Hugh Wesley Goodwin, a 54-year-old municipal court judge in Fresno, California, is under investigation for his practice of mixing God and the law.

California’s judicial watchdog commission indicates that Goodwin’s practice of giving some defendants a choice between going to church or going to jail is a violation of the Constitution’s clause on the separation of church and state. The commission also says that he allows religious classes to be held in his chambers (a reference to a Thursday noon Bible-study session for courthouse employees), and it mentions his open support of a Christian candidate for public office. So far, the commissioners have not invited the judge to meet with them.

Despite the probe and all the criticism of him in legal circles and in the press, Goodwin takes pride in the apparent success of his program in dealing with one of society’s pressing problems—rehabilitation of lawbreakers. After his appointment as a judge in February, 1976, Goodwin began giving persons guilty of minor crimes a choice of doing community-service work, paying a fine, going to jail, or attending church services twice a week (he specified that one of the services had to feature study of the Bible). Most who have appeared before him—including a number of habitual offenders—have chosen the religious “sentence.” Of these approximately 200 persons, says the judge, only five have been back in court on subsequent charges. Thus Goodwin sees himself as only a catalyst in the process of helping people to straighten out their own lives through the discovery of moral guidelines and sources of spiritual power.

Offenders are permitted to choose their own church after consultation with friends and relatives, but many ask the judge to pick out one. Goodwin works closely with a number of pastors in town; they are expected to become involved personally in efforts to help the offenders. (The judge denies suggestions that he is proselytizing. He says he would let a Jewish defendant attend a synagogue and a Muslim attend services at a mosque, but so far there apparently have been no such defendants.)

Goodwin maintains that the non-jail option not only helps the individuals involved but also results in big savings to taxpayers: children and other dependents of some offenders are kept off welfare rolls, penal-system expenses are reduced, and people in trouble are provided a place where they can receive “free” counseling and loving care. And some unemployed troublemakers have gotten jobs, thanks to sympathetic church members who contacted prospective employers, he says.

The sentence varies according to the offense. One shoplifter was given this choice: a $200 fine, or ten days in jail, or eighty hours of community work, or ten Bible-study sessions at church. Goodwin believes her case is a crucial one: her children are aware of her habit of stealing, and if she doesn’t change her ways it is likely that the children will follow her example. With God, at least, there’s hope, reasons the judge, himself the father of four. He normally prescribes six months to a year at a church. Many defendants and their relatives have come back later to thank him, he says.

Goodwin doesn’t think that what he is doing violates the Constitution, and he says this belief is shared by the ministers he knows, all of whom are church-and-state separationists. He believes it is wrong to interpret the Constitution “to mean that a man can’t serve the Lord where he is.”

He scoffs at the criticism of the lunchtime Bible-study sessions, which he organized at the suggestion of his boss when he was in the Public Defender’s office. “Girlie magazines are fine, but not the Bible,” he comments wryly.

Goodwin doesn’t see anything wrong, either, in encouraging his ministerial friends to “get behind a candidate who believes in God and get him elected to office.” Such opportunities are rare, says Goodwin, so he is not too concerned about complaints in this area.

The judge’s friends insist he is no crackpot or fanatic. He is soft-spoken and unassuming, they say, a man strongly committed to Christian principles. He holds earned degrees from Harvard and Howard universities. His services are in wide demand as a lecturer on the church and community circuits. He is an active member of Second Baptist Church in Fresno and does some teaching at First Baptist.

As Fresno’s first black attorney (he is married to the city’s first black public-school teacher), Goodwin counseled many poor and disadvantaged people. He organized Fresno-area citizens for the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March in Alabama in 1965.

There is pressure for Goodwin’s resignation or removal from office, but he isn’t budging. He predicts his case may end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, says he, if his opponents try to remove him, he will use the occasion “as another opportunity to educate them.”

VERNAGENE VOGELZANG and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

No Room In the Room?

Can religious services be held in publichousing facilities without violating the Constitution’s clause on the separation of church and state?

That is a question that is vexing the board of the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA). The issue arose when a nun attached to a nearby Roman Catholic church held three informal, ecumenical worship gatherings and Bible readings at the Pinecrest housing development last year. Most of the 225 elderly residents of the facility apparently approved (half are members of the Catholic parish), but the CMHA issued a formal ban against the occasional services last April.

The nun, Sister Claire Foken, has launched a campaign to reverse the decision, and she has garnered some strong political support.

When congressman Tom Luken complained to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that the senior citizens’ First Amendment rights were being violated, the agency said it had no jurisdiction, but it did warn the CMHA that there may be constitutional problems if religious groups are the only ones denied use of the common room at Pinecrest.

Moreover, Pastor Harold Stockman of Price Hill United Methodist Church inquired at a recent CMHA meeting why Yoga, which he described as “a form of Eastern meditation,” is permitted in the common room but Christianity is not.

CMHA director Henry R. Stefanik, a church-going United Presbyterian, says he would permit worship services at Pinecrest “if we’re legally empowered to do so.” But he also suggested that Pinecrest is not a nursing home and that if residents are too infirm to get to their churches they “may belong in some other residence.”

His comment upset Sister Foken and her friends even worse. “It is not fair to say anyone who can manage a small apartment and use the Pinecrest elevator should be able to walk to church,” she asserted.

Krishna Calling

Seven affiliates of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (popularly known as the Hare Krishna sect) were accused in a $310,000 civil suit of illegally hooking into a private microwave communications system and making thousands of dollars of phone calls that were charged to other persons. The suit was filed in federal court in Los Angeles by MCI Telecommunications Corporation of Washington, D.C. MCI operates a system linking eighteen metropolitan areas. It is used mostly by businesses making extensive out-of-state calls. The firm alleges that the Krishna groups somehow found out the code numbers of subscribers to MCI and how to make and bill long-distance calls. Antiracketeering and fraud statutes were invoked in the suit.

Krishna attorneys had no immediate comment.

An Appeal To The Past

The teacher dismissed by a school in England for his literal interpretation of Genesis (see March 4 issue, page 54) has had his appeal dismissed by an industrial tribunal.

Following the verdict, David Watson, 57, told reporters that the state’s version of religion had now drifted so far away from Christianity as to be virtually worthless in providing any sort of anchor in life for children. “One of the best things that could happen as a result of my case,” said the former head of religious education at a Hertfordshire school, “would be to put the clock back five hundred years and start again: set up Christian schools as they used to be in the past. The schools in this country have become pagan schools and … it is time to think about pulling out.”

He objected to a syllabus which expected him to teach that stories such as those in Genesis were “of course” myth and legend. He denied that he was trying to brainwash the pupils into accepting his own interpretation.

Watson plans now to return to India where he had previously been a missionary, and will teach at a “broad-minded” Christian school.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Give and Take

Political contributions by churches are strictly forbidden by regulations of the Internal Revenue Service. The law was apparently violated by St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles, and as a result the church may lose its status as a tax-exempt organization.

Last spring, the church gave two checks for $1,000 each to fund-raisers for California attorney general Evelle J. Younger’s campaign for the Republication nomination for governor. Younger’s top finance people said they were unaware of any problem created by the donations, and St. Paul’s pastor, John L. Branham, said his church had been contributing to Younger’s campaigns “for years.” It’s “nothing new,” he stated, “and it has no bearing on our tax-exempt status.”

The money was used to purchase $250 tickets to a fund-raising dinner. Tax authorities say that if an investigation shows the church did indeed make political contributions, action—subject to appeal—will be taken to remove it from tax-exempt rolls. This would mean that church members no longer could list contributions to the church as tax deductions, and the church could lose its property tax exemptions.

Mobile Members

Where do new church members come from? And where do departing members go?

Those were answers sought by a recent survey conducted by the 13-million-member Southern Baptist Convention. Many of those who joined a Southern Baptist congregation last year came from within: children or young people who were baptized and voted into membership. Others came from unchurched backgrounds. But 39,000 persons came from other religious groups, and the SBC lost 46,000 of its people to other denominations and faiths, according to the study.

An almost even trade occurred between the SBC and main-line Protestant denominations. The latter provided 79 per cent of those coming into SBC churches, while Catholics accounted for 14 per cent and small Christian “sects” contributed 4.2 per cent. Most SBC gains from the main-line Protestant sector came from Methodists (34 per cent) and Presbyterians (12 per cent). Lutherans and the Assemblies of God were listed at 4.2 per cent each.

The study shows that SBC churches gained four times as many members from Catholic churches as they lost to Catholicism and twelve times as many members from non-Christian faiths, but it also shows that SBC congregations lost about twice as many to small Christian groups as they received from those backgrounds.

War and Grace

Pastor Dean Lueking of the 1,800-member Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois, has been one of the national leaders of the so-called moderate faction in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod opposed to the policies of LCMS president J. A. O. Preus. Rather than continue the conflict, Grace voted 425 to 199 to break ties with the LCMS and become independent as of October. Last month the LCMS notified Grace that it intended to buy back the church property under terms of an option inserted in the sales agreement when the LCMS sold the property to the congregation in 1929. Lueking and the congregational leaders say they have a different understanding of the agreement, and they indicated they would fight to retain their property. The dispute will likely end up in civil court.

The repurchase option was apparently written into the 1929 agreement to ensure that a Missouri Synod congregation would always be on or adjacent to the LCMS’s Concordia Teachers College, whose property adjoins Grace. (Of Concordia’s 1,200 students, estimates of the number of students who attend Grace range from about a dozen to 150. The college has its own chapel.)

According to the agreement, the option to repurchase could be exercised if the parish were to “decide to affiliate, consolidate, or merge” with an organization not part of the LCMS, or if the congregation were to “fail or decide not to teach or preach the Scriptures” in accord with the LCMS constitution.

In order to avoid the option problem, the congregation—on advice of legal counsel—voted to become independent when it split from the LCMS rather than to affiliate with the American Lutheran Church or the breakaway 200-congregation Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which is composed mostly of former LCMS members. Lueking has been close to both groups.

The LCMS has offered about $750,000 for Grace’s property. This is approximately $100,000 more than its appraised value, according to an LCMS official. Parish leaders, however, said recently that replacement cost of the buildings alone would be “in the multi-million-dollar range.”

Battling The Absolutists

More than 200 religious ethicists last month issued a “call to concern” opposing “the absolutist position that it is always wrong to terminate a pregnancy at any time after conception.” Their statement called abortion a “serious and sometimes tragic procedure for dealing with fetal life,” but it also stated belief that “abortion may in some instances be the most loving act possible.” It went on to challenge “the heavy institutional involvement of the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in a campaign to enact religiously based anti-abortion commitments into law.”

At a press conference in Washington,

D.C., where the statement was released, Protestant church leaders said it was not intended to be anti-Catholic or to deny anyone’s legal rights to speak out on an issue. But, said Dean J. Philip Wogaman of Wesley Seminary, “it is inappropriate for one group to seek to employ the power of the state to enforce its views.”

Religion in Transit

The U.S. Supreme Court last month let stand state tuition-grant programs for students at church-related colleges and universities in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Southern Baptist-related Wake Forest University recently received a $300,000 federal grant for buildings, equipment, and salaries for its biology department. North Carolina Baptist Convention policy, however, forbids affiliated schools to accept government funds unless they cover services rendered by the schools. A denominational committee has been investigating. Its preliminary recommendations: return the amount considered to be for capital improvements. The school wants to keep the money.

The California Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed suit in Los Angeles challenging the constitutionality of a state program that lends textbooks to non-public schools (most are Catholic schools).

Evangelist Oral Roberts announced plans to build a $100 million health center that will combine medical expertise with prayer. The complex, to be called the City of Faith Medical and Research Center, will be housed in three large structures, one of them sixty stories high, on an eighty-acre site in Tulsa. Included will be a 777-bed hospital and a medical and dental school. An estimated staff of 5,000, including 300 physicians and surgeons, will be required to maintain it, estimates Roberts. He hopes to have the complex debt-free when it opens in 1981. (His evangelistic association reported income of $20.7 million in 1974, the latest figures available. More than $6 million was given to Oral Roberts University, down $2 million from the amount given in 1973.)

The multi-million-dollar, thirty-five-acre Southern Keswick Bible-conference center in St. Petersburg, Florida, has been given to the Chicago-based Moody Bible Institute. The complex includes a 60-student Christian school (kindergarten through high school) and two radio stations. C. W. “Bill” Caldwell, Southern Keswick’s president, will stay on as manager of the stations. (Prior to the transfer, Moody owned and operated seven radio stations in four states.)

A $600,000 lawsuit has been filed in Des Moines against the Meredith Corporation by six persons dismissed by the printing firm in 1975 for refusing to work on sex-oriented magazines because of their religious beliefs. The six, who are seeking damages and reinstatement with back pay, contend the publications contained “repugnant” and “pornographic” material. They insist that their beliefs could have been “reasonably accommodated” if they had been assigned to work elsewhere in the plant.

