High on the moral Majority’s agenda is the reintroduction of prayers in public schools—either by congressional act or by constitutional amendment. Many American evangelicals apparently favor such an objective. I do not, and my reasons are primarily theological.

We are not here discussing the voluntary use of public educational facilities by Christian groups. That issue—well settled for university-level instruction by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 8, 1981, in Widmar v. Vincent—permits Christian students, no less than others, to meet on campus for Bible study, evangelism, prayer, and so on. The confusion with the school prayer question is plain in a recent Newsweek article (“Once Again, School Prayer,” Dec. 28, 1981), which discusses the application of the Widmar decision to high schools. We fully agree with David L. Llewellyn, a Simon Greenleaf School of Law faculty member interviewed in Newsweek, that Christian high school students should certainly be allowed to hold their club meetings on school grounds too—for no impossible gulf separates the maturity level of high school seniors from that of college freshmen!

But the school prayer issue refers not to the constitutionality of voluntary student religious meetings on campus. It refers to the permissibility of teacher or student-directed voluntary religious exercises in a classroom context. The latter activity was forbidden as unconstitutional in the well-known U. S. Supreme Court decisions Engle v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963). Mr. Justice Clark, for the majority in Schempp, wrote: “While the Free Exercise Clause [of the First Amendment] clearly prohibits the use of state action to deny the rights of free exercise to anyone, it has never meant that a majority could use the machinery of the state to practice its beliefs.” Such reasoning, however, did not convince those evangelicals who see America as essentially a “believing nation” now unable to teach prayer to its younger generation along with the three R’s. For many conservative Christians, Engel and Schempp have become prominent signposts marking America’s slide to moral and spiritual bankruptcy.

One could ask: Was America ever a Christian nation? Were the founding fathers predominantly evangelicals or essentially deists? Does the First Amendment forbid the political establishment of all religion, or did it favor one Christian denomination over against others? The Calvinist “reconstructionists” and many grassroots evangelicals would argue that our country was founded on a theistic base and that public school prayer is simply a reflection of that perspective. I, however, would vigorously maintain that our nation is, de jure and de facto, a pluralistic society, affording religious neutrality—and evangelistic possibility—to all its citizens.

Yet evangelicals need not solve this thorny legal and historical problem to decide the voluntary school prayer issue: theological analysis offers an entirely sufficient answer.

Here Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has unwittingly done us a great service. In a Senate debate on November 16, 1981, Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) asked of Helms: “Let us assume that a teacher of, say third-grade students, is a very devout Roman Catholic, and she goes into class one day and writes on the blackboard behind her desk the words of the ‘Hail Mary.’ She then announces, ‘Children, we will now have a voluntary recitation of this prayer. Those of you who do not want to recite it need not recite it; those of you who wish to, please join with me.’ Would it be the Senator’s view that the Department of Justice, in such a case, should not go into court and a court should not entertain such a case?” Helms replied: “I say to the Senator that the scenario he has concocted does not bother me at all. I am a Baptist. I would not object at all to my grandchildren being in a class where that happened, and I do not think the majority of the American people would.” Pressed as to whether he would feel the same way if he were an orthodox Jew, Helms said that he would.

We find it remarkable that Danforth’s very realistic “scenario” did not “bother” Helms “at all.” Theologically, it ought to bother evangelical, Bible-believing Christians very much indeed. The Bible insists on prayers in the name of Jesus (John 14:13–14; Col. 3:17). Thus, in the voluntary prayer atmosphere Senator Helms is promoting, Christian children would have to be instructed by their parents and their pastors not to participate whenever school prayers were biblically unjustifiable. This would, of course, apply also to “Hail Marys” since “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

To be sure, Helms is thinking of a “theistic” (probably even evangelical) majority—as the Southern Baptists dominate so many communities south of the Mason-Dixon line. But that is not America from sea to shining sea at the end of the twentieth century. In Boston, school prayers might well be Unitarian; in Salt Lake City, Mormon; and in San Francisco, directed at best to Vishnu, and at worst to Anton La Vey’s Satan. Surely such a result would be an abominable confusion of Law and Gospel.

And what about the plight of minority children in a predominantly evangelical social community? The advocates of school prayer think little of the deleterious effect of social pressure in driving them and their parents away from a free decision for Christ. Evangelism thrives on true freedom and is crushed by social conformity.

If we want prayer in school, the answer is perfectly plain: we can establish church schools to achieve that end. As Justice Clark said in Schempp: “The place of religion in our society is an exalted one, achieved through a long tradition of reliance on the home, the church, and the inviolable citadel of the individual heart and mind.”

Dr. Montgomery, a lawyer-theologian. is dean of the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, Orange, California, and director of its European program at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France.

We have a killer in our midst today. It is the way we crowd as much as we possibly can into the church week.

I sat recently in a ministerial meeting and heard a pastor describe all the activities he is laying on his people. I got exhausted just listening to him. I wondered: When does he have time with his wife? With his children? When do his people have time to relax, to enjoy themselves, to spend an evening just having someone over? When is there time for prayer, for Bible study and meditation?

I heard a Yale Divinity School professor complain not long ago that he and his fellow professors have little time for further study because of all the committee meetings they must attend. Where have I heard that before?

I have heard it in counseling with church people who have come with broken hearts, bleeding marriages, problem children, and vanished hopes. They have brutal questions about their faith: Where is God when I need him? Why doesn’t he answer me? Why isn’t my Christianity working?

Why are we so compulsively busy? As I reflected on the way pastors burden themselves and their people with too many activities, I found at least seven reasons for this killer pattern.

1. We are willing without question to buy the “party line.” Whatever comes in a manila envelope from headquarters is from God. What is announced over a loud-speaker and appears on a projection screen must be right.

2. We have lost our ability to think. We have become carbon copies of someone else’s thoughts—mainly the Big Guy on the top rung of the ecclesiastical ladder.

3. We are worshipers of fads. We are sucked into the latest church fancies just as much as our people are captured by the Madison Avenue promotions we decry from our pulpits. We are attracted by what is the latest “success,” and we spend money on tapes, paperbacks, hardbacks, plane tickets, and seminar registrations just to cuddle closer to the Big Guy.

4. We are afraid of what people will say if we protest that we have had enough. We cannot admit that our own marriages are in sad shape, our prayer lives a shambles, and our devotional lives a farce. We do not have the nerve to plead for a reduction in weekly church programming.

5. We cannot stand the pain of getting to know our own families again. We say we know them; we even preach that we do. But there are serious communication gaps between the persons under our own roofs.

6. We do not want to face the vacuum within our own souls. We are so geared to being forever on the move that we would not know what to do if we ever stopped long enough to sit down for two hours straight.

7. We are part of church politics. Who is brave enough to make waves? Who would be eccentric enough to stay home with the kids, to love his wife, to look at the sky, to write a poem—or even read one?

A couple of years ago I decided to change. To survive, I had to face up to the pain. I laid a new sheet of honesty on my soul: I decided to be truthful with God and my own inner self. I wanted my marriage to last, and even more, for it to be a quality relationship. I wanted to know my children, and to love them genuinely.

The Lord heard my cry and led us to a small congregation, whom I challenged with the new pace. I warned them against the killer in our midst. They responded enthusiastically; then others, liking what they saw at our church, decided to join. We have seen God work beautifully, teaching us his peace, the enjoyment of life, and the blossoming again of the inner gardens of the soul.

We set out to make church life as simple, yet as meaningful, as possible. Church school is still at 10, the worship service at 11; but no one drives back for an evening service. Instead, we have a Sunday noon fellowship meal, to which our families bring casseroles and salads, followed by a praise service, either in the sanctuary with Communion, or at a nearby convalescent home. Then we go home and rest with family and friends. Sunday is no longer an 18-hour day of holy exhaustion but one of peace and spiritual refreshment. We have an hour of Bible study on Wednesday evenings, followed by any necessary committee meetings, which are kept to a strict time limit. This schedule has enabled me to encourage our people to spend the other evenings doing family things.

Now, when we do see each other, we genuinely enjoy it, and God has given us a precious peace in unity. (I have a hunch that church members sow seeds of trouble when they see each other too often.) Our personal lives have been revolutionized. Now we have time to pray, to study the Bible, to play family games, and to have fun. We talk with, and listen to, one another. The joy of a simple, unpressured existence is a treasure that no amount of ecclesiastical conformity will take away.

To slay this church-activity killer, one must be ready to deal with guilt. It took me about six months to drain out all that clung to my soul as I changed my lifestyle: How could I sit in a coffee shop for a half-hour with my wife while the world was going to hell? How could I spend time wrestling with my little boy, playing with my three-year-old daughter? When I sat down to read a Dickinson poem, my brain went into spasm.

Neither was I prepared for the suspicion and disbelief that greeted me when I voiced my new-found freedom to my clerical colleagues. They responded tensely, not with congratulations, for now they were the ones being confronted. Could they take the chance of falling in love with their spouses anew? Could they learn to talk with their children? Could they rearrange their priorities to spend an hour or two a week with a gripping book?

Personally, I am over that. I would love to talk with you about it. If you ever come my way, I’ll take time to listen and pray. Maybe you’ll stay long enough to smell our roses. For too long I saw them without seeing them. Now I see them and know why.

