We can hardly deny the fact that people bring along contemporary concerns and assumptions when they read the Bible. They look for answers to certain questions and hope to find confirmation for their beliefs. Whether Calvinists or Arminians, capitalists or socialists, all seek proof texts for convictions they hold dear. It is no accident that Hans Küng manages to find a “Jesus” in the New Testament who is neither rightist nor leftist, but a man of the center—a man, in fact, just like himself!

A hermeneutical circle operates between the text and the values of the reader that influences interpretation. Anyone who denies this, claiming his views are wholly neutral and scientific, is certainly deceived and quite possibly a deceiver.

This is not to say that the objectivity ideal in interpretation is false and not to be sought after. The Bible has a fixed text and canonical shape, and ought to be read in its original meaning. But the interpreter can still insert into the cracks of exegesis his or her own agenda and affect the results.

Now, this need not necessarily have bad effects. For example, contemporary concerns may well alert us to aspects of biblical teaching previously passed over. There is no doubt but that science has compelled us to look at the doctrine of creation with new concentration. Auschwitz has forced us to reexamine what we think about the Jews. The cries of the poor and the hungry have made us reconsider what the Bible has to say about justice and mercy. Modern concerns need not distort the Bible, and may even cause us to pick up on some aspects of its teachings that were dormant. They make us ask if traditional interpretation has been on the right track, and if there are answers to these new questions. The hermeneutical circle need not be vicious.

But it can be. It is entirely possible for the Bible reader to be so attached to contemporary concerns that even the Bible cannot stand in the way of them. For example, Rudolf Bultmann is famous for insisting that modern man cannot be expected to believe in the vicarious atonement of Jesus or his bodily resurrection, even though he knew the New Testament taught both clearly and repeatedly. All we can expect modern man to do is identify with the existential thrust of the text; anything beyond that would require a sacrifice of intellect. So he merrily demythologised the New Testament and existentially reinterpreted it. A hermeneutical circle like that is vicious because it allows contemporary concerns to dominate what the Bible wants to say and seizes infallibility for the reader, not the text.

Rosemary Ruether offers another example in her new book, To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (Crossroad, 1981). She tells us that three concerns are very important to her: socialism, feminism, and pro-Semitism. She hopes to find support for these causes when she reads the Bible, and does find it in the “prophetic promise” of the Scriptures. Many texts that do not support her belong to fallible and unreliable aspects of biblical teaching. Insistence that Jews be converted to faith in Christ, for example, is for her unacceptable teaching. These modern concerns clearly operate magisterially over the Bible and predetermine what it may authoritatively say to us. This attitude is widespread and almost a given in modern theology. Evangelicals thus reject the hermeneutical circle that has become a device for Scripture twisting and denial and makes the reader a higher source of revelation than the Bible.

But we do not reject the hermeneutical circle in the nonvicious sense. We must be aware that we bring to the text concerns arising out of our human experience. These create a drive toward understanding and affect what we perceive and receive. We might even define evangelical theology in terms of the hermeneutical circle.

Evangelicals sense a dark shadow and threat to the gospel message when they look out on the church and its theology today. Just as our predecessors once resisted the human traditions creeping into the Catholic church, so today we feel palpably the threat coming from liberal theology. This concern is born out of our modern experience. When we bring it to the New Testament, we find a similar concern. We sense a crisis of truth in the churches today like the one Paul wrote about: “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Ambiguity surrounds who Jesus is, and uncertainty hangs over his uniqueness. Cultural trends and human opinions are respected more highly than the objective authority of God’s written Word. To be authentic persons and to be change agents seem to be more important than to tremble at God’s Word. To meet this need, God raised up evangelicals to say No!

The times require us to stand up for the truth and integrity of the gospel. Like Paul, we refuse to sit idly by while the bride of Christ is seduced by the Enemy (2 Cor. 11:3). Like the apostle, we too feel astonishment and dismay when supposed Christians desert the Lord and turn to another gospel (Gal. 1:6). Evangelicals are not a throwback, a pitiful anachronism, an antiquated fossil. They are up-to-date believers for whom the Bible has come alive.

When the story has been written, it may be said that these evangelicals tried to be good stewards of the mysteries of God and to guard the gospel in the power of the Spirit. It may be that corporately they fulfill the role of bishop: “He must hold fast to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). It may even be said that by 1982 the tide was turning, and victory was in sight.

Dr. Pinnock is professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Screenplay by Steve Tesich; directed by George Roy Hill.

The World According to Garp says one thing: this life is all we know, so touch it, savor it. God does not exist. Garp is not so much about a writer (Robin Williams) as twentieth-century man. It clearly presents a modern, humanist world view.

This symbolic film begins with a baby, traces his growth, and ends with his death. Life is a cycle of birth and death; in between is the stuff of memories. Death appears in many disguises as the inevitable intruder. To live fully, says Garp, one must accept life as we know it, and death is part of that life.

The Warner Brothers film has been criticized for not capturing the passion of John Irving’s novel, on which it is based. Stripped to symbols, it is a picture of stark reality. Some viewers might prefer illusions and passions to cover this too-naked view of reality. It sounds like Paul’s reference to those who do not believe in the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:19). In Garp’s world one can only accept life or withdraw from it, be a life supporter or its destroyer.

Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, is a life supporter, the enemy of sexual lust in a sexually oriented, tradition-bound society. The Christian viewer, however, will not appreciate her definition of a full life: to her, it means having a child but not a husband. But Jenny does not negate family life, and warmly supports her son’s marriage. She fights for the right to good relationships and choice. One of her close associates is an ex-football star who has had a sex-change operation.

But also in this world are those who mutilate and destroy life. Among these are the Ellen Jamesians, women who choose withdrawal and self-mutilation as a protest. It is an Ellen Jamesian, disguised as a life supporter, a nurse, who kills Garp. So neither withdrawal from life nor mutilation is good.

The language and sexual encounters will mar the film for Christians, but there are things to like: love, acceptance of life, courage, forgiveness, and growth. In Garp, to be a life supporter, to accept life and death, and to build good memories are the best one can do. They are all one can do in a world without God.

Reviewed by Lucille Travis, a college English teacher in Minneapolis.

In 1594, when london was a Puritan stronghold, the lord mayor pressured other officials to prohibit building a theater south of the city. He called the stage “corrupt and profane … conteining nothing ells but vnchast fables, lascivious divises, shifts of cozenage [trickery and deception], & matters of lyke sort.” The actors specialized in drawing others “into example of imitation & not of avoyding the sayed lewd offenses.” He was chagrined at “how people of all sorts ar withdrawen … from … sermons & other Christian exercise, to the great sclaunder of the ghospell.” Thankfully, he failed. Had he succeeded, Shakespeare’s Globe might never have been built.

Some contemporary evangelical distrust of theater reflects similar concerns. First, we might agree with the lord mayor that frequently the stage portrays “unchaste fables,” particularly in comedy. But this blanket condemnation is unjust. Though some comedy glorifies the sexual escapades of characters attractive only for their ability to deceive, comedy’s traditional mythic theme has more truly been “accommodation,” how to live in the world, rather than sex.

Serious plays are not usually vulnerable on the ground of “immorality.” The tragic play actually upholds moral values, which some characters reject, destroying themselves and, often, their societies. Evil is punished, if not immediately, ultimately. Even modern humanist or absurdist plays reveal a longing for transcendence in their despairing conclusions. God’s absence from man’s life results in visions of the world that are spiritually unsatisfying, empty.

Second, actors themselves have been attacked for centuries, occasionally to the extent of automatic exclusion from the church. The lord mayor called actors “maisterless men,” vagrants, outside conventional society. Our opinion is often remarkably similar. Acting demands personality traits likely to trouble most American Christians. Actors must assume the characters of other individuals, developing a repertoire of details recognizably those of persons in the play, fleshing out certain speeches and revealing the hidden motives of characters, making us believe in those motives. Not to put it too strongly, actors must be both superb detectives (to discover these things at all) and convincing liars.

Now, contemporary American Christians may envy actors their skills and renown, and simultaneously distrust the lying and hypocrisy—other names for such posing—that they engage in on stage. There, “lies like truth” are the substance of art; in life, contemptible and disgraceful. Similarly, we find it difficult to accept the skills of an actor’s training. The sensitivity exercises, physical stretching, posing, dancing, speaking that constitute an actor’s training we frequently misinterpret as affectation, self-indulgence. Nothing could be more unjust: an actor’s self-discovery physically, vocally, even intellectually, is utterly necessary. True, actors may be tempted to indulge their professional liberty and make it license for self-display, but every Christian in every profession is so tempted.

A third objection links the content of plays and the character of those performing them. The lord mayor charged that actors drew an unwary audience into imitating the immoral acts presented. That all the arts of fiction powerfully influence people is a common accusation, deserving a cautious answer. It is not an idle charge, especially in the lord mayor’s time, when the stage was the one imaginative enterprise accessible to all social classes. It did and does have power, and some of it conceivably is power to harm.

In our time, however, fiction, television, and film are, by their very nature, more influential than the stage, attracting and enforcing a greater degree of imaginative involvement. No one I know ever forgets that he or she is watching a play, and no one forgets the surrounding audience. But both frequently happen with television or film. Levels of imaginative participation are much higher in both television and film, not to mention the novel, in part because of the richness and complexity of technical effects available to their creators. A film or television producer can fragment reality, superimpose multiple images, overdub sounds—in fact, do visually what the novel attempts to do verbally in stream of consciousness. The “realities” created by such effects attract an audience compellingly.

By its very poverty of effects theater seems less able to persuade. Of course, this is not the whole truth. Whenever an actor appears live before an audience, he or she generates an effect no other medium can produce. Before us is an actual human being, symbolically reflecting our hopes or fears. And this person may succeed or fail, may break before us. Such an experience of immediacy generates great empathy for the performer and gives him or her great influence over the audience.

This particular criticism of live theater, then, is at least weakened as we consider other available forms of communication, and the fact that we are sensitive to and mistrustful of these media as seldom in the past. The stage’s ability to convince us is less than that of other such media—yet we must recognize and value its effectiveness in reaching into the deepest needs and longings of an audience.

