CHRISTIANITY TODAY asks the National Council of Churches to tell evangelicals about itself …

IT is GRATIFYING to be asked to write an article on this subject for an evangelical journal as respected as CHRISTIANITY TODAY. In preparation for this task, I asked my colleagues at the NCC to contribute their suggestions. A dozen responded, though not all of their responses can be included here. They expressed enthusiasm about this opportunity and eagerness to address this readership. Of course, mine must be the sole responsibility for what has been included and for what has been left out, but I am grateful for their help, and I hope you will be also.

Evangelicals have come into great prominence on the American scene in the past decade. Some among them—and some among the “mainline” churches—have viewed this as an occasion for heightened rivalry between the two groups, especially in such areas of disagreement as the propriety or effectiveness of prayer in public schools. A few mainline “liberals” have even viewed the greater assertiveness of evangelicals as an uprising to be put down before it gains an entrenched position in public awareness (perhaps not realizing that they are already too late).

Most leaders of the conciliar movement today, however, do not share that attitude. They have welcomed the emergence of evangelicals from what has sometimes seemed a self-imposed and somewhat anti-intellectual isolation, as one might welcome into the family circle a slightly shy brother who had needlessly been feeling inferior and rejected. Much of the animus that still divides us may be an inheritance from past experiences in which some brothers were the victims of intellectual and ecclesiastical snobbishness. They were not invited to join the local ministerial association, for instance, or to take a turn leading the high school baccalaureate or the Memorial Day service at the cemetery because they were not thought to be from, well, you know, real churches.

When the great day comes for the “real” churches to stand up, there may be some surprises. Since only the Lord of the church knows which the “real” churches are, Christians can only go by what they discern to be the outward marks of the church (such as “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” [Acts 2:47]). Many conciliar leaders now are seeing the marks more clearly in groups their predecessors had viewed with superciliousness. To the degree that we have caused or perpetuated this “putdown” of brothers or sisters in the faith, we have been false to our own ecumenical ideals, and bear an obligation to go more than halfway to repair the breach.

While still disagreeing with some of our evangelical brothers and sisters on particulars, we are increasingly conscious of the far wider convictions and concerns we share with them. And we believe intensely that the Christian witness in the nation is not complete without strong, articulate, and authentic expression from evangelicals. We sincerely welcome them to their proper and vital role in the public dialogue and covet the opportunity for greater exchange of Christian insights with them in the church.

It has often been the case that various branches of the church have emphasized different aspects of the gospel, thereby providing valuable counterbalances and correctives to one another. Usually, though, they were unable to recognize the worth of each other’s contributions at the time. We want to do better than that. We want to explore and cherish others’ insights while their possessors are still alive to engage in give-and-take, rather than content ourselves with safely posthumous appreciations.

Inaccurate Labels

It is awkward and presumptuous to speak of “evangelical” and “ecumenical,” since many of the former are as ecumenical as the latter. (Has not Billy Graham invariably been willing to include in his crusades more denominations than were willing to participate in them?) And many of the latter are as evangelical as the former. “Mainline” is also presumptuous, almost as much as “real.” “Liberal” and “conservative” are relative, simplistic, and misleading. Even to say “we” and “you” tends to reinforce a polarity that overlooks the commonality we share in Christ. But without some terms, there can be no discussion, so I will continue to use “evangelical” and “ecumenical” with the caveat that they refer to branches of the same family.

Though inadequate and overlapping, these two terms are not entirely inappropriate. Most evangelicals are more consciously and visibly evangelistic than their ecumenical counterparts, who have to insist that they, too, are evangelical because it doesn’t always leap to the eye or ear. On the other hand, ecumenicals have an occupational trait that isn’t always visible in evangelicals: it could be called the “ecumenical itch.” We itch to get people together—even the most disparate branches of the church—in order to learn from one another, and so that the witness of the church can be more fully rounded and complete.

This leads us to seek out and invite evangelicals far more than they seek us out. Perhaps that is fitting and necessary to make up for earlier condescensions, but after a certain number of fruitless overtures, one begins to wonder if evangelicals are afraid to engage in serious and continuing dialogue with us. When some evangelical leaders do participate in some of our programs or projects, they seem not to want it widely known lest it cause them embarrassment at home. This suggests that they, at least, know we are not ogres, but their followers don’t—or their leaders think they don’t—and they do not seem anxious to correct that misperception. That is understandable, since exoneration of the NCC is not their most pressing problem.

The NCC is the creature and dependent of the denominations that make it up, and it has their strengths and weaknesses, writ large. It does what they want it to do, and it does not do what they do not want it to do. It has often been the lightning rod or whipping boy for things the denominational leaders wanted to do, but could not do in the name of their own denominations. If the NCC is not responsive to the lay person in the pew, it is because a gap exists not between the denominational leaders and the NCC, but between the denominational leaders and their own grassroots members. It is a symptom they share with other churches and national membership organizations.

What we have said, we have said; what we have done, we have done, and I do not recall any statements or actions for which I feel we need to apologize—except perhaps that they were not more vigorously implemented. Some may not have proved as wise or effective as we thought them at the time, and some may not have been acceptable to others, then or now. But they were undertaken in what we believed to be fulfilment of the requirements of the gospel as we understood it, and that is all that anyone is called to do.

Other Facets Of The Ncc

Some of those actions have had—for better or for worse, depending on one’s point of view—an effect on the nation’s history. But rather than take a posture that is either triumphalist or defensive, I should like to mention a number of things the NCC does involving evangelicals that are not widely known, or that may be of special interest to them.

1. Publication of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, which for 64 years has been the sole and indispensable reference work providing objective data about organized religion in the U.S., including, of course, evangelical bodies.

2. Coordination of the 1978 Gallup Study of the Unchurched American, in which several evangelical groups participated.

3. Provision by the Associated Mission Medical Office of training courses for mission health professionals on such topics as “Medicine in the Tropics.” Some of these courses have been attended by far more registrants from evangelical mission agencies than from Roman Catholic and NCC member agencies together.

4. Conference on “Government Intervention in Religious Affairs,” the papers from which were published under that title this year by Pilgrim Press. The conference was cosponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Council, the Synagogue Council of America, and the U.S. Catholic Conference, and was attended by representatives of over 90 percent of organized religious bodies in the U.S.

5. Research project on religious television, which includes among its financial supporters and planners the Christian Broadcasting Network (Pat Robertson), the PTL Club (Jim Bakker), and other electronic church ministries, as well as the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical bodies.

6. Survey of church-based child day care services, financed mainly by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which will encompass the largest number of local churches ever included in a nationwide study.

7. Protecting the sanctity of religious conversion, whereby so-called deprogrammings are deemed illegal uses of force to reverse conversions, not only to unpopular new religious movements, but to evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements, some of them in mainline denominations. The NCC supplied the governor of New York State with a legal analysis of a “conservatorship” bill passed by that state’s legislature that would have legalized deprogrammings under court order. The NCC analysis helped persuade the governor to veto that bill in 1980 and again in 1981.

Some Strengths Of The Conciliar Movement

Whatever our real or supposed shortcomings, I would like to suggest three strengths of the NCC. These may even be marks of the church.

1. Diversity. One of the marks of the church is surely inclusiveness: “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). The NCC is making a conscious, determined effort to bring into its governing bodies, its staff, and its program committees a fuller participation by women and minorities.

Though this effort has not yet achieved all that many have hoped, it is further advanced than in most denominations and evangelical circles. The result has been some initial turbulence, some shaking up of accustomed ways of doing things and accepted ways of thinking, but that is to be expected when new players join the game. The result has been a significant enrichment of our understanding of the gospel and a greater ability to live it out in action than was the case when our decision making was dominated by middle-aged, middle-class white clergy (like the author), who were dragged, resisting all the way, into a broader, better circle. We covet the same experience for evangelicals.

2. Conciliar decision making. There are small “ecumenical” organizations that operate on the cafeteria plan: each denomination can pick what it wants to participate in and “lay out” of the rest. Ours is a more difficult and demanding discipline. Every member denomination is a full partner in activities supported and decided on jointly. They sit down together around a common table and decide by majority vote what the conciliar body as a whole is going to do, and then that decision, commonly arrived at, is binding on the expenditure of the funds they have pooled for their joint operation. Such give-and-take can get strenuous at times, but it is a truer embodiment, we feel, of the “family-ness” that should mark the church than something one can opt into or out of on the basis of the shifting preferences of the moment.

3. Advocacy for the poor and the oppressed. One of the essential marks of the church, we believe, is its concern for the poor, its championing of the oppressed, its succor to the needy, its defense of those unable to defend themselves. This is not done solely by providing social service to needy individuals but by correcting the structures of social injustice that make and keep them needy. Oddly enough, this is not always a welcome ministry. It is sometimes threatening to people who are not poor or oppressed. Though they may feel no personal guilt for poverty or oppression, they fear that alleviating it will damage them. At any rate, this concern for the poor and oppressed is the reason for the statements, programs, and actions that have earned the NCC much obloquy.

We would covet such attentions—if they arose from the same causes—for our evangelical brothers and sisters. Perhaps you can find more gracious and less controversy-generating ways to side with the poor and the oppressed. But you cannot side with the rich, the comfortable, the oppressors against the poor and still be the church. Nor can you be neutral, for to stand aloof is still to take sides, the wrong side, the side of the priest and the Levite, the side that will inevitably prevail if nothing is done to rescue those who fall among thieves.

An argument could be made, and I have sometimes made it, that the NCC’S solicitude for the poor may be a bit patronizing, since there are very few poor or oppressed people in our churches, and therefore we do not have as direct a knowledge of their situation and needs as we ought. When they need religious help, they don’t go to our churches but to storefront groups or the Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I suspect not too many of them go to evangelical churches either. Evangelicals and ecumenicals are both a little out of touch with the people for whom God has a special concern; perhaps we could help each other get closer to them.

