Page 5616 – Christianity Today (2024)

A Laotian mother and her two children had obtained clearance to emigrate to the United States, and they needed a sponsor before they could enter this country.

There were special problems, however. Laotian soldiers had fired upon the Vue family as they crossed the Mekong River into Thailand; awaiting resettlement in a Thailand refugee camp, the three were nursing serious wounds suffered in the attack. The five-year-old son had been shot in the spine and was paralyzed. The mother could walk only with a crutch. The father (and breadwinner) and three other children had died en route.

A sponsor in the United States first must guarantee the ability to provide enough financial and personal care for the family, said immigration officials. Considering the circ*mstances, these would be substantial. But the resettlement office of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, after being informed of the costs and care that would be involved, said, “Send them anyway.”

Such benevolence reflects “just plain, dam goodness,” said John McCarthy, the director of migration and refugee services for the United States Catholic Conference. In many respects, it characterizes the outpouring of response by religious groups to the human suffering in Southeast Asia. Religious groups have resettled over 75 percent of the Indochinese refugees entering the United States since May 1975, and various Christian relief agencies have sent food and medical supplies to the refugees, who last month numbered 340,000 in crowded temporary camps across Southeast Asia.

Refugee sponsors in the United States have included church groups, local ministerial associations, Christian student groups, and individual families. Appeals for sponsorships heightened last month since refugees—primarily from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam—continued to flee their homelands at the rate of 50,000 to 60,000 per month. Vietnam particularly was blamed for the exodus; it has expelled thousands of its ethnic Chinese, who at one time numbered 1.8 million, in racial persecution reminiscent of the Holocaust of World War II. An estimated 200,000 refugees have died, most of these being “boat people” who have drowned in the South China Sea. One reporter called the situation “a liquid Auschwitz.”

Many resettlement officials have waiting lists of sponsors, and said that government red tape and funding shortages have slowed the resettlement process. McCarthy, whose office has resettled over one million refugees during the past 30 years, expressed his anger and frustration at the delays.

“There’s a bumbling, bureaucratic failure happening out there,” he said in a telephone interview last month. He told of 80,000 refugees already cleared for immigration to the United States who were still in the refugee camps, where food, water, and medical supplies were lacking. Many of these will die or contract disease if not moved to temporary transit camps, he said.

McCarthy claimed the U.S. government has balked because of the costs—thinking that. “we can keep these people in filth [in the camps] for about $1.50 a day; if we put them on Guam, it would cost $10.” In effect, said McCarthy, “the government is evaluating life at about $8.50.”

At a New York press conference on June 28, several Jewish and Christian leaders made the same appeal for temporary transit centers, where refugees can be nursed to health and prepared for their initial exposure to North American life. (The press conference reflected the increased urgency of the situation. In late June, the Thai government forcibly repatriated over 40,000 Cambodian and Laotian refugees, and the Malaysian government threatened to expel its entire refugee population. In a joint statement, the ministers of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand had announced they would admit no more refugees unless those were assured of resettlement.)

Catholic Cardinal Terence Cooke convened the press conference, and he was joined by Paul McCleary of Church World Service (relief arm of the National Council of Churches), Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee, Grady Mangham of World Relief, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, among others. The religious leaders also requested—in their appeal to President Carter, the United States Congress, and the United Nations—that resettlement be promoted in other countries and that American military transport be used to take the refugees to transit camps.

Evangelical relief agencies last month were attacking the refugee problem from several directions:

• Food for the Hungry, a Scottsdale, Arizona, group, was operating its rescue ship, the Akuna, in international waters off Malaysia. President Larry Ward requested a meeting with Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister Mohamad bin Mahathir, during a trip to Southeast Asia. Ward asserted, however, that the “ultimate solution” to the Indochinese refugee problem is in South America. For two years, Food for the Hungry has negotiated for permission to resettle refugees in Bolivia. A spokesman said the agency recently contacted officials in Paraguay and Surinam about refugee resettlement, and that they expressed “positive interest.”

• World Vision launched its rescue ship, Seasweep, on July 6. President Stanley Mooneyham accompanied the vessel on part of its initial 25-day relief operation, which involved giving food, water, and medical supplies to refugees escaping in boats, often overcrowded, unseaworthy, and low on supplies.

• World Concern sent two medical teams into refugee camps in Hong Kong. The Seattle, Washington, agency also promoted vocational training in refugee camps in Thailand and Malaysia, and sent food and medical supplies. The agency began a $1 million fund raising campaign last month through radio, television, and newspaper advertising in the Pacific Northwest, where most of its donors are located. World Concern also was named “western coordinating agency” for refugee resettlement for World Relief.

• MAP International, based in Carol Stream, Illinois, sent $35,000 in medical supplies last spring to refugee camps in Thailand. Those supplies were distributed by staff members of the International Rescue Committee, a group that also is involved in refugee resettlement.

• World Relief, the relief and development arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, developed a “survival kit” for Cambodian refugees being sent back across the border from Thailand. The kit included cooking utensils, food, blankets, and other supplies. Its refugee services office opened earlier this year under the direction of T. Grady Mangham, and has found sponsors for 1,300 refugees. (For information about sponsoring refugees, write World Relief Refugee Services, Box WRC, Nyack, NY 10960.)

One sponsor working through World Relief was a Lisle, Illinois, Bible Church layman, Herbert Oldham. He says he spent $200 to $300 of his own money over the course of sponsorship of a Vietnamese family. The retired father of eight, Oldham said the sponsorship was rewarding and a learning experience. Because of the cultural barriers separating the Vietnamese and himself, Oldham commented, “I can sort of understand what a missionary must be up against.”

For the most part, relief agencies discourage single families from sponsoring refugees. Leon Marion, executive director of the American Council for Voluntary Agencies—umbrella agency for nine religious and humanitarian resettlement groups—advocates that a group of people sponsor a refugee, rather than an individual or family, because of the amount of personal attention and costs involved.

The nine groups under the umbrella of the American Council for Voluntary Agency have resettled over 245,000 Indochinese refugees since May 1975, said Marion (Feb. 16 issue, p. 43). McCarthy’s Catholic agency has resettled nearly half of those refugees. The council’s various agencies, which include World Relief and Church World Service, receive $350 in federal money for each refugee they resettle. Marion estimates that the entire resettlement process—from the initial contact overseas to the time the refugee is met by his sponsor—costs from $1,200 to $1,500.

Other costs are incurred, Marion noted, while the refugee is being settled into the community. On occasion, he said, these costs can be high. “All you need is one sickness or illness requiring medical care, which the resettling agency is responsible for, and the cost could run into thousands of dollars.”

However, Mangham of World Relief hoped that potential sponsors wouldn’t be frightened off by cost. Various governmental assistance programs are available, he said. “Really, if people avail themselves of the assistance that’s provided, they can sponsor a refugee with very little financial obligation on their part.”

What is most required of sponsors is time spent in attending to the refugee’s needs, Mangham indicated. Most refugees need housing, employment, and training in English. He says that resettlement provides a “tremendous opportunity for Christian witness” since Christian sponsors can share “their reason for doing this” with the refugee family.

A good refugee resettlement program will take about three months, said Matthew Giuffrida, director of resettlement programs for the American Baptist Churches. This is the amount of time needed by a local group to “take a refugee to the point where he is able to control his own life and make his own decisions,” he said. “At that point, the refugee stops being a refugee.”

Sometimes, refugees’ decisions displease their sponsors. A Florida church was disgruntled, Giuffrida said, when its refugee family, on a $1,000 monthly income, began shopping for a new sports car. Other sponsors, particularly from the north, have experienced a sense of loss when their refugee family moved away after several months to relocate in areas with a warmer winter climate.

“But to me, that’s the meaning of freedom,” he said. “They [the refugees] do place great importance on their own convictions, and they’re not here in this country to be dominated but to express themselves, and I can go along with that.”

Giuffrida’s office has settled more Indochinese refugees than any of the other 15 denominations working under Church World Service—over 700 during the first six months of this year. American Baptists first began refugee-related work in 1919, when it established “Christian centers” in major urban areas. At these centers, new immigrants were helped through the difficult first days of acculturation. Presently, the denomination budgets $18,000 per year for refugee programs as part of a permanent program base. “We recognize that while the faces of refugees change, new refugee crises are always with us,” he said.

Considering the urgency of the present refugee crisis, now more than ever a “sponsorship is a way of saving a person’s life,” said Giuffrida.

President Jimmy Carter in June raised the U.S. refugee quota from 7,000 to 14,000 per month. Several relief officials praised Carter’s action, but noted that the government had not been meeting the previous quota because of transportation problems, such as the grounding of the DC 10 jets, and depleted government funds for refugee problems. John Tenhula, an information officer with Church World Service, said his organization, like many others, has a “backlog” of sponsors and that there is a lag of three to six months between the time when a refugee obtains a sponsor and when he arrives in the United States. Like many other relief agency officials, he hoped the resettlement process would be speeded up.

In a July 4 newsletter appeal for refugee sponsorships, Church World Service asked, “PLEASE! Have you stopped to think how many boat refugees from Indochina could drown while the world talks about helping them?”

C. S. Lewis And Friends

The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends, by Humphrey Carpenter (Houghton Mifflin, 287 pp., $10.95), is reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, editor at large, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This book is a treat, a Sunday after-church brunch, a fluffy omelette, or a smooth piece of cheesecake. Not only does it look good and smell good, it tastes good. The main ingredient is C. S. Lewis.

That is as it should be. For the Inklings, despite Lewis’s own protestations to the contrary, were C. S. Lewis. He leavened the group; he bound them together. The people who gathered on Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and Child (or the Bird and Baby as it was nicknamed), Lewis’s favorite pub, and in his rooms on Thursday evenings, were his friends. The commonality that held them together, other than a love for certain kinds of literature and reading aloud, was their relationship to him.

