Page 5508 – Christianity Today (2024)

In hearings before a commission of the Association of Theological Schools, Harvard dean Krister Stendahl once proposed, no doubt with tongue in cheek, that all seminaries should immediately confer doctorates on everyone. This ought effectively to eliminate intellectual pride in degrees and put an end to the senseless pursuit of academic degrees for the sake of the degrees. Pastors and scholars would then be motivated to pursue their studies solely for the sake of what they would learn. Schools and churches in turn would evaluate candidates not on the false basis of degrees but on their ability to function effectively as pastor or teacher or scholar.

This poses the question of why we have degrees anyway. Do they really serve any good and useful purpose—particularly in the ministry where the call of God, moral commitment, and the enablement of the Holy Spirit are infinitely more valuable to the practice of Christian ministry than a diploma? After all, a diploma may only prove that a student sat in class for 15 hours every week over three years, listening to lectures by someone who was never called to be a pastor, had no gifts or experience as a pastor, and may not even have gifts to teach.

The offering of degrees for academic work has deep roots in Western culture. The University of Bologna began the practice, and early in the thirteenth century the University of Paris bestowed the first bachelor’s degree. Oxford University chose to confer the degree at the end of the course of study, and the American colonies adopted this English practice with Harvard granting its first degree in 1642. Special degrees for seminary or divinity school graduates developed much later and did not become common practice until the nineteenth century. The Master of Divinity has now all but universally supplanted the older B.D. or Th.B. as the standard degree following a three-year (postcollege) program of professional education for the ministry.

Across the years, the seminary curriculum has slowly evolved from a rigidly structured concentration in Greek and Hebrew exegesis, biblical studies, church history, systematic theology, denominational distinctives, and pastoral duties to a wide open curriculum with liberal slices of English Bible, Christian education, counseling, sociology of religion, inner-city studies, and church worship. Most conservative seminaries require both Greek and Hebrew; most liberal schools do not. Previous to this century, the older practice of an additional year of internship brought the student into prolonged exposure to local church practice. Largely for financial reasons, internship is now provided during the three-year course.

What a degree means is a hotly debated issue both on and off the seminary campus. Still, in spite of occasional misgivings, the demand for degrees by both ministers and church congregations has wide support. Degrees continue to meet a felt need of the religious and Christian community. Very simply, degrees arose because people desired some certification by a responsible body that indicated ministers possessed certain skills useful for the successful pursuit of their profession, and which ordinary people felt inadequate to evaluate.

In spite of wide variations in standards, the ministerial degree came to mean at least this: the candidate had satisfied a group of intelligent, trusted individuals (the theological faculty) that he possessed the rudiments of a broad cultural education (his A.B. prerequisite for admission to seminary), had mastered a basic body of theological knowledge, understood the doctrines of Christian faith and of his own denomination, and knew something not only of the principles of preaching, but also of the duties of a pastor.

A theological degree, therefore, stands generally for a specific kind of training at the graduate level of study. This is why it is wrong for an institution to set its own standards for a degree or to grant degrees for lesser amounts or a significantly lower quality of training. In such cases, to award a degree is an act of flagrant deception. No institution of integrity will grant such dishonest degrees, and no person of moral integrity will have anything to do with an institution that stoops to such immoral practices.

No doubt seminaries ought constantly to reexamine their curriculum to make sure it is meeting the true needs of its graduates. When some liberal schools offer the standard professional degree for the ministry on the basis of a heavy load of sociology, psychology, philosophy, and religion, that is dishonest. But when a conservative school certifies that a student has completed a standard course for the ministry while filling his schedule with Greek, Hebrew, church history, and theology, and little or nothing on the practice of ministry, that too is dishonest. All too frequently we hear the story of seminary graduates who don’t know the first thing about how to preach or how to carry on the day-to-day ministries required of a pastor.

Seminaries must take seriously their responsibility for the degrees they offer. When an evangelical seminary awards a ministerial degree, it certifies that an individual has completed the standard academic preparation for the pastorate or for ordination to the Christian ministry. Surely we have a right to expect seminaries training young people for Christian ministry to tell the truth.

Late last year the government-sponsored Patriotic Three-Self Movement in the People’s Republic of China printed 85,000 Bibles and 50,000 New Testaments. The printing of the edition was exhausted by March. Further, we hear that the demand for Bibles in China today is almost insatiable. During the bleak years of the cultural revolution, Bibles were systematically destroyed. Hard-pressed Christians treasured their few available Bibles and wore them to shreds by constant use. To preserve the written Word of God, faithful servants laboriously copied by hand long pages of the text—even whole books. Even now religion is merely tolerated, and the official position is that religion will eventually fade away of its own accord when the communistic society comes to its own.

The value their Chinese brothers and sisters set upon the Holy Scriptures should come as no surprise to Western Christians. At the beginning of our Christian era, did not the apostle Paul tell us that Holy Scripture is God’s instrument “to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15)?

Karl Barth was once asked: “Could you state what your Christianity is all about in a few simple words?”

He replied: “It can all be summed up in the simple words of the child’s hymn: ‘Jesus loves me! this I know, For the Bible tells me so; / Little ones to him belong; They are weak, but he is strong.’” The Bible introduces us to Jesus Christ, and to know Jesus Christ is to know God.

But in that same passage, the apostle adds a second purpose of the Bible: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, NIV). The Bible is God’s instruction book to guide the thought and life of the believer. By it the faithful disciple of Christ may grow to full Christian maturity and live an obedient and useful life in this world.

No wonder Chinese Christians treasure their Bibles and desperately yearn for more!

Knowing—As I Am Known

My, but it’s getting expensive to be a church member—at least at the church where I belong. And I don’t mean the offerings. It’s the extras that are attacking my budget.

Exhibit A is the “church directory” for which all of us had to have our pictures taken. The picture was free, I guess, but it cost me money to order extra copies for our friends and relatives. The whole project just about wrecked the church, even though the pastor said the book would help us get to know each other better. We saw people in the directory that we have never seen in church, and this raised some furor. Then the deacons took up a special offering so we could mail copies to our missionaries. Surely missionaries see enough weird-looking people without sending them our pictures.

No sooner did we recover from the directory drain than the pastor suggested that we start wearing name tags. “It will help us to know each other better,” he explained. (I think we’re getting to know him better.) The deacons displayed samples at prayer meeting and the battle started again. Mrs. Hawkins said the type was too small and she couldn’t read it. But her eyes are so weak that we would all have to wear sandwich boards for her to be able to read our names. Mrs. Lorrimer wondered if the tags were available in different colors so she could match them to her various apparel ensembles, and Mrs. Olsen said that the pins would ruin her clothes. “Why don’t we get the kind that clip on your pocket, like they wear at the hospital?”

Well, the name tag idea was tabled. Then the pastor came home from a “group dynamics” conference and decided we needed to be more dynamic. It turned out to be dynamite instead. “We will cancel the evening services,” he said, “and start meeting in house groups. This way we can get to know each other better. We will also save light and heat at the church.” When somebody asked about wasting gas driving all over town, he just said, “Well, this way we can get to know the town better, and you may lead a hitchhiker to the Lord.”

Don’t ask me how the house groups are doing. I hear that some people are complaining because it’s costing a lot to provide coffee and refreshments. “You don’t have to feed us,” the pastor explained, “but it will help you to get to know your grocer better.” Forgive me, but I’m staying home instead and reading my Bible and praying for the people in the church directory. Would you believe it? I’m getting to know myself and my Lord better.

EUTYCHUS X

A Realistic Portrayal

Bernard Rifkin’s evaluation of Ordinary People [April 24] astonished me. I could not see any sinister and ulterior motives lurking in the shadows of this movie.

Rifkin confuses biblical values (or “Calvinist values”) with “traditional culture,” a common but dangerous misconception. There are elements in our culture that do contribute to repression of feeling, to artificiality, and to mental illness. This is not the fault or the result of biblical values, nor does Ordinary People claim that it is.

The film’s crucial message to Christians is (1) hurting is human, (2) keeping hurt inside can be self-destructive, and (3) there are people out there, even unbelievers, who can help us work through our hurt.

JESSICA SHAVER

Long Beach, Calif.

Why Rifkin sees this movie as an attack on Protestant values is beyond me. This descriptive movie is harshly realistic of what happens when anger and negative feelings are denied and parents do not have a healthy relationship. Rifkin is attacking a straw man and is overspiritualizing what he sees.

We have in today’s culture a large number of evangelical families exactly where the Jarretts were in Ordinary People: good families with relationships lacking depth and true intimacy. A major factor is our emphasis on cognitive and behavioral components of human personality. Many people—like Rifkin, I suspect—are fearful of the affective component of their personality, so they repress their feelings and never allow themselves the openness and spontaneity that make true intimacy possible.

WAYLON O. WARD

Richardson, Tex.

Ordinary People is a morally poignant movie precisely because it penetrates the spiritual vacuity inherent in the value orientations and cultural consciousness of people like Rifkin himself. It shows us, in a painfully familiar (and attractive) setting, the structured strains and existential ambiguities that are emotionally pathogenic, not in spite of, but because of middle-class secularized Protestant values.

JEFFREY W. SWANSON

New Haven, Conn.

Humanism In Education

The April 10 issue was of special value to me as it provided encouragement, advice, information, correction, and a basis for discussion.

