Many fans attending a recent soccer tournament in Honduras were treated to free, four-page programs. The cover photo showed the 50,000-seat National Stadium, while the back page had a scorecard for the six-nation event—an elimination round for the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain.

The attractive and useful program seemed like something to hang on to—a souvenir maybe. And that was exactly what the publishers wanted, because inside, headed by the apostle Paul’s exhortation to reach the prize that lies ahead, was a simple plan of salvation with Scripture portions.

This creative evangelistic effort was the work of AMEN—La Alianza Ministerial Evangelica National—and the first phase of its multipronged campaign in the Honduran capital and its sister city Comayagula.

Though formed only last April, AMEN has burst on the scene with a spate of activities, which, at least on paper, promise to make a spiritual impact on this Central American nation of 3.5 million (an estimated 7 to 10 percent are evangelical).

The interdenominational group of evangelical pastors and church leaders began by sending 300 young people to the National Stadium in November, bearing 200,000 of the “gospel scorecards.” AMEN next sent tract-bearing young people to Tegucigalpa’s mobile population: buses, markets, and in the streets. At the same time, adults worked a house-to-house visitation campaign—using 486,000 pieces of literature in all.

Then on November 15, AMEN promoted a pastoral exchange program among the city’s evangelical churches. All these events were designed to lead up to a December crusade in the National Stadium with evangelist Alberto Mottesi. This would be followed by a program to integrate the crop of new believers into a local church.

After a short rest for the Christmas holidays, AMEN planned to start promoting an April crusade with popular evangelist Hermano Pablo (Paul Finkenbinder), and then an eight-city campaign in May with an as-yet-unconfirmed speaker.

Surrounded by violence and unrest in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, Honduras rests like a precarious island of peace—at least on the surface. “There is fear, doubt, and nervousness in our nation,” said AMEN president Enrique Peñalva. The pastor of Tegucigalpa’s large La Primera Iglesia de Santidad (First Holiness Church) believes the unsettledness has made Hondurans spiritually hungry. He says AMEN organized out a sense of urgency to take advantage of this openness, as well as the nation’s freedom to worship. There is no telling if and when these freedoms might cease, considering the volatile Central American scene, asserts Peñalva. (Hondurans recently picked their first civilian president in a decade. Roberto Suazo Córdova is to take office January 27, but skeptics give his regime a chance of surviving only from six months to a year before intervention by the army.)

Last April, leaders of two Tegucigalpa area groups—the one Pentecostal, the other not—sat down to discuss common goals. They wound up deciding to merge into what is now AMEN.

This remarkable unity owes partly to the fact that AMEN members represent themselves as individuals, not denominations or churches. Free from doctrinal and polity obligations, the group members can unite to make progress where a denomination-based unit might not, say AMEN leaders. Honduran evangelical churches grew 14 percent between 1960 and 1980, said Peñalva, and the largest denominations are Baptist, Holiness, Assemblies of God, and the CAM International-related churches.

Deaths

Sandy Ford, 20, son of evangelist Leighton Ford; November 27, at Duke Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, of complications during surgery to correct cardiac arrhythmia.

Some 325 law enforcement authorities, legislators, church leaders, and others grappled with ways to combat pornography last month in the first national conference devoted to the subject. They met in Arizona under the sponsorship of the Phoenix-based Citizens for Decency through Law (CDL).

One thrust of the conference was to assist government prosecutors in dealing with what has become a specialized legal field. They were provided with a voluminous workbook of reference materials and technical workshops.

But conference spokesmen candidly acknowledged that prosecutors can only be effective when backed by citizen awareness and action. Citizens are either unaware that they can take strong action, or wrongly believe the courts have ruled in favor of pornography. Therefore, the main target has to be public complacency, the experts said.

Conference leaders attribute public lethargy to several factors:

• Ignorance of how vicious pornography has become. It bears little relation to the “naughty magazines” of the last generation with their skimpily clad or bare-breasted models. Today it is thousands of magazines, quickie films, and videotapes with close-ups of nothing but promiscuity, group sex, bestiality, masturbation, rape, sadomasochism, gang sexual assault, and fetishes. Even sex murders actually have been committed on film.

• Ignorance of the effects of continuing exposure to pornography. Victor Cline, a Salt Lake City psychologist and expert in the field, told the conference that pornography has an addicting effect, that it requires escalation (over a period of time, the consumer needs increasingly rough material), that it desensitizes (making one immune to that which originally shocked), and that there is a strong tendency for its users to act out what they have seen.

CDL’S founder Charles H. Keating, Jr., who recently retired as its president, cited evidence of this effect: Police vice squads, he said, report that 77 percent of child molesters of boys and 87 percent of child molesters of girls admitted imitating the sexual behavior they had seen modeled in pornography. He also referred to a report by Michigan State Police detective Darrel Pope on 38,000 reported sexual assault cases in that state during the years 1956 through 1979. In 41 percent of those cases, pornography was used “just prior to or during” the crime.

• Defensiveness about such oft-repeated assertions as, “You can’t legislate morality.” Laws are not intended to make people love what is right but to prevent them from giving vent to lust, greed, and hate in ways that harm society.

• Belief that “censorship is undemocratic.” Obscenity laws are not censorship. Censorship is the prior restraint of the communication of an idea. The public has a right to protect its quality of life through legislation.

• Belief that “victimless crimes among consenting adults are no concern of the public.” Both the participants and society are being victimized. This is to say nothing of the exploitation of children. There are between 260 and 280 monthly magazines catering to pedophiles—people who get their “kicks” by looking at the nude bodies of eight-year-olds and younger in compromising poses. There are nationwide clubs that trade in children.

The upshot of inaction by uninformed citizens is that law enforcement officials, sensing no public mandate, are not implementing existing antipornography laws.

