Page 5457 – Christianity Today (2024)

The southern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) is approaching its June meeting of the general assembly with less than complete harmony. The cause of contention, ironically, is a constitutional amendment designed to bolster denominational unity.

Called “Chapter Six” because that is the constitutional section up for amendment, the proposed change would give the denomination control over the real estate, bank accounts, and trust funds of each of its 4,000-plus congregations, regardless of any legal titles held by a local board of trustees.

PCUS officials say the amendment only makes explicit what has been implied throughout the history of the denomination (it began with the Civil War). The proposed amendment states: “All property held by or for a particular church … is held nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church in the United States.”

Flynn Long. Jr., associate stated clerk, noted the Westminster Confession of Faith affirms “the oneness of the church,” implying that congregations are individually a part of a larger whole. Congregational independency has never been a tenet of an individual Presbyterian denomination.”

Another official said the new Chapter Six is not “some grab for power.” Joseph Grier, Jr., who last year chaired the Committee on Polity, said the amendment was necessary only as a legal safeguard, to “prevent churches in Georgia from withdrawing without the consent of presbytery.”

Opponents of the amendment have labeled it an effort to “deny the civil rights of the congregation to own property.” They vehemently dispute the amendment’s statement that it is “declaratory of principles” present since “the inception of the presbyterian form of church government.”

Yet the amendment has already been approved by the necessary majority of PCUS presbyteries. Thirty-three have approved it, 23 have voted against it, and 4 have yet to vote. The amendment is expected to be approved when the PCUS general assembly meets June 11 to 17 in Columbus, Georgia.

The strongest recent opposition to Chapter Six erupted in Mississippi, where all three of the state’s presbyteries oppose the measure. The 426-member Cleveland, Mississippi, church divided almost equally among members who want to leave the denomination and those who want to stay. Pastor Wilson Benton has been particularly outspoken against amendment. Two other Mississippi churches and 12 in other states have left or are trying to leave PCUS because of the property amendment.

A second controversial subject will also be considered at the June meeting: the reunion of the southern Presbyterians with the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA). Fifteen PCUS presbyteries already have joint affiliation with the UPCUSA. A number of conservative churches also object to the reunion move because they fear it will eventually require election of women elders (UPCUSA now requires male-and-female boards.)

Cardinal Cody Of Chicago Dies At Age 74

John Patrick Cardinal Cody, archbishop of Chicago, died April 24 at his home there. He died of an apparent heart attack at age 74. Cody’s last months as leader of the country’s largest Catholic archdiocese were marred by accusations that he misspent church funds. A federal grand jury was investigating charges that he had channeled $1 million to a longtime friend, Helen Dolan Wilson. Cody denied the charges, saying, “any accusations against the shepherd are also against the church.”

A dramatic development hours after Cody’s death was the reading of a letter he had written months before. The letter was penned in the midst of the funding controversy with instructions that it be read at the cardinal’s death. Cody wrote that he forgave the news media and others who caused him “personal hurt” but added that “God will not so forgive.”

Cody’s letter expressed sentiments that those alleging misuse of funds had “malicious designs” against the archbishop. Nonetheless, he said, “I can turn away because I am a Christian, a bishop, a person. I do so.”

“But God will not so forgive,” the letter continued. “God’s is another way—He stands before my former enemies insisting forever with good will that they change.” Cody also lamented that some people, “even priests,” had attacked him “because a delusion is too compelling.”

Cody was head of the Chicago archdiocese for 17 years. Previously, he spent 11 years in Rome, earning three doctorates. He also served the church in important positions in St. Louis and Kansas City. Cody was widely known before his 1965 arrival in Chicago for his work in integrating Catholic schools in New Orleans, where he served four years. He was known for his defense of church doctrine and was a canon law scholar.

His successor will probably not be decided upon until next fall or later. Cincinnati archbishop Joseph Bernardin has been a frequently mentioned possible successor to Cody. Other possibilities include Theodore Hesburgh, now president of the University of Notre Dame. Many observers, however, suggest the next archbishop (to be appointed by the Pope) will be a surprise—some name new to most churchmen.

John Richard Keating, cochancellor for personnel of the Chicago archdiocese, was named interim administrator. Keating, 47, was ordained in Rome and has been in Chicago since 1963.

North American Scene

Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) agreed with NBC television to split coverage of the Nabisco-Dinah Shore Invitational golf tournament. Ironically, the deal was made during the Coalition for Better Television’s boycott of NBC. The coalition considers NBC particularly guilty of offensive programming and an “anti-Christian” bias. NBC chairman Grant Tinker stated that the CBN agreement “shows that we’re thoroughly objective about everything.” CBN carried the early rounds of the tournament with NBC televising the larger-audience finals.

A French study of astrology concludes that there is no correlation between people’s character traits and the signs of the zodiac under which they were born. The Los Angeles Times quoted Michel Gauquelin, the study’s director, as saying that “the results were completely negative.” Gauquelin’s group compared the biographies of 2,000 successful people with their astrological signs. The subjects included athletes, soldiers, actors, politicians, and writers. For all 12 signs, a statistical analysis found that the correlations between personality traits and signs were no better than would have been predicted by chance. Gauquelin’s paper appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, a journal set on debunking claims of the paranormal.

Cult deprogrammer Ted Patrick was cleared of charges of kidnapping, assault, and sexual battery. Patrick was accused of kidnapping a 19-year-old Cincinnati woman whose parents thought she had been led into lesbianism through mind control. The prosecution contended the woman’s parents paid Patrick $8,000 to organize the kidnapping. Patrick’s attorney said his client was not involved. The woman, Stephanie Riethmiller, has also filed a $2.75 million civil suit against her parents, who are said to have instigated the “deprogramming.”

The largely hom*osexual Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches has cleared the first hurdle to becoming a member of the National Council of Churches. The council cautions that the controversial denomination has still not been accepted, however. An NCC committee did vote to send the denomination’s membership application to the NCC’s governing board. That board will decide this month if the church is eligible. Founded in 1970, the hom*osexual denomination now has 172 churches in eight countries. An estimated 15 percent of the membership is heterosexual.

The Lutheran Church in America is considering closer ties with the Episcopal church. A recommendation for the LCA’s biennial convention in September calls for mutual LCA-Episcopal recognition, provision for joint worship, interim eucharistic hospitality, and sharing of facilities. It has been praised by LCA bishop James R. Crumley, Jr., and Episcopal church presiding bishop John M. Allin. The priority item at the LCA’S convention will be another proposed strengthening of ties. The LCA is considering a union with the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt’s Commission on Crime wants that state’s legal drinking age raised to 21. The commission also suggested that two-or-more-times offenders be referred to an alcohol treatment center. That would focus on the offender’s alcohol problem rather than place emphasis on drunk driving merely as a crime. Persons 18 and over may now buy beer and wine in North Carolina, but not liquor. The commission wants the age raised to 21 for purchase of alcoholic beverages. The commission’s recommendations were accompanied by grim statistics: at least 360 of the 1,330 fatal accidents in the state in 1980 were alcohol related, and 61 percent of those killed in one-car accidents were intoxicated.

The red-clad followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh outvoted long-time residents in a move to disincorporate Antelope, Oregon. A vote of 55 to 42 will keep the town (officially listed as a ghost town) incorporated and on the map—unless a judge decides some voters weren’t eligible and nullifies the vote. Antelope natives attempted to disincorporate the town so that Rajneesh’s 300 Oregon followers would have to deal with county government (county residents would outnumber the Indian guru and his followers in any votes). The original Antelope residents fear Rajneesh will take over their town, then raise taxes to drive out the “old-timers.” Meanwhile, Rajneesh has plans to incorporate his own town just 18 miles away from Antelope (CT, April 23, p. 38).

Personalia

Richard S. Reilly has been appointed director of Gospel Literature International. Reilly, formerly a missionary in India, was director of Calcutta Youth for Christ and secretary of the United Missionary Society.

Vonette Bright, wife of Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright, was honored as distinguished alumna of Texas Woman’s Univeristy. She graduated from the school in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in home economics.

George C, Fuller, 50, will be the next president of Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary. Fuller is a graduate of Princeton and Westminster. He has taught at Reformed Presbyterian Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He succeeds the retiring Edmund Clowney, president of the seminary 16 years.

Donald Robinson has been declared the new Anglican archbishop of Sydney, Australia. He succeeds Marcus Loane. Robinson is a graduate of Sydney University and Cambridge.

Deaths

Susan Alamo, 56, cofounder of the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation, a Pentecostal ministry to drug addicts and runaways, and the target of some cult deprogrammers; April 8, at Oral Roberts’s City of Faith Medical Center in Tulsa, of cancer.

The Church of England primate, Robert Runcie, was howled down in March and forced to abandon a Liverpool church service by demonstrators against the imminent papal visit to Britain. No reigning pontiff has ever set foot on English soil, and the protesters wanted to keep it that way.

But the May 28 to June 2 visit is going ahead at an estimated cost of some $11 million, and elaborate security precautions are being taken so that John Paul II’s nine-city itinerary will not be disrupted by the activities of Orangemen and their allies. In Glasgow a spokesman for the Orange order (a Protestant anti-Catholic society formed in Northern Ireland in 1795 and named for William of Orange) promised that the Pope “will have a visit to remember.” The less extreme Protestant Reformation Society, despite profound misgivings about the tour, is likely to settle for more symbolic protest, such as a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square to coincide with a service in Canterbury Cathedral in which Runcie, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope will celebrate Communion together.

In terms of British history, that service is an almost inconceivable event. In no other country are the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century so etched onto the national consciousness. Canterbury is the center of an English Christianity severed from the church of Rome by King Henry VIII in a quarrel about a royal divorce that happened to coincide with the European religious revolution associated with Martin Luther and John Calvin. Subsequent events generated great bitterness—Queen Mary, Henry’s Roman Catholic daughter, had leading Protestants burned at the stake; and Elizabeth I, Mary’s Protestant successor, replied with an intense persecution of Catholics, and many priests died on the gallows.

That history lies behind the ground swell of protest and controversy building around John Paul’s visit.

Moderate Anglicans welcomed his coming, but called it “sensitive” because, in the words of the preface to the current Church of England Year Book, “in coming to England, the Pope will be visiting a country where there is a historic folk church not in communion with him and yet confident that it is the ‘Catholic Church of this land.’ ”

A number of observers judged this an inauspicious time for John Paul to come. They pointed out that merger talks between the Church of England and three historic denominations (Methodist, United Reformed, and Moravian) are at a crucial stage and could be jeopardized by the appearance of an Anglican-Roman Catholic deal.

