NEWS

Ríos Montt takes over in Guatemala after praying with his elders.

Guatemala’s March 23 coup was stalled for more than an hour while General Efraín Ríos Montt gathered the elders of his church for their advice and prayers. When they had given their blessing and laid their hands on him, he proceeded to the National Palace.

There howitzers and tanks in the central park had remained trained on the second floor offices of President Hernando Romeo Lucas Garcia. He had adamantly refused to surrender power to the junior officers who had smoothly executed the bloodless coup, insisting that he hand over to a general. The coup-makers named Ríos Montt. But his whereabouts was unknown, and they finally put out a call over the national radio network for him to present himself.

Four hours after he was ushered into the palace in civilian clothes, he appeared on television in camoflauge fatigues as president of a three-man military junta.

Ríos Montt, 55, is a dedicated believer and leader in the Verbo (“Word” as in John 1:1) Church. Founded by a group sent to Guatemala after the 1976 earthquake by Gospel Outreach of Eureka, California, Verbo is a fast-growing charismatic church that is successfully penetrating the middle and upper classes of Guatemala City. Sunday services draw crowds of over 1,000, and are held in a multicolored tent.

The main ministry of the church, according to its leaders, is the discipling carried out in the 12 “home churches” that meet in different sections of the city on Thursday evenings. One of them has been held in the Ríos Montt home, a modest two-story dwelling in a middle-class neighborhood, and led by “Brother Efraín” and Montt’s wife, Maria Teresa. Now the location of that group will have to change.

Actually, when Ríos Montt was summoned, he was working in his office at the Verbo Christian Day School, next to the tent. Why an active general was serving as an administrator of an evangelical institution is an eyebrow-raising story that could only occur in Latin America.

His military career was exemplary; he moved successively to commander of the Mariscal Zacapa Brigade, instructor and then commandant of the Polytechnic Institute (Guatemala’s equivalent of West Point), and army chief of staff.

But then in 1974 he resigned his post and ran for president in that year’s elections against the regime’s official candidate. Ríos Montt and his supporters claimed victory and many outside observers agreed with them. The military government, however, declared General Laugerud Garcia the victor by 41.1 percent of the votes cast to Ríos Montt’s 31.1 percent.

“The government was determined to hold on to power,” a reporter for the New York Times quoted a diplomat who had been a close observer of the process as saying. “So when it had to win by fraud it decided to win handsomely. The final figures, of course, bear no relationship to reality.”

Many of Ríos Montt’s supporters were outraged and wanted to take up arms against the corrupt right-wing officers who have run the country for the last 20 years. But he rejected that course, attempting instead to launch a campaign of nonviolent opposition. That fizzled, and Ríos Montt was dispatched to Madrid for two years as a military attaché—a thinly disguised form of exile.

“Even though they stole the election from me in 1974,” Ríos Montt said several months ago, “I thank God he allowed it to happen. At the time, I was very bitter. But now I can see God’s hand in it.”

That bitterness, in fact, was an important factor in his spiritual pilgrimage. Despite a religious background (his brother is the Roman Catholic bishop of Esquintla, the country’s third largest city), Ríos Montt did not know Christ at the time. He did evidence spiritual interest, even inviting an evangelical pastor to address the students at the military academy when he headed it. But it was when he returned to Guatemala after his stint in Spain that he and his family became involved in a home Bible study, and eventually, three-and-a-half years ago, with the Verbo Church.

The general was assigned no specific duties on his return from Spain, presumably to keep him from building a power base. It was for this reason that he was able to contribute his time to the school and also to serve as Sunday school superintendent. Ríos Montt’s two sons, both army officers, are also active in the church, while his 14-year-old daughter is a student at the Verbo school.

The Verbo Church is pastored by a group of lay elders, and Ríos Montt was scheduled to have been ordained as an elder the Sunday following the coup. Events dictated otherwise, but he was in church that Sunday and is expected to be ordained later on.

The junior officers who plotted the coup apparently sought out Ríos Montt because of his integrity and the respect he had gained in his various posts. They knew he shared their deep concern about the repressive tactics used by the military, and about concentration of the nation’s wealth in the hands of a privileged few. During an earlier civil war with leftist guerrillas in the 1960s—when he was chief of staff—he was particularly effective in granting amnesty to many of the guerrillas.

There was a national sigh of relief at the results of the coup. A new respect for human rights was immediately apparent. The junta never even imposed a curfew. Promptly arrested were the much-despised chief of the National Police, General German Chupina Burahona, and Colonel Hector Montalban, head of the “G-2,” the army’s intelligence unit. Their plainclothes police are accused of being the death squads that have assassinated thousands of civilians suspected of disloyalty or leftism.

Although Ríos Montt suspended the country’s constitution and is now ruling by fiat, he is expected to announce a timetable for returning the country to an elected government after the junta has gotten itself organized.

The general clearly believes that he was divinely placed at the national helm. “I have confidence in my God, my Master, and my King, that he will guide me,” he declared the evening of the coup, “because only he can grant or take away power.

“Take your machine guns off your chest, take your pistols out of your belts, and put your machetes back to work,” he exhorted his fellow citizens. The peace the country so desperately needs, he said, depends on each individual. “The peace of Guatemala is in your heart. Once there is peace in your heart, there will be peace in your home, and there will be peace in society.”

HARRY GENET with STEPHEN SYWULKA in Guatemala

Evangelicalism And Guatemala

If Ríos Montt can spark a turn-around in the deteriorating social climate of Guatemala, beset by a growing left-wing insurgency, he will win the gratitude of his 7.5 million countrymen and considerably enhance the reputation of Guatemala’s burgeoning evangelicals.

The evangelicals are celebrating 100 years of presence in the country this year—a centennial that will culminate in November with parades and a nationwide Luis Palau evangelistic campaign.

At a centennial-kickoff pastors’ conference in Quezaltenango in February, the first National Church Directory was introduced. It lists more than 6,000 churches with a total membership of nearly 335,000, and estimates that the broader evangelical community numbers 1.5 million, or 20 percent of the total population.

As recently as 1930 there were probably no more than 10,000 believers. Some factors behind recent rapid growth:

• Half the population of Guatemala is Indian, and it was here that Cameron Townsend, founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, caught the vision of reaching these tribes in their own languages. They have proved responsive.

• Evangelism-in-Depth, a countrywide saturation evangelism effort in 1962, capped a decade in which evangelical numbers tripled—mostly in Pentecostal churches.

• Outreach was begun to the upper classes. Ríos Montt was among the fruit of this relatively recent thrust.

Ironically, evangelicals have traditionally considered politics sinful. This decade should tell whether they can complete the transition from a despised, lower-class minority to that of a major—perhaps even the major—component in national life.

Gothard Sued By Ex-Employees

A group of former employees of Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts filed two lawsuits in a Chicago federal court on March 31. One of the suits charges Gothard and his board of directors with seriously mistreating employees, and the other one charges them with misspending millions of dollars of the institute’s money.

The lawsuits were filed after the employees and the institute’s directors were unable to reach agreement on a discussion of the allegations to be conducted by the Christian Legal Society’s Conciliation Service, in an effort to keep the dispute out of court.

The first lawsuit is a class action suit filed on behalf of former employees who allegedly have been mistreated. The suit claims more than 100 are affected. Among the allegations are these:

• Employees were told that when they went to work at the institute they would get sufficient salary, living expenses, property, and retirement benefits, which they did not receive. Because of this breach of contract, the suit asks for $1 million in damages.

• Gothard and the board “engaged in conduct to discredit, libel, slander and malign” the plaintiffs, using illegal means that held them up to “public hatred, contempt and ridicule.” This allegedly was the case since 1980, when the troubles at Gothard’s institute broke open, causing about 40 employees to leave, and causing some to talk publicly about troubles at the institute. To compensate for this, the suits asks for $500,000 in damages.

• The institute imposed “outrageous standards of personal conduct,” including sexual mistreatment, and then directed that the mistreatment not be disclosed under threat of retaliation. The suit asks for $1 million in damages to compensate for these problems, as well as another $1 million in punitive damages. (This is the only charge for which punitive damages are asked.)

The second lawsuit is also a class action suit, filed on behalf of people who have paid to attend the seminars, and also on behalf of those who contributed money to the work of the institute. The suit claims the alumni have a vested interest in the continuing affairs of the institute, including the right to see that the money they contributed is spent properly.

This suit names Bill Gothard and other board members as defendants. It alleges that they failed to monitor properly the institute’s financial affairs and allowed some of the money to be misappropriated by others in the organization. The suit cites these examples: purchasing pornographic movies, paying for personal use of the institute’s jet, purchasing antiques valued at more than $100,000, and purchasing real estate “at values greatly in excess of the recognized market value.”

The suit also alleges that the institute’s board consistently made false allegations about the former employees who have differences with Gothard, in an effort to discredit them.

This suit asks that the court appoint a trustee to run the institute, the entire board of directors be replaced, and a full financial audit be conducted.

The lawyer for the former employees, Stewart Entz of Topeka, also asked for a court order restraining the defendants from destroying records, using institute money to defend themselves in court against their alleged wrongdoing, and using institute money to inform alumni and donors about the suit in a disparaging manner.

Although Gothard and some board members are named in the suits, not all board members are named. Most notably, the name of Samuel Schultz is absent. He resigned from the board in 1980 because of the troubles that caused so many of the employees to leave. The plaintiffs have asked for all institute records, and if they gain access to them, they will refine the list of defendants to those they feel are directly culpable.

At press time, neither Gothard nor his lawyer had issued a statement in response to the suits.

The troubles in the Gothard institute came to light in the summer of 1980, when dozens of employees left the organization. It had become known that Bill’s brother, Steve, who was responsible for administrative affairs of the institute, had had sexual intercourse with a number of secretaries (seven, apparently) at the institute’s retreat in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was the second time it had become known within the organization that Steve Gothard had been involved with female staff members. The last time had been some four years earlier, when Steve was working at the Oak Brook, Illinois, headquarters of the institute. Some staff members urged that Steve be dismissed then. Instead, Bill sent him to the Michigan retreat to work on institute matters from there, although unmarried female employees were present there. (Bill Gothard steadfastly maintains that he was unaware of the sexual problems when they recurred.) Some of the senior staff members who left in 1980 are upset that Bill did not move decisively in firing Steve when the second round of problems surfaced, although Bill maintains he took proper action.

Most of the allegations about misused money stem from purchases Steve made for the Michigan property, and the rental of pornographic films by him.

From the outset, the disgruntled employees asked for a multiple-year audit of all institute expenses. Last year Gothard hired an independent firm, Price Waterhouse, to perform an audit, but it was limited to the most recent fiscal year. They examined earlier records only as they applied to the purchase of the Michigan property. The auditors found nothing amiss and praised the institute, but acknowledged that their scope was limited.

TOM MINNERY

Once again the evolution/creation controversy makes front-page news. Here are all the ingredients a newsman could ask for. We see the champions riding out to do rousing, albeit verbal, battle. Behind each of the two groups is a home front, a good-sized segment of America’s general public. One side the mass media find easy to caricature or portray as the buffoon. The other side, speaking from a rostrum of academic prestige, is learning to flavor its pontifications with enough salt to satisfy the media taste.

How delightful a battle, so human yet so bloodless! Who would be churlish enough to ask for definition of terms or clarification of the issue? But do it we must. We begin by asking whether evolution and creation are necessarily antithetical alternatives. And the answer depends on how the two words are defined.

Defining Evolution

Evolution is a term that can conjure up a host of images and conceptual extrapolations—nature red in tooth and claw, social Darwinism, robber barons and laissez-faire capitalism, reductionist materialism, aggressive atheism, ethical relativism, human perfectibility, a self-existent universe. To the scientist acting as a scientist, however, such ideas are simply not germane. Evolutionary theorizing is merely a way of explaining in natural terms the history and mechanism of change within the universe as a whole, in certain parts of it such as stars and the earth, and in life on our planet (i.e., cosmology, stellar evolution, historical geology, and organic evolution).

