Page 5405 – Christianity Today (2024)

Where There Is No Vision

Ah, what practical vision abounds in over-the-counter Christian Bookstores. Across the bookstore from Kittel’s Theological where the “John 3:16 Frisbees” lie gleaming in the counter in redemption blue plastic, has at last come a Spiritual answer for Christians in the North: the “Jesus Ice Scraper.”

I could hardly look upon them without feeling cheap and worldly because I have used only a secular “Firestone Ice Scraper” for most of my long winters. (But then what kind of life-depth can you expect from one who has also used only a “Pepsi beats Coke Frisbee” instead of a Scripture Frisbee?)

What made me feel even worse is that I had overlooked the potential power of the “Jesus Ice Scraper.” Perhaps the efficacy of such a scraper could be merely waved over light frost on a February windshield while ice is rebuked in the name of consecrated celluloid.

Gazing down into a pail filled with the scrapers, I realized the vast power now available to Christians in the North. Vision—blessed sight—making travel and light possible to all those blinded by frost. Oh how true the blest injunction “Open my eyes that I may see …” but with the “Jesus Ice Scraper,” there is not only vision, but interstate travel.

As l gazed downward, a divine voice broke in the air around me and I heard the ancient words again: “What wilt thou?”

“Oh, plastic joy,” I cried, “that I might receive my sight.”

“Then crucify thyself,” cried a voice rising from the pail of scrapers, “if thou wouldst see, and take unto thee this 89-cent purchase and come from darkness to marvelous sight.”

“Still,” I cried, “I see through this glass darkly. I see only little Hondas as trees driving.”

And at the word, I scraped again and saw every Honda clearly.

I had been healed.

As I gazed into the bucket of scrapers, joy fell upon me in wholeness. Scriptures in new translations flew at me:

“See ye, indeed, but perceive not.”

“Without a vision, there are 13 car pile-ups!”

“Whether the 89-cent Jesus Ice Scraper is divine I know not, one thing I know, whereas I once was blind, I now see.”

In ecstasy and joy I did buy, and lo, I did scrape and my vision came again to me as of the vision of a little child.

EUTYCHUS

Not To Be Ignored

Constance Cumbey and her book Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow [News, Sept. 2] should not be dismissed without a hearing. Granted, she could not argue her case in a court of law and win. “The Plan,” however, will be presented to the court of World Opinion and the Bible has something to say about the outcome.

I do not hesitate to affirm that Cumbey’s thesis is correct: the Man of Sin is alive today, he is about to be brought forward as the Christ of the New Age and it will shortly be our responsibility to identify him as Antichrist even if it means, God forbid, being labeled “Fundamentalists.”

DAVE MEEKER

Joplin, Mo.

This article raises questions anew in my mind as to why discussions on providence, evil, and the will of God almost always center in Genesis 3 and never consider Romans 8, particularly from verse 17 onward. Paul suggests that our creaturely imperfections and the incompleteness of this world may have to do, not with Adamic perverseness, but with some design of the Creator himself who intended that his creation be incomplete and thus forced to turn to him for strength and fulfillment. The possibility that he intended for evil to coexist in this world with good as a necessary foil or point of contrast for his divine goodness ought to be explored. Romans 8 would enable us to break out of the old dogmatic ruts of original sin and human depravity, and put the discussion on a more wholesome plane.

REV. EDWARD A. JOHNSON

Trinity Lutheran Church

Dalton, Neb.

Further Consideration

I want to express my deep appreciation for “Schooling at Mother’s Knee: Can It Compete?” [Sept. 2]. It was refreshing and very balanced.

I would like to add something regarding the consideration of the pros and cons. In reference to the idea that “family closeness is gained at the expense of the varied experiences of school.” I would like to propose that this may be a faulty assumption. In actuality, the school environment is often very “artificial” with its same-age grouping of children in the classroom with one adult role-model. I would suggest that home schooling affords the opportunity for greater exposure to the real world (if one takes it) and more time for meaningful relationships with people of all ages.

SHARON R. GRIFFITH

Anderson. Ind.

Rewarding And Refreshing

Reading Virginia Stem Owens’ “Seeing Christianity in Red & Green as Well as Black & White” [Sept. 2] was as rewarding and refreshing as seeing a 3-D film with stereophonic sound after a photo album of black and white candids. It takes courage to call Christians to be “whole brains.” or at least to balance out the dominant left brain in evangelicalism with healthy right brain activity. That kind of courage is not always appreciated.

The sad thing in the Christian hierarchy is not that the theologians have a secure niche of authority and respectability near the peak of the mountain, but that the artists and musicians and actors and imaginative writers cannot share the view from the top but have been sentenced to wander homeless in the foothills below.

Creative Christians deserve a chance to show their stuff, to be taken seriously, to affect the patterns of thought and life in the Christian community. The Word needs to become flesh again; Christ speaks through the arts if we will only hear him.

LUCI SHAW

Wheaton, Ill.

Alarming!

Loss of liberty pointed out bv Kenneth Kantzer’s article “The Bob Jones Decision: A Dangerous Precedent” [Sept. 2], alarms anyone who values his right to speak the truth, no matter how unpopular. I, for one, never considered my position as a pastor to be one of the leaders of a “government subsidized” organization. Were Americans to accept this Supreme Court idea there would soon be another cabinet-level department at the White House to control both our pulpits and our actions.

REV. BARRY NEALY

Westside Baptist Church

Lafayette, La.

Where is it written that religious institutions have an inalienable right to tax exemption at all? Perhaps the church’s biggest mistake was allowing the government to put this burden on us in the first place. The decision that tax exemption constitutes government subsidy was correct to at least one extent: it can be and is being used to wield control over the churches.

Many Christian institutions which have bragged for years about their refusal to accept government aid must now realize that they have actually been doing so all along, and now stand in grave danger of government control through threats to their tax exemption status.

Since there is no command of God that says we are entitled to such privileges and the government is morally obligated to give them to us, perhaps the best thing we could do is surrender such status, pay the taxes, and teach our people biblical giving habits to cover the cost. Only then could we genuinely be free of secular control.

JAMES F. SENNETT

College-Career Christian Fellowship

Lincoln, Neb.

Babelfication?

In regard to Martin E. Marty’s article “Baptistification Takes Over” [Sept. 2], if Baptistification is the “most dramatic shift in the Christian world,” God help us; Christendom is far worse off than I thought it was. I find the identification highly offensive. It must be a stench in the nostrils of God. Why not title the article for what it is—Babelfication?

CLARICE BANDOW

Madison, Wis.

Thank you for the outstanding article by Martin Marty on Baptistification. I appreciate his fresh honesty and humor in dealing with a most basic question of how one becomes a Christian in the 20th century. As Marty states, in baptism “there is power and promise” and being “born from above” is a daily experience of dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ. Amen.

REV. RICHARD T. PEARSON

DeSoto-Freeman Lutheran Parish

DeSoto, Wis.

I Second The Motion

Dr. Waltke has answered correctly the question “Is It Right to Read the New Testament into the Old?” [Sept. 2]. I second his motion that we put into practice the church’s traditional view of the priority of the New Testament in the interpretation of the Old.

