Fanny And Alexander

An Ingmar Bergman film,

released by Embassy Pictures.

Most of the evidence that cinema can be art comes from outside the English-speaking world. Between films like Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander and commercial offerings that keep one’s mind from serious thought or one’s head in the trough, there is a great gulf fixed. Deep seldom calls to deep in cinema. It does here.

The eye, that glutton for frontiers, finds a feast in the impeccably detailed, lavish world of the Swedish upper class, circa 1912. We meet the Ekdahl family: the matriarchal Helena, the philandering Adolf, the schizoid Carl, the tragic Oscar and his philandering wife Emilie. They, and others in the huge cast, supply a bit of everything: joy and angst, security and fear, beauty and ugliness, love and cruelty, life and death. We see it all through the eyes of Fanny and Alexander, especially the latter, who spins strange yarns to lantern slides late at night.

If Bergman’s Weltanschauung can be seen in theater-manager Oscar’s speeches, or Alexander’s cinematic proclivities, it is even clearer in the second half of the story, which is as cerebral and mystical as the first half is visual. After Oscar’s death, Emilie, for undeveloped reasons, marries Edvard, a bishop. He is a talented, handsome man, but also cruel and vengeful. His house is orderly and austere, and its windows barred; the servants are meddling hags. In this world, one is never sure what is real and what is not. Alexander sees visions of Oscar, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Intelligent Christians, who should see this film if they see any at all, will have no trouble decoding the symbolism. It is fascinating to watch a story revolve around the most profound “why?” questions, and to know that someone still asks them.

One can believe this is Bergman’s last film. (Bound copies of the screenplay are being sold.) Less credible is the claim that it is not autobiographical. The bishop, in a late apparition, reminds young Alexander that he cannot escape. Indeed, the film grapples with an omnipresent God who displays both goodness and severity. From this God no one can escape. Not even Ingmar Bergman.

Reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Southern California.

How Bad Is Our Confusion?

It had been an age of cut-rate homers and dime-a-dozen Dantes, an age when everything was great because nothing was very good. It had been the age of Capote and Warhol and Updike and Pollock masquerading as the age of Pericles; an age in which multitudes of creative writing teachers had suddenly become “important” rivals of Shakespeare; when rock lyrics “leaked bits of near-meaning that made beyond-sense”; when technicolor images of perverted sex and sadistic cruelty drew the hallelujahs of the nation’s media elite; an age when “hollow people wrote hollow books for hollow critics.”

How bad is “it,” meaning our own confused century? According to critic and essayist Bryan Griffin, the rot is deeper than any of us had thought, which, in most cases, is pretty deep. But there is hope, because:

“It was all over: from Havelock Ellis to Shere Hite … the names and noises and postures that had defined the bizarre cult of the infantile for the greater part of this spiritually stagnant century had suddenly become the targets for general intellectual ridicule.”

And ridicule them he does, in a brawling, audacious style, buttressed with plenty of documentation. None of the popular media pundits, social-engineering academic bullies, small-minded publishers and soi-disant sages are spared. Evangelical readers who know from Scripture “what is in man” will not be surprised, but they will delight to have some of their own judgments stated so bravely and pop culture’s catechism of can’t so effectively decoded. “The awful pallbearers of the nation’s shabby legacy,” according to Griffin, have had their day.

But why did it all happen? Griffin examines the prophecies of some of the last century’s true wise men and concludes: “It is the tragedy of the false cultural democracy that pretends that virtue and meaning and wisdom can be obtained from swarms of unimpressive men. It is the tragedy of the democracy that sacrifices the possibility of excellence to the lie of equality: that in Florence equal tribute would have been paid to Leonardo and his apprentice; that in Jerusalem would have given Jesus and Judas the same vote.” All those attempting to form an intelligent and thorough critique of modern culture—those who wish to be salt and light in the world—will value the analysis.

Griffin does paint with a wide brush and is open to the charge of being too negative and, in places, repetitive in his treatment. A few writers deserve better than what he gives them. Some will love this book, others may hear the sound of an ax grinding and hate it. His case is also weakened by a reluctance to divulge information about himself; even his publisher knows very little about him. But Panic Among the Philistines deserves to be read by everyone because the author does not stop at painstakingly diagnosing the problem and the reasons for it. He offers solutions; among them:

“Go back to where you began: to Socrates and Plato; and follow that light to Aristotle and Virgil, to Epictetus and St. Paul, to Luther and Erasmus.… He reminds readers that they are part of “the everlasting battle in which there are no truces. A battle between those who would preserve and extend the highest values of civilization, and those who would use the tools of civilization—education and knowledge and liberty and peace—to savage those values. It is the battle between host and parasite, between those who seek and those who drift, the battle between those who stand for something and those who will tolerate anything, between those who find happiness in the pursuit of goodness and those who become miserable in the pursuit of happiness.”

Much, much more could be quoted. There is commentary, investigative reporting, and timely exhortation here; even, yes, some reasons for optimism. The ideas are packed tight. The book is not for those whose minds are untrammeled by thought. Those who ignore Panic Among the Philistines do so to their own loss.

Panic Among the Philistines, by Bryan F. Griffin (Regnery Gateway, 1983; $12.95). Reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Southern California.

“Truths We Keep Coming Back And Back To”

Robert frost once wished he could be monarch of a desert land devoted to the “truths we keep coming back and back to.” So too it seems with general revelation: we keep coming back and back to it, for it discloses enduring truth that nourishes the mind of the church. Two recent works nudge us in that direction.

Since evangelicals believe in Jesus Christ, “through whom and for whom the whole universe has been created,” they cannot, T. F. Torrance says, ignore “the empirical reality of the created order.” By fully believing in the incarnation of God the Son, they confront “the inescapable realism of evangelical theology” (p. 11). If we are truly to know God, our knowledge “must be grounded ultimately in the reality of God” that is accessible to us (p. 21).

Such knowledge is possible, Torrance argues, if we take a unitary view of knowledge such as outlined by Michael Polanyi and other scientifically oriented thinkers. They refuse to separate empirical and theoretical aspects of knowledge and argue that they mutually inhere in each other and all that is. If evangelicals can grasp the implications of a realism that seems emergent in contemporary scientific circles, they will have an opportunity to think and develop fresh, better-grounded perspectives.

Doing so presents “theological questions to biblical scholars,” however. Dualistic notions of earlier ages, whether in Augustine’s theology or Newton’s science, seem untenable in the age of Einstein. Evidences of such dualism in biblical scholarship—“Subjectivist existentialism” on one hand and “linguistic formalism” on the other—suggest by their inadequacies that a better, “basically theological exegesis and interpretation of the Bible” (p. 69) needs to emerge in evangelical churches.

We learn truth about God as we listen to the Word of God, in which “we hear ‘God speaking in person’ ” (p. 77). Authentic learning, as Plato so clearly taught, emerges from dialogue as one personally appropriates truth that can never be exclusively conceptual (and thus overly abstract) or perceptual (and thus overly concrete). “Audits” as well as precepts and concepts constitute knowledge. The Word of God in Holy Scripture is the Word of God. Scripture does not merely contain God’s Word. But the Word of God in Scripture transcends the words inscribed therein, for the Word of God speaks truth to mankind. The Word is the meaning, the truth of the words we hear as we listen to what is said. Rejecting both liberalism and fundamentalism, Torrance believes a realistic evangelical theology can more adequately interpret the Bible.

Such a theology enables us to understand and proclaim God’s self-revelation, preeminently in Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Word. With that disclosure, as well as the Word in Holy Scripture, the listening church can develop doctrines as men and women hear the Word and coherently understand it. Doctrinal statements rightly present such understanding. They are true insofar as they rightly state what is with reference to the Truth. As Anselm taught, there is an “ontological priority and objectivity of truth in all genuine knowledge” (p. 132).

Consequently: “We must penetrate through the created truth, speech, and rationality of biblical statements to the solid ground of the Truth, Speech, and Rationality of God upon which they rest, in order that everything may be understood and expounded directly in the light of the Truth that God himself is, under his constant guidance, and in conformity to the structures of rationality or conceptuality which are given when we listen to the Truth and submit our minds to its compelling claims” (p. 135).

This book contains the 1981 Payton Lectures that Torrance delivered at Fuller Theological Seminary. They reflect the work he has been doing for a number of years, trying to blend insights from philosophers of science with orthodox theology. Deeply rooted in the classical theologians of the Christian church, thoroughly aware of movements in modern science and philosophy, he certainly makes a strong case for recovering a fundamentally realistic evangelical theology.

