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Concern is raised for those who have no choice about whether to join.

Cult watchers question the degree of mind control various cults exercise over their members. It is a matter of debate how much choice the young adult cultists are capable of asserting. But today there is an increasingly visible group of individuals who are unequivocally without choice: small children.

Many of the controversial new religious groups are now 15 or 20 years old. “Cult life,” notes writer and researcher Marcia Rudin, “undergoes change. One of these major changes is that cults are becoming a family matter.”

And it is not necessarily a very pleasant family matter at that. Rudin points out that of the 913 people who died at Jonestown, a third (276) were small children and early teen-agers. Margaret Singer, a University of California at Berkeley psychologist who counseled children who escaped Guyana, learned of frightening child abuse there.

Children above age six were forced to work in jungle construction from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. daily, in temperatures as high as 120 degrees. As punishment, some were thrown into dark wells after being told snakes awaited them there. Two six-year-olds who unsuccessfully attempted escape had balls and chains welded to their ankles. More than once young girls were forced to masturbate publicly because their parents spoke when forbidden.

Appallingly, the horror of Jonestown, while extreme, is hardly unique. Singer enumerates a long list of abuses that afflict cult children to varying degrees:

• Physical punishment tends to be severe, often intensified by the leadership’s belief that one may “beat out the devil, beat out the evil in children.”

• The “bizarre and unhealthy diets” may not be good for mature cult members, but they are especially harmful for developing children.

• Some groups have persons other than parents raise children, releasing the parents for more intensive fund raising or religious devotion and service.

• School and formal education—like many elements of the wider society—are decried. Some children educated by cult-established schools receive inadequate educations. Others who go to public schools sometimes must adopt the strange clothes or appearance of the cults and consequently suffer ridicule from other “normal” children.

• A number of cults neglect dental and health care for children, as well as ordinary immunizations. They also fail to acquire birth certificates, leaving the children as virtual nonpersons in our credential-oriented society.

• The pain of parental divorce may be accentuated for the cult child, since a parent who decides to leave the group is frequently anathematized as satanic.

• Sexual abuse is tolerated in some cults and, in at least one, even encouraged.

How many young children are in cults? Counts of cult members are notoriously difficult to acquire. But Rudin believes cult children now number in the thousands. Cults wishing to grow encourage members to bear children, she said. The better known, larger cults appear less guilty of child abuse and neglect than smaller, less visible groups.

Charges against Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, for example, have been comparatively mild. Some former members say children receive poor education and live on inadequate diets. Some experts say that the worst child abusing cult is David Berg’s Children of God (COG—also called Family of Love). One COG publication (entitled “My Little Fish”) brazenly encouraged adult-child sex and included photographs of children engaged in sexual play with each other and adults. COG children as well as adults are believed to suffer from rampant venereal disease.

Rudin said there are about 1,000 children under age 12 in the 8,000-member COG. Love Israel is a smaller group. As in several cults, children and adults in Love Israel receive little medical attention—illness is believed to be caused by lack of faith. Children go undernourished because Love Israel leaders teach that food is only a sacrament and God will take care of the body apart from it.

There are documented accounts of child deaths. In 1981, four members of the River of Life Tabernacle in Montana were convicted of beating to death a five-year-old boy with electrical cords and a fiberglass stick. A five-year-old in another obscure group, the Black Hebrews of the Children of Israel, died after he was beaten and made to eat red peppers.

The alarming amount of abuse in cults is mostly attributed to the groups’ authoritarian structures. Roger Daly, director of community relations for the American Family Foundation, said submission is emphasized in cults. Naturally rambunctious and spontaneous children are then seen as disrespectful and full of evil. Additionally, Daly said, the cultic groups insulate themselves from wider society and largely reject its values.

“There seems to be very little capacity for cult groups to receive admonishment from people outside,” Daly said. That removes the check society might have on moral excesses. Finally, the intense love between parents and children can be seen as competition for the parents’ devotion to the cult. The cult leader’s jealousy for devotion can be manifested in bizarre ways: one mother who left California’s River of Life Ministry said she was told to confess incestuous desires for her pre-pubescent son, and he for her.

Fortunately, children in cults are not without hope. “There are many areas where the legal system can be used to insure that if a child in a cult can’t be removed from a group, he can at least lead a better life inside it,” Rudin said.

Inspectors can check for health code violations and make certain children are given medical attention. If minors are being transported across state lines, kidnapping laws may be applicable. There are child labor laws and even federal antislavery statutes on the books. And government agencies can remove physically or sexually abused children from cults.

Of course, none of this is to be undertaken trivially, and it is never easy to take children from parents. But Rudin believes publicizing the exploitation and abuse of children may mobilize interest groups—such as pediatricians, nutritionists, and other child advocates—to apply more pressure to unethical cults.

Why Crouch Was Arrested For Chicken Soup Possession

For the first time since his arrest in connection with cocaine, gospel singer Andrae Crouch has discussed the incident publicly. Crouch was stopped November 2, 1982, on a Los Angeles freeway for erratic driving and then arrested. He discussed the incident during a recent interview on KBRT, a Christian radio station in Los Angeles.

Crouch explained that he had allowed some acquaintances to use his apartment while he traveled. Crouch described them as “wild” and said that although he was leery about the arrangement, “it was one of those situations I just couldn’t get out of.”

Crouch explained further that before he returned, friends in Houston had given him chicken soup mix from a diet plan, and he accidentally spilled some of it on the floor of his car while returning from the airport. When he returned to his apartment, he was with a deacon from his father’s church. Crouch noticed a small bottle and a straw in the bathroom—cocaine paraphernalia left behind by the people who used his apartment. He stashed it in his pocket.

Later that night, he and the deacon were pulled over by the police. Crouch said the charge was erratic driving only because the police needed a reason to stop them. Why were they actually stopped? “[The police] were just doing their job,” Crouch said. “We looked the part—two black guys in a silver Mercedes.”

The police assumed the spilled chicken soup mix was cocaine and began putting it in plastic bags. Crouch tried to explain, but after police found the small bottle containing traces of what really was cocaine, he figured they would never believe his story.

So he spent the night in jail. Authorities later determined that the white powdery substance the officers had bagged really was chicken soup. The local district attorney did not file charges because the amount of cocaine in Crouch’s possession was too small.

Because there were other people involved, Crouch chose to wait for advice before discussing the matter publicly.

North American Scene

Everett Sileven, pastor of the Faith Baptist Church in Louisville, Nebraska, was released from jail on February 1. Sileven has spent a total of four months behind bars over the last two years for violating a court order to close down his church school, which he refused to have licensed by the state (CT, Nov. 12, 1982, p. 54). The school has been closed since last October 22.

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has reintroduced legislation to prevent child pornographers from hiding behind the murky legal definition of “obscenity.” If passed, the legislation would write into federal law a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that child pornographers could be prosecuted even if their material does not meet the court’s narrow definition of “obscenity.”

Shelton College in Cape May, New Jersey, is arguing in a federal district court that its right to free exercise of religion is being curtailed by a 1916 New Jersey law that requires state licensing of degree-granting institutions. Shelton was closed in 1971 after it failed to qualify for licensing. The school’s chancellor, fundamentalist Carl McIntire, then moved the school to Florida. Shelton returned to Cape May in 1979, reopened, and has refused to seek a license. McIntire said Shelton would close if it lost the court case “because we are not going to submit to state control.”

Over 100 church-related agencies and individuals have filed 22 shareholder resolutions with 19 major U.S. corporations urging them to reconsider their activities related to nuclear and chemical weapons. Among the corporations are American Telephone & Telegraph, General Electric, Shell, and Union Carbide. Six resolutions relate directly to nuclear weapons production. The most prominent is the resolution filed with AT&T by 58 individuals who are asking the corporation to cancel its support for a facility in New Mexico that researches and develops nuclear weapons technology. Among the filers are agencies of the Christian church, the United Methodist church, the American Baptist churches, and the Reformed Church in America.

The issue of state regulation of church schools has spread to Kentucky. The Bible Baptist Church, which operates an unaccredited school in Campbellsville, Kentucky, has filed a class-action suit against the state. The suit is in response to the state Department of Education’s decision to press truancy charges lodged against parents for not sending their children to an approved school. B. C. Gillispie, the church’s minister, claims the school exceeds all the requirements for state accreditation. But he adds, “This is a ministry of this church, and we will not, by religious conviction, apply for [licensing].”

The Gideons International has ended its practice of giving Bibles to public school children in Illinois. Following protests by some parents and the American Civil Liberties Union, a lawyer for the Illinois Board of Education issued an opinion that giving away Bibles in public schools breaches the Constitution’s separation of church and state.

United Methodist Bishop Melvin E. Wheatley, Jr., says he has no intention of resigning, retiring early, or backing off on his support of homosexuals in the church. The First Church of Colorado Springs, the second-largest United Methodist church in the West, called for the bishop’s resignation if he does not retract statements that it isn’t a sin to be a homosexual and that nothing in church law bars gays from ordination. Wheatley says he is innocent of any wrongdoing. He points to the decision of a church investigative committee, which last May determined that Wheatley’s appointment of a gay pastor to a Denver church did not violate church rules.

A seven-foot, three-ton statue of Christ will soon appear inside a cloverleaf of a South Atlanta freeway. The statue represents an effort by Georgia’s Department of Transportation to appease area residents who protested the building of the highway because an on-ramp will cover part of a pre-Civil War burial ground for blacks.

A Supreme Court justice has ordered a halt to state-sponsored prayer sessions in Alabama public schools. Justice Lewis F. Powell’s order set aside a federal court judge’s order that had allowed such school prayer until the case is heard by a U. S. circuit court of appeals. In January, U.S. District Judge Brevard Hand ruled that federal courts were powerless to prohibit worship in classrooms. But Justice Powell’s decision reinstates an injunction outlawing the prayer sessions.

Officials of the National Council of Churches have denounced the CBS program “60 Minutes” for presenting what they called a biased and inaccurate report on its programs. In the feature, aired January 23, correspondent Morley Safer declared that some groups receiving NCC funds advocate Marxist philosophy and anti-American propaganda. A seven-page NCC reply to the presentation alleged, among other things, that Safer grilled NCC president James Armstrong on minute details that only a full-time staff member could know. The NCC response said the organization had suggested several staff officers who could answer detailed questions, but that “60 Minutes” declined the offer.

Robert Schuller and his staff will appeal a recent ruling that made his Crystal Cathedral ineligible for tax-exempt status. Schuller called the ruling a “$400,000 misunderstanding,” alluding to the amount his church now owes in back taxes and he claims neither he nor his staff understood that only church-related groups could use the $20 million cathedral. Schuller is confident tax-exempt status will be restored when everything is explained.

Two young women were kidnaped and held in their mother’s house in Pontiac, Michigan, over the Christmas holidays. They claim the kidnapers were deprogrammers trying to deliver them from their fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

In four recent confrontations of violence, members of the organization Jews for Jesus have been victims of the militant Jewish Defense League (JDL). One JDL member was among five people arrested for the abduction and attempted “deprogramming” of a 22-year-old Jewish-born Christian street missionary. The JDL concedes it has tried to stop the Jews for Jesus from handing out pamphlets on New York City streets. A JDL official said the only effective means of stopping the missionaries is force.

The sister of an heiress who bequeathed more than $8 million to the Jimmy Swaggart Evangelistic Association is contesting the gift in court. The heiress, Zoe McDonald Vance, died in 1981. She left three wills, all of which contained the bequest to the Swaggart organization. Her sister, Mary Katherine McDonald Leone, claims Vance was “brainwashed” by Swaggart. She said her sister was old and sick and that Swaggart “wormed his way” into her emotions. In a deposition, Leone charged that implied cures for her sister’s illness and her entry into heaven were connected with the donations.

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, has been approved by the Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. This means that all past graduates and present students who go on to graduate will be treated as graduates of an approved non-Methodist seminary. Trinity was one of eight evangelical schools placed on probation by UM officials in 1981. Last year, Trinity and Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary were the only two schools not removed from the probation list.

Surrogate motherhood has become one of America’s growth industries. At least four states have considered laws to legalize and regulate the practice in which a woman agrees to be artificially inseminated by the husband of a childless couple and to give the baby to the couple. An aerospace engineer from Malibu, California, now publishes a guide listing dozens of potential surrogate mothers, complete with pictures and suggested prices. Reuben Pannor, a child-care specialist from Los Angeles, calls surrogate adoptions “premeditated abandonment” and suggests that couples desperate for children be introduced to the many older children waiting to be adopted.

Members of several Church of Christ congregations in the Houston, Texas, area have gone the extra mile by paying off a $1 million debt for which they had no legal obligation. The debt was incurred by a Christian home for the aged, which was closed in 1980. The churches were not bound because the home was independently run. Louis Moore, religion editor for the Houston Chronicle, reported that the gesture sparked unity among the Churches of Christ. He wrote “all they will gain from this is a clean conscience and a feeling that they did what was right.” Church members were aware they had no legal obligation to pay the debt, but believed they had a moral obligation.

He speaks out strongly for the importance of Scripture.

President Reagan declared 1983 the Year of the Bible during his address at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on February 3. Three days earlier, he addressed a session of the National Religious Broadcasters convention on the theme of the Bible. His 21-minute speech was interrupted by applause 15 times. Here are excerpts:

In a time when recession has gripped our land, your industry, religious broadcasting, has enjoyed phenomenal growth. Now, there may be some who are frightened by your success, but I’m not one of them. As far as I’m concerned, the growth of religious broadcasting is one of the most heartening signs in America today.

When we realize that every penny of that growth is being funded voluntarily by citizens of every stripe, we see an important truth. It’s something that I have been speaking of for quite some time—that the American people are hungry for your message because they are hungry for a spiritual revival in this country. When Americans reach out for values of faith, family, and caring for the needy, they’re saying, “We want the Word of God. We want to face the future with the Bible.”

Facing the future with the Bible—that’s a perfect theme for your convention. You might be happy to hear that I have some “good news” of my own. Thursday morning, at the National Prayer Breakfast, I will sign a proclamation making 1983 the Year of the Bible.

We’re blessed to have its words of strength, comfort and truth. I’m accused of being simplistic at times with some of the problems that confront us. I’ve often wondered; within the covers of that single Book are all the answers to all the problems that face us today if we’d only look there. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever.” I hope Americans will read and study the Bible in 1983. It’s my firm belief that the enduring values, as I say, presented in its pages have a great meaning for each of us and for our nation. The Bible can touch our hearts, order our minds, refresh our souls.