If Christian writers such as Crater [“The Unproclaimed Priests of Public Education”] listened less raptly to and quoted less frequently from the educational experts, they would give their readers a more balanced picture of public education in America. There is a great difference between what is said in the orderly, quiet expert’s office and what is done in the stuffy, busy, crowded classroom.

Ten years ago our province’s department of education established a humanistic-based “values” social studies program. Experts came from all over to laud and to borrow from this innovative program. Last year the whole social studies curriculum was changed. The values emphasis was not scrapped as a result of mass protests. Rather, an expert left the rarefied atmosphere of his office and talked to teachers. He found that they had not been teaching the new curriculum and had no intention of ever teaching it. The reasons for why they found this curriculum unteachable were as varied as the teachers themselves.

Although evangelicals fear it and college officials wish it, educational experts still are not able to mass produce teachers as Heinz does ketchup.

LUCILLE GLEDDIE

Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

Messianic Jews

I want to express my sincere appreciation for the article, “A Messianic Jew Pleads His Case,” by Pawley and Juster [April 24]. From my own perspective as a Gentile Christian, given a deep love for Jewish people by my parents, I have discovered how helpful Passover, Sabbath, and the other festivals of Leviticus 23 are to Christians seeking to discover their Old Testament roots. Our children have grown up with these festivals and look forward to them with great anticipation. Perhaps one way for evangelicals to begin to appreciate Messianic Jews will be to discover our common roots.

MARTHA ZIMMERMAN

Richland, Wash.

Because of my Jewish background, it is easy to relate to events in the Gospels and in the first-century church. Peter, Paul, James, and John are members of my family and the Rabbi of Nazareth speaks to me in my own language as I sit at his feet. What could be better? The rabbis will tell you that I am no longer a Jew because I have found the Messiah whom Isaiah and Moses foreknew. If I were agnostic or atheistic, I would still be Jewish, but since I have recognized the Messiah by the signs given by our holy prophets, I have ceased to be Jewish, but somehow have not become a Gentile. What am I, then? My heart tells me that I am as Jewish as I was on the day of my birth to a Jewish father and mother.

MURRAY GOODMAN

Tucson, Ariz.

My father-in-law was a converted Jew. He did not come out of strict Judaism, and he was not ashamed of his Jewishness, but upon his conversion, he was not in the slightest interested in “Hebrew Christian congregations.” His position simply was, “I was once a Jew, I am now a Christian. I want to be known as a Christian without any trappings or qualifications.”

As far as the apostle Paul is concerned, at the present time, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile … but all one in Christ Jesus. I am a Gentile Christian. My father-in-law was a Jewish Christian. But both of us are Christians. I do not attend a Gentile church; there was no reason for him to have attended a Jewish church. There is no such thing. The church combines those who were once Jews and once Gentiles into one new body, one new thing, the body of Jesus Christ which is the church.

Furthermore, in my own experience of talking to Jews about Jesus Christ, the vast majority know almost nothing about Judaism. They are Jewish pagans to all practical purposes. So much stress is laid in courses on Jewish evangelism on a thorough knowledge of the law and fulfilled prophecy, although as a matter of fact, the majority of Jewish people to whom we speak about the gospel have no knowledge of either one.

FRANCIS R. STEELE

Upper Darby, Pa.

One place in Juster and Pawley’s article where absolutist statements distort reality and the boundless power of God is in the pronouncement that “one has to be Jewish to relate in total compassion to the hearts of people who have been through the Holocaust.” So much for Corrie ten Boom and other Gentile Christians who suffered and died for the victims of the Holocaust.

ROBERT STROUD

Citrus Heights, Calif.

Rabbi Tannenbaum’s statement that “Jewish tradition allows that Gentiles can believe in the Trinitarian concept, termed in Hebrew as sh*ttuf (partnership)” is not correct. The best Hebrew term, the one used by Israeli believers for whom Hebrew is their native tongue, is the word shilush, which means trinity. Tanenbaum, viewing the Trinitarian concept as a “partnership,” rejects the Christian concept on the basis that the covenant of Sinai “explicitly excludes the possibility of any belief that God shares his being in any partnership with any other being.” We are not talking about a sh*ttuf or a mere partnership between God and a man named Jesus, but we are talking about a shilush in which the one God as a Trinity shares the same essence in a oneness.

Jewish believers represented in this issue were all representative of one branch, that of Messianic Judaism. The Hebrew Christian approach has a far more biblical and theological foundation than the former, whose representatives often represent a very confused and inconsistent theology.

ARNOLD G. FRUCHTENBAUM

Ariel Ministries

San Antonio, Tex.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published. Since all are subject to condensation, those of 100 to 150 words are preferred. Address letters to Eutychus and His Kin,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187.

No evangelical—one is tempted to say no Christian—has influenced the theology of the Third World quite so thoroughly as British pastor-theologian John R. W. Stott. In a way that is reminiscent of John R. Mott from an earlier generation, John Stott has crisscrossed continents in both hemispheres in tireless efforts to carry the gospel to every corner of the earth. Students are his special domain. He loves them, and they worship him.

For years he preached six months in his home church, All Souls of London, and for the remainder of the year ministered at countless retreats, seminars, short courses, and missions on every inhabited continent. In recent years, he has travelled constantly, preaching and lecturing to students everywhere. His message is always the same, yet always new and fresh. He simply teaches the Bible! How, you ask, could anyone hold the minds and move the hearts of students from Anchorage to Ouagadougou, and from Belgrade to Boston by simply teaching the Bible? John Stott does it. With his razor-sharp mind, he cuts through muddy thinking, exposes kinks in logic, and encourages students to think straight. His sacrificial love for students is transparent: no hour is too late, no time inconvenient to explore a troublesome problem.

But two quite different things impress me every time I hear him. The first is integrity: he lives what he preaches. He preaches that we are to seek first the kingdom of God, and he forsakes a highly successful pastorate in a world-renowned congregation to travel in the hard places of the earth, keeping long and wearisome hours, sleeping every night in a different bed—all for the sake of the gospel. The second unique thing about John Stott is his God-given mastery of the art of unfolding Holy Scripture. When I hear him expound a text, invariably I exclaim to myself, “That’s exactly what it means! Why didn’t I see it before?” Students love it. And some of us who are a little too old to be called students in the ordinary sense are also grateful.

Readers will regret to learn that John Stott is taking a six-months’ leave from his arduous schedule, including his monthly column in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He will welcome our prayers. And we will pray for re-creation of his weary body and soul and, God willing, for a speedy return to his regular schedule of writing for this magazine.

Notes on “Semana Santa”:

a town square, a seventeenth-century church of six-foot-thick adobe walls newly whitewashed for Semana Santa, church bells pealing the daily rythms of the townspeople

a richly textured, three-dimensional world—brightly colored shawls, swooping skirts like moths and butterflies, woodsmoke rising from thatched roofs,market stalls, crowded buses with huge bundles on top, flowers that grow by the grace of God—and processions, always religious processions, with images of the saints whose history is mixed with the old Mayan religion

Calvario—a pilgrimage chapel on a mountain top,the street from the church in the town square to Calvario, our house along that street

Semana Santa—Holy Week, larger-than-life statues of Jesus carrying the cross, Jesus on the cross, Jesus in the coffin, images of the Marys and the various saints, hundreds of penitents bearing these images over carpets painstakingly designed with colored sawdust, pine needles, and flower petals

we rushing out our front door at every sound of a procession coming, we finally settling on chairs with cups of coffee in our front garden, watching for hours on end, we climbing on rooftops, trees and ladders to take pictures

processions all day and all night on Thursday, Good Friday, and “Sabado de Gloria,” incense, chanting,singing, brass instruments playing a dirge,snare drums, church bells, candles, we feeling depression

Sunday morning—after the rending dirge, we expecting unbridled oboes, and wildly improvising trumpets; everything quiet, thousands of people who line the streets yesterday now at rest—no singing woodwinds, no marimba, no trumpets, no dancing in the streets

A Biblical Radical

The Radical Wesley and Patterns of Church Renewal, by Howard A. Snyder (Inter-Varsity, 1980, 188 pp., $5.25), is reviewed by Paul A. Mickey, associate professor of pastoral theology, Duke University Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina.

Was John Wesley Anabaptist? Yes! Was he Anglican? Yes! Author Howard Snyder says so.

Was John Wesley Establishment? Definitely! Was he a Charismatic? But, of course! That, too, is Snyder’s word on Wesley.

Come, come now, one might protest. But Snyder insists—and I agree—that Wesley was a radical in the truest biblical sense of the word. The secret to the radical Wesley is his doctrine of the church (pp. 5–7) that at one and the same time places emphasis equally on inner experience (Moravian, Anabaptist, Mennonite influence), the sacraments (Church of England and Roman Catholic influence), and the outward, social witness through the Classes and Societies (Wesley’s own theory).

In Chapter 11, “The Wesleyan Synthesis,” we are told how the unique and powerful theological and practical syntheses of apparent opposites were kept in balance as John Wesley rediscovered and reintegrated the radical biblical themes of institutional and charismatic dimensions of the church and Christian experience (pp. 150, 154).

