Philip Yancey
John Donne asked the questions that face everyone who suffers.
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In this essay, Editor-at-Large Philip Yancey, author of Where Is God When It Hurts? and Disappointment with God, reflects on how his life and work have been changed by John Donne’s meditation on, and experience of, suffering. This is the second in a series of essays produced for CHRISTIANITY TODAY on how contemporary Christian writers have been influenced by the classic authors. These essays will be published in book form as The Reality and the Vision (Word).
No matter where I start, I usually end up writing about pain. My friends have suggested various reasons for this phenomenon: a deep psychological scar from childhood that has not yet come to light, or perhaps an additional melancholy chromosome. I do not know.
“How can I write about anything else?” is the best explanation I can come up with for my fixation. Is there a more fundamental fact of human existence? I was born in pain, and I offered up, as my first announcement of life, a wail. I will very likely die in pain as well. Between those brackets of pain I live out my life, traveling from the one toward the other.
Before writing the book Where Is God When It Hurts? I spent a month in a library exploring what other people had written about pain. Books about “the problem of pain” filled five long shelves. While browsing, I came across a remarkable book, written 366 years ago, that has changed forever the way I think about pain: John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. The great Elizabethan poet and preacher wrote it in bed, convinced he was dying of bubonic plague. It is trenchant and inquiring without being blasphemous, profound without being abstract or impersonal. It combines the raw humanity of modern treatises with the reverent sagacity of the ancients.
How shall they come to thee whom thou hast nailed to their bed?
John Donne was a man acquainted with grief. During his term as dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London’s largest church, three waves of the Great Plague swept through the city. (Donne’s own illness turned out to be a spotted fever like typhus, not bubonic plague.) The last epidemic alone killed 40,000 people. Mangy, half-crazed prophets stalked the deserted streets, crying out judgment; and in truth, nearly everyone believed God had sent the plague as a scourge. Londoners flocked to Dean Donne for an explanation, or at least a word of comfort.
Donne had, in fact, grown up in the school of suffering. His father had died in John’s fourth year. Being raised in a Catholic family was a crippling disability in those days of Protestant-sponsored persecution. Catholics could not hold office, were fined for attending mass, and were often tortured for their faith. After distinguishing himself at Oxford and Cambridge, John Donne was denied a degree because of his religious affiliation. His brother died in prison, serving time for having sheltered a priest.
At first Donne responded to these difficulties by rebelling against all faiths. A notorious Don Juan, he celebrated his sexual exploits in some of the most frankly erotic poems in all of English literature. But finally, riven by guilt, he renounced his promiscuous ways in favor of marriage. He had fallen under the spell of Anne More, a 17-year-old beauty so quick and bright that she reminded him of sunlight.
In a bitter irony, it was just when Donne decided to settle down that his life took a calamitous turn. When Anne More’s father found out about the marriage, he determined to break Donne forever. He got Donne fired from his job as secretary to a nobleman and had him, along with the minister who performed the ceremony, thrown into prison. In black despair, Donne wrote his most cryptic poem: “John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.”
Although Anne’s father eventually softened, still he refused to help the young couple. Donne, now branded, could not find further employment. For nearly a decade he and his wife lived in poverty, in a cramped house that filled with their offspring at the rate of one per year. Anne was subject to periodic depression, and more than once nearly died in childbirth. John, probably malnourished, suffered from acute headaches, intestinal cramps, and gout. His longest work during this period was an essay on the advantages of suicide.
Sometime during that gloomy decade, John Donne converted to the Church of England. Later, his career blocked at every turn, he decided to follow the king’s advice by seeking ordination as an Anglican priest. He was 42 when he made that decision. Contemporaries gossiped about his “conversion of convenience” and scoffed that he had “wanted to be ambassador to Venice, not ambassador to God.” But Donne gradually grew reconciled to his calling. He earned a doctor of divinity degree from Cambridge, promised to write no more poetry, and devoted himself instead to parish work.
The year after Donne took his first parish job, Anne died. She had borne 12 children in all, 5 of whom had died in infancy. Donne made a solemn vow not to remarry, lest a stepmother bring them further grief. He preached Anne’s funeral sermon, choosing as his text these words from the Book of Lamentations: “Lo, I am the man that hath seen affliction.”
This, then, was the priest appointed by King James I to Saint Paul’s Cathedral in 1621: a lifelong melancholic, haunted by guilt over the sins of his youth, failed in all his ambitions (except poetry, which he had forsworn), sullied by accusations of insincerity. He hardly seemed a likely candidate to inspire the nation in plague times. Nonetheless, Donne applied himself to his new task with vigor, arising every morning at four and studying until ten. In the era of the King James Bible and William Shakespeare, educated Londoners honored eloquence and elocution, and in these Donne had no equal. He delivered sermons of such power that soon the cathedral was filled with worshipers.
Two years later, the first spots of illness appeared on Donne’s body, and doctors diagnosed the plague. For six weeks he lay at the threshold of death. The prescribed treatments were as vile as the illness: bleedings, strange poultices, the application of vipers and pigeons to remove evil “vapours.” During this dark time, Donne, forbidden to read or study but permitted to write, composed the book Devotions.
“Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute,” the book begins. Anyone who has been confined to bed can identify with the series of circumstances, petty yet overpowering, that Donne describes: a sleepless night, doctors in whispered consultation, the false hope of remission followed by the dread reality of relapse.
The mood of the writing changes quickly and violently. Such emotions as fear, guilt, and the sadness of a broken heart take turns chasing out all inner peace. Donne worries over his past: Has God “nailed him to bed” as a mocking punishment for past sexual sins? In his prayers he tries to muster up praise, or at least gratitude, but often fails. He pictures himself as a sailor tossed capriciously about by the towering swells of an ocean in storm. Occasionally he gets a glimpse of faraway land, only to lose it with the next giant wave.
In the tradition of Job, Jeremiah, and the psalmists, Donne uses the arena of his personal trials as a staging ground for a wrestling match with the Almighty. For Donne, as he looks back on life, the facts do not add up. After spending a lifetime in confused wandering, he has finally reached a place where he can be of some service to God, and now, at that precise moment, he is struck by a deadly illness. Nothing appears on the horizon but fever, pain, and death. What to make of it? In Devotions, John Donne calls God to task.
Give me, O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid.
I have interviewed many people whose lives are defined by suffering. In every case they have described to me a crisis of fear, a crisis of meaning, and a crisis of death. And the central reason I keep returning to Donne’s Devotions is that the book continues to yield new insights into these primal confrontations with the mystery of suffering.
Most of the time, Donne was left to battle fear alone. In those days, victims of contagious diseases were subject to quarantine, and as Donne lay on his bed he wondered if God, too, was participating in the quarantine. He cried out, but received no answer. Where was God’s promised presence? His comfort? Always, in each of the 23 meditations, Donne circles back to the central issue underlying his suffering. His real fear was not of the tinny clamor of pain cells all over his body; he feared God.
Donne asked the “Why me?” question over and over again. Calvinism was still new then, and Donne pondered the notion of plagues and wars as “God’s angels.” But he soon recoiled from that idea; “Surely it is not thou, it is not thy hand. The devouring sword, the consuming fire, the winds from the wilderness, the diseases of the body, all that afflicted Job, were from the hands of Satan; it is not thou.”
And yet, he never felt certain. Guilt from his spotted past lurked like a demon nearby. Perhaps he was indeed suffering as a result of some sin. And if so, was it better to be scarred by God or not visited at all? How could he worship, let alone love, such a God?
Although Devotions does not resolve many of Donne’s questions about suffering, it does record his emotional resolution, showing us a step-by-step process of transformation. At first—confined to bed, churning out prayers without answers, contemplating death, regurgitating guilt—he can find no relief from omnipresent fear. Obsessed, he reviews every biblical occurrence of the word fear. As he does so, it dawns on him that life will always include circumstances that incite fear: if not illness, financial hardship; if not poverty, rejection; if not loneliness, failure. In such a world, Donne has a choice: to fear God, or to fear everything else.
In a passage reminiscent of Paul’s litany in Romans 8, Donne checks off his potential fears. Great enemies? They pose no threat, for God can vanquish any enemy. Famine? No, for God can supply. Death? Even that, the worst human fear, is no permanent barrier to those who fear God. Concluding that his best course is to cultivate a proper fear of the Lord, for that fear can supplant all others, he prays, “As thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me, 0 Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid.”
In his wrestling with God, Donne has changed questions. He began with the question of origin—“Who caused this illness and why?”—for which he found no answer. His meditations move gradually toward the question of response. The crucial issue, the one that faces every person who suffers, is, “Will I trust God with my pain and fear? Or will I turn away from him in bitterness and anger?” Donne decided that in the most important sense it did not matter whether his sickness was a chastening or a natural accident. In either case, he would trust God, for in the end trust represents the proper fear of the Lord.
As Donne explains, the decisive reason for trusting God traces back to his son, Jesus. Illness opens up a great gulf between ourselves and a God who knows nothing like weakness or helplessness. A sense of distance from God may creep in that only magnifies our fears. But in Jesus we have a Great Physician “who knows our natural infirmities, for he had them, and knows the weight of our sins, for he paid a dear price for them.”
Make this … very dejection and faintness of heart, a powerful cordial.
Viktor Frankl, survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, expressed well the second great crisis faced by people who suffer: the crisis of meaning. “Despair,” he said, “is suffering without meaning.” And in a society like ours, saturated with comfort, what possible meaning can we give to the great intruder suffering?
What is the meaning of AIDS? A loud, public debate rages over that one, but what about the meaning of progeria, the bizarre abnormality that speeds up the aging process and causes a 6-year-old child to look and feel 80? Or what is the meaning of cerebral palsy, or strep throat, or a freak January tornado?
Most of us can see only a negative “meaning” to suffering: It is an interruption of health, an unwelcome break in our pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Visit any card shop and you will get the message unmistakably. All that we can wish for suffering people is that they “Get well!” But as one woman with terminal cancer told me, “None of those cards apply to the people in my ward. None of us will get well. We’re all going to die here. To the rest of the world, that makes us invalids. Think about that word. Not valid.”
John Donne, thinking himself terminally ill, asked similar questions about meaning, and his Devotions suggest the possibility of an answer. The first stirrings came to him through the open window of his bedroom, in the form of church bells tolling out a doleful declaration of death. For an instant, Donne wondered if his friends, knowing his condition to be more grave than they had disclosed, had ordered the bell to be rung for his own death. But he quickly realized that the bells were marking another’s death from plague.