In today’s pluralistic world, diverse claims constantly circulate concerning man’s knowledge of God. “At the heart of the contemporary debate,” Bruce Demarest holds, “is the problem of general revelation” (p. 9). While acknowledging its past pitfalls, while clearly asserting that only special revelation grants us redemptive knowledge, Demarest believes evangelicals must recover an appreciation for the integrity and instructiveness of general revelation, especially as we seek to understand and address the non-Christian peoples of the Third World.

He clearly states his position: “Man, made in the image of God and enabled by common grace, effably intuits (in the first moment of mental and moral self-consciousness) eternal changeless principles, including the existence, character, and moral demands of God. Thus equipped with a rudimentary knowledge of God, man adduces further knowledge of God’s character and purposes by rational reflection on the data of nature and history. From the light of general revelation, then, all people know God as Creator, Preserver, and Judge of the world” (pp. 22–23).

In his fallen condition, however, man stubbornly resists and refuses to follow the truth he inwardly knows. Thus God in his mercy extends special revelation (Scripture and Christ), which elicit saving faith and a fuller knowledge of his nature and will. But special revelation effectively reaches and teaches man within the context prepared by an awareness of God already cultivated by general revelation.

To clarify his case for such general revelation, Demarest surveys its development throughout church history. He discusses the classical Catholic, Reformation, Puritan, liberal, neo-orthodox, neo-liberal, Vatican II, and non-Christian positions. His presentations are readable, concise, and enlightening, though he might be hard pressed to defend some of his judgments on Vatican II, liberation theology, and non-Christian religions.

Given the mass of material addressed, insofar as the book is designed for college and seminary classrooms, it achieves its end and opens up historical and contemporary perspectives on general revelation. One finds particularly impressive the attention and reverence given general revelation by some of the greatest theologians of the past. Disdain for it (a la Barth) seems a peculiarly modern attitude, whereas overemphasis has flawed pantheistic perspectives both past and present.

Having made a historical survey, Demarest concludes with his own appraisal of the biblical perspective. He believes the Scriptures support, in the first place, an “intuitional knowledge of God” innate within every man, “created in the image of God and universally illumined by the Logos” so that he “effably intuits the reality of God as a first truth” (p. 228). Second, human beings have an “acquired general knowledge of God” that is possessed but suppressed. “When man confronts the indicia of the intelligibly ordered cosmos with an open mind, his innate idea of God is supplied with further characteristics that augment his overall understanding of God” (p. 234). Third, an available “knowledge of God as redeemer” has been graciously extended in special revelation and is needed by non-Christian peoples for salvation.

Though Demarest sides with Calvin and many others who allow that God may certainly work in exceptional ways and save some who have not heard the Christian gospel, he holds that only biblical truth can properly point men and women to salvation. Thus the missionary thrust of the church should build upon the knowledge of God possessed by all men everywhere, impelled by the awareness that without the special revelation of God-in-Christ, the world is lost.

This volume is scholarly, readable, useful. “Demarest has undertaken,” Vernon Grounds says in the foreword, “the herculean task of examining Christianity’s epistemological foundations” and “has produced an outstanding work of scholarship that places him in the front rank of evangelical theologians” (p. 8).

Reality and Evangelical Theology, by T. F. Torrance (Westminster Press, 1982; 174 pp., $8.95), and General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues, by Bruce A. Demarest (Zondervan, 1982; 301 pp., $12.95). Reviewed by Gerard Reed, visiting professor of history and philosophy, Point Loma College, San Diego.

United Church of Christ (UCC) general synod delegates have adopted a task force report recommending that candidates for the ministry not be refused ordination on the basis of their homosexual orientation.

“In considering a candidate’s qualifications for the ministry, the candidate’s heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual orientation, in and of itself, should not be grounds for denying the request for ordination,” the report states. It concludes “that a person’s sexual orientation is not a moral issue, but that sexual behavior does have moral significance.”

The report also asks the UCC national staff to “facilitate ministry to gay people, whether they choose to affirm their sexual feelings or attempt to change them.…”

The recommendations are not binding on the denomination’s 6,443 churches. Area associations of churches in the 1.75-million-member denomination have the sole power to ordain ministers.

UCC delegates also elected the Reverend Carol Joyce Brun as the denomination’s secretary, the church’s second-highest elective office. Brun is the first woman to be elected as a top officer in the UCC.

In other action, UCC delegates endorsed a mutual United States-Soviet Union nuclear weapons freeze; called on Congress to stop all funding for the MX missile and other first-strike nuclear weapons; and called on churches to push for programs to help victims of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The disease affects practicing homosexuals, Haitians, and users of intravenous medications.

In other denominational meetings held this summer;

• Delegates to the Church of the Brethren annual conference adopted a position paper on human sexuality that supports “the teaching that sexual intercourse … belongs within heterosexual marriage.” The paper lists ways the church can extend “Christlike comfort and grace to homosexual and bisexual persons” and does not call homosexuality a sin.

The church also instructed its congregations to “employ all lawful means to protect refugees” by providing legel assistance and by petitioning Congress and the U.S. State Department to grant refugee status to those fleeing political oppression. When legal means have been exhausted, congregations are encouraged “to prayerfully consider sanctuary as a faith response to the current situation in Central America.” At least 43 non-Brethren churches around the country have provided sanctuary to refugees by giving them temporary havens within church buildings.

• The General Synod of the Reformed Church in America approved one of the strongest antiabortion statements in the church’s 355-year history. Delegates to the synod voted to oppose the use of abortion “in all but very exceptional circumstances.” The decision replaces the denomination’s earlier pro-choice stand.

Delegates also decided to retain membership in the national and world councils of churches, and voted by a two-to-one margin to investigate affiliation with the National Association of Evangelicals.

• A resolution challenging the American Baptist Churches (ABC) prochoice stand on abortion failed by a two-to-one margin at the denomination’s biennial meeting. In other action, ABC delegates passed a nuclear freeze resolution; called for an end to military aid to Central American countries; and suggested that churches and denominational offices pay for basic governmental services such as fire and police protection.

• A decision on the ordination of women as deacons in the Christian Reformed Church was delayed until next year, pending the completion of a report by a Committee on Headship in the Bible.

• The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) invited the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) to join the OPC. Presbyteries of the PCA have been encouraged to ratify the move. In 1981 the presbyteries approved a similar invitation to the Reformed Presbyterian Church-Evangelical Synod, a denomination that joined the PCA last year. However, in that same balloting, an invitation to the OPC failed to receive the necessary three-fourths majority approval.

• The General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church initiated proceedings to unite the 95,000-member denomination with the Second Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a primarily black denomination with more than 7,000 members. Unification of the two bodies is set for 1982.

• The General Board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) voted to recommend that its genera assembly next month ask the United States and other governments to halt military aid to Central American countries.

• Delegates to the general conference of the Evangelical Free Church of America approved the first reading of a proposal that would renew denominational support of Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois. The college severed ties with the denomination in 1975. Under the proposal, the denomination would select two-thirds of the college’s board members and ask its 853 churches to support the college financially.

• The executive council of the Church of God (Anderson, Ind.) restructured its committee on world hunger and relief to place greater emphasis on awareness of the world food problem and to stimulate involvement in solving the problem.

• The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church added 13 new churches, 6 of them from the former Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (PCUS). One of those six churches, the 1,500-member First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, became the largest congregation in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. The PCUS merged with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. last June to form the new Presbyterian Church (USA).

RON LEE

Crystal Cathedral Tax Problem Still Unresolved

Last December, California State tax authorities blew the whistle on Robert Schuller and his Garden Grove Community Church. They claimed the church, because it had become commercialized, no longer qualified for a property tax exemption. Eight months later, the battle still lingers. Schuller calls it “the toughest thing I’ve had to face.” The California State Board of Equalization had billed the church for more than $400,000 in back taxes. The loss of its exemption would cost the church an estimated $250,000 a year. Attorney Thomas Bost, who is representing the church, says, “We feel no tax is due, and we believe the law supports our view.”

Nevertheless, the church appears willing to pay a portion of the assessment just to settle the matter and to keep it out of the courts. Lawyers for the church are trying to negotiate a settlement. But William Grommet, an investigator for the equalization board, says that at this juncture no compromise is forthcoming. He says the law reads that for property to be tax exempt, it must be used exclusively for worship or religious purposes. “That,” says Grommet, “interpreted by us, doesn’t mean you can run your own private business there or rent the property to commercial organizations.”

