Page 3060 – Christianity Today (2024)

Will the Republican party take a strong pro-family stand? Will there be a third-party candidate? Will the economy mean as much to voters in 1996 as it did in 1992? Or will concerns about morality and family values take center stage?

These questions are but a few examples of what candidates, political activists, and voters will have answered when the 1996 presidential election occurs a year from now. For Christian conservative activists, the 1996 election provides the long-anticipated opportunity to defeat President Bill Clinton, whose politics, policies, and past have been under attack since Inauguration Day.

Although the number of candidates for the GOP presidential nomination seems to change monthly, one reality has not changed: politically conservative religious activists are solidly Republican. A recent Luntz Research poll of 1,000 members of the 1.7 million-member Christian Coalition shows that only 5 percent are Democrats, while 68 percent are Republicans.

Since the Christian Coalition strengthened its relationship with the GOP-controlled Congress in 1994, the Pat Robertson-founded group is emerging as a major force in presidential politics. No fewer than seven Republican candidates made room on their schedules to address the coalition’s Road to Victory conference in September.

While many conservative Christians are thrilled at the powerful achievements of the Christian Coalition, other believers are worried about its influence, and a few actively work against the coalition’s agenda.

“We are very concerned about the perception that there is one voice for Christianity out there, and it belongs to Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition,” said Patrice Hauptman, spokesperson for the Interfaith Alliance, an interdenominational group formed as a counterweight to the Christian Right.

“We want candidates to know that there are Christian voters who oppose what we regard as pandering to the Right and its extremist agenda.” At 10,000 members, the Interfaith Alliance is minuscule in comparison to the Christian Coalition, but according to Hauptman, the group has recently been growing at a rate of 2,000 a month.

Meanwhile, as religious conservatives build a grassroots network nationally, the Clinton administration has not remained idle. A steady stream of religious leaders, including evangelicals, have made their way to the White House for closed-door sessions with the President.

Don Argue, who recently met with President Clinton, said as head of the National Association of Evangelicals he will focus the NAE’s efforts on emphasizing the moral issues and not toward endorsement of candidates or political parties. He said, “We intend to speak to issues of moral values where the Scripture speaks.”

Beyond a stance on the issues, politically active Christians are faced with the central question: Is it better to maintain the purity of one’s position—and potentially lose—or soften one’s views to gain support and perhaps win?

Yet, some leaders do not see a painful choice between principle or pragmatism. For Ron Sider, founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), Americans are too narrowly focused. He finds that shortcomings are not in short supply when he examines the candidates and their positions.

“I would like to have [the next president be] consistently pro-life; someone who places empowering the poor at the center of his concerns; who is truly committed to preserving the environment and the sanctity of life; whose life and rhetoric are genuinely profamily,” Sider told CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

For his part, Christian Coalition’s Ralph Reed has not only called religious conservatives to a higher road, but also a broader agenda. At the Road to Victory conference, he said, “We do not seek to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party or any political party. We seek to do more than elect a President. We seek to restore and heal a nation.”

WALKING THE TALK: Legally constrained as a not-for-profit from issuing political endorsements, Christian Coalition has used this limitation to its advantage by pressing candidates to endorse its own legislative agenda.

However, many in the GOP presidential field have signed on to much of the Christian Coalition agenda, as most clearly articulated in the Contract with the American Family. Consequently, individual activists have been left to measure for themselves who is walking the talk and who is just talking.

U.S. Senators Bob Dole and Phil Gramm, both key contenders for the GOP nomination, have at different times and for different reasons been faulted by religious conservatives as being insincere in supporting the profamily movement, even though both have achieved a top rating of 100 in the latest Christian Coalition legislative scorecard.

Yet, the three GOP presidential candidates who most persuasively argue the pro-family agenda have been marginalized by their lack of fundraising prowess, inexperience, and sometimes fiery rhetoric, which has alienated some supporters.

These three-U.S. Rep. Bob Dornan of California, former U.S. ambassador Alan Keyes, and conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan—represent all the principles the Christian Right could ever hope for in a presidential candidate. Not surprisingly, all three names have come up as possible running mates for whoever the GOP nominee will be. To choose one of the three would be more than symbolic—there is not a “yes man” among them. Whoever picks any of them would instantly shore up his support from the Christian Right. But he also would risk isolating GOP moderates and independents.

THE ISSUES DEBATE: As presidential candidates encounter the issues, voters are making it increasingly clear that they expect morality to be the leading-edge issue of the 1996 campaign.

The Luntz research survey of Christian Coalition members found that 62 percent indicated that “moral decline” was the most critical concern facing Americans, followed by 10 percent who said abortion, and 9 percent who said the budget deficit or tax policy. In addition, an ABC News/Washington Post telephone poll earlier this year of 1,011 individuals found that 73 percent said the federal government had not gone “far enough” in promoting morality and family values.