Not that this felicitous book—and Carpenter does write well—is merely a Lewis biography disguised. Much of the information about Lewis has been published before, though perhaps not said so gracefully or poignantly. But Carpenter develops all the other characters as they moved in and out of Lewis’s life. Perhaps since he has recently written a biography of Tolkien, he spends more time on Warnie Lewis and Charles Williams. The book might almost be considered a mini-biography of the latter.

The structure of the book reflects the structure of the Inklings; it is a masterly stroke. Lewis begins and ends the book. The center section (roughly), part two and much of three, concerns Williams. If Lewis was the mind behind the Inklings, one might say that Williams was its heart.

But a heart and a mind flawed. That is the other amazing quality about Carpenter’s treatment. He is nearly objective. (No one can be completely so.)

If you revere these writers and cannot admit a little original—and other—sin into their lives, you will not like this book. Carpenter takes the men as he finds them. He was there. He knew. Lewis was somewhat of a snob. His treatment of Tolkien was not always what it should have been. Tolkien did have a selective memory and an acid tongue in later years. He was jealous and suspicious of Lewis’s success in so many fields. Williams (and this was new information for me) had a sad*stic streak and had an idyllic marriage in writing only.

All that merely makes the influence of these men more remarkable to me. No mortal should be above criticism; no one is. And criticism done as charmingly as Carpenter has done should help idolaters take it more easily.

So, the meal is laced with a little medicine. Evangelicals who have idolized these men—let’s admit that some of us have done that—need this book with its medicine. I was glad I took it all.

The Mountains Of Ararat

Where Is Noah’s Ark?, by Lloyd R. Bailey (Abingdon, 128 pp., $1.95 pb), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, professor at large, Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, California.

With a format similar to that of many books arguing for the ark’s survival, this book will doubtless be read by many who think that it is another work of that genre. It is not. Instead it seeks to refute the arguments that favor the survival of Noah’s vessel.

Bailey, who is associate professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, commences with an attempt to cut ark hunters off at the pass: he argues that “the mountains of Ararat,” where the ark was said to have landed in Genesis 8:4, cannot properly be identified with Mt. Ararat (called Buyuk Agri Dagi by the Turks), in eastern Turkey. In support of this contention, he provides as an appendix an article published in 1901. This argument is hardly new and has been answered frequently. When James Bryce returned to England with his wood relic from Ararat in 1876 and delivered a paper before the Royal Geographical Society, he cited the great Theodor Nöldeke and others in support of the identification of the Armenian Ararat with the biblical mountain and declared that “he could not admit that any other Ararat had superior claims to the mountain of which he had been speaking” (see my book, The Quest for Noah’s Ark, Pt. III, sec. 6). By refusing to identify the Genesis mountains of Ararat with the Turkish mountain, Bailey then has to explain every one of the considerable number of sightings, the wood finds, the photos, and the satellite data connecting the ark to present-day Ararat.

The strain of this herculean task shows throughout the book. Thus Bailey declares that “attempts to date Navarra’s wood by the extent of fossilization and related conditions are totally meaningless”—and cites amateur explorer John Morris (coauthor with Tim LaHaye of The Ark on Ararat) and the Department of Wood and Paper Science at the North Carolina State University in support of his contention (pp. 77–80). Frankly, this reviewer finds it difficult, on such a basis, to dismiss the physical wood analysis not only of the Madrid Forestry Institute, but also that of the Department of Anthropology and Prehistoric Studies of the University of Bordeaux.

When faced with undeniable discoveries of hand-tooled wood at exceedingly high altitudes on treeless Ararat, Bailey prefers any explanation—however speculative—to an attribution of this wood to the ark. Some examples: “There is nothing physically improbable … in the proposal that persons may have carried or hauled heavy timbers to the snow line and used them to build some sort of structure” (p. 91). “Even if the wood grew only at a distance from the mountain, there is nothing improbable in the suggestion that the timbers were brought there overland” (p. 92). G. Ernest Wright, who opposed the whole idea of a universal flood and the literal historicity of the Genesis account of Noah, is quoted for his utterly gratuituous speculation that wood discovered on Ararat could have come from a replica ark: “Industrious monks … wishing to further their livelihood by the tourist trade, may have built something up on the mountain that with great difficulty could be seen and shown to be the ‘Ark’” (p. 95). Particularly indicative of Bailey’s approach to his subject is his comment on the absence of any records showing that such a replica was built: “In my view, such an absence of literary evidence proves nothing. Had such a replica been constructed, the monks would have tried to avoid any record of their activity” (ibid.). Thus documentary confirmation of the replica hypothesis becomes impossible in principle; any evidence would have been concealed by the sneaky replica builders.

If you can believe that, you should not have the least trouble believing the admittedly circ*mstantial, but at least substantial, mass of evidential data pointing to the survival of the one wooden object historically and inextricably tied to Mt. Ararat, Noah’s ark.

American Civil Religion

Twilight of the Saints: Biblical Christianity and Civil Religion in America by Robert D. Linder and Richard V. Pierard (InterVarsity, 213 pp., $4.95 pb) is reviewed by Paul F. Scotchmer, Berkeley, California.

In the mid-1950s, Will Herberg’s Protestant-Catholic-Jew startled religious and academic leaders throughout America with the observation that there are really four major religious expressions in America, not just three. Besides Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism, there is also a “common faith,” which Herberg identified as the American Way of Life. Scholars began to pursue this theme in earnest beginning with Robert Bellah’s oft reprinted 1967 essay on “Civil Religion in America.” Making good use of a decade of lively discussion on this topic, historians Linder and Pierard have collaborated to expose the historical development of American Civil Religion and to weigh this “common faith” on the scales of biblical Christianity, evangelically conceived.

Chapter 1 introduces civil religion in general, and its American manifestations in particular. Unfortunately, it is at this early stage that we encounter the weakest aspect of the book: the definition of civil religion. “Briefly stated, civil religion is the use of consensus religious sentiments, concepts and symbols by the state—either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously—for its own political purposes.” The problem is the emphasis on the state. A better definition of American civil religion was supplied by Herberg a few years ago in an address on this subject: “It is an organic structure of ideas, values, and beliefs that constitutes a faith common to Americans as Americans, and is genuinely operative in their lives; a faith that markedly influences, and is influenced by, the professed religions of Americans.” This definition avoids the suggestion of state religion.

In chapters 2 and 3 the authors do a commendable job of illustrating the development of civil religion in America, from its dayspring in Puritanism to its twilight in contemporary society. Fortunately, they deviate from their own definition of civil religion; otherwise, they would not have been able to do justice to its permeation with American values wrought by eighteenth and nineteenth-century evangelicals.

Chapters 4 and 5 offer a balanced evaluation of the good and bad in civil religion. The authors recognize on one hand the usefulness of some sort of spiritual consensus for social cohesion; on the other hand, they underscore the tendency for civil religion to baptize national (and ephemeral) values, and to dilute biblical (and eternal) values.

The sixth and final chapter explores the alternatives for evangelicals in today’s society. The temptation to promote civil religion as a means of gluing back the pieces of our disintegrating social and political order is roundly rejected. This leaves essentially three alternatives: (1) to resign oneself to the fact that America is going to the devil, limiting one’s concerns to the spiritual realm; (2) to attempt to “recapture America for God,” emulating our Puritan fathers; or (3) the author’s solution, simply to practice New Testament Christianity, “re-emphasizing the ‘city upon a hill’ model but applying it only to the people of God rather than to the entire American nation.”

A stronger case could be made for the second alternative, but nevertheless, Christians can certainly profit by reading Twilight of the Saints. It treats a most complex subject in a lucid way, and its colorful illustrations make it a source of entertainment from start to finish. But more than that, it prophetically incites Christians in America to discriminate more carefully between Christ and culture.

The Spiritual Condition Of Europe

The Changing Church in Europe by Wayne A. Detzler (Zondervan, 256 pp., $5.95 pb) is reviewed by Donald D. Smeeton, professor, Continental Bible College, St. Pieters Leeuw, Belgium.

Robert P. Evans’s Let Europe Hear, was issued in 1963 and so for many years evangelicals have lacked a major survey of current conditions in European Christianity. There have been brief overviews, such as Wallace Henley’s Europe at the Crossroads (Good News), but they make no claim to comprehensiveness. Now Evans’s colleague, his associate director of the Greater Europe Mission has provided a worthy successor. Detzler comments on Europe from Great Britain to Greece, from the charismatic Catholics to the order-bound Orthodox.

Europe has moved from nominal Christianity to pragmatic paganism. How could this change have happened? Most readers, especially American evangelicals, will appreciate Detzler’s interpretation of the contradictory movements within Europe. One hears of many towns without an adequate gospel witness, yet one knows about the famous cathedrals. One hears of resistance to the evangel, yet Bible sales are growing rapidly. One views the persecution of Christians behind the Iron Curtain, yet sees the rise of Euro-Communism in “Christian” Europe. How can all these reports be true? Detzler will help the bewildered correlate these opposing movements. Detzler explains why Vatican II can be credited (blamed?) for provoking both a progressive and a conservative reaction among European Roman Catholics. He suggests reasons why the Roman Church appears both to embrace and reject Communism. Because the Eastern Church appears incomprehensible to Western eyes, most readers will profit from Detzler’s summary of recent events in this “enigmatic” branch of Christendom. But one wonders how he can be so suspicious of the Roman Catholic Church in the “free” West, yet so sympathetic to the plight of the Orthodox Catholics in the Communist East. As a resident of Dorset, England, Detzler is at his best in his analysis of strengths and weaknesses in the Anglican and Free Churches of England.

