His only props are two logs approximately 17 to 25 inches long and 10 to 18 inches in diameter: he uses them as a seat. His only companions on stage are an imaginary horse and an equally imaginary—and somewhat doltish—companion named Michael. But when Roger Nelson steps forward and begins his 120-minute portrayal of the founder of Methodism, he is John Wesley.

Nelson’s one-man dramatic vehicle, The Man from Aldersgate, is breathing new life into the idea that drama can communicate the gospel. The historical Wesley logged some 250,000 miles on horseback, delivering his message of freedom in Christ; Roger Nelson has logged over 175 performances that proclaim the eighteenth-century English evangelist’s message anew. And this play sends audiences away with the feeling they have met a man, not listened to a legend.

While there may be certain contemporary interest in one-man shows (for example, the currently successful St. Mark’s Gospel with Eric Booth; see CT, June 12, p. 53), the idea of watching and listening to such a performance sounds to some about as exciting as tepid tea. Roger Nelson makes the potion hot and sparkling, neither over- nor underacting the role.

An audience’s first glimpse of Nelson’s reincarnated Wesley is when he makes his way onstage looking—and for all the world sounding—like a man past 70. A colonial, tricorn hat crowns his thick mantle of white hair, completing the period costume. As the old man settles down on his logs and begins to reminisce, one is quickly drawn to a very human personality from an earlier age.

Wesley’s humor, for example, shines through dialogue with the invisible Michael: “Were you quite certain to draw this water upstream from where the horses were drinking and not downstream?… Does it matter?… It matters a great deal to me.… Never mind; I think it would be better if I didn’t know.” You learn something about his family: of 18 siblings, only 8 survived infancy. Of his six surviving sisters, “not one of them made a good marriage.” His impression of the preaching of the day that sought to emulate Lord Chesterfield is dismissed with a delightful example of obtuse Chesterfieldian prose.

The old man’s memories reach back to his childhood escape (at the age of 5½) from death in the manse blaze, calling himself “a brand plucked from the fire.”

But by far the most time is taken in a clear, lucid, and careful explanation of his conversion at the age of 35. Some 80 to 85 percent of the material in the play comes from Wesley’s own writings, and playwright Brad Smith has carefully crafted this section, revealing Wesley’s inner struggles as he recalls his discussions with Moravian Peter Boehler, and culminating with a description of the now-famous meeting in Aldersgate Street when the reading of Martin Luther’s preface to Romans opened the floodgates and he finally saw salvation as an instantaneous work of faith.

Actor Roger Nelson is no amateur. Though he followed other interests after active involvement in high school drama (appearing in five musicals at suburban Chicago’s New Trier High School with fellow student and friend, Ann-Margret), he did not turn to the stage again until after he had earned a B.A. in mathematics, served a hitch as a U.S. Army officer assigned to the Sentinel Project, and spent three years as a civilian mathematician at a military arsenal. But his acting urge was rekindled in 1970 and he moved to New York. There he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and began appearing in stock and repertory as well as off-Broadway productions. His credits include leads in Butterflies Are Free, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Forty Carats, and West Side Story. To supplement his income he also taught at Hunter College (N.Y.) and Fairleigh Dickinson University (N.J.)—and even managed to earn an M.S. in computer science.

In New York he met a man named Paul Moore, then pastor of a church located in what was once a theatrical club to which Nelson had belonged. At Moore’s request, Nelson helped the church develop a theater company, including street theater in Times Square. One night Moore had a dream: in it, Roger Nelson was John Wesley. But the dream was only that until the day Nelson met Brad Smith, a free-lance writer and playwright. Though there were no funds to develop a play to bring the dream to life, Smith accepted the challenge. For the next several months he researched Wesley’s life and writings, and by the fall of 1977 had a completed, two-hour script.

Nelson was excited with the results. He soon began performing bits and pieces of the play at informal gatherings around Colorado Springs, where he had recently relocated. His home church, Winnetka Bible Church near Chicago, also staged an early performance, and since the play was being financed out of Roger’s own pocket, their love offering was welcomed.

The first full-length performance took place in June 1979 at the University of Colorado; now, over two years later, the end is not yet in sight. The largest audience was at the International Sunday School Convention in Detroit a year ago, commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of the Sunday school. Some 5,000 watched a production that even included a live horse for the first time. Fall performances this year include such diverse institutions as the U.S. Air Force Academy and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

When Nelson took the play to a Wisconsin church last fall, he was not expecting to hear the performance followed by an evangelistic invitation. To his utter amazement, 40 people—10 percent of the audience—expressed a desire to receive Christ. Because the play can have that kind of impact, Nelson has no plans at present to quit what is an exhausting pace. Though he did not view the play as an evangelistic tool at the outset, he has become increasingly impressed with the way God can use this simple dramatic vehicle to communicate the gospel.

The play is also giving rise to other dramatic possibilities. The United Methodist Church has discussed with Smith and Nelson the possibility of a filmed version that would coincide with the denomination’s bicentennial in 1984. Smith’s mind is already running to a variety of possibilities that would bring Wesley alive on the screen in a different kind of adaptation. And the success of the Wesley work sent Smith off to research the life of hymnwriter Fanny Crosby. The resulting one-person play uses some 99 percent of Crosby’s own words in a format similar to programs the hymnist presented during her lifetime, as she sang and spoke while seated at a piano. Now if only a producer can emerge with a short, slight actress who can sing and play the piano and …

Nelson and Smith would agree that it was God who brought The Man from Aldersgate into their lives. Perhaps the closing lines Nelson speaks as Wesley are not so coincidental when one contemplates the idea of using drama to witness to others the force of God in one man’s life:

“Here’s a thought before I go that has kept me on the right path for many years now. ‘If we seek God in all things and do all for him, then all things are easy.’ ”

On our daily trips to check on the progress of our new house up the mountain, the children and I noticed a bulge in the pavement. The road was new, and the pavement fresh and unbroken.

What, we wondered, had the nerve and strength to push its way up and through six inches of road binding and four inches of asphalt? Each day the little mound rose noticeably, and the children were full of ideas.

“It’s an oak tree.”

“No. It’s a locust.”

“No, dummy, it’s a walnut.”

“I know,” I heard little Bunny exclaim, “it’s a morning glory—and that’s the glory coming up!”

You see that in people, especially baby believers in Christ. Or perhaps it is just more noticeable in them.

Anyway, Christ’s life comes through. And we, too, can say, “… it’s the glory coming up!”

Southern Baptists

Satellite To Beam To Low-Power Tv Network

Southern Baptists have signed a $2.1 million-a-year contract for use of a space satellite to beam Christian programming over a new television network it is planning. The satellite is to be launched in 1984 by the Southern Pacific Communications Company.

The network is being developed by the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, whose headquarters are in Fort Worth. It has applied to the Federal Communications Commission for 105 “low-power” television stations nationwide, which would make up the network.

Low-power television is a new wrinkle in broadcasting, brought on by the federal government’s fast deregulation of the industry. The FCC tentatively plans to grant licenses for new broadcast stations capable of reaching from 3 to 20 miles, depending on terrain and antenna. The stations will be relatively cheap to operate: experts say a church could go on the air with its own station for about the price of a new parking lot. A station needs no expensive studio, just a videotape machine to broadcast what it wishes, plus a transmitter and antenna.

The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine, which tends to prevent television preachers from blasting away on such controversial topics as homosexuality and abortion, will be relaxed on low-power stations. Neither will there be lengthy and expensive hearings before broadcast licenses are granted. In fact, the FCC essentially intends to grant licenses on a first-come, first-served basis, with preference given to minority and nonprofit enterprises. That decision prompted a stampede about a year ago when the FCC unexpectedly announced it would allow low-power television. More than 5,000 applications have been filed.

The Southern Baptist network will be called ACTS—for American Christian Television System. It hopes to start broadcasting a year from now, eventually going to 12 hours of programs a day. The Baptists expect to offer preaching, Bible teaching, Christian growth shows, children’s entertainment, family programs, talk shows, music and variety specials, situation comedies, drama, sports, and some educational programs. The stations will not appeal for money on the air.

The Baptist Radio and Television Commission will also encourage local Baptist churches to install satellite receiver dishes so they can get ACTS programs for their own use, or where possible to feed it into a local cable TV system.

During a ceremony at which the contract was signed with Southern Pacific, the Baptists made a $175,000 down payment, equivalent to one month’s rental on the satellite. Bailey Smith, president of the 13.6-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, called the ceremony “a significant event in the propagation of the gospel.” The SBC is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Church of England

Bishop Dismayed By Shift To Right

A Church of England bishop has expressed dismay that the moderate party within his denomination is rapidly declining. Says Denis Wakeling, bishop of Southwell: “Central churchmanship, liberal in theology, tolerant in practice, which formed the hard core of Church of England membership … has been virtually eliminated by the idea that we should have ‘convictions’ of the Evangelical or Catholic kind.”

Wakeling, whose diocese includes the industrial city of Nottingham, was not happy about expressing the division as one between radicals and traditionalists. It was, he said in his Southwell Diocesan News, between “those who believe that clear-cut convictions are all important and must be proclaimed, and those who think that truth is less easily defined and is something we seek rather than a sword we brandish.”

In an age when missions are stressed more than mission (“even Billy Graham all over again”), liberal ordinands are being rejected because they are thinkers rather than activists. “Liberal-minded Christians,” asserts the bishop, “actually believe something as much as radicals do; they are not unconvinced or faithless, but just being as honest as they can.”

Turkey

Martial Law Hampers Gospel

The year-old military regime of General Kenan Evren, 62, imposed martial law and a three-hour curfew every night on Turkey. Evren curbed terrorism and inflation, strove to keep Turkey in the community of parliamentary democracies (albeit through a hand-picked constituent assembly), and simultaneously curtailed the abuse of freedom by extremists.

The power of Islam is the single unifying factor in a land that is ethnically and religiously divided. The tiny Christian minority (Syriac, Armenian, Arab Orthodox, Greek, Catholic) is often under attack by fanatical Muslims. At least two Christians leaders are in prison without charges being brought. Christian numbers are diminishing further as members leave the country.