Then there was the recent announcement that Britain’s relations with the Vatican were being upgraded to ambassadorial status. Non-Anglican churchmen were sore that they were not consulted. British Council of Churches general secretary Philip Morgan commented on the insensitive timing of a declaration that seems to change the nature of the papal visit from pastoral call to state function.

Finally, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), which has been meeting since 1970, published in March a report of deliberations concluded last September. The report suggested the bishop of Rome should have primacy of honor if a new relationship is forged between Rome and the Anglican communion. The 18-member commission claimed to have reached a large measure of agreement on the Eucharist, ordination (Pope Leo XIII rejected the validity of Anglican ordination 86 years ago), and authority.

The theologians said they “agree that ‘conciliarity’ and primacy are complementary”—that the church needs both active involvement in decision making at the local level and a single head as the “focus of visible unity.” The report goes on to caution that “this does not mean that all differences have been eliminated.”

The 122-page report stressed that it is not a blueprint for unity, but the Anglicans were generous in their acceptance of papal primacy. “It is possible,” the document states, “to think that a primacy of the bishop of Rome [the report avoided use of the word pope] is not contrary to the New Testament and is part of God’s purpose regarding the church’s unity and catholicity, while admitting that the New Testament texts offer no sufficient basis for this.”

But the ARCIC report only finesses a stand off over papal infallibility. “Infallible,” it notes, is a “term applicable unconditionally to God alone and … to use it of a human being, even in highly restricted circ*mstances, can produce many misunderstandings.”

The initial response of the Vatican doctrine unit to the report was negative. Publication was delayed from a scheduled mid-January date while Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster, England, flew to Rome to talk the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) out of insistence on an accompanying series of dissenting notes, arguing they would be an insult to the Anglican communion.

Last month CDF head Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, “It is not yet possible to affirm that a really substantial agreement has been reached in all the questions” ARCIC studied. In his letter to Alan Clark, Roman Catholic bishop of East Anglia, he also said, “Various points, held as dogma by the Catholic church … cannot be accepted as such, or are … accepted only in part, by our brethren of the Anglican church. Moreover, some formulations in the ARCIC report can be given divergent interpretation, while others do not seem readily reconciled with Catholic doctrine.”

The Pope himself will not be able to dodge giving his own reaction to the report while in Britain.

The next Lambeth Conference (mouthpiece of the Anglican communion, which is competent to deal with the report) is not due until 1988.

But the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church has already made a favorable pronouncement. The general secretary of its Church Union Society states: “Provided the Church of England does not miss this great opportunity and creates no new barriers to mutual understanding, the flower of Anglican-Roman Catholic unity could be in full bloom by 1988.”

Very different is the reaction of evangelical scholar Roger Beckwith. He points out that the report’s “silence on the doctrine of salvation, its failure to agree on the doctrine of revelation, and its adoption of unacceptable Roman Catholic teaching on papal primacy and the Holy Communion, mean that it fails to provide a doctrinal basis for closer relations between the two churches.”

HARRY GENET with J. D. DOUGLAS in Scotland

World Scene

The parents of the late Chester Bitterman III flew to Colombia last month to present an ambulance as a gift from the believers of Bitterman’s home town, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They were met by President Julio César Turbay Ayala and granted a private interview. They also presented the keys to the hospital in Villa Vicencio in a dedication service. El Tiempo, Bogotá’s largest daily, editorialized: “The family of the … linguist … has eloquently demonstrated that the imperishable principles of Christianity have not been lost.… To respond to such an inconceivable monstrosity of a crime by donating an ambulance is to interpret in a very beautiful fashion the lesson to love your neighbor.”

Latin American evangelicals turned out in strength last month to form their own regional fellowship. Called to Panama City by an ad hoc committee, the 200 delegates (representing some 80 national denominations and more than 17,000 congregations) to the Consultation of Evangelicals in Latin America (CONELA) scrapped most of the scheduled workshops to devote at least 10 hours to vigorous debate in drafting a constitution. Ad hoc president Asdrubal Ríos turned over the gavel of the tumultuous sessions to an impromptu choice for moderator, José Messina, a Paraguayan Baptist. Marcelino Ortiz, a Mexico City Presbyterian and a member of the ad hoc committee, was elected president by the assembly. But the other three officers—two Pentecostals and a Baptist—were not from the committee. In a rider to the constitution, the conferees declared that CONELA should not join either the World Council of Churches or the International Christian Council.

At the height of the Falkland Islands crisis, British Christians sent a substantial gift and a message of people-to-people support to the churches of Argentina. Clive Calber, director of British Youth for Christ (YFC), who, together with Baptist minister Ian Coffey, delivered the $17,500 gift to an Argentine delegation, said, “We want to tell them Christians in Britain love their brothers and sisters in Argentina.” The action grew out of a spring vacation conference for youth in North Wales called Spring Harvest. More than 12,000 conferees at the event, sponsored by YFC and Buzz magazine, signed the message. The Argentine delegation that received the gift and message was in Panama for CONELA, the Consultation of Evangelicals in Latin America.

Herman Nickel’s nomination as ambassador to South Africa breezed through the Senate although opposed by two religious groups. Their opposition arose from an article Nickel wrote in the June 1980 issue of Fortune magazine titled “The Corporation Haters.” It said the National Council of Churches (NCC) harbored “Marxists marching under the banner of Christ.” Nickel is opposed to apartheid but believes the economic sanctions promoted by the NCC would hurt blacks most and invite violent rather than peaceful change. The NCC and the church-supported Washington Office on Africa opposed Nickel’s appointment.

Protestant and Roman Catholic church weddings won legal status in Greece in March, along with civil marriages. And the usually fragmented Protestants pulled together in an unprecedented manner to help bring it about. In the past, only Greek Orthodox weddings were legally valid.

And what one couple decided to do about it.

Years ago, an African student in the United States to attend college, asked for a drink of water. An American pointed him to a spittoon. The student was humiliated. He was Kwame Nkrumah, who rose to head the government of Ghana for 14 years.

Another African student received his military training at Aberdeen, Maryland. His experience here apparently did not endear Americans to him, for when Mengistu Haile Mariam took power in Ethiopia in 1977, he expelled Americans from his country.

Ironically, nine revolutionary leaders in China in the 1940s were introduced to communism while they were studying here. Most international students do not distinguish between Christianity, Americanism, and capitalism. Rejection of one leads to rejection of the others.

More than 311,000 international students from 184 countries are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. They present pastors and mission leaders with remarkable mission fields, and that fact is especially significant because among those 184 countries are those closed to Western missionaries. By entering the States, the students indirectly open locked doors. In addition, these students are among the most intelligent, highly educated, and influential in their countries.

International students, however, seldom find Americans friendly towards them. Stories of bitterness, mistreatment, and rejection abound.

Robert and Mary Taussig spent four years in Nigeria, where Robert, a professor of veterinary medicine, taught college. They met many Nigerian students bitter about their experiences in America. “I hate America. It has nothing to offer me,” said one student.

The Taussigs returned to Manhattan, Kansas, in the fall of 1976, and Bob Taussig resumed his teaching position at Kansas State University (KSU).

“We returned feeling very convinced that God was leading us to do something for international students,” said Taussig. “But we didn’t know what to do.” They obtained a list of names of international students and spent a year praying for each name.

What germinated was the conviction that the students’ social and cultural problems must be handled before spiritual needs can be addressed.

The Taussigs began by emphasizing personal friendship. “And by friendship,” Taussig said, “we mean something more than that which is casual. It has to have some depth and quality.”

Unexpected assistance helped launch the friendship program. Three American students who lived in basem*nt rooms in the Taussig home became willing recruits when their hosts shared their ideas. The trio invited international students over for meals, visited them, helped them with their shopping, and with housing during breaks when dorms were closed.

More volunteers soon joined them. The scope of their activities expanded to include Bible study and evangelistic meetings.

Objectives crystallized. This led, in the fall of 1978, to the formation of Helping International Students (HIS), a church-based community service organization. The Taussigs are HIS directors and now have more than 270 American helpers. More than half are from their congregation, Grace Baptist Church.

Chuan-Hsin Hsueh was a chemist doing research at Beijing College of Chemical Engineering, and is working on a doctorate in chemistry at KSU. He came alone; his wife and five children are in mainland China.

When he landed at Kansas City, Kansas, in February last year, he had only $30 in U.S. currency, and “a little English.” He took a bus to Manhattan, Kansas, as he could not afford a commuter plane, arriving at 9 P.M. Sensing that he was a stranger, a Christian approached him, found out his circ*mstances, and rang Taussig. The Taussigs took him in for the night.

Another KSU student who was a lecturer is Korean Nam-In Kim, 34. He taught crop physiology in South Korea. When he arrived on campus three years ago, he was single and not a Christian. He now has a Korean wife he met here, and a three-month-old boy. Baptized at Grace Baptist Church in September 1980, he is the only Christian in his family of seven.

Kim said, “He [Taussig] is the symbol of Christianity. When new students come to KSU and they need transportation, he has someone to pick them up. He helped me spiritually. When I stayed in the dorm, he visited me one night and gave me a book on Christian living.”

Grace Baptist Church figures prominently in HIS activities. When the pastor first gave Taussig pulpit time in the fall of 1978 to explain the HIS program and appeal for volunteers, 80 responded. Since then, appeals are made at the start of each semester.

Besides serving the community, the Taussigs feel that HIS helps stimulate the congregation to be missions minded, promote world awareness, and provide a training and support base for cross-cultural work. They believe that the local church, rather than parachurch organizations, should be the base for international student work. The church’s communal and family life, its manpower, and financial resources render it an ideal center.

Nigerian students respond well to HIS. James Hassan, one of 120 Nigerian students at KSU, said, “Nigerian culture is very different from American culture. Back home I’m used to talking to anybody. But nobody cares about me here. I show a friendly face, but I get the impression that I’m not wanted. Some seem to say, ‘What business have you got with me?’ I’m referring to American students and adults alike.

“But I see a spirit of brotherhood in Dr. Taussig. They [the Taussigs] are among the people who care.”

Several training programs, workshops, and seminars have been designed to teach American volunteers cross-cultural principles of conversation and communication.

“The American is more of a problem to us than the international,” said Taussig. “The problem is with our narrow, provincial outlook, our Western culture that thinks that everything resides here. This even splinters off into the idea that Western Caucasian people are more intelligent, more sophisticated. It’s a type of Western blindness.”