This is only one of the many ways in which we could help each other to be better Christians in a better church, and we have deprived each other of this mutual upbuilding in Christ too long already.

Dean M. Kelley is director for civil and religious liberties for the National Council of Churches, New York City. He is the author of Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (Harper & Row, 1972, 1977) and the editor for Government Intervention in Religious Affairs (Pilgrim Press, 1982). CT asked Mr. Kelley a number of additional questions, which the editors felt were not addressed in his article. Those questions and his answers follow.

Urban pastor, missionary, author, scholar, lecturer and local church activist in Chicago: Howard Snyder is all of these. He has emerged as one of the most articulate spokesmen for church renewal, not because he has invented and promoted a new program, but because he insists on the Ephesians model of church life. From Brazil seven years ago, he burst onto the North American evangelical scene like new wine splitting old wineskins, with a book built on that theme (The Problem of Wineskins: Church Renewal in a Technological Age, IVP, 1975). Since then he has written The Community of the King and The Radical Wesley: Patterns for Church Renewal (both IVP), and is now working on a fourth book while completing his Ph.D. degree at the University of Notre Dame.

A life-long Free Methodist, Snyder was born to missionary parents in the Dominican Republic, educated at Spring Arbor College, Greenville College, and Asbury Theological Seminary. He served as a pastor for two years in Detroit, and then went to Brazil for six years, where he was dean of the Free Methodist Seminary. He returned to head up Light and Life International, a Free Methodist men’s organization, finally leaving it to devote himself to writing and to involvement in an urban church, the Olive Branch Mission in Chicago. In this interview with CT he develops his central thesis of the church as a gifted community, what changes need to take place in local churches, and how these changes can be effected.

Many people first became acquainted with Howard Snyder through your book, The Problem of Wineskins: Church Renewal in a Technological Age. What caused you to write it?

During my first year in Brazil I did a lot of reading and reflecting on my two years as a pastor in Detroit (1966–68). The Detroit riot was in 1967. The purpose of the church in the city was a major issue and I couldn’t give an intelligent answer to the question, What is the church? I would give some cliché, like the body of Christ, but I didn’t own it. I became interested in the poor and studied all the references to the poor in the Bible. In Brazil, the impact of cultural differences also prompted me to write. I became particularly interested in the New Testament idea of koinonia (fellowship). It was out of those reflections and my study of Ephesians that the book came.

Are you hopeful or discouraged about moving the denominational hierarchies toward looking at some of the issues of basic definitions of the church and church structures?

I’m quite hopeful in the broader sense of what’s happening in the church. There are a number of signs of people both rethinking and trying to reembody the church. But I’m not optimistic about major changes in traditional denominational structures. There’s a lot of resistance to that. But at the local church level, many churches really are wrestling with how they can more authentically be the body of Christ within their own traditions. A number of churches are finding ways to make their tradition and the Scriptures more vital by applying New Testament principles of church life.

What has been the general response to your proposals?

I find great interest and acceptance, particularly by younger pastors and lay leaders. On the other hand, some people in leadership positions think my ideas make nice theory but that they are not very practical.

How do you respond to that criticism?

On two levels. One, the question is not theory versus practice, but what the Bible teaches. I’m willing to be tested on that basis. If I have pointed to things that are scriptural, then regardless of whether they seem practical or not, we need to find how to make them practical. Second, if what I have written adequately or authentically interprets Scripture, then it will be borne out in practice. I’ve been encouraged to find many local churches where the things I have written about are happening with some degree of vitality and authenticity.

You had a traditional seminary education. You were taught Methodist ecclesiology and traditional church structures. How did you discover your new ideas?

What impressed me, after I got out of seminary, was that we went through seminary and never really talked about the nature of the church. In our Western culture we have been so individualistic that we have not adequately raised the question of the church. For example, we tend to talk much more about Christian psychology than Christian sociology, because we are more attuned to the individual’s relationship to God than to the group aspect of the church. When I asked, What is the nature of the church? people always said Ephesians was the book on the church, so I studied it. That really put it together for me. Granted, I was reading other books and articles that raised questions about the nature of the church, but the thing that integrated the biblical perspective for me was Paul’s doctrine of the church in Ephesians.

The Book of Ephesians has been around for quite a while. Are you saying that you discovered something that other people never knew was there or that the power structures in the church either avoided or suppressed?

As you say, it’s always been in Scripture, but in one sense the Bible is like a time bomb. It explodes at different times when truths are rediscovered, truths that have been submerged under other emphases or under the accumulated weight of theological and ecclesiastical traditions. There are a lot of very foundational things in Ephesians that we are not practicing. I’m trying to hold up Scripture as a mirror against the contemporary church. People must be directed back to Scripture, in the context of the local church and in small groups, and they must study the Bible inductively—not just asking what it says about personal salvation, but also about the corporate life of the church. It’s right there and it’s revolutionary.

What are some of these revolutionary—you also used the word foundational—truths that the Holy Spirit seems to be applying to the contemporary scene?

First, God has an overall plan of reconciliation that encompasses his whole creation—all things in heaven and on earth. His plan for the fulness of time is to unite all things in Jesus Christ.

Second, the church does not just receive that plan, but in some sense is an agent of its fulfillment. We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. To me, this suggests that we should do those good works that contribute to God’s reconciling plan.

Third, the church is the body of Christ. We are not saved to God divorced from our brothers and sisters, but we are made into a new community of people around Jesus Christ.

Related to that is a fourth truth: the actual functioning of the body. To be a member of the body means to be joined to a community of ministers to which spiritual gifts are given, not only for our individual benefit, but primarily for the sake of the body and for equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.

Let’s return to your starting point. You said that in Brazil you began to think of church structures as built-in obstacles. What do you have against structures?

I have nothing against structure in itself—it is inevitable. My concern is with the kind of structure. We need to teach people in the church the difference between the wine and the wineskins, to teach them the essence of the gospel, and then to create cells or nuclei of real koinonia in the body. We must begin to look not just at personal spiritual growth, but the whole nature of the body—the corporate life of the church, the priorities of the kingdom, and so on. Then we can develop the kind of structures that will feed, carry on, and extend the life of the church. In some cases more change will be necessary than in others. Structures that only tend to perpetuate traditional programs have lost the real impulse of the Holy Spirit, though they were once relative perhaps to a particular time, or to a particular community.

The gospel is always new and produces change, but structures tend to become rigid with time. That’s what Jesus meant when he talked about new wineskins. We need always to renew our structures, to keep them doing what they were originally created to do—to extend and support life. Structures should be life-support systems. Instead, they are often just the opposite. We end up serving the structure instead of the structure serving the church.

What advice do you have for pastors who want to make changes in structures?

Change is threatening. Those of us who advocate change must also recognize the need for stability. Pastors often come to me and say, “I have a vision for a church more along New Testament lines, but I have a traditional church and the people are not open to those ideas. What should I do?” My answer is that the leaders in the church first of all have to be pastors and equippers of the people. They also should begin by creating small cells of life or fellowship among those in the body who are open to this and hungry for it. Then, if the Holy Spirit is in it, a natural process of renewal will begin. Eventually, when questions about structures are raised, some changes can be made in an organic, wholesome way. But to go in and abruptly change structures in a church is so threatening that it will be counterproductive and only create friction.

What are some structures that have outlived their usefulness?

This varies according to the local situation, and every church needs to diagnose its own institutions. We sustain them for the best of reasons, but we must look at the actual results. Take church buildings, for example. In many cases they are functional, but we need to consider the amount of money we invest in them, especially now when questions of energy, world hunger, and so on have come into play. We ought to consider other options, such as several churches cooperating rather than building separately, or using community centers or multipurpose buildings.

I don’t condemn church buildings, but often so much attention is given to the building that people do not give enough attention to ministry. In fact, ministry is determined by architecture to some degree.

Another unquestioned structure is the assumed division between clergy and laity. This makes it difficult for us to affirm and work out in a practical way consequences of the fact that everyone is a minister and is called to ministry. All believers are the laity, the laos (the Greek word for people) of God. While God certainly raises up pastors and other kinds of leaders in accordance with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, their primary function is to equip the whole body for the work of the ministry. In most churches, we’re not beyond the point of affirming this in theory. It will become revolutionary for the ministry of the church when we really do equip the saints for work in the local church. Instead of having one or two ministers, we will have 200, or 300, or 400, however many members there are.

Where should the pastor start?

There are two reasons for starting with some kind of small cell group. First, it provides the context for developing the intimate relationships that are pictured in the New Testament: exhorting one another, building up one another, and encouraging one another daily. This is how the Holy Spirit changes people’s lives. It’s not just getting them involved in a program, or even in some significant ministry. Ministry grows out of renewal in people, based not just on their relationship to God, but also on the scriptural model of encouraging and building up one another.

Second, it also provides the context for getting a new vision of the mission of the church, a place for asking fundamental questions. The average church is bombarded with a choice of program options, but these programs do not raise questions about the nature of the church. Using small groups may sound like a retreat from mission, but this is where a new vision can be captured for the overall ministry of the church. A new power will enable the church to reach out effectively. That’s not guaranteed, but there’s a certain dynamic in small cell groups.

Pastors and lay leaders are subject to fads—going back to the 1950s. Now everybody is into small groups. We’re burned out going from one fad to the next.

You seem to be saying that we must turn back the clock and get back into community, small groups, intimacy, koinonia. It seems like they have been tried and some people like them and some don’t.

