There is a growing government awareness of the role of religion in international affairs.

For 45 minutes each week, the Rev. Victor Potapov has a chance to tell multitudes of citizens in the Soviet Union about religion in America. The soft-spoken Orthodox priest broadcasts a radio show, “Religion in Our Life,” from the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. It is beamed toward Russia six times during the week, with topics ranging from interviews with the recently released Siberian Seven to a book-by-book analysis of the Bible.

Potapov receives only a trickle of smuggled mail from his listeners. Last year, a letter arrived from a man who could not attend church during Holy Week and discovered a series of special worship services Potapov prepared. “You won’t believe it, but I was moved to tears,” he wrote.

Potapov believes “religion is growing by leaps and bounds” in the Soviet Union, and he tailors his broadcasts to encourage a Russian spiritual renewal. “The Soviets like to point out that religion and science are incompatible,” he said, so he concentrates on refuting that premise by broadcasting feature stories about Soviet scientists who have also adhered to their faith, such as helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky.

This year, under VOA’S new director, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Potapov’s programming responsibilities have expanded to include worship service specials marking each of the 12 festivals on the Orthodox calendar. He estimates he has between 20 and 30 million listeners each week, drawn primarily from the 50 to 80 million Orthodox believers and two to three million Baptists in the Soviet Union.

VOA, a branch of the United States Information Agency, broadcasts 960 hours of programming a week in 42 languages. Scarcely 5 percent of that consists of religious programming, but growing government awareness of the role religion plays in international affairs has brought about “a systematic and careful expansion,” Tomlinson said. In 1982, for the first time ever, VOA broadcast worldwide in English a Christmas Eve service from National Presbyterian Church in Washington.

The Christmas broadcast raised suspicions among church-state purists, but Tomlinson said, “I told them I’m Episcopalian, my deputy is Jewish, and so on. What we are doing is above all balanced, reflects all faiths, and reflects the real America, and that, I think, is absolutely central to VOA’S mission.” VOA is chartered to present to the world who Americans are and what they do—a topic of endless interest abroad.

VOA’S religious programming is sensitive to current events. Tomlinson explained, “When martial law was declared in Poland, the celebration of mass was taken off Warsaw radio and TV, so we expanded our 15-minute news program to include the presentation of a weekly mass from a Polish church in the United States.” Because of this and other Polish-language programs, Poland’s military regime fired off an angry letter to Washington that accused VOA of “destabilizing constitutional order” in that country. Tomlinson counts that a high compliment. “The reason we are effective is not because we are hitting the Polish people with distortions or with a product that has a great anti-Communist spin. We are going with truth, with facts, with what’s happening in the world. That’s a great threat to totalitarian regimes.”

The VOA tries to portray the diversity of American life and thought. For religious programming, this means broadcasting news and specials of Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. By doing this, Tomlinson said, “we convey something that is essentially an American, or a Western, principle: that we believe there is something mightier than the state.”

For VOA’S “America Today” program early next year, a major series of features on American religious life is being planned. It will cover the gamut: denominations, ecumenism, evangelicals, women in the churches, church-state controversies, and America’s religious roots, among other topics. Neither this, nor the more specialized programming done by Potapov, is intended to proselytize.

VOA first entered the airwaves just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Today, the equipment they use is still largely of that vintage. Tomlinson said one-third of VOA’S transmitters are more than 30 years old, and broadcasts to the Soviet Union from Munich, West Germany, originate on equipment confiscated from the Nazis. Chronic understaffing and dated equipment in Washington inhibit VOA expansion. Its congressional appropriations are inevitably low because other priorities capture headlines and votes.

In the war of words, VOA is an essential though scarcely noticed front-line combatant. Its commitment to religious broadcasting is an acknowledgment that freedom of worship and belief is integral to a free society.

BETH SPRING

An evangelical church historian finds encouraging signs at the World Council of Churches’ Sixth Assembly in Vancouver.

This report on the Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and personal reflection on the significance of the event, was written by Richard Lovelace, professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

After its Uppsala, Switzerland, assembly in 1968, the World Council of Churches (WCC) espoused liberation theologies, sent money to liberation movements, and acutely criticized Western failures. This, combined with comparative silence about Communist societies, convinced many evangelicals that it was controlled by the political and theological Left. But the Sixth Assembly of the WCC in Vancouver, which concluded last month, may significantly alter that perception, and may introduce stronger evangelical currents in the council.

Vigorous Trinitarian theology with a strong emphasis on eternal and supernatural life in Christ permeated this assembly. The theosis motif—the special Orthodox emphasis on our vital union with Christ in his death and resurrection, and our salvation through participation in the divine life—especially lent itself to the theme of this assembly, “Jesus Christ—the Life of the World.” Evangelicals were impressed by the powerful imagery of Father Theodore Stylianopoulos’s sermon on the assembly theme: “The preexistent Word … reveals divine life through creation, through incarnation, and through sanctification.… The eternal Word himself is the instrument of the revelation of God’s glory throughout the material and spiritual cosmos, to the end that all creation may be disclosed in its true nature as a burning bush ablaze with the glory of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.”

A later homily during the Orthodox liturgy, concluding the all-night peace vigil on the Feast of the Transfiguration, made clear that the Russians are anything but a secularizing influence in the Council:

“[Let us seek words] resembling the style and conveying the content of the Bible rather than ineffective resolutions commonly presented at the United Nations.… We are not here … to issue loud pronouncements that we know we will not be able to honor. Neither are we here to impress the news media with revolutionary concepts or interpretations of Christianity.…

“People of God everywhere are anxiously waiting to hear a voice proclaiming Jesus Christ, the God-man, as the sole ruler of our lives, and his law of love, compassion, social justice, personal dignity and peace, as the law that supersedes all human laws.… If, when we depart from Vancouver, our faces should shine like the sun … only then will people all over the world believe that we are really determined to reinstate Christ in our lives and our lives in him.

“Men and women of this century are praying that the twenty-first century will be the century of Christ. They can accept nothing less than that.… They are all looking for a new signal, for a new, more practical and believing Christianity, when they will be guided by the hand by Christ himself.… The Transfiguration stands not simply as a glorious event or vision but also as a luminous ascendance of human nature to its theosis.”

Along with strong Christology and an emphasis on supernatural life in Christ, the assembly seemed to evangelicals to have a stronger rootage in Scripture. Philip Potter’s general secretary’s report was no tame summary of activities but a strong expository sermon developed from 1 Peter 2:4–5, full of exegetical brilliance (especially a play on the words oikos/oikonomia/oikoumene, relating God’s house built of living stones to the well-being of the whole world). His message strongly challenged the church not to be “tempted to echo the doomed policies of the nations from which we come.” Potter did not hesitate to emphasize Protestant distinctives, which threw the Orthodox into shock: he magnified the priesthood of all believers and denounced “the heresy of magisterial authority.” During the rest of the assembly, even the most liberal speakers tried to exegete Scripture, not to tinker with it.

Pentecostal David Du Plessis, who has attended all five general assemblies of the WCC, felt that this was by far the most biblically solid yet. “When I first started, I couldn’t see anything but the tares. Now the wheat is overwhelming the tares.” Du Plessis especially noted the applause of the delegates, which regularly supported points affirming Scripture or historic Christian orthodoxy.

Delegates and observers complained that not enough prominence was given to evangelistic proclamation. Evangelicals have been delighted with the new WCC statement on Mission and Evangelism, which shows the influence of evangelical theology in its strong call for proclaiming the gospel and personal conversion to Christ. Roman Catholic observer Thomas Stransky called this “the most important document since the merger with the International Missionary Council,” but observed that the draft statement on “Witness” that came to the floor of the general assembly was far behind this in content and balance. Committee members complained that the drafter had ignored their corrections. After a series of delegates made plain that the implicit universalism and weak Christology of the document would be unacceptable to home churches, it was returned to the committee for redrafting, a move rarely made in assemblies. A similar protest against universalism in the assembly’s Message secured the change of a crucial sentence in a passage on evangelism: “We have no reserved seats at the banquet” became “All are invited to the banquet.”

One of the major leaders in the council, after declaring to me his evangelical sympathies, described the first draft of the “Witness” document as “a piece of trash.” He agreed with me that a problem the council faces is that its staff is not entirely representative of the spiritual and theological power in the member churches, especially in the Third World. Of course, American evangelicals do not represent this kind of grassroots power very well, either. Latin American and African believers are thoroughly like Americans in their devotion to Scripture, nurture, and evangelism, but their observations on both the superpowers sound harsh in our ears. They insist they are not motivated by Marxist ideology but are disturbed by the way multinational corporations support rather than challenge oppressive systems in their countries.

Another feature of this assembly that was strikingly different from the past was its emphasis on worship and intercessory prayer. M. M. Thomas noted that this assembly had no brilliantly innovative theology, but was rich in symbolic communication and in worship. Every day began with multilingual worship in a huge tent, a striking symbol of the Christian pilgrimage, and ended the same way, with a noonday preaching service included.

But the most remarkable spiritual dimension of the assembly was its background of prayer. Gwen Cashmore, the new director of renewal for the WCC, who has roots in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and in the East African revival, arrived in Vancouver a month before the assembly with a Franciscan nun, Sister Joan Puls, and set up a gathering that prayed by name for all those who were to attend the assembly. During the assembly, there was a round-the-clock prayer watch upholding every session and meeting. At the peace vigil, private requests were collected to be held before the Lord in the prayer watch.

Subjectively, this assembly was one of the great spiritual experiences of my life. We are dealing here with intangibles, but I must report that I have never been among so many supernaturally courteous, gracious Christian people. I am used to the formal pomp and logic of Presbyterian General Assemblies, or the partly manufactured cheer of evangelical and charismatic gatherings. But the assembly was conducted with an easy, natural good humor among the leaders and pervaded with a serious, loving humility among the delegates. Everything seemed dignified by the presence of the Spirit. The only arguments I had in Vancouver were with my fellow evangelicals. Perhaps the ecumenical venture attracts irenic and pacific Christians—peacemakers—or perhaps, as Spurgeon suggests in connection with Psalm 133, the Holy Spirit delights to dwell in fulness among the unity of the brethren. At any rate, I kept reflecting each day about shalom, about the city of the peace of God, and the peace that passes all understanding.

And I have one more thing to report that does not accord with our usual ideas about the World Council. In the 18 days of this assembly I did more witnessing for Christ than I have done in the past several years. The presence of 4,000 Christians from so many parts of the world, in so many distinctive styles of clothing, had an awakening impact on Vancouver. Everywhere I went, people wanted to talk to me about the council, thanking us for dealing with the issues of peace and the economy that are worrying them and open to hearing a reason for my hope in Christ. “I get up there to the meetings as much as I can,” said one waitress; “they’re beautiful!” “Thank God for the World Council,” said another traveler; “they’ll save us from the evangelicals!” (It turned out she had us mixed up with Ian Paisley and Bob Jones.)

As I concluded an impromptu counseling session with a lapsed believer and a lesbian Satanist—both hugged me as we parted—I wondered whether the WCC’S insistence that the kingdom of Christ changes things here and now, as well as in eternity, may be an evangelistic plus that we need to explore. The great eras of awakening are those in which the poor hear the gospel preached to them—perhaps because they see Christians taking sides with them against the forces that are destroying them.