Christian Broadcasting Network has announced that it will launch a major school to be known as CBN University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Graduate schools of communications and theology are to be established first, followed by graduate schools of business and law, according to the network’s founder-president, M. G. “Pat” Robertson.

Catholic Relief Services—the aid and development arm of Roman Catholics in the United States—provided food, medicine, clothing, and other assistance valued at $240.3 million over the past fiscal year, according to a CRS report. This aid, said the report, reached some 18 million persons in eighty-five countries.

First the good news: a random sampling indicates that the amount of money received by Christian colleges from alumni and other sources was significantly higher in the past school year than in the previous year, according to Christian College News Service. This reflects a national trend. Now the bad news: in many cases, inflation has outpaced the giving and donor dollars today buy up to 25 per cent less than what they did between 1972 and 1976. Meanwhile, an unofficial survey shows that enrollment at Christian colleges is generally ahead of that a year ago, while enrollments at most secular schools have remained steady.

A New York City health department report shows that 30 per cent of the nearly 110,000 babies born in New York City in 1976 were born out of wedlock, almost three times the rate recorded twenty years ago.

Representatives of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, a pro-abortion alliance of eleven major Protestant, Jewish, and humanist organizations, issued a complaint against President Carter. They said he has met “repeatedly” with Catholic officials on the abortion issue but refuses to meet with their agency. All they want to do, they said, is to make known their various theological viewpoints on the issue and to support his opposition to a constitutional amendment that would all but ban abortions. Abortion is basically a theological issue, they said, and “it must not become a matter of civil law.”

A Bucks County, Pennsylvania, judge turned down Robert B. Graham’s attempt to use religion to obtain a property-tax exemption for his home. Graham, who received a mail-order ordination certificate from the Universal Life Church in Modesto, California, decribed his house as a meeting place for the Holland Universal Life Church of Love. The judge, however, said it was “merely a haven for disgruntled taxpayers.”

Prison Fellowship, a two-year-old ministry spearheaded by Charles Colson (Born Again), is functioning in thirty of the nation’s 600 state and federal prisons, according to press reports. It relies on more than 1,000 volunteer workers. A computer helps to match community volunteers with inmates seeking assistance. One experimental feature of the program provides for selected prisoners to be released for several weeks to participate in spiritual training sessions. These have been highly successful so far, says a Colson aide. Colson himself is in demand as a speaker at inmate gatherings in prisons across the country.

Personalia

John R. Dellenback, immediate past director of the Peace Corps and a four-term Republican congressman from Oregon before that, was elected president of the six-year-old Christian College Consortium, based in Washington, D.C. He was also elected president of the Christian College Coalition, an alliance that includes the fourteen evangelical colleges in the consortium and twenty-one other Christian schools. Both positions are executive posts.

Everett Graffam announced he will retire in July as the top executive officer of the World Relief Commission, the relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. Jerry P. Ballard, a management consultant from Atlanta, has been named to succeed him.

Royal L. Peck, a missionary educator in Italy for twenty-two years with Greater Europe Mission, was appointed executive director of Christ’s Mission, a New Jersey-based agency that specializes in ministry to Roman Catholics. He succeeds the retiring Stuart P. Garver. Peck plans to expand the mission’s work to include church-planting projects overseas. Its publication, Christian Heritage, will be continued.

New presidents: John Dillenberger, a

United Church of Christ minister and seminary teacher, to Hartford Seminary Foundation in Connecticut; Stanley E. Letcher, Jr., a minister of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental), to Midwest Christian College in Oklahoma City; and Jesse Fletcher, pastor of the 3,900-member First Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee, to Hardin-Simmons University, a Southern Baptist school in Abilene, Texas.

Herman E. Van Schuyver, an administrator in the Christian school movement, was named director of the National Association of Christian Schools, an affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Charles Templeton, a prominent Canadian evangelist in the 1950s who turned his back on the faith and took up secular pursuits, has written a novel with a religious theme and title: Act of God (McClelland and Stewart). The plot is built on an archeologist’s discovery in Israel of the bones of Jesus.

Joni (pronounced Johnny) Eareckson was 17 when her spinal cord was severed in a diving accident in Maryland in 1967. Paralyzed from the neck down, she overcame bitter depression with the help of God and friends, and she learned how to write and draw by holding a pencil in her mouth. Now her sketches are found on greeting cards and prints in bookstores across the country. They are signed “Joni-PTL” (for “Praise the Lord”). Some 150,000 copies of her biography, Joni (Zondervan), are in print. World Wide Pictures, an affiliate of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, plans to produce a movie about her for release in theaters across the country.

World Scene

Under the banner, “National Evangelization Crusade 1977,” hundreds of thousands of South Korean Christians recently gathered on Seoul’s Yoido Island for four days of singing, preaching, and prayer. All thirty-two of Korea’s Protestant denominations were represented at the event, which commemorated a spiritual revival that began in Pyongyang (now the capital of North Korea) seventy years ago. Leaders predicted all of Korea will someday be evangelized, resulting in reunification of the country. But they also spoke fearfully about the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops and the danger of attack by North Korean forces.

Bibles: The Cuban government told the United Bible Societies it will permit importation of 5,000 Bibles and New Testaments for distribution by local Protestant churches; the Polish Bible Society reports that by the end of this year 200,000 copies of a new translation of the Bible into Polish—the first Polish translation since 1400—will have been printed in that land; Southern Baptists are distributing 25,000 Bibles throughout the Philippines, and the American Bible Society has supplied 10,000 Bibles, 40,000 New Testaments, and other literature to the committee planning the Billy Graham crusade slated for Manila, November 23 to 27.

Operation Mobilization, an international evangelistic agency specializing in the use of short-term missionaries, has been able to carry the Gospel to many “closed” areas with its 2,300-ton shipLogos. Book exhibits for the public (often attracting thousands of people per day) and conferences for pastors and other Christian workers are scheduled while the vessel is in port, and crew member-missionaries fan out to witness and distribute Christian literature. Now the group hopes to add another ship to its ministry. Leaders were looking at a 6,800-ton Italian liner last month (fuel consumption: thirteen tons per day).

Israeli police reported that about thirty ultra-Orthodox Jewish zealots vandalized the home of seven Americans who describe themselves as “Jewish disciples of Christ.” The Americans had received publicity in an Israeli television report on the village in Galilee where they live.

A translation of the Gospel of Matthew in Gheg, a dialect of modern Albania, was published by the United Bible Societies. It contains special helps for Muslim readers. Albania has banned the Bible and outlawed all religion, so 15,000 copies of the Scripture portion have been published in Yugoslavia for distribution among the one million Albanians who live there.

Nine Latin Americans identifying themselves as “leaders” of two evangelical student groups in Central America—autonomous units of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship—have called for active support of the proposed new Panama Canal treaty in an “Open Letter to Christians in North America.” Their appeal expresses “shock” at the “opposition of so many” Americans to the turnover of the canal. “You stole it,” they asserted. A mission executive says none of the nine is a staff member of either group, making the letter an unofficial one.

The average British clergyman’s salary is only $4,250 per year, but a magazine that conducted a survey on job satisfaction concluded that British ministers as a class are the men most satisfied with their jobs. Nearly 60 per cent of the clergy among 24,000 persons polled said they were “very satisfied” in their work, and 86 per cent said they would choose the same occupation again. The most miserable workers, according to the survey, were draftsmen. Only 8 per cent said they were happy in their jobs.

These are unsettled times for the issue-tormented Episcopal Church. There are nasty confrontations and court skirmishes over parish control and property matters at the local level involving the small but noisy breakaway movement that was spawned by the denomination’s decision last year to open the priesthood to women. Many more who have not left the 2.9-million member church are nevertheless still vexed by that decision, and there is lingering resentment on the part of some toward changes in the Episcopal prayer book designed to make it more contemporary. And, increasingly, many church members are troubled by the mounting pressures to permit ordination of avowed homosexuals.

About half of the church’s 240 bishops gathered for a week at a resort at Port St. Lucie, Florida, to try to sort things out and maybe pour oil on the troubled waters. Some of the oil landed in the fire instead. When the deliberations ended last month, still more controversy had flared up.

In an opening state-of-the-church address at the House of Bishops meeting, Presiding Bishop John Maury Allin stunned his brother bishops with a confession of his own negative view toward women’s ordination, and he offered to resign.

“Can you accept the service of a presiding bishop who to date is unable to accept women in the role of priests?” he asked. “To date I remain unconvinced that women can be priests,” he stated. Then he said: “If it is determined by prayerful authority that this limitation prevents one from serving as the presiding bishop of this church, I am willing to resign the office.”

At a morning session later in the week the bishops gave Allin a unanimous vote of confidence. There were, however, expressions of concern. When pressed, Allin explained that although he would not personally ordain a woman he would arrange for someone else to do it. He also indicated that as a matter of conscience he could not receive communion from a woman priest.

Several bishops said there had been a deluge of telegrams and phone messages from people back home protesting what Allin had said. Bishops Paul Moore, Jr., of New York and Robert C. Rusack of Los Angeles told Allin he had inflicted “hurt” on many of their people by his speech. Rusack said some of his members were asking: “Cannot the presiding bishop support the faithful even as he has those who have left us?”

Allin said he in no way had suggested that what the denomination had done in voting for women’s ordination was wrong.

The resolution of confidence reaffirmed Allin’s leadership and noted his “right … to hold a personal conviction on this issue, trusting him to uphold the law of this church and the decision of [the denomination] in its official action.”

In a bid to calm opponents of women’s ordination, the bishops adopted by a near-unanimous vote a conscience clause that specifies no one should be “coerced or penalized in any manner” for not recognizing women priests. The action permits a bishop to refuse to ordain women, and it also allows him to bar women ordained elsewhere from serving in his diocese—even if a parish in his diocese wants to employ one. (So far, about sixty women have been ordained.)

The statement was adopted after Bishop Clarence R. Haden of Sacramento, California, warned that he was “willing to pay the penalty” and join the dissidents if the church did not show that it was sincere about healing the deep theological division that exists. (The bishops themselves are badly divided on the issue. Their vote was split 95 to 61 for ordination at the church’s convention last year.)

Bishop Thomas Fraser of Raleigh, North Carolina, expressed concern for long-range implications of the action: “If we are not careful … we’ll abdicate our leadership to the conscience clause.” Suffragen (assistant) bishop J. Stuart Wetmore of New York warned: “We are on the edge of lawlessness. Never again will this house be able to discipline any of its members on any question.”

That prediction was put to a test of sorts in the cases of retired bishop Albert A. Chambers of Springfield, Illinois, and Bishop Moore of New York. Chambers, 71, has been entering the dioceses of other bishops without permission to administer confirmation in parishes of the breakaway movement, which plans to organize a new denomination to be known as the Anglican Church in North America (see October 7 issue, page 60). Moore has been in hot water for ordaining a professed lesbian to the priesthood last January (see February 4 issue, page 55).

A motion to “censure” Chambers was defeated, but the house did pass a stiff resolution saying it “deplores and repudiates” his actions. The measure appealed to Chambers and “other members of this house” to refrain from performing any episcopal acts in any diocese without the clear approval of the bishop of that jurisdiction.

Chambers replied that he had not changed his mind. “There is no doubt about it—I have broken the constitution and canons of the church,” he acknowledged. He indicated he would continue his activities: “I am at your mercy. I accept your judgment. But I have my vocation to fulfill. I cannot go back on that. I am sorry.”

Chambers could face a church trial on the charges. The church, however, did not discipline three other retired bishops who persisted in breaking ecclesiastical laws by ordaining women at a time when the church had not yet opened the priesthood to women. To prosecute Chambers but not the others would seem unfair to many conservatives in the church, and it would no doubt create further controversy.

A number of bishops—including Moore—wanted the house to take firmer action against Chambers, but others counseled that he could be used as a “bridge” to meet with the dissidents, and they warned that stern action against him would only harden the revolt.

At Allin’s suggestion, the house set up a committee to seek to restore relationships with the estranged parishes. (About twenty parishes have voted to leave the church. There are dozens of other dissident congregations made up mostly of persons who have left individual churches in various dioceses. A West Palm Beach parish not far from where the bishops were meeting voted to secede. Bishop James Duncan of southern Florida tried to intercede at the last minute, but he was sent packing back to the bishops’ meeting without having been able to speak.)

At one point Allin entertained the possibility of the House of Bishops itself helping the new denomination to get started as a good-will gesture. In order for the dissident Anglican body to be formally organized, it must have a bishop, and it takes three recognized bishops to

consecrate one, according to Episcopal teachings about apostolic succession. Allin’s colleagues quickly dismissed the suggestion. Time later reported that Chambers and two unnamed bishops are now willing to perform consecrations.

In a long pastoral letter, the bishops appealed to the dissidents to return to the church. “It is not necessary for you to leave the Episcopal Church in order to live with your Christian conscience and witness,” they said. The letter points out that there have been many struggles over change throughout the history of the church. It quotes from the house’s conscience statement and says: “We do affirm that one is not a disloyal Episcopalian if he or she abstains from supporting the [women’s ordination] decision or continues to be convinced it was in error.”

