Compassion: A Common Good

Compassion, by Donald P. McNeill, Douglas A. Morrison, and Henri J. M. Nouwen (Doubleday, 1982, 142 pp., $12.95), is reviewed by James L. Sauer, head and reference librarian, Eastern College, Saint Davids, Pennsylvania.

Christianity and liberalism both embrace compassion as a common good. Compassion is their synthesis: an expanded exhortation to compassionate existence as seen from a liberal Catholic perspective.

McNeill, Morrison, and Nouwen are three priests whose work in education and counseling provide some basis for speaking on compassion. They have coauthored a book whose aim is not analytic, but, like the provocative drawings throughout the text by artist Joel Filartiga, it is designed to move our faith to work.

Compassion is the central message of their gospel: “God is a compassionate God. That is the good news brought to us in and through Jesus Christ.” The concrete example of compassion is the obedient servanthood of Christ, the God-with-us. This core idea is explored in community and discipleship “through the discipline of patience, practiced in prayer and action.”

Mixed with this clear Christian message is the ideological framework of the authors. Examples are numerous: the prevalence of buzz words like “solidarity” and “community”; illustrations of oppression only from right-wing nations; lists of horrors that include rapes, torture chambers, and nuclear plants in the same sentence. There is also a tendency toward biased antithesis: a “competitive” life made incompatible with a compassionate life; an “ordinary and proper life” that is inconsistent with a life of pilgrimic “displacement”; and heroism belittled in favor of servanthood.

The authors’ ideological vocabulary also tends to get away from them at times: “we see how voluntary displacement leads to a new togetherness in which we recognize our sameness in common vulnerability, discover our unique talents as gifts … and listen to God’s call, which continually summons us to a vocation beyond the aspirations of career.”

Christians of a socially liberal bent will find this work a motivating expression for faith lived in this world. Christians of a conservative sort might read it for some insights, but only with compassion.

The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, by Tom Sine (Word, 1981, 246 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Robert D. Pitts, professor of religion, Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

Our society is blessed with a growing group of people who serve as our collective conscience as we merrily spend and consume our way through life. Tom Sine is legitimately classed with Rifkin, Sider, and others who have sounded notes of alarm about the voracious appetites of the Western world while two-thirds of the world suffer from hunger, cold, disease, and godlessness.

In the early stages of Mustard Seed, Sine, a Christian futurist, generates a guilt trip for his readers. But his real thrust is an appeal for Christians to join in fashioning “lifestyles that are … more celebrative and more just.” He boldly asserts that “… simply participating in the frenetic activity and programs of the institutional church cannot be a substitute for being committed members of a small fellowship group.” Instead, he urges Christians to get busy helping God turn the world “right side up.”

Sine feels that unless a Christian is expending his energy and resources among the needy, wherever they are, he probably is not fulfilling Christ’s commands. Therefore, he advocates that Christians should (1) reduce waste in their budgets and share their savings with those in need, (2) reduce their time commitments to be able to enjoy God and others more, and (3) share their housing, transportation, meals, and other expenses to free up money to invest in kingdom work.

The difference between most Christians and Tom Sine is that he believes Christians can make a difference in the trouble spots of the world, and he has committed himself to do something about it. Not everyone who reads this book (and every Christian should) will agree with Sine’s analysis, but the points he makes are hard to refute.

The Mustard Seed Conspiracy certainly is not a tirade against the church; it is a sane, well-balanced appeal for more of us to plant our seeds of concern, be they ever so small, beside those already in the conspiracy to bring God’s kingdom to pass in the world.

The Flames of Rome, by Paul L. Maier (Doubleday, 1981, 443 pp., $14.95), is reviewed by Jill Baumgaertner, assistant professor of English at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Paul Maier is a veteran author of historical novels about early Christians. His latest is set in first-century Rome where the aged but able emperor Claudius is poisoned by his wife so that her son, Nero, can assume the throne. The empire, which had become well versed in the sensational and the degenerate under Claudius’s predecessor, Caligula, experiences a resurgence of Bacchic behavior. Lewdness, murder, and sexual perversion provide a rather titillating backdrop for the entrance of the apostle Paul into Rome, where he is defended in front of Nero by Flavius Sabinus, the novel’s major character. Simon Peter also eventually appears in Rome, as do Aquila, Priscilla, and Luke.

To allay rumors that the emperor himself had started the great fire of Rome, Nero blames the Christians and stages a two-day persecution festival. It is then that Peter is crucified and hundreds of other Roman Christians are tortured and devoured by wild beasts.

The historical connections Professor Maier has uncovered are fascinating and impressive. His portrayal of the depravity rampant in Rome is certainly eye opening, and his research and description of Rome’s fiery devastation seem well documented in his notes. The Flames of Rome is too much like a movie spectacular, however. While the scene is first-century Rome, Maier’s characters are twentieth-century American in outlook and orientation. They also suffer somewhat limited development. Flavius Sabinus and clan lack depth. Though they are seen struggling the way good people in a corrupt regime most struggle, we never see them in totality. The characters, fall into only two camps: the good and the evil. There is nothing realistic in between. All of this is narrated in a panting, florid style, overwritten and underedited.

Historical fiction can be an uncomfortable hybrid, satisfying neither the historian nor the literary critic. The Flames of Rome might provide interesting historical contexts, but it cannot be experienced or praised as a fine piece of literature.

Tension builds between Christian musicians and those who use their works.

“God gave me this song” is a declaration made by nearly every gospel singer or group at one time or another, usually before singing an original composition. Some songs really do sound as though they were composed by God himself—or at least by Gabriel. Others could more appropriately give credit to a rancid anchovy pizza.