A short time later, sounds from the funeral service itself drifted in amongst the street noises. Donne croaked out a feeble accompaniment to the congregational singing of psalms, and then he wrote Meditation 17 on the meaning of the church bells—the most famous portion of Devotions, and indeed one of the most celebrated passages in English literature (“No man is an island.… Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”). Donne realized that although the bells had been sounded in honor of another’s death, they served as a stark reminder of what every human being spends a lifetime trying to forget: We will all die. “So this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.”
The tolling of that bell worked a curious twist in Donne’s progression of thought. He had been wondering about the meaning of illness and what lessons he should learn from it. Now he began contemplating the meaning of health. The bell called into question how he had spent his entire life. Had he hallowed the gift of health by serving others and God? Had he viewed life as a preparation, a training ground, for a far longer and more important life to come—or as an end in itself?
The review prompted by the bell proved revealing to Donne. “I am the man that hath seen affliction,” he had told the congregation at his wife’s funeral. But it now seemed clear that those times of affliction, the periods of sharpest suffering, had been the very occasions of spiritual growth. Trials had purged sin and developed character; poverty had taught him dependence on God and cleansed him of greed; failure and public disgrace had helped cure worldly ambition. A clear pattern emerged: Pain could be transformed, even redeemed. Above all, his lifelong struggle with vanity and ambition appeared in a new light. Perhaps it was God’s own hand that had blocked all temporal employment, an apparent failure that had forced him to enter the ministry.
Donne’s mental review led him to reflect on his present circumstances. Could even this pain be redeemed? His illness prevented him from many good works, of course, but the physical incapacity surely did not inhibit all spiritual growth. He had much time for prayer: The bell had reminded him of his less fortunate neighbor, and the many others suffering in London. He could learn humility, and trust, and gratitude, and faith. Donne made a kind of game of it: He envisioned his “soul” growing strong, rising from the bed, and walking about the room even as his body lay flat.
In short, Donne realized he was not “in-valid.” He directed his energy toward spiritual disciplines: prayer, confession of sins, keeping a journal (which became Devotions). He got his mind off himself and onto others.
The Devotions record a seismic shift in Donne’s attitude toward pain. He begins with prayers that the pain be removed; he ends with prayers that the pain be redeemed, that he be “catechized by affliction.” Such redemption might take the form of miraculous cure—he still hoped so—but even if it did not, God could take a molten ingot, and through the refiner’s fire of suffering, make of it pure gold.
God had demonstrated that power beyond all argument, Donne notes, in the death of his Son. The shed blood of Christ had become a kind of toast of health to all the world. In the end, even the unimaginable suffering of the cross was fully redeemed: it is by his stripes that we are healed.
Though so disobedient a servant as I may be afraid to die, yet to so merciful a master as thou I cannot be afraid to come.
Two great crises spawned by Donne’s illness, the crisis of fear and the crisis of meaning, came together in a third and final crisis, the crisis of death. The poet truly believed that he would die from his illness, and the cloud of impending death hangs over every page of Devotions.
We moderns have perfected techniques for coping with the crisis of death, techniques that doubtless would have caused John Donne much puzzlement. First, as Ernst Becker has detailed in Denial of Death, we construct elaborate means of avoiding the crisis altogether. As shown by our exercise regimens and nutrition fetishes, we treat physical health like a religion, while simultaneously walling off death’s blunt reminders—mortuaries, intensive-care rooms, cemeteries. Living in Elizabethan London, John Donne did not have the luxury of denial. Each night huge carts were driven through the streets to collect the bodies of that day’s plague victims; their names appeared in long columns in the next day’s newspaper. No one could live as though death did not exist.
On the other hand, some modern health workers have popularized the notion of acceptance as the ideal attitude toward death. After Elisabeth Kübler-Ross established acceptance as the final stage in the grief process, scores of groups sprang up to help terminally ill patients reach that stage. One need not read long in Donne’s work to realize how foreign such an idea might have seemed to him. Some have accused Donne of an obsession with death (32 of his 54 songs and sonnets center on the theme), but for Donne, death was always the Great Enemy to be resisted, not a friend to be welcomed as a natural part of the cycle of life.
Donne took some comfort in the example of Jesus. The Garden of Gethsemane hardly presented a scene of calm acceptance. There Jesus sweat drops of blood and begged the Father for some other way. He too had felt the loneliness and fear that now haunted Donne’s deathbed. And why had he chosen that death? The purpose of Christ’s death brought Donne some solace at last: he had died to effect a cure.
The turning point for Donne came as he began to view death not as the disease that permanently spoils life, but rather as the only cure to the disease of life. For sin had permanently stained all life, and only through death—Christ’s death and our own—can we realize a cured, sinless state. Donne explored that thought in “A Hymn to God the Father,” the only other writing to survive from his time of illness:
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For, I have more.Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin? and, made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year, or two: but wallowed in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thy self, that at my death thy son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.
The word play on the poet’s own name (“thou hast done”) reveals a kind of acceptance at last: not an acceptance of death as a natural end, but a willingness to trust God with the future, no matter what. “That voice, that I must die now, is not the voice of a judge that speaks by way of condemnation, but of a physician that presents health.”
John Donne did not die from the illness of 1623. He recovered and, though weakened, put in eight more years as dean of Saint Paul’s. His sermons and other writings often returned to the themes touched upon in Devotions, especially the theme of death, but never again did they express the same sort of inner turmoil. In his crisis, Donne managed to achieve a “holy indifference” about death: not by discounting death’s horror—his sermons contain vivid depictions of those horrors—but by a renewed confidence in resurrection.
If Jesus’ death had made possible a permanent cure for sin, his resurrection made possible a permanent cure for death. Donne liked to use the analogy of a map. Spread out flat, a map, in two dimensions, radically separates east from west. The two directions appear irreconcilably distant. But curve that same map around a globe—a far more accurate representation—and the farthest eastern point actually touches the farthest western point. The two are contiguous. The same principle applies to human life. Death, which appears to sever life, is actually a door opening the way to new life. Death and resurrection touch; the end is a beginning.
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so.…
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Seven years after the illness that inspired Devotions, Donne suffered another illness that would severely test all he had learned about pain. He spent most of the winter of 1630 out of the pulpit, confined to a house in Essex. But when the time of the Passion approached on the church calendar, Donne insisted on traveling to London to deliver a sermon on the first Friday of Lent. The friends who greeted him there saw an emaciated man, looking far older than his 59 years. A lifetime of suffering had taken its toll. The friends urged Donne to cancel the sermon, but he refused.
Donne had often expressed the desire to die in the pulpit, and he nearly did so. The impact of that sermon, “Death’s Duel,” one of Donne’s finest, did not soon fade from those who heard it. To John Donne, death was an enemy that he would fight as long as strength remained in his bones. But he fought with the confident knowledge that the enemy would ultimately be defeated.
Carried to his house, Donne spent the next five weeks preparing for death. He dictated letters, wrote poems, and composed his own epitaph. Acquaintances dropped by, and he reminisced. “I cannot plead innocency of life, especially of my youth,” he told one friend, “but I am to be judged by a merciful God, who is not willing to see what I have done amiss. And though of myself I have nothing to present to Him but sins and misery, yet I know He looks upon me not as I am of myself, but as I am in my Savior.… I am therefore full of inexpressible joy, and shall die in peace.”
A carver came by during those last few weeks, under orders from the church to design a monument for the dean. Donne posed for him in the posture of death, a winding-sheet tied around him, his hands folded over his stomach, his eyes closed. The effigy was carved out of a single piece of white marble. After Donne’s death, workmen mounted it over his funeral urn in Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
It is still there, John Donne’s monument. It was the only object in the entire cathedral to survive the Great Fire of 1666, and modern visitors daily file through the ambulatory, behind the choir stalls, to gaze at the white marble monument set in a niche in the gray stone. Tour guides point out a brown scorch mark on the urn dating from the fire. Donne’s face wears an expression of serenity, as though he attained at last in death the peace that eluded him for so much of life.
Our last day is our first day; our Saturday is our Sunday; our eve is our holy day; our sunsetting is our morning; the day of our death is the first day of our eternal life. The next day after that … comes that day that shall show me to myself. Here I never saw myself but in disguises; there, then, I shall see myself, but I shall see God too.… Here I have one faculty enlightened, and another left in darkness; mine understanding sometimes cleared, my will at the same time perverted. There I shall be all light, no shadow upon me; my soul invested in the light of joy, and my body in the light of glory.
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RICHARD A. BAER, JR.1Richard A. Baer, Jr., is professor of environmental ethics at Cornell University and a fellow of the Center for Public Justice in Washington, D.C. He contributed the chapter “The Myth of Neutrality” to The Blackboard Fumble: Finding a Place for Values in Public Education, recently copublished by Victor Books and Christianity Today.
Unless you are willing to risk job land reputation, there are certain terms—wop, hymie, nigger, Chink, to name but a few—that you simply do not use in public. (Just ask Jimmy the Greek or Jesse Jackson.) Attitudes toward racist and sexist language have changed enormously over the past three decades, and America is a better place because of it.
Given these circumstances, it is noteworthy that one unusually prejudicial term continues to go virtually unchallenged. It can be found on the lips of university presidents, politicians, and church leaders; in proclamations of the American Civil Liberties Union; and, most notably, in a number of Supreme Court decisions.
The term is sectarian.
That sectarian is hardly a flattering term is evident from even a cursory look at any standard dictionary. Among its more common synonyms are “bigoted,” “narrow-minded,” “heretical,” “parochial,” and “dogmatic.”
Given this range of meanings with their consistently pejorative connotations, it is disturbing to note that the mass media regularly use the term to describe and label individual Americans and groups of Americans. Even more disturbing, however, is its use by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since roughly the end of World War II, the highest tribunal of our land has used the term in a wide variety of cases as a synonym for the word religious.
Not only does the Court call religious schools and colleges “sectarian”; it also describes the motivating beliefs and ideas that inform the basic world view of these institutions as “sectarian.” It even pins the label on schoolchildren, employees, teachers, and administrators of religious organizations.
The equation religious = sectarian enjoys wide acceptance today, so much so that its occurrence seems quite unremarkable to most Americans. Recently, I heard several church leaders at a conference on educational choice refer to their own religious organizations as “sectarian.” I reacted with a combination of sadness and anger. I thought of how blacks in an earlier day sometimes referred to each other or even themselves as “niggers.” When a form of discrimination becomes deeply enough ingrained in a culture, the oppressed may themselves overlook how damaging and unjust it is.