Now, I realize it’s fashionable, in some circles, to believe that no one in government should order or encourage others to read the Bible. Encourage—I shouldn’t have said order. We’re told that will violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the founding fathers in the First Amendment.

Well, it might interest those critics to know that none other than the father of our country, George Washington, kissed the Bible at his inauguration. And he also said words to the effect that there could be no real morality in a society without religion.

John Adams called it “the best book in the world.” And Ben Franklin said, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men.… without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach, a byword down to future ages.”

So, when I hear the First Amendment used as a reason to keep the traditional moral values away from policy making, I’m shocked. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.

I’ve always believed that this blessed land was set apart in a special way, that some divine plan placed this great continent here between the two oceans to be found by people from every corner of the earth—people who had a special love for freedom and the courage to uproot themselves, leave their home-land and friends to come to a strange land and, when coming here, they created something new in all the history of mankind: a country where man is not beholden to government, government is beholden to man.

I happen to believe that one way to promote, indeed to preserve, those traditional values we share is by permitting our children to begin their days the same way the members of the United States Congress do—with prayer. The public expression of our faith in God through prayer is fundamental—as a part of our American heritage and a privilege which should not be excluded from our schools.

No one must be forced or pressured to take part in any religious exercise. But neither should the freest country on earth ever have permitted God to be expelled from the classroom. When the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional almost 21 years ago, I believe it ruled wrong. And when a lower court recently stopped Lubbock, Texas, high school students from even holding voluntary prayer meetings on the campus before or after class, it ruled wrong, too.

Our only hope for tomorrow is in the faces of our children. And we know Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” Last year, we tried to pass an amendment that would allow communities to determine for themselves whether voluntary prayer should be permitted in their public schools. And we failed. But I want you to know something: I am determined to bring that amendment back again, and again, and again, and again.

We were frustrated on two other fronts last year. There are five million American children attending private schools today because of emphasis on religious values and educational standards. Their families, most of whom earn less than $25,000 a year, pay private tuition and they also pay their full share of taxes to fund the public schools. We think they’re entitled to relief. So, I want you to know that shortly, we’ll be sending legislation back up to the Hill and we will begin the struggle all over again to secure tuition tax credits for deserving families.

There is another struggle we must wage to redress a great national wrong. We must go forward with unity of purpose and will. And let us come together, Christians and Jews, let us pray together, march, lobby, and mobilize every force we have, so that we can end the tragic taking of unborn children’s lives. Who among us can imagine the excruciating pain the unborn must feel as their lives are snuffed away? And we know medically they do feel pain.

I’m glad that a Respect Human Life bill has already been introduced in Congress by Rep. Henry Hyde. Not only does this bill strengthen and expand restrictions on abortions financed by tax dollars, it also addresses the problem of infanticide. It makes clear the right of all children, including those who are born handicapped, to food and appropriate medical treatment after birth, and it has the full support of this administration.

I know that many well-intentioned, sincerely motivated people believe that government intervention violates a woman’s right of choice. And they would be right if there were any proof that the unborn are not living human beings. Medical evidence indicates to the contrary and, if that were not enough, how do we explain the survival of babies who are born prematurely, some very prematurely?

We once believed that the heart didn’t start beating until the fifth month. But as medical instrumentation has improved, we’ve learned the heart was beating long before that. Doesn’t the constitutional protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extend to the unborn unless it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that life does not exist in the unborn? And I believe the burden of proof is on those who would make that point.

I read in the Washington Post about a young woman named Victoria. She’s with child, and she said, “In this society we save whales, we save timber wolves and bald eagles and Coke bottles. Yet everyone wanted me to throw away my baby.” Well, Victoria’s story has a happy ending. Her baby will be born.

Victoria has received assistance from a Christian couple, and from Sav-A-Life, a new Dallas group run by Jim McKee, a concerned citizen who thinks it’s important to provide constructive alternatives to abortion. There’s hope for America; she remains powerful and a powerful force for good; and it’s thanks to the conviction and commitment of people like those who are helping Victoria. They’re living the meaning of the two great commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Each year, government bureaucracies spend billions for problems related to drugs and alcoholism and disease. Has anyone stopped to consider that we might come closer to balancing the budget if all of us simply tried to live up to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule?…

I know that each of you is contributing, in your own way, to rebuilding America, and I thank you. As broadcasters, you have unique opportunities. And all of us, as Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, have a special responsibility to remember our fellow believers who are being persecuted in other lands. We’re all children of Abraham. We’re children of the same God.…

Malcolm Muggeridge, the brilliant English commentator, has written, “The most important happening in the world today is the resurgence of Christianity in the Soviet Union, demonstrating that the whole effort sustained over 60 years to brainwash the Russian people into accepting materialism has been a fiasco.”

Think of it—the most awesome military machine in history, but it is no match for that one, single man, hero, strong yet tender, Prince of Peace. His name alone, Jesus, can lift our hearts, soothe our sorrows, heal our wounds, and drive away our fears.

He gave us love and forgiveness. He taught us truth and left us hope. In the book of John is the promise that we all go by, [and it] tells us that “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

With His message, with your conviction and commitment, we can still move mountains. We can work to reach our dreams and to make America a shining city on a hill. Before I say goodbye, I wanted to leave with you these words from an old Netherlands folk song, because they made me think of our meeting here today:

“We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing.” “We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant, / And pray that Thou still our Defender wilt be. / Let Thy congregation escape tribulation: / Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!” To which I would only add a line from another song, “America, America, God shed His grace on thee.…”

An Important Test Of Religious School Freedom Begins

Does God or the state govern the gift of teaching?

Seven fundamentalist Christian schools in Maine were told to comply with state education regulations or get themselves a lawyer. Not only did they get a lawyer, they got one of the country’s best, and they were the first to file suit. The schools, and the churches operating them, charge that the state is unconstitutionally sticking its nose into religion by trying to dictate what can be taught and who can do the teaching.

The case, Bangor Baptist Church v. the State of Maine, went to trial last week amid some signs that the fundamentalist church schools might have another important victory in the making. For one thing, their lawyer is William Ball of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who won a forceful decision in a similar case in Michigan just two months ago. For another, the federal court judge in the Maine case, Conrad Cyr, threw out the state’s plea for a summary dismissal of the lawsuit. In doing so, the judge wrote a 56-page decision in which he said the state may have turned its compulsory education law into an “unauthorized administrative system for the licensing of private schools.” He said the Maine legislature has neither “mandated nor authorized the administrative closing of unapproved private schools.…” Because the schools filed suit against the state instead of the other way around (which is what usually happens in such cases), the fundamentalists have a tactical edge in court.

Among other things, Maine requires that private schools offer courses approved by the state education department and that teachers be state certified. The Maine Christian schools that filed suit fall short on both counts, but that does not necessarily mean their courses lack quality.

Ralph Yarnell, executive director of the Maine Association of Christian Schools, which is one of the plaintiffs, said he offered to let the education department examine the test results of Bangor Christian School’s 330 students, as well as students at other member schools, just to demonstrate that the teachers perform well. David Lavway, the administrator of the Bangor school, said that all but 3 of his 36 eighth graders exceed national norms in English and reading, and the other three are right at the average.

Ball’s past strategy has been to demonstrate in court precisely what state certification of teachers says, and does not say, about proficiency in the classroom. During the Michigan trial, the certification issue turned out to be something of an embarrassment for the state. Experts could not agree on which standards teachers should follow, and they were not able to prove a connection between certified teachers and good education. The judge in the case, himself a former school teacher, noted that “the overwhelming evidence shows that teacher certification does not ensure teacher competency and may even inhibit it.”

The Maine Christian schools teach the fundamentals—writing, spelling, math, history, geography, science, the arts, and physical education—and they are willing to obey state safety and health standards. The plaintiffs argue that what puts their schools outside of state jurisdiction is their belief that education is religiously mandated and must be in accord with what the Bible teaches. They believe that such an education cannot be obtained in a school in which tenets of their faith are questioned or contradicted.

Ball prepares his Christian school cases meticulously and unsheathes an array of constitutional weapons in marshaling his courtroom arguments. Other lawyers have not always done that, and that helps account for the tragic incident in Louisville, Nebraska, in which a church was closed and a pastor jailed (see the articles elsewhere in this issue by Rodney Clapp and John Whitehead).

The Maine fundamentalists recognize the legitimate, although limited, interest the state has in ensuring sound education. Herman Frankland, president of the Maine Association of Christian Schools and pastor of the 1,000-member Bangor Baptist Church, which operates one of the schools in question, said his school recently installed a $40,000 sprinkler system to comply with the state code. “But,” he said, “we teach history as ‘his story,’” and he said it is God, not the state, who gives some people the gift of teaching, and that is why his teachers will not be certified by the state.

Personalia

Theologian Carl F. H. Henry will be a full-time visiting professor of Christian studies at Hillsdale College in Michigan for the 1983–84 academic year. Henry will teach an introductory religion course and lead a weekly evening seminar series.

Wendell G. Johnston has been selected as dean of Biola University’s Talbot Theological Seminary. Johnston is currently president of William Tyndale College in a Detroit, Michigan, suburban area.

Dutch priest, theologian, psychologist, and noted author Henri J. M. Nouwen has received an appointment at the Harvard Divinity School as professor of divinity. The appointment, which is on a half-time basis, begins with the 1983–84 school year. Nouwen is best known in this country as a lecturer and author.

A well-known surgeon talks about that miraculous red river within us as an emblem of life.

Throughout history, blood has been a symbol—and, in a real sense, the source—of life. On the following pages, physician Paul Brand continues the contemplation of blood that he began in the last issue of CT and will conclude in the next.

God’s wrath, his eternal recoil against everything unholy, is for the believer turned aside by Christ’s blood. This meaning of blood, one aspect we contemplate at Easter, has no medical counterpart today. But what follows, blood as the source of life, is central to both the Bible and medicine.

Brand’s thoughts were gleaned and expressed on paper by writer Philip Yancey.

Blood spatters the pages of mythology and of history. Drinking it gives strength and new life: to the ghosts of the dead in The Odyssey, to the Roman epileptics who dashed onto the floor of the Colosseum to quaff the blood of dying gladiators, to Kenya’s Masai tribesmen who still celebrate feast days by drinking blood freshly drawn from a cow or goat.

In early history, blood assumed a mysterious, almost sacred, aura in human relations. An oath held more power than a person’s word, but blood made a contract nearly inviolable. The ancients, unashamed to act out the physical literality of their symbols, would sometimes seal blood contracts by cutting themselves and mingling their blood.

We moderns inherit quaint symbolic tokens of the intrinsic mystery of blood: a wedding ring on the “leech finger,” which was believed to contain a vein that led directly to the heart, or perhaps a child’s game of “blood brothers” in which two participants solemnly and unhygienically act out their undying loyalty. We echo misconceptions, too, when we use such terms as “pure blood,” “mixed blood,” “blood relations,” harking back to the days when blood was assumed to be the substance of heredity.

Even after blood has been analyzed in laboratories and demythologized, it still retains some power, if only in the queasy feeling it evokes when we see it shed. There is something horribly unnatural—to some, physically nauseating—about watching the juice of life seep uncontrollably out of a living body. No wonder religions throughout history have exalted blood to sacral status. A ravaging plague, a minor drought, a desire to triumph over enemies, a decoy for the gods’ anger—anything of major import may prompt a bloody sacrifice in a primitive religion.

Although worshipers feel increasingly uncomfortable with the thought, Christianity too is inescapably blood based. Old Testament writers describe blood sacrifices in painstaking detail and their New Testament counterparts layer those symbols with theological meanings. The word “blood” occurs three times as often as the “cross” of Christ, five times as frequently as “death.” And daily, weekly, or at least monthly (depending on denomination), we commemorate Christ’s death with a ceremony based on his blood.

As a surgeon, I come into contact with blood almost daily. I read it as a measure of my patients’ health. I suction it away from critical areas when I’m cutting. I order neatly labeled pints of it from a refrigerator when a patient needs an extra supply. I know well the warm, sticky, slightly acrid substance pumping around inside each of my patients—flecks of it stain every suit and lab coat I own.

But as a Christian, I instinctively wince at the blood symbol that suffuses our religion. We do not grow up in an environment stocked with mystagogic religions and animal sacrifices. As our culture moves further and further away from the culture of Bible times, the blood-linked concepts of expiation, atonement, sacrifice, and propititation lose their meanings; or worse, they repel people from the faith. A challenge arises. Can we discover meanings behind the biblical symbolism of blood that fit more naturally within our culture while preserving the essence of the metaphor?

Because I am a surgeon and not a theologian, I must restrict my discussion to qualities of blood I know something about. In exploring the meaning of blood, I must keep in mind the warm and sticky fluid I wash off my hands each day. Blood was chosen as a symbol because of what it is, and the more we know about literal blood, the better we will grasp the meaning behind it.

To a surgeon, blood is the emblem of life. That is not just a philosophical or historical concept, but a deeply rooted awareness. Blood is life. Loss of blood is loss of life.

When performing surgery, I must continually control bleeding as part of my routine. As I cut, most of the bleeding comes from some of the millions of tiny capillaries, and I leave them alone, knowing they will stop of their own accord. Every minute or two a larger spurt of bright blood tells me that an artery has been cut and I must clamp it or burn it with a cautery. The slow ooze of darker blood shows me a punctured vein and I pay even closer attention because a vein has less muscle in its wall than an artery and cannot close itself off easily. During surgery, I strive to locate each significant vessel before cutting. Then I can clamp it twice and cut between the clamps without the loss of a drop of blood. All this routine proceeds without stress or emotion after years of practice.

A different level of bleeding may occur during surgery that no surgeon ever really gets used to. Sometimes, through an error of judgment or loss of manual dexterity, a really large vessel tears open and the wound gushes with blood. In the critical cases that every surgeon remembers, the blood wells up in a cavity like the abdomen or the chest and totally obscures the rip in the vessel from which it comes. The surgeon shouts for suction and for gauze sponges, and, following Murphy’s Law, this is when the suction nozzle gets blocked or the lights go out. No surgeon ever goes through a whole career without some such incident. If a surgeon panics at such a time, he or she should move into another branch of medicine.

