Page 5469 – Christianity Today (2024)

The senior minister of a large church asserted that the most trying, heated conflict he had experienced in more than two decades as that church's pastor was about changing the light fixtures in the sanctuary.

That large, vital congregation was not known to be quarrelsome. It was comprised of people considerably above average in educational background, breadth of experience, and economic status who often relied on their outstanding staff and lay leadership in decision making. However, they would not allow changes in their traditional décor.

Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, wrote: Be not the first by whom the new are tried. Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

In your church you will likely have those who seem determined to be the last to lay the old aside. On the other hand, there may be some who, although not avant-garde, are out front in their willingness to change when they feel change is for the better. The issue at which these two groups find themselves at odds may be no more crucial than moving a picture on the wall of the narthex or slightly altering the order of worship; yet such trivia may produce serious discord and strife and may even result in alienation and schism if left unchecked.

Difficult Changes

To be sure, some changes are extremely difficult to bring about in almost any setting. Church leaders should be conscious of the magnitude and ramifications of such changes before attempting them, however essential and justified they may be.

Moving a church from one location to another. Many members will be attached to the old building and site, regardless of the rationale for moving. Memorials, stained-glass windows, and other objects about which people are particularly sentimental only compound the problem. Members sentimentally attached to an edifice have been known to stick with the building even though their own congregation had moved out and a congregation affiliated with a radically different denomination had occupied the old building.

Merging with another congregation. A merger is difficult to accomplish even if it involves two congregations of the same denomination; it is particularly intricate and exacting if congregations of different denominations are considering union. Mergers may involve radical changes in name, location, building, organizational structure, leadership, and program.

A building program. Any building program by a congregation requires consummate management skill to avoid disruptive conflicts. The decision to build, the method of financing, the choice of the architect and the architecture, the letting of contracts, and the selection of furnishings and colors are just some of the decisions that may cause serious problems if not handled skillfully.

Redecorating or refurbishing the sanctuary. Redecorating an existing sanctuary may pose as many problems as building a new church. The acceptance of a change in the color of the walls may be trying enough, but the rearrangement of chancel furniture or changes in the pews can be traumatic for many.

One church changed the color of the walls in spite of strenuous objections; later when they changed the walls back to the original color, the same people objected again. Such objectors may simply find it difficult to accept change in almost any form.

Displacing a volunteer who has served in one spot for many years. Removing from office a volunteer of long standing can be a perilous action. The worker may be a greeter, a Sunday school superintendent, or a Sunday school teacher. One dare not assume that a volunteer worker, particularly of long tenure, wants to be replaced, even if she or he volunteers to step aside.

Changing the schedule of the worship services or the Sunday school hour. Any change in the Sunday morning schedule will prove disruptive for some. One proposed change may be advantageous for parents and disadvantageous for couples without children, or vice versa. Another proposed change may be attractive for those interested only in worship on Sunday morning. Some families may prefer Sunday school and worship scheduled simultaneously so that the parents can be in church while their children are in Sunday school, but others may find such a schedule objectionable because the parents want to attend Sunday school as well as worship, and they want their children to do both.

Revising the liturgy of the worship service. People grow accustomed to an order of worship. One church in my city hasn't made a perceptible change in its liturgy for twenty-five years. Another congregation, seeking to "get with it" a few years ago, decided to overhaul its order of worship to achieve freshness and make it more appealing, but after a short time it went back to the old way because the congregation felt uncomfortable with the changes. Innovative happenings can make worship more exciting. Nevertheless, worshipers tend to feel more secure when surrounded by the familiar, and changes in liturgy are usually hard to bring about without unrest and strenuous opposition.

Replacing any items that have been given by particular families in the church. Items such as an organ, piano, cross, picture, communion trays, or paraments are difficult to replace without destructive conflict if they have been donated by particular church members or families, even if replacement is badly needed. The donors, their families, and their friends are likely to oppose any change that would replace any article with which they are historically or emotionally identified.

The list could be almost endless, but the above changes are among those most difficult to make. I list them not to discourage you from seeking change if change is needed, but to emphasize how difficult such changes are to bring about. If you try, do it with your eyes wide open and with every skill you can command.

Here are several things you can do that might help facilitate change:

Know the Local Tradition

Whenever a new minister is called to a pulpit, traditions are inevitably upset. Even if the new minister resolves to make no changes in the church for some time, members may sense the uprooting of tradition because the new leader differs from previous ministers. For this reason it is vitally important for a minister to be informed about his or her predecessors.

A minister may find out what style of leadership has been embraced and employed in the church. Did any predecessors have a personality cult, relying largely upon charisma and charm? Were they guardians of traditions and preservers of the status quo? Were they autocratic, insistent upon calling the signals and "running" the church? Did they involve staff and laypeople in the decision-making process?

Of course a new minister can give too much attention to a church's history. One should not evaluate people on the basis of how they related to previous ministers. The vigorous opponents of one minister may be staunch supporters of another. The peripheral members of one administration may become a part of the church's nucleus under different leadership. One should never allow oneself to be victimized into inaction by old feuds, old scars, and old problems.

Because traditions are difficult to break without stubborn resistance and travail, ministers and laypersons are sometimes attracted to embryonic congregations in order to avoid the idolatry of sacred cows and the stifling words "We've never done it that way before." It is true that starting from scratch can more likely satisfy the itch of pioneer spirits to be daring and innovative. But even though churches with virtually no history are not as bound by the past as old ones, the new churches are far from entirely free from the restraints of tradition. Members can bring prejudices and traditions into the newly created fellowship. Some will want to do it the way it was done in their old home church, however inept that church may have been.

Evaluate the Congregation

Make the church aware through an educational process that other churches do it differently (if this is the case) and that a change, therefore, would not be as radical as some might surmise. To accomplish this, one might survey other churches by means of a questionnaire. Or one might suggest that members visit other churches to see for themselves how well new approaches have worked. The educational approach will not work in every instance. Sometimes the reluctance to change has such an emotional basis that members will not even be open to an educational process. Nevertheless, it can prove helpful in some circ*mstances or in concert with other strategies.

Change in Stages

If possible, make the change slowly or on a temporary basis at first. For example, if a church has been accustomed to having business suits in the pulpit, and the new minister prefers to wear a robe, the minister is likely to provoke substantial opposition if he or she simply begins wearing a robe at each worship service. However, if the minister begins wearing a robe at weddings and funerals held in the church's chapel, and then wears it in the sanctuary only at the worship service on Higher Education Sunday, the changes may produce little opposition or controversy. The minister may be able to make the transition so gradually that the congregation is scarcely aware. Business firms under new management often use such a strategy. The old name of the firm gets smaller and smaller as time passes while the new name looms ever larger. The public may be scarcely aware that a change in ownership and name is being made until it is a fait accompli. By then the public may have thoroughly accepted the new name.

Cultivate the Traditionalists

Be sure to give special attention to those whose egos are wrapped up in the status quo or who are particularly resistant to change. If your church has an old organ that needs to be replaced, don't assume that the donation of a new organ by some generous family or group will cause all the faithful to rise and sing the doxology as one. Some may be offended, even if changing from a small electronic organ to a four-manual pipe organ. They would be offended because they gave some or all of the money that bought the old organ in honor of their late husband.

If someone in your church wants to give a large sum of money for a cross to be designed by an outstanding artist to replace a wooden cross made by a retired carpenter, don't assume that the congregation will welcome that change. The retired carpenter may be much beloved, and many may have grown accustomed to the simplicity and starkness of that wooden cross.

A thoughtful visit may cause those who would otherwise oppose a change to be cooperative and supportive because their feelings were considered and heard prior to a decision. At the least such a visit may prevent their vigorous opposition; it may even elicit their enthusiastic support by involving them in the process for change.

If those who are likely to object to a change are persuaded in advance of the vote to support it, who then will block or oppose the change?

A minister became convinced that additional educational space was essential to the continued growth of the church he was serving. He felt that the congregation would for the most part enthusiastically support the program. He could think of only two board members who would be likely to oppose the building project. He did not foresee their opposition as hard-line or intransigent, but he did believe that the immediate reaction of these two conservatives in board meeting, when the building committee made its report, would be "I'm against it; we can't afford it. "

The minister decided to call on the two men to brief them on developments to that point. The two viewed the plans with keen interest. When the board meeting was held to vote on the question of erecting additional educational space, these two men vied for the floor to make a motion to approve the building project.

The longer a church goes without making any changes in policy, program, facilities, accouterments, or tradition, the more difficult it is to make changes. It's like creasing a hat. When a hat is relatively new, it is easy to change the location of the crease, but after that crease has been in place for months, it is difficult to create a new one.

If you are in a church that has not been innovative, concentrate at first on changes that are least likely to provoke heated opposition. Don't make changes just for change's sake, but recognize that the more you are able to change, the more you are likely to be able to change.

Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Where Is Wisdom To Be Found?

Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction, by James L. Crenshaw (John Knox, 1981, 285 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Robert K. Johnston, associate professor of religion, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

There has been wide scholarly interest shown in Israel’s wisdom literature in the last 20 years. A number of significant studies have been produced (von Rad, Brueggemann, Murphy, Scott, for example), but no generally accepted introduction has surfaced. James Crenshaw, a professor of Old Testament at Vanderbilt and one of America’s leading wisdom scholars, has attempted to fill the gap with this volume. But despite its usefulness, the book has sufficient problems to make unlikely its widescale adoption as a textbook, particularly among evangelicals.

Crenshaw begins by tackling the difficult problems of definition. How is wisdom’s multifaceted nature to be characterized? For Crenshaw, wisdom distinguishes itself in its “conviction that men and woman possess the means of securing their well-being—that they do not need and cannot expect divine assistance” (p. 24). Instead, “the Creator [has] left human survival to its own devices” (p. 19).

This secular characterization of wisdom leads Crenshaw to adopt several questionable conclusions. First, rather than creation theology being understood as basic to wisdom’s posture, the perceived focus on the Creator within wisdom literature is viewed as an intrusion upon wisdom’s self-sufficiency. That intrusion increases until Yahwism and wisdom are finally joined.

Second, having understood wisdom as the search for order that would assure well-being, Crenshaw sees skepticism as an inevitable result wherever reality is faced honestly and the limits of human reason recognized. Such skepticism arose early in Israel’s history, according to Crenshaw, and became a viable alternative to Yahwism, particularly among “those who failed to discern evidence that God actually controlled history” (p. 208). But surely the questioning of God in Old Testament wisdom literature is far from the skepticism that Crenshaw posits. Goethe and Rousseau, rather than Job and Qoheleth, seem ultimately to be Crenshaw’s sources.

Third, the biblical traditions about Solomon’s wisdom are judged by Crenshaw to be “fantasy” (p. 44): “Every account teems with material typical of popular legend and folklore” (p. 49). Aside from raising important issues concerning biblical authority and inspiration, such a conclusion seems unwarranted given the data. The description of Solomon’s nature wisdom, for example, is consistent with an early date, as is the linking of wisdom and riches. Furthermore, the text’s clear intention seems historical.

Finally, in an effort to divorce wisdom from Yahwism, Crenshaw downplays any influence by wisdom on the law and prophets. While correct in doubting whether Isaiah and Amos were formerly sages, he fails to deal adequately with the clear interaction that does exist.

Although Crenshaw’s skeptical conclusions seem unwarranted by the biblical texts, his discussion nevertheless has much to offer the discerning reader. Particularly helpful are his discussions of the individual wisdom books (although Song of Songs is omitted). Proverbs is understood as enabling the Israelites to cope with life; Job and Ecclesiastes as empowering them to face sickness and death; Sirach as integrating sacred history and worship into sapiential discourse; and Wisdom of Solomon as preserving the wisdom heritage by transmitting it in a new Hellenistic world view.

Crenshaw’s notes are extensive and his selected bibliography extremely useful. This book will challenge your thinking. Even when you disagree you will find yourself being stretched.

The Modern Cop-Out

The Interruption of Eternity: Modern Gnosticism and the Origins of the New Religious Consciousness, by Carl A. Raschke (Nelson-Hall, 1980, 271 pp., $18.95), is reviewed by George W. Jones, director, religious programs, and professor of higher education, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

Gnosticism, that heresy against which the ancient church struggled and largely triumphed, has been reincarnated in the new religions of our day. Carl Raschke, professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, argues this thesis comprehensively and persuasively by applying philosophical and theological analysis in order to understand Eastern-oriented and psychotherapeutic cults.

Taking seriously the content of the new religions, as well as their function in human society and personality, Raschke holds that Westerners “are all becoming Gnostics of a sort” (p. 243). Especially does he see Gnosticism as a very attractive alternative for the intellectual community with its declining faith in rationality, historical progress, a benevolent and understandable universe, and a perfectable world society. Even among mainline liberal churches, Gnosticism seems to have a special appeal, probably for the same reasons. Idealism, certainty, and a kind of spirituality can, thereby, be maintained apart from a return to Christian orthodoxy.

Raschke identifies the common Gnostic threads in some 50 philosophical/religious thinkers and movements over the last two millennia. These are as varied as alchemy, Christian Science, kabbalism, nazism, and the new narcissism. He finds in each at least one of the common threads or basic presuppositions that make up the skein of his Gnostic hypothesis. (1) They have “a preference for ‘cosmic insight’ over empirical caution and scrutiny.” (2) They follow a “recourse to elitist notions of self-salvation.” (3) They look “to the occult wisdom of the past for inspiration.” (4) They have “a prepossession with the evil of the existing order, with the fatality of life in the present” (p. 24). Thus, saving oneself from a doomed order through a hidden wisdom into a new state marked by timelessness and changelessness becomes Raschke’s working definition of Gnosticism.

Raschke is better at diagnosis than at prescribing solution. However, he closes his book by sounding an alarm: the Gnostic trends in our day are dangerous. A retreat from “the ambiguities, contingencies and incalculable factors of human existence” (p. 243) are not only a Christian heresy but also social treason. He calls on people of faith to correct the Gnostic mistranslation, “the Kingdom of God is in you,” to the textually accurate one, “the Kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Raschke is writing for a scholarly audience, albeit one that needs not share his disciplinary specialties. Many ministers and faculty, who are trying to understand the significance of the cults and the occult in this latter quarter of the twentieth century, will find this book a valuable tool. To be aware of an opponent is the first step in preparing to engage him.

The Reality Of Reconciliation

The Ministry of Reconciliation: A Study of Two Corinthians, by French L. Arrington (Baker, 1980, 1978 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Paul Elbert, postgraduate student in New Testament in the University of London, King’s College.

At the beginning of this century the British theologian James Denney described 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 as the locus classicus on the death of Christ in Paul’s writing. Denney was sure that wherever one began in the gospel story, he would inevitably be led to the Cross.

He thought substitutionary atonement was the most obvious teaching of the New Testament, believing that God’s offer of assurance of salvation to sinners was an assurance rooted in experience and the best constraint to discipleship.

In his last book Denney noted, “Just because the experience of reconciliation is the central and fundamental experience of the Christian religion, the doctrine of reconciliation is not so much one doctrine as the inspiration and focus of all.”

In citing this quotation as a key to the church’s life and witness (p. 27), French Arrington, the gifted American New Testament scholar who teaches at the new Church of God School of Theology, takes up the theme of reconciliation in a popular and practical exposition of II Corinthians. The concept of reunion of the separated is applied to every level of our personal relationships, displaying a deep understanding of Paul’s pastoral agony as he attempted to restore genuine fellowship in that most spiritual of his letters.

Those reconciled to God are themselves to be reconcilers in that faith does not keep silent. But this testimony should be strictly honest and free of exaggeration. Truthful speech is one of God’s graces (6:6–7a). Any superficial testimony that disregards the real nature of sin and minimizes the Cross is not the gospel of Jesus and Paul. Since Christianity then is a religion of relationships, Paul’s feelings for the Corinthians can serve as a model for us when alienating experiences arise.

The sympathy with which the author handles the motif of power in weakness is a tonic for faith. Paul’s hardships and sufferings did not at all indicate a lack of ministerial success. In fact, he boasted in weakness. How strange that is to our modern values! “God cannot help or use self-sufficient people but only those who have a deep dependence on Him. Where there is weakness and openness to divine grace His mighty power comes clearly in view” (p. 167).

Yet more deference could have been given to the painful physical ailment or thorn (12:1–10) as the means of making God’s power evident in weakness. It would have been helpful to state explicitly that it can be God’s will for a believer to experience physical illness. Resignation and obedience can then set one free to love God and others.

This is a serious book for serious times, but it is vibrant and alive. Its short, clear sentences are penetrating and easy to read. I believe it is the best lay person’s commentary on II Corinthians in print. In its contemporary relevance, it may even surpass the older (1958) entry in the Tyndale series. The attractive topical format holds the reader’s attention, and the bonus of its numerous grammatical insights strengthens the discussion. Pastors looking for study material for Sunday schools or house groups will certainly be well served.

What Is Christian Art?

Signs of Our Times, by George S. Heyer (Eerdmans, 1980, $5.95, 98 pp.), is reviewed by Calvin Seerveld, senior member in philosophical aesthetics, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This book contains the Gunning Lectures given at the University of Edinburgh in 1975; each lecture takes about 10 modest pages of print. The style is engaging, and Heyer selects specific artists for comment. He makes limited points, and does not pontificate through easy generalizations.

Humans are created by God to need images as well as ideas (p. 9), but modern man has turned images into idols to satisfy his senses (p. 4), or to have art serve as a religion that has no creed but the secular salvation of our technological society (p. 21). However, when the premillennial ideology of the Russian constructivists and U.S. artists of the 1930s ran amuck (p. 25), says Heyer, the exhibitionist art of “action paints” and the gnostic culture of happenings and “conceptual art” became the introverted, substitute rationale. “Consequently, our culture has bred an elite, a cadre of gnostic priests, the elect, who dispense to the masses the arcane wisdom embodied in art. Most of the wisdom is foolishness, of course, in perfect fidelity to its subject matter, but it is spoken and heard in an awesome aura of authority” (pp. 31–2).