What I am calling for is simple and unambiguous: No agent of government—executive, legislative, or judicial—at whatever level of government—federal, state, or local—should be permitted to label the religious beliefs, or the lack of religious beliefs, of any individual American or American institution “sectarian.” And we should protest vigorously whenever the media condescend to insult fellow Americans with this epithet.
Inherently Prejudicial
Sectarian is caste language, a phrase that has been used throughout American history to keep the religious “untouchables” in their proper place. Just as ruling elites have used racial and sexual epithets to put down blacks and women, so they have used sectarian to exclude and marginalize those individuals and groups whose religious beliefs and practices did not correspond to their own vision of what was appropriate in the cultural marketplace.
It is hardly conceivable that our society could deal justly with blacks and other minorities if we had not decisively rejected terms like sambo, pickaninny, or Polack. Would not the same logic demand that we renounce sectarian as a synonym for religious?
Sectarian always implies a contrasting mainstream, a right way of thinking, an acceptable position. But if the First Amendment means anything at all, it means that government is acting illegitimately when it proclaims that the mainstream in our society is “secular” rather than “religious,” “nonsectarian” rather than “sectarian.”
Some parents feel compelled by their consciences to seek a religious education for their children. Quite apart from the difficult question of whether government should pay for such education, can any fair-minded person argue that the state has a right to demean such citizens, their children, and the people who serve them by implying that they are bigoted, narrow-minded, and unorthodox? The state is totally incompetent to make such pronouncements.
I am not proposing a national debate on this question. Rather, as an American citizen I am calling on our courts and the media forthwith to stop using the term sectarian altogether. It should not appear one more time in any court decision, except when its usage is unavoidable—for instance, when quoting earlier cases or when referring to statements or judgments of parties before the courts. The use of such language by the media and by agents of government fundamentally violates the spirit of the First Amendment and the genius of the American political experiment.
It will not do to argue that sectarian has become a technical legal and constitutional term with its own restricted meaning and that the Court means no harm. Both points are true, but irrelevant. What is important is that the term is a bad actor with such dubious parentage that there simply is no way the Court can use it, whatever its intentions, without prejudicial effect.
Righting An Old Bias
How do we account for current usage of sectarian, and why have religious people not protested this discrimination earlier?
Actually, the Founding Father whom many of us most clearly associate with freedom of religion and conscience—Thomas Jefferson—must share part of the blame. Particularly in his private correspondence, Jefferson typically referred to orthodox, Trinitarian Christians—those who believed in the deity of Christ and the classical doctrines of salvation—as “sects” or “sectarians.” He held that their beliefs were based on dogma, superstition, and revelation.
By contrast, Jefferson considered his own Unitarian and Enlightenment convictions about morality and religion to be universal and “nonsectarian.” They were grounded, he believed, in reason and common sense, were compatible with science, and deserved to become the basis of public morality and politics.
But neither Jefferson nor the Christians of his day considered sectarian to be a synonym for religious or thought that nonsectarian meant nonreligious. Rather, Jefferson used sectarian to refer to the wrong kind of religion.
What has happened over the past 40 years is, in effect, that Jefferson’s bias against certain religious people and beliefs, mainly traditional Christians, has been extended to religious people in general. Jefferson might be excused for his use of the term, for he honestly—even if mistakenly—believed that his own Unitarian religious convictions were of a different and more rational order from those of the orthodox Christians of his day. But for Americans to continue such discrimination today has little moral or political justification.
Curiously, and ironically, the equation religious = sectarian is not even empirically accurate. All the best polls show that Americans are incurably religious—not just a few Americans on the fringes of society, but a majority. Close to 90 percent claim to believe in God, and roughly 40 percent attend religious services nearly every week.
Just as white Protestant males have had to realize that they have no legal right to define moral and religious standards for all Americans, so the modern secular heirs of the Enlightenment will have to abandon their indefensible conviction that they alone are the “nonsectarians” to whom control of the public square belongs.
Our courts and the mass media can either aid or hinder this move toward nondiscrimination and public justice. By decisively rejecting the term sectarian as a synonym for religious, the Supreme Court could make clear to all Americans its commitment to fairness and could move us one step closer to freedom and justice for all.
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In San Francisco and New York, the law is blurring the meaning of family.
Nobody has yet figured out a way to be “a little bit pregnant,” but if some public officials have their way, it may soon be possible for homosexuals to be “sort of married”—thanks to recent events in San Francisco and the state of New York (CT, Aug. 18, 1989, p. 44). Official actions there have been both embraced and reviled as sanctions for gay and other nonmarried, live-in relationships. It looks as if the church may need to prepare for a long series of legislative battles on yet another family issue.
In New York, the state Court of Appeals ruled that a partner in a long-term homosexual relationship can take over the couple’s rent-controlled apartment when the lover who signed the lease dies. The term family, wrote Associate Justice Vito Titone for the four-to-two majority, “should not be rigidly restricted” to those who have formalized their relationship by obtaining a marriage certificate.
San Francisco’s contribution to the blurring of boundaries for family is a “domestic partners” ordinance. The proposal, written by gay municipal supervisor Harry Britt, includes a formal process for couples to register at city hall and be issued certificates similar to marriage licenses. Once registered, those who are city employees would be eligible for some of the same benefits as married employees. Shortly before the ordinance was signed into law, Britt noted that it was written so that “it could be used everywhere, and this afternoon we’re sending it to … so many other cities I can’t remember them all.”
All Eyes On San Francisco
In San Francisco, the story is not quite over. In early July, on the day the domestic partnership law was scheduled to take effect, the Reverend Charles McIlhenny of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Rabbi Lionel Feldman submitted a petition with over 27,000 signatures to the registrar of voters, forcing a November referendum that will finally decide the law’s fate.
San Francisco voters (and New York judges) are not the only ones who should be concerned about the outcome. These measures do more than simply recognize that society is host to a growing number of variations on the traditional family. They also give implicit endorsement, sending a clear message to impressionable young people that same or opposite-sex live-in relationships are acceptable. It is one thing when that argument proceeds from the mouth of a gay-rights activist; it is quite another when the highest court of New York and the governing board of a metropolitan area put their weight behind such distortion.
Fortunately, the San Francisco measure has stirred up a reaction. Bay Area evangelical pastor Gene Selander says that the close call on the domestic partners ordinance will guarantee that we will “see a little bit of the church militant arise” in months to come.
We hope so. A legislative aide to municipal supervisor Harry Britt said of the forthcoming referendum, “Now people all over the country are going to be watching this election. That’s what our [gay-rights] movement is all about. We want to be out. We want to be visible.”
We can pray that the church will be equally visible—and even more articulate—in speaking out against anything that chips away at the foundation of family and marriage. The health of society—and the church—is at stake. God’s purposes rest too squarely on the strength and stability of the family for us to sit quietly by.
By Timothy K. Jones.
Pete Rose might have bet on the ponies, but the rest of the nation apparently prefers the numbers game. Voters across the nation are rushing to the polls to approve public lotteries and other forms of legalized gambling.
Like the “sin taxes” on alcohol and tobacco, legalized gambling seems to make sense. Let bad habits pay for improved education, care for the elderly, housing for the homeless, and other services too costly to be borne by other forms of taxation. We may mildly mutter our objections to bingo and lotteries, but state-sponsored “gaming” has become public policy in many states without significant protest. Many legislators have been reluctant to approve public lotteries, but say opposition to legalized gambling is half-hearted and no match for the highly organized proponents. We evangelicals have been asleep or preoccupied with other worthy crusades.
In the meantime, gambling has begun to grip men and women in epidemic proportions. Valerie Lorenz, executive director of the national Center for Pathological Gambling, sees “compulsive gambling as the mental health problem of the 1990s.” Sirgay Sanger, who heads the National Council on Compulsive Gambling, has predicted that we may be “headed into a decade in which gambling will be the addiction of choice.”
That Gamblers Anonymous and various treatment centers for compulsive gamblers have grown rapidly is further evidence of the nation’s emerging addiction problem. Estimates are that up to 3 percent of the population must be classified as compulsive gamblers. These people have serious problems. Studies suggest that at least 20 percent of those who enroll in therapy programs have already attempted suicide at least once as a result of their enslavement.
Public officials recognize the potential harm of gambling, even as they legalize it. Minnesota’s legislature, for example, recently approved the creation of a state lottery (potential revenue: $90,000,000). Then, with a tip of the hat to an already sizable addiction problem in the state, the legislature promised the commissioner of human services $300,000 to establish treatment programs for those who would become ensnared in the web of state-promoted wagering. New Jersey, which expects to net $1 billion in lottery revenue this year, has set aside $275,000 for treatment of gambling-addiction problems. It is a thoughtful arsonist who puts a cup of water in the fire bucket. By and large, the irony of these disproportionate grants is lost in the legislative lust for expanded state revenues.
“Taxing” The Most Vulnerable
Victims of gambling addiction tend to be young adults, and the majority come from economic situations in which they are least able to afford the losses. A New Jersey study indicates that more than one-third of families with annual incomes of less than $10,000 spend one-fifth of their income on lotteries. In effect, they are financing a “program” ostensibly instituted to provide them with education, health care, jobs, and housing—a truly regressive form of taxation!
Yet if our response to the alcohol and tobacco revenues is any indication, we may continue to view lotteries and other types of legalized gambling as useful—albeit regrettable—sources of revenue. How tragic if we do. How tragic for those caught in gambling’s destructive grasp.
We have rightly learned to fight abortion and pornography aggressively—evils that galvanize our moral indignation. Shouldn’t we also generate some energy and responsible action to try to stem the plague of gambling, especially the state-promoted forms? Shouldn’t we use our organizational skill and lobbying savvy to resist the lottery plague?
By George K. Brushaber.
Lausanne II is now history. But the monumental task the conference addressed—world evangelization—is still ahead of us. The challenge would indeed be daunting without periodic conferences like this, which are occasions to discover the cohesiveness of the worldwide fellowship committed to the task and to sense the empowerment of the Spirit for witness and service.
Gathering 4,000 participants and support staff from 186 countries to the steamy urban jungle of Manila is no mean feat. And despite moments of apprehension during the last 12 months of preparation, the small working committee with its bare-bones office staff did a fine job of gathering up the loose ends into a meaningful pattern. Perhaps the monumental effort of putting the conference together makes world evangelization look somehow more manageable.
The choice of location showed both spiritual wisdom and political savvy. The sheer bulk of evangelicalism, along with the greatest vigor, has shifted from West to East, and from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern. While Switzerland may have been less humid and a whole lot more comfortable, shifting the Congress to the Third World made sense.