I had a wonderful teacher in England who did his best to prepare our reflexes for just such an emergency. Sir Launcelot Barrington-Ward, surgeon to the royal family, taught me pediatric surgery. As his assistant, I would hear him ask each fresh student, “In case of massive bleeding, what is your most useful instrument?” At first the newcomer would propose exotic surgical tools, to which the old teacher would frown and shake his head. There was only one answer: “Your thumb, sir.” Why? The thumb is readily available—every doctor has one—and it offers a perfect blend of strong pressure and gentle compliancy. Then he would ask, “What is your greatest enemy when there is bleeding?” and we would say: “Time, sir.” He would ask our greatest friend and we would give the same reply.

Sir Launcelot drilled into us the fact that as long as blood is being lost, a surgeon is losing the battle. Life is leaking away as the patient gets weaker and approaches the point of no return. But once I have my thumb on the bleeding point, time is my friend. There is no hurry; I can stop and plan what to do next. The body is busy all the while doing what it can to help. Blood is clotting. I have time to clean up and arrange a transfusion, or to send for a special instrument, or to get an extra assistant, or to enlarge the incision to get a better view of the situation. All this can happen if my thumb is pressing firmly on the area of bleeding. Finally, when all is ready, I slowly remove my thumb, while my other hand and my assistants are poised to take action—and I find that no action is needed. The bleeding has stopped.

At such a moment, in the rush of adrenaline brought on by the emergency, the crisis often brings to me a kind of exaltation of spirit. I know that all my life has prepared me to mobilize reflex, training, and skill to do whatever is necessary to preserve life. I feel at one with all the millions of living cells in that wound fighting for survival. It is an incredible feeling to realize that the common thumb is the only thing keeping my patient alive.

After hundreds of such experiences in the electric atmosphere of the surgical room, every surgeon learns to identify blood with life. The two are inseparable: you lose one, you lose both. Why, then, does the Christian symbol of blood seem to contradict what I learn at such moments?

I must admit at the outset that I find the usual applications given the symbol of blood in Christendom distasteful and sometimes repulsive.

I switch on my radio on a Sunday morning while driving from my hospital in Carville to New Orleans. A heavy-breathing pastor is conducting a Communion service in some church in the bayous. He gives a maudlin, second-by-second commentary on the final agony of Jesus on the cross. With a raspy tone and sing-song inflection he vividly describes the sensation of having a cross strapped to a back bloodied by whips. The congregation murmurs as he evidently holds up a four-inch thorn to illustrate how barbarously the soldiers jammed such a crown onto Jesus’ head. Every mention of the word blood, which his accent stretches into a two-syllable “bluh-hd”—the nailing, the thud of the cross in the ground, the spear in the side—seems to give this preacher a fresh burst of energy.

The theme of death hangs darkly over the entire hour. I drive along in bright sunshine, glancing at the stately egrets, white as clouds, bobbing for food in the canals lining the highway. The preacher asks his parishioners to think of all their recent sins, one by one, and to contemplate the horrible guilt that led to such a bloody death on their behalf.

A ceremony follows, the sacrament itself. Since this is a Protestant church, the congregation remains seated while ushers distribute the elements. I try to imagine the servers, decorous in their three-piece suits, fanning out with military precision, stepping sideways down each row, ending on exactly the right pew, taking care not to clink their wedding rings on the aluminum trays.

The elements themselves hardly resemble the components of a meal: a thimbleful of grape juice and a cube of crustless bread bearing no sign of the fire that made it, or a pale, tasteless wafer embossed with a holy monogram. Everything has changed from the actual event when Jesus gave loose instructions for the sacrament to follow him. The Lord’s Supper has moved from a meal in a home to a ritual in a church, from a simple procedure to an elaborate ceremony, from the concrete to the abstract. And I wonder: Has something else changed along the way, something foundational? Has the entire intent and meaning of the service vanished?

My mind, jarred from the solemn ceremony still continuing on the radio, returns to the literal substance of blood—not the watery purple in the glass but the rich, scarlet soup of proteins and billions of cells. To any medical person, blood signifies life and not death. It feeds every cell in the body, sustaining it with its precious nutrients. When it leaks away, life is endangered; perhaps someone else’s transfused blood can restore life.

Has our modern interpretation of the symbol, as exemplified by the radio preacher’s fixation on death, strayed so far from the original meaning? We must take our decisive clue on meaning not from medicine but from Jesus and the authors of the Bible who introduced those symbols. To them, the trope of shed blood often stood for death (“[Abel’s] blood cries out to me from the ground,” Gen. 4:20). And yet, rooted deeply in every Jewish person’s consciousness was a primordial association of blood with life. God had given it that meaning, as a new era of world history began, in a covenant with Noah. God commanded, “But you must not eat meat that has lifeblood still in it.” Later, in the formal legal code with Moses and the Israelites, God reiterated his command as “a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.” He explained the reason: “For the life of a creature is in the blood …” (Lev. 3:17; 7:26ff.; 17:11, 14; Deut. 12:23ff.).

Jews were not squeamish about blood. Violent death and capital punishment were familiar public spectacles. Israel had no aseptic slaughterhouses for their sheep and goats, and each family member must have seen the bloody deaths of many animals. But, before eating, any good Jewish housewife checked her meat to see that no blood remained. The rule was absolute: do not eat the blood, for it contains life. “Kosher” cuisine developed, with elaborate techniques to assure that no blood contaminated the meat.

So deeply was the prohibition against ingesting blood etched into Jewish consciences that, centuries later, when the apostles distilled which Jewish customs must be honored by the new Gentile Christians, two dicta against drinking blood made the list of only four taboos (Acts 15:29). Jewish Christians were flexible on such long-held practices as circumcision, but they clung to strict prohibitions against ingesting blood, “For the life is in the blood.”

In view of Jewish assumptions about blood, consider the shocking, almost revolting, message Jesus brings to that culture: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6:53–37, NIV).

Blood Cells: Red, White, And Delicate

What the telescope does to nearby galaxies, the microscope does to a drop of blood: it brings us closer to the staggering reality. A speck of blood the size of the dot over this letter “i” contains five million red cells, 300,000 platelets, and 7,000 white cells. The fluid is actually a population, a teeming ocean of living matter.

Red cells, the most visible and numerous, strictly speaking are not cells at all, since they have no nuclei. They had nuclei at one time, in their early days in the marshy nursery of bone marrow, but the loss of a nucleus frees red cells to use less oxygen for themselves and therefore carry more for other cells. In early stages they also had a pale color and amorphous shape. As a rite of passage, into the bloodstream, red cells take on a clay color and conform to a standard, machine-stamped shape. If laid side by side, red cells in a single person would carpet an area of 3,500 square yards.

For every 700 red cells, one larger, more elegant white cell appears. Transparent, bristling with chemical defenses and Houdini-like ability to slip between other cells, the white cells act as the body’s militia. Flattened on a microscope slide, a white cell resembles a fried egg speckled with pepper, each black dot representing a deadly chemical arsenal. As they circulate in the body, they assume rough spherical shapes, like detached eyeballs floating through the blood vessels. Their relative scarcity reveals an important principle of the body’s health: nourishment, not combat, is the chief method of defense.

A third type of blood cell, the platelet, adds an aesthetic touch to blood with its delicate flower-like shape, but its function remained hidden until recently. Now scientists recognize that platelets, which live only two to four days, play a crucial role in the complex and vital process of clotting; they serve as mobile first-aid boxes. This amazing liquid that flows in pipes detects leaks and, with no outside interference, repairs them and tidies up the debris. When a blood vessel is cut, the fluid that sustains life itself leaks away. Tiny platelets begin to melt, like snowflakes, spinning out a gossamer web of fibrinogen. Red blood cells begin to collect in this web, like autos crashing into each other when the road is blocked. Soon the tenuous wall of red cells thickens enough to stanch the flow of blood. The body cannily gauges when a clot is large enough to block the loss of blood without dangerously impeding the flow within the vessel itself.

Red cells are merely swept along with the currents, their bi-concave shapes making no allowance for locomotion. The body provides the energy for their travels by employing the heart, an organ so remarkable it deserves a book exclusively devoted to it. I would like to see a government design specification sheet for the heart:

Bids Accepted For:

• Fluid pump with 75-year life expectancy (2,500,000 cycles).

• No maintenance or lubrication required.

• Output: must vary between .025 horsepower at rest and short burst of 1 horsepower determined by such factors as stress and exercise.

• Weight: not to exceed 300 grams (10.5 oz.).

• Capacity: 2,000 gallons per day.

• Valves: to operate 4,000–5,000 times per hour.

A call for gross immorality by Jesus would hardly shake his followers more severely. His words, coming at the peak of his popularity just after feeding the five thousand, signal a drastic turning point in his public acceptance. The Jews become so confused and outraged that a crowd of thousands, who had pursued him around a lake in order to forcibly crown him king, silently melts away. Many of his closest disciples desert him; his own brothers judge him insane; plots to kill him suddenly spring up. Jesus has simply gone too far.

Whereas the modern church errs by missing the true import of the blood symbol—the custom now seems sterile and archaic—at least those first hearers catch the dramatic sweep of what Jesus does. He takes the word blood and siphons from the image thousands of years’ deep-felt Jewish associations. No Jew ingests blood—only savages and primitives do that. Blood is always poured out before God as an offering, for life belongs to him.

Against that background, Jesus says, “Drink my blood.” Is it any wonder the Jews are shocked and his disciples slink away? A question looms. Knowing—as he must have known—the offense his words would cause, why did Jesus say them? Why not draw a parallel with Jewish sacrifice that would have been understandable to everybody? If he had said, “Eat my flesh and pour out my blood,” or “Eat my flesh and sprinkle my blood,” his hearers would have grasped Jesus’ intent of sacrifice. That appropriate symbol would have offended no one. But Jesus said, “Drink it.”

Jesus spoke on that day not to offend, but to introduce a radical transformation in the symbol. God had said to Noah, if you drink the blood of a lamb, the life of the lamb enters you—don’t do it. Jesus says, in effect, if you drink my blood, my life will enter you—do it! The Communion service pulls together both his sacrificial death aspect and his resurrected life. I believe Jesus intended our ceremony today to include remembrance of past death and also realization of present life.

The tension between death and life builds to a climax in the event of the Last Supper, surely the most poignant and intimate glimpse of Jesus in all the Gospels. In setting the scene, the gospel writers carefully weave together parallels, freighted with symbolism, between Jesus’ last days and the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. The Last Supper occurs in the midst of one of three major Jewish feasts, the Passover. Jesus enters the city on a donkey, cheered by a throng of admirers, on the very day when passover lambs are being selected by Jewish families. Blood is everywhere, slapped on the doorposts of Jewish homes in an unintended cross shape to commemorate the fateful night in Egypt.

Shut away from the cacophony of festival Jesus and his disciples partake of a meal replete with imagery that Christians still imitate. John recalls the emotional tone of that meeting: “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love” (John 13:1, NIV). Something is brewing on planet Earth this night; Judas’s abrupt departure confirms it. All the disciples can sense the magnitude of that last meal.

At that scene, Jesus speaks the words that have been repeated so many millions of times: “This is my blood of the [new] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). A death would occur the next day, the death of the Son of God. Thousands of Passover lambs would be slaughtered in accordance with the old covenant; this one death would singularly introduce the new covenant.

Yet even in the next sentence, Jesus hints that his death, unlike others, would prove temporary: “I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.” In John’s fuller account, Jesus clearly predicts his resurrection, citing the analogy of childbirth as an illustration of the way in which their grief will turn to joy.

Death and life come together in that meal. But in one respect this new sacrament differs from all Old Testament ceremonies that prefigured it. Here too, as in John 6, Jesus commands his disciples to drink the wine, standing for his blood. The offering is not poured out, rather taken in, ingested. He repeats those shocking words, “Drink from it, all of you.”

That same evening Jesus uses another metaphor that may shed light on the meaning behind shared blood. “I am the vine; you are the branches,” he declares. “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5—note parallel wording to John 6:56). Surrounded by the vineyard-covered hillsides of Jerusalem, the disciples could more easily comprehend this metaphor. A grape branch disconnected from the nutrients of the vine is withered, dry, and dead, useless for anything except kindling. Only when connected to the vine can it grow, prosper, and bear fruit. The metaphor is precise: wine was called the blood of grapes (Gen. 49:11; Deut. 32:14).

Even in the doom-shrouded atmosphere of that last night, at the meal from which Eucharist derives, the image of life springs up. The disciples drink the wine, symbolic of his blood, which can vitalize them as the sap does the grape. Spiritual life is not something ethereal, outside us, that we must work hard to obtain. It is in us, pervading us, as blood is in every living thing.

If I read these accounts correctly, they correspond exactly to my medical experience with blood. We come to the table to partake of his life. “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him”—at last those words make sense. Christ came not just to give us an example of living but to give us the life itself.

The earliest Christians seemed to get the message: their Eucharist feasts invariably celebrated the risen Christ, memorializing not so much the Last Supper as the Easter meal when Jesus shared fish and broke bread with the disciples. Works of art lining the 100 miles of dank corridors in the Roman catacombs vividly illustrate that point. Among 20,000 frescoes amateurishly painted on those stone walls, not a single death theme or cross appears. Whenever the Eucharist is portrayed, fish, a symbol of life, is always present on the table.

Theologian Oscar Cullmann, in Early Christian Worship (Westminster, 1978), presents a fresh interpretation of a miracle that has often puzzled Bible scholars. John alone records Jesus’ first miracle, at a wedding banquet in Cana, when he turned water into wine. The miracle itself is straightforward; what is puzzling is John’s pattern in every other instance to link Jesus’ miracles, called “signs,” with some symbolic spiritual teaching (such as joining the feeding of the five thousand with the passages on the Bread of Life). The wedding miracle alone offers no such apparent symbolism.

Cullmann offers the view, supported by some church fathers, that this miracle too has symbolic teaching. Relying on key phrases such as “My time has not yet come” (John 2:4), he concludes that the Cana story points to the death of Christ. As the bread in chapter 6 connects to the bread of the Last Supper, the wine here may point to the wine of the Last Supper.

John clearly mentions one element of symbolism: the water Jesus transformed was the kind “used by the Jews for ceremonial washing.” If Cullmann is correct, the miracle signifies the passing of the old covenant based on purification rites to the new covenant of Christ’s shared blood, abundantly available to all.

I will leave to Bible scholars the judgment on Cullmann’s interpretation. If true, the setting could hardly be more appropriate to introduce this great symbol: a wedding feast, filled with joyous music, the laughter of guests, the clink of glasses and pottery; the sounds of excitement as two families permanently join. Sharing the wine that stands for Christ’s blood fits in much better with that tone than with the mawkish sounds I heard from my radio in Louisiana. Eucharist is, if you will, a toast, to the Life that conquered even death and that is now offered freely to each of us.

