Page 4890 – Christianity Today (2025)

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Incompatibility?

The men who created the European ideal … believed it to mean a commitment to certain political values: social pluralism, political democracy, human rights, free markets. In the 1990s being European has declined into a matter of taste: for wine made in France, fashions made in Milan, cars made in Düsseldorf. Heaven forbid that style choices should commit you to believe in anything.

—Michael Ignatieff in “Can Russia Return to Europe?” (Harper’s, April 1992)

Using power aright

The great agony of the Christian statesman turns on the proper use of great power for moral ends.

—Edward L. R. Elson in a letter to President Dwight Eisenhower

A more shameful crucifixion

Not Herod, not Caiaphas, not Pilate, not Judas ever contrived to fasten upon Jesus Christ the reproach of insipidity; that final indignity was left for pious hands to inflict. To make of His story something that could neither startle, nor shock, nor terrify, nor excite, nor inspire a living soul is to crucify the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame.

—Dorothy L. Sayers in The Man Born to Be King

What direction are we growing?

The focus of health in the soul is humility, while the root of inward corruption is pride. In the spiritual life, nothing stands still. If we are not constantly growing downward into humility, we shall be steadily swelling up and running to seed under the influence of pride.

—J. I. Packer in Rediscovering Holiness

Whatever happened to artistic integrity?

Decadence has bloomed.… [T]oday wallowing-in-animal-entrails art and self-inflicted-gunshot art can hardly stir up a yawn.

Not that the art wars are drawing to a close. Critics still act like forward observers searching for enemies of the avant garde, and dealers plot strategies. More than anyone else, however, it is artists, particularly the young ones, who learn art as a conquest and are giving corruption a bad name in the process. Thirty years ago artists struggled endlessly to keep their need to succeed—or just pay the rent—from [destroying] their integrity. These days the fledgling hip have no time for all that; they are too busy tailoring their art to meet the market.

—Cliff McReynolds in “Art and the Successful O.D.” (CIVA Newsletter, 1992, No. 2)

Made to stretch

God created man something on the order of a rubber band. A rubber band is made to stretch. When it is not being stretched, it is small and relaxed; but as long as it remains in that shape, it is not doing what it was made to do. When it stretches, it is enlarged; it becomes tense and dynamic, and it does what it was made to do. God created you to stretch.

—Charles Paul Conn in Making It Happen

Irreverent God Talk

You are free in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He exists and is evil; you are free to say … that He would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or mystification; you may water Him down with gallons of long words, or boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one’s conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It is now thought irreverent to be a believer.

—G. K. Chesterton in George Bernard Shaw

Hugo struck my neighbors with terror but not with the fear of God

A few years ago, Hurricane Hugo slammed into the coast of South Carolina at Charleston, where I live. What immediately struck me about a natural disaster is that it has the power to upset one’s sense of the permanence and reliability of the physical world. As so many experienced more recently in Florida and Hawaii, order is replaced by chaos, and certainty is replaced by questions.

Many of my neighbors found that the trees once standing so harmlessly and all in order outside their front doors suddenly came thundering into their living rooms and attics. Others, nearer the coast, found the beauty of the Atlantic Ocean turning ugly and life-threatening, washing the treasures of a lifetime in houses, furniture, and boats out to sea. The kosmos was disrupted, and questions were in order. But what kinds of questions were being asked?

When Lisbon Shook

Hugo was not the first natural disaster to provoke important questions about human existence. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which claimed ten to fifteen thousand lives and reduced three-quarters of the city to rubble, resulted in vast social and intellectual disturbance. The quake brought about a period of extraordinary moral and theological reflection. Both the age of revolution in France and Germany, and the age of Wesleyan revival in England are often associated with the catastrophic events in Portugal. Comparing the responses to the two disasters will reveal just how far we have moved in our experience of the world.

Three lines of questioning emerged after the earthquake. First, what does the earthquake have to say about divine providence?

A widespread sentiment took root that this catastrophe was a divine judgment against a sinful city. With such a dreadful judgment, the offense must necessarily have been equally dreadful, an impression made all the stronger since the first shocks arrived on All Saints’ Day when the churches of Lisbon were crowded with worshipers.

A famous Jesuit speaker, Malagrida, was a typical example of an extreme point of view: “Learn, O Lisbon, that the destroyers of our houses, palaces, churches, and convents, the cause of the death of so many people and of the flames that devoured such vast treasures, are your abominable sins.”

Others, interestingly, thought of the earthquake as judgment upon the Jesuits, who were found in great numbers in Lisbon. Still others, notably in England and Germany, made the earthquake a case against Catholicism. But, for the most part, both theologians and the general populace refrained from this extremity of moral judgment against a whole population, even though those “earthquake sermons” were common fare for years to come.

Some attempted to defend God from the harsh picture of divine judgment the moral extremists had painted. A Franciscan preacher argued that the quake was a form of divine mercy. After all, he maintained, Portugal deserved much worse: God could have justifiably engulfed the whole nation, or at the least, destroyed the entire city of Lisbon. In view of what he could have done, God had performed only enough to warn Lisbon, and indeed the world, of his just displeasure. His action—however alarming it was at the time—was an act of mercy!

At the other end of the scale was the view that the earthquake should be seen as a natural disaster. A Spanish Benedictine monk was impressed that one of the recent earthquakes had been felt in two cities, Oviedo and Cadiz, at precisely the same time; and the cities were 500 miles apart. Obviously there was some deeper phenomenon that affects the earth surface at two such distant places at once. He attributed it to the latest matter of scientific excitement, electricity. This Benedictine thinker saw the catastrophe as one of a whole range of fatal events that could be explained purely by natural causes. The point, he insisted, is that one must be ready for death at any time: the earthquake is not, as others said, a special sign revealing God’s judgment.

The second question to arise out of the rubble of the Lisbon earthquake concerned the stability of social institutions. Perhaps nothing could really be depended on.

Unlike the United States, which found its national beginnings during this time, Europe was affected by a profound historical pessimism. The earthquake had seemed a crowning event in a whole series of disasters. The Turks had appeared on the doorsteps of Europe on three occasions in the eighteenth century. The Seven-Years War had ravaged the continent and wasted human life as well as economic resources. The new colonial possibilities in the New World had driven much of Europe mad with greed for enormous profits. Slave trade was expanding at a time when conscience had almost ruled it out in the home nations. There were attempts at assassination: of Louis XV in 1757 and José of Portugal in 1758.

A French poet, Le Brun, called his age the “infamous and atrocious century,” in a poem on the great calamity of that time. The poem’s title was “Ode to the Sun on the Misfortunes of the Earth Since the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.” “Perish the memory,” he said, “of our lamentable days.”

The third question to arise prominently regarded the relationship between human mortality and moral responsibility.

The young philosopher Immanuel Kant was to see this aspect of the earthquake’s effect as the only profitable one. No one could penetrate to the purposes of God. Nor could anyone conclude that the world, in and of itself, reveals any stability of purpose. In spite of this fact, or perhaps because of it, we realize in the face of such a disaster that we are not created for this life only. A greater reality exists, and therefore a greater obligation. Disasters only remind us that “if in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.” It is the transcendence implied by moral duty that answers to the fragmented world of disasters.

To us moderns, the thing to note is not the answers to these questions but the character of the questions themselves. We have moved too far away from the world of the Lisbon earthquake to have a wholly reliable understanding of what they felt. These questions reveal a world that was still affected by the “bright shadow of heaven.” Whether the answers were naturalistic or explicitly theological, the questions centered on the world’s relation to a transcendent reality.

How Hugo Made Us Feel

Hurricane Hugo was nothing like the Lisbon earthquake in terms of lost lives or societal impact. It was, nevertheless, a true disaster. The word disaster originally implied being “separated from the stars.” We in this region of the Carolinas had experienced a disturbance of the stars, a disorientation.

After the storm, we were without electrical power for some time, as long as a month in some communities. My own neighborhood was fortunate; in eight days we had the lights on again. In the meantime, I spent the daylight hours clearing the wilderness of blown-down trees and debris, joining with neighbors in efforts to salvage some order from the general destruction.

At night, for the most part, I took stock of the outside world. Reading by candlelight and listening to my battery-powered radio, I learned bit by bit the story of the larger disaster. A few miles away, in McClellanville and Awendaw, people’s houses and belongings had been scattered to the winds. On Sullivan’s Island, some homes had been left uninhabitable. Others had been washed completely away, leaving behind only a patch of sand.

I suspect some features of the Lisbon experience were repeated. It might be difficult, for instance, for a preacher to resist the temptation to preach about the one who “builds his house upon the sand.” But, in fact, although the “religious” note is never entirely missing, I wonder now why it was played so infrequently and quietly.

On one occasion, a radio commentator said, “Wait till this Sunday! More people will be in church than at almost any time you and I have known.”

So far as I know, that was the only time an optimistic comment concerning the religious life of the community was aired over the public media. The religious community was certainly visible, and involved, but as far as any general anticipation of a changed spiritual climate, this was the only one expressed in the media—even though there was a continued effort not only to keep people informed, but to keep the spirits high.

I went to church that Sunday. We sat in the darkened sanctuary, without sound system or air conditioning. With the buzzing of chain saws in the background, we worshiped. There was a small crowd in attendance that day, not a large one. Moreover, they were almost all “regulars.” They were not ushered out of their houses and into church by the recent fearsome display of nature’s powers. And, from what I learned, the experience was roughly the same in all of the area churches.

Nevertheless, I noticed something else over the next few days, as I listened to radio, keeping in touch with the world. At least half a dozen times a day the broadcast featured a local psychologist or psychiatrist. Typically the psychologist told us we were experiencing a kind of grief; but that was OK—it’s normal. We also heard about certain stages of adjustment through grief: denial, anger, depression, and (hopefully) acceptance.

What had the great catastrophe brought us? An awareness of the power of God over creation? Or of the frailty of the human condition? Or was it only that our psyche was out of kilter and needed fixing? Judging by media attention, by far the most urgently important topic seemed to be how we felt.

Literally hours of interviews were devoted to how people were “coping” emotionally, or whether they were emerging from the shock of the storm and becoming “optimistic” again.

We were focusing not on what had happened to the world around us, but on what was happening inside us. The most urgent question was not what all of this might mean so much as how we have each experienced it. Naturally, people were still interested in the objective facts of the hurricane and its after math; but to the extent that any intellectual response took place, it was seldom in terms of questions about the kosmos (the nature of the world), much less Theos (the questions about God), but an intense focus on psyche, on personal experience.

I became aware, then, more than ever, of just how godless our world has become. Even in the extremities of natural disaster, we no longer ask how this illuminates the mystery “over us,” but instead attend to the enigma “within us.” A gigantic shift has taken place in our picture of the world. The light of heaven has dimmed for us, and we look within for a light to mark the path.