What you have outlined is precisely the problem. We sometimes hear that a church was killed by koinonitis. What has happened is that churches have added on small groups as another program. That’s not the point. Rather, we must recreate the level of community and raise questions about the nature of the church and the ministry. We must get beyond this program mentality.

I don’t advocate small groups, period. We need to rediscover “community” as it is understood in Scripture. The life of the church is made up of worship, community, and witness. Most churches concentrate on worship and evangelism or witness. Because of our culture, we have not developed the intensity of community life that is normative for the church.

Some churches have brushed up against these ideas, but haven’t gotten far enough into them to see how they could be integrated into their church. So, after trying this or that, they have gone on to something else. Others have begun to see this vision for the church, as pictured in Scripture, and have learned how to build up the life of the body so that spiritual gifts actually do begin to function as avenues of ministry. Then believers really are equipped for ministry and a vision of the overall kingdom in the world comes alive.

What is “community”?

Unfortunately, we don’t have an adequate English equivalent of New Testament koinonia. “Fellowship” doesn’t do it; “community” is subject to misunderstanding; “communion” is a possibility, but most people associate that with the Lord’s Supper. I use community to mean the church as the body of Christ, the family of God. It means building up the church so that the figures, “the body of Christ,” “the family of God,” “the household of faith,” become sociologically real. We actually do become that kind of fellowship in the way we relate together in the church. Koinonia means “shared life,” not only in our spiritual lives, but also in our social and economic relationships. How this works out will vary from church to church.

Have you been able to carry out your ideas in your own local church?

I’m working with the body to create a greater sense of community. God speaks to the whole body, and we must try to develop a consensus for community—under leadership certainly—but using the gifts of all the people.

Going back to worship, community, and witness, I encourage the kind of worship that focuses on praise to God, but in a way that builds community through times of informal sharing. We aim for the kind of witness that grows out of genuine body life and then extends to relationships in the neighborhood. We’re not calling people to Christ separate from the church, but to new life in Christ and in the body. The primary concern is to build a deeper level of sharing and intimacy. We work primarily through small group Bible studies. We’re in the early stages, but we have agreed that part of our agenda is talking through these issues. Where that will lead, nobody knows. We trust the Holy Spirit to bring consensus rather than a predetermined goal. The specifics depend on what God says to the mix of persons in our particular fellowship.

You are starting with a church of 30 people. How would you apply this to a church of 500 or a thousand?

Spiritually and sociologically, a church of over 200 can’t have the intimacy of community, unless that church is undergirded by a network of smaller cells. Therefore, in a larger church the key is such a network. It must not be introduced as a program, with the pastor declaring, “We’re all going to be in small groups.” That won’t work. Start with one or two cells and let the network grow. This takes much wisdom, but it can be done and will often produce renewal.

Aren’t these groups shooting off on their own threatening to the pastor, elders, deacons, or the session? Isn’t there a control problem? What about doctrine, such as the use of tongues in a non-Pentecostal church?

Yes, they do threaten the leadership, but that threat must be faced for the sake of meeting the deep human hunger for community. If that need isn’t met by the church, people will either starve or find other ways to meet it. It is much better for the leaders to take the initiative and provide opportunities for small groups rather than try to stamp them out because they might turn out to be charismatic.

The groups do not necessarily go off by themselves. The word “network” is important. These groups have functioned best where there has been both accountability to the elders and interrelationship within the larger church body. Small groups are best controlled not with an organization, but by keeping group leaders in touch with each other.

For example, the pastor could have a primary group of 10 small group leaders, from which other groups will spin off. There is a natural flow of information back and forth, producing not only an accountability structure but also a pastoring structure. Needs are reported to the pastor. Of course, if the groups are healthy, many needs will be met at the level of community, relieving much of the pastor’s counseling load.

Some pastors are threatened by small groups because they haven’t been trained to think of the church in organic terms but in terms of institutional programming. They don’t know how to handle cells. That’s one reason why small groups haven’t worked in some churches; people have tried to graft them onto a model of the church for which they are not congenial.

You have talked a lot about the nature of the church. What is it?

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name”—that’s a minimal definition. The fundamental reality is, as I say, the community of God’s people. My definition focuses on the internal function of the body. The church is a fellowship of people who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and have been joined to God and to each other. These people are ordained for ministry by God, who has given them gifts to carry out the priesthood of believers. The Holy Spirit releases the necessary gifts for the church to be redemptive in society.

You emphasize that all believers are ministers. What is the difference between the lay person and the professional?

Since every believer is gifted, the question answers itself when we discover our gifts and allow the ministry of the church to be determined on the basis of those gifts, rather than trying to squeeze people into already-existing forms of ministry. The challenge for the pastor is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. But if he has the gifts, he also teaches, preaches, counsels and so on. He must be very capable in the area of discipleship, because the gift of discipling is essential, and the pastoral function is a discipling function.

The pastor’s priority is to invest in a group of people to the point where they become colleagues in ministry. When their own gifts are discovered and developed they become the primary persons to equip the rest of the body.

Parallel with this must come an expanded view of ministry, which includes not just church work, but involvement in the business of one’s neighborhood or town. If someone develops a significant ministry, the church should then consider part-time support, so he could be free to devote more time to the project.

Your concern for intimacy and community seems to run counter to the Robert Schuller model and also to the televised church. How does your emphasis buck the tide against both the super church and religion by TV watching?

The impact of the super church and the electronic church may be short-lived, or may be so subverted by the secular culture that it will lose any redemptive value. Perhaps 20 years from now people will have forgotten church-growth institutes and religious TV shows and be caught up in a much more authentic grassroots renewal of the church.

Are you hopeful for the future of the local church or pessimistic?

I’m hopeful, because of what the Holy Spirit is saying to us and because of what he has promised to do for the kingdom through the church. I’m encouraged because there are signs that people are taking these things seriously. At the same time, this is a critical test for the church. I suspect that the most transforming movements in the church will not come from North America, but from Third World churches and churches in China.

My tears were my diploma, another’s death my benediction, and my failure my ordination.

I wish to memorialize Arthur Forte, dead the second year of my ministry, poor before he died, unkempt, obscene, sardonic, arrogant, old, old, lonely, black, and bitter—but one whose soul has never ceased to teach me. From Arthur, from the things this man demanded of me, and from my restless probing of that experience, I grow. This is absolutely true. My pastoral hands are tenderized. My perceptions into age and pain are daily sharpened. My humility is kept soft, unhardened. And by old, dead Arthur I remember the profounder meaning of my title, minister.

It is certainly time, now, to memorialize teachers, those undegreed, unasked, ungentle, unforgettable. In memoriam then: Arthur Forte.

Arthur lived in a shotgun house, so-called because it was three rooms in a dead straight line, built narrowly on half a city lot.

More properly, Arthur lived in the front room of his house. Or rather, to speak the cold, disturbing truth, Arthur lived in a rotting stuffed chair in that room, from which he seldom stirred the last year of his life.

No one mourned his absence from church. The man had a walk and a manner like a toad, a high-backed slouch, and a burping contempt for his fellow parishioners. Arthur’s mind, though uneducated, was excellent. He had written poetry in his day, both serious and sly, but now he used words to shiv Christians in their pews. No one felt moved to visit him when he became housebound.

Except me. I was the pastor, so sweetly young and dutiful. It was my job. And Arthur had phoned to remind me of that.

But to visit Arthur was grimly sacrificial.

After several months of chair sitting, both Arthur and his room were filthy. I do not exaggerate: roaches flowed from my step like puddles stomped in; they dropped casually from the walls. I stood very still. The TV flickered constantly. There were newspapers strewn all over the floor. There lay a damp film on every solid object in the room, from which arose a close, moldy odor as though it were alive. But the dampness was a blessing, because Arthur smoked.

He had a bottom lip like a shelf. Upon that shelf he placed lit cigarettes, and then he did not remove them until they had burned quite down, at which moment he blew them toward the television set. Burning, they hit the newspapers on the floor. But it’s impossible to ignite a fine, moist mildew. Blessedly, they went out.

Then Arthur would increase the sacrifice of my visit by first motioning toward a moist sofa of uncertain color, and then speaking deadly words: “Have a seat, why don’t you, Reverend?”

From the beginning, I did not like to visit Arthur Forte.

Nor did he make my job (my ministry! you cry. My service! My discipleship! No—just my job) any easier. He did not wish a quick psalm, a professional prayer, devotions. Rather, he wanted sharply to dispute a young clergyman’s faith. Seventy years a churchgoer, the old man narrowed his eye at me and argued the goodness of God. With incontrovertible proofs, he delivered shattering damnations of hospitals (at which he had worked), and doctors (for whom he had worked over the years): “Twenty dollars a strolling visit when they come to a patient’s room,” he said, “for what? Two minutes’ time, that’s what, and no particular news to the patient. They leave that sucker feeling low and worthless. God had listened to their heart, and didn’t even tell them what he heard! Ho, ho!” said Arthur, “I’ll never go to a hospital. Ho, ho!” And somehow the failure of doctors he wove into his intense argument against the goodness of the Deity. When I left him, I was empty in my soul and close to tears, and testy, my own faith in God seeming most stale, flat, unprofitable at the moment. I didn’t like to visit Arthur.

Then came the days when he asked for prayer, Scripture, and Holy Communion, all three.

The man, by late summer, was failing. He did not remove himself from the chair to let me in (I entered an unlocked door), nor even to pass urine (which entered a chair impossibly foul). The August heat was unbearable. I had argued that Arthur go to the hospital. He had had a better idea. He took off all his clothes.

Naked, Arthur greeted me. Naked, finally, the old man asked my prayers. Naked, he opened his mouth to receive Communion. Naked. He’d raised the level of my sacrifice to anguish. I was mortified. And still he was not finished.

