Eutychus and His Kin: November 9, 1984

To Err Is Humor?

The October 5 issue of this magazine contains a peculiarity. At the top of page 55 are three photographs. One man is Bob Sweet, who is on staff at the White House. Next to him is Jerry Falwell. And to the right of Falwell (probably for the only time in his life) is Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.). Except it really isn’t Senator Weicker. It is Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.).

How did this happen? Well, as resident jester at CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I consider it my responsibility to enliven the atmosphere now and then. So I thought, Why not a fun test for you, our erudite readers? And I put John Chafee’s photo in the space reserved for Lowell Weicker. You came through. We have many letters to prove you know Chafee from Weicker any day.

The only problem is that the CT editors didn’t get the joke. To be honest, I really didn’t expect to see that substituted caption in print. I thought somebody here would catch it and correct it. Now imagine those poor editors next time they’re in Washington. Say they drop by to interview Senator Weicker. They think that the black-haired, lanky Chafee really is Lowell Weicker. So the real Weicker would invite them into his office, but they’d say, “Thank you, that’s okay. We’re waiting for Senator Weicker.”

I mean it. It could happen. It appears these editors offer errors the same amount of resistance most defensive tackles offer Nebraska running backs: very little. But I’ll admit this adds an entirely new dimension to my job. I was getting a little bored, working only on my little column from issue to issue. But now that I’ve found out what I can get away with—just watch me work!

EUTYCHUS

The Public School Debate

John Alwood may be right (“The View from the Principal’s Office,” Sept. 7) when he said, “If there is a battle going on, there are a lot of schools where no one knows it.” I suspect that his school may be one of them.

His responses to the questions reveal an undeniable influence of the very humanism he is struggling to disregard. When Alwood indicated warmness to a teacher assigning students to write a horoscope to get the class interested in writing, and when he defended “a string of swear words” from Brave New World, he relinquished any credibility he might have had in speaking on the subject of humanism. One doesn’t ask the fox about the security of the henhouse.

EVERETT STENHOUSE

Costa Mesa, Calif.

I want to applaud Dr. Alwood for the spirit and balance of his views. He seemed to relate to all kinds of kids with justice and fairness, both rare qualities. He affirms our conviction that voluntarist organizations make a valid contribution to the school’s life and can participate in school life without being objectionable.

ROBERT MITCHELL

President, Young Life

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Can the loss of Bible teaching in public schools really have had no effect on American morals? Is there really no direct impact by a secularist teacher’s values on children he teaches? Is silent prayer at school really so awkward as to be unworkable? Considering the article’s answers, one can only hope Dr. Alwood has somehow been misunderstood or misquoted.

KENNETH J. BRYER

Carol Stream, Ill.

I heartily endorse Alwood’s challenge to evangelicals to become involved with the public schools. There is no more available mission field. Who speaks for God in those schools if all the evangelicals are withdrawn?

MALCOLM WILLEMS

Kent, Wash.

Old Testament Jews would have died a thousand deaths before allowing others with a different philosophy of life to educate their seed. Few parents can adequately balance the humanistic presuppositions, thinking, and attitudes that develop in the 7-hour gap between bus rides. Instruction is more than modern science labs, a computer terminal, or band. Biblical training is a way of life. The point is not “Look at those awful public schools!” but “Look how Christian education offers us, the Christian parents, help in fulfilling our responsibility to educate our children in a biblical basis for life!”

MARK ECKEL

Shiloh Christian School

Mandan, N.Dak.

The Real Kierkegaard

I commend CT for publishing the fine article by C. Stephen Evans on Sören Kierkegaard, “A Misunderstood Reformer” [Sept. 21]. I have been deeply disturbed by the evangelical tendency to depict Kierkegaard as a bogeyman threatening the true faith. (This perhaps is true of the Kierkegaard presented through the medium of some existentialist philosophers.) I hope Evans’s article will go a long way in banishing that caricature from the minds of evangelicals and stimulate a firsthand investigation of his writings.

CHRIS MCDERMOTT

Lakeland, Fla.

In his article, Evans asks, “Must an author be infallible to be read with profit, or appreciated as a Christian brother?” The answer is obvious. However, it gets a negative vote from some whose letters to the editor inform us that they intend to allow their subscriptions to lapse, citing a “liberal trend” in the publication. Frankly, I find the change refreshing and edifying.

REV. THOMAS R. TERRY

Sardis Baptist Church

Timmonsville, S.C.

American Baptists: No Nod to Gay Relationships

I must protest a discernible trend in CHRISTIANITY TODAY toward biased reporting of news related to mainline denominations. Your report on the Family Life Policy Statement adopted by the General Board of the American Baptist Churches, U.S.A. [Sept. 7], implies that the policy endorses homosexual relationships. That is a gross distortion, and was not the intention of the representatives.