Terror Without Awe

The storm may have stricken people with terror for a brief few minutes, but not with awe. The transcendent “Thou” is missing from our experience of the world.

What we were dealing with was not the equilibrium of a psyche that got tipped over, but a massive, foreign, unknown, alien power. Even if it was not God, at least it was nature, an apersonal will in the universe that paid not the least attention to our personal wills. The storm let us know, whether providentially or not, that reality includes something far greater than “me”; and it is not an illusion, but a powerful reality with 135-mile-per-hour winds.

The fact that we have almost dropped any transcendent orientation in life reveals something of the modern heart and mind. It should be an unsettling thought that this world is attempting to chart its way through some of the most perilous waters in history, having now decided to ignore what was for nearly two millennia its fixed point of reference—its North Star.

So we are faced with inevitable questions: What happens to a world that has abandoned its hope for heaven and has substituted dreams and longings that lodge themselves in a world without heaven? What powers are invoked, and what is lost, when the highest goals of human existence must emerge from the possibilities within life? What happens, in a word, when not even a hurricane reminds us of our fragile place in the kosmos?

A noted Western philosopher, introduced to the world in 1926, was one day sitting on a log when he heard a buzzing sound. He was puzzled and fell to pondering. As his leading chronicler remembers the event, the philosopher reasoned along the following lines:

“‘If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee.’

“Then he thought another long time, and said: ‘And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey.’

“And then he got up, and said: ‘And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.’”

Now, even though this philosopher carries the strange title of Winnie-the-Pooh, and even though his work is mostly appreciated by children, this bit of reflection deserves our serious attention. After all, it resembles the way the American church is more and more thinking about God and discipleship.

This incident shows Pooh to be a pragmatic individualist. He cannot imagine the bees possessing an existence and purpose apart from his own use and interest. The Pooh is the quintessential consumer, entirely practical and entirely self-centered: The only reason for being a bee is to make honey, and the “only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.”

Thus reasoning, the Pooh has a range of other possibilities blocked from his vision. He cannot see, for instance, the wider ecological purpose of bees, how they weave into a fabric of flora and fauna not only by providing honey, but also by such crafts as pollinating flowers. Another thing Pooh cannot see is a theological purpose for bees: that in the wonder of their existence, they speak and spell the glory of a Creator God.

Pooh-Speak

The Pooh, in short, is a bear of very little vision. And that is part of what makes these ingenious stories so amusing. What is not so amusing is that our language for God and life—our serious, Christian, adult language—has become every bit as restricted as the Pooh’s playful, areligious, childlike language. More and more, we American Christians are limiting ourselves to a kind of Pooh-speak for talking about God and discipleship. We are forgetting the language and grammar of Scripture. Increasingly, our only tongue is the language of pragmatic individualism and the grammar of consumerism.

The most obvious examples appear in the pervasive prosperity gospel and in the trend to “market” the church. Across all denominational lines, churches are promising health and wealth as shamelessly as once only extreme Pentecostals did. A suburban Lutheran church near San Francisco, for instance, recently advertised a “money-back guarantee.” Donate to the church for 90 days, and, if you aren’t blessed, you can have your money returned.

American Christians largely envision the church as a spiritual supermarket. We choose churches on the basis of whether or not they “meet my needs.” We move to a new community and describe our search for a place of worship as “church shopping.” Recently I talked with a professor at an elite evangelical college. He brought up some problems at his church, then sighed, “Ah well, most churches only have a shelf life of about three years anyway.”

All this is Pooh-speak, pure and simple.

There is less and less a sense that finding (and being found by) a church is something entirely different from choosing a new car. We seem increasingly blind to the limits imposed on us by consumeristic language.

Is Holiness Good For You?

Writing and editing in the evangelical world for over ten years, I have seen our language increasingly forced away from the language of the Bible and toward the language of religious consumerism. That is not to say that the language of pragmatic individualism does not have great power and even some benefits. Many Christians, for example, now insist their faith has something to do with everyday life. Also, we are now more inclined to dismiss theologies that assume God can only be glorified if we deplore ourselves or say that if we are having fun God must be dismayed.

But if we are only comfortable speaking as pragmatic consumers, we will ignore or distort entire vistas of the biblical terrain. This was brought keenly home to me recently when two authors independently submitted book manuscripts on the same topic—the holiness of God.

Both manuscripts worked directly, explicitly, and consistently from the biblical text. Both were well written and, on their own terms, interesting. I saw value in both and moved to the editorial task of conceiving how the authors might draw in the widest possible readership.

I needed, in other words, to start translating their manuscripts into a “marketable” language.

But here was a translating headache. The authors had begun with God; I would have to push them to begin with the individual human. They had addressed needs theologically perceived, fitting humanity onto God’s agenda; I would push them to write about felt needs, fitting God onto the individual human’s agenda. At the heart of what these authors had to say, in fact, was the conviction that humanity is in deep trouble exactly because it tries to use God to its own ends. So if I pushed these authors to speak in the idiom of pragmatic individualism, I would push them to say exactly the opposite of what they wanted to say!

In short, the holiness of God is not easy to conceive in Pooh-speak. More than that, if it is forced into Pooh-speak, it will no longer resemble any biblical sense of the holiness of God. God’s holiness is not for my use or self-interest, though the language of consumerism would have me imagine it must be. It is the other way around. Apart from God I am lost, without direction and purpose, unable to know my true worth—the worth of a creature among creatures wrought and redeemed by a transcendent God.

Snared in the net of Pooh-speak, I live with a grossly stunted imagination. This stuntedness would have been well understood by the Puritan Richard Baxter, who wrote, “If you will glorify God in your lives, you must be chiefly intent upon the public good, and the spreading of the gospel through the world.” The alternative, according to Baxter, was a “private, narrow soul … always taken up about itself, or imprisoned in a corner, in the dark.” Such a soul “sees not how things go in the world: its desires, and prayers, and endeavours go no further than they can see or travel.”

If I can imagine a good that is bigger and grander than myself, a purpose beyond what will satisfy merely me, then, in Baxter’s words, I can be a “larger soul” who “beholds all the earth, and desires to know how it goes with the cause and servants of the Lord.” Thus, Baxter recognized, those who understand the holiness of God “pray for the ‘hallowing of God’s name,’ and the ‘coming of his kingdom,’ and the ‘doing of his will throughout the earth, as it is in heaven,’ before they come to their own necessities.”

Sabbath And Sex

Holiness is not the only biblical concern that drops from sight when we confine ourselves to Pooh-speak. Consider the Sabbath.

Recently I spent a weekend with a group of ministers. In one discussion, they emphasized the need for Sabbath rest in our frenetic society. The leader extolled the value of rest and restful exercise because it refreshed him and made him sharper at his ministry. The Sabbath, in other words, was useful since it facilitated his ministry.

Biblically, though, the point of the Sabbath is exactly its uselessness, its sheer impracticality for us and our work. It is a regular reminder that God alone is God; the universe and its maintenance does not depend on me or my ministry.

Another example is the Christian confusion over sexual ethics. We tell our young people they should reserve sexual intercourse for marriage. But then we justify our position in terms of consumer choices. We tell them that abstinence before marriage is the least harmful and most healthy alternative. We warn them about AIDS and venereal diseases. We talk about how the really “good sex” is had between two people without previous partners.

The problem is that this approach, presented by itself, encourages each teenager to think only about himself or herself. And if they think of themselves only as individuals, they can always find exceptions to the rule. Most people who have sex outside marriage never get AIDS; individuals who have had sex partners before their spouse may still have wonderful sex on their marital bed. What is “good for them” may not seem so obvious.

But what if we turn to a language and imagination more like Baxter’s than Pooh’s—a vision “chiefly intent on the public good”? Then it is not difficult to see how it is good to keep sex connected to marriage. Any worthy society will want to promote the birth and healthy upbringing of children, for only so can it insure its future. And children can be healthy only if their parents are capable of the commitment and fidelity that build family stability. As the political philosopher Michael Walzer recognizes, “From the point of view of society as a whole, private affairs are marginal and parasitic upon marriages and families.”

Yet people who see sex individualistically, mainly as a means of recreation or self-fulfillment, are sensitive only to their own needs and gratification. Commitment and fidelity are beyond them.

A Zero-Sum War

In short, Pooh-speak disposes me to think first, and often only, of myself and my benefits. At its extreme, it reduces life to a contest of self-interests in a zero-sum economy: For me to gain, someone else must lose.

Enslaved to the language of individualism, we do not see our profound and unavoidable connections to others. Philip Slater writes, “The notion that people begin as separate individuals, who then march out and connect themselves to others, is one of the most dazzling bits of self-mystification in the history of the species.” We are now so individualistic and pragmatic that we can fight against tax raises to improve schools for the next generation without ever feeling stingy or selfish.

Biblical language, Baxter’s language, opens up other possibilities. It disposes me to see my connection to others and to see us benefiting together under God. Thus Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, sees individual Christians as members of a community, each with gifts used to build up all. The kingdom of God is a limitless rather than a zero-sum economy. It is more like life as family than as war: The new child does not steal parental love from big sister, but instead creates more love to go around.

Biblical language, then, calls us into a new and wider world. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17, NRSV). Incorporated into Christ, the individual can now see everything in a transformed way, connected under God, created and redeemed in Christ.

Such a vision is what Augustine had in mind in the rhapsodic final book of The City of God. There, looking ahead to the consummation, “God will be the source of every satisfaction, more than any heart can rightly crave, more than life and health, food and wealth, glory and honor, peace and every good—so that God, as St. Paul said, ‘may be all in all.’ … And in this gift of vision, this response of love, this paean of praise, all alike will share, as all will share in everlasting life.”

That, to understate the matter, is not a pragmatic individualist speaking.

Called To Be Multilingual

The insidiousness of consumer language is that it confuses the kingdom with the kingdom’s benefits. It mistakes certain effects of the gospel for the gospel itself. Someone who repents and follows Jesus can expect direction in life, an easing of guilt and anxiety, moral growth, and many other benefits. “But,” as John Howard Yoder writes, “all of this is not the gospel. This is just the bonus, the wrapping paper thrown in when you buy the meat, the ‘everything’ which will be added, without our taking thought for it, if we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

For Christians, Pooh-speak cannot be our first tongue. Instead, we need a sharper and reinvigorated sense of how the people of God are called to be multilingual. We may need to know the language of pragmatic individualism (or, at other times, the language of existentialism or Marxism or the New Age). But our primary language, our first tongue in every time and place, must be the language of Scripture.

While the Assyrian army beseiges Jerusalem (2 Kings 18–19), its negotiator Rabshakeh taunts the people of Judah in their own language. He stands just outside Jerusalem’s wall and mocks Yahweh, comparing the Lord God to failed deities of other nations. Rabshakeh uses the language of Judah, but only to pervert it, to show Assyrian kings more powerful than Israel’s Creator and Redeemer. Similarly, when we dress Pooh-speak in the language of the Bible, we twist the biblical language.

