Book Briefs: May 15, 1987

One Woman On The Sawdust Trail

The Woman Evangelist: The Life and Times of Charismatic Evangelist Maria B. Woodworth-Etter, by Wayne E. Warner (Scarecrow Press, 354 pp.; $32.50, hardcover). Reviewed by Grant Wacker, associate professor of religious studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Maria Woodworth-Etter, one of America’s most colorful woman preachers, was born in 1844 in Lisbon, Ohio, and died 80 years later in Indianapolis, Indiana. That much is certain, but until now very little else about her life has been. Hagiographic lore has made it difficult to tell where the facts ended and the legends began. Now Wayne Warner’s biography of Etter, based upon prodigious research in contemporary newspaper accounts, goes a long way toward clarifying the historical record.

Besides telling the story of Etter’s career, the book advances two theses: first, that Etter helped break the male domination of the American pulpit; second, that she was an important forerunner and, later, popularizer of the Pentecostal movement. Whether Warner proves the first thesis is debatable, but the second is beyond question.

The “Trance Evangelist”

In 1880, just after the death of the fifth of her six children, Etter determined to enter full-time ministry. First licensed with the United Brethren, she soon switched to the (Winebrenner) Churches of God, where she remained until they dismissed her for an “uncooperative” attitude 20 years later.

Starting in 1883, many of the men and women attending Etter’s meetings would suddenly fall to the floor in a trance-like state Etter considered a sign of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Soon the “Trance Evangelist,” as she was called, felt impelled to introduce the gifts of divine healing as well.

Almost immediately Etter found herself swamped with invitations to hold meetings in churches of all denominations (and Mormons as well) throughout the Midwest and on both coasts. Although she habitually exaggerated the results of her ministry, contemporary newspaper accounts make clear that year after year her meetings were jammed with thousands—in some cases upwards of twenty thousand—of spectators, true believers, and plain folks seeking healing.

Etter’s services were never known for decorum, but in time they became synonymous with the most unrestrained forms of revivalism. Some cities passed ordinances forbidding children from attending. One reporter wrote that her meetings sounded like the “female ward of an insane asylum.”

The Reluctant Pentecostal

The Pentecostal movement emerged about 1900, but Etter’s relationship with it was tenuous at first. Although trances, healings, and (after 1904) speaking in tongues were common in her meetings, she was never very precise about the theological meaning of those events nor about what signs counted for what. Further, she seems to have been reluctant to identify with Pentecostals because of their unwillingness to ordain women or grant them any real measure of authority. Nonetheless, she finally joined forces with the Pentecostals in 1912.

They loved her. Etter’s books, which sold tens of thousands of copies and achieved a semicanonical status in her lifetime, were translated into a half-dozen languages and continue to be reprinted by Pentecostals in the 1980s.

Not surprisingly, Warner, who is the official archivist of the Assemblies of God, is sympathetic to Etter. He clearly believes that some—although not all—of her miracle claims were authentic. But he also strives to tell the whole story, “warts and all,” including her marital difficulties, inaccurate prophecies, scrapes with the law, and propensity for plagiarism. Readers will find this biography a nostalgic excursion into a Norman Rockwell-like world of small towns, steamy summer nights, and throbbing revival preaching.

The book is not likely to change anyone’s mind about whether women should be involved in public ministry, but it does prove that Aimee McPherson was not the first and probably not the most important female evangelist to grace the sawdust trail.

The Occasional Journalist

Present Concerns: Essays by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 112 pp.; $14.95, hardcover; $4.95, paper). Reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, author of A Year for Life.

With Christians of all shades either plunging headlong into politics or being dragged into it kicking and screaming, this latest collection of Lewisiana is both well named and aptly timed. Lewis disliked politics and feared that his works would be interpreted as “anti-Left” propaganda. But he did hold well-defined views on basic political issues, and those views were strongly related to his Christian beliefs.

Present Concerns is drawn from Lewis’s occasional journalism and makes some of this material available for the first time. It will help Christians to explore the links between their faith and their social and political thought.

