Page 5648 – Christianity Today (2024)

How stands the church in 1979? Such people as Harvard theologian Krister Stendahl, national pollster George Gallup, missions leader David Howard, and Catholic bishop Thomas Kelly have their opinions. So do pastors in places like Waka, Texas, and Nappanee, Indiana. They were among the respondents to this CHRISTIANITY TODAY survey, designed to show where the church “is at” as we enter a new year.

News assistant John Maust traveled the nation by telephone and post, asking persons at all levels of church ministry two questions: What is your greatest concern for the church today, and how might the church begin to deal with that concern in the coming year?

We could not publish all the responses in the space available, but representatives for varying concerns are included. Similar subjects are grouped together first and then other views are grouped according to the ministry or profession of the respondents.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers aren’t expected to agree with every observation that follows. We chose people who would represent points on the theological spectrum—from Dwain Epps of the World Council of Churches to soul-conscious conservative John R. Rice. The editors want to challenge readers to ask themselves, Where should the church be headed in 1979?

‘Letting The World Set Our Agenda …’

Charles Keysor, editor of Good News magazine, a publication of the evangelical movement of the same name within the United Methodist Church.

Christianity is being modified to accommodate the fads of our culture. Rather than “leaning against” the consensus, as Francis Schaeffer puts it, we are letting the world set our agenda. In the mainline denominations, this can be seen in the uncritical endorsem*nt of abortion, hom*osexuality, and secular feminism—baptizing as Christian the agenda of the left wing of the Democratic party.

In more conservative circles, capitulation to culture can be seen in the lopsided emphasis on personal experience, material prosperity, and health, and on being content with a fellowship of those with whom we agree—a “ghettoization” of the faithful.

The main defense against that is for believers to know Scripture. Otherwise, they will be seduced into cultural conformity. For this reason, all genuine renewal must be centered in God’s Word, rather than in personal experience, church reorganization, church growth, gifts of the Spirit, social action, or anything else.

Denny Rydberg, editor of the Wittenburg Door, a magazine that often takes humorous but accurate aim at evangelical foibles.

The church is being eaten up by the culture. Christians are being co-opted, not just in the way we do things, but also in our goals and priorities. The church seems almost indistinguishable from any other organization in society. You can’t tell the Christians from anyone else. I think that pastors, church leaders, and laypeople are going to have to ask, “Hey, what are the distinctives of the Christian faith? Where do they run counter to the culture and how are we going to really help people not be conformed to this world?”

Billy Melvin, executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals.

My concern is the measure of infiltration by the world into the church. We have been influenced far more than we would like to admit. This infiltration has dulled our effectiveness, blurred our vision, and caused us to adopt worldly standards of success. The answer is a return to the authority of God’s Word.

David P. McDowell, assistant chaplain at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

My greatest concern is the rise and progress of cultural Christianity. This phenomenon has not only weakened our witness to society but has also led to a certain assimilation of the church into society. The church should redefine what is essential Christianity. Its leaders need to explain the Christian faith in all of its radicalness so that Christians can establish life styles that witness to the reality of Christ vis-à-vis society.

‘More Genuinely Involved With Social Justice …’

Ronald J. Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and professor at Eastern Baptist seminary.

A top priority for both the mainline and the evangelical churches should be to become more biblical. That means that mainline churches should get more genuinely involved with evangelism, and that evangelical churches should become more genuinely involved with social justice. Both groups should begin overcoming their ghastly individualism and begin to discover the New Testament meaning of the church.

I don’t think we can make much progress toward living simple life styles or toward getting involved in social justice until we rediscover the church—as a community whose members are living very differently from the rest of the world. The church is being swept into the mainstream of American society. Whatever else you might say about the fundamentalists, at least they knew they were separate from society. Of course, they could become separate in wrong kinds of ways. But the church is different from the world. Its values should differ, for example, from the American attitude that it is a constitutional right to have instant gratification.

We literally need thousands of evangelicals to move back into the city. Individual families shouldn’t do it alone. The movement to the city should be one of community, several families going together to support each other. Community living has its problems. You’re close to each other, and you discover each other’s weaknesses. That’s painful, but valuable.

Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine and a member of Sojourners’ Fellowship, a Christian community living in the inner city of Washington, D.C.

My prayer is that the church be awakened to the need for its own conversion, that churches bound to comfort and fear become communities of compassion and faith. Churches that are guarded by status and guided by the status quo should become bodies that care for each other and for the poor. I am convinced that churches that are uninvolved in struggling to ease the pain and oppression of life must become places where God’s hunger for justice and peace is made visible in the world.

John Perkins, head of Voice of Calvary Ministries, Jackson, Mississippi.

The church should help the poor through holistic evangelism and development projects, giving them pride and dignity, to find a way out of the poverty cycle. It should support indigenous projects and churches in the poor and black communities.

Manuel Ortiz, counselor for “high risk” adolescents at Clemente High School in Chicago and an elder of Spirit and Truth Fellowship, a Christian community of Latinos within the racially tense Humboldt Park neighborhood.

The church needs to identify with the poor and oppressed for spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual liberation. The churches already in the inner city should recommit themselves to meeting and working with the oppressed people. They should speak clearly and prophetically to the church that has not yet identified with the poor. They must break down the bias, the walls, the insensitivity to the poor, and then educate the church about the poor.

‘Getting More People Involved …’

Alvin Shifflet, pastor of the 300-member First Brethren Church in Nappanee, Indiana, a rural town of 4,000 noted most for its Amish residents and kitchen cabinet factories.

I want more people involved in church ministry. You can take people into the church, but unless they get involved and become committed disciples, you haven’t accomplished much. I’m serving a small community church, but the super-churches are having the same problem of inactive members. The only difference is that with them the problem is magnified. I’m not suggesting a massive revision of church membership lists or “back door revivals,” as they are called. We just need a stronger emphasis on discipleship.

Small group Bible study is the best tool I know for that. When people really begin studying God’s Word, it affects them. They become better disciples and often end up ministering in the church. I can have pastor’s classes and tell new members what I think, but that’s not effective. They’ve got to get involved on their own in Bible study.

Of course, many people aren’t interested in doing that. I guess they’re too busy. So much of our time is spent in maintenance—maintaining the church program or the church building. Perhaps this is a subtle trick of Satan’s that we spend 80 per cent of our time that way. We could spend that time in discipleship. I have a feeling that many Christians are going into the rapture by train—pretty slow.

Robert Schuller, author and pastor of the Garden Grove Community Church in suburban Los Angeles—a “superchurch” that is attended by thousands.

My greatest concern for members of the local church is their commitment to paying the price of lay leadership. The church must be the body of Christ in the community. Its members should look for people who hurt and then love, lift, and help them. The priority for church ministry in the coming year should be evangelism and church growth. A church fails unless it becomes a mission. There is no way an institution can survive if its only objective is to take care of its own people.

Ted Engstrom, executive vice-president of World Vision International.

There seems to be an ever-increasing tendency for the average person in the pew to expect the “professional” to head up the program and meet the needs that are to be found in the local church. As a result, we are experiencing a trend toward large, multi-staff institutional church organizations. There must be a renewed emphasis on the “priesthood of believers” and on the vital role of the laity in carrying on the ministry committed to the church, the Body of Christ. Preachers and professionals must take the lead in causing this renewal.

‘Parents In A New Team Effort …’

George Gallup, Jr., a Sunday school teacher and Episcopalian who majored in religion at Princeton University; is best known as president of the Gallup Poll.

My greatest concern is that our youth are not getting the help or guidance they seek from their parents regarding such issues as sex, cheating in school, alcohol, and drug abuse. Nor are young people receiving much help in terms of their spiritual values, simply because parents are unwilling or unable to discuss basic religious questions with their offspring.

Pastors, priests, and rabbis need to work more closely with parents in a new “team effort” so that parents will be able to discuss key issues with their children with greater spiritual insight and maturity.

Thomas Kelly, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and its service arm, the United States Catholic Conference, ordained a bishop in 1977 and a member of the Dominican order.

My major concern is for family life within the church. The church should discover how it can support and strengthen the family, while combating the forces that are militating against it.

The Roman Catholic Church has embarked on a costly study of family life in America. The study, called A Plan of Action of Family Ministry, is designed to get people involved on the parish level from now through 1990. The program in the local parish will have six emphases: singles and pre-marrieds, married couples, parents, “developing” families, families that are hurting, and leadership couples.

‘Get Back To Soul-Winning …’

John R. Rice, 84, elder statesman of fundamental Christianity in America; worked the revival circuit for years and has edited the Bible-preaching Sword of the Lord newspaper since its inception in 1934.

The churches need to get back to soul-winning—the Great Commission. This has not been a primary concern for most major denominations, though some groups—the independent Baptist churches, for example—have had a great upsurge in conversions.

Soul-winning would have to start with the preachers, and the preachers have to be trained in the seminaries. Unfortunately, most of the fundamental, Bible-believing seminaries are stressing scholarship, not soul-winning. A man who attended one of these seminaries once confessed to me, “They taught us how to load the gun, but they didn’t teach us how to shoot it.”

At the Sword of the Lord, we could find only twenty churches in America that had won and baptized 200 or more converts during 1965. I challenged churches in my newspaper to reach a 200-convert goal in the coming year. About half of them succeeded. Two years later, more than ninety churches had baptized 200 or more members in a single year. Then more than 120 had done it. I expect that more than 300 churches will do so this year.

Their goal is to win souls. They make their services evangelistic and go out to get people in house visitations. I’m not against the great churches of today, but I’m against any church that is satisfied to stay small. That’s not biblical.

David Howard, director of the Consultation on World Evangelism, a conference to be held in June, 1980, in Thailand.

The church must recognize its mission to get the Gospel to the whole world, a mission that has not changed since New Testament times. In our outreach, we must realize our responsibility to the three billion people who still have not had an adequate opportunity to hear of Jesus Christ.

If the church is going to fulfill its mission to the world, it must do so within the context of the given cultures of the world. The church must discover how to make the Gospel relevant to any culture in any time or place. We must keep in mind three cultures: the cultural context in which the New Testament was written, the cultural trappings of the Gospel communicator today, and the culture of the audience that is being exposed to the Gospel. At the same time, we Christians must be careful not to do away with the unchangeable standards in the written Word.

From The Grass Roots

Ronald Gifford, pastor of the growing Blanchard Road Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Wheaton, Illinois—the area often called the Protestant Vatican by many people in the media.

Here in Wheaton you first have to realize that you’re ministering in a parade. It’s hard to create any sense of community among people who move away so fast, such as students and missionaries home on furlough. You also have to realize that many people in the congregation have their first priorities elsewhere in the kingdom of God. They have fellowship and a sense of ministry at their place of work. Another struggle, a great frustration to me, is that so many people live in Wheaton because there’s no challenge to their faith. You don’t have to interact with non-Christians in Wheaton. The problem is that your faith can go squishy soft. I try to challenge my congregation in my preaching. People who don’t want that kind of challenge don’t come to our church.

I hunger for believers to put down their spiritual roots—for a Spirit-led movement in which believers’ lives are affected totally and their Christianity becomes a joy to live, not just something to put up with. When I speak of a moving of the Spirit, I’m not speaking of something having to do with the excitement of the movement or an emotional froth. We’re so existential, it scares me.

This renewal needs to begin with the pastors. It is a rare moving of the Spirit that will propel the people of God beyond their pastor’s level of spiritual maturity. So my first concern at Blanchard Road is for my own spiritual health. I find that I’m spending more time in prayer and personal reflection. I’m encouraging and discipling my leaders to do the same. I think the result is that the entire church will be affected.

Paul Toms, pastor of the 2,000-member Park Street (Congregational) Church in Boston and president of the World Relief Commission, relief agency of the NAE.

I want to see biblical preaching practiced. I want to see biblical truth come alive and meet the day-to-day problems of people. A way to encourage this is through fellowship groups, where members develop pastoral concern for each other.

Ted Mears, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church near Florence, South Carolina, whose members celebrated the 200th birthday of their church last year.

The church should begin meeting the needs of families that move from the city into residential and suburban areas. For example, my church for 175 years was a small rural church serving a farming community. But in the 1950s Ebenezer became a suburban church of 785 members as the city of Florence grew outward and toward the church.

David Stauffer, pastor of the Church of the Brethren in Waka, Texas, farm and cattle-ranching town of 1,200 located in the Texas panhandle.

The adults in my church are concerned that young people brought up in the church don’t have enough zeal for the Lord, and they don’t understand why that is the case. Most of the people now active in my church are in their fifties or older.

Kenneth Peterson, pastor of the independent Calvary Bible Church in Wichita, Kansas.

The church should keep its spiritual purity and dedication to Christ. Only then will it fulfill the great commission to reach the world with the Gospel. There must be a genuine return to Bible preaching.

