“Homosexuality will be the hot issue at the October convention,” said David Virtue, referring to the coming triennial general conference of the Episcopal Church. Many Episcopalians made the same forecast, but Virtue speaks from personal experience. His editorial, “Gay Is Not Okay,” in a diocesan newspaper in Virginia, stirred a wave of controversy large enough to carry him back home to British Columbia.

Virtue, who describes himself as an evangelical Baptist, became editor of The Virginia Churchman in January. However, he accepted the post on one condition—that the 25,000 circulation, monthly newspaper stop carrying an advertisement for Integrity, an unofficial Episcopalian gay caucus that endorses, among other things, the ordination of homosexuals.

The diocesan communications committee accepted that condition, dropping the ad. But as a compromise it let Integrity announce group activities in the newspaper’s calendar of events. Integrity officials had expressed their displeasure, saying the disputed advertisement did not advertise homosexuality per se, and that Integrity intends only to promote the concerns and interests of homosexuals.

That was only the beginning of public reaction. Virtue felt moved to explain his opposition to Integrity in a February editorial. He said the Integrity advertisement in effect condoned homosexuality: while Integrity did not “openly advocate” homosexuality, he said, neither did the group oppose it. “The Integrity forum in no way helped people break their homosexual behavior,” Virtue explained. “In other words, it said gay is okay.”

Virtue detailed why gay is not okay in his editorial, first by explaining what was not at issue: namely, whether homosexuality is a sickness or a psychological illness, and the matter of homosexual rights. “No one wants to deny homosexuals rights to live and work where they choose. That is not the point,” he said.

Virtue declared that the bulk of available evidence indicates that homosexuality is environmental or learned behavior, not genetically carried, and that most important, homosexuality is sin.

The church, he said, “has never defended fornication or adultery as right or normative behavior. Why, then, should it turn around and say homosexual behavior is okay?…” He said that homosexuals “must and should be accepted” into the church based on their profession of faith in Christ. However, they should not be allowed to continue homosexual liasons: “You can’t call wrong right.”

He concluded the editorial, asking, “What then do we say? Our admonition to the homosexual is that of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery: ‘Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.’ ”

Virtue, a New Zealand native, said he never expected the public reaction that followed: “I got a letter from nearly every diocese in the country—either violently for me or violently against me.”

Integrity spokesmen challenged him in the newspaper’s letters section, and several clergy in the diocese requested a meeting with Virtue—who studied at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and obtained his masters degree from Regent College in British Columbia. The clergymen wanted to know Virtue’s theological basis for argument.

At the same time, the neighboring Diocese of West Virginia expressed pleasure with the editorial. It announced plans to hasten a merger of its own newspaper with the Churchman. Many diocesan laymen wrote their anti-Integrity sentiments, according to Virtue; he said that area clergy were “more liberal” and more negative than the laity.

At the height of the controversy in early March, Virtue resigned from the Churchman. The diocesan communications committee said farewell with “some regret” in the April issue—noting Virtue’s journalistic skills and that he had “struck a responsive chord and expressed the views of many in our diocese.”

In his own farewell message, Virtue said he did not regret his editorial comments. He said, “I have profoundly disagreed with many aspects of the church’s stance on issues, and its refusal sometimes to take a clear unequivocal position on an issue.” In a subsequent telephone interview, Virtue explained his sudden departure: as an evangelical, he anticipated “a collision” with those “in a fairly liberal diocese.” He returned to British Columbia, where for the preceding five years he was religious news editor of the Vancouver Province, a secular daily newspaper.

And “collision” is what some observers expect at the triennial convention. Liberal and conservative elements within the 3-million-member body already are bickering over the ordination of women and proposed revisions of the Book of Common Prayer. Now there is homosexuality to contend with.

James Robison appreciates television as a tool for evangelism. But the Texas-based preacher would like some repair work done on the medium’s Fairness Doctrine.

Robison, whose evangelistic association is filming fifteen prime-time television specials designed to evangelize America, recently began a court challenge of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Fairness Doctrine. Specifically, he is upset by an interpretation of that doctrine by Dallas television station WFAA-TV, which cancelled Robison’s Sunday morning program after his continued criticisms of homosexuality.

The Dallas station cancelled Robison after his February 25 program, on which the Southern Baptist evangelist had denounced homosexuality as sin according to Romans chapter one. The Dallas Gay Caucus called the station after the broadcast demanding equal time to respond.

Station manager Dave Lane said the station’s law firm evaluated the transcript of the program, and it “concurred that the homosexual community had been attacked and should be given free time to respond.” Then the station cancelled the 30-minute program, apparently tired of controversy stirred by Robison. Station management was upset with Robison in 1975 when he gave a series of sermons on “false faiths”—mentioning certain cult groups by name. Following Robison’s attack on homosexuality and specifically on the Agape Church in Fort Worth in 1977, his program was cancelled, but then reinstated. (The church demanded equal time to respond.)

Lane explained to the Baptist Standard newspaper, “I told James that you can call sin sin, you can call murder murder … but when you lump homosexuality in with it you are dealing with a controversial issue, and the burden of proof is on the television station to balance it.”

Robison, however, says the station management had indicated that he could preach on any moral issues as long as he didn’t “call names.” He has labeled cancellation of his program as a violation of free speech. He believes his comments were religious, not political, as the Dallas station management has implied. He explained, “We think that in this country the subject of a preacher’s sermon should be dictated by the conscience of the preacher and not by the FCC.”

Robison’s evangelistic association has hired the services of flamboyant, criminal lawyer Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, who will conduct a legal challenge to redefine the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. Haynes would seek an FCC hearing, and assemble a legal team of communications and constitutional lawyers.

Robison continued filming his program at the WFAA studios, despite the cancellation. But his immediate concern was for the ninety or so other television stations nationwide that carry the program; he wants to forestall other cancellations that might be prompted by questions about the Fairness Doctrine. A Robison-produced television special, “The End of Outrage …,” also contains attacks on homosexuality as sin. But Robison’s lawyers assure him the program, which began airing on sixty-six stations last month, would not violate the Fairness Doctrine.

The television special initiates a costly prime time television blitz of fifteen programs, scheduled to begin next month. Robison intends for the programs to reach at least 95 percent of Americans; but in a recent fund raising letter, he said present levels of donor support would allow exposure of only “25 percent of the nation.”

With his PTL television network lurching from one crisis to another, PTL president Jim Bakker announced last month that he was “stepping out of management” at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based operation. He handed the reins to a new executive vice-president and general manager, Edward Stoeckel, 54, a long-time projects engineer with the Ralston-Purina Company. Bakker (rhymes with maker) said that Stoeckel will “totally manage the day-to-day operations of the ministry” and will have broad powers to set financial priorities aimed at placing the ailing network on a “sound managerial footing.”

“We have embarked on too many projects—two schools, a satellite network, overseas missionary activities—and we are overextended,” acknowledged Bakker, who will retain his post as president and host of the popular PTL Club television show.

The PTL Club has exerted an undoubted positive impact on the field of Christian communications. Supporters say there is hardly a midsize town in the United States without a viewer who attributes his conversion or spiritual revitalization to the show.

Until the change, Bakker functioned as general manager and exercised virtual one-man rule at PTL, despite a large executive staff whose counsel on some critical decisions ran counter to his. Under an unusual arrangement worked out when he moved to Charlotte five years ago, Bakker became president and chairman of the PTL board of directors (he recently was named to the position for life); he remains chairman of the staff executive committee.

In announcing Stoeckel’s appointment, Bakker pledged not to countermand any of the new executive’s policy decisions. Bakker, an ordained Assemblies of God minister, said the switch would enable him to concentrate on ministry aspects of the work and on long-range planning.

Stoeckel faces many difficulties, perhaps the most pressing of which is staggering indebtedness. When a Charlotte television newscaster reported recently that PTL is in arrears in excess of $14 million, Bakker branded the information as “preposterous.” Two days later, however, he acknowledged on the PTL Club that $10 million “would get us almost out of debt. “The amount includes a stack of past due accounts (stations alone were owed about $5 million for air time as of March, according to one internal source), along with construction and other projects that have been “tabled.”

Several firms have filed lawsuits seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars owed them. A major telethon by Bakker late last year staved off seemingly certain bankruptcy (Feb. 16 issue, p. 44). But the network—which needs $800,000 a week to survive—sank further into debt by at least $1 million per month up to last March, said a former executive, when an intensive fund-raising effort resulted in a spurt of additional income that halted the downward trend—at least temporarily.

Also, there has been trouble with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Charlotte Observer in January claimed that hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by Bakker for overseas ministries had been used instead to pay bills and to finance domestic projects—a violation of law. The disclosures were based upon PTL documents and interviews with former PTL executives and overseas Christian leaders. (The amount included more than $281,000 earmarked for the establishment of a telecast in Korea hosted by Yonggi Cho of Seoul, pastor of one of the world’s largest Pentecostal congregations.)

Bakker vowed he would fulfill the pledges eventually. Donors nevertheless complained, and the FCC sent two agents (both are Christians) to look into the matter. Bakker rebuffed them, however, and the FCC last month decided to issue subpoenas for tapes and records. Claiming that exorbitant expenses and constitutional issues are at stake in complying with FCC requests for information, Bakker has vowed to fight the agency in court.