It is also peculiar that a journal that claims great interest in advancing the cause of evangelism should ignore totally the fact that a policy statement on evangelism was also adopted by the general board at the same meeting.

DANIEL E. WEISS

National Secretary

American Baptist Churches, U.S.A.

Valley Forge, Pa.

For the reporter to say that “convenantal, intentional family arrangements” [is] an apparent reference to homosexual unions demonstrates a “tilt.” As chair of the drafting committee I can say unequivocally that no such inference was intended. The statement is clear that such an inference is not that unless one is looking for it.

REV. HARLEY D. HUNT

Emerald Baptist Church

Eugene, Oreg.

Is your reporter trying to paint the ABC “liberal”?

REV. MARVIN BREININGER

First Baptist Church

Pittsfield, Maine

You have resorted to the secular media’s irresponsible twisting of facts in order to sensationalize a story. Sadly, the damage doesn’t end here as the body is further divided by such misunderstandings.

REV. DENNIS HAMMONS

The Eastern Heights Baptist Church

Evansville, Ind.

Ralph Winter: Reinventing the Wheel?

I read with interest “Ralph Winter: An Unlikely Revolutionary” [Sept. 7]. However, I am a bit puzzled. Winter seems to have reinvented the wheel. In 1942, Paul Fleming became the center of a group known as New Tribes Mission, which selected for itself the somewhat arrogant motto, Reaching New Tribes Until We’ve Reached the Last Tribe. Wycliffe Bible Translators concludes their organizational theme song, “… ‘til in every language is told His salvation, / March onward, O Camp Wycliffe, with God’s saving Word.”

What is Winter doing that these two organizations are not? Why can he not simply stick pins into, give a hotfoot to, or otherwise irritate existing mission boards into pushing out to the edges of their organizational maps and finding “the least, the last, and the lost” to send missionaries to?

DAVID S. LANDON

Chicago, Ill.

The article was delightful, accurate, inspiring, and even entertaining. I would have added an item or two: first and foremost that beyond the sheer genius of the man and his passion for the next person and tribe yet to hear of Jesus Christ lies a personal godliness and love for the Lord Jesus that is inspiring and infectious. I believe Ralph Winter is one of our generation’s truly great men of God. His genius, plus the cross-pollinization of that great host of people committed to world evangelization, has got to be something that has never happened in the world before.

OLAN HENDRIX

U.S. Director, Send International

Farmington, Mich.

Your illustrations of Winter were counterproductive. The cover portrays him as God (almost), viewing the peoples of the world like a cosmological scientist. The illustrations of his head as a light bulb alternately pictured him as the Albert Einstein of missions or a dehumanized object—a head with ideas but no body or heart.

FRANK NOELL

Portland, Oreg.

Miss America and Conservative Chauvinism

Your recent editorial, “The Tarnished Crown of Miss America” [Sept. 7], is ludicrous. Am I to believe that all Miss America contestants other than Vanessa Williams are virtuous? Since when does about three centimeters of cloth create virtue? Your editorial is evidence of the conservative chauvinism sweeping America today, making lesbianism and homosexuality a greater sin than fornication and adultery. Actually, abortion is only a symptom of the latter two. I would suggest that you reread Genesis 1–3, Romans 3, and Galatians 5.

REV. LUKE H. BRANDT

Indiana Creek Church of the Brethren

Harleysville, Penn.

The officials of the Miss America pageant and the publisher and editors of Penthouse magazine are bedfellows: they all profit from the sexploitation of human flesh. It is just that the former are more subtle while the latter are blatantly offensive about it.

HAVEN BRADFORD GOW

American Life Lobby

Stafford, Va.

An “Absolutist” View on Abortion?

The unholy brouhaha that has erupted over the publication and subsequent withdrawal by InterVarsity Press of D. Gareth Jones’s book Brave New People (News, Sept. 21) provides sobering evidence for the rising level of hysteria that threatens to overtake thoughtful evangelical discussion of the thorny abortion issue. Quite properly concerned that secularism is making alarming inroads into the thought patterns and lifestyles of American evangelicals, prolifers have seized on abortion as the issue upon which to take an absolute, uncompromising stand. Yet the complex and tragic nature of some real-life cases and the genuine questions surrounding biblical interpretation makes such an absolutist position premature and self-serving.

Jones and InterVarsity Press are to be commended for attempting to responsibly contribute to the evangelical abortion dialogue. It is unfortunate that the present religious-political climate among American evangelicals is too brittle and polarized to allow it.