The other equally radical aspect of Wesley’s ministry was his identification with the poor. In his Journal, March 31, 1739, he writes, “At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation.” The Wesleyan revival spread primarily because “it was a movement largely for and among the poor” (p. 33).

I found greatest help in chapter 3, “Preaching to the Poor,” and in chapter 12, “Wesley and the Church Today,” in which a critique of Wesley’s social and political conservatism is offered (pp. 150–60).

Snyder provides a very insightful study of Wesley, illuminating the spiritual depth, theological strength, and social radicality of Wesley, the reformer and evangelist. The evangelical spirit in Wesleyan circles is on the move again, and Howard Snyder is an excellent guide to challenge that move to the depths that made John Wesley the biblical radical he was and wanted his followers to be.

The Celtic Church As Example

Renewal in Christ, As the Celtic Church Led “the Way,” by Edward W. Stimson (Vantage Press, 1979, 372 pp., $10.00), is reviewed by Robert M. Sutton, professor of history and director of the Illinois Historical Survey at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Every now and then a book appears that seems to have more than one audience in mind. Renewal in Christ is clearly one of those books. It is on the one hand a historical treatise that explores the activity and vitality of the early Celtic church in Britain, Scotland, and Ireland; but it is also a plea for late twentieth-century church renewal based upon the fundamentals of the faith as practiced by Celtic believers of the early Christian era.

Edward Stimson is a scholar and an evangelical Christian now retired after a long and fruitful ministry in the United Presbyterian church. One cannot help being genuinely impressed by his skillful weaving of history with tradition, as well as his sincere and deeply felt personal concern for the “Way.”

The history of the early church with which Stimson deals is largely unknown in this country. Reconstructing what at times must be a shadowy account of the interaction of secular and clerical leaders, he frequently allows the participants to speak for themselves from the sources. This is especially true of his treatment of Saint Patrick and his remarkable accomplishments during the fifth century A.D.

There is a ring of prophetic truth about the volume as the author shows from history how the Celtic church not only evangelized the greater part of the British Isles, but also renewed the faith in Europe with a missionary zeal that reached all the way from Ireland to Lombardy, Switzerland, and lands beyond the Rhine and Danube. Implicit in all of this is Stimson’s deep concern for the church in our world today, and his strongly held hope that the example of the Celtic church may serve as a paradigm to call his own beloved United Presbyterian church back to a more wholesome balance between biblical nurture and legitimate social concern.

Perhaps Stimson’s prescription could have an even wider application. Can anyone doubt the need for the Celtic heritage with its emphasis on the New Testament “way” of truth and life in Jesus Christ to reawaken and inspire us all?

Theology For A New Generation

Lectures in Systematic Theology, by Henry C. Thiessen and revised by Vernon D. Doerksen (Eerdmans, 1979, 450 pp., $13.95), is reviewed by Charles C. Ryrie, professor of systematic theology, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

In his time, Thiessen, the late chairman of the faculty of the graduate school at Wheaton College, stood as a giant of orthodoxy. His one-volume theology was widely used during the 30 years before this revision was done by Vernon Doerksen, associate dean at Talbot Theological Seminary.

Anyone acquainted with the original work will especially want to know what kinds of revisions have been made. The preface indicates that certain sections—such as those on inspiration, election, imputation, pretribulationism—have been “extensively revised”; newer source material has replaced some citations from older authorities; a bibliography has been added; and the NASB has been used in place of the ASV.

The revision appears, on rough calculation, to be about 70 pages shorter overall. Indexes have been adapted; there are relatively few footnotes, new or old, though there are many Scripture references. The revision preserves the very teachable outline and often polishes it. The original pretribulational, premillennial position of Thiessen has been strengthened in the chapter on the Rapture.

Any reviewer can find something he might wish had been added or elaborated; but certainly, five lines on inerrancy in a section that was extensively revised, is far too little for the 1980s.

Especially interesting are the evident differences between Thiessen and Doerksen. Thiessen believed foreknowledge on which election was based was prescience; Doerksen relates foreknowledge to actual choice. Thiessen allowed for a long interval between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2; Doerksen prefers not to do so. Thiessen was noncommittal about the length of the creative days; Doerksen may prefer solar days. Thiessen favored the Augustinian view of imputed sin; Doerksen proposes the “corporate personality view.” Certainly the inclusion of these alternate views is desirable; but one wonders about the propriety of not indicating in any way which views are not Thiessen’s.

Laymen, pastors, and teachers who liked the original Thiessen volume will find this revision even more useful.

Early Christian Communities

The Community of the Beloved Disciple, by Raymond Brown (Paulist Press, 1979, 204 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by David W. Wead, pastor of Boones Creek Church of Christ, Johnson City, Tennessee, and assistant professor of Bible at Johnson Bible College, Knoxville, Tennessee.

This work comes out of research requisite to Brown’s presidential address before the Society of Biblical Literature in 1977 and the Shaffer Lectures he delivered at Yale in 1978. The book portrays the development of one segment of the earliest church, that connected with the “Beloved Disciple,” in the period 30 to 60 years after the lifetime of Jesus.

Brown believes that the original group who accepted Jesus as the Davidic Messiah joined with another antitemple group who understood Jesus against a Mosaic background. Together they developed a high, preexistent Christology that led to their expulsion from the Jewish synagogue. This high Christology also led to a split separating them from certain elements of Jewish Christianity. In a third stage, one segment of this community, “the secessionists,” denied that Jesus was fully human and took a path that ultimately led to Gnosticism. The orthodox group, seen in the Epistles, confessed Jesus’ full humanity and ultimately came back into union with the Great Church.

Brown bases his “detective work” on the presupposition that the Sitz im Leben of that particular segment of Christianity would lead them to preserve in their writings (the Gospel and epistles of John) those events and teachings from the life of Jesus that had become a part of their own experience. Thus we can trace the history of the community of the Beloved Disciple from its choice of events, and the attitudes important enough to be preserved in the writings.

Not everyone will agree with Brown’s thesis; however, the study done and the lines of thought opened up make for interesting reading. It is well worth the effort just to keep one’s own perceptions sharpened up.

p*rnography Rejected

p*rnography: A Christian Critique, by John H. Court (InterVarsity, 1980, 96 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Robert C. Roberts, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

J. H. Court, a clinical psychologist, examines some arguments for allowing p*rnography to be available to the general public. He aims much of his discussion at the 1970 Presidential Commission Report on Obscenity and p*rnography, which concluded that p*rnographic materials do not increase sex crimes, and indeed, tend to decrease them by diverting potential offenders from crime into harmless looking at magazines and watching of movies. It also suggested that if p*rnography is freely available, people soon tire of it and sales drop off, reducing the criminal activities associated with the trade. Another argument holds that restrictive laws against p*rnography violate freedom of speech.

Along with the arguments above. Court expounds three other “arguments.” He points out that perverts like the Marquis de Sade prefer hatred to love, and might argue that p*rnography is good because it is destructive. Some revolutionaries argue that it is a good thing because it leads to the destruction of the family, while others argue that it is good because it loosens up traditional standards of sexual morality. These “arguments” are obviously not the sort that would be used in a presidential commission report. Neither would the first two be likely to have wide appeal as arguments. The book, which is organized around these various “arguments,” thus gives a certain feeling of organizational artificiality.

Court therefore is addressing two rather different challenges to Christian intuitions about p*rnography: one is sociological, and one is philosophical. I cannot give expert judgment on Court’s sociological arguments, but they seem convincing to me: all the arguments holding that when p*rnographic materials become more available sex crimes decrease and the public becomes satiated are either bad arguments or based on highly questionable data. The truth seems to be that sex crimes do increase with greater availability of p*rnography.

I also accept Court’s philosophical observation that you cannot argue morals with people whose world view is that destroying people, or the nuclear family, or people’s moral inhibitions about sex, is a good thing. In contest with such people, all we can do is to continue to hold up the Christian world view, and warn those who are well disposed toward it not to be duped by the tactics of the destroyers. In response to those who say that restricting p*rnography violates freedom of speech. Court insists that freedom of speech must always be qualified: we do not allow people the freedom to libel one another, and similarly we should not allow them the freedom to corrupt our minds.

If the book were written more clearly, I would recommend it without qualification. As it stands, I simply recommend it.

The Final Triumph Of God

Songs of Heaven, by Robert E. Coleman (Revell, 1980, 159 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Sylvia Rose Rolland, librarian, Renewal Center, Florissant, Missouri.

What about worship in heaven? In this unusual devotional study, the author highlights the “songs heard around the throne” as he presents and explains the Book of the Revelation in language that every adult reader can understand.

He states his purpose is to “lift out the songs in the Revelation, see them in their context, analyze their essential messages, and then apply some pertinent aspects of the truth to our lives today.” He achieves this goal in an appealing manner throughout the book. Some of the appeal seems to stem from the character of the book, which is meditative-reflective, rather than academic-disputative.

Occasional overstatements occur. I note, for example, Coleman states in chapter 3 that “redemption is solely the unmerited gift of eternal love,” that “Jesus literally paid it all,” that “all man can do is quit the futile game of pretending to be self-sufficient, affirm the completed work of Christ, and by simple faith receive the transfusion of the Savior’s life.”

There are Christians who might contend that this fails to convey the total truth, and that faith without works is dead. However, it should be pointed out that in chapter 10, in explaining the judgment of the righteous, Coleman does emphasize the necessity of good works in addition to and as a result of faith.