The majority of evangelicals who caucussed at the assembly were also enthusiastic, so much so that they produced a statement commending the World Council and inviting evangelicals to add their gifts to its process. The main drafter of “Evangelicals at Vancouver: An Open Letter” was Arthur Glasser, who reflected the contributions of a group of about 40 others, including Waldron Scott and Orlando Costas, who was an adviser at the assembly. The evangelical statement made the front page of the assembly newspaper. Emilio Castro, head of the WCC Division of Mission and Evangelism, was ecstatic about the support provided for evangelical concerns in the council, and predicted that the open letter would turn out to be the most important event at the Sixth Assembly. More than 200 persons signed the document, and many others thanked us for it.

Not all evangelicals at the assembly affirmed this statement. A counterstatement produced by Peter Beyerhaus was signed by American missiologist Arthur Johnston and a Korean Presbyterian professor, Myung Yuk Kim. The Beyerhaus statement admitted some of the progress noted by the other evangelicals but called attention to theological vagueness, a neo-Marxist “theology of the poor,” feminist neopaganism, the presence and counterwitness of spokespersons for non-Christian religions, unbalanced criticism of the West, shallowness in perceiving sin, and lack of eschatological perspective. It concluded by warning evangelicals to stay clear of the WCC process, just as the open letter called for their involvement.

Another View …*

A discussion group of evangelicals at the Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches by majority vote decided to send an open letter to evangelicals all over the world, sharing with them their basically positive impressions and charging them to drop their previous theological reservations about the WCC and get actively involved in it. Some of us felt alarmed by this sudden shift of opinion. We could neither share the optimistic assessment of the Vancouver event nor the far-reaching consequences that were drawn from it. When it became clear that the majority insisted on going ahead with the plan and even managed to obtain the support of the assembly’s steering committee to broadcast its statement as the evangelical reaction to all participants, we decided to draw up an alternative statement.

We did not feel happy about this public appearance of a theological rift within the evangelical camp. But we thought this to be a far lesser evil than the danger that, through the impact of that open letter, Christianity at large might mistakenly come to believe that most of the serious doctrinal issues that have divided the evangelical from the conciliar movement, at least since Uppsala 1968, had now been settled, and that the WCC in Vancouver had moved to a basically biblical position. Our careful analysis of the speeches and worship at the assembly revealed that the opposite was true, in spite of an apparent new biblical orthodoxy on the surface. After all, this assembly was the first in the history of the ecumenical movement in which a theological atheist—Dorothee Sölle—and leading representatives of non-Christian religions were invited to address the audience on its central theme, “Jesus Christ the Life of the World.” We also felt that the supporters of the open letter had no mandate for sending such a weighty message to all our fellow evangelicals throughout the world. They did not participate in the name of their respective evangelical denominations and world bodies—who wisely had decided to stay outside. Second, it is far too early to come to such a revolutionary conclusion concerning the WCC’S stance and direction.

Our own discussion group is aware that technically ours is a minority statement. But the evangelical representation in Vancouver was very fragmentary, and the fact that our three members have been students of the ecumenical movement for many years, attending ecumenical and evangelical conferences and publishing books and articles about it, made us confident to share our views with our fellow Christians in and outside Vancouver.

We were afraid the open letter could mark a fatal turning point in the history of evangelical Christianity and lead to doctrinal alienation or a new split. Evangelical leaders should take the initiative to encourage serious local evaluation of present-day ecumenicity and convene international consultations about it.

PETER BEYERHAUS

The majority of English-speaking evangelicals at the assembly agreed with many elements of the Beyerhaus critique, though they felt it concentrated on the empty half of the glass and came to a wrong conclusion. (Most Third World evangelicals were not meeting with their Western counterparts because of language barriers and because they were unsure whether Western evangelicals were standing with them in their political and economic situations.) Ironically, Father Theodore Stylianopoulos thanked the evangelicals for Beyerhaus’s statement, which the Orthodox Christians perceived as strengthening their own critique of Western liberalism.

This indicates that not all evangelicals need to agree about the World Council in order to help it recover its original balance and dynamism. Unlike the evangelical and charismatic ecumenical networks, it is not a fellowship of like-minded Christians, but a process that brings together representatives from the grassroots of world Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Its leadership includes some dubious representatives of Western liberalism, especially Europeans. Though the “Guidelines for Dialogue with Other Living Faiths” does not violate evangelical convictions—it merely sets up a climate for “friendship evangelism” in a context of mutual sharing—some of the staff seem fuzzy about the uniqueness of salvation in Christ. But Orthodox Christians and Third World evangelicals are unlikely to be taken in by these errors. It is far more likely that they will change the leadership of the council, even more than young evangelical students have been changing mainline seminaries.

Those who do not feel comfortable working in the council can do helpful things outside it. If they will be careful to speak the truth in love, they can point out its needs with the objectivity distance lends. The council quietly insists that it cannot give Soviet abuses the same prophetic attack it levels on the West without imperiling its Russian members. But at this assembly I heard it stated several times that it is helpful for outside groups to protest civil rights violations in the East.

Evangelicals in member churches who feel comfortable working in the council, and others who are attracted by its holistic approach to the expression of the gospel in society and all of culture, should commend themselves to the process as representatives of the dominant subculture at the grassroots level. The council is increasingly aware that it cannot do its work without their help.

And we should pray for the council: for the strengthening of its theological side, the Faith and Order Commission; for the enabling of Emilio Castro, Cecilio Arrastia, and other evangelicals working in the Division of Mission and Evangelism; and for Gwen Cashmore and the renewal division that needs an enlarged budget and could profit from input and consultation with evangelicals. The new Theological Advisory Board is asking for theological representatives outside the WCC sphere. Perhaps we should pray for an international consultation with evangelicals to match the one recently held with charismatics at Bossey. In the future, some denominations might be joint members of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), and WCC. A convergence of the evangelical and charismatic networks with the WCC should be at least an item for prayer.

Evangelicals, after all, invented the ecumenical movement. In the Great Awakening of the mid-1700s, Lutheran Pietists, Wesleyan Arminians, and Calvinists all cooperated in bringing evangelical renewal to their churches. The achievements of the Second Evangelical Awakening in mission and social reform during the early 1900s were possible because renewal sectors in all churches combined in an “evangelical united front.” Later in the century, D. L. Moody’s Student Volunteer Movement generated the ecumenical momentum that led to the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, the first of the great series of meetings that forms the modern ecumenical stream.

At this point, however, the theological breakup of Western Christianity split the ecumenical stream. Protestant liberals dominated the Life and Work conferences of the 1920s and ‘30s. Neo-orthodox theology, which condemned both modernism and fundamentalism, ruled the Faith and Order conferences of the same period. Fundamentalists and Pentecostals developed their own national and international networks. The evangelical reform movement in the 1940s developed other separate arenas, the NAE, and later the WEF.

Thus, when the Faith and Order and Life and Work streams merged in 1948 to form the World Council of Churches, they did not draw many conservative leaders into their fellowship. Evangelicals tended to stay in their own ecumenical networks and to criticize others. But increasing numbers of American evangelicals are now joining their Third World counterparts within the council.

What about the political stance of the WCC? In many respects its leadership sounds like the United Nations at prayer. The New World Economic Order it recommends—the “just, participatory and sustainable society”—could turn out to be just another version of centralized socialism. It would be helpful to have this phrase clarified, and it would be good to have more free-market economists in the council to respond to its challenges.

Are the council’s social goals too utopian, or even anti-Christian? At times its theology sounds impossibly optimistic about what is possible in ordinary history, like the evolutionary monism of Teilhard de Chardin. It is particularly upsetting to modern evangelicals touched by premillenial pessimism. Jonathan Edwards’s dream of a world “united in one amiable society … one church, one orderly, regular, beautiful society”—is a dispensationalist’s nightmare, at least before Christ’s return. But those who suspected that Antichrist was at the Vancouver assembly were not a very credible bunch: Ian Paisley, Bob Jones III, and Carl Mclntire with his explicit affirmation of South African apartheid. The WCC can be pardoned for reaching toward the kingdom a little further than these critics.

Several leaders at the assembly clearly stated that the WCC does not support armed revolution. On the contrary, it has adopted the pacifism of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems to be calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Isn’t this unrealistic and dangerously destabilizing? Perhaps. But as I read Isaiah 2:1–5, I hear the prophet predicting a time when the temple of the Lord, which we now know as the body of Christ, will be so lifted up that all nations will stream to it and be taught of the Lord, and will beat their swords into plowshares. This conversion of our destructive potential into productive wealth is now becoming such a rational necessity that the nations might even be prepared to trust the Prince of Peace to bring it about. I think the World Council can be pardoned for reaching in that prophetic direction. It may be underestimating the tenacity of sin and the powers of death and destruction—or it may simply be correctly assessing the power of the grace of Christ in an awakened church.

RICHARD LOVELACEin Vancouver

The Bible suggests a different approach.

How should we pray for an unsaved friend or loved one? Prayer relating to evangelism has been more misunderstood and subject to “malpractice,” I believe, than any other.

Scripture does not record that Jesus Christ ever prayed explicitly and directly for the eternal salvation of a lost soul. Neither Jesus nor Paul ever commanded us to do so. In several places, prayer for the unsaved may be inferred indirectly. Our Lord taught us to “pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44; all references in the NASB). The greatest benefit to an unsaved persecutor would be his salvation.

Paul urged that prayers be offered “for kings and all who are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:1–2), that governmental authorities would not inhibit the free working of the church. But behind the immediate object is an overarching one, that God “desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Thus, prayer for unsaved government officials is implied.

The most explicit New Testament prayer for the unsaved is Paul’s heartfelt cry, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them [Israel] is for their salvation” (Rom. 10:1). But this prayer is for the salvation of the nation as a unit rather than for the salvation of individual Jews.

Why does Scripture contain only this one example of direct prayer for salvation of the lost? Is it because Christ and Paul did not care about evangelism? Hardly! Christ wept over the lost souls of men. Paul’s zeal for their conversion energized him to the end of his days. What instruction, then, does the New Testament give us about prayer as it relates to evangelism?

Christ tells us that in view of the whitened harvest fields (an obvious allusion to an evangelistic need), we should “beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:38). Our Lord commanded prayer for the harvesters rather than for the harvest.

When Paul found himself in jail, he wrote requesting prayer to believers in two local churches (Eph. 6:19–20 and Col. 4:3). The passages—similar in content—give valuable insight into the nature of “harvester” praying.

Suppose you found yourself in a local jail surrounded by guards and fellow prisoners who desperately need Christ. You decide to write your local church, requesting prayer. You would be likely to mention by name some of the hardened men around you and ask your fellow Christians to pray that God would soften their hearts and save them. Yet Paul, in such a situation, said, “pray on my behalf” (Eph. 6:19; cf. Col. 4:3). He, too, advocates prayer for the saint rather than the sinner—prayer for his own effectiveness in witnessing for Christ. These passages interpret Christ’s command to pray for workers to be sent into the harvest. So let us take a closer look at them.

Paul Desired An Opportunity To Witness

Paul did not request prayer for deliverance from prison or for ability to hold up under stress. Paul says to pray “that God may open up to us a door for the word” (Col. 4:3). Biblically, it is God’s business to pry open doors of opportunity (Rev. 3:7). Rather than force an opportunity, Paul through prayer depended on God to provide one. Certainly the Word of God is quick and powerful, but we are not to throw Scripture verses against the door. Evidently prayer is instrumental in opening a door for the Word.

