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But the challenges of content and prophetic presentation still lie head
Religious broadcasting has influenced profoundly the Christian community and the secular public during the past 25 years.
It trumpeted the gospel literally to the ends of the earth. It caused directly or proximately the rise of parachurch ministries. It thrust evangelical doctrine and practice into the mainstream of American social, political, and religious life.
For the first time in history, the gospel has been presented for all the world to hear and see. That achievement is undoubtedly the fait accompli of religious broadcasting. But that is not all. Religious broadcasting also served as a kind of closed-circuit communications system by which evangelicals came to a sense of national self-realization.
In essence, a vast parish of the air was formed, a fellowship without membership. Through this electronic church, the body of Christ perceived its fundamental oneness despite secondary differences in doctrine and polity. The medium and the message were the same: we are one in the Lord and we are strong in the power of his might.
The Past Achievement Of Pioneers
Religious broadcasting in the modern sense did not take shape until the late fifties and sixties. But visionary pioneers of an earlier day already had grasped the significance of radio for evangelism and teaching. Stalwarts like Walter Maier, Paul Rader, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Charles E. Fuller, M. R. DeHaan, and others built national radio ministries from small beginnings in the 1930s and 1940s.
Others, like Percy Crawford, Rex Humbard, and Oral Roberts, launched television ministries in the early fifties. So did the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Seventh-day Adventists, and Bishop Fulton Sheen.
All of these people were ahead of their time, but Percy Crawford’s quantum leap to FM radio and UHF television in the late fifties opened the doors to religious broadcasting as we know it today. Crawford obtained licenses to own and operate FM stations in a day when most people did not even know what FM was. His venture into UHF television in 1960 in Philadelphia was so conceptually advanced it failed; not enough people had UHF receivers.
Crawford’s far-sighted advocacy of FM radio and UHF television resulted in a rapid increase of Christian-owned stations. These stations in turn laid the financial foundation on which the evangelical media explosion of the seventies was built. Although UHF has not equaled FM’s swift rise to broadcast media power, it is carving out sizable audiences and generating profits. All the Christian television stations on the air today are UHF.
After the death of Percy Crawford in 1960 and the failure of his station in the same year, full-time Christian television retreated to a dream until Pat Robertson put WYAH-TV on the air in 1962 in Norfolk, Virginia. Robertson, a Yale lawyer turned religious broadcaster, was to Christian television what Crawford had been to Christian radio. He opened several UHF stations in major markets and led the way to the production and distribution of syndicated Christian television programs. Robertson’s other firsts included the introduction of organized Christian fund raising on television and the use of cable and satellite technology.
The Current Competition Of Programs
With the multiplication of Christian stations came a growing demand for program material. First in the line of supply were the established programs, those great warhorses of religious broadcasting in which orthodox doctrine, traditional semantics, and conservative style converged. Before the decade of the sixties ended, there was a host of new programs and more to come.
These newcomers were evangelical enough in doctrine, but their message was packaged in an increasingly modern style. Tension grew between the old and new, strained, and finally divided religious broadcasting into fundamentally two camps: traditional and contemporary.
The focal point of debate was music—and little wonder. Just when evangelicals were getting into broadcasting, everybody under 30 was dropping out of society, or so it seemed. Rock music was in, and before long its ripples reached the rapidly developing Christian music industry. The debate has diminished somewhat, with contemporary music holding the upper hand in terms of stations favoring the newer sounds.
The gospel music industry was just one of many Christian enterprises and ministries that flourished in direct proportion to the growth of religious broadcasting. Christian publishing houses and bookstores, the Christian counseling revolution, advertising and marketing firms, and various parachurch organizations, including nationally known evangelists, all found a mother lode of exposure and support in religious broadcasting.
Perhaps the most interesting but least explored aspect of religious broadcasting has been its role in carrying ideas within the Christian community. Political ideology of the religious right traveled well on the religious wavelength. The modern charismatic movement virtually exploded through Christian radio and television. The “Christian psychology” movement did the same.
The rapid expansion of stations and program material brought diversity and specialization to religious broadcasting—perhaps more than we need. With some 1,600 radio and 40 television stations operating on full-or part-time religious formats, marketing threatens to change from servant to master. Vendibility and salability have become key questions as the focus of our concern shifts from asking what shall we say to how shall we say it. Market research, demographics, and audience response vie for position in front of calling, conviction, and content.
The Coming Necessity Of Cooperation
Management and programming issues pale in significance when compared to the problems technology imposes on religious broadcasting. The Christian world is about to be future-shocked by an invasion of space-age multiple delivery systems that will either fulfill hopes for evangelizing the world, or shatter religious broadcasting beyond repair.
Much of the technological hardware is already in place. Cable and pay television have widened the public’s viewing options. Two-way cable systems, where both parties can see and talk to each other, have been tested successfully. A nationwide Christian media counseling service beckons. Videocassette recorders and videodiscs will soon make it possible for a local Christian bookstore to offer concerts, revival meetings, or teaching sessions—video and audio—for the price of a record. Low-power television, soon to be in use, and UHF/VHF translators, already in use, augment broadcasting’s ever widening delivery system.
It is easy to imagine ways this gadgetry will increase religious information available to Christians and the general public. But even the wildest dreams would find it hard to anticipate what is coming in satellite and computer technology.
Picture, if you will, a worldwide Christian satellite system pumping out 24 separate television signals and 24 separate FM signals to earth. That makes 48 new listening and viewing options available to anyone who is plugged into the right wire or who owns the necessary equipment.
Talk about specialization and fragmentation! Talk about gospel glut! Every conceivable audio and visual need will be covered. Every taste in music, every unique ministry, every interpretive whim and wish—all can and will find their way to these highly specialized channels. And this is only part of the story. Computer technology will link up with these satellites and provide staggering amounts of data for home computers. Using microtechnology, the computers will relay information subvisibly and subaudibly right in the satellite signals. An entire Bible can be sent in seconds; Strong’s Concordance in minutes. These can be stored for later use in the form of printouts on the television screen, hard-copy teleprinters, and even facsimile pictures. Answers to counseling questions, what the Bible says on any subject, what a certain Bible expositor has taught or written or believes, out-of-print books, live missionary updates—anything and everything will be at your fingertips with home computers.
If your system lacks “storage” space, you can program your request on the computer. It will “watch” the continuous flow of information desired until you are ready to use it.
All this seems far-fetched, but it can and will happen unless we come to the end of the age, humanly speaking. A world Christian Consortium, along with its United States member called Project Lookup, is already organized and plans to launch the first of three Christian satellites by 1985. The first satellite will broadcast to North and South America, the second to Europe and Africa, the third to Asia and the Pacific. Each will have its allotted 24 television channels plus 24 FM subchannels. Plans call for using 12 television channels at first and eventually increasing to full operation.
It must be apparent to even the casual observer that religious broadcasting stands on the edge of a brave new world facing challenges unlike anything previously known. These appear to fall into four categories.
First, technology. Religious broadcasting must develop a strategy for dealing with the rapid advances in delivery systems. Economically viable and business experienced, evangelicals now have the capability of damaging their own cause through the unrestrained use of technology. Indeed, the Christian marketplace has already reached the breaking point through overlapping signals and competing program material.
Technology has become a special responsibility. The daring we must summon is not that of dauntless pioneers, but rather of the courage to submit ourselves to one another in the Lord so that we can use the new technology before it uses us. There is no more room for blind ambition in religious broadcasting, no matter what lofty motives are offered in its defense.
The second challenge of the future will be to devise ways to reach the many people who do not listen to or watch religious broadcasting. Documented audience research shows that religious broadcasting regularly reaches less than 5 percent of the total available radio and television audience in the United States. We are not broadcasting the Good News; we are narrowcasting it to a highly defined, previously interested audience. This does not mean we are failures, but it emphasizes the fact that we have a long way to go before we are effectively utilizing the mass media at our disposal for world evangelization. Nor will the matter be resolved by adding new stations, cable, satellite, or other delivery systems. The problem remains: How do we attract the disinterested unbeliever?
The third challenge will be to fulfill our responsibility to speak prophetically as well as scripturally to current issues. Evangelical participation in politics is big news, and I congratulate activists who have forced America’s leaders to recognize and respect the majority of the electorate who adhere to Judeo-Christian moral values.
We must be careful, however, not to make religious broadcasting synonymous with a certain political philosophy. How are we to speak to the whole of society if we are perceived by the public as the Knights Templars of the airwaves? Who can argue with our outrage at abortion, sexual immorality, and the divorce rate? But what about American wastefulness in a hungry world, or penal reform, or racism? Does not the prophet have a word from the Lord on these and other issues that affect us all?
The final challenge of the next quarter-century in religious broadcasting is program content. There is no way around this issue if we are to be religious broadcasters. Our mandate is to tell the truth about heaven and hell; we must preach Christ to those without hope and without God in the world. And we have a responsibility to believers as well; we must correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. No doubt the most difficult aspect of this challenge will be to tell the truth so people can understand it. It will not be enough for us to say it. We also have to ask, Did they understand us? And further, Did we understand them?
Ultimately, the Holy Spirit must convey divine truth to the human mind and will. But this does not relieve us of our responsibility to present the gospel with clarity and relevance. The listening and viewing public of the future—Christian as well as secular—will be more critical than audiences of the past 25 years. Simple solutions to complex problems will not easily win a hearing, nor will truisms and clichés.
The challenge is clear: to communicate the Word of God in such a way that all the world will understand truly that Jesus Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Carl F. H. Henry
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Jerry Falwell sounds a dramatic call for an evangelical fundamentalist alliance in The Fundamentalist Phenomenon (Doubleday, 1981), which he edited with Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson.
No fundamentalist spokesman is as pointedly critical of contemporary fundamentalism as is Falwell, and none more sharply censorious of evangelicalism. Nonetheless, he calls for a coalition of fundamentalists and evangelicals that would “reshape the forces of conservative Christianity.” Falwell declares the 1980s the decade of destiny for spiritual revival and political renewal in America: “The time has come for the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals to return our nation to its spiritual and moral roots.”
Establishment evangelicalism’s response to this remarkable appeal, and also that of Falwell’s fundamentalist cohorts, could influence the structural fortunes and public opportunities of theological conservatism in America for the remainder of this century. The appeal merits careful study and comprehensive dialogue by leaders qualified to speak for the many divergent strands of American Bible believers.
Falwell’s summons does not explicitly extend to ecumenically identified evangelicals, most of whom lack interevangelical affiliation. But despite sharp criticism of theologically plural contexts, he admits that more believers survive an ecumenical climate than he once thought.
Pastor of an outsize church, chancellor of Liberty Baptist College, mass-media merchant of the gospel, and energetic sociopolitical crusader, Falwell at times wears enough hats to confound his critics over which role he speaks in on issues. Menachem Begin, who talked with Falwell by phone after Israel’s destructive strike against Iraq’s nuclear plant, told critics that Israel had the endorsement of “a spokesman for 20 million American evangelicals” (Falwell’s estimated radio and television audiences). Not long after that Falwell scorched President Reagan’s Supreme Court appointment of Sandra O’Connor because of her abortion stance. Which hat was Falwell wearing? On what ground did he take his positions?
Falwell considers it virtuous to speak with a simplicity that assures wide news media exposure. But must leaders not clarify when they merely speak their personal preferences, when they speak for specifics that they hold to be biblically authorized, and when they speak ethically on a nontheological base?
Falwell has lifted American fundamentalism out of its underground into the foreground that the broader evangelical movement was already occupying. The fundamentalist wing now differs from evangelicals generally in its preference for “strong confrontation” over “penetration” as the means of social change; in its hostility to Billy Graham (it considers inclusive crusade sponsorship a concession to apostasy); and to the charismatic movement (whose theological validity it rejects). By contrast, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) currently has a charismatic president, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has recently named an Assemblies of God scholar to succeed Harold John Ockenga as president.
Falwell spurs many fundamentalist pastors both to program local day schools and Bible schools and to venture mass-media preaching and public involvement on moral and political issues.
In The Fundamentalist Phenomenon (written in cooperation with Liberty Baptist College associates Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson), Falwell declares that fundamentalists are modern heirs of biblical Christianity in opposition to liberalism, communism and “left-wing Evangelicalism.” There can be no doubt, he says, “that Fundamentalist roots go back to the Evangelicals of the late nineteenth century.” The volume contains readable chapters on the evangelical-modernist conflict from 1900–30 that saw fundamentalist influence wane in “mainline” denominations, and independent fundamentalist efforts grow.