The more popular songs are recorded, published, and spread widely. They eventually come to congregations as “choruses”—informal songs that are learned by means of words displayed on an overhead projector.

Therein lies the rub. It is illegal to put the words of a copyrighted song on a transparency or on a chalkboard, or print in a bulletin or song sheet, without the permission of the publisher. Since we Christians must live under all the laws that are not contrary to God’s stated will (1 Peter 2:13), it therefore becomes wrong (sin, if you will) to use “bootleg” transparencies in our worship.

The problem is twofold. First, there are so many songs flooding the market that it does not make sense to buy one or two chorus books for corporate use since each one will have only a few songs that the congregation wants to sing. The economics of 200-plus books multiplied by $3.95 or more, times three different chorus books, will be easily understood by church finance committees. The further confusion of four different song books in the hymnal rack is also apparent.

Second, the lasting value of these songs is not the same as hymns that have withstood the crucible of time. Who can remember—or even want to remember—the “meaningful” choruses of 15 years ago? Continual updating of song inventories is obviously necessary.

These two problems, the lack of a complete anthology of favorite choruses and the transitory nature of popular tunes, make the overhead transparency an ideal way to teach new songs. But, as stated, this is illegal without the publisher’s permission.

The church where I minister wrote to seven publishers asking permission to make transparencies or to publish in our bulletins the words to some of their songs. The responses brought stipulations that, for the most part, were prohibitive. Companies asked us to pay them royalties of from $5 to $20 per song. (Copies of the letters are on file at CT.) Some said we could reproduce the words if we sent them in advance a copy of our bulletin for their approval. But who prints bulletins weeks in advance? Only one of the seven, Maranatha Music, allowed us to use their material at no charge. (Readers must contact Maranatha separately.)

As a minister, I have wrestled with the scriptural implications of “a laborer is worthy of his hire.” Applying that to this situation, I would say a musician is worthy of his hire. He should sell records, tapes, and get paid for performances. However, to require compensation every time a musician’s work is used in some small way seems to me to be similar to a preacher requiring a fee every time a part of his sermon is quoted or written down. Rightful support, and the ministry with God’s blessing, may be in conflict.

My personal solution to this situation is radical. I will no longer buy or sing music produced by companies that will not allow my congregation to use it for congregational singing. While you may feel uneasy with my solution, I would like to suggest that you do something with which you do feel comfortable. If you feel like complaining, do it to the music companies. Meanwhile, stop using “bootleg” transparencies and causing your congregations to do wrong by their worship.

The opening phrase of this article implies that some songs are a gift from God. But if God gives a song, it should be used for the good of the body—like any other spiritual gift!

MARCUS W. BIGELOW¹Mr. Bigelow is minister of education and evangelism at Green Valley Christian Church, San Jose, California.

Naïveté about human nature haunts another utopian vision.

Utopias have appeared at various times and in several types. From the days of Plato until our own midcentury, writers of varying ability have sought to sketch a supposedly perfect society. Some forms of utopia have been described in writing as philosophical or political exercises. Some were intended to be taken seriously, others less so. Some have been simple, even whimsical, sallies into the sphere of nonplaces.

Plato, in his Republic, outlined his vision of the perfect social order, a vision that has served as a pattern for a variety of serious utopian attempts. But by contrast, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited were really satires, while such modern forms as Lost Horizon and Brigadoon obviously were intended sheerly as entertainment.

There is, however, a genre of utopian writings intended to be taken with utmost seriousness. Examples of these are Karl Marx’s projection of an ideal classless society under socialism and, more recently, the daring vision of the global village as conceived by H. Marshall McLuhan.

Some utopian literature has survived as worthy of study and restudy—notably Plato’s Republic and the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, who launched the modern fashion for utopian literature. Other projections have been like meteors—appearing suddenly and disappearing just as quickly. Magnificence of vision does not guarantee permanence, either as a model for action or as literary vogue.

Fifteen years ago I surveyed in this column the theories of McLuhan about the impact of the “electronic revolution” on contemporary civilization. McLuhan became a cult figure in his native Canada and in the United States. He championed the view that the phenomenal development of communication technologies had prepared society to move from a print-oriented era to a lost oral culture, waiting in the wings to be restored.

McLuhan’s landmark volume was his Understanding Media (1964), (although he had laid the foundation in his Gutenberg Galaxy [1962]). Central to his thesis was the slogan, “The medium is the message.” This summarized his conclusion that the medium of linear type (and hence the printed page) produced a public mentality that was stilted and demeaning to the sensory and imaginative elements in human nature.

He utilized as analytical tools themes typical of the 1960s, notably that of the “generation gap,” together with the old favorite, alienation. He felt that the development of electronic media, especially the transistor radio and television, revealed a radical “generation gap” between the centuries-long era of linear type, pioneered by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century, and a dawning age shaped and determined by radically different forms of communication.

In McLuhan’s view, the era of mechanized printing led to a pedestrian mode of thinking, writing, and doing. This, he felt, suppressed the more characteristic human elements of feeling and spontaneity. Consequently, reason and reflection crowded out the sensory and imaginative.

He maintained that the net result was loss of a supposed primeval tribalism in which communication was basically one-on-one, and by which knowledge spread simultaneously within the tribal social group. He assumed that this original form of sociological grouping was superior to that developed since 1465. Five centuries of life in the West have been distorted by the tyranny of the printed page.

McLuhan’s utopian vision was based on his conviction that the world was now ready for a retribalization in which primeval and sense-oriented modes of communication should rule supreme. This reflected a facile romantic view of tribal life as it existed in the past and in remote areas today.

