If intellectual barriers fall, will faith spring up?

If there’s anything to body language, my friend was speaking volubly. His fists clenched and unclenched, his legs crossed and uncrossed, and the muscles of his face contorted in tension and rage.

Anger had been growing like a tumor inside him, drawing nourishment from a fiancée’s recent jilting, a mother’s abandonment long before, and an employer’s refusal to hire him. But now that those three were memories, he had transferred the accumulated anger to God. Why had God allowed his life to turn sour?

My mind whirred as I tried to sort through the uncatalogued emotions to discern what he was really asking. He had come to me, after all, not to a therapist, presumably because he saw Christian faith as the fountainhead of his disillusionment. As I listened to his disconnected thoughts, three questions seemed to keep recurring in different forms:

1. Why is God inconsistent? My friend insisted he had tried being faithful to God, with disastrous results: no mother, no fiancée, no job. What about all the Bible’s promises of personal reward and happiness? And why had so many others, unconcerned with integrity and faith, prospered? It was a common complaint, but a good one.

2. Why doesn’t God guide more clearly? My friend reviewed a sequence of choices he had made in his career, education, and romance. At each point, he claimed, he had begged God for some direction, but to no avail. “What kind of Father is he?” he cried out in obvious anguish. “He lets me down every time, and I end up making the wrong choice. Does he enjoy watching me suffer and fail?”

3. Why is God silent? Above all others, this question haunted him. It seemed to him an irreducible minimum, a kind of theological bottom line, that God should somehow prove his existence. One night he had stayed awake until sunrise, crouched on his knees, begging for God to reveal himself. “Just one word,” he had pleaded, “anything—just say something! Let me know for sure that you’re really there, and I’ll believe the rest.” No answer.

Like knights circling a high-walled city, over the next two hours we groped around the mystery of God’s involvement in planet Earth. He knew theology as well as I, and together we trudged through the familiar territory of our fallen world, God’s protection of human freedom, his tendency to work through natural creation rather than countervailing it.

But one fact soon became clear: no theoretical answer would solve his existential problems. He needed love, acceptance, healing—qualities best acquired within the caring body of Christ. A spurt of reading or a two-hour discourse on theology would hardly suffice. Months later, I have not forgotten my friend’s questions, nor the depth of feeling they evoked in him.

It happened that I was reading through the Old Testament the same year as our conversation, retracing the history of the Jews, that race of people Frederick Buechner describes as “just like everybody else only more so.” As I read, it struck me that Old Testament Jews would likely have viewed my friend’s three questions in a very different light.

God’s consistency? The Old Testament gives a remarkable portrait of a chosen nation bound to God by a covenant. In Deuteronomy 7:12–16 and in dozens of other passages, God spells out his part of the contract, guaranteeing them prosperity, fertility, health, and military triumph in exchange for their obedience. There are exceptions, of course, but to a very impressive extent God did act consistently in his relations with Israel. What else so terrified the prophets?

Guidance? One need only contemplate the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud to realize guidance was not so inexact a science back then. Old Testament characters flunked at doing God’s will, not finding it.

Silence? Assuredly, characters like David and Jeremiah experienced the dark night of the soul. But at certain moments in Old Testament history the reality of God’s presence was downright irrefutable. Could a Jewish teen-ager in the Sinai truly doubt the existence of Jehovah? If so, he need only stroll into the Holy of Holies and place a hand on the Ark of the Covenant. His doubts would vanish—one second before he did. It must have been harder to be an atheist in those days.

Reading through the Old Testament gave me a new appreciation for the scheme of the two covenants, including a few apparent benefits under the Old Covenant that are often overlooked. But as I pondered the history of God’s people, I realized that the friend in my living room had been wrong on one point. He had insisted that if God would answer those questions—if he would act consistently, guide clearly, and speak audibly—then he and the entire rest of the world would follow the true God.

I wish it were so, but it is not. For proof, I need only look at the history of Israel during a time when those three questions were not so troublesome. Read the Old Testament history for yourself. It offers a good reminder that faith does not necessarily spring up when intellectual barriers fall down.

PHILIP YANCEY¹Chicagoan Philip Yancey is the accomplished author of several books, and editorial director ofCampus Lifemagazine.

The Christian’s dilemma in Eastern Europe

“Where in the world is there a Christian government that is founded on spiritual foundations?” Russian Orthodox philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev once asked. The answer is, “Nowhere.”

Yet militantly atheistic governments exist. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, many Christians are seeking to define the place of the church in an atheistic society. In all Eastern European countries, the ascendency of Marxism-Leninism has been accompanied by some curtailment of religious liberties.

In some socialist countries, such as Yugoslavia, East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, Christian churches, although restricted, remain socially and politically active. The Protestant and Catholic churches of East Germany, for example, operate hospitals and homes for the mentally handicapped, elderly, and infirm.

In other Marxist-Leninist countries, such as Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union, churches are severely restricted and sometimes brutally repressed—a situation that has shown no signs of abating since the accession of Yuri Andropov.