Specifically, Grommet objects to Schuller operating a family-owned corporation, called “Possibilities Unlimited,” on church property. Orange County assessor Brad Jacobs says the church failed to mention the corporation on forms requesting the exemption. Grommet also objects to the use of church buildings, including the Crystal Cathedral, for business meetings (Amway, E. F. Hutton, and others), fashion shows, and concerts, especially those featuring secular artists such as Fred Waring and Victor Borge.

Jacobs notes that California law prohibits “nonqualifying individuals and corporations” from profiting by activities held on exempt property. This, he says, includes performers like Borge and their agents.

Bost points out that “Possibilities Unlimited” no longer operates on tax-exempt property and that, when it did, it occupied only one small office and a couple of closets among seven buildings on church property.

Regarding the other questionable activities, Schuller believes the church has the responsibility to lend its services and facilities to the community. “Even before we dedicated the Crystal Cathedral,” he says, “we announced that we hoped it would be enjoyed by the community as a concert place.” Schuller allows only activities that “build unity and love in the community.” “Our policy has never been to say ‘no’ just because the activity is secular,” Schuller says. “Our theology says that the secular must become sacred and the sacred must become secular.”

Perhaps the main reason for the controversy is the haziness of the law. It states that exempt property must be used “exclusively” for worship or other religious, or charitable, purposes. But, according to Bost, the courts have interpreted “exclusively” to mean “primarily.” Thus, the question, “How much is too much?” is subject to the investigator’s judgment.

Grommet does not object to churches holding such fund-raising events as spaghetti suppers. But Grommet contends Schuller’s church has gone too far. “This church is commercialized to a much greater degree than I’ve ever encountered in the state.”

In response, Schuller notes that of more than 1,000 activities sponsored by the church over the two-year period in question, only 23 were contested. “I don’t think that is overwhelmingly commercial,” he says.

North American Scene

The Hare Krishna movement is $32.3 million poorer. A superior court jury in California has awarded that amount to a 23-year-old former Krishna member and her mother. The jury concluded unanimously that the girl, Robin George, was imprisoned and brainwashed after joining a Krishna temple as a teenager. She and her mother sued for libel, emotional distress, false imprisonment, and the wrongful death of Robin’s father, who died of a stroke, which, the suit alleges, resulted from stress in trying to locate his daughter.

Groups on both sides of the school prayer controversy have expressed an unwillingness to compromise. At a recent hearing a compromise amendment devised by the Senate Judiciary Committee was denounced from all corners. The amendment, authored by Orrin Hatch (RUtah) would allow silent meditation periods in classrooms, and equal access for student religious gatherings on public school grounds. Conservatives argued that the measure does not move toward returning oral prayer to the classroom. Liberal groups believe that the Constitution already allows for the proposals in the amendment.

After spending nearly five years in an Australian prison, Americans Florice Bessire, 66, and Vera Hayes, 65, are home. The women were arrested in 1978 after 1.9 tons of hashish was discovered in their borrowed camper van (CT, March 5,1982). A massive letter-writing campaign coordinated by Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship, and begun in 1980, failed to move the Australian government. But a newly appointed attorney general, after reviewing the case and the letters, ordered the two released.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of state legislative chaplains paid at public expense. In a 6-to-3 decision, the high court upheld the practice of presession prayer by the chaplains, citing the long history of publicly supported chaplains at both state and federal levels. Expressing the majority’s opinion. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote that to invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making laws is not an attempt to establish a religion.

The Supreme Court has refused to review lower court rulings that have prevented a city-owned hospital in Minnesota from refusing abortions. The Virginia Regional Medical Hospital in Virginia, Minnesota, wants to establish its own policy on abortion. The hospital began disallowing abortions in 1973, less than a week after abortion was legalized. The practice was successfully challenged by the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. The hospital eventually brought its appeal to the high court, which decided 7 to 2 to dismiss the appeal.

Sex outside marriage is acceptable for an elderly man and woman whose financial situation makes marriage impossible. This is one finding from a survey of Lutheran Church in America clergy and laity. Some 2,500 lay people and 1,000 clergy were selected at random from the LCA’S 3 million members. Among other things, the survey revealed that the LCA opposes abortion on demand.

The prolife movement has been dealt yet another blow. A proposed constitutional amendment to allow states to restrict abortions was voted down in the Senate by a 50-to-49 vote. The 49 votes fell far short of the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment. The proposed amendment read simply, “A right to an abortion is not secured by this Constitution.” Prolifers were denied the symbolic victory of a 50–50 draw when antiabortionist Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) refrained from voting on the measure because it would not have banned abortion outright. But prolife groups were encouraged that, for the first time, a full house of Congress debated the morality of abortion.

A Gallup poll finds support for a promilitary stance tempered by latent support for a verified freeze.

Most evangelicals approve of President Ronald Reagan’s promilitary policies on nuclear arms, yet they would support a nuclear freeze if the conditions were right. These somewhat contradictory results appear in a new Gallup poll commissioned by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).

Overall, evangelicals gave answers similar to those of the general public, with one notable exception: on several key questions, between one-fourth and one-third of the evangelicals registered “no opinion.” This is about 10 percentage points higher than the public at large.

Spokesmen at NAE’S Office of Public Affairs in Washington say this confirms their suspicion that evangelicals comprise the “great undecided group” on this issue. It is because of this, they believe, that Reagan agreed to address their annual meeting last March in Orlando, and fervently appealed for evangelical support, NAE, with 3.5 million members, has taken no stand on the issue. The poll was commissioned, according to Washington office director Robert P. Dugan, Jr., when NAE officials realized there was no empirical data about how evangelicals perceive the issue.

When asked if they approve or disapprove of “the way President Reagan is dealing with the nuclear arms situation,” 41 percent of evangelicals and 43 percent of the general public said they approve. Those who disapprove numbered 26 percent of evangelicals and 34 percent of the public, and “no opinion” was given by 33 percent of evangelicals and 23 percent of the public at large.

Among evangelicals, 60 percent would favor “an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union for an immediate, verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons,” while 18 percent oppose it and 22 percent have no opinion. Nonevangelicals strongly supported the freeze, with 75 percent favoring it, 16 percent opposing it, and 9 percent having no opinion.

When the “no opinion” option is excluded, evangelical support for the freeze jumps to 77 percent. However, follow-up questions show that the apparent evangelical support for a freeze may be simply an expression of what people would like to see happen under ideal circumstances. An overwhelming 76 percent of evangelicals and a similar percentage of the general public do not believe the Soviets would agree to on-site inspection of their nuclear weapons—an essential prerequisite for a verifiable freeze. Only 15 percent of evangelicals and 22 percent of the general public would favor a unilateral freeze.

These results were gleaned from in-person interviews with 1,540 adults in 300 American communities in mid-May. Of all the people interviewed, 17 percent classified themselves as evangelicals by affirming that they are born again, believe the Bible is God’s inspired Word, and have urged others to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. The number of evangelicals in the scientific sample projects to 28 million adults nationwide.

The high percentage answering with “no opinion” may suggest a reason other than being genuinely undecided: evangelicals are poorly informed about the issue. Jim Bell, a consultant to the Gallup organization who analyzed these results for NAE, said “evangelicals tend to be less well informed about political matters than the general public because they are less well educated and live in rural rather than urban settings.”

A demographic profile of the evangelicals polled shows 19 percent have a college education, compared with 30 percent of the public. Half of the evangelicals live in the largely rural South. However, nonwhites and women—two groups generally portrayed as opposing the President—are more prevalent among evangelicals than in the population as a whole. Women comprise just over half of the American public and 62 percent of evangelicals. Similarly, 26 percent of evangelicals are nonwhite, compared with 14 percent of the general public.

Bell explains the paradoxical support for both Reagan and a freeze by pointing out that the freeze question tends to be regarded hypothetically. “What evangelicals are saying is, if the Soviets agree to a freeze and we can have on-site inspection, that would be wonderful; but realistically it can’t be expected.”

More revealing, according to Bell, is a question that gives some insight into underlying attitudes about war and peace. Most people who strongly advocate a nuclear freeze believe the continuing arms build-up on both sides heightens the risk of war. Just 19 percent of the evangelicals agreed with this outlook, while 31 percent of the rest of the sample agreed. More than half the evangelicals said they believe U.S. nuclear inferiority would pose a bigger risk of war. This implies solid support for Reagan’s commitment to “peace through strength,” including a continued arms build-up.

Because there was no overwhelming consensus, however, Bell believes more evangelicals are developing an awareness of the issue and its complexities, after a long history of simply supporting the status quo.

