By the time this is published, the Dade County referendum will have been held and we’ll know whether Anita Bryant has been upheld or disowned by her Florida neighbors. That isn’t quite correct; it’s whether her concern that children not be taught in public or private schools by practicing homosexuals has been upheld or disowned.
Regardless of the outcome, let’s hear it for Anita Bryant. I don’t know of any other person in recent years, male or female, who has put a career on the line for a moral principle as she has. No college or Bible-school or seminary president, no pastor, no editor or writer, no business executive. I’m pretty sure that some have done it, but they are probably much less visible than she.
At the very beginning, in early January, Ms. Bryant was asked if she realized that there was power on the other side, and that she could suffer severely for righteousness’ sake. She replied that she did.
I am tempted to discuss what has been going on in the United States during recent years, how the battle for minority-race rights and women’s rights—areas of discrimination with an immoral base—has been extended to homosexuality and other areas with a moral base. Can people be “good” Christians and be opposed to having their children taught by practicing homosexuals? Ten years from now, will it be possible for Christians to be opposed to having their children instructed by a child molester or pornographer?
I resist the temptation to explore Alice in Wonderland because the Eutychus letter shouldn’t be so long that it usurps other letters.
So thank you, Anita Bryant, for your willingness to see your public Christian testimony go down the tube for what you perceive to be a Christian principle. You reached out for God rather than Las Vegas. So did the prophets before you.
As for me and my house, we shall wait to buy a new sewing machine and stock up on tomato juice. Just in case.
EUTYCHUS VIII
Bravos For Best
Thank you for printing the interview “Music: Offerings of Creativity” (May 6). Cheryl Forbes’s discussion with Harold Best revealed more good theology and exciting philosophy than any other article I’ve read for a long time. It also reminded me of Dorothy Sayers’s thoughts on the creative mind.
DOROTHY ALFORD
Elkhorn, Neb.
By skirting the issue of how music affects the masses and by emphasizing music as an individual offering or sacrifice, Dr. Best seems to appear almost snobbish. “This is my offering to God, whether anyone else likes it or not.” His assertion that this offering of creativity reflects the imago dei and Donald Hustad’s point (“Music Speaks … But What Language?,” May 6) about music being revelation as well as expression are harmonized by a fact which both men omitted from their articles. This very fact, I believe, clarifies the meaning and purpose of music in a context of worship as well as evangelism.… That fact is that the Lord is the original Creator-Artist. He created all things, and not without purpose.
Dr. Best’s emphatic assertion that God had to make the world is more consistent with certain strains of Hinduism, the emanational philosophy of Plotinus, and many process theologians than with the God of the Bible. As Dorothy L. Sayers, among others, so rightly stressed, the Triune God who creates is indeed the basis for all human aesthetic endeavor. But Sayers began with a thoroughly Christian doctrine of God when developing her analogies.
TIM ERDEL
Pastoral Intern
South Shore Bible Church
Chicago, Ill.
The interview with Harold Best is one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking articles I have read in any magazine for some time. I’m glad to see some serious thought being given to the function of music and art in the church.
GARY L. JOHNSON
Manager, Publishing Division
Bethany Fellowship, Inc.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Dealing With Doctrine
On the whole I thought your editorial “Doctrinal Hodgepodge in the Churches” (May 6) was a good assessment of denominational moorings being ripped out of the biblical foundation. But I think that your illustration of confessional inconsistency was bad. The issue of eternal security or losing one’s salvation is highly controversial, and evangelicals historically have been divided on this issue. Also, it is a minor doctrine compared to Jesus’ deity and humanity, God’s sovereignty or the Trinity.…
What is needed is for evangelicals to have clear sight on essential doctrines so that there is no repetition of the Unitarian-Universalist pattern, but we need to accept the inconsistency of the different views with which we see secondary doctrine. After all, we are not omniscient.
O. SCOTT OLIVER
Oak Park, Ill.
In your editorial you noted that the Roman Catholic Church is undergoing major changes of belief, and state that they are questioning teachings not based on Scripture, such as the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception, and transubstantiation. As a Roman Catholic who has accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour … I am more than happy to see traditional concepts such as the intercession of saints, adorations of Mary, and salvation only by membership in the Roman Catholic Church being discarded.…
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Whether or not Scripture requires that Christ’s words upon the breaking of the bread be interpreted to mean the literal transformation of the physical substances of the Lord’s Supper into the physical substance of Christ is open to question.…
The real presence of Christ, either intermingled with or fully supplanting the bread and wine, may very well be mandated by Scripture; it certainly is not contradictory thereto, and your “not biblically based” identification leaves much to be desired. Otherwise the editorial (on the Reformed churches), typical of your magazine, was excellent.
MICHAEL C. TRIPKA
Highland Heights, Ohio
More Digging Around ‘Roots’
Roots seems to have conveniently replaced the quiescent agony over Viet Nam in satisfying that undisguised appetite of Americans, not all, for self-flagellation. There is but a thin line separating this national tendency for beating ourselves over the past and a potential recrudescence of widespread race hatred to which this book and telecast series might have unconsciously contributed.
Like Cheryl Forbes (“From These ‘Roots,’ ” May 6), bless her heart, I too have my “roots” in Scandinavia. Our common ancestors, in point of fact, were devil worshipers in northern Europe who settled disagreements by beating each other with clubs. With such an illustrious family tree, I prefer to allow my roots to be buried in history. Forgetting those things which are behind, the view before us expands with joy and true liberation in Christ as we become “rooted and grounded in Him” (Col. 2:7).
FRANCIS ANDERSON
Seattle, Wash.
Thanks to Cheryl Forbes for writing on Roots. One of the reasons that the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (the “Covenanters”) is a small denomination is that 150 years ago she disciplined her members who held slaves. You had to have slaves in that day to go first class economically in some parts of the country. They chose second class.
RAYMOND P. JOSEPH
Reformed Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Inc.
I wanted to let you know of an incorrect attribution in the article. The director of the film The Emigrants is Jan Troell, not Ingmar Bergman.
JOSEPH DOSTAL
Columbus, Ohio
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