But there are some answers to traditional objections to the stage; a concealed but omnipresent modern assumption in many evangelical minds is more resistant. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Calvin Seerveld all seem to represent Christians who prefer novels or “permanent artifacts” over live plays. As Christians, our “word centeredness” encourages our desire for a stable, unchanging text allowing repeated examination. We like novels, which we can reread or rethink. We want to “participate” in them imaginatively, fashioning characters and scenes as we choose. The stage allows neither privilege. Calvin Seerveld recently revealed a longing for this stability as a criterion of value that many evangelical Christians probably share. He upheld those arts that produce “objects as unique valuables”—paintings or sculpture, for instance. Now, if what is permanent and unchanging excels what is transcient and variable, live performances must always be unworthy of serious concern. What else is a play, if not the brief interaction of audience, actors, and text? The text was not designed to stand alone, unperformed. “Permanence,” then, cannot be a criterion in the same way for a play as for a painting. Yet a play can have “permanent” value, in treating man’s universal longings, conflicts, and timeless search for meaning.

What practical application does all this have for us as Christians? Though some evangelicals hold a differing view, I see four things.

First, our response to live theater should be more cautiously positive. Live theater may indeed reveal Christ and man’s need for him.

Second, we should work at perceiving the mythic truth and intention of plays—the whole play, not just scenes.

Third, as Christians who love things “true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report,” we need to apply appropriate standards of judgment to the stage.

Fourth, we who are Christian writers and performers must realize our responsibility to go beyond “traditional” representations of the gospel, often simply dramatized Scripture texts. These are valuable, but chiefly for Christians, not non-Christians. The bias of the non-Christian world is toward the modern realistic play, with recognizable characters—yet which may symbolically and subtly reveal Christ.

The theater’s place in society is not what it was in 1594, and many view past objections as unfounded. Though some evangelicals ignore the theater, or turn to it only when its subjects are explicitly and directly Christian, they may lose an opportunity to grow. Others today believe that hostile position will not allow Christian wholeness, depth, and maturity to come ultimately to the stage. In fact, we cannot use it maturely for communicating the gospel as long as we do not understand it as a vehicle for the gospel. I believe that in such a case not only we, but all non-Christians who love the theater, are losers.

Dr. Sherry is assistant professor of English at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky.

Letter from Beirut

John Ferwerda, a missionary in Lebanon with Middle East Media, remained in West Beirut for the first half of the Israeli seige of the city. He evacuated his family to a mountain suburb of East Beirut after three weeks, and then returned. Excerpts from his recounting of the experience follow.

The days were punctuated by the usual artillery attacks on the Palestinian camps in south Beirut together with the usual afternoon air raids from 4 to 7 P.M. At first, with some trepidation, we watched the fighters circle around and then zoom in on targets just a few miles away. They would be received with heavy antiaircraft fire from below; and every time they would fly over our area, huge bursts of fire would be sent up to bring them down, shaking our windows and sending chills through us all. The noise was deafening. At first we would rush into the inner rooms for protection, but then we realized they were not after our area (as we had supposed, when we planned to stay on), and we more or less got used to the noise. Most days we would have little more than six hours of electricity, but it was enough to keep things cold in the refrigerator. And it was good to have the Ping-Pong table on the veranda to help pass the time with the children, as well as our small balcony garden to water, and a new-found family pastime: playing Uno at night by candlelight.

By the eleventh day, my assistant, Malek, told me that he was leaving the following morning with the French ship evacuating people from Jounieh (with his fiancée) to take the body of her colleague, Jean Lego, back to Paris. (He was killed by shrapnel while filming an attack.) Malek was able to loan us 1,000 Lebanese lira ($200) before leaving, which meant that our cash on hand was up to about 3,000 LL—not much if we had to split up in two locations, but enough to last us for a few weeks if we were cut off in West Beirut together. We had kept $1,000 in cash in dollars on hand for emergencies during most of the past seven years, but had become a little careless and only had about $150 together. Within a few days after the invasion, all the dollars disappeared from the market. The money changer (our usual source of immediate LL cash for any dollar checks presented) closed for good, followed by our bank the next day.

Somehow, we were able to get out and fill up our car with gas—and two hours later fill up a jerry can with a few gallons for emergency—just before all gasoline disappeared completely from all stations. Already people were tense and worried about gun fights at the long lines, and militias were arguing over their claims on gasoline. We were also able to get an empty butane tank filled for cooking; and we were generally comforted to see such large stocks of food in the shops (particularly at the shop in the ground floor of our apartment block), including cartons of water. But we bought a few more things to enable us to hold out for two weeks just in case we were all cut off in our apartment.…

We faced even more severe doubts about whether or not it was foolish to keep the family with me if there was real danger. I wanted them to leave, but none of them wanted to leave me alone. And Marian and I did not want to give up the apartment for others to loot or occupy—especially since we had been holding on during difficult circumstances for the past seven years. Cyprus was so far away, if they did leave; and we would not be able to contact one another. Should they go to the mountains east of Beirut? No, not for the time being. We should stay together longer until we had real peace about doing otherwise.…

Tuesday brought the beginning of Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting during the days, eating at night)—an especially difficult ordeal in the hot, sultry Beirut summer. In the afternoon I got up courage to walk over to the dentist (who amazingly was still taking patients in between shellings; we had agreed I might not come if there was much shooting in the afternoon). He had a small, electric generator, so he could proceed with several difficult fillings; but as I sat there with half my tooth gone, I was praying that the shooting would not start again, or that his electricity would not fail. As it was, his major light went dead, and he had to use a smaller auxiliary one. But it was a relief to have it done, even if shortly after getting home, a large car bomb went off nearby, and the scream of jets announced another air raid.

One of the more ominous developments in the second week was the arrival of 10 or so Bangladeshi mercenaries in the field next to our bedroom wall, where they set up a mortar a few feet away, as well as their living space, sleeping just on the other side of the wall. It was a little unnerving to think that our field might become a real military target. Of course it was suitably camouflaged, but this seemed insufficient to elude the eyes of the U.S. satellite passing over Lebanon or the innumerable reconnaissance flights.

The Bangladeshi were normally very well behaved, as were also the Palestinian commandos, now so abundant on the street below us, all carrying machine guns or pistols. But thinking of the old adage, “if you can’t beat them, join them,” it seemed wise to act a little congenial with our new neighbors (even though we didn’t want to encourage relations—especially after they started sitting on our wall, watching us play Ping-Pong). So after we heard that our Palestinian neighbor had given them lemonade, the next day we acquiesced when they asked for some old rusty chairs that we had been planning to throw away anyway. They did not try to take advantage of us then, but later on after we left, their attempt to move in on our veranda was one of the reasons I felt compelled to return.

Finally, by Wednesday, June 23, the seventeenth day of the invasion, we decided to relocate Marian and the children, if the Lord provided a place. At first we had thought of Arab friends from the Brethren assembly high in the mountains above Jounieh. When we did not succeed in contacting them, we called the David Kings at the Southern Baptist seminary in the hills just three miles to the east of Beirut. They warmly invited us to stay in the guest apartment at the seminary. That was a blessing from the Lord: the family had a relatively secure place to live among wonderful believing friends, and the children and Marian had good fellowship and times of renewal.…

At first you think that a six-day war is a good idea—let them come in and get it over with quickly. But then it drags on for another week, and you say to yourself, “Well, I have stood it two weeks, no doubt I can take a third.” By the time a month is almost over, people are talking about two months—and you adjust to that even though you can’t imagine how you can ever last four more weeks. But the heavy experience of seeing thousands of shells and bombs falling on innocent civilians hidden between the buildings down below, as the whole night sky lights up with flares and bright red explosions, is a thing one can hardly put in words.…

You cannot imagine how free we felt as we finally crossed over in an exodus flow three cars wide, without any problem—not even being searched by the Christian militia! The joy of being reunited with my family safely was just as great as the subsequent anguish of having to leave them 17 days later to go back into West Beirut for two weeks to rescue our apartment from occupation and looting.

Many Christians seized the opportunity presented by the war to serve their fellow men. One of the most dramatic was the daring mediation of the Maronite Christian archbishop of Tyre, George Haddad, to evacuate people to the beach before Israeli tanks moved in on the town. Wearing a white cassock with a small silver cross on his chest, he walked several kilometers along the beach to meet the advancing armored column to ask for a delay before the Israelis entered the ancient biblical city. As reported, he said, “I told the colonel in charge that there were many old people and children who needed to be evacuated. They gave us 90 minutes to get everybody out on the beach before they started advancing again.” In this way, many lives were saved.…

Several Christians have been protected from great danger in amazing ways. One example is the blind evangelist, Ayoub, who had a rocket explode on the same floor in the apartment next to his without hurting him, only to be followed by a second rocket through the roof of the building, which fell on the bed in the room above his bedroom—without exploding.…

Six major Christian relief organizations have sprung to the task of providing food, medicines, clothing, bedding, cooking utensils, emergency housing, and electric generators. One organization alone has given some 175 tons of food; and altogether at least 300,000 people have been helped in one way or another so far. A basic policy has been to distribute relief to all needy people regardless of religious or political affiliation. Nineteen voluntary youth groups in West Beirut have implemented the distribution of this aid. An Armenian Christian college was one of the first to begin and set the pace for others. Among services included was garbage collection until there was no more available gasoline. Several courageous Christian nurses worked long hours at the American University Hospital to save lives, comfort the injured, and to help keep one of the few remaining hospitals open.

Some Christian schools opened their doors for Red Cross or Red Crescent centers for the wounded, and others for refugees and relief. One school, under severe pressures, with only a few staff members left to continue such services, provided living space and hot meals for 75 families.…

Many Lebanese Christians who regarded the Israelis as their liberators from the intolerable chaos of a “state within a state” and all that this has implied, still had ambivalent feelings as the sheer weight of such a devastating and crushing blow has also fallen on them. Anger and frustation over the “hi-jack” of Lebanon [by the PLO], has been diluted by shock and remorse at the price of liberation: the ravage of one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Some even wonder if Israeli motives are unmixed, as news comes in of Israeli plans for a major share in the future reconstruction and potential tourist trade. Nevertheless, according to one, if not the predominant, Christian view (even shared by many Muslims), removal of the PLO military presence from Lebanon was a horrible but unavoidable condition for the restoration of a free Lebanon.

World Scene

Nicaragua’s conservative archbishop secured a letter from the Pope to the country’s conference of bishops last June criticizing the liberation theology behind a “people’s church.” Read in Nicaragua’s churches in August, authorities prohibited its publication in Nicaragua’s only opposition daily, La Prensa. After the paper suspended publication for a day in protest, the Sandinist government reversed itself and ordered that the letter be printed in all the country’s newspapers. In his letter, John Paul II calls “absurd and perilous” a church that calls itself new, charismatic, and popular and sets itself over against its [supreme] bishop. “The concept of ‘people’s church’ can but with difficulty avoid being infiltrated by strongly ideological connotations, along the lines of a certain political radicalization.…” Priests who “wish really to serve the people” will do so “not through a political role, but through the priestly ministry.…”

Infant baptism is controversial in more ways than one. A congregation of the Reformed churches in the Netherlands in August baptized a child whose guardians are two female homosexuals and members of the parish near Rotterdam. Meanwhile, a Lutheran pastor in Hesse, West Germany, supported by his church board, has refused to christen the illegitimate baby of parents who intend to continue to live together but decline to be married.