Aside from ignorance and apathy, a main reason why the public is not applying pressure on law enforcement officials is confusion about Supreme Court rulings on obscene materials. Americans need to understand four aspects of what is and is not constitutional, according to spokesmen at the Phoenix conference:

• Belief that First Amendment free speech rights are not absolute. The free speech rights of tobacco companies to advertise cigarettes on television, for example, have been limited in FCC rulings in favor of the public’s right to protect its collective health. A Supreme Court opinion says that “a man has no more right to dispense obscenity in the name of free speech than he does to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater—in the name of free speech.”

• The Supreme Court’s consistently held view that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.

• The Supreme Court’s 1973 shifting of the burden of proof in obscenity cases from prosecutors, who previously had to prove that obscene works were “utterly without redeeming social value,” to the defense, who must now prove that a challenged work has “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

• The Supreme Court’s ruling, in effect, that if the defense cannot establish such value, and if the prosecution can establish that the material is offensive to the standards of that community, then it may be banned constitutionally.

While local efforts are scoring gains in cities and towns across the U.S. (see box), the conference participants agreed that, strategically, more focus has to be on law enforcement at the national level and on choking off the avalanche of pornography in new forms.

Homer Young, a former supervisor of FBI pornography investigators, put blame on U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, who told the 92 federal attorneys general not to prosecute pornography cases except for child pornography. If Smith decided to prosecute vigorously obscenity cases under existing law, he insisted, the traffic could be cleaned up in 18 months. He called for a nationwide campaign of letters and follow-up letters to the attorney general, asking him to fulfill his oath of office by prosecuting all laws, with priority given to obscenity laws.

The other urgent need, the conference concluded, is to appeal to the Reagan administration to have the Federal Communications Commission regulate cable television. The FCC has washed its hands of the issue, saying that cable TV is not broadcast over the airwaves and is therefore not under its jurisdiction. This ignores the fact that most such programming is transmitted from its originators to local cable companies by satellite.

Twenty-two percent of U.S. homes are now wired into cable. Communications experts predict that 50 percent or more will be hooked up in just 10 years. Unless the pornography explosion in cable television and in videotapes can be contained, closing down the smut theaters could prove a hollow victory.

Who Says You Can’T Beat Sleaze? These Communities Have

Despite what many people think, some communities have been able to rid themselves of pornography. These are communities that know pornography can be successfully prosecuted if local opposition to it materializes.

Here are some of the success stories:

• So-called adult bookstores have been entirely eliminated from Atlanta, Georgia (CT, Oct. 6, 1978, p. 46); Jacksonville, Florida; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Paducah, Kentucky.

• Citizens of Summit County, Ohio, obtained a conviction against a smut store in Tallmadge. The decision, affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, has strengthened legal precedent in the area of community standards.

• Pittsburgh citizens, including churches and synagogues, succeeded in keeping a pornograhy wholesaler from setting up a warehouse in a suburb. They were instrumental in amending the state obscenity law to make it more effective.

• In Council Bluffs, Iowa, Citizens Concerned for Community Standards mobilized clubs and churches to press for antipornography legislation, and got it.

• Citizens in Colorado applied sufficient pressure that the legislature overrode the governor’s second veto of a criminal obscenity statute. They are currently pushing through a bill regulating the sale of harmful materials to minors.

• Buffalo police, with community support, reduced the number of smut stores to five, and those that remain no longer carry hard-core material.

• A group of San Antonio, Texas, citizens rallied to the defense of their district attorney when he was fined in federal court after taking action against the pornographic film Deep Throat. They paid the tab to bring in expert witnesses, and spearheaded a broad coalition that passed a Texas obscenity statute in 1980.

• Glendale, Arizona, closed down a pornographic theater and three bookstores. But this action has been challenged by local courts, and citizens are pressing for enforceable legislation. Phoenix CDL chapter members picketed some 30 smut bookstores with the eventual result that about 15 were shut down.

• Citizens of Louisville, Kentucky, and adjacent Jeffersonville, Indiana, led by an Episcopal clergyman, teamed up to drive the pornographic theater out of Jeffersonville, and have so far succeeded in having more than $50,000 in fines levied against it. They also stopped the showing of the pornographic film Caligula in local cinemas.

• In Mesa, Arizona, Church of the Redeemer pastor Vincent Strigas, Jr., has developed a decency coalition that includes representatives of the Mormon and Catholic churches. They have surveyed all the stores in the community and are urging those that carry no pornography to display colorful 11-by-14-inch decals that read “We Support Decency.” The group next plans to apply pressure to the convenience stores and others that carry smut to drop it or lose community business.

• Members of Westside Assemblies of God Church in Davenport, Iowa, launched a citizens’ drive to get pornography off the shelves in their city. Other churches joined, and the materials were off grocery store and barber shop shelves in two weeks. The group then picketed the smut stores and massage parlors, securing passage of an ordinance banning the massage parlors.

They have unlisted telephone numbers. They get two or three letters daily, mostly from worried parents asking for help. The threat of lawsuits is constant, heard like Muzak droning in the background. They sometimes fear for the safety of their families.

And so the cult watchers, as they have been called, were happy to congregate in San Diego recently for the third annual Cult Summit Conference. About 90 attended, reading and hearing papers, developing strategies, and commiserating with each other on what one called “this rather insane enterprise we’ve been involved in so long.”

The conference was sponsored by Spiritual Counterfeits Project, based in Berkeley, California, and a handful of leading evangelical cult watchers. It was different from the preceding two conferences in that wider viewpoints were represented. Although most participants were evangelicals, some voices from the Jewish and nonreligious academic communities were heard as well.

Rabbi Steve Robbins opened the conference. The chairman of the Task Force on Cult and Missionary Actions for the Jewish Community, Robbins eloquently conveyed the “persistent sense of loneliness” he feels after 10 years of striving to keep Jews out of the cultic web.

“We are running to catch up to a reality that has staggered our imaginations, shaken our conceptions of what religion is, and even what human beings are,” Robbins said. He claimed the personal dimension of the issue is hardest to deal with, exhorting his listeners to determine “what it is that can be done to other people in the name of religion and what we can do in the name of God to stop it.”