Usually the scientist is simply investigating whether there exist long-term, large-scale, natural processes analogous, for example, to the development of a baby from a fertilized egg. More often than not, he has no theological or philosophical ax to grind, and is likely to be a bit irritated when a nonscientist carries his ideas beyond what he feels to be their legitimate bounds. Obviously that irritation is not a preventive against unwarranted extrapolation, for each idea listed above has turned to scientific evolution for support. The point is that a scientific concept must be considered independently of its perversions.

Defining Creation

The word creation, too, evokes different responses. Many scientists shun it altogether because it connotes situations and events impossible to understand through empirical data. Theistic scientists, to be sure, do not shy away from the word, for they see the material realm as contingent upon a creator. To them, the stuff of the world, its behavior patterns and changes over time, are all cradled in the hand of a transcendent God. Among today’s theistic scientists, however, is a group called creationists, who require the word creation to mean much more. For them, believing in creation means adhering to a specific chronology of events which they believe the Bible unequivocally describes. Compressed into perhaps 10,000 years or less, it is a chronology sufficiently idiosyncratic as to call for a new name—“creationism.”

Daniel Wonderly describes another group of creationists who have been around “since the latter part of the 19th century” (some say the 18th century). Including himself among them, he describes them as “a large body of Catholic and Protestant creationists who accept the geologic evidence for long periods of time, including the entire sedimentary record.” Many within this group, according to Wonderly, “believe that matter and the basic forms of life were originally created by divine fiat, with extensive speciation following the creation.” Wonderly’s group is not at the center of the current controversy, so that here the terms creationist(s) refer exclusively to those who insist upon a very young earth and the rejection in toto of the geological timetable.

It is the habit of these creationists to apply the label “evolutionist” to almost anyone who differs from them in the slightest degree. They fail to recognize that there are many who hold to divine creation while rejecting the label “creationist.” Such people consider themselves faithful to the Christian Scriptures but see no reason to exclude God from slow processes which result in novelty. They are creationists in the traditional sense, but now find themselves standing in the gray area between “creationists” and “evolutionists.” By omitting them and their contributions, current discussions are so starkly black and white that a balanced examination of the issues is impossible.

Evolutionary Theorizing

In most cases, evolutionary theorizing begins with pre-existing stuff which evolves; that is, changes. Given that stuff, its energy and its basic laws, scientists face the task of drawing historical and mechanistic conclusions from presently accessible empirical data. They do not ask “Who?” and “Why?” Rather it is “How?” and “When?” that concern them as scientists. The theists among them will certainly use the term creation to describe the origin of the basic stuff of the universe; but what about subsequent developments? How does one label changes that turn primordial matter into new entities? Do theists label them “creation” so as to affirm their theism? Do they also require that the processes be supernatural, fearing that natural (and gradual) processes are somehow beyond the purview of God?

As a Christian, I necessarily recognize both my own creatureliness and that of the entire material realm. Furthermore, I have no problem at all with divine creation by fiat if the evidence requires it. In another time my position would have clearly marked me as a creationist, but today that appears not to be the case. Now it seems that one can claim to be a creationist only by rejecting the possibility that God’s activity includes time-consuming natural processes.

There is a tendency for today’s self-styled creationists to subsume all such processes under the term “evolution” and then apply the term pejoratively at the first hint that someone does not accept their scenario. I do not know whether they respond from an a priori bias against process, or are fully convinced that Scripture negates it. For whatever reason, what they regard as evolution is anathema to them, and its association with divine activity is considered incongruous.

Often those who do battle with “creationists”—call them evolutionists—are equally rigid in separating process from God. Prominent among them is Steven Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist (see his “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Discovery, May 1981). With the alternatives limited by such a dichotomy, it is no wonder that the current battle between the extremes of evolutionists and “creationists” generates more heat than light.

The Lesson Of Big-Bang Cosmology

Although evolutionary theorizing generally begins with pre-existent material, a few scientists try to fit even the origin of matter into a naturalistic framework. Most notable are advocates of the steady-state cosmology that envisions the continuous ex nihilo creation of matter atom by atom over endless time. At present this cosmologic view is being eclipsed by big-bang cosmology, a concept that includes a seeming “beginning” of the universe. Supposedly there was a moment about 15 billion years ago when all of the matter in the universe exploded from a point and moved out to form the expanding universe of today. The status, even the existence, of that universe-in-a-point are problematic, to say the least.

How one eminent scientist responded to this apparent beginning and how others have responded to him are instructive here, for the whole affair bears upon what I consider to be an implicit conviction of creationists—namely, that if in the present universe we can find evidences of former catastrophes, abruptness, discontinuity, or currently inexplicable processes or events, then we will have irrefutable proof that the universe was made by almighty God. A logical extension is that many will be drawn irresistibly to a theistic conviction, perhaps even to Christian faith.

Unfortunately, the case of astrophysicist Robert Jastrow does not follow the above script. At the 1978 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jastrow gave an address entitled “God and the Astronomers” (now available in a small book of the same name). Jastrow made the dramatic statement that “now we see the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world.” Nowhere did he say straight out, “I believe that God exists.” But he came so close that a number of noted scientists have taken up the cudgels against him.

Jastrow’s God, it turns out, is basically the God-of-the-gaps. Where empirical knowledge fails, invoke God. He says:

Scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money.… Every effect must have its causes, there is no first cause.… This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover … the scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation!…

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Jastrow began his talk by stating his own agnosticism, and he maintained that position when quizzed following the formal talk. A Christian physicist in the audience, Paul Arveson, asked him, “In light of all this evidence and in light of your own honesty in taking it at face value, why are you still an agnostic?” Jastrow replied, “I keep coming close to the edge of faith, but I never quite make it over.… In my later years I may reconsider this. You know how old men often turn to such thoughts.”

One wonders why Jastrow went to the trouble of sticking his professional neck out so far while continuing to be an unbeliever through it all. It would seem that theistic conviction does not automatically follow when a person becomes aware that scientific knowledge has its limitations.

If the astronomic evidence and Jastrow’s inferences from it were unsuccessful in making; even Jastrow a believer, it is not surprising that others were unconverted. Fred Hoyle, British astrophysicist and proponent of a universe infinite in space and time, was interviewed after Jastrow’s lecture and said that he thought “the main controversy is whether the so-called origin of the universe really has to be taken literally or whether this is a physical transition from a preceding state.” He added, “I personally have little doubt that there has to be a preceding stage, perhaps even an evolutionary process.” Even a Christian astronomer, Owen Gingerich of Harvard, was cool to Jastrow’s conclusion. His response, quoted in Time magazine (February 5, 1979), was that “Genesis is not a book of science. It is accidental if some things agree in detail. I believe the heavens declare the glory of God only to people who’ve made a religious commitment.”

Scientist-writer Isaac Asimov was notably unrestrained in responding to Jastrow. He wrote:

If I can continue to read the English language, Jastrow is implying that since the Bible has all the answers … it has been a waste of time, money and effort for astronomers to have been peering through their little spyglasses all this time. Perhaps Jastrow, abandoning his “faith in the power of reason” (assuming he ever had it) will now abandon his science and pore over the Bible until he finds out what a quasar is … Why should he waste his time in observatories? (“Science and the Mountain Peak,” The Skeptical Inquirer, winter 1980–81, p. 43).

Such an intemperate response shows that Asimov holds deep convictions that Jastrow has disturbed. Asimov is an avowed atheist and Jastrow has pointed to what he considers to be evidence for God. He has touched a sensitive spot beneath the skin of Asimov’s formal scientific knowledge.

“Blessed Are the Meek”

Moses, by turns raging and afraid,

Was meek under the thunderhead whiteness,

The glorious opacity of cloudy pillar.

Each cloud is meek, buffeted by winds

It changes shape but never loses

Being: Not quite liquid, hardly

Solid, in medias res. Like me.

Yielding to the gusting spirit

All become what ministering angels

Command: sign, promise, portent.

Vigorous in image and color, oh, colors

Of earth pigments mixed with sun

Make hues that raise praises at dusk,

At dawn, collect storms, release

Rain, filter sun in arranged

And weather-measured shadows. Sunpatches.

EUGENE H. PETERSON

Do Creationists Have A Hidden Agenda?

It seems to me that similar sensitive spots exist in the “creationist-evolutionist” debates, but are being covered over in an effort to portray the discussion as purely scientific. The fact is, the “creationists” have a hidden agenda. And, because they are sincere Christian people, I believe it contains supremely important issues, issues that transcend the minutia of science and strike at the heart of what it is to be human. The question of God’s existence is certainly one, as illustrated by the Jastrow affair. But also crucial are God’s relationship to the universe as well as the purpose and destiny of human life.

In the debate now going on, however, such issues are not overtly discussed. We are led to think, by the “creationists” at least, that what is being debated is totally a scientific matter, a question to be argued in the same way as any of the many scientific issues in history. Ostensibly the Bible is kept out of the discussion, although the biblical wellspring of the “creationists” is clear to all who are familiar with its history. It is only because of the American commitment to separation of church and state that mention of the Bible is muted. As a result, the wrong battle is being fought and a potent weapon silenced.

Suppose the “creationists” were to win their case, or at least to insinuate their position into the public schools. Would a proclamation of the Christian gospel thereby be assured? Does human uniqueness flow only from a creationist cosmology? Is “proof” of a 10,000-year-old earth a key to revealing Christ’s redemptive act on the cross? To me, the answers are obviously No. Thus, I consider the creationist approach to be poor strategy for a truly Christian impact on the world. I do not believe it will accomplish what its promoters desire (and what I desire)—namely, widespread and effective dissemination of the good news of God, including a respect for the divine authorship of the material realm.

The Aberration Of “Creationism”

Scientists in general, and many Christians among them, regard the “creationist” movement as aberrational and cultic, an irritant rather than a force for creating understanding. While many of its leaders have earned doctoral degrees from prestigious universities, most are in the fields of engineering, mathematics, physics, and chemistry—areas lacking in the historical dimension crucial to the issues being debated. Admittedly, some are biologists, but geologists and astronomers are almost unrepresented.

More important than academic background, however, is the way in which “creationists” participate in the scientific enterprise. Having set in concrete their view of events in the midst of distant history, they come to lecture from a rostrum of certitude. They separate themselves even from scientists who are committed Christians. The Creation Research Society, for example, was founded by people who withdrew from the American Scientific Affiliation, not because ASA members were unable to recite the Apostles’ Creed with full affirmation but because the ASA was supposedly “soft” on evolution.

The only contacts that “creationists” have with the scientific community at large are through campus debates where their ablest speakers generally acquit themselves very well. However, rather than face-to-face debate before generally uninformed audiences, creationists should be making their case through established scientific channels. After all, science is not static. Its history records a myriad of cases where people with new ideas supported by new data have overturned the status quo. And they have done it directly by confronting their peers. The journals and the scientific meetings are there for those who would participate.

What we see, in fact, is “creationists” talking to creationists. They speak about research that they have done. What that research seems to involve, however, is a search of the orthodox scientific literature to cull out statements that reinforce creationist prejudices. How odd that the honesty of establishment scientists in expressing their failures as well as their successes should not be matched by a similar honesty by “creationists,” whose scientific convictions seem surprisingly free of ambivalence and uncertainty. Consider, for example, this ingenuous statement of an establishment anthropologist, David Pilbeam of Harvard University, in his review of Richard Leakey’s book, Origins:

Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleoanthropology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about (American Scientist, May/June 1978, pp. 378–379).

Such a statement no doubt evokes different responses. Creationists probably say, “I told you so,” and add another arrow to their quiver. Some professional anthropologists with phylogenies well worked out in their own minds may be upset and rush to reply.