I also agree that in the hands of the New Testament writers the “literal fulfillment” of the prophetic Scriptures frequently received a spiritual, or nonphysical, form. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews might justly be accused of “spiritualizing” the Old Testament when he insists that Israel’s people, land, city, temple, and highpriest are no longer earthly or political, but eternal and heavenly in nature. Yet, it is this climax of revelation that explains the purpose of Israel’s nationhood and religious ceremonies. The Spirit-guided writer of Hebrews not only clarifies the meaning of the Old Testament, he completes our Lord’s own teaching about the nature of the kingdom of God which was taken away from the physical seed of Abraham and “given to a nation producing the fruit of it” (Matthew 21:43).

Both the unity of Scripture and the finality of Jesus Christ are at stake in this issue. If the Messiah’s rule is indeed the fulfillment of the “Law and the Prophets,” as well as the culmination of all creation and history, then we as Christian interpreters must allow him to have the last word.

ART LEWIS

Bethel College

St. Paul, Minn.

Kushner Theology Heresy?

Philip Yancey’s hesitancy to condemn Kushner’s Theology as heresy, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” [Aug. 5] is further evidence of a widespread reluctance in evangelical circles to take God’s sovereignty and man’s inability seriously. Job was able to say, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” And yet in saying “all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” (Job 1:22). It would seem that wrongdoing lay instead at the door of all who refuse to have their view of suffering informed by the strange, but ultimately comforting fact, that God “doeth all things well.”

REV. LARRY ALLEN

Presbyterian Church of the Covenant

Houston, Tex.

Enlightening Article

I’ve been profoundly influenced by the writers of two articles on the subjects of past and future in your Aug. 5 issue: “Future Shock & Christian Hope,” and “Yesterday: The Key That Unlocks Today.” Lovelace and Hatch shone beacon lamps into the heart of the issues of history, faith, and future.

REV. HOWARD VRANKIN

St. Olaf Lutheran Church

Fort Dodge, Iowa

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Directed by Nagisa Oshima

Like a cinematic hothouse, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence teems with ideas and supercharged emotion growing lush—and impenetrable—as the South Pacific jungles where it was filmed. Ostensibly a study of diametric cultures at war, Japanese director Nagisa Oshima compromises the film’s integrity in his attempt to graft the delicate blossoms of Eastern thought onto the oak of Western pragmatism. To instruct (and win) American and European audiences, Oshima becomes a Samurai in Anglican vestments and Lawrence is deprived of a distinct point of view.

Missionaries, in particular, will recognize the conflicts in the film: when the best of intentions are frustrated by a lack of understanding between cultures. The characters convene in a Japanese prison camp during World War II where each seeks to work out his own salvation with fear, trembling, and casual brutality. The camp commandant (Ryuichi Sakamoto) sees a kindred spirit in British officer Jack Celliers (David Bowie), but their mutual respect is negated by a historically imposed antagonism. Former diplomat Col. John Lawrence (Tom Conti) tries unsuccessfully to bridge the gap between two worlds and represents the ideal civilized man: harbinger of the blessed peace heralded by angels that first Christmas. As Oshima is quick to tell us, truth and morality in war are determined by the victor. In the film’s epilogue, the warm friendship between Lawrence and a Japanese sergeant is severed when the engines of Allied victory condemn the former captor to death.

Despite its noble pretensions, there is little to recommend this film. The cast is superlative, but the film seems to have been edited with a Samurai sword. Most Christians will be put off by the violence, a reaction Oshima intended. In the end, Lawrence tellingly restates its own problem. The prisoners are singing hymns in defiance of the Japanese—as if to say, there can be no dialectic between East and West, no synthesis in life or in film. Without the unifying principle of Christmas, truth, morality—and art—will always be captive of the temporal visitor. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is one gift better left unopened.

Reviewed by Harry Cheney, a freelance writer living in Southern California.

“As surely as the victims are a problem for the Jews, the killers are a problem for the Christians.”

Elie wiesel is a jewish author all Christians ought to read. His Jacob-like struggle with God was born from his experience of the Nazi pogrom and his vision of the terrifying flames gushing from the tall chimneys of Auschwitz. Taken with his mother, three sisters, and father to the German concentration camp in 1944, he recounts the experience in Night (1958), his first book.

François Mauriac, the Christian French novelist, who encouraged Wiesel to tell his story, wrote the foreword to Night. He describes what engaged him “most deeply”: “The child who tells us his story here was one of God’s elect. From the time when his conscience awoke, he had lived only for God and had been reared on the Talmud, aspiring to initiation into the cabbala, dedicated to the Eternal. Have we ever thought about the consequence of a horror that, though less apparent, less striking than the other outrages, is yet the worst of all to those of us who have faith: the death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly discovers absolute evil? [emphasis added].”

Night; the flames of the crematorium; absolute evil.

Here is Wiesel’s description of arrival at Birkenau, the reception center for Auschwitz:

An SS noncommissioned officer came to meet us, a truncheon in his hand. He gave the order:

“Men to the left! Women to the right!”

Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother. I had not had time to think, but already I felt the pressure of my father’s hand: we were alone. For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother’s hand. I saw them disappear into the distance; my mother was stroking my sister’s fair hair, as though to protect her, while I walked on with my father and the other men. And I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever. I went on walking. My father held onto my hand.

Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Near him was an SS man, putting his revolver back in its holster.

Christians, I think, tend to forget the absolute evil that was the crucifixion. Our shining silver crosses and crucifixes decorate our fallen humanity; we hardly feel the weight. Yet if we take Jesus’ words seriously—that what we do or fail to do to the least of our brothers and sisters we do to him—then every death in that Holocaust was also in some very real sense the death of Christ: Who is guilty? Who is not guilty?

My nine-year-old son said to me recently that the world would be such a good place if God simply got rid of all the evil: people who pollute our environment; thieves who steal our goods; killers who steal our lives. I agreed. Yet I saw immediately that if all evil were gotten rid of, I, too, would no longer exist. Evil is so inextricably bound up in ourselves. Who is guilty? Who killed Elie Wiesel’s mother, his sister Tzipora, his father? Where was God? Why did God allow the Holocaust? Who is not guilty?

Wiesel’s works raise many questions for Christians and Jews, but there are no easy answers. In A Jew Today (1978), a collection of essays, Wiesel asks:

How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was ever excommunicated by the Church? That Pius XII never thought it necessary, not to say indispensable, to condemn Auschwitz and Treblinka? That among the SS a large proportion were believers who remained faithful to their Christian ties to the end? That there were killers who went to confession between the massacres? And that they all came from Christian families and had received a Christian education?… It is a painful statement to make, but we cannot ignore it: as surely as the victims are a problem for the Jews, the killers are a problem for the Christians.

Wiesel’s novels and plays explore the human responses, primarily Jewish, but Christian, too, to a world where faith in a just and merciful God is constantly threatened by the presence of persons only too eager to hurt and maim and kill, and by the silence of that God in the face of such evil.

In his first novel, Dawn (1960), the central character is Elisha, an 18-year-old Jewish youth who has escaped the gas chambers of Buchenwald. How does one live with and understand the evil he has experienced?

The study of philosophy attracted me because I wanted to understand the meaning of the events of which I had been the victim. In the concentration camp I had cried out in sorrow and anger against God and also against man, who seemed to have inherited only the cruelty of his creator. I was anxious to reevaluate my revolt in an atmosphere of detachment, to view it in terms of the present.

Elisha, however, does not study philosophy but is recruited for a Jewish terrorist movement directed against the British forces occupying Palestine in the mid-1940s. As the novel begins, we discover that Elisha’s commander has chosen him to execute a British officer in reprisal for Britain’s execution of a Jewish prisoner:

Tomorrow, I thought for the hundredth time, I shall kill a man.… I did not know the man.… All I knew was that he was an Englishman and my enemy. The two terms were synonymous.

