Page 4822 – Christianity Today (2024)

Is rock ‘n’ roll—Christian rock ‘n’ roll—a worthy subject for a CT cover story? To those on our staff born after 1946, and who grew up thinking Rolling Stone magazine was “groovy,” the answer was obvious. Of course, to those born before 1946 the answer was not so clear.

Facts and figures settled the issue: Contemporary Christian music sells $500 million worth of CDS and cassettes each year—and that amount of dough is rising. For many fans, CCM artists are the main representatives of, and primary link to, evangelical Christianity. An additional point of interest: the recent acquisition of several Christian labels by various media conglomerates. Add it all together and you have a volatile (and loud) mix of motives and pressures.

To sort it out, we sent senior writer Tim Stafford. Both halves of the age spectrum liked the choice since Tim (1) is a baby boomer who is a veteran of rock concerts but who (2) has not been to a rock concert in many a year, owns no CCM music (though his 12-year-old daughter plays her two Amy Grant tapes “constantly”), and would much rather talk for hours about the decline of The New Yorker than anything having to do with popular music.

Tim s cross-cultural exploration of CCM-land took him to the muddy fields outside Portland where he witnessed Jesus Northwest, an annual music festival attended by thousands of the teenage faithful. (For fun: Try to find our middle-aged reporter in the youthful mob pictured on the cover. Hint: He’s near the purple fog.) His wry and wise observations can be found in “Has Christian Rock Lost Its Soul?” beginning on page 14.

MICHAEL G. MAUDLIN, Managing Editor

I first met Bill Leslie in a grungy pizza parlor after a DePaul University basketball game. I was surprised to find an overweight white man who dressed carelessly, talked too loud, and laughed uproariously at his own (bad) jokes. This was the minister of Chicago’s La Salle Street Church?

Out of curiosity I attended La Salle the following Sunday and ended up staying there for 13 years. I got to know Bill well, especially after my wife accepted a job directing one of the church’s outreach programs. Bill talked too loud in the pulpit, too, and laughed at his own oft-repeated jokes, and he occasionally slaughtered the English language. But he was our pastor, and we grew to love him. This summer, when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 60, Janet and I joined many other Chicagoans in grieving the loss.

Bill Leslie served the same church for 28 years, and what a time it was. The congregation met in a building whose stones can tell the history of Chicago: German-speaking Lutherans laid the cornerstone in 1882, and Italians, Japanese, and Appalachian whites all took turns in the building until hippies and then yuppies moved in. When Bill became pastor in 1961, the church stood midway between the richest and poorest communities of Chicago. Two blocks to the East lay the Gold Coast, average income over $50,000; two blocks to the West lay the Cabrini Green housing project, average income under $3,000. While studying the prophets’ words on justice, La Salle caught a vision of being a “bridge church” between the two neighborhoods.

After several years of commuting from the comfortable suburb of Wheaton, Bill Leslie heard God’s call to join the community. It was 1968, the worst time possible for such a move. After Martin Luther King’s assassination, angry blacks burned down 30 square blocks of buildings not far from the church. National Guardsmen patrolled the streets. The Leslies could find no one willing to insure their urban home.

A few years later, three men attacked Bill in the sanctuary, hoping to steal the morning offering. They hit him on the head with a bowling pin, stomped on his groin, and battered him with a fire extinguisher. Stripped of clothing, gagged, hogtied, Bill lay in the vestibule and reconsidered his call to the city.

But he did not give up. Too much was happening in the fledgling congregation for him to walk away. Neighborhood outreach started when Sunday-school teachers, noticing that many students could not read, offered tutoring classes after the Sunday service. The need was enormous—the local high school had a dropout rate of 75 percent. Soon busloads of students from Wheaton College were making their way to La Salle Street to help.

Since unemployment among the working-age population of Cabrini averaged 86 percent, most kids from the projects hung out on street corners all day. Bill and others at the church saw a need for recreational programs. They bought a pool table, set up a basketball court, and raised money for football equipment. Before long an urban Young Life program had sprung up, affiliated with the church.

More needs surfaced. When a government study reported that a third of all dog and cat food was bought by senior citizens too poor to afford “people food,” the church began a seniors ministry. To counter neighborhood abuse by landlords and the police, an attorney quit his firm to begin a legal-aid clinic. A counseling center was established, with a sliding fee schedule based on income.

In Chicago, as in most cities, half of all babies are born to single mothers, and soon the church founded a ministry to assist them as well. Bill was most proud, however, of a housing project that he first dreamed of when the church’s annual budget was $20,000. Somehow, with La Salle leading the way to secure grants and loans, the $11 million development became a reality. Economically and racially mixed, Atrium Village is credited with reversing neighborhood decay.

Unlikely pioneer

Bill Leslie was a most unlikely pioneer. He was disheveled, disorganized (several times I waited in vain for Bill, who had forgotten our appointment or gone to the wrong restaurant), and hardly a promising candidate for racial reconciliation. (He had attended the strictly segregated Bob Jones University, and his father-in-law had worked in racist Lester Maddox’s gubernatorial campaign.) Yet he, as much as anyone, was responsible for pointing the evangelical church back to the city and for reminding us that Jesus came to redeem communities as well as individual souls.

Three decades in the inner city took a toll on Bill and his family. At the memorial service, a member of the congregation addressed the Leslies directly: “I’m sorry that Bill gave us so much and had so little left over for you.” Bill Leslie did many things wrong, but he got one thing right: he understood the grace of God. He recognized his own endless need for grace; he preached it almost every Sunday; and he offered it to everyone around him in starkly practical ways. Because of his faithfulness, the Near North side of Chicago is a very different place today. And so, I believe, is heaven.