There is consistency in the presentation of all known theories and/or explanations of the Scripture quotations used. This is definitely a good feature that helps the reader realize that no single interpretation is being pressed. The relationship of the Book of the Revelation to our everyday life is well delineated, giving the book a strong, practical value. An additional asset is the book’s extensive and thorough bibliography.

The spirit of this book is twofold: one of peaceful reassurance of the final triumph of good, and one of joy in our own participation now in heavenly worship.

Anyone who wants to find the right blend of ingredients to make the Book of the Revelation appealing, satisfying, and useful in living the Christian life more deeply will surely find it here.

A Very Great Man

John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography, by C. Howard Hopkins (Eerdmans, 1979, 816 pp., $19.95), is reviewed by William C. Ringenberg, professor of history, Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

Lives of great men oft remind us,

We can make our lives sublime;

And departing leave behind us

Footprints in the sands of time.

C. Howard Hopkins presents John R. Mott as both a great and a unique man. While the label “great” is ascribed to more people than it actually fits, and while few people are truly unique, Hopkins convincingly supports his claim for his subject.

Under Mott’s direction at the turn of the century, the American college YMCA movement reached its peak as the most widespread student Christian organization in American history. Almost simultaneously he became the director of the Y’s missionary arm, the Student Volunteer Movement, (SVM), through which thousands of superbly trained and able youths committed themselves to careers as foreign missionaries. Mott traveled almost constantly to organize and visit student organizations.

In 1891 he made the first of over 100 Atlantic crossings to study and promote the international student movement. A 20-month world tour in the mid-1890s resulted in the formation of the worldwide counterpart of the American Y movement, the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), the leadership of which he then added to his continuing duties with the American student Y work and the SVM.

Just as Mott sought to unite Christian students throughout the world into the WSCF, so also in his later years he became increasingly interested in the unity of Christians of all ages and countries. His efforts contributed significantly to the growing ecumenical movement that in his lifetime culminated in the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Unlike many of the leaders and supporters of the WCC and the YMCA, he did not abandon his concern for personal evangelism as he became increasingly interested in social concerns and church unity.

Mott enjoyed the privilege of being honored as a prophet in his own time. President Woodrow Wilson spoke for many when he described him as “certainly one of the most useful men of the world.” His repute is further illustrated by the attractive positions that were offered to him—and which he turned down (e.g., the presidencies of Moody Bible Institute, Oberlin College, and Princeton University; the deanship of Yale Divinity School; the leadership of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ; and the post of ambassador to China). He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1946. Perhaps no one has exerted so much influence for good on American college students. Few Americans have been as well known—and appreciated—abroad.

Despite Mott’s great importance in the history of Christianity during the first half of the twentieth century and before, he has not been a well-known figure to the modern generation. Therein lies the importance of this book, for it is the first comprehensive biography of Mott. He now should become increasingly recognized and appreciated. My fear, however, is that the book is so comprehensive that its great length will limit the number of readers. Rarely should a popular biography exceed 400 to 500 pages—not even for a Mott.

Whatever the ultimate readership of the book, Hopkins has written a biography worthy of his subject. He literally followed Mott around the world in search of source material, and committed 15 years of his life to the project. Hopkins’s qualifications for the task were as great as his dedication to it, for he previously authored standard histories of the YMCA in America, and the social gospel in America. The result is a very good biography of a very great man.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Numerous books covering the Reformation have recently appeared. Surveys, as well as primary sources, are among them. In particular, works related to neglected Reformation traditions are appearing in greater numbers.

Surveys. Lewis Spitz’s valuable 1971 The Renaissance and Reformation Movements, two volumes (Concordia), has been republished in paperback. It will be gratefully used by a new generation of students; unfortunately, however, the bibliographies were not updated. A straightforward, somewhat political history of the time is Europe in the Reformation (Prentice-Hall), by Peter J. Klassen. Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation (Christian Univ. Press/Eerdmans), by Richard L. Greaves, are nicely done studies in the thought of John Knox. Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia (Universitetsforlaget, Oslo; Columbia Univ. Press), by Oskar Garstein, is volume two of a study, this one covering 1583–1622. The work is without peer on the subject and certain to be definitive. The notes and bibliography alone cover almost 200 pages.

Sources.Luther: Early Theological Works (Westminster), edited by James Atkinson, contains four important works from 1517–21. The Theologia Germania of Martin Luther (Paulist), edited by Bengt Hoffman, is a fine translation of Luther’s 1518 version of this important earlier work. Luther placed it next to the Bible and Augustine in value. Melancthon and Bucer (Westminster), edited by Wilhelm Pauck, is primarily the Loci Communes Theologici and De Regno Christi. Analysis of the Institutes of the Christian Religion of John Calvin (Baker), by the late Ford Lewis Battles, is an excellent outline of Calvin’s Institutes. Erasmus on His Times (Cambridge Univ.), by Margaret Mann Phillips, is a shortened version of The Adages of Erasmus, now in paperback. John Eck’s Enchiridion of Commonplaces Against Luther and Other Enemies of the Church (Baker) has been translated by the late Ford Lewis Battles. This is the only available English translation of Eck’s controversial work. Martin Chemnitz’s Enchiridion has been nicely translated into English by Luther Poellot in Ministry, Word, and Sacraments (Concordia). J. C. Wenger has put together selected writings from sixteenth-century Anabaptists in A Faith to Live By (Herald Press).

Studies. H. G. Haile has written an experimental biography, developing primarily the later years in Luther (Doubleday). The Life and Faith of Martin Luther (Northwestern), by Adolph Fehlauer, will be appreciated by high-schoolers. Reflections on Luther’s Small Catechism (Concordia), by Daniel Overduin, is a set of four short paperbacks that effectively develops Luther’s basic thoughts. A major contribution to Luther studies is Luther and Staupitz (Duke Univ. Press), by David C. Steinmetz. No Other Gospel (Northwestern), edited by Arnold J. Koelpin, is a helpful collection of essays in commemoration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the Formula of Concord. The Role of the Augsburg Confessions (Fortress/Paulist), edited by Joseph A. Burgess, is an irenic collection of Catholic and Lutheran essays. Potchefstroomse University for Christian Higher Education, R.S.A., has made available two valuable works; Contemporary Research on the Sixteenth Century Reformation and the nicely illustrated From Novon to Geneva: A Pilgrimage in the Steps of John Calvin (1509–1564), both by B. J. Van der Walt.

Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant (Ohio Univ.), by J. Wayne Baker, is a major work that analyzes Bullinger’s place in the covenantal reformed tradition, arguing that he was the first covenant theologian. Two interesting works deal with the “radical reformation”: The Reformers and Their Stepchildren (Baker), by Leonard Verduin, and The Golden Years of the Hutterites: The Witness and Thought of the Communal Moravian Anabaptists during the Walpot Era. 1565–1578 (Herald Press), by Leonard Gross. Both are excellent studies.

The Waldensians: The First 800 Years (Claudiana/The American Waldensian Aid Society, 475 Riverside Dr., N. Y.) is an illustrated, helpful survey of this important tradition.

An attempt by evangelicals to relate theology to the secular-humanist situation had better be done with eyes wide open.

Many evangelicals are being charged with adopting a new form of liberalism as they think through the ideas of modern secularists. What are we to make of this charge?

First, we must admit that the term “liberal theology” is often used loosely and pejoratively. Loosely, it designates any position theologically to the left of one’s own. A person who denies the reality of God will seem liberal to the one who denies only the deity of Christ. The defender of scriptural infallibility will seem liberal to the person dedicated to biblical inerrancy. Furthermore, like the term fundamentalist, the adjective liberal has taken on a negative connotation for many people, one that signifies a weakness of conviction, a willingness to compromise principle. As a result, most of those we call liberal today are reluctant to accept the designation. We must begin therefore with an attempt at definition.

Religious liberalism was originally a nineteenth-century response to the cultural revolution we call the Enlightenment, a response characterized by a high degree of accommodation. More important than the Reformation in the shaping of the modern mind, the Enlightenment was a revolution in the direction of human autonomy in all areas: politics, philosophy, science, art, music, theology, and so on. It represented a flourishing of man-centered, critical thought, opposed to any received dogma or authoritarian symbols.

Its impact upon Christian thought was devastating and total. Almost every pillar thought to undergird the system of revealed truth came under attack and was seriously undermined. God was no longer seen to be sovereign, man to be unique, history to be providentially directed, or miracles to be possible. The new humanist mentality demanded a response, and liberal theology was an attempted reply.

That response was marked by a willingness to concede to the humanistic orientation a considerable degree of validity. It tended to retreat from those orthodox positions that were most vulnerable to criticism, and set up Christianity’s defenses at points where the attack was not so much concentrated. Liberals like Schleiermacher sought to revise theology in terms of universal human religious experience, making faith somewhat private and existential, and thinking that the new ideal of human autonomy would thereby not be disturbed but rather attracted. A liberal like Ritschl saw in the humanist concern for morality an opportunity to present Christianity as a social (we would now say political) theology, also in the hope of Christianizing the new cultural mood. It would not be too harsh to say that liberal theology was a new form of Christianity, occasioned by the Enlightenment, which believed it necessary to abandon the old orthodox lines of defense and to shift the discussion to some new ones.