In the Soviet Union, religious societies are forbidden to carry on cultural-social activity outside their places of worship. According to Article 19 of the 1929 Soviet Law on Religious Associations, “the activities of the clergy, preachers, presbyters, and the like shall be restricted to the area in which the members of the religious association reside and in the same area where the prayer building or premises are situated.”

Some East European churches nevertheless perceive God’s providence in the communist disestablishment of churches because it forces the church to refocus its mission on the spiritual.

But can the church confine its word and witness only or primarily to the spiritual? Despite opposition, Soviet and East European churches have not been silent—even about political issues. East German Lutheran churches particularly have refused to confine the church to a purely spiritual role. Former Bishop Frankel of East Germany asserted, “The church cannot limit itself to the care of the past and of pure worship, and allow itself to be confined in its public witness to the agreeable part of the truth.”

The public witness of other East European and Soviet churches has, however, been muted. The Russian Orthodox Church has vigorously denounced injustices—such as racial discrimination—but only when they exist outside communistic societies. It has actively organized conferences and issued statements promulgating world peace—but only from a Soviet perspective. Patriarch Pimen noted in a telegram to the chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, “The consistent peace-loving foreign and domestic policies of our state are unreservedly supported by the believers of our church.…”

Such partisan utterances, many East European Christians would argue, are necessary to insure the survival of the church under Marxist regimes, and are preferable to no prophetic voice at all.

Increasingly, however, such assumptions are being challenged—especially by Christian youth. In East Germany and Hungary, peace movements have emerged among young Christians critical of the Soviet Union (as well as the United States). Even while the Russian Orthodox-sponsored conference on “Protecting Life from Nuclear Catastrophe” was being held in Moscow in May 1982 under the aegis of the Soviet government, the East German Communist government was harassing Christians who persisted in wearing a sword and plowshare patch, the symbol of the independent peace movement.

Lutheran church hierarchs have defended the peace movement and its numerous young supporters. At a ten-day conference on peace held in November 1982 by the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in East Germany, Bishop Horst Gienke, one of the sponsors, insisted that the matter of peace could not be left to “politicians and generals.”

From Poland the muffled voice of Solidarity continues to speak. “To us the human rights movement represented by Solidarity is a holy war,” a Polish Catholic patriot recently stated. “Our Christianity compels us to resist political and social injustice.”

Many Czech Christians are resisting totalitarian pressures and calling for political and social change in their society. Catholic philosopher Vaclav Benda argued before his latest imprisonment in May 1979 that “political activity” is required of a Christian in a totalitarian society. According to Benda, “Political evil today is primarily an all-enveloping heaviness that every citizen carries on his shoulders and within himself. The only way to overcome it is to throw it off, wrench oneself free from its power, and set out on the road to truth.… The Truth, which at a definite place and time became flesh and dwelt among men and consented to suffer for their sake, cannot be regarded as a place in which the believer can rest.”

Such a courageous summons to political and social action can be answered only at considerable cost in Czechoslovakia’s Marxist-Leninist society. But despite risk, ranks of Christians in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe are determined to speak and live prophetically for Christ.

PETER AND ANITA DEYNEKA¹Peter Deyneka, Jr., is general director of the Slavic Gospel Association, Wheaton, Illinois. Anita, his wife, is an instructor in SGA’s Institute of Slavic Studies.

God loves people, not numbers. But he wants to see certain countable things happening in their lives.

Two years ago our congregation began using numbers to measure the church program. We are convinced they have helped make our ministry more effective. Previously I would have objected strenuously to this approach. I was convinced that using numbers in church work was the product of human ego, and I told myself I was seeking “quality, not quantity.” I believed my scorn for “the numbers game” came from concern to protect the purity of the gospel; actually, it was based on ways I saw numbers being used.

I saw church leaders use a single numerical measure to evaluate something as complex as a pastor’s overall effectiveness. I served my internship in a church badly hurt by a pastor who was abrasive, dictatorial, and divisive. But that was overlooked by some denominational executives because he gained large numbers of baptisms.

I saw the discouragement of small congregations because they could not produce gaudy membership statistics. Meanwhile, larger churches seemingly were misled because their numbers looked so good: they missed countless opportunities for service and witness and never knew the difference.

I saw numbers manipulated to control the impression they created. I arrived to pastor one church where a recent evangelistic crusade had been declared a tremendous success because it produced 35 baptisms. But only three adults were attending the church because of the crusade—a number that would never be reported. Reporting at an event’s conclusion only the numbers that make it look good is a widespread practice. Sponsors of door-to-door visitation that produces few decisions speak glowingly about the large number of contacts made.

The narrow, selective, manipulative use of numbers, I concluded, is detrimental to the church. I still believe that. Then I saw that not every congregation that used numbers fell into these traps. That encouraged me to work with my congregation to develop a different approach:

• We measure and evaluate as many facets of church life as possible. We count not only the number of members, but also how many people attend services. A yearly congregational survey tells us such facts as how many members are involved in regular Bible study, faithful giving, mutually supportive relationships, and consistent witnessing. When we plan for the year, we set objectives for many activities instead of a single objective in baptisms or attendance. This is more work, but we want enough numbers to give us accurate information to evaluate our congregational life.