More important than the conversation at the wall, however, is the conversation going on behind the wall. Judah’s King Hezekiah prays to Yahweh in the language of Judah, rightly recognizing the Lord as the maker of heaven and earth and the sole God over all the kingdoms (19:15). As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann comments, “The conversation on the wall is crucial, because the Assyrians are real dialogue partners who must be taken seriously. They will not go away. But unless there is another conversation behind the wall in another language about another agenda, Judah on the wall will only submit to and echo imperial perceptions of reality.”

Likewise, we must retain a facility in consumerism as a second language because it is the language of our society. It will not go away—at least not for a good, long time. In fact, I fear it may become so dominant that the “truth” and “reality” it presents will be more true and real to Christians than the truth and reality of Scripture. For example, some in the church already accept the idea that the “bottom line” reliably determines what we should be and do; or that theological designations such as the “Trinity” and the “kingdom of God” are supposedly more abstract and less “practical” than psychological formulations such as “dysfunctionality” and “self-esteem.”

The conversation at the wall must always go on. But our hope lies behind the wall, where we must renew our first language. Pooh-speak is fun. Pooh-speak can be grand. Pooh-speak is sometimes useful. It just isn’t the gospel.

CT interviews Gary Bauer, defender of the two-parent family and other radical ideas.

“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” said Harry Truman. This is one of Gary Bauer’s favorite quotes. Indeed, the president of Family Research Council (FRC) seldom has much good to say about the nation’s seat of government. Still, the veteran politico has made Washington, D.C., his home, realizing that in many ways it represents the frontline in the battle for the family. Bauer spent much of the eighties within the governmental bureaucracy, serving as undersecretary of education under William Bennett, and then as domestic policy adviser in Ronald Reagan’s White House. Today at FRC he uses that experience—and a massive network of contacts—in a grassroots effort to convince the bureaucracy to become more family-friendly. In many ways, he is considered the commander of the profamily movement in Washington. He outlines his battle plan in his new book, Our Journey Home (Word). In an interview with CHRISTIANITYTODAY, Bauer discussed the ups and downs of his quest to be a voice for what he considers the most underrepresented constituency in Washington: the family.

How much is really at stake for the family?

One always runs the risk of coming across like Chicken Little. But I think most people—whether they’re on the Right or the Left—will agree that there have been tremendous cultural changes in the last 30 years. Conservatives will generally say, as I do, that these changes have by and large been bad for family life and for values. Others think these changes are progressive and that we should see more of them.

I think if these changes continue, America in the year 2000 will be a completely different thing than what the founders anticipated and what most Americans hope and yearn for. We will be economically uncompetitive and a social disaster. I see the next ten years as a time of incredible importance as the country decides which way it’s going to go on these issues.

What do you see as the key issues?

Unfortunately, you have to start with basics. Number one is, What is a family? Public policy can’t help the family if the people who make public policy are unable to define a family. We believe a family is people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. And we believe that, historically, marriage has been limited to heterosexual couples, and it should continue to be so limited.

The second issue is the whole question of reliable standards of right and wrong. For 30 years we’ve had unbridled individualism. The result has been sky-high abortion and illegitimacy rates, condom distribution in the schools, abortion on demand, and a host of other things. All those are important, but I think they all go back to that core issue of whether or not we’re going to balance our radical individualism with a sense of community, a sense of having obligations to one another.

I think a key issue in the nineties will be re-creating a consensus that there are standards. And as a civilized society, we must find ways to pass these standards on to our children.

How do you link Christianity and the family? Is Family Research Council a Christian organization?

It is a tightrope to walk. We see ourselves as a conservative, profamily organization.

We believe the tradition in our culture, which has been formed by Christianity, supports the family unit and makes possible the teaching of reliable standards of right and wrong. We are in no way, shape, or form embarrassed by, or hesitant to proclaim, our strong Christian faith. By the same token, we don’t want to send a signal to others who are not Christians that they’re not welcome in the battle for family and tradition.

We obviously work closely with an organization [Focus on the Family] that describes itself as a ministry. But there are different tasks to be done here. I mean, if you listen to [James Dobson’s radio] program, you might get a more overt Christian message. If I go up to Capitol Hill and testify, I’m not going to get far if I quote a Bible verse—although I’m certainly going to read the Bible in the morning before I go up to testify in order to help me keep my sanity and remind myself what this is all about.

Many people have negative images of lobbyists, working behind closed doors, wheeling and dealing, and peddling influence. How do FRC lobbyists actually operate?

Let me say first of all that [lobbying] has a bad reputation for a good reason. It is not unusual in this town to use half-truths, to routinely engage in personal attacks rather than discussing the issues. It’s not unusual to trade in confidential information for your own benefit, to mislead reporters, to mislead people on Capitol Hill—all in the hope that you can pull a fast one.

We at the FRC are for better or worse fairly transparent. We tend to say exactly what we believe. We try to avoid personal attacks—however tempting it may be. I feel I should not do or say anything in Washington in the name of people with traditional values that I would be embarrassed to do or say if they were sitting in my office watching me do it. And that crosses off the list a lot of things that are fairly routine in Washington, I’m afraid.

Does that hamper your effectiveness?

This city flourishes on cynicism and, quite frankly, we find a lot of people—even our opponents—who find it refreshing when we’re up-front about what we’re doing, where we’re coming from, and what it is we intend to accomplish. That’s the only way I can explain the fact that, in spite of being an outspoken conservative, I am invited by liberal politicians to come up and testify. It’s not that I let them off easy; generally in those hearings there are fairly heated exchanges. But I think they feel they’re not going to get a sucker punch. And that’s heartening.

What do you consider the profamily movement’s key areas of effectiveness?

I think the greatest compliment that could be paid to the efforts of the movement is to rewatch a videotape of the Democratic Convention. The platform of that party still has major problems, in my view, but what’s clear is that almost every major politician in the country believes that the American people are hungry for affirmation of the values of hearth and home. I don’t believe that would have happened if over the last three or four years groups like ours had not been constantly sounding that theme and demanding that elected officials address it. And if the Democrats say these things often enough, they may actually begin to believe them, and that would be even better.

What are your biggest obstacles?

Even though we’re bringing in enough money to do what we planned to do, most of the groups in this movement are terribly underfunded compared to our competitors. Groups like the Children’s Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Planned Parenthood outclass us, often with Hollywood money and very large contributions. It would be nice to do this battle for a couple of years and not have to worry about the bottom line.

You’ve been personally active in Republican politics. Is there a danger that FRC may be seen as pro-Republican rather than profamily?

There is always that danger. I have not had a problem with that, because over the last couple of years I’ve been critical of the Bush administration when they’ve done something that we think was inappropriate. To the extent I get complaints, it tends to be from people who say, “Gary, I agreed with what you said, but we don’t want to hurt President Bush.” And I remind them that we are not an annex of the Republican National Committee.

We are willing to work with anyone who will embrace the profamily philosophy we have. We were in the process of briefing Ross Perot on some issues when he unceremoniously left the race. And I requested to testify before the Democratic platform committee. Not surprisingly, just as they didn’t let Governor Casey [a prolife Democrat] testify, they certainly didn’t let me, either. But we will continue to aggressively defend these values, even when that means criticizing people that I may feel a political affinity for.

Some people contend that the profamily agenda is too broad, incorporating issues that are more concerned about conservative ideology than the family. FRC literature mentions things like the banking scandals or the balanced budget amendment. How narrow an agenda should there be in determining when something is profamily?

I think the profamily movement has made a mistake in defining the agenda so narrowly that it means only abortion, pornography, and gay rights. It’s also very antifamily to be going into debt by billions of dollars, which will have to be paid back by our children. You can’t convince the American people there are reliable standards of right and wrong if their leaders in Washington are routinely abusing their privileges and the institutions that they’re in control of. So I do see those things as part of the family agenda.

You’re not going to see us taking positions on the Strategic Defense Initiative, on Yugoslavia, or whether we should be hitting Iraq or not. But there are other things that do have a clear family angle to them, and we shouldn’t be afraid of them.

You have criticized government programs as being bad for the family. Is government spending in and of itself antifamily?

It depends on the way the spending is done. More often than not, if that government spending is part of a Washington-based program with a Washington-based bureaucracy, it ends up being bad for the family. The programs end up reflecting the values of those bureaucrats instead of the values of the people they’re trying to help. If what Washington does empowers families through educational vouchers, tax relief, or other things that put more money into the pockets of the American people, then that’s profamily.

What about those families that have fallen through the cracks and are in a real crisis situation? What’s the government’s responsibility there?

In a caring and decent society, there will always be a safety net. The challenge for us is to provide that help without providing incentives for the behavior that causes people to be in those predicaments. I think the evidence is fairly overwhelming that we have constructed a welfare system that has made it easier for people to make bad decisions. I suspect that the challenge of the nineties is going to be whether the best minds on the Right and the Left can come up with ways to help the poor without making it more likely that we’re going to have more poor.

Is there a specific role in the profamily movement for churches and religious leaders?

America desperately needs to rediscover the obvious. In 30 years we have forgotten a lot of very simple things: how to find happiness, how to have a good life, arid how best to raise children. It is among church people generally that the obvious is most understood. So I think it’s up to church people to carry the torch, to remind Americans that there are rules, and these rules actually work. I would like to see a self-assured Christianity in this country, a Christianity that acts as if it has the answers, because, in fact, it does. If there’s ever a time for the church to be looking home, it seems to me that this is the time. The Brazilian rain forest may desperately be in need of help, but the inner cities of America are even more desperate. I would just hope that we can devote as many resources as possible to helping this country find its moorings again.

How they made “family values” this year’s hottest political issue.

These days, Washington’s three big profamily, Christian-based activist groups are reminiscent of singer Barbara Mandrell’s crooning a few years ago that she “was country when country wasn’t cool.” Despite this year’s partisan division over “family values,” and after years of toiling to persuade the news media and politicians to treat family concerns as at least something other than a backwoods song of political corniness, these lobbyists have found the profamily tune rising to the top of the pop charts.

And Concerned Women for America (CWA), Family Research Council (FRC), and Christian Coalition (CC) are struggling to maintain control of definitions and the agenda in the midst of their apparent success.

“By itself, the label profamily no longer means a thing,” Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, has stated bluntly. Even people intent on changing the traditional family to alternative structures have tried to incorporate the label, he warned. For example, Gregory King, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation’s largest homosexual advocacy group, told the Washington Times in August, “I personally think that most lesbian and gay Americans support traditional family and American values,” which he defined as “tolerance, concern, support, and a sense of community.”

Hardly any candidate this election year has seemed willing to venture forth without an umbrella of profamily rhetoric as protection in case of family-voter thundershowers. And chief among the cloud-seeders have been the Big Three profamily groups.