Nevertheless, the abortion issue has remained foremost in the minds of many Christian activists as they evaluate presidential candidates. Phyllis Schlafly, head of the right-wing Eagle Forum, believes the Christian Right “will not coalesce around a pro-choice candidate.”

In her role with the Republican National Coalition for Life, Schlafly has encouraged candidates to sign the “Pro-life Pledge of Support,” which calls for the support of “qualified pro-life Republicans at every level of our government and party.” So far, Keyes, Buchanan, Dornan, Gramm, and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana have signed.

In spite of the early focus on familiar issues, there is a distinct threat to an issues-driven presidential campaign posed by the growing possibility that Colin Powell, the popular Persian Gulf War hero who has fared very well in recent voter polls, will step into the Republican presidential primaries.

Many could tolerate Powell’s moderate positions on gun control and affirmative action if he were staunchly pro-life. But given Powell’s early statements indicating his support for legal abortion, his attractiveness to Christian conservatives has been minimized.

Yet Reed, in a recent televised interview with David Brinkley, suggested he might be open to a Powell candidacy. “I think the question is ‘How sharp are those differences?’ ” Fellow conservative William Bennett, who appeared on the same program with Reed, went further, stating, “There are pro-choice candidates I could support.”

Other Christian conservatives are staunchly against a Powell bid. Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), has expressed both dismay and confusion about the support Powell is receiving, saying in a recent newsletter that conservative support for Powell had “gone far enough.”

Contending that last fall’s political revolution was based on issues and values, Bauer asks, “How is it that our leaders have lost confidence this quickly in the conservative message and its appeal to the American people that was so clearly demonstrated in November of 1994?”

A MODERATE MAJORITY? In a country that is an estimated 86 percent Christian, many religious Americans are turned off by the polarizing nature of political debate, whether it involves the presidential race, Congress, or a local school board election.

This moderate bloc of voters includes many Christian evangelicals who, while disagreeing with Clinton on many concerns, are also willing to give him credit where it is appropriate.

Clinton’s statements favoring the expression of religious values in public schools and his support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act have enhanced his image in some evangelical circles. Clinton has worked to draw leading evangelicals into dialogue, having met with evangelist Billy Graham and having sent personal greetings via videotape to the twentieth anniversary celebration of Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Community Church in October.

NAE’s Argue, at a September meeting with Clinton at the White House, told Clinton that many evangelicals do not feel represented by the stridency of the Christian Right. “We affirm many of the values the Christian Coalition affirms,” Argue told CT. “But we are concerned about their methods and sometimes with the spirit in which they speak and act.”

Evangelicals’ almost unanimous opposition to the President’s positions on abortion and homosexuality will prevent many of them from supporting him. But the GOP’s historic advantage with evangelicals would be compromised significantly if the party opts for a presidential or vice-presidential candidate not outspokenly against abortion.

In coming months, Christian conservatives will be keeping close tabs on the emergence of vice-presidential contenders, perhaps key to revealing the GOP leadership’s true colors and plans. That will greatly influence, for example, the Christian Right’s assessment of front-runner Dole. The sometimes intense speculation over the possibility of a third-party candidacy could be fueled by an insufficiently conservative choice for running mate by the GOP nominee.

DIFFICULT CHOICES: As the primary season unfolds in coming months, conservative activists will be confronted with the hard choices concerning where to expend their scarce resources of time, dollars, and energy.

But for a handful of Christian leaders, there are concerns that transcend who wins or loses an election or primary. Argue says that for him the matter that underlies the 1996 presidential election is “the incredible decline in the moral sensitivity within the culture.”

He says, “We are living in a post-Christian culture. That’s a very serious new paradigm for the church. Much of the church does business as if moral absolutes are still at the basis of our culture. They are not.”

From his perspective, ESA’s Sider urges Christians “not to be single-issue voters, because God is not single issue.” He adds, “If we ask the question, ‘Is the Christian Right fully biblical?’ The answer is flatly no.”

Sider says, “We must have a biblically balanced agenda concerned with the range of issues God talks about in the Scriptures. As voters, we must ask which of the candidates comes closest to this biblical balance, or, to put it negatively, which is likely to do the least damage.”

The FRC’s Bauer echoes the view that faith is more important than partisan politics, saying, “If we ever fall into the trap of thinking that we are Republicans first and men and women of faith second, then inevitably we will fall prey to … the temptation of thinking that a balanced budget—as needed as that is—is as important as unborn children.”

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

On paper, a September conference sponsored by Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR) seemed to be a gathering focused on dealing with questionable religious movements. But behind the scenes, much more was accomplished. Countercult ministries that have been feuding with one another began steps toward reconciliation and mutual respect.