Because of the need for such a volume and Detzler’s gallant effort, I hesitate to criticize, but I think it is better that criticisms come from one who is sympathetic to Detzler’s commitment rather than from one who thinks that evangelizing Europe is unnecessary. The discerning historian will surely question the assertion that Europe’s spiritual decline is the direct result of the rise of nonevangelical theology. Certainly theology that minimizes biblical authority and rejects the supernatural does contribute to the demise of the church, but so do philosophic opinions (i.e. materialism), social conditions (i.e. war), and economic change (i.e. rapid economic prosperity). Europeans will rightly note the unnecessary viewing of Europe through American eyes. About 95 percent of the footnotes and bibliography refer to materials in English; the remainder are from a single European language, German. On noting this Anglo-centeredness, a Belgian friend said, “After all, an ocean separates England from the Continent!” Detzler cites the Billy Graham backed congresses in Berlin (1966), Amsterdam (1971), and Lausanne (1974) as evidence of evangelical resurgence, yet these might better illustrate the needed presence of American organization and finance. I have no doubts, however, that these meetings provided positive impetus in unity and evangelism among European evangelicals. The traditional Pentecostal will wonder why so much concern was centered on the Catholic charismatic movement when the large and growing Pentecostal churches in France, Portugal, and Italy receive such slight mention. He will also wonder why the four pages on Romania concentrate on the Baptists, while leaving the more numerous Pentecostals unmentioned.

Nevertheless, The Changing Church in Europe is still a very helpful book. Detzler’s message needs to be heard.

Periodicals

The field of Christian education has not been well-served by periodicals on the professional level. Now the National Association of Directors of Christian Education has launched Infocus as a 16-page collection of articles and notes. All present and potential DCE’s should subscribe, along with all Bible college and seminary libraries. $5/year (3 issues). Stanley Olsen, 810 S. 7th St., Minneapolis, MN 55415.

Creeping secularization, cultural pluralism, and the aboriginal population are high on the agenda.

A well-known evangelical preacher in a well-known evangelical church in the United States, who was about to visit Australia to speak at a Christian convention, was being farewelled by his congregation. “Lord,” prayed a venerable deacon, his grey beard twitching with emotion, “protect our beloved pastor from those wild Australians.” His sentiment accorded well with the myth cherished by many Americans, that Australia is an untamed country of bush and billabong, inhabited by koalas and kangaroos, and jolly swagmen.

Although the present reality is vastly different, Australians are still coming to terms with their history. “One of the ghosts in our past which still haunts us,” said Manning Clark the historian in his 1976 Boyer Lectures, is “the bloody encounter between the white man and the black man,” while the other is “the use of cheap convict labor to plant civilization in Australia.”

Today at least three major challenges face Australian Christians. The first is secularism. Although the 1976 census reveals that 78 percent of the population still profess to be Christians, there was a “mass swing of the sixties and seventies away from God and church” (see Leon Morris, “Christians in Australia,” Jan. 19 issue). The weekly church attendance of Protestants is now less than 20 percent, while in the 21- to 24-year age group it is only 9 percent.

This creeping secularization is due less to an intellectual rejection of the gospel than to the apathy that materialism brings. Although there is some poverty—especially among working class migrants—the majority of Australians are very comfortably well off. It was Donald Horne who in 1976 coined the expression “the lucky country.” The label has stuck, but in a sense in a different way from that intended by its originator. He meant that Australia had become a modern industrial country more by good luck than by good management. But what Australians usually mean when they use the expression of themselves is that their country’s vast natural resources guarantee their affluence, and its sunshine their health and enjoyment.

The second challenge is that of cultural pluralism. Before World War II virtually all Australians were of British descent. People referred to Britain as “the old country” and described a trip there as “going home.” But after the war there was a planned influx of Italians, Dutch, Germans, Yugoslavs, Poles, Austrians, and especially Greeks (Melbourne is now the third largest Greek-speaking city in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki), while more recently immigrants have been arriving from Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Latin America, and the Chinese dispersion. So the original hom*ogeneous Anglo-Saxon culture no longer exists. In its place a multicultural society is emerging, in which the different ethnic groups are learning to respect each other. I know no better statement of the ideal of “integration” than that given in 1969 by Roy Jenkins when he was British Home Secretary. He defined it “not as a flattening process of assimilation, but cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.” Thus the church has new opportunities to reach out to the growing numbers of Muslims and Chinese.

The third challenge is the Australian aboriginal population. It is thought that the Aborigines migrated to Australia from Asia some 20,000 years ago. When the European colonists arrived, there were probably 300,000 of these simple people, hunters and food gatherers, divided into more than 600 tribal groups, speaking more than 200 languages, and regarding the whole continent as theirs. The decimation of the aboriginal population was appalling. Many died of European diseases, while others were ruthlessly slaughtered, until by the mid-1930s there were only about 60,000 “full blood” Aborigines left. (The aboriginal population has more than doubled since then, and it is estimated that it may be back to 300,000 by the end of the century.)

The Aborigines were also dispossessed of their land. “Unlike other British colonial territories, Australia was claimed and occupied without negotiation of a treaty, without any act of purchase and without any payment of compensation.” So writes Frank Engel, former general secretary of the Australian Council of Churches, in a recent paper.

Worse even than the Aborigines’ loss of life and land was their loss of morale. “It is my thesis,” wrote the aboriginal author Kevin Gilbert in Living Black, “that Aboriginal Australia underwent a rape of the soul so profound that the blight continues in the minds of most blacks today.”

Most of the churches have missions to the Aborigines, and have a reasonable record of bringing them education and health care in addition to the gospel, and of helping to champion their rights and preserve their identity. It is thought that perhaps 75 percent of them are now nominally Christians. Only a few Christian Aborigines have been ordained to the pastorate, however, although the number is growing. The Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship was founded earlier in this decade and draws about a thousand to its annual convention. As yet, however, there is little liaison between them and white evangelicals.

For three weeks in May, Billy Graham conducted his third crusade in Sydney; 95 percent of the churches cooperated in the Crusade. The statistics are astonishing. Eleven thousand people enrolled in the counselling classes, and more than 2,500 prayer groups were formed. On April 22, 30,000 Christians visited a million homes. Then, in spite of unseasonable cold and rain, huge crowds came to the Randwick Racecourse each night, growing to 85,000 on the final Sunday afternoon. At each meeting more than 1,000 responded to the invitation, a high proportion of whom had no church affiliation; thousands of small nurture groups are now caring for them. Mass media coverage was overwhelming, and landline radio relays were arranged in 130 centers. A team of associates held satellite crusades in other cities, and nearly 1,000 clergy and church workers enrolled in the week-long School of Evangelism, which it was my privilege to address on three mornings. Church leaders have spoken of the powerful impact the crusade has had not only on Sydney but throughout the nation. “My visit to Australia,” said Billy Graham as he left, “has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my entire ministry.”

John R. W. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church, London, England.

A warning to men everywhere of medicine that murders.

In space somewhere between the front row and the screen a mother and two children, in silent and staccato movements, paint, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” They have come over a grassy knoll, floating ghostlike, traversing the ground in stop-action chunks of distance and time. Their faces and clothing are colored chalky white. They paint on an invisible canvas suspended between you and them. Behind the words they paint a white backdrop, obscuring themselves behind their work. The sign completed—crumbles. The hill behind is again visible. The mother and her children have vanished.

Thus begins a second Francis Schaeffer film series. Premiere showings and seminars, again using a companion book, will begin in Philadelphia on September 7 and initially are scheduled in 19 other cities. Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, M.D., have written the book, which director Franky Schaeffer V has adapted for the script of the five-episode film series. The surrealistic title sequence announces that this intends to be a media experience, not just another Christian movie.

Abortion, as symptomatic of eroding human worth, is the theme for the first of the 50-minute episodes. Koop, in his only dramatic role, launches the series with a mechanical response to a phone call. Appraised of a baby’s critical condition, he orders emergency medical procedures to save its life. Although the action never quite reaches the pitch of a Hollywood panic, it ushers the viewer into the muted clamor of an operating room. In tense reverence you settle back. Maybe this will be a better Christian movie.

On the screen, surgical preparations continue. The camera weaves through the maze of sophisticated equipment that will assist Koop in his effort to sustain the flickering life of one infant. Afterwards, standing in a medical jungle of tubes and wires, the world renowned surgeon wonders out loud about the irony of taking such extraordinary measures to save one deformed life when, in other hospitals only blocks away, other babies who are unwanted, unbelievably are allowed to starve, victims of designed neglect.

In a following sequence, Schaeffer talks about the dehumanizing consequences of a mechanistic, utilitarian view of man. The camera has found him lost in the midst of a smouldering junkyard. The scene shifts to a broken baby carriage lying in the mud.

There is another graphic scenario. The camera wanders above a seemingly endless expanse of hot, white sand strewn with hundreds of “dead” dolls, then draws back to show Koop standing on the shores of the Dead Sea. He is standing on a rise of salt surrounded by pools of brackish water. One doll lies face down, partly submerged. Koop contrasts the conservation quotas on spiders and whales with the medical profession’s open season on unwanted babies. The message is straight-forward, enhanced and supported by the strength of the graphics. The viewer cannot help but be moved. We live in a schizophrenic society concerned about the increasing rate of child abuse, while it licenses doctors to kill the unborn.

But the films have a schizophrenia of their own. At times Franky Schaeffer and company lapse into the security of an evangelical media tradition I call the preacher syndrome. Schaeffer occasionally interrupts the cinematic flow with lectures that stir painful memories of the first series, “How Should We Then Live?” The flat documentary-like narratives contrast with other imaginative, poignant images that “bring home” the message.

Many times the visual message is weakened because of the priority put on words. Schaeffer’s tightly reasoned and analytical arguments are not well suited to film. And he was apparently reluctant to simplify his language to accommodate the broader audience.

Film demands much more from a speaker than does a live appearance or even one on television. The audience is totally captive, enclosed in a tunnel. The only source of light and sound is the screen at the other end. Every nuance is scrutinized.