McLuhan envisioned the emergence of a “global village” into which all of mankind would be brought together through electronic circuitry. His was a magnificent vision of the emergence of worldwide participation in a common culture.

A new mode of thought, he believed, would restore the human sensory system to the place of prominence it had lost in societies shaped by use of the printed page. This should reverse the forces that created the alienation haunting modern society.

McLuhan was understandably impressed by the communication satellites that first circled the earth in the sixties, making instantaneous communication possible worldwide. He envisioned a universal public awareness, even in a complex world, capable of creating a new and ideal mentality. This, in turn, would create a new society similar to that of the primitive village, from which the hunger of vast sections of mankind, or the cruelties of modern war, could no longer be concealed.

Many factors sided with McLuhan’s analysis. Modern audiences are enabled not only to know world events, but to feel them. This could lead to the development of a capacity in the world community for participation and commitment.

Somehow something went wrong. The vision faded, and, in place of a global village, there has emerged a world that resembles the medieval manor, with the hereditary castle towering above a tragic, nondescript collage of hovels. To put it in modern idiom, in the world of today, towering skyscrapers and impressive condominiums are surrounded by all sorts of ugly, squalid structures.

In place of a universal group viewing of world events, with a global sharing of compassion and concern, we see television viewing, for example, to be less and less a whole-family affair. Joggers perform their daily ritual, frequently as lone individuals, with ear-plugs of transistors brightening up their paces. Youths gather around electronic games, not in groups participating in worthwhile sharing of human concerns, but as individuals hunching over the consoles, with tense faces, pushing buttons or shifting levers.

It is ironic that newer technologies have made listening and seeing increasingly insulated and privatized. The vision of new commitments to world justice and to concerted action to alleviate world inequities has faded. The ideal of a village of world proportions moving toward harmony among persons, groups, and nations has been lost along the way.

What vital elements did Marshall McLuhan fail to incorporate into his vision? Here are some suggestions: First, his advocacy of the village as an ideal model for human society was romantic and wholly inadequate. His insistence that society should be basically nonreflective and nonrational failed to take into account deeper elements of human existence, such as the life of the mind, and, deeper still, mankind’s profound moral sense.

McLuhan’s system failed to reckon with the deeper understanding of mankind as bent and twisted and, equally important, the conception of what men and women can become by God’s grace. These last are indispensable to any viable vision of an ideal society. To some this may seem “old hat,” but conceivably it yet may fit modern heads.

HAROLD B. KUHN¹Dr. Kuhn is professor of philosophy of religion at Asbury Theological Semianry, Willmore, Kentucky.

Their unwavering standard dismisses much of contemporary culture.

Ask an amish person about the way he lives and you will most likely hear, “Why should you want to know?”

His response is more than a dodge. It is, in fact, quite reasonable. Why should the Amish way of life be important to anyone other than the Amish?

For a long time, people regarded the Amish way of life as strange and peculiar. In the past few years, however, Amish institutions have been suggested as effective models for solving many contemporary social problems.

When E. F. Schumacher said small was beautiful, the peculiarities of the Amish were translated into positive examples of how smallness worked in community. When economic growth brought inevitable shortages in our society, Amish frugality became not pointless eccentricity, but essential virtue. When American agriculture drew fire because of dependence on petroleum fuels and fertilizers, soil mining and lack of diversity, Amish agricultural practices became an ecologically sound alternative.

Reporters asked if the Amish might be a model for the family of the future. Sociologists saw a vital link between the Amish and ecology. Social critics applauded the Amish way as the hope of the future. Others offered the Amish lifestyle as a prototype for rediscovery of the simple life.

Like others, I am impressed by the Amish. Besides their sense of community, use of resources, and independence, however, I recognize another Amish strength. They have a strong sense of purpose.

One expression of that sense of purpose is that they don’t need anyone to tell them what they need. They have no use for self-improvement seminars, self-actualization workshops, or books on how to lose weight, run a marathon, or make love.

In some ways the Amish are more liberated than others in society who feel compelled to excel at whatever the latest expert dictates. Why? The Amish have an unwavering standard by which they dismiss much of contemporary culture.

Yet it is this unwavering standard that leads me to suggest that any attempt to use the Amish as a model for others would be foolhardy.

What is missing in most books and articles on the Amish is the realization that this sense of purpose is fundamentally religious. The Amish are not bound together by ecological or humanistic concerns. Neither are they primarily an ethnic group. One is not born Amish. Instead, each Amish man and woman must elect to become Amish by being baptized into the church.

The Anabaptist heritage of the Amish was founded on the principle of choice. This primacy of religion over ethnicity also meant that individuals raised in non-Amish families could become Amish if they were willing to live by the rules of the church and were sincere in their religious convictions.

Adherence to Amish practice without understanding its religious basis, however, is simply meaningless. Using the Amish as a model without accepting their religion is akin to trying to separate the secular from the sacred in human behavior.

Consider some examples. The Amish one-room schoolhouse could be viewed as a potential model for progressive education. Its form, however, is a direct expression of the goal of Amish parochial schools: “to prepare for usefulness by preparing for eternity.” Did you know Amish congregations permit the rental of cars and drivers for transportation while at the same time they prohibit ownership of motor vehicles? They also permit the use of tractors for some things but not for field work. Such distinctions make sense only within the context of a unique historical and theological setting.

An Amish minister said he had a bagful of letters he had received asking how to become Amish. He was suspicious. What most of the writers were after were Amish practices minus beliefs. Said the minister, “They don’t want to know about our commitment to Jesus Christ, which is the basis for everything we do.”

His replies to the would-be Amish boldly stated that commitment. Most of the seekers lost interest.

