Its credo asserts that life began by chance and evolved from there.

Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, begins with the dogmatic statement, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” When the dean of American humanists asks. “If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars?” (p. 243), the challenge calls for a theological response.

The 350-page book by the Cornell University professor is produced in connection with the 13-installment series aired by the Public Broadcasting System on astronomy in the broadest sense. An able scientist, Sagan guides us through the universe in our imagination and shares with us the very latest in theory and observation about the heavenly bodies. The TV camera often inordinately presents him in a pose of rapt communication with nature. The medium is the message of a humanist metaphysic. Its credo asserts that life began by chance on an obscure planet in one of a billion solar systems in the universe, and evolved from there. The grand epic started with a mysterious explosion and will end in oblivion, but in the meantime, what a show!

In time, man emerged king of the earth, and is just about ready to begin exploring the universe in earnest, whereupon, according to Sagan, he is almost certain to discover other civilizations more advanced than our own. This may, by the grace of nature, bring him to his senses. Man on earth, you see, is a nasty and quarrelsome species and needs the correcting, even saving, influence of other intelligent beings to bring him to his senses. When that happens, mankind will be relieved to know it is not alone in the universe, and finally realize how foolish all its petty parochialisms of politics and religion are. If not, nature’s judgment will surely fall. Thus endeth the first lesson.

The grandeur of this epic myth is undeniable, but there are a few questions a Christian theologian would wish to put.

First, why is it, if it is so important that we adopt scientific ways of thinking, that it is so much in jeopardy here? Sagan reveals a strong tendency to blur the important distinction between fact and theory in the interest of making his case.

Now, I am not one who holds that the universe was created rather recently, more or less the way it is now. Nor am I inclined to dismiss the possibility that a good deal of evolution has occurred and is occurring. But it does make me nervous to hear Sagan advance his theory about how it all happened, as if there were no serious problems with it. If he were truly open-minded in these things, he would have to state that his reconstruction of past events is very hypothetical. No intelligent observers were around to watch it happen, and so his view of evolution is theory, not fact, and only one of several conflicting theories.

To believe that creatures as highly complex as human beings were produced by a gradual process of evolution from the primeval soup takes a good deal of effort unless it is believed uncritically. Sagan really ought to assist the intelligent reader with a little more hard evidence and critical interaction. Is this an example of thinking scientifically? Would it not be more accurate to call it faith (in the scientist)?

Second, concerning the history of science, why does Sagan suggest so often that religion and superstition held scientific progress back when he must know that most of his heroes in the field were and are believers? It is fitting that he should teach at Cornell whose first president was A. D. White, who wrote A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896), and who perceived religion to be the great opponent of progress in science. Without wishing to deny that institutional religion has oftentimes opposed new ideas in science in the fear that they might upset theological convictions, I think it only fair to state somewhere in the course of a long book that modern science was born on Christian soil and in connection with a Christian understanding of the world, and nowhere else, and that what motivated many of the founders of modern science, like Newton and Boyle, was precisely their faith in the Creator. It is historically false as well as counterproductive to set religion over against science. Is it possible that Sagan does not know this?

Third, the way of salvation for Sagan is for humans to celebrate nature and to get into contact with extraterrestrials, which he hopes will have a good influence on them. If that happened, he says, “the history of our species and our planet would be changed forever” (p. 314).

Why would it have this effect? They might turn out to be more egotistical and aggressive than we are. But even if their motto was to love one another, have we not known this for centuries? And has it transformed our behavior? There is an extraterrestrial I think Sagan ought to meet, but sadly he denies God’s existence.

Naiveté also comes out in the political realm. Like the rest of us, Sagan is worried about the threat of nuclear annihilation and wants to do something about it. His suggestion is that we all disarm, with the West leading the way. But is it not obvious what the result would be if we did that? We would certainly come under the sovereignty of a state that is not only scientific and secular, but also the most despotic and ruthless, and which now rules a large part of the earth. Indeed, is it not ironical that the one state that endorses all that Sagan is saying in terms of scientific materialism is also one of the least free and humane? Sagan does not want a society like the USSR, of course, but it ought to give him pause that it is the one obvious example built on his ideals.

Finally, why would anyone celebrate nature if in fact it is the product of blind chance and part of a pointless process? Sagan appears to think that people ought to imitate his own loyalty to evolution and reverence for life. But why should they do such an irrational thing? Surely a more sensible response to the cosmos as Sagan presents it would be to adopt a nihilistic outlook and try to derive as much pleasure from life as possible before it is snuffed out. Perhaps he should go back and read Nietzsche, who really understood where materialism leads you. If Sagan and his readers want to feel at home in the cosmos and celebrate the adventure of life, they would be wise to forsake his world view and accept the message of the Bible. It glories in the beauty and worthwhileness of the universe and sees it rooted in God’s gracious and eternal plan.

If Sagan can be taken to be expressing a major alternative to Christian faith in our Western scientific culture, the future outlook for the gospel would appear to be excellent.

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

Making the truth transparent.

Why in heaven’s name would any preacher need an artist? Because an artist can add much to every preacher’s pulpit power with complementary graphic support. Visual communication in religion is just as important as verbal communication.

American business spends millions daily in visual as well as verbal promotion of its products and services. These millions are justified because they produce many sales. The blending of verbal and visual communication in business gets results by appealing to America’s eyes as well as its ears. This same approach is needed in our preaching.

Consider these four advantages to visualized preaching:

First, such preaching gives a clearer grasp of spiritual truth. Every preaching technique that enlightens and clarifies meaning should be welcomed by God’s servants. When we use graphics to interpret the truth we make the gospel more transparent.

Second, visualized preaching stimulates increased interest by giving the eyes as well as the ears a focus of attention. It is still true that “one picture is worth a thousand words.” Human response to a picture is much greater than the vanishing impression of the spoken word.

Third, the impact of visualized preaching is longer lasting. “In one ear and out the other” is the fleeting effect of most of our words. Pictorial sermons, however, register a deeper impression on people. A message only heard is soon forgotten; seen, it makes a more permanent impact on the mind and can be recalled repeatedly.

A reliable communication study reports that ideas are transmitted to others in these approximate proportions: by vision, 85 percent; by speech, 10 percent; by touch, taste, and smell, 5 percent. A person’s capacity to communicate is increased 95 percent when image and speech are combined. Use of both sight and sound fortifies your impact eight to one.

Fourth, our Lord himself believed in visualizing the truth. What more compelling reason could we want? He used the language of imagery constantly, through parables, figures of speech, metaphors, and so on. This was his method of making God understandable to men.

God would have remained unapproachable to us had he not bridged the chasm between himself and our human limitations. He did it by visualizing himself, making himself accessible to us in Christ. This transformed God from an enigma to one we can know and trust and love. We, too, must attempt to give some form of visualization to Christian truth or it will remain obscure to men. This can be done in two ways.

The pastor ought first to search out a capable artist who is also spiritually minded. It is important that skill and devotion be blended in that individual. Then the pastor should develop a congenial working relationship with this person. If there is no such artist in the congregation, he should search elsewhere until the right person is found and enlisted to collaborate in communicating Christian truth.

The minister then needs to prepare a projected preaching schedule covering at least a month of selected topics. This should list sermon date, topic, and principal truth to be highlighted. The advance information is given to the artist, enabling him or her to have the necessary lead time to develop an appropriate visualization for the main thrust of the sermon.

When the apt illustration is sketched out, it is produced in final form for use in church on Sunday near the sermon’s close. Two methods may be used:

First, working from the sketch, using a black felt pen with wide nib, an enlarged copy is made on white paper and displayed on an easel near the pulpit. This drawing needs to be about 48 X 60 inches to enable it to be seen properly by all. Paper used by sign writers for window ads works well. A sign shop can furnish the paper rolls; these can be cut off for the individual drawings.

Second, the drawing is duplicated in sufficient quantity for congregational distribution. If the printer is a church member, a satisfactory arrangement might be made with him to print the sermon graphics for two successive Sundays on one press run, using 8½ x 11 sheets. This would reduce printing costs by half. When cut in two, these sheets would be calendar page size.

Copies are put in envelopes and placed at the ends of the pews to be passed along near the sermon’s conclusion. Listeners would be requested to take them home for reflection, thus prolonging the impact of the message.

A good approach is to try this plan for a month, testing its value and the congregation’s response. Expense involved need not be excessive—and the project may prove to be one of the best investments the church ever made for its own spiritual development.

The main outlay would be the artist’s fee, which in the case of a church member could be nominal. Even a Christian artist from outside the parish might make only a reasonable charge. As previously noted, if the calendar is done by a printer who is a member, the graphics could be produced, two Sundays at a time, at moderate cost; the only added expense would be the extra pa-paper involved. If the easel drawing method is used, the main expenses, besides the artist’s fee, would be the paper rolls and pens.

Of course, the local situation will determine which method of presentation is best for the church. Why not experiment with both and then decide? The important thing to remember is that visualizing the gospel can give fresh power and meaning to the preaching.

For maximum effect (if the easel method is used) the sermon picture should not be shown until several minutes before the close of the message. Until then, it should be hidden on the easel by another religious drawing—an overlay graphic that would serve as an inspirational display to worshipers before they view the sermon illustration.

