Enfants Terribles In Our Churches

I wish to suggest a new rite (sacrament, ordinance) of the church: the infant baptism of adults.

This is no sudden flash of cognition, no whim. As is fitting for such a fresh and radical concept, I have pondered the idea for several years. Nor is it a latter-day attempt to bring baptists and paedobaptists together. Nothing short of the Rapture, including Eutychean intervention, could accomplish this.

Here’s how it would work.

Herbert Elder is fifty-three years old, has been married for thirty years to Charlotte Elder. They have three children, one of whom is still at home.

Herb has decided that he wants to divorce Charlotte and marry Linda Younger (age thirty-seven, married ten years, two young children).

At this point he applies to his pastor for infant baptism. If his request is granted, the Sunday morning service is scheduled, and at the same time Herb is welcomed into the cradle roll department.

If Linda is also a member of the church, she follows a similar procedure, perhaps being baptized as an infant the same Sunday as Herb. In the case of paedobaptistic churches, infant infants may also be scheduled for baptism.

While I have chosen a lay example, the same pattern would be followed for baptizing ordained infants.

-You don’t like my light approach to a terrible contemporary problem? Then tell me about a church that takes a serious, biblical approach.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Against Killing Culture

I appreciated reading the interview with C. Peter Wagner and Ray Stedman, “Should the Church Be a Melting Pot?” (Aug. 18). Having served as a missionary among American Indians and from personal experience, I find myself agreeing almost completely with C. Peter Wagner. I have never felt that God expected anyone to worship him in an uncomfortable situation. The people I served among were most comfortable singing their Indian hymns and praying in their native tongue. In fact, they are more comfortable with an Indian pastor than a white missionary who is often paternalistic in his approach and knows little or nothing about the American Indian culture. I fully agree with Wagner that “culture is not sinful.” It has been my observation that white missionaries have tried to kill the culture in order to make American Indians (and others) act and worship like whites when they worship. I suspect that our attempts at trying to “homogenize” God’s children in worship are really in effect “judaizing” them.

DAVID FLICK

First Baptist Church

Elmore City, Okla.

I view some of Dr. Wagner’s statements with dismay.… We believing or Messianic Jews represent a minority in the Christian church and to adopt into our worship a methodology foreign to the majority is to isolate ourselves from the rest of the members of the body of Christ. How, if this is done, can we understand Paul’s reference in First Corinthians 10:32 to the three distinct categories of humanity? And if I as a believing Jew am made to feel different from the rest of the body of believers, I think that this should be regarded as sinful behavior. Also, Dr. Wagner, I believe, contradicts his previous statements when he says “that the entrance of the Gospel into any culture has to change part of that culture.” I do not suggest that a believing Jew forgets his heritage. By the same token, the majority of Jews today are traditionalists with little, if any, knowledge of practices of orthodox or even conservative Jewry. Philippians 3:13, 14 should be our new base from which we develop into new creatures in Christ. May I suggest that what is vital in today’s church, in many instances, is a return to Bible teaching which incorporates God’s plan for the Jew and makes believing and seeking non-believing Jews welcome.

FRIEDA G. ZUCKERMAN

Whittier, Calif.

Present At Prague

I read with interest your article “Peaceful Prague” (News, Aug. 18). I would like to make one small correction. You mentioned that at the last Assembly in 1971 “there were no Americans.” I was one of the few Americans who did attend. I did so unofficially in order that our point of view could be represented and to maintain fellowship with people with whom we disagreed but with whom we are still united in Christ.

HOWELL O. WILKINS

Asbury United Methodist Church Salisbury, Md.

A Vote Against Canned Worship

I appreciated very much Mr. Howell’s article “Let Worship Be Worship” (Minister’s Workshop, Aug. 18), and its practicality. And I appreciate your increasing emphasis as a magazine on material we can practically use. There is a point about leading worship that I have noticed as a pastor myself and an observer of many others leading worship … And that is, simply, the worship leader should be worshiping, too. I see many leaders up there almost commanding the people to get with it, ridiculing them, perhaps, for not singing with gusto or something else. A leader is a guy who does something first, and then others see him and follow. How many of us pastors really worship while we are leading worship? I see it as similar to the difference between canned and real laughter. We have canned praise, canned prayer, canned specials—even canned sermons. And that … lack of freshness is all too evident. Are we pastors coming to our services wanting and ready to worship, or are we there to fulfill our image and merit our wages? Whichever it is—it shows.

MILES FINCH

New Life Christian Center

Polson, Mont.

Reversed Decision

When my July 21 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY arrived, it was to be my last due to financial reasons. However, when I opened the magazine and started reading the outstanding articles pertaining to South Africa today, I was astoundingly made aware of the fact that I couldn’t afford to be without the C.T. magazine at any cost.… Thank you for making me aware and interested in the situations of the South African people. Being made aware, as a Christian, the situation demands a response. We have a responsibility to our Lord and to the truth of the Gospel message, to bear one another’s burdens.

PRISCILLA M. PELUSO

Loomis, Calif.

As a black Christian, I was impressed by the sharp and clear-cut analysis of the South African problem. In the light of your recent editorial change, one thing remains unchanged: the continued excellence of your magazine. Keep up the good work!

KEITH BOSEMAN

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

It is not easy to convey the many-faceted problems and joys of being a Christian in South Africa; as a Christian and third-generation South African, I would like to congratulate CHRISTIANITY TODAY on the good effort. However, it is ironical that writers familiar with the history and present conditions of the United States should be surprised when they see another “remarkable renewal movement” in a different part of the world. Have renewal movements in America been less remarkable? For me and numerous black and white South Africans, Jesus is our peace, and he has broken down the walls of fear and distrust between us.

HEATHER HORNING

Lancaster, Penn.

Merci Beaucoup

Thank you for your news article (“Evangelical Feminists: Ministry Is the Issue,” July 21) concerning the Evangelical Women’s Caucus. It is tragic that the EWC has adopted the name “evangelical.” In my opinion there is a huge chasm between this caucus and evangelical biblical Christianity. These people must realize that a woman becomes a woman not by joining some pseudo-Christian feminist group but by becoming what God wants her to be. Dr. Francis Schaeffer has said “… women’s insistence on equal rights, in a poor sense, has brought them to the position of having fewer and fewer men who are men. And then the cycle continues and the women are hungry and hurt.” If the women of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus wish to harangue us some more about women’s rights that is their privilege, but they should do it under a banner other than that of evangelical Christianity.

J. SCOTT SUSONG

Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church

Houston, Tex.

For Your Information

With much interest I followed John Warwick Montgomery’s critique of Helmut Thielicke in “Thielicke on Trial” (March 24) and Helmut Thielicke’s “Response” concerning their dispute over the Free University of Hamburg (June 23). Montgomery may be right calling the Free University of Hamburg the “first independent, evangelical university in Germany.” However, I would like to point out that for eight years, now, an independent, government-accredited, evangelical seminary has thrived in neighboring Switzerland: Freie Evangelisch-Theologische Akademie, Basel (Free School of Evangelical Theology—FETA).

DAVID E. POYSTI

Biebergemünd, West Germany

Uneven Calibre

I was surprised to find two back-to-back, ably written articles in your June 23 issue of such biblically uneven calibre. The article entitled “The Yoke of Fatherhood” by Thomas Howard was much appreciated, even though certain areas of compromise were not (for example, the lingering implication that homosexual union might not be totally condemned of God). The affirmation of our need to let Scripture judge us and thus the necessity of shouldering God-given responsibilities in the roles of husband-father and wife-mother was refreshing. However, the adjacent article, entitled “Parents and Prodigals” by Virginia Stem Owens was destructive in implication. It was not only unbiblical but also antibiblical in its pessimistic view of parent-child relationships.

ROBERT P. TEACHOUT

Taylor, Mich.

Wrong Treatment

Our concern for television programming is justified (Editorials, “Decent Speech on the Airwaves”, May 19). However, our course of action is following the wrong path. We are treating the symptom, not the disease, when we bring pressure on the advertisers or the programming executives. Simple logic dictates that conclusion.…

CHARLES G. BEEKLEY

Ashland, Ohio

Correction

Harold O. J. Brown’s book mentioned in the August 18 issue is entitled “Death Before Birth” and not “Life Before Birth.” We are sorry for the error.

Senior editor Edward E. Plowman leaves this month on a special assignment to Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and other points east. While reporting on the Billy Graham Crusades in those countries, he will also provide CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers with an update on the state of the church in Scandinavia and Poland. Have you ever prayed specifically for a news reporter or journalist? Pray for Ed that he may reflect back to us with insight and clarity a true picture of the work of God in those lands.

And while you are about it, pray also for Billy Graham and his team. After short stops in Oslo and Stockholm, he will conduct an intensive compaign with broad public exposure in six major cities in Poland—a precedent shattering breakthrough for the Gospel in eastern Europe.

In this issue Will Norton, Jr., interviews former Ku Klux Klan member, Thomas Tarrants. The testimony of Tarrants demonstrates once again the power of the Gospel to transform a life. As a red-necked Klansman consumed with hatred for all Jews and Blacks, Tarrants relentlessly pursued a path of violence and destruction to the bitter end. Then in the solitary despair of his jail cell, he met the Saviour and.… But you must read it for yourself. What do you think of his solution to the growing problem of violence? Share your response with other readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in a letter to the Editor.

The tremendous success of the “Holocaust” series on American television and the approach of the 1980 passion play at Oberammergau have again raised the spectre of Christian contributions to anti-Semitism (see August 18 issue, page 16). Remarkably, no one seems to remember that the major influences in the creation of modern anti-Semitism were the deistic Age of Reason (see Arthur Hertzberg’s French Enlightment and the Jews [1968]) and the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx (see E. Litvinoff, ed., Soviet Anti-Semitism: The Paris Trial [1974]). Rather, efforts are made, along the lines of William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, to pin twentieth-century anti-Semitism on such Christian notables as Martin Luther.

Shirer’s claim that Luther was a “savage anti-Semite” is based largely upon the Reformer’s tract, Von den Juden and ihren Lügen (1542; W.A., 53), written four years before his death. Indeed a violent pamphlet, reflecting the irritability that age and disease had brought upon Luther, its intent and message nonetheless have generally been misunderstood. From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich one would conclude that Luther passionately hated the Jewish race and believed that physical persecution was the proper means of dealing with it. However, as Roland Bainton correctly emphasizes, Luther’s position, unlike that of Nazi Germany, “was entirely religious and in no respect racial.”

Luther—and here his naiveté is certainly in evidence—could not understand why the Jews did not return to Christ after the errors of the papacy had been revealed and the Gospel purified; and, along with virtually all Christians of his time, Catholic as well as Protestant, he regarded all unbelievers as a positive social menace. Indeed, Luther “drew his material from medieval Catholic anti-Semite writings” (Gordon Rupp). But Luther did not resort to unthinking advocacy of persecution, as Shirer implies by his Luther quotations—taken, unhappily, out of context. Luther spoke not of depriving Jews of their wealth per se but of removing from them the wealth that they had unjustly obtained through usurious practice. And the confiscated monies were to be held in trust to be used for the maintenance of converted Jews—especially the “old and infirm”—according to their needs. Moreover, in order that the Jews might not continue to carry on their “sinful” financial practices, Luther proposed their return to Palestine, in line with the accepted principle of territorialism, or, failing that, their resumption of the vocation of agriculture (i.e., resumption of the more secure position they had enjoyed in the early medieval period).

Shirer does not quote the prefatory statement to Luther’s proposals, which conveys the tone of his treatise: “We must indeed with prayer and the fear of God before our eyes exercise a keen compassion towards them and seek to save some of them from the flames. Avenge ourselves we dare not. Vengeance a thousand times more than we can wish them is theirs already.” As Rupp says: “It all falls very far short of the Nazi anti-Semitism with its doctrine of Race, with its mass extermination, with its atrocities and with its inter-marriage laws.” The basis of these horrifying practices was not the teachings of Luther; Jarman (The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany) has shown that the Nazi anti-Semitism actually “rested on the mystical feeling for German blood and soil and that the Jew polluted the blood”—a theory for which the philosopher Dühring and the composer Wagner were especially responsible.

Secularism, not Christian faith, is the real source of modern anti-Semitism, and evangelical believers should not hesitate to point this out. Unhappily, Christians today are too easily intimidated by the charge of anti-Semitism, and the temptation is very strong to back down even to the point of blunting the gospel witness to the Jew in order to avoid criticism. Recently, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was severely condemned by Rabbi A. James Rudin, a national director for interreligious affairs of the American Jewish Committee, for using evangelistic materials prepared by Moishe Rosen, leader of Jews for Jesus. “By singling out Jews for intensive proselytizing,” declared Rudin, “the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has, in effect, branded Judaism as an inadequate religion. By undertaking this program, the Missouri Synod has sadly revived the medieval image of the Jews as a theologically deficient people.” The Executive Secretary of the Synod’s Board for Evangelism responded: “Through our meetings with Rabbi Rudin, we have come to see that this materia] is offensive.” But even if some of Moishe Rosen’s techniques could stand improvement and even if the Synod’s material was not as tactful as it might have been, the fact remains that Judaism is an “inadequate, incomplete, and theologically deficient” religion: like every other religion in the world lacking faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour, it desperately needs to be made complete through him (John 14:6).

Evangelicals preoccupied with biblical prophecy not infrequently lose sight of this fact. Israel looms so large in the scriptural plan of salvation that the unwary prophetic interpreter illogically sees only salvatory good in whatever the nation Israel does in today’s Mideast crisis. However, (1) contemporaneous prophetic interpretation is notoriously unreliable (I often gaze meditatively on my copy of J. Oswald Smith’s classic of the 1930s, Is Mussolini the Antichrist?), and (2) even if Israel’s activity in the Mideast today were apodictically tied to biblical prophecy, it would still be held to God’s eternal standards of justice, righteousness, and peace in its dealings with other nations. In April, by invitation of the Egyptian and Israeli governments, I was privileged to have personal meetings with President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin in conjunction with the Evangelical Fact-Finding Mission on the Mideast Crisis, and I was far more deeply impressed by Sadat’s concerns for a biblical standard of peace than by Begin’s monomaniacal conviction that it is Israel’s divine destiny to rule the eretz Israel (cf. “Begin: la Bible et le fusil,” Le Point, April 3, 1978, pp. 73–77).

Israel most definitely has a destiny and it deserves a national place in the sun no less than other nations. But the frightening thing about Zionism is that the nation Israel becomes a religion in its own right. Thus in Rabbi Ashlag’s mystical Entrance to the Zohar (ed. Philip S. Berg; Jerusalem, 1974), we read:

“When a Jew strengthens and values the aspect of his inner part—which is the aspect of Israel in him—more than his exterior part—which is the aspect of the nations of the world that is within him—that is to say when he expends the greater part of his effort and energy to develop and elevate the aspect of his inner part, that is within him for the benefit of his Soul (Nefesh), and only expends the minimal effort that is absolutely necessary for the survival of the aspect of the nations of the world that is within him—that is to say for his bodily needs—and thus comes to observe that which is written in the Mishnah (Avot, 1) ‘Make your Torah fixed and your work part-time,’ then through these actions of his, he will also be having an effect on the internal and external parts of the whole world so that the people of Israel will rise higher and higher in perfection, and the nations of the world—who are the exterior aspect of the world—will recognize and acknowledge the true worth of the people of Israel.”

To this the only answer is—and evangelical Christians have a holy responsibility to give it without fear or favor—that no nation possesses salvatory quality, that every people and each individual is judged by the very same divine standards of righteousness, and that the way of salvation differs in no way for Jew or Gentile: “The righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:22–24).

John Warwick Montgomery is professor at large, Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, California.

When a panel of four officers of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) last month released $85,000 to the guerrilla groups fighting against an interim settlement in Rhodesia, a storm broke over their heads. The most common allegation: The WCC is financing terrorism.

The money, which came from a special fund of the WCC’s Programme to Combat Racism (PCR), had been allocated more than a year ago to the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), a black coalition led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. Because of uncertainties, the WCC executive committee asked the officers to study the situation before releasing the funds.

The officers: Archbishop Edward Scott of Toronto (WCC Central Committee moderator), Jean Skuse of Sydney, Australia, and Catholicos Karekin II of Antelias, Lebanon (vice-moderators), and Philip Potter (general secretary).

In an explanatory statement, the WCC noted that “since March the [Rhodesian] regime has vastly increased the scale of its aggression and oppression against those who oppose the settlement, both internally and outside the country.” It dismissed the stepped up terrorist activities—attributed largely to the Patriotic Front—as an inevitable consequence of the government’s “aggression.”

The PCR grant was earmarked for humanitarian purposes only—food, health, social, educational, and agricultural programs. WCC people acknowledge that they have no sure means of checking how the money is used. But, said one WCC official, “We don’t believe the money will be used to buy guns. We have known the Patriotic Front for many years, and we believe they are responsible people.”

An unidentified spokesman for the Patriotic Front in Lusaka, Zambia, welcomed the PCR grant as recognition of “the legitimacy of the armed struggle and our need for material as well as moral assistance.”

Patriotic Front members have been accused of recent massacres of white missionaries, farmers, and black villagers (see July 21 issue, page 42). However, William Howard, a black American Baptist who works for the Reformed Church in America and serves as chairman of the PCR commission, said that WCC officials did not feel there was enough hard evidence to prove the accusations. (Indeed, even some arch foes of the Patriotic Front attribute many of the deaths to small roving bands of hoodlums not tied to any of the major political groups.)