It also made sense because of the implicit endorsement of the incorporation of social-justice concerns into the program of evangelization. Third World evangelicals have, of course, always blended the two causes. But until the latter half of this century, European and North American evangelicals have largely restricted social activity to crusades against vice. And despite the forward-looking teaching of key evangelical thinkers, there remains a residual resistance to any social activity that does not promise an immediate crop of conversions.
But holding a major meeting in a Third World urban center is not the same as giving full recognition and participation to the evangelical leaders of the developing countries. Currently, only four of the thirteen members of the executive committee are Third Worlders. And all the North American members are white. The next step is clear: increase the proportion of the committee drawn from the Two-Thirds World and develop an appropriate racial balance among those drawn from North America.
By the Editors.
We hope a Hitler will never come again, but temptations like those he brought surely will
TIM STAFFORD
On September 1, 1939–50 years ago—Hitler invaded Poland and a world war began. Now, generations later, we are able to view this almost nostalgically; Word War II appears to be “the good war,” in which the sides were neatly divided between good and evil. Such historical memory appeals to our desire for moral order; Americans were “good people” who met and defeated evil.
One enigma persists, however: How did Germany come to be so dominated by evil? Where were their “good people”? Where, particularly, were the Christians in this “land of Luther”? With the translation and publication of Klaus Scholder’s The Churches and the Third Reich (two vols., Fortress), it has become possible for Americans to study this question much more closely.
History is about deeds that make a difference. In retrospect, to the secular historian, the “church struggle” against Hitler seems unimportant, for it failed. But during the thirties, the church struggle provided the most passionate and well-publicized resistance to Hitler’s totalitarianism. (A sign of how much has changed: Hitler proudly promoted his philosophy of government as “totalitarian,” in contrast to seemingly impotent democracy.) News stories about the church struggle appeared almost daily in such papers as the New York Times. Martin Niemöller, the foremost leader of the church resistance, was a household name.
We can learn as much from studying failure as from studying success. Through considering the church’s reaction to Hitler, we can learn how it is that good, Christian men and women allowed a truly demonic government to lead their nation—and the world—into hell on earth.
An Unglorious Prize
Prewar Germany was not an agnostic nation. Though certain strata of society were strikingly anti-Christian, most Germans felt a deep piety mixed with a profound patriotism. It would have been difficult for any leader to lead Germany if the church had stubbornly and openly opposed him.
Hitler knew that. So when he came to power in 1933 he set a high priority on controlling the church. Within months he completely dominated other important German institutions: the labor unions, the universities, the parliament, and the political parties. He devoted much more energy to the church, but with it he never quite succeeded. If you awarded a prize to the German institution that most successfully withstood Hitler’s arrogation of power, you would have to give the prize to the church. Unfortunately, this would be like awarding an Olympic gold medal to a one-legged runner after all other competitors fell down; the church, if it did better than others, did not do well.
I will mention six crucial aspects of the failure, concentrating on the Protestant side. (Catholics failed just as grievously, but in different ways and for somewhat different reasons.)
Satan comes as an angel of light. The German church was terribly afraid of communism. Not far from their borders, Stalin was in the midst of his deadly reign. A worldwide depression was destroying the German economy. Germans felt alone and persecuted in the world, as they had ever since the end of World War I and the Versailles Treaty. As Scholder writes, Germans felt that they lived in an “age of transition, which expected nothing of the present and everything of the future.”
Hitler played masterfully on these fears and dreams. His appeals to decisive leadership, to personal discipline, and to anticommunism attracted conservative German Protestants.
They ought to have known better. Hitler’s National Socialist party had a reputation for racism and thuggery. Less known, but not particularly hidden, was its background in pagan “pan-German” religion, which saw the German Volk as the power of light in a battle against worldwide darkness. This mystical elevation of German ethnicity was inherently anti-Christian, not only because it was anti-Semitic, but more broadly because Christianity, considering all people as equal (and equally helpless) at the foot of the Cross, could hardly glory in the greatness of Germanness.
In coming to power, however, Hitler disguised these features of his beliefs. He eliminated party leaders with a taste for anti-Christian religious controversy; and when he first came to power, he put on a show of pious religiosity. On the one hand, he insisted that his concerns were strictly political; he had no interest in doctrinal disputes. On the other hand, he spoke reverently of the Christian foundations of the German nation, promising that the government would “take Christianity under its firm protection, as the basis of our entire morality.…” He ended his speeches with a pious benediction, beseeching God’s blessing on Germany. Hitler, a master of symbols, created an impression of humility before God. Most Germans, including most Christians, chose to trust him.
Hitler wanted to reorganize the nation, including the churches, through the führerprinzip or “leadership principle.” He professed to be distressed by the fragmentation of Protestant churches into numerous autonomous regional bodies; he proposed one centralized authority for the entire Protestant church. This posed as a matter of mere organization. In the enthusiasm of the moment, when most Germans joyfully believed that their nation was being saved, the churches accepted.
In reality, of course, Hitler wanted a convenient way to dominate the church. Once he had a national church organization, with a Reichsbischof at its head, it was easy to get his man into that position, and to use him to intimidate any resistance to the National Socialist program. Fortunately for the church, Hitler’s choice was a little-known military chaplain, Ludwig Muller, who spoke in pious phrases but dithered and lied whenever controversy sprang up, so that even supporters soon lost all confidence in him. If Hitler had chosen someone skillful, he might have neutralized the church without difficulty. In the events, Ludwig Müller’s untrustworthiness generated more immediate resentment than Hitler’s program.
God and country. Not only did Hitler play on a national mood, he played on a weakness in the church. German Protestants were proud of their church, with its well-ordered, 400-year-old Lutheran heritage and its world-renowned theologians. And they were proud of being German. They regarded German culture as the peak of Western civilization. Many German Christians moved easily from their pride and patriotism to a conviction that God had some unique place for the German people. They mixed God and country, even God and race.
“The German Volk,” wrote theologian Wilhelm Stapel in 1922, “is not an idea of humanity but an idea of God’s.” Some of Germany’s best theologians developed the proposition that God was revealing himself through his sovereignty over the German national experience. From this it was a short jump to the claim that Hitler’s seemingly miraculous transformation of Germany was an act of God, demanding Christian assent.
Perhaps Manifest Destiny—America’s nineteenth-century conviction that we had a unique calling to civilize the world—was similar. But nineteenth-century America was not squeezed by economic depression and civil turmoil as was Germany in the twenties and thirties—and America never produced a national leader like Adolf Hitler.
A national movement, the “German Christians,” rose up to celebrate Hitler, and their enthusiasm, plus the backing of Hitler’s officials and the support of prominent theologians, swept them to victory in the newly instituted national church elections. “German Christians” did not want the church to stand back from the wave of renewal Hitler was bringing; they wanted the church “coordinated” with the marvelous changes in the Third Reich. They wanted, for example, the laws removing Jews from civil service positions applied to Christian pastors. Those who were racially Jewish, or who had married Jews, would lose their churches. There were only a few such pastors, and the rationale was this: Doesn’t the work that God is doing in our nation require a wholehearted “Yes!”—even if it involves incidental cases of injustice?
In retrospect, Christian willingness to let Jews suffer seems incredible. It is salutary to remember, however, how few American Christians were at this same period disturbed by injustices done against blacks. People are able to ignore remarkable horrors, particularly if they have only incidental knowledge of the people involved.
The German church did ultimately resist “coordination.” Resistance began with political opposition to Reichsbischof Muller and his reorganizing schemes; then, under the leadership of Karl Barth, resistance became more theologically based. Bypassing the official church channels, church leaders met in the extraordinary Barmen Synod, where they solemnly ratified the Barmen Confession as the basis of the true Christian church.
The Barmen Confession was essentially theological, not political; it emphasized the uniqueness of God’s revelation in Christ, repudiating any “revelation” in German history or any other source. The political implications were obvious: nazism must be judged by the Bible. Around the Barmen Confession formed what was known as the Confessing Church, which asserted itself to be the true national church of Germany on the basis of its orthodox confession of Jesus Christ. (This was in contrast to the recognized national church, taken over by the “German Christians,” which based its authority on its official status.) It is difficult to assess the size and strength of the Confessing Church, but in some areas it was clearly a majority. After several years of strife, it succeeded in regaining partial control of the church bureaucracy. But by the time it had fought the battle within the church, it was too late to say a decisive word to the nation.
The limits of leadership. Hitler had not been in office long before some remarkably brave and capable pastors rose up to oppose his plans for the church. Martin Niemöller was the most outspoken and energetic; his past as a decorated World War I U-boat captain gave him impeccable patriotic credentials. Karl Barth provided theological resistance; his passionate insistence on the unique revelation of Scripture inspired ordinary pastors in a way that is rare in the history of theology. A young theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was influential behind the scenes. It would be hard to wish for a more dynamic trio of leaders.
Yet more than leaders was needed. Niemöller was painted as a radical, and when Hitler imprisoned him, many pastors were secretly pleased. Barth, a Swiss citizen, had to leave the country. Bonhoeffer became a solitary voice and fell silent, his resistance going underground. Ultimately, only a small minority of Christians were willing to put their lives on the line, and these few could be marginalized.
The limits of theological statements. By all accounts, the high-water mark of the church resistance was the Barmen Declaration—a fine credal statement still read with profit today. All who attended the Barmen Synod were astonished by the breeze of the Spirit that blew there. But excitement must be translated into unified organization, into action with all the risks attendant. Proclamation is not enough. Sacrifice is required. And here the German church largely failed. Jealousy and pride among denominations and among individual leaders enabled the Nazis to play Christians off against each other.
Government tyranny may operate through nonconfrontational bureaucratic control. Hitler eventually abandoned the well-publicized war of direct confrontation with the churches. He won the silent war of bureaucratic harassment. Rather than imprisoning outspoken members of the Confessing Churches, government authorities made it difficult for such pastors to get new churches, threatened to take away their pensions, withheld salaries. It was more difficult to protest virtuously against the loss of a pension than it had been to protest against the forceful takeover of church offices.
Through the thirties, the government managed slowly to squeeze the church resistance down to nothing by such harassment. Eventually, when the war came, most young pastors were drafted, and they went quietly to war. Germans, deeply patriotic, could not imagine refusing to fight for their country.
