Bethlehem’S Past And Future Star

The Return of the Star of Bethlehem, by Kenneth Boa and William Proctor (Doubleday-Galilee, 1980, 176 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Stanley Clark, pastor, Huntsville Bible Church, Huntsville, Texas.

Our generation is fascinated by the cosmic and supernatural. Boa and Proctor hitchhike on this fascination by discussing six theories for the star that led the wise men to Christ. They conclude the star was an appearance of the Shekinah glory—that visible manifestation of the presence of God—and appeared at Christ’s birth to signal that God had become incarnate.

Having argued their explanation of the star, the authors turn to the future. They recount events of the Tribulation, culminating in Armageddon and the return of Christ. Based on Revelation 19:11–18, they write, “This flashing brilliance in the heavens marks the return of the Star of Bethlehem.” The star, then, is associated with both advents. The chapter concludes with an exhortation to be ready personally for the star’s return.

That admonition is followed up in the last chapter, which sets forth the gospel and invites the reader to trust in Christ. The rest of the chapter gives basic follow-up on how to live the Christian life.

The book is written in an entertaining, lead-the-reader-on style that is free from religious jargon and exhaustive argumentation. For that reason, arguments for some of the positions it takes will not be convincing to some readers.

Besides being an excellent popular treatment of various star theories, this is a good book to put in the hands of those mildly interested in spiritual things. It will present them with the reality that history is coming to an end and they should be prepared.

Mutual Submission

Heirs Together, by Patricia Gundry (Zondervan, 1980, 192 pp., $7.95 pb), is reviewed by Anne Eggebroten, instructor of English at City College of San Francisco, California.

Questions about women’s role continue to be a major focus of debate in American society and in evangelical churches as we move through the 1980s. While issues like the Equal Rights Amendment and ordination of women are debated hotly, the discussion often boils down to a single question or two: What about the home? What about marriage?

Patricia Gundry gives us a calm, clearheaded answer in Heirs Together. First defining marriage as a relationship (not an institution) and then examining it historically and biblically, she leads us to understand that equality in marriage is God’s plan.

Gently she breaks the news that the traditional hierarchical pattern of marriage is traditional only—and largely based on Greek, Roman, and medieval traditions that Protestant Christians disagree with anyway. Over the years we have absorbed worldly, pagan ideas into our view of marriage and then given them a biblical stamp.

In a delightfully down-to-earth analysis of the first marriage, Gundry observes the biblical emphasis on mutuality, and points out that there was no one else around to tell Adam and Eve how to relate. Gundry suggests that Christians who are in traditional hierarchical marriages and would like to improve them should examine whether equality might be biblical. Her main theme is openness to growth and change. She often reminds readers that she is not offering yet another guaranteed formula for success; instead, she offers biblical principles to be applied with wisdom and flexibility.

Ten years ago as a young woman planning marriage, I looked on every church bookshelf and in every Christian bookstore for this book, but it wasn’t there. Now that it has been written, I urge pastors and Christian leaders to make sure Heirs Together is available to those who are searching.

An Evangelical Theology Of Prayer

The Struggle of Prayer, by Donald G. Bloesch (Harper & Row, 1980, 180 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Kent D. Maxwell, assistant professor of Christian ministries, Winebrenner Theological Seminary, Findlay, Ohio.

The Struggle of Prayer is an evangelical theology of prayer in which the author understands prayer to be “neither mystical rapture nor ritual observance nor philosophical reflection …” but “dialogue between a living God and the one who has been touched by His grace.”

Christmas Star

“I see him, but not now, I behold him, but not nigh:

A star shall come forth out of Jacob …”

Numbers 24:17

No star is visible except at night,

Until the sun goes down, no accurate north.

Day’s brightness hides what darkness shows to sight,

The hour I go to sleep the bear strides forth.

I open my eyes to the cursed but requisite dark,

The black sink that drains my cistern dry,

And see, not nigh, not now, the heavenly mark

Exploding in the quasar-messaged sky.

Out of the dark, behind my back, a sun

Launched light-years ago, completes its run;

The undeciphered skies of myth and story

Now narrate the cadenced runes of glory.

Lost pilots wait for night to plot their flight,

Just so diurnal pilgrims praise the midnight.

EUGENE H. PETERSON

Bloesch explores the differences and convergences between mysticism and biblical prayer in this book, which he describes as a continuation of discussions begun in two earlier works: The Crisis of Piety and The Ground of Certainty.

In “The Crisis of Prayer,” Bloesch writes “… the dominant trend in modern theology is to reduce prayer to a mystical sense of the presence of God …,” seeing the growing liturgical movement as a factor.

In chapter three, biblical prayer is grounded in the fact of God and his love for mankind, in Jesus’ efficacious work of redemption and reconciliation, and in the Holy Spirit who enlivens and directs prayer. I found his discussion here on unanswered prayer the most disappointing feature of the book. Nothing new is said to help the believing saint who seemingly meets the spiritual qualifications, yet fails to see the answer to prayer for which he longs.

Bloesch believes that “… true prayer will always give rise to words,” spoken or unuttered. He is positive toward glossolalia as prayer, but rejects meditation as true prayer. While having a great appreciation for the Christian mystics throughout the church’s history, Bloesch believes they have compromised biblical, prophetic prayer. Chapter six, where he deals with prayer and mysticism, should be read by all who want to understand the essence and uniqueness of biblical prayer.

“The Goal of Prayer” concludes the book. The ultimate goal in prayer is the glory of God, but there are other legitimate goals as well—our own salvation, preservation in the world, our material needs (certainly a welcome word for those who have had guilt trips laid on them for including them), gifts of the Spirit, anointing of the Spirit for ministry, conformity to Christ, and social justice.

This book is essential reading for anyone serious about prayer, and it fills a vacuum that has long existed. In it the evangelical’s desire and need for a theology of prayer that is both solidly biblical and scholarly written will be met.

How Wives Can Help

You and Your Husband’s Mid-Life Crisis, by Sally Conway (David C. Cook, 1980, 240 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Creath Davis, executive director, Christian Concern Foundation, Dallas, Texas.

This book is a response to the phone calls, letters, and personal dialogue with women whose husbands were going through a mid-life crisis. The questions and the pleas for help came to Jim and Sally Conway as a result of Jim’s book, Men in Mid-Life Crisis. Questions like these came from all over the country: “How can I survive during this time? I understand that I need to meet my husband’s needs, but who meets my needs? What do I tell the children? Should I force him to choose between me and his girlfriend? How can I save our marriage? How much should I change to please him?”

Sally Conway is uniquely equipped to respond to these questions. She has survived her husband’s midlife crisis, and she and Jim came through with an even stronger marriage. This ordeal, along with many years experience as a pastor’s wife, a public school teacher, a conference speaker, an editor and writer, an effective mother of three daughters, and a deep faith in Jesus Christ, give her a rich background out of which to deal with the tough issues involved in surviving a husband’s midlife crisis.

Sally shares much of her own experience with Jim, along with insight gleaned from data collected through a nationwide survey and personal counseling. She has integrated real situations throughout the book, which lend tremendous credibility as well as aid the reader in identifying both the problems and the solutions for her own situation. I strongly recommend this book for either personal preparation for an anticipated midlife crisis, or, especially, if your husband is in his midlife crisis.

Help On Jeremiah?

The Book of Jeremiah, one in The New International Commentary on the Old Testament series, by John A. Thompson (Eerdmans, 1980, 819 pp., $22.50), is reviewed by Homer Heater, Jr., dean and professor of Old Testament, Capital Bible Seminary, Lanham, Maryland.

The Book of Jeremiah is the sixth commentary to appear in The New International Commentary on the Old Testament series. Thompson was senior lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Melbourne (Australia) until his retirement in 1978.

The commentary is divided into two main sections: an introductory section dealing with a number of topics, and the commentary proper. The introductory section contains some of the most helpful data in the book. “Jeremiah in His Historical Setting” (pp. 9–27) is an excellent presentation of the historical background. As a matter of fact, one of the better features of the book is its continuous presentation of good historical data. Much of this relies on the very important book by Wiseman, Chronicles ofChaldaean Kings (626–556 B.C.) in the British Museum. This important material is correlated with the biblical events at every turn in the road.

Thompson provides a very helpful overview of the debate on the composition of the Book of Jeremiah. This vexing problem has been approached in so many ways as to lead Thompson to conclude “there is very little unanimity among the scholars who have occupied themselves with trying to elucidate the book of Jeremiah …” (p. 46). He presents John Bright’s thesis with sympathy that “the prose sermons of Jeremiah may [emphasis mine] have owed a great deal more to his inspiration than has been acknowledged by many of the scholars” (p. 49). Thompson leans very heavily on Bright throughout. Most critical scholars reject the prose sections as Jeremianic, and Thompson agonizes through each such passage with many qualifications such as “there is nothing to say Jeremiah could not have written this” (cf. pp. 188, 308, 342, 463, 593, 687). Both Bright’s and Thompson’s views are more conservative than most critical scholars would hold, but for an evangelical commentary, it shows entirely too much dependence on the “Deuteronomistic” theory of the compilation of the Old Testament. That the Book of Jeremiah was compiled from messages collected is obvious, but the Deuteronomistic theory holds that much of the book was written by later hands and placed in the mouth of Jeremiah.

The section on the covenant concept is completely occupied with the issue of Near Eastern covenant formulas, with no mention whatever of the “new” covenant. On turning to chapter 31 of the commentary, the reader finds a brief two pages discussing what the author admits to “represent one of the deepest insights in the whole Old Testament” (p. 580). Its fulfillment, says Thompson, was held by the Qumran sect to be themselves and by the Christians to be the members of the emerging Christian church. One would expect a little more enthusiasm in defense of the latter and rejection of the former on the basis of the inspiration of the New Testament, but one looks for it in vain. We are not told when or how this new covenant will ultimately be fulfilled.

The survey on the issue of the Masoretic Text (MT; Hebrew text) as opposed to the Septuagint (Greek text) concludes in support of Janzen’s view that the shorter Septuagint text is generally to be preferred. This is reflected in several places in his translation. I, for one, am not willing to generalize from the Qumran fragment to a Hebrew Vorlage at Qumran based on the Jeremiah fragment because (1) the material has only been presented in a preliminary way (after almost 30 years!), and (2) the reconstruction of the fragment has a number of problems. Thompson does a considerable amount of emendation throughout the commentary, often following the Septuagint.