“No question, you can give them credit for the fact that ‘profamily’ is now fashionable,” said nationally syndicated columnist Michael McManus.

The Big Three groups are in virtual unanimity about the profamily agenda and see themselves as arbiters of it. But critics—including many Christians, and even some prolife evangelicals—have let it be known they are not willing to concede that role, suggesting that the Big Three have defined family issues too narrowly within politically conservative parameters and have neglected some of the most important issues concerning the health of the family.

“I weep when I see some of these groups tying these very good profamily causes into anti-gun control, opposing parental-leave legislation, and blocking efforts to raise wages,” commented Stephen Monsma, political science professor at Pepperdine University. “I’m just so afraid that although they started out with appropriate concerns, the danger of being co-opted by the secular Right—as for many liberal Christians by the Left—is very great.”

Monsma, a former Democratic legislator from Michigan, is not altogether critical, however. “Since moving to California, I have a greater sense of the militant secularism for gay rights, pornography, and the like,” Monsma said. “There really is a Hollywood secular elite. So I compare the big profamily groups to the Northern generals in the Civil War. Even though they repeatedly fumbled and bumbled, it was still much better that they were out there fighting against slavery.”

A Reader’s Digest poll this year gave further credence to the idea that something like a profamily vote truly could be mobilized. It noted that, at nearly 100 million, married couples with children are the largest demographic voting bloc and that their attitudes on some of the family-value issues lean toward “traditional” by more than 20 percentage points difference from other adults. They also are far more likely to be churchgoers than any other demographic group.

The Big Three profamily groups have some key advantages in going after that bloc and continuing to claim the role of carrying the profamily banner defining the movement.

Distinct Roles

First, they provide a kind of solid institutional and unified front on most issues while each has a distinct function that complements the others.

• CWA stirs women’s activism as the largest grassroots women’s group in the country. It has a $10 million budget and a staff of 25 operating out of a building in the heart of the giant federal bureaucracy complex just southwest of the U.S. Capitol. Beverly LaHaye, who remains the chief executive, began the group as a San Diego effort in 1979. But it quickly achieved national status as the first major alternative women’s voice to feminist activists. Its motto is: “Protecting the rights of the family through prayer and action.”

• FRC is a think tank, churning out studies, daily reports, and quotes-on-demand for the news media. The nearly $3-million-a-year operation, with a staff of 25, is located in downtown Washington, D.C., a block from the National Press Building. Started in 1981, it has been a division of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization since 1988. Bauer describes it as a “conservative profamily organization.”

• CC is a new-fangled version of old-fashioned, get-out-the-targeted-vote political organizing. Its president, Pat Robertson, in 1989 spun the group out of the expertise and personnel accumulated during his 1988 run for the Republican presidential nomination. With plans to spend more this year than last year’s $4.3 million budget, it has a staff of 30 in its Chesapeake, Virginia, headquarters, which is organizationally unconnected to other Robertson-related entities in nearby Virginia Beach. All its efforts fall under the profamily umbrella, its leaders say.

In The Rolodex

Another jump the Big Three have on would-be, profamily arbiters is that they were first to get their names in the issue files of journalists’ Rolodexes.

“Washington is a special-interest town, and almost every special interest has a high-powered lobbyist that speaks for it here,” Bauer said in an interview. In his years of government, including the Reagan White House, Bauer did not encounter many people representing the average American family. So two of the Big Three—and to a lesser extent, Christian Coalition—have set themselves up to be that voice.

Before Concerned Women and the Research Council, most journalists’ telephone card files were blank for where to turn for a quick quote from the traditional family point of view. Skimming recent news clips finds LaHaye and Bauer being quoted seemingly everywhere. The organizations clearly have established themselves as visible and credible enough that many news media do not think they have a balanced presentation of certain issues without comment from one of the Big Three spokespersons.

One example this year was in the release by the Children’s Defense Fund of a report on the worsening conditions of children in this country. They examined the statistics and focused on changes in government spending. But it neglected to give a full examination of the changes in illegitimate births and single-parent households and their effects on the child-poverty statistics. FRC, with its think-tank capabilities, immediately released the statistical analysis neglected by the Children’s Defense Fund and succeeded in adding that to the news media’s—and thus the public’s—view of the issue.

In approximately 80 percent of the instances in which Family Research Council is quoted, the call is initiated by the journalist, said Bill Mattox, policy analyst for the council: “The Rolodex function is working.”

Backed By Members

The Big Three also stake a claim for being the true voice of the profamily movement because they really do speak for a lot of people and have the organization to mobilize them.

• CC’s bimonthly newspaper, Christian American, has 200,000 subscribers. Membership is up to 150,000. Their numbers are multiplied in political power by the members’ top activity, which is phone surveying of their precincts to identify voters who share their family views. Those people are put on file and called when one of their concerns is at stake in an election. The coalition has 31 statewide affiliate organizations and scores of local chapters in 47 states.

“Based on what I see in meetings across the country, our members are a real cross section,” said Guy Rodgers, national field director. They are a mix of ages, in a variety of family situations, and include both novices and veterans of political activity. He said heaviest membership appears to be in Texas, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North and South Carolina.

• FRC claims a monthly newsletter circulation of 125,000, from which most of its income is derived. Bauer sends a daily one-page memo to church leaders across the country. In addition, the think tank has access to millions of listeners to the Focus on the Family programs, including daily participation on the 5-minute and 15-minute “Family News in Focus” radio shows.

• CWA claims more than 600,000 (at least 80 percent of them women) as members on the basis of their financial support or participation in organizational activities during the last 18 months. They are organized in 1,200 “prayer/action chapters” in all 50 states where they also work on local and state issues. The national office stays in communication through the monthly magazine, Family Voice, with 200,000 subscribers, and through action alerts sent to chapters.

They and millions more now have an opportunity to hear from LaHaye daily during a live, half-hour radio show she broadcasts from a studio in her office.

The organization takes credit for generating 1.9 million post cards to TV network executives asking that they not open advertising to condoms. The main three networks still are barring the ads.

“I hear over and over, ‘You give us a chance to have a voice, those of us who never had one before,’” LaHaye said. “We represent millions of traditional women who care about their families, even though many may be working.”

Even after all its years of visibility, the group still has to throw its membership weight around at times to get at least equal opportunity with the National Organization for Women to speak for women. That was the case with the Supreme Court confirmation process for Judge Clarence Thomas. NOW and other feminist spokeswomen filled media stories with their claims to represent the disgust of American women for the nominee. LaHaye used her membership numbers to force her view into later stories that women, in fact, believed in Thomas as somebody sensitive to their concerns about traditional family values. Public opinion polls confirmed LaHaye’s claim.

In a Washington Times article this year, Ann Stone, head of Republicans for Choice, said about her adversary group on the other side of the abortion issue: “I always say a lot of people on the other side are paper tigers, but [CWA] wields more clout than they sometimes get credit for.”

Defining The Movement

No document defines the profamily movement. But a review of the Big Three’s past history, voter guides, publications, and interviews provides a fairly clear picture. The defining profamily issues appear to fall in seven categories.

1Abortion. An observer could read through the groups’ publications and be excused for thinking that profamily is just another name for prolife. Antiabortion concerns have tended to overshadow all other issues.

Ron Sider, of Evangelicals for Social Action in Philadelphia, has questioned the emphasis. Although he agrees with the groups’ prolife positions, he says abortion is more a result of disintegrating traditional families than a cause. It would make more sense to concentrate on the direct contributors to family disintegration, he suggests.

LaHaye admits that her group has stressed abortion but says that has been partly determined by what issues were coming up in Congress. She said she felt led a couple of years ago to switch gears some and to emphasize what “each issue has to do with children. Otherwise, our kids will never know an America like we know America.”

2Challenges to traditional moral values. These issues are at the core of the profamily groups’ identity. All three agree on what a true profamily politician should oppose: pornography, the promotion of homosexuality, condom distribution in schools, sexual education that does not emphasize abstinence, violent and sexually exploitative entertainment media, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The politician should also work to provide choices for parents in picking the kind of school that best imparts values and education to their children. And vigilance is necessary to protect against loss of religious freedom due to governmental intervention. A priority of CWA is to combat sexual and physical abuse of children and wives.

The Reader’s Digest poll indicated that the groups are squarely in line with American families on many of these issues.

3Fairness to families. While legitimate family life can occur in other forms—sometimes out of necessity—the two-parent model is held as the bedrock upon which society must be built. Except when financially impossible, one parent (usually described as the mother) should remain home with younger children. The government should provide incentives for people to live the model family life and, at the least, should not make it difficult or discriminate against those who do.

The groups view the tax and welfare systems as biased toward single people and single parenting and support significant reforms. “The evidence is fairly overwhelming that we have constructed a welfare system that has made it easier for people to make bad decisions,” Bauer said. More galling to the groups is the taxation on families with children, which is far higher than in 1950 because the dependent exemption has lost more than two-thirds its value.

A recent issue in this category was federal child-care legislation. Profamily groups blasted the original proposals because all the benefits would go to mothers who worked, thereby creating another incentive for women not to be with their children. The groups claim a major victory in the change of language so that the child-care solution equally benefits mothers at home.

4Fiscal and governmental conservatism. It would appear that to be profamily under Big Three values one must oppose all higher taxes and nearly all forms of additional government spending. The groups tend also to equate profamily values with efforts to limit elected terms, congressional pay hikes, and franked mail.

All of that stretches the profamily umbrella too far for some evangelical critics. While appreciating the desire to limit government spending so as not to make the deficit worse for future generations, new government programs could be the answer in some cases for family problems, they argue.

David Medema, of the Christian JustLife political organization of Grand Rapids, complained that the “profamily groups are blinded by a distrust of government.… We believe there are times the government has to mediate the effects of the free-market system.… The groups back off from dealing with the systemic economic issues that cause mothers to go to work and children to be aborted.”

Monsma said groups attempt to marry the religiously felt profamily issues with political conservatism: “They may be very sincere in trying to be Christian, but when every time the position comes out right-wing Republican,” the ability to move masses of American voters is diminished.

Bauer has allowed that the profamily movement indeed was born out of an alliance—“partly of conviction, partly of convenience”—with an already-existing conservative movement in the late seventies. But he added: “We are not an annex of the Republican National Committee.” He believes FRC is not so susceptible to the charge because it has been so critical of the Bush administration in the past year.

CC’s general position “would be that we would oppose any higher taxes,” field director Rodgers said. “The government is doing too many things. The bulk of taxes come from middle-class families.… There are good Christians who would say that the level of taxes isn’t a moral position. But it is so obvious from where we come that you can hardly argue with it.”

Is it difficult for Concerned Women to appear nonpartisan? “Extremely hard,” LaHaye admitted. “We have to be very careful with the FCC and the IRS. There are some Democrats on the Hill who know us and shake our hands. It’s not as easy with them as with the other party. But it is possible.”