As many local congregations aspired to become independent superchurches—and some in turn became virtual denominations—fundamentalists fell into intramural dispute over secondary separation (cooperation with outsiders). Pursuing “absolute purify,” they divided until “by 1967 the Fundamentalist Movement was so fragmented and diversified that it was impossible to describe it, categorize it, or even understand it.” Even the great doctrinal foundations became almost secondary. Fundamentalists meanwhile lacked a social ethic, and emphasized personal taboos. The infighting Falwell describes is tawdry. Leaders (Falwell among them) criticized the clergy for political involvement and had little thought of making the religious right a national moral cause. Yet some who now oppose Falwell’s political activism, he notes, had in the past supported the political activities of Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis.
Falwell’s appraisal of evangelicals largely reflects the tendential views of Richard Quebedeaux and Robert Webber: evangelicals are deeply split into competing groups on right, left, and center. Tolerance of doctrinal compromise is the hallmark of “young evangelicals.” Quebedeaux’s report of their openness to Protestant liberalism and to sexual lassitude is taken as an overall gilt-edge characterization.
The New Evangelicalism, Falwell says, tolerates “inclusion of Christ-denying, Bible-deprecating unbelief”; and, “The atmosphere of New Evangelicalism is generally that of conformity to society.” Mainline evangelicalism, Falwell summarizes, reacted to fundamentalism “and produced New Evangelicalism,” which emphasizes not only denominational infiltration and social engagement, but “theological tolerance,” and “overtolerance has left the Evangelical Movement in neutral” and “the entire movement is in danger of drifting into moderate Liberalism.” If this is a verdict on the NAE, Falwell needs to spend more time away from Lynchburg.
Falwell gives 10 internal criticisms of fundamentalism and makes the costly confession that “it is possible to attend a Fundamentalist church and … almost never hear the Gospel.” We laud his rejection of what he disavows in fundamentalism and in left-wing evangelicalism insofar as his characterizations are sound. If left-wing evangelicals are liberal in theology, they are not evangelicals, though political liberalism need not on all issues put them outside the camp of evangelical orthodoxy. Nor need dialogue with Catholics, Jews, and Marxists be evangelical wickedness. If Falwell lived in Russia he might be glad for it, and sometimes dialogue can even be the first step in conversion.
Except for “a difference of attitude,” Falwell concedes, evangelicalism and mainstream fundamentalism are not intrinsically different. Both share the fundamentalist basics of inerrant scriptural authority, the deity of Christ including the Virgin Birth, substitutionary atonement, the literal resurrection, and the second advent of Christ. These basic beliefs, the volume holds, are those of “the majority of religious Americans.” (Elsewhere the number of the general public believing in biblical inerrancy is placed at 42 percent.)
One exasperating feature is Falwell’s sliding use of descriptive terms. From the strong American commitment to “orthodox, fundamental, evangelical Christianity” (adult evangelicals are placed at 30 million but no distinction between evangelicals and fundamentalists is made within this figure) he leaps to the verdict that “Fundamental Christianity is resurging as America begins the decade of the 1980s” and “Fundamentalism is the force of the 1980s.”
Over 200,000 students are preparing for Christian vocations in conservative schools, we are told, and the Christian school movement has 15,000 schools with over two million students, with three new schools emerging daily. No doubt many fundamentalist churches, like evangelical churches generally, show notable gains in membership, and in church and Sunday school attendance. Of the top 20 Sunday schools, half are fundamentalist; among them is the nation’s leading Sunday school with 36,000 members. Falwell places membership of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, largest of the fundamentalist groups, at between “2 to 3 million”—which allows a 50 percent margin of error.
As in the title’s use of the terms fundamentalist and conservative, there is a confusing shell game in the volume’s flexible alternation of left-wing evangelicals, new evangelicals, and evangelicals. Some contrasts are not only simplistic but unworthy.
The volume also contains some factual errors—as that the NAE helped to organize CHRISTIANITY TODAY—and it approves theologically imprecise and uncritical overstatements of neo-orthodox position. It is also confused about the 1977 Chicago Call. Some quotations are twisted to serve other than intended purposes.
What characterizes “the resurgence of Fundamentalism into the mainstream of American religious life”? The volume states candidly that fundamentalists (Jerry Falwell especially) hijacked the evangelical jumbo jet while establishment leaders hesitated to forge an aggressive public program. Leaders of establishment evangelicalism held conferences on the future of evangelicalism, but neither the NAE, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, evangelical colleges, nor prestigious evangelists took the urgency of social involvement seriously enough to initiate a mass movement. Fundamentalist mainstream engagement came through the electronic church, which mainline evangelicals neglected, and it gave national visibility to Falwell’s political morality thrust in the 1980 campaign.
Falwell depicts evangelicals as overintellectual at the expense of church building, a caricature dating back to Bob Jones, Sr. The “ethereal theorizing of the Evangelicals,” has, he says, impaired their production of “the organizational structures” necessary to a dynamic political impact. It may be questioned, however, whether most evangelicals theorize enough about the matter. Precisely the lack of theoretical definition rendered much of the recent fundamentalist political involvement vulnerable to needless countercriticisms.
Moral Majority’s list of concerns will, on the whole, commend itself to most evangelicals, although the commitment on Israel should be guarded against any implication of support for “Israel—Right or Wrong.” To insist that Israel be answerable to international justice as fully as any other state is not anti-Semitic. Falwell now insistently puts human rights concerns and world hunger on the agenda. But his statement of the grounds on which Christians are to address the political order still leaves some important issues unresolved.
Falwell’s volume gives no precise statement of the real theological-philosophical enemy of biblical theism today except for rather vague references to humanism. It reflects Tim LaHaye’s unbalanced view that humanism espouses amorality. Yet its most important message is: “The time has come for true Fundamentalists and sincere Evangelicals to rise above the excessive labeling and listing of people, groups and schools.… Divergent groups of Bible-believing Christians who hold to the basic tenets of the faith can cooperate together in order to develop a broadly united front against the real enemies of true Christianity. Let us once again focus the theological guns at liberalism, humanism and secularism.”
How many fundamentalists can Falwell spur to broader involvement? How many of “the 20 million for whom Falwell speaks” are not already involved in larger evangelical alliances? Key ’73 proposed that fellow evangelicals, irrespective of ecumenical involvement or noninvolvement, join shoulder to shoulder in communities across America to witness to the joys of knowing the Savior and the rewards of Bible reading. Is that finally in prospect? Can evangelicals forge a cooperative evangelistic thrust for righteousness in national life? Differ as they may on some specific issues, and on the secondaries of some specifics, can they exercise on nonecclesiastical grounds a coordinated legislative influence in the promotion of justice?
Falwell’s volume deserves full reading not simply as a window on fundamentalism’s bid for larger evangelical perspectives and cooperation that can lift fundamentalism beyond its largely negative role of the recent past to a profounder world/life vision, and to points of amenable coalition for important evangelistic and sociocultural objectives. Falwell should be asked for specifics of fundamentalist strength and an identification of spokesmen ready to cooperate in a high-level prayer-and-probe-projection meeting involving key leaders.
Falwell’s proposal is the most open bid from the independent fundamentalists since Carl McIntire’s formation of the now ailing American Council of Christian Churches. It dare not be neglected.
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Tom Minnery
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Jerry Falwell was seated in a hearing room on Capitol Hill, ready to testify on the tuition tax credit bill. The first question from its sponsor, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wasn’t about tuition tax credits at all, however. Moynihan asked why his name was on Moral Majority’s “hit list” of congressmen who are targeted for election defeat.
The question was good-natured and so was Falwell’s reply. But the point of his response probably was missed by most of the people in the room: it was that Moral Majority does not have a hit list; it never did, and never will. Moynihan had it confused with another organization.
A large problem facing Moral Majority as it regroups for the issue campaigns that he ahead is getting people to realize just what it is and what it is not. If a U.S. senator does not have it straight, is there any hope for the rest of the people?
Falwell himself has not made things easy. He is seen each week by millions in his role as Falwell the fundamentalist preacher on the “Old Time Gospel Hour.” Yet in his Moral Majority role, he wishes to be known as Falwell the concerned citizen, who is seeking to restore the country’s moral roots but not asking that all its citizens become born-again Christians.
Confusion is thus inevitable. But there have been truckloads of invective from commentators in the secular mass media accusing Falwell of the ultimate sin of a pluralistic society: trying to force everybody to believe in his brand of religion. Yet this is precisely what the Moral Majority has not been trying to do, and the prevalence of the myth betrays an astonishing ignorance of fundamentalist Christianity. The American press is not bashful about burrowing into any problem it lumbers upon, but the misconceptions in this case have been so virulent that there are those at Moral Majority headquarters who believe the problem is not ignorance but intent.
Falwell’s religious roots are in the Baptist Bible Fellowship, which has headquarters in Springfield, Missouri. It has some 35,000 churches in America, some bigger than Falwell’s. Its message is not only born-again Christianity, but separation from the world’s evil influence. This is what Falwell believes, and it is practiced at his church and his college. It is assuredly not what Moral Majority stands for.
For Falwell, the separation between his religion and his political activism in Moral Majority is so distinct that he can balk at inviting Billy Graham to preach in his Lynchburg pulpit (assuming Graham would accept) because of Graham’s association in his crusades with religious “liberals.” Yet without batting an eye, Falwell can walk into a synagogue and talk to Jews about Moral Majority. The press has failed to discern the crucial separation that Falwell sees between faith and politics.
The essence of the Moral Majority message is that the country is chopping off the Judeo-Christian roots that have nourished its political and legal vitality. Those roots must be made to grow back if the country is to survive. This is not Christianity, and, according to Moral Majority, people can march under that message without becoming Falwellian fundamentalists.
The question of whether the country can survive without its moral roots is at the center of the Moral Majority phenomenon. Yet that is seldom addressed by Falwell’s critics, probably because he has given them juicier targets to shoot at. On this central issue, however, the evidence is strongly in Falwell’s favor.
Harold Berman, a Harvard Law School professor, writes: “It is supposed by some, especially intellectuals, that fundamental legal principles … can survive without any religious or quasi-religious foundations on the basis of the proper political and economic controls and philosophy of humanism. History, however, including current history, testifies otherwise. People will not give their allegiance to a political and economic system, and even less to a philosophy, unless it represents for them a higher, sacred truth.”
That this country’s religious foundations (if not the daily practice of all the founding fathers) are Christian seems beyond dispute. Joseph Story, a U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1811 to 1845, wrote that “Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the first amendment to it … the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”
When leftward critics enter the constitutional arena to argue against Falwell, they usually wind up misreading the separation of church and state doctrine, which has nothing to do with keeping the influence of Christianity out of government. (Falwell heartily endorses separation of church and state.)
Cal Thomas, Moral Majority’s vice-president for communications and a former NBC correspondent in Washington, D.C., has found so much hazy reporting about Moral Majority in the popular press that he has begun slashing back. In an Indianapolis speech to Moral Majority organizers, Thomas said of the press, “Usually they are dumber than you are. They ask predictable questions and they don’t understand the answers. They’re more interested in their careers than in the issues.”
Thomas was asked to defend the new religious right during a debate at a recent Associated Press broadcast convention in Washington, D.C. He was told that Carl McIntire, the old fundamentalist firebrand of another era, would be appearing with him to defend the movement. That, said Thomas, “shows an incredible misunderstanding” of the 1980s fundamentalist phenomenon, and he turned down the invitation three times before finally agreeing to go. He said that putting what Falwell represents together with what McIntire represents is like asking Amos ’n’ Andy’s Kingfish to join Andrew Young in defending black issues.
Even the religious press sometimes has a hard time keeping things straight. The August issue of the United Presbyterian magazine A.D. carried a cover article entitled, “Moral Majority: Distorting Faith and Patriotism.” But the question might be asked, Who is distorting what? The cover photo accompanying the article is identified as a shot from the Washington for Jesus rally, and shows a crowd praying in charismatic fashion, with upraised arms. Other photos from the rally also appear.
The cover photo seems odd as a Moral Majority illustration because neither Falwell nor most of the fundamentalists he speaks for are charismatics. Besides that, Falwell wasn’t even at the rally, nor did Moral Majority sponsor it. The magazine’s editors had Moral Majority confused with the charismatic movement, a different phenomenon entirely.
Even commentators closer to fundamentalism have not always taken time to aim straight. Robert Webber, a Wheaton College professor, wrote a book called The Moral Majority: Right or Wrong? In it he finds that Moral Majority fails to espouse biblical Christianity, and it is on that account that he is critical. It is not surprising Webber should detect this, because it is the whole point of the organization. Falwell stresses every chance he gets that it is not religious. Webber acknowledged that his book failed to make this distinction about Moral Majority, and said that if he had waited another six months before writing, the book would have been different. He said he based it largely on Falwell’s book, Listen, America!, published in December 1979, a few months after Moral Majority was organized. Listen, America! expresses Falwell’s concerns as a fundamentalist preacher, and it is not about Moral Majority at all. Cal Thomas conjectures that Webber’s book would have been different if only he had personally interviewed Falwell before writing it. Twice Webber was asked to come to Lynchburg, but he did not go.