The commentary section (c. 650 pages) is, for the most part, very helpful. The translation is very readable without being paraphrastic, and any deviation from the MT is adequately footnoted. The reader will find much that is helpful throughout.

Two areas, however, concern me greatly in view of the fact that this series is purported to be evangelical and for that evangelical community. The first I have already touched on. The form-critical approach of Thompson makes this commentary radically different from E.J. Young’s three volumes on Isaiah, which were the first in this series. Young represented the standard conservative approach to the study of the Old Testament text. I have noted dozens of times in which Thompson speaks of the editorial activity in such a way that one cannot be sure whether Jeremiah was speaking or some later “historian” speaking in Jeremiah’s name. This certainly does not do much for the authoritative statements of Jeremiah that God spoke to him.

The second area is somewhat difficult to pin down because Thompson phrases his point of view so carefully that it is not always easy to discern his perspective. On occasion, Thompson speaks of Jeremiah standing in the council of the Lord, and therefore, speaking not politically, but from the mind of God (p. 534). There are too many times, on the other hand, when the reader is left to wonder whether Jeremiah was truly representing God or only had some inner impression that God was speaking through him (pp. 8, 9, 93, 167, 588, 622). I would like to hear a commentator committed to the Bible as the Word of God speak with a little more assurance on some of these issues. There is very little discussion of predictive prophecy in this commentary.

All of which leads me to ask why the evangelical community cannot come up with a commentary series representing a high level of scholarship and maintaining a commitment to the Scripture, a happy combination in such men as C. F. Keil of another day. This is a helpful commentary in many ways, but it does not represent the conservative position of most of the evangelical community today.

The Real Battle

Theology Encounters Revolution, by J. Andrew Kirk (IVP, 1980, 188 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Douglas D. Webster, registrar and teacher, Ontario Theological Seminary, Toronto, Canada.

Theology Encounters Revolution is more than a title: it is a reality. Daily news reports from El Salvador, Iran, and Poland confirm J. Andrew Kirk’s conviction that “revolutionary change is likely to be an increasing part of the experience of Christians everywhere” (p. 163). A 10-year teaching ministry in Argentina sensitized Kirk to the crucial importance of fashioning a biblically grounded political consciousness.

The value of Kirk’s work is threefold. He offers a fresh survey of the forerunners of revolutionary theology, such as Rauschenbusch, Niebuhr, Barth, and Bonhoeffer, capturing the vital concerns evangelicals need to hear but often neglect because of their rightful classification of these theologians as liberal or neo-orthodox.

Second, his broad sweep of contemporary theological reflection acquaints the reader with the remarkable spectrum of theological method and persuasion when it comes to social and political concerns. Kirk’s awareness of the importance of historical circumstances and cultural context is evident in the arrangement of part two according to geographic regions. He does a good job in selecting key representative theologians and then synthesizing their perspectives in a manner that is specific but not overly detailed. In the space of 70 pages he takes the reader on a journey through six political spheres that span the globe (Eastern and Western Europe, white North America, black North America, black South Africa, and Latin America).

A drawback to the work may be that the average evangelical reader may not be aware of the theological presuppositions of men like Jürgen Moltmann or Jean Segundo. Although these theologians retain the language of Christian theology, their post-Enlightenment philosophical orientation tends to subtract biblical content and perspective from their political theologies. Not all the theologians surveyed by Kirk believe that the key to an authentic Christian theology is a relevant biblical hermeneutic (p. 182). According to their theological presuppositions, they may espouse a contemporary hermeneutic but not necessarily a biblical hermeneutic.

The third and most valuable contribution Andrew Kirk makes is his stress on the authority of God’s Word in shaping a Christian’s political perspective. He is aware of the dangers of enculturation and the tendency to substitute loyalty to a particular confession at the expense of a creative study and application of the Scriptures. In the concluding section, Kirk outlines effectively a broad biblical framework for an authentic evangelical theology, one sensitive to social and political concerns. He holds no illusions about the nature of man, but neither does he retreat from “the human challenge implicit in revolutionary thinking.” Kirk writes with a reserve and humility characteristic of his conviction that “at present there is no single orthodox understanding of how biblical truth relates to political and social revolution” (p. 164). However, when he moves from his very fair, if overly cautious, assessment of political theologians and the World Council of Churches to his own insights into such matters as violence and the Christian’s revolutionary expectation, he reveals a very perceptive and discerning mind. In a world rocked by revolution and counter-revolution, Theology Encounters Revolution deserves to be read by anyone serious about fulfilling the mission Jesus Christ has sent us to accomplish.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Following is a collection of commentaries on the Gospels. Some are new; some are reprints. All are of help to the pastor or exegete.

Matthew. Broadman Press continues its simple Layman’s Bible Book Commentary series with Matthew, by Clair M. Crissey. The New Century Bible Commentary is being made available in paperback, with Matthew (Eerdmans), by David Hill. Robert G. Bratcher has prepared A Translator’s Guide to the Gospel of Matthew (United Bible Societies).

Mark. George T. Montague writes Mark: Good News for Hard Times (Servant), which contains many helpful insights. Hugh Anderson’s Mark (Eerdmans), of The New Century Bible Commentary, is available in paperback. It represents a single-minded redactional look at the Gospel. Robert G. Bratcher offers A Translator’s Guide to the Gospel of Mark (United Bible Societies), to go along with that of Matthew.

Luke. Kregel has reprinted the hefty expository and homiletical Gospel of Luke by W. H. Van Doren. It is over 1,000 pages long and contains sound comments, if not critical help. What is certain to be a standard when finished is the Anchor Bible’s The Gospel According to Luke 1–9 (Doubleday), by Joseph A. Fitzmyer. E. Earle Ellis’s very well done The Gospel of Luke (Eerdmans) is in paperback along with the other New Century Bible Commentaries.

John. Baker has put B. F. Westcott’s two volumes on the Greek text into one paperback masterpiece in The Gospel According to St. John. Robert E. Obach and Albert Kirk have written a devotional work in A Commentary on the Gospel of John (Paulist). W. H. Van Doren’s massive (over 1,400 pages) The Gospel of John: Expository and Homiletical has been reprinted by Kregel. Joseph Blank’s three-volume The Gospel According to St. John (Crossroads) is designed as a commentary for spiritual reading, and quite well done. Barnabas Lindars’s Gospel of John (Eerdmans) is The New Century Bible Commentary in paperback. It usually hits the center of the target theologically, even if Lindars is quite skeptical as to the historical value of the material. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan), edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, continues with volume 9: John by Merrill C. Tenney, and Acts by Richard N. Longenecker. It is well done, with Acts being especially helpful.

Even when we believe in God, we do not take the spiritual realm very seriously.

Christmas is not so much a story about Jesus as about God. He gave his greatest gift, himself. He freely chose to involve himself in the human condition without reserve.

The theme is divine impoverishment for the sake of human enrichment. He who was rich for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be rich (2 Cor. 8:9). The One who is rich beyond imagining, superior in power, and perfect in wisdom and holiness became a helpless baby, poor and defenseless, to win the friendship of sinners. “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15).

The greatest objection to the truth of the Christian message is a simple one: it is too good to be true. Celsus voiced this objection early in the history of the church. Being infinite, God could not do that, and being perfect, God would not do it. He might love mankind, but not that much. He might go to some lengths to help us, but not that far. In Judaism and Islam, God is merciful—but there are limits to what he is able and willing to do to put his love into effect. Christmas means that God loves us without limits. It means he has not given us over to our fallenness, but that he entered our situation in Christ and gave full expression to his gracious Word in that singular human life. Belief in the incarnation of the Son of God has always been the hallmark of Christian faith and a pearl of greatest price.

But why does it sound like a myth to Western ears? Why does it seem like an imaginary tale out of a book of fables? One reason has to do with Western ears themselves. We have been immersed in a scientific mentality that limits reality to the realm of material cause and effect. We are suspicious of the paranormal and any claims to be in touch with it.

Even when we believe in God, we do not take the spiritual realm very seriously and limit God to a restricted set of activities. We have a natural bent to want to demythologize aspects of what the Bible reports God did. Confronted with the message of the Incarnation, the Western mind immediately thinks of myth. We need to apply the insights of anthropology to ourselves and not just to others, and recognize that the problem does not lie in the gospel but in ourselves. We are afflicted with a poverty of imagination and spirit, and we need to be healed. Radical theology is right—people today often live as if there were no God. But rather than something to accept and celebrate, it represents a negative element in our cultural conditioning that we need to try to transcend.

But there is another intrinsic reason why the Christmas story sounds like a myth. It reminds us of the handsome prince sweeping in to rescue the sleeping princess. It sounds a little like the ancient cycles of pagan myths that spoke of the dying and rising god, and the victory over the destructive powers of the universe for the sake of mankind.

Apart from the notable exception that the Christmas story actually transpired in time and space, it is like those good legends that exist in world literature; it captures their essence. As C. S. Lewis put it, “If myth had ever become fact, it would be just like this.” These ancient tales tell us of mankind’s dreams and aspirations; Christmas tells us about God’s mighty act to fulfill them all. In Jesus Christ the myths are not so much abrogated as fulfilled. The Christmas story sounds like a myth because it was meant to. As J. R. R. Tolkien believed, it is the story that captures the truth of all fairy stories. It is the good news we all must hope is true.

In an earlier day, this connection of the Christmas story with myth and legend would have enhanced its plausibility. To many Western minds, however, it is just as likely to make it seem implausible. It is the skeptic’s delight to associate the two because he thinks it will certainly discredit the Christian message. But it does not. Instead, it can be the lever to break open what in the material explanation is a closed box. It can open us up to the realm of divine action and reality. How blind we have been recently to limit our vision of possible reality to the merely mechanical, when spiritual reality waits to be explored.

At least consider at this Christmas time that reality is not a pointless material process, but a creation open to its Maker and full of spiritual significance. The world of myth and symbol speaks of salvation and hope from beyond us, and in the event of the incarnate God in Bethlehem the promise is fulfilled and the power released.