Thus Elisha, the former victim, becomes the killer, and we follow his thoughts through his dark night to the awaiting dawn and its consequences. The execution takes place, but the reversal of roles, we discover, is no solution; the killer only kills himself:

The night lifted, leaving behind it a grayish light the color of stagnant water. Soon there was only a tattered fragment of darkness, hanging in midair, the other side of the window. Fear caught my throat. The tattered fragment of darkness had a face. Looking at it, I understood the reason for my fear. The face was my own.

Other novels and other responses follow: The Accident (1961), where despair drives the Jewish survivor to cooperate with fate in his own destruction; The Town Beyond the Wall (1964), where another response is madness. Here the Jewish survivor, Michael, wants to return to his home town, Szerencsevaros, now behind the Iron Curtain, to confront the spectator who had stood at his apartment window and watched while the Jews of his town were sent to the concentration camps.

The Town Beyond the Wall is about all the walls (physical, psychological, spiritual) that exist to separate one person from another, and about the breaching of those walls, about reaching the city where real human beings meet face to face, recognize their common humanity, love, affirm one another in themselves. Embracing insanity, we find, like murder, like suicide, is evil.

Other novels include The Testament (1981), where the focus shifts from the Holocaust in Germany to the terrible persecutions of the Jews in Russia.

Wiesel’s stories bring us to the heart of darkness, but they do not leave us in despair, for we are led by his art to touch those depths in life where laughter, love, friendship, faith, understanding all point to an underlying mystery, an affirmation at the heart of Judaism in the Torah, one that, for Wiesel, reaches back to the story of Cain and Abel, the first victim. Writing—astonishingly!—of Abel’s guilt, Wiesel says:

In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, he comes first. His very suffering gives him priority. When someone cries, and it is not you, he has rights over you even if his pain has been inflicted by your common God.

… Abel did nothing—such was the nature of his fault” (Messengers of God).

Who is guilty? Who is not guilty?

Wiesel’s fiction explores human responses to evil, yet in the final analysis Wiesel is a contemporary Job, demanding a hearing, a contemporary Jacob, wrestling with God to understand, in the face of monstrous evil, the meaning of God’s apparent silence. The outcome of Wiesel’s struggle ought to concern every Christian.

L. EUGENE STARTZMAN¹Dr. Startzman is professor of English at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.

We hire the pastor, hut not his wife.

Is there some quasi-ecclesiastical office known as “minister’s wife?”

In American Christianity over the last couple of centuries, the pastor’s wife has come to be regarded as a special kind of woman with a special kind of responsibility. Because it has been assumed that the pastor is a super Christian, his wife must be also especially holy. Much honor and prestige has been associated with this special “office.” Many women have risen to the challenge and met the expectations. The successes are well known; the failures, like men who have failed in the pastorate, are soon forgotten.

But in recent years more and more women have wrestled with some of the expectations and qualifications that go with their “office.” They have begun to wonder whether it is proper for them to conform to all that is expected. Their questions are not merely the outworking of feminism in American culture or symptoms of the individualism of the “me” generation. They arise out of the troubling awareness of many women—not all of them young—that what Scripture requires a pastor’s wife to be is obscured by cultural demands. Some examples:

“Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness”

This little maxim is not one of the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, it has taken on the force of Holy Writ and become the basis of numerous criticisms and judgments about the pastor’s wife. A clean, tidy house is desirable, of course. But must the pastor’s wife have the cleanest and tidiest of them all?

The mania for cleanliness is a cultural value embedded in the middle classes of Europe and North America. But the kingdom of God does not depend upon Lysol and Endust. To invest too much time in cleaning and arranging possessions is to establish false priorities.

The Pastor’S Wife Is To Be A Leader

This expectation surfaces in many communities—and not without warrant. After all, she has more background in theology and Bible than most women, and is married to a church professional.

But despite a relatively successful pattern of pastors’ wives as teachers and leaders among women, it is unhealthy for a congregation to expect that of every woman who assumes the “office.” Scripture makes clear that in the body of Christ various people function according to the gifts they have been given.

In any given group of pastors’ wives you will find a whole range of personalities: timid, shy, outgoing, confident, reflective, brash, insightful, comic, serious. Men going into the pastorate manage to court and wed women of every type—thank God for that! As a consequence, one does not know what particular gifts she will bring to the congregation until she is there. She may have teaching and leadership gifts; then again, her gifts may be counseling or supporting or serving.

Pastors’ Children Are To Be Exemplary

It is true that 1 Timothy 3:4 reminds the church that an elder “must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect.” But that obligation applies to all Christian parents. Elders are to be chosen from among those in the congregation who demonstrate that they can manage their families and rear respectful children. But it is another thing to expect elders always to have the most exemplary children, those who score A+ in every category.

Pastors’ wives come from all kinds of backgrounds: strong Christian families, weak Christian families, non-Christian families, broken homes. Only by God’s grace do any of them—or any of us—become competent parents.

Pastors’ wives take a great deal of criticism when their children fail to live up to others’ expectations. This is unjust if those expectations are not applied to every family in the congregation.

The Pastor’S Wife Is The Official Hostess

Hospitality is both an obligation of all and a special gift for some. Every Christian should be ready to respond to the needs of persons who are traveling, who need food, clothing, shelter, and comfort. But some Christians have a special gift for hospitality. Their homes are like inns, with guests dropping in and out all the time. Usually these gifted people enjoy their calling, even thrive on it.

While all pastors’ wives recognize their basic obligation to be hospitable, not all have a special gift to be the congregation’s sole task force on hospitality.

The Scriptural Requirements For The Office

The cultural role model for the pastor’s wife sets up a number of false expectations. A church should resist adopting them since to fail to live up to them is no serious deficiency.

What does Scripture put forth as the special requirements or qualifications of a pastor’s wife?

Absolutely nothing! There is no office of minister’s wife. There are no qualifications or expectations that wives of pastors, teachers, evangelists (and elders of any type) are to meet to distinguish them from Christian women in general.

It is time to depose pastors’ wives from their special “office” and enroll them in the general priesthood of the church along with the rest of us.

The pastor’s wife is called to be the wife of the man she married. Whatever Scripture requires of wives, that is what one should expect of pastors’ wives: to serve their Lord by supporting, nurturing, and building up their husbands and their children. And, because pastors’ wives are women who have particular gifts, they can be expected to use their gifts to contribute to the building up of the whole body of Christ and to the wellbeing of the society in which they live. It is presumptuous for the church to require anything more of a pastor’s wife. There is no biblical warrant for requiring higher standards of performance of those who are in full-time Christian ministry.

The single, traditional role model for the minister’s wife in American Christianity is giving way to a plurality of roles. One reason is that American culture itself is increasingly pluralistic. What is important for the congregation to recognize is that, until her particular gifts are known, there should be no expectations as to the role the pastor’s wife will play as a member of the body. Her particular function in the church and in the world will be shaped by her gifts and by her husband’s and her own expectations for herself.

On the other side, a pastor’s wife who comes to a new congregation will likely want to know what role previous pastors’ wives have filled in the church. She will probably be willing to meet some of the expectations that constitute the pattern of roles in that congregation. It is right for her to do so. But where she deviates from the “norm,” she is not to be judged if she fails to live up to cultural, and not biblical, expectations.