(Falwell’s people know the value of personal acquaintance. The original manuscript of a new book by Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson, two staff members at Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College, [see accompanying review] slashed hard at liberal Harvard theologian Harvey Cox. Then Hindson and Thomas were invited to speak at Harvard. They were enthralled with Cox, and with his and some of his religion students’ spiritual depth. Hindson stayed on an extra day, and when he returned to Lynchburg, the book was changed.)
Despite all the misconceptions about what Moral Majority is, there are some substantial criticisms that Falwell brings upon himself. For one thing, the “Old Time Gospel Hour” is chronically short of money, and some of Falwell’s fund-raising letters are so strident they are silly.
One of those recent letters was on the subject of world hunger—a problem Falwell blamed on Communism. The strategy behind the letter seemed to be that if the heart-rending pictures of starving children accompanying the letter wouldn’t get you to part with your money, that old bugaboo Communism would. The letter noted, almost incidentally, that some of the money would not be spent to fight world hunger or the Communists at all; rather, it would go to Lynchburg, to support Falwell’s college and school.
Another Falwell letter, this one seeking money for Moral Majority, suggested that militant homosexuals were now more bold than ever because they thought Moral Majority was getting weak. Although Falwell the Moral Majoritarian recognizes the civil rights of homosexuals and Falwell the preacher separates the sinner from the sin, the letter was such a heavy-clubbed attack that it effaced all these distinctions.
This “crisis of the week” approach raised the eyebrows of Sen. Mark Hatfield, who has been concerned about the ethics of religious fund raising. It was his prodding that brought about formation of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (of which Falwell is a charter member). Hatfield twisted arms again during an ECFA speech in April, alluding to some of Falwell’s letters.
The pressure was felt in Lynchburg. The June mailing from Moral Majority was a positive-sounding summary of the organization’s achievements (it didn’t bring in as much money as the crisis letters), and the August mailing was little more than a birthday message to Falwell from Sen. Jesse Helms.
With his mass mailings and television programs, Falwell has direct access to his constituents, and he says he ignores the distortion he reads in the news media. Others in his organizations are much more bothered by it.
“We’ve got to start seizing the initiative and start framing the issues, and stop reacting to outlandish charges,” said Moral Majority’s executive director, Ronald Godwin. An administrator at Pensacola Christian College before joining Moral Majority, he brings a Ph.D. in planning and management from Florida State University to the organization.
One of Godwin’s goals is a tighter relationship between Moral Majority at the national level and its state and county affiliates. He said new contracts will be drawn up that will specify more clearly how the name can be used. The intention is to eliminate some of the embarrassments brought about by the Moral Majoritarians in Maryland, for example, who picketed a local establishment selling anatomically accurate gingerbread men.
One of those “loose cannons” rolling about the deck is Michael Gass, a Medford, Oregon, fundamentalist minister who heads that state’s Moral Majority chapter. Gass has been making life uncomfortable for Mark Hatfield, who is the most prominent evangelical Christian in the Senate. Not one given to hyperbole, Hatfield called Gass “a wild man” who is trying to tine up an opponent to run against him in 1984 because of his liberal votes. This comes at a time when Falwell and Hatfield are establishing, in Hatfield’s words, “a marvelous working relationship and communication.”
(Gass apparently has been feeling the heat. He said in an interview that he has stopped commenting on Hatfield’s record because the press distorts everything he says. Gass did say, though, that he agrees with Hatfield much more than he disagrees with him).
Hatfield finds that Christian leaders who have recently awakened to politics are confused about just what that is. They will say they are not being “political” because they don’t endorse candidates or are not active in a political party, Hatfield said. “They will say one moment that government should be taken out of busing and civil rights and affirmative action. Then they say government ought to crack down on the pornographers, or the abortion law.… They are being political when they want an impact by a corporate state by a corporate action,” he said.
Hatfield finds that Falwell in particular has matured rapidly. “Starting with the homosexual issue, in which he was so shrill … the burn ’em at the stake type of thing … I think he has been able to delineate between the sinner and the sin, which I don’t think he did at first.” Hatfield also noted Falwell’s growing involvement in social problems, especially in the inner city.
Lately a number of commentators have begun to dismiss the religious right as an influence for the future, noting the financial difficulties of Falwell and others, and the fact that television audiences don’t seem to be as large as electronic churchmen sometimes claim. But that assessment could be classified as just another misconception of what motivates men like Falwell. For him, money has been chronically short ever since June 28, 1956, when the Thomas Road Baptist Church started up in the syrup-sticky confines of the Donald Duck Bottling Company building in Lynchburg. He and others like him are stirred not by their financial statements, nor by the rating sheets of Neilson and Arbitron, but by the feel of God’s hand upon their shoulders.
Moral Majority’s Godwin says that in hopes of having a deep impact on the 1982 Congressional election, the organization plans to start chapters down to the county level in every state by next year. That seems like an impossible goal, and even if they don’t accomplish it, it is clear that the folks from Lynchburg plan to be around for a long time to come.
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Because of Jerry Falwell’s impact on both the religious and political scene, and because he and his supporters are concerned that the mass communications media often distort his views, CHRISTIANITY TODAY met with him at Lynchburg, Virginia, for approximately two hours. Following are excerpts from the interview, which was tape-recorded and edited for publication. In it, Falwell answers questions frequently raised about Moral Majority, and about his own philosophy and goals.
The secular press seems eager to discredit Moral Majority. That’s got to hurt.
The press is very powerful; no one would question that. But I’m not afraid of the press. I cannot stop doing what I believe God wants me to do because of a concerted effort by liberal persons in the national news media to hurt us.
Where do you see Moral Majority going?
Moral Majority is going through its most rapid growth right now. The hostility of the national news media that you mentioned has really been the greatest thing that has happened to Moral Majority. I can’t say I enjoy being attacked—but it has helped the movement. People are far more perceptive than 10 years ago, and because of television, we are able to get through to them. Someone in the print media can make what you say sound the way he wants it to sound. This is not possible on “Face the Nation,” “Meet the Press,” or with Phil Donahue or Tom Snyder where we have been able to eyeball the people.
Are you going to keep hammering away at the same issues for the near future?
We’re going to keep banging. We’re going to recruit members. This was a good year, so we are trying to get organized, trying to get those loose cannons out there under control. We’re trying not to throw people out, but to educate and conserve people who may be doing it wrong.
Who are “those loose cannons”? Are some of your local leaders hurting you?
We are not being hurt by some people who make foolish and unfounded announcements in the name of Moral Majority. I look on our national movement as a union leader would the labor movement. Here in southwest Virginia and in parts of West Virginia we have had striking coal miners shooting at nonunion people and throwing rocks at their automobiles. That does not discredit the labor movement in America. We know these criminals are not representatives of labor in general. Likewise, when some uninformed person in Maryland attacks a bakery for making pornographic cookies, or some gentleman in northern California in no way connected with Moral Majority advocates capital punishment for homosexuals, it simply remains for me to repudiate any connection or any endorsement of what they are doing or saying.
You don’t see any need to change the policy by which you allow your name, Moral Majority, to be used by state groups?
There really is no way I can stop it. We have very little problem with our 50 state chairmen and their executive committees. We meet with these people regularly, and conduct seminars. We are less than two years old as a movement, so there is obviously a great deal of maturing and educating to be done. We have very few problems considering there are four million people actively involved, among whom are some 72,000 ministers, priests, and rabbis.
Most of us didn’t learn in seminary what we are doing now, so we have the job of educating each other and orchestrating our goals, our philosophy, our methodology. If someone who really is connected with us occasionally makes an unfounded statement or does something to discredit the movement, I think it is to our advantage to err on the side of liberty rather than to have a monarchy where Jerry Falwell is the only spokesman and makes all the decisions and controls every part of the movement. It will not be a national movement unless there is pluralism in the leadership.
What are your really deep spiritual goals for the Moral Majority? What would you like to see happen?
I would like to see Moral Majority become a very powerful and positive movement for morality in this country. And I would hope that in this decade we will be able to bring the nation back to an appreciation of the traditional values and moral principles that really have been the American way for 200 years. I’d like to see the family become prominent in our society again. I would like to see television featuring united families rather than broken and distorted families. I would like to see language on the television screen again assume some dignity and gravity, and not be seasoned with profanity. I would like to see the country become more sensitive. I can see Moral Majority creating a sensitivity among the American people for the needs of the unfortunate, the poor, and the disenfranchised that will cause the private sector, particularly the churches, to fill the vacuum that is going to be created by the government’s necessary withdrawal from that sphere. I would like to see us remaining nonpartisan, within the two-party system. I would hope that none of Moral Majority’s principal persons would ever run for election to public office at any level.
Would you include yourself in that?
Oh, of course.
Yet you feel a legitimate way to achieve these goals and bring the answer to your prayers is to be involved in the political process.
Moral Majority for me is definitely a movement in which I am involved as a private citizen—period! I do not involve Thomas Road Baptist Church. The church has never given a dollar to the movement. When our people come here to church they hear the Bible taught and preached, they don’t hear Moral Majority. I doubt if I’ve mentioned the words Moral Majority 10 times in Thomas Road Baptist Church.
What is your relationship with fundamentalist pastors who probably don’t see eye to eye with you on many of your involvements?
The most aggressive leaders in Moral Majority are fundamentalist pastors. That isn’t necessary, because Moral Majority is not a religious organization; it’s political. There is no theological agreement in Moral Majority. At the same time, fundamentalists like me were taught to fight before we were taught to read and write. There is no lack of courage among fundamentalists. Fortunately, fundamentalists like me have been growing up over the past 20 years. We have been finding we can fellowship only in truth, but that we can have friendship in many other affinities.
How would you define a fundamentalist?
Well, there are differences. Definitions change every decade. My definition of a fundamentalist is one who, first, believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, and second, is committed to biblical separation in the world and to the lordship of Christ. For me, the definition of separation from the world may be different from some others’. I don’t use alcoholic beverages and I preach teetotalism. That would be the practice of 18,000 members of this church. I don’t think it has anything to do with salvation. But when I talk about separation, I mean separation from the rock music culture, separation from immorality, separation from the Hollywood culture.
Would you ever say anything on the “Old Time Gospel Hour,” for example, about the deceptive advertising in the Readers Digest by the Mormons?
No, I wouldn’t. On the “Old Time Gospel Hour” I’m preaching the gospel to everybody. I’m not pastoring a church; I’m not developing a spiritual movement. I’m preaching the gospel and attempting to do something for Jesus Christ. If I attack Catholics or Jews or Mormons, or allow anyone to do it on my platform, I have immediately excluded them as a reachable group.
I know you have spoken to Catholics. Have you ever spoken in a synagogue or to a group of Mormons?
I can’t think of anyplace I haven’t preached. As a matter of fact, if I were to take engagements in all the synagogues I’ve been invited to preach in, I’d be preaching every week in a synagogue.
Preaching or talking on the Moral Majority?
Moral Majority. The largest synagogue in this country has invited me to come and speak on Moral Majority. As a gentleman, that is all I would speak on. I would not go there as pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, but as president of Moral Majority, sharing what I think would be our points of coalescing. The same thing is true with the Mormons.
Can’t you slip in a little bit of the gospel in a Moral Majority speech, just in case there is someone out there who hasn’t been converted?
If I want to be deceptive, I can. But I don’t want to be deceptive. What we’ve said from the beginning is that the Moral Majority is a political organization. You’re not going to hear doctrine there. We are not going to try to witness to you there. You come as an American who shares the moral views of the membership, and to fight together on a prolife, profamily, promoral, pro-American position.
Could I pose a hypothetical question? If you would, please, compare Salt Lake City with New York City. Say that in Salt Lake City they took the Moral Majority position right down the line, but because of false doctrine, they would not ultimately go to heaven. New York City has a reputation for the very things Moral Majority is against. Yet there is a possibility that some of those people in the corrupt society in New York City, in spite of their immorality, might be converted and wind up in heaven. Which would you rather see? I’m concerned that we could get the country morally straight and people would still go to hell.
I don’t think there is any problem at all as long as we all know who we are. I’m a Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, soul-winning preacher. I know that the “Old Time Gospel Hour” and Thomas Road church are committed to winning people to Jesus, planting local churches, building Christian schools, and witnessing to everybody, everywhere. At the same time, I think America is great, but not because it is a Christian nation: it is not a Christian nation, it has never been a Christian nation, it is never going to be a Christian nation. It is not a Jewish nation. It is a nation under God, and a nation in which for 200 years there has been absolute freedom to preach whatever religious conviction one might have, without ever impinging on the liberties and freedom of others. Madalyn Murray O’Hair has every right to preach her venomous message.