Yvonne Delk, a powerful black woman who leads the Community Renewal Society, summed up Bill’s life with simple eloquence: “He was biblical without being fundamentalist, spiritual without being withdrawn from the world, and actively engaged with the world but not conformed to it. You have fought the good fight, Bill, you have finished the course, you have kept the faith. We are grateful for a man sent from God to Chicago whose name is Bill.”

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Desegregating Our Hearts—And Pews

Breaking Down Walls: A Model for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife,by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein (Moody, 241 pp.; $14.99, hardcover);More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel,by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice (InterVarsity, 238 pp.; $9.99, paper). Reviewed by Edward Gilbreath.

In the wake of the now almost-mythic Rodney King saga, America has been rudely awakened and forced to re-examine the current state of race relations. Among the discoveries is the continued relevancy, some 35 years later, of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The most segregated hour of America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning.”

Two recent and remarkably similar books adroitly address race relations in the church, both shedding light and providing hope. Save for the unique personalities of the coauthors, Breaking Down Walls, by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein, and More Than Equals, by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, could well be the same book: both are written by a black and white team; both arise from experiences in similar cross-cultural ministries; and both offer thoughtful and challenging strategies for reconciliation during this current wave of racial awareness.

Breaking Down Walls is the more practical of the two books, which may be attributed to its authors’ added years of experience. Washington (an African American) pastors the cross-cultural congregation of Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church, while Kehrein (who is white) directs the various inner-city services of Circle Urban Ministries. They are partners in a holistic outreach to the Austin community on Chicago’s rough West Side. Part one covers their diverse backgrounds and the circ*mstances that brought them together.

Kehrein candidly recalls his fledgling years in Ripon, Wisconsin, a WASP community known as the birthplace of the Republican party. The process of his moving from a state of indifference to a poignant sensitivity to the plight of African Americans is a fascinating portrait of an awakened conscience.

Washington’s memories of growing up in segregated Jacksonville, Florida, paint an often disheartening picture of the Jim Crow South. But it is his experience of being “drummed out” of the army by calculated incidents of racism that serves as the turning point in his life—paving the way for Washington’s call to the ministry and ultimately his partnership with Kehrein.

The resulting friendship between the two men is so genuine and clearly providential that if the book were to end here, its “model for reconciliation” would still be effective. However, the book’s second part takes a closer look at the principles that make Rock Church and Circle Urban Ministries prototypes for cross-cultural fellowship. Their many examples of time-tested strategies help to bring the book’s eight principles of reconciliation to life.

Moving beyond passivity

If Breaking Down Walls is the more practical of the two books, More Than Equals is the more didactic. Perkins and Rice, editors of Urban Family magazine and staff members of the John M. Perkins Institute for Reconciliation and Development in Jackson, Mississippi, spare no blows in their crusade to educate the racially illiterate. And they accomplish their goal, combining intriguing surveys of an often forgotten black history with personal testimonies designed to move us beyond our passivity on race relations.

Like their counterparts, Rice and Perkins exhibit a relationship that in itself proves the chasm between white and black Christians need not remain. Rice (a white American), having been raised in Korea by missionary parents, thought himself well-schooled in cross-cultural relationships; but by college, he was stunned to realize he had no true relationships with blacks—a condition he felt God was calling him to change.

Perkins (an African American) represents the essence of the angry, wronged black man who would rather wash his hands of the whole mess, but who is constrained by the gospel and the example of his father (the influential activist/pastor John Perkins) to seek harmony with his white brothers and sisters. To some, Perkins’s brutal frankness may be disturbing, but it is precisely this candor that makes him a credible spokesman for this emotionally charged subject.

Both More Than Equals and Breaking Down Walls have the same goal, and they rely on the same principles to drive home their points. For instance, both cite intentionality as a primary factor in bringing about true cross-cultural relationships: “Racial reconciliation doesn’t happen spontaneously,” write Washington and Kehrein. “[The barriers separating the races] will only come down if, like Jesus, we become intentional about it.” And, not surprisingly, the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18) is the acknowledged impetus behind the messages of both books.

Although both volumes have their share of weaknesses (for example, the occasional confusion created by the two-voice narrative in Breaking Down Walls, or a tendency toward verbosity in More Than Equals), they are highly significant books for evangelicals. Many works have dealt with the reality of racial disunity in the church, but this pair offers proven solutions to the problem. Applying those solutions, to move beyond our “11 o’clock, Sunday morning” complacency, is left to us.

When Nations Are “Chosen”

God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster,by Donald Harman Akenson (Cornell University Press, 404 pp.; $29.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Mark Noll, author of A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Eerdmans).

Donald Akenson, a widely published historian who teaches at Queen’s University in Ontario, has written a book that should be especially sobering for anyone who feels that the United States enjoys a unique “covenant” with God. His goal is to compare the way that covenantal thinking has shaped the cultures of Northern Ireland (Ulster), the Republic of South Africa, and the modern State of Israel. On one level, the book is splendid comparative history—Akenson has immersed himself in the historical literature of all three societies and has trenchant things to say about how their development followed uncannily similar paths.