The Evren takeover has hindered rather than helped dissemination of the Christian message. There is, however, a growing interest among university students, and some have recently been converted. Trans World Radio reports its Turkish broadcasts bring correspondence that reflects serious questions.

Two translations of the New Testament are in progress, and publication of these will help communicate the message.

Churches and agencies cooperate in Michigan program.

He didn’t ask, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” But it was obvious he had a hard-luck story. So when he walked into the Wednesday night prayer meeting, defeat tugging down the lines in his face, the brothers responded. They listened to his story, then counseled him into the small hours of morning. Only the love of Christ could heal this man and give him reason to live, for he had just lost his wife and children in a car accident. After a soul-wrenching 5 A.M. conversion, they gave him enough money to go north to the funeral.

The good brothers were had. The man they helped had used the car accident story before. It had worked then, too. He was an experienced panhandler; his special touch, churches.

Something new? Not to Virgil Gulker, director and founder of LOVE, Incorporated, a Holland, Michigan, program that is spreading into communities all over Michigan. In fact, “chronic dependents” are one reason Gulker originated LOVE.

LOVE’s stated purpose is helping needy people. But the way it helps them is by coordinating the efforts of a community’s private and public agencies as well as those of its churches. More specifically, LOVE reduces unnecessary duplication of agency services, develops an inventory of available community resources, increases agency responsiveness to needs making them more accountable to their sources of support, and identifies and screens out chronic dependents.

More than four years ago as director of the Good Samaritan Center in Holland, Gulker visited the area’s service agencies. He asked directors of the City Mission,

Salvation Army, Community Action House, Police Service Unit, and others to give him a list of 12 people they were helping who might be considered chronic dependents. Six agencies listed the same 12 people—convincing evidence that Holland’s helping hands were duplicating efforts and being duped in the process.

Gulker later visited Holland churches, discovering the familiar list of 12 had also done a number on them. The list grew to 80.

“Chronic dependents,” said the soft-voiced, clear-eyed director of LOVE. “I could tell you stories …” He said he ought to write a book on how to get freebies from the churches. “You make the rounds,” he said, “from church to church. You may only get $10 or $15 a stop, but after a while that adds up.”

Gulker said many of these “parasites” actually solicited help alphabetically from churches listed in the Yellow Pages. He always has strong suspicions, he said, about seeing those pages torn out of books in telephone booths.

Gulker worked to entwine Holland’s service agencies into a cooperative, non-duplicating community network that could help the truly needy while screening out roving panhandlers. Their goal was to de-institutionalize people—to urge all families receiving public assistance to become independent of it within a year, and to deny aid to any who would not meet certain self-help conditions such as budgeting, employment, parenting education, or job skills training.

The next phase of Gulker’s program was LOVE, Incorporated. It came about in response to a minister’s embarrassment at how well agencies were working to meet community needs that the churches ought to have been providing. Gulker marked out a four-square-mile area of Holland in zones, assigning responsibility for needs arising out of each zone to churches in that area. Acting on referrals from the Good Samaritan Center, people serving as contacts in 74 churches recruited volunteer help and material assistance from their congregations.

In 1980 alone, more than 377 needs for such services as budget help, baby-sitting, transportation, tax assistance, sign language, tutoring, and hospice care were supplied by LOVE churches. “I am convinced,” said Gulker, “that God will allow no need that Christ’s church does not have the resources to meet.” With gently persuasive sincerity he continued, “The body has all the gifts it needs to minister to its community. The key to changed individuals, even whole communities, is organization.”

Gulker’s talent for organizing is one of many. He came to the Good Samaritan Center with a Ph.D. in English literature and language from the University of Michigan and with six years’ experience in prison work implementing rehabilitation programs like “Books Behind Bars.” He also attended Western Theological Seminary for a year to round out his social concerns with some theology.

Gulker described church volunteers garnered by LOVE’s interdenominational network as a special kind of worker. “Their quality of care is higher,” he explained. “They expect no gain for their efforts. They aren’t paid. They have a selfless attitude, and want to take the time to help.”

At the heart of Gulker’s program is the Family Support System, a unique adoptive care model used by churches to provide residential and supportive services on a contractual basis for high risk, indigent, or abused families. Churches could use this “ministry model” to meet the needs of parolees, probationers, terminal cancer patients, disabled or handicapped persons, senior citizens, and others.

“Within each community one finds at least one church,” says LOVE, “with its own community of caring people who possess all the love, time, resources, and skills required to alleviate most needs. Multiply all those assets in one church by the number of churches in a community and you have created a helping network with the potential to significantly reduce mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. All that is needed then is an organization plan to harness and direct that vast, largely untapped resource.”

LOVE is that plan—for Holland and surrounding communities of Zeeland, Douglas, and Saugatuck that have asked to be included in the program.

How do Holland area pastors regard LOVE? “My thoughts about LOVE,” said C. William Hoesman of Zion Lutheran Church, “are all positive. The strength of this program is that each church is responsible for its own geographical area, keeping it in its own bailiwick to answer to needs.

“Our community has good interdenominational cooperation,” he continued, “and LOVE has certainly fostered this nice atmosphere.”

Pastor Calvin Bolt of Faith Christian Reformed Church said, “LOVE has helped us as churches to coordinate our help within the community. Instead of each church doing its individual program, our efforts are now coordinated.”

Mark Mayou, First Baptist Church pastor, appreciates LOVE because “they have screened requests for help. They know who are professional panhandlers and who really have needs. That’s taken a lot of weight off my mind. I know I have a place to call to check people out who call me for help. And if they really do need help, LOVE can help me channel them to it.”

Mayou has had years of experience with the church freeloader. “I was in South Haven for awhile,” he said, “where there was no organization like LOVE. I really ran into some doozies. I was taken.

“They always call on the weekend,” he said, “late at night when everything’s closed. They ask for food, money, or a place to stay. So you give them a few dollars, and next week you find out you are about the fifteenth place they hit. They make the rounds of all the churches—then go back to a nearby town where they live.

“I’ve never run across anyone like Mr. Gulker before. He’s wise to who really needs help. He uses existing programs, organizing them and centralizing information, to channel requests and refer people to the right place for help.”

Gulker’s LOVE succeeded so well in Holland that 19 other Michigan communities asked for the program. Thus it was that in early 1981 Gulker, “with a dream in his heart, a knot in his stomach, and a step out in faith,” decided to resign from the Good Samaritan Center to take LOVE to other Michigan cities. Flint has already incorporated the program.

President Reagan’s budget cuts forcing cutbacks in federally funded community agencies are a direct mandate to the church; it no longer has the option to care about community needs, said Gulker. “It must care.” Moving forward in his chair with all the optimism and determination of a man who has already found the answer to his own question, he said, “What it must ask now is how it will care.”

North American Scene

An estimated 8,000 people gathered nightly to hear Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau in his first full-scale, bilingual crusade in the U.S., in spite of warnings to San Diego Catholics about the dangers of fundamentalist evangelists. Although Palau, the “Billy Graham of South America,” expressed hope that San Diego would become the spiritual cornerstone of California, he said eight days were simply not enough to reach a city of more than a million people. His recent five-week effort in Glasgow was “more like it,” he said. “You really get a chance to become acquainted with the people and to find out what their problems are.”

If you give money to Maryland’s United Way, none has to go to an agency or beneficiary you disapprove of. Julie Henseley, director of communications for United Way, said complex new computer equipment now makes “donor options” possible. That is all well and good, since Archbishop William Borders urged Catholics to back the United Way’s fund-raising campaign only if contributions could be withheld from Planned Parenthood of Maryland. Said Borders, “Recently, on the local and national levels, Planned Parenthood has begun an active public campaign to lobby for legislation supporting abortion. This aggressive and public advocacy by Planned Parenthood demands a response.”

The cost of reaching the lost has surpassed even “700 Club” show host Pat Robertson’s ability to raise money for the Christian Broadcasting Network. For the first time, CBN will carry commercials, thereby reaching into the marketplace pocketbook for advertising dollars to reach the lost. Companies opting for a piece of the network’s projected audience of 15.5 million homes are Richardson-Vicks, makers of Vicks Ny-Quil, Formula 44, Oil of Olay, and Clearasil; Newsweek, General Mills, Time-Life, and Oscar Mayer.

Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and Jerry Falwell—watch out: the Catholics are coming to television. “With the deregulation of the broadcast industry and the mass purchasing power the electronic church has applied to the broadcast medium,” said Edwin O’Brien, director of communications of the New York archiodcese, “the Catholic church is being effectively shut out of over-the-air broadcasting.” The Roman Catholic church is therefore planning a nationwide television network, with headquarters in New York, that will link parishes, parochial schools, and colleges by satellite and cable. The Catholic network is expected to be operational by 1984.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, said Shakespeare—and the California Supreme Court. Citing separation of church and state, the court ruled it is unconstitutional for the state to lend textbooks to private and parochial schools. Lost is a $3.6 million state program that annually provided 50 percent of textbook needs for participating schools, 90 percent of which are religious. The loan program had been challenged in a suit by the California Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. State officials said they would undertake an immediate review of other programs that involved private schools and students in an effort to see if they might be affected by the court’s decision.

Private charities now can expect an $18 billion drop in donations over the next four years. According to a study by the Urban Institute of Washington, D.C., tax cuts expected to spur investment by upper-income taxpayers, who usually pay some 40 percent of donations to charity, will also reduce their incentive to donate by placing them in lower tax brackets. In addition, what these taxpayers would have paid in taxes they are now able to save, providing even less incentive to give the money away. “It’s a triple whammy against the nonprofit organization,” said Brian O’Connell, president of the Independent Sector, a coalition of 320 foundations that commissioned the study.

The Devil made him do it, say two Connecticut lawyers defending 20-year-old Arne Johnson, accused of first-degree murder. Dubbed “the Brookfield demons” by local residents of the town where the crime occurred, the case has provoked national attention as the first in legal history in which demon possession will be argued as a defense. Johnson’s devils, say his lawyers, descended when he challenged the ones attacking his girlfriend’s 11-year-old brother, David Glatzel, saying, “Take me on instead; come into my body.” It seems they obliged. Murder resulted from his grotesque behavioral change.