Another PTL problem reportedly involves the operators of the 200 or so stations in the United States and Canada that air the PTL Club: many are getting uneasy over PTL financing woes. Some station managers have expressed displeasure over Bakker’s increasingly high-pressure appeals for funds, and one accused him of “manipulating” unwary donors with misleading statements. Among other things, Bakker has broadcast attacks against the FCC and “the atheists” who, he claims, are out to put PTL off the air—further chilling the station executives (see box).

Citing slow payment and the style of Bakker’s promotional pitch, KOA-TV, the NBC outlet in Denver, dropped the PTL Club and replaced it with the rival Christian Broadcasting Network’s 700 Club. Observers point out that if PTL is unable to keep or replace its stations, its main source of income will dry up.

In addition, PTL faces a problem of a demoralized staff. Stoeckel’s appointment caps almost a year of turmoil at PTL headquarters that saw the departure of ten of the network’s fourteen vice-presidents. Of these, six were forced out by Bakker within the past six months and three others left under a cloud.

Fired in February was Jim Moss, 47, PTL’s executive vice-president and executive producer, who hired Bakker in 1974 and who reputedly was most responsible for building the network. Other executives have been shuffled around within the troubled organization, and numerous employees have been caught up in the throes of PTL’s financial uncertainities. (About 120 employees had been terminated since January, says a spokesman; this leaves PTL’s work force at 650.)

The hardships came amid published revelations that Bakker and his wife are paid nearly $100,000 a year in salaries and benefits between them. Bakker’s brother Norman, his parents, and his sister, Donna Puckett, also are on PTL’s staff. Mrs. Puckett, a vice-president, recently handed in her resignation because of PTL’s tangled problems, but Bakker refused to accept it and put her on paid leave of absence, according to reports.

Nearly all the board members have been replaced within the past year. Among the latest appointments are President Demos Shakarion of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International and Richard W. Dortch, staff executive of the Assemblies of God.

Some of the departed vice-presidents have been quoted in press stories. They include Bill Perkins, Robert Manzano, and Roger Flessing. All expressed sympathy with PTL’s goals, and said they were speaking out only in order that management problems at the network might be corrected.

They told of alleged discrepancies between what Bakker and PTL’s executives knew and what they told contributors. For example, two leading television audience-rating firms hired by PTL showed that 1.3 million people viewed the PTL Club; but Bakker advertised the audience as 20 million. (Bakker explained to reporters how he arrived at the higher figure: he used a random formula in which one piece of mail represented at least 1,000 viewers; to get a conservative estimate, he then used 10 percent of the total computed.)

Bakker declined to be interviewed, but a source authorized to speak on his behalf suggested that the management mess resulted from the incompetence of some former executives, not from bad decisions by Bakker. The source indicated that in order to improve the situation, Bakker was forced to weed out the ineffective staff members.

Other alleged unethical practices were mentioned. Perkins charged that PTL used shady business tactics to stall and mislead creditors. Checks were deliberately postdated or sent without signatures, he said.

Another ex-executive told CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “When contributors send their money, we have a responsibility to pay the stations for air time first; but Jim insisted on going ahead with school construction and other projects unrelated to television.” (Construction of Heritage University and related schools at PTL’s sprawling multi-million-dollar “Total Living” complex south of Charlotte has been halted as a result of the financial crisis.)

Bakker assembled “the finest management team imaginable,” said a former top staff member, “but now he has placed on it all of PTL’s corporate sins and sent it into the wilderness.”

PTL’s altercation with the FCC may result in little direct damage. FCC penalties, fines, and license suspensions can be levied only against stations. PTL owns only one station: WJAN-TV in Canton, Ohio. The station was purchased in August 1977 for $2.5 million.

Work began almost immediately on construction of a new $250,000 studio, and plans were made to produce a network news show. Viewers responded to local telethons by Bakker and began contributing $1 million a year, according to WJAN-TV station manager David Kelton. Some $850,000 per year went to construction and mortgage costs, and the local news show cost $150,000 a year to produce, leaving nothing for needed new equipment and a transmitter, he said.

PTL finally abandoned plans for building a production center in Canton, transferred or dismissed a number of WJAN’s staff, scrapped the news show entirely, and left a skeleton crew behind to pick up PTL’s programming by satellite. Rumors were circulating in television business circles this month that Bakker was looking for a buyer for the station.

Myth-guided Zeal

Zealous but misguided letter-writers are continuing a campaign against a nonexistent threat to religious broadcasting. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) was receiving 8,000 letters a day at the end of 1978, all written in the mistaken belief that atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair had petitioned the FCC to ban religious broadcasting. In recent weeks the number of protest letters has risen.

The FCC isn’t sure why there is increased interest in the matter. The protests by Jim Bakker (of PTL) against the FCC and unnamed “atheists” may have prompted the fresh round of protest mail. The FCC official said, “We’ve had a lot of calls on the PTL thing, and about the same time we started getting a lot of calls about Madalyn Murray O’Hair.”

Stephen Sewell, of the FCC’s Complaints and Compliance Division, put the blame for this renewed concern partially on newspaper articles that describe an O’Hair petition. In recent weeks some newspapers and magazines have carried paid advertisements, which readers could use to indicate their support of religious broadcasting and opposition to O’Hair by clipping the form and mailing it to the FCC.

“The best thing I can say is that the commission cannot legally prohibit the broadcast of religious programming,” said Sewell. “In any event, it [the FCC] has no desire to.”

Theology Of The Old Testament

Toward an Old Testament Theology, by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. (Zondervan, 303 pp., $10.95), is reviewed by J. Barton Payne, professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

The publication of an evangelical theology of the Old Testament has to be significant: it occurs only about once evey ten years. Since the compilation of Vos’s incomplete but valuable notes in 1948, this area has been restricted to my contribution in 1962 and that of Lehman in 1971. This newest contribution to the field, by a stimulating professor at Trinity Seminary, constitutes the most thorough interaction of Bible believing scholarship with modern Old Testament theology that has yet been achieved. Kaiser’s bibliography concentrates on the period since 1963 and he is meticulous in his acknowledgments of ideas and of documentations. Even though he modestly tells us he is moving “toward” his subject, he has managed to squeeze most of the relevant topics into these 300 pages. Under the patriarchs, for example, he includes such details as their names for God and their hopes for life after death. He is not exhaustive, saying little on the Mosaic rituals and calendar and never mentioning the menorah (candlestick) that appears on the cover and title page. He also disregards angelology, vows, and tithes. Nevertheless this volume is excellent for college and seminary survey courses.

The author holds firmly to biblical inerrancy and on questions of Old Testament introduction rings clear as a bell: Solomonic Ecclesiastes and Song, exilic Daniel, and even a ninth century Joel and Obadiah. He commences his historical outline with the pre-patriarchal era, the theology of Adam, if you will. Yet his desire for “irenic dialog” is observed throughout. He pleads with today’s more skeptical theologians to “listen to the canon.” He explains, “We wish only to establish that the writers claimed (whether we concur here or not is not the issue) that they felt themselves to be under a divine imperative” (p. 24).

Kaiser concentrates on the methodology of biblical theology, devoting almost a quarter of his book to it. He fears the extremes both of a barren history-of-Hebrew-religion approach or of the imposition of a doctrinal grid drawn from systematic theology. Though admitting that he groups biblical events on a “convention borrowed from systematics,” he opts for Von Rad’s diachronic (chronological) organization of material rather than for Eichrodt’s structural (topical) arrangement. The author feels that the proper goal for biblical theology is not to provide doctrinal summaries but it is to provide an exegetical tool so that interpreters of a given text can do their work against the backdrop of what God had revealed up to that point. Yet as a result, readers will discover undue repetitions, e.g., on Genesis 12:3 and its concluding passive verb, on Genesis 9:27 and the subjects of its verbs, or on Deuteronomy 5:28–29. Also one wonders if the average student might not have been more helped by having the full discussion of, say, the Messiah or the resurrection in one chapter.

Kaiser opposes the use within biblical theology of the principle of the “Analogy of Faith,” meaning the interpretation of the Old Testament on the basis of Christian theology as a whole, or specifically of biblical passage in the light of any later passage. The difficulties that this approach poses are compounded by his unwillingness to allow the biblical writers to “speak better than they knew,” with meanings beyond their human truth-intentions. As a result he inevitably lapses into a hermeneutic of “multiple fulfillment” in order to legitimatize meanings that are given in the New Testament. Examples are when he sees Isaiah 7:14 as referring originally to Hezekiah (p. 210) or when he discusses how even the king of Tyre and Antiochus IV become “part and parcel” with the final Antichrist (pp. 240, 248).

The writer’s evangelical warmth glows in his development of the Lord’s promise, which he proposes as a “center” for the whole of biblical theology, namely God’s assurance in Genesis 12:3 that in Abraham (and in his Messianic seed) all the earth should be blessed. Even the wisdom literature can be seen as motivated by God’s promises. Yet his own comments suggest another, and perhaps more fundamental, inductively derived center, when he describes Israel’s blessings as “the content of God’s numerous covenants” (p. 34), or, “Again, all this divine activity could be subsumed under one concept: it was a remembering of His covenant” (p. 101).