5Conservative side issues. Two of Concerned Women’s major stances during the last decade were support for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and aid to the Nicaraguan contra rebels. One of its 13 current top priority goals is to resist “increasing pressure to weaken the country’s defenses” and to “deploy the strongest national defense system in the world as a deterrent to foreign aggression.”

Christian Coalition’s California voter guide listed opposition to a handgun-purchase waiting period as a profamily position. Its national guide included an amendment to limit the “hiring quota” qualities of a civil-rights bill as one of the “key family values” before Congress during the last two years.

Critics regard these types of issues, with no obvious direct relationship to the family, as convincing evidence of the prevailing political ideology. Sider proclaimed “incredible irony” about the gun-control opposition in the face of terrible violence suffered by families from licentious handgun use.

CC recognizes that not all issues have the same moral weight, Rodgers said. “We recognize voters have different feelings. The handgun waiting period is one of those issues that there isn’t a consensus on in the Christian community. But it is a position that most of our people take because they tend to be conservative in general.… A lot of our people have decided … that violence is a problem from the breakdown of the family culture, not from the availability of handguns.”

LaHaye said her group regards defense issues as essential: “We feel to protect the family we have to defend it nationally. Yes, we supported SDI. We felt it would protect families.”

She pointed out, though, that some of the group’s issues fail to draw overwhelming support from members. “When we’re in an issue they really support, they are gung-ho and send money,” she said. But a lot of members held back, and even complained, about the activism for the controversial and expensive SDI missile-defense system, she said, so “we didn’t do much more with SDI. Our contras work got pretty strong support. We were releasing a biweekly newsletter offering information not in the secular media.”

6Stances that seem backwards. No profamily stance has been as tough to explain as the Big Three’s full-force opposition to legislation that would require businesses to hold a job for anyone who took up to three months of unpaid leave for the birth of a baby or care of a sick child, spouse, or parent.

“I want to ask who is setting the agenda?” Sider said. Medema suggested he might know: “I think the organizations opposed parental leave to avoid conflict with their conservative patrons and the business community.” Medema’s and Sider’s evangelical, prolife organizations supported the measure.

But the Big Three’s leaders say their stance was entirely consistent with their principles not to bias the system toward working mothers. “I don’t like big government telling free enterprise what it must do,” LaHaye said. “We reject that every chance we get. We felt the bill would be unfair to women.”

The profamily groups worried that small businesses might decline to hire women of childbearing age to avoid the cost of potential parental leaves.

Based on research from FRC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they argued that employers would have to pay for the costs of the parental leave by cutting the pay and benefit opportunities for all workers. That would mean men workers whose wives chose to stay home with the children would be subsidizing women who chose not to stay home, they said.

The groups also objected that the law would teach parents that three months was long enough to stay home. They did not propose lengthening the leave, however, because the burden would be too great on businesses. What they did propose was a law that would require companies to give preference to workers who took up to six years of parental leave. They wouldn’t be guaranteed their old job back but would be placed first on the list for the next job for which they were qualified.

7Missing issues. Perhaps as defining of the profamily movement as anything are the issues the groups do not emphasize or even handle. “What about tightening laws to push fathers to pay child support?” asked Sider. Several critics cited the need to move toward a high-skill/high-wage economy, noting that many mothers have to work because wages for nonsupervisory male workers have actually declined since 1973, while the cost of housing and other essentials has soared. That also has a role in why poor young men are not marrying young mothers at the rate of earlier decades, some said.

“If they researched why women have to work, it inevitably would lead to issues of wage structures and benefits,” Medema said.

But the Big Three’s voice on those issues is virtually silent.

The biggest gap in the profamily groups’ advocacy is in the area of divorce, said McManus. “The most important issue for American families is, How do you hold them together?… We have a 60 percent divorce rate, the highest in the world.” McManus marvels that the profamily groups not only have not placed top priority on changing no-fault divorce laws but essentially have ignored the issue. He salutes Family Research Council for recently beginning to address it seriously, though.

The fact that most divorce laws belong to the states is the reason FRC has been so slow on the issue, Mattox said: “We’re seeing the need to develop model state legislation and need state organizations to make it work.”

While serious work remains to be done on the profamily agenda, the Big Three have proved themselves effective communicators of a point of view that until recently was not often heard in Washington. Speaking out for families may not always be cool (especially after the election), but it is necessary.

A church grows in the face of poverty and persecution.

ARTICLE BY BARBARA R. THOMPSON¹Barbara R. Thompson is a writer living in Decatur, Georgia.

For four-year-old Amit, lying in rags on the floor of a thatched-roof hut in Nepal, the future appeared short and bleak. His mother was dead of tuberculosis. His father wandered village streets, out of his mind. Severely malnourished and infected with glandular tuberculosis, Amit was too weak even to disturb the flies covering his face. Death seemed certain—and kind.

Today Amit is a bright, energetic ten-year-old, flying kites and playing caroms in the shadow of the Himalayas. His favorite subjects are science and art. Gifted with a near-photographic memory, he is the top student in his school. “I want to be a doctor,” says Amit. “I want to serve the sick people of my country.”

Amit is among hundreds of young Nepalese whose lives have been transformed by the work of Ram Sharan Nepal, a 33-year-old Nepalese pastor. With his wife, Meena, Ram provides a home and education to over 150 orphans. He is also a pastor, Bible-school teacher, the supervisor of 96 churches, and the director of a vocational training program for Nepal’s poorest citizens.

These tasks, difficult in any country, are complicated in Nepal by devastating poverty and the antagonism of the ruling class toward Christianity.

The playland for some of the world’s richest tourists, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Per capita income is $80 a year. One in five children die in the first few weeks of life. Two of three Nepalese live in crippling poverty, their lives contracted by tuberculosis, malnutrition, contaminated water, and lack of medical services.

The poverty of Nepal, the world’s only Hindu kingdom, is reinforced by a rigid caste system. Of the country’s 20 million citizens, 5 million are “untouchables”—shoemakers, tailors, street sweepers, toolmakers, and garbage collectors belonging to the lowest Hindu caste. Despite laws against caste discrimination, untouchables are locked at birth into a cycle of misery with no parallel in the Western world.

“Perhaps in light of religious and cultural traditions, untouchables can accept their lot in life,” says Ram. “But when you know a better way, it breaks your heart to see the children, with their closed expressions, struggling to find their next meal. They are born into an atmosphere of virtual imprisonment.”

While untouchables pay for the sins of a “previous existence,” Nepal’s higher castes reap the rewards of underpaid labor. Living in relative affluence, they use religion to cement their political and economic power. Ironically, even the head of Nepal’s still-thriving Communist party is a Brahman, a member of Hinduism’s highest caste.

Assured of Hindu beliefs of moral superiority, Nepal’s ruling elite rightly perceives the simple Christian message of love and grace as a radical threat to the social order. Until Nepal’s democratic revolution in February 1990, evangelism and Christian conversion were crimes punishable by imprisonment and even death.

It was in this closed society that, at the age of 15, Ram Sharan Nepal became a follower of Jesus. The son of a Hindu farmer from northwest Nepal, Ram spent his childhood tending goats and rising early to offer sacrifices to Hindu deities.

“I saw firsthand the way religious leaders were robbing poor people,” recalls Ram. “For me, Hinduism was an ‘outside’ religion. I was looking for a religion of the heart.”

Ram was introduced to Christianity by a classmate, the son of a pastor from Finland. “I was drawn by the simple message of Jesus,” remembers Ram. “Christianity was about grace, not sacrifice. It gave me a way to help people.”

Shortly after his conversion, Ram’s brother tried to kill him. Ram fled his family’s home and moved to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Living alone and working full-time, he found spiritual and emotional support in a small underground church of teenagers. By the age of 17, Ram was a pastor, praying for the sick and discreetly visiting new converts.

“We were like the church in the Book of Acts,” remembers Ram. “We were the first generation of Christians in Nepal, and we treated one another with love and care.”

At 20, Ram went to India for Bible college. Four years later he returned to Nepal and married Meena, a registered nurse who also had been a teenage convert in the underground church. Together, the couple pioneered a new house church in Kathmandu.

The same year Ram and Meena adopted their first orphan. “He was an eight-year-old child, wandering the streets out of his mind,” recalls Ram. “He broke the windows in our home and wrote obscenities on the wall. But today he teaches primary school and plans to go to Bible college.”

Within two years, Ram and Meena were caring for over 30 children. Meena nursed malnourished, tubercular children around the clock, and eventually she and the couple’s newborn daughter contracted tuberculosis. Both recovered with medical care.

Meanwhile, social revolution was sweeping Nepal, and Ram and Meena’s house church grew rapidly. Its members were largely young professionals, willing to risk imprisonment to practice a new, more democratic religion. Ram himself was frequently arrested. On one occasion he was jailed and beaten for two weeks.

“My role model in suffering was a witch doctor, Rishin Lama, from southwest Nepal,” says Ram. “When he converted to Christianity, hundreds of villagers followed his example. Rumors of mass conversion reached the government, and Rishin was jailed and beaten for nine months.

“He still has the physical scars of his beatings,” adds Ram. “Rishin Lama is a gentle spirit, and I learned from him how to tolerate hardship and torture for Christ.”

By 1988 Nepal was on the edge of revolution, and the government turned its attention from church leaders to political activists. After months of unrest, the traditionally peaceful kingdom erupted into armed conflict.

In February 1990, bloody street demonstrations ended the absolute rule of King Birendra, a Brahman and Harvard graduate whom many Nepalese still regard as an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu.

“The new government immediately released Christian prisoners,” reports Ram. “Christians were given the right to worship and observe religious holidays. But the constitution still forbids evangelism or conversion.” For Nepal, freedom of religion remains a fragile gift, whose future depends on the outcome of the slow evolution of culture and social customs.

In The Shadow Of The Himalayas

An avalanche of rocks, boulders, and topsoil thunders down a sheer cliff, spilling onto the road below. A carload of tourists screeches to a halt. A hundred feet above their heads a dozen or more workers, some only children, stand on narrow rock paths, swinging pickaxes and shovels to break away the side of the cliff.

When the avalanche subsides, workers move in to clear away the debris. The children shovel their back-breaking loads in teams: one child pulls with a chain; another holds the shovel and pushes. A rail-thin girl, not more than ten years old, brushes a wayward strand of hair from her face. Her skin and ragged yellow dress are covered with layers of dirt. She coughs, trying to clear the dust from her lungs.

The tourists are on their way to view the 26,000-foot peaks of the Annapurna Mountains. Their unscheduled stop gives them time to absorb a breathtaking panorama: a river running through a rock gorge, bright-green rice paddies, terraced mountain fields, a grove of banana trees.