Heyer wishes to correct the Protestant tradition that usually has disfavored art (pp. 3, 60), by developing John Calvin’s passing comment that “sculpture and painting are gifts of God” (Institutes, I, xi, 12). His basic thesis is that “beauty always gleams in the creation, and we can find it” (p. 41).

Heyer calls himself a Calvinist, but the fabric of his reflection is basically structured, it seems to me, by the Beauty theology of Thomas Aquinas, with an updated bow to Maritain, and especially to Gilson. The positive half of the book, as I understand it, is an apology for secular modern artists who have used “the resources that their Maker has provided … ‘fittingly’ in their efforts to add to our world objects whose beauty I, at any rate, see no need to defend” (p. 54). In spite of their ideology, Heyer means, when Léger or the cubists produce beautiful art, they are crypto-servants of God. “The beautiful objects that men make bear their own testimony to Jesus Christ” (pp. 53, 42).

I think this position and line of argument will find favor with many evangelicals who are reassessing the stance of the (Protestant) church toward art.

Since Heyer says his statement is tentative, perhaps the following problems could engage us all in discussion:

1. Can aesthetic theory resting on the traditional concept of beauty (which, incidentially, inclines one to be partial to classical Greek statuary as the artistic norm [pp. 43–4]) ever escape a natural theology of sorts, where art and artists by nature witness to the beauty of God (p. 46)?

If one adopts a covert natural theology, certainly his Calvinism is gone. But more important, I think, one misleads people in their understanding of what is going on historically in modern art.

2. Can we Christians find ways to recognize that Matisse and other gifted artists have been used, perhaps, as God used Cyrus (cf. Isaiah 45) to face Christ believers and disbelievers with ways God would have us know, without making Matisse and Picasso naturaliter Christians, whom Heyer says prefigure the new earth in their art (p. 58)?

Heyer’s indictment of mainline modern art as a gnostic idolatry may be largely correct. But if that is true, then his conversation with it is curiously uncritical and congenial.

Thomas says correctly somewhere, I recall, that bad arguments for a good thesis really undercut the truth. For us to have a sound base and perspective from which to assess secular art, and to motivate and understand art that will be truly sensitive to the lordship of Jesus Christ we will need, I believe, not theological essays on modern art (which speculate on Jesus’ beauty), but a down-to-creaturely-earth, Christian philosophical aesthetic theory.

Muddle In The Middle

The Forty to Sixty-Year-Old Male, by Michael E. McGill (Simon and Schuster, 1980, 298 pp., $11.95), is reviewed by Creath Davis, executive director, Christian Concern Foundation, Dallas, Texas.

Michael E. McGill’s book is based on the results of a four-year major research effort focusing on middle-aged men and their crises. Male midlife crisis literally means changes in a man’s personality in midlife. These are substantive and occur rapidly, giving them a dramatic and even traumatic character. Such personality changes alter the way a man views his world and the way he behaves toward it and the people in it—wife, children, friends, employer, employees. Powerful spin-off consequences affect everyone related to the male in midlife crisis, and the author deals with these in excellent fashion.

Out of his research, McGill describes the shortcomings he sees in many contemporary treatments of the subject. He then attempts to present the current knowledge and information about midlife crisis and its causes and effects, both positive and negative. There are firsthand reports in each chapter of men who experienced a midlife crisis. The stories of the people who were affected by the changes these men underwent are told. McGill then discusses what someone going through a crisis period should do, and what steps can be taken to prevent a midlife crisis. The author also describes the kind of supportive action that can be taken by individuals involved in one form or another with a man undergoing a midlife change.

An example of the practicality of McGill’s book are the five steps found in every case where resolution of the crisis was successful: (1) recognition; (2) acknowledgement; (3) consideration of the consequences; (4) choosing to change; and (5) integration of the change.

Interestingly enough, the author states that it is estimated that nearly two-thirds of all men between the ages of 40 and 60 will never experience a midlife crisis. A common characteristic of these men is that their identity is not threatened by the events of midlife. They have multiple sources of identity and are therefore less vulnerable to loss of identity in midlife. The author suggests that to help prevent a serious midlife crisis, a man should find multiple ways to define who he is.

Briefly Noted

The following is a pot pourri of church history, drawn mainly from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. These centuries yet speak for those who have ears to hear.

The Continent. Forerunners of the Reformation (Fortress), by Heiko Oberman, illustrates the shape of late medieval thought from key documents. Helpful introductions begin each section. An excellent treatise, certain to be discussed, is The Church in the Theology of the Reformers (John Knox), by Paul D. L. Avis. Three Luther studies are: Martin Luther (John Knox), a standard work by James Atkinson, with a new introduction and now in paperback; Luther: On Ministerial Office & Congregational Function (Fortress), by Gert Haendler; and Luther & His Mother (Fortress), by Ian Siggins. The Best of John Calvin (Baker), compiled by Samuel Duran, is a topical survey of Calvin’s ideas, finally in paperback.

A sadly encouraging, yet highly instructive, book is The French Huguenots: Anatomy of Courage (Baker), by Janet Glenn Gray. Challenging in a different way is The Autobiography of Madame Guyon (Keats), edited by Warner A. Hutchinson. Puritans and Libertines (Univ. of Calif.), by Hugh M. Richmond, looks at Anglo-French literary relations during the Reformation. It is a learned and very interesting book. On the Glaubenslehre (Scholars Press) is F. D. E. Schleiermacher’s two important letters, newly translated, analyzed, and explained by James Duke and Francis Fiorenza.

Great Britain. A massive and definitive study is Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Univ. of Minn.), by Richard L. Greaves. It is hard to imagine how this book could be improved on. The Banner of Truth continues its Works of Richard Sibbes with Volume 3 on 2 Corinthians 1. Martin Lloyd-Jones said of this author, “I shall never cease to be grateful to Sibbes who was a balm to my soul.” The Call of God (Cowley), by Robert B. Shaw, looks at the theme of vocation in the poetry of Donne and Herbert, and provides a nice introduction to these poets. Two helpful reprints are Out of the Depths: The Autobiography of John Newton and The Heart of Wesley’s Journal, both by Keats Publishing.

Introduction to Puritan Theology (Baker) edited by Edward Hindson, a valuable reader of mainly British writers, is now in paperback. Scottish Methodism in the Early Victorian Period (Edinburgh Univ./Columbia Univ.), edited by A. J. Hayes and D. A. Gowland, is the correspondence of the Rev. Jabez Bunting (1800–57). Here is firsthand insight on a neglected subject.

The United States. An absolutely fascinating study is Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard (Univ. of N.C.), by Norman Fiering; it is a penetrating look at Puritan thought. Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, Jr. (Edwin Mellen), by Suzanne Geissler, traces the development of thought from the Great Awakening to Burr, providing the religious and intellectual context needed to understand the enigmatic Burr. Samuel Hopkins & the New Divinity Movement (Christian Univ./Eerdmans), by Joseph A. Conforti, is a first-rate study of a complex phenomenon.

The apostle Paul will not allow a pact of peace with sin.

Recently i reread the first chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. I was increasingly disturbed to discover how far theology has moved away from the teachings of the apostle. This became obvious first in Paul’s proposal of the primary subject of his letter: the justification of the sinner (1:17). Theology today seems to be in the process of replacing sin and grace with rich and poor as the basic polarity of biblical thought.

In its exclusiveness, this new hermeneutical grid also represents a reduction of the basic antithesis of good and evil, an organic part of the doctrine of justification. Evangelicals, too, have recently begun to interpret the whole of Scripture from the viewpoint of this new hermeneutical principle. With a time lag of some 15 years, they repeat, as it were, that development in the World Council of Churches: we seem to be saying again that political and economic liberation must come first, worship later—a sequence allegedly established by the Book of Exodus.

Saint Paul is no longer in favor. However, in my view, Christ does not create the impression in the Gospels that he is reducing his message to the rich/poor polarity. His call to repentance, in fact, is addressed to everyone, though for the rich it may mean something different than it does for the poor. In the passages on property and riches, the primary concern is the relationship to God. Possessions often become the object of idolatry; therefore, it is God who is robbed of loyalty in the first place, not the poor.

Nevertheless, today we tend to adopt as motto: “At a time of global social crisis the God question should be put on ice for a while.” From a biblical point of view, this is a terribly perverted perspective. Scripture holds that whenever justice is done to God’s concerns, then the poor will find justice also. God is the solution to the social problem. Whenever the rich man finds God, the slave finds freedom (Philemon!), and the poor his means of sustainment (Lev. 25). The betterment of social life is not achieved without God.

Today we see God made practically redundant in theology and the church. He becomes the “forgotten factor.” This forgetting of God in our generation is the reverse side of our overall worship of man. Our day and age resemble Paul’s indictment exactly: “although they knew God they did not know him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21). We did receive the truth. We were shown the divinity of God; but we perverted it and established the deity of man, of nature, of the visible. In this process we came to deify and worship possessions, sex, nation, power, and so on. God is being replaced everywhere in human thinking. Forgetfulness concerning God is the signature of our time.