Underground Evangelism (UE) acknowledges that it falsely claimed to have printed three-quarters of a million children’s books in six languages for distribution in Eastern Europe. In an article in Underground Evangelism magazine, the organization said the books had been printed at a cost of more than $100,000 and it appealed for contributions to cover the cost. The series pictured with the article—the Little Owl, Little Fish Bible Story Books and Bible Stories for Little People—are little known in North America. But when UE’S British magazine reprinted the article in its June issue, British and Dutch holders of the copyrights protested. British UE director Stanley White investigated and found that permission had been denied to reprint the first two series, and no answer given for the third. Moreover, he told the British magazine Today, none of the books had, in fact, been printed.

Books by a convert from Islam to Christianity have been banned in Indonesia. Hamran Ambrie has written 17 books about his faith, formulated in the context of his Muslim background and defending Christianity or rebutting Muslim-spread distortions of Christian belief. The attorney general has banned their sale, and Ambrie has appealed to Indonesian President Suharto.

Is the Chinese dragon speaking with a forked tongue? The official magazine of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), Tian Feng, has been calling for brothers to live together in harmony and mutual respect. But although this is what TSPM preaches, what it practices tells another story. It has promulgated a regulation limiting church meetings to Sundays, and only twice then. Violators are being fined. So-called house church meetings, not linked to the TSPM, are not sanctioned at any time. Local TSPM leaders are reporting such meetings to local public security bureaus, who then make arrests. According to the Hong Kong-based Chinese Church Research Center, reports from village and rural areas tell of beatings and of people being suspended by their thumbs or bound in awkward positions for prolonged periods, as reprisal for attendance at unsanctioned church gatherings.

They plan a Washington, D.C., convention to show that “we’re not snakehandlers.”

Independent fundamentalist Baptists are planning a well-publicized reunion in 1984 to reestablish family ties that have been severed for an entire generation. “Baptist Fundamentalism ’84” (BF ’84), scheduled for April 11–13 in Washington, D.C., may signal a new era of cooperation and visibility for people who have traditionally valued low-profile self-sufficiency.

“The bottom line is that the war’s over. We’re coming together,” said Raymond Barber, pastor of Worth Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and president of the World Baptist Fellowship. Late last year, Barber presented the idea for the conference to Jerry Falwell, who helped organize a series of planning meetings.

The support they have garnered for this Bible-preaching congress is impressive, with a central committee of 20 leading fundamentalist pastors and five cochairmen. They include Tom Wallace of Beth Haven Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky; Dan Gelatt of First Baptist Church, Elkhart, Indiana; and John Rawlings, Landmark Baptist Temple, Cincinnati, Ohio, along with Barber and Falwell. Well-known independents who are absent from the list include Jack Hyles of Hyles-Anderson College and pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, and Bob Jones III.

Lee Roberson, chancellor of Tennessee Temple University and pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church, both in Chattanooga, is undecided about participating. He has misgivings about being identified with Falwell’s Moral Majority, despite the fact that the conference is designed to ignore politics. Hyles and Roberson pastor the two largest churches in the country—of any stripe. In fact, three of the five largest churches are fundamentalist Baptist: Roberson’s Highland Park Baptist Church, 54,989; Hyles’s First Baptist Church, 52,355; and Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church of Lynchburg, Virginia, 17,000. (The other two among the top five are Southern Baptist Convention churches: First Baptist of Dallas, 21,137; and First Southern Baptist of Del City, Oklahoma, 14,210.)

The organizers say their purpose is not 100 percent participation, but an opportunity for fellowship and preaching among like-minded pastors and lay persons, and a chance to debunk myths about fundamentalist Christianity. “There’s a tremendous amount of confusion in our country over snakehandlers and segregationists—so many things that we are not,” Falwell said. “There’s no question we have a lunatic fringe—everybody does. But we disavow them. We feel Baptist fundamentalists need to say for themselves who they are.” The conference will be held in Washington partly to generate national press publicity about fundamentalists.

Planners expect registrations to reach 26,000, with participants representing roughly 75 percent of the various fundamentalist Baptist groups in the country. There is no reliable means of determining just how many churches of this type exist, according to Fred Allen at the conference’s main office in Kansas City, but Falwell ventured a guess of 70,000 separate congregations. Already 50 state chairmen are beginning to promote the conference among eligible churches.

Leaders from each of the major independent Baptist fellowships in the country are taking part in BF ’84 as individual pastors rather than as spokesmen for any group or fellowship of churches. The congress will not seek any new organizational alignments nor will it “form any permanent organization, fellowship, super-movement, council [or] board,” says an official fact sheet. A “fellowship” is a loose-knit association of churches that promotes joint missionary endeavors but imposes no governing authority.

The emphasis on participating as individuals, not as group spokesmen, is crucial because of the fragile alliances formed for the meeting. Many of the fellowships, which include General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC), World Baptist Fellowship (WBF), Baptist Bible Fellowship (BBF), and Southwide Baptist Fellowship, have been at odds with one another since the early 1950s.

Before a planning meeting last April, Falwell said, “We decided that if we could come away without bloodshed, that would be a good meeting. That first meeting was a revival. The president of one movement told the leader of another across the table ‘That 30-year-old battle wasn’t my battle, and I want to ask forgiveness.’

“Both men stood up and embraced. In ten minutes, what we had prayed we’d get directed toward in four hours happened. Then we planned the meeting.”

Reconciliation among fundamentalist factions has been occurring over the past four or five years at the grassroots level, say several observers, and this conference will be the first cooperation at leadership echelons. It’s a moment some fundamentalist leaders have sought for years. Truman Dollar, active with Baptist Bible Fellowship and pastor of Kansas City Baptist Temple, helped melt the ice two years ago when he addressed the World Baptist Fellowship, which includes about 1,200 churches.

Considering fundamentalism’s fragmented history, this particular occasion was especially noteworthy. Fundamentalism emerged in the 1920s, when traditionalists in mainline denominations battled theological liberalism. When the immediate crisis appeared to have passed, they began battling each other.

The World Baptist Fellowship, founded in 1931 by J. Frank Norris, split in 1950, with dissenters forming the rival Baptist Bible Fellowship. BBF is now the largest of the independent fellowships, with 3,500 churches representing between 2 and 3 million people. The reconciliation of the two leaders, the BBF’S Dollar and the WBF’S Barber, is something that Dollar said he has been “praying on and trying to cultivate for many years.” Feisty, outspoken Frank Norris also clashed with GARBC’S predecessor group when his church was denied admission.

Strong personalities split fundamentalism in the 1950s, and today strong personalities are pulling the movement back into alignment behind one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Falwell, in particular, sees himself in a position to encourage likemindedness and unity. “The times in which we live,” he said, “are bringing people together. The hazards of our generation are making us realize it’s a much smaller world than it was before.” Falwell’s own exposure to the world outside fundamentalism has brought an increasing recognition of spiritual needs among people who are totally oblivious to the fine points that divide Christians.

“I think it’s important for those who name the name of Christ to love one another and have communication with one another,” he observed. Raising the movement’s stature in the eyes of outsiders is a secondary goal.

One outsider, church historian Martin E. Marty, believes fundamentalists have already gained a stronger foothold than they have had in the past. “They are being taken somewhat more seriously and seen as more than just tent revivalists” because of their recent, splashy entry into political life, as well as television exposure.

“The whole movement spooks out the broader public much less than it did two years ago,” Marty said. “Now its outer limits are known and the statistics have been corrected.” Marty said two years ago the questions put to him by lecture audiences across the country were “obsessively about the New Christian Right. Now, I almost never get questions about it. People know it’s there, but they realize it’s just an organized subculture, not a sweeping force.”

To gain broad acceptance for BF ’84, Falwell has studiously had to avoid political overtones. Organizers insist the meeting has no political agenda and will endorse no candidates.

That assurance has not been enough for some fundamentalists who are highly critical of Falwell for what they perceive as his slide toward secular humanism. His most outspoken foe from the Right is Bob Jones III, chancellor of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Jones is planning his own World Congress of Fundamentalism in August 1983, hoping to attract 10,000 people.

These plans are stirring no concern among BF ’84 planners. As Dan Gelatt put it, “Nobody tells a fundamentalist what to do. That’s the beauty of being a fundamentalist.” Barber pointed out that “some men will not become involved outside of their own immediate circles. They are great men doing great things for God, and they feel they’re most effective working through their own channels.” Barber said the attitude of BF ’84 committeemen is one of “love toward all and malice toward none.”

BF ’84 is intended to be an expression of what fundamentalists are for, including evangelism, inerrancy of the Bible, and church planting. Gelatt predicts “it will be good for fundamentalism because pastors who aren’t part of any association will see there are thousands who believe as they do. It will be a great source of encouragement, with zero organizational impact but tremendous spiritual impact.”

The Abortion Mess In Los Angeles

Last February, a private pathology lab in Los Angeles, which collected aborted fetuses for disposal, fell behind in payments on its 20-foot-long storage container. It was repossessed, and when workers began unloading it to haul it off, they were horrified to see the headless body of an infant spill to the ground. The stench of rotting flesh and formaldehyde overwhelmed some of the workers, and a few vomited. Inside the container they found the bodies of some 17,000 unborn infants.

The incident aroused the furor of California’s antiabortion organizations and highlighted for them the reality of abortion as nothing before. A few of the babies were well formed, some of them certainly past the 22-week cutoff point for legal abortion in California.

The bodies still have not been disposed of. They rest in a jurisdictional no man’s land, as several prolife groups, as well as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, want them released for burial. In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit to prevent the release of the fetuses (normally they would be cremated). The county district attorney’s office, which has custody of the bodies, is in the middle and wants to keep them as evidence for possible prosecution of illegal late abortions. James Dobson, the Los Angeles psychologist and popular evangelical author and lecturer, has used the incident on his syndicated radio show to highlight the issue of abortion and to bring pressure on the county prosecutor to allow the bodies to be buried.

Nick Mikulicich, deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, asserts that eventually the babies will be buried. But, he says, “When or by whom it will be done, I can’t tell you,” because the applicable law is unclear.

