Ministering to the disabled is not just a fine idea. It is an imperative.

Governmental and charitable agencies are giving more attention to the needs of the disabled in terms of architecture, education, employment, housing, rehabilitation, and transportation. In large measure, the disabled, comprising more than 25 million Americans, can be credited with raising the nation’s awareness of these needs. At the same time, churches, with notable exceptions, are missing the mark in developing effective ministries for these people.

As a disabled person, I rejoice at these secular strides, slow as they might be, but I am saddened that churches are dragging their feet in ministering to the emotionally, mentally, and physically handicapped. This is not due to disinterest, but because there is no well-defined implementation and context of ministry. Furthermore, other needs have pressed churches from all sides, pushing ministry among the handicapped into the background. A subconscious rationale suggests that “the disabled are always with us.”

At best, this is a poor excuse. It represents the antithesis of Jesus’ active and compassionate ministry to the disabled. He actively ministers to these people in roughly one-third of the gospel accounts. Jesus had compassion for their bondage, and sensed their potential. Churches must emulate their Lord; they must be motivated by compassion and sense potential in initiating a ministry, in the midst of other pressing needs, to which the disabled might well give help.

Another factor is that this ministry is needed both to check and to support secular advances. While these are important, there is no way all of the needs can be met. We are living in an economic crunch in which the disabled share. Under all circumstances, secular solutions are never the total answer; in fact, without a vital and growing spiritual dimension, the answer is very fragmented. Distinct Christian influence and input is needed to make realistic advances, to encourage help from the private sector, and to equip disabled persons with a Christ-centered spiritual understanding that recognizes real victory is never achieved through legislation but rather within one’s self. This comes when one has a viable relationship with Christ.

Reasons for starting an effective ministry among the disabled in the local church are perfectly obvious to many. They are not so obvious to others. In either case, those reasons need to be examined and thoroughly understood by both minister and congregation; action follows.

There are a number of important components that need to be examined. An important word in the vocabulary of a handicapped person is accessibility. Far too many churches silently say to the disabled. We don’t want you—demonstrating this by numerous architectural barriers. Granted, it is unreasonable to expect all churches to be completely accessible. But when a church undergoes renovation, accessibility features should be included wherever possible: ramps, handrails, an elevator. When a new church is to be built, a comprehensive study should be made of those features that ensure accessibility for people with a wide range of handicapping conditions: these should be incorporated into building plans.

Transportation is also a major problem for the handicapped. Churches should be able to offer transportation by car, van, or bus for those who have a legitimate need. Architectural and transportation considerations such as these have been described as “external evangelism.”

The vital components of a ministry to the handicapped are counseling, theology, and healing. Counseling is defined here as a perpetual relationship between a disabled person and pastor and/or congregation, nourished in Christ’s love and power. The relationship must be grounded in honesty, sincerity, and a mutual probing of meaningful answers to life’s gnawing “whys?” Static, pat answers are no good. A minister assuring a handicapped person from a distance that God loves him and that one day he will be rewarded is frequently of little comfort. But a mutual discovery of God’s love in the midst of pain and disappointment can bring joy and motivation.

Counseling ministry must reach disabled persons of all ages, as well as their families. Sometimes family members have a greater need to develop coping skills and to eliminate guilt. Ministers and concerned members also need to have a working knowledge of community resources for assisting the handicapped in education, rehabilitation, and vocational opportunities.

A positive understanding theologically of self and disability is closely related to counseling. Theology cannot be so much taught here as it is learned in the context of Christian fellowship. The person who begins to understand, finds a peace; his life is set in positive motion. That has been my experience. The answers are not static, but evolving and expanding, rooted as they are in Christ’s love.

While questions of this nature can never be fully answered this side of eternity, they are satisfactory if they are not spoonfed to an individual. He must discover them within the supportive love and nurture of Christian fellowship. It is a move on the theological spectrum from God’s punishment, to him willing the disability for a glorious reason, to him allowing it because a physical law was violated. In his wisdom, he allowed; but he also sustains. Empowered by the Resurrection, we can build purpose and worthiness from life’s rubble. There is no time here for pity, and it is in building that abilities are discovered. It is less important that we be at the same place on the spectrum than that we be constantly maturing into a fuller comprehension of God’s love.

In my experience, the word “healing” has been both terrifying and hopeful. There have been repulsive times when it was challenged that enough faith would effect healing—bringing someone wholeness. Such challenges are cheap, manipulative, and can cause much damage in creating guilt feelings. Many have discovered the healing process on a deeper level where it is mediated through God’s grace, and Christ’s power becomes a past, present, and future experience. The experience is both real and comforting. It is predicated not on one act, nor on a quantity of faith, but upon the willingness to make certain that spiritual growth is never ending.

We cannot, however, deny the physical healings of the New Testament. They were real. Mainstream Christianity is prone to sidetrack the issue, and this must cease. Ministers grounded in the integrity of the Scriptures need to inspire their congregations to pray with compassion, sincerity, and expectancy for all manifestations of healing.

An individual’s disability is secondary to his personhood, which needs a vital awareness and living relationship with Christ. When these dynamic dimensions are instilled in people, the transforming “I am living with Christ in both pain and joy” experience occurs—dimensions for all people.

Ministering to the disabled is not just a fine idea, it is imperative!

LOUIS MICHAUX¹Mr. Michaux is a free-lance writer living in Richmond. Virginia, where he works with Handicaps Unlimited.

After two centuries of missionary effort, less than 3 percent of India’s 670 millions is Christian.

It is not difficult to be a lover of India. The gentleness and simplicity of its people with their spiritual sensitivity and hunger for God, its handsome men, elegant sari-elad women, and vivacious children with wondering eyes and ready laughter—these are some of the characteristies that endear Indians to those of us who have the good fortune to know any.

The Christian good news reached India very early. Although the claim of Syrian Christians that Saint Thomas came to India in the first century lacks solid historical evidence, yet trade between Palestine and India is known to have flourished at that time, and one of the signatories of the decrees of the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 was “John. Bishop of Persia and Great India.”

The Portuguese explorers, who opened up trade with Europe, also paved the way for the Jesuit missionaries, and Francis Xavier arrived in 1542. Protestant missions date from the eighteenth century, and the modern missionary movement may he said to have begun with William Carey, who arrived in Bengal in 1793.

In spite of two centuries of Protestant missionary effort, however, less than 3 percent of India’s 670 millions profess to be Christians, and two-thirds of these are Roman Catholics or Orthodox. Why has the headway been so slow?

The first reason is doubtless the peculiar character of Hinduism in both its intellectual and moral aspects. Intellectually, it is a totally inclusive faith, absorbing everything and rejecting nothing. It would gladly embrace Jesus Christ also—if only he would renounce his exclusive claims. But any talk of his uniqueness or finality is deeply offensive to Hindus. Mohandas Gandhi was a perfect example of this attitude. I have visited Sevagram, the ashram where he lived between 1936 and 1946, and seen the small, glass-fronted bookcase in which he kept his Bhagavad Gita, Koran, and Bible. He loved these three books equally, he said. He greatly admired Jesus, particularly his Sermon on the Mount, but strenuously denied that he was unique.

To this intellectual obstacle a moral one is added, namely the dreadful doctrine of karma, that every human being must eat the fruit of his own wrongdoing, if not in this life then in samsara, the endless cycle of future reincarnations. “A Hindu will never admit that he needs a Savior.” a Christian professor of theology once said to me, “not because he does not acknowledge that he is a sinner, but because he believes he can save himself—by karma, by bhakti (religious devotion), or by ceremonial washing.” This is why the Hindu reformer Vivekananda said that “it is a sin to call a person a sinner.” To such people, steeped in the illusion of self-salvation, the cross is a stumbling block—until in despair (as one convert expressed it to me) they are driven by their own Hindu scriptures, which say there is no forgiveness, to Jesus who says there is, since he died to secure it and offers it to us freely.

A second hindrance to the spread of the gospel has been imperialism, and the Western appearance of the Christianity many missionaries planted. “Everywhere.” wrote Roland Allen in 1912. “Christianity is still an exotic.” Similarly, Stanley Jones, the American Methodist missionary, championed what he called the “naturalization” of Christianity in India. He ended his book The Christ of the Indian Road (1925) with an illustration drawn from an Indian marriage custom: “The women friends of the bride accompany her with music to the home of the bridegroom … that is as far as they can go. Then they retire, and leave her with her husband.” Just so, he argues, the missionary’s “joyous task” is to introduce Christ to India and then to retire. “We can only go so far—he and India must go the rest of the way.”

Yet western missionaries have not always displayed this modesty. In Bishop Lesslie Newbigin’s words in The Finality of Christ (1969), they have sometimes confused the tradenda (the fundamentals of the faith which must be handed down) with the tradita (traditions which we have received, but are not indispensable), and have passed on the latter with the former, “a whole mass of stuff.… everything from harmoniums to archdeacons.” It is only with slowness and hesitancy that the Indianization of Christianity is taking place.

The third hindrance to the evangelization of India I am reluctant to mention, because I cannot do so without implied criticism of my Indian brothers and sisters. But it is they who have expressed this matter to me, and I am only passing on their own convictions. It concerns the lack of moral discipline in the churches, and the toleration in church members of such acknowledged evils as caste discrimination, corruption, and litigation. These are public sins, which cause a public scandal. Until there is repentance and renewal, one cannot expect the church to be an effective agent of the gospel.

In spite of these three hindrances, there are many encouragements today.

It is wonderful to watch the development of indigenous Indian missions, especially the Indian Evangelical Mission formed by the Rev. Theodore Williams, and the Friends’ Missionary Prayer Band, whose founder-president is Dr. Sam Kamalesan. The FMPB now has 155 missionaries (mostly in the unevangelized regions of North India), 31 candidates in training, and the stated goal of 440 missionaries by the end of 1982. All these Indian missionaries are supported by Indian money. Moreover, they are finding great receptivity to the gospel in many Hindu villages. In one area of South India, which has previously been totally resistant to the gospel, and in which there is no church building for miles around. 100 baptisms are now taking place each month.

The resolve to evangelize is not limited to the missionary agencies, however. The 1977 All India Congress on Mission and Evangelization at Devlavi addressed its call to “all Christians in India.” Pointing out that 98 percent of evangelistic effort was being directed towards the existing Christian community, it called for a redirection of concern and action towards the responsive segments of the unreached 97 percent of the population. The All India Conference on Evangelism and Social Action followed in 1979. Its Madras Declaration called for the gospel to be visibly demonstrated in Christian action against poverty, injustice, and corruption.

So there is a mood of confident expectancy among evangelical Christians in India today. The Rev. P. T. Chandapilla, general secretary of the Federation of Evangelical Churches of India, spoke to me in Madras in January about the importance of the growing evangelical compassion for the poor and the necessity of good works of love to authenticate our gospel preaching. It is in this context that “We are seeing the greatest turning to Jesus Christ which India has ever seen,” he said, “especially in the tribal belts. For India there is no other option left.”

JOHN R. W. STOTT¹Mr. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls C hurch, London, England.

Kaunda favors Christian humanism, but appears immobilized.

The new-found political activism of Zambia’s churches is getting on the nerves of one of the country’s most distinguished, loyal, and devoted churchmen: President Kenneth David Kaunda.

The president is a teetotaler who has banned alcohol from his Lusaka State House, even for visiting dignitaries. Each morning he spends time in private Bible reading, meditation, and prayer. The son of a Methodist preacher and himself a lay reader in the church, Kaunda over the years has been a vigorous defender of the cause of Christianity in Zambia. In private sessions with offending high government officials, he is known to reach out frequently for his Bible and turn the meetings into fervent, even tearful, evangelism encounters.

In recent months, however. Kaunda’s official relations with the organized churches have been less than warm. Last month he warned the churches against setting themselves up as an opposition party, singling out the Roman Catholic weekly paper, The Mirror, for particular tongue-lashing. He accused the paper of being consistently and unrelentingly negatively critical of government viewpoints.

The falling out between Kaunda and the churches comes at a particularly trying time for Kaunda’s regime. The country’s economy is bad and deteriorating. Politically, some of the thin threads that bind together its delicate peace-and-stability formula have begun to snap: the military establishment became restive late last year, necessitating sweeping changes; a number of prominent businessmen and former high government officials were rounded up and are soon to stand trial for plotting to overthrow the government; the loyalty of trade unions has been severely shaken by the inept government handling of negotiations with striking miners, bankers, and teachers.

Before independence, the churches of Zambia actively spoke out on behalf of the nationalist movement. The current Catholic-archbishop of Lusaka, Emmanuel Milingo, and the current general secretary of the Christian Council of Zambia, Kingsley Mwenda, were ardent nationalists themselves during the preindependence struggle for national liberation. But once independence was achieved, the churches receded into the background, “leaving politics to the politicians,” as Mwenda once remarked.

That situation suddenly changed two years ago when churches conducted a joint effort to study political trends in the country. The study produced a document entitled “Marxism, Humanism, and Christianity.” signed by leaders of the Roman Catholic Episcopal Conference, the Christian Council of Zambia, and the Zambian Evangelical Fellowship.

The document was issued as a letter to all Christians in Zambia in August 1979. It analyzed and challenged the country’s drift toward scientific socialism. It was hailed around the world as “a striking example of how the Christian voice can be lifted to comment on political affairs in a way that rejects mealy-mouthed generalizations, calls things by their proper names, deals in specifics, and offers a clear-cut view of the difference between right and wrong.”

The church leaders sensed a tendency in official circles to adopt and impose a Marxist-Leninist social order. They declared the churches had a duty to speak out against it, “lest our silence be taken to mean that we agree with what is being said.”

Carefully contrasting the two main strands of socialism, the church leaders explained that “democratic socialism seeks to end exploitation and to protect the people through public ownership of major industries and natural resources … by setting up a welfare state that freely provides all citizens with the necessities of life such as health, education, and social services.” Scientific socialism, on the other hand, is described as progress towards communism and atheism, leading to the suppression of religion, personal freedoms, and the orderly and constitutional processes of government. The leaders advised Zambian Christians to reject this “inhuman doctrine.”

The leaders took the unusual step of referring by name to neighboring countries that offer positive as well as negative examples of socialist development. Tanzania was praised for practicing “nothing to trouble the Christian conscience,” but both Mozambique and Angola came in for severe criticism.

The document cited a resolution of the June 1978 conference of Mozambique’s only party, Frelimo, which declared that “religion is an obstacle to the advancement of the revolutionary process,” and further that “the activity of religious organizations is harmful.” The leaders also quoted at length extracts from a 1977 letter of the Catholic bishops of Angola to their government, urging it to respect the rights of religion and human rights.

Humanism also came under critical review. Congratulating Kaunda for introducing a challenging ideological frame of reference for Zambia’s sociopolitical and economic development, the leaders warned, however, that Zambia is not the first country, and Kaunda not the first person, to use the term humanism. In other contexts it might mean totally different things.

The church leaders warned that they saw in Zambia an emerging and powerful clique of atheistic humanists who say “that there is no God and that we should not live as if there were.” The document contrasted this to Christian humanism which sees men and women as called not only to be fully human, but also to grow as members of God’s family, “to mature personhood, to the measure of the stature of Christ.”

There were two other extremely useful parts to the document: a critique of capitalism, which the church leaders rejected as being unsuitable for Zambia; and a long, Bible-based study of the Christian view of the human person.

The document said in conclusion: “Our first main reason for rejecting scientific socialism is that as a philosophy it denies God. Our second is that this rejection of God necessarily denies man. We differ profoundly from Marxists in our understanding of the human person, so that Marxist humanism is also radically different from Christian humanism.”

The document created a stir in Zambia’s political circles. Reuben Kamanga, a member of the central committee of the country’s only legal political party—The United National Independence Party—lashed out angrily at the church leaders, warning them to “stop dabbling in politics and frightening people unnecessarily.” Kamanga told them to “remain within their spiritual domain rather than venture into politics—a domain for politicians.”

Kaunda, however, was of a different opinion. He ordered members of the party to study the document carefully and to treat it as an important contribution to the ongoing discussion in the country aimed at arriving at appropriate national goals. “Kaunda,” says a British missionary in Lusaka, “held out an olive branch to the churches, but the churches didn’t recognize it.” An official of the Christian Council of Zambia, however, feels maintaining some formal distance is a practical necessity at this time.