My own response is two-fold: first, to admire the author’s candor as well as the give-and-take of the intellectual environment from which it springs and then to add the author’s remarks to my mental storehouse of information about human nature. There it joins with data, both secular and biblical, to provide the grist for my own thinking about the mechanism (not the Mechanic) behind human origin. Currently I see sufficient ambiguity to make me cautious about endorsing a particular mechanism of human origin. About human nature, however, I have no hesitation. I believe that the Bible unequivocally affirms that we humans, in spite of our all-pervasive sin, are the apple of God’s eye, significant enough to be redeemed by the death of his only Son.

Reasons For Creationists’ Success

If “creationists” have been unable to dent scientific orthodoxy, what accounts for their success in capturing headlines and influencing state legislators? I believe there are two factors that any successful salesman can quickly recognize. First, there is zeal issuing in hard work, and, secondly, a new product for which there is clearly a wide market.

For many years, a host of Christian people with a simple faith and little knowledge of science has been suspicious of scientists as a group. In their reading of the Genesis account, God brought the current universe into being as it is now in six 24-hour days. All this scientific theorizing about evolutionary processes is simply introducing complications where there is obvious simplicity. Besides, scientists seem always to be attacking the Christian faith and acting as if they could accomplish anything through science.

For a long time such Christians saw the alternatives as science or faith—choose one. And they chose their faith. Then came the new generation of “creationists” with the message that Christians can now have their cake and eat it too. The Bible has been right all along; science is now seen to affirm the simple story to which the faithful have been holding for so long. Thus, the new twist of “creationism” is to argue that the facts of science point to “creation” rather than to “evolution.” This is reflected in the title of the current creationist bible, Scientific Creationism (ed. Henry Morris, Creation-Life Publishers). Its message is that about 10,000 years ago God created by fiat a universe much like that of today. The earth’s multitude of plant and animal species shares a simultaneous birth rather than any common ancestry, and the fossil-filled rock record is primarily a consequence of the flood of Noah.

In publications galore, this message has been disseminated through religious bookstores all over America. It has been picked up by a diverse readership—pastors, speakers, youth workers, and Sunday school teachers. Most of them are not scientifically trained. So the message they send forth is often garbled or incomplete or just plain wrong. Though their message is often lacking in accuracy or balance, it is heard by many Christian people, and it creates the widespread conviction that the scientific establishment is engaged in a conspiracy to keep the truth hidden so that atheistic secular humanism can have its way.

Seemingly in support of such a conclusion is the scarcity of books written by Christian authors who oppose recent earth “creationism.” Many scientifically qualified people fall into this category, people with an orthodox faith in Jesus Christ and a deep commitment to divine creation. For a diversity of reasons they have not felt constrained to expose in writing the faulty foundation of “creationism.” For some it is the unpleasantness of writing polemics against fellow Christians; for others it is a conviction that nothing will change the minds of those who want to believe the “creationist” paradigm. Still others recognize the many tentative areas of historical science and refuse to be drawn into a debate where rigidity seems to dominate.

An Analysis Of The “Creationist” Phenomenon

How is it that one group of Christians has magnified the importance of a particular view of animate and inanimate history so that it rivals the redemptive message of the Christian gospel? What can explain, for example, the masthead of the Bible-Science Newsletter, which lists “A Young Earth” side by side with “Christ as God and Man—Our Savior?” It seems to me that the answer is a mixture of three ingredients: biblical interpretation, human personality, and the current American context.

Creationists, in my judgment, are hyper-literalists in their interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis. They require the days to be consecutive 24-hour intervals, and that makes humanity a mere five days younger than the oldest stars and rocks. Furthermore, the genealogies in later chapters are seen to confine humanity to the past 10,000 years or less; so that must also be the age of the entire universe. The incredible amount of scientific evidence for the earth’s great age is swept aside with seeming ease. Henry Morris, for instance, writes: “The biblical cosmologist finally must recognize that the geological ages can have had no true objective existence at all, if the Bible is true” (Biblical Cosmology and Modern Science, 1970, Baker, p. 23).

Yet W. B. Riley, premier American evolution fighter of an earlier generation, had no trouble accepting the geologic ages. Furthermore, a later host of conservative Bible scholars considers an ancient earth fully compatible with Scripture. These are people with evangelical credentials and a commitment to biblical inerrancy—men such as J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., E. J. Young, and Gleason Archer. How unwise to ignore their contributions.

But behind the conviction that the Genesis 1 account of creation is to be taken in uniformly literal sense are also some very able people, the second ingredient in creationism, its leaders who write and debate and speak. As mentioned previously, they have scientific or engineering credentials. Above all, their zeal is based on a belief that they are serving God in a world that is godless. In withdrawing even from Christian scientists of different persuasion, they are like Elijah in their inability to recognize a cadre still loyal to God. Furthermore, a society increasingly aboveboard in its opposition to Christian faith almost confirms the wisdom of their withdrawal. Here is where the third strand enters: American culture in the late twentieth century.

One need not be a very perceptive observer of current American society to discern the erosion of Christian behavioral standards. The opposition to Christian mores has moved from insidious to blatant, forcing a defensive posture on those who would style their lives according to biblical principles. Furthermore, atheism clad in religious and intellectual garb is heralded more openly and more frequently. Thus pressured, Christians seek help in standing firm. Some reach out for symbols and causes that seem to echo the noble words of Martin Luther, “Here I stand; I can do no other!”

“Creationism,” I believe, is one such cause. I understand it, but I cannot support it. To me it is a caricature of the true Christian view of men and things. In its isolation and inflexibility, “creationism,” in my judgment, is doing more harm than good.

Science—An Ally Not An Enemy

It is my belief that the scientific enterprise, as it exists today, is plodding along the path that leads to accurate knowledge of the material realm. This is not to sanction all that goes on in the name of science; rather it is to affirm that at its core the scientific enterprise is sound. Who can deny the significant progress already made toward understanding the material world? In addition, science seems to operate in ways that eventually weed out error and define profitable avenues of attack. This seems as true for unraveling earth history as for elucidating the nature of the atom.

Of course, no Christian would grant ultimacy to scientific truth, for the heavens and the earth are destined to pass away. But this is no reason for Christians to abandon science or participate only as kibitzers. As fellow passengers on planet Earth, Christian scientists should be in the thick of things, contributing and receiving, correcting and being corrected. Participation is not implying that the scientific enterprise will one day usher in an age of the ultimate, or even of total material truth. Rather, Christians within the scientific establishment are needed both to point out the impossibility of such goals and to witness to the divine message which redeems the material world.

When a Carl Sagan or a Jacob Bronowski is carried beyond the scientific data to personal speculation, who but a Christian scientist is more qualified to resist being hoodwinked and to articulate an accurate response? The challenge is to respond precisely and clearly when God’s Word is clear, with restraint and admitted uncertainty when dogmatism is biblically unjustified. Our model is He who was full of grace and truth.

It is my conviction that Christians need to strive continually to integrate scientific truth with biblical truth, never demeaning one or the other, never setting one against the other. After all, the God who made the world also authored the Word. Only when we honor them both can he be glorified fully.

Edwin A. Olson is professor of geology and physics at Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.

We were sitting in a little sidewalk cafe north of Athens. In Sounion, which perches on the tip of the cape southeast of Athens, are the ruins of the once-lovely temple dedicated to the sea god Poseidon, and we wanted to see them. The apostle Paul must have sailed past this cape on his second missionary journey and looked up to see the tall white columns gracing the top.

Sidewalk cafes are friendlier and more informal than tourist hotels, and this one was no exception. Sitting at a neighboring table was a genial English couple, who struck up a conversation about all they had seen. “You know,” they commented, “one wonders, after traveling around this place, if a man named Paul didn’t live here after all.”

The mind goes back in time 2,000 years to an ancient Athens that was smaller and more beautiful than the Athens of today. It was “a provincial university city, the home of art treasures” (Otto F. A. Meinardus in Paul in Greece). It was dominated by the Acropolis with its magnificent temples, the largest and most magnificent being the famous Parthenon. These buildings had already been standing for several hundred years when Paul arrived.

An ancient proverb declared that there were more gods in Athens than men, and wherever the apostle looked there were gods—in temples, in niches, on pedestals, on street corners. Paul even discovered a temple to the unknown god.

Seeing the city wholly given over to idolatry, Paul’s spirit was “exasperated” (NEB). He disputed with the religious leaders, with devout persons, with those he met in the marketplace. Then he took on certain philosophers of the Epicureans and the Stoics. Some of them derisively called him a babbler, or in Greek, a spermologos—literally a “seed-picker”—an Athenian slang term for those who loafed about the agora picking up odds and ends.

In the days of Paul, the Council of the Areopagus had authority over all matters pertaining to the religious life of the city, and it was because of this that Paul was invited to appear before them. Here he delivered his famous speech that changed the course of history, though the change was not sudden but gradual. When he spoke of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; others said they wanted to hear him again on the matter.

But when Paul left Athens, he left behind at least two believers: a woman named Damaris, about whom we know nothing, and Dionysius, the Areopagite. Then silence fell. We know only that a small Christian community did develop, and it grew in spite of the paganism that continued to flourish around it. By A.D. 408–50, several temples in Athens had been converted into churches. During the reign of Justinian (A.D. 527–65) the Parthenon itself was turned into a church, and remained one for 200 years. At about the same time, the Erechtheum atop the Acropolis was also converted into a church.

There are churches in Athens today dedicated to the apostle Paul, though it is not Paul but his first Athenian convert, Dionysius the Areopagite, who is venerated as the patron saint of Athens.

Today, 2,000 years later, the temples are in various stages of ruin. And who can name the gods to whom they were erected? Who can name the members of the Areopagus? Who, aside from scholars, knows the form of government in Greece at that time? Yet, “After traveling around here, one wonders if a man named Paul didn’t live here after all.”

Conflict in Northern Ireland erupts onto North American television screens with enigmatic intensity and frequency. The names of hunger-striker Bobby Sands and fundamentalist preacher-politician Ian Paisley are well known. The issues that gave them their prominence are less clearly understood.

Perhaps some North American evangelicals are uneasy about the war in Northern Ireland, sensing that Protestants there share with them common roots of theology and, in the case of the Scots-Irish, of ethnic background. Certainly many North American Catholics acknowledge a commitment to the “green” side of the Ulster conflict and contribute generously to the support of the outlawed Irish Republican Army (IRA). How, if at all, should American evangelicals react? Should they respond with solidarity—or embarrassment—to the situation of their coreligionists across the Atlantic?

Since 1969, more than 25,000 people have been injured, and over 2,100 have died violent deaths in Ulster. This rural province contains a population of only one-and-a-half million, six counties, two medium-sized cities, and covers an area a little larger than Connecticut. In Belfast, 30,000 people relocated their homes in the five years following the onset of violence in 1969 as they sought refuge in Protestant or Catholic residential suburbs. The British government has paid compensation claims totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for bombed property and personal injuries and death. Every week brings continuing news of sectarian assassination of Protestants by the IRA and of horrifying revenge killings. One Western rural area near the frontier with the Irish Republic has currently about 50 unsolved political murders, and the families of isolated Protestant farmers live in daily fear of the IRA’S bullet and booby-trap bomb.

Religious leaders, both Catholic and Protestant, are closely identified with the conflict. In the case of the Roman Catholic church, it is for failing to excommunicate convicted IRA terrorists, and for giving succour to hunger strikers. Extreme Protestant churchmen, like Ian Paisley, blend religion and politics, provoking widespread appeal among a mass of Protestants, saints and sinners alike.

The key to even a basic understanding of the Irish conflict is in the history and religious geography of the country. The Republic, with its capital in Dublin, has a population of about three-and-a-half million, of whom less than 5 percent are Protestants. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, part of the United Kingdom and with its provincial capital in Belfast, has a split of about 65 percent Protestant and 35 percent Catholic. Whereas the Protestant population of the Republic has been declining for over a century, the Catholic population of Northern Ireland has been growing slowly for 50 years.

