Page 4794 – Christianity Today (2024)

ALSO REVIEWED IN THIS SECTION:

A THEOLOGY OF WORD AND SPIRIT

By Donald G. Bloesch

HOLY SCRIPTURE

By Donald G. Bloesch

WHEN GOD DOESN’T MAKE SENSE

By James Dobson

TWO KINGDOMS

By Robert Clouse, Richard Pierard, and Edwin Yamauchi

OUT OF MY MIND: THE BEST OF JOE BAYLY

Edited by Timothy Bayly

BITTER ROOTS

By John L. Moore

Gay, Proud, And Sadly Mistaken

STRANGER AT THE GATE,by Mel White (Simon and Schuster, 287 pp.; $23, hardcover). Reviewed by Bob Davies, executive director of Exodus International and coauthor of Coming Out of hom*osexuality (InterVarsity).

Can best-selling Christian books and I award-winning evangelistic films be written and produced by a married man who, between writing projects, is committing adultery with other men? Not only could it happen—it did happen, as revealed in Mel White’s disturbing autobiography. His confessions will probably embarrass well-known evangelical leaders who used his services as a ghostwriter: Jerry Falwell (Strength for the Journey, If I Should Die Before I Wake!), Billy Graham (Approaching Hoofbeats), Pat Robertson (America’s Dates with Destiny), and W. A. Criswell (Standing on the Promises). Besides his books, White produced such films as How Should We Then Live? with the late Francis Schaeffer, and D. James Kennedy’s Like a Mighty Army.

In Stranger at the Gate, White presents himself as an evangelical case study. His goal is to show that the traditional Christian teaching on hom*osexuality is wrong since it did not work in his life and causes suffering in the lives of many others. White’s writing skills serve him well as he eloquently tells his story, describing the excruciating conflict between his inner hom*osexual desires and his outward evangelical successes.

Although aware of same-sex desires from an early age, White considered them sinful and sought to escape them by marrying Lyla Loehr in 1962. Over the next 25 years, even though he loved his wife and delighted in their two children, White felt tormented by continued longings for sexual intimacy with other men. He sought freedom through Christian psychotherapy, exorcism, prayers for healing, and every other avenue of help he could think of. Nothing seemed to work—and finally he took the plunge into hom*osexual relationships.

White admits that his first gay encounter was less than he had hoped for: “I had dreamed of this night for decades, but when it actually happened, I felt awkward, embarrassed, and guilty.” He held his handsome young partner in his arms, “thanking God for this good fortune [while] I was begging God to forgive me.” White decided that night that his “natural, God-given sensual needs could not be ignored, postponed, and denied forever.” He remained married but frequently met his male partner for sexual liaisons during the next year.

Incredibly, he was still heavily involved in writing projects for top evangelical leaders. One day, after meeting with Billy Graham in Acapulco to discuss a book, he flew to Chicago to see his lover, then took a night flight back in time to have breakfast with Graham the next morning. In White’s own words, “It could have been a bad scene in a B-grade soap opera.”

But his double life was ripping him apart. During the coming weeks, his depression reached new lows, and he thought constantly about death. Valium became his “only real source of comfort,” even while he continued to lecture at Christian colleges and seminaries across the country. Finally, both he and his wife underwent Christian counseling, then decided to separate. Their divorce was finalized in 1986.

In late 1991, White’s writing career in conservative Christian circles ended when he began confessing his hom*osexuality and confronting “hom*ophobic” attitudes. Last June, his appointment as dean of the largest gay and lesbian congregation in the world, Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, attracted widespread media attention and propelled him “out of the closet” before a national audience. Only then did many evangelicals learn of his hom*osexuality.

A KINDER, GENTLER SODOM

White’s autobiography makes fascinating—and painful—reading. He is strongest when describing his ongoing inner loneliness and turmoil since childhood. His narrative, however, quickly weakens when he strays from his own story to tackle theological issues, such as the traditional biblical teachings on hom*osexuality. “It is obvious,” he argues at one point, “that the original Sodomites weren’t hom*osexuals at all.” Then he mentions Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 1:10 and Jeremiah 23:14 that list the nonsexual sins of Sodom, but he virtually ignores the New Testament passages that link Sodom with sexual immorality (2 Pet. 2:7; Jude 7).

Perhaps the most dangerous oversight in White’s “post-hom*ophobic” theology is the absence of the notion of human sinfulness. After he and his lover attend a gay church in Los Angeles for some time, White asks the pastor why his sermons always focus on God’s love, but never God’s judgment of sin. “The people who come to this church have heard enough about sin and judgment,” the pastor answers. “It’s time they heard about love for a change.”

This imbalance seems to lead White into a philosophy of sanctified hedonism. Despite the fact that White still considers himself a Christian pastor, there is a conspicuous absence, in what he teaches, of such biblical principles as self-denial, sexual constraint, “taking up one’s cross daily,” or “loving another more than oneself.” In other words, White fails to “Christianize” his hom*osexual experience. For instance, White expresses “great regret” at his choice to abstain from hom*osexual encounters earlier in life; but even if his partners were female and not male, these actions would still be labeled fornication (and later adultery) by traditional Christian ethics. Eventually, White comes to embrace fully his hom*osexuality as “the natural, God-given passion at the very heart of my existence.”

White’s unshackled abandon to his sexual impulses is the foundation of his life message, and it is a misleading, even deadly, example for other Christians struggling with sexual-identity issues. Thousands of men who have embraced White’s philosophy are now dying of AIDS. Others still in conflict about their hom*osexual urges will be persuaded that living out their sexual fantasies will bring peace and fulfillment.

In putting the most positive spin possible on his story, White has to minimize the devastation his choices have caused other people around him. The reader is left to speculate about the turmoil faced by his wife when, late in his marriage, White asked her for a “time-share” arrangement so he could freely pursue sex with a male lover “on the side” while maintaining a marital façade. And the fact that his parents have never been comfortable with his decision to pursue hom*osexuality is only briefly mentioned.

THE CHURCH’S CLOSET

Ultimately, White’s book has the same weaknesses as any biography. One person’s life experiences do not offer a universal perspective on such large issues as hom*osexuality. For example, White fails to acknowledge that some people involved in a lifetime of hom*osexual relationships have found them as unfulfilling as he found heterosexual intimacy. And White’s current long-term relationship with another man is relatively rare in the hom*osexual community, as demonstrated by the rampant spread of HIV among gay men.

White states repeatedly that hom*osexuality cannot be changed, despite the hundreds of men and women who have left that behavior and report their lives to be more peaceful and satisfying as a result. He says “ex-gay” testimonials are short-lived; but many men and women have lived free of hom*osexuality for decades. These same people will admit that leaving hom*osexuality behind is tremendously difficult, and there is a significant number of “ex-gays” who eventually return to active hom*osexuality. But does the difficulty of overcoming a certain pattern of sexual arousal mean one should simply succumb to it? One wonders what White’s message would be to a man struggling with sexual desires for children, or even to a heterosexual friend tormented by lust toward female coworkers.

In fact, White has little time for the concerns of those who oppose his moral philosophy. He reserves his strongest chastisem*nt for leaders of “the religious right” who oppose hom*osexual practices, saying these religious leaders are causing millions “to fear and to hate gay and lesbian people” with claims that grow “more lurid and far-fetched every day.” He laments the conservative church’s “determined effort to force their version of morality on the rest of the American people,” missing the obvious point that gays are guilty of the same “offense.” Still, some of his criticisms carry weight, especially when he documents how some Christian ministries promote antihom*osexual hysteria in their fundraising efforts.

In spite of its erroneous conclusions, Stranger at the Gate teaches valuable lessons. For one, it shows that same-sex inclinations do not automatically cease at conversion, nor are they easily expunged by a quick prayer or counseling session. Second, it reveals the personal agony that can result from unloving attitudes—still all-too-common in some Christian circles—toward those who battle hom*osexual desires. The truth is that the church can do a much better job dealing with the issue of hom*osexuality without going down the path Mel White encourages us to take.

Reshaping Evangelical Theology

A THEOLOGY OF WORD AND SPIRIT: AUTHORITY AND METHOD IN THEOLOGY, by Donald G. Bloesch (InterVarsity, 400 pp.; $22.99, hardcover);

HOLY SCRIPTURE: REVELATION, INSPIRATION AND INTERPRETATION, by Donald G. Bloesch (InterVarsity, 367 pp.; $25, hardcover). Reviewed by Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama.

The publication of the first two volumes of Donald Bloesch’s Christian Foundations series represents a signal advance in the maturation of evangelical theological scholarship. In the heady days of the evangelical resurgence after World War II, the shapers of this movement set two formidable goals: one, to foster a tradition of first-rate scholarly engagement with the various theological disciplines from the perspective of historic Christian orthodoxy, and, two, in distinction from separatistic fundamentalism, to reclaim the mainline Protestant denominations for the cause of evangelical Christianity. In a sense, Bloesch is heir to both of these dreams.

When completed, Bloesch’s seven-volume magnum opus will constitute the most substantial theological contribution of any American evangelical since Carl Henry’s magisterial God, Revelation and Authority. What’s more, this comes from one who has made his mark as a professor in a mainline Presbyterian seminary and as a theologian of the United Church of Christ, arguably one of America’s most liberal Protestant denominations.

In volume one, A Theology of Word and Spirit, Bloesch sets forth his theological prolegomena. While Bloesch’s work may be comparable to Carl Henry’s in some respects, it is clear that he takes his cues from another Karl—Barth of Basel. Indeed, along with the late Bernard Ramm, Bloesch has probably done more than any other contemporary theologian to revive an interest in Barth among evangelicals. Although Bloesch claims some of Barth’s conclusions are problematic, he does not develop this critique in any sustained way. At a number of specific points—the priority of faith over philosophy, the disparagement of natural theology, the circ*mscribed role of apologetics—Bloesch is clearly trudging in the tracks of his great mentor.

Near the end of volume one, Bloesch offers a new typology of the major options he discerns in contemporary theology: a theology of restoration that attacks modernity without serious engagement with it (B.B. Warfield, Henry, possibly Tom Oden); a theology of accommodation that seeks to forge a unity between secular and religious wisdom (Friedrich Schleiermacher, David Tracy, John Hick); a theology of correlation that seeks a new synthesis between Christian faith and modern claims (Paul Tillich, Hans Küng, Wolfhart Pannenberg); and, finally, a theology of confrontation that does not ignore modern issues but calls them into question on the basis of the core Christian message (John Calvin, Barth, Abraham Kuyper). One may question whether this is really an adequate description of the theological landscape. It is clear, however, that Bloesch is forging his own system as a variant of the confrontation paradigm. He wants to move beyond what some call the “heads-in-the-sand” restorationists without compromising his commitment to the faith “once for all delivered.”

A VENTURE OF DARING LOVE

The tension between these polarities is evident in volume two as Bloesch unpacks his doctrine of Holy Scripture. Here, more clearly than in volume one, the general rubric for the entire series comes into play. Bloesch wants to set forth a doctrine of biblical revelation that affirms both the divinely given objectivity of the scriptural text while also allowing for the dynamic role of the Holy Spirit in both inspiration and illumination. Thus he affirms a sensus plenior within the text of Scripture: its meaning is not exhausted by what the human writer had in mind, but it can be understood only in the light of the development of God’s complete revelation. The interpretation of Scripture is not so much an art to be learned, Bloesch contends, but rather a gift to be received in faith. Bloesch further defines faith as “a kind of naïveté that impels us to venture forth in childlike trust with a certainty that the Spirit will lead us into all truth.” In distinction from the literalism of the fundamentalists and the reductionism of the liberals, Bloesch calls his method “the postcritical, pneumatic approach of a catholic evangelicalism.”

Clearly there is much in Bloesch’s doctrine of Scripture that can be warmly embraced by all evangelicals. Over against the excesses of reader-response hermeneutics and other “myths spawned by higher criticism,” Bloesch argues for the conceptual and intelligible character of revelation, pointing out that while “we cannot objectify God, God can objectify himself and thereby make his truth available to us.” Thus, in the Bible we are presented “with real truths, with truth that is absolute and unconditional because it is God’s truth.” At the same time, Bloesch wisely reminds us that while God’s truth can be formulated in rational speech, it can never be “possessed or mastered” in propositions.

For Bloesch, inerrancy is not the preferable term to describe Scripture, although it should not be abandoned because of what it conveys concerning the divine source and veracity of the Bible. Most, if not all, of Bloesch’s legitimate concerns about what he prefers to call “difficulties” (as opposed to errors) in the biblical text have been covered in the two Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) and Hermeneutics (1982). Bloesch wants to distance himself from these statements because of their supposedly rationalistic bent, though he nowhere interacts with their specific arguments.

In the end, we must ask whether Bloesch’s own very high view of biblical authority is not itself undermined by his unwitting concession to destructive critical methodologies. What does it mean, for example, to say that infallibility applies to the revelatory meaning of the Bible, “not to any particular text or report” in it? On the basis of this kind of claim, of course, critical scholars have dared to demythologize all kind of texts in the Bible, including those that report Jesus’ miraculous conception and bodily resurrection. In other settings, Bloesch has defended the integrity of the Christian message by resisting the trend to adopt inclusive God-language in the church. One wonders, however, whether those Bloesch rightly opposes on this issue could not, in fact, defend their relativizing of God-language on the basis of Bloesch’s understanding of biblical revelation.