EMNR, a consortium of ministries, has operated in fits and starts since 1982, its efforts sometimes interrupted by disputes within its ranks. “I confess I failed to anticipate the problems that could arise in the simple idea of an organization to help others,” says the organization’s founder, Gordon Lewis of Denver Seminary.

Presiding over the summit in Atlanta, EMNR board member Craig Branch of Birmingham, executive director of Watchman Fellowship, told his fellow cult watchers, “Maturity and knowledge are much needed in order to have an effective front. There have been a number of Christians who, in zeal and sincere efforts, have caused problems.”

The four-hour meeting preceding EMNR’s annual conference produced rough ideas for ethical guidelines on everything from plagiarism to criticism of fellow ministries, which will be smoothed out by a committee within the next few months.

“People in countercult ministries have honest differences of opinion among themselves,” says Rob Bowman, director of research for the Atlanta Cult Awareness Project. “We’re going to have to learn to live with that.”

BINDING UP WOUNDS: Bowman has firsthand familiarity with such disagreement. A former staff member of Christian Research Institute (CRI) in Irvine, California, Bowman served as spokesperson for the 35-member ad hoc Group for CRI Accountability, which made allegations against CRI president Hank Hanegraaff. Dueling lawsuits between former employee Brad Sparks and CRI were settled in Christian mediation recommended by EMNR in July (CT, Sept. 11, 1995, p. 88).

Hanegraaff, host of The Bible Answer Man on radio, was not invited to speak at EMNR’s cult-watch conference, but some representatives of CRI did attend. Hanegraaff has been named a preferred speaker at the 1996 meeting in Saint Louis, according to EMNR executive director Bill Alnor.

“The fact that he’s invited next year is a good sign,” says Alnor, himself a former CRI employee. “CRI is very committed to continuing their relationship with EMNR. There is a possibility we may sponsor a conference together down the road.”

Players in another well-publicized dispute were also on hand. Sociologist Ron Enroth, author of two popular books on dysfunctional congregations, addressed the meeting on how new religious groups seek legitimacy.

But even before Enroth’s “Recovering from Churches That Abuse” hit the shelves last year, the Chicago-based Jesus People U.S.A. (JPUSA), one of the groups he covered, engaged in an aggressive campaign to counteract Enroth’s characterization that the group is authoritarian and ostracizes its former members.

Although Enroth earlier had praised JPUSA’s “wonderful ministry to the margins of society” and its “Cornerstone” magazine, that did not stop “Cornerstone” from issuing a lengthy retort to Enroth’s book last year.

In an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Enroth, a sociology professor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, says he feels disconnected from other cult watchers because of his academic background. “Most of these people are full-time cult watchers,” he says. “It seems to me they haven’t learned to dialogue with each other as we do in the academic community. … It’s almost childish infighting rather than scholarly discourse.”

GETTING ALONG: Enroth met with “Cornerstone” editor Eric Pement for two hours at the summit.

“It was the first opportunity I’d had to talk to him face to face in a long time,” Pement says. “The situation still isn’t perfect, but it was a very fortunate and meaningful step toward understanding and communicating our differences.”

This year’s meeting had several such conversations, according to Alnor.

“The good thing about this conference is there are so many disputes out there in cult research, and most of them are now resolved,” Alnor says. “I saw people huddling who had been bitter enemies. Last year in Philadelphia, our conference just seemed to make everything worse” (CT, Oct. 24, 1994, p. 85).

This year’s gathering closed with a sermon by founder Lewis. He called for fellow cult watchers to meet the standards for church leaders outlined in 1 Timothy and Titus (to be blameless, patient, self-controlled, upright, and of sound doctrine), and to follow the directive from Paul in 1 Corinthians to love one another.

“We can have the most extensive knowledge of true and false doctrine ever, but if we have not love, we gain nothing,” Lewis said.

Lewis told a joke about six shipwrecked sailors: two who were Southern Baptists built a lean-to church and started reciting Scripture and singing hymns; two who followed New Age ideas built a shack where they began channeling; the two who led countercult ministries “built separate lean-tos and published lengthy papers against each other,” he said. “Will the watchdogs become attack dogs at each other’s throats while the house is being burglarized?”

EMNR, he said, should call for “unity in the essentials, liberty on the nonessentials, and charity for all.”

Lewis praised the cooperation of EMNR and the Interfaith Witness Department of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, which cosponsored the three-day conference that followed the summit meeting. Involvement with denominational agencies can increase the influence of EMNR and provide added accountability to the organization, he said.

Organizers credited Phil Roberts, director of the Interfaith Witness office, with the idea for the summit, which many participants said set a positive tone for the conference. One Chicago-area cult-watcher, Don Veinot, Jr., of Midwest Christian Outreach, observed, “It’s much easier to backbite somebody if you haven’t broken bread with him.”

