Page 5466 – Christianity Today (2024)

Sexy or not, Earthly Powers reiterates: What does it mean to be a man of God?

Could Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers in any way be meat for Christians? Its central character, Kenneth Marchal Toomey, is a hom*osexual, and explicit sex and gutter jokes pop out of hundreds of the 1980 novel’s 607 pages.

But Christian theology permeates Earthly Powers. Is God good? Toomey boggles at concentrations camps. Is God just to allow the church to condemn hom*osexuality, while Toomey burns? Are man’s Christian efforts helpful? Who are the real saints?

Famous authors of history manifest hilarious mannerisms in Paris sidewalk cafe chats with Toomey, who is himself a successful novelist tangentially modeled on Somerset Maugham. During the Prohibition period in the U.S., Toomey’s Italian brother-in-law is hacked to death in a Chicago meat locker. During the Nazi regime, Toomey’s adopted mother shoots at Himmler. Toomey shoves the Nazi to safety; Madame Campanati is mowed down. Toomey’s niece commits suicide in a Jonestown-type massacre. History sizzles again.

What does it mean to be a man of God? The novel is charged with this question. Huge Carlo Campanati, who becomes Pope Gregory XVII, is Toomey’s alter ego. For Carlo, life is war. Evil is not secular, as is sometimes implied in phrases like “the evils of capitalism.” Rather, “evil properly means an absolute force that has run riot in the world almost since the day of creation, and will only be quelled at the day of judgment” (p. 148). Sometimes a battle is lost. Even then, good may come out of evil (“God will take care of the ratio between the world’s population and the food supplies of the world. Today we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of a war which reduced the population of Europe by some millions. Out of evil good” [p. 203].).

In any case, there is no question who will win the war. Meanwhile, “we must do what we can where we can,” Carlo says, when, powerless to aid his mutilated brother, he heals a child dying in the same hospital.

Formidable in every way, Carlo storms around the globe, picking up the lingo everywhere. He lifts his cassock and boots a Nazi in the crotch. He throws ammonia, disguised as holy water, into the eyes of a burly Indian sorcerer from whom he is exorcising demons. He lobbies for trade unions, and listens sympathetically to Marxists. He engineers the Lateran treaty with Mussolini that makes the Vatican inviolate, then attacks the Nazis ferociously. Nevertheless, he tells an Indian blackshirt, “I love Benito Mussolini probably more than you do … and I regret that his pure humanity, which issued from the hand of a God in whom he does not believe, has been so foully sullied.”

No gnostic, Carlo also eats formidably: “The waiter brought fish in one hand and tried to take the tureen away with the other. Don Carlo put out burly arms and grasped it by its rim: there was still half a plateful there.… There was a big boiled oiled cauliflower which Don Carlo at once, as though performing a sacrifice, chopped into three unequal portions.… I wondered whether to raise the theological issue of gluttony, but I knew what the answer would be. Eating your fill was not gluttony, it was a good, nay a necessity. As for eating beyond your fill, that was the devil’s work and it contrived a kind of purgation along with the temporary agony, both salutary things.”

Unfortunately, Carlo’s best acts backfire. Because he encourages the vernacular mass, his nephew, an anthropologist, is sacrificed by Africans who have indigenized the mass absolutely. The child Carlo heals grows up to become the Jim Jones figure who drugs Carlo’s niece to death.

Do these paradoxes show Carlo’s humanness? Or are he and Toomey manipulators of different kinds of earthly powers, who succeed outwardly but fail ultimately? Is the real saint Toomey’s easygoing brother Tom? Or is Tom scarcely more a saint than is an animal, who doesn’t harm because he doesn’t aim to achieve anything great?

Throughout, Burgess spins a kaleidoscope of linguistic, literary, pun, and musical lines. German, Italian, Latin, Swahili, French, Malay, and Arabic color the narrative. Earthly Powers is dazzling. But is it also p*rnography? Certainly it is not Grace Irwin or Taylor Caldwell. Perhaps it is for the professional student of literature who, as A. N. Triton suggests in Whose World?, may breeze over sex passages that would explode for an amateur reader.

Meanwhile, however, to avoid realism that might include sex and violence, too many Christians bury their minds in fantasy. Christian bookstores market works by the “Inklings” and later derivative writers ad nauseum, out of all proportion to their significance in the total stream of Christian literature, and without any comparative emphasis on writers like Mauriac, Greene, O’Connor, and Wiebe. We want to escape: this world is not our home. How we would blush at Chaucer’s bawdy tales or the Bible’s steamy sex scenes.

Sexy or not, Earthly Powers reiterates: What does it mean to be a man of God? Toomey’s last words come as he watches a thunderstorm: “‘He plants his footsteps in the sea,’ I quoted from Sunday’s services while I looked out from the lashed french windows, ‘and rides upon the storm.’ The old bastard. Will he let us sleep?”

Christ does not guarantee sleep, however. Though we see through a glass darkly, Christ guarantees victory.

Yet both Toomey and Carlo hunger and thirst for God. Both die in the faith. For an artist, reality includes multiple levels of meaning, including paradoxes. Perhaps Burgess senses that God does move in mysterious ways, and sometimes through earth’s power-charged storms.

Dr. Adeney is lecturer in missions and cross-cultural communication at Seattle Pacific University, Washington.

Mainline churchmen fear evangelicals will dominate.

Some described it as a “thorny issue.” Others conjured up images of the proverbial “can of worms.” But in spite of the generally acknowledged dangers, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) last month opened public hearings on the future of religious broadcasting in Canada.

Since its creation under the Broadcasting Act in 1968, the CRTC has had sole responsibility for the regulation and supervision of all aspects of broadcasting in Canada. Although religious broadcasting per se is not addressed at any point in the act, the focal point has become section three, which requires Canadian programming to present “a reasonable, balanced opportunity for the expression of differing views on matters of public concern.” In the past, the CRTC, which exercises its control through the licensing of broadcasters, has steadfastly refused to license specifically Christian stations, saying these would not reflect the “balance” spoken of in the act. Consequently, Canada has no totally Christian radio or television station except in Newfoundland, where two radio stations have been operating since before that province joined the Confederation in 1949. Indeed, their continued existence was even stated as a prerequisite for Newfoundland joining the country.

Although there has been some dissatisfaction within the Christian broadcasting community concerning the CRTC’S restrictive approach, the scene had remained reasonably quiet—that is, until February last year when Crossroads Christian Communications, Incorporated, producers of the highly successful “100 Huntley Street” program seen daily nationally, made application to the CRTC for a license to distribute their programs via satellite across Canada. In denying their request, the commission acknowledged the need for public discussion on the whole issue, and submissions from interested parties were invited.

An overwhelming 1,500 submissions were received, ranging from single-page letters to carefully prepared and well-documented briefs. A representative sampling of 39 was selected, and their authors were invited to defend their beliefs at the public hearings.

It soon became apparent that CRTC chairman John Meisel’s opening reference to religion as being normally considered a subject “never introduced into polite conversation in mixed company” was well-founded. Two members of Parliament who testified berated the commission for not allowing the marketplace to determine whether or not a station should be on the air. Counseling the CRTC not to become “a denominational Grand Inquisitor,” a British Columbia member of Parliament described the denial of licenses as censorship—“usually something that is applied to p*rnography and obscenity.” “How ludicrous,” he claimed, “that it is being applied to something as wholesome as Christianity and religion.”

While the call for deregulation was shared by several others, including the Canadian Association of Christian Broadcasters and the Council of the Atlantic United Baptist Convention, it was not echoed by the Council of Muslim Communities of Canada (CMCC). Addressing the commission by means of a telephone link from his office in Saskatoon, Hisham Ahmad expressed the CMCC’S concern that the licensing of specifically religious stations would only mean that evangelical Christian groups with more money at their disposal would dominate the air waves at the expense of religious minorities. Referring to U.S. evangelists “in the style of Falwell and Roberts,” Ahmad described his uneasiness with the message that “unless you follow our ways, you will most assuredly go to hell. Unless you contribute funds, other people will go to hell.”

Warning against the licensing of religious stations, Ahmad reiterated his opinion that if they were permitted, stringent controls should be maintained by an interfaith committee. He proposed to the CRTC that only regular stations be allowed to carry more religious programming, and that such programs be only of an educational nature, reflecting “the mosaic that is Canada.”

Spokesmen for Interchurch Communication expressed similar concerns. Representing Anglican, United, English-speaking Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian, as well as some Baptist churches, the group called for a moratorium on any decision to open up the air waves.

Rabbi Jordan Pearlson of the Canadian Jewish Congress also spoke of controls, which, he maintained, were especially necessary for the area of fund raising, both on the air and even in subsequent direct-mail solicitations.

His concern had been earlier justified by the presentation of Maj. Ben Cheney, a career officer in the Canadian armed forces. Cheney’s brief, backed up by numerous exhibits, described how, after a tour of duty in the Middle East, he had returned home to his widowed mother to find she had given away thousands of dollars in response to “personal” letters from Rex Humbard and others. The letters, he claimed, had been churned out by machine for the sole purpose of defrauding his mother and others like her. The advent of computers, coupled with high-pressure tactics, makes it possible for susceptible people to become the prey of such TV evangelists, said Cheney.

Not coincidentally, a television documentary describing Cheney’s case in detail was aired the night before his presentation, and it highlighted his testimony. ABC’s movie Pray TV, which premiered just as the hearings closed, served to underscore the issue. Also interviewed in the documentary exposé of TV evangelists was David Mainse, founder and host of “100 Huntley Street,” the Crossroads production. Although the interviewer observed that the Mainse program does not go in for “the vulgar excesses” of many of the TV evangelists, his success in Canada has caused concern among many of those present at the hearings.

So it was not surprising that the Crossroads brief became the focus of considerable attention. Calling for neither status quo nor deregulation of individual station licensing, the Crossroads team presented a model for a Christian TV network with round-the-clock spiritual content. It would, they maintained, be open to denominational productions from all elements of the Christian faith. But just who would control the content of the programs, or which groups would be acceptable, was vague, at best.

The Crossroads brief did make an impressive case for what one Toronto paper termed simply “clean television.” Included would be “clean music, good kids, good advice, and even a respectable soap opera.” Their logic concerning the need for such fare was certainly easier to follow than that put forward by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB). In their brief, the CAB insisted that soaps full of drug dealers and shysters contribute to the moral fiber of the land by encouraging viewers to hate such characters! “Religious stations,” argued the CAB, “just aren’t needed.”

It is unlikely the CRTC will find an easy solution to the problem of religious broadcasting in Canada as it weighs the evidence brought before it. But while it considers the issue in general, it will have to come to grips with those specific and thorny questions raised during the hearings: What constitutes “religious” broadcasting? What must be its aims (whether to evangelize or merely explore religion)? Can—or even should—balance be regulated within a single station or across the system? How can access to religious broadcasting be equitably distributed (recognizing majority wishes and minority rights)? How might abuses, especially fund-raising abuses, be controlled?