At NAE’S annual meeting, a rethinking of the issue was evident in the attentiveness convention-goers paid to a point-and counterpoint discussion of nuclear strategy given by theologians Ronald Sider and Harold O. J. Brown. NAE also was a convener of the recent Pasadena, California, meeting on Peacemaking in the Nuclear Age, at which 1,400 evangelicals gathered to exchange views.

At this point, Dugan said, “barring an unforeseen shift in evangelical thinking, the mixed results of the poll surely suggest that evangelical leaders are not likely to affirm a specific position on the matter of nuclear freeze, as did the NCC and the Catholic bishops.”

Court Decision Seen As Aid To Reagan’S Tuition Tax Credit Plan

A U.S. Supreme Court decision last June upholding a Minnesota law granting tax deductions to parents of parochial school students is expected to increase the chances for congressional approval of a similar bill supported by President Reagan.

However, Reagan’s proposal, which has been approved by the Senate Finance Committee, differs significantly from the Minnesota law. That state’s law allows tax deductions for parents of children both in public and in private schools. The President’s plan would create a tuition tax credit only for parents of children who attend private schools, many of them church related.

The 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision was praised by supporters of public aid to parochial schools. “At the very least, this decision should be a message to Congress that such tax relief measures that help parents educate their children are not de facto unconstitutional,” said Msgr. Daniel F. Hoye, general secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference.

Opponents were concerned that the court was setting a precedent for state support of religion. James M. Dunn, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, called the decision an “aberration” in the court’s “long-standing effort to hold the line of church-state separation.… [The decision] clearly favors students in private and parochial schools.”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” But Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority, said the Minnesota law does not violate the “no establishment” clause. Reasons cited in the majority opinion include the following: Private schools take an educational burden from public schools, thus benefiting all taxpayers; the financial aid goes directly to parents rather than to private schools; and the tax deduction is available to parents of children in public schools as well as to parents of children who attend private schools.

The court acknowledged that most of the tax benefits apply to parents whose children attend private, primarily sectarian, schools.

Pope John Paul II braves Poland’s political storms.

For months, Polish citizens had awaited with high spirits the visit of their most revered countryman. Pope John Paul IPs historic eight-day trip in June to his native Poland was everything his people hoped it would be. Literally millions of Poles heard the Pope’s inspiring message, calling for unity and love, offering hope to a nation that has perceived its liberty slipping away.

Especially since the installation of martial law in December 1981, Poland’s masses have made known to their government their disenchantment with communism. Apparently coming to grips with the internal unrest, the Polish government, headed by General Wojeiech Jaruzelski, allowed the visit. Most analysts believe this was a necessary risk to ease the tension. Poland’s official press described the visit as evidence of the “legitimization of the Polish Government by the Vatican and the church.”

The Pope’s trip highlighted the historical tension that has existed between Polish Catholicism and communism. Characterizing this tension is the outlawed Polish labor union, Solidarity, which has made an indelible mark on Polish history. When Solidarity began to emerge in 1980, one of the first acts of the striking shipyard workers was to arrange for the availability of the sacraments. The union, through public proclamations, has consistently tied its roots to the Catholic church.

Tiptoeing through Poland’s political minefield, the Pope carefully dressed his criticism of the government in nuance and buried it in the context of his message to the people. He encouraged his comrades to seek a “moral victory” in the midst of political defeat. In part, he said, this moral victory entails “love of neighbor” and “fundamental solidarity between human beings.” His choice of words did not go unnoticed.

In addition, the Pope specifically noted the workers’ revolt of 1980, calling it the “witness which amazed the whole world, when the Polish worker stood up for himself with the gospel in his hand and a prayer on his lips.”

Former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski believes the political controversy surrounding the trip blinded most Western observers to the Pope’s main purpose. That purpose, says Brezezinski, is to unify Eastern Catholicism, in the midst of a spiritual crisis born out of the failure of Marxist materialism, and by Western Catholicism, which the Pope believes has been beset by the West’s hedonism.

The impact of the Pope’s visit remains open to speculation, since little of his four hours of private talks with Jaruzelski has been made public. However, one clear development in Poland is the growing influence of the church. Poland’s primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, announced that church and state are discussing the formation of a church-financed fund to assist Polish agriculture and raise living standards in rural areas.

Surveys reveal that in the last year the number of regular churchgoers in Poland has soared from 70 percent to more than 90 percent. Church growth has been accompanied by unprecedented freedoms for religious broadcasting. This allowance of the government is widely perceived as a concession aimed at gaining favor with the church, deemed politically indispensable.

The concession has given Poland’s meager evangelical church a boost. Protestant broadcasts have been introduced to Polish radio. The Polish Baptist Church, which this year expects to receive a record number into the church (nearly 3,000), has delegated a former pastor to full-time radio work. In June, Billy Graham’s 1978 evangelistic campaign in Poland was shown on local television. Also, Polish Lutherans have gained wide access to public media this year to report on activities commemorating Martin Luther’s birth.

Poland’s evangelical church is growing slowly in size and in influence. Andrzej Bajeński, pastor of a United Evangelical congregation in Warsaw, reports that his congregation has increased by 50 members in the last two years, noting that most of the new members are from nonevangelical circles. Joint Catholic-Baptist discussion groups, formed after Graham’s visit in 1978, are still functioning. These and other developments indicate that a once-isolated evangelical subculture is cracking the hard shell of traditionalism in Poland.

Protestants eagerly anticipated the Pope’s meeting in Warsaw with the Polish Ecumenical Council, which includes Baptists, Methodists, and United Evangelicals, among other denominations. Some were disappointed that in his extended words of greeting, the Pope made no mention of his invited, non-Catholic guests. Most evangelicals, though, are content if their access to the millions of spiritually uncommitted Poles is not greatly impeded by the state or the Catholic church.

Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the Pope’s message in Poland was his sharply increased veneration of Mary, an emphasis that runs counter to the aspirations of Poland’s evangelicals.

There Are Far More Christians In China Than Officials Admit

During the past six months, China’s Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) has branched out on several fronts. Set up in 1951 to serve as a liaison between the government’s Bureau of Religious Affairs and the Protestant churches, the TSPM crumbled during the Cultural Revolution but was revived in 1979. It has opened many new churches—according to one estimate there are now over 700 Three-Self churches. It expects to have one million Bibles in print. And it has increased the number of training courses it offers.

A Three-Self delegation headed by its chairman, Bishop Ding Guanxun (K. H. Ting), visited a number of European and African Ding Guanxun nations plus Hong Kong last fall. The members everywhere emphasized the progress made by the church and stressed their expectation that Christians in the West recognize them as the true representative of what they describe as between two and three million Protestant Chinese Christians.

This figure is, however, unrealistically low. Surveys based on the visits of Christians, reports from house church leaders, and letters from local groups have shown that there are more than this number of believers in just 1 of its 29 provinces. While no accurate figure can be given for the whole country, the true figure is clearly many times larger than that given by the Three-Self leaders.

Bishop Ding and members of his delegation sought to discredit those who refuse to join the TSPM, describing them as a small minority of extremists often influenced by outside organizations. The house churches contain a great variety of groups, the vast majority being simple Christians who have one desire: to spread the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The growing number of official churches has been offset by increased persecution of those meeting in homes. Most house meetings in the cities have now been closed since all Christians are expected to attend the registered churches where they exist. In one city, a group of 150 meeting regularly for services on Sunday, with 70 young people attending a weekday Bible study, was ordered to close. Most of the members refused to join the Three-Self church that was opened nearby. They are probably now meeting in very small, secret family groups.

The Three-Self Patriotic Movement in another city issued a letter of accusation about a respected house church leader. He had been forced to stop preaching and holding meetings in his home, but he refused to put up a notice declaring that there would be no more meetings in his house. The letter, circulated to Christians in the city, declared that he was guilty of antirevolutionary activities.

Political charges are almost invariably brought against Christian leaders who refuse to join the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The TSPM informs the Public Security Bureau about them. One evangelist recently held meetings at which 180 people indicated their commitment to Christ. The police arrived to arrest him just as he was departing, but local Christians managed to conceal him.

Some evangelicals, realizing that if they remain outside the TSPM they will be regarded as antirevolutionary, feel it best to take advantage of the limited freedom given by the TSPM and so seek to maintain a true gospel witness within the open churches. A large number of Christians in the cities, however, attend no church, but very small, irregular house groups.