• We set numerical objectives so as to protect us from the temptation to manipulate numbers. For example, a year ago our board sought a way to attract unchurched people in the community to our church. We decided to promote, a series of gospel concerts as a family entertainment opportunity, and to aim at attracting 15 unchurched people to each one.

• We work to compile our numbers with accuracy and unflinching honesty once our objectives are set. The concert series attracted few unchurched people, and our clear objective and an accurate count of those attending revealed the concerts were ineffective for outreach.

Our church is located in a resort area, and visitors make up about 40 percent of the attendance. Their presence could be misleading, so we count total and local attendance. The local number is less impressive, but it tells us how to assess local impact.

Used honestly and accurately as a tool for self-evaluation rather than an end to be reached by any means, numerical measurements have made four positive differences in our church:

• Openness to change has increased. Numbers help show the gap between objectives and accomplishments. We are now more concerned with improving the future, and we see the status quo as worth preserving only so long as it accomplishes its purpose.

• A healthy sense of accountability has been created. Our board reviews each month’s plan, compares results with goals, and plans for the coming month. This accountability causes leaders to take responsibility seriously, and they seldom allow things to drift. And because we are accountable to one another, the numbers are strengthening our sense of community.

• The use of numerical measurements has raised morale. We can identify ineffective projects early, sparing members the maintenance of unproductive programs and the hopeless feeling that “nothing ever gets finished around here.” We are able to celebrate finishing a task or reaching an objective.

• Missionary consciousness has increased noticeably. Said one member: “I used to hate seeing strangers coming to church. Now I’m thrilled to see any who come, and I want to run right up and welcome them!”

We want to use numbers as did the shepherd whose count at the sheepfold one night was a great 99 percent. But he used numbers as a tool, not an end. He went out and brought the one missing sheep back to the fold. I believe that, properly used, numbers help us come closer to Jesus’ ideal of ministry.

DARRELL HOLTZ¹Mr. Holtz wrote this column as pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church at Big Bear City, California. He is now assistant professor of religion at Union College,Lincoln, Nebraska.

A Pull Between Medicine And Pastorate

If D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s life were a novel it would be panned by critics as too unrealistic. Because his life is a historical reality we are left to wonder at the providential energy that could have effected such an astonishing career. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was the son of a middle-class Welsh dairyman who fled to London to avoid bankruptcy. After distinguishing himself as a medical student, young Martyn attracted the attention of Sir Thomas Horder with a daring diagnosis made possible after an examination of the patient’s spleen. Lord Horder was the most celebrated doctor in England, chiefly because he was called to the deathbed of King Edward VII. After disputing the young Welshman, Horder made Lloyd-Jones his chief clinical assistant (at age 23) when later developments vindicated the original diagnosis.

The events that transported Martyn Lloyd-Jones from a glamorous Harley Street medical practice to a pastorate in an impoverished Welsh mining town make for a magnificent biography. After agonizing for a year over a call to the ministry, he decided he could be of more use to the Lord in medicine. That resolve was shattered one evening as he came from a London theater. “As we came out of the theater suddenly a Salvation Army band came along playing some hymn tunes. There is a theme in Wagner’s opera Tannhauser, the two pulls—the pull of the world and the chorus of the pilgrims—and the contrast between the two. I know exactly what it means. When I heard this band and the hymns I said, ‘These are my people, these are the people I belong to and I’m going to belong to them.’ ”

A more felicitous match between biographer and subject could scarcely be imagined. Author Iain Murray is himself a distinguished preacher, church historian, and editor. (He was Lloyd-Jones’s assistant at Westminster Chapel for several years, and he made early efforts to gather data for this biography.) His efforts were slowed by the great man’s aversion to any personal publicity. Although a fervent advocate of Lloyd-Jones’s doctrine position, Murray shows restraint in allowing him to speak for himself through extracts from sermons and interviews. The book is an electrifying apologetic for the powerfully theologized pulpit emphases of the Reformers and the Puritans. Such an approach was in eclipse when Lloyd-Jones began his ministry. The renaissance of interest in Reformed theology is due in no small way to this man; he himself would attribute the resurgence to the sovereign grace of God.

This work takes the reader only to the beginning of Lloyd-Jones’s long ministry at Westminster as G. Campbell Morgan’s successor. Give us more, Mr. Murray—and please do not keep us waiting long.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899–1930, by Iain H. Murray (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1983; 394 pp., $ 15.95). Reviewed by Ronnie Collier Stevens, Faith Evangelical Bible Church, Gramercy School, Morehead City, N.C.

Nuclear holocaust and christian hope is one of a growing number of recently published studies on the Christian faith and the challenge of peacemaking in a nuclear age. The authors, Ronald Sider and Richard Taylor, are both pacifists, and they argue that the only legitimate response to the threat of nuclear war is a radical commitment of love.

“Never in the history of the planet has there been a more desperate need for Jesus’ way of costly love for enemies,” they write. “Jesus taught us to love, not to hate; to heal, not to kill; to pray for our persecutors, not to destroy them.” Because of the growing possibility of nuclear war—a war that would result in greater destruction than ever experienced in all previous wars—the authors suggest that the only hope for the future of the world lies in giving up the contemporary military system of defense and replacing it with a nonmilitary defense system.