Paul Desired Courage To Witness

Paul twice requested boldness. He desired ability to make the gospel known “with boldness” (Eph. 6:19). He wanted an opportunity to speak “boldly” (Eph. 6:20). The root idea of the Greek words Paul uses is of open or free speech.

It is possible to witness but be so inhibited by fear that the presentation of the gospel is blurred. Evidently Paul considered intercessory prayer important in producing courage to present the gospel’s claims without this paralyzing restraint.

Paul Desired A Message

Paul begged his readers to pray “that utterance may be given to me” (Eph. 6:19). The apostle wanted a message, and he wanted it to “be given” to him by God. Paul perceived that effective witnessing must be initiated and sustained by God. The Holy Spirit must wield the sword if conviction and conversion are to occur.

Because the message to be presented is “the mystery of the gospel” (Eph. 6:19; cf. “mystery of Christ” in Col. 4:3), divine assistance would be needed in both its proclamation and comprehension. A “mystery” is a truth sovereignly withheld by God and then revealed to man at a given point in history. It refers to new truth that God has chosen to reveal. Paul stated earlier in his letter (Eph. 3:3) that God had sovereignly revealed to him new truths. These new truths fall outside human experience: “Eye has not seen and ear has not heard” them (1 Cor. 2:9). Hence the gospel needs to be presented with divine clarity if men are to comprehend it. Only prayer achieves this result. So Paul requested the Ephesian believers to pray that he might proclaim the gospel “as I ought to speak” (Eph. 6:20). He requested the Colossian believers to pray “that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak” (Col. 4:4). In both instances, Paul implies that the clarity he seeks is beyond human ability.

Obviously Paul felt prayer to be necessary to secure this divine assistance. Since God chooses to move in response to prayer, no asking of God ordinarily means no doing by God. “Whatever you ask … that will I do” (John 14:13). Real evangelism begins not by talking to men about God, but by talking to God about men. It begins by crying to God to send out workers into his harvest. This “thrusting forth” involves praying that the harvesters will be given opportunities to witness, boldness as they witness, and unique anointing that makes their speech both clear and powerful. This is “harvester” praying.

Of course, it is not out of place to cry out, “Father, save my unsaved loved one!” It would be almost subhuman not to voice such a petition occasionally. But it would be more in harmony with New Testament instruction to pray for God to send Spirit-filled Christians across the path of that loved one.

If you know of no specific Christian who has contact with your loved one, pray for God to bring one into that person’s life.

If you know of a Christian who works with your unsaved loved one, start praying for that Christian to be built up and equipped. Then pray that God will use that Christian to witness effectively to your loved one.

If you yourself are living with the unsaved loved one, recruit several Christians to engage in “harvester” praying on your behalf. This would come closer to the biblical instruction concerning prayer for evangelism.

Both Christ and Paul concentrated their prayer effort on the saints. And as the saints are built up and are equipped to be divinely sent out into the harvest, evangelism will inevitably take place.

How have all great turnings to God in history begun? By the saints getting revived! Revival of the saints has invariably overflowed as evangelism in the community. The greatest hindrance to evangelism in your community is not the sinful indifference of its sinners, but the carnality of its saints. When Christians are built up and Spirit filled, evangelism will take place.

Paul’s admonition is to pray “for all the saints, and … on my behalf” (Eph. 6:18–19).

CURTIS MITCHELL¹Dr. Mitchell is professor of biblical studies at Biota University, La Mirada, California. He is the author of Praying Jesus’ Way (Revell, 1977).

The man, asleep in the trash bin, was awakened with a jolt. He had been scooped up along with the trash by a 21-ton Indianapolis garbage truck. Knocked unconscious, he came to upside-down and squeezed into an area where, as the driver later put it, “a human being shouldn’t fit.”

The truck started again and picked up two more loads of trash. When the driver stopped for a third load, he heard some hollering. Getting out, he looked around. The voice sounded far away, and he could see no one. So he started the compactor. That’s when he heard a banging inside the truck. Thinking something mechanical was wrong, he stopped the cylinders. Then, he later reported, he “heard a voice saying he sure would like to get out of wherever he was.” Fortunately, the driver saw to it that he did.

Did you ever feel caught in a compactor? Feel that you had too much responsibility, too many concerns, too much to do and not enough time, too many engagements and not enough strength—so much so that you sure would like to have gotten out of wherever you were?

We’re talking here about compactors, and there is nothing creative, supportive, or productive about a compactor: it is destructive. It goes beyond pressure, the subject of our first By the Way column. Compaction goes to the breaking point or, more accurately, the squashing point.

When you find yourself there (never mind how you got there, for this is a parable with built-in limitations), the first thing to do is to holler. Yes, a prayer can be a holler. A prayer can also be a sigh, a tear, a murmur, a look, a reasoned entreaty. It can also be a holler. God hears his children: “His ears are open to their cry.”

“God does not promise strength for uncommanded work.” Perhaps you’re attempting things he hasn’t commanded. When I began to feel compacted and cried for help, God showed me my priorities had gotten distorted. He was to come first. Then I realized I needed to be “liberated” from wherever I was: off of boards and committees, creating no more books or articles for the time being, attending no unnecessary meetings nor granting unnecessary interviews.

This was God’s answer for me. He may have another solution for you.

I want to be free to be a wife, a homemaker, a mother, and a grandmother.

Compacted? He’ll help you out of wherever you are.

“We are very good at defining what guidance is not, but very bad at defining what it is.”

The issues are immediate and clearcut. Who do I marry? What job should I take? Should I go to a Christian or secular college? Which church should I attend? Ought I consider having another child? Should I move to Texas? Each of us has a customized set of these questions that hover oppressively over our daily routines.

It would seem reasonable to expect God to be involved in such major decisions affecting our lives. And yet, try to make sense, if you will, of the most commonly heard advice on the topic of divine guidance.

Mystical Guidance

The older strain of advice has a more mystical or supernatural aura about it. Some Christians teach that God has a plan for each of our lives, a wonderful plan, in fact, and that we only need discover it to know what school we should attend, who we should marry, what occupation we should choose, where we should live. God’s plan is individual and specific. For direction on how to decipher the recondite secrets of this plan, these Christians turn to such examples as Gideon’s putting out a fleece and Paul’s vision of a Macedonian call. To me, the selection of those two examples has always seemed curious in the extreme.

In the story reported in Judges 6 and 7, Gideon clearly emerges as an example of doubt and vacillation. Has anyone experienced such irrefutable guidance? After a personal visit from an angel of God, who gave exact instructions, Gideon asked for and got a confirming sign: the spontaneous combustion of his offering to the Lord. Still nervous about the military improbability of his task, he asked for another sign, that of a wet fleece. When that was provided, he had the audacity to ask for yet a third sign, the dry fleece. After all these supernatural confirmations, Gideon still shrank from his task until God recommended he stroll among the tents of the enemy and listen to their conversations.

“Putting out the fleece” hardly seems an appropriate model for someone seeking guidance. It better describes someone who knows exactly what God wants and still quakes before the task.

Similarly, the account of the Macedonian call offers a dubious prototype for guidance. The most evident fact is that this vision came as such a surprise to Paul. He planned his missionary journeys as strategically as a general plans army maneuvers. But this one time (Acts 16:6–10), he ran into a roadblock. “The spirit of Jesus” constrained him from his determined route and the vision suggested an alternative. In a survey of the Book of Acts to discern Paul’s reliance on guidance, the Macedonian call stands out as a spectacular aberration from normal experience—hardly the type of incident to construct a philosophy of guidance around.

Rational Guidance

Lately, a more pragmatic school of thinking about guidance has sprung up in Christian circles. A sincere questioner uses such resources as the Bible, the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, and external circumstances to descry God’s will. “Line up those three like harbor lights,” a popular analogy advises, “and your ship safely glides in.” Some add a fourth harbor light: the wise counsel of fellow Christians. In essence, this strain of thought has made the whole issue of guidance less mysterious, more rational.

Very recently a more iconoclastic school of thought has appeared. A book called Decision Making and the Will of God, by Garry Friesen, has sold 100,000 copies and stirred up considerable controversy. He spends the first few chapters developing a caricature of a pastor who gives seminars on traditionally accepted notions of guidance. Then Friesen asks a major question. Does God, in fact, have an “individual will” for me that specifies in advance the major choices of my life? Friesen concludes that God has a moral will, fully revealed in the Bible. But where no specific command or principle is given, the believer is free and responsible to choose his or her own course of action. Friesen devotes 452 pages to proving his point.

Some Examination

How, then, can we deal with the major anxieties about the future that hang over us? Whereas some Christians exhort us to seek a deep, mystical confirmation before deciding on a course of action, others admonish us to study the Bible and then make up our own minds. Where do we look for guidance to help decide on a philosophy of guidance?

Frankly, for various reasons I have found these common approaches confusing and at least partly unsatisfying. They often leave unanswered basic questions about God’s sovereignty and his readiness to impinge on human affairs. In thinking about guidance, I have tried to take a step back from the actual precipice of choice in order to consider more fundamental questions of how an infinite God could guide finite human beings. “What are his options?” I have asked myself (knowing full well that questions phrased like that are hopelessly inadequate when one contemplates an infinite God). In this process, I have relied on a wonderful, although densely written, philosophical work entitled Incarnation and Immanence, by Lady Helen Oppenheimer. The book is unavailable in an American edition, so I will try to compensate by freely borrowing some of its seminal ideas.

Lady Oppenheimer begins her discussion on divine guidance by first examining how we ask other humans for guidance. What do we ask for when we ask for guidance? She lists three common examples.

1. We ask some people’s support of the decision we are already leaning toward. Employees within large companies do this masterfully by seeking counsel with precisely those people who will build a ground swell of support for their own pet projects. Children are even more disingenuous: they possess an instinctive ability to sense which parent will most likely agree with their desires, and approach that parent for permission.

But surely this common technique does not offer us a model for asking advice of God. Going to him for approval of our predetermined ideas and plans would be sheer blasphemy. We must look to other models.

2. We go to some people because we truly want to be told what to do. “I can’t decide which college to go to—you tell me,” the befuddled teenager asks his parents. “Look, it’s up to you whether we have another child or not,” says one spouse. “You decide, and I’ll go along with whatever you choose.”

Professional counselors encounter this type of questioner often; the indecisiveness itself is the reason for the counseling. Such clients yearn for a wise parent to make all the important decisions in life. A wise counselor rears back from playing a direct parental role. The client needs not good advice, but the mature ability to make his or her own decisions. The counselor takes on a long-term goal of freeing the client from the unhealthy dependency of “victimization.”

The counselor’s response offers an important insight into one of the most puzzling aspects of the whole guidance issue. Why does not God forthrightly tell me which decision is the right one? Could it be because such a response would inevitably jeopardize human freedom, a course God has scrupulously avoided taking from the Garden of Eden onward? He desires not so much to run our lives as to have us, in full control of our lives, offer them to him in obedience and service. (I am speaking here of morally neutral issues. Anything revealed in Scripture needs no further guidance initiative; it is God’s Word to us.)