For in those latter days, the naked Arthur Forte asked me, his pastor, to come forward and put his slippers on him, his undershorts, and his pants. And I did. His feet had begun to swell, so it caused both him and me unutterable pain in those private moments when I took his hard heel in my hands and worked a splitbacked slipper round it; when he stood groaning aloud, taking the clothing one leg at a time; when I bent groaning so deeply in my soul. I dressed him. He leaned on me and I touched his nakedness to dress him, and we hurt, and his was sacrifice beyond my telling it. But in those moments I came to know a certain wordless affection for Arthur Forte.

(Now read me your words, “ministry,” and “service,” and “discipleship,” for then I began to understand them: then, at the touching of Arthur’s feet, when that and nothing else was what Arthur yearned for, one human being to touch him, physically to touch his old flesh, and not to judge. In the most dramatic terms available, the old man had said, “Love me.”)

The last week of August, on my weekly visit, I found Arthur prone on the floor. He’d fallen out of his chair during the night, but his legs were too swollen and his arms too weak for climbing in again.

I said, “This, is it, Arthur. You’re going to the hospital.”

He was tired. He didn’t argue any more, but let me call two other members of the congregation. While they came, I dressed him—and he groaned profoundly. He groaned when we carried him to the car. He groaned even during the transfer from cart to wheelchair: we’d brought him to emergency.

But there his groaning took on new meaning.

“I’m thirsty,” he said.

“He’s thirsty,” I said to a nurse. “Would you get a drink of water?” “No,” she said.

“What?”

“No. He can ingest nothing until his doctor is contacted. No.”

“But, water—?”

“Nothing.

“Would you contact his doctor, then?”

“That will be done by the unit nurse when he’s in his room.”

Arthur, slumped in his chair and hurting, said, “I’m thirsty.”

I said, “Well, then, can I wheel him to his room?”

“I’m sorry, no,” she said.

“Please,” I said. “I’m his pastor. I’ll take responsibility for him.”

“In this place he is our responsibility, not yours,” she said. “Be patient. An aide will get him up in good time.” O Arthur, forgive me not getting you water at home. Forgive us 20 minutes’ wait without a drink. Forgive us our rules, our rules, our irresponsibility.

Even in his room they took the time to wash him long before they brought him drink.

“Why?” I pleaded.

“We’re about to change shifts. The next nurse will call his doctor. All in good time.”

So Arthur, whose smell had triggered much discussion in the halls, finally did not stink. But Arthur still was thirsty. He said two things before I left.

He mumbled, “Bloody but unbowed.” Poetry!

“Good, Arthur!” I praised him with all my might. Even malicious wit was better than lethargy; perhaps I could get him to shiv a nurse or two.

But he rolled an eye toward me for the first time since entering this place. “Bloody,” he said, “and bowed.”

He slept an hour. Then, suddenly, he started awake and stared about himself. “Where am I? Where am I?” he called. I answered, and he groaned painfully, “Why am I?” I have wept at the death of only one parishioner.

Since the hospital knew no relative for Arthur Forte, at 11 P.M. that same night they called me. Then I laid the telephone aside, and I cried as though it were my father dead. My father. Indeed, it was my father. Anguish, failure, the want of a simple glass of water: I sat in the kitchen and cried.

But that failure has since nurtured a certain calm success.

I do not suppose that Arthur consciously gave me the last year of his life, nor that he chose to teach me. Yet, by his mere being; by forcing me to take that life, real, unsweetened, bare-naked, hurting, and critical; by demanding that I serve him altogether unrewarded; by wringing from me first mere gestures of loving, and then the love itself—but a sacrificial love, a Christ-like love, being love for one so indisputably unlovable—he did prepare me for my ministry.

My tears were my diploma, his death my benediction, and failure my ordination. For the Lord did not say, “Blessed are you if you know” or “teach” or “preach these things.” He said, rather, “Blessed are you if you do them.”

When, on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he sat and said, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things,” said Jesus, “blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:14–17). Again and again the Lord expanded on this theme: “Drink to the stinking is drink to me!” One might have learned by reading it …

But it is a theme made real in experience alone, by doing it.

And the first flush of that experience is, generally, a sense of failure, for this sort of ministry severely diminishes the minister, makes him insignificant, makes him the merest servant, the least in the transaction! To feel so small is to feel somehow failing, weak, unable.

But there, right there, begins true servanthood, the disciple who has, despite himself, denied himself.

And then, for perhaps the first time, one is loving not out of his own bowels, merit, ability, superiority, but out of Christ: for he has discovered himself to be nothing and Christ everything.

In the terrible, terrible doing of ministry the minister is born. And curiously, the best teachers of that nascent minister are sometimes the neediest people, foul to touch, unworthy, ungiving, unlovely, yet haughty in demanding (and then miraculously receiving) love.

Arthur, my father, my father! So seeming empty your death, it was not empty at all. There is no monument above your pauper’s grave—but here: it is here in me and in my ministry. However could I make little of this godly wonder, that I love you?

Walter Wangerin, Jr., author of the award-winning Book of the Dun Cow (Harper & Row, 1978), is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Evansville, Indiana.

Now it’s up to evangelicals to prescribe a medicine without the dangerous side effects.

Why did the Equal Rights Amendment die? Some feminists charge it was because too many old men greedily sought to hang on to power and could not divest themselves of the perverse view that women are toys. Don’t believe it. Most men have always felt a bit sheepish about opposing ERA. On one hand, they had a gut feeling it was bad for the country, for the family, and for women. But on the other hand, they knew women were created in the image of God and deserved equal rights with men.

The truth is, ERA was stopped by women—and not by submissive ones wistfully longing for the good old days. For the most part, ERA was stopped by young women—women who felt they had a cause—millions of them. As one weary legislator said: “I can read my mail.”

In part, these women stopped the amendment because they wished to protect the distinctive rights of women as women. What many feminists conceived to be liberation from restrictive mores of the past, other women reckoned as protection they were loath to forego. It is a fact that over 150,000 women heading single-parent families have fallen below the poverty line each year for two decades, while during this same period the number of adult men in poverty has actually declined (Persuasion at Work, Aug. 1982). And rightly or wrongly, many women believed that misguided efforts to protect them (like ERA) really contributed to this worse state for women.

Women also opposed ERA from more altruistic motives. They knew preschool children suffer when no mother is home. Again, rightly or wrongly, they were convinced that a vote against ERA was a vote for the family.

Even more women opposed ERA because its feminist supporters too frequently identified it with an image of solid opposition to Judeo-Christian morals on which our society is built. They spoke in behalf of premarital and extramarital sex, the breakup of the nuclear family, and easy divorce laws. They fought for “freedom of choice,” and abortion on demand. And too many women consider these not advantages to covet but evils to shun.

Again, many opposed ERA because they feared how our courts might interpret it in the future. In spite of reassurances by some of its supporters, many suspected that its broad language would be interpreted to override the facts of life and biological differences between the sexes.

Undoubtedly, the most significant factor in alienating both men and women from ERA was the confrontational approach of many ERA supporters. Despite what we often hear to the contrary, men love women and women love men. They are innately suspicious of anything that bases their relationship on confrontation. They want it to be complementary and cooperative.

There is no doubt about it: our society has put women down. We have perpetuated inequalities in position (in business and in the church) and in pay. Women have suffered gross injustices. Their opportunities have been unfairly and unnecessarily circumscribed. But there are better ways of righting these wrongs than ERA.

Men and women are not identical—thank God! But they are equally created in the image of God. They are equally redeemable and in Christ share the same destiny. Within the body of Christ they have identical status and before the law of human government they deserve identical standing and equal justice.

Evangelicals have done more than their share to stop ERA. But no evangelical can honestly look at this as a victory. Rather, from a biblically instructed viewpoint, it represents at best only an awakening to the fact that with ERA the country was on the wrong path. We have recognized our mistake and have turned back. But the task of achieving fair play for women still remains undone.

Every evangelical whose life direction is determined by the principles of Holy Scripture will dedicate himself again to the search for fair and righteous laws for every human, but especially now for the women of our land. If we do not, we are only guaranteeing a renewed clamor for another ERA. Injustices ignored, like open sores, will in time only fester and invite desperate remedies that do not heal but ultimately sicken the body.

The evangelical world is being plagued by ghostwriters in the sky.

Charles Jones, A leader of the church, has some ideas his friends think would be helpful to a wider audience. “Why don’t you publish them as a book, Charlie? I get a lot more from you than I do from most books I read.”

But Charlie says, “Oh no, I’m no writer!” And there the matter rests. Eventually, however, someone suggests that Charlie seek the help of a capable writer.

So Charlie approaches him. “Money isn’t my main object,” he says. “I just want to be helpful to more people. Will you at least talk to me about my ideas? I have some notes, too.”

“Yes,” says the writer.

In the course of time an agreement is signed. The writer interviews Charlie extensively to discover his views, looks over Charlie’s scattered notes, and listens to tapes of some of his talks. The writer spots the key issues, works out the general outline with Charlie’s aid, and then writes a draft in his own words.

No ethical problem so far.

Then Charlie begins to think, “After all, these are my thoughts. Why should I share credit for them with anyone?” He begins to visualize the book jacket, The Christian View of Holiness, by Charles Harmon Jones. It has a good ring to it. He says it over aloud a few times. It grows on him.

Finally he tells the writer, “I want to give you credit for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you. But instead of putting your name on the cover with mine, I’ll say in the preface how much I owe to you. Of course this won’t change our financial agreement.”

The writer, gulping once, says with false modesty, “Well, Charlie, if that’s what you want, I guess I can go along with it.”

Then a publisher is found. “There is no question in my mind,” he says, “that this has to be solely in Charlie’s name. He’s the one with the name recognition. We’ll sell a lot more books that way.”