The Soviet threat is real, Sider and Taylor tell us, but they suggest that the only morally and biblically legitimate method of protecting national interests is through a civilian-based defense (CBD) involving nonviolence, noncooperation with the enemy, active resistance, participation of the masses, and the power of good will.

The book is divided into four parts: the threat of nuclear war, biblical theological perspectives on war, the making of peace, and the development of a biblical system of national defense. Despite the title, it should be emphasized that this study does not focus on nuclear weapons policy issues. The heart of the book is Part II, which presents a nonviolent-resistance approach to peacemaking. Building on this approach, the last half of the book discusses how Christians can become agents of peacemaking.

Sider and Taylor argue that the theory of just war, which has been the most widely accepted approach to peacemaking among Christians, is no longer valid in a nuclear age. They argue, correctly, I think, that all-out nuclear war between the superpowers would create such massive and indiscriminate destruction that it would violate the traditionally recognized criteria for just wars. But the authors are not content with discounting the legitimacy of the just war doctrine for nuclear weapons; they argue that the doctrine is unacceptable for conventional violence as well. Four reasons are given for discounting the just war approach: it has failed to stop violence among Christians, the criteria have not been applied consistently, the early Christians were pacifists, and the teachings of Jesus support nonviolent resistance.

While the first two criticisms are most assuredly true, the last two are open to debate, particularly the thesis that Jesus enjoins nonviolent resistance à la Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mohandas Gandhi. While such a view may be correct, we should recognize that it deviates significantly from the historic view of Christian (vocational) pacifism based on nonresistance. Moreover, biblical scholars disagree on what the New Testament teaches regarding violence and resistance. No less a theologian than Reinhold Neibuhr held that there was no support in Scripture for the doctrine of nonviolent resistance. Thus, before adopting or rejecting the peacemaking suggestions of the last half of the book, readers would do well to ponder the implications of the different theological perspectives on war. War: Four Christian Views (ed., Robert G. Clouse, IVP, 1981) will provide a useful introduction to the debate.

Written in the genre of advocacy books, this study is primarily concerned with providing a solution to the predicament of war in general and nuclear war in particular. The aim is noble: to provide hope for the world as countries continue to participate in the aimless and wasteful nuclear and conventional arms races. The problem won’t be solved by wishful thinking, however, but will require a careful and dispassionate illumination of the moral predicament posed by an imperfect international system where national security is ultimately dependent on the governments of sovereign states. A denuclearized world would, certainly, be a more humane and secure world, but the weapons are here. A world without gunpowder would similarly be more desirable, but the invention of gunpowder cannot be disinvented. Because the instruments of violence cannot be eliminated, they must be managed and controlled—and that is the task of diplomacy. It is interesting that in a volume dealing with a Christian approach to peacemaking there should be no discussion of international politics or the relationship of the instruments of force to the settlement of interstate disputes. To be sure, peace is a spiritual gift from God. But it is also a concrete goal, requiring the diligent persistence of God’s people in moderating the political tensions in which international violence breeds.

Christians concerned with peacemaking will find this carefully and extensively footnoted book of help. By setting forth a radical approach to peacemaking grounded in an ethic of nonviolent resistance, Sider and Taylor have provided a fresh and provocative study that can strengthen the current debate among Christians about how to implement the peacemaking mandate. But those who are looking for an examination of the moral issues surrounding the nuclear dilemma of nuclear deterrence should look elsewhere, including the pastoral letter on nuclear weapons drafted by the U.S. Catholic Bishops titled “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.”

Nuclear Holocaust and Christian Hope, by Ronald J. Sider and Richard K. Taylor (IVP, 1982; 492 pp., $8.95 pb). Reviewed by Mark R. Amstutz, chairman, Department of Political Science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

It was with mixed feelings that I approached the Verdict on the Shroud, subtitled “Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” I was afraid it would be an overly enthusiastic, blindly biased proclamation of the shroud’s authenticity as Jesus’s burial garment by a couple of Christians who were themselves not scientists.

The book, however, produced a pleasant surprise. While neither Kenneth Stevenson nor Gary Habermas have scientific backgrounds, they have presented carefully and clearly the evidence gathered by the Shroud of Turin team, as well as those investigators who preceded them.

Beginning with an assessment of the two pitfalls likely in any approach to the shroud—that is, either instinctive disbelief or idolatrous worship—the authors argue that a truly unbiased approach assesses only the scientific evidence of the shroud’s authenticity as an actual burial cloth of first-century origin. It is a consideration of history, archaeology, the testimony of the Scriptures, as well as the facts of human anatomy and physiology that evaluates the case for the shroud as the authentic burial garment of Jesus.

Squarely confronting the most skeptical views of the Shroud of Turin, the authors lead the reader to three inescapable conclusions: (1) the shroud is an actual burial cloth of a first-century Jew; (2) the Jew was Jesus Christ; and (3) Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead.

Each point is arrived at after a clear and concise presentation of the evidence and a logical step-by-step argument that I found fascinating, and that deepened my appreciation for what our Lord went through to redeem us. It is impossible to study the shroud without becoming aware of the terrible torture the Romans inflicted on him.