Biggest sponsor of troops tells why.

Question: what religious group is the largest sponsor of Boy Scout units in the United States?

Answer: the Mormon church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), with 2.7 million members in the United States, sponsors 17,000 Boy Scout emits. In terms of percentage, the Mormons greatly outnumber the other large religious sponsors of Scout troops. The Roman Catholic church, with 50 million members in the United States, has 11,000 units, and the 9.6-million-member United Methodist church has 10,600 units. (The Catholics and Methodists have more actual boys involved than do the Mormons because their units, while fewer, are larger.) Some 238,000 Mormon boys participate in Scouting, or nearly 1 in every 10 Mormons.

Why the heavy involvement? Robert Backman, president of Young Men for the Mormon Church, said, “the principles that Lord Baden-Powell (founder of Boy Scouts) espoused in the Scouting movement are exactly the principles we want to rear our young boys by. Scouting helps our young men set worthwhile goals and then achieve them. It gives them a sense of their own worth and their ability to do things. It also sets the tone for them to become real Christians when it says ‘do a good turn daily.’ Which is the basis of Christianity, really,” he added. “You know—do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Contrary to Back-man’s statement, the Mormon church is far removed from Christianity, and the Golden Rule is not the basis of Christian belief.)

Can Boy Scout troops become religious tools for proselytizing boys into Mormonism? “Oh, yes,” Backman said. “Definitely. The last statistic we had said 10 percent of our [Scouts] are not members of our church. And we naturally have a number of converts by virtue of that exposure.”

Backman said the Mormon church is unique in that it is “very centrally governed.” Because of that “we simply ask our congregations to use Scouting as an activity for our boys, and have almost a complete saturation of our congregations who are involved in Scouting.”

The LDS has been deeply involved with Boy Scouts almost from the time the program was introduced from England into the United States. “In 1910 Scouting came to America,” said Backman, “and in 1913 the Mormon church became one of the first principal partners of the Boy Scouts of America.” Backman himself is a member of the national executive board of the Boy Scouts.

Scouting coincides neatly with a Mormon boy’s progression through the stages of Mormon priesthood. Every boy is encouraged to become a Scout at age 12, the year he automatically enters the priesthood as “Deacon.” When he reaches age 14, he enters Varsity Scouting and acquires the title of “Teacher.” At age 16 he becomes an Explorer Scout and receives the full title of “Priest.” From there he voluntarily enters the LDS missionary force for two years.

Scouting also helps prepare Mormon boys for missionary work. “We have about 30,000 young people out on the mission field all the time,” said Backman, “and we have discovered that the vast majority of them have had Scouting in their background.” He said Scouting helps develop qualities such as self-management, self-confidence, selflessness, and serving others, which are helpful for mission work.

Joseph Kessler, director of religious relationships for the Boy Scouts of America, said the Mormon church was a large sponsor of Scouting because “it’s a good program which helps the LDS do what they wish to accomplish with their youth.” He said, “Scouting is accepted by Mormon church officials as an outstanding youth program they can interlace with their religious theme.”

He confessed a touch of uneasiness about the Mormon use of Scouting as a religious tool, though. He said, “You know, I guess any other church would say Scouting prepares young people for life or society in general today without coming right out and saying it helps make missionaries of them.”

Is it proper for Scout units to become religious tools for bringing boys into the Mormon faith?

“Any type of religious organization can charter a Boy Scout unit,” said Kessler. “But if a boy joins that unit from another church it should be made known that the unit is chartered by a particular religious denomination, and that some of the things they would be discussing would perhaps be apropos only to that particular denomination.”

He said, “If a boy is of one denomination, he stays with that denomination. You don’t earn a merit badge in someone else’s church tenets. You have to practice what you are. Scouts should help boys become better members of their own denominations.”

But then he added, “Of course, if the boy becomes a convert to the other church, that’s a different story.…”

World Scene

A grant of $920 made by the British Council of Churches to a black citizens rights group in racially tense Liverpool has led to civic and police charges of financing “urban terrorism.” A council spokesman responded that such gifts were an expression of Christian love.

Pastor Dmitri Vasilievich Minyakov was sentenced to five years in a strict regime labor camp and confiscation of all his personal property by a court in Tallin, Estonia. Further, the court placed Minyakov’s 15-year-old son in a special boarding school where he would be forbidden to pray and to have a Bible, would be educated along atheistic lines, and could even be deprived of any communication with his family. Western concern reportedly influenced court officials to drop charges of treason and to deal only with the religious activities of the pastor, who is a member of the Council of Evangelical Christian Baptist Churches in the USSR.

The Church of England is “not against” girls under the age of 16 going on the pill or being given contraceptive advice. So says a booklet published by the church’s Children’s Society. This, adds booklet author and society chaplain John Bradford, might even be without parental knowledge. Calling the booklet “shattering,” Exeter physician Adrian Rogers opposes the practice, commenting, “Where else does one turn in our society for firm moral principles, if not to the Church of England?”

Personalia

Charles L. Allen, pastor of the 11,000—member First Methodist Church of Houston, Texas, was named Clergyman of the Year by Religious Heritage of America. The United Methodist minister has been a radio broadcaster for 32 years and is author of more than 30 books.

“Lutheran Hour” program manager Elmer J. Knoernschild, 67, who has been in religious broadcasting 47 years, has announced his retirement. The “Lutheran Hour” is broadcast weekly over more than 1,200 radio stations in the United States and Canada. Knoernschild’s successor is Ken Roberts.

Waldron Scott, former general secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship, is the new president of American Leprosy Mission. ALM is the oldest charitable agency in the U.S., serving leprosy patients worldwide. It aids hundreds of thousands of leprosy patients in hospital centers and clinics in 19 countries.

Formulate strategy for Third World countries.

Christian scholars from around the world met at Dordt College last August to develop a response to Marxism and neo-Marxism, especially in the context of Third World countries. The meeting was the Third International Conference for Institutions of Christian Higher Education (ICICHE). Reformed colleges and seminaries from 20 countries were officially represented.

The keynote speaker was Sander Griffioen of the Free University in Amsterdam, who presented the challenge of Marxist and neo-Marxist ideologies for Christian scholarship. He recognized the need to address both orthodox Marxism-Leninism, which is in control in the Soviet Union, and the various schools of neo-Marxism that appear in western Europe and the Third World. He contended that Marx underestimated the importance of economic life, locating the “good life” outside the economic realm. “There is no sense of stewardship, of pride of one’s own work, of the joy of harvest,” in Marxism structure, Griffioen contended. Nor has a century of Marxism made innovative contributions to the restructuring of the economic order. Even today, Marxist nations are being forced to adopt a modified capitalism.

Marxism has an optimistic view of man, untainted by the Fall. Consequently, said Griffioen, it views the individual without need of intermediate structure. As a result, “in Communist society, individuals are left behind without protection over against a state and a party not bound by laws, without the shelter of independent trade unions and other associations.” The cult of man for himself thus has left the individual exposed and unprotected.

Central in Marxian philosophy is a certain inevitability of the historical movement toward the Communist state. Yet, its view of human nature again is important. Griffioen countered that “Marx’s optimism is founded on the assumption that the drama of history leaves man’s creative nature intact. He never seems to face up to the corrupting effects evil has had on human nature.” Rather, the Christian is called to affirm the fact that God is upholding creation and guiding history for his purpose. Only at the religious level can Marxism be adequately understood.

James Skillen of Dordt College, who presented a specific Christian response to the Marxist challenge, said Christians need to be concerned for social justice as well as evangelism. Emphasizing either without the other makes for an unscriptural dichotomy. Evangelicals concerned for social justice need to see that persons are not destroyed or treated inhumanly. This principle was applied elsewhere in the conference to apartheid in the Republic of South Africa and to the terrorism of both right and left in some areas of Latin America.

Social justice has an eschatological dimension, Skillen explained; it points to the final judgment against injustice. In that context, Marxism uses the revolution as the eschatological moment in which all inequities are righted. Marxism replaces the Christian message that God will step decisively into history to judge man at the Day of Judgment by inserting in its place a transformation of society within history.

Ideology Of Liberation

Another facet of the Marxist challenge to Christianity, the theology of liberation, was examined by C. René Padilla, director of Ediciones Certeza in Buenos Aires. Seeing liberation theology in the context of the Marxist challenge is a result of its emphasis on the historical custom of doing theology. The historical situation is the starting point for theological reflection. In turn, it takes on ideological forms. The Marxist sociology, including the notion that poor are poor because the rich exploit them, is taken as axiomatic.

Padilla reminded the conference that Christians need to articulate their faith in the same context of repression, poverty, and hopelessness that spawned liberation theology. He asserted that theology should not be the exclusive domain of the philosophical and academic reflections of the few. It needs rather to respond to the needs of individuals in their specific situations. To accept the validity of the challenge of the liberation theologians does not mean one must become a Marxist; evangelicals should be stirred by the Marxist invectives against injustice. Evangelicals, in rejecting liberation theology, need not be isolated from historical reality.

The conference also considered the church in Poland and in Communist China. Alice-Catherine Carls, of Sterling College, said two challenges face the church in Poland. The more important challenge is the one from the government, with the second coming from revisionists and dissidents whose leftist views oppose the social doctrine of the church. The church has retreated from neither of these.

Jonathan T’ien-En Chao, director of the Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong, explained that there are three major political institutions in China: the party, the state, and the army. The real political power, however, resides in the party. Consequently, the party expects the church to comply with its requirements, so while, for example, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement is technically independent of the state, it is not free from party control. In spite of both strong party sanctions to restructure the church and rampant past persecution, the church in China is growing significantly.

Three proposals were adopted at the conference. The first expressed solidarity with the Polish people and pledged to generate an awareness of the situation and to lend all appropriate support. The second called upon and encouraged the South African Christians to work for justice for all racial groups, to dismantle the present system in institutionalized racial discrimination, and to reconcile and unify the people. The third proposal took the form of a letter to President Reagan, begging him to “take seriously the cries of Latin America’s oppressed peoples …” and “cease sending aid and arms to the governments of countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador.”