Take a hard look at your expectations for your pastor’s wife. Are they biblical or have they developed from the accumulated traditions of your congregation? While you are reflecting on this, take time to pray for her and for the unique challenges that she faces. Encourage her to capitalize on the special opportunities for ministry that come with her situation. When you are tempted to criticize your pastor’s wife, give her more encouragement, support, and assistance instead. By so doing, you glorify your father in heaven.

MICHAEL G. SMITH¹Mr. Smith is the former managing editor of Great Commission Publication. The article is condensed and reprinted from the March 1983 issue of New Horizons, publication of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Theologians take a new look at storytelling.

To many people today the Bible seems irrelevant. It was written in cultures that vanished many centuries ago. The customs and concepts that fill its pages are unfamiliar. How, then, can its message make sense today?

A recent movement called “narrative theology” sees “story” as the link between Scripture and modern times. The Bible, after all, is full of stories. Think, for instance, of the fairly brief stories of Gideon or Ruth or Jonah, or of longer ones such as the Exodus or the spread of the early church, or of the overarching historical drama from Creation to Consummation that encompasses them all. Clearly, when the Bible wants to tell us about God and humanity, about sin and salvation, if often recounts stories in which these realities come dramatically alive.

Narrative theologians also note that modern people strive for meaning and self-identity through trying to understand their own “stories.” To find themselves, many investigate their ethnic and historic “roots,” analyze significant episodes in their past, and then seek to accept or creatively redirect these influences.

For such people, the Bible can come alive if they are challenged to consider how biblical stories might interact with and alter their own. They might, for instance, investigate Paul’s letters and Acts to discover the religious and cultural roots of Saul the Pharisee and what it was that transformed him into Paul the apostle. In the process, they might find helpful parallels with their own pilgrimages.

Narrative theology offers much promise. In some modern theologies, social, psychological, or philosophical themes are very prominent. The Bible is seldom used, sometimes merely in occasional attempts to support these preconceived theories. But beginning perhaps with Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative in 1974, the emerging narrative theology movement has sought to let Scripture tell its own stories.

Narrative theologies listen to entire biblical texts. They reject sharp distinctions between historical “events” that the texts report and the theological “interpretations” given by their authors. This counters biblical criticism’s tendency to take the texts apart, to cast doubt on some of the “events,” and to regard the writers’ “interpretations” as merely human perspectives.

Second, narrative theology suggests ways of bringing theology and pastoral psychology together. Frequently, biblical scholars pay little attention to psychology, while Christian counselors rely heavily on secular theories. But if the story is a pattern by which personal background, conversion, and sanctification can be understood, biblical stories can provide guidance for personal growth, and personal stories can illuminate and lend concrete meaning to many biblical themes and terms.

Third, narrative theology can provide links between Scripture and the arts—especially literature and drama. For the more one is sensitized to the narrative elements in Scripture, the more capable one becomes of appreciating the truths and untruths in other narrative structures—and perhaps of creating narrative forms of art.

Fourth, stories can provide avenues for healing social and racial conflicts. Human groups are often at odds because their backgrounds and histories are so different. But if such groups can listen to each others’ “stories,” understanding and communication can occur. Here again, biblical stories—think of the conflicts and adjustments among Jews and Gentiles in the early church—can provide insightful parallels.

Nevertheless, narrative theology has potential problems. (Many are sympathetically reviewed in Michael Goldberg’s Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction [Abingdon, 1982].) It has shown how “stories” can be helpful and illuminating. But in a world full of personal, ethnic, and religious stories, which ones are true? How can one choose among them? Some narrative theologians, such as George Stroup in The Promise of Biblical Narrative, emphasize the normativity of biblical stories. Others, however, despite their respect for Scripture, are often unclear as to what sort of priority biblical stories might have over others. And by simply referring to all of them as “stories,” they can pass over questions as to whether the biblical episodes recorded actually occurred in history, and whether they are not only “helpful” but true.

Second, how meaningfully will narrative theology deal with biblical texts and theological themes that contain no stories? Think of psalms that simply exude praise to Yahweh. Can narrative theology deal significantly with worship? Or will it neglect worship in favor of themes like history, psychological development, and ethics—themes easily expressed in storylike form?

Finally, many narrative theologians try to distance themselves from what they denounce as a conservative, literalist approach to Scripture and theology. Evangelicals may easily feel that they are the target of abuse. However, they should not be put off by these routine, overgeneralized caricatures. Despite some differences, thinking evangelicals and narrative theologians will find that they have much in common, and much to contribute to each other.

THOMAS FINGER¹Dr. Finger is associate professor of systematic theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard, Illinois.

Capitalism: For Good Or Evil?

Evangelicals agree that Christians have a duty to love and care for the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. However, there is widespread debate within the evangelical community over the proper means to this end. Liberals and conservatives alike claim moral and rational superiority for their methodologies. In recent years, the tide seems to have shifted toward the political Left.

The leftist bias of the National Council of Churches and several mainline Protestant churches has long been suspected and was recently documented by Reader’s Digest and CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

The proportion of evangelicals who are willing to endorse left-wing political and economic programs has been growing. What is the catalyst turning traditionally conservative and moderate Christians toward the Left? According to Ronald Nash, the Left has captured the attention of evangelicals under false pretenses. Deftly utilizing Christian rhetoric, the Left has made serious inroads into the evangelical community under the rubric of “social justice,” an ill-defined term that entails a “large, powerful and paternalistic state.”

In classical political thought, justice implied harmony and balance.

For Plato, a properly ordered soul was a just soul ¡similarly, a properly ordered state was a just state. In such a regime, every person did the work that he was best suited for, thus maximizing his contribution to the city-state. Reward was given according to merit, and each received what he deserved. Equality prevailed among equals, and inequality reigned among unequals.

Aristotle went even further and introduced the concepts of universal justice (justice as virtue) and particular justice (justice as fairness).

According to Nash, justice has been torn from its classical and biblical bearings and has been narrowly redefined as social justice, which simply translates into economic and social leveling. Nash ably attacks this distorted modern notion of justice and the socialist economic program that it entails. We seem to have forgotten that in biblical and classical literature, justice serves “several functions ranging from its use as a synonym for righteousness to more particular usages in which people receive their due in commercial, remedial and distributive situations.”

Concerned Christians not only must have a proper understanding of justice but must also be informed about political and economic affairs. Nash writes, “If a Christian wishes to make pronouncements on complex social, economic and political issues, he also has a duty to become informed about those issues.” Good intentions are not sufficient; only sound economic principles are capable of truly aiding the indigent.

Capitalism is often accused of being in opposition to Jesus’ message and mission. “Capitalism is supposed to be unchristian because it is supposedly a system that gives a predominant place to greed and other unchristian values. On the other hand, socialism is thought to encourage basic Christian values.…” It is refreshing to see an evangelical scholar join the ranks of those arguing on behalf of free-market capitalism. Recently, such scholars as George Gilder (Wealth and Poverty) and Michael Novak (The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism) have attempted to redeem capitalism and demonstrate that it is the most moral, effective, and equitable means of providing economic prosperity for mankind. This book circulates that message to the evangelical community.

Nash shows that “capitalism is not inherently immoral.” All economic systems are amoral, only people are moral or immoral. He argues that more attention should be paid to the positive moral contributions fostered by capitalism. He concedes that capitalism can be used for immoral ends, but he asserts that socialism “contains far more potential for evil.”