I was filled with joy when I finished the book. Having a scientific background, I have always wished for some extrabiblical empirical evidence for the Lord’s existence on this earth. But I believed without it, never expecting in this life to find it. Here, however, is a possibility—a strong possibility—for such evidence, not only for his physical existence, but for his resurrection as well.

There should be a note of caution, however. As one might expect, there are strong arguments against the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, not the least of which is the lack of carbon 14 dating. Apparently too much material was needed for the test, and the shroud’s owner at the time would not allow it (the shroud was recently inherited by the Roman Catholic church). The actual date of the shroud is therefore yet to be determined.

But even if a carbon 14 date reveals it to be something other than a first-century artifact, it certainly has iconic value in that it does represent the Lord in his suffering and turns our eyes on him and what he went through for us.

I do recommend this book, with its many color prints, as valuable reading for pious Christians.

Verdict on the Shroud, by Kenneth Stevenson and Gary Habermas (Servant, 1981; 220 pp., $12.95). Reviewed by John Young, Saint Athanarius’s Academy of Orthodox Theology, Goleta, California.

King Of Comedy

Twentieth Century-Fox;

directed by Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is one filmmaker who sees better in the dark. His always-compelling characters stalk the murky shadows of airless city streets, haunted, obsessed, alone. They are victims—survivors, if you will—of one vast human wave that breaks against the sharp-edged, impersonal stone-and-glass hives of their existence. King of Comedy is Scorsese’s latest urban fable, an interesting addition to his gallery of dark psychological portraits.

King of Comedy exhibits the same thread of social fragmentation that runs through all of Scorsese’s efforts, from résumé films like Boxcar Bertha to the Academy Award-nominated Raging Bull. The characters hide behind their obsessions, erected like fortifications against the armies of the night—Travis Bickle, the gun-toting Taxi Driver, and Jake LaMotta, the Raging Bull, both burrow deeper into their own neurotic self-images seeking the self-justification denied them by a closed society.

Here Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), the self-styled King of Comedy, lives in a fantasy, obsessed with being a stand-up comic on his own coast-to-coast talk show. Denied his goal by prudent network executives, he retreats behind the walls of his own delusions. He longs for a social acceptance that eludes him precisely because of the neuroses he hides behind. As with any unstable explosive, add a little friction and the flash point is reached. The psychic explosion is furious within these characters: La-Motta swings at anything that moves; Bickle wipes out a prostitution ring. And Rupert Pupkin kidnaps Jerry Langford, this film’s Johnny Carson. Each, in turn, is rewarded for his excess, for there is limited celebrity status at the end of a twisted rainbow. Each finds acceptance because of, not in spite of, his neurotic obsessions.

In a broader sense, King of Comedy is about our irrational preoccupation with celebrities. The modern media hero is piped into the home and kept in a box, to be retrieved at will. One need only press a button and the same, familiar video friend is there; the remote-controlled relationship requires nothing of the receiver. The manic fans in King of Comedy expect from a flesh-and-blood celebrity the same attention they receive from their video icons. Adulation turned to assault is the logical progression of such a relationship. They claw desperately at the disappointing reality, hoping all the while to gain something tangible.

But actually to become a celebrity is the stuff of dreams—and Rupert Pupkin is a loser with a dream. He wants his own place on the video altar. By kidnaping Langford he is simply repossessing an already co-opted personality.

Scorsese’s seriocomic tale is an ironic study of a serious problem: widespread media exposure often makes celebrities of criminals and criminals of fans. John Hinckley knew this instinctively and wounded a President in reenactment of Travis Bickle’s massacre. John Lennon died because Mark David Chapman asked: Who is more famous, the celebrity or the person who kills him? Both would undoubtedly agree with Pupkin that it is “better to be king for a night than smuck for a lifetime.” Each received an infamous crown for his efforts.

One expects more menace from De Niro’s Pupkin—a replay of the Taxi Driver’s mental disintegration—but the director chooses instead to concentrate on the banality of individuals who cringe in the shadows of media-created giants. Rupert Pupkin becomes, in effect, the punch line in a gigantic social sitcom. Scorsese skillfully points our laughter in the wrong direction until we realize, with a start, that the joke is on us.

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

How could civil rights and the Klan sprout from the same soil?

Most people who care about the matter would admit that a lot of writing by Christians leaves much to be desired. Franky Schaeffer has gone into the reasons in his Addicted to Mediocrity. Certainly the last generation of Christians has, as Malcolm Muggeridge says, left imaginative art to “those with sick or obsessed minds,” as a look at the latest pile of fictionalized sex manuals will verify.