Paul Brand is head of rehabilitation at the U.S. Public Health Service leprosy hospital in Carville, Louisiana. Chicagoan Philip Yancey is a free-lance writer and the editorial director of Campus Life magzine. Their article, seccond of three parts, is adapted from In His Image, a work in progress, to be published this fall by Zondervan. The two also coauthored Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (Zondervan, 1980).

“Sez who?” and “So’s your old man!” It would be difficult for children to argue without these classic rejoinders.

No one wants to lose an argument and few are satisfied with a tie. It is like kissing your sister (with apologies to Roberta, who never liked to kiss me either). We seek to settle our disputes with a final decision, a consummate verdict, an ambiguous judgment—in our favor. We want a final court of appeals where the last word is heard and we can reply to the “sez who?” with “___ says, that’s who,” and the debate is over.

For all men, the supreme Authority is God himself. If “God says,” further debate is as foolish as it is futile. Job learned the hard way that debating with God is more difficult than stopping tanks with stones or Muhammad Ali with Don Knotts. Your old man might be able to beat my old man and your big brother might be able to whip my cousin, but your whole family does not have a prayer against God. One word from the Almighty is enough to slay the combined forces of hell.

For the church, the issue of authority comes down to “sez who?” The battle of the Reformation turned on this question. Luther said popes and councils can err and there is only one normative source for “God says”: the Bible. Rome countered with agreement at one point, that indeed the Bible is “God says,” but added that “God also says” in the decisions of the church.

The battle of the Bible is a two-front war. The western front fights the battle of where the “God says” is found. Is it in the Bible? In the church? In the theological opinions of scholars? In the cataclysmic events of world revolution? All is not quiet on the western front as these issues continue with fierce debate in our own day.

If the western front were conquered and every skirmish squelched, and if all men agreed without reservation that the Bible is the written Word of God, the sole inerrant authority for the church, the war would still not be over. There would yet remain the raging conflict on the eastern front. There the fight is not over where the Word of God may be found, but over what the Word of God says.

As soon as we hear that God says, we ask, “What did he say and what did he mean by what he said?” If God speaks, he must use words to do so. Words express thoughts, commands, descriptions, and the like. The problem is that words and sentences (like all matters of speech) must be interpreted if they are to be understood. It is far more than a matter of translation, for while translation gets at what God says, we are still left with the question of what God means. Without translation the meaning remains hidden, but even with accurate translation we are not guaranteed accurate understanding of the translation.

For example, if all Bible translators agree that the Greek of Mark 14:22 should be translated, “This is my body,” we still face the question of what Jesus meant by those words—a question that divides large segements of Christendom. The conflict over the Lord’s Supper hangs on the question of interpreting the Bible.

The role of the church in interpreting the Bible was crucial to the Protestant Reformation. Rome affirmed an infallible Bible with the church playing the role of the infallible interpreter of the infallible Bible. Luther affirmed the infallibility of the Bible but denied the infallibility of the church. This position is reflected widely in other Protestant creeds and confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though Roman Catholics and Protestants disagreed on this matter, both sides faced a common dilemma. Even if the church were infallible, the infallible interpretation rendered by it would still have to be interpreted and understood by individuals who remain fallible. Rome claims two infallible guides while Protestants have but one. Neither side, however, has found a way to render the individual recipients of the Word of God infallible. The scheme looks like this:

Roman Catholic—Infallible Bible

Infallible Interpreter (Church)

Fallible individual recipient

Protestant—Infallible Bible

Fallible Interpreter (Church)

Fallible individual interpreter

In terms of infallibility, Protestantism has eliminated the middle level of infallibility, the church. (And don’t forget the western front where many scholars, Protestant and Catholic alike, have questioned the Bible itself, dispensing with infallibility altogether.)

The reformation spawned a cardinal principle among Protestants, a principle that is as precious as it is dangerous—the right of private interpretation of Scripture. This principle was never intended, however, to mean that the individual shall interpret the Bible in isolation from the wisdom of the church. Privacy is one thing, and isolation is another. This principle of private interpretation declares the right of every Christian to interpret the Bible for himself. The individual conscience of the believer is not bound by the interpretations of the church. Since Luther expounded this principle it has been subjected to dreadful abuse. The Reformers were careful to point out that the right of private interpretation carries with it the responsibility of correct interpretation. No man or church ever has the “right” to distort the meaning of Scripture.

Since the Bible has been freed from monolithic ecclesiastical control, virtually all the floodgates of iniquity that Rome feared would be opened have been opened, and the Christian world has been inundated by heterodox and bizarre distortions of the Bible. For some, the Bible has become a nose of wax, easily twisted, formed, and reshaped to fit the bias of the interpreter. Private interpretation of the individual subject has become a license for subjectivism that destroys any possibility of an authoritative word from God.

With private interpretation we must have a sound hermeneutic to fix the nose upon the face to prevent arbitrary men from transforming the Mona Lisa into Pinocchio. We need rules to follow in interpretation—objective rules that will act as restraints on our tendency to distort the Scripture according to our own bias. The establishing of objective rules of interpretation is what the science of hermeneutics is all about. The word “hermeneutics” comes from the same Greek word by which the god Hermes was named. Hermes was the Greek counterpart to the Roman Mercury of winged-feet fame, whose speed of motion makes him a fitting logo for your local FTD florist. Hermes, like Mercury, was the messenger of the gods. Hermeneutics is the science of “getting the message” accurately.

Certain principal rules were adopted by early Reformers, and these formed the axioms of classical Protestant hermeneutics. These axioms include the following:

1. Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter. This axiom maintains that the Bible is its own best and normative interpreter, ruling out the propriety of setting one part of Scripture against another. This rule is established on the foundation of the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture, which imply a total inner consistency in the Word of God.

2. Grammatical-historical exegesis is necessary. This axiom requires that the Bible be understood according to the original meaning of the texts, discovered by historical, linguistic, and lexicographical research. It prohibits the interpreter from changing the original message to accommodate present attitudes, viewpoints, or philosophies. It prevents the original message from being distorted by modern revisionism.

3. The Bible is to be interpreted by its literal sense. This axiom declares simply that the Bible should be interpreted according to the literary sense in which it was written. Nouns are to be treated as nouns, verbs as verbs, parables as parables, historical narrative as historical narrative, and so on. This axiom precludes any legitimacy of “reinterpreting” history as parable by doing violence to the literary structure of the text, a favorite pastime of nineteenth-century liberal scholarship. For example, if a modern scholar does not believe miracles are possible or happened, he cannot legitimately change a writer’s claim that they happened into a parable with a moral lesson. The rule seeks to preserve the intention of the author by interpreting his message according to the form in which he wrote it.

Since the classical view of the Bible’s inspiration has come under attack, modern scholars have sought to reinterpret the Bible to “save” it from utter irrelevance. Just as prior paradigms of science with their working axioms have been displaced by newer ones, in the same way many have sought to rid the church of classical models and axioms of hermeneutics. The modern seminary student is bombarded to the point of confusion by the multitude of novel and conflicting views of hermeneutics competing for acceptance. The loss of unity on the basic axioms of biblical interpretation has left the laity bewildered as they listen to conflicting interpretations of what God says. It’s like watching a tennis game with no net or boundary lines.

The chaos of hermeneutics is what prompted the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) to sponsor a major summit meeting on hermeneutics, held in Chicago in November 1982. The summit gathered 80 evangelical scholars and leaders to meet and together hammer out the major points of unity on the rules for interpreting the Bible. Surprisingly, the group was able to agree on 25 key points of affirmation and denial of principles of interpretation, a level of agreement that is extraordinary in these days of chaos (CT, Dec. 1982, pp. 47–48). It was apparent at the summit that the cardinal axioms of classical Protestant hermeneutics are nonnegotiables among leading evangelicals. Though sophisticated usage of contemporary tools of biblical scholarship were adopted and recommended at the summit, they were done within the bounds of an objective base of axioms that recognizes the full infallibility and inerrancy of God’s written Word. The church still has a “God says” that can be heard, understood, and obeyed.

Constitutional lawyer John Whitehead talks about legal strategy and civil disobedience. Which really put the padlock on the church

Pastor everett sileven has served two jail sentences and has had his church in Louisville, Nebraska, padlocked (and his church school closed down) because he refused to follow the law of his state. Nebraska law requires that all schools, including church schools, be licensed by the state and retain teachers certified by the state. Such schools must also teach a state-approved curriculum.

Sileven has said that he refused to follow any of these requirements because of religious beliefs he claims are rooted in the Bible and protected by the United States Constitution. Thus, two basic issues are raised by the Sileven situation: theological and constitutional.

Intimately related to Sileven’s defiance is the question of the state’s authority over what Sileven refers to as the “educational ministry” of Faith Baptist Church. Most Americans do not have problems with the church itself being free from government control. The questions and the legal issues arise when churches operate schools, claiming they are ministries of the church on the same level as other ministries (such as Sunday schools).

Biblically, can a church make the claim that its church school, which teaches such subjects as science and math, is a legitimate ministry and function of the local church? The fundamentalists answer in the affirmative, based on verses like 1 Timothy 3:15, which states that the church is “the pillar and ground of the truth.”

The fundamentalists take this to mean that the church can operate a school as one of its functions. But it is not as simple as that. Although the Old Testament Levites operated educational institutions, and some historical references record the operation of schools by the early church, both history and the New Testament do not clearly answer the church-school question.

Be that as it may, one cannot sidestep the issue of lordship upon which the Nebraska church has so staunchly resisted licensing by the state. Sileven’s religious beliefs concerning the school as a ministry of the church and against licensure of the school, as his jail terms evidence, are obviously sincere. Sincere religious beliefs are protected by the Constitution unless the state can show an interest of sufficient magnitude to override the religious beliefs.

The issue of licensure of church schools evokes varying responses among Christians. Some say the New Testament does not prohibit any licensing of churches or church schools. On the other hand, some argue that mere acceptance of a license for anything whatsoever is prohibited. Still others think that licensing should be accepted only in certain instances.

There is often inconsistency in practice on the licensure issue. Some pastors take a strong stand against licensure of the church and church schools, but accept a state license to perform marriages. Many churches that have taken similar stands have fire and health permits, employee identification numbers, and bus license tags, all of which are state licenses. Many Christian colleges that espouse an antilicensure position possess state charters (again, a form of licensure). Also, those Christian attorneys who proclaim (rightly so) that their profession is a ministry of God are licensed by the state to practice law. No matter what one’s view is on this subject, content control and the inherent right of the church to exist are the key issues that Christians must examine in licensure situations.

Content control by the state, in the form of approving or disapproving the content of the teaching of God’s truth, is prohibited by the Bible. The apostles were forbidden by the authorities to “teach in this [Christ’s] name.” Peter replied to the Sanhedrin: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:28–29).

State control that threatens the inherent right of the church to exist is also objectionable. This would include such things as government attempts to define what is a true church. If the state proclaims by way of government definition that a church cannot or should not legally exist, then such government actions should be resisted.

In one sense, the right to exist is also a form of content control in that it is an attempt by the state to control how the church functions in proclaiming the truth. It is this type of control that churches should resist and not, as we will discuss later, such things as reasonable health and safety laws.

Although the state historically has viewed Christian resistance to state mandates or controls as political and legal concerns, it is essentially a theological matter. The issue eventually leads to the question of lordship: Who is lord over certain areas of life? Is it Christ or the state?

Lord means sovereign, God, absolute owner. For the true Christian, “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:11). This was the original confession of faith and the baptismal commitment of those who entered the Christian church.

Assuming that an educational institution is a legitimate ministry of the church, what is the state’s authority or jurisdiction with regard to the church and its ministries? Is the state lord?

Jurisdiction comes from two Latin words, jus, law, and dico, say. The one who has jurisdiction is the one who declares the law, whose word is the binding, authoritative word for that sphere of life and thought. The church is not within the state’s jurisdiction or area of control. It belongs to God. Christ is the head of the church and it submits to him (Eph. 5:23–24). This is essentially the biblical teaching on the separation of church and state.

It should be noted that the three terms—license, accreditation, and certification—most commonly associated with state regulation of church schools are jurisdictional terms: they raise the question of who submits to whom. The word accreditation comes from the Latin word credo, which means “I believe.” Certification derives from a Latin word meaning “certain.” And license is from the Latin word licere, which means “to be permitted.” All three terms also have religious overtones. They imply a verification, a declaration, that a certain thing is true. Further, they imply the permission to exist, issued by a lord or ruler to those who seek approval.

For the church to seek such approval from the state would seem to imply that the state, not Christ, is lord over the church, or that there is at least some type of shared lordship over the church. The Bible, however, teaches that there is no such thing as shared lordship. God’s jurisdiction is total (see Deut. 10:14; Ps. 24:1; Isa. 42:8; Matt. 28:18; and 1 Cor. 10:26).

There is, of course, still a place for the state. Although God possesses total jurisdiction, it must not be forgotten that God has instituted the state for the two-fold function of protecting the good of society and promoting justice (Rom. 13:4). Thus, the state is a legitimate authority, but not everything it does is necessarily legitimate. Here the statement of Peter quoted earlier is again applicable. When there is a conflict between God’s directives and those of men, we ought to obey God.

There is no example in the New Testament of Christians submitting to licensure of the church or any ministry of the church. Instead, we see Christians standing—as Peter did before the Sanhedrin—and proclaiming Christ’s lordship. Licensure also did not stifle the postapostolic church.

According to church historian R. J. Rushdoony, the early church came into immediate conflict with Rome because it engaged in several unlicensed activities. It held worship meetings without permits, and it collected abandoned babies (as part of its opposition to infanticide) and reared them. Such activities eventually resulted in the persecution of Christians.

A consideration of licensure leads soon enough into the difficult thicket of church-and-state separation. Since the great majority of the private Christian schools are intimately connected with churches, the separation of church and state is brought to the forefront. Consequently, the First Amendment of the Constitution comes into play.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized in several key decisions that schools can legitimately be a function of the church. Of course, the question concerns whether or not the state can constitutionally treat the school ministry of the church differently than it does other ministries.

Some Christians argue that no differentiation should be made between a day school and other ministries of the church. They assert that this would be an admission that the day school is not a ministry on an equal basis with the other ministries of the church. Obviously, however, there is a logistical difference between a Sunday school, which meets once a week for a few hours, and a day school, which meets five days a week for eight hours a day. The fact that day school students are in the building many more hours during the week increases proportionately any health and safety risks.