On the homosexual ordination issue, the bishops adopted a report by a theology committee headed by Ohio bishop John H. Burt. The report emphasized that “biblical understanding rejects homosexual practice.” Ordaining a practicing homosexual, it said, would “require the church’s sanction of such a life-style not only as acceptable but worthy of emulation.” The paper distinguishes between “advocating and practicing” homosexuals who could not be ordained to the priesthood and persons with a “dominant homosexual orientation” who could be priests if they remained celibate.

The paper also said the church must restrict its “nuptial blessing” to heterosexual marriages, thereby forbidding priests to officiate at unions of homosexual partners. It did advocate better treatment of homosexuals by the church and society in general.

The bishops decided by a vote of 62 to 48 not to censure Moore for ordaining avowed lesbian Ellen Barrett, and they also voted 68 to 49 not to advise California bishop C. Kilmer Myers to refrain from licensing her to minister in his diocese, where she now lives.

At times, the debate surrounding the proposed censure of Moore was bitter. Moore insisted his ordination of Ms. Barrett was “a sign of hope” to the homosexual community. He and others maintained that there are many homosexuals among the Episcopal clergy, and a vote to censure him could lead to a witch hunt.

Other bishops charged that Moore’s action had touched off the worst uproar in the church’s history, and Bishop William C. Frey of Colorado told Moore: “I thought you acted with aristocratic disdain for the rest of us in the church.”

Myers indicated he would proceed to license Ms. Barrett. He said he disagreed with the report of the theology committee, on which he serves. “I strongly object to the notion that celibacy must be enforced upon homosexuals,” he said, adding that he does not think the practice of homosexuality is a sin.

Burt has had to battle with an eight-member task force in his own northern Ohio diocese over the issue. On the eve of the House of Bishops meeting, the task force released its report recommending that practicing homosexuals be ordained and married in the church. It implied that homosexual practice is not sin, saying that “not every word of Scripture can, should, or must be taken literally. Scripture must be viewed in the light in which it is offered and in the context of a culture which we cannot thoroughly understand.”

The group refused to reconsider its findings, as Burt had requested. He challenged the report’s conclusions, arguing for the concepts contained in the statement later adopted by the House of Bishops.

Reactions in the aftermath of the bishops’ meeting in Florida have been mixed. For example, Bishop Rusack of Los Angeles said that what happened there had “opened some doors” to put him in better touch with disgruntled church members who are “on the brink” of joining the breakaway movement. He also said the conscience statement was “a help” to him in dealing with priests in four parishes that have voted to secede (the cases are in civil court).

Allin’s views, however, have prompted a loud outcry from many people in the women’s ordination camp, and some are calling loudly for the presiding bishop’s resignation.

Not so loudly, a number of church members are disappointed with the bishops’ failure to censure Moore. As for Moore himself, he told a diocesan convention after he returned home that he would not ordain any “publicly avowed, practicing homosexual” until further study by a special diocesan commission. He thus cooled some tempers for now but left open the door to challenge later the stand on homosexuality taken by the bishops in Florida—a position on which he abstained from voting.

To The ‘Rescue’

An American Episcopal woman priest, Alison Palmer of Washington, D.C., stirred up a storm in the Church of England last month by administering communion in two Anglican churches without obtaining the permission of Anglican bishops. She is the first woman to administer the sacrament at a public service in Britain.

At the invitation of clergyman Alfred Willetts, rector of the Church of the Apostles in Manchester, and his wife Phoebe, a licensed deaconess, Miss Palmer celebrated communion before a congregation of seventeen men and women at the Manchester church. Later she did the same thing at St. Thomas the Martyr University Church in Newcastle on Tyne, where 100 had gathered.

In letters to several bishops, including Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan (who favors opening the priesthood to women), the Willettses took “full responsibility” for inviting Ms. Palmer to administer communion. Coggan and others were said to be unhappy over the act, and Bishop Patrick Rodger of Manchester said he was considering “what action is to be taken as I view this unlawful proceeding.”

Ms. Palmer, 46, was invited to St. Thomas by the church council, which put what it called “natural justice” ahead of obedience to authority, according to news accounts.

The official position of the Anglican Church on women’s ordination is that it has “no fundamental objection,” but the House of Bishops ruled last year that women ordained abroad in the worldwide Anglican communion—to which American Episcopalians belong—may not officiate in the mother church. The ordination issue is to be considered at next year’s Lambeth Conference, a meeting of all bishops in the Anglican communion held every ten years. Some fear Ms. Palmer’s action may add to the controversy surrounding the question.

Another fear among church officials is that the development may affect ecumenical discussions with church bodies opposed to women priests.

Some of the strongest criticism of Ms. Palmer’s action came from vicar Anthony Duncan of St. John’s Anglican Church in Newcastle. He posted his statement of protest on his church door. He declared that “not only has grave scandal and offense been caused by an act done in flagrant canonical disobedience, but also the whole integrity and certainly the unity of the fellowship of the Church of England in this city has been most wantonly compromised.”

Ms. Palmer was reported to have said she was committed “to rescue my sisters whose call to the ordained ministry is impeded by discrimination.”

Winners

God may have been rooting for both sides in the World Series.

Members of both the Dodgers and the Yankees took time out from crowded schedules and clamoring reporters to attend pre-game chapel services as they had on weekends all year. The Dodgers held their service before game-time on Saturday in Los Angeles. Pastor David Hocking of First Brethren Church in Long Beach spoke on Isaiah 41 and sources of spiritual power. The Yankees met before the game on Sunday and listened to Bill Pannell of Fuller Seminary cite the story of the Good Samaritan to drive home points on acceptance and togetherness. About twenty were at each service.

The meetings were coordinated by Baseball Chapel, an evangelical ministry that assists chapel leaders on each major-league team to line up speakers and offers spiritual-training conferences in the off-season. Cumulative chapel attendance for all the teams this year exceeded 10,000, up 30 per cent from last year, partly because of two new expansion teams, partly because of increased interest.

Chapel leaders for the Dodgers are pitcher Don Sutton and leftfielder Dusty Baker. The regulars include first baseman Steve Garvey, pitchers Tommy John, Doug Rau, and Elias Sosa, shortstop Bill Russell, coach Red Adams, and manager Tom Lasorda.

The sanguine Lasorda, a turned-on Roman Catholic, says he’s found the prime ingredient in managing baseball to be the same thing Solomon sought from the Lord: an understanding heart. After an outstanding inning in a tight game, Dodger players can often be seen in the dugout hugging each other and dancing up and down like a group of bubbling charismatics—with Lasorda in the middle of it all. The manager says he’s “never once regretted loving God.” On the eve of the series he affirmed: “The whole pattern of life is mapped out for us by Jesus Christ. If he wants us to win, he will make it possible.” Whatever, said he, the Lord has brought him to where he is in baseball, and he is forever grateful.

For the Yankees, first baseman Chris Chambliss and pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter are the chapel leaders, assisted by pitcher Don Gullett, shortstop Bucky Dent, second baseman Willie Randolph, leftfielder Lou Piniella, rightfielder Reggie Jackson, and others. When Jackson was with the Oakland A’s, the witness of then manager Alvin Dark—an outspoken Christian—made a strong impact on him as he tried to get his life together, a struggle that still is going on. Jackson sometimes says things he later regrets, but millions of series fans last month heard him put in a good word for the Lord to radio and television newspeople too.

The grudges, moods, and troubles were forgotten for the time being when Jackson socked three successive pitches out of the ballpark, etching his name in the record books and helping to sew up the series for the Yankees.

Perhaps there was cheering even in heaven.

Center Secured

The Center for World Mission, headed by evangelical missiologist Ralph Winter, raised $850,000 in its marathon appeal for funds to purchase the seventeen-acre former campus of Pasadena (Nazarene) College in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

That was enough of the $1.5-million down payment to secure the center’s option to purchase the site. Winter told reporters he expects to have the balance of the down payment on hand by the time escrow closes in April. The successful fund appeal staved off attempts by a syncretistic sect, the Church Universal and Triumphant (also known as Summit International), to purchase the property (see September 23 issue, page 47).

Winter still has a long way to go. The price-tag on the campus is $8.5 million, and he wants to raise an additional $6.5 million to upgrade the facility and to establish an endowment fund. His intention is to create an institution known as William Carey International University with graduate on-campus and extension programs to service the needs of world evangelization. Plans also call for the formation of a network of five evangelical mission centers around the world that would be linked to the university. Efforts, said Winter, would be made not only to help missions and churches around the world but also to integrate the global activities of his organization with those of governments, voluntary organizations, and philanthropies involved in economic development.

Meanwhile, leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant announced her group has purchased a 218-acre parcel in Malibu Canyon north of Hollywood for her group’s Summit Lighthouse University and church headquarters. The property was bought from a Roman Catholic order for $5.6 million. Mrs. Prophet, known to her followers as “Mother,” says the site will be called Camelot and be “a place where people can study Christ and Buddha and realize their potential.”

Both Winter’s and Mrs. Prophet’s organizations have been renting space on the Pasadena campus from the Nazarenes, who moved to San Diego.

A Campaign For Inerrancy

A ten-year effort to study and defend the doctrine of biblical inerrancy was launched in late September with the formation of The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy at a meeting of thirty prominent evangelical leaders and scholars in Chicago. According to published reports, the group intends to educate the evangelical community about the doctrine’s importance, to show that those who deny inerrancy are “out of step” with the Bible and the historic evangelical mainstream, and to effect “institutional changes within seminaries, denominations, mission agencies, and other Christian organizations.” Council members were said to fear that evangelicals could drift into neoorthodoxy by “default” in the absence of information and “clear thinking.” The authority of the Bible rests upon inerrancy, the members contend.

Pastor James M. Boice of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, a noted evangelical scholar and preacher, spearheaded the drive to form the council, and he is its chairman. The Chicago meeting was held without fanfare, and no press releases were issued. Boice, however, briefed Eternity, which published a major report on the council’s emergence in its November issue.

A well-known evangelical organization contributed $10,000 to help underwrite the council’s launching, and several $1,000 gifts came from noted evangelical leaders, said Eternity.

Among the leaders involved in the council are: Jay Adams, John Alexander, Gleason Archer, Bill Bright, Edmund Clowney, W. A. Criswell, Norman Geisler, Harold Hoehner, Donald Hoke, James Kennedy, Elisabeth Leitch, Roger Nicole, J. I. Packer, Harold Ockenga, Robert Preus, Earl Rademacher, Francis Schaeffer, Ray Stedman, R. C. Sproul, and Merrill Tenney. Evangelist Billy Graham has given “unofficial” support, according to Eternity.

Printer’S Error

A Texas newspaper was embarrassed by a printer’s error in a story on the church page. The title of a book that was to be reviewed at a Unitarian women’s meeting was reported as “How to Say ‘No’ to a Baptist and Survive.” It should have been “How to Say ‘No’ to a Rapist and Survive.”

The council plans to hold a summit conference on the inerrancy issue in Chicago next October and to sponsor dialogues on seminary campuses beginning in 1979. Both inerrantists and non-inerrantists are to be included in the dialogues, which will be aimed at clarifying issues and promoting better understanding. “Our desire is to maintain loving dialogue with [the non-inerrantists] rather than to cut them off from fellowship or discussion,” the council is quoted as saying.

Jay Grimstead, the council’s executive director, said his group hopes to avoid the mistakes that some conservatives made in the past. He cited the attitudes of such separatists as Bob Jones and Carl McIntire. “We are committed to speak whatever we speak in a way that will be considered loving, wise, and scholarly,” said Grimstead.

Not everybody is pleased by the council’s existence. Theologian Clark Pinnock, once an ardent inerrancy advocate, told Eternity: “The last thing we need is a ten-year inerrancy campaign. Our concern should be with the blatant liberals who demythologize parts of the Old and New Testaments. The battle needs to be fought, not at Fuller Seminary, but at places like Chicago and Harvard divinity schools.… A campaign for inerrancy will encourage people to avoid the real issues and serve to drive young, clearheaded students away from evangelicalism and into the liberal camp.”

Fuller Seminary is one of the storm centers of the current controversy over inerrancy. In his book, The Battle for the Bible (Zondervan), editor Harold Lindsell, who took part in the Chicago meeting, alleged that some Fuller teachers were loose on Scripture. A counterattack was mounted by Fuller’s faculty. It was led by the seminary’s president, David Hubbard, and resulted in the publication this year of the non-inerrancy-oriented Biblical Authority (Word), edited by Jack Rogers of Fuller.

“We need to spend our energies not in defending a particular theory [of inspiration],” commented Rogers to Eternity, “but on what the Scriptures say themselves and on the Lord of creation, adjusting our lives accordingly.” Hubbard said he welcomed the council’s campaign because “evangelicals should support anything that contributes to a better understanding of Scripture.” But he, too, suggested that the council might miss the “real” issue. Said he: “Rather than speculating on how God inspired the text, we need to explicate what we already find in the text.” He added: “I trust the campaign will be carried out so evangelicals don’t look foolish before the rest of the church and the world.”