Exegetical insights and helpful word studies appear throughout the book along with stylistic infelicities. But there is so much good in Toward an Old Testament Theology that I am eager to see its projected multi-volumed successor.

Comprehensive Aid For Counselors

On Becoming a Counselor, by Eugene Kennedy (Seabury, 336 pp., $12.95), is reviewed by Karin Granberg Michaelson, Sojourners Fellowship, Washington, D.C.

On Becoming a Counselor reads like a good text book. A book of pop psychology or “how to” it is not. The forty-four chapters cover everything from a philosophical groundwork for counselors to detailed descriptions of basic psychological problems and their treatment. Kennedy is a well-known Catholic priest and author who teaches psychology at Loyola University in Chicago. Here he does not attempt any synthesis between psychology and theology in counseling. Nevertheless, it is certainly the kind of resource that belongs on every minister’s shelf as a reference aid for counseling responsibilities.

The book includes excellent bibliographical notes at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book. Kennedy has provided a comprehensive text from which the motivated counselor, professional, or para-professional can continue to explore in greater depth various psychological syndromes such as depression, neurosis, or psychosis.

It is also useful because of Kennedy’s major thesis that a counselor’s best resource is his or her own humanity. To the extent that a counselor can be freed from the need to perform and can approach each client with simple humanity, that person will become an effective counselor. Approaching the client as an individual with a problem rather than making the problem the focus and overlooking the person behind it is what Kennedy urges all counselors. These are not new concepts, but they are profoundly important to counselors. Kennedy emphasizes the need for counselors to know themselves. The key to fulfillment and satisfaction in your counseling work is to be deeply aware of your own feelings and reactions, treating them with the same respect and acceptance as those of the client.

Kennedy spends a lot of time discussing the stress related to being a counselor and how to manage it creatively. He repeatedly returns to the conviction that the counselor who knows him or herself experiences less stress and functions more creatively in counseling relationships. However, Kennedy returns to the subject of stress so often that he begins to build a strong case for the notion that counseling is the most stress-producing vocation possible and that you cannot escape it. Kennedy’s initial arguments on stress management seem inconsistent with his later remarks on the extreme stress connected to working with depression, neuroses, obsession, marriage problems, suicide, and grief counseling; in short, problems everybody has. At the completion of this comprehensive study, the reader may well wonder whether there is anything redemptive about counseling for either the counselor or the client. His model for counseling does not seem to reflect the role of the suffering servant in Isaiah about whom it was said, “with his stripes we are healed.” There is a fine line between accepting our humanity and limitations as counselors and actively pursuing the models set before us in Scripture. A counselor who is burdened with a messianic complex will assist no one. Neither will the self-protecting counselor who doesn’t grapple with counseling as a ministry that will include suffering with another person. Kennedy’s failure to deal thoroughly with this tension is a major weakness of this study.

Although Kennedy emphasizes the need for counselors to focus on the person behind the problem, he seems to have lost sight of his own advice. He gives the majority of his attention to pathology rather than to healing. If every client is perceived as a problem to be solved, it is not surprising that counseling according to Kennedy is such stressful work. By the time he has introduced the tenth chapter with warnings about the special stress involved in counseling, the reader may question Kennedy’s ability to discriminate. Surely not all maladaptive behaviour is equally demanding and stressful on the counselor. If the counselor experiences it that way, perhaps the person should find another vocation.

Despite these few flaws, Kennedy has put together a major work, which should not be overlooked by anyone in the helping professions. He has classified and discussed the major types of psychological problems and listed identifying characteristics of each. In addition, he includes valuable information on many areas that can be considered problems in living, such as marriage-related issues, suicide, grief, and drug addiction. Although Kennedy addresses himself to people engaged in other professions who are doing informal counseling, such as nurses, lawyers, and doctors, his greatest usefulness will probably be to the clergy and lay people involved in counseling ministries. Kennedy is too academic in his approach and too thorough to entitle his work basic; but basic, intermediate, or advanced it is well worth reading.

The Christian On The Job

The Christian Employee, by Robert Mattox, (Logos, 220 pp., $3.50 pb), Your Job: Survival or Satisfaction, by Jerry and Mary White (Zondervan, 190 pp., $6.95), Success Without Compromise, by Richard H. LeTourneau (Victor, 176 pp., $1.95 pb) are reviewed by Robert Case, realtor, Yakima, Washington.

As Western society drifts farther away from its Christian ethical moorings those who are ministering those Christian ethics through the pulpit and teaching positions seem to be retreating farther away from an understanding of that society. This is nowhere more apparent than in their appreciation of the how and who of the market place. Many of the evangelical pulpits and educational institutions are occupied by men and women who have never held a secular position in the job market, and therefore have little personal understanding of what the majority of their parishioners endure during the work week. This is a luxury which the Lord never permitted himself (Mark 6:3; Luke 2:52); nor did Paul (Acts 18:3). Even the current darling of the evangelical left, Amos, knew what it was like to work in the real world before he became a social critic (Amos 7:14–15).

In the yawning chasm left between an increasingly “secular” (Latin for “belonging to worldly things”) society and an increasingly insulated clergy/academia swings the embattled lay man and woman who must fight to hang on to their Christianity and their economic livelihood. Unfortunately, there is little practical help on the way. But the three books in our review do attempt a rescue. The focus of the books is on working as a Christian in a non-Christian place of employment. That means cooperating with and competing with others whose ethical gyroscope is not spinning in the same direction as that of the Christian (1 Pet. 2:11–25).

R. G. LeTourneau is perhaps the most recognizable name of a Christian businessman in America in the last forty years. His son, Richard, has written several books on work and the Christian, and his latest is Success Without Compromise, that is, “getting ahead God’s way in the workaday world.” LeTourneau is a multitalented, practical man. Successful in business, education, and writing, he knows what he is saying. His earlier book, Success Without Succeeding, is a valuable asset to a discussion of our topic. His latest endeavor, however, is disappointing. I had hoped for a more cogent examination of the Christian’s plight in the workaday world but it was not forthcoming. Nevertheless, there still are some nugget thoughts worth remembering, such as: “It is extremely important that a Christian be as prepared as possible for any field of endeavor. With the help and guidance along with the strength and wisdom of the Holy Spirit there is no reason why a Christian cannot be prepared better than any of his contemporaries. To ignore this preparation, or to sidestep it, would be saying in effect that we do not have the guidance and wisdom available to us that we say we do …”

On a less positive note, just as he is ready to end his book he tosses off a statement that tantalizes us with the thought of deeper, and perhaps more meaningful, help to the beleaguered Christian worker: “The basic problem with money is that human nature has basically a master-slave orientation. We all want to acquire this labor of other people, or the medium of exchange which will buy that labor, while at the same time minimizing the amount of labor that we, ourselves, must perform to earn the use of another’s services.” That is a sentence that warrants some elucidation and, unfortunately, receives none. So, there is the first weakness of this book: not enough grappling with real, meaty problems that most Christian workers face in a secular environment. The second weakness is even more serious and might not be corrected by another book. The weakness is LeTourneau’s handling of Scripture. He notes that we must be wary of dealing with certain problem situations with a scriptural solution. He writes: “There are many cases … where to take a scripturally absolute position may be considerably more damaging to the cause of Christ and to the future of any given situation than to apply the laws of grace.” (He does not explain the latter phrase.) LeTourneau clearly has a high view of Scripture, but a more consistent hermeneutics and better exposition in future writings will add immeasurably to his already considerable contribution to the evangelical believer in today’s work force.

Mattox gives us ample exposition and has put into the hands of the Christian worker a most valuable aid to maintaining a biblical stance in a secular work place. The core of his book is the thesis that Scripture gives us seven principles in providing a foundation to support Christians in our places of employment. These are: (1) God controls kingdoms and companies; (2) you are employed by Christ, not by your company; (3) your future depends upon God and your response to him; (4) your circumstances are designed by God; (5) count your superiors worthy in thought, word, and deed; (6) you must trust the Lord to direct your career; (7) your only status symbol must be the cross.

This book is filled with simple, yet helpful, exegesis of both the Old and New Testaments. Mattox does a marvelous job with Joseph, Moses, and Daniel. He gives us some very practical do’s and don’t’s and puts the so called “seven editions of the Word of God” found in Thompson’s Chain Reference Bible to good use. The author’s approach is very reminiscent of Bill Gothard’s proof-texting approach to the Christian life. Despite the weaknesses of this, it does have the very commendable feature of drawing its teaching from a course all Bible-believing workers have access to—the Bible!

Mattox rightly quotes Matthew 22:29 as a good reason for knowing what the Bible has to say concerning the working world: “Jesus replied, ‘You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.’ ” I enthusiastically commend this book for any Christian working in the secular atmosphere. The author has given those of us who sit in the pew on Sunday and work among the pagans Monday through Saturday a valuable aid in living the Christian life in our places of employment (Phil. 2:14–16).