This type of issue, however, has nothing to do with the key issue, content control, which was at the heart of the Nebraska case. The state of Nebraska argued successfully through the courts that it has a responsibility to see that its citizens are properly educated to function in society. To that end, the state sought to approve the curriculum of church schools, arguing that curriculum approval, licensing, and teacher certification are only “minimal intrusions” upon the religious practice of church schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that even minimal intrusions on religious practice must be justified by a compelling state interest. In other words, the state must show an interest of such a magnitude that it justifies not allowing an exemption for those whose religion the state regulation affects. The state must also demonstrate that no less-restrictive alternatives are available to achieve any compelling state interest it may have. Only then, it has been held, will the state regulation in question stand within constitutional parameters. In the past, this heavy burden on the state has worked to protect religious freedom.

In the case of a church school, the state’s compelling interest, if any, is whether or not the children are receiving a quality education, or at least an education that is comparable to that received by children who attend the public schools. It is the end result of education with which the state may be concerned, not curriculum details that it might regulate. As one Nebraska pastor correctly puts it, “The state says the proof is in the recipe. We say it is in the pudding.”

In the majority of cases that have gone to trial over church schools, the quality of education has never really been in doubt. In fact, in most instances, children attending Christian schools score higher on the standard tests than do students who attend public schools.

The strength of the compelling state interest test was, indeed, shaken by State of Nebraska v. Faith Baptist Church, the case involving Pastor Sileven. There was no evidence presented at the trial that the school was failing to provide a quality education. Essentially, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld closing of the church simply because the school had failed to comply with the state’s regulatory scheme.

A perceptive article by Timothy Binder in the Nebraska Law Review (Vol. 61, 1981) noted that the Nebraska Supreme Court failed to apply the constitutionally mandated “compelling state interest” test. Moreover, the Nebraska court did not review arguments for a less restrictive method of regulation. In effect, Binder wrote, the state’s will to regulate education overrode the parents’ fundamental rights in directing the education of their children. The court’s decision, Binder said, “constitutes a severe blow to religious freedom in Nebraska and is contrary to the free exercise test which has evolved through United States Supreme Court decisions.”

However wrong the Nebraska decision was in its result, the Nebraska court never had the benefit of hearing a key constitutional argument since Sileven’s attorneys did not press the First Amendment’s “establishment of religion” clause (see CT, April 10, 1981, p. 48). Under the establishment clause, the Supreme Court has held that the state cannot “excessively entangle” itself with religion.

Entanglement is an important weapon in cases where, as in Nebraska, the state seeks to entwine itself with religious institutions. For example, Nebraska state education regulations not only require church schools to seek approval through licensing and certification as well as approve the school’s educational programs, but they also require that the church schools furnish names and addresses of all students enrolled in the school. A key to proving unconstitutional entanglement is the fact that the state would keep a continuing surveillance over the church school. All the trappings of excessive entanglement were present in Sileven’s case, but not presented by his attorneys.

Sileven and his attorneys were against using the “excessive entanglement” defense because they believe it concedes that some entanglement between church and state is constitutional, as long as it is not judged excessive. However, an attack on excessive entanglement is a legal argument that technically does not concede the constitutionality of lesser entanglement.

Moreover, some “entanglement” (in the layman’s sense of the word) or involvement between the state and the church is an unavoidable fact of life. For example, churches need and use police and fire protection provided by the state. Sileven’s attorneys waived an important defense in not presenting this First Amendment issue to the Nebraska courts. It is simply indefensible not to raise every available legal argument supporting the position of the church or a church school.

The nebraska situation may merely be the tip of the iceberg. There are many pastors throughout this country who will resist the state with the same fervency that Sileven demonstrated.

A note of caution, however, must be sounded. Confrontation is not always the answer to unbiblical acts by the state. When confronted with unbiblical regulations, the first step should always be negotiation with state officials to alleviate, if possible, any problems. Second, before going to court or perpetrating civil disobedience, those involved should seek political change. Reasonable legislation can often head off church-state confrontation. Finally, litigation or civil disobedience should come into play only as a last resort (and after careful consideration and good legal advice).

The church must be wise in what it fights. Drawing the line on content control and the inherent right to exist is biblical. Some, however, have not been so wise as to fight the content control issues. They have objected to and contested in court the state’s authority to require safety and health in their churches and Christian schools, requirements that arguably fall under the state’s authority. As a matter of tactics, it is wise for churches and Christian schools not to struggle against reasonable state health and safety regulations.

Finally, the church must not forget that it is to be a witness of Christ to the community at large. Christians must reflect God in their actions. As Francis Schaeffer writes, the “final apologetic … is what the world sees” in the church.

Does it glorify God, we should ask, for a Christian school to resist laws that exist to ensure safe conditions in its buildings? Should not Christians go the extra mile and be an example of what it means to operate healthy and safe institutions? No matter what constitutional precedent may be set, if a church or Christian school exhibits a bad witness in the process, we all lose.

John W. Whitehead, author of Schools on Fire (Tyndale, 1980) and an expert in church-and-state legal issues, is a practicing attorney in Manassas, Virginia.

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor gives his “on-the-scene” impression.

Leading the parade was a man without any legs. He was fully uniformed, in the blue suit and white cap of the United States Marine Corps. He proceeded in a wheelchair, and it was plain that in Vietnam he had lost his limbs but not his patriotism. He held an American flag proudly aloft.

Behind the Marine marched unlikely and motley troops. They were not uniformed, and their parade was straggly—two men wide here, four or five wide there. These men were carrying signs, picketing. And they sang. But not soldier songs, not protest songs. Their song was “Victory in Jesus,” chorused hesitantly and a little timidly. Clearly, the marchers had sung the old hymn many times before—but not on the street, not protesting in their beloved America. These marchers, these protestors, were fundamentalist pastors. At the end of their line came a man pulling a cross equipped with a wheel at its foot.

The pastors, coming from more than 30 states, marched in the county seat of Cass County, Nebraska. They were protesting the jailing of Everett Sileven (Sil-e-ven), pastor of Faith Baptist Church, 15 miles away in Louisville. Sileven was in jail because his church continued to operate a private school for 29 children, though it lacked a state license and certified teachers.

Protesting is new for twentieth-century fundamentalists. Blacks, feminists, and antiwar demonstrators all learned two decades ago the skills of protest—marches, sit-ins, boycotts. But most fundamentalists rallied for law and order when blacks took to the streets; they are still opposed to feminism; and they believe the Vietnam War was a mistake only in that it was not fought intensely enough to be won. These conservative Christians are learning about protest quickly, however.

They know the biggest club they can wield against the state of Nebraska is public opinion. And they know that public opinion is reached and finally swayed through the conduit of mass media. Marches drew those media and made “good” television. A parade led by a wheelchair-bound, flag-bearing Marine made even better television. The garnish of a man dragging a cross on a training wheel made some of the journalists think they had been transplanted into a Flannery O’Connor story.

But the fundamentalists, intuitively and consciously, knew the power of the symbolic. The Louisville church had been padlocked to stop classes inside. Soon after police removed lock and chain to open the church for Wednesday evening worship, the fundamentalists put their own lock back on. The Marine, yet in uniform, posed with chain cutters at the door. Shutters clicked, videotapes whirled, and the message went out in the form of an evocative image: a man who had fought for freedom—who had given up his legs for freedom—and who had come back home to find a Baptist church chained shut.

It attracts attention. It moves hearts. It applies torque to that amorphous, all-important American force, public opinion. “It’s all a poker game,” a series of orchestrated bluffs, admitted Greg Dixon, one of the leaders at Louisville. Dixon, an Indianapolis pastor and national secretary for the Moral Majority, at one point thanked a New York Times reporter and praised the news media in general. “We wouldn’t be anywhere without them.”

Louisville was not the first place fundamentalists understood the power of the press. The Separation of Church and Freedom, subtitled “A War Manual for Christian Soldiers,” was published in 1980. It includes an entire chapter on press relations. “Our freedom will live or die, not in the U.S. Supreme Court, but in the court of public opinion,” wrote Pastor Kent Kelly, who fought the church education battle in his state of North Carolina. “Get on your knees. Get out the Bible. Meet the attorneys. Meet the issues. But don’t forget to meet the press!”

The television lights jostled high in the crowded sanctuary, giant insect eyes burning white hot on aluminum legs. Around them, in a room meant for 150, surged 300 people. They stood in the aisles and clustered like barnacles on the floor around the pulpit. Many still had on their winter jackets since doffing them would have meant risking their loss or having them trampled. The crowd parted, somehow squeezing open the aisle, and the Marine was pushed to the front.

He was evangelist Tim Lee, and he had come from Oklahoma City to do something he does very well: preach. After some hymns he removed his cap and produced a handkerchief. Already perspiration beaded his square face. It was hot, and about to get hotter.

Lee deftly wheeled from one side of the platform to the other, sometimes jerking his lapel microphone from its cord. But no matter, he did not preach meekly—in either volume or content.

Lee was incredulous: “I lost my legs in Vietnam for a cause not as important as this.” A Baptist pastor, minister of the gospel in the United States, was in jail. “I don’t see how folks can sleep good when a Baptist preacher’s in jail,” he shouted. America had other problems, mostly due to “that liberal crowd,” which does not appreciate the God-blessed history of America. Columbus, after all, “sailed by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” The nation was built “upon men with a Bible in one hand and a weapon in the other.”

Lee shot down gun control, and some wild “Amens” ricocheted around the room. He chastised the “queers” (“Don’t you blame God for your sins”) and certain well-known members of “that liberal crowd” (Jane Fonda, Angela Davis, and “I’d-rather-be-dead-than-have-Ted” Kennedy). Evangelist Lee’s audience was enthusiastic, and waves of “Amen” and “Preach it, Brother” swelled oceanically.

American fundamentalists are not a uniform group. They value their independence, even from one another. Generally, however, the fundamentalists find themselves allied with the political Right. The surge of conservatism has awakened them to preserve the moral character of the country: it has alerted them to their considerable numbers and influence. Like the political Right, they speak of a return to the America of old.

Fundamentalists, and other evangelicals like Francis Schaeffer, have proposed various strategies of restoration. The September 21, 1981, issue of Moral Majority Report suggested it might be appropriate to withhold taxes if Congress “does not have the backbone to pass a Human Life Amendment.” Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto (Crossway, 1981) has, in fact, been endorsed by organizations favoring the abolition of income taxes, although Schaeffer does not advocate that in the book. The New York Patriots Society said Manifesto is “going to shake up today’s church” and advised, “Buy it for your friends who hide behind Romans 13.” The religious/political Right’s co-opting of Schaeffer is evidenced in the purchase by Jerry Falwell’s “Old Time Gospel Hour” of 62,000 copies of Manifesto for distribution. Ken Campbell (sometimes called the Canadian Falwell) bought 8,000.

Pastor Kent Kelly, in his book The Separation of Church and Freedom, believes the nation now has a humanist government but “Christians were here first.” He continued, “If the humanists want a nation based on their religion, which is where we stand today through their efforts, they need to go somewhere else and start one.…” In this view, Christians once controlled America, and can do it again.

A low-profile proposal by an influential evangelical predicted Christians will excel in law, politics, and the media, “and will take over more and more of the centers of power in these areas. This is so because we know how to run the world better than those who have wrong views of basic reality.…”

What is the unbiased Christian to make of all this ferment? In Nebraska, there are mild demonstrations and a pastor is jailed. Thinkers as influential as Francis Schaeffer call for activism, even civil disobedience. The thoughtful Christian is increasingly pressured to take a stand. But where, and how, should she or he stand?

In making up our minds, we might consider Tolstoy’s statement: “In truth, the words ‘a Christian State’ resemble the words ‘hot ice’.” One hundred fifty years ago slave trade was flourishing; some would question whether America was more truly Christian then than now. Or was it more Christian at the turn of the century, when social Darwinism and industrialization had spawned child labor? Historians debate how “Christian” America’s history is. Yet, no matter how deeply Christian America may once have been, there was never a golden age, just as there has never been “hot ice.”

One is given further pause when he considers that America’s present-day pluralism must affect any approach treating the nation as a country ruled directly by God in much the same way as Judah in the seventh century B.C. Talk of a quasi-theocracy (whatever it might be called) ought to be offset by a sober consideration of America’s pluralism. Our nation was once a great melting pot, but is now split linguistically, culturally, and religiously. This may make it difficult or impossible to reestablish the degree of Christian influence America knew a century ago, especially when Christians (as illustrated by Lee’s sermon) can register only rage at the diverse groups currently well established in our culture. Surely a degree of tolerance is a component of the compassion Christ calls us to embrace. The conservative Christian activist commendably wants to influence society for Christ, but the process must always be exactly that: one of influence, not compulsion.

“Mob rule has triumphed Louisville.” So began the lead editorial of the Omaha World-Herald the day Everett Sileven was set free. After a week of rallies, pickets, all-night vigils, and perpetual phone calls to law keepers and legislators, Faith Baptist pastor Sileven was released from jail. It was a time to celebrate. In Louisville, cars were parked a half-mile in all directions from the church. The television lights were back on, and 300 people were back in the 150-person sanctuary. This time no one was noticing the heat.

“Victory in Jesus” was being sung again, confidently, in an accustomed setting, and resonating cobwebs out of corners. Tears streamed, and handkerchiefs waved: white flags surrendering to joy. Sileven, trailed by his tall and stately wife, bumped, and was pulled, from one hug and slap on the back to the next. They celebrated, even as the ink dried on the final morning edition of that day’s World-Herald.

The World-Herald was not celebrating. “Hundreds of Moral Majority members and other fundamentalist Christians” had gathered in support of Faith Baptist. “By sheer numbers and the implicit threat of violence, supporters of the school … have intimidated authorities and persuaded a judge to suspend a properly imposed court order.” That, in the judgment of the newspaper, was “chilling.”

“Particularly ironic is the prominence of the American flag in demonstrations contradicting what the flag stands for: a nation ruled by law,” the editorial continued. “When intimidation and the possibility of violence become political weapons, there is no safety for anyone under any law.”

Yet civil disobedience, however mild it may have been at Louisville, was no easy thing for the fundamentalists there. Few Americans remain as genuinely and unabashedly patriotic as fundamentalists. They love their country’s heritage, including its legal foundations. But fundamentalists are also committed people. In Nebraska, they were torn between two commitments: their government, and Jesus Christ.