During World War II, the presence of U.S. military units on remote Pacific islands led the natives to doubt the effectiveness of their own lifestyle. Their response was to destroy ritual masks and costumes, arrange houses into something like a military camp, and parade around with sticks like guns.

For us to mimic the culture of the Amish would be just as futile as the actions of the natives in those islands.

Ironically, the Amish see themselves as a model for others. They feel their mission is to exhibit Christian behavior in every part of their lives. They see their lifestyle as a silent witness to their faith.

In their lifestyle they have attracted much attention; in their faith they have been almost totally ignored.

MARC A. OLSHAN¹Dr. Olshan is assistant professor of sociology and social work at Bethany Collage, Bethany, West Virginia.

An author who should he read, if you can find his works.

Evangelicals are always quick to bemoan the absence of literature written by gifted writers brought up within and sympathetic to evangelical Protestant Christianity. In light of that complaint, it is unfortunate that through neglect the works of the Swedish writer Olav Hartman have gone out of print.

At least four of Hartman’s works have been translated, and they were published in the U.S. until the mid-1970s: his novels Marching Orders and Holy Masquerade (Eerdmans, 1970 and 1971); Earthly Things, a book of essays dealing with Christian apologetics (Eerdmans, 1968); and a collection of three plays, titled Three Church Dramas (Fortress, 1965). Hartman also wrote critical essays and collections of sermons, most of them never translated.

Born in 1906 of parents active in the Swedish Salvation Army, Hartman joined the national Lutheran church and was ordained in 1932. He served as a pastor and as director of Sigtunastiftelsen, a Christian educational and cultural foundation in church drama. A pioneer in this area, he wrote several church plays. They have been described by Robert E. Seaver, professor of speech and drama at Union Theological Seminary, as “meeting a critical need in the church, chiefly with respect to the nature and function of drama that should be performed in places of worship or within the context of a service of worship … authentically scriptural and liturgical … radiant celebrations of the Word.”

Hartman himself described the purpose of his dramas as always “to be in the service of the Christian message, its distinctive aim to proclaim God’s word to the congregation, to express their intercessions before God” (Preface, Three Church Dramas, p. viii). He added that such a view of drama and worship as proclamation and intercession “faithfully reflects the character of much of the Bible.…” The intercessions before God are made directly by the congregation through the singing of hymns. These hymns are divided into stanza groupings, and occur at different points in the play as prescribed by the playbill.

The subjects Hartman chose for the three plays translated into English underline the truth of his contention that “there must be a reestablishment of the relationship between cult and drama that lies behind considerable sections of Scripture” (Preface, Three Church Dramas, p. ix).

“Prophet and Carpenter” is about Jonah. On one level Jonah is the disobedient prophet, one of the many self-proclaimed righteous who experience the gospel of God’s grace as unwelcome and incomprehensible. The carpenter is also simply a carpenter in Nineveh. Nineveh is Nineveh; the ship is the ship; the sea is the sea. On another level, however, Jonah foreshadows a greater prophet as does the carpenter, repairing what is broken, going into, not away from, the city.

In “Crown of Life,” a drama based on the Genesis account of Creation and the Fall, an analogy is drawn between Adam’s temptation and Christ’s. Being “anti-Christlike” as Hartman put it, is one of the worst sins; Christ obeyed God, and Adam did not.

“The Fiery Furnace,” the last play in the English translation, is a synthesis of Revelation’s account of the Lamb opening the seven seals and the description in Daniel of an encounter between a heathen dictator and the Israel of God. The time of the play is the end (Matt. 24:14). It is set at the axis between heaven, indicated by the four beasts at the altar, and earth, marked by the conflict between worldly powers and the church of the faithful. The issues the play presents are eternal: the reduction of the church’s power by the state; the risk of preaching judgment and forgiveness; the demands by Scripture of care for the poor.

Marching Orders, Hartman’s first novel, has been called a satire of the Salvation Army, an organization with which he was well acquainted. Such a statement, however, is a misnomer, for the author notes at the opening: “The objective of this study is not to describe the Salvation Army, nor is it possible to say of the people it is about: ‘Salvationists are like that.’ They do not appear in the book in order to show what the Army is like; but the Army appears in order to show what they are like.”

What emerges is Hartman’s unflinching disclosure of man’s heart. The reader sits by, smugly watching legalistic, inflexible characters perform, comfortably identifying with the book’s more liberated and gracious Christians. Then comes the shock: the greatest legalist of them all, a character nicknamed “The Knife” for obvious reasons, is the only one who exhibits true repentance. On the last page, she remains kneeling at the altar, having acknowledged her sin and received forgiveness. The question confronts one: “Have I seen my sins that clearly?” Hartman has turned the tables abruptly; complacency is impossible.

While strong in its message, Marching Orders is a weaker work, suffering from stereotyped characters and wooden, predictable dialogue. Far stronger and more intriguing is Holy Masquerade, a story about secular man confronting the message and people of the church.

An unswervingly honest non-Christian, Mrs. Klara Svenson, the minister’s wife, is its lead character. She intends to penetrate the authenticity of her husband’s and his parish’s faith. She discovers a holy masquerade but also her own fierce hunger for faith. As the weeks of Lent proceed, so does the unmasking of the characters, an unmasking made almost bizarre by the minister’s inability or refusal to see his unbelief and his view of his wife’s increasing faith as insanity. His faith is an external exercise that has refused to reach his heart. “Albert,” Klara reflects, “talks a great deal about the need of the world but in general sleeps very well and snores considerably … has a mask and lays it aside more and more seldom.”

Klara despises the kind of religion he perpetuates: “His skepticism and his faith are both a fog where it is easy to lose your way, for he is knowledgeable, if one can have knowledge of that which lacks all fixity. But he will become rector on the strength of it, believe me.”