The concentration of one million Protestants in Ulster is explained by colonization of that part of Ireland, which began in the seventeenth century at precisely the time when the celebrated Mayflower settlers were establishing themselves at Plymouth Colony. Colonists from England were mainly Anglicans; those from Scotland, Presbyterians. Both were equally glad to homestead on the lands of displaced Catholic native Irish—land granted to them by the British Crown and secured for them in the face of violent opposition by English and Scottish armies.

In the 13 American colonies, the native Indian population was decisively beaten by the settlers and thorough conquest precluded a nasty minority problem like Ulster’s. By contrast, in the northern part of Ireland a numerically significant native Irish population survives, its historic disaffection nurtured by a continuing sense of grievance and injustice.

The settlement patterns of 300 years ago are still largely intact in rural areas, with Presbyterians (28 percent) concentrated to the immediate south and north of Belfast, and Anglicans (23 percent) to the south and west of Northern Ireland. Methodism grew out of Anglicanism, and the distribution of Methodists (5 percent) follows that of the Anglicans.

Roman Catholics are most heavily concentrated in the south, west, and northwest of the province and in Belfast, where they make up about 30 percent of the city’s population. Smaller groups—like Baptists, Congregationalists, Plymouth Brethren, Pentecostals, and Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterians—are found throughout the mainly Protestant areas within about 50 miles of Belfast.

The seventeenth-century settlement was planned by the British Crown to secure the north of Ireland in the hands of loyal Protestants and prevent its exploitation by the Catholic French as a strategic base from which to invade Britain. Just as the late medieval population settlement bore the birthmarks of international religious and political conflict, so 300 years later politics and religion still unite to blight and mar the island. Indeed, when Ireland was divided in 1920, the frontier separating the two parts of the country was drawn around Northern Ireland to encompass the maximum number of Protestants. It is not surprising that Protestantism has been the dominant religious force in the North, and, conversely, that Roman Catholics there have felt themselves to be a precarious minority. Paradoxically, the situation of Catholics in Northern Ireland is mirrored by the minority position of Ulster Protestants in the island as a whole.

Evangelical Christianity in Northern Ireland is numerically quite strong—one estimate puts its numbers at from 60,000 to 100,000. Evangelicals are sparsely represented in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) and receive little support from their church authorities. In Presbyterianism, on the other hand, evangelical numbers and influence have been growing steadily for the last quarter century. Today about 35 percent of the Presbyterian clergy would take a broadly evangelical view. Tracing their roots even beyond the 1859 Revival, most evangelicals are strongly committed to the fundamentals and are tirelessly active in organized Bible study, gospel campaigns, and in the support of overseas missionary work and other traditional forms of evangelical activity.

In many Protestant towns and villages, street meetings are a visible sign of evangelistic vitality, and up to 100,000 children are enrolled in Sunday schools across the province. More novel forms of evangelistic expression are also being developed. These include a Christian film ministry reaching an international market, effective outreach to prisons, and a range of city ministries based on the Belfast YMCA. Charismatics have been gaining in strength and confidence in the last 10 years, too, and have to their credit many attempts to glorify Christ in the midst of conflict.

There are some close links between evangelicalism in North America and Northern Ireland. Christian bookstores throughout Ulster are heavily stocked with literature from the U.S. and Canada. Indeed, the links with North America go back to Dwight L. Moody and his preaching visits to Ulster in the late nineteenth century.

Theologically, the northern Irish brand of evangelical Christianity has always been strongly separatist, polemical, and characterized by denominational jealousies. The Presbyterian and Anglican churches are Reformed in theology and amillenial in their eschatology. Premillenial eschatology, on the other hand, has wide currency among most evangelicals, and in the case of the Plymouth Brethren is usually translated into abstention from political participation. The historic “peace denominations” are represented only by the Quakers, who are generally evangelical in theology. Though few in number, their untiring work for reconciliation between the two communities has won them respect and appreciation from all sides in the conflict.

Evangelicals are drawn for the most part from the middle and lower middle classes, and with a predominantly rural background a generation or two ago, most are socially and politically conservative. There is virtually no tradition of social radicalism among Protestants in Northern Ireland. A major paradox in their world view is that, while they readily and generously give to mission and social concern agencies in the Third World (with some exceptions, mainly among the Methodists), they have been notably indifferent to social inequalities at home.

In the North, despite their numerical strength and the fact that they account for perhaps 20 percent of regular Protestant church-goers, evangelicals, surprisingly, lack theological weight commensurate with their numbers and activity. This may be so because they are minorities in the Presbyterian and Anglican denominations and in Methodism, and they have only occasionally obtained leadership positions in denominational councils. The smaller church groups, Baptists, Brethren, Pentecostals, and Free Presbyterians, are normally thoroughly evangelical. Once again, however, their considerable potential influence is dissipated owing to their separateness. Some evangelicals from different denominations find common focus through organizations like Inter-Varsity, and movements like the YMCA and Keswick. But even then, there is a sense of separateness as their awareness of spiritual unity is diminished by frequent reminders of denominational shibboleths.

The theme of minorities is important in the conflict in Ireland. Protestants are a minority of about 22 percent in population of the island as a whole. And as we have seen, evangelicals often have a greater awareness of their isolation than of their strength. Catholics in Northern Ireland, outnumbered two to one, have every reason to see themselves as a minority. Indeed, in Belfast where Catholics are very heavily outnumbered by Protestants, they have sometimes feared liquidation in a kind of sectarian pogrom. Protestants, on the other hand, often perceive their Catholic neighbors as potentially or actually seditious, committed to the erosion or overthrow of the very constitutional basis upon which Northern Ireland is established.

Fifty years of reciprocal suspicion has meant that until the 1970s most Catholics in Ulster were second-class citizens, as illustrated by their social class and occupational profiles. Mutual suspicion and the fear engendered by mistrust and social precariousness have combined to produce a kind of religious tribalism often found in more traditional societies. To be a Protestant, or a Catholic, in Northern Ireland is not simply a theological fact; it is indicative of a total world view that translates itself into sectarian politics.

Some element of sectarian tension has always been a feature of social life in Belfast and in rural frontier areas. It has frequently erupted into civil disturbance and violence. The last century saw nine such outbursts, and the current “Troubles” are the fourth in the last 80 years. Sadly, therefore, sectarianism is a dominant feature of society in Ulster, a social phenomenon made worse by the educational policies of the Catholic church which, insisting on separate education and a dual system of schools, continues to ensure the social and cultural isolation of Catholic and Protestant children.

Just as the sectarian issue is a dominant feature of social life in Ulster, so the land frontier with the Irish Republic, “the Border” as it is known, is the most important political reality in Ireland today. For the Nationalist movement, for Catholics in Northern Ireland, and hence for the Catholic church, the Border is anathema. It is a symbol of the occupation of part of the island by what they see as a foreign army, an unceasing inspiration to the IRA, outlawed in both parts of Ireland. And neither of the main political parties in Dublin, their histories permanently marked by their civil war in the 1920s over the partitioning of the country, has been able, until recently, to break out of traditional postures toward Northern Ireland. Even today some 600 IRA terrorist suspects, wanted for violent crimes in Northern Ireland, are living in the sanctuary of the Irish Republic, which steadfastly refuses to allow extradition to Britain.

But the Protestant view from Belfast is vastly different. More than any other political institution, “the Border” is sacred. It is regarded as a bulwark against Republicanism and Catholicism. It is seen as a kind of stockade protecting a Protestant fortress. Ultimately most Protestants, evangelical or otherwise, cling to it as their guarantee of freedom of worship and conscience. Many insist that it must be protected at all costs if Ulster’s Protestant and evangelical heritage is to be preserved.

To illustrate the basis for his dogmatism, the Protestant in Ulster will point to the 1937 Constitution of the Irish Republic, which lays claim to the territory of Northern Ireland; denies divorce to Protestants and Catholics; and is the basis of a legal system severely restricting access to contraception by all, Protestants and Catholics alike. Further, he will point to the shrinking Protestant community in the Irish Republic, and to inexorable Catholic policy on inter-faith marriages, which, insisting that children of such marriages be brought up in the Catholic faith, has led over 50 years to a kind of slow genocide of the Protestant population there.

The evangelical will probably refer also to the struggle against enormous odds by new believers in the Irish Republic. Some officers there in the Irish Army were recently forced, on pain of army discipline, to sever all links with Campus Crusade for Christ, the organization responsible for leading them to Christ while at university. Further, in November 1981 a recently formed evangelical church established by born-again Roman Catholics in county Roscommon in the Irish Republic was the focus of national attention after the local Catholic bishop orchestrated a national mass media campaign to pressure its members to return to the Catholic church. These recent illustrations, and many more, would be cited to reinforce the assertion that for much of rural Ireland, religious pluralism is virtually unknown and the parish priest and his bishop are the officers of a monolithic Catholicism that continues to play an almost medieval role in community life.

This is the background against which the hard-line views of Ulster’s one million Protestants must be evaluated. They have an almost paranoid fear of Dublin and its claims over their territory. They bitterly resent being used as a “political football” by American politicians fishing for the Irish vote in the United States. They deeply distrust the British and are convinced that successive London administrations are determined to “sell out” Northern Ireland to Dublin. They see ecumenism as a ploy in the hands of Catholic churchmen determined to erode Protestanism, destroy the gospel, and establish their hegemony over the Protestant people of Ulster. The murderous terrorist campaign of the Provisional IRA, causing death and destruction to the lives and livelihoods of so many Protestants, appears to them to have the covert support of many Catholic clergy and some bishops. Small wonder that Protestantism in Northern Ireland feels under siege.

The political groupings in the North of Ireland that existed to maintain the constitutional link with the British Parliament and Crown are known as Unionist. Unionism has long been synonymous with Protestantism—at least in the sense that for 50 years Unionist parties refused membership to Roman Catholics. And Unionism has always been closely aligned with the Orange Order, a 200-year-old Protestant fraternity with some 1,500 local branches and a membership of about 90,000 (about 32 percent of Northern Ireland’s adult male Protestants). The Orange Order is avowedly religious. It exists to protect and maintain the Protestant faith, and is currently led by Martin Smyth, an evangelical Presbyterian minister. It is not difficult to see that for Catholics living in Northern Ireland, Protestantism and Unionism are closely identified. The gospel of justification by faith and commitment to the authority of Scripture appear to be theological dimensions of an integrated politico-religious world view.

Until 1972, Northern Ireland had its own Parliament; during its 50-year life, the only party in power was the Unionist party. Its permanent majority led to great frustration among the elected representatives of the Catholic population who were politically impotent. Because Catholics were seen as disloyal and in fundamental disagreement with the very basis of the state, they were virtually excluded from executive-level employment in central or local government, and they experienced severe discrimination in employment and in the allocation of state housing. These frustrations boiled over in the late 1960s, when, encouraged by the civil-rights movement in North America, political activists formed the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to press for equity for Catholics by nonviolent means, and to draw attention to abuses in employment and housing. By 1973, as a result of their efforts major legislation and the setting up of monitoring agencies had eliminated those abuses.

Out of the collision between the civil-rights movement and the Northern Ireland Unionist Administration grew the Provisional IRA, and, in 1972, the abolition of the Belfast Parliament. This led to direct rule by British politicians appointed by the British government. But the aims of the IRA are nothing short of abolition of the Northern Ireland state, and the establishment of a Cuba-style revolutionary socialist republic in Ireland. And in pursuit of those aims, their campaign of indiscriminate murder, violence, and political propaganda continues. During one week in November 1981, the IRA carried out five murders. These included Robert Bradford, an evangelical, who had been a Methodist minister and was a Unionist member of the House of Commons at Westminster. No event in the last five years so infuriated and incensed Protestant opinion in Northern Ireland, and frustration at the ineffective security policy of the London direct-rule administration was at an all-time high. In this atmosphere, the recent accords between the London and Dublin governments, in the view of most Protestants and almost all Unionists, only add political insult to the massive physical injury inflicted by the IRA. It is an attitude epitomized by Ian Paisley when he called British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a “traitor and liar” in the House of Commons.