The workers are “kulies,” untouchables who work year-round to maintain avalanche-prone roads for travelers. They live in makeshift tents and shacks at the edge of the road, breathing the parasite-ridden dust kicked up by passing vehicles. For their cruel labor, kulies earn $2 a day, an above-average income in Nepal. It is enough for a diet of only rice and dahl (lentil soup). But it is not malnutrition or even years of back-breaking work that takes the lives of most kulies. Rather, it is the dirt and dust that covers their homes, their clothes, their skin, and eventually their lungs.

It’s Sunday morning in Kathmandu. The monsoon has come and gone, and brightly colored kites rise and dip in the sky.

In a small, second-story room, Ram Nepal and a congregation of 80 first-generation Christians sing hymns and pray in unison. Light streams in open, unscreened windows.

Not many months earlier, the church was underground. Members arrived one by one, slipping quietly into the building. Windows were shuttered. Prayers were said in whispers. More than one service was interrupted by a visit from the police.

Today sounds of worship echo on the street. A guitar and a harmonium attract the attention of bicyclists and pedestrians. A young man leans against a tree, listening intently as Ram tells the parable of the prodigal son.

“Since the revolution, church attendance has doubled,” says Ram, who supervises dozens of churches in remote mountain regions. “People are no longer afraid of going to jail, and the poor are becoming educated. They are thinking critically about religious beliefs that oppress them.”

The church’s rapid growth has led to an acute shortage of trained leaders. In 1991, Ram began a Bible school to provide young Nepalese men and women with classes in Bible, theology, church history, counseling, and church planting.

“The younger generation is looking for a change,” says Paul Narayan Rana, a 20-year-old studying at the Bible school. “They have a lot of questions that Hinduism and Buddhism cannot answer.”

A Young Voice Of Hope

Min Raj, 20, is a student at a Bible school in Kathmandu founded by Ram Nepal. As a 17-year-old, Min Raj was a catalyst in the evangelism of his village. Today he returns to his village every two weeks to lead church services and evangelize surrounding villages.

When I was 10, my mother died in childbirth. My father is a farmer from Hindu’s highest caste. I grew up treating untouchables with utter contempt. I thought they were worthless and would not allow them to enter my home.

When I was 16, I was in a gang. We did a lot of drinking and smoking. We beat people up. One day some evangelists came to my village. It was against the law, but they went house to house telling people about Jesus. I began reading the Book of Matthew. After one year I came to know Jesus was the Savior. I was the first person in my village to become a Christian. People ridiculed me.

Then my friend became a Christian. We went from house to house, telling people about Jesus. They were happy to hear he was the sacrifice. They did not have to take a goat or chicken to the temple.

Many times the police threatened me, but I was not afraid. I knew one day truth would win. Now 500 people in my village are Christians. Four other gang members are in Bible school. More would like to come, but they have a financial problem.

Because of Christianity, my life is changed. From the Bible I learned that God created all mankind. Man is not big or small because of the caste system. This is how I began to sympathize with poor people, to treat all people the same.

My wife and I were married when I was 16. She was 15. In Hinduism, women are just the ornament of men. They must literally worship their husbands. Before I became a Christian, I thought women were slaves. But I read in the Bible there is no difference between men and women. In domestic work or preaching work, we are all equal. Now I help my wife with her work, and she helps me with mine. We are partners.

In Hinduism, before a woman becomes a Christian she is limited to domestic work or farming. But in the church, she can teach and take part in the spiritual and social effort.

I am optimistic about the future of Nepal. In my village we are planning many projects, including education, forestry, and vocational training. We want to evangelize the other villages around us and train Christian leaders.

On weekends, like many other students, Paul is an itinerant pastor and evangelist, making the long trek to remote mountain villages to lead church services and Bible studies. He welcomes the freedom to worship openly but is realistic about the pace of social change.

“There is still family and social persecution. I might not be put in jail, but I might not be able to get a job, either.”

The maturity and commitment of student workers like Paul gives an early-church quality to Nepal’s indigenous Christian community. It is a spirit that Ram hopes to keep alive even as the church loses its underground character.

“A problem in the Asian church is that people go to seminary and come out identifying with material things rather than the life of the people,” reflects Ram. “I tell my pastors, I have no salary system. I cannot guarantee your pension. I can only say, If I eat, you’ll eat. And sometimes I don’t eat.

“As long as I am alive, I will not allow a spirit of institutionalization in my church. We must always be a loving community, caring for one another.”

Ram and Meena model this caring community within their own home. In the last year, the number of orphaned children in their care has grown to 150. Sixty live with Ram and Meena and have been adopted. Another 90 fill an overflow building near the church. Most of the children are untouchables from city streets and remote mountain villages.

“One in seven children in Nepal is orphaned,” says Ram. “And 60 percent of the population is under 20. The situation is so desperate, we had to hire a gatekeeper to keep people from leaving children by our door.”

Like most visionaries, Ram has more dreams than money or volunteers. He plans to expand his children’s ministry to serve 3,000 orphans. He is pioneering an occupational-training program for untouchables and women. He eventually hopes to develop a Christian college and plant hundreds of churches throughout Nepal.

Meanwhile, at “the rooftop of the world,” the ceiling of opportunity remains hauntingly low. Nine of ten Nepalese make their living on small farm holdings. With the population growing by 2.6 percent per year, farmers in search of arable land move higher up the fragile Himalayas. Nepal’s topsoil, the life of future generations, has become its chief export, washing all the way to Bangladesh.

“When I go to villages, what I see is a picture of hell,” says Ram. “I am surrounded by people without enough to eat, who are sick and without hope for the future.

“If I were not a Christian I would not live in this country,” he adds candidly. “Poverty is a spiritual death, and I could not face the suffering every day. But God always puts his face on people, and it is his love which compels me.”

Shootout At The Not-So-Ok Corral

New research confirms that television violence is more than a nuisance. It’s becoming a public-health problem.

In 1957 my family purchased a television set, and my father laid down the law. No gunplay. I could watch anything I wanted until the shooting started.

Under my father’s wary eye, I switched on “Gun-smoke.” And before the title sequence was completed, Marshal Dillon had beat a bad guy to the draw and Sheriff Dad had turned off the set.

What my father, like many parents, knew instinctively is now recognized as scientific fact: watching TV violence not only stimulates aggressive behavior in children, it contributes enormously to societal violence. And journals as diverse as TV Guide and the Journal of the American Medical Association are labeling TV violence a “public health problem.”

Earlier this year the Journal of the AMA published a report by Brandon Centerwall of the University of Washington. Until recently, he wrote, television violence had been studied only in laboratory settings or in short-term field studies. But in the past decade, some 20 long-term field studies have been published, and their results are clear: Each showed a positive correlation between viewing TV violence and acting out violent or aggressive behavior.

One study chronicled physical aggression in 45 first-and second-grade students in a remote Canadian town (called “Notel” by the researchers) that did not get television until 1973. Students’ behavior was compared with that of children in two towns that already had television. Over a two-year period, the rate of physical aggression among the control group did not change significantly. But the “Notel” children’s rate of physical aggression increased by 160 percent.

Another study followed 875 semirural U.S. boys for 22 years and found that their “television violence viewing at age 8 significantly predicted the seriousness of the crimes for which they were convicted by age 30.”

Centerwall himself compared homicide rates among whites in South Africa, whites in the U.S., and the general population in Canada. South Africa was chosen because television was not introduced there until 1975. Following the coming of television to the U.S. (1945–74), the annual white homicide rate increased by 93 percent. In Canada, for the same period, the homicide rate increased 92 percent. But in South Africa, with no television, the homicide rate decreased by 7 percent.

What happened after 1975? In Canada and the U.S., countries already saturated by television violence, the homicide rate dropped slightly; while since the introduction of television into South Africa, that country’s white homicide rate has increased by 130 percent.

Without television in the U.S. today, the data suggest there would be 10,000 fewer homicides each year, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults. If a disease had entered the American populace in 1945 and were today responsible for that many deaths and injuries, we would be determinedly engaged in medical research and celebrity telethons. Maybe some star will still become the Jerry Lewis of media violence, but don’t count on it.

Beyond the statistical evidence on the effects of TV violence, there is a common-sense conclusion that there are additional effects of media violence that are not so easily quantified.

One is desensitization to violence. Television producers have discovered it takes increasing amounts of violence, graphic sex, and foul language to hold an audience’s attention. Rather than look to wit or emotion to capture viewers, many producers simply increase the frequency of shock elements. How does this affect viewers? Daniel Linz of the University of California notes that repeated exposure to slasher movies and depictions of violence against women will result in people being less sensitive to the victims portrayed in the movies and in real life. Any dulling of our sensitivity to the victims of violence is a serious matter for Christians, for God has revealed himself as one who has compassion on those who suffer.

A second hard-to-measure effect of media violence is the twisting of psychosexual development. Psychologist James Dobson writes, “Exposure [in early adolescence] to sadistic behavior can lead [a boy] to associate sexual arousal … with females (or males) in pain or peril. Thereafter, his most exciting thought may focus on killing, raping or torturing those within his power. Does this happen to every boy who watches violent television? No. Does it happen to some? Yes, and the damage they can do in a lifetime is alarming.”

Teledependent No Longer

The mounting evidence is enough to alarm parents, teachers, and legislators. But the entertainment industry is slow to respond. As Joan Beck writes: “Industry spokespersons who say the linkage hasn’t been proven are beginning to sound as hollow as the Tobacco Institute trying to wiggle away from all the evidence tying cigarettes to lung cancer.” What can be done?

As consumers, we must not rely on the entertainment media to police themselves. We should look instead to media watchdog organizations such as the Christian Film and Television Commission and the American Family Association. Boycotts, as controversial as they are, have been effective. Remember: television does not exist to sell entertainment to audiences. It exists to sell audiences to advertisers. Economic pressure on advertisers creates change.

As concerned citizens, we must educate Hollywood. When the entertainment industry catches on to the importance of a social evil, it responds. In TV Guide’s article on video violence, Harvard’s Deborah Prothrow-Stith calls attention to the way Hollywood helped change attitudes toward smoking and drunk driving.

As voters we can support programs to reduce the poverty, drug abuse, and family breakdown that create the context in which much violence is bred.

As communities and churches, we can create wholesome, interactive child-care to keep the unsupervised children of our neighborhoods from absorbing the television lie that violence solves problems.

As parents, we can help our children choose nonviolent programming, and we can wean them from teledependence by encouraging reading and interactive play. We can teach young children several important lessons: TV violence is faked; violence is not an appropriate means for getting your way; and violence hurts people, badly. We can even try living without TV.

Children watch television at home. And they evaluate what they see in light of their parents’ commentary and example. In the last analysis, parents may be the most important people in breaking the link between televised violence and the carnage in our streets.

By David Neff.

This summer Billy Graham announced he has Parkinson’s disease. His statement came on the heels of his largest-ever North American attendance (New York’s Central Park), his Latin American Mission World with more than 5 million attending 5,000 satellite and video venues, and his recent Moscow School of Evangelism.