Creamed

Singer Anita Bryant, who has gained national attention as a crusader against homosexual rights, was speaking at a press conference in Des Moines when a young man who identified himself as a homosexual hurled a banana cream pie at her from close range. It hit her square in the face and also splattered her husband, Bob Green, who was close by.

“At least it’s a fruit pie,” quipped Miss Bryant, her face and clothing covered with the gooey pie.

Green called on those present not to stop the youth as he dashed from the room. The couple began to pray aloud, saying they forgave the act. “We’re praying for him to be delivered,” said Miss Bryant. Then she lost her composure and began to cry.

Green later came on the youth, who said he was Jim Higgins of Minneapolis, and three friends talking to reporters outside. One of the friends was holding a pie. The singer’s husband grabbed it and shoved it into the face of one of Higgins’s other friends.

Our Brethren In Communist Europe

Discretion and Valour: Religious Conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe, by Trevor Beeson (Collins+World, 1976, 348 pp., $2.95 pb), and Protestants in Russia, by J. H. Hebly (Eerdmans, 1976, 192 pp., $3.65 pb), are reviewed by Alan H. Winquist, assistant professor of history, Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

The problem with studies on the state of the church in Eastern Europe is that they quickly become outdated. Yet the research presents valuable historical background, recent successes and failures, and the differing conditions under which these churches are operating. Both books are highly readable summations, but one must consult more detailed studies on many matters.

Beeson (British journalist and minister) wrote his survey based on data gathered by a team of researchers working for the British Council of Churches. The study, which includes the Christian and Jewish communities of the eight Eastern European communist-controlled nations plus the Soviet Union west of the Urals, does not go beyond events of 1973, the year before it was published in Britain. Also not included is the state of the Moslem faith, the recent growth of the Baptist and Orthodox churches in Siberia and Central Asia, and the Church in Armenia.

Several themes run through Beeson’s study. As the title states, the main church response to continually shifting government religious policies that are particularly confusing and inconsistent in the Soviet Union has been a combination of discretion and valour. In other words, this has taken the form of either responsible accommodation and accepting less than the ideal or of defying the law and the authorities that frequently lead to suffering and even death.

Another thesis is that the Eastern European churches, like those in the West, are experiencing repercussions from increased secularism stemming from the movement of population to urban areas. Beeson believes that decline in church vigor is not caused so much by repressive government policies as by the growth of urbanization, which leads to increased secularism. Beeson notes that there is a wide variety of conditions under which practicing Christians and Jews are living in the East. This is related in no small measure to historical experiences.

I find Beeson’s descriptions of the churches in the satellite countries more interesting than of those in the Soviet Union, mainly because more attention has recently been focused on the latter. Some fascinating facts include the statement that with regard to Poland “probably no country in the world is more tenaciously Catholic.” For example, attendance at Mass on Sundays in urban areas is 77 per cent and in rural areas, 87 per cent. In the German Democratic Republic, the Lutheran Church still owns about half a million acres of agricultural land, Radio GDR broadcasts a religious service every Sunday at 7:30 A.M., and it has more church musicians than in any other country in the world. Furthermore, during World War II many Christians shared prison cells and concentration camp experiences with the communists, resulting in today’s “genuine, but grudging, respect at top level between Church and State in the GDR.” Beeson acknowledges the difficulty experienced by Lutherans in working with young people and in obtaining permission to build new churches.

Filmstrips

Among recent filmstrips on Bible and theology for high schoolers and adults we mention the following. Thomas S. Klise (Box 3418, Peoria, IL, 61614) narrates his own two-part text for Understanding Genesis. It covers the first eleven chapters, with a cursory commentary on the rest. The Klise Company puts out a mixed line of productions, some good and others evangelicals are unlikely to use. This is one of the latter. Combining a light jazz background, an almost disdainful manner of speaking, and striking yet interesting modern art (a lot of stark angularity and collages), Klise is newly excited about some hoary critical theories on Genesis’ genesis. It is a curious stew of truths, half truths, and non-truths.

The line of another Catholic firm, Paulist Press (545 Island Rd., Ramsey, NJ, 07446), also has to be studied and sifted, but its new series on the four Gospels is characterized by reverence, insight, and attractive packaging. Faithful to the Scriptures, the titles are Matthew: Discipleship, Mark: Christian Kerygma, Luke: Prayer and Social Apostolate, and John: Spirituality and Sacrament.

Biblical personalities, for example David: King of the Jews are popular. Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation (425 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60611) produced this filmstrip. It begins with its left foot, “Fact and legend have merged in the Bible, and much of what the book says combines these two.” After that ungainly beginning the story of David is quite biblical. There is only one further misstep—the unjustified word if. “If David killed the Philistine giant Goliath, he did it about this time. No one is quite sure how he did it, or even if he did it.” Deborah, Ruth, and Esther from the Old Testament, and Mary of Magdala from the New Testament, are the focus of four filmstrips, Women of the Bible by Family Films (1422 Lahark St., Panorama City, CA, 91406).

Living God and Dead Gods (Klise) is an interesting discussion for relatively sophisticated lay persons. It takes the position that “death of God” talk refers to a cultural or anthropological question rather than a theological one and that it refers to the decay and looming demise of Western civilization. It further states that the “death of God” theologians are making observations about man rather than God. This is altogether too facile, for most “death of God” theologians mean what they say. The content will provoke spirited disagreement. The artistic standards of Klise are unfailingly high.

The ambitious “Images” series by Klise is also noteworthy for its highly charged ambiguity. Yet the artists in four sets of eight filmstrips have achieved unity in diversity.

In Images of Christ the starting point of each filmstrip is the Bible, but it quickly mutates into a sharp sense of nowness in our understanding of Christ. We don’t believe in a static Christ, but there are moments when this series comes close to indentifying him with every process from cosmos to comic strip. The secularizing spirit is unmistakable.

The author strains Images of Revelation through the sieve of human reflection. He notes that “there is but one world, redeemed yet ever redeemable; a world in which and, indeed, through which God’s last word has been spoken by the Incarnation.”

Images of Love is an extraordinary series on the meanings of love. The filmstrip on marriage uses verses from the Song of Solomon. However, many evangelical churches will not approve of it, while others will find this exciting.

Images of the Future is a series of moral tracts for the times. It has an obvious Roman Catholic point of view. It is also in step with the developing pseudo-science of futurism. However, the questions it raises are real and need to be answered. The Other Side and Sojourners people will applaud the substance of these filmstrips, but the rest of us cannot afford to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear.

In sum, this is a brilliant quartet. In one sense Klise has taken a genuine risk. Because of his relevance, will this series be useful in five years? “Images” has all the makings of a gorgeous dud.

DALE SANDERS

Portland, Oregon

The study shows the current large-scale Christian (Orthodox and Protestant) activity in Romania, and the free availability of Bibles in Hungary. Yet the author also takes note of the bleak Albanian situation.

Both Beeson and Hebly (a Dutch churchman whose book was published in the Netherlands in 1973) stress the current importance of religious life in the Soviet Union. Figures are hard to come by but Beeson’s conservative estimate is that thirty million people attend Russian Orthodox services. Hebly’s account of Russian Protestants (more correctly the Evangelical Christian and Baptist movement; he does not study other Protestants such as the Lutherans) is divided into two parts: the historic background (heavily influenced by nineteenth-century German Baptists) prior to the 1917 Revolution, and the story of Protestantism during the fifty years since that event. The Bolshevik Revolution was looked upon by Russian Protestants as a genuine liberation, and in fact the church came into its own between 1917–1929. In the 1920’s, there was even an attempt to establish a city for believers in Siberia, an idea that initially had the government’s blessings. But suddenly in 1929 religious repression came that lasted until the 1941 German invasion.

The Union of Evangelical Christians and Baptists was founded in 1944. In 1963 the Mennonites joined it. Today this organization is active but divided into two camps, the registered congregations and the non-registered (or Initsiativniki). The latter group has been increasingly protesting against government interference in religious life, and includes dissenters such as Georgi Vins, who has received much attention in the West but who is given sketchy attention by Hebly. Michael Bourdeaux’s Religious Ferment in Russia should be consulted for a better understanding of this group.

Hebly’s appendix, “Between Loyalty and Martyrdom,” includes interesting evaluations of certain individuals such as Romanian evangelist Richard Wurmbrand. Hebly thinks Wurmbrand paints a distorted picture of an organized underground church and is “no trustworthy source of information.” He concludes his short study by asking Western Christians not to pass quick judgments on the extremely difficult position faced by believers in the Soviet Union. These people, the author states, are struggling “to continue to exist as an organism—the only one in the U.S.S.R.—that has its roots in soil other than the official monopolistic ideology.”

Hebly identifies his sources, many of which were written in German, but unfortunately he does not include an index. Both authors present fascinating facts on the state of believers in the East, and their studies are recommended for those who are seeking brief, readable surveys. I hope that future studies will be more analytical rather than just overviews and updates on our Christian brethren in Eastern Europe.

God’S Grace

Free for the Taking, by Joseph R. Cooke (Revell, 1975, 190 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Gerald Hawthorne, professor of Greek, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The sub-title of this fascinating volume, “The Life-Changing Power of Grace,” clarifies the meaning of its catchy title. But don’t let this explanation dissuade you from reading the book. This is not another discussion of an already overworked topic.

Joseph R. Cooke, a professor of Far Eastern Languages at the University of Washington, not only carefully defines grace from a biblical perspective, but movingly illuminates its meaning from his own personal experience. Born into a Christian home, taught in Christian schools (including a theological school), surrounded by Christian friends, himself a committed Christian, commissioned as a missionary to Thailand, Cooke found one day that he was tragically at the end of the road. He suffered a nervous breakdown and could not do any of the things for which he had prepared himself—teaching, preaching, facing even the least spiritual challenge such as reading his Bible or praying. He felt himself of no use to God, to his wife, to himself, to anyone.

Free for the Taking, however, is not the story of his long slow climb back to life and hope. Rather the book details the one thing that was most crucial in his upward progress to wholeness—a new understanding and appreciation on his part of the grace of God, and a renewed commitment, this time a joyful and an intelligent one, to the God of grace.

The book begins with a familiar definition: grace is “unmerited favor.” But it proceeds in a fresh and captivating way to make us understand the creative power of this undeserved divine favor in daily living. Grace and legalism, grace and sin, grace and guilt, grace and destructive hostile feelings, grace in the family, and the church and society are just some of the ideas he discusses. As he writes he gently probes almost every sore spot in a Christian’s life, and like a physician he gently and uniquely applies to it the poltice of God’s love and forgiveness—grace.

The book’s only weakness is the chapter on “Grace in Society.” Cooke admits that he does not have the ability to deal adequately with this subject, but tries anyway. As a consequence he writes idealistically, theoretically, and superficially on the topic. He could have strengthened his book by omitting the chapter.

In spite of that, Free for the Taking is a helpful study. It is valuable for any person who seriously struggles with the demands of the Christian life, or more correctly, with the misconceived demands of the Christian life. If its message is heeded at all it will be a catalyst for a liberating, life-changing experience.

John Bunyan Misunderstood

Puritan’s Progress, by Monica Furlong, (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975, 223 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Tom Nettles, assistant professor of church history, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

This book attempts to trace the intellectual development of John Bunyan. But don’t expect bread from Furlong’s Puritan’s Progress; you’ll only break your teeth on the stone. The lack of sustenance is only one of the disappointments. The sophomoric theological statements, the potpourri of amateurish psychoanalysis, the disastrous historiography, and the debilitating latitudinarianism intensify the frustration for the discriminating reader.

After a depressingly simplistic, though sometimes perceptive, chapter entitled “The Puritans” Furlong in two successive chapters traces the life of Bunyan. First she describes his childhood, early struggles with guilt, conversion, and the discovery of his gift of preaching. The next chapter recounts the persecution of dissenters under the Clarendon Code, Bunyan’s imprisonments, the order of his writings, and his death. The biographical section is not an end in itself but provides the context for a discussion of Bunyan’s writing.

Furlong summarizes Pilgrim’s Progress (parts I and II), Mr. Badman, and The Holy War. She has done as well as could be expected with this necessary task. The author would agree that even the noblest synopsis of Pilgrim’s Progress is a disappointing representation of the real thing. Mr. Badman and The Holy War do not suffer as much, since they do not reach the same heights of genius as Pilgrim’s Progress. Furlong makes some pertinent observations about Bunyan’s style, purpose, and possible motivation and she weaves these gracefully into her condensation of his works.

