A new openness in New Testament studies allows for both God’s transcendence and church tradition.

At the first World Council of Churches General Assembly in Amsterdam in 1948, Karl Barth shrewdly observed: “I have often had the impression that the line of separation within the Ecumenical Council is not a denominational one, but one that crosses through all the confessions. Is not the real division in the ‘Churches’ that between a biblical system of thought and a non-biblical humanistic system?”

Father Jérome Hamer, the Dominican scholar who quoted these lines in his tome on Barth, toward the end of his book showed confidence that after World War II Protestants were now engaged in a move from humanism to the Bible, “which is accepted as an exterior norm for the mind of man, as God’s order to humanity and not as a prolongation of a psychological experience.” Father Hamer, however, was not sure whether this meant a permanent attainment or merely an interlude in the extended reign of man-centered Protestant liberalism.

After another 30 years it seems that “interlude” is the right description. Father Hamer had hardly published his remarks when there appeared the first signs of the rise to dominance of the theology of Rudolf Bultmann. During the past three decades theology witnessed the ascendancy of another “humanistic system” with its philosophical presuppositions and through-going man-centeredness.

In its wake followed the departure of other theological disciplines from the biblical perspective, and their degeneration into “sciences of man,” psychology of religion, sociology of religion, history of religion—in short, religious anthropology.

Naturally, under the strong influence of the Bultmannian school, New Testament studies gave a lead in this development and paid the heaviest toll. After Bultmann had put all emphasis on man’s new self-understanding, reducing the Gospels to the provision of a mere “that” of Christ’s coming, the school found itself struggling with an ever smaller residue of objective historical content. Like Noah’s dove, faith had nothing to rest its foot on.

It is from this situation of despair that we perceive a grumble of discontent and the distinct cry for a new beginning. In 1975 Peter Stuhlmacher, professor of New Testament studies at the University of Tübingen, West Germany, published a major essay on “Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture” (English translation by Roy A. Harrisville, Fortress Press, 1977). In it he surveyed the course of the discipline through history and ended with a number of strong statements about its present condition. Himself a product of the Bultmann school, Stuhlmacher bluntly declares the “collapse” of Bultmann’s system. He feels that historical criticism has gone to extremes where it has reduced itself to irrelevance for the church, which it ought to serve. The inherited position has become “untenable.”

Reasons given are the estrangement of New Testament studies from the Old Testament—a necessary consequence of the Bultmann approach; its almost programmatic historical skepticism, dividing faith from history; and the dissolution, through a radical application of form criticism, of the New Testament message into innumerable isolated strands of religious contention. All this results in an overall “distancing effect” for modern man vis-à-vis Scripture. And finally, as Stuhlmacher observes, the historical and dogmatic vacuum thus created is quickly being filled again by a new dogmatism and all kinds of philosophical and political substitutes.

In terms of a recovery of the situation, the German scholar proposes a new “hermeneutic of consent,” meaning an openness on the part of the exegete, both for transcendence, i.e., God’s activity in history, and for tradition, i.e., the creed of the church as well as the theological interpretation of Scripture in the past.

This stringent analysis has most recently been backed up by New Testament scholar Otto Betz, Stuhlmacher’s immediate colleague at Tübingen University. In a major lecture on New Testament Christology, delivered at the (Evangelical and Lutheran) “Convention of Confessing Movements” of West Germany earlier this year, Betz addressed the present loss of a unified view of the person and work of Christ. He chastised historical skepticism and the wild conjecture making noticeable in the discipline, and particularly deplored ignorance of the Old Testament that often created the problems New Testament students then found difficult to solve. Betz stressed that the historical and theological assertions of the Gospels, denied for too long, deserved the trust of the researcher.

This stand finds the full support of a recent study, “Are the Gospels Historically Trustworthy?” by Helmut Burkhardt, an evangelical scholar of the younger generation who also gives the credit to the contributions of Scandinavian scholars such as H. Riesenfeld and B. Gerhardsson.

So, perhaps, there is hope that New Testament studies are breaking out of a period where they lay ice-bound by philosophical presuppositions.

All this is good news. However, a case for caution remains. At least in the case of Peter Stuhlmacher—now one of the leading minds in New Testament studies worldwide—there seem to be inconsistencies in the signals received. For example, how can we require “openness for transcendence” and at the same time continue to abide by the law of traditional historical criticism: that all events in history must be analogous and correlated to each other, and that miracles must be rejected?

Further, how does the assertion that all theological interpretation of Scripture must take place in the context of a lived faith fit with the claim that a nonbeliever could also exercise that interpretation? Does not all theological work presuppose continued prayer? And finally, how will historical criticism of Scripture be used merely as a method, in a functional manner, as Stuhlmacher suggests, when it admittedly has its own system of values, due to the source from which it comes? As such, it would continue to induce the passing of value judgments upon Scripture, at a time when we are being encouraged to learn to see, listen, and make mere statements of fact.

No doubt there are a number of things that still need sorting out. We are watching an attempt that has not yet risen beyond compromise. New Testament scholarship will have to advance boldly to a new stand or retreat to the old attitudes. Nevertheless, a start has been made.

Even if a new day should be dawning for New Testament studies, there is a long way to go in the reconstruction of those other theological disciplines which need to find their way back not only to an “openness for transcendence” but also to true God-centeredness and biblical perspective.

As it stands, Stuhlmacher’s endeavors, praiseworthy and relevant as they are. do not provide sufficient reason to squelch evangelical concern over the present state of theology and of New Testament studies in particular.

Klaus Bockmühl is professor of theology and ethics, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada.

Over the last year some 350,000 Kampucheans (Cambodians) have fled the hunger and fighting in their tormented homeland. Of these, some 130,000 crossed the western border into Thailand; even more traveled east into Vietnam, and the rest moved north into Laos.

Now, in inquiry sessions conducted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) with Thai government observers present, as many as 70 percent of those in Thailand have said they want to return. (The majority do not qualify for emigrating to other countries, in any case.) Even higher proportions want to leave Vietnam and Laos. The Vietnamese-dominated Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh that now effectively controls most of Kampuchea says it is willing to take them back.

Assisting with the resettlement of these “returnees” allows at least one evangelical relief agency the opportunity to turn over a new leaf in relations with the Heng Samrin regime. And many of the Khmer people who entered Thailand as nominal Buddhists will return to their home villages as believers in Jesus christ.

Why is the human tide beginning to turn?

• Thanks to concerted relief efforts, says the UNHCR’s Robert Jackson, starvation in Kampuchea is no longer an imminent danger, even though aid is still focused on “life preservation.” Kani Wagner, representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, reports that about 81 percent of the country’s rice farmland has been planted for the coming rainy season harvest. Refugees in border holding areas now believe they can survive after they are back home.

• Fear of a resurgence of the draconian Pol Pot regime is subsiding. Pol Pot loyalists are bottled up in a mountainous region of southwest Kampuchea and their grip on the surrounding countryside gradually is being pried loose.

• The Khmer are finding the Vietnamese, their ancient enemies, less harsh than they had feared. Although hardly operating a democracy, the new rulers have restored a degree of order and predictability. No one knows how much of the Heng Samrin government’s growing reasonableness in dealing with international organizations is aimed at influencing the upcoming vote in the UN over whether to seat its own representatives or those of Pol Pot. (The regime is as hostile to the church as its predecessor. Six of seven congregations meeting in Phnom Penh are reported to have been shut down—three at gun point.)

• The Heng Samrin government has agreed to receive its displaced citizens back to their home areas without “reeducation.” The UN agencies have developed a working relationship with the regime that will allow it to facilitate resettlement; and Thailand, in particular, is anxious to move out the displaced persons.

Until recently, relief supplies distribution has been in some respects a no-win situation for the relief agencies. Some, such as World Vision, shipped supplies at high cost by sea and air to the Kampuchean capital and its port. Mostly confined to a Phnom Penh hotel, agency officials were frustrated by major docking and transport bottlenecks and were not allowed to verify that supplies reached their intended civilian recipients.

Other agencies, such as the National Association of Evangelicals’ World Relief and the Mennonite Central Committee, distributed across the Thai border “land-bridge” at much lower cost. But because the distribution points were adjacent to Pol Pot-dominated areas, the Heng Samrin regime considered their distribution an unfriendly act. This dilemma led a liaison official for one agency to remark facetiously that the best way to get supplies to the intended recipients would be to “drop the rice on a tree stump and run.”

Now the Kampuchean government is allowing agencies that have followed both approaches to deliver supplies inside Kampuchea and to monitor the distribution. They will be working in tandem with others such as Russian-supervised stevedores and Polish medical teams.

The agencies have been asked by UNHCR to begin with resettling 18,000 families by the end of the year, at a projected cost of $13 million. The eventual numbers resettled may reach as many as 300,000. UN agencies and the Red Cross have been given food, educational, and medical responsibilities. World Relief has been delegated the task of providing $2 million worth of garden seed, agricultural tools, and basic household utensils and tools for subsistence.

The voluntary repatriation will more deeply permeate Kampuchean society with a Christian witness than ever before. The intense evangelism engaged in by Kampuchean believers in the Thai border holding areas has brought this about.

The outstanding example is the Khao I Dang holding center, housing between 120,000 and 140,000 displaced Kampucheans. As many as 600 there were Protestant Christians, but there were never more than five trained Christian workers. The witness outreach began last November 30 when Christian and Missionary Alliance Pastor Chan Hom and 248 of his congregation crossed the border together. Pastor Ngem Sokun was among later border-crossing believers (Sokus weighed 51 pounds on his February arrival, his wife only 33 pounds).