In the countryside, the TSPM is seeking to set up its own house churches and to register gatherings of Christians. The vast majority of Christians, however, is still meeting independently. While some are nominally affiliated with the TSPM, most have no official link to it.

In several parts of the country the Three-Self provincial councils have adopted resolutions “aimed at implementing the Party’s policy of religious freedom.” These resolutions, published in pamphlet form, have included the following points:

1. All churches that have obtained government approval to carry out religious activities must uphold the Three-Self principles (self-government, self-propagation, and self-support. This implies that only government authorized churches are permitted.)

2. All religious activities must be conducted within the church building. (This effectively restricts the multiplying of informal meetings in the homes, so prominent in the recent mushrooming of the church.)

3. Ministers must not go to other areas or welcome outsiders to speak in the church. (This is aimed at stopping traveling preachers and evangelistic teams sent out by the house churches.)

4. A management committee made up of those who adhere to the Three-Self principles is to be appointed for every church. Preachers and teachers who have not been ordained under the auspices of the TSPM must report to the management committee and can only be allowed to continue their ministry if they are acceptable to the TSPM.

5. It is forbidden to make converts among young people who are under age. (In some cases, young people asking for baptism have been turned away by Three-Self pastors. Even adults are sometimes reported by the TSPM to their work units, where they may come under strong pressure to not attend the church.)

6. The work of evangelism of the Chinese Christian church is the responsibility and jurisdiction of the Chinese church. (No activities, including the distribution of literature, is to be allowed by people from Hong Kong, Macao, or overseas churches.)

7. All Christians are called to uphold the four basic principles. These are (1) the socialist road, (2) the people’s democratic dictatorship, (3) Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong thought, and (4) the leadership of the Communist party.

It is reported that those who do not comply with these seven resolutions must undergo “reeducation,” and if they do not change their attitude and behavior will be taken into custody.

These resolutions, if implemented, would undoubtedly weaken the church and obstruct it in fulfilling its evangelistic task. Perhaps Bishop Ding was thinking of this when he said in his address at London University last October: “We do not think that this large numerical growth should or can continue, because it is already larger than our work of Christian nurture can cope with.”

The score: 31 Pentecostals out, 30,000 to go.

Five years to the day after 5 of them dashed into the American embassy in Moscow, 15 members of the Vashchenko family flew from Moscow to Vienna. For 23 years the single-minded Pentecostal family had waged a determined campaign to emigrate.

Some combination of Western publicity of the case of the so-called Siberian Seven, the Vashchenkos’ and Chmykhalovs’ abandoning of sanctuary in the embassy, and an apparent decision by Soviet authorities to make a symbolic gesture were the ingredients that led to the June 27 breakthrough.

Last month 15 members of the Chmykhalov family flew from Moscow to Vienna enroute to the United States. They had been told earlier by the authorities to obtain invitations from friends in the West. Their permission to exit coincided with the formal agreement of the United States to sign a compromise document on security and human rights at the East-West conference in Madrid. Observers speculated that the Chmykhalovs may have been retained as a bargaining chip and to insure restraint by the outspoken Vashchenkos at the time of their exit.

Those who attempted to provide diplomatic help to the Seven recognized, in the words of Lynn Buzzard, executive director of the Christian Legal Society, “that the families in no way were going to be allowed to emigrate directly from the embassy.” Therefore, the most difficult task was to produce enough “good-faith signs” to convince the Seven to take the risk of leaving their embassy haven.

The rigid stand-off between the Seven and the Soviet authorities began to buckle after the Christmas of 1981 hunger strike led to Lidia Vashchenko’s hospitalization in January 1982. On her release, she returned to the family’s home village of Chernogorsk in Siberia and again applied for an exit visa. Last March she was summoned to the local visa office and told to reapply. Two weeks later she was allowed to leave. She flew to Israel and sent a formal invitation to the rest of her family from there. On the strength of her being permitted to leave, her parents and two sisters left the embassy (along with two members of the Chmykhalov family) and returned to Chernogorsk.

The fact that the official Soviet news agency, Tass, which rarely comments on emigration permissions, even after the fact, broke the story one day in advance of the Vashchenko exit, indicates that the Soviets were cultivating some good press from their action.

The Vashchenkos are now in Tel Aviv, Israel, on visitor’s visas. Prime Minister Menachem Begin commented positively on their arrival over Israeli TV, and Mayor Teddy Kollek formally welcomed them to Jerusalem. Christians form a beleagered minority in Israel. And whether or not the Vashchenkos will be granted residence rights is another question. They have standing invitations from the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and elsewhere. Lidia actually visited the U.S. in a deliberately unpublicized visit late this spring.

Kent R. Hill, the Seattle Pacific University professor who translated material from the Vashchenkos for Siberian Seven biographer John Pollock, visited the Seven at intervals during their embassy stay. He said that their “hostage-like existence” had taken its toll. He observed the “signs of great pressure, a certain amount of paranoia, and on occasion a certain amount of bitterness.”

They arrived in Vienna fatigued from their three-and-a-half day train ride from Siberia to Moscow and from the departure hassles, and were at first reserved to the point of defensiveness. (Their escorts, from Vienna on, are convinced that there was a KGB agent on their flight from Moscow, and another in the Vienna airport.)

But in Israel they quickly bounced back as they settled into new routines—shopping for necessities, learning English words, and splashing and diving on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Hill said they “demonstrated a very sweet and warm spirit—a testimony to the vitality, the vibrancy of their faith.”

Hill praised the obvious warmth and mutual respect evident in the extended family of two parents, 13 children ranging in age from 9 to 32, and one in-law—“the way they defer to each other, particularly to the older children.”

Vic Glavach, until recently with the Christian Legal Society, who also accompanied the Vashchenkos during their first week in Israel, had been alerted to the family’s reputation for headstrong stubbornness. But he said he found them “delightful, comfortable people to be with.” He said he did not get the impression they were picking a bone with anyone, would make demands, or were looking for publicity. He said it was obvious, as they visited sites around the Sea of Galilee, that the family members knew the biblical significance of each location. Glavach was struck by the family custom of all following the father, Piotr, in rising for prayer and thanksgiving around the table both before and after each meal.

Christians did most to contribute to the exit of the Seven at the consciousness-raising level. Groups formed to champion their cause created a flurry of publicity that rippled to government leaders, especially in Britain and Sweden. Some denominations with ties to the Soviet Union took little action, however, considering it a Pentecostal problem. And even a denomination such as the Assemblies of God produced no support for the Seven during their first four years in the embassy. When funds were needed to cover the emigrant travel and relocation costs, $60,000 quickly poured in, a significant share of it from the Jewish community.

In spite of the two families exit, Soviet emigration policy has been tightening up over the last two years. Internal pressure on the church is also increasing. Hill says, “There is absolutely no evidence that this is going to begin any kind of a trend toward greater emigration of Christians—be they Pentecostal, Baptist, Russian Orthodox—to the West. I think the Soviets and Andropov will resist that completely. I don’t think there’s any sign that this is a harbinger of any major breakthrough.”

Why did the break come? Hill says, “It is the result of their being known in the West. It was only when individual Christians were willing to speak out on their behalf, making it a public issue in the West, that the pressure built sufficiently for the Soviets to decide to go ahead and make an exception. It is a vindication of the prayers and the work of those who have been willing to speak out on behalf of those in trouble behind the Iron Curtain. If there is any lesson in this, I think it is that without that, we have absolutely no way to protect them.”

There are many in need of that kind of protection. The unregistered Baptists report 171 of their leaders are imprisoned. Michael Rowe, a Keston College, England, researcher on religions in Communist lands, says there are about 150,000 Pentecostals in the Soviet Union, of whom 30,000 have signed petitions seeking emigration. Then there are some 1.8 million Baptists, Mennonites, and Lutherans. That is quite aside from the estimated 60 million who retain their Russian Orthodox faith.

The Siberian Seven, says Buzzard, are a symbol of all these oppressed believers. “If the Christian community in the West says, ‘Whoopee! Wow! I’m glad that’s over with. Now we get back to the chicken dinners’—somehow they’ve missed the point.”

HARRY GENET

A Christian Rock Star In The Soviet Union?

A remarkable new type of clandestine communication recently reached the West from the Soviet Union. It is a cassette recording in both Russian and English of a Christian rock opera, entitled The Trumpet Call, and produced by a group of young Christian musicians in Leningrad.

Valeri Barinov, the composer of the opera and leader of the group, has been working on it for six years. Influenced by rock music of the 1970s, and particularly by the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, he decided to try to communicate his faith to young people through his music. Barinov’s concern is particularly for young people who are outcasts in Soviet society: drug addicts, prostitutes, alcoholics, and criminals.