There is a church called “The Temple of Pictured Truth.” How wonderful it would be if the preaching in our churches could become more luminous, making them all temples of pictured truth! Just as TV has a more powerful impact upon people than radio, so visual preaching excels mere oral preaching.

Christ made preaching our priority business when he said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” This imperative task requires every possible method of communication.

We are profoundly certain that visually supported preaching empowered by God’s Spirit can spearhead a great new advance of his kingdom among men. Preacher, begin your search for an artist!

DELWIN H. MARTIN¹Mr. Martin is a free-lance writer and preparer of government documents who resides in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Comedy, in passing from myth to reality, loses its innocence.

Laurel and hardy refined the tit-for-tat gag into a comic masterpiece. “Reciprocal destruction” never looked funnier than in their 1929 two-reeler, Big Business. In their efforts to sell Christmas trees to resistant Californians, they come across the redoubtable James Finlayson. His irritation at the boys’ persistence grows into a mounting frenzy. Piece by piece he destroys their Model T Ford as they, piece by piece, with equal vengeance, destroy his house.

Is this merely comedy? Or is it something more? Or is the “something more” part of what makes the comedy?

More than one will agree with the film producer who said, “If I want to deliver messages, I go to Western Union.” Film comedy especially would seem to suffer rigor mortis when subjected to metaphysical autopsies. Stan Laurel, author of many Laurel-Hardy gags, reacted as most of us would at the sight of a philosophical scalpel. “We were trying to do a very simple thing, give people some laughs, and that’s all we were trying to do.”

Is he right? Are there more than just laughs behind Diane Keaton’s dialogue with Napoleon in Woody Allen’s 1975 Love and Death? Napoleon enters her room with the comment, “I heard voices.”

“I was praying,” she replies.

“I heard two voices.”

“I do both parts.”

In Manhattan (1979), a friend charges the Woody Allen persona with being too rigid and self-righteous. “You think you’re God.”

Allen responds, “Well, I’ve got to model myself after someone.”

Why does Maurice Yacowar, in Loser Take All (1979), describe the Woody Allen films as “guilt-edged cinema”? Why does he compare the atheism of Ingmar Bergman with that of Allen? “As in Bergman’s work, the voice of God cannot be heard; but Allen fills the silence with one-liners.”

Great comedy, as Allen put it in 1974, “is intellectual without trying to be.” Drama looks into the broken celluloid mirror and cries. Comedy laughs. Humor confesses, “I do not believe in an afterlife,” and adds, “but I am bringing a change of underwear.” It faces a shattered world and tries to keep your sanity by losing it.

The comedy art of the 1920s Mack Sennett films displays this integrating function. Slapstick builds its effects not around chaos caused by people, but around people caught up in chaos. The Keystone Kops are a comedy version of Sisyphus, toiling to push his rock up the hill. The game itself becomes the fun. And through the game, Harold Lloyd-like, we hang in there.

Two contradictory elements in the world we see are integrated in the Keystone comedies. On the one hand is the body as a machine, the mechanized man of nature. Charlie Chaplin’s friend staggers under a large sack of flour. His legs begin to buckle. No one thinks of removing the sack from his shoulders or helping him with his burden. They just push his legs back into the perpendicular, as if they were props. The sharp, curt, staccato movements of so many Sennett comics are much more machine-like than any form of comedy that had existed before. Man is filmed as a package of conditioned reflexes.

The humor comes by integrating all this with the other contradictory element in our “worldview” doll house, the freedom of innocence. An overzealous anesthetist gives Ben Turpin too much gas. He swells up like a zeppelin and floats slowly across the room. The possibility is unreal, childlike. Hal Roach, a Sennett studio graduate, put it: “Actually the great comedians are representing or portraying children or the things children do.” The absurdity of the comedy builds on this innocent freedom in contrast to a mechanized world.

Sennett slapstick throws pies at the shock of speed and mechanization. But it is not a protest against them. It accepts them as a child accepts them. Is this why we are still drawn to this classic period?

Charlie Chaplin took this perspective further. He preserved the slapstick point of view by refining it into a mythology. He carried it to the point of protest and tragedy. He underlined the innocence by underlining the cosmic hostility. His tramp became a mythical symbol, Charlie Everyman. “This fellow is many sided,” he once explained, “a tramp, a gentleman … always hopeful of romance and adventure.… However, he is not above picking up cigarette butts or robbing a baby of its candy.”

The early Chaplin did not tamper with the problem. Comedy never does. As Woody Allen puts it, “when comedy approaches a problem, it kids it but it doesn’t resolve it. Drama works it through in a more emotionally fulfilling way.”

But as Chaplin’s work proceeded into the era of sound, the dark side emerges more clearly, and the myth destroys itself. The tramp survived City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936), but the world was growing darker. The 1940 caricature of Hitler, The Great Dictator, had some great comic moments. But the world was losing its innocence and there was less reason for laughing. By 1947, the tramp was dead and Chaplin turned to “black comedy” about a modern Bluebeard, Monsieur Verdoux. The final descent was the deeply autobiographical and bitter A King in New York (1956). It was the least funny of Chaplin’s films, a funnyman’s revenge on an uncaring America.

Myths, by their very nature, die when the sense of innocence dies. As man’s substitute for divine revelation, they must come to grips with the reality of sin and man’s estrangement from God. But they must do it without God’s definitions. And they must do it by rebuilding man’s sense of hope. Hope, in film comedy, is translated as innocence. The camera dramatizes this psychology of Romans 1. The child sits in the lap of his heavenly Father, slapping his face and telling him he is not there. Contradictions melt into naïvité.

This may be the reason for Chaplin’s greatness in the full-length films of the 1930s. He went beyond slapstick to myth. Slapstick and fantasy make the real world seem funny. Chaplin used reality to make our fantasies seem mythical.

In the last decade, Woody Allen has come closest to recapturing this innocent element. Like Chaplin, he has created a persona, the schlemiel always put upon, the Jewish outsider—like the hero in Sleeper (1973), who confesses that as a schoolboy he was regularly beaten up by Quakers. His optimism is far more fragile. “He cannibalizes his neuroses. He seizes his fate as an anxiety-ridden, aging adolescent and makes fun of himself. What bravado. What courage. What time is it?” The world of Woody Allen is even gloomier than Chaplin’s. But it is comprehensive enough to allow for mythologies. Politics (Bananas, 1971), love and death, sex, religion are recurrent themes.

In Annie Hall (1977), and in Manhattan (1979), he moves from slapstick to the mythic level. Annie Hall seeks to reconcile us to man’s imperfect lot by resisting the temptation simply to do funny things. It exposes the drama of life through comedy. Manhattan, says the film critic Yacowar, “details the professional and romantic compromises by which man avoids confronting his insignificance in the cosmos and his inability to control his fate.” Allen’s funny is not so much funny-funny as cosmic funny.

The latest Allen release, Stardust Memories (1980), was not treated kindly by critics. It was assaulted by Pauline Kael for reworking past themes without progress. Stanley Kauffman saw Allen turning sour on his audience. Allen may have reached his Monsieur Verdoux level. The innocence is evaporating. The core has been exposed and it’s all bad.

In Play It Again, Sam (1972), Allen, at his friend’s urging, sidles up to a beautiful girl in an art gallery. While he screws up his awkward courage, she looks at a painting and interprets it. She sees “the hideous, lonely emptiness of existence” in this “useless, black strait jacket in a black absurd cosmos.” The juxtaposition of images makes it funny. In Stardust Memories, the innocence has burned away. The image of the world is the same. It is no longer funny. Woody Allen the “theologian” has moved from Norman Vincent Peale to Reinhold Niebuhr.

Kauffman suggests compassion for Allen himself. But his compassion seems cold, with a hook in it. Kael ended her review with a comment that will strike many of us. “He may be ready to become a Catholic convert.” Will compassion call us to pray for Woody Allen and see the searching soul in the guilt-ridden man on the film couch?

HARVIE M. CONN¹Dr. Conn is associate professor of missions and apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

And why it was not more honorable to go out of business instead.

Getting stuck between a rock and a hard place may be difficult enough, but the complexities of coming between a rock and a hard place in the space age have left a Christian television company in an embarrassing position. It leases satellite time to a cable television group that will soon broadcast soft-core pornography for Playboy magazine.

The organization in this unusual position is the National Christian Network (NCN) of Cocoa, Florida. It happened, an NCN official declares, because of “circumstances that took place due to a $70 million satellite being lost in space.”

Currently, six satellites are in earth orbit, beaming television signals for the nation’s broadcast industry. Each satellite is equipped with up to 24 transponders, or satellite channels, with each transponder serving a broadcasting company.

Evangelicals were early into space, with PTL network and the Christian Broadcasting Network leasing transponders on the first television satellite, Satcom I. NCN president Ray Kassis said his company hoped to invade space on Satcom III, a descendant of the first “bird” (industry insiders’ name for the satellites).

Kassis’s network made its successful bid for a Satcom III transponder in 1978. The satellite, owned by RCA, was launched in December of the following year, but was “lost in space” in the process of being positioned. Whether the satellite exploded or simply slipped out of earth’s orbit is unknown, but suddenly RCA was without a $70 million satellite, but still obligated to 11 networks expecting to use it.