Chapters seven and eight suffer most from Furlong’s non-evangelical stance. “The Belief of Bunyan” reveals Furlong’s perplexity concerning the supposed contradiction between Bunyan’s personal warmth and the coolness of his Calvinistic theology. She cannot see that Bunyan’s acceptance of a God who is both judge and justifier might arise from devotion to Scripture rather than from a mild case of paranoid schizophrenia. In “The Mind of Bunyan” Furlong violates the canons of historiography and greatly diminishes the integrity of her research. She applies the conclusions of Erikson’s psychological study of the young Luther uncritically and unilaterally to Bunyan even though there is no evidence for such application, which she admits at one point. Just to make sure that she finds the right psychological pigeon-hole she also applies the emphasis of Sheldon’s body types: Bunyan is a mesomorph and thus manifests a temperament characterized by somatatonia. She also includes Evans’s Freudian analysis that anality played a very important part in Bunyan’s life as it did in the development of all Puritans and was doubtless instrumental in Luther’s formulation of the doctrine of justification by faith. Jung’s psychological process called “individuation” caps off Bunyan’s development. Although college freshmen taking introduction to psychology would be impressed, she would do better to ask with Menninger, “Whatever happened to sin?”

By far the strongest chapter concerns the influence of Bunyan. Furlong adroitly wends her way from Ben Johnson to e.e. cummings and notes the ebb and flow of Bunyan’s popularity. Southey, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Alcott, Shaw, and Lamb are all mentioned.

Finally, Furlong tries to summarize the strengths of Puritanism as expressed by Bunyan. To be sure, according to the author one must wade through a slough of errors to find the celestial strength, but we modems can easily enough reject the errors of Puritanism. However, Puritanism does provide the high drama, catharsis, and individual meaning we so desperately need. She says that Bunyan eventually achieved a balance in life; he “found the liberation of wholeness towards which all men blindly struggle.” Furlong would have understood Bunyan better had she realized that his pilgrimage was not the struggle of one determined by psychological stimuli, but the progress of one who “walked by faith and not by sight.”

Bible Translations: General And Particular

Good News for Everyone: How to Use the Good News Bible, by Eugene A. Nida (Word, 1977, 119 pp., $3.25 pb), is reviewed by Harry Boonstra, director of libraries, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

Nida’s book is partly a commercial. It calls attention to and explains several features of the Good News Bible, such as the introductions, notes, and line drawings. Nida, who is in charge of translations for the American Bible Society, also gives interesting information about the translation personnel (including nick names), the schedule of the translation, and the huge distribution of the New Testament portion. There are also some jibes at the King James Version (which, it seems, can absorb all the jibing in majestic imperturbability) and at the Living Bible (which continues to sell very well). Add to this the testimonials of satisfied customers, and one has all the makings of a sales pitch.

But the book is more than sales pitch and therefore one is justified in buying what otherwise comes free. It has a description of committee translation and a lucid explanation of contemporary translation theory. Although Nida has already set forth these principles in his Theory and Practice of Translation, most of these concepts are here discussed in a more succinct manner.

The fundamental notion of “dynamic equivalence” is distinguished from both literal translation and from paraphrase. Nida illustrates the concept with many examples, focusing on Psalm 23 in some detail. The chapter discussing “territories of meaning” and “semantic components” is more technical, but certainly not beyond the comprehension of perceptive and persistent readers. Nida sums up the intent of dynamic equivalence by suggesting that “in a sense, a Bible translation into English should seem as though the original account had been written in English and not in Greek or Hebrew.” The rest of the discussion considers specific translation problems and is illustrated with Good News Bible solutions. Chapters five and six explore the departures from some traditional renderings, such as “young girl” for “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 and “universe” for “heavens and earth.” Nida has a helpful treatment of what translation theorists call “pseudo concordance” (one Greek term always to be translated by the same English word), and here defends the different Good News Bible renderings for haima (“blood”). Chapter eight deals with measurements, geographic and biological designations, and other cultural aspects; chapter nine is a brief discussion of texts and textual problems.

The old precept that one need not completely agree with an author yet still benefit from him is especially true of Nida’s book. One reads and hears so much impassioned but ignorant debate about different Bible versions; here is an opportunity to learn about the purpose of contemporary Bible translations. Even if one never uses the Good News Bible (which would be a shame), one can still derive many helpful insights.

The Growing Disciple

What Every Christian Should Know About Growing, by Leroy Eims (Victor, 1976, 168 pp., $1.95 pb), and A Guidebook to Discipleship, by Doug Hartman and Doug Sutherland (Harvest House, 1976, 173 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Pamela Broughton, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Now that I have accepted Christ, what effect is this going to have on my life? In order to answer this common question, a person must know something about what the Christian life means in general, and the meaning of a Christ-centered life in particular.

LeRoy Eims, director of evangelism with the Navigators, provides a step-by-step guide for developing a closer relationship with the Lord. Eims stresses that maturity is an ongoing process dependent on the Holy Spirit’s working in a believer’s life and provides insight as to how this can work practically. I had the impression while reading this book that he is talking to a close friend who is vitally interested in my growth and understanding. The strength of this book is the blend of Scripture and experience to help the new believer gain the basic skills that are needed for a fruitful Christian walk.

The book by Hartman and Sutherland is designed to help every Christian become a more effective disciple. One of the concepts of discipleship that they stress is the distinction between relational and terminal thinking. Simply put, the former relates knowledge and activities to an ultimate goal, while the latter does not. The careful and thorough organization of this work makes it useful for churches in structuring a discipling ministry.

For Christmas Giving

Modern Concordance to the New Testament

edited by Michael Darton (Doubleday, 788 pp., $27.50) claims to be a new approach, not keyed to the words in some particular version (usually the King James) but instead keyed to the ideas represented by one or more Greek terms and by countless terms in the various English translations. As such it is similar to the numerous, competing topical indexes to the Bible. The key distinctives are: (1) the large page size, with each Scripture quotation allotted a line or two instead of being crowded one right after the other; and (2) the arrangement, under major headings, of the verses grouped together by the underlying Greek word, then subdivided by the topical idea. For example, the major heading “Love” is divided into agape and related terms, then “love of God,” etc., and then into philos and related terms, then again “love of God,” etc. This serves, therefore, as a topical concordance in which the Greek is given prominence, but not at the expense of making it too difficult to use as an index to what the New Testament has to say on a given subject. There are several indexes to help you find a word that is not where you might expect. “Forgiveness,” for example, is a subdivision under “Mercy, Pity.” It takes getting used to, but it is easy to imagine this book being of great service to the serious Bible student.

The Eerdmans’ Handbook to the History of Christianity edited by Tim Dowley (Eerdmans, 656 pp., $19.95) is an excellent gift for the whole family. Pictures and charts, mostly with color, abound on every page. The book invites browsing. But the text is both readable and accurate, too. If you only have one church history book, this should be it.

The Good News Bible, also known as Today’s English Version, was a multi-million seller in its New Testament portion, Good News for Modern Man. The whole Bible was published in inexpensive editions by the American Bible Society late last year. Now a complete range of editions, from children’s to leather-bound, are available from Thomas Nelson and from Collins-World. Broadman has a much more limited selection. It is expected that other publishers will soon be adding this widely commended translation to their lines. Watch the ads and check with your local booksellers.

A revised edition of the English translation of volume two of Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, has recently been released (Eerdmans, 488 pp., $18.50). The first edition appeared in 1975 but was not sold through normal channels. The articles are on fifty-eight Hebrew word groups from “separation” to “uncover, emigrate.” This series will doubtless prove to be as important to Biblical studies as its counterpart known as “Kittel.”

Volume two, covering terms from “gall” to “present,” is available of The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology edited by Colin Brown (Zondervan, 1023 pp., $27.95). For a favorable review of the first volume see September 10, 1976, issue, page 50. One more volume is yet to come.

For someone learning Greek, or wishing to review what he’s learned, a useful aid is New Testament Greek Notebook by Benjamin Chapman (Baker, 131 pp., $9.95). It is a medium-size three-ring notebook with several sections summarizing vocabulary, grammar, inflections, and principles of exegesis and textual variations. Much space is left for inserting one’s own notes from classroom and personal study.

Another translation of the whole Bible is now available: The Holy Bible in the Language of Today by the late William F. Beck (Holman, 1447 pp., $8.95). The New Testament was released in 1963. The Old Testament was completed in 1966, the year of Beck’s death, but editing delayed it until release last year by a minor firm and this year by Holman.

Scholarly Study Of The Life Of Jesus

Jesus Through Many Eyes by Stephen Neill (Fortress, 1976, 214 pp., $5.50 pb), and Jesus in Contemporary Research by Gustaf Aulén (Fortress, 1976, 167 pp., $7.95), are reviewed by Peter H. Davids, assistant professor of biblical studies, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.

When two distinguished scholars write summaries of the state of New Testament research, one must take notice. Even more noteworthy is the fact that both scholars have done much of their work in other fields; yet they clearly demonstrate their competence in this one. Each person brings a freshness and new perspective into his New Testament scholarship.

Neill introduces New Testament theology and brings to his brief textbook both his customary lucidity and the warmth of his personal faith. He pursues his goal by surveying the teaching of each group of New Testament literature (arranged by date and church of origin) and concluding with a discussion of the teaching of Jesus.

What sets this book apart is that it arrives at its modest goal. Neill clearly presents his mainline-British, moderate, critical position with an admirable clarity (which makes the book readable) to those both to his right and left. He clearly knows the full range of scholarly thought, a fact that becomes especially apparent when one pursues his selected bibliography, which in classified groupings leads the student on to wider reading in both older and more modern works coming from the pens of evangelical (e.g., F. F. Bruce, G. E. Ladd, I. H. Marshall) and “radical” (e.g., D. E. Nineham, R. Bultmann, N. Perrin) scholars alike. Rarely has this reviewer seen such a catholicity and concentrated quality in one bibliography.

Now one cannot pretend that this book is without weaknesses. First, its brevity means that it lacks the detail and comprehensive presentation of contrasting positions that a scholar would like. Can one adequately discuss Paul’s letters in thirty-four pages under the heads of resurrection, spirit, and reconciliation? Probably not. But then the book only claims to be an introduction and there are suggestions for further reading. Second, not everyone will agree with Neill’s critical position, especially his conclusions on the historical value of the Gospels. I am sympathetic with many of his conclusions about the historical Jesus (e.g., the genuineness of the Son of Man sayings), but he wonders if Neill’s warm faith has not pushed him beyond his critical presuppositions in reaching them. Most evangelical teachers will want to read this book and use its bibliography, but when they recommend it as an introduction, it will be as an introduction to a position with which they do not entirely agree.

Aulén differs from Neill in three ways: he focuses on Jesus, not the whole New Testament; he purposes to cut the ground from under imaginative reconstructions of Jesus (due to a perceived disarray in modern scholarship); and he writes as a Scandinavian with a warm appreciation for the role of Scandinavian scholarship. These differences make his book unique.

In sorting out positions on Jesus Aulén focuses on three areas of agreement: “Jesus’ central message about the ‘kingdom of God’ which was about to come, and his own personal relation to that event; the content of Jesus’ ethical proclamation; and important traits in his behavior and relationship to the different streams within his own Jewish milieu.” As part of his basic approach to demonstrating agreement he compares the results of H. Braun to those of W. D. Davies and B. Gerhardsson. He does indeed show large areas of agreement, and he continues to do so when he adds a medley of other scholars, including C. H. Dodd, J. Jeremias, U. Wilkins, R. W. Funk, and N. Perrin. New Testament scholarship as a whole does have something positive to say about Jesus. One can only applaud this result and enjoy the way he firmly rejects the arguments of W. Schmithals in defense of a Bultmannian barrier between historical research and faith. Jesus research is not only legitimate, Aulén argues, but it is also possible.

Yet while enjoying the consensus that he produces and being stimulated by his argument, one looks for something more solid on which to take a stand, for these “assured results of critical scholarship” never overcome the dichotomy between faith and history. The nature of the resurrection is still simply the object of faith, not of historical analysis (which can only assert that the apostles did experience appearances of Christ) and the Gospel narratives are still more the report of Easter faith than a trustworthy witness to Jesus.

Both Neill and Aulén, then, have produced something of value to the evangelical. Neill will serve as a useful and moderate introduction to where New Testament scholarship is today. He could help a pastor “catch up” or a seminary class get started. Aulén is for thoughtful reading by both pastor and scholar. His Scandinavian point-of-view will be appreciated and his state-of-the-search-report will suggest useful starting points. But the evangelical will want to go beyond both in his encounter with the living Jesus so trustworthily set forth in the Gospel accounts.

New Journal

The Evangelical Review of Theology was launched by the World Evangelical Fellowship with a 174-page issue dated October, 1977. Intended for a global audience, about a dozen articles, mostly reprinted from small-circulation journals, along with a few book reviews, are in the first issue. This journal belongs not only in all theological libraries around the world but also in the libraries of any university where religion is taught. The low price facilitates personal subscriptions. It is to be published each April and October (World Evangelical Fellowship, Box 670, Colorado Springs, CO, 80901; $4/year).

I was in Latin America when The Myth of God Incarnate (edited by John Hick) was published in faraway London (see September 9 issue, page 45 and September 23 issue, page 30). But within a day or two the ripples (even shock waves?) had reached Argentina, and people were asking me if English churchmen were still Christians. (In the United States the book is published by Westminster Press.)

