Bob and Madalyn’s ‘Fight to the Finish’

At last month’s ceremonies of her million-dollar American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, Madalyn Murray O’Hair announced that she intends to step up her attack against religion in America’s public life. Two of her objectives: the removal of “In God We Trust” from coins and of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. A local law firm confirmed that a suit is being prepared seeking to have the motto on coins declared improper.

“Atheists’ human rights are being violated,” declared the 58-year-old woman who in 1963 successfully argued before the Supreme Court against prayer in public school. “We’re all being forced to carry a symbol of God in our pockets.”

Ms. O’Hair said she plans to sue the government to compel strict enforcement of the prayer ban. The ban must extend to parent-teacher associations, she added (she had a spat in May over an invocation at her local PTA meeting). She wants federal funds withheld from school systems where there are “continuing violations of state-church separation.” In line for special attention from her is the Dallas school system, which teaches the creation story in science classes.

Jimmy Carter’s election has been a “boon to atheists,” said Ms. O’Hair. “He keeps smiling and putting his foot in his mouth and quoting those idiocies, because the Bible is an idiotic book,” she railed. But, she added, it has caused a lot of atheists to come out of the closet and support her. “Things are going so well,” she said, “that if I weren’t an atheist, I might even say, ‘God is with us.’ ”

Some things weren’t going well, however. A few days after the big American Atheist Center sign went up, the insurance company dropped its policy on the building, and the mortgage company called in the mortgage, Ms. O’Hair disclosed. Nevertheless, she said, the group now had enough money to pay it off.

In a curious development this month, Ms. O’Hair teamed up with Southern Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington of New Orleans in a barnstorming tour designed to permit both to get their respective messages across—but with the crowd advantage decidedly in Harrington’s favor. The pair had debated each other before in more than a dozen television appearances, but now, said the publicity, it was a “fight to the finish.”

The “fight” began in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just down the road from where the famous Scopes “monkey trial” was staged in 1925. Harrington, a master phrase-maker known widely as “The Chaplain of Bourbon Street,” paid $5,000 in advance to rent the 5,000-seat municipal auditorium and flew in for a day-long publicity blitz to help promote attendance. He appeared first on Harry Thornton’s morning TV talk show. Thornton, who is also a professional wrestling referee, had agreed to moderate the public confrontation between the evangelist and the atheist that night. Thornton said he couldn’t understand why several prominent local ministers had told their people to stay away. “Everybody who believes in Bob and his work should be at the auditorium tonight,” he asserted.

“If God’s people don’t wake up,” warned Harrington, “America-one-nation-under-God will become America-one-nation-under-atheism. I want people to see how dedicated this demon-directed damsel is. Then they’ll want to help me stop her.”

As for Ms. O’Hair, she said she wanted to show that “Bob Harrington is stupid and [to] get the atheists out of their closets to support me.”

About 4,500 showed up at the auditorium. Atheists were hard to find. From the moment Thornton welcomed the crowd to “this history-making event” until Harrington’s farewell almost three hours later, the auditorium reverberated with cheers for the preacher and boos for the unbeliever.

A down-home gospel group, “Little Richie Jarvis and Our Brother’s Keeper,” warmed up the crowd with foot-stomping, hand-clapping music. A chorus of catcalls greeted Thornton’s introduction of Ms. O’Hair. “You’re very rude,” she scowled, “but that’s to be expected from Christians.” A fog-horn voice boomed back, “Praise the Lord!” And so it went for the next half hour, with Ms. O’Hair trading barbs with the audience while contending that America’s founding fathers (“all anti-Christian”) never intended for the country to be a Christian nation.

When Harrington’s turn came, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. “I’m glad Madalyn is here,” he said. “I believe the more we expose her to you, the more America will shun atheism and turn to God.” Instead of answering Ms. O’Hair’s charges, he chided the audience: “While you were out having fun being saved, this woman went to the Supreme Court and got prayer and Bible reading taken out of our schools. She’s done more to set God back in America than anyone before. But she’ll never do it again.”