On another level, the book is a forceful testimony to the power of the biblical theme of covenant. In Israel, Ulster, and South Africa, energetic individuals who felt that God had singled out their peoples for a special relationship have been inspired to dedicated—even heroic—exertions in constructing societies modeled on biblical patterns. The underside of the picture, however, is that these societies have also manifested a violent “us-them” mentality that justifies inhuman acts toward enemies that function as the “Cannaanites” over against “the chosen.” Akenson writes to illumine, not to indict. But because his illumination is so successful, the indictment is all the more powerful.

Naming God

Speaking the Christian God: the Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism,edited by Alvin F. Kimmel, Jr. (Eerdmans, 337 pp.; $21.95, paper). Swallow’s Nest: A Feminine Reading of the Psalms, by Marchiene Vroon Rienstra (Eerdmans, 255 pp.; $18.95, paper). Reviewed by Stanley J. Grenz, professor of theology at Regent/Carey College, Vancouver, British Columbia, and the author of Revisioning Evangelical Theology (IVP).

Among evangelicals, discussions of theological “feminism” tend to focus on the roles of women in the home and in the church. In the so-called mainline churches, these debates moved off center stage long ago. Now raging is a controversy of far greater theological consequence: the feminist debate over how we speak about God.

The contributors to Speaking the Christian God are convinced that at stake is the central Christian understanding of God’s nature. Their goal is to enter the foray by engaging those feminist thinkers who advocate replacing the traditional trinitarian language (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) with other models of the divine reality.

The essayists are fighting an uphill battle, and they know it. Feminist theology has captured the loyalties of the officials and intellectuals of most mainline denominations, who have elevated these new doctrines to the status of “orthodoxy.” Leslie Zeigler, professor of Christian theology emerita at Bangor Theological Seminary, summarizes the experience of many: “It is impossible to obtain even an acknowledgment of the justification of questioning the feminist agenda. Attempts to encourage a discussion of the theological issues involved in the use of inclusive language for God are met with either a stonewalling resistance or a curt rejection.”

The book’s plaintiffs cannot be dismissed by painting them as reactionary fundamentalists. With few exceptions, they are participants in the mainline denominations. Likewise, they all see themselves as feminists, understood as persons who are “convinced of the absolute equality and dignity of man and woman as created in the image of God.” And they include some of the leading scholars of our day—Elizabeth Achtemeier, Robert Jenson, Thomas Torrance, and Geoffrey Wainwright.

God names himself

The 18 essays in the volume all agree on what is the key theological issue in the controversy: the nature and finality of theological language. Are the traditional trinitarian names for God the result of God’s own self-disclosure and therefore given once, for all time? Or is all language about God merely metaphorical, so that theologians can change it in the interest of overcoming patriarchalism and fostering women’s liberation?

Foundational to the position of the contributors is the premise that “God names himself.” Contrary to the feminist claim, God is not the “great Unknown” for whom we invent arbitrary language. Rather, God has revealed himself; he declares who he is. This divine self-disclosure occurred in God’s historical activity, specifically, in the history of Israel and through Jesus, who named God “Abba.” The authors are convinced that the revelation of God as the triune one is normative for Christian theology and worship.

Their acceptance of the normative status of the traditional language leads the authors to conclude that the feminist renaming of God constitutes an alien intrusion into Christianity. Achtemeier, for example, minces no words: “By attempting to change the biblical language of the deity, the feminists have in reality exchanged the true God for those deities which are ‘no gods.’”

Several contributors term this intruder “religious monism,” a viewpoint that rejects all dualisms, including the strict differentiation between God and the world. Crucial to the radical feminist agenda is the revising of the traditional doctrine of “creation out of nothing” in favor of speaking of God as giving birth to creation and of the world as “God’s body.” Equally significant is the monistic reduction of Jesus. Rather than being the unique incarnation of the divine, transcendent Logos, revisionists see him as an expression of the unity between God and the world. By breaking down the “masculine” hierarchy of a monarchial God over the world, feminists hope to open the way for a more “feminine” sense of the interconnectedness of God and the world.

The breasted God

If the appraisal of the current debate by the contributors to Speaking the Christian God is accurate, how should we assess a project such as Marchiene Vroon Rienstra’s feminine paraphrasing of the Psalms? Her educational credentials (M.Div. from Calvin Seminary) and her ministry context (Presbyterian, Reformed, and Christian Reformed) suggest that she does not slavishly follow the radical feminist agenda.

Indeed, Rienstra’s main concern is not theological but pastoral. She is convinced that God is neither male nor female, but encompasses both genders. In Swallow’s Nest, Rienstra offers female images of God for the sake of “those whose unfortunate relationship with fathers and other men makes it impossible to draw close to God imaged as father and male.” But her intent is much wider. She believes that by balancing the traditional male images with female language, “believers will be able with both heart and head to relate to the ‘feminine’ as well as the ‘masculine’ face of God.”

Rienstra does have some affinity with more radical feminists. Like them, she is convinced the Scriptures have a masculine bias, which has deprived the believing community of women’s wisdom and has led to the wounding of many. Through her devotional paraphrase, she seeks to help alleviate this problem. Rienstra finds a hermeneutical license for this enterprise in the divine name El Shaddai. Because the root word in shaddai means “female breast,” she claims (but does not substantiate) that the name may be translated “breasted God.”

I sympathize with aspects of the feminist critique. Indeed, some women are put off by male-oriented terms for God. I applaud attempts to overcome these problems. Swallow’s Nest puts us on notice that there may be more feminine imagery in Scripture than we generally see.

Yet I must confess that many feminist works, including Rienstra’s, leave me with some of the gnawing questions posed in Speaking the Christian God. One concerns consistency. A moderate revisionist like Rienstra erroneously assumes that the Psalms can support a consistently feminine paraphrase. Female imagery seems out of place in texts that portray a God who is characterized by more male-oriented imagery, such as avenging protection, judgment, and rulership.