The book is unworthy of its highly competent contributors. Of course, every symposium is uneven, but this one contains several inner contradictions. My problem with the book concerns the questions of language, authority, and heresy.

Language

First, the debate is confused by a failure to agree on the meaning of the word “myth” and to distinguish between substance and form, or doctrine and language. Sometimes “mythical” is used quite harmlessly to mean no more than “poetic” or “symbolic.” Frances Young contrasts “myth” with “science” in the sense that religious reality is inaccessible to scientific investigation, indefinable in human language, and inconceivable to the finite mind. Her use of the word “myth” may be injudicious, but we have no quarrel with her and others’ desire to preserve the element of mystery in Christian faith and experience. Maurice Wiles makes a conscious attempt to define the term, though he admits it is “loose and elusive.” He takes four biblical doctrines (creation, fall, incarnation-atonement, and resurrection-judgment) and argues that to call any of these a “myth” implies that there is “some ontological truth” which corresponds to the central characteristic of the myth and some “appropriateness” about it. The weakness of his argument may be judged when he goes on to write of the “Incarnation myth.” Despite the variant uses of the word myth all the contributors deny that Jesus either claimed to be or was the God-man of historic Christianity. The book airily dismisses the claims of Jesus on the ground that they are Johannine not synoptic. No serious attempt is made to face the claims—often indirect rather than direct—that the Synoptic Gospels do record or explain how ho kurios, the Septuagint title for Yahweh, could be applied to Jesus so early and without controversy, as in the Pauline epistles, which indicated that the divine lordship of Jesus, demanding worship and obedience, was already the universal faith of the church.

Authority

The contributors don’t recognize the authority of the New Testament. They have no objective standard or criterion by which to test their views. The book is divided into two halves, “testing the sources” and “testing the development,” but the sources are not the New Testament documents against which the later development of doctrines is assessed. New Testament writers and patristic writers are quoted without any distinction drawn between them.

What, then, are the sources of incamational belief? Michael Goulder constructs an ingenious but largely unsupported theory that it arose from “the Galilean eschatological myth” and “the Samaritan gnostical myth” (the latter emanating from Simon Magus) in dialectic with one another. Instead of these “two roots” Frances Young prefers “a tangled mass” of divine births, claims, titles, appearances, and expectations—pagan and Jewish—all creating a “cultural atmosphere” conducive to the deification of Jesus.

Granted such an atmosphere, what sparked off belief in the Incarnation of God in Jesus? The authors reply that it was an experience of salvation through Jesus. There was no “revelation,” only an inference from their experience. The same is true today, they say. They retain some kind of commitment to Jesus because he means something special to them.

Now we evangelicals have ourselves often stressed that creed without experience is valueless. Nevertheless, to base creed upon experience is a very different and a very precarious practice.

Heresy

What should the contemporary church do with heretics? Is that a harsh word? I think not. A humble and reverent probing into the mystery of the Incarnation is the essence of true Christological scholarship. But attempted reconstructions that effectively destroy that which is supposed to be being reconstructed is Christological heresy.

Let me defend my question further. It is based on three convictions: there is such a thing as heresy, that is, a deviation from fundamental, revealed truth; heresy “troubles” the Church, while truth edifies it, and therefore if we love the truth and the Church we cannot fold our arms and do nothing.

The purity of the Church (ethical and doctrinal) is as much a proper Christian quest as its unity. Indeed we should be seeking its unity and purity simultaneously.

I do not myself think a heresy trial is the right way to approach this. Heretics are slippery creatures. They tend to use orthodox language to clothe their heterodox views. Besides, in our age of easy tolerance, the arraigned heretic becomes in the public mind first the innocent victim of bigoted persecutors, then a martyr, and then a hero or saint. But there are other ways to proceed. The New Testament authors are concerned not so much about false brethren as about false teachers, who act like wolves and scatter or destroy Christ’s flock. Although the contributors to The Myth of God Incarnate are academics, most of them are also ordained Anglican clergymen who hold a bishop’s license to preach. Is it too much to hope and pray that some bishop sometime will have the courage to withdraw his license from a presbyter who denies the Incarnation? This would not be an infringement of civil or academic liberty. A man may believe, say, and write what he pleases in the country and the university. But in the church it is reasonable and right to expect all accredited teachers to teach the faith that the church in its official formularies confesses and that (incidentally) they have themselves promised to uphold.

There is a second and more positive step to take. The apostles’ response to the rise of false teachers was partly to warn the churches not to listen to them or be led astray by them, and partly to arrange for the multiplication of true teachers. Thus, Paul told Titus to appoint presbyters in every town who were loyal to the apostolic teaching, so that they might be able both “to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it” (Tit. 1:5,9). It is in this connection that we must congratulate Michael Green on the speed and sagacity with which he assembled his team of authors to write the answering symposium The Truth of God Incarnate. Heresy cannot be finally overcome by any force except that of the truth. So there is today an urgent need for more dedicated Christian scholars who will give their lives to “the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil. 1:7).

JOHN R.W. STOTT

Mommy, what’s the difference between a lima bean and a human bean?” The question brought a lift on the first frosty morning of the season. The grass shone white and beautiful. But the frost was too early. It left row after row of blackened, shriveled, despondent green and yellow beans in our Alpine vegetable garden. The day before I had looked expectantly at the thriving green leaves and sturdy plants—tiny beans that needed only a few more days of sunshine to ripen. I bought boxes to freeze the beans for Thanksgiving dinner and many winter meals. I thought of cutting the crisp beans in diagonal pieces or long french-cut bundles. I wondered how long it would take for the big orange blossoms to turn into zucchini and for the small green tomatoes to grow big and ripe.

But while we slept the frost came, leaving behind a crisp beauty that belied ruined crops. Yet the cabbage, carrots, beets, broccoli, lettuce, celery, onions, parsley, and dill survived. The resistance level to frost differs from plant to plant. The warm sunny days that follow the cold ones can cause more growth in the plants that resisted the first frost. But beans can’t make a comeback. For them the frost came too soon.

“The difference, darling?” I replied. “Well, a lima bean and a green string bean and yellow snap beans are all vegetables. We grow them, pick them, and eat them. A human bean is not a bean at all dear, but a being. A being is a person, like you and me. We can think and walk, and when we get cold we can seek shelter, a place to go out of the wind and frost, or we can put on a coat to wrap around us. To save our beans from freezing last night we should have thought for them and covered them with burlap bags.”

The dead leaves were reminders of Christians for whom the frost came too soon, and for whom no friend provided any burlap bags. Sturdier Christians must shield more frail ones.

The frost came too soon. The dead leaves reminded me of Christians for whom the frost came too soon, and for whom no friend spread burlap bags. The sturdier plants can’t protect the beans, but sturdier Christians can do something about protecting the more frail ones—and they are meant to. Not one of us is strong. We all need to ask the Lord for his strength in our weakness, moment by moment, to get on with what we are doing. We also need to help each other, especially those who are weaker than we are. Very tender plants, very young Christians, or very frail Christians need understanding and love, longsuffering and kindness, and the hospitality of other Christians. Remember that Paul spoke with great appreciation of three men: “I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus: for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied. For they have refreshed my spirit and yours” (1 Cor. 16:17, 18). Even Paul needed the loving care of other Christians. The “be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted” of Ephesians 4:32 does not only speak of forgiving as God has forgiven us for Christ’s sake, but it tells us to express kindness and tenderheartedness toward other Christians when they need it. That means sharing time and energy, as well as material things.

A burlap bag does not take the place of sunshine, but a burlap bag can keep the frost from hurting a plant. If the garden is large and the most fragile plants numerous, the problem is having enough burlap bags to protect them. When I hear of wilting Christians I think that no one has been willing to be a burlap bag in time. Each of us should be a burlap bag for someone else. Only the Lord can be our sunshine. But there are times when the frost permeates the garden and touches certain plants more than others. A plant can only be a plant; we can be both plant and burlap bag.

Hospitality? God asks that of us all. It is to be a burlap bag for some other Christian. It means giving your time and energy as well as your money for someone else.

The command in John 13:34, 35—“That ye love one another … By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples”—needs to be coupled with First Peter 4:8, 9—“And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves.… Use hospitality one to another without grudging.” These strong commands are meant to be practical. A burlap bag can’t cover much territory at one time; only a few plants can come under its shelter. Peter’s thoughts on hospitality tell us how to be a burlap bag. What does hospitality mean to you? Having a few people come to Sunday lunch? Inviting someone for tea or coffee to talk for an hour or two? Opening your home for a person in need to stay for a few days? Stopping to talk with a neighbor about the wonder of the Bible? Visiting someone in a hospital? What really is needed is sensitivity to the frost in the air, and to cheerfully become a burlap bag.

As I was writing this, a nurse called me. She was depressed and discouraged as she faced the beginning of a two-week stretch of night duty. How can a person write about being a burlap bag and not go ahead and be one at first opportunity? Hospitality can happen on the phone. We talked and then we prayed together for each other. There we were, both plants and burlap bags.

We need to do the Word of God. As we see ourselves as plants and burlap bags we will be fruitful. In Second Peter 1:5–8 we are told to “add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity.” By doing these things we can avoid a shriveled harvest.

A significant amount of attention has been given this year to the publication of Simone Pétrement’s biography Simone Weil, A Life in an English translation (Pantheon). This publicity is a further illustration of English and American interest in the life-pattern, as well as the religious and philosophical thought, of the French mystic who died at thirty-four in 1943 in a heroically futile gesture. (Suffering from tuberculosis and in despair because she was not permitted to leave England and return to occupied France, she refused to eat more than the workers in France and died of starvation.)

This is a lengthy and detailed chronology, written by one of Weil’s closest friends with the approval of the Weil family. I do not consider it a literary biography because the over-riding contradictions and the mythic and metaphoric patterns of Weil’s remarkable but flawed life do not stand out for the reader to see readily. Pétrement does indeed offer us interpretation and clarification of detail because of her extensive research, but the reader is often weighed down by the wealth of quoted materials, particularly the militant articles written for various union periodicals and papers in the early 1930’s. Further, the translation is sometimes marred by awkwardness and literalness. American readers without some knowledge of French culture may have difficulty in retaining interest in chapters one through twelve. (Here Pétrement clarifies Weil’s roots within the chaos between the two world wars, the influence of her teacher Alain upon her, the details of her militant leftist and union activities, and her movement away from pacifism.) The war years constitute a compelling story as Weil’s personal destiny becomes a reflection of the tragedy of Europe as she knew it.

Weil always had a sense of vocation that led her to identify with the oppressed and brought her a certain notoriety in pre-war France. As a philosophy professor she participated in workers’ demonstrations during the depression; she took a leave of absence from teaching to work in various factories. By 1939, however, she had rejected Marxist doctrine, the concept of the political party, and modern bureaucratic organization. Her vision turned from the future to the past as she used Greek culture in particular as a springboard for much of her social commentary. Despite her agnostic background, she had come to a mystical experience of the love and presence of Christ. She saw the crucified Christ as the embodiment of the complete identification of God with the afflicted and oppressed.

Despite Weil’s agnostic background, she had experienced the love and presence of Christ. She saw the crucified Christ as identifying with the afflicted and oppressed.

Interpreters tend to categorize Simone Weil according to their particular biases: social and political theorist and activist, theist with Platonic and Gnostic roots, Christian mystic and female Christ-figure, brilliant thinker given to extravagant and heroic follies, or neurotic given over to a desire for self-immolation once France was occupied. The strength of the completeness of Pétrement’s work is that she lets the reader glimpse all these facets of Weil’s life. The reader is left to grapple with her complexity. If Simone Weil thought that “it is only heroes of real purity, the saints and geniuses, who can help the afflicted” (The Simone Weil Reader, David McKay), it is clear that she felt called as one of that group. Weil’s parents seem to have spent a lot of time in rescuing their daughter from her self-imposed sufferings, but Pétrement testifies that her friend was extraordinary; the luminosity of her presence lifted those who knew her beyond themselves.

The bulk of Weil’s writings that have made her reputation date from the end of her life, the years 1940–1943. In London she apparently wrote with the inspiration of one who senses the impending call of death. George Panichas has edited a useful anthology, based on material that has already appeared in translation. Some of these essays have been difficult to obtain, so that this collection is most welcome. Panichas has written appropriate explanatory material to accompany Weil’s works, emphasizing that she was a prophetic social critic, able to perceive the evil of the existing social order only because of her metaphysical vision. He calls her “the great Christian Hellenist of modern times” but notes the heterodoxy of her thought. In choosing to emphasize the spiritual force of Weil’s thought, Panichas does not suggest the full nature of her evolution as a thinker; his generalizations do not permit him to analyze the rich nuances of her thought.