But why was it necessary that the Child be born of a virgin? I suppose the answer would be that it was not “necessary,” although it was appropriate. The gospel writers who tell us of the miraculous conception do not attempt to give us any reasons why it was necessary that Jesus be virgin born. The impression they leave is that it was appropriate for an event of this magnitude to be marked by a sign. Christmas is, after all, the story of the grand miracle. As Queen Lucy put it in The Last Battle (The Chronicles of Narnia), “In our world too a stable once had something in it bigger than the whole world.”

The birth of Jesus and the empty tomb together enclose and bracket the miracle of God’s salvation, which is his doing and not ours. The unique birth points emphatically to the divine son who here became man. It is the sign that accompanies the mystery of the Incarnation and marks it off from the way all other human lives begin. It is an act of divine omnipotence that stands behind the purpose of grace that prompted the Incarnation itself. I think it doubtful that anyone who denies or explains away this miracle takes with due seriousness the mystery of the Incarnation.

Jesus came to make us rich. Are we all enriched in him? We are not, if we remain self-centered and mean, bitter, and anxious, hostile.

His birth has not yet had its full desired effect in our experience. It is still needful for him to be born anew in our midst and make us rich. Christmas, that myth of myths, the myth made fact, has still its ancient power to heal and save and restore.

It can transform the life of anyone who, like Mary, will open himself to the gracious promise of God.

CLARK H. PINNOCK¹Dr. Pinnock is professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

It is a calling for the spiritually mature to serve and the less mature to grow.

Few people willingly visit convalescent hospitals and rest homes. Rarely does anyone enter such an establishment unless there is a close friend or relative within. Frequently the last stop before death, most patients are over 60, confined to wheelchairs or their beds, and many have lost touch with reality. Many patients have outlived their close friends and relatives and are all alone in the world. Others have families so busy with their own lives that they take time only rarely for the elderly inmate. The elderly often find themselves imprisoned by their ailing bodies and minds, condemned to live out a colorless existence within institutional walls.

Some progressive convalescent facilities do try to help those with still-active minds, and plan activities for those who can still get around. But staffs and funds are limited; the largest chunk of an institution’s budget must go for overhead (housing, laundry, food, staff salaries). Larger facilities usually hire a social director to oversee social functions, but in many smaller facilities this is handled by the administrator or a secretary. To a hospital administrator, church services are a social function, and unless owned by a church group, few convalescent facilities have their own chaplains.

In most communities, a few of the larger churches send teams to the local hospitals, usually the larger and “nicer” (cleaner and fancier) of the local facilities. Most of these have more than one denomination offering their services. A few denominations also send ministers or priests to visit their own patients. But many patients have no ties to any particular church, although they consider themselves Christians. Frequently they feel out of place at the worship service of another denomination.

The greatest need in all communities is for nondenominational services in the smaller facilities. But to minister effectively to people with a variety of religious backgrounds, and to prepare and conduct services wherein people of all denominations can feel comfortable, requires much thought and preparation.

Music is basic to a service in a convalescent hospital. Most facilities have a piano; some may even have an organ. When neither is available, the music may be tape recorded, and patients can sing along with it. Music is the key to bridging differences between churches. Old-time hymns that are familiar to nearly everyone are the best choices, and the elderly never tire of singing them. They bring back pleasant memories, and the hymns themselves have a healing quality. No one can sing those old songs without having them uplift their spirits.

It is also simply practical to devote the first 20 to 30 minutes to music. The ministerial team quickly learns that rarely will all of the patients be in place waiting for them when they arrive; it usually takes several minutes for the nursing staff to wheel everyone in. It is also helpful if large-print songbooks are available, since many of the elderly cannot read fine print.

The minister should open the service with prayer following the music. It helps to unify the group by concluding this prayer with the Lord’s Prayer or the Twenty-third Psalm, which the group can pray aloud with the minister.

The message should be short (10 to 15 minutes), positive, and to the point. Like children, many of the elderly have a short attention span. Positive themes that are basic to all denominations should be chosen: God’s love for us, how to be more loving toward each other, how to pray, and so on. This is neither the place for theology, nor for presentations of dogma or pet doctrines. The speaker also may find the patients will wheel themselves out if they decide the talk is too long or too boring. Further, many of the elderly have hearing difficulties, so it is important to speak slowly and distinctly, and, of course, loud enough.

There should be a closing prayer or meditation, a final hymn, and prayer with each individual. (If someone requests laying on of hands, it should be done with a minimum of fuss before or during the final hymn.) A service following this format may be concluded in an hour or slightly more. A coffee hour may follow at the discretion of the ministers and hospital staff.

The two indispensible parts of the service are the music and the individual prayers at the end. The ministers and volunteers should make a special point of touching the patients, giving them a hug or holding their hands. Many feel alone and unloved, and therefore unlovable and untouchable. The physical contact reassures them that someone cares, and also that God cares.

Where does a church or a minister start in undertaking a regular nondenominational service at a convalescent hospital? A facility’s needs may come to the attention of a minister through a member, or perhaps as the result of a phone call from a desperate social director who has had a group cancel at the last minute. Or, a minister or volunteer may take the initiative and contact local hospitals. Someone should then go to the facility before the first service, interview the social director, tour the hospital, ascertain the availability of a piano, and set the day and time for the services.

How many volunteers are needed for an effective convalescent hospital ministry depends upon several factors. The most important consideration is the number of patients who will normally be present at the services. In large facilities, they may number as many as 50, most of whom will be in wheelchairs. A majority will need help to find their places in the songbooks, and all will need to be encouraged to sing. It will usually take a minimum of three volunteers plus the pianist and the minister to keep the service moving smoothly. If the facility is small, the minister and a pianist can easily handle the service. In a board-and-care facility, where the elderly are more apt to be ambulatory and enthusiastic, the minister can conduct the service alone—especially if he or she can play the piano. The person in charge of the church’s program should take into consideration the number of volunteers regularly and dependably available, and look for a convalescent facility that can be handled comfortably.

The ministry to the elderly, the terminally ill, and the senile is a special ministry. It is also a ministry for the spiritually mature, for there are many people who cannot stand even to visit a convalescent hospital, and some find such a visit can make them physically ill. But for the few, the rewards are far out of proportion to the small amount of time actually invested. Wrinkled faces quickly become close friends and misshapen bodies are scarcely noticed, for those who minister are relating to real persons within those bodies. Not only is such a ministry an expression of divine love moving through a team of volunteers, but the warmth of new friendships returns blessings of that same divine love.

MARTHA J. MOHRING¹Mrs. Mohring is a minister with the Independent Church of Antioch in Rialto, California.

As Mozart’s short life showed, being one of God’s chosen vessels hardly makes for a smooth journey.

The announcement that Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus won most of the major 1981 Tony awards suggests that American theatre may be experiencing some interest in theological issues. While hardly constituting major interest in Christian matters, it points up some interest and insight in theological questions that should command the attention of evangelicals.

Amadeus is an impressive production, well acted and imaginatively staged by John Bury. The play, on the life and career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as seen through the eyes of one of Mozart’s most resentful fellow composers, the long-since forgotten Antonio Salieri, alternately deals with the doctrine of election and God’s sovereignty and a reverse view of the Faust legend. It is not simply a routine biography of a famous composer.

The perspective of the drama comes from Salieri, in old age, looking back on his life. At the outset, he informs us that, as a youth, he dedicated himself to God, asking only for the gift of music, and pledging in return to use this gift for God’s glory.

Salieri’s prayer is apparently heard. He rises quickly in the world of music of his time and finds himself court composer under Joseph II, emperor of Austria. On the surface, Salieri has maintained his vow, but at a deeper level, pride and self-satisfaction begin to surface in his character. The turning point occurs when the much-heralded protégé, Mozart, then about 20, visits the court of Joseph II. At first, Salieri, playing the role of tutor, is delighted to make the acquaintance of the young musician. Before long, he sees that Mozart’s musical ability is not simply profound: it goes beyond genius. Salieri recognizes in it the music of God himself. It dawns upon him that the gift for which he prayed and made his vow to God has been given to another. His resentment becomes overwhelming when he perceives the young Mozart to be neither pious nor terribly cultured. He cries out to God, “That gift which should have been mine you have taken and given to an obscene child!”

Salieri comes to see himself as the butt of a monstrous cosmic joke. God has ignored his prayers and pledges and, incredibly, has bestowed a divine gift on a wayward adolescent who cares nothing, apparently, for God or his glory. In the course of all this, Salieri himself is unmasked. His true desire was for fame, not God’s glory. Furious, he vows to destroy the divine gift in Mozart, and this, of course, means destroying Mozart.

He is remarkably successful. Rather than writing music for the glory of God, he is now bent on silencing, or at least muffling, God’s glory in Mozart’s music. Mozart’s career is stifled at each turn, while Salieri’s work, on the other hand, finds an evergrowing audience. He gets all he wants: fame, a secure standing at court, a respectable family and an attractive mistress, as well as the satisfaction of Mozart’s quick demise. Before he can really enjoy all this, however, he realizes that God is visiting him with a terrible punishment. To Salieri is given the gift, which many of his contemporaries lack, of hearing unmistakably the voice of God in Mozart’s music. At the same time, he is more than aware of the mediocrity of his own work. He realizes that his own music will be forgotten while the divine gift in Mozart will insure the eternal value of his work. Salieri descends to the level of hell Karl Barth described as having your own way and being stuck with it.

Mozart, on the other hand, shows some signs of repentance. His Don Giovanni reveals a contrite identification with the legendary Don Juan. Ironically, the only work Mozart can get at the end of his life is transcribing the music of Bach. His Requiem shows Bach’s influence and serves as his own final testament. His career ends where Salieri’s began: giving explicit glory to God.

Peter Shaffer’s drama may or may not be entirely factual, but that is beside the point. Amadeus presents in a clear if unintended way an essentially Pauline-Augustinian view of the sovereignty of God.