A second question is that of propriety. Does not a paraphrase as thoroughgoing as Rienstra’s presume to know more about what documents are needed by the people of God than the Holy Spirit knew? With this query we come to the heart of the protest found in Speaking the Christian God. Many feminists argue that the Bible and Christian tradition are hopelessly masculine and therefore in need of radical surgery. Their attempt to “improve” on the biblical tradition, however, calls into question any concept of revealed truth, any suggestion that human language can truly reflect the divine essence.

Finally, with the essayists I wonder about the solution feminists propose. I am simply not convinced that new terminology will release us from whatever patriarchal bondage and male bias continues to haunt the church.

Rather than replacing the biblical language for God, we need a renewed awareness of how that language stands as a critique over all oppressive structures and all fallen relationships. In addition, we could use a deeper appreciation of the richness of theological metaphor and simile that the Holy Spirit placed in the biblical writings.

The debate over theological language will not subside in the near future. Speaking the Christian God and Swallow’s Nest suggest that it is intensifying and is even spilling over into evangelical circles. Indeed, the question of our conception of God may become the theological question of the 1990s. Rather than seeking to evade the issue, evangelical thinkers would do well to face it head-on and attempt to make a helpful contribution. These two volumes call us to take seriously the feminist critique of the biases present within the Christian tradition and to push even deeper in discovering what God has revealed to us in Scripture.

Christianity has been spreading rapidly in prosperous Singapore, but there are questions about whether evangelicals are supporting, rather than resisting, its repressive political system. Christians represent 19 percent of the population, up from 8 percent in the mid-1970s. Christianity has especially spread among the affluent and educated, representing 26 percent of those with university degrees.

Singapore is 77 percent Chinese, mostly Buddhist with a significant Muslim minority, and yet the city-state has a vibrant evangelical movement.

However, Christians are some of the regime’s most outspoken defenders. Cabinet minister and church elder S. Dhanabalan has described the Singapore government as “one of the cleanest in the world” in spite of its policies of detaining political prisoners without trial, denial of religious freedom to some, press domination, draconian security laws, a liberal abortion policy, and frequent slander suits against opposition politicians to squelch debate.

This year a rising star of the main opposition party, Chee Soon Juan, was fired from his university post, ostensibly for the misuse of $132 in research funds. Chee, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, maintains that the firing was politically motivated. In last year’s election, Chee took on the prime minister. Even though he lost, some of the prime minister’s support was eroded.

After being fired, Chee went on a nine-day hunger strike to clear his name, and ended it by proclaiming, “I am a Christian—my life is not my own.” Yet, when he defended himself in the news media, his former boss, Dean Ernest Chew, a church elder and prominent leader, took out a defamation suit against Chee.

Some believe that evangelicalism’s “narrow piety,” neglecting concerns for social justice, contributes to church growth among Chinese Singaporeans. Such a tendency fits in with the Confucian ethics highly touted by the ruling elite. Although Christians are free to worship, the government retains the power to ban any religion or church—the Jehovah’s Witnesses are illegal here. A Singaporean denominational head has spoken in favor of this policy, saying, “If the government is acting against a cult, then we will support such action.” A Singaporean Christian scholar has called the concept of inalienable rights, enshrined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, “not Christian.” In 1990, the Religious Harmony law was enacted, enabling the government to ban at will religious leaders from speaking publicly and to imprison them—all without trial. A 1992 U.S. State Department report says the law “has had the effect of causing some religious groups to exercise more self-restraint.” When author Os Guinness lectured at a Bible college here and criticized the lack of genuine religious freedom, the tape of the lecture was destroyed. Guinness had said that “Singapore authorities have no idea of the logic and history of the principle of religious liberty.” The college was unwilling to offer the first lesson in freedom.

By John B. Carpenter in Singapore.

Bonanza of values-laden shows in the works.

Hollywood is more open to family entertainment than it has been for decades, and television and movie viewers already are seeing the results on their screens. Movie companies and broadcast networks searching for audiences are turning—perhaps reluctantly—to family-oriented entertainment, including the eagerly awaited CBS-TV adaptation of Catherine Marshall’s Christy.

Christians can credit cable and video competition for network television’s rediscovery of the family market, says Calvin College professor Quentin Schultze. “There’s chaos in the industry right now as to what the market is for broadcast network fare. The television industry is very open to trying just about anything to keep their losses to cable and the VCR minimal.”

Looking for a formula

“The audience will fall in love with Christy,” says producer Ken Wales of his TV series based on the best-selling book. “’Christy’ is a real breakthrough in terms of what we’ve seen on TV showing what a young girl’s faith can do.”

CBS will launch the weekly drama about a Christian schoolteacher in the Appalachians in January. The series will focus on Christy’s search for a purpose in her life. Wales says, “You see Christy’s faith in action by what she does, not what she preaches.”

Entertainment experts have high hopes for “Christy.” Schultze, who read the script for the premiere episode and visited the set, predicts it will be a success for CBS. Michael Medved, film critic for PBS’s “Sneak Previews,” told CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “I think ‘Christy’ is going to be a hit across the country. ‘Christy’ is going to really take off.”

“Christy” will join another network series that has garnered praise from Christian audiences, NBC’s “Against the Grain.” That show, which began airing on Fridays in September, is the story of a high-school football coach in a football-crazy Texas town.