Mr. Swank is pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Walpole, Massachusetts.

Faculty and students at a small midwestern college were once subjected to a somewhat anarchical display of art criticism. THIS IS NOT ART was rubberstamped on a dirty wall, a potted plant, and across the screen of the color television in the Student Center.

Walls? A potted plant? A color TV? Andy Warhol produced art from a soup can, but that was probably not what the college art critics had in mind. Could there have been a genuine hunger beneath their extraordinary actions?

“Our notion of beauty,” says Virginia Stem Owens, “has been so called into question and undermined that everyone is a little embarrassed by the word now.… Beauty is a word that has been bought out by Hallmark cards.”

Instead of beauty we have what Jacques Maritain called “sensual slush.” It serves well the “unnatural principles of the fecundity of money and the finality of the useful,” which Maritain saw as the spirit of the age.

Evangelicals need not be governed by these principles. As torchbearers for mainstream Christianity, they have a vigorous, exultant, and profound basis for artistic pursuit. “Embedded in the texture of the Bible,” writes Aiden Nichols, “is a metaphor of vital significance for the Scriptures as a whole, that of man made ‘in the image of the invisible God.’ We can hardly expect to grasp the sense and scope of this metaphor unless we have some fairly adequate notion of how art subserves the human search for meaning and truth. For these metaphorical utterances are appealing to nothing other than man’s experience of art.”

Yet, instead of a world in the process of being restored to its role of imaging God’s glory—as windows flung open to him by Christ—we are presented with the static, flat, asymbolic world of “a heap of broken images, where the Sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief and the dry stone no sound of water” (T. S. Eliot).

This fraud provokes only sporadic protest now, when there should be a lifelong raging against the dying of the light. To dissociate significant Christian vocation from painting, writing, drama, music, and poetry is to defraud both the Christian and the non-Christian of the breadth of expression God made possible in the Incarnation.

There is, moreover, a discomforting link between the representation of created things—especially in painting and the plastic arts—and idolatry. Such a connection between image making and idolatry dates back to the cradle of the Christian faith. Christianity is steeped in the Jewish mentality, which, writes James F. White, “held in tension the transcendence of God with God’s concrete involvement in the actual events of human history … even inanimate objects can gain a power to speak and yet never become identified with God themselves. Thus a false split between the material and spiritual is avoided.”

This tension between transcendence and immanence is ever in danger of being disturbed. Says Francis Shaeffer: “On Mount Sinai God simultaneously gave the Ten Commandments and commanded Moses to fashion a tabernacle in a way which would involve almost every form of representational art that men have ever known.”

There was a strenuous struggle between transcendence and immanence in the church during the Byzantian controversy (A.D. 726–843), from which came the explosive exegesis of the Pauline concept of the Christ as the Image of God. The iconoclastic crisis (the decree against images) and the victory for icons was for the Eastern Orthodox church a major effort in developing the startling implications of the Incarnation. The outcome of the controversy resulted in that church’s sanction and approval of painting and iconography. If God took a body and stood in full sight of his creation so that the apostle John could say: “We have heard … we have seen … our hands have touched.…” then the attempt to represent godlikeness in a way that can be heard, seen, and touched is claimed to be a valid endeavor. Only in being embodied is God fully expressed to us. While the orthodoxy of such views has been fiercely challenged in the West, it has not lacked supporters.

“One important way of expounding Christ as the recapitulation of mankind,” says Nichols in connection with Irenaeus’s teaching, “is to say that the Incarnation was the exhibition of the image in which man was originally made.” Irenaeus’s concept was that “Man’s original capacity for god-shapedness, his initial capability of acting as a disclosure of God, was restored to him in the person of Jesus.”

For Clement of Alexandria, the Incarnation was the “Son’s step into the range of the visible … a sensuous affair, and the senses, correspondingly are vitally operative in perceiving it.”

Many others also struggled to express themselves in regard to the Incarnation. It is hard to imagine the passion with which the church fathers defended the legitimacy of icons. They thus ensured the place of art, out of a conviction that the world, since Christ’s advent, now carried the “power of significant presence” (Saint John Damascene).

It is certain that this period of theological ferment unleashed a great flowering of art: the Latin plainsong, the luminous iconography of Byzantine and Russian orthodoxy, the roofs and spires of church architecture.

The theological waters navigated by the church should not be ignored. To create significant form and meaningful shape is a truly Christian vocation, “so long as the thing made remains a message/icon pointing beyond itself, transparent to the power of life itself in creation,” writes Jay C. Rochelle.

While such a view may be regarded with suspicion by some evangelicals, it may cause them to rethink the unwisdom of abandoning art as belonging to a secular culture. Only God’s revelation in Christ gives us the image, example, and cornerstone for art.

And dissatisfied sophomores can find encouragement in their efforts to stamp out the fake and demand the real.

Mr. Abraham recently completed graduate study in communications at Wheaton College (Ill.) and has returned to his native Bahrain where he was a schoolteacher.

Cinema

REDS

Screenplay by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffith; directed by Warren Beatty.

How much do you want to know about John Reed? Warren Beatty’s Reds is an ambitious attempt to chronicle this prototype American radical journalist, backdropped by the social foment surrounding the Russian Revolution.

Reed authored the famous Ten Days that Shook the World, a worshipful account of the Russian Revolution. Beatty, who does everything in this movie but sell popcorn, miscasts himself as Reed and sometimes appears to have wandered in off the set of Shampoo. Likewise, his dialogue focuses not only on the real injustices of the time, but drags in the dreary demonology of the seventies.

Diane Keaton faces similar problems as Reed’s wife, Louise Bryant (who later married the first U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R.). Her mannerisms are of Woody Allen’s New York, not John Reed’s. It is not her fault that her lines interpolate a collection of current feminist cant.

The documentary-style “witnesses” who periodically testify remain confusingly unidentified. There is no repartee and we are never sure to what they are witnessing. Reed’s heroism? Naïvete?

As a period piece, Reds is a mixed bag, alternately blurring and informing; the costumes and settings are faithful and beautifully photographed. One strike-breaking villain even wears a black hat. When not oppressing the poor, the Christians of the day apparently spent a lot of time persecuting people like Reed and Bryant. Reds succeeds as a romance. The portrayal of love as something stronger than dogmatic politics is the picture’s strong suit.

The specter of millionaire actors spending millions to film someone who eschewed private property is certainly entertaining. Along with all the Oscars, they will, no doubt, recoup their investment with some to spare. But is that a crack in the Kremlin wall from Reed rolling over in his grave? Perhaps in 50 years a film will be made about Reed’s journalistic descendants who adulated the Soviet regime when it had hardened into a boring, brutal tyranny. Will they call it Pinks?

Reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer in Poway, California.

A study in missionary / national politics

They did it against incredible odds. The 14 students who will graduate from the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology (BEST) on June 27 are the first fruits of a heroic effort to produce graduate-level theological education on the African continent. That effort has been dogged by a running crisis that has tested to the limit everyone connected with the fledgling school, located in the Central African Republic. It made the school’s first five years a revealing case study in missionary-African relationships.

Every one of the 14 graduates will be immediately thrust into ministries with considerable responsibility. They will not have to go through the reverse culture shock that has often plagued African seminary graduates who have returned after years of study in Europe or North America. And even though they have not paid the exorbitant costs of training abroad, most observers believe the education they have received is on a par with what they could obtain overseas and much better tailored to their needs.

It is not that there are no theological schools at the college level in Africa. There are a score of schools—some started by missionaries in the last century—but they have drifted into liberal teaching and are tied to the World Council of Churches. There are also departments of religion at many universities, but most of these deal with Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions. Evangelical churches have long refused to send their students to these schools.

This evangelical vacuum was the driving concern of the late Byang Kato, the Nigerian first general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (AEAM). The need was most urgent in French-speaking Africa.

Kato led the AEAM in the mid-1970s to sponsor a seminary through its theological commission. It settled on Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, as the location because it has a significant evangelical community, the fruit of the work of the Grace Brethren churches. Another positive factor is its reasonably central location between the two major population clusters of French-speaking Africa: West Africa and Zaire. Also, the country’s mercurial ruler at the time, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, in one of his magnanimous gestures, donated a prize property for the school.

Control of the school was vested in a 40-member general assembly, some of whom formed a board of governors. The aim of involving all sectors of French Africa was commendable, but the results, in light of difficult and expensive travel and communications in the region, were unwieldly.

The school opened in October 1977 in the two existing buildings on the property. Its faculty consisted of three missionaries—all Americans with doctoral degrees: Paul White from Reunion with Africa Evangelical Fellowship, Donald Hocking of the Grace Brethren in the Central African Republic, and Floyd Shank from Zaire with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. There were 16 students.

Conflicts emerged immediately between White and Hocking. The presumed asset of operating the school in an evangelical milieu became a liability as Hocking attempted to mold the school in the highly separatist image of the Grace Brethren and sought to insert the pastors of the Brethren churches into school affairs. White, with the support of most of the students, fought for a broader character for the school.