The debate portion of the program itself was mostly a case of Harrington baiting O’Hair and O’Hair baiting the audience. “Are you trying to get converts?” asked Harrington? “O my God, no,” exclaimed the atheist. The crowd screamed in glee at the apparent lapse in her unbelief. “I program that into my speeches,” she explained quickly. “It always sets you hypocrites off.” (Her son William Murray, the subject of the 1963 Supreme Court case and presently the executive vice-president of Ms. O’Hair’s atheist center, says that his mother’s reflex vocabulary is affected by the conditioning of her Presbyterian childhood but that they are “working” on the problem.)

At one point, Ms. O’Hair said that her 12-year-old daughter Robin was “tormented,” roughed up, and given the silent treatment by pupils at “a stinking Christian public school” in Austin. Her description evoked shouts of “Praise the Lord” and “Tell her about Jesus.” Harrington said he was sorry the Austin pupils didn’t “share some love” instead. Replied Ms. O’Hair: “Oh, they shared Christian love all right. They shared hatred, rejection, intolerance. That’s all that Christians have ever shown to the world.”

Thornton called an intermission. Volunteers passed offering buckets. Printed checks on offering envelopes could be designated to “Bob (God and country) Harrington” or “Madalyn (no God, no country) O’Hair” (representatives of both sorted the envelopes). Then the evangelist called attention to his $10 “victory bags” available in the lobby (they contained books, records, and literature), and Ms. O’Hair handed out subscription forms for the American Atheist magazine, a slick-paper monthly in full color with a reported paid circulation of 10,000. The event ended with written questions from the audience.

William Murray insists that “the big checks” in the offering were designated for Ms. O’Hair from professionals and executive types while Harrington’s gifts were mostly small ones. He says this was true in meetings in Nashville and Huntsville, Alabama, too. Capacity crowds of 2,000-plus attended in both cities.

The debate tour was Harrington’s idea, and he pays all the bills. Ms. O’Hair (she gets no fee from the evangelist) went along with the idea in order to get the public exposure, says Murray. (The annual gross income of her American Atheist Center has grown from $75,000 five years ago to $500,000 presently, according to Murray.)

Although Harrington succeeded in getting a lot of people aroused over the issue of atheism, there were some backfires of sorts. In Huntsville, some main-line church people left the meeting early, expressing disgust at the conduct of the majority in the audience. A number of pastors declined to promote the meetings. Some said they didn’t think such a platform ought to be given an atheist. Others objected to the sensationalism. Still others refused to cooperate because of personal issues involving the evangelist.

Several of these issues came up in a press conference at Chattanooga. In response to a question about his business affairs, the evangelist placed his organization’s net worth at $3 million and his personal net worth at $250,000. (A source close to the organization said its income has averaged about $200,000 a month during the last two or three years. Revenues include sales of books and records, rally offerings, mailed contributions, and sale of a motivational course entitled “The Total Man,” authored by Harrington.) Harrington said his board consists of himself, three staffers, his lawyer, and a former Southern Baptist pastor who now sells insurance. He added that he is a member-in-good-standing of the Southern Baptist Evangelists’ Association, and that he is a member of First Baptist Church in New Orleans (he has not attended for more than a year, however, according to a church source).

In reply to another query he acknowledged that he and his wife of thirty years are separated. The couple have two married daughters in their twenties. He attributed the split to incompatibility and extensive travels away from home. Harrington, who will be 50 next month, left his wife in November. He meanwhile had established a relationship with a staff member, Zonnya LaFerney, a divorcee, according to sources close to Harrington. In protest against the affair, his sons-in-law resigned from their staff positions with Harrington. The next day the evangelist fired most of the other staff members, retaining his mother and father, a retired Methodist minister who looks after a counseling chapel in rented quarters on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. A year earlier, evangelist David Wilkerson had spotted Harrington and Miss LaFemey allegedly drinking together on a plane between Toronto and Dallas. Wilkerson “rebuked” Harrington, the sources say. Harrington denies the drinking and illicit; liaison changes.

Miss LaFerney, who often travels with the evangelist, is described as Harrington’s business manager, director of public relations, and director of his “Total Man” program.