Jerold Barnhart, pastor of the Elmore, Minnesota, United Methodist Church where Vice-President Walter Mondale was confirmed in 1941.

The church needs people who will reach out to others of the community in the name of Christ. We do this already, but in the name of other organizations such as the Lions, the Odd Fellows, and the Masons. I call these the “other churches.” They are great competition.

Herbert Bell Shaw, Wilmington, North Carolina, a bishop within the 1.5-million-member African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

The church should organize a summit meeting of the leaders of all the major religions in the world. The purpose would be to find out what the other religions have in common with Christianity. This is something the Christian world ought to at least think about. I know there are some things that Christians have in common with those other religions.

Academia

Krister Stendahl, dean of Harvard Divinity School and one of the most respected New Testament scholars in the world.

As I see it, waves of fear and resentment will surge over the United States and the Western world in the years ahead. These will come when we are forced to shrink in our own self-importance, in our consumption of resources, and, perhaps, in our standard of living, as compared to the rest of the world.

This suggests to me something that is the most difficult thing spiritually—namely, for us to learn to diminish, instead of always striving to be bigger and bigger. Our spiritual needs will be enormous when we try to overcome this ingrown way of thinking. It is the model of John the Baptist, when he said, “It is as it should be—that I diminish and he increases.” That kind of grace, to diminish, is the hardest of all to learn. It would be very strange if the church did not help us in this respect.

I am afraid that many people in America grab onto religion these days only as a way of making America stronger or bigger. This is common because of the strong fear that America is going backward. I hope and pray that the Gospel, which has had power to overcome similar ways of thinking in the past, will do so again.

Frances White, coordinator of the counseling major at Wheaton Graduate School.

My greatest concern is the lack of stress on biblical truth. The tendency to replace solid scriptural teaching with culturally relevant, but ever-changing issues, could leave today’s generation without a solid base of objective truth upon which to evaluate social concerns.

As a behavioral scientist, I am keenly aware of the need to address current issues that affect our lives. However, to do this honestly, the church must first guide its members to understand the unchanging truths of Scripture and help them incorporate those truths into their total lives. With this as a base, the church is ready to distinguish between the revealed, absolute truth of God’s Word and temporary, cultural, relative beliefs.

Counseling is becoming accepted within the church today because the needs are so tremendous. With all the cultural changes taking place, people are running into conflicts and issues that they haven’t had to face before. For example, new perspectives on the role of women and marriage relationships have created a new set of problems and a tremendous amount of conflict. People are hurting. And hurt drives them to seek help.

Richard Lovelace, professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

I am hopeful that evangelical renewal groups within the mainline denominations will continue to grow, in the process reviving the churches spiritually and reforming them theologically—bringing healing and unity to the body of Christ without sacrificing evangelical integrity.

My second concern is for the evangelical movement itself—that it continue to be reformed, purified, and reestablished in its original balance of emphasis on spiritual renewal, evangelism, social witness, and church unity. The classical evangelical movement, at least as I have studied it from the Reformation to the nineteenth century, had a strategy of renewing the entire church body. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, evangelicalism has become somewhat separatistic.

William Hill, pastor and director of student ministries at Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

One of my greatest concerns is that the church of the twentieth century has found its home in the world. This is seen in the million-dollar edifices erected to the glory of man. Television and radio hucksters promise success in business, family affairs, and physical health to those who will contribute to their programs.

The church needs a world vision that will take it out of itself. What life would come to the church if its members became involved in door-to-door evangelism, inner city ministries, and in visiting hospitals, prisons, and orphanages. What a testimony there would be to the world if church members would forfeit a luxurious vacation to spend the time on a mission field.

Denominational Leaders

Joseph R. Flower, general secretary of the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States with 1.3 million members.

I’m concerned about church growth. Even more important to me is raising the spiritual level of Christians to a deeper devotion to the Lord and a fuller experience in the Holy Spirit, with the manifestation of the Spirit being in evidence.

James C. Sams, president for twelve years of the National Baptist Convention—one of the largest predominately black denominations in America.

The church should try to bring back into its fellowship those members who have strayed away. The pastor should motivate his active members to reach out to those who have left the church.

Herbert A. Mueller, secretary of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the second largest Lutheran body in the United States with 2.9 million members.

Our greatest concern at the moment within the LCMS is the large segment of young adults that, according to the Gallup Poll, have a very low interest in the organized church, and perhaps even in religion. We intend to mount a special program of outreach toward them.

William E. Kuhnle, assistant to the national representative of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, a denomination of 260,000 members with headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois.

The church must rely on its biblical foundation in all areas of its ministry. There needs to be a return to the absolute authority of the Bible as a guide for daily and godly living.

Here And There

Richard Halverson, pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, Maryland.

I see two serious needs: the need of the world’s unreached masses to know about Christ, and the need of contemporary Christianity to shake off the shackles of secularism.

There are more than two billion unreached people in the world, according to missiologists, and the majority of these are beyond the scope of present witness. The church must take this challenge seriously. At the same time, the church must seek a renewal that will influence our culture for the kingdom of God.

Happily, evangelicals within the major denominations are discovering each other at last and beginning to work together in and through the system to make their witness effective.

Ralph Bell, associate evangelist, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

White Christians need to exhibit more concern about racism and poverty. The cause of racial justice has suffered reverses recently, and the church has remained quiet. Maybe the church can’t help everybody, but it can at least speak out and take creative action to help solve a few problems.

Masses of urban dwellers remain untouched by the black churches around them. A number of young black evangelicals have appeared on the scene, and they ought to be encouraged in their outreach efforts.

Dwain Epps, World Council of Churches representative to the United Nations.

The church should be a major world force for breaking down barriers that separate human beings into conflicting and sometimes warring camps. It should give witness to the unity that all Christians have in Jesus Christ and discover ways, through contact with people in other countries, to demonstrate the common humanity we have.

Margaret Andersen, associate communications officer at Episcopal Church headquarters and member of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in New York.

The church should concern itself with metropolitan issues, or root causes, of problems that can be found in both rural and urban communities. In the human rights issue, I can see any number of root causes—for example, the lack of understanding of human sexuality, of a person’s right to be recognized, of the dignity of life, or of the dignity of dying.

The church can be a conscience. It must help each person to understand the root causes of problems and then to react to those causes.

Donald E. Wildmon, pastor and executive director of the National Federation for Decency, Mississippi-based organization that is combating sex and violence in the media.

The church should become involved in the public area of private morality—prostitution, p*rnography, sex-oriented music on radio, debasing television programming. The church should call its members to action from the pulpits. It should use institutional committees, support other efforts, and pray for its own forgiveness for having neglected to speak to this critical issue. Without personal integrity, society will not fulfill its mission in God’s world. Past history offers plenty of evidence for this conclusion.

Karen Mains, speaker and author of Open Heart, Open Home, a book on Christian hospitality.

Popular Christianity today has a problem. By that I mean that many times we settle for easy forms of Christianity. We settle for words and activities, and we avoid what can be an agonizing search for spiritual realities. But even within this easy, popular form of Christianity, there is a group of people who are hungry for God. These Christians hunger for knowing God by acquaintance, not just for knowing about him.

I would like to lodge something in your imagination—a small touchstone, we might say, by which, if you are so disposed, you may test the ideas and slogans and voguish trends that come your way.

Some such touchstone is necessary, I would think, for anyone who is not content to be a mere fool, and who does not want to be in the tragicomic position of waggling along behind every bandwagon that trundles past. And of course you and I find ourselves at a point in history that has a terribly heavy traffic in bandwagons. More of them are coming at us more rapidly and more noisily than, I should think, at any other time since the expulsion from Eden. You can’t avoid them. They rumble and blare and loom, magnified and amplified by every kilowatt and decibel that the media can muster. A hundred years ago, or a thousand or ten thousand for that matter, mountebanks and wizards and false prophets had to whip up what following they could on the strength of their own voice and their own tricks. Now every jester has an instant, vast, and utterly credulous audience via the talk shows. The audience is credulous, I say, because they have been schooled in the tradition of moral and intellectual democracy, in which every idea is worth exactly as much as every other idea, and in which we are committed to giving equal time, not just on the air or in the columns of newsprint, but also in our minds—equal time, I say, to Isaiah and Beelzebub, for example, or to St. Thomas Aquinas and Mick Jagger, or the Blessed Virgin and Bella Abzug. We see the talk-show hosts, sitting in vapid amiability while their guests blithely dismantle the entirety of history and myth, and we pick up this frame of mind. We take on an earnest, humorless, frame of mind that gravely receives all data as “input,” so that we hear one person telling us about the joys of open marriage, and another about what an emancipation it is to find that one is no longer a man or a woman but a person, and still another going on about what a step forward it will be when we learn to address God as Our Androgyne, which art in Heaven—we hear all this, and our only response is, “What I hear you saying is …” or “I need this input,” or “Heavy,” or some such trenchant comment.

But this will not do. It is not good enough to receive all data as though it is arriving from some cosmic grist mill, all of it to be ground into your loaf. There is wheat and there is chaff. Distinctions have to be made. There is good stuff and bad stuff. And the only way to sort out the good from the bad is to discriminate. There is no question of a moral democracy, any more than there is of a gastronomic democracy. If you eat vegetables, they will do you good; if you eat toadstools, they will kill you. Somebody has to discriminate between the two and tell us which is which. They are not neutral data for our stomachs. Again, there is no moral democracy any more than there is a mathematical democracy. Two plus two equals four, and we may knock our foreheads on the floor and turn purple in the face because this stark datum doesn’t grab us right, or we may shout that our math teacher is an uptight traditionalist and pig—we may adopt this line, I say, but two-plus-two-equals-four remains sublimely unthreatened by our tantrum.

We need a touchstone. We need to learn to discriminate. Your big job in life is to learn the discipline of discrimination, if you didn’t learn it in school. The moral vision that furnishes this touchstone that I am speaking about is that of ancient orthodoxy, or, put another way, of catholic orthodoxy. Now some of you may start in your seats when you read that phrase: “catholic orthodoxy”? The man has gotten his messages mixed up: He thinks he is at the Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto, or St. Perpetua’s Seminary, or somewhere. This is an evangelical audience.

I am aware of this. That is why I say that the moral vision that obtains here is that of catholic orthodoxy, that is, of the dogmatic tradition taught by the apostles, received by the Church, and agreed upon by all orthodox Christians always and everywhere, whether Anabaptist, Reformation, Latin, or Eastern. The Vincentian Canon is a useful way of phrasing it: quod ubique, quod semper, et quod ab omnibus creditum est: what has always been believed, everywhere, and by everyone. Any serious and thoughtful Christian is a dogmatist, not in the sense of being pig-headed or ostrich-like, but in the sense of having a lively awareness that he stands in a defined tradition of received teaching that has been articulated by the holy prophets and apostles, and handed down through the centuries. It is spelled out in the Bible, and guarded and proclaimed by the Church. The Christian vision is a vision of the eternal, that is, of majestic fixities and mysteries that stand in judgment upon our history and our existence. The Word that was Incarnate in the drama played out on the stage of our history was the Word that articulated order out of chaos in the beginning, and that will utter the final summing up at the end.

For this reason, the thinking Christian finds himself in a perpetually ambiguous, not to say peculiar, position vis-à-vis his own epoch. He is, let’s face it, what the loose-jointed marionettes of contemporaneity call “uptight.” That is, he is, in fact, stuck with an attitude that will be sniffing into things, and that wants to ask difficult questions—that wants to take a second and a third look at things, to see how they look when you line them up next to the fixed standard. He is not quite at liberty to let it all hang out: Indeed, he suspects that letting it all hang out is what you get in nurseries with babies screaming and vomiting, or in mental hospitals where they have failed to align their actions with accepted patterns, or at drunken orgies where inhibition and reticence are thrown to the winds.

The christian will be forever asking how this idea or that one fits. Fits what? Fits the pattern, says the Christian—the solemn, blissful, austerely and magnificently orchestrated pattern of glory that we call Creation, or the Dance. The Christian will be forever testing things in the light of the bright fixities that Christian vision perceives and celebrates.

This is the reason why Christians are not ordinarily found in the van of contemporaneity. The Palm Sunday mob is the same in every century, forever throwing down their garments and their palms at the feet of the new prophet, hailing and exulting in things simply because they seem new and promising. “Innovative” and “creative” and “unstructured” are their favorite words, but of course by Friday this crowd has gotten bored by the creatively unstructured innovations, so they crucify the prophet and chase after fresh ones. (The point in this metaphor here is simply the flighty frame of mind of the mob, which will give Christians pause when they hear loud slogans abroad: The prophet in question here, of course, was bringing in something true, but they had no way of discriminating between him and Simon Magus, or any other zealot.)

It is particularly difficult now for Christians to keep their wits about them and their sights unblurred. The sheer tumble and force of novelty that comes at us all makes it nearly impossible to keep clear in one’s imagination—or in one’s moral vision, shall we say—the fixities that arch over the broil of our history and our fashions. Let me mention a few of the items in this tumble as examples of what I mean. We might call them cults, since that is what they are, really.