So publisher, writer, and source all agree; the book appears, and Charlie is swamped with praise.

“Charlie, I never knew you were a writer. That was a fine book. Clear and easy to read, but it packed a wallop. Thank you for writing it.” Charlie finds himself manuevered into the position where he has to accept credit for both what he did and what the writer did. He says, “Thanks, Jack, I just thank the Lord for his help.”

Frank Appeal To Conscience?

Let’s analyze this biblically. First, Paul says “… we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2, NIV).

But can Charlie commend himself in this way? If one of those readers who had complimented him on his writing (“I didn’t know you were a writer, Charlie!”) were now to find out that the book had two authors, Charlie and Jim, how would he feel? A bit let down? A bit deceived?

Theft With A Modern Wrinkle?

The commandments, surprisingly, may apply here. The eighth says, “Thou shalt not steal.” Is there a sense in which Charlie (supported by his publisher, and with Jim’s limp-wristed acquiescence) has stolen credit due Jim? God gave a gift of writing to Jim that he didn’t give to Charlie. Yet Charlie received acclaim as a man of both insight and writing ability.

Now, of course, Jim should count others better than himself (Phil. 2:3). But do we not feel a sense of loss, a certain failure of the fellowship, a lack in community when the body of Christ at large does not have the opportunity to turn to Jim and say, “You did a good job with Charlie’s ideas, Jim. Thank you.”

When Is A Lie Not A Lie?

We should also consider the ninth commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Asked who wrote that book, any reader would say, “Charles Jones.” After all, that is what the jacket and blurb and title page bore witness to. But in fact, Charlie did not write that book. Jim and Charlie did the job together.

So publisher and supposed author have entered into a conspiracy to deceive the public. This is becoming so common in the religious world that if not stopped it could become an evangelical Watergate—an authorgate.

Why should the publisher and apparent author deceive the reading public this way? “Well,” says the publisher, “is it really deception? After all, the ideas were the ideas of Charlie.” Yes, but the words were the words of Jim. Shades of Jacob conning Isaac out of Esau’s blessing!

Suppose instead the book jacket had said, “by Charles Harmon Jones, with James Q. Wilson.” Some such phrasing would bear true witness to the state of affairs. And according to the ninth commandment, God would have been pleased.

Can We Covet Someone’S Gift?

The tenth commandment says, “Thou shalt not covet.” One wonders what goes through the mind of a person who cannot write a book but wants his name in print. Charlie turned over and over in his mind the words, The Christian View of Holiness by Charles Harmon Jones. His ego fattened on them. He swelled. But is that only the Walter Mitty coming out in Charlie? Perhaps this explanation would be suitable if the words had remained in Charlie’s imagination. When a real book appears, though—one we can buy and lay on the coffee table and discuss with others and compliment Charlie on—it goes beyond a pleasant fantasy to downright covetousness.

By refusing to put Jim’s name on the cover, Charlie shows how he covets Jim’s gift, and is ready to distort the truth to satisfy his thirst for what is not his own. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife … nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s”—including his gift of writing. Such covetousness dampens the enthusiasm of emerging evangelical writers, and retards the development of fine new writers committed to the Bible.

And perhaps coveting of a more serious sort is involved. Jesus said, “He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him” (John 7:18, NIV). Whose honor is Charlie really coveting?

Ghostly Writers

The problem is not restricted to ghostwritten books. God’s spotlight of realism, the Ten Commandments, shines on magazine articles as well. Suppose a man writes an attack on feminism and then gets to thinking about the resistance of his intended female readers. “They will say I’m a man, accuse me of male chauvinism, and refuse to be receptive to what I say.”

What to do? Simple, some would say: Use a pseudonym, a female pseudonym. The offending male name is purged from the article, and an acceptable author’s name is listed. Is this ghostwriting? No, it involves no writer who produces the text for a nonwriter—no Jim who writes in Charlie’s place. Yet going back to the ninth commandment, we see we are forbidden to bear false witness.

Perhaps this is a case not of ghostwriting but ghostly writing. The apparent writer is nonexistent, a ghostly form of no substance. But suppose one of the readers, a woman, now goes to a writers’ conference where she hears the author admit that when he writes attacks on the feminist movement he always uses a female pseudonym. As she sits there listening to him, how will she feel? Manipulated? Deceived? Betrayed? That writer is in the process of losing his most precious possession as a writer—his believability.

Another situation arises in magazines where the editorial staff themselves choose to write most of the articles. To them the problem is that the resulting issues sound ingroupy—ten articles by four people whose names keep popping up. As a solution they might be tempted to fake it, to use pseudonyms, to make it appear that the issue was the work of many authors instead of just a few.

A better editorial solution might be to publish some without a name, or with “name withheld.” The reader is then not deceived, because no name is given. A still better solution might be for the editor to develop a larger group of reliable writers so he does not have to rely solely on his small staff.

From the commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” we can draw some such principle as this: The reader has a right to know that if an author’s name is given, it is the author’s true name.

Honesty Demands Creativity

Someone may pose an exception: “A Russian Christian in touch with Western magazines wishes to bear witness to the true condition in his church in relation to the government. But if his name appears in the Western press, he will be imprisoned. Should he, bowing to the authority of the ninth commandment, bear true witness, state his name, and lose his freedom?”

Such a problem raises another point. Deceit in publishing is less a matter of being too creative than of not being creative enough. There are many ways by which an author can have his cake and eat it too. The editor of the magazine publishing the Russian’s article can either use “name withheld,” or perhaps invent a name and then indicate after the author’s name that this is a pseudonym for a Russian Christian whose life would be endangered if his true name were revealed.

The effect is that the reader is not misled, and the editor and writer keep their integrity and honor God by submitting to his commandment.

Creativity—more creativity—could also be the answer in the article on feminism. Suppose the author, a man, had talked the issue over with his wife, and they had come to agreement. Could they then not have written the article together? It could appear with coauthors “Betty and John Moses.” Then the feminist reader would see that both a woman and a man were involved.

“Not enough of a difference,” an objector might say. “If a man’s name is there anywhere, it will turn off women readers.” But at some point we have to do what David did—trust God to bridge the gap. David was nothing to Goliath, but God made the difference.

A Matter Of Trust

The growing tendency today toward ghost- and ghostly writing may boil down to this: a canny but this-worldly approach to life, a playing of all the angles, a cunning attempt to skirt the edge of moral forthrightness, a refusal to trust ourselves to God to get across his message against all opposition.

Perhaps we must renew our trust in the Holy Spirit, the Great Communicator, so that with Paul we may then trust ourselves “to even man’s conscience in the sight of God.”

The ghost- or ghostly writer would then protect his integrity, and stand up to be counted. The nonwriter with insights would receive the just credit for his work. The publisher would seize the opportunity to acknowledge his commitment to the truth.

And the reader would be told the truth.

We have laws governing such matters as truth in packaging and truth in advertising. The last three commandments constitute a kind of law governing truth in writing. It is time for readers to be freed from the borderline deceit (and conceit) involved in ghost- and ghostly writing. The reader has the right to know that if an author’s name is given, it is the true author’s true name.

Paul Fromer, associate professor of English at Wheaton College, Illinois, is a former editor of HIS magazine. He serves part-time as deputy editor for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Soap Suds on the Electronic Church

Christian TV, already in space via satellite, has now entered the stratosphere of soap opera. Producers soon will scour the country for writers to keep up with audience demands for “true-to-life” Christian soap, so I have prepared an outline for an episode of a series called “Out of This World.”

Mildred Drew, former short-term missionary, is trying to survive on the meager salary she receives teaching art at a small Christian college. She has been at the school only three months, but already she is torn between her attraction to handsome Tom Blue, a first-string quarterback, and to Prof. Reuben Gates, 30 years her senior and a thousand years her intellectual superior.

To further complicate Mildred’s life, Tom’s younger sister, Betsy, has run away from home to seek Tom’s help because she is pregnant. Tom persuades Mildred to take Betsy to live with her during “this difficult time.” When Pastor Cantor comes to counsel Betsy, he demands that she reveal the father of her unborn child. Mildred is tormented by her concern for Betsy’s mental stability and Pastor Cantor’s insistence that the baby must not come into the world “without a name.” Just when she decides to tell Tom she can no longer be responsible for Betsy, he comes to thank her for enabling him to keep his mind on football so the college can win the division championship. In desperation, Mildred tries to contact Betsy’s parents but learns that they are in the Virgin Islands.

Mildred seeks counsel from Professor Gates, but he confides that he has only six months to live, and asks Mildred to help him locate his estranged son, Wilbur, who is an artist in Greenwich Village. Mildred promises she will go to New York to look for Wilbur. Before she leaves, Pastor Cantor pressures her into teaching the first-grade Sunday school class for six months for Mrs. Tibbets, who is having gallbladder surgery.

Just as Mildred is going out the door to catch a train for New York, Dean Thompson phones to tell her that three students have dropped her art class. Mildred determines to pray for these students because she believes her ceramics course is vital to their mental health.

The train is pulling out of the station as Mildred runs along the platform. At the last moment, a handsome man with a patch on his eye reaches down and sweeps her up into the train. As the episode fades out, Mildred is seated on the train next to her rescuer. He pulls out a pipe and she pulls out her Bible.

EUTYCHUS XI

Not Caught—in Process

Why is intellectual tension tantamount to being “caught between two faiths? “A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths” [Aug. 6] was well done, but to say Jastrow is caught between two worlds of thought is to misunderstand the depth of what he has to say. His life is one of inquiry, his mind remarkably open to new understandings. Hardly caught, he is in process. Our evangelical bias is that a process toward the faith is progress, and that a process toward science, if certain dogmas come under question, is falling away. But if a harmony of these “two worlds” is to come about, we must be willing to allow our faith to be informed by science.