The church can win battles for its rights but lose its identity as the church. It is possible to write a glowing account of the Confessing Church. It had its moments of glory. For example, the church never yielded on the Jewish question; despite sustained pressure from the Nazis, the church insisted on its right to baptize anyone seeking to become a Christian, regardless of racial background. The irony is that eventually the principle became meaningless: all “non-Aryans” having been put in concentration camps, none were left to baptize.
The great slogan of the Confessing Church was Let the Church Be the Church. It referred to the church’s unique calling. The church was to remain detached, as citizens of another kingdom, from the rages of the day. In a nation suddenly enthralled with its emerging destiny, detachment was essential.
What the slogan sometimes came to stand for, however, was an exaggerated view of the separation of church and state. It meant defending the church’s right to decide whom to baptize and what to preach; but it also could be taken to mean that the church would leave nonchurch matters strictly up to the state. The Confessing Church spoke strongly against the government when it interfered with Christian prerogatives. It failed to speak out when the government, as a “state matter,” interfered with Jews. Failing to speak for others, the church did not really remain the church.
Differences Today
It is difficult to imagine a country more ripe for Hitler than Germany in the thirties. Shattered institutions, a devastated economy, a pervasive sense of bewilderment and shame for the demise of their great culture—the circumstances of prewar Germany are very far from those in America today. We may be no better than those Germans, but we live under better conditions. Our institutions and traditions protect us from the likes of Hitler.
That is not to say, however, that there is nothing to learn from the failures of Christians in Germany. In other, subtler ways, the church can be tempted to support an immoral agenda, or at least be neutralized in its opposition.
We can learn to be watchful of those who seem to be our friends. We should beware of leaders promising deliverance from our fears, of politicians professing newfound piety. Politicians who understand how we think, who can manipulate our symbols and use words we love to hear—perhaps, today, words such as family and morality, which were also prominent in Hitler’s vocabulary—are inherently more seductive to the church than politicians, whom we find naturally prickly and difficult. The German church would never have submitted so happily to a leftist government, but a right-wing regime could play it like a fiddle.
We can learn that we cannot afford a lofty indifference to politics. In the German church, those least involved with the political scene were often the most easily led astray, because they were politically naïve.
We can learn that careful, theologically and biblically astute thinking is essential. Christians in Germany were only effective in resisting Hitler where the wider church—not just a few leaders—understood the distinctive Christian position at stake. The German church struggle teaches us that a church needs a clear, robust theology based on the revelation of God in Christ. If its positions are vague or sentimental, based on the spirit of the times more than on Scripture, the church can be swept away by those more expert at understanding the spirit of the times than we. Only the rare church leader can win political games with the politicians.
Finally, Christians must be willing to pay the price of sacrifice. Writing position papers and rating candidates will be inadequate. When was evil ever confronted by a position paper alone? The Confessing Church in Germany did some fine theologizing. Few, however, would give their lives to implement it.
Sacrifice is not the same as working hard for your cause. Christians have their distinctive institutional and religious interests, and it is expected that they will work to protect these just as do other lobbying groups. But sacrifice means working hard for people other than yourself—people who can never repay you. The German church failed at this. Their priorities were the prerogatives of the church: Christian influence in the schools, for example.
In the years before the war Dietrich Bonhoeffer frequently quoted Proverbs 31:8: “Open your mouth for the dumb, for the rights of all the unfortunate.” Sadly, few Christians responded. In our political involvements, we must be careful to do better. Otherwise, we may preserve our position in human society while sacrificing our position in God’s.
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The keys to publishing a well-read magazine are many. The writing must be crisp and clear. The graphics need to catch the eye of the browser. Articles should speak to important issues with which readers struggle. Our editors search for authors, artists, and augurs who can deliver each of these crucial elements.
But CHRISTIANITY TODAY has one further hoop through which all articles must jump: theological accuracy and integrity. For this indispensable ingredient we rely on our panel of senior editors.
Our senior editors come from different sectors of conservative evangelical Christianity. For example, co-executive editor George Brushaber is president of Bethel College and Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. His doctorate from Boston University is in philosophy. Kenneth Kantzer is a Harvard-trained theologian who teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And Oxford-educated J. I. Packer is a systematic theologian from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Each brings a perspective to our quarterly senior editors’ meetings that strongly complements the others.
To enrich the process further, we occasionally ask new scholars to serve while old familiar friends take a break. Two new members recently joined the panel: Dennis Kinlaw, president of Asbury College in Asbury, Kentucky, and Richard Longenecker, professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.
After a summer of such movie sequels as Ghostbusters II, Star Trek V, and the third Indiana Jones film, it seems appropriate that Dennis should rejoin the senior editor panel. During his initial term in 1985–87, his warm spirit and cogent comments never failed to add to the substance of our meetings, and those still on the panel from those years eagerly welcome him back.
In addition to his duties as president of Asbury, Dennis is president of the Francis Asbury Society and a member of the Christianity Today, Inc., board. An ordained United Methodist minister, he did his graduate work in Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University.
Richard Longenecker brings a Canadian presence to our panel. He taught at Wheaton College, Wheaton Graduate School of Theology, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School before assuming his current post in 1972. He has written five books: Paul: Apostle of Liberty, The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, The Ministry and Message of Paul, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, and New Testament Social Ethics for Today. He has written commentaries on Acts and Galatians and numerous articles in professional journals.
Richard did undergraduate work at Wheaton College in archaeology and history, and his doctorate is from the University of Edinburgh.
His Edinburgh degree in a sense helps to maintain the European flavor of the panel since one of our members whose term just ended, John Akers, also studied there. During his term as a senior editor, John brought a perspective born of both an academic career and years of service as a special assistant to Billy Graham. John’s influence has been a positive force, and we are grateful for his expertise.
We would also like to thank Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen for her time and skills. Mary contributed more than a Canadian perspective (a role to be filled somewhat by Richard Longenecker). Her expertise in psychology and theology helped us focus several major projects, including materials on codependency and homosexuality.
Our next senior editors’ meeting will be held this month, and the agenda has filled up fast. Articles on mainline renewal movements, animal rights, and our relationship to Judaism need to be discussed. And we need to brainstorm new ideas.
But getting together a group of good minds and committed spirits to discuss journalism, graphics, needs in the community—and, of course, theology—never fails to be a rewarding experience—for us and, we hope, the readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
TERRY C. MUCK
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The recent Supreme Court ruling that protects flag burning as a form of free speech touched off an early-summer display of patriotic fireworks. Politicians, led by President Bush, lined up to blast the Court’s action as sacrilege and called for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the desecration of the flag.
I just hope the church doesn’t fall in line behind them.
By saying this, I do not intend to express any un-American sentiments. I simply believe that what Americans do with the flag has more to do with the state than it does with the church.
Making this distinction between the nation and the Christian community has always been a difficult one for American believers. We all grew up studying the courageous efforts of the Pilgrims who braved great dangers to come to this land to practice their faith without interference. They saw themselves as a “city set on a hill.” But they also blurred the line separating church and nation, a perspective for the most part maintained by the American church ever since.
My own experience as a boy reflects this. Like many American Christians, I grew up in a church that displayed both a Christian flag and an American flag near the altar. And during Sunday-school opening exercises, we all stood up to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible. Consequently, the line between our twin loyalties to church and state, the boundary between the kingdom of Christ and at least one nation of this world, never seemed very clear.
This was not the case for those who first pledged their allegiance to Christ and to his kingdom. To confess “Jesus is Lord,” as the early church did, was to risk the wrath of Rome, whose subjects were called to swear their loyalty to empire and emperor by declaring, “Caesar is Lord.” Certain things could be rendered to Caesar, such as taxes and obedience to temporal laws, but the expression of supreme loyalty and devotion was due no one but Christ.
That is at the heart of what troubles me about the debate generated by the Court’s ruling on the flag. The language central to the arguments on both sides of the issue is the language of supreme devotion and loyalty. It is not going too far to call it religious language. Justice Brennan’s opinion, siding with the majority, stated, “We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in so doing we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.” In rebutting that view, President Bush has stated vociferously that the American flag is too “sacred” a symbol to be desecrated, even in an act of protest. This motivated his flag-protecting amendment to the Constitution.
But the flag of the United States of America is not sacred. Nor is the republic for which it stands. The flag is not the cross, nor is it the Bible, nor does it symbolize in any way those things that ought to call forth our deepest expressions of devotion or commitment. For no nation of this world—not even this great nation—embodies the kingdom of God. Those who pledge allegiance to that kingdom and to its sovereign Lord ought to be wary of compromising or diluting that supreme commitment.
This is not a call to abandon patriotism. I am not advocating flag burning. I find that particular expression of dissent repugnant. Furthermore, I am grateful to live and participate in this great experiment of freedom and democracy. I do not want to live in any other nation on earth.
But this is a call to caution. Christians have pledged first and eternal allegiance to the kingdom of the Lord Christ, so we must show care in the words we use. In our love for our nation and in our respect for its symbols we dare not call sacred or seek to consecrate by language or action things that are not sacred.
Rick McKinniss is pastor of Kensington Baptist Church in Kensington, Connecticut.
Speaking Out offers responsible Christians a forum for their views on contemporary issues. It does not necessarily reflect the views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Simplistic?
Bruce Shelley’s call for quality in Christian labor [“Why Work,” July 14] is noteworthy but somewhat simplistic. Many dimensions of life and work compete, conflict, or are outside the bounds of individual influence. For high quality to be achieved in some areas, performance must be compromised elsewhere. A work ethic may result in perfectionism, workaholism, and worker exploitation if unbalanced by the knowledge that labor remains imperfect and is not the only form of worship favored by God.
Monty L. Lynn
Abilene Christian University
Abilene, Tex.
Shelley must have inadvertently left out one of the most important “workplaces” where “meaning of life” is taught firsthand by the mother and homemaker. What vocation could more “directly influence the thinking and viewpoint of society”?
Mrs. Carolyn Haege
Freeburg, Ill.
Faceless Statistics
Charles Colson’s “Save the Wails” column [July 14] really just underscores the saying that if one person is killed, it’s a tragedy; if a million people are killed, it’s a statistic.
We all know that endangered species are being slaughtered; we all know that children are dying in lonely misery. But when three whales are trapped in the ice, or a little girl is trapped at the bottom of a well, suddenly the statistics turn into individuals with the kind of response Colson comments on. Surely a basic effect of the grace of God in our lives is to move us beyond the all-are-equal principle, which no one really believes anyway, to the each-one-is-special principle, which most of us do believe about ourselves and other families. If we let him, the Holy Spirit will teach us to believe it about everyone.
Meanwhile, anything that puts a face on a statistic is a step in the right direction.