For readers encountering Weil for the first time, I would recommend these sections in Panichas’s anthology: “Spiritual Autobiography,” “Sketch of Contemporary Social Life,” “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” “Factory Work,” “Last Thoughts,” “Analysis of Oppression,” “The Iliad, Poem of Might,” “Up-rootedness and Nationhood,” “The Power of Words,” “The Responsibility of Writers,” “Human Personality,” “Love,” “Metaxu,” “Beauty,” “The Love of God and Affliction,” and “Concerning the Our Father.”

Simone Weil was pessimistic about the centralization of power in an increasingly bureaucratic and technological society that destroys regionalism and kills the worker’s freedom and dignity. In this she was prophetic. She was theistic in her postulation of the source of good (God) outside the world and in her theory of creation as a process of de-creation as God withdrew from the world, which was in him, allowing it to function by the rigorous law of necessity. She was Christian in acknowledging the sacred, impersonal impulse toward good within the individual that is converted into love as Christ seizes the spirit of the person who focuses his full attention on God and waits for grace. Grace counteracts the gravity of necessity. Weil’s social and religious thought offers material for an interesting comparison with our more orthodox contemporary, Jacques Ellul.

Patricia Ward is associate professor of French and comparative literature, the Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

A Christian family with college-bound members faces hard choices today. To attend a local public university or well-endowed private college may cost a modest amount of money, perhaps the price of a compact car. If the family chooses a Christian private college, however, the price may be more like that of a fine luxury car.

Christian colleges should be incubators of Christian thought and perspective in all areas of life. They should stimulate Christian service to the church and the secular community. They are hardly a luxury, if we are serious about the commands of Scripture to subdue the earth and to manage its physical and human resources to God’s glory.

But the idea of luxury persists and will continue to persist because, with rising costs, the average family that chooses Christian higher education for its children will probably have to forego big and second cars, a boat, long vacations, and other luxuries we have learned to consider necessities. In one sample of good Christian colleges, the average cost for an academic year—tuition, room, board, fees—rose from $3,000 in 1973 to $3,800 in 1977.

A Christian college education doesn’t cost more than a secular education. The difference is who pays the price—the taxpayer, or the student and his parent. How do colleges without governmental subsidies pay their bills and meet their ever-increasing obligations? A recent sampling of good Christian colleges revealed that students paid 71 to 95 per cent of the costs of running the college; the remaining 5 to 29 per cent had to be raised from other sources. Those other sources usually available to private colleges are gifts from alumni and other interested persons, support from churches, businesses and foundations, small endowments, and small amounts from governments.

The topic I was requested to write about was the financial crisis in Christian colleges. I chose not to, because I do not think that the crisis is financial. Rather, I think the crisis is one of inadequate communication. The Christian community does not understand what Christian colleges are and should be. The genius of Christian higher education, of Christian scholarship and teaching, of a Christian educating community, has not been adequately communicated, and as a result the priceless benefit of the truly Christian education has been misunderstood or even ignored by the Christian community.

In an article last spring in the Evangelical Newsletter, C. Stephen Board reviewed the vigor of campus ministries such as those of Campus Crusade, InterVarsity, and the Navigators and those of churches around large university campuses. As important as these ministries are, they cannot provide the academic nurture and stimulation that a Christian college community can provide if it is serious about developing a Christian world view.

In his article, Board pointed out some weaknesses of campus ministries: “Among the greatest weaknesses of evangelical activity at the secular campus are: (1) grad students—hardly any work anywhere, (2) urban centers—very little in the Jewish and Catholic urban centers, and (3) community colleges—no group has cracked them. Also Christian faculty at the most prestigious universities are sparse, and tend to be in engineering and science, rather than liberal arts. Finally, too rarely has a strong Christian critique of the university been forthcoming from any of these groups. Christianity rarely confronts humanism head-on. Consequently, evangelicals come across as mystics without much to say to the greater academic culture” (Evangelical Newsletter, Volume 4, Number 2, January 28, 1977, page 4).

A Christian college community should be energized to confront humanism head-on and to prepare students to think in a Christian manner so they will not be engulfed by secularism as they confront it daily for the rest of their lives. But Board concluded with these startling words: “At any rate, Christian parents still wonder where to send their kids. My advice is: Send them to the big universities—they will find lots of Christians there. Avoid the small secular or pseudo-religious colleges. The U. of Ill. has perhaps 2,500 evangelical Christians. That’s more than the student body at Moody and equal to the students at Wheaton.”

I endorse his advice to avoid the “pseudo-religious” college and add to that the lukewarm Christian college. But I disagree with his central point. The fact that a lot of Christians attend a particular immense university does not mean that one can there develop a Christian world view in his academic work. Some Christian fellowship and some Bible study is not an ideal substitute for an education that the Lord of Creation is invited to dominate.

The genius of Christian higher education is found in the fact that all the resources of the college community are committed to seeing all of life in the wholeness and richness made possible for believers in the Christ of the Scriptures. The foundation of a Christian education is a wide-ranging biblical view of the world, a philosophical awareness that all truth is God’s truth, a historical perspective that enables one to deal with the fact that God is working in and through his creation, and a realization that man in God’s image renewed by Christ is quite different from the humanistic conception of man as the “measure of all things.”

The most common misconception about Christian colleges is that they isolate students from reality and grow “hothouse” Christians who cannot stand strong when challenged intellectually. When choosing a college, I too would reject a college whose educational program does not help students understand the real world in which they will have to function as educated Christians. But isolation from reality is not a characteristic of the good Christian colleges. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal visited a leading Christian liberal arts college and wrote, “While many educators think evangelical liberal arts colleges … encourage narrow-minded thinking, such colleges appear intellectually broader than many Bible colleges.” He noted that “Bible institutions” are commonly believed to ignore whole areas of study and to view subjects other than religion as incidental. He found, however, that the colleges he visited taught and analyzed Marx, Freud, and Darwin, but definitely from a biblical perspective. That’s good Christian education!

Another common myth about Christian colleges is that they lack academic quality. But I have read many evaluation reports from accrediting teams (almost always composed of persons from secular colleges and universities) and they all have recognized the quality of faculty and academic programs at the good Christian colleges.

The faculty for a good Christian college will include a substantial number with doctorates from leading universities. Graduates of Christian colleges can be found in the best graduate and professional schools in the country. The quality of committed Christian colleges is recognized by the academic community.

Not infrequently the charge is made that Christian colleges are only for the rich. Statistics show, however, that the students at Christian colleges come mostly from the middle to lower-middle classes. Most financial-aid awards are made on the basis of need, and the person with the greatest need is most likely to get the help.

Some college-bound young people dismiss the Christian college as all right for the prospective minister or missionary but not for someone who wants a specialized major. This is basically wrong information. The range of programs available at Christian colleges (admittedly over a great geographic spread) is surprisingly great. Students who cannot find the program they want at a Christian liberal arts school are well advised to attend such a school for a year to two of Christianly taught history, literature, science, and so on before going on to specialized work at a secular university. There are more and more joint programs between Christian liberal arts colleges and more specialized schools that enable students to partake of the benefits of both.

The Christian church and community should consider the Christian college worthy of support because of its unique mind-shaping function. If the men and women who sit in the pew on Sunday are expected to operate as educated, thoughtful Christians during the following week, there should be a reservoir of Christianly educated men and women upon whom they can depend for support. Christian colleges can provide that needed reservoir of educated strength only if they are supported and encouraged by the body of believers. Christians should take another look at the serious Christian college and devise ways to support it—not as a poor cousin but as an absolutely essential component of the growing Christian community.

Is there a financial crisis in Christian higher education? During the past decade, many Christian colleges showed that they could manage what had appeared to be insurmountable financial problems. For most the challenge is still pressing, but they have every right to be optimistic—if Christian higher education begins to take its rightful role in the total Kingdom endeavor. Christian education is a “basic industry” necessary for the welfare of the Christian community.

Christian colleges that are looking to the government to solve their financial problems are headed for serious trouble, though the reallocation of tax revenue to institutions that are compatible with the taxpayers’ values can be defended constitutionally. The hope for the future for the college that wants to be academically and biblically sound will be found in a growing service relationship to the Christian community.

“You Lack One Thing”

St. Mark 10: 17–22

He’d gotten the message early that religion’s

good for health and business: keep the rules,

avoid loose girls, righteousness has happy

rewards, Moses is a good investment.

It hadn’t taken long to show a profit,

living proof that piety pays: his heart

was sound, the family farm blessed, two kids

in Little League, a wife who knew her place.

Confident of his claim on the heavenly

bonanza, he put it all on display for Jesus.

The dismissing phrase, “You lack one thing,”

was disappointing considering the source.

He’d have to find a better rabbi, one

who understood the finer things of life.

EUGENE H. PETERSON

Sarai

“Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah

should have given children suck? for I have borne

him a son in his old age.”

-Genesis 21:7

Chinese red paint blood

Begins to run in her favor

Along the brittle grapevines of her arms,

Salting the womb at last with life.

And in the moonless midnight of her mind

A million million points of light

Prick a new Jerusalem into sight,

Spreading a seashore of city before her.

The glossy wolf’s hair about her eyes,

The puckered chimpanzee’s flesh around her mouth,

The darting fish’s sly of her speckled hands—

All the natural evolution of her kind

Begins by her new life to die,

And she is born a new creature.

TROY DALE REEVES

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.

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Temple—what do these schools have in common? They all began firmly committed to evangelical Christianity and are now secular in scope and viewpoint. These are but a few of the multitudes of colleges and universities that have made the gradual transition from decisively Christian to nominally church-related to openly secular. This pattern is repeated so often that it seems inevitable. Why? What causes the loss of original identity in so many Christian institutions?

To answer this question thoroughly would take knowledge and analytical skill far greater than mine. What follows is a survey of some possible contributing factors to such a decline. I have separated them into three groups: practical, emotional, and philosophical.

Practical Factors

First and most obvious is the pressure of finances. What the students pay usually provides only a part of the needed capital. With the search for endowments, bequests, and public funding comes the danger of controls. The authentic “gift” is rare. Often the larger the gift, the stronger the attached strings. Leaders of a Christian institution may feel forced to compromise its position to meet the demands of payrolls and other pressing expenses.

Second are accreditation pressures. If Christian institutions are to compete with secular schools, they need to be approved by state and other accrediting agencies. Although in theory these agencies are neutral about the world view presented by an institution, subtle pressures are often brought to bear on evangelical institutions to broaden their perspectives.

Third among the practical pressures is the problem of faculty recruitment. Nothing shapes the direction of our academic institution so much as the faculty. I once spoke with a college president who was about to retire. He had taken a small Christian college with a minor budget and meager facilities and built it into a major institution. Yet he said to me with tears, “I have given all my energy to buildings and funding. I’ve neglected the area of faculty recruitment. Our faculty no longer has a strong Christian commitment, and it is my fault.” The institution he built is now secularized.

Often the paper credentials become more important in hiring than the philosophical and theological perspective of the one who holds them. The Ph.D. from Harvard carries more weight than a Th.D. from a Christian seminary. And such points as “Can this person communicate? Is he or she skilled in teaching?” are often neglected.

I’ve seen schools where the theology department has five professors, four of whom are soundly committed to Christianity but are very weak communicators. Their classrooms are dull and stuffy. The fifth professor has wandered far afield from classical Christianity but is dynamic, spontaneous, warm, and exciting in the classroom. Who influences the students the most? We could argue that students should not be influenced by such extraneous factors as personal charisma, but it would be naive to do so. If Christian institutions are to endure, they must have teachers who are both sound and skilled in communication.

Then, fourth, there is the question of church supervision. It is a glaring fact of history that where church-related schools have been under close church supervision, their endurance has been greater. This may be post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking, but I doubt it. When the school is not answerable to the church, the tendency is for the curriculum to become broader and broader until it no longer represents the church.

The climate of higher education in America is highly unfavorable to church controls. Colleges and seminaries want to lead the church, not serve it. In the past, the seminary and Christian college were seen as servants of the church, filling a highly specialized need for research and training. There was to be a spirit of reciprocity and mutual dependence between church and school. But this concept collides with prevailing notions in secular education. It therefore becomes more difficult, though more necessary, for the school to submit to the church.

Emotional Factors

First among what for lack of a better word I am calling “emotional” factors is the shibboleth of academic freedom. If research is to be vital and the pursuit of knowledge is to have integrity, a certain amount of academic freedom must be given to professors. But this freedom cannot extend to the point of autonomy if the purposes of a confessional institution are to be served. Yet it now seems to be considered an inalienable right of professors to teach whatever they want. All too often, the banner of academic freedom has been used as a cloak for perjury. Seminary professors take ordination vows professing belief in doctrines that they then deny in the classroom. Professors sign statements of faith and then proceed to undermine them in the name of academic freedom. When an institution seeks to censor or remove a professor guilty of such perjury, the professor is seen as an injured victim and the institution as a menacing, intolerant tyrant. Sometimes an institution would rather tolerate the professor’s subversion of its standards than be exposed to public ridicule for “tyranny.” The tenure system and faculty unions make this problem all the more acute.