Her indictment of wishy-washy theological liberalism is absolute; what she longs for is a familiar and contemporary cry, but in poignant terms: “Oh, to live in a time with clear colors, when the ministers believed in angels and devils and atheists were burned at the stake just as if they had been martyrs of the faith. It is terrible to doubt when there is no real faith to doubt in but merely beautiful words.” She cries for an uncompromising providence and a divinely ordained world in which, as she puts it, “black is black and white is white.” She does not go unanswered; God’s grace meets her need, though not in predictable ways.

Nathan Scott, theologian and writer, commented about Hartman that “he explored moral ambiguities of Christian existence with a subtlety and pathos that puts one in mind of Mauriac, Bernanos, and Greene.” While such comparisons are always faulty at best, it is true that Hartman dealt honestly and incisively with the greatest issues facing Christians living in a fallen world.

Let us restore Olav Hartman to print, to our bookshelves, to our curriculums, to the active list of those who have remained true to their faith, vision, and art. Let’s take the edge off our complaints.

ROSALIE DE ROSSET¹Miss de Rosset is assistant professor of communications at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.

One of the biggest problems marring delivery of United States aid to underdeveloped nations has been the absorption of funds by foreign governments, which in many cases do not deliver the aid where it is needed most. In December, however, the lame duck Congress passed a measure which, for the first time, defines a nation’s “absolute poor,” and requires that 40 percent of U.S. foreign aid be devoted to projects that benefit them directly.

The measure was initiated by Bread for the World (BFW), the country’s leading ecumenical Christian lobby group. It passed despite intense lobbying against it by the U.S. government’s Agency for International Development (AID).

AID agreed with the spirit of the legislation, but it opposed the measure because AID believes it will require unnecessary bureaucratic procedures to determine who the poor are. Also, AID maintained that there would be difficulty in determining which projects directly benefit the poor.

An AID official estimated that currently as much as 80 percent of AID funds can be understood to be directly benefiting the poor. Bread for the World, in contrast, calculates that the figure is only 25 percent.

As drafted, the measure called additionally for 50 percent of AID funds from 1984 onward to directly benefit the absolute poor. That part of the bill did not pass. According to a spokesman for AID, the final result was “something both sides can live with.”

In the next few months, Bread for the World officials intend to monitor AID expenditures carefully to ensure that the change they have called for is implemented. BFW believes that even the weakened bill is, nevertheless, very significant.

“This is the first time aid has been specifically targeted for people who really need it, and the first time poverty has been defined according to exact standards,” said Paul Nelson of Bread for the World. An AID official said, however, that criteria for determining the “absolute poor” are unreliable.

When the reform was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1982, it had the support of 16 relief organizations, including CARE. However, after AID officials met with those among the 16 that it funds, CARE and several others changed their minds. This, according to BFW analysts, almost killed the legislation.

Bread for the World has also been active on the home front. Amid reports that the number of hungry Americans is on the rise for the first time in 20 years, BFW has announced that lobbying for domestic food and nutrition programs will be its top priority for 1983. Late last year, BFW began an “Offering of Letters” campaign urging members of Congress to pass a “Preventing Hunger at Home” resolution.

BFW reports that an estimated 500 church groups wrote letters to Congress during November and December and that several thousand are expected to join the effort through the winter. According to a BFW domestic hunger analyst, church and private assistance agencies are experiencing between 50 and 300 percent increases in requests for food over last year. The analyst said that elderly people will be among those most vulnerable to hunger in 1983 because of cutbacks in food stamps, senior nutrition programs, and other federally funded efforts.

Veteran missionary and Third World missions leader Lawrence E. Keyes has been appointed president of Overseas Crusades.

Dr. William T. Iverson has been appointed vice-president for the Department of Ministry of the San Bernardino, California-based International School of Theology.

On Januars 14, the Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary formally installed James M. Grier, Jr. as the third dean in the school’s 42-year history. Prior to assuming his duties at the seminary, Grier was associate professor of philosophy at Cedarville College in Ohio.

Bishop William Kohn, of the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC), has been elected president of Lutheran World Ministries. It is the United States arm of the Lutheran World Federation and is supported by the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the AELC.

For antiabortion activists, the new session of Congress is off to a dismal start. The House of Representatives changed its rules, with the likely effect of blocking debate on abortion funding. In the Senate, Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oreg.) has retreated to the sidelines, with no plans to reintroduce a compromise prolife bill from last year.

Many observers believe a Hatfield-sponsored bill would fare better than Sen. Jesse Helms’s measures have. But friction between Hatfield and prolifers heated up in December when he led a Senate floor fight against the Ashbrook Amendment, designed to exclude abortion funding from federal employees’ health insurance plans.

A subcommittee quietly tacked the amendment on to a “must pass” continuing resolution to keep the government financially solvent. In the flurry of year-end activity, it passed unnoticed by Hatfield and the rest of the powerful Appropriations Committee he chairs.

Stung at being tricked, and sticking to his long-stated opposition to appropriations “riders,” Hatfield argued that it is wrong to let the federal government tell its employees how they may or may not spend money for health care. The rider was defeated 49 to 48—the margin that defeated Helms’s bill last fall—indicating that senators’ positions on the issue are well defined.

To the detriment of the prolife cause, Hatfield’s battle scars from his confrontation with Helms last fall, (CT, Oct. 22, 1982, p. 56), as well as the Ashbrook tussle, left him reticent about supporting any prolife legislation. According to staff members, Hatfield believes the Senate needs “a little relief” from divisive social issues. He will decide whether he and his staff have the time and emotional stamina to enter the fray once more.