The Whites’ book comes from the pen of a couple of Navigator staff members and the organization of their material is characteristic of that body. The book has two major divisions: “Foundations” and “Problem Situations.” The former is the best part of the book with the most exegesis and with thoughtful comments, such as, “Whether we like it or not, neighborhoods segregate according to social and financial levels. Instead of envying those who have more than you have, thank God for placing you in both your job and your neighborhood so you can be salt and light for Christ where you are.” They have a chapter entitled, “The Biblical View of Work,” and while it will not unseat Alan Richardson’s The Biblical Doctrine of Work as a pivotal piece of theological thought, it still is good, clear writing for the lay reader.

The second section, “Problem Situations,” while helpful, is less so than the first section. In this part the Whites cover a number of job categories such as, “The Salaried Employee,” “The Hourly Employee,” “The Working Woman,” etc., and they attempt to sketch some problem areas for each category. Sketching is all that can be done in a book aimed at simplicity and shortness, thus some of the profound and deeply disturbing questions of each category are not really covered. However, despite the brief treatment given this section it affords a panoramic view of part of the job market (and the curses and blessings of that market) for the believer, and is a serviceable primer for the worker.

Dorothy Sayers wrote in Creed or Chaos, “Work is not, primarily, something one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. When a man or a woman is called to a particular job of secular work, that is as true a vocation as though he or she were called to specifically religious work.” Many share those sentiments, but authors and publishers have not kept Christian bookstores supplied with helpful books aimed at encouraging believers to claim their secular work environment for the Lord of Creation.

Human-divine collaboration characterizes all honorable work.

Let me say it before you think it: a clergyman is the last person in the world to expatiate on this topic. For everybody knows that no clergyman has ever done a day’s work in his life. Instead, according to the old quip, he is “six days invisible and one day incomprehensible.” A few years ago a rather drunk Welsh Communist boarded the train in which I was travelling. When he learned that I was a pastor, he told me it was high time I became productive, and ceased to be a parasite on the body politic.

What is our attitude to our work? Here is a popular view:

I don’t mind work

If I’ve nothing else to do;

I quite admit it’s true

That now and then I shirk

Particularly boring kinds of work—

Don’t you?

But, on the whole, I think it’s fair to say,

Provided I can do it my own way

And that I need not start on it today—

I quite like work!

What has been called “the orthodox view” of work (or so I have read in a secular book on the social psychology of industry), and has been the basis of industrial psychology and managerial practice (or so I am assured in the same book) is “the Old Testament belief that physical labor is a curse imposed on man as a punishment for his sins.” The author goes on to write that this view has recently been modified. But even so it is a serious distortion of Scripture. The fall certainly turned work into drudgery, because the ground was cursed with thorns and thistles, and cultivation became possible only by the sweat of the brow. But work is a consequence of creation, not the fall; the fall has aggravated its problems without destroying its joys.

So we badly need to recover the biblical doctrine of work. In the first two chapters of Genesis God reveals himself to us as a worker. Day by day, stage by stage, his creative work unfolded. And when he created mankind male and female to his own image, he made them workers too. He gave them dominion, told them to subdue the earth, and thus made them his representatives to care for the environment on his behalf. Then when he planted a garden, he put the man he had made into the garden he had planted, in order that he might cultivate it. It is from these revealed truths about God and man that we must develop a biblical doctrine of work.

First, work is intended for the fulfillment of the worker. The two sentences of Genesis 1:26 belong together: “let us make men in our image” and “let them have dominion.” It is because we bear God’s image that we share God’s dominion. Therefore our potential for creative work is an essential part of our Godlike humanness, and without work we are not fully human. If we are idle (instead of busy) or destructive (instead of creative) we deny our humanity and so forfeit our self-fulfillment. “There is nothing better than that a man should find enjoyment in his work” (Eccl. 2:24; 3:22). And although employers should do their utmost to relieve the discomfort and danger of certain jobs, even such work as this can yield a measure of job satisfaction.

Secondly, work is intended for the benefit of the community. By cultivating the garden of Eden Adam will have fed and perhaps clothed his family. The Bible emphasizes productivity for service. The produce of the “land flowing with milk and honey” was to be shared with the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the alien. Paul told the thief to stop stealing and start working “so that he might be able to give to those in need” (Eph. 4:28).

Thirdly, work is intended for the glory of God. God the Creator has deliberately humbled himself to require the cooperation of human beings. He created the earth, but entrusted to humans the task of subduing it. He planted a garden, but then appointed a gardener. “You should have seen this ’ere garden,” said the Cockney gardener to the person who piously praised God for the lovely flowers, “when Gawd ’ad it all to ’isself!” The fact is that creation and cultivation, nature and culture, raw materials and craftsmanship belong together. As Luther put it, “God even milks the cow through you.”

This concept of divine-human collaboration applies to all honorable work. God has so ordered life on earth as to depend on us. The human baby is the most helpless of all creatures. Each infant is indeed a gift of the Lord, but he then drops it into a human lap saying, as it were, “now you take over.” For years children depend on their parents and teachers. Even in adult life, though we depend on God for life, we depend on each other for the necessities of life, not only of physical life (food, clothing, shelter, warmth, and health) but of social life too (everything that goes to make up civilized society). So whatever our work, we need to see it as being—either directly or indirectly—cooperation with God in leading human beings into maturity. It is this that glorifies him. Some years ago the chief health inspector of the Port of London wrote to me that to work for his own ends did not satisfy him. “I like to think,” he went on, “that I am responsible for a part of the greater field pattern whereby all serve human welfare and obey the will of our wonderful Creator.”

According to God’s intention, then, work might be defined as “the expenditure of manual or mental energy in service, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.”

The attentive reader will observe that I have made no reference to pay, for it is “work” which I have tried to define, not “employment.” We need to remember that though all employment is work, not all work is employment. Adam was not paid for working in the garden. The housewife is not paid for keeping the home and bringing up the children. And millions of people do spare time work for the church in a voluntary capacity. It is an important distinction to which I shall return next month when I enlarge on the contemporary problem of unemployment.

Unemployment is a problem of enormous magnitude. Of the total labor force 6 percent is now unemployed in Britain, 7 percent in the United States and 8 percent in Canada. And the true percentages would be higher if we included those who do not register as unemployed persons and those who are underemployed on account of “overmanning.” Worst hit are young people under the age of twenty-five (44 percent of the unemployed in Britain belong to this category), the blacks, the disabled, and the unskilled. The Third World figures are much worse, however. It is reckoned that 35 percent of the work force of developing countries are unemployed (about 300 million people) as compared with an average of 5 percent in the West (some 17 million).

John R. W. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church, London, England.

(from Philippians 2:6–11)

In the fullness of time Christ came empty prince?

built a tower of mustard seeds reigned

with a towel

And in time’s void He came brimming baskets

of bread for the hollow

blood for the penniless and

a tree to plant again

Eden.

SUSAN ZITZMAN

In 1873, when the sport of mountain climbing was still in its infancy, an enterprising young Englishwoman climbed most of the way to the summit of Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc, to the place known as Les Grands Mulets. Her guide urged her to go on, as it seemed to him that she could easily attain the summit and incidentally become the first woman to do so. She demurred, stating that she had already accomplished what she intended, and that to go on would be nothing but vanity. That woman was Frances Ridley Havergal (b. 1836), one of the most gifted hymn writers in the English language. Her death occurred two days after Pentecost exactly a century ago, on June 3, 1879.

Those who know and love Frances Havergal’s hymns may not be surprised at the description given by one of her publishers: “a gentle spirit, a temperament alive to all innocent joys, to all the harmonies of life and literature, a deep and earnest faith, a loving self-surrender to the Savior.” Lines such as these: “Take my life, and let it be, …” and, “Golden harps are sounding, Angel voices ring, …” seem to speak of a submissive, contemplative nature. The rather more robust, “Like a river glorious,” and the stirring, “Who is on the Lord’s side?” bespeak a vigor that is acquainted with hard work and earnest struggle as well as with “all innocent joys.” And indeed, as Frances Havergal’s letters and personal accounts of her mountaineering in Britain and on the Continent show, she was indeed gentle—but certainly not weak.

During our own years in Switzerland my wife, Grace, and I hiked over many of the high mountain passes that used to be important travel routes in the days before the railroad. It was in 1971 that Grace picked up, in a library sale in Yeotmal, India, Frances Ridley Havergal’s Swiss Letters and we realized something of the real character of this remarkable woman. Even today, life in those high mountain regions is simple and hard. Today Switzerland is one of the most prosperous nations in the world, but in the nineteenth century it was poor, particularly in mountainous regions that have since then become the center of skiing and tourism. Through the Alps there run two boundaries: the French-German language boundary and the Protestant-Catholic boundary. Due to the historic Protestant-Catholic conflict, religious rivalry has remained strong, even to the present, but the quality of spiritual work and of ministry in the isolated valleys and their villages was poor.

It was in Frances Ridley Havergal’s Swiss Letters that we discovered that almost exactly one hundred years before us, when mountaineering was still in its infancy and the comfort of mountain inns and Swiss Alpine Club huts did not yet exist, she had hiked over most of the same high passes that we ventured. She did not stick to the mule trails, but went right up the peaks: “The snow slopes,” she writes, “were most entertaining to cross, and I enjoyed the scramble excessively.” In the light of the intense spiritual sensitivity to which her hymns bear witness, it is fascinating to observe her physical vitality and the zest she brings to life. An Alpine Club companion comments that she “went up like a chamois,” and she herself wrote, “The glissades down are simply delicious.” Such a glissade (controlled slide down a steep snow-covered slope without skis) almost cost her life and that of a companion on the descent from Mont Blanc.