America has become the greatest nation on earth because of what Solomon said in Proverbs 14 (in paraphrase): “Living by God’s principles promotes a nation to greatness; violating God’s principles brings a nation to shame.”
If a nation or a society lives by divine principles, even though the people personally don’t know the One who taught and lived those principles, that society will be blessed. An unsaved person in business will be blessed by tithing to the work of God. He’ll still go to hell a tither, but God blesses the principle.
I feel that the dignity of life is a principle we protected in this country until 1973. I think the traditional family, the monogamous husband-wife relationship, is a principle that America has honored until lately. Now we have a 40 percent divorce rate and we accept homosexual marriage, so we are beginning to violate that principle. The principle of moral decency has been honored in this country until lately; pornography is a recent phenomenon. All these principles and many others have been honored in this country, and for that reason God has honored the United States. That has nothing to do with whether people go to heaven or hell. It is a personal relationship with Christ that determines that.
In order for the churches in America to evangelize the world, we need the environment of freedom in America that will permit us to do it. If we, through Moral Majority and other such organizations, can protect and preserve those principles, America will stay free, so that the ultimate goal of the gospel—world evangelization—can be pursued by the churches.
So then you can justify Moral Majority by this rather distinct, clear delineation between the political and the spiritual and say that in the long run Moral Majority contributes to the preaching of the gospel and the saving of souls.
Yes. Because it creates and preserves freedom.
You grew up during a time when patriotism went down rather sharply. How did you come by your rather intense patriotism?
There are lots of paradoxes in my development. I grew up in a home where my father did not believe in religious values. He was never inside a church in his life. My mother was a very religious woman. Dad would not allow her to force us to go to church, so we were home on Sunday mornings. My mother would leave the radio on when she left for church, and that is how I heard Charles E. Fuller and became a Christian. I was an 18-year-old college sophomore studying mechanical engineering at the time I was converted. Two months later, in 1952, I felt the call of God to full-time Christian service.
When I was a boy in Virginia, in a redneck society, patriotism was just a part of life. Whatever was for America was right, whether it was right or not. I had an overdose of patriotism as a boy. I also grew up in a segregated society. I was a segregationist, and Thomas Road church was five years old before God flushed that out of my system. I thought segregation and spirituality were the same. I would have fought you over saying that I was prejudiced; I would say it was scriptural. When I first baptized a black man in this church, it caused quite a ripple.
A number of years after that, Thomas Road Baptist Church, which had always been patriotic in a redneck way, really became patriotic in the Christian way. It was through an osmosis by which the Spirit of God, through the Word of God, taught me that I was wrong and made me willing to say it publicly. It cost me a lot of friends for a while. That’s not an issue any more, but it was a big issue in this town 20 years ago. We still have that to overcome with the older black people in this community who remember Jerry Falwell in that context.
But patriotism was just a way of life as a boy. I realized later that one could be committed to his country and still be an internationalist in world missions without compromising either.
God has raised up America in these last days for the cause of world evangelization and for the protection of his people, the Jews. I don’t think America has any other right or reason for existence other than those two purposes.
Speaking of your outspoken support for the Jews, and particularly the Zionists, do you not see a parallel between your former redneck segregationist views and your rather uncritical, enthusiastic support now of the Zionists?
I don’t think so. I have personally examined that possibility in my own heart. I support the Jews, first, for biblical reasons; I take the Abrahamic covenant literally. God has blessed America because we have blessed the Jews. God has also blessed America because we have done more for the cause of world evangelization than any other nation. I also support the Jews because I think, historically, the evidence is on their side that Palestine belongs to them. Legally, they have had the right to be in the land since 1948. I also support the Jews because from the humanitarian perspective, they have the right to exist, and there are a hundred million neighbors who are committed to their extinction. I also support the Jews because they are the only true friends America has in the Middle East.
Could you, through your open support of the Zionists in the Jewish state, help that state to be more democratic in terms of allowing freedom of witness and preaching in Israel?
I talked with the leaders there about that subject. I talked with respect. They have many concerns. Some are valid, some are not valid. They are fighting for survival right now. The Jews look on conservative Christianity as the right wing that has been their enemy in years past. It is only a modern phenomenon that conservative Christianity is pro-Jewish. So-called Christians wiped them out during World War II, and all of them were right-wingers. It has just been in this generation that mature, Bible-believing Christians have stood up and said, “Hey, we are for the Jews because God is for the Jews.” The leadership in conservative Christianity today is solidly behind the state of Israel; there is no question about that. However, the Israelis need more time to be assured of the fact that we don’t have any ulterior motives.
I have no problem preaching in Israel. We have missionaries there. There is no question there are cases and instances where the Arabs are not treated fairly, and I am against that. But I have to look at the overall picture and say that, at this moment, the issue is Israel’s survival. Israel has got to come through this period and have survived, with everybody accepting that. Then, there has to be time for freedom to mature there, as it did in our country. That didn’t happen in revolutionary days. We Baptists had a terrible time in this country 200 years ago. The country has to be safe first before it can talk about internal freedoms.
You seem to be very much together, upbeat and positive. You’re always looking for new worlds to conquer. What are you afraid of? Are you confused?
I have the constant fear of any minister about getting his priorities confused. I must always remember that my first priority is to my wife and children, under God, of course. When I fail there, I fail everywhere. I have a son in college, and a daughter and a son in high school who need me very much. I have to be there to deal with their needs and problems so they can grow up well adjusted and normal. And I do that. I don’t let anybody confuse my priorities.
Second to that, I decided years ago that I am pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Although I have 62 associates who help me minister to the people, I’m their pastor, and I stay committed to meeting their needs. Beyond that, there are the schools, the television, the radio, Moral Majority, and a multiplicity of other things. But I never let the bottom become the top.
Some political leaders are fearful of right-wing “hit lists.” They say these are unfair to our traditional political process. Does Moral Majority have a hit list of congressmen or senators you are trying to defeat?
We have no hit lists. We are not attacking candidates; we are not endorsing or supporting candidates. We did not put Ronald Reagan in office; the perception of that is much greater than the reality. We are committed to issues and principles that the liberal leaders of our nation don’t have on their agenda. We look on abortion as murder. That’s a strong statement and I realize it runs counter to the grain of liberal sociologists and educators. In our reaction against the social gospel, we have ignored the social implications of the gospel in conservative Christianity. In the past five years we became aware of that, and we acknowledged our wrong attitude. We must now make it a priority in the 1980s.
Apparently there is a distinction in your mind, which doesn’t come across in your advertising and in your lectures, that you don’t endorse candidates but you support them. What is the difference?
Someone asked me during the last campaign if I was endorsing candidate Reagan. I said, “No, I’m not. I am voting for him because the platform on which he is campaigning is very near the platform that I believe in.” I did not endorse or publicly promote his candidacy because I want to be able, while he is in office, to criticize him when I think he is wrong. I don’t want any position in the White House. I don’t ever want to be a chaplain or spiritual counselor. I always want to be an outsider. I want to be able to support the president when I think he’s right and oppose him when I think he’s wrong. If he does exactly the opposite of what he campaigned for, I want to be able to say that I voted for him but I was wrong, and that I am now going to work to get him out of office.
However, I do think that Mr. Reagan is the greatest thing that has happened to our country in my lifetime. We have Congressional elections coming up in 1982. Many of the state chapters have political action committees that want to support and endorse candidates, and we allow that.
So your state committees would decide, in fact, who they are going to try to get into office.
Yes, they would. Many of them don’t have political action committees, but they are allowed to. I don’t come in and campaign with them.
Does it bother you at all that they do that?
My preference would be that they didn’t, but many of them have very strong convictions about it. They feel it’s their obligation to do precinct work. I can’t find Scripture to oppose that, and so I don’t get involved.
Who really controls Moral Majority and who decides what the platform is going to be, the four points around which you can build a pluralistic consensus?
We spent about five years chipping out that platform after meeting with Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, fundamentalists. I and three or four others here and there worked on it. We realized we had to create a nonreligious organization where we could address the issues as private citizens and without violating the separation of church and state or the tax-exempt status of our ministries. All the real volatile moral issues had become volatile political issues by the late seventies. We finally arrived at a consensus where everybody said, “Leave it there. If you leave it there we can come in. If you bring in gun control, domestic policy, the Panama Canal, if you bring in this or that segment, it will never proliferate.”
Moral Majority’s position was clearly established in June of 1979 and it has not changed one iota since. And it cannot. We are prolife, protraditional family, promoral, under which we have opposed the illegal drug traffic and pornography, and we are pro-American, which means strong national defense and the State of Israel. If we wanted to add anything, we would have to get all four million people and all 72,000 ministers to agree, because we made a moral commitment to them that this is where we are.
Television comes under pornography. That’s a little fuzzy.
We need to take a position on the violence—on sex and violence. We are very careful about the violence thing. We do fudge there, because I happen to think that violence is detrimental, but there are some in our group who do not. Some Moral Majority people see the problem of the sex influence in television, but they do not see the influence of the violence. We have to be very careful that what we say is Moral Majority position is Moral Majority position.
I was asked on “Face the Nation” about gun control. I had to make it very clear that this was Jerry Falwell speaking, that I am against gun control, and why. I said that very clearly. But I could not say this was a Moral Majority position, because it wasn’t. We would lose a large segment of Moral Majority if we took a gun control position.
If you say you are profamily, or promoral, where do you stop?
We just define it. We define it as illegal drug traffic and pornography.
Do you put alcohol and tobacco under drugs?
Yes, we do with alcohol, but not tobacco. We have lots of Moral Majority members who smoke. People say, Why don’t you guys get more involved in this? Or someone will say, What about the poor? We could never bring the issue of the poor into Moral Majority because the argument would be, Who is going to decide what we teach those people? Mormons, Catholics? No, we won’t get into that. As private persons and ministers, we make a commitment if we feel convicted. But for Moral Majority, no! If we go in there, create jobs, raise funds, and get involved with the local pastors, the problem is, which pastors? If we say the Mormon pastors, the fundamentalists are gone. If we say the Catholic pastors, the Jews are gone, and so forth. We just have to stay away from helping the poor.
Could Moral Majority ever have a convention and add other moral issues?
We could, if something occurs. We really try to zero in on the vital things.
Are you ever going to have a national convention?
Someday we may.
Do you see yourself dropping out of the leadership at some time.
I see myself spending less time, hoping to develop new leadership if some of the outstanding men in this movement rise to the top, but probably not dropping out. It is happening already.
Is it more important for you to speak to the people, or to the leaders?
I can do both. I have the opportunity of speaking weekly to the leaders in private meetings and to the people on television. I spoke to the Chicago Civic Club last spring and I am speaking this fall to the Executive Club. While I was in Chicago I spoke to a small group of Jewish leaders. The night before and the next morning I spoke to 35 leaders of the largest industries in America. Their board chairmen and presidents were there privately, with no publicity and no fanfare, for obvious reasons for both of us.
Do you speak for Moral Majority, or as a preacher?
Whatever they want. Because I am there as a private citizen I discuss anything. And I can share the gospel there.
Carl Henry and some other evangelical leaders and theologians feel you are extreme and they would like to meet with you, have dialogue with you, to get you to moderate your views. What do they want you to moderate?
I have no idea. Dr. Henry is a great man and I would never, under any circumstances, criticize him. My only unhappiness was that his comments were made without any discussion with me to see where I am coming from. It is not his nature to do that, and it is unusual that he did it.
You haven’t had any private conversations with evangelical leaders, theologians, or scholars saying, Do this or that to make yourself more acceptable to us and to our people?
There is no way I can be effective in trying to develop a real spiritual revolution against the trend of the times and be popular with everybody at the same time. I’ve got to be willing to wait a few years before a lot of good people understand what we are trying to do.
From where we sit, we get this constant pounding from Christians who are not “followers of Falwell.” We are trying to figure out what it is.
Frankly, I am raising a lot of money and some of their people give to our ministry. That is a valid concern they would have. If I were sitting where they are, in all fairness I would be feeling a little edgy about that. The ones who don’t know me don’t know where I’m going; they don’t know if I am honest.
Suppose I was sitting where that pastor is; would I not be feeling a little uneasy about this guy, too? Is he trying to put together a political party? Is he trying to be president? Is he planning on taking over this country some day? Is he personally getting rich off all this?
Those are questions they don’t have the answers to. I have to be willing to keep saying the same things everyplace, everywhere, long enough. It is going to take a number of years before I can expect to be accepted by many of the people.
Are you too much of a showman? Do you spend too much time on TV raising money?