3. Sometimes we simply want a chance to think aloud, in the presence of a friendly listener. Whole schools of therapy have arisen to extol the virtues of such a role. The counselor should nod meaningfully, restate the client’s questions for him or her, and essentially help the client clarify a position without directive interference.

At first glance, the “friendly listener” approach does resemble our approach to the divine in prayer. But there are crucial differences, too. In prayer we have no visible proof of anyone listening, not even the bare minimum of a person nodding a head and restating our opinions. Lady Helen Oppenheimer expresses the frustration this way, “One cannot go on forever being grateful for silence. A good listener is not one who we begin to think has gone quietly away.” And we do, after all, want guidance, not just sympathy, from an all-knowing God.

Guidance And God’S Omniscience

These examples of human guidance can only begin to express the “problem” of an infinite God guiding finite human beings. Consider, for example, a healthy form of human guidance that falls under the second category of Oppenheimer’s list. We consult experts in fields such as law or medicine, freely subjecting ourselves to their superior judgment on issues of vital importance. We want, and pay dearly for, their informed advice. Is not an omniscient God an ideal “expert,” fully informed on the particulars of our lives, and the most objective adviser we could possibly imagine?

At this point, the difference between finitude and infinitude crops up. I go to a lawyer or a doctor in order to exhaust his advice. I want him to study books, talk to his colleagues, scan his computer files to gather the best possible advice. He helps me to the limits of his capacity. When he is done, I take the results and make the decision on my course of action.

With God, it is different. He has unlimited capacity. In a curious sort of way, it would be cheating at the most basic level of human independence to receive “the inside story” of how the future will turn out. There would be no meaningful opportunity for faith or obedience if I knew the inevitable result of taking one sort of action and not another. Human freedom would dissolve. An all-knowing God cannot “give advice” like a conscientious lawyer. Where does he draw the line? Imagine what would happen if one musician (or one politician, or one pastor, or one confused college student), but not others, had direct and limitless access to God’s infinite wisdom and creativity. The rules governing the whole planet would shift.

C. S. Lewis hinted at God’s hesitance to intervene directly: “He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.… Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to coexist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of ‘divine abdication.’ ”

Let me summarize the problem of “divine abdication” by referring back to Lady Oppenheimer’s three models for human guidance. It seems common forms of human guidance take on grave difficulties when God himself is the other party. Surely we do not want to use him as a rubber stamp on decisions (option one). He cannot easily fill the role of an objective “friendly listener” (option three) for paradoxical reasons: because of his invisible spirit nature and also because of his own unlimited capacity and omniscience.

The second example of guidance, that of “telling us what to do,” is probably the least likely avenue God will take, out of respect for human freedom. There are exceptions, of course, the Macedonian call and Gideon’s fleece being among them; but these stand out primarily because they are exceptions. Perhaps we have the key here as to why the issue of guidance causes so much frustration among Christians. Of the various alternatives, is not this the one we secretly desire—that of being told in our prayers what to do? And yet God, with good reason, usually refrains from guiding so directly.

Does God Guide?

Most discussions on guidance tend to vaporize at about this point in the argument. We are very good at defining what guidance is not, but very bad at defining what it is. I began with the personal issues of choice that hang over each of us, and I cannot go on forever pointing out the problems in divine guidance. To be honest, I must somehow address the practical matter of involving God in the decision-making process.

Yet I have begun to wonder if our problem with guidance centers in our tendency to see it in terms of a technique, rather than as part of a relationship. As techniques, the first and third examples presented by Lady Oppenheimer fail to satisfy, but seen in the context of a relationship they take on an entirely different light.

I think of the most intimate relationship I have ever had, that of marriage for 13 years to my wife, Janet. I quickly confess that in this human relationship, also, Oppenheimer’s second option is the rarest: I almost never go to my wife to be told what to do. But, within the womb of intimacy, I do often go to her to seek support for my own decisions (option one) and to seek out a compassionate “friendly listener” who has my best interests at heart (option three).

At times in the rush of a day, I have neglected to mention some important fact, even a pleasing thing that has happened to me, perhaps an article that has been accepted for publication or an award. If my wife finds out later, she confronts me with a wounded, sometimes fiery look. “You never told me that!” she accuses. She should know more about me than anyone else—hers is an entirely appropriate, even endearing, kind of jealousy.

Or, I think of negative things in our marriage: an irritation I try to bury deep inside, a necessary confrontation I seek to avoid, a fear or insecurity I wish would go away. After 13 years, I have simply given up trying to hide those things from Janet. They will come out sometime, maybe weeks later, maybe months. My own body will give me away: a tilt of the jaw, a quiver of the eye, a sudden stiffening, an unnatural silence.

The very fact of communication is almost as important as the content of it. In one sense, I almost never go to Janet “for advice” on an issue—not, at least, in the way I would go to a lawyer or professional counselor for advice. But in another sense, everything that I do and that I am I strive to share with her. When I do face a choice between two options, naturally I go through the process with her. But at the end, when the decision is reached, we are both quite unsure of who contributed what to the ultimate result. Such a division—who contributes what—would seem strangely irrelevant to intimacy. Certainly we both maintain our independence in the process, and yet somehow—if we are relating healthily—we arrive at a truly joint decision.

In the intimacy of human marriage, perhaps we can catch a glimpse of the intimacy longed for by God. A theme peals out from the Bible, a ringing of bells, a call for us humans to act like the Bride of Christ that we are. God is the lover, we the beloved. When we reject him, we prostitute ourselves—the sexual imagery fills the prophetic books.

Here is an important clue: The Bible contains very little specific advice on the techniques of guidance, but very much on the proper way to maintain a love relationship with God. What Janet and I are learning—the small and large communications that make up our life together—is a shadow of the intimacy God desires from me. He wants a conscious and willing acceptance of his presence whenever I make a decision. The spotlight of guidance shifts from technique to relationship.

The Psalms And Guidance

If someone asked me for a recommendation of a biblical text on the doctrine of guidance, I would quickly suggest the Psalms. Yes, that’s right, all 150 of them. I learned to appreciate the Psalms on a trip to Colorado, in the midst of the busiest and most anxiety-filled year of my life. I had to go somewhere to escape office pressures in order to concentrate on one last editing of a book manuscript, and I chose Colorado in the month of May. I also needed to seek out guidance on some major decisions about my future.

I determined to arise early each morning, drive or walk to a scenic setting, and begin the day by reading in order straight through ten psalms. Those mornings still stand out with all the bracing clarity of the morning mountain air. Clusters of bright green aspen trees were coming into leaf, staining the sheltered folds of the still-wintry mountains with a gash of life. I would stare around me for a long time before reading.

Previously, I had dipped into the Psalms one at a time, finding a familiar one here or there. I found the technique of reading ten in sequence jarring. Some of them offered praise to God in jubilation and thanksgiving. They extolled his everlasting love, his deliverance, his clear guidance in daily affairs. Others, often sandwiched in between the most triumphant ones, blasted God for his seeming absence, his failure to guide clearly, his apparent forgetfulness of the promises he had made. At first the discord seemed bizarre, almost as if the Hebrew canonizers had arranged the order with a streak of mocking irony.

After a few days of unresolved dissonance, I began to change my perspective on the Psalms. I stopped looking to them for specific advice and instead viewed them as spiritual journals, accounts of a few people who took seriously the intimate relationship between God and man. The authors were brutally honest, chronicling the full benefits of that love relationship, but also the outrageous disappointments. (Martin Marty, in his recent book Cry of Absence, characterizes one-half of the psalms as “wintry” ones and only one-third as summery ones. You must read all 150 to get the full picture, the welter of emotions and faith and doubt.)

The putative author of some of those psalms was called “a man after God’s own heart.” I now understand why. In his life, David always took God seriously. He intentionally involved God in every minor and major triumph and every minor and major failure. He railed at God, exalted him, doubted him, praised him, feared him, loved him. But regardless of what happened, God was never far from David’s thoughts. David practiced the presence of God in daily details, and then took the time to keep a revealing poetic record of the intimacy between them. The repetitive, even tedious, prosody of the psalms is perhaps their main point. They primarily communicate not concepts, but rather the record of how a relationship is maintained.

Not Magic, But Faith

I confess that I have shifted tracks in the middle of an article, but I have done so because I believe most of the questions about guidance, the “how-to’s” are misdirected. They are the typically impatient demands of us Americans who want a short-cut to the “magic,” the benefit of relating to Almighty God. There is no short cut, no magic—at least not that anyone can reduce to a three-point outline. There is only the possibility of a lifetime search for intimacy with a God who, as the psalmists discovered, sometimes seems close and sometimes far, sometimes seems loving and sometimes forgetful. We have little sympathy, as Lewis said, for the “problems” of Omnipotence. But God does not want sympathy, he wants love and a lasting commitment to take him seriously, every day, regardless. And if there is a formula for guidance, it would have to be that.

Does God guide? Yes, I believe that he does. Most times, I believe, he guides in subtle ways, by feeding ideas into our minds, speaking through a nagging sensation of dissatisfaction, inspiring us to choose better than we otherwise would have done, bringing to the surface hidden dangers of temptation, and perhaps by rearranging certain circumstances. (He may also still guide through visions, dreams, and prophetic utterances, but I cannot speak to these forms as they lie outside my field of experience.) God’s guidance will supply real help, but in ways that will not overwhelm my freedom.

And yet, I cannot help thinking this whole issue of divine guidance, which draws throngs of seekers to seminars and sells thousands of books, is powerfully overrated. It deserves about as much attention as the Bible devotes to the topic.

The sociologist Bronislaw Malinowski suggested a distinction between magic and religion. Magic, he said, is when we manipulate the deities so that they perform our wishes; religion is when we subject ourselves to the will of the deities. True guidance cannot resemble magic, a way for God to give us short cuts and genie bottles. It must, rather, fall under Malinowski’s definition of religion. If so, it will occur in the context of a committed relationship between a Christian and his God. Once that relationship exists, divine guidance becomes not an end in itself but merely one more means God uses in nourishing faith.

John and Vicki Purifoy seem perpetually young. When I first met John, he was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in piano performance. But as is true of many young married couples, finances were a problem. When the opportunity became available for him to work as an editor for Word Music, he jumped at it.

It was delightful to watch the Purifoys become a part of the Waco community. Vicki quickly became involved in civic and cultural activities, and both John and Vicki were involved in the church music programs. They sang in the adult choir, Vicki directed the children’s choir, and John and I spent every Sunday afternoon rehearsing the college choir.

At the same time, Word Music burgeoned under his leadership. John developed relationships with composers—the lifeblood of any music publisher—and excellent relationships with our suppliers. He became adroit at understanding copyright law. This was a great time for Word Music.

Two children came along; Waco is a wonderful place to rear a family. Michael and Drew are very normal boys—great kids!

One morning John handed me an envelope containing a letter of resignation. I was heartsick. He was not unhappy at Word, and the horizon for this talented young man was bright indeed. But the Purifoys, both gifted musicians, felt the Lord leading them into a music publishing venture that would allow them to specialize in music meeting the needs of smaller choirs. They spent a great deal of time seeking God’s leading.

Today there is a new music publisher known as Purifoy Publishing. It required building relationships with bankers, real estate people, and others. John and Vicki are committed up to their eyeballs to the bank.