The believers were aggressive in witness and discipleship. They held small group Bible studies and children’s meetings. Converts were immediately given Bible training and encouraged to participate in continuing the evangelism. By last month there were 75 congregations in the sprawling camp. At least 26,000 had expressed some form of Christian decision, a full 8,000 were regarded as having become firmly established in Christian discipleship, and 2,600 adults had been baptized. In less than a year the original 600 professing Christian faith, assisted by only a handful of C&MA and Overseas Missionary Fellowship missionaries, had doubled their numbers more than five times.

These figures are especially impressive when contrasted with the number of Protestant Christians in all of Kampuchea before the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975: less than 6,000.

What accounts for this remarkable increase? H. Robert Cowles, editor of the C&MA organ Alliance Witness, discussed that question in a September editorial: “First, the Spirit of God is evidently moving g among the refugees.… Second, the Kampucheans at Khao I Dang’s have been … deprived of homeland and all material resources. Their gods have failed them. Hardly a person among them has not despaired of life itself.… People in extremities like that tend to be cordial to the message of God.

But Cowles went on to list the diligent witness of the believers as the third and perhaps decisive factor and held it up as an unrivaled model for world evangelization in this generation.

Evangelism

Wichita Crusade Offers More than an Evangelist

The last time churches in Wichita, Kansas, jointly supported a major, citywide crusade was in 1912. Then, boisterous evangelist Billy Sunday called attenders to “walk the sawdust trail” in a sweating, stomping, old-style revival.

Evangelist Leighton Ford led a different kind of evangelism campaign during the past year in Wichita. His “Wichita Reachout,” which culminated last month with a week of preaching meetings, may indicate that evangelism—and particularly the traditional crusade—is adjusting to a new era. One evangelism strategist said Ford is the only major American evangelist now using the kind of comprehensive approach evidenced in Wichita.

Ford’s goal, like Sunday’s, was new converts. But after eight days, and a total attendance of 30,900, some 350 inquired about making Christian commitments. This 1 percent response rate somewhat disappointed the campaign organizers. However, they cited added Christian decisions coming in the previous events. They also believed that the campaign’s value lay in what will come after: new cooperation is expected between the pastors and the churches, who have a history of going their separate ways.

About 150 of the city’s 300 churches took an active part in organizing the September 21–28 campaign, which, in fact, was not called a crusade. The executive planning committee preferred calling it “reachout,” since “there’s greater sympathy among secular people for that term,” said local chairman and First Baptist Church pastor Roger Fredrikson.

The “reachout” budget topped $180,000 because of its multifaceted program, Fredrikson said.

Ford’s team and local organizers formed a comprehensive strategy with linking events that lasted over the course of a year. Whereas in Sunday’s era crusade meetings revolved entirely around the evangelist and had an impact only as long as the meetings lasted. Ford’s “reachout” was designed to have a broader impact.

“A lot of people tend to view a crusade as a climax to a period of intensive effort,” said Preston Parrish, who moved his family to Wichita 13 months ago to begin coordinating efforts for the Ford team. “We’ve been talking about the crusade here in Wichita as a catalyst to ongoing evangelism at the congregational level.”

Local pastors tossed around the idea of a Leighton Ford crusade about 10 years ago. However, serious plans began less than three years ago under Fredrikson’s leadership. The American Baptist pastor said events were planned in order to involve all churchmen—not just an evangelist or the pastors—in the evangelization process.

One event built upon another; in chronological order these were:

• A one-day seminar on congregational evangelism, led by United Methodist church evangelism officer George Hunter, and attended by more than 180 key pastors and laity.

• A small-groups discussion series. About 90 churches and 6,000 people participated in a seven-week study series, “In the Spirit of Love,” which was designed to deepen congregational life, Fredrikson said. This was followed by a four-week personal evangelism series, based on Ford’s book, Good News Is for Sharing.

• A banquet on May 13. This was designed to challenge Christian families to build relationships with their neighbors. Ford gave an address, and the executive committee showed a locally produced, 35-minute videotaped presentation of ideas for ways Christians could open their homes and make friends with unsaved neighbors. About 550 family units committed themselves to making contact with a neighbor sometime during the spring or summer. (The committee had hoped for the participation of 2,000 to 3,000 Christian families, but Fredrikson suspected the idea “was such a new thing” that many didn’t take part.) One example was Wichita Mayor Bob Knight, who was an early organizer of the Ford meetings. He arranged for a block party attended by some 60 to 70 of his neighbors.

• Lay witness forums. In late August, about 60 couples, representing a variety of working and social backgrounds, spent a week in Wichita. Their areas of expertise provided local Christians with evangelism opportunities. For instance, Christian Legal Society executive director Lynn Buzzard spoke at a seminar, attended by local lawyers and judges, on Christian conciliation. Former steel company executive Wayne Alderson of Pittsburgh led one of his Value of the Person seminars for about 450 local labor union and management leaders.

• A locally produced TV special aired September 13—the final event prior to Ford’s preaching meetings. Those Christians who had been forming relationships with their neighbors all summer were asked to invite those neighbors to their homes to watch the program.

The special was “deliberately planned to be provocative,” said Fredrikson, with the idea that it would spark conversations about spiritual things. Some Christians reported the Christian conversions of neighbors as a result, said Fredrikson.

Called “On This BB Spinning,” the program got its name from a local man’s opening comment, “Man, if all we’re doing is sitting on this BB spinning, then suicide is a reasonable alternative.” Parrish said the TV special carried interviews with Wichita residents who asked four questions pollster George Gallup has found Americans are asking: How can I cope with life’s problems? How can I find meaning in life? What’s Christ got to do with all of this? In an on-the-air interview with Fredrikson, evangelist Ford discussed God’s answers to those questions. The two men sat outdoors, within view of the convention center where the meetings would begin the following Sunday.

Ford’s “reachout process” has evolved though trial and error, Parrish said, and emphasizes five principles that help congregations “discover and experience evangelism.”

These principles are: (1) establishing specific objectives; (2) identifying people’s needs; (3) equipping the laity; (4) reaching out and discipling; and (5) celebrating and evaluating. The Ford team has been developing these principles since a crusade several years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia. For those meetings, the team drew upon the help of audience research specialist James Engel, communications department chairman of Wheaton College (Ill.) Graduate School.

Engel is a leader in the use of mass media and other strategies in presenting the gospel to an audience whose needs have been determined by surveys or other research. He said Ford is the only major evangelist in North America using the kinds of techniques and strategies in evidence in Wichita. Parrish said the Ford team will present some of its materials and videotaped programs in seminars.

Reachout organizers ran into some problems with their congregational approach. Parrish said organizers found many Christians lacked any contact with secular friends: “We [Christians] have become so ingrained, so ingrown, that most Christians lack meaningful relationships with unreached people.” The Ford team tries to erase Christians’ fears of discussing their faith with the unsaved by “helping them see that evangelism is really making friends for God,” Parrish said.

A second problem is getting all churchmen involved in evangelism—not just “the motivated 10 percent,” Parrish said. He believed this problem was at least partly overcome in Wichita, since a number of Wichita churches reported an increased involvement in small group programs even after Ford’s campaign ended.

England

A Giant in Hiding

Eighteen percent of England’s adult population in 1979 belonged to a church, but only 11 percent attended. So states a newly published survey of the British and Foreign Bible Society, sponsored by the Nationwide Initiative in Evangelism.

The survey, Prospects for the Eighties, draws its data from a 1979 census of England’s 40,000 churches. It claims to offer “a unique collection of information.” since all the main Christian groups in England cooperated for the first time in a joint statistical project. The survey covers the 46 administrative areas in England (excluding Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) and gives figures for each.

Mainstream Protestant churches are still losing members, but the loss in attendance is not correspondingly as high; Baptists show an actual 1.3 percent annual increase in attendance since 1975. Roman Catholics reflect an opposite trend: a fractional increase in membership but a 2 percent drop in attendance since 1975.

Three groups of churches show the most encouraging figures: the Pentecostal/Holiness grouping shows an annual growth of 2.3 percent (3 percent in attendance), the Independent figure is 5.4 percent (5.4), and the African/West Indian figure is 5.5 percent (4.7).

In a chapter assessing changing trends, Gavin Reid writes: “The churches are the sleeping giant in England. Were they to organize themselves to press for any agreed end, it is hard to see how they could be resisted, but … the giant is not only sleeping, it is in hiding.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

World Scene

The number of Protestant believers has doubled or tripled within the last decade in Central American nations, according to recent figures compiled by the Institute of In-Depth Evangelization. The San Jose, Costa Rica-based agency, which in seminars emphasizes “holistic church growth” and the discipling and mobilization of the laity, cites the influence of the charismatic movement, religious freedom, and political unrest and natural disasters, as promoting new religious awareness and ultimately the evangelical cause.

Television and radio made the greatest impact during evangelist Luis Palau’s recent two-week crusade in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The nation’s largest television network, “Telecentro,” broadcast Palau’s live question-and-answer program for 12 nights, and radio station HCJB in Quito transmitted Palau’s crusade messages into at least 10 countries in Central and South America. The crusade, held in a 10,000-seat stadium, averaged nightly attendance in the 6,000 range, with 2,850 making Christian commitments. Organizers report new evangelistic inroads to the nation’s professional and middle-class people.