Those wanting to give the infants what prolife activist Philip Dreisbach calls “a decent burial,” argue that anybody who claims a deceased body for burial can be given that body. As evidence, they cite the case of a pastor in Chino, California, who recently claimed from the coroner’s office the bodies of three aborted infants found hanging from nooses in a particularly gruesome incident near his church. The church held a funeral service and those bodies were buried. It is not clear who hung the bodies, nor why.

Apart from the legal entanglements of who gets the 17,000 bodies, Dreisbach and his allies are sickened at what they see as the inhuman, grotesque criminality of the abortion industry in California, and in the country as a whole. Dreisbach is a Palm Springs physician.

Several days after the fetuses were discovered last February, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors asked the district attorney’s office and the health department to see if any laws had been violated, to file charges, and to have the fetuses buried. State senator Alex Garcia, describing the event as a “mass murder,” made an official request to claim the bodies for burial.

When progress got bogged down, the board of supervisors requested that a private coroner be allowed to perform autopsies on a number of the larger bodies—some of which were determined to be as old as 30 weeks.

Meanwhile, Dreisbach wrote a letter to President Reagan, who responded by telling of his “horror and sadness” at the situation. Reagan told Dreisbach, “Your decision to hold a memorial service for these children is most fitting and proper.” The president called abortion “an evil” and said, “We must strengthen our resolve to end this national tragedy.”

In May, several prolife people, including Senator Garcia and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, demanded that the district attorney release the bodies for burial. To tell the public what was happening, a press conference was held. “But,” says Dreisbach, “the reporters present concentrated on the insignificant question of how photos of the aborted fetuses were obtained, instead of asking questions about the brutal deaths of the infants.”

Finally, in June the ACLU filed its lawsuit to enjoin the district attorney from releasing the fetuses to the prolifers.

Not much has happened since June. The district attorney’s office has cataloged all the specimens. Of the 17,000 fetuses, 150 are believed to be beyond the 20-week gestation period.

It is a news story that is grabbing more and more attention, though. Dobson, director of the Focus on the Family ministry, said, “As often as I’ve addressed the issue of abortion, seldom have I been as sickened as during our coverage of this particular news story. It’s one thing to talk glibly about the sacrifice of 1.5 million lives per year in America. Such a massive number is difficult to visualize. However, when 17,000 fetuses are exposed in a storage container, the real meaning of the abortion phenomenon is suddenly depicted in graphic fashion.”

DANIEL W. PAWLEY

North American Scene

A recent federal court ruling holds that refusing federal funds does not exempt a private school from laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Grove City College, a Pennsylvania Christian institution, was not charged with sex discrimination but refused to assure the Education Department it was complying with Title IX of the 1972 education act amendments. Title IX touches on sex discrimination. The college argued assurances are required only of schools accepting federal aid, which it does not. A lower court agreed, but an appeals court said Title IX applied to acceptance of “indirect” aid, or government loans and grants to students. The ruling appears to extend Title IX requirements to all schools, since almost every school has at least one student receiving federal aid.

North American Baptists adopted a statement of beliefs at their triennial conference in Niagara Falls last month. Church officials stress the statement is a guideline, not a creed, and is to be used to identify the conference theologically in its extension efforts and to other churches considering joining the conference. The statement is strong on scriptural authority. It says the Bible is “trustworthy, sufficient, without error—the supreme authority and guide for all doctrine and conduct.” The North American Baptist Conference is of German origin and has a membership of about 60,000.

Alabama’s new voluntary school prayer law has been barred from use until a trial is held on its constitutionality. The prayer law, passed in July, said any public school teacher, “recognizing that the Lord God is one,” may pray or lead willing students in prayer at the beginning of class. A prayer written by Fob James III, the governor’s son, was recommended. It refers to God as “Almighty,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge.” But a Mobile lawyer and agnostic said his children were ostracized after refusing to join in classroom prayer. The lawyer brought a lawsuit, which led to the decision by federal judge W. B. Hand. The judge also said the law was a state attempt to encourage religious activity.

Southern Baptist peace activists are mobilizing to advance the cause of arms control in the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC, regarded as a stronghold of conservatism, at its recent convention threw out peace resolutions that called for disarmament. A group of Baptists meeting at the National Peace Convocation in August are optimistic anyway. Participants included Foy Valentine, executive director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, and Jimmy Allen, president of the denomination’s Radio and Television Commission. Glenn Hinson, editor of the Baptist Peacemaker, declared the group’s enmity to the SBC’s conservative wing. He said the conservative wing is “actually radical and … trying to uproot all our traditions.”

But the country’s largest Protestant denomination still emphasizes social issues.

Delegates to United Church of Canada’s twenty-ninth general council got right down to business on opening day by ordering the outgoing moderator, Lois Wilson, and the four men nominated for her position to picket the local offices of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

It was the thirty-seventh anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs over Japan. The picketers joined others in front of the office before being allowed in to present a document to one of the prime minister’s secretaries asking Trudeau to ban testing of American cruise missiles in Canada.

Trudeau missed the demonstration; he was climbing in the Canadian Rockies.

But it was a made-to-measure gesture for Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, known for its avant-garde leadership in social and theological issues. The United church, a uniquely Canadian institution, was created in 1925 when members of two churches in the Reformed tradition—the Presbyterians and Congregationalists—joined with the Methodists, whose roots were in the Anglican church.

Wilson, 55, a tiny, dynamic minister, was active on the social front during her two-year tenure as titular head of the church, which claims a membership of over two million.

Words such as South Africa, oppression, the poor, sexism, and multinationals are frequently heard at the United church. Committees studied a variety of social and theological concerns and lobbied governments and corporations to promote social justice.

Dozens of well-researched documents reached the floor of the university gymnasium August 8–14 where the 453 commissioners and 200 observers were grouped around tables for instant “table-talk.”

Many resolutions were merely put off to the next council two years away—such as an explosive report on human sexuality, which included the issue of whether homosexuals should be ordained.

A plenary session discussing the issue was told there are admitted homosexuals in the church’s divinity schools and among ministers.

But the commissioners did pass many resolutions. One called for expanded use of renewable, or soft energy, as opposed to energy mega-projects. Another called for better surveillance of prisoners’ rights, just days after one of Canada’s bloodiest prison riots at nearby Archambault Penitentiary in which three guards and two prisoners were killed. Commissioners approved another resolution on ecology, which included the idea of holding a Creation Sunday each spring.

The United church has already begun lobbying with American churches in the U.S. Midwest, the area from which much of the pollution in Canadian air comes.

The increasing emphasis on social action has its detractors in the church, who see it as one reason for declining membership (CT, Feb. 19, p. 28). This wing was represented by the United Church Renewal Fellowship; a tiny but growing evangelical movement of 2,600 paid-up members within the church.

Wilson was replaced by Clarke MacDonald, a 61-year-old church executive and pastor for 25 years, who tries to hit the evangelical as well as social action bases by calling himself “a basic, evangelical activist.” In an interview, MacDonald said he is “basic, because whatever we do in social action has to have a biblical gospel as a bench mark.” As for evangelical: “I’ve been saved by grace and I want to tell others.”

Among his ‘activist’ credentials, MacDonald is chairman of Project Ploughshares, an interchurch peace and disarmament group campaigning for “Canada as a nuclear weapons-free zone.” He has traveled to promote human rights in such places as southern Africa, South America and Eastern Europe.

Along with the evangelism-versus-social-action dispute at council was a parallel one called “faithful remnant or growth.” This arises from one tendency in the church, which is to be realistic about the decline of membership and influence and just remain faithful to the cause particularly of social justice. The other side wants to promote evangelism and church planting. Gordon Williams, who is a United minister and cohost of the daily charismatic-evangelical television show “100 Huntley Street” from Toronto, declared in an interview: “Any of our churches and ministers, coast to coast, who have gone to work to make their ministry more relevant and evangelical have seen their congregations grow.”

Ethel Snow, an active member of the renewal fellowship along with minister husband Bailey, from Port Carling, Ontario, said that the church “has to get back to its scriptural roots” before it tackles social problems.

“As strange as it may seem, my husband was an ordained minister for seven years before he became a committed Christian,” said Mrs. Snow, her face flushed with embarrassment. The faithful remnant group accuses the growth group of “triumphalism” and being “simplistic.”

Asked about the membership decline, MacDonald said he viewed it “with concern. I want to see the church built up—not through membership drives, but by making the gospel attractive—winning people to the cause of Christ.”

On the theological front, the commissioners voted to put the church through a six-year examination of its basic beliefs, starting with the members.

The conference took steps to recognize Canada’s other official language within the church, and studied a request by its 12 small French-language churches to form a separate linguistic presbytery.

The United church has not evangelized among Canada’s 7 million French—concentrated in Quebec—as effectively as more evangelical denominations, whose churches have grown rapidly during the past decade.

ALLAN SWIFT in Montreal

NEWS

They say they were assigned to infiltrate a Christian organization, but Christianity infiltrated them.

The Church of Scientology, established in the 1950s, is easily the most aggressive of the world’s new religious groups. The church has allegedly framed a writer on a bomb threat scheme, staged a phony hit-and-run accident involving a Florida mayor, and directed harassment campaigns against prosecuting attorneys. At least 11 Scientologists were convicted three years ago in schemes to infiltrate the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.

Now comes another story of intrigue. In mid-1980, Scientologists Ford and Andrea Schwartz apparently infiltrated two California cult-watching organizations. For the next two years, the pair acted as double agents, funneling information out of the “enemy” organizations to the Church of Scientology.

But now the Schwartzes have (to use the espionage jargon they have grown so accustomed to) “blown their cover.” More than that, Ford and Andrea Schwartz say they have gone from infiltrating evangelical Christendom to becoming evangelical Christians.

The admission comes after Ford worked in one of the cult-watching organizations as a deprogrammer. That put him in the strange position of deprogramming a handful of Scientologists while he was still a Scientologist. While Andrea was an undercover agent, she gained the confidence of Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP) in Berkeley, California, a respected evangelical watchdog of cults and new religions, to the point that she authored SCP’s most popular booklet on the dangers of Scientology.

The Schwartzes said they were working in a time-honored Scientology tradition when Ford agreed to infiltrate Freedom Counseling Center, for families of cult members, based in Burlingame, California. A few months later, Andrea was asked to slide into SCP, a group the church reportedly feared as one of its most dangerous enemies.

Ford joined the Scientologists in 1972, Andrea in 1973. They met and married later. Both were “registrars,” or salesmen of Scientology counseling courses that cost about $125 per hour. They excelled as registrars, Ford working in Los Angeles and Andrea in Washington, D.C.