The satellite’s loss was hardly less threatening to Kassis, whose company had already invested in staff, buildings, and costly earth-based satellite receivers. NCN had signed up 200 cable systems nationwide, ready to broadcast Christian programming to an estimated 1.4 million homes. But RCA found another satellite, and struck a deal with American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The phone company agreed to bring two old, nonoperating satellites back into service and lease them to RCA. This meant that NCN could not back out of its agreement with the giant company, and would have its channel. The catch was the position of the AT&T satellites, which were originally intended to bounce telephone conversations back to earth. Their placement in orbit thus differed from that of the television satellites at which almost all earth-bound cable TV stations point their antennas.

That meant the 200 systems signed up with NCN would have to purchase and place new antennas to receive its signal. Most declined and dropped their agreements. One-and-a-half years later, NCN has just one-fourth of the planned 200 subscriber systems. But even building to that point has been slow and wobbly.

NCN began broadcasting 24 hours daily, seven days a week, on June 1, 1980. Being paid solely by programmers (the network does not solicit funds from the viewing publid), Kassis’s network sank into debt when most of them reneged.

But NCN could not renege on its commitment to RCA. Federal Communications Commission rules include a heavy penalty for any network that backs out of a contract for a satellite transponder.

Finally, if the Christian network canceled its satellite allocation, it would drop to the bottom of a list of some 140 customers clamoring to lease a transponder. That would mean it was not likely to get another transponder and return to the air before the year 2000, Kassis said.

Funds were not coming in, and RCA “threatened because of slow payment to cancel our arrangement,” Kassis said. He went to RCA officials and outlined his problems. They suggested he broadcast his Christian fare 14 hours daily and sublease the transponder to another company for the remaining 10 hours daily.

Rainbow Programmers, based in New York City, immediately offered to sublease the NCN transponder, but Kassis at first refused because he wanted no association with Rainbow’s R-rated films, or any other films for that matter. “I’m disappointed in Walt Disney movies,” he said.

For three months he searched for alternative networks. Kassis said he negotiated with the Southern Baptist Convention, Oral Roberts’s association, and other Christian groups, but none was interested in subleasing his transponder because of the satellite’s abnormal positioning that made its messages unreceivable at most cable stations.

The NCN executive claims he even sought out inoffensive “secular” networks, such as a sports cable network, but was rebuffed. He was left, massive bills in hand, facing only one option: to sublease to Rainbow Programming or see the television ministry go under.

A development that occurred shortly after his subleasing of NCN’s transponder to Rainbow has not pleased Kassis. The August 24 issue of Broadcasting magazine reported Rainbow’s merger with Playboy Enterprises, Inc., the publisher of Playboy magazine.

Playboy’s move entered it into a hot, new market for cable programmers: adult programming that includes not only pornographic movies, but “erotic cartoons,” sex-oriented talk shows, and “adult drama series.” Playboy hopes its network for broadcasting this fare will be on the air by 1982. Penthouse, a Playboy competitor, is planning a similar network.

Playboy Enterprises has promised the network will be “conceptually consistent with the magazine,” featuring “all the style, elegance and taste that have become a trademark of Playboy magazine.”

It is the revenue generated from such programming that is keeping NCN afloat, Kassis said. “It is not fair to turn it around into making us out to be promoting R-rated programs. There is no malicious, evil, money-influence type situation. We had to do what we had to do.”

Even if that is the case, NCN’s arrangement has displeased at least one customer. Bob Jones University, which was receiving NCN programs, has canceled its subscription.

Kassis admits lease money from Rainbow goes directly to NCN, not RCA, but denies his station is making a suspicious profit. He contrasts his carpetless office with the “purple limousines” conspicuous at other Christian television networks. And he says NCN will discontinue its association with Rainbow as soon as possible. The NCN president said he could not be specific as to when the contract will lapse, but admitted he hoped to drop Rainbow before 1985.

Kassis will answer the hard question: Might it have been more honorable for his “gospel ministry” to declare bankruptcy and cease programming than to open a channel for video skin peddling? “We have a responsibility as believers to pay bills and not to be the kind of national ministry enjoying a lousy practice of money handling. We wanted to show America’s unsaved, unchurched public that not all Christian TV is in it for the money … that faith is not measured by how healthy, wealthy, or happy you are,” he said.

Kassis goes one step further in his defense of NCN. “We have a problem in the cable industry in identifying the parameters of what programming should be condoned and what should not,” he suggested. He sees NCN’s dilemma as “an opportunity to look at and evaluate and bring to some sort of standard, cable television.”

Laws need to be legislated and guidelines set. “That,” said Kassis, “is what I’d like to see come out of all this.”

Preus’S Successor Sees Biblical Issue Fading

Ralph A. Bohlmann, recently installed as the ninth president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), has named unity, confessional adherence, and mission as three goals of his self-described “scarred” denomination as it enters the 1980s.

Bohlmann, 49, is a former president of the denomination’s Concordia Seminary. He succeeds Jacob A. O. Preus as president of the LCMS. Preus led the church through a divisive controversy on the authority of the Bible—a controversy that resulted in the departure of 100,000 LCMS members. Commentators such as Harold Lindsell, author of The Bible in the Balance, credit Preus with upholding an orthodox view of Scripture in the LCMS.

Bohlmann believes the issue of biblical authority is no longer a “major, upfront problem,” but he plans to keep it under constant scrutiny. He considers his style of leadership to be quieter and less flamboyant than that of Preus. If he encounters problems, Bohlmann said in an interview, he will try to “encourage a more quiet settlement than we have had in the past.”

But the new president said his goals do not differ from his predecessor’s. After the period of contention, Bohlmann plans to appeal for denominational solidarity.

Logos Publishing, High-Flier In The ’70S, Files Bankruptcy

The 1970s were boom years for Christian publishers. The revival of interest in conservative Christianity, as well as the charismatic renewal, led the public to buy books on Christian subjects in quantities never before seen in the publishing industry.

The most successful of the charismatic Christian publishers was a former New York City jeweler, Dan Malachuk. The first book he published, under the name Logos, became a best seller—Run, Baby, Run, by Nicky Cruz, a street fighter turned Christian. His next one, Prison to Praise, by Merlin Carothers, produced phenomenal sales, as did its sequels.

For Logos, the heady days are over. Bowing to debts totaling $5.5 million, the Plain-field, New Jersey, company filed for protection from creditors under the federal bankruptcy code in mid-October. The action came after three creditors—collectively owed $200,000—threatened it with involuntary liquidation.

Logos reportedly owes its printers and suppliers about $500,000 altogether. Besides that, it has debts of about $5 million from individuals who lent it money. Collectively, there are about 800 creditors, according to Ted Meth, the company’s lawyer.

The publishing failure came largely because of Dan Malachuk’s venture into Christian journalism. In 1975, Logos started a national Christian newspaper with a highly credentialed editorial staff of some 135 correspondents worldwide, who were maintained at pay levels competitive with the larger secular papers. One of the National Courier’s former staff members still refers to what was done at the Courier as “Christian journalism’s finest hour.”

The financial problems were horrendous from the start. Malachuk bought a vacant newspaper printing plant for $199,000 and he borrowed heavily for other aspects of the newspaper operation, saddling it with a debt that caused it to close in 1977. The paper was paying $200,000 a year in interest on loans, and sometimes losing $100,000 a month. Malachuk ordered a press run of a half million for the first issue, although there were not nearly that many copies sold. Paid circulation eventually rose to a respectable 110,000.

In the paper’s final edition, the editors candidly admitted their failings but stood by their original vision. The staff was disappointed that only 25 percent of readers renewed their subscriptions. “The body of Christ was just not ready for a first-rate newspaper,” concluded Jamie Buckingham, one of Logos’s prominent authors and a Courier columnist.

The newspaper’s editorial staff was built by Robert Slosser, recruited from the New York Times Washington bureau. Slosser attracted a diverse group of seasoned journalists, all of them committed Christians, including Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and Methodists, and all committed to serious reporting of national and religious affairs.

The staff was taken aback in 1976 when Malachuk decided suddenly that the newspaper would cease reporting of secular news and cover only the charismatic community and other religious events. The reason apparently had to do with the fact that the parent organization, Logos International Fellowship, was officially organized as a church. That kind of an arrangement is not unknown among some Christian organizations, but most people on the Logos corporate and editorial staffs did not know they were actually church employees. (An application for a postal permit identified Malachuk as pastor and elder, as well as president of Logos, and it showed Slosser as an elder.)

As a church, Logos had joined the independent Assemblies of God. The Internal Revenue Service had become interested in activities of some of the member churches, and apparently there was some question as to whether, as a church, Logos should be publishing a newspaper that dealt so heavily with political affairs. Some staff members became disgruntled when they learned of the church connection.

Insiders say some of Logos’s problems were due to mismanagement. They feel that publisher Dan Malachuk got into something he did not sufficiently understand when he jumped into a nationally distributed newspaper.

Malachuk had little publishing background before he went into the business. In a 1974 interview with Your Church magazine, he said that with Logos Journal, “we started with the first magazine I ever did, cold.” He added that when a printer’s representative asked him about the design of Logos’s first book, Malachuk pulled another book off a shelf and said, “You see this book. I want you to make my book look just like this.”