Attacks on the PCR are hardly new. There have been plenty since it was begun eight years—and $2.6 million—ago. This time, though, some of the sharpest criticism is coming from people who have supported the council and the PCR. Part of the reason for the perplexity is that two black church leaders joined Prime Minister Ian Smith in forging an interim government. They are United Methodist bishop Abel Muzorewa and clergyman Ndabaningi Sithole, a minister of the United Church of Christ who received his theological training at Andover Newton seminary near Boston. Both are highly respected in their denominations.

The grant “pits black against black,” criticized Lois Miller, an executive of the world ministries division of the United Methodist Church. A former member of the WCC Central Committee, she gave the WCC officers a passing grade on intent, but commented, “I do think they made a mistake this time.” By choosing one side, she said, the WCC “is making a political statement,” instead of aiding needy people on humanitarian grounds. “It’s going to hurt them,” she predicted. “We’ve got people asking us to withdraw from the WCC.”

United Methodist bishop Ralph T. Alton of Indiana, who sits on the WCC’s 125-member Central Committee, echoed her remarks. He disclosed that he had fired off a note to Philip Potter questioning the manner in which the decision was made. The grant, he said, was “not according to the policies established in the WCC in situations of political conflict where church leadership was involved on both sides.”

Other leaders were quoted in United Methodist publications as endorsing the WCC action, and there were indications last month that a major confrontation on the issue was shaping up in that denomination (see following story).

Some light was shed on the background of the grant by Annette Hutchins-Felder, who was quoted in a United Methodist news release. Ms. Hutchins-Felder, a staff member of the embattled Women’s Division of the United Methodist Church, serves on the PCR commission, which recommended the grant to the WCC’s officers. She said that the commission had two options at its May meeting: the United African National Council (the interim government) or the Patriotic Front.

“After the commission heard Philip Potter’s analysis of the situation based on a fact-finding visit … it was felt the UANC was no longer involved in the liberation movement,” she explained. “It was part of the government, while other groups were still seeking majority rule. To give money to a government was not in keeping with what PCR stood for.” The commission, she said, “decided the Patriotic Front was still trying to get the best settlement for all the people.”

Leaders of the United Church of Christ, a denomination in the ecumenical forefront, called for “a review” of the grant. “It is not obvious,” they said in a carefully worded statement, that the grant “really serves very well the democratic goals” of the PCR. The paper also criticized the WCC for failing to consult “the church constituency within Zimbabwe or elsewhere in the World Council of Churches family.” A staff member of the New York office of the WCC acknowledged that complaints have been piling up there from denominations and individuals alike.

One of the most stunning reactions came with the announcement of the Salvation Army that it was “suspending” its membership in the WCC “pending further inquiries.” The Army said that it has never contributed funds to the PCR and that it has always opposed violence. (Two British women who taught at a Salvation Army girls’ school in Rhodesia were shot to death by guerrillas in June.) Many WCC executives, including Potter, were away on vacation at the time of the announcement and were unavailable for immediate comment. A news release by Potter’s top aide commended the Army “for the care in which it announced its decision.” It praised the London-based group’s past involvement in the WCC, saying it has “served ecumenism well.”

Fireworks erupted toward the end of the world Anglican Communion’s Lambeth Conference at Canterbury (see story, page 50). Bishop Patrick Rodger of Manchester, England, a former staff member of the WCC, moved that Anglican churches “reaffirm their support and strengthen their understanding” of the WCC. The 440 bishops approved the motion with a show of hands, but not before some angry speeches were made against the WCC grant.

Bishop Gray Temple of South Carolina asked how Anglicans can “come down on one side of a very explosive issue,” and he said that “it will be very difficult for us to explain this to our people.” John Burrough, British bishop of a Rhodesian diocese, said that the WCC grant should go not to the Patriotic Front but to help black children abducted by the front’s guerrillas.

Bishop Addison Hosea of Lexington, Kentucky, told the conference that the grant “typifies an activity that many of our people regret, and they won’t like hearing that $85,000 is very little money.” He was referring to a remark by Episcopalian Cynthia Wedel of Alexandria, Virginia, one of six WCC presidents and a consultant at Lambeth. She said that the WCC fund “is a tiny side program of one unit of the WCC and is supported entirely by special gifts given for the program, and not from the grants of Anglican churches for the entire work of the WCC.”

In London, Christian Aid, the powerful and wealthy relief agency of the British Council of Churches, disassociated itself from the WCC’s action. Although the agency has never provided funds to the PCR, it has supported many other WCC programs. Director Kenneth Slack, worried that “some of our supporters may be confused,” stated that the WCC grant “gives direct church support to the Patriotic Front at a time when its individual acts of violence have deeply distressed many who are eager to see justice established in Rhodesia.” He pledged continued aid to “the victims of the struggle” and “in the development work that will be needed in a free Zimbabwe.”

A WCC statement defending the grant contended that Rhodesia’s internal settlement of the majority-rule issue “leaves the illegal white minority regime still in effective control and gives it a veto over real change for the next decade.” (The settlement contains provisions for democratic elections and a majority government by year’s end, though with special concessions to whites, including temporary control of security forces and certain public services.)

In West Germany, the Protestant Working Group of the Christian Democratic Party charged that the grant “shows in a frightening way the incredible, irresponsible and pharisaic behavior of the [WCC] toward accusations of violations of human rights in southern Africa.”

The Evangelical Church in Germany (West Germany’s state Lutheran church) criticized such a move even before the grant was announced. “We do not feel able to support the [anti-racism program], for we believe that the word of the Bible forbids the church to support the use of violence either directly or indirectly,” said church leaders in a statement released earlier in the summer. At the same time, they cautioned German Lutherans against regarding liberation movements in southern Africa the same as terrorist groups in Germany.

Shortly before the latest grant was announced, forty members of Christian groups in Britain, West Germany, the United States, South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand met in London and formed the International Christian Network (ICN).

German Lutheran Peter Beyerhaus, a missions educator at Tubingen and stern critic of ecumenism, was elected ICN chairman.

Through mobilization and coordination of church members, the group hopes to stop “the alarming erosion of biblical standards of doctrine, morals, and social order in the churches throughout the world.” One of its targets: the PCR. The group called upon Philip Potter to take steps to abandon the program or to resign as WCC general secretary. “Failing such action,” the group warned, it would call upon member churches of the WCC to withdraw from the world body.

Normally, the formation of such a dissident group as ICN would have received little attention, but in the present climate it may loom as a thunderhead in a not too distant gathering storm whose fury the WCC must yet endure.

Methodist Civil War

Another front recently opened in the Rhodesian conflict—not in a faraway forested border region, but within the United Methodist Church (UMC) in the United States. Methodist bishop Abel T. Muzorewa of Rhodesia and the Women’s Division of the UMC fought it out last month behind the scenes and in public print.

During a visit to America to seek an end to U.S. sanctions against his country, the bishop lambasted the UMC unit’s criticism of Rhodesia’s “internal” solution toward achieving majority rule. His remarks were addressed to U.S. Methodists in a special message published in regional editions of the United Methodist Reporter.

Muzorewa, 53, is the leader of the United African National Council, one of the major black parties that agreed to the internal settlement, and he is one of the four members on the Executive Council of the interim government. The other three members are United Church of Christ minister Ndabaningi Sithole, tribal chief Jeremiah Chirau (both are black moderates), and Prime Minister Ian Smith. Reputedly representing 90 per cent of the country’s 6.5 million blacks and 250,000 whites, they are to hold power until elections are held, presumably in December, when Rhodesia is to become known officially as Zimbabwe.

Four years ago the bishop was forced into exile as a result of his struggle for majority rule. At one point he endorsed violence as a means to get it. Last fall he helped to negotiate a settlement designed to bring about a peaceful transfer of power. “It is the fulfillment of what I’ve been fighting Ian Smith for all these years,” he declared in his special message. “Who would want the killing to continue?”

The UMC women’s unit did not see it his way. In a resolution last April, the women described the settlement as “peace without justice,” and they warned that it might instead lead to warfare among the blacks themselves. The resolution stated that a “viable solution must include all parties”—an implied objection to the absence of parties led by guerrilla leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe.

Muzorewa replied that the guerrilla leaders had chosen “to exclude themselves” and earlier had acted to “frustrate any efforts toward democracy, peace, and order.” He said that the women’s group had been misled by an “ill-informed and fanatical [female] supporter” of Nkomo and the Patriotic Front coalition with Mugabe. He did not name her.

In a response to the bishop’s charges, however, president Mai H. Gray of the Women’s Division said that Muzorewa was referring to Mia Adjali, the executive secretary of the divisions office at the United Nations. Ms. Adjali had charged that the bishop had his own political interests at heart when he entered into the settlement. President Gray defended Ms. Adjali’s integrity and the division’s decision-making process that led to the resolution. She also implied that the unit would not reconsider the measure, as the bishop had requested in his published remarks. Ms. Gray also reaffirmed her group’s support for black majority rule, and she expressed hope for a peaceful transition.

During his trip to America, Muzorewa visited Washington at the invitation of Republican senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, whose recent move to lift the sanctions against Rhodesia was rejected in the Senate by only six votes. Helms has often been associated with conservative churchmen and causes. He is a Southern Baptist.

More trouble awaited Muzorewa upon his return home. Some members of his political party complained that the bishop had lost touch with the people. They called for a conference to elect new party leadership, but their move was overwhelmingly defeated at a meeting of party representatives. Six persons were expelled from the party, including three clergymen (a United Methodist, a Presbyterian who served as the party’s secretary for natural resources, and an Anglican who formerly served as the party treasurer).

For a time it appeared that Muzorewa and the three other top people in the interim government—including Smith—would show up at a missions conference at the fundamentalist Church of Christian Liberty in the Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights. The church’s pastor, Paul D. Lindstrom, had invited the Rhodesians to speak on the future of Christian missions in their country. Lindstrom told reporters that the invitation was accepted by telephone, and he asked the U.S. State Department to help with preparations, causing embarrassment and some hurried shuffling in government circles. There were indications that Smith might be refused entry under conditions of the U.S. boycott against Rhodesia. Next, Lindstrom announced quietly that the visit—set for July 29—had been postponed because of schedule conflict.

Lindstrom, who once threatened to lead an army of mercenaries to free American soldiers held captive in Viet Nam, said that the Rhodesians had granted permission to his church to reopen its Emmanuel Mission in their country. It had been closed because of terrorist activities. The pastor told reporters that Viet Nam veterans would be dispatched to the mission to protect the missionaries and medical teams.

Messages To Methodists

Evangelicals are becoming more visible—and vocal—in the United Methodist Church. Major issues that have surfaced recently in the UMC are part of the reason. UMC publications last month paid major attention to meetings and pronouncements of the unofficial evangelical caucus in the denomination known as Good News. There were these developments:

• the Good News board formally protested the reappointment of an avowed homosexual pastor to his New York parish, and it requested the UMC’s bishops to petition the denomination’s Judicial Council for a declaratory decision on whether practicing homosexuals can serve as pastors.

• the Evangelical Missions Council, one of twelve Good News task forces, called for the resignation of the Women’s Division staff of the UMC global ministries unit for opposing Rhodesia’s interim government, one of whose leaders is UMC bishop Abel Muzorewa (see preceding story).

• the board lashed out at the treatment of evangelicals and evangelical concerns in UMC seminaries.

• the caucus sponsored two convocations that attracted 1,100 persons to help lay groundwork for a greater evangelical presence and influence at the UMC’s 1980 General Conference. (Three issues were flagged: the ordination of admitted homosexuals, the church’s financial system, and the need for church extension.)

At the center of the homosexual ordination issue is minister Paul Abels of Washington Square United Methodist Church in New York City. Abels, a Drew seminary graduate, has been at Washington Square since 1973. He was quoted a year ago in newspapers in connection with a story about a “covenant” service he performs as a sort of marriage rite for homosexual couples, and he also discussed his own homosexuality.

Bishop W. Ralph Ward Jr., of the UMC’s New York area, and his cabinet recommended against Abels’s reappointment as pastor (UMC pastors serve on a yearly basis), but the majority of the ministerial members of the area UMC conference rejected the recommendation. (Fewer than half of the conference’s 700 ministerial members were present for the voting, according to some pastors who attended the closed session.) Additionally, Abels’s parishioners asked that he be permitted to remain rather than be put on leave of absence, as Ward had proposed. The conference also turned down a recommendation that the question of appointability be referred to the Judicial Council, the UMC’s supreme court. Ward then acceded to the majority opinion.

The Good News board added its voice to the ensuing outcry throughout the denomination. In a letter to Ward, it expressed “profound astonishment and regret” at the action and urged that it be rescinded. “The spirit and letter of our Book of Discipline [church law] are presently being violated,” declared the board, and it called for “an immediate end … to this moral scandal.”

Ward, however, says that the UMC constitution contains no absolute dictum about homosexuality and the ministry. The issue, he says, rests with the UMC’s Social Principles code, and he says that he is “not sure whether the Social Principles are law.” The code, as adopted by the UMC in 1972 and reaffirmed unchanged in 1976, states: “… we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” Under the circumstances, explains Ward, he had no other choice than to go along with the majority.

(The Texas-based United Methodist Reporter took a tougher stand than the Good News group. The newspaper criticized the reappointment and suggested that bringing Abels to trial is “the only responsible course of action left open to Bishop Ward and his cabinet if they are to uphold the church’s biblical, theological, and social principles.” Among the charges that might be brought, offered the newspaper in an editorial quoting Methodist law, are “immorality, crime, or other imprudent and un-Christian conduct,” “disobedience to the order and discipline” of the church, “disseminating doctrines contrary to the established standards of doctrine of the church,” and “unministerial conduct or maladministration in office.”)

Ward has appointed a task force to study the issue of appointability and to report to the cabinet. He declined to comment on the possibility of lodging charges against Abels.

The New York case followed on the heels of a decision by the UMC’s Garrett-Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, to dismiss two homosexual students. The decision generated widespread protest, both off and on campus, but a statement circulated among the alumni of the school defends the dismissal as being in accord with the school’s responsibility to prepare students for ordination.

On another stormy issue, General Secretary Tracey K. Jones, Jr., of the UMC Board of Global Ministries labeled the call by the Good News Evangelical Missions Council (EMC) for the resignation of the UMC Women’s Division staff “irresponsible, incomprehensible, and uninformed.” He affirmed that the staff’s “commitment to Christ … is beyond question.”

The EMC action is the first time in its twelve-year history that Good News has called for the resignation of UMC staff personnel, according to a Good News spokesman. The resolution noted that Bishop Muzorewa had “publicly stated the Marxist stance of at least one” staff person. “The Marxist views of staff persons in the Women’s division have long been a topic of conversation” in UMC circles, said the EMC.

The EMC also charged that “the official 1979 mission study materials on mainland China [published by the National Council of Churches] reveal a blatant bias, imbalance, and carefully slanted journalism that literally is spiritual treason because it calls 100 years of sacrificial missionary effort on the part of the church and missionaries a disastrous mistake that Maoism is correcting.” The group called for the creation of mission-study materials by a committee of evangelicals and for their availability throughout the ten-million-member denomination.

The eight-member EMC is chaired by Paul Morrell, pastor of the large Tyler Street Methodist Church in Dallas. “We are United Methodists, too,” he says. “Our concerns and perspectives are real and valid. Our willingness to be involved is certain … [UMC] boards and agencies must represent all of us and not the views of the select or the few.”

Voicing concern in still another area, the Good News board said an intensive eight-month study showed that UMC seminaries are casting evangelicals as “narrow, bigoted, fundamentalist, and unscholarly.” Evangelical students in the schools, the board alleged, often encounter “antagonism, hostility, and ridicule.” The seminaries are hostile to evangelical theology, the board said, and they don’t deal with it seriously. More faculty ought to be hired from the orthodox tradition, the board recommended.

The Good News group, based in Wilmore, Kentucky, has no formal membership, but its publication Good News has a circulation of 15,000, and there are 35,000 on the mailing list of the organization. Good News editor Charles Keysor serves as executive secretary of the group, and faculty member Paul A. Mickey of Duke University is chairman.

Record Offerings

Armored trucks may one day replace the traditional offering plate if the string of record Sunday offerings continues.

Television pastor Robert H. Schuller of the 9,000-member Garden Grove Community Church in Anaheim, California, reported a record single-Sunday collection of $1,251,356 to help build his church’s Crystal Cathedral (see July 21 issue, page 44). After checks in the next day’s mail from nonattenders were counted, the total reached $1,421,000.

One week later, on June 25, the 1,700-member independent Overlake Christian Church in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland received $1.65 million in cash and pledges toward a $1.8 million building project. The donations included seven diamond rings, several motor vehicles, and some newly borrowed money, according to pastor Bob Moore.

Religion writer John Dart of the Los Angeles Times discovered that the record for single Sunday offerings had been broken four times in the past fourteen months. The previous high-income marks were reported by three Church of Christ congregations in Texas: Broadway church in Lubbock ($886,900), Bammel Road church in Houston ($1.1 million), and Westbury church in Houston ($1.2 million).

“Remarkably,” noted Dart, “Garden Grove’s big-giving day did not lead to a drop in contributions on following Sundays.” A church spokesman told him that the average Sunday offering level of $60,000 was holding firm.