Religious liberalism is not really a theology in the sense of being a creedal formula. It is astonishingly diverse. It is really an approach or a method in theology rather than an ideology. It is noted chiefly for its openness to modernity and its willingness to accommodate Scripture to it. Even if its fortunes decline in one particular expression, liberal theology does not pass out of existence, but merely changes its shape in response to altered cultural conditions. Liberalism is super flexible, always ready to move into neoliberalisms.

Evangelicals feel religious liberalism is willing to pay too high a price to achieve relevance. Of course we see the apologetic problem. After all, what do you say to the person affected, as all are, by modernity, who has difficulty believing biblical teaching about Creation, demons, miracles, or hell? It is not necessary to regard all liberal theologians as people eagerly destroying faith and lusting after novel humanistic theologies. There is a large hermeneutical problem here with which liberals are trying to come to terms. What is wrong cannot be that they tried to give honest answers to honest questions. Bultmann and Schaeffer are both trying to do that.

What is wrong is that liberals tend to kill the theology patient while trying to save him. They lack a certain robust confidence in the truth of divine revelation that ought to guide them more profoundly in forming the answers they give. They tend to panic under pressure, and surrender far too much. They should know that one cannot defend Christianity while giving up on the incarnation and the bodily resurrection of Jesus without jeopardizing the thing they are out to defend. Religious liberalism is right to respond creatively to the Enlightenment (we all ought to do that), but wrong in the way it responds. It simply does not do sufficient justice to the norms of special revelation in the Bible, and therefore does not offer the coherent response so badly needed.

The antidote for all this involves a culturally creative and biblically faithful response to modernity and the range of questions it raises for all sensitive, thinking people. It will fall more and more to evangelical Christianity to give answers to questions raised in the modern world. The challenge is: How do we formulate answers that are not substantially the same as liberal proposals and, in terms of the Bible, equally deviant?

The militant conservatives in our midst are not imagining everything when they charge some of us with surrendering too much in our response to challenges of biblical criticism, evolution, feminism, political theology, and the like. There are signs that some evangelicals are on the way to becoming religious liberals, not because they chose to do so in one great step, but because in working out their ideas they have innocently covered most of the ground by smaller shifts. Suppose evangelicals start saying the Bible makes mistakes, is pluralistic theologically, culturally relative, offers basically an existential experience or some small core of truth. It is not alarmist to ask whether this is evidence of an essentially liberal theology arising among us.

I make no charges, but I appeal to our community of faith to work at our response to modernity with our eyes wide open, and not to repeat the mistakes of liberal theology. We need to heed the scriptural word, “let any one who thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). There is no law in stone that says evangelicals cannot become liberals. There is, in fact, a great deal of evidence that they have done so. Liberal theology could easily be called post evangelical theology, because that is almost always exactly what it has been historically. I urge my evangelical sisters and brothers to proceed with caution now that we have our place in the sun, so we do not repeat the mistakes of liberal theology.

CLARK H. PINNOCK¹Dr. Pinnock is professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Communication requires the risk taking involved in any relationship where understanding is the goal.

We want to communicate; it is our business, our calling. We dream of holding an audience spellbound as we present the gospel. We study the “how-to’s” of sermon preparation. We spend hours researching, organizing, and developing our messages. And yet, we feel sometimes they get across and sometimes they don’t. This tension between our need to communicate effectively and our inability to do so consistently drives us to search for a communications method that really works.

But that is our problem: we search for some formula that will enable us to become master preachers. But there is none. Communication by itself is too complex a process to be squeezed into a formula or model.

If we are to increase our effectiveness we must not look for a process, but look rather at the process of communication. The question is not, “How do we communicate?” but “What is communication?”

What is the function of communication? Is it to move people to commitment? Is it a means of getting people to integrate information? Is it correct to see communication in terms of behavioral changes?

We talk about “getting the message across,” and there is the rub: too often pastors—by the very nature of their training—see communication only in terms of the message. We think communication is the process of getting our message to the people. Effective communication must therefore occur when the receivers (the people) receive 100 percent of the sender’s (preacher’s) message.

Early studies in the field of communication show this same focus on the message. The Shannon-Weaver model of communication (1949), which has dominated the direction of thinking in communications for years, focuses its study on getting the message to the receiver. Based on the technology of the Bell telephone system, it presents a logical, accurate description of what happens to a message when the “information source” encodes the message and sends it through a channel where the “receiver” decodes it.

As communicators worked with this model, they began to realize that what works with a telephone does not necessarily work with a person. Some scholars began to add to, modify, and eliminate parts of the model to make it more human. Others abandoned the model and focused almost entirely on the studies of human behavior.

Then came the studies of Marshall McLuhan. In the 1960s, he shook the foundations of communications studies with one statement: “The medium is the message.” With this single statement, McLuhan pointed to two basic facts: (1) the message is not central to the act of communication: and (2) the communicator (the medium) is.

Communication is not simply the sending and receiving of the content of a message. If it were, the process would have been mastered ages ago. Communication is nothing less than the establishment and nurturing of the relationships between the parties involved. It is the interaction between human beings—their personalities, their self images, their environment, their total being.

Communication is an event, not a content. It is more than a matter of transferring information. It is better symbolized by a handshake than a telephone. The key phrase is interaction between people

By stressing interaction, we focus on all the technological input of the science of communication, from syntax to feedback, which is symbolized in the Shannon-Weaver model. As interaction, we are looking at an act that is, by its very nature, dynamic, irreversible, and contextual.

When we stress people in the key phrase, we bring to bear the complex field of human behavior. We therefore recognize that communication involves the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social-cultural aspects of being human.

When we stress between, we acknowledge that communication is a matter of quality, not quantity. It is not a question of how much information (message) is transmitted, but rather of the quality and depth of the interaction (medium) itself. It is not so much a matter of encoding and decoding as it is of reducing differences, becoming transparent, and creating an open environment. Effective communication is not when 100 percent of the information has been received. It is when two parties understand each other.

The best communication takes place when two parties are together. Through their interaction, they have, for one moment and on one frame of reference, come together. Together does not mean agreement, or even a sharing of the same goals, information, or convictions. In this context, together means that they understand where they themselves are, where the other party is, and what their relationship to each other is in terms of a specific frame of reference. Thus, the goal of communication is not merely to become unified in thought or action, but to understand each other, to be together.

A handshake, for example, is a dynamic interaction between people. It may be a greeting, a test of strength, a seal of agreement, or an act of love. It depends on how the two people perceive themselves, the other person, and their relationship. It is dynamic because their perceptions may change during the event itself.

That is why communication can be effective even if the particulars of the communicative act (the structure, cultural backgrounds, vocabulary, etc.) are not precise.

Communication becomes a matter of plunging in. Those who wish to communicate must be willing to plunge into an interaction between people. How deep is the initiator willing to plunge? How much of himself is he willing to risk?

When you step into the pulpit, how much of yourself are you willing to share? How deeply are you willing to interact with the hearts and souls of the people?

It is not just a matter of how deep you as the iniviator are willing to plunge. It is also a matter of how deep the people (the responders) are willing to allow you to plunge, and then to plunge into the interaction themselves. Because the interaction is dynamic, the intentions of both parties may change as the interaction takes place.

This is not to say that the message is unimportant. Christ died and rose so we would have good news to preach. And McLuhan was wrong: the message is central, but it does not occupy the center alone. With it is the interaction of speaker and listener.

The person who is absorbed in the message must think of the personal aspect of communication. The person who is absorbed in “interaction” must reconsider the message he is charged with presenting.

If you have been focusing simply on the message—and many of us have been trained to do just that—take the plunge. The next time you step into the pulpit, remember: communication is not just a matter of dropping the anchor of content into the sea. You must plunge into the sea yourself.

WALTER J. KIME¹Mr. Kime is pastor of the United Presbyterian Church in Dalton, Ohio.

Because God works almost always in hidden ways, we are free to decide for him or against him.

Frederick Buechner (pronounced Beekner) has been writing for 30 years. To date, he has published 17 books. In each of them, fiction and nonfiction, he explores, defines, and celebrates the Christian faith.

“I don’t write novels particularly for evangelicals,” he told us in a recent interview at his home in the mountains of Vermont. He was saying that many religious readers have found his fiction disturbing. Yet the time is long overdue for Christians to be aware of the work of this skilled and deep-sighted writer. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has given his life to presenting the gospel to the secular reader.

Buechner has received significant critical praise for his latest book, Godric (Atheneum, 1980), his tenth novel, which is a fictional biography of a twelfth-century saint. Godric is a startling departure from the four novels preceding it, all of which are centered in a character named Leo Bebb, an irrepressible evangelist, founder of the Church of Holy Love and a mail-order religious diploma mill.

When Flannery O’Connor was asked why she, a dedicated Roman Catholic, wrote stories about Protestant fanatics, she replied that if you are a Catholic and have this intensity of belief, you retire to a cloister and are never heard from again—whereas if you are a Protestant, you go about the world getting into all sorts of trouble. After following one of these Protestant fanatics around for four novels, Buechner has pursued one of the Catholic saints into the inner sanctum of his private consciousness—and he is heard from again, telling his own story at age 100. We asked Buechner:

What led you to write about Godric?