Schultze says broadcast networks can create a niche for themselves with family entertainment such as “Christy” and “Against the Grain,” which are less likely to appear on narrowly marketed cable channels. “Obviously, it’s financially motivated, but it may end up with a good result.”

Beating the odds

The movie industry also is taking notice of the trend toward family entertainment. Wind Dancer Production Group, which produces the ABC sitcom “Home Improvement,” is developing Walter Wangerin’s short-story collection, Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, as a motion picture. Academy Award-winning playwright Horton Foote is writing the screenplay. Wangerin’s agent, Rick Christian, says the movie will feature the book’s observations of a Midwestern boy growing up in the 1950s. Christian says, “It’s very human—profoundly human.”

Also seeking a slice of the Christian audience is The Judas Project, which tells the story of what might happen if Jesus Christ appeared for the first time today, instead of 2,000 years ago. The film, written and directed by James Barden, is being released regionally in the United States.

“In Hollywood, you hear them say if it’s not Terminator 2, it’s not a high-concept film; it’s a ‘quiet film,’ “says Christian. “I think there’s a tremendous market out there for these types of films.”

Medved is certain the market is there. “Last year 61 percent of all movies were rated R. In 1993 so far, 39 percent were rated R,” says Medved. “For the last five years, the R-rated films have had the lowest average box-office return. Now that they’ve finally reduced the number of R-rated films, that’s one of the reasons that the overall box office has gone up.”

Schultze cautions against “an overreliance on box office figures and underreliance on cable and video revenue,” which can recoup losses for a film that did poorly in theatrical release. He says family fare is back in style in part because adolescents have moved from theaters to video, a demographic shift that raises the average age of filmgoers and opens the market to “films that are less action-oriented and have more subtle themes and more sophisticated characterization.”

“It’s the best opening that the Christian community has had since the early days of television,” says Schultze, who believes Christians need to become involved in the industry, especially in writing and financing. Medved notes that evangelicals are forming actor coops and networking groups that also attract conservative Jews.

The success of projects such as “Christy” and Miz Lil could encourage Hollywood to continue its flirtation with family entertainment. “The industry is doing better partially because what they’re doing is offering more variety,” says Medved. “It seems to me that an industry that uses the slogan of freedom of choice [is] finally giving the audience some freedom of choice, and I think the audience is grateful.”

By John Zipperer.

ABORTION

Bishop Threatens Tax Protest

A Roman Catholic bishop says he will not “voluntarily pay taxes to this government if it uses tax money to subsidize abortions” through national health care. “Better for us … to obey God than men and women when they try to force us to pay for killing human life in the womb.” Bishop Victor Balke of Crookston, Minnesota, wrote in his diocesan newspaper.

“If the President’s health care plan … is so passed that it forces you and me to pay for abortions,” Balke wrote, “I hope there’s a widespread refusal to cooperate.” Balke also withheld taxes to protest the Vietnam War, though the government simply took the money from his bank account.

hom*oSEXUALITY

Adoption Plans Upset Mother

An Oregon judge has rejected a mother’s attempt to stop the adoption of her three-year-old son. Megan Lucas gave up her son a year ago but reconsidered after learning that a hom*osexual couple may adopt him.

Lucas had a year to change her mind about the adoption, but missed the deadline by a day. She says state officials coerced her into giving up her son, and in September a judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the adoption by two hom*osexuals who are licensed to give foster care. Eleven days later, the court refused to renew the injunction. Lucas, unmarried when the boy was born, now is married to another man. She says she and her husband can provide a stable home, and she claims she is not trying to stop the adoption just because hom*osexuals are involved.

WHITE HOUSE

SBC Leaders Meet Clinton

Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore met with four Southern Baptist ministers in September in the first meeting between the President and Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders since the denomination publicly opposed the President’s domestic policies in June. The White House meeting, which participants say was frank and cordial, included discussion on abortion, the environment, and hom*osexuality.

Clinton, a Southern Baptist, explained his positions, and the pastors related their views on biblical authority. SBC president Ed Young, one of the ministers, says the meeting was a “wonderful time of praying together, sharing together” with the discussion perhaps laying the groundwork for future communication. Young, who went jogging with the President the next morning, also presented Bibles to Clinton and his family.

CHURCH ATTENDANCE

Study Disputes Accepted Figures

A new study challenges the long-standing view that 40 percent of Americans are devoted churchgoers. Americans attend church half as often as they have been telling Gallup Poll researchers, according to a controversial new study to be published in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.

“What the Polls Don’t Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance” measures attendance for Protestants in Ashtabula County, Ohio, and for Catholics in 18 dioceses across the country. The researchers found only 19.6 percent of Protestants and about 28 percent of Catholics attended church during an average week.

The researchers went beyond the Gallup practice of asking people if they attended church; instead, they attempted to count the actual numbers of people in the pews. The authors of the report say that further study is needed to determine if their results are credible. In the meantime, the Gallup organization is examining the new results, but stands by its own findings.

SALVATION ARMY

Collection Boxes Trashed, Retired

In a triumph of the selfish over the selfless, years of collection-box abuses have caused the Salvation Army to remove 450 boxes from shopping-center parking lots in ten Midwestern states.

Maj. Israel Velazquez says more than $1 million was spent last year to remove junk from the bins. “I don’t think people understand how much of it was trash,” says Velazquez. In Detroit, up to two-thirds of the daily pickup consisted of garbage.