In view of this, we as Christians are faced with the task to re-present God: to throw up the question of God everywhere, and to look concretely for the honor and service of God. In short, we have to restate and reapply the first commandment. We need to reintroduce the question, “What does God say in our situation?”

If we fail to call humanity to repentance before the presence of God, we too will be reckoned among those who are accused: “No one understands, no one seeks for God” (Rom. 3:11). One of the great services Karl Barth rendered to the church was when he insisted in 1933 on theology’s task to keep the God question first, even in view of the demand of “national resurrection of Germany” for attention and assent.

Another critical area where today’s theology seems at odds with Paul’s teaching is the assessment of the present state of humanity. In Romans 3, Paul continues, “All have turned aside … no one does good, not even one” (v. 12). That all are sinners is a judgment Protestant theology will no longer pronounce over humanity. We have learned to speak instead of “solidarity” with all men. Today, the predicate “sinful” is altogether rejected as a manner of moralizing that is unworthy of Christian theology.

Paul, however, does not think in terms of theological or merely platonic predicates. He describes the reality of man. He certainly operates on the presupposition (Rom. 2:12) that “All who have sinned … will perish,” and he insists that there will be “a day of wrath” and “a day of judgment” (2:5, 16). Again this is something to which most modern theology does not hold. We did away with the concept of the wrath of God 150 years ago when Schleiermacher decreed: There is no such thing as God’s displeasure over a sinner. The idea that a person might “perish” or be “lost” is thought of today as fundamentalist and in bad taste. Theologians are either silent about God’s judgment or replace it by a theory of the universal grace in Christ. That Paul should even think (Rom. 2:16) of Christ as sometime judging the secrets of men, and that this warning of judgment should be part of the gospel, is taken as a strange and unheard-of paradox by theology today. The best one will do with this passage is immediately to interpret judgment as equal to forgiveness.

Theology relegates the announcement of God’s judgment to obscurity and fails to see that by so doing it actively buries the source of that central ethical concept of human responsibility. If, however, we are no longer responsible to God, it is very doubtful whether as individuals we will ever seriously accept a responsibility before society. In abolishing the concept of judgment we also abolish the Christian idea of human responsibility.

A third point is that Paul and the modern theological consensus are largely at odds with each other over his stark formula of “those who by patience in good works seek for … eternal life” (Rom. 2:7). “To seek for eternal life” is really lost in Christian ethics. The horizon of eternity has become almost totally irrelevant. We even claim that orientation to eternity might create a mindset of other-worldliness, and we would then be oblivious to the needs of people around us or forgetful of the task to do good works. The horizon of eternity certainly does not produce that result for Paul. As did Jesus before him, he startlingly relates doing works of mercy to eternal life. We would do well to allow them to teach us again instead of regulating revelation by our own concepts of pure doctrine, symmetry, or contradiction!

Moreover, in this context we might also let Paul remind us of the relevance of “good works.” Some Protestant theologians immediately become suspicious of the term because it might impinge on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They need to rediscover the balance in Paul himself, from whom they received that doctrine. Others deprecate “good works” because for them, nothing short of social revolution will do. They, too, alienate Christians from their own viable basis, Scripture itself. All kinds of Christians would be helped if we recovered what it means that our behavior should be characterized as “seeking eternal life by patience and good works.”

These are just a few examples of the growing alienation between theology and Scripture. That silent process of deterioration of theology, of the teaching of the church, must not go unchecked. It is not a matter of one school of theology, or of one party in the church, versus another. The whole of Christian teaching is too important: theology can make or break a nation. Also, with Hannah More we believe it is not good to cast odors upon a stream when the source has been polluted.

But it would be the cleverest trick and the direct poisoning of the well if atheism and human fantasy were allowed to run theology and to determine the teaching of God. Then everything would be turned upside-down. It would be the master lie whereby suspicion of corruption would be the least feasible, and by which the “Prince of this world,” who still parades his pretensions, might best rule over humanity.

Against this nightmare the prayer, “Hallowed be your name,” must include the petition for a re-Christianization of theology in our generation.

Dr. Bockmühl is professor of theology and ethics at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Most believe that sermon preparation and delivery are the most rewarding aspects of their profession.

A survey conducted among Protestant ministers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North and South Dakota included this question: “How important do you consider the weekly sermon? How much time do you spend in its preparation? Do you feel free to discuss controversial subjects in the pulpit?”

All who answered this question considered the sermon to be of utmost importance. Some placed it second only to handling personal crises in the congregation. Most pastors agreed that preaching the weekly sermon was their opportunity to strengthen, renew, and enable the believer. They also saw it as the time to arouse the unconverted and those who lack spirituality and faith in Christ.

“My most important duty in speaking,” one pastor wrote, “is to equip the saints, giving them a feeling for life, lifting them up.” Another said it was the chance to proclaim, to teach, to motivate, to give hope, and “to build a fire under people.”

“The sermon is my one opportunity to give a logical presentation of the faith without interruption,” said one pastor. “It may contain the only ideas and insights people hear about their faith.” What is the basis on which sermons are prepared? Showing how theology and the teaching of the Bible can change and improve everyday living is the method most pastors use in sermon preparation. “It must be more than theological; it must be practical,” several said.

But the pastors were divided over whether controversial subjects should be discussed in the sermon. “The sermon should basically be God’s Word and not controversial issues,” one pastor wrote. “Lay people need time to grow spiritually according to their needs, not to deal with controversy,” was the opinion of several.

Some pastors use controversial subjects only if they can relate the subject to the Word of God and their congregation. “I would rarely talk directly about abortion,” one wrote, “but I would talk a good deal about the high regard a Christian must have for life.”

Some pastors, when they find themselves boxed in over discussion of controversial matters important to their community, present both sides only when they can relate the issue to the Scriptures. Most pastors felt that politics and personal controversy should never be discussed. The church’s need for money should seldom be discussed. Sex, if the subject is discussed at all, has to be “handled very carefully.”

Those who felt free to use the pulpit to discuss any subject did so because “the Old Testament prophets never backed off from controversial subjects.” However, these pastors did say there were certain topics from which they backed away because of specific prejudices within their communities or churches.

One pastor felt that because the sermon is a monologue, controversial topics should be saved for fellowship or teaching sessions where lay people could have an opportunity to participate and give their views.

Choosing the sermon topic and then deciding how to go about delivering it is a risk-taking venture for every pastor: it is the Sunday morning worship service that exposes him to the most people in the shortest time. Sadly, many lay people use the sermon during this “prime time” to judge the total effectiveness of their pastor. Probably this is the reason that for some pastors, preparing and preaching the sermon is the most frustrating and difficult part of their job.

“One has to be so careful these days to use the right gender, the right ethnic vocabulary, the right—you name it. The free spirit of enthusiasm has been stymied because everyone is looking out for Number One, and that is contrary to the teaching of our Christian faith,” one pastor wrote.

Another advised those who were uninspired or found it difficult to prepare sermons to do more reading. “You can’t pick up a newspaper or the Bible without knowing that the world, the community, the church, the families, the youth, the races, the nations, the sexes, the economy—ad infinitum—are problems that involve persons. Where there is a right or a wrong, a good or a better way, God (and therefore every religious person) has a concern.”

Most of the pastors agreed with this view and considered preaching the sermon the most enjoyable part of their job. “There is an excitement in giving a good sermon,” one said. “In part, at least, I am an actor; I am disturbed by babies crying and any other noise, by lack of eye contact with the congregation, and obvious apathy.”

Some pastors were bothered because people did not seem to listen “as well as they used to.”

How long does it take to prepare a good sermon? Ideally, “one hour of study should be spent for every minute in the pulpit,” said several. Some could prepare a sermon in fewer than 10 hours, but most needed from 15 to 20 hours a week to do this. One said, “The ideal sermon would probably take 40 hours to prepare; I usually spend about 6.” Another said it took from five hours to forever to prepare a sermon. Only one pastor said he always used (someone else’s) prepared sermons.

Most pastors try to plan their sermon topics in advance. Everything they study, read, do, see, and think as they go about their daily and weekly work then feeds into these sermons, which may be many weeks, even months, away. One man said, “I am a verbalizer, always talking to myself. It seems I am in constant rehearsal for the next sermon.”

It is usually the younger ministers in their first parishes who spend the most hours in sermon preparation. But with experience, the time spent is less. “After 20 years or so,” one pastor said, “I have come more and more to trust that the Holy Spirit will help. He has. My time of preparation has decreased and I believe the quality of my sermons has improved.”

GLORIA SWANSON AND JEANNE WARD

Mrs. Swanson is a free-lance writer living in Hallock, Minnesota; Mrs. Ward is a former teacher of English and Latin, who lives in International Falls, Minnesota.

Tom Key is wholly at the disposal of his many roles.

on the surface of it, a “cotton patch” rendering of the gospel might appear to be an unlikely business. After all, the gospel is surely a simple enough affair for us all to understand, and it is no harder for us to shift our imaginations over to first-century Palestine than into Oz, or Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood. We are the sort of creature who likes to be beckoned away to some other time and place. Otherwise, what is the attraction of “Once upon a time in a far off land”?