Evangelicals in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden should form their own segment of the church. That was the call issued by 400 participants in the Uppsala meetings of the Fellowship for Church Renewal in Sweden. They agreed with proponent Bishop Bertil Gärtner of Göteborg that a “Swedish Confessional Synod” should be formed, so that those among the 8-million-member church who believed that membership involved “obedience to Jesus” should not be dominated by the majority in a politicized social institution. Voluntary associations, such as the Swedish Evangelical Missionary Society, already exist within the church, but Archbishop Olof Sundby said he feared that the proposed synod would help cement and institutionalize opposing attitudes—over ordination of women, for instance.

The people of western Crete got the bishop of their choice and, in the process, dealt a setback to the authority of the Greek Orthodox church hierarchy. After supporters “kidnapped” and held for two weeks the popular Metropolitan Eirinaios Galanakis of Germany (Oct. 10 issue, p. 77), the ecumenical patriarchate gave in. It found a vacant diocese and elected to it Metropolitan Naktarios Hadjimichalis, clearing the way for Eirinaios to return to the diocese he formerly served.

Lev Regelson was given a five-year suspended sentence by Soviet authorities last month. Regelson, a Russian Orthodox layman, was a leader of the Christian Seminar (a discussion group of young Orthodox intellectuals) and author of The Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917–45, which documents accommodation of the church to the Soviet regime under Metropolitan Sergi. Tass news agency reported that during the trial Regelson, imprisoned since his arrest last December 24, expressed repentance for his activities and asked forgiveness.

Zimbabwean President Canaan Banana has called for a “radical transformation” in the nation’s church groups. The ordained Methodist minister said last month that some of them turned a blind eye to oppression and injustice when the white minority was in power. He did not single out any denomination. His comments came at a gathering of Anglican churchmen, (who have been criticized at other times by the new government).

Nearly a thousand Christians who consider themselves Zionists gathered in Jerusalem last month in a festival of support for Israel’s existence. The event was organized by Dutch preacher Jan Willem van der Hoeven, who has lived in Israel for more than a decade. The New York Times quoted van der Hoeven as saying, “There are many millions of Bible-believing Christians who feel they are not represented anymore by their governments. They would like to say to Israel, ‘We are with you.’ ”

Revival is sweeping through the Kachin tribal area of northern Burma. Kachin Baptists are in the final year of a three-year thrust to commemorate the centennial of their beginnings. The call for a “Gideon’s band” of 300 young Kachins to give three years without remuneration to evangelism and renewal efforts resulted in more than 600 volunteers. The selected 300 were trained, formed into teams, and sent throughout the mountain region, singing, telling Bible stories, sharing testimonies, and distributing medical and other supplies. A resulting marked increase in baptisms brings the denomination’s membership to over 90,000. The Assemblies of God reports parallel renewal and growth among Pentecostal believers, with their members now estimated at 50,000.

Several Christian relief agencies have urged that the United States vote against seating the Pol Pot regime in the United Nations. They advocate instead a vacant seat for Kampuchea (Cambodia). This, they assert, would allow the U.S. to oppose both human rights violations and aggression “with greater integrity.” Issuers of the statement included the Mennonite Central Committee, Food for the Hungry, and Church World Service.

Religious organizations with branch offices in Indonesia will be required to channel contributions through the Indonesian government and not to those branches directly. That is the expectation after President Suharto spelled out a new approach to missions in a speech to Indonesia’s National Council of Churches last summer. He pledged that religious freedom would be maintained, but said national interests must guide policy concerning “the relationships between Indonesian religious bodies and their overseas counterparts.” This regulation, he said, was “not meant to build walls of restriction.”

At age 33, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has come down with a bad case of perplexity.

At this year’s annual AU-sponsored National Conference on Church and State, held last month in suburban Washington, D.C., it was clear that some 120 participants were anything but united on several important issues, including the role of religious groups in politics. They did seem agreed that religion-and-government issues are no longer as simple as they were back in 1947. AU was founded that year by a group of Protestant church leaders to fight government aid to Roman Catholic schools and to prevent the appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Much of the platform and corridor talk during the two-day event centered on the activity of the so-called evangelical right in the 1980 election campaign. Speaker after speaker condemned the organized evangelical political activity led by such groups as television preacher Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Richard Zone’s Christian Voice, and Ed McAteer’s Roundtable organization. The movement makes a Christian’s position on certain political and social issues virtually a litmus test of faith, alleged several speakers.

Such organized political activity “cheapens the church, and it cheapens grace,” declared Southern Baptist R. G. Puckett, AU’s executive director.

“Churches have a responsibility to lobby to correct wrongs when the government oversteps its borders, but they shouldn’t get involved beyond that,” commented panelist H. Dickenson Rathbun, manager of the powerful Christian Science lobbying office in Washington.

Another panelist, James Dunn, social concerns executive of Southern Baptist churches in Texas, said it is okay for religious individuals to become involved in the political process, but not organized movements. The leaders of the evangelical right, he alleged, are uninformed and unrealistic about the issues, unfaithful to their own highest ideals, uncaring, unbrotherly, and untruthful.

Dunn referred to Falwell’s much-publicized account of a conversation he supposedly had with Jimmy Carter about homosexuality, a conversation that did not take place. (Falwell first tried to explain that his account, given to an Alaska audience last spring, was intended to be taken as a parable, but he later expressed regret for having made the misstatement.)

Two other Southern Baptist leaders also took the religious right to task: William L. Self, pastor of Wieuca Road Baptist Church in Atlanta and chairman of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, and Jimmy R. Allen, who heads up Southern Baptist radio and television work.

Self accused the religious right of “trying to stampede the American voter and turn back the clock on the issue of separation of church and state,” an action he says will eventually result in loss of religious liberty.

Allen, a former president of AU, said that as the anti-Catholicism in AU’s past is “not to our credit,” neither is the crusading spirit of the present-day religious right a credit to the church. The movement, he alleged, is driven by a “desperation mentality.”

Younger participants in the AU meeting, however, disagreed with the speakers during floor discussion. United Methodist seminarians said they had been raised in a church that taught them they must change the system if they are going to help society—and this means getting organized and active politically. They indicated that they oppose the religious right, not for being involved politically, but for being on the wrong side of issues. The priority, they said, is to become mobilized themselves. Older members of AU raised their eyebrows at such talk.

Several other participants said that the conservative evangelicals are to be commended at least for recognizing and dealing with some moral problems in society that liberal church people have declined to face.

The most important current church-and-state issue is prayer in public schools, commented Puckett. Lutheran lobbyist Charles Bergstrom, who classifies himself as an evangelical theologically, said he wonders why any evangelical would want government-mandated prayer in the schools. “Whose prayer will be used?” he asked, suggesting that evangelicals might not be pleased with the outcome.

One session dealt with the issues of scientific creationism and secular humanism in public schools. Mormon law professor Paul Toscano of Brigham Young University said that the government ought to permit churches to use tax money to set up alternative schools because the government, through the courts, has established “the religion of secular humanism” in the public schools.

Julius B. Poppinga, a New Jersey attorney who is president of the evangelical Christian Legal Society, replied that he agreed with Toscano on some points, but that parochiaid, tax credits, and dual school systems are not the answer. Government and educators must recognize the pluralism that exists in the public schools and adapt their methods accordingly, he said. For example, he suggested, creationism should be taught along with evolution in science classes, and both should be equally regarded as theories.

Panelists in still another session explored the current disputes between Christian schools and the federal Department of Labor. The government has been classifying employees of Christian schools as non-church employees in order to require payment of unemployment compensation taxes, but in the process the government has applied a limited definition of church. Panelists agreed that the problem is a sticky one, and that long litigation is ahead. The main issue: if the government can apply a definition to a church that the church itself does not accept, is not the government violating religious liberty?

Both Dunn and Puckett acknowledged in interviews that AU may be entering a new phase in its struggle to keep the wall of separation between church and state in place. In the past, they indicated, AU has been concerned primarily with making sure that religious groups stay on their side of the wall. A greater danger may now exist from government attempts to breach the wall, they said, and AU will have to pay more attention to that threat.

To patrol the wall, AU has a staff of 27, a budget of $1 million for its three components (a research division, a legal arm, and a parent administrative body), a mailing list of 100,000 (there is no formal membership), and a 70,000-circulation magazine—Church and State—with considerable influence in the field.

Pornography

Roman Orgy on Film Makes First-run Theaters

“The most degrading film ever made,” charged attorney Paul McGeady of Morality in Media. “The most outrageous and savage attempt to exploit the macabre nature of man in order to suck money from his pockets,” asserted author and Church of Christ pastor Neil Gallagher.

The movie Caligula, produced by Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, won’t win any awards from antipornography activists. In fact, they want the movie banned.

Filmed in Rome, the two-and-one-half hour movie is filled with explicit sex and graphic violence. Obscenity foes are particularly concerned about stopping Caligula because it is showing in first-run movie theaters where it has greater visibility and would seem more respectable than if it were shown in X-rated movie houses.

Antipornography watchdog groups are convinced the movie is legally obscene, according to the benchmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Miller v. California. This ruling established three tests for defining what is obscene: (1) when the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient (lustful) interest; (2) depicts or describes sexual conduct in a “patently offensive way,” and (3) “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

The Cleveland, Ohio—based Citizens for Decency Through Law and the New York City—based Morality in Media both have sharply criticized U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti for not challenging the film. (In a letter to CDL founder Charles H. Keating, Jr., Civiletti said U.S. District Court and Department of Justice officials had viewed the film and agreed that the Supreme Court’s standards provided insufficient basis to exclude the film legally.)