I found it hard to complete the Bebb books. I kept writing sequels. When I finally finished, with no conscious thought of what I was going to do next, I sat down exactly where you’re sitting and picked up the little Penguin Dictionary of Saints. I had done a book on theological words and I thought I might do—maybe not a book—but something on saints. I opened it up just by accident to Godric, whom I’d never heard of. I was just enchanted by him. And then it suddenly occurred to me that this was Bebb in an earlier incarnation. Of all my books, it’s the one I like best, and it was something I didn’t have to struggle for. It was on the house.

If Godric is a twelfth-century Bebb, that would make Bebb a twentieth-century Godric. Where did the notion of Leo Bebb as saint come from?

Perhaps it began with the reading of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which of all the novels I’ve read, with the possible exception of The Brothers Karamazov, has had the greatest effect on me as a writer. I sometimes think my whole literary life has been an effort to rewrite The Power and the Glory in a way of my own. Part of what I was about in the Bebb books was to create a kind of whiskey priest. Or it became that. When I first began I thought of Bebb as an Elmer Gantry figure whom I would expose in the process of writing about him. But I came to like him more and more and to see more clearly what was saintly about him.

What exactly do you mean by saint?

I would think that the New Testament meaning of saint would be different from what one means by “the saints,” like Saint Francis or Saint Augustine. When Godric resists being classified as a saint, he’s thinking of Saint Cuthbert and other giants he had known. My view is that Godric is a saint in the sense that through his life the power and glory of God is made manifest in a very special way, even though like all the rest of us he is standing up to his ankles in mud.

In The Alphabet of Grace you say that at its heart most theology, like most fiction, is essentially autobiography. How autobiographical is your work?

By and large, I haven’t drawn very heavily on my own life in my novels—except my fantasy life. There are certain exceptions, of course. In The Final Beast the conversion experiences of the minister Nicolet were very much my own. And Kuykendall, the clergyman-professor in The Return of Ansel Gibbs, was modeled on a Union Seminary professor who had a tremendous influence on my life in every way.

What has influenced you in a literary sense?

I’ve already mentioned Graham Greene and Dostoevsky. Shakespeare’s King Lear. As for poets, the one I come back to more than any other is Gerard Manley Hopkins.

He’s also one who has had an influence on my style.

How have your books sold? Have any of them been best sellers?

Only the first one. The nonfiction books do quite well, but with the exception of A Long Day’s Dying, none of the novels has gone much beyond a few thousand copies.

Have you found that discouraging?

I think I’d write even if there were nobody to read. Fortunately, there have always been enough people who’ve responded to my novels the way I’ve wanted them to, so I’ve never felt entirely neglected. Further more, writing is more than a craft for me. It’s my ministry.

If writing is your ministry, who are the members of your parish?

I think of myself as addressing two different kinds of audiences. In the nonfiction, it’s more on the order of a congregation in a church. In the novels, I’m trying to reach the people who wouldn’t be caught dead in church or reading a religious book—the people Schleiermacher called religion’s “cultured despisers”—in a language I think they will understand.

Even though your main role as a novelist is that of a Christian apologist to unbelievers, it seems that with your stress on the mystery at the heart of existence and on the risk of faith, you have something important to say to the clergy.

Perhaps so. In my book Telling the Truth, I speak of a certain kind of minister as being like the captain of a ship who’s the only man aboard who doesn’t know the ship is going down. Everybody in the congregation knows that in addition to faith there are doubt and despair, and if in some sense the minister doesn’t acknowledge this in what he says, he shuts people off. There’s always the element of risk and doubt and mystery. It’s never easy for me. I can’t affirm anything easily.

Do you think your novels have anything to say to Christians in general?

Yes, I think so. I hope so. What I’m saying to Christians in my novels is what, if they’re honest with themselves, I think they know already. I’m saying that yes, God indeed does so love the world that he is at work in it continually, but almost always in hidden ways, ways that leave us free to decide for him or against him. When he does his work through human beings, they are apt to have feet of clay just as much as Leo Bebb or Godric, because that’s the only kind of human beings there are, saints included. My novels are not Sunday school stories with detachable morals at the end. They are my attempt to describe the world as richly and truly as perhaps only fiction can describe it, together with the truth that God is mysteriously with us in the world. That is in essence what I am saying to Christians and to anybody else who will listen.

SHIRLEY AND RUDY NELSON¹Mrs. Nelson is a novelist, and her husband a professor of English at the State University of New York in Albany.

The ECFA proves its viablity and tests its clout.

After three years of existence, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) appears to have won a permanent role in promoting uniform accountability and full disclosure of financial information among Christian organizations that solicit contributions from the public.

Over the last year, member organizations increased from 90 to 181, their combined incomes totaling $706 million. And ECFA’s fund deficit last year of $18,000 has been erased. The ECFA member seal has become a familiar sight. (One group that recently sent out a promotional mailing with only the ECFA emblem appearing on the envelope was admonished to include its own name as well.)

But although the fledgling entity’s acceptance seems assured, it is still staking out its turf between secular watchdog groups on the one hand, and certain religious trade associations on the other.

Most prominent among the former is the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The CBBB traditionally has concentrated on consumer fraud complaints. But about a decade ago, it got into oversight of charities because of many public inquiries seeking to learn whether fund raisers were legitimate.

Christian organizations critical of the CBBB complain that while the council says it does not evaluate the purposes of groups or even their operating standards, its publications give the impression of blacklisting. The CBBB Philanthropic Advisory Service issues a pamphlet, “Give, but Give Wisely,” that lists organizations that do and do not meet its standards for charitable solicitations. Organizations, for instance, that have more than 25 percent of their board of directors on their staff will be rejected right along with groups that refuse to divulge financial information and strong-arming cults.

The ECFA, by contrast, lists its members, but will not reveal those rejected or even those in process of applying.

At this year’s annual meeting of the ECFA in Washington, D.C., last month, representatives of the CBBB were invited to address the group. But the invitation came over the deep misgivings of several board members. Nancy DeMarco and Helen O’Rourke warned the group that the Better Business Bureaus are in the process of issuing more stringent standards on controls and use of funds. (The discussion draft outlines a requirement that at least 60 percent of total income be spent on programs directly related to the organization’s purposes, that fund raising and administrative costs not exceed 40 percent, and that fund raising and development not exceed 30 percent.)

The CBBB spokesmen acknowledged that the ECFA had come closest of any self-policing group to having a measureable impact on the number of inquiries the Better Business Bureaus receive. This, they said, was because evangelical organizations are in the forefront of those in public fund raising.

Luncheon speaker Jerry Falwell, well-known pastor of the Lynchburg. Virginia, Thomas Road Baptist Church, articulated the anti-BBB sentiment of many evangelicals. Using 2 Corinthians 4:2 as his text, he urged public disclosure because “it’s right.” “No one can ultimately cripple your ministry but you,” he declared, “by defensively refusing to play by the rules and giving the appearance of wrongdoing.” But he went on to suggest that Christians cannot submit to secular watchdog groups. “This world is still no friend to grace,” he said.

Those with an antigospel bias, Falwell said, will always oppose effective Christian ministry, no matter how far above reproach its methods are. But the ECFA is vital, he said, for the millions who are neither antigospel nor progospel. “We need to be a part of exposing those organizations that are fraudulent,” he said, adding puckishly that soon “everyone will be forced to join ECFA voluntarily.”

That is essentially the idea behind the launching of ECFA. The man most directly responsible for its inception was also a speaker at this year’s meeting: Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oreg.).

Hatfield recalled that on July 29, 1977, Billy Graham, Stanley Mooneyham of World Vision, and the leaders of five other Christian organizations met in his office to discuss pending legislation. Former Rep. Charles H. Wilson’s (D-Calif.) bill would have tightly regulated all public fund raising, requiring financial disclosure with every advertisem*nt, commercial, and at the point of personal solicitation. Hatfield euphemistically said that he “decided to hold off on my alternative bill to allow voluntary disclosure a chance.”

Those present got the message. The preliminary meetings that eventuated in the ECFA were held that December. It was organized in September 1979. One observer wryly remarked that ECFA is Mark Hatfield holding a gun to the head of the evangelicals.

This year Hatfield, an evangelical himself, continued to apply pressure with the utmost courtesy. He reminded participants that he had called for the voluntary watchdog group to name violators and departures from the spirit as well as the letter of its standards. He also had called for genuine disclosure at the point of solicitation as well as in annual reports, he said.

Hatfield went on to insist that Christian organizations cannot surrender their control to professional fund-raising organizations that may pragmatically plan “emergencies” to increase income or build a campaign based on fear—“the hom*osexuals are talking over” or “Christians are being driven off Capitol Hill.” He also challenged the gathering to ponder whether moneys raised above the amount required for a stated goal can be diverted to other purposes.

Evangelicals, Hatfield concluded, “cannot go on blithely building our own kingdoms and power bases.” “The Lord,” he said, “is the final grantor of the ECFA seal of approval,” and may withhold his blessing from those abusing their trusts.

Christians, bewildered at the prominence this issue has assumed over the past few years, may wonder if believers are trailing far behind their secular counterparts on funding accountability.