However, there is another element at work in the gospel. How shall we say it? We might attempt it thus: even though all stories are in one sense or another “the story of my life,” yet the gospel really is that story. The places (Bethlehem, Bethany, Caesarea Philippi, Golgotha, Olivet) are there in Palestine, but they are also real points in the experience of the Christian soul. The geography of the gospel is at one and the same time the geography of the heart. And this is true of the events that occur in the story: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Epiphany, the presentation in the temple, the fasting in the desert, the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension—they are all events in the pilgrimage of the Christian soul.

If this is true, then there is no end to the ways in which this story may be translated into local and personal situations. There is a paradox here, of course. An Eskimo or a Saxon peasant or a Bantu or a Young Life kid may be helped by having the story told in familiar pictures that touch on his own life. But on the other hand, he must also be told what a sheepfold is, or what a cross is. Those elements must always be there, one way or another. So we may say that the story is infinitely “translatable,” but also infinitely intractable. We may change the imagery for the moment; but we must also keep all the old imagery. (For modern people, for example, there might be some proximate sense in which we might speak of God as “chairperson”—heaven help us. But sooner or later he must be known as Father and King, even though those are notions alien to modern imagination.)

This is a long way of leading up to a drama review. But it is germane. Cotton Patch Gospel is now playing in New York at the Lamb’s Theatre. Starring Tom Key (well known to thousands of people for his one-man show on C. S. Lewis), and based on Clarence Jordan’s cotton-patch version of the Gospels, the show is a winner.

You tramp around rural Georgia, through Valdosta, Malone, and Two Egg en route to Atlanta (read Jerusalem), with the narrator (Saint Matthew/Tom Key) and Jesus (Tom Key also—he plays more than two dozen roles), accompanied by the four “Cotton Pickers,” a country/western/bluegrass group who play fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, and bass fiddle, and act as crowds, disciples, and other extras.

If you are like this reviewer, you might think you prefer the lofty imagery of the abbey at Cluny or some such place when you indulge your reveries on Christian topics. You might tell yourself that country and western is not your scene. If you are like this, then drop everything and go to the Lamb’s Theatre in New York. You will be regaled. Your feet will be tapping and your fingers will be snapping. And then maybe even your tears will be starting, over the late Harry Chapin’s music, sung and played with irresistible ebullience by Scott Ainslie, Pete Corum, Michael Mark, and Jim Lauderdale. If you do not see the whole rural South incarnate in Pete Corum as he hunches lovingly over that bass fiddle, and if you do not love it, then something is wrong with you.

Tom Key is an actor to watch. His portrayal of C. S. Lewis was fascinating and powerful, but there were some small elements in it that seemed a bit more Key than Lewis. He seems now to be moving in the direction that all real actors must aspire to, namely to be wholly at the disposal of the role itself. It is a bravura performance. He must be at one point John the Baptist railing on the sinners, with the veins standing out in his neck; at another, Christ raising the dead girl and asking her if she’d like some breakfast; and at yet another, a cynical Georgia politician (read petty official in Jerusalem). He does it all, with vigor, suppleness, and authority.

Dr. Howard, author of numerous books, is professor of English at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts.

Profits are tithed; no bargain loans, though.

The well-known saying, “There’s nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come,” expresses the enthusiasm that has greeted this country’s first Christian bank, located just east of Portland, Oregon.

Stewardship Bank of Oregon, a state-chartered, full-service commercial bank whose stockholders all confess Jesus Christ as Lord, is nearing its first anniversary. It opened Friday, March 13, 1981, with a capitalization of $1.6 million. Although banks take up to three years to break even and start making a profit, Stewardship Bank is breaking even now, according to its president, Richard Wells.

What separates this bank from the rest of the crowd is that it gives 10 percent of its profits to Christian schools and organizations. Furthermore, its 350 stockholders tithe their dividends, sending more money into Christian work. The idea has caught on, say bank officials, and not only has the bank attracted depositors from around the world, it has received a shower of press coverage from the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine to the Sidney (Australia) Morning Herald.

When the bank organized, the first $10 share of stock was set aside in the name of Jesus Christ. It took some time for the bank to grow from an idea among Christian businessmen to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) member with one thousand accounts. “A lot of groups think we just got together, formed a bank and away we went,” says Wells, “but there were a lot of organizing necessities.”

The incentive for the bank began in August 1977. Bob Laughlin, the owner of Western Food Equipment Company in Portland, was in serious trouble when a major Portland bank that had extended $300,000 in credit to his company told him to find another bank in 30 days. Western eventually picked up financing elsewhere, but Laughlin saw the need for a bank more sympathetic to smaller businesses.

At the same time, Laughlin, a member of the development committee for Judson Baptist College, an evangelical school in The Dalles, Oregon, was aware of the problems the school was having in raising money without the cooperation of a commercial bank. A Western employee asked him why Christian banks did not exist, and Laughlin had no answer.

With the help of like-minded businessmen, Laughlin and a group of Christians, many of them small business owners, began working toward developing a bank operated by Christian principles. His wife, Milli, who now handles new accounts, did most of the research and writing needed to obtain a charter and zoning clearances, and the interior decorating for the new, $500,000, 9,400-square-foot building. The bank, with its tastefully decorated, glassed-in, blue-and-red Colonial-style interior is situated next door to Western’s offices.

Stewardship Bank’s name is derived from Webster’s dictionary definition of stewardship as business management. Scripture exhorts believers to be good stewards or managers of what God has given them, and according to bank officials, to give away 10 percent of the bank’s profits is good management. The bank’s symbol, a sheaf of wheat, is carved on the door bars. Its motto is “In God We Trust.”

The bank’s last major hurdle before opening was obtaining FDIC approval. This came after weeks of delay over controversy surrounding the bank’s requirement that stockholders sign a covenant confessing Christ as Lord and agreeing with the bank’s purpose “to further the work of Jesus Christ.” FDIC directors refused to approve such a covenant until they were shown the range of religious inclinations of the prospective stockholders, and state banking commission officials said the covenant was legal.

The stockholders come from 20 different denominations and 200 churches, including Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist. Five pastors are stockholders, one of whom serves on the 11-member board of directors. As for the clients, they do not have to be Christians to bank there.

“The question is never asked,” says Wells. Yet, the message of Christ comes across. Customers have been known to confide personal problems to the tellers, who sometimes pass out religious tracts; there are copies of a Christian newspaper in a news rack in the lobby; and the staff meets before office hours once a week to pray for 15 to 20 minutes.

“A lot of people come in and just want to talk,” says Wells, a Baptist and former chief lending officer of the Bank of California in Portland. “As for some individuals with financial problems, we can spend more time with them than at a usual bank—not meaning that we’ll be an easy mark, but we can offer some advice.”

As the bank was being formed, the question of Old Testament prohibitions against usury came up. “We have no plans for low-income financing,” says Wells. “We need a proper yield for our loans. We’ve been very competitive, but usually our rates have been lower than our competition.”

“During our organization, we questioned whether Christians should be involved in banking at all,” says Laughlin. “Unlike secular banks, we funnel profits to Christian organizations. We don’t see any problem with the Old Testament usury law, as long as we are sharing profits with Christian schools.”

One of those schools is Judson Baptist College, which will get the largest share of the bank’s tithed profits. A number of bank stockholders graduated from Judson; Laughlin is on the college’s finance committee and a retired Judson vice-president manages Stewardship’s marketing.

Other recipients of Stewardship’s bounty include Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland, Campus Crusade for Christ, a local television ministry, Young Life, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, the National Association of Evangelicals, and three private Christian schools in Oregon.

The idea does appear to be catching. Similiar banks are organizing in Wheaton, Illinois; Billings, Montana; and in the Los Angeles area. While traveling on behalf of Western Foods, Laughlin spends his free time meeting with contacts across the country who want to see a stewardship bank in their city.

They try to counter liberal churches that finance socialism overseas.

People in Washington are sitting up and taking note of a new organization, the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), founded just last spring, but already making waves in church and government circles. Recently it was the object of a secret controversial investigation paid for jointly by agencies of the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ.

Scores of luminaries representing church, government, and private agencies, along with dozens of reporters, gathered at a luncheon in Washington last month to meet and listen to the recipient of the institute’s first “Freedom and Democracy” award: Nicaragua’s embattled Catholic primate, Archbishop Obando y Bravo of Managua.

The prelate was chosen, say IRD officials, because he has courageously resisted totalitarianism on both the Right and the Left, striving to achieve democratic ideals in his country.

The institute is basically the brainchild of itinerant evangelist Edmund W. Robb, 55, of Marshall, Texas, a leader of evangelical causes in the 9.7-million-member United Methodist Church (UMC). Yet its executive committee includes such heavyweights as Lutheran theologian Richard John Neuhaus, not usually associated with evangelicals, and Catholic scholar Michael Novak. Other top IRD backers range from Lutheran sociologist Peter Berger of Boston College and Jesuit James V. Schall of Georgetown University to evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry and historian Richard Lovelace of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Some are Democrats, others are Republicans. Political neo-conservatives and liberals alike belong.

“Religious allegiance is critical,” says Novak. “The IRD is a religious organization of Christian clergy and laity concerned about the extension of democracy everywhere in the world—and about efforts by some church bureaucracies to funnel church funds and ideological support to nondemocratic movements.”