Malachuk, however, is admired for his boldness and sincerity. “Dan has always done exactly what he believed God was calling him to do,” said friend and Logos board member Jimmy Rainwater, “And always he has done it with great energy.”

Though the Courier ceased publication in 1977, the book publishing arm and Logos Journal continued operation until this year. The Journal subscription list has been picked up by Charisma magazine; no money will be involved in the transaction, which will add 14,761 subscribers to Charisma.

The inventory of Logos books has been handed over to Bridge Publishing, a British and Canadian firm, for which Malachuk will serve as a consultant.

Logos International’s board of trustees has appointed a committee to meet with debtors and look after the problem of their interests. Malachuk went off the board a year ago. “I don’t know what will be done about the debts,” he stated. “That’s up to the trustees. I only work here.”

RODNEY CLAPP and J. ALAN YOUNGREN

After dodging potshots from critics for more than six months, C. Everett Koop breezed through a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing, on his way to becoming the nation’s thirteenth surgeon general since 1875.

His nomination caps a 40-year career in medicine, giving the noted pediatric surgeon charge over the U.S. Public Health Service commissioned corps, bilateral health treaties with other nations, and programs for elderly and disabled individuals.

Koop’s critics came in two varieties: those who expressed concern over his evangelical and prolife views, calling him an “extremist”; and others who challenged his experience in the field of public health. But their efforts fizzled during confirmation hearings before the Senate’s Labor and Human Resources Committee last month.

Koop’s day on Capitol Hill was a victory march, with 12 out of 14 witnesses testifying in his behalf. Presiding Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) set the pace by defending Koop’s First Amendment right to speak out on issues, outlining his achievements, and saying “no one can take a close look at Dr. Koop’s long career without marveling at the extent of his community involvement and his commitment to promoting and improving public health.” A parade of other senators—Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Don Nickles (R-Okla.), Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.), and John Heinz (R-Pa.)—joined in commending Koop.

Only Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) grilled him with questions raised by groups that included the American Public Health Association (APHA), Planned Parenthood, Center for Science in the Public Interest, and National Organization for Women (NOW). APHA and NOW were the only two who sent representatives to testify against him.

Koop clearly enjoyed the opportunity to vindicate his record. When Kennedy quoted a New York Times editorial condemning Koop as President Reagan’s choice for surgeon general, Koop called it “a considerable injustice.” He elaborated, saying “I have been accused of this lack of qualifications, as far as I know, primarily by APHA, and what they have said has been picked up and repeated by paper after paper.

“I guess the thing that disturbs me the most is that they never came to me and asked me whether or not I had any public health experience. Just a little bit of research would have turned up some of the things that you’ve heard here this morning about my experience in public health.”

Much of the criticism from APHA centered on Koop’s lack of credentials as a career Public Health Service physician. Their prepared statement said the post of surgeon general “is clearly intended to be the top federal public health professional in career service, and this traditional office should not be capriciously prostituted to the cause of either political patronage or personal presumption.”

But Koop described at length the public health experience he has gained in four areas: pediatrics, consumer protection, international health care, and in work with disadvantaged—or “underserved”—people. He has helped reverse infant mortality rates by developing surgical procedures and improving pre-and postoperative care for children. He identified cancer as a leading cause of death among young people and worked to inform his colleagues and the public of the risk it presents.

Koop played a major role in eliminating the practice of x-raying children’s feet to determine if their shoes fit, thus preventing exposure to harmful radiation. He also helped bring about a court order to remove coloring and mint flavoring from corrosive oven cleaners, which many children ingested when they assumed it was candy.

In international health care, Koop traveled throughout Africa as a board member of MAP International (for Medical Assistance Programs). He said “I was assigned the task by the U.S. State Department of convincing the ministry of health of Ghana … that an American-type medical school had more to offer that country than the three proposals made by the Soviet bloc. I succeeded and in addition worked to staff the school in Ghana for the next five years.”

Koop’s work in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Poland, and throughout Europe and Asia has also received wide recognition. Both the Dominican Republic and France have presented him with their highest civilian awards.

Delivering babies in the welfare homes of Harlem drew Koop’s attention to the needs of the underserved. Throughout three decades at Children’s Hopsital in Philadelphia, Koop worked to coordinate private and public care for ghetto dwellers.

Koop met criticism of his antiabortion convictions as readily as he dealt with the challenge to his experience. His previous board memberships with the National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and Christian Action Council, as well as his collaboration with Francis Schaeffer in the film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, drew fire from NOW and other groups. But Koop recounted a conversation he had with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Richard Schweiker, when Koop told him, “I’ve said all that I should say and written all that I should write on the abortion issue.”

At his Senate confirmation hearings, Koop said simply, “It’s not my intent to use any post that I might have in government as a pulpit for ideology. It is not my intention to continue to be a speaker on the prolife circuit.” Later he added, “I am not opposed to contraception. I am not opposed to family planning.”

Undercutting his critics further, Koop had several witnesses testify in his favor who flatly disagreed with him on abortion. Richard D. Wood, chairman of the board of managers at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, said he has been active with Planned Parenthood for 30 years. He said “I am opposed to Dr. Koop’s stance on abortion and his thinking on that subject. However, I can state honestly that Dr. C. Everett Koop has never imposed his ideology on me or my associates at the hospital. In my opinion, this well illustrates his ability to be objective and to place personal feelings aside in connection with his professional responsibilities.”

By the close of his hearings, Koop was visibly elated at the prospect of putting the controversy behind him and getting down to business. He said he looks forward to “a great opportunity for service,” although “I wouldn’t wish on anyone what I’ve been through.”

One of his top priorities is to streamline programs to aid the elderly and the disabled, and to start cooperative efforts between public and private sectors. “The great untapped source of private help is the church,” Koop observed. He indicated that the Reagan administration is counting on Christian good will to fill some of the gaps created by massive federal budget cuts.

“If God one day has mercy on Seville,” wrote Cipriano de Valera in 1588, “San Isidoro Monastery will be a university for the study of theology.” The Spanish monk, a convert to the teachings of the Reformation, wrote these words in exile after escaping the rigors of the Inquisition.

Valera’s trust in God’s mercy appears to be bearing dramatic fruit at last. A Protestant group, the Reina-Valera Foundation, purchased a major part of the important San Isidoro del Campo Monastery in September, for conversion into a conference and study center. The Spanish government has declared the monastery, with its four-and-a-half acres of grounds, to be of national interest and of historical and artistic value.

The foundation, consisting of Spanish Christian businessmen and D. José Cardona, a Baptist pastor who is secretary of the Spanish Evangelical Commission on [religious] Defense, made a down payment of $25,000 for the acquisition; the remaining $325,000 is due before June 1982.

Built in the thirteenth century, the monastery achieved prominence three centuries later. Its monks engaged in secret Bible studies after a certain Julianillo Hernández smuggled in New Testaments and other prohibited books. So intense was the response that almost the entire order accepted the Reformed doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ alone.

Casiodoro de Reina—the other monk after whom the foundation is named—began to translate the Bible into Spanish direct from the original languages. Reina and Valera were among 20 monks the Inquisition forced to flee. Reina’s Bible translation—the one still used by the evangelical churches in Spain today—was first published in Basel, Switzerland, in 1569. It was revised by Valera, and the second edition published in Amsterdam in 1602.

Protestant operation of San Isidoro is visible evidence of the remarkable degree to which Spain has moved over the last 40 years, from religious repression, through various degrees of religious toleration, to genuine religious liberty.

In 1939, following the victory of General Francisco Franco in the civil war, most Protestant churches were closed for several years.

The right of non-Catholics to “private worship” (broadly interpreted to mean worship in recognized places without external indications of any kind) was recognized in 1945. But church closings and other denials of liberty soon followed.

More New Neighbors

The first mosque to be built in Spain since the Moors were driven out in the fifteenth century has been erected in the city of Marbella. The Arabs are moving in along the Costa del Sol, using oil dollars to buy land seized from their ancestors by the sword. The new summer residents include Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia and Sheikh Zayid, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The newcomers are doing their best to avoid generating a backlash. Prince Fahd, for instance, has donated $2 million to city hall to ease a low-income housing shortage in Marbella.

Toleration became more generous during the latter part of the Franco era. In 1967, a law on religious liberty “compatible in any case with the Catholic confession of the Spanish state,” was promulgated.

Under King Juan Carlos, religious liberty has increased dramatically. In 1978, the new constitution laid the groundwork for real religious liberty. It says, “the freedom of ideology, religion, and worship of individuals and communities is guaranteed without limitation in its manifestations except as necessary for maintaining public order protected by law.”

The only reference to the Catholic church, which has traditionally been the state church, is a pledge that the government “will continue appropriate relations of cooperation with the Catholic Church and other confessions.”

Last year the Spanish government enacted the law of religious liberty, which elaborates the meaning of the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty. It lists specific guarantees, such as the right to change religion, manifest beliefs, worship, teach, associate with other believers, choose religious leaders, and own property for religious purposes.

Protestants are moving to exploit the opportunities that came with their new freedoms. Evangelistic films have already been shown in many cities and towns since the anti-Protestant regulations were lifted. The Protestant churches are learning how to run evangelistic crusades, local church campaigns, and evangelistic tent meetings.