There is the cult, for example, of the self. You have heard people talking about self-affirmation, and self-discovery, and self-acceptance, and self-identity. The great idea is to discover who you are. Fine. But any Christian will listen to this vocabulary with some wariness, since the vision he is already committed to sees a drastic paradox in this matter of the self. The biblical notion seems to be that we get to point A by heading toward point Z: That is, we move towards authentic self-knowledge by abandoning the quest for self-knowledge. Self-knowledge seems to be more or less irrelevant in this vision. Or at least irrelevant while we are en route to where we are going. Then—ah, then—we get the white stone with our real name engraved on it. This is given to the men and women who overcome, whatever that means. It does not seem to be promised to those who have sought themselves all along the way. I know this sounds like a cavalier oversimplification, and as though I am jettisoning the whole of the behavioral sciences on the strength of one verse of the Apocalypse. That is not quite what I have in mind. The point I am making here is that no Christian can listen with unmixed belief to popular vocabulary about the quest for the self that so ferociously engages our generation.

Again, there is the cult of frankness. “Let’s be honest,” meaning thereby “Let’s tell it like it is. If you think it, say it. Don’t be uptight. Break down the hedges and barriers of convention that obstruct the openness between you and your brother.” Fine. Candor is all to the good. But any Christian will also want to know how we propose to guard the shrine that is the other person. He will want to know, before he opens up the shrine of himself to others, just who has the warrant to come in here. Just as (says the Christian) there are high hedges that stand between you and me physically, so that I have no warrant to possess your body unless I am your spouse, so there are high hedges between you and me psychologically and emotionally and spiritually, and I have to know what the warrant is to enter the shrine of your personality before I barge in. For this reason a Christian will distrust the popular idea, so violently dramatized in the more extreme forms of T-group, that we all have a warrant to know everything about you, just as he distrusts the idea of physical orgies. He does not believe that you can suspend the rules, even for one evening’s experiment, physically or psychologically. And, I should think the same would apply religiously: A Christian will enter only very cautiously into the forms of religious exercise that call for us all to be putting all our cards on the table all the time. Not everybody has the warrant to see your cards, remember.

This notion, surely, is also at work in the contemporary celebration of “open marriage,” where the idea is that we will all be very grown up and very sensible, and get beyond being uptight about some old-timey notions of fidelity and monogamy and so forth: Good heavens, we’re modern men and women now, and know how to handle a variety of sexual relationships.

No, says the Christian. That ain’t the way it is, baby. That ain’t the way it is. And the same notion would be at work in the current cult of p*rnography in magazines and cinema: The idea there is, how emancipated! how modern! how un-uptight. But the Christian, curmudgeon that he is, suspects that this whole Dionysian romp is misbegotten—that there are places you can’t enter with impunity. All religions and all tribes and all myths have known that there are taboos—all of them, that is, except Sodom, Rome in its decline, and us.

Or, third, there is the cult of liberation. Here the notion is, declare your autonomy. Proclaim your emancipation. Smash the chains that tradition has shackled you with. Discard the conventions and taboos written in the holy books, and set about redefining and reforging human existence. If you listen to the rhetoric of some of the forms of lib in our own time, you will hear this eager zest to redefine and reforge everything. Don’t give one moment’s courtesy to ten thousand years of myth and history: It’s all a cynical plot. The human race has missed the boat entirely, and we will do it right.

Well, whatever side of the various lib questions you find yourself on, if you are a thinking Christian and an orthodox one, you will enter into the discussion with solid commitment to the validity of history (since the drama of your redemption was played out in history), and with a great skepticism about the chances of the twentieth century coming upon some emancipating truth that escaped, somehow, the attention of the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the fathers, and the rest of the train of sages and witnesses in history. You will need to move carefully and painstakingly through the data, and you will suspect that the distinction assumed in the Bible between man and woman (for example) is perhaps the richest distinction in the whole creation, and that we blur, or deny, that distinction (it is being attempted now) to our own impoverishment. You will bring, in other words, the touchstone of ancient Jewish and Christian vision to bear upon the hasty slogans of your own decade.

Or again, there is the cult of the unstructured, which I have already mentioned in passing. You have no doubt sat on committees whose job was to plan some event. Sooner or later in the discussion some bright soul pipes up, “I know! Let’s just have it unstructured! That way everybody will be free to …” and so forth. But I daresay you have not sat on a committee where anyone ventured to observe in reply to this suggestion, “Fine, but remember that hell is the ultimately unstructured place.” The City of God is measured out foursquare, with adamantine foundations and jeweled gates, and that is not just an idea from some kooky prophecy chart. It is there, built into the structure of the universe and our existence, and we dismantle things to our peril. Anybody who was not born yesterday knows that it is the structures and the conventions that help us through chaotic and impossible situations, and that gather and bear up our flying emotions. Victory parades, music at marriages or funerals, dances of joy, sonnets of love, liturgical processions: Are these not, every one of them, the structured forms that we bring to raw experience and emotion, and that turn out to be the very thing we needed to enhance and heighten our capacity to experience and articulate the event? If we were all left standing about vaguely in the face of huge experiences, we would soon enough find ourselves reduced to the feeble level (alarmingly common in our own time, alas) of “Oh wow,” or “Outta sight.” That is to real, profound experience what pablum is to pâté: just not as good. Think of the child who has never been taught the simple convention of saying “How do you do.” Every time he has to encounter an adult, he is thrust back on his own unstructured spontaneity, and that is misery for him and everyone else. Or again, think of the feeble and flimsy efforts at bonhomie that go on at get-togethers where nothing is planned. And what would we do with our nuptial joy without the splendid structure of the wedding ceremony, or with our grief without the office for the burial of the dead? Our own era tries, but it is a pitiable spectacle in an arena filled with myriads from every tribe and civilization who knew better—who knew that traditional and ceremonial structures and courtesies and conventions are the very vehicles that bear us along. Our era thinks they are cages imprisoning us. A Christian, of course, will have plowed deep into his imagination the solemn and blissful imagery of the Tabernacle and the Apocalypse, and he will suspect that this is something fairly close to the tap-root of things. In this sense he is a radical—a person who wants to go to the root. He declines to accept the contemporary definition of radical, which means simply violent or sweeping or utopian.

A fifth cult in our time is the cult of the convenient, made possible for us by our stunning advances in technology and medicine. We now have immense mysteries dissolved for us by a pill or a test-tube, or a quick visit to the doctor. Contraception, for example, or abortion, are available on easy demand. It’s all quite bracing. But any Christian, with his imagination suffused with the ancient biblical awareness of the awesome thing that human life is, will want to know just what it is we are manipulating here. Good heavens—babies made or unmade at the popping of a pill.

I am not urging, by the way, that no Christian will use the pill. I am urging that he will always have a salting of skepticism in his imagination about the brisk modern traffic in these things. If you disagree with the pope, you had better have weightier arguments against him than simply the argument that his point of view is inconvenient. How do you shoot down his argument from natural theology? It will take more than shouting, “I have a right to my own body!” A Christian will want to know.

A sixth cult in our time is, of course, the much-celebrated new morality. Here the idea is that we now have fresh light on things, and that no prophets or priests are going to tell us what varieties of sexual activity, say, are legitimate, much less with whom we may enjoy these diversions. We make our own choices now. But a Christian is stuck with all these intractable taboos again. You can’t do this and you can’t do that, until you are as pinched and unhappy as Mrs. Grundy. What’s the matter with Christians? Can’t they live?

And I suppose the answer here is, “Nothing more is the matter with them than has been the matter with Jews and Moslems and Hindus and pagans all down through history who have known perfectly well that the sexual phenomenon was a high and sacred thing, to be surrounded with the most fierce strictures.” Queen Victoria did not make up “conventional morality.” Neither did the Puritans. Neither did the Catholic Church. Nor the apostles. Nor the rabbis. A Christian suspects that it is all built into the choreography of the great Dance, and that all these tiresome taboos are actually cues and clues, nudging us on toward our authentic bliss and wholeness. Follow the yellow brick road. That way lies the City.

That’s the end of my argument. I hope, even if you disagree with me passionately, that you will see my main point, which is that the Christian vision arises from sources, and stretches toward vistas, that are infinitely beyond the power of mere contemporaneity to alter. We didn’t set the Dance going, and we can’t reorchestrate it. We might even, if we are courageous and radical enough, discover that the pattern of that Dance, observed and obeyed so gravely and joyously by the great company of sages, patriarchs, prophets, psalmists, apostles, confessors, and witnesses, and all the ranks of angels and archangels and thrones and dominations and powers, right up to the terrible cherubim and seraphim themselves—that this pattern is the very guarantor of our true bliss and liberty.

After reading our lead article, the CHRISTIANITY TODAY audience may wonder what it all means. Respondents to “What is your greatest concern for the church today?” provide many ideas, but no answer predominated.

A number of valid concerns surfaced from the diversity of response. Among them were the renewed emphasis on evangelism, greater commitment to social programs, and development of family life. In addition, the style of ministry did not always predetermine the response. For example, Denny Rydberg, iconoclastic editor of The Wittenburg Door, and Billy Melvin, something of an establishment spokesman as executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals, both said that the church must avoid its compromise with culture. Metropolitan superchurch pastor Robert Schuller said the church needs the renewal of its laity, as did a smalltown Indiana pastor.

That many of the answers were quite predictable was a sidelight to the article. John R. Rice—who keeps tabulations on converts produced through his Sword of the Lord newspaper—wanted greater emphasis on soul-winning. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine and a social activist, said the church should focus its efforts on social programs. World Council of Churches official Duane Epps wanted greater unity among church bodies.

To some readers, such predictability might smack of an overall trend in America—a trend Newsweek called “Single Issue Politics.” The writer said that Americans today are pushing their own pet issues, while ignoring other important, but unrelated, concerns. Proposition 13 activists, for example, might mobilize for or against a political candidate depending solely upon that candidate’s stand on tax cuts. It may not matter whether the man has an impressive leadership record. They want to know, “Does he care about my property taxes?”

Evangelicals sometimes feel so protective of their interests and ministries that they regard any criticism of them as a personal affront and an attack on God. There are several levels of polarization within the church—innovation versus tradition, evangelism versus social action, charismatic versus noncharismatic. It would be refreshing if the various players in the church met in 1979 and conceded that they are members of the same team.

Many single parts put together form the body of Christ. We are not all hands, or feet, or legs. Individual Christians probably do best to fill only one niche at a time anyway. No one can be all things to all men. So if there is a single unifying theme to the survey, it might be for church members to have a concern—then act upon it.

The survey respondents apparently thought carefully about their answers, and it is encouraging that some of them practice what they proclaim. Ron Sider encouraged church members to move back to the city; he, himself, lives in inner-city Philadelphia in an aged structure purchased under the government’s “dollar-a-building” program. A Wheaton, Illinois, pastor, who said that renewal must come through church leaders, now spends more time in personal prayer and meditation.

We offer in this article a smorgasbord of opinions. Readers can choose those that apply to them, and then take action. Apathy is not on the menu.

The Alternative To People’S Temple

About two months have passed since more than 900 People’s Temple cultists annihilated themselves in Guyana. The causes will be discussed for many more months, as will the ramifications of it.

The average American, now fearing any religious zeal and not understanding the difference between true Christianity and false religion, could react against legitimate evangelism and discipling.

To prevent this, Christians should be sure that they preach and practice the bedrock essentials of the faith. We need to reaffirm our distinctives and show a conflict-torn world that true peace and fulfillment are to be found in following Christ, not mammon or madmen.

Evangelicals don’t follow cult leaders like Jim Jones of People’s Temple. But we often seem to deemphasize the leadership of Jesus Christ by the hushed tones we use when speaking of favorite preachers or teachers, or by the reverence we accord some denominational confessional tradition.

Evangelicals don’t spit and stomp on the Bible, as did the late Jim Jones. But despite our protestations to the contrary, in practice we can ignore the authority of Scripture. We read books about the Bible, and we should. But we should also read the Bible itself. We listen to narratives (often embellished) of the spiritual struggles and triumphs of others. The lives of faithful Christians, honestly told, can encourage and strengthen us. But we should not depend on them; we should also have active spiritual lives of our own.

People are losing confidence that technology can solve their problems. This has provided openings not only for biblical Christianity but for various aberrations from it and also for aggressive Asian-based religions. And hedonism, newly defined and unembarrassingly defended, is gaining ground again.

Undoubtedly, some of the searching souls who were attracted to the People’s Temple had been exposed to vital Christianity and had rejected it. Even Jesus himself only attracted a few followers in his lifetime. And many who started to follow him turned back.