In February, Morality in Media lost a court bid to have the film confiscated and destroyed. MM president Morton Hill, a Jesuit priest and former member of Lyndon Johnson’s Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, and Hinson McAuliffe, Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor, a Baptist layman who in 1978 filed charges against Guccione for selling the sex-oriented Penthouse magazine in his jurisdiction, were coplaintiffs.

U.S. District Court Judge Vincent Broderick in New York rejected the suit, saying “there was no injury in fact to any of the plaintiffs.” He did not rule on the question of whether the material was obscene. A subsequent appeal to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also failed. Morality in Media since then has fought the film by asking district attorneys around the country to send investigators to view the film to see whether it violates obscenity laws.

Only one local judge so far has ruled on the illegal obscenity issue. Chief Justice Harry Elam of the Boston Municipal Court in August found the movie not legally obscene. Elam believed the film has a “serious political theme.” He said it was important that Americans be reminded of “degrading periods” of history to prevent their repetition. (Guccione flew in and paid expert witnesses, who testified to the merits of the movie.) To this, Massachusetts MM vice-president Joseph W. Chevarley was quoted as arguing in rebuttal, “One of the best ways to repeat historical degradation is to sanction the vilest exhibition of that degradation for the public entertainment.”

Both Morality in Media and the CDL, nonsectarian groups, have individual Christians and, in some cases, churches as members. From the Christian community, there has been no organized opposition to the movie.

Gallagher, an East Providence, Rhode Island, pastor, and president of his state’s NDL chapter, has filed a complaint against the movie with Rhode Island Attorney General Dennis Roberts.

He sees Caligula as a watershed. If Christians and the general public don’t challenge the movie, he said, “We will have shown the truth of what Francis Schaeffer writes about [Whatever Happened to the Human Race?]: the only thing Americans are concerned about is their own personal peace and affluence.”

Ironically, the film begins with a Bible verse etched across a blank screen: Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” What followed was anything but biblical, although Gallagher in a telephone interview judged that it showed “the truth of Romans, chapter one … what men will do when they are really cut off from God.”

Correction

The Baptist Federation of Canada, or “Federation Baptists,” is not a member of Interchurch Communications, an ecumenical group that opposed government licensing of the evangelical Canadian Family Radio in Vancouver, British Columbia (Sept. 5 issue, p. 78). In fact, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec—one of the four member bodies within the Baptist Federation, and a member of the ICC—officially supported the licensing and disassociated itself from the ICC’s stand.

The brief reign of Rome’s fourth emperor, Caligula Caesar (A.D.37–41) is depicted with explicit sex scenes: oral and anal sex, homosexuality, incest, masturbation, necrophilia, rape, and often with lingering close-ups. The writhing bodies are paired with graphic violence: Caligula cuts off a dead man’s penis and feeds it to dogs; a small girl’s head is smashed against a stone wall; there are decapitations, torture, and mutilations.

The movie’s sex and violence made it “a $17 million trough of rotten swill,” in the eyes of movie critic Rex Reed.

The film’s cast and budget would seem to give it greater respectability than other “adults only” fare. It has played in first-run, not X-rated theaters: in 108 theaters in 83 cities as of September 25, said Penthouse Films official Leslie Jay. It cost $17.5 million to produce, and features name British actors: five-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole (best known for his role as Lawrence of Arabia) cast as Tiberius Caesar, Malcolm McDowell as Caligula, Shakespearean actress Helen Mirren, and Sir John Gielgud. Art director Danilo Donati is a three-time Academy Award winner. “This film is really special,” said Jay. “It depicts pagan Rome as it really was.” In some cities, Penthouse has leased movie theaters where it sets the adults-only admission price of from $5.00 to $7.50.

In the future, pornography is expected to spread further among the general public. Pornography on cable television will be the big moneymaker of the 1980s, said Hill of Morality in Media. One TV industry magazine has estimated that two-thirds of the more than $120 million worth of prerecorded videotapes sold this year will be X-rated.

Pornography is growing because of public apathy, not because of weak laws against it, say antiobscenity activists. Morality in Media’s president Hill says the pornography traffic could be wiped out in 18 months if the U.S. Attorney General’s office initiated nationwide investigation and prosecution.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems to have given local governments the power of deciding for themselves what is obscene. Groups such as MM and the CDL quickly rebut arguments that pornography is protected by the First Amendment, according to a CDL newsletter. State and local obscenity laws generally are the same, but local law is preempted when that is not the case, said lawyer McGeady of MM.

(Formed in 1962 by three clergymen concerned about pornography’s effects on children and the family, Morality in Media has dual aims of educating Americans to the dangers of pornography, and encouraging community efforts against it. MM runs a National Obscenity Law Center in New York City, which is a clearing-house for information to aid in court prosecution of pornography cases.)

Gallagher himself has used most of the methods for fighting pornography that are described in his book, How to Fight the Porno Plague (Bethany Fellowship. 1977).

Existing laws and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling generally allow for persons to “get a prosecution,” Gallagher said. His antipornography philosophy has been: “You can prosecute this film or this magazine if you want to. You just don’t take no for an answer. You take the attitude that Caligula or whatever it is, is leaving the city, or I’m leaving. Christians should be like the importunate widow in Scripture.”

There are just so many Christians who don’t know the problem of sex abuse, and “how it directly leads to sex crimes as well as desensitizes Americans,” he said. He advises Christians to inspect exactly what is being sold and distributed in their communities; they will be alarmed, but able to knowledgeably fight pornography, he said.

In fact, the central issue is whether pornography is harmful. Its supporters argue that pornography is a subjective matter that can’t be legislated. Pornography and civil rights advocates have cited an individual’s right to read what he wants. Opponents argue that pornography rarely is a private matter, since anything that is sold or distributed is a public concern.

JOHN MAUST

Lutherans

Missouri Synod’s Preus Declines a Fourth Term

Jacob A.O. Preus looked like a shoo-in for reelection next summer as president of the 2.7-million-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). Most Lutherans, therefore, voiced surprise when Preus, 60, announced in a statement in the October issue of his denomination’s official publication, The Lutheran Witness, that he would not seek reelection.

Preus, who is completing his third four-year term, has guided the church through its most turbulent years. He entered office with a mandate to halt the church’s alleged drift toward theological liberalism. Most observers agree he accomplished that goal.

By contrast with the period during which he became president in 1969, “the trend toward more liberal doctrinal positions [in the LCMS] has almost totally stopped,” Preus said in a telephone interview. He believes there is greater emphasis in the LCMS today on evangelism and strengthening the local church. The new president should pursue these and other emphases, he said.

Those comments explain Preus’s published statement: “… after 12 years and three terms in the office I believe the Synod needs a change in leadership, a new face, new directions, and new interests. Many pastors stay in a parish too long, and I believe a change in synodical leadership will be beneficial.”

Some observers said Preus just needed a rest. He rode out a rocky, often controversial, tenure in office. He expects to take his first-ever sabbatical and perhaps do some teaching when his term officially expires next September.

Conservatives backed Preus’s election in 1969, and wanted him to stop theological liberalism, allegedly typified by teachings at the denomination’s leading seminary, Concordia in Saint Louis. Preus, president of the synod’s Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, before his synodical election, began promoting doctrinal orthodoxy at the Missouri school. He also launched an investigation of the teachings of its faculty.

This ultimately led to the suspension of Concordia president John Tietjen, and, in turn, a student-faculty walkout. They formed a “Concordia Seminary in Exile,” since renamed Christ Seminary-Seminex. It has 200 students currently and Tietjen is president. The school is in partnership with the 112,000-member Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, organized in 1976 by so-called moderates opposed to the turn toward the right.

Soon after, Preus stated his intention of moving “more into the middle” in the dispute between theological liberals and conservatives. His action angered groups at both extremes. The denomination experienced political maneuvering, and this is expected to continue (if not build) before the election of Preus’s successor at the July 1981 convention.

Preus, who won’t endorse anyone, asks only that the new president be “doctrinally sound,” and not “the creature or possession of any faction or clique in the Synod.” Asked if he would have done anything differently as LCMS president, Preus said he would have tried to be “more patient … as kind and as loving to everyone as I could.” He noted this had been difficult in those early turbulent years “because of all the mud flying.”

Spiritual Control

The Teacher: A Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing?

On Sunday, September 14, Myrna Wolfe returned to her New Castle, Pennsylvania, apartment after a six-day absence to find the bodies of her two roommates and religious devotees, Jean Barr, 43, and Marina Olsen, 52, sprawled on the floor.

Olsen, a Virginia Beach, Virginia, divorcée, apparently succumbed on September 10, the thirtieth day of a 40-day fast. Barr, recently separated from her husband over religious differences, expired two days later. In both cases, the coroner ruled death by natural causes. Until the final days of their fast the women had abstained from water as well as food and each had wasted away to a mere 60 pounds.

Before they began periodic rigorous fasts a year ago, Olsen weighed 150 pounds and Barr “at least 160,” according to family members. Both were described as “born-again charismatic Christians.” Three years ago they forsook denominational churches (Mrs. Barr was a Presbyterian, Mrs. Olsen a Catholic) to follow Wolfe, 46—a self-appointed minister, prophet, and healer known to her handful of local disciples as “The Teacher.” Relatives allege that Wolfe completely dominated the two women, reducing them to “mindless robots,” and charge her with ordaining the fast. Wolfe denies the accusation, the three women moved into the sparsely furnished New Castle apartment last June, but their “teacher” made frequent trips alone to attend to her “ministry” and to visit her husband and daughter in Pittsburgh.