In May 1980, Kaunda again tried to close the distance. He used the occasion of the Golden Jubilee Celebration of the Catholic Church in Ndola (on the copper belt) to give a personal appraisal of the past and present role of the church in Zambia. After lavishly praising the rapidly growing “dedicated and wise local leadership” of the church in Zambia, Kaunda said:

“The current history of the struggle and rise of the people of Zambia is not yet fully written. When it will be written, the record will show … that it was never true that the missionary offered us the Bible with his left hand while he used his right hand to steal freedom and resources from us: that it was rather the other man, the one who held out to us no Bible at all, who sought to steal from us not only our resources but to run away with our whole freedom and the Bible itself.”

In this, Kaunda was telling the churchmen of his country that he does not share the viewpoints of his neighbours in Mozambique and Angola, and that he does not share the convictions of the scientific socialists in his own ruling party, UNIP.

Yet the confrontation continues. Both Kaunda and the leaders of the church have been overtaken by events. The recent revolt, which landed a few distinguished citizens in jail on suspicion of planning to topple the government, came from the right wing of Zambia’s new elite. It came cashing in on growing unease with the rising influence of scientific socialists in UNIP, using the very words of protest that church leaders themselves had made popular.

“The churches are in this,” a prominent church leader recently said in Lusaka. “It won’t help anyone to say we have been dragged into it; we played our part in calling attention to some of these trends as no other organized body of concerned citizens would have done. Without the license to meet and discuss these issues, we could very well have been considered subversives too. But we must restrain ourselves now from jumping to conclusions. The state has the responsibility to keep this nation secure and we must urge it to act responsibly and justly, to investigate the charges carefully, and to conduct a fair and open trial in a court of law.”

That leader was also confident that Kaunda knows the heart of the churchmen is in the right place. “Kenneth knows how we all feel about him. Politically there is hardly a replacement for him at this moment, and we gave him our unswerving loyalty and support during the recent elections. He literally stands between Zambia and chaos.”

South Africa

Brotherly Feud Strains Reformed Family Ties

A multiracial organization of Dutch Reformed ministers in South Africa is under fire from several quarters. The Broederkring’s (Circle of Brothers) more than 300 members fervently oppose the government’s apartheid policy (which is staunchly defended by an all-Afrikaner secret organization called the Broederbond [Federation of Brothers]).

The Broederkring is under investigation by the black Dutch Reformed Church and by a committee of the colored Dutch Reformed Mission Church. They charge it with fostering a theology of revolution, and accepting assistance from abroad.

Broederkring president Allan Boesak replies that his organization supports the official declarations of faith, and that overseas funds are used for scholarships for overseas study, freeing the brown and black churches from the financial stranglehold the white church (NGK) exerts on them.

In addition, the minister of justice, L. le Grange, has accused the Broederkring of civil disobedience and refusal to engage in military service. Boesak, currently lecturing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says he believes these are opening shots in a campaign to have the Broederkring meet the same fate as the Christian Institute of Beyers Naudé: banishment.

EVERT VAN DIJK

Colombia

Bitterman Slaying Isolates Guerrillas, Bolsters Sil

Edmund K. Gravely, Jr., a reporter for the New York Times, was in Bogotá, Colombia, at the time Chet Bitterman was kidnapped and through the following month. He wrote this report for CHRISTIANITY TODAY:

They came early in the morning. Seven guerrillas, one dressed as a police officer, entered the guest house of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in Bogotá, Colombia, seeking the director of the organization, Alva Wheeler.

He was not there. But Chet and Brenda Bitterman, both linguists with the institute, and their two children were. The intruders took Bitterman as their victim.

“You know you are fighting against God,” his wife warned them, according to another linguist in the house.

“Yes, we know it,” one replied.

In telephone calls to newspapers and radio stations, the kidnappers demanded that SIL leave Colombia by February 19 in exchange for the 28-year-old linguist’s life. According to its policy of not yielding to terrorists, the institute refused.

Forty-seven days after the abduction, on March 7, the body of Chester Allen Bitterman III was found. He had been shot through the heart with a single bullet.

Police found the body early Saturday morning after an anonymous caller told a local newspaper, El Tiempo, that he was in an abandoned bus in a residential-industrial neighborhood in the southwest part of the city. The bus’s driver had been bound, gagged, and blindfolded by the killers. Bitterman’s body had been wrapped in a flag, on which these words were written in Spanish: “M-19 against imperialism, against the Office of Indian Affairs. For the national sovereignty. War upon the Summer Linguistics Institute. Until victory or death. National Coordination Base M-19.”

Chet Bitterman’s body was buried that same day at the institute’s center, Lomalinda, 85 miles southeast of Bogotá. He had wanted it that way. His wife and their two daughters, Anna Ruth, 3, and Esther Elizabeth, 18 months, flew there with her parents, who are also institute staffers in Colombia, and with the American embassy consul, John Coffman. The next day, Mrs. Bitterman, her daughters, and her parents flew to the United States.

Bitterman’s murder came after surprising twists in events turned negotiations for his release into raw confrontation.

The death outraged the Colombian press, the Colombian and United States governments, and spurred wide police searches and arrests. Within a day, Colombian police arrested more than 50 persons, including the Protestant minister, Alfredo Torres Pachon, who had called himself an intermediary between the kidnappers and the institute. (Torres is communications secretary of the Latin American Council of Churches [CLAI]).

Colombian President Julio Cesar Turbay, who had moved recently to end guerrilla activity in the country by offering amnesty to anyone who would turn himself in, reacted strongly to the murder: “The monstrous assassination of Mr. Bitterman is truly surprising for its cruelty. It has no possible justification.”

The country’s interior minister, German Zea Hernandez, said the kidnappers “reached the worst extremes of barbarity and cowardice.” He seemed to make the translators’ position in the country more secure than ever. “The institute does not have to leave,” he said. “I don’t see any reason for the institute having to leave the country under pressure of an atrocious crime,” said Zea, who is in charge of both the Colombian police and native Indian policy.

In Washington, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., said, “His death is a tragic loss to this country and the people of Colombia he sought to serve. We mourn this loss.

“Chester Bitterman and his family have shown the highest standards of steadfastness and bravery of which all Americans can be proud. They have courageously demonstrated that Americans will not give in to terrorist blackmail.”

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Bitterman’s mother, Mary, said, “Since we committed Chester to the Lord, we knew whatever the outcome, it would be the Lord’s will.”

“We are not to judge,” she said. “We have seen some encouraging things already from this.” Chester was the oldest of eight children. “We had committed Chet to the Lord’s care a long time ago. We are willing to accept this as His will,” she said. “The Lord doesn’t make mistakes.”

In California, Don Lindholm, associate director of Wycliffe Bible Translators, SIL’s sister organization, said Bitterman’s death “will not cause us to cease our work in Colombia. It will call us to a deeper commitment to our work.” He said the Colombian government was providing police protection for the 250 full-time and temporary workers with the institute.

Last January 19, when Bitterman was taken, it appeared that the kidnappers had seized an issue that might rally the support of the Roman Catholic church, the government, the press, and the populace. But events turned so strongly the other way that the guerrillas were left cornered by their own words and mocked in the press.

The kidnappers, who called themselves a hard-line faction of the M-19 (or April 19 Movement), charged that the institute was really a branch of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, that it had set up a missile base in the plains, and was schooling native Indians to become CIA agents.

While such extreme charges had not been made before, SIL’s work has been a sensitive issue in Colombia. Some Catholic church and government leaders had been calling for the institute’s expulsion. Some said the institute was duplicating work the church had been doing for more than a century. Members of the government and anthropologists said the organization’s translation work was destroying native tribal cultures.

The pressure became so great two years ago that many people expected the institute to be thrown out and confessed wonderment when it was not.

But when Bitterman was taken, the Colombian government immediately declared unconditional support for the translators and for the agreement under which they work. SIL has a formal agreement with the government to put native Indian languages into written form, compile dictionaries, and print Spanish-Indian translations of various material, including the New Testament. Chester Bitterman had commenced study of the Carijona Indian dialect. He had just received the government’s go ahead to begin living among the Indians, in the southern part of the country—after a short trip from Lomalinda to Bogotá for an operation that would alleviate his gall bladder attacks.

Other surprisingly strong support for the institute came from Father Garcia Herrera, the country’s most popular Catholic television broadcaster. He publicly called for release of the translator, declaring that Catholics could not remain indifferent to “the pain of our Protestant brothers,” which, he said, would be converted into “a crown of heroism, sainthood, and martyrdom.”

The situation was also tangled by a split within the guerrilla organization. The main branch of the militant antigovernment group repudiated the kidnapping and said it was the work of a radical offshoot. One faction seized several reporters, took them blindfolded to a secret press conference, and announced it had no part in the kidnapping. It then released the reporters.

The nation’s newspapers and radio stations gave the kidnapping wide coverage. When the reporters investigated the guerrillas’ accusations about Lomalinda, their pictures and articles sarcastically asked where the missiles were.

A final twist came a few days before Bitterman’s death. Brenda was led to believe by her channels to the guerrillas that her husband was about to be released. Accordingly, she had begun packing their suitcases for an anticipated flight to the United States.

All of this seemed to strip the negotiations of the drama that surrounded M-19 a year ago when it held 30 diplomats in the Dominican embassy in Bogotá for 61 days. At that time, guerrillas finally got no more from the Colombian government than free transportation to Cuba and a few admirers.

This time they got no more than blood on their hands.

The kidnappers threatened to kill all institute personnel, including the Colombians, one by one. But instead, the government announced in mid-March that it had killed 19 guerrillas and captured 74 others, including the M-19 leader, Rosemberg Pabón Pabón, who had been known as Commandante Uno.

For their part, SIL personnel all seemed intent on staying despite the threats against them. Their reaction seemed like that of Chester’s 18-year-old brother, Chris: “Chet himself said one life isn’t worth all the hundreds of Indians who would never have heard the Word. This is what he said even before he was kidnapped.”

England

Anglicans Move Another Step Toward Union Plan

The Church of England general synod gave provisional approval to steps toward union with four other English denominations: the Churches of Christ, and the Methodist, Moravian, and United Reformed churches.

The day-long debate in the synod on covenanting, as it is known in England, was taken up largely by three major issues: that all moderators of the United Reformed church should not be required to become bishops during the first seven years of any proposed union; that the validity of the orders of the other churches’ ministers should be recognized; and that women ministers in those churches should similarly be recognized as presbyters. Decisions on each issue required approval by majority vote in each of the three houses (bishops, clergy, and laity).

The closest result in the nine separate votes was a 144-to-89 acceptance of women ministers by the house of clergy. The plan now goes to the 44 dioceses of the Church of England for their consideration before returning for final action by the synod in June 1982, at which time a two-thirds majority of each house will be required. As of now, those votes are not there.

The Anglo-Catholic wing of the church, led by Graham Leonard, bishop of Truro, has been unhappy about the whole matter. Leonard argued the short-sightedness of trying to separate faith and order. He deftly reminded the synod of its discussions on marriage: “We spoke of how everything that is likely to divide must be dealt with before marriage.” He invited members to look at the two people sitting next to them: would one of them, he asked, be left with a troubled conscience because a synod majority forced this decision through?

The archbishops of Canterbury and York strongly commended the proposals. Robert Runcie pointed out that the divisions among English Christians had been exported all over the world, and that what had started there should finish there. He rejected the stubborn view of God’s grace that permitted action only if nothing in the small print prevented it. Stuart Blanch of York denied that the threefold ministry (bishops, clergy, and laity) could be established as integral to God’s purpose or essential to Catholic order.

Always in the background was the memory of Anglican rejection of the plan for unity with the Methodists in 1969, and the feeling that any rebuff to other churches on this occasion would scuttle prospects for unity for the rest of this century. At least two things are different about the current debate: the final majority demanded is two-thirds, instead of the three-quarters sought in 1969: and the Anglo-Catholic opposition this time is not likely to be joined by weighty evangelical voices—a combination that 12 years ago pulled enough votes to insure an inadequate majority count.

Of the churches involved in the present plan, Methodists have about 470,000 adult members: United Reformed, 165,000; Churches of Christ, 4,000; and Moravians, a few hundred only. An equivalent adult membership figure for the Church of England is commonly assessed at just under two million.

J. D. DOUGLAS

The ‘Doctor’ Is Out

Expositor Lloyd-Jones Ushered Into ‘The Glory’

One of Britain’s greatest Bible expositors, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, died in his sleep at his London home. Appropriately for one whose roots lay in Wales, it happened on Saint David’s Day (March 1). It was in Wales that he had spent his childhood, in the little town of Newcastle Emlyn, and it was there that he was buried last month.

The Presbyterian Chapel was crammed full for the funeral service, conducted by Welsh pastors, partly in their own language—a language in which “the Doctor” was said to have preached even better than he did in English. One of his friends, who described himself as “an ordinary little minister,” spoke simply of what he and many others owed to Lloyd-Jones. He added, “He kept alive in our hearts the flame of revival; now he has gone to the place where revivals come from.”

It was in industrial Wales that Lloyd-Jones began his ministry after he had forsaken a brilliant career as a medical specialist, convinced that many of his patients needed not ordinary medicine, but the gospel of Jesus Christ. The diagnosis was confirmed during those first 11 years in Port Talbot where the common people heard him gladly and a moribund congregation came alive. Chosen in 1938 by G. Campbell Morgan as his colleague at London’s Westminster Chapel (Morgan retired in 1943), the Welshman saw the congregation through difficult wartime years (half the roof was blown off by a German bomb). Under his 32-year ministry, the chapel was established as the foremost evangelical pulpit in England, chiefly because of his conviction that preaching is “the highest and greatest and the most glorious calling.”

He was a man of strong views on controversial subjects (see the interview and editorial, CT. Feb. 8. 1980), but these were always the outcome of keen analytic reasoning. He believed in evangelical unity, and was a warm supporter of interdenominational activity so long as theological principles were not jeopardized. He was suspicious of syncretism in the Church of England, and in 1966 challenged evangelical Anglicans to leave a national church whose witness he felt to be hopelessly compromised. Some did leave, and the result of the ensuing furor was a hardening of attitudes and widening of the gulf between Anglicans and non-Anglican evangelicals.

His son-in-law, Sir Frederick Catherwood, reports that just before the Doctor’s death at the age of 81, he told the family: “Don’t pray for healing, don’t hold me back from the glory.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

Pennsylvania pair’s conscience bars endorsing leftist causes.

Two Pennsylvania pastors have been put on leave of absence from the United Methodist Church (UMC) after their refusal to encourage their congregations to support a denominational fund. Alex Ufema and John Finkbeiner, Jr., said conscience forbade them to endorse contribution to the UMC’s World Service Apportionment.

The ministers, who each serve three rural churches near Pittsburgh, said too much of the funding went to causes they could not support. They cited contributions to the World Council of Churches and National Council of Churches as representing the denomination’s “consistent identification with only one side of the political spectrum—the leftistleaning side.”

Under rules enacted by the general conference last year, however, congregations are required to supply funds for the World Services Apportionment, the main artery of denominational financing. Before last year, World Service funding was voluntary. Making it mandatory, Finkbeiner said, left the two ministers feeling trapped.

In January, they spoke with superiors about their objections. Then they held meetings at each of their six churches and told the congregations they could not support the World Service Apportionment. “We set our people free,” Finkbeiner said. “The boards were left to make up their own minds.”

Two of Ufema’s churches stopped payment. None of Finkbeiner’s did. But in mid-March, after a series of meetings with regional UMC officials, both men were notified by the Western Pennsylvania Board of Ordained Ministry that they were placed on leave of absence.

The 45-member board notified the ministers their membership in the conference was being discontinued “because of ‘Disobedience to the Order and Discipline of the United Methodist Church,’ ” referring to the Book of Discpline. James Ault, bishop of the Western Pennsylvania Conference, emphasized the discontinuation was a recommendation and not a final decision. He said the recommendation would be considered by the executive conference in June. The bishops declined comment on the specific reasons for the discontinuation, saying any remarks would bias its later consideration. “ ‘Leave of absence’ is really a euphemism for being excommunicated,” said Charles Keysor, executive until last month of the UMC renewal movement, Good News. Ufema and Finkbeiner were told not to conduct services at any of their churches and given the choice of resigning or applying for an ecclesiastical trial.

“We felt to resign under pressure would be to admit guilt,” Ufema said, so the pair hired an attorney and will request a hearing of their case. They will be heard by a body of 13 peers, selected by the Western Pennsylvania Conference.