The answer will have far-reaching consequences for the direction of religious broadcasting in Canada for years to come, but it will not, at any rate, be immediately forthcoming. A spokesman for the commission, asked when a ruling might be announced, replied simply, “God only knows!” The rest of us wait and wonder.

Christianity Grows In Nepal; So Do Arrests

More than 50 Christians have been arrested in Nepal over the last several months, according to visitors to the Christian Conference of Asia held in Singapore. Indiscreet literature distribution touched off the latest round of repression in the Hindu kingdom.

Behind these is the probability that rulers are apprehensive over the spread of Christianity. Three factors are significant. First, Nepalese Christian leaders estimate that the 4,000 Christians in the country in 1979 have tripled since then—largely through an informal network of house fellowships.

Second, the Nepal Christian Fellowship (NCF), a national body established 20 years ago, opened the Nepal Bible Institute last May on NCF property outside Kathmandu, the capital city. It began with nine students, with and without previous education.

Third, an NCF conference last April, attended by 400 from at least 80 of the 200-plus congregations in mountainous Nepal, increased unity in a fellowship that, due to poor roads and communications, had developed eastern and western components with some resulting rivalries. Adon Rongong, Nepalese director of Campus Crusade for Christ, was elected president of a more united NCF.

The NCF, however, does not have a working relationship with the 28-year-old United Mission to Nepal, which concentrates on educational, medical, and economic projects in the country (CT, July 18, 1980, p.56). In accordance with local law, it does not evangelize openly.

Singh said an American missionary friend who wanted to work in Nepal was told by UMN that he would have to adhere to its service contract and only share his faith with those who came to him and inquired about his faith. The missionary reportedly felt that such an arrangement was unsatisfactory, and he decided to go elsewhere.

Surprise! God Is Alive And Well In Dayton, Ohio

Is “God Among Us”? An Ohio newspaper asked that question in an intensive eight-month study, and published a six-part series by that title. The answer: God is not only alive, but quite well in southwestern Ohio.

The Dayton Journal Herald found some surprising things when it went on the trail of God in its city. Critics of television evangelists claim contributions to TV preachers siphon off funds that would otherwise go to local congregations. But the Dayton reporters found that most viewers of TV preaching are also churchgoers. Most contribute to their church but not to the TV preacher, and those who do give to TV ministries give even more to their home church.

The series concluded that “religion is woven into the fabric of our lives.” Reporters surmised that being born again was a common condition before ex-President Jimmy Carter. (A poll done for the series showed 40 percent of the Dayton church members call themselves “born again.”)

The Crenshaw Christian Center has 9,000 members.

They start coming as early as 6:30 on Sunday morning. By 10, there are lines around the block, and police unclog traffic bottlenecks near the parking lot. Those arriving too late to get into the 1,400-seat sanctuary will have to view the proceedings on closed-circuit television from the gymnasium. The morning service will be taped for television and aired as far away as Australia and the West Indies.

This is Crenshaw Christian Center in Inglewood, California; Frederick K. Price, pastor. Its membership, consisting mostly of middle-class blacks, has tripled in the last three years and now stands at 9,302, with over 3,000 in new members classes. To accommodate the numbers, the congregation has purchased the former Los Angeles campus of Pepperdine University for $14 million ($2.5 million down payment) and plans to construct a 10,000-seat-sanctuary. The existing buildings will be used for a school of ministry.

The church is charismatic but independent, and exhibits none of the disorder sometimes found in Pentecostal-style meetings. In the service on January 17, the pastoral staff carefully outlined biblical principles of order for the use of gifts. There were two instances of glossolalia (tongues), both by women, both short, and both followed by interpretation. The announcement for the offering was greeted with applause, and the gifts were collected in buckets instead of plates.

Price’s sermon is an hour-long, verse-by-verse study of Colossians. With his Bible open, he roams the aisles and up among the choir, interacting with the congregation by asking questions and repeating key points several times. Many people take notes. His illustrations, often humorous, draw on everyday life and the familiar world of the work place.

Now in his forties, Frederick Price grew up in a family influenced by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he did not become a Christian until his first year of marriage in 1952. Since receiving the call of God to the ministry “in an audible voice,” he has been pastor of Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Christian and Missionary Alliance churches. The current facilities in a neat, well-manicured section of Inglewood, near Los Angeles, were purchased from a white Disciples of Christ congregation that Price states “went out of business” because they “would not integrate.”

Although the center’s television program, “Ever-Increasing Faith,” is enormously popular in Los Angeles, Price does not credit this with the recent upswing in membership. “We already had two morning services and closed-circuit television before the television ministry,” he says. His concept of television is not to build membership, but to teach the Bible. “Most people who come here are attracted by the changed lives of our members,” he affirms.

Price’s own ministry began to be successful, he states, after a Spirit-baptism experience in 1970. He was influenced by Kathryn Kuhlman, Lutheran charismatic Larry Christiansen, and Tulsa evangelist Kenneth Hagin. While maintaining his independence, he has supported Oral Roberts’s hospital project, expressing sympathy for Roberts’s concept of healing that “combines the natural and supernatural.” He approves of the work of the denominations, even the Catholic charismatic movement, and such people as Billy Graham. However, he maintains that “denominationalism will have to go some day, because by its very nature it is divisive.”

On the subject of theological education and the value of seminaries, Price refuses comment. He has had no formal theological training himself. His library is well stocked with standard biblical works popular among evangelical clergy, but he relegates them to the time before his Spirit baptism and no longer uses them. He also feels that even Hebrew and Greek linguistic studies, “unless implemented,” are of little practical use.

On political and social issues, Price likewise refuses comment, a stance that has upset local critics. He urges members to follow the injunction to pray for their leaders—advice not likely to satisfy social-justice advocates.

In his cassette ministry, Price makes available a series of ten tapes entitled, “Redeemed from Poverty, Sickness and Death” and nine tapes entitled “High Finance—Tithes and Offerings.” Critics have perceived such things as an undue emphasis on materialism and prosperity, with some accusing Price of being “a cross between Richard Pryor and Reverend Ike.” He finds the charge annoying, but dismisses it without response. Crenshaw Christian Center does have a financial assistance program for people in need, with priority given to church members.

Described in the local press as low-key, Price does not see himself as a leader beyond his own ministry. Unlike pastors at other large, area churches, he never calls press conferences and never seeks publicity. But with a swelling membership soon to go over 10,000, a huge new sanctuary, and television exposure, he may not have to.

Personalia

Glenn Anderson has resigned as dean of North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago. Dean since 1968, he will return to full-time teaching of church history at North Park. The seminary’s enrollment doubled under Anderson’s leadership.

Bob E. Patterson, a professor of religion at Baylor University (Waco, Texas) has been named the president of a new organization, the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion. The association was formed to “foster scholarly publication” by members, and will launch a journal to be called Perspectives in Religious Studies.

North American Scene

The Chicago archdiocese announced that 40 percent of the parishioners in each parish must subscribe to the archdiocesan newspaper. Any parish that had not reached that quota by February 15 would receive a weekly bulk mailing of the newspaper—with a bill sent to the pastor. Hit by the recent postal hikes (CT, Feb. 5, p. 68), the plan was an attempt to augment revenue through an increase in circulation, which had been falling. So many priests objected that Cardinal Cody, the bishop of Chicago, extended the date by which the new subscriptions must be paid.

The United Church of Christ is the first U.S. denomination to have a female majority in its seminaries. Recent enrollment figures show 52 percent of the denomination’s students in master of divinity programs are women. Other denominations with significant percentages of women students include the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 34 percent; United Presbyterian Church, 32 percent; United Methodist Church, 32 percent; American Baptist Church, 29 percent; and the Lutheran Church in America, 26 percent.

Several evangelical seminaries have been reinstated on the United Methodist Church’s list of approved schools. Six of eight schools considered favorable to evangelicals by the UM renewal movement, Good News, were placed on probation last June by UM officials. That meant graduates of those schools would not be eligible for ordination in the denomination. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (S. Hamilton, Mass.) now has full approval, as does Oral Roberts University (Tulsa). Also approved were Ashland (Ohio) Theological Seminary and Memphis (Tenn.) Theological Seminary. Schools still unapproved by the UM include Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Ill.).

One of C.S. Lewis’s Narnian Chronicles will appear on movie theater screens in two years. The Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation, pleased by the success of producing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for television, now plans to do The Magician’s Nephew for theatrical release. The Lion … won an Emmy award and attracted 37 million prime-time viewers for its television release in 1979. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia is a seven-volume story of fantasy and adventure for children.

The U.S. Supreme Court has reiterated its 20-year-old ban on sponsored prayer in public schools. The case originated when a 1980 Louisiana law permitting voluntary prayer in public schools was implemented by the school board of Jefferson Parish, near New Orleans. Three parents sued, contending that the law and the board’s policy promoted religion in violation of the First Amendment. A district court judge upheld the law, but the court of appeals reversed the decision in August, maintaining that it was an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling, not accompanied by a written opinion, upheld the appellate court.

Evangelist Morris Cerullo, his World Evangelism organization, and the purchasers of its San Diego hotel complex face a $13 million lawsuit filed by a real estate agent. Maureen L. King and her company, La Costa Financial and Investments, filed an eight-count suit accusing Cerullo and World Evangelism of bilking her out of a 3 percent commission on the December 9 sale, which she alleges would have amounted to $510,000. Atlanta-based developer Terry Considine and several associates bought the hotel and adjacent properties for an undisclosed sum, although county property records show the price was more than $12 million.

Arkansas state Senator Jim Holsted, sponsor of the controversial Arkansas creation-science law, has been placed on a year’s probation and fined $5,000. He was charged with stealing $105,000 from Providential Life Insurance Company, of which he was treasurer and board chairman. Democrat Holsted, who resigned his elective office as part of a pleabargaining arrangement and repaid the money, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of making false or misleading statements. He said he might run for election after his probation. “A winner,” Holsted said, “never accepts defeat.”

… catching some evangelicals off guard, wary

It looked like a worship service in one of Lima’s evangelical churches: lively gospel choruses, the strumming guitar, clapping and spontaneity, and plenty of praises in prayer. But this was a Catholic charismatic prayer group at its Wednesday night meeting in Twelve Apostles Parish.

About 50 people, most of them young, were one week away from completing a 10-week course, “Life in the Spirit.” The final session would give participants the opportunity to pray for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Rómulo Falcón, the invited speaker for the evening, explained what that next step involved.

“Don’t seek the baptism in the Spirit until you recognize Jesus as your only Lord,” said the priest, dressed casually and sounding like a Billy Graham from the Vatican. “Total surrender to Christ is essential for receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. The tendency of many today is to seek their own salvation, to rise above sin on their own power. But the only Savior is Jesus.”