Robbins blamed deficiencies in society for the popularity of cults. Children are raised to have their sense of self depend on others. Thus the popularity of designer jeans, the rabbi noted. Children soon learn that “if you are going to be accepted you’ve got to wear somebody’s name.… We are either somebody else going or somebody else coming.”

Robbin’s bluntest words were saved for last, when he said, “Evangelical Christians now know what it is like to be evangelized.” He challenged evangelicals not to evangelize Jews, but to busy themselves with the unchurched. He condemned Jews for Jesus, a Christian mission to Jews, as a “prevarication of Christianity, a lie.” Evangelical listeners praised Robbins for his “courage” in challenging the evangelism of Jews, but asserted they must obey the Great Commission.

The rest of the conference roster included almost all recognized evangelical authorities on the cults. Walter Martin, author of The Kingdom of the Cults, spoke on lessons from his 30-year battle with cults ranging from Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Rosicrucians. James Bjornstad, founder of the Institute of Contemporary Christianity, addressed the difference between cultic and Christian conversion.

Ronald Enroth, author of The Lure of the Cults, told how cults go about becoming legitimate and widely accepted (see box). Brooks Alexander of Spiritual Counterfeits Project warned his colleagues that humanism is passing from its secular phase to cosmic humanism, a mixture of rationalism and Eastern occultism.

Alexander said public education is the “prime target” for proponents of cosmic humanism because “it influences the most people in the most pervasive way at the most impressionable age.” Groups such as Werner Erhard’s “est” entertain ambitions of getting their training into school curriculums. The originator of “confluent education,” already taught in some California public schools, has written that her curriculum is based on the idea that “we are all God, … we have the attributes of God.”

The spread of cosmic humanism makes the possibility of a Christian’s unknowing involvement in non-Christian spirituality “very real today,” Alexander said. “Many of the teachings, trainings and treatments offered by ‘new age,’ ‘holistic,’ and ‘human potential’ groups affect the individual in ways that go far beyond their expressed secular purpose.”

The participants were especially interested in a talk by Margaret Singer, a psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley. Singer testifies frequently at trials involving cult members and is regarded as a leading expert on brainwashing. She said brainwashing is a poor term, “a far more Madison Avenue term than most of us want.”

But a process that could be called brainwashing definitely occurs in some cults, Singer said. In fact, “modern cults are more successful with peer and social influence than [North] Koreans [in the Korean War] were with a gun at the head.”

Brainwashing techniques include chanting, which can lead to hyperventilation. The hyperventilation produces a feeling similar to drunkenness. Cultic speakers often select a member of the audience with vivid breathing, then speak to the rhythm of that person’s rising and falling chest. Speaking softly causes the listeners to concentrate more and, surprisingly, it is “easier to induce trances if you don’t make sense because listeners fill in the gaps and listen harder.”

Conference organizers appreciated the wide range of backgrounds of the speakers, saying it helps to take an integrative approach to the problem of the cults. Some participants, however, believed the conference should have focused on theological issues. Dave Hunt, author of The Cult Explosion, protested that prayers were not said before every session and wondered if the evangelical cult watchers were preoccupied with academic respectability. Hunt went so far as to call psychology “the Trojan horse that has entered the church to destroy it.”

Thirty years ago, Walter Martin said, most churches would not take him seriously when he said he wanted to speak on the cults. Today, Martin and the others have more calls for help and information than they can begin to answer. The cults, it seems, are no longer taken lightly.

How Moonies Win Friends And Influence People

Paul doesn’t list it as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but a flair for public relations is probably the most important asset for cults wanting legitimacy in the eyes of society. Sociologist Ronald Enroth described the public relations ploys of several cults in a paper presented at the San Diego conference on the cults.

Enroth quoted the director of a public relations firm who said early Mormons Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were public relations masters. He also claimed Mormon Tabernacle Choir recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra came as the product of a “professional, non-Mormon public relations firm.”

Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church works hard to associate itself with respected celebrities and thereby earn public acceptance. Moon has received official letters or certificates from more than 200 governors and mayors, including Jimmy Carter when he was governor of Georgia, former Alabama Governor George Wallace, and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Evangelical author Richard Quebedeaux has worked for the Moonies, and cult officials use his name to lend credibility to themselves.

One of the Moonies’ most insidious tricks is to solicit good wishes for special events and invite dignitaries who probably won’t come, then transform the dignitaries’ telegrams of polite regrets into letters of endorsement.

Thus the Moonies can quote former Mayor John Lindsay as saying that “New York appreciates the contribution of the Unification Church to the life of our great city.” Likewise, William F. Buckley, Jr., has sent his “heartiest wishes,” Senator Strom Thurmond has wished the group success in its “campaign for Christ,” and Senator Jesse Helms has praised Sun Myung Moon as “a Christian in our increasingly secular society.”

The Moonies image building is so effective that Enroth believes that within 15 years the cult will be as widely accepted as the Mormon church is today.

“We now affirm.”

With those words last month, the U.S. Supreme Court backed a lower court’s decision that public universities cannot ban religious worship and discussions from their buildings. The ruling on Widmar v. Vincent—eight to one in favor of an evangelical student group—may affect school regulations at 40 percent of America’s universities. It basically means religious groups should be given the same access to university facilities as nonreligious groups.

Christian attorneys lauded the Widmar decision as a major victory for religious liberty. “By striking a blow for government neutrality toward religion, Widmar helps to restore the First Amendment as a shield protecting religious liberty rather than a sword attacking it,” said Lynn Buzzard, executive director of the Christian Legal Society.

James Smart, attorney for the students who brought the suit, said 4 out of 10 universities will now have to change regulations that discriminate against religious student groups. Some universities, for example, charge fees for use of rooms by religious groups while allowing nonreligious groups to meet free.

The decision probably will not make a difference on public high school campuses, where Bible studies have been banned. That is because a week after the Widmar decision, the Court refused to hear an appeal dealing with banning of religious worship in high schools. Smart suspects the Widmar decision could bear on home Bible studies, which have been prohibited because homes are not zoned as places of worship. Widmar may be used to argue “you can’t have different regulations based on the content of discussions,” Smart said. Only time, and a head-spinning array of court battles, will determine the real fallout of the decision.