In March 1978, Hocking resigned (and Shank withdrew at the end of the school year). The AEAM national unit in the Central African Republic, influenced by the Grace Brethren, began a campaign to have White expelled and Hocking reinstated.

That fall 17 new students joined the original 16. Of the 33 students, 21 were married. White began singlehandedly to teach the school (with occasional help from visiting professors), and continued with construction of 10 duplexes.

Meanwhile, White was told to leave the school by both the seminary’s general assembly chairman, Isaak Zakoué, and the AEAM chairman. But the general assembly, though inclined to expel White, could not muster a quorum to do so. For the students’ sake, White refused to leave without a replacement. That led the Central African Republic unit of AEAM to withdraw from full membership, and Zakoué to resign the general assembly chair.

He was succeeded as chairman by Dirinda Marini-Bodho, an evangelical official in the Church of Christ in Zaire, the government-induced merger of all Protestant bodies. And that, in retrospect, marked the turning point. Marini told White to go ahead and direct the school until September 1981. But he also brought in the first African professor from Zaire. Two more Zairian professors—both Ph.D.’s—have been added in the two succeeding years.

One reason for the difficulty in shifting from missionary to African staff is that missionaries are usually loaned by their societies, whereas African professors add directly to school expenses.

During all this turmoil, the seminary has continued to grow. Its current 52 students come from the Central African Republic, Zaire, Burundi, Chad, Guinea, Rwanda, and Angola. Caring for them includes providing for the needs of 37 wives and more than 100 children.

A three-story administrative and classroom building has been erected and paid for. David Dacko, president of the Central African Republic, donated a second property plot adjacent to the existing one, and plans call for expansion to accommodate 120 students and their families. White has made fund-raising trips to Europe and North America every year.

Last September, the seminary’s general assembly dealt with the impasse by appointing one of the Zairian professors, Nyanza Paluku-Rubinga as dean, and designating Paul White as academic secretary. It then streamlined the general assembly, reducing its members from 40 to 25 (retaining only 5 missionaries), and appointing a Chadian Brethren pastor as chairman. The restructured board of governors excludes White; its only missionary member is an American Baptist who is black.

Paluku credits White with holding the school together until an African team was assembled and with giving him room now in which to take charge.

Resolution of the administrative impasse has cleared the air. The best indication of this is that churches of West Africa and Madagascar, which had withheld students from the school while it was under a cloud, are now submitting applications.

Accreditation by a recently formed evangelical accrediting association, which was held up during the standoff, should now be granted in due course.

The Grace Brethren, meanwhile, launched their own school in the country—Brethren Biblical Seminary, at Bata—over mild objections from the country’s educational authorities about duplication. Hocking is on the staff. There are six students. A faction in the Grace Brethren churches, largely lay, has submitted a petition that calls for closing the seminary, sending its students to the Bangui Seminary, recalling Hocking, and rejoining the AEAM.

Perhaps the overriding conclusion that may be drawn from the seminary’s drawn-out birth pangs is that while many churches formed by missionaries are determined to remain evangelical, they are also determined to assert their African character. Those who fail to recognize this are engaging in a losing rear-guard action.

World Scene

Nicaraguan authorities backed down when the Roman Catholic church dug in its heels last month. The Sandinists had canceled the usual pre-Easter vacation because of the “imminent threat of invasion” from the United States, and ordered the Catholic church to move its traditional morning Good Friday mass to late afternoon to keep people at their jobs. After the Catholic hierarchy refused, the authorities reversed their order. Catholics have also protested Nicaragua’s treatment of its Miskito Indians in the northeast sector of the country. By contrast, Protestants, through the evangelical development agency CEPAD, have echoed the Sandinist line, issuing a statement that expresses “sadness” at the “war-like, intolerant, and arrogant attitudes of the government of the United States towards Nicaragua.”

The East German government has banned the wearing of a patch with the words “swords into plowshares” (Micah 4:3). It said the patch is misused by youth supporters of a peace movement in East Germany “to express a way of thinking hostile to the state and to participate in an illegal political movement.” The quotation is accompanied by a picture of the monument Russia gave to the United Nations. The monuments depicts a man with a raised hammer about to beat a sword.

German evangelicals awoke to their strength in the media during the first Evangelical Media Congress, held during March in Boblingen, West Germany. The Association of Evangelical Communicators, the congress organizers, arrived at these statistics: its 15 publishers account for more than half the Protestant books on the West German market; its radio missions have more than one million listeners in German-speaking areas; and its magazines have an annual circulation of 30 million copies.

Portugal’s national broadcasting system discriminates against Protestants. That is the charge made by two ecumenical organizations, the Portuguese Council of Churches and the Europe Region of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). They objected to a bill that seeks a TV channel for exclusive Roman Catholic use. A WACC statement supported the “minority churches in their struggle for recognition and equal rights and for free and equal access to the media” in Portugal. About 60,000 of Portugal’s 10 million people are Protestant; the rest are Catholic.

Preaching The End Times In New York City

Good crowds at a prophecy conference.

Sixteen prominent fundamentalist preachers and teachers gathered at the end of March in New York City to affirm that we are living in the end times. It was one of the largest prophetic conferences in the area in at least two decades. There was little new about what they said or how they said it, but they were surprised by how New Yorkers received it.

The city’s subways were not filled with hymn singing, but churches were well filled night after night. Noontime meetings in lower Manhattan’s John Street Methodist Church drew 150 people a day from among the 700,000 people who work in the financial district’s offices.

That was “very good attendance for a 1:00 P.M. service,” said Warren Danskin, pastor of the 60-member church. Its heritage dates back to the time of the revivals ignited in England and America under the preaching of John Wesley, George Whitefield, and others during the Great Awakening.

The event, the International Prophetic Congress, was sponsored by Jack Wyrtzen’s Word of Life Bible Institute. It ran nine days, with the speakers rotating round-robin style among 13 churches, Northeastern Bible College, and Nyack College.

It began in the Calvary Baptist Church, the Manhattan stronghold of evangelicalism, and continued in noontime and evening meetings in the Bronx, lower Manhattan, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey.

From the beginning it was clear that the timetable of prophetic events was going to be presented with fundamentalistic certainty.

“I happen to be pre-trib, pre-mil. If you disagree, that’s all wrong, and we’ll forgive you for that and other sins,” said evangelist Wendall Calder with a smile.

“The Rapture could occur tonight,” he went on. “Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if the Lord came and broke up this congress?” In loud, fast-paced sentences, pounding the pulpit and his Bible, he summarized the country’s moral ills and urged listeners to prepare for the Rapture.

J. Dwight Pentecost, from Dallas Theological Seminary, outlined the scriptural basis for belief in the pre-tribulation Rapture. Charles W. Anderson, founder of Northeastern Bible College, described the horrors of the Tribulation. “Always orient yourself with this,” he said. “Terrible persecution is about to break on mankind,” but the Rapture will save the faithful.

John F. Walvoord, president of Dallas Theological Seminary, then sketched the different views of millenialism and explained why the pre-tribulation premillenial position is the proper one to hold. “We are now 30 minutes away from atomic missiles,” he said. “In one week, 50 percent of our population would die. Many are therefore comforted that the Rapture will come before these things. If it were not for this hope, I would be a pessimistic person. The world is headed for trouble,” Walvoord stated.

After four messages and three invitations, the grand old man of Southern Baptist preachers, 81-year-old Vance Havner, took the theme of “What shall we do about it all?”

He has no organization behind him, no secretary, and has followed advice handed down to him years ago: “Dirt, debt and the devil are alike. Stay away from all of them.”

Other speakers were Jack Murray, Paul Bauman, Marvin Rosenthal, Louis Goldberg, Charles C. Ryrie, Renald Showers, B. Sam Hart, Lehman Strauss, Donald R. Hubbard, Joe Jordan, and David Wyrtzen.

Many of them regularly speak at prophetic conferences around the country, but rarely at the same place at the same time. Some of them took a few hours to compare notes at a breakfast near the end of the congress.

At one meeting “8–10 young people sat on the front rows writing furiously,” said Goldberg. “I’ve never seen response like this in this area. It’s phenomenal to me.”

Calder, who had never before preached in New York City, said, “People asked me after I had preached for an hour, ‘Why did you quit?’ You sense it during preaching—tenderness and responsiveness in the people.”

Throughout the week, Murray said, the “thrust has not been on escapism but on how we live in the light of this hour.”

The death of Chester Bitterman, the Wycliffe Bible translator who was murdered in Bogota, Colombia, last year, has shaken the “provincialism in American fundamentalism,” he said. “The big, big thing this time is holy living in the light of his coming.

“Who am I to say we will not be in deep, deep water before the Rapture.”

EDMUND K. GRAVELY, JR.

Billy Graham’s Moscow preaching mission will show this.

Evangelist Billy Graham’s visit next week to a religious conference in the Soviet Union and to two Moscow churches is unprecedented. But beyond that, the news puzzled many North American Christians who tend to assume that the only churches existing in the Communist-controlled USSR must meet secretly.