Evangelical comfort with language may warrant its heavy use when that is the only medium used (such as in the book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Fleming H. Revell, 1979). However, there are several more sensory dimensions through which one can work the message in film. The existential potential must be appreciated to be pursued.

An example of language overkill clutters a sensitive scene in which a young boy and girl (Franky’s children) play mommy and daddy with a baby doll. I first saw the sequence on an editing table without sound. I could almost imagine the little girl’s words as I watched. In the final version, the young girl awkwardly recites an overwritten script of four- and five-syllable words. Here words detract from the impact.

One of the more effective examples in this series depicts society’s dehumanization of the aged. A parapalegic grandmother is discarded by her children in a nursing home—propped glassy-eyed and alone in front of a television set blaring forth quiz show banality—and forgotten. In the dramatization of this everyday occurrence, we have witnessed a visual parable with a felt impact beyond words.

By the end of episode three, human dignity has been regained. Abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, death with dignity, and mercy killing have all been dismantled as viable social alternatives to life. The Judeo-Christian understanding of man has left humanism bankrupt.

The fourth and fifth films revert again to too much dependence on words, rather than making the powerful use of the visual image so splendidly employed in films one through three. The fifth film presents the gospel, using portions of Scripture for much of the script. In an effort to tie this film to the series, the camera wanders through a dark and ethereal setting of caged people, victims depicted in earlier films, lost somewhere in the abyss. There follows a sequence of Schaeffer’s Bible talks shot on the appropriate locations in the Holy Land. In one, he is the prophet speaking from Mount Sinai.

The films, in many respects, are a breakthrough for Christian cinematography. The music and lyrics were obviously given high priority. Schaeffer and Koop have written a strong, prophetic statement that should clarify the confusion among many Christians about the ethical issues involved. Humanists have been given notice of the impending moral chaos that faces a society divested of its Judeo-Christian foundations. Despite the distracting tendency to posit a preacher on the screen, these films present lucid arguments firmly establishing the biblical view of man as the cornerstone of the legal and medical professions in Western society. They vividly portray the cancerous consequences of humantistic relativism in these professions. But what makes these films mandatory viewing for Christians and others concerned about the degenerating status of all but the “perfect, planned, and privileged” is the way they sort through the relevant data in the light of Scripture and present the inevitable conclusions. They are solid ground on which Christians can take a stand.

I both laud and lament these films. They are that way—either very good or very bad (cinematically speaking). There is a confusion about who is in control. Are they a documentary series by Schaeffer and Koop, or a brilliant use of the medium of film by Franky? Room must be allowed for the stature of the writers. The message is their apologetic, but in many places they don’t allow it to become truly intregated with the medium they are employing—film. In outstanding spots it does. And that, for me, is the success of these films.

Assessing the risks of Jewish-Christian dialogue.

Jewish-evangelical interchange seems to be entering a new phase. A decade or more ago (when I first took interest in dialogue), the activity seemed limited to an individual here and there. More recently, whole groups of Jews and evangelicals have convened in order to understand each other better. Much distortion remains, however, because we often prefer to talk about rather than with one another.

Difficulties arise when the two communities try to engage in dialogue. First, they are basically different, like oranges and apples: the Jewish community is a culture, the evangelical community a religious faith. Evangelicals, for example, do not understand how an atheist can be a Jew, but Jews have no problem with that combination.

Second, the groups must overcome the bitter legacy of Jewish-Christian relations from biblical times to the present. This ominous cloud hangs over any current endeavor.

Third, the impression lingers that dialogue implies weakness or uncertainty as to one’s own convictions. Or else, it represents a risk that one group may uncritically accept an alternate point of view and slip from the solid rock of their faith.

Fourth, differing theological vocabularies can cause problems. Take the Protestant doctrine of grace. I remember a Roman Catholic theologian who got so exasperated with a Protestant’s insistence on the principle of grace that he blurted out, “I agree, I agree, now can we get on to something else?” But Jews are not Roman Catholics; our appeal to salvation by grace may sound to them like escaping from responsible action. It may appear as not necessarily approval, but acquiescence in the holocaust. We don’t always understand each other as we attempt to have dialogue. Often we are tempted to draw early and unwarranted conclusions.

How do Jews view evangelicals? It’s hard to say precisely. “Where there are two Jews you have at least three points of view,” goes the familiar Jewish saying. But here are some general conclusions.

Jews in the U.S. take note of the evangelical presence. Ten years ago they did not. Rabbi Arthur Gilbert used to distinguish among Roman Catholics, Protestants, and evangelicals, insisting that evangelicals should be represented in any kind of interaction. But he was the exception, not the rule. Jews appreciate the substantial evangelical support for Israel. They understand that the support is not uniform but it is distinctive when compared with the Christian community as a whole. But they also feel that evangelicals may be supporting them for the wrong reason, particularly in the hopes of their latter-day conversion. If that is the case, and evangelicals tire of Jewish resistance to them, the Jews fear that evangelical support may languish or even take some covert form of anti-Semitism (understood as hostility toward the Jewish people as such).

According to Charles Clark and Rodney Stark in Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism, orthodox Christians’ narrow view of salvation leads them to proselytize. But when Jews reject their message, Christians often get hostile. This tendency, which is common among evangelicals, threatens the Jews. And further, evangelicals refuse to admit the danger or fail to see that it operated in the past. Jews accept the fact that evangelicals are evangelistic. That is not their major concern. What troubles them is when the Jew is singled out for evangelism.

Many of the widely held stereotypes about evangelicals have been picked up by the Jews. The Elmer Gantry image is all too common to them as well. In short, the Jewish community would like to believe the good will so lavishly expressed by evangelicals. They would like to believe that evangelicals have a genuine concern for Jews, not as pawns in Christian eschatology, but as fellow men and women, and elder brothers and sisters in a monotheistic faith. On the whole, their desire to believe seems stronger than their misgivings.

Now I will speak as an evangelical to evangelical Christians about the Jews. I do not at all mind if the Jews listen, and I welcome any response from either community.

Evangelicals dismiss too quickly the anti-Semitism associated (sometimes in an incipient form) with orthodox Christian tradition. While the comments by Harold O. J. Brown and John Warwick Montgomery in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Aug. 18 and Sept. 8, 1978) have much to commend, they seem to illustrate this point. Justin Martyr not only ably defended Christianity, he accepted the persecution of Jews as a just recompense “for crucifying our Lord.” Chrysostom gives more than a little evidence of hostility toward the Jews. Luther never recommended the mass extermination of Jews, but his vitriolic attacks were enough to influence others. Evangelicals ought to recognize anti-Semitism whenever it threatens, even if it comes from our church fathers. (We may also err in reading too much into comments of some of the fathers and improperly faulting them.)

Evangelicals should not go on a guilt trip, however. This would solve nothing and would likely intensify the problem. It is enough that we repudiate anti-Semitism wherever we find it, in ourselves or in others.

The more difficult task for evangelicals lies with the alleged roots of anti-Semitism in Scripture. Our immediate reaction is to ask whether the prophets were anti-Semitic; if not, then neither Jesus nor the disciples should be considered so. But this is not adequate. Several sensitive areas remain: Jesus’ scathing attack on the Pharisees, John’s references to “the Jews,” the falling away of Israel, and Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus. I will only comment on these briefly.

When Paul stood before the Sanhedrin, he announced, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead!” (Acts 23:6, NASB). He did not say that he had been a Pharisee prior to his experience with Christ on the way to Damascus. Now Paul hardly would have said that he was a Pharisee if Jesus had categorically denounced all Pharisees as hypocrites. It would also be difficult to appreciate Jesus’ warning to the disciples to “beware the leaven of the Pharisees” (Luke 12:1), as if the disciples might fall prey to the same hypocrisy. We must not interpret selective attack on the Pharisees to apply to Pharisees in general, much less to Jews as a whole.

John’s references to “the Jews” reflect the growing separation of Christians (both Jew and Gentile) and the Jewish community as distinguished from them (see also 1 Thess. 2:14–16). He uses the term in contrast to the disciples of Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile (John 5:16, 18; 7:13; 9:18; 10:31; 11:19; 18:36). At one point (John 4:22), he breaks the pattern to record Jesus’ comment that “salvation is from the Jews.” If we do not read more into the phrase than John intends, we will find no basis for anti-Semitism.

Paul carefully orchestrates the theme of Israel’s falling away (already familiar from the prophets) and the ingathering of the nations (anticipated in the prophets). He asserts that the falling away provides no cause for the Gentiles to become complacent or arrogant (Rom. 11:18), and the ingathering is to make the Jews jealous (Rom. 11:11). Concerning the obstinate nature of his people, Paul concludes, “I say then, God has not rejected his people, has he? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom. 11:1, NASB). NO fair appraisal of these words can justify hostility toward the Jews.

The question of Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ death has been variously understood. Some even charge the Jews with deicide. When Rabbi Gilbert asked my opinion years ago, I replied that Jesus died for the sins of all humanity, and that the sins of the Jews should not be singled out. I still feel comfortable with that answer.

What shall we draw from these brief observations? The conditions that gave rise to anti-Semitism are already in place: the establishment of Christianity as distinct from the Jewish community as such, persecution, and the increase of partisan polemics. But Christians were admonished by teaching and example to love rather than hate the Jews, and as grafted branches not to boast over those who were originally part of the vine.

This point is critical for evangelicals because they take Scripture seriously. They can discover in Scripture the circ*mstances that gave rise to anti-Semitism, but they will find no justification for walking that dismal road. In fact, the reverse is true. The pages plead for them to love all humanity, the Jew no less than any other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “We cannot hate what God has created and claim to love Him.” Anti-Semitism is a denial of the evangelical faith.