Although HIS’s concepts and training materials developed independently of other international student ministries, the Taussigs now have ties with several organizations, including International Students and the Southern Baptist Convention.

Since these experiences, the Taussigs said they are grateful to God for the opportunity to go to 80 countries without leaving Manhattan, without needing a visa, and without learning a foreign language. KSU is a veritable mission field.

The Taussigs have seven children and 22 grandchildren. They look upon the international students as part of their extended family—their spiritual children.

Two verses guide them in their labors: “When a foreigner lives with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him … love him as yourself” (Lev. 19:33–34).

LAWSON LAU in Manhattan, Kansas

NEWS

Graham’s springtime blitz draws a strong response.

Even for a itinerant evangelist, it has been a lot of travel. During April and May, Billy Graham has been crisscrossing New England, holding one-day rallies in seven cities and delivering “evangelistic lectures” at seven college campuses, including three Ivy League schools. Three associate evangelists—Ralph Bell, John Wesley White, and Leighton Ford—have also been working the territory. The climax comes the first week in June with an eight-day Graham crusade in Boston.

In the middle of it all, Graham made trips to Washington, D.C., to address a U.S. Chamber of Commerce prayer breakfast, to Moscow for an unprecedented preaching engagement (CT, April 9, p. 44), and from there to London to pick up his $200,000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

College crowds, particularly in the Ivy League, are not apt to be pushovers for a Bible preacher. But as Graham’s schedule got under way, it was evident he was getting a good reception. He drew 1,600 at Northeastern and 1,900 at the University of Massachusetts. At Yale, the crowd stretched down the street and around the corner by the time the doors of the campus chapel were opened. When Graham spoke, about a thousand people had packed out the place.

He spoke twice at Harvard—the first night at the John F. Kennedy School of Government before a near-capacity crowd of some 800, which Graham’s Harvard hosts admitted by advance ticket only. When he concluded, Graham was accorded a sustained ovation by an audience not known for its effusion toward outside speakers. The next day the campus daily newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, called the crowd “enthusiastic.” The following night Graham spoke in spacious Memorial Church in the middle of fabled Harvard Yard. The church was packed—the audience again limited to Harvard students, faculty, and staff.

The one-day rallies were also drawing good crowds as the schedule got under way: 19,000 in Providence, Rhode Island; 4,400 in Burlington, Vermont; and 9,000 in Portland, Maine. The number coming forward for counseling afterwards was running 10 percent—double what Graham usually sees in North America.

“Our team senses something unusual happening here,” said Sterling Huston, Graham’s director of crusades for North America. “There is just a very confirming sense in the numbers and the spirit of those who have been coming that this is God’s time for New England.”

Some of Graham’s campus lectures coincided with “Ground-Zero Week” at a number of colleges, a time dedicated to halting the arms spiral, and Graham’s lectures were billed as focusing on the peace issue. No doubt some students were disappointed because Graham did not dwell on nuclear arms, and he said nothing critical of the Reagan administration. He mentioned only briefly what he dubbed “SALT 10,” the destruction of all nuclear arms. He emphasized, however, that he is not a pacifist, he does not concur with unilateral disarmament, and he does not have magic solutions to the arms race.

In fact, if there was a reason for Graham’s success with the Harvard students, it was his forthright admission that he does not have all the answers, and for his gentle approach to the gospel, minus fire and damnation.

He said he is still on a personal pilgrimage and “the more I learn, the less dogmatic I become on some topics … the answers are constantly being oversimplified in our society. It’s especially true in religion and politics. The temptation to simplify must be resisted.”

He declared his commitment to the social aspects of the gospel, and he described his alma mater, Wheaton College, as an antislave institution founded before the Civil War. He described his first “act of conscience” as a time at one of his earliest crusades when he ripped down a rope barrier separating whites from blacks.

There were some tough questions from the audience, such as, Was Graham manipulated by former President Nixon for Nixon’s political gain? Graham replied that Nixon used him less than some other presidents, and he revealed that in 1960, Nixon heard a rumor that Graham was about to endorse him for president. According to Graham, Nixon phoned to tell him not to do it because Graham’s ministry was more important than Nixon’s candidacy.

Graham was asked if he would condemn apartheid in South Africa, and in the Dutch Reformed church there, which supports it. Graham replied that it would be too easy to speak out from the safe distance of a Harvard lectern and that he has done it instead in Durban and Johannesburg. Pressed about including the Reformed church in his condemnation, Graham demurred, saying not all Reformed ministers favor apartheid.

As at his other campus lectures, Graham presented the gospel, calling it the only way out of the human dilemma, and declaring that Christ was “either a madman, a liar, and the biggest liar in the history of the world, or he was who he claimed to be.”

Graham’s warm reception at Harvard is consistent with a slow but noticeable trend of openness to evangelical Christianity on college campuses in New England, particularly where evangelicals have been willing to be counted on social issues as they boil up on campus.

When David Fountain, a young Conservative Baptist minister, arrived at Harvard in 1976 to work as a chaplain with graduate students, he found no organized outreach among the graduate population of 7,000. He started one and was joined in 1978 by another Conservative Baptist chaplain, Michael Knosp. Today, the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship includes about 100 graduate students. It is encouraging growth, given the rarified air of the Harvard graduate schools.

At another level, the Harvard Divinity School has been talking with the Graham people for some time about finding donors to endow a chair of evangelical studies (total amount needed: $1 million). Part of the reason, said George Rupp, dean of the divinity school, is that “there’s a seasoning of evangelical scholarship. An institution [such as Harvard] always recognizes scholarship wherever it finds it, and we now find more of it in evangelical circles.” He also said that because of the growing visibility of evangelicals in the culture, mainline scholars are more interested in discussions with them.

Those discussions have already begun. Last fall two professors from nearby Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, David Wells and Richard Lovelace, came to Harvard to discuss pertinent issues with two of their counterparts from the divinity school. The meeting was scheduled for the student lounge, but there were so many interested students and faculty wanting in that it was moved to the school’s largest lecture room, where it was still jammed.

It is certainly too early to declare that another “Great Awakening” has come upon New England, but as Graham’s work in the region this spring has shown, there do seem to be signs of life that may be signaling the end of a long, hard freeze in the area that once preserved for the nation its Judeo-Christian heritage.

TOM MINNERY in Boston

When I was getting started in my profession, I used to wonder what happened to preachers when they got old. (In those days, “old” meant somewhere in the 40s. I have since recalculated.) I supposed that old preachers, like old soldiers, did not die; they just faded away. Now that I have reached middle age, I am getting my answers.

Not that I am old. (As I mentioned before, I have recalculated.) True, I can no longer sign John 8:57 after my name (“Thou art not yet fifty years old”), but there are plenty of other verses to choose from. My friends who own pocket calculators tell me that nobody can know when he is at middle age until he knows how long he will live. But even if the Lord graciously grants me fourscore years, I am still past that midpoint, and that makes me a middle-aged minister.

Dante found himself “in a dark wood” when he arrived at “the middle of the road of life,” but it was his own fault. He admitted that he “strayed from the straight path.” Byron had nothing good to say about the middle years: “That horrid equinox, that hateful section / Of human years, that half-way house, that rude / Hut …” His experienced estimate was that our middle years are the time “when we hover between fool and sage.” I think Byron must have followed Dante off the straight path.

Not that middle age doesn’t have its special problems. Bob Hope once defined middle age as that time of life “when your age starts to show around your middle.” My wife told me that swimming was good for my figure, and I asked her if she had ever looked at a duck’s figure. Many golfers I know are tediously overweight, and I don’t golf anyway. I still get my exercise by carrying books up and down the stairs and occasionally strolling about the neighborhood.

But I sometimes have a problem understanding what is going on in the high councils of Christendom. A whole new vocabulary has developed while I was out of the room parsing a Greek verb. The church renewal movement has occasionally given me slight headaches, and I have to pray extra hard before reviewing books by some authors. The new “tell-it-like-it-is” school of biography and autobiography upsets me. I sometimes feel like taking a shower after reading such stuff, and I suppose that dates me.

All sorts of new winds are blowing. Fences are coming down that used to seem sturdy. The fellow who used to draw the boundary lines was ran over by a gang of protest marchers and we don’t see him any more. Perhaps that’s the biggest problem of the middle-aged minister: he is not always sure where he belongs. He is too wise to follow every flag that marches by, and yet he has no desire merely to be a spectator.

Some ministers solve this problem by jumping on a noisy bandwagon and hitching their future to an evangelical superstar, a “man with a cause.” Their own light is dim, so they live on a borrowed glow. “There is safety in numbers.” they argue; but, as a witty British minister once remarked, “There is more safety in exodus.”

I have never felt happy on a bandwagon. Like Thoreau, I tend to listen to a different drummer. I have never asked my friends to follow my flag; all I have asked is that they give me the privilege of following it myself, and I will do the same for them. Jehovah is a God of infinite variety and there is no need for us to be carbon copies or clones. Too many middle-aged ministers huddle together for warmth and safety when they ought to be out cutting new trails for the gospel.

All the books tell me that my middle years are a time for evaluation. I am embarrassed to confess that I never had an identity crisis. My parents always reminded me who I was, and when they forgot, my two brothers and sister took up the quarrel with the foe. I don’t recall that any of my professors ever lectured on the subject, although more than once I did have a crisis trying to identity what they were lecturing about.

The books also tell me that the middle years bring threats of fear of failure. Perhaps they do. My own feeling is that God and his people have treated me far better than I deserve, and that God has balanced the blessings and burdens in a beautiful way. My early optimism has become realism; I trust there is no pessimism. I am not as critical as I used to be, not because my standards are lower, but because my sight is clearer. What I thought were blemishes in others have turned out to be scars. In my earlier years, I was one of the six blind men describing the elephant. Today I can see the elephant clearer and also the other five men.

A friend once said to me, “I want to get mellow, but not rotten.” A good point. I recall that one of the great saints prayed, “Lord, don’t let me become a mean old man.” I suppose this has special relevance when we see others achieving goals that, to us today, are either dreams or memories. When I read the news columns of religious periodicals, I am amazed at the number of “immature young men” who are filling important places of leadership. Why, I knew some of those fellows way back in Youth for Christ days! They were just kids!