The Widmar case began in 1977 when the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) told a Christian student group, called Cornerstone, that it could not use a classroom for its meetings. Cornerstone admitted it would be praying, singing hymns, and discussing the Bible. The university cited a policy prohibiting use of university facilities for “religious worship or religious teaching.”

The legal arguments began at the federal district court. That court held the university was correct not to allow religious meetings because it would advance religion and thus violate the separation of church and state. The federal appeals court, however, disagreed, saying such a ruling violated the religious group’s right to free speech.

The Supreme Court’s decision was to affirm the appeals court. Justice Lewis Powell wrote the majority opinion. His argument can be reduced to three points.

• The university creates a public forum by allowing a variety of student groups (from Young Republicans to homosexual rights advocates) to meet on campus. In order, then, to limit the free speech of any groups, the university must show that a “compelling state interest” would be served. Only that would justify overriding the group’s free speech.

• The religious group would be only one among several secular groups meeting on campus. This was in answer to the UMKC attorneys’ argument that the “compelling state interest” was the protection of the First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause.” That clause, preventing establishment of a state church, is said to be violated by any state advancement of religion. (The First amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.…) According to Powell, the impact would, for the most part, neither advance nor inhibit religion.

• The state’s interest in maintaining separation of church and state would not be sufficiently threatened by this to deprive religious students of free speech.

Powell emphasized that an open forum “does not confer any imprimatur of state approval on religious sects or practices.” Such would no more commit the university to religious goals than it is now committed to the goals of the Young Socialist Alliance, which is eligible to use campus space.

Powell cautioned that “the basis for our decision is narrow.” He said the Court’s ruling does not prevent the university from setting regulations for meeting times, places, and manners. He affirmed the university’s right to make judgments on how “scarce resources” (such as space) may be best allocated. He also said the Widmar decision does not affect the university’s right to exclude activities that are disruptive and “substantially interfere with the right of other students to obtain an education.”

Justice John Paul Stevens, though agreeing with the Court’s majority judgment, disagreed with its reasoning. In a concurring opinion, Stevens said the university did not have to show “compelling state interest” to prevent a group from meeting in campus facilities. But even aside from that, he wrote, UMKC had shown no valid reason for banning a group merely because it is religious.

The single dissenter, Justice Byron White, wrote that religious worship differs from the free speech protected by the Constitution. He admitted not allowing the students to worship on campus would burden the free exercise of religion (another First Amendment clause), but viewed he burden as “minimal.” Because it is minimal, he opened the state’s interest in avoiding claims of promoting religion overrides.

Westminster Seminary Fires Theologian

Norman Shepherd has been dismissed as associate professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, ending a long dispute over his view of the doctrine of justification.

In dismissing Shepherd, the seminary board of trustees said it “makes no judgment whether Mr. Shepherd’s views as such contradict or contravene any element in the system of doctrine taught by the Westminster Standards.”

The board decided that because of the long debate, too many people in the seminary community have come to believe Shepherd holds views contrary to Reformed doctrine. The dismissal, then, was in the best interests of the seminary,” the board said.

In a theological paper submitted to the board, Shepherd acknowledged that some of his teachings might lead one to believe that justification is conditioned on the believer’s subsequent good works. In the paper he quoted an earlier statement of his, in which he said, “Works done from true faith … being the new obedience wrought by the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer united to Christ … are necessary for salvation from eternal condemnation.…”

Yet he also said, “I wholeheartedly repudiate the inference that man, by his works, contributes to his own justification.” Shepherd said he fashioned his system to guard against the erroneous beliefs that one can enjoy forgiveness of sin without repentance, or that one can enter eternal life without attaining the holiness specified in the Scripture (Heb. 12:14), or that salvation absolves one from the necessity to persevere in the faith.

In his own paper submitted to the board, Edmund Clowney, the seminary’s president, explained his doubts about Shepherd’s views. First, he credited Shepherd as a first-rate scholar widely read in the Reformation authors. Clowney said Shepherd is one of the seminary’s highly regarded professors. But, said Clowney, “After examining his position as carefully as I can, I am persuaded that his views are sufficiently distinctive in emphasis and form to be controversial.”

Clowney told the board in his paper that the “firestorm of criticism” against Shepherd was eroding the seminary’s reputation among the churches from which the school draws support and students.

Shepherd joined the Westminster faculty in 1963. His dismissal is effective in January, and he will continue to draw full salary until June 1983.

Just over 10 years ago, Judson E. “Buddy” Childress, at age 24, was in charge of the University of Virginia account for the Xerox Corporation. He had been promoted four times in two-and-a-half years, from salesman to account executive. His goal was to be a millionaire by the time he was 30.

Today, Childress, a native of Richmond, Virginia, has somewhat different goals. As director of Needle’s Eye Ministries, Inc., he has dedicated himself to working with the business and professional community in the Richmond metropolitan area. Childress’s clients are educators, lawyers, physicians, and financial consultants.

Childress’s organization is reaching more than 3,000 people a year. He uses monthly luncheons that feature speakers from the professional community, weekly Bible studies designed to evangelize and strengthen members, special seminars on such topics as time management, and the counseling services of the Christian Counseling Center, which is an agency of Needle’s Eye.

A faith ministry, Needle’s Eye depends on gifts for 75 percent of its approximately $45,000 annual budget. The remaining 25 percent comes from seven churches of different denominations in the Richmond area that include Needle’s Eye in their annual budgets.

Childress has been engaged in this work for four years, following his graduation from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. He finds it to be the most difficult work he has ever done. “I think the hardest person to bring to Christ is the business and professional person,” said Childress. “He’s got too many gods he has to give up.” It was not all that long ago that Childress himself responded to the claim that Christ rose from the dead with, “I can’t buy all this garbage.”