Evangelicals would do well to keep in mind a corrective to anti-Semitism: we ought to see in Israel both the wrath and the mercy of God, not wrath alone. And we ought to weigh our own standing before God in terms of his mercy and wrath, not mercy alone. This balance will help us immeasurably as we confront the Jew.

Jews are a part of this beloved world, not a device to trigger the end days. Love them for themselves; help them as we would help others; build bridges of friendship.

And what of evangelism? Evangelicals have the feeling that if something moves, we must convert it. We are too concerned with visible results. It is our responsibility to share our faith with whoever cares to hear, but the results are in God’s hands.

We should also keep in mind the striking similarities between Jews and evangelicals: the high regard for Scripture; allegiance to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the awareness of being a people of God; common elements in ritual and worship; the legacy of suffering for our faith; and a hope that transcends all the tragic events of life. However we wish to explain it, we have a special kinship. That, too, should be part of our approach to the Jew.

Samuel Schultz shared with me an experience that illustrates this kinship. One day he was waiting to view the famous Isaiah scroll and two bearded rabbis stood in line before him. When they came to the scroll, they stood transfixed before the ancient text while tears trickled down their faces. Once they gained their composure, they moved quickly on their way, probably without knowing how deeply my friend would identify with their response to the sacred text. They were, each in his own way, people of the Book.

I conclude with an appeal to dialogue. By nature dialogue suggests the willingness to hear and be heard. It suggests that we go beyond speaking at Jews to speaking with them. Rightly understood, dialogue does not compromise the integrity of those who participate or the communities they represent. I have never met a person I could not learn from or one so profound that I had nothing to offer in return. The opportunity today for Jewish-evangelical dialogue is unprecedented. With these thoughts in mind, therefore, let us proceed with care, but proceed nonetheless.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

Current definitions of this key word give negative guidance.

“Missionary” is a venerable and respected word in search of identity. If you think I exaggerate, try this quiz:

Which of the following could be called a “missionary”?

1.Billy Graham

2.Jimmy Carter

3.Carl F. H. Henry

4.Francis Schaeffer

5.All of the above

6.None of the above

Number five is true if “every person is a missionary or a mission field” (though some Republicans might take exception at one point). Number one is true if “missionary” means full-time evangelism. Number four is true if “missionary” means going to some culture other than one’s own to do religious work. Number six is true if “missionary” means the vocation of pioneer church-starting evangelism.

Then again, what difference does it make? Consider what happens when fuzzy definitions of this key word lead to troublesome things like the acute frustration many young adults have over a missionary “call,” the confusion of missionary and national church leaders about the missionary role, and the sharp contention over whether or not the church has entered the postmissionary era. Then it would make a difference.

But, some might say, the definition is not in doubt. It’s to them that I pose the following remarks. My aim is not to come up with a definition, but simply to argue that we badly need one.

The catchy slogan, “Every Christian is a missionary,” is intended to jolt God’s people into responsible obedience to Christ’s intention that all be witnesses and proclaim the good news. It is based on the idea that the word “missionary” simply means “sent one” and that all Christians fall into that category. If that is true, what then becomes of a specific “call” or vocation?

“Oh, but,” some would respond, “just as there are many disciples and only twelve Disciples, so there are missionaries and Missionaries.

But that won’t do. If all are automatically lower-case missionaries, why should anyone be so arrogant as to aspire to the big-time, capital-letter Missionary? What distinction is there, anyway?

Thus the mission board executive comes to the pulpit to defog the issue: indeed there is a specific calling that is for some, not for all. It partakes of the same basic idea, being sent, only now the missionary becomes one who is sent far away. He may fly an airplane, extract teeth, or teach theology, but if he goes far away, then he is a missionary. Even if he is paid by Shell Oil? No, only if he is paid by Christians and works at it full-time. Then Stephen Olford came as a missionary to the United States because he was sent from far-away England and is paid by Christians? No, one must be paid by Christians in his own country.

But this is all location; whatever happened to vocation? The missionary “call” then becomes negative guidance: where God does not want me to serve. Anywhere but in my own country and among my own people. It is assurance that God has called me to serve him full-time in some culture not my own.

No wonder the prospective candidate is confused. But to what vocation is he called? And what madness it is to discuss the validity of “missionary” in any place until the question of role is decided. It is possible to discuss the question of whether a particular vocational role is needed in any particular situation, but first the role must be defined. Japan does not need foreign doctors. The ratio of doctors to population in Japan is far higher than in America. But Japan desperately needs gifted pioneer missionary evangelists. “Postmissionary” in the context of contemporary understanding means that no Christians in any vocation are needed in any country other than their own—a comfortable notion indeed!

So we muddle along befogged while the potential candidate for foreign service wrestles with location when he should start with vocation. The missionary (undefined) agonizes in his own soul and negotiates with national leadership over his role, while people who should know better talk about moratorium.

Maybe it would help if we would swap words with the Roman Church and start over. We have a Latin word—missionary—that has become denatured and of little use. Why not get back the Greek word the Roman tradition uses for expatriate religious people—“apostle”—and see if we could start over with more precise definitions?

I am aware that language doesn’t change that easily. But surely the point is clear: we must define the key word in the great evangelistic mission of the church or suffer the consequences of continued confusion over call, role, and validity.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

If holiness is beautiful, dare churches be drab?

The question before us, as I understand it, might be put like this: “What about splashy churches?” That is to say, ought the Christian church to pour enormous amounts of cash into erecting tremendous edifices to house its activities?

The question is not a new one. And before one has got through trying to arrange the issues that come crowding along the minute the question is asked, he has discovered that it opens out onto gigantic imponderables.

On the surface, the answer is clear. Indeed, it would hardly seem to admit of any discussion at all. Shall we build splashy churches? Of course not. Who do we think we are? Whom do we follow anyway? The pioneer of our faith never set about to upstage Nebuchadnezzar and Caesar. He never built so much as a lean-to for his followers, nor left any blueprint for such a structure. Let the pomps of Babylon and Rome memorialize themselves with golden images and arches of triumph, for they are all, precisely, Babylon and Rome. The pomps and triumphs of the kingdom of heaven are of such unlikely and unimpressive kinds as a girdle of camel’s hair and a colt, the foal of an ass. Fasting in the desert. No gold, nor silver, nor scrip, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staves. A borrowed room upstairs; a borrowed grave. Come—why waste time even raising the question?

It seems to me that arguments against the proposal that we build big churches group themselves under at least four headings, although there are, no doubt, more than that. And underlying all of the four would be the whole prophetic biblical picture that would seem to rule out the enterprise to begin with. The headings under which we may group some of the arguments against our building huge and expensive churches would seem to be (perhaps on a rising scale of weightiness): taste, efficiency, imagery, and economics.

1. Taste. From a merely aesthetic and architectural point of view, what sort of harmony can we discern between what the Christian church is supposed to be and what these gigantic piles look like? Surely this is a basic principle of aesthetics, and hence of architecture: the thing you are making ought to answer somehow to its use. The form articulated in the stone or brick or concrete (the World Trade Center, the Whitney Museum, the Opera in Paris) should address exactly the idea at work in the enterprise. Let us leave on one side for the moment medieval cathedrals and abbeys. The question being put to us here is whether we ought to be building big churches. The twelfth-century achievement is a fait accompli, and hence beyond our immediate reach.

But what about the churches that are being built now? Anyone with semi-civilized taste would have to grimace at most of them: great, looming, sprawling “plants,” all landscaped and tricked out like suburban office parks. Alack! We perceive millions of dollars’ worth of bricks and ersatz-Colonial woodwork, bland and functional, all announcing, “Get a load of the size of this operation.” One wants to creep under the nearest cabbage leaf in sheer embarrassment.

But that is all a matter of taste. My point is simply to observe that the category of taste does, in fact, carry some possible arguments against building expensive churches. The fact that there are some churches being built here and there that might be candidates for genuine architectural immortality (Le Corbusier, for example) would carry us into later categories in this discussion. A corollary consideration, of course, still under this heading, is the awkward fact that we don’t seem able very often to achieve good taste either expensively or cheaply; we are as likely to erect a botch if we scrimp as if we lavish. And the final, obvious factor is that for any Christian, taste is a highly ambiguous business in any event, since it seems to be more or less irrelevant to the category “sanctity,” which is all that seems to matter when the chips are down—at least, if we take our cues from the prophets, the apostles, and the Lord’s teaching.

2. Efficiency. Look at all that gaping space standing vacant for six days out of every seven. Think of the fuel being pumped into the furnace just to keep the cavern at 50 degrees. And the classrooms! Who can justify all this?

Of course, some churches can respond that they are, in fact, using the space quite efficiently, and that countless meetings, both of parish and of community activities, occur all week long. Fair enough. The rejoinder to this often takes the form of a suggestion that homes and rented rooms about town might serve as well for most of what we house in these big plants. After all, the church is supposed to keep it simple. While I am not asked to settle that phase of the discussion, I suppose that if I were forced to take up a position here, I would want to raise the prior question of whether the church, locally, should ever be big. When you get 2,000 people in the assembly, is it still possible to live the corporate, disciplined, mutual, sacramental life that is the apostolic pattern, and which we have no choice but to follow?

3. Imagery. This category is, perhaps, almost indistinguishable from the first category of taste. It seems to me, however, that there is a different nuance here, beyond the merely immediate business of some congregation’s erecting of an immensity that signals “Money! Success! Great fund raising techniques!” to the local populace. We address rather the whole question of the image of what the church is in history. Shall we have a pilgrim imagery, or a triumphalist imagery? Do we want to herald Christ as reigning gloriously over all the works of man, or as kneeling with a towel? Do we hail human imagination with Annunciation, Transfiguration, and Ascension in what we build, or with kenosis, Nazareth, and Golgotha? Shall it be the prince St. Vladimir, or St. Francis? Shall it be the rich Joseph of Arimathea, or Martha of Bethany? Michael the Archangel or Mother Teresa?