The security situation and fear of imminent sellout by Britain provide the context in which the role of the Reverend Ian Paisley must be seen. Dr. Paisley (the doctorate is an honorary award from Bob Jones University) is the most powerful politician Ulster has seen for 50 years. He is an elected member of both the British Parliament in London and the European Parliament, as well as being the leader of his Democratic Unionist Party (established in 1971 as the Protestant Unionist Party). He is the head of his own denomination, the fast-growing Free Presbyterian Church, which he founded about 30 years ago.

Paisley is an inveterate opponent of ecumenism, and his first political grouping, established in the mid 1960s, was Ulster Protestant Action, which was established to fight what he saw as a “Romeward trend” in the Presbyterian church. His Martyrs’ Memorial Church in Belfast is probably the largest Protestant church built in Ireland in the past 50 years. It is the stage each week for his strange blend of fundamentalism and excoriation of the British administration in Ulster. His Democratic Unionist Party now has achieved considerable power in local government across Ulster and has made Sunday observance a main plank in its political platform. Accordingly, several towns have been forced to close their sports complexes on Sundays following controversial and highly unpopular decisions. Paisley’s enormous following among the Protestant population is constantly reinforced by his evident compassion for the victims of IRA gunmen, and his weekly schedule often includes attendance at several funerals.

Paisley explains his theology as Reformed. As a preacher he claims a prophetic mandate, and as a politician he believes he wields the magistrate’s sword. Pointing to what he regards as the singular blessing of God on his political career and claiming recently that he spends “more time in prayer than perhaps any other Protestant minister” in Northern Ireland, Paisley is imbued with a conviction and sense of destiny that is reminiscent of a medieval crusader. Certainly his politics and religion intermingle in a perplexing and often frightening manner. His followers include many thousands of ultra right-wing evangelicals and tens of thousands of theologically nondescript Protestants to whom he offers a resolute leadership more notable for what it opposes than for what it affirms.

The emergence in late 1981 of Paisley’s “Third Force” is a particularly menacing development with its claims of nearly 100,000 armed volunteers, many of whom are commanded by ministers in his Free Presbyterian Church. It is remarkable that Paisley—who places such stress on the doctrine of separation when applied to fellow Christians—can without qualm completely set this aside in the political realm. Politically, and among the Protestant paramilitary organizations, he has some strange bedfellows.

Escalating IRA violence is enabling Paisley to consolidate his political leadership, largely at the expense of the more moderate, but poorly led, Official Unionist Party. And his claim that close to half the members of the Third Force are Presbyterians causes alarm in the ranks of the Presbyterian church. As the Belfast Telegraph newspaper recently put it, “The battle is on, not only for the heart of Unionism but also for the soul of Presbyterianism.” Many Protestants, however, find his rhetoric and political opportunism an embarrassment. They are profoundly disquieted by his anti-Catholic stand, feeling that the gospel of Jesus Christ is tainted by association with his provincial politics. Not for nothing has he been called “The unmitred pope of a pope-hating people.”

In recent weeks, there have been signs of a growing cleavage among evangelicals within the Presbyterian tradition, and a number of moderates have called for Christians in Northern Ireland to forsake the political idols of Ulster Protestantism and turn their backs on violence as a means of protecting themselves. Paisley, of course, is only the latest in a line of Protestant Unionist politicians whose aim has been to protect the economic and social advantage of Northern Ireland’s Protestants. How unfortunate it is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is harnessed to such a partisan cause. Certainly the mutual succour of politics and Protestantism in Northern Ireland for almost a century has quarantined evangelical belief within the Protestant population and has contributed to the coming together of Catholicism and Irish Nationalism.

Evangelicals in Northern Ireland are clearly intimately bound up in the conflict there. What is the way forward for them? It would be easy to sit in judgment from afar and mildly tell them what they must do. But that would be offensive and insensitive. The settler ancestors of the one million Protestants of Northern Ireland have occupied their farms and towns for much longer than the average American family has been in the United States.

Ulster’s Protestants value their freedom of worship and conscience as highly as any American. They have a high regard for the rule of law and are indignant and afraid when IRA gunmen seem to strike at will from the sanctuary of the Irish Republic and carry out their frequent murders with terrifying randomness and efficiency. Proud of their British heritage, they are fiercely loyal to the Crown and are determined to repulse every antidemocratic attempt to sever their province from the United Kingdom. How, they might indignantly ask, would Americans react if Mexican terrorists sought to intimidate the population of Texas and remove it from the Union? Would they suggest that U.S. citizens there should be repatriated and that Texas should be handed over despite the democratic wishes of its population?

But evangelicals in Ulster have many lessons to learn from the conflict. Christianity in Ulster needs to be depoliticized. The churches need to become more truly biblical; they must explore and preach what it really means to follow Christ and to love one’s (Catholic) neighbor. They need to learn how to represent Jesus Christ and his gospel in such a way that men and women are free to accept Christ without being expected to buy a package of political and social attitudes. They need to question some aspects of Paisley’s doctrine of the state and his rationale for tying Christians to political commitments. Similar arguments were used to justify the Crusades of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, and Cromwell’s theocracy.

We would all do well to remember that the Lord who said to Peter, “put up thy sword into thy sheath,” told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight.” The spiritual history of Ireland, North and South, would have been very different if Christians had chosen the path of peace and had prized loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ over maintaining economic and social advantage. Christians in many countries have yet to learn to heed Peter’s lesson, set out so clearly in his first epistle.

Arthur Williamson teaches at the New University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. His field is social policy. He is coeditor of Violence and Social Services in Northern Ireland (Heineman Educational Books, London, 1978).

Through his financial dealings with the poor, Robert Lavelle tries to stake a Christian claim in people’s lives.

Wander through the Hill District of Pittsburgh. You will see parts of it that look like a slum: an inner-city ghetto. Burned-out and boarded-up buildings testify to businesses that have fled the area for more lucrative locations. Vacant lots reveal the vicious cycle of slum housing: the landlord who quit trying to keep it up, the tenants who gave up, the city inspector who preferred a bribe to real inspection, the drug addicts who moved in after the tenants moved out. Declared unfit for habitation, the house went down under the wrecking ball of the city’s demolition crew. You might witness a corner drug sale if you watch carefully. The numbers runner slips by.

As you continue your wandering in this area, though, you see signs of hope, of growth, and of life instead of death. You come to one of the few bright spots, an attractive building at the corner of Herron and Centre Avenues. It is Lavelle Real Estate and Dwelling House Savings and Loan.

If you are 12 years old, looking for models, you might look to the kingpin of drug sales. But you might also look to Robert R. Lavelle, the bank executive in the nice building who waves to the kids as they walk by, who sometimes finds them jobs, who visits their homes if their parents are among those who are struggling and buying a house with one of the mortgages he provides to poor black families who otherwise cannot obtain credit. The larger banks downtown would think twice before ever offering a mortgage to someone in a slum.

Officially Robert R. Lavelle is executive vice-president and secretary of Dwelling House and president of the real estate company. In practice, as a Christian applying his faith to his work, he has shaped a wide-ranging inner-city ministry, with a special emphasis on economics and housing. The key characteristic of his work is that 80 percent of his bank loans go to people who would be unable to obtain credit from other banks. “We take the person who has had problems with his credit and we try to teach him, and we give a chance to the person who normally isn’t given a chance,” he explains. He does it all in obedience and thankfulness to the One who changed his life at the age of 47.

Lavelle had done good works prior to his conversion to Christ in 1964, but his motives were different then. The son of a Church of God evangelist and a praying Christian mother, he resisted the faith of his parents until his mother’s death helped him see what he was missing in life. She was a semi-invalid after his father’s death, and would gently remind her son that though he treated her well, was a good father to his own two sons and a faithful husband to his wife Adah, he lacked one thing.

“It was the effort to attain goodness on my own strength that led me to become a Christian. I had quit doing all the things you were supposed to quit doing. I had quit smoking. I had quit drinking. I didn’t have to quit running around with other women; I always had only one wife. I guess I was one of those good Pharisees. I did good things,” he recalls, “yet I didn’t have peace, and I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t quite identify it, but it seemed like I wasn’t getting credit for the things I felt I should be getting credit for.”

Lavelle’s capacity to help exploded in the years after his conversion. His savings and loan business attracted Christian support from many who heard his testimony and placed their savings with his organization. His own vision for inner-city ministry expanded as he saw that Christ provided answers to the wide range of problems he grappled with each day as he ran two businesses in a ghetto.

Christ is the answer, he is quick to acknowledge, but that truth must be demonstrated and not merely stated, otherwise the slogan sounds simplistic to those who do not know Christ. “We need somehow to put that in the framework of everyday living and everyday existence. If Christ is the answer, his life shining through me, other people will see the good works that I do and glorify God in heaven. And the only way that Christ can get this glory is by Lavelle making sure that no one gives him credit for whatever it is that might be done that is helping someone else to have a better life. So I have to say that Christ is the answer, but he is the answer as he works through my life, as I acknowledge him as Lord, and as I make sure that others understand that it isn’t me in my strength doing this. If it were me in my strength, I would not be doing it.”

Lavelle carries out this commitment in business primarily by making his skills available to people in need, to people who would be turned away by other lending institutions because they do not have enough income or are a poor risk. Occasionally customers wonder why, and he winds up with an opportunity to share the reason for the hope that is in him.

Lavelle’s location in the heart of the Hill District ghetto is essential for his work, though he has been pressured by federal government regulators and others to move to a “better” location where there are fewer black and poor people. He stubbornly insists on staying where he is surrounded by people in need—“for educational purposes, to teach people,” he says. “Since 85 percent of learning comes from what people see, then you have to be in the community where people can see you. You can’t be in Washington, you can’t be downtown, you can’t be in one of those buildings where there are guards who keep you from getting in unless you sign your name, state your purpose. Here people can walk in.”

Much of his time is spent counseling people, explaining the responsibilities of home ownership to families with low incomes. Sometimes he winds up being an all-purpose social worker as well. “This morning I had a call from a young man who has had a life of dope, prison, problems, alcohol; a veteran,” Lavelle says, thinking of an example. “This young man was always willing to have the benefits of power without paying the price, and that got him into dope and alcohol and a lot of other things.”

He worked with the man several years, sponsoring him for parole after a prison term, providing him with a job, then helping him obtain other jobs. “He was always standing on the fence between his old life and his new life.” Lavelle helped the man buy a home for his family, counseling him when he fell behind on payments. “Each time he falters, each time he’s given a chance to make another start, it seems like there’s a strengthening quality and growth, and each time of positive action is seemingly a little longer than the last time.”

Not all the homes he finances with Dwelling House mortagages require such intense counseling. Others who fall behind on payments may receive an evening or weekend visit from Lavelle for a time of prayer and discussion. What does he say?

“I know you and I know that you have a concern for these children, that you’ve done something for them when you provided this house. We made this loan to you. You signed that you would pay on the first of each month. Now you’re providing them with a house, and that’s fine, and they do need this roof over their heads. But they need something more than that. They need a parent with integrity, who’s going to be an example of honoring his obligations, keeping his word.”

The idea is to appeal to self-respect. Lavelle seldom forecloses on home buyers who fall behind on payments, preferring to counsel and encourage. Thus his delinquency rate is higher than that of most other lending institutions. But his foreclosure rate is lower. “We only have a foreclosure when there is total abandonment,” he says. “I tell a person that if the only thing he has money for is to eat, then I’ll pay the mortgage; but I won’t let one pay for anything except food ahead of the mortgage.”