Though a critic of evangelicals to his right, Bloesch recognizes the overriding unity he shares with them as believing Christians who affirm the faith once delivered to the saints. Like Emil Brunner, Bloesch sees more hope in fundamentalism than in liberalism, “for what is dissolved can no longer be restored, whereas what is frozen or hardened can be brought back to life by the Spirit.” Indeed, conservative evangelicals, while lamenting the inconsistencies in Bloesch’s doctrine of Scripture, should rejoice in his clear affirmation of historic Christian verities as well as the genuine piety that undergirds his work and informs his vision of theology as “a venture of daring love born out of fidelity to the Great Commission to share the gospel with all peoples.”

Betrayed By God

WHEN GOD DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, by James Dobson (Tyndale, 288 pp; $17.99, hardcover). Reviewed by Chris Hall, assistant professor of religious studies, Eastern College, Saint Davids, Pennsylvania.

In his new book, James Dobson, founder and president of Focus on the Family, attempts to help Christians journeying through life’s inexplicably dark valleys. While not giving believers detailed directions on how to deal with tragedies, which some might prefer, Dobson presents a broad road map for struggling Christians.

He believes evangelicals overlook the ambiguities of life, leaving them ill prepared for the horrific accidents, terminal illnesses, and sudden deaths that come with shocking regularity. As Dobson says, “In a matter of moments the world can fall off its axis.” When it does, he observes, Christians often experience a deep sense of betrayal as God seemingly fails to answer their deepest prayers.

In response, Dobson suggests a number of wise and helpful strategies. First, he gently calls his readers to a deeper reverence of God as God. God, Dobson reminds us, is not a divine genie or bellhop. God is accountable to no one and owes no explanation for his actions.

This may be difficult to hear, particularly for those who have experienced the harsh bite of pain or the lonely night of grief. But, as Dobson writes, when God seems to “[defy] human logic and sensibilities,” Christians must allow his infinite love revealed in Christ and witnessed in Scripture to carry them through.

Second, Dobson warns that human beings lack the intellectual capability to debate with God. Christians have two choices: to demand answers from God, which they might not receive or welcome if actually given, or to trust in God as God. Insisting on answers to inexplicable events, he asserts, will result in creeping bitterness toward God and life.

Third, Dobson beckons believers to develop realistic expectations shaped by an immersion in Scripture and an understanding of prayer’s rhyme and rhythm. At times God answers prayers in a remarkable fashion. At other times, God seemingly says “nothing at all.”

At this juncture, Dobson criticizes the theological promoters of “universal health and prosperity,” because their theology foments unrealistic expectations that lack scriptural warrant and lead to dismay and disillusionment with God. Sooner or later, God will appear “whimsical, untrustworthy, unfair, or sinister” within the perimeters of a health-and-wealth theology.

Along the way, Dobson points to the roles of sacrifice and struggle in the formation of Christian character. “We are in a spiritual war with a deadly foe.… Flabby, overindulged, pampered Christians just don’t have the stamina to fight this battle.” He also notes the periodic connection between willful sin and human suffering. “I believe many of the trials and tribulations that come our way are of our own making.”

In When Cod Doesn’t Make Sense, Dobson expands his readers’ horizon beyond the boundaries of this present life. One day resolution will be given to the questions that find no answers this side of heaven. But for the time being, believers must continue the journey faithfully, trusting God in the midst of the mysterious, storing away “our questions for a lengthy conversation on the other side.”

The Church’S Dance With Culture

TWO KINGDOMS: THE CHURCH AND CULTURE THROUGH THE AGES, by Robert Clouse, Richard Pierard, and Edwin Yamauchi (Moody, 672 pp.; $29.99, hardcover). Reviewed by Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).

Two thousand years of Christianity have produced a rich historical tapestry woven with both triumphs and tragedies. Yet many believers are unfamiliar with the divergent forces that have shaped their faith. A valuable guide and introduction to that heritage is Two Kingdoms, by historians Robert Clouse, Richard Pierard, and Edwin Yamauchi.

The book explores not only the development of the institutional church, but also Christianity’s relationship to the surrounding culture—giving lessons that are especially appropriate today as the church adapts itself to a post-Christian age. We all can take heart when we read how past believers overcame challenges from both paganism and persecution.

Two Kingdoms also provides readers with a useful lesson in secular history. The authors survey the rise of feudalism, the collapse of Byzantium, post-Reformation conflict, and the carnage of the twentieth century—all the while reviewing Christianity’s cultural impact. These presentations exhibit sophistication despite their abbreviated length.

The book closes by listing some of the challenges facing the church—including racism, war, secularization, and women in ministry. Not surprisingly, one can disagree with the authors’ formulation of some of the issues. For instance, some would argue that the problem of the Third World is really poverty, not income disparity. But the existence of such differences merely highlights the need to discuss these subjects.

Overall, in reading Two Kingdoms one cannot help being overwhelmed with both the majesty and mystery of God’s method of redeeming humankind. And the more readers understand the legacy of their faith, the better able they will be to weave their experiences with those of the past, extending the tapestry of Christianity even further into the world.

Prophet Bayly

OUT OF MY MIND: THE BEST OF JOE BAYLY, edited by Timothy Bayly (Zondervan, 192 pp.; $10.99, paper). Reviewed by Stephen Board, president of Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois

As a monthly columnist for the now-defunct Eternity magazine, where I was privileged to be his editor, Joseph T. Bayly surveyed the evangelical establishment with a prophetic pen from 1961 to 1986.

Now seven years since his death at 66 following open-heart surgery, Bayly’s provocative personality lives on in this compilation of his best columns.

Bayly was an evangelical pundit—a philosopher and orator. Overarching his formal roles was his real calling: to be a conscience for conservative evangelicals. Bayly kept us honest.

Joe Bayly often said what no one else was saying, but he also had a personal credibility that more glib critics lacked. He and Mary Lou Bayly had suffered the death of three sons; his words to people in crisis never sounded cheap. He grew up with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s pioneer years in the 1940s, then wove in and through evangelical publishing, boards of directors, and missions. He had fully paid his dues.

In his writing, Bayly often issued vexingly plausible counsel such as this advice to his children, hidden away in a column written after his first heart attack: “Don’t have TV. Refuse to rent your living room and your time—your own, your spouse’s, your children’s—to pagan hucksters. Ask whether you’d want these people as guests and friends in your home … and ask similar questions about Christian hucksters.” The Baylys never owned a television.

Bayly inveighed against pharisaism and spiritual lopsidedness. In one column, he recalls a Christian student gathering in the late forties in Europe that included some former Nazi soldiers who were believers. One soldier shared that because he had refused to participate in social dancing, he had lost his chance to become an officer. His church and home had taught him that dancing was wrong, but he had had no conscience about Jews. “I remember my feeling of surprise. Christians were the same everywhere—they weren’t afraid to speak out, even against Hitler, when it came to social dancing.”

If this fatherly conscience of evangelicalism were still among us, he would likely be writing on “seeker services” in churches, on the decline of the hymnbook in worship, on mission trips to Russia, on the place of money in Christian publishing and entertainment, and on the mushrooming of an American underclass, to name just a few current issues. To his creative credit, we don’t really know what he would say.

Montana Revelations

BITTER ROOTS, by John L. Moore (Thomas Nelson, 228 pp.; $10.99, paper). Reviewed by Robert Bittner, a freelance writer living in Lansing, Michigan.

“To kill the plant, you must kill the root,” notes Reba McColley, commenting on stubborn Montana flora in John Moore’s novel Bitter Roots. Yet her words also apply to the stubborn members of—the McColley clan, her family by marriage. In the McColleys’ case, the “plants” are divisiveness, jealousy, resentment, and mistrust that have grown wild for l three generations. And the “root” is the family’s patriarch, Alistair I McColley.

Although respected by his peers, Alistair is remembered by his kin as the man who represents everything bad about the family. Yet none of Alistair’s heirs has succeeded in redeeming the McColley name. A woman of indomitable faith, Reba desperately wants to see the McColleys come to terms with their history.

And God uses this desire. One night, Reba’s thoughts are interrupted by God’s voice: “My people are like books. They have stories that are read and stories that go unread. If you will listen and not judge, the unread will be told. Hear the story of the seed, taste of the fruit born from bitter roots.”

Reba accepts God’s invitation, opening her heart and mind to the myriad McColley stories. Subsequent chapters feature, in a loose short-story format, first-person accounts of McColleys both living and dead. As Reba moves from McColley to McColley, she learns their stories, secrets, and dreams. She also discovers truths behind the family’s myths and some surprising answers to the family’s questions.

With Bitter Roots, novelist and Montana rancher Moore (author of The Breaking of Ezra Riley, the 1990 winner of the CHRISTIANITY TODAY Critics’-Choice Award for fiction) tries to take popular Christian fiction to a new stylistic plateau. The attempt is not entirely successful.

In past books, Moore skillfully described his much-loved Montana landscape and the ranching men who wrest their livelihood from it. Here, Moore focuses on female characters and explores interpersonal relationships. Some chapters succeed to great effect, like “Breakin’ Ice” and “Sermons.” Others fall short, due to underdeveloped emotional interactions and stereotyped female characterization.

But Moore is a strong writer with a desire to explore life’s issues in a lyrical and realistic style, rooted as firmly in the natural landscape as it is rooted in Christian faith. If Bitter Roots disappoints, it is because it fails to sustain its own lofty ideals. We can wish that other evangelical novelists would aim as high.

The crisis of our health-care system touches us every day. Employers, the working poor, the unemployed, parents of young children—all struggle with a system that costs too much yet does not truly prevent suffering.

Unfortunately, the debate over health-care reform has too often been dominated by concerns about money and privilege. People of faith have not yet succeeded in putting moral issues into the center of the debate. But churches have a wonderful opportunity to make their voices heard and their actions count.

Religious groups have long been at the center of efforts to heal the sick. According to medical historian Henry Sigerist, Christianity entered the world as a “religion of healing.” Churches and religious orders through the centuries have been known for founding hospitals and homes for the aged. Just as science has advanced, so has the effectiveness of religious organizations. In 1994, some of the most sophisticated medical centers in the world are owned by churches. Roughly 29 percent of all the hospital beds in the United States are owned by Catholic or Protestant groups. But more can be done.

Approximately 300,000 houses of worship can participate locally and directly in resolving the crisis in health care. The least we can do is be sure that everyone has access to basic medical services. But our concerns should go far beyond the question of who gets access to a system geared to curing disease. Health-care reform should focus on prevention, justice, and partnership.

Churches should first realize that preventing suffering has higher ethical priority than curing disease.

Prevention is a harder concept to communicate than curative medicine. Observ-ing a sophisticated operation to remove a tumor is far more dramatic than convincing a teenager not to smoke. But the ethical priority must be to avoid the cancer in the first place. Many urban hospitals routinely employ extraordinary medical technology to save the lives of underweight and premature infants. But it is far more compassionate to prevent such problems by seeing that every mother gets prenatal care and adequate nutrition.

Ten years ago the Carter Center conducted studies with experts in numerous health specialties to understand what would happen if our society would apply our current knowledge and technology to preventing disease. The findings revealed that more than two-thirds of all illness and years of life lost before age 65 were due to health problems that could be avoided by changing our own personal habits.

A recent study coauthored by Carter Center fellow William Foege in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that an even larger portion of health-related suffering is preventable. Officially, heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disease, accidents, and chronic pulmonary disease account for most of the 2.1 million people dying annually of the 10 leading causes of death. But what actually causes these deaths is tobacco (400,000 people), diet and sedentary lifestyle (300,000), alcohol (100,000), infections (90,000), toxic agents (60,000), and firearms (35,000), followed by sexual behavior, motor vehicles, and drug use. Churches, with their influence on how people behave, can have great impact in these areas.

Health-care reform also has to do with justice.

Roughly 29 percent of all the hospital beds in the United States are owned by Catholic or Protestant groups.

Matters of health are far too important to Christians to relegate them to others. Regardless of the outcome of health-care reform, people of faith will be drawn to visit the sick and the lonely, the hungry, and the hurt. More than one-third of the biblical stories of Jesus involve healing. Although most congregations have at least some activity in this area, few have matched the priorities of the Savior in spending time with the sick, counseling the troubled, or confronting problems that result in disease.

Staff at the Carter Center’s Interfaith Health Program have visited with hundreds of community leaders who have found practical ways to make a tangible difference in the hardest health problems our society faces. At a conference at the center earlier this year, 140 of these leaders from a variety of faiths and backgrounds came together to share what they knew about how to respond to the challenges of AIDS, mental health, hunger, violence, substance abuse, adolescent sexuality, and poverty. Everyone present was personally involved in doing something about the problem being discussed.

They had no easy words or quick fixes to share. But we found no problem that was not being confronted successfully by some church or religious group.

The debate over health-care reform has too often been dominated by concerns about money and privilege.

Health is too complex, and the issues too troubling, for any of us to do very well by ourselves. We found that the most successful ministries were done in collaboration, often across denominational boundaries. Churches that joined with other churches and religious organizations found they could do more in partnership than they could working separately.

Government is also a crucial partner in the work of health and healing. In our society, it is important that neither church nor state use the other to achieve dominance in certain areas of interest. However, collaboration in serving the poor and the sick is a practical necessity. Churches and welfare offices refer people back and forth; public health clinics and religious hospitals work closely together; church food banks use government food; and government programs for the elderly often use church buildings.

Unfortunately, many Americans do not believe a positive solution to the health-care crisis is possible. This is extraordinary given what we know about how much suffering is preventable. At no time in our history could we be as realistically optimistic about bringing health and wellness to our society. In this context, the most crucial contribution of faith groups is faith itself.

Our words have little meaning if not accompanied by actions. Our research has identified several gaps that people of faith must bridge if we are to reach the goals we seek:

■ We must confess to a gap between what we say we believe and what we actually do. Many congregations are recognizing the distance between their own ideals of service and social justice and the day-to-day activities of their congregations.