But probably most of the followers of Jones had not encountered fellowships of men, women, and children who were thoroughly exemplifying the Lordship of Christ—for this life as well as for the next. Adherents of People’s Temple have said that Jones’s work among the poor attracted them. This is an indictment of evangelicals who have compartmentalized life into the sacred and the secular.

Feed my sheep, said Jesus. Often we simply spiritualize such commandments, but the Christian faith is for the whole person, physical and emotional as well as spiritual. The Guyana tragedy challenges us to show that this is so.

“Good day, Reverend. Do you have a few moments to.… Good. Here’s my card. Why don’t we sit down and I’ll explain our service. What is it? Well, idyll spelled IDL—oh, you’re not familiar with us? Interior Decorating for the Lord is a subsidiary of Evangelical Amusem*nts, which has just been bought by Yatsumitso. Yes, that’s right, the company that made your sanctuary piano. The chairman of the board has read all the marketing reports about the evangelical boom—we are a very successful company, let me assure you—and since Yatsumitso was already in the churches, in a manner of speaking, the chairman decided to test the waters even further.

“Now, I can see by looking around your office—this is where you do all your counseling, right? Yes, I thought so. Had many successes? Many troubled souls found peace and security lately? Sorry to hear that. Are you sure you aren’t rationalizing? Oh, I grant you that prayer is a part of it and that God’s time is not always our time. But he did give us minds to figure out better techniques to make his message more, shall we say, accessible to our generation. And that, not to put too fine a point on it, is why I am here.

“What can I do? Didn’t you have courses in counseling in seminary? Right. That’s no longer enough. In fact IDL is putting together a seminary course based on our proven techniques of office decoration. Perhaps your successor will have his counseling degree with an emphasis on color scheme or furniture placement.

“Yes. That’s what I’ve been talking about all along. Look at the color of this office. White may be fine for hospitals, but not for a pastor’s office. Sterile. Uncreative. Cold. Uninviting. The first thing we do is to warm it up. You want people to find you receptive, don’t you?

“And this furniture. The desk is disgraceful. Look at those dents, scratches. Why, aren’t those marks? Oh, your son did that. I would have suggested paragoric. Your parishioners want a family man, but you can’t have the evidence in the furniture. This chair will also have to be replaced. I can hardly sit still, much less listen to you. You need a grouping. Sitting behind a desk is fine for scolding the janitor, but not for reassuring a depressed personality. Let’s add a sofa, and a few soothing pictures, perhaps of a more idyllic time, say the country in bloom. The snow scene goes. Yes, I know it matches the walls. That’s the trouble. Perhaps a few plastic plants. Nothing so upsets a counselee as to see a dying philadendron. And I can do the whole job for only a few thousand dollars.

“You’ve heard enough? Then I’ll have my crew start next week. What? Well, if you’re willing to take that kind of responsibility. I suppose the Holy Spirit is better than nothing. But if you should change your mind.…”

EUTYCHUS IX

Author’s Views

Calvin Seerveld’s article “Gospel of Creation” (Nov. 17), which I am extremely disappointed to find in a magazine purporting to uphold the inerrancy of Scripture, reveals his own weak and neo-orthodox view of the Bible.… Such neo-orthodoxy undercuts the very breadth of God’s, revelation and casts us onto the shifting sands of humanistic relativism.

JOHN KESSLER

Forward Baptist Church

Toronto, Canada

Confusing Head

Imagine our surprise when we picked up the November 3, issue and turned to page 12 to see: “Midwest Christian College Recalls 1972–75 Alumni: Faulty Biology Text Stated as Reason.” Further reading clarified the headline, of course, but we began to wonder how many people who know about our college would simply have seen the headline, concluded that it meant us, and questioned what was happening here. Let it be stated, then, that Midwest Christian College has not recalled her alumni nor has she a faulty biology text. We continue to develop preachers and Christian educators as we have for more than thirty years. We continue to strive for increasing effectiveness, ever seeking ways to do the job better. But we have not recalled any alumni!

FACULTY

Midwest Christian College

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Lifting Up Thanks

I would like to thank CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Alzina Stone Dale for her contemporary psalm of thanksgiving (“Thanksgiving Is Not Ash Wednesday,” Nov. 17). How uplifting it was to be made to feel the Thanksgiving worship she experienced in the past and now which echoes the ancient psalmist who encouraged us to “offer up thanksgiving unto the Lord for all his benefits to us” and not feel guilty. At times, the giving of thanks, the exulting in the blessings of God upon us, the sheer enjoyment of our relationship to God, is the only appropriate thing to do or the only thing we feel like doing. That’s my kind of Thanksgiving. Thank you for helping me worship that way in my study. I hope to do the same in public worship this Thanksgiving season.

WESLEY L. HENRY

Cookeville, Tenn.

Although I agree with Alzina Dale that we as a people have allowed Thanksgiving to be joyless, I have some problems with her theology. Since when has America become a chosen people or a chosen nation? I am quite comfortable with the fact that Christians have been elected and chosen by God as a nation of priests. But to lump all Americans together, as if we, as a people, were a second Israel is too much. Biblically there is no basis for comparing America with Israel, because God chose one nation and that was Israel and when Israel did not live up to God’s calling as a people, to shine like a light for the world to see, God chose for himself a diversity of peoples to be the chosen children of God, and they are the Church, not the U.S. or any other nation.

PAUL V. STUNKEL

Washington. Pa.

Tribe of Solzhenitsyn

Sometimes when we receive a shipment of several items in one package the most valuable are found at the bottom of the package. So it was in the November 17 issue. The last article by Harold Kuhn (Current Religious Thought. “Solzhenitsyn and Some Spiritual Implications”) tells about Solzhenitsyn’s speech at the Harvard Commencement on June 8. Here we have a refugee from totalitarian Russia holding up a very real and unpleasant mirror to our nation’s moral decadence. And it is not to our credit that this man had the courage to make the remarks he did at one of the supposed citadels of Western civilization. Commencement addresses have a habit of becoming pointless pablum for the entertainment of the populace. No doubt his audience at Harvard did not appreciate his remarks but that is just where they were needed. It is not often that the “intelligentsia” have such basic truths thrown in their faces. More power to Solzhenitsyn. May his tribe increase.

Louis W. DEVRIES

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Melodyland Regroups

Re the news articles on Melodyland School of Theology in your issues of December 1 (“Dissonance Jars the Melodyland Harmony”) and December 15 (“Melodyland Lingers: Is the Song Ended?”): We asked journalist Yurica to delay sending articles on the Melodyland faculty difficulty until the situation became clearer. As a result of her precipitate articles many inaccuracies need to be corrected.

1. “The school faculty” did not ask for a major reorganization. Only certain faculty did so, not including our heavyweights: Walter Martin, world renown specialist on the cults; Dr. Michael Esses, Semitic specialist of international repute: Dr. Donald Reiter, leading Baptist spokesman and practical theologian; Old Testament scholar Dr. John Rea; and so forth.

2. Eleven faculty members and two staff persons who signed the ultimatum have broken their contracts with the institution and left in the middle of the school year. Only four of these faculty members had earned doctorates, and a number of them were part-time professors. Typical of current replacements is Rodney Rosenbladt, formerly of the Westmont College philosophy department. We continue with twenty-five faculty members and no retrenchment of instruction.

3. President Rodman Williams disengaged himself from the dissident faculty and continues as president.

4. It is simply untrue that the “problems at the school are not theological in nature.” One of the chief factors precipitating the dissident faculty’s ultimatum was the firing of a staff member who, like several other professors who have now left us, found unpalatable Melodyland’s exceedingly strong statement on the inerrancy of Scripture and rejection of the higher critical method.

5. The dissident faculty sent an unsolicited letter to the regional accrediting association imparting the kind of misleading information that abounds in your articles by Yurica, but this has now been rectified with the executive secretary of the association. Melodyland’s accreditation status remains unchanged.

May we request more responsible news coverage of our activities in the future? Bearing false witness against a neighbor is a serious spiritual matter.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Professor at Large

Melodyland School of Theology

Anaheim, Calif.

The New Testament rarely records laughter; and mirth, some wrongly conclude, is unbecoming the sensitive and dedicated disciple of Christ. Not so!

From Abraham, who by faith saw the humor in God’s infinite provision for man’s weakness, to Paul, who calls upon Christians to worship God with hilarity in their giving, the entire Bible carries a strong note of humor. It would be stronger if it cultivated a deeper sense of humor. We are, therefore, grateful to God for his gift of humor.

Each year at this time the Old Eutychus removes his mask and discloses to all his true identity. This year he reveals the well-known features of an old and beloved friend—Joseph Bayly, pastor, InterVarsity staff member, editor of His magazine, author, and now vice president of David C. Cook Publishing Company. Joe has wielded his facile pen during the past two years as Eutychus VIII. We extend him our hearty thanks and beg him to appear again quickly in the pages of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The acronym “F.E.E.T.” looks like something out of James Bond, but it has nothing to do with espionage—unless you consider the theological climate in Europe to have become so radical that evangelicals by definition constitute an infiltration movement. F.E.E.T. stands for the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians, a group “founded to promote evangelical theology in Europe in a spirit of loyalty to the Bible.” Full membership is open to “those engaged in theological research or who are teaching at a [European] university or college” and to “pastors and laity who have given evidence of serious theological concerns by their literary production”; associate membership is “open to non-European theologians working temporarily in Europe.” All members must subscribe to the doctrinal basis of the Fellowship, which, much like the Apostles’ Creed, represents what C.S. Lewis termed “mere Christianity”: the trinitarian work of God in creation, redemption, and sanctification. As to biblical authority, the fellowship is committed to “the divine inspiration of holy scripture and its consequent entire trustworthiness and supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.”

During the week of August 21–25, the second European Conference of F.E.E.T. took place at the beautiful, wooded “New Life Center” (Neues Leben Zentrum), established five years ago by dynamic German evangelist Anton Schulte at Altenkirchen, between Cologne and Frankfurt am Main. Present were close to sixty leading European evangelical theologians from denominational backgrounds as diverse as Lutheran and Pentecostal and from countries as widely separated geographically and ideologically as Norway, Yugoslavia, and East Germany. The official languages of the conference were English, French, and German, and through the simultaneous translations of such crack linguists as Frederick Burklin from German Bible Institute of Greater Europe Mission (Seeheim) each participant could hear all papers and discussions in these three tongues. For organizing such aspects of the conference with strategic care, credit was due especially to Neil Britton, formerly of Aiglon College, Switzerland, who served as conference coordinator.

Of the four plenary papers, two were of a fairly limited exegetical scope, and two ranged into wider theological and philosophical territory. The more strictly focused essays were both delivered by theologians from Scotland—thus reinforcing the (attractive) stereotype of meticulous, textual Scottish theological scholarship. Howard Marshall of Aberdeen analyzed “Dialogue With the Non-Christian World in the New Testament,” concluding—over against the “dialog” school of contemporary liberal churchmen—that in the New Testament “the traditional picture of a church communicating and proclaiming the faith once-for-all delivered to the saints is a well-founded one. There is not the slightest suggestion that the church and the world conversed as equal partners in the search for truth.” David F. Wright of Edinburgh performed a similar analysis of patristic writers, with special attention to Justin Martyr, and arrived at much the same conclusion: “Justin was no apologetic trimmer, no partner in a dialogue of give-and-take.… For Christianity’s contemporary dialogue with other creeds and ideologies, Justin’s guidelines point the way to an evaluation of their beliefs which may be neither wholly negative (for the Logos has ever sown truth among all races) nor uncritically positive (for man’s grasp of the teaching of the Logos is at best fragmentary and distorted). Above all, Justin shows us how to retain the Christological focus in such dialogue.”

Jan Veenhof of Amsterdam and Klaus Haacker of the Kirchliche Hochschule at Wuppertal-Barmen endeavored to analyze the concept of truth in systematics and biblical theology respectively; their approaches and results were much the same, and elicited parallel reactions from a good number of the conference participants. Both essayists made much of the fact that the Hebrew words for “truth” and “faith” have a common root. For Veenhof this offered the opportunity to criticize the “orthodox Protestant theology of post-Reformation times,” which allegedly hyperobjectified truth along Greek lines, instead of recognizing that “when an Israelite qualifies a person or thing as true, this qualification does not refer to conformity to the actual idea but to the realization of the expectation that one can cultivate on the basis of the respective relationship.” Although appreciating Veenhof’s related criticism of Tillich’s correlation principle, many participants saw his discomfort with truth-as-correspondence as potentially harmful to biblical authority and his picture of classical Protestant orthodoxy as an imprecise straw man (contrast the writings of Robert Preus).