I am fully expecting between now and the coming of the Lord that this world is going to experience a spiritual awakening unlike anything in the past. There is going to be an invasion of God on this planet, and changing of lives: real biblical evangelism. There is going to be a terrific harvest of souls somewhere between here and the Rapture. I believe that God’s role for America is as catalyst, that he wants to set the spiritual time bomb off right here. If that is the case, America must stay free. And for America to stay free we must come back to the only principles that God can honor: the dignity of life, the traditional family, decency, morality, and so on. I just see myself as one to stand in the gap and, under God, with the help of millions of others, to bring the nation back to a moral standard so we can stay free in order that we can evangelize the world. And protect the Jews.
If you have to go on TV and be a showman, a money raiser, a promoter, it is because everything feeds into that overriding purpose.
It does indeed.
Taking the slam-bangs from the liberals, the evangelicals, and the fundamentalists?
I’ve never had those things in mind. I don’t read all of it. I’ve learned that nobody can hurt you but you.
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We have to select our battlefields more carefully and wage our battles more graciously.
Recently a pastor wrote the editor: “Please cancel my subscription; I have heard enough about inerrancy. When you begin to carry more articles on the spiritual nurture of the soul and less on picky theologians’ quarrels like that over inerrancy, I’ll renew my subscription.” We sympathize with that pastor. Fine points of theological debate may intrigue nit-picking scholars, but they are a poor diet on which to nourish the soul.
A few days before the letter arrived from that disenchanted pastor, a world-famous evangelical theologian (not noted for any exclusive preoccupation with the inerrancy question—Carl F. H. Henry, no less) gently chided the editor for not participating decisively enough in the current discussions of this topic. The golden mean between too much and not enough is difficult to determine.
At a recent conference in Toronto (CT, Aug 7, p. 34), faculty members from 27 colleges, seminaries, and universities, plus many students and pastors, gathered to discuss the topic of inerrancy and related issues. They came from most of the centers of evangelical learning and opinion. From Fuller Theological Seminary came Jack Rogers, Lewis Smedes, and Charles Kraft. From Trinity Evangelical Divinity School came John Woodbridge and Grant Osborne. From Westminster Theological Seminary came John Frame and Richard Gaffin. From the Dutch Reformed movement came James Olthuis and John Vander Stelt. Among the many others who participated in the meetings were: Carl Armerding and Ian Rennie of Regent College, Robert Johnston of New College (Berkeley), William Abraham of Seattle Pacific University, Stephen Mott of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Ray Van Leeuwen of Calvin Theological Seminary, and Robert Webber of Wheaton College.
There were also evangelicals from mainline denominational seminaries: Richard Longenecker from Wycliffe College (Toronto), Clark Pinnock from McMaster Divinity School, Gerald Sheppard from Union Theological Seminary (N.Y.), Donald Bloesch from Dubuque Seminary, and Iain Nicol from Knox College (Toronto). Graduate schools of theology were likewise represented: William Lane from Western Kentucky University, Anthony Thiselton from the University of Sheffield, T. Baards from Free University (Holland), and many others.
Last September the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy met in Chicago for a conference from which issued the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. The same organization has called for another conference to be held late this year in Saint Louis.
Surely all this demonstrates that the church is exceedingly troubled over the question of inerrancy. We may well regret the uproar as a tempest in a teapot or lament that the issue is long overdue for more thorough study by evangelicals. But the concern of the church is evident. At CHRISTIANITY TODAY we seek to keep our readers informed, to note the significance of the controversy, and, when we can, to clarify issues and provide readers with data necessary for drawing intelligent and responsible conclusions.
Lessons From A Theological Controversy
A major breakthrough in the ongoing evangelical debate over inerrancy may have occurred at that recent gathering of scholars, students, and pastors in Toronto. The conference reflected in microcosm the broad range of evangelical conviction. But it was more than a sharing of opinions. With a minimum of posturing and positioning, earnest scholars learned the value of meeting face to face and exploring firsthand the several angles of vision each brought to the Bible. The result was a remarkable credit to the Christian spirit of those present.
The most significant outcome of the colloquy was a meeting of minds on central issues that divided the group. Before the conference, many were uncertain about how much they really shared in common. After all, harsh words had been exchanged in recent years and a great deal of suspicion had been generated. Many differences remained unresolved, and a basic understanding of the nature of biblical authority still divided some of those present. Still, throughout the conference, conviction grew that not only had the participants achieved great progress in mutual understanding, but that many had reached agreement or near agreement on the most critical issues relating to the errancy or inerrancy of the Bible.
The Bête Noir Of Inerrantists
Jack Rogers, author of The Scripture in the Westminster Confession (Eerdmans, 1967), editor of Biblical Authority (Word, 1977), and coeditor with Donald McKim of The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (Harper and Row, 1979) has become the bête noir of defenders of the inerrancy of Scripture. A consensus of evangelical writers, including Francis Schaeffer, Harold Lindsell, Carl F. H. Henry, John Woodbridge, William Barker, John Gerstner, Norman Geisler, the current editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and many others had charged Rogers with limiting biblical infallibility to faith and practice (sometimes without indicating exactly how one could determine which parts of the Bible were “faith and practice”). According to this view of “limited inerrancy,” only those biblical statements directly bearing on the doctrine of salvation should be accepted as God-given, and other aspects (nonsalvational matters) may well be merely erroneous human opinions that certainly were not divinely protected from error or were not possessed of divine authority.
Why Inerrancy Is Important
To the defenders of inerrancy this called for sinful man to stand in judgment over the Bible. It subverted the instruction about the Bible set forth by Christ, the Lord of the church, and flatly rejected the Bible’s own teaching on what is manifestly a religious matter—the authority and role of Holy Scripture in the life and thought of the believer. Its practical significance, moreover, was to render the Bible ineffective as the church’s guide to truth. Such a view of the Bible left the individual believer with two alternatives: either, on the one hand, to go snooping through the Bible trying to decide which parts of the Bible must be accepted (being salvational) and which parts could safely be discarded or, on the other hand, to rely upon a purely subjective response (which verses the “Holy Spirit speaks to me”). Either alternative frees the Christian from the authority of the written word of Scripture and leads inevitably to a fatal subjectivism.
Why Inerrancy Seems To Be A Dangerous Doctrine
For Rogers and company, on the contrary, the inerrantists represented a heretical innovation in the Christian church that (at least for some) resembled a malignant cancer that must at all cost be removed by immediate and radical surgery. Its malignancy manifested itself in two ways.
First, it represented a negative and degenerate stance adopted as an emergency measure in opposition to modern liberal attacks against biblical inspiration. Also, the new doctrine of inerrancy unfortunately proved utterly unacceptable to any thoughtful student of Holy Scripture. Its effect was to drive from the church any reasonable scholar who could not stomach the necessary “sacrifice of the intellect.”
Second, because of the importance to them of their view of biblical inerrancy (confusing it as they did with biblical authority), inerrantists became a major disruptive force to tear apart the church and to divert its energies to the support of impossible positions—energies that desperately needed to be employed in the church’s witness for Christ and the edification of the body.
Misconceptions Drove Evangelicals Apart
But things are not always what they seem. As the Toronto conference progressed, it became clear that massive misconceptions as to how each understood the other rendered most of their previously written interchanges largely irrelevant. With transparent honesty and disarming humility, Jack Rogers confessed that he had radically misunderstood what inerrantists were saying. He lamented his own “blind spots” and “lack of clear vision.” His writings had “not been neutral, objective treatises” but “arguments designed to defend a position under very heavy attack.”
Misconceptions About Inerrantists
Rogers’s first misconceptions, so he explained, related to the nature of biblical inspiration as defended by inerrantists. For them the Bible was wholly a divine book in which the human author (no matter what some of them at times affirmed) became totally eclipsed—or so he had thought.
This basic misunderstanding as to the nature of biblical inspiration in turn led the inerrantists, as Rogers had perceived them, to a false and dangerous hermeneutic. In conformity with their speculation as to how a perfect God must reveal himself, inerrantists viewed the Bible as a book of exact and precise language. They overlooked the human and culturally conditioned form of the Bible. The purpose of the Bible, so they seemed to be saying, is to enlighten mankind in all branches of human knowledge. And by inspiration, the biblical authors were not only informed as to future scientific and historical truth, but also enabled to record these truths in a form appropriate to modern scientific historical viewpoints. Naturally, the inerrantists also failed to discern the variant literary genre of the Bible and the importance of the historical-critical method of interpretation by which an author must be understood in the light of the way language was used in his own time and culture.
The basis for this false hermeneutic, so Rogers held, lay in the slavish dependence by inerrantists upon the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid, the eighteenth-century Scottish realist. Inheriting Reid’s views as to the nature of human thought and language, the linguistic descendents of the Scottish realist held that all human knowledge is univocal rather than analogical. Biblical words, therefore, have a literal and universal character in which all meanings are obvious. In support of this naïvely realistic view of language, the inerrantists also adopted a rationalistic defense of Scripture as the Word of God that largely undercut the biblical view of the witness of the Holy Spirit.
Finally, this inerrantist view of a Scripture that was all divine but not at all human led to absurd hermeneutical corollaries that certainly did not represent the view of the church in the ancient, medieval, or Reformation periods. Rather, it arose late in church history and was polished off in its contemporary form by the Princeton theologians, Hodge and Warfield.
Such was Rogers’s view of the inerrantist position at the time he wrote all three of his major volumes. Since then he has come to see that many inerrantists simply do not hold the hermeneutical position or the rationalist defense of the faith that he has associated with the inerrantists’ position. And even inerrantists who tended in practice, if not in theory, to deny the full humanity of Scripture, may have misconceived the thrust of Rogers’s attack, thinking that he was really opposed to the truth of the Bible rather than to their false hermeneutic and unbiblical rationalism.
Misconceptions By Inerrantists
In much the same way, inerrantists discovered that they had radically misjudged the view of Rogers. He was objecting not to their cherished doctrine of the truth of the Bible but to the miscellaneous truths many of them were deriving from the Bible. Again and again Rogers stressed that “the Bible is an infallible divine message given in human culturally conditioned form. A study of the message in its original, cultural context and a translation of its intended meaning into our culture and time is the function of scriptural study.” With the Reformers, Rogers holds that the purpose of Bible study is not “to pick out technical information about the problems of science or society.” Rather, it is “to realize a right relationship to God and a right approach to structuring the covenant community.”
This means that the faithful student of Scripture is not to peruse its pages in order to find, by prophetic insight, the latest scientific theory imbedded in the Bible so as to demonstrate its divine origin. He is not to judge the historical writings of the Old Testament or the gospel in the New as though they were objective historical documents from the pen of a trained historian writing from our twentieth-century perspective.
To interpret the Bible in this way is to make it say what its human authors never intended to say. We must not always interpret the Bible writer to mean what we would mean if we used those same words today. We must acknowledge that the Bible is God’s word brought to us in human words—human words of a particular origin, spoken and written by particular human beings at a particular time and place.
But by no means, so Rogers avers, does that mean that Holy Scripture speaks falsely. Referring directly to those who “seemed to understand me as intending to prove that the Bible was errant in matters other than salvation and the life of faith,” he states emphatically: “That is not my position.” He specifically rejected the “ludicrous” view of an errant-infallible Bible. His previous opposition to inerrancy was against “a narrow theory regarding the interpretation of the Bible.” If “inerrancy simply means truth,” then “I certainly want to be an inerrantist.” He continues: “Imprecision of language, accommodation to ancient cultural forms of expression, and a variety of literary genre” are one thing; and he accepts this. But “picking or choosing or dictating what God may and may not say” is quite a different matter, and the latter he forthrightly rejects. He adds: “I do not espouse the errancy of the Bible. Nor do I espouse a limited inerrancy. If inerrancy means that the Bible is true, trustworthy, and authoritative, I believe in the full inerrancy of the Bible.”
In his historical surveys of the doctrine of the church, he did not affirm that the premodern church held that Scripture sets forth errors, but that for them, the Bible was not inerrant in the wooden hermeneutical sense of contemporary inerrantists as he then understood them. Of course, the fathers of the ancient church and of the Reformation churches, as well as the Westminster divines, taught the full authority and truth of Holy Scriptures.
In the discussion of his own understanding of biblical inspiration, Rogers states his view of the complete truth of the Bible is in agreement with the view of inerrancy set forth in the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. That document, in emphasizing the complete authority of the words of Scripture, includes a safeguard against false aspects of a dictation model of biblical inspiration by its denial that in choosing the words of Scripture God overrode the writers’ personalities.