About four weeks after John’s tiny company gave birth to its very first choir octavo, I was invited to play for a morning service at a church in Houston. To my utter dismay, I found a photocopy of John’s first piece on the music rack of the piano. My initial reaction was a kind of, “Well, join the club, John” (chuckle). Immediately, however, I had a feeling of frustration and anger because these people were stealing from one of my finest friends. And the guy is struggling to keep his head above water. He’d be far better off unemployed, for virtually every cent goes back to the banker who is striving to help him.

It is almost comical how serious the church is about the truths found in God’s Word, and yet when it comes to stealing, many churches do so with the total understanding that it is in violation of the law—yes, even God’s law. It has been determined that Christian music publishers are being robbed of from anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of the money due them.

The soul of man craves music; the Christian life should be filled with song. God’s Word speaks of it over and over, and the Psalms are probably the finest example. It seems short-sighted to flagrantly rob the people who are making new music available for Christians to enjoy and minister.

Pastor, minister of music, you can put an immediate halt to the stealing that goes on in your church library if you will only live the Christian life in this area of your service.

John and Vicki Purifoy only seem perpetually young. With the way choir directors are stealing their music, they are aging far too quickly.

Publishers fear modern technology has made every church a printing plant.

Few subjects generate more heat in the music industry today than the question of copyright use and abuse. Moreover, few subjects are stickier. The question is one on which nearly all musicians, and many nonmusicians, have an opinion, and sharp disagreements arise because it is debated from opposing sides of the musical fence. Consumers—all of us who use printed or recorded music in any form—tend to view music publishers as growing rich on exorbitant fees they extract from the musical public dependent upon them. Publishers, on the other hand, suspect there is a photocopier or tape deck hidden in every consumer’s hip pocket, cranking out endless illicit and illegal paper and electronic copies of popular songs.

When the controversy takes up residence in the church, it moves beyond mere legality. Suddenly morality, ethics, and even spirituality, become part of the problem. Are Christian music publishers really defrauding the church, hiding behind the language of U.S. copyright law and taking unfair advantage of congregations, choirs, and individual Christian musicians? Or are churches and para-church groups, and the performers within them, the real culprits, creating instant hymnals and music libraries with the aid of overhead projectors, photocopiers, and tape recorders? Someone has rightly characterized the tension between the publishers and congregations as “a struggle between those who want to make a profit and those who want to get something for nothing.”

When CHRISTIANITY TODAY published a short opinion article earlier this year (“God Gave Me a Song: Copyright Restrictions Took It Away,” CT, Feb. 18, p. 86), many readers wrote expressing their views. Some people said, in effect, “Right on!” Author Marcus Bigelow persuasively described a problem he encountered when he wrote to several church music publishers. He had asked their permission to reproduce the words to some popular choruses on overhead projector transparencies for congregational singing. “The responses,” Bigelow wrote, “brought stipulations that, for the most part, were prohibitive. Companies asked us to pay them royalties of from $5 to $20 per song.”

The transparency- and slide-making question is a growing problem within the industry and a perplexing one in many churches. And it is but the tip of a very large iceberg. Further questions surround printing copyrighted words of songs or hymns in church bulletins and orders of service for weddings, on mimeographed or printed songsheets, and even in short quotations in religious papers and magazines.

Duplication of printed music by photocopier or similar means adds another dimension, and it is a process to which tons of octavos (printed choral music), hymn- and chorusbooks, instrumental parts from orchestrations, and sheet music are all regularly—and illegally—subjected.

Copying recordings onto blank tapes is still another part of the problem, as is the illegal duplication of “tracks,” those readily available and expensive tapes that provide recorded instrumental accompaniments for soloists and choirs. Even playing records of copyrighted songs on for-profit Christian radio stations that do not purchase an ASCAP license to do so is part of the larger problem, and the subject of litigation.

Any one of these issues move many music publishers close to the point of rage. A sizable segment of the music-buying public, on the other hand, has grown weary of paying the escalating costs charged by publishers for increasingly sophisticated materials, and feels caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Large numbers of Christians do make every effort to be honest, ethical, and legal in their use of copyrighted music, though there are still some who are ignorant of parts of the law and often unwittingly make illegal use of musical materials. Yet, there are others who have concluded they are being “ripped off” by fellow Christians, and they knowingly break the law, having decided they have a right to do so. There are even some religious-music consumers who believe sincerely that any gift from God must be shared with fellow Christians free of charge; therefore, restrictions or prohibitions of any kind, legal or otherwise, cannot be applied. In an attempt to bring the question into sharper focus, and as a follow-up to the earlier article, CT listened to musicians, music publishers, and attorneys familiar with copyright law. What follows is an attempt to clarify some of the specific issues.

The Transparency Argument

Reproducing musical lyrics on transparencies and slides usually boils down to how congregations are to learn newer, and popular, songs that are not printed in even the newest, most comprehensive hymnals. Where people were once taught new songs by rote, today’s technology has by and large changed that practice. Overhead projectors, initially acquired by many churches as a teaching tool, were found capable of serving several purposes, so many congregations began to use them to display the words of new songs. It was probably a natural step in churches whose pastors were already using the overhead in their preaching ministry: the equipment was instantaneously available for other uses. In the beginning, few people worried about copyright infringement. After all, the songs were merely being projected as a convenience and help to the congregation.

Today, consumers and publishers have one of their bitterest disagreements over what the copyright law actually says about those transparencies. In fact, the Copyright Revision Act of 1976, in effect since January 1, 1978, may have muddied the waters on this score, although it was designed to clarify and update the older statute. Portions of Section 110, “Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays,” are usually invoked when the subject is discussed:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106. the following are not infringements of copyright:

(1) performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or place devoted to instruction, unless … the display of individual images is given by means of a copy that was not lawfully made under this title, and that the person responsible for the performance knew or had reason to believe was not lawfully made; …

(3) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work or of a dramatico-musical work of a religious nature, or display of a work, in the course of services at a place of worship or other religious assembly.…

Attorney Thomas E. Smith of the Chicago firm of Lee, Smith & Jager told CT that while section 106 of the statute states that the copyright owner has the exclusive right to make copies of the copyrighted work, section 110 (including the portion quoted above) sets forth certain limitations on the exclusive rights, and in essence gives exemptions. He reads (3) above as one activity “which is not an infringement of the copyright” when “the performance, or display, is in the course of services.’ ”

“In my view,” says Smith, “the making of a transparency could reasonably be considered to be part of the display or projection process.”

Similar beliefs were expressed in letters received at CT, including one from a reader who obtained two separate legal opinions concerning the making of one transparency of each of 50 songs for projection at sing-alongs where no admission is charged. The two lawyers agreed that “there is not a violation of copyright laws” according to the paragraphs quoted from section 110.

At this point, one can almost hear the music publishers shouting, “Stop! That’s not true!” The question, they say, is what is meant by “lawfully made” copy. They contend it gives only the owner of the copyright—in most cases the publisher—the right to make a copy, or to give permission (with or without a fee) for someone else to make one.

In attorney Smith’s opinion, however, it is reasonable to interpret section 110 (3) as exempting both performance and display of religious music “in the course of services at a religious assembly even if in producing that display, a transparency has to be made.” That reading is far from definitive. Smith is quick to point out that he is unaware of any decisions “with respect to this precise point,” and that his own opinion is based upon the legislative history of the current copyright law. (It should be obvious that the exemption would not apply if the transparency were used to make other copies, or given or sold to someone else.)

If, on the other hand, the publishers are correct, they are right to insist that only they as the copyright owners can grant permission for transparencies to be made. (It might be pointed out that there are opaque-type projectors that allow images to be shown directly from the original source, though, as Smith observes, “this would not seem to be a satisfactory mode of display for large gatherings in a religious service.”)

But debating the legal question is not enough. Even if Smith’s interpretation is someday found in a court decision to be correct, does it really mean the publishers are practicing fraud when they insist on granting permission? Are they in truth charging fees to which they may have no right? And does it give churches a broad license to do what they please in the matter? We need to look at some other factors.

The Costs And Ethics Game

For another perspective, CT turned to Donald P. Hustad, currently professor of church music at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and senior music editor for Hope Publishing Company—a dean among American church musicians. Hustad points out that copyright law has applied to hymn publishing since the early nineteenth century. Hymnals contain a large amount of copyrighted material, some controlled by the publisher and some for which he paid royalties to other publishers. When churches buy hymnals, they are paying for permission to use the copyrighted material contained in them. “Why should they not do the same for songs that appear later and are not a part of their hymnal?” Hustad asks.

Kristine Van Driest, a CT reader in Adams, Wisconsin, responded to the earlier article and expressed the opinion that charges of from $5 to $20 per transparency are quite reasonable: “For a congregation of 200, that is only 4 to 20 cents per person. If the song isn’t worth this much, perhaps it shouldn’t be used for worship at all.”

About those charges, Hal Spencer, president of Manna Music in Burbank. California, and a past president of the Church Music Publishers Association, told me his relatively small company now employs one person full-time just to handle the multitude of permission requests; sometimes a single request can require as much as an hour of that person’s time. The administrative costs represented in the flat fee charged just about break even, he says.

But beyond that, there is the consideration of royalties owed to the songwriter or composer. The transparency, or any other type of copy, is actually substituting for the printed form of the song, which is copyrighted. It is that form on which the compensation or royalty for the words, the music, and often the musical arrangement is based.

A fairer way to set transparency fees, Spencer thinks, would be to prorate them according to the size of the congregation requesting permission to make the copy, and the number of hymnbooks they would normally purchase.

There are some ethical considerations that churches need to face. For example, many newer congregations are less tied to a traditional type of service, having discovered that singing is more spirited and services move at a quickened pace when worshipers are not turning pages and don’t have their heads buried in a book. Some have nearly eliminated the use of hymnals, though they may not be trying deliberately to cheat publishers—who are quick to point out that the sales of hymnals are down. (There are other factors, of course; summer church camps, for example, rarely buy new songbooks anymore.)

But what are we to think about churches that have stopped using hymnals and instead project the words of every hymn or song they sing—yet refuse to obtain permission or pay a fee for the privilege of using a mode that merely substitutes for books they would have purchased in an earlier day? Furthermore, that question does not even address the problem of what happens to the integrity of the music when congregations are given only the words to read. One wonders how many transmutations of “He Is Lord” or “Jesus in the Morning” are being sung, for instance.

According to Spencer, some churches now have fully automated systems to show projected texts. When the song-leader pushes the right buttons on the pulpit, the hymn or song is instantly projected from a number-keyed projector. He predicts it will not be long before a projection system is installed for the choir, showing words and parts on the conductor’s stand, thus dispensing with printed pages altogether and giving the choir director the nearest thing to eye contact with every singer.

Modern technology is wonderful—but can we justify using it to engage in questionable ethics or break laws and, worse, to break faith with fellow Christians who are in business? “Submit yourselves to the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men,” says Peter (1 Peter 2:13, NIV), and that surely includes copyright statutes.

Reprinted, Recycled Songs

Some churches that have not gone the transparency/slide route have found another way to zero in on just the songs they want to sing: they print them. Words, with or without the music, are appearing increasingly in the Sunday bulletin. And an alarming number of churches are creating “home-made” hymnals by using the photocopier or offset press to compile books or booklets of songs from a variety of published sources. They end up with what Spencer describes as something no publisher could possibly provide; a “perfect hymnal”—one that is custom made for a single congregation.