All Christians at least potentially face the dilemma of the Louisville fundamentalists. What conservative Christians considered unthinkable 20 years ago has now come to pass: they find themselves at odds with the United States government. The question of whether or not to be civilly disobedient may confront more and more Christians in coming years. Once again, then, we must ask: Where should we stand?

Civil disobedience is not new in Christianity. Ecclesiastical and governmental authorities threatened Christ to force him to stop his ministry. He disobeyed. Peter, Paul, and other New Testament Christians—despite their exhortations of general obedience—occasionally found themselves at odds with the authorities. By the fifth century, Augustine could declare, “A law that is not just goes for no law at all.” Tyndale resisted, and was executed. Bunyan refused to get a license to preach, and was jailed. Fifteen years before Thoreau (not a Christian) spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax, two Georgia missionaries defied a licensing law. Cherokee Indians were required to give up their land claims, and missionaries, to obtain preaching licenses, were by law supposed to advise the Indians to relinquish their claims. One of the missionaries wrote that he refused to give such advice because he was under a “clear moral obligation—a question of right or wrong—of keeping … the commands of God.”

It is the question of lordship that presents dilemmas for the patriotic Christian. Scripture evidences a clear concern for lawful order—the Antichrist, after all, is preeminently seen as “the man of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:3). And Romans 13:1–7 counsels Christian obedience to the government, as do Titus 3:1–2 and 1 Peter 2:13. But in Christ and the Powers (Herald Press, 1962), Hendrik Berkhof notes nine other New Testament passages that demonstrate ambivalence toward “principalities and powers” such as the state. He notes that government is a necessary mediator of order and justice in society, and therefore good. But government is also part of the fallen order, and so it may itself attempt to become a god. When the state’s will contradicted that of God, the apostles chose to resist it. Their teaching and example are of general obedience to the state, but never-failing obedience to the lordship of Christ.

What triumphed at Louisville was not the World Herald’s “mob rule.” It is true, as constitutional authority Alexander Bickel recognized, that all civil disobedience is coercive in its “ultimate intent,” After all, civil disobedience is a last resort, an attempt at correction after more ordinary forms of persuasion have failed.

It is also true that the anarchic potential of civil disobedience cannot be denied. Social philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of the “anarchic nature of divinely inspired consciences, so blatantly manifest in the beginnings of Christianity.” An appeal directly to God sails over the heads of magistrates. It instantaneously produces crisis and confrontation, for who (or what) can be appealed to above God? Indeed, Paul apparently tried to restrict that potential for civil or moral anarchy, even advising slaves to accept their status unless freedom was offered (1 Cor. 7:20–22).

Scripture would advise us, then, not to take civil disobedience lightly. It must be undertaken only with caution, prayer, and the counsel of the church. It is an act of gravity since it is, in a sense, law breaking. But it is law breaking of a unique kind, an activity that affirms law in general while violating law in the particular case.

Aristotle said the good man could be a good citizen only in a good state. Thus the Christian—striving always to be a good man in the Christlike sense—should not be surprised if at some time he has to be a “bad” citizen in a fallen society. Gen. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said, “No great cause ever achieved a triumph before it furnished a certain quota to the prison population.” Most men go to jail because they are worse than their neighbors; a few go because they are better.

And jail is often where the civilly disobedient person lands. That is how he or she affirms the legal structure while violating a particular law. Law preserves the order and health of a society: the person who is civilly disobedient has classically accepted that, and when he reluctantly defies a law, he accepts the penalty. He may be an outlaw, but no true civil disobedient is a fugitive.

The Louisville fundamentalists, still uncomfortable with confronting government, may be reassured to know that civil disobedience is very much of the American heritage. Arendt argues that it is uniquely American in substance, and that the American system is the government most capable of coping with it, “not, perhaps, in accordance with the statutes, but in accordance with the spirit of its laws.” Evangelical ethicist Stephen Charles Mott notes that “civil disobedience, stepping into the breaches of constitutional order, gives justice a second chance.” Without such a safety valve, violence and even revolution would be more likely. “Thus,” Mott observes, “civil disobedience can truly be a way of paying our obligations of respect and honor to the the political system (Rom. 13:7).

A visitor to faith baptist church crossed the starchy autumn grass of the church lawn. Ahead of him was a mongrel, chewing its paws. A young, jeans-clad Louisville resident passed on the sidewalk. He thought the visitor was a fundamentalist pastor, and commanded the animal: “Bite him, dog, bite him.”

Protest did not make the fundamentalists popular in Nebraska. Unfortunately, civil disobedience appears guaranteed to alienate and enrage. It has done so from the time of Socrates to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Louisville incident serves to remind all Christians (whether or not they approved of fundamentalist conduct there) of their inherent position of tension in this world. They are in the world but not of it. Christians seek to redeem the earth and all that is in it, but admit they are “aliens and strangers on earth” (Heb. 11:13).

The ancient Epistle to Diognetus notes that Christians must pass their lives on earth but are citizens of heaven, that they love all men but are persecuted by all. These words from the early church seem terribly odd to contemporary American Christians. A possible lesson of Louisville may be that the lordship of Christ can be uncanny and unnerving—even to Christians.

Ideas and beliefs move people, but they become a matter of debate to the common man or woman only when they break out in current events. The separation of church and state is a complex idea, one well suited to scholarly discussions incomprehensible to lay people. With the rise of the so-called Religious Right, however, church-and-state separation is an idea breaking into everyday history. It occupies coffee shop conversation and is a matter of strong opinion to millions of men and women outside ivory towers.

The controversy is especially strong in Nebraska, where, for the last five years, a fundamentalist school near Omaha has been fighting to operate without state-required certified teachers and a license. The Faith Baptist Church of Louisville, with fewer than 30 students, has polarized the entire state. Christians do not agree on the matter, and polls show most Nebraskans opposing the Faith Baptist stand.

Faith Baptist pastor Everett Sileven has served two jail sentences because the school remained open contrary to court orders. He believes the state attempts to usurp the place of God when it requires licensure and teacher certification. He, like thousands of fundamentalists nationwide, sees the church school as a ministry of the church equal to all others. To Sileven, licensing the school is tantamount to the state licensing a pastor. It is wrong, Sileven and his sympathizers say, because Christ alone is Lord of the church.

Last October, Louisville became the center of mild demonstrations by about 500 fundamentalist pastors. They gathered in eastern Nebraska after the Louisville church was padlocked by authorities to prevent classes from being held in it (CT, Nov. 12, 1982, p. 54, and Nov. 26, 1982, p. 58). The events there attracted national attention and sparked new concern among conservative Christians on three counts: the proper relationship between church and government; the appropriateness of civil disobedience; and the church’s role in the education of its members’ children.

As the writer of a letter to the New York Times put it, “There is more at stake in Nebraska than obstinate preachers, baffled bureaucrats, weeping ‘extremists’ and embarrassed ‘moderates’.” The issue, said the educator who authored the letter, “has grave implications for the integrity of the Bill of Rights” and religious and educational freedom.

Four state legislatures, including Nebraska’s, struggled with the licensure of private religious schools last year. Civil disobedience is affirmed as Christian and urged by the Moral Majority, Francis Schaeffer, and other voices listened to by conservative American Christians. Considering the issues raised at Louisville more and more pressing for its readers, CHRISTIANITY TODAY decided to go beyond news coverage of the situation.

The following articles attempt to set the Louisville events in perspective and provoke meaningful thought on the issues those events so pointedly raised. John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney, probes legal questions and suggests a center of focus to help church schools decide when the state exceeds its rightful authority. Assistant editor Rodney Clapp, who visited Louisville for eight days last October, reflects on civil disobedience and growing fundamentalist activism.

The shot through the rattlesnake’s head had all but demolished it. The rattler was still twisting on the driveway as the family gathered around to see the latest snake kill. One of the dogs eased forward to finish it off, and the snake struck again. The dog jumped back.

Then one of the grandchildren reached out to touch it. Bill grabbed him and held him back, explaining how deadly even a dead snake can be. The young grandson, totally without fear, was determined to grab its tail. Again the mangled head struck out. The boy jumped back, getting the message. Rattlesnakes and copperheads, the only two poisonous snakes in our region, are to be feared.

“Education,” wrote Angelo Patri, “consists in being afraid of the right things.”

We taught our children to be careful with matches and to be respectful of open fire; fear of house fires and forest fires prompts sensible precautions. We also taught the children never to run into the street without first carefully looking both ways; a proper fear of cars is also legitimate—as are accepting rides from strangers, using unprescribed drugs, not wearing helmets when riding motorcycles, breaking the law, and dishonoring one’s parents or one’s country.

There is one grand, noble fear we are taught from Genesis to Revelation. It is “the fear of the Lord.” This is more than “being scared of” (though there is a bit of that in it, too). It is “a reverential trust,” not only a fear of offending, but a loving to the point one would not want to offend.

“In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge” (Prov. 14:26).

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10).

“O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!” (Deut. 5:29).

“To guard against all such blasphemous chumminess with the Almighty, the Bible talks of the fear of the Lord—not to scare us but to bring us to awesome attention before the overwhelming grandeur of God” (Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction).

We live in a world wracked by fears and anxieties. The following appeared in Le Monde (Paris) in the summer of 1981:

“A Long Bastille Day Weekend

“In France, overheated and overcrowded prisons are about to explode. In Northern Ireland, IRA inmates are dying one after the other. In El Salvador it’s murder unlimited. In Chile, ‘order’ reigns. In Asia the refugees keep looking for refuge. Poland fears the summer. Afghanistan resists in silence, Iran rants on. Purges are under way just about everywhere.

“The South is hungry, the North is afraid.

“Happy weekend, everybody!”

But God reassures his church in Revelation, “Fear none of those things which are to happen.” We are to fear only the Lord.

It is the fear of God that puts all other fears in proper perspective.

According to the leaders in Christian publishing whom CHRISTIANITY TODAY consulted, here is a profile of today’s Christian book reader:

1. Today’s Christian book reader is looking for concrete answers to many of life’s problems. According to booksellers Harden F. and Maxine Young (Hardin is president of Christian Bookseller’s Association), today’s permissive society that says anything goes forces people to seek help to shore up the crumbling foundations of families, marriages, relationships, churches, and even businesses.

“Readers are looking for help for themselves and for others in order to handle these extra pressures,” the Youngs say. “Authors need to write more confrontational material to square off against permissiveness.”

For these readers, books dealing with home and family will continue to be popular, but with an expanded range of topics. Wesley R. Willis of Victor Books says publishers must also meet the needs of single parents, divorced and widowed, and others who have traditionally been neglected.

2. Today’s Christian book reader is older and more conservative. According to statistics in U.S. News and World Report (Nov. 22 and 29, 1982), our population growth and mix point to a median age shift from 30 in 1980 to 36.3 by the year 2000. There are simply more book buyers now who are elderly.

“We will have to meet the particular needs of the over-65 age group,” says Harden Young. “And the fads that created some of our sales should diminish now. As the median age increases, fadishness will decrease, for the older we become the less we like change.”

3. Today’s Christian book reader is more mature. “The reading public is sick and tired of fluff,” says Wesley Willis. “Book buyers are selecting volumes for purchase with great care, increasingly demanding value for their money. They want the contents to be substantial, both in the concepts presented and in the quality of writing and editing.”

Abingdon’s Kent McNish says today’s Christian is ready to move from froth to serious reading in matters of Christian faith. As evidence he cites his Creative Leadership Series, edited by Lyle Schaller, which has sold more than 300,000 copies.

Jerry Jenkins of Moody Press says publishers have responded to this growth spurt in readers by themselves becoming more serious, businesslike, and careful. “We’re publishing more books every year, but our mix now is more heavily weighted toward scholarly works. A year and a half ago, 18 percent of our titles were textbooks compared to 50 percent now.”

Even Moody’s popular-level material, he says, particularly that written for adults, has had a corresponding turn toward the more substantive in biblical and doctrinal content.

4. Today’s Christian book reader is also maturing as an evangelical in matters of faith and learning. “There has been a maturing of evangelical scholarship, a tangible, sophisticated wrestling with key issues in biblical and theological studies,” says James W. Sire of InterVarsity Press.

He credits Carl F. H. Henry with giving impetus to this trend 30 years ago; his efforts are bearing fruit not only in his massive newly completed theological work, God, Revelation, and Authority, but also in the work produced by many younger scholars.

One of these, Anthony Thiselton, in The Two Horizons, for instance, effectively grapples with the central problems of hermeneutics, and does so without fear of contamination by nonevangelical scholarship.

Gilbert Bilezekian says evangelicals are looking for more substantial books because they are changing their approach to complex and sensitive issues. “The more common reaction of biblical Christians is one of growing sophistication,” he says. “They are extricating themselves from dead ends, such as preoccupation with end-times minutiae and the use of charismatic repertories as toys rather than tools.

“As a group they are reluctant to join Christians who have made a big splash in the shallow waters of single-issue politics. Instead they are headed in a new, more mature direction; redefining their identity, exploring their common roots, seeking each other reflectively, and mapping out strategies for united action.”

5. Today’s Christian book reader is searching for ways to integrate his faith with other areas of learning. When he was in graduate school 20 years ago, James Sire remembers preparing an annotated bibliography on the relationship between Christianity and literature. The list included no more than a dozen works, most of dubious value.

Today Sire says there are hundreds of articles and scores of major books by Christian scholars on the subject. And what is true of literature and Christianity is equally true of psychology, sociology, history, art, and music, plus Christianity.

Some fields, such as economics and educational theory, still need work, but nonetheless, there are more Christians writing in other academic fields than in earlier decades.

Sire also points out a noticeable trend by key Christian writers in the sixties and seventies who have shifted emphasis today in an attempt to broaden the focus of Christianity. Throughout the sixties, for instance, John Stott’s attention was focused on biblical study, evangelism, and the health of the local congregation. Today, without losing any of this interest, Stott is addressing major social issues such as abortion and nuclear war. Sire says similar shifts can also be traced in the writings of Francis Schaeffer, Howard Snyder, and others.

6. Today’s Christian book reader is looking for guidance in current social, ethical, and moral issues. Wesley Willis says Christians are seeking out printed resources to help them find answers to complex questions dealing with the value of individuals and our responsibility to them such as: How should we relate to the unborn? To the senior citizen? The terminally ill? To those more conservative or more liberal than we are? To the rich, or the poor? To members of other races? To those in authority over us or our subordinates?