Keysor, a long-time observer of the Methodist scene, thinks the case is important. “It gathers up a number of issues and brings them to needle-sharp focus,” he said. Since the situation epitomizes liberal-conservative tensions in the denomination, Keysor believes it will set a precedent for dealing with pastors who balk at supplying funds.

Ufema and Finkbeiner agree: they see themselves as “examples” to keep other ministries from challenging the UMC status quo. Finkbeiner said he and Ufema were not attacked personally: “We had gotten along well with our district superintendent and Bishop Ault.”

That left the pair shocked by their forced leave of absence. The two were classmates at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where they graduated in 1980. They considered their ministerial gifts complementary and were thus granted “contiguous parishes”—geographically close congregations. Both think their future in United Methodism is doubtful, but plan to seek affiliation with another denomination.

Keysor said the action against the Pennsylvania ministers bespeaks increasing “institutional uptightness” and points to the key issue of how much latitude of conscience will be allowed. He thinks a double standard operates. The UMC’s doctrinal guidelines encourage free conscience for the individual on participation or nonparticipation in war. It will allow civil disobedience but not freedom of conscience within the church, Keysor said.

Finkbeiner concurs. “The church boasts of its pluralism and ecumenicism, but it’s all one-sided. Where are evangelicals allowed to express ourselves?” He is not offended that the denomination supports the World Council, but thinks a congregation should have some choice in where its money goes.

“We in the Methodist church are giving money to terrorists who are Marxist, Communist, or totalitarian in offshoot,” Ufema said. “We need to be aware of the scriptural basis of giving, which means responsible giving.” Ufema suspects he’s been struck by a “liberal backlash to conservative political involvement.”

Finkbeiner emphasizes the two aren’t reactionary. They are in sympathy with the Chicago Declaration, a statement of social responsibility made by Evangelicals for Social Action. Finkbeiner has a master’s degree in social sciences and has worked with prisoners, juvenile delinquents, and the unemployed.

Ufema is concerned about the upcoming trial: “It’s not going to be a very pretty thing.” Keysor thinks perhaps thousands of UMC ministers share the pair’s qualms. The trial brings the situation into the open and “escalates its publicity” (the Pittsburgh Press has already given the story front-page coverage). “The establishment has poked its stick into a hornet’s nest,” Keysor said.

Arkansas Bill Adds Momentum

California Evolution Trial Raises Creationist Profile

At first glance, it was hard to tell just who won what in the creation-evolution trial last month in California. But as the dust settles, the creationists believe they won big.

“There’s just a constant bubbling out there now; it’s like yeast rising through the whole loaf,” said Nell Segraves, grandmother of the plaintiffs. She is one of the founders of the tiny Creation Science Research Center in San Diego, and was explaining how the phone has been ringing off the hook as television, radio, and press reporters call constantly, wanting to know what this creationism business is all about.

Her son Kelley, 38, the director of the creation center, brought suit against the state on behalf of his three children. He claimed their religious beliefs, constitutionally protected, had been offended by the dogmatic teaching of evolution in the public schools.

Reporters flocked to the trial, hoping to see a replay of the celebrated Scopes trial of 1925. Their hopes melted when the complainants changed course during the trial and backed away from their perceived desire to have creationism taught alongside evolution. Instead, they settled for reaffirmation by the state of a 1973 policy of teaching evolution as theory, not dogma.

In the creationists’ eyes (if not in the eyes of the press) the point was crucial. That is so because for the last 18 years. Nell Segraves and Jean Sumrall, also of the Creation Science Research Center, have basically been textbook vigilantes, trying not so much to promote creationism in the science texts as to rid them of dogmatic evolutionism. The state board of education adopted its policy toward evolution under the conservative influence of Ronald Reagan, then governor. But as the liberalism of Gov. Edmund Brown, Jr., took hold in the form of appointments to the board of education, the policy was mothballed, the creationists said. Having it reaffirmed in court last month was important for them.

Nell Segraves said the trial also showed that religious freedom is absolute, and that students whose religious views are offended must be accommodated in class.

It also seemed that for the first time the views of creationists were getting respectful, if not believing, attention in some of the major news media that paid attention to the trial, Newsweek. for example, quoted a retired biology teacher who said he believes in creationism because, “As I look at the world around me, there are some things that are better accounted for by creationism.” The magazine also noted that the Creation Research Society in Michigan claims 700 “pedigreed” scientists among its 2,600 members. Critics often contend in print that no serious scientist holds with creationism.

A little more than a week after the trial, the Arkansas State Legislature passed a bill requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution in that state, adding more fuel to the fire the creationists stirred. Local school boards in a variety of places already require that creationism be treated in science classes.

The snowball seems to be rolling, and the creationists in California, who gave it the first nudge, are clear in their intent to see it move faster and grow ever larger. Asked why they did not pull out all the stops in their California trial and press for creationism to be taught alongside evolution in the schools. Segraves said, “If we had equal time with evolution, that would set evolution in concrete, but we feel we can overcome it completely. Why hobble ourselves?”

Documentary Scheduled for April 23

Public Radio To Air Tapes From Ill-Fated Jonestown

“Dad, now I have no life of my own, I’m living on your time.” Those are the words of a Jim Jones follower as recorded on tapes to be aired April 23 on National Public Radio’s “Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown” (check local listings for the time). The 90-minute documentary is made up of excerpts from recordings made at the Guyana camp before the 1978 mass suicide and murder of 900 men, women, and children.

The tapes were obtained by writer James Reston, Jr. (son of New York Times columnist James Reston) in response to a Freedom of Information request. In the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the tapes have not been broadcast previously.

Reston used the tapes to write the National Public Radio program and a forthcoming book, Our Father Who Art in Hell. The radio documentary will air only a fraction of the tapes—which total more than 900 hours of sermons by Jones and recorded meetings with his followers.

One of the tapes was recorded at a “white night” ceremony at which Jones asked members of his cult if they would kill and die for him. A young child replies, “I’m prepared to die for this family if I have to for freedom. Thank you, Dad.” A woman proclaims, “When they hurt you [Jones], they hurt me.” And a man who identifies himself as a Vietnam veteran says, “I’m ready to face the front lines with you right now.”

The tapes, made during the 18 months prior to the November 1978 tragedy, also demonstrate what Reston calls “the slavery of the followers and the power and sacrilege of Jim Jones.”

One conversation is between a man who volunteers to die for Jones but hedges on killing his 11-year-old daughter “if Facists were coming up the road.” Finally, the man allows, “If it came to that, I would have to take her life.”

At that point, however, Jones protests that an 11-year-old is old enough to fight. “We consider that she would take up a cutlass and fight till she was dead,” he says. Then, ominously hinting, “Unless it came to an overwhelming invasion, then we would gently put them to sleep … we’re already prepared for that.”

A one-hour panel discussion and national telephone call-in session will follow the documentary. Bill Moyers, host of television’s “Bill Moyers Journal,” will anchor that portion of the program.

Racial Bridge Building

Atlanta Churches React To Murders Of Black Children

“ ‘These children have never had a single positive experience with a white person,’ commented a black Episcopal layman who is an official in one of the Atlanta Housing Authority projects.” So begins a letter to all clergy in Atlanta from Donald O. Newby, executive director of the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta, Inc. (CCMA). As the search for clues to the murders of 20 black children (and two others still missing) continues, Atlanta’s Christians are faced with an opportunity to help solve some “root problems” that many believe are related to the murders.

Mayor Maynard Jackson, speaking at the Eleventh Annual Community Breakfast the CCMA helps sponsor, said he believes “God is testing the city of Atlanta.” Jackson and speakers Andrew J. Young and Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum called on the 1,200 blacks and whites who gathered on March 7, 1981, to pray and to get involved in Atlanta’s struggle during this crisis.

Pastor Jim Bevis of Brook Valley Church of Christ directs the Atlanta Religious Mobilization Against Crime (ARMAC), which was called for two years ago by Mayor Jackson when Atlanta was emerging as a homicide center. ARMAC has been resurrected by the current crisis and Bevis is calling on the religious community to open its facilities to provide gathering places and counseling centers.

Jim Bevis sees positive steps, such as a special service at the black Union Baptist Church on Sunday. March 8, attended by a crowd of 400, and composed of almost as many whites as blacks. He was also a part of the Mayor’s Action Conference on Poverty on March 18, which addressed some of the “underlying problems” the whole church must deal with in Atlanta.

Newby and Bevis are concerned that people not forget the underlying needs after the current crisis is over. They expect future problems of comparable magnitude if Christians do not get involved. Says Newby, “There is a growing fear, frustration, and tension among many poor people, rooted in the long prevailing problems of unemployment, housing, education, hunger, and poverty. Anxieties are increased by projected drastic reductions in government assistance. This is already increasing demand for help from the churches.”

One need churches are being asked to meet is for recreational facilities and personnel. Due to financial cutbacks, the Atlanta Housing Authority will not be able to staff recreation areas adjacent to its 26 housing projects this summer. Bob Bevis, who coordinates urban ministry for three churches, is helping the CCMA recruit volunteers for these housing projects. He is also assisting in the development of clusters of four or five churches representative of different races and sections of the city, to aid youth and families through public schools near public housing units. The “adopt a school” program is supported by the Atlanta School Board, and clusters are forming so as to get involved in the schools before classes end this spring.

Tony Warner, campus minister with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at the predominantly black Atlanta University Center, says that the 20 killings have caused “the black community to feel increasingly there is a national trend of racism.” Warner believes there are some “good signs of blacks and whites coming together in worship services, concerts, and special prayer meetings.”

There is “real tension” and Christians have accepted a “terrible situation” said Tom Roddy of North Avenue Presbyterian Church and Jon Abercrombie of the Atlanta chapter of Evangelicals for Social Action, referring to housing and health problems in the city.

Roddy reports that North Avenue is having some joint prayer meetings with West Hills Presbyterian, home church of the nineteenth victim, Jeffrey Lamar Mathis, aged 10. West Hills pastor John Sharp has become a pastor to the families of the victims, who continue to be under intense pressure. Roddy believes the city is beginning to rally, but confessed his own difficulty in “rejoicing in a new day” because of his awareness of people who are hurting and needing comfort.

Abercrombie is helping several churches focus their resources in Atlanta and hopes people won’t forget the underlying needs once the murders are solved.

Several black pastors are available to receive clues concerning the killings, and are working supportively with the special police task force. Other pastors are promoting unity and a feeling of hope that the murderers will soon be found.

Newby said recently, “Before I came to Atlanta I was aware of the slogan [about Atlanta], ‘A city too busy to hate.’ During our job interview one of the black pastors said, ‘Yes, and also too busy to love.’ ” Newby and others say they want to break down the barriers between groups in Atlanta so that love will be acted out in concrete ways.

JIMMY LOCKLEAR

Church Women’s World Day of Prayer

Critics Take To War Path Over Indian Prayer Ritual

Is calling God the “Great Spirit” or comparing the sun with the knowledge of Christ acceptable? Some conservative Christians in Germany and North America who were offended by a liturgy written for the Church Women United’s World Day of Prayer don’t think so.

The liturgy, used March 6 by churches participating in the program, was sponsored by the international women’s organization based in New York City. Written by seven Christian women of American Indian descent, it is based on the theme of appreciation for the natural environment.

Audrey Sorrento, director of celebrations for Church Women United, said the organization chooses a different topic for each year’s day of prayer and asks members from appropriate cultures to write the liturgy. When it was decided to make the environment and ecology this year’s concern, American Indians seemed a natural choice to be authors for the service because of “their reverence and respect of the earth,” said Sorrento.

Critics objected to what they considered a tendency toward “heathen-naturalistic faith.” A West German writer criticized it as “unlimited pluralism and syncreticsm,” which loses “the authority of the great ecumenical Apostle’s Creed and therefore can lead the congregation astray concerning the world man has disfigured.” A group of North American Baptist women in Illinois participated in the prayer day and were surprised to see the leaders decked out in Indian headbands during the service.

Some elements of the liturgy that were specifically criticized are: referring to the earth as “Mother Earth” and God as “Great Spirit”; likening the wind to the Holy Spirit and the sun to the knowledge of Christ; facing each of the four compass directions to intone prayers; and excluding any mention of the Cross.

Reginald Hollis, Anglican bishop of Montreal, believed the service included a “pantheism quite remote from the New Testament.” Speaking of Christianity’s distinctiveness, Hollis said, “There is a uniqueness to the Lord and his dealing with our sin that cannot be expressed when our worship is centered on ecology and is patterned on ancient native rites.”

Sorrento said the liturgy elicited “many beautiful letters,” with positive responses far outnumbering negative ones. “Our religious customs, our rituals, are based on fundamentally human actions,” she said. “The bread and wine of Communion are very ordinary, material things. Because we’re human beings we have to express our religious realities in concrete form.”

That was what the authors of the liturgy—women of Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Church of Christ, and Roman Catholic persuasions—attempted to communicate, said Sorrento. Those who objected to the service mostly saw it as returning to pre-Christian worship rather “than recognizing God reveals himself in all ways. We can learn from anybody’s way of worship,” she said. The Indian backgrounds of the liturgical writers included Sioux, Choctaw, Seneca, Hopi, and Winnebago.

She noted that the liturgy spoke of Christ as the center of life and relied on “universal symbolism.” That symbolism, she maintained, was “invested with the fullness of our understanding in Christ.”

Sorrento said a few callers phoned wondering what parts of the service meant, but that a bit of explanation and education was adequate. She also emphasized that addresses to “Mother Earth” were not prayers to the earth as God, but a dialogue with the spoiled and wronged environment. “Every time we pray a prayer to God we go beyond our understanding,” she added.

Hollis believed the liturgy was motivated by guilt over treatment of Indian nations and a desire “to return to nature.” On those points he was sympathetic, but he also said. “To be faithful to our calling, we cannot serve God or our Indian neighbor if we do not proclaim Jesus is ‘the way, the truth, and the life.’ ”

North American Scene

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that may decide whether religious college groups will be allowed to meet on campus. A student group at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, sued after being barred from holding meetings on campus. Since the group admitted it was trying to “promote a knowledge and awareness of Jesus Christ,” its meetings were considered an improper advancement of religion. Lynn Buzzard, executive director of the Christian Legal Society, expects the Supreme Court to settle the growing controversy over collegian Christians and their gatherings in public buildings.

The Devil has been named as “codefendant” in a Connecticut murder trial. Arne Cheyenne Johnson, 19, is being tried for the stabbing death of his best friend. Johnson reportedly spent much of one summer trying to help a demon-possessed boy and, at one point, challenged the demons to “take me on.” Police said Johnson’s friend received several wounds when the two quarreled months later. Johnson’s attorney claims it happened because Johnson was possessed. “The courts have dealt with the existence of God. Now they’re going to have to deal with the existence of the Devil,” the lawyer said.

Evangelical college students demonstrated peaceably in five cities on March 14, to protest the Soviet Union’s repression of Christians. In Chicago, some 200 students heard a speech by Arkady Polischuk, a former Soviet Communist who defected to work for release of 30,000 Soviet Christians trying to emigrate. In Saint Paul, Minnesota, Governor Al Quie spoke to an estimated 400 students and proclaimed a statewide “Day of Remembrance” for Christians suffering behind the Iron Curtain. The America Association of Evangelical Students organized the demonstrations.

Marriage is not only alive, but getting healthier all the time, says a husband-wife sociological team. Thomas and Marcia Lasswell, both instructors at the University of Southern California, believe marriage statistics have been misread. They say two-thirds of first marriages last, and almost as many second marriages do. The divorce rate is distorted by such factors as the relatively few “serial” marriages, where a person marries three or more times.

Deaths

E. Schuyler English, 81, former president of Philadelphia College of Bible, editor of The Pilgrim Bible, chairman of the editorial committee for The New Scofield Reference Bible, editor of Our Hope magazine, managing editor of Revelation (now Eternity), radio broadcaster, and author of several books; March 16 in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, of a heart attack.

Evangelicals win favorable exposure and grope for unity.

“For me the best sermon was seeing so many people gathered to hear the preaching of the gospel.” Aristómeno Porras, editor of the prestigious Bible in Latin America magazine, was describing his reaction to the “Mexican Congress with Billy Graham” in Mexico City early last month.

Baptist leader Augustín Acosta, who served as the congress president, tripped off long applause in the Sports Arena, converted to a spiritual birthplace, when he declared, “This is the greatest exposure this city has had to the gospel.”