When probed further concerning his view of scriptural truth as related to science and history, Rogers defined his view more precisely. He does not believe that Scripture ever states what is false in science or history. Scripture could be interpreted that way if we insisted on reading back into Scripture our own contemporary ways of saying things, but that would be to misinterpret Scripture. We must constantly remember the religious purpose of the biblical writers and always allow them to speak in the language and cultural medium of their own day. But when we interpret Scripture fairly to mean what it really means to say in its own way, it tells only the truth and never in any part of it errs or guides us away from the truth. What more could any inerrantist ask?
Where Do We Go From Here?
What shall we say to all this? We rejoice that some evangelicals, at least, were willing to discuss their differences and to listen—especially listen—so that viewpoints became clarified and the issues that divided them were not beclouded but illuminated in a way profitable for all. Let this stand as a model for the rest of us.
A Plea To Inerrantists
As evangelicals respond to this humble attempt at a meeting of minds, certain dangers present themselves.
1. Inerrantists may choose to dig in and defend their previous interpretations of Rogers and his supporters. After all, both he and they are on public record in the books they have published. Such a response, however, would be fruitless and, in fact, harmful to their cause. The point is not whether or not inerrantists are justified in the way they have interpreted Rogers and others. The final authority on what Rogers really believes and teaches is Jack Rogers. We must not condemn him for views he says he does not hold. We must grant him the privilege of clarifying his position, and then we must deal with his view as he really means to present it.
2. Likewise, inerrantists must not focus their attention on refuting Rogers’s interpretation of Warfield, Hodge, and the old Princeton theology. After all, Warfield is not infallible. Whether Rogers’s understanding of Warfield’s position is right or wrong may be an interesting and highly mootable historical question. But we must all weigh Rogers’s view not by the standard of Warfield but by the infallible standard of Holy Writ.
3. Naturally, we must not think agreement on the inerrancy of Scripture really settles all issues (even when carefully defined so as to isolate the complete truth of Scripture from the related but quite distinct issues of hermeneutics and apologetics). It only provides us with the common ground of an infallible and inerrant standard (without limitation to only parts of Scripture) on which evangelicals may pursue other questions, some of which are of even greater importance. Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons assert the full authority of the Bible, but they interpret it so as to eliminate the very gospel for which God gave us the Bible.
Many important issues, therefore, still remain. Over these, evangelicals may well wish to take issue with Rogers. They may object to his unqualified espousal of a philosophy of critical realism; they may see logical pitfalls in his commitment to the analogical nature of all human thought. They may regard him as too generous in his estimate of neo-orthodox or existential views of biblical inspiration.
Very serious questions, for example, need to be raised regarding Rogers’s application of his own hermeneutics and biblical exegesis. As he sees it, how does this relate to matters of biblical introduction? Does he agree with E. J. Young of Westminster Theological Seminary who, in his early work on biblical introduction, held that Solomon did not write the book of Ecclesiastes, and that rightly interpreted, the book does not really claim that? And what about the Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles, second and third Isaiah, multiple authorship of the Pentateuch, or the Macabbean date of Daniel? Is the Book of Jonah a story with a moral or history? Rightly interpreted, does the Bible tell us anything about the biological origin of man (evolution or creation)? Or anything relevant for the geological timetable (long ages of earth’s history)? Or the history of the human race (man as a recent phenomenon or as existing hundreds of thousands of years on planet earth)? What limits, if any, does he place upon the cultural relativity of the Bible. Does his insistence upon the cultural conditioning of all human language and thought forms destroy the possibility of valid human knowledge?
These questions face all evangelicals. Inerrancy does not in itself settle them. Some, no doubt, are trivial. But some of them are important issues demanding the serious attention of all students of the Bible—of all who take the Bible seriously as the guide of their thought and life.
The lesson we can draw from the Toronto conference is simply that the first rule in theological controversy is to make sure you understand what the other fellow is really saying. Controversy carried on in low visibility rarely engenders anything more than heat. We congratulate Jack Rogers for taking the initiative in the midst of controversy to clarify his own position and take new aim. We call on all inerrantists to do the same. If we really object to Rogers’s views on subsidiary positions that have surfaced in the course of the debate, let us direct our focus accurately upon them and the hermeneutical and apologetic issues they involve. We do not at all suggest that these are unimportant issues. Far from it—we encourage discussion and sharp debate of them. But let us not charge Rogers with holding that the Bible is errant in the sense that it says what isn’t so. He himself affirms that he holds the Bible to be all true, and he just might be merely misinterpreting what the Bible says, even though he is as eager as we are to insist that the Bible is all true in whatever it really says.
A Plea To All Who Have Objected To Inerrancy But Believe The Bible Is True
At the same time, we urge Jack Rogers—now that he understands what inerrancy means to most of its current defenders (rightly interpreted, the Bible tells us only truth, and truth that comes with divine authority)—to focus his attack not against inerrancy but against encrustations that have grown around it: the false hermeneutic (as he sees it), which so many who hold to inerrancy have espoused, and the false rationalism, by which so many inerrantists support their view.
We also urge him to put into writing his views on the complete truth and divine authority of Holy Scripture without surrounding his affirmations with so many qualifications that his affirmations are lost in the maze of qualifications. We need qualifications. That is proved by the frequent misunderstanding of the inerrantist position. But we also need statements that are sufficiently clear and forthright that people know what we are saying. Obfuscation of the truth by clarifications that do not clarify and by qualifications that do not qualify but negate is a disease endemic to theologians. For the good of the church, we must all battle daily to avoid it—especially if we are theologians.
The Reason For Urgency
What, then, was really at stake in the Toronto discussions about inerrancy? It was not a question of purity or compromise, of peace at any price. In microcosm at Toronto, and throughout the church at large today, a much larger issue is at stake. It is the unity of the evangelical witness to the full truth of the written Word of God. We ought not to follow those whose philosophy is to divide up believers into tiny sects in the name of an absolute purity of doctrine. Some issues are worth fighting for and some are not. And it is terribly important we know which is which. We should imitate the great evangelicals of the past who sought to preserve the unity of all biblical forces in their witness to the full authority of Scripture over the church and to its gospel for the renewal of the church and the conversion of the nations.
Let us hear the question posed in the Word of God: “Why then are we faithless to one another?” (Mal. 2:10). If we are going to make significant progress in the Great Commission of our Lord, we evangelicals will have to select our battlefields more carefully than we have in the past, wage our battles more lovingly, and submit our total strategy to the sovereign judgment of our Lord and his Word. We trust that this meeting may symbolize the rebirth of a discriminating unity in evangelicalism that will be at once consistently loyal to the full authority of Scripture (including the inerrancy of Scripture rightly and historically understood), and also irenic in spirit.
Evaluating the American Festival of Evangelism at the closing press conference were a Presbyterian (Leighton Ford), a Pentecostal (Thomas Zimmerman), a Baptist (Bill Hogue), and a Christian Churchman (Paul Benjamin). Not too many years ago such a joint appearance across denominational lines would not have been possible. Hogue spoke to the new posture of the Southern Baptists: “We intend to work with other evangelicals.”
These men were there not at the behest of the press, but because they shared a common commitment to winning people to Christ. Over the years evangelicals have learned they can trust each other, and they can deemphasize denominational distinctives for the sake of making a dent in this country’s multitudes who don’t care about religion, churches, or the gospel.
We commend these leaders, and many others, for their persistence in the cause of evangelism. Plans for the festival floundered in the early going, not simply because huge gatherings cost huge sums to promote, but because of skepticism in some circles that enough lay people cared about evangelism. If anything, the festival proved that people want help, they want that help in terms they can understand, and they are not content to theorize about evangelism.
It is our hope that the Kansas City festival will spawn at least two or three similar meetings in the future, perhaps in the Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast. The momentum must not be lost. The Evangelistic Association of New England has proved over the years that regional conferences work.
The Kansas City festival must be duplicated across the country not only because evangelism demands trained disciples, but also because the unconverted need to see Christians dropping their denominational fists. Didn’t Jesus say something about the world believing in him because of the unity of his people?
Eutychus
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A Book Is Known By Its Review
The art of analyzing a book review is one every student should master. I am an experienced review reviewer because I began writing reviews when I was a junior in Sunday school. I reviewed books from our Sunday school library, which was located on a window sill in our classroom. It was a collection of paperbacks by authors like Paul Hutchens and other juvenile writers—that is, writers of juvenile fiction. I read so many Sugar Creek Gang books that my teacher was afraid I’d get diabetes. Twice I almost fell out of the window.
The first step in analyzing a book review is to note who wrote the review. You must try to figure out why he or she was chosen to write this particular review. Suppose the book is Lectures on Gnosticism and the reviewer is identified as “Horace Postlewaithe, Jr., head pastry chef at Hoffmeyer’s Bakery, Madison, Wisconsin.” This probably indicates that the book review editor is overweight, owes Hoffmeyer money, and is paying off his bill by sending free review books to the employees. On the other hand, it could also mean that Postlewaithe, Jr., is related to the author or the publisher, in which case they are guaranteed an enthusiastic review. Either way, don’t bother to read the review. It will be biased and you will waste money buying the book.
However, if the reviewer is Dr. Qumran Masada, noted professor of dispensational archaeology at Feeblecorn University, you know immediately the review will be over your head. Furthermore, the professor will complain that the book did not have enough information on the Ming Dynasty, and so cannot be trusted on any other subject. Again, you have saved money.
You must also take note of the publisher, because there are some publishers we just cannot trust no matter who the reviewer is. If the reviewer recommends a book from a “bad” publisher, don’t believe him. If he says something critical about a “good” publisher, take it with a grain of salt. After all, a good tree produces good fruit, and a good publisher publishes good books, no matter what the reviewer may say. It’s as simple as that.
Next, check the name of the author. Do you recognize it? If not, don’t waste time reading the book. New authors are always angry at something or confused about the situation. Old authors are safe, especially if this is the tenth book in a series. By now, the author has run out of material and is living in an echo chamber. The book will be boring but safe.
Should you find yourself desiring to read the book whose review you have analyzed, immediately hide your bifocals and donate the price of the book to a worthy cause. Chances are the reviewer didn’t read the book, so why should you? Wait for the digest to appear in paperback, or, better yet, wait for the movie, whichever comes first. And while you are waiting, you can always read more reviews.
EUTYCHUS X
No Turning Back
Karen Burton Mains is to be commended for her view of the perplexity of the modern Christian woman [“It’s A Mystery to Me,” July 17]. I agree that the church is best served if it accepts that the women’s movement has happened. To deny that is like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube.
It is time for pragmatism, not theorizing about women’s role in the church. The women’s movement can be a challenge, not a threat, if viewed as the opportunity to encourage ministry by and for women in all areas of their lives. To define women’s role in terms of restrictions or limitations was not Christ’s view. He said, “You are freed …,” “Go in peace,” and “Go tell …” What if the church were to declare a moratorium on the limitation statements and say only positive things about women’s role and ministry?
The idea sounds exciting enough to try.
KATIE FUNK WIEBE
Hillsboro, Kans.
Self-Examination Essential
Your editorial, “Love of God Demands Love for His Church” [July 17], was excellent and timely. We need to be confronted with the importance of and the necessity for the church in today’s world. It is the body of Christ. If we are to work within the church to improve it (and we must), we will have to examine the church and be willing to be critical. As we examine the church, we will be examining ourselves and when critical, will be critical of ourselves. I trust we are able and willing.
NEIL R. FULTON
Elmhurst, Ill.
It was good to read such strong support for “God’s instrument for introducing love into the barren, loveless existence of the fragmented and isolated life of twentieth-century man.” I have served in three churches in 11 years of full-time service. I have never found a church that did not have serious problems. But we all must realize that the church belongs to Jesus Christ, who “will never leave us or forsake us” and finds “all things to be possible.”
I find myself in graduate school, where the church is under great criticism. Some see no hope in revitalization, and have chosen alternatives. The leadership of the church must itself be open to a “multitude of counselors” for the strengthening of the church. Critics of the church must be willing “to hear reproof” also, that they might obtain understanding.
DONALD PAUL BATES
Wheaton, Ill.
No Help
Kok’s points are well made and communicate a sincere truth: the body must know what the individual is suffering before it can help [“Pastors Shouldn’t Keep Secrets,” July 17]. What he failed to point out is that people around us simply do not help. I can’t count the number of times that when people begin to describe some problem area of their life, what immediately comes is advice, suggestions, and war stories to “help.” It is exasperating and disappointing. Kok’s metaphor of the body is as scriptural as it is accurate. But the body, by God’s great design, almost always responds to its own need properly. The body of Christ (some of its members) frequently fails miserably.
DAVID W. SMITHWICK
Glendale, Ariz.
Before And After
Charles Bussey, in “Bob Dylan: Driven Home” [June 26], quotes from Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” dialogue between Abraham and God and interprets: “Dylan’s theme rings clear and true: only through obedience to God can man achieve peace.”