The transformation from a success-oriented businessman driven by money and ego to a man with Christ as his main concern in life was a slow one. There was no sudden or dramatic change. It began when Childress started going to church for his son’s sake. The man he saw preaching was someone Childress could identify with—big, a nice dresser, academically successful. And as Childress admits, “They were all the wrong reasons.” Still, a friendship between believer and skeptic developed.

The minister was effective first by being a friend and not pressuring Childress. Second, the man took issue with Childress’s unbelief “in a very gentle way.” He made himself available to Childress and was able to answer many of the tough questions that stood in the way of Childress making a decision for Christ. The minister’s willingness to accept Childress as he was and patiently nurture him has influenced Childress’s own style of witnessing to the business and professional community.

To establish contact with executives, Childress uses the same combination of professionalism and pavement pounding that he used when selling copiers and insurance. Like any other smart salesman covering a new territory, Childress started by consulting a register that listed all the members of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce by corporate address along with one or two of each company’s top people.

Sometimes Childress would call ahead and set up an appointment. At other times, he would make what is known as a “cold call”—going to see someone he did not know without an appointment. “The reaction was amazing,” he said. People did not think he was a crank when they learned of the services he was offering. “I got more positive responses … than I did when I was in insurance,” he said.

One of the major difficulties Childress faces in his ministry is the feeling of moral superiority that many of his clients have. “There are many people in the business and professional community who belong to the church, and who are tacitly if not otherwise actively satisfied with the fact they’ve done their religious part. They go to church every now and then. They give a little bit of money to this organization and that organization and lead a comparatively clean, ‘good’ life but have absolutely no [more of a] relationship with Christ in a personal manner than I did 10 years ago.”

Often the professional who has achieved material success feels that Christianity is only for those who need it. An objection Childress hears regularly is, “I don’t want to have to come to God when I’m down. I don’t want Christianity to be a crutch.” The difficulty with this, observes Childress, is that man’s ego has always stood in his way—since the beginning of time. Consequently, a person is usually going to have to be at a low ebb for God to get his attention. “That’s the norm,” he said.

The motive to succeed, to gain acceptance by one’s peers and by one’s self, often keeps the business person busy 12 to 14 hours a day. The executive may be “making it” socially and financially, but his family suffers neglect. For example, Childress does not remember his first child before the age of two. His marriage was near divorce three times.

Confusing success with happiness causes people to lead restless lives and to struggle after goals they never seem to reach. In an effort to gain a momentary reprieve from the hectic anxiety of the moment, business and professional people often become heavy drinkers. Alcoholism is one of the problems with which Childress and Needle’s Eye deal. The use of drugs, both legal and illegal, is not an uncommon way for professionals to handle their tensions. “Adultery,” says Childress, “is rampant.” Divorce has become commonplace.

“We don’t ‘sell’ Christ as a pie-in-the-sky figure who will meet everything we want. [We don’t say] there will never be any problems ever again … that’s not the gospel. If that was the gospel, [Christ] would have never hung on the cross.” Childress feels that Christians who do teach that faith is related to success and well-being are “heretical.”

Childress’s first concern is with the client’s “felt needs,’ such as trying to save marriage or overcome a drinking problem. “We must meet felt needs” in order to win the right … to meet the deepest needs, which are spiritual in nature,” he said.

Once concerned with little else, Childress now is reluctant to talk about the success of his work. He laughs, “We don’t have visions of grandeur about having little franchise Needle’s Eyes all over the country.” He does not even have long lists of important names and statistics to impress the inquirer. “I’m not sure of the motive for keeping tally of everybody that comes to the Lord or makes a recommitment through your counseling, through your Bible study, through this, that, or the other.”

Yet, the results have been there. The two monthly luncheons with which he began have become three. The attendance at each has grown from 30 up to 100. The number of Bible studies, seminars, and other services, most of which are free, have grown. The number of people desiring counseling has required Needle’s Eye to set up another agency, the Christian Counseling Center, in order to handle the waiting list that was once four months long. At present, the Christian Counseling Center, which, like Needle’s Eye, is interdenominational, has 23 counselors working in the organization.

For Childress, the success has been in seeing marriages revitalized, homes changed, and individuals coming to terms with themselves. “Ultimately,” he reflects, “one of the really exciting things is maybe a generation away. The children are growing up with two parents who are dedicated to Christ.”

When the Palo Alto, California, city council placed Measure B on the November 3 ballot, the city’s homosexuals found support in places they probably hadn’t counted on: the churches.

Measure B sought to outlaw discrimination against homosexuals in housing, employment, union membership, and public services. In what may be considered a rather bold political stance, Mayor Alan Henderson openly supported the measure.

But in a just as bold, and probably more unusual, stance were the city’s religious leaders. More than half the congregational leaders of the city’s 50 churches expressed their support of the proposed ordinance. The most vocal and organized proponents were the 30-member Palo Alto Ministerial Association and the 15-member Ecumenical Outreach Coalition.

“Members of the ministerial association support the measure not because they support homosexuality per se, but because they support fair play and justice for all people,” said Donald Mason of Covenant Presbyterian Church.

“In cases such as civil rights, church leaders need to speak out in one voice,” said Jim Burklo of the First Congregational Church.

“Not to do so would default our responsibility as religious leaders of the community,” added Harold Bjornson, pastor emeritus of the First Baptist Church.

If seemed Measure B would have an easy victory. By election day, supporters had spent more than $25,000, and opponents had spent less than $500.

Also behind the measure was the very nature of the people of Palo Alto. They pride themselves in being liberal: most of the city’s almost 55,000 citizens are white, upper-middle class, and educated. They share their city with the prestigious Stanford University, and they live just 20 miles south of San Francisco, notorious for its gay community.

The people of Palo Alto are also somewhat genteel. And such was the tone of the campaign. “Palo Alto appears to be the first American community to raise the emotional gay rights issue in a political campaign to the thoughtful level of a faculty club debate,” wrote Randy Shilts of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Yes, Measure B had everything going for it. Most people were surprised, then, on election day, when it lost badly—58 to 42 percent. In political terms, it was a landslide.