Wolfe told police she was a chain-smoking alcoholic, blinded by glaucoma and diabetes and contemplating suicide, until a miraculous healing eight years ago following her conversion during a Billy Graham telecast. She became involved in charismatic groups in Virginia Beach and western Pennsylvania, but withdrew to form an independent “transient” ministry. “We prayed her out,” one Pennsylvania charismatic leader informed this reporter, “because she always tried to dominate everyone.”

A Virginia Beach couple related that they “quit their jobs, flushed their jewelry down the toilet, threw away their wedding crystal, and even sold their two Fiat cars for $30—“the first sum a stranger offered”—when assured by Wolfe and Olsen that God would provide for all their needs. Wolfe admitted having accompanied Barr and Olsen on multi-thousand dollar shopping sprees. Only a few days before the deaths she accepted $1,500 in “love gifts” from Jean Barr. Asked why she didn’t try to dissuade the women, Myrna Wolfe retorted, “that would be witchcraft, … control.”

She added that she failed to report the emaciated condition of her roommates when she last saw them alive, six days before the bodies were discovered, because “it was not my business. I knew they had to stand on their own convictions.” At press time no charges had been filed and police were continuing the investigation.

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS

Personalia

After eight years of brushing up against the law, things recently got sticky for professional “deprogrammer” Ted Patrick. He was convicted of felony kidnapping in San Diego for planning the abduction of a 25-year-old Phoenix woman from what her family believes is a cult. Patrick was sentenced to a year in jail and is free on appeal. Until now, he has been tried 13 times and convicted only twice, both times for misdemeanors.

Michael M. Zembrzuski, a Pauline priest whose efforts to build a large shrine near Philadelphia led to a church investigation of the project’s mismanagement, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Gannett News Service. Gannett’s lengthy exposé of the project won it a Pulitzer Prize. Zembrzuzki’s libel suit asks $10 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages.

George Bush’s pastor would like to make one thing perfectly clear: Bush is one political candidate who is not born again. Thomas Bagby, pastor of Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, said, “While the charismatics and the reborn Christians are concerned about themselves, George and I are concerned about our religion being the impetus, motivation, or causation for other people. Let’s put it another way: We don’t belong to the Me Generation.”

Phillip Potter, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, will be on a leave of absence from his duties until next April 20. Konrad Raiser will step in as acting general secretary until Potter returns. Potter is a native of Dominica in the Caribbean. His wife Doreen died in June following a year-long illness.

Publishing

Fiscal Millenium Dawns for Tribulation Touter

Author and financial consultant Jim McKeever is spending advertising money as if the Tribulation, about which he writes, were tomorrow. McKeever’s Omega Publishing Company in Medford, Oregon, budgeted $500,000 for a two-month advertising blitz—mostly in Christian magazines—for three of its books, said Omega president Bob Turnbull.

Two of the books are McKeever’s and the third is by author Dave MacPherson: each says Christians will go through the prophesied seven-year Tribulation, and McKeever tells how to prepare for that experience.

McKeever’s Christians Will Go Through the Tribulation, for instance, has chapters on preparing to survive nuclear war, famine, and earthquakes. He tells where to buy water purifiers and dehydrated food, which are the safest areas of the U.S. in case of nuclear attack, how to build a fallout shelter, and the advantages of moving to a self-sufficient farm. He includes detailed diagrams and lists of resource materials.

McKeever also has a section on how to prepare spiritually for the turbulent end times. For those Christians who believe it is wrong to make physical preparations for the Tribulation, he writes, “This is okay. However, we do have an obligation to take care of our families.”

Where did all the advertising money come from? Turnbull, whose previous 10-year ministry in Hawaii earned him the unofficial title, “Waikiki Beach Chaplain,” said the funds came from McKeever’s nonprofit Ministries of Vision organization. Besides Omega Publishing, the organization has two newsletters, conducts seminars, and sells cassette tapes. A former IBM executive, and computer and financial consultant, McKeever decided a number of years ago to place any personal profits above living expenses into Ministries of Vision, said Turnbull. In August, the organization bought charismatic businessman George Otis’s Bible Voice publishing firm, and the two merged—McKeever’s Alpha Omega Publishing becoming simply Omega Publishing.

Controversies

Smith Rouses Clamor over Whether God Listens

Bailey Smith, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stood his ground last month in the furor over his remark at a Dallas political affairs rally in August, to the effect that God doesn’t hear the prayers of Jews. Many fellow Southern Baptists and U.S. Jewish leaders scolded him publicly for it.

“I have a deep, deep love for the Jewish people, but as a Christian minister I must proclaim the distinct message of Jesus Christ,” he said in a Christianity Today interview. If he were to repeat the remark, knowing it would be pulled out of the context of his speech, he said he would specify that God hears no one who rejects Christ as Messiah and Savior. Among Scriptures he offers as evidence are Luke 10:16 and 1 John 3:22–23.

Smith said his mail, more than 300 letters, was running heavily in his favor, and he has tracked down the opinions of numerous Southern Baptist thinkers, past and present, who agree with him.

What about Cornelius in Acts 10, the Roman soldier whose prayers definitely were heard by God? “That’s easy,” Smith said. “Anyone gets his prayers heard who is ultimately willing to be led to Jesus Christ.”

North American Scene

Some Southern Baptist Convention executives recently formed a convention-wide videotape network. This ad hoc committee (which has no official SBC sanction or authority) will promote the use of videocassettes as a teaching and training tool in local churches. With funds it hopes to raise from state conventions, the committee plans to produce from 200 to 500 video programs during the next three years. These would be made available to local churches on a loan or service fee basis. The committee has arranged for SBC churches to buy the expensive video players at discount prices.

Some U.S. Mennonite Brethren delegates challenged their church’s historic peace position during its recent triennial conference. However, delegates avoided serious conflict by approving a compromise statement. They affirmed the church’s peace stance—preferring alternative service to the military draft—but also recognized there are differences of opinion among churchmen and Mennonite Brethren themselves. To these persons, the statement read, “we commit ourselves to loving and accepting relationships.”

A suburban Portland, Oregon, church is closing its six-month-old refugee resettlement station near Condon. An $850,000 abandoned air force radar station was purchased by the charismatic Easthill Church in Gresham, where it taught Laotian Hmong refugees survival language and job skills there (June 6 issue, p. 48). However, church officials say the camp was too isolated for the refugees, many of whom had families, friends, and cultural ties back in Portland. “They need to be in touch with their community, and that’s something we just flat out didn’t anticipate,” pastor Jerry Cook told a reporter. He said the program would continue, but in the church’s activity center and not as a live-in operation.

Membership in the Evangelical Church of North America grew by 3.4 percent last year. One of the youngest but fastest growing denominations in the U.S., the ECNA numbers about 12,500 members spread across 140 member churches. It was organized in 1968 in Portland, Oregon, when 46 former Evangelical United Brethren church congregations chose not to take part in the merger with the Methodist church. The withdrawing congregations (including more than half of the EUB congregations in the Pacific Northwest) feared liberalism in the Methodist body. Churches in the ECNA strongholds of Oregon and Washington have continued growing, while United Methodist churches in the two states have lost more than 25,000 members (15 percent of their membership) since 1968.

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s multimedia division, Twentyonehundred, won recognition from secular peers. Its production, Habakkuk, which presents the prophet’s words against a modern backdrop, received a gold medal at the International Multi-image Festival in Vail, Colorado. The 55-minute production, used on college campuses as an evangelistic tool, projects images from two dozen projectors onto a 50-foot screen and has a three-channel soundtrack (see Refiner’s Fire, April 18 issue). This was the first time the 10-year-old Twentyonehundred entered one of its programs in a competition.

Books On And For Women

Books on and for Women are reviewed by Nancy M. Tischler, professor of English and humanities, Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, Pennsylvania.

The time is ripe for books about women. They are rolling off the presses at a rate that forces the reader to grow increasingly discriminating. No longer is there a single market and a common reader; women are interested in theology, administration, psychology, physiology, biography, history, Scripture studies, and poetry.

Some of the new books are aimed at young women whose highest goal is marriage and childbearing. For them, Julia “Mom” Taylor provides “God’s Answers for Women in Today’s Upside Down World” in Last, Least and Lowest (New Leaf Press). She offers practical, traditional, motherly advice to teen-agers to be good girls; modest, chaste, clean—not bad advice. “Mom” sees the new wave of women’s liberation as Satanic, and recommends the wisdom of the Proverbs.

Such wisdom is also the core of other chatty little books aimed at middle-class housewives weary of children and chores. For a large number of American women, obedience remains a part of the marriage vows to which they firmly subscribe. Mildred Cooper and Martha Fanning, in What Every Woman Still Knows (Bantam), are anecdotal and breezy in their presentation of traditional views; Iverna Tompkins, in The Worth of a Woman (Logos), is more pedantic and organized; Virginia Kirley Leih, in Portrait of a Fulfilled Woman (Tyndale), is the most perceptive and biblical. Her book is a personal and thoughtful series of insights into Proverbs 31. For those especially downcast about their homemaking role, Miriam Neff in Discover Your Worth (Victor) offers a “how-to” book for self-discovery. One especially thoughtful book for harried housewives is A Piece of Me Is Missing, by Marilyn Cram Donahue (Tyndale). She suggests ideas for creative, joyful Christian living, including having a coffee-break with God—actually talking to him over coffee each day. Cameos (Harvest House), by Helen Kooiman Hosier, is a series of biographical sketches of women who have lived by their faith while facing the various problems of raising their families.