The reality is that since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union has struggled in vain to liberate itself from the influence of Christianity. John Lawrence, an authority on the Soviet Union, has declared that “the number of believing Christians is now far higher than the number of believing Marxists, and many secret Christians are found in the ranks of the Communist party.” Walter Sawatsky, a scholarly Protestant observer of the Soviet church situation, estimates that weekly church attendance in the USSR is “at least four to five times higher than in Great Britain—that is, at least 20 percent of the Soviet population remains actively Christian.”

It is estimated that half of the 268 million Soviet citizens are nonreligious. But 11 percent are Muslim; Jews and Buddhists account for another 2 percent; and a full 100 million, or about 37 percent, are Christian. Of these, slightly more than 70 million are aligned with the Russian Orthodox church. The balance consists of Armenian Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants.

The Communist authorities therefore take an if-you-can’t-lick-’em-join-’em approach, seeking to manipulate and restrict the church rather than to stamp it out. Protestant response to this policy has divided the Protestant churches into two major camps: those registered with the authorities and belonging to the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, and those affiliated with the church organization that has refused to register and is therefore illegal and overtly persecuted. This group is called the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. The registered body will have delegates at the conference Graham is attending; the unregistered body neither could nor would.

Because of its historic and numerical dominance, the Russian Orthodox church is the main avenue through which the Council on Religious Affairs for the Central Committee of the Communist party seeks to regulate believers.

State control of the Orthodox church actually preceded the revolution in 1917. Peter the Great in 1721 managed to convert the church administration into a subdepartment of the state.

Paul D. Anderson, editor emeritus of Religion in Communist Dominated Areas (RCDA), last year wrote in that journal: “It is plain that the churches [except the unregistered churches] in the USSR are now working parts of the Soviet system, joining with all the other civil organizations in defending the socialist system. Through their delegates to international church conferences they have supported Soviet policies and resisted efforts of foreign churches to point out evidence of lack of freedom to carry on church work within internationally recognized norms of principle and practice, or to raise a Christian voice in national affairs.” He points out that their cooperation nets believers very little in return. “We know of no Christian having been elected or appointed to a local or national soviet [administrative council], although the patriarch is invited to formal state receptions on great public holidays.”

Government manipulation of the Russian Orthodox church is best documented by a 1975 secret “Report on the Russian Orthodox Church,” written by a deputy chairman of the Council on Religious Affairs for the Central Committee of the Communist party. A copy of it was smuggled to the West and recently translated into English by RCDA.

The report confirms that the agenda of synod deliberations and appointment of its members are cleared in advance with the council. It lists the ruling bishops under three categories: (1) those who are loyal, abide by the regulations, and do not attempt to expand the role of religion, (2) the loyal and law abiding who nevertheless attempt to activate the church and increase its role, and (3) those who attempt to evade the laws on cults (meaning religions).

This is the second time that the Russian Orthodox church has sponsored an interreligious conference. (The first, in 1977, dealt with broader aspects of disarmament.) The unwieldy official title that has emerged is “Religious Workers for Saving the Sacred Gift of Life from a Nuclear Catastrophe.”

Those invited—including about 25 from the United States—were invited as individuals and not as official representatives of denominations or other organizations. The invitation response form allowed each person to choose whether he wished to attend as a delegate or as an observer. Attending as an observer—as Billy Graham elected to do—maintains a kind of neutrality about the conference and a distance from its outcome. But while observers may speak out in the conference, only delegates may register official votes, allowing them formally to express disfavor as well as approval of an item in a conference document.

The conference is expected to draft a letter to the religious communities, a letter to governments, and a letter to the second special session of the United Nations. It may also appoint a delegation to the UN session, which is to deal with disarmament issues.

Given the Russian Orthodox sponsorship of the conference (and therefore indirect Soviet involvement), why would Western religious figures want to participate?

Bruce Rigdon, professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, explained in an interview why he is going as a delegate:

“Participation in that conference does not mean on anybody’s part approval of everything that has to do with church-state relations or policies in the Soviet Union or anywhere else in Eastern Europe. It is, as I understand it, to be a gathering with one major issue in front of it, and that’s the issue of the possibility of nuclear holocaust and the necessity of nuclear disarmament.”

Rigdon said he agreed with the preparatory committee’s decision to limit the subject of the conference documents to the nuclear sphere. He said, however, that the preparatory committee had agreed that participants who wanted to talk about the rights of dissidents and other issues would be provided informal contexts in which to “come together and talk with one another to see what would happen.”

NEWS

It’s not the bastion of secular humanism that some critics claim.

To outsiders, Bible studies and prayer meetings may not be the most scintillating events crowding a U.S. congressman’s calendar, but opportunities for Christian fellowship on Capitol Hill are drawing larger crowds than ever before.

Each week, up to one-fourth of the nation’s 100 senators gather for a Wednesday morning prayer breakfast. Hundreds of congressional staff members pack out lunchtime Bible studies and evening singles’ groups. Even the Capitol Hill police have a new monthly Bible study, led by Senate chaplain Richard C. Halverson. Many groups emerge spontaneously out of shared needs and friendships, and others are initiated by evangelical groups or individuals who minister to Congress.

Close-knit covenant groups appear to be a main source of strength for elected leaders who encounter staggering pressures on the job. Congressman Don Bonker (D-Wash.) observes, “This is a tough place to walk straight. We need the reinforcement that can only come when brothers in Christ get together. Otherwise, the dynamics of this job are such that we’d stray very quickly from the path.”

Bonker lunches each Wednesday with three other members of the House of Representatives, including two Republicans and one fellow Democrat. “We open with prayer and get into the Scriptures right away,” Bonker explains. The meetings have continued for three years.

On the Senate side, similar groups have mushroomed in recent years, and attendance at the Wednesday prayer breakfasts has more than doubled. The Wednesday sessions are strictly off the record and feature one senator each week, who brings a message or shares a personal testimony. Among the regular participants are Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oreg.), William Armstrong (R-Colo.), Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) and Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.).

Monthly Senate staff prayer breakfasts draw well over 100 participants to hear speakers ranging from Charles Colson to Dallas Cowboy coach Tom Landry. Those who attend are urged to “bring a friend next time.” Wives of senators can attend a weekly Bible study organized by Dee Jepson, wife of Oregon Republican Roger Jepson. All this activity reflects that, in Senator Grassley’s words, “there are more Christians in Congress than the average citizen believes.”

Just how many committed Christians there are in Congress is a difficult question to answer. Those involved in Christian ministry on Capitol Hill estimate that roughly 25 of the 100 senators could be counted, but no one would even begin to guess at the number in the much larger House of Representatives (435 members).

Last December, Psychology Today magazine reported the surprising results of a survey of congressmen and their religious beliefs, done by psychologist Peter L. Benson. His interviewing team found that Congress as a whole is just as religious as the American public generally. Indeed, it may even be more so. That’s because 90 percent of the congressmen interviewed were men, and men tend to rank lower on spiritual matters than women. “If Congress were compared with American men only, it is likely that members would seem considerably more religious than the American public,” Benson wrote.

Benson found that of his survey sample of 80 congressmen, 95 percent believe in God, as compared with 94 percent of the public at large; 71 percent of congressmen believe Christ is divine, compared with 83 percent of the American public; 80 percent of congressmen believe Scripture is the word of God, compared with 67 percent of the public; and 30 percent of congressmen have had a born-again experience, compared with 34 percent of the public.

Benson’s study found that although most evangelicals in Congress are political conservatives, a significant minority are among the most politically liberal in Congress. Overall, the study flies in the face of strident arguments from conservative writers and preachers, who condemn Congress as a bastion of secular humanism.

Christians who are veterans of Capitol Hill see the spiritual quickening in terms of a willingness on the part of more believers to be open about their faith. Thomas R. Getman, chief legislative assistant to Senator Hatfield, spent more than 14 years on the Young Life staff before joining the Senate staff six years ago. “I feel as much in the ministry now as I did in Young Life,” he says. “The real call of God in our lives is to be loving, faithful, obedient people—not to change the world through legislation.”

As a mission field, Congress has been quietly cultivated through the years by Christians who view themselves as “facilitators” responding to needs that are brought to their attention. The most significant work has come from “the fellowship,” a low-key group that is best known for the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

Senate chaplain Halverson worked with the fellowship for 20 years before accepting his present post in 1981. He defends their total publicity blackout, saying, “The minute we start telling people how God is using us, we will violate the very principle we feel committed to.” Congressmen fear being exploited, and their concern is well founded. One man involved in the fellowship movement said he was contacted by a network television news team who wanted to send over a camera crew and tape a congressman “being born again.” The answer was a blunt “no.”

Another organization that has gained the trust and acclaim of wary congressmen is Christian Embassy, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. After a shaky start in 1976, when Campus Crusade director Bill Bright was linked with right-wing political efforts, embassy staffers have been more circumspect in their work and are solidly nonpartisan.

Embassy director Rodney “Swede” Anderson, 43, explained that the embassy ministers to other branches of government, the military, and the diplomatic community, as well as to Congress. Their emphasis is on low-pressure evangelism and follow-up. “No one asks us for advice on political matters,” Anderson says, and if someone did, he would not give it anyway. “I don’t even know how my own staff voted in 1980.”