“It came as a surprise to us,” Henderson said.

“I am very, very disappointed,” Burklo said.

Even with hindsight, church leaders and city officials can only speculate on why the measure was defeated. “Most people thought it wasn’t needed in our community,” said James McLeod of All Saints’ Episcopal Church.

“Palo Alto likes to believe this is a liberal town, and problems can be solved on a case-by-case basis,” city councilman Gary Fazzino said.

Perhaps, also, the people of Palo Alto were not convinced there really was discrimination against homosexuals in their city. The groundwork for the election was laid by the Palo Alto Human Rights Commission, which presented the city council with the results of their study. It quoted gays who said there was ample discrimination against them. As opponents to the measure were quick to point out, that study was based on only 85 respones to 1,000 questionnaires that had been distributed.

Before the election, both Steve Zeisler, associate pastor at Peninsula Bible Church, and Jack McDaniel, pastor of Palo Alto Baptist Church, had argued that the measure was not needed. “There are few cases I know of of proven discrimination,” McDaniel said. “What they want is the privilege to exhibit or propagate their lifestyle.”

“Someone said they [homosexuals] were tilting at windmills, but there were no windmills,” Ken Allen said after the election. Allen is a member of the Mormon church’s Palo Alto second ward and a Palo Alto attorney.

Burklo was one of many church leaders who strongly disagreed that the measure was not needed. “There needs to be some kind of public policy that people’s rights should be protected, regardless of sexual orientation,” he said.

Others feel the vote against Measure B was more of a reaction to government legislating human rights. Mentioned less often was the possibility that the people of Palo Alto are not quite as liberal as they boast. “I think we have a more realistic picture of our community’s real values,” Mason said.

Many church leaders who supported the measure still believe “one battle is over, but the struggle for justice will go on,” as Mason put it.

“We are challenged to live by the great commandments to love our neighbors, and I think that applies to all our neighbors,” Burklo said. “There will be another time, another opportunity to bring it before the public.”

Burklo was quick to add, however, “That is just a hope. I am not organizing it.”

There Will Be No Third World War, Un Official Predicts

Calling the current superpower nuclear arms race “nonsense,” Robert Muller, secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, told editors of the religious press that there is not going to be another world war, ever. He was a featured speaker at the Global Issues Seminar at the UN, sponsored by the United Nations Association, the American Jewish Press Association, Associated Church Press, Catholic Press Association, and Evangelical Press Association.

Behind Muller’s optimistic logic was the conviction that nuclear weapons are “instruments of power, not war,” for the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He predicted that within the next five or six years there will be an “uproar all over the world” against the costs of nuclear weapons. “The people who have to pay the taxes will say, ‘This is enough.’ ”

Muller was also encouraged by the fact that since the UN’s founding in 1945 “this has been a rather peaceful planet on the whole.” Wars have been “extremely limited.”

Muller also based his prediction of peace on what he called the “elevating of ourselves from a material-scientific outlook to one that is moral and spiritual.” Taking a long look, he commented, “We are in the kindergarten of global living.”

Editors learned that in the meantime, the world is a tough school. Brian Urquhart, undersecretary general for special political affairs, has the touchy job of managing UN peacekeeping forces in such explosive places as Lebanon and Cyprus. He said the UN works “when everybody is scared stiff. We need the UN to avoid a nyclear confrontation.”

Critics maintain that the UN is helpless because the Security Council can’t take forthright action. Urquhart admitted this, but said it does give time for “face-saving devices to be worked out.” Truces are the practical way to stop fighting and the UN’s “great achievement” has been to put the international forces in place between opposing sides.

Refugees are also a prime concern for the UN. Poul Hartling, UN high commissioner for refugees, estimated that 25 million people have become refugees in the last 30 years. Not counting Palestinians, there are 10 million refugees today, half of them in Africa. On the positive side, he noted that 700,00 refugees from Indochina have been resettled in the last four years.

The most critical refugee problem is in Pakistan, where 2.5 million Afghans have fled the Russian occupation. Another critical situation is in Honduras because of the influx of 40,000 refugees from El Salvador.

Another problem involving the UN is world hunger. Editors heard reports that 40 countries are not meeting the food needs of their people. In 10 years, the needs of these people will equal two-and-a-half times the total U.S. food output.

Is there any hope for conquering hunger? Yes, but national policies must change. What is missing is political will. In the end, hunger, like the nuclear arms race, will go on until it is good politics for legislators to end it. Editors of religious periodicals saw various segments of the UN manfully striving to bring about change, but quite aware of the obstacles.

JAMES REAPSOME

World Scene

Women will be ordained as deacons in the Church of England beginning in 1983. That was the decision of the church’s general synod in November. Deacons in the Anglican church are members of the clergy who are called “reverend” and may officiate at weddings and certain liturgical celebrations. Anglo-Catholics denounced the move as a step on the road to ordaining women to the priesthood and therefore a barrier to union with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

A plan to arrange vacations for American tourists in Anglican parishes of England has created a furor. The London travel agency working out the details for the Church of England’s development officer implied that a Sunderland working-class parish would be unsuitable for the tourists. They would be, the agency said in a letter to the parish church, “well-established, middle-class Americans, with standards considerably higher than those of our own middle class.”

Czechoslovakian Christians accuse security forces of murdering a lay activist. Paul Svanda, 22, who was active in the Roman Catholic “underground church,” was found dead at the bottom of Mococha Gorge in Moldavia in October. According to an unofficial group of Moravian Catholics, he was found “in a place where no one could have fallen.” Relatives were not allowed a the post mortem, no inquest statement was issued, and the coffin containing his remains was not permitted to be opened. A secretly ordained priest was also killed in unexplained circumstances last February. Also in October, the security forces carried out massive raids on parish houses and homes for retired priests and nuns throughout the country, confiscating literature, typewriters, and duplicators in an effort to suppress the network of surreptitious church information broadsheets (samizdat).