I therefore find the supplementary article, “The Two Faiths Tied Together” [Aug. 6], absolutely unnecessary and counterproductive. Why are we so uncomfortable with the intellectual tension caused by an honest agnostic? Why include a second opinion to set these tensions at ease? Who, really, is “caught”?

REV. KIRT E. ANDERSON

First Presbyterian Church

Lubbock, Tex.

The Jastrow interview should emphasize the fact that it is not possible to separate true science and Christianity. By definition both are statements of truth and reality in all areas of creation and of life, and so cannot be in conflict if both represent the truth.

Like it or not, millions do turn to science and technology as an alternative to religion. But we must seek ways to convince others that the Word of God is not only to be trusted but is so true that science cannot possibly disagree with it. In fact, it would be helpful to stop thinking of God in supernatural ways. God is the only natural One, and if anything, we are the unnatural ones. When science finally does discover God they will probably brag about it as a great achievement of their own. They will completely ignore the fact that God was surrounded by others when they found him.

R. GORDON SEELEY

Brick, N.J.

Wrongfully Named

In North American Scene [Aug. 6], you carried a news item concerning the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. We are not the GARB; our name is the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and we are a fellowship of local churches. Also, your item indicated that we were a “74,000-member denomination.” The GARBC has 1,585 fellowshipping churches with a total membership of more than 250,000 people. Our churches actually minister to more than 300,000 people, and our fellowship is growing.

PAUL N. TASSELL

General Association of Regular

Baptist Churches

Schaumburg, Ill.

Enough, Please!

Am I the only one growing weary of seeing every film reviewed in CT turned into a “Christian” message? You had a case with Chariots of Fire [Jan. 22], but to turn E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [July 16] and even Annie [Aug. 6] into films with “images of grace” and “messianic significance” is going too far. Not everything on the screen has a Christian message in it. To dig deep to find one does an injustice to the film and disturbs the credibility of truly Christian films.

DOUGLAS YEO

Baltimore, Md.

Weaknesses Betrayed

Clark Pinnock’s otherwise excellent article on presenting classical theology [“Climb One Doctrine at a Time,” Aug. 6] betrays several weaknesses. First, he seems to lump all nonevangelical theologians together in the same bag, which he labels “liberal.” This does not provide the basis for precise theological discussion.

Second, it would be well to recognize explicitly and utilize the positive contributions made by nonevangelical theologians. Unless and until conservative theologians are ready to do this, they will remain in an intellectual backwater.

RICHARD A. JOHNSON

Copperas Cove, Tex.

Issue of the Year?

Your August 6 issue gets my vote for “issue of the year” (maybe even the decade) because it goes to the heart of the prime question facing Christianity today: “How do we resolve the conflict between science and Christian theism?” The arena is marked off brilliantly by Clark Pinnock [Climb One Doctrine at a Time], with the correct solution implied in the very enlightening interviews with Robert Jastrow and Donald MacKay.

If thinking Christians could persuade the other side that there is indeed “truth” outside the purview of the scientific method, and that “truth” obtained by this method is merely a subclass of “all truth,” then a meaningful cooperative effort can be launched to tap the real mine of truth. Rather than controversy we would have mutual respect and cooperation. If today’s evangelicals are sincere and confident, not to mention faithful, they will have no fear as to where this search for “truth” will end.

R. A. HUGHES

La Habra, Calif.

A Slavering Mouthful

I am deeply appreciative of the words of prophetic warning in Charles Colson’s “The Most Fearsome Judgment” [Aug. 6]. They were timely, true, and thankfully received. They came with all the force of the apostle’s words in Romans 1, describing and denouncing the state of the Gentile world. The call for radical repentance is the only thing that will make survival possible. As the slavering jaws of the wolves are seen about our camp in the growing Saturday evening of the world, I pray the exhortation may be heeded.

W. CARL KETCHERSIDE

Saint Louis, Mo.

This article gives the impression that we Americans are one monolithic society. No distinctions are made between the church and the world: “We do precisely what we want to do, answering only to the whims of our desires.” “Our passions and lusts are insatiable …” Colson writes of the “cesspool of our own greed and lust and hate.” Does he intend that “we” and “our” be understood only in a rhetorical sense?

The prophet Elijah fled to Horeb and hid in a cave. The voice of the Lord asked, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah related the many sins of Israel: “The sons of Israel have forsaken thy covenant … and I alone am left.” Then God told him, “Yet will I leave 7,000 men in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal …”

I am not implying that Charles Colson may be a modern Elijah, but his article needs some clarification.

FRANK W. DRANEY

Albuquerque, N.M.

Summer vacations are a thing of the past and we are all once again hard at work. As I write this, weeks ahead of this issue date, we are just pulling out of the summer slump and gathering momentum for the oversize fall issues that will soon come crowding in.

I hope you will read Dean Kelley’s article, “The NCC Shares What Is on Its Mind.” We might well have titled it “What Evangelicals Need to Know about the National Council of Churches.” It will tell you some things you didn’t know about the NCC and enable you to see it from a perspective not often available in evangelical publications.

Every time we print something highly critical of an evangelical enterprise, we immediately receive an avalanche of letters to the editor. “Why air dirty linen in public?” they ask. In the five years I’ve been editor we have given our share of lusty whacks to the NCC and the WCC. We try to be fair—though it’s always easier to see the logic and beauty of our own viewpoint than of someone who stands on the opposite side. But I can’t recall anyone clearly identifying himself as an evangelical who has written to rebuke me for displaying the National Council’s dirty linen. In fact, many approving letters come when we decry the liberal theology, bad morals, and left-wing politics of the National and World Councils. Maybe that says more about us evangelicals than it does about the councils. In any case, you owe it to yourself to read what Dean Kelley has to say. It may surprise you.

Then, my good friend Wes Pippert tells how God restructured his job. I am reminded of the shock I received on a trip to Italy many years ago. Over the door of a large and very impressive building was the legend “Bank of the Holy Spirit.” Blasphemous! was my first reaction. But why? Are business and religion like oil and water that cannot mix? From an evangelical perspective, genuine religion must pervade every aspect of life. “Bank of the Holy Spirit” may be indelicate, but we dare not wall off our business life from the sanctifying graces of the Holy Spirit. Wes gives us biblical advice that has proved valid in his own experience. Genuine Christian faith should make a difference on the job.

Once again many evangelicals are thinking through their doctrine of the church. From his Wesleyan roots, former missionary Howard Snyder has developed a church program that fits the needs of the church today. He finds that a basic need is a “hunger for community.” And his solution is the very opposite of the current fascination with the superchurch or the spectator TV church.

Finally, Lutheran pastor Walter Wangerin has written a beautiful piece on the making of a minister. It really applies to every Christian. God takes us just as we are, and in his own wonderful and mysterious—but not always pleasant—way molds us into humble and effective servants of our Lord Christ.

Is bland prayer better than no prayer?

On the first day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on President Reagan’s proposed constitutional amendment on school prayer, it was sometimes hard to tell the supporters from the opponents.

Some who spoke for the legislation echoed those who spoke against it in saying that school prayer should not violate students’ consciences, that states should not get into the prayer-writing business, and that “watered-down prayer” serves no useful purpose.

Opponents, on the other hand, criticized the frequently hostile attitude of public schools toward religion. The opponents criticized what Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg.) called “ridiculous barriers” to voluntary school prayer, which actually has the Supreme Court’s blessing.

The hearings also revealed confusion and disagreement over how the President’s amendment would be implemented if passed by Congress and ratified by the states.

The amendment says: “Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer.”

While there was some discussion of constitutional theory at the hearings, most discussion focused on the religious and social aspects of school prayer. Amendment supporters—including Senators Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), and Gary Jarmin of Project Prayer, a coalition of conservative groups—argued that the existing Supreme Court decisions on school prayer restrict students’ right to the free exercise of religion.

Opponents—including representatives of the National Council of Churches, Southern Baptist Convention, Lutheran Council in the USA, and the Synagogue Council of America—argued that the proposed amendment would lead to the state establishment of religion.

Critics agreed that a White House background paper made it clear that if the President’s amendment was approved, state and local governments would be able to choose sectarian prayers or write prayers for public school use. “If groups of people are to be permitted to pray,” the paper said, “someone must have the power to determine the content of such prayers.”

Bob Dugan, head of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Washington office, asked that the amendment be changed to include language allowing religious instruction during “released time” on public school grounds and barring the state from influencing “the form or content of any prayer or religious activity.”

John Murphy, deputy supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, a million-member Catholic fraternal organization, and Ed McAteer of the Religious Roundtable, a Christian Right group, opposed the state writing of prayer. Jarmin and Rabbi Seymour Siegel, a theologian representing the conservative Jewish Forum, supported the states’ right to write or choose school prayer.

Senator Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.) asked for reaction to a prayer suggested in a new Alabama law. That prayer says: “We acknowledge you as the Creator and Supreme Judge of the world. May your justice, your truth, and your peace abound this day in the hearts of our countrymen, in the counsels of our government, in the sanctity of our homes, and in the classrooms of our schools. In the name of our Lord, Amen.”

Siegel said the phrase “in the name of our Lord” was a standard Christian formula with the words “Jesus Christ” implied even though not stated. But if that phrase were dropped, he said, he would find the prayer acceptable. Dugan and Murphy both described the prayer as “watered down” and recommended that school prayer consist of prayers offered in rotation from authentic religious traditions. “You’d have a Jewish student praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; you’d have a Roman Catholic student praying in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; you’d have an evangelical student praying to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Nathan Dershowitz, representing the Synagogue Council of America and 11 Jewish community organizations, took exception to a claim in the White House background paper that “the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments are reflections of our Judeo-Christian heritage that cannot fairly be described as instruments for the imposition of narrow sectarian dogma on school children.”