A second “emotional” factor is the problem of competition. Every school wants to be regarded as academically excellent. In our culture, secular institutions determine academic trends, and this poses grave problems for the Christian institution. For example, secularists have strong prejudices against Christian beliefs. A question of biblical authority may be met by a response that “no one with any intellectual integrity still believes in the Bible.” The Christian institution may soften its view of Scripture to earn the credibility of the secular world.

Closely related to this is the problem of intimidation. The ridicule of the secularist can be hard on the Christian ego. The insecure Christian scholar or institution is most vulnerable at the point of scholarly reputation. Where courage fails, Christian institutions falter.

The problem of intimidation is rarely discussed among Christian educators. Perhaps we don’t want to admit our vulnerability. But it is a reality that we dare not overlook. There is a constant need for mutual support among Christian scholars. We need the encouragement of one another.

Philosophical Factors

The first point in this category is the demise of natural theology as a cohesive force. Kant’s assault on natural theology and the possibility of establishing crucial theological truths on the basis of theoretical thought created a crisis for higher Christian education. Theology, the queen of the sciences, was rudely dethroned. Where Kant was accepted, theology no longer could serve as an integrating intellectual force. The mixed articles of Aquinas could no longer serve as common ground for the pursuit of truth. The university became a multiversity with “religion” subsumed under a larger department of anthropology or sociology. Schools that desired to keep theology in a preeminent position often degenerated into citadels of irrelevant obscurantism. Others sought a compromise with the Kantian framework and slowly capitulated to it. A few institutions sought to develop a Christian intellectual methodology by which they could maintain their Christian world view in a highly intellecual environment. Fideistic philosophies developed by which theology could be defended on grounds other than natural reason. Westminster Seminary is the most notable and successful school of this type. Another response was to launch a counterattack against Kant and continue the Christian model along the lines of Aquinas. This was partially successful in some Roman Catholic institutions.

A second philosophical factor was the rise of the phenomenological approach to education. This grew out of the demise of natural theology. If metaphysics was no longer an intellectual option, then it became the task of education to focus learning on the realm of the phenomenological. Countless Christian educators adopted this method, quite unaware of its philosophical roots or importance. Even in Roman Catholic institutions the competition became keen between the neo-Thomists and the advocates of phenomenology.

I witnessed the subtle intrusion of the phenomenological approach into a Christian college a few years ago. I was invited to address the faculty on “The Uniqueness of Christian Education.” As I walked to the lecture hall I noticed a sign on an office door: “Religion Dept.” Before the lecture I asked the faculty if the “religion department” had always been called that. A professor replied that until four years ago its name was “department of biblical and theological studies.” I asked why the name had been changed. No one knew. The teachers seemed perplexed by my line of questioning. In this Christian college, the change of a core academic department from a classical description to one of phenomenological parlance had gone virtually unnoticed.

These are some of the possible causes of the death of Christian colleges and universities. An awareness of them should help us be more vigilant in our present structures and in the ones we plan for the future. There are no guarantees for the endurance of Christian schools, but there are safeguards. We must take seriously our attrition rate in scholarship. The Christian faith has a vital contribution to make to the enterprise of learning.

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.

Watergate cover-ups and clandestine Central Intelligence Agency activities have thrust us into an era when baring the organizational soul to the public has become a virtue—and the eighth deadly sin is refusing to do so.

Despite traditional protection from state interference, religious organizations are not immune to these pressures for disclosure. During the last year religious groups have been the targets of proposed legislation in Congress, notably the charity disclosure bill, H.R. 41, introduced into the House of Representatives by Charles H. Wilson (D-Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service.

Wilson’s bill seeks to regulate any charitable organization, including churches and other religious groups, that solicits “in any manner or through any means, the remittance of a contribution by mail.” In plain language, this means that a religious group asking in any way for money to be donated to it through the mail is subject to the disclosure requirements of the bill. Groups covered by the bill would have to include with their solicitations the following information: the legal name and address of the charity; the purpose of the solicitation and intended use of the money contributed; and the percentage of contributions “which were directly applied” to the charitable purpose, after deducting “all fundraising and management and general costs during the most recent complete fiscal year.”

This information must be provided at the point of solicitation, or when the appeal for funds is made, rather than at the demand of prospective contributors or investigators. The bill requires groups that solicit on radio to make their communications clearly audible. Those that use television must make their disclosures in clear lettering and for a sufficient period of time to allow the viewer to read the wording. The bill exempts some very short radio and TV appeals, and also “bona fide membership organizations,” including churches, that make exclusive solicitations to their members.

Any charitable organization, including churches, that falls under the bill would find its records subject to the watchful eye of the Postal Service. At the request of postal authorities, churches would have to supply “audit reports, accounts, or other information as the Postal Service may require to establish or verify information which such organization is required to include in solicitations.”

From a legal point of view, there are two main problems with H.R. 41. In the first place, there is good reason to believe that the courts would find the bill unconstitutional. Secondly, even if the bill is constitutional, some of the key words and phrases are so vague that the courts would have to work overtime to give them meaning in future lawsuits.

The possible conflict of the bill with the Constitution centers on the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from passing laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” If H.R. 41 becomes law it seems likely to restrict the freedom of churches and other religious organizations in fundraising. Television appeals would have to be interrupted by an extensive disclosure statement, and the impact of the appeal would be blunted. Also, the additional accounting and paperwork in delineating management and “direct” charitable costs will put an added financial burden on religious groups. In a kind of religious Catch-22, as churches spend more money on administration to comply with the disclosure law, the percentage of money they can apply directly to their charitable purpose will decrease. And in the public eye they may appear to be spending an inordinate amount of money on administration, partly because the disclosure law requires them to do so. The power of churches and other religious organizations to raise money freely to support their activities is necessary if they are to remain an independent force in society. Otherwise, financial pressures may force these groups to rely more on foundations or even government aid, and our constitutional principle of strong, separate spiritual institutions will be lost.

The eyes of the government are turning their watchful sight churchward. Under H.R.41 any church or religious group that asks for money through the mails must make full public financial disclosures.

The U.S. Supreme Court has traditionally avoided taking an active role in restricting or regulating the activities of religious groups. On the contrary, most active steps by the court have been to broaden the power of religious groups. For example, in the 1952 Zorach v. Clauson case, the court held that a New York City ruling which allowed students to leave school for religious instruction during regular school classes was constitutional. The court again approved a form of state aid to religion in Sherbert v. Verner in 1963. Writing for the majority the late Justice Tom C. Clark said it was a violation of freedom of religion not to allow a woman who was a Seventh-day Adventist to receive state unemployment compensation. She had been fired by her employer because her religious convictions prohibited her from working on Saturdays.

H.R. 41, in contrast, would cast the federal government in an active role opposing religion. This role appears to be in conflict with the Supreme Court’s landmark 1947 decision of Everson v. Board of Education, in which the late Justice Hugo Black declared that “State power is no more to be used to handicap religions than it is to favor them.” Chief Justice Warren Burger reinforced this line of thought in 1970 in Walz v. Tax Commission, which upheld tax exemptions for property used solely for religious worship. Burger wrote, “We must also be sure that the end result—the effect—is not an excessive government entanglement in religion.” He established two tests to determine excessive state entanglement in religion: “whether the involvement is excessive, and whether it is a continuing one calling for official and continuing surveillance leading to an impermissible degree of entanglement.” Although Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist criticized this entanglement standard in a later case, Burger’s ruling still stands as the law of the land.

The Chief Justice concluded in Walz that a principle of “benevolent neutrality” should control the state’s dealings with the church. The provisions of H.R. 41 seem anything but “benevolently neutral” as they attempt to impose an active fundraising and accounting burden on religious groups.

But the constitutional problems that surround H.R. 41 are only part of the problem. The language of the bill is so vague that considerable litigation is inevitable on that ground alone. One phrase that poses serious problems of interpretation is the statement that charitable organizations that solicit “in any manner or through any means” the remittance of contributions by mail must include the various financial disclosures with the solicitations. But what about the lay chairman of a local church pledge drive who stands in front of his congregation and tells them to take pledge cards from the ushers and mail them to the church? If nonmembers are present, must the chairman exclude them explicitly from his appeal, or recite the disclosure litany from the pulpit? Will missionaries writing of their financial needs on the field be under similar obligations? Which federal agencies will implement and police such requirements?

Or how about the pastor who is pulled aside by a nonmember who wants information about giving money to the church? If the pastor suggests that the inquirer drop his contribution in the mail, will this suggestion be a solicitation “in any manner and through any means”—a solicitation that would require a full, on-the-spot disclosure of management percentages? If so, the pastor’s freedom in asking for contributions will be severely limited.

What it all boils down to is this: the phrase “in any manner or through any means” is so sweeping that it is bound to be challenged in court by religious groups that are understandably reluctant to surrender control over their fundraising.

An even more difficult section of the bill to define is the requirement of disclosure of the percentage of all contributions that were directly applied to the charitable purpose “after deducting all fundraising and management and general costs during the most recent complete fiscal year of the organization.” In any charity, there is a large gray area of costs that cannot be defined clearly as either “management” or purely charitable. In a local church, is the minister’s salary a management cost, when a large part of his time is devoted to counseling and preaching? If the costs attributable to counseling and preaching are not being “directly applied” to the charitable purpose, it is difficult to imagine what would be. But the pastor is also an administrator. So to comply with H.R. 41 it will probably be necessary to allocate his salary between charitable and administrative functions.

Also, what about the church secretary’s salary? Granted, the secretary may be doing “fundraising” work, like typing appeal letters. But the job may also include typing the minister’s sermons and putting together the Sunday bulletin. That part of the secretary’s salary required for both of these latter tasks would seem to be money “directly applied to the charitable purpose,” but some postal investigator might well decide otherwise. If the bill becomes law, the failure to define these terms clearly could create a nightmare of paperwork and accounting costs for religious groups, and will make enforcement by the Postal Service even harder.

The problem of enforcement and surveillance brings up another difficult problem raised by the language of the proposed law. Recent amendments, apparently in response to constitutional questions about excessive state entanglement in religion posed by the Walz case, give lip service to restricting the Postal Service’s power under the bill to oversee religious groups. For example, the Service cannot audit charities “at regular intervals” and can intervene only where there is a “specific need.” But postal authorities still retain broad discretion under H.R. 41 to demand “such audit reports, accounts, or other information as the Postal Service may require to establish or verify information which such organization is required to include in solicitations.”

Taken at face value these words seem to give the Postal Service the right to demand such confidential records as contributors lists. If these lists should become public, and there is reason to think that they might under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, a church or other religious organizations would lose control over who would have access to their hard-earned and carefully-guarded donor lists. Donors to unpopular or controversial evangelistic groups might find themselves being harrassed by the group’s opponents.

Finally, though churches and other religious groups that solicit “exclusively” from their “members” are excluded from the bill, the definition of the word “members” raises a knotty question. There are some churches with different classes of membership. The United Methodist Book of Discipline, for example, provides for “affiliate members” who can participate fully and hold office in one United Methodist church while staying on the rolls of another. There are also “associate members,” who are members of a different denomination but who elect to participate in a United Methodist church on the same terms as an affiliate member. H.R. 41 is unclear whether the term “members” includes all these types. Defining the term precisely is essential to determine whether solicitations to one or more classes of “members” require disclosure under the bill. Furthermore, in some organizations all donors are regarded as members of a contributors’ organization or club, and their membership gives them certain privileges and recognition. If the word “members” in this bill can be read so broadly, religious groups might be well advised to use the same escape hatch to avoid compliance with disclosure requirements.

But looking for ways to escape the requirements of H.R. 41 is not really the answer to this proposed legislation. Instead of imposing onerous, vague, and constitutionally questionable disclosure requirements on religious organizations, the federal government should concentrate on enforcing mail fraud and other statutes that are on the books. The most that is called for on the federal level is a statute that would preempt the various state laws now in force so that charity regulations would become more uniform nationally. Any such legislation, however, should only give federal authorities power to compel disclosure and investigate religious groups when there is evidence of some criminal or civil violation. Bills like H.R. 41 that require disclosure with no evidence of wrongdoing and give the Postal Service broad discretion in auditing confidential church records seem more an overreaction to the enthusiasm for disclosure than a measured proposal for effective long-term reform.

Pillar of Cloud

A wonder when the cloud halts,

A time of rest and fruit

While herds grow fat

And ewes suckle young.

Away on nervous hills

The watchmen pace

While lovers below

Give leave to spring.

But what to do

When the cloud moves on?

Strike the set! Break camp!

Move out and mount the hill.

Zion’s milk waits over the brow.

Zion’s honey flows at the end

Of a misty trek.

MICHAEL GRAVES

Immediacy

As I was saying,

what I want, God,

what I really want

is always the immediacy

of the short sight,

of the softly heard,

the immediacy of the human race

that charges its destiny into wreckage

several times a century.

I of the short sight and dim hearing

would do likewise, Lord,

if You permitted.

CAROLE SANDERSON STREETER

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.