While living in one of the inner-city slums of Leningrad, in 1977, he often staged concerts for young people at the local Komsomol (Communist Youth League) youth club. He and his friends would play old Beatles and Rolling Stones songs. This drew young people in from the neighborhood like a magnet. As a student in the Soviet Union at the time, this reporter was present one night and observed the young people singing and dancing.

When the room was full, Barinov and his fellow musicians stopped singing and waited for everyone to quiet down. Barinov then took a New Testament from his pocket and, with a broad smile that lit up his face, began to preach the gospel.

Barinov’s Christian rock opera was produced by a group of professional musicians who are Christians—a painstaking and dangerous operation. All seven members of the group had to get off work at the same time for every secret rehearsal. Completion of the rock opera recording is especially remarkable since Barinov was under observation by KGB agents throughout the preparation years.

Barinov’s aim in sending a Russian-language version to the West was to have the music broadcast back to the Soviet Union over foreign radio stations. He hoped that in this way the message in The Trumpet Call, a call to repentance and belief in Jesus Christ and in his death and resurrection, would reach thousands who avidly listen to foreign radio broadcasts.

Barinov has lost a succession of jobs because he engages in personal evangelism at work. For a time he held a relatively well-paid job as an ambulance driver—the ambulance also was useful for transporting his guitars and other equipment around town. He now is employed as an outdoor worker, hosing water on asphalt in parks to create skating rinks. He earns barely enough to feed himself and cannot adequately support his wife and two daughters.

At the same time as copies of the rock opera cassettes were sent to the West, Barinov and another member of the group, Sergie Timokhin, sent a signed appeal to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR calling on it to allow the group to “stage open performances of religious music in the concert halls of our country.”

Having received no reply by mid-June, the pair decided to stage a performance in the Leningrad Baptist Church on Sunday, July 10. They preceded the concert with a week of prayer and fasting.

In mid-February Barinov received notification that he was to be called into the army for two months of reservist training. He was then ordered to report for medical examination and examined by a psychiatrist, who told him that if he “preached” (witnessed to his faith, that is) in the army, he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital.

Barinov was visited by an employee from the psychiatric hospital on June 26 and ordered to go for an interview with one of the head doctors there. A letter received from Timokhin protests Barinov’s registration as a psychiatric patient: “I consider him completely normal. The program words, music, and arrangements written by Valerie bear witness to this fact, as do his organizational skills in arranging the recording in the most difficult circumstances …”

Barinov himself wrote an appeal to President Reagan, saying, “What is astonishing about the whole farce is that people working in a humanitarian profession agreed to take part—people who are bound by the Hippocratic oath.”

LORNA BOURDEAUX

Commandos Free Sudan Hostages

Four missionaries are safe after Sudanese government commandos rescued them and another hostage from a rebel group that held them for two weeks. The rebels, who held them in Boma, a remote outpost in southeastern Sudan, had released six other hostages, some of them missionaries, before the commando raid.

The ordeal began June 24 when members of the South Sudanese Liberation Front captured missionaries Martin Verduin, a Canadian; the John Haspels family, of Lyons, Kansas; and Willem Noort, a nurse from the Netherlands. Also held were two representatives of the Frankfurt Zoological Society. The next day the rebel group took hostage Ron Pontier and Bruce Riggins, both American missionary pilots.

The rebels demanded clothing, medicine, about $100,000 in cash, and the right to make a statement over a Voice of America radio broadcast. They threatened to shoot the hostages if their demands were not met. The rebels are fighting to free the southern Sudan, which is predominantly Christian and animist, from the domination of Arab Muslims in the north.

On June 27 they allowed Riggins to fly out of Boma with Haspels’s wife and children and with one representative of the zoological society. The remaining five were held until the commando rescue on July 8. Most of the hostages are affiliated with a consortium of mission agencies called the Africa Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Southern Sudan (ACROSS).

ACROSS Executive Director Charles Wilson joined representatives of the United States and Sudanese governments in negotiating with the rebels. At the time the Sudan decided to send in government commandos, none of the rebels’ demands had been met. Eighteen rebels and one government soldier were killed in the rescue. None of the hostages was injured.

Pontier and Riggins are pilots for the New York-based Africa Inland Mission (AIM), an evangelical missionary sending agency, AIM was a founding member of ACROSS. The Haspelses are relief and development workers affiliated with ACROSS. Verduin is a pilot for the Sight by Wings mission agency, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

AIM U.S. Director Peter Stam said his organization has a policy that prohibits paying ransom for the safe release of its staff. “We have so many exposed people, once we started [paying ransom] there’d be no end [to the hostage taking].”

World Scene

The founder of the only nonofficial disarmament group in the Soviet Union has been expelled from the Soviet Union. Sergei Batvorin, founder of “The Group to Establish Trust Between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.,” will continue to be active in Western disarmament campaigns. He says the antinuclear movement in the Soviet Union is growing, despite repression.

The former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, John Rees, has been convicted for defrauding the ecumenical agency of more than $250,000. Desmond Tutu, current general secretary of the council, has accused white South African liberals of turning against him and of making a martyr of Rees, his predecessor. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of Archbishop Denis Hurley, who is president of the South African Conference of Catholic Bishops, a massive ecumenical church conference is being planned for 1986. Hurley hopes the Catholic church can become as relevant to South Africa as it has been in Central America since a landmark conference was held in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968.

Guatemalan president Efrain Rios Montt is under considerable pressure to fulfill his vow to restore “authentic democracy.” He made the vow after annulling the results of national elections held in March of 1982, with the claim that the voting was fraudulent. Dissenters, including Catholic church leaders and an army general, have petitioned Rios Montt to rid the government of the military and to draft a constitution. Recently Rios Montt declared a “state of alert” because of threats of a military coup. An electoral tribunal has been formed for the purpose of establishing a democracy. Rios Montt expects elections will be held sometime next year.

Conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention are nudging it away from its leftward drift. This has never before happened in a mainline denomination without a schism.

It is a given, in American church history, that Protestant churches drift to the theological left. Mainline Protestant intellectuals, infused with European theories of Bible criticism, retain little of what their ancestors held about the Bible’s authority.

The largest American Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, hasn’t escaped the trend, although compared with other denominations, the drift has been barely perceptible. Within the convention, however, the change has never passed unnoticed. Southern Baptists have feuded over the issue throughout much of this century.

Since 1979, the fuss has been furious. At that time, conservatives in the denomination began organizing to prevent further slippage, and since then they have been outmaneuvering the “moderates” (as the more liberal Southern Baptists have become known) at every turn. Today, it appears the conservatives have not only stopped the leftward trend, but they are turning the huge denomination back toward its historic roots.

It is not a lurch, nor even a swerve, Jimmy Draper, the president of the convention, likens it more to a deliberate course correction of a ponderous aircraft carrier. Even so, the new course is unmistakable. And it is historic, for never before in American church life has a major denomination turned back toward theological conservatism without a schism.

The word “largest” seems hardly apt to describe the Southern Baptist Convention. It has 14 million members, half again as many as the next largest church, the United Methodist. It has 36,000 congregations, 6,630 career home and foreign missionaries, and it baptized nearly a half-million people last year. It has six seminaries, 52 colleges and universities, and an agency with the modest little title of Sunday School Board. The board is the publishing arm of the convention. It owns the Broadman Press (118 titles published last year), the Holman Bible publishing company, and a chain of 65 Baptist bookstores. Its headquarters is housed in five buildings covering two-and-a-half blocks in downtown Nashville, and it has 1,500 employees. The board publishes 150 periodicals (1982 postage budget: $2.6 million), and has its own zip code. The Southern Baptist annuity board has assets of $1 billion; the Baptist Radio and TV Commission has 200 cable television systems and a goal of network of 100 low-power television stations. All Southern Baptist churches are independent. Its agency operations are financed by voluntary contributions that are made to the denomination-wide Cooperative Program. Last year Southern Baptists contributed to that program, and to special mission offerings as well, nearly a half-billion dollars.

With all this, Southern Baptists are an intriguing diversity. Mark Hatfield, Jesse Helms, Jimmy Carter, Lester Maddox, the news editor of People magazine, and the head of a major division of the Ku Klux Klan all claim affiliation.