The Mennonites Come to Town

Mennonites and some of their ecclesiastical cousins from around the world come together every five years for fellowship and inspiration at the Mennonite World Conference (MWC). About 9,000 of them (1,000 or so from outside North America) came this year to Wichita, Kansas. It was the first such assembly in the United States in twenty years and the tenth in the WMC’s fifty-three-year history. (The Mennonite community, which includes Amish, Hutterites, and Brethren in Christ, as well as groups bearing the Mennonite name, has a membership of 613,000 baptized persons in forty nations, according to WMC sources.)

The delegated eighty-five-member General Council, which oversees the MWC and looks after Mennonite interests between assemblies, elected Charles Cristano of Indonesia as the new president. He succeeds Million Belete, an Ethiopian engaged in Bible society work in Nairobi, Kenya. Belete, who emphasized the familiar peace and anti-militarism themes of Mennonites in a talk, was the first African to hold the MWC presidency.

For the first time, a delegation attended from the Soviet Union, thanks partly to an invitation delivered personally by Belete. The six Mennonites and Baptists were led by Michael J. Zhidkov, pastor of the Moscow Baptist Church. Zhidkov also is vice-president of the All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUCECB), the umbrella organization to which a number of the 55,000 Mennonites and their churches in the Soviet Union belong.

Zhidkov indicated that permission to make the visit was in line with a growing spirit of détente in recent years and with the Helsinki Treaty, which calls for “increased human contacts” between the East and West. He declined to comment on the recent sentencing of Soviet dissidents. The delegation had come to promote inter-church relations, it was explained. Zhidkov did insist that Christians as private citizens are free to criticize the government. However, he said, as ministers “we do not do so from the pulpit.” The church, he asserted, intercedes for the rights of its members, especially in the practice of their faith.

The visit of the Soviets attracted a demonstration outside the meeting by separatist preacher Carl McIntire and some of his followers; they charged that Zhidkov is an agent of the Soviet secret police.

In another demonstration, a group of Mennonites peeled off from the conference program and conducted a prayer vigil at the regional headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service to protest the collection of taxes for military spending.

The Mennonite community has its roots in the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation. Along with baptism of believers only, its distinctives include pacifism, an emphasis on separation from the world, and involvement in social services.

East Germany: Religious Détente?

Calm and storm, struggle and rapprochement, hope and despair—all have been counterthemes in church-and-state relations in the (East) German Democratic Republic during the past thirty years. Although a recent softening in attitude on the part of the political leadership of the GDR has fed hopes that a new era in church-and-state accord is just around the corner, the status of practicing Christians continues to be precarious and uncertain. That serious tensions still exist can be seen in such incidents as the self-immolation of Pastor Oskar Brüsewitz in Zeitz in protest against the oppression of Christian young people (see September 10, 1976, issue, page 81 and November 5, 1976, issue, page 80) and the exiling of controversial folk singer Wolf Biermann not long after he had held a concert in a Prenzlau church.

Government and church leaders met in 1969 to formalize the organizational division of East German Protestantism from its Western counterpart, but since then the only official contacts have taken place through the relatively low-level office of the State Secretary for Ecclesiastical Questions. This is headed by Hans Seigewasser, an old-time Communist who during the Nazi years had come to know and respect the pastors who were prisoners with him in the same concentration camp.

After repeated requests from the clerical side, party chief Erich Honecker agreed to meet last March with the five-member executive commmittee of the Evangelical Church Federation (led by the GDR’s senior Protestant bishop, Albrecht Schoenherr) and discuss future policies toward the church. Honecker’s motives were transparently political, some observers insist. For one thing, they say, he wanted to prevent the church from becoming a focal point for opponents to the new socialist order. Further, they add, he wanted to continue using the church as a device for upgrading the international reputation of the GDR. West German theologian Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg commented in a recent interview: ’‘The image of the regime in the area of human rights is tarnished, and this is an effort to put on a better face for world opinion.”

Although Honecker did not promise to alleviate restrictions on travel to the West or to curb discrimination against Christians in higher education and professional opportunities, he granted a bundle of concessions that took most observers by surprise. Both Protestant and Catholic churches would be granted radio and television time on special occasions, government assistance in funding clergy pensions, permission to carry out pastoral work and literature distribution in prison and to hold services in nursing and old people’s homes, financial help for the maintenance of church cemeteries, compensation for church-owned lands included in collective farms, and limited import of Western theological publications.

They also would be allowed to build church edifices in new communities like Eisenhüttenstadt where Protestant services are now being held in a house trailer, and public funds would be used to repair historic churches and buildings identified with the Reformation in preparation for the 1983 quincentennial of Martin Luther’s birth.

The immediate impact of the “thaw” was striking. Schoenherr’s Good Friday service in East Berlin and a Dresden service on Whitsunday were televised. For a change, the authorities did not try to hinder attendance at the Lutherans’ spring church assemblies in Leipzig, Erfurt, and Stralsund (the special trains and buses were mysteriously all on time), and in a sharp break with past practice some meetings were held outside the confines of churches. In Leipzig two halls of the fairgrounds were rented to help accommodate the 52,000 people who gathered there, and in Erfurt an open air rally in the cathedral square attracted 20,000. The Leipzig “Kirchentag” assembly was hailed by many leaders as the most important meeting organized by a church in the GDR for almost twenty-five years.

William Thomas, a black American evangelist, was allowed to conduct a week of services in a Baptist chapel in East Berlin. And reconstruction of the Berlin Protestant cathedral, a prominent downtown ruin in the GDR capital, has been proceeding with alacrity.

However, all is not so rosy as it appears. There has been no perceptible letup in unofficial discrimination against Christians. For example, a high school senior in a medium-sized industrial town was denied admittance to university studies, according to his parents. In an interview, they said that he had straight A grades but had refused to state categorically to the school authorities that he was “a convinced Marxist-Leninist.”

A graduating university student who specializes in Western languages confided in another interview that he had been denied employment as a translator, the profession for which he had trained, because his dossier revealed that he was a believer. Instead, he was assigned to the lesser post of teacher in a trade school.

Even more serious is the determination of the state to implement a program of military instruction (including the use of weapons) in the high school curriculum for all children and both sexes. Church spokesmen protested vigorously that this legislation would lead to the militarization of the state. Their arguments were brushed aside, though, and the new courses are to be introduced this fall.

As a result, the future for East German believers is uncertain. Privately, most churchmen seem skeptical about the Honecker detente. “We are doubtful; we want to know what is behind it,” said a theology professor. They want to see whether it is a temporary ploy to neutralize potential opposition within the ecclesiastical ranks or a genuine effort to have the church occupy its legitimate place in GDR society.

The possibility of an ugly confrontation looms over the military instruction question. Church leaders face a perplexing dilemma. If they continue to oppose it, the church will be portrayed as a “class enemy,” the implacable foe of the worker’s state and the socialist order. If they give in, their children will be exposed to militaristic indoctrination, while at the same time it will be plain to all that the church can be bullied. Thus the basic theme of church-state tension in the GDR remains unchanged and the prospects of the church clouded.

RICHARD V. PIERARD and ROBERT D. LINDER

Evangelicals Can Wait

Evangelicals may be keenly interested in heaven, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will flock to a movie with a heavenly title and an after-life theme.

That’s what executives of Paramount Pictures found out last month when a special promotion of the popular motion picture Heaven Can Wait fizzled in Wheaton, Illinois. The Chicago suburb of 40,000 is often billed as the “Evangelical Vatican,” because of the large number of conservative Protestant organizations headquartered there. (A researcher claims he has identified more than 350 in the Wheaton vicinity.)

Paramount mailed 100 free movie tickets to clergymen in town and to leaders of thirty-two Wheaton-based organizations, including religious publishing houses, mission agencies, and national church groups. Only 30 of the select 100, however, showed up at the special showing in a Wheaton movie house, and many of them had seen the film before, according to a Chicago Tribune report.

Accompanying each free ticket was a letter of invitation that included a reprint of a glowing review of the film from a National Council of Churches publication. (The movie is about a professional football player who is snatched too soon into the hereafter by an inept guardian angel during a highway accident, only to find that he is not due to arrive in heaven until fifty years later.)

It all began when a Paramount marketing executive read a newspaper article about the concentration of evangelicals in Wheaton, explained publicity man Sherman Wolf. The executive, said Wolf, reasoned that “if we could get these people to see the film, they would realize that all movies aren’t bad. And they’d tell their friends about it.” If Paramount is to get a share of the evangelical audience, he concluded, Wheaton would be a good place to start.

Seemingly undeterred by the poor turnout, Wolf said he planned to phone all the no shows and perhaps schedule another screening later on. Paramount is trying to tap the nonmoviegoer market, he commented, something that “may take time.”

No Secret

It is no secret that unchurched young adults are much more likely than older churchgoers to have permissive attitudes toward extramarital sex. Gallup Poll findings released last month suggest that age and faith are indeed important factors in how people feel about the topic. Only 52 per cent of persons between 18 and 29, for example, said that extramarital sex is “always wrong,” while 61 per cent of adults between 34 and 49 and 77 per cent of those over 50 registered a similar belief, according to the survey. Among the unchurched, 53 per cent said they feel that way, but 74 per cent of the churched went on record as being always opposed to extramarital sex. Protestants (71 per cent) were somewhat more likely to hold such a view than Catholics (64 per cent).

Scientology in Court

Eleven high-ranking members of the Church of Scientology, including the wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard, were charged with a number of serious crimes in a forty-two-page indictment handed up by a federal grand jury last month. The indictments were expected ever since FBI agents, acting on information obtained from a former Scientology official, raided Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington last year and seized thousands of allegedly incriminating documents (see August 12, 1977, issue, page 32, and May 19, 1978, issue, page 60).

The indictment charges that the Scientologists conspired to plant spies in government agencies, break into government offices, steal official documents, and bug government meetings. A number of theft and burglary counts are included in the indictment. (Several members of the church were caught removing documents from government offices.)

Much of the evidence outlined in the indictment seems to be based on the church’s own internal memos and other documents. The conspiracy against the government began in 1973, according to the indictment.

Scientology spokesmen implied that whatever the church did to obtain information about itself in government files was done in self-defense. The indictment, said a church news release, “places the Justice Department in a vulnerable position, for the very documents in question will support the church’s disclosure of a twenty-eight-year campaign by intelligence agency operatives working throughout the world to create an international suppression of the religion of Scientology.”

“This indictment represents grand jury findings of criminal conduct; nowhere does it mention religion,” commented prosecutor Raymond Banoun.

In a rare public appearance, Mary Sue Hubbard surrendered in court in Washington with eight other Scientologists. They were released on their own recognizance. Two persons based in England—where the Hubbards live—were expected to surrender later. Those indicted either directed or worked for the church’s Guardian offices. These offices apparently were responsible for defending the church and for attacking its real and potential enemies.

Those arrested include the church’s highest U.S. official, Henning Heldt (listed as Deputy U.S. Guardian), and his chief deputy, Duke Snider.

Religion in Transit

The strike that halted publication of three New York City daily newspapers was a boon for evangelist Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. News-hungry New Yorkers snatched up 300,000 copies a day of Moon’s News World, according to a Moon spokesman. Usual daily circulation: 50,000.

Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, the school that was decimated by the large-scale faculty and student walkout in 1974 during the doctrinal conflict in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, is well on the road to full recovery. The student population has been replenished, and the school has full accreditation from both the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The ATS in 1976 lifted its second of two probations that had been imposed because of the controversy. A joint team from the two accrediting associations last month gave the school a clean bill of health.

The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union has added a priest, a nun, and a Disciples of Christ minister to its staff. The union wants to attract more support from church groups in its long boycott of J.P. Stevens Company products. Its aim is to unionize the company’s workers, something it has failed to do for fifteen years. Most of the firm’s eighty-five plants are in the South.

Corbin L. Cherry, a United Methodist, has been appointed director of the Chaplain Service for the U.S. Veterans Administration. He will oversee the work of 984 chaplains in 172 VA hospitals. He lost a foot in the Viet Nam conflict when he stepped on a mine.

Correction

A “Southern Baptist” gift of $5,000 to support the Church World Service wheat shipment to Viet Nam (as reported in the March 24 issue, page 53) was never received, according to CWS executive director Paul F. McCleary. A spokesman for the National Council of Churches, of which CWS is an agency, had furnished the list of donors originally. However, when Southern Baptist readers questioned the report, McCleary said there had been a “tentative pledge” but that it had been withdrawn. He neither identified the person responsible for the pledge nor said why it was withdrawn.

More than 16,000 soldiers of South Korea’s elite Sixth Corps listened to gospel preaching in an evangelistic program planned by the army’s chaplain corps and Baptist agencies. As a result, say missionaries, more than 2,200 men signed decision cards, and another 570 soldiers—including two battalion commanders—were baptized. There have been mass baptisms of Korean troops before, but under Presbyterian auspices. (The majority of the country’s Protestants are Presbyterians.)

Miss Dr. R. Etchells was appointed to head St. John’s College in Durham, a school where Anglican men are prepared for ordination. She is the first woman to hold such a position.

Certain groups that have split from the Dutch Reformed Church in Holland reject any kind of medical vaccination, and about 100 adherents—most of them children—were stricken by polio this past summer. Members regard disease as a display of God’s wrath. They cite a passage from the fifth chapter of Luke: “Those who are well need no physician.” Happily, the polio virus afflicting them is apparently mild and not a killer.

About 1,000 men, women, and children marched twenty miles to Guatemala City to demand a government investigation into the murder of their parish pastor. Hermogenes Lopez. The priest was known as a campaigner in behalf of peasants’ rights. Most recently he fought an industry’s water plan that would have hurt irrigation of peasants’ farms.

James I. Packer, associate principal of Trinity Collge in Bristol, England, and one of the Church of England’s leading evangelical theologians, will move to Vancouver, British Columbia, next year to teach at Regent College.

Richard Anderson, a medical missionary from Britain, was appointed international general secretary of the Africa Inland Mission. He succeeds Australian Norman Thomas.

Deaths

MYRON F. BOYD, 69, Bishop-emeritus of the Free Methodist Church of North America, who for twenty years was radio pastor of the denomination’s international radio program, “Light and Life Hour”; in St. Louis, of a heart attack following surgery.

GLENN “TEX” EVANS, 67, retired United Methodist evangelist, popular humorist, and founder of the Appalachia Service Project, the volunteer organization that refurbishes homes in Kentucky and Tennessee; in Nashville, of cancer.

FRANCIS PICKENS MILLER, 83, prominent Southern Presbyterian layman, author, and former chairman of the Geneva-based World Student Christian Movement; in Norfolk, Virginia, after a brief illness.

Almost the only prophecy to come true about the eleventh Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops at Canterbury last month concerned England’s notorious weather. The preliminary instructions sent to the some 450 bishops and archbishops in about 100 countries described English summer weather as being somewhat unpredictable. “It can be wet and cold, so a raincoat and warm clothing should be brought.” Wet and cold it proved to be, and throughout the conference—held on the strikingly modern but rather bleak campus of the University of Kent—delegates hurried to sessions dressed in anything that would keep out the driving rain.

There were other prophecies: that this would be the last Lambeth Conference (it has been held more or less every ten years since 1867, when seventy-six bishops attended the first one at Lambeth Palace in London, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official residence); that the 65-million-member Anglican Communion would break apart on the divisive issue of women priests or simply collapse because it lacked a sufficient common identity; that the bishops from the Third World (nearly one-third of those present) would take the conference by the scruff of the neck and use it to attack the inadequacies of the capitalist West.

The last conference in 1968 was an untidy affair. As with all previous Lambeth conferences, it was held in London, was a nonresidential talking shop, and came shortly after the dismantling of the British Empire, home of the great majority of Anglicans. White bishops who had recently lost their colonial status and black bishops from newly independent states were equally uncertain of their moves on the Anglican chessboard. Ten years had not improved the situation. Could Lambeth 1978 give Anglicanism the new identity it was seeking?

With the support of the Anglican Consultative Council set up ten years ago to oversee world Anglicanism, Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan decided to take the conference out of London, separate the bishops from their wives (“sexual apartheid,” as one African bishop described it), and call the delegates to “prayer and waiting upon God.” During the three weeks that the bishops ate, drank, talked, prayed, and listened together, barriers to understanding crumbled, tolerance of diverse viewpoints grew, and in a sense a new Anglican Communion, adjusted to modern-day realities, emerged from the ashes of the old paternalistic model.

After ten days of intensive discussions that were set in a contemplative atmosphere behind closed doors, the bishops came out into the open, passing fifty resolutions on subjects ranging from authority to armaments, doctrine to deaconesses, poverty to primates.

For many reasons the debate on women priests was crucial. Prior to the conference, warnings of dire consequences if the bishops approved the continued ordination of women to the priesthood were uttered by leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as by Bishop James Mote of the Anglican Church of North America, which broke away from the U.S. Episcopal Church on that issue.