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Men in plaid button-down shirts and overalls held up by suspenders and women in bonnets and sixteenth-century-style skirts are industriously busy around the room. One logs on to the Internet to check the day’s electronic mail messages and postings to the group’s web site. Another handles calls on its 800 number for orders for the movement’s line of old-fashioned wooden kids’ toys and state-of-the-art disability equipment that contribute to the community’s $20 million in annual revenues.

At noon, the workforce thins out as parents leave to pick up their children from community daycare. A crew of parents takes turns watching and instructing the children of Woodcrest, one of eight Bruderhof rural communities in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and England, where 2,500 Bruderhofers live and work.

After spending an extended lunch with their children in the communal dining hall, the adults return to work. One day a week is designated for the Interhof conference call, for which all 250 adults of the Woodcrest community in the rolling hills of upstate New York gather in a large meeting hall and, via sophisticated conference-calling facilities, are connected to the other Bruderhof communities. Heavy German accents fill the room as the communities pray and work their way down an agenda of community business.

Lately the agenda for this Anabaptist religious group has been brimming with controversial issues, including a passionate campaign for a stay of execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther journalist on death row who was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. There also have been painful splits with other Hutterite groups and fending off of ex-Bruderhofers’ accusations that the Bruderhof is a cult.

MOVEMENT ROOTS: Founded in Germany in the 1920s, the Bruderhof—like the better-known Amish—are a spinoff of the nonviolent sixteenth-century German Anabaptist movement in which adherents pledged loyalty to God over the state (CT, Mar. 15, 1985, p. 22). Unlike the Amish, they have a long tradition of political involvement. Alarmed in the late 1920s by the rise of the Nazis, the Bruderhofers’ resistance ultimately led to their expulsion at gunpoint by the new Nazi state. Their exodus included living in other parts of Europe before settling in Paraguay for 15 years. In 1954, Bruderhofers established their first community in the United States near Rifton, New York. Their communal lifestyle in an individualistic society invites curiosity and suspicion.

“The basis of our communal life is the New Testament,” says Bruderhof elder Johann Christoph Arnold. “We simply try to follow as closely as we can Christ’s teachings.”

Members have no private property but share everything as outlined in Acts, chapters 2 and 4. This theology has led the Bruderhof to set up their own elementary schools, and in an outspoken way to oppose the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia.

Many who encounter the Bruderhofers’ commitment to fundamental Christian principles respond with admiration. Catholic thinker Thomas Merton used Bruderhof founder Eberhard Arnold’s book “Why We Live in Community” as the “completely Christian answer” to the question of genuine community living.

Living out Christian ideals, however, has not made for a tranquil journey. Throughout their history, the Bruderhofers’ road less-traveled has embroiled them in public and internal controversies.

FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE: The Bruderhofers’ radical pacifism leads them to butt heads naturally with the state over issues such as the death penalty and in the process end up as part of unusual and controversial coalitions. In the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, the Bruderhof are working alongside the NAACP and Move, the urban, secular, African American, politically radical group that made headlines a decade ago when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on one of their buildings.

Arnold says, “The gospel leaves us with no other choice but to fight against the death penalty with all of our strength.” Bruderhofers believe Abu-Jamal was “framed” in the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and that he did not receive a fair trial. As they have taken part in letter-writing campaigns and protests, new friendships have been forged between the black activists and the German Anabaptists.

The Bruderhofers also have cosponsored the Philadelphia rallies on Abu-Jamal’s behalf where Bruderhof children read excerpts from Abu-Jamal’s “Live from Death Row.” “Mumia has in a sense become one of us,” says Arnold. “Even though he is not a believing Christian, his writings have brought the gospel of Christ alive to us in a new way.”

Move leader Pam Africa sees similarities in the Bruderhof and Abu-Jamal. “They stand up for their beliefs,” she says. “Once the Bruderhof heard about the case and found out about the truth, they didn’t sit around and philosophize about it—they put their religion to practice.”

HUTTERIAN SPLITS: Although the Bruderhof have found unity in opposing racism and social injustice, they have found themselves increasingly as splintered and isolated as when their movement was founded.

From the beginning in 1920, the relationships between the Bruderhof and the other Hutterite groups have been complex. At that time, Eberhard Arnold, Johann Christoph Arnold’s grandfather, founded the Bruderhof in Germany. According to Rich Preheim, assistant editor of the Mennonite Weekly Review, when Arnold established the Bruderhof, patterned after the sixteenth-century Hutterites, he did not know that the direct religious descendants of Anabaptist leader Jacob Hutter were living in North America, organized around three colonies. “Since then the ‘traditional’ Brethren, the Western Hutterites, and Arnold’s Bruderhof [Eastern Hutterites] have had an on-again, off-again relationship, which is now off,” Preheim says.