Evangelicals in the largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world (68.2 million) felt they had reason to rejoice. They had won a public hearing in a country that checks public proclamation of all religious messages, and which had, until recent decades, indulged in widespread suppression of Protestant Christianity.

Isolated incidents of persecution persist—mostly in small, rural villages. But the prevailing attitude among the middle and upper classes in Mexico City, however, is a combination of materialism and inattention to personal spiritual relationships. Many officials and private leaders refer to themselves as “free thinkers,” while atheistic leftists flourish in the universities.

The climate did not seem propitious for a mass evangelistic crusade. For one thing, current laws restrain public proclamation of religious messages—laws which developed as a reaction to the stifling Roman Catholic domination of the nation in the last century. Liberal leaders such as Benito Juarez, a personal admirer and friend of Abraham Lincoln and a reader of the Bible, sought to wrench from the Catholic church its vast land holdings. Violent battles between the church and the liberal government continued for decades, until the government gained legal control of the situation. The Catholic church still exercises a stronger control over the people in Mexico than in most Latin American countries.

By law, all church buildings in Mexico belong to the state. Shortly after constructing a church, congregational leaders turn the building over to government authorities. All religious services must be held in recognized church buildings, except for private religious meetings of a family nature, and these may be held only after the door is closed. Neither the church nor the clergy may hold land or public office, and Catholic priests are not allowed to wear their habits in the streets. One international traveler noted, “Mexico has one of the strictest constitutional controls of religion that exists in the world.”

Law and practice are often at variance, however, as the Pope’s visit signaled. President López Portillo met him at the airport, then took pains to point out that he welcomed him only as a private citizen. The foreign pontiff spoke in many public places and celebrated Mass on city squares; public pressure extends beyond the most carefully honed legal language.

Undaunted by these obstacles, evangelical leaders continued to press the invitation they had extended to Billy Graham nearly 10 years ago. (Graham had preached in Mexico City in 1958.) The obstacle was always the lack of a signed contract for a large stadium. The same issue almost aborted this congress at the last minute.

Contacts were made, and a verbal agreement arrived at for the use of the 50,000-seat Inde Sports Stadium belonging to the government-operated Sports Federation. But only three weeks before the congress, the verbal agreement was canceled. The explanation given to congress officials was that a shakeup in the Sports Federation caused the suspension of all previous agreements. Private sources confided, however, that government observers noted disunity among evangelicals, and for that reason suspended the stadium agreement.

Congress officials called for united prayer, then began a desperate search for solutions. With what a local newspaper called “extra-official support” from the government, they signed the contract for a 19,500-seat downtown Mexico arena just one hour before Graham flew into the city. The publicity effort was a shambles.

Initial press attitudes toward the evangelist were negative, with several accusations of political motives for his mission. Then Gonzalo Baez-Camargo, a noted Methodist journalist and the nation’s most illustrious evangelical, defended Graham in his editorial column, challenging his opponents to go hear him—especially since the meetings were free!

The climate changed as front-page articles appeared in several of the city’s newspapers. One publication marveled that “the nation’s television, radio, and press sought extensive interviews with Dr. Graham since he arrived in the country.” Another lamented the limited size of the Sports Arena, since so many people wanted to hear Graham.

The arena filled to capacity each of the five evenings (eight had been scheduled at the stadium), and on three evenings, thousands were turned away at the doors. The crowds that couldn’t enter gathered outside to sing, pray, or organize impromptu street meetings. Traffic jams tied up the arena area for hours each evening.

Nearly 3,500 Mexicans responded to Graham’s urgent appeals to receive Jesus Christ as Savior, and an equivalent number registered other decisions. Evangelist Guillermo Villanueva, who served as Graham’s interpreter, pointed out, “Because of the arena layout, the inquirers couldn’t come forward as usual, but stood during the invitation. I know that counselors couldn’t get to many of them, so the actual response was higher than the reported figures.”

Congress officials were alarmed when an usher reported on the last night that two men with a revolver had eluded him and disappeared in the crowds. As Graham prepared to preach, Salvation Army officers sealed off access to the platform and mounted an intense guard. Their faces radiated relief when the service ended safely.

Top-level government authorities congratulated congress president Acosta on the order and respect displayed by evangelicals during the meetings. Over 350 churches in the world’s largest city (estimated urban population: 17 million) participated in the congress.

Meanwhile, 1,300 Christian leaders from Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Texas met for a four-day School of Evangelism. Under the guidance of Presbyterian pastor Vidal Valencia, 23 outstanding Mexican and American evangelical leaders shared their knowledge and experience in evangelistic concepts and methods. Morning plenary sessions gathered all the Christian workers in a large downtown church, while in the afternoons 16 different workshops were offered in five centrally located churches.

In his address to the school, Billy Graham stressed the priority of evangelism, but added that Christians must also demonstrate their love to neighbors in practical ways. One Christian leader commented, “These men are getting ideas and tools that will revitalize their ministry all over this country.”

At the close of his Mexico City meetings, and before proceeding to another three-day series of evangelistic rallies in the oil-rich state of Tabasco—where an adequate stadium was assured—Graham made a brief visit to President López Portillo.

Tabasco, to most of the world, means hot sauce. But in Mexico, Tabasco stands for chocolate, oil, and evangelicals. The Vermont-sized state on Mexico’s humid southeastern gulf coast boasts vast plantations producing the cacao bean, but the enormous petroleum deposits below them have created a boom area.

According to the 1980 census, at least 10 percent of Tabasco’s 800,000 people are evangelicals, mostly Presbyterians. Mexican missionaries (Presbyterian) first preached in the then severely underdeveloped region around 1880, and today Villahermosa, the state capital, is the center of the nation’s major concentration of evangelical Christians.

Between 1930 and 1935, however, an intense ntireligious campaign orchestrated by Toámas Garrido, the state governor, could have finished off the young church. Church buildings were closed, Bibles burned, and pursued preachers taught believers in secret house meetings.

But when Billy Graham arrived in Villahermosa for his four-day gospel campaign last month, he could not have found a greater contrast. The present governor’s personal assistant was the first to meet the preacher as he got off the plane. “We have been looking forward to your coming to Tabasco, and welcome you with open arms,” he said. “You are free here to carry out your activities.” A thousand people were outside the airport, also waiting to welcome Graham.

The crowds grew as 10,000 filled the city’s “February 27” baseball stadium for the largest crusade dedication service in the history of Graham’s crusades. More people came on the following nights, and 35,000 people attended on the last two nights—a record for Protestant meetings in Mexico.

More than 8,000 inquirers indicated conversion decisions. Young people made up more than half the inquirers, reflecting the fact that 50 percent of Mexico’s population is under 15 years of age.

Santiago Marín, a local businessman who served as general secretary for the Villahermosa meetings, publicly thanked Graham for coming to southeastern Mexico, and led the huge crowd in thanking God for blessing his people. Marín had arranged the donation of one evening’s offering ($4,215) to the Mexican Red Cross. This silenced critics who had charged that evangelicals are interested only in spiritual matters.

In summing up the congress, Pedro de Koster, one of Mexico’s leading Protestants, noted: “We have seen the unity of God’s people as never before. Denominational barriers to fellowship were removed. A tremendously positive impression was made on the government. The lieutenant governor’s wife called to compliment us on the people’s respectful behavior, as well as on Dr. Graham’s messages. And we are experiencing spiritual harvest. I can see 30 churches coming out of these meetings on a short-term basis, and many more in coming years.”

One evangelical leader expressed concern, however, that no ongoing fellowship to stimulate evangelical cooperation was being formed following the Mexican congress. “At one point in the congress preparations,” he commented, “federal officials asked when we evangelicals are going to work together. They intimated we might enjoy better church-state relations if we do. We’ve seen in Mexico City and in Villahermosa what the various churches can do when they join hands. Are we too selfish, or is there some suspicion among us? We’ve started to move together, and we must keep it up!”

Guatemala

Believers Are Targeted As Terrorism Escalates

Some kind of terrorist threat was inevitable. But when Virgilio Zapata, director of the Instituto Evangelica Latina America (IEAL) in Guatemala City, received a threat to his son’s life on March 11, it was still a shock.

Within the hour, the 17-year-old high school senior was spirited out of the country to friends in the U.S. He is already attending a local high school and hopes to graduate in June as planned. But the family has no illusions that the danger is over.

Violence and in timidation have been escalating in this Central American nation, and missionaries have been warned to leave the country or be killed. Some have left. Others have made secret plans to flee in an emergency. Several Guatemalan Christian leaders have already been killed.

Zapata, a native Guatemalan, fears civil war is imminent. The IEAL board closed the girls’ dormitory on the institute’s main campus in Guatemala City because of the girls’ vulnerability to capture or attack. The school’s offices have been ransacked twice in the past year by terrorists and a $7,000 payroll was taken at gunpoint.

Guatemala has the potential for prosperity, rich as it is in coffee, cotton, and oil. Its Mayan ruins and breathtaking beauty lure thousands of tourists each year.

But the prosperity isn’t now enough to go around. Many Indian laborers earn less than $1 a day. Guatemala’s per capita gross national product, second only to Costa Rica in Central America, is still just $1,000 a year, and illiteracy stands at 53 percent.

Poverty from within and the pressure of subversive exploitation from without are building up the tension. The military dictatorship of General Romeo Lucas García is making “too little, too late” efforts to restore confidence and gain the support of the Guatemalan people.

One of these efforts led to the threat on young Zapata’s life. The government launched a campaign to persuade every literate Guatemalan over the age of 18 to “teach,” for 120 hours, at least three illiterates how to read and write. As a result, IEAL opened 15 literacy classes at the school, and young Virgil Zapata himself was teaching 11 “reluctant” students.

Protestant roots and fruits south of the border

Mexico shares a border with the country that sends out the largest number of evangelical missionaries. Yet it has not seen the large-scale conversions to Christ witnessed in some other Latin American nations.

Evangelical historians note that the first Protestant services were conducted in 1847 in the Ambassador’s Room of the National Palace. Soldiers of invading U.S. and French armies gave Bibles to local people, who read them avidly. Most of the early converts were from the mixed masses (mestizo), rather than from the upper-class Spanish elite or the lower-class Indian peasants.

In 1873, one evangelical congregation with 75 communicants served Mexico City. But by 1894, 18 Protestant churches functioned in the city, and 469 congregations were scattered throughout the nation.

1894 was a big year for Mexican evangelicals, for evangelist D. L. Moody and companion Ira Sankey crusaded there for Christ. Moody preached in the National Theater of the capital city, and also addressed a congress of evangelical missionaries. His ministry stirred local believers to greater evangelistic action. Methodist and Presbyterian schools aided the budding church. During the latest revolutionary period (1910–1920), evangelicals suffered, as did all elements of Mexican society. However, they continued to grow, spurred at intervals by Evangelism in Depth, Billy Graham, and Luis Palau.

According to the 1970 census, there were 900 thousand evangelicals in the nation, or 1.8 percent of the total population. By 1980, however, that figure had almost tripled to 2.4 million, and made up 3.5 percent of the country’s 68 million people. Church leaders believe the number of evangelicals in Mexico may be higher than census figures indicate, since many census takers didn’t ask about religous affiliation, assuming the persons they interviewed were Catholics.

But the terrorists, fearing that the government would swing the populace in its favor with such a move, reacted with threats of violence. The typewritten note, delivered by an unknown messenger to Zapata’s office, demanded an end to literacy classes and school-sponsored evangelism. The student body of 5,000 (largest Christian school in all of Latin America) has an aggressive sports evangelism and gospel team ministry, and has produced hundreds of Christian professional and business leaders in its 25-year history.

Zapata, who was appointed by the Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala to head up the massive relief program after the 1976 earthquake, has also established development programs in several towns severely damaged by the earthquake and has carried on literacy programs in those areas for several years.

In a phone call to Christian Nationals Evangelism Commission, which has assisted IEAL financially for a number of years, young Zapata emphatically denied that his father or the board of IEAL would agree to the terrorists’ demands. “They know that one of them will be next on [the terrorists’] list, but they are determined to continue with the program. In fact, 34 of our graduates this year are planning to open literacy centers and hope to reach 200,000 people in this way. The only adjustments they’ve made are to move the centers into private homes so that the terrorists won’t know where they are hiding.” said Zapata from his U.S. hideaway.

LORRY LUTZ

Eastern Orthodoxy

Westernizing The Eastern Church: Two Models

The branch of Christianity that most prizes its heritage in the unifying church councils of the first seven centuries has assumed a fragmented form in the New World. Orthodox churches have appeared to most as cultural extensions of various nationalities from eastern Europe. Over the last decade, however, third-and fourth-generation Americans in these churches have begun to adapt them to American culture and psychology.

For decades, the two-million-member Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America has depended on a steady supply of Greek immigrants to bolster membership. The new arrivals reinforced intense loyalties of the fatherland.

But the same language and culture traits that have sustained the immigrants have begun to alienate Greek-American young people, causing many to drift away. For instance, those who never learned the language of their parents cannot follow much of the Greek liturgy.

Archbishop Iakovos (pronounced YA-ko-vos), the 69-year-old head of the Greek Orthodox in the Americas, has led his church through the initial stages of a sometimes anguishing search for a formula to broaden its constitutency. Two years ago he pushed through a plan to subdivide his archdiocese into dioceses headed by bishops who are given considerable autonomy. Although the archbishop retains control, the move was seen widely as an indication of his willingness to share power and to respond to the American penchant for participatory forms of governing.

Iakovos also has encouraged ecumenical gestures. This has attracted new people to the church, but at the same time caused a few of the more conservative clergy to break away and form splinter parishes.

Last year the archbishop hired the Gallup organization to explore the attitudes and practices of his constitutency, with a special survey of teen-agers. As a result, the archdiocese has given new priority to waging a public relations campaign to explain Greek Orthodoxy to a broader cross section of Americans. For the first time, a priest, Alexander Karloutsos, has been given responsibility for a strengthened department of communications. In February, a communications commission, composed of lay Greek Orthodox professionals in the field, was formed to provide direction.

As one member of the Archdiocesan Council put the problem: “Every time we’re given national exposure we’re looked upon as a curiosity. We must reach out not only to Greek ethnics but to anyone who has a spiritual hunger.”

At the January Synod of Bishops, Iakovos carried the decentralization process a step further, appointing three bishops to oversee the establishment of monastic orders, the operation of parochial schools, and spiritual renewal. Bishop Maximos of Pittsburgh, who was tapped for the spiritual renewal role, is described by a sympathetic evangelical observer as a kindred spirit who evaluates his priests and parishioners on the basis of their “Christ-centeredness.” Nevertheless, he has been instructed to issue a booklet describing his church’s position on renewal and giving guidelines as to what actions will and will not be countenanced for the faithful.

This carefully nurtured change is all contained within strict parameters: all Orthodox in the New World are part of the diaspora from the Old. As such, they are subordinate and accountable first of all to the national Orthodox church in their country of origin, but more especially to Demetrios I, the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople (Istanbul). The ultimate desirability of a national American Orthodox church is acknowledged, but that can be initiated and confirmed only by the ecumenical patriarchate.

For this reason, the Greek Archdiocese’s Synod of Bishops took sharp and public exception to a current move by the predominantly Russian Orthodox body that negotiated autonomy from its national church 11 years ago. The one-million-member Orthodox Church in America (which the Greek Orthodox still insist on referring to by its former name—the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America) announced at the beginning of the year that its archbishop, Metropolitan Theodosius, was moving his see from New York to Washington, D.C.

The OCA, with headquarters in Syosset, New York, intends to split off the churches of Washington, its suburbs, and Baltimore, from its New York-New Jersey diocese to form a new minidiocese. It professes the basic reason to be that diocesan administration of the larger unit tied Theodosius down and hampered him in performing his duties as head of the wider church across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. A small, manageable diocese is being created to free his schedule.

Critics are sure this explanation is disingenuous. They note that traditionally the secular capital has become the capital of the see of the church. They believe the OCA is symbolically moving to establish itself as the national Orthodox church. And, they complain, “the symbolism takes on a certain reality.”