Using what she now calls “manipulative” sales techniques, Andrea sold courses at an incredible clip of $20,000 per week, she said. “I helped people sell their houses, sailplanes, violins; I helped a guy sell his cemetery plot. It just got bizarre,” she said.

The two met at a 1975 conference of registrars. They decided to marry soon afterward but suspected that church officials would not allow either of them to move, because they were so good at their jobs.

So, on a November Thursday evening, Andrea boarded a flight to Los Angeles. She and Ford—having too little time for blood tests and other legalities—crossed the border to Tijuana and wed. They knew the church would have to move one of them if they were already married. Andrea, after the seven-hour return flight, was back in Washington for a Saturday morning meeting. By February, following minor church discipline, Ford was allowed to move to Washington.

Both continued to work diligently for the church, putting in 14 hours a day, seven days a week. But by 1977, Andrea said, the pressure was telling. “I was at the point of a nervous collapse,” she said. She needed a vacation but got no rest. Her sales fell and she became insubordinate, which prompted a Scientology “auditor” (counselor) to tell Andrea she was a “totally evil” person. Ford was counseled to divorce his wife.

The experience soured the Schwartzes on Scientology, but they were confident wrongs could be righted if only “Ron” (L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the church) knew. From 1977 until 1979, they were marginal Scientologists, living a more or less normal suburban life outside San Francisco.

But they found suburban life empty and frustrating and were drawn back toward the center of Scientology in 1980 when Hubbard issued a “general amnesty” to members he admitted had been harshly treated.

It was a few months after the couple accepted amnesty, they said, that the church’s Guardian Office—the center of Scientology’s intelligence operations—approached them with the idea of being double agents in anticult groups. Accepting the assignment was an excellent way to prove their loyalty to the church, Andrea said.

Ford was to infiltrate the Freedom Counseling Center and find an ex-Scientologist now operating as a deprogrammer. His assignment was to turn the man “into a vacuum cleaner salesman” or, as Ford puts it, “someone who would never think about doing anything against Scientology again.”

He never found the would-be “vacuum cleaner salesman.” And his assignment soon changed. Ford was to become the leading authority of all anti-Scientologists in the United States, he was told. “If somebody from the IRS wanted to investigate the Church of Scientology, the idea was they would call me. If the FBI wanted information, they would call me,” he said.

Eventually Schwartz’s ruse worked. Trained as a deprogrammer by the Church of Scientology and thoroughly knowledgeable about the group, Schwartz said he helped police infiltrate Scientology, deprogrammed Moonies, cooperated in bringing lawsuits against other cults, and he became a respected source for the media.

When Reader’s Digest ran a two-part series attacking Scientology, it was Schwartz the editors asked for a list of organizations that could help families of Scientology members.

Andrea, meanwhile, was to learn born-again Christian lingo, infiltrate the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, and become so influential “that I would finally end up being in the position of running SCP or closing it down,” she said. Her assignment would be eased, Scientologists believed, by the stupidity of Christians. “The opinion was that if I was an intelligent Christian, I would be an interesting commodity because there aren’t such animals in great numbers,” she said. “Most Christians are stupid; that’s what I was told.”

Ford had an identical opinion, considering Christians about as threatening as “the local pharmacy or the fire department.”

What Scientology Teaches

L. Ron Hubbard, the 71-year-old founder of Scientology, has led a colorful and varied life, according to Scientology literature.

He was born in Nebraska, could ride horseback before he walked, read and wrote by age four, became the nation’s youngest Eagle Scout, and was accepted as blood brother of the Blackfoot Indians.

Between the ages of 14 and 18, Hubbard is said to have traveled to Asia with his father, a navy commander. There, Hubbard has written, he studied Eastern religion. At 19, Scientologists say, Hubbard entered college, going on to earn doctorates of philosophy and divinity. According to the Los Angeles Times, Hubbard’s college transcript shows he dropped out after his sophomore year.

Dianetics, a book published in 1950 and said to present “the modern science of mental health,” laid the groundwork for the Church of Scientology.

Scientology recasts elements of psychotherapy and Eastern religious philosophies. A 1975 booklet published by the church describes it as “the spiritual heir of Buddhism in the Western world.”

According to Hubbard, in the core of every person is an imprisoned “thetan,” or god, trying to get out. This spirit is hampered by man forgetting that he was once a god. The thetan is also caught in a web of injuries done to himself and others (in this and previous reincarnations), injuries which are not consciously remembered but stored in the “reactive mind.”

The “reactive mind,” roughly analogous to Freud’s id, causes the individual to act irrationally and compulsively. The thetan can be freed by the process of “auditing,” or counseling.

The counseling is done with an electrogalvanometer (E-meter), a machine that measures skin resistance and is said to expose the problems of the reactive mind. Uncovering the cause of unwanted behavior expels it and, with enough counseling, the Scientologist may ascend to the highest level—the operating thetan.

He is then a god and aware of it, free of neuroses, compulsions, and other ills humans are susceptible to. (Scientology claimed the process prevented the common cold, until the Food and Drug Administration protested.)

The operating thetan can also recover knowledge from past lives, experience soul-travel, and control the physical realm of the universe.

The use of the E-meter and concern for technique, mixed with Eastern religious ideas, makes Scientology the first of the new religions to combine technology and mysticism. This potent combination is said to have attracted more than three million members worldwide.

He also got to know some of the workers at SCP, and the Schwartzes were puzzled by obvious intelligence. Brooks Alexander, an SCP founder, “stinks of somebody who is smart,” Ford decided. “And that doesn’t fit.” He suspected Alexander as an agent of the Soviet KGB, a scheme plausible to him since Scientologists believe the entire world is fast coming under the domination of a Rockefeller “feudal empire.”

Andrea continued working as a volunteer at SCP, which paid her transportation and child care costs. But the Schwartzes’ spy ploy was beginning to boomerang. Both listened to cult experts who pointed out alleged difficulties with Scientology. When the couple went to the Scientologists for answers, they were often told there were no answers, but it “doesn’t matter.”

Although the SCP executives never lied to Andrea, she caught the Scientologists in flat contradictions. SCP executives were concerned about her family; the Scientologists never asked. Andrea went to church with Brooks Alexander and other suspected “KGB” or “CIA” agents. She could not believe it, but they looked like they sincerely believed there was a God listening to their prayers.

By spring of last year, the Schwartzes decided Scientology was spent as a vital force. But they still believed in L. Ron Hubbard and hoped they could spread his insights. It was in December that writer Paulette Cooper mailed documentation allegedly proving several falsehoods in Hubbard’s autobiography. It convinced Ford.

“It all came together in the middle of a deprogramming,” Andrea said. “He deprogrammed himself.” When Ford returned home he kept his wife up through the night convincing her Scientology was a “hoax, a scam, con, and fraud.”

The next morning Andrea was alone to spend what she considers the worst day of her life. She had entered Scientology when she was 19 and suddenly she “felt very much back at 19 again.” She questioned her marriage: she had only known Ford as a Scientologist—did she know him otherwise? She doubted her worth as a mother: she had been raising her son as a Scientologist.

Plagued with fears and doubt, she remembered Scientology: The Technology of Enlightenment, the booklet she had written for SCP. She reread her own words, unexpectedly seeing them in a new light. She was at the point at which it was “hard to look at black and call it white, and white and call it black,” Andrea said. The booklet “fit into things I just had to face up to.” She found herself going to the Bible that had “helped me establish my Christian verbiage in my cover.” That afternoon, Andrea said, she became a Christian.

Ford describes a feeling of imbalance much like his wife’s. In fact, leaving Scientology did not actually entail a decision to defect. “It was much closer to deciding to swim,” he said. “You suddenly find that the boat you thought you were sitting in doesn’t exist and you’re sitting in water, going down, and drowning. There wasn’t a conscious decision.”

Three months passed until the Schwartzes decided to go public with their defection. By May, they were public ex-Scientologists. On May 11, fearing reprisal from the church, Ford packed a loaded revolver and moved his wife and son from campground to campground for two weeks. He lapses into spy talk as he describes “picking up the can and rattling it to see if anyone was on our tail.”

But the Schwartzes quickly decided they could not live a life on the run. They would have to exercise their new-found faith in God. They returned home and now plan a career of leading people out of Scientology.

Can the Schwartzes be trusted at this point? Or are they triple agents, adding another twist to an already labyrinthine story? Indeed, were they ever Scientology spies?

Alan Hubbert, president of the California branch of the church, said Scientology no longer practices any sort of espionage. After incidents in the late seventies that included the conviction of 11 Scientologists, “we have undergone an extensive reorganization and have no need for that sort of activity.”

Ford Schwartz says Hubbert knew of at least one “operation” to which Ford was assigned. Hubbert denies it. The Scientology official adds that, as a matter of principle, the church is strongly opposed to deprogramming. It would never sanction deprogramming by one of its own members and, in fact, expelled Ford Schwartz because he was a deprogrammer.

Michael Flynn, a Boston attorney involved for three years in litigation against the church, said there is “no reason to doubt” the Schwartzes’ story. What Hubbert says about the church stopping such intelligence work is “utter nonsense,” according to Flynn. Has Flynn himself been harrassed by Scientologists? “Unendingly, nonstop,” he answered.

Ford Schwartz has filed sworn affidavits of his alleged intelligence activity in Boston. Harvey Silverglate, Scientology’s Boston attorney, said he has had little time to evaluate the credibility of Schwartz’s claims. But he said any such activity would not be espionage or “dirty tricks,” but rather “self-protective information gathering” by a religious body trying to save itself from unethical attackers. Silverglate hints at a renegade faction within the church that acted outside the counsel of the hierarchy.

SCP’s Mary Axton believes the Schwartz story, right down to their recent conversion. “They’re not triple agents,” she said. Evident spiritual growth by the Schwartzes “manifests their honesty now,” Axton said.

Ford Schwartz offers another piece of evidence. His case officer for one undercover assignment was a man named Michael Wood, Schwartz said. Wood sometimes used the code name Tom Randall and, at least until three months ago, could be reached at a certain telephone number.

The number is dialed. It rings. A recording answers: the phone has been disconnected. There is no forwarding number.

RON ENROTH in Santa Barbara,

with RODNEY CLAPP

Personalia

Philip P. Gammon has been appointed executive director of the American Council of the Africa Evangelical Fellowship. Gammon has been with the mission 20 years—10 years as chairman of the board. He is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College, and New York University.

Jerry Horner, chairman of the undergraduate department of theology at Oral Roberts University, has been named dean of the new School of Biblical Studies at Christian Broadcasting University, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Horner has also taught at Southwest Baptist University, Fort Worth, Texas.