The Bruderhof’s involvement in political controversies, such as Abu-Jamal’s case, is incongruent with how other Hutterites approach their much more private and insular faith. “Just because they claim the same foundation in terms of beliefs doesn’t mean it gets expressed in the same way,” Preheim says. The split between the Bruderhof and some groups within the Western Hutterites seems to be final, while with others there is still some hope for reconciliation.

FALSE ACCUSATIONS? In recent years, another struggle for the Bruderhofers has struck closer to home.

For more than a year, the Bruderhof have faced chronic friction from a group of people who have left, 200 of whom loosely identify themselves as Children of the Bruderhof (COB).

COB’s accusations against the Bruderhof include punishing dissent with expulsion, preventing some former members from communicating with family still in the group, trying to harass ex-members into silence, and not adhering to all the tenets of the faith. Bruderhofers admit mistakes, but they accuse COB of misrepresenting circumstances.

A typical example of this verbal sparring is an accusation by COB member David Ostrum that Bruderhof elder Arnold compromises his pacifist position by owning a permit to carry a handgun. Arnold acknowledges that a few years ago he acquired a gun to deal with rabid animals on Bruderhof property, but within two months, he realized that having the weapon was a bad idea and sold it.

Central to the disputes is what COB members believe is the needlessly harsh discipline of children and the overly restrictive control of adult members. In addition, COB members also have been prevented from seeing relatives still among the Bruderhof. Bruderhofers say family members want it that way, and that children are expected to abide by strict morals.

When teenagers graduate from high school, they make a decision whether to join the Bruderhof as adult members. As for adult converts to the Bruderhof, the Hutterites say they let them know up front they are expected to renounce private property, tobacco, television, and premarital sex. “The decision to join the Bruderhof community is the individual’s,” says Ian Winter, a Bruderhof leader. “No one is forced into any decisions.”

Recent meetings between the Bruderhof and COB members attempting reconciliation have only accentuated tensions between the two groups.

A PROPHETIC WITNESS: As the Bruderhof face the challenges of societal injustices and of unresolved internal issues, their community life continues to attract handfuls of refugees from American materialism.

In 1990, physicians Diane and Paul Fox and their four children were living an affluent, hectic lifestyle that left them weary and burdened.

“My first response when I visited [the Bruderhof] was excitement and joy,” Diane Fox says. “My second response was, paradoxically, one of dismay. It became more and more clear to me that in order to attain the freedom that Christ was offering me in community, I would have to give up all the false freedoms that I had worked so hard to acquire: all the money, all the status, all the apparent security.”

Yet, the family has adjusted to the simple lifestyle. “My service is small: I practice medicine, I take my turn at preparing a meal or watching the children, I run an errand, answer the phone occasionally.” Diane Fox says. “The miracle is that we receive a hundredfold for the small service that we do. The cars are maintained, the meals prepared, the laundry and cleaning done, the daycare provided, the gardens tended, the children taught, the elderly cared for—all for love, and all for free.”

A vital part of the Bruderhof ministry has been to provide a Christian witness to the fact that there are viable alternatives to American consumer-driven living. Derek Perkins, executive director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, California, has been helped by Bruderhof interns for seven years.

“The Bruderhofers believe that the radical teachings of loving your enemies, serving the poor, being nonviolent, and holding all things in common of Jesus are for the here and now,” Perkins says.

Preheim, however, expresses caution about such a lifestyle. “Living in community can be a dangerous thing,” Preheim says. “Intentional communities don’t have a successful record.”

Although the Bruderhofers agree that their radical discipleship puts them on a collision course with American culture, they confidently intermingle Christian community living and social activism into a potent vision of faithfulness.

Back in July at the successful stay of execution hearings for Abu-Jamal, a letter was read from Bruderhof member Richard Thomson, in which he said that if the stay was not granted, “I want to offer my own life and accept the lethal injection … so that [Mumia] may live and your law be satisfied.”

Andres Tapia and Rudy Carrasco are in Rifton, New York.

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The racial fault lines in America were brought into glaring focus with the not-guilty verdict in the O. J. Simpson murder trial and two weeks later during the “Million Man March” for black men in Washington.

For Christians working toward racial reconciliation, those fault lines are intimately familiar. “Sunday morning is still the most segregated time in America,” says Chris Rice, co-editor of “Reconciliation Quarterly.”