The headquarters of Ethiopia’s largest Protestant denomination was confiscated by government officials in November. The eight-story Addis Ababa building was the administrative center for the 500,000-member Mekane Yesus (Lutheran) Church, and will be converted into courtrooms. The headquarters of a Baptist group, Emmanuel, was also seized. Ethiopia’s Marxist rulers belong to the Amhara tribe, while Mekane Yesus membership is almost exclusively from the largest tribe, the Oromo. Gudina Tunsa, Mekane Yesus executive secretary, disappeared two years ago, and many believe he is in prison. Tunsa is the brother of an Oromo Liberation Front leader.

The U.S. government has denied Mennonites a license to send school supplies to Kampuchea (Cambodia). In a preliminary decision in November, the Commerce Department objected to the planned shipment of 86,000 kits of pencils, notebooks, erasers, and rulers because these items do “not fall into the category of emergency relief.” Mennonite Central Committee Asia secretary Bert Lobe responded that “UNICEF has for years taken the position that primary school aid is an integral part of emergency assistance.” If the decision stood, the Mennonites planned to operate under another group’s license or from Canada.

North American Scene

Jack Chick has resigned from the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA). A delegation from CBA visited Chick to talk about the multitude of complaints the association is receiving from its members, who are Christian bookstore owners (CT, Oct. 23, p. 62). Chick publishes virulently anti-Catholic comic books and tracts, some of which contain false information. In a letter to bookstores that buy his material, Chick said he is resigning because “the whore of Revelation 17 and 18 has quietly moved into the CBA and will quietly seduce you, and your power will be gone.” Chick interprets the whore of Revelation as the Catholic church. By dropping out of CBA, Chick will no longer be able to display his material to booksellers at the association’s conventions.

A dissident United Presbyterian Church (UPCUSA) congregation has been awarded title to church property it was locked out of last spring. A reported majority of members of the Babcock Memorial United Presbyterian Church, Towson, Maryland, voted in March to leave the UPCUSA. The presbytery said the group could not take church property with it. A harrowing string of events—including lockouts and armed guards—followed, and the case landed in court (CT, April 24, 1981, p. 37). Recently a judge ruled the dissidents had legally transferred the title to church property and the denomination no longer owned it.

U.S. denominations are showing an increasing concern with the nuclear arms race. United Methodist bishops recently issued “A Call to Nuclear Disarmament and Peace with Justice.” It described the arms race as an issue of “ultimate” significance. Robert Davidson, moderator of the United Presbyterian General Assembly, looked forward to coming Geneva negotiations and hoped they would represent the first steps on the road to world peace. The American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) applauded President Reagan’s new emphasis on reduction of arms. And a Southern Baptist official promised to watch the Geneva talks closely to see if the superpowers “mean business” about peace.

Assemblies of God (AG) Sunday schools are the fastest growing in 20 of the 50 states, according to a contest sponsored by Moody Monthly magazine. The magazine contest judges Sunday school growth from voluntary reports submitted by the schools. The biggest jump in the AG schools was reported by a Phoenix church that saw its Sunday school attendance leap from 1,059 in 1980 to 3,773 in 1981.

Catholic Bishops Strongly Denounce Nuclear Weapons

American Roman Catholic bishops spoke out strongly against nuclear weapons when they gathered in Washington recently for their annual National Conference of Catholic Bishops. But there were enough dissenters on the nuclear issue to underscore the fact that the Catholic church is not yet the “peace” church that some liberal Catholic commentators would like to see it become.

Archbishop Joseph Bernardin of Cincinnati chairs an ad hoc bishops’ committee on war and peace, and he stirred the simmering nuclear issue with strong words against the country’s possession of nuclear arms. Bernardin said that a “significant school of Catholic pacifism” has emerged since the Second Vatican Council. He said the moral doctrine presented by nuclear weaponry constitutes a central issue that the Catholic church must face. He and other bishops urged their colleagues to speak out strongly against nuclear force when they return to their dioceses.

The feeling, however, was not unanimous by far. New Orleans Archbishop Philip Hannan, formerly a chaplain of the 82nd Airborne Division, suggested that the antinuclear speeches were missing the issue. If the nation lost its military power, he asked, what would guarantee freedom to worship God, and the freedom for man to keep his dignity?

The bishops divided on another matter central to the Catholic church—that of abortion. The issue produced sharp debate during the meeting. New York’s Terrence Cardinal Cooke, who had endorsed the Hatch constitutional amendment, squared off in a Senate hearing against Boston’s Cardinal Humberto Medeiros. Medeiros and other bishops objected that by supporting the Hatch amendment, the bishops were merely acquiescing in finding an easy way out of the abortion debate, turning the whole issue over to individual states as the Hatch amendment would do.

In a statement to the press, Bishop Mark Hurley of Santa Rosa, California, tried to predict what the news media would make of the abortion and nuclear armament debates. “On right to life you called us right-wing, and I am sure on this [nuclear arms] you will call us left-wing. We like to see ourselves as thoroughly consistent in both instances.”

For the secular press, fond of compartmentalizing people and issues into tidy political cubbyholes, it was a valid point to ponder.

Could a wholesome television show with evangelical undertones—but without the hard-sell gospel—lure viewers away from “General Hospital” or “60 Minutes”? Pat Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) intend to find out, with programs designed to attract non-Christian as well as Christian viewers from all walks of life.

Posing a prime-time threat to ABC, CBS, and NBC is little more than a distant hope, but CBN’S momentum is unmistakable, attracting widespread notice in broadcast trade publications. By this month CBN will have nudged its way into the industry’s Nielsen ratings by gaining nationwide access to nearly 14 million households able to receive cable television programs.

Their foray into the marketplace began last year with a clean break away from traditional Christian television fare. Like other religious broadcast entities, CBN found itself preaching primarily to the already-converted, and drawing just 2 or 3 percent of the total television viewing audience. Michael Little, executive producer of “The 700 Club,” said the shift to a secular appeal began when CBN strategists asked themselves, “What impact are we really making in response to the Great Commission?”