Afterwards, driving his Volkswagen back across town to his own parish, Falcón shared freely how a 17-year-old involved in the Catholic charismatic renewal led him to Christ and into a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit. He recalled that he was then rector of the seminary in Trujillo, and, as a frustrated product of nine years of advanced theological training, was about to leave the priesthood.

By all indications, Falcón’s testimony is similar to hundreds of others in Peru’s Catholic charismatic renewal. There are a thousand registered Catholic charismatic prayer groups in Peru (“registered” means that each has a trained leader, and that members have completed the “Life in the Spirit” course). At the hub of the movement, in Lima, an estimated 30,000 Catholics in 150 prayer groups identify with the movement.

Some time ago, Juan Landazuri Ricketts, primate of Peru and archbishop of Lima, appointed Falcón as coordinator of the charismatic renewal in Lima (another priest is nationwide coordinator). Concerned about having trained leaders for the growing movement, Falcón a year ago started a school for servidores, or servants, which meets currently in 15 locations around the city. Participants committed themselves to one weekend of Bible and discipleship training per month over three years’ time. Members of “Jesus’ Victory,” an evangelical charismatic group in Orlando, Florida, were flying down to teach in the school at their own expense.

When asked about the Catholic charismatic renewal in Lima, local evangelical leaders did not seem aware of the movement. One reason for this is that the Catholic movement is drawn from the upper classes, while evangelicals substantially come from the lower social strata. Most had never heard of Falcón or that so many people linked themselves to the movement.

Most of those who have heard about the renewal have greeted the news about as enthusiastically as Ananias greeted word of Saul’s conversion. They recall persecution from priests as recently as the 1960s.

One Lima missionary, possibly representing a majority of the city’s evangelical community, complained that if Catholics really were accepting Christ, they should come out of their church to evangelical Protestantism. He complained of seeing literature showing the so-called Four Spiritual Laws on one side and a message calling for greater devotion to the Virgin Mary on the other.

Lima’s Catholic charismatics are determined to stay with their church, but many say their goal is to renew it. The charismatic renewal already has brought changes to Roman Catholicism, said Falcón. Singing for instance, has entered the worship service. “We never sang before,” he said.

Besides that, he described a greater emphasis on personal Bible study and Christian community. “And the Catholic church is being purified of things that have nothing to do with biblical Christianity: the processions, the images.”

Unlike many Pentecostals, Lima’s charismatics do not emphasize speaking in tongues. They say it is only one of many gifts available to the Spirit-filled Christian.

Sometimes the term “baptism in the Spirit” is used synonymously with personal salvation. At other times it is used to refer to renewed activity of the Spirit in a Christian.

The renewal in Latin American Catholicism is difficult to gauge theologically. This is partly because it is overwhelmingly a lay, rather than a clerical, movement, and therefore doctrinally imprecise. Another reason is that it divides into two streams.

The larger stream is open to Protestant influence and tends to downplay the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church without denying them. It tolerates traditional practices, but quietly deplores them. The smaller stream tends to reinforce the very traditional aspects of Catholic piety and sees manifestations of the Spirit as the subjective appropriation of gifts already objectively given through the church.

The resulting mix makes most of the Catholic hierarchy nervous, because, although it values the vitality of the movement, it perceives that much of it appeals more to Scripture and to the Holy Spirit and less to the authority of the bishops.

It also puts off Protestant evangelicals, who see that some Catholics become more ardent in their veneration of the Virgin and more regular in confession. They also perceive still-unresolved contradictions between the remaining charismatics’ quite evangelical gut-level theology and their acquiescence to traditional Roman Catholic doctrine at the propositional level.

The charismatic renewal has not only swept into local parishes, but also into Catholic young people’s and businessmen’s circles. When all of Lima’s charismatic Catholic youth meet, from 4,000 to 7,000 turn out.

Concerned to see young converts in the renewal get solid Bible and discipleship training, businessman Jimmy Pestana and his wife, Norma, started a Bible school in their home (no evangelical seminary in the city would accept Catholics as students). Some 125 young men and women took the classes five evenings a week.

Besides being Falcón’s choice to oversee the youth movement, Pestana also leads a growing renewal and evangelistic outreach among the city’s business community. Interestingly, the unintentional catalyst for this movement was Protestant: Allan Shannon, coordinator for government, church, and public relations for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which is related to Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Two years ago Shannon was attending a charismatic prayer group, which included Pestana and another man, and Shannon saw in both men particular Christian leadership potential. Shannon invited the two to start meeting weekly with him for lunch for discipling, prayer, and Bible study.

Occasionally they would invite unbelieving business acquaintances who, after hearing their friends’ testimonies, would “literally break down and ask, ‘How can I have what you guys have?’” recalled Shannon.

Seeing many “unplanned” conversions, Shannon and others decided to hold larger meetings with evangelism in mind. Wednesday night meetings began in a Lima country club, where the men would invite unconverted acquaintances for an informal coffee. The meetings would end with a believer’s personal testimony and an invitation for prayer to accept Christ.

Five or more regularly responded. In the two years since the three men’s first lunch date, an estimated 200 men have made Christian commitments through this outreach.

The charismatic renewal in Lima dates back to 1970, but it really took off in 1979 after the Sixth Catholic Charismatic Encounter in Latin America, better known as ECCLA VI. Some 90 delegates, leaders of the Catholic renewal from 20 countries in the Americas, met for 10 days in Lima. The emphasis was evangelization of Latin America’s 300 million baptized Catholics (about 95 percent of the population). Significantly for the renewal in Peru, at ECCLA VI Cardinal Landazuri pledged his full support for the renewal, calling it “undoubtedly a presence of the Spirit in his church.”

Shannon says he can understand why evangelicals have been hesitant or unwilling to involve themselves with Catholics: doctrinal differences, memories of Catholic persecution of Protestants, and church leaders and missionaries fearing what their constituencies will think. However, Shannon says he urges evangelical leaders at least to talk to Catholics. “I tell people, ‘Let’s find out what God is doing and get behind it.’”

Catholic charismatics are literally begging for Bible teachers. Shannon recalled a conversation with some nuns who teach at an exclusive Catholic girls school in Lima. They asked that Shannon help them locate evangelicals who could teach the Bible in their school. “But not one [evangelical] would touch it!” groaned Shannon, smacking his forehead. “What an opportunity—the chance to teach the Bible to 2,000 girls, the cream of the crop—and we didn’t take advantage of it.”

Shannon currently teaches at the Bible school in Pestana’s home and occupies a behind-the-scenes support role in the Catholic charismatic renewal. Responding to a friend in the U.S. who wondered if Catholics perhaps were “converting” him, Shannon wrote that like the apostle Paul, he only sought to become all things to all men so that some might be saved. “This means if I want to win Catholic priests and nuns to Jesus Christ, I’m going to have to get in with them and show them Christ’s love.”

Some evangelical leaders are disturbed by the restriction against the entrance of additional foreign evangelical missionaries into Peru—only replacements for departing missionaries are admitted.

Pedro Merino, general secretary of the National Evangelical Council of Peru, said immigration officials apparently are honoring the request for such a restriction directly from Cardinal Landazuri. Last month Merino was trying to arrange a meeting with the cardinal to iron out the problem.

The Catholic charismatic renewal’s ultimate impact may well depend on whether it can pair strong biblical foundations and leadership maturity with the rapid growth of the movement. Also, much depends on whether the church hierarchy gives leeway to renewal leaders such as Falcón. Many of the movement’s innovations and practices must certainly appear shocking to the traditionalists.

Structural renewal of the Catholic church began with Vatican II, said Falcón. But the charismatic renewal is bringing another kind of renewal, “an interior one,” he added. “In the renewal, one accepts Christ as Savior and Lord. Before, the Catholic church didn’t know that experience.”

In the view of this unassuming priest, the result of the charismatic renewal will be nothing less than to “renew the whole Catholic church.”

Howard To Head World Evangelical Fellowship

The World Evangelical Fellowship executive council last month appointed David M. Howard, Sr., as its general secretary. Howard, a former Latin America Mission missionary and missions director for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, assumed the post at the beginning of this month.

The previous general secretary, Waldron Scott, resigned 13 months ago, and Wade T. Coggins, the North American member of the executive council and executive director of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, had assumed the post’s duties on an interim basis.

The World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF) is a grouping of 44 national associations of churches that was formed in 1951. Its North American components are the National Association of Evangelicals and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. It is often regarded as an alternative to the World Council of Churches.

Howard’s appointment followed a sustained but unsuccessful effort to recruit a Third World Christian leader for the post. National leadership, it appeared, although of high quality, was still thin, forcing candidates to conclude they could not be spared from their national responsibilities.

Plans by Scott in the early 1970s to relocate the WEF offices from Colorado Springs to Beirut, Lebanon, were aborted during the civil war in that country. But the WEF has made more progress in shifting from its orchestrated-in-the-West beginnings than at first meets the eye.

Over the past year, the WEF leadership has deemphasized the idea of a central location and moved instead to the concept of a worldwide team of leaders who work in their own regions and travel for periodic consultations.

A delicate issue in the relationships of evangelicals at the international level is the relationship of the WEF, with its relatively spartan support from its national affiliates, and the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, generously endowed by Billy Graham-related sources and led by Leighton Ford. It is therefore noteworthy that Howard directed the 1980 consultation at Pattaya, Thailand, which served as a follow-up to the 1974 Lausanne congress.

Howard was most recently senior vice-president of the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Evangelism Explosion (CT, Jan. 22, p.31).

World Scene

The World Council of Churches has produced a major document on church practice, which it hopes will give the ecumenical movement a boost. Meeting in Lima, Peru, in January, nearly 100 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox theologians of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order (advised by Roman Catholic observers) unanimously adopted an agreement, “Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry,” and asked their member denominations to respond officially, indicating the extent to which they were prepared to concur. The accord recognized both infant baptism and “believer’s baptism” of adults, but bars rebaptism. It also attempts to reconcile the Protestant view of Communion as a memorial with the Catholic view of it as a sacrifice. And it advocates an “episcopal” structure of the ministry, with bishops, priests, and deacons.

The Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church will recognize the validity of each other’s baptism. The January ecumenical move cleared the way for a “common baptismal certificate” for the Presbyterians and Catholics, Scotland’s two largest denominations.

Evangelicals in the Netherlands are alarmed by a so-called antidiscrimination bill being debated in the Dutch parliament. Introduced last September by Minister of Justice Jacob de Ruiter and parliamentary undersecretary Kraayezeld Wouters, the measure would make it illegal for organizations—including schools, hospitals, and institutions for social and youth work—to exclude personnel because of hom*osexuality or cohabitation outside of marriage, or to maintain regulations forbidding these practices. The Dutch Evangelical Broadcasting Company is coordinating an extensive campaign against the bill, and 6,000 Christian schools have joined in protesting it.