Don Hustad also commented on this, saying he recently picked up a Xeroxed hymn booklet in a wealthy, “liberal” church in a suburban Ohio city, one that regularly sings from the Pilgrim Hymnal. He reported that the pamphlet contained 41 gospel songs, folk hymns, and new popular forms, 31 of them under copyright protection. “There was not one notice of permission in that book,” said Hustad, “not even one acknowledgement that the material was copyrighted,” adding, “I have difficulty believing that no one in that congregation understands that this is larceny.”

There is a reason why music publishers are concerned almost to the point of paranoia over the copyright problem. Under the pre-1976 law, a copyrighted song printed and distributed without the proper notice risked being placed immediately into public domain, for if the publisher learned of the existence of the copy he was considered a “party” to the undocumented use. Though the new law went a long way toward addressing the problem, giving copyright holders five years to correct the situation, publishers are understandably nervous whenever the words to a copyrighted song appear somewhere without that notice.

The problem, says Spencer, is that “this is an easy law to break, and what is easiest to break is broken first.” Hustad thinks the public seems to feel that a new, tough restriction has been placed on their liberty, when in actuality the questions never arose until every office had the equipment that made it a printing plant.

Paul Wohlgemuth, coordinator of church music at Oral Roberts University. once wrote in CT that it is “mystifying that such illegal practices are so blithely tolerated while at the same time churches are very scrupulous about paying for utilities, Sunday school materials, and the pastor’s services” (CT, June 27, 1980). Indeed. But no one wants to sit in a dark building, forgo curriculum aids, or lose a minister. The musicians and the publishers can’t attach a church’s assets or cut off services for nonpayment: their product is already out there in the marketplace. In reality, they cannot stop a choir director from buying one copy of a new anthem and then making a dozen or more additional copies on the church office copy machine. (Ironically, that process often costs more than it would to buy the music. The seven or eight cents or more a sheet that it costs to make each copy is usually “hidden” in other office expenses, so the culprit mistakenly believes the music is costing him little or nothing. According to an article in the June 1983 newsletter of the Music Publishers Association, “Ultimately, this means that composers are forced to write only in those areas which are least subject to photocopying. Publishers are forced to put more and more music out of print. Print runs are continually reduced because of falling sales due to photocopying, and as a result, the cost of printed music continues to rise.”

Neither have publishers any control over someone who borrows a piece of music, or a record, to make a personal “free” copy. To be sure, it is convenient. But it is also wrong: it deprives the publisher/copyright owner, and often the songwriter or orchestrator, of his principal source of revenue.

Hustad says he has a hard time believing it is impossible to find a contemporary “mini-hymnal” that would contain most of the songs a church wants to sing. He acknowledges it takes time to check them all, but that “there are scores from which to choose.” A really creative church could look for friends or members to write new music for that group’s specific needs and use, he adds. “Then they could print them exactly as they want—and even join the company of those who have music to copyright and sell!”

One congregation that is doing just that is Church By the Way in Van Nuys, California. Pastor Jack Hayford, an accomplished hymn writer (“Majesty”), prints his songs in the bulletin for congregational use. He also similarly used music written by Jim and Carol Owens during the period they were members of Hayford’s congregation.

Most publishers are willing to bend and seek the best ways to accommodate the churches. Few, if any, charge a church that wants to print the words to a song in a bulletin or similar “throwaway” sheet; they do insist that the quotation carry the correct copyright information, and usually want copies for their file. Hayford feels publishers are mistaken if they fear music won’t be purchased if the lyrics are printed in bulletins.

Publishers are usually also willing to work out an arrangement whereby out-of-print music can be duplicated. Policies differ, and a fee may or may not be charged if a choir director is given permission to reproduce a piece he or she can no longer purchase. Many publishers will allow the music to be duplicated as long as it carries a specified copyright and permission line and is done with an understanding that the copies will be destroyed if the music is reprinted later.

Prices, Profits And Royalties

The music publishers are not without fault, of course. They, along with any entrepreneur, look for ways to make their business more profitable. One choir director friend told me he will no longer purchase choir music—octavos—that is bound in colored covers with elaborate artwork. Publishers may insist they charge only for the actual pages of music, and that may be true. But if they believe a bright, beautifully designed cover screams “buy me” to a harried choir director thumbing through piles of new music, they will make sure it is included whether it is needed or not. And the cost has to be absorbed somewhere, whether it is actually part of a per-page charge or not. I have a feeling most choir directors really only care about what is inside the cover. Their criteria for selection are usually based more on such things as the level of difficulty of the music, the theological soundness of the text and its appropriateness to their particular ministry, and the singability—not on graphic design and colored ink. And what happens when every cover is brightly designed? It just could be that then it is the plain, black-and-white piece that stands out.

It is also true that several large music publishing empires are awesome. Though the cost of their products may be tied to such things as escalating prices of paper and other materials, increasing royalties in inflationary times, and the high cost of recording, printing, and necessary overhead—including salaries—one does wonder why, for example, publishers will insist on marketing a children’s cantata only in a $3.95 book that contains a full score when the music calls for the children to sing just a melody line. A small church with a meager budget for music doesn’t deserve to have to pay premium prices for what it doesn’t need. There is such a thing as overkill. Also, as noted in an interview with Norman Johnson in the last issue of CT (Refiner’s Fire, p. 79), we are living in an era when contemporary songwriters try to write both words and music—“too often merely to control royalty fees.” The public’s perception of the music industry as merely big business is not entirely without basis.

Also, publishers need to be more sensitive to the people they serve. Another CT reader, Joseph Nicholson of Springfield, Missouri, complained that his own experience when corresponding with publishers concerning copyright “revealed an astonishing level of insensitivity, imperception, and inefficiency. Personal letters were answered with form cards; letters were sent ‘stamped’ with the signature of the company official.” Time pressures, insufficient staff, and related problems could explain some of that, but not Nicholson’s final complaint that “specific questions and requests were left unanswered.”

Still, as Don Hustad says, there is a mistaken notion going around that the music industry is filled with wealthy hymn/song writers and publishers, who are fleecing the church unfairly. He says, “Most songwriters (there may be exceptions in evangelical circles) receive modest returns from their creativity, and I see a lot of publishers in financial difficulty. It is the ability to publish and sell copyrighted material that is the lifeblood of the music publisher. If other companies can publish his material for their own profit, or if a church can duplicate it to bypass purchasing the music, he will soon be out of business and there will be no new music to worry about. And what of the hymn writers who do not perform or make recordings? Are those persons—like Margaret Clarkson, author of many hymns, including ‘We Come, O Christ, to Thee’ and ‘So Send I You’—to have no compensation for their work?”

Some publishers are trying to find new, creative ways to meet the problems. After Marcus Bigelow’s article appeared in CT last February, Word Music, one of the larger publishers, went to work on producing an Electric Hymnal. It enables anyone to purchase a multimedia kit that contains three printed copies of a song, a legally made transparency and set of slides, and an accompaniment tape. Not everyone will appreciate or need the accompaniment tape, and $12.95 per song for each kit may seem a bit steep to those unaccustomed to thinking in terms of prorating costs according to the number in the congregation or hymnals purchased. Other publishers are planing their own versions, though some are waiting to see how well Word’s idea—and the transparencies—sells. The Electric Hymnal already contains 17 titles with 8 more on the way, including 5 Christmas songs. It is one creative approach, and the kind of thing the industry will increasingly have to consider.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the problem is that there is so much misunderstanding. Publishers need to learn what the church public’s “hot” buttons are, face the fact that modern technology has ushered in a new day in terms of the way things are used, and try to meet genuine needs quickly and without excessive commercial “hype.” But church leaders, and their music directors and congregations, need to make sure they are behaving Christianly toward the people who make the music available. More self-policing is mandatory, for the odd borrowed copy of printed or recorded music run through any kind of duplicator finally hurts everyone. We consumers will face continually increasing costs until we learn that in the price we pay we are only making up for our larceny, which has been robbing writers and publishers for years while we have substituted something illegitimate for something legitimate—no matter how one interprets copyright laws. And, after all, as Christians whose chief end should be one and the same—the glory of God—that, plus ethical conduct, not mere legality, ought to motivate our actions and our behavior toward one another. When that attitude cuts both ways, we will have come a long way toward mutual understanding and cooperation.

An interview with Nixon’s “hatchet man” a decade after Watergate.

Upon Christian conversion, the heart beats for the happy life. When Charles Colson turned to Christ on an August evening in 1973, his world fell apart. As a White House counsel to President Nixon, the clutch of the Watergate prosecutor fell firmly about him. He was guilty, he went to prison, and his enemies hooted at his profession of faith as just another political ploy.

Colson found that God does not always spare his children from the pit, but guides them through it if they are willing. Colson never could have guessed the direction his life would take upon his release from prison. Today, 10 years after his conversion, Colson is president of Prison Fellowship, an organization with 170 staff members and 15,000 volunteers, who evangelize and disciple inmates in 12 countries. Colson also seeks to educate the public about what he sees as the failure of the modern prison system in the United States.CHRISTIANITY TODAYeditors interviewed Colson at his Prison Fellowship headquarters near Washington D.C.

It was ten years ago last month that you left the White House and then took the gospel to heart. Describe what happened and how you felt.

I had arrived at everything I had ever dreamed about as a kid. I was 41 years old, had a healthy six-figure law practice, clients waiting at the door, a yacht in Chesapeake Bay, a limousine and driver, was a friend of the President, and had all kinds of people working for me and others dying to come into my firm. And I never felt more rotten in my life. The first couple of months that I was out of the White House I was dead inside: empty and tired. It was then I met Tom Phillips. One of his associates told me he had had some kind of a religious experience at a meeting. At his office I could tell something was different about the man—he was calm and peaceful, yet he was a man who had worked his way up to the top just as I had.

This happened at just the beginning of the really serious Watergate scandal. I decided there was something realistic about the man, so I asked, “What happened to you, Tom?” He said, “I’ve accepted Jesus Christ and committed my life to him.” Those are the most shocking words ever spoken to me. Other than Sunday school and just a smattering of understanding, I really did not know what the gospel was. When I acted stunned and changed the subject, he felt embarrassed and awkward. Over those next months I saw something in him that I knew was missing in my life. In August of 1973, he took a couple of hours and told me what had happened to him, how he had gone to a Billy Graham crusade after a couple of years of spiritual searching in his own life and had given his life to Christ and been transformed. I sat in awe, but I wouldn’t show it. I just couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. He read the little chapter on pride from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which was like sticking a knife into me. I wouldn’t admit it, but the chapter described me more than anything else in the world. Tom prayed, which stunned me also, because I’d never prayed, except in the Episcopal church out of the Book of Common Prayer; and here was a man on his porch praying.

That night when I left his home I could not get out of the driveway, because I was crying too hard. I was overwhelmed by the realization of my own sin, the fact that I was unclean; and that’s when I remember calling out so vividly, saying, “God, take me as I am.” Then I went up to the Maine coast, and I now realize that was when God regenerated me.

How did your conviction and prison experience affect your new faith?