Rev. Oliver Stevens
Manitowaning, Ont., Canada
Colson’s attempt to make light of concerns regarding the welfare of farm animals is only understandable on the assumption that he is ignorant of the conditions under which these unfortunate creatures have come to be raised and slaughtered. The realities of “factory farming” are not those of “Old McDonald’s Farm.” Addressing this tragic situation with humorous stories about suicidal chickens and overwrought animal liberators makes no more sense than attempting to dismiss concern about the suffering of “caged people” with similar stories about the foibles and follies of prison inmates. The question is not whether we should care more or less about caged humans than caged animals; the issue is one of compassion for all who suffer.
We need less “showboating” and more persistent, well-conceived efforts to bring about that day when the entire creation will rejoice in the blessed reign of the Lord Jesus. Colson’s efforts to help a whole category of forgotten humans contribute much to that end; he deserves credit for not letting us rest easy when we might well have done so.
Richard L. Fern
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
Resurrected For Judgment
Regarding your coverage of the debate about “annihilationism” at “Evangelical Affirmations 89” [News, June 16], Advent Christians do not believe “that unsaved souls will cease to exist after death.” Rather, we believe that the lost shall be resurrected for the final judgment, and shall then suffer consciously under the wrath of God to the degree that each deserves—leading to a literal destruction of body and soul.
Tom Warner
Ashland, Maine
A “Bravo!” And A Yawn
Bravo!—on the one hand—for John Akers’s column “The Battle for the Imagination” [June 16]. We need more calls for integrating “… creative men and women—the writers, the artists, the filmmakers—who will capture the imagination of our confused world in the name of Christ.”
Yawn!—on the other hand. The arts are mentioned a lot lately, which is nice, but where are those church and mission leaders who are writing budgets that include their strategic contribution, who are affirming with fervor Christian role models in the various artistic disciplines (and providing them a context where they can make a living while they role model)? Where are the Christian mission organizations that are aggressively seeking out Christian leadership out of a music/arts background for their strategy planning and working them into leadership of their ministry teams? Where are the Christian foundations and ministry organizations who are funding these “… writers, artists, filmmakers—who will capture the imagination of our confused world in the name of Christ”?
Bryon Spradlin
Artists in Christian Testimony
Cucamonga, Calif.
The creative men and women are in the church. Some express their art through music, the only art fully accepted by the church. But others sit quietly alone; waiting to be affirmed, encouraged, supported. They are waiting for the body of Christ to understand and find room for the novel, the film, the play, the masterpiece ruminating within that could reach beyond the subculture and challenge the basic assumptions of our secular age and point the world towards ultimate truth.
Until the church goes beyond just lip service to encourage and invest some of her resources, her members, and even her own children in the pursuit of redeeming art, I fear the body of Christ will be left with only the shrill, small voice of reaction to art instead of the clear, powerful voice of the creator of art.
Max McLean
Morristown, N.J.
More Than One Kind Of Abuse
Regarding James and Phyllis Alsdurf’s “Battered into Submission” [June 16], there are several kinds of abuse practiced by both husbands and wives. Physical abuse is perhaps the most easily seen and reported. The subtle, sneaky, sly abuses of emotional and psychological nature are harder to recognize and deal with. Public ridicule relating half-truths with threats of mental instability, withholding of financial truths, brainwashing children to his or her advantage—the list goes on and on.
The abuse can be learned as far back as watching grandparents. Thanks for the article.
Dorothy M. Applegate
Chapel Hill, N.C.
I was troubled that the article should refer to the chronic, practicing wife-batterer as a Christian. A Christian combines two things: A set of basic Christian beliefs, and the moral life suited to them. The two by the Spirit are organically inseparable. A person is not a Christian if he has either one without the other.
Nelson B. Baker
Bedore, Mass.
“Remarkably Timely”
Thank you for Roy Anker’s insightful article “Yikes, Nightmares from Hollywood” [June 16]. As I prepare to teach a graduate seminar on Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy films from a Christian perspective, this “terrific” piece was remarkably timely.
In an exercise I use to extract script ideas from the students (we already sold one short horror film, All Things Fanged and Carnivorous, to HBO), I begin by asking them to write down three pressing fears that haunt them in the wee hours of the morning. Invariably, what terrifies them most parallels what is seen as most fearful in the Scriptures: the Good. And our complaint is that Hollywood has not yet recognized what truly tingles the spine, buckles the knees, quakes the heart, and turns bones into jelly. To meet God is a terrifying adventure.
Terry Lindvall
CBN University
Virginia Beach, Va.
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Prolife And Prochoice
I agree with CT’s editorial position that there are many ethical human-life issues that evangelicals agree on, and therefore they should dialogue—rather than argue—about abortion [CT Institute, July 14]. But the four men writing in this section did not appear to consider whether the women involved have any choice in the matter of reproduction and abortion. On the contrary, many of us evangelicals are both prolife and prochoice. We believe women’s rights and fetal rights are bound up together and cannot be addressed separately. Reading this section, I felt unrepresented and alienated.
Most astounding was Charles White’s article, “Why Abortion Matters Most.” No wonder both the means and ends of eliminating abortion are so crystal clear to him: he never once mentioned women! Furthermore, as a student in biblical studies, I am unimpressed with his shaky biblical foundation for his antiabortion position. God’s Word simply does not make it clear that the fetus is a person with rights equal to those already born. Abortion was not an issue in the biblical writings; the passages he cited are open to other interpretations.
Reta Finger
Chicago, Ill.
Perhaps the church would get a better hearing on the abortion issue if we approached it the way Jesus answered the question about divorce. Rather than give a list of “grounds” for abortion, such as rape, incest, danger to the mother, and so on, we ought to talk about our Creator’s design for sexual intercourse and marriage. That is, we ought to affirm the beauty of the exclusive mutual commitment to love and respect each other in the marital relationship and stress the necessity of that being present before intercourse takes place.
Should we stop at outlawing abortion? Shouldn’t we also work to pass laws prohibiting the sale of other contraceptive devices to unmarried people? Such a tactic seems to me to get at the root of the problem rather than focusing on the symptom.
Randy Crenshaw, M.D.
Nashville, Tenn.
No one explored the hidden agenda of prochoice. It is population control of the poor and minorities. Abortion has always been and always will be around for the elite. No one discussed how we are going to reach those women who have had abortions now that we have judged them murderers. I used to have on average one woman a week talk with me about her abortion, seeking forgiveness and healing. Now I have virtually none. I assume they are going to secular advisers.
Rev. Jim Christy
Sunny View Church of the Nazarene
Greeley, Colo.
Kenneth Kantzer asks, “Should we pass laws to force a woman who has been raped to carry the child to birth?” What he means is: “Should we require the mother to act like a mother, since the child she is carrying and is thinking of destroying is hers as well as the man’s, or shall we administer capital punishment to the child, denying its rights to life because of the crime of the father?” Which is the more Christian response?
Lloyd A. Hartman
San Jose, Calif.
Kantzer’s plea is anything but balanced. Why is the product of a rape any less deserving of absolute legal protection than that of a loving relationship? Furthermore, since when is the pregnant woman “risking her life to save the life of another”? This line of reasoning, besides being flawed, formed the basis for the entire “slippery slope” proabortion argument in the first place—the ultimate unwanted, and therefore justifiably disposed of, pregnancy.
R. Scott West
Wheaton, Ill.
I can’t believe Kantzer would opt for abortions even if we Christians can’t readily supply all the solutions inherent in bringing troubled babies to birth. Killing is never the solution for the unborn. I agree with White. Let’s not get sidetracked.
Ray Potts
Grandville, Mich.
The prolife people see themselves as the paragon of modern Christianity. They brag of their political power. Forgive me, but when I try to read your correct theology, a picture intrudes of a woman being harassed by Christians, and the triumphant Christians gloating that they have made life harder for her by their harassment. I cannot believe that behavior is the way of Christ. Presumably a partial objective of your papers was to “cool it.” I wish you success.
Harold A. Palmer
Nacogdoches, Tex.
Prayer Requests
Last week during our Bible-study sharing time Jane said, “I’d like everyone to remember my Aunt Mabel. She stubbed her big toe on Uncle Otto’s shin, and has a doctor’s appointment in the morning to see if she’ll need a walker.”
The leader turned to me and said, “Will you take Jane’s prayer request?”
He caught me daydreaming. I admit it. I was mentally replaying a Cubs double play that had iced a Pirates rally, and as the defense headed for the dugout, it was my turn to bat (so to speak).
Being a public-prayer veteran, I did what I had to do. I bluffed: “Lord,” I prayed, “please remember this loved one of Jane’s. Be with her in this time. You know her need better than we do, and we ask that you’ll give her comfort and strength to sustain her through her trials. We pray that thy will be done in this matter, and we’ll give you all the honor and praise for whatever happens. Amen.”
I’m sure no one was fooled, just as I’m sure no one really worried. After all, these things happen to all of us. How does God respond to prayers like that? I don’t know. But when one of my own prayer requests is shifted onto a daydreamer, I always send a backup prayer, just in case.
Which may explain why Jane was still praying as we resumed our Bible study.
EUTYCHUS
Discomfiting Truth
I was greatly pleased to read Virginia Stem Owens’s article, “A Faith that Trembles and Dances” [July 14], as it clearly communicated some points the church often seems to overlook—for one, the intrinsic value of the individual over and above the value of the group.
It’s a shame that Kierkegaard too often gets a bad rap from many in the evangelical community—often, I believe, from those who have not really studied him. Much of what Kierkegaard had to say would not set well with many Christians today; but then again, “truth” has no responsibility to make us comfortable.
David L. Russell
William Tyndale College
Farmington Hills, Mich.
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Astute observers of the nation’s drug problem will notice an intentional mistake on this month’s cover: cocaine doesn’t grow in fields. Those green leaves being dried are from the coca plant. They will be gathered up by narcotraffickers, and processed in jungle laboratories into a fine, white powder, which will then be shipped to the United States to be sold as cocaine.
When we learned veteran journalist Brian Bird was going to be in Colombia and Bolivia, we asked him to trace cocaine to its roots (literally). In Bolivia, he commandeered a Land Rover for trips into the lush but dangerous countryside. “At one point, we were stopped by the ‘leopards,’ machine-gun toting, U.S.-backed anticocaine police,” says Bird. “Since we were gringos, we were suspects.”