Behind the tension lies a different history and mindset of the Russian Orthodox. The Russians arrived in the New World before the U.S. Civil War, organizing a mission in Alaska in 1794, setting up a center in San Francisco in 1872, and moving it to New York in 1905. After the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Moscow was no longer able to exercise effective control over its North American establishment, which developed the habit of making its own decisions. The spread of communism in Europe after World War II set other ethnic Orthodox groups adrift from their old-country moorings. Russian immigration dried up at the same time. A majority of OCA clergy were born in North America, and 5 of its 13 bishops are converts.

To the Russian-American way of thinking, history has already created an autonomous North American Orthodox church, and as the oldest form of Orthodoxy in the West, it feels entitled to offer its negotiated autonomy from Moscow as a vehicle for the other nationalities, asking them to join with it in the OCA while retaining their identities as distinct “jurisdictions.” A Romanian group accepted that invitation in 1970, and smaller Bulgarian and Albanian groups have joined up since.

But these claims have not been recognized by most Orthodox bodies whose primates are members of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, chaired by Archbishop Iakovos. (Still, the OCA remains a member of SCCOBA.)

Behind the Greek gradualist approach to change in Orthodoxy in the Americas and the more radical Russian course lie differing views of the patriarch in Constantinople. All Orthodox take strong exception to the Roman Catholic dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility. The primate of each national Orthodox church is equal to every other. However, the bishop of Constantinople has the place of honor among the primates; he is the “first among equals.” (If the Western and Eastern churches were to be reunited, the place of honor would pass to the bishop of Rome.)

To the OCA, the ecumenical patriarch is simply entitled to chair gatherings of all the primates. It would hope to obtain his eventual blessing on a united national Orthodox church in the Americas. To the Greeks, the place of honor of the patriarch goes well beyond that. He is the head, and the body cannot move without a signal from the head.

Be that as it may, the process of acculturation goes on, reinforcing a general desire for a greater measure of oneness within Eastern Orthodoxy, and increasing embarrassment over the anomaly of national, ideological, and sometimes personal rivalries that divide a theoretically singular, uniform church.

HARRY GENET

World Scene

Summer Institute of Linguistics work in Mexico is currently in a holding pattern, since a majority of its linguists have left the country. Over the last two years, SIL has been accused in an intense national press campaign of destroying indigenous cultures. Leaders of the sister organization to Wycliffe Bible Translators have responded that the dictionaries and grammars prepared for tribal peoples give them group identification and pride in their culture, as well as contribute to preservation of their cultural heritages. Some linguists figure Mexico has 150 separate, mutually unintelligible languages. SIL has published New Testaments in 57 of these languages, including six new translations printed last year.

After the kidnapping of Chet Bitterman, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board made official its unwritten rule never to pay ransom if one of its workers is kidnapped. Its statement said that to pay ransom for a missionary “would raise serious questions regarding our theology, our mission concepts, and our stewardship. It would place every other member of our missionary family in immediate jeopardy.” However, the board noted that missionaries are permitted to decide for themselves whether to leave or stay in “troublesome areas,” and that “unnecessary risks are discouraged.”

West Germans have formed their first national Bible society. In February, representatives of the 34 regional societies approved the founding of the German Bible Society. With headquarters in Stuttgart, the amalgamated society will be among the largest worldwide, with 60 full-time staff.

Evangelicals have joined in relief efforts after the recent earthquake in southern Greece. Three strong quakes between February 24 and March 4 resulted in 22 dead and some 500 injured, and caused considerable structural damage to many towns and villages. The epicenter was just a few miles northeast of Corinth. Several major Protestant churches in Athens, some 50 miles to the east, reported minor damage to their buildings. The mother church of the Free Evangelical Church (a Greek denomination unrelated to others with similar names) may have to rebuild the old home it used for offices and Sunday school classrooms.

Soviet authorities are adopting new tactics in countering religious dissidents, according to reports reaching Keston College. An imitation of the samidzat (typewritten, secretly distributed) journals is being produced, with KGB sanction, by two authors who testified against Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin at his trial last August. Also, dissidents who recanted have been recruited to persuade activists to stop sending information about violations of believers’ rights to the West. Authorities have undertaken to deal with these violations themselves, they are saying, so there is no longer any need to enlist support from abroad.

The International Assistance Mission has decided on a temporary withdrawal of all its personnel from Afghanistan following the murder of Erik and Eeva Barendsen (CT, Feb. 20, p. 52). The IAM is a group of Christian workers serving the people of Afghanistan through medical and rehabilitation programs. Recuperation and assessment were given as reasons for the standby furloughs; but most staff expressed their willingness to return.

A two-year visa crunch for missionaries to Indonesia appears to be easing. Authorities stopped issuing new visas in early 1979, and in July of that year began stamping as unrenewable, six-month visas for all missionaries who had first entered the country more than five years previously. Since then, however, unrestricted renewals have resumed, and the nonextendable visas have been renewed on appeal. Last month the Southern Baptists reported receipt of two visas for new missionaries. The general Indonesian policy of encouraging foreigners to train Indonesians to replace them is still in effect.

During the 1970s, fundamentalist Christians fighting for the right to educate their children in their own private schools rolled up five landmark victories in the nation’s courts. It seemed that the legal walls separating church and state—at least in the realm of religious education—were becoming bulwarks.

But now, many constitutional lawyers who specialize in First Amendment freedoms for Christians are becoming agitated, because they believe the walls built during the seventies are being seriously eroded.

Ironically, the problem is not so much with the courts or the federal government as with a small, fundamentalist law firm in Cleveland, Ohio, named (David) Gibbs and (Charles) Craze. The firm has a distinctive philosophical view of how to handle the cases—a view that has not prevailed in three important decisions handed down in state courts during the last 12 months.

But philosophy is not the whole problem, according to the many critics of the law firm. Its senior partner, David Gibbs, is an able trial lawyer who has won some victories. But Gibbs spends most of his time on the road, preaching at fundamentalist rallies and lecturing in seminars about the need for pastors to stand their ground against the government. He does this under auspices of the Christian Law Association (not to be confused with the Christian Legal Society), which he and others founded in 1977 to raise money so Gibbs and Craze could defend its pastor clients and educate them about the dangers of government encroachment on the churches.

Consequently, Gibbs simply does not spend enough time preparing his cases for trial, say the critics, and they say he has lost more than one case because of Shoddy research. Gibbs roundly denies the accusation, but among those deeply concerned are the lawyers who have left Gibbs and Craze during the last two years because they were dissatisfied with Gibbs. In fact, as many full-time lawyers—four—have left the firm in the last two years as currently work there. (One of the four who has resigned, Tedd Williams, will stay on until June.) Besides the lawyers, the Christian Law Association’s last two editors have also left in dissatisfaction. One of them, Alan Grover, quit after only two months—before CLA’s magazine, the Defender, could even announce his arrival.

The three harmful court decisions that have been handed down in the last year involve Christian clients of Gibbs and Craze. It is what other constitutional lawyers see as inadequate defense of the issues at stake that has them so concerned. One of these is John Whitehead, a Washington lawyer, who told a group of Christian educators recently. “If [these three decisions] stand, they may have reversed 50 years of constitutional law.” (Whitehead is one of the lawyers who left Gibbs and Craze and now practices independently.)

A doctor who harms a patient by using a treatment that fails hurts no one but that patient. But a lawyer who loses a case in a top state or federal court sets a legal precedent. The court’s decision is used against other lawyers down the road when they try to defend similar cases. Each harmful precedent makes the battle more difficult.

One lawyer views the Gibbs and Craze situation as so serious that he has done something lawyers rarely do. He has criticized them publicly by writing an unfavorable letter to them and sending copies to other lawyers handling religious freedom matters. That lawyer is no idle critic. He is William Ball of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and he has won more important cases bearing on Christian freedom than any other lawyer in the country. All five of the landmark decisions in the seventies were won by Ball, and he has won others as well. Comments by two attorneys are typical of what one hears about Ball: “He’s a lawyer’s lawyer,” said one. “He’s almost a legend.” said another.

The court decision that prompted Ball’s letter involved two fundamentalist Christians. Paul Shaver and Dennis Steinwand, who sent their children to the Bible Baptist School in Bismarck, North Dakota, being operated by the Bible Baptist Church without state approval. The parents said they were required by God to educate their children by Christian principles, which were not taught in public schools; since Christian education was a religious duty, their school could not be required to submit to any state regulations.

Fair enough, said the state supreme court in its opinion; but if the parents believed state regulation imposed illegally on their religious beliefs, they should have showed how this was so; but they did not. “No attempt was made at the trial to show how compliance with the law would affect the religion of the parents or their children.” said the court in its opinion.

(In one of the landmark cases of the seventies, Whisner v. Ohio, the situation was similar. A fundamentalist school would not comply with the state’s “minimum standards,” which were contained in a 125-page booklet of 600 regulations. But in this case, William Ball, defendant Levi Whisner’s lawyer, called witness after witness to show that the “minimum standards” were a hopeless maze. Not all of the standards were even understood by the state’s educational bureaucracy. Ball also showed that state certification of teachers—one of the regulations—was not the safeguard the state claimed it was. Certification means the state approves the teacher’s credentials after he passes certain college courses and gets a degree. The trial was dogged work, but it paid off when, in 1976, the Ohio Supreme Court found the standards unconstitutional.)

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says two things about religion. The first is that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The second is that Congress cannot prohibit “the free exercise thereof.” The Fourteenth Amendment applies this to state government as well.

Courts have held that if the government “excessively entangles” itself in religion by overly regulating Christian schools, it has violated this first constitutional safeguard, the “Establishment Clause.” But in this argument is an admission that the government does have some legitimate duty to see that children are properly educated.

This is where David Gibbs draws the line. He and his clients believe education is ordered by God, so there is no distinction between the Christian school and the local church. Just as pastors would not permit the state to have a say in its church worship, neither can they permit the state any control over education.

Because of the beliefs of the pastors Gibbs has defended, he does not develop the “excessive entanglement” idea contained in the Establishment Clause because they believe in no entanglement. Their stand in court, therefore, is simply that any attempt by the government to regulate them amounts to a violation of the second constitutional safeguard in the First Amendment, the “Free Exercise Clause.” This is the philosophy that separates Gibbs from most other lawyers who defend Christian school cases.

Ball believes it is a fatal mistake. “The Constitution gives us two weapons against government, not just one. The First Amendment has a Free Exercise Clause and an Establishment Clause. It is the latter which is the Constitution’s big gun against violations of church-state separation.”

With regard to the implication that if excessive entanglement is prohibited, then some entanglement must be permissible, Ball said, “Not at all. In almost all these cases, the state has sought to impose excessive entanglements, very major violations of church-state separation. It is an awful mistake not to attack these.”

Lawyers differ about what rights the state has in Christian education. Ball believes it must be limited to reasonable fire, health, and safety regulations as well as the core curriculum, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic.

In a recent article, Ball wrote that if the “religious anarchists,” as he calls them, could write their own law, they would say the state would have no power to impose any requirement on what is taught in religious schools. “This means that nothing—literally nothing—can be required to be taught in any religious school. Although all such schools may, it turns out, teach English to their children and teach it well, this statute is a denial of the principle that we (as in ‘We the people …’) have any common concern for one another in the area of education. Thus, under such an exemption, no school, or home teacher, could be required to assure that a child learn the language of his country, or that he be able to compute, or know something of his country’s history, form of government or geography.”

Gibbs argues that his clients do not object to reasonable fire, health, and safety regulations for Christian schools either, as long as the government does not make a distinction between the church and the school. But this often happens, because local codes usually call for stricter regulations for schools than for churches. Problems occur when pastors refuse to obey the stricter regulations, especially when the school is located in the church building. They believe it is unreasonable for them to bend to stricter regulations during the week when they have far fewer people in the building than on Sunday.

The North Dakota decision, the first of the three that lawyers consider so harmful, was handed down last summer. The second of the three decisions came last December. In this case, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that James Olin could send his daughter to an Amish school, even though the Olins were not themselves Amish. While that seemed like a victory, the court called for new, more reasonable, state regulations (to replace those struck down in Ohio in the Whisner case). It suggested that Ohio adopt the North Dakota regulations, which were upheld in the Shaver case, and which require teacher certification. Many teachers in tiny church schools are not certified, and this would wipe them out. This is deplorable, wrote Ball in a memorandum on the Olin decision. “I fear that it spells great difficulty for the future.” The law firm defending James Olin was Gibbs and Craze.

On January 30, the third harmful decision was handed down. The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled against the Faith Baptist Church School in Louisville, Nebraska, after it refused to seek state approval. The court held that the state may certify teachers, that it may dictate curriculum, and that high scores by the religious school children on standardized tests are not sufficient to protect the state’s interests. As in Olin and Shaver, no attempt was made to show in detail how the regulations excessively entangled the state in religion. The law firm on the losing side was Gibbs and Craze. Ball and other constitutional lawyers believe it is imperative that religious education cases be prepared meticulously and defended on as many fronts as possible for one overriding reason. The United States Supreme Court has not yet ruled clearly on just how far the state may go in regulating religious schools, and the Christian legal community wants only the best-prepared case to get to the high court. Everett Sileven, pastor of the Nebraska church, is completely satisfied with Gibbs’s handling of his case, and has asked him to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. He apparently will, and other Christian lawyers believe it will be devastating if the court decides to hear it, because they believe it has no chance of winning. Even that doesn’t disturb Sileven, who said he expects to go to jail to win the complete religious freedom he believes in.

David Gibbs’s brethren in the legal profession are not the only ones upset at what they perceive to be his failure to prepare well. Clients have been known to feel the same way.

Dale Crowley, Jr., is executive director of the National Foundation for Fairness in Education in Alexandria, Virginia. Four years ago, his organization hired David Gibbs to handle their lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institution. Crowley and his group believe the National Museum of Natural History, run by the Smithsonian, breaks the law by displaying an evolution exhibit because it offends the religion of those who believe in biblical creation. The suit was lost, and Crowley lays much of the blame on David Gibbs.

Crowley said in an interview that after hiring Gibbs, “We ran into delays, neglect, and preoccupation with his speaking engagements across the country. It drove us up the wall. We’d write him letters and get no answers, make phone calls and get no return calls. We even had him scheduled for a meeting down here and he didn’t show up.” At the meeting were influential people from the Washington, D.C., area who might have been influenced by the lawyer’s presentation of the case and contributed to the high costs of the suit, said Crowley.

Gibbs finally did come, apologized for neglecting the case, and promised to advise the group once a month of the developments. When they got no monthly updates, Crowley and others wanted to fly to Cleveland to see Gibbs. When they could not get an appointment, they did not go. “It was a nightmare,” said Crowley.

Responding to Crowley’s statements, Gibbs said he did not show up for the meeting because his plane was snowed in. Sometimes, he acknowledged, he is hard to reach because he has so many cases and is on the road so much. He denied that his busy schedule prevents him from making the best possible preparation for the cases. “Do we do our dead level best to prepare as best we can? The answer is yes,” he said.

But Gibbs’s law partner, Charles Craze, has become the subject of a legal action brought by an unsatisfied client. Craze handled her case on behalf of the Christian Law Association and lost it. She is appealing, and one of the grounds is “inadequacy of counsel.” The appeal is being handled by John J. McLario, a prominent fundamentalist Christian lawyer.

The defendant is Cynthia Webster, wife of David Webster, pastor of the Bible Baptist Church in Neillsville, Wisconsin. She was a teacher at the church’s school, and one day in October 1978, she swatted a five-year-old boy five or six times with a wooden pointer after he deliberately, and repeatedly, refused to pronounce a word that he knew. After serious bruises were found on the boy, Mrs. Webster was charged with a felony count of child abuse, a serious crime. The trial was in August 1979, and the following facts are from the appeal documents:

As the trial date approached, the Websters began to wonder because they had not heard much from the Christian Law Association, although it had agreed to take the case. David Webster said, “We were a little apprehensive because we were never told of any strategy, any investigations, any attempt to get witnesses from our side or any instructions concerning questions we would be asked if we had to testify. We wondered if they had forgotten about us.…”

Craze flew into town the day before the trial and spent only about three hours with the clients. The appeal claims Craze’s defense was inadequate, and here is some of what the appeals documents said:

• The lack of preparation was evident when David Webster made a serious error on the witness stand by admitting that his wife was wrong in using a pointer instead of a paddle to swat the child. Craze compounded the error because he apparently wasn’t paying attention and had Webster repeat, in the jury’s presence, the admission that the pointer was wrong. Webster’s response “… can only be characterized as confused, disorganized, and destructive to his own wife’s case,” said one of the appeal documents.