In a letter to his supporters, he explained that the disease had been diagnosed three years ago and that he has noticed only three symptoms: “a slight difficulty in memorizing or remembering Scripture verses; a tremor in my right hand that keeps me from writing notes or letters to my friends and children; and a difficulty in going downstairs, unless I am holding on to a rail, or on to someone’s arm.” Otherwise, doctors have assured him, he is in excellent health at 73 and should live a normal and fruitful life of ministry.

He also said this: “I have learned through the years that God comes with greater power when we are weak. This seems to be the plan all the way through Scripture, whether it is little David facing the giant Goliath, or whether it is Paul with his thorn in the flesh.… In 1 Corinthians 1:27–29 it says, ‘But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things … so that no one may boast before him’ (NIV).

“In other words, God makes the choice. When he uses something weak, or someone weak, it’s for the purpose of showing that his power and might is the secret of success in his work. God said to Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ And Paul responded, ‘Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.… For when I am weak, then I am strong.’”

With this spirit, Billy insists he will continue to hold crusades since so many doors are open “on a scale we have not known in our ministry.” Those crusades include the recent one in Moscow and a German-based Mission World crusade that will blanket Europe.

Some speak of crusade evangelism’s ebb, and others second-guess Billy Graham as he tries to match his energies to opportunities. One writer even suggested he would be wise to retire. However, over the years, Billy Graham has spent enormous amounts of time seeking God’s guidance. One remembers his choice to go to Russia a decade ago, before it was “acceptable.” On his return from meeting Kremlin leaders, he was savaged by the American press. Yet, in retrospect, he is seen as a pioneer who helped pave the way for the massive changes there.

Billy Graham continues to have a great vision for world evangelization. He has asked for prayer, and at this time of his life, we would do well to respond with the same sort of urgency he has always brought to his own prayers. Billy Graham may be weaker in some ways, but when undergirded with much prayer, he may be stronger than ever.

By Harold Myra.

“The loveliest A fleet of islands anchored in the Seven Seas” was how Mark Twain described the Hawaiian Islands. I recently attended the American Scientific Affiliation conference held in Hawaii. This afforded me the opportunity after an absence of six years to revisit the place of my birth, Hilo, and a variety of boyhood sites in Honolulu on the island of Oahu.

I was struck anew with the tropical beauty of the islands, the blue-green waters, iridescent hues of tropical foliage, all bathed in brilliant sunshine. It was more humid than usual because of the Kona, or south wind, but this was a small discomfort compared to the grip of a frigid Ohio winter. I was surprised to see sugar cane still being tended north of Hilo. (A few days later, however, the Brewer Company announced it was discontinuing sugar production.)

Along with a multitude of Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Filipino laborers, my grandparents and my father came from Okinawa to the Islands to work on the sugar plantations. My mother, though born in Hawaii, was raised in Okinawa. As an uneducated widow, she worked long hours as a maid to raise me. Despite her difficulties, she saved enough money to give me books and even to send me to a private school.

Having been a nominal Buddhist, I became a nominal Episcopalian at this school. It was through the witness of a classmate that I came to attend an evangelical Congregational church, where I first heard the gospel through a basketball player from Taylor University. A retired educator from England patiently explained how I could be reborn through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.

Shortly after my conversion I worked on a missionary farm in Wahiawa. I have not had the privilege of attending a seminary, but I count the three years spent on that farm as a kind of spiritual schooling. As a city boy, I had no aptitude for such chores as milking goats or cleaning out chicken pens. But it was during this time that I was able to memorize many Scriptures, and I could meditate on the Book of Hebrews while moving a cow from one place to another. I also learned many hymns by heart while washing eggs—to be sure, with the loss of a few eggs.

During that same period, I also helped out at a center for GIs from nearby Scofield Barracks. Some of the draftees were anxious to get out of the service. They would remark, as though they were on Alcatraz, “Only 76 more days before I get off this rock!” Having been transported free of charge to the most beautiful place in the world, these men were absolutely miserable because their hearts were elsewhere.

Now, I must confess that as I grew up in Hawaii, I did not appreciate its beauty. It was only when I got to California that for the first time I realized what I had been taking for granted. (Likewise, when I used to travel for 90 minutes from Honolulu to Kahuku, I thought that was intolerably long. But I learned what long could really be when I rode a bus from Los Angeles to Columbia, South Carolina, for 72 uninterrupted hours.)

Gaining Distance

It was good to go home again, but it is my odyssey from a parochial locality to a broader world that has taught me some valuable lessons.

First, we cannot appreciate our heritage and our good fortune, until we can distance ourselves enough to look at them from another perspective.

Second, our presence in the most pleasant surroundings—even in a veritable paradise—will not make us happy if our hearts are not at peace. One could be transported bodily to heaven, but be absolutely miserable there without being “born again” into the kingdom of God’s Son.

Third, our being placed in trying circumstances, as Joseph was forcibly separated from his family and eventually cast into prison, can be used by God to ensure that the only important thing in our lives is our relation to our Creator and Redeemer. It is those who have been so reduced and refined, who can be entrusted with service for him.

EDWIN M. YAMAUCHI

I am an unhappy member of the Religious Right. While the ideals and intentions of our current family-values agenda are good, the tone is not. In our attention to three A’s, the battlegrounds of family values, we miss the biblical balance between morality and compassion and between sin and the opportunity for forgiveness. In so doing, we may be sacrificing humility for a fourth A—arrogance.

• Alternative lifestyles is the first A. The Bible is clear on homosexuality. Genesis 19 calls Sodom and Gomorrah cities of moral degradation. Their homosexuality revealed a deep, moral fall. Paul also condemned such alternative lifestyles as the outworking of human rebellion, exchanging the one-fleshness of the marriage bond for a mismatch.

The Bible is likewise clear on another matter. Jesus reached out to tax collectors and sinners not with condemnation, but with an invitation. His explanation was, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.… For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Moral truth is moral truth; it cannot be redefined. Those who choose an alternative lifestyle are accountable for their decision. But accountability ultimately rests with God, not with a government and not with us. Gay bashing is not how we should respond. Where is our invitation to receive grace alongside our warning against sin?

• AIDS comes next. The public reacts negatively to the disease because many people who have AIDS have chosen to engage in the first A or because they are drug abusers who have used infected needles. No doubt abstinence, monogomous marriage, and saying no to drugs are the most effective ways to stop the spread of AIDS. But “innocents” are also infected: health-care workers through cuts and needle sticks, and children of drug users, for example.

Biblical compassion calls us to care for and minister to people in both groups. Maybe through finding compassion in the face of tragedy, such people, some of whom did make wrong choices, will consider where they stand with their Maker.

• Abortion is the third A. A woman considers an abortion. Is her condition the result of a moment of thoughtless passion? Was it escape and experimentation in a sex-saturated culture? Does she consider an abortion because of rape, incest, or to save her life? Or, tragically, is it simply a matter of convenience? Whatever the reason, she faces life-or-death consequences, either for herself or her child.

At the same time, in defense of the child, we scream, “Murder! Stop!” But what concrete measures do we take to care for the mother and her new child? Where are our family values when need exists beyond the womb? Where is the invitation to receive help beyond the condemnation?

Our responses to these needs often seem to miss our religion’s point and appear to be only efforts to score political points. We are not called to pray for our country, but for the people in it, and for its leaders, all of them.

We in the Religious Right should never forget that we do not possess the truth inherently, but are to reflect it, not only by what we say on moral questions, but by how we act in addressing them. When we don’t, we come dangerously close to a fourth A—arrogance.

Our message must be: Your actions have many powerful, even external, consequences. For your own sake, do the right thing before God. It is to him that you are accountable. Consider your actions and your need, turn to him, and join us in the journey that began when forgiveness was offered through the death of an innocent, Jesus Christ.

And like him, we are to be humble and meek, not arrogant. We in the Religious Right must beware of becoming the Religious Self-righteous.

By Darrell L. Bock, professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and minister of the Word at Trinity Fellowship in Richardson, Texas.

Speaking Out does not necessarily reflect the view of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Truth Hurts

Quick! Fax a copy of “Nine Election-Year Temptations” [by Vernon Grounds, Sept. 14] to every pastor and politician in America. It’s too bad these nine probing religio-political truths couldn’t have been beamed onto those huge TV screens in Madison Square Garden and the Astrodome this summer. I would challenge any CT subscriber to read them without saying “ouch” at least once.

As president of the Religious Public Relations Council, I can attest to the political diversity of America’s faith community. In our ranks are deeply devout men and women of every denomination; their party sympathies are amazingly unpredictable. I find it happily ironic that even should I wish our organization could exert some political clout for one side or the other, our members would never let me. If God has picked his party, he certainly hasn’t sent a press release out to our mailing list yet.

David B. Smith

National President

Religious Public Relations Council

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

In New England communities like ours, pastors are often catapulted into the arena of public decision-making. Dr. Grounds’s very specific warnings help to define the ethical boundaries.

Pastor Wayne A. Detzler

Calvary Baptist Church

Meriden, Conn.

Politics over God’s creation

Hats off for your interview of Albert Gore [“Preserving God’s ‘Very Good’ Earth,” Sept. 14]. Questions regarding the environment were excellent. As to his answer regarding abortion, I stand amazed: He carefully avoided a hint at his position. The bottom line is that he is very concerned for seals and dolphins with overtaxed immune systems but looks the other way as millions of unborn children are slaughtered. His political savvy is impressive, but his lack of conviction for the right of the unborn to life is unforgivable.

He will likely be elected along with Bill Clinton. On their watch the Freedom of Choice Act will most certainly be passed with a swiftness rarely seen in political circles. We may have to answer to our children as to how we treated the Earth they inherit from us. Gore will have to answer to God for allowing political expediency to overshadow God’s most wonderful creation: Life.

Mike Whitesell

Battle Creek, Mich.

I am disappointed that CT would publish this interview at this time. It is almost as though the publication is attempting to aid Clinton-Gore in their efforts to win the confidence of evangelicals. The candidates’ views on abortion and homosexuality certainly precludes the giving of any confidence or vote.

Chris Gamer

Riverside, Calif.

Thank you for the interview with Al Gore. You have been featuring so many Republicans recently that I had begun to wonder if I had mistakenly subscribed to Republicanism Today. I hope this article signals a less politically partisan approach in the future.

Stephen Tarr, Pastor

Port Orchard United Methodist Church

Port Orchard, Wash.

My wife and I were offended by the interview. What place does a purely political environmental (New Age) discussion have in a supposed Christian magazine?

Leslie F. Smith, Jr.

Eugene, Oreg.

The sidebar states that the interview occurred “a few months before he became a vice-presidential candidate.” Was that before Gore switched from his prolife position—which he expressed in several legislative votes—to embrace, as he now does, a party platform that advocates unlimited access to abortion?

David H. Fosselman

Notre Dame, Ind.