The conference statement declared that Christian scholars, while “continually challenged to self-criticism,” have a responsibility to educate the Christian community about the unchristian meaning and dangerous impact of Marxism in the contemporary world and to “speak prophetically on behalf of those for whom few speak about the problems of poverty, wealth, injustice, and oppression.” They must face the question of socioeconomic development and the need for critical examination of capitalism, and they must strive toward better international channels of communication.

HADLEY MITCHELL

Beyond Ideology

Thielicke Questions Wcc’S Political Judgment

Eminent German theologian Helmut Thielicke is the latest to join the ongoing controversy about World Council of Churches policies. He asserts that the 300-member body has “identified itself with certain political ideas and systems” in the last two decades, and in particular has “allowed subversive movements to be legitimated through the gospel.”

Writing a foreword to the German version of Amsterdam to Nairobi by Ernest W. Lefever, Thielicke points out that the church is not just a comforter of those suffering under unjust rule, but also has the task of monitoring “unjust societal structures.” Nevertheless, it must take care not to be equated with an ideology and should not itself become the subject of revolutions. There could be situations in which Christians decide upon a course of “active opposition,” but never the church or the wcc.

Thielicke does not question the Christian motivation of the council, but detects a slide toward “sympathy for Marxist revolutionary groups” and increasing subjection to “Marxist programs.” Anyone who treads on such ground should not be surprised that slowly but surely Jesus was reduced to a “bare principle” of love. The Hamburg theologian goes on to question the political understanding of the WCC staff. One could only wonder at a church institution straying “from the parental home of the gospel into the foreign land of an ideological charm.”

Latest defections over World Service dues.

Exodus is not only the second book in the Bible. It has long been a characteristic of Methodism. In England, Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, split from evangelist George Whitefield over the issue of Calvinism. In America, Methodists throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen friends and relatives departing into breakout denominations: Methodist Protestant, 1830; Wesleyan, 1833; Methodist Episcopal, South, 1844; Free Methodist, 1860; Nazarene, 1907; Southern Methodist, 1940; Evangelical Methodist, 1946; Evangelical Church of North America, 1968.

In addition to spinning off whole new denominations, mainline Methodism, now called the United Methodist Church (UMC), has been sloughing off new congregations at an increasing rate, contributing to the slow, steady decline of mainline Methodism that began in the mid-sixties. United Methodist membership in 1980 stood at 9.5 million, down from nearly 11 million in the early sixties.

Most recently, congregations have been leaving the denomination as pastors and members return to the biblical roots of Methodism. Others have left because of charismatic movement influence. The following six churches all pulled out of Methodism this year:

• In Peterborough, New Hampshire, some 120 members quit the local UMC church this spring. They formed Trinity Evangelical Church under the leadership of Ronald R. Pinard, who left the denomination with them. Now their weekly worship attendance averages 175, and is growing. Within one year they plan to affiliate with a compatible denomination. They left, said Pinard, after UMC Bishop George W. Bashore told the church it had to pay its World Service apportionment in spite of reservations voiced by church members. Religious News Service reported, “The parishoners objected to church money allegedly being sent to Marxist-oriented activist and guerrilla groups.”

• In Poneto, Indiana, a new congregation known as The Sonlight Wesleyan Church began April 26. A group of dissatisfied members and their pastor left the Petroleum United Methodist Church. The new congregation has approximately 250 worshipers each Sunday, said Ray Cale, former UMC layman now active in the new church. Attendance at the old church was about 60 or 70, he said. It used to be around 310. The infant congregation affiiliated immediately with the Wesleyan denomination. “Our main thrust is soul saving,” said Cale.

• In Kearney, Missouri, Christ Wesleyan Fellowship started May 17. According to Dale Taff, a 30-year Methodist who was among the 15 families who left the local UMC congregation to establish the new church, they are searching for a pastor and property to build on.

“We didn’t want to leave Methodism,” he said. “But we told our district superintendent that we had problems of conscience about paying what the denomination set for World Service dues from our church. He told us we had to pay or leave. He also told us the UMC Discipline [church law] is above the Bible.”

• In Monroe, North Carolina, Pentecost Sunday saw the first worship service of Unity Christian Fellowship. Pastor of the new church is ex-United Methodist Bill E. Poole. He pastored two UMC churches in the vicinity and left the denomination “with about two families from each parish.” Unity Christian Fellowship has quickly attracted worshipers from varied religious backgrounds, he said. Now an average of 50 people meet for worship and Sunday school in an office building owned by one of the church members.

• In Saint Joseph, Missouri, Pastor Forrest B. Williams left the Deer Park United Methodist Church with a number of members to form a new church. In a congregational letter dated August 26, 1981, Williams announced he had quit the denomination voluntarily after informing the bishop and cabinet of changed viewpoints which, all agreed, said Williams, “would make his continuance and that of like-minded church members impossible.”

• In Perryopolis, Pennsylvania, “the church at Strickler’s” meets in an auction barn. It was formed early this year when two young pastors, both graduates of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, were removed from their six churches, then excommunicated by the bishop and elders of the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference of the UMC (CT, April 10, p. 60, and July 17, p. 82). Ordered out of their parishes, Alex Ufema II and John Finkbeiner, Jr., began worshiping as “Methodists in exile” with almost 100 members of their former congregations.

The two clerical expatriates were denied a church trial. The reason for their ouster, the two men believe, was their unwillingness to urge church members to pay World Service.

Following A Trend

The trend in church pullouts had already begun in 1978. Christ’s Church, for example, began in 1979 when a group left the large UMC church in Arlington, Texas. Friction over use of official UMC Sunday school literature plus deep-rooted theological differences caused the split, said Ron Hanna, an American Airlines pilot. He left the UMC to become a charter member of the new congregation, which worships in a motel setting and has about 220 adult members.

A shopping center houses Church of the Savior, which broke away from the local UMC in Mathews, North Carolina. Since April 1980, membership has reached 130, said C. E. Strickland, pastor of the new group.

“Since we left the UMC our people have a stronger sense of personal responsibility for the church and its ministry,” Strickland said. “In the UMC, many people and pastors develop a passive dependency on the system. We can’t praise God enough for our new freedom!”

In June 1978, about 300 people left the 1,200-member First United Methodist Church in Loveland, Colorado, with their pastor, Glenn Brown. The Church of the Good Shepherd now numbers about 440 members.

“God’s hand was in the formation of this new church,” said Brown. “Now there seems pretty basic consensus on the things that really matter. We are united as a church in our desire for salvation-centered missions. Social issues are involved, but on a secondary basis. Now we are free to be led by God’s spirit.”

Richard M. Sprague, pastor of the Asbury Covenant Church in Tavares, Florida, retired out of United Methodism—into a new church and denomination. After 20 years as a UMC pastor, he left in 1978 because, “… the UMC has left us and a high percentage of its people as it moves to the liberal left, wasting time with ERA, gays, World Council, et cetera, et cetera.” So he founded a new church, affiliating with the Evangelical Covenant denomination. “We feel very fortunate and blest to be part of a Bible-believing and warm-hearted evangelical group,” he commented. Asbury’s weekly worship attendance averages 120, with up to 750 people during the winter tourist season.

Another Florida pastor who moved out of United Methodism is John B. Bass. In 1973 he left the denomination of his Methodist fathers—his great-great grandfather was Methodist Bishop James O. Andrew—to become pastor of the Church of North Dade in North Miami. Since then the church has affiliated with the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana.

One of the best known orthodox preachers in United Methodism left in 1978. His departure had a “ripple effect,” with at least three other split-out congregations drawing guidance from Roy C. Putnam, pastor of Trinity Church, Greensboro, North Carolina.

As a young Methodist preacher in 1955, Putnam founded Trinity Methodist Church in Greensboro. Its nucleus was new converts from a Billy Graham crusade. The church became one of the most vital in the Western North Carolina United Methodist Annual Conference.

But in 1978, 320 of its members turned their backs on a church built with their own money. They bought a synagogue in Greensboro and invited Putnam to become their pastor.

The split was the result of growing realization, in the words of one leading layman, that “we want to be a scriptural church and United Methodist affiliation seems to be more of a liability than an asset.” The breaking point came when United Methodist Bishop L. Scott Allen refused the leaders of the church a voice in who would become their new pastor (Putnam was scheduled to be moved to another appointment after 23 years at Trinity). Trinity Church, no longer United Methodist, now has 475 members and is growing steadily.

Putnam is uneasy about remaining without denominational affiliation. He said several people have suggested the need for some sort of federation for groups and churches leaving mainline churches.

A highly publicized church split occurred early in 1980 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Worth Gibson, a known charismatic, was suddenly ordered to move to another church after serving over 10 years as pastor of the local 1,600-member UMC church. He felt no leading to move. So he and his two associate ministers, together with about 300 members of his congregation, quit the denomination to establish Trinity Church.

A church trial in 1979 led to the excommunication of David Whitington, pastor of Minter’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Grapevine, Texas. The ire of the hierarchy was aroused, Whitington told the Dallas Morning News, because he showed two motion pictures in his church, The New World, featuring Hal Lindsey, and Rapture, by David Wilkerson. “Rev. Jack Riley, superintendent of the Brownwood District … was very emphatic about not wanting any ‘Dallas Theological Seminary charismatic stuff in his district,” Whitington said.

United Methodist Bishop W. McFerrin Stowe ordered Whitington to move to a different church. Because the congregation wanted him to stay as their pastor, Whitington said no. This led to his ouster from the denomination—and the birth of Christ Our King Church.

The largest congregation known to have quit United Methodism since 1978 is the Red Lion Evangelistic Association in Bear, Delaware. It began in May 1978, when 506 members of the Red Lion United Methodist Church voted to leave.

The rupture developed as leaders of the Red Lion congregation became aware of denominational support for abortion, liberation theology, and new morality standards. They were particularly upset with the UMC’s unwillingness to reject the idea that practicing homosexuals should be kept out of the clergy.