The Church of Sweden may lose its role as national census taker. For more than two centuries the Lutheran churches have not only registered all births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths, but have maintained population records. Now a Swedish government committee has recommended that census records be turned over to the state social security organization and be processed by computer.

How Christian are Western European countries? Recently released statistics from 1980 for the established churches in West Germany and Finland provide some insight. The Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Germany reported that 42 percent of the West German population belonged to its 17 regional churches, but only a little more than 5 percent on the average attended worship on Sundays. The high point was Christmas Eve when a quarter of the members appeared. In Finland, 92 percent of all children born were baptized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. But an average of only 3 percent of parishioners attended Sunday worship services.

Greece may be about to get civil marriage for the first time, over the strong objections of the Greek Orthodox Church. Currently only church weddings are valid. The church’s council of bishops insists that civil marriage is tantamount to prostitution and adultery and declares that those who contract a civil marriage will “automatically place themselves outside the ranks of the church.” The Greek Socialist government also seeks to repeal legislation mandating jail terms of up to a year for adultery and forbidding remarriage for any person sentenced for the offense.

Lida Vashchenko, one of the Pentecostal “Siberian Seven,” has returned to her home in Chernogorsk, Siberia, after being released from a Moscow hospital. Admitted to the hospital from refuge in the U.S. embassy on January 30 after a month-long hunger strike, Lida surprised family and others by taking food. She was released on February 10 and allowed to visit her family in the embassy before departing for Chernogorsk. She is expected to again apply for emigration for her and her family.

The Russian Orthodox Church has opened a new publishing center in Moscow that cost $2.75 million. Western observers puzzle over why the authorities even allowed the editorial offices to be built, and say the move illustrates the complexity of church-and-state relations in the Soviet Union.

An evangelical denomination has been given legal status in Hungary. It is the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship, a branch of the Methodists that has nine pastors for 180 groups, serving 2,000 people.

The Romanian secret police are discriminating. In January, two U.S. pastors, a lawyer, and Evangelism Center International (ECI) official Curtis Nims made a one-week visit to the country. Curtis was singled out, interrogated, and the next day escorted to the airport and put on the first outbound flight. His companions completed their visit. ECI affiliates are Underground Evangelism and International Christian Aid.

Five leaders of Ethiopia’s largest Protestant denomination, the Lutheran Mekane Yesus Church, were detained in January but released again after one week. Reports indicated they had been seized for attending a meeting that was not “properly authorized” and for violating unspecified government regulations.

The Orthodox Jewish monopoly on official religious life in Israel is being challenged by its Supreme Court. A case brought before it in January by two Reform rabbis could lead to equal legal status for the Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism. The court issued an order that requires the minister of religion and the Council of the Chief Rabbinate to show why non-Orthodox rabbis should not be allowed to register and perform marriages.

The government of Bahrain has moved to expel a Christian faith healer. Sumathy Michael, an Indian who moved to the Arab island nation in the Persian Gulf in 1964, had gained fame over the last seven years for her healings and exorcisms. Muslims and Hindus, as well as Christians, came to the home of the wife and mother to be anointed with oil and prayed over. But the numbers multiplied after an article about her appeared in the Arabic-language Akhbar al-Khaleej newspaper in December. The authorities investigated, found she was an embarrassment to the Telegu- and English-speaking congregations of the National Evangelical Church, and asked her to leave.

No Chance Of ‘Desexing’ Bible, Says Scholar

There has been much talk of the “desexing” of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, but RSV committee chairman Bruce Metzger has recently sought to allay fears. Metzger, a New Testament professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, says there will be no tampering with language relating to Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit.

Writing in a recent issue of the Presbyterian Communique, newsletter of a United Presbyterian renewal movement, Metzger said “the translator cannot alter history.”

“If, according to Deuteronomy 21:15 ff., only sons had the right of inheritance, and if Peter and Paul wrote instructions concerning the appropriate demeanor for Christian women at home and in the church, the translator cannot alter history,” Metzger wrote.

The RSV committee has differed with earlier translations, which employed masculine phraseology “even when this is not demanded by the original texts,” Metzger said. In some places, the King James translators inserted “man” or “men” despite the absence of an equivalent term in the texts. For example, Luke 17:34 in the KJV reads, “In that night there shall be two men in one bed.…” The Greek text more properly states “there shall be two in one bed.…”

Metzger rejects the suggestion of some RSV translators that the word “God” be used regularly instead of “he,” “him,” or “his.” “That would result in intolerable English,” he believes, especially in passages like Romans 8:28–30, where the word “God” would be used 12 times in three verses.

The copyright to the RSV Bible is owned by the National Council of Churches, which is preparing a more “inclusivist” lectionary of Bible verses to be read during worship services. The new lectionary will, according to the NCC, attempt “to expand the range of images beyond the masculine to assist the church in understanding the full nature of God.” The lectionary is outside the jurisdiction of the committee of scholars overseeing the RSV Bible. The revision of the lectionary drew charges from the Roundtable, an organization of conservative religious leaders, that the NCC was “desexing” the Bible, since the lectionary is composed of Bible passages.

Dissident Adventists suggest she was.

Scattered shots have been taken at the authority of Seventh-day Adventist matriarch Ellen G. White, but a broadside blow comes with the latest issue of Evangelica, a bimonthly magazine published and read by dissident evangelical Adventists. The latest issue strikes hard not only at White’s writings, which Adventists use as an aid to interpreting Scripture, but speculates that White’s famous visions may only have been epileptic seizures.

Robert Olson, director of the Ellen G. White Estate, thinks the Evangelica issue is riddled with “half-truths and inaccuracies.” Nonetheless, the magazine’s editor, Alexander LaBrecque, notes the fact that 1,000 extra copies of the edition have been requested (the periodical has a circulation of 8,000).

White’s writings have been the source of heavy controversy since Adventist minister Walter Rea claimed that she plagiarized several other writers. In addition to the plagiarism question, Evangelica presents three other arguments that, if true, would topple White from the prophetic throne where Adventists placed her.

The most fascinating of those arguments is made by Delbert Hodder, a pediatrician and active Adventist. Hodder notes that the supposed “supernatural nature” of the many visions White had during her lifetime are regarded as proof she was a prophet. But Hodder speculates the visions had no supernatural cause. A form of epilepsy called partial-complex seizures may have been responsible instead.

Like some sufferers of the partial-complex seizures, White received a severe head injury. She was hurt at age nine when a schoolmate hurled a rock into her face. Similarities between seizures and White’s visions include:

• Eyes that are open and often turned up. Historical accounts report White’s eyes “rolled up” during visions.

• Words or phrases that are repeated monotonously. White is characterized as repeating “light,” “dark,” “glory,” and “glory to God” during visions.

• Gestures. White reportedly wrung her hands, walked back and forth, and gracefully moved her shoulders in her ecstatic states.

• Visual hallucinations, including “crude sensations of light or darkness.” White spoke of “light” and “dark” during her visions.

Hodder also detects several of White’s personality traits that are similar to those of the epileptic with partial-complex seizures. Depression is typical, and White was plagued by its intermittent occurrence. A hypergraphic tendency (writing a great deal) is another, and White authored 53 books. Religiosity is still another; White’s deep interest in religion began after her head injury.

Guy Hunt, a professor of neurology at the Adventist Loma Linda (Calif.) University, disputes Hodder’s contentions. Hunt said seizures are so bizarre that almost anything can be similar to them. Secondly, seizures usually begin within a few months of the traumatic injury: in White’s case, the visions started eight years later.

Finally, seizures are usually episodic, and not as consistent and frequent as the 2,000 visions White had.

The most challenging of Evangelica’s arguments, according to White estate director Olson, is Robert Brinsmead’s interpretation of the “shut-door episode.” Brinsmead, one of the first dissident evangelical Adventists, believes the denomination “engaged in a conspiracy to hide the facts of early Adventist history.” The shut-door theory was postulated to explain what happened in 1844 when, contrary to prediction, Christ did not return to earth. It held that on October 22, 1844, Christ stopped pleading for sinners in one apartment of a heavenly sanctuary and went into a second sanctuary to plead only for the “little flock.” Only the Adventist believers, in other words, would be saved.

Later, the church shifted its position. White once testified that a vision affirmed the shut-door teaching. At another time, after the shut-door teaching fell out of favor, she said the same vision contradicted that theory.

Ron Graybill, associate secretary of the White estate, notes that seven years passed between White’s testimonies. There could have been a simple lapse of memory, he said. In addition, the doctrine of the shut door evolved over time. Finally, the denomination’s later actions should not be seen as a cover-up because officials were simply working with less organized records. Today’s indexed archives make the discrepancy appear obvious, but it was not so earlier, said Graybill.

Evangelica’s third argument is that Ellen White made a number of statements on health now known to be scientifically false. She wrote that wigs congest the brain and that persons become “hopelessly insane” after adopting the “deforming fashion.” She believed masturbation was “killing thousands and tens of thousands,” that eating meat strengthened man’s “animal propensities,” and that some races began by sexual relations with animals. Graybill answers this objection to White’s authority by holding that her inspiration extended only to areas that directly relate to faith and practice. Olson said that although scientific details might be incorrect, the principles behind White’s statements were sound (on the undesirability of masturbation, for example).

NEWS

They got 14 years in jail for smuggling drugs; they say they didn’t do it (sort of); Colson can’t help them.

Charles Colson is accustomed to dealing with hardened criminals through the organization he heads, Prison Fellowship (PF). Now, however, he has embarked on a concerted campaign to free two American women tourists in their sixties who have been sentenced to 14 years in an Australian prison on a drug-smuggling conviction. The women say they were framed. The case of the “drug grannies” is becoming something of a sensation in Australia.

Convicted in 1978, Vera Hays and Florice Bessire claim they were framed by a nephew who continues to elude worldwide police searches. Both women came to personal faith in Christ while behind bars, and say that a visit and correspondence from PF director Colson have helped sustain them.

Now, because of their deteriorating health, Prison Fellowship has stepped up its efforts to bring them home. “We are seeking their release on compassionate grounds, based on their physical condition,” PF’S David Eno explained. “We’re trying to encourage people to write, because if Christians don’t get organized, we’ll probably see one of them die in jail.”

Bessire, 65, and Hays, 63, have received wide press attention in Australia, where public opinion has remained divided. The Australian press has tagged them “drug grannies,” a term of mixed affection and contempt, though neither is actually a grandmother.

Their troubles began when Vera Hays’s nephew, Vernon Todd, offered the pair an expense-paid trip around the world. He invited them to fly to Stuttgart, West Germany, pick up a Land Rover, drive it to Bombay, India, and then have it shipped to Australia, where he then lived.

Bessire and Hays were thrilled at the prospect of round-the-world sightseeing, so they locked up their mobile home in LaPine, Oregon, and set out. On the last leg of their journey, they took delivery of the camper van in Australia and began touring the country, on their way to Todd’s home. But police discovered 1.9 tons of concealed hashish riding along with the two tourists.