The impact of Lavelle’s ministry is difficult to measure. Home ownership has increased to 40 percent. But how do you evaluate changed lives? His example is also hard to measure. He stands in the gap, as commanded by the prophet Ezekiel: “We’re here so that these kids—you can see the buses coming now to take the kids home from school—can see a business with all the accouterments of success that they would normally equate only with a drug pusher and a numbers runner and the pimp and the prostitute and the loan shark and the alcohol dispenser and the after-hours spot. They are the only people these kids ever see with the nice car and the good living. It seems like people can’t grasp the fact that if you’re going to help people, you have to be where they are. Wherever the person who needs the help is, that is where you have to be. It’s the Jericho Road story: the man who needed help wasn’t transplanted to the church, to where the priest was going. He needed help where he was.”

For all his efforts to help poor people, though, Lavelle also has a practical, economic side to his character. “I still have to have all the technical knowledge necessary to run these businesses,” he says. “I know about the law of supply and demand, diminishing return, Gresham’s Law—you name it. I know them and I have to observe them. But I’m still saying that we must respond to needs.”

Other lending institutions have noticed this practical side and have invited Lavelle to join them, offering much higher salaries and benefits than he enjoys through Dwelling House and Lavelle Real Estate. He takes an annual salary of $7,400 from Dwelling House. His real estate company salary is $15,000 when the market is good, though he lost money in 1980. Sometimes the temptation to flee to a larger bank beckons. “It would be more comfortable, yes, with all the fringe benefits and all the back-up people and the guarantee of pension and all that. If we get a two-week vacation this year, it will be the first time we have been away for two consecutive weeks in 20 years because we can’t do it. I can’t have any excuse.”

His goal for the Hill District is 90 percent home ownership, which he thinks is the key to many of the problems of the inner city. “When we provide home ownership (equity) to poor and black people, the economics of their areas change from dope, numbers, prostitution, pimps, and loan sharks, to home ownership, good city services, police and garbage collection, quality schools, viable businesses, and jobs,” he says. “Home owners, since they pay the taxes for the school board, can demand quality schools where teachers teach instead of just keeping order. There are no troubled schools where the homes are owned. People demand the right resources.

“Home owners require business in the area. There are no businesses in black communities because there is no home ownership. Then you have jobs from businesses moving in. Kids can learn the system, earn money, and stay out of trouble. Home owners demand the government to be the government. The police protect instead of exploit. The police in this community just want their rakeoff from the dope pushers and the runners and the pimps and the prostitutes. Then you have garbage collection, regular, in a courteous manner, instead of strewn all over the place.”

He is skeptical about the ability of government to accomplish a lot on behalf of poor people, though he adds that some programs have been helpful on a short-term basis. He suggests that the government should put deposits in lending institutions that agree to counsel and help low-income families buy homes, avoiding the creation of a new bureaucracy. The urban affairs committee of the U.S. Savings League has approved the idea in the past, with some debate.

“Many people objected to the idea—the risk,” Lavelle explains. “I replied that our unwillingness to take the risk any longer is the reason government steps in and we get the laws, bureaus, programs that bloat government spending, pay large salaries, and often provide no significant return to the people.”

To reach his goal for widespread home ownership, Lavelle depends on Christians throughout the country who share his vision and keep savings accounts with Dwelling House by mail, some as small as $100. Inflation has discouraged some from joining him because he offers the normal 5½ percent interest rate. He does not try to compete with other lending institutions by offering high-yield certificates because he would not be able to keep mortgage interest rates low enough to give poor people a chance at home ownership.

But he continues to see steady, slow growth in the number of savers (approximately 3,000 now), with $7 million in assets. He is not sure why more Christians do not save with him, considering the interest in recent years among evangelicals in ministry to the inner city. “I think it’s part of the system under which we live,” he speculates. “It’s not possible for people to conceive of a profit-making institution like ours since our society sets up nonprofit organizations and government agencies to perform these services. And they just think that that is how we solve these problems, that we do not get personally involved with them.

“To see a business sharing, caring, and sacrificing so that someone else’s good will comes about without regard to what that might do to the bottom line is just not conceived of as being a practical thing. Therefore, people are able to dismiss it from their minds because they don’t see it as real. Yet they don’t inquire as to the reality of it, nor do they test it to see. It’s easier and more comfortable not to test it, but if they were to test it and see that it is true, they would have to join it or reject it, and they’re not comfortable with either of these options.”

Lavelle faces other obstacles to his goals. Robberies have pushed his insurance rates up. Savings and loans are generally facing economic difficulties, losing more deposits than they are gaining, sometimes merging or turning to the federal government for aid. The troubled list maintained by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation keeps growing. Somehow Dwelling House continues to thrive.

“How can an institution like Dwelling House with $7 million in assets continue to survive?” he asks. “The answer, as I see it, lies in Acts 5 where Paul and James and John were being beaten in the marketplace, witnessing to Christ Jesus who was crucified and risen and ascended, and forbidden to teach and preach in his name by the Sanhedrin. They said that they must obey God rather than man. Then Gamaliel, the teacher and one of the leaders of the Sanhedrin, said not to put these people to death because, if what they were doing was of God, the Sanhedrin might find it was opposing God himself. If what they were doing was not of God, then it would fall of its own weight.

“That’s really where I feel Dwelling House Savings and Loan and Lavelle Real Estate are. If it is of God, no one will be able to prevail against us. And if what we are doing is not of God, then it will fall of its own weight—and it should, because there is no valid reason for us to exist.”

Russ Pulliam is an editorial writer and columnist for the Indianapolis News, Indiana.

Psst! Anybody Listening?

Few people today have had the experience of using a party-line telephone—that wonderful institution our grandparents enjoyed. You never said anything over it that you wanted kept secret.

During World War II there were signs in schools, factories, churches, and restaurants: A SLIP OF THE LIP MAY SINK A SHIP. They were a constant reminder that our enemies might be listening, and that a careless conversation could have disastrous consequences. The same is true today. Many of us are sharing a party line with Russian spies who regularly listen in on long-distance phone conversations. Overheard gossip could adversely affect someone in the electronics industry, the space program, or the military.

There is a positive side to this situation. If Russian spies are listening to our phone conversations, we can use the opportunity to give them a message. For example, when you call Aunt Millie or Uncle Jack in Sheboygan, you can discuss how thankful you are to live in a country where men and women are free to travel, to change jobs—and where free speech and a free press are a reality. You could emphasize the fact that Americans admire the Polish people, decry what has happened in Afghanistan, and are well aware of what Russia is doing with yellow rain. Discuss things that will tell the spy that many Americans are morally strong and spiritually committed. If you complain about food prices, be sure you also mention how thankful you are that there is plenty of food on supermarket shelves.

You might want to try a more direct approach: “Hello, Aunt Millie,” and “Hello, Russian. Why don’t you stop eavesdropping?” Or, “Hi, Comrade. Aren’t you glad you’re here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.?” Take advantage of the opportunity to get a spy to read the Bible. Make it a practice to quote chapter and verse in your conversations. Your spy will be puzzling over Bible verses for hours. You might even put together a selection of verses that could send a powerful message into the heart of the Russian spy network in the U.S.

Some vindictive people—not Christians, of course—might start giving special “American” recipes over the phone that, if cooked and eaten, would be guaranteed to put a spy out of commission, or at least “on the run” for a while.

The important thing is to remember that, like it or not, you are on a party line with Russian spies. If you can’t do anything else, you can at least make every effort to bore them.

EUTYCHUS XI

Knee-jerked Vengeance

Does Mr. Marsden seriously believe [“A Law to Limit the Options,” Mar. 19] that the American Civil Liberties Union, which manufactured the Scopes incident in the first place, cares about the various creation models held by evangelicals? Even had the Arkansas law been more inclusive than what Marsden calls the “most conservative of the literal interpretations,” the ACLU would have knee-jerked with precisely the same speed and vengeance. Clearly they don’t care how we present our case, only that we present it at all. The ACLU has demonstrated that it is dedicated to eliminating the few vestiges of Judeo-Christian heritage that remain in American public life. It is inconceivable to me that a Christian would knowingly assist their efforts.

The Arkansas law, though weak at points, offered a broad framework within which creation-science could have been presented. That opportunity is now gone.

TONY LEGRAND

Visalia, Calif.

Evangelicals Unite!

I agree with most of what Richard Neuhaus wrote in his article, “Who, Now, Will Shape the Meaning of America?” [Mar. 19]. Those who count themselves evangelical had better stop arguing among themselves and unite on some moral issues. While they vacilate, the abortionists, pornographers, homosexuals, and evolutionists are persuading our young people that the Bible is an old fogy’s book and there is no God.

E. F. PARTRIDGE

Montgomery, Ill.

Deceptive Allure

“Liberation Theology: European Hopelessness Exposes the Latin Hoax” [Mar. 5] was at best a glaring visual and verbal relapse to tragic and unfortunate days gone by.

One need not be a liberation theologian to recognize the deceptive allure of a flawed attempt to debunk the popular movements in Latin America via Eastern Europe. Theologies of liberation are created within particular revolutionary situations. Latin American liberation theology is understandably Marxist and anti-American. The Eastern European theological expression now emerging is, as it must be, far different. Such is the nature of the theologies of liberation, and though they may be mistaken in whole or in part, we surely do them an injustice if we “expose” one culturally informed theological expression by relying upon events occurring in a totally different historical context.

MICHAEL KNOSP AND DAVID FOUNTAIN

Cambridge, Mass.

I cannot accept either Benjamin’s perception of the relationship of liberation theology to the Polish situation or his general evaluation of the state of affairs in Eastern Europe in general. It is unfortunate he did not reflect upon his material a little more thoroughly before writing.

It is not responsible to talk of queues for food in all Communist countries. Upon my last visit to Hungary, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables were readily available in Budapest, Szekesfehervar, and on Balaton. Fresh oranges were piled high, and coffee was available.

Even in 1979, everyone—Hungarians, Czechs, and East Germans—saw Poland as the poor sister. Then Poles came in huge busloads across the Oder River on shopping sprees in the “oasis” of the East German marketplace.

On the church scene, of course, there are other distinctions. In West Germany the state collects taxes for all but the free churches (Baptist, Methodist, etc.). In East Germany, all the churches have involuntarily become “free” churches and have begun to thrive after substantial adjustments in numbers and methods of operation. In Czechoslovakia, all church buildings are state owned, and all pastors are paid directly by the government—even in the “free” churches. In 1980 they received their first pay increase since the system’s inception in 1949. In Hungary, a combination of state support for the “established” churches and unofficial payments from nebulous church treasuries supports the ministry of the Reformed Church. Others may function differently. In each of these countries, the churches traditionally have played, and continue to play, obviously different roles. Any effort to describe them “monolithically” obscures reality.

REV. JAMES A. DWYER

Sunnycrest United Methodist Church

Marion, Ind.

Wrong Focus

It is disappointing that in reporting on Evangelica’s special issue on the problems surrounding Seventh-day Adventism’s extrabiblical authority [“More Problems for Ellen White,” Mar. 5] the focus was on peripheral matters and completely overlooked the central thrust of Evangelica’s challenge: that Ellen White’s claims of divine revelation should be rejected because (1) her theology denies the New Testament gospel of justification by faith alone on the basis of Christ’s finished work of Atonement, and (2) God has given his full and final revelation in his Son, recorded in the New Testament by the apostolic witnesses. This is the real issue at hand, and if more Christians were aware of it, fewer would become entrapped in Adventism and other quasi-Christian cults of this nature.

ALEXANDER LABRECQUE

Evangelica

St. Joseph, Mich.