■ We must close the gap between what is known in health fields and what is applied. For example, even though we can prevent or cure many mental illnesses, society’s stigma against people with mental illness often keeps them from getting the help they need. Churches can lead the way here.

■ We find a constant gap between the creation of successful programs and their replication in other settings. Effective models are rarely known outside certain groups’ circles of interest. We must help bridge this gap and encourage learning across the boundaries between faiths and professional specialties.

■ We must work at the gap between denominational traditions, races, and cultures. The hour of worship remains the most segregated hour of the week, which cripples our ability to understand the full range of what God would have us do in the world.

■ Finally, there is a gap between our current wants and our long-term needs. It is not enough to seek the health of our own circle of friends or even of those in our own time. We must, like the Native American elders, ask how an action will affect the seventh generation.

Is it realistic to imagine a movement of thousands of congregations reaching out to their neighborhoods as agents of wholeness and healing? We think so. There is hardly any congregation, any faith group, that does not look to serve God by alleviating suffering.

Such discussion of a national health movement is exciting, but it can obscure the demand for local commitment. Congregations should think of their own communities. They should make sure that every child is immunized against the basic diseases before the age of two; that every person has access to the rudiments of medical attention; that every pregnant woman receives prenatal care; that every elderly person is contacted each day, just to make sure he or she is okay; that every young person has a safe place to study.

None of this is expensive or complex, especially if we approach the tasks in collaboration with others who share our commitment to health.

President of the United States from 1977-1981, Jimmy Carter currently chairs the Carter Center in Atlanta, a non-profit organization promoting peace and human rights worldwide. The center launched its Interfaith Health Program in September 1992.

Changing Lives On Both Ends Of A Hypodermic

Numbers testify to the importance of Esperanza Health Center to the North Philadelphia Latino community it serves: 43 percent of families living below the poverty level; over 75 percent of children born out of wedlock; over 70 percent of adults lacking a high-school education. Most children here are behind in their immunizations, making childhood diseases more than just a nuisance. Most people think it impossible to die from measles. But in 1992, eight children from this community proved otherwise.

There are more disturbing numbers in this neighborhood. Located in one of the heaviest drug-trafficking areas on the East Coast, it has Philadelphia’s highest infant-mortality rate, three times the city’s average. Its suicide rate also ranks first.

However, thanks to Esperanza—the name is Spanish for hope—there are some good numbers, too. A host of doctors specializing in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and cardiology offer residents personal care integrated with nutrition education, Christian counseling, and social work. In response to the measles epidemic, Esperanza arranged for more than 40 students from the Medical College of Georgia in Atlanta to head north. For six weeks, the good old days when doctors made house calls returned. These young med students combed the neighborhood, delivering almost two thousand shots, 79 percent of them to children who were behind on their immunizations.

To Carolyn Klaus, Esperanza’s medical director, 400 was the most important number associated with that immunization effort. That was the number of people who either came to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior or said they wanted to know more about him.

The significance of this number is revealed in the first sentence of the ministry’s philosophy statement: “At Esperanza Health Center, we believe that fullest health comes through knowing Jesus Christ.”

That is why Esperanza does its best to coordinate its activities with the missions of local churches. Says Klaus, “Health care is perhaps only 20 percent medical. The other 80 percent has to do with jobs, housing, lifestyles, conflict resolution, meaning in life, forgiveness, and belonging to a caring community. What institution is better equipped to meet these needs than the church?”

Many of the community’s spiritual and physical needs, according to Klaus, can be addressed by laypersons, including people trained in the basic principles of preventive health care.

But, she says, prevention alone is not enough: “The area of need that grips me most every day is the area of mental health. One out of every three persons I see has a mental health problem sufficiently severe to interfere with his or her functioning or physical health. Many problems are very serious.”

Some of these problems—in particular, those that are spiritually rooted—can be handled by local I pastors. But, says Klaus, “The need for Christian counselors and social workers who are willing to serve the poor remains dire.”

While much remains to be done, much is being done, thanks to Esperanza. It expects some 100 students to participate in this summer’s child-immunization program. And it expects lives to be changed forever on both ends of the hypodermic needle.

—REPORTS BY RANDY FRAME.

Dying For Hope

Home of Hope sounds like the name of a place with a view to the future. In reality, this Grand Rapids-based ministry focuses on those who seem not to have much of a future. Indeed, people must be dying to get into Home of Hope, for it accepts only those in the last months of terminal illness, including people with AIDS, who have nowhere else to go and no one to look after their physical and emotional needs. Its 18-bed facility is always filled to capacity. Approximately 350 have come and gone in the last three years.

When it opened in 1990, Home of Hope represented the fulfillment of a vision for Paul Van Oss. In the early 1970s, as part of his work with World Vision, he visited a Home for the Dying run by Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India. “I sensed the presence of Christ—in the care, compassion, and love extended there—in a very dramatic way,” he recalls. “I felt I had been put in touch with a little bit of heaven.” He adds, “This kind of ministry offers the church a chance to get beyond peripheral theological differences and work together. It is evangelical ecumenism at its best.”

The medical care offered at Home of Hope makes no pretense of curing. Rather, it is intended to relieve such symptoms as pain and nausea. Home of Hope eases the burden of its patients by creating aesthetically pleasing surroundings, good-tasting meals, and, perhaps most important, an environment where people feel at home, free to talk about anything from their childhood memories to their present fears. As one person put it, this is a place “where people live while they are dying.”

Despite the pleasant appearance, Home of Hope might seem at first glance a depressing place. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that Home of Hope has the future in mind after all. As the booklet for patients published by the ministry affirms, “The last word belongs to God.… God raised Jesus Christ from the grave and in this resurrection miracle all the terrors of death were overcome.” Despite the pervasive presence of death, Van Oss’s ministry points not to suffering and disease but to a future overwhelmed by the hope of eternal life.

A Road To Happy Endings

The staff of Columbia Road Health Services in Washington, D.C., like to view each of their patients not as statistics, but as stories. Behind each visit—and each need—is a story, one that physicians and other staff take time to learn. Tom, for example, was a 53-year-old man forced into a city shelter because of an apartment fire. Years of hypertension left him with kidney damage. After visiting Columbia Road Health Services, he received the lab tests and medications he needed. Connie, an elderly woman from El Salvador, came to the clinic because she had lost 30 pounds in just a few months. She discovered there she had diabetes. Oral medication took care of the problem for a while; the medical staff at Columbia Road eventually taught her how to administer her own insulin shots.

In 1994, this ministry, begun in 1979 by Washington, D.C.’s Church of the Savior, will encounter some 15,000 stories, many of them depressing.

But the story of Columbia Road itself is an uplifting one. The ministry is dedicated to serving those who cannot gain access to the mainstream health-care system. For some, the system is too confusing or impersonal. For others, it is unaffordable. Columbia Road answers the need with a staff that includes four medical doctors, eight medical assistants, two nurses, three social workers, and three counselors.

The story of Janelle Goetcheus, medical director at Columbia Road, is also inspiring. Back in the mid-1970s, she was preparing to go to Pakistan to serve as a medical missionary. That all changed after she visited some friends in Washington who showed her an inner-city housing project, complete with falling ceilings and hallways littered with dead rats. “I knew there were health needs overseas,” she recalls, “but I had never heard anybody talk about health needs in the inner city.”

Instead of going to Pakistan, she and her family came from rural Indiana to the nation’s capital. (She still pronounces it “Warshington.”) There she launched the health clinic that grew into Columbia Road Health Services.

There is nothing like proximity to centers of political power to reveal the limitations of government. “The structure of the welfare system,” Goetcheus observes, “is harmful to the family unit. Sometimes people have to separate in order to survive.”

Her top concerns are for the city’s children, whose housing and educational opportunities seem to be getting worse instead of better. Her other main interest is young black men who are hardened by a prison system that has virtually no concept of rehabilitation.

Goetcheus, now 53, and her husband raised a family in the city on an income more typically associated with a schoolteacher than a physician. There were times, she says, when her children resented the lifestyle their parents chose for them, but today they regard the experience as a gift.

For her part, Goetcheus is sustained for the long haul by actively participating in a strong community of faith. The medical work is important, but it is not of ultimate importance. She spends an hour in prayer each day. Every Thursday afternoon, the medical office is closed for worship. Four times a year it closes while the staff goes on retreat.

It is a sense of obedience and devotion to Christ that motivates Columbia Road to make sure as many as possible of those 15,000 yearly stories have happy endings. And those happy endings are made more possible as people hear and experience the message that God loves them, no matter how sordid their stories might be.

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

How the Reformed tradition revolutionizes our approach to the spiritual life.

Spirituality is a buzz word these days. But sometimes the impression is left that Catholicism, with its long tradition of spiritual formation, is the only game in town. A well-known series of the “classics” of Western spirituality, notes Presbyterian pastor and scholar Hughes Oliphant Old, omits many of Protestantism’s most important figures. Some might conclude that there is no such thing as a Protestant spirituality.

As Old demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. Here he assesses the rich insights the Reformed tradition brings to piety and prayer. This is the first in an occasional series on how varied traditions can enrich our understanding of God and the spiritual life.

The Protestant Reformation was a reform of spirituality as much as it was a reform of theology.

For millions of Christians at the end of the Middle Ages, the old spirituality had broken down. Spirituality had been cloistered behind monastery walls for centuries. To be serious about living the Christian life had meant leaving the world and joining a religious community. At the heart of it all was a celibate, ascetic, and penitential devotion.

With the Reformation, the focus of the Christian life changed. Rather than separating from society, Christians began to conceive of devotion as living everyday life according to God’s will (Rom. 12:1–2). Spirituality became a matter of living the Christian life with family, out in the fields, in the workshop, in the kitchen, or at one’s trade.

Those in the tradition of Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, John Knox, and the English Puritans therefore came to speak of the doctrine of the Christian life when discussing what Roman Catholics call “spiritual theology.” Traditionally they have preferred the word piety over spirituality. In broadest strokes, a Reformed spirituality must be defined in terms of the Christian life in this world. What are some of its distinctives?

FED BY THE WORD

Reformed spirituality is first a spirituality of the Word. While it received renewed emphasis in the Reformation, a spirituality of the Word is nothing new to Christianity. Already in the Gospel of John we find it, especially in its opening verses (John 1:1–18), but also sprinkled throughout the text. Jesus is presented as the Word, the revelation of the Wisdom of God. The Christian life is a matter of hearing this Word and receiving it by faith. In this John was heir to the wisdom theology found primarily in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, and many of the Psalms. Israel’s wisdom writers developed a piety centered in the Bible. It was a piety of those charged with caring for the Sacred Book and teaching its precepts, a scholar’s piety that emphasized studying the Bible, copying its manuscripts, preserving the history of its interpretation, and preparing and preaching sermons. The foundation of its educational system was the memorization of Scripture.

The rabbis of Jesus’ day kept alive this bookish kind of piety, as did the earliest Christian church. Luke undoubtedly had this in mind when he told us that the apostles devoted themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word (Acts 6:4). The study of the Word of God stood at the center of the apostolic ministry. From the beginning, Christianity was a religion of the Book, and its piety was a piety of the Book.

At the time of the Reformation, this spirituality of the Word gave a prominent place to both the public preaching of the Word and the personal study and meditation on the Word. Early in the Reformation, preachers such as Martin Bucer, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox set aside the lectionary and began to preach through books of the Bible. This was called preaching the lectio continua. It was a systematic approach to the interpretation of Scripture in worship. It aimed to explain the text of Scripture as the authoritative Word of God rather than give the preacher’s view on a variety of religious subjects. And every serious Christian was expected to study the Scriptures systematically at home.

NOURISHED BY THE PSALTER

Reformed spirituality is also a spirituality of the Psalter. It has been nourished by praying the Psalms—singing and meditating on them, both at church and at daily family prayers.

Why sing the Psalms? They are the fundamental prayers of the church. Jesus constantly prayed the Psalms, as every good Jew in his day did. The church continued the practice in ancient times, rejoicing in the way the Psalms had been fulfilled in Christ. The earliest Christians understood the Psalms as the prayers of the Holy Spirit and therefore were honored as a primary component of the prayer of the church (Acts 4:23–31).

Calvin had a profound sense of the Psalms as prayer. In the preface of the Genevan Psalter of 1542 he wrote that the Psalms are valuable for prayer because they are the prayers of the Spirit; they thereby teach us to pray as we ought, even when we are not sure how (Rom. 8:26). Isaac Watts, the English Congregationalist, wrote many hymns based on the Psalms that are still popular today. Charles Wesley produced a particularly fine collection of metrical psalms. And Christian hymn writers today produce very singable psalm versions.

It is my firm conviction that nothing would help us recover the life of prayer more than rediscovering the Psalms. Protestant spirituality is a singing spirituality. For Reformed Protestantism, a good part of that singing is going to be Psalm singing.

RECOVERING THE LORD’S DAY

The spirituality of the Lord’s Day forms another cardinal feature of Reformed piety. While the beauty of the Christian understanding of the Lord’s Day has often been obscured by Sabbatarian legalism, there is something profound about the early Christian sign of the eighth day, the first day of the New Creation (John 20:1, 26). It was Jesus himself who interpreted the old Sabbath and established the Lord’s Day by meeting with his disciples for worship on the first day of the week (John 20:19, 26).

A few years ago I discovered A Treatise Concerning the Sanctification of the Lord’s Day, a work of early eighteenth-century Scottish minister John Willison. His writing showed me the spiritual vitality of the observance of the Lord’s Day as our spiritual ancestors understood it. Part of their secret was focusing on what they were to do on the Lord’s Day rather than what they were not to do. They saw it as a day devoted to prayer and meditation on God’s Word, a day for public and private prayer.