Haacker, in his more nuanced paper, admitted that the “Greek” or “formal” concept of truth appears in the Bible, especially in forensic or courtroom imagery, but argued that this is a minor theme. After all, Rahab the harlot served Israel by lying and was rewarded for it; God sends a lying spirit into King Ahab’s court prophets; and so forth. Much of this had uncomfortable parallels with James Pike’s existential and situational position in Doing the Truth. To be sure, Haacker’s basic argument was that “whereas in our philosophical tradition the question of truth is related to the valuation of statements or knowledge, and thus only affects a limited area of human existence, the biblical terms that we translate with the word ‘truth’ are comprehensive norms for the whole of human behavior and being, right into the deepest levels of the personality.” But could not this excellent point have been made without invidious comparisons of formal truth with personal truth? Why must both-and be turned into either-or?

Among the workshop essays were a superlative plea, by Yugoslavia’s foremost young evangelical theologian Peter Kuzmic, for a mature and informed evangelical dialogue—without compromise—with Marxism; a keen argument by Hans Kvalbein of Oslo that primitive Christianity did not assimilate a hellenistic culture but provided that society with an eschatological witness to revelation; an epistemologically ambiguous but nonetheless stimulating “dialogue in and with philosophy” by L’Abri staff member Udo Middelmann; and valuable insights into dialogue with Eastern religions (by Bruce Nicholls of New Delhi) and the dialogual task facing the theology of missions (by Jacques Blocher of the Institut Biblique at Nogent-sur-Marne, France). A common subject of dinner table conversation was the supposed brain-drain resulting from the recent immigration of European evangelical scholars to the western hemisphere (James Packer, Klaus Bockmühl, both to Regent College, Vancouver, for example). But the F.E.E.T. Conference was itself the best evidence that European evangelical theology need not fear the future.

John Warwick Montgomery is professor at large, Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, California.

Last month 68,000 people packed the Stade du 20 mai in Kinshasha, the biggest stadium in Zaire, to celebrate the centenary of the arrival of Protestant missions. The crowd showed the infectious enthusiasm that has helped make the 6.5 million Protestants in Zaire the largest French-speaking Protestant community in the world.

Itofo Bokambanza Bokeleale, president of the Church of Christ in Zaire (CCZ), which sponsored the rally, applauded the early missionary effort. The record is one of the more remarkable growth stories in African church history. When the first missionary, Henry Craven, landed in Zaire in 1878, there were no Christians. He established a mission at Pala Bala, near the modern port city of Matadi and soon was joined by other British missionaries from his own Livingstone Inland Mission and from the Baptist Missionary Society.

The British missionaries, wanting to quickly establish stations across Africa and halt the southward expansion of Islam, penetrated the interior along the course of the Zaire (Congo) River. Two Jamaicans were sent to Zaire by the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society in 1884—the first American-sponsored missionaries.

Development of the church was constant, though slow and costly. In some outlying areas, buried missionaries outnumbered the living. Protestant work doubled during the two decades between the wars (1919–1939). The next big influx followed World War II and raised the missionary force to more than 1,000. The church grew accordingly in Zaire, until today the Protestant community includes one-fourth of the 25 million population.

Local congregations belong to formerly independent denominations that were merged by government decree to form the CCZ, the only recognized Protestant body. Denominational identity was maintained, though denominations are now called communities. The 11,220 parishes are served by about 2,500 ordained and an equal number of unordained ministers. The CCZ also operates 2,830 primary schools and 6,092 secondary schools, which have a total attendance of 1 million students. The other major institutional work of the CCZ is medical. Its sixty-three hospitals around the country form the hub for maternity clinics, dispensaries, leprosariums, sanitoriums, and health centers.

Shoddy Power Politics

Bokeleale heads this religious conglomerate. Dressed for the centennial celebration in a long, white robe capped by a cardinal-type cape, addressed as monseigneur, and wearing a large crucifix, he could have been a Roman Catholic prelate instead of a Protestant minister. Bokeleale’s ecclesiastical garb and title symbolize a growing controversy between the CCZ president and many of the fifty-three member communities. In 1975, Bokeleale suggested to the CCZ national synod that regional presidents be elected to the position of bishop and that each community follow suit for its own leaders.

Bokeleale’s own community, the Disciples of Christ in Zaire (DCZ), took that step the following year. Replacing its congregational style of government with an episcopal one, the DCZ made its general secretary a bishop and conferred the title of honorary bishop on Bokeleale. Bishop Harms of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany performed the consecration ceremony.

Some leading Protestants, both inside and outside the CCZ administration, strongly objected to what they saw as an attempt by Bokeleale to change the fundamental government of the church. Four pastors published a 150-page document entitled, “Is Christ Still the Head of the Protestant Church in Zaire?” The four ministers described Bokeleale’s moves as “an attempt to convert the entire Protestant community of the CCZ to an episcopal church without consultation with or consent by its members.”

Opposing Bokeleale has its problems. One of the four pastors who wrote the 150-page document was the CCZ vice-president; he is no longer in Zaire and no longer an official of the CCZ. Another of the pastors, from the influential French-language International Parish of Kalina, was threatened by Bokeleale with dismissal from his church. The director of the Bible Society of Zaire openly criticized Bokeleale and lost his job.

The issue these men and others raised is neither new nor insignificant. It is, in their words, “unity in diversity,” or the right of autonomous CCZ communities to maintain their own essential character and autonomy without interference or pressure to conform to a contrary form of government set by the CCZ national leadership. Their concern differs little from that which motivated others in 1971 to protest on the basis of religious liberty the formation of the CCZ (see April 14, 1972, issue, page 4; November 24, 1972, issue, page 9). In both instances, people opposed bringing the autonomous communities under a strong, centralized authority.

Even the Disciples of Christ Community is having second thoughts. During their annual general assembly in July, members rescinded their action of 1976 regarding bishops and the episcopacy. They returned to the congregational concept of church government, with a general secretary as administrator. Despite its internal power struggle, the CCZ still provides for evangelism, development, education, and women’s ministries to its member communities.

Political Shambles

Zaire is going through one of its most difficult periods since 1960. David Lamb, in the International Herald Tribune, summarizes the current state of the republic: “The economy President Mobutu nationalized is being denationalized. The authenticity campaign has been largely abandoned. The corruption that he promised to end continues unchecked, with Mobutu himself the biggest offender. The army that he pledged to reorganize remains only a mob with guns that prey on the public. The agricultural sector that he vowed to revise still is struggling along at a plodding pace.”

Part of the agricultural problem stems from an unusually severe drought in the rain forests of the Lower Zaire Province, the fertile area that feeds the Kinshasa population. Instead of the normal seventy inches of rainfall, last year the region had only nine inches. Some districts have not had rain for nineteen months.

The thousands of Angolan war refugees who have fled to drought-stricken Lower Zaire compound the problem. Thousands more are homeless and starving in Shaba Province following civil war there in two successive years. Nearly a million refugees are living in Zaire.

Such Christian relief agencies as World Vision International and Church World Service are funneling millions of dollars in relief aid to the war refugees and drought victims through local churches and mission stations within the distressed areas. Secular organizations, including the International Relief Commission, coordinate their efforts with the Protestant and Catholic churches. The Zaire Protestant Relief Agency of the CCZ acts as a clearinghouse for this aid.

The CCZ and its member communities had been central to education programs in Zaire since the beginning of missions and modern civilization in the country. When the government decided in 1975 to nationalize the educational structure, between 90 and 95 per cent of the schools were still administered by Catholics and Protestants.

Three disastrous years of public education followed. The entire system became morally and financially bankrupt. In some instances, teachers exacted sexual favors from female students in exchange for passing grades, and funds for salaries and administrative expenses disappeared en route to the schools. Finally, in 1978, the government admitted shortcomings in the schools and returned the administration back to the church—a massive task involving 3 million students, 80,000 teachers, and finances that since 1965 have averaged about 20 per cent of the total national budget (see January 7, 1977, issue, page 43).

An unexpected result of the school nationalization was a spiritual awakening among the students. “After the abolition of the confessional youth movements and religion courses in schools, a remarkable spontaneous movement arose among some young people,” noted the CCZ centenary special, It’s a Miracle. “Having learned the habit of Bible reading with the aid of Scripture Union material, they themselves created in their respective parishes Bible study groups, which quickly attracted the attention of a good number of their fellows.”

The Scripture Union directors in Zaire had experienced problems in getting young people out to their summer camps. Some programs attracted only a dozen youths. But once religion was no longer a curricular activity, the camps began to fill. Leaders are now forced to limit registration in some camps, as attendance has climbed to above two hundred.

Some Scripture Union students formed a group, “Chain of Integrity,” during the period of nationalized education. The students, recognizing that Christians must combat corruption with honesty, met to encourage each other in resisting temptation. The movement has spread to adult Christians in business and professional occupations.

Spiritual awakening is not limited to the young. A new generation of evangelism-minded British Baptist missionaries is moving into areas along the Zaire River to revive once-active churches. A tent evangelist in western Zaire near Bomba followed relief trucks into refugee camps, and now over 1,000 Angolan converts are being discipled. Three years ago a congregation began in Kinshasa with about thirty adults; now more than 400 believers attend each Sunday, and they are building a church to accommodate 1,000.

The Centennial celebrants who jammed into Stade du 20 mai had reason to cheer. Neither power politics in the CCZ hierarchy or Zairian economic and political shambles stopped church growth. The church had a good first century, and the second promises to be even better.

ROBERT L. NIKLAUS

Terrorist-Shy Irish Church Rebuffs Wcc

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland suspended its membership within the World Council of Churches (WCC) last month. The reason: a protest against the controversial Program to Combat Racism of the WCC, particularly its grant last summer to the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).

The action was taken during a special session of the General Assembly of the church and carried by a vote of 561 to 393. More than half of the presbyteries had requested the special meeting.

Suspension does not mean complete withdrawal of membership from the WCC. Instead, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland will cease its participation in the affairs of the WCC, except for certain Christian education and missions programs. (Of the 575 congregations, 475 are in Northern Ireland, where members make up about 20 per cent of the population.)

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has consistently opposed antiracism grants and has refused to contribute funds to the Program to Combat Racism. The church will continue to discuss the antiracism grants with the WCC. An Irish delegation planned to meet this month in London with WCC officials, a day after Salvation Army leaders were to discuss their self-imposed suspension for the same reason from the WCC.

Complete withdrawal by the Irish church from the WCC would require the vote of two successive general assemblies of the Irish Presbyterians, says A. J. Weir, clerk of the general assembly. The next regular meeting won’t take place until June.

At the recent special session of the general assembly, the church reaffirmed its stand against racism. It also recognized the political, economic, and ethical pluralism that exists within the WCC.

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, which feels it has no small experience in dealing with terrorists, from the beginning has charged the WCC with making grants to “anti-racist” organizations without making provision for accountability on how the money is spent. The church fears that the WCC is identifying more with conflict and terrorism than with sufferers of injustice.

A statement made recently by the Inter-Church Relations Board of the Irish Church points out that “grants made by well-intentioned donors to paramilitary or guerrilla groups, or to their supporting organizations, do not end simply with humanitarian aid, even when so used, but strengthen generally the power of the particular group or individual administering them.…”

The statement continued, “It would be as wrong and offensive to entrust ecumenical church grants, however earmarked, to the organization of Ian Smith and his colleagues as it is to give to the Patriotic Front in their violent confrontation.”

It is expected that the antiracism grants will be high on the agenda when the WCC Central Committee gathers next January in Jamaica.

DECOURCY H. RAYNER

Misery Relievers Also Love Company

Although their home constituencies differ, evangelical relief agencies aiding flood victims in North India or boat people in Southeast Asian waters often end up working with the same government officials and church groups for the same purposes.

Last month, representatives of ten relief and development agencies formed an umbrella organization that will provide a better communication among themselves and the groups they represent.

The initial members of the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations (AERDO) are all based in the United States and Canada.¹They are Compassion International, Compassion/Canada, Development Assistance Services, Food for the Hungry, Food for the Hungry/Canada, Institute for International Development. Inc., MAP International, World Concern, World Relief NAE, and World Vision International. However, the group is holding charter membership open for a year and is soliciting the membership of sister organizations overseas. AERDO offices will be established in Seattle, Washington.

AERDO will not be involved in relief funding. Its thrust instead will be exchange of information, setting of standards, and coordinating programs. It aims to be to relief and development mission agencies what the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA) and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA) are to evangelism and church-planting mission agencies. AERDO officials also seek a liason role between their organization and the EFMA and IFMA on the one hand, and national church groups on the other.

In addition, says AERDO president Arthur Beals of World Concern, “We wish to provide information about development that will enable Christians to understand its relationship to the other tasks we have in implementing the Great Commission.”

No sooner was AERDO formed than it spawned another group: the Consortium of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations (CERDO), composed of several AERDO members. CERDO is designed for joint projects, for technical support, and as a conduit for governmental relief and development funds not available to individual church agencies. Its office will be in Washington, D.C. (CERDO has no creedal stipulations of its own, but limits participation to members of AERDO, who must subscribe to the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith.)