• Craze did not question the child’s testimony, although he would not answer questions at first and his mother repeatedly whispered to him as he testified while seated on her lap.

Asked about all this, Craze responded by saying the case was adequately defended. He said the defense strategy was to be completely open with the jury, and “it borders on stupidity” to suggest that he should have objected that the child was an incompetent witness, because when children are involved in a trial, they easily win the sympathy of a jury, and criticism of them, even if justified, can backfire. He said he did not see Scott’s mother whispering to him, although affidavits from spectators say she did. Regarding the alleged slip by David Webster in admitting that his wife was wrong in using a pointer, Craze said the jury had a harsh impression of Webster, and needed to hear him admit that a mistake had possibly been made.

Despite the fact that Craze says the defense was adequately prepared, the appeal contains an affidavit from Timothy Hallett, pastor of the New Testament Baptist Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Said Hallett, “Attorney Craze indicated to me that he was very busy and that it is hard to keep up with all of the different cases and difficult to do them justice because there just isn’t enough time to spend on each.… Attorney Craze stated to me during that conversation that he did not have enough time to prepare for the Webster case and that he wished he could have given more time to it.” Craze does not recall saying that, but said he may have; he said most lawyers wish they had more time to prepare. He reiterated that the Webster case was well defended.

It is not surprising that the Christian Law Association has so many cases. Gibbs is on the road almost constantly. He is a gifted speaker, able to dissect the principles of First Amendment law so that the fundamentalist pastors who flock to the CLA’s “biblical-legal” seminars across the country can grasp the urgency of their need to stay free from the government’s grasp. Much of the advice seems sober, level headed, and valuable, but at other times it is belligerent. During a lecture at a seminar in Mount Hermon, California, Earl Little, CLA vice-president, told some 200 pastors that since Satan is behind bars, the pastors needn’t fear him when he comes disguised as a zoning inspector trying to make a school comply with regulations. He compared government agents with apes behind bars, and snakes behind a glass barrier. He exhorted the pastors to resist their intrusions, saying Jesus’ disciples counted themselves worthy when they stood against the government. “If you roll over on your back and wag your tail, they’ll dance on your chest with steel cleats,” Little said.

During the very next lecture, however, Gibbs urged the pastors to be calm when their school is visited by government inspectors, and to exhibit Christian love at all times. A pastor checking his notes after the seminar might be excused for being confused about the stance he should take.

Gibbs has a wide and apparently growing following among fundamentalist pastors. His reputation started in Ohio during the turmoil of the seventies, when the state was pressing its burdensome regulations on Christian schools. Gibbs spoke powerfully at rallies, explaining the cases he was handling. The situation was defused when Ball won the Whisner case, having the regulations thereby declared unconstitutional. At that time, Gibbs was also defending a church in Concord, New Hampshire, whose pastor was under threat of a jail sentence for operating his church school in violation of local zoning regulations. The case, which lost in lower courts, was upheld by the state supreme court, but only after Gibbs drove all night through a blizzard from Cleveland to Concord to appear in court and argue the case. By all accounts he gave a dazzling performance. The Christian Law Association was organized that year, 1977, to raise funds as the case load grew with Gibbs’s reputation.

The CLA engages in brassy self-promotion, mostly through its magazine, the Defender. In 1978, the magazine quoted the well-known fundamentalist pastor, Jack Hyles, as saying that Gibbs is “the legal messiah for the Christian school movement in America today.” A slide-tape presentation says the CLA “is to the judicial system what the ballot box is to the political system.” The Defender articles are shamelessly effusive: “The morning hours were grueling and tedious as Attorney Gibbs’ cross-examination pressed on with unwavering determination to secure the truth,” read one account of a trial.

Officially, the CLA is a client of the Gibbs and Craze law firm, and the CLA paid the Gibbs and Craze firm nearly a half million dollars for its legal services in 1979 (1980 figures were not available). As a practical matter, it seems Gibbs controls both the firm and the CLA. Wallace Metts was employed by CLA as media director, but left in dissatisfaction last December, partially because Gibbs was gone so much that Metts could not get things accomplished since Gibbs’s approval was necessary for most of what Metts did. “Everything I did was subject to Gibbs and Craze. It got to be intolerable.” Metts said.

He also grew disturbed at the two hats Gibbs was trying to wear at the same time: that of preacher—calling pastors to stand fast in the faith, even if it means going to jail for it; and that of constitutional lawyer—trying to perform the exacting work it takes to bring momentous cases to court while on an exhausting touring schedule.

The dual role does not seem to be working successfully, as testified by the growing number of Christian lawyers who are nervous about Gibbs, including those who have worked for him and who have left because of him. So far Gibbs has not taken to heart the growing chorus of criticism that says he is greatly jeopardizing the cause of Christian freedom in the nation.

The humanist heresy has redefined the goal of education.

I am a christian and a pastor; I am persuaded that Christianity is true. In harmony with Jesus’ approach, however, I do not wish to see the state or anyone else coerce others into Christianity or any religious system. It was the Christian faith that the pilgrims and Puritans embraced; yet it was also they who endured the hardship of coming to this land to escape state-sponsored religion and to obtain the right to worship freely. Consequently, our nation was imbued early on with a passion to separate the church and the state, mainly for the protection of the church and freedom of religion.

The church is openly religious; we have a Bible, institutions, traditions, and all the markings of a religion. It should be evident, moreover, that we have gone to great pains in the United States to keep Christianity and other recognized religions out of the classrooms of state-sponsored schools—to the extent that voluntary prayers have been prohibited by the Supreme Court. Even evangelical Christianity tends to favor separation of state and religion.

The problem I wish to address is the fact that not every religion is willing to abide by this rule of separation, that there are those holding a religious position who are succeeding in obtaining state sponsorship for the teaching of their religious views in public schools.

Most religions consist of a unified system of beliefs that deal with basic views on such things as God and human ethics. These would be recognized as two basic elements in all religions—a view of God or some sort of ultimate reality, and a view of ethics, derived from ultimate realities. Most often these are expressed in some kind of holy book. Judaism and Christianity certainly fit that description and make no pretense of being anything other than religious systems.

As parents and as taxpayers, however, we may not be aware that humanism also possesses the basic elements of a religion. It has its “holy book,” The Humanist Manifesto, I and II, a sort of Old and New Testament, if you will. The religion of humanism should not be confused with humaneness, humanitarianism, or the humanities, however. Humanism calls itself a religion at least seven times in the first four pages of its book. The very first sentence reads, “Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view …” Furthermore, humanism holds a position on God—it says there isn’t one. Its book says “faith in the prayer-hearing God … is an unproved and outmoded faith … and there is insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural” (pp. 13, 16).

Religious humanism, finally, has a firm position on ethics. Their “Bible” says, “Moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction” (p. 17). In other words, morals are not derived from absolutes given by God, but are determined by the individual from situation to situation. The Judeo-Christian view is a religion and humanism is its opposite number—image and counter image.

Lest there be any doubt, the Supreme Court has on at least two occasions identified secular humanism as a religion: in Abington v. Schempp and Torcaso v. Watkins. In Torcaso, the Court spelled out that “religion” in the constitutional sense includes nontheistic as well as theistic religion and the state is therefore forbidden to prohibit or promote either form of religion. It is here that the problem is to be found. The state is increasingly being put in the position of promoting humanism, a nontheistic religion, and to the detriment of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

As a parent and taxpayer, I face the problem that humanism is the dominant view among leading educators in the U.S.—among those who set the trends in education, develop the curricula, dispense federal moneys, advise governmental officials on education, and so on. This religious viewpoint is being promoted in public schools, frequently without the knowledge or consent of parents and taxpayers. Many teachers and educators participate in such programs without appreciating their significance. Furthermore, as a Christian, I am increasingly alarmed that my taxes are used to subvert my own position.

Parents could once assume that when they sent their children to school, the traditional Judeo-Christian values they held would at least be respected by the schools, if not reinforced. But no longer can parents make that assumption. According to the Gallup Polls, in 1977 at least 94 percent of Americans believed in God. Yet, among those in leadership in education, a significant number believe otherwise, professing humanism. Their views are the ones coming through to children in today’s schools.

To show how this is coming about, we will go first to the root of the issue—the change in the philosophy of education. We will then examine some of the fruit—the specific programs carrying the humanist message into the schools. And finally, we will examine the attitude of those in educational leadership who are consciously trying to promote this approach.

Goal Of Education

First, the philosophy of education: what is education supposed to accomplish? Most of us have thought that the schools’ responsibility is to teach cognitive skills—reading, writing, math, and so on, in the context of such commonly accepted values as honesty, truthfulness, and discipline. Apparently this is still the expectation of parents as nationwide they are distressed over the 10-year decline in SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores and the growing awareness that today’s children seem less equipped to read, write, and add in an increasingly complex culture.

Most parents would be surprised to discover that leading educators no longer see their job primarily to be the teaching of these necessary skills. The philosophy of education has undergone a fundamental change. Educators now perceive their job to be the complete “resocialization” of the child—the complete reshaping of his values, beliefs, and morals. Teaching is now being viewed as a form of therapy, the classroom as a clinic, and the teacher as a therapist whose job is to apply psychological techniques in the shaping of the child’s personality and values.

There is evidence showing the philosophy of education has altered in this way. For example, such changes have been discussed in Congress, the subject of legislative action. S. I. Hayakawa, U.S. Senator from California, was an educator for most of his life. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, he stated:

“In recent years in colleges of education and schools of sociology and psychology, an educational heresy has flourished.… The heresy of which I speak regards the fundamental task of education as therapy.… There are exercises in psychodrama, role playing, touch therapy, encounter groups, involving necessarily the searching and exploration of innumerable matters that are nobody’s business except that of the child, the child’s parent, or the family’s physician or psychiatrist.”

The National Education Association report. “Education for the 70’s,” states clearly that “schools will become clinics whose purpose is to provide individualized psycho-social treatment for the student, and teachers must become psycho-social therapists.” The National Education Journal states in February 1968 that “the most controversial issue of the 21st century will pertain to the ends and means of human behavior and who will determine them. The first education question will not be ‘what knowledge is of the most worth?’ but ‘what kind of human behavior do we wish to produce?’ ”

Who will determine human behavior, and what kind of behavior do we want? Who will engineer society, and what kind of society shall we design? These are the tasks the educational leaders have set for themselves. They are not thinking small.

How will this affect what goes on in the classroom? Consider the following statement on what is to be studied in classrooms by the former president of the NEA. Catherine Barrett: “We will need to recognize that the so-called basic skills, which represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day. The remaining time will be devoted to what is truly fundamental and basic.”

This is a remarkable viewpoint in light of the declining test scores that seem to indicate that education is not succeeding very well in communicating the basic skills. Barrett, nevertheless, wishes to press on undaunted to bigger and more significant things, such as redesigning society.

That the schools should be going in this direction is no real surprise. John Dewey, the patron saint of public education, was a signer of Humanist Manifesto I, and a president of the American Humanist Association. B. F. Skinner of Harvard, a prime advocate of behavioral psychology, was a signer of Humanist Manifesto II. Consider also a prophetic statement by Horace Mann, another early father of public education: “What the church has been for medieval man, the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God would be replaced by the concept of the public good.”

Educational leaders thus say the big question in education is, “What human behavior do we want, and who will produce it?” And that is my question: According to whose pattern do the educationists propose to reconstruct society? Whose values will be taught? Without doubt, the state will uniformly educate its children in the values of the religion of humanism, for they are the “rational” ones. We are in no danger of having the state impose Judeo-Christian values on children; far from it. The question is, are we in jeopardy if the state becomes the sponsor of the religion of humanism?

Method

Let us now consider the fruit of this new philosophy, specific programs designed to convey a humanistic outlook on life. Those programs designed to shape young minds referred to by Senator Hayakawa included psychodrama, role playing, touch therapy, and encounter groups. To these we may add values clarification, situation ethics, sensitivity training, survival games, and other behavior-oriented programs. Beginning in kindergarten and continuing through high school, these programs are intended to modify children’s attitudes, values, and beliefs. The problem is not with values as such, but with the fact that these new programs are designed to “free” the children from the Judeo-Christian notions of value and morality their parents may have passed on to them. These programs cover such topics as sex education, drug education, family life, human development, and personality adjustment.

Needless to say, there is no god in the system of values being taught by humanists, and so there are no absolutes, no clear rights and wrongs (except the clear “wrong” of having absolute convictions of right and wrong). The only basis for developing morals is what the child himself wants or thinks, and/or what the peer group decides is right. Strong convictions of right and wrong are looked upon as evidence of poor social adjustment and of the need for the teacher’s therapy. The child must be delivered from primitive notions of morals. To aid in this, mothers and fathers are depicted in the literature as old-fashioned, as having hang-ups and strange ideas about morals, as being unable to keep up with the changing world. The children are much brighter and know much more than past generations who, after all, led us into our present mess! Old values have clearly failed, so, on to newer and better ones of our own making. Horace Mann was indeed prophetic: the school is to become the church for modern man.

Lest I be charged with imagining all this, let me give some concrete examples. Sheila Schwartz is a humanist, subscribing to the philosophy of the humanist “Bible.” The January/February 1976 edition of Humanist Magazine carries her article, “Adolescent Literature: Humanism Is Alive and Thriving in the Secondary School.” That title alone is an education. Professor Schwartz (she is a professor of English education—she trains public school teachers) makes the following significant statements in this article:

“Something wonderful, free, unheralded, and of significance to all humanists is happening in the secondary schools. It is the adolescent-literature movement.… They may burn Slaughterhouse Five in North Dakota and ban a number of innocuous books in Kanawha County, but thank God [sic] the crazies don’t do all that much reading. If they did they’d find that they have already been defeated.… Nothing that is part of contemporary life is taboo in this genre and any valid piece of writing that helps make the world more knowable to young people serves an important humanistic function.… None of the books are didactic, but all of them espouse the humanistic ideals to which young people should be exposed.”

Her article describes some of the books in detail; in reference to one she says, “The story is not really believable if we look only at the mental illness in it, but the humanistic attitudes in it are valuable.” According to her, then, those parents, here referred to as “crazies,” who are trying to keep books they feel are harmful from their older children are defeated even so, because such material is already contained in adolescent literature.

This is not just theory; it is contained in the training for many school teachers and has worked its way down into adolescent literature. I hope you are troubled as I am at this elitist attitude—at the arrogance of so-called experts who have seized authority that is not theirs because they are convinced they know better than the parents. I wonder if the parents whose children are using these books know that these experts feel the humanistic values being taught are the most important things in the literature.

The root of this problem is the religion of secular humanism and its effect on the philosophy of education. Its fruit consists of those specific educational programs designed to modify values and behavior, so as to reengineer society. What is the attitude of the educational elite in all of this?

Outlook

Sidney Simon is one of the educational elite in the U.S. He is a humanist. He teaches at the Center for the Humanistic Education in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is one of the main architects of values clarification theory, which is widely used in public schools. Mr. Simon has been quoted as admitting that when he was training teachers in values clarification in New York City, “an orthodox Jewish right-wing group got hold of it and just raised hell” because they felt “values shouldn’t be dealt with in the school but should be left for the religious institutions and the home.”

While teaching at Temple University, Simon said. “I always bootlegged the values stuff. I was assigned to teach social studies in elementary school and I taught values clarification. I was assigned current trends in American education and I taught my trend.”

Simon’s situational ethics are true to his humanist form, for he apparently saw nothing unethical about “bootlegging” religious beliefs into public education, nor did he feel moral guilt at his subterfuge and deception. This often seems to go along with the new approach to education. Keep it subtle, keep it quiet, or the parents will really get upset. This man trains teachers, and his attitude as an influential educational leader is seeping down to underlings who implement his educational strategies.

Rhoda Lorand, a member of the American Board of Professional Psychology, made some observations about the attitudes of educators before the U.S. House Sub-Committee on Education. Her testimony related to House Resolution 5163 having to do with education. Her words are as follows:

“The contempt for parents is so shockingly apparent in many of the courses funded under Title III, in which the teacher is required to become an instant psychiatrist who probes the psyche of her pupils, while encouraging them to criticize their parents’ beliefs, values, and teachings. This process continues from kindergarten through the twelfth grade, and has created dissension and bitterness from one end of the country to the other.… The National Institute of Mental Health promotes these programs and funding for them is readily available through Title III. Therefore, despite the vigorously expressed opposition of parents, school officials continue to institute and implement these programs and feel free to insult the parents who object to them.”