Sources close to the Harrington family describe Joyce Harrington as a deeply spiritual woman who still loves her husband and is praying for him to return “to the Lord and to his family.”

News of the evangelist’s domestic situation has spread widely, and as a result, a number of his speaking engagements have been canceled. This reportedly prompted him to discuss with the board recently the possibility of his moving into a broader, more secular-oriented “ministry.”

JAMES C. HEFLEY and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Two Planes Are Down

Two fatal crashes last month involving Missionary Aviation Fellowship planes claimed the lives of both pilots and seven other persons. Bad weather figured in the accidents. In each case the accident occurred while the plane was landing.

At Bota-Victoria in Cameroon, Africa, veteran pilot George Wall, two missionaries of the Basel Mission (Switzerland), and a staff member of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon were killed. Another national was injured. Wall, of Reedley, California, is survived by his wife Kathy and four children.

Pilot Chris Davidson and four of five members of a Dutch Christian and Missionary Alliance family were killed at Tagma in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Pieter and Nell Akse, their son Henerik, 5, and their daughter Marleen, 3, are survived by a third child, Ellen, age 7, who was away at school at the time of the crash. Davidson, a former Marine Corps pilot, is survived by his wife Nancy and three children. His father is pastor of First Baptist Church, Chanute, Kansas.

Another CMA missionary, H. Myron Romley, witnessed the crash, but he was unable to approach the burning wreckage for more than two hours.

Disclosure Is Closer

It may not come this year, but some veteran legislators think it is a certainty by the end of 1978. “It” is a federal law requiring financial disclosure by charitable organizations—including religious groups—that solicit the public for funds.

The possibility that such legislation will emerge from Congress appeared to be stronger than ever before as the House of Representatives began its August recess. H.R. 41, a disclosure bill that has been criticized by several religious leaders (see May 6 issue, page 61, and May 20 issue, page 26) won approval of a subcommittee just before the recess. In its amended form it could be taken up by the full Post Office and Civil Service committee as early as next month. The measure, introduced by California congressman Charles H. Wilson, cleared the subcommittee on a close 4 to 3 vote after the author agreed to amendments that would limit the power of the Postal Service in its enforcement of the law. The version of the bill now going to the full committee also exempts from disclosure certain organizations that solicit only their own members, trustees, alumni, and their families, but it is still generally applicable to all groups using the mails to request or receive contributions from the general public.

If H.R. 41 becomes law, it would require all covered organizations that solicit funds through the mail to include with the solicitation a disclosure statement (including the percentages of receipts used for the group’s announced “charitable purpose” after deduction of fund-raising and administration costs). It would also force organizations asking television viewers or radio listeners for mailed gifts to broadcast such information as a part of the solicitation.

When first introduced, the Wilson proposal was opposed by what seemed to be a solid front of religious leaders from a broad spectrum. After the subcommittee action that front seemed to be less than solid, with some now ready to accept some kind of disclosure requirement.

Taking the lead in the strategy to get a law that might eliminate fraudulent operators while not unduly burdening legitimate religious groups is Senator Mark Hatfield, one of Capitol Hill’s best-known evangelicals. He said, “The fact is that there is a great need for legislation to discourage the kind of fraud and misrepresentation which often occurs under the sponsorship of apparently legitimate religious organizations. On the other hand, of course, we need to be careful not to burden worthwhile agencies with a great deal of paperwork.”

The Oregon Republican predicted that the Wilson bill faces an “uphill fight,” but he suggested that he was considering the introduction of “alternate legislation” of his own to “provide essentially the same benefits” but without some of the “impossible demands” of H.R. 41.

One of the organizations that has not decided that legislation in this area is inevitable is National Religious Broadcasters. NRB’s executive secretary, Ben Armstrong, said all of the organization’s members are being asked to express their concern to their congressmen. An NRB statement called the Wilson bill “abhorrent” and “a threat to religious freedom in the United States.”

NRB is particularly concerned with a section of the bill that regulates fund appeals over radio and television. But even if this were dropped, said Armstrong, “the basic threat to religious freedom would still remain. As part of the religious community, NRB advocates the defeat of this bill in its entirety.”