ROGER C. SIDER, M.D.

Rochester, N.Y.

I was greatly displeased with the negative light [in which] we were shown. The CAC and other groups were quite right in opposing a book that considers the abortion of a seriously handicapped infant “the least tragic of a number of tragic options.” Murder is always a tragedy, it is never an option. God in his wisdom created some people with great handicaps. We, as Christians, have no right to say, “This one would be too much trouble, Lord, so I’m going to kill him.”

GARY F. BENTLEY

Philadelphia Christian Action Council

Hatfield, Penn.

Heaven—and a New Earth

Philip Yancey’s “Heaven Can’t Wait” [Sept. 7] was well written and to the point, but he nowhere hints that there’s a new earth coming. Too many Christians have an altogether ethereal picture of the future. Actually, the promise of the new earth is an essential aspect of biblical eschatology. Our happiness will not be complete until our bodies will have been raised, and we shall be living on the renewed earth. This new earth will then still be heaven. To leave the new earth out of consideration when we think about the Christian’s future is greatly to impoverish biblical eschatology.

ANTHONY A. HOEKEMA

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

One idea of heaven I value highly is that the essential ingredient of heavenly life is useful activity.Matthew 25 best illustrates that to me. The man who has worked faithfully is told that he may now enter more fully into work and the joy of usefulness. Fundamental to heaven’s joy is useful activity.

REV. DONALD L. ROSE

Huntingdon Valley, Penn.

Tobacco and Southern Baptists

I was surprised to read that 51 Southern Baptist churches in North Carolina had reacted against a resolution to end subsidies to tobacco farmers, calling it “the lifeline for many of our people and the majority of the churches” [News, Sept. 7]. Soon I expect to read that other churches are complaining about the crackdown on cocaine traffic since that is the primary source of their income. What if Californian marijuana growers and Times Square hookers tithe religiously? Does that sanctify their professions?

DAVID FARNUM

Coudersport, Penn.

Ministry to Homosexuals

In an age when evangelicals are out protesting against “gay rights,” I am so happy to see Christians reaching out for the homosexuals’ greatest right of all—the right to become children of God just as everyone else in the world [News, Sept. 21]. It’s high time Christians accept these people as human beings made in the image of God, having a need for salvation through Jesus Christ, needing love and friendship. They need Jesus, not our judgmentalism.

DEBORAH J. REINIKE

K. I. Sawyer A.F.B., Mich.

My dictionary defines the word gay as “joyous and lively; merry; happy; lighthearted.” This certainly cannot describe those unfortunate, ill members of society called homosexuals, and I cannot understand why you as America’s leading evangelical Christian magazine persist in using the word in reference to them.

DON BREWER

North Little Rock, Ark.

The persistent misconception is that evangelicals are not involved in ministry to homosexuals. This article helps. It says, however, “At this year’s United Methodist General Conference, participants turned down a statement in support of civil rights for gays.…” The paragraph considered and voted down by the general conference included the sentence, “Their invisibility as a minority has meant …” To pass that paragraph would have meant we were recognizing homosexuals as an official minority group. Then it stated, “We hold that persons should not be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation.…” Delegates wondered if a homosexual youth director at a church could be dismissed under such legislation. The rights statement also asked for the “creation and effective enforcement of legal sanctions against such discrimination.” United Methodists simply believe they have and must retain the right not to employ homosexual persons in church staff positions.

JAMES V. HEIDINGER II

Executive Secretary/Editor

Good News Wilmore, Ky.

That First Amendment

The editorial “Nonsense and the First Amendment” [Sept. 7] opens a sore spot with people who believe the Constitution means what it says—no less, no more. The long series of decisions about the practice of religion in schools has no constitutional basis whatever. It is abundantly clear that “the Congress can make no law …”; it seems equally clear that no restraint whatever is placed on any other legislative body. Isn’t there someone somewhere who can do something about the federal courts who put the nonsense into legal interpretation of the First Amendment?

JESSE DUCK

Trenton, Tenn.

Your editorial made good sense to me. What does not make sense is how you can decry, correctly, the nonsense promulgated by such pernicious provocateurs of permissiveness as the ACLU and at the same time “promote” perfidious “peregrination”! An ad on page 81 of your September 7 issue says “preference to women candidates.” My dictionary says of discrimination: to make a distinction in favor of (my analysis) or against one person or thing as compared with others. It is, therefore, just as wrong to favor one group (women/minorities) as it is to disfavor them! Would you have carried the ad if it said “preference given to white male candidates”?

JOHN L. ROBINSON, JR.

Overland Park, Kans.

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