At this point, many Christians may want to shout, Wait! We can’t quite separate all that out. There must be some paradoxes there: Christ’s majesty and his humility; Christ as conqueror and as servant; the church as glorious and as pilgrim; the gospel as both the fulfillment and the antithesis of human aspiration; both gold and sackcloth as images that must be kept alive; the feast table that is also an altar; the sword and the healing hands; sceptre and towel; terror and comfort. We have a jumble of contradictions—all symbolizing the paradoxes roused by the appearance of the ineffable in the middle of our ordinariness.

But I am ahead of my argument. Here I would point out that there is an argument that proceeds from the problem of imagery. For what exactly does the church wish to signal, if anything at all, in its buildings? Christians in Chartres, Bec, and Amiens, had one idea. The First Church in Americasville that has just finished its $3 million plant has another. And Christians meeting upstairs in a rented Elks hall in Altoona have yet another.

4. Economics. What we mean is biblical economics. How on earth can we justify vast sums of money when half the world is starving? The equation is outrageous. Have we never read the prophets? Who among us wants to be found at Dives’s table in this era of widespread poverty? But, alas, all of us sojourners in America are at Dives’s table, strip down as we will.

Can we not, then, conclude that the case is clear? In the light of such considerations, is there any doubt about the answer we should give to the question of erecting opulent church buildings? It would seem not. If taste, efficiency, imagery, and economics mean anything, then it would appear that the pouring of immense sums into church buildings is at least grotesquely inappropriate, if not immoral, in this age.

But we cannot quite leave it at that. There are at least two matters left dangling if we close off the discussion here.

First, there is the vexed question of what sum we should arrive at as a “Christian” ceiling for church building expenditure. If it is granted at all that there should be a roof over the heads of God’s gathered people, and if all of them are not to meet forever in borrowed Elks halls, then how much shall we allot as a permissible per capita (or per communicant) outlay? Immediately, we meet a dozen sliding factors such as size of congregation, geographical location, labor costs, material costs, inflation, depression, desired durability of structure (grass? wood? adobe?), appropriateness to local culture (is it rural Idaho, urban Zaire, or suburban Mexico City we are talking about?), demands of the ministries carried on by the congregation in question, and willingness of the Christians to contribute offerings for the structure. Unless we grip things in some doctrinaire and bureaucratic headlock in the interest of Christian “economics,” we will all hesitate to come up with a maximum or a minimum figure. Who knows what is appropriate?

From our editorial desks it is easy to pontificate about how Christians all over the world are to budget their money. But then we stumble into a culture somewhere whose whole vision of what is supremely precious knocks into a co*cked hat those ferocious prescriptions we thought we were inferring so precisely from prophetic biblical texts. Any reflective Christian would wish to receive hesitantly those shrill encyclicals handed out as “biblical” from theorists who claim to have found the right formula.

It is awkward, of course, that neither the Lord nor the apostles ventured to hammer out an economic system. What was surely needed was the overthrow of the “system” under which humanity then staggered—as avaricious and unjust a system as any modern Marxist or capitalist has devised. But they seemed rather to appeal to prior principles—don’t be greedy, give extravagantly, care for the poor and oppressed—that would work themselves out visibly in the Christian community, as a sign in Rome and Babylon of the kingdom of heaven.

Which of us has a warrant to walk up to a church building, point the finger, and say, “That is a sin”? That is the sort of inquisitorial righteousness the Pharisees excelled in, for they knew what was wrong with everyone, and were prepared to assign guilt. How do I know, when I approach some painstakingly-made and exquisitely-crafted church building in Asia or Austria—or America—whether what I am looking at represents the pig-eyed egoism of some hard-sell preacher or the loving offering to God of the resources and labor of his people in this locale? My theories may shout one thing at me; I had better hold them tentatively and humbly.

I may think I know that the money in question should have been used for some other, more urgent purpose (and I must confess that most of the time I do think this). But one has to watch out when commenting on others’ offerings—spikenard, and that sort of thing.

This raises the second matter that must be stirred into our thinking before we close off the discussion. It is the mystery of the eternal in time; the mystery of the ineffable appearing in visible form. On this frontier we have awful paradoxes, and God deliver us from flattening them all out in the name of logic, pragmatism, economics, or even compassion. Here there will be things that defy our calculations. For example, there is a tabernacle made extravagantly, lavishly, wastefully even, of gold and acacia and fine-twined linen, for the inefficient purposes of the cult of a God named Yahweh. There were people who could have used those funds.

But here the objection may be raised that this is an old covenant item: everything has been superseded in the new. All that visible imagery is now brought to its fulfillment and enacted in the tabernacle of our flesh. It is charity of life, and not gold and acacia, that is to announce “holiness unto the Lord” now.

While this is true and taught in the epistle to the Hebrews, the whole thrust of the epistle—and indeed of the whole new covenant—surely drives us into deeper, not shallower channels. It does not end the offering of the works of our hands to Yahweh, but rather places these offerings in the greater context of charity. It is not mere gold I am after, says the Lord, it is your heart. Learn to love me above all, and your neighbor next. And then make your offerings. All of your work—your domestic routines, your professional duties, your skills and your crafts, your sculptures and dances and poetry, along with your limitations and your sufferings and your gold and silver—bring it all to me. For in the oblation of these you signal their redemption from the profanity that you brought on things by trying to seize them for your own in Eden, and you will herald the joyous return to the seamless goodness of Creation.

But how did we get from expensive churches to Eden and the hallowing of Creation? Was it not by reflecting on the mystery of the eternal in time? Heaven, in finding its way into our history, does not always do things the way our schemes might have thought it should. It calls us, for example, to feed the hungry—but then it asks us to bring lambs, bullocks, and doves to the altar, which is a waste of meat. Mary and Joseph could have put those poor turtle doves to much more obviously charitable uses. The woman with her costly ointment could have done better than to pour it out in a hysterical act of rhapsodic penitentiality and adoration. And, while the suggestion was made, it was silenced, and her waste was extolled and held up for the honor and emulation of all humanity forever.

The forerunner of the Messiah might have done better to preach insurrection against the system, since that, surely, was by far the worst evil abroad. But instead he, and the Messiah after him, called on everyone to be baptized. That is most impractical and futile business, unless it is acknowledged that the visible tokens and vehicles of the eternal will not always make sense on a pragmatic accounting. The kingdom of heaven does not come always and strictly in plausible economic terms. It may do so, to be sure. But it will escape even that category from time to time—in spilled spikenard (a waste), or in a bunch of yellow roses taken to a shut-in (why not feed the old woman?), or in a song composed and sung as an act of praise (no bread is buttered), or (even) in a church built truly and visibly ad majorem gloriam Dei.

If, therefore, we begin our thinking about immense, expensive churches on the reasonable plane of logic economics, we will arrive every time at the inevitable conclusion that no such structure ought ever to be built. The money can be put to better use; nay, it must be put to better use, as long as there is need in the world. But then we realize that, if we stick rigorously to this enormously plausible scheme, we have condemned at a stroke every single act of beauty ever offered in the wasteful business of worship. Bach ought to have been out helping others instead of cranking out endless cantatas. The workers of Chartres and Lincoln should have spent those generations doing something useful. Fra Angelico and van Eyck were indulging in a luxury while their neighbors’ needs went unheeded. Every potter, and every nun starching the fair linen, and every silversmith and glazier and seamstress making something exquisite and extravagant, and every singer and dancer and actor and trumpeter is condemned by our serene inquisition.

Will our fierce economics, or even our arithmetic of compassion, quite compass the whole mystery? May heaven keep us from insisting on spurious and destructive dichotomies. Charity will appear at one moment in the plain white habit of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and the next in the brocaded chasuble of her priest; at one moment in the chapped hands of St. Francis and the next in the delicate hands of the illuminator; at one moment in the voice of the prophet crying “Woe!” to the rich and fat, and the next in the voice of the choirboy singing “Ecce quam bonum.”

It is all a jumble and a muddle, and none of it will fit. Which is perhaps our big clue. The drama of Love Incarnate is, precisely, a mystery, and you can’t come at mysteries with either calculators or economics.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

Presenting affluence and preaching sacrifice.

In early 1976, Eastminster Presbyterian Church in suburban Wichita, Kansas, had an ambitious—and expensive—church construction program in the works. Their architect had prepared a $525,000 church building program. Then a devastating earthquake struck in Guatemala on February 4, destroying thousands of homes and buildings. Many evangelical congregations lost their churches.

When Eastminster’s board of elders met shortly after the Guatemalan tragedy, a layman posed a simple question: “How can we set out to buy an ecclesiastical Cadillac when our brothers and sisters in Guatemala have just lost their little Volkswagen?”

The elders courageously opted for a dramatic change of plans. They slashed their building program by nearly two-thirds and settled instead for church construction costing $180,000. Then they sent their pastor and two elders to Guatemala to see how they could help. When the three returned and reported tremendous need, the church borrowed $120,000 from a local bank and rebuilt 26 Guatemalan churches and 28 Guatemalan pastors’ houses.

I talked recently with Eastminster’s pastor, Dr. Frank Kirk. Eastminster stays in close touch with the church in Central America and has recently pledged $40,000 to an evangelical seminary there. The last few years have seen tremendous growth—in spiritual vitality, concern for missions, and even in attendance and budget. Dr. Kirk believes that cutting their building program to share with needy sisters and brothers in Guatemala “meant far more to Eastminster Presbyterian than to Guatemala.”

The Eastminster Presbyterian congregation asked the right questions. They asked whether their building program was justified at this moment in history given the particular needs of the body of Christ worldwide and the mission of the church in the world. The question was not, Are gothic (or glass) cathedrals ever legitimate? It was rather: Was it right to spend $3.9 billion (in 1967 dollars) on church construction in the 1970s, when over 2.5 billion people had not yet heard of Jesus Christ and when one billion people were starving or malnourished?