But with calm resolution the delegates held to a steady course. They declined a proposal for a five-year moratorium, and they defeated a move by a leading evangelical, Maurice Wood, Bishop of Norwich, to veto the possibility of women bishops. The sole concession to opponents of women’s ordination was the recommendation that women should be consecrated bishops only where there is overwhelming support within the province concerned and after due consultation with all the Anglican primates. By these decisions, in the words of Bishop Alistair Haggart, a Scottish Episcopalian, “The Anglican Church showed it is capable of making up its own mind and is not a yo-yo at the twitch of Rome or orthodoxy.” Orthodox observers at the conference were horrified, but Roman Catholics were somewhat mollified by the generous and unprecedented action of the conference authorities in inviting the Catholic observers present to celebrate a requiem mass for Pope Paul, whose death was announced while the bishops were in session. Most of them attended.

The Third World, though not allowed to dominate the proceedings, left satisfied that its voice had been heard. Sample actions of the bishops in this sphere:

• a strongly worded call to world governments to end the abuse of human rights. Although it started originally as an African resolution about Africa, the statement was internationalized to apply to other parts of the world.

• a message of support to the 20,000 inhabitants of Crossroads, the shanty town near Cape Town, South Africa, that is threatened with demolition.

• an appeal to “governments, world leaders, and people without distinction,” calling for fair trading, conservation of natural resources, help for developing nations, a new approach to technology, urbanization, armaments, the redistribution of wealth, and an end to national self-interest, materialism, and oppression of the poor. (The bishops declined to back their words with actions when they turned down a suggestion by Welsh bishop John Poole Hughes that the conference should have a one-day fast and donate the money saved on meals to an aid organization.)

• overwhelming support for the World Council of Churches despite strong protests from several bishops at the announcement from Geneva the day before of a grant of $85,000 to the Patriotic Front in Rhodesia from the Special Fund of the WCC’s Programme to Combat Racism (see story, page 60).

Perhaps the biggest bonus was the emergence of Bishop Desmond Tutu as the conference’s “favorite son.” He is the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. Whenever he came to the microphone to speak, the conferees leaned forward to listen. His influence—and that of the exiled bishop of Damaraland, Colin Winter—could be seen behind the major declarations of the conference in support of the deprived peoples of the world. He was one of three bishops to receive an honorary doctorate of civil law from the University of Kent during the conference. At 46, he is clearly destined to play a major role in world Anglicanism in years to come.

There were press reports of general disenchantment with the Anglican Consultative Council, a coordinating group made up of clergy and lay representatives of the various Anglican churches. Chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, it seeks to represent and advise Anglicans in matters affecting them. Its secretary-general, Bishop John Howe, delivered an unscheduled address defending it against those who accused it of exceeding its authority and of having manipulated the conference. The bishops were unimpressed, however, and they voted against the council being involved in discussions about future Lambeth conferences.

The council will now have a “competitor” in the form of an Anglican “curia” comprising the primates of the twenty-five provinces, who will meet every two years to review the state of Anglicanism worldwide and express judgment on issues of note. But as with the Lambeth conference, its decisions will not be binding on the whole communion.

On sexuality, the bishops spoke of “heterosexuality as the scriptural norm.” Also, “Christian ideals of faithfulness within and chastity outside marriage” were affirmed following a debate that revealed differences on homosexuality between Western and Third World bishops. Bishop Paul Moore of New York pleaded for greater compassion and understanding for homosexuals. But Bishop Sospeter Magua of Kenya said he was shocked that the subject should even be discussed.

In addition to their main resolution on war and violence, the bishops qualified their support for the World Council of Churches by asking the Church “to reexamine its complicity with violence and to look again at Christ’s own teaching against violence.”

Surprisingly, evangelization, which in a preconference ballot on bishops’ preferences for subjects to be debated came out on top of the fifty-five listed, was virtually omitted from the fifty resolutions approved by the whole conference.

Despite the almost monastic nature of the conference, the bishops were not beyond the reach of the demonstrator, the lobbyist, or even the ordinary member of the public. On the issue of women priests they were made aware very early of the presence in the press gallery of several ordained women from the Episcopal Church in the United States, and on a one-day trip to London the bishops had to run the gauntlet of demonstrations by banner-waving feminist groups when they attended Evensong at Westminster Abbey. A pacifist pilgrimage from London to Canterbury also led to much lobbying of the bishops. A “graffiti roll” displayed at Canterbury Cathedral attracted comments and questions to the bishops from fifty visitors to the ancient shrine.

On the rare occasions when the bishops did leave the university campus, all the panoply and pageantry of Anglican ritual and splendor were displayed. In contrast with the bishops’ working clothes of sweaters and slacks, the formal eucharists in Canterbury Cathedral that began and ended the conference were a clerical outfitter’s dream. (Wippells, the brand leader in this field, had a shop on the campus offering a 10 per cent discount on all vestments purchased during the conference.)

Archbishop Coggan was praised on all sides, not only for the type of conference he planned, but also for the way he handled it. Sadly, this belated recognition of his leadership comes as the spry 69-year-old is contemplating retirement. If the collegial emphasis within Anglicanism continues to grow, the worldwide church will want to have a say in the appointment of his successor.

To Donald Coggan, always proud to call himself an evangelical, must go the major credit for making the 1978 Lambeth Conference a calm and peaceful retreat from a stormy world. Those from the hectic, fast-moving Western world were forced to slow their pace to something approaching that of a black bishop, who addressed the primate with eloquent simplicity: “I come from Africa, your grace, and I take my time.” With unintentional irony, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of the Russian Orthodox Church, who conducted a quiet day for the bishops and gave a week of morning devotional talks, told his all-male audience: “I have given you a certain amount of grass. Now, like good milking cows, you must produce milk for your flock.”

The Anglican dairy is back in business.

The Charismatics At Canterbury

Canterbury Cathedral had never seen anything like it. Anglican archbishop Bill Burnett of Capetown, South Africa, finished celebration of the eucharist by leading thirty other bishops—all in full vestments—in a dance around the high altar.

The unusual scene occurred during a week-long meeting that brought some 360 leaders of the Anglican-Episcopal charismatic movement to Canterbury prior to the Lambeth Conference (see preceding story). The leaders were joined by people from all over the world for a weekend International Anglican Conference on Spiritual Renewal, a first among Anglicans and Episcopalians. The 1,300 participants plus onlookers packed the cathedral that Saturday night for a Festival of Praise featuring exiled Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere of Uganda, a noncharismatic, as the preacher.

What surfaced with the resignation of an Episcopal priest from his parish in the early 1960s has grown to international proportions in the Anglican Communion. After Dennis Bennett left his parish in Van Nuys, California, because of his “baptism in the Spirit” (he went to a Seattle parish), the movement spread widely among other Episcopalians, including priests. (More than 25 per cent of the U.S. Episcopal clergy has been involved, say some movement spokesmen.) It spread across the ocean to England and eventually to Anglican churches around the world. In all, about fifty bishops and archbishops are part of the movement, say sources, and the thirty-one who were at the conference came from places as diverse as Singapore, Africa, Chile, South India, and the United States.

The conference theme centered on looking to Jesus as the head of the church and obeying him more. Participants in the leadership conference spent most of their time in small groups, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They concluded that a commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord is central and that in order for the Anglican Church to be renewed each member must be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan put in an appearance at the Festival of Praise and thanked the conferees for their prayers for the bishops and the upcoming three-week Lambeth Conference. He expressed seemingly mixed feelings about the movement. “Actually,” he said, “I wish that the charismatic movement in itself would ‘die’ so that the whole church would be a charismatic movement.”

There were a few success stories: parishes and cathedrals that have a strong blend of Bible teaching, pastoral leadership, and use of the sacraments with an “anointing from the Holy Spirit” among clergy and laity alike. But the majority of participants returned to churches that are mostly disinterested in charismatic renewal or opposed to it. Many vowed to try to start a weekly prayer and praise meeting or to try to instill “life” in Sunday services.

Conference leaders came up with a variety of suggestions for change in their parishes. A workshop dealing with ministry and leadership in the church concluded that some traditions of the church must be changed in order to achieve a New Testament-style Christianity. They suggested that the parish priest could share his responsibilities with elders in the church. For example, parishes could have prayer groups of around fifteen people who would meet regularly to pray together and be taught by a qualified elder. And women could be encouraged to have a greater share in the leadership of a parish.

There was much emphasis on teaching the Bible. “The Bible belongs to the Anglicans, too—not just the Baptists,” chided clergyman Everett “Terry” Fullam of St. Paul’s Church in Darien, Connecticut. “I don’t know of any church in the world which hears more Scripture but understands it less,” he declared. “It has not proclaimed the Word of God.… We Episcopalians have sacramentalized our people but have not evangelized them.”

Fullam said that the church is in great need of renewal, and he warned that its implementation would be like radical surgery. “God does not want to do a redecoration job in the church,” he said. “Instead, some things may need to be stripped down to the foundations. God may not be interested in renewing certain traditions.”

Another major conference theme: a renewed church is the most effective kind in the war against evil. Archbishop Burnett emphasized that spiritual gifts are essential for successful spiritual warfare. In a workshop on social action, he gave examples of how “baptism in the Spirit” had erased racism and banished hatred from the hearts of various people in South Africa.

There were plenty of reminders of the church’s responsibility to the poor. An offering at a weekend service netted about $10,000 for the work of the African bishops.

The conference was the brainchild of Fullam and Anglican clergyman Michael Harper of England, who were inspired by the Roman Catholic charismatic sponsorship of an international conference in Rome in 1975. The pair saw special significance in planning such a meeting just before the Lambeth Conference and in Canterbury, the spiritual home of the Anglican Church.

One of the prayers heard most among the Anglican charismatics was that the bishops at Lambeth would welcome the charismatic renewal as a solution to the problems that are plaguing the Anglican Communion.

JULIA DUIN

Diversifying The Outreach

Expansion and diversity were major concerns at the general assembly of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) last month in Kansas City. More than 18,000 persons, including some 2,500 voting delegates, attended the week-long meeting.

The delegates endorsed a goal of doubling the church’s fast-growing membership by 1986. Billing itself as America’s oldest continuing Pentecostal denomination, the church has a membership of 365,000 in North America, and it claims one million adherents worldwide.

The Spanish-language division of the church has doubled in the western United States over the past four years—from twenty-two churches with 915 members to forty-five churches with 1,700 members. That was cited as precedent for the ambitious growth goal. The assembly also voted to create a Spanish-language theological school to serve its Spanishspeaking members.

Some delegates expressed “a growing fear that power within the denomination is too concentrated.” This concern prompted a resolution specifying that the Council of Twelve—a body elected to conduct the business of the church between assemblies—include at least six pastors. A motion was also passed opening the way for more international and ethnic representation on the highest governing bodies of the church. A number of black and Hispanic leaders spoke of the “unity of this church” and of their commitment to work within the church to bring about changes.

The world missions department served notice that it is shifting its focus to twenty of the world’s largest cities and adjusting its techniques to include greater use of modern electronic communications.

Delegates in a resolution agreed to keep on pressing the television industry to regulate itself more carefully and to provide higher quality programming. The church has been a leader in the campaign against excessive violence, profanity, and sex on television.

In other business, the assembly adopted resolutions that called for increased emphasis on family life and that condemned abortion on demand, homosexual activity, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

The assembly elevated staff executive and educator Ray H. Hughes to the top post as general overseer. He succeeds Cecil B. Knight.

With Carter In Church

If President Jimmy Carter wants some peace and quiet when he goes to church, he is more apt to find it these days at the military chapel he sometimes attends near Camp David in Maryland than at his home church in Washington, D.C., or at the churches near his home in Plains, Georgia.

Last month Carter visited his mother, Miss Lillian, in Plains and went with her to Fellowship Baptist Church in nearby Americus. The President’s mother started attending Fellowship after an uproar over racial and other policies split Plains Baptist Church (see December 3, 1976, issue, page 50). A central figure in that dispute—black minister Clennon King of Albany, Georgia—showed up at Fellowship on the same day that Carter visited.

King distributed leaflets to reporters before the service, and he tried to give one to the President before he sat down. Instead, a Secret Service agent took it and asked the minister to leave. King said he wanted to attend the service, and he took a seat two rows behind Carter. After Pastor William Givens introduced some guests, King rose to introduce himself. He declared that an unidentified millionaire had offered to build a church for him in Plains but that Carter stopped it. “I love the President, and he loves me,” he said. “But he’s listening to the wrong Negroes.”

Carter did not turn around during the incident, and King sat quietly for the rest of the service. Carter later told reporters he knew nothing about the church but expressed hope that King would get it built. The black minister declined to offer proof of his allegation. “I just know it’s true,” he said.

Demonstrations of a more serious nature have marred services at First Baptist Church in Washington. Nine demonstrators against the neutron bomb were recently arrested there. Ushers carried a woman from the church after she launched into an antibomb speech during the offertory. Two other demonstrators were removed earlier when they spoke out in the President’s Sunday school class. It was the second time that protesters disrupted Sunday services at the church.

Carter told reporters that he too has concern for nuclear disarmament. But, he added, “a demonstration in church that disrupts the worship service is not the best forum in which to express one’s feelings.”

Foreclosure

Once again the wolf is knocking at the door of controversial separatist leader Carl McIntire. The city of Cape May, New Jersey, has begun foreclosure proceedings on all his Bible conference and former college properties in town. The city claims that McIntire owes about $500,000 in back taxes. The amount includes more than $360,000 on an administrative and library facility left vacant after less than two years of use when McIntire’s Shelton College was forced to move out of the state.

McIntire received a favorable court ruling in his struggle to obtain tax exempt status, but the city claims the ruling applies only to one year. A judge ruled last month that the unused college property, assessed at $1.3 million, is taxable. It is being eyed as a possible city hall.

City and county inspectors have peppered McIntire’s conference facilities with scores of violations in what many observers believe is a harassment campaign.

The minister is making a last-ditch emergency appeal to raise the money.

Dr. james Barr, Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford, is one of our leading British theologians. He will probably be remembered for his contribution to the hermeneutical debate in The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961), in which he convincingly argues that the meaning of a word is to be determined less by its etymological history than by its contemporary use in context. He has written four major works since then.

Last year, however, he wrote a very different kind of book, Fundamentalism, which is not dispassionate but polemical, and which fiercely attacks fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals (whom he refuses to distinguish from one another). Our whole position is “incoherent,” even “completely wrong” (p. 8), he asserts. Indeed, to him “fundamentalism is a pathological condition of Christianity” (p. 318), so that, far from it being “the true and ancient Christian faith,” he is not even sure if it comes “within the range that is acceptable in the church” (pp. 343–4).

Two introductory comments need to be made. First, Barr refers several times to the research that lies behind his book, and claims that he has made a “very thorough review of fundamentalist literature” (p. 9). This is a false claim. He relies too heavily on the Scofield Reference Bible, which he calls “perhaps the most important single document in all fundamentalist literature” (p. 45), and popular presentations like the New Bible Commentary and New Bible Dictionary. He is unfair—even rude—to Norman Anderson and Michael Green, almost ignores F.F. Bruce and Howard Marshall, and does not begin to do justice to the reasoned argumentation of J.I. Packer in his Fundamentalism and the Word of God or J.W. Wenham in his Christ and the Bible.

I do not think he is any more surefooted when he turns to the American evangelical scene. He refers to Hodge and Warfield, the Princeton giants, and he quotes E.J. Carnell and G.E. Ladd appreciatively. But he has not read Carl F.H. Henry, for he refers to only one of his books and includes only two quotations from his pen, both of which he has taken from other authors.

My second general comment concerns his object in writing the book. It is not to change our minds, he says, but to understand and describe our “intellectual structure” (p. 9). This is strange. If we are so completely mistaken, should he not want to alter our opinions? The book is not a serious theological debate; he has little or no respect for the people he is criticizing. His tone ranges from the cynical and the patronizing to the contemptuous and even the sour. He attributes ignorance, prejudice, and hypocrisy to us. He also accuses us of making no “serious attempt to understand what non-conservative theologians think” (pp. 164 and 316). This may be true of some of us, but I fear that the boot is also on the other foot. Fundamentalism has increased my own determination that in all religious debate I will respect the other person, listen carefully to him, and struggle to understand him. There can be no understanding without sympathy and no dialogue without respect.

In criticizing Barr’s selectivity and tone, I am far from saying that we have nothing to learn from his attack. Here are three sensitive areas in which I think we should listen to him.

First, tradition. “The core of fundamentalism resides not in the Bible but in a particular kind of religion” (p. 11), he writes. That is, the religious experience and consequent tradition of evangelicals is normative for us, rather than Scripture. We “do not use the Bible to question and re-check this tradition”; instead, we “just accept that this tradition is the true interpretation of the Bible” (p. 37). This is often uncomfortably true. We do sometimes use our venerable evangelical traditions to shelter us from the radical challenges of the Word of God.

Secondly, theology. Fundamentalism, writes Barr, is “a theology-less movement” (p. 160). And the reason, he thinks, is that we are preoccupied with biblical studies and the defense of biblical authority. He gives no credit to the innovative work of Dutch theologians and some others, but as a generalization we cannot resist his stricture that we produce more biblical scholars than creative theological thinkers.

Thirdly, interpretation. Hermeneutics is Barr’s own specialty, and here he scores some well-aimed points. “The inerrant text, given by divine inspiration, does not decide anything” (p. 302), he says. He is right. It needs to be understood and applied. But we evangelicals have always been much better at defending the authority of the Bible than at wrestling with its interpretation. Dogmatic assertions about infallibility and inerrancy are no substitute for conscientious, painstaking studies.