It is this latter aspect of accountability that apparently led some alarmed United Methodist and United Church of Christ officials to commission a $6,000 investigation of the IRD by Eric Hochstein and Ronald O’Rourke, two independent Washington researchers with congressional staff experience.

Curiously, the pair produced a 50-page report on the IRD’S history, membership, and aims without interviewing any of the principals. Their paper, circulated at the National Council of Churches’ general board meeting in Cleveland last fall, and now known in IRD circles as “the Snoop Report,” focuses on past political activities of a few of the IRD’S leaders. It erroneously describes the institute as a “special project” of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority,” founded in 1973 by moderate Democrats following the landslide defeat of George McGovern. (Novak and others on the IRD’S board in fact campaigned for McGovern. The pair’s error is apparently linked in part to the institute’s temporary shelter under the tax-exempt umbrella of the Washington-based Foundation for Democratic Education, whose president, lobbyist Penn Kemble, serves on the IRD’S executive committee.)

The institute’s roots go back to the so-called Jessup Report, a “preliminary inquiry” of United Methodist financing of controversial organizations and projects. It was drawn up in April 1980 by United Methodist layman, David Jessup, a Washington researcher with the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) and a socialist activist during his student days in Berkeley. His 26-page report gives details of United Methodist funding tilted in favor of alleged nondemocratic totalitarian-inclined groups.

Jessup issued the paper to buttress two reform petitions he wanted to see enacted by the 1980 UMC General Conference. At that conference, he met Robb and other members of Good News (an evangelical movement in the UMC), who helped obtain passage of parts of the two petitions. For months afterward, UMC officials and editors heaped criticism on Jessup, charging that he failed to take into account political realities with which the church must work, and insisting that church-agency spending is done according to open democratic procedures.

Robb kept in touch with Jessup, and last April called a meeting in Washington of leading religious figures who shared his and Jessup’s basic concern about church financing of groups opposed to democratic ideals. Out of this meeting came the IRD. Its funds initially came mostly from two grants: $65,000 from the Smith Richardson Foundation, and $50,000 from the Scaife Foundation, a source of much New Right financing.

The IRD has a Washington office and staff, and has produced booklets on the church in Nicaragua and El Salvador. It has also published a landmark statement on “Christianity and Democracy,” drafted by Neuhaus.

Robb, the IRD’S acting executive director, is active on other fronts. In 1976, following a Good News conference on “The Crisis in Theological Education” in the UMC, he founded the Foundation for Theological Education. His aim is to finance (up to $8,000 or so per year per student) the doctoral studies of promising evangelical scholars in the UMC who might help bring about theological renewal along evangelical lines in the UMC. So far, 19 scholars have taken part, including Chip Hayes, who earned a Ph.D. at Emory University and now teaches New Testament at Yale.

At first, the UMC theological establishment, led by the widely respected Albert Outler, opposed Robb, who ironically does not possess a seminary degree himself. But Robb persuaded Outler of the validity of his cause, and the eminent theologian now serves on Robb’s board of directors (as do UMC bishops Earl Hunt of Lakeland, Florida, and Finis Crutchfield of Houston).

Robb’s foundation also sponsors a triennial colloquy at Notre Dame designed to “expose liberals to first-rate evangelical scholarship.”

If liberals in the UMC are nervously looking over their shoulders these days, people like Robb and his colleagues may be to blame.

Denied U.S. Visa, Paisley Storms Into Canada

Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland’s colorful minister-politician, brought his volatile mix of Orange Lodge politics and fundamentalism to North America last month. Denied entrance to the United States, the irrepressible preacher simply came to Toronto—80 miles north of the American border—where he was besieged by American television networks clamoring for interviews.

Ostensibly in Canada to preach at his Toronto Free Presbyterian Church, he did speak there twice on Sunday and once at a midweek meeting. The presence of many eager news media people and anti-Paisley demonstrators, however, made even those church meetings into “media events,” which gave him a wider public platform from which to blast the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Pope, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and those who urge moderation (compromise, according to Paisley).

“We have seen souls saved and been informed on the situation in Northern Ireland,” the congregation’s spokesman told the closing meeting on Wednesday night. According to reports, 10 or 12 people responded on Sunday evening to Paisley’s evangelistic invitation at the close of the service.

Much of the five-day period in Toronto, however, was devoted to a press conference, newspaper interviews, and Canadian and American national television interviews.

The major purpose of the visit, Paisley told the press and his church audiences, was to counter “IRA propaganda and lies” and to alert North Americans to the danger of bankrolling violence and death through financial support of IRA terrorists. He promoted and distributed a book, Ulster: The Facts, originally printed expressly for his American visit that was vetoed by the State Department.

Meetings at the church and at the Tuesday night rally in the Orange hall featured gospel songs, militant hymns, Scripture reading, and a revivalist atmosphere.

“Protestants we started, Protestants we continue, and Protestants we are going to stay,” Paisley told his Orange audience. “There will be no change.” His address was frequently interrupted by enthusiastic applause. As he spoke, about 200 demonstrators paraded outside with placards denouncing Paisley and the Fascists. A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cameraman was stabbed in the hand with a flagpole during a scuffle.

In press interviews, the outspoken preacher condemned the appointment of a British ambassador to the Vatican as unconstitutional and “a black day for England.” He also lambasted the Pope’s planned visit to England.

He criticized the North American news media for preoccupation with concern over armed Protestant groups (which he defended) and a glossing over of IRA atrocities, which, he said, made defensive measures necessary.

Paisley told his Wednesday night church audience that a conspiracy had been under way for years to eliminate Protestants and Protestantism from Ireland. The papacy, ecumenists (“deluded Protestants and IRA apologists”), and ecumenical evangelism were witting or unwitting participants in the plot, he told the 350 who packed into the suburban church.

Two IRA supporters, Danny Morrison (the group’s director of public relations) and Owen Carron (elected to succeed IRA guerrilla Bobby Sands as a member of the British Parliament), followed Paisley to Toronto to counter his arguments. The protagonists never met, and a proposed debate never materialized. The two IRA spokesmen were arrested at the U.S. border, where they attempted to enter the country illegally and under false pretenses.

The Toronto news media, Paisley told his church audience, had been “by and large, a fair and reasonable press.” On his departure, however, the influential Globe and Mail editorialized concerning the recent visitor: “It might fairly be noted that the violent men of the Irish Republican Army have helped make him what he is today, just as his intractably partisan posture immeasurably aids their cause. Reprisal matches reprisal and malediction echoes malediction in awful symmetry. In any serious discussion of the troubles of Northern Ireland, Mr. Paisley’s name is sure to come up. He is one of them.”

LESLIE K. TARR

Wildmon’S Tv Boycott Is On Again

Last spring the Coalition for Better Television, headed by Donald Wildmon, a Methodist minister from Tupelo, Mississippi, threatened to organize a nationwide boycott of advertisers whose products were advertised on television programs deemed morally unfit by the coalition.

Wildmon was noticed, and network executives grew concerned—especially when television’s largest buyer of commercial advertising time, Procter and Gamble, announced that it would no longer advertise on more than 50 objectionable shows. Satisfied that progress was being made, Wildmon’s organization canceled the boycott.

Now, however, concerned that the events of last spring did not result in appreciably better programs during the autumn viewing season, Wildmon’s organization voted last month to proceed with the boycott this year. He plans to make the announcement at a full-dress press conference in Washington, D.C., on March 2, when he will also announce which advertisers are to be targets.

Although network executives publicly disdained Wildmon and his group (which claims to speak for 1,200 individual organizations—even Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority belongs to it), they were privately worried the last time around simply because advertisers tend to worry about any sort of “hit list.”

In an interview last winter, a spokesman for one of the country’s largest advertising agencies said, “It only takes a percentage point or two of shift in the retail sales of washing machines or K-cars to make a tremendous difference in profits.”

Less than half of the United Church of Canada members believe strongly in God.

An ambitious survey of Canadians on the subject of their religious attitudes reveals an astonishing decline of the Christian faith in Canada, particularly among members of the country’s largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada. Less than half of its members profess an unequivocal belief in God.

“Organized religion in Canada is experiencing a dramatic drop-off,” sociologist Reginald Bibby says. “Churches are losing many of their once-active members and adherents, while failing to replenish such loses.…” He adds that his survey shows little likelihood that the trend will change.

Bibby, head of the sociology department at Alberta’s University of Lethbridge, bases his analysis on an 11-page, 303-item questionnaire answered by nearly 2,000 people across the nation. The project was supported by the United Church of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian government, and the University of Lethbridge.

The randomly selected respondents reflect the nation’s religious spectrum, but because the responses were broken down by religious affiliations, Canadians have a revealing first-ever national religious profile. (The affiliations analyzed are Anglican, United, Roman Catholic, conservative, other Protestant, and none.)

Regarding the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, and life after death, United and Anglican church members consistently scored below the national average. “It seems noteworthy,” Bibby observes, “that only about 40 percent of actual United church members claim unequivocal belief in God and the divinity of Jesus.” By contrast, he found, conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics are far more likely to believe.