They are also developing religious broadcasting, linking programs to promotion of Bibles and gospel literature. The arrival of local radio in many parts of Spain was an important element.

Although Protestants are growing steadily, they total only about a quarter-million out of Spain’s 37.8 million, and enrolled church members number no more than 50,000.

The Brethren are the largest group, with some 90 congregations; the Baptists have 80, and there are small but important Reformed Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and Evangelical denominations, as well as many independent Protestant fellowships.

When modifications are complete, the monastery where Reina and Valera were fired by the gospel promises to make a significant contribution to this Protestant community; it will be used for seminars, conferences, and retreats. The sixteenth-century Gothic cloister will house the main conference hall, a museum, a library, and study rooms. Other buildings will provide sleeping, dining, and other facilities for up to 800 guests. Plans call for a special library for research on the Protestant movement in Spain, with separate student rooms apart from the conference center.

An evangelical chaplain presides over a diminishing Protestant majority.

The Protestant cadet chapel almost soars above the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Its light, Gothic inspiration was deliberately topped, however with a heavy, bastion tower to convey military imperturbability. Just beneath its squat silhouette, the 4,000 co-ed Cadet Corps is anything but stolid. The rapid flux at West Point includes dramatic change in the religious environment.

Always Protestant since its founding in 1802, the Cadet Corps, if present trends continue, will soon have a Roman Catholic majority. In the entering class of 1985, the largest in history with 1,527 plebes, there are more Roman Catholics than Protestants.

Within the reduced Protestant ranks there are far fewer mainline Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, and more Baptists and nondenominational sectarians. The long tradition of genteel Southern Episcopalians braced with some Calvinism is giving way to a broader evangelicalism and assertive personal religion. For a century, it sufficed morally at the Point to be a Christian gentleman. Now, in addition, you had best be a “born-again” Christian.

And other religious persuasions—the Mormons, Moonies, Eastern Orthodox, and Jews—are making their moves among the Corps.

The official spokesman and coordinator for all this religious ferment is the senior cadet chaplain, Richard P. Camp, Jr., who reflects both the lingering grasp of tradition on the Corps and ecumenical changes occurring willy-nilly.

A graduate of Wheaton College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Dick Camp is quiet spoken, introspective, and highly respectful of tradition. He has the virtue at West Point of being very athletic at 44 years of age. As one of his parishioners told me, “It helps if you want to pastor cadets to be able to jog five miles a day with them.”

Selected for the Associated Press Little All-American football squad as an undergraduate, Camp has coached the academy’s 150-pound football team for several years. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes as well as “huddle groups” of informal prayer and witness sessions among athletes are facets of his ministry.

Camp has numerous coministers. Two other Protestant cadet chaplains are on his staff, and he coordinates two Roman Catholic priests and four full-time Protestant workers whose salaries are paid by outside groups. Other part-time professionals include a Jewish rabbi and many lay volunteers. All minister to just over 4,000 cadets.

There are anomalies in Chaplain Camp’s role at West Point. A civilian and an independent Baptist, he is pastor to a congregation overwhelmingly military. It is one a good many army chaplains would like to have. He inherited a liturgy that is on the formal side and retains it. The vast nave of the cadet chapel is infrequently packed with cadets since the Supreme Court ruled mandatory chapel attendance to be unconstitutional. Many of Chaplain Camp’s fellow Baptists are absent from his diminished flock because they, along with the Lutherans and the Episcopalians, have formed three separate congregations.

Seven years at West Point, the last two as senior chaplain, have brought about changes in Dick Camp. “A dozen years ago I was locked into my own denomination’s attitude about who really is a Christian,” he told me. “I have come to appreciate other traditions that emphasize liturgy and being nurtured in the church.” He is also bothered that his own emphasis upon personal religion and piety experienced in small support groups may skirt the bigger ethical themes associated with the student search for truth. “The cadets have so little time to think seriously, including about religion, that I wonder: Are we asking the big religious questions when we have a little time with them?”

Chaplain Camp observed recently a streak of apparent ethical illiteracy among senior cadets arguing with an antiwar activist. The young men were unable to draw any moral distinctions between legal military orders and illegal ones, or discern military authority from the authority of God.

One aspect of ministry at West Point with which Camp and others are pleased is the cadet-led Sunday schools for about 500 children who reside on the academy’s grounds. It is a coveted honor to serve on the cadet staffs. About 130 teach in the Protestant school and some 90 work in the Roman Catholic Sunday school.

Bible study among the cadets is informal and growing. There is at least one group meeting weekly in every one of the 36 companies into which the Corps is organized for military life. These are grassroots fellowships over which the chaplains have no direct control.

Not all the cadets endorse this religious fervor in the companies. One black cadet said he felt the Bible groups belonged in the chapels and not the barracks where they appear to compromise the Fourth Class System, a rigid separation of plebes from social contact with upper classmen for purposes of learning military discipline. He also noted that many of the cadets who eagerly attend Bible study, which can only take place during evening time designated officially for academic study, are flunking their regular courses.

Housecleaning

For more than 150 years, there has been a singular morality at West Point: absolute adherence to the cadet Honor Code against lying, cheating, or stealing, or toleration of such in others. Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster was a retired four-star general when President Jimmy Carter called him to the superintendency of the academy in 1977. The general had to lose a star to take his command, but he gained a pulpit because the academy was nearly shaking to its foundations from a major academic scandal which, Goodpaster told me, meant “maybe as many as 20 percent of the Corps had lied, cheated, or stolen.”

Goodpaster in effect became everyone’s moral leader in rehabilitating the essence of the Honor Corps and traditional credos at the Point. The principal institutional change was the conversion of a required course in English literature into a required course in moral philosophy. Tradition being dominant at West Point, the new course went on being taught by the English department instead of the chaplains.

Many of the ethical problems Goodpaster and Chaplain Camp have had to deal with have no overt relationship to the Honor Code—sexism, alcoholism and drug use, crazy driving, abuse of authority by upper-classmen over subordinates, and sexual misdeeds. The superintendent traces these more complex problems to neither the academy nor the army, but to “the society from which the cadets come, [which] is more permissive, more self-centered, more me-first.”

One moral anxiety for cadets that transcends even the Honor Code is the classic one over killing. Goodpaster and many officers are worried about the ethical dimensions of megakilling through nuclear confrontation. Chaplain Camp finds by contrast that the cadets he counsels are exclusively concerned with the moral dilemma of individual killing.

Robert Scurlock, the cadet in charge of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and an impressive evangelical model among the cadets, seconded this concern. “Before coming to West Point,” he said, “many think of the place only as an academic setting. But they arrive and fire an M16 or toss a grenade and have to come to terms that a willingness to kill another human is integral to the military profession.” Scurlock said he decided for himself: “It’s better to have Christians within the army helping its moral standards than withdrawing from it because of ethical doubts.”

General Goodpaster reminisced over several of his decisions to help someone in the army or to accomplish a mission prudently that had moral and ethical meaning for him. He said he had never experienced a moral dilemma, though “there can be a conflict between the demands of the system and a person’s own views, a person’s own conscience.” If that should happen, the general advised resignation as the only honorable out.

Keeping It Christian

The academy prefers to see certain moral attributes in its cadets, namely those that reinforce its prevailing symbolic codes and actual processes. For that reason, everyone interviewed, including Chaplain Camp, thinks Moonies should stay out of West Point. There is a Moonie commune just a mile outside the academy’s gate and there have been at least two converts to the Moonie sect the past year within the corps.

As for the Mormons and Orthodox and Jews, only two years ago the Mormons finally won the right to have their boys take a year off from cadet life for missionary service without having to resign from the academy. When Orthodox cadets worship on Sunday in a secular classroom, incense and the lovely hymns of that 1,500-year-old liturgy rise softly. And the Jews, though traditionally only a handful in the corps, have raised about a million dollars toward erection of a synagogue.

The Catholic brethren crowd five weekend masses at Holy Trinity parish, just a few hundred yards down campus from the Protestant redoubt. When one of the Roman Catholic priests was asked if necessity and equity might not prompt a request for equal time in the more sumptuous cadet chapel, which is Protestant by tradition only, he was genuinely shocked. However, a Catholic cadet commented: “No, we won’t take the chapel away from the Protestants; we’ll just take the battle flags from them.”

If you visit West Point, you will find the battle flags—many dating from regimental units of the Revolutionary War—still hanging in Chaplain Camp’s Gothic nave—for at least the next two years. On June 30, Methodist Goodpaster relinquished command to Lt. Gen. Willard W. Scott, Jr., the first superintendent of the Roman Catholic faith in this century. Anyone who knows anything about tradition and tact at West Point realizes those battle flags must stay on Protestant ground.

GENE PRESTON

It was nearly three years ago to the day that 33 American scientists unpacked 72 crates of highly technical laboratory equipment and hauled it into the ornate reception room of the Palace of Savoy in Turin, Italy. They would spend the next five days performing every nondestructive test they could think of to try and determine once and for all the source of the most unusual relic in Christendom, the Shroud of Turin.

The scientists, from many prestigious laboratories across the country, spent the ensuing three years analyzing their findings, working mostly on their own time. They gathered again amid the autumn leaves of New London, Connecticut, early last month, and the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), as they call themselves, reported their findings to the world.