Inaccuracies

Your assertion that our research center is one of the “other groups” formed recently to promote the Vashchenko and Chmykhalov emigration is in error [“Siberian 7: A Desperate Situation,” Feb. 5]. The Research Center for Religion and Human Rights in Closed Societies and its publication, Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, have championed over the years the rights of various religious denominations and of many individuals. The bill (S. 312) to grant permanent resident alien status originated in our research center in February, 1980.

Nobody has worked more devotedly for the Siberian Seven and for the bill than Jane Drake of Montgomery, Alabama, the founder of SAVE. It was Mrs. Drake, and not the State Department, who asked former President Carter to telephone the Seven on January 14. The most realistic hope for the Seven is the passage of S. 312 in the near future, which will have an enormous impact on the issue of human rights in the USSR.

REV. AND MRS. BLAHOSLAV S. HRUBÝ

Research Center for Religion and

Human Rights in Closed Societies

New York, N.Y.

Good cover pictures encourage people to read the articles they illustrate. We thought we had a winner in the painting of Uncle Sam on the cover of our March 19 issue. So many have asked who was the Uncle Sam model for that painting that I thought you might be interested in the story behind the picture.

Richard Neuhaus’s speech delivered at the Harvard Club in New York City raised the issue of who will determine the direction of America during the last two decades of the twentieth century. In the recent past, liberal leadership of the mainline denominations has provided that role for our country. Today its leadership is faltering. Who will take its place? If evangelicals (both in and out of the mainline denominations) would work together, they could assume that role and provide guidance and intellectual leadership for our nation during the next generation.

We wished to portray Uncle Sam cutting out the pattern for the future of America, and we wanted a model who not only looked the part but also symbolized in his character the rock-ribbed integrity we covet for our national leaders. I know of no one who fits that image better than Dr. Hudson Armerding, president of Wheaton College (Illinois). We asked him to pose for a photograph in full dress costume. He agreed, and we were happy with the painting. We hope you were, too.

We hope you will read the story of Robert Lavelle in the current issue. This Christian bank executive puts into daily practice what many evangelicals have been urging—the duty of the Christian private sector to come to the assistance of the poor and needy, particularly those hurt in recent federal budget cuts.

A sadder tale stems from Northern Ireland. In this troubled area of the world, concerned Protestants and Roman Catholics alike have felt at a loss for ways to quell the violence. Without glossing over the complexities of the situation, Arthur Williamson tries to sort out the issues and help us understand what keeps this land in turmoil.

Finally, Edwin Olson takes on a highly controversial topic—the evolutionist/creationist debate. We will devote an issue to this topic next fall, but here, Olson tries to define terms and uncover the real questions. If you think the debate among evangelicals appears acrimonious, take a look at secular scientific writers Robert Jastrow and Isaac Asimov. More than anything else, evangelicals need to sort out what are the real issues and determine where their biblical faith is at stake and where only traditional interpretations of Scripture are involved. Until we do so, the debates will continue to generate more heat than light.

Fantasy: A Reader’S Passport To Reality

Fantasy is a world better entered into than understood. It is as varied as cloud shapes on a summer day. As a literary genre, it covers everything from supernatural/horror stories to the low fantasy of sword and sorcery, and from animal fantasy, such as Walter Wangerin’s excellent The Book of the Dun Cow, to high fantasy like that of Tolkien or Lewis.

Good fantasy pulsates with power. It touches a reader’s beliefs, his way of viewing life, his hopes, his dreams, and his faith. In the hands of a careful writer it can drive home spiritual truth as nothing else can. In that light, it is encouraging to see newer writers tackling this form.

Charles Beamer in Lightning in the Bottle (Nelson) and John White in The Iron Sceptre (IVP) have done precisely that, just as Charles Williams did in All Hallows’ Eve (Eerdmans) a generation ago.

Beamer is a former English teacher and educational consultant. The first book in his fantasy series, The Legends of Eorthe, was Magician’s Bane. It was all that a first novel often is: a little too moralizing and a little too imitative. But Lightning in the Bottle strikes a very different and more pleasant note. It reveals a significant amount of artistic growth on Beamer’s part, with moral lessons less preached and more shown. And the story stands more on its own than it does in the shadow of Narnia.

The principal characters are Jodi and Martin Westphall, Eric Vanover, Richard Brogan, and Jon, a mute. These youngsters go to Eorthe, a dimensional twin to Earth, to participate in a conflict between those who seek the King, who is the Lord of Light and the book’s Christ figure, and the forces of darkness, personified in Jabez and Sarx, sorcerer sons of Ingloamin, Lord of Darkness. Although this sounds a bit dualistic, Beamer steers clear of that by making the King the son of Abba, Father of Light and Creator of Eorthe and Earth. Ingloamin is but a created thing of the void.

The children are sent to recover the stolen Lightning in the Bottle, a symbol for the Eorthians of faith in Abba and the King. Their quest is aided or hindered from all sorts of strange sources—a wind god named Win-dor, wolvors, bogloams, and fearsors. The Leohtians, or Light People, are the most original and memorable of the lot.

John white, who is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, is the author of several nonfiction works. His first novel, The Tower of Geburah, unfortunately falls into a category of children’s books enjoyable only to children. The Iron Scepter, however, has less of that limitation as White, like Beamer, shows signs of growth as a novelist—although to a lesser degree. He retains at least two irritating little quirks: he inserts himself into the narrative (just because Lewis did it in Narnia doesn’t make it a good thing to do), and he has chosen inappropriate, or at least illsounding, names: “Anthropos,” a kingdom in White’s fantasy world, whose symbolism is painfully obvious; “Gaal,” pronounced according to the book’s index as “Gahl,” the Christ figure; and “Theophilus Gorgonzola Roquefort de Limburger V,” a flying horse. All of the names aggravate more than illuminate.

Apart from that, the story is agreeably interesting. The children are Kurt, Wesley, and Lisa Friesen, and their cousin, Mary McNabb. The conflict is between Kardia, King of Anthropos, and Mirmah, the Lady of Night and Empress-to-Be of the Darkness that Swallows the World. The resultant story is illuminated by spiritual insight and truth.

It is obvious that parallels to both Narnia and Middle Earth are abundant in both books: children who answer a call to go into another world to battle evil; the involvement of their battle in some kind of epic quest; at least one child who starts “bad” and ends “good”; a villain who stands in the place of a deeper, more evil force; evil that is overcome not by might nor power, but by belief in the book’s Christ figure; and so on.

This is not to say that these books are merely pale imitations of other works. Look, for instance, at the formulas used by detective fiction, romances, thrillers, and some “literary” novels. What counts is the author’s ability to put something unique and living within the formula.

To varying degrees, Beamer and White both have created that unique something within their novels. The books are readable and well worth their price of admission. If they are at times irksome, they are also at times awesome. Each has a good appendix to keep up with names, places, language oddities, and other items of interest. Quite frankly, I look forward to what both these men will produce when they hit their stride.

All Hallows’ Eve is totally different from the Beamer and White novels. For one thing, it is a reprint—long overdue—of a Charles Williams classic. Also, it is horror, not high, fantasy. Its secondary world is not a place of monsters, heroics, and Christ figures, but rather a dismal/glorious (depending on your view) place where one’s true nature reigns supreme. It is the City, a place close in nature to purgatory, and it lies spiritually superimposed on London just after World War II.

Two of the novel’s characters, Lester and Evelyn, are dead. In the City, the inner realities of their earthly lives work themselves out, pointing Lester to ever-higher realms and Evelyn to ever-lower. Entwined in this is Father Simon, a sorcerer, who intends to break the boundaries of the City by sending his illegitimate daughter, Betty, there permanently. The conflict that ensues with its climax on All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween) makes for a highly dramatic novel rife with spiritual imagery. Be sure to read T. S. Eliot’s introduction. It offers valuable insight into both the meaning of All Hallows’ Eve, and Williams as a person.

Reviewed by Larry E. Neagle, a free-lance writer in Fort Worth, Texas.

Like Ships In The Night

Toward a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religion, by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (Westminster, 1981, 206 pp., $18.95), is reviewed by Bruce Demarest, professor of theology, Denver Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

A Harvard authority on world religions, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, advances a relativistic model of the leading faiths: a Christian is one who participates in the complex of Islamic religious life—and so on. This means, first, that there is no one religion higher than any other, and second, that God is at work in Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic religious history.

Postulating the model of “corporate critical self-consciousness,” Smith insists that religious knowledge involves that which can be personally experienced by all (the subjective pole) and that which can be scientifically analyzed (the objective pole). To avoid provincialism, it is necessary to participate in the consciousness of those of other faiths. For example, one should understand what the temple ritual means to pious Hindus and what fetishism and ancestor worship signify to African traditional religionists. Only then can a person begin to construct a theology that is truly global.

Faith, according to Smith, is a universal quality of human life. Faith is not assent to truths; rather, it is a way of viewing one’s neighbor and the world. Instead of Christian faith or Buddhist faith, one must speak of faith in a generic sense. Since God is at work in all religions, and since faith is a fundamental human quality, Smith concludes that a person is saved by participation in the life of one or another of the world’s religious communities. Thus, God saves Buddhists through the teachings of the Buddha and Hindus through the poetry of the Gita. Smith argues that this generic approach to religion enables modern man to be a compassionate pluralist without being a nihilist, and it offers a viable basis for building a peaceful world order.

The evangelical Christian will disagree with many of the author’s conclusions. Smith argues that as a rational animal, man is capable of securing all truth by application of the scientific method. One finds no acknowledgement of sin or the need for special revelation to impart truths beyond human apprehension. Indeed, Smith does not appeal to a single text of Scripture to support his case.

The Bible, furthermore, never links salvation with mere participation in a religious community. Paul regarded his early life in Judaism (Gal. 1:13–16), and the Thessalonian Christians saw their experience in traditional religion (1 Thess. 1:9–10), as conditions of darkness rather than fight.

Finally, the Christian understanding of God, man, sin, and salvation differs so radically from the Hindu and Buddhist views that the situation is not unlike ships passing in the night. We ought to avoid a narrow provincialism, but when conflicting claims are presented, we must make a choice. If one view offers a coherent explanation for the miraculous works and resurrection of Christ and others fail to do so, the inquirer has good reason to accept the supported view and reject contradictory alternatives.

In sum, Smith’s scholarly study is wanting at crucial points. It does, however, confirm the aphorism, “There is nothing like comparative religions to make a person comparatively religious.”

Using The World Christianly

Bent World: A Christian Response to the Environmental Crisis, by Ron Elsdon, (IVP, 1981, 170 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Martin LaBar, professor of science, Central Wesleyan College, Central, South Carolina.

Ron Elsdon, according to the cover and contents of Bent World, is an Irish geologist, of some prominence in his profession. He has obviously done a lot of work in writing Bent World, which is thorough, scholarly, and well documented—without being unreadable.

I found the book to be really two books in one. On the one hand, the middle half says essentially nothing about Christianity, but documents present problems of the world. A chapter each is concentrated on metals, energy, cities, and food. These chapters contain a lot of statistics, but unfortunately, these will soon be out of date. Nonetheless, they do present the difficulties in a comprehensive manner.

On the other hand, there is a Christian response to the environmental crisis. The first chapter sketches the environmental views of a diverse group (a commission of the World Council of Churches, the National Evangelical Anglican Congress, Paul Ehrlich, J. R. W. Stott, Lynn White, Jr., and others). The last three chapters, on the effects of sin, the implications of salvation, and what Christians can and should be doing, are the best part of the book. It is difficult to imagine a more thorough use of the Bible in examining our relationship to the environment, and Elsdon has suggested things Christians can do. Especially, he wants us to be Christian in our attitudes toward material things and other people, and to question the status quo. We have not been a peculiar people.

Bent World is more thorough in relating Scripture to the issues than Earthkeeping (Loren Wilkinson, ed., Eerdmans), a book covering similar topics. It is also less expensive, though Earthkeeping is better written and more thorough in examining the historical roots of our attitude towards nature. Both deserve a place on the bookshelves and in the minds of Christians of our time.