The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925 through union of three denominations—Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian (although one-third of the Presbyterians rejected the merger and maintained a continuing Presbyterian church). In the last census, 19 percent of Canadians indicated a relationship to the United church, giving it the highest following behind the Roman Catholic church.

Concerning the biblical knowledge of the respondents, the sociologist gives this withering appraisal: “… with the possible exception of conservative church members, Canadians—church members and nonmembers alike—have a remarkable level of ignorance of even the basic content features of Judaic-Christianity.”

The survey of religious practices shows a sharp decline in church attendance since 1956. In that year, 61 percent of Canadians said they had attended church during the previous week. By 1978, that percentage had declined to 35. United and Anglican church attendance in 1978, however, was well below the national average—28 percent for United and 24 percent for Anglican. In that same year, 45 percent of Catholics and 39 percent of conservative Protestants reported church attendance during the previous week.

The decline in Christian commitment was also reflected in membership statistics for 1966 to 1977. The United church registered a sharp drop, from a membership high of 1,062,006 in 1966 to 930,226 in 1977, and its Sunday school enrollment shrank from 570,000 to 242,000. Bibby points out that all Canadian churches declined in that period.

His analysis of the data conveys a sobering message to Canada’s largest Protestant denomination: “… the United church finds itself in a position where its people appear to have a low level of commitment to traditional Christianity. Basic beliefs pertaining to God, the divinity of Jesus, and life after death tend to be held with ambivalence; regular church attendance and private prayer are practiced by only a small proportion, while regular private Bible reading is virtually nonexistent. Relatively few are convinced that they have ever experienced God, and a majority do not demonstrate a knowledge of basic Judaic-Christian content. Taken together, the result is that only one in seven gives evidence of being committed to traditional Christianity.” Bibby wonders if “the United Church of Canada has to a great extent become fused with a highly secularized culture.” He said the United church should determine if the message it delivers is “translated Christianity or industrial world-view-induced humanism.”

If the church opts for the secular humanist emphasis, he maintains, it “may well engage in self-liquidation, through finishing a distant second to superior secular competitors.”

Bibby points out that the problems are more serious than imagined because of a “belief lag effect.” He says, “Many people have been rejecting the churches, yet retaining ideas which date back to childhood participation. Without similar exposure, however, it is very doubtful that their children, for example, will manifest such beliefs.”

The failure of all churches at this point, he contends, could have dire effects for them. “Without the sustaining influence of organized religion, commitment to the Judaic-Christian tradition is destined to diminish. And organized religion in Canada—mainline or conservative—is in trouble at this stage in Canadian history.”

In proposing possible strategies for churches, he calls on them to “assess whether or not what they are doing represents anything in the way of a unique contribution to the lives of Canadians.” He points out that churches should be specializing in addressing “the ultimate questions” posed by man.

“In order to flourish in a functionally specialized society, religion must perform a function which gives it something of a unique place,” the sociologist maintains. “It must be saying and doing something different—and appreciably better—than its secular competitors. Only then, we have argued, will people find religion worth their attention and resources, worthy of transmitting to their children and others, and significant among other socializing agents which mold their minds and their actions.” Failure to do that, he warns, could cause people to turn their eyes elsewhere if religion has nothing particularly special to say.

The report is not without a ray of hope. Bibby points out that although religion has become peripheral in Canadian society, the new religions and cults have had a small appeal. “To the extent that Canadians continue to be religious,” he says, “traditional Christianity appears to have a significant lead over its religious competitors.”

According to church spokesmen, the report and analysis have been passed on to denominational department heads and other leaders across the nation. It is probably too early to predict whether the sobering analysis will provoke deep heart searching or acrimonious debate in the United church, which has been cited as a model for church union movements elsewhere.

Although the United church helped subsidize the survey, denominational spokesmen said they contemplate no official response or major action.

Lois Wilson, the church’s moderator, stated that the survey was initiated before she became moderator, and that she was unaware of any specific contemplated response or action.

Albion Wright, secretary to the church’s general counsel, pointed out that the church had not commissioned the report and that there never had been any intention of making it the basis for policy or strategy. He added that it was available for the consideration of those departments that found it useful.

A Look At The Local Church Of The Future

Earlier church services, less denominational loyalty, and changing adult education are some important trends Lyle E. Schaller observes in the church. Schaller, parish consultant for Yokefellow Institute of Richmond, Indiana, became the guru of Christian change agentry with books like The Change Agent and Activating the Passive Church. Writing in the January Presbyterian Survey, Schaller lists seven significant movements that congregations should be aware of to keep up with the times.

1. The most significant, Schaller believes, is the congregational use of local cable television. “It now appears the big audiences for religious telecasting will be via the local cable franchise …,” he says, “rather than over the network stations.”

2. The most controversial trend, on the other hand, is the proliferation of Christian day schools. These schools often open amid accusations of racism, but Schaller thinks their existence is a foregone conclusion. “The real issue is, who will offer this specialized ministry?” he writes, wondering if “mainline” Protestant denominations will move into the field.

3. The erosion of denominational loyalty is another trend. In the average Protestant church, Schaller says, only 8 of 20 new adult members come from a sister church or same denomination. “Less emphasis is being given to denominational labels and more is devoted to the personality, program, and distinctive role of the particular congregation,” Schaller writes.

4. New church members are also picking churches for different reasons than they used to, Schaller believes. During the 1950s and 1960s parents chose churches that had good programs for their children. Now young adults shop for a church with a strong ministry to their own age group, which means “the church with a strong evangelistic thrust must strengthen its adult ministries.”

5. Bible study is moving out of Sunday schools and into weekday slots, Schaller notes. Statistics on Sunday school attendance have looked dismal, but the Bible is receiving more attention at men’s breakfasts, women’s home studies, and “unofficial” groups for high school and college students.

6. Worship services are starting earlier on Sunday mornings, Schaller says. Factors include fewer hours spent sleeping on the average, a desire to free more of the day up for family activities after church—and the National Football League. According to Schaller, the NFL has been “an obvious factor in increasing church attendance at earlier services during the autumn.”

7. The final trend is toward an adult educational curriculum that recognizes “several distinctively different stages of an adult’s faith development.” This means classes may cease being divided by age, gender, marital status, and the like, and focus on the individual’s level of spiritual development.

World Scene

Evangelicals were ready for the advent of competitive broadcasting in Norway, where test broadcasts began with the new year. First of the new local radio stations on the air was the Gilekollen Media Center (GMC) in Kristiansand. The GMC is owned by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission, an evangelical voluntary organization within the (Lutheran) Church of Norway. It is beginning with one hour of programming daily. Six of the first 18 successful applications were submitted by free church denominations and other Christian organizations. Nearly 200 groups have applied.

There were 130 believers from the unregistered Baptist churches being held in Soviet prisons and labor camps at the beginning of 1982. That count is reported by exiled leader Georgi P. Vins of the Council of Evangelical Baptist Churches.

Evangelicals have appeared on television in Yugoslavia for the first time in the history of the socialist nation. In December, Peter Kezmic, director of the Biblical Theological Institute in Zagreb, represented evangelicals alongside Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and Muslim spokesmen. Last month he was interviewed separately. The unprecedented exposure evoked many calls and letters and an interview for a secular magazine.

The Nigerian Bible Society plans to set up its own printing plant at Enugu. This is a departure for black Africa, which has traditionally depended on imported Bibles subsidized through the world service budget of the United Bible Societies. Whole Bibles will continue to be supplied from abroad, but the Nigerian Society is producing its own new-reader Scriptures and Scripture portions.

A congregation of Nigerian Methodists took matters into its own hands recently. The members of Wesley Cathedral, near Lagos, listened as their minister preached a sermon on the Sunday following Christmas. Then, as he retired to the narthex, they mobbed him, snatching off his crown and other regalia and leaving his robe in tatters. They were protesting the move from simple clerical garb to ostentatious attire that accompanied independence for the Wesleyan Methodist Church. The hierarchy switched an ordination scheduled to be held at the cathedral to another location.

Bible study led to the ouster of a top Jehovah’s Witness.

“[In] 40 years of full-time service …, I endured privation, poverty, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fever, dysentery, jailings, dangers of mob violence, of gunshots and war, the risk of life and liberty in dictatorial lands, along with constant toil.…”

That sounds very much like Saint Paul’s own litany of suffering, but the list belongs to one-time Jehovah’s Witness (JW) Raymond Franz. Raymond, 60-year-old nephew of JW president Frederick Franz, climbed high in the JW structure until he was removed from the Watchtower in 1980. Now he has been excommunicated from the cult. In the eyes of his 88-year-old uncle and other loyal JWS, Raymond Franz is as a dead man.

Until his resignation, the younger Franz was a member of the elite governing body, a group of about 15 men who oversee national JW activities from Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn. He resigned under pressure, and last December 31 Franz was disfellowshiped (the JW term for excommunication). The premise for the disfellowshiping was that Ray Franz had dined with a man who left the cult only months before.