Any senator willing to lead the prolife charge will find the issue dominates a lion’s share of his staff’s time, and makes him a lightning rod for press attention, much of it critical. Hatfield’s first priority will be economic issues confronting his Oregon constituents and the work of the Appropriations Committee. Renewed involvement in the abortion issue, if it comes at all, will most likely be in peripheral but important areas—promoting alternatives such as adoption, for instance.

Prolife activist Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), said, “I never dreamed we would spend half our time fighting Mark Hatfield. We don’t like riders on appropriations bills either, but it is the only way to address abortion funding.” Ashbrook defenders say it would make federal policy consistent. Currently the Hyde Amendment prohibits use of Medicaid money to pay for abortions. It is inconsistent, Johnson says, for the government to deny tax money to poor women on Medicaid while providing it, via health insurance coverage, to relatively well-off federal employees.

The Ashbrook amendment passed the House of Representatives by a wide margin last year before the Senate fight began. But if new procedural rules approved January 3 had been in place then, it probably would have been defeated. Under the new rules, the full House will have to vote to open up an appropriations bill before riders (like Ashbrook) are considered, NRLC terms the rule “an easy procedural escape route” for congressmen who prefer to duck the issue. Riders have been used by liberal and conservative members of Congress to oppose funding for the Vietnam War, forced school busing, and wilderness development, as well as abortion.

Supporters of the new rule claim it will prevent time-consuming forced debates on issues Congress is unprepared to address. They say riders “disrupt and undermine the normal authorizing process of Congress.” Riders tend to be “last resort” steps taken when a member of Congress has failed to gain committee consideration or approval for legislation.

Johnson believes even the well-established Hyde Amendment may be endangered by the new rule. Like Ashbrook, it must be passed with each new continuing resolution since efforts to legislate abortion funding restrictions into permanent law have not succeeded. Even though Hyde and Ashbrook have attracted support from a majority of House members, Johnson said many of these representatives would rather avoid the controversy altogether and vote to prevent riders from being considered.

BETH SPRING

Churches in America may be one of the few institutions sheltered from recession, with financial contributions that appear to have stayed well ahead of inflation. The average U.S. church member donated $239.71 to his congregation in 1981—less than half a tithe for most wage-earners, yet enough to boost giving 12.3 percent.

As in past years, smaller and more conservative groups received substantially more money from their members than larger, mainline bodies. One notable exception is the Episcopal church, where giving leaped 37.5 percent—with each average member giving $100 more than in 1980. (The average yearly giving per member in the Episcopal Church was $361.43 in 1981.)

Other mainline groups in which giving surpassed the 1981 inflation rate of 8.9 percent include the American Lutheran Church, United Presbyterian Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and United Methodist Church.

Financial statistics from 45 Protestant church bodies were compiled by the National Council of Churches (NCC) in an annual survey that covers about 40 percent of all contributions to U.S. churches. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Mormons, do not collect or make public comprehensive statistics on their members.

The most generous givers in the study belong to the Missionary Church, a conservative group with 279 congregations reporting per capita giving at $783.59. Next are Seventh-day Adventists at $732.20 and the Wesleyan Church at $687. Other groups whose members gave more than $400 each include Primitive Methodist, Orthodox Presbyterian, Church of the Nazarene, North American Baptist Conference, Evangelical Covenant, and Reformed Church in America. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant group, averaged $201.70 from each donor.

Constant H. Jacquet, Jr., editor of the NCC’s Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, speculated that a poorer socio-economic base keeps SBC giving relatively low, but he cautioned, “It certainly isn’t true that poor people give less. Often they are the ones who give sacrificially.”

Jacquet said a higher level of personal commitment in the more conservative bodies encourages higher giving. Generally they are “supporting a great many more institutions from a smaller base.” Also, more discipline is exerted on members, and the practice of tithing is a tradition conservative bodies have always emphasized.

Tithing may become a higher priority for other church groups, too. Jacquet said Episcopalians “have made it a norm in the practice of giving,” and this partially accounts for their recent increase.

Some 300,000 spectators and an appearance by the nation’s president highlighted the fiftieth anniversary of Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) ministries in the Ivory Coast in West Africa. One participant in the event, Louis L. King, the U.S. C&MA president, said, “Never before has a church in the worldwide family of C&MA churches achieved such national recognition and favorable exposure.”

Fifty-three years ago the first Alliance missionary couple, Rev. and Mrs. George Powell, arrived in Bouaké, the second largest city in this French-speaking, West African nation. As one of the first Protestant missions in the country, ministry rapidly expanded, a national church grew, and the country’s largest evangelical denomination resulted.

Today, the autonomous C&MA churches, called the Evangelical Protestant Church (C&MA) of the Ivory Coast, have 760 congregations with total membership of over 100,000. The nation’s population exceeds 8 million.

Inaugurating the celebration, held in December, were two Saturday afternoon parades in Bouaké, headquarters city of the national church and of the 35 C&MA missionaries. Following separate parade routes, Christians from 6,000 towns witnessed in song to an estimated 100.000 people lining the streets. Uniformed, banner-carrying Christian Service Brigade and Pioneer Girls youth led each brightly dressed parade of 2,000.

The delegations converged at the Air France Church of the C&MA, which is named for the section of the city in which it is located. Many spent the entire night in “cell praise meetings” throughout the city.

Early Sunday morning, Christians, animists, and Muslims poured into the Air France sanctuary and overflowed into a massive nearby tent and temporary shelters. Masses estimated at 300,000 (half the population of Bouaké) lined the adjacent highway. Three alternating choirs performed.