Barr declines to accept a distinction between conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, or even between “extremists” and “moderates.” We are all lumped together in the same (to him) rather stinking manure heap. Is this fair? One of our characteristics is supposed to be “a strong hostility to … modern critical study of the Bible” (p. 1). Yet he goes on to cite evangelicals who do attend to its historical and literary origins, while regarding them as inconsistent with their own principles. It is hardly just to condemn us for both doing and not doing the same thing, all in one breath.

My personal belief is that, in the original meaning of these terms, every true evangelical should be both a fundamentalist and a higher critic. In fact, I wrote that very thing in a small book as long ago as 1954. The original fundamentalist was insisting on such fundamental doctrines as the deity, virgin birth, substitutionary death and bodily resurrection of Jesus, in addition to the authority of the Bible, while the higher critic (as opposed to the lower or textual critic) was simply a literary critic who investigated the forms, sources, date, authorship, and historical context of the biblical books. But of course over the years both expressions have changed their image. The fundamentalist is now thought by many who use the term to be obscurantist, and the higher critic destructive, in their respective attitudes to Scripture.

Is there any difference, then, between an evangelical and a fundamentalist? I wonder if it is arbitrary to suggest the following distinction. The fundamentalist emphasizes so strongly the divine origin of Scripture that he tends to forget that it also had human authors who used sources, syntax, and words to convey their message, whereas the evangelical remembers the double authorship of Scripture. For this is Scripture’s own account of itself, namely both that “God spoke to men” (Heb. 1:1) and that “men spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21). On the one hand, God spoke, deciding what he wished to say, although without crushing the personality of the human authors. On the other hand, men spoke, using their human faculties freely, though without distorting the message of the divine author.

This double authorship of Scripture naturally affects the way the evangelical reads his Bible. Because it is God’s Word, he reads it like no other book, paying close attention to the context, structure, grammar, and vocabulary.

What if the two are in conflict? Barr is hostile to all harmonizers, to all (that is) who attempt to eliminate apparent discrepancies either between science and the Bible, or between different parts of the Bible, or between our theological understanding of the Bible and our historical critical methods in studying it. Here I find myself in almost total disagreement with him. Of course, if by harmonization is meant the twisting or manipulating of evidence, then it is dishonest. But it is not dishonest in the face of apparent discrepancies, to suspend judgment and continue looking for harmony rather than declare Scripture to be erroneous. On the contrary it is an expression of our Christian integrity, for it arises out of our basic conviction that there is only one living and true God, and that he is the God of Scripture and of nature, of theology and of history.

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

No one can take first being hailed for his virtues, then torn up for his vices.

While working on a juvenile biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, I began to pay closer attention to modern portrayals of famous people. I fear that I should have been alert to their dangers long ago. Biography is a popular literary form today, if you count the endless in-depth profiles in newspapers and magazines, as well as the television specials devoted to portraying recent history in terms of personalities. But most of these accounts, whether fiction disguised as fact or fact disguised as fiction, run to a formula my young son knows very well: the good guys and the bad guys. In fact, in the name of truth and the first amendment, our society likes to crucify people in the public eye. Either we lionize them or we throw them to the lions, often doing first one and then the other. It makes a better story.

Writers seem to consider it proper to approach their subjects, or victims, with the strong personal prejudices that make for juicy reading, or they relish any opportunity to turn a story into an X-rated show. Almost no human being can take first being hailed as Caesar for his virtues, then tom up in the arena for his vices, and the impression is left that the individual had no clearcut personality at all. But if a celebrity protests, it is made clear to the audience, whose appetite for blood is roused, that this is just one more case of someone who can’t stand the heat and ought to get out of the kitchen. A pattern appears in which we build a Colossus, then show he has feet of clay, which proves he could not also leave footprints on the sands of time. But in such caricatures we lose sight of the person himself and ignore the cardinal virtues of justice and temperance, not to mention the more important Christian virtue of charity. Then we beat our breasts and bewail the fact that there are no more judges in Israel.

I was driven to consider my own approach to Dorothy L. Sayers carefully, because a chief source for her life, commissioned by a publisher, was written by someone who seemed not only to dislike Sayers, but also to misunderstand her work. But I, on the other hand, had been her ardent fan since college days, when I first stumbled happily upon Busman’s Honeymoon, then shortly afterwards read Man Born to Be King. Having read her works “out of order” I had never divided Sayers like all Gaul, into three parts: mystery writer, playwright, or translator. But I still wanted to know more about what had made her able to write so many different things. I thought of her as a kind of parent who had led me engagingly to think about things I had never considered before or to see connections between different worlds and ideas. I knew the Dorothy L. Sayers I met in her books was not visible in the earlier biography, but I was also determined that I must do my best to tell the truth about her, not invent a figment of my imagination.

First, I approached the job with the assumption that her orthodox Christianity held the key to her personality and her career and that an effort to ignore the implications of her religious beliefs made for a distorted portrait of the lady. Most people assume that a Christian biography will be hagiolatry (uncritical lives of the saints). A typical contemporary biographer often writes about a Christian figure by ignoring his religious beliefs in favor of emphasizing his sex life. In a current biography of G. K. Chesterton, his marital love life is considered at greater length than either of his conversions, while epitaphs for Thornton Wilder had a field day with his peppery personality and ignored the possibility that his Christian background had influenced his themes or concerns.

Therefore, in my hunt for the right approach, I went to all the primary sources about Sayers that I could discover (not uncover). I also promised to give everyone who helped me a chance to see how I had made use of the material, not only to catch me out in error, but also to allow him to edit out anything he considered off the record. I was rewarded by great cooperation from people who seemed surprised at what I thought was simple professional courtesy. The fact is that we live in a time when we believe everyone is fair game and ought to enjoy setting himself up as a target. Finally, too, I took Sayers herself as my mentor in my job and tried to follow her own rules for writing biography, which she had stated in discussing her unfinished work on Wilkie Collins.

Sayers suggested that a biographer should start by liking her subject, but give the facts about the person without unnecessary interpretations and psychological commentary. Her approach was amusingly illustrated in a comment to Dr. Barbara Reynolds when she said that fortunately “One can’t make up fancy psychology about the unknown author of the Song of Roland.” But in her introduction to her translation of that epic, she talked at length about the author’s times, the interests of his audience, the literary background of the work, and his artistic goals. She put the emphasis in fact on the work, not the man, but she did not ignore the artist either.

Sayers also recommended that wherever possible, the subject should speak for himself, primarily from his published works, his notebooks, and the like, but not necessarily making use of quotations from interviews or gossip. She herself suffered, as most public figures do, from being misquoted so often that she rejoiced aloud in a wartime poem over the fact that a lack of newsprint had cut the number of misquotations she found and that it might end them altogether. Most important of all, in writing about Wilkie Collins she saw her job as describing his development as a writer, not his private life, though in today’s market a good titillating book could be written about Collins’s drug addiction and his mistresses. She saw that the real facts about him were his ability and strengths as a writer, together with his influences from and on other writers, and theirs on society as a whole. She made use of her own knowledge of writing to characterize his, but in everything she said she also tempered justice with mercy, because she honored him.

Clearly, biography is not a special Christian discipline. But we need to beware of its use as a secular weapon aimed at destroying our faith in our fellow men, for such a lack of faith can also affect our faith in God. In our age we are more careful about idolatry, seeing whitewashed sepulchres everywhere, but sinfulness is not the whole story. Famous men are also, as Ecclesiasticus says in chapter 44, “our fathers who begat us … Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning … wise and eloquent in their instructions” and knowing this about them, we need to honor them and make them the glory of their times.

If we allow the news media to tell us about Jacob only when he is stealing Esau’s birthright, we will never understand how Jacob also became Israel who dreamed of a ladder from earth to heaven and wrestled all night with God. We are called to honor our parents, even while, as we ourselves grow older, we are more conscious of their faults and more aware of how like them we grow ourselves. Public figures can be our parents, too. Let us beware of a constant diet of personalities instead of a real consideration of whole persons. Let us be aware that we shall be judged as we judge and try to insist that those who undertake to inform us also remember the Golden Rule, instead of assuming that they sit on Mount Olympus while their subject dwells below with Pluto, for none of us are gods.

Alzina Stone Dale is a free lance writer and editor who lives in Chicago, Illinois. Her biography on Dorothy L. Sayers, “Master and Craftsman: The Story of Dorothy L. Sayers,” is to be published by Eerdmans this fall.

Before looking at various categories consider these ten titles of special significance for the study of the church’s past that were published in the United States during the last half of 1977 and the first half of 1978.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church edited by E. A. Livingstone (Oxford) is a skillfully done abridgement of the 1974 second edition of one of the standards in its field. School libraries should have the unabridged edition (which includes extensive bibliographies), but most individuals and congregations will find the concise edition adequate. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church (1974, Zondervan), a revised edition of which is just out, remains our first choice for this type of reference tool, but the concise Oxford Dictionary makes a good second choice.

What do you expect from a title like The Christians? Well in this case one has a pictorial feast illustrating the diversity within Christianity from its beginnings to the present. Author Bamber Gascoigne’s text, striving for neutrality, is not particularly distinguished, but the ancient reproductions and the modern photographs, mostly by his wife, Christina, make the book worth acquiring. The publisher is Morrow.

Two three-volume sets are massive treatments of their respective topics and belong in all theological libraries. Both were originally in French and have previously appeared in British editions but are here mentioned because they have found American publishers: A History of Christian Spirituality by Louis Bouyer (Seabury) and A History of Early Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea by Jean Daniélou (Westminster).

Of at least as much importance to students of the New Testament as of the early church is The Nag Hammadi Library in English edited by James M. Robinson (Harper & Row). Since these writings by Gnostic heretics (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Apocalypse of Peter, and so forth) will be referred to in the media and by opponents of apostolic orthodoxy, it is convenient to have them collected in a handy volume.

A leading scholar of the period, C. R. Elton, provides us with a splendid, well-written narrative that will probably become the standard for many years. Reform and Reformation: England, 1509–1558 (Harvard).

Three monographs on American religion should be of special interest to evangelicals. Religion in the Old South by Donald Mathews (University of Chicago) shows how evangelicalism came to predominate in the century before the Civil War in the region where it was originally weakest. Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience, 1830–1890 by Jay Dolan (Notre Dame) carefully documents the little remembered phenomenon of the parish mission by Catholic revivalists complete with emotional appeals. Contemporary Catholic charismatics will be interested in his precursor. I hope it will quell some of the sneers against revivals by those who have assumed they were peculiar to debased forms of Protestantism. Armageddon Now! The Premillenarian Response to Russia and Israel Since 1917 (Baker) is by Dwight Wilson, who is himself a premillenarian but who shows how so many of the best known proponents of the teaching have been rather incautious, to say the least, in their identifying of what were then contemporary figures and events with biblical prophecies. Of course today’s best-selling authors on prophetic subjects show no inclination to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Besides, caution hurts at the cash register.

Combining a look at evangelicalism of today with a call for greater appreciation of the often-ignored post-apostolic church is Wheaton College professor Robert Webber’s Common Roots (Zondervan). This important book deserves to be read widely and thoughtfully.

GENERAL Most books of historical interest can readily be classified by time or place, but (in addition to the ones mentioned earlier by Bouyer, Gascoigne, and Livingstone) here are some others that roam beyond normal boundaries.

If you plan to go looking at old or traditionally constructed and furnished church buildings in Britain, take along Church, Monastery, Cathedral: A Guide to the Symbolism of the Christian Tradition by Herbert Whone (Enslow [Box 301, Short Hills, NJ 07078]). Among the hundreds of terms that are defined: “armarium,” “mensa,” “rood.” Outstanding photographs to help prepare for the journey, and to relive it, accompany helpful texts in The Evolution of Church Building by Jack Bowyer (Watson-Guptill) and The Pilgrims’ Way by John Adair (Thames and Hudson). Closely related is The Meaning of Ritual by Leonel Mitchell (Paulist), which gives a brief historical overview of Christian ritual.

A. Daniel Frankforter’s History of the Christian Movement (Nelson-Hall) cannot be recommended as the introduction it purports to be, though it has its good points, particularly on the Middle Ages. Roman Catholicism is well served by two popular histories: A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Bokenkotter (Doubleday) and Pilgrim Church by William Bausch (Fides/Claretian), an edition of a work whose title is shared with a widely known book of an earlier generation that reported on underground churches over the centuries that were persecuted by the Catholics.

Beginnings in Church History by Howard Vos (Moody) and the even briefer The Church by Russell Spittler (Gospel Publishing House) are revisions of short introductions by evangelicals. A conveniently small reprint of Who’s Who in Church History by William Barker is now available from Baker.

Both Jews and Christians will appreciate Jerusalem History Atlas by Martin Gilbert (Macmillan) with 66 maps and 116 illustrations of its past 2,000 years.

The first few volumes of a lengthy series. The Classics of Western Spirituality, are now available and are being heavily promoted through the mails by Paulist. Many individuals and all libraries should consider subscribing, at least to receive the volumes by Christians.

For those who like brief, popular-style biographies see Saints for All Seasons edited by John Delaney (Doubleday) and confined to a score of authorized Catholic saints and Woman’s Way to God by Anne Fremantle (St. Martin’s), which roams widely to include not only the likes of Joan of Are and Teresa but also the founders of the Shakers and Christian Science.

THE EARLY AND MEDIEVAL CHURCH Besides the already mentioned Nag Hammadi Library and Daniélou’s trilogy, one of the more significant books is The Early Versions of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger (Oxford). This book is useful not only for light on the New Testament text but for information on the spread of Christianity throughout the ancient world.

Another edition with extensive revisions is now available, in paperback, of J. N. D. Kelly’s widely commended Early Christian Doctrines (Harper & Row).

A major study of Julian the Apostate by G. W. Bowersock (Harvard) is a welcome corrective to the widespread distortions about the emperor who tried to reverse the tide toward Roman support of Christianity. An even more fascinating Christian figure was Origen, but the book about him by Theodore Vrettos (Caratzas [246 Pelham Rd., New Rochelle, NY 10805]) is a novel. As such it can arouse interest in further understanding him even if literary plaudits are restrained.

In Early Christianity and Society, Robert Grant (Harper & Row), one of the leading scholars of the period, seeks to show how, contrary to “golden age” advocates, the early church wasn’t so different in many ways from the bourgeois mentality that is deplored today.

Popularly aimed are Women in the Middle Ages by Frances and Joseph Gies (Crowell) and The Albigensian Crusade by Jonathan Sumption (Faber [22 S. Broadway, Salem, NH 03079]). More specialized works to note are Meister Eck-hart, Mystic and Philosopher, translations with commentary by Reiner Schürmann (Indiana University). The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century by Denys Hay (Cambridge) and a reprint, Early Christian Ireland by Máire and Liam de Paor (Thames and Hudson).

The greatest influence of Cistercian monasticism was in the Middle Ages following its founding in 1098. A definitive history, bringing the story down to the present, is offered by Louis Lekai in The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent State University). (Writings on monasticism by the most famous modern Cistercian, Thomas Merton, are collected in The Monastic Journey edited by Patrick Hart [Sheed].)

THE MODERN CHURCH There are so many books dealing with some aspect of Christianity since 1500 that we will consider them by the major geographical areas after first mentioning some titles that range more widely. Modern European Thought: Continuity and Change in Ideas, 1600–1950 by Franklin Baumer (Macmillan) is an informative and interpretive account by an expert, a book that merits wide reading and reflecting. Of more specialized interest is Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought by Eugene Klaaren (Eerdmans).

Relevant to current debate is The Battle for the Gospel: The Bible and the Reformation, 1444–1589 by Marvin Anderson (Baker). Teachers of Reformation history will welcome back in print The Reformation: A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observers and Participants edited by Hans Hillerbrand (Baker). Researchers will welcome the 28,000-entry Mennonite Bibliography, 1631–1961 edited by Nelson Springer and A. J. Klassen (Herald), continuing a bibliography of the movement’s first century compiled by Hillerbrand. The first four volumes, covering A through G, of the microfilm holdings of the Center for Reformation Research (6477 San Bonita Ave., St. Louis, MO 63105) are now available.

In the area of denominational studies we have three popular titles, Our Anglican Heritage by John Howe (Cook), A Brief History of the Presbyterians: Third Edition by Lefferts Loetscher (Westminster) and God’s Army by Cyril Barnes (Cook) on the Salvation Army.

Wesleyans will welcome The Arminian Arm of Theology: The Theologies of John Fletcher … and James Arminius by Howard Slaatte (University Press of America), a major biography, John Wesley: His Life and Theology by Robert Tuttle, Jr., and an important collection of essays edited by Leon Hynson, The Development of Wesleyan Holiness Theology (Wesleyan Theological Society [215 E. 43 St., Marion, IN 47952]). Reprinted is A. Skevington Wood’s biography of Wesley, The Burning Heart (Bethany Fellowship), which focuses on his evangelism.

A major reinterpretation of the Counter-Reformation with far-reaching implications is proposed by Jean Delumeau in Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (Westminster).