When the jury’s verdict was announced that Simpson was not guilty of murdering his wife and her friend, whites and blacks had startlingly different reactions. Many blacks cheered, while many whites said a guilty man was being set free. The reactions to the verdict were no different among many Christian groups. National Council of Churches (NCC) General Secretary Joan Brown Campbell vividly remembers the responses among the members of the NCC staff the day the verdict was disclosed. At the moment the verdict was read, with few exceptions, “black staff cheered, some white women cried, and some white men said ‘There is no justice.’ “

She says the differences are due to a “cultural gap that exists despite the fact that the NCC has had a proracial-justice policy for over 50 years.”

On October 16, when Louis Farrakhan rallied at least 400,000 black men in Washington, there were similarly divergent reactions. Although a significant number of black Christian leaders opposed the march, many black Christians participated.

In Boston, Eugene Rivers, a Pentecostal minister and head of the interracial Ten Point Coalition, said both the Simpson verdict and the Washington march reveal that the American people are descending into “a state of psychological apartheid.”

Rivers, whose father worked with both Elijah Mohammad and Malcolm X, said, “The ascension of Farrakhan as a pivotal figure in the black community is a result of the failure of the black church to develop a coordinated program of evangelism and rehabilitation for black males.”

Outspoken opposition to Farrakhan was frequent among white Christian leaders. Pat Robertson, the leading religious broadcaster, commented, “We want to see the black males and females in America march for justice and participate in the public process, but the leader should not be Louis Farrakhan. He is a monger of hate.”

UNITY IN WORSHIP: Even though interracial tensions are evident nationally, there are churches successfully bridging the divide. On a recent October Sunday morning at Second Canaan Baptist Church in New York City’s Harlem, a visiting white opera singer walked up front to perform. The singer said he had a plane to catch, but wanted to sing a song, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,” before he left. Starting slowly and softly, he began to sing and was soon joined by the black choir. Then, row by row, the congregation joined in. By the end, all were standing, clapping and singing.

Afterwards, Second Canaan Baptist’s pastor, Henry Davis III, commented, “When he sang, there were not many dry eyes. His impact had nothing to do with his color.” Later that week at the Wednesday noon prayer meeting, Second Canaan Baptist members reflected on the state of relations between black and white. “Churches are more segregated than they should be,” says Pernell Lewis, who has attended Second Canaan Baptist for more than 30 years.

Davis believes “worship is an excellent place to start.” In his former church in New Jersey, he was regularly invited to preach in predominantly white churches. “They told me, ‘When you come to us, be yourself. Bring your traditions.’ “

ON THE AGENDA: Racial reconciliation has been high on the agenda of church leaders the past 18 months.

The Southern Baptist Convention in June approved a resolution acknowledging its racist heritage. The National Association of Evangelicals and the National Black Evangelical Association held a special joint session in January to commit themselves toward building racial harmony through individual relationships.

Also, the Assemblies of God has passed a resolution urging its pastors to “enhance and accelerate … the inclusion of black brothers and sisters” and committing the denomination to “removing every last vestige of racism.”

But the fallout from the Simpson verdict will test the strength of these groups’ resolve, says Rice. “It’s one thing to change theology, but another to change habits and lifestyles.” Predominantly white churches have made those kinds of resolutions in the past, he says.

“Blacks have reason to be skeptical. Their perception is that we whites are willing to be involved in something as long as it doesn’t cost.” Rice says that one of the first steps white Christians can take is to ask why differences of opinion exist on matters such as the Simpson verdict.

The NCC’s Campbell said bringing about interracial harmony will also require churches to take steps that may have been tried in the past, but were dismissed as too modest. To help encourage interracial dialogue and understanding among members of its staff, the NCC has hired an outside consultant to help the process. Within the nation’s seminaries, racial concerns are receiving additional attention. Vernon Grounds, chancellor of Denver Seminary, said educating new pastors about racial issues is critically important.

He said seminaries should be training Christian leaders to be “agents of reconciliation” not only between God and individuals, but also between peoples.

Looking across America’s racial landscape, Grounds said, “We can approve of the stated purpose of the Million Man March. The main thrust of that gathering is surely one that we as evangelicals can endorse. This ought to be a stimulus and a challenge to us.”

SEGREGATED NEIGHBORHOODS: One of the persistent realities of America’s racial division is how it has been enhanced by lifestyle patterns. “Churches are segregated because neighborhoods are segregated,” says Rice. “We need to deal with that, then we need to deal with the leadership in our institutions and our churches. Are we willing to have interracial leadership?” In addition, as racial attitudes are examined, concerns about poverty and economic inequality may also emerge.

Situated on Chicago’s southwest side, the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church serves a diverse neighborhood of African-Americans, Latinos, and whites. Saint Matthew’s pastor, Julio Antonio Loza, said that his congregation does not have the “luxury” of living with racial divisions. “They all share the same problem and that is poverty. They are at the bottom of American society.”

Through the church’s weekday feeding ministry, racial divisions have become less potent. Loza’s focus has been to assist church members to realize that true reconciliation does not come through political change, but through confession of sin and a relationship with Christ.