More recently some Christians have argued that we should replace this emphasis on the Lord’s Day with a spirituality of the liturgical calendar. But the observance of Lent and Advent is antithetical to a Reformed piety. It puts the emphasis on seasons of fasting rather than the weekly observance of the resurrection of Christ. Lent and Advent become the “religious” seasons of the year while the observance of the 50 days of Easter and the 12 days of Christmas become anticlimactic. A true Reformed piety could never drape any Lord’s Day with penitential purple! To the contrary, it sees the service of the Lord’s Day as a foretaste of the worship of heaven (Rev. 1:10). That our worship occurs on the first day of the week, the day of resurrection, gives it a joyful, festive mood.

This was not just understood in narrow spiritual terms, either. The Reformed manuals of devotion always include a humanitarian dimension in the Lord’s Day observance. They speak of how Jesus made a point of healing on the Sabbath, how it was a day of releasing people from burdens (Luke 13:16). It was a day for relieving the poor.

THE SACRED MEAL

A Reformed spirituality finds in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Participation in the sacred meal seals the covenantal union between us and our God. Not only does the sacrament bring us into communion with God, it brings us into the Christian community. Communion may only be celebrated a few times a year in most Reformed churches, but when celebrated it is traditionally given a great amount of time.

Preparatory services before Communion have played an important role in Reformed sacramental piety. Churches in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Scotland customarily held a week of services before the observance of the sacrament and followed it with several thanksgiving services. These Communion seasons were the mountaintop experiences of the Christian life. As we discover from the Communion meditations of Matthew Henry (1662–1712), minister of the Presbyterian Church in Chester, England, preparation for the Lord’s Supper was a time for the most serious devotional meditation.

Christians in those days also approached Communion as the wedding feast of the Lamb. God’s redemptive love formed a recurring theme, and the Communion sermon would often take a text from the Song of Solomon. In New

Jersey in the late 1730s we find Jacobus Theodoras Freylinghuysen and Gilbert Tennent preaching the same kind of sacramental piety as they led the Great Awakening. They invited their congregations to the Lord’s Table to experience the consummate love of Christ and to pledge their love to him in return.

SACRALIZING THE ORDINARY

Stewardship is yet another major theme of a Reformed spirituality. Reacting against the asceticism of the Middle Ages, the Reformers took the parables of Jesus concerning the good stewards and their talents as the basis for a new Christian understanding of the use of wealth (Luke 12:42–48 and Matt. 25:14–30). In the centuries that followed, Christian merchants, artisans, housewives, farmers, and bankers began to discover positive spiritual value in their work. They found in their industry, labor, and professions a true vocation. Family life, the raising of children, the support of the elderly, and the care of a home were more and more regarded as sacred trusts.

This new approach to life was beautifully expressed by the seventeenth-century Dutch painters. Vermeer, de Hooch, Hobbema, and Rembrandt showed the sacredness of everyday life as they painted the kitchens, courtyards, and country lanes in which the Dutch lived out their Christian lives.

The Puritans in both England and America gave family life a new dignity by making daily family prayer a primary spiritual discipline. Every Christian home is a little church, Puritan Richard Baxter said. In such classics as Baxter’s Christian Directory, we find a great deal on the subject of Reformed spirituality and how it functioned in the life of the family.

Part of the Re-formed understanding of stewardship is what some have called the Protestant work ethic. As maligned as it was in the 1960s, it was an essential part of the spirituality that has repeatedly delivered Protestants from poverty. Now that the sixties are long past, it is time to take another look at how a Reformed spirituality contributed to the rise of capitalism. It may well be a more positive contribution than the Marxists wanted us to believe.

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE

Finally, we consider the place of meditation on the mystery of divine providence. English Puritan John Flavel wrote the classic on this subject. He tells how the Christian, confident that God’s providence embraces all the events of our lives, gains understanding by thinking about how God is speaking to us, warning us, encouraging us, leading us through life, guiding us in his service, and finally bringing us to himself. The thoughtful Christian thinks over what Providence has brought about, he said, and, listening carefully to the Word of God, tries to discern God’s leading.

Most Christians are aware that Calvin’s theology gave great attention to the doctrines of providence and election, but many do not realize how much he absorbed these themes from the Scriptures themselves. The lives of Abraham, Joseph, and David, Calvin said, give us constant examples of how God shapes our lives. Abraham was called to a land that is described simply as a land that God would show him (Gen. 12:1). Joseph was sold as a slave into Egypt, and yet the Bible is clear that God had led him through those difficult days so that he might be a blessing to both the Egyptians and his own family (Gen. 45:7). David was anointed by Samuel to be king over Israel while he was still a boy. God alone could have ordered his life so that eventually he would ascend the throne and fulfill God’s purpose for his life (Ps. 138:8). The life of Christ, even with his passion and resurrection, was part of God’s plan for our salvation (Acts 2:23–24). The apostles saw even their own ministry as the unfolding of God’s plan (1 Pet. 2:4–10).

English Baptist Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached one of his greatest sermons on the spiritual application of the doctrine of providence. His sermon on Queen Esther shows that each of us has a divinely appointed destiny, a purpose in life. The devout life is one dedicated to fulfilling that purpose.

That fulfillment, the Reformers stressed, will find fullest expression not on the mountaintops of the spiritual elite, but in the daily lives of every believer.

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

A Christian critique of a movement gone wrong.

Last year the producer of National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation called to invite me on the program. The network was doing a show on “Take Our Daughters to Work Day,” with Marie Wilson, director of the Ms. Foundation for Women, as a guest. The producer wanted my perspective as a lawyer and M.B.A. who had decided to become a full-time mother.

I welcomed the opportunity. “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” was a good idea, I said on the program, to the extent that it inspired our daughters to work hard, aim high, and strive for excellence. Yet it failed to address what concerns women most today.

Mothering, I reminded Marie, is a difficult job. Every day I discipline, teach, and inspire my children. Every night at dinner my husband and I take time to ask our children to name a good thing they did that day. We strive to build a strong Christian faith in them and encourage them to develop Christian virtues. I know it will take years of devoted effort like this to reach my goals as a mother.

Over the past several years, I noted, I have talked with women from many backgrounds and walks of life. When the conversation has turned personal, I usually hear the same words: “I’m scared for my children and their future.” Do these women worry that society will block their daughters’ career advancement? I do not think so, though I know from personal experience that women often face greater obstacles to their success than men do.

Something more profound troubles me and the women I talk with: the environment in which our children are growing up, and the moral, cultural, and social deficit they are going to inherit. But who, I asked on the air, speaks for women like me, women who—whether they work or not—believe their primary duty is to their children? Clearly, society’s most pressing need at the moment is not more lawyers or accountants. What we need, I said, is more decent people, of the kind only strong families and dedicated parents can produce. We need people of character—self-controlled people who know right from wrong and are committed to the common good. The women I know want their daughters to become such people.

Marie agreed that parenting is important. But she quickly made clear that her idea of parents and mine were quite different. Mothers like me, she suggested politely, are passé. For the twenty-first century, we need something new—a “multi-parent” society. I suggested this seemed a tall order, since our society already has trouble assuring even one parent for each child. Time ran out before Marie could answer. What struck me about the exchange was that Marie and I spoke different languages. We disagreed markedly in our assumptions about what it is to be a human being and a citizen in a democracy, and about the nature of the good life.

HOW A MOVEMENT GOT OFF TRACK

As a woman and a Christian, I believe profoundly in equal rights and equal opportunities for women, and I am deeply grateful to the women whose tireless crusade opened the voting booth, the universities, and the board rooms to women. Eighty years ago, women could not vote. Today they can. Forty years ago, American women could claim no guarantees of equal access to employment, housing, education, or credit. Today their rights to these things are enshrined in law, and barriers of all kinds are crumbling in spheres of work and public life.

Clearly feminism, traditionally defined as equal rights for women, has played a major role in bringing women into full and equal citizenship. But while most women share feminism’s traditional goals, today fully two-thirds refuse to call themselves feminists.

What explains this paradox? I believe the contemporary feminist movement has strayed far from the mission of classical feminism. The feminism of the Ms. Foundation, the National Organization for Women, and university women’s study departments seems out of touch with the average woman’s daily life and concerns. Many feminist leaders today dismiss a return to the home like mine as a throwback to the mythical days of June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson. Instead of “empowering” women, they actually create a victim mentality that debilitates them. In its radical forms, feminism purports to offer meaning and purpose it cannot give. Even worse, extreme expressions of feminism strike at the heart of orthodox Christian faith.

Sadly, contemporary feminism too often seems to be a chip on the shoulder disguised as a philosophy, an excuse to blame others for personal failures. How did the movement that has done so much for women get off on this self-defeating track?

To answer this question, I spent the last year reading the seminal books of the modern feminist movement. I discovered something fascinating: feminism’s image of woman has changed drastically since the inspiring days of the suffragettes.

The founding mothers of feminism, who wrote from the 1840s to 1940, generally portrayed the typical woman as a capable, intelligent human being who knew her own interests. All she needed to make a contribution to society commensurate with her talents and energies was an even break—the equal rights and opportunities to which she was entitled. Classical feminism proclaimed that “biology is not destiny.” Its uplifting vision, writer Cynthia Ozick notes, was one of “aspiration and justice made universal, of mankind widened to humankind.”

The writings of early feminists were addressed to and described women like my grandmother and great-grandmother, who were typical of their generations. They were strong, wise, resilient, and resourceful individuals. They never had the opportunity to go to law school, as I had. For a time in their lives, they could not even vote or serve on a jury. But they knew how to get things done, and done well.

My great-grandmother, for example, was widowed at a young age. After her husband died, she took her eight children to Colorado and homesteaded there as a single mother. She nursed four children who died before the age of 18. She worked hard, night and day, battling the elements to ensure that the children who survived would become honorable and productive citizens. In similar fashion, my grandmother raised five children almost single-handedly during the Depression. She started a business and drove her Model T 30,000 miles across the country to establish a chain of distributors. With the money she earned, she helped to send her children to college.

What made it possible for my grandmother and great-grandmother to accomplish so much, while facing hardship and discrimination of a kind few of us will ever know? They knew who they were, why they were here, and what they had to do. They had well-considered ideas about what the good life is, and they had the internal resources of virtue and character necessary to live that life. They were strong women, like the industrious woman of “noble character” praised in Proverbs 31. In their prudence, resourcefulness, and courage, they resembled biblical heroes like Miriam, Sarah, Deborah, and Esther, and heroes of the church like Susannah Wesley and Catherine Booth.

VICTIMS AND EMPTY VESSELS

Unfortunately, starting with Simone de Beauvoir’s influential 1954 book The Second Sex, the woman of character like my grandmother seemed to disappear from the writings of many feminist intellectuals. In the feminist bestsellers of the 1960s and ’70s—Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics—the image of woman as strong and capable was superseded by a new and radically different image. I call this new woman “the empty vessel.”

In essence, the empty vessel of postsixties feminist theory is a timid, weak, and bewildered creature. She is defined by her suffering and victimhood. She lacks the internal resources to cope with suffering, to put it into perspective, and to distinguish between garden-variety irritation and real injustice. Easily threatened, she is only comfortable operating within the context of a group, a “sisterhood” of like-minded victims. Why is she so weak and vulnerable? Unlike my grandmother, she seems to have little idea of who she is, what she believes, or how she should live.

Betty Friedan was one of the first to describe American women in the language of the empty vessel. In her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, Friedan spoke of women as “empty,” “infantile” creatures, lacking “a core of human self,” “the ‘I’ without which a human being is not fully alive.” In her eyes, the women of her generation were “anonymous biological robots,” paralyzed by their “sense of emptiness, non-existence, nothingness.”

Even if many American women lived artificially constrained lives in 1963, the year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made sex discrimination illegal, women have made extraordinary progress over the last 30 years. Yet influential feminist theorists continue to place the image of the empty vessel at the center of their world-view.

For example, in 1983—the year I graduated from law school in a class that was 40 percent female—Gloria Steinem’s Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions appeared. Steinem was a household name, an important and powerful woman who had founded Ms. magazine and served as president of the National Organization for Women. Yet her book recounted daily struggles to make herself “real” and overcome her nagging “feelings of nonexistence.” Steinem attributed her sense of emptiness and impotence to the fact that women are “psychic colonies … half-people” who have “no idea who we are, or who we could become, as whole, independent human beings.”

The empty vessel remains the star of the show in the feminist bestsellers of the 1990s. Susan Faludi’s 1992 Backlash reveals an author every bit as angry and alienated as Friedan was in 1963. (Indeed, Faludi dismissed Friedan—who had rethought empty vessel imagery in her 1981 book The Second Stage—as a brainwashed pawn of the Reagan administration.) In Faludi’s eyes, contemporary women, whether investment bankers or astronauts, remain traumatized by a menacing patriarchal culture. Women, she claims, are still “blind to their own interests and abilities” and continue to “live in the shadows,” groping “in the dark” for purpose and direction. Weak and confused as ever, they make the most important decisions of their lives on the basis of the “whispers” and “cajolings” of those around them.

As I read these books, I kept asking myself, How could my great-grandmother have saved the cattle from a prairie blizzard if she had been made of such stuff? I realized that the feminist movement’s mission has shifted; much feminist theory is no longer centrally concerned with promoting fairness and equal rights. In its more radical guises, the movement has become a sort of quixotic, existential crusade to fill empty vessels by conjuring up for them an “authentic self.” Once the empty vessel finds an identity, the thinking goes, she will become what Gloria Steinem calls “a whole, independent human being.” At last she will feel truly free, truly visible, truly real.