The strong view of election is seen in Amadeus, and here we must agree with Salieri that Mozart, as a person, seems almost totally undeserving of his gift. He is far more interested in satisfying the cravings of his youthful libido. The modern view is that God ought to act according to human expectation. If we are honest, we must admit that Salieri’s viewpoint is what we would be inclined to take. Why Mozart? Anyone who hears Mozart’s Mass in C or Requiem must confess to having heard “the voice of God.”

The argument in Amadeus goes beyond this—and is strongly reminiscent of Barth’s evaluation of Mozart. (He maintained that the angels played Bach while “on duty.” In their free time, they delighted in playing Mozart.) Mozart’s music is not divine when it deals with some explicit religious theme, Barth would argue; Mozart’s music was heavenly because of its very nature: it expresses a beauty, joy, and profundity beyond anything in the created order. This applies at least as much, for example, to the piano concertos as to the requiems and masses. Not everyone will agree—I’m not sure I do. The point is that this view of the divine character of Mozart’s music is what makes the argument of this play work. God has chosen to express his voice through an instrument that seems scarcely appropriate, at least in terms of human judgment.

The play is also accurate theologically in showing that being a chosen vessel of God hardly makes one’s life easy. Is God’s election, for example, worth the pain and agony of dying in misery at age 36? Though the play does not seek to deal with Mozart’s “salvation,” his contrition is nonetheless present, and the Requiem suggests a turning to God. Unlike absurd examples of evangelical “biographies,” here turning to God only creates more earthly misery. And yet, when we have given Salieri a final hearing, and have considered the abject state of Mozart near death, we are left with the music of Mozart’s Requiem, his final composition (portions are played in the last act). He truly speaks the language of heaven; he has only this. The final suggestion of the play is that Mozart has glimpsed something of the reality of God through music.

The ultimate test of Mozart’s music, Amadeus seems to say, is whether we hear the voice of God in it. Salieri heard it all too clearly, and hardened his heart; Mozart’s heart was opened. God’s ways are not our ways and yet we, like Barth, see more of the truth of the divine character through this example of God dispensing his gifts, “after the counsel of his holy will” (Eph. 1:11). God’s magic flute plays on.

PAUL LEGGETT¹Mr. Leggett is on the staff of the General Assembly Mission Council of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., while he finishes work on a Ph.D. dissertation at New York’s Union Theological Seminary.

On the night of the new moon recently, Johnny Midnight, an occultist who has risen to religious prominence only this year, gathered some 30,000 of his followers and radio listeners into the prestigious air-conditioned Araneta coliseum in Quezon City, Philippines.

The people came by private and public transportation from all over greater Manila and its outlying towns and barrios. Following the instructions that Midnight had issued repeatedly over the radio for weeks, they brought bottled mineral water. Many waited from as early as 8 o’clock in the morning for the coliseum gates to open, and when the program finally began at 7:00 P.M., they packed the auditorium to witness a show that had all the trimmings of modern entertainment. The stage, designed by a noted Manila stage personality, had as its centerpiece a giant pyramid made of bars wrapped in aluminum foil. Six girls clad in white, ancient-looking Greek gowns, and jingling golden bells, escorted Midnight to the stage. Men in colorful robes heralded his dramatic entry with French horns.

A man who is usually seen in a plain bush jacket, Midnight wore a white-and-gold flowing satin robe for the event. The big dome roared with thunderous cheers and applause from the crowd. Many were seeing Midnight for the first time, although they had read about him and heard him over radio station DZBB. His five-hour program runs from midnight to 5:00 A.M.

Midnight amused the crowd with has witty remarks and humor, and even did a bad “lip sync” of a local pop song. Then he began to speak in a strange tongue that sounded like Arabic. As he did so, a smoke machine under the stage emited white smoke. Shifting colored lights add to the eerie atmosphere. As the chanting and the tongues speaking built to a climax, the people held out their water containers—plastic cups, pitchers, thermos jugs, and soft drink bottles—for the “toning” ceremony, Midnight’s version of a healing service. As Midnight chants and speaks in strange tongues, healing energy supposedly flows out and into the water, which the adherent drinks, and which Midnight calls “the water of life.”

Midnight’s top-rated, five-hour radio program is said to have an audience of some four million people. They range from sidewalk vendors to movie stars to top business executives. A major part of the program consist of live telephone calls from listeners who share their healing experiences through “radio toning.” One woman said she was about to drink the water when she noticed a sparkling nugget like gold dancing in the glass. Some claimed to have seen Johnny Midnight himself in the room in which they were listening to the radio.

Owner of one restaurant and manager of two others, Midnight has contradicted himself many times. He laughs off any reference to the supernatural. “I’m as good a cook as I am a witch,” he has joked. “I’m doing a purely natural, scientific work.” He has repeatedly said, “I’m not a healer. I only help people to heal themselves.” And yet in his radio talks and his writings he always invokes the name of God and has even called himself names, such as “Alpha and Omega,” that refer to Christ, and has used biblical terms loosely.

Midnight was born Johnny Joseph, Jr., on March 31, 1941, and claims to be of Syrian and Iraqi ancestry. A Catholic since birth, he has always been religious and interested in helping people. In fact, in 1968 he used his radio program to coordinate rescue efforts during an earthquake tragedy. For his deeds he received an award from President Ferdinand Marcos. Sometime in the seventies he went to Egypt and studied at the Egyptian Branch of the Chaldean Mysteries and was initiated into the brotherhood inside the pyramid of Khutu at Gizeh, thus becoming a missionary of the Chaldean cult.

Of greater concern to evangelicals is the stance the Roman Catholic church has taken toward Midnight. A well-known Roman Catholic priest, Jaime Bulatao, recently published a series of articles in a local daily newspaper evaluating the Johnny Midnight phenomenon.

He ended up, however, saying that Midnight is “helping many people,” that his theology is “basically Christian” and could be made more “palatable to Catholic theologians.” Not long after the series of articles came out, Midnight had a meeting with the number one Catholic leader in the country, Cardinal Jaime Sin. The meeting catapulted Midnight into yet greater prestige and made him bolder.

Is Tv Violence More Harmful Than We Think?

Violence on television may be responsible for 25 to 50 percent of all real-life violence occurring in American society. That was the testimony of one expert at a congressional hearing on television violence last month. The hearing was the most strident attack on network TV violence to date.

Researchers previously have more cautiously argued that there appears to be a correlation between the amount of TV violence watched and violent acts committed in real life. But now, said David Pearl of the National Institute of Mental Health, “We have come to a unanimous conclusion that there is a causal relationship between television violence and real-life violence.”

Experts testifying for the networks disagreed, saying such studies are becoming more and more controversial. The discrepancies among them mean that little is proved, they contended.

But Ted Turner, owner of the Cable News Network, testified that profuse TV violence was leading to “national suicide.” Testimony against violence was also heard from researcher George Gerbner and Donald Wildmon, head of the National Coalition for Better Television. The strongest remarks were made by Thomas Radecki, who initiated the National Coalition on Television Violence nearly two years ago.

Radecki claimed TV violence was the number one cause—over alcohol abuse and family breakdown—for the increasing violence in American society. He argued against several widespread notions, such as the one that says TV violence affects children more than adults. Radecki said studies show adults are equally influenced.

He also said “law and order” violence, with the good guy using violence on the bad guy, more effectively causes the viewer to accept the use of violence in his life. Radecki called a “myth” the assertion that violent pornography does not increase the likelihood of sexual crimes. Instead, such fare “definitely increases the acceptance of interest in committing sexual violence for the typical American or Canadian adult male.”

Furthermore, Radecki claimed the portrayal of violence, for all its gore, is not realistic. In real life about half of all violence is committed under the influence of alcohol. But on TV most violence is done soberly and drug free. Television violence also fails to show the devastating personal and social consequences of violence.

Radecki’s observations came after he reviewed 700 scientific studies and reports covering more than 100,000 people.

Christian lawyers organize as never before to protect religious freedom.

In 1950, only two students at a prominent Christian college were considering careers in law. Of the two, just one went on to become an attorney. Evangelicals of the time were not overly concerned with social issues: it was more important to be preachers, missionaries, teachers. The cultural changes of the last three decades, however, many of them in the legal arena, left conservative Christians out in the cold.

Philosopher Francis Schaeffer has had strong words on the lack of Christian influence on the legal system. “The law is in shambles and the Christian lawyers have not made any significant impact towards its development. I wonder, where are all the Christian lawyers? I feel let down by them and think I have, and the church has, a right to feel let down,” he said at a conference last spring.

But slowly and quietly, evangelicals have penetrated the legal profession, and rumbles from several quarters indicate the Christian voice will grow even more forceful.

At Wheaton College, for instance, more than 70 undergraduates participate in a prelaw society. Oral Roberts University recently won accreditation for its law school from the American Bar Association. Bob Jones University has an adviser for a contingent of prelaw students.

But perhaps more important than young Christians looking forward to being lawyers is the increased activity of Christians already in the ranks. Groups whose intentions range from devotional fellowship to serious legal intervention have sprouted across the landscape, mostly since the 1960s. They include:

• The Christian Legal Society (CLS), initiated in 1961 and now grown to 2,000 members, has moved from the humble purpose of Christian fellowship for attorneys and judges to ambitious plans to alter the course of church-and-state separation.

• Christian Legal Defense and Education Fund (CLD), begun in 1969, has concentrated on recruiting Christian attorneys to aid Christian schools in legal battles.

• The Moral Majority Legal Defense Foundation, which is so new a baby that its delivery has been prematurely announced. Moral Majority officials are still laying the groundwork for an organization they promise will be an “aggressive, no-fooling-around group” plunging into litigation on such issues as abortion.

• Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, a small group initiated in 1964, has offered free legal services for the poor but is now largely occupied with stimulating its growth.

• The Christian Law Association, based in Cleveland, Ohio, is headed by fundamentalist lawyer David Gibbs, and it tries to defend fundamentalist schools from government control. Its strategy and its view of the law have been criticized by other Christian constitutional lawyers. Some of them feel the CLA has actually set back the cause of religious freedom (CT, April 10, p.48).