The charitable organization also had to contend with people taking choice items out of the boxes, sometimes leaving the less desirable goods strewn across parking lots. The Salvation Army will continue to provide home pickups to make up for the loss of the accessible donation boxes. The organization also is experimenting with drop-offs at their thrift stores and attended trailers in selected parking lots. The Salvation Army had already removed donation bins in the South and West.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

‘Unsaved’ Tally Draws Criticism

As many as 180 million Americans may be unsaved, according to the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board Evangelism Index. The study, based on 1990 population and church membership data, highlights areas with concentrations of non-Christians—whether churched or unchurched—for evangelism. However, the report created a controversy in the media, which accused Baptists of being judgmental.

“I’m not surprised that people are upset, because it flies in the face of political correctness and universalism,” says Martin King, public relations director for the Home Mission Board in Atlanta. He says the controversy was also a blessing, creating a national discussion on the meaning of salvation.

King says the areas of greatest evangelism potential appear to be the West Coast—particularly Southern California—and the Northeast, areas that have large cities, many people unaffiliated with any church, and relatively few Southern Baptists.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

In Brief

The culture wars continue in Georgia. In August, Cobb County commissioners passed a law declaring hom*osexuality incompatible with community standards and cut off $120,000 in arts funding (CT, Oct. 4, 1993, p. 46). hom*osexual groups responded by launching a boycott to persuade businesses not to locate in the county or hold conventions there. The latest salvo has been fired by a primarily conservative Christian group, Consumers for Cobb, which is on a nationwide “buycott” campaign to drum up support for hotels, restaurants, and other businesses.

• Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson is appealing a ruling by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) that he must repay nearly $400,000 in connection with his 1988 presidential campaign. The FEC ordered the broadcaster to pay $280,794 to the U.S. Treasury for exceeding spending limits and using public money for unqualified expenses. He also has been told to repay $105,635 to news organizations because of overbilling for air travel.

• The New York Public Library is sponsoring an exhibit of a dozen major Dead Sea Scrolls fragments and related artifacts, on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority through January 8. Nearly 200 items are part of the free display, which depicts the world in which the scrolls were created, examines the scrolls as texts, and tells details of their discovery, interpretation, access, and preservation.

• Officially sanctioned papal merchandising in connection with Pope John Paul II’s August trip to Denver included coffee mugs, T-shirts, and even “pope soap on a rope.” But one of the most enterprising entrepreneurs is Dennis Bylina, 46, of Albuquerque, who bought the white carpet on which John Paul stood to say Mass at Cherry Creek State Park. Bylina is selling pieces for $3 per square inch.

• A cult deprogrammer who abducted the wrong woman has received a seven-year, three-month prison term. Federal Judge T. S. Ellis sentenced Galen Kelly of Alexandria, Virginia, saying, “It is never okay to kidnap an adult child.” Kelly mistakenly abducted Debra Dobkowski of Washington, D.C. He had intended to take her roommate, who belonged to a group called Circle of Friends.

• Lutheran Bishop Lyle Miller, who calls his Northern California-Nevada district “the most polarized in the country on the gay-lesbian issue,” will leave his post next spring, a year early. Miller, 57, has felt pressure since he disciplined two San Francisco congregations that hired hom*osexual pastors in 1989.

• The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has filed suit against the state’s Division of Taxation, claiming that a state law providing a sales-tax exemption for Bibles violates the First Amendment ban on government endorsem*nt of religion. After a state supreme court ruling last year declaring the exemption illegal, the tax division urged bookstores to start taxing Bibles. Some bookstores are taxing Bibles; others are not. However, a state law remains on the books exempting “canonized Scripture” from taxation.

• Muriel B. Dennis, 79, cofounder of Good News Publishers and Crossway Books in Wheaton, Illinois, died September 30 following complications from surgery. She and her husband, Clyde, who died in 1962, founded Good News in 1938 with $20. She became president in 1963 and board chairman in 1987.

Armstrong followers divided over doctrinal shift.

Up to half of the 100,000 members of the Worldwide Church of God (WCG)—which has moved toward orthodoxy after 60 years of rejecting basic Christian beliefs—may bolt following the latest round of doctrinal changes, observers and former members say.

Two splinter groups, each claiming the mantle of WCG founder Herbert W. Armstrong, are poised to gain members and dollars in the wake of the anticipated exodus.

In a series of meetings during “the next six months,” according to WCG spokesman David Hulme, the Pasadena, California-based church will reveal to ministers and members “certain doctrinal information,” which eventually will be made public.

A survey of articles written by WCG pastor-general Joseph W. Tkach reveals the most likely shift will involve a new view of the Godhead that embraces trinitarian doctrine heretofore rejected by the church (CT, Nov. 9, 1992, p. 57). “The Bible teaching is that there is one God, who is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit,” Tkach wrote. “It is not my idea, nor is it the idea of some fourth century theologians. It is the plain Bible teaching.”

Church observers also believe the group will drop a requirement that members adhere to Levitical dietary laws on “clean” and “unclean” foods.

In earlier moves, the WCG said it would stop setting dates for prophesied events and drop prohibitions against medical care, the celebration of birthdays, and interracial marriage. Also jettisoned were teachings that man was born to “become God as God is God” and that the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain and America were descended from two of the ten “lost” tribes of Israel.

Mass exodus?

The changes are expected to trigger a rush from the ranks of the church. John Trechak, who publishes Ambassador Report, a newsletter that chronicles the church, predicts losses ranging from 10 to 50 percent of the membership.