Not only did Frances enjoy both physical and spiritual exertion, but like another mountain-based Francis—Francis Schaeffer—she kept them together. She referred to her hikes through Switzerland as “a working vacation.” Her work was the ministry of the Word, in speech, song, and visitation. Having learned both German and French as a girl and apparently possessing a real gift for languages, Frances was able to converse with the local people on both sides of the language border. As she hiked through the valleys and over the passes, she stopped in small towns and villages, distributing Gospels, preaching, and visiting shut-ins. She even composed a French hymn that is still found in many French-language hymnals.

Accounts of her life and her own letters tell so naturally and self-confidently of her faith, her devotional life, and her constant activity in witnessing, teaching, writing, and working, that one sometimes gains the impression that this came naturally and easily in Queen Victoria’s England. And although Frances makes it sound as though there could be nothing in the world more natural than standing “on the Lord’s side,” to “serve the King,” we know that she often took her stand and performed her service in a decidedly unfriendly environment. Although, like many impecunious English clergymen, her father was well-connected in upper-class circles, the consecration she shared with him was by no means typical of that class. Both in Britain and in Germany, the history of the nineteenth century abounds with examples of those who were noble and wealthy by birth, and who consecrated both life and fortune to the service not of earthly kings and Kaisers, but of the King of Heaven. This class was international in character, and Frances Havergal related as easily to peers and peeresses as to peasants. Both her ability to relate naturally and her clarity of spiritual conviction appear very early in her life.

When her father went to Germany in 1852 to consult an eye specialist, Frances at sixteen became a friend of the Countess zur Lippe. Lippe was an independent principality at that time, before the unification of Germany under Bismarck. Both the count and the countess were admirable representatives of German Pietism (as was Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert), and, as Frances writes, lived very simply, giving the majority of their ancestral income away. But the Count and Countess zur Lippe were no more typical of the German aristocracy than William Wilberforce was of the British upper class. Frances was enrolled for a time in an exclusive girls’ school in Düsseldorf, where, she reports—not without a trace of British pride—she astonished everyone by coming out first in her class. Yet there, she reports, among 110 girls, “I do not think there was one beside myself who cared for religion.” Her next comment is startling, but typical of the woman who could scale Mont Blanc: “This was very bracing.”

Back in Britain, Frances studied both biblical languages, developing a skill that helps to explain the fact that her hymns, although full of sentiment, are not basically sentimental but biblical. For almost every line she writes, however imaginative and poetic, there is a firm scriptural foundation. She does not write or sing of her experience in the first place—although she is very open about it—but of the Lord she serves. And her active study no more kept her from ministering to people of every condition than did her active vacationing in the mountains of Wales or Switzerland. She was active among village people, among farm workers, among sailors. She traveled to Ireland and ministered there as well, her generous spirit overcoming the handicap of hostility that would have overwhelmed the typical upper-class Briton in subject Ireland.

In almost any current American hymnal, Frances Ridley Havergal is well represented. Although her hymns are warm and fervent, they are anything but soupy. At a time when many evangelicals are becoming suspicious—and rightly so—of the syrupy emotionalism that characterizes many so-called “favorite hymns,” Havergal’s hymns offer an invaluable contrast. They show, more clearly perhaps than those of any other writer since Charles Wesley, that it is not necessary to resort to the emotional pressure-cooker contrivance of walks in the garden alone in order to sing warmly and fervently of the love of Jesus. Everything that we need or should want to say in the Christian life, if the sentiment is legitimate, can be drawn from Scripture without resort to religious fancy. At the same time, it can be beautiful and fervent. It is hard to select a single hymn from among her scores as an example, but surely these lines illustrate her combination of biblical accuracy and spiritual enthusiasm:

Thou art coming, O my Saviour, Thou art coming, O my King,

In thy beauty all resplendent; In thy glory all transcendent;

Well may we rejoice and sing:

Coming! in the opening east, Herald brightness slowly swells;

Coming! O my glorious Priest, Hear we not thy golden bells?

Harold O. J. Brown is professor of theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Why should a busy pastor or student collect books? The question would have astonished the fourteenth-century Richard de Bury. “All the glories of the world,” he once declaimed, “would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.”

The response of others would be more pragmatic: those who work with ideas or problems need to have access to information that can be used. All right, but how do you embark on a library building program? Here are some suggestions for the aspiring bibliophile.

1. Have an overall plan. In deciding on the purpose of the library, we obviously cannot have everything, but this should be no discouragement. A coherent plan of action will direct the building of a significant and usable collection within the limits set by the owner. What, then, is the purpose of the library?

Will it be a specialized working library? Here the pastor should choose some area, Old Testament archaeology, for example, and ask, How can I answer my questions about this subject? He will seek scholarly books and articles (or interesting Sunday school lessons). He will not need first editions or tooled leather bindings. Good sound copies (which are also far cheaper) will do. Scarcer works could even be ratty copies that could later be rebound.

Will it be a basic reference library? Here one is looking for standard works from many categories. Dictionaries, lexicons, standard commentaries, and surveys will supply the need. From these the pastor can answer most questions asked of him, even if he cannot answer all of his own questions in an area of special interest.

Will it be for private use only or for others as well? This is something to be faced early. If one is going to lend books freely, then multiple copies of some works will be needed. Hardbacks are preferable: they stand up to abuse better than paperbacks. If books are used for display in lectures (early Bibles, say), then condition becomes an important consideration. We can read a tattered volume, but we would not want to display it.

Will it include a highly personalized section of very special interest? This could be anything, of course. In my case, it is searching for the earliest possible editions of epoch-making New Testament works, such as J. A. Bengel’s Gnomen Novi Testamenti (1743), J. G. Wettstein’s Novum Testamentum (1751–52), or R. Bultmann’s Jesus (1926). What one does here depends on the interest and ingenuity of the person.

Will it be with a view to investment or simply usability? If investment is in view, then antiquarian books come into focus, as well as specialized knowledge of books, as such, not just their usability. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress can be bought from any bookstore for use; but try to locate an early edition! That becomes another matter. A person might want to combine some of the above to suit his or her particular needs: specialized in one area, general in another, investment in another, current paperbacks in another. But whatever you do, have a plan that makes sense to you.

2. Acquaint yourself with sources of supply. Some people quit before they even start, because they do not know where to begin. Once a person has defined his areas he needs to find out where to purchase his books. This is easier than it might seem. Look at it this way. Book publishers and book dealers are in the business of selling books. If you are interested in buying, they are interested in you. There are over 1,700 publishers listed in-Religious Books and Serials in Print 1978–1979, any of whom would be glad to send catalogs to prospective buyers. Book Dealers in North America and A Directory of Dealers in Second-Hand and Antiquarian Books in the British Isles list thousands of book stores, any of which would love to sell you books. There are also journals, magazines, and specialized publications, all of which are devoted to the selling of new and used books. Once you decide what you want to do, go to your nearest library (public or seminary) and ask some questions of the librarians. They spend their lives buying books and can direct you to the sources of supply.

3. Be a discriminating buyer. The number of religious books available is staggering. Religious Books and Serials in Print 1978–1979 lists 47,000 books. These are mainly in English. If one were to add foreign language titles, the total would probably top 100,000 religious books in print today. Add to that used books for sale, and the figure is enormous. The big question is obviously, Which ones do I buy? I have no easy answer. It is easier to find the books for sale than to decide what to buy. Good direction can, however, be found by looking in the right places. Here are a few:

a. Go to a theological library. Look at the books for yourself. Note those that appeal to you.

b. Check the indices of works in a given area and see which are referred to most. Clearly if a dozen books all rely heavily on another book, you should buy the one on which they have drawn.

c. Check the actual use of books by looking at the library card. If no one else is reading the book, why should you?

d. Ask some friendly theology professor (and which one isn’t?) what he thinks. Perhaps he has a few standard bibliographies he could spare.

e. Read the book review sections of Christian magazines and theological journals.

f. Ask people who know books (dealers, librarians, teachers, etc.) what they read or recommend.

g. Read the trade magazines—but do it with discrimination.

h. Learn the names of authors you trust or enjoy reading, and look for them—and see what books they used when writing.

i. Acquaint yourself with annotated bibliographies, such as: Cyril J. Barber’s The Minister’s Library (1974, Baker) and its Periodic Supplement #1 (1976) and Periodic Supplement #2 (1978) and the bibliographical pamphlets available from Theological Students Fellowship, 233 Langdon, Madison, WI 53703.

Remember, a book is only good if it serves a purpose. After you have worked out your plan and found out where to buy the books, buy those that fit in. It will be “good” only if it is actually used. If no one ever looks at it, you might as well never have bought it.