It is easy to look at the future in a rearview mirror, but that kind of driving always leads to a collision. God is building his temple, and I would rather stand shouting with the youths than sit weeping with the aged. True, some things are changing; but they have always been changing. I am reminded of the reader who complained to William Randolph Hearst that his newspaper was not as good as it used to be. He replied: “It never has been.” I believe that God still saves the best wine until the last, and that the path of the just still gets brighter and brighter, even if we sometimes find ourselves looking at the glory through our tears.

Yes, there are many compensations to the minister who reaches middle age. I have lived long enough to be thankful for unanswered prayer. Here and there, I meet people who were helped along the way by something I said or wrote. I admit that it makes me feel old when I dedicate the children of parents who were little imps in churches I have pastored, but it makes me feel happy to know I helped to give them a good start. I have fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in the Lord all over the world, and that gives me a good feeling—especially when I travel and need someplace to hang my hat.

I like to think I have matured a little. I don’t know as much about prophecy as I used to, and I have stopped hunting for obscure texts that will stun congregations. I have learned the hard way that there is a difference between an outline and a message, and I wince when I remember some of the sermons I have preached. How patient were those congregations that listened and loved and encouraged! They came for bread, but too often I gave them a stone—but they were kind enough not to throw it at me.

God has taught me that he blesses people I disagree with and does not ask my permission. No, I have not abandoned my theology. The foundation is still the same, but I must confess that I have rearranged the furniture and even tossed out a few pieces that don’t seem so important anymore. I have learned to love my neighbor, even if he wears a different label from mine. And I have learned not to be afraid of truth, because all truth is God’s truth, no matter what the channel. When I meet a new Christian friend, I major on what we agree on and let the disagreements take care of themselves.

Regrets? Just a few, but nothing major. God has ruled and overruled, and I have no room for complaint. I am not running around quite as much—not because there are no opportunities, but because I have rearranged my priorities. William Culbertson, the late president of Moody Bible Institute, once said to me, “We do more by doing less.” He was right. I am no longer infatuated with the latest church-growth scheme or intimidated when I fail to attend the latest seminar. Instead of reading the books of the hour, I am concentrating on the books of the ages and learning a lot more.

Above all, I am trying to encourage and help those who are coming along. After all, people encouraged me in those early difficult years, and real Christian encouragement is a rare commodity these days. God changes his workmen, but his work goes right on. I want to be like David and serve my generation in the will of God.

I want to keep growing, even though the older I get, the more difficult it becomes. Why? Because there is no growth without challenge, and there is no challenge without change. When I was younger, change was a treat; now it tends to become a threat. But I need change—not novelty, but change—the kind of experiences that force me to dig deeper and lay hold of that kingdom which cannot be shaken. There is no time to waste on scaffolding; I must build on essentials, not accidentals.

The same Lord who started me on this path will see me through to the end. I have no desire for a road map of the future; one day at a time is sufficient. I am doing my best to act my age and not trying to imitate a teen-ager. At the same time, I don’t want to drift into what a friend of mine calls “sanctified senility.” Balance is the key word, isn’t it?

The mind grows by what it takes in; the heart grows by what it gives out. “Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face,” wrote Montaigne. I would rather have a wrinkled face than a wrinkled mind. The Indian summer of life has its own glory and beauty because God made it that way, and I hope to enjoy it with him as long as he allows. Ministry thrives on maturity, and time cannot destroy what we do in the will of God. There is no time to wallow in evangelical nostalgia, not as long as there is a world to reach with the gospel.

Middle age? It is just another stage in a grand and glorious life that has been planned for us by a loving Father.

Could we want anything better?

A former pastor, Warren W. Wiersbe is currently engaged in radio and conference ministry, and serves as associate teacher on the “Back to the Bible” broadcast. Author of some 50 books, he and his pastor son are currently collaborating on a volume on the subject of pastoral ministry. He wrote CT’s Eutychus X column for nearly three years.

The ascension of Jesus is just not important for Christians—it isn’t, that is, if the importance of an event is determined by how many commemorate it. Even among Roman Catholics, Christ’s ascension does not seem to attract the same attention as the assumption of Mary. The latter commemoration, in fact, has acquired many of the characteristics of Jesus’ own ascension.

Coming as it does 40 days after Easter, Ascension Day never had the good fortune to fall on a Sunday. It is forever doomed to Thursday.

The Ascension also suffers at the hands of those who see the Resurrection as a myth. Without a meaningful doctrine of a physical resurrection of Jesus, the Ascension is the first domino to fall. No Resurrection easily translates into no Ascension. If the Resurrection only means that the early church glorified Jesus as the Christ in its preaching, then the accounts of the Ascension and Jesus sitting down at God’s right hand can only be further descriptive embellishments of the basic kerygma. Both Resurrection and Ascension would be myths contrived by the church to show that these earliest Christians began to think of the earthly Jesus in exalted, almost divine, terms. They would be parables teaching in unison that Jesus had become something special in God’s sight. Already 150 years ago, Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of neo-Protestantism, saw both the Resurrection and the Ascension as unnecessary to demonstrate that God was present in Jesus.

The Ascension is, however, embedded into the church’s worship life as all the major Protestant and Roman Catholic confessions follow the statement in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” It is not a later addition to the church’s faith; writing from Rome—probably before A.D. 70—Peter states: “For Christ also died for sins once for all … through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him” (1 Peter 3:18, 21–22). The outline of our Apostles’ Creed is clearly detectable.

In this century, conservative Protestant theology has been so concerned with defending the historical character of Jesus’ virgin birth and resurrection that his ascension has received relatively little theological attention. It is handled in only a few pages—sometimes a few paragraphs—in most traditional dogmatical textbooks. Frequently it seems that the Ascension is handled in such a way that it does little more than provide the best explanation of why Jesus is not with us today as he was with his disciples after his resurrection. Others emphasize it as a doctrine offering bereaved Christians comfort in knowing that the faithful departed are with Jesus.

But there must be more to the Ascension. Without denying the value and truth of viewing it as providing a haven for Christian saints, the church must see a wider dimension for this doctrine.

The early church never understood the ascension of Jesus as a departure ceremony for a beloved teacher traveling to a distant and unknown land. Rather, it was seen as a further step in his glorification, from which the church could only benefit. Luke, the only New Testament writer to give us a graphic account of the Ascension, also points out that after the event Christ was working with his apostles (Acts 14:3). For Luke, the Ascension did not mean that Jesus was no longer with them. Describing it, he gives no indication that the disciples were in any way saddened or disappointed. On the contrary, they were elated and glorified God. The Ascension did not only mean that Jesus had entered a new dimension. It also meant that through it they were going to participate in Christ’s universal reign through their preaching of the gospel. What God had been doing through Jesus in calling men to repentance he was now going to do through them.

The full significance of the Ascension is lost if it is simply viewed as a spatial event with Jesus going from one place to another. Such an understanding would mean that it would be merely a deathlike departure for Jesus—though of course under the more pleasant circ*mstances of being carried into heaven bodily. But, like those who die, Jesus would actually be removed from us. Such a view would mean that we could remember him, and that in his place in heaven he could be aware of us. But he would not really be present with us.

Along with his ascension, the New Testament writers just as emphatically teach that Jesus is still present with his church. Remember, only? Luke provides the historical details of the Ascension. The longer Marcan ending (16:9–20) is generally recognized as a later addition, even though it can be considered an adequate theological reflection of the primitive apostolic doctrine. The absence of ascension details in Matthew, Mark, and John can hardly mean that they saw no use in the doctrine. They all teach Christ’s return on the Last Day, and such a return is not plausible without something resembling the Ascension.

That the Ascension lacks attention only means the early church saw the Lord’s presence in their midst as a Christian truth as vital as the fact that through the Ascension he was no longer visibly present with them. Just as Luke could conclude his Gospel and begin the Acts of the Apostles with the ascension of Jesus, so Matthew could conclude his Gospel with Jesus’ words, “Lo, I am with you to the close of the age.” This is not a contradiction between conflicting Gospel traditions. Since ascension means removal from sight and not departure from the earth, just the opposite of departure is meant. The One who preached only in Palestine among the Jews is now preaching everywhere in his church.

The writer of the longer Marcan ending saw the harmony between ascension and Christ’s presence in his church: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it. Amen” (Mark 16:19–20).

The Soviet cosmonauts probably intended to strike a blow for official Marxist atheism when they proclaimed from their first earth-circling trip that they had not seen Jesus or the apostles in heaven. But any search to the most distant part of the created universe will result in a similar disappointment at not finding the ascended Lord. The Honest to God bishop, John Robinson, made theological hay by proclaiming the demise of the alleged biblical view of the three-storied universe. Without a hell down there and a heaven up there, ascension as a spatial event becomes meaningless.

In referring to Christ’s descent to earth in the Incarnation and his ascension into heaven, the Bible is not speaking of change of a spatial nature, but of one of condition. Common expressions in our own speech include such phrases as “he is going up in the world,” or “he feels down.” Christ’s ascending into heaven and sitting down at God’s right hand mean he assumed control of the world for the benefit of his church. The apostle Paul describes Christ’s glorification as the subjection of all things in the universe to him (Phil. 2:9–11).

Ascension means not only personal glorification for the Messiah, but also for the church. The Resurrection is not only an event in history, but also it means that the Christian has already been raised with Christ. The Ascension follows the Resurrection, and it means that Jesus has taken his church with him into heaven to share in the glories he has received for his work of atonement. Christians have already died and been raised with Christ (Eph. 2:5–6), though from our vantage point in time our death and resurrection lie in the future. God, however, sees these events as having already been accomplished in Jesus. The divine and not the human perspective must be recognized as the superior and overarching reality. This gives Christian faith its confidence.

Ascension and Jesus seated at God’s right hand give tangible definition to the reconciliation that God, wrathful over sin, has accomplished in the Atonement. Our human nature, once alienated from God by sin, has been raised by Christ’s ascension to God’s right hand (Eph. 1:3).

In his ascension hymn, “See, the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph,” Christopher Wordsworth gave poetic expression to the dogmatic truth that God and man have been united in Christ:

Thou hast raised our human nature
On the clouds to God’s right hand:
There we sit in heavenly places.
There with Thee in glory stand.
Jesus reigns, adored by angels:
Man with God is on the throne.
Mighty Lord, in Thine Ascension.
We by faith behold our own.

Even though the ascension means the reality of Christ’s presence in the church rather than his absence, it also means that he is no longer visible to his church on earth. He simply is not present as he was before his crucifixion. But the different type of presence began with his resurrection, not with his ascension. For Jesus, resurrection not only means his body had overcome death, but that it was immediately assumed into glory. The risen Lord was no longer living in Jerusalem or anyplace else after his resurrection, but he had passed in one moment into the glory of his Father.