William J. Saal is the new United States director of North Africa Missions’s U.S. council. Former director Gregory M. Livingstone was named deputy to the general director of the mission.

Latin American Evangelicals Organize For Strength

Ninety-eight Protestant denominations pledge cooperation.

“Finally we have a continent-wide alliance that will hold the line for conservative, biblical evangelicals! We saw it come to life in Panama; and then in Lima, Peru, God taught it to walk.”

The speaker was Mexican Presbyterian pastor Marcelino Ortiz, who last April was elected president of CONELA (Confraternity of Evangelicals in Latin America), the first authorized organization to represent the majority of Central and South American evangelicals.

Evangelist Luis Palau has said that Latin America desperately needed an organization that would unashamedly espouse conversion evangelism, encourage church growth, and defend biblical theology against liberal penetration in seminaries and churches.

Ortiz and ten other CONELA officials met in July for the organization’s first executive committee meeting in Lima, Peru. Guidelines were established for the eight regional vice-presidents, permanent working commissions were nominated, and special activities were scheduled to advance evangelical growth and cooperation across the continent.

“At this point, CONELA has gone further than any previous inter-evangelical effort,” commented Assemblies of God missionary Bruno Frigoli, who serves on the confraternity’s board of advisers. He noted that several spontaneous attempts had been made during international congresses to create an evangelical cross-denominational agency in Latin America (Huampani, Peru, 1963; Berlin, 1966; Lausanne, 1974), but none succeeded. Then in 1980 during the Consultation for World Evangelization in Pattaya, Thailand, Frigoli and 39 Latin American leaders issued a call for the creation of CONELA.

“Under the auspices of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE),” reported Ortiz, “98 Protestant denominations and 74 Christian service agencies responded to the call, and in Panama unanimously organized CONELA on April 23, 1982. The assembly in Panama asked the executive committee to draw up guidelines and name the working committees.”

According to CONELA’s secretary, Eduardo Ruan, the regional vice-presidents have noted wide reception and support across the continent. That support is evidenced by several recent developments. An informal alliance in Mexico representing 80 percent of the nation’s evangelical churches reorganized itself as the Confraternity of Evangelicals in Mexico, and is adopting CONELA’S documents for its own use. The Evangelical Council of Venezuela unanimously voted to join CONELA, even though this involved a modification of its constitution. The Council of Evangelical Pastors in Chile warmly approves of CONELA, and Argentinians are mentioning the “spirit of Panama” as they cross denominational lines to build an evangelical alliance. Ruan is president of the Evangelical Council of Venezuela.

The CONELA executives envision the organization as facilitating communication among conservative evangelicals, rather than as a decision-making council.

Ricardo Glaser, a Brazilian Baptist who is CONELA’S treasurer, said at the Lima meeting that 56 percent of the funds spent on the confraternity’s creation came from Latin America.

Glaser expects that 70 percent of the 1982/83 budget will be met with Latin American funds. He pointed out, “This high percentage of Latin American financial involvement demonstrates there is firm support for CONELA and its principles.”

The Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) is gearing up for its constitutional assembly in Lima, Peru, in November. Methodists, Anglicans, and other mainline ecumenical movements are backing CLAI. According to published information, CLAI expects to spend nearly $2 million before and during the constitutional assembly. Ten percent of that amount is scheduled to be provided from Latin American sources, while 90 percent will come from North America and Europe.

Ecuadorian Galo Vasquez, on loan from O.C. Ministries of Santa Clara, California, was named executive secretary of the confraternity. “More evangelical groups participated in the formation of CONELA than have ever joined for any event in Latin America,” commented Vasquez. The organization’s statutes prohibit CONELA from relationships with either the World Council of Churches or the International Council of Christian Churches. Vasquez says the enormous bulk of Central and South American evangelicals avoid contacts with both groups.

“CONELA was born with open arms,” added Ortiz. “We encourage membership by national evangelical alliances, denominations, Christian service agencies, and even local churches. If they agree with the Lausanne covenant, they will receive a warm welcome.”

Some Grace Brethren Want To Alter Traditional Ordinances

The question of church ordinances was a prime matter of attention as 700 delegates of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches gathered in Palm Springs, California, early last month for their ninety-third annual conference.

The Grace Brethren churches are a branch of the German Baptists, an Anabaptist group that emigrated to America in the eighteenth century. The largest branch is the Church of the Brethren. The Grace Brethren group, numbering 42,000, with another 80,000 communicants at mission points outside the United States, is best known for its schools, Grace College and Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana.

A Brethren church is characterized by the practice of baptizing believers by triple immersion, and observing an agape meal (“love feast”) and washing the saints’ feet at its Communion service in conjunction with the Eucharist. The Grace Brethren teach that these two latter observances are of “ordinance” status alongside baptism and the Eucharist. The church’s statement of faith declares that the Christian should observe this “threefold Communion service.”

A controversy arose in 1981 following a series of messages delivered in the Grace Brethren Church of Long Beach, California (the denomination’s largest church, with 2,500 members and 3,000 regularly in attendance). Senior pastor David L. Hocking declared that some Brethren ordinances should not be obligatory on the churches nor serve as a standard for membership in the churches or denomination. He held that the agape meal was not directly instituted by Christ and that footwashing, as described in John 13, should have primarily a spiritual interpretation.

His church has begun to observe the Eucharist monthly by itself, and only three times annually observes it in conjunction with the agape meal and footwashing. Three other congregations in California have also started separate Eucharist services. These four churches total 4,000 members, or almost 10 percent of the denomination.

At the 1981 conference, the Long Beach church was found in violation of the denomination’s constitution, which stipulates that churches may be accepted that practice triple immersion only and the threefold Communion service only. The offending churches were allowed to continue their practice, and a two-year study committee was appointed to consider the issue. No other churches would be able to change, however, without being disfellowshipped.

A further complication arose when the Brethren Investment Foundation declared the Long Beach church in default of a $630,000 building loan for violating a contract provision that Brethren teaching be upheld by recipient churches.

At the outset of the 1982 conference, moderator Luke Kauffman, pastor of the Myerstown (Pa.) Grace Brethren Church, reported on a doctrinal survey he conducted among the 577-man ministerium. Fully 105 ministers registered at least some reservations about the threefold ordinance.

The conference quickly set aside efforts to exclude churches or resolve questions raised by the Communion controversy before the results of the two-year study are received. In the meantime, the conferees appeared satisfied with assurances from the Long Beach church that it was in accord with the statement of faith on observance of the threefold Communion. Hocking stressed to the conference that the debate was not over beliefs but rather over the philosophical question of freedom of practice and whether these practices should be marks of identity.

Not so, say Brethren traditionalists. They believe observance of a threefold Communion is a practical expression of Brethren theology and articulates properly the sense of the statement of faith. They argue that to introduce a more frequent Eucharist is primarily a theological statement, and the new practice in effect elevates the Eucharist above the other two, thereby robbing them of equal standing and giving them lesser validity.

The 1983 conference will reach a final resolution of the matter. The intervening year promises to be a critical time for reevaluating not only ordinances but also the whole question of local church freedom versus denominational identity.

DONALD P. SHOEMAKER

Creationism Is A Hot Topic As Evangelical Scientists Meet

Several hundred American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) members meeting August 13 to 16 at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, heard geneticist V. Elving Anderson affirm the “argument from design.” In an earlier form that argument led nineteenth-century creationists to conclude that God wound up the cosmic clock and left it running. Their conclusion (deism) was wrong, Anderson said, but not the argument itself. His three lectures on “designer genes” showed how the design of human bodies, brains, and much behavior is chemically encoded in human chromosomes.

Anderson, associate director of the University of Minnesota’s Dight Institute for Human Genetics and a former ASA president, is currently president of the scientific research society Sigma Xi. He was an ideal choice to keynote the 1982 meeting, according to biochemist Robert L. Herrmann, executive director of the 41-year-old evangelical ASA. Herrmann called Anderson both a competent scientist and caring human being, “a role model for many of us. Elving not only does hard-headed research on hereditary diseases like epilepsy but counsels married couples who are carriers of defective genes. The better his scientific work, the better advice he can give to prospective parents. Doing good science is one way to serve God. That’s what ASA stands for.”

Anderson said that only 1 percent of human DNA carries the design for known biological structures, and that today’s recombinant DNA techniques (used for “genetic engineering”) are revealing unexpected complexity in the way genes work.

How did it all begin? On life’s origins, Anderson took a position unlikely to please extremists of either the evolutionary or special-creation camps: “We cannot say that problem has been solved, but neither can we say it is insoluble.” On human origins: “Those who argue for a fiat creation of human beings must account for the remarkable similarities of humans and animals. Those who think God used previously existing genetic material must account for human uniqueness. Both positions present problems. We should be grateful for our status of bearing God’s image, which makes spiritual life possible. We should also thank God for the characteristics we share with animals. They make scientific medicine possible and remind us that we, too, are his creatures.”

With the Arkansas “balanced treatment” creationism trial past and a similar trial in Louisiana now postponed, the creation-evolution controversy was on many minds.

The nearest thing to confrontation came during a plenary session, when Louisiana State University chemistry professor Dewey K. Carpenter characterized “scientific creationism” as a view that focuses so much on events in the distant past as to rob the biblical doctrine of creation of most of its intended content. The next speaker was Dallas Theological Seminary professor Norman L. Geisler, who reiterated his Little Rock testimony that the creationism defined in the Arkansas law is not religious but scientific “in the broad sense.” In the narrow sense, he said, science deals only with repeatable events in the present, so “neither creation nor evolution is scientific.” Called on to comment, Carpenter said “I hope it’s clear that Dr. Geisler and I are expressing views about as opposite as one could imagine.” Many in the audience agreed with Geisler that “creation versus evolution is not the real issue” but doubted that his posing of “naturalism versus supernaturalism” was much help. One biologist said, “Look, science deals only with natural phenomena. As a scientist and a Christian, I have to be both a naturalist and a supernaturalist. I’m also both a creationist and an evolutionist. I believe God did it, but how?”

One session made it clear that the Creation Research Society (CRS) of San Diego, often described in the press as an ASA splinter group, is in no sense a “clone” of the older group.