The twentieth century has been noted for the variety and complexity of movements within Christianity. Arthur Johnston provides a thorough study of the great modern congresses on evangelism, starting with Edinburgh 1910 and focusing on Berlin 1966 and Lausanne 1974, in The Battle for World Evangelism (Tyndale). He demonstrates that the battle was not simply against non-Christian foes, but over crucial differences between ecumenical and evangelical understandings of what faithfulness to God requires. Johnston’s book is important reading, especially for those who would minimize the differences. Meanwhile evangelism has continued on a mass scale, most notably through the ministry of Billy Graham. See Why Billy Graham? by David Poling (Zondervan), Billy Graham: His Life and Faith by Gerald Strober (Word). Billy Graham: The Man and His Ministry by Mary Bishop (Grosset and Dunlap), and a technical study, An Assessment of Mass Meetings as a Method of Evangelism: Case Study of Eurofest ’75 and the Billy Graham Crusade in Brussels by William Thomas (Humanities Press).

Aggressive outreach characterizes many besides evangelicals. Dynamic Religious Movements edited by David Hesselgrave (Baker) has a dozen in-depth studies of rapidly growing movements in various parts of the world, two-thirds of them Christian deviations. The Cults Are Coming! by Lowell Streiker (Abingdon) and Christ and the New Consciousness by John Newport (Broadman) are brief overviews. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church by Frederick Sontag (Abingdon) is informative, even if too sympathetic. Experimentation in American Religion: The New Mysticisms and Their Implications for the Churches by Robert Wuthnow (University of California) reports sociological research.

CONTINENTAL EUROPE Because of his logical and systematic style, Calvin comes off as cold-hearted to many. A warm welcome therefore to The Piety of John Calvin: An Anthology Illustrative of the Spirituality of the Reformer edited by Ford Lewis Battles (Baker). An easy-to-read introduction to the great reformer is Man of Geneva by E. M. Johnson (Banner of Truth).

Luther was battling not only Rome but those around him who wanted what they considered a more consistently biblical reformation. In the past, access to Luther’s opponents has largely been through unsympathetic reports. Now we can readily see both sides speaking for themselves in Karlstadt’s Battle With Luther, ably translated and commented upon by Ronald Sider (Fortress).

The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck, edited by William Klassen and Walter Klaassen (Herald), makes available in English the key works of one of the most important early Anabaptist reformers. Also belonging in all theological libraries (especially since they tend to be overloaded on the Calvin and Luther side) is a major study of the man often considered the most important thinker among the early Anabaptists, Balthasar Hubmaier: Anabaptist Theologian and Martyr by Torsten Bergsten (Judson). In some ways Hubmaier’s views are more like the later Baptists than Mennonites. In any case they are well worth studying.

Other neglected areas of the continental reformation are treated in The Renaissance and Reformation in Germany edited by Gerhart Hoffmeister (Ungar) with special reference to German humanism and The Historiography of the Reformation in Slovakia by David Daniel (Center for Reformation Research).

The Lutheran Reformation culminated 400 years ago with the Formula of Concord. To honor the anniversary there appeared essays in Discord, Dialogue, and Concord edited by Lewis Spitz and Wenzel Lohff (Fortress) and The Formula of Concord: An Historical and Bibliographical Guide by Lowell Green (Center for Reformation Research).

Growth Patterns of German Speaking Baptists in Europe by William Wagner (William Carey) is especially welcome since so little is available in English about this movement that began in the nineteenth century and provides the undergirding for much of the evangelical work in Eastern Europe.

Of special interest for Catholic studies: The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770 by C. R. Boxer (Johns Hopkins), Pascal’s Provincial Letters: An Introduction by Walter Rex (Holmes and Meier), Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century by Gerald McCool (Seabury), and The Catholic Church and the Soviet Government, 1939–1949 by Dennis Dunn (Columbia).

THE BRITISH ISLES Besides the work by Elton mentioned at the beginning of this survey two other major works are Milton and the English Revolution by Christopher Hill (Viking), giving a historian’s approach to a great man in turbulent times, and The Dissenters From the Reformation to the French Revolution by Michael Watts (Oxford), the first volume of a thorough history of the English and Welsh free churches.

A statistic-filled work of great importance is Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles Since 1700 by Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert, and Lee Horsley (Oxford).

Among books of wide interest are Wilberforce by John Pollock (St. Martin’s), on the great evangelical social activist (see also He Freed Britain’s Slaves by Charles Ludwig [Herald] for a fictionalized account for younger readers); The Knox Brothers by Penelope Fitzgerald (Coward), about four extraordinary sons of an evangelical bishop, one of whom became a Catholic translator of the Bible; Whatever Happened to the Jesus Lane Lot? by Oliver Barclay (InterVarsity) on the first hundred years of the evangelical fellowship at Cambridge; Change and the Churches: An Anatomy of Religion in Britain by David Perman (Transatlantic Arts), a comprehensive survey of the contemporary scene; and Charles Simeon of Cambridge by Hugh Evan Hopkins (Eerdmans) on the most influential evangelical minister of the early 1800’s.

Of more specialized interest: Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I edited by Felicity Heal and Rosemary O’Day (Archon), The Indifferent Mean: Adiaphorism in the English Reformation to 1554 by Bernard Verkamp (Ohio University or Wayne State University), The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London, 1616–1649 by Murray Tolmie (Cambridge), and Tom Brown’s Universe: The Development of the English Public School in the Nineteenth Century by J. R. deS. Honey (Times Books).

NORTH AMERICA: GENERAL Teachers of American church history, as well as those who want refresher reading of a nontextbook nature will welcome a collection of twenty-seven previously published, and commended, essays edited by John Mulder and John Wilson, Religion in American History (Prentice-Hall).

Essays by representative scholars of various groups reflect on American Religious Values and the Future of America edited by Rodger Van Allen (Fortress). Blacks, Jews, Catholics, women, and ecumenical Protestants are included. As is all too common, evangelicals had no one to speak for them. Nevertheless the essays and the responses to them are worthwhile and—who knows?—maybe the next time there is such a forum room may be made for someone for whom evangelicalism is alive.

Miscellaneous essays in both French and English (with summaries in the other) are compiled by Peter Slater in Religion and Culture in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University).

A massive two-volume treatment belonging in all college and seminary libraries is A History of Philosophy in America by Elizabeth Flower and Murray Murphey (Putnam). The role of Christian thought is given due recognition.

Consortium Books (Box 9001. Wilmington, NC 28401) published a set of eight volumes, Faith of Our Fathers, each by a different author. The first two survey Christianity beginning with Christ himself through the Reformation. The remaining six present the history of Christianity in America with two volumes each on the colonial period, the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. The books are nontechnical and of necessity selective. But they do convey more information than the customary introductory survey and hence might be of use in adult education and high schools. The authors represent various denominations and theologies.

Church musicians and music-lovers have available a brief but serious study by James Sallee, A History of Evangelical Hymnody (Baker). (Two books to note about one of America’s best-known hymnwriters: Blessed Assurance: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby by John Loveland [Broadman] and Fanny Crosby Speaks Again [Hope Publishing Co.] consisting of the words of 120 previously unpublished hymns.)

The Word Carrying Giant by Creighton Lacy (Carey) tells the story of the American Bible Society from its founding in 1816 to 1966. The Story of Catholics in America is a concise introduction edited by Don Brophy and Edythe Westerhaven (Paulist). Evangelization in America by David Bohr (Paulist) is also about Catholicism, giving theological and practical discussions along with a historical survey. It would be useful to compare with Protestant counterparts. Congregationalism in America by Manfred Waldemar Kohl (Congregational Press [Box 1620, Oak Creek, WI 53154]) is a brief overview, with the last few pages reflecting the stance of the Congregationalists who did not merge into the United Church of Christ. Three of the six projected volumes of A Time to Remember edited by Barry Callen (Warner) have been released. Short extracts from previous writings enliven these historical works on the nearly one-hundred-year-old Church of God headquartered in Anderson, Indiana. Meet Southern Baptists (Broadman) by Albert McClellan is a well-illustrated introduction.

NORTH AMERICA: BEFORE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY At the beginning of the survey Catholic Revivalism and Religion in the Old South were mentioned.

As usual there were a number of fine books on some aspects of Puritanism. Two that are of popular interest and also treat other colonists are In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life by James Deetz (Doubleday Anchor) and a well-written and documented study of The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America by Philip Greven (Knopf).

An important theme of the preceding book is brought into the nineteenth century in Children in the New England Mind: In Death and in Life by Peter Gregg Slater (Archon). Much of this ground is also ably covered in The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change by David Stannard (Oxford). Many things about Puritan child-rearing practices that seem unusual to us are more readily comprehensible when we are reminded how high was the infant and child mortality rate.

The Faith of the Pilgrims by Robert Bartlett (United Church Press) is an extremely sympathetic account of the Plymouth Colony, as distinct from the far more influential Bay Colony. Primary sources are compiled and commented upon to give a distinctly unsympathetic account in Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny by Charles Segal and David Stinebeck (Putnam). The tragic conflicts between peoples of different cultures and technologies have been a permanent strand of human history. Puritans and other Christians, though hardly blameless, are certainly far from the worst examples.

Two important works by the greatest Puritan and colonial thinker are combined in Apocalyptic Writings, volume five in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Yale). Stephen Stein edited a never published commentary on the last book of the Bible together with a response by Edwards to the decline in fervor following the Great Awakening. The lingering impact of Puritanism, particularly in Hawthorne and Melville is the subject of The Middle Way: Puritanism and Ideology in American Romantic Fiction by Michael Gilmore (Rutgers).

Far more typical of later religious history than New England were the Middle Atlantic states. Jon Butler compares four denominations and shows that colonial religion was not so “democratic” as often asserted in Power, Authority, and the Origins of American Denominational Order (American Philosophical Society).

The Revolutionary period is well represented by Christians in the American Revolution by Mark Noll (Eerdmans) and The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England by Nathan Hatch (Yale), both of whom are able younger evangelical historians. By contrast, the confidence and frequency with which judgments of what God must think are expressed in The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall and David Manuel (Revell) and America’s Revolutionary Spirit: The Evangelical Religious Heritage of the Nation by John Terry (Exposition) are reminiscent of a much older style of historical writing. There are weighty theological reasons for refusing to identify America with either the old or the new Canaan.

Two recent historical studies with considerable significance for the relationships between Christianity and science are Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought by Theodore Dwight Bozeman (University of North Carolina) and Creation by Natural Law: Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought by Ronald Numbers (University of Washington).

A major study, especially helpful for those only familiar with polemics, is Foundations of the Seventh-day Adventist Message and Mission by P. Gerard Damsteegt (Eerdmans), in which the focus is on 1850–1874. A friendly nonmember and critic, Geoffrey Paxton, traces to the present the Adventist tension between traditionally Protestant and Catholic ways of viewing salvation in The Shaking of Adventism (Baker).

Sympathetic biographies of a variety of nineteenth-century religious leaders to note: The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney by Thomas Gary Johnson (Banner of Truth reprint), Dagger John: The Unquiet Life and Times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York by Richard Shaw (Paulist), McGuffey and His Readers by John Westerhoff III (Abingdon), God Sent Revival: The Story of Asahel Nettleton and the Second Great Awakening by J. F. Thornbury (Heritage (Box 411, Lewis-burg, PA 17837]), Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority by Robert Peel (Holt), the third volume of a trilogy, and The Night Cometh by Rebecca Winter (Carey), on Arthur and Lewis Tappan.

NORTH AMERICA: TWENTIETH CENTURY The noteworthy study Armageddon Now! was mentioned at the beginning of this survey. To help put religious developments in perspective by seeing them against the backdrop of the country generally, see Americans in a Changing World by William Appleman Williams (Harper & Row).

“Christian Change in a Changing America” is approached in various aspects and methodologies, but the needed comprehensive treatment is still lacking. Why Conservative Churches Are Growing by Dean Kelley (Harper & Row) is in an updated edition telling of one set of changes, and Richard Quebedeaux’s The Worldly Evangelicals (Harper & Row) tells of another. Climb Along the Cutting Edge by John Chittister et al. (Paulist) is a thorough study of one of the biggest areas of change in recent years, that of Catholic nuns. Prolific priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley tells of two other areas that haven’t changed so much as some would like to think: he celebrates Neighborhood (Seabury) and deplores An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America (Sheed). J. Russell Hale reports on a study he made in six scattered counties where church membership is very low to find out Who Are the Unchurched? (Glenmary Research Center [4606 East-West Hwy., Washington, DC 20014]). Increasing diversity in both secular and religious beliefs led to a conference whose addresses are included in Religious Liberty in the Crossfire of Creeds edited by Franklin Littell (Ecumenical Press [Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122]).

Denominational studies include examinations of two major mergers in The Formation of the Lutheran Church in America by Johannes Knudsen (Fortress) and The Shaping of the United Church of Christ by Louis Gunnemann (United Church Press) as well as a major split in Anatomy of an Explosion: A Theological Analysis of the Missouri Synod Conflict by Kurt Marquart (Baker). Carl Brumback’s history of the beginning of Pentecostalism and the Assemblies of God is reprinted in two volumes, A Sound From Heaven and Like a River (Gospel Publishing House). The Church That Produced a President is an anecdotal introduction by James and Marti Hefley to their and Carter’s denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (Wyden).

Two enthusiastic accounts of evangelistic movements: It’s a Sin to Bore a Kid: The Story of Young Life by Char Meredith (Word) and A Movement of Miracles by Bill Bright (Campus Crusade) on the recent Here’s Life campaigns.

Books on minorities are increasing. Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement is a compilation by Randall Burkett of sermons in support of a major black movement of the twenties (Temple University). Also see Images of the Black Preacher by H. Beecher Hicks, Jr. (Judson) and This Far by Faith: American Black Worship and Its African Roots (National Office for Black Catholics). Brief but useful reports on another minority that involuntarily became part of American society are Christian Leadership in Indian America edited by Tom Claus and Dale Kietzman (Moody) and The Navajos Are Coming to Jesus by Thomas Dolaghan and David Scates (Carey).

Biographies of prominent twentieth-century religious figures: Eugene Carson Blake: Prophet With Portfolio by R. Douglas Brackenridge (Seabury), The Anita Bryant Story by Anita Bryant (Revell), Baker James Cauthen: A Man for All Nations by Jesse Fletcher (Broadman), George Burman Foster: Religious Humanist by Alan Gragg (Association of Baptist Professors of Religion [Box 2190, Danville, VA 24541]), From Power to Peace, an autobiography by Jeb Stuart Magruder (Word) and For This I Was Born: The Captivating Story of Louis T. Talbot by Carol Talbot (Moody).

LATIN AMERICA In his usual carefully documented style J. Edwin Orr tells us of Evangelical Awakenings in Latin America (Bethany Fellowship). The prevailing Catholicism and its recent major changes is the subject of Hugo Latorre Cabal’s Revolution of the Latin American Church (University of Oklahoma). W. Douglas Smith, Jr., has produced a careful study, full of charts, and discusses principles applicable elsewhere in Toward Continuous Mission: Strategizing for the Evangelization of Bolivia (Carey). Two non-Christian movements that are prominent in Jamaica and Rio de Janeiro, respectively, are The Rastafarians by Leonard Barrett (Beacon) and Macumba: The Teachings of Maria-Jose, Mother of the Gods (St. Martin’s).

AFRICA A major collection of scholarly essays that should be in seminary and Bible college libraries is African Religions edited by Newell Booth (Nok [150 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10011]). Two monographs: Politics and Christianity in Malawi, 1875–1940 by John McCracken (Cambridge) and Frontier Peoples of Central Nigeria by Gerald Swank (Carey).

ASIA-PACIFIC Three scholarly monographs have come to my attention that missions libraries should have: Christian Missions to Muslims: Anglican and Reformed Approaches in India and the Near East, 1800–1938 by Lyle Vander Werff (Carey), W.A.P. Martin: Pioneer of Progress in China by Ralph Coveil (Eerdmans), and Reluctant Mission: The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, 1891–1942 by David Wetherell (University of Queensland [c/o TIC, 5 S. Union St., Lawrence, MA 01843]).

One of the larger Christian groups in New Zealand, with a strong missionary outreach, are the Plymouth Brethren. See a detailed scholarly history by Peter Lineham, There We Found Brethren (GPH [c/o Everyday, 230 Glebemount Ave., Toronto, Canada M4C 3T4]).

Lords of the Earth by Don Richardson (Regal) is an especially good example of a popular mission tale. Although the focus is on an Australian, Stan Dale, and his ministry among the Sawi tribe of New Guinea, much of the exciting and moving narrative is related from the viewpoint of the people into whose midst these outsiders of strange ways and beliefs intruded. Other popularly aimed books: Fire in the Islands! The Acts of the Holy Spirit in the Solomons by Alison Griffiths (Harold Shaw), Amazed by Love, an autobiography by G. D. James, an Asian evangelist (Asian Action [G.P.O. 579, Singapore]), Servant of Love: Mother Teresa and Her Missionaries of Charity by Edward Le Joly (Harper & Row), Higher Ground by Eloise Cauthen (Broadman), a biography of her father, Wiley Glass, missionary to China, and Come Walk the World: Personal Experience of Hurt and Hope by World Vision leader W. Stanley Mooneyham (Word).

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Nothing concerns people more than their health or that of those close to them. In the past five years a whole library of books has appeared on the subject of healing and the problem of pain, which is the reverse of the health coin. The following discussion samples what is currently available. The books reflect different perspectives and traditions. Many of them are written by charismatics, where the renewed interest in healing began, though such mainline denominations as the Reformed and Methodist churches are also represented.