Until the situation improves there are the classics, perhaps Solzhenitsn, and the Inklings and their imitators. But those who seek original, compelling prose might give Will Campbell a look. His Brother to a Dragonfly drew comparisons to William Faulkner. Although the book reads like a novel, it is autobiography that transcends Will Campbell and charts the pained history of the American postwar South. Of particular interest are Campbell’s travels as a teenage fundamentalist “preacher boy” among what might be called the First Church of Christ Racist. Not another hatchet job on white Southerners, the vignettes all ring true and are rich in color, sound, humor, and nostalgia. The story of a robed Klansman walking into a church service to present a Bible is unforgettable. Some readers may have forgotten that only a few years ago the governor stood shoulder to shoulder with the president of the University of Mississippi to bar entry of “knee-grows.” In his saga of the civil-rights strife, Campbell treats readers to glimpses of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), Andrew Young, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. To a Northern liberal who states, “I’d never vote for anyone with a southern accent,” Campbell replies, “You, are a bigot.” He raises the ire of liberal churchmen by insisting he was pro-Klansman (not pro-Klan), the stance he thought Jesus would take to save such hate-bitten people.

Not that it is all social history. Will’s story is, in Walker Percy’s words, “scrupulously honest” and deeply touching. It is prose you can feel, as opposed to mere “creative writing.”

The Glad River is an ambitious novel that manages to be a period piece, a war story, a political-religious statement, and a chronicle of relationships all at once. The narrative centers on a Baptist who refuses to be baptized because he sees no real Baptists around to do the job. A great strength of the book is that it lets religious characters be themselves without caricature or hagiography and unctuousness. The spiritual conversations are so real as to suggest portraiture. Brothers of different denominations argue about which nonefficacious method of baptism is correct; in the heat of a wartime theological discussion by men who are surrounded with death, we hear: “Religion is about us. God is about God.”

Responding to criticism that the novel is “preachy,” Campbell pleads guilty, adding that, “If a writer is not trying to say something, he shouldn’t be writing.” The Glad River is not the definitive (and elusive) “Christian novel,” and Campbell cannot be described as an evangelical. But then, neither can Solzhenitsn or Tolkien. If evangelicals read only evangelicals they would have small bookshelves—at least of quality fiction.

But Brother to a Dragonfly may be an evangelical book. Campbell reports that a prisoner on death row who had demanded an early execution read it, converted to the Christian faith, renewed his appeals, and may yet be set free. Have any of the elongated Four Spiritual Laws that pass as “Christian novels” had similar results? When a writer like Will Campbell holds up a mirror to life, including the spiritual dimension, anything can happen. Religion is about us. God is about God.

LLOYD BILLINGSLEY¹Mr. Billingsley Is a writer living in Southern California.

The evangelist only recently met his real parents.

Evangelist Leighton Ford’s Charlotte, North Carolina, crusade this spring was noteworthy not only because 866 people registered decisions for Christ, but because it was Ford’s first crusade in his home town. And the city’s response demonstrated that in Charlotte, Ford is not a “prophet without honor.”

The aggregate attendance over eight days was more than 53,000. On one night, the Charlotte Coliseum was filled to capacity and hundreds had to be turned away. Ford’s theme that “there is hope” was reflected in the messages of crusade guests, including Charles Colson, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Tom Landry. More than 400 local congregations participated in the outreach effort.

For Ford, there was another highlight. One of the thousands of faces in the crowd was that of his father, who made the trip from Florida to hear his son preach for the first time. The two had met only 14 months earlier.

Ford was born in Canada out of wedlock in 1932. He was adopted at birth, but did not know this until his mother pulled him aside at age 12 and explained it. His feelings about his life with his adoptive parents are ambivalent. He told a Charlotte reporter that his parents were good to him, but that there were times when he had to break up fights.

After both of his adoptive parents had died. Ford began a search for his natural parents. He traced his mother to a town in Canada and went to see her in October of 1981. She had remarried, borne three more sons, and had been living alone for 28 years. Ford says his mother told him, “Every time I saw a tall young man I would wonder if he were my son. I have lived my entire life with hope.” Ford and his mother have maintained their new-found relationship. He sends her tapes of his sermons and calls her on special days.

Ford’s search for his natural father was interrupted by the death of Ford’s 21-year-old son Sandy in November of 1981. He died following heart surgery. In Charlotte, Ford spoke candidly of the reality of Christian hope that accompanied his personal Gethsemane.

When the grief had subsided, Ford resumed the search for his father, and he found him in Florida. They continued communicating, and eventually Ford invited his father to Charlotte for his April crusade.

The reunion provided the local media with an added touch of human interest. Media coverage was extensive. The city’s two papers and two major television stations carried daily reports and special features. Also, the Ford organization placed an insert in the Charlotte Observer and received 1,700 requests for Ford’s printed message, “There Is Hope.”

An Egyptian administrative court upheld the ouster of Pope Shenouda III from the Coptic Orthodox Church leadership, but struck down the section of the 1981 decree that replaced him with a five-bishop committee. The April court action is being seen as a move to force the church to elect a new pope, effectively removing Shenouda, whose confrontational stance aroused former President Anwar Sadat. But some Copts protest that under President Hosni Mubarak the government is interfering in internal church affairs to a degree Sadat never attempted.

Chinese authorities arrested a Guangzhou (Canton) pastor last month for holding church meetings in his home and entertaining foreigners. Lin Xiangao had been imprisoned for years and then released in 1979. The authorities said his activities were a violation of restrictions for a five-year parole period.