After reading these books about allotment of time for children, committees, and husband, one is shocked by the cultural and emotional ghetto outlined in such books as Stopping Wife Abuse (Anchor), by Jennifer Baker Fleming. The hidden anguish of women’s lives, the brutal treatment, the isolation are frightening reminders that all is not well or tidy in our world. This book would be useful for pastors who deal with cases of domestic tragedy and need to know the legal ramifications of their advice. Not all abuse is physical, as the studies of women and psychological distress suggest. Helen de Rossis, in Women and Anxiety (Delacorte Press), provides a useful self-help book that curiously ignores the possibilities of a religious solution to problems of stress.

Other books, like Please, Lord, Don’t Put Me on Hold (Concordia), by Jane Graver, reminds us that a large number of women in modern society do not go home to husband and children at the end of the day. Working women share the same tensions as working men, and have their own peculiar needs for strength and support. These meditations are witty and prayerful, and at the same time, very personal and realistic.

But the real avant-garde in women’s studies is not in these practical, gentle, scriptural books. The new women poets and theologians are following a divergent path that bears comment. Mary Daly, an associate professor of theology at Boston College, is the most radical and articulate of these, though her love of words catches her in a trap of enjoying word games rather than seeking to communicate. Her earlier books, Beyond God the Father and The Church and the Second Sex, have now been followed by the logical sequel, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon), Having transcended the “anti-male” stance, she asserts that she is now “Furiously and Finally Female” in her attack on the Christian “myth,” charging that Mary was raped and used as a sales gimmick by a patriarchal system. Some of Daly’s ideas find more scholarly and dispassionate support in the recent study by Elaine Pagels on The Gnostic Gospels (Random), in which she argues that certain Scriptures were suppressed by the patriarchal church, notably the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene. Susan Griffin echoes Daly’s ideas in a more poetic, stream-of-consciousness meditation in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (Harper & Row), asserting that man has exploited, spoiled, and mechanized both nature and woman.

The most forthright and readable of these feminist theological works is by Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Feminism (Beacon). We can clearly see the new wave here and in Womanspirit Rising: The Feminist Reader in Religion, edited by Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (Harper & Row), which is a good cross section of feminist thinkers. (Christ also wrote the literary study on women writers published this year by Beacon Press: Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest.) The attack that we see in these books is on the patriarchal nature of God as interpreted by the Judeo-Christian tradition. The warfare leads its participants to a renunciation of both the Scripture and the religion, ending in a return to the worship of the goddess and to the practice of witchcraft. This is absolute radicalism, an attack on the very roots of Judaism and Christianity.

In contrast with such iconoclasts, the evangelical women in Our Struggle to Serve (Word), edited by Virginia Hearn, appear very traditional and gentle. These 15 women—all bright, talented, and unable to swallow the simplistic answers of Total Woman—describe their anguish in striving to remain in the fellowship of churches that refuse to hear their cries. They feel like pretty (or sometimes ugly) children who are seen but not heard by a church that expects them to be happy slaves, knowing and rejoicing in their “place.” They argue that God has given them talents they cannot use for him so long as they remain “modest, meek and silent.” They are all from traditional faiths, all educated, and all struggling to be true to themselves, and to their God, their church, their families, their callings, and to Scripture. Most are part of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus and publish regularly in Daughters of Sarah. Their struggles, so different from those of women who are content to cut their lives to the traditional patterns or from those who are delighted to shred the faith and the church, deserve our sympathetic attention. They are a part of us, an exceptionally talented part.

Conflict Stories In The Synoptics

Jesus and His Adversaries: The Form and Function of the Conflict Stories in the Synoptic Tradition, by Arland J. Hultgren (Augsburg Publishing House, 1979, 223 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by David E. Aune, professor of religion, Saint Xavier College, Chicago, Illinois

Professor Arland Hultgren of Luther-Northwestern Seminaries in Saint Paul has produced a first-rate analysis of one oral form found 18 times in the synoptic Gospels, the “conflict story.” This is the first such study since Martin Albertz’s 1921 monograph, Die synoptischen Streitgespräche (The Synoptic Controversy Dialogues).

Hultgren finds that the “conflict story” consists of three elements: (1) introductory narrative; (2) the opponent’s question or attack; and (3) the dominical saying with which the form usually concludes. He distinguishes between “unitary” conflict stories (in which the saying is inseparable from the first two elements), and “nonunitary” conflict stories (in which the saying probably circulated independently of its present narrative framework). In comparing these conflict stories with suggested parallels in both rabbinic and Greco-Roman literature, Hultgren finds they are unique. Though all conflict stories were formulated by the post-Easter church, the earlier ones originated in a Palestinian setting in which they functioned to defend early Christians from Jewish criticism (e.g., Mark 2:1–12, 15–17, 18–20, 23–28), while later ones originated in a Hellenistic church setting where they had a largely catechetical funtion (e.g., Mark 7:1–8; 10:2–9; 12:18–27).

While Hultgren’s book is an important contribution to form criticism of the Gospels—a subject which has suffered benign neglect in recent NT scholarship—no review is complete without some criticism. First, the author ignores H. Schürmann’s recent suggestion that the ministry of Jesus may have served as the original setting for the generation of oral forms. Second, Hultgren’s confident judgments that one feature or another of a synoptic conflict story belongs to a Palestinian or Hellenistic cultural setting are based on caricatures of the two cultures. Recent studies have underlined the degree to which Palestinian Judaism was permeated by Hellenism. Third, his insistence on the “uniqueness” of the conflict story is based on an ignorance of recent work done on rabbinic and Greco-Roman literary forms. Fourth, his assessment of the Sitze im Leben (settings in life), or the conflict stories, is problematic since he does not deal with the oscillation between oral and written forms and the necessarily different settings presupposed by both.

But such observations notwithstanding. Professor Hultgren has provided us with a stimulating and provocative discussion of the synoptic conflict stories.

An Excellent Evangelical Biblical Introduction

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Volume 1; Introductory Articles (Zondervan,1979, 734 pp., $19.95) is reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, dean of arts and humanities, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Volume 1 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Introductory Articles on the Bible) is a large and important work. It could serve by itself as a university-or seminary-level introduction to biblical literature. Everyone who recognizes the major evangelical authors of the day will feel he is with old friends as he scans the table of contents. The list reads like the platform personnel at a banquet of evangelicals in honor of all those committed to the scholarly pursuit of a divinely inspired and completely trustworthy Bible.

It would be impossible to begin to cover each of the 35 articles that make up this volume (9 general, 11 OT, and 15 NT). Thus I shall list a few titles which are representative of the kinds of topics dealt with and make some general comments about the larger evangelical movement in biblical studies of which this volume is an excellent example.

The reader obviously will want to know something about “The Authority and Inspiration of the Bible,” and Carl Henry supplies the lead article on this crucial issue. Then we find ourselves investigating “The Transmission and Translation of the Bible” (Bruce) and its geographical setting (Houston).

Old Testament studies involve its language (Young), history (Motyer), theology (Kaiser), chronology (Archer), and canon (Fisher).

The New Testament section is equally rewarding. Greenlee writes on “The Language of the New Testament,” Julius Scott on “The Synoptic Gospels,” Cole on “The Life and Ministry of Paul,” and Walls on “The Canon of the New Testament.” You will discover the other writers and subjects when you buy the book—and you should buy it. It is well worth the money.

Most readers will know that The Expositor’s Commentary will be published in 12 volumes, and a careful reading of the introductory volume will convince the neutral observer that evangelical scholarship has come of age. The authors are fully abreast of the latest developments in their fields. While the bibliographies that follow each article are necessarily short they show an awareness of the larger theological world in which the evangelical works.

Most of the articles have a sort of text-bookish style that makes them less exciting to read than one could hope for; but, alas, that seems to be necessary in scholarly writing. However, the student with a genuine desire to learn will plow through almost anything—even the most pedantic prose—if he is rewarded with solid information and an occasional insight of lasting value.

Following the last article there is a 13-page index of persons, a 21-page subject index, and 21 more pages of scriptural references. This added feature helps to bind the work together. The subject index, in particular, makes the volume more usable as a reference work. The quality of this product speaks for itself and the evangelical church will benefit greatly from the forthcoming Expositor’s Commentary. Volume 1 has set a high standard.

Dreams And The Christian

The Gift of Dreams: A Christian View, by Kathryn Lindskoog (Harper & Row, 1979, 202 pp., $8.95); Working With Dreams, by Montague Ullman and Nan Zimmerman (Delacorte Press, 1979, 335 pp., $10.00), are reviewed by Shirley Nelson, novelist, Albany, New York.

“Dreams don’t mean anything!” scoffed a character in one of Kathryn Lindskoog’s dreams. “Speak for yourself!” she answered, and woke up. “That was the end of him,” she writes, in The Gift of Dreams. “A truly perfect squelch.”

But Lindskoog knows that our dream people frequently represent parts of ourselves. And while reading this disarming book, we are always aware of the presence of a sensible writer. Though Lindskoog takes dreams seriously, she does not take herself too seriously, and so we trust her as she leads us on what seems to be a fantastic journey.

Our dreams, of course, are fantastic—and very real. In fact, they are apt to be more real and more honest about what is going on inside us than our waking consciousness is able to be. Lindskoog tells us that, as does Montague Ullman in his valuable book, Working With Dreams. Ullman is a noted psychiatrist. Lindskoog is not: she is a writer and critic. Yet there are profound similarities in the dream discoveries of both.