The Red Lion church was running three services each Sunday and had to build. But Red Lion leaders, including the Rev. Irv Pusey, questioned the wisdom of spending millions of dollars on new facilities—only to find that living with the denomination (which owned the property) was impossible. So the majority decided to leave. “It was the crunch of ownership of this property that made us face up to the fact our theological differences were going to catch up with us and we would be without a church,” Pusey told Newscope, the denomination’s newsletter.

Today, Red Lion Evangelistic Association has 1,000 members.

A graph of the congregation’s giving would “go way off the top of the chart,” said Pusey. “Before we left the United Methodist denomination, our people were giving about $2,000 per week. As soon as we declared our independence, giving climbed to $4,500 per week. Now it is $7,000 per week not including more than $50,000 given annually to missions, $150,000 for the Christian school, and $12,000 annually to support our radio gospel outreach on three stations.”

How are United Methodist church officials responding to the latest exodus of churches from the fold, particularly those leaving in protest over payment of World Service funds? “I am not aware of any churches actually leaving the denomination over this,” said Bishop Ellis Finger, president of UMC’s Council of Bishops. “Some members have left, but as far as churches or actual congregations leaving, it’s more a matter of individual action rather than congregational action.”

He continued, “There are as many as 40,000 different congregations in the United Methodist Church, and of these, only one or two where an appreciable number of a given congregation have chosen to leave a particular parish church. These instances, however, have been very minuscule.”

Fingers said UMC church members had freedom to continue their involvement in the church or to discontinue it. “The church is eager to maintain its interpretive ministries to all its constituencies,” said the bishop, “particularly the world ministries of the church supported by the World Service Fund. There are differences of opinion among the membership at times, however, as to the use of some of these funds. That’s not unexpected in a church as large as the United Methodist Church with a constituency that does have diversity within its ranks.

“But the decisions as to how the World Service funds are deployed,” he said, “are reached by representatives of all of the annual conferences who are involved in these decisions. There is an appreciable amount of democratic procedure and precedent for these decision-making entities.”

Houston’s Bishop Finis Crutchfield, president-designate of the Council of Bishops, said he knew about people and churches that had quit paying their money to World Service, but did not know of any churches that had withdrawn from the UMC denomination because of that issue.

He said he knew little about churches outside of Texas (“I’m not president yet, but president-designate”). As for churches in his own state, he said, “No churches in the Texas conference have withdrawn from the denomination, and I don’t believe any will. They’re too loyal for that. Eighteen congregations have pinpointed what they consider to be the problem and have quit paying their World Service funds, but nobody’s withdrawing.”

Crutchfield added, “I can understand those congregations that in loyalty want to make their point by not supporting programs they cannot in good conscience support. But to withdraw? It’s a cowardly thing to withdraw.”

CHARLES KEYSOR

E. V. Hill knows where the money is.

People usually think of south central Los Angeles as the site of the Watts riots or police shootouts with the Symbionese Liberation Army, not as home of the World Christian Training Center (WCTC). The center’s sign barely stands out among liquor stores and dry cleaners. Once inside, however, it is clear this is more than another storefront mission. It is the high command post for E. V. Hill’s war on poverty.

As pastor of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Hill has definite evangelistic ideas concerning the needs of the poor. “Those who will save the city are not the politicians, the educators, the media, the police, the businessmen or the man in the street,” he says, “but the Christian.”

Established in 1970, Hill’s WCTC has as its goal the “salvation of the city.” It offers a basic ten-week program in Christian doctrine and personal evangelism in courses taught by staff or visiting specialists. Graduates become “block workers” who strive to win their entire block for Christ. In addition to this basic program, a number of others now flourish.

The only WCTC program to use government funds, hence the most controversial, is the center’s Work Experience Program.

Funded by a CETA grant (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act), the program evaluates, trains, and places youths from 16 to 21 years who are high school dropouts, ex-offenders of the law, gang members, or handicapped. Now in its third year, the program has placed hundreds of area youths in jobs or back in school, and boasts a placement rate higher than other CETA projects.

William Seitz, the center’s executive director, said “they [the government] didn’t want to give this program to the WCTC because they said the church couldn’t handle it. Initially, they gave us a terrible rating and recommended funding of only 30 percent.” But Hill’s close association with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley eventually helped them land the grant. One hundred percent funding was promised if they could place 15 of the first 50 youths. They placed 37. Seitz said WCTC is one of the only CETA groups that “knows where the money is.” He sees public officials as divided over the program; one group wants to continue the funding based on its success, another wants to “finish it off because it is proving them wrong.”

Although teaching of Christianity is not allowed, staff personnel claim dedicated Christian instructors make a real impact with their personal interest in individuals.

The center’s $408,000 CETA grant runs out September 30, mainly due to Reagan’s budget cuts, but the city of Los Angeles has promised continued funds, WCTC also seeks funds from local industries and business to help train people.

In cooperation with the courts, the center offers the Volunteer Action Center, a referral service allowing offenders to do community work instead of serving jail sentences.

That deteriorating neighborhoods might fall victim to demolition with further displacement of the poor was the concern that launched Operation Looking Good. With the help of this community clean-up project, numerous houses have been painted and hundreds of trees planted. Workers in the program direct residents to available city funds for community improvement projects. Other social programs include ministries in convalescent homes, on skid row, and in prisons. In most of these the WCTC cooperates with existing organizations and churches. The center also helped send 200 children to camp this summer.

Two new programs in the works concern youth gangs—a big issue in Los Angeles—and the deaf. The state of California recently denied funding for the center’s gang program, but is currently reviewing their program for the deaf. Director Seitz feels the deaf are often bewildered by the red tape of state programs and would like to use the WCTC as a one-stop referral service.

A new addition to Bible-related spiritual programs are WCTC’s university extension courses. College-credit Bible courses taught by Fuller Theological Seminary and Biola University staff will be offered at the center at reduced prices. And plans are being made to expand the entire WCTC concept to other major cities, including Dallas and Cleveland.

In waging war on poverty, E. V. Hill has managed to violate every orthodoxy of liberal poverty fighters. He is a man of humble beginnings from the South who personally nominated Martin Luther King for leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Yet he has outraged black and white liberals by heading Black Clergy for Reagan. Critics who deride Reagan as antipoor do not bother Hill at all. “It was necessary to elect Ronald Reagan,” he said. His only reservation is the administration’s somewhat slow response to suggestions for a task force on poverty. Reagan did offer Hill the post of chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, but he turned it down, feeling he could be more effective in other areas.

Defending his conservative approach, Hill said, “White liberals have used us more than they have helped us.” Even though they “marched and wept with us in the South, they also were not totally honest. They left with the jobs and the power.”

Real antagonism, Hill insists, stems from the fact that he has insider’s knowledge about how to help the poor. He told about a white liberal woman on one of Mayor Bradley’s poverty commissions who stridently advised him what black people needed. Hill suggested she ask him what blacks need: “I’ve been one all my life,” he said.

Hill’s double-edged comments thrill conservatives and chill liberals. “Capitalism is the right way, the biblical way,” he says. “Democracy cannot work if half the people decide to freeload. Government is not our great white hope.” Hill easily sheds the criticism these statements elicit and is respected even by those who differ with him because of his “poverty credentials” and impressive record.

Some Christians have criticized Hill recently because of his association with Moral Majority. Although he was raised to hate white conservatives because they were “bigots and ku-cluckers,” Hill has found through personal experience that this was not so. He says Falwell’s church and college have numerous black students and members. And a group of students from Falwell’s college spent this past summer working in the ghetto with Hill’s evangelism program. Hill explains his Moral Majority ties by saying, “Anyone who calls for biblical morality will catch it from everybody.”

Hill’s ability to secure cooperation and funds from white evangelicals for work among ghetto poor has, without doubt, been his biggest coup so far. He works with Billy Graham, Bunker Hunt, Bill Bright, and Stan Mooneyham in a situation that is “totally open.” His concern is that white evangelicals “put as much into the ghetto as they have into foreign missions.”

Hill has myriads of programs and successes in his wake. But he has not lost his first love, which he says is “telling people how to be saved.” Neither does Hill feel he is one of a kind. Are there other younger black pastors on the rise who think like he does, loving the gospel and the poor? Hill says without hesitation, “The woods are full of them.”

Decide to back Reagan for the long race.

Religious and political leaders of the antiabortion movement are usually pictured as stiff-backed moralists, unwilling to learn patience and unable to learn the complexities of Washington politics. They campaigned heartily for Ronald Reagan last year, but columnists predicted they would turn their backs on him the moment he failed to keep them appeased.

Reagan’s nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court left them confused and bewildered. Reagan the candidate personally and repeatedly pledged himself to the notion that unborn life is sacred, and O’Connor, as a state senator in Arizona during the early seventies, left a definite mark as a pro-abortionist.

Prolife leaders gathered in Dallas September 3, a week before Senate confirmation hearings were to begin in Washington on O’Connor’s nomination, to proclaim their chagrin and do what little they could to fight the confirmation. It became clear during the long day of speeches and sermonizing that whatever their hopes for defeating O’Connor, the prolifers were not yet ready to give up on Ronald Reagan. It was the day’s most surprising development.

“Ronald Reagan is the greatest president we’ve had in my lifetime, and history may record that he’s the greatest president ever,” declared evangelist Jerry Falwell. Falwell promised Reagan he would withhold all comment on O’Connor until after the confirmation hearings. He turned down repeated opportunities provided by the press to denounce Reagan because of O’Connor.

When Carolyn Gerster, an Arizona physician and long-time leader in the prolife movement, met with candidate Reagan early in his campaign, he convinced her of his commitment against abortion. The interview led her organization, the National Right to Life Committee, to endorse him for president. During the Dallas rally, she spoke heatedly against the O’Connor nomination, but she was steadfast in her belief in Reagan. She believes Reagan was misinformed about O’Connor’s abortion record, either by O’Connor herself, or by a Justice Department staff member who researched her record.

There is widespread belief among anti-abortion leaders that the latter is the case. Last summer, Kenneth Starr, a young counselor to Attorney General William French Smith, was asked to research O’Connor’s abortion record. He sent Smith a memo (later leaked to the press) that mentioned O’Connor’s involvement in several abortion-related pieces of legislation. The memo downplayed O’Connor’s connection with these, however, and appeared to give her a clean bill of health. But closer examination of the legislation by the antiabortion leaders indicated O’Connor’s rather firm support of abortion on demand.