He also maintains that free-market capitalism is the most rational means of aiding the poor. It has succeeded in providing mankind with a higher standard of living than any other system ever devised. Socialist systems have proven to do more harm than good due to the fact “that before society can have enough to distribute among the needy, a sufficient quantity of goods must be produced. By focusing all their attention on who gets what, defenders of the welfare state promote policies that severely restrict production.”

He concludes that “no Christian need be ashamed to count himself a defender of capitalism.” To do otherwise means to support an inferior economic system that harms the poor and thus runs counter to our Christian duty. “The belief that the welfare state is an indispensable means to social justice is a myth whose time has passed.”

A note of caution to the unwary reader: One should not attempt to equate biblical and classical notions of justice. Admittedly, there are points of similarity, but to assume that they are synonymous without substantiating argument is troublesome. Nash often stresses the classical notion of justice at the expense of a biblical notion. Perhaps a carefully defined biblical notion of justice was beyond the scope of this book, but it is nonetheless necessary if one is to evaluate adequately modern notions of justice.

This short volume provides us with a well-argued polemic against leftist political rhetoric while it praises the merits of a free market system. It is a book that liberals must refute to maintain credibility, and a book that conservatives would be wise to study carefully if they desire better to articulate and defend their position.

Social Justice and the Christian Church, by Ronald Nash (Mott Media; 1983). Reviewed by David L. Weeks, assistant professor of political science, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, California.

What’S Wrong With Darwinism?

What do the emerging information/service-based economy, experimentation in recombinant genetics, fundamentalist attacks on evolution, the boom in electronic games, and the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead have in common?

According to Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book, Algeny, published this spring, a lot. Each is a sign either of the decay of the old Darwinian cosmology or of the growth of the algenic one replacing it.

The reason the human race is currently despoiling the environment, tolerating hazardous working conditions, and finding meaning in acquiring things is because of Darwinism, asserts Rifkin—who now heads a Washington lobby, the Foundation on Economic Trends. Darwinism enables industrial man to celebrate the survival of the fittest, to expend massive efforts to “perfect” nature, and to believe that such strivings are necessary if society is to progress and the economy is to grow.

Rifkin, a student activist in the sixties, questions these Darwinian assumptions on both intellectual and practical grounds. A brilliant writer, he is convincing as he uses the best and latest scientific sources. But the problem with the death of any world view is the need for an invention of an acceptable alternative. Although society is still in the process of doing this, Rifkin tries his hand anyway.

What does Rifkin see around him, around us, that will provide an alternative to an evolutionary cosmology?

Algeny is a word Rifkin borrows from Joshua Lederburg, the Nobel laureate biologist and president of the research-dedicated Rockefeller University. It is the concept he uses to order the objects he sees on the horizon. A play on the word alchemy, the medieval attempt to change base metals to gold, “Algeny means to change the essence of a living thing by transforming it [genetically] from one state to another” (p. 17).

Read Rifkin for a lucid analysis of the dilemma that faces mankind in conjoining bioengineering and computer technologies. Read Rifkin for a scratching critique of the shortcomings of Darwinism written graphically in laymen’s language. But turn to life in the Spirit based on the Word of God for the dynamism and the guidance to strive toward a humanly possible future.

Algeny, by Jeremy Rifkin (Viking Press, 1983; 293 pp.). Reviewed by George W. Jones, director, religious programs, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

The Last Self-Help Book

What a relief in an age of narcissistic introspection to find a book that pokes fun at an entire culture preoccupied with the “self.” With sardonic wit and philosophical miscellany, novelist Walker Percy challenges the Zeitgeist of our age in his second work of nonfiction, Lost in the Cosmos. The Roman Catholic author subtitles his volume “The Last Self-help Book.” The designation is ironic because Percy seriously questions whether we can ever know ourselves and is critical of the very attempt to try.

To buttress his skepticism of the Socratic dictum, “Know Thyself,” the author asks the reader why there are “sixteen schools of psychotherapy with sixteen theories of the personality and its disorders and that patients treated in one school seem to do as well or as badly as patients treated in any other—while there is only one generally accepted theory of the cause and cure of pneumococcal pneumonia and only one generally accepted theory of the orbits of the planets and the gravitational attraction of our galaxy …” (p. 6). Percy’s point is that as the workings of the universe are understood more completely, cosmological myths and religious belief systems (such as Christianity) that guarantee the identity of the self lose their credence. The twentieth-century result is that “the self becomes a space-bound ghost which roams the very cosmos it understands perfectly” (p. 13).

The author adopts a very loose and constantly changing genre to show us that we are taking ourselves too seriously. The book consists of a mock self-help quiz. Percy poses 20 questions with didactic overtones intending, perhaps, to prod the reader to theistic answers. Along the way he couples the cultural cynicism of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., with the Christian world view of Flannery O’Connor and Malcolm Muggeridge. Lost in the Cosmos contains essays, science fiction, one-liners, charts, a script for “The Last Donahue Show,” and letters to “Dear Abby.” Percy uses these tools to critique everything our culture has to offer. The final product is a provocative look at a generation that in the end can only say, I am, therefore I am. Speaking as a modern-day writer of Ecclesiastes, the author offers not the last self-help book but the first polemic intended to crush thoroughly the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self.

Undoubtedly the book has more significance than value. Percy’s musings will probably end up being humorous despair for the avant-garde instead of a primer for the Christian faith. While the author does not actually suggest that man can make sense of life in the cosmos through faith in God, he leaves the reader with virtually no alternative.

Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 262 pp.; $14.95). Reviewed by Reed Jolley, pastor, Santa Barbara Community Church, Santa Barbara, California.

A recent encounter raises this provocative question.

Some mormons will tell you they converted on a visit to Salt Lake City and Temple Square, and understandably so. Perhaps neuroses fester underneath, but externally the Utah society appears to work. A few years ago, the Mormons themselves spent millions of dollars advertising their success in a series of 12-page inserts in Reader’s Digest. The first, entitled “Seven Keys to Mormonism,” centered on the healthy, upright lifestyle that presents itself to a visitor to Utah.

Home and family come first to the Mormons, the pamphlet said. “It will be a family likely to be admired by neighbors for its quiet competence and self-assurance, and generally envied for its closeness and good-natured round of shared activities.” The pamphlet went on to praise the virtues of self-reliance and enjoying work.

Temperance, a rather old-fashioned word, is unashamedly adopted by Mormons. They abjure alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, soft drinks, and other vices. In short, Mormons point to upright living, high achievement, and sterling citizenship as primary proofs of their faith.

Despite the obvious attraction of all these qualities, something kept nagging me as I studied the pamphlets extolling the virtues of Mormonism. Virtually every word could have been written by the National Association of Evangelicals in a brochure touting evangelicals. Do we want to be known for our citizenship, industriousness, righteousness, and temperance? Is not that the goal of right-wing evangelicals—to create a national climate that would allow these qualities to flourish?

Another thought troubled me when I compared the Mormon self-promotion with its evangelical equivalents. It contains not one word about grace, forgiveness, or a vicarious sacrifice on our behalf. If indeed we evangelicals are becoming known for the very same external principles that distinguish Mormons, are we also in danger of stumbling over the essential core of the gospel? Would not a phrase like Repentant Majority or Forgiven Majority serve as a more orthodox way of defining evangelicals than a term like Moral Majority? Such a label would give credit to God to assure that, in Paul’s phrase, “no one can boast.”