Although some Christian-college presidents and fund-raisers are not convinced yet that a federal disclosure law is inevitable, others are. A lawyer working with one group of colleges has prepared draft legislation to shift responsibility for enforcement from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department. No member of Congress has introduced that alternative yet, however.

One Washington lobbyist observed that several proposals have been advanced to exempt certain categories (churches, schools, health care institutions, or broadcasters) from the disclosure bill, but he said the current public interest in disclosure would dictate a bill with few exemptions.

A number of organizations, meanwhile, were taking new looks at their codes of ethics and accounting practices in an effort to demonstrate that they are self-policing and need no government regulation. Leaders of Catholic orders, for instance, have drafted new guidelines for fund-raising. Among them are prohibitions against vesting all control of an order’s funds in any one person and soliciting for “undefined future needs.” The new guidelines are being submitted for approval to the nation’s bishops at their fall meeting.

All of the action on the disclosure front is not at the national level. Some state and local governments have also moved into the field, and legislation is now pending in a variety of jurisdictions. One national religious organization that solicits the public has already been required to comply with such regulations in thirty-eight different states or counties.

Missouri Synod Aftermath

“We are over it. We are going to enter into a new era. We’ll be lifting up our voices in praise to the Lord.”

That’s how President J. A. O. Preus, 57, of the 2.8-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) sized up the state of the church in a speech to an LCMS laymen’s auxiliary this month in Denver. He based his views primarily on the outcome of the LCMS biennial convention in Dallas in July.

The convention was belabored by as much discussion about dollars as about doctrine—in distinct contrast with the past three conventions. It marked the end of a stormy period in LCMS history during which time conservatives under the banner of biblical inerrancy took over the denominational machinery, installed one of their own as president (Preus), ousted theological liberals and moderates from LCMS schools and places of leadership, and made it virtually impossible for the so-called moderate movement to regain power for at least the next two or three decades.

In the only jolt of sorts for Preus he failed by two votes to be reelected president on the first ballot (546 were needed), but he won easily on the second ballot. A last-minute challenge had been mounted by some of the same hard-core conservatives who succeeded in wresting the presidency for him in 1969. Missouri pastor Herman Otten and his Christian News weekly tabloid led the challenge. The Otten camp accused Preus of having become too soft on the liberals and of not being hard-nosed enough in relationships with other Lutheran bodies, especially the American Lutheran Church (ALC), with whom the LCMS has had altar and pulpit fellowship since 1969.

To show they meant business, the dissidents promoted the candidacy of seminary teacher Walter A. Maier, an LCMS vice president, for Preus’s seat. Maier came in third on the first ballot (with 168 votes), after district president Charles Mueller (with 279). On the second ballot, Maier lost forty-nine votes, presumably to Preus.

The two key doctrinally oriented issues centered around continued fellowship with the ALC and approval of a joint Lutheran hymnal.

By a substantial vote the some 1,100 clergy and lay delegates passed a resolution placing the LCMS’s fellowship with the ALC in a state of “protest.” They called for a study that could lead to a cessation of fellowship in 1979 if the main issues of contention are not cleared up. These include the ALC’s more liberal stance on interpretation of Scripture, the ordination of women (practiced by the ALC but considered heresy by many in the LCMS), the ALC’s ecumenical ties, and its views of the nature of fellowship (not as confined as the LCMS’s views).

By a closer vote the delegates decided not to accept the proposed joint hymnal but to study it instead until the 1979 convention. There were insinuations but no documented proof that the hymnal was doctrinally impure. Ironically, it was the LCMS in 1965 that persuaded the ALC and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) to join in the common-hymnal venture. Following the vote at Dallas, ALC officials were furious.

“We took out some of our hymns that the Missouri Synod didn’t want in the hymnal,” complained ALC president David Preus (a cousin of the LCMS Preus). “Now we’re stuck with Missouri-Synod hymns in it that we don’t want.” (Both the LCA and ALC already have given the hymnal preliminary approval; they will probably publish it jointly early next year, which means the LCMS likely will have to take it or leave it as is in 1979.)