By 9:00 A.M. all television crews and members of the press were positioned and the honored guests began arriving. They included cabinet ministers, the president of the supreme court, president of the national legislative assembly, the chiefs of the military, and most Bouaké city officials.

Finally, in his first Bouaké visit in 11 years, the chief of state, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, accompanied by a red-plumed, silver-sworded color guard, walked a red carpet to his seat of honor.

The singing reached its final cadence and a four-hour service began. A national C&MA leader reviewed the Protestant Evangelical Church’s work during the last 50 years. Then American guest, Louis L. King, presented the church with a $50,000 gift to help construct church facilities in Abidjan and Bouaké and a $5,000 grant for ministerial students.

Next, the president of the national C&MA church, Diéké Koffi Joseph, looked intently at President Houphouet-Boigny (not a professing Christian) and preached the gospel. Following the message, the minister of the interior decorated King with the Medal of Honor, Ivory Coast’s second-highest national award, elevating him to the rank of Officer of the National Order. President Houphouet-Boigny embraced King with a triple kiss of friendship.

After the service, 500 invited guests were escorted to a sit-down dinner elsewhere in the building. Sitting at the head table with the nation’s president and church officials, King was conspicuously the only non-African.

After everyone else feasted on a huge, outdoor dinner on the grounds, the crowds began to disperse. The anniversary celebration was the greatest single event held by the Christian and Missionary Alliance church in any West African nation.

WARREN BIRD

Elizabeth Dole and Dee Jepsen win grudging respect from many women’s organizations.

The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) last June appeared to leave “liberated” and “traditional” women hopelessly divided. Members of NOW (the National Organization for Women) fasted in protest, while Stop-ERA promoters celebrated.

Defeated feminists directed their wrath toward President Reagan and his perceived attempts to keep women in their place, while a recession economy increasingly pressured them out of the house and into the work force. Now, thanks to two women whose “place” is in the White House, Reagan administration efforts on women’s issues are gaining slow, tentative support from all but the most outspoken groups.

Elizabeth Hanford Dole and Dee Jepsen, like most women, do not align themselves with—or against—radical feminism. Both are married to U.S. senators from the Midwest and have strong personal commitments to Christ. They are devoted to husband and family, but are equally at home in their career pursuits, and they actively seek common ground with women’s rights groups on issues of legal and economic equity. Dole was the president’s assistant for public liaison. As this article went to press, Dole was named Secretary of Transportation by President Reagan. Jepsen, as the administration’s liaison with women’s groups, reported to Dole prior to her recent appointment.

Both women want to see tangible results—Dole calls it “compassion women can put in the bank.” Achieving this means chipping away at laws and regulations, gaming victories that rarely attract attention.

One example, accomplished by a White House Coordinating Council on Women chaired by Dole, makes it easier for low-income women to claim a child-care tax credit on their income tax returns. Originally, the credit did not show up on the “short form” most low-wage earners use. The coordinating council learned about this from a women’s rights group and it advised the Treasury Department to make the change.

Jepsen is well known in Washington as the wife of conservative Sen. Roger W. Jepsen (R-Iowa) and as the organizer of a Senate wives’ Bible study. Because of this, Jepsen’s appointment in late September was greeted with dismay and skepticism by feminists. But she has proved able to bridge gaps between the Reagan administration and women’s groups.

Pat Ruth, legislative director of the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL) characterizes Jepsen as “open, honest, and helpful.” Ruth was a skeptic last fall, assuming that Jepsen was a radical conservative straight from a midwestern Moral Majority chapter. Discovering otherwise improved Jepsen’s credibility with Ruth.

WEAL priorities include Social Security reform, insurance reform, and addressing the concerns of poor, elderly women. In these areas, Ruth believes Jepsen is willing to push for change from within the administration. The abortion issue is their biggest potential stumbling block, but both sides have declared a truce. “We don’t even talk about it,” Ruth said. “Reproductive freedom” remains on WEAL’s agenda.

Jepsen, a strong prolife advocate, believes the secret to working together is mutual respect. “Women who are opposed to abortion need to understand that there are many prochoice women who feel it’s their duty to stand up for the right of a woman to control her own body. Now, I totally disagree with that, but I know many of these people are very sincerely motivated. I respect them and believe they’re well intentioned even though I will work against their cause.”

Some women’s groups charge that the threat of a “gender gap” is what compelled Reagan to establish the coordinating council in July and appoint Jepsen just one month before last fall’s elections. In other words, it was only politics, they say, that prompted Reagan’s sudden concern for women.

But Dole and Jepsen are letting administration actions speak for themselves. One that has received support from WEAL is the Fifty States Project, designed to encourage each state to identify and eliminate statutes that discriminate against women.

A similar effort at the federal level resulted from legislation introduced by Dole’s husband, Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.). Mrs. Dole sees these actions as “another track to equal rights for women” that could tap into energies once channeled into the fight to pass ERA. “If we show we’re serious and if we produce results, I think we’ll have them right in there working with us,” Dole said.

One glaring exception to that statement is NOW, the feminist group known for its long and losing battle for the ERA. NOW remains disenchanted with Reagan. The group, with 250,000 members, claims to have doubled its size since the 1980 election. A NOW position paper discounts administration programs as “ineffective efforts that are no more than smokescreens.”

Specifically, NOW views the Fifty States Project as an insult to women, claiming the work has already been done by previous administrations. NOW’s leaders have not met with either Dole or Jepsen and refuse to comment about them, except to observe that Jepsen “has been active in Far Right organizing efforts.”