We leave it to renegade artists, such as Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, and Frederick Buechner, to portray the inherent fallenness of the most religious people, while in our policies, our self-promotion, and our churches we tend to focus on the good works. One of Percy’s characters in The Second Coming captures this well:

“I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though they, the Christians of the South, the U.S.A., the Western world have killed off more people than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise the truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around. Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million Southern Baptists?… A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it?”

His last question rings loud. Could it be that evangelicals are so anxious to point out how good they are that they neglect one basic fact—that the gospel comes as a eucatastrophe, a spectacularly good thing happening to spectacularly bad people?

Since evangelicals are reading into the Congressional Record biblical rationales for opposing abortion, the Department of Education, tobacco subsidies, and sundry Supreme Court decisions, I would propose an important and corrective balance. In our churches, why not spend more time studying the implications of Jesus’ parable of the righteous man and the tax collector? One man thanked God for his blessings, that he was not a robber, evildoer, adulterer, or tax collector. He fasted twice a week and tithed his income. The other had an indefensible morality, not much in the way of a résumé, and a hopelessly inadequate theology. One prayed eloquently; the other said seven simple words, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Yet which one went home justified?

Interestingly, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus’ disciples—an ornery, undependable, and flawed group of men—became exhilarated with the power of a gospel offering free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world.

Disciplined

Tethered by the wind and the sun,

whether these shadows stand still or run

along the grass, they must follow the line

of pattern the elements define.

As God is more than sun and wind

I am more than shadow, yet disciplined

I must be: tethered, tugged by His hand

this way or that, to run as He planned.

—Pearl Lunt Robinson

Now for the bad news …

World mission strategists connected with the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization have prepared a long-range planning report that presents a fascinating snapshot of world Christianity and trends for the future.

It says some 16,400 people a day are converting to Christianity in Africa, or nearly 6 million per year. In East Asia and South Asia, churches are gaining 360,000 and 447,000 new members a year respectively. Although the Chinese government has officially approved only several hundred churches in that country, there might be between 25 and 50 million believers meeting in hundreds of thousands of house churches throughout China.

In the West, by contrast, the picture is dismal. The churches of Europe and North America together are losing 2.8 million people a year to nominalism and unbelief, and that number more than offsets the growth of evangelical churches on the two continents. The report says greater emphasis must be given to reevangelization of the West.

The Lausanne committee report made these further points:

• About one billion people throughout the world consider themselves Christians but are only nominally so. There are enough evangelicals throughout the world to evangelize these people, but one hindrance is the tendency of many Western evangelicals to emphasize salvation without preaching the necessity of a new life in Christ.

• The Westernizing and modernizing trends of the world are rapidly moving Christians away from commitment to prayer and meditation upon the person of Christ.

• The trend toward secularization in the West will continue, and that will lead many to promote secular answers, such as Marxism, to the world’s problems. “An ever-increasing pluralism will make an appeal to ‘what is right’ ever more difficult.”

• The number of “hopelessly poor” people in the world is increasing at a faster rate than the world population. Many people in unstable countries seem ready to give up much of their freedom in exchange for assurance of social and economic stability. That means there will be stronger trends toward dictatorships of the Left and the Right.

In light of that, the Lausanne strategists say, “We must recapture a vision of the church’s responsibility towards the poor. We must remember the biblical admonition that God has a special concern for the poor and demands justice for them.”

• The most dramatic change in the world’s population is the movement of people into cities. By the year 2000, the percentages of populations living in cities will be: the United States, 94 percent; Europe, 82 percent; the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 80 percent; Latin America, 73 percent; Australia, 85 percent; Asia, 60 percent, and Africa, 45 percent.

• Populations of some cities will swell immensely by the turn of the century. Mexico City will have an estimated population of 31.6 million; Calcutta, 19.7 million; greater Bombay, 19.1 million; greater Cairo, 16.4 million; Jakarta, 16.9 million; Seoul, 18.7 million; Manila, 12.7 million; Bogotá, 9.5 million; and Lagos, Nigeria, 9.4 million.

The Lausanne committee, which supervised preparation of the report, stems from the conference on world evangelization that met in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974.

World Scene

Officials from the Verbo Church of Eureka, California, have found it necessary to deny allegations the church has political motivations in Guatemala. The Church’s most noted member is Guatemala’s deposed president Efraín Ríos Montt, who has been accused of unfairly using his political power to advance Protestant theology (CT September 2, 1983). The Verbo Church is one of some 50 congregations in seven countries associated with Gospel Outreach, a loosely organized Pentecostal church consisting of numerous groups organized by members of the counter-culture movement of the 1960’s.

Organized Christian activity in Saudi Arabia has ceased. It reportedly began after a representative of the Carter administration persuaded King Khalid in 1977 to allow low profile Christian religious expression in the Islamic country. Eventually, Christians were meeting weekly in large groups. But the Islamic revolution in Iran reversed the trend. Hopes that Khalid’s death in 1982 would ease the suppression were crushed. Since King Fahd has taken over, Christians have been interrogated, deported, and generally denied the limited freedoms they had been granted.

Tonga people in the drought-stricken Gokwe region of Zimbabwe have dug deep into their meagre resources to show Southern Baptists their gratitude. Drought victims raised more than $100 to help replace a 10-ton Southern Baptist-owned relief truck that had been destroyed by anti-government dissidents in May. The money won’t come close to replacing the truck, but missionaries were touched by the generosity of the Tonga people.

A Roman Catholic faith-healer in Zambia has been forced to resign his post as archbishop, Emmanuel Milingo has been named a special delegate to a small Vatican office in Rome. Sources close to Milingo said the resignation was forced and that he was “deeply grieved.” Milingo, 53, was called to Rome last year after he ignored Vatican orders that he curb his faith-healing activities and devote more time to standard duties.

A survey sponsored by the British and Foreign Bible Society concludes that less than half of England’s population has even a passing knowledge of the Bible. Most English people (81 percent, according to the survey) have a Bible in their home. But only 8 percent read it more than once a week, and more than a third never read it at all.

The World Council of Churches has added two denominations to its membership. At its recent Vancouver meeting the council added the Baptist Convention of Nicaragua, with 35,000 active members, and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of South Africa, with 30,000 members, all of whom are black. The current WCC membership consists of 301 denominations in 100 countries.

The Russian Orthodox Church demonstrated its support for Soviet foreign policy in a statement delivered at the recent Vancouver assembly of the World Council of Churches. The statement read in part, “… the foreign policy of our government … is the policy of peace. Only the nuclear freeze, which our Soviet government and party General Secretary Yuri Andropov support, can bring peace to mankind.”

Nearly a million Ethiopians are in danger of starving to death because of a famine caused by a severe drought. Three organizations—Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service, and Lutheran Relief Services—believe the tragedy can be averted if the United States government would grant emergency aid for the transportation of food. The government has expressed concern that aid will be used for military purposes.

Two United Methodist Church agencies have asked President Reagan to cancel his trip to the Philippines, scheduled for November. The church’s Board of Global Ministries and Board of Church and Society, in a telegram to the President, called the murder of former Philippine Senator Benigno Aquino a political murder that raises questions about the credibility of the Marcos regime.

Pope John Paul has proposed that 1983 be recognized as the 2000th anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s birth. The Pope made the proposal during his recent trip to Lourdes, France. Catholics celebrate Mary’s birthday on September 8, but had never officially set a year for her birth. Since tradition holds that she was 17 when she bore Jesus, 1983 is a logical choice, though most of modern scholarship holds that Christ was born in about 4 B.C.