“The Ten Commandments are expressed and even numbered differently by various sects,” and the Lord’s Prayer is unacceptable to Jews because it comes from the New Testament, Dershowitz said. At the same time, he said, “Christians will be unhappy if those [state] formulations omit Jesus as the Messiah and thus violate the very essence of Christianity.”

Referring to the supporters’ argument that students objecting to a particular prayer may be excused, Dershowitz said, “The delusion of voluntariness is belied by history and recognized as a fiction by countless educators and other persons who know how children think and act. To a child in a classroom, no part of the school routine is voluntary. It cannot be made so by the cruel device of telling them that they are allowed to brand themselves as pariahs by leaving the classroom or by staying there and remaining conspicuously silent during a religious ceremony that reflects the faith of a majority in their classrooms.”

In opposing the amendment, Charles Bergstrom of the Lutheran Council attacked “indifference or antagonism” toward religion in the schools and noted that “the Supreme Court has not ruled out the study of religion in public schools.” Bergstrom called this “a positive challenge … to develop programs which acknowledge the religious and moral dimensions of life while also respecting the larger religious neutrality mandated by the Constitution.”

Jimmy Allen, representing the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “While there may be some voices arguing against the proposed amendment out of indifference to the prayer experience, I am not one of them. I argue against it out of that very concern for authentic and genuine expression of prayer. I think it is bad law which would produce either bland or bad results for genuine spiritual awakening in our land.”

Allen noted that he was free to oppose the amendment despite the Southern Baptists’ support for it at its June convention, because conventions speak only for themselves, not for all Baptists, and because the convention has opposed school prayer frequently in the past.

Dean Kelley, representing the National Council of Churches, called the amendment “unjust, unwise, and unnecessary.” Kelley also offered a biblical defense of the council’s position, citing Matthew 6:5–6, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which he urged his followers not to pray on street corners like “hypocrites,” but to “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret; and your father who sees in secret will reward you.”

“It surprises us,” he said, “to see those who claim to be Bible-believing Christians disregarding this central admonition on how Christians should pray and pressing for a constitutional amendment which would allow what the Lord of the church does not.”

The Family: Pressures And Prospects

The insecurity of modern parents has generated a plethora of books on “how to be a better parent” and “how to rear better children.” Many of these books are merely the sharing of experiences. Others are based on psychological principles to be applied in the context of the home. A few are the product of experimental research.

Teenage Rebellion (Revell) is in the latter category, and was written by a Kansas City pastor and a practicing child psychologist. Using results of a questionnaire given to 110 young people, Truman E. Dollar and Grace H. Ketterman examine the causes of teenage rebellion and then offer parents—primarily fathers—counsel on how to prevent similar problems from arising among their sons and daughters. Readers with different perspectives may disagree with the authors in some areas, but this pastor/counselor team has brought to light many areas of child rearing that parents may have overlooked or ignored. Though based on a limited population sample, Teenage Rebellion is a valuable treatise. Don Highlander’s Positive Parenting (Word) has as its subtitle, “How to love, motivate, and discipline your child to grow up happy and responsible.” Believing that positive encouragement is the key, the author stresses the importance of relationships within the family, and describes in 13 perceptive chapters how these may contribute to the development of emotionally healthy children, prepared to take on responsibility and enjoy a meaningful life. Highlander has done all parents a service, and readers will gain new insights as they come to grips with his prescription for success. Positive Parenting is a good book for church libraries.

Two brothers-in-law, Josh McDowell and Paul Lewis, teamed up to write Givers, Takers and Other Kinds of Lovers (Tyndale). Their material is well documented, and the quotations in chapter 1 are alone worth the price of the book. In the succeeding chapters, McDowell and Lewis analyze contemporary sexual mores and contrast present attitudes with true love. Singles will find the chapter on “What Makes Dating Fun?” of practical value. Throughout, there is a valuable emphasis on growth, directed both to individuals and couples. Much of the book is aimed at college students who, in the pressure of their studies and the uniqueness of their situation, need what these authors have to say.

Bruce Narramore’s Adolescence Is Not an Illness (Revell) is a popular survey of the problems peculiar to this age group. Each chapter is brief, and does little more than show parents what to expect from their children during these years. It also shows parents how to maximize their children’s potential for growth. Areas of common conflict discussed include such realities as coping with peer pressure, dating, sexuality, discipline, disinterest in spiritual things, money, and negativism. One wishes more had been written, and parents with children at this stage probably need more counsel than what is provided here, although it does lay a foundation for this period of a child’s development.

In a similar vein is Almost Grown (Harper & Row), by James R. Oraker and Char Meredith, which is more extensive and equally practical. Treating the physiological, intellectual, social, and spiritual perspectives of adolescents, the author covers the tenth through nineteenth years and convincingly integrates New Testament teaching with the problems and opportunitities of these young people. Almost Grown is heartily endorsed by James Dobson, and worthy of serious consideration.

The focus shifts from children to their parents in James O. Palmer’s The Battered Parent and How Not to Become One (Prentice-Hall). The author discusses ways a parent may avoid unpleasant altercations with a child and prevent discipline problems from developing into full-scale hassles. He hopes to eliminate situations that wreak havoc on a parent’s psyche. One section deals with preparing children for the trauma of divorce and the disintegration of the things that comprise the basis of their emotional security.

John H. Westerhoff III’s Bringing Up Children in the Christian Faith (Winston) places the responsibility for nurturing a child’s faith squarely on parents. Without pretending to have the answers, Westerhoff charts a course for parents on rearing their children from the cradle to the time they leave home. Spiritual principles are intermingled with psychological insights in a most beneficial manner. The result is a helpful, though brief, treatment.

Finally, Herbert Wagemaker focuses specifically on the nature and use of correction in Parents and Discipline (Westminster). Of specific value is his chapter on “Identity.” Here, rather than dealing with the traditional divisions of personal identity—autonomy, sexuality, internalized morality, career choice, and actualization—Wagemaker breaks new ground as he makes a plea for freedom and the creation of an atmosphere in which sons and daughters may grow to full maturity.

Books on marriage and parenting still top the list of the nation’s “best sellers,” which seems to grow longer and more specialized with each passing year. The works discussed here do make a contribution, however, and some of them touch on areas previously overlooked by others.

Reviewed by Cyril J. Barber, professor of bibliography, International School of Theology, Arrowhead Springs, California.

Remarriage As God’S Gift

Remarriage: A Healing Gift from God, by Larry Richards (Word, 1981, 133 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Charles Cerling, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Tawas City, Michigan,

Evangelical thinking about divorce has been cast in concrete since the early fifties, with the works of John Murray, Guy Duty, and Charles Ryrie forming the basic framework for that thinking. Subsequent writers have agreed with them or merely modified their basic positions. Dwight Small attempted to shatter the concrete with The Right to Remarry, but the book was so dependent on Small’s dispensational theology that it did little to change thinking.

Now Larry Richards has written a book that deserves to be described as “a watershed,” or “monumental.” The reason is that for years our thinking about divorce has been primarily exegetical. We have never applied theological concepts of sin, grace, and creation of man as a sexual being with companionship needs to our view of divorce. Richards does so, and comes to conclusions that combine sound, traditional exegesis with compassionate theology. Future discussions on a biblical view of divorce will not be held without reference to Richards.

What does he say that deserves this praise? While maintaining that God’s ideal is permanence, that God himself gives permission for divorce and remarriage without sin in only two circumstances—adultery and irremedial desertion—Richards also says that God in his grace recognizes that human sin (“hardness of heart”) will so damage a marriage relationship that the partners will find it necessary to divorce. He does not suggest this as the easy way out. It is rather a conclusion drawn by a couple after hard work on their part, or on the part of one, to save a failing marriage because of their earlier sinful actions. God’s ideal of permanence is therefore fully upheld. At the same time, however, our sinful weaknesses are highlighted against a background of God’s gracious action in permitting us to sin, then forgiving us and giving us another chance to succeed. A pivotal point in this argument says that God, who permitted divorce in the Old Testament as his gracious dealing with hardheartedness, will much more offer grace in the New Testament-era to those who through hardheartedness go through divorce.

To understand Richards, the reader must understand the two definitions of sin he uses: it is both willfully violating God’s will, and falling short of God’s standard. Thus, it is wrong willfully to flee a marriage when God has commanded permanence. However, if a couple faces divorce because they have fallen short of God’s ideal, even though this is sin, God, in his grace meets the couple, forgives their sin, and permits them to try again through remarriage.

In making this new analysis of the biblical teaching on divorce, Richards will anger many people. They will be particularly angered in that he says this understanding takes divorce from the realm of church judgment and makes it a matter of individual conscience guided by the teaching of Scripture.

I appreciate what Richards is attempting to say; however, he fails to set this into the context of church discipline. If there is one major weakness in the book, it is this. Is there a time when a church should discipline a person for divorce? If divorce and remarriage are exclusively the decision of the couple—even of just one of the individuals involved—how can the church administer discipline?

How Can We Save America?

A Christian Manifesto, by Francis A. Schaeffer (Crossway Books, 1981, 150 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Michael J. Woodruff, an attorney in Santa Barbara, California.

Although vietnam has receded from view, the subject of civil disobedience has returned in a different context after an absence of approximately a decade. In his new book, A Christian Manifesto, Francis Schaeffer addresses the Christian community about the need for Christian presence in society. He calls for action, even to the point of civil disobedience and war, to preserve freedom and the Christian heritage of America. It is a strong memorandum, which generalizes about the current posture of law and government.