4. Set yourself realistic goals. Book-oriented people are often maligned as impractical and out-of-touch. The very word “bookish” connotes dusty rooms and stooped shoulders. But we bibliophiles can be realistic in our better moments and follow some sensible principles. Take the following, for example:

a. Remember your financial situation. Books can be very expensive; only money that is not needed elsewhere should be spent. The joy of owning a perfect copy of Westcott’s Commentary on John could be spoiled if your car runs out of gas halfway home and you are broke because you bought the book.

b. Remember your family. Books are your friends, but your husband or wife is an even better friend. Do not embark on any long-range projects without first getting the approval of everyone who has some stake in you and your time. You might think that rummaging in used book stores on your vacation is fun, but your family might not. You could solve this, of course, by marrying a librarian, but even librarians have to eat.

c. Do not become preoccupied with your books. Life still has to be lived. If your book collecting becomes an obsession, perhaps you had better take up fishing. No one should suffer because of an excessive concern for books.

d. Do not try to buy everything all at once. Set out some attainable goals and strive to reach them. In this way you will have a feeling of progress, rather than a feeling of frustration at not owning everything. There will always be something you did not buy, so don’t let it worry you.

5. Do not forget the physical facilities. Books should be used. That means they will have to be within reach. Nothing is worse than to have a book and not be able to find it because it is buried somewhere in the attic. Calculate first how much space you have, how you want to arrange your books, how accessible they have to be, who needs to get to them. Then start filling the shelves. Try to have an appropriate place for them as well. No one likes to see stacks of books in the dining room or the hall. Ideally, one should have a study or library where the books could be arranged for maximum use.

6. Keep up your spirit of adventure. Do not let your books become a burden. Try to keep the larger perspective. Think what a thrill it is to have on your shelves the works that changed the world—that the thoughts of Luther or Bunyan or Wesley are available for our guidance today. Or if you ever get bored or feel persecuted, take down a missionary biography or learn about the Huguenots.

Let your book buying become a part of you. You will never grow weary of it, and it will provide you with a well-stocked larder of tales to tell. Like the time I was walking in London’s Euston Road and observed some planks laid over a couple of sawhorses covered by a tarpaulin. Attached was an improbable note: “BOOKS: BE BACK AT 11:00.” Who could resist something like that? It turned out to be a large assortment of rare antiquarian theology books, among other things. I found there a first edition of N. Hemmingsen, Commentaria in Omnes Epistolas (1562) that could be unique. Not even the British Museum has a copy.

There are horror stories too. In a large city in northwest England, searching about in the dingy basement of a book store, I saw in the sooty half-light a very rare seventeenth-century leather-bound set. When I tried to take a volume out, it broke in half vertically because the other half was rotted to the grimy wall. Thousands of books were ruined in that basement. You also meet wonderful people with whom friendships frequently develop. As Emerson put it, “It is a tie between men to have read the same book.” I have found book store owners to be among the most helpful of all tradespeople. Make the most of it all.

7. Share the blessings with others. When I first began collecting over twenty years ago, kindly people gave me duplicates to get started, and I have never forgotten this. I can still remember the books thus acquired. Do the same to others. If you see a scarce book and you already have it, buy it anyway, if it is a good price. Then give it away as a present. You will never know what good will come of it.

Lending is another matter, however. These books are wanted back, and that puts them in a different category. Use your judgment here and lend only to reliable people. Keep a record of what was lent, and when you want it back. Even then, try to be philosophical about it when you lose a book or two. It happens to everyone. Perhaps a good rule to follow is to lend only those books you would not mind losing.

8. Do not forget to read the books. This is what they are for. If they go unread, they should have remained unbought. Let the wisdom to be found in the books you own become a part of your life. If the answers to the questions people ask are simply buried on your shelves, then the whole purpose of building a library is defeated. It is living in poverty when the wealth of a thousand scholars is languishing unused within your reach.

There is a great satisfaction about seeing a good library develop over the years. It is not only valuable for a person’s ministry, it can become a significant part of his life. The man who loves books is ultimately never alone.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

Many Christians believe rock music renders the listener helpless to the temptation of evil.

The Subject of rock music is highly controversial in some evangelical Christian circles. Christians whose musical tastes were formed before rock music became popular, or who were raised in environments where it was not heard, often voice their displeasure at the loud, raucous music. Some even feel that rock music is infused with satanic powers. On the other hand, young Christians who listen to rock music protest this position by pointing out that they have maintained their Christian commitment even while listening to this music. To compound the issue, many of the Christian musicals now being sung by teenagers in the church have quasi-rock music backgrounds. While the argument continues, some pastors have taken decisive action.

During the winter of 1977, a syndicated story with an accompanying photo appeared in our local newspaper. The photo showed a pastor and some of the young people from his church standing before a large bonfire. The young people were throwing their rock records into the fire. The reason given for the burning of the records was that young people so often commit the sin of fornication to a background of rock music that these young people wanted to rid themselves of this influence. The rather clear implication of the story was that “the music made them do it.”

Although there are many different sub-styles of music suggested by the term rock music, the picture of guitar-playing young people dressed in gaudy outfits yelling into a microphone with the volume of the music so high that only noise is perceptible, has caused many Christians to believe that all rock music has the power to render the listener helpless to the temptations of evil. Is this true? Can rock music cause the listener to be so mesmerized that he or she cannot resist the sins of the flesh? A look at the findings of three widely separated bodies of knowledge might shed some light on this emotional issue. These involve: (1) the historical roots for the idea that music can affect character; (2) research results from the psychology of music; and (3) sociological studies done on the effects of rock music on the listener.

The idea that music has the power to affect character is not new. Plato, in The Republic, argued that music could (1) strengthen a person, (2) cause him to lose his mental balance, or (3) cause him to lose his normal will power so as to render him helpless and unconscious of his acts. Whether a person was affected positively or negatively, according to Plato, depended upon the type of music used. Certain scales (from which the music was composed) and instruments were thought to have specific ethical powers. The soft-voiced kithara, a stringed instrument, and the austere-sounding Dorian mode (scale) were thought to be ennobling. On the other hand, the raucous-sounding aulos, a reed-wind instrument, and the Phrygian mode were thought to have the power to incite people to violence and immorality.

Plato and the Greek philosophers were well aware of the music of the southern Asiatic peoples with their festivals known as bacchanals. The “belly-dancing” associated with the music appeared to the philosophers to be degrading and orgiastic. The “good” music of the Greek culture was more quiet and austere, and these philosophers felt that their music was heartening and virtuous. The Greek philosophers assumed that because the southern Asiatic people’s behavior at their festivals was associated with certain types of music (and instruments), the music must have made them do it.

The early church fathers were well versed in the philosophy of antiquity. The Greek emphasis on the separation of body and soul seemed harmonious with the Scriptures, and the church fathers adopted the Greek view of the influence of music on behavior. The music of the pagan cultures in which churches were established was sensual and directed toward sensual pleasure. It was this sensual appeal of the music that concerned the early church fathers. To be emotionally moved apart from the thought expressed in the text of the song was an offense against God for St. Augustine. Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:2 underlines the point. The emotional effects of music have always been a subject of controversy. Today, some evangelical churches exploit such effects freely (even using quasi-rock musicals), while other churches feel that to use music common to our pop culture is an offense toward God.

Happily we live in a society that has advanced in the knowledge of how music affects us physically and emotionally. Investigators concerned with the psychology of music have sought to document the physical and emotional effects we all experience in music from time to time. They have found that music does, at times, affect us physically and emotionally. Music can produce marked physical changes in heart and respiratory rate, blood pressure, neural response in the skin, dilation of the eyes, and muscle contraction and relaxation. This list suggests that music’s physical effects can be formidable. Such physical changes, however, can also occur at an exciting basketball game or in an erotic encounter.

I say the word can rather than does, because not everyone responds to the same music in the same way unless the music is associated with ceremonies that everyone understands and has experienced. Important variables determine physical response to a given piece of music: the degree to which music is important in our lives generally; the degree of familiarity with the specific piece of music and/or the musical style being heard; whether or not we like the music being heard; our mood at the time of the hearing; the abruptness of tempo changes in the music being heard (P. R. Farnsworth, The Social Psychology of Music, p. 213). From this, we can see that identical physical responses to a given piece of music are not assured in all people.

Much of the music used as background in stores and restaurants is designed to create in us a specific response. We have all felt the effects of such music on our moods. The success of music in changing our moods, however, tends to be related to certain nonmusical associations we have made with that music. These associations are both general and specific. Television serials and commercials, schools and colleges, even specific behavioral responses, become fixed in our minds with particular themes associated with them. For example, Rossini’s William Tell Overture conjures for many of us the old television character of The Lone Ranger, or the playing of Across the Field rouses in Ohio State University alumni feelings of loyalty or nostalgia. These responses are general because large groups of people have developed similar associations with the music and the nonmusical object.

Highly personal associations can emerge when we hear music which we encounter at a time of emotional stress or exhilaration. Psychologists call such an association “classical conditioning” or “signal learning.” These can be either unconditioned responses to an unconditioned signal (when the association is made without repetition of the event that produced the association), or conditioned responses developed through repeated experiences of the musical signal and the nonmusical event over a period of time.