The said “theme” may be clear and true, but at that time it was not what Dylan was trying to get across. That album, hailed by the secular world as the greatest collection of the poetry of evil since Baudelaire, packs a communicative force awesome even today. But it is a communication of hate, fatalistic despair, and the blackest cynicism. We should not whitewash or reinterpret the blasphemies of 1965 in light of the blessings of 1980. They spring from different motives and different men.
T. S. Eliot’s postconversion “Little Gidding” said of “… the rending pain of reenactment / Of all that you have done, and been; the Shame / Of motives late revealed, and the awareness / Of things ill done and done to others’ harm / Which once you took for exercise of virtue. / Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.” Dylan has recently written, “… I was blinded … I was gone … How weak was the foundation I was standing upon.” Both Eliot’s and Dylan’s preconversion poetry contained striking insight into the bitter futility of existing in a world with nothing real to cling to. But their earlier works can still be valuable in an instructive as well as artistic sense. These works show man’s chaotic state and need of peace. But it is only in their works after conversion that their “theme” becomes “obedience to God” in achieving it.
MARTIN SARVIS
Amarillo, Tex.
Nurture For Young Artists
Seerveld’s article, “Can Art Survive the Secular Onslaught?” [July 17], was of interest to me as a parent of a 17-year-old visual artist who has for months been trying to locate a Christian postsecondary art school. Could it be that the reason the Christian community has not caught the vision of arts as a “reasonable service” is because the Christian academic world has convinced us that art has no place there? The Christian academic world is finally catching up in the fields of science and engineering and I would like to see the same in the visual arts.
WANDA F. MILLER
Ellicott City, Md.
Growth Or Decline?
In “The Decline of a Church and Its Culture” [July 17], Lindsell attributes the rise in Sunday school enrollment in the Roman Catholic Church (the Parish School of Religion) to rediscovery of the Bible. Would that were the case! While it is true that there has been a resurgence of biblical interest and scholarship since Vatican II, the PSR increase is a negative factor, not a positive development. It represents a turning away from the full-time Catholic school training, which dominated the Catholic educational scene since the twenties, to the superficial Sunday-only education. As such it can be seen as supportive of Lindsell’s thesis that biblical (religious) literacy is on the decline in the U.S.
SISTER LORETTA PASTVA
Chardon, Ohio
Please Document
Some of Mr. Dinwiddie’s points are valid [“Moneychangers in the Church, June 26], but stripped of integrity because they lack documentation, particularly the opening statements. Specifically, “A popular gospel musician’s fees skyrocket … because his booking agency takes 40 percent … as commission.” This amount seems exorbitant; it is common knowledge in agency circles that the normal booking fee runs between 10 and 20 percent.
Can you validate the statement “Christian artists’ homes break up at an alarming rate”? This sounds like passing judgment, an undocumented generalization which tempts the human nature to suspect the bad rather than encourage the good.
PAULA PILECKI
New Sound Concerts
Walpole, Mass.
All statements were carefully checked by the author, but names were omitted so as to focus on the issue and not the personalities. The artist involved authenticated the 40 percent booking fee. Public records, pastors, and business associates document the increasing rate of breakup of homes among Christian artists. Care was taken to qualify statements to protect the integrity of those who faithfully discipline their talents and lives for the glory of God. Other responses suggest that, if anything, he article understated the seriousness and pervasiveness of the growing commercialism in music ministry.
—Editors
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Dr. Thomas Zimmerman is a former president of the National Association of Evangelicals who presently serves as general superintendent of the Assemblies of God. As part of the twenty-fifth anniversary of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I asked him to write an article for us on what Pentecostals are doing right.
When I was a youth, I didn’t think Pentecostals did much of anything right. I considered them fanatics who carried on antics, in the name of religion, far across town on the other side of the railroad tracks. Later I changed my mind about Pentecostals. Of course, I got converted—to Christ, that is. And I met a few live Pentecostals.
But the really decisive factor in my changed attitude came when—of all things—I first read the work of Jonathan Edwards: Distinguishing Marks of a Revival of the Spirit of God. That book gave me a new standard—a biblical standard—by which to evaluate the structure of the Christian church. It cut through frothy superficialities and put the focus on the really significant aspects of Christian experience.
We evangelicals have much to learn from our Pentecostal brothers and sisters. God has greatly blessed their witness during the last half century. That does not mean we agree with them about everything—especially about their distinctive doctrines of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Still, we confess that God has wonderfully used them in many ways, and there is much they can teach us. In his article, Tom Zimmerman shares some of the things God has done through the Pentecostal churches.
In this same issue, Tom Bisset analyzes what the broadcasting business means to the church. Already it has transformed the image of evangelicals in our nation. Its potential for the future is startling. Then we include an interview with Jerry Falwell, the most successful of modern television evangelists. Through television Falwell has become the acknowledged leader of right-wing evangelicals and the head of Moral Majority. In his recent book, reviewed here by Carl F. H. Henry, Falwell calls for wide support from all who accept his basic moral values—whether they be fundamentalists, evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Jews, or Mormons.
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Words Hot From The Soul
Malcolm Muggeridge: A Life, by Ian Hunter (Thomas Nelson, 1980, 243 pp., $13.95), is reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Poway, California.
One might well ask the question why, after Muggeridge’s own Chronicles of Wasted Time, anyone would dare to attempt a full-length biography of this man for whom battalions of adjectives are insufficient. Is not such a work redundant and unnecessary?
Fortunately, the answer is no. Ian Hunter, a Canadian law professor, student, and friend of Muggeridge, has produced a thorough and sensitive account of this important man. Himself a stylish and lucid writer, Hunter has included many details and perspectives that are absent from his subject’s own works.
Since the third volume of Muggeridge’s autobiography has not appeared, and some—including his American publishers—doubt that it will be forthcoming, this book may ultimately prove to be the only detailed, organized account of his latter years. It was during this time that Muggeridge “rediscovered” Jesus and began to write about him as few have ever done. The storm of invective this provoked from, in Hunter’s words, the “intellectual Samurai” of the time is particularly well chronicled.
For American readers who are unfamiliar with the wit of Muggeridge, Hunter plucks some prize barbs from the slag heaps of the British press. Some examples, among many: John Foster Dulles—“dull, duller, Dulles”; and Clement Attlee—“a sheep in sheep’s clothing.” The account of his television interview with Mike Wallace of CBS is priceless.
Most important, Hunter penetratingly reviews the record of Muggeridge as a prophet. He predicted, when the prevailing opinion was totally contrary, the demise of the British Empire, the rise of Soviet tyranny, the failure of the League of Nations, and the disastrous effects of television, materialism, and eroticism, among many others. Of particular interest is the prediction that euthanasia will be the next raging social issue. Based on this track record, Hunter urges the reader to consider Muggeridge’s most consistent prophecy: that we are living “in the twilight of a spent civilization.”
Hunter is certainly right when he states that Muggeridge’s genius goes beyond his literary powers. It resides mainly in his “having something to say” that is “hot from his soul.” For all who would know this man and his message, Malcolm Muggeridge: A Life is essential.
C. S. Lewis Aglow
The Achievement of C. S. Lewis, by Thomas Howard (Shaw, 1980, 139 pp., $5.95), and C. S. Lewis: Spinner of Tales, by Evan K. Gibson (Eerdmans, 1980, 284 pp., $8.95), are reviewed by Michael H. Macdonald, professor of German and philosophy, and director of the C. S. Lewis Institute at Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington.
Two recent books that merit the attention of readers of Lewis fiction are Tom Howard’s The Achieiement of C. S. Lewis and Evan Gibson’s C. S. Lewis: Spinner of Tales. (CT readers may also wish to note that Carolyn Keefe’s compilation of essays on Lewis’s personality and work, C. S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher, was republished [fifth printing] in 1980 by Zondervan.)
Both authors have distinguished themselves elsewhere: Howard as professor of English at Gordon College, author (Christ the Tiger, among others), and popular lecturer; and Gibson, professor emeritus of English at Seattle Pacific University, author of numerous pieces.
Howard writes as he speaks—powerfully. Employing an immense vocabulary and a marvelous way with words, he attempts not so much to find a category for Lewis’s work as to see the nature of his achievement. How does his art relate to human experience? Does it throw light on or obscure that experience? Does it ennoble or trivialize our vision of man? Howard does not miss the central motifs of Lewis works: moral order (fixed, serene, blissful), orderliness, temptation, freedom, heaven, hell, longing—in the end, human experience in the bright light of the Ultimate.
Gibson’s exceedingly careful study may become the definitive introductory work on Lewis’s fiction. His clientele are those ordinary readers who would like to understand more clearly Lewis’s ethical and theological implications. Somewhat like Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Gibson’s book puts together much that we already know in a new, fresh, and persuasive way.
In addition, Gibson uncovers what many critics miss almost entirely—the structural balance of the works. He also notes everything from the number of colorful nouns and adjectives in a chapter to the inconsistencies of an illustrator. Thoroughly immersed in Scripture, Gibson’s wisdom and maturity are particularly evident in his interpretations of Aslan, Father Christmas, and the Green Lady.
Gibson’s style is much more Apollonian than Howard’s. The emphasis is on form, order, meticulous care to detail, and clarity of contour. Dionysian might not quite be the word to characterize Howard, yet his style is less one of moderation, order, and law than one of English meshed with Latin (or French), and magnificent sentences (sentence fragments, sometimes)—strong and soaring. As one might suspect, Gibson discusses the Narnia books separately while Howard makes sweeping references to Narnia in totality. Both do so excellently.
Perhaps what distinguishes these two works from others about C. S. Lewis is what Peter Kreeft notes in the preface to Howard’s book: these are books that look beyond Lewis to something far more important—his world.
The Bible Into Shoeleather
Ladder of Angels, by Madeleine L’Engle (Penguin, 1980, 128 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Elizabeth Skoglund, family counselor and author, Burbank, California.
Combining a charm of style that revitalizes many biblical passages with a dazzling display of children’s art, Madeleine L’Engle has produced in Ladder of Angels a high quality of Christian literature.
While biblical passages are made contemporary in a loose paraphrase, authentic biblical truth seems accurately preserved. Practical truth appears to be emphasized with striking clarity. The disunity that befell Adam and Eve in their sin, the sharp turn of the question “What of us?” following the description of Ezekiel’s vision, and the defeat of Satan when confronted with Job’s faithfulness all have applications to life for us here and now. Old truth is not distorted but made new. Biblical principles are translated into shoe-leather for those of us who follow Christ in this decade.
Adding appeal and further understanding to the ancient but ever new—and newly put—words of the Scriptures are the colorful illustrations by children, painted with characteristically combined childish simplicity and depth.
Ladder of Angels is for any age. Indeed, it is for anyone willing to allow Scripture to speak with its ancient power, yet to be made new for all persons of all time.
Clark Strikes Back
Language and Theology, by Gordon H. Clark (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1980, 152 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by Robert H. Countess, chaplain, U.S. Army, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
In a review of Robert L. Reymond’s The Justification of Knowledge (CT, Nov. 18, 1977), I wrote: “Reymond shows that Gordon H. Clark’s absolute idealism leaves us with the impossibility of knowledge.” And: “Responses … will surely be forthcoming.”
Gordon Clark has produced his response. He makes witty but trenchant criticisms that largely call for Reymond to produce his own theory of language, especially for him to specify what sensation is and what role it plays in the acquisition of knowledge.
Reymond contended that scores of Scriptures point to the acquiring of knowledge via sensory experience—particularly those passages in which are employed such verbs as see, hear, read, and listen. To Reymond, these are obvious sensory knowledge-producing verbs, and he then asked Clark how these could be ignored when at the same time Clark claims the Bible to be his sole source of knowledge. Reymond insisted that Clark do exegesis which, Reymond holds, would demolish Clark’s absolute idealism.
Clark has produced in this monograph three emphases: (1) that ordinary language is, after all, really adequate for “God talk”; (2) that empirical epistemology leads inevitably to skepticism; and (3) that human language is possible and meaningful “because God created man a rational spirit, a mind capable of thinking, worshiping, and talking to God. God operates through his Logos, the wisdom that enlightens every man in the world” (p. 152).
Language and Theology is Gordon Clark’s defense of his epistemology known as “spiritual rationalism” (p. 131). When an empiricist states, “Knowledge is derived from the senses,” Clark raises several seemingly devastating objections to empirically based epistemology. They are: (1) that sense impressions can be highly untrustworthy; (2) that sense impressions cannot produce concepts; and (3) that sense impressions can never lead to universal propositions (which universal propositions are fundamentally necessary to logical thought [pp. 132ff.]).