President John Robinson of MAP International says CERDO will seek funding where a consortium makes better sense than for several smaller agencies to work alone—reducing red tape and funneling government funds to projects proposed and approved by its member agencies. He cautions that consortium members must be agencies that are viable apart from the partial government funding.

Spain Cuts Its Ties To Church—Almost

In a popular referendum early this month, voters in Spain were expected to ratify a new constitution that had been overwhelmingly approved a month earlier by the Spanish Parliament. Since all of the leading parties favored the new constitution, its approval was considered nearly certain.

Under the new parliamentary monarchy Spain would no longer have an official religion—ending 500 years of church-and-state union, at least in theory.

The new constitution would open the door to acceptance of a new Law of Religious Liberty, which has already been worked out by representatives of the various religious groups and the Spanish government. Included in the law is an interpretation of Article 16 of the constitution, which concerns religious freedom.

Spanish Protestants have already expressed disagreement with the new constitution, particularly to sections where the politics of consensus led to a backtracking from the pointed declaration in an early draft that the Spanish state was not “confessional.” Article 16 states that there is to be no official religion. But a sentence that was inserted after discreet lobbying by the bishops of the eighty-member Episcopal Conference (Roman Catholic), raises serious doubts. The sentence says, “The public authorities will keep in mind the religious beliefs of the Spanish society and will maintain … cooperation with the Catholic Church and the other confessions.” Protestants fear that mention of the Catholic church by name in reality gives it special considerations denied the others.

Among the notable changes, the new Constitution would end discrimination in burial places and end restrictions in the establishment of new churches. Also, the Constitution would establish legal rights in marriages and in the religious education of children, and the freedom to change one’s religious beliefs. The 1953 Concordat between the Vatican and the Franco regime that proclaimed Catholicism the state religion is being revised to bring it into line with the new Constitution.

A major problem yet to be resolved is separation of church and state finances. The Roman Catholic Church has received some $85 million annually from the Spanish government to pay its clergy and maintain its extensive holdings. The Spanish government, on the other hand, has relied heavily on church schools and teachers for the education of children.

A new agreement, still being drafted, is likely to prevail. It places a “religious” tax upon citizens, which is to be paid along with the income tax. Each person would be able to designate the religious group he wants to receive his tax, with the Spanish government keeping the tax of those who fail to express a preference. Protestant churches oppose taxation, maintaining that local congregations are responsible for financing their own activities.

In whatever manner the deliberately vague passages of the Constitution are worked out, Spain has decisively shed its image as the most Catholic country in Western Europe. It was already considerably less Catholic than its reputation. Perhaps now that will be official.

DALE G. VOUGHT

World Scene

Pope John Paul II received rebel Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in private audience last month. The French prelate, who is under church suspension because he rejects the reforms of Vatican II and insists that mass be said only in Latin, requested the meeting. Vatican sources believe Lefebvre may be seeking reconciliation.

The Presbyterian Church of South Africa is unhappy about World Council of Churches support for the Rhodesian Patriotic Front. But instead of terminating membership in the WCC, the denominational assembly decided to divert its membership fees to relief efforts directed toward “WCC victims” in the Rhodesian conflict.

Jim Bakker, founder-president of the PTL Network, has been warning viewers that his North Carolina-based international Christian television enterprise is in danger of going under.

PTL has accumulated more than $13 million in debts, and about $6 million of its accounts were past due last month, according to a network official in Charlotte. Hundreds of calls have poured in from creditors, said the source, and some suppliers of books, Bibles, and other goods served notice that they will send no more shipments until they are paid.

In early November, the management was a weekend late in scraping together enough money to meet the biweekly payroll of $250,000 for some 800 employees, the first such delay in the five-year history of PTL. (Workers got their second paycheck of the month on time, but cash flow reportedly was still tight.)

A contractor has stopped work on PTL’s proposed $100 million headquarters and educational complex known as the Total Living Center: The contractor was owed $2.5 million—$500,000 of it long overdue.

So far, only a camp and conference center have been completed on the 1,400-acre site, which is located just across the state line in Fort Hill, South Carolina. The site was purchased for $1.6 million last year amid clashes between PTL and state and local officials over taxes and fund-solicitation registration.

New studios, a university campus, and a retirement village are among the planned facilities. In the meantime, the 300 students in the entering class of PTL’s Heritage University, along with the 300 students from another PTL school for grades kindergarten through twelfth grade, are meeting in temporary quarters in Charlotte. (The university presently offers a two-year undergraduate program in communications and theology.)

A serious crisis occurred recently when NET Television of Ann Arbor, Michigan, the firm that duplicates tapes of PTL shows for nationwide distribution, threatened to stop its tape reproduction. NET and PTL officials finally worked out a payment schedule aimed at reducing the more than $1 million owed by PTL.

The network also fell behind in payments to RCA, which supplied PTL with more than $2 million in camera and studio equipment. Air time costs PTL more than $1 million per month, and these bills have also been accumulating. Meanwhile, the network is unable to fulfill some offers it made for free material and other orders for goods.

Staff unrest has come with the finance crunch. Bakker (pronounced Baker) fired 60 of 690 employees last June, explaining the move would save the company $500,000 a year and stave off bankruptcy. But complaints surfaced that people were being asked to work many hours of overtime without pay and that the layoffs were intended to prod or punish those who balked.

Bakker denied the charges, but he did complain about a poor turnout of volunteers for workdays at the camp center. “We’re missionaries,” Bakker told a reporter. “You don’t serve God for eight hours a day and then punch out.” Half of those dismissed were rehired later, and scores of new people were added to the work force.

Bakker embarked on an around-the-world missions tour in October, and he says he found that PTL was behind in its obligations in some of its foreign ministries. Upon his return home, he discovered a huge backlog in unprocessed mail. Contributions had been banked, but acknowledgments, gift offers, and follow-up offering envelopes had not been sent to thousands of viewers, according to a spokesman. A computer foul-up had misprocessed much of the mail that did go through the system, Bakker also explained later. The result: Money pledges that once averaged $1.5 million per week had dipped sharply. Workers were mobilized around the clock to clear the backlog.

Meanwhile, a clash developed between Bakker, 39, and PTL executive vice-president Robert Manzano. The dispute ended with the resignation of the 36-year-old Manzano, but both men insisted that their parting was amicable and without animosity.

Bakker discussed the financial difficulties of the network last month during a fund-raising telethon that is aired semiannually on the popular “PTL Club” talk-and-variety show. (Most of the 203 stations and 3,000 cable hookups that carry the “PTL Club” broadcast shows that were taped two or three weeks earlier. The PTL telephone number is flashed frequently on the screen, and viewers can call in prayer requests, money pledges, and testimonies to Charlotte, where operators around the clock attend a bank of phones.)

Appealing for “immediate” help, Bakker encouraged viewers to charge their pledges to their credit cards. PTL officials had negotiated with the North Carolina National Bank of Charlotte to receive cash for pledges charged to the callers’ credit cards without signed authorization. By agreement, PTL promised to make refunds to the bank if any callers reneged. About $70,000 in credit-card pledges arrived during the first week of the campaign, and only $6,000 had to be refunded, according to a PTL official.

North Carolina National, however, canceled the arrangement when Bakker announced on TV that PTL might be “within days of … closing.” Bakker promptly switched PTL business to another bank, and he told reporters that he believes the past-due accounts will be cleared up by the end of next month.

Another controversy cropped up last month—this one involving Bakker’s personal affairs. It was disclosed that Bakker and his family soon would move into a $195,000 house in an exclusive Charlotte neighborhood. As it turned out, the home was purchased for the Bakkers by Kentucky businessman Harry Ranier.

Bakker said he had failed in persuading Ranier to donate the money instead to Heritage University. Already the owner of an $80,000 home in suburban Charlotte, Bakker said he and his wife will live in the house rent-free but will not accept the title to it.

Bakker, a former Assemblies of God evangelist from Michigan, got the idea for PTL while working at the Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). In 1965, he pioneered the talk-and-variety show format for Christian television with a show known today as “The 700 Club.”

When Bakker launched PTL, its initials stood for “Praise the Lord.” He later changed the meaning to “People That Love.” The network’s $5 million studio is considered one of the best-equipped in North America, and it is part of a twenty-five-acre headquarters complex patterned after colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.

More than 50,000 persons have called PTL over the past two years to testify that they were born again after watching the “PTL Club,” according to network officials. New converts are offered Bible correspondence courses, and more than 2,000 pastors of various denominations have been recruited from across the country to assist with follow-up, officials say. Support comes from “partners” who number in the hundreds of thousands.

A Spanish version of the “PTL Club,” featuring a Spanish-speaking host, is aired in eighteen countries, and the English-language version is broadcast in several African countries, the Philippines, and some Caribbean areas. There are plans for a Japanese version, as well.

Melodyland Lingers: Is The Song Ended?

After two weeks of meetings, emotion, and tension, many of the teachers and administrators of Melodyland School of Theology (MST) discontinued their employment with the school in mid-November. They charged that their employment contracts and agreements had been breached in significant ways by Chancellor Ralph Wilkerson and his board of directors.

Those who withdrew from the Anaheim, California, school were eight full-time faculty, four part-time faculty (two of whom served in other staff positions as well), and four full-time staff members. These, plus four who had previously resigned, formed the teaching and administrative core of MST. They included the vice-presidents for administration and finance, and for academic and student affairs, the dean of students, the registrar, the public relations director, the head librarian, the coordinator of student services, and the director of the social work program.

Following the mass exodus, only one full-time faculty member, John Rea, remained at MST along with J. Rodman Williams, president of the school. Wilkerson stated that there were still twenty other MST teachers, but as of late last month all were part-time.

After laboring for months with his faculty on the proposed reorganization program of the school (see the December 1 issue, page 46), which required Ralph Wilkerson to relinquish his control over the school, Williams apparently reversed himself and chose to continue as president on Wilkerson’s terms. When asked to comment, Williams said, “I feel that I should not make any statements at this time.”

Winter quarter classes will be held, though the new class schedule offers only about half of the normally scheduled classes. There are almost no electives, and at least one required class has been dropped. Some classes are being taught by students. The schedule indicates that classes for the Master of Social Work Program “will be announced.”

Accredited Christian institutions in the Southern California area are assisting Melodyland students by reviewing and discussing the transfer of their credits.

Throughout the confrontation period, Wilkerson refused to accept any part of the four-point program submitted by the faculty. “God gave me the vision. I am now the chancellor, and I’ll continue to be the chancellor,” he said.

A spokesman for the faculty stated, “One thing should be kept in mind. We have acted together as a corporate body in unity. No one person drafted the reorganization proposal, but the entire group participated as a whole. Integrity was the key factor in all of our decisions. In the end we realized that we could not stay at MST and keep our integrity intact.”

The faculty cited instances of censorship by Wilkerson. One was his “urging” in writing that all academic papers be submitted for reading by his administration prior to publishing. Another was the taping of all classroom lectures, which, in some instances, allegedly were used as evidence for censorship. Faculty spokesmen said that it was this tension-creating, authoritarian style that triggered their reorganizational requests.

In addition to the enormous staffing and financial problems still dogging the school, MST faces the potential possibility of having its charter to confer degrees revoked by the Office of Private Post Secondary Education of the State of California. The school was given until the end of November to comply with the state requirements. The state vocational program, which certifies schools that veterans may attend and receive benefits for, is scheduled to review the MST status in March. In February, the school must also face an accreditation team, with its accreditation-candidacy status at stake.

KATHERINE YURICA

The Seminaries: Glum Over ‘Gays’

Avowed hom*osexuals who want to enter the ministry create peculiar problems, as the presidents at Iliff School of Theology in Denver and at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, are finding out.

At these United Methodist schools admitted hom*osexuals have asked to start or continue studies to prepare for a pastoral ministry. They were turned down.

Last May, Garrett refused to allow two hom*osexual students to continue in the three-year master of divinity (M.Div.) program, the one that prepares students for the pastorate. The students, Terry Colbert and James Mason, were told they could transfer to other Garrett programs—such as its joint doctoral program with adjacent Northwestern University. They decided not to. Each sought ordination within the United Methodist Church and completion of the M.Div. program.

Local boards of ministry decide whether to ordain a pastoral prospect. United Methodist seminaries only “prepare people and certify them as fit for ministry,” said Garrett president Merlyn Northfelt. Garrett does not admit or advance known hom*osexuals to its professional ministry (M.Div.) program.

The issue lay dormant until last month when a faculty committee at Northwestern threatened to end academic cooperation with Garrett unless the latter ended “exclusionary” policies against hom*osexuals. Northwestern was founded by Methodists, but now is independent; it shares library and certain recreational facilities with Garrett students.

The policy-making Faculty Senate at Northwestern passed a resolution asking the General Faculty Committee to be less hasty; it instructed committee chairman Arthur Veis to organize a further discussion of the matter with Garrett faculty representatives.