In my sermons and in my life and in my book I talk a lot about cheap grace, and I really feel strongly about that because I think we have an epidemic of belief in America today that if you accept Christ, everything is going to go well in your life. My life became a can of worms, from the moment I received Christ and for the next 18 months. I was not a target of the criminal investigation. Everyone thinks when I became a Christian it was because they were down my neck—it was not. I had been told that I would not be a target of the criminal investigation, that I would be a government witness.

But when I got back to Washington, the first thing my lawyers told me was. “By the way, Cox’s office called, to put you before the grand jury, not as a witness, but as a possible target.” My world collapsed. After two days, the grand jury pulled me out and said, “You’re going to be indicted.” Then Nixon started getting in deeper and deeper trouble. I was his public defender, but I couldn’t defend him because of the possibility of criminal prosecution. I ended up pleading guilty to something I hadn’t been charged with but that I was guilty of, and I was sentenced to one to three years in prison. While I was in prison, my dad died and my son got into trouble. Really, it was almost two years from the time Christ came into my life until I could say in a worldly sense that anything good happened.

At the time, did you realize God could use this experience to refine your faith?

One of my favorite quotes from Solzhenitsyn is when he talks about his own spiritual conversion. He says, “Bless you, prison, bless you.” He came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity but the maturing of the human soul. For me, going to prison was the greatest thing that could have happened in my life. I didn’t see it at the time. God used this period of brokenness in my life to give me a whole different set of values and perspective on life, to deepen my own Christian faith, to enable me to see the utter futility of institutions dealing with most of the problems we face today. Prison is the extreme illustration of how institutions cannot cope with the fundamental moral problems of society. They can’t change people’s morals, which are the cause of crime—crime is a moral decision. I saw that, and I’ve also been able to see how God has used the one failure in my life—prison—to touch the lives of thousands of other people.

Did the idea of Prison Fellowship develop while you were in prison or afterward?

The concept came in prison. I used to meet at night with a group of fellows to pray and study our Bibles, and I saw how God could work through us and really make a difference inside the life of that prison. When I got out, I really hadn’t made up my mind what I was going to do. I had some very good offers in business, including an outstanding offer from a fellow who said, “Write your own contract, and I’ll guarantee you a million dollars after taxes in three years.” I was not disbarred in my home state of Massachusetts, so I thought about going back there to practice law, which was really what my wife wanted us to do.

I was still writing Born Again and figured I had to get the book written. After that I’d decide what to do with my life. I figured I would get started in the ministry of taking people out of prison and working with them outside and turn it over to somebody to run, because I didn’t want to be in full-time Christian service, and my wife did not want that public life. Also, I hate traveling, and I couldn’t stand to go back into prisons, those rotten, stinking holes. I even threw clothes away because they smelled of that prison. Yet, in the summer of 1976, I could not feel excited about doing anything else. At that point, practicing law seemed boring, and I kept feeling drawn to do something in the prisons. So I made the decision to start this ministry. We started with $90,000 in royalties from Born Again; just six of us in a rented office and a prayer that God would show us what he wanted done in the prisons. We had no concept of what to do. Gordon Loux came from Moody Bible Institute, and he had a good understanding and knowledge of the Christian world and how to get organized. And here we sit with 170 on the staff, 15,000-some volunteers, 15,000 inmates, and a program in 12 countries. It’s amazing.

What are you primarily trying to accomplish at Prison Fellowship?

Our principal job is to exhort the church to fulfill its biblical mandate to take the gospel into the prisons and to build the church behind the prison walls. We’re really in the church-planting business. We will go into a prison and put on a seminar, lasting anywhere from three to five days, with one of our 25 instructors. First, we canvass the churches in that local area and recruit volunteers to go in with us—mature Christians who can be core group leaders for the discussion groups; then we have a combination of lectures and discussions. Last year we held about 180 seminars. This year 240 are scheduled. That’s our principal way of reaching a lot of inmates. We also have a Bible study course in both English and Spanish, written just for inmates, that we use as a follow-up. We have a coordinated curriculum developed for all the instructors to use in prison seminars. We put on training conferences for church volunteers all over the United States. There are about 1,000 inmates whom we have taken out of prison for discipleship training. Finally, we take people out to work on community service projects. That’s one aspect of the ministry that excites me the most. Inmates are in groups of 6 to 12, and they spend two weeks living in volunteer homes, fixing up the homes of elderly people in the inner city.

Do you receive good support from churches?

Yes. One of the plusses of this ministry has been the enthusiastic response of the church by and large. There is a changing attitude in the church, which is much more receptive to this. A few years ago, if I talked about these kinds of things, you’d feel a chill go through a lot of churches. I think that’s part of the maturing process—a growing awareness maybe that government social programs aren’t really meeting needs, and that the church has a responsibility in this area. I think probably it is one real evidence I see of a spiritual awakening. Part of it is the resurgence of evangelicalism. I think evangelicals are more out front today than they were ten years ago, certainly more so than when I became a Christian. I had never heard of an evangelical.

Would you call your first book Born Again if you had it to do over?

No. I wouldn’t have if I had known enough, because I would have figured it was an overused cliché. I happen to be a Baptist and I go to a Baptist church. At the time I was still an Episcopalian. My wife is Roman Catholic, and I went to the Roman Catholic mass. She had picked up the people’s mass book and flipped it open to the page where the hymn “Born Again” was and said, “That’s what you should have called your book.” So I called the publisher and said I have a new title: “Born Again.”

He said. “Oh, no, that’s a tiresome cliché.”

I said it came out of the Catholic hymnal.

“Well,” he said, “It’s overdone with Baptists.”

I said, “I’m convinced it’s the right title, so you title it.”

What evidence have you seen to indicate that the prison system in this country is not working?

It’s self-evident that it isn’t working. We have the highest prison population per capita in the world except for the Soviet Union and South Africa. The prison population is growing 15 times faster than the general population and yet we have the highest crime rates. If prisons worked, we’d have less crime. FBI statistics show 74 percent of the people who get out of prison will be arrested again in four years. The whole system of punishment today is geared toward taking away people’s dignity, putting them in an institution, and locking them up in a cage. Prisons are overcrowded, understaffed, dirty places; 80 percent of American prisons are barbaric—not just brutal, but barbaric. A young man who is nonviolent, not really tough, and who’s under 25, is probably going to be homosexually raped the first month he’s in, in most American prisons and in the vast majority of American jails.

Half the people who commit crimes today commit nonviolent crimes, and they are the ones I’m talking about keeping out of institutions, as long as we’re able. If they’ve done shoplifting twice, we put them in prison for six months; shoplifting three times and they’re in prison for two years. We have just lost that guy, just turned him into a bank robber or somebody who is going to hold up the 7–11, or who’s going to rape or beat someone, because that will be the result of his prison experience. It is going to exacerbate whatever it is in that person that caused him to commit the crime in the first place.

I believe deeply in punishment, I believe an individual has to be held accountable, and I think he has to be confronted with his own sin. There’s no justice without punishment, but the punishment needs to be effective for the individual, and redemptive and beneficial to society. Prison as a punishment is a failure. As a place to lock up people and keep them off the streets, it’s a success. We need warehouses to quarantine dangerous people, but at most that’s only about half the people we incarcerate today. So we’re overcrowding and overloading the prisons, and the expense is absolutely staggering. The national average is $17,000 [per year to incarcerate someone], plus anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000 to build a new prison cell. And we continue adding people as we did last year, when 60,000 were added to the prison system. You are talking about $60,000 times 60,000—that’s just the capital expenditures—3.6 billion per year to keep even with the present prison population nationally. Most of that comes out of state budgets, which are already overtaxed.

What is the better way?

The biblical way. For property offenses, God has prescribed a system of restitution. Prison is a relatively new invention, really only about 200 years old, as a purpose of punishment. You’ll find throughout the Bible that prisons are there for political reasons or for people awaiting trial, but not for punishment. Biblically, we are told to make restitution. We have examples throughout the Old Testament, and Zacchaeus in the New Testament. I believe in alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders.

What evidence have you seen of these alternatives being successful?

You really can rehabilitate someone when you let him see what he’s done—when crime is no longer an impersonal thing. If offenders have to work to try to make good to the victim, it makes it very personal. Second, when they start to make good, they feel good about themselves. When you throw someone who’s committed a crime in a cell, his selfesteem goes down, down, down. Everyone tells him he’s no good, and then when you put that person back out in the street, he believes he’s no good. But get him working to pay it back, and a sense of dignity returns—he really feels somebody cares about him.

The statistics almost universally show that restitution programs, community service programs, and counseling all have a rate of somewhere between 10 and 20 percent who return to crime, rather than the national 70 percent. Most of those figures, however, are misleading, because the people you deal with in those programs are handpicked and are motivated to make it. But everyone you put through one of these programs you can be pretty sure is saved from getting into that institutional jungle.

Are criminal justice officials open to the alternatives?

I can’t find anybody who’s disagreed with me yet. The whole question is public education. In covering the whole political spectrum, from far left to far right, everybody agrees. The whole issue is, Can we get the votes to do it? Do we dare say we ought not to be putting more people in prison? Politicans have played this tune so long, and it always gets applause. But how long does it take you to educate the public and get over that? Now, Florida is very significant. I felt like I was being thrown in the lion’s den when I had a meeting in Dade County, where crime is such a problem. I made the major proposal of the program, and I was afraid we’d get run out of that room—there were people standing up and shaking their fists at me. But the legislature went ahead and did it, and there was very little public uproar. I know they are definitely changing.

We had no idea of getting into the reform area in this ministry until I was in a prison where we later learned they were going to take me hostage. We didn’t know it at the time. One of the leaders was converted, and a riot was averted. We found out they were going to kill nine or ten guards, and we sat down and met with them and held off that riot. Then I was invited to address the state legislature on what was wrong with the prisons because they had heard what we were doing.

How do you feel about the death penalty?

I am very much opposed to it and always have been. I don’t want to give government that much power. It is too easy for an innocent man to be found guilty. Every single study on it shows that it really doesn’t deter crime or homicide. In two states, one right next to the other, one cut out the death penalty and the other continued it. In the state that continued it, homicides went up; in the state that cut it off, the homicides went down. If you study these crimes, 55 percent are among family members and close friends, and are crimes of passion. Crimes of passion aren’t deterred. A hired killer is not deterred, he just ups his price.

Everybody will read this and write in and say, What about Genesis 9:6—“Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed.” I agree completely. But Deuteronomy 17 also says there must be two live witnesses before there can be an execution, and one of the accusers has to participate in the execution. And the reason for that standard was so they could be absolutely sure there would be no mistake. There is not one jurisdiction in the United States today that meets the standard that God has set. If we’re going to take God’s requirement that there be capital punishment, let’s also take his requirement to be sure we’ve got the right guy. Charlie Brooks died by lethal injection in the state of Texas with no one knowing whether he did kill that individual or not, and with the prosecutor pleading for clemency before he was executed—the prosecutor, because he didn’t know if he killed him. Charlie Brooks was not executed by biblical standards.

What prevents prison reform from taking place?

The biggest single obstacle to prison reform today is the lethargy of the public, the demagoguery of some politicians and the wholesale resistance of the conservative evangelical church to something that sounds liberal to them. My job is to explain to them that it really is biblical. That’s the amazing thing. Everything in our little booklet is out of the Bible, and when people read it they change; but we’ve got to educate them. The message has to get to them.