In a letter to a Chicago resident who complained about the O’Connor appointment, Reagan said, “Mrs. O’Connor has assured me of her personal abhorrence for abortion.” He thus maintained that his selection of O’Connor was proper. During the Dallas rally, Gerster declared that the phrase “personally opposed” or “personally abhorrent” should be stricken from the vernacular because many politicians, including President Jimmy Carter, have used it to keep prolifers at bay while acting contrarily on legislation. Gerster and other Dallas speakers made it clear that what politicians believe personally about abortion is inconsequential. What matters is how they act in their official capacities.

One of the few voices of moderation heard at the rally was that of Paul Weyrich, executive director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, and one of the central figures of the New Right. He told about 6,000 in the Dallas Convention Center that some in the movement have spoken too stridently, and urged all to gird themselves for a long, tough fight to eradicate abortion. He said, “Many people who worked in the campaigns and who voted, perhaps for the first time in their lives, for Republican candidates [last November] falsely believed that when the election results were in, the battle was over. In fact, it had just begun.”

Weyrich said some congressional candidates who won election with support from the prolife groups were sincere at the time in their conservative social positions. They find, however, now that they are in Washington, that “it just isn’t socially acceptable to be identified with these sorts of issues.” He said others who were elected by riding the New Right bandwagon never intended to follow through in the first place.

The Dallas rally was organized by the Roundtable, a consortium of conservative religious leaders headed by former Colgate-Palmolive executive Ed McAteer. On the surface, the voices in Dallas were united; but underneath, grumbling was heard. Falwell, for one, had promised to come to Dallas only under the agreement that the rally would not become the anti-O’Connor harangue it was. Falwell had taken seriously his promise to the president to hold fire until the Senate hearings were over, because the secular press erroneously tends to lump all participants in the New Right under Falwell’s Moral Majority label. Falwell’s assistants were busy collecting tapes of everything Falwell said throughout the day just in case they need to prove that Falwell kept his commitment.

The Dallas rally showed that although the prospect of Sandra O’Connor on the high court was personally abhorrent to just about everybody who marches under the prolife banner, the movement’s leaders were determined to believe the best about Ronald Reagan. They were not ready to cut themselves off from his administration, which, until this baffling nomination, has seemed so genuinely at one with them. The real value of the rally was to keep Reagan’s feet to the fire so that he will pay more attention to the heat when the next Supreme Court vacancy occurs.

Attempts to suppress reports of scandal fail.

King of all the religious publishers in Nashville is the sprawling Southern Baptist Sunday School Board (BSSB). It has 1,500 employees, provides annually 164 million pieces of literature to 35,000 Southern Baptist churches, and operates 65 bookstores and two national conference centers on an annual, self-supporting budget of $109 million. It is a far cry from 1891 when board founder J. M. Frost set up shop with one desk in a friend’s office.

After surviving financial crises, doctrinal disputes, and civil-rights quarrels, the Southern Baptists’ most powerful agency has been shaken by a sensational trial, resulting from a $1.5 million suit brought by former personnel officer Donald Sloan Burnett. He charged the BSSB with assault and battery, wrongful discharge, gross negligence, outrageous conduct, false arrest, imprisonment, and defamation. After two weeks of eyebrow-lifting testimony, a jury in Judge Joe Loser’s Third Circuit Court in Nashville awarded Burnett a $400,000 judgment against the board on defamation. Judge Loser threw out the other charges, and subsequently reduced the judgment to $60,000. This was accepted on September 1 by Burnett, who could not afford the money for and was unwilling to suffer the anguish of a protracted new trial.

In trial testimony, scores of board personnel were named in allegations of sexual and financial misconduct and neglect of duties. Burnett charged that board officials had tried to have him committed to a mental hospital. The jury verdict centered on alleged defamation by BSSB president Grady Cothen in a chapel talk to board employees in which he tried to explain the bungled commitment attempt. Most of the crucial events happened in July and August of 1976.

Burnett, an Oklahoman, had dropped out of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville because of his wife’s health, and thereafter pastored a Nashville church and worked at the municipal library. In 1967 he worked in the board’s church library department, and in 1968 became an employment representative, recruiting for the board on Baptist seminary and college campuses and speaking in chapel services. In July 1976, at age 37, he was earning $18,000 a year and had been praised in an employee publication.

By this time, Burnett testified, he had become “alarmed at the number of divorces and the number of persons who had resigned in what I thought were unusual circumstances,” and at reports from women who said they had been sexually harassed by male superiors.

Early in July, Burnett talked to De-Vaughn Wood, vice-president for finance, and his complaints were relayed to William O. Thomason, executive vice-president, and to Cothen. Burnett’s charges had specifically mentioned Wayne Chastain, director of the management services division, and various women employees. Burnett urgently sought a meeting with Cothen, a former college and seminary president, and executive director of the Southern Baptist General Convention of California before joining the board in 1974. Burnett, by Cothen’s remembrance, said he was under surveillance by unnamed parties and feared he might be “framed” or “ambushed.” They met at Cothen’s house, and Cothen taped the conversation.

Burnett reported his suspicions of wrongdoing. He suggested there might even be two-way mirrors in some bathrooms. But he gave no “specific” evidence, and said, according to Cothen, “God has given me dreams and visions,” and that he was “God’s person to clean out the board.” Cothen arranged with Burnett for the president’s office to receive any further information. Burnett agreed that Thomason also should be kept informed. A former board editor of a parents’ magazine, Thomason held a doctorate in psychology and counseling from Southwestern Baptist Seminary.

Burnett testified that following his initial meeting with Cothen, he heard that Thomason was involved with two women in the board’s employ. When he told two associates he intended to give this and other details on wrongdoing to Cothen, they strongly advised against it, citing Thomason’s alleged previous involvement in moral problems. “I knew then,” recalled Burnett on the stand, “that I had put my head in a noose.”

During the next few days, a series of frightening events occurred that made Burnett feel his life was in danger. Clicking noises made him suspect his phone was tapped. A neighbor reported a prowler outside Burnett’s home. He became sick while eating pizza at a country club, and thought someone had tried to poison him. While Burnett and his wife were vacationing at Sea Island, Georgia, Burnett learned that a Robert Jackson—the name of the board’s photographer—from Nashville was registered at the hotel. He concluded that his enemies had tried to photograph him in a compromising position (it was a different Robert Jackson). Burnett saw a further attempt to entrap him when at the hotel a woman engaged him in “almost intimate conversation.”

Returning to Nashville much disturbed, he recounted the latest incidents to Cothen, and said he was carrying a gun. Burnett spoke of God commanding Ezekiel to kill 70 false prophets who were merchandising in the temple. He urged Cothen not to talk to Thomason since he was one of those being accused, but Cothen apparently did talk to Thomason and both agreed that Burnett needed psychiatric treatment. Cothen felt he was “potentially homicidal and could do harm.”

Cothen disclaimed knowledge at that time of Thomason’s involvement with Ann Hutcherson, an interior decorator whom he had counseled about marriage problems with her husband. Mrs. Hutcherson admitted that her husband later believed Thomason to have broken up their marriage. Burnett agreed to see psychiatrist Daniel Calhoun, not knowing he lived next door to Thomason.

“I still trusted Dr. Cothen,” Burnett said on the stand. Afterwards Calhoun advised that Burnett be hospitalized for tests. Burnett responded that if he felt he needed help he would go to his family physician. “It occurred to me,” Burnett testified, “that I had thought of every way they could disgrace my testimony, but I never thought of them trying to find me insane or put me behind bars or in a cell. Who would believe the testimony of a crazy man?”

Calhoun told Cothen that Burnett was, in his opinion, a paranoid schizophrenic, potentially homicidal, and did indeed need treatment. Calhoun said he would arrange for a second evaluation, required under Tennessee law for involuntary commitment. Cothen and his associates consulted with board lawyers about plans for apprehending Burnett. Cothen arranged with the Metro (Nashville) chief of detectives, Major Bowers, to have a police car pick up Burnett beside Cothen’s car in a secluded area of a board parking lot. The police would take Burnett to Parthenon Pavilion, a private facility, where Dr. Bill Sheridan might provide the needed second signature.

Cothen testified: “I was afraid his hostility level to certain members of the board was so great he might kill someone, if startled inadvertently. So we made the joint decision to put this man under the care of a psychiatrist.”

Cothen admitted these plans were not discussed with Burnett’s family, and that he had unsuccessfully tried to involve Dr. Arnulfo Agbunag, Burnett’s family doctor. Cothen conceded, too, that he had heard about two Nashville chaplains who had called to verify organizational responsibilities of certain employees after reportedly counseling board secretaries tormented with guilt over adulterous relationships with highly placed board men.

The apprehension was set for August 4. The police became confused and drove into another parking lot in full view of dozens of offices. Directed on a ruse to the place where Cothen and the police were waiting, Burnett was encouraged by Cothen to get in the car. Burnett protested. Cothen insisted. “I was afraid, if I ran,” Burnett testified, “that people coming out of the board would say, ‘Here’s Don and police officers and they’re arresting him and he’s crazy.’ I didn’t want to leave that impression.” He got in the car.

At the mental hospital Burnett threatened to sue for violation of civil rights. Eventually, after talking by telephone with Agbunag, Dr. Sheridan released Burnett and refused to sign the commitment papers. By arrangement, Burnett met with Agbunag at Madison Hospital, but refused to register there, “afraid I was going to be drugged.” Burnett called a Baptist lawyer who later declined to pursue Burnett’s case after talking with board officials.

On August 4, Cothen tried to explain to board employees in chapel what had happened in the parking lot. It was, he said, “an attempt on our part, acting upon competent advice, legally and medically … to get some help for one of our brothers.… He has not done anything bad.… He deserves our prayers.” But, added Cothen, “He will not return to the board until he obtains help, if he needs it.”