NOW disdains any economic initiative short of the passage of ERA. It views the amendment as the best and the only tool for achieving economic equity. Dole counters that the Reaganites have helped women economically, by changing laws in order to correct “marriage tax” penalties, Individual Retirement Account (IRA) limitations, and unfair inheritance taxes.

Dole and Jepsen say the most significant economic benefit for women is the drop in inflation, from about 13 percent to less than 6 percent. Reagan’s appointments of Sandra O’Connor to the Supreme Court, Jeane Kirkpatrick to the United Nations, and other women to head the Peace Corps, Environmental Protection Agency, and Consumer Product Safety Commission should mollify critics as well, they insist. The fact that Dole and Jepsen wield influence at the White House is in itself a measure of how women have increasingly gained a hearing in government.

Change at the top may reflect change at the grassroots, and new currents in feminist thought are evident. Two decades ago. Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, ushered in the organized women’s liberation movement. Now, in a newer volume called The Second Stage, Friedan questions the popular wisdom of feminists who have sought to push sexual freedom and other individual liberties to the limit. Beginning with her own daughter, Friedan has observed women experiencing “pain, puzzlement, bitterness,” because they deny and suppress real needs for “love, security, men, children, family, home.”

She even challenges the approach to abortion rights: “Such slogans as ‘free abortion on demand’ had connotations of sexual permissiveness, affronting not only the moral values of conservatives but implying a certain lack of reverence for life and the mysteries of conception and birth.”

Elizabeth Dole, as President Reagan’s assistant for public liaison, kept communication lines open between the administration and special interest groups of all sorts. By chairing a newly formed White House Coordinating Council on Women, Dole was particularly aware of the changes in society affecting women. She and her husband, Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), were raised as Methodists and are active with Foundry Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.

When you addressed the National Association of Evangelicals’ annual convention last year, you said you are “shaping your work around your faith” for perhaps the first time. What does that mean?

Before, my career had become all important and was sort of the center of my life. Now, my faith is central and other things flow from that. Once it is the center of your life and not an activity added to an already hectic schedule, it simplifies the complications of life that pull and push in all directions. It gives me a broader concept of how my career can be used in service to [God].

Is this particularly important because you are in the public eye?

Being in the public eye gives me unique opportunities to share my faith with others. This is probably the most challenging period of my career, and God is a very important source of power and strength. I’ve asked God to do his will in my life and I just hope I understand what it is. I think I’m ready to be fully receptive, but I sometimes wonder if I completely understand. Spiritual growth is not fast; it’s a slow process.

What role can churches play in reconciling divisions among women?

I certainly see a role for the church in helping women understand what’s happening and how to deal with it; accepting the problems in their lives and telling them they don’t have to be all things to all people. A basic love of God and wanting his will to be done in their lives would help them work through all this.

Friedan acknowledges what Dole and Jepsen successfully model: “Concepts that look irreconcilable on paper are in fact reconciled in real life.” It is not a matter of choosing between freedom or family, but of integrating tried and true values into rapidly changing circumstances.

Dee Jepsen, President Reagan’s liaison with women’s groups, is known as a leader among Christian women in Washington, D. C. She and her husband, Sen. Roger W. Jepsen (R-Iowa) are Lutherans, and attend the nondenominational Capital Church in suburban Virginia.

How has this new position affected your spiritual and home life?

I’m not able to work with my husband and travel with him as before, but he’s been very supportive. I’m finding he can help clean the house and make beds just as well as I can, and he’s doing it cheerfully, which I deeply appreciate.

When this opportunity presented itself it took a lot of deep thinking and praying. He encouraged me; he’s one of my biggest fans. If he had not felt that way and it would have been a problem in our relationship, I would not have pursued it.

When you speak to women, you often warn them against looking for self-worth in their function alone. Please explain that.

Women have to realize they have value in and of themselves. As a Christian, I believe that value comes from being children of a creative God, created in his image and likeness. We certainly are not created equal in talents or abilities or appearance, but we are created with an equal spiritual worth, so we find our identity there, rather than looking for it in our function.

How has your commitment to Christ affected your ability to communicate with women’s groups?

It’s helped a great deal, because the perspective on life and on people that I have gained is that we all are special and no one is any more important than anyone else. I know the concerns other people are feeling are very real to them, whether I share them or not.

In doing this, Jepsen articulates a Christian alternative to feminism that does not rule out the pursuit of career: “The Lord didn’t create us just to take up space on this earth. I believe in doing the very best you can with the talents and abilities with which you are gifted.”

For Jepsen—and probably most women—that means a combination of child rearing and work outside the home. Jepsen has lived out three different roles—single (divorced) mother; full-time homemaker looking after six children; and career woman active in politics. “I believe there are seasons in life,” she says. “What may fit a woman when she’s in her twenties may not fit when she is in her forties.”

Jepsen is also a pacesetter for women in volunteer ranks. She helped organize CREED, a group working to release Christians imprisoned in the Soviet Union, as well as the STEP Foundation, ministering to inner-city needs. Before her White House appointment, she served as a volunteer in her husband’s Senate office, doing legislative research.

Dole’s experience presents a career-oriented contrast. She completed both a law degree and master’s degree in education at Harvard. She was the second woman ever appointed to the Federal Trade Commission, and rumors had been circulating in Washington that she was in line for a Cabinet-level post. She sees opportunities for women to get good educations and pursue careers as hallmarks of a desirable “liberation.” But at the same time she says “it is a perfectly fine choice to stay at home and be a mother. That is a very high calling indeed.”

Dole and Jepsen both made life choices from an array of options not limited to extreme feminism or reactionary traditionalism. Understanding the pressures that face women of all persuasions has enabled these two to seek out areas of cooperation and avoid confrontation. It’s a tactic that appears to be paying off both for the White House and for women.