Authors are needed, says Willis, to write books of “well-reasoned analysis based upon profound spirit-led biblical exegesis rather than emotional condemnation of those with whom we disagree.” He uses the current rash of books on secular humanism as an example. “For every legitimate critique of secular humanism there are countless emotional diatribes,” he says. “We must do more than encourage Christians to turn over rocks to find secular humanists. We need to help guide readers into a biblical understanding and lifestyle that will constitute a solid offense against all unbiblical philosophy.”

7. Today’s Christian book reader is becoming serious about understanding Scripture and presenting its message to non-Christians. Evangelicals are realizing that a society saturated with technological wonder working but bereft of spirit will sooner or later turn to Christians, clamoring for guidance from the Word of God. Consequently, they are preparing to come up with biblical answers.

Inductive Bible studies fill a need not met by the popular devotional or the more scholarly expository books. Women’s groups, neighborhood Bible studies, couples organizations all want solid Bible study material. Publishers are adding topical Bible study books to their ever-growing line of inductive study material.

Gilbert Bilezekian suggests that apologetics, “thoughtfully measured to persuade rather than antagonize,” is making a comeback. Contemporary Christian apologists seek to gain an entrance into the mind by presenting Christian alternatives to issues over which secular society has reached an impasse,” he says. “But the mood—following the tone and manner of C. S. Lewis—is one of gentlemanly détente rather than of the strident confrontation characterizing the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that occurred during the early part of the twentieth century.”

8. Today’s Christian book reader is looking for specific ways in which he can practice his faith. “Being a practicing Christian, like being a practicing doctor or lawyer, means developing one’s profession,” says Kent McNish. “If we profess Jesus Christ, we will want to do that as effectively as possible, whether that be as lay Christians or full-time church workers.”

That may mean learning how to teach the Bible more effectively, learning how to relate better to young people, or learning how to cope with personal or family problems.

Eight experts tell where Christian book publishing is headed.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked eight leaders in Christian book publishing to discuss trends in books today. Cheryl Forbes leads off with the point of view of a publicly held book publisher (Zondervan). Jerry Jenkins presents the views of an institutional publisher (Moody); Wesley Willis, a curriculum publisher (Scripture Press/Victor Books); Kent McNish, a denominational publisher (Abingdon); James W. Sire, a publisher related to a parachurch organization (InterVarsity); and Hardin and Maxine Young, booksellers (Christian Supply Store owners), and president of Christian Booksellers Association. We also asked Gilbert Bilezekian to view books from the perspective of a college professor (Wheaton) and leader of a rapidly growing church.

There is an air of expectancy in Christian publishing today. Although the phenomenal growth of the Christian bookstore market may have slowed, and the economy has still not obeyed the present Administration, we are excited about the future of our industry. We see this in our sales conferences and our editorial meetings. We hear it from the production side when press people and shipping personnel are reading our new books. “Something,” we hear, “is happening.” Just what is that “something”?

We can see this elusive something in three areas: changes in the market, changes in the kinds of books coming from publishers, and changes in technology. The first two are interdependent.

A decade or two ago readers were primarily demanding books on prophecy and personal experience. The Late Great Planet Earth and Joni are two examples of successes in these categories. Now prophecy books have all but disappeared from the frontlists of most publishers, and though numerous personal stories are still being published, many today deal with difficult issues that once would have been taboo in Christian publishing: for example, rape, child abuse, incest, and mental illness. It took some time for us to admit that Christians divorce; it may take a little longer to admit that Christians also become mentally unbalanced or are victims of abuse or incest, though Christian psychologists know how many people are suffering.

If prophecy books are out, Bible study books are definitely in and will stay in for quite some time. Inductive Bible studies fill a need not met by the popular devotional or the more scholarly expository books. Women’s groups, neighborhood Bible studies, couples organizations all want solid Bible study material. Publishers are adding topical Bible study books to their ever-growing line of inductive study material. Book buyers, then, are becoming serious about understanding Scripture.

At the same time that publishers note a new seriousness, they also note a new desire to be inspirationally entertained. Christian book buyers have discovered fiction. Perhaps it started with the Oxford Christians and fantasy back in the sixties (though I suspect most of those books were bought from general secular stores, not Christian bookstores). However it happened, the taste for the “made up” continues strong today and at least one Christian publisher has a serious commitment to publishing new fantasy by relatively unknown writers—always a risky business in publishing.

But there is another kind of fiction that Christian women book buyers in particular seem to want: the inspirational romance. Millions of Christian women have been reading books from Harlequin and Silhouette, for example, but those books have become increasingly erotic and less romantic. So where will Christian women go to find their romance? Silhouette currently is researching the possibility of an inspirational romance line and has already contracted for some of these books. Christian publishers, too, will be issuing inspirational, as well as historical, romances. The recent success of several historical romances indicates that readers want wholesome, entertaining stories. And the number of manuscripts of fiction that publishers are receiving shows that there are writers to fill the need And they are good writers; the caliber of these manuscripts is much higher than in the heyday of Grace Livingston Hill. This is just beginning.

If Christian readers are studying the Bible and awakening to fiction, they are also looking closely at themselves in two ways. Self-help books in the areas of marriage, divorce, and family relationships have been popular for a number of years. Now Christians want books that help them deal with love, anger, forgiveness, fat, discipline, food, priorities, clothing, style, and beauty. They want to be in good physical and spiritual condition, and books that provide step-by-step instruction have an eager audience.

But Christians are also studying themselves in another way. They are investigating weak areas in evangelical theology and biblical understanding that may lead to a skewed view of the Christian life. These problem-oriented books ask us to put what we learn from our Bible studies into practice. They ask, on a practical level, what it means for us to be disciples, how we can be committed, and what are the daily ethical implications of servanthood. The authors of these books have stopped looking for the mote in another’s eye, but instead are trying to help evangelicals remove the logs in their own.

Finally, the new technology in publishing will affect how quickly publishers can respond to the shifting tastes of readers. As more and more authors write on word processors, publishers will be able to produce books more rapidly and less expensively. The sense of immediacy achieved by television will never be reproduced on paper, but publishers will come closer than in the past. This will have a great effect on what people read and what they learn from that reading.

CHERYL FORBES

Last November, following the publication of Jimmy Carter’s memoirs (Keeping Faith, Bantam), Christianity Today editors met with the former President in an exclusive interview. In it President Carter reveals many previously unpublished insights into his personal faith in God and his relationships with world leaders.

Wes Pippert, United Press International White House correspondent during the Carter administration and an authority on the former President, writes the introduction to the interview, which he edited for accuracy.

Shortly after he became president, Jimmy Carter, in one of his many ceremonial duties, welcomed Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Christians to the White House. According to Coptic tradition, Shenouda is the 117th pope to follow Saint Mark, who they believe founded the Coptic church in Egypt.

As the two leaders talked in the Oval Office, Shenouda told the President about the new congregations Coptic Christians had organized in the United States. Flashing the famous Carter smile, the President replied: “You’re establishing several new churches; very good. That’s a good evangelism program. I think Saint Mark would have been pleased.”

In the later years of his Christian life, Jimmy Carter has been an aggressive evangelist, and in a lengthy interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY (excerpts of which follow) he gave intimate accounts of perhaps some of the boldest witnessing in the recent history of Christendom. Carter told CHRISTIANITY TODAY details concerning his witnessing to Chung Hee Park, the dictator of South Korea, shortly before he was assassinated, and to Edward Gierek, then the Communist leader of Poland, while Carter was on a whirlwind trip to Europe, Asia, and Egypt in late 1977 and early 1978. Neither incident is contained in Carter’s recently published memoirs, Keeping Faith.

But one of the most provocative portions of the book describes a conversation Carter said he had with the late Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in Venice in 1979 about arms control. “He startled me by laying his hand on my shoulder and saying, ‘If we do not succeed, God will not forgive us,’ ” Carter wrote. Carter acknowledged he erred a day or two later by making reference to Brezhnev’s remark at a larger meeting. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko replied cynically, “Yes, God is looking down at us all.” Carter said Brezhnev looked embarrassed.

Carter once told this reporter about a private conversation with Pope John Paul II during the pontiffs visit to Washington in October 1979. As the two men were in the family quarters of the White House, Carter asked whether the Pope wished to speak as two statesmen or as two friends, and the Pope replied, as friends. Carter said he asked the Pope how he handled all the adulation that continually surrounds him, to which the Pope answered that he prayed more about that than anything else.

Carter paid a price for his witnessing, however. The New York Times criticized him in an editorial for trying to proselytize Park. And many evangelicals condemned him for recognizing China at the expense of the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan.

But Carter maintained a persistent witness. One of the most moving examples was his witness to Hubert H. Humphrey shortly before the senator’s death in 1978 when the two men were by themselves at Camp David. After Humphrey’s death, Carter described what had happened in front of the fireplace at Aspen Lodge. Paraphrasing Romans 3:23, the former President said, “He and I talked about religion, about how deep his faith had grown since he became ill. We talked about sin and how we know that everyone sins and we fall short of the glory of God, but how God forgives us.”

There is no doubt that Carter continues to witness. He is a regular Sunday school teacher now as, he told CHRISTIANITY TODAY, he has been most of his life. He remarked to a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention that he made 30 calls recently to people in and around Plains to get them to come to Sunday school.

It was witnessing that marked a significant step forward in Carter’s spiritual life. After he made a fuller commitment of his life in 1966, which he describes in the interview, he went on several witnessing missions for his church. On one, in Massachusetts, he joined with a Cuban pastor, Eloy Cruz, and the two men saw 46 persons accept Christ that week. Through these witnessing missions, he said, he began to feel “personally present with the Holy Spirit,” to pray more easily, and to feel a sense of peace and security he had never felt.

Unfortunately, Carter does not discuss his witnessing in his memoirs. Perhaps he felt he was writing for a broad audience, some of whom might be offended. Carter also did not discuss in his memoirs what this reporter feels may have been the most significant contribution of his presidency: the use of power.

Early in his administration, Carter told a group of government employees that he came to them not as “First Boss” but as “First Servant.” (He told this writer privately that he was criticized for that remark—it seemed to lack macho.) To the Christian, the remark was reminiscent of Isaiah’s Servant passages.

At about that same time he told an elite gathering of politicians and religious people at the National Prayer Breakfast that they often do not understand what it means to be a “servant,” and he reminded them that when the twelve disciples struggled among themselves for superiority in God’s eyes, Jesus told them that whoever would be chief among them must first be a servant (Matt. 20:27).

The Bible’s influence on Carter is strongly evidenced by his Sunday school lessons and speeches. In this reporter’s book, The Spiritual Journey of Jimmy Carter (Macmillan, 1978), every one of Carter’s religious statements were pulled together and arranged. He often quoted Tillich and Niebuhr, generally using the same quotation over and over again. Truly vast, however, were his references to Scripture, in both Testaments, in nearly every Book of the Bible. If he was shaped by anything, it was those hundreds of Baptist Sunday school lessons over the years. The Scripture he quoted most often, incidently, was Romans 3:23 (“For all have sinned …”) and Luke 18:10–14, the story of the proud Pharisee.

It has been this reporter’s belief that Carter’s restraint in using force—for instance, in dealing with the Iranian hostage crisis and in being the first president in 50 years not to send American troops into combat—grew out of his conviction, which he believed was biblically grounded, that power is to be used to serve, not as force.

Carter discussed this view of power during his unsuccessful 1980 campaign. “I have always tried to use America’s strength with great caution and care and tolerance and thoughtfulness and prayer,” he said on one occasion. “Once we inject our military forces into combat, as happened in Vietnam, it’s hard to control it from then on, because your country loses prestige if you don’t ultimately go ahead and win,” he said to another audience.

Again he paid a price because the world viewed this as weakness; it wanted macho. His supporters pointed out, however, that the course of restraint was not only principled, it was pragmatic. The hostages came home alive, and the United States avoided loss of life in combat. This public perception that he lacked forcefulness, coupled with his inability to communicate in an inspiring way that would motivate the people, probably led to his defeat.

In a recent conversation, Carter acknowledged that he could not communicate as well as Ronald Reagan. Then he added; “I had a sense of calm competence in the strength of my country, in its beneficial influence without the use of military force. I saw the major peaceful weapons were a basic morality and an adherence to principles that other people admire. I saw very clearly the Soviets have no strengths except military strength. They’re an atheistic nation; they don’t appeal to those who have religious belief.… I saw these differences between us and them as an advantage for us and as weapons to be used in lieu of a threat of a superior military force.”

Why did you use the title Keeping Faith on your book?

I. didn’t have a natural inclination toward a title when I started the book. It was only after I got involved in it that I tried to come up with a phrase that would encapsulate several different approaches. One approach had religious overtones, the fact that I saw in my own service in the White House a unique responsibility as a born-again Christian. That was the responsibility to let standards of morality and ethics be part of my administration, my thought process, and part of my decision making.

Another was that when I was elected there was a breakdown among the American people in their faith in the presidency itself. This was in the after-math of Watergate and Vietnam. I offered an administration which wouldn’t tell a lie and promised I would try to be as honest and decent as the American people.

The third idea behind the title was that in spite of the crises that afflicted our country, such as the energy shortage and the Iranian hostage seizure, it was important for our country to keep faith with the basic elements of historical purpose that have shaped it.

So there are multiple meanings to the title. Some of the editors felt it had too strong a religious connotation and they disagreed with my choice for a while. But eventually they agreed.

It’s obvious you thought the greatest test of your presidency was the hostage crisis. How did you handle the spiritual dimensions of that as it related to your own faith, your own walk with God? How did a crisis of that kind affect your prayer life?

I spent more time praying while I was President than at any other time in my life. My decisions affected many other people and involved life or death, war or peace. The decisions I had to make were presented to me in terms of conflict. The decisions that have to be made by the President are ones that are too complicated, too far reaching, too difficult, and too controversial to be made by anyone else.

The most vivid memory I have of being President in difficult times was the loneliness of making a final decision. I invariably turned to God in prayer and asked him to give me guidance and wisdom and sound judgment. I also prayed that my actions and statements would be compatible with God’s will.

I was obviously impressed with keeping peace, the production of nuclear and conventional weaponry, the stewardship of the earth, and the basic value of human life. To return to your question, there’s no doubt that the last 14 months of my presidency, when the hostages were being held, were the most difficult times in my life.

I had a dual responsibility. One was to protect the integrity of my country and its basic purposes and goals in dealing with the Iranians and others. The second was to protect the lives of those 52 people. I tried to resolve that inherent conflict and I think I did it successfully. We were ultimately able to protect the integrity of the country and eventually, in answer to many prayers, to bring those 52 people home safe.