Dismissing The Problem

In August 1976, Cothen gave Burnett a three-month paid leave of absence, promising he could return to the board with proper certification from a psychiatrist. Burnett testified he consulted Dr. James Cheatham of Dalton, Georgia (who found nothing wrong with him), because the board has “influences and connections that are unbelievable … in this area.” Burnett admitted continuing his investigation of alleged wrongdoing, and said his suspicions about Thomason and Chastain were “confirmed.”

On September 5, Thomason resigned. Two others about whom Burnett had made allegations subsequently left.

Judge Loser dismissed Thomason as a defendant, but he and Cothen were questioned about Thomason’s involvements. Cothen admitted learning about Thomason’s “relationship” with Mrs. Hutcherson, and said he could not accept Thomason’s account of it as “wholesome and healthy,” and Thomason’s report that his wife wanted him to marry the woman upon her death. Cothen conceded he offered to keep Thomason on if he would end the relationship. When Thomason declined to do so he forfeited his $50,000-a-year job. He married Mrs. Hutcherson three weeks after his wife’s death.

Cothen further admitted in testimony that he did not fire Wayne Chastain until early this year following an investigation that purportedly disclosed various shortcomings. The departure of Thomason and Chastain was noted only as “resignations.”

One trustee called Cothen at the outset of the trial, saying he hoped Baptist Press, the official SBC news agency, would wait until the trial was over, and not print mere allegations. Cothen reportedly gave assurance that he was watching the reporting process carefully, and hoped that BP would let the board’s information officer write the news story. BP officials told CT it was “normal policy” to have staffers of SBC agencies write news stories about events and persons in their own employment.

The official SBC news story on the trial was authored by Linda Lawson. It was reviewed without changes by Cothen and sent to BP. Dan Martin (BP news director) and Lawson agreed to omit the forced resignations of Thomason and Chastain as irrelevant. The story also failed to note that Cothen was personally present in the parking lot. Martin defended the piece as written and edited on “sound journalistic principle.”

Jury foreman Dr. Rowland Ahrens said in an interview that the jury had taken the firings into account, and carefully considered the judge’s instructions on defamation. “If you just simply listened to the word [Cothen’s chapel speech],” Ahrens said, “then there certainly wasn’t anything to say that was defamation. We looked at the big picture.” Ahrens said the jury thought it important that Burnett had gone “from being considered a good employee … to having his whole reputation wiped out in one month.” On Burnett’s alleged paranoia the jury implied that anyone going through his experiences had reason to be “fearful.”

The jury, said Ahrens, did not see Cothen as an evil man; his desire was to do the best he could for the board. Burnett, commented Ahrens, “was probably more strict than the average person, but … he didn’t seem to be out of character for that particular organization.”

The jury, recalled Ahrens, took less than an hour to render a verdict in Burnett’s favor. They then added up the damages to Burnett since 1976: $124,000 for loss of his house, on which he had been unable to keep up payments; $50,000 for difference in income between his board salary and what he had earned as an insurance salesman; $40,000 for lost retirement benefits; $86,000 for loss of character—a total of $300,000 as compensatory damages. To this they added $100,000 in punitive damages.

Repercussions

After the trial, Burnett confided a deep hurt, particularly over broken ties with former friends. “Some of us,” he said, “went to the Sunday School Board and other agencies feeling God led us there. Sometimes we got the impression that management was making decisions not on the basis of God’s will … or the people’s good. It was just simply business.… Many times some of us would try to bring up some kind of spiritual subject and it seemed to be completely out of place.” As to the current situation at the board, Burnett stated, “I’m not saying things are worse than in 1976, but I believe many of the problems are still there.”

Burnett said most Southern Baptist churches had closed their doors to him since the 1976 incident. He and his wife, now a kindergarten teacher, attend a small independent chapel, but hope eventually to continue as Southern Baptists. “We pray for those responsible for what happened. We’ve found the Lord helps a lot.”

Contacted by phone, Cothen said: “The verdict was not supported by the evidence. The remission by the judge tends to support my thought. The pertinent evidence came out in court. There were repeated admissions from the plaintiff that his imagination had run away with him.” Cothen declared that high moral and spiritual standards continued to be held at the board.

An article in the Tennessean, which had mentioned the firing of Thomason and Chastain, has raised some concern among Southern Baptists.

Jack Harwell, the Georgia state Baptist editor, observed, “I think this is another case where the kingdom would have been served better by going ahead and telling the whole story from the beginning.”

Deeper rumbles come from leaders of the more conservative bloc. Texas Appeals Court Judge Paul Pressler (a leader of the SBC biblical inerrancy coalition) has called for a trustee investigation and a report made to Southern Baptists. “I personally am distressed to see attacks being made on individuals who raise the possibility of problems existing in Southern Baptist life,” Pressler said.

Reaction is even stronger from Fred Steelman, minister of the 2,500-member Red Bank Baptist Church in Chattanooga and a key figure in the Tennessee Baptist Convention. “That was a stupid thing to do to Burnett in the parking lot,” he said. “This raises serious doubts about Dr. Cothen’s ability to run a multimillion-dollar Christian organization. It also makes me wonder how objective Dr. Cothen has been in dealing with problems at the board since.” Steelman called for a “thorough” investigation by board trustees and a full report to Southern Baptists.

Moderator Jerry Songer called the board to express concern on behalf of some pastors in the Hamilton County (Chattanooga) Baptist Association, and was assured that the executive committee of the trustees had affirmed Cothen’s administrative leadership. Songer was further assured that board officials, including Cothen, would consider meeting with the Chattanooga pastors about matters alleged in the trial, which had been the subject of a lengthy front-page piece in the Chattanooga Times.

Burnett said if Cothen or board officials engaged in such informational meetings, then he would ask for equal time. He reported that Baptist Press, the day after CT’s inquiry, had called him for a statement. He told them, he said, “in light of the fact that you’ve never once called me during the past five years for my side, and have printed everything the board and Dr. Cothen said, I will never give a statement to BP.”

Southern Baptist associations will hold annual sessions this month, with state conventions meeting in November. Indications are that the Sunday School Board affair and Baptist Press reporting on the issue will be hot topics of conversation.

JAMES C. HEFLEY

Capitol Hill

Augsburger Starts Inner-City Church

An evangelical church has taken root in the midst of Washington’s Capitol Hill area, under the pastoral care of Myron S. Augsburger. The new work, Washington Community Fellowship, is loosely associated with the Mennonite Church and is expected to take initiative in addressing inner-city needs by cooperating with other ministries.

Augsburger, president of Eastern Mennonite College (EMC) and Seminary from 1965 to 1980, began leading worship services in June at Reformation—Lutheran Church, just east of the Capitol. This fall, his congregation of between 35 and 45 will move to recently purchased facilities in a racially mixed neighborhood in Washington’s northeast quadrant.

Sensitive to the city’s demographics, Augsburger expects the church to “aim at middle-and upper-middle-class people and then reach both ways.”

According to 1980 census data, the number of whites aged 25 to 39 who live in the city rose 33 percent over the last decade. The Washington Post reported that “city officials believe many in this group are young professionals … who have been heavily involved in the renovation boom on Capitol Hill.”

At the same time, due to shifts in other age brackets, Washington’s black population is holding steady at about 70 percent of the total. Together with ongoing ministries such as Tom Nees’s Community of Hope and John Staggers’s One Ministries, Augsburger is “planning how to reach the needy of the city.” He envisions a board of 13 elders, including men and women, blacks and whites, to direct the church and “to demonstrate by involvement our commitment to inter-racial ministry.”

One former Capitol Hill resident termed Washington Community Fellowship “an answer to prayer.” Noting that there have been no significant evangelical works there in the past, he said, “evangelicals have long needed a church on the Hill where they can worship together,” instead of scattering to the Virginia and Maryland suburbs for services on Sunday.

For Augsburger, the church is helping to “fulfill a dream to offer a more holistic ministry and serve people at their point of need” by “developing a community of disciples.” He is currently living on the third floor of Sen. Mark Hatfield’s Georgetown home, and has also initiated an interdenominational Sunday evening vespers service at Georgetown Baptist Church.

Augsburger enumerated some of the difficulties encountered in this new ministry, including “a tendency for people to be enamored with the myth of power” and a problem of “class consciousness that militates against cooperation.”

He and his wife Esther made the move to Washington at the urging of four different Mennonite missions boards, and because they feel it will “enhance our growth into new areas.” Augsburger expressed a “conviction that after a stint in the inner city, I will teach theology with a different conditioning” than if he had remained in academia.

After leaving EMC over a year ago he pursued postdoctoral studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. He will continue to serve as adjunct professor at EMC and also at Associate Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart, Indiana.

BETH SPRING

WCC In Dresden

Central Committee Urges Ban On Neutron Bomb

Thirty-six years after the fire-bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II, the World Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in the East German city urged a ban on the neutron bomb “and any other such weapons.” The 11-day session opened with a service in the eighteenth-century Kreuzkirche at which Bishop Johannes Hempel said that GDR (East German) Christians would show their guests “our life as it is, with its strengths and with its weaknesses.”

A similar note was struck the next day by Bishop Albrecht Schoenherr of Berlin-Brandenburg. GDR Christians, he said were resolved “neither to conform uncritically to the socialist society of the German Democratic Republic nor to reject it in principle.” Referring to the Nazi era, Schoenherr declared that one result was German church sensitivity to “ideological distortion.”

WCC deputy general secretary Konrad Raiser referred at a press conference to “remarkable cooperation” from the GDR government, from which greetings were brought by Klaus Gysi, state secretary for religious affairs. Some journalists nonetheless had been put off the trip to Dresden because of red tape and limitations put on foreign press activity in East Germany.

General secretary Philip Potter affirmed a WCC program emphasis on “supporting, strengthening, and sustaining the weak, the sick, the maimed, the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed and deprived,” though he observed that some efforts toward that goal “encounter opposition and even hostility.”

Last summer the Irish Presbyterian Church and the Salvation Army withdrew membership from the World Council of Churches, largely on the grounds of the WCC’s political statements and its handling of its Program to Combat Racism.

More Vietnamese boat people flood into Hong Kong.