Democracy, inequality, and the bomb

In the essay “Equality,” for example, Lewis says that most people defend democracy out of a belief in man’s inherent goodness. “I am a democrat,” contends Lewis, “because I believe in the Fall of Man.” The “real reason” for democracy, the author adds, is that “mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.”

In the selection “Democratic Education,” Lewis points out how beauty, virtue, and truth are not democratic. “Political democracy,” he says, “is doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death.” The notion that “I’m as good as you,” says Lewis, “is the hotbed of Fascism.”

In a similar vein, “Modern Man and His Categories of Thought” cites “Proletarianism,” a vaguely “Marxist” way of looking at the world. Proletarian thinkers believe that “whatever may be wrong with the world, it cannot be themselves.” This has direct application to much of liberation theology.

“On Living in an Atomic Age” is Lewis’s contribution to the ongoing nuclear weapons dialogue. Lewis was convinced that “we think a great deal too much of the atom bomb.” He believes it is a mistake to “exaggerate the novelty of our situation,” citing the plague, Viking raids, cancer, and syphilis. “We were all sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.”

“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb,” he continues, “let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies but need not dominate our minds.”

But heavy themes do not dominate this collection. Other essays deal with such varied themes as English, hedonism, bicycles, and sex in literature. In much of it, Lewis accomplishes his usual feat of delighting and instructing at the same time.

Though he was an occasional practitioner, Lewis had doubts about journalism, especially newspapers. Indeed, he told people to avoid them. One wonders what he would think of a little over 100 pages of his own articles dressed up to look like literature and priced at $14.95.

Such pop anthologizing often falls flat with other authors, but it works with Lewis because of the breadth of his mind, the simplicity of his style, and the clarity of his faith, expressed in such statements as this: “Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”

The Perils And Promise Of Technology

Responsible Technology: A Christian Perspective, edited by Stephen V. Monsma (Eerdmans, 252 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Stanley J. Grenz, associate professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The 1980s have witnessed an increasing disillusionment with our technological society, even among secular futurists. In his widely hailed book, Megatrends, John Naisbitt anticipated a movement away from the “forced technology” of the present to a balance between “high tech” and “high touch” in the future society. (A similar but religiously based warning was voiced already in the 1950s by the French social critic, Jacques Ellul, who decried a growing trend toward “standardized culture.”) And a reaction to technology may also be perceived behind certain contemporary movements: “Death with dignity,” for example, is a recapturing of control over one’s own destiny in an era in which even death is determined by technological specialists.

Responsible Technology is an attempt to deal with the problems and promise of modern technology from an avowedly Christian perspective. The book seeks to offer to the current situation a prophetic word, decrying the dangers of “technicism” while avoiding Ellul’s apocalyptic pessimism.

The book’s central thesis is that a stark contrast exists beween technology “done out of love and in response to God’s normative will” (which is the ideal) and the ruthless drive for “a salvation of material prosperity” by means of technological advances (which characterizes fallen society). The authors claim that technology is value-laden and not morally neutral, since technological tools and products are intertwined with their environments. Christians, the authors maintain, are called to harness technology to the service of others and the care of creation.

At the heart of their proposal lies the Calvinist concept of the “cultural mandate”: God has placed human beings “in creation in order to bring the creation to its full development.… to bring to light the treasures the Lord God has stored up in it.”

The book describes normative principles for a “responsible” technology. Three chapters are devoted to the technology’s relationship to science, economics, and the state. The authors propose what should be if the cultural mandate is to be fulfilled and, to this end, call for government regulation of technology.

The book closes with a call to responsible Christian living in a technicist society. Such living requires a “prophetic radicalism” that roots out blind faith in technological advancement. Specific suggestions are offered: through education a network of concerned persons must be developed; the mass media must be reformed, so that they are no longer the agents of the inculcation and celebration of technology; and Christians must engage in renewed lifestyles, transformed by the vision of love and servanthood.