Almost all (five out of six) of the more than 2.5 billion persons who have not heard of Jesus Christ live in social groupings and subnations where the church has not yet effectively taken root. Cross-cultural missionaries are needed. Gottfried Osei-Mensah, executive secretary of the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization, recently called on every 1,000 evangelicals to send one missionary couple to these unreached peoples. That can be done—but it requires that the church live a simpler lifestyle, as called for in the Lausanne Covenant.

The grim realities of world hunger also raise questions about expensive church construction. The World Food Council recently reported that “up to one-third of all children born alive die from malnutrition or (malnutrition-induced) diseases before the age of five.” At least five hundred million and perhaps as many as one billion persons are starving and/or malnourished. The National Academy of Science published a study in 1977 in which it was stated that “seven hundred and fifty million people in the poorest nations live in extreme poverty with annual incomes of less than $75.” In the U.S., on the other hand, the middle class feels poor when it makes only $15,000, $18,000, or even $25,000 each year (“The Middle Class Poor,” Newsweek, Oct. 1977). We are 14 times as rich as the average person in India and the gap continues to widen. It is in that kind of world that North American congregations must decide whether buying expensive organs, rugs, and multimillion dollar cathedrals is justified.

What biblical teaching is relevant to that decision?

First, this created world is a beautiful and good gift from our Father. Our places of worship ought to be a joyful celebration of his gorgeous gift.

Second, Christians are not committed to a simple lifestyle: we are committed to Jesus Christ. We are, therefore, also committed to faithful participation in the mission of our servant King in a lost, broken world. It is because two and a half billion have never heard the gospel and because perhaps as many as one billion people are starving or malnourished that Christians today must question expensive church construction.

Third, God is on the side of the poor and oppressed. But do not misunderstand this—I do not mean that poverty is the biblical ideal. Nor do I mean that the poor are Christians just because they are poor, nor that God cares more about the salvation of the poor than the salvation of the rich.

But the Bible does teach three things:

1. At the central moments of revelation history (e.g., the Exodus, the destruction of Israel and Judah, and the Incarnation), the Bible repeatedly says that God acted not only to call out a chosen people and reveal his will (although he certainly did that), he also acted to liberate poor, oppressed folk (Exod. 3:7–9; 6:5–7; Deut. 26:5–8; Amos 6:1–7; Isa. 10:1–4; Jer. 5:26–29; Luke 4:16–21).

2. God acts in history to pull down the unjust rich and to exalt the poor (Luke 1:46–53; 6:20–25; James 5:1). And God does this both when the rich get rich by oppression (James 5:3–5; Ps. 10; Jer. 5:26–29; 22:13–19; Isa. 3:14–26) and also when they are rich and fail to share (Ezek. 16:49–50).

3. The people of God, if they are really the people of God, are also on the side of the poor (Matt. 25:31–46; Luke 14:12–14; 1 John 3:16–18; Isa. 1:10–17; 58:3–7).

If we want to worship, we must also imitate the God who, Scripture says, is on the side of the poor.

Fourth, the uniform teaching of Scripture in both Old and New Testaments is that God wills transformed economic relationships among his people. God desires major movement toward economic equality in the new society of the church. Paul’s advice to Greek-speaking, European Christians collecting an offering for Aramaic-speaking, Asian Christians puts it bluntly: “I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want so that their abundance should supply your want, that there may be equality” (2 Cor. 8:13–14).

If we examine what the Bible says about economic relationships among the people of God, we will discover that over and over again God specifically commanded his people to live together in community in such a way that they would avoid extremes of wealth and poverty. That is the point of Old Testament legislation on the jubilee (Lev. 25) and sabbatical years (Deut. 15), on tithing (Deut. 14:28–29), gleaning (Deut. 24:19–22), and loans (Exod. 22:25).

Jesus, our only perfect model, shared a common purse with the new community of his disciples (John 12:6). The first church in Jerusalem (Acts 2:43–47; 4:32–37) and Paul in his collection (2 Cor. 8–9) were implementing what the Old Testament and Jesus had commanded.

Compare that with the contemporary church. Present economic relationships in the worldwide body of Christ are unbiblical, sinful, a hindrance to evangelism, and a desecration of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The dollar value of the food North Americans throw in the garbage each year equals about one-fifth of the total annual income of Africa’s 120 million Christians. It is a sinful abomination for a small fraction of the world’s Christians living in the Northern Hemisphere to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Third World ache and suffer for lack of minimal health care, minimal education, and, in thousands and thousands of cases, just enough food to escape starvation.

We are like the rich Corinthian Christians who feasted without sharing their food with the poor members of the church (1 Cor. 11:20–29). Like them, we fail today to discern the reality of the one worldwide body of Christ (v. 29). The tragic consequence is that we profane the body and blood of the Lord Jesus we worship. Christians in the United States spent $5.7 billion on new church construction alone in the six years from 1967–72. Would we go on building lavishly furnished, expensive church plants and adding air conditioning, carpeting, and organs if members of our own congregations were starving?

These biblical principles lead me to question much of the church construction in affluent nations at this moment in history. But not everyone agrees.

One of the most common reasons advanced for erecting expensive church facilities is that they attract individuals to the church and thus have an evangelistic impact. Robert Schuller defends his multimillion dollar church plant in this way:

“We are trying to make a big, beautiful impression upon the affluent non-religious American who is riding by on this busy freeway. It’s obvious that we are not trying to impress the Christians!… Nor are we trying to impress the social workers in the County Welfare Department. They would tell us that we ought to be content to remain in the Orange Drive-In Theater and give the money to feed the poor. But suppose we had given this money to feed the poor? What would we have today? We would still have hungry, poor people and God would not have this tremendous base of operations which He is using to inspire people to become more successful, more affluent, more generous, more genuinely unselfish in their giving of themselves” (Your Church Has Real Possibilities [Regal Books, 1974], p. 117).

But several questions arise: Does God really want rich North Americans to be still more affluent? Do people who are attracted to that kind of church really give more generously to world evangelism and a biblically-grounded search for justice for the poor? Are we attracting people to the kind of God the Bible says Yahweh is—or are we attracting them to a God made in the image of affluent North Americans? The programmatic account in Luke 4:16–21 makes it very clear that preaching to the poor, releasing captives, and liberating the oppressed were central to Jesus’ mission. Is a multimillion dollar church building the best setting for calling people to follow that kind of Lord?

I feel more ambiguity about a second objection: “Since the good Creator has made such a gorgeously beautiful world, our places of worship ought to reflect that splendor. And that costs money.” Now, I must confess that I love Gothic cathedrals. (I suspect, however, that if the medieval church had devoted more resources to the kind of economic sharing across class and ethnic lines exhibited in the New Testament, the church would have been much stronger.) Certainly the good Creator has no interest in drab, dreary churches. He loves celebration and beauty. But need that always be expensive? Joyful, colorful banners and Spirit-filled singing can enliven even cheerless community centers and school auditoriums.

Some things, of course, are invariably costly. You cannot produce good organ music from burlap banners. Actually, I would not have too much trouble with one “cathedral” built to celebrate the splendor of the Creator in each larger population center if all Christ’s body in that area could share it. But most of the expensive church plants I know are for the exclusive use of rich suburban folk rather than for the poor, blacks, and Hispanics.

More intensive use of existing church buildings or other buildings that stand idle on Sunday would make much church construction unnecessary. At Dallas’s Fellowship Bible Church (Gene Getz, pastor), four different congregations use one sanctuary. Obviously, a bit of flexibility is necessary. One congregation meets on Friday evening, two on Sunday morning (8:00 and 10:45) and one on Sunday evening.

Philadelphia’s Living Word Community used a different approach when their congregation outgrew the original downtown structure, which seated about 400. They subdivided into two (and later, four) weekend gatherings for worship. One group continued to use the downtown church. But the second group (and then the third and fourth groups) arranged to meet in a school auditorium or a warehouse or in church buildings that were available on Saturday or Sunday evenings. The absence of costly building programs has provided large financial resources for more significant programs. (And it certainly hasn’t hindered church growth!)

Howard Snyder suggested in The Problem of Wineskins that the early church’s model of house churches meeting in private homes was an inexpensive way to begin new congregations in the city. Unfortunately, many denominational church-extension agencies assume that the first step in starting a new congregation is to purchase land for a new building. In my own church, Jubilee Fellowship of Germantown, we discovered that when we grew too large for the delightfully informal atmosphere of private homes, a local community center was adequate.

But not all church construction is wrong. What we need are guidelines to help a congregation decide when it ought to build a new church or expand existing facilities. Obviously there are no revealed norms. And woe betide those who dare to try, legalistically and self-righteously, to impose their hunches on others! But, does that mean that each congregation should do what is right in its own eyes?

That is the typical, individualistic American approach. But it is not the biblical pattern. Certainly each individual and each congregation should pray and seek the Spirit’s guidance for themselves. But they should also solicit the advice and wisdom of the other members of the body of Christ as they endeavor to apply biblical principles in today’s world. And that worldwide body includes not just other affluent North American congregations who have lovely facilities that others would love to duplicate. It also includes poor, inner-city churches struggling to meet minimal budgets, and Third World churches where sisters and brothers in Christ cannot afford minimal health care, adequate clothing, or elementary education for their children. Defending our building programs before their church boards would dramatically alter the discussion.

Would it be possible to develop a set of guidelines for future church construction in North America resulting from dialogue with all segments of the body of Christ worldwide? I offer the following as an attempt to begin such a dialogue:

1. Carefully explore the relevant biblical teaching. The congregation should spend a couple of months studying how the Bible’s teaching about God’s special concern for the poor and about redeemed economic relationships among the worldwide body of Christ relates to its proposed plans. Sermons, Sunday school sessions, prayer meetings, and fellowship evenings would all be appropriate for this.