In other words, the educational elite have quietly usurped the authority of the parents, and since they can count on federal funds and power, they feel free to look with disdain on the parents who object to this arbitrary takeover. Their elitist arrogance is appalling. It is not at all clear that they know better how my child should be raised or that they have a superior system of values. In my judgment, they have no more right to impose their religious system on children than does any other group.

Private Education

Someone may well say, “If you don’t like the public schools, send your children to private schools.” In their distress over the declining quality of public education and displeasure at the attempt to subvert traditional values in the public schools, parents frequently have done just that. But what recourse do those parents have who can’t afford private education as an escape from these problems? Consider the plight of a frustrated black father in New York City as his child falls further and further behind. Nat Hentoff wrote in Learning:

“The black father was so consumed with anger and despair that it was hard for him to speak. ‘You people,’ he said to the impassive members of the board of education, ‘operate a … monopoly like the telephone company. I got no choice where I send my child to school. I can only go where it’s free. And she’s not learning. That’s your responsibility, it’s the principal’s responsibility, it’s the teacher’s responsibility that she’s not learning. And when you fail, when everybody fails my child, what happens? Nothing. Nobody gets fired. Nothing happens to nobody except my child.’ ”

In summary, we are faced with the imposition of a government-backed religion. The religion of humanism is being passed on to formative minds through state sponsorship of public education. The goal is to reshape society through the molding of young minds. Humanism is a self-proclaimed religion; it has its “Bible” and its beliefs. Its leaders are attempting to remake public school teachers into its ministers and priests, public classrooms into its sanctuaries, public tax coffers into its offering plates, and other people’s children into its captive congregation. Humanism’s “Bible” vigorously insists that it is wrong for the state to promote any religious view; humanists apparently mean any religious system other than their own. What should we do?

First, parents can educate themselves in this matter; good pamphlets and books are available. Our overall goal, next, ought to be to move the philosophy of education back into communicating basic skills and out of social engineering. Further, we should make it known that we do not accept the attempt to use the schools to promote a particular religious viewpoint—theistic or nontheistic.

On a local level, I do not recommend the bull-in-a-china-shop approach by parents. I do recommend their courteous but determined effort to discover the true nature of local school curricula. Parents have a right to know what their children are taught and they ought not be put off by the elitist attitudes of contempt or secrecy. Parents will find differing levels of humanist programs from school to school, and we ought not think that all teachers and educators are consciously trying to promote humanism. However, education is moving powerfully in that direction and now is the time to stop the trend.

Second Sight

If we could see with widened gaze of angels,

we might discern the shape

and whole dimension of love.

PEARL LUNT ROBINSON

For 25 years, including my first two years of college and three years in the navy during World War II, I was associated with a rather conservative environment. I was reared in a small farming community in central Texas by parents devoted to their Christian faith and who brought up their four children to abide by biblical standards.

The first crack in this relatively solid foundation occurred during my latter undergraduate college years at Southern Methodist University, where I encountered many liberal professors. The crack almost became a break in the early 1950s, and I completed a master’s degree in the domain of John Dewey at Teachers College, Columbia University. It was there that I was fully indoctrinated into the permissive philosophy of education and life.

I was introduced to the idea that there are no absolute standards: judgments depend only on circumstances. At the time, I was fascinated by situation ethics. Academically, that meant the teacher emphasized social development as much as intellectual progress, and that he expected less from students than formerly. Also, I began to believe that the group was more important than the individual. Many of my grades were determined by such nebulous criteria as group progress, social interaction, and future potentialities. I found myself enjoying the ease of achieving high marks (what we know today as grade inflation was just beginning).

Permissive Teaching

Soon after receiving the M.A. degree, I put many of these permissive ideas into practice as a classroom teacher and principal in one of the state’s better school systems, in Austin, Texas. I led in shaking up the basic curriculum. For example, I advocated the “progressive” idea that writing, reading, and arithmetic should all be integrated into the social studies program, letting these basic skills more or less “emerge.”

Some years later, after receiving a doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin, I moved on to advocate further permissive programs in two additional colleges before arriving at Austin College in February 1965. As I prepared students to become teachers, I strongly advocated social studies as the hub of elementary school curriculum. I instructed prospective teachers that to teach reading per se was secondary. Of first importance was the child’s social development, occurring most prominently in teaching of such topics as, “My Community Helpers,” “Cold Lands,” and “Hot Lands.”

Another “progressive” idea I practiced was that all teaching and learning should be fun, exciting, and made easy. If a lesson or skill was difficult, it should be carefully scrutinized because pupils should not be expected to cope with hard problems. They might be hurt psychologically; they might even come to dislike learning, the teacher, the school. I was gradually succumbing to the notion that society was more important than the family, and the state more worthy than the individual. I was agreeing that change, almost any kind of change, was necessary and good for everyone, while traditional values were, outmoded and in need of replacement.

By 1973, after I had spent 25 years becoming continually more entrenched in the permissive doctrines fostered by Dewey and others, relativism was dominating my life. Whatever was workable and sound yesterday was probably not so useful today. On the religious side, I was greatly influenced by liberal theologians who preached that it did not matter whether I believed in the story of Creation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or miracles—as long as I believed in God. I was becoming “emancipated” from the whole of the Bible. I could accept or reject any portion I desired and still be “Christian” in my philosophy. In fact, had I held to the inerrancy of Scripture, I would have been considered narrow-minded, highly suspect as a religious fanatic, and certainly not academically respectable. As a college professor. I wanted my colleagues’ approval.

Relativism also influenced my moral philosophy, because I had accepted the idea that, regardless of my personal beliefs, what other people did was all right. I could keep my own position, if I desired, but I should not hinder “progress” for others. So I kept silent as society became more and more permissive while it abandoned traditional moral values.

However, I began to wake up as my two older children, then a high school junior and a college freshman, alerted me to the world of evangelicalism. As they became involved in evangelical campus groups, I realized they had a commitment and personal faith that I lacked. Soon afterward, in the fall of 1973, my college assigned me to work with a group of 14 freshmen for seven weeks on a topic of my own choosing. Because of my interest in my children’s activities, I selected the topic: the evangelical revolution.

A central aspect of our investigation concerned Francis Schaeffer’s books and his program at L’Abri in Switzerland. His writings showed me the need to stabilize the foundation of my faith. In the fall of 1974, when I had the opportunity to take a sabbatical, I chose therefore to do postdoctoral work for three months as a Farel House student at L’Abri. As part of my studies there, I read Death in the City, by Schaeffer, and Dust of Death, by Os Guinness; I also listened to their tapes on the influence of humanism in our culture. I could understand the truth of what they proclaimed, because everything they said I had experienced directly or vicariously.

I could see that I had been submitting to the kind of humanistic forces that give man credit for the creation of the universe. I had seen the degeneration that occurs when humanists take God’s truth out of human life. At L’Abri I found intellectual reasons for believing in the biblical absolutes I had once been taught, but had later taken lightly or dismissed entirely.

Reexamining Our Culture

After L’Abri. I tried to look at our culture more realistically. As I read newspaper and magazine reports, I saw that once highly regarded positions of leadership in our society were being eroded by immoral and illegal practices. Judges, ministers, police officers, mail carriers, bankers, senators, representatives, and even presidents were all found guilty. Yet, more and more the public was accepting these practices as permissible.

To be specific, I came to see seven deadly perils in permissiveness:

Self-centeredness. We are becoming dedicated to self. The feeling of “damn the other person” is rampant. Because of this egocentricity, we are often able to justify any “self-fulfilling” act.

Laxity. We are coming to reject standards, authority, and adherence to laws, commandments, beliefs.

Dishonesty. We are becoming oblivious to lying, deceit, and shady deals. We are approaching a day when we no longer trust anyone.

Greed. We are becoming dedicated to self-gratification, dissatisfied regardless of our affluence.

Apathy. We are becoming indifferent to the needs of others, believing that it is best not to get involved—what is going on is none of our business.

Hatred. We strive for acceptance, care, friendship, love; yet we often demonstrate hatred by failure to build up people through praise. It is peculiarly difficult for us to say, “I love you.”

Irresponsibility. We are losing our self-discipline. If things get tough, we move on because we live in a disposable society. If our work gets too hard, we quit; if our marriage gets difficult, we divorce; if our parents are “no good.” we run away; if our schools are dull, we drop out.

To fight against being engulfed by such a spirit, I tried to work out a Christian world view. For instance, here are three rudimentary ideas I became convinced about. They gave me a base from which to work:

1. Around the world there is a strong bond among Christians because of their belief in a personal God. As a result of their commitment, they have drawn together irrespective of linguistic, economic, social, cultural, or educational barriers.

2. Everything that happens in the world today relates in some way to biblical history and to God’s plan. We are not living in a world void of a Creator; his hand is still evident. Everything fits together in a grand scheme, though most people do not realize this.

3. Among all the religious and nonreligious philosophies of the world, none compares with the Christian philosophy, centered in the teachings of Christ, concerning the worth, potential, and responsibilities of each person. Without such a philosophy, parents, educators, and leaders in society often degrade in person.

Education

I became specially aware of the results of permissiveness in the public schools. I came to see such problems as grade inflation, promotion for merely social reasons, laxity in discipline, lower academic standards, and general disrespect for people and property as reflections of our culture and its system of education.

I discovered that, while at one time students of high, ethical standards were entering the teaching profession, now an increasingly large number of students were preparing to be classroom leaders who held that everything must go. They tended to believe that there are no right and wrong codes in society: judgments depend merely on each person’s private value system.

In reaction, I began to study the dangers of abandoning Judeo-Christian standards, especially as they affected the field of education. I wanted students to know that although we might live and teach in a society and school system that ignored God, teachers must uphold Christian principles. For example, I stressed the need to:

• Adhere to the idea that the teacher is a model, an example, a leader, and stands for what we know to be right;

• Maintain order, respect, responsible behavior, and decency in the classroom;

• Keep each pupil in mind as a worthy person who possesses tremendous potential:

• Establish high expectations and standards in all aspects of teaching.

Are student teachers and others ready to consider these ideas? Response has been positive during the past three years as I have used them with my students in our program of training teachers at Austin College. As one person remarked. “Young people today need specific, concrete answers—not endless talk about relativism and freedom of choice. The only freedom comes within a structure of absolutes, and if our teachers deny that structure, then they are really locking their students in bondage—the bondage of meaninglessness.”

Where five years ago I received little encouragement in my personal “revival,” today many students and teachers are receptive when they hear absolute truths taught. Though students have long been told by parents, teachers, professors, and other leaders that there are no lasting standards, many are ready for change.

More and more students entering the teaching profession are aware that something is lacking in our educational endeavors. Last year my students were assigned as teacher aides to a month-long, all-day program. They worked in a high school classroom in average or above average socioeconomic communities. Their reactions suggest that they are ready for thoughtfully presented new ideas. Here are some of their written responses: “For the most part, these students could care less about learning and becoming something in the world instead of a nothing. I watched some try to cheat on tests; I listened to them talk in class; I have come to the opinion that very few have the drive needed to go out in the world and make something of themselves.”

Another said, “I found that teaching was a very tiring, frustrating experience. [The students’] apathy makes me wonder how this country could possibly be so advanced.”

A third student said. “I was amazed at how much attempted cheating there was. It is really sad that some high school seniors have not developed enough pride in themselves to make them feel very strange leeching answers off somebody else.”

So, although the perils are becoming more and more an acceptable part of our culture, a reaction to relativism is setting in. Here are some changed views and practices that I have seen teacher educators and classroom teachers using to counter the trend.

1. We are beginning to realize the necessity of exhibiting selflessness to counteract self-centeredness. As leaders in the world of education, we have to work hard to avoid being caught up in the web of modeling the very thing we want to overcome. Even with the odds against us, being selfless can still have tremendous positive results. For instance, we can take time to listen to what students have to say. Perhaps we can learn from one teacher’s failure:

A first grader went to school with a lot of excitement for the morning’s show and tell. She had found a frog in a pond near home and had brought it in a jar. Her teacher, however, did not have time to listen, and hardly bothered to see what she had brought. Yet, if he had taken the time to hear what she had to say about her discovery and then had used it in the classroom, he would have enhanced her desire to learn and her respect for her own ability. By not listening, he missed the chance to motivate her not only in science but in other fields as well.

2. My own institution has taken several steps during the past two years to improve standards for the preparation of future teachers. Teachers in the schools are likewise giving more attention to establishing academic and social codes of behavior to counteract the peril of laxity and upgrade the development of students. Academically, for instance, we are seeing teachers with a higher expectation that students can attain a wisely set level of achievement. Socially, teachers are maintaining a climate of respect, student-to-student and student-to-teacher: they are not permitting students to swear at other students or at teachers, for example.

3. There seems also to be more concern now for the student as a person. We are beginning to believe that to exercise authority in a classroom and to maintain high expectations do not mean less love for the student. In fact, when our standards and expectations are low, we may well be promoting hatred in the student toward learning, toward other students, and toward the teacher.

Students and teachers are beginning to see that something is lacking, and that this traces back to a spiritual void in our society. As they perceive the cracks, they are ready to listen to some explanations. Our job is to point out the nature of society’s dilemma, its causes, and the things we can do to correct it.

A list of 21 moral principles has been adopted for use in one school system without serious challenge or violation of constitutional rights.

The subject of moral education in the schools is a matter of growing concern to many parents, teachers, and concerned citizens. As Christians should be the first to recognize, what is most important about any society is not its gross national product or its military might or its artistic triumphs. It is, rather, the kind of people it produces. That outcome depends largely on the moral and ethical principles honored in that society. Thus it logically follows that passing on the best of our ethical heritage to the young should be one of our foremost obligations.

Our educational forefathers knew, as we must know when we think about it, that unless the educated are guided by sound values, education can be more curse than blessing. The pre-Hitler German educational system is vivid reminder enough. Education can produce technically skilled totalitarians, or upper-class terrorists, or bored hedonists.

In the nineteenth century, McGuffey’s Readers were widely used in American public schools. As many know, they were suffused with not only moral, but religious themes and exhortations. As time went on, the schools gradually discontinued the Readers, seeing them not only as outdated, but as inappropriate for a pluralistic society and a professionally oriented school system. Nothing of a comparable nature replaced them; post-McGuffey students were exposed to little more than the haphazard moralizing that individual teachers might incidentally offer in the course of their daily routine.

How have we reached the point where education in traditionally accepted moral values is looked upon with so much suspicion? The road from McGuffey’s Readers to professional pride in a “value-free” education (even if it never was that) has been a by-product of many social forces: Darwinism. Freudianism, anthropology, scientism, and the prolonged decline of religious faith that is only now being reversed—all had a part. So did the erosion of a sense of community and community values, along with the growing stress on individualism, individual rights, and instant hedonism. So did the unceasing attacks upon home, church, and school as adequate moral mentors for our rapidly changing times. All of these developments combined to drain the vitality and much of the legitimacy out of moral education in the schools. The spirit of secular humanism became the spirit of the age, gaining indisputable control over public higher education and the potent mass media. That spirit equated progress with liberation from “stifling and outmoded” moral codes.

Considering the dominant intellectual currents in most educational environments, moral conservatives became understandably alarmed lest a highly permissive morality should prevail if moral education were reemphasized in the schools. They were intimidated by the more vocal, more modish, more liberal elements in most communities, forgetting that they were still a solid numerical majority in most school districts. Inhabiting a mass media—conditioned culture increasingly hostile to values dear to them, they even suffered some loss of confidence in the validity of their own cherished beliefs.

The sour fruits of this changing culture, however, were conspiring to revive that confidence. The soaring statistics on crime (including school violence), rape, abortions, illegitimate births, veneral disease, teen-age drunkenness, drug usage, divorce, extramarital adventures, pornography, as well as evidences of growing incivility, dishonesty, and irresponsibility, were causing concern everywhere. These cultural offspring even raised doubts among some of the morally “liberated” about how englightened their views really were. If these ugly phenomena were not indicative of serious moral decadence—pray tell, what would be?

The moral condition and direction of our society, then, has caused religious and nonreligious parents alike to undertake a renewed search for ways to revive constitutionally the teaching of moral principles in the schools. Polls show that about 80 percent of parents want more emphasis on moral training in our public educational system. But they get it only timidly and ineffectually—if at all.