One Lawyer Stands Alone

Christian law fellowships are proliferating, but one attorney who has not started any group has become the patron saint of private religious schools. William Ball of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, heads a small law firm that works six days a week meticulously preparing cases (on occasion, Ball has dipped into his own pocket to get the cases into court). A Roman Catholic, Ball won five landmark court decisions of the seventies relating to schools and education. Here are the three most significant:

• Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1973, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court agreed with Ball’s argument that constitutional freedom of religion allows Amish parents the right to take their children out of formal schooling after the eighth grade.

• State of Ohio v. Whisper, 1976, was decided by the Supreme Court of Ohio. Ball showed that the “minimum standards” the state expected schools to comply with (listed in a 125-page booklet of 600 regulations) “unduly burdened the free exercise of religion.” Ball also demonstrated that state certification of teachers was no guarantee of teacher quality.

• Kentucky State Board of Education v. Rudasill, 1979, was similar to Whisner. In Rudasill, the Kentucky Supreme Court found teacher certification, textbook approval, and school accreditation requirements violated the free exercise of religion clause.

Ball’s intent has not been to abolish all government supervision of education, but to reinforce the constitutional prerogratives of private religious schools to educate children according to the tenets of their faith. The Pennsylvania attorney has written that some government supervision, although sharply limited, is desirable in that it recognizes “the principle that we (as in ‘We the people …’) have [a] common concern for one another in the area of education.”

Moral Majority’s foundation is being arranged by Virginia attorney John Whitehead, and its goals are ambitious. Whitehead said key issues will be abortion, church autonomy, protection of the rights of private religious schools, family autonomy free from government interference, pornography, and “public arena” law (such things as public prayer and Bible reading). It will also try to guard laws that allow religious organizations to operate as tax exempt. Whitehead added that Moral Majority will battle for non-Christian religious groups when the case has potential to set a precedent favorable to all religious bodies.

The Legal Foundation will open a national office in Washington, D.C., this spring, employing three or four attorneys (as yet unnamed).

Christian Legal Defense and Education Fund, operating out of Leesburg, Florida, has attempted to establish a network of Christian attorneys, said spokesman Wally Metts. CLD does not keep a membership roster but has about 2,500 regular supporters, Metts said. It often raises funds to cover legal costs in cases involving Christian schools. It will do research for attorneys, and provide theological advice.

Metts, an ordained minister, said CLD is aware of Falwell’s plan for another legal group and they plan to cooperate. “We will not duplicate services,” he said.

The oldest of the groups is the Christian Legal Society, based in Oak Park, Illinois. After steadily establishing itself over the past two decades, the CLS is suddenly coming of age. It has undertaken a three-phase program of expansion and already has “lead projects” in five cities. Those are model offices of one or two full-time workers who seek to marshal resources of the Christian legal community in their cities. The offices work with Christian lawyers who volunteer to grant free legal aid to the poor. The CLS has also sharpened the cutting edge of Christian legal involvement with its Conciliation Service.

It has full-time conciliation services in four cities, and others at “one stage or another” in 40 other cities, said CLS executive director Lynn Buzzard. The conciliation services offer alternatives for Christians who are aggrieved but feel the Bible forbids them to take another Christian to court.

CLS lawyers mediate disagreements but also seek to heal the anger behind arguments. Recognizing that litigation often embitters the person involved, the Conciliation Service counsels the disputants and even prays with them. It has been so successful that secular imitations are appearing. Cases are handled more to the satisfaction of the disputants, do not take as long as they might in the courts, and save that already clogged system from further overcrowding.

The CLS is also constructing a comprehensive plan for Christian legal involvement, which, according to Buzzard, will include education (where the church-and-state separation issue crops up most often), government regulation of Christian ministries, human life (genetic engineering as well as abortion and euthanasia), and justice in community (aid to the poor).

A coherent strategy is needed for Christian action, said Buzzard. “One of our concerns has been that Christian reaction [to legal developments] has been emotional and episodic. It has tended not to be strategic but just to go where the hot action is,” he said.

What is developing is a Christian assault on the secular understanding of church-and-state separation, which the attorneys believe now discriminates against religion. Most Christian attorneys favor pluralism, but they believe the present brand is distorted to favor secular philosophies. The pluralism Buzzard opposes is that which “systematically excludes religion from public life.”

Such a “pluralism” is in evidence in a case now before the Supreme Court, Vincent v. Widmar. That case pits a Christian student group against the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC), whose officials told the group it could not meet for “religious worship or religious teaching” in campus facilities. So-called secular groups, such as Marxists or feminists, are allowed to meet there, but an explicitly religious faith is held to have a special, almost pernicious, quality. In a time when the idea of the university as in loco parentis (parent away from home) has been dropped in favor of students’ mature independence. UMKC attorneys ironically argued that incoming freshmen might be susceptible to the religious influence of groups meeting on the secular campus. The secular becomes sacred and inviolable.

“Allow the pornographer and radical secularist to get a shot at values. Fine, I can live with that. But I want my shot too [as a promoter of Christian values],” Buzzard said.

Whether the CLS and other groups can nudge the law in a new direction remains to be seen, but the challenge is attracting notable legal talent.

Stephen Galebach, young graduate of Yale and of Harvard Law School, was the author of “A Human Life Statute” in last winter’s Human Life Review. His article was the first to propose that Congress pass a bill (not a constitutional amendment) defining “life” in such a way as to protect unborn children from abortion. Columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., called this “dazzling insight.” The bill was written and introduced.

Galebach left a prestigious Washington law firm earlier this month to join CLS because “it has the clearest vision of any group I’ve seen for applying a Christian vision” to legal issues. “The state,” said Galebach, “inevitably makes moral judgments.” He wants to make certain Christians have a word in the moral process.

A New Lease On Campus Life

Campus Life magazine, published by the evangelical organization Youth for Christ (YFC/USA), has been a bright star among Christian periodicals journalistically. It has a monthly paid circulation of over 200,000, and an estimated readerhip of one million, mostly high school students. Earlier this year it carried off five first-place awards from the Evangelical Press Association.

Financially, however, the picture is entirely different. In 1979 the magazine had severe losses, and the burden threatened not only the magazine but the parent organization as well (there are 180 local chapters). Last month YFC put the magazine on an entirely new footing.

Campus Life will continue to be published, but a new, completely separate nonprofit corporation has been set up to ran it. On the board are Philip Yancey, YFC vice-president for publishing; Jay Kesler, YFC president; William Slemp, YFC’s national director of advertising sales; Harold Myra, president of Christianity Today, Inc.; and Paul Robbins, executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc. Four more board members will be named later. Myra is chairman of the new organization, called Campus Life Publications, Inc.

The Christianity Today executives have close ties to YFC. Myra was editor and publisher of Campus Life until joining Christianity Today in 1975, and Robbins was YFC national field director, later joining Myra at CT. Yancey followed Myra as editor and publisher of Campus Life, but resigned in 1978 to pursue a full-time writing career. He returned last year to try to lift the magazine’s sagging financial figures. He was able to stabilize circulation, advertising, and the staff, but it soon became evident a new structure was needed. Under the new organization, Yancey will administer Campus Life as president and publisher.

New Direction Charted For Costa Rican Seminary

An evaluation study group has prescribed a dose of “radical evangelicalism” as the antidote to ailments that have weakened the Latin American Biblical Seminary (SBL—for Seminario Biblico Latinamericano) in San José, Costa Rica. The report is non-binding.

Founded in 1923 by Latin America Mission (LAM) founders Harry and Susan Strachan, SBL for years held the leading role in training pastors for Latin America’s evangelical churches. But after the seminary became autonomous in 1971, a preoccupation with the concerns of liberation theology brought about a decline in support by conservative churches, the recent departure of five faculty members, plans by the LAM-launched Costa Rican Bible Churches to start an alternative Bible school, and withdrawal of endorsement of the seminary by LAM-USA (CT, May 8, 1981, p. 40).

The seven-member study commission said the controversial seminary faced four options:

• It could close. Doing so, however, would deprive Latin America’s churches of a “formidable instrument” for training leaders.

• It could return to the theological past. That is considered an “impossibility” and a denial of present realities.

• It could embrace unconditionally an extreme expression of the theology of liberation. That would be “an obvious form of theological reductionism.”

• It could pursue “radical evangelicalism.” That would mean promoting an uncompromised commitment to the poor and to social issues, founded upon an equally uncompromised foundation in basic evangelical doctrines and “the best Protestant tradition.” This option, the 23-page report concluded, was the only valid one, blending emphases of both right and left to achieve “total integral liberation.”

World Scene

Evangelicals have the most popular radio network in Haiti. It is Radio Lumiere, associated with Worldteam, whose format of news, gospel, and contemporary Haitian gospel music have put it ahead of the number-two official government station and the third-ranked station of the Roman Catholic church. These are results of a survey, released October 31, conducted by the Haitian Center of Family Hygiene. Radio Lumiere airs health education features and speaks out on social issues.

One of the “Siberian Seven” is probably suffering from cancer, according to a daughter. Lida Vaschenko, one of the Soviet Pentecostals who have spent more than three years inside the U.S. embassy in Moscow, has written that her mother, Augustina, “needs surgery” and that it “is impossible here.” In a recent letter to the Stockholm-based Slavic Mission, she asks, “Can this possibly expedite a solution to the question of our emigration?”

Evangelical publications were on display at Yugoslavia’s international book fair in Belgrade this year for the first time. Free Gospels of John were distributed from the booth rented jointly by the Baptist and Pentecostal publishers. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s correspondent in Yugoslavia notes that this is an early benefit of formation of the Council of Evangelical Christians last year.

The principal of a Protestant school in Turkey is on trial in military court for teaching Armenian children their own language and Protestant religious knowledge. So says IDEA, the news service of the German Evangelical Alliance, which reports that Hrant Güzelian disappeared last March after teaching for more than 20 years, and that his trial is probably the result of protests and publicity by the Armenian Protestant Church in France. Güzelian is accused of having “collected Turkish children in East Anatolia and infected them with Armenian nationalism.” The prosecution demanded a sentence of from one to three years imprisonment. The verdict is not yet known.

A Canadian missionary to Thailand was shot and killed while speaking to a group near the Central Thailand Buddhist stronghold city of Thatago. Overseas Missionary Fellowship missionary Koos Fietje, 38, was killed on October 24. He is survived by his wife and three children. The Fietjes helped establish a vital, growing Christian congregation in Thatago.