But there is a catch. Feminist thinkers warn that this authentic self will not come easily. In fact, it cannot emerge until the existing social order has been turned upside down. For radical feminism claims that women’s supposed emptiness is caused by social institutions created by men, who seek to retain power for themselves by alienting women from their true, spontaneous selves. Consequently, women who wish to “make themselves real” must view social norms and arrangements with reflexive suspicion and hostility. This is what Germaine Greer meant when she declared, “All the baggage of patriarchal society will have to be thrown overboard. Women must explore the dark without any guide.”

Radical feminism offers the empty vessel what she craves most: an identity. But it is a negative identity—what literary critic Lionel Trilling has called the identity of “the opposing self.” The opposing self, wrote Trilling, is characterized by its “intense and adversarial imagination of the culture in which it has its being.” It gains its sense of identity by indignantly rejecting everything the larger culture holds dear. Consumed by self-pity, the opposing self embraces “the great modern strategy of being the insulted and the injured.”

Those who adopt the identity of the opposing self tend to be drawn to one another, forming what political scientist Paul Hollander has called the “adversary culture.” By embracing utopian ideals that can never be satisfied, such people ensure that they will always have much to complain of. Radical feminism’s utopian ideals offer some women what Hollander calls “the very attractive identity of the moral crusader.” Though such feminists see themselves as “free thinkers”—principled rebels occupying high moral ground-in reality they remain dependent on the agenda of the larger culture, and merely react against it.

WHEN FEMINISM BECOMES RELIGION

The metamorphosis of feminism from a campaign for equal rights to an existential crusade has had a curious result. Too often, contemporary feminism holds itself out as a source of ultimate meaning for women. It claims to answer the fundamental theological question: “Why do we suffer?” For many, it has become a religion.

Prominent feminists have been forthright about this. Betty Friedan observed in 1983 that “at times the feminist movement was almost a religion to me.” Feminist thinkers often show a special affinity for the language of being “born again.” In a recent New York Times article, for example, activist Vivian Gornick described what she called her “conversion” to feminism. She wrote that the feminist insight—that women are as “real” as men—“went into me like a laser beam.… It shed light and warmth. It healed and explained. It told me who I was in the world as I experienced the world.” Faludi’s Backlash, too, is peppered with religious imagery. She speaks of feminism as bringing salvation, as ushering in what she calls “the promised land of equality.” Not surprisingly, she portrays the alleged “backlash” against feminism in terms that Christians reserve for the Devil. It is a seductive and terrifyingly powerful evil force that “whispers in your ear” and fools you into thinking that you are acting freely, rather than under its influence.

Over the years, classical feminism, with its emphasis on fairness and equality, has proven an invaluable tool for women fighting discriminatory practices in our churches. Today most women—including those evangelical women who are resisting rigid and demeaning practices in the churches—find classical feminist principles to be a source of intellectual integrity and personal strength. But feminism in its religious guise—the sort of feminism that seeks to find ultimate meaning in the self—is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity, and it exerts an increasingly destructive influence in the church world.

Nowhere was this influence more evident than at RE-Imagining, a widely publicized feminist conference that attracted 2,200 participants from 49 states and 27 countries last November. RE-Imagining was sponsored by the Greater Minneapolis, Saint Paul Area, and Minnesota Councils of Churches, and underwritten by a $65,000 grant from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA). Other mainline denominations, including the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the American Baptist Church, also provided funds.

RE-Imagining, declared its organizers, marked the dawn of a feminist reformation, a “Second Reformation … much more basic and important to the health of humankind than the first.” To render Christianity relevant to female experience, they claimed, we must “re-imagine all that has been passed on to us through two thousand years of Christian faith.” Rather than pursuing the Truth, RE-Imagining’s focus was on encouraging each woman to imagine “her own truth.”

The central task of conference participants was to “re-imagine God.” There was little room for the triune God of Christianity. In fact, Lutheran pastor Barbara Lundblad drew whoops and applause when she noted with satisfaction that “we have done nothing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Like several other speakers, ‘womanist” theologian Delores Williams scoffed at the idea of Christ’s atonement. “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.… We just need to listen to the god within.”

The deity of RE-Imagining was Sophia, nominally the biblical spirit of wisdom. Sophia, conference participants were told, is “the suppressed part of the biblical tradition, and clearly the female face of the human psyche.” Prayers to Sophia named her as “our maker, creator God, mother and guide.” At the conference grand finale—the “Struggle for Transformation Ritual”—participants worshiped Sophia in a rousing service complete with milk and honey.

RE-Imagining was not about women seeking better understanding of the Christian God. It was about women seeking self-affirmation and searching for an “authentic identity.” Participants sought to coax out their hidden, spontaneous selves in many ways: “scribble writing,” belly dancing, and anointing themselves with red dots and bowing to “the divine in each other.” The aim of the conference, after all, was to “create that wonderful space where we are truly free to be ourselves.” In the “Ritual of Making Holy Time,” attendees were urged to “dream wildly” about “who we intend to be … through the power and guidance of the spirit of wisdom whom we name Sophia.”

Not surprisingly, many RE-Imagining participants seemed to conclude that the elusive self for which they hungered was, in fact, divine—what Delores Williams called “the god within.” The conference program left little doubt on the matter: “Sophia is the place in you where the entire universe resides.” Whether they knew it or not, conference participants were worshiping themselves.

What form did the authentic self conjured up at RE-Imagining take? First, regardless of title or status, RE-Imagining participants were encouraged to think of themselves as victims. After all, a person who feels empty finds it is easier to define herself by her weaknesses than by her strengths. Second, they were encouraged to view themselves primarily as feeling rather than thinking beings. They sought to “make themselves real” through emotive song, dance, and storytelling, rather than through the more demanding articulation and defense of ideas. Third, they were urged to think of themselves as social critics and righteous moral crusaders. Finally, they were encouraged to appropriate an identity by merging with the larger group. The outlines of Lionel Trilling’s opposing self are unmistakable.

I believe that most women do not see themselves as empty vessels in search of a self. But we cannot underestimate the seductive appeal of the image of the empty vessel, especially when it is promoted endlessly in mainline denominations and conferences like RE-Imagining. After all, it does not take much to convince most of us that the world does not properly appreciate us. We are always eager to believe that someone else is to blame for what is troubling us in our lives. And all of us are tempted by that most human of failings, the desire to remake God in our own image.

FULLNESS FOR EMPTINESS

We must, however, resist the siren call of radical feminism. We must take every opportunity to convince women in our churches that feminism as religion is doomed to fail because it is built on sand.

How do we begin? We remind women that, as we learn new truths, we must take care not to forget enduring truths. And if we gain a new insight—that men and women arc each other’s equals—only to lose sight of the timeless truths about what it is to be truly human, free, and whole in Christ, we make a bad bargain indeed.

The paradox, of course, is that the good news, the Christian message that feminists are so eager to “re-imagine” or throw overboard, is, in fact, the answer to the pain their emptiness causes them. It alone can bring them real hope, real freedom, and humanity in all its fullness. The Christian world view is intimately familiar with the experience of emptiness, with the despair and impotence that radical feminists—like all of us—seek to escape. We call this experience the human condition. Christians know the dark night of the soul, but we also know that self-glorifying rage will only plunge us deeper into the abyss.

Christians have an answer for the feminist who despairs because she does not know “who she is.” We say, “You are a child of God, made in God’s image, as all of us are. But we are also fallen creatures in a fallen world. We are by nature limited, flawed, and rebellious.”

The feminist says, “But what am I supposed to do? I can’t tolerate this emptiness and confusion. My anger compels me to reject the social institutions that are causing my suffering.” But Christians say, “Social arrangements may compound our suffering, but in the end we suffer because we are sinners. We are all called to relieve suffering and promote justice wherever we can. But we can never build Utopia, because salvation is not of this world.”

The feminist says, “My only hope is to see a truth that is true for me.” Christians answer, “There is such a truth, but it is universal. It has its source outside our flawed and limited selves. This is the truth revealed to us in the Judeo-Christian God, and in the person of Jesus Christ, who said to us, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.’ We can know this truth, and it will set us free. The early church father Augustine put it best: ‘Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.’”

RECLAIMING EARLY LESSONS

This articulation of the deepest sources of human identity can help women tempted by the image of the empty vessel. But there are practical, common-sense lessons to teach as well, the lessons my grandmother knew by heart.

First of all, we will never be happy as long as we are preoccupied with self. Indeed, Jesus said we must die to self to have new life. My grandmother’s identity grew out of a web of relationships and personal loyalties defined in part by mutual obligations and moral duties. She knew that the duties that arise from membership in a family or community are really pathways, not obstacles, to fulfillment.

I think Marie Wilson was perplexed by my choice to put my children first, and by my concept of motherhood as involving moral duties that simply cannot be passed off to others.

My grandmother was able to discern and carry out her duties under challenging circ*mstances because she made the cultivation of virtue and character the central task of her life. To her, being a “whole, independent human being” did not mean constantly taking her emotional and spiritual temperature. Rather, it meant becoming a grown-up.

What does it mean to be a grown-up? It means growing wise through experience and through empathy. It means being humble and admitting your mistakes. It means cultivating the very adult virtue of self-control. It means being resilient and good-humored. Being a grown-up means putting others’ needs and interests before your own, when those others are dependent on you. Most of all, it means asking at all times not what is pleasant or convenient, but what is right.

As contemporary women, we are blessed with many advantages my grandmother did not have. We have the opportunity to develop our talents and use our skills in the full range of public life. Thanks to the dynamism of our country’s political and economic systems, I no longer have to sit at home spinning thread, making soap, and scrubbing on my washboard to ensure my family’s survival. If I work hard enough, I have a good chance of becoming a senator, maybe even President. I can become a chemist, climb Mount Everest, or dedicate my life to breaking the track records set by Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Much has been given to us as women today, and much will be required of us. I believe we have a moral responsibility to reclaim the heritage of classical feminism’s proud accomplishments, and the image of the woman of character that grows out of it. It is this image, this vision, that we need to put to work in our churches—and pass on to our daughters.

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

CultureOfDisrespect

American intellectuals are moving from benign neglect to active opposition to Christian ideas.

American intellectuals have moved beyond the “Culture of Disbelief’ as Stephen Carter termed it in his book of that name. With Christians and Christian ideas increasingly relegated to the margins, we have entered a new and more troubling phase—the culture of disrespect. This movement from benign neglect to active opposition, hostility, and discrimination is being played out in academia, the business world, and government. With few exceptions, orthodox Christian ideas are met with discrimination and perfunctory dismissal.

Speaking to a group of scholars recently, George Marsden, an evangelical Protestant teaching at the University of Notre Dame, accused major universities of discriminating against scholarship that reflects religious, especially Christian, perspectives. “Unless the major universities change, they should add a footnote to the phrase in their catalogues announcing that they ‘welcome diverse perspectives.’ It should read: ‘Except, of course, religious perspectives.’”

Since the political correctness movement has woven its way into the power structures of American society, we can no longer avoid trouble simply by proselytizing and keeping fervently held Christian convictions to ourselves.

TWO TEMPTATIONS

Christians are most vulnerable to two postmodern temptations: believing PC rhetoric and then practicing a diluted form of it.

For example, some within the church believe evangelism is outmoded and unnecessary in a culturally diverse society. They have been drawn into the notion that tolerance means leveling those differences that genuinely and appropriately separate peoples. Rather than risk offending a neighbor or an entire foreign nation, they have allowed their outreach and missionary programs to atrophy. The gospel is rendered inoffensive when Christians transform themselves into another special-interest group, working in their own small way to make a better world for everyone.

Among evangelicals, a poorer cousin of political correctness is at work. Some in our subculture seek to silence or openly ridicule the unpopular views of fellow believers, most notably those who espouse positions relating to women in ministry, the role of minorities in church leadership, specific gifts of the Spirit, or the use of modern methods in evangelism and church growth. The tragedy of this is the same as PC’s effect on university campuses: genuine dialogue and true learning cannot take place when some of the participants are discredited and muzzled. There is no longer a place for respectful disagreement.

IF NOT PC, THEN WHAT?

Where, then, is the Christian foil to those driven by politically correct thinking? It is not enough for Christians simply to secure their own constitutional rights through the courts. And it is certainly not in the spirit of Christ to engage in the bruising politics of raw power. These are mere mirrors, not Christian alternatives, to political correctness.

As president of a Christian college, I have fantasized putting up a sign on our campus: “Warning! This is not a politically correct campus.” But that’s too negative. Perhaps the sign should read: “Biblically correct campus. Proceed with caution.” Unfortunately, that sounds just as arrogant, elitist, and smug as the rest.

So, forget the signs. If we are not politically correct, what are we? Rather than being consumed or co-opted by the PC movement, Christians ought to strive to be more biblically guided than politically correct. The differences are significant:

A politically correct person encourages making “religion something that should be believed in privacy, not something that should be paraded,” Stephen Carter contends. A biblically guided person attempts to apply Christian principles to society and culture, even when the most culturally sensitive efforts breed contempt in today’s political climate.

A politically correct mindset smacks of indoctrination; the biblically guided mindset creates an atmosphere in which truth may be pursued unfettered by any preconceived formulation.

The politically correct philosophy accepts and encourages many forms of sexual expression. The biblically guided view honors celibacy before marriage and encourages heterosexual expression of love within the commitments, nurture, and safety of marriage.

Politically correct Christians stifle legitimate viewpoints worthy of study and discussion. Biblically guided Christians explore all aspects of contemporary life through the lens of Scripture with a spirit of love.

We should never be surprised at any effort to silence the gospel, which is the eventual effect of the PC mentality. At the same time, we must examine our own tendencies not only to be accepted by those outside the church, but also to force those within the church into silence when they disagree with someone’s narrow grid for interpreting biblical truth. Only by personally and corporately internalizing biblical principles as our guide can we hope to effectively encounter our culture.