Bold Program, Immense Problem

Responsible Technology is the work of six fellows of the Grand Rapids, Michigan, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, three of whom are members of the Calvin College faculty. The editor, Stephen Monsma, is a former state legislator who is currently with the Michigan Department of Social Services. Interaction by the six contributors and reworking by the editor has resulted in a truly joint venture, largely devoid of the spottiness and uneven writing of similar ventures.

This is a much-needed book, pinpointing the technological society as an issue not commonly addressed by the Christian community. And the authors are not afraid to offer a bold program for tackling an immense problem.

At the same time, the book is not without shortcomings. One is the book’s understanding of secularization, which the authors characterize as a continuation of the Fall. They equate secularization with human attempts to establish kingdoms of pride. This thesis, while having some merit, reflects a one-sided and simplified appraisal of secularization. The contributors fail to acknowledge the benefits this process has brought to humankind.

Some readers will object to the “transformationist” theme that pervades the book. This theme, which emphasizes the role of Christians in bringing society into conformity with God’s design, is understandable given the Calvinist basis from which the authors develop their thought. But it seems that they are again guilty of oversimplification when they see only three options for Christians: culture negation, culture accommodation, or honoring of the cultural mandate. Although the contributors acknowledge that Christians constitute a minority influence in society and rightly challenge believers to translate their faith into action in the world, the program smacks of an unrealistic Puritan model of an earlier day.

A final problem lies in the authors’ optimism about the human conscience. Prophetic radicalism includes a recapturing of the “pivotal role of conscience,” for this aspect of personhood is where moral truth is apprehended. This understanding fails to acknowledge fully Paul’s warning that the conscience must be instructed by revelation and can become “seared” through moral abuse. This Pauline pessimism lay behind the Reformers’ distrust of all inherent human capabilities.

These reservations are not intended to minimize the significance of Responsible Technology. The book offers a vision of a society in which all areas of life are brought under the lordship of Christ. Perhaps this vision would be more appropriately grounded in the eschatological kingdom of God, than in the past-oriented cultural mandate. Nevertheless, the vision of shalom, however grounded, forms a pertinent call to action in the present.

Biblical Counterpoint

Music and Ministry: A Biblical Counterpoint, by Calvin M. Johansson (Hendrickson Publishers, 138 pp.; $6.95, paper). Reviewed by Charlotte Kroeker, chair, Division of Fine Arts, Phillips University, Enid, Oklahoma.

Calvin Johansson is a rarity: a trained musician and theologian who speaks articulately about church music. And his book, Music and Ministry: A Biblical Counterpoint, combines theological, musical, philosophical, and pragmatic perspectives unlike any other book on church music.

Johansson begins by examining two commonly held philosophical bases for church music programs: aestheticism (in which art is often elevated to the position of God) and pragmatism (in which the end too often justifies the means).

There is a third philosophical basis, suggests Johansson—a biblical counterpoint. On this foundation, neither art nor methodology can be worshiped.

Johansson defines music in the church as being based on biblical truth, formulated in theological principles. For example, Johannson discusses the doctrine of Creation, concluding that the church has a biblical imperative to be creative. He reflects on the image of God and the responsibility we have to express an accurate image of God in music. Blasphemous images are painted weekly in our musical offerings—when our work is ill prepared, we portray a lazy and slothful God.

Johannson is critical of the church’s musical response to our mass-production industrial society. The church has become an unwitting consumer of mass culture’s musical mediocrity by adapting pop music’s cliches and commercialism to church settings. Johannson calls us to recognize our blind acquiescence and move instead into creativity with artistic integrity.

Practical considerations are also addressed: intellectual and emotional balances in church music; the relationship between faith and delayed gratification (the right music may not always be the music we “like”); doing one’s best (choosing the best musicians for the musical offering); growth and church music education; the importance of music in ministry and worship.

Music and Ministry is different from the practical and descriptive accounts of evangelical church music already available (such as those by Hustad or Lawrence and Ferguson), drawing together ideas from the arts, literature, theology, philosophy, and contemporary culture to give a fresh perspective from which to view church music.

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