Billy Graham’s Houston-Gulf Coast Crusade

It wasn’t a bad performance, even for Billy Graham. On the day his Houston crusade began one Sunday last month, Graham had breakfast with the Houston Oilers football team, and then conducted the team’s chapel service. That afternoon the Oilers faced the Oakland Raiders. They trailed by a touchdown late in the game, when tight end Mike Barber, one of the team’s enthusiastic Christians, caught the game-winning pass in the end zone. The pass was thrown by substitute quarterback John Reaves, his first start since 1978. Reaves is also an outspoken Christian, whose response to reporters after the game was, “Praise the Lord. I just put faith in Jesus. I was saying prayers the whole game. I’m going to celebrate tonight by going to church.”

It did not hurt any that Barber and Reaves were in all the papers on Monday since Barber, by long-standing arrangement, was scheduled to give his testimony at the Graham crusade on Monday night.

Chill winds and rain kept the crowd at Rice Stadium to 14,000 the first night of the crusade, but attendance built steadily during each of the eight nights, growing to 55,000 on the final Sunday. Inquirers responding to Graham’s salvation invitations numbered 8,312. Contributions more than covered the $905,000 cost of the crusade, and the additional money will be used to finance the cost of the crusade telecasts, which are planned for next spring.

Graham expressed some disappointment in the extent of participation by local church organizations. Postponing the crusade a year was considered, but the evangelist’s schedule was too crammed for that, and so preparations went ahead.

If there is an American city that needs to hear Graham’s message, it is Houston. The nation’s fourth largest city and its number-one boom town, Houston is plagued by rising crime rates, a growing homosexual population, and the ills of big-city life.

Louie Welch, president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, delivered some decidedly un-chamberlike words in his welcoming address on the crusade’s opening night. He said, “Dr. Graham, since your last visit here [in 1965] we’ve gotten meaner … there is a greater tolerance toward the misuse and abuse of sex, and drugs, and all the things that have been destructive through man’s long and checkered history.… We need the cleansing influence of Christianity, the moderating salt of the earth.”

Some 600 ministers from 45 denominations attended the School of Evangelism held daily during the crusade week. The Graham team encourages participation from all Christian denominations, not only those in accord with the team’s creedal beliefs, so there were some ministers in the audience unaccustomed to hearing strong messages on the need for soul-winning preaching.

One of those messages came from John Bisagno, whose First (Southern) Baptist Church in Houston has exploded in growth since his arrival 12 years ago. His noontime Bible studies in a downtown storefront are jammed by businessmen.

According to Bisagno’s speech to the pastors, the following are keys to church growth: convincing the members they can win the world for Christ; developing in church services a spirit of love, warmth, brightness, and happiness; preaching a verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible rather than topically; being a good motivator; winning souls personally; building the Sunday school; working hard; and above all, having faith. Graham gave the ministers some advice from his own preaching experience: preach with authority, with simplicity, with repetition, with urgency, and to a decision. He discounted his own preaching skills, saying “I’m not a great preacher. I’m sort of an exhorter. I’m an ordinary preacher, communicating the gospel, and the Lord has seen fit to honor it.”

During the week of the crusade, news outlets across the country, from local radio stations to the NBC “Today” show, were suddenly buzzing with speculation about who would become Billy Graham’s successor. As it turned out, the speculation originated with Graham himself, coming from a candid newspaper interview with Louis Moore, religion editor of the Houston Chronicle. In the interview, Graham said that the board of directors of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association had just met in Dallas to contemplate what to do when Graham retires (he is 63, in good health, and has no plans yet to retire). He said that at one time he thought his successor might be Leighton Ford, his brother-in-law and an associate evangelist with the Graham team. However, Ford has “more or less quit crusades … he has become sort of a world religion strategist and a leader,” Graham said, adding that he is certain Ford is being considered for the presidency of Wheaton College.

Graham continued: “There are some who think my son Franklin may some day be the man. That was brought up at the [board] meeting because he has my name [Franklin is William Franklin Graham III; Billy is William Franklin Graham, Jr.] and is being ordained in January. He has his own organization which he has built from scratch. He is a very powerful speaker and Bible teacher and very authoritative in the pulpit. He has a presence about him.”

The younger Graham, 28, was present in Houston, but demurred completely from speculation about whether he might succeed his father, commenting that God’s gifts are given to each person individually. The elder Graham said he had not expected his statements to get such wide publicity, but that the comments, as they appeared in the Houston Chronicle, were accurate.

Later in the interview, Graham ruminated on the thought of someday leaving the crusade trail. He said sometimes he thinks he might like to pastor a small country church in the mountains of North Carolina, but that he is determined to stay true to his calling, evangelism. His wife, Ruth, is also strongly committed to his crusade work, he said. “When I became pastor of a church, and then president of a college, she sort of chaffed under that role because she felt God had given me the gift of evangelism.”

Threats To Soviet Christians Rouse Congressmen

Growing concern over Christians who are imprisoned and harassed for their faith has made some congressmen redouble efforts on behalf of religious freedom. One result is a new nonprofit organization called CREED—Christian Rescue Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents.

Patterned after groups that support Jewish dissidents and publicize their plight, CREED attracted broad bipartisan support at a fund raiser in Washington. Sen. Roger Jepsen (R-Iowa) and Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), both outspoken Christians, established the group more than a year ago. Their work has been endorsed by Jewish congressmen and by liberals and conservatives of both parties.

Jepsen was instrumental in securing Baptist pastor Josif Ton’s recent safe release from Romania (CT, Oct. 23, p. 55). At the CREED meeting, Ton publicly expressed appreciation to Jepsen “for saving my life.” Ton was threatened with official retaliation in Romania for publishing accounts of religious persecution.

Ton tells a story whose happy ending is due, in large part, to the political clout that was mustered in Washington on his behalf. Jepsen, in appealing for financial and volunteer support for CREED, repeatedly pointed out that the support of people in high places can make all the difference. “The white light of publicity helps the dissidents,” Jepsen said.

He and Kemp have written numerous letters “to particular people about particular situations.” As a result, Jepsen claims “lives have been changed and persecution has lessened.”

Another Christian in exile who spoke at the briefing concurred. Pastor Georgi Vins gave an impassioned testimony of what it means to walk with Christ behind the Iron Curtain. Alexander Ginzburg, released along with Vins in 1979 in partial exchange for two Soviet spies held in the United States, said the families of imprisoned Christians suffer a nearly complete loss of financial security. Ginzburg, a Jew, spent nine years in prison for aiding dissidents.

With the family’s main wage earner removed from the picture, “the families of prisoners find themselves in the most desperate circumstances one can imagine,” Ginzburg said through an interpreter. And their poverty is deepened if they remain faithful to their loved ones because the cost of visiting an imprisoned husband equals between two and five months wages. Vins, who now resides in Elkhart, Indiana, stressed the moral support that persecuted Christians need. “I appeal to Christians in the West to write letters to prisoners and their families. Tell them, ‘We love you; we know about you; we pray for you.’ ” Vins said he believes there are more than 300 Christians imprisoned in the Soviet Union because of their faith.

Ernest Gordon, CREED’s president since September, called the group “a new sign of the times, a working of grace, a sign of hope.” Former dean of the chapel at Princeton University, Gordon said, “because deliverance from bondage is God’s work, it is ours as well. This ministry is surely the basic Christian mission of our time.”

Echoing this theme was philosopher Francis Schaeffer, who called CREED “the beginning of what Christians should have been doing for many years.” He sharply criticized Christians who would define political activism of this nature as “unspiritual.” In what some saw as a departure from Schaeffer’s earlier thoughts on political involvement by Christians, he said, “Dare we say it is unspiritual to use political means to stop these things?”

Observing that Christianity poses an increasing threat to Communist governments facing economic breakdown, Schaeffer warned that only restraint imposed from outside—from the United States—can soften the blows of persecution on Christians who live out their faith in spite of state-imposed atheism.

BETH SPRING

Ncc Holds An ‘Ecumenical Event’

The uninformed observer may at times have thought it was a meeting of evangelicals, what with the concern for “biblical illiterates” and the call to nurture spiritual life. But the talk came from the National Council of Churches (NCC), together for a two-day celebration and evaluation of the ecumenical movement.

Originally, the NCC hoped 2,000 would attend its early November Ecumenical Event, pulling the council out of a lag in enthusiasm and helping it plot its reaction to a political climate that has abruptly skewed away from the NCC’s generally liberal positions. The turnout was disappointing, however, with just over 700 participants gathered in Cleveland.

They elected a new president and spent much time discussing the religious Right. The council, consisting of 32 Protestant and Orthodox church affiliates with a combined membership of 40 million Christians, elected James Armstrong as its new president.

The United Methodist bishop of Indiana, Armstrong is widely known for his social activism. He has campaigned for civil rights, peace in Vietnam, disarmament, and hunger relief. He intervened to prevent bloodshed at the crisis at Wounded Knee in North Dakota, and stood vigil in protest of the death penalty at the Utah execution of Gary Gilmore. But Armstrong’s election also reflects a growing NCC concern to keep its activism spiritually based. The bishop is regarded as an excellent Bible student and preacher, and has said his social stands were made “on the basis of deep ethical and religious convictions.”

“I regard the spiritual life and the nurture of the inner world essential if we’re to be what we have been called to be in the world,” he said. Still, Armstrong added his voice to others warning against the style and substance of Jerry Falwell and Moral Majority. The bishop said Falwell is not biblical and “his sexism and rigid legalism dehumanize the very persons for whom Christ lived and died.”

Ethicist Max Stackhouse also addressed the participants, telling them “ecumenical Christians must resist the heretical efforts to ‘Koranize’ the Scriptures, to void [church] traditions, and to break communion with other Christians, as several self-ordained media preachers are doing.” He labeled the religious Right “Christian Ayatollism.”

There’s hope! The editor wants it to die.

There are tenth anniversaries and there are tenth anniversaries. One of the most unusual has to be the recent anniversary of a magazine that has been called “ants in the pants of the faithful,” has invented and employed the technique of “necro-interviewing” in a talk with the late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and that named comedian Steve Martin 1980 Theologian of the Year.