Like other Campus Crusade missionaries, embassy staff members raise their own support. Anderson coordinates his efforts closely with fellowship people and shares their disdain for publicity. He finds there is “a temptation to pride when ministering among influential people. The Lord does not share his glory. Being here has heightened my sensitivity to that.”

James E. “Johnny” Johnson, active with the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship, hosts a Saturday morning prayer time for congressmen each month. Johnson explains, “We do this because congressmen perhaps would not go to a church and get up and say ‘I need some prayer.’ But in their own environment, they will come up and ask for prayer, and they will pray for others.”

Somewhat more controversial are occasional extravaganzas where big names and big money combine in an evangelistic effort. The most recent example was a Kennedy Center performance of Someone Special, a musical about the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Starring Pat Boone and Carol Lawrence, the show attracted an overflow crowd from Washington’s upper crust. The next day, a perplexed Washington Post reported, “It was not a fund raiser, premiere, or apparent promotion. For anyone. Unless you count Jesus Christ.”

The program’s coordinator, Robert Pittenger, is a transplanted Texan who has been spreading the gospel in the capital for just over a year. Some congressmen express uneasiness over the political interests behind the money that supports him, coming from Colorado’s Coors family and oil billionaire Bunker Hunt of Texas, among others.

Any hint of political overtones sends congressmen running the other way, and ministries with staying power provide an escape from partisan maneuvering and manipulation. Anderson, of Christian Embassy, explains: “When a man’s heart and mind are saturated with Scripture, that affects his whole view of life. It leads men in politics down different roads.”

Hatfield, for example, recently introduced a resolution calling for a freeze on nuclear weapon production. Conservative Charles Grassley has supported military expenditures, fully aware that some fellow Christians will fault him for it. Both men base their positions on Christian stewardship.

For Don Bonker, arriving at a position on any given issue does not mean it is the only “Christian” answer. Rather than praying for direction on specific votes, Bonker says he prays for overall guidance. “It’s like being on an athletic team. You don’t pray to win, but to honor God as you play.”

At a seminar for evangelical students in 1980, Bonker said, “As politicians we are elected to solve society’s problems, but as Christians we acknowledge that we cannot solve even our own problems without God’s help. And so we try to apply our faith in ways that are meaningful, try to share and uphold one another in a way that will keep our priorities straight and strengthen our own personal commitment.”

Finding courage to do the right thing from day to day is the greatest single need of men and women in Congress, says Swede Anderson. Getting Christians elected is only the beginning. Once they are in office, understanding and prayer support from the grassroots become even more critical.

Richard Halverson: Prayer Warrior In The U.S. Senate

The issue of forced busing to achieve racial integration brought on a nerve-racking, eight-month filibuster in the U.S. Senate, marked by flaring tempers and damaging accusations toward the end. On the day the filibuster collapsed in compromise, Senate chaplain Richard C. Halverson opened the session with prayer as usual, cognizant of the sparks flying between liberals and conservatives.

“Father in heaven, when pressure becomes heavy between those who hold opposing views, we are less inclined to concentrate on issues and more inclined to think personally.…

“Keep us mindful that we debate a point, not because we are stubborn and inflexible, but because we are strongly convinced that our position is the best.… Never allow us to feel that love is unbecoming the dignity and decorum of this powerful body. Gracious, loving Lord, help us to conduct all our business on this floor, as well as in our offices and homes, in love.”

Three hours later, according to one observer, the acrimony subsided for good, and opposing senators were voicing mutual support and respect. “Halverson’s prayer described the mood perfectly. God was faithful to that prayer,” a Senate staff aide said.

When people ask the white-haired chaplain what he does all day, the answer comes easily. “The most important thing I do is pray. It would be accurate to say I’m preoccupied with it. I’m beginning to learn what Paul meant when he said ‘pray without ceasing.’ ”

Halverson regards his opening prayers as seriously now as he did his sermons at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, where he served as pastor for 22 years.

His preoccupation with prayer, however, has brought him a lion’s share of criticism. Columnists in the press have accused him of doing nothing, and he continues to be harassed by a suit against him by atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair. The suit charges that public money should not be spent for a chaplain.

Christians on Capitol Hill—whether they guard the doors or chair a committee—know Halverson and call his pastoral presence an inspiration. Once, a policeman stopped him in the hall and asked if he would pray for the officer’s ailing mother. Halverson paused to pray on the spot, to the policeman’s amazement.

The chaplain leaves his door open for individual counseling, conducts a monthly Bible study for Capitol Hill police, and has responded to a request from staff members by starting a popular topical study during Friday lunch hours.

“I feel God has called me to equip the laity. The cutting edge of the body of Christ is where the laity is between Sundays,” he says. Halverson senses an increased momentum in the work of the Holy Spirit in Congress, and gives two reasons for it. First, groups like Campus Crusade’s Christian Embassy are making themselves available for ministry and are “more agressive, in a good sense, than they have been in the past.” Also, he sees “a growing sense of futility, a growing awareness of the bankruptcy of humanism, a growing sense of inadequacy” pervading the outlooks of even the most self-assured people in power.

Although he is relatively new to his Senate job, he has maintained close contact with senators and representatives throughout the past two decades. But there is no trace of the hard-boiled cynicism that can develop among people who watch the scandals come and go.

Instead, he says with conviction, “Senators are thoughtful, intelligent, and have a high sense of accountability to the nation and the people. The image at the grassroots is almost the opposite of what it is like in reality. You’re not going to find a higher level of integrity and purpose than you find here.”

North American Scene

Responding to a class action suit filed by former staff members against Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (CT, April 23, p. 33), the chairman of the board, G. A. Hemwall, issued a call to prayer. He said in a special newsletter: “We are confident that the truth will be made known and that the allegations of mismanagement, etc., will not be upheld. Moreover, we have been advised that the complaints are substantially without merit. However, we care about the individuals involved and would ask you to pray with us that deeper needs would be understood and met.” Meanwhile, the institute’s seminars continued on schedule. Seven basic seminars and 11 seminars for pastors were held in March.

Biology graduates from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College can now be certified as teachers in Virginia public schools. In what the Washington Post hailed as a “victory for biblical creationism,” the Virginia Board of Education decided Liberty Baptist College graduates may teach biology in state high schools even though they are trained in scientific creationism. Only one person on the nine-member board voted against the accreditation. A professor of biology at James Madison University (Harrisburg), William Jones, compared creationism to voodoo before casting his negative vote. But other board members approved the program because it will teach students evolutionary theory as well as creationism.

Meanwhile, Falwell opened the doors to his church’s family center, a facility to help the “truly needy.” Selected food and used clothing are provided at a grocery sponsored by the Thomas Road Baptist Church. Applicants are visited by assistant pastors to determine if they really need the assistance. Unemployment in the Lynchburg area is currently at a high 7 percent. Falwell believes the family center will answer President Reagan’s call for voluntaryism and serve as a model to other fundamentalist churches. Too long, the evangelist said, that has been left to liberal religionists.

An Indian guru’s planned Oregon city may lose a third of its population before the gates are opened. Seventy-nine followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh were ordered by immigration authorities to leave the country. Extensions of their tourist visas were denied because they did not prove they are tourists or that they plan to give up their homes abroad (most are Europeans). Rajneesh has 300 followers (counting the 79) in Oregon on 64,000 acres near Antelope. He hopes to incorporate the community and call it Rajneeshpuram (CT, April 23).

A group of Chicago Catholics wants the Vatican to order John Cardinal Cody to testify before a federal grand jury. The grand jury has been investigating allegations that the cardinal mismanaged up to $1 million in church funds to the benefit of his step-cousin. The cardinal has refused to testify, saying he is “answerable to Rome and to God.” Concerned Catholics of Chicago wrote Vatican officials, calling on them to “hold Cardinal Cody to that accountability.” Some Chicago Catholics are withholding financial support of the church due to the controversy, but Concerned Catholics believes that harms the local church. That, however, “does not diminish the outrage for the arrogance [of Cody] that makes many consider such means of expression,” they said.

Years of determination are showing fruit.

In every mainline Protestant denomination that has drifted from orthodoxy, there is a group of conservatives who refuse to leave, hoping somehow to bump their church off its liberal tracks, and reroute it back toward its historic roots.

The successes of these “renewalists” have certainly not been dramatic, nor even widely noticed, but years of quiet determination are finally showing fruit. Recently, 18 leaders of renewal movements in seven mainline denomninations gathered in Pittsburgh to assay their progress. Reports were mixed, but the leaders agreed that they are encouraged enough to stand their ground, anticipating that the flag of orthodoxy will yet be planted on surprising territory. Although the group has met annually five times before, this time they felt confident enough to adopt a name: the Fellowship of Renewal Group Leaders.

Renewal leaders in the northern and southern Presbyterian denominations, United Church of Christ, Church of the Brethren, and Lutheran, Methodist, and Roman Catholic churches attended the Pittsburgh meeting. Their featured speaker was Edmund Robb, the chairman of fire eyebrow-raising Institute on Religion and Democracy (CT, Feb. 19, p. 34) and former executive of the Good News movement, the United Methodist renewal engine.