Sooner or later suffering finds us all. Whether we respond with prayers for healing or prayers for acceptance, we can find comfort and guidance in the experiences of Christians who have grappled with these issues. Most of these books have helped me. I include some books that aren’t useful to show the differences in quality of books on healing. And I look at three books that raise the obvious question, What if you aren’t healed? I want to show the reader how to evaluate books on healing so they can find the best books available. The place to begin is with Morton Kelsey’s study Healing and Christianity: In Ancient Thought and Modern Times (Harper & Row). Kelsey to date has written the most complete work, theologically and historically, on healing. Kelsey says that “this is not a book on the method of practice of religious healing. Instead it is an attempt to provide a theological foundation, based on historical and scientific understanding, for a serious ministry of healing today.”

Kelsey’s book, based on charismatic theology, represents a radical departure from the mainstream of modern theological thought on the matter of divine healing. It is a comprehensive history of sacramental healing in the Christian church from biblical times to the present. A theme that runs through charismatic literature on the subject of healing is the belief that it is God’s ordinary will to heal, and that such healing comes primarily through supernatural intervention.

The best writers on the subject argue that healing was a primary ministry of Jesus and his church, but that it fell into disrepute sometime during the Middle Ages, when the sacrament of anointing the sick became relegated to a rite for the dying. Kelsey makes a strong case for returning a concern for healing to the ordinary life of a congregation and demystifying the experience of being healed by God of one’s infirmities, be they emotional or physical, congenital or accidental. Kelsey, an Episcopal rector, researched his study for fifteen years and has had far more than an academic relationship to the subject of healing. As he puts it, “I have seen the things of which I write.” I believe him.

For a person who wants a more pragmatic book on healing, Francis MacNutt has written one. Father MacNutt, like Kelsey, is a theologian in the charismatic renewal movement who has been involved in a healing ministry for about ten years. Healing (Ave Maria) is an excellent book. It contains detailed information on the charismatic healing style, which has spread across the world in the years since Vatican II. MacNutt describes how he was drawn into a healing ministry and responds directly to questions concerning why some people are not healed. MacNutt’s maturation is reflected in the contrast between his first and second books. The Power to Heal (Ave Maria) enjoys more subtlety and open admission of the mystery of God’s ways regarding why some persons’ prayers for healing are answered affirmatively and some negatively.

I do not find in MacNutt, however, a satisfactory treatment of the theology of suffering or of the cross, which is the critical question to be resolved in the matter of divine healing. Why does God apparently heal some people and not others? Can suffering be redemptive? But in The Power to Heal, MacNutt is far more direct than in Healing, his earlier work. He admits that he doesn’t know the answers. Readers searching for books on healing written with balance and maturity can anticipate being challenged by MacNutt’s clear and forthright message: healing power is available to everyone—healing is the birthright of the Christian church. But MacNutt does not hit you over the head; he invites you to test it for yourself.

Being the sister of the current president makes it difficult for her work to be accepted in its own right, but Ruth Carter Stapleton’s message is worth hearing. In her two books, The Gift of Inner Healing and The Experience of Inner Healing (Word), she shares simply and directly her insight on the nature of emotional healing. Like MacNutt, she shows decided growth between books.

If it’s a question of reading only one, make it the second in which she shares her own experience of inner healing. She conveys a spirit of warmth and hope throughout the book that will thaw the most cynical reader.

Stapleton has a gift to share with us: the repression and denial of one’s true feelings is the antithesis of Christianity and can only lead to spiritual, often physical, death. If this sounds like pop psychology a la the Sensitivity Group Movement’s cheap grace variety, it is not. She demonstrates repeatedly in both books what Paul Tournier expressed in Guilt and Grace: The painful path of sin and humiliation precedes the royal road of grace and forgiveness. Inner healing is not a cheap idea. It means tough repentance and restitution.

The refreshing thing about Stapleton is that she is convinced that Christ loves and forgives the feelings of the inner child each of us has, and that through prayer and “faith imagination” the painful memories that still dominate our present thoughts, activities, and relationships can be healed by him. Along with Kelsey and MacNutt, Stapleton respects the insights of modern psychology and acknowledges their usefulness. A mark of maturity in charismatic literature on healing is its respect of medical science.

The most significant theological aspect of charismatic literature on healing is the conviction that sickness is evil and inconsistent with the intention of God toward the creation. Sickness is the direct result of the Fall; salvation brings wholeness and health if we but ask through prayer. The healing miracles of Jesus and the disciples is a sign of the Kingdom of God.

Healing Life’s Hurts: Healing Memories Through the Five Stages of Forgiveness (Paulist) written by two brothers, both Catholic priests, is a major addition to the work done by Stapleton on healing the emotions. The Linn brothers have used the Kübler-Ross stages of death and dying to express the process for healing memories and emotions. As they put it, healing a memory is like dying. Therefore, they take us through the five stages of forgiveness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and illustrate through personal experience and examples how to uncover and forgive the hurts that have occurred over the course of a lifetime. Healing Life’s Hurts combines theory with practice, and includes several exercises on how a person may guide him or herself through the process of forgiveness, which is necessary to healing. This is an important companion to Stapleton’s work because it is designed for use by small groups to help build the church’s life.

The Linn brothers, with the help of Barbara Shlemon, a registered nurse with whom they have shared a healing ministry, have written another book on healing. To Heal as Jesus Healed (Ave Maria) explores in the light of their own experiences in a ministry of healing the rite of anointing the sick. The authors provide numerous examples of healings and demonstrate that the new Roman Catholic Rite of Anointing is in keeping with the original place of healing in the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church. This book offers limited usefulness, because of its focus on the Roman tradition, rather than on the scriptural basis for healing.

Althouse, in his Rediscovering the Gift of Healing (Abingdon), is involved in a ministry of healing primarily in the United Methodist Church. He relies heavily on MacNutt and Kelsey to build his historical and theological basis for healing as an ordinary mission in the church’s life. The brief study includes suggestions on how to begin a healing ministry in one’s local church.

In contrast, George Bennet, former hospital chaplain, working in the church healing ministry trust of the Church of England, has written a refreshing and brief account of his experiences with and belief in healing as an ordinary part of the church’s life in In His Healing Steps (Judson). Anglican and Roman Catholic charismatics who come from traditions steeped in the sacraments seem to maintain a more balanced and mature relationship to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and decisions about their place in the life of the larger church. Bennet is a clear example of this pastoral maturity. He does not see healing in black-and-white simplicity, and is not afraid to discuss why some are not healed after fervent prayer. Nor does he explain this by telling us that they did not have enough faith.

Bennet maintains that the very name of Jesus implies healing: It means God saves or God heals, that it is the nature of Jesus to heal, that where the presence of Christ is there is healing. He speaks about the power of the principalities that lie beneath all our disease, and that in most sickness there is some malignancy that is buried even from conscious awareness that needs attending. His book is not history or theology but a testimony of the power of a healed and reconciled relationship with God.

George Martin’s Healing: Reflections on the Gospel (Servant) attempts a short interpretation of some of the biblical material concerning healing. It is too brief to be definitive and although it is well written, it lacks depth. One would do better to read Kelsey and MacNutt for a more integrated analysis of the relationship of the biblical case for healing to the present implications for a healing ministry in the church’s life.

Two books that I would not recommend are both from the Gospel Publishing House of the Assemblies of God. The Case for Divine Healing by Bill Popejoy and By His Stripes: A Biblical Study on Divine Healing by Hugh Jeter are characteristic of the oversimplification of which charismatics are often accused. They are glib and preachy. Although I do not doubt the sincerity of either individual regarding their convictions about divine healing and its usefulness to the church, the tone of these books makes true dialogue impossible. They are monologues, love affairs with their own convictions. Kelsey, MacNutt, Stapleton, and Bennet do not try to convert the reader. They believe the healing power of Christ will persuade and speak for itself. Popejoy builds his case for healing in an authoritarian, catechetical style, which is lifeless and unconvincing. He is out to prove it to us through the authority vested in Scripture, but it comes out like a clanging symbol.

By His Stripes, too, tries to build an airtight biblical case to sanction the practice of supernatural healing in the life of the Church. But the approach is brittle: isolated proof-texting of quotations from Scripture and the discouragement of honest doubt. If Christ included Thomas in his inner circle, so should Jeter in a matter as complex as the question of God’s will in regard to sickness and suffering.

Healing is not a new thing for Roman Catholics and Anglicans; you sense immediately a maturity and an enthusiasm tempered by experience in the books they write. Reginald East, an Anglican priest, has written a short study Heal the Sick (Dimension). His aim is to encourage Christians to accept a healing ministry as ordinary rather than pointing to it as something extraordinary. East wants to demonstrate that any Christian can enter into a healing ministry through prayer and openness to God’s spirit. He offers clear and simple instruction to readers who are interested in learning to pray with others for healing. East shares his own initial reluctance to enter this kind of ministry; yet he felt directed to it by God’s spirit. He discusses both physical and emotional healing and offers practical instruction for each type of prayer. This book will be of particular use to readers who are already convinced of the need for healing prayer and are seeking guidelines as they begin to practice it.

John Sanford, Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst, has written what is to me the most provocative study on healing of the books surveyed here. Healing and Wholeness (Paulist) relies on the work of psychologist Carl Jung for its arguments. Evangelicals who will note his somewhat unorthodox use of Scripture and the use he makes of wisdom from other religious traditions may distrust the book. Nonetheless, this refreshing and stimulating study suggests that the cultural definition of health as adjustment and adaptation is a false one, which needs revision. To illustrate his point he reminds the reader that in Nazi Germany the whole society was sick and that those who could not adjust or adapt to Hitler’s views were not sick but profoundly well. Thus we need to reexamine our notion of wholeness.

Sanford suggests that one of the goals of life is a journey toward wholeness or individuation in Jungian terms. Sanford believes that the journey toward healing and wholeness cannot be equated with peace of mind. And that is encouraging. For Sanford, suffering is a real part of becoming whole. This is a book for the serious reader on the subject of healing. It emphasizes the philosophical and theological rather than the practical ways to find healing. Ironically, it may offer us more than many “how to” books because of the thinking it provokes.

The reader always returns to the question of suffering—whether in the celebrated account of Paul’s thorn in the flesh, the story of Job, or the countless other examples in Scripture that imply that illness and suffering are sent from God, the author of all life. You cannot ignore the possibility that illness and suffering may serve a purpose in the lives of individuals. God’s thoughts and ways are not ours. It is to this side of the question of healing that we must turn sooner or later, for it is painfully obvious to even the most zealous advocate of spiritual healing that everyone who prays is not healed.

Burton Seavey’s Why Doesn’t God Heal Me? (Creation) is a negative example; it represents many books that take the approach that the reason God doesn’t heal us is that we don’t have enough faith and are not obeying God’s set of conditions for healing. This simplistic reduction of the mystery surrounding suffering will be of little use to the person who has prayed fervently and who has not received the healing he desires. What it will do is create guilt and feelings of failure. Seavey declares that “it is God’s will to heal every born-again believer, when the conditions are met.” Others who address the problem of pain concur that this thinking is not only bad theology but harms individuals who are looking for answers as to why they are not healed.

Here are two fine books that deal more adequately with the magnitude of suffering. Philip Yancey, former editor of Campus Life, says that pain has the potential for blessing in Where Is God When It Hurts? (Zondervan). He does this in fresh ways. He visits a leprosarium in Louisiana and discovers that those afflicted with leprosy do not have the built-in warning system in their nerve endings to warn them of danger. They lack the ability to feel pain. Pain, he says, is God’s blessing that nobody wants. He raises the question of why there is such a thing as pain and of how people respond to pain. He suggests ways to cope with pain. He interviews Brian Sternberg and Joni Eareckson, two Christians whose lives were changed in split seconds to life-long quadraplegics. Brian and his family believe and hope for a complete healing miracle. Joni seeks to find meaning in the acceptance of her situation. Although prayer for healing is an option for Yancey, it fails to erase the problem of pain, since each of us must face death. Yancey wants to help those people trapped in pain to find meaning in and acceptance of their situation.

Robert Wise embraces the possibility of spiritual, even miraculous, healing, but he also grapples with the fact that all people who pray for healing are not healed. When There Is No Miracle (Regal) does this well. Wise writes as one who has believed in and experienced miracles.

“You ought to believe and anticipate the extraordinary intervening power of God, but God does not move at the snap of anyone’s fingers, nor by the quoting of Scripture verses out of context. It is possible that you are missing the greatest miracle: that His sovereign hand is moving through every single event of your life whether the moment is exalted and exhilarating or tempestuous and traumatic.”

Wise challenges us to anticipate God’s work in our lives even when we see no concrete evidence of this, and when we experience only pain and frustration. He points out that the question, “Why did this happen to me?” needs to be transformed into “what is the intended meaning of this event?”

A member of the Reformed Church in America, Wise accepts a theology of providence based on the assumption that nothing is lost to God. No person or no moment of our existence is without meaning, though there will be many times when the present meaning will not be accessible to our understanding. Each chapter of When There Is No Miracle begins with an imaginary dialogue between the author and Jesus discussing a different aspect of pain and suffering. And each chapter closes with questions for discussing the convictions Wise expresses.

Ultimately, there should be no conflict in accepting the paradox that suffering exists side by side with supernatural healing; that the faith and hope to pray for healing is not fundamentally opposed to that faith and hope which accepts what is given, while looking to the transforming power of God’s love.

Books on healing and suffering bring us to the basic question of human existence, the question of God’s will. Although that will may remain ultimately a mystery, there are some aspects that are clear: God’s will is dynamic, not static, and it always calls the Christian to greater faith and hope. Regardless of the outcome of individual suffering, our primary call is to be drawn deeper into relationship to him.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Grace made personal.

In this era of the secular mass media, we are surrounded by celebrities created by the press and by prepackaged television personalities. Unfortunately, evangelicalism has also fallen prey to the celebrity syndrome of the communications industry. We read Christian best-sellers: first-person accounts by news-makers (sometimes coauthored or ghost-written); we watch and listen to the testimonies of sports stars and entertainers at televised evangelistic crusades; we make movies featuring great Christian personalities. These uses of the media can be quite valid means of spreading the good news to a general public accustomed to the ways of television and film; they can also encourage and teach pilgrims on the way to the Celestial City.

The celebrity syndrome is dangerously close to getting out of hand, however. We forget sometimes what it means to tell one’s individual story in the light of the theology of grace made personal. We also neglect the biblical teaching of imitation in the Christian life. Instead, through the media, we live vicariously the thrilling experiences of others and think that the Christian life should somehow be glamorous.

In the New Testament, particularly in Hebrews, we are called to fix our eyes on Jesus. Imitation is, first of all, to be of Christ. In order to persevere in the Christian life, we are also called to imitate the saints. The writer of Hebrews exhorts the struggling early Christian to show concern, not to be lazy, “but to imitate those who, through faith and patience, are inheriting the promise” (6:11–12, NEB). After citing the catalogue of saints in chapter 11, the writer concludes that once we realize we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, we can proceed with the running of the race, gazing fixedly on Jesus. We are one with the saints, and we are comforted by their company. The hymn that we sing to a tune of Ralph Vaughn Williams catches the spirit of Hebrews:

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,

Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,

Thy name, O Jesus, be for ever blest.…

O blest communion, fellowship divine!

We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;

Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.

Alleluia, alleluia!

We share a common struggle with the saints, and what attracts us about them is the story of their lives. Any life touched by an encounter with Jesus takes on an amazingly literary quality—it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It becomes the plot of a story with meaningful form. Amos Wilder has admirably expressed this idea.

“A Christian can confess his faith wherever he is, and without his Bible, just by telling a story or series of stories. It is through the Christian story that God speaks, and all heaven and earth come into it. God is an active and purposeful God and his action with and for men has a beginning, a middle and an end like any good story. The life of a Christian is not like a dream shot through with visions and illuminations, but a pilgrimage, a race, in short, a history” (Early Christian Rhetoric, SCM Press, 1964, pp. 64–5).

Our personal lives take on the metaphor and outline of a story, too, but sometimes we need models to show us what the particular plot of our narrative is. The Church has always recognized this need, and within both the Catholic and Protestant traditions the literary genres of biography and autobiography have frequently provided exempla to believers. In the Middle Ages, for instance, saints’ lives became one of the most well-known narrative forms because of the appeal of these extraordinary biographies to the popular imagination. The Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives, was widely circulated and used as a source book by writers like Chaucer. Although the virtues and faith of the saints were stressed, the attention of the audience was frequently directed to the external events of the story—to the miracles and to the martyrdom of the life. Frequently this audience venerated the saint and his life because the narrative was cast in a form that directly paralleled the pattern of Christ’s life; in that case, the biblical doctrine of imitation was in danger of disappearing.

Although the Reformers rejected Catholic hagiography and dogma about the saints, in the post-Renaissance age the writing of spiritual biographies and, particularly, autobiographies, came into its own among Protestants. Reformation theology viewed the individual Christian as unique because called by God, yet as Everyman whose Christian life could be a valid example for other believers. Although the sense of the continuity of sainthood throughout the ages may have disappeared among Protestants in nonliturgical churches where the commemoration of the saints and martyrs and All Saints’ Day had been abolished with the liturgical calendar, these readers were able to gain a feeling for the martyrs of the Reformation and for the struggles of contemporary Christians.