During the 40-day period between resurrection and ascension, Jesus came out of his glory to appear to his disciples and to eat, talk, and walk with them. In no way was he subject to the ordinary processes of human existence; however, for the benefit of his disciples he wanted to show that he had risen from the dead. His ascension was essentially no different from his disappearances during that 40-day period when he removed himself from their sight. This did not mean that he had gone somewhere. He appeared out of glory, and he returned to glory. But his final removal from their sight had to be so convincing that they would no longer expect him to return until his final appearing. Being lifted up from the earth and covered with the cloud, along with the message of the angels, was to convince the disciples that Jesus would no longer be visibly present among them.

There is, perhaps, some benefit in paying little attention to the Ascension, for it is just as important to believe that Jesus is still working with his church as it is to believe that he was removed from our sight. But even more important, Christians have already begun to share in his glory by being raised to God’s right hand in him.

David P. Scaer is professor of systematic theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

When a marriage fails, the church has failed and needs to breathe new life where there has been death.

“It’s all over now. One final session in court and a life together is over. If the marriage had ended in death (you muse), there would have been a funeral. Your friends would have been with your mate or you for the final service. Word and sacrament would have been a comfort. Next Sunday there would have been prayers for the survivors. The grief could have been open, and even proud. One need not apologize for death.

“But this is a divorce … and divorce is completely and utterly without honor. The church has no prayers for the divorced. No congregational voice will rise up to heaven on behalf of your loss.”

So begins Alice Stopler Peppier in her introduction to Divorced and Christian (Concordia, 1974). She is right. More often than not, the church offers no support for the person caught in the painful grief of a living death: divorce. Divorce is a statement of failure not only for the persons divorcing, but also for the Christian church.

Some churches go to extremes. On the one hand, there are those that do not recognize divorce as legitimate on any grounds. Others, on the other hand, accept divorce as preferable to an ongoing unhappy marriage. The CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll (1979) showed that about two-thirds of the nation’s pastors fell somewhere between these extremes, believing divorce should be permitted only in an “extreme situation” (CT editorial, May 25, 1979).

My plea, regardless of the foregoing, is for pastors and lay Christians not to get so hung up on which biblical grounds divorce may be permissible that they overlook the duty of the church to minister to those who have sustained, or who are experiencing, divorce. In many cases, not only have these people not gone through divorce for the right reasons (if one accepts such a possibility), but for reasons that do not meet the biblical criteria some pastors and churches understand to be legitimate.

Much has already been said and written about how to prepare for marriage, but very little is available on what to do for those who have failed. Some seminars have been conducted for pastors who are seeking creative ways to uphold the biblical view of marriage and at the same time to respond to the suffering of divorced persons (see “Divorce and Remarriage in Christian Perspective,” by William Oglesby, Pastoral Psychology, Summer 1977).

The church desperately needs to face and develop a Christian policy and attitude toward both divorced persons and those who have remarried, so that it will be able to respond immediately and with openness when confronted with questions. We only compound the problem if we pretend it is not there, or when we force someone to suffer while the church makes up its mind about such things as membership, teaching, or holding office. By the time the dust has settled, the person in question usually will have given up and gone elsewhere, or simply dropped out of church worship and nurture.

Each church, of course, must decide what the Bible teaches about divorce and the remarriage of divorced persons. Certainly the Bible upholds the high view of marriage as a God-ordained relationship that no one should destroy.

At the same time, because I believe Christians must care about divorced persons, we are also required by that same Bible to come alongside people who hurt, and offer them the redemptive, healing grace of God. Such an approach is described in “A Christian Understanding of Divorce,” by Thomas Olshewsky (Journal of Religious Ethics, Spring 1979); in Christian Alternatives Within Marriage, by Gary Demarest (Word, 1977); and in Divorce and the Faithful Church, by G. Edwin Bontrager (Herald Press, 1978).

I look at marriage as both a spiritual covenant before God and the church and a civil contract before society. It is a covenant in the sense that both parries vow to commit themselves by God’s grace to each other. These vows, spoken before God and his people, rest on the belief that Christ reinstated the supremacy of marital fidelity in the face of the Pharisees’ question about loopholes. Marriage thus pictures God’s covenant with the church.

As far as society is concerned, marriage is a civil contract in which the couple declare their intention to live by the laws of the state. These laws are for the good of society as a whole in that they provide stability for parents and children.

Such an approach to marriage carries us far beyond the immediate questions so often discussed: Was sexual adultery committed? By whom? Who is the innocent party? When we consider marriage as primarily a spiritual covenant, the important issue is personal fidelity to the vow to work toward becoming one in relationship. Wrongdoing is thus not limited to the overt sexual act with someone other than one’s spouse. Rather, it may well be the infidelity of neglect and alienation because of one’s preoccupation with a job or children or oneself. More often than not, these are the things that lie behind overt extramarital behavior, things that tempt a husband or wife to begin to look elsewhere for the understanding he or she perceives as missing in the marriage.

If marriage involves such a spiritual covenant, the failure of that covenant is a matter for repentance. Sometimes surprising things happen when husbands and wives confess such failure and seek the support of the church in the person of a friend, a pastor, or a counselor. In this way they should be enabled to find God’s healing grace to change and return to the marriage with a renewed covenant. But for partners who cannot or will not take this step, divorce may become necessary as a last resort.

I agree with Olshewsky when he says, “If divorce from past failures does lead the Christian to a civil divorce, s/he has the continuing task of setting the break in repentance and mending it in forgiveness.… This requires not only that we adopt a Christian understanding of divorce but an understanding of Christian divorce, a divorce that leads into reconciliation rather than alienation.”

Gary Demarest comments: “This is not to say that divorce for any reason or every reason is acceptable. It does affirm the fact, however, that God makes a gracious provision for us to deal with the irremediable, destructive situations in every human relationship. This principle is reiterated in the context of Matthew 18:15–17, where a process is offered as a means of dealing with broken relationships in the Christian community.”

There are some who may say that this is letting down the barrier and inviting divorce. Not at all. Without condoning sin, the church must still love a divorced or divorcing couple and seek to minister to them. We must remember that the justice and love of God are to be wedded in that experience also. In Romans 6, the apostle Paul tried to explain the forgiveness of God in the face of the law of God. We do not invite sin that grace may abound. But neither must we hold that divorce is the unpardonable sin for which there is no healing and forgiveness from God.

Responsibilities for the marital relationship are spread among the couple and the community of faith before whom, and with whom, they have taken their vows. If marriage is so serious a task, and we humans so sinful, then the church has a great responsibility to support that task by every possible means. It can do this through helping a couple prepare adequately for marriage, and by supporting them through the ups and downs of their becoming “one flesh.”

Here is the background for the church to respond more effectively to divorced persons. The place to begin is by taking church membership more seriously. If confessing Christ as Lord and Savior means not only that we are related to God through his Spirit but also that we are now related to other Christians in the church, then we need to reevaluate the covenant relationship of church membership. Do people simply come and go in spectator fashion? Or does church membership involve responsibility for one another in Christ? Growth and education in the Christian life cannot be experienced without meaningful relationships in the church.

But please note: I am not speaking of authoritarian relationships where one merely stands in judgment of another’s behavior. Rather, I am remembering that I, too, am a sinner who has been forgiven much by the Savior. I am speaking of relationships where we call one another to commitment, and where we encourage and support one another and bear one another’s burdens when we fail (Gal. 6:1–5).

As Henri Nouwen says, we need to be committed to membership in a community of “wounded healers.” This can be experienced only where there are growth groups within the church. Small cells provide the kinds of relationships necessary for leveling with one another in love for the purpose of Christian growth (Eph. 4:15).

The church also needs to help Christians learn how to live in a fragmenting, secular society. For example, probably one of the greatest causes of divorce is that it is too easy to get married. Contrast how much time a couple spends in romance with the amount it spends in preparation for a married lifetime. According to Wayne Oates, “The divorced Christian is a symptom of the irresponsibility of the church as a teaching community and its failure of nerve as a fellowship of human suffering” (Pastoral Counseling in Social Problems, Westminster, 1966).

Bontrager writes: “It is imperative that counseling services be provided to persons considering marriage to help them understand the seriousness and responsibilities of marriage.” While this is, of course, true, it may be too little, too late. We need to revamp our educational programs so as to provide realistic and effective education for living in our stressful society—that is, we need to provide support/study groups in the church at every age level. We need to apply Christian truth and grace to living in an alienating society, and we need to do it to prevent problems and to reeducate people who have fallen into patterns that have produced problems.

An important function of the church is to provide the supportive, accepting relationships that are so much needed by those suffering the painful grief of divorce. Divorced persons often find that it takes one to three years to work through grief and readjustment. That this period is so long may be due in part to the loneliness and alienation such individuals have experienced in the Christian community.

I remember one active member of an evangelical church who was suffering a divorce and the loss of his job at the same time. He told me he could count on the fingers of one hand the people in the church from whom he felt real support. Others, he said, would turn down another aisle to avoid him as he entered the church. Some would admonish him to pray more, or to get his life in order so that God could bless his marriage and restore him to a job.

A Christian singles recovery group can be of tremendous value during this period of grief. Most churches already have enough people for such a group when they take into account the widowed and divorced persons who are already there. Christian organizations that minister to singles are glad to provide help to get a group started.

It is important to recognize that group ministries like these should only be for recovery. Their goal is to reintegrate hurting people into the life of the church. An important part of that process is educating the rest of the church body to help their understanding.

We need to get in touch with our own unbiblical prejudices and fears about divorced persons. Particularly we need to look at how we subtly—and not so subtly—communicate our attitudes to formerly married persons. I remember one church that had an adult group called “Pairs and Spares.” It wasn’t until I began to listen to widowed and divorced people that I realized how brutally that title described how they are often made to feel.

Darlene Petri quotes Katie Wiebe’s experience of attending a large, church banquet with a woman friend. “As we entered the banquet half, the ushers asked us if we would mind splitting up and taking single seats, which they found difficult to fill with couples. I wondered later how many married couples had been asked to do the same” (The Hurt and Healing of Divorce, David C. Cook, 1976).