How does separation of synagogue and state play in Israel? According to a recent poll reported in the Israeli press, 57 percent of Israelis would like to see religious studies in state schools expanded, while only 6 percent would opt for a reduction. And, as a result of a reorganization in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, more than 250 Muslim clergymen will go onto the state payroll. They will be remunerated for conducting weddings and dealing with village religious affairs.

Iranian authorities are continuing a drive to decimate Bahais (followers of an offshoot of Islam considered heretical), according to reports reaching the U.S. State Department. Three were hanged in April, and 19 others were sentenced this spring. Nearly 400 Bahais are believed to be in prison in Iran, and about 4,000 are said to be “internal refugees” and in hiding. About half the Bahai children of school age—25,000 to 30,000—are reported banned from school attendance, and most of those permitted to attend are mistreated.

Ninety percent of the French population no longer believe in sin, and only 4 percent accept the concept, according to a recent survey. Also, in a country where 82 percent consider themselves to be Catholic, 69 percent said they never went to confession and 13 percent said they confessed to a priest once a year or less often. The survey results were published in the Catholic weekly Le Pelerin.

Three Christian institutions will begin the 1983–84 academic year with new presidents. George W. Peck has been selected president of Andover Newton Theological School. Thomas W. Gillespie succeeds James McCord as president of Princeton Theological Seminary. Finally, DeWitt C. Baldwin will be the new president of Earlham College.

T. Patrick Arnold has been elected president of the missions agency Worldteam. He succeeds J. Allen Thompson. Arnold, since joining the mission in 1943, has served as personnel director, area director, and vice-president for administration and finance.

Norman S. Marshall has been named national commander of the Salvation Army in the United States. Marshall, who had been commander of the eastern territory, succeeds John D. Needham, who died April 13.

In appreciation of Charles W. Koller, 1896–1983.

It is impossible for a good man, fully consecrated, thoroughly equipped, and performing his ministry with diligence and effectiveness, to remain hidden or unappreciated by men.” Charles W. Koller had just completed his first year as president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago when he spoke these words to the graduating class of 1939. Although Koller’s name is not a household word, he has neither remained hidden nor unappreciated by thousands. As W. A. Criswell, pastor of the 20,000-member First Baptist Church, Dallas, said in a letter to his close friend, “Only eternity will reveal the immeasurable contribution you have made to the cause of Christ and His Kingdom. Your courageous, uncompromising spirit has been a blessing to all of us.” Koller died quietly in his sleep on May 19, at the age of 87.

Koller came to Northern Baptist Seminary when a courageous, uncompromising spirit was essential. Controversy raged through the American Baptist Convention (ABC), at that time called the Northern Baptist Convention, leading to a split that would produce the Conservative Baptist Association of America (CBA) in 1947. Pulled in two directions, Koller held tenaciously to a pure gospel and denominational loyalty to the ABC, insisting that the seminary remain within the ABC but maintain a doctrinal position that made him welcome as a Moody Founder’s Week speaker.

History shows how right Koller was, for his alumni now hold key positions in both the ABC and CBA. Northern alumni from the Koller years also hold key leadership positions in numerous seminaries, colleges, and parachurch organizations. These alumni include such men as Kenneth M. Meyer, president, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; George Sweeting, president, Moody Bible Institute; Donald Hescott, executive vice-president, Moody Bible Institute; H. Wilbert Norton, former dean, Wheaton Graduate School; Melvin Lorentzen, associate director, Billy Graham Center; Kenneth Taylor, president, Tyndale House and paraphraser of the Living Bible; O. Dean Nelson, former president, Central Baptist Theological Seminary; David J. Draewell, former president, North American Baptist Seminary; Gordon Johnson, dean, Bethel Theological Seminary; Carl Lundquist, former president, Bethel College and Seminary; T. Leonard Lewis, former president, Gordon College; C. Adrian Heaton, former president, American Baptist Seminary of the West; J. Edwin Orr, missionary educator; Torrey M. Johnson, founder, Youth for Christ; Warren W. Wiersbe, associate teacher, Back to the Bible Broadcast; and Carl F. H. Henry, noted theologian. Koller taught dozens of other professors and leaders.

Part of Koller’s success in producing leaders was in his philosophy of “producing reproducers,” as Mel Lorentzen recalls. He had driven a stake out in front of him that said “train leaders,” and he moved everything toward that goal. Northern Baptist Seminary President William Myers marvels at the way Koller “was able to visualize the institution, its goals, the campus, the faculty, and its finances, and to get the best of each. Many marvel at the faculty he attracted with inadequate finances—people such as Harold Lindsell, Carl Henry, Torrey Johnson, and others, including Julius R. Mantey, Warren Young, Faris D. Whitesell, Peder Stiansen, W. Warren Filkin, Arnold Schultz, and T. Leonard Lewis—who left a profound mark on the Christian history of our times. Three of the four future editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY were faculty members at Northern during the Koller years.

Perhaps Koller’s most remembered contribution was in his teaching of preaching. Hundreds of future pastors and Christian leaders took his “Senior Preaching” course where he taught others what he had mastered so well, the art of expository preaching. Carl Lundquist spoke of this as “a desire to help ministers become effective preachers of the gospel, an able demonstrator of expository preaching at its best.” Warren Wiersbe told Koller in a letter, “It is impossible for me to measure my indebtedness to you as a teacher of preachers. You not only taught us how to preach, but you excited us and convinced us that preaching the Word is a high and holy calling.” koller’s book, Expository Preaching Without Notes (Baker), is in its thirteenth printing.