Augustine had initiated the genre of autobiography with his Confessions, and subsequently the Catholic Church gained a series of important spiritual autobiographies, particularly from the religious orders stressing the inner life. Unlike the saints’ lives, which were official dogma, spiritual autobiographies constituted a continuous tradition of personal literature within the church. Protestants owing a debt to Augustine’s theology gave attention to his Confessions, but the seventeenth-century Puritans developed their own autobiographies, which usually followed a fixed pattern: “serious childhood, sinful youth, legal righteousness often preceded by a struggle, and final illumination” (L.D. Lerner, “Puritanism and the Spiritual Autobiography,” Hibbard Journal, 1957, p. 374). Many uneducated Puritans, including John Bunyan, wrote autobiographies in lieu of theology and affirmed their sainthood, or election, while sharing their dark night of the soul. Puritan autobiographies could include memoirs and journals, depending upon the degree of attention focused on the internal life of the writer and the sense of overall structure, but the majority of these works are of limited literary value.

Christians have continued to write autobiographies, but somehow twentieth-century readers know fewer and fewer of the great autobiographies of the past. These works are the very ones that can form our taste and give us standards by which to judge the plethora of attractively packaged books with glossy photographs that are currently being produced on the religious book market. The great spiritual autobiographies attract us by their simple ring of human truth in which we recognize our own humanity and see I the possibility that we, too, might be touched by grace. They lead us through the refining crucible from which the qualities of sainthood emerge. Karl Olsson’s observations in another context also apply here. “The saints encourage us and comfort and urge me on, not by the wagging of their fingers but by modeling their own mortality” (Come to the Party, Word, 1972, pp. 134–5).

Human truth alone will not make a Christian autobiography great reading; that truth has to be cast in the language and form of literature. Although anchored in the writer’s perception of fact and of inner experience, a great autobiography takes on the appearance of imaginative narrative. There is a sense of structure and pattern to the life. And in Christian autobiographies, the patterning is drawn from the archetypes and images of the Bible—from narratives like the parable of the prodigal son, or from the events of Christ’s life, or from images like the pilgrimage of life. The meaning that directs the writer’s choice of form is from such biblical doctrines as redemption, grace, providence, and the sovereignty of God. The autobiographer may draw a truth from experience, but his basic concern is not to preach, so meaning is often implied through metaphors and imagery. The style of great autobiographies is never dated. The life we read about is memorable as much for the striking way it is told as for the pattern of its story.

The autobiographer claims to tell the truth in a unique way. What matters is the inner person of memory, imagination, feeling, and soul. Characters and events are always filtered through the personal vision and recollection of the writer; the truth of autobiography is essentially the truth of inner experience. There may be errors in the recounting of external events, but we gain instead a sense of the continuity of the self. As an outsider, the reader of the autobiography is put in the unique position of both sharing in the life of the writer and distinguishing his degree of self-awareness and maturity. We become aware of the writer’s idiosyncratic point of view and we can learn from even the marks of human limitation. At the same time, the validity of the autobiographer’s experiences can be checked against Scripture. The tremendous paradox of the Christian autobiography is that the writer refuses to claim that he is different from any other Christian touched by grace even as he describes his unique experience. This attitude is in sharp contrast with the claims of many secular autobiographers, particularly from Rousseau on, who see themselves as unique and unlike any other human being.

A final quality of great spiritual autobiographies is the grace with which they conclude. The story always ends at the point where the writer comes to terms with God, with himself, with his purpose in life, or with a higher and fuller level of living. Counter to our expectations, the conclusions of Christian autobiographies are not predictable. Where, when, and how the story ends depends in part on the author’s artistry and on his age at the time of writing. Conversion may constitute the conclusion of the book, or it may be a dramatic peak in a story that leads to a special calling or vocation. In any case, the ending leaves the reader at a point of stasis when the writer senses that integration has occurred in his life.

A glimpse at four representative spiritual autobiographies will illustrate the qualities for which we should be looking in our reading. These particular works are diverse, but they are drawn together by their archetypal motifs from biblical material. Augustine wrote his Confessions around A.D. 400, fourteen years after his conversion and four years after he had become bishop of Hippo. Books one to ten constitute his personal conversion story in which everything leads to the dramatic moment of illumination and change described in book eight. Augustine’s perspective in time as he reconstitutes his life allows him to see God’s pattern of grace. He shows us a number of stages that prepared the way for his conversion, and he makes these phases vivid by narrating concrete incidents to highlight them. As a nineteen-year-old student in Carthage he was stirred by his reading of Cicero and undertook the study of philosophy and the search of truth; subsequently, Augustine’s ambition was frequently at odds with his higher goal, but in retrospect he can comment: “I had begun that journey upwards by which I was to return to you” (F. J. Sheed translation, Sheed and Ward, 1942, p. 38). Augustine rejected the Christian faith as too unphilosophical and became enamored with Manicheanism, but that only led to disillusionment when he realized how second-rate Manichean experts were as intellectuals. Drawn toward skepticism next, Augustine went to Rome when he was about twenty-eight. When he heard Ambrose, he could only exclaim “how truly he spoke.” Ambrose’s intellectual superiority shook Augustine’s prejudice against Christianity, but he was still troubled by problems such as the nature and origin of evil. He began to examine Scripture and gained respect for the Catholic position, which called for faith where proof was impossible. Continuously troubled by lust and a sense of wretchedness, Augustine then turned to mystical Neoplatonism. When that did not satisfy, he finally discovered the Pauline teaching of grace and the reality of Jesus as mediator.

The drama of Augustine’s conversion once his heart and mind are prepared is hard to match in fiction, as when he describes his wretchedness as he sits in a garden in Milan. “And suddenly I heard a voice from some nearby house, a boy’s voice or a girl’s voice, I do not know: but it was a sort of sing-song, repeated again and again, ‘Take and read, take and read’ ” (p. 146). Augustine thinks that it must be a childish game, but then decides it is a divine command. He opens the Bible to Romans 13:14: “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.” “I had no wish to read further, and no need. For in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, it was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart, and all the darkness of uncertainty vanished away” (p. 146).

On one level, this story follows the biblical pattern of the return of the prodigal son. While Augustine’s mother Monica prays, God extends his grace and draws the restless intellectual to him. Augustine’s originality as a writer, however, transforms this archetypal motif into a distinctive literary work of psychological depth. The story is in the form of a confession and is addressed to both God and the reader, but as he writes, Augustine is striving to explore his inner being. No other writer before him in the Western tradition had ever used the first-person narrative in this way, and Augustine opens the way for the psychological exploration of the self in later literature precisely because of his Christian concept of the inner man. “What nature am I? A life powerfully various and manifold and immeasurable. In the innumerable fields and dens and caverns of my memory … in and through these does my mind range, and I move swiftly from one to another and I penetrate them as deeply as I can, but find no end” (p. 186). Augustine draws himself in all his complexity and with all his contradictory motives, and we empathize with him. As we lay his autobiography down, we take with us the personality of the man who, as bishop, is still being purified.

At the insistence of her spiritual directors. Saint Teresa of Avila wrote her Life between 1562 and 1565; she never intended it for the general public, but it equals Augustine’s Confessions (which she had read) as a record of a great soul. Teresa lived until 1582, so her account does not cover most of her activities in reforming the Carmelite order in Spain, although she does describe the foundation of the first reformed convent of St. Joseph and the opposition by religious authorities and others to her appeal to follow radically the call to poverty and obedience. This energetic, intelligent, and witty woman traveled throughout Spain promoting the Carmelite reform after having spent her younger years totally within the convent. Her Life is remarkable for its analysis of the nature of the mystic experience in an unorthodox, spontaneous style (a direct reflection of her personality), complete with asides, exclamations, and colloquialisms. She writes because she has been asked to, and she is fully aware of the limitations of her memory and the demands on her time. “Only those who have commanded me to write this know that I am doing so, and at the moment they are not here. I am almost stealing the time for writing, and that with great difficulty, for it hinders me from spinning and I am living in a poor house and have numerous things to do. If the Lord had given me more ability, and a better memory, I might have profited by what I have heard or read, but I have little ability or memory of my own. If, then, I say any good thing, it will be because the Lord has been pleased, for some good purpose, that I should say it, while whatever is bad is my own work and Your Reverence will delete it” (E. Allison Peers translation, Doubleday-Image, 1960, p. 123).

Teresa also creates a compelling story of her inner turmoil as a young nun. She discovered inner prayer early in her convent life but then fell into a lukewarm spiritual state for fifteen years. “My life became full of trials, because by means of prayer I learned more and more about my faults. On the one hand, God was calling me. On the other, I was following the world.… I could not, therefore, shut myself up within myself (the procedure in which consisted my whole method of prayer) without at the same time shutting in a thousand vanities. I spent many years in this way, and now I am amazed that a person could have gone on for so long without giving up either the one or the other” (p. 105).

This narrative reveals a movement toward both submission and maturity. The initial conflict within Teresa between worldliness and singleminded devotion to Christ was next succeeded by intense insecurity and fear as Teresa began to experience her initial mystic visions; her insecurity was by no means lessened by the degree of opposition and doubt as to the validity of her mystic states she encountered within the church. Finally, after two years of testing during which she began to experience actual union with Christ, a turning point came in about 1558. Teresa was able to recognize her unique selfhood and decided to let God speak to her in whatever way he would choose. “I realized that I was completely different; so I put myself into God’s hands, for I could do nothing else: He knew what was good for me and it was for Him to fulfil his will in me in all Things” (p. 248). Soon after this she experienced a state of mystic rapture during which Christ freed her from fear. From this divine revelation Teresa draws a truth that is applicable for all believers as she addresses the reader. “Reflect—for this is the truth—that to those who give up everything for Him God gives Himself. He is not a respecter of persons. He loves us all; no one, however wicked, can be excluded from His love since he has dealt in such a way with me and brought me to so high a state” (pp. 253–4).

As the reader proceeds toward the end of the Life, he finds Teresa gaining the courage and inner serenity that free her energies to undertake the reform of the Carmelite order and to accept the call to a simple life. The road she travels—the road of mysticism and the way of poverty—is neither narrow nor hard. Teresa borrows wonderful biblical imagery (perhaps from Isaiah 35:8–10) to describe a royal, broad path of freedom from fear and of total submission, which is her final perspective as she concludes her story. “As I am now out of the world, and my companions are few and saintly, I look down upon the world as from above and care very little what people say or what is known about me.… My soul has been awakened by the Lord from a condition in which I used to feel as I did because I was neither mortified nor dead to the things of the world; and His Majesty will not let me become blind again” (p. 397).

John Woolman, the eighteenth-century American Quaker, would have shared Teresa’s interest in the inner life and in an outer life of simplicity, but how different his religious heritage is as an American heir of Pietism and Puritanism. He had read a number of journals by itinerant ministers when he began writing his journal about 1756, but as a largely self-educated man he had also studied Thomas à Kempis, William Law, and Jakob Boehme. The journal is not private; Woolman wrote it intermittently for the rest of his life, intending it for an audience and even recopying parts of it. “I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin this work” (Phillips P. Moulton edition, Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 23). The narrative is not continuous and the language is straightforward, but the reader is drawn into a compelling story of the awakening of the social conscience of an evangelical. Woolman no doubt intended that the reader examine his own values, too, and he draws our attention toward key events in his life that demonstrate either his struggles to live in accord with his conscience or his method of confronting people directly to put personal wrongs right or to stir their consciences, particularly on the condition of the Negro slaves. When Woolman was in his early twenties, his employer asked him to write a bill of sale for a Negro woman while her buyer waited. “The thing was sudden, and though the thoughts of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow creatures felt uneasy, yet I remembered I was hired by the year, that it was an elderly man. a member of our Society, who bought her; sc through weakness I gave way and wrote it, but at the executing it, I was so afflicted in my mind that I said before my master and the Friend that I believed slavekeeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion” (p. 33). After this incident, Woolman’s policy is to ask to be excused from any action to which his conscience objects.

Woolman begins his journal with the story of his early religious inclinations, his adolescent waywardness, and the final change of his heart as a young man, but his major concern is how to reflect his inner state in the values of his active, external life. His early sensitivity to the unjustness of slavery was soon followed by a desire to live simply and to resist materialism. He decided to intentionally limit his income by remaining a tailor. “I saw that a humble man with the blessing of the Lord might live on a little.… There was a care on my mind to so pass my time as to things outward that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the True Shepherd” (p. 35).

Woolman made numerous trips as a Quaker-recommended minister, but his first journey really awakened his sensitivity to the eventual destructiveness of slavery to America as well as to the individuals involved. From then on, the die was cast, and he engaged in social action by confronting prosperous Quaker slave-holders, addressing yearly meetings of the Friends, and refusing to write wills involving slaves. “Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of everyone to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them” (p. 50). Sympathy with the Negroes as souls “for whom Christ died” led Woolman toward identifying with the Indians, whom he visited on a trip to Pennsylvania, and with seamen and oppressed workers on his final trip to England. Those were not easy times; England and France were at war, and Woolman struggled with the pacifist issue, refusing to pay taxes that were directed toward the war.

The most sustained narrative in the entire journal is Woolman’s account of the voyage that he took to England, which ended in his death by smallpox in 1772. Woolman endures the hardships of living in the steerage because that is in accord with his values, identifies with the hard life of the seamen, survives storms with deep serenity, and feels a renewed call to forsake worldly treasures and speak up for the oppressed. While on the voyage, he discusses the nature of true love with respect to the parable of the good Samaritan. That biblical motif summarizes the essence of Woolman’s own life. “In this love we can say that Jesus is the Lord, and the reformation in our souls, manifested in a full reformation of our lives, wherein all things are new and all things are of God” (p. 177).

C.S. Lewis’s graceful style in Surprised by Joy (1955) could hardly be farther removed from Woolman’s straightforwardness. As the story of his intellectual evolution as a young man and his inevitable move toward a conversion experience, Lewis’s book parallels Augustine’s work. The pattern here, however, is of paradise lost and regained, though regained in altered form, and Lewis covers the years 1898 to 1931 after his academic career at Oxford was becoming established, but well before his general recognition as a writer. Lewis’s perspective is that of a well-known Christian figure, in that there are allusions to his other writings and that his personal intellectual history clarifies certain of his interests as a mature scholar.

Paradise is an ideal known in childhood, which gradually passes out of Lewis’s experience as a young intellectual, but which always haunts him. A motherless boy who was also estranged from his father, Lewis very early experienced fleeting moments of joy when he was drawn into an imaginative world of great beauty. “Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew” (Collins-Fontana, 1966, p. 12). Joy was the trace that the ideal left in Lewis’s emotional being; like Novalis, Wordsworth, and other Romantics, he came to yearn for that ideal and to live for that stab of joy.

While at “Oldie’s” boarding school, Lewis lost joy in his generally unhappy experience there, but he regained it later at preparatory school. Now, however, joy became part of a secret interior life that was quite distinct from Lewis’s intellectual concerns. What was actually happening—and this the reader discerns at the end of the autobiography and then projects back onto the earlier material—was the gradual extinction of an innate spiritual sensitivity to a higher level of reality that Lewis had as a child. (His experiences of joy are akin to Wordsworth’s “intimations of immortality” in the child.) Even as Lewis found an ideal world in Wagner’s versions of the old myths, medieval romances, and the Eddas, joy was becoming a rarer and rarer experience. The extinction of spiritual sensitivity also accompanied Lewis’s rejection of Christianity, his development into an intellectual prig, and his evolution toward increasing pessimism. All this was relieved only by his friendship with Arthur, a soul-brother who also knew joy, and his encounter with two great teachers.

The nadir in Lewis’s story is finally reached in the chapter “Check.” Joy has disappeared, and pleasure is a poor substitute. “Such, then, was my position: to care for almost nothing but the gods and heroes, the garden of the Hesperides, Launcelot and the Grail, and to believe in nothing, but atoms and evolution and military service. At times the strain was severe, but 1 think this was a wholesome severity” (p. 140). The turning point comes not long after when Lewis begins to understand what joy really is. The reading of MacDonald’s Phantastes leads him to sense that the barrier to joy may well be something within himself.

Once at Oxford, Lewis tried to reform himself (“The New Look”), but that failed. Then everything turned “against” him and his resistance to belief. Through Owen Barfield and others, he accepted the existence of the supernatural; then he moved to Idealism. He read George Herbert and Chesterton and met Christians like Tolkien. All moves rapidly to the dánouement.

Lewis comes to see that the paradise he had been seeking was a false one. “I perceived (and this was a wonder of wonders) that just as I had been wrong in supposing that I really desired the Garden of the Hesperides, so also I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself’ (p. 176). Joy turns out to have been a pointer to God. As inexorably as in the case of Augustine, grace has drawn Lewis toward a vision of the legion that is his true sinful self and to the acceptance of a theistic belief as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” (p. 182). When Lewis finally believes in Christ, it is just as dramatic an event as Augustine’s final illumination, but in a quieter way. “I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion … It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake” (p. 189).

These four autobiographers set high standards in story telling. They were extraordinarily gifted people, with minds at one time analytic and metaphoric. And that is the challenge of writing spiritual autobiographies: to maintain a delicate balance between the probing of mind and memory as they dissect the past and the concrete, imaginative leap of the literary pulse. The personality of all four persons controls the form and style of their works, which are as translucent as their souls. These autobiographers challenge us to seek those standards in writing and reading that last, to take courage from true sainthood, and to recall that we are creating daily our own spiritual auttobiographies.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.