Schaeffer’s treatment of Supreme Court decisions on religion will likely disappoint legal scholars. In fact, the dicta in the Torcaso v. Watkins footnote did not define secular humanism but rather implied that there could be a brand of religiously imitative humanists if their organized ritual were like that of the 1956 organization, Fellowship of Humanity, in Oakland, California. The Supreme Court’s position on a broader definition of religion to include nontheistic religions is not yet clearly stated. To date, however, it has taken into account the social reality of a changing religious climate in America.

This work will provoke questions about the implications of what Schaeffer says. For example: Should Christians literally fight for their rights and take up arms—as the Arkansas survivalists have done? Does antagonism toward “secular humanism” preclude the possibility of including the pre-Huxley humanist position within the Christian tradition following Erasmus? Is a new domestic civil war over values inevitable? Can Schaeffer’s opposition to a theocratic state be heeded or even understood by the New Right?

If people are demonstrating in the streets a year from now over political, economic, and social issues, will this book help Christians to act responsibly, in a way that will not contribute to chaos or abet anarchy? I think it is clear that the days ahead require Christians “to speak common sense apprehensibly [with] a calm, direct, fairminded tone,” as Joseph Sobran has recently written.

Francis Schaeffer’s words add strength to the view that Christians must act if society is to reflect important Christian values in law and government. These words will also help fuel the debate over the form of such action and the content and concern behind it.

More Than A Machine

Our Fragile Brains: A Christian Perspective on Brain Research, by D. Gareth Jones (IVP, 1981, 278 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Poway, California.

It is always refreshing to find a specialist in a highly complex field who is also a Christian. D. Gareth Jones, professor of anatomy and human biology at the University of Western Australia, is such a man, and his volume, Our Fragile Brains, gives a fascinating perspective on a largely unknown subject.

In tackling this huge subject, Jones covers everything from the physical structure of the brain to brain surgery, altered consciousness, and brain control. Many charts, diagrams, and interesting photographs supplement the text. These useful data are backed with well-reasoned digressions about how all this relates to the biblical view of man, freedom, dignity, and current reductionist trends. He sounds warnings concerning the consequences of viewing man as a machine, and about the effects of drugs. There is even a helpful section on transcendental meditation. The author’s mastery of the subject and love for it are very evident. The reader comes away more impressed with God’s creation and certain of the impossibility of the randomness doctrine that so permeates contemporary thought.

Although written for “nonprofessionals,” Our Fragile Brains is quite technical in places. However, this is probably preferable to having this subject trivialized. The interested reader, most likely a student or professional, will be stretched by this work while those of more casual interest will acquire some weighty apologetics and insights. Certainly, all who read it will be better able to marvel that they are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

What Price Ego?

The Man Who Could Do No Wrong, by Charles Blair (Chosen, 1981, 233 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Gordon Oosterman, a teacher at Calvin College and Western Michigan University.

There is a thesis abroad that Protestant churches in Anglo-America can be divided into two general categories. One comprises congregations wherein the ongoing words of the gospel are essentially embodied over many years while pastors, baptisms, funerals, and families come and go. The other category is made up of news-making congregations. These bodies started with a very few people under adverse circumstances, and, with a long-staying pastor who has personal charisma, have risen in meteoric fashion to attract the attention of their locale and quite possibly the national news media as well. Those who are familiar with this latter group can readily supply names from California to Ohio, from Oklahoma to Florida.

If this is a valid thesis, the congregation and main character of this book fall unquestionably into the latter classification. The congregation is Calvary Temple in Denver, and the pastor is Charles E. Blair, who, a few years ago, was found guilty in court of “17 counts of fraudulent and otherwise prohibited sale of securities.” For this he was fined $12,750 and placed on five years’ probation.

This is neither a comfortable book to read nor an easy one to evalute. It is for the most part biographical, excessively so, with rags-to-riches overtones. Yet if the reader gets to the last few chapters, or even begins reading there, the book is worth both the time and effort to ponder the tragedy. I call it tragedy, because this man was not trying to steal money or deceive others. He was and is genuinely interested in the cause of the gospel and the care of the needy. These concerns led his congregation to become involved, with a “babes-in-the-woods” mentality, in several business interprises. One of these was the Charles E. Blair Foundation. This pastor-dominated church, despite its governing boards, did not realize the implications of its involvement. The bottom line appears on page 215, where the pastor recalls his testimony in the courtroom:

“As president of these three corporations (Life Center, Calvary Temple, and the Charles E. Blair Foundation), did you know the details of what was going on?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think, as president, that you should have known?”

“Yes.”

Predictably, the secular press had a field day with the unpleasant details. To the credit of both pastor and congregation, much was done to honor obligations and work out matters with due Christian concern. The last pages are particularly incisive. Here Blair thinks aloud, without the cocksureness that characterized his earlier days when he was unduly preoccupied with his “image.” He belatedly ponders the difficulties in distinguishing God’s will from deceptive ego-trip motives. He realizes increasingly a congregation’s need for a meaningful system of checks and balances, as well as for the services of experts who can responsibly write checks and balance ledgers.

This is a good book for people serving on church boards. It will make them more aware of their responsibility to prevent the church from disgrace because of sloppy stewardship. It is also a good book for impetuous pastors bent on erecting buildings as indirect monuments to themselves. It is further good for pondering which of the two church models referred to is more in keeping with the New Testament church.

How can we love what we do not understand?

What do you read first when the newspaper arrives? I dive for the sports pages—an involuntary reflex action left over from a youth spent with visions of Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers dancing in my head. The child within me still suffers more anxiety over league standings than the Falkland Islands. Old reading habits die hard.

It is the same with Christian magazines and periodicals. When I first began reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY, two columns hooked me quickly. One was “Eutychus and His Kin,” the other, “Current Religious Thought.” I still go first to “Current Religious Thought,” for I know I will encounter some vignettes of intellectual insight to nourish my too-empty head.

We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization. We are not necessarily antiacademic, antitechnological, or antiscientific. The accent is against the intellect itself. Secular culture has embraced a kind of impressionism that threatens to turn all our brains into mush, and the evangelical world has followed suit, developing an allergy to all things intellectual.

The kind of debate waged between Luther and Erasmus or Edwards and Chubb would be unacceptable today. Their reasoning was too acute, their polemics too acerbic, their critiques too rapier-like for our modern comfort zones. Debates, if they are held today, are won by charm and a benign smile rather than by lucid argument. Satire is almost extinct, the verbal gladiators who used it having perished with the fathers. To be sure, William Buckley persists, but he is an anachronism, a refurbished antique whose style is so uncommon that some mistake him for something new.

How I pine for the days of yore when Ad Leitch responded to Tillich’s recasting of traditional categories of divine transcendence from “up-there” to “down-there” on the depth dimension of the Ground of Being. Does anyone remember Leitch’s article in the early sixties about the impact Tillich’s theology would have on church architecture? He said that instead of steeples pointing heavenward we would have to have our church services while assembled in a cavernous open pit. Our search for the Ground of Being would occur not while singing “Rise Up, O Men of God,” but rather “Go Down, Moses.”

Kierkegaard, after evaluating the state of the church in nineteenth-century Europe, wrote, “My complaint is not that this age is wicked, but that it is paltry: It lacks passion.” The Dane should be alive today. Passion we have—it is reason that is in eclipse.

Christianity is an intellectual faith. This does not mean that it flirts with intellectualism or restricts sainthood to an elite group of gnostic eggheads. But though the Word of God is not limited to intellectuals, its content is addressed to the mind. There is a primacy of the intellect in the Christian life as well as a primacy of the heart.

How can that be? To speak of the primacy of both mind and heart sounds like a neo-orthodox creed, a dabbling in dialectics. How can two distinct things have primacy at the same time without resorting to contradiction? Must there not be one ultimate primacy, or at least a primus inter pares? We can, I think, have two primacies if they hold their primacy in different relations. The primacy of the intellect is with respect to order. The primacy of the heart is with respect to importance.

We know that the disposition of the heart toward Christ is of supreme importance. If our doctrine is correct, our intellectual understanding of theology impeccable, it is to no avail if our heart is “far from him.” If the head is right and the heart is wrong, we perish. On the other hand, if the head is confused, the understanding muddled, and the doctrine fuzzy, there is still hope for us if our hearts beat with a passion for God. Better the empty head than the empty heart.

Why then bother with religious thought, or speak at all of the primacy of the mind? Precisely for the sake of the heart. How can we love what we do not understand? How can we worship an unknown God? If the character of God remains an enigma to us, all our singing, praying, and religious zeal becomes a useless passion, a beating of the air. Religion degenerates to superstition and liturgy becomes a form of magical incantation.

There is a content to the Christian faith. That content is directed, by way of order, to the mind. The New Testament calls us to be childlike, but not with respect to understanding. It is the plea of the apostolic heart that we not be ignorant in our heads.

God has made us with a harmony of heart and head, of thought and action. God the Holy Spirit superintended a Book that is to be read, whose verbal content is to be so understood and digested that our hearts may burn within us. As the ankle bone is connected to the knee bone, so there is a marvelous circuitry fashioned by God that flashes back and forth from head to heart. The more we know him the more we are able to love him. The more we love him the more we seek to know him. To be central in our hearts he must be foremost in our minds. Religious thought is the prerequisite to religious affection and obedient action.

We must have passion—indeed hearts on fire for the things of God. But that passion must resist with intensity the anti-intellectual spirit of the world. The entrance of that spirit into the house of God is like a Trojan horse, concealing within its belly the troops of the enemy who would beguile us with contentless religion, thoughtless action, and vacuous zeal—fire without light. Its only legacy will be a tomb for a forgotten diety inscribed with the epitaph, “To an Unknown God.”

Dr. Sproul is president of the Ligonier Valley Study Center, Stahlstown, Pennsylvania.