Under contention is whether the M.Div. at Northwestern is only intended to lead to ordination. Northwestern says no; Garrett says yes. Faculty committeeman Veis said, “If the program leads directly to ordination, which I don’t think it does, then it’s reasonable for the church to have its standards. But if it’s an academic program,” he added, “then the issue is one of academic freedom—then it’s unjust to dismiss students because of their [sexual] preferences.”

Garrett president Northfelt last month had not reacted to the Northwestern faculty resolution. He said that the only news he had received of the threatened end to academic cooperation between the schools had come from the Northwestern student newspaper. “We (Garrett) will do nothing until we get an official request,” he said.

At Iliff school president Jameson Jones this fall refused (he preferred the word “returned”) the application of Lucius Allen Grooms of Washington, D.C. Grooms was a candidate for ministry in a gay denomination, the Metropolitan Community Church, and is not a United Methodist.

Jones, who is president of the Association of United Methodist Theological Schools—a group comprising chief executives from the thirteen United Methodist seminaries—based his decision on financial grounds. He wanted to know if Iliff’s admission of an admitted hom*osexual would result in a loss of funding from the United Methodist Church.

The United Methodist Book of Discipline says that church funds cannot be given to “any ‘gay’ caucus or group” or be used for promoting “the acceptance of hom*osexuality.” Iliff receives $300,000 annually from the United Methodist Church, one-third of its educational and general budget, and school officials didn’t want to jeopardize that by admitting Grooms.

Jones asked for clarification of the funding matter from the Division of Ordained Ministry Task Force on Seminary Support. The group supervises distribution of the $6 million raised each year from the local churches for the seminaries.

The task force has been working to “design a process by which the Division of Ordained Ministry can engage in a discussion of those issues (hom*osexual education and funding) during its next meeting,” which will take place in March. Task force chairman Virgil Bjork hopes that the seminary presidents, who have appointed their own study task force, and the Division of Ordained Ministry will study all aspects of the hom*osexual question—including admission to seminaries, advancement in degree programs, funding, and ordination.

“If we do not take the initiative in clarifying these issues,” he said, “someone will press for it. Then the issues will not be clarified within the context of rationality and healthy dialogue.”

The problem probably won’t disappear. At Lexington Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ), an admitted hom*osexual was refused his degree in 1976 after completing coursework within a master of divinity program. This fall, a circuit court judge in Kentucky ordered the school to award the degree. The judge said that Lexington had not sufficiently forewarned students that hom*osexuals would not be awarded degrees. Now Lexington president Wayne H. Bell awaits an appellate court hearing regarding his appeal of that decision.

Methodist official Bjork summed up. “Historically, the church has had ordained hom*osexuals. It’s the coming out of the closet that generates difficulty.”

Wesleyan Tug-Of-War On Pentecostal Link

About 200 scholars, pastors, and students jammed into tiny Mt. Vernon, Ohio, last month for what some observers called the most significant meeting of the fourteen-year-old Wesleyan Theological Society (WTS). The conferees studied the often controversial Wesleyan-Holiness doctrine of “baptism in the Holy Spirit.”

The openness of their dialogue may signify a theological turning point for the denominations represented within the WTS—most of which also belong to the Christian Holiness Association (CHA), a grouping of about fifteen church bodies that includes Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and Free Methodists.

At issue was what one speaker termed “an embarrassing divergence between John Wesley and his spiritual heirs.” (Wesley did not have a doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, at least in those terms, and he didn’t refer to Pentecost in his description of “entire sanctification” as did Holiness churches formed after his departure from the scene.)

Also at stake for the conferees gathered on the Mt. Vernon Nazarene College campus was the relationship between Holiness theology and Pentecostalism. Many church historians say Pentecostalism emerged from the Holiness movement at the turn of the century, though some Holiness officials have tried to deny that link and strongly criticize Pentecostalism. Holiness churches historically regarded Pentecostalism as “Holiness heresy” since it tied baptism in the Holy Spirit to speaking in tongues. The Holiness doctrine of baptism in the Spirit involves “entire sanctification”—a second, but non-tongues, encounter with the Holy Spirit.

A variety of spirit baptism positions were heard by conferees. United Methodist Robert W. Lyon issued a sharp challenge to the traditional Holiness doctrine. He assumed a more Wesleyan stance. A New Testament scholar at Asbury seminary, Lyon said there is no biblical basis for a doctrine of baptism in the Holy Spirit as a “second blessing.” Instead, he said that “conversion is the truly sanctifying experience.”

After questioning, however, Lyon affirmed his commitment to the classical Wesleyan doctrine of “entire sanctification” as a “perfecting” of what was begun in conversion.

Alex Deasley, New Testament theologian from Nazarene Theological Seminary, surprised some of the conferees by accepting a great portion of Lyon’s exegesis. (Deasley’s Nazarene church is committed to the spirit baptism doctrine.) Deasley argued that the “purifying” theme in Pentecostal imagery could be applied to the whole of salvation experience—whether it was effected at conversion or realized in a post-conversion experience. Free Methodist theologian George A. Turner, however, defended the more conservative post-Wesley doctrinal position held by most Holiness churches.

Discussion was extended and intense. Evangelist Morton Dorsey, a president of the CHA two decades ago, objected from the floor to what he believed was the dialogue of revisionism, a denial of the “spiritual reality” preached in the Holiness movement for more than a century. Others disagreed, calling the shifts more semantic in character.

Melvin Dieter, WTS president and church historian at Asbury, said that, in any case, the dialogue at the conference was important. He wanted a “new forthrightness in theological dialogue” within the WTS. Dieter also called for “new aggressiveness” in conversation between related theological traditions, from Calvinistic evangelicalism to Pentecostalism.

In his presidential address, Dieter recognized the historical and theological links between the Holiness tradition and Pentecostalism. He cautioned that a more classical exegesis should not be allowed to undercut the experiential depth of the Holiness movement.

Nazarene theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop aroused some “amens,” as well as some shocked looks when she declared the conference discussions were “provincial.” She doubted whether the Holiness movement was ready for the “whole Wesley,” and said the issues involved had no simple answers. She called for fuller attention to the complicated historical, semantic, and biblical questions at stake. Bangs emphasized the Christocentric nature of Wesley’s thought, as well as the broader work of the Holy Spirit throughout human history.

Wesleyan church historian Clarence Bence echoed Bangs. He also sought an eschatology that was built on Wesley, but that avoided the “cultural pessimism” of a Hal Lindsey and the “historical utopianism” of some liberation theologians.

United Methodist Lawrence Wood of Asbury seminary is president-elect of the WTS, which now numbers about 1,100 members.

DONALD W. DAYTON

Bishops’ Grief Wins Ear Of Chief

Roman Catholic leaders are both angry and frustrated by what they feel is increasing government intrusion into church affairs, and last month they took their case to President Jimmy Carter. Four top prelates, representing the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), later told reporters that Carter had given them a sympathetic hearing.

Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco, NCCB president, said there was “immediate agreement” by Carter that church-and-state problems exist, not only for Catholics but also for other religious groups. The bishops, said Quinn, also expressed “a mounting concern about the need for aid to parents of … private school children”—a gentle reminder of an as-yet-unfulfilled Carter campaign promise. The President asked the bishops to send him a detailed listing of their specific concerns.

The bishops’ twenty-minute meeting with Carter came at the conclusion of the semiannual meeting of the Washington-based NCCB at a hotel three blocks from the White House. Although their three-day agenda was jammed with budgetary and housekeeping items, the 264 bishops devoted a large chunk of time to the government issue.

Bishop after bishop voiced complaints against what was described as unfair and unwarranted actions by government regulatory agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Labor. Especially criticized was the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has claimed jurisdiction over parochial school and other institutional employees in such matters as unionization and unemployment compensation. (A case involving the NLRB and parochial schools in Chicago and Fort Wayne, Indiana, is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.)

Some bishops lamented that Carter had received strong help from the church hierarchy in winning important legislative battles, but had failed to protect the church from harsh treatment by certain presidential appointees. “The White House and Administration used us when it was something they wanted,” fumed one bishop.

Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York suggested that the bishops set up an ecumenical monitoring process, possibly with the assistance of church colleges, to help guard against government interference in church work. By consent (no vote was taken), the bishops agreed that a watchdog was needed. However, they decided to assign the role to their own officers rather than to establish a new committee. (Cooke attended the meeting with Carter, as did Quinn, NCCB general secretary Thomas C. Kelly, and Archbishop John R. Roach of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the NCCB vice-president.)

In other actions:

• The bishops decided for the first time to respond officially to conclusions of Protestant and Catholic theological dialogue groups. The first response will be made to the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue.

• An NCCB committee listened to statements from 20 of the some 1,500 persons who attended a conference in Baltimore Where ordination of Catholic women was advocated. The women demonstrated outside the NCCB meeting hall and chided the bishops for not permitting them to make a report to the full body.

The ordination issue was not on the agenda, but at one session six bishops urged the NCCB to begin serious discussion of the woman’s role in ministry. No action was taken, and leaders reaffirmed that church teaching prohibits the ordination of women. The only reason for any talks, suggested Quinn, would be to “elicit a better acceptance of the teaching of the church.”

Personalia

C. M. Ward, well-known Pentecostal radio preacher, has retired after twenty-five years as speaker on the Assemblies of God thirty-minute program, “Revival-time.” Ward also resigned as president of Bethany Bible College in order to give full time to writing and speaking ministries.

Philip Yancey has given up the editorship at Campus Life magazine to become editor of Campus Life Books—a book line copublished with Zondervan. The move will give Yancey more time for writing and research; a frequent contributor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Yancey has more than 250 articles in sixty-four publications to his credit.

Teen-Age Preacher

Jones’s journey toward self-worship ended in death in Guyana. But it began in the tiny eastern Indiana town of Lynn, where casket-making is the main industry. Jones apparently confessed Christ as a boy under the influence of a neighbor and Nazarene church member, Mrs. Myrtle Kennedy. He began preaching as a teenager and at the age of 18, he married Marceline Baldwin, a nurse at the Richmond, Indiana, hospital where they both worked.

Jones enrolled at Indiana University but dropped out during his sophom*ore year to give more time to preaching. He continued his studies, however, in night school classes at Butler University in Indianapolis and finished after ten years with a degree in education. In 1953, he became pastor of the Christian Assembly church (Methodist) in Indianapolis, but a dispute erupted and he left. Jones later said the congregation had opposed his bringing blacks into the church: others, however, attributed the conflict to his becoming a Pentecostal.

For the next few years, Jones held Sunday afternoon healing services in church buildings he rented. In 1956, Jones opened People’s Temple in leased quarters. He sold monkeys door-to-door to purchase a synagogue in a black neighborhood a year later. Interestingly, the synagogue had been headed by Rabbi Maurice Davis, who in recent years has been an organizer of efforts to deprogram cult members.

Persons who attended People’s Temple in those early years recalled in interviews that the services were much like those in any old-fashioned Pentecostal church. Blacks and whites got along relatively well, they said.

But there were things that disturbed members in the inner circle.

Jones and a few Temple members attended a spiritualist camp meeting in the late 1950s, and Jones came back a believer in reincarnation, said the man who served as Jones’s associate pastor until 1963 (when he was replaced by an Assemblies of God minister). “Quite a few spiritualists began attending the church after that,” he said.

Jones had ESP, some ex-members insist. “He accurately predicted events, including the death of a woman who jumped from a hospital window,” said one. Jones believed he was “guided” by a supernatural “spirit,” said a former university classmate.

Fateful Visit

The next major change within Jones occurred in 1961 when he and some young people visited Father Divine in Philadelphia. Following that visit Jones frequently alluded to the black preacher whose interracial following regarded him as the personification of God. It was soon evident to the inner circle that Jones no longer believed in the virgin birth of Christ, that he believed in evolution, and that he wanted people to pay more attention to him than the Bible.

“The Bible is a black idol; you people worship it,” he charged. Jones, known for years as “Jimmy,” assumed the title of “Father.”

“He did some good things,” says former member Judy McNaulty. “But he just got power and changed.” (Mrs. McNaulty’s brother, Charles Beikman, was being held in Guyana in the throat-slashing deaths of a mother and three children.)

Jones began emphasizing pacifism and brotherhood in his sermons, but he also warned that blacks might perish some day at the hands of white racists. He complained that bigots had persecuted him. At that time, white members began leaving the church, some because of the racial emphasis, others because of theological differences.

Indianapolis resident Edward Mueller remembers another side of Jones: “He tried to get me to be a minister, but he wasn’t sincere. He said there was no easier way to make it. Once he told me, ‘Just look at my hands: they’re not dirty.’”

On the side, Jones ran a community center and two nursing homes. In 1961, the mayor of Indianapolis appointed him director of the city’s Human Rights Commission. Then Jones spent nearly two years in Brazil where he studied the methods of a Brazilian faith healer. When Jones returned to Indianapolis, he found the spirits lagging and attendance dwindling at the Temple.