“There will be people leaving,” says Trechak, also of Pasadena. “I think people are disgusted” with the changes, which are “a 180-degree turn” from founder Armstrong’s doctrines.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if 50 percent—at least—walk out the door after [WCG’s fall] Feast of Tabernacles,” says Bruce Renehan of Tehachape, California, a 23-year veteran of the church who left two years ago. This fall he will publish Daughter of Babylon, a book refuting Herbert Armstrong’s doctrines. “The majority of the people in the church have bought into the things Herbert W. Armstrong taught. They believe he was God’s man.”

Roderick C. Meredith, a pioneer Armstrong lieutenant who now leads a dissenting group, the Global Church of God in Glendora, California, also foresees an exodus from WCG. “There may be thousands that will leave over the next two or three years,” Meredith says. “There’s the growing realization that Christ is not going to solve the [doctrinal] problems.”

Rival groups

The shifts, announced in the past three years, have led to two serious challenges to the WCG. In the past year, two rival churches have won members and contributions.

One, the Philadelphia Church of God (PCG) in Edmond, Oklahoma, fields a weekly television broadcast it claims reaches 150 million homes in North America and western Europe. The group has close to 20,000 subscribers to the Philadelphia Trumpet, a monthly magazine replete with reverent citations of the writings of Armstrong, who died in 1986 after leading the WCG since its founding in 1933.

Gerald Flurry, PCG founder and a 20-year minister in the WCG, says his is the only church properly revering Armstrong as a prophet of God and continuing the WCG’s work of “warning” the world about a prophetic climax of world events. Membership is between

2,000 and 3,500.

Meredith’s Global Church of God is coming up on its first anniversary. Meredith, who says he was forced out of WCG leadership in 1992 after 40 years of ministry, reports his church has the support of 2,000 people. The church produces a weekly 30-minute radio program aired on 16 radio stations.

Dissension a tradition

Dissenting movements are not new for the WCG. In the 1970s, scores of ministers and several thousand church members left over doctrinal disagreements. Most notable was Garner Ted Armstrong, Herbert’s son and heir-apparent, who began the Church of God, International, in 1978.

But where earlier WCG exiles have started their own groups or gone their separate ways, the Philadelphia Church of God and the Global Church of God are claiming the mantle of Herbert W. Armstrong and seeking those members disaffected by recent WCG changes.

In Pasadena, WCG director of communications Hulme says church membership remains constant at around 100,000 members, and the group does not fear a massive walkout. “We regret there are people who decide to take these courses of action,” Hulme says of the dissenters. “We wish they were with us.”

Those academics who have studied Armstrong and his followers agree that the WCG is engaged in an unprecedented exercise. “I can’t recall a movement that has made change from the top down in similar circ*mstances,” says Ruth A. Tucker, author of Another Gospel.

By Mark A. Kellner in Pasadena.

MISSIONS

Abducted Men Still Missing

Three Americans serving with New Tribes Mission (NTM) who were abducted January 31 from the Kuna Indian tribe village of Pucuro in Panama (CT, Mar. 8, 1993, p. 63) remain missing, with the missionary agency not knowing if they are still alive.

“We are overdue for positive proof they are alive,” says Dave Zelenek, spokesman for the Sanford, Florida-based NTM. The last sign was an April 8 audio recording of the men. Colombian guerrillas suspected of kidnapping the trio have demanded $5 million for their release, first from NTM, then from the wives, who returned to the United States in February.

“There isn’t that kind of money, and there won’t be,” Zelenek says. “They are a little slow to comprehend that we can’t pay it. To pay would place missions in jeopardy around the world.”

The men are being held in the dense, mountainous jungle along the Colombia-Panama border.

Kidnappers initially communicated via two-way radio, but since May, sporadic negotiations have involved Panamanian Indian couriers carrying messages into the jungle.

NEW ENCYCLICAL

Pope Fires Warning Shot

In an encyclical six years in the making, Pope John Paul II reaffirms moral truth and calls upon church leaders to resist the tide of relativism that has swept through the church in the nearly three decades since the Second Vatican Council.

The release of Veritatis Splendor in October is a shot across the bow of Catholic clergy and teachers who have challenged the Vatican’s authority on issues ranging from abortion to hom*osexual activity.

Though the encyclical had been expected to be a diatribe against hom*osexuality, abortion, and contraception, the final document contains little about such subjects, reserving most of its space and energy for an argument in favor of truth, against moral relativism, and for papal authority.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

In Brief

Colleen Green has filed a $1 million negligence and fraud lawsuit against Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and the Christian College Coalition because she contracted a skin disease while on a two-week, school-sponsored service program in Costa Rica. Green alleges she developed cutaneous leishmaniasis last year when she was bitten by disease-carrying bugs in a Bribri Indian jungle village.

• The International Lutheran Council was formed in a September meeting in Antigua, Guatemala, by conservative leaders from 25 Lutheran bodies representing 18 countries. A guiding document devised by the organization says it will protect historic Lutheran confessions and a “high” view of Scripture from perceived assaults of liberalism. Denominational members, such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, will share information and study theological questions.

• Business is booming for those offering an electronic link to God. Bezek, Israel’s state-run telephone company, instituted a prayer line with a newspaper, the Jerusalem Christian Review (CT, Oct. 4, 1993, p. 62). In September, a second fax line was added (011-972-261-2222) for those wanting to leave notes at Jerusalem’s Western Wall but who are unable to make the trip there. The fax line has been averaging 70 messages daily. Messengers copy the faxes and leave them in crannies of the wall.

• Niall MacMenamin, a 23-year-old Irish Catholic missionary with Volunteer Missionary Movement, was shot to death August 24 in Entasekera, Kenya, while a thief who stole his mission motorcycle escaped.