H. Harold Hartzler, retired physics professor at Minnesota’s Mankato State University and former ASA executive secretary, described the relationship between ASA and CRS, pointing to differences in their doctrinal statements. CRS members are committed to a strict interpretation of Genesis, including the flood of Noah as “an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect.” ASA members affirm belief in the Bible as “the inspired Word of God, the only unerring guide of faith and conduct”; in Jesus Christ as the only mediator of salvation; and in science as a valid way to explore God’s creation. ASA leaves all other matters open to discussion. As a member of both societies, Hartzler said that most CRS members believe the age of the earth to be under 10,000 years, or 100,000 at the most. Some ASA members hold similar views, but most accept the evidence for an age in billions of years and many consider evolution a mechanism God used to create new forms of life. Emphasizing many common beliefs shared by ASA and CRS, Hartzler urged closer cooperation between the two societies.

Adventists Report On Bankruptcy Scandal

In 1981, Seventh-day Adventist Donald Davenport, a Los Angeles developer, filed for bankruptcy. It was no ordinary bankruptcy. A subsequent lawsuit—filed by SDA church members—charges that Adventist clergy negligently invested church trust funds with Davenport. When Davenport’s empire collapsed, church agencies lost $21 million, and individual Adventists may have lost as much as $20 million.

Now SDA president Neal Wilson has released a gargantuan (624-page) report investigating the Davenport bankruptcy. Wilson has arranged a special committee to review and analyze the report and to recommend “remedial and preventive procedures to the general conference.”

Wilson, writing in the church’s weekly magazine, the Adventist Review, said most of the problems “could have been avoided if church policies had been followed.” He said the report may indicate “some may be guilty of a conflict of interest and possibly other infractions,” but “in all likelihood most acted in good faith.”

Wilson is apparently not letting all church officials involved off the hook. He said that “leaders who show inability to work in harmony with established financial policy shall not be continued.” The president said a conflict of interest existed if one invested personally more than “minimal” sums of money with Davenport while committees over which the investor presided also had loans with Davenport. Special favors from Davenport or higher rates of returns than the developer was granting to church institutions would also constitute conflict of interest, Wilson said.

Canon Bewes once told me about the time he invited Malcolm Muggeridge to speak at his church in England. All the local atheists showed up, relishing the unique opportunity. After the service there was a coffee, and Mr. Muggeridge answered questions. The general run of them went something like, “Why have you let us down?”

When Cannon Bewes sensed time was up, he called for only one more question. Having dealt with that, Mr. Muggeridge noticed a boy in a wheelchair trying to something. He stopped. “There is someone who wants to ask me a question. I will wait and answer it,” he said.

Again the boy struggled to get the words out, but nothing came.

“Take your time,” said Mr. Muggeridge reassuringly. “I want to hear what you have to ask and I’ll not leave till I hear it.”

Then, as the boy’s struggle continued to produce only agonized contortions, Mr. Muggeridge stepped down from the platform, walked to where the boy sat, put an arm about his shoulder, and said, “Just take it easy, son. It’s alright. What is it you want to ask me? I want to hear, and I will just wait.”

Finally, the boy blurted, “You say there is a God who loves us.”

Mr. Muggeridge agreed.

“Then—why me?”

Silence filled the room. The boy was silent. The audience was silent. Mr. Muggeridge was silent. Finally, he asked, “If you were fit, would you have come to hear me tonight?”

The boy shook his head.

Again Malcolm Muggeridge was silent. Then, “God has asked a hard thing of you,” he said. “But remember, he asked something even harder of Jesus Christ. He died for you. Maybe this was his way of making sure you’d hear of his love and come to put your faith in him.”

“Could be,” said the boy.

CT asked Mr. kelley a number of additional questions, which the editions felt were not addressed in his article. Those questions and his answers follow.

1. Many evangelicals think of the NCC as a monolith with enormous power to control religious activity right down to the grassroots level of pulpit, Sunday school, and church board. How much clout does the NCC really have at this level?

The NCC is anything but monolithic. Its 32 member denominations often have very divergent views—on abortion, for instance. The NCC does not have direct access to local congregations unless they choose to respond to some NCC program, but must work through denominations, which also do not have very good communications with their own congregations. The NCC’s clout is thus often overestimated by both friends and critics.

2. How does the NCC avoid the charge of one-sidedness in opposing a select list of oppressive regimes (South Africa, Chile), while being far less urgent in criticizing other equally oppressive governments (Albania, or especially Stalinist Russia, where it now appears that more died than even in Hitler’s well-publicized purges)?

The NCC probably will never avoid charges of being “one-sided,” whatever it does. It seems a bit superfluous to denounce the Soviet Union or other “oppressive governments on the left” when others (including the U.S.) are denouncing them so regularly. (Nevertheless, the NCC has adopted a number of resolutions criticizing the Soviet Union for its restrictions on religious liberty, but these seem to gain less coverage in the news media. Among them are resolutions on the violation of human rights in Chile and the USSR in October 1973; resolutions on human rights and religious and political suppression in the USSR in November 1977; expression of concern for prisoners of conscience in the USSR and Czechoslovakia, November 1979; actions for supporting seven Soviet citizens granted sanctuary in the U.S. embassy in Moscow in May 1981.)

It often seems more needful to address the shortcomings of nations (like South Africa) that are uncritically accepted by some as members of what is rather overgenerously referred to as “the free world.”

3. The NCC has been sharply critical of American military involvement in other countries. Why has it often been silent (or even supportive) of similar Soviet involvement?

The NCC bears no responsibility for the actions of the Soviet Union and could probably affect them very little, whatever it did. As part of the citizenry of the United States, the NCC has a greater responsibility to offer moral guidance to the U.S. to the best of its ability. (Nevertheless, it did issue a statement excoriating the Soviet Union’s action in Afghanistan in January 1980, one of its divisions issued a statement on Poland in January 1981, and the governing board adopted a resolution condemning the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in November 1978, and one condemning secret trials in the USSR in October 1975.)

4. What biblical passages does the NCC call upon when it supports military violence as a Christian means of correcting social justice?

The NCC has not “supported military violence as a means of correcting justice.” Perhaps the reference is to grants to African liberation movements, which were made by the World Council of Churches. The National Council of Churches is not a branch office of the WCC. Though the two are composed of some of the same denominations, each makes its own decisions, and raises and spends all funds independently of the other.

5. The NCC has appealed to the Bible to point out flaws in capitalism. Does it hold other economic theories, such as socialism, up to the light of Scripture for equal scrutiny?

In policy statements over the years, and in a recently developed Economic Justice Curriculum, the NCC has done precisely that—discerned scriptural criteria for what economic systems should accomplish for human beings and then examined various economic systems against those criteria. And none of the existing systems shows up very well.

6. Who decides what the NCC doctrinal statement means—475 Riverside Drive? Union Theological Seminary? Churches that contribute money? No one?

Presumably, the question refers to the Preamble to the NCC Constitution, which reads: “The National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America is a community of Christian Communions which, in response to the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord. These Communions covenant with one another to manifest ever more fully the unity of the Church. Relying upon the transforming power of the Holy Spirit the Council brings these Communions into common mission serving in all creation to the glory of God.” In any given instance, the governing board of the NCC, composed of the representatives of the member communions, decides what that statement means and how it applies.

7. The NCC wishes to present itself as a family of the different churches in Christendom. Because it accepts groups that tolerate doctrinal innovation, it might seem impossible for it to deny membership to groups that tolerate lifestyle innovation. If almost any group calling itself a Christian church can join the NCC, its distinctiveness is in doubt. How then does the NCC define the “Christian church” so as to justify its existence as a distinctive organization?

The preceding statement eliminates some religious bodies’ eligibility for membership in the NCC. The Unitarian-Universalist Association is generally acknowledged—by themselves and by the NCC—not to fit the description in the Preamble. The Unification Church was characterized by the NCC’s Faith and Order Commission as not being an orthodox Christian church, so it would not qualify. There are, in addition to the 32 member communions, 37 others that are deemed by the governing board to be eligible to join if they should wish to do so—including the Roman Catholic church and the Southern Baptist Convention.

8. Recently the Metropolitan Community Churches (a gay group) applied for membership in theNCC. Why did theNCCtable the motion, instead of, on the one hand, sympathizing with the problems of homosexuals, and on the other hand, taking a formal stand against the immorality of the practice of homosexuality?

The NCC did not “table” the application of the Metropolitan Community Churches; it referred it for study in the Faith and Order Commission precisely to determine the theological questions of whether it meets the criteria of the constitution (especially with respect to its organizing principle, not just its creed). A press release issued by the NCC following that meeting stated: “Although many of the member Communions support Civil Rights for homosexuals, none affirms homosexuality as a Christian lifestyle and many believe its practice to be a sin and contrary to the will of God.”

Zaccheus’s encounter with Jesus didn’t cause him to change professions, but he did his job differently.

For most of the quarter century I have been a wire service newsman I have approached my job the same way most reporters do: committed to the traditional journalistic values of accuracy, objectivity, fairness, and aggressiveness.

Frankly, it did not occur to me that the Holy Spirit might have something to say about these values. Being a Christian who was a reporter essentially meant being on the lookout for stories with a “religious” angle and being alert to opportunities to witness to my colleagues.

Some of the ways I handled stories during those early years probably were better than I realized. As a beginning reporter in the Dakotas, for example, I knew instinctively it was wrong to identify racially Indian traffic victims but not white ones, and stopped the practice. I knew it was important to point out that the state legislature appropriated matching funds to get every available federal dollar for highways but would not do so to get small federal grants for high school science laboratories.

In Chicago, I reported in stark detail every twitch of the deaths of Vincent Ciucci and James Duke, the last two men to die in the Cook County electric chair, not necessarily to sensationalize but so that the reader would realize the horror of seeing a person’s life purposely snuffed out. I knew it was important to put theologian Paul Tillich’s life into perspective when he died at the University of Chicago in 1965, and a call to a Wheaton College theologian accomplished that.

I knew as the editor in charge of United Press International’s Washington newsfile for afternoon newspapers that it was important to get into the same story the point of view of both opponents and proponents of a new weapons system. I knew it was crucial to have frequent stories describing the plight of the long-suffering minorities in this country and about the upheaval that consciousness raising was causing.

But what was lacking in my approach was a unifying theme—a light that would guide me in handling every story. In other words, what did the Christian faith and Scripture have to say to me about the essence of my job?

Then I read that Hudson Taylor Armerding, president of Wheaton College, had urged his faculty and staff “to have a more comprehensive knowledge of the Scriptures and to address themselves to the difficult and rigorous task of relating the teaching of Scripture to their particular discipline or area of work.” The realization came to me almost abruptly: my commodity was truth. My job was to pursue and publish truth, to the best of my ability to communicate in the story what was the core, the nub, of what I was covering.