The answer is no, according to a third speaker, William Warshauer, chairman of the nonprofit industry services division of Price Waterhouse and Company, a prominent auditing firm. As recently as 10 years ago, he said, no professional standards of accounting for nonprofit groups existed. The first guidelines in the field were issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) as recently as 1973 and 1974. Since then the field has been narrowed somewhat by treating hospitals and educational institutions separately from other nonprofit organizations. That still leaves groups as disparate as foundations, labor unions, museums, and local governments lumped in with charities in one category. But it did allow the AICPA to draw up a Statement of Position in 1978: nonbinding standards of accounting for the field.

The associated group empowered to set mandatory standards is the Financial Accounting Standards Board, located in Stanford, Connecticut, which the Wall Street Journal has labeled “the most prolific rule-making body in government.” It turned its attention to the nonprofit sector only in 1977, and so far has developed only a “conceptual framework” as a basis for developing a consistent set of accounting standards. Warshauer said that this is an “intricate, confusing, time-consuming process.” He added that although he is sure uniform standards will evolve, the input period is likely to be protracted in an effort to achieve wide acceptance of the result.

ECFA not only needs to gain recognition comparable to the longer-established Better Business Bureaus. Certain evangelical professional associations also see it as unnecessary for their constituents, while welcoming it for others.

The Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, for example, began working on its comprehensive Accounting and Financial Reporting Guide for Missionary Organizations in 1975, completing its work in 1979, just one month after the ECFA was organized. Both the IFMA and its counterpart, the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, while officially neutral, have informally taken the position that their standards are as comprehensive as those of the ECFA and that mission agencies belonging to them should feel no obligation to join ECFA.

An observer with an accounting background who is sympathetic to both groups notes that such a response misses the point. The missions associations are trade associations, he says, concerned with a broader range of member agencies’ interests, while the ECFA is more narrowly designed to certify integrity to the “watching world.” He judged that half of the member IFMA missions have not met the organization’s own reporting standards over the past 10 years, and that a significant percentage is still struggling to meet them. But no action has been taken, he says, because it is very difficult for a trade association to decimate its own ranks or even to be tough in enforcement.

IFMA executive director Edwin L. Frizen, Jr., differs. He acknowledges that a number of member agencies’ reports were less than full audited reports, but says they were always prepared by certified public accountants. With the completion of the Guide, he estimates that less than 20 percent did not immediately meet the standards spelled out for the first time. But, he says, all have taken steps to bring them into full qualification within the next year. Moreover, he adds, the IFMA has dismissed a half dozen or so members over its 64-year history.

The ECFA has attempted to respond by finding ways to be helpful to the so-called faith missions. In early April, it hosted a meeting with eight mission agencies representative of the diversity in this grouping. Chaired by World Vision executive Ed Dayton, it explored the fund-raising philosophies and problems of the nondenominational missions with their executive and financial officers. The philosophies ranged from faith alone, to faith plus full information, to energetic solicitation.

Fund-raising problems were evident. At least one agency reported that a decade ago its accepted candidates typically had raised their support and were off to their overseas assignments in about one year with few if any dropouts in the process. Now, it typically takes two years to obtain the required support and as many as half of the candidates grow discouraged and withdraw in the interval.

ECFA executive secretary Olan Hendrix felt the ad hoc consultation proved positive in that the participants were not defensive and that fund-raising obstacles were identified.

Even without a coalescing of views in this sector, however, the ECFA’s prospects look bright. At the three-year mark, the ECFA has set itself the goal of 250 member organizations by the end of 1981. The recognized seal-of-approval role it seeks in accrediting evangelical organizations that solicit from the public is almost within grasp.

Personalia

Robert Cooley, an archaeologist at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, has been elected president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. The announcement ends a two-year search for a successor to Harold J. Okenga. Cooley is from an Assemblies of God background.

Ron Cline was elected president of World Radio Missionary Fellowship (HCJB in Quito, Ecuador), to succeed in 1982 Abe C. Van Der Puy, president for the last 20 years. Cline has served with the mission for five years.

R. Michael Steeves was appointed general secretary-treasurer of the Baptist Federation of Canada. Steeves has been pastor of churches in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. The Baptist Federation includes four conventions and unions, and has 120,000 active members across Canada.

Texas multimillionaire T. Cullen Davis threw his weight behind a proposal to make Texas public schools teach creation science along with evolution science. Davis, a recent convert and close friend of evangelist James Robison, sent a letter to each member of the Texas legislature indicating his support for the bill. He added. “As a businessman with many employees throughout the state, I will be most pleased if I can report to my associates in your area that you have affirmed a position on these bills.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Robert A. K. Runcie, titular head of the world’s 64 million Anglicans, completed a 21-day tour of the U.S. earlier this month. Much more low-key than Pope John Paul II’s U.S. tour 18 months earlier, the visit was called “pastoral” by Runcie, 59, a nonevangelical traditionalist and World War II veteran who breeds Berkshire pigs as a hobby. His trip ended with a call for unity among Christians during the week-long meeting of the world’s 28 Anglican primates in Washington, D.C. It was the first time the bishops convened in the U.S.

Results include flow of Bibles into Socialist Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan government flew in the parts for a plastic swimming pool earlier this month. The pool was not to be built at the home of some Sandinista elitist—far from it. Its destination was a large prison in Managua, where 700 prisoners were waiting to be baptized.

Their new faith in Christ, and the revolutionary government’s apparent encouragement of it, are among several remarkable developments in the Central American nation. The most recent is the revolutionary government’s request for 800,000 popular-language New Testaments.

The first 100,000 entered the country from Colombia earlier this month, mostly through funds provided by the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMFI). Now the United Bible Societies is raising funds for the remaining 700,000.

The New Testaments will be distributed free through local churches, and are earmarked specifically for prisoners and the thousands of Nicaragua’s new readers. In the unprecedented 1980 “Great National Literacy Campaign,” literacy in the nation of 2.4 million nearly doubled—from 48 to 88 percent.

Alberto Cárcamo, general director of the UBS office for the Americas (one of four regional headquarters) in Mexico City, said interior minister Tomás Borge Martínez requested the Bibles, realizing that “if the new readers don’t get material to read, they’ll lose what they’ve learned. “But Cárcamo also attributed the choice of reading materials to Borge’s “Christian principles.”

Borge, himself tortured and his wife and daughter killed by guardsmen of deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza, attests to a personal experience with Christ, coming largely through the ministry of the FGBMFI. He has attended a number of FGBMFI’s functions in Central America, most recently a one-day event in Panama to which he flew.

Observers say Borge’s spiritual healing is most evidenced in his reconciliatory measures toward former enemies and his treatment of political prisoners. Borge publicly denounced and apologized for the executions of several hundred Somocistas by revenge-bent Sandinista guerrillas soon after the June 1979 change of government. He emphasized that revenge and murder is not the Sandinista policy. He secured early release for some of the 7,000 political prisoners, and hopes to better the conditions in overcrowded prisons where the estimated 4,200 prisoners remain.

At a meeting of the local Managua Full Gospel Business Men’s chapter last July. Borge voiced his burden for the prisoners and asked FGBMFI officials for help (CT, Sept. 19, 1980). The charismatic-oriented group, with headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, responded by sending in several thousand Bibles, as well as local pastors to minister to the prisoners. These efforts are not hurt by the fact that the government’s head of prisons, Chester Alvarado, is a Christian. FGBMFI director for Central and South America, Newman Peyton, Jr., said he recently prayed with Alvarado to accept Christ as Savior.

Peyton, based in Houston, said the FGBMFI’s vision for Latin America is to reach its heads of state with the gospel. He directs this work with Latin America Mission affiliate Jonás Gonzalez, the Texas-born FGBMFI Latin America coordinator based in Costa Rica, who joined FGBMFI 13 months ago after extensive ministry with LAM-related agencies.

FGBMFI-sponsored prayer luncheons and meetings with Latin American political and government leaders are low-key. Usually a well-known figure shares his personal testimony, and meetings are often on a one-to-one basis. Peyton emphasized the apolitical nature of FGBMFI—that the group will extend the gospel to anyone, regardless of a person’s politics: “We’re not anti-capitalist, anti-Communist, or anti-anything—just pro-Jesus Christ.”

FGBMFI officials prefer not to publicize their meetings with Latin American heads of state, but there are indications that this behind-the-scenes witness is making a substantial impact. According to Peyton, FGBMFI officials met in late April with provisional president Policarpo Paz Garcia of Honduras and “God touched him.” At FGBMFI’s request, Costa Rican president Rodrigo Carazo Odio was host to a December 1979 dinner meeting that brought together Honduran and Sandinista leaders at a time when their respective nations were involved in a bloody border dispute.

Largely because government leaders of Guyana have been influenced favorably for the gospel, that “whole nation is going through a born-again experience,” Peyton asserted. He mentioned again the positive effect of Borge, who, while not a member of the three-man ruling junta, is the “real power” in Nicaragua as its Minister of the Interior.

United Bible Societies officials hope Christians will take advantage of the open door for Bible distribution in Nicaragua. Many observers believe free nations earlier missed their chance by not answering the Sandinista government’s request for teachers during the literacy campaign. Cuba did, however, sending in at least 1,800 teachers who taught reading, as well as the Marxist line. Christian leaders want to pump in Christian materials to keep pace with the prevalent Marxist ones. Right now the government allows the churches almost complete religious freedom.