Much of what they said had dribbled out months ahead of schedule as individuals on the team reported in professional journals the results of their own particular tests. The significance of their findings was underscored anew in New London when the dozens of reporters on hand pressed them to the hilt to explain themselves in plain terms. And here are those plain terms: the shroud—the 14-foot long linen strip containing the ghostly image, front and back, of a body bearing the same marks described in the Gospels of the crucified Christ—is not a forgery.

Not only is it not a forgery, something else became clear during the two-day scientific symposium at which the scientists discussed their work. Try as they might, they have been unable to reproduce the kind of image displayed on the shroud, although they brought to bear the collective abilities of specialists in a variety of disciplines, including physics, chemistry, photomicrography, pathology, and computerized photo enhancement. That last field is so new it was described during the symposium as not yet a science, still an art.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the testing was done by John Jackson of the University of Colorado, whose specialty is theoretical physics. He became interested in the shroud while studying pictures of it during off hours, when he was an officer assigned to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jackson applied to the pictures a device, called a VP-8 image analyzer, that is normally used to provide computer-enhanced photos of planets. The mechanism transforms the intensity of an image into vertical relief, thus producing on a television-type screen what looks to be a three-dimensional image. When used on the facial protion of shroud, the resultant image was that of a man’s head standing out in stark relief. Thus there seemed to be some unique three-dimensional characteristic encoded into the shroud image, unlike anything ever seen in artwork.

Jackson asked several artists to try to recreate the ghostly image of the man’s head. To the naked eye, their handiwork closely matched the original, but when the image analyzer was turned on, each recreation clearly failed to produce an image in proper three-dimensional relief.

It was Jackson’s work with the image analyzer in 1977 that pricked the interests of the scientists who joined the team. This inability to reproduce the image is what has them baffled. After all, the shroud is known to be at least 600 years old, placing it in an era when technical skills were primitive by comparison. Yet the technique used in making the image cannot be explained, even with the immeasurable present-day advancements in technical skills and knowledge.

One of the prominent theories is that the image was lightly scorched onto the cloth, for the actual image markings are made by dehydrated cellulose fibers in the material—just what would be expected of a scorch. But the scorch, if that is what it is, lies only on the surface of the fibers, and every time Jackson tried to reproduce even a light scorch on linen, the burn affected much more of the fiber than did the image on the shroud. Besides that, the scientists could not reproduce the precise three-dimensional effect on the cloth, even by scorching it with a three-dimensional object.

If the shroud appears to bear the markings of the crucified Christ, and the scientific team concludes it is not a forgery, does that mean it is the genuine burial shroud of Christ? Pressed for an answer to that question during a press conference prior to the symposium, none of the scientists would go that far. “Scientists haven’t the techniques to answer if it is the shroud of Jesus Christ,” said John Heller, a biophysicist from the New England Institute.

Publicly, as scientists, none of the team members would even speculate that the shroud was the genuine article. But privately, and speaking “religiously,” some of them now do believe that, including Jackson, the scientist who organized the team. Jackson cautions that his view is still tentative, pending the outcome of the one test that could establish the age of the cloth. That test has not been done because it would destroy a small portion of the shroud. It apparently will be done at an unspecified time, however, using a new procedure that would consume an even smaller sample of the cloth.

The shroud’s existence can be traced historically to around 1357, and records from the era indicate that many thought it a fake. Today, in the “scientific” age, fewer, ironically, are so willing to dismiss it, including those who know most about it, the scientists of the shroud project. Interest in the artifact is growing beyond the bounds of Roman Catholicism, which has traditionally revered it, although Rome has not taken an official position on its authenticity.

Donald Lynn, a Caltech scientist and team member, said he has given about 75 talks on the shroud during the last three years, before audiences of from 30 to 3,000.

At one location where he was to speak, the 250-seat auditorium was packed 15 minutes before his scheduled 10 A.M. start. He was asked to repeat his lecture at 2 P.M., which he did, but again the auditorium was packed. Asked to give a third talk at 4 P.M., he declined, fatigued. The location was neither a church nor a religious institution, but the Washington D.C., staff headquarters of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Scuffling over a Shroud Book

Almost visibly, the scientists of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) recoiled from publicly answering the only question on the minds of most people who attended their weekend symposium last month. “Is it real or isn’t it,” the scientists were asked time and again. Their response was that since they have no scientific explanation, they have no explanation at all.

Some members of the team were upset by the appearance of a book, Verdict on the Shroud, published by Servant Publications in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Advertised as based on evidence from the shroud team, it concludes, in carefully measured words, that the shroud is probably Christ’s. The book was written by Kenneth Stevenson, an air force engineer now with IBM, the official spokesman for the team, and Gary Habermas, an associate professor of apologetics at Liberty Baptist College and a specialist in evidences for the resurrection. He was peripherally associated with STURP.

The scientific team disclaimed any connection with the book and sued, so far unsuccessfully, to stop its publication, lest the public think the book represents the team’s findings.

Although the conclusions of authenticity are clearly those of the authors, and their research includes historical matters outside the bounds of the STURP team, the fact is the book does seem to report reliably the work of the team.

Lawrence Schwalbe, a team member and physicist at the Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratory, wrote the official summary of the team’s work for presentation to the owner of the shroud, Umberto II, the exiled king of Italy (he lives in Portugal). Schwalbe collaborated with the book’s authors in the chapter in which they summarized the team’s findings. In a foreword to the book, Schwalbe wrote: “Stevenson and Habermas have presented the technical results … as objectively as possible” in lay terms. He vouched for the reliability of their reporting of his specialty, the physics and chemistry tests of the shroud.

Another team member wrote an afterword for the book. Robert Bucklin, a physician and deputy medical examiner for Los Angeles County, wrote: “Habermas and Stevenson have faced this issue (of authenticity) squarely and have carefully presented all possible positions. While a majority of the scientists have been reluctant to take a stand on this matter, a few of us have openly expressed our opinions that there is support for the resurrection in the things we see on the Shroud of Turin.”

With statements like these from team members, pressures have been enormous from other members who are not so convinced, for reputations of professional objectivity are at stake.

During a press conference prior to the press conference, Schwalbe seemed to recant his statements in the book, saying he had not read the manuscript carefully enough. Another of the scientists stood up to say Bucklin was not actually a member of the team. Later, still another scientist rebutted that, saying Bucklin was indeed a team member. (Bucklin participated in the symposium.)

One of the scientists, Joan Janney, said Stevenson was official spokesman only during the direct examination of the shroud in 1978 (although as late as last April Stevenson handled press relations for an exhibit of shroud photography). Janney said the team never heard of Habermas at all, although the book lists him as a “research consultant” to the team. The publisher countered that Habermas signed a document on August 17, 1980, giving him that status, under a procedure approved by the team’s board of directors.

The publisher, Bert Ghezzi, emphasizes that the book does not purport to be the official conclusion of the team, and he volunteered in court to send disclaimers to booksellers for insertion in unsold copies. He agreed to eliminate acknowledgments to team members when the book is reprinted, as well as delete references to the team when the dust jacket is reprinted. There apparently are no plans, however, to eliminate the contributions by Schwalbe and Bucklin.

With all the ruckus, Habermas and Stevenson have been beseiged by radio, television, and press people from around the country, and the book is selling well. But none of that impresses Habermas. “I’d trade it all for the blessings of the team,” he said.

From the team statement:

“For an adequate explanation for the image of the shroud, one must have an explanation which is scientifically sound. At present, this type of solution does not appear to be obtainable …

“We can conclude for now that the shroud image is that of a real human form of a crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and give also a positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved.”

Religious Centrists Line Up Against Moral Majority

“We, the members of many religious communities, describe ourselves differently from our fellow believers who have described themselves publicly with such terms as the ‘Moral Majority’ and ‘Christian Voice.’ ”

These are the opening words in a hard-hitting attack on the growing influence of the New Christian Right. Entitled the “Chicago Statement,” it was drafted by a group of 40 theologians, pastors, and lay people last month in Chicago.

These people are alarmed by the way the New Right is capturing news media attention, and concerned that this is misleading the general public into perceiving Moral Majority as the authentic Christian expression in the sociopolitical realm. As a result, the group decided last February to form the Chicagoland Committee on Fair Play in order to counter the Right influence in the churches.

The loosely knit organization attracted adherents from four major traditions: “mainline” Protestant denominations, independent evangelicalism, the historic peace churches, and Roman Catholicism. The sparkplug was Jack W. Lundin, pastor of a Lutheran Church in America congregation in suburban Lombard. The other leaders were three noted theologians and authors: John T. Pawlikowski of Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union; Robert Webber, Wheaton College; and Dale Brown, Bethany Theological Seminary.

The writers of the “Chicago Statement” intended it to be a declaration on religious and national matters that would be more than just a knee-jerk reaction to the New Right. Rather, as Lundin said, it would “provide for breathing room on the crucial issues causing confusion and consternation on the part of millions of Christians and others.”

This stance was reinforced in the document’s preamble, which asserted, “Although the statement is occasioned by the wide dissemination of the views of such groups, it is not simply a rejoinder but an appeal for a deeper understanding of Scripture and Christian tradition.” The signatories call upon believers in Jesus Christ “to exert prophetic responsibility and constructive engagement in the political process.”