The church that takes seriously God’s high call to Christlikeness will be able to support and teach the high view of marriage as a covenant between two partners to become one flesh in Christ for life. At the same time, such a church will join those who fail in confession and healing, and in renewal through God’s forgiving grace. The congregation that has a theology of divorce, and a Christian response, is prepared not to deny, ignore, tolerate, or condemn divorced people. Rather, it will face divorce with a failing couple, and with them, own it as a sinful failure of the covenant. That church will provide counsel for healing and renewal. And, if necessary, it will walk with that couple through the pain of civil divorce, mutual forgiveness, and restoration, to the end that together they may go on for God in the Christian life.

George Ensworth, Jr., is professor of pastoral theology and chairman of the Department of the Ministry of the Church at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He also conducts a private counseling psychology practice.

Gospel music needs to be saved—from its detractors, its advocates, and its own “success.” The once clear perception of gospel music as proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ is no longer generally evident. The public image of gospel music is so confused that even the integrity of the term itself is in great danger. What a church means when it advertises gospel music, and what the secular mind—or even other Christians—thinks it means may have absolutely no relationship. The trend to retain the name while emptying it of its meaning may force us to relinquish its use altogether.

Gospel music has become very successful in secular terms (“Moneychangers in the Church,” CT, June 26, 1981), and promises to become even more so. According to syndicated columnist Dick Kleiner, “Knowledgeable people predict that gospel music will become the most important thing in music within four or five years, and they see gospel music series on television and gospel music coming in movies” (Dec. 16, 1981). Lack of historical perspective and unwisely worded statements have created much of the current confusion. The communications media give the impression that gospel music began about 60 years ago, and that it is primarily in one of three categories: black, southern-country/western, or “contemporary” in style. They ignore the mainstream of gospel hymnody and the gospel song of the past 150 years.

Historically, as Donald Hustad points out in his book, Jubilate! (Hope, 1981), gospel music has been “usually concerned with the basic gospel, the message of sin and grace and redemption, and man’s experience of them.” It is not just that “gospel” means “good news,” but that it expressly means the good news of salvation through Christ.

The origin of the gospel song can be traced to the camp and revival meetings, the singing schools—which had a profound impact on public music education—and the Sunday school of the first half of the nineteenth century. Some gospel music traditions continue, such as the “all-day singin’ and dinner on the grounds” in many southern churches. Many of the gospel songs of this period are still loved and used today—for example, William Bradbury’s “Just As I Am.” Like Bradbury, many of the gospel songwriters of the nineteenth century were highly trained, sometimes in European conservatories. They were also culturally sophisticated. Fanny Crosby knew no fewer than six U.S. Presidents, and scores of other prominent leaders. Much of our gospel music is the product of a distinctly cultured people.

The term “gospel music,” according to Hustad, was first used by Philip Phillips, “the Singing Pilgrim” of the nineteenth century. In 1874, P. P. Bliss published Gospel Songs, and the following year combined it with Ira Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos. The result, Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, eventually numbered 1,200 selections and is still sold in Great Britain. Sankey and D. L. Moody, as well as other evangelist-musician teams, made the gospel song familiar throughout the world.

Recent articles in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, however, and a special documentary series on ABC-TV, are examples of a different, limited view of gospel music. It is consistently defined within a strict context of the black church as “music of joy,” and as having been “invented” in the 1920s by Thomas A. Dorsey. Now 83, Dorsey is the black Chicago musician who wrote “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Peace in the Valley.” He defines gospel music as “the expoundation of that which you have inside you that is good, so help the other fella who is not feeling so good.”

There is an increasing tendency to define gospel music as merely expressions of positive feelings. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times (March 5, 1982), Don McLeese says, “In the American musical mainstream, gospel has become almost synonymous with spirit.”

Reba Rambo (McGuire) recently said, “Any song that is positive and upbeat can be considered to be gospel music.” A joyful mood, a sense of excitement, seems to be more important than content.

Gospel hymnody historically has been message oriented. Important as the music was to Luther, Wesley, and countless others, the text was even more important. Today, however, a lack of clear content is distinctly one of the problems with much—though by no means all—gospel music. The desire to achieve “crossover” has created a too-frequent dilution of the gospel message, so that, as Kleiner says, “Sometimes it is hard to pin a gospel label on a song that is contemporary gospel, because it often seems to be just another love song.” This apparently does not bother some. Gary Chapman, voted Songwriter of the Year by the Gospel Music Association, commented on his reaction to writing one of his songs as, “Wow, they can look at this any way they want to.”

Such activities and organizations as International Gospel Song Festivals, the Gospel Radio Network, and the Gospel Music Association with its own Dove awards all developed out of post-World War I trends. Southern gospel quartets began to attract attention in the 1920s as they appeared in school assemblies and churches. Simultaneously, Thomas Dorsey turned his talents in the direction of black gospel, adding elements of blues, jazz, and ragtime to more traditional hymns and spirituals. Elements of his style included syncopation, strong jazz rhythms, blues chords and melodic devices, and improvisation. 1945 to the early 1960s is generally considered to be the “golden era” of this branch of gospel music. Black gospel developed basically along two lines: an emphasis on the singer’s vocal quality and beauty of style—Mahalia Jackson, for example—and a concentration on the interaction between soloists and ensemble, with the voices often deliberately coarsened in quality to convey an atmosphere of emotional conviction. In performance, the notes and words are only suggestions; in fact, performers in church may not even finish, but give way to “shouting.” Performing four or five numbers can take up to two hours.

During the past 30 years, “gospel” increasingly has become identified as a secular style, devoid of any religious meaning. In 1950, the Dominoes recorded a rhythm and blues number, “Sixty Minute Man,” overtly erotic and admittedly based on the style of black gospel music. One of the common practices in secular gospel at this time was to break down in tears during a song.

The identification with commercial pop styles is all too complete. Allen Wheeler, general manager of an all-gospel music station in Chicago Heights, says, “If you will compare a contemporary gospel record with any of the current hits on the rhythm and blues charts, the only difference will be the lyrics. The beat is basic.” Chicago gospel music historian Clayton Hannah states, “What makes [gospel music] different than anything else is the beat. That’s all it is: Christian music put to a beat.” Many top secular artists started out singing gospel music, whether southern or black. (Elvis Presley, for example, claimed it was a major influence on his style.)

All this has made gospel music increasingly vulnerable to marketing manipulation. Last December, the Second Annual International Gospel Music Conference attempted to bring gospel musicians and their secular counterparts closer together. Contemporary Christian Music magazine (Jan. 1982) reported that Dick Asher, the deputy vice-president of CBS Records, said, “I’ll not pretend that we’re here because of some new burst of religious faith. We’re here because of the potential to sell records in the gospel market.” Former Chicago music critic Thomas Willis observes, “The secular, competitive professionals are more concerned with the market than the message.” Plainly, “the key word is ‘saleability.’ ”

Increased visibility of gospel music intensifies our need to demand consistent spiritual reality and content. Many artists are genuinely concerned that the Christian message and role modeling be clear. Even though they know it may hurt their commercial television potential, some continue to insist on a “message” orientation in their presentations. Black gospel artist Jessy Dixon says, “My songs are testimonies,” and Ben Speer expressed to me his deep concern that southern gospel artists not only maintain integrity in their music, but in their personal lives as well.

Gospel music is worth saving. It fulfills a vital, necessary role in a healthy, well-balanced hymnody. From the days of the early church, doctrine was taught and the gospel spread through music as well as through preaching. There has been a historic relation between genuine revival and an outpouring of new congregational song. Some of this new witness music penetrates the continuing heritage of evangelical hymnody: Andraé Crouch’s “My Tribute,” Ralph Carmichael’s “The Savior Is Waiting,” John W. Peterson’s “It Took a Miracle,” and Bill and Gloria Gaither’s “Jesus Is Lord of All” are examples. Most does not survive, but then, neither do most new worship hymns.

If gospel music is to be saved, we must face some issues squarely. We must admit that too often we have lacked openness to new music, even when it has had genuine substance. We have frequently failed to get past the vehicle of a text to see how, with some adaptation, some of the new music could be assimilated profitably into our hymnody.

On the other hand, sometimes we have been so open that we have failed to exercise responsible discernment, so that “anything goes.” Our heritage is disdained in a desperate quest for increased popularity. Overzealous proponents of gospel music often have hurt the cause. An arrogant attitude toward traditional, classical hymnody only polarizes people and diminishes the prospect for a full-orbed ministry of music.

Music lovers, too, also are often intolerant. They fail to balance attacks against the admitted excesses of gospel music by honest support of its virtues, and they fail to distinguish between true emotion and mere sentiment. Thus, they undermine the credibility of criticism that otherwise would be valid. This has often led church leaders and their congregations to take a counterproductive anticlassical stance.

The salvation of gospel music requires informed and committed support from many sources; no single approach will suffice.

1. Christian colleges, Bible institutes, and seminaries should require courses in hymnology of all students, and church history, systematic theology, and pastoral ministries of church musicians. Hymnology courses will be counterproductive, however, if teachers view gospel music as “inferior” and “unworthy” of use in Christian worship, and if they have failed to demonstrate biblical concepts successfully in their own ministries. The mature professor may discover that the thoughtful support of good gospel hymnody in no way compromises his stature as a Christian musical leader—in fact it may even enhance it.

However, one honestly wonders whether or not the Christian school has not already forfeited its leadership role. Pastors nationwide are too frequently disillusioned with the products of its programs, and view them with cautious suspicion. The successful church musician has often painfully learned the practical fallacies of much that he heard from authoritarian, sometimes youthful, idealists. The wounded music ministries in countless churches and their legacy of anticlassical and nonworship music is often the reaction to an insensitive and inexperienced advocate of good music.

2. Pastors need to keep themselves informed in hymnody. Public guidance from the pastor can do much to help direct and support a balanced congregational music ministry. Pastor and musicians working together, making decisions primarily on the basis of ministry, and with respect for the content of a song, can be role models to their people. They can help them to develop their own sense of selectivity, understand the kind of gospel music that has genuine significance, and sing it with the biblical balance of emotion and understanding (1 Cor. 14:15).

3. If music is to be a valid ministry of the Word, then the musician must also be a student of the Word and consistently apply its standards. Further, the church musician must recognize that the song of his people just may be legitimate in the house of God. As a pastor through music, he may need to exhibit all his love and patience if he is to help them effectively make their song appropriate in content and treatment.

4. Christian broadcasters perhaps presume too much of a leadership role in music. Although they claim they merely reflect the public’s taste, the Christian broadcasting medium is perhaps the single most powerful and effective educational force in gospel music today. Announcers and programmers have a shaping role in gospel music often out of all proportion to their musical and ministerial qualifications. Christian stations should require those who choose what is played or promoted to have some background of hymnology and church music. This is especially true of people coming out of Christian communications courses.