2. Study the world scene today. Carefully analyze, as a congregation, the current needs for both world evangelism and relief, development and justice programs abroad.

3. Examine your motives with ruthless honesty. Ask questions such as: Do we want a new (or larger or renovated) building because it is necessary to carry on the biblically defined mission of the church, or because other Christian congregations (of our social status) have similar facilities? How many of the items (carpet, organ, etc.) are necessary and how many are planned “because that’s the way they are doing things these days”?

4. Explore alternate ways to meet the same need. Can we use other facilities in the community instead? Could a second congregation use our present church facility on Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon? Would we be willing to make modest changes in our traditional time of worship in order to free resources for worldwide evangelism? If not, what does that say about our priorities?

5. Consider the effect of the new facilities on the thinking and activity of your members. Will the new building (or organ) help the members of the congregation identify more easily with the poor? If new facilities require a new location, will the new location make it easier to engage in Jesus’ special concern to preach to the poor?

6. Engage in extended dialogue with other members of the worldwide body of Christ before beginning any new church construction. Ask nearby congregations if they have any suggestions on how to meet growing demands for additional space. The church board could spend a weekend visiting an inner-city minority congregation to review the building plans in great detail with them, to pray together about the plans, and to seek their honest reaction. Invite your denomination’s cross-cultural missionary agency to respond to the proposals in light of evangelistic opportunities abroad. A few key members of the congregation who could might visit a Third World country to discuss the building plans with Christian leaders there in light of the needs of their evangelistic and development programs.

7. Include equal matching funds for Third World (or inner-city) evangelism and long-term development in your fund-raising proposal. If we decide we need a $500,000 educational facility, then we would raise $1 million and give one-half of it to inner-city or Third World churches. Of course, if we can do what Eastminster Presbyterian did (i.e., slash the original cost by two-thirds), we might even be able to go beyond a 50–50 matching arrangement. But I want to keep the proposal modest, so I’ll stick to the idea of an equal matching fund.

Obviously, this is not the usual procedure for planning church construction. But it certainly would not be difficult to implement. It would be an easy, visible way to implement our confession that all Christians in the world are our brothers and sisters. Undoubtedly all church construction that the risen Lord truly desired would still take place after open consultation with a few more members of his body. We really have nothing to lose but church construction that God does not want.

And there is not one suburban congregation in North America that could not afford this matching funds arrangement if it cared half as much about evangelism and justice for the poor as the Bible says God does.

Should we build large, expensive church facilities today? Occasionally, perhaps—after we have studied relevant biblical teaching, explored the needs of our hungry, unevangelized world, vigorously tested our motives, looked carefully for alternatives that would permit us to give more to missions, made sure that the new facility would help us imitate Jesus’ identification with the poor, honestly sought the advice of other Christians (especially poor Christian congregations), and implemented a matching fund for evangelism and development in the Third World.

If the North American church followed that process and immersed itself in deep prayer and unconditional openness to the Holy Spirit, how many more ecclesiastical Cadillacs do you honestly think it would order?

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

Cba Gets Beyond The Flaky Fringe

Each year the Christian Booksellers Association holds a convention for publishers and other suppliers to enable them to meet the thousands of Christian bookstore owners from across the country. And a mammoth event it is; only a few of the largest cities can host it. Last month in Saint Louis, more than 7,000 people came to visit 800 displays, and to listen to authors and musicians.

When one sees this event described in the newspapers of the host city, it is common to read many clever words describing the more flaky fringe items—including silly slogans, cheap jewelry, and plastic banners. We note that Christian writers have also lightened and brightened their copy with reports of dubious items in various corners of the enormous exposition halls. These writers have wondered with justification where Christ was in all this hoopla. It is indeed a valid question. However, having just returned from the CBA convention, we find that although we did see embarrassing items, these did not make the dominant impact.

It is true that we don’t feel very comfortable, for example, with frisbees that spin out the slogan, “The Rapture: The Only Way to Fly,” or T-shirts emblazoned with “Heaven or Hell? Turn or Burn.” But as we walked the mammoth hall and talked to various publishers, we found a lot of things right. There was Zondervan selling the NIV Bible by the thousands—and ultimately, millions. If this was hucksterism, it didn’t come across that way; we’re glad for every one of the NIV’s that go out. As we wandered past the very tasteful and impressive displays—from Moody Press and Gospel Light and Revell and Word and Thomas Nelson and Tyndale House and Scripture Press and David C. Cook—it was hard to find an oily palm among the sales representatives. In fact, several times we heard the remark, “I’m really impressed by the clean, professional approach of the men and women representing the companies.” Even after we had passed by the major suppliers, we noted a marked improvement in the quality of exhibits of greeting cards, decorative plaques, and posters over previous years. We even saw some tasteful ichthys sport shirts that a slightly stuffy CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor might even be persuaded to wear!

The tacky fringe stuff, unfortunately, cannot be kept out of CBA conventions because of trade regulations. Some of these are embarrassing, and we have also disliked the heavy hype-and-dazzle events of some past conventions. But overall, this annual conclave and the CBA organization have done a tremendous job in increasing the sale of Christian books and other materials over the past 10 to 15 years. Somehow we did not feel at all like throwing brickbats as we came away from the convention.

So, in spite of warts seen here and there, we congratulate Christian Booksellers Association for its strong effort to influence hundreds of lives through a broad range of Christian products. We would encourage CBA to keep pressing for better and better quality so that the gimmicky items shrink into dusty corners.

Public Conversation With God: Choosing The Right Words

Many Christians, especially among the older generations, are offended by the increasing use of “you” and “your” when God is addressed in public prayer. They grew up thinking that only such old English forms as “thee” and “thou” were appropriate. Many other Christians are pleased with the change, thinking the older forms represent an unbiblical picture of a remote deity who is not interested in ordinary men and affairs.

We need to remember that prayer is communion with God. The words used are not crucial; the attitude of the person toward God is everything. In private prayer we should speak to God simply, naturally, and without ostentation. The less we think about words and the more we think about God, the better.

In public prayer the words take on relatively more importance. The person who leads in prayer represents the whole congregation. His words should be understood by those whom he represents before God as he leads in prayer. The prayer should be so phrased as not to call attention to the words but to God and to what the leader prays. As far as possible, the words should be those with which the individuals who make up the body can identify so as to make it their own prayer.

In private prayer, therefore, use either “you” or “thou” depending on which best expresses for you personal relationship and the appropriate reverence you have toward God. If you use “thou,” make sure it is not because God is remote and something less than a true person like your mother or father or bosom friend. If you use “you,” be sure it is not out of presumption or a lack of a true awe and reverence appropriate for a sinner when he steps into the presence of a holy God.

In public prayer, be sensitive to the language habits of those you represent, and to the word that will enable you to help those you represent identify with you and pray with you in your prayer.

Public prayers may develop the proper habits of a congregation and may even educate. But public prayer is not the mode for instruction of the congregation; it is people addressing God. And the one who leads in public prayer leads best when he knows his congregation well and can express their prayers in ways they can make their own.

We need a theology that integrates body building and church buildings.

Ron sider (“Cautions Against Ecclesiastical Elegance,” pages 14–19) and Thomas Howard (“Expensive Churches: Extravagance for God’s Sake?” pages 18–23) address head-on the disturbing question of what kind of church building is both honoring to God and appropriate for our day. Neither writer gives a categorical answer about what is right for all churches for all times.

How can North American churches get their priorities right as they build their places of worship? Every church contemplating building construction should enlarge its perspective to encompass the whole church of God and all its needs. The amount of money a church gives to missions and relief programs often reflects that church’s vision for the work of Christ worldwide. But the quality of their place of worship can also reflect how much they love God (see Haggai 1:4).

To gain worldwide perspective, Christians and churches have a responsibility to keep informed about events in all parts of the world, not just in North America. Missions and relief organizations and the news media can supply information about the physical and spiritual needs in various countries. The act of praying regularly for the needs and political problems of other countries, as well as for the Christians and missionaries there, will help broaden our understanding and rouse our compassion for the world. If our idea of God is great enough, our passion to worship him absorbing enough, our awareness of the needs of the world vivid enough, and our love for our fellow human beings deep enough, we are then adequately prepared to seek our answer to the more mundane question of building construction.

Without suggesting that the Bible prescribes only one type of church as the “pure church” or that only one type of church building is divinely appointed and appropriate to it, we must, with the Holy Spirit’s help, bring our churches more into line with biblical priorities. For some, this could involve selling church property; for others, it may mean better use of present facilities and restructuring the church budget. For still others, it may require the adoration from the heart of a Bezaleel, skilled by God’s Spirit, or from the woman with costly ointment, to fashion a place of worship that will truly reflect the perfection of our God. We cannot condemn all “splashy” churches in one fell swoop. Nor can we condemn the rigorously functional gospel hall on the second floor of an office building or in the storefront of the business district. The structure is not important if it houses a living organism of spiritual strength.

The extensive use of gold and other precious “unnecessary” materials in both temple and tabernacle reminds us that sin is not determined by the cost of materials. Beauty has its own place, pointing beyond itself to the One who created all things “in the beginning.” Our concern for beauty, moreover, should be matched with a concern for simplicity—and both should be subsumed under our love for others and our desire to glorify God. A church can praise him by the beauty of its buildings. It can praise him by the faithfulness of its members. These are not mutually exclusive, but only the second is essential.

We all glory in glass cathedrals made with our own hands. When we say that our own church’s immediate needs are the most important, we exhibit an “edifice complex” and dishonor God. (The Tower of Babel did not draw men near to God.) It is time we became less concerned with church building and more concerned with building the church—the body of Christ—so long as we remember the body is not just food and drink but also has a soul.