Hong Kong officials cite a resurgence of Vietnamese refugees entering Hong Kong as evidence that the face of the refugee problem is changing. This may mean that Hong Kong will have to absorb as many as 10,000 who cannot be resettled. It may also mean that relief agencies in the U.S. and throughout the world will have to change their agendas if they hope to meet the renewed challenge.

Recent counts by the Government Information Service (GIS) of Hong Kong place the current refugee population at 18,000 and reveal that arrivals for the first five months of 1981 were double that of the same period in 1980. Stacked against predictions made in April 1981 by UN officials that the refugee problem would be all but over by July of this year, these figures are worrying not only government officials but also relief organizations whose resettlement figures are subsiding after a good showing last year.

According to current GIS information, Hong Kong should still expect to have more than 12,000 refugees if present arrival and resettlement rates continue.

“The exodus is still on,” says David Roads, chief information officer for GIS. “And now we’re getting the bicycle repairman, fisherman, and farmer instead of the professionals and skilled tradespeople of the past.”

With this new refugee profile, officials suspect that, as is being argued on the floor of the U.S. Congress, more and more of the refugees may be economic, not political.

Resettlement of “blue collar” refugees is becoming more difficult. “Countries are reluctant to take them,” Roads says. The Hong Kong government has spent more than $25 million in the last three years on refugee work.

Refugees sometimes complicate their own situations as well. One Hong Kong English newspaper, the South China Morning Post, recently stated that about 20 percent of the current refugee population fell into a category called “residual refugees.” Residuals fit into two main categories: “no shows,” refugees who refuse to show up at an interview with another potential sponsor country because they want to resettle in the U.S., thus jeopardizing their resettlement chances altogether; and “Refugee Processing Center (RPC) refusals.” The latter refuse to go to the RPC, a kind of holding center in Bataan, Philippines, where refugees intent on resettling in the U.S. receive language and culture training.

Meanwhile, relief work continues in the camps, and hope remains. World Relief Corporation representatives visiting the Western Quarantine Anchorage barge in Hong Kong harbor talked with a man who said he had traveled with his family from Da Nang, South Vietnam. His reason was “liberation.” He said, “My country should not be ruled by Communists.” After further questioning, he was asked if he would like to ask any questions of the World Relief visitors. “Where are we going,” he smiled. “When will we get there?”

Never in recent history has the church been handed such opportunity to affect society.

President reagan’s communications skills and political expertise have captivated Washington, D.C. His budget authorization package was passed in late June by the House, and by the first week of August, both the Senate and House had accepted the conference agreement. Speculative economic forecasts cloud the exact budget reduction, but many analysts quote $35 billion as a conservative estimate.

The appropriations process, which began in early September, calls for appropriation committees to operate within the parameters of the authorization schedule. For example, the school lunch program has been authorized at a $3.2 billion spending level. Appropriations for that program cannot exceed $3.2 billion. Thus, the $35 billion in cuts are already guaranteed, and additional reductions are expected.

Democrats may pursue various political tactics designed to slow the budget process. If their maneuvering has been successful through October 1, Congress will be forced to pass a continuing resolution, funding programs at 1981 levels.

This would be disastrous for Reagan’s momentum, and another television appearance would be necessary. The slowdown strategy would be the only way Reagan would be precluded from receiving the proposed $35 billion in cuts.

Public philosophy has been altered significantly, and budget reductions have a supporting groundswell that is able and ready to snuff out any last gasps from proponents of the now outdated Great Society mentality. The conclusion remains the same: the government is dramatically altering its budget policy and philosophy.

What this means is that never in recent American history has the church literally been handed such an opportunity to affect society. Instead of chastising Reagan’s “heartlessness,” the church needs to begin preparing and planning for the imminent ramifications of the budget reductions.

Government’S Social Programs

Traditionally, the United States government was primarily responsible for defending the country, budding roads and bridges, maintaining law and order, and so on. Rarely did the government dip into the treasury to buy food, clothing, or shelter for individuals. These basic needs were supplied by local communities or churches shaping what Reagan calls “the frontier spirit that used to be.”

In the last three decades, social (centralized cities, isolation), political (ripening of liberal dogma), and spiritual (gradual default by churches involved in community problems) reasons all contributed to extending the role of federal government into the realm of social services. During this time, churches became captive to values of the nation’s compatible culture. Christianity became domesticated, confined to the status quo. Church clergy began to seek governmental assistance and legislation for needs that they could not with theological and ecclesiastical motivations commend their own membership to supply.

The evolving proposition, that only the federal government could or would aid the neediest members of modern society, revolutionized the functions of the state. This theory fostered a host of social programs, which sprouted as astronomically as did the theory itself.

Government has certainly strained to fulfill its so-called moral responsibility. Social programs have increased geometrically in both size and scope. Between 1970 and 1980, outlays for social services programs skyrocketed from $90 billion to $300 billion. Food stamp and nutritional aid spending increased 779 percent since 1972. Funds from at least one of the five major social services programs—food stamps, school lunches, subsidized housing, Medicaid, and Medicare—are now dispensed to 34.4 percent of U.S. households. As these social programs swelled, a seldom-mentioned fact became apparent: most government social programs were failing.

Statistics show that the total value of federal resources consumed by the poor in 1979 was enough to elevate every officially poor family 30 percent above the poverty line. Yet poverty levels were unchanged in 1979 and have virtually remained constant (approximately 12 percent) since 1968.

Many superficial reasons for welfare’s inefficacy are obvious. Social services programs: (1) promote the concept of remaining poor by destroying incentives to work; (2) deny the poor explicitly what they need—jobs and money—while showering them with goods and services the government thinks they should have, in amounts deemed appropriate; (3) render the father of a poor family optional while rewarding growth in family size; (4) are subject to fraud and abuse by both recipients and administrators.

Other, more esoteric reasons for social services incompetency exist. (1) Bureaucracies responsible for doling out social service funds consider program beneficiaries categorically, not individually. (2) Government is limited by its broad gambit of responsibilities. Consistently prioritizing poverty programs is neither feasible nor advisable. (3) Finally, government has undertaken what is basically a spiritual ministry. The social service agencies lack two key ingredients in their restorative recipe for society: the underpinning of love and the motivation of Christ.

Biblical Survey

Even a cursory scan of the Scriptures will reveal a distinctive emphasis on the economically deprived. Biblical commandments regarding concern for the poor are so unequivocal that they are a fundamental challenge, testing the love and earnestness of the Christian community. These maxims are discovered in basic texts like the Lord’s Prayer and are interwoven throughout the policies and practices of the early church.

Careful examination yields the following biblical principles that should formulate Christian action.

• Destitution and poverty are inescapable ills of sinful societies (Deut. 15:11; John 12:8).

• Individuals served by Jesus must become compassionate servants to the spiritual and social needs of the poor (Luke 10:28–37; 1 John 3:16–17).

• Believers should perceive their worldly riches as temporal gifts from God and use them for his glory (Ps. 62:10; Luke 12:15–21).

• God is pleased by and blesses Christians who give to society’s less fortunate (Prov. 19:17; Eccles. 11:1).

These are not nebulous principles but relevant precepts that can and must be embraced by the Christian community. The Scriptures illustrate the ease of applying these principles, and the ensuing benefits, using the first-century church as example (Acts 4:32–37; 6:1–7).

The early church believers made their financial resources unconditionally available to others. Their joyous attitude of surrendering all, which was pivotal to the church’s fervent social efforts, cultivated a disentanglement from the material affairs of life (2 Cor. 8:1–5, 13–15; Rom. 15:26–27). A contagious spirit of loving unity developed (Acts 2:44–46) and God rewarded this ministry (Acts 2:41–47).

Unfortunately, today’s church is floating rapidly downstream from these biblical precepts. Some religious leaders are paddling furiously toward the early church lighthouse, but casual observations of the modern church show these endeavors to be futile. Perhaps today’s Christian does have more to sacrifice than the “fanatical” first-century believers. Rationalizing, however, will not exonerate the church from the serious consequences of its inaction (Matt. 25:31–46).

The church must once again become a visible model, a light on the hill (Matt. 5:14–16), within which economic differences are surmounted. Only then can the church, with integrity, prophetically challenge cultural values. Only then will the church have an inherent vitality that will interest the world.

Practical Conclusions

To return to the Reagan budget cuts, government officials estimate that one out of six families will be forced off the welfare roles or have benefits reduced because of Reagan’s slashing tactics. Four hundred thousand families will be shoved off Aid to Families with Dependent Children. One million persons (36,000 households) will be ineligible for food stamps while 35 percent of those remaining on the food stamp rolls will lose at least six dollars a month.

These marginal welfare recipients, who will turn to the church for support, present an unprecedented opportunity and challenge for the church to reassert itself by plugging the gaps Reagan has chiseled from special services programs. Failure of the church to respond will mean relinquishing authority back to the state and certain loss of respect for the church by observant Americans. Failure to respond will mean continued tax escalation and government infringement.

Churches must seize this occasion to:

• Fulfill God’s commandments by mirroring the efforts of the early church while reaping the resultant blessings;

• Demonstrate to society the power of love;

• Perfect the social services system.

Local church efforts, carefully administered by deacons, will definitely surpass most of the intangible difficulties now encountered by bureaucratic institutions. Fraud and abuse can virtually be eliminated while recipients of local church giving will obtain more than government handouts; they will receive caring relationships along with a community of compassion.

Now is the opportune moment to commence writing a new chapter in the history of the church. There are three features that must mark this effort.

First, church clergy and laymen must allow the Holy Spirit to make them uncomfortable individually as they attempt to empathize with those within the poverty-stricken segment of our society.

Second, Christians must sacrifice individual time and money, as the Lord directs. The only safe rule is to give more than can be spared; that type of giving brings fear of insecurity, but dependence on God.

Third, the church must develop small prayer groups to concentrate on specific needs of the poor within their particular community. The group will first have to strive to resolve economic inequities within the church itself. The movement could then spread throughout the community and to neighboring churches.

If these three measures are implemented quickly, they will afford the church the opportunity to overcome the challenge Reagan’s budget cuts offer. Now is the time to renew those religious convictions from which our morality springs.