The Wittenburg Door is a small magazine (circulation 16,000) with a widespread reputation. It is an answer to critics who say conservative Christians take themselves too seriously: an evangelical satire magazine. No evangelical celebrity is immune from Door treatment. Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Robert Schuller have all been spoofed. The periodical has probably offended as many people as it has entertained.

Its most controversial issue, one of its latest, was the Wittenburg Door “sex issue.” Many readers were offended, starting with their reactions to the cover, which pictured a man and woman in bed beneath a portrait of Christ with a black bar across his eyes to blind him from the activity in the bed.

More than 200 readers promptly cancelled their subscriptions, said editor Mike Yaconelli. Ninety letters poured into the Door offices. Two contributing editors were embarrassed and asked to be dropped from the roster. Finally, one individual interviewed for a later issue demanded that the interview not be printed in such a magazine.

“On the positive side,” said Yaconelli, “we had almost as many new subscriptions” as were lost. To Yaconelli and his small staff of four (not including contributing editors), “sex is not sacred.”

“We would never want to do anything that would make Christ less than God,” he explained. But that still leaves plenty of things for the Door to skewer. There have been theme issues on evangelicals and money, charismatics, homosexuality, politics, and cults. Coming issues will feature the Rapture and, for the first time, a venture outside the evangelical camp to examine Roman Catholic foibles.

After the sex issue, Yaconelli said, “I guess we’ll be a little more careful for the next issue—make sure it doesn’t blow people out of the water.” That doesn’t mean his magazine is backing off hot issues for long. “As a matter of fact, I think we ought to do another one [on sex],” an unrepentant Yaconelli said.

The Door’s saving grace throughout its stormy 10-year history (it is now making a profit for the first time) may have been the editors’ propensity for not taking their magazine too seriously. It was started by two southern California youth ministers who wanted to have some fun. After gaining 400 subscribers and sinking $60 into debt, the youth ministers sold their enterprise to Youth Specialities, a youth group ministry which, among other things, printed books of novel games to be played at church youth parties.

“We wanted to be known for more depth than the banana split relay,” Yaconelli said in explaining Youth Specialties’ interest in the periodical. It was only after three issues that the editors realized they were misspelling “Wittenberg.” Deciding it was too late to change, they stayed with “Wittenburg” and began cultivating a free and easy image—with proofreading errors, haphazard graphics, and issues usually arriving three or four months late. But, as the editors have written more than once, “that’s all part of the Wittenburg Door.”

There have been more serious and less intentional mistakes. The Door once granted its “Loser of the Month” award to the United Methodist Church for a divorce service liturgy. Actually, the liturgy did not come from official Methodist literature. The Door apologized for its mistake.

Yaconelli also admits humor has unnecessarily hurt feelings before. The Door’s mock gossip column, “Wanda Ritchie’s Body Life,” once slashed at the executive of a relief agency by calling him fat. “The guy was really hurt,” Yaconelli said. Because of a number of such episodes, the editors have dropped the Ritchie column.

There have also been failings of taste—at least according to former readers. Nearly every issue’s letters column includes two or three notices of cancellations with explanations like “your magazine is very un-Christian,” and evaluations that regard it as a “sacrilegious piece of garbage.” Even compliments can be backhanded, as with the approving reader who wrote to say, “The Door is to the church what prunes are to the elderly. It keeps you healthy.”

On the other hand, the periodical is noted for its stimulating (and serious) interviews. Door editors have interviewed novelist Frederick Buechner, Congressman Paul Simon, Fuller Seminary president David Hubbard, and author Sheldon Vanauken. When the “battle for the Bible” was at its peak, the Door squared off warriors Harold Lindsell and Jack Rogers on their differing views of biblical inspiration. It also questioned evangelical sociologist Richard Quebedeaux at length about his involvement with Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, which has seemed to lend legitimacy to the Moonie cult.

The Door may have the distinction of being the only magazine whose editor wants it to die. Yaconelli said he would rather the magazine “quit while there are still things to say and leave with dignity,” but the rest of the staff wants to continue. They believe the Door plays an important role in the church by raising issues too controversial for other magazines.

Yaconelli concedes that the magazine sometimes goes too far, but “when you do satire you risk going too far. We try not to hurt anyone or question motives. We try not to make fun just for the sake of making fun.”

At times, though, the Door has found itself making fun without wanting to. It works under a financial strain partly because advertising is not accepted. It was once, but then, Yaconelli lamented, “we realized the advertisements were the very kind of thing we were satirizing.”

Cult Deprogrammer Is In Trouble Again

Ted Patrick, a San Diego man known for “deprogramming” young people out of offbeat religious groups, is in trouble again.

A Hamilton County, Ohio, grand jury in late October indicted him and three associates on several charges of abduction, assault, and sexual misconduct. The case involved 20-year-old Stephanie Riethmiller of suburban Cincinnati, whose mother suspected she had lesbian ties. The mother allegedly paid Patrick $8,000 to deprogram her daughter out of lesbianism. (Miss Riethmiller denies that she is gay.)

Patrick has branched out to other fields as well. Last summer a troubled father paid him to deprogram his 35-year-old daughter, a teacher with a Ph.D. degree, from her liberal political orientation.

Nine Frustrated Faculty Leave Luther Rice

Over the last seven months, virtually the entire administration of Luther Rice College and Seminary has resigned following a number of disputes with its president, Robert Witty. The Jacksonville, Florida, school offers undergraduate and graduate degrees primarily by home study, and has been struggling to improve its academic programs in order to become accredited by the Association of Theological Schools. Luther Rice is independent, but Southern Baptist in orientation.

Nine of 20 full-time faculty members have left, and a number of these who were interviewed said they believe Witty is not moving fast enough to strengthen entrance requirements and courses of study in order to win accreditation. Witty says precisely the opposite: that the departures will ultimately enhance the school.

One of the many points of conflict between Witty and the administrators was the policy of provisionally accepting students and allowing them to start course work before transcripts of credits were received. “Once they [the students] got in, they were in,” regardless of transcripts, said Clifton Van Note, who resigned as director of operations of the seminary.

Witty, however, said that “no one is admitted into any program as a fully matriculated student without transcript evidence,” although several others confirmed Van Note’s statement. (It is not unknown for some students to be admitted even to accredited schools without complete transcripts.)

The following faculty members have left the school since last May: William Eidenire, dean of the seminary; Charles Williams, dean of the college; Nathan Boles, hired as dean to replace Williams; Jerry Simpson, assistant dean of the seminary; James O’Neill, assistant college dean; Donald Cleary, associate professor of church music; Clarence Rudegeair, a professor (who actually took early retirement); John Burns, the seminary’s academic dean; and Van Note, director of operations and assistant to the dean for master’s-level programs.

Eidenire said decisions at the school were supposed to be made by a three-member administrative committee consisting of Witty, himself as seminary dean, and Boles as college dean. According to Eidenire, Witty frequently would overrule the committee, exercising a “presidential prerogative.” “We would make decisions in administrative committee which were altered by Dr. Witty in actual practice. This administrative pattern, and the lack of academic integrity, are the reasons I resigned,” Eidenire said.

John Burns, the academic dean, said, “I came to the conclusion that Luther Rice was not serious about accreditation.” Among other things, he said he was bothered by the fact that a student’s grade point average was not a factor in his admittance to the doctor of ministry program. “I firmly believe that graduate education is not for everybody,” said Burns.

Several of those interviewed said they were further upset that after the faculty had unanimously voted to seek the removal of a student involved in a moral problem, and after the student did, in fact, drop out, Witty reinstated him. Simpson, the assistant dean of the seminary, said this was the incident that caused him to resign.

Eidenire and Boles, the seminary and college deans, resigned in September after the school’s board of regents voted, on Witty’s recommendation, to do away with the administrative committee and have only one person, the president, ultimately in charge. Witty said the administrators were unhappy with this arrangement, and that was what caused the dissension.

Commenting on the resignations, Witty said, “We are not discouraged or displeased at the departure of these men,” adding that the seminary will be better because of it since it will allow faculty members with stronger degrees in their teaching fields to be hired now. He said some replacements have already been made. Some of the faculty members who left did not have doctoral degrees from accredited schools, which, Witty said, has hampered Luther Rice’s ability to become accredited by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), the only agency recognized for accrediting of graduate theological education.

Witty’s view was not shared, however, by Marvin Taylor, associate director of ATS, who has visited the school, and who will have much to say about its accreditation. Said Taylor, “Quality academic institutions seldom lose substantial numbers of faculty members. Accrediting associations are always concerned when that happens.”

Witty singled out Eidenire, the seminary dean, as one who did not have a doctorate (although Eidenire was working on one from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary when he resigned). Others who left described Eidenire as one of those most firmly committed to improving the school academically.

Taylor of ATS said of Eidenire, “My impression is that he is a serious-minded, conscientious educator devoted to improving the academic atmosphere at Luther Rice Seminary. My personal impression is that the loss can’t do anything but hurt the institution.

In the matter of the student with the moral problem, Witty said he reinstated the man because the procedure used by the faculty in voting against him was not proper and because upon his own investigation, he found the matter less serious than alleged.

Eidenire maintained, however, that the proper procedure for disciplining the student was followed to the letter. “This is just another example of the lack of administrative integrity,” he said. Several of those who left the school noted that the student’s problem was serious enough to have been reported to the Jacksonville police.

Wiliam Beck, an Old Testament professor who remains at Luther Rice, said that although Eidenire was trying to get the school to move faster than Witty was willing to go, it is heading in the right direction and will move even more vigorously under its next president. Gene Williams, a Southern Baptist evangelist, will replace Witty when he retires next spring and becomes chancellor. Williams said he will be in charge of the school, and Witty will assume a role that will be advisory only. Williams also said he is dedicated to improving the school enough to gain ATS accreditation.

TOM MINNERY

On a recent visit to China, correspondent Lorry Lutz shared in a very special reunion. Paul Chang took his wife and two children from their home in Southeast Asia to meet his family in China. For the first time, 21 family members gathered together; some had never met before. This account first appeared in the Christian Nationals World Report.