Brian convinced the leopards he was clean, then went on to interview Christians who grow coca. That they were not hard to find says something about the extent—to say nothing of the irony—of this situation. While American parents worry about their children falling prey to drugs, these South American parents need the coca leaf’s profits to feed and clothe their children.
Brian’s report begins on page 40, but later this year you can see more of his journalistic skill. While in Colombia he spent several all-nighters on the streets of Bogotá doing research for a screenplay. Check your local listings in December for the World Vision television special, “Where on Earth Are the Children?”
As you will learn in our report, the tentacles of the illegal drug industry have much of the planet in its grip.
LYN CRYDERMAN, Senior Associate Editor
Ideas
Philip Yancey
Columnist
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I have just endured my very first diet. I hardly qualified as overweight, but an unauthorized 13 pounds suddenly appeared on my body and I determined to do something about it.
My friends, especially those truly overweight, showed no sympathy whatever: “A diet, huh? Are you trying to lose or gain weight?” Very funny. As for me, I felt offended that my body would take it upon itself to enlarge without prior consultation.
The diet worked, I’m happy to say, and now that my proper physical shape has reasserted itself I can reflect on what I learned. Mainly, I realized that I had long borne a ponderous prejudice against fat people. Never having had to battle weight problems, I felt little compassion for those who do. (It seems odd that in this era of protest against racism, ageism, and sexism, no movement against “fattism” has sprung up.)
A Jolly, Fat Saint
During my diet, I sometimes found myself thinking about G. K. Chesterton. As far as I know, that extraordinary English gentleman never attempted a diet, and as a result, his weight usually hovered just under the 300-pound mark. His girth and general poor health disqualified him from military service, a fact that led to a rather brusque encounter with a patriot during World War I. “Why aren’t you out at the front?” demanded the indignant young lady when she spied Chesterton on the streets of London. He coolly replied, “My dear madam, if you will step round this way a little, you will see that I am.”
That distinctive shape made Chesterton a favorite of London caricaturists. It took only a few strokes for a skilled cartoonist to capture his essence: from the side he looked like a giant capital P. Chesterton rounded out his reputation with other eccentricities, which, taken together, perfectly fulfilled the stereotype of a slovenly, absent-minded professor. For example, here is a biographer’s account of a public debate with George Bernard Shaw:
In all their debates Chesterton never did become the smooth and polished orator that Shaw was. He usually arrived late, made comments about his size (by 1911 he weighed 270 pounds), and carried a bunch of scribbled notes on odd bits of paper, at which he would peer nearsightedly. Bending his head to look at them, he muffled his high-pitched voice and his pince-nez fell off. He blew through his moustache and chuckled amiably at his own wit. By contrast, Shaw was punctual and well-organized, a lean, dapper man with a gorgeous Irish voice and the gestures of an accomplished actor (from The Outline of Sanity, by Alzina Stone Dale).
We miss him today, I think. For all his personal quirkiness, Chesterton managed to propound the Christian faith with as much wit, good humor, and sheer intellectual force as anyone in this century. With the zeal of a knight defending the last redoubt, he took on, in person and in print, Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sigmund Freud, and anyone else who dared interpret the world apart from God and Incarnation.
In his day, sober-minded modernists were seeking new theories to explain the past and give hope to the future. Shaw, seeing history as a struggle between the classes, proposed a remedy of socialist utopianism. Wells interpreted the past as an evolutionary march toward progress and enlightenment (a view the rest of the century would do much to refute). And Freud held up a vision of humanity free of repression and the bondage of the subconscious.
Ironically, all three of these progressives had in common a rather stern countenance. With furrowed brows and dark, haunted eyes, they would expostulate on their optimistic visions of the future. Meanwhile, with a twinkle in his eye, laughing at his own jokes, Chesterton would cheerfully defend such “reactionary” concepts as original sin and the Last Judgment. In public debates, typically he would charm the audience over to his side, then celebrate by hosting his chastened opponent at the nearest pub.
Thin And Cold
Chesterton claimed to distrust “hard, cold, thin people”—and perhaps that’s why I kept thinking of the jolly, fat apologist during my diet. It seems the personality types have reversed. Nowadays in the church, sober-mindedness has won the day. Theologians with long faces lecture us on “the imperatives of the faith.” Political activists scare us with doomsday predictions of holocausts, nuclear and environmental. Heads of Christian relief agencies (a surprising number of whom, oddly, are overweight) report somberly on world hunger and overpopulation.
And I, columnist for an evangelical magazine writing in isolation from my basement, go on a crash diet to shed 13 pounds. Thirteen! Chesterton could gain that much from one meal.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting a churchwide eating binge. I know that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, and that obesity involves health risks comparable to those from smoking and drinking. What troubles me, though, is whether we have unconsciously accepted the model of “hard, cold, thin people” as the ideal Christian personality.
I sometimes wish the Bible had included more physical descriptions of its characters. I envision the apostle Paul as thin (too much prison gruel). But what of Jeremiah? Have we reason to believe that a prophet who exercised so little emotional control would strictly regulate his appetite? Or what of King Solomon, who spread his table with foreign delicacies? I imagine that the people in the Bible manifested the same range of personality types and physical shapes as one might find in the average airport terminal today.
I don’t regret going on my first diet. But I did discover that, like sports, scholarship, and anything else requiring discipline and self-control, dieting offers temptations toward a spirit of pride, superiority, and self-righteousness. G. K. Chesterton has reminded me there is more to life than being thin. “Despair,” he once said, “does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy.” Chesterton, with all his excess, never wearied of joy.
My diet goals successfully met, I’m left with one nagging question: Is it possible to be a soft, warm, thin person?
Philip Yancey: A Philip Yancey column that ran from 1985 to 2009
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Guardians of the Great Commission: The Story of Women in Modern Missions, by Ruth A. Tucker (Zondervan, 278 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Tim Stafford.
Women missionaries have coped with an image more comic than heroic. “Unclaimed blessings,” single women on the mission field have been called, with bemused patronage. Ruth Tucker helps us see more clearly. Delving into old missionary biographies, mainly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she presents brief portraits of about 60 women. As she did in her book on the history of women in ministry, Daughters of the Church, coauthored with Walter Liefield, Tucker places the women in their historical context and then lets their lives speak for themselves.
And speak they do. Independent (sometimes cantankerous), determined, able, these women would be difficult to patronize. Tucker quotes missiologist J. Herbert Kane: “The more difficult and dangerous the work, the higher the ratio of women to men.”
Until late in the nineteenth century, however, women were not accepted by mission agencies except as missionary wives (whose role was supposed to be strictly domestic). Unable to serve overseas, women frequently became leaders in urban missions at home. According to William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, “My best men are women.”
Beginning in 1861, though, women began to form their own mission boards. They were all-woman operations: Women’s missionary societies paid the bills; women administrators set policy; women missionaries were sent. (Once overseas, they worked within conventional mission structures.) They changed the face of missions. One of the movement’s leaders, Helen Barrett Montgomery, summarized their record: “We began in weakness, we stand in power. In 1861 there was a single missionary in the field.… In 1909, there were 4,710 unmarried women.” By then, women outnumbered men on the field two to one.
Free To Serve
Writes Tucker, “While opportunities for women in meaningful ministry were often very limited on the home front, precisely the opposite was true on the mission field. Practically every area of ministry imaginable was wide open to them. There was criticism when they overstepped the bounds of what was considered to be the ‘woman’s sphere,’ but the criticism was muffled by the overwhelming needs of the missionary enterprise as well as by the fact that women on the mission field quickly proved to be more than equal to the tasks before them.”
Lottie Moon is one example. Sailing to China in 1873, she was assigned to teach school, yet believed her gifts lay in evangelism and church planting. She set out determinedly to do it, despite her field director’s resistance. Fifteen years later her work in P’ing-tu was described as the “great evangelistic center [among the Southern Baptists] in all China.” Moon insisted on women’s rights, but always in the context of ministry. “What women want who come to China is free opportunity to do the largest possible work.… What women have a right to demand is perfect equality.” She died at 72 from malnutrition, suffered during a time of famine because she could not eat while there were hungry children at her door begging for food.
For the most part, women missionaries were given what Moon asked: the largest possible work. The tasks were so overwhelming that mission leaders found it difficult to argue against women who insisted on doing them. But there was an astonishing difference between what these women did on the mission field and the way they were viewed at home. Malla Moe, a colorful, early TEAM missionary to Swaziland, functioned as the equivalent of a bishop, assigning pastors and overseeing their work. When she returned to her native Norway, however, she was not even permitted to speak in the chapels.
Learning Some Lessons
Guardians of the Great Commission offers lessons that apply beyond missions. One is that gender roles become less important whenever the church is outwardly focused. Few quibble about who does what when there is more work than all can do.
And then, the factual record ought to put to rest some fears about the blurring of roles in the church. Women have done everything overseas, and it has not led to disaster. On the contrary, it has produced both remarkable women and remarkable results. The transformation of the church from a European phenomenon to an international, transcultural movement is perhaps the most notable fact of church history during the past two centuries. Could it have been done without these women’s leadership? That is very doubtful indeed.
Ironically, when denominational mission boards finally began to accept women candidates in the early twentieth century, the end result was a loss of influence for women. Women’s missionary boards were pressured to merge with their “parent” boards. The Woman’s Missionary Movement, a three million-member organization, was absorbed and eventually abandoned. As the church overseas grew and became indigenous, male leadership became dominant there as well.
Today, Tucker laments, “the enthusiasm for missions among women has dramatically declined.” No doubt the women she profiles would have a thing or two to say about that.
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie (Viking, 547pp.; $19.95, hardcover). Reviewed by David Bentley, a staff member of the Zwemer Institute of Muslim Studies in Pasadena, California.
The shock waves of rage and death, including a death threat on the author, have marked the first months of the publication of The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel has resulted in the death of a score of Muslim Pakistanis, interrupted Iranian-European relations, and generally brought a chill to Christian-Muslim contacts.
Islamic believers are offended by the novel because it intimates that the faith of Muhammad and his holy book, the Qur’an, arise from other than divine sources. Most of the world’s Muslims feel that the book insults their faith, but are supportive of those who have called for an Islamic court to decide whether the work is blasphemous. At a recent Islamic summit, the leaders clearly indicated that the pronouncements by Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini were unacceptable. Khomeini had issued a bounty in the millions of dollars for the murder of the author. Rushdie remains in hiding in the City of London.
Anti-Muslim Sentiments
Salman Rushdie’s fantastic tale is about two Anglicized Indians who survive a plane crash over the English Channel. One is transformed into a goat-creature while the other takes on an angelic appearance. In two lengthy chapters, which are part of dream sequences, one of these characters witnesses the beginnings of Islam in Arabia in thinly disguised parodies of Muhammad, his wives, and his followers.