What could the average pastor do to help the public become more accepting?

I think since crime is the number two domestic problem, next to the economy in every poll, the concern is already there. Half of the American people say they are afraid to walk within one block of their homes at night, according to Gallup polls. When that happens, you’ve undermined the whole basis of biblical order in society, and the greatest danger is that people will sacrifice their freedom for order. If it’s a moral issue, as I believe it is, we ought to be addressing it by helping our children to understand their moral responsibilities at an early age and keeping that family unit together. Pastors ought to deal with the cause of crime and get people to realize that communities have to get involved. You cannot just take a guy and ship him off to the state pen and forget about him, because when he comes back, he’s going to be a real menace to your society. We have to deal with them in the community—send them down to the firehouse to paint it; make them go out and work among the poor in the streets.

Tell us about your latest writing project.

My next book will be published by Zondervan this fall, entitled Loving God, as the result of some very deep convictions about the need for the church to be equipped to defend the faith and then to have the courage to live it. As I look back on my ten years as a Christian, I’ve come to realize that not only is Christianity the way to live my life, not only is Christ real to me, not only am I sure of eternal life, but if Jesus Christ is really who I say I believe him to be, then that fact has to radically change everything about my life. That’s got to be the only thing that matters; nothing else matters. As I look around and see this enormous church, with buildings going up and people crowding in on Sunday mornings, it’s becoming a big entertainment circuit. People are going in just to be made to feel better on Sunday mornings. They are not approaching Christ as what he is—everything. So I’ve written the book with the hope it will challenge people to understand what they believe.

It’s very different from the other books, which are autobiographical. This is a book I hope will be very challenging for serious Christians who want to mature and really treat Christ the way I think he has to be treated if he’s what we believe he says he is.

Looking toward the future, are you committed to Prison Fellowship as far as you can see, or do you plan to turn it over to someone else?

Anybody who wants it! It’s one of the first jobs in my life I haven’t worried about losing. I wish my associates could take me out of the work; I have a little place down in Florida with a nice little fishing boat, and I love to fish. What drives me on is that I’m at perfect peace that this is what God has called me to do in my life. I have more peace about that today than I’ve ever had. I have no pride in the organization; I don’t want to build an organization. I want to be part of the movement of God’s spirit and see the whole church coming alive to what God has called the church to do and to be in our society. I don’t see any other hope. I will keep doing this as long as I believe it’s what God has called me to do, and as long as I’m able and needed and realize that so many people in prison need us.

My deeper feeling is about the need of the church of Jesus Christ to provide more leadership and vision in society, which is absolutely bankrupt without it. The values by which we live today are basically sick values. It is the church that provides the hope of moral leadership, which is why I have a deep longing to see the church be what God wants it to be, the invisible kingdom, to make its presence felt, and to be a witness. I think we’re looked upon too much today as just another institution, like any other agency of society. The church ought to be not just another organization, but the organism that is challenging society, giving leadership to society. The gospel has to be a disturbing message today, and it isn’t. It tends to be [presented as] just a religious adaptation of the false values of our secular culture.

Sunday Night Nausea

Here is the church

Here is the steeple

Open the door and …

And … just as I thought. The people are where they usually are on Sunday night. It gets harder and harder to make sound decisions about where we are going to spend Sunday night.

The commandment calls to us: “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.” As for the Sabbath night—it is the night on which the TV superspectaculars beckon us to turn from the church and gaze into the blue glare. But what of Brother Drably’s sermon series and the youth musical?

I remember how for years my children complained that the wicked witch of the West had first died in 1939, and yet 30 years later they had never seen a Munch-kin. Oh, how they begged to stay home from Sunday night church and watch The Wizard of Oz. It seemed a small sacrifice at the time, but now the great serialized movies—Shōgun, Centennial, The Thorn Birds—all come on Sunday night. How can the church ever compete? Tom Sawyer once lamented, “Church ain’t shucks to the circus.” Tom spoke volumes about the lack of enthusiasm that many adults and most children feel, “Church ain’t shucks to Sunday night television, either.” Given a choice between video extravaganza and the droll show study series on “Israel in Nomadic, Precivilization History,” Sunday night church doesn’t stand much of a chance.

Some churches suffer needlessly. They may allow their Sunday P.M. show to degenerate into a kind of unplanned drift into “Singspirations” in which the “sing” never seems to have as much “spiration” in it as we would like, or a lecture film series on the Mark of the Beast and Israel’s return to Sinai. Or the church might spend big bucks to bring in a Schaeffer film series or a Dobson/Landorf film series. Sometimes a concert series is the answer for the church as it opens the doors to wow-wow athletes who can hold the attention of the youth for a love offering plus expenses. In spite of all this, Sunday evening services gradually move from the sanctuary to the little chapel for want of a major crowd. Still, churches hold in guilt the notion that all great churches stay true to the Almighty by keeping the doors open on Sunday night. The one-eyed monster has hypnotized the faithful, and the glitter it offers is more than enough to plague the spastic church torn between making the performance entertaining and the issue of real teaching and worship to the switched-off generation.

EUTYCHUS

Temptation!

Nathan O. Hatch’s “Yesterday, The Key That Unlocks Today” [Aug. 5] tempted me to do the very thing it so ably warns against doing. I found myself picking (by underlining) out of the article’s “tapestry, only those strands that reinforce our [my] own points of view.” It expresses its ideas briefly and much better than anything I’ve read.

REV. O. F. WAGNER

SAINT MICHAEL’S LUTHERAN CHURCH

Portland, Oreg.

Two Camps Clearly Presented

Let me compliment you on the journalistic objectivity displayed by James C. Hefley in “The Historic Shift in America’s Largest Protestant Denomination” [Aug. 5]. I was pleased with his attempt to present clearly the opinions of the two camps. I am somewhat concerned, however, about the subtle but dim view that seemed to be expressed about our seminaries. The “moderates” are not the only products of our academic institutions.

Contact with liberal views on the seminary campus is a necessity, otherwise we lock up our orthodoxy in little boxes.

REV. MARK D. COOKE

Northside Baptist Church

West Columbia, S.C.

Nuclear Predicament

Your article concerning the Pasadena conference on nuclear war [News, July 15] reported some poor thinking about the just-war theory and its application to the policy of nuclear deterrence. The just-war theory provides criteria for a decision to actually conduct war—when to consciously and deliberately decide to start shooting. The whole purpose and thrust of nuclear deterrence is to prevent nuclear shooting. Therefore the just-war criteria cannot be applied, at least not in the same way.

The question that we must focus on is whether or not nuclear deterrence does a better job of preserving life and freedom than the available alternatives. The complaint that it is immoral to threaten to do what we should not actually do is vacuous. If threatening retaliation prevents actual war, then Christians, in the biblical role of peacemakers, should threaten retaliation. That may sound horrible, but war is actually horrible.

WAYNE SHOCKLEY

Brooklyn, Wis.

In the nuclear predicament we have a very good balance. On one hand, we have those who have alerted us to the terror of nuclear war, and on the other hand, those who encourage us to be strong and not succumb. The present balance between fear of nuclear war and unwillingness to be overpowered by another’s nuclear tyranny should allow us to move to that time when no nation can economically afford armed conflict.

REV. F. ARLIN NAVE

Mount Tabor Presbyterian Church

Portland, Oreg.

More Than Lethal

It was good to see your editorial “Drunken Driving: Are We Angry Enough to Stop It?” [Aug. 5]. I feel it is important that Christians take a stand on such vital issues of public policy and then to let the public know what that stand is.

Twice in the editorial there are references to blood alcohol content percentages: “1 percent blood alcohol” and “a 1.0 percent.” The correct figure is 10 or one tenth of one percent, commonly referred to as “point one oh.”

LARRY L. OLMSTEAD

Williamston, Mich.

Biblical World View Lacking

In her article concerning the Bob Jones decision [News, July 15], Beth Spring appears to take a very narrow sampling of commentary upon which to base her analysis. This is evident not only in the title’s use of the words “Ominous Implications,” but most particularly in her closing paragraph giving a passing comment that, although the decision advanced racial equality, the cost was not worth it. I was struck by the apparent lack of biblical world view in most of the commentary quoted.

I firmly believe that Jesus is indeed Lord, and that the Supreme Court acted as his minister (Rom. 13) in striking down racial discrimination and partiality that have no place in the Body of Christ. God will tolerate wickedness for so long, then he judges it, as taught in Revelation as a message for the ages. The existence of wickedness has no bearing on his lordship. As long as Jesus wants it, we will have tax deductions, and when he doesn’t, we will be the better for it.

JOHN A. TEETS

Philadelphia, Penn.

Useless And Antagonistic

In regard to “Those Strange Encounters” [July 15], I am disappointed in CT for publishing such a uselessly antagonistic article. As one who has also experienced that “overwhelming holy presence all around me,” the article leaves me with the feeling that the author is jousting at windmills, trying to examine with the minute human intellect an aspect of God’s glory that simply cannot be so analyzed.

REV. BILL GUERARD

State College, Penn.

Helpful Report

Your editorial “The Central American Powder Keg: How Can Christians Keep It from Exploding?” [July 15], written with the assistance of William Taylor, is the most clear and helpful report on U. S. policy in Central America that I have read. Congratulations on the competence, courage, and wisdom with which it was written.

EUGENE L. SMITH

Closter, N.J.

I commend you for speaking out on the matter and for the historical background cited out of which the present problems have emerged. My only problem is that you did not go far enough.

After stating (1) that the United States is hated in Central America because of its past support for the repressive and cruel Somoza regime and that (2) our government supplies arms to the government, wouldn’t it have been appropriate to ask Christians in our country to demand that our government cut off all “covert” aid to those forces that are trying to overthrow the present government? While the CIA has done such things in the past in Central and South America, they are neither moral nor legal according to international law. Furthermore, our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Nicaragua are pleading with us to ask our government to stop such arms supplies to those forces that are killing their own people. Perhaps then Nicaragua can have a chance to become more economically stable and allow for more democratic free expression.

REV. STEVE MILLER

Community Bible Church

Arleta, Calif.

Esp For Christians?

I was angry when I read “ESP and the Paranormal” [July 15]. It seemed to reflect the belief that no miracles have happened since Bible times. Narrowly defined, of course ESP has no value for Christians. But it is not a synonym for spiritism or quackery. Extrasensory phenomena include Christian experiences such as intuitions, premonitions, and the gift of prophecy such as we find in the Bible.

WARD S. MILLER

Redlands, Calif.

The article seems most accurate from the scientific view. Yet the world of the Spirit and mystical are basic to most evangelical Christians in their conversion experience and their calling to Christian service. The Old Testament is full of prophecy concerning Christ, and this mystical tie unfolds in the New Testament. So I had some trouble with the spirit of the article, which took away the mystical. God seems to keep certain processes hidden in matters of divine intervention, for if a finite, self-centered man discovered by science the process of communication, he would tamper with and corrupt the signals. If we could understand these processes we would not reach for God or people by faith but by knowledge or ESP. Now, we just pray for others through God in faith, leaving it to the wisdom of God. It is noticeable that the Bible doesn’t give much support for the scientific world or the psychic phenomena. It calls for faith and faithfulness, which is coupled with hope and the greatest motive, love.

REV. DON H. THOMAS

Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Fayetteville, Tenn.

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