Briefly Noted

Spiritual maturity has always been the goal of Christian nurture, even if it is not always attained. It is no different today, and several factors have heightened the push toward clarifying what that means. For instance, there is a new attitude among Christians toward psychology and what it has to offer; we have leisure to think about such things; material possessions have failed to give satisfaction; and the general insecurity of the times forces us inward. From the many (almost too many) books that attempt to show the way, the following selection presents those that have something to offer:

General. Something of an introductory theology of spirituality is The Heart of the World (Crossroad), by Thomas Keating. It is not too deep, but it does go in the right direction. More directive is Toward the Heart of God (Winston), by John Dalrymple, which describes the journey inwards and then out again. It is quite well done and shows the truth of Dag Hammarskjöld’s statement, “The longest journey is the journey inwards.” Transcend (Crossroad), by Morton Kelsey, is a full-blown guide to the spiritual quest that adds valuable insights from psychology (especially Jung). Although its 22 chapters are not woven totally together, it still provides much-needed help.

Three books deal with Christian meditation: Word into Silence (Paulist), by John Main, describes the Christian meditative experience, then offers a 12-step meditative program; Beyond TM (Paulist), by Marilyn M. Helleberg, is along the same line but more psychologically and practically oriented; Alone with God (Bethany Fellowship), by Campbell McAlpine, is a twopart manual covering pre-meditation and meditation from a wholly biblical perspective (Eastern parallels and psychological twists are absent).

Louis Dupré writes a searching, but all-too-brief introduction to mysticism in The Deeper Life (Crossroad). More detailed, but looking decidedly Eastward, is The Mirror Mind (Harper & Row), by William Johnson. This book looks directly at Zen meditation and Christian prayer, allowing them to flow constructively into each other. A collection of the late R. C. Zaehner’s essays is available as The City Within the Heart (Crossroad). The book provokes thought, as one would expect from Professor Zaehner. Paul Tournier’s The Whole Person in a Broken World (Harper & Row) is now available in paperback to help a new generation of seekers.

Navpress offers a nine-booklet set called Studies in Christian Living, covering the whole of Christian life from “Knowing Jesus Christ” (the first booklet) to “Achieving Victory” (the ninth). They are helpful, but sometimes have too little content. The ninth, for example, has 23 virtually blank pages (to be filled in by the reader) out of a total of 32. Although not specifically about spirituality, Gariy Friesen’s Decision Making and the Will of God (Multnomah) ought to be mentioned. It gives helpful guidance on how to discern God’s will and make decisions where there are no clear biblical guidelines. It is wise and careful in its suggestions.

Special Emphasis. Numerous attempts have been made to isolate the key element in spirituality. Sometimes it is overstated, sometimes it is not. The following group of 11 books offers a variety of answers to the question, “How do I become spiritually mature?”

In Living God’s Way (Kregel), F. E. Marsh says prayer is the secret of the spiritual life. There is much practical wisdom offered in support of this idea, but the either/or thrust upon the believer (either self or Christ) ignores the help psychology can give in redeeming rather than abandoning the self. The Promise of Paradox (Ave Maria), by Parker J. Palmer, celebrates the contradictions that are at the heart of human experience. To acknowledge these is to reach a new understanding of what it means to be spiritual, yet human. Bernard J. Tyrrell says healing comes through enlightenment in Christotherapy (Seabury). Using the insights of Frankl, Glasser, Dabrowski, and others, Tyrrell suggests that true spirituality comes from a loving response to the Christ-value, answering our most important prayer: “Lord, that I may understand.”

Dr. Messenger’s Guide to Better Health (Revell), by David L. Messenger, ties physical and spiritual health together in a sensible, down-to-earth way, stressing diet, exercise, and emotion. I might even start jogging myself! John W. Drakeford shows how to have stability when things begin falling apart in The Awesome Power of Healing Thought (Broadman). He uses Paul’s advice in Phil. 4:8 as a starting point: “Think on these things.” Richard J. Foster suggests that simplicity is the answer in Freedom of Simplicity (Harper & Row). This marvelous and helpful book shuns simplistic solutions in favor of simple ones that touch the bedrock of reality. Have You Felt Like Giving Up Lately? (Revell), by David Wilkerson, says it is by not giving up through the power of faith that you may heal your hurts. Donald Deffner sees the inner quest as a search for freedom in Bound to Be Free (Morse Press). Freedom is defined according to what it leaves behind, what it embraces, and what it requires.

Improving Your Serve (Word), by Charles R. Swindoll, develops the theme of selfless living as the essence of Christian servanthood. Tested by Temptation (Kregel), by W. Graham Scroggie, shows how to be fitted for Christian service by understanding properly what temptation is and how to overcome it. Richard J. Nouw suggests that action in our needy world is the key to spirituality in Called to Holy Worldliness (Fortress): we will then be agents of victory.

Personal Statements. Robert C. Girard has written a highly original and personal account of his own struggle toward spirituality in My Weakness: His Strength (Zondervan). It is easy to recognize bits of oneself in what Girard says and to be helped by his suggestions. The Promise of Hope (Abingdon), by William M. Kinnaird, is a collection of short, personal notes that tell of struggle, pain, and victory. Kinnaird’s honesty cannot help but benefit people in similar circumstances. A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee (Doubleday), by Henri J. M. Nouwen, contains prayers written during Nouwen’s second stay at a Trappist monastery in upstate New York They are filled with freshness and insight—usual with Nouwen’s works. From another Trappist monastery, this one in Colorado, comes W. Paul Jones’s diary, The Province Beyond the River (Paulist). Its style is reminiscent of Nouwen’s earlier A Genesee Diary, and he, too, writes with insight and spiritual understanding.

The Lutheran tradition has broad, ecumenical application.

Many evangelicals oppose public allegiance to historic documents that pull together the heart of Christian doctrine. Their fear is that these “confessions” take the place of authority in the church that should be held by the Bible alone, not by any human statement. They look with suspicion not so much on the documents themselves (e.g., the Westminster Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Augsburg Confession) as on “confessionalism.”

These are people who think that simply affirming an ancient creed not only does not save anyone, but may actually be a hindrance to conversion. They view these statements of faith as having been powerless to maintain orthodoxy in some large denominations. They see how even Roman Catholic encyclicals and councils permit a high level of doctrinal tolerance and change.

But deep down, this evangelical antipathy to confessions rests on the firm belief that no one human document can do justice to the Bible. Paradoxically, many evangelical institutions and organizations try to guarantee their orthodoxy by requiring annual subscriptions to statements of faith that are interdenominational “confessions.”

As an evangelical Lutheran, I want to defend the value of our confessions and show why it is important that Lutheran clergymen subscribe to them at their ordination.

Lutherans see their confessions as statements of the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Unlike the Catholic understanding, the Lutheran view does not recognize doctrinal development. Rather, Lutherans look to a single core of confessions. One confession expands upon another, but it is not an addition. All confessions derive their authority from the Bible, and thus, Lutherans look at their confessional allegiance as biblical.

They do no more than Peter did when he confessed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, God’s Son. One who subscribes to a historic confession of faith acknowledges the Bible as the source of the church’s teaching. These confessions show that one strand of truth stretches from the original apostolic witness to the church today.

Three ancient creeds comprise the heart of the Lutheran confessions: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. The first two were probably constructed from forms already in use in apostolic times. When a Christian affirms allegiance to these creeds, it is far more than a contractual agreement. As part of the liturgy, they are essential to the believer’s devotional life. That is why Martin Luther wanted the Apostles’ Creed recited eight times a day!

Lutherans also recognize documents from the sixteenth century as authoritative expressions of the apostolic faith: Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms (1529), the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537), the Formula of Concord (1577), and the Preface to the Book of Concord (1580), a collection of these documents.

Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession, a guideline for many non-Lutherans as well, is the centerpiece of these confessions. When its four-hundred-fiftieth anniversary was observed in 1980, it appeared that the “ecumenical parousia” was going to materialize. The most intriguing response came from Rome where it was hinted that the Pope might recognize the Augsburg Confession.

More fuel for the ecumenical fires was provided by Vincent Pfnür’s discovery that Melanchthon and Eck in fact came very close to agreement during some behind-the-scenes negotiations in the summer of 1530 at Augsburg. Eck, who later refuted the document, apparently agreed with Melanchthon on all but 2 of the first 19 articles. Pfnür, a Catholic theologian at the University of Münster, implied that Catholics and Protestants had therefore unfortunately and unnecessarily been separated for four-and-a-half centuries.

The anniversary also brought reminders that Calvin himself had subscribed to a later edition of the Augsburg Confession (1540). But overlooked was the fact that this edition minimized the characteristic Lutheran understanding of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper.

So, the ecumenical possibilities in 1980 came to nought. Regardless, Lutherans have never understood the confession as an isolated document anyway, but rather one fleshed out by the other sixteenth-century statements. These subsequent documents in fact circumscribe the ecumenical possibilities of Augsburg. For example, Melanchthon in his Apology to the Augsburg Confession rendered rapprochement with Catholicism impossible by insisting on the total moral depravity of man and justification as God’s activity in Christ alone, excluding all human contribution. While resembling Catholics in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the Lutherans did not endorse the transubstantiation theory. In his Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, Melanchthon rejected the papacy as a divine institution, but affirmed the validity of the ordained clergy and of bishops as spiritual but not secular leaders.

Luther himself wrote three confessions. His “Small Catechism” is a compendium of doctrine, widely recognized for its brevity, clarity, simplicity, and profundity. He prepared it originally for poorly educated priests, to explain the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Lutherans now use it for family devotions and to prepare for Communion. The “Large Catechism” includes Luther’s sermons for priests who had little Bible knowledge and lacked preaching skills.

It is in the Smalcald Articles, however, that Luther’s real thunder sounds forth. He covers basic doctrine, but also attacks the Mass, false repentance, and the pope as the Antichrist. While Catholics are aware of these barbs, some ecumenically minded Lutherans are embarrassed by them. Lutherans do not see these confessions in a narrow denominational sense. They consider them to be statements applying to the church at large, because they are based on the pre-Reformation church fathers. They are restatements of the Apostles’ Creed demanded by the Reformation.

Lutherans do not put the confessions on a par with the Bible, but repudiate this kind of “confessionalism.” They do not replace biblical faith with a sixteenth-century version. The Bible is central and the sola Scriptura principle obtains for Lutherans just as much as for other Protestants. In matters of conversion and instruction for church membership, doctrines must be demonstrated from the Bible. Because Lutherans understand the confessions to be doctrinally derived from the Bible, they accept them as a basis for church teaching. They never insist that we must first accept the confessions without examining the biblical evidence for their correctness.

Of course, the writers of the confessions never intended to put the church into an exegetical straitjacket. But they did intend to say that the doctrine revealed through the prophets and apostles remains true and valid for Christians until Jesus comes again. Strictly speaking, no new doctrines have been revealed since the apostles. The confessions were intended to be not only biblical and apostolic, but also catholic—one faith for all times.

To confess these confessions publicly was costly for the Lutherans. They had to be willing to stake their lives on them. Within a generation of Augsburg some of the princes who signed it lost their thrones. They committed themselves to something far more significant than a political ploy to break the back of Rome. They saw themselves as standing before Jesus as Judge on the Last Day.

By placing their fives and fortunes on the fine they proved that they believed the confessions to be more than theological theories. They believed they were divine truth.

Confessions abbreviate, but they also preserve, the apostolic faith. They are not a postapostolic phenomenon, but are rooted in the practices of the apostles and the early Christians. Saint Paul observed that the Lord Jesus Christ himself made the good confession before Pontius Pilate. Paul’s son in the faith, Timothy, did the same before many witnesses (1 Tim. 6:12–13). Lutherans maintain this tradition.

Dr. Scaer is professor of systematic theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.