By R. Judson Carlberg, president of Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.

Beyond Tribal Europe

Americans commonly think of Europe as one entity. In reality, there are many Europes. It has been a deeply divided continent for the greater part of this century.

How many countries are there today in Europe? If you know today, you may not know next week. Twenty-one new countries have come into existence since the 1989–91 changes and the collapse of the former socialist federal empires.

One of the most important geographical words to learn about Europe is the word former. Now it is the former Yugoslavia and former Soviet Union, former Czechoslovakia, former East Germany, former Leningrad, and many more thousands of formers as cities, streets, and institutions that were named after the heroes of Marxism have already been or are being changed.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 did not solve all our problems. Europe has been divided in many ways other than in its politics. Europe is religiously divided. Most of central and northern Europe claims to be Protestant. Most of southern Europe, Austria, and Poland is Roman Catholic. Most of Eastern Europe is Eastern Orthodox.

At present, Eastern Europe is going through a very painful and bloody transition. When the Communists in power saw what was happening in 1989, they very quickly changed the names of their parties from Communist to Socialist to Social Democrats to become more palatable in the initial democratic processes. But they retained their old mindset.

Metanoia, or a change of mindset, has been a missing element among Eastern European political leaders. A number of capitals in Eastern Europe have essentially the same people in power. They just changed labels. We have a saying in Croatia: “They changed from red to pink.”

When communism collapsed, whatever communism suppressed has now exploded. The two prime examples are nationalism and religion. Nationalism was suppressed by communism because Communists set out to build a new proletarian internationalism. Religion was suppressed because they wanted to build an atheistic society. With Communist pressure gone, the explosions of religion and nationalism are going hand in hand. The former national churches see themselves as preservers of national culture, national identity, the sense of nationhood, and strive to reclaim a monopoly on religious life. This combination of nationality, religion, culture, along with new political power, is dangerous. It inhibits the free development of democracy and human rights.

In the Bosnian conflict, the ethnic and religious elements do play an important role right now. But they did not in the beginning. They are being manipulated by the politicians.

Recently, a Russian Orthodox bishop said, “The Russian soul is Orthodox.” The talk is, if you are Russian, you are Orthodox. If you are Polish or Croatian, you are Catholic. If you are anything else, you are not a good citizen. The Christian face is defined along ethnic lines. One of the great tasks that we evangelicals have is to define what it means to be Christian.

We need to have a comprehensive global agenda in this ministry of reconciliation, not narrowed down to a country here and a country there, but a long-range, preventive strategy. We need to contribute to a climate of dialogue and development of democracy and peace if we want to be instruments of reconciliation in our world. As Christians, we cannot speak about reconciliation without speaking about the Cross.

It is extremely important in Eastern Europe to develop a nonsectarian ecclesiology. Pray and work for unity. Evangelize without proselytizing. This may sound unrealistic. But we should strive to help other believing Christians to renew their own church.

Christians should keep in theological balance all three biblical tenses of reconciliation: the past tense of what Christ accomplished on the Cross; the present tense of our call to be agents and ambassadors of reconciliation; the future tense of the cosmic eschatological kingdom.

DANCING TOWARD THE FUTURE

Finally, while working against apparently impossible odds, we must never give up hope. Hope energizes us for the action in the present. People think of hope as passive, as waiting for the Lord to come and snatch us out of this mess. However, Saint Augustine said hope has two daughters: Anger and Courage-anger with the way things are, and the courage to change them.

Someone passed on to me a favorite saying: “Hope is the ability to listen to the music of the future. Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.” Do we have the courage to dance to that future’s music? That’s what reconciliation is all about.

By Peter Kuzmic, Evangelical Theological School, Osijek, Croatia; adapted from an address delivered at the World Vision Washington Forum.

Why Rep. Tony Hall goes to drastic lengths to motivate compassion.

U.S. Rep. Tony Hall defies narrow categories. The Ohio Democrat prays devoutly, yet he is no closeted quietist. He cuts the profile of an activist, yet his Christian faith keeps him from being a mere do-gooder. An active participant in the National Prayer Breakfast, a convener of a weekly Capitol Hill prayer and Bible-study breakfast, he is best known outside Washington, perhaps, for his work in fighting hunger.

In the 1960s, Hall served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. He lived with the poor, experienced their suffering, and entered politics as a result.

Last year, when the U.S. Congress cut off funds for the Select Committee on Hunger, Hall fasted 22 days in protest. After his hunger strike, he organized a Congressional Hunger Caucus and a nonprofit organization, the Hunger Center. In March, he announced a three-day fast during Holy Week to draw attention to hunger and keep it from getting eclipsed by other issues. Twenty members of Congress from both parties joined in for at least part of the time, as did President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

In promoting hunger programs, Hall seeks a balance between local efforts and overseas relief. For ten years, he has cultivated a “constituency for hunger” among the people of Dayton, Ohio. And he scheduled a visit to Angola in early April to assess firsthand the hunger crisis there.

CT spoke with Hall on the eve of Good Friday, the last day of his fast.

Are you looking for any specific results from this year’s fast?

Not like last year. I am simply trying to raise the consciousness of the nation. I want people to begin to realize there are 25 million Americans that are hungry, who go to food banks and soup kitchens, and half of them are under the age of 17. So many people don’t understand that, even when you tell them, because in this country you don’t see the hungry like you do in Sudan and Ethiopia. What we have in America are poor women with children—the working poor who don’t qualify for any assistance. After they pay the rent and utilities, they have about two or three days every month when they don’t have money for food.

And we have four or five million senior citizens who fall through the cracks because they live on a fixed income just a little over the poverty line. We have children who go to school, have no energy, and fall asleep in class because their brains are not being fed.

You have blamed the hunger problem on a lack of political will. What do you mean?

Hunger should be in the top 5 issues in this country, but it’s not even close—it’s probably not even in the top 40. When we have so many Americans going hungry and 35,000 people dying overseas from hunger every day, it is a major issue. It would be helpful if the top leaders in our country, the President and the leaders of both parties, would say hunger is an important issue.

We know how to feed people, how to immunize children, how to teach mothers and fathers about nutrition and breast-feeding. We know about vitamin A and how to get people off welfare. It simply must become a priority.

Also, communities, neighborhoods, and cities have hunger programs. It’s not so much a matter of money as it is deciding to do something. Many towns don’t even have good food banks or nonprofit grocery stores.

We do not have enough small-loan programs that get people off welfare. We have done it for years overseas with a default rate of less than one-half of 1 percent. And every community that can should have gleaning programs, where people can collect unharvested food from fields and trees.

How has your hometown of Dayton tackled these issues?

We have a large Emergency Resource Bank, and 66 food banks and soup kitchens. For ten years we’ve had a gleaning program and a senior citizens’ feeding program on weekends. We have Operation Food Share, where local businessmen collect leftover food from restaurants, country clubs, hospitals, and hotels and take it to the Emergency Resource Bank. Then the call goes out, “We’ve got stroganoff tonight.” I’ll tell you, my people in Dayton are eating better than anyone in the country.

How have you managed to keep people involved?

Many years ago I visited Ethiopia during a big famine. I saw so many die. But I realized that many people in my home district did not know about it. We needed to dramatize the problem, so we organized a 40-hour event called Stop Hunger … Fast! People raised money for every hour they fasted. Four thousand participated. We brought in ambassadors from African countries to talk about their nations. We had workshops. We made a big deal out of it, and we raised $380,000. Half went overseas and half stayed in Dayton.

You seem not to have fallen victim to “compassion fatigue.” What keeps you and others going?

I get tired. I’ve seen hunger so many times it’s hard for me to look at it. We keep it going by making it local, making it something people can touch, something they can see with their own eyes.

Why did you go to Angola?

People told me it was so bad there that people were walking around in the major town just dying in the street. We wanted to see it and find out how to help. Conflict has been going on for years—government and antigovernment forces fighting one another. Often a quest for power oppresses and destroys the people. It’s a glaring reason why God says to pray for people in authority.

They have a saying in Africa: “When the elephants fight, the grass dies.” When the leaders fight, the people perish. In 1 Timothy 2, Paul says we should pray for those in authority so that the people “may live a quiet and peaceable life.” We are to pray for the leaders, not because they are special, but because they have the power to make things good or make things bad.

What does fasting mean to you personally?

I have seen the vitality and the power of it. The best part for me is in the morning when I’m alone, reading, praying, and thinking. The 22-day fast brought a real closeness to God. It really is an act of self-denial. It is a way of taking the focus off yourself to put it on something else, a way to humble yourself before God.

If we fast in earnest and humbly, God’s Word becomes very powerful. Isaiah 58 describes the kind of fast God wants: “To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke to set the oppressed free and break every yoke.… to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter” (6–7, NIV).

If we spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, it says, we will receive God’s guidance, strengthening, and blessing.

For people who fast, a lot of things happen. They identify with hunger because they’re going without. They want to know more. It changes their opinion about reaching out and doing something.

Is life for hungry people today better or worse?

Things have gotten worse, but I think awareness of the issue is improving. If more people can be motivated, both inside and outside government, we will make a major dent in the issue of hunger. That’s one reason for a fast: to raise consciousness about the whole issue and motivate people to do something. I don’t care so much about what they do, as long as they do something. They’ll figure out what they have to do.

By Beth Spring, a freelance writer and author of Staying Safe: Prison Fellowship’s Guide to Crime Prevention.

I made the hardest choice the other day. I stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh—at least, for a while. Now, I know what some of you other dittoheads are saying. But hear me out. A dittohead, by the way, for those uninformed about Limbaugh nomenclature, is simply a religious—excuse me, a devout, er, a regular listener to or viewer of Rush Limbaugh’s radio and television programs, agreeing with Limbaugh to the extent of orally awarding “dittos” to his commentary.

Some dittoheads may think I’m straying from the conservative fold. Fret not, fellow fearers of big government and socialism in all its insidious forms. You will have to journey far to find someone more cynical about the ability of centralized government to solve anything.

So what’s the problem? The story goes like this: I was at the pizza parlor with my fellow ministers of the Lord, enjoying the aftermath of ministry at a nearby prison for juveniles. At one point, the conversation turned to politics, as conversations often do these days. Having discovered Rush a few months earlier, I had dutifully cultivated my attitude toward anything that could be labeled “liberal.”

Sitting with me at that very table were brothers and sisters in Christ espousing political positions belonging, shall we say, to the left of center. And I found myself getting that close (picture here Maxwell Smart, from the old Get Smart television series, with thumb and forefinger pressed together) to getting into an actual argument with a fellow believer over politics.

That’s when I stopped—talking, that is. And later, when I took time to analyze that encounter, my devotion to the Rush Limbaugh show was also put on hold. Why did I feel so in conflict with one of my own fellow ministers over something as temporal and idiotic (my usual description) as politics, for heaven’s sake?

Listening to Rush put me in a combative frame of mind regarding anything having to do with the L-word. I have realized that the body of Christ was bound to include people from across the political spectrum. I simply couldn’t take the chance of allowing that kind of combative inclination to jeopardize any of those external relationships so critical to the functioning of the body of Christ.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not judging any other dittohead or even the occasional listener or viewer. But alas, I am weak. And my passions run deep about some things. My passion for the church and those in it runs deeper than my enjoyment of Rush’s witty conservative commentary.

The tenor of his show comes off in such stark “us vs. them” terms. The shades are strictly black and white. (Guess who is wearing white.) Limbaugh can make you so mad with his zany but pointed criticism of the “other side.”

Why is it, by the way, that when I refer to Rush, I keep wanting to capitalize the “h” when I write the pronoun “he”? And is it just me, or does anyone else notice the movement among dittoheads to “convert” friends and neighbors? I kid you not. Callers use those very words to describe their efforts to proselytize their new-found faith—er, excuse me, belief—oops, I mean, political understanding.

And have you heard callers describe the day, sometimes the very moment, they “discovered” Rush Limbaugh? And even the person who introduced him to them? It’s positively spooky how it parallels a conversion to Jesus as Lord. I can’t help fantasizing about a church full of believers as sincere and committed to the gospel as dittoheads are to conservatism.

But the point for me remains the same. In my case, a political philosophy was threatening to put my relationship with Jesus Christ and fellow believers, in some circ*mstances, into a subordinate position. My personal solution was to fast from the program for a time to refocus on the center of my life, Jesus Christ. If any of this rings true for you, too, you might consider doing the same.

By Brad Kunkel, a contractor and builder from San Jose, California. Reprinted from The Christian Leader.

Speaking Out does not necessarily reflect the views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The President’s Faith

To raise the question of the reality of Bill Clinton’s faith as Philip Yancey did [“The Riddle of Bill Clinton’s Faith,” April 25] is to become engaged in an exercise in futility since the answer to that question is known only to God. The real question is whether Clinton’s life and actions reveal the presence of such faith. Yancey answered that question quite well when he wrote that Clinton “is a consummate politician” who takes “his cues from the crowd.”

Clinton’s assertions regarding his Christian faith and his belief in the authority of Scripture are negated when he shows greater concern for the results of polls than for what he says he believes is God’s Word.

Walter Mueller,

Maple Glen, Pa.

With all due respect to evangelical leaders with “impeccable credentials,” like Ed Dobson, perhaps the reason for our confusion about President Clinton’s faith comes from asking the wrong questions. Dobson suggests we look for clues and evidences. He concludes the President is “deeply spiritual” because he knows the Scriptures, is emotionally affected by prayer, goes to church, carries his Bible, and professes faith in Christ.