There was no silver Communion plate to celebrate this holy meal. A lid from a tin box of cookies painted with a local scene for tourists, covered with an inexpensive handkerchief, served instead. The “bread” was some broken biscuits purchased at the local store. Teacups that were filled with sugar cane juice represented the “shed blood.”

Silently Paul Chang passed the plate to each one sitting in the crowded hotel room; one after another they reached out to take the “bread” slowly, almost caressingly. The only noises heard were muffled sobs and the sounds of people blowing their noses, trying to hold back their tears.

When the plate was passed to Grandma Chang, she could contain herself no longer. Rocking back and forth on the bed, she wept and prayed as her heart overflowed. “O Lord, it has been so long. For more than 20 years I haven’t been able to take Communion. We’ve not been able to remember your broken body and shed blood as you commanded. Oh, thank you that you allowed me to live to see this day. At last we’ve been able to come to your table again.”

Paul wept unabashedly as he held the plate before his 83-year-old mother, knowing that the years of deprivation and personal suffering were also being washed away in this ceremony with its spiritual healing.

This was the last night of a four-day family reunion for the Chang family. Though Paul had been able to visit his mother briefly in 1979 (the first time in 30 years), he had not been able to take his own family along. Now his wife, Nien-Chang, and their two children, Mark and Ruth, had come to meet Grandma and their uncles and cousins. As many as could obtain permission under the recently relaxed government policies gathered.

One brother, a doctor, traveled three days and two nights by train. Because of the great distance and expense, he was not able to bring other family members along.

From just a day’s journey away, another brother came with his two sons and his son’s fiancée. One of Paul’s nieces was allowed to come home from the rural area to which she had been assigned during the Cultural Revolution to work on a farm. All in all, there were 21 family members at this reunion, and as the days went by, other local Christians who had known the family joined the group.

It was a time to rejoice and a time to weep.

Over the years, Paul had gleaned snatches of what had happened to the family and especially to his father, who had been a seminary leader. Pastor Chang had moved the seminary twice, fleeing with his students ahead of the army, but after the second move, he realized there was no other place to go. It was then that he sent his third son, Paul, out to Hong Kong on a junk crowded with refugees.

Paul’s brothers wrote that his father had been imprisoned until he promised to have “right thoughts” toward the government and confessed his “wrongs.” Even after his release, they wrote, he had been ill and had suffered from malnutrition, and he died in 1962. After that letter there were more than six years of silence before Paul heard from any of them again.

But it was only on this visit that the family felt free. The “time to speak” had come. Paul learned for the first time that his father actually died in prison. In the quiet hours when the two could be alone, Paul’s mother told her story:

“One night in 1958 they sent a message that your father should come to a meeting. He washed and dressed in his best clothes and left. He never came back. They accused him of connections with former political rulers. But I know it was just because he had missionary friends, and was still leading the seminary. Even through those early years of the new government, he was able to keep the seminary open. It was a struggle; the students had to work hard to care for their own needs. They even erected a simple building on the property your father bought for the school.

“But when they put him in prison, they closed the school and took over the property. Some of the students were detained; they put two of your brothers in prison for two years.”

Paul was shocked and heartsick to learn what the family had gone through. Other family members told him how the prisoners had nearly starved to death. The families tried to take food to them, but those were days of severe shortages and rationing. Mrs. Chang was allowed to visit her husband only once a month. Other Christians in the community, remembering Pastor Chang’s kindness and his godly life, also tried to help, though they knew this could endanger them as well.

Then one day in 1962, the message came from the prison, “Chang has died. Come and get his body.” The guard had made an honorable gesture to a man who had distinguished himself by love and kindness even in prison, for usually prisoners were buried in common graves unknown to their families.

Now, as the family gathered around the table one night, one of Paul’s lovely young nieces asked, “Do many people in America believe in God?” She seemed startled when she was told that probably 90 percent believe in God, though far less than that have a personal relationship with him. But when asked if she was a Christian, she hung her head and said, “No.”

She, like some of the others, had never heard the gospel message. One cannot imagine the fear of harassment, threats, and imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, which had left deep scars on their parents—and which had sealed their lips lest their children, pressured at schools, should report them or should be taken from them and raised as atheists. They felt they could only silently live out their faith.

But several of the nieces and nephews were believers. The oldest could remember his grandfather, and had heard his grandmother pray aloud many times. But he, too, was concerned about his faith. “We don’t know what Christianity really is. We only see our parents praying silently. We’ve never had a Bible.”

And then came the floods of questions: “How do we grow? How do we pray? How can we understand the Bible? How can we witness? There is no one to go to for answers!”

On the last evening, one of the Christians who had suffered beatings for being a Christian, and was paraded down the street wearing a dunce hat during the Cultural Revolution, came to ask to be baptized. With the churches closed, there had been no one to administer the sacraments for over 20 years.

She knelt in the center of the room with the family of believers around her. A teacup had to serve as a baptismal, sanctified by the “sweet communion in that place.”

Then as she rose from her knees, without any warning, the oldest grandson came forward and knelt, then a daughter-in-law, then one by one—until all the grandchildren but one had made this step of commitment.

Before the evening was over, a former evangelist, who himself had spent five years in prison, rushed home to get his daughter who was a Christian. She had told her father she wanted to be baptized if the opportunity ever arose. He returned with three other neighbors who also wanted to follow the Lord’s command. It was a time to laugh and rejoice.

Perhaps the time for suffering and weeping is over for this family. Many barriers were removed in this reunion, hearts were bared, memories washed clean, and the years of silence broken.

But the fears are still there, and though they speak, they speak softly as though looking over their shoulders to see who is listening. The man who betrayed their father is still active in the town. The Christians are hesitant to meet together to draw attention to their faith. They do not carry the Bibles they were given, for they are still not sure if doing so may cause difficulties.

This was a time for healing, but these people are still bruised and tender. They are a picture of many in the church in China, and their experience should cause us great care lest we, as fools, “rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Personalia

Gregg O. Lehman was inaugurated as twenty-seventh president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. Lehman, formerly executive vice-president at Taylor, succeeds Milo Rediger, who is retiring.

John W. Alexander, 63, is now president emeritus of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship; he was president since 1965. The new president is James McLeish, formerly senior vice-president of IVCF.

Eleanor Soltau, a medical missionary to the Middle East for 30 years, received World Vision International’s Robert W. Pierce Award for Christian Service. Chosen for her pioneer work among Arabs in the Middle East, she has been director of the Hospital of Light in Jordan since 1967.

Dead: Reuben E. Larson, 84, cofounder with Clarence W. Jones in 1930 of the Quito, Ecuador, pioneer missionary radio station HCJB; on November 17 in Orange City, Florida, of heart failure.

Despite the skepticism and ridicule of critics, Oral Roberts’s controversial City of Faith medical complex has risen in Tulsa. Roberts celebrated his victory November 1 at a spectacular dedication ceremony that included such guests as country singer Barbara Mandrell, the governor of Oklahoma, and Christian television celebrities Pat Robertson and Rex Humbard. The next day, the City of Faith Hospital opened its doors to patients with a staff of 33 doctors, 120 nurses, and 9 prayer partners.

The prayer partner concept makes the Roberts medical complex unique. The partners are part of the healing team of doctors and nurses, praying with patients for the supernatural dimension of healing.

The 294-bed hospital is designed to make patients comfortable not only spiritually, but emotionally. Nature scenes from every state hang on corridor walls, and hospital rooms look more like pleasant hotel rooms. Each floor has a sophisticated communications center where computers feed nurses all the patient information they need. Each nurse is stationed next to a computer terminal within calling distance of a small cluster of patient rooms.

The idea for this $150 million complex came to Roberts three years ago after he lost his daughter and son-in-law in a tragic plane crash. Devastated, Roberts retreated to a California desert to pray. There, he says, God commanded him to unite the healing streams of prayer and medicine in a trinity of triangular skyscrapers: one, a 30-story hospital; another, a 60-story medical clinic; and the other, a 20-story research center.

The Tulsa Area Hospital Council strongly opposed Roberts’s plan. It claimed Tulsa already had too many unused hospital beds. Other opponents said the City of Faith would further add to Tulsa’s doctor shortage by hiring away physicians.

The battle between Roberts and his critics continued all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Roberts’s medical towers were rising. In the midst of construction, he said he saw in a vision a 900-foot Jesus who encouraged him by saving the hospital would be built through the contributions of donors. Critics snickered, but the faithful kept donating, and by the time the state supreme court handed down its opinion, it was a moot point. The court granted Roberts a permit.

Still, some area doctors are not happy with Roberts’s two-million-square-foot complex. C.T. Thompson, a Tulsa surgeon, says doctors don’t like the “miracle-a-day” image Roberts is giving the Tulsa medical community. Thompson says the hospital is unnecessary and that the city can’t handle the type of patient he expects it to attract. He says “all the social services of the city will be sopped up to take care of the poor and unwashed who arrive in search of miracles.”

But James Winslow, chief executive officer of the hospital, says the City of Faith will take care of its share of indigent patients and “will not knowingly refuse anyone health care because of his lack of ability to pay.”

Roberts used a crass mass-mailing gimmick to get people to contribute to his hospital during the fall. He mailed computer-printed letters to patrons asking them not to breathe a word to anyone about the contents of a highly confidential note from Winslow to Roberts, copies of which accompanied the letters. The awful contents of Winslow’s note: the hospital was due to open in 30 days, and not enough money was in hand. Yet by faith, Winslow told Roberts, he had gone ahead and ordered equipment for the hospital.

Roberts expects his center to attract more than his miracle-believing three million supporters. He says he believes the City of Faith could become the “Mayo Clinic of the Southwest,” with the most advanced technology and medical research available. The research center will specialize in cancer, heart disease, and aging. On the City of Faith’s dedication day, Roberts declared that God was about to give a cure for cancer, which he calls a mysterious, satanic disease. He said he hoped his research center would be a part of that discovery.

Roberts knows his City of Faith has a long way to go before it can match Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic. To complete the center, he still needs another $130 million from his supporters, a sum he expects to have by 1988. At that time, Roberts’s plans call for 777 beds and a total of 4,000 staff members, including 318 doctors and 800 nurses.