The version being sent to Nicaragua is Dios llega al hombre (literally “God comes as man,” and is the Spanish equivalent of Good News for Modern Man). (U.S. supporters can contact the American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023 about the Nicaraquan project). The Bible cover carries the seal of Nicaragua, and the words of the national hymn. Time will tell whether the New Testaments bring a spiritual revolution with as much impact as the political one in Nicaragua.

Scotland

Luis Palau Returns For Glasgow Crusade

The motto of Scotland’s largest city is “Let Glasgow flourish through the preaching of the Word and the praising of his name.” The acids of modernity in recent years have abbreviated that to the opening three words, but Luis Palau opted for the original version when earlier this month he opened his five-week crusade in Kelvin Hall.

A revival of wintry weather kept attendance down to about 4,500. To his listeners, the 46-year-old Argentinian spoke of a different kind of revival that would restore Scotland to past spiritual greatness—when its preachers trusted the Bible and its missionaries were sent all over the world, including Palau’s own Latin America.

Palau has strong Scottish links: his maternal grandmother was a Balfour. A Scots businessman’s testimony was used in his own conversion as a boy, and he has already conducted crusades in northwest and southeast Scotland. He stresses, nonetheless, that he does not see himself as “a missionary to darkest Britain.”

But Palau expressed concern at the Glasgow meeting that 2,000 Scottish churches have been closed since 1929, and that a large segment of the population in the land of John Knox is not being reached by the gospel. “It’s either back to the jungle or back to the Bible.” he told his Scottish hearers.

Palau is convinced that “many people have images of what evangelical Christianity is all about that are twisted and totally misleading.” He left those first-day listeners in no doubt about his own concept, and several dozen responded by going forward for counseling at the close of the meeting.

This largest crusade in Glasgow since Billy Graham came to the same hall in 1955 has a budget of some $700,000, of which almost half had been raised before the 900-strong choir rose for the first hymn.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Zimbabwe

Shattered During War, Evangelicals Regroup

The Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ)—then Rhodesia—collapsed in 1978 at the height of the liberation struggle, when it was difficult to call meetings. In addition, most of the officers of the fellowship, which was born in 1963, were missionaries, some of whom left the country as the guerrilla warfare intensified.

Last month—just a week before Zimbabwe celebrated its first anniversary—delegates from 10 evangelical denominations and mission organizations met in Salisbury and determined to revive the organization (which had 25 member bodies before its collapse). They elected an interim executive committee, with Philemon M. Kumalo, ordained in the Brethren in Christ Church and principal of Ekupheleni Bible Institute, as chairman. Bishop Joshua Dhube of the United Baptist church and a member of Parliament in Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s government was elected secretary; Wilbur Beach, a TEAM missionary, was selected as treasurer.

According to Dhube, the general citizenry views favorably the liberal-leaning Zimbabwe Christian Council. Some member denominations in the ZCC identified with the nationalists during the protracted warfare, whereas some evangelical missions were sympathetic to the Ian Smith regime.

One of the EFZ’s weaknesses, argues Willfred Strom, EFZ chairman from 1968 to 1972 and one of the committee members in the interim executive, “was that it was too mission oriented. Now, it should reflect the new reality in Zimbabwe.”

The resurrected EFZ’s success or failure, supporters say, may depend on its ability to interpret the orthodox Christian message within the context of African experience.

NGONI SENGWE

Mexico

Protestants Are Tormented Still In The Villages

Hostility against the thriving Presbyterian church had been building for some time in San Lorenzo Temexlupan, a small town in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. More than 300 people had accepted the message of salvation—even though only a small part of the New Testament had been translated into their language, one of the many Zapotec dialects, through work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Wycliffe).

Then in March, hostility exploded. The president of the congregation, Valentino Martinez Marcial, was found dead on the road beside his burro, seven bullets in his body. Valentino, 28, had been the SIL translator’s principal translation assistant for the local language.

Soon after, another member of the church, Vicente Marcial Francisco, 26, was also murdered. Strangely, the authorities reportedly did not bother to write up the deaths as crimes that needed investigation.

A few days later, a mob armed with sticks, axes, and machetes marched on the simple Presbyterian chapel and destroyed it. Another member of the church was shot, but escaped; a fourth victim, beaten badly about the head and left for dead, also survived.

By that time, the believers got the message and fled. A group of 47 sought refuge in the town of Santa Rosa Mata Galtinas where in past years several believers were killed. But the town fathers held a meeting and voted that no refugees could stay. Fleeing again, a large group of believers from San Lorenzo arrived at the gates of San Pablo Presbyterian Church in the city of Oaxaca, capital of the state. They requested food and shelter for an indefinite time. Others fled to Mexico City and other parts of the country.

Realizing local authorities were against the believers, the San Pablo pastor, Saul Velasco Cervantes, and other Presbyterian leaders sought an audience with the governor of Oaxaca. He offered to send soldiers to escort the people back to their homes. But leaders in San Lorenzo swore to kill every one of the Presbyterians as soon as the soldiers departed.

Despite the deaths, the news got out slowly: Pastor Velasco told a local reporter what was happening, and on April 29 a Mexico City evening paper, Ovaciones, headlined in letters three inches high: “HOLY WAR,” adding incorrectly that two Presbyterians had been burned to death. Some radio stations around Mexico picked up the story, but most of the press ignored it.

The “war” aspect was typical of Roman Catholic attitudes toward the introduction of teachings other than their own in rural Mexico, but Oaxaca Presbyterians are not clear whether the persecution is being directed by Communists or Catholics. However, as recently as June 1979, the Catholic archbishop of Oaxaca publicly attacked the Summer Institute of Linguistics without supporting evidence, accusing the translators of being agitators, “proselytizing and provoking violence and deaths in Oaxaca upon inducing the Indians to division …”

On April 30, the National Assembly of the Presbyterian Church began to consider what action to take regarding the Oaxaca incidents, said its president, Juan Garcia. If enough funds were available, there was a strong possibility of publishing full-page statements in major Mexico City newspapers to make the public aware of the problem and lead the authorities to take corrective action.

ELISABETH ISAIS

World Scene

A mass evangelistic rally in West Berlin scheduled for June 5–7 has created a furor in advance of the event. The heavily advertised Berlin ’81 is to be held in the 78,000-seat Olympic Stadium. It is the project of Volkhard Spitzer, charismatic pastor of the 500-member Christian Center in Berlin. The German Evangelical Alliance, the Berlin Ecumenical Council, and a number of Lutheran church entities have disassociated themselves from the rally. They cite Spitzer’s claim to divine instruction in launching Berlin ’81, his handling of prophetic topics, and advertisemets that show as participating some leaders who have declined to attend. Spitzer said he is shocked that a meeting designed to reach people for Christ could “still meet with such opposition in Germany,” and insisted he has no plans to develop a new movement.

Evangelicals in Yugoslavia have taken a step toward cooperation, but are finding harmony elusive. Last December an evangelical council formed, with members (churches and individuals—not denominations) from among the Baptists, Brethren, Lutherans, Methodists, Reformed, Assemblies of God, and other Pentecostal groups. But soon afterward, certain Baptist leaders opposed the council, accusing it of ecumenism. In Yugoslavia, “ecumenical” would indicate the inclusion of Roman Catholics, Serbian Orthodox, or Muslims, but none of those are part of the new evangelical fellowship. A Yugoslavian correspondent attributes the discord to a personality conflict between Baptists and Pentecostals rather than a matter of conscience, noting that those seeking to undercut the council previously served together at the international level with no qualms.

The Hungarian Bible Council is incensed that mission organizations have pirated its ecumenical version of the Hungarian Bible. The council, which represents Reformed, Lutheran, Free, and Orthodox churches, first published the version in 1975, and so far has printed 80,000 copies. But council president Tibor Bartha, a Reformed bishop, says the churches are “deeply grieved” that the version, protected by international copyright law, “was being printed without our knowledge in a printing press somewhere in the West, and being regularly smuggled into our country.” He stated that rumors that the Bible is in short supply in Hungary are false. The thousands of copies of the pirated edition flooding second-hand bookshops at almost half the official price, he said, are undercutting the economic viability of producing the new version, and also threaten to bring all Bible distribution in Hungary into disrepute.

American Protestants have launched a TV station in Southern Lebanon. Sponsored by television evangelist George Otis’s High Adventure Ministries of Van Nuys, California, it began beaming its signals last month into the heavily Palestinian Tyre and Sidon region. The same organization installed a radio transmitter in Major Saad Haddad’s so-called Christian Enclave along the Israeli border in 1979. The Israeli-protected strip is populated equally with Maronite Christians and Shiite Muslims.

The Brother Andrew organization has been strongly criticized by a new Hong Kong-based grouping of Christian organizations that focuses on assisting the church in mainland China. In its first newsletter, the Fellowship of China Ministries takes Open Doors to task for releasing a book with “an unneccessarily agitative title, God’s Smuggler to China, despite warning from the fellowship. The FCM expresses deep regret and discourages the distribution of this book in Hong Kong.” An officer of the fellowship (whose members are Asian Outreach, the Chinese Church Research Center, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Christian Communications Ltd., Far East Broadcasting Company, and Trans World Radio) noted that it is not illegal for Bibles to enter the People’s Republic, and that to suggest that this is the case is to tag Christians who distribute them as violators of the law.