Worth $1.5 million, it was the biggest single hashish haul the Australian police ever netted. The women concede that Todd told them the Land Rover held a small quantity of marijuana, but that he falsely assured them it was legal in Australia. They were arrested, tried, and sentenced to 14 years in prison; Todd fled the country.

Legally, their situation seems intractable because both women pleaded guilty at their trial after allegedly being assured of deportation to the United States. Instead, they landed in a maximum-security prison, where Hays recalled being “mixed in with criminals of all sorts.” After the U.S. State Department intervened 19 months later, they were transferred to a different facility where they get outdoor exercise and wear civilian clothes.

But their ironclad sentences make them ineligible for parole, and Australian law makes no provision for swapping prisoners with the United States, thus further efforts have proven futile.

Prison Fellowship does not address the question of whether the two women are guilty or innocent, Eno said, because “many big questions remain.” But PF’S overriding concern is the poor health of the aging “grannies.”

Hays is blind in one eye from an infection that followed a cataract operation in prison. She suffers from hypertension, headaches, and a painful deterioration of the spine. Her remaining eye also has developed cataracts. The older lady, Bessire, says her worst moments are “when I see Vera suffering.” Bessire herself contends with chronic arthritis and has had a series of minor infections since being imprisoned.

Despite their physical trials, the two say their new-found faith in God is a source of constant strength. “My communication lines with God were down, but since I’ve landed in this predicament I have realized what had happened to me,” Bessire recounted in an interview with Australian journalist Sandi Logan. “Prison is one place you really sit down and take stock of yourself, and realize your shortcomings, and there were many. God has forgiven me and even in here I can find peace and glory in our Lord.”

Hays said she was consumed with bitterness and hatred toward her nephew after being jailed. “I had to stop that. I had to turn to God and pray to God to stop my hating and to turn it to love and forgiveness.” Hays also prayed for a sign that the Lord was listening. She is sure it arrived in the form of a visit from Mrs. Charles Thornley, active with Gideons International in Australia. The Thornleys visited the two women every Sunday and eventually led Hays to Christ.

Since then, fellowship provided by PF/Australia volunteers and others have bolstered the pair’s spirits and enabled them to minister as well. Hays said, “We have helped a lot of young girls who we have taken under our wing and set on the right track.”

In a letter to PF International’s vice-president, Kathryn Grant, Bessire and Hays wrote, “The times have been very trying, but we know our Lord is omnipresent, and no matter where we are, his hand never leaves ours. Our faith is food for the soul, and we will never go hungry.”

Their ardent wish is to return home, but only the Australian government can grant a release. Colson has repeatedly appealed to authorities to “temper justice with mercy.”

BETH SPRING

Tough legislation starts to move as a few Christians lobby hard.

Drunk driving accidents claim 26,000 lives each year in the United States—the highest rate per citizen in the world. Until recently, that statistic has remained a neglected fact of life, raising only sporadic concern after a specific tragedy.

But over the past two years, clusters of citizens, often led by the families of crash victims, have demanded tougher laws and more enforcement muscle. In several states, citizens have had encouraging results. After long neglect, Washington is astir about the problem. Congressional legislation is beginning to move, and a presidential commission has been formed.

Perhaps surprisingly, the religious community has been slow to speak. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is determined to reverse that stance. Without endorsing a return to Prohibition, NAE has addressed the issue for more than a year through its Washington Insight newsletters. The organization has been cited favorably by advocates of drunk-driving reform for its effectiveness in generating public awareness.

Evangelicals drink far less than the population at large, according to pollster George Gallup, who has found that two-thirds of them are teetotalers. He has said that “in no other area could the churches of America be of greater help than in dealing head-on with the crisis problems of drinking.”

NAE officials agree, and they have vigorously supported action on several fronts. In Congress, legislation introduced by Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) and Rep. Michael Barnes (D-Md.) would require states to enact a baseline set of laws against drunk driving. Hearings are expected in early spring.

Pell began paying attention when two of his staff members were killed by drank drivers in separate accidents. The bills (S-671 and HR-2488) would, he said, “create certainty that even a first offense will bring down real and unpleasant sanctions,” including:

• At least 10 days of community service for a first offense, and 10 days in jail for people convicted two or more times within five years.

• Restriction of licenses for first-time offenders to essential or work-related travel, and issuance of special, identifiable marker plates.

• A requirement for states to identify repeat offenders and require judges to determine if an offender needs treatment for alcoholism.

A spokesman for the senator praised NAE, saying Insight items have “generated a tremendous amount of mail.” NAE also lobbied hard for President Reagan’s new task force on drunk driving, which will publicize the problem and urge governors to make accident prevention a top priority.

Prevention at the state and local levels is the most important, yet it is often hamstrung due to politics. William Plymat, executive director of the American Council on Alcohol Problems, explains that “police are often reluctant to arrest drinking drivers because they feel the courts will not do justice to the cases. In most states, we have inadequate laws which are vague and indefinite. Often charges are reduced to reckless driving. Often bail is set at a low figure and the driver is back on the street, quickly drinking and driving again.”

Local citizen movements to turn the tide have produced two major organizations, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) and Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID). In Maryland, MADD directors Tom and Dorothy Sexton lost a teen-aged son who was returning from a fishing trip in July 1980. He was riding in a car that was smashed head-on by a drunk with over twice the amount of alcohol in his blood that is necessary for qualification as legal drunkenness. The Sexton boy was killed instantly. The drunk driver received a $200 fine and two years’ probation.

Tom Sexton, deeply angered by the court’s leniency, said, “It takes local involvement. Fear of arrest by local police has a tremendous impact—that’s what is needed.” Due to change in citizen attitudes, a Maryland judge recently meted out a sentence of five years in prison for a drunk driver charged with manslaughter.

The Sexton’s local MADD chapter has organized lobbying efforts on behalf of establishment of county task forces, alcohol awareness programs, and counseling help to bereaved families on their rights in criminal proceedings. Another important function is court monitoring to determine which judges are excessively lenient and to bring it to the attention of the news media.

Most people who are stopped or arrested for driving while drunk are hard drinkers, not social drinkers or wine-with-dinner advocates. Instead, fully 60 percent have severe alcohol dependencies, according to the National Association of Alcoholism Counselors.

In most states, a person is legally drunk when the blood alcohol concentration registers one-tenth of 1 percent. To reach that level, a 160-pound man would have to consume five drinks in the course of an hour. And the average person arrested is at twice the legal limit, says John Moulden, drunk-driving program specialist at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Richard Cizik, a researcher for NAE, hopes to see compassionate evangelical involvement, because drunk driving is “a needless form of violence,” he said. “It’s as unfortunate as national crime statistics, and it is preventable. Christians need to demonstrate the value of life based on clearly discernible principles.”

For starters, he suggests a church group could address the issue by educating teen-agers and supporting community efforts. Cizik also says Christians should not hesitate to participate in court monitoring, petitioning, and letter writing to hold enforcement officials accountable for their actions.

For guidance in establishing a local task force, a manual commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is available free of charge from Sandy Golden, 21 Quince Mill Court, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20760. It is entitled “How to Save Lives and Reduce Injuries: A Citizen Activist Guide to Effectively Fight Drunk Driving.” Information also can be obtained from Tom Sexton, 3113 Tinder Place, Bowie, Maryland 20715.

Tragedies Often Are The Sparks That Ignite Action Against Drunks

Christmas Eve 1981 is a night seared into pastor Loren Gisselbeck’s memory, and his throat tightens as he describes it. Just before a holiday program at his United Methodist church in rural Westminster, Maryland, Gisselbeck answered his phone and learned that two children and three grandchildren of his education director were dead following a car crash caused by an intoxicated driver.

The education director, Martha Proctor, had planned and organized the special Christmas Eve program, “Journey to Bethlehem.” But as it was performed that evening, she lay in a hospital with a skull fracture. Her daughter suffered multiple bone fractures and a lacerated liver. Two sons, 23 and 14, were dead, along with her baby grandchildren, ages 3, 2, and one month.

Gisselbeck hurried from his church to spend the evening with Martha’s husband, Richard, a former missionary. The pastor returned in time for his 11 P.M. service, and as he quietly broke the news, he heard “just one big gasp” from his congregation of 500.

“I knew we had to do something,” he said, so he called a community meeting. The mid-January gathering attracted more than 200 people, including state legislators, prosecutors, county commissioners, state police, and representatives from locally active groups, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). They established a local task force, patterned after successful efforts in two other Maryland counties and manned by a cross section of people who work with drunk drivers and their victims.

The duties of the task force are clear-cut:

• Document how the county handles drunk drivers from arrest through prosecution.

• Identify flaws in the system and determine how to correct them.

• Monitor courtroom decisions to see which judges are lenient and which are strict.

• Obtain wide news media coverage of drunk-driving offenses.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., a similar effort began two years ago after a head-on, drunk-driving crash paralyzed infant Laura Lamb for life. Now “we have some of the finest law enforcement in the nation and some of the toughest prosecution, with a 95 percent conviction rate,” says Sandy Golden. He is a volunteer activist who abandoned his television journalism career after the Lamb incident in order to devote full time to anti-drunk-driving work. He said the efforts have succeeded in spite of lax laws.

One response to citizen lobbying efforts in Montgomery County is a series of police roadblocks on weekends, instilling, according to Golden, “a general fear of arrest.” Though the strategy has been condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union, most drivers who are stopped at the roadblocks for a brief sobriety check profusely thank the policemen on duty. There is no discrimination; everyone is stopped. Consistent news coverage throughout the state and in neighboring Washington, D.C., also has heightened public awareness.

Elsewhere, similar tragedies, which seem to be a prerequisite of lasting reform, have also sparked citizen initiatives. California officials reported a 43 percent drop in traffic deaths over the New Year’s holiday this year because of a new package of laws requiring a 48-hour jail sentence except for minor first offenses. In those cases, a judge could substitute a fine, a 90-day license suspension, and require attendance at a drinking drivers’ school. In addition, a mandatory minimum fine of $375 for each conviction is in effect, with $20 of that placed in a victims’ indemnity fund.

Similar treatment awaits drunk drivers in Maine, following a tough set of laws passed last fall. In Minnesota, authorities may suspend a driver’s license without a hearing upon arrest for intoxication.

According to John Moulden of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, New York passed some of the most significant legislation last year. Mandated jail sentences of 7 to 180 days and fines ranging between $200 and $500 are in effect for proven repeat offenders, who cause a major portion of all alcohol-related traffic incidents. Moulden praised New York officials for recognizing that “it’s not just a one-shot crackdown on New Year’s Eve. What the issue needs is applied effort.”

The Proctor family tragedy in Maryland spurred Gisselbeck to apply his efforts against drunk driving, yet his attitude is compassionate, not vindictive.