It appears that the environment, and courting the evangelical vote, are more important to Gore than biblical truth.

Frank Chin, M.D.

Monroe, La.

Joyful Noise Department

My nephew Wally Watts, a pastor in Southern California, decided to introduce the great hymns to his upwardly mobile, self-esteemed, praise-chorused congregation. In a few weeks he had produced a new hymnal that, he says, “adapts our great hymn heritage to a new church culture.” He began by organizing the hymnal by interest group.

He knew praise chorus fans would howl (over and over and over again), so for them he included:

“Sing Them Over Again to Me” and “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Singing.”

Wally also knew self-esteem advocates would balk at stanzas full of worms and wretches. Such hymns are replaced with:

“Glorious Things of Me Are Spoken,” “Jesus Loves Me, This Is Only Natural,” and “Expected Grace” (“how sweet the sound, / That self-actualized a pretty swell person like me”).

My nephew’s hymnal assumes nothing, so it’s probably the first to be “seeker sensitive.” For such people it has:

“My Hope Is Built on Nothing Much,” “Lord, (I Think) I Want to Be a Christian,” “Tell Me a New, New Story.”

But the bulk of the hymnal is devoted to the category that makes up most of that congregation—the lukewarm:

“A Pretty Good Fortress Is Our God,” “Open My Neighbor’s Eyes, That He May See,” and “I Need Thee Every Month or So.”

This hymnal has more: “Hymns for Real Christian Families,” for instance. More on that next time. For now, I’m considering a new hymn title myself: “There’s a Limit to God’s Mercy.”

EUTYCHUS

Senator Gore is not a Christian. He is running with another hypocrite who advocates the choice for a woman to kill her child and who has yet to repent of his adultery with godly sorrow and shows only a pattern of being self-seeking. Not only should you have not supported Senator Gore, you cannot even eat lunch with him.

Tim Williams

Aurora, Colo.

The same courage Senator Gore has mustered to speak to environmental issues is the same courage he and others can and should muster to speak to the threat to the earth’s most endangered species, the unborn child.

Scott Patty, Associate Pastor

Park Avenue Baptist Church

Nashville, Tenn.

Al Gore’S “Double-Talk”

Few articles in recent months have drawn more mail from CT readers than the interview with senator Gore. The foregoing is a small sampling. One theme is predominant: How can the senator espouse environmental causes that champlion the rights of endangered species, ye ignore the protection of unborn humans?

Some readers missed the environmental discussion entirely in their dismay at the space given the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in an election year. None who accused CT of partisanship appeared to recall the lengthy interview with Vice-president Dan Quayle published in the June 22 issue.

If nothing else, the mail response has once again proved how important the abortion issue is to evangelicals.

Changing philosophy of theological education?

The News article “Grace Brethren Split Over ‘Doctrinal Drift’” [Sept. 14] contains a statement by David Plaster, vice-president of academic affairs at Grace Seminary, that is misleading: “We continue to teach our own convictions, but our students are required to read materials from opposing viewpoints. Dr. Whitcomb objects to that.”

Dr. Plaster, one of my former students, should know that I have always taught the importance of consulting original sources representing all significant viewpoints in biblical research, and the absolute necessity of guiding students in the evaluation of such viewpoints against the objective standard of God’s inerrant and infallible Word.

It is significant, however, that Plaster “does acknowledge a change in methodology, a change that preceded Whitcomb’s departure.” This new methodology appears to be a shift of philosophy of theological education toward a confusing exposure of students in the classroom to a multitude of viewpoints at the expense of consistent and careful indoctrination in the entire counsel of God.

John C. Whitcomb

Winona Lake, Ind.

The fundamental mark

“The Forbidden Fruit,” by John Stott [Aug. 17], is one of the best Meditation pieces I have ever read. Truly, love is the most fundamental mark of a true Christian. One caveat: I would have to note the conflict, in my estimation, between “If agape is sacrificial, how can it be self-directed?” and “Jesus said we find ourselves when we lose ourselves” and the statement “When we love, joy and peace follow as natural consequences.” One of the “good news” aspects of the gospel and the God who scripted it is that we do not live in a “tragic” universe, where “good guys finish last.” Instead, we live in a triumphant universe, where “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Thomas F. Harkins, Jr.

Fort Worth, Tex.

Please send me a pair of scissors. With three authorities like John Stott, Martin Luther, and Thomas Cranmer all agreeing we are justified by faith only, I need to cut James 2:24 out of my New Testament.

Richard May

Steens, Miss.

John Stott’s fine meditation on love was flawed by his faulty exegesis of Galatians 5:24—“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” To say that “Paul is not being literal … but means that we are ruthlessly to reject the claims of our fallen nature to rule over us” is a far cry from the meaning of crucifixion, which Webster defines as “to execute or put to death.” Paul makes this perfectly clear in Romans 6:6: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” CT should protect its readers against such theological bias.

A glitch like this does not keep me from appreciating the magazine, and I compliment you on its contribution to Christianity today.

Eugene L. Stowe

Kansas City, Mo.

One-sided abortion story

I enjoyed reading Tim Stafford’s article “Inside Crisis Pregnancy Centers” [Aug.17]. I ama strong supporter of CPC and believe the workers and volunteers in these centers are the “true” soldiers on the frontline in the abortion battle.

As a newspaper reporter in the secular press, I know the media is only telling one side of the story, thereby leaving the wrong impression in the minds of many people. Articles such as Stafford’s are helpful in that they present the side not told in the national media. I hope CT continues to publish such needed information.

Bruce E. Goolsby

Springfield, Mass.

Step out of the comfort zone

I was surprised to see CT turn to an associate college professor for an article on Christian compassion rather than to one of the hundreds of inner-city parachurch leaders in this country who are putting their theories into practice by working alongside the poor and desolate [“Dependent No More,” by Marvin Olasky, Aug. 17].

At the Denver Rescue Mission, as in many other missions, we believe that men and women often must fill that hungry gap in their stomachs before they can open their hearts to the nourishing words of Jesus Christ. In addition to providing premeal chapel services, we turn Christian volunteers’ compassion into action via job training, literacy education, babysitting, parenting-skills training, and numerous other services. There’s room for all in these trenches—if you’re not afraid to step out of your comfort zone.

Rev. Del Maxfield

Denver Rescue Mission

Denver, Colo.

Those “truly human values”

In the editorial “American Babel” [Aug. 17], you used many words to enforce your position that Christianity should be reconciled with the world. Your premise—“Nevertheless, truly human values are God’s values”—is scripturally false and blasphemy.

“Truly human values,” according to Scripture, are that “there is no one righteous, there is no one who does good … the way of peace they do not know” (Rom. 3). Lest we forget, the whole point of the cross was because man’s “time-tested traditions,” which you put on the same level as the wisdom found in the Bible, cannot uphold law or values.

Mrs. Melissa Maschler

Woodland Hills, Calif.

I came to the conclusion that CHRISTIANITYTODAY stands for what is Christianity today. David Neff proposes joining forces with other traditions to win more hearts. He even wants to pay attention to the ideas of upright, moral pagans in “American academia.”

This kind of thinking is not found in the Christianity of the New Testament. I am sure the Pharisees wanted to promote “honesty, sexual fidelity, family loyalty and the dignity of work,” but Jesus did not join forces with them.

Paul E. Montero

Marion, Va.

No abuse at the Vineyard

In your August 17 review of Ron Enroth’s book Churches That Abuse, I came across the name of my own denomination as a potential suspect. I found myself checking Enroth’s criteria. On my first perusal, none related to my experience with the Vineyard. Then, as my husband and I recollected our church experiences from conventional roots to Vineyard praise and worship, some understanding began to emerge.

We remembered the mainline setting, when church was a comfortable place and we served on committees. Then came the switch to a more evangelical setting. We found ourselves like fish out of water. It was bizarre and invigorating all at once. People’s problems and hurts were evident. We felt like fleeing, but were intrigued—especially enjoying the worship and coming to recognize the presence of the Lord. We found ourselves participating instead of spectating.

Next, we found ourselves involved in other people’s hurts. We began to work through healing together. We had to establish rules in the growing process. Could this be what Enroth sees as abusive? Discipline is a delicate matter.

Structure and order are obviously necessary. Those of us whom God has led to minister to people in the process of change must ask: “Am I constantly aware of this individual’s choice to accept my help or to reject me and my offer? Do I trust the Lord enough to let them go, or am I demanding to be the authority in their lives? Am I trying to fulfill my desires, or am I ready to be spilled out for God’s purposes?”

If a church group is not allowing individuals to choose their own paths, free to leave, with their love, and not their scorn—they are practicing abusive behavior and not the love of God. In some cases there is abuse, which Enroth is right to address. In other situations, confrontation or discipline grounded in the love of the Father could be perceived as abusive.

In my years of experience with John Wimber and various Vineyard Christian Fellowships, abuse of authority has not reared its ugly head.

Georgia Wiester

Buellton, Calif.

Schizophrenic loyalties

I read with interest Kim Lawton’s article “Estranged Bedfellows” regarding the Democratic National Convention and its frustrated evangelical faction [Aug. 17].

Regarding the confusion of Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), a professed born-again Christian, and the malady affecting professing Christians Gov. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) as well as Rep. Floyd Flake (D-N.Y.) and entertainer Phil Driscoll, these participants (and others like them) suffer from schizophrenic loyalty, which has led to separation anxiety.

What the aforementioned are broadcasting loud and clear is that life (which entails the mandatory ingredient of potential) as it relates to the sixth commandment, is suggestion—not commandment. These men affiliated with the Democratic party now look at the fetus the way the Communists surveyed our shores: “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable,” all the while claiming mental anguish, which, if they would run a reality check, is in reality a spiritual anguish.

Would Jesus accept the line politicians give when they say they are men of deep convictions on moral issues but do not vote for them (or cast off affiliations in antithesis to them) in the public arena because these convictions, born in private, have nothing to do with their public, secular life?

Roger A. Raker

Winchester, Va.

Rep. Hall says the Democratic party “offers many views that should resonate with evangelicals. ‘The Democrats have always had the reputation of being for the downtrodden and the oppressed … the powerless and the hungry.’” That he can speak of the homeless, the poor, and the environment in that way without including the most “oppressed” and “powerless” entity on the face of the earth, our unprotected unborn, is mystifying and an outrage—especially because he pretends to represent the evangelical community in saying so.

Joe Grier, Pastor

King of Glory Fellowship

Oshkosh, Wis.

Beyond Westernization

“Colorizing Church History” [July 20] is one of the most inspiring articles I’ve read in CT. I think it is consistent with the teachings of Christ to say that the less the church values itself as a (Western, white, male) institution, the more potential it will have to do the work of God in the world.

Tamara J. Jaffe-Notier

Oak Park, Ill.

Letters are welcome; brevity is preferred. All are subject to condensation. Write to Eutychus, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.