5. In fairness, broadcasters often are frustrated in their attempt to program quality gospel music because of the increasing difficulty in obtaining such material. The record companies must realize their responsibility both to make available and to promote aggressively a certain amount of quality gospel music, perhaps subsidizing it with profits generated from more popularly oriented releases. A public and real commitment to spiritual values, with an avoidance of hucksterism and phony “greatest” slogans, with less concern for Grammy nominations and Dove awards, and more concern for the cause of Christ, would greatly enhance their credibility in the public eye and be a real service to the ministry of music.

6. Artists with genuine talent and a proven capacity to minister the Word of God through music should be encouraged and supported. They must do their homework to see where they fit in the historical continuum, not just in relation to the current “top 40” scene. Pastors are increasingly wary of gospel artists, and some major churches now refuse to invite any at all. Where this is a reflection of genuine concern, it is admirable. However, some large churches have developed well-earned national reputations for underpaying musicians, and use the current situation as a convenient justification.

7. Bookstores should exercise more discretion and provide wider variety in what they play and promote. Working in cooperation with Christian radio stations, they could help foster a desire for quality gospel music. Many Christians want to purchase better gospel music—especially when they hear it on the radio—but they cannot find it in their stores. Too often the stores exhibit little inclination to obtain it for them.

8. Publishers must encourage more quality gospel music, and books that present it and its use in a reasoned and balanced way. Snide remarks about other Christians should be discouraged. There is no place for arrogance or self-righteousness at any level of ministry. However, it does no good to print—or record—excellent material if it is not promoted. Christian magazines should profile musicians who have something of genuine spiritual value to say, and who would be excellent role models for our youth.

9. We need more congregational and perhaps less “spectatorist” music. We must explore more of our congregational heritage and make better use of the resources in our hymnals. We may need more new tunes for old texts—like Pete Butler’s excellent 1966 setting of Fanny Crosby’s “Redeemed.” Our new texts may exhibit simplicity without being simplistic. God’s most original work, redemption, does not need to be expressed in trivialities.

10. Christians should check their facts, then graciously make their views known. Letters, phone calls, personal comments—repeated and to the right people—all help. It does no good to complain to someone who cannot do anything about the situation.

11. Finally, the term “gospel music” should be reserved for music that is related to the gospel of Christ and man’s response, and the clearer, the better. Rather than see how diffuse we can make it, so that people aren’t sure if it is there or not, we should give a “certain sound” that is relevant to our time and culture. We must refuse to surrender the term to its commercial exploiters, or permit it to be applied to a style that may accompany lyrics that are antithetical to Christian standards. Nor should we allow a part of gospel music to presume to speak for the whole of it.

Above all, with Ira Sankey we should pray that God “wouldst bless especially the singing of these gospel hymns.… May we sing, not to be heard of men, but may we sing to praise Thy name.”

Richard D. Dinwiddie, music director and conductor of The Chicago Master Chorale, is visiting professor of church music at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Bad health—that is, bodily malfunctioning and pain, until lowered efficiency, tending towards death—has been a fact of life since the Fall. Had there been no sin, there would have been no sickness. As it is, however, both are universal, the latter being a penal result of the former. So, at least, implies Scripture. So, too, did yesterday’s Christians view the matter, and therefore they did not find bad health and chronic discomforts an obstacle to faith in God’s goodness. Rather, they expected illness, and they endured it as they looked forward to the health of heaven.

But today, dazzled by the marvels of modern medicine, the Western world dreams of abolishing ill health entirely, here and now. We have grown health conscious in a way that is itself rather sick, and certainly has no precedent—not even in ancient Sparta.

Why do we diet and jog and do all the other health-raising and health-sustaining things so passionately? Why are we so absorbed in pursuing bodily health? We are chasing a dream, the dream of never having to be ill. We are coming to regard a pain-free, disability-free existence as one of man’s natural rights.

It is no wonder, then, that Christians nowadays are so interested in divine healing. As Christians, they long for the touch of God, as direct and powerful as possible, on their lives (and so they should). As modern men, they are preoccupied with physical health, to which they feel they have a right. (How much there is of worldliness in this preoccupation is a question worth asking, but it is not one with which we will deal here.) With these two concerns meeting in Christian minds, it was predictable that today many would arise to claim that all sick believers may find bodily healing through faith, whether through doctors or apart from them. And exactly that has happened. A cynic would say the wish has been father to the thought.

But is that fair? That it was natural for this teaching to emerge in our times does not make it either true or false. It presents itself as a rediscovery of what the church once knew, and never should have forgotten, about the power of faith to channel the power of Christ. It claims to be biblical, and we must take that claim seriously.

To support itself from Scripture, this teaching uses three main arguments.

First, Jesus Christ, who healed so abundantly in the days of his flesh, has not changed. He has not lost his power; whatever he did then he can do now.

Second, salvation in Scripture is a wholistic reality, embracing both soul and body. Thoughts of salvation for the soul only without, or apart from, the body are unbiblical.

Third, blessing is missed where faith is lacking, and where God’s gifts are not sought and expected. “You do not have, because you do not ask,” says James. “Ask and it will be given you,” says Jesus. But, Matthew tells us, in Nazareth, where Jesus was brought up, he could not do many mighty works because of their unbelief.

All of this is true. So, then, does Jesus still heal miraculously? Yes, I think that on occasion he does. I hold no brief for blanket denials of healing miracles today. I believe I have known one such case—not more than one, but equally, not less. There is much contemporary evidence of healing events in faith contexts that have baffled the doctors. B. B. Warfield, whose wife was an invalid throughout their marriage, testily denied that supernatural healing ever occurs today. But I think he was wrong.

What is being claimed, however, is that healing through prayer, plus perhaps the ministrations of someone with a healing gift, is always available for all sick believers, and that if Christian invalids fail to find it, something is thereby shown to be lacking in their faith.

It is here that I gently but firmly demur. This reasoning is wrong—cruelly and destructively wrong—as anyone who has sought miraculous healing on this basis and failed to find it, or who has been called on to pick up the pieces in the lives of others who have had such an experience, knows all too well. To be told that longed-for healing was denied you because of some defect in your faith when you had labored and strained every way you knew to devote yourself to God and to “believe for blessing,” is to be pitchforked into distress, despair, and a sense of abandonment by God. That is as bitter a feeling as any this side of hell—particularly if, like most invalids, your sensitivity is already up and your spirits down. Nor does Scripture ever require or permit us to break anyone in pieces with words (Job’s phrase: it fits) in this way.

What, then, of those three arguments? Look at them again; there is more to be said about each one.

It is true: Christ’s power is still what it was. However, we must remember that the healings he performed when he was on earth had a special significance. Besides being works of mercy, they were signs of his messianic identity. This comes out in the message he sent to John the Baptist: “Go and tell John what you hear and see … blessed is he who takes no offense at me.” In other words, let John match up my miracles with what God promised for the day of salvation (see Isa. 35:5ff.). He should be left in no doubt that I am the Messiah, whatever there is about me that he does not yet understand.

Anyone today who asks for miracles as an aid to faith should be referred to this passage (Matt. 11:2–6) and told that if he will not believe in face of the miracles recorded in the Gospels, then he would not believe if he saw a miracle in his own back yard. Jesus’ miracles are decisive evidence for all time of who he is and what power he has.

But in that case, supernatural healings in equal abundance to those worked in the days of Jesus’ flesh may not be his will today. The question concerns not his power but his purpose. We cannot guarantee that, because he was pleased to heal all the sick brought to him then, he will act in the same way now.

Again it is true: salvation embraces both body and soul. And there is indeed, as some put it, healing for the body in the Atonement. But, we must observe that perfect physical health is promised, not for this life, but for heaven, as part of the resurrection glory that awaits us in the day when Christ “will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Full bodily well-being is set forth as a future blessing of salvation rather than a present one. What God has promised, and when he will give it, are separate questions.

Further, it is true that blessing is missed where faith is lacking. But, even in New Testament times, among leaders who cannot be accused of lacking faith, healing was never universal. We know from Acts that the apostle Paul was sometimes Christ’s agent in miraculous healing, and he was himself once miraculously healed of snakebite. Yet he advises Timothy to “use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments,” and informs him that he left Trophimus “ill at Miletus.” He also tells the Philippians how their messanger Epaphroditus was so sick that he “nearly died for the work of Christ,” and how grieved Paul himself had been at the prospect of losing him. Plainly, had Paul, or anyone else, sought power to heal these cases miraculously, he would have been disappointed.

Moreover, Paul himself lived with “a thorn in the flesh” that went unhealed. In 2 Corinthians 12:7–9, he tells us that in three solemn seasons of prayer he had asked Christ, the Lord and the Healer, to make it go away. But the hoped-for healing did not occur. The passage merits close attention.

“Thorn” pictures a source of pain, and “flesh” locates it in Paul’s physical or psychological system, thus ruling out the idea that he might be referring to an awkward colleague. But beyond this, Paul is unspecific, and probably deliberately. Guesses about his thorn range from recurring painful illnesses, such as inflamed eyes (see Gal. 4:13–15), migraine, or malaria, to chronic shameful temptation. The former view seems more natural, but nobody can be sure. All we can say is that it was a distressing disability from which, had Christ so willed, he could have delivered Paul on the spot.

So Paul lived with pain. And the thorn, given him under God’s providence, operated as “a messenger of Satan, to harass me,” because it tempted him to think hard thoughts about the God who let him suffer, and in resentment to cut back his ministry. How could he be expected to go on traveling, preaching, working day and night, praying, caring, weeping over folk with this pain constantly dragging him down? He had to contend with such “flaming darts of the evil one” all the time, for the thorn remained unhealed.

Some Christians today live with epilepsy, hom*osexual cravings, ulcers, and cyclical depressions that plunge them into no less deep waters. Indeed, Philip Hughes is surely correct when he writes: “Is there a single servant of Christ who cannot point to some ‘thorn in the flesh,’ visible or private, physical or psychological, from which he has prayed to be released, but which has been given him by God to keep him humble, and therefore fruitful?… Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ is, by its very lack of definition, a type of every Christian’s ‘thorn in the flesh.’ ”

Paul perceived, however, that the thorn was given him, not for punishment, but for protection. Physical weakness guarded him against spiritual sickness. The worst diseases are those of the spirit; pride, conceit, arrogance, bitterness, self-confidence are far worse, and they damage us far more than any malfunctioning of our bodies. The thorn was a prophylactic against pride, says Paul, “to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations.” Seeing that was so, he could accept it as a wise provision on the part of his Lord.