Loza does not believe as time goes on that “the whole world will reconcile.” He said, “The Scripture tells us that towards the end there will be wars and the son will rise against his father. It says there will be violence and destruction.

“But we are to be instruments of peace and reconciliation.”

Timothy C. Morgan with reporting from Tom Giles in New York City.

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Tentmaking—doing missionary ministry while working in a “nonreligious” occupation—has been billed as the magic bullet of Western missions in the past decade. Self-supporting tentmakers, taking a cue from the tentmaking apostle Paul (Acts 18:3), could enter countries closed to traditional missionaries, particularly in the Muslim world. At the same time, they could bypass the difficult, time-consuming, and uncertain process of raising financial support from reluctant or overcommitted churches and individuals.

Yet too often the magic bullet has misfired, sometimes hitting devoted supporters of the approach squarely in the foot. Some tentmakers have been wracked with guilt because of their double identity, or sent home broken and defeated because of a lack of training in spiritual or cross-cultural ministry or an inability to balance the demands of their secular job with their spiritual ministry.

Despite the setbacks, the movement is gaining a maturity that promises to enhance its effectiveness and allow tentmaking to fulfill some of its promises and complement the older, more established missions movement.

“Ten years ago, tentmaking was a novelty,” says Ted Yamamori, president of Food for the Hungry, a relief-and-development agency in Scottsdale, Arizona. “Nowadays it’s more organized, and networking is going on worldwide.”

Last year, 70 strategists from 17 nations met in Thailand to form the Tentmakers International Exchange (TIE), which had been planned since the Lausanne II missions conference in Manila in 1989.

“There is a strong and growing interest in tentmaking,” says William Taylor of Austin, Texas, head of the missions commission of World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), an international umbrella organization representing national evangelical groups. “The most common version in the West is the engineer or teacher serving in a restricted—access country.”

The Filipino Missionary Association is using another model: training 2,000 evangelical contract workers as tentmaking missionaries. “This is a truly strategic and brave force that is particularly impacting the Muslim Arab nations,” Taylor says.

LIVING WITH RISKS: Christians are taking risks in tentmaking roles. While employed for two and a half years by the National Conservatory of Music in Tetuan, Morocco, Salvadoran orchestra conductor Gilberto Orellana helped convert 14 Moroccan Muslims to Christ. Then Orellana was jailed, convicted of proselytizing, and sentenced to a year in prison before being expelled in January.

In 1993, a New Zealander and three Americans working for an export-management company—and serving as tentmakers for the Mesa, Arizona-based Frontiers—were imprisoned in Cairo and later deported for proselytizing.

Perhaps responding to the ethical quandaries of tentmakers who use the strategy merely as a means to enter otherwise closed countries, leaders of Intent, composed of 50 U.S. agencies in the tie network, advocate a broader understanding of the tentmaker role. Gary Ginter, a member of Intent’s board, prefers the term “kingdom professional” to “tentmaker.”

“Tentmaking has come to be thought of primarily as a financial strategy, and we don’t think that it is,” Ginter says. “The issue is much more one of the people of God using the gifts of God … for the works of God.”

Intent, formerly the U.S. Association of Tentmakers, based in Colorado Springs, has organized several conferences to spread its message and enhance the networking of tentmaker-minded mission leaders, churches, and strategists.

TIME IS AT HAND: “Within the next ten or fifteen years, the greatest percentage of missionaries will be going out in this way,” says Carol Davis, Intent’s interim director. “But there are very few agencies that are really open. Most of them have tried it and feel it doesn’t work.”

Interest in tentmaking by U.S. Protestant agencies, although minor when compared to the traditional support-raising missionary, continues to grow. According to the Missions Advanced Research and Communication Center in Monrovia, California, there were 1,200 tentmakers in 1992, up from 873 four years earlier. In the same time, the number of traditional cross-cultural missionaries plunged from 50,550 to 41,142.

Yamamori, author of a 1993 book on the need for humanitarian tentmakers, Penetrating Missions’ Final Frontiers, says the recent interest in the “10/40 Window” “has really accentuated the need for tentmaking.” The 10/40 Window is a geographical area from 10 degrees to 40 degrees north of the equator, in which most of the world’s non-Christians and poor people live. Intensive efforts are focusing on missions, evangelism, and prayer support (CT, Oct. 2, 1995, p. 106).

While the relatively few agencies that use tentmaking tend to view it as a supplemental rather than a primary strategy, openness to working with organizations such as Intent is on the rise.