I tracked truth through the Bible and found it on almost every page. Anyone can do this, using Young’s or Strong’s Concordance, even without knowing Hebrew and Greek. As the concordance shows, the Hebrew word for truth is emet; the Greek word, alethea. Emet implies certainty, dependability, faithfulness. Indeed, “faithfulness” is the term often used for it in English translations. You can count on truth. A news story ought to be trustworthy and reliable—it ought to be true. But truth is far more than a static notion of mere accuracy. When the White House issued a statement saying Clarence Pendleton was being nominated chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, that was accurate—as far as it went. But I believe I was capturing the larger, more significant truth in reporting that President Reagan was firing Arthur Flemming, who was then chairman, for his outspoken advocacy of busing and certain other civil-rights views.

I learned that truth is dynamic and energizing. Time and again the Bible links truth with other traits or principles. From the very beginning, the writer of Genesis tied together the mercy and truth of God (Gen. 32:10). It was as if one implied the other. David spoke of the mercy and truth of the Lord (see 2 Sam. 2:6; 15:20), and did so repeatedly throughout his psalms. So did Solomon in Proverbs. Isaiah intertwined justice and truth. Zechariah 8 speaks of peace and truth. King Hezekiah asked for peace and truth (2 Kings 20:19).

What does this mean to me? Truth ought not to be separated from mercy, justice, peace, righteousness. A reporter who is a Christian should seek and write truth that promotes justice and mercy. This discovery has had an indelible daily impact on me in my current assignment—covering social legislation (welfare, education, and health, as well as abortion, busing, and prayer measures) on Capitol Hill.

What can happen in a nation where truth is not reported? Isaiah said, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking …” (59:14–15). On the other hand, mercy and truth can preserve our nation’s leaders (Prov. 20:28). Thus, the clarion call to the Christian reporter ought to be: “In your majesty ride forth victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right” (Psalm 45:4).

I learned also that as a reporter I cannot be arrogant or adamant about the stories I write. Even though I try to get at the nub or essence of a story, I realize my conclusions must be tested. Joseph tested his brothers’ words to see “whether there is truth in you” (Gen. 42:16).

One aspect of truth I found especially challenging: it emancipates, it sets free. God sends forth his mercy and truth to “put to shame those who trample upon me” (Psalm 57:3) and to “rescue me from sinking in mire; let me be delivered from my enemies” (Psalm 69:13). Jesus said the truth sets free (John 8:32). It is clear that truth comes from God. The Old Testament speaks frequently of God’s truth. “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of thy throne; mercy and truth go before thee,” the psalmist Ethan said (89:14). Jesus is truth (John 14:6) and the agent of truth (John 1:17; 8:40; 18:37–38).

Ultimate emancipation is found in Jesus Christ. But if all truth comes from God, then even the truth of a simple news story can help free the world from doubts and fears and bondage. I saw that television cameras and news stories about our treatment of blacks in the 1960s had helped awaken our nation to the hard fact that we still needed to deal with racism, and that helped lead to the passage of the body of laws setting minorities free—at least in a legal sense. The TV cameras trained on the Vietnam war helped awaken our consciousness and started us toward an eventual emancipation from that terrible ordeal.

I came to understand that the paramount task I have as a reporter to pursue and publish truth is a divine calling with tremendous spiritual implications. Thus, every time I communicate the truth, to the best of my ability—whether that story be about Poland, the President, congressional action on the budget, or merely a “barn burner” or a “fender bender”—I have made a theological statement. If it is true that the taste of some truth in the mind of the newspaper reader or TV viewer creates a hunger for more truth and nudges that person toward the ultimate truth in Jesus Christ, it might not be an exaggeration to say the story, even about the most blatantly secular subject, has become an agent of evangelism.

One particular area of the truth caught my attention: the moral dimension in a news event that often went unreported. While covering the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, I made the same observation that Michael McIntyre discussed in the Christian Century. It was that when McGovern began talking about morality, as he frequently did, the reporters closed their notebooks, glanced at each other indulgently, or looked at their watches as if they were trapped in a Sunday school class on I Chronicles. The result was that the McGovern campaign was not truly reported. While dealing with Watergate in 1973–75, I saw that we covered the break-ins, the White House tapes, and the Nixon impeachment inquiry in excruciating detail, but we were incompetent and uneasy in writing about what was perhaps the central truth of that scandal. What is there about power that leads those who have it to be so vulnerable to the temptation to abuse it? We in the White House press corps reported Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school lessons and his action in the Oval Office, but we seldom examined the relationship between the two.

The Christian who is a reporter does not necessarily bring more intelligence or skill to the story, but he or she may have a certain sensitivity to this kind of truth that other reporters do not.

The Bible Basis

Jesus made an important theological statement by being a carpenter the first part of his adult life. I am sure he was a careful, creative one.

Yet his calling of the disciples may have contributed to our tendency to segregate our secular work from the spiritual. In Mark 1, Jesus called Simon and Andrew to be his first disciples. “Follow me,” he said, and they dropped their nets and followed him. We often have inferred from this that they left their trade. As a matter of fact, Simon continued to be a fisherman, because Luke 3 states he was back at the nets. When Jesus told Levi in Mark 2 to “follow me,” Levi left his tax office. This may have helped plant the notion that when we follow Jesus it means we abandon our trade and follow him quite literally.

Luke offers a different conclusion altogether. In Luke 3, John the Baptist was preaching repentance and forgiveness. The multitudes gathered around him and asked for baptism. John the Baptist answered, “Bear fruits that befit repentance.” He said this meant that if they were tax assessors they should stop overassessing, and that if they were soldiers they should stop plundering and looting. The first fruit of their baptism was the impact it had on their jobs.

In Ephesians 4, Paul speaks of putting off the old nature and putting on the new. He remarks, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work.” Again, a sign of one’s new nature in Christ had to do with his or her job.

In Luke 19, the first thing Zaccheus, another tax collector, did after his encounter with Jesus was say he would restore to anyone four-fold what he had defrauded. To him, meeting Jesus led immediately to corrections in the way he performed his job.

Other Professions

Christian laymen spend almost half their weekday working hours on the job. If they don’t allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate their work they are omitting from godly influence a large part of their existence. It has to do with wholeness. If Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives, he ought to be Lord of all our lives and that ought to include the way we perform our job or profession. I’m not talking merely about honesty or diligence, for we hope all Christians approach their work in that fashion. What I am speaking about is how the Holy Spirit can shed great light on the nature of our work so that we see it and understand it and perform it in an entirely new way.

Yet the doctrine that faith can rewrite our job description has been largely ignored by Christians. Ministers rarely preach about it. Bible studies rarely are directed toward it. What are the dangers if we don’t let the Holy Spirit illuminate our jobs? We simply forfeit the huge area of decision making, information dissemination, research, the assembly line, the secretarial pool to other forces. We must seek to build the kingdom in these fields, too.

“What we ought to be helping people to feel is that whatever they do, whether in law or medicine or homemaking or construction, they’re accountable to Christ and to the glory of God,” Senate Chaplain Richard C. Halverson has said. “That’s their mission. That doesn’t mean they don’t verbalize the gospel when they have an opportunity, or that they don’t pray, or don’t get in prayer groups. What they do 8 to 10 to 12 hours a day on the job between Sundays, that’s their ministry.” What about other professions? How can the people in them discover ways in which the Holy Spirit can reshape their jobs?

I suggest that ministers or leaders of parachurch organizations should pay more attention to this aspect of spiritual wholeness. Mel Lorentzen’s Bedford Center has wrestled with union/management and mass-media questions from a biblical perspective. New College in Berkeley, California, has sponsored a conference for Christians in business. Recently, at First Presbyterian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a steel mill superintendent, who has 2,000 workers under him, joined with the former mayor, a bank executive, the owner of two companies, and others to discover what the Christian faith had to say about handling discipline problems and responsibilities in the face of community demands. I cannot imagine a better place for such discussions to take place.

Campus Crusade and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship ought occasionally to divide their conferences into small groups or “caucuses” arranged by major. Then conferees could participate in an appropriate Bible study and discuss purposefully how Scripture enlightens their specific areas, and discover how to deal with the ways those areas may threaten their faith. There already are numerous groups of Christian faculty members that ought to be enlarged to include laymen. Faculty Ministries of Inter-Varsity (17 Worcester St., Grafton, Miss.) has a list of these societies.

A convenient way to start is to distill your profession into a single word definition, and then trace that word or concept through Scripture. For me, in journalism, the word was “truth.” For the politician, it might be “power.” Contrast, for example, the biblical view of power as servanthood with the worldly notion of power as raw force or manipulation. For the lawyer or law enforcement officer, it might be “justice.” In Scripture, justice is mercy and fairness more often than it is punishment. Frances Ullmer Picket, a young architect, did her senior paper at Tulane University on the relationship of Scripture and architecture. For the teacher or parent, Jesus himself is the model, the Word.

The person in business or sales ought to seek to serve the customer’s needs, not merely to make a profit. Serving is one way of loving—and it is good business. Fred Vann, a retired California businessman, once told me, “I must bring the same moral standards to my job that I bring to my personal life.” The Christian ad writer who is under tremendous pressure to overstate something can overcome this temptation by writing especially novel or creative ads.

But what about tasks on the assembly line or in the secretarial pool, or jobs that are tedious—even boring? Paul calls all of us to excellence (Phil. 1:10), even in menial tasks. One minister, Edward W. Bauman, says that if a job seems singularly unrewarding, then it is all the more important that the worker find gratification and creativity outside the workplace. If we find ourselves in such a job, we ought to strive to work for a business that helps people (remember the linking of mercy and truth for the reporter?). It would be a far different thing to work for a plant making slot machines. If our work is tedious, we can pay special attention to our interpersonal relationships. The check-out person in a supermarket can make an effort to see each customer as a human being; the person on the assembly line can seek a meaningful friendship with his or her coworker.

A few years ago I was dispatched temporarily to the UPI bureau in Bismarck, North Dakota, to fill in during an emergency. Our bureau was in the 20-story North Dakota State Capitol, a skyscraper quite unlike other capitol buildings. Its architects, Joseph Bell DeRamer and William F. Kurke, made it of modern design in the early 1930s, and it looms like the Washington Monument above the Dakota prairie and the typically western one- and two-story buildings of Bismarck.

That Sunday I sat in the sanctuary of the new McCabe United Methodist Church, located close to the capitol. Its architects, Ritterbush Brothers of Bismarck, must have been inspired. They made the chancel of glass and hung a cross in it, so the people in the congregation saw the cross superimposed on the capitol in the background.

The cross, yes; but the cross superimposed on the world.