At this juncture, one might easily misunderstand Clark, and, possibly, Reymond has. Clark does not deny that sensory impressions exist. Nor does he deny that they provide data with which knowledge has to do. Rather, Clark asserts that sensory impressions produce only sensory impressions—not knowledge—because knowledge is logico-propositional. He believes that logic is “the architecture” of God’s mind and thus logic is universal, valid, and a most necessary basis for knowledge.
It appears that Clark has answered Reymond’s question: “Don’t you have to read the Bible?” (p. 131). Clark readily embraces sensory involvement with his scriptural pages and his way of looking at scriptural, ink-formed words in Hebrew and Greek and English (add also French and German!). But all such sensory impressions do not produce knowledge for Clark. Knowledge derives from logical handling of these data and relating them to concepts built into man’s God-created mind.
Clark fails, however, to confront a most basic issue of Christian epistemology when he does not treat of what he means when he speaks of our knowing God. There is at least on the surface a sterility to Clark’s knowledge. Is knowing two plus two equals four like knowing that in the Bible we are told about God? How can one who believes in these two propositions be comforted by them? Can one love a proposition? Be consoled by a proposition?
Like Reymond, Clark is most effective as a critic. This book is to be recommended highly, but I suspect those seeking positive answers will probably have to continue seeking them.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Pastoral Ministry. The Shepherd Under Christ (Northwestern, Milwaukee, Wis.), by Armin W. Scheutze and Irwin J. Habeck, is a textbook for pastoral theology, covering topics from the call to the ministry to the shepherd and his supervisors. Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors (Broadman), by W. A. Criswell, covers the same territory, drawn from over 50 years of success in the pastorate, and defined as “working now toward eight thousand registered every Sunday in Sunday School and toward a giving program of over eight million dollars a year. “Becoming a Prophetic Community (John Knox), by Jack Corbett and Elizabeth Smith, speaks to the social ministry of the church. Lawrence Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke look at the church as an organism, rather than an organization in A Theology of Church Leadership (Zondervan). David Kingrey and Jack Willcuts offer a corporate model for church life in Team Ministry (Barclay, Newberg, Oreg.).
Two nicely done books on conflict are: Resolving Church Conflicts (Harper & Row), by G. Douglass Lewis, and Conflict Ministry in the Church (Broadman), by Larry L. McSwain and William C. Treadwell, Jr.
Dealing specifically with hurting pastors are: Coping with Depression in the Ministry (Cope, 225 South First Ave., Suite 205, Arcadia, Calif.), by Archibald D. Hart, a set of cassettes and booklet of genuine value; Burn-Out: Stages of Disillusionment in the Helping Professions (Human Sciences), by Jerry Edelwich; and Passages of a Pastor (Zondervan), by Cecil R. Paul. This is all useful material.
Preaching. David Steel looks at Preaching Through the Year (John Knox) by focusing on the liturgical seasons. The Homiletical Plot (John Knox), by Eugene L. Lowry, looks at the sermon as narrative art form. Richard Jensen discusses variety and imagination in preaching in Telling the Story (Augsburg). Building Sermons to Meet Peoples’ Needs (Broadman), by Harold T. Bryson and James C. Taylor, is an easy-to-follow homiletical handbook. The Sermon as God’s Word (Abingdon), by Robert W. Duke, looks at the varieties of theological homiletics from fundamentalism to black liberationism. Robert D. Young offers this clue to effective preaching: Be Brief About It (Westminster). Reflections on 40 years of preaching is Postscript to Preaching (Judson), by Gene E. Bartlett.
Church Programs: Three books deal with the library: The Small Church Library: A Guide for Organizing and Managing It (Forward Movement, 412 Sycamore St., Cincinnati, Ohio), more a pamphlet than a book; 121 Ways Toward a More Effective Church Library (Victor), by Arthur K. Saul; and The Church Library Workbook (Light and Life, Winona Lake, Ind.), by Francine E. Walls.
Two truly excellent books by Gerard Berghoef and Lester DeKoster are The Elder’s Handbook and The Deacon’s Handbook, both published by Christian Library Press, Box 2226, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Understanding Your Church’s Curriculum (Broadman), by Howard P. Colson and Raymond M. Regdon, is now revised for a new generation of pastors.
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Human alienation goes deeper than Marx allowed.
Karl marx taught that religion dehumanizes man. The more one puts into God, the less there is left over to put into man. How can man be free to project his own social utopia if there is a God ruling over him? To that assumption Marx added a second conviction for which he is famous: that religion is the opiate of the poor and the oppressed. Unjust societies produce it, and the just society will cause it to disappear. Hence, he predicted that religion was certain to wither away.
Three telling criticisms, however, can legitimately be raised against the Marxist viewpoint.
First, Marx never really faced up to Jesus Christ and the prophetic tradition in the Bible. It is preposterous to speak of the religion of Amos or Jeremiah, Isaiah or Jesus, as a narcotic of the oppressed. Their words were designed to make the rich oppressors uncomfortable rather than put them at ease, and surely were good news to the poor. Jesus did not side with the authorities against the poor. He did not go off somewhere in the desert, fleeing society to pursue a pure life. He advocated and lived out a revolution of love that oriented him to a stand on the side of the needy as he dedicated himself to God’s kingdom and its justice.
Max Weber distinguishes between world-rejecting religions and world-affirming ones; the latter see themselves as responsible to transform culture in the service of God. The Christian message should be seen as this kind of faith, having within it a powerful impulse to change social conditions. Something Pascal said applies to Marx: “Let them at least learn what is the religion they attack before attacking it.”
The one-sidedness of Marx’s critique of religion is tragic. Had he placed his passion for social justice in the framework of the faith of his fathers instead of dialectical materialism, he might have become the great modern prophet so needed in church and society. Had he done so, many of the sad features of his thought that stem ultimately from his materialism might not have eventuated: the metaphysical emptiness, the ethical barrenness, the contempt for life, the self-righteousness.
Marx was off target as far as Christianity is concerned. Our gospel is not an opiate, but a source of great hope for all people. We must, however, be willing to admit that Christians at times have defended God at the expense of man, that we have not always paid attention to the cries of the oppressed, and that large numbers of church people still need to be awakened to the social implications of the gospel. Marx was partly right—religion can be an opiate. But he was wrong in thinking it had to be, and in not seeing its potential for hope.
Second, Marx was mistaken when he predicted the demise of religion. Actually, he made a number of predictions that have not come to pass. He thought the state would wither, whereas it has only gotten larger in Communist lands. He also thought capitalism would soon disintegrate, and did not anticipate its ability to adjust to new situations and to reform itself by correcting the evils pointed out in the original Communist Manifesto.
Certainly his prediction that religion would wither away was wrong, despite intense propaganda and even persecution in Marxist lands. That it has not faded away owes to a certain superficiality in Marx’s thought about human alienation and the role of religion. Religion is essentially a system that gives people confidence that the world and their lives in it are intelligible and meaningful. Religion will exist as long as man is man. Marx erred in not seeing that religion can ennoble and humanize life, and need not degrade or trivialize it. He even made a logical blunder at this point. He argued that man wishes for meaning, therefore believes in God, therefore God does not exist.
But the conclusion does not follow. Although nothing exists merely because we wish it did, it is not true that things cannot exist because we wish them! God may exist even though man wishes it—indeed, to turn it around, the deep need for meaning itself might bear some significance as to the nature of ultimate reality. The universe would be a madhouse if man was starved for meaning, and there was no hope of meaning to feed on.
Human alienation also goes deeper than Marx allowed. Self-centeredness and deceit exist in socialist countries too, and create a severe problem for Marx’s utopian vision. How can the classless, sharing society come into existence unless mankind is somehow changed to become loving and other-directed? What is lacking in Marx—a doctrine of salvation—is obviously present in the gospel he despised. His prophecy failed because the analysis was faulty. He opposed the One Thing that could have solved his problem. This tragically missed opportunity in the history of ideas has awesome consequences for us all.
Third, in 1840, though it might have looked to Marx as if religion was the opiate of the people, now, 60 years after the revolution, things seem to be reversed. We see in Communist society a huge totalitarian state, which forces people into a harsh regime, and which, while promising paradise in the future, denies elementary human rights in the present.
Is Marxism not the opiate of the people today? Indeed, Marxism is very much like a militant type of religion—authoritarian and dogmatic, strictly organized, infallible in its teachings, steeped in sacred sources, and spread by the sword. It offers people what amounts to a substitute theology, a total perspective on the world, a Weltanschauung. As a religion, Marxism is the “god that has failed” as Arthur Koestler found it. Alongside its empty promises are grim realities. Marx turned away from Christianity when he could not see in it any real concern for suffering people. Now people are turning from Marxism for the same reason. And while Christians have been rediscovering the socially relevant gospel of Jesus, the serious inadequacies of Marxism have been showing up plainly. It is a humanism without a human face.
None of these criticisms fills me with glee. If only Marx had faced up to Jesus Christ, had understood the true scope of religion in human life, had anticipated the grim results of the choice he made that has brought untold suffering to the world in our time! But is it not still true that people turn away from the gospel without knowing what it is and run the risk of repeating the same mistakes? If only we could communicate that there is a better way: the good news that there is a loving Father who cares about justice for the oppressed and the dignity and worth of human life. Ours is a religion that is as likely to make us uncomfortable as comfortable. But in view of the alternatives, surely it is also the most intelligent choice a thinking person could make in deciding what to do with his life.
CLARK H. PINNOCK1Dr. Pinnock is professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
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According to the prophet Amos, the worst famine that can befall anyone is “not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11).
In our day, biblical preaching feeds the people of God with his Word. But while there may not be a famine in some pulpits, there is a degree of malnutrition caused by an unbalanced diet. Some parts of the Bible are preached over and over while other portions are ignored.
Perhaps the most neglected parts of the Word are the narratives of the Old Testament. These include large sections of the Pentateuch, the historical books, parts of Daniel, and the book of Jonah. I have preached some of my best-received sermons from these passages, and I have discovered several practical guidelines for preparing messages from narratives.
1. Emphasize people. Essentially, Old Testament narratives are the stories about people. History must be read in terms of the people who made it. Preaching must emphasize the human element more than the historical.
The Book of Judges is both a hall of fame and a rogues’ gallery. What preacher could fail to capitalize on the fascinating people of Judges? There was Deborah, in the front lines before women were registered for the draft; Gideon, with his almost comical fear followed by his utter failure to cope with his own success; and weak-willed Samson, the “super jock” of Scripture. It will make us familiar with ourselves, because in these Old Testament people we will see ourselves.
2. Explain actions. Usually the Bible tells us what its characters did with their lives, not what went on inside their heads. Don’t try to psychoanalyze the people of the Old Testament. Discover their characters through their actions.
For example, Gideon’s use of the fleece was an outgrowth of his semipagan superstitions. Failure to mention this fact could lead to misunderstanding and misapplication by the audience. Nothing less than a solid understanding of Old Testament history, culture, and geography will guide the preacher in evaluating the actions of Old Testament people.
3. Explore options. Old Testament characters become more real and easier to identify with if we think not only about what they did, but what they might have done in certain situations. Life is a series of choices; interest can easily be aroused by pondering them. Sometimes what someone did not do tells as much about him as what he actually did.
Consider Rehoboam, Solomon’s son (1 Kings 12). By following foolish political advice, he precipitated the rebellion of the northern kingdom. The text tells us that Rehoboam sought the advice of both older and younger men, following the counsel of the latter. But something is missing. Scripture tells us that Israel’s kings from Saul to Zedekiah sought supernatural advice in times of crisis. Rehoboam, however, does not appear to have sought the advice of God at all. This fact reveals as much about him as do his recorded actions. Old Testament characters faced options, and successful preaching about them will explore these options as well as the more obvious actions.
4. Contemporary main points. “What has this got to do with me?” is the usual audience response to Old Testament narratives. This is the fundamental question the preacher must answer. A universal theme in the text must be isolated, developed, and applied. But sometimes, though we are successful at isolating such a theme, we smother it in sermon construction by making a common technical mistake: we phrase the main points in historical instead of in contemporary terms.
For example, we might see the theme of Jonah 4 as “lovelessness.” A main point of a sermon on the chapter could be. “The Causes of Jonah’s Lovelessness.” But this is a ho-hum point. Who cares what caused Jonah’s lovelessness? What we care about is what causes our lovelessness. The main point should be, “The Causes of Lovelessness.” As a rule of thumb, always avoid mentioning any historical name, incident, or term in main points. This will help keep the points contemporary.
For too long the stories of the Old Testament have been relegated to the preschool Sunday school department. If we believe, with Paul, that “these things occurred as examples” (1 Cor. 10:6), we will seek to rediscover the rewards of studying and preaching them.
MICHAEL J. HOSTETLER1Mr. Hostetler is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Mahomet, Illinois.