Ullman, founder of the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York, writes out of years of experience in clinical research. Sharing authorship with Nan Zimmerman, a lay individual, he makes psychological theory available to the average reader, though the book is a professional treatise.

Lindskoog, on the other hand, talks informally about understanding dreams, her own, her children’s, her friends’—ours. We come in the back door and sit in her kitchen. The risk of this light-mannered style is that it tends almost to belittle her meticulous research, yet I have never read a more cogent explanation of what happens during sleep, or been so enlightened regarding the function of dreams in emotional health. Says Ullman, “The paradox … is that the dream, the product of our most private … being, can best be brought to fullest realization through being shared.” He states this in recommending group therapy; Lindskoog has demonstrated it on an even more public scale, within a specifically Christian context.

Neither Freudian nor Jungian, both books stress the necessity of discovering one’s own emotional language in dreams, one’s own metaphors. We live our waking lives in prose, says Lindskoog, but we dream in poetry. Claimed C. S. Lewis: “Such information as poetic language has to give can be received only if you are ready to meet it half-way.”

A Rich Commentary On Leviticus

The Book of Leviticus. “The New International Commentary on the Old Testament,” by Gordon J. Wenham (Eerdmans, 1979, 362 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Gerhard F. Hasel, professor of Old Testament and biblical theology and assistant dean and director of the Th.D. program, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

This is a highly informed commentary on one of the neglected books of the Old Testament. Professor Wenham of the Queen’s University of Northern Ireland, Belfast, seeks to combine “the plain original meaning of the text” with “its abiding theological value,” namely, “what the sacred text has to teach the church today.” In his attempt to achieve the first goal, Wenham has integrated into exegesis the comparative, socioanthropological, and new literary-critical approaches. The “enduring theological message” is found at the end of each chapter or at some other appropriate place, and discusses the relationship of the exegeted section to the NT and the NT use of ideas, words, or rituals drawn from Leviticus. This two-step procedure, that is, the movement from what the text meant to what it means, reveals once again the difficulty of conceiving a commentary.

The author’s discussion of law suggests that instead of dividing the Hebrew legislation into moral, civil, and ceremonial law it would be better to say that “some injunctions are broad and generally applicable to most societies [moral law], while others [civil law] are more specific and directed at the particular social problems of ancient Israel” (p. 35). This position leads to the assertion that the principles underlying the OT are valid and authoritative for the Christian while the particular applications found in the OT may not be. The situation with the “ceremonial law” is different. It is obsolete for the Christian, because all its enshrined ideals are fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ.

Several highlights may be listed as follows: (1) A postexilic date for Leviticus is difficult to maintain and a much earlier date is required. How much earlier is not indicated. (2) The motto of Leviticus is holiness. In Hebrew thinking everything was either “holy” or “common,” “clean” or “unclean.” Holiness is a state of grace; cleanness is the natural state of most creatures; uncleanness is a condition to which men descend through bodily processes and sin. (3) Israelite sacrifice was concerned with restoring relationships between God and Israel and between members of the covenant community. Sacrifice can undo the effects of sin and human infirmity; sacrificial blood is necessary to cleanse and sanctify the offerer. (4) The Day of Atonement rites were designed to cleanse and sanctify the sanctuary and altars from the uncleanness of the Israelites. (5) The meaning of kippēr, “to make atonement,” means either (a) “to wipe clean” or (b) “to pay a ransom,” but not “to cover” as many scholars once suggested. (6) The laws of clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11 are symbolic in nature, reminding Israel of its special status as God’s holy people (following Mary Douglas). (7) Blood is “at once the most effective ritual cleanser (‘the blood makes atonement,’ 17:11) and the most polluting substance …” (p. 188). This list indicates something of the depth and breadth of this commentary.

I was surprised to note that the complex problem of laying on of hands, substitution, and substitutionary sacrifice never entered into the discussion. This is a painful lacuna in an otherwise most refreshing, stimulating, and rich commentary that will make excellent reading for both scholars and laymen.

The Present Power Of Jesus

The Positive Power of Jesus Christ, by Norman Vincent Peale (Tyndale House, 1980, 266 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Lewis W. Kisenwether, Jr., pastor, First Baptist Church, Matawan, New Jersey.

Norman Vincent Peale’s twenty-fifth book, The Positive Power of Jesus Christ is, to my mind, his best and perhaps most significant. It answers the question, “What can Jesus Christ do in the lives of people?” and affirms what Christians have known through the years. When Jesus Christ enters human life he saves it, changes it, makes it new, heals broken hearts and relationships.

Peale begins with his own personal testimony of the power of Jesus Christ. He speaks of faith and victory over personal problems and gives the credit to Jesus Christ. He then goes on to relate stories of real people who have encountered Jesus and seen the power of God work wonders. The average pastor will find a great deal of effective pulpit material in this new volume. The people Peale uses to show forth the power of Christ are the very sort who sit in church pews every Sunday or seek consolation in the bars of our cities. Their problems are those of everyday people all over the country.

While The Positive Power of Jesus Christ is by no means a theological work, it provides insight into Peale’s theological foundation. Constantly we see him not as the pulpit master or radio speaker, but as a Christian coming in contact with needy people, using personal witness as his tool of evangelism. It is the basis upon which he approaches spiritual life. In one incident, which he calls “one of the strangest interviews of my ministry,” he is asked by a church official who has lost zest for life: “How do you go about being converted and finding the peace and joy you refer to?” Peale’s reply: “I said that the requirements were the confession of sin, an expression of belief in the power of Christ to heal the lesions of the mind and soul, acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, a humble request for forgiveness, and the willingness to turn oneself completely over to God.”

Briefly Noted

Inspiration/Authority of Scripture. Current controversy concerning the nature of the Bible has drawn strong defenses of its God-given truthfulness. Inerrancy and Common Sense (Baker), edited by Roger Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, is a collection of well-written essays, as is Inerrancy (Zondervan), edited by Norman Geisler. John F. MacArthur defends the reliability of God’s Word in Why Believe the Bible (Gospel Light), also available under the title Take God’s Word for It. InterVarsity Press offers J. I. Packer’s God Has Spoken, affirming the full authority of Scripture.

Paul J. Achtemeier takes a different tack in The Inspiration of Scripture: Problems and Proposals (Westminster). He argues that inspiration is to be located in the tradition, situation, and respondent in Scripture, and can become the Word of God for us by pointing us to Christ.

Worship/Preaching: James F. White has written a thoughtful survey in Introduction to Christian Worship (Abingdon). It is particularly good in explaining terminology. Peter Brunner’s Worship in the Name of Jesus (Concordia) is a full-scale, definitive work by a Lutheran theologian. O Come, Let Us Worship: Corporate Worship in the Evangelical Church (Baker), by Robert G. Rayburn, is a popular and practical plea to make worship more meaningful for churches today, with a series of helpful suggestions. Sickened by male-dominated worship, Thomas and Sharon Neuter Emswiler in Wholeness in Worship (Harper & Row) offer a comprehensive manual for nonsexist services.

A second edition of Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed (Oxford University Press), edited by R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming, contains the most comprehensive collection of basic material in print. Marty E. Marty offers sensitive, personal reflections in The Lord’s Supper (Fortress). In Spirit and in Truth (Dorrance), by Calvin H. Chambers, is an attempt to integrate charismatic worship into the Reformed tradition.

Baker Book House has reprinted P. T. Forsyth’s classic Lyman Beecher Lectures of 1907, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. One can compare them with The Preaching Event (Word), by John R. Claypool, which are the Beecher Lectures of 1979. Minister’s Saturday Night (Pilgrim), by Robert L. Eddy, is a collection of topically arranged sermon helps (illustrations) taken from everywhere—from Jesus to Charlie Chan.

Too many church leaders have allowed the creative juices to be blocked.

I believe all of us subconsciously want to be creative.… The trouble is that for most of us imagination has been suppressed to the point where we have stopped using it. We need to stop and daydream once in a while. We need to let our imaginations roam and give them a chance to breathe. It’s never really too late for anyone to start thinking more creatively (J. B. Dubois).

Churches are often stereotyped as being lethargic, change-resistant organizations. A frequent attitude is that if you want to see a dead, traditionalistic bureaucracy, simply look at the nearest church. Unfortunately, we all know that to some extent the stereotype is true. Many churches are dead in the water, without power, and drifting from crisis to boredom. Part of the reason, I believe, is a lack of creativity in leadership. Not, mind you, a lack of talent, or spirituality, or money (although too often these are to blame), but a lack of creativity.

Creativity involves imagination, originality, ingenuity, innovativeness. But although it includes these characteristics and others, it transcends them all. Creativity is not, in my opinion, a spiritual gift, although the Holy Spirit is the ultimate expression of the creative power of God. It is certainly not mere faddishness—the ability to sell the church board the latest Miracle Program from a publisher or parachurch organization. (The miracle of some cure-alls is that they can be sold at all!) For a definition, let’s say that creativity is the fragile ability to synthesize accumulated knowledge and past experiences with present reality in order to bring into being something new. The new thing brought into being is not totally new—nothing is—but it is new to those to whom it applies.

I deliberately emphasize creativity as a “fragile” ability. Few people lack creativeness; but far too many, especially those in church leadership, have allowed the ducts through which the creative juices flow to be blocked. The following obstructions to creativity must be identified:

Cynicism. “I had a creative idea once. But then I suggested it to be board and …” Few pastors would make such a statement, but the experience of having a creative idea summarily shot down in a committee meeting is common. The leader who allows these experiences to lead to a cynical, pessimistic attitude is choosing to languish in self-pity and tedious routine. First tries are seldom successful. Perhaps only two out of ten creative ideas will blossom into workable programs. But all ten ideas, including the two that would have worked, may be stifled by cynicism.

