The Healing Fields

It may not be easy helping a nation that defeated us in war. But it is right.

In the face of injustice, rising tension, and military build-up, it is easy to forget that the church has been given “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:8). When confronted with cunning evil and brute violence, it is easy to ignore Jesus’ injunction to “love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44). Certainly for many conservative churches during the Vietnam War, these imperatives of the gospel were pushed down on our list of priorities.

But now 15 years have gone by since the end of American involvement in Vietnam, and perhaps what we have lacked in speed can be made up in quality. As Terry Muck’s essay in this issue (“An American in Hanoi,” p. 24) makes clear, Vietnam is still a country in need of reconciliation and love.

After World War II, it was easy to play the role of the benevolent winner and generously help those countries that were ruined by the war. But in Vietnam, we did not win. Not only that, but we were torn in two as a nation, united only in our grief over the 58,000 soldiers we lost. In many ways these wounds are still very much with us.

It is the peculiar genius of the gospel to transform the tragic into an epiphany of love. As wounded healers, we are called to act out God’s ministry of redemption. In the context of Vietnam, this means that the American church has an opportunity to incarnate the gospel, to exchange bitter memories for a vision of hope, to reach out in love to those who were our enemies, to go the extra mile of providing aid and services to the winners of the unofficial war.

And this is precisely what some Christian organizations have been doing. Groups such as World Vision, World Relief, Save the Children Federation, OxFam, the Mennonite Central Committee, American Friends, Lutheran Family Services, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and others have cut through the red tape and set up programs that provide health care, vocational training, disaster relief, and other services to this much-victimized nation.

Such efforts do not call into question the legitimacy of our country’s past actions in this region. Nor do they legitimize Vietnam’s current government, which continues to persecute Christians and violate human rights. Rather, these efforts recognize that we are in a different time and situation. The war is over. New strategies and new goals are called for.

Last June the U.S. Department of State urged nongovernmental organizations to be involved in addressing the humanitarian concerns of Vietnam. Many see this, along with its shift in policy toward Cambodia, as a sign that the United States eventually plans to restore official relations with the government of Vietnam.

The time is ripe for the church to exercise its moral leadership and encourage this development. We can be involved in a number of capacities: through supporting medical and economic programs, befriending and sponsoring Amerasian children of American soldiers, sponsoring refugees, or becoming politically involved. (For those churches that want to learn more about current opportunities in Vietnam, World Vision has created a video and a brochure.)

When Christ calls us to action, we cannot table the motion. We are commanded to love, to reconcile. The current situation is not ideal. We would love to send missionaries and to support the indigenous church more actively, and perhaps someday we may be able to do more. But God has given us an open door. Let us walk through it.

By Michael G. Maudlin

The poster in Chicago busses and at “El” stops reads: “Kissing Doesn’t Kill. Greed and Indifference Do.” The ad, which is supposed to convey an AIDS education message, has also played to a mixture of cheers and jeers in New York, San Francisco, and other major urban venues.

The design was produced by a group called Gran Fury, the graphics and advertising arm of the gay activist group ACT-UP. The funds came from a grant from the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

The controversy generated by the ad seemed to center on the fact that the couples shown kissing on the poster were not all your garden-variety pairings. They included a brace of osculating males and two soul sisters, mouth-to-mouth, who did not appear to need resuscitation.

“Repulsive,” said the 60-year-old Eleanor Drayton to a Chicago Tribune reporter. But we find a lot of ads repulsive. What set this ad apart was the diversion of the limited funds available for the important task of AIDS education to promote a political message.

“It is not an AIDS-prevention ad,” Shepherd Smith of Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (ASAP) told CT. “It is not a meaningful prevention message. Therefore, it has no value to the epidemic.” Surely there is nothing on the poster that will help any individual avoid behavior that could transmit disease.

“It is a political statement,” Smith continued. To most of the public, that political statement may be almost as obscure as any prevention message the advertisement bears.

Is it a political statement about nontraditional sexuality? That it doesn’t matter whom you kiss? That all sexual relations are created equal and have inalienable rights? That may be the message borne by the images.

But the text of the ad seems to be an attack on our society’s slow response to AIDS. It is true that in recent years, the mobilization of our resources to combat Legionnaire’s Disease (which killed mainly white males) was much faster than the response to Toxic Shock Syndrome (which attacked only women), which in turn was much faster than the response to AIDS (which at first attacked only gay men and Haitians). We should all take to heart the notion that a quick response to AIDS would have been far better than a slow one.

But the problem is not with that part of the message. It is with the shifting of responsibility away from the person who indulges in risk-laden sexual activity. Of course kissing can kill. As ASAP’s Smith said: “Scientifically speaking, the poster’s message is flawed. You’re not going to find a serious scientist today who will say that intimate kissing with an end-stage diseased person is not dangerous.”

It seems that Gran Fury does not want people to have to police their own sexual behavior. Not that many years ago, people did not know how AIDS was transmitted. But today, it is hardly an effective AIDS-prevention message to say, “Kissing Doesn’t Kill.” What we have in this poster is the sexual-liberation equivalent of the more familiar “Guns Don’t Kill. People Do.” But whether we are talking viruses or Uzis, the more microbes you spread around or the more assault weapons you import the more likely somebody is going to get killed. When there is a wave of mortality, smart policy makers don’t try to help people shift the responsibility. They mobilize everyone to take responsibility.

But maybe this ad will work out after all. The average rider of Chicago busses has probably not kept up with the political pressures being exerted to speed up medical response to AIDS. Instead, he or she has probably gotten the message that you can get AIDS by having unprotected sex. And maybe he or she will get the right message in spite of the poster: When asked by a radio reporter what the sign meant, a Chicago woman said, “Well, it means that kissing is okay, but if you get greedy and you do too much kissing, it can hurt you.” Right.

By David Neff.

Watch thousands of charismatics, brought together for a week of workshops and worship in Indianapolis’s Hoosier Dome, and what will you see? Hand raising, fervent praying, and exuberant singing, right?

Right. But that’s not all. Not this year. On the thirtieth anniversary of Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett’s resignation from his Episcopal parish in Van Nuys, California (cited by many as a catalytic event in the spread of charismatic renewal to mainline denominations), the movement is coming of age.

At the North American Congress on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization, held in August, there was an unprecedented emphasis on world evangelization and ministry to the poor, the flowering of seeds planted in another conference three years ago in New Orleans. British renewal leader Michael Harper noted there was not only a call to “personal and national evangelism, but also to a global vision for evangelization.”

Meeting under the theme “Evangelize the World, Now!” participants were urged to count the cost and carry the gospel to the ends of the earth, especially to the poor, even if it means martyrdom. “This is not a ‘bless me’ conference,” said Vinson Synan, chairman of the North American Renewal Service Committee, which sponsored the event. The seriousness of the call mingled with celebratory worship is a bracing combination.

Those evangelicals who have been wary of their more exuberant charismatic and Pentecostal brethren can celebrate this recovery of great compassion and commitment to the Great Commission. Linked with charismatics’ hallmark spiritual vitality and energy, such evangelistic zeal bodes well for the church’s mission mandate.

By Timothy K. Jones.

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