At the foundation of Koller’s effective ministry is a rock-solid man who consistently portrayed all that he preached and taught. He chose in his wife Selma the perfect model of a minister’s wife, and together they passed along the values they represented to their two daughters, Carolyn K. Schroeder, Ph.D., wife of Robert V. Schroeder, D.D.S., Dallas, Texas; and Evelyn K. Reeve, wife of the Reverend Virgil V. Reeve, Decatur, Illinois. David Draewell summarized what so many of us saw in the power of Koller’s personal presence: “You modeled for me the concern, graciousness, hospitality, competence, and basic lifestyle of a Christian minister. I attempt, though at times with somewhat feeble results, to pattern my service after the many good things I observed in your style of leadership.”

At the death of J. L. Kraft, of Kraft Foods fame and fortune, and a prominent supporter of Northern Baptist Seminary, Koller said, “He demonstrated that greatness depends on achievement, achievement depends on character, and character depends on God. His life is written deep in the affections of those who knew him.” Those of us who knew him well, and worked with him closely, would bring those tributes to focus on Koller himself at this time.

Some 100 New York City ministers, priests, and rabbis, who serve as chaplains, have gone union. They said that part-time chaplains are receiving between $4,900 and $5,900 and those working full-time get between $15,000 and $28,000. A union organizer said that chaplains have no pay scales and no steady increases or benefits. At their first bargaining session with the city, the chaplains requested $17,500 for part-timers and $35,000 for full-timers. They waived overtime, holiday, and night differential pay, stating that these would be reflected in the pay rate.

While enrollment in public, Catholic, and nonchurch private schools fell in the seventies, enrollment in Protestant schools skyrocketed. In the Northeast and Midwest, church school enrollment increased by 50 percent. On the West Coast, it doubled, and in the South, it nearly quadrupled. Much of this growth is attributable to Christian fundamentalist schools, whose population began to soar with early attempts at school desegregation. It is commonly held that the migration from public schools is largely a result of permissiveness and lower academic standards.

The town of New Castle, New York, has announced plans to begin foreclosure proceedings against the Unification Church. The church refuses to pay $121,000 in property taxes on land owned since 1980. The church has never applied for tax-exempt status. It will not pay because it believes the property is overassessed and the taxes are excessive. As the town seeks to assume ownership of the property, the church has sued the town to have the assessment reduced.

HIS magazine, published by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, has been honored as Periodical of the Year by the Evangelical Press Association. HIS also won the youth Award of Excellence. Edited by Linda Doll, HIS is a monthly publication whose primary readership is evangelical college students. Commenting on the selection, judges said that HIS sets the pace for “first-class writing, thoughtful content, and superior design.”

Nearly eight million Americans visited occult bookstores in 1982, according to a survey. This figure is up 3.3 percent from 1981. But the rapid growth of previous years appears to be over.

The term “evangelism” has been pulled and stretched so often in different kinds of churches that its biblical precision is often shrouded. Evangelist Billy Grahm is calling together between 3,000 and 4,000 evangelists from around the world next month to reaffirm the biblical meaning of evangelism, and to give them an opportunity to be trained and to trade strategies.

The conference will be held July 12–21 in Amsterdam, and more than 5,000 people from some 130 countries applied to attend. Applications were screened by regional committees to ensure that only itinerant evangelists—those who travel to declare the gospel—will come, since the conference is designed for them, and because space is limited.

Graham considers the conference to be one of the more important training opportunities ever to be available for evangelists. Two-thirds of the participants will be from Third World countries, and half of those will be from Latin America, where evangelical Christianity has made great gains in recent years.

Graham said, “There have been other international conferences on evangelism, but this one is aimed at training, inspiring, and equipping these traveling evangelists, who, like Jesus Christ, go from village to village, city to city, preaching the love and peace of God. If the message is going to continue in some countries, it will be only through national evangelists who are trained and equipped.”

All conference sessions will be translated into English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. More than 100 Christian journalists from around the world have volunteered time to attend the conference and prepare news releases, tapes, and film for mass media outlets. The communication will be done in some two dozen languages. The conference has become known as “Amsterdam ‘83,” and Graham has defined five goals for it: fellowship among itinerant evangelists; exchange of ideas and successful evangelistic methods; study of the theology of evangelism in the light of confusion about its nature and necessity; study of specific concerns and techniques during workshops; and inspiration and greater commitment to evangelism.

Graham will deliver four major messages during the assembly. Other speakers from around the world will also speak on key topics. Some of the speakers known to North Americans are the following: Luis Palau, Bill Bright, Paul Yonggi Cho, Pat Robertson, Charles Colson, Leighton Ford, and E. V. Hill.

Organizers of the conference expect a major paper to emerge from it. The paper will probably reaffirm the biblical meaning and mandate of evangelism, and call for a greater commitment of both evangelists and local churches.