David Preus used the time given him for fraternal greetings to offer the LCMS delegates some stem pastoral advice instead. He expressed sadness at the fellowship-of-protest action and said it was “incomprehensible that our churches, which share allegiance to Christ and his church, to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, should be sidetracked from mutual fellowship.” He said the sidetracking resulted from “poking away at matters which are not directly addressed in either the Scriptures or the Confessions”—a slap at recent LCMS actions requiring specific doctrinal conformity in certain areas of interpretation. He said there was little serious effort on the part of the LCMS to show the ALC that alternative positions on ecumenism and women’s ordination, for example, are preferable. “No,” he said, “there has only been a handful of people telling us that this is the way the LCMS sees it, and unless we see it like you do, there will be an end to fellowship.”

The ALC president said his church believes the “entire Scripture to be the inspired and authoritative word of God.” But, he added, the demand that all should agree that biblical inerrancy means “just exactly what some Missouri-Synod theologians say it means” sounds to ALC members like “ecclesiastical pride and tyranny.”

Many observers believe the ALC will make no major changes to accommodate the LCMS any further, and they predict official fellowship therefore will cease by vote of the next LCMS convention.

In other actions, the delegates:

• Called for increased evangelistic efforts among Jews and members of cults.

• Adopted budgets of $30 million and $32.9 million for the next two years.

• Warned against “false teaching” practiced by “some” (a word added by amendment) in the charismatic movement.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Easing the Pains In Plains

It took the wisdom of Solomon for President Carter to manage a Sunday visit in his hometown this month without offending anyone. It was his first trip to Plains, Georgia, since Plains Baptist Church split in June (see July 8 issue, page 37). Carter was a member and Sunday-school teacher of the church for years before he left for Washington (where he joined First Baptist Church), and he has relatives and friends on both sides of the schism. The split, preceded by the forced departure of pastor Bruce Edwards, occurred after months of feuding over issues of race, politics, and pastoral policies.

Carter solved his dilemma by attending Sunday school at Plains Baptist and the morning worship service at the forty-member breakaway Maranatha Baptist Church, which is housed five miles outside of town in a 110-year-old white frame building once used by Lutherans.

At Plains Baptist, where Carter was baptized in 1935, teacher Clarence Dodson of the men’s Sunday-school class welcomed his former co-teacher back and told him the church has missed his influence and drawing power (“there’s been many a vacant seat since you left”).

Waiting outside was the man over whom the simmering differences came to a head on the Sunday before last November’s election: Clennon King, a black minister and political gadfly from Albany, Georgia, just back from creating a scene at Edwards’s newest pastorate in Hawaii. King had demanded admission as a member at Plains Baptist, setting off a fight—led by Carter and Edwards—to overturn the church’s ban on black members. The policy was changed, but the congregation later voted not to accept the non-resident King as a member.

King was all but ignored as the presidential entourage hurried out of the Plains church and sped off to Maranatha Baptist. Carter was welcomed there by Maranatha’s pastor, Fred Collins, who had preceded Edwards as pastor at Plains Baptist. It was the second birthday of Carter’s grandson Jason, so the congregation sang “Happy Birthday,” and the boy plopped two pennies into the collection plate. Collins preached on the doctrine of election during the hour-long service, then called on the President to give the benediction. Carter’s prayer reflected the conciliatory spirit he tried to impart to his friends at both churches:

“O Father, bless this small and new church, separated, we all pray, not out of a sense of estrangement or alienation or division or hatred, but out of a sense of love and rededication to thee. Let all the tensions be alleviated and disharmonies be removed, and let there be a genuine search for reconciliation when needed. May there be a permanence about this church based on love and forgiveness and dedication. And those in the Plains Baptist Church—let it not be a sign of weakness in thy kingdom but the strength of having two churches instead of one.”

Afterward, he commented to reporters: “I think it’s a healthy thing to have two strong churches. They’re both good churches.… I want both of them to grow and flourish.”

Then the President was whisked away to a reunion of wife Rosalynn’s family in the fellowship hall at Plains United Methodist Church.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.