“I have another member, a 19-year-old,” he explains, “going on trial for drunk-driving homicide. I called on him in the hospital after he killed a girl. From the standpoint of what this does to people, whether they are victims or perpetrators, we’ve got to be concerned.”

Black Evangelist Named To Civil Rights Commission

B. Sam Hart of Philadelphia, 50-year-old black evangelist and radio station owner, was named a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission last month by President Reagan.

Hart said he was first sounded out by White House staff members about accepting the chairmanship of the five-member commission to replace 76-year-old Arthur S. Flemming, a liberal Republican and vigorous civil rights advocate, who was fired by Reagan in November. But Hart explained the long hours required by the job “would have taken me away from my ministry.” He explained, “I serve the Lord first, my country second.”

The president has since nominated for the commission chairmanship Clarence M. Pendleton, 51, black conservative Republican from San Diego, who has opposed busing to promote school integration, expressed skepticism about the value of affirmative action, and has taken the stand that he feels free enterprise is the best cure for economic hardship among blacks.

It is widely known in government circles that administration officials have become annoyed by the commission’s advocacy of a strong federal role in school desegregation, affirmative action to open more jobs to minorities and women, and denials of tax exemption to schools that allegedly discrimate against blacks.

The Reagan administration has been reversing earlier government positions in all these areas and evoked criticism from the commission, which advises the President and Congress on civil rights policy and monitors the enforcement of civil rights laws.

Hart’s appointment drew fire from liberal black activists, who complained that he had never been involved in the civil rights movement. The opposition was so intense that both senators from Pennsylvania, Republicans John Heinz and Arlen Specter, asked that ratification procedures be held up.

Hart was born in Harlem in 1931 but grew up in Jamaica, where his father, Arthur, served as a Plymouth Brethren missionary. Settling in Philadelphia, Sam taught retarded children in the public school system before resigning in 1968 to devote himself full-time to the gospel ministry.

In 1977 Hart was able to obtain a low interest loan of $176,000 through the Pennsylvania Minority Business Development Authority to build WYIS, an AM radio station in suburban Phoenixville. WYIS broadcasts black gospel music, Bible instruction, and call-in talk shows. Hart describes his widely syndicated “Grand Old Gospel Hour” as “the largest black-produced evangelistic program in the world.” The sponsoring organization for his multifaceted ministry also has started 12 churches on the East Coast, 5 in the Philadelphia area.

NEWS

They are smart, and they work hard to be accepted, but they clearly teach heresy.

Everybody has seen a Moonie. They are those strange-looking, apparently mindless people selling flowers at airports. They are led by a mysterious Korean who has probably brainwashed them. They are bizarre and alien—not at all like “normal people.”

At least that is the idea. But the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church has now been in America for 23 years, the first missionary having arrived in 1959. “Moonie” became a household term in the early seventies when a network TV news team visited a Unification Church commune and found alarming things happening to the sons and daughters of Americans.

In what could be called a legitimacy blitzkrieg, the Moonies are launching a multi-pronged, sophisticated campaign to become accepted in America. Biblical Christianity, already arrayed against dozens of cults and competing philosophies, faces a newly formidable foe. The Moonies are vying for their place in the sun.

Many are no longer (if they ever were) distant-eyed automatons, robbed of individual personality or intelligence. Instead, Moonies include bright, amiable men and women who, for those who want only to deal with them simplistically, are disconcertingly “normal.”

Special Report

Mose Durst, president of the Unification Church in America, dismisses charges of brainwashing and profiteering. He admits the Unification Church has done “stupid” things. But that, he maintains, was due to the youth of the movement and Moon’s desire to spread his message rapidly. Durst has a pervasive sense of humor, and he observes that Moonies are becoming more established in society. “We used to sell flowers; now we’re the proprietors of flower shops. We used to solicit at airports; now we own the planes,” he says.

But that is an exaggeration. Some members own businesses, tithing up to half their income. None of the businesses are nationally known, Durst says. Ex-Moon Incorporated, a body of disenchanted former Moonies, lists 69 businesses owned by Moonies in 13 states. These include jewelry stores, health food stores, and travel agencies. A church-related company in Korea is the world’s largest exporter of ginseng tea.

The cult, says Durst, hopes more Moonies will settle into the middle-class establishment so they can get off the streets. Street soliciting is “not the way to win hearts,” he admits. “It’s a bad image, not a practical way of making friends.” The Unificationists hope to end all such soliciting within two or three years.

Moon’s church no longer shuns the news media. “We used to ignore it or be sarcastic,” Durst says. Now they ignore what they view as unfair reporting, and welcome journalists. The Moonies do not want to be outcasts any longer.

In many cases, their moves for legitimacy are above-board and overt, and apparently flow naturally from Moon’s ideology. In other cases, they use subtlety. Durst claims the organization wants to identify itself openly. Fund raisers, for example, are supposed to wear plastic cards identifying them as members of the Unification Church. Those who do not are disobedient to church orders “Would that we had as much control over people as the media think we do,” Durst comments sardonically.

The most-publicized legitimation tactic is probably the Moonie professional conferences. Most are organized under the auspices of the church’s New Ecumenical Research Association (New ERA). The Moonies have convened with evangelicals, scientists, lawyers, and journalists.

Moon’s theology foresees a day when science and religion will be unified, and so there have been 10 annual conferences on the “unity of the sciences.” Scientists from such institutions as the Sorbonne, Oxford, Southern Methodist University, Harvard, and Yale have attended the conferences. The conferences are often held in such exotic locations as the Bahamas, and participants’ transportation is paid, Durst says. Altogether, the Moonies spend $3 to $4 million yearly on such gatherings.

The conference programs forthrightly list Sun Myung Moon as a member of the organizing board and note that participation denotes “neither acceptance nor endorsem*nt of the tenets and activities of the Unification Church.”

The Moonies have established a charitable agency, Project Volunteer, which recently distributed 87,000 pounds of government surplus cheese to needy people. Their publishing house, Rose of Sharon Press, now boasts 24 circulating titles. One, The Social Impact of New Religious Movements, is used in college sociology courses to present a sympathetic view of cult development (what the Moonies prefer to call “new religions”).

A Moonie film production company spent a whopping $46 million on the movie Inchon, starring Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, and Ben Gazzara. (By comparison, Hollywood’s hottest film last summer—Raiders of the Lost Ark—cost $20 million.) The movie recounts Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Korean story. It premiered in Washington, D.C., last May, but not to rave reviews. One film critic rated it a negative 13 “on a scale of 1 to 10.” The Moonies are negotiating to show the film throughout America.

The Unification Church helps publish the News World Daily News, a New York newspaper with 70,000 circulation, and more than 10 other newsletters or magazines. It has about 15 politically involved groups, from the Communist Research Group to World Freedom Institute. The church sponsors (or helps sponsor) a track team, a ballet company, a theatrical group, and 19 other cultural or social organizations.

The Moonies’ primary college campus recruiting force is the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP). It is expanding with chapters at Princeton, Rutgers, and the University of Chicago. (CARP-sponsored rallies support Ronald Reagan’s stance on El Salvador.) There is also a high school recruiting arm, known as the High School Association for the Research of Principles. Six rock bands seek to attract converts, touring under names like the Blue Tuna Band and ironically, Front Group.

In upstate New York, near Barrytown, the Moonies have now solidly established the Unification Theological Seminary. About 150 students attend classes presented by Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and even Greek Orthodox clergymen. Professing evangelical Richard Quebedeaux has had his evangelical commitment called into question over his activities with the Moonies. He is listed among faculty in the seminary’s 1980–81 catalog.

Most students are in their early thirties, and they are open to a variety of theological influences. Four took a course last summer from evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry at New College (Berkeley, California). The books of Teilhard de Chardin are popular on campus, as are Quebedeaux’s and those of the controversial Catholic, Hans Küng. The comfortable seminary library now houses 25,000 volumes and regularly receives about 400 periodicals.

Oddly, only 1 of the 15 teachers at the seminary is a Unificationist. She is Young Oon Kim, a disciple of Moon for 27 years, and the original Moonie missionary to America. Kim has a Master of Theology degree from Toronto University, although her doctorate is in education. Her book, Unification Theology, “rephrases” Moon’s Divine Principle in “theological terms,” Kim says. (Moon has a degree in electronic engineering but no formal training in theology. When asked what it is like, as a person trained in theology, to study the theology of an untrained theologian, one student shot back, “It’s like reading Acts.”)

Kim’s book, coded the “red book” by students because of the cover’s color, indicates her wide reading. Any one page may include footnotes from Barth, Aquinas, or a church father. The Moonie theology and ideology make its adherents impossible to pigeonhole. They accept a literal interpretation of the creation story, insisting on the historical existence of Adam and Eve. But they reject the inerrancy of the Bible as a whole and, says Kim, consider fundamentalist spirituality “shallow.” Evangelicals, Kim believes, should “deliberately learn from liberal theology and bring fundamentalist spiritual fervor into liberal camps. Bring about the reconciliation of these two great camps so you can be the great force to fight evil.”

The Moonies, says Kim, acknowledge the supernatural. Satan is real. Some Moonies speak in tongues, experience ecstatic visions, and hear voices. It is not unusual to witness visible spirits, Kim says, or to notice an odor of perfume when a good spirit is near. Despite the thoroughgoing belief in the supernatural, Moonies are also friendly to generally liberal process theology. Compared to orthodox Christianity, Unification theology is clearly heretical. As Kim notes in her book, Moonies doubt the “total sufficiency of Jesus’ atoning death on the cross.” In essence, Christ saved mankind spirtually, but it remains in need of physical redemption by the marriage and family-bearing of an ideal man and woman. The man is to be from Korea. Although it is not an explicitly stated doctrine, many Moonies believe the new messiah is Sun Myung Moon.

It is significant that the controlling theme of Moon’s Divine Principle is not derived from the Bible, but from the Taoist Book of Changes. Moon sees reality as a series of polarities: positive and negative, man and woman, in and out, and so on. Because of this, the savior must be matched with a woman—salvation, too, must follow the theme of polarities. As James Sire puts it in his Scripture Twisting (IVP, 1980), “the Bible, despite constant references to it, is really tangential to Divine Principle. All the intellectual framework comes from other sources—Eastern thought, modern science, and Moon’s own fertile imagination.”

The Moonies’ high esteem of marriage grants them more ground for legitimacy in American society. Although Moral Majority constituents would disagree with the Moonies on much, the Unificationists’ high view of the family, staunch anticommunism, and strong pro-Americanism might appeal to Jerry Falwell and friends. Such points may make for bridges from the Moonies to surprising places on the American landscape.

Moonie seminarians are quite able to articulate their beliefs and will obviously be in the vanguard of the Unification Church’s efforts to become accepted in the next generation. About 40 Unificationists are now working for their doctorates at Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and other divinity schools. In many cases, the Unification Church pays their tuition. The first crop of Moonies will graduate from these seminaries within two years, and can be expected to provide an increasingly refined apologetic for Unification theology.