It was not for want of prayer, then, that the thorn went unhealed. Paul tells the Corinthians what came through from Christ as he prayed about it. “He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ ” It was as if to say, I can use my power better than by making your trouble go. It is better for you, Paul, and for my glory in your life, that I do something else instead: that I show my strength by keeping you going though the thorn remains.

So Paul embraced his continuing disability as a kind of privilege. “I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” The Corinthians, in typical Greek fashion, already despised him as a weakling. They did not consider him an elegant speaker or an impressive personality. I am weaker than you thought, says Paul, for I live with my thorn in the flesh. But I have learned to glory in my weakness, “for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Now you Corinthians learn to praise God for my weakness, too!

One virtuous commentary doubts whether the thorn can have been illness in view of Paul’s “extraordinary stamina” throughout his ministry. How obtuse! Extraordinary stamina was precisely what Paul was promised. Similarly obtuse was the reviewer who described Joni Eareckson’s books as a testimony to “human courage.” The age of miraculous blessing is not past, thank God, though such blessing does not always take the form of healing. But then, neither did it in Paul’s day.

Three conclusions issue from what we have seen.

The first concerns miraculous healing. Christ and the apostles only healed miraculously when they were specifically prompted to do so, so that they knew that to attempt to heal was the Father’s will. That is why all the attempted healings recorded in the New Testament succeeded. As we noted, miraculous healing for Christians was not universal even then, so there is no warrant for maintaining that it should be so now.

The second conclusion concerns sanctifying providence. God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other sorts of affliction, as his chisel for sculpting our souls. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your complaint uncomplainingly, being kept sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel less than good, is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace in your life.

The third conclusion concerns behavior when ill. We should certainly go to the doctor, and use medication, and thank God for both. But equally certainly we should go to the Lord (Doctor Jesus, as some call him) and ask what message of challenge, rebuke, or encouragement he might have for us regarding our sickness. Maybe we shall receive healing in the form in which Paul asked for it. Maybe, however, we shall receive it in the form in which Paul was given it. We have to be open to either.

I thank God that I have known almost 40 years of excellent health, and I feel well as I write this. But it will not always be that way. My body is wearing out; Ecclesiastes 12, if nothing worse, awaits me. May I be given grace to recall, and apply to myself, the things I have written here when my own day of felt weakness comes, whether in the form of pain, paralysis, prostration, or whatever. And may the same blessing be yours in your hour of need, too—“under the Protection,” as Charles Williams used to say.

British theologian and author J. I. Packer is professor of systematic and historical theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Among his many writings is the well-known Knowing God (IVP, 1973).

Counterpoint

Stinger,you can jab,and point,and thrust your sword at me,(you do it so expertly!)but I do not fear.

Stinger,you can prick and pierceand lunge your sword through me,(you know you can make me bleed)but I do not fear.

And then, Stinger,you can dance and gloat and lift your sword in glee when I succumb to your weaponry, but I still do not fear.

Because Stinger,I am the living and the living don’t feel the sting of your sword,the living go free.Only the dead know your devilry.

Stinger, you are stung by our victory.

LESLIE FIELDS

If God Held A Press Conference

Does the liberal bias of reporters allow them any degree of fairness and objectivity?

“Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you read,” warns the cynic! That is ridiculous if taken literally; sound, practical wisdom if taken seriously. Every Christian needs to heed this time-honored advice as he watches TV, listens to the radio, or reads his daily newspaper.

At Columbia University, Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman recently prepared a major study of the “media elite.” They profiled a group “out of step with the public and raised serious questions about journalism’s qualifications as an ‘objective’ profession.” The article describes them as “a new leadership group” with immense influence upon society. Business leaders rule them most influential. They rate themselves second.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S readership polls show that our articles on topics discussed in the public news media are better read. The news media unquestionably rank at or near the top in influence on modern society and certainly determine what issues we discuss, if they do not determine our conclusions.

Who are these movers and shakers of American society? They are the people who write our newspapers and magazines, and whose voices we hear over radio and television. They are white (95 percent), male (79 percent), well-heeled, college graduates, and from highly privileged homes. We have every reason to believe that they are also dedicated to their profession, hard-working and at least as honest as the average. But they are not religious.

When asked to state their religion, exactly half responded: “None.” Nearly a quarter were reared in a Jewish household, but not many are still practicing Jews. Only 8 percent said they attended church or synagogue on a regular basis; 86 percent declared they seldom or never darken the door of a house of worship. Over half characterized themselves as ideologically liberal or Left-leaning. And most thought their fellow journalists really stood still farther to the Left than did they.

In politics, they are consistently and overwhelmingly liberal. Most are opposed to Marxism and state ownership of industry and business and are firmly committed to capitalism. However, they are equally committed to the welfare state and generally discontented with the social system. A large segment (28 percent) are convinced that America “needs a complete restructuring of its basic institutions.” With many others they consider the most important goal of our nation is to attain economic stability. But their second most important goal is to move the nation toward a less impersonal and more humane society—clearly interpreted to include greater moral and social permissiveness.

The importance of the stance of these journalists for American evangelicalism, for our nation, and for the world’s impression of America (and therefore also for American missionaries) can scarcely be overestimated. Note, first of all, how wide is the divergence between the world view of this group and that of the rest of the country—and particularly how widely it varies from the religious world view of evangelicals. For example, half the “media elite” possess no religion; for the rest of the nation, 60 percent are church members, 90 percent regard their religion as important, and 80 percent profess to believe in the deity of Christ. Fifty percent of the “media elite” see nothing wrong with adultery, while 95 percent of the public and 100 percent of the evangelicals disapprove of it.

But how does this world view affect a journalist’s reporting and in turn shape the views of the rest of us? We cannot assume that his world view will necessarily cause him either to twist the facts or to reveal his own convictions, let alone that his world view will necessarily determine the conclusions we draw from his reporting. We believe the newsmen and -women in most cases sincerely desire to reflect to us a fair picture of what happens. Moreover, there is a built-in system of checks in their profession. Too slanted a report will be discovered by others, with the result that the reporter loses his credibility.

Yet no one can ever free himself from his own world view. An evangelical newsman, Wes Pippert, has said: “A large segment of good journalists simply turn off moral information. It’s as if they were tone deaf in this area. They don’t understand Christian doctrine and they don’t really understand the Judeo-Christian ethic. Since they don’t understand it, they find great difficulty in reporting it accurately or interpreting it fairly. They lack a cultivated religious and moral sense.”

Examples of this are not hard to find. Sam Hart, the black Christian nominated for an important role in the present administration, was blasted by journalists from every side. They attacked him because of his very conservative political and social stance and also because of what they thought were irregular financial arrangements. But nowhere did it appear that they made any attempt to check the very plausible explanation Hart gave of these arrangements. The public was all too willing to accept any suggestion of shady dealings by a conservative black preacher. And Sam Hart withdrew his name.

C. Everett Koop’s long-delayed appointment to be U.S. surgeon general is an even clearer case. When his name was proposed, one would have thought his only accomplishment in life was his opposition to abortion. He was derided as a “fundamentalist” and “a clinician with tunnel vision.” His extraordinary contribution to his field and brilliant medical pedigree never showed up in newsprint, radio, or TV.

The fact is, the world view of reporters does influence their reporting. How could it be otherwise? Their world view determines what they see, what they understand, what they think is important (or unimportant), how hard they work to check their sources, to what they choose to give prominence, the code words employed (like fundamentalist, or extreme Right), comparisons made, interpretations suggested even when not stated, and value judgments of approval or disapproval.

We appeal to the journalists themselves. We would remind them of their responsibility to report the news fairly, to seek to understand the American culture of our day, and especially to recognize the role of religion in our society. If they would be faithful journalists—faithful to their professional task—it is their duty to understand the role of religion, to understand the spiritual and moral commitments of the people whose actions and thinking they are endeavoring to interpret for our society. They cannot divest themselves of their world view, but they can recognize that they have one, and lean over backwards to represent fairly those whose views are alien to their own.

Finally, the awesome power and influence of the public media coupled with its strong antimoral, antireligious, and antievangelical bent ought to challenge evangelicals to greater participation in this influential instrument in our society. If evangelicals are to penetrate our culture and, indeed, become the salt and seasoning of the society in which they live, then it is necessary that they prepare themselves to function effectively at this neural point in our modern social structure.

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us

What will happen when, as many scientists hold, the sun turns red and roasts the earth alive? One physicist answers, “Probably we will have escaped to [a friendly planet near] another star in the Galaxy before then.”

We may take comfort, he would say, in knowing either that the sun will not fail us for six billion years, or that we can escape our problems by fleeing in spaceships.

Such optimism gives the Christian a case of theological indigestion. Granting that the “old earth” people are right and that we are to measure the life of our solar system in billions of years, still there is that business of escaping in spaceships.

Jonathan Schell, writing in the New Yorker of February 8, cannot stomach it either. Such a view “assumes that if only we could escape the earth we would find safety—as though it were the earth and its plants and animals [and sun, or something out there] that threatened us, rather than the other way around.”

Why is the spaceship view wrongheaded? Because, for one thing, “wherever human beings went, there also would go the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons, and, with it, the peril of extinction.” Schell concludes that “science cannot deliver us from its own findings.” True enough. But even more basically he points out that it cannot deliver us from our own “destructive and self-destructive bent.”

The fact is, all those people escaping in six billion years will (if we provisionally accept that time system) carry the same defects that corrupted their ancestors long ago. William Golding has illustrated in Lord of the Flies that hom*o sapiens is selfish, and more than selfish, downright vicious.

How many brinks must humankind teeter on, how many world wars must it fight, how many Jews must it kill or classes exterminate before it realizes that the problem is not mainly “out there” but “in here”?

Our hearts betray us, for “out of the heart come evil thoughts.” We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Old optimisms die hard. Perhaps biblical realism, which calls for repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ, poses radical surgery for an evil too radical to bear the thought of. Perhaps many today, glimpsing in a preternatural moment the wickedness of their own hearts, are driven by a momentary horror to look on fantasies more pleasant than reality.

The thick and dreadful darkness, the setting sun, the smoking pot, and the blazing torch pose a covenant-in-blood too real and too certain for us to accept. Escaping in spaceships seems easier by far.

And after all, in the spirit of ancient Belshazzar’s handwriting on the wall, does not E=mC2 portend a time when one atomic blast will reduce us all to sunbeams?