In one of the Sunday school lessons you taught in the couples’ class at First Baptist Church in Washington, you gave an exegesis of a New Testament passage about testing the spirits, discerning which voices are of God and which are not of God. In a situation in which your advisers were split down the middle and there didn’t seem to be any clear-cut way of knowing, how did you go about testing those voices?

I don’t think my prayer life would be any different from yours, or any different from mine as a sometimes troubled father in my own home, or as a businessman getting started and dealing with customers. There’s no basic difference in attitude. One thing that happens when you reach the highest elective office in this country, maybe in the world, is that you can quite often remove consideration of political aspirations, financial rewards, or public esteem from those decisions. That is true if you have a feeling of self-assurance and confidence, and you’re not trying to mislead the public or shape a false image. You don’t really have as many temptations to reward yourself as you do when you’re hoping someday to be a state senator or a rich man. I don’t think the danger of being selfish or self-serving in your decisions is any greater as President than it is as an editor, teacher, merchant, or whatever.

Do you believe God gives special grace for special situations?

Yes. When I became President I looked anew at the lessons in which the Bible teaches us to honor those who hold public office. I never did have a feeling that I was chosen by God to be President because I was superior but I felt a responsibility as one of God’s secular representatives. As a President I could also realize the amplification of my own voice.

As a man of prayer, a born-again Christian, were you misunderstood? Did the secular press understand that side of you?

No, I don’t think so. I went to Washington with some question marks hanging over my head. “Here’s a Baptist, a so-called born-again Christian. How could he possibly make objective decisions that affect Jews, agnostics, atheists, and others? Is he going to wait for a flash of lightning to come out of the sky to tell him what to do? Does he think he’s better than we are? Is he going to condemn those whose lifestyles are different from his?” All those questions penetrated the consciousness of the secular press. I was suspect. I never tried to put my faith forward because I didn’t see a political advantage to be derived from identification as a born-again Christian. I could see the consternation that might arouse in the Jewish community and others. So your question could be answered affirmatively. There is a lack of understanding among the secular press about what it means to be a born-again Christian, and my experience as a candidate and President has at least helped to focus the question, whether or not it has provided answers.

What about the country as a whole? Did the people accept your spiritual situationmore than the Washington press accepted it?

Yes. There is more of a concentration of cynicism within the Washington press than there is in the country as a whole.

We were told not long ago that a number of evangelical senators prefer not to be identified publicly as evangelical Christians. They think they can do a better job if they avoid a strong public identification as evangelicals. Did you ever wonder if perhaps you could have done a better job if you had not come out so strong as a Christian?

I really don’t think I came out that strong. When I was campaigning (in 1976) I didn’t try to hide it. But I was finally asked a question about my Christian beliefs; I think it was on the back porch of a home in North Carolina. There was a small group of reporters there, and I answered the question. Because I was beginning to have some political success, it was intriguing to the Washington press that had begun following me. They pursued it aggressively, and I tried to answer the questions accurately but without exaggeration and without trying to stimulate further questioning.

Would you have preferred not to have the born-again label?

No. I don’t regret that at all. It’s part of my nature, it’s part of my character.

Who are some of the theologians who have influenced you?

Reinhold Niebuhr is the one theologian whose writings I’ve read most. When I was in the state senate a friend gave me a compilation of Niebuhr’s writings about politics and government on the one hand and religious belief on the other. I’ve got a very good library on theology, including Niebuhr, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, and others.

You were speaking about honoring those in high elective office. When you became President and Christians knew of your commitment, did you feel from them a sense of prayer and support, feeling that they were really behind you?

Yes—not only because this is an innate feeling and a natural expectation, but also because they would so frequently tell me so. When I was inaugurated we were having a series of receptions at the White House, and I was overwhelmed when the hundreds of military leaders who came to the White House repeatedly commented, “Mr. President, we’re praying for you. God be with you.” As a state senator and as President I was involved in official prayer groups that met privately. As you know, there are some very devout Christians in Washington.

We also had a good church life. When I became President, as when I became governor, I wanted to have the life of an average Christian. I didn’t want anything special, I didn’t want to visit all the churches in Washington one Sunday after the other, always to be a visitor. I wanted to be a part of a church. When I was governor I was a deacon in the church; when I was President they asked me to become a deacon, but I didn’t think it was appropriate. I was active as a regular church member and felt the need for the Baptist church to reach out in a broader program of evangelism. I invited the leaders of our denomination—the Southern Baptist Convention—to come to the White House, and we had some talks about how to heighten or broaden our ambitions for our foreign mission program. I talked to the members of the Mormon church in some depth, and asked them how they went about getting so many volunteer missionaries. We tried to do a similar thing in our Baptist denomination. I did some things like that because I was President. Otherwise I really tried to be an ordinary churchman.

When you were a statesman, traveling overseas, did you at any time try to present your faith, or did you feel those were not the right times and settings?

Yes, I did, and it was surprising. For instance, when I met with Edward Gierek, then first secretary of the Communist party in Poland, I talked to him about the Christian faith, and witnessed to him in a quiet way. He told me his mother was a devout Christian. He was a Communist and atheist. I talked to him at length about his need to accept Christ and to reestablish the faith of his childhood. He said he thought his Communist faith was adequate, but I reminded him very much of his mother. He’s now out of office, since the agitation in Poland.

Another person I witnessed to aggressively was President Park in Korea. One of his daughters was a Christian, one was a Buddhist, and he had no faith. As we traveled around Seoul together, I talked to him about my own religious faith. I had been to church that Sunday in the same place Billy Graham had his tremendous sermon. He promised me that he would convince some of the Christians in South Korea to come and talk to him about Christianity and what it meant. I pursued it as far as I legitimately could. Later I wrote the Christian leaders there and told them that President Park would be looking forward to their visit.

I met with Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping. Others had said the Chinese Communist government wouldn’t permit Bibles to be imported to China. Deng told me that if I went to China, I would find the Chinese Christians there had decided they did not want foreign missionaries to come in and they thought the gospel would be accepted more effectively if it was not tainted with a foreign flavor. But he said he would do what he could about modifying the Chinese constitution to permit religious freedom and try to investigate the impediments to Bible distribution. In March of 1981, he initiated an amendment to the Chinese constitution guaranteeing freedom of worship. When I visited [in September 1981], Christians were distributing Bibles throughout China with the help of the government.

Those are just a few quick examples. I thought it was appropriate. But I never made a public issue of it.

Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is prominently mentioned in your new book. What kind of man was he?

He was a devout Muslim. But he always emphasized when he was around me—and Begin—that our faiths were compatible. He was thoroughly familiar with the meaning of monotheism, and he always reminded Begin that the Jewish people and the Egyptian people were descendants of Abraham and shared a common background in the Old Testament. He emphasized that all three of us worship the same God, God the Creator. He often brought up the prospect that if we did reach peace in the Middle East, all three of us would join together to build a worship center on top of Mount Sinai. Muslims, Christians, and Jews could go to the top of Mount Sinai, which is holy for all of us, and worship in our own way. Anwar had an ecumenical approach to religion that was inspiring. He always reminded me that I was one of his best friends and that he revered Christ, and in his deepest part he knew that Christ was worthy of his total reverence.

What about Israel’s leader, Menachem Begin?

There is no doubt that Begin uses the ancient biblical promise as a basis for his claim that Israelis have a right to all the disputed territory. Recently he has expanded his area of boundary on both sides of the Jordan. He’s not limiting his ambitions anymore to the Jordan River: he’s interested even in the east side of the Jordan. I’ve always disputed Begin’s claim that this fulfills ancient prophecy. I’ve never really gotten into an argument with Begin on theology or the New Covenant, but I have criticized him because he looks upon the Jews as special people, yet sees the Palestinians as subhuman. He characterizes all of them as terrorists, even the women and children, so that he can avoid the responsibility of providing them basic human rights. He sees no incompatibility in his religious claim and the deprivation of Palestinian rights to assemble peacefully, to have freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the right to hold property without it being confiscated.

This is a reason for the continued crisis in the Middle East, and I think it’s one of the greatest obstacles we have to overcome. Whether this is an element of Begin’s sincere religious belief or whether it’s a means by which he can lay claim to these disputed territories, I have no way to judge.

Over the last few years conservative Christians have been trying to make an impact in Washington with some moral issues, such as prayer in public schools, tuition tax credits, and abortion. Based on what you’ve seen, are they likely to do that?

I think not. Conservative Christian leaders exemplified by Jerry Falwell reached their peak of influence in 1980. Then they made an effort to define what a Christian was by whether or not he was for or against the Panama Canal treaty, for or against the SALT treaty, for or against the establishment of the Department of Education, and so forth. In many ways my attitude toward the Bible is conservative. I’m a Southern Baptist, and if you had to put me in the liberal or conservative wing, I’d probably go with the conservative, or moderate, wing. But I think the effort to shape politics by defining what a Christian is has passed its peak. I consider this an aberration on the political scene, and it is going to fade away, not into absolute obscurity, but it will have a lesser impact.

Could you tell us about your spiritual roots?

This has been more of an evolution than a revolution. I was a regular Sunday school student when I was 2 years old. All the way through my grammar school and high school years I never dreamed of not going to Sunday school. When I went to the naval academy, I taught the 12-year-old girls, daughters of the officers and enlisted men who were stationed at the academy. In the submarine, on special occasions, we held Bible classes between the torpedo tubes and I taught. When I came home from the navy I began to teach junior boys and girls, 9, 10, 11, and 12. When I was elected governor we moved our letter to the church nearest the governor’s mansion. About one Sunday out of four, I taught the senior adult men, all over 65 years old. When we moved to Washington, I taught about one out of four Sundays. I now teach every Sunday that I’m in Plains.

There was a change in my spiritual life when I was defeated for governor in 1966. It was the first real disappointment in my life. I had been able to achieve all my great ambitions—to go to college (no one in my family had ever finished high school before me on my daddy’s side for 300 years or so), to be a naval officer, a submarine officer, to have a successful business, and to be a state senator. I ran for governor and was defeated. It was a major setback in my life. I was in debt. I had to reexamine my priorities. I found in self-examination that when I did achieve success it wasn’t gratifying. My sister [Ruth Carter Stapleton] was very active in lay evangelism. We had a long talk and she explained to me the simplicity and beauty of the more intimate relationship with Jesus that is possible for a Christian. That added a more intimate dimension to my religious faith. So I’ve grown as a student too.

Wesley G. Pippert is congressional reporter for United Press International in Washington, D. C. He is the author of Faith at the Top (Cook, 1973) and The Spiritual Journey of Jimmy Carter (Macmillan, 1978).

Carter’s Latest Book

Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, by Jimmy Carter (Bantam Books, 1982, 622 pp., $22.50), is reviewed by Wesley G. Pippert, United Press International, who covered Carter’s two presidential campaigns and his four years in the White House.

Jimmy carter’s Keeping Faith is a faithful, detailed account of his presidency. His self-portrait is consistent with what has been reported publicly many times: that he is a devout Christian, a student of Scripture, and especially, a man of prayer.

“I prayed a lot—more than ever before in my life,” Carter wrote of his presidency. He cited specific examples of times when he did so.

He recalled that he had prayed publicly for peace at the First Baptist Church in Washington in 1977 when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem in the first big break-through of the ancient problems in the Middle East. He prayed during his 1978 Camp David Mideast talks—which dominate the book—when he, a Christian, met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a Jew, and Sadat, a Muslim.

Carter wrote that one of his tools in the 13-day Camp David talks was his annotated Bible, which he had accurately predicted would be needed in talks with Begin, who always uses the biblical names for locations in Israel. Carter sometimes went off by himself during the intense negotiations to pray. On the crucial eleventh day, he wrote, he asked Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Defense Secretary Harold Brown to leave him alone and he “prayed fervently for a few minutes that somehow we could find peace.”

Two days later, the Camp David accords, which still dictate the Mideast peace process, were reached.

There was prayer on lesser occasions. He and Bert Lance, also a devout Christian, prayed in the President’s small inner office when the then budget director’s 1977 Senate hearings began on his alleged mismanagement of his financial affairs.

Carter wrote that in praying, he asked God “to give me a clear mind, sound judgment, and wisdom in dealing with affairs that could affect the lives of so many people in our own country and around the world.

“Although I cannot claim that my decisions were always the best ones, prayer was a great help to me. At least, it removed any possibility of timidity or despair as I faced my daily responsibilities,” Carter wrote.

Numerous times during his presidency he said publicly that he and his wife read the Bible together in Spanish and prayed each day—without fail. He meant it. In fact, he told a town hall meeting in Oklahoma on one occasion that because he was going to be away that night, he and his wife had had their time of worship—their term for “quiet time” or “family devotions”—that afternoon in the White House.

But, regrettably, Carter does not discuss what part in his presidency this constancy in private worship played, except for one brief story.

He wrote that as the 1980 Democratic national convention neared and stories about his brother Billy plagued him, his wife Rosalynn called him and said she needed to be calmed.

“I told her to reread the words of Jesus from our previous night’s chapter, which happened to be John 14, ‘Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me,’ ” Carter wrote.

There never was any doubt about the Carters’ singular love for each other. His book gives a clue that he saw his wife as a gift from God.

Carter wrote that late in the summer of 1980, as Ronald Reagan’s big margin in the polls shrank, he gave his wife a little picture frame, in which Ecclesiastes 9:9 had been translated from the Living Bible (which the First Lady always carried with her to church) into Spanish: “Live happily with the wife you love through the fleeting days of life, for the wife God gives you is your best reward down here for all your earthly toil.”

Carter had a mastery of Scripture that was revealed in his Sunday school lessons and dog-eared Bible. He always followed the assigned Baptist lesson for each Sunday. One Sunday the lesson was about the persecution of Naboth in 1 Kings 21. That Sunday, Baptist preacher Georgi Vins, who had just been released from a Soviet prison, was in his class, and Carter drew a parallel between his and Naboth’s persecution.

But Carter’s book does not reveal nearly enough about other ways Scripture shaped his presidential decisions. He once said that his sense of human rights came from the Old Testament and a childhood “steeped in the Bible.” He makes no reference to this in Keeping Faith.

The Christian reader of Carter’s book cannot help saying, “Tell us more details! Tell us more details!” Carter admits there may be another book inside him. It is to be hoped that he will be as explicit in it about how he integrated Scripture, prayer, and witnessing into his official duties as he already has done on other occasions.