Let me illustrate the unconditional response to an unconditioned signal. When I was fourteen years old I began playing the trombone. The sound of the trombone had completely taken my attention, and it became the most important thing in my life. I was also beginning to listen to orchestral music, and the sound of the trombones in orchestral recordings would give me an emotional “charge.” As a sophomore in high school (a year later), I experienced my first real “crush” on a girl. Within a few days of this emotional experience, I heard Wagner’s Tannhaüser Overture with its magnificent passage for the trombones. Somehow in all of this, the feelings I experienced for this girl became an unconditioned response to the signal of Wagner’s Tannhaüser Overture. I still get a vivid image of the girl, and experience the feelings I had for her whenever I hear this overture—even though the conditioning was set twenty-five years ago. When I tell this experience to my students and play the music, they look at me as though I had lost my mind. The trombone melody in the overture is a solemn, hymn-like tune that would more likely be associated with a high liturgical service than with feelings of infatuation for a girl. The point here is that this was a very personal experience, and the musical signals in such associations have meaning for no one except the one having been conditioned.

On the other hand, conditioned signal learning occurs through repeated association of the musical signal with the nonmusical event. One such conditioned signal learning experience is that of the “altar call” in our evangelical churches. Hymns such as “Just As I Am” are used only at the conclusion of the service. The conditioned responses to such hymns (signals) may range from one of feelings of release from guilt, to unexplained feelings of guilt among the members of the congregation. These hymns are used at this point in the service because they tend to produce a thoughtful, introspective mood in the congregation. It is thought that such a mood will cause the nonbeliever to examine himself and to respond positively to the “altar call.” While the “altar call” hymn does work on the nonbeliever at times, it also works as a signal to believers, who have not divorced their faith from their feelings, to produce invalid and seductive feelings of guilt. This conditioning is resistant to our efforts to be free of it, and Christians must be conscious of its effects upon them.

Undeniably, we do respond physically and emotionally to music. Specific responses to music, however, are dependent upon individual musical tastes, musical environments, and musical associations that may vary from one person to another. Those investigating physical and emotional response to music have even found it difficult to get consistent responses to the same piece of music even within the same individuals, since one’s moods and how one feels physically vary from time to time. So our emotional and physical response to music can be unpredictable.

Beyond this general interest in the effects of music on our emotions and feelings, there has been concern about rock music as a vehicle for social protest in recent years. The rock festivals of the 1960s, such as at Woodstock, with their revelations of drug use and illicit sex, caught the attention of sociologists, and studies were conducted into the effects of rock music on the listener.

In one study, by J. P. Robinson, R. Pilskalu, and Paul Hirsh, researchers asked their subjects to list their favorite kinds of music by record title and to indicate whether or not they used drugs (and what kind). The records listed were categorized as (1) protest rock; (2) soul, motown, or rhythm and blues; (3) all other pop hits; (4) show tunes; (5) country-western; and (6) all other music. A score of three was given to a respondent listing a protest rock record for all three favorites down to a score of zero for a respondent listing no protest rock records as his favorites. The study showed that those who used drugs tended also to listen to protest rock music. However, a majority of those listing protest rock as their favorites used no drugs at all. The authors summed up their findings by emphasizing that listening to protest rock music in no way constitutes a cause for drug use. The study (“Protest Rock and Drugs,” Journal of Communication, XXVI [August 1976], pp. 125–136) simply affirms that those who use drugs may also listen to protest rock music. The authors did admit, however, that not all third variables had been studied. One of these variables was the relationship of the lyrics of the music to drug use.

Another study by Robinson and Hirsh looked at the degree to which teen-agers from white middle and lower middle class families, and from black families, understood the lyrics of protest and psychedelic rock music. When these researchers asked teen-agers in the various social classes to “translate” the lyrics of the rock songs, two-thirds of the teens clearly didn’t understand the message of the songs, and the third who did were the white middle class teen-agers who listened to this music regularly. When asked whether they were more interested in the sound or in the meaning of the lyrics of the songs, 70 percent of the teens said they liked a record more for its beat than for its message (“It’s the Sound That Does It,” Psychology Today, III [October 1969], pp. 43–45).

The only clearly negative effect that has been found for those listening to rock music has been in inner-ear damage due to excessive volume associated with rock music. Not all people, however, will suffer the same damage when exposed to the same decibels of sound for the same period of time, because of differences in resistance to inner-ear damage.

Now we return to the story in the newspaper referred to at the beginning of this article. Was the burning of the rock records by the pastor and his young people an appropriate action toward reducing temptation to the sin of fornication? The answer would appear to depend upon who committed the sin of fornication. If the young people burning the records were guilty of this sin and the rock records had become a signal for conditioned responses because of the associations of the music with the act of fornication, then the burning of the records was an appropriate move as a means of reducing temptation. Jesus spoke to the problem of temptation when he said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members, than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matt. 5:29). I have talked with persons who were heavy drug users, and after conversion they had to quit listening to rock music, even the rock music in some churches, because of the associations it had for them. We must separate ourselves from musical signals, or any other kind of signal, that tends to produce conditioned responses in us that are not Christian, until we have been freed from the associations these signals bring to mind.

If the pastor, in the newspaper story, was burning the records in hopes of preventing the sin of fornication among his young people, our evidence here would suggest that the move was, at best, ineffective. In this case, the pastor was looking at the wrong cause of the sin. Jesus had something to say about what defiles a man when he encountered criticism about eating the proper food (a parallel to hearing the proper music, in that both involve the senses): “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile” (Matt. 15:19–20). We decide to do what we are going to do based either on our will to please God or our fleshly desires.

In the case of the studies in protest rock and in the psychology of music, how much one is “into” the music and looking for the message was a crucial factor in the degree to which the music affected him. The music could have its effect only if the person desired to let it affect him. The pastor, in this case, might better have used his time in helping his young people to examine their motives and in encouraging them to bring their motives under the authority of Jesus Christ.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

Imagine 50,000 persons gathering for a funeral in the cold winds of a Chicago January morning—and the New York Times not reporting it.

Well, that actually happened in 1969. The funeral was that of famous gospel singer Roberta Martin, and it symbolized the neglect with which mainstream America has treated the genius of black American church music.

Gospel is one of the most important forms of that genre of song—but it is only one. There are also spirituals, jubilees, black hymns, praises, “cross-over” music, and black anthems. All of them are distinct contributions of Afro-American culture to the American scene and to the entire world. But they are generally unnoticed by both the white church and secular musical arenas.

Exceptions exist, of course. The general public was forced to acknowledge the spiritual as perhaps the first uniquely American indigenous musical form, especially when Marian Anderson included them in her repertoire before 75,000 listeners on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (after she was denied concert access to famed Constitution Hall). More recently, the creative genius of Andrae Crouch has gained currency in white evangelical churches—although most who hear and sing his songs are unaware of the difference between his “cross-over” music and traditional black gospel music. (It is called “cross-over” precisely because it is in vogue among both blacks and whites. Much as disco music crosses the secular racial song-settings, Crouch’s kind of “pop-gospel” accomplishes the same thing.)

If the American mainstream has not recognized the appeal of black religious music (it is hardly ever called “sacred music” in black circles), some evangelists have, though; and they have added black singers to their traveling staffs especially in order to attract blacks to their crusades. Billy Graham was one of the first to do this, with the addition of the late Ethel Waters (and then Myrtle Hall and others). Oral Roberts, in much the same trend, sponsored an entire gospel ensemble known as Souls Afire. Even the late Kathryn Kuhlman employed Jimmie McDonald, now pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, as her soloist. (He too had earlier been with the Graham Team.) For more suspect motives, many of the Pentecostal free-lance healing evangelists have switched to almost all-black musical entourages, since classical Pentecostal leaders and their church members have shunned the sensationalism of A.A. Allen types.

Nevertheless, the subtle tentacles of racism have prevented wider acceptance of black musical gifts in the churches. Say the word “gospel” to the average white Christian, and he will think of the salvation message exclusively; or say “gospel music,” and he will think of the Oak Ridge Boys or the Blackwood Brothers quartet. But “gospel” in the black community always means music (the words “singing” or “music” are never appended, however), while “the gospel” means salvation.

Similar shifts in understanding occur in other ways. Spirituals, when utilized in white churches, often are viewed as mere “protest” music or folk songs—a backhanded compliment that always connotes inferiority. Even when they are sung as musical offerings, they occasionally engender discussion over the comfortability of using non-standard constructions or pronunciations; and a kind of stilted form results because black instrumentalists are not permitted to accompany, or white soloists are chosen to sing lead parts, while blacks (in integrated choirs) are kept in the stands. An even more obvious anomaly occurs when black singers in predominantly white gatherings choose (or are encouraged) to sing only standard white compositions.

Because these difficulties seem to persist even in integrated churches, it is to the black church one must go to experience black religious music in its total effect. (Indeed, it is the sterile, single mode of music in white churches which most effectively prevents their attracting larger numbers of black worshipers and members. There is a recognition in the black community that churches and taverns are alike in at least one respect: one can always tell the clientele they are seeking to perpetuate by the kind of songs that fill their air.)

In the black church, however, music reigns supreme in all its glory and diversity. There even the Catholic churches sing mass with gospel choirs replete with tambourines and hand-clapping; and Pentecostal church choirs ring out with anthems. Nobody in the former category considers such a “folk mass”; and no one in the latter thinks that Beethoven (himself rumored to have African ancestry) strains are too “high church or uppity.”