In spite of all that, however, the Moonies may only be dog paddling to stay afloat, and not swimming forward. The huge amount of money and energy the Unification Church expends does not appear to attract a significant number of new members. After about 20 years, there are 30,000 Moonies in America, by their own estimate. That’s many more than the 2,501 members Jehovah’s Witnesses had drawn after 20 years of existence, but only half of the 60,000 who followed Mormonism after its first 20 years. In addition, observers believe there may be only three to four thousand committed Moonies, and that there may be as many ex-Moonies (25,000) as present members of the organization.

Hard work has never proved a barrier to the followers of Sun Myung Moon. They have invested stupendous amounts of time and labor to gain (and keep) one recruit. In the process, however, they have extended their influence far beyond their own numbers. As The American Baptist for January put it, the Moonies seem to have “put down sufficient rootage in the pluralistic garden of American religious life to be a serious contender for a permanent place.” That permanent place is not likely to be at the airport selling carnations.

This special report was written by CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S assistant news editor, Rodney Clapp, who spoke with cult experts, and visited Moonie headquarters in New York City, and their seminary in Barrytown, New York.

A Plea For More Deprogramming

Distraught parents may already think members of cults suffer from mental illness—but do they suffer from a new kind of mental illness never known before?

That is the conclusion of two researchers writing in the January issue of Science Digest. The researchers, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, call the “new” emotional disturbance “information disease.”

The Digest story ends with a strong plea for stepped up “deprogramming” of members of offbeat religious groups.

Conway and Siegelman contended that cults depend on the use and abuse of deceptive and distorted language, artful suggestion, emotional experience, and physical exhaustion and isolation to enslave members intellectually.

The researchers mailed 1600 surveys to former members of cults and received 400 completed surveys. (They deleted surveys of persons with emotional problems before their cult involvement.) Those surveys showed high percentages of the former cultists suffering from nightmares, amnesia, hallucinations, violent outbursts, and suicidal tendencies. More than 52 percent of former members reported the alarming experience of “floating” in and out of altered states of consciousness.

Conway and Siegelman discovered that it took former Scientologists the longest average time (25 months) to recover from negative effects. Some ex-Scientologists are said never to recover. “The only thing I got out of this scam was deep suicidal depression coinciding with the fear of death within five years after separation,” one former member wrote. “We were told that 90 percent of all ‘refund cases’ eventually commit suicide.”

The researchers also contended that the amount of time spent in a cult apparently corresponds with the severity of emotional damage. But most of the damage appears to occur within the first six months, they said. They concluded that Scientology and Hare Krishna inflict the most harm on members. Those two groups and the Unification Church were even in reports of physical deprivation.

Conway and Siegelman (the authors of a 1978 book on cultic conversion, Snapping) concluded their article by pleading for acceptance of deprogramming. They called it a “lifesaving intervention.” Deprogrammed cultists are said to recover faster than former members who were not deprogrammed.

Deprogramming is not finding much support in the conventional religious community. The National Council of Churches has criticized the practice. Lynn Buzzard, executive director of the Christian Legal Society, notes that “anticult bills” (once proposed in nine states) “would legalize deprogramming on a very wide basis. We need to remember that any machinery set up to deal with cults can be used someday against ourselves. After all, Christians were the cult of the first century.”

Deprogrammers, called “faith-breakers” by cult members, have concentrated not only on cultic groups, but have also abducted Roman Catholics and Baptists. Ted Patrick, the best-known deprogrammer, was indicted in Ohio last October on charges of abduction, assault, and sexual misconduct. He was attempting to deprogram an alleged lesbian. Patrick was paid earlier to deprogram a 35-year-old woman from her liberal politics.

I have been confronted during 15 years of ministry in California, Europe, and New England with many evangelicals who either have come out of cults or are attracted to a cult. In all of my conversations with such people, the central issue has never focused on cultic doctrine. Usually, doctrine was an after-the-fact issue. What, then, makes our people in the evangelical community vulnerable to cults?

A close examination of every major cult today, with the exception of Eastern cults, reveals that many began in an evangelical church or with a leader from an evangelical background. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church (Moonies), was raised in a missionary Presbyterian home. Jim Jones, founder of the People’s Temple, accepted Christ in a Nazarene church and was pastor of an interdenominational charismatic church and a Disciples of Christ church. Moses David, founder of the Children of God, came out of a Christian and Missionary Alliance background. Victor Paul Wierwille, founder of The Way, was an evangelical, and a Reformed pastor. Many of the older, more established cults had evangelical roots, including Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

What is common to these churches and church leaders who have been led to cultism?

First, they all started by describing themselves as in opposition to their local church or denomination, or to the church at large. They had discovered the ideal church. The foundation was always begun with an identity by opposition.

Second, in these systems the pastor or leader was placed in a position beyond confrontation, coupled with a tight discipleship or shepherding approach to instruction.

Third, these groups placed a high emphasis on group sharing, testimonies, spirituality, devotions, and in some cases, Bible study.

Fourth, in these groups the leader had gained some new spiritual insight emphasizing the last days, healing, community, or spirituality.

Fifth, these groups placed a high value on community and caring.

Finally, all such groups slowly developed their own subcultural spiritual language.

Many evangelicals who are drawn to cults are not drawn because of beliefs or doctrine but because of similarities to Christianity that we value as marks of spirituality. The members of the People’s Temple never expected to end up in Jonestown, as Mel White so clearly illustrates in his movie Deceived. It is easy for us as churches and as individuals to write off these groups and try to remove by remote control our responsibility to face our own vulnerability to cultic deception. If you think you or your church are not vulnerable to these dynamics, you are the most vulnerable. In all my conversations with former cult members, and with those presently struggling with cultic leanings, I have found five similarities between cults and evangelical churches.

Defining Spirituality

We evangelicals place a high emphasis on our experience of Christ. So do the cults. We have a tendency to witness to our conversion rather than of Christ. We often view our conversion experience as the gospel; it is not. The gospel is that Jesus Christ entered human history, died, and rose from the dead. If you believe in him as Savior, you stand before God totally in the clear.

Our overemphasis on subjective experience has some of its roots in the reactions to rationalism, naturalism, and liberalism that infiltrated the Protestant church during the past century. Lacking an apologetic base, gospel verification soon became a matter of subjectivity. Often religious telecasts, Christian magazines, and Christian biographies confuse the gospel with a person’s experience of the gospel. As a consequence, our criteria for determining spirituality are often confused, subjected to the criteria of personal experience.

Recently we had a guest speaker on our campus whose content was profound, biblical, and challenging; but his delivery was slow, deliberate, and presented in a low-key voice. The students’ biggest complaint was that the speaker was not spiritual.

Several weeks later we had a guest speaker who was a master communicator. His content, however, contained little Scripture, and much of the message put down evangelicals, the middle class, suburban life, and Western culture. Little in the sermon was instructive in enabling and equipping the believers for service, ministry, and growth, or in facing sin and forgiveness. The sermon was punctuated with emotional, moving stories. At the end, the community gave a standing ovation.

Afterward, I asked the same students who had found the first speaker “unspiritual” what they thought of the second. Their overwhelming response was that the second man was very spiritual. Not one of them could remember the content, but they felt he must have been a man of God. “I felt God’s presence and I was challenged to commitment.” Such a reaction to a moving speaker is just one example of the dynamics prevailing in many of our churches. And we wonder why our people foolishly follow a pied piper to never-never land. The cults offer charismatic leaders who will move you spiritually—to commitment and often to tears.

All of this is complicated by the fact that we often define spirituality on the basis of devotions, quiet time, prayer, evangelism, and Bible study rather than holistically, as Scripture does. Scripture begins with Creation and climaxes with Christ redeeming all of life. Christians live total lives obediently before him—in families, jobs, mind development, prayer, evangelism, and relationships.

Evangelicals are easily manipulated by anything that hints at spirituality. There is a popular prefacing phrase that goes, “The Lord led me.” At first this sounds very spiritual. However, if you examine Scripture, you will find it is seldom used, except occasionally by false prophets or for deception. For example, Joshua was deceived by this type of spiritualizing (Josh. 9:8–9). Jacob deceived Isaac (Gen. 27:20) by using it. God does lead us, but these words are often overused and can become a tool to manipulate others or to avoid being responsible for the decisions God places before us. To misuse this phrase can easily border on taking God’s name in vain.

Last spring I received over 20 letters from pastors, evangelists, and leaders of musical groups who were “led of the Lord” to minister in New England during the first half of October—during the peak of the fall colors! Interestingly, God never seems to lead such ministries to New England in February.

All cultic leaders and churches that become cultic place a high emphasis on being “led by the Lord.” Misuse of this term can make us prey to cultic tendencies.

Evangelicals also tend to couple their definitions of spirituality with leanings toward legalism. This can make us frustrated with our churches, which never live up to the expectations of the ideal spiritual church. As a result, we are attracted to situations that promise or offer a more nearly perfect or spiritually ideal community. We often forget that perfect communities come at the expense of human freedom.

Expectations Of An Ideal Pastor

Evangelicals not only have concepts and expectations of an ideal church, but also of an ideal pastor. Cults offer both the ideal pastor and the ideal church.

While in Europe 10 years ago, I had contact with a youth missions organization based in Switzerland. Each team member, upon arrival, was given a victory sheet that told him he was never to question those in authority over him, and never to write home anything negative. But to deny sin and reality is certainly not the biblical model.

We seem to long for two major spiritual images in evangelical circles. One is the successful bionic pastor or missionary whose church markets him in a cassette ministry; usually he is good-looking. Unfortunately, bionic people are half machine. The other image is the inner-city-guitar-Levi model who rejects all middle-class trappings. Unfortunately for this model, the sixties were 20 years ago. The biographies and autobiographies of both these figures tell of success and of ideal images to be followed. Each “image of perfection” borders on idolatry and leads us to live under guilt because it places unrealistic expectations on us.

We compare ourselves to models presented on talk shows and in books, but we fail to discover our own creative gifts and abilities to serve God. Unlike Scripture, these people usually speak only of success and rescue stories.

Like members of cults, we have difficulty admitting our own sins because we want to be the ideal. I have worked in two pastorates, one evangelical and one liberal, on my journey toward a deeper spiritual commitment. The one thing that impresses me about the cultural differences between these movements is that when problems arise, liberals face them openly, admit their wrongs, and ask forgiveness. I find, however, that we evangelicals have a tendency to justify our behavior, spiritualize it, or to blame the church structure for our shortcomings. Our inability to deal with our own sins and weaknesses, coupled with our ideal models, makes us very vulnerable to cultic-type leaders who present an image of successful and sinless leadership.

Choice And Guidance

Both evangelical groups and cults place tremendous emphasis on guidance. Many cults emphasize group choice over personal choice, or urge choices aided by a leader or discipler. Many of the cults mentioned earlier began with a tight authority system of accountability. Although we can observe many exciting things happening in the area of discipleship in evangelical churches, there are dangers of abuse. Many current evangelical trends toward shepherding and discipling encourage people to allow a leader to make decisions for them.