The Lord himself suggests we look for other clues—fruit (Matt. 7:20), hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt. 5:6), and by taking up the cross and following the Lord (Matt. 16:24). Our confusion about the spiritual state of President Clinton is symptomatic of our confusion about why the visible church continues to record new professions of faith and remains largely impotent. It’s hard to imagine Luther, Calvin, or Edwards suggesting the evidence of regeneration will be found in going to church, carrying a Bible, and being emotionally affected by prayer.

Bob Lepine

Little Rock, Ark.

Fear Of Flying?

Our church, jumping into the new world of evangelism via niche marketing, has recently begu reaching out to an under saveed target group: the fregurnt flyer. Because so many people in our upscale community travel throughout the week, we spared no expense.

Our seats have individual airconditioner nozzles, reading lights, and usher call buttons. A seat-belt sign comes on automatically when the preacher starts to say something controversial; oxygen masks and airsickness bags are located in the pew racks.

Our “Frequent Attender Plan” rewards consistent attendance with discounts toward overseas travel (to the Holy Land, of course). Our “First Class” seating pampers those who make generous contributions to the church building fund by allowing them to exit the service during the last verse of the closing hymn.

After a few months, however, things have started to get out of hand. Some of our “frequent flyer” newcomers have begun making requests for special treatment They want vegetarian meals and alternatives to sermons provided on headsets, and pillows and blankets.

How far should we be willing to go? The elders met last Wednesday and decided to create an ad-hoc committee to consider the newcomers’ special requests.

Niche-market evangelism is great. But where do you draw the line?

I still don’t understand why Bill Clinton has become the flashpoint of so much hostility among evangelicals. Does anyone really believe that Republicans, in their current incarnation as defenders of America (suburban America, that is), are really any better?

Victor Clemente

Jersey City, N.J.

Two lines in Yancey’s article tell it all: “Clinton defends this shift by saying the approach to specific moral issues in a democracy should change as popular opinion changes” and “As a politician, he would take his cues from the crowd.”

Pete Simpson

Bloomington, Minn.

I was appalled by Edward Dobson’s statement: “I believe that he is more deeply spiritual than any President we have had in recent years.” Dobson is obviously lacking in historical knowledge regarding former Presidents, and even more lacking in his knowledge of the Bible in these matters. The apostle John tells us that “the man who says: ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he says, is a liar and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).

Roy E. Knuteson

Fort Collins, Colo.

I have long awaited the interview in which President Clinton was provided opportunity to share what thousands of Christians know to be true: that the abortion issue can be argued from either extreme with the Bible as “evidence” for both sides. Having once had the opportunity to chat with Al Gore, I have no doubt of his Christian faith. Thank God neither leader compromises what he believes to be true just to win the support of evangelicals!

The “critics [who] remain unimpressed by religious words and other tokens of faith” might do well to examine how closely aligned their attitudes might be with the Pharisees of long ago.

Having spent most of my life in public-school administration, I sympathize with the President’s desire to address real issues confronting society today amidst the incessant criticism of evangelicals. If every evangelical would truly study the Scriptures, with a focus upon what Christ said and did (with said focus at least equal to or greater than the idiosyncratic writings of Paul, which are so much a part of evangelical preaching), there would be no “riddle” to Bill Clinton’s faith.

David Wood

Aurora, Colo.

Unlike Mother Teresa, who can afford to see the abortion issue in “stark, binary terms,” Clinton must consider the sticky questions, like, “When does human life begin?” Pardon me for being stark and binary on this one, but if life is not present in the mother’s womb at even the earliest stage of pregnancy, then what is it that must be killed lest it continue to grow? And if the life is not human, of what species is it? If the protection of human life is not the province of the law (and the presidency), then what is? Unless we believe that all human life bears the image of God, then no human life will be seen as worth preserving. The abortions Clinton allows and the urban shootings Clinton deplores are not unrelated phenomena.

Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

Littleton, Colo.

A Biblical Perspective on Ecology

The CT Institute on Eco-Myths [April 4] deserves continuing debate. And CT deserves credit for tackling ecological controversy, even if somewhat tardily. Yet something is missing. I wonder why CT did not really provide the kind of theological comment needed to put ecological problems in a broader biblical perspective.

Of course we are stewards of God’s magnificent creation! What I miss in the articles are considerations of the most essential biblical doctrines of mankind’s redemption and God’s glory therein:

1. Mankind’s depravity (his inevitable failure to achieve the beautiful life, but rather to destroy) demands attention. Other than in a postmillennial viewpoint, this indicts not only unbelievers but believers, too, in serious degree. The individual and collective sinfulness of the race underlie all suggested causes of ecological disaster.

2. Biblical prophecy projects human sinfulness to an inevitable total destruction of mankind’s efforts and, to a great degree, of his environment. Let’s face it: Other than with an optimistic expectation of the outcome of the present age, conditions will get worse, not better.

3. Biblical eschatology, if I read it correctly, asserts that God’s gracious work of redemption includes “a new earth.” A Christian, while properly concerned with stewardship, is nevertheless in a very different position from those whose values are limited to what is here. Indeed, the Christian, while exhibiting responsible stewardship, is ob-ligated to point unbelievers to that “blessed hope.”

John A. MacDonald

San Francisco, Calif.

All people of this world, including Christians, have before them issues that were of little concern earlier in this century. Aside from the usual concerns of war, crime, poverty, starvation, disease, and so on, there are those that must be looked at in a far broader perspective, requiring a reevaluation of our moral understanding and decision making. These issues involve sexual activity, sexual orientation, AIDS and STDs, family planning, contraception, abortion, the explosive growth of both the developing and developed countries’ populations, and the displacement of millions of people, migrating across national borders.

Discussing the greening of the church without considering the impact of growing numbers of people is like trying to mop a floor with the faucet remaining on. We cannot have endless growth of populations and hope for realistic solutions to these environmental problems.

Ronald J. Fasano

Bellevue, Wash.

Calvin B. DeWitt offered us three questions to help discern good science from “junk science.” But ironically, he, himself, merely acknowledges there is a debate about certain degradations of the earth, then proceeds to treat as fact allegations of global warming and ozone depletion. Where were the competent scientists who’ve been exposing the fallacies of the alleged crises and putting the problems in a realistic perspective? Just as our nation has a health-care problem, not a crisis, so I’m waiting for some valid information showing our world’s pollution problems are of crisis proportion.

Duane L. Burgess

Tucson, Ariz.

Creation’s Eighth Day

I enjoyed Eugene Peterson’s article “The Good-for-Nothing Sabbath” [April 4] about recovering a more biblical understanding of daily and weekly time and the Sabbath. I would have enjoyed it more had he not ended up treating Sunday as a sort of Christian Sabbath, but rather recovered the ancient Christian understanding of Sunday as the eighth day of Creation, the first day of the new creation, the beginning of the day without evening of the kingdom. Just as the Sabbath is more than a day off, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, is more than just the Christian Sabbath.

Stephen Parsons

Cary, N.C.

I agreed with the [former pastor] author up to where he said, “For 18 years, Monday was my Sabbath.” It seems to me that the choosing of which day is the Sabbath is up to God, and we then either decide to obey that choice or not.

Robert R. Baptist

Saugus, Calif.

Any Sabbath that is not fully experienced is a “good-for-nothing Sabbath.” There is no such thing as a meaningful half-Sabbath. From sunset to sunset, the time is holy, and it must be used as holy unto the Lord of the Sabbath.

We do have to settle for all or nothing. To settle for anything less you don’t have a Sabbath.

Ron Myers

Prince George, B.C., Canada

No Match for an Empty Tomb

Thank you for Lyn Cryderman’s editorial “Rising Above the Fall” [April 4]. It’s high time someone called evangelicals on their preoccupation with the “evils of modern society” and the resulting de-emphasis on Resurrection hope.

Unfortunately, this depravity doctrine may be facilitated by well-meaning evangelical Christian leaders. I was employed for several years by a Christian organization where this attitude prevailed as the leadership increased its commitment to influence public policy. In concentrating on defeating proposed antifamily (Democratic) legislation, the atmosphere of hope within the company—and the message of hope to its constituents—diminished. For me, it was actually refreshing to rejoin the “secular work force” where people weren’t always obsessing about society’s decline.

While I certainly advocate Christians being aware of and involved in issues that impact our world, I saw activism promote pessimism—even fear—when the “glorious doctrine of Easter” was allowed to be overshadowed. Thank you for the reminder that today’s headlines are no match for an empty tomb.

Suzanne Strawn

San Marino, Calif.

No Shame for True Victims

Haddon Robinson sweeps over thousands of women, men, and children who are true victims of violence, sexual crimes, and prejudice [From the Senior Editors, April 4]. There is no shame in being a victim. It is a shame when the church says, “Get over it!”

Often victimized persons do not find a safe haven in the church. Instead, they seek support and help from AA, Al-Anon, social agencies, and other people-centered groups. So many men and women have found [in them] the atmosphere of compassion and understanding they need to face their pain and learn to take charge of their own lives. This is hardly shunning responsibility.

Our ascended and risen Savior can extend his healing and life-giving power to others who have suffered evil. Not all victims are in “search for a scapegoat.” Many are looking to see if the church will welcome them with Christlike understanding and compassion.

Pastor Anthony Sarnicola

First Baptist Church

Boonville, N.Y.

Evangelicals and the Environment

Randy Frame’s report on my critique of the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation [News, April 4] says World “obtained a draft and … published a lengthy critique.” Some evangelical leaders who had been asked for comments on a draft dated October 20, 1993, faxed me the draft and asked for my recommendations, which I gave them. Later, after the CT Institute met and the Evangelical Environmental Network adopted the final version of the declaration, I requested and received the final version from EEN’s office. My critique referred to the earlier version in a effort to lend some specificity and testability to the vague and unquantified empirical claims in the final version, but it was a critique of the final version itself, not the draft.

The main burden of my critique was that the declaration, as adopted, is so vague that many who sign it, lacking specific expertise in empirical debates about environmental issues, would be unable to know precisely what the declaration’s authors meant by some of their statements, and what specific claims and policies they would later promote under the umbrella of the declaration, with the im-plicit endorsem*nt of all who endorse the declaration. My questioning of the truth of the empirical assumptions underlying the declaration was a secondary concern.

Finally, Frame misidentifies me as an economist and author. Although my advanced degree is in economic ethics, and I have written textbooks and taught courses in economics and the environment, I am not an economist but an associate professor in interdisciplinary studies at Covenant College specializing in the application of theology, ethics, and world-view to economics, government, public policy, and environmental stewardship.

E. Calvin Beisner

Chattanooga, Tenn.

I was nervous when I first heard associate editor Tim Jones describe Katherine Kersten’s article on feminism. Not that I was unsympathetic to the point of view expressed, but the article tapped into one of my fears for the magazine: that we muddy our stand to be defined only by the gospel.

Despite the many connections evangelicals have with cultural conservatism, it is not the same as the good news of Jesus Christ. Christians can be found at almost all points on the political spectrum. For this reason, we are loath to identify culturally conservative positions with evangelical Christianity unless we come to those positions out of our commitment to Christ and his Word. That is why we can strongly oppose both hom*osexual behavior and hom*ophobic hatred—we are simply imitating our Lord.

But does Jesus oppose feminism? He certainly doesn’t oppose the idea that women have equal standing and worth. That was his idea. But as Kersten points out, the feminist establishment has moved beyond this basic Christian idea to some unchristian ones. I discovered her critique to be profoundly Christian, a corrective to a movement that began with Jesus.

A few words about our new look: Regular readers will notice several changes. With a move to desktop publishing and the advent of a new art director, Tom Moraitis, we thought the time was ripe for some fine tuning. Our goal was to establish a classic, sophisticated design that improved readability and preserved editorial integrity. I think that is what we achieved.

Interviewing a couple she calls Tom and Laura Brett, Maggie Scarf asked Tom what attracted him about Laura. He said that in addition to being pretty, smart, and funny, she was a challenge.

“A challenge because of her sincerity, I suppose, and her honesty, too. It’s all there,” he added, with a small shrug, “in her language.”

“Her language?” I gazed at him quizzically. He, however, was exchanging a knowing, fond look with his wife. “Church language,” he explained, running a quick hand through his curly brown hair. “Listening to Laura talk to her friends, you hear certain terms come up again and again. Things like ‘letting yourself be vulnerable’ and ‘investing yourself in a decision.’” (Intimate Partners)

Given that church language was the clue to Laura’s challenging ethics, we might have expected Tom to mention terms like sin, repentance, redemption. But to Tom, “church language” consists of what some of us fondly call psychobabble, the language of popular psychology.

Across the ages, the church has been haunted—hindered and helped—by alien spirits. Time was when the ghosts skulking behind pulpits and visiting in the choir stalls were mostly philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Kant; and more recently, Hegel, Marx, Whitehead, Heidegger. In the best cases, their conversation stimulated Christian thinking and threw light on aspects of our life and calling that we might otherwise have missed. But sometimes the philosophers affected the pulpit more than the gospel of Jesus did; it was their spirit, rather than the Holy Spirit, that became the spirit of the community; it was their words, and not the Word of Life, that were taken to heart by the congregation.

Recently psychologists have largely displaced the philosophers. Seminars in Rational Christian Living teach believers how to avoid depression, anxiety, unproductive anger, and overeating through rational self-management. In Episcopal congregations, the air is often thick with the mysterious breath of Carl Jung. Small-group Bible studies have a distinctly encounter-group air about them, what with all the sharing of feelings and “needs” that goes on there. We hear about “sensitivity” and “openness” and “being in touch with our feelings.” We learn to accept ourselves and to get in touch with our unconscious or the child within. We class ourselves as introverted or extroverted, feelers or thinkers, sensers or intuitives.

