Who Speaks for the Voiceless?

People’s rights are trampled in China, and Israel, and Syria. Why is the Bush administration—and the church—silent?

Following is a guest editorial by Brian F. O’Connell, program coordinator of Peace, Freedom and Security Studies for the National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C.

Voicelessness. That is the anguish many government dissidents experience from China to the Middle East, from Africa to Mexico. These advocates of democracy, freedom, and religious liberty could once count on strong public, or at least private, support of the U.S. government. That seems no longer to be the case.

Ironically, it is because some countries have newfound favorable relations with the United States that human rights has been downgraded on the foreign-policy agenda. The Bush administration apparently feels that criticism of other countries’ “internal affairs” would impede growing friendships. As an example, the President has promised to veto a bill passed by Congress to include human-rights improvements as a condition on “most favored nation” (MNF) trade status with China, arguing that he was “trying to chart a course between the lesser of two evils.” But as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said, the real question is: “What about greater evils?”

Greater evils are not hard to find in China, where hundreds of prodemocracy demonstrators are still imprisoned, religious believers are harassed and persecuted, and slave labor camps are still in force. They are not hard to find in Egypt or Israel, which receive billions of dollars of American foreign aid every year, yet severely restrict political and religious freedoms. They are not hard to find in Syria, which, even though President Hafez al-Assad has a prominent role in Middle East peace discussions promoted by Secretary of State James Baker, remains on the official U.S. list of states that sponsor international terrorism.

Current policies let U.S. economic and political interests define—or eliminate—our moral obligation. When a State Department official recently was asked about the lack of human-rights concerns in the countries we helped in the Gulf War—for example, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—he replied that “complex geo-strategic issues” must take priority. Apparently respect for human dignity was, at best, a secondary concern.

In setting its priorities, the Bush government has clearly backed off from the human-rights policies of the past two administrations. From 1975 through 1990, advocacy of human rights was a central tenet in U.S. foreign policy. During the Reagan administration, religious-liberty violations were added to the criteria for measuring human-rights abuses.

Obviously, since then the world stage has changed; but have the principles that led to the advocacy of human rights become obsolete? One would think that the triumph of democracy in Eastern Europe, which has had significant consequences in such unlikely places as Nepal and South Africa, would translate into a continuation of such successful policies.

A few key leaders in Congress—such as Chris Smith from New Jersey, Frank Wolf from Virginia, and Paul Henry from Michigan—continue to champion human rights. But clearly, the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy is no longer central, and that is a tragedy.

America must continue to be a champion of human rights. That is one of the things that people around the world look to us for, and that the God of history expects. The cause of human rights and religious liberty is critical, and not only for the sake of increased access of the gospel to restricted countries. It is the only way of speaking for those who cannot speak.

New Courses For A New Age

Most pastors worth their seminary sheepskins can tick off the names of church history’s best-known heretics. But while they have been schooled in the textbook errors of Marcion, Arius, and Nestorius, they may get barely passing grades when it comes to understanding Joseph Smith or Shirley MacLaine. They may be ill-equipped to help parishioners refute door-knocking Jehovah’s Witnesses or evangelize New Age-influenced relatives.

Indeed, few seminaries offer more than an elective or two on aberrant religious movements. (See “Kingdom of the Cult Watchers,” p. 18.) Many pastors conversant with Christian Science or New Age teaching are largely self-taught. Is it time for seminaries to do more to educate church leaders in contemporary doctrinal aberrations?

Given the increasingly multiple-choice nature of American religious experience, we suggest the answer is yes. Theology professor Gordon Lewis of Denver Seminary (which is among the few seminaries that do regularly offer classes on cults), suggests that much seminary teaching of theology simply assumes the self-evident truth of the Christian faith: “It doesn’t adequately deal with the pluralism in our society, and with what is traditionally called apologetics.”

Seminaries, he argues, train students using Peter’s model of preaching at Pentecost, where “all you have to do is quote the Old Testament and show its fulfillment in Jesus.” It is assumed that piling up Bible texts will win a debate. But our society may have more in common with Athens, where Paul addressed the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, than with Jerusalem. So we need instead, says Lewis, to follow the example of Paul in Acts 17, which gives us a “paradigm for reaching people who do not have a background in the God of the Bible or Christian belief.”

To do that requires more than academic grounding in orthodox belief; it takes an agile familiarity with culture’s opposing viewpoints. Paul knew the Scriptures, but he also knew his day’s leading thinkers well enough to discern points of contact with Christianity, and to seize on places of departure.

To follow Paul’s example means training ministers to approach theology, church history, evangelism, and homiletics with constant reference to the marketplace of religious ideas and experiences. The argument is often made, of course, that if a student is informed of the errors of earlier centuries, he or she will be able to recognize their modern mutations. That reasoning may have held 30 years ago, when cults were clearly identifiable and to join meant a radical break from family and tradition. But syncretism and mushy, feel-good spiritual substitutes represent a growing temptation for many today. Heterodoxy may not always come in neatly defined doctrinal statements.

Today’s New Age beliefs, for example, have what someone called “a softer cognitive center.” And with the lines blurring between “self-help” strategies and New Age spirituality, culture’s (and parishioners’) errors may require more sophistication to address. That “panentheist” Matthew Fox (theologian of “Creation Spirituality”) has been the featured speaker at more than one denominational pastors’ conference should give us pause.

Older pseudo-Christian groups are not going away. (There is a new Latter-day Saint every four-and-one-half minutes.) And many of the newer religions are holding their audience. If, as author J. K. Van Baalen argues, the cults represent the “unpaid bills of the church,” we need to know what they are offering people who are disenchanted with traditional religion.

It won’t do to have pastors who can meticulously translate a sentence of New Testament Greek but cannot read their culture and recognize on sight the cults’ sometimes seductive reasoning.

By Timothy K. Jones.

Once In Love With Amy

Earlier this year, Amy Grant—who gained popularity some 13 years ago with Christian melodies such as “El Shaddai” and “My Father’s Eyes”—sang her way to the top of both the pop and gospel charts with the song “Baby, Baby.” It was a first for a contemporary Christian musician to score such double success, one that she will likely repeat with other songs from her latest album, Heart in Motion.

But despite her popularity, the five-time Grammy winner has her critics. Some Christian stations have refused to play her recent releases because they are “too upbeat” or “too controversial.” A profamily leader has complained that the video for “Baby, Baby”—a song Grant says she wrote for her infant daughter—portrays the married singer flirting with a young male actor. The persistent rap is that she has “gone secular” in trying to cross over from gospel to pop (read commercial) success.

Amy doesn’t run from that charge. “If somebody says, ‘You’re trying to go secular,’ I say, ‘Of course I am: That’s the whole point,’ ” Grant explains. “I’d rather do a record chock-full of great songs that make it to hit radio and have one song at the end that says ‘Have I earned the right to say something really important to you?’ ”

That is exactly what she has done in her album. Eight of its songs provide a wholesome look—sans evangelicalese—at some common pop-music topics, like love and friendship. One mentions God. And the final song of side two delivers the clear message that life has no meaning without Jesus.

So why the fuss? Perhaps it is because, for so many years, Amy was ours. And now we worry about her, like a child leaving home, headed out into the world (the pop-music world, no less). We worry when we see that her “crossover” promotion includes one demure pose for Christian record store posters, and another, a slightly more provocative look, for the secular stores.

As for Grant’s music and message, we say, “More power to her.” And we also hope, out there in the “whatever sells” world of pop success, she keeps seeing things through her Father’s eyes.

By Ken Sidey.

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