It noted that God works through the various Christian communities regardless of whether they are on the political Right or Left, yet they, like “all orders of society are permeable to evil.” Thus they share in such vices as violence, poverty, discrimination, militarism, greed, materialism, hedonism, and sexism. Because of this, the call to responsible kingdom life cannot be reduced to an agenda of moral legislation and political power. At the same time, the writers insisted that they did not wish to impose their convictions on public institutions or “censor” those who disagreed with them. Instead, they called upon Christians “to acknowledge the mixed character of the human situation and the ambiguity inherent in all human choices.”

The document steered a middle course through the rocky waters of public issues that have been the source of such deep divisions among contemporary Christians. It addressed the topics of human life, justice, the environment, public morality, the nation, the family, human rights, and peace. It affirmed the “sanctity of all human life” without taking an absolutist stance on the abortion issue. It endorsed justice for all people regardless of their status and urged political leaders to meet the needs of all disadvantaged people. Christians should care for the natural environment and respond to the “critical loss of personal and public moral standards” as evidenced by pornography, exploitation of sex in television programming and advertising, and the diminution of honesty and integrity. They were cautioned against materialism and blind trust in nationalism, urged to work for peace and human rights, and invited to reaffirm the family as a gift from God.

Speaking directly to the approach of Moral Majority as they perceived it, the authors of the statement called upon the church and all believers “to speak and act with courage where Christian convictions are clear, with humility in areas of permissible disagreement, and with love and compassion in all matters.”

Although the give-and-take discussion grew heated at times, the sharpest disagreements arose over the profamily and “prohuman” issues. In fact, some stayed away from the meeting because of dissatisfaction with the preliminary working draft, which did not take a firm “prochoice” stance on the abortion issue, while others feared that even mentioning the question would stir up smouldering controversies that were tearing their churches apart.

There was a humorous note as well. The Chicago Sun-Times, which last month scooped the rival Chicago Tribune with an exposé of Catholic Archbishop John Cardinal Cody’s questionable financial dealings, tried to get the jump again by publishing on the morning of the meeting lengthy excerpts from the manifesto. These were taken from the first draft, however, which was so extensively rewritten that the final version bore little resemblance to the text found in the Sun-Times.

RICHARD V. PIERARD

North American Scene

Evangelical apologist Francis Schaeffer and D. James Kennedy, pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were speakers at the first general assembly of the fledgling Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). The new denomination, which organized last spring (CT, April 24), includes breakaway congregations mainly from the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. It includes an estimated 20,000 members. Kennedy observed that divisions in Protestantism are no longer between denominations, but between evangelicals and liberals. Schaeffer cautioned the EPC, which leaves open the question of women’s ordination, to make sure it was doing so on biblical grounds and not out of “sociological convenience.”

“Oh, we’re the Moral Majority, we’re holier than thou; / By God, we’re here to tell you what we will and won’t allow. / We’re out to purge the nation of its humanistic bent; / A separate church and state we’ve simply given up for Lent!” Jerry Falwell may not be humming the tune, but it is making amateur songwriter Doug Mayfield of Deerwood, Minnesota, happy. Mayfield, an English teacher, wrote and recorded the song as a novelty. It apparently touched a responsive chord: sales of 6 million records are projected. Mayfield notes the song “seems to polarize people.” A fight broke out in a Duluth bar when someone cued the song on the jukebox.

Are legal curbs on abortion causing poor women to turn to sterilization as a means of birth control? The Illinois Public Aid Department (IPAD) reported a record number (6,219) of state-financed sterilizations in 1980. At the same time, state-financed abortions have dropped sharply. Stricter restrictions on Medicaid payments for abortions became effective in October 1980. An IPAD spokesman acknowledges an increase in the number of sterilizations in the general population, not just among the poor.

Southern Baptist pastor W.A. Criswell challenged his First Baptist Church of Dallas to pledge $1 million for the coming year to Southern Baptist mission work. The church, with 22,000 members, is the largest Southern Baptist congregation in America; its mission giving had been $200,000 annually. But Criswell said the Holy Spirit’s command was clear in a dream he had: “Your assignment is making the church known through $1 million to missions.”

Gordon R. Werkema has been named the ninth president of Malone College, Canton, Ohio. Werkema will leave the post of executive vice-president of Gordon College (Mass.). He has also served as executive vice-president of Seattle Pacific University.

Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng, speaking in a Detroit church, said the Vatican applies a double standard when it demands human rights in Poland but denies them in the Catholic Church. In Küng’s view, he lost his license to teach Catholic theology not primarily because of “all my heresies,” but because of church politics. His Christology, he said, was not so much the issue as his demands that bishops be elected by a representative body and that celibacy be abolished. Küng has reportedly been offered a teaching position at the University of Michigan, though a university spokesman said no decision has been made.

The Mormon Church is a legitimate Christian denomination, asserted Mormon leader Bruce M. McConkie recently, despite “fashionable” remarks to the contrary. Speaking at the one hundred fifty-first Mormon Conference, McConkie said Mormons are Christians if “being a Christian means believing in Christ and accepting him as the Son of God in the full and complete sense, and loving our fellow men.” McConkie, a member of the church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles, admitted Mormons honor Joseph Smith, a founder. “It is true that his place in the heavenly hierarchy makes him a prophet of prophets and a seer of seers. He ranks with Enoch and Abraham and Moses. But salvation is in Christ, not in Abraham, not in Moses, not in Joseph Smith,” he said.

Eight staff members ofSojournersmagazine, including editor Jim Wallis, were arrested protesting an Air Force Association “arms bazaar” in Washington, D.C. The journalists, and at least 43 other protesters, were blocking the driveway at the motel hosting the bazaar. The presiding judge said prison sentences (of up to 30 days) were imposed on the eight because all had been part of civil-disobedience protests previously and had “flouted the law.”

World Scene

The Moonies have turned their attention in Europe from Britain to West Germany. In September, the Unification Church announced it will be concentrate its “missionary work” in the Federal Republic. Following major court reversals in Britain, the sect has withdrawn 300 workers there and is redeploying them in German cities.

For the tenth year, evangelical young people from all over Yugoslavia met in an all-day-Sunday “September Gathering.” Some 500 youths converged on Novi Sad for messages, singing, a panel discussion, and getting acquainted in the local Baptist church.

The Anglican Church of South Africa deliberately avoided inviting government officials when it installed its new archbishop. For the first time in South Africa, the church refused to invite the president, prime minister, or even top province officials to the September 30 ceremony in Saint George’s Cathedral in Capetown at which Bishop Philip Russell of Natal was installed. The dean of the cathedral said, “The move is a sad one, really, because it shows the growing polarization in this country.”

FEBA’s new 100-kilowatt, radio transmitter in the Seychelle Islands off the horn of Africa is now on the air in daily use. The transmitter was financed by the Lutheran World Federation, whose Radio Voice of the Gospel studio and transmitter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, were nationalized in 1977. In return, the LWF receives religious broadcasting air time.

Zealous literature distribution in Nepal by foreign workers has again provoked a crackdown. A Way of Life Literature worker was apprehended by police in a Kathmandu suburb in August for violating a 24-hour curfew against gatherings of more than four people. More than that number had clustered around him to see the Bibles he was selling. Police traced the Bibles to the Bible Society in Nepal, imprisoned the Bible Society national representative, and confiscated his stock of Scriptures. Local believers fear that bookshops permitted to operate in three towns and other discreet distribution may be curtailed.

The Bible Society of India has a different sort of problem, according to a correspondent there. Its board chairman has asked for and received the resignations of the general secretary and four other top directors. It is believed that the shakeup resulted from a confidential report submitted by a special commission that delved into the operation of the society.

Complaints by China’s Communist regime about a resurgence of superstition have some basis in fact, even among Christians. Recent visitors to the People’s Republic report heavy emphasis on physical healing in some areas, resulting in superstitious practices, such as attributing magical powers to a Bible on the body of a sick person.

Malpractice Suit Against Macarthur Is Dismissed

An unprecedented “clergy malpractice” suit against the large Grace Community Church of the Valley in Panorama City and four of its ministers was dismissed last month in a California Superior Court. The suit involved the church’s prominent senior minister, John F. MacArthur, Jr.

Judge Thomas C. Murphy issued a summary judgment dismissing all charges in the suit filed last year by the parents of a young man who was counseled by the church and eventually committed suicide.

Though malpractice suits against doctors and lawyers are common, attorneys for both the defendants and plaintiffs could find no similar suit ever filed against a clergyman. Some insurance companies later expanded coverage to include clergy malpractice amid wider public attention to the potential problem.

“This ruling removed a veiled threat that was hanging over clergy and churches and their right to counsel,” said Samuel Ericsson, the church’s attorney. “A lot of insurance was sold just because this case was filed,” said Ericsson, who is also special counsel for the Christian Legal Society based near Chicago.

Edward Barker, an attorney for plaintiffs Marie and Walter J. Nally of Tujunga, California, said right after the judge’s ruling that he expects the couple will file an appeal.

The suit had alleged that MacArthur was aware over a long period of the “depressive state and suicidal tendencies” of Kenneth Nally, 24, a seminary student who attended the church and worked part-time there. He shot himself April 2, 1979.