In 1964 Jones applied for ordination within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a 1.3 million-member mainline denomination that is very prominent in the ecumenical movement. John Harms, now retired in Oklahoma, was regional executive minister of the denomination at that time, and he served on the committee that examined Jones. Harms was uneasy about Jones’s “emotion-oriented religious background” and about his lack of seminary training. “But because he [Jones] seemed to be groping for a more rational approach to religion, and because he was an effective leader of the poor and oppressed,” said Harms, “the committee decided to recommend that People’s Temple proceed with his ordination.”

Harms, who never heard Jones preach, says he did not favor the decision, believing that Jones needed the discipline of an academic preparation and a good theological foundation.

The Migration

On the advice of his good friend Ross Case, Jones took more than 150 followers to California in 1965 and set up spiritual shop there. From his new pulpit in Redwood Valley outside Ukiah, Jones began preaching that the Bible was an unreliable document. He denounced its moral standards, often throwing the Bible to the floor, spitting and stomping upon it. Before his congregation, which soon grew to 3,000 members, Jones called Jesus a bastard and Mary a whor*.

Richard Taylor, an American Baptist pastor in Ukiah during Jones’s tenure there, recalls one frequent Jones liturgy: “Who am I?” Jones yelled. “Jesus Christ,” the people answered.

Jones’s name was substituted for Jesus in tradition hymns. He believed himself to be the reincarnation not only of Jesus Christ, but of Lenin, Buddha, and the Bahai prophet Bab, all rolled into one. His followers believed him “The Living Word,” and Jones’s magazine by that name glorified his powers on every page.

Jim Jones had an obsession for power. Almost every abberant feature of his church can be traced either to that or to his obsession with sex. Richard Taylor explains that “He achieved successive levels of power over his followers until he actually controlled their lives.” And according to Jeannie Mills, who was instrumental in blowing the whistle on Jones following her exit from the Temple in 1975, Jones’s decision in 1964 to join the Disciples of Christ was the result of a deliberate search for an organization in which he could remain completely autonomous.

Jones’s thirst for power was slaked by political interests. He held political office in every place he lived. Throughout California, Jones was respected by politicians as a man able to mobilize thousands of people.

The politicians failed to realize that Jones was manipulating them, not serving them. A favorite game was to get endorsem*nts from important public figures by giving them carefully staged tours of the church’s clinic, legal aid office, and dining facilities for the indigent. Members of the Temple acted the part of cured heroin addicts, indigents glutting themselves on Temple feasts, and sick people being treated at the clinic—all following a Jones script. Visiting dignitaries were invited to address Temple worship services. A guest would be photographed, unaware that militant-looking blacks with raised fists were part of the picture—blackmail material.

Evolving Commitment

Jones’s manipulation of politicians appears almost comic compared with what he did to his followers. Grace Stoen, an outspoken defector from the church, said that Jones gradually but drastically changed his followers. A commitment evolved until Jones possessed the body, mind, and soul of someone.

Initially a Temple member pledged a portion of his time. But what was so attractive about this bizarre outfit? “Warmth,” says Mills, “first, last, and most important.” The individual was never alone but genuinely part of a community. People were not judged according to their status in the secular world. In the People’s Temple, a white man with a Ph.D. from MIT could direct the junior choir and a black man with a sixth-grade education could be associate minister. “I found people who weren’t impressed by what I had, but by what I was,” says Mills. Although she confesses to have been a racist when she first entered the Temple in 1969, Mills changed when she discovered that “It’s very, very beautiful to see black and white people together in a living, working, functioning society.”

The electric atmosphere of Temple worship services also attracted people—enough to retain their interest for four hours at a stretch. Worship began with singing by a polished choir and then moved into a testimony service during which members of the congregation told of the miraculous healings and prophetic revelations of their leader. They expressed gratitude for the protection and sense of security they received from Jones’s ministry. Following an offering Jones would begin his “sermon.” Jones never preached expository sermons. Rather he ranted about local, state, and federal politics, interspersed with four or five or more offerings for various causes. The last hour of the service was given to healings and revelations. Week after week, he appeared to make good on his original promise to Archie Ijames to perform miracles. Supposedly people were freed from their wheelchairs and crutches. The blind were made to see and the deaf to hear. Often someone would appear to dramatically die. Then Jones would “cure their maladies” and resurrect the “dead.”

Few people knew that Jones hired people on whom to perform these miraculous healings and resurrections. Neither did they know that his henchmen snooped in their files, medicine cabinets, garbage cans, and so forth, to provide Jones with material for his mysterious revelations. Those who did know were either discredited, paid off, or party to the charade.

Jones extolled the virtues of Temple membership: “Ask the city hall if they know your pastor. They won’t. But they know us.… Do they care about you at your church? People love you here, even if they don’t know you.”

After Jones got a person’s time, he went for their material possessions. Jones used a variety of tactics to get his parishioners’ dollars. He shamed them publicly and encouraged them to compete with their donations. Nonresidents of the Temple were expected to tithe 25 per cent of their income; residents gave everything they had in return for maintenance by the Temple and an allowance as low as two dollars a week. The Temple from 1968 to 1976 received thirty real estate properties. The block-long parking lot behind the San Francisco Temple is still crowded with cars donated by church members for resale by the Temple.

Draining Schedule

Next, Jones demanded total participation in the Temple community to the exclusion of the outside world. Here is a typical week of Temple life, as recounted by a member.

Sunday: morning meeting in Redwood Valley from 11 A.M to 3 P.M., evening meeting from 6 P.M. to 2 A.M.; Monday: planning commission meeting from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M.; Wednesday: catharsis session from 7 P.M. to 1 A.M.; Friday: meeting in San Francisco from 7 P.M. to 1 A.M. followed by overnight travel to Los Angeles on eleven Greyhound-type buses owned by the Temple; Saturday: meetings from 2 P.M. to 1 A.M.; Sunday: meeting in Los Angeles from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. followed by the return trip to Redwood Valley in time for school or work Monday morning. (Asked how many of the meetings were actually for worship, Jeannie Mills said, “All of them. They were all worship-Jim-Jones meetings, including the planning commission meetings.”)

Besides meetings, fulltime workers had other demanding responsibilities. Service projects were expected from everyone, ranging from work in the Temple clinic, legal aid service, and dining room, to writing letters to politicians (each person writing up to 100 such letters in a week), and other forms of political activism. Many members only got four to six hours of sleep a night. In the process, they were drained physically and emotionally, becoming more malleable in Jones’s hands. Fraternizing by important members of the community with old acquaintances was forbidden, and a punishable offense.

That was not enough. Not only was the community raised to a position of supreme importance, but the individual was reduced to almost total submission, to what could be called a state of “mortification.” During the so-called catharsis sessions, members of the community were expected to confess to various sins (real or not) for which they were physically punished. Mills wryly noted that people seldom volunteered confessions. Other members readily accused them.

Until several years ago, punishments were relatively mild. Over time they increased in severity. What began with three or four swats of the belt became in Jonestown a week in solitary confinement in a small, subterranean cubicle. Jones also enjoyed watching ill-matched boxers or tormenting people with snakes.

Jones also at times forbade married couples to have sexual intercourse—at least with each other. But reports indicate that Jones freely indulged in relations with both sexes. Should a woman be tempted to leave the Temple for lack of sexual activity, Jones would either satisfy her needs (if he found her attractive) or commission one of his lieutenants to do so.

Exclusive Loyalty

Case said Jones could tolerate no loyalty to anyone but himself. Breaking the sexual bonds between husband and wife was the surest way to undermine interpersonal loyalty.

With an arsenal of psychological weapons, Jones succeeded in robbing his followers of their time, their property, and their dignity. Against this background, perhaps the murders and suicides of his disciples is less mystifying. The last supper of cyanide-laced Flavour-Aid was merely the final act of servitude to the man who wanted and tried to be “God.”

Since the death orgy in Guyana took place, the secular media has given massive coverage to this religion-related story. Before the deaths occurred, press investigations of People’s Temple were few, though New West magazine published an investigative feature on People’s Temple in August, 1977, alerting at least the San Francisco area to the bizarre practices of the cult.

A first investigative report was filed in 1972 by Lester Kinsolving, an Episcopal priest-turned journalist. Writing for the San Francisco Examiner, Kinsolving prepared an eight-article series on People’s Temple that was killed after publication of only the first four articles.

Upset by Kinsolving’s revelations of cruelty, fake healings, and immorality within the Temple, Jones had placed more than 100 pickets outside the Examiner offices on the third day of the article series. Kinsolving contends the Examiner killed the series as a result of pressure from lawyers and politicians who owed favors to Jones.

At that time, Kinsolving tried to arouse the attention of law-enforcement bodies. (He says he received numerous threats in the aftermath of the series and that his house was burglarized.) In addition, Kinsolving chided officials in the Disciples of Christ for not disavowing Jones.

Church In Action

Indeed, many complaints have been directed toward the Disciples of Christ since the killings. Why did the church take no action?

The regional headquarters of the denomination had organized a committee to review allegations against Jones and People’s Temple. Tim Stoen, a 1960 graduate of Wheaton (Illinois) College who joined the Temple and later defected, had given the committee documents showing what really was happening behind the Temple’s closed doors, says cult defector Mills.

She said, “They [the committee] were told … They were made aware of things going on inside the church, and they did not care to check into it.”

Asked about these charges, review committee chairman Scott Lathrup contends this was a case of the the words of Temple defectors against the words of Temple members.

Mills said, however, that the documents taken by Stoen to church officials contained an affidavit from several former Temple members. Stoen was a deputy district attorney for Mendocino and San Francisco Counties during his years in the Temple; many say he was Jones’s right-hand man for a time.

Cult defector Mills alleges that Disciples of Christ regional president Karl Irvin did nothing because Jones had blackmailed him. Irvin denies this.

He, like Disciples of Christ president Kenneth Teegarden, says no action was taken against Jones because Disciples of Christ bylaws do not provide for the expulsion of a local congregation.

In a news release issued after the killings and after a deluge of questions from church members, Teegarden explained the official church stance. He said, at present, congregations can withdraw only at their own initiative. (He also said the committee investigation of Jones was never completed since Jones was out of the country and could not be confronted.)

As a result of the killings, however, Teegarden said, “We [the church] will initiate … a proposal … for removing congregations from fellowship.”

Still, the question remains why so many people joined the cult. Many, like Stoen, came from evangelical backgrounds and were initially attracted by the urban outreach of People’s Temple.

Cult defector Mills said she had found the warmth of the community attractive. Ever since her departure, Mills says, she has been “looking desperately” for a similar environment. “In no church [I visited] did more than perhaps the usher and one greeter say hello to me,” she said.

Reflecting upon her first visit to People’s Temple, she said, “I felt like I had died and gone to heaven.”

Religion In Transit

A second printing of the New International version of the Bible by Zondervan will bring the total number of copies in print to 1.6 million by year-end. Bookstores ordered all the initial 1.2-million press run before the October 27 publication date. With an exclusive thirty-year contract to publish the new translation, Zondervan expects a sales windfall. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company already has upped its sales prediction for this year by $3 million to a $41 million total.

Gambling opponents have “I told you so” crime statistics from Atlantic City, New Jersey. Within the two months after the first casino gambling houses opened there last May, street crime increased by 25 per cent. Public safety Commissioner Edwin J. Roth blamed the increase on the influx of visitors to the resort city.

Who is Jim Jones—the social-spiritual cult leader of the People’s Temple whose 900 followers in Guyana committed murder-suicide last month?CHRISTIANITY TODAYstudies the sequence of events leading to that tragic death orgy. Correspondent Paul Scotchmer, based in San Francisco, interviewed former People’s Temple members there, while senior editor Edward Plowman assisted by investigating Jones’s Indiana origins.

Perhaps the mysterious power of fallen cult leader Jim Jones is explained best by a conversation more than thirteen years ago inside the home of cult defector Ross Case.

Case, then an associate pastor of the People’s Temple in Indianapolis, had just moved to Ukiah, California. Case thought Ukiah would be the safest place during the imminent nuclear holocaust predicated by his good friend Jones.

People’s Temple member Archie Ijames was visiting Case in his new California home one night in February, 1965. And Case didn’t like what Ijames had to say.

Jones had issued an ultimatum to Ijames and another Temple associate: Choose me or Jesus. Jones had said: “You go out and preach Jim Jones, and I’ll back it up with miracles.”

Ijames chose to follow Jones. He told Case, “I felt like I had to do it, even if I fell on my face.” Ijames told Case that he had decided to “submit my mind completely” to Jim Jones.

Jones followed Case to California (originally a suggestion by Case). But after his discussion with Ijames, Case decided not to follow Jones. He broke off from the Temple, and for that action, Jones would later ridicule and defame Case.