Some schools have opted for “values clarification,” in which students, through directed bull sessions, are supposed to discover for themselves what values to live by. Some schools have accepted this approach because it allegedly avoids indoctrination. (It usually doesn’t, of course. The discussion leader—consciously or unconsciously—typically will shape the questions or otherwise direct the discussion in ways that promote his or her value preferences.)

Let me be blunt: Given their meager life experience, their myopic vision and necessarily immature judgment, teen-agers lack the ability to formulate independently a sound value system. It is foolish and naive to expect them to. Too many students during these sessions will try to rationalize values that promote their freedom to do as they please.

Students need to know and have a right to know what thoughtful and responsible people over the centuries have learned about living. If we fail to tell them, we do them a profound disservice.

Efforts to place greater stress on moral education in the schools invariably confront two major objections: (1) Moral education is said to be the job of home and church, not of the schools; and (2) Critics ask: whose moral values, in our polyglot culture, will be taught? Upon examination, neither objection proves cogent.

First, a substantial minority of homes give their children only skimpy moral training—and not a very good example, either. Many other homes do a reasonably good job but have moral blind spots. And even the best homes, in these morally chaotic times, would welcome having their training reinforced by the schools.

As for church training, millions of children never attend church. Of those who go, many are not exposed to the full range of moral values and attitudes young people need.

Second, those who believe moral education is outside the proper domain of the schools overlook the fact that many public schools, with full community approval, already teach many moral values; don’t cheat, steal, or deface: do your work well; be responsible: be courteous and law-abiding; respect persons of other races, and so on.

But although some schools try to inculcate these values (in a rather slipshod manner), they fall far short of teaching the full spectrum of values and perspectives needed (which can be constitutionally taught) if children are to make the most of their lives and the greatest contribution to their society.

When parents and others raise the “But whose values will be taught?” objection, they have usually prevailed, because we have not specifically identified those principles that can be taught with the approval—indeed with the gratitude—of virtually all parents, Christian and non-Christian.

Following is a list of values and attitudes that have stood the test of time, which the Talawanda School Board recently adopted as guidelines for public schools in the vicinity of Oxford, Ohio. They were endorsed, after public hearings, without serious objection from any of the widely diverse groups in this heterogeneous university community.

1. Acknowledging the importance of self-discipline, defined as the strength to do what we believe we should do, even when we would rather not do it.

2. Being trustworthy, so that when we say we will or will not do something, we can be believed.

3. Telling the truth, especially when it hurts us to do so.

4. Being honest in all aspects of life, including in our business practices and in our relations with government.

5. Having the courage to resist group pressures to do what we believe, when alone, we should not do.

6. Being ourselves, but being our best selves.

7. Using honorable means, those that respect the rights of others, in seeking our individual and collective ends.

8. Conducting ourselves, where significant moral behavior is concerned, in a manner that does not fear exposure.

9. Having the courage to say. “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

10. Practicing good sportsmanship. Recognizing that although the will to win is important, winning is not all-important.

11. Maintaining courtesy in human relations, including the courtesy of really listening to others.

12. Treating others as we would wish to be treated; recognizing that this principle applies to persons of every class, race, nationality, and religion.

13. Recognizing that no person is an island, that behavior that may seem to be of purely private concern often affects those about us and society itself.

14. Bearing in mind that how we conduct ourselves in times of adversity is the best test of our maturity and our mettle.

15. Doing work well, whatever that work may be.

16. Showing respect for the property of others—school property, business property, government property, everyone’s property.

17. Giving obedience to law, except where religious convictions or deeply held moral principles forbid.

18. Respecting the democratic values of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and due process of law. Recognizing that this principle applies to speech we abhor, groups we dislike, persons we despise.

19. Developing habits that promote physical and emotional health and refraining from activities destructive of those ends.

20. Abstaining from premature sexual experience and developing sexual attitudes compatible with the values of family life.

21. Recognizing that the most important thing in life is the kind of persons we are becoming, the qualities of character and moral behavior we are developing.

None of these principles or attitudes conflict in any way with the values cherished by evangelical Christians. Far from being in conflict, they either incorporate values that have biblical roots or they express democratic principles that are fully shared by thoughtful Christians and non-Christians alike. Indirectly, they could strengthen youngsters to resist many current temptations that alarm their parents.

Nor are First Amendment problems involved. These values can be taught without violating the “establishment of religion” clause; they are of the same general character as values now taught in schools without raising constitutional challenges. While the proposed values are compatible with traditional Christian views, no one of them is uniquely Christian.

How can these principles and attitudes be taught? I do not pretend to have all the answers; experienced teachers of elementary and secondary education would be better qualified to answer.

But a few suggestions may not be amiss. Biographies that portray people whose lives manifest many of these values can be assigned. Students could write themes about occasions when people they know violated one or more of these principles, and comment on the consequences that followed. Or they might write about persons—perhaps their parents—who concretely exemplify by their lives adherence to one or more of these principles. They might be asked to identify those principles they most admire in others and those they feel a special need to incorporate into their own lives. They could be asked to take home a copy of the principles and attitudes, talk them over with their parents, and then report back on the ensuing conversations. (A “consciousness raising” exercise for the home is of crucial importance in an effective program of moral education.)

Each principle or attitude should be displayed on the blackboard for a week or so. Where possible, an epigram that capsulizes or memorably illustrates one of these principles could also be placed there: “An ounce of apology is worth a pound of loneliness”; “It is easy to tell a lie—but it is hard to tell only one lie.” The application of these principles to concrete circumstances important to students at the stage of life in which they find themselves could be threshed over in class. Finally, students should be made aware of the reasons that underlie these principles, since many parents who believe in them are not very articulate or cogent in defending them.

Schools should encourage full and free discussion of these principles and attitudes. Dissent should be welcomed; where defensible values are involved, open discussion can only strengthen their case. It is only when values cannot survive close examination that free speech need be feared.

It may be argued that everyday role models are more important in instilling moral values than any amount of formal instruction. While all would agree, there are several factors pertinent to that truth. First, schools already have faculties possessing the moral strengths and weaknesses common to all. Generalized exhortations about their responsibility as moral exemplars will not transform them into significantly superior models. But spelling out concretely a series of valid moral principles (and attitudes) to be stressed in the schools will produce some of that same salutary “consciousness raising” among the faculty that is needed in many homes. Reflecting on these principles, as schools plan and carry forward a moral education program—aware that colleagues are reflecting on them, too—teachers will experience subtle internal and external pressures to conform their conduct more closely to them. To some degree, students will be evaluating their teachers’ behavior by those principles—and teachers will know this is happening. Faculty behavior will not be morally transformed by all this, but the process may help bring out the best in these people. It will produce no moral miracles, but it can be a force for good—and that is all we can hope for. In addition, sensible counsel is a useful supplement for even good role models. Certainly parents have always believed so.

We should not hesitate, incidentally, to concede to the young that these 21 principles are widely violated in our society and that none of us fully adheres to them at all times. But it should be made clear that these are the guidelines by which good people strive to live, and that they are at their best when they live up to them.

Whatever their outward show of independence and (often) rebelliousness, young people want to know right from wrong—especially if persuasive reasons are given for moral beliefs, rather than “It’s right because we say so.” Youngsters need well-defined standards of right conduct, even if they are going to resist them. Few things are more troubling or unsettling to teen-agers than not to know right from wrong. If we can’t answer all their questions, we can point to general principles that are enormously helpful to them as they make decisions.

No knowledgeable Christian believes that moral principles, no matter how valid they may be, are adequate for salvation—or even fully adequate for the well-being of society. But religious teachings cannot intrude into the classroom under our constitutional system. Since they cannot, we should do what can be done in the schoolroom to help all children acquire values that will be useful to them and to society.

I believe Christian parents in every community should take the lead in inaugurating moral education programs in their schools. They would be not only doing their own children a favor, but giving unfortunate children, from morally deficient homes, a helping hand they badly need. If this is not an appropriate undertaking for responsible Christians, I wouldn’t know why.

The problems feed our natural inclinations to despair.

For christian blacks in America, our past should make us pause for reflection. Since the days of our slavery, the story of Moses leading Israel out of bondage in Egypt has been an inspiration and a focus of teaching in black churches. But that story did not end with the Exodus. After leading them through the wilderness, Moses brought the Israelites to the edge of the Promised Land. Taking his last opportunity to prepare them for the future, he reminded them of the covenant God had made with them. He rehearsed the blessings promised if they kept the covenant and the curses if they disobeyed.

The succeeding centuries of Hebrew history reveal a continual cycle of blessing and curse, of Israel’s keeping and breaking of their solemn promise.

Looking back over the history of black people in America, I see a continuous struggle for liberation. The curse of slavery, though broken to some extent by the Civil War, has not been fully removed. Freedom’s benefits have not always been fully realized. The blessing of freedom was marred after the Civil War by injustice and segregation. Not until the civil-rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s was the road to progress paved with more than slogans and tokenisms.

The role of the church throughout this straggle for black liberation has been paramount. Though certainly not everyone and everything in the civil-rights movement was Christian, a core of both black and nonblack Christians helped prepare the way for new benefits. Among them, unemployment and poverty were attacked; many blacks gained new hope of a better life; to a degree, they achieved equal access to education, voting, employment, and housing; self-esteem among young blacks began to grow as they recognized that “black is beautiful” in the same way that Caucasian, Oriental, American Indian, or Latino is beautiful; the discovery of black power brought economic and political changes.

A sense of brotherhood, both within the black community and beyond it, began to emerge. Christians had a platform from which to mandate righteousness. With emerging black consciousness came a new agenda for American society, bringing new standards of justice, compassion, righteousness, and fair play. God’s blessings were no longer limited to a majority race. And opportunities for other minorities increased. Growth of pride in one’s ethnic heritage accompanied the increased sense of self-worth experienced in numerous ethnic groups.

Black Christians can look back on the last 20 years with some satisfaction at the accomplishments wrought and the constructive processes set in motion. With devastating swiftness, however, came the “curses” that weakened the blessings: the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the disgrace of Vietnam, the collapse of confidence in social institutions and governmental leadership, culminating in Watergate.

Now black Americans, including black evangelicals, find themselves “cursed in the city and cursed in the country.” We are no longer leading the culture: no longer are we asking the important questions or raising the important issues. Why is our call for justice and righteousness so weak that it no longer seems to command the attention and the respect of Americans? Let me suggest some reasons.

Not only is there a lack of strong leadership within the black community, but in the nation as a whole the awareness of unity and common purpose has diminished. Concern for, and commitment to, the welfare of all ethnic groups has been eclipsed by the pursuit of pleasure and instant gratification. Economic gains have been diluted by the faltering of the entire economy, while the poorest among us suffer the most. The welfare system has itself been beset by a lack of moral consistency and direction. Many local governments are facing budgetary problems that threaten services essential to life for the city poor. In addition, the quality of public education continues to deteriorate.

The problems feed our natural inclinations to despair. Even black Christians, along with much of American Christendom, have succumbed to the lure of self-interest and a kind of decadent individualism. Instead of being leaders of a new humanity centered in the lordship of Christ, we have become followers of “other gods” spawned of the “me generation.” which is how we have broken the freedom “covenant.” We have followed gods of our own design, reflections of our own narcissistic impulses. Instead of acting on God’s behalf for the benefit of others, we have pursued our own interests.

As I observe this current stream of events. I am grieved by the rate of black-on-black crime and by the abuse of drugs and alcohol. I am angered by how much of the merchandising of drugs in the black community is done to blacks by other blacks. Such a waste of human resources cries out for someone to take responsibility for one of the most destructive blights on all young Americans.

The question, to use the Old Testament analogy, is: Have the covenant curses so completely negated the blessings that only Band-Aid solutions can be sought? There are critical social needs in the black community, and when the moral and spiritual vacuum of society in general are added to these, the result is either a hopeless despair or a naive nostalgia. As a Christian, I believe our blessings can be restored. The challenges of the future can be met; despair and nostalgia are not the only alternatives. Recovery is possible if black Christians will set the example in giving themselves for each other and for the whole of society. If we are to be effective, we must identify the critical pressure points, and then creatively and honestly develop new strategies, while preserving the enduring principles of faith and justice. To do otherwise is to become slaves to the past—either by clinging to it or reacting to it. Five basic problem areas must be confronted if we are to see a revival of God’s blessings.

First, as Christians, we must place Jesus Christ at the center of the problem-solving process. True liberation from both personal and social problems can come only as we meet the future with Christ’s power helping us. We need to establish biblical and not merely societal values. In the face of moral bankruptcy and pseudo-Christian respectability, we must make Jesus the model of a new value system. Instead of the common “What’s in it for me?” standard of self-fulfillment, we must raise the banner of loving obedience to God and commitment to one another. We have paid a terrible price in broken marriages, scarred children, weak and divided churches, and impotent communities by placing personal fulfillment above commitment. We do not need new words about values; we do need people whose lives embody the values of Jesus: his greatest act as the Man for others was the Cross. Christians must take the lead in reordering their priorities and in changing their lifestyles. They must seek the interests of others rather than their own.

Second, we must place a higher value on our families. Blacks have not paid enough attention to the quality of family life and we have therefore lost a sense of continuity from generation to generation. We must reaffirm our families as part of the divine priority system. Our families are a refuge against the hostility of an uncaring world, as well as the laboratory for developing lifestyles. Christians, in common with other people, have the problems of adultery, divorce, abortion, teen-age pregnancy, and breakdowns in communication. If black and nonblack Christians alike can demonstrate that their families hold together, they will gain a powerful platform from which to speak to all people. This is especially true for blacks, whose sense of uprootedness has militated against strong family ties.

Third, we must regain educational losses. Crisis is the word for education today. Money is short, and inner-city blacks and other minority groups suffer most. More and more people are losing confidence in public education. There has been a dramatic abandonment of public education even among Christians, and as a consequence, poor blacks and other minorities are left in an educational void with no means to escape it. The private school has sometimes become a tool of segregation, rather than serving as a bastion of quality education. The church should be at the forefront of the battle for quality education for all children; Christians may have to develop alternative schools. Certainly they must work with public schools in areas of financial responsibility, curriculum development, and parental involvement.

We must not fall into the trap of providing education for any one particular group in a way that leaves other children to a decaying public school system; to do so would be completely irresponsible. Whatever alternatives we provide must be available to all, not just to those who can afford them or to those who attend our churches.

Fourth, we need to establish and maintain economic priorities. Black Christians, along with the rest of Christendom, must work out on the economic front the implications of Jesus’ value system. Blacks have long known deprivation; they have also learned creative survival. We need to demonstrate now that we are not interested in our own welfare only: we must care for everyone’s economic well-being, particularly those least able to provide for themselves. We must live sacrificially for the benefit of all so we can show that all our resources come from God. The blessing of God on his people will become more evident, not because we are richer than others, but because by careful stewardship and mutual concern we can meet the needs of others, even in hard times.

The fifth and final problem area is the one upon which all the others hang: We must preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in all its power and truth. Black churches must experience a renewal of an integrity of the gospel that does not water down the biblical Jesus. While there is some truth to the comment by Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “We see no distinction between the social and personal gospel,” the message of salvation in the gospel has all too often been diluted. The gospel is the motivation and power behind our confrontations with the issues of our day.

Even our greatest efforts to solve some of our problems are vain without the power of Jesus Christ working through us. It is only through his power that we can anticipate the restoration of covenant blessings. Through him injustice and moral bankruptcy can be transformed. The Lord Jesus Christ came to give us a new covenant. If we believe him and follow in his covenant, the blessings of true liberation can be ours.

Mother Earth, Daughter Spring

Eyes bright, she encored lullabies

at midnight with smiles and dove-soft coos.

I was her earth. She was my springtime.

Our minutes savoured into hours that hovered

over days that gilded long. It seemed

the seasons of her growth were almost endless.

Then years changed gears

and set our clock high-speed.

New skills became her old skills; and as freckles

came and faded, her childish fancies gave way

to grown-girl dreams.

I knew springtime

wouldn’t last forever. Though a gift, I understood

she was a loan. But, how has twenty years

passed by so quickly? And once so trained

to nurture, how do I step from strenuous caring

into hours that bauble with free time?

Oh, Love, bring new life to my spirit.

Let me rest at breast of heaven-care.

You are my gentle-strength, my source of life,

eternal. Keep me yearning, ever learning.

Never wean me. You are my “earth.”

I am your spring.

VIVIAN STEWART