Generally encouraged, Robb said after the conference that bad news is mixed with the good. He is pleased that the evangelical Asbury Theological Seminary now channels more pastors into United Methodist pulpits than any other Methodist seminary.

In a recent article on the surging growth of evangelicalism at the expense of mainline churches, the New York Times pointed out that the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary sends many of its graduates into the American Baptist and United Presbyterian churches in California. As a result, California’s Presbyterian churches are heavily weighted with evangelical ministers. The article said the same thing is happening in New England with the graduates of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Robb believes that the lay witness movement, which ignited in the United Methodist church, then spread to other denominations, has boosted renewal. Highly significant, he said, is the charismatic movement, since it penetrates not only every Protestant denomination but also the Roman Catholic communion. “Parachurch groups are making great impact,” Robb said, and many of the most effective youth parachurch groups are evangelical. Those like Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade are drawing collegians to the faith and then sending them to seminaries with “Bibles in their hands and Christ in their hearts,” Robb observes.

Because of such factors, seminary students are more traditionalist than those of 10 or 20 years ago, he said. The old seminaries—Princeton, Harvard, and others—are not ignorant of the shift. Harvard Divinity School hopes to establish a chair in evangelical studies, perhaps to be named after Billy Graham.

Gordon-Conwell professor Richard Lovelace has been at the forefront of the renewal movement, especially in the United Presbyterian church. Lovelace is now forming the Foundation for Church Renewal. He hopes it will fuel renewal in such areas as Christian art, mass media, and social concern, both inside and outside the historic denominations. Among the notables who have agreed to serve on the board of the new foundation are Anglican theologian J. I. Packer, social activist Ron Sider, and Thomas Howard, a writer and teacher concerned for vigorous artistic expression in the church.

Whatever the gains, the renewal leaders have been in the game too long to engage in easy triumphalism. Donald Bloesch, a Presbyterian evangelical teaching at Dubuque (Iowa) Theological Seminary, thinks the “liberal establishment will be fighting back. As the moderate [evangelical] voice gets stronger, I predict even more tension.”

Those gathered at Pittsburgh listed several “highly urgent” concerns, including abortion, approval of homosexuality, radical feminism, and attempts to prohibit evangelizing of Jews. “The homosexual issue is certainly not dead,” said J. Robert Campbell of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. United Methodists agreed and cited the example of a known practicing homosexual whose ministry was approved by a Denver bishop despite strenuous opposition.

The renewal leaders at Pittsburgh were impressed by the vitality of one group in particular: the United Church of Christ’s People for Biblical Witness (PBW). Working in a denomination regarded as one of the nation’s most liberal, PBW is drawing increasing respect after five years of existence. Most recently the group sounded the alarm about a proposed “restatement” of the UCC’S 1959 statement of faith.

The revision fails to affirm the Holy Trinity and implies the Unitarian heresy,” PBW’S board charged. Barbara Weller, president of PBW, said, “Laity, theologians—all think the proposed statement is horrendous. We hope it will die a fast, quiet death.”

A “fast, quiet death” is, of course, the exact opposite of what is hoped for the renewal movements. Evangelicals, Robb insists, “must stay in” the mainline denominations. Too often, he fears, traditionalists retreat to “spiritual bomb shelters” just as they are about to win the battle. He believes they should not give up the fight.

Carl Henry On The Failure Of Liberal Arts Education

Our century has witnessed “the greatest overturn of ideas and ideals in the history of human thought,” according to evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry. Henry made this appraisal of the modern university in a banquet address at Toccoa Falls (Ga.) College, during the twenty-ninth annual southeastern regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS).

As this century began, Henry said, most liberal arts educators made fundamental assumptions. Among them: that truth is absolute and attainable, that man cannot arrive at utopia without a change in his own nature, and that Scripture’s God provides an ultimate reference point for thinking about personal and social values and coherence in the universe. A radical shift of presuppositions began about 1925 and has since turned all these assumptions on their heads.

Instead of looking to God to underlie rational thought and morality, modern liberal arts educators have created their own pantheon of gods, Henry said. Today “shared values,” rather than the deity, define social ethics and determine personal standards. Rather than utilizing divine law to transform the social order, the naturalistic mindset looks to processes of democratization or socialization. Man—not God—now defines “truth” and “goodness.” The universe is reduced to impersonal processes.

Henry described naturalism’s new presuppositions under four headings, explaining how each reflects a shift from God-centered to man-centered thinking. The modern university, he said, assumes the comprehensive contingency of everything, including God; the total temporality of all things; the radical relativity of all human thought and life; and the absolute autonomy of man.

Not all educators hold these premises, Henry acknowledged, and some who do might be unaware of them. Still the assumptions permeate university thought to such an extent that students generally believe true modernity depends on rejecting revealed and absolute truth and asserting “creative selfhood” in its place.

Naturalism attracts students by promising to meet their needs for personal worth, security, and survival. But its promises are all false, Henry said, because naturalism lacks any solid basis for either man’s permanence or his universal worth. Henry agreed that humanism also offers a total social agenda, but charged that it builds on ideas borrowed from the theism it denies.

Because the naturalist also receives God’s natural revelation in creation, and because he is made in God’s image, he makes daily choices and value judgments inconsistent with humanistic fundamentals. Naturalism is therefore thinkable, Henry concluded, but not livable. As a result, even nonevangelicals within the intellectual system are asking basic questions today for which their philosophy gives no answers.

Henry urged evangelicals to stand together on undisputed biblical truth affecting a neopagan culture, and to avoid fragmenting over side issues in the face of united opposition. For example, they should insist on the value of human life, and unite in affirming creation.

EDWARD FUDGE

White House Figure To Run Lay Training Center In North Carolina

Columbia Bible College (South Carolina) has hired Harry Dent, a former White House adviser in the Nixon administration, to be director of a Christian lay training center to be built on 1,500 acres of mountain land near Asheville, North Carolina. The land was donated by Billy Graham.

Dent, 52, will begin developing the center upon his graduation from Columbia’s graduate school next month. He gave up his law practice last fall for a year of study, intending to go into some aspect of Christian ministry.

Dent was working for Nixon in the White House during the Watergate affair. He said in an interview with the Washington Post that what saved him from “the inner sanctum” of Watergate was his “Boy Scoutish image” as a devout Southern Baptist. Because he resisted requests made of him by H. R. Haldeman, a key White House job he might have gotten went instead to Jeb Magruder.

Columbia president J. Robertson McQuilkin said a board approached “only Harry Dent for the training center role, although others were considered. We are pleased he has accepted the challenge.”

It is an ambitious challenge. McQuilkin hopes to develop “one of the largest and most versatile Christian retreats and training centers in the United States.” Lay evangelism and service will be the focus of short-term training sessions and conference ministries. Dent said, “The most effective communication of the gospel comes from lay people witnessing to lay people.”

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association donated the land last year.

The brighter side of videocassettes.

More and more, what is appearing on home television across the U.S. is unrelated to the daily TV Guide listings. The videocassette recorder (VCR) industry is mushrooming, and people are frequently turning to prerecorded tapes for entertainment instead of to the major networks’ nightly offerings. Video stores with their countless shelves of programs—mostly movies—are popping up in shopping malls everywhere. Even Fotomat, franchiser of those bright yellow kiosks in parking lots, has gotten into the action.

Now Christians who own VCRS—and who are looking for someplace to obtain acceptable tapes without having to wade through the secular marketplace’s long catalogs with their proliferating lists of X-rated materials—are beginning to have their own needs met. A+ Video, for one (P.O. Box 33195, Tulsa, Okla. 74135), has introduced the Golden Apple Video Club. Calling it the industry’s first club “aimed directly at the inspirational and G-rated segment of the home market,” A+ Video has begun its club with over 200 titles, ranging from The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, and The Cross and the Switchblade to Fiddler on the Roof and Pinnochio.

But is entertainment the sole use to which Christians can put videocassette recorders in their homes? Maybe not. While publishers have accepted the wide interest in entertainment and are doing something about it, they are also beginning to look at other programming areas—home/neighborhood Bible studies, for instance. It just could be that another entire area of outreach is going to develop via the TV tube. Those of us with a gray hair or two remember the early days of television when half the neighbors on the block gathered in the living room of the one home where a single 12-inch screen was located in order to watch Uncle Miltie or Burr Tillstrom’s wonderful puppets. But while the novelty of those days has long since worn off, today selected videotape showings may provide a new opportunity to gather the neighbors to watch, and then discuss, a film or a program of contemporary interest.

For example, World Wide Pictures (1201 Hennepin, Minneapolis, Minn. 55403)—the Billy Graham film ministry—has announced plans to make several of its films available on videocassette by next fall. Initially for sale only (in the $50 price range), such films as Johnny Cash’s Gospel Road, His Land with British pop singer Cliff Richard, and Time to Run will be available nationally in a number of Christian bookstores.