Like Rushdie himself, the two main characters grew up as Muslims in Bombay but were not able to sustain their faith and turned to the arts and entertainment, both careers a definite surrender to Western values of hedonism and secularism. They reach professional success, but the personal-familial-cultural losses are staggering.
Despite claims to the contrary, the anti-Muslim sentiments go far beyond the casual sprinkling of satire in a dream sequence. The portrait of Muhammad, renamed “Mahound,” is an affront to the faithful Muslim because it evokes a medieval stereotype of the prophet. Rushdie, speaking through a myriad of mortals and supernaturals, comes across as more sympathetic with the idolatry of the polytheists than with the monotheism being preached by the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad.
The book’s title refers to verses that the prophet recited in an unguarded moment when these verses were whispered to him by Shaitan (Satan). The Prophet abrogated these verses almost immediately, but the issue of abrogation of “divine” words is raised throughout the book. This occurs when “Salman,” a fictional Persian scribe, begins to tamper with the sacred writings himself. Salman, the scribe, boasts of polluting “the word with his own profane language.”
The Urban Muslim
The novel is not serious enough to be slanderous, but The Satanic Verses will remain on the shelves of a few readers and perhaps outlive the public controversy because of its sensitivity to the greatest movement of people in this century—urbanization. The migration of people from community-centered villages to the anonymity of megacities is one that both Muslims and Christians have to face if they are to continue to be sources of spirituality. Rushdie eloquently describes these migrants as souls with “broken memories, sloughed-off selves, several mother tongues, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.”
The novelist’s concern for his fellow exiles who are experiencing urbanization in London deserves a healthier therapy, however, than the diabolical skepticism that he offers. To suggest that the alienation of modern life entails an existence without God is not the cure to religious deception but rather its ultimate manifestation.
Christians have an imperative to reach all stations of persons with the good news of Jesus Christ. Salman Rushdie presents us with a deeper challenge beyond the secular city with a portrait of a difficult people group to reach, the urban Muslims.
Singing the Lord’s Songs
Rejoice in the Lord: A Hymn Companion to the Scriptures, edited by Erik Routley (Eerdmans, 640 pp.; $12.95, hardcover); Psalter Hymnal (CRC Publications, 878 pp. [regular edition]; $11.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Allen Schantz, professor and chair of music at Colorado Christian University.
Two recent hymnals cause reflection on the relationship between Scripture and hymnody.
Rejoice in the Lord was prepared by the Reformed Church in America and intended for wide use by the “whole Church of Jesus Christ.” By God’s good grace, the committee was able to secure the services of the eminent English hymnologist Erik Routley, who completed the editing of this hymnal just before his death.
Hymns are arranged in canonical order of the Scriptures, making a clear correlation between musical worship and the Scriptures. With hymns by Isaac Watts, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and many others, as well as 54 psalms (some with several settings), this hymnal is a veritable treasury of the hymn in English.
Wherever possible, all the original stanzas are included (an unusual practice for current hymnals). Most of the hymns are consistent with their original text (and thus with the KJV), although some older expressions have been clarified. For example, “If thou but suffer God to guide thee” has been changed to “If thou but trust in God to guide thee.” Readers may find it disconcerting that while man and brother, meaning “humanity,” have been changed to avoid gender-specific terms, the thee’s and thou’s have been retained. In keeping with the staid nature of this hymnal, there are no contemporary Christian popular melodies.
As a history of English-language hymnody, there could be no more fitting eulogy to the life and work of Erik Routley. An ordained minister of the United Reformed Church (England), Routley served his last years as a professor at Westminster Choir College. His life’s work in music is summarized by his own words: “Perhaps the most obvious point in the teaching of Jesus is that in the kingdom of God duty and delight meet.”
Sing a new song
The Psalter Hymnal takes literally the biblical injunction, “Sing to [the Lord] a new song” (Ps. 33:3). Prepared by a committee from the Christian Reformed Church, it includes songs from “a variety of the Christian communities, cultures, and traditions that make up the body of Christ.” The 12 members of the committee (among them musicians, poets, and theologians) themselves contributed 184 new hymns, versifications, tunes, and harmonizations.
This hymnal makes a significant contribution to the evangelical community with its attempt to revitalize the singing of psalms. All 150 psalms begin the hymnal and use the same numbering as the English Bible. Thirty additional settings the psalms and 56 versifications based directly on other biblical texts are also included. The hymnal concludes with 395 hymns.
Great care is taken to insure that the hymns, Bible songs, and psalms are faithful to the original meaning and context of the Scripture passages from which they are taken. Each text was examined for its consonance with the original Hebrew or Greek text and for its English meter, rhyme, and accent.
The Reformation principle of worshiping in the vernacular is applied to all texts. Many older texts are updated and older pronoun and verb forms (thee, thou, wast, wert) changed where appropriate. Texts are revised to avoid gender-specific terms. Pronouns for God remain consistent with current Scripture translations. All of the responsive readings are taken from the NIV.
Balance and variety characterize the musical and liturgical styles. Musical style ranges from short choruses to antiphonal and chantlike songs. Introduction marks are provided for the instrumentalist. Familiar songs are balanced with new songs, old songs with recently written songs, childlike songs with musically challenging ones.
This hymnal exudes an international flavor. Twenty-three Afro-American melodies are included; nine Hispanic, five Israeli, three Asian, and one Nigerian. The best of the hymns representing the nineteenth century are retained and balanced with both older and more contemporary hymns. Those who work with youth will be pleased that much of the best in contemporary Christian music is included. Many songs, especially those with simple harmonies, include guitar chords.
A Reformational vanguard
With its emphasis on singing all the psalms and other biblical texts, the Psalter Hymnal points to a renewed Reformational and biblical integration of new hymnody with the written Word of God. Rejoice in the Lord serves in a similar manner to integrate traditional English-language hymnody with the Scriptures.
May other hymnal editors take note!
These hymnals forge a Reformational vanguard in evangelicalism, renewing the biblical bond between music and the Scriptures. It is my prayer that they will gain wide currency both inside and outside Reformed circles, pointing to the embodied Word of God, the Lord Jesus.
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The man and the message were proven and familiar, but when Billy Graham preached the gospel during Mission 89 in London, his campaign methods showed a decidedly contemporary and high-tech flair. “Teaser” posters and live satellite linkups to sites throughout Great Britain and in Africa helped bolster stadium crowds and made Mission 89 the biggest single outreach of the evangelist’s 40-year ministry.
Weeks before Graham hit town, Londoners were confronted by a puzzling series of ads. “E.ILF—Can anyone make sense of it?” billboards asked, until the solution to the puzzle was revealed: “LIFE. Come and hear one man who can make sense of it. Billy Graham.”
“The style is different from anything we’ve done in the past,” said team representative Bill Jefferson. “I think it’s more in line with the way you do things in Britain—soft selling.”
Near-capacity crowds filled London’s largest venues for 12 meetings during the June 14-July 1 crusade. Attendance at West Ham, Crystal Palace, and Earls Court totaled more than 306,000. The response prompted Graham to add an additional meeting at Wembley Stadium, canceling an appearance at the opening session of the Lausanne II Congress on World Evangelization in Manilla (see “Global Camp Meeting,” p. 39). In spite of torrential rain, more than 73,000 packed Britain’s largest stadium for the added event.
Satellite technology expanded Graham’s preaching presence to 240 Livelink locations. Each received live broadcasts of Graham’s Earls Court meetings. Each Livelink site was organized as an individual crusade, complete with sponsoring committee, counselors, and follow-up teams. Crowds at the sites boosted total attendance in Great Britain more than 1.2 million. According to crusade organizers, more than 80,500 indicated commitments to Christ.
Several Earls Court meetings were also carried live and by video rebroadcast on the national television networks of 30 countries in Africa. An estimated 22 to 30 million people watched each program, including more than 8 million who attended 16,000 separate crusades organized by African churches.
The transcontinental link was the first time such technology has been used to extend Graham’s reach to other countries in the developing world, said Bob Williams, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association representative who headed the Africa project.
And in Wales …
While Londoners were puzzling over posters that eventually led them to Billy Graham’s Mission 89, the residents of nearby Wales heard the preaching of evangelist Luis Palau. His five-week “Tell Wales” campaign ran from May through mid-June, culminating at the national stadium in Cardiff.
Wales presented a demanding challenge to Palau. According to crusade director Alan Johnson, after the area’s historic revival of 1904, led by Welsh preacher Evan Roberts, there developed an unusual spiritual barrenness. Although many may attend chapel regularly, few know a genuine relationship with Christ. “This nation was visited by God,” Johnson said, “but in subsequent generations its people have turned their backs on God.”
Rather than conduct large rallies at one location, Palau traveled through the isolated valleys of Wales, speaking in 17 different locations during the campaign. Palau delivered his messages in English, while prayers and hymns were offered in Welsh. In all, about 80,000 people attended the meetings, organizers said, and nearly 5,000 responded to Palau’s evangelistic invitations.
In spite of the proximity of the campaigns, the two efforts overlapped little. Only one site in Wales participated with Graham’s Mission 89. A Graham spokesman said his organization encouraged Welsh believers to participate in Palau’s efforts. And according to Johnson, the isolation of most parts of Wales meant Graham’s London meetings received little notice there.
Boycotts And Rumors
Graham’s efforts in Great Britain were actively opposed by Ian Paisley, the controversial Protestant churchman and politician in Northern Ireland, who criticized Graham’s cooperation with Catholics. Paisley took out advertisements in regional papers, calling for a boycott of the crusade.
Several British newspapers also reported that Graham had received death threats prior to the crusade, allegedly from extremist Protestant groups in Northern Ireland who condemned the evangelist’s links with the Catholic church. But Graham spokesman Larry Ross denied any threats were received. “I can say across the board that there were no death threats or threats of any kind prior to or during Mr. Graham’s time in England,” Ross said. Anti-Graham leaflets were distributed at some gatherings. Ross said he believes reports of such opposition were exaggerated into rumors of death threats.
Mission 89 was the 70-year-old evangelist’s eleventh in Great Britain. Noting that he had received invitations to many regions of the country, he said he would like to return, but added, “I don’t know how much longer God is going to give me strength to do this.”
“When the physical strength is lacking, the spiritual strength takes over,” he told the Wembley crowd. “I have to tap the spiritual power. That is what keeps me going.”