When parishioners at Hamilton Square Baptist Church in San Francisco gathered for Sunday evening worship on September 19, they knew it might not be a typical service. But it turned out to be far more eventful than anticipated.

Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition based in Anaheim, California, was the featured speaker. Sheldon has vigorously opposed pro-hom*osexual legislation in the state, including playing a key role in overturning a 1989 domestic partners ordinance in San Francisco. Though the church did not publicize Sheldon’s visit, two pro-hom*osexual newspapers did, calling for a protest. Throughout the week before the service, says Hamilton Square pastor David Innes, the church received phone calls from people threatening to disrupt it.

And disrupt it they did, according to Innes and several eyewitnesses. Innes detailed his account of the evening’s events in a two-page news release sent to enlist support from “fellow soldiers in Christ” around the country.

Innes says between 75 and 100 “rioters assumed complete control of the exterior property and grounds of the church.” He claims protesters denied people entrance to the church, in some cases by physical contact. According to Innes, one woman was carried away from the entrance while police stood by watching as both her hands were scratched, breaking the skin.

Rioters, Innes says, vandalized church property, replaced the church’s Christian flag with a hom*osexual flag, harassed and scared children, pounded on doors during the service, and hurled eggs and rocks at churchgoers. Sheldon was “pelted” by “debris” as he received a police escort to a church van.

More vocal activism?

Although Sheldon has had his home painted with graffiti and his office littered with manure by radical hom*osexuals, this is the first time he was targeted at a church.

According to Peter LaBarbera, editor of the Lambda Report, a California-based newsletter that monitors the hom*osexual movement, the incident represents a trend toward increased militancy among hom*osexual activists.

“It’s ironic that gay activist leaders claim they want more tolerance when, in fact, they are among the most intolerant people this country’s got going,” LaBarbera says. He calls the church protest “an immensely important event because it signals the intolerance they have for people’s religious views.”

Some details of the event, however, are in dispute. Noah Griffin, a spokesman for the San Francisco mayor’s office, says, “No police officer in San Francisco would stand by while someone trying to enter a church is assaulted.”

But Innes told CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “We stand by everything in the news release. We put nothing in it that cannot be verified with video, eyewitnesses, and pictures.”

hom*osexual power

Innes says he blames not police, but those in political control of the city, particularly the board of supervisors. “You really can’t compare San Francisco with any other city,” says Innes. “hom*osexual advocates infiltrate and dominate the political structures here. Police are in straitjackets. They can’t do their job. They’ve been instructed not to arrest hom*osexuals.”

Griffin responds, “The gist of the phone calls we’ve been receiving is that police do not do anything because of the gay voting bloc in this city. That simply is not true.”

Innes, however, called attention to a letter written by a 25-year veteran of the San Francisco police force and published in the September 30 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. In the letter, the officer describes a recent assignment to keep things under control at the city’s Folsom Street Fair.

According to the letter, the fair included food and craft booths, but “appeared to have as its main theme a public display of the private sexual practices and preferences of consenting adults.” The officer described having observed “couples in bondage attire, men and women displaying … bare breasts, bare genitals and buttocks. There was also a flogging demonstration. Worst of all, I observed male couples, totally naked, engaged in acts of mutual masturbation and oral sex.”

The officer writes that he was “highly embarrassed” when people questioned him why he would not make any arrests. “At least a dozen times I had to painstakingly explain that we were to take a position of ‘high tolerance’ and not to create an incident.”

As a result of the September 19 episode, Innes has met with San Francisco mayor Frank Jordan and other city officials. Innes says he believes his concerns were heard, noting that police showed up the next Sunday to protect the church, and that the situation has quieted down.

Innes is, however, still urging supporters to file grievances with those “city officials responsible for this travesty against our church and our religious freedoms.”

By Randy Frame.

Country music is being overrun with the same evils that rock ’n’ roll has fallen prey to, according to an alliance of Nashville pastors.

Evangelist and former pastor Ray Hughes says there has been a demonic strongman evoking evil and lust in the country music capital of the world. Supporters of Hughes include pastors of some of the most influential churches in Nashville, such as Don Finto of Belmont Church and Christ Church senior pastor L. H. Hardwick, who are calling for prayer, repentance, and spiritual warfare.

Using a complicated and controversial “spiritual mapping” technique developed by missiologist C. Peter Wagner, which claims to identify satanic strongholds in a city using geography, topography, and ancestral movement, Nashville historian Hughes and pastor Stephen Mansfield have compiled a manual, labeling Nashville’s most notoriously demonic hangouts: birthing points of the Ku Klux Klan, Masonic lodges, and a popular shopping mall.

But not everyone is convinced. Rob Morgan, senior pastor of Donaldson Fellowship, says, “The way to confront the evil in country music is by being a witness.” Bill Dyrness, dean of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, says, “I don’t see any place where the Bible urges us to make [spiritual warfare] a focus of evangelistic ministry.”

Hughes also indicates that contemporary Christian music, headquartered in Nashville, is on the spiritual skids: “As a result of the commercialism [in Christian music] there are quite a few impurities floating around in it.”

The ministerial coalition has gained momentum in recent weeks as a result of this year’s Country Music Awards, where luminaries Tanya Tucker and Reba McEntire surprised the industry with their risque attire. Some artists, though, such as Ricky Skaggs, Naomi Judd, Connie Smith, and Jack Green, reportedly are calling for a time of repentance.

By Perucci Ferraiuolo.