Add to that the fact that Word, Inc. (4800 W. Waco Dr., Waco, Texas 76796), which broke ground early in the Christian record and book publishing industries, has just developed a new line: Word Home Video. Last month a tape rental library of 40 programs was introduced in selected Christian bookstores nationwide. Included are tapes by family life specialist James Dobson (with some brand-new material); Joyce Landorf’s film, His Stubborn Love; adventure films from the Moody Institute of Science; The White Lion from White Lion Productions; and concerts such as Amy Grant’s “A Circle of Love.” Larry Richards, Lloyd Ogilvie, Billy Graham, and David Mace are also available on Word Home Video tapes, as are a number of programs specifically for children.

Word’s rental fees will be $7 for 24 hours, $12 for 72 hours, or $15 for a week. Christian dealers renting the new library display the tapes in a case that contains a replay unit and TV monitor. Also, although the tapes offered initially are in the VHS format only, Beta and 3/4-inch will be available on special order.

One of the real pioneers in videotape production and distribution is Covenant Video (3200 W. Foster Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60625). Among their new productions are two excellent six-part family series by psychologist Kevin Leman: Sex and the Christian Family and Christian Parenting. Leman is personable and witty in the 10- to 15-minute segments, which were filmed before a live audience, and the accompanying leader’s guides can help stimulate lively and helpful discussion.

Also new from Covenant is a unique series of children’s programs with the improbable title of The Lovin’ and Livin’, Freed and Forgiven, Gettin’ Goin’ Gang. I use the word “unique” because the members of the gang’s cast actually interact with their audience of children—they do, that is, if the leader has previewed the tape so he or she knows when and how to react! A couple of trolls named Coot and Herm and a human named Hannah engage young viewers in their work (planting trees), quarrels, and good deeds, while teaching biblical precepts. The leader’s guides are excellent: they are thorough and well thought through. Covenant is again to be congratulated on responding to the 1980s challenge. These programs would, of course, work well in a church situation. But anyone with a TV set and VCR could gather neighborhood children and use these programs for a ministry of outreach.

The videocassette scene changes almost daily. In spite of current economic woes, VCR sales are brisk. Now that the people who produce religious materials are entering the video scene, let us hope new opportunities to witness will develop. The church in the world, in your neighborhood and mine, has some new tools to use.

Should the church stand or sit amid the cable TV explosion?

Cable television, commentators believe, is ushering in a startling new way of life for Americans. It opens the way for increasingly specialized programming, with more than 100 channels offering films, sports, fine arts, even 24-hour news. The educational possibilities are intriguing: colleges could present lectures for an entire course to students in their own homes. Two-way cable television is already a reality in Columbus, Ohio, where viewers have electronically coached the local football team by “voting” on plays. Cable will almost certainly expand television’s already prominent role in our lives.

Where should the church stand amid the cable explosion? Does cable, with its inviting potentials in so many areas, have anything to offer the local congregation? It does. For one thing, cable TV air time is available without cost to churches across the U.S. Although federal regulations requiring cable stations to offer “community access” channels have been dropped, most stations still provide them. A simple telephone call may be all that is necessary to get a local church’s program on the air. And money, surprisingly, presents no real barrier.

Most cable companies will lend cameras and editing equipment free of charge. Some will even train lay people to operate video machinery. A congregation wishing to cablecast its worship services will certainly need its own camera and recording equipment, however. But even there the cost can be less than $3,000.

So if money is not the key ingredient, what is?

The key is for a congregation to be convinced a cable TV ministry is valid. It is fairly easy to make the decision to spend 2 or 3 percent of a large church’s annual budget on video equipment if the church leadership (including the pastor) understands the effort as a significant outreach.

First of all, church leaders might realize that by putting their services on cable TV they are making an effective statement to their unchurched neighbors. They are saying the congregation wants to share the message it proclaims every Sunday inside that rather formidable building.

Television, of course, is viewed behind closed doors, apart from any community—including the church. Cable TV ministry should be seen as pre-evangelism that opens doors. Television is a medium people trust, one they welcome into their homes every day. People who would hesitate to visit a church in person will watch a worship service on television. They can see a church’s worship style, and then, when they come in person (certainly the desired goal), they feel comfortable, not lost in an unfamiliar setting.

Entering into cable TV ministry should strengthen, not diminish, those areas of ministry where pastors and lay people already serve. Elderly shut-ins can now see the service each week instead of only hearing it on a tape recording. Shut-ins still need regular visits from pastors and members, of course; but it is an extra benefit to a hospitalized member if the worship service is carried via cable to hospital rooms.

The pre- and postservice television message should clearly tell viewers, “We would like to have you visit in person.” Evangelism callers will still need to visit the homes of all Sunday guests to explain personally what the gospel means and answer individual questions. And from experience at my church, I am convinced that additional evangelism callers will be needed after cable services have been started.

Cable ministry offers yet another advantage: it provides a place of ministry for teen-agers and young adults, who are too often forgotten. Video equipment has been introduced into many schools, and many youth already have a working knowledge of the technology. Young people are less threatened by new gadgetry than their elders, and they are creative and eager to experiment. Youth and cable ministry is a ready-made match.

But the congregation convinced that cable can be an important ministry may wonder where to start. First of all, as I stated earlier, cable companies may lend a portable camera and recorder for occasional taping. This allows a church to try out cable programming before any major commitment is made or equipment bought. The church may even borrow these from a member who owns equipment personally. In a previous article (CT, Nov. 20, 1981), I suggested camera and recorder options that will get a congregation started for $2,000 or less.

Then, when a congregation is ready to go beyond the simplest one-camera operation, the first camera can become part of an expanded production capability. To begin two-camera recording, however, one of the two cameras must have external synchronization or “genlock” potential. High-quality cameras with this feature are now available for $2,200 to $2,700. Cable stations generally offer training sessions in camera and recorder techniques. Thus, with basic equipment and practiced operators, imagination is the only limit to the ministry.

A talk show or panel discussion is one programming possibility. A congregation can actually begin programs such as these with no equipment of their own, working out of the cable company’s studio.

But what should be discussed?

Family Films of Panorama City, California, has a list of movies cleared for cable use. Normally a cable station would not consider these to be viable local material; but they can be given a local framework. For example, the pastor can introduce a film to the cable audience. Then, after the film has been aired, four or five members may join him to discuss the film, its focus, or related topics.

The variations on this theme are myriad. The cable station may have current events segments that could be used as discussion starters. The church’s teen-aged TV crew could tape high school plays, band concerts, personality interviews—even something like “A Visit with the Pastor” could be done creatively.

You must begin with the basic question: Is this a way your church can relate the gospel message to people who cannot, or simply do not, attend church now? If it is, you should seize this rich opportunity to present that urgently needed message.

Dennis H. Tegtmeier is pastor of the First Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska.

The films of Urbana ’81—global in scope, and both a treat and a burden for the missions minded—are for rent.

At first glance, the assembly hall looked like a giant flying saucer that had made a forced landing on the frigid wastelands of a remote galaxie conceived by George Lucas. Sparkling diamonds of light reflected off silvery sleeves of ice on trees and shrubs, adding to the fantasy-like atmosphere. Yet the drama here did not take place astride a tauntaun, or inside an imperial snow walker on the remote planet of Noth. Rather, it occurred at the 1981 version of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s Urbana Missionary Convention.

Though no reruns will appear on network television or HBO, and though the stirring addresses, workshops, and intense Bible studies and discussions with missionaries and missions representatives have faded into the memories of 15,000 students, IVCF staff, and missionaries, one aspect of Urbana ’81 will continue just as it was first presented in the circular assembly hall. To Every People, a series of four films ranging from 10 to 14 minutes in length, left a powerful impression on delegates. It related the Christian mandate to tribal, Hindu, Muslim, and Chinese worlds, capturing the essential flavor of Urbana ’81.

Produced by Twentyonehundred Productions, the multimedia arm of IVCF (233 Langdon, Madison, Wis. 53703), the films are a gourmet feast, offering an overview of the history, cultural distinctives, past contact with Christianity, and current opportunities for presenting the gospel to unreached peoples. Using well-edited footage from sources as diverse as the Hearst News Service Archives and the University of Wisconsin Film Library, along with the best of evangelical cinematographic resources, Twentyonehundred has woven together a BBC-like documentary examination of the four major cultural groupings. These groups make up more than 75 percent of the world’s population outside areas where Christianity is a viable option. To Every People serves up enough salient information to fill the viewer with missionary data, but without causing an acute case of “missionary conference indigestion.”

The first of the films, titled “Good News for the Tribal World,” provides an overview of the four-and-one-half billion people living on our planet and their geographic, economic, political, sexual, and cultural divisions. Noting that most of the world’s religions have animistic roots, the film draws out the essential flavor of the world’s tribal groups. The blend of evangelism, social concern, and cultural integrity avoids the fast-foods approach of some missionary films or multimedia presentations that frequently leave the viewer with spiritual, psychological, or intellectual indigestion. Fortunately for missions education, a high quality of fare is maintained throughout.

The second film focuses on the 568 million people in the Hindu world. Since 96 percent of them live in India, this film is essentially a look at the world’s second most-populated country. Drawing on the resources of such eminent missiologists as Stephen Neill, Donald McGavran, Samuel Kamaleson, and Paul Heibert, it raises some fascinating questions about the interfacing of the gospel and culture. Though designed to be presented in sequence with the other films, this serving is too filling to be consumed in rapid succession with the others of the series. Time and conversation should be allowed to digest properly the multitude of impressions it leaves.