Intolerance of error. This also carries a two-out-of-ten rule: you may have eight losers before the first winner. You can forget about being creative if you can’t stand to make a mistake. Any organization must develop a high tolerance for failure, for failures are the necessary price we pay for good, successful, creative ideas.

Excuses. The commonest excuse for being uncreative may be, “I just don’t have a creative personality.” I do not believe one’s personality is irrevocably formed by age five; you can change your personality for the better. You may not win a Nobel Prize, but you can be more creative if you work at it.

Laziness. Nothing kills creativity more than laziness. Unless you were born some kind of genius, creativity will require more effort than uncreative colleagues are willing to exert. You must discipline yourself so you can take extra time to think about where you want yourself and your organization to be in the future. It is in such thoughts that the imaginative moment arrives—the moment you are able to synthesize what you know and what you’ve done and relate these to your current situation. Strict discipline and hard thinking are prerequisites for this.

Overexposure. Another obstruction to creativity is overexposure, for no one has an unlimited reservoir of creativity. The reservoir can dry up if it is tapped too often. Pastors who must create three or more public speeches or presentations weekly face this danger. The creative edge is easily dulled through overuse—too many sermons, Bible studies, Sunday school lessons, “devotional” talks, and so on. Without realizing it, many pastors are dissipating their creative energy through overexposure.

Another dimension of the fragility of creativity not to be overlooked is its spontaneity: you can’t force it. Sometimes I have a week or a few days when I have many creative ideas. There are other times when I have none at all. I have the same experience in memorizing Scripture—some periods are more productive than others. Creative thoughts often come when you least expect them. I once had a brainstorm for a new Sunday school promotional program while shaving in a cabin in northern Minnesota on my vacation. Creative ideas come to a friend at night in bed. He always keeps a pencil and note pad ready by the side of his bed. Good ideas must be caught as they appear or they tend to disappear quickly; they may never return.

Once the main obstacles are identified there still is the most potent factor of creativity to deal with: your own attitude. In his book, The Making of a Christian Leader, Ted Engstrom points out that the key to creativity lies within the leader’s own personality. The constituent parts of attitude—a healthy view of yourself, your relationship with God and others, and your belief in the work God has called you to do—combine to make you capable of creative thinking.

Here are a few practical suggestions you can use in the process of increasing your creativity:

Make time. Creativity takes time, especially quiet, think time. Time management expert Alan Lakein emphasizes the need to achieve a balance between quiet time and activity time. Many pastors are so overwhelmed by the demands of people and programs that their quiet time either disappears or is totally taken up with sermon preparation. Create more quiet time by having your secretary intercept all incoming calls and visitors. If you have no secretary, dial your own number and leave the phone off the hook for a half-hour. Better yet, spend an hour or two back in the stacks of the nearest library. But put limits on your creative quiet time as well—lest you be all thinking and no doing.

Read. Take time to read, and not just religious books. If there is more creativity in the secular world than in the church—and I think there is—then it stands to reason that you should read some secular books if you want to increase your creativity. Read whatever you find to be interesting and challenging: and read especially in the fields of management and social commentary.

Keep a file. Every good preacher keeps a file of “back-burner” sermon ideas. Why not do the same for program and promotion brainstorms? Write down your ideas as soon as they occur. More creative ideas are lost because they were forgotten than are lost to any to the obstacles named.

If you work at it, you, too, can become a creative person exercising a truly creative ministry.

Michael J. Hostetler is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Mahomet, Illinois.

The soft sins of suburbia are hardened into a Christian cosmology of heaven and earth and hell.

Over the long summer, everyone anticipating the fall television season longed to know “Who shot J. R.?” Although our curiosity was not immediately appeased, we might think about why J. R., the eldest Ewing brother on the TV show Dallas, has become, as they say, “a legend in his own time.” For once, this cliché has been applied to a figure who actually participates in the original meaning of “legend.”

His legendary forebears go back at least to the Middle Ages where “J. R.” appeared as the figure of Vice in morality plays. In these allegories, Vice stood for the essence of evil and behaved strictly in accordance with his nature; he tried to cause as much havoc and destruction as possible. In the plays of Shakespeare, Vice took on a more naturalistic appearance; nevertheless, he stood behind such characters as the eponym of Richard III, Goneril and Regan in Lear, and most especially Iago in Othello (see Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil by Bernard Spivack, Columbia Univ. Press, 1958). In Restoration theater he became the cad or seducer—a character who played a major role in the Victorian novel as well.

J. R., like his literary ancestors, is evil: unmitigated, unabashed, pure evil. He, as they, often wears the disguise of virtue, but the audience can always count on the dramatic irony of his corrupt intentions; we know he’s out to pervert and destroy everybody. The more his villainy suggests the diabolical, the more mysterious he becomes. And mystery is in short supply on television—real mystery, not merely suspense.

He is so very attractive because he makes the fictional cosmos of Dallas multidimensional; by his presence he lends the show the structure of Christian cosmology: heaven and earth and hell. And this is what makes the show so unusual (at least before its offspring were born) and so likeable. The cosmology of most television shows consists of a humanist suburb where the characters have been abandoned by heaven and hell to their psychotherapists. In these cramped dwellings of the human spirit Good and Evil have been replaced by Self-esteem and Desire; the language of holiness and damnation has been vanquished by psychological catch phrases.

Think about the old show, Family. Reviewers praised it for its sensitive character portrayals. But the show was not popular because it was well acted, although it was at times, or because the scripts sometimes broached problems common to family life. It was popular because the dedicated viewer of Family could rely on one or more of the TV family’s members stumbling into a discreditable love affair each week. The plots became increasingly uniform after the show had been on the air for a time, until the writers had to figure out only two things: (1) Who beds whom this week? and (2) How do we get the lovebirds out of each other’s arms so that the principal character can go on to other nests?

This formula reached its apotheosis when Willy, the son, found himself in a hotel room with another man’s wife: he took an extravagant amount of time to unloosen his shoestrings, and she, a much less self-conscious girl, sat on the bed in her slip. But there could be no direct appeal to morality: Willy could not simply say, “This is wrong. I’ll drive you home.” After all, in their humanistic world these people were just two organisms with the natural chemicals of Desire racing through their bloodstreams; they had no recourse to words like “sanctity” and “honor,” for those words most definitely belong to the old cosmology. Still, the viewer knew Willy would not go through with this affair, for Family generally backed traditional values. No, Willy’s problem, the writers’ problem, was to find a humanistic way out of this dilemma. Willy resorted to the other pole of humanism, Self-esteem. He said something like, “Honey, this is all we could ever have, just these brief encounters. It’s too sad.” The young woman’s chemicals were racing and she was not convinced. Neither, in terms of the story’s logic, was I.

Indeed, in terms of the cosmology of television, why shouldn’t they have gone to bed together? Perhaps the young woman’s self-esteem was shattered by Willy getting cold feet—what about her self-esteem?

There are two possible answers, neither of them encouraging. The first is merely the matter of censorship, in which case the show becomes an elaborate striptease, a seduction with the “saving grace” of a G-string ending. More likely, however, the producers and the writers of Family had a kind of nostalgia for the old values and sought ways of establishing links between the catchwords of psychology and what the ancients said; they wanted demythologized ethical standards.

It is true that cop and detective shows still operate in part in fictional worlds that depend on the old cosmology: the forces of good versus those of evil. But the tone of these shows generally reflects the prevailing ethos of skepticism. No show typified this more than Baretta. Tony Baretta worked to arrest those responsible for the trade in heavy drugs, the power brokers of organized crime who lived in opulent surroundings even as their patrons overdosed in back alleys. He also worked contrary to the wishes of his fractious boss who stood for a law enforcement system nearly as corrupt as the criminals. Baretta adopted an existentialist stance: he made his own rules. He was an archetypal modern hero forever unsuccessfully harrowing an inescapable hell.

But, see: the presence of J. R. in Dallas makes that show work as it never would without him. Bobby and Pam, the younger brother and his wife, are typical members of a TV family; they are nicer than nice, diabetically sweet—junk food characters. But as foils to J. R.’s malevolent machinations they miraculously become not nice but good. Virtuous. They are no longer “organisms with needs and desires” but human beings struggling to defeat the forces of evil and maintain a kind of Mercedes SL 450 rightousness. Even so, given the limits of television’s usual humanist cosmology, this battle of good and evil is a treat.

At the end of Othello the Moor realizes how his whole life has been subverted by his ancient. He determines to kill Iago and says: “I look down toward his feet—but that’s a fable. If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.” (V, ii, 286–87) Well, Othello can’t spot a cloven hoof, but he can’t kill the blackguard either. And while Iago is dragged off at the end to be tortured, he does escape alive from a stage littered with corpses.

Iago’s torture has involved long periods of internment in hell, but he has been resurrected often on many stages, and now he has surfaced once again on TV. In Dallas, in the character of J. R., Iago wears a Stetson and disguises his cloven feet with spurs. He is as fascinating as ever.

The old cosmology brings with it those images that have nourished the imagination of Western civilization. Even television, the electronic warlord of the barbarian, has begun to learn that old lesson.

Harold Fickett, author of Mrs. Sunday’s Problem and Other Stories (Revell, 1979), teaches at Wheaton College, Illinois.