An evangelical seminary is scheduled to open next September in Holland. Tyndale Theological Seminary fulfills the dream of Bob Evans, who founded Greater Europe Mission. Arthur Johnston, professor of missions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, will be Tyndale’s first president. Currently, none of the few conservative seminaries on the European continent offer instruction in English.

In West Germany, It Is Only Natural To Teach Religion In Public Schools

Ronald Reagan could be forgiven for a twinge of jealousy should he ponder the question of church-state separation in West Germany. In that country, not only is prayer allowed in public schools, church and state officials work together to provide a religious education to every school child who wants it.

If a school has at least 10 children from the same religious tradition, parents have the right to demand a teacher from that confession to give religious instruction.

Karl Heinz Potthast, who chairs Germany’s national Protestant Board on Religion and Training, states that “Christian values are one of the important foundations of education.” Nonetheless, the courses are not mandatory. Parents may have their children excused, and students 14 years or older may decide for themselves whether to attend. Still, nearly all schoolchildren do attend, because, according to Potthast, they find they can confront questions that never come up in other classes. Potthast adds, however, that despite the religious freedom, public schools are humanistic and secular in their outlook.

The greatest problem religious teachers in Germany face is how to educate some 700,000 Islamic students in the public schools there. German law says they have a right to receive Islamic instruction. But the law also states that religious education in public schools “must correspond to the value system of the constitution.” The constitution is based on Judeo-Christian ethics.

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

The Upjohn Company denies it has plans, but a salesman, believing otherwise, resigns.

Abortion, a generally safe procedure, is still one that must be performed in a hospital or doctor’s clinic. The drugs necessary for a reliable early abortion at home, however, are in advanced stages of testing. The side effects that have thus far kept them off the market are being eliminated.

The Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, is largely responsible for researching the drugs, called prostaglandins. The company denies it is researching a product for do-it-yourself abortions, but the direction of its work has become all too clear, at least to one of the company’s top salesmen, who recently resigned as a matter of conscience.

Prostaglandins, which are naturally occurring hormonelike bodily substances, cause contraction of the uterine wall, then menstruation, and, consequently, abortion. They were developed by Upjohn and have been used since the early 1970s to end second-trimester abortions. But because of the severe side effects, which include vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, and uterine pain, their use has been confined to hospitals.

It was his suspicion that Upjohn was sponsoring further research on prostaglandins for home use that caused pharmacist George Schimming, one of the company’s most productive salesmen, to resign in April. He left after he discovered that Upjohn was providing drugs and financial support for projects whose clearly stated goals included the refinement of an abortion-inducing drug for home use.

Prostaglandins have many uses, including treatment of ulcers, asthma, and cardiovascular disorders such as hypertension. Prostaglandins are used to dilate a woman’s cervix to make childbirth at term easier. They are also used to abort dead fetuses to spare women the physical and psychological trauma of carrying a dead baby to term.

Ironically, prostaglandins offer lifesaving temporary therapy for certain kinds of “blue babies” awaiting surgery.

For these reasons, Schimming defended Upjohn for years, but questions from skeptical prolife organizations kept surfacing. Late last year, he sent off a long letter to Upjohn, asking for the full story.

Upjohn responded with a form letter that stated that it was “developing an abortion product to be used in early abortions.” The letter went on to state the company’s stand on abortion: “Where a woman decides in concert with her physician to have an abortion we believe that if it’s within our ability to deliver a safe and effective medical agent for the procedure, we have a responsibility to do so.”

The letter, however, denied that Upjohn has plans of marketing a home, “do-it-yourself” abortion product. Schimming’s research has led him to believe otherwise. In the February 1983 issue of Contraception, a monthly medical journal, an introduction to a research report calls “post-conceptional menses induction” a “high priority therapeutic need.” The introduction further states that this “non-invasive method … might receive wider acceptance in lesser developed countries and by users who prefer a self-administered method,” and point out that the method “facilitates large scale use.…”

Schimming noticed that in almost all the abortion-related research he found in Contraception, and in another medical journal called Prostaglandins, Upjohn was credited for providing drugs and financial support. Although the January letter said the drug was being tested only in the United States, Schimming found reports of Upjohn’s involvement in research in Sweden and in other countries. Schimming also ran across a statement by Edward M. Southern, a fertility researcher for Upjohn, who wrote that “self-administration of prostaglandins during the first six weeks of pregnancy look favorable” and “there seems to be no doubt that we can expect a continued expansion in this direction and that possibly an important field of fertility control is evolving.”

“I knew that if they were going to continue the research, I couldn’t continue to support them in any way,” says Schimming. And so he called it quits. There was no hesitancy on his part, and Upjohn had no questions.

“Until I actually resigned,” says Schimming, “I felt a burden I couldn’t carry.”

Schimming is now trying to educate people about Upjohn. He maintains high respect for the company, and he rejects the hard-hitting attacks on Upjohn by the Moral Majority, calling them inflammatory. He believes a more compassionate and more pragmatic approach is to appeal to Upjohn’s moral sensitivities. He says that Upjohn is responsive to public opinion.

For its part, Upjohn stands by the accuracy of its January letter to Schimming. Despite the direction of Upjohn-sponsored research, a company spokesman reaffirms that Upjohn is developing an abortion product not for home use but for first-trimester abortions in hospitals.

If it is true that Upjohn has no plans to market a home abortion drug, it may only be true because such a drug is not yet marketable. Physician John Willke of the National Right-to-Life Committee, which has a bulging file on Upjohn, calls its denial of plans for home use “completely absurd.” He says, “That’s where the money will be.

Willke can only speculate about when a do-it-yourself abortion drug will be marketed. He says the “threat of it happening in the next few years is real.” Schimming’s guess is five years.

In a 1979 issue of American Pharmacy, it was stated that Upjohn took “the longest of long shots” in its decision to research prostaglandins when only a handful of scientists had ever heard of them. Today, thousands of man hours and millions of dollars later, Schimming cannot foresee Upjohn, with its ambivalence on abortion, turning down the opportunity to reap the financial benefits of its investment.

His hope and his prayer is that sensitive public protest will cause a change of heart and mind at Upjohn.

The nation’s two major Mennonite groups have adopted a resolution calling on the government to end all foreign military aid. The Mennonite Church General Assembly and the General Conference Mennonite Church also called on the United States and Canada “to actively encourage a negotiated settlement of the conflicts in Central America.”

X-rated films are attracting audiences in the millions, reports the newspaper Electronic Media. The weekly publication estimates there are one million subscribers to cable systems offering the films and 370,000 subscribers to multiple distribution systems and subscription channels offering them. Twelve states are studying legislation to ban indecent programming.

The legality of a Nativity scene sponsored by the City of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is being challenged by four organizations, including the National Council of Churches. In briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, opponents maintain the display violates church-state separation. They also say that using a religious symbol for commercial purposes degrades a symbol that is sacred to devout Christians.

A man with a wife and seven children has been ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Paul Thomson, 66, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1941. Eight years later he became a Roman Catholic. The Catholic church now allows former Episcopal priests, even married ones, to be ordained Catholic priests.

The on-again, off-again law that would deny college students financial aid if they do not register for the draft is on again. But three historic peace churches are trying to soften the law. The Church of the Brethren, the Mennonite Church, and the Society of Friends have established funds to replace federal aid lost to young men who do not register. The Supreme Court revived the law in June, lifting a federal judge’s injunction that would have prevented it from taking effect.