Why does psychology tend to weave itself into sermons, prayers, Bible studies, pastoral care, retreats, spiritual self-reflection, and vestry meetings? Why does the church’s language not get equally infused with the latest developments in fiber optics or subatomic particle physics or genetic engineering? The answer is obvious: The church is not in the business of physics or genetics, but from its earliest days it has been in the person business—transforming people from being damaged, poorly functioning, unfulfilled, hostile, and anxious, to being whole, well-functioning, fulfilled, loving, and at peace. In other words, the church has always dealt in practical psychology.

What It Is to Be a Self

Christian spirituality (or psychology, if you will) has resources for explaining (diagnosing) what goes wrong with people psychologically. The ancient Christian lists of sins, along with the analysis of how the sins do their dirty work—for example, the “seven deadly sins” of pride, envy, sloth, greed, anger, lust, and gluttony—provide a kind of diagnostic scheme. The lists of Christian virtues, again with analysis of their psychological profile—for example, faith, hope, love, humility, compassion, contrition, gratitude, patience, perseverance, self-control—provide a psychological character-ideal, a notion of what the fully functioning person is like. The Christian disciplines of worship, prayer, meditation on God’s Word, meditation on special exemplars of human excellence (saints), service to others, gift-giving (especially to the poor), and fellowship with other Christians are ways of pursuing this proper personal life and shaping our characters as mirrors of God and sisters and brothers of one another. They are, as it were, the basic “therapeutic interventions” of Christian psychotherapy.

To draw the connection in the other direction, we could say that the psychologies of Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, Carl Jung, Heinz Kohut, and others are really alternative spiritualities: like Christianity, they are ways of conceptualizing what it is to be a person, along with diagnostic schemes and sets of disciplines by which to arrive at better “health”—that is, to grow toward true personhood or away from various forms of failure to be proper persons. These psychologies are, of course, in various ways unlike Christianity in what they take persons to be, so I call them alternative spiritualities. That is why Christians, who insist that persons be formed as children of God, must understand these psychologists’ spiritualities and know just where the continuities and discontinuities with Christianity lie.

The danger is that these psychologies may, to one degree or another, replace Christianity without most people even noticing that any substitution has taken place. In some instances, the influence of the therapies—even from within the church—may be so strong that our character and relationships are no longer Christian but are now family-systemic or Jungian. Our love may be Rogerian empathy, our courage the updated Stoicism of Ellis’s Rational-Emotive Therapy, our forgiveness motivated by our therapeutic “right to be free from hate.” In short, the language we assimilate and the disciplines to which we submit may make our souls therapeutic rather than Christian.

The Christian will agree with Charles Taylor when he says that having a self is quite a different thing from having a kidney. You can have a kidney without having any ideas about kidneys, says Taylor, but to have a self necessarily involves having some ideas about what it is to be a person, about what is important in life, about what the goal of life is, and about what persons can do. We are “self-interpreting animals.” As selves, we do not live by bread alone but by the “words” in terms of which we interpret ourselves, whether these proceed from the mouth of God or the mouth of our Jungian analyst or our Marxian political science professor or Carl Sagan or the pop Darwinians who write for Time. All these thoughts, these words, these understandings are out there floating around in our social environment, inside and outside the church, and they constitute, in significant part, a kind of spiritual junk food. They tell us what it is to be a person, what it is to be fulfilled, what kind of world we live in, what truth is, and how we are to think if we are to be rational.

We are what we eat, according to the biblical psychology. Since we are verbivorous beings, the words we chew, swallow, and digest will determine how we see the world, what we take to be important, how our behavior, our character, and our very life are shaped.

Since persons are verbivores, those who seriously interpret themselves in Christian terms will tend to have Christian selves; those who seriously interpret themselves in Rogerian or Jungian terms will tend to have Rogerian or Jungian selves. The various psychotherapies and personality theories that are influential today are not just neutral medical technologies or scientific theories; they are philosophies of life that endorse particular virtues, character traits, or features of personality. These are the traits a person would have if her therapist succeeded in making her into a fully functioning and mature person—mature, that is, by that therapist’s reckoning. And they are traits the therapy is designed to foster.

These therapeutic virtues are often similar to the Christian virtues, and this is perhaps one reason Christians are attracted to the psychologies and feel comfortable with them. But the therapeutic virtues are not only similar to the Christian ones; they are also, in important ways, quite different from them—even incompatible with them.

Becoming a Double Lover

Many of the secular psychologies identify some basic “need” or “drive” that sets the most fundamental agenda for a human life. Freud, for example, says that we are driven by a need for sexual fulfillment that we cannot properly satisfy in direct ways. The fundamental task, then, is to find socially acceptable ways of satisfying our instinctual needs.

Christian psychology can be read as having the same pattern of positing a basic need or potential or drive, and then seeing human troubles and maladjustment as forms of failure to achieve what our basic nature requires. Our basic need is identified in the double commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:37—40). This state of proper attachment to God and neighbor is what we were made for; it is this toward which our hearts most basically incline, despite all appearances to the contrary. We are “nothing” without love, according to the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 13:2). As Saint Augustine comments, we were created with a (suppressed and often hidden) drive to praise and honor God, and our hearts are “restless” until we “rest” in God.

Any Christian psychology that is developed with the help of concepts from the secular psychologies will have to remain faithful to this premise: we are made to love God and will find complete “mental health” only when we do so.

Diagnosing Sin

Sin is without any doubt the chief diagnostic category of biblical psychology. In the New Testament, sin is not just a set of misdeeds but a perverse state of the person and thus a psychological state, a state of the soul. It is a “nature” that one has put on, an orientation, a matter of perverse motives (Eph. 4:22; Gal. 5:16-21; 1 John 2:16). Insofar as Christianity is a word about the overcoming of sin, it is, in the most literal sense of the word, a psychotherapy—a cure for sick souls. But as a concept of psychic dysfunction, sin has three features that non-Christian concepts of dysfunction lack: sin is offense against God, is the result of responsible human agency, and is incurable by merely human effort. Let us look at the last two of these.

Responsibility. The dominant tone of many therapies is that the client is a victim of his society, his unjust upbringing, his early self objects, poor training, or ignorance. Some therapies give the impression that the very idea that a person is responsible for his dysfunction is antitherapeutic. (“Don't make the client feel guilty.”) However, one of the chief therapeutic strategies of Christianity is forgiveness—God’s forgiveness of sinners offered in Jesus Christ, and each sinner’s forgiveness of others. And forgiveness implies guilt; it applies only to someone who is dysfunctional by his own responsibility. Nor can he properly receive forgiveness unless he feels his guilt and repents of his sin. Thus the biblical psychology stresses the therapeutic importance of contrition, that emotion in which the individual regrets his state and dissociates himself from it while taking responsibility for it (Luke 3:7—9; 7:36—50; 18:8—14; 2 Cor. 7:8—10).

A worry that seems to lie behind therapists’ shyness about ascribing responsibility to the client is that being “judgmental” will merely raise the client’s defenses and preempt the development of therapeutic trust. Christian psychology is as much opposed as any other psychology to judgmentalism (Matt. 7: 1—5) if we think of the judgmental attitude as a kind of contempt by one person, who sees herself as “righteous,” of another whom she regards as inferior to herself because of the other’s sinful condition.

This is an alienating and untherapeutic attitude, to be sure, but the remedy need not exclude ascribing responsibility. What is pernicious about judgmentalism is not the judgment being made, but the contempt that alienates one human being from another. The Christian doctrine of sin is that “there is no distinction” between therapist and client in this regard, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

It is a requirement of proper Christian maturity that each one of us recognize emotionally his own sinfulness and dependency on God’s grace. A pervasive attitude of contrition is a mark of Christian holiness, and surely will be a mark of the Christian therapist. Rogers and Kohut stress therapist empathy and require it not to be an artificial attitude or mere “technique,” but to make itself felt to the client out of the depths of the therapist’s personality. Christian psychology agrees with this, but adds that contrition is an equally important virtue for the therapist to possess. Contrition is the attitude that will prevent judgmentalism as the therapist discusses the client’s sins with her.

Incurability by merely human effort. Besides being a misrelationship with God, and a kind of dysfunction for which the sufferer is to some extent responsible, sin is a condition for which there is no cure by merely human effort. As the New Testament declares, sinners are “dead [in their] trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) and need to be “born again” (John 3:1—15). Sin is by definition a condition from which one must be rescued by God. The central story of Christianity is about that rescue operation. So we have two tightly related psychotherapeutic acts of God: the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of God’s son, two thousand years ago in Palestine, and the healing work of the Holy Spirit in individuals and congregations throughout the ages and down to the present day.

This means that distinctively Christian psychotherapy, no matter how extensively it uses strategies adapted from the secular therapies, will always enlist the help of God—reconciliation of the client with God through the work of the Holy Spirit—and this will mean at some time (the time will need to be judiciously chosen) acknowledging explicitly God’s saving act in Palestine two millennia ago and prayerfully invoking present help from his Holy Spirit. It will also involve integrating the client into a faithful congregation where he may find fellowship and opportunity to partake of Holy Communion.

Denying Our Lesser Selves

Under the influence of secular therapies, Christians have grown uncomfortable with the idea of self-denial, but it is important both as a strategy against sin and as a positive part of Christian life and growth. We have been led to feel that the self is sacrosanct: just as in an earlier time it was thought never fitting to deny God, so now it seems never right to deny oneself. But just as it was okay, in a God-fearing age, to deny idols but not to deny the true God, so in our age we must convince people that while it is wrong to deny one’s true self, it is okay to deny false or lower selves.

As we saw earlier, “self” is not the name of something in the way that “kidney” is the name of an anatomical part. A self is a function of a self-interpretation, a “word” that gives the self shape and substance. According to the Christian Word, the core of the selfhood of all of us—what we most truly are as selves, whether or not we have actualized and acknowledged this—is that we are bearers of God’s image, made and intended to be his children, to love him and our neighbor and to serve in his kingdom. This is the self that Christian nurture promotes and that Christian psychotherapy restores.

This self is sacrosanct in Christianity; it would always be wrong to deny one’s nature as a child of God. All “selves” that are in opposition to this one, or even of lesser status, are candidates for denial, and this denial may be very therapeutic. When a person denies herself so as to become more open to God or to others, she is denying not her true self but a false or pseudo or inadequate self—at minimum, a lesser self.

This is not at all to deny that self-denial is painful and felt (in a way) as a denial of one’s true self. For example, I may wish to do something that is comfortable and satisfying (talk with my friends, read a book), but my son wants to play a game with me or talk with me about something interesting to him but boring to me. If I stop what I am doing and talk or play with him, then I am denying myself for his sake. And if my self-denial so succeeds that I enter wholeheartedly into this fatherly activity and am not just gritting my teeth and doing my fatherly duty, then I transcend my selfish, inadequate, or lesser, self and find a truer self whose identity is “father of this boy” and “steward of God.”

A Christian psychology sees the human self as a strong agent—not just a pawn pushed about by environmental and genetic inheritance but one who, though acting within limits set by inheritance, is decidedly an agent—an individual who himself is responsible for what he does and what he becomes. Self-denial expresses this status of responsible agency, for it is by definition something that the individual undertakes, not something that just happens to him. In self-denial the individual doesn’t “go with the flow,” thus letting the flow be responsible for his character; he takes his life and selfhood into his own hands. The fact that self-denial goes “against the grain” makes it even more agency-producing than other consciously undertaken acts.

Lastly, self-denial is required because of sin. So far I have spoken of denying the actual self not because it is bad but because it is not the essential, truest self. It is not bad to want to be alone, to desire food for oneself, to want to write a book or make some other personal success, but these desires do not express what is deepest in us, according to a Christian psychology. So we deny the lower self in the interest of the higher. But according to biblical psychology, we not only have a lower nature that needs taming and subordinating; we also have a sinful nature that needs to die.

So if I find myself embroiled in patterns of envy and pride, I need to die to self, to be crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20)—not just to subordinate my invidious self to my kingdom self, but to get rid of it altogether. Christian psychotherapy will devise methods, often no doubt partially indebted to the strategies of the secular therapies, for helping individuals bring about this death.

Suspicion and Appreciation

In various secular therapies, we can see themes to which Christian psychology has been committed since the time of its origin. For example, Rogerian therapy stresses the curative power of acceptance and empathy—something formally akin to the attitude that God shows to humanity in Jesus Christ, who shares our sufferings and forgives us and welcomes us into his kingdom. Ellis stresses the importance, for healthy living, of accurate “cognitions”—beliefs and orienting self-talk; Christianity as a healing message has always, at least in its orthodox forms, stressed the connection between proper psycho-spiritual formation and correct beliefs. Behavior therapy stresses the healing of relationships and psyche that can come from correcting behavior, reminding us of the many times that John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul exhort their hearers to behavioral change in the interest of spiritual ends, and of James’s remark that faith is perfected by works (James 2:22).

Yet not only does each psychotherapy bear some resemblance to Christian psychology; each of them also, in one respect or another, contradicts Christianity. Our integration of insights and techniques from these other psychologies must therefore be done cautiously and with precision.

Still, because the therapies have developed their insights in a fairly rigorous way and have focused energetically on refining their own special techniques for person formation, it stands to reason that we can learn a lot through dialogue with them. Christian psychotherapy will be “eclectic” in bearing a number of resemblances to the secular therapies; some of these will be the result of its integrating features of those other therapies. But first and foremost, Christian psychology must be true to the complexity of human nature and to the distinctive biblical view of the self.

Robert C. Roberts is professor of philosophy and psychological studies at Wheaton College in Illinois and the author of Taking the Word to Heart (Eerdmans), from which this article was adapted.