Franz does not deny that he had dinner at a Gadsden, Alabama, steak house with Peter Gregerson. But Gregerson, who disassociated himself from the cult after having been a JW since the age of three, is Franz’s landlord and employer. Franz thinks it is difficult not to talk to (or eat with) the man who is your boss and who owns the land on which you live.

After his resignation from the governing body in 1980, Franz was mute. He chose not to comment on any of the problems he had with the cult (CT, Dec. 12, 1980, p. 68). But the recent disfellowshiping has spurred Franz and his friends to tell more of his story.

Raymond Franz graduated from high school in 1940, and the same month went to the mission field to win converts for Jehovah God. He served in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. He once visited a Kentucky coal mining camp with other JW missionaries and was told to leave the camp. When he persisted, Franz was shot at.

After more than 20 years of arduous service, Franz went to Brooklyn and began work on the Aid to Bible Understanding. The encyclopedic Aid is the authoritative JW commentary on what the Bible means. Ray Franz was considered one of the best Bible scholars in Brooklyn and worked on the Aid with four other men.

Writing the Aid drove Franz closer to the Bible and he was haunted by the theme of grace—a theme incongruous with the typically legalistic emphasis of the cult. (Ironically, Franz and two others who wrote “about 80 percent” of the Aid have since been disfellowshiped. Although it has since been revised, it substantially remains a book written by the three men who are no longer JWS.)

By 1971, Franz was elected a member of the prestigious governing body. The reasons for his pressured resignation nine years later remain unclear. Franz and his uncle Frederick, JW president, reportedly were on poor terms (though Raymond will not comment on this). His doctrinal conclusions may also have disturbed other members of the governing body. Political bones of contention included a 1975 shift in the power structure, which Ray Franz supported and his uncle opposed.

He was 58 when he left the Watchtower, untrained in other labor, and without finances. He also had heart problems. It was then that Peter Gregerson, a long-time friend, offered Franz some living space on his Alabama farm. Franz moved near Gadsden and lived in a house trailer, farming and doing odd jobs for Gregerson, and he continued to worship at the Gadsden Kingdom Hall.

By late December Franz was disfellowshiped. The elders said he had violated a pronouncement of the September 15, 1981, Watchtower magazine, which forbade speaking to or dining with a disassociated JW. In Franz’s case, the disassociated JW was Gregerson.

Two years ago, while still a Witness, Gregerson was promoted in his company, Warehouse Groceries, a chain of 10 stores in northeastern Alabama. This gave Gregerson time to read Scripture (many former JWS report their problems with JW authorities began when they started studying the Bible on their own). Despite the fact that all of Gregerson’s family and friends were Witnesses, he “came to the conclusion that what I had been believing all my life was not true.” He resigned from the cult. Franz now works full-time under Gregerson at Warehouse Groceries, as do at least 35 JWS. Though the other Witnesses necessarily speak to Gregerson on occasion (and even eat with him, Franz says), only Franz was disfellowshiped.

Franz appealed his disfellowshiping but withdrew his appeal when he learned who would sit on the appeal committee. One man had been embarrassed by Gregerson years before when Gregerson challenged his handling of a matter before higher JW officials. Another, Earl Parnell, was the father-in-law of Gregerson’s daughter until the marriage ended in bitter divorce. The third was Earl Parnell’s son-in-law.

Spokesmen in Watchtower headquarters say the national officials had nothing to do with Franz’s excommunication. A Gadsden elder says the disfellowshiping concerned “strictly the congregation here. The governing body has nothing to do with it.”

Gregerson considers that claim “laughable.” He believes the elders were in contact with Brooklyn, and the JW elite may have initiated the excommunication. He wrote Brooklyn several times to protest the Gadsden proceedings but never received a reply. In addition, a traveling overseer had questioned Franz at length about his beliefs.

Raymond Franz will not say if he remains a Witness. A series of letters to the committee that eventually turned him out portrays a man seriously wrestling with Scripture and finally proclaiming, Luther-like, “I assure you that if you will help me to see from the Scriptures that the act of eating with Peter Gregerson is a sin, I will humbly repent of such sin before God.” It is a smaller stage, perhaps, than Luther’s or Wesley’s, but the Bible continues to cause men to stand alone and suffer the consequences.

NEWS

Fundamentalist Christianity burst onto the public scene in 1979 when Jerry Falwell organized his Moral Majority. It broke into the news all over again last year in California and Arkansas when creationists went to court to fight the theory of evolution in public schools.

Now, fundamentalism has boiled up in another arena, pitting racial discrimination against religious freedom. Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, citing a biblical injunction against mixing of races, refused to admit black students until 1975. It still prohibits dating and marriage between races, although it has fewer than 12 blacks among its 6,000 students.

Its biblical beliefs on racial separation are not shared by most biblically conservative Christian schools—even most other fundamentalist schools. The Bob Jones doctrine holds that joining of races contributes to “one-worldism,” which it says is man’s attempt to unite against God, and that God intended the races to remain separate when he dispersed the people at the Tower of Babel.

Bob Jones III, the school’s president (his father and grandfather preceded him as president), testified in detail on the school’s beliefs during a federal trial in 1978.

According to the Bible, Jones testified, three races descended from the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and God scattered them so they would seek him, not unite against him. Jones also used Deuteronomy 32:8: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the Sons of Adam …” He also quoted part of Acts 17:26, in which God is said to have set the bounds of people’s habitation.

Jones referred to several passages in Revelation in which God unites the people under his kingdom, and testified that “God has divided people religiously, he has divided them geographically, he has divided them racially. But there is coming a day when all of that will cease, and until that day comes, we intend to do our best to keep the lines that God has established.”

Evangelical scholars disagree with nearly every point Jones makes. Bruce Waltke, the Old Testament authority at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, said there is no way to correlate the descendents of Shem, Ham, and Japheth with races in the modern anthropological sense. For one thing, said Waltke, Caucasians can be found in each line: Israelites among the sons of Shem, Greeks among the sons of Japheth, and Egyptians among the sons of Ham. The emphasis of the passage is not on the establishment of racial lines but upon the curse of Canaan, the son of Ham. “To our knowledge, he said, Canaan is not part of the Negroid race.”

Waltke said it is theologically inappropriate to use the Old Testament to establish modern-day racial segregation since God no longer works through physical blood lines as he did with the nation of Israel. That is because the work of Christ opened salvation to all. He referred to 1 Corinthians 7:39: “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (NASB).

Finally, Waltke noted that Deuteronomy 21 provides rules whereby Israelites might marry outside their own racial group, and thus the practice is expressly not prohibited in the Bible.

Walter Elwell, professor of Bible and theology at the Wheaton College Graduate School (and CT book editor), said that, biblically, “there is only one race, period. It is the fundamental presupposition of the entire Bible.… Because we are all mankind, we all take part in Adam’s sin, and because we are all mankind, we can all be redeemed because Christ died.” Regarding the passage from Acts 17:26 used by Jones in the trial, Elwell said the verse teaches precisely the opposite of what Jones contends. Elwell also noted that the portion Jones did not use in court says “he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth …,” thereby emphasizing the unity of man, not his separation.

The Bob Jones beliefs do not square with those of some other fundamentalist schools, most notably Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg, Virginia. It has some 200 blacks in a 3,000-student enrollment, a larger percentage than in some evangelical schools. Ed Hinson, associate dean of its School of Religion, sees segregation as a Southern issue: “I do not see it as an issue that divides fundamentalists from evangelicals,” he said. “In defending Bob Jones we would need to be very clear that we are not defending their position.

The Goldsboro (South Carolina) Christian Schools comprise another fundamentalist institution that does not admit blacks, which, like Bob Jones, is defending itself before the U.S. Supreme Court. Its board chairman is a Bob Jones graduate. Most evangelical organizations disagree with Bob Jones theologically, but some mainline bodies, including the American Baptists and United Presbyterians (as well as the National Association of Evangelicals), have filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court defending the school’s religious freedom to hold its view.

For the last 12 years, Bob Jones University has battled the Internal Revenue Service to retain its tax exemption, with the IRS contending the school cannot qualify as a charitable institution eligible for tax exemption because its practice violates public policy. President Reagan called off the IRS and restored tax-exempt status to the 111 private schools, including Bob Jones, which were ruled ineligible for tax-exempt certificates. Congress, not the IRS, should establish the policy, Reagan said. The White House hastened to send a proposed bill to Capitol Hill that would remove tax exemptions from those who are practicing racial segregation.

Because of Reagan’s action, the religious issues in question—which the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to rule on—seemed lost in the swirl of antisegregationist rhetoric.

In response, William Ball, the Bob Jones attorney, issued a stinging memo criticizing what he called “a triumph of media distortion.” Ball wrote: “The avalanche of telecasts, editorials, and cartoons have almost totally omitted any reference to (a) whether Congress gave the IRS the power it asserted, and (b) whether religious institutions must lock-step their practices to ‘federal public policy’ as the price of their tax exemption (and thus their existence).”

The only island of calm in the turmoil seemed to be the Supreme Court. The White House asked the Court to remove the Bob Jones case from its calendar since the IRS antisegregation policy, which brought about the dispute, was no longer in force. But so far, the Court has not removed the case, leading to speculation that the justices may decide the question anyway.