Most Southern Baptists were sheltered from the fundamentalist-modernist wars of northern Protestants in the 1920s. Southern Baptists remained virtually locked in the segregated, provincial South until the 1940s, when they began expanding north and west, to the discomfiture of the less-evangelistic Northern Baptist Convention (now American Baptist Churches), from which the Southern Baptists split in 1845 over the issue of slavery. Forty percent of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) members live west of the Mississippi, with rapid growth in the Midwest and New England. Next year the convention is expected to add Canada to its territory.

Today, there are about 275,000 blacks and 635 predominantly black churches in the SBC. First Baptist in Atlanta has 150 black members and several black Sunday school teachers, where as less than 20 years ago civil-rights workers were scuffling with white deacons on the steps over whether to permit black entry. There are also a quarter-million SBC ethnics speaking 70 languages, in 3,500 predominantly ethnic churches.

With all its growth and geographical diversity, the convention has not been without theological dissension. In 1961 an uproar came at the San Francisco convention (the term convention describes both the denomination and its yearly meeting, held at changing locations, that was destined to have far-reaching consequences.

The protest was over Midwestern Seminary professor Ralph Elliott’s commentary on Genesis, published by the Sunday School Board’s Broadman Press, in which he forthrightly said Genesis 1–11 was not factual history and that Abraham only “thought he heard” a call from God to sacrifice Isaac. Broad-man promptly withdrew the book. The seminary fired Elliott, not for heresy, but for insubordination in republishing the book against the command of trustees. In response, several state Baptist editors blasted the trustees for dodging the real issue: Said C. R. Daley, editor of Kentucky’s Western Recorder: “If [Elliott] is a heretic, then he is one of many.… Professors in all our seminaries know that Elliott is in the same stream of thinking with most of them, and is more in the center of the stream than some of them.”

In attempting to clarify its position on biblical inspiration, the SBC in 1963 adopted a revised confession of faith, declaring that the Bible “has … truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.” If anything, the new confession only muddied the waters. Did the statement apply to the very words of the biblical autographs, or only the doctrine contained in those words? Year after year “inerrantists” tried to get the convention on record as prescribing their view of inspiration. They finally succeeded in passing their resolution in 1979, but its interpretation was not recorded in the minutes. More important, the convention elected as president a conservative, Adrian Rogers, pastor of a huge church in Memphis. He was the first of three successive conservative presidents who began to shift the denominational apparatus back toward conservatism.

At the same time, another pivotal figure entered the scene. He was Paul Pressler, a deacon and Sunday school teacher in Houston’s Second Baptist Church and a Texas Appeals Court judge. Pressler, 53, recalls: “Five young people from my Bible class went to Baylor University [an SBC school]. They called to-say they were hopelessly confused by their religion course. I drove down and read the text, which their professor had coauthered. I saw five whom I had labored over being destroyed by teachers supported with my money. On the way back to Houston, I decided to do something.

A fellow deacon told Pressler he should meet a red-haired graduate student at New Orleans Seminary named Paige Patterson “who thinks like you do.” Pressler and his wife Nancy drove to New Orleans for a Bible conference. “One night, about 10:30, we knocked on the Patterson’s door,” Pressler remembers. “We went downtown for coffee and donuts at the Cafe DuMonde. I guess you could say it was there that the Pressler-Patterson coalition was born. We talked about what could be done to turn Southern Baptists back to belief in an inerrant Bible.”

Patterson, son of a long-time Texas Baptist leader, subsequently became president of the independent Criswell Institute for Biblical Studies in Dallas, and associate pastor of the huge First Baptist Church in Dallas. He began publishing and reporting examples of “liberalism” by SBC teachers and editors. About that same time, inerrantist theologian Harold Lindsell published his book The Bible in the Balance, devoting a long chapter to “The Southern Baptist Convention: Moving Toward a Crisis.” Lindsell documented quotations from professors books and journal articles that he said proved their departure from historic SBC beliefs. He also showed results of a thesis, based on a survey by a Southern Baptist Seminary student, that indicated a decline in orthodoxy as students progressed through their studies. Lindsell said the future of Southern Baptists would depend on how they resolved the question of biblical inerrancy. Lindsell was assailed by many SBC establishment figures. The Baptist Sunday School Board refused to stock his book for their stores.

The politically astute Pressler saw that the SBC president was empowered to name the convention’s Committee on Committees, which nominated the Committee on Boards, which nominated the trustees who hired administrators and made policy for the denomination’s schools and agencies. Each year a percentage of trustees rotated, so it would take election of several successive presidents with conservative resolve to turn the tide. That has been the core of the successful strategy.

Pressler and a corps of people began working the grassroots, showing churches evidence of alleged liberalism among denominational teachers and editors, and urging them to send their maximum allowable number of messengers to the next annual meeting and help elect a conservative president. Adrian Rogers, elected in 1979, was followed in 1980 by another conservative, Bailey Smith of Del City. Oklahoma, before “moderate” opponents realized what was happening. Smith was reelected in 1981.

In September of 1980, Pressler told a group in Virginia: “Conservatives have been fighting battles without knowing what the war was about. The lifeblood of institutions are trustees. We need to go for the jugular and get to the root of the problem. “Editors of Southern Baptist newspapers picked up the phrase “going for the jugular” and some of them portrayed Pressler as a kind of evil genius. Cecil Sherman, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, recognized for the first time the clear danger of a takeover by inerrantists. Sherman, his brother Bill, who is a pastor in Nashville with many Sunday School Board employees in his church, as well as Kenneth Chafin, a Houston pastor, rallied fellow “moderates” to a meeting in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They organized a plan to counter what they called a “politcally motivated” attempt to take over the SBC.

The moderates called themselves “denominational loyalists,” and they vociferously denied there were liberals in SBC schools. Chafin called the inerrantist crusade “a naked, ruthless reach for personal power that acts in ways that say any means are justified.” One of the seminary presidents said privately, however: “Why don’t we just admit that Pressler and Patterson have out-organized us?”

Despite all the rhetoric, the moderates provided a lot of ammunition for the conservatives. Cecil Sherman, then president of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, debated Patterson at a pastor’s conference in Morganton, North Carolina. Sherman declared plainly that the Bible had “errors and contradictions,” adding, “I am concerned about the message of the Bible, not the inerrancy.” He saw contradictory pictures of God in the Scriptures. “In parts of the Old Testament we have a tribal God, vindictive and cruel, low and mean, while the picture of God in Jesus is lofty and beautiful.” He suggested that the character of God remains the same, “but our perception of his character is changing.” Sherman said he held to the dynamic view of inspiration, “which was held by my seminary professors.”

Conservatives backed Jimmy Draper to succeed Bailey Smith in 1982. Draper, pastor in a Dallas suburb and formerly the associate to the inerrantists’ most revered father figure, W.A. Criswell of First Baptist in Dallas, was opposed by Duke McCall, who had just retired from the presidency of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, the school to which many charges of liberalism were directed. Draper won 60 percent of the vote. Later that year one of Southern’s professors, Dale Moody, became the target of criticism for his public denial of the doctrine of eternal security of the believer. Inerrantists capitalized, branded him an apostate, and he was eased out of his position. Draper proved to be more cautious, discreet, and open to dialogue than Bailey Smith, who flayed SBC liberals in his presidential speech. Draper pledged to “get Southern Baptists talking to each other instead of about each other.” He met quickly with moderates, asking their help in finding “common ground.” The moderates thought Draper might be accommodating until he refused to support a sharing of presidential appointive powers with leaders of state Baptist conventions, where moderates have more influence. Then he set their ears ringing by telling SBC evangelism directors in San Juan, Puerto Rico: “The extreme theological stance of the left will absolutely kill evangelism.”

Still, Draper continued his efforts at dialogue, bringing moderate and conservative leaders along with agency heads to a summit meeting near Dallas. There, moderate Don Harbuck from Arkansas charged that “the judgmental spirit and exclusivistic posture of fundamentalism” was dividing Southern Baptists. Paige Patterson disagreed, and said agency leaders were not responsive to the SBC majority who held to an inerrant Bible. Baptist agencies, he said, should give conservatives parity with moderates in employment opportunities. Denominational employees who preferred not to use the term inerrancy should state “publicly, clearly, and unambiguously what they do believe” about essential doctrines. Students holding the Bible to be without error should not be ridiculed in seminary classrooms. The Cooperative Program should be “restructured” to permit selective giving by churches wishing to exclude agencies whose programs they could not in “good conscience” approve.

The agency heads listened and made no pledges to either side. Afterwards, Chafin said he was throwing in the towel, because until agencies are willing to fight, there is “absolutely nothing I or anyone can do to help them.”

