If I Were President …

Many Americans feel quite strongly about what’s wrong with America and what actions are necessary to get the country back on the right track. We hope that, as the new President takes office, evangelicals in particular will speak up and let him know how they feel. For a long time, far too few of them have been advising American presidents. Evangelicals should make their collective impact felt by communicating with the White House and sharing their concerns as never before.

We urge that the incoming administration focus attention on the abortion question. Abortion is now the leading cause of death in America, and forthright action is sorely needed. Neither the executive nor the legislative branch of government has taken any noteworthy initiatives to restore rights to the unborn. The country is still at the mercy of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that went to extreme lengths to legitimate abortion on demand. We strongly contend that the effects of that ruling do not represent the norm desired by the American people as a whole.

Abortion must compete with many other crucial questions for attention. But Jimmy Carter needs to be reminded again and again that his contact with the people during the election campaign showed the depth of concern about the current inadequacies of legal restraints on abortion. Carter himself has said repeatedly that he was asked more about his stand on abortion than about anything else. He said he was against it and pledged that he would do what he could, under the law, to reduce the number of abortions. If he is to keep his promise to be responsive to the rank and file, he will take strong steps to put back into American legal codes the right of the fetus to live.

Having said that, we should recognize that Carter faces a raft of problems when he takes over the Oval Office. Proponents of all kinds of causes loudly proclaim that theirs is the most urgent. Which squeaky wheel does he oil first?

Perhaps a bit presumptuously, Christianity Today asked its editors-at-large to offer Carter some advice by completing the sentence, “If I were president …”

Dr. Thomas Howard, professor of English at Gordon College, Massachusetts, replied, “I would try most earnestly to use all the force of my office to strike a loud warning bell for America to call her back from her wild pursuit of self-destruction on the shoals of secularism, egoism, luxury, and hubris. I would try to destroy the myth that there is any road to health for a society other than that of self-denial, work, integrity, and purity.”

Dr. Nancy Tischler, professor of English and humanities at Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, said she would try “to replace pragmatism with idealism, cynicism with honesty. I should consider the long-term good of this country, cut the budget, reduce the waste, power, and size of the federal government, and try to govern with justice and mercy and humility.”

Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, assistant professor of history at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, pointed out that most people agree on the problems facing the president but differ on their order of priority and their solutions. Yamauchi said he would be “especially concerned with attending to the problems of the ‘downtrodden’—the poor, the unemployed, the aged, the victims of crime, and the minorities who have suffered from discrimination. I would seek to restrain Americans from their increasingly affluent and often wasteful use of funds and resources, so that these may be conserved and shared with those who are in need of them, both in the United States and abroad.”

Dr. Carl Armerding, who is assistant professor of Old Testament at Regent College, Vancouver, and is currently studying at Cambridge, said he would set two priorities: “In domestic affairs, to work out the implications of an election that divided the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’ so radically, and, in foreign affairs, to take up the peace initiatives recently floated in Egypt and Syria and press for an overall settlement in the Middle East.”

Dr. Leon Morris, returning to his native Australia after a teaching stint at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, thought he would like to see the President leading the nation to act in the spirit of the coin motto “In God We Trust.” There was a time, he said, “when the United States, in the spirit of this motto, was known for its passionate concern for justice, for its help for the weak, for its genuine altruism.”

Professor Peter Beyerhaus of the University of Tübingen in Germany was the most specific. He said flatly he would ask that morning prayer be reintroduced in public schools. “I am hoping for a spiritual explosion in the United States,” he said.

Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, professor-at-large at Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, California, reached into history for his contribution. Montgomery suggested that Carter take his cue from Sir Matthew Hale, lord chief justice of England in the reign of Charles II. A portion of Hale’s diary, in which he sets out his plan for a typical day, is included in the introduction to a book Three Epistles to His Children. Regular prayer, behavior monitoring, and mental diligence are features of the plan, which also embraces principles often appearing in modern management techniques.

Dr. Harold Kuhn, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky, said he would put himself in Solomon’s place and ask for wisdom. Kuhn put the premium on selecting the right kind of people to help him govern, “including, where practical, evangelical Christians.”

Like the next occupant of the White House, these contributors are Christians who take the Bible seriously. Believers everywhere should join in prayer that Jimmy Carter will have this Book not only at his side but also in his heart and mind as he makes decisions.

The Bequest Of Benjamin Britten

Last month at the age of sixty-three composer Benjamin Britten died as he had lived, quietly secluded in his coastal home at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England. Unlike many artists he was not a “personality.” Rather, his music tells us his story.

Britten, born November 22, 1913, began to play the piano at two. At age seven he read himself to sleep with musical scores of operas and symphonies; the pattern of notes fascinated him. He had written an oratorio and a string quartet by the time he was nine, and he received a scholarship to the Royal College of Music when he was sixteen. Unlike many composers today, he never saddled himself with outside teaching jobs or part-time work but earned his living solely through his musical writing.

Also unlike many of his contemporaries, Britten did not divorce himself from the musical past. He used dissonance and at times twelve-tone rows, but he also wrote moving lyrical music such as his song cycle “A Charm of Lullabies.” Moreover, Britten rejected the secularist tendencies of composers to ignore the Church as a vehicle for great music and Christianity as a subject for it. Two of his best-known compositions are “A War Requiem” and “A Ceremony of Carols,” for treble voices and harp. In the latter the choristers process into the church singing of Christ’s birth. After singing the carols, they recess singing the same music with which they entered. Britten also wrote several religious parables—like small operas—for church performance; “Curlew River” is the best known of these. “Hymn to St. Cecilia,” “Missa Brevis in D,” and the song cycle “The Holy Sonnets of John Donne” are other well-known compositions for the Church.

Benjamin Britten will be best remembered, though, as a great operatic composer. His international acclaim came with the premiere of Peter Grimes, now part of the repertoire of every major opera house in the world. It was commissioned, for only $1,000, by then Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Other operas followed, including the stark all-male Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville’s masterpiece.

Benjamin Britten was undoubtedly one of this century’s most gifted and brilliant composers. He also was one of the most disciplined. He worked every morning, exercised and rested in the afternoon, and returned to work after tea. As in the parable of the talents, he multiplied his and proved a good steward of what God had given him.

Paul’s Pattern For Starting Anew

The New Year is a time for beginnings. It is time to start a clean page. The account of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9 is one of the Bible’s most dramatic descriptions of a fresh start. The former persecutor of Christians made a complete turnaround in his life; he was a different person after that day on the Damascus Road.

Paul’s record of achievement as the first great missionary was due in no small part to the way he began his new life in Christ. The events of those initial days after his conversion provide a pattern for any believers turning a new leaf. God blessed his steps, which were not easy ones for him or for those around him.

His first significant act was to get up (v. 8) and get going. Some people, presented with a clean slate, are afraid to make the first entry. Not Paul! Instead of bewailing his temporary handicap, he accepted the help of seeing people around him, and he started his walk with the Lord.

Except to say that he neither ate nor drank (v. 9), the Scriptures tell us little about Paul’s activity until Ananias was sent to him. No doubt it was a time of meditation and waiting on God.

During the visit from the reluctant Ananias, Paul submitted to the ministry of a Christian brother (vv. 17–19). He received spiritual and physical help to prepare for his future ministry.

Almost immediately, the convert began to share his new faith. He proclaimed Jesus in a variety of ways to a variety of audiences (vv. 20, 22, 29). Interspersed with his public witness were meetings with the brethren in which he got more counsel and assistance (vv. 27, 30).

God blessed his efforts (v. 31), as he will those of any Christian submitting himself totally to God.

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