Cultic leaders often build their systems for guidance and authority on Bible verses taken out of context. But many of our churches also emphasize one aspect of scriptural teaching and exclude the rest. The result is that some churches built on body life are lacking in worship; others built on discipleship may fail to allow for diversity. Furthermore, such practices can lay the framework for an identity by its opposition to the rest of the body of Christ. It moves out of the authority of the totality of Scripture. Almost every cult began with focus on one aspect of Scripture to the exclusion of the rest.

Group Sharing

Cult members and evangelicals both place a high emphasis on sharing. When sharing is elevated as a sign of spiritual maturity, however, we are vulnerable to a cultic group mentality. Sharing for the sake of sharing can easily lead to group manipulation, exploitation, and autocratic control. While we may have a tendency to equate spirituality with sharing of our deep personal concerns, so do most cults. Like evangelical groups, cults place a high emphasis on devotions, evangelism, self-denial, and prayer as outward signs of spirituality.

Authority Or Independence?

Many churches were established either as a reaction to liberalism or as a split from another church that did not emphasize what its members felt should be uniquely emphasized. Evangelicals do not often belong to churches with a tradition of authority; we tend to pride ourselves on our independence. But of whom are we independent—God, Christ, the rest of the body of Christ? Can the head say, “I have no need of the arm” (1 Cor. 12:12–20)?

Cults view themselves as independent, and it becomes easy to identify with a cult in an effort to oppose a church. As evangelicals, our own independent attitudes make it easy always to be looking for another community that promises something better or superior to the one in which we are at present.

Coupled with this independence is a confusion of unity and uniformity. We often long for uniformity—charismatic with charismatics, Baptist with Baptists, high church with high churches, free church with free churches. We seek out those who will reinforce our own likes and dislikes. The result is a blindness to the richness of diversify God offers us within the body of Christ, and a blindness to our own mental tendencies to write off other members of the body of Christ. We subtly remove, by remote control, our responsibility to “love one another” (John 13:35). Each cult offers both uniformity and identity by opposition.

Evangelicals are seldom drawn to cults because of beliefs or doctrines but because the cults offer something more: a heightened sense of spirituality, an ideal leader, group guidance, group sharing, and uniformity and identity.

If we think we are not vulnerable, we are most vulnerable.

Dr. Bussell is dean of the chapel at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts. His article is adapted from one printed earlier in The Gordon (June 1981).

Many evangelicals are drawn to the cults, not because of beliefs or doctrine, but because of similar religious sensitivities.

Two recent books apply a strong dose of theological savvy in support of this controversial topic.

A theology of church growth by George Peters and an apology for church growth by Peter Wagner may well revive the church growth movement that was so prominent in the 1970s. A decade ago, this movement swept like a tidal wave from the mission fields into North America. A plethora of church growth books quickly appeared on the subject and its guru, Donald McGavran, retired. “Kingdom theologies” and sociopolitical action slowly nudged church growth out of its former prominence. Except for the committed, it appeared that the movement would quietly slip from evangelical vocabulary much as Evangelism-in-Depth and body life did.

But this is not so. George Peters has written a sound theological study of church growth centered on the Book of Acts. He establishes that church growth is not merely a fad of nineteenth- and twentieth-century evangelicalism, but rather an expression characteristic of the very roots of Christianity. Church growth should be the concern of every generation because it is biblically normative. He has revived the legitimacy of vibrant church growth.

In writing A Theology of Church Growth (Harper & Row, 1981), Peters has drawn upon exacting academic preparation, wide reading in German as well as in English, and decades of theological discipline as a seminary professor. Extensive world travel has further enhanced the perspective his own cross-cultural missionary experience has contributed. The overview of his published A Biblical Theology of Missions (Moody Press, 1972) has given him a balanced perspective that theologians, missiologists, or behavioral scientists often seem to lack

Peters begins by asserting that the Book of Acts is the primary textbook in world evangelism and church growth. In Acts 1:8 the Master has given “His principle directives for this great building program: these directives are gradually unfolded” (p. 16). Peters believes that wherever Acts 1:8 was faithfully discharged, the Holy Spirit enabled a church to be born, and then formed it. He recognizes that church growth takes place in society, yet he ascribes the ultimate cause of church growth to the Holy Spirit.

In Acts, numerical growth is a fact. Nevertheless, quantitative growth can be deceptive for “it may be no more than the mushrooming of a mechanically induced, psychological or social movement, a numerical count, an agglomeration of individuals or groups, an increase of body without the development of muscle and vital organs” (p. 23). Peters gives no comfort in his book to subbiblical views of church growth, whether in politicized ecclesiastical history or in our own day of manipulative behavioral sciences.

Peters concedes that the Bible is not a book about church growth, but about preaching the gospel. The goal is evangelization, but he considers ecclesiocentricity foreign to the Bible. He comes down hard on some of us when he says, “This is an age when church planting, church growth, church expansion, and church multiplication have become evangelical obsessions, when sociology and anthropology have become more dominant in missiology than the Bible and theology, when technology and methodology are better known than the divine moving of the Holy Spirit” (p. 45). All will not agree with Peters, but they will be stimulated to serious reflection on the mission of the church and its relationship to the Spirit and to the kingdom.

The relationship of the kingdom to the church and to the local church is carefully analyzed, for it has become one of the recently revived issues the pastor and missionary must confront. How much time and money should be dedicated to the kingdom’s sociopolitical responsibilities, and how much to evangelism, church planting, and church growth? Peters’s sober treatment of biblical texts leads him to support the present as the church age, but the present age also includes a limited unfolding of the kingdom. His well-organized presentation seems to be a preview of the revived kingdom-church debate that formerly raged in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy early in this century.

As pastors see themselves in “the ends of the earth” rather than in “Jerusalem,” they will also profit by what many tend to dismiss as missionary concerns. This is especially true of what Peters calls areas or parishes of “high potentiality.” This is his unique way of addressing the receptivity to the gospel of a neighborhood, a people, an ethnic grouping, or even a nation overseas. Peters’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit in this age leads him to an almost unbridled optimism concerning the ultimate receptivity to the gospel of people everywhere. Many missiologists appear to depend upon social or political upheavals to initiate readiness for religious change. While Peters recognizes a possible relationship with “high potentiality,” he focuses upon the spiritually whitened harvest fields, which “are not the same as psychological and social moods and circ*mstances.” High potentiality can be turned into evangelistic results only “by the presence of Christians and/or the Word of God.” The Holy Spirit brings readiness, he says, but it is the Christian’s responsibility to labor.

No less important in this discussion is Peters’s treatment of the Holy Spirit and the way in which he relates to all of humanity. How does he work in general history, in Israel, and in the church? Basic to Peters’s understanding of these relationships is the Heilsgeschichtliche theological principle: because of the Spirit working in history, the world is not a madhouse, but an arena—a battlefield between the forces of light and darkness—where the final outcome is assured. At the Parousia, the return of Christ, Satan will be destroyed, and Christ’s victory will liberate the world from exploitation, oppression, and religious bondage.

Upon these theological foundations, and because the church is God’s church, Peters moves into church growth as God’s primary means to reach the world. Four pillars comprise the remaining substantive chapters relating to the growth of the church. The first pillar considers the fitness of the church as a qualitative community (Acts 1–5). Pillar two examines the need for an “adequate and serviceable” church structure for growth (Acts 6–7). The third pillar involves several chapters concerning the multiple functions of the church both “inwardly” and “outwardly” (Acts 8–12). Here, his 13 principles of church growth become the heart of his study. Pillar four concludes with the focus of the church upon world evangelization (Acts 13–28).

This book contains a wealth of serious theological reflection accompanied by abundant biblical texts. It will, in all likelihood, become required reading for church growth pastors as well as pastoral and missionary-oriented students.

Peter wagner has likewise studied the major critiques that have confronted the church growth movement over the past decade. His is a mature treatment of contemporary issues that he skillfully simplifies by drawing upon his experience in classroom and communications. Church Growth and the Whole Gospel attempts to enter into serious discussion with detractors of the church growth movement, and brings up to date Donald McGavran’s Understanding Church Growth of a decade ago. This book clearly establishes Wagner as McGavran’s successor and the leader of the contemporary church growth movement.

Church Growth and the Whole Gospel could be subtitled “How My Mind Has Changed” or “A Contemporary Apologetic for the Church Growth Movement.” It contains a subtle but distinct reaffirmation of Donald McGavran’s basic principles in a popular, yet developed perspective. A reader’s enthusiasm for the book grows as he enters into the substance of Wagner’s argument.

Evangelicals are newly interested in the kingdom—probably stimulated by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of Melbourne 1980. Wagner begins his study of the acute issues confronting every minister and missionary by carefully reflecting on the kingdom. He observes that “kingdom theology” in its various forms sustains the social or horizontal dimension of the gospel among many evangelicals.

He goes on to add a much-needed stress on the “cultural mandate” of Genesis 1:28 in which the first recorded command was given to mankind: creation was to be treated as God himself would treat it. On the twin bases of the kingdom and the cultural mandate, Wagner concludes, “No one can be a kingdom person without loving one’s neighbor. No Christian can please God without fulfilling the cultural mandate” (pp. 12–13).

Wagner points out the dangers of “selective obedience.” He finds that some read the Scripture with “sociopolitical eyes” only, and then neglect the miraculous and supernatural signs of the kingdom represented by the healing and exorcisms of Jesus recorded in the Gospels (Luke 7:21–22). Others read the Scriptures without giving due attention to the present manifestation of the kingdom in anticipation of its literal fulfillment.

From the vantage point of the kingdom and cultural mandate, Wagner examines objections raised to the church growth movement. One major objection considered asserts that God wants his kingdom to grow; it is nowhere stated in Scripture that God wants his church to grow, for this is an ecclesiocentric, not a Christ-centered, idea. All church growth, Wagner recognizes, is not necessarily kingdom growth—because of the tares—but church growth is a penultimate task while kingdom growth is the ultimate task.

Wagner moves briskly and helpfully from priorities influencing the financial support of missions to sociopolitical change, from discipling to ethical awareness, from hom*ogeneity to racism, from the United Presbyterian Church to Jerry Falwell of Moral Majority, from Jim Wallis of Sojourners to smoking as a social issue. Wagner investigates deep truths in popular terms, making them available and interesting to layman as well as pastor. Though many will disagree on some details, as I do, all will agree he has done a good job in confronting contemporary issues. He has interacted with both evangelical and nonevangelical critics of the church growth movement, and has renewed its biblical credibility.

If Peters and Wagner keep it up, the church growth movement will challenge believers not only in this generation, but also in the next.

Arthur P. Johnston is professor of world mission at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He is author of The Battle for World Evangelism (Tyndale, 1978).