Pittsburgh, where the 1983 convention was held in June, was supposed to be a good location for moderates, who are strong in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. But before the convention, moderate leaders painted a gloomy picture of their prospects. In a circular letter, Harbuck said Draper had “been a more skillful and less embarrassing president than Bailey and Adrian.” Harbuck foresaw “no opposition” to Draper’s reelection. Sherman, writing to agency heads and denominational editors at the request of the moderates’ steering committee, said, “Mr. Pressler has been more successful than I ever dreamed he would be.” He added sadly: “Systematically, almost surgically, the kind of Southern Baptist I am has been excised from policy-making posts. This is painful to us since all the while we thought we were friends of the denomination. We have viewed ourselves as your defenders and supporters both in word and in coin. A denomination that has no place for us is emerging.”

Moderates lost more ground at Pittsburgh. They were unable to defeat any conservative trustee nominations, as they had at the two previous conventions.

Draper, reelected without opposition, saw a relaxing of tensions by both moderates and conservatives. He noted that he had purposefully not used the term inerrancy in his presidential address on “Deep Beliefs” of Southern Baptists. But he added, “We still have to work through what we mean by the authority of the Bible, do some defining.” He called charges that conservatives were trying to turn the SBC into a creedal body “a straw man. The first Baptist association that met in America hadn’t met over once or twice until they adopted a confession of faith. We do have statements of belief.”

The SBC, says Draper, is “kind of cumbersome, like trying to take a sharp right turn in an aircraft carrier. You can’t do that very easily. I see [what we have done] as a midcourse correction, with our leadership being responsive to the constituency. A turning back to where we were.”

Paul Pressler, in an interview, listed five elements that brought success:

“We saw the handwriting on the wall and started early. We sought to work within the system instead of tearing down. We followed a definite plan that would get conservative trustees nominated and elected who would change the system. We did not make frontal attacks on the integrity of those we felt were liberals. We merely read what they had written and published and asked our constituency whether that was what they wanted taught in their schools.” Pressler cautioned that “the war has not been won. We still have a long way to go.” Cecil Sherman, now 55, said in an interview that the inerrantists had been winning because they “tagged into our greatest fears and dreams.” Dreams of “quantifying in terms of large sanctuaries and many baptisms. Fears that liberalism works against quantifying.” Such superchurch pastors as Rogers, Smith, and Draper had been elected “because they embody the dreams of so many pastors [to have large, thriving churches].” Sherman insisted he was not antigrowth, but that it was a mistake to say growth is the result of correct doctrine. “Moonies, Muslims, and Mormons are growing. There are pastors who have correct doctrine who are not in growing churches.” (It is a fact, however, that Southern Baptist churches, as all Protestant churches, tend to grow if they are conservative in doctrine, and tend not to grow if they are liberally inclined.)

Sherman maintained that he is “a biblicist, but one of my own mix; a traditionalist” holding that the SBC should “let leadership bear witness to an experience with God and leave the rest of doctrine to find its own level.” A denominational teacher, Sherman said, should not be bound to any creed of the past, but be permitted “soul liberty to follow Scripture as his highest objective source.”

Dale Moody, Sherman insisted, had been “functioning as a Baptist” when he had been led by Scripture to believe in apostasy. A teacher who might also be led by Scripture not to believe in the Virgin Birth should not be fired. “It [the Virgin Birth] is in two Gospels, but not in two others,” he added. “Did Mark and John make a mistake by forgetting to list it? If the Virgin Birth is desperately important, [Mark and John] must have erred.”

Clearly, Southern Baptists are turning and churning. New faces are appearing on denominational platforms and in agency offices. New trustees with a more conservative bent are sitting on boards, and more of them are likely to come.

The last time such a change occurred in a major denomination was in 1973, when the Missouri Synod Lutherans staked themselves to a strong doctrine of biblical authority. But the church split. There is not likely to be a split among Southern Baptists, at least not soon, given the strong denominational loyalty and the retirement pensions vested in the annuity board.

Cecil Sherman was asked what he would do if the SBC seminaries were taken over by the “fundamantalist party,” as he calls it. “I will advise my church not to support a ‘Jerry Falwell’ seminary,” he declared. “They may not listen, but I will tell them that.” Another moderate told his pastor friends: “Let’s not kid ourselves. We could leave but our churches will stay.”

Although the convention is not likely to see schism, there is no question that it is making a historic turn to the theological right. The main question now is: How far will it turn?

JAMES C. HEFLEY

Alternatives to deprogramming.

The announced retirement of Ted Patrick, the father of the modern anticult movement comes at a moment when the movement he founded is undergoing significant changes and his technique of coercive deconversion (deprogramming) of cult members is becoming increasingly obsolete. Patrick became the focus of the legal, financial, and emotional pressures that are forcing anticultists and other cult critics to seek a more effective response to the visible presence of so many diverse religions some so bizarre that it is difficult to recognize them as religions.

The growth of cults, those groups that either champion traditional Christian heresies (primarily Gnosticism or Arianism) or operate totally outside the Western religious tradition, experienced a quantitative leap after 1965 when the Oriental Exclusion Act was repealed and many Asian religious teachers took the opportunity to migrate. Korean Sun Myung Moon made his first visit in 1965, and Swami Prabhupada came in early 1966. Thus new forms of Eastern religion were already established when the great revival of the early 1970s swept the country. While evangelical Christianity, particularly the Pentecostal and Jesus People movements, gained the most from the revival, the Eastern faiths were strengthened by a flood of new adherents, and America experienced a significant increase in religious pluralism.

As these strange and unfamiliar forms of faith emerged, angry, frightened parents of the mostly youthful converts formed the first anticult groups. Patrick appeared to provide a practical program of action, one that could, they believed, not only retrieve family members but also destroy (or at least outlaw) the cults.

But the cults could not be destroyed so easily. Certainly some have withered, but their demise has been due to poor leadership, shallow theology, and weak organization, not opposition from anticultists. Quite the contrary, the more noteworthy cults such as the Unification Church are continuing to grow slowly and to institutionalize, with only minor modifications of their timetable due to anticult pressure.

Moreover, the practice of deprogramming has come under increasing condemnation. (Because of the growing number of violent incidents associated with him, Patrick had frankly become an embarrassment to his former supporters.) As early as 1974 the National Council of Churches denounced the practice. When legislative attempts to legitimize it arose, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and both liberal and evangelical Protestants spoke with one voice against it. Evangelical church leaders and people speaking for the black community, in particular, saw the potential for their constituents to become targets for deprogrammers.

The church’s voice, which became the decisive factor in the steady defeat of anticult legislative thrusts, has found a new ally in the critique of deprogramming by its victims. Though many former cultists acknowledged that deprogramming had accomplished its assigned task, they resented the manhandling they received and have demanded modification. Christian leaders such as Ron Enroth have criticized the deprogrammer’s neglect of the spiritual needs that led people into the cult experience. In response, some anticult groups have moved toward a more noncoercive method of “exit counseling” that abandons the more unacceptable features of deprogramming—kidnaping and physical restraint—and allows a freer climate to develop, one within which counselors can address the very real spiritual crises of former cult members.

Meanwhile, in the face of the failure of the anticult movement to alter or curb the cult phenomenon, interpreters have suggested new approaches to interaction with cults, their leaders, and their members. People speaking for the religious community who hold a wide variety of opinions about the cults agree that education concerning cult life and belief is essential. Such education can allay the fear (often bordering on hysteria) many people have of cult growth, and at the same time it can remove the aura of the exotic and mysterious that initially attracts many young members to the groups. Lutheran Ballard Pritchard sees the success of new religions as a warning that the church must reexamine and improve itself. Fr. John Saliba, a Roman Catholic, agrees: “The response of the Christian church should be to develop a greater awareness of the variety of needs people in our age have, and create practical ways in which these legitimate desires can be met.”

Some religious scholars have called for dialogue with the cults. Such dialogue, while acknowledging the right of the new religions not only to exist but also to seek converts and grow, would nevertheless seek to correct abuses (such as deceit in recruiting and fund raising).

Finally, Christians who regularly work with cultists are calling evangelicals to shift the emphasis in our approach to members of cult groups from arguments about doctrine—the overwhelming preoccupation of our books about cults—to a sharing of the love of Christ for the cultist and the confession of the claims of Christ upon each life. What argument can never do, the good news of Christ’s power to redeem the life can.

J. GORDON MELTON¹Dr. Melton is director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, author of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American Religions (McGrath, 1978), and coauthor of The Cult Experience (Pilgrim, 1982).