The suit also said young Nally was “dissuaded and discouraged” from seeking professional care. Instead, the suit alleged, he was told to consult counselors at the church, pray, read the Bible, and listen to tape recordings of MacArthur’s sermons.

Attorneys for the conservative Protestant church, which attracts more than 10,000 worshipers each Sunday, questioned in court documents whether “a pastor has a ‘duty to refer’ the most difficult spiritual and emotional problems to so-called professionals, that is, psychiatrists and psychologists.” The defense also questioned whether a court is competent to decide whether prayer is not the proper counsel in a given situation.

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

The debate over tuition tax credits intensifies.

Congress is considering proposals for tuition tax credits, whereby citizens could subtract from their tax bills a portion of the tuition they pay for sending their children to nonpublic schools. The idea is seen as a boon for the Christian school movement, since high costs have prevented many parents from sending their children to such schools. Those who oppose it see the idea as an economic threat to the public school system.

Experts argued each side of the issue at last month’s National Association of Evangelicals board meeting in Chicago. Speaking for tuition tax credits was James Skillen, a college professor and executive director of the Association for Public Justice. It is an organization of evangelicals working for justice in political issues.

Speaking against tax credits was R. G. Puckett, executive director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. He is a Southern Baptist minister, and formerly an editor of Baptist publications. Following are highlights from the debate.

Skillen said there were no public schools at all in the country’s early history. Parents were understood to be responsible for educating children, and a variety of schools existed. Some of them were church schools, and some of them were not church connected, but all taught biblical morality. Around 1830, the situation changed with the influx of Irish Catholics into New York City. They brought their own schools, and began asking for some of the tax money that had been distributed to existing schools.

Eventually, public money was turned over to the New York Public School Society for distribution to the “nonsectarian” schools, which was to say non-Catholic schools. Skillen said that until relatively recently the nonsectarian schools, which became the public schools, still had a strong Protestant orientation, teaching the Bible and biblical morality.

He said parents have no business complaining about public schools since they have turned the business of education over to the government. What should be seen is that the government cannot be the agency primarily responsible for education. That responsibility should be returned to parents. Tax money to support education should be distributed proportionately among the agencies educating children. If Protestant Christian schools educate 10 percent of the children, they should get 10 percent of the public funds. If Jewish schools educate 10 percent of the children, they, too, should get 10 percent of the tax money. If public schools educate 10 percent of the children, they should get a proportionate amount of money.

Speaking against tax credits, Puckett offered five reasons why the idea should not become law.

First, he said, most of the money would flow into explicitly religious schools, thus violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

Second, in a democracy such as ours, he said, it is not enough that parents should be concerned about educating their own children. All citizens must be concerned that education is open to all. If quality schools are open only to those who can afford them or who have a particular doctrinal perspective, then the poor or those who do not have the proper background may be relegated to inferior public schools. That would damage the democratic precept that all citizens must be well educated.

According to Puckett, part of the problem with public schools today is that citizens have asked them to do what they cannot do: provide welfare types of food and health programs, and act as agents of social change. “I would like to suggest that we take an approach to education which teaches our young people how to balance their checkbooks and how to read an editorial in the daily paper,” he said. He called for Christian parents to become much more active in their local public school systems, and said, “We ought not to see the public school system as babysitters or caretakers, or as disciplinarians to handle problems that have not been handled at home.”

Third, Puckett argued that tax credits are fiscally unwise at a time when the federal government is trying to cut costs. He said early cost projections range from $2.7 billion to $7 billion.

Fourth, the idea would polarize communities along religious lines, he said.

Fifth, Puckett said tax credits invite more government intervention in the private sector, because “it is a rule of life. Where government money flows, government intervention follows quickly.”

Responding to Puckett, Skillen said the argument that tax credits harm public schools is similar to arguing that ending slavery in the South was wrong because it harmed the region’s economy. “If the public school system is by its very nature an unjust establishment … then to alter it is essential even if it brings a change in the structure of education,” he said.

In his rebuttal, Puckett repeated his assertion that “public education is not the responsibility of parents, it is the responsibility of citizens.” He defended public schools, saying, “I contend that the failure is not the public school system, the failure is the parents.”

In response to audience questions, most of them critical of public education, Puckett acknowledged the problem of humanistic philosophies that dominate public schools. He said it is wrong to teach evolution without creation, and it is wrong not to teach moral values. He also said morals and common decency can be taught without an explicit religious connection.

Author of the following is Ron Alridge, television critic for the Chicago Tribune. It is reprinted by permission of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Inc.

The Rev. Don Wildmon just won’t go away. The conservative United Methodist minister from Tupelo, Mississippi, who heads the National Federation for Decency, has been ridiculed, ignored, and publicly debated, but somehow he always lands on his feet.

The latest survival exercise came when Wildmon appeared on the popular nationally syndicated “Phil Donahue” talk show, which the minister’s TV-monitoring group has attacked as too sexy.

An unusually large “Donahue” audience was on hand for the taping, mainly because it occurred in Salt Lake City, where fans don’t routinely get a chance to be in the audience and where the arena is larger than the show’s regular studio in Chicago.

Donahue introduced Wildmon politely, urging the audience to make him feel welcome. Wildmon, wading through the applauding crowd to take his place alongside the host, appeared slightly nervous and drawled that he must be crazy to publicly debate such a talented foe. It was the same technique the country slick preacher used to cast himself as the underdog at the outset of last June’s debate with CBS vice-president Gene Mater. Wildmon won that debate—decisively.

This time there was no clear winner, though Wildmon probably gained the most points simply because he didn’t fall on his face. Donahue was firm, but fair. Wildmon was sincere and gentlemanly.

Donahue argued that discussing sexual topics on television is informative and helpful to many people; Wildmon said such discussions often help legitimize what he considers immoral behavior. Donahue chided Wildmon for trying to censor TV; Wildmon said he has no power, only the opportunity to persuade and the right to try. Wildmon defended his threatened boycott of TV sponsors as both American and democratic. Donahue said advertisers were too scared to withstand such pressure.

And so it went, a fencing match between a clever city boy and a clever country boy, with neither side puncturing a vital organ. The audience frequently voted for one man or the other by applause, boos, and hisses. Support seemed evenly divided. It was a good show, and a highly spirited one.

Both men came out looking good, though an on-camera appearance by Donahue’s beautiful, charming wife, Mario Thomas, was a bit much—especially when she talked about what a great guy her beleaguered husband is. Whether intended or not, it smacked of a stunt designed to win sympathy and support for Donahue.

People are forever surprised when Wildmon waltzes through the spotlight of public attention and emerges unscathed. Many people, such as the folks at CBS who dreamed up last June’s disastrous Wildmon-Mater debate, seem to think he is so hickish, so wrong, so ignorant that mere exposure will cause him to dry up and blow away. Previously, the strategy was to ignore him. From time to time, there have been full-scale counterattacks. Nothing has worked.

What Wildmon’s opponents fail to grasp is that he’s surviving, thriving, and gaining influence because he is (a) sincere, (b) smart, and (c) more than a little right.

I’ve had numerous discussions with Wildmon, and I’ve attacked and defended his various actions. Although I have many misgivings about some of his views, I have no doubt that he is a fundamentally decent, well-intentioned man who believes, correctly, that television is a major cultural force in our society. Given a choice between believing Don Wildmon and believing most of the many network executives I’ve met, I would opt for Wildmon.

You may not agree with Wildmon’s moral code, but he has one, and he makes no apologies for it. He thinks sex is a beautiful gift from God that belongs in the marital bed. He objects to drinking and profanity. He cherishes family life, opposes homosexuality, and thinks people should worship God. He claims to love all people, from gays to murderers, but not necessarily their acts. “We’re all God’s children,” he’s fond of saying. Wildmon is that rare breed of Christian fundamentalist who doesn’t seem to have a mean streak.

When Wildmon looks at television, he sees a medium brimming with promiscuity, profanity, violence, alcoholic beverages, and irreverence. Religious people are shown as fools, he asserts, family life is distorted, and traditional Christian values are woefully underrepresented. To those who prescribe the TV set’s off button as a cure for such video ills, Wildmon says that’s like fighting crime in the streets by staying inside. Now here’s what’s important about the assertions in this paragraph: Wildmon is right. And that’s why he won’t go away.

Wildmon has a faith in the masses that lets him believe that one man, speaking out from the obscurity of Tupelo, Mississippi, can make a difference. Like a minister with a calling, he is convinced that he must try. And he is trying, sometimes stubbing his toe along the way, but always trying. He says he doesn’t want to control every show that goes out on the public airwaves, but he would like to have his values represented more fully and fairly by them.

Wildmon has reasoned that commercial television responds only to commercial pressures; that you can’t appeal to a network’s morals but you can appeal to its profits. Therefore, he applies his muscle to advertisers, urging them not to sponsor certain types of programming and threatening to boycott them if they don’t comply. Wildmon notes, again correctly, that boycotts are part of the democratic process. Remember the civil rights boycotts of the 1960s?

Too often, the response to this deceptively complex man has been a simpleminded attack rather than a thoughtful effort to understand and explain him. Wildmon is the leader of an important, perilous, somewhat remarkable social movement. There are reasons he and his movement exist. And neither will disappear until those reasons disappear.