The answer appeared to be “not much,” so CBN began replacing pulpits and King James English with Johnny Carson-style sofas and soap-opera vernacular. Its anchor show, “The 700 Club,” assumed an upbeat, magazine format, complete with news spots from Washington, D.C. Other programs resemble familiar TV Guide lineups, with a top-quality soap opera, early morning news and chatter, a miniseries on pornography, Wall Street analyses, and entertainment for children.

Behind the “big three” networks, CBN is still a distant second in size to Ted Turner’s Cable News Network, based in Atlanta. From plush colonial headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia, CBN beams its offerings via satellite to 2,700 cable affiliates. A subsidiary, CBN Continental, consists of television stations owned and operated in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Portsmouth, Virginia, where Robertson first went on the air 20 years ago. Altogether, CBN broadcasts have the ability to reach a potential 85 percent of American households.

By presenting a smorgasbord of shows with the whole family in mind, CBN is bucking a trend toward “narrow-casting”—a term for cable broadcasters and networks that opt for a single specialty such as all-news, all-sports, or R-rated movies, CBN’S leap of faith is a high-risk venture, and it has never succeeded before.

But, as Robertson sees it, the time is right. “In some areas, as much as 30 percent of the total viewing audience is now watching cable or independent TV stations,” he says. “That means the economics are such as never before. We can really rival the major networks.” The proliferation of home videocassettes, videodiscs, Home Box Office movies, and locally operated low-power stations increasingly challenges “big three” dominance.

CBN’S splashiest attempt to communicate a Christian alternative is “Another Life,” a soap opera that attracts 100,000 viewers in New York City alone, according to Arbitron, an industry rating service.

The daily half-hour drama stars a happy, intact Christian family whose members pray their way through difficulties. In early November, “Another Life” featured a miraculous healing, “leaving no doubt about where we stand,” said a CBN employee.

The show’s producer, Lynwood King, has worked with other soaps such as “One Life to Live” and “Ryan’s Hope.” He said Christian characters on network shows are usually one-dimensional portrayals, thrown in for sensational value. “As a Christian, I feel the time is indeed ripe for what this show has to say. We are really striving to show a Christian famiy—how they cope with problems they run up against.”

Production for the soap proceeds on a round-the-clock schedule, with professional actors and detailed sets. Some scenes, such as protagonist Lori Davidson’s wedding, are filmed on location—a rarity even for other network soaps because of the expense.

In its other programming as well, CBN spares no expense for talent and technology. As a result, the budget continues to be a major inhibiting factor in fulfilling Robertson’s dream of a “fourth network.” Leasing satellite transponder time, essential for nationwide cable distribution, costs $115,000 each month, and that figure rises steadily. A sophisticated computerized lighting system in the four production studios carried a price tag of more than $1 million.

To alleviate some of the financial pressure, CBN is selling commercial air time to sponsors that include Richardson Vicks (makers of Vicks Nyquil and Oil of Olay), General Mills, and Kraft. Religious broadcasters who previously received free air time were charged fees of $2,800 per half-hour, causing many of them to cancel and look elsewhere for an outlet.

That has had repercussions among CBN fans who miss pulpit pounding and Bible reading. CBN Satellite Network director Tom Rogeberg said, “A large group of people are wondering if we have forsaken our mission. We have not; we’ve just refined it.”

Robertson defines that mission as a “long-range aerial bombardment” approach to evangelism, and he points to statistics that show phenomenal increases in the number of viewers. “Our male audience for ‘The 700 Club,’ after we made the shift to a more news-oriented format, went up 77 percent,” he said. “The thing that I’m thrilled about is that young married couples are watching the program; this is a key target audience.” Robertson estimates that 2.5 million viewers tune in weekly.

In the world of Christian television, reaching more viewers is what the Great Commission is all about. “Last year we had 75,000 people accept the Lord,” Robertson said. “In the last two weeks of October, we had close to 4,000 decisions for Christ”—measured by call-ins to 10,000 “700 Club” counselors in 83 cities. “The evangelism is actually heightened, but the presentation is much more subtle.”

Calling himself “an evangelical who believes in the gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Robertson described his philosophy of evangelism: “I believe that Jesus Christ is part of everything that we do in our lives. We want to show the full-orbed life through the perspective of Jesus Christ. You have to deal with people as they are and not as you would like them to be, because the world is not a giant church service.”

On “The 700 Club,” Robertson radiates the combined demeanor of a Mister Rogers and a Mike Wallace as he banters with cohost Ben Kinchlow. Recent guests have included Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, columnist Robert Novak, cosmetic mogul Mary Kay Ash, baseball star Hank Aaron, Walter F. Mondale, a vice-president of Gulf Oil Corporation, and a Wycliffe Bible translator.

An ordained Southern Baptist minister with a law degree from Yale, Robertson believes in advocacy journalism, or espousing a position while presenting the facts. But at the same time, he has quietly distanced himself from movements and personalities of the New Right, including Ed McAteer’s Roundtable and the Moral Majority.

Less controversial is “USam,” with a “Good Morning, America” format and former Miss America Terry Meeuwsen as anchorperson. “Bears and Blankets,” a program aimed at one-to four-year-olds, was developed by students and faculty at CBN University, adjacent to the network. Other shows, purchased from independent producers, include “American Trail” (patterned after Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road”), “This Week on Wall Street,” National Geographic specials, country music with Barry McGuire, and “Romper Room.” Movies produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Worldwide Pictures and reruns of old comedy serials round out the lineup.

The challenge before CBN is to develop a mix of programs appealing to a diversity of viewers without diluting the salt of the gospel message. While they are not on the verge of sacrificing spiritual truth at the altar of Nielsen ratings, the pressure of competition is on the rise.

For now, the drama at CBN is just beginning to unfold. Will wholesome programs appeal to non-Christians? Will commercial sponsors support Christian television? Will Lori find happiness as a newlywed? Stay tuned.