From the standpoint of current events, “Good News for the Muslim World” is perhaps the most relevant of these films. Its focus is the 817 million Islamic people scattered throughout the Middle East, Asia, and in portions of the Western world. Though it might be easier to circulate a film that takes to task the radical excesses of the Ayatollah Khomeini, this third film admits to similar past strategic blunders in the long and bloody relationship Christians have had with the world’s second-largest religious group. Instead, the emphasis is on breaking from the history of animosity, and incorporating elements of the Muslim’s culture into Christianity without compromising the essential elements of the gospel.

“Good News for the Chinese World” is the final offering in the sequence. Using a pleasing combination of Chinese art, newsreel footage from the early twentieth century, and current perspectives of Chinese ways of life, it mixes the glories of the past and present spread of Christianity among the 960 million Chinese in the People’s Republic of China and the 40 million Chinese scattered around the world with the cultural faux pas of the past. Some people may find the comments about China’s Marxist government distasteful, but the flavor reflects the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of man.

Perhaps the greatest drawback to using To Every People is the richness of each serving. There is nearly too much to digest each time the projector is turned on. This content must be savored to be appreciated. To serve such a gourmet delight quickly amid a smattering of fast-food favorites in the church’s programming will be a disservice to both the viewer and the film.

To Every People can be rented for $40 for each segment or $120 for the entire series ($135 for the full series when booked individually).

Back in urbana, after lunch delegates could choose from over 250 workshops, discussions, and movies. Though none of the presentations was of the gourmet variety seen and heard in the assembly hall, their unique flavors became for many the taste of Urbana.

One of the film offerings was the newly released Ken Anderson production, Hudson Taylor. Beautifully filmed in a rural, Oriental setting, the story captures the flavor of nineteenth-century Shanghai where Western influences, as well as the exploits of Western economic interests, were strongly felt.

The story looks at Hudson Taylor’s first 11 or 12 years in China, showing his struggles to carry the good news of Christ beyond the great population centers to the peasants in the rural areas. It reveals the battles of a visionary young man who finds himself consumed with two intense desires: one is to reach all of China for Christ; the other is to have a wife. Unlike some other treatments of the founder of the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship), the story is seasoned with very real human struggle as well as spiritual warfare.

Taylor is depicted as a rather frail young man, ill at ease with the colonial excesses of the British influence in China during the last century. Yet he faithfully submits himself to the direction of the older missionaries while discovering firsthand the total inadequacy of their recipe for the fulfillment in China of the Great Commission. Conversations with his friend John McCarthy are used to explore the depths of his frustrations.

A theme of rejection winds through the film; it becomes the basis upon which the young missionary builds his ministry—one that has endured to this day. The most intentional, and in some ways most amusing, rejection is Taylor’s abandonment of Western dress in favor of Chinese attire. This is followed—though seemingly unrelated—with rejection by his English girl friend, Elizabeth. This leaves the visionary free from cultural fetters to chart his own course of missionary outreach.

Taylor next rejects the established support system. He claims that “God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.”

The last major rejection in the film story comes just as Taylor appears to be establishing a foothold on inland China with a fresh batch of missionary recruits from the British Isles. The younger pioneers begin to reject the radical ministry style established by their leader in favor of a lifestyle more in keeping with their cultural heritage.

Yet it is on these reversals that the story of Hudson Taylor is built. His dress and lifestyle help establish immediate and lasting rapport with the Chinese people, resulting in many conversions. His bachelorhood becomes a key ingredient in freeing him to fall in love, and to marry Maria Dyer, an attractive missionary teacher. Though anguish surrounds their relationship as their only daughter and later Maria herself succumb to disease, Taylor’s young wife is an important source of strength. She aids him in his quest for trust in God for financial support, and for guidance of a somewhat reluctant assortment of missionary recruits.

Though strong in impact, setting, and basic story line, this film continues to show the weaknesses so often evident among evangelical film makers. Character development is weak, and after a dozen years of dysentery, family tragedies, and stress associated with the responsibilities of trusting God for a new ministry, Taylor appears no older than when he first stepped onto Chinese soil. Casting, while generally appropriate, is weak in the characterization of his daughter, Gracie. Special effects also seemed amateurish; the warehouse fire that supposedly destroyed the young missionary’s medicines looked more like a dedication service campfire.

Despite its artistic flaws, Hudson Taylor will make a significant contribution to missionary education and inspiration in a day when the spirit of the missionary visionary has nearly been lost. The film lasts 80 minutes and rents for $75.

Another recent release well received by students at Urbana ’81 was Come By Here, the story of Marilyn Laszlo, which was recently released by Wycliffe Bible Translators. Though only 27 minutes in length, students stumbled over one another to stand in line for over an hour to view the story they had heard so forcefully presented in the assembly hall by the missionary.

Similar to the format of a National Geographic “special,” the movie tells the story of the Sepik Iwam tribe in Papua New Guinea, and of the methods Marilyn Laszlo used to “carve the sego paste of life on banana leaves” for the people to read in their own language. Though documentary in format, the story is really a re-creation of the years between 1969 and the present, using the tribe’s people to reenact the process of Bible translation.

The strength of the film may also be its weakness. Students flocked to see the film because of the exciting manner in which Laszlo told the story before 15,000 people. Yet when confronted with a tape recorder, her fine edge of communication may have been lost. It is difficult to maintain the superlatives without seeing an audience and sensing their response.

The film climaxes with Laszlo and her translation partner taken to visit a tribe with whom they have had minimal contact. After day-long travel by canoe, the translators arrive in the village to which they had been invited. To their surprise and delight, a church building stands in the center of the village. Their joy quickly melts into tears, however, as they discover there was no missionary, no national evangelist, no pastor, and no church—only a building modeled after the one built by the Sepik Iwam people. The tribe was waiting for someone to come and “carve the sego paste of life on the banana leaf” for them. What more can be added about the need for workers among tribal peoples of the world?

The film is available from Wycliffe, with requests being handled through regional representatives. For information, contact Wycliffe Bible Translators (Huntington Beach, Calif. 92648).

Mark H. Senter III is pastor of Christian education at Wheaton Bible Church, Wheaton, Illinois.

During my 25 years in Washington, D.C., associated with the prayer breakfast movement and pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church, I developed a deep conviction that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” requires faithfulness in prayer by God’s people. It could well be argued that to the extent to which governments fail, they fail because of prayerlessness as much as because of negligent leaders.

Prayer for our leaders is not optional, it is mandatory. Not to pray is to disobey a clear command from God. (The apostolic injunction is given in 1 Tim. 2:1–4.) We profess to see a direct influence of prayer when it relates to such concerns as evangelism and missions. Scripture teaches the same vital connection between our prayers and a stable, godly social fabric. Why do we seemingly ignore the first reason the apostle gives for our intercession for government leaders? It is certainly not because we are unaware of our nation’s grave social ills.

Social evils are growing like a deep-seated cancer, and the so-called evangelical revival has not stopped it. In fact, despite evangelicals’ successes in the mass media and their political influence, it appears that they have had little positive impact on contemporary culture.

Evangelicals have never had it so good. Their television celebrities attract millions of people and dollars. Some of their books sell in the hundreds of thousands. In the last election they got involved in politics as never before.

Meanwhile, however, divorce, abortion, alcoholism, drug abuse, pornography, and crime threaten to bring down our nation. The apostle Paul clearly understood that intercession for national leaders was an effective antidote. Is it not conceivable that prayer will make a difference?

Thirty years ago Congress called for an annual National Day of Prayer on a day other than Sunday. This year the date is May 6. In his proclamation, President Reagan recalled that the purpose of Congress in taking this action was to call people to turn to God in prayer and meditation, whether in groups or as individuals. “From the earliest days of our Republic,” he said, “Americans have asked God to hear their prayers in times of sorrow and crisis and in times of bounty.… Ever since, Americans have shared a special sense of destiny under God.”

America’s leaders have often called on citizens to pray in times of crisis: 15 times between 1775 and 1863–9 of them between 1775 and 1784 during the struggle for independence.

In his 1863 call for a Day of National Humiliation and Prayer, President Abraham Lincoln perhaps most clearly enunciated the underlying spiritual issues. He said:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.

“But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

“Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves … to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

President reagan reminded us this year that God answered prayer “through the storms of Revolution, Civil War, and the great World Wars.” He added: “As a nation, we have been richly blessed with His love and generosity.” He then issued this call for all Americans to pray on May 6:

“On that day I ask Americans to join with me in giving thanks to Almighty God for the blessings he has bestowed on this land and the protection He affords us as a people. Let us as a nation join together before God, aware of the trials that lie ahead and of the need for divine guidance.”

Every church ought to schedule and promote special times of intercessory prayer on May 6—early in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. Christian organizations should set aside periods of prayer. Every Christian should be certain to pray particularly for our government leaders on May 6. No other duty is as important as prayer. It matters little what else we do if we fail to pray.

“… if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).

Richard C. Halverson, formerly pastor of Washington, D.C.’s Fourth Presbyterian Church, is chaplain of the United States Senate.