Music in the black neighborhood, the same as politics, receives uniform expression. While there are appreciative motions for varied kinds of white music and politics, musical tastes and political opinions do not vary according to income and educational differentials as much as they do in the dominant society. As James H. Cone puts it, “It is impossible to be black and encounter the spirit of black emotion [in the spirituals and other songs] and not be moved.”

In a very real sense, the whole worship ritual is musical in essence. Services in black congregations normally last longer than in white ones, because time must be given to sing testimonies, sing prayers, sing offerings, and even sing sermons—plus sing “songs.” As a carry-over of African tradition, the “Spirit will not descend without song”; and every peition, every cry, every joy, must be acted out in song and dance and percussion. Thus the prayers become musical chants, the intonations of the worshipers become rhythmical, and both testimonies and sermons begin slowly but build to amazing intensity in inflection, stress, and pitch. The minister who truly preaches (and the member who truly testifies) will eventually place his hand to his ear as if trying to hear that heavenly melody, and the pianist and organist will add to every pause with a refrain in the same key. (In fact, instrumentalists in black churches can tell you exactly in which key each familiar minister is known to pitch his sermon.) All of this, together with the famed call-and-response format, is African in origin. It is Africanism baptized in Christian symbolism.

Most directly African, of course, are the spirituals themselves. The spiritual existed for a long time in oral tradition before it ever was set to a written score. Often a narrative ballad, it reflected the historical experience of the slave and followed themes of justice and deliverance. Most of the spirituals have come down to us in varied forms with adapted lyrics and even sounds. Partly this is because they were continuations of African songs, and the African forms were never reduced to writing before they were transmuted into African-American variations. Partly also, this is due to the fact that there were many accidental and intentional errors of transmissions by white observers who attempted to record the slave songs. Eileen Southern, black professor of music at Harvard, says the spirituals “were transferred from one congregation to another by itinerant preachers, by the black watermen who worked on the boats that plied the Mississippi and Ohio and Missouri Rivers, and finally by the slaves when they were sold from one state to another.”

The first printed versions were not published until 1867, but missionaries were reported to have heard Africans singing melodies so closely resembling certain spirituals that they felt they had found them in their original form. One such song was “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” In Rhodesia, not only the melody, but also the thought expressed had parallels. Among one ethnic group, a chief near death would be placed in a canoe headed toward the great falls for his final journey to the “other world,” while the people bankside sang. Tradition has it that on one such occasion, as the chief’s canoe neared the edge, a mist from above descended and bore him aloft. Thus are traced both the content and melody of this great spiritual which we know in its Christianized form.

Early Afro-American slaves did not think of themselves as such, but as captives in a strange land. When forbidden to hold secret cult meetings because of their potential for fomenting rebellions, these men and women were forced (in the presence of white supervision) to phrase their hopes and aspirations in Christian code-language. The River Jordan thus really meant the ocean; heaven symbolized Africa or deliverance; Moses was (at different times) sung to mean Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and even Bishop Francis Asbury; the Old Ship of Zion was a ship bound for Africa’s homeland; and Weeping Mary was the distraught mother separated from her young who had been sold off to other plantations.

From these earliest beginnings, black church music, like the church itself, reflected the absence of division between sacred and secular. The social and political content of salvation history, for the black church, did not originate in the social gospel of religious liberalism, but was part and parcel of the black church’s song and word from its origin.

Not unlike the spirituals were the early black hymns. They too were first sung as part of an oral tradition, and only later set to writing. Unlike the spirituals, however, they were more Afro-American than African in origin and development. Some of them were tunes from the “field hollers” and other slave songs set to Christian words. Others were adaptations of hymns by Isaac Watts, or mixtures of Watts’s hymns and spirituals.

John Wesley’s journals mention a white Methodist minister, the Rev. John Davies, who described his ministry among the slaves and noted that they “take so much pleasure” in the Watts hymns and songbooks he shared. By 1801, the Rev. Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination (the first independent black church), had published a hymnal for black churches, called A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns Collected from Various Authors by Richard Allen, African Minister. While no tunes were included, only textual material, this hymn book reflected both the Watts style and innovations. Often, in these and later hymns, the white models were supplemented with lines from typical prayers or favorite scriptures, additional choruses, or numerous refrains injected throughout.

Musicologists have noted that Afro-Americans used shifted accents, rhythmic syncopation, polyphony, altered timbral qualities, and diverse vibrato effects to Africanize the white hymns.

While the use of black hymns in the churches dates from about 1750, it was not until 1848 that the first black congregation brought musical instruments into the sanctuary; and not until 1841 did any black church have a choir. Both of these additions, needless to say, caused much internal dissension in both Baptist and Methodist churches (called African Baptist Churches or African Methodists), particularly among the holiness claimants. There is a very important school of musicology which holds that many of the songs and hymns sung at the white frontier camp meetings were, in fact, borrowed from the blacks who participated in them.

Once musical instruments were accepted, it was not long until anthems were also created by blacks for use in the churches. Dr. Evelyn Davidson White of Howard University has compiled a list of more than 300 choral anthems commercially published by more than sixty such composers.

Another important kind of church music are the jubilees. Like the spirituals and black hymns, the jubilees date back to slavery time. In fact, some persons define them as “joyful, high-spirited spirituals.” They were almost always spontaneous creations in the beginning, arising from the masses who were not permitted to learn to read or write, and who had no musical training. Always shouting-songs, they were wholly original with complicated rhythms. In 1871, Fisk University formed its first group of Jubilee Singers who presented these traditional songs to a wider public through travels and concerts. Some of these jubilees are still sung in black churches today.

Of course, the most current songs in black churches now are gospels. The year 1933 is usually considered the beginning of this musical form. It was that year that Thomas Dorsey, a black blues musician, composed the song “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” after the death of his wife and child while he was “on the road.” But gospel itself developed out of two separate traditions—the quartet style found in black Baptist churches after the First World War, and the new style of religious music found in black Pentecostal (“sanctified”) church who had baptized jazz and blues with Christian lyrics.

Gospel is heavily antiphonal, has a pronounced beat, and much instrumentation and improvisation. It represents an amalgam of the spirituals, jubilees, field songs, jazz, reels, blues, and hymns. Characterized by gliding pitches, moans and wails, flattened and diminished chords and notes (especially third and fifth), riffs, breaks, rags, and blue notes, it has been termed “composed folk song” by Pearl Williams-Jones, prominent ethno-musicologist.

Actually, one might speak of different kinds of gospel, since the term now includes slow and worshipful “praises,” up-tempo “shout songs,” testimonial “choruses” and “jubilistics,” the “sermon-songs” of James Cleveland and Shirley Caesar, and the “cross-over” songs of Andrae Crouch and others. Dorsey (who is now seventy-nine and assistant pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago) claims that gospel was taken from the “sanctified” (Pentecostal) churches in an effort to revitalize Baptist and Methodist congregations. While it is true that the roots of gospel are primarily in the Pentecostal churches, it is also true that Baptist and Methodist churches scorned the new gospel music for many years. Except for the storefronts (which early adopted it), the larger churches have only lately come to accept gospel as a regular feature of Sunday morning services.

Gospel has had profound effects, not only upon black church music, but also on white music and on secular music. Not only “Precious Lord,” but also “Deeper, Deeper,” “Washed in the Blood” (both by C.P. Jones), “Jesus the Son of God” (by G.T. Haywood), “Peace in the Valley” (by Dorsey), and scores of other songs now used by white evangelicals, were all written (both words and music) by black composers. It has been estimated that nearly 75 percent of all black rock and soul singers got their start in black churches singing gospel. Even now, Al Green is the pastor of a Pentecostal church in Memphis; Billy Preston is also a minister; and Little Richard (like scores of other artists) has gone back and forth between gospel and rock so many times one finally loses count. Every one of the more than 120 black colleges and universities also has its own official gospel choir; and there is a National Black College Choir Festival. The influence of gospel has been so wide that it is difficult to draw the line between the sacred and the secular in these realms.

Duke Ellington, of course, is another who took the impulse of gospel to bring jazz concerts to liturgical churches. Gospel has always been a regular feature of mass meetings conducted by civil rights organizations of all kinds: it accompanied the singing of marchers with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and it is a regular feature of Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH meetings. Gospel was also uniquely the base of many of the docu-dramas and plays of Langston Hughes, as well as the more modern plays like “Your Arm’s Too Short to Box With God.” Even secular poet Nikki Giovanni chose a New York gospel choir for background music for both her recordings of poetry. Black dance troupes also perform to gospel.

But gospel remains preeminently the province of the churches. Denominations such as the Church of God in Christ, which still do not use hymn books of any kind in local churches, employ national music representatives such as the famed Mattie Moss Clark of Detroit to tour the country, training choirs in the newest black-composed songs. And James Cleveland’s Gospel Music Workshop draws more than 20,000 black youths and hundreds of choirs to a different city each year for much the same purpose. Cleveland is pastor of a Baptist church.

But it matters not whether it is gospel, jubilees, anthems, hymns, or spirituals. It is all best described as singing from the soul.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.