Two allies in the church-state separation movement have taken opposite sides on the issue. Should a religious students’ club in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, be permitted to meet on school property during nonclass hours? The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, which represents nine Baptist denominations, says yes, noting that the group is student initiated and student run. But Americans United for Separation of Church and State disagrees, saying such activity would lead to competition and proselytism among students.

The Mormons have broken ground for a temple in the Midwest. It is being built in the Chicago suburb of Glenview and will be the twenty-fourth in the world. At present, Midwestern Mormons must travel to Washington, D.C., for temple rites.

Robert Schuller and his Garden Grove Community Church (Crystal Cathedral) have paid $473,000 in back taxes. The payment was delivered under protest and with the charge that the cathedral is the object of religious harassment. A church spokesman said the church was prepared to take the matter to court. A hearing with California’s Board of Equalization has been scheduled for October 31. The board has charged that Schuller’s church should not receive a property tax exemption because it is overcommercialized (CT, Aug. 5).

The organization Jews for Jesus has a survey it says refutes the charge it preys on the young and uneducated. Such accusations come frequently from Jewish leaders. The survey revealed that most subjects are a minimum of 25 years of age and have at least a few years of college education. Critics of the survey, however, point out that the survey did not reveal how well the converts were educated in Judaism.

Racial turmoil between Hindus and Buddhists leaves 100,000 people homeless.

By the time racial violence ended in the central Asian island nation of Sri Lanka recently, some 400 people had been killed and 100,000 left homeless. It was thought the centuries-old tension between the majority (70 percent) Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority (22 percent) Hindu Tamils was easing. But the outburst crashed those hopes and devastated an economy that had been slowly recovering.

The recent turmoil began with the July 23 slaughtering of 13 Sinhalese (government) soldiers by a radical group of Tamils seeking, ostensibly, the establishment of an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka.

Retaliation by the Sinhalese was swift and sure. Throughout Sri Lanka, but especially in its capital city, Colombo, Tamil homes and businesses were looted and burned. Some Tamils were reportedly doused with gasoline and burned alive, to the cheers of onlooking Sinhalese.

The bulk of the relief and rehabilitation effort is being carried on by Christian organizations, although Christians make up less than seven percent of Sri Lanka’s 15 million people.

Some of the wealthier Tamils have fled to India; others have begun to rebuild their businesses. But tens of thousands have nothing and nowhere to go.

Evangelical Christians and organizations are seeking to provide both short-term care and a long-term plan to channel the displaced Tamils back into Sri Lankan society, MAP (Medical Assistance Programs) International sent emergency medical supplies valued at $250,000. Southern Baptists donated materials for a portable field hospital.

Other organizations involved include World Relief, Campus Crusade, and the Salvation Army. Anglicans, Missouri Synod Lutherans, Presbyterians, and the Assembly of God Church have crossed denominational boundaries to coordinate their effort.

The Sri Lankan Evangelical Alliance Development Services (LEADS) is the coordinating organ for a large part of the evangelical effort. The head of LEADS, Reg Ebenezer, is a Tamil and a Dutch Reformed minister. He sees in this time of Tamil persecution unlimited opportunity for church growth. “They have trusted in padlocks, iron gates, and in their gods,” he says. “And these have not provided security.”

Christians In Nepal Are Harassed By The Government

The Christian church in the Southeast Himalayan nation of Nepal endures under the scrutiny of the government’s watchful eye. A recent crackdown by the district administration in the Katmandu Valley led to the jailing of several believers, including a pastor, on charges the church was leading Hindus to change their religion.

Late last year, Nepal’s only Bible school was shut down. Since then, special police in plain clothes have been mingling with Christians at church services.

In Nepalese law, attempting to change another’s religion is considered a serious crime. But at a public inquiry, Christian missionaries and nationals testified that the major role of the church was not to change Hindus but to serve as a place for worship, prayer, and spiritual growth among Christians. Freedom of worship for Christians is guaranteed by Nepal’s constitution.

During three weeks of meetings with police, the jailed pastor’s friends were able to build rapport. He was eventually released, and worship services at his church have resumed. The church is confident the government will drop its charges that the church is prompting Hindus to change their religion. But evangelism in Nepal has received a message.

A New Christian Legal Group Fights For Religious Liberty

In Delaware, a Roman Catholic nurse was denied unemployment compensation because she refused to work for an abortionist. An Orthodox Jew in the same state was denied an absentee ballot for an election held on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

In North Carolina, two men were sued for libel after they picketed an abortion clinic with signs that indicated that doctors performing abortions are murderers. At an abortion clinic in New York, a man was arrested for criminal trespassing after he knelt to pray.

What do these persons have in common? They all have had run-ins with the law after they acted on their religious convictions. And they all have received legal assistance from the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting human life and preserving religious freedom.

Attorney John W. Whitehead, the institute’s president, says the organization provides legal aid for religious people who cannot afford their own attorneys. The Virginia-based institute is funded by private donations.

Whitehead says the United States government has strayed from the principles on which the country was founded. The Declaration of Independence, he says, was based on Judeo-Christian principles, which he sums up as “you are to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and … to love your neighbor as yourself.

“If you love your neighbor as yourself, you’ll give your neighbor his rights,” says the 37-year-old lawyer. “That’s the key there. It’s protecting his rights—his rights to property, his rights to be born, his rights to worship his God.”

Since its founding in July 1982, the Rutherford Institute has taken part in six legal cases involving the infringement of religious liberty or the freedom of speech. Defending opponents of abortion is in line with the institute’s first priority: protecting the sanctity of human life.

The organization’s other four priorities include the protection of the “traditional family”; protection of churches and Christian schools; the protection of free speech and freedom of religion in the public arena, including public schools; and helping people in Communist countries who are oppressed because of their religious beliefs.

Whitehead says freedoms in this country are slowly being eroded, a trend he says could lead to an authoritarian state.

“It first begins with a nation that forgets God. Once they move away from the source of their blessings … it all ends up the same place—oppression of people.”

To reverse the trend, he says, Christians need to resist the forces that are trying to secularize American society. He says one of those forces is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Our problem’s not so much the ACLU as it is their mentality,” he says. “But their mentality is the same as in a lot of state governments—what I call secularism.… I think their philosophy is antireligious.”

In one instance, the ACLU sued the city of Pawtuckett, Rhode Island, to force the removal of a nativity scene from the city’s Christmas display. Lower courts ruled in favor of the ACLU. The case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Rutherford Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of the city’s creche display.

However, the ACLU is not always on the opposite side in legal battles. The ACLU filed a brief in support of an Orthodox Jewish woman who was denied an absentee ballot to vote in an election held on a Saturday. The Rutherford Institute is representing the woman in court.

The institute also is defending a Delaware woman who was arrested for disorderly conduct after she entered an abortion clinic to counsel women and to distribute prolife literature.

By request of the U.S. Justice Department, the institute prepared a legal memorandum on the issue of state regulation of religious schools. Representatives of the institute also testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in behalf of a bill that would guarantee equal access to public school facilities for student-initiated religious gatherings.

The author of five books, Whitehead recommends that Christians get involved politically to provide a Christian influence in society and government. But he cautions against supporting candidates just because they are Christians.

While his books advocate Christian political involvement, Whitehead stresses that he is not arguing in favor of a “Christian America” or a theocracy. “Christianity that comes in and makes people pray [in public schools] and becomes oppressive is no better than the other system.”

RON LEE