“Frankly, as an organization, we keep trying to say, ‘What’s our niche?’ ” says Dave Brown of the Evangelical Alliance Mission in Wheaton, Illinois. “We’re going to have to increasingly say, ‘How can we partner? How can we set up these networks and work together?’ “

Brown says many in the missions community still view tentmaking as “a financial ploy of people who don’t have the guts to do deputation.” They are also rightly concerned, he says, with “the skeletons lying out in the desert of people who have gone out there and didn’t know what they were doing and weren’t connected with anybody.”

Some of the strongest interest in the strategy comes from churches seeking to equip their laity for world missions in cost-effective and creative ways. To help them avoid some common pitfalls, WEF in 1993 published a manual for churches, “Working Your Way to the Nations: A Guide to Effective Tentmaking.”

Successful tentmaking models are plentiful, even from established Christian organizations that make no secret of their presence in sensitive countries. Since 1954, the United Mission to Nepal has provided a plethora of Christian humanitarian services in the poor, largely Hindu country, with the government’s blessing. InterServe, founded in 1852 and based in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, has shifted from being a traditional mission to a tentmaking agency. Its unapologetically Christian workers use their “secularly marketable skills” in medicine, publishing, engineering, and the like in communities that need them, earning respect and the opportunity to share their faith further.

InterServe director Ralph Eckhardt says, “Their responsibility is simply to witness, by word and deed, to people who have never been introduced to the gospel message before.”

TOOL OF THE FUTURE: Tentmaking remains an effective strategy of accessing countries that are otherwise closed to traditional missions and evangelism.

“It will get more and more difficult to get traditional missionary visas,” says Fred Gregory, former president of the Seattle-based World Concern. “We need to find other ways to contribute to the cause of the kingdom.”

Driving the change, Gregory says, are the spiritually mature churches overseas that require fewer preachers, teachers, and administrators but still appreciate help in areas such as agriculture, engineering, and information technology.

The opportunities for tentmakers never have been greater, according to Intent’s Ginter, as modernity and capitalism increasingly homogenize world cultures.

“One of the silver linings of modernity is that it allows us an incredible range of ways to respond to cultures we would otherwise be quite blocked out of,” Ginter says. “Tentmaking is a supplemental strategy. It’s by no means a panacea, but it is part of what I think God will use for the next 50 years.”

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The lead-off articles in this issue celebrate 50 years of Billy Graham’s public evangelistic ministry. But we could also celebrate another important anniversary: 40 years ago, Billy Graham gave one of his most important speeches to one of his all-time smallest audiences. The evangelist called together about 10 influential Christian leaders to explain his idea for a new magazine to be called CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He hoped it would fill a void:

“Thousands of young ministers are really in the evangelical camp in their theological thinking and evangelistic zeal,” Graham said. “As evangelicals, I am convinced we are in the majority among both clergy and church members. However, we have no rallying point, we have no flag or organization under which we can all gather. We are divided, confused, and in one sense defeated. We need a new strong vigorous voice to call us together that will have the respect of all evangelicals of all stripes within our major denominations.”

Later that year, businessman Howard Pew responded to Graham’s vision by providing most of the funds needed to send it free to nearly every member of the Christian clergy in North America. The prospect of such generosity encouraged Graham’s physician father-in-law to abandon his surgical practice and manage the new magazine: which he did for 18 years.

Watch this space for more reminiscing in 1996, for it was in 1956 that the first issue of CT was published. And if you can handle a full load of nostalgia in 1996, you’ll also want to read Billy Graham’s (as yet untitled) memoirs. Originally scheduled for publication this fall, they are now nearing completion and will go to a publisher early next year.

On this magazine’s silver anniversary, Graham said it had “helped bring about an evangelical revolution in America.” On Graham’s golden anniversary, we say that he gets the lion’s share of the credit.

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

It is hard to know just how to take an invitation to write about gluttony. “We thought you would be the perfect person,” the editor’s letter read. “Gee, is it that obvious?” I thought, alarmed. “No, no, that’s not really me. It’s just these horizontal stripes.”

But, if I am honest, I have to admit that it is me. It’s most of us. Food is an intoxicating pleasure, and it appears superficially like an innocuous one. What is so bad about engaging in a little gluttony, anyway? It’s not one of the bad sins, like adultery or stealing—we wouldn’t do that. All gluttony does is make you soft and huggable. It’s the cute sin.

But gluttony is not about appearance; our inclination to associate it with external effects alone shows how reluctant we are to confront the sin in the heart. The gluttonous impulse is a sign of disharmony with God’s provision and creation, and it can disrupt the spiritual lives of people of every size. External dimensions are no predictor of internal rebellion.

Previous generations of Christians knew this. Overindulgence in food did not just lead to thickened waistlines and arteries; it led to spiritual disaster. These words from a nineteenth-century Russian monk, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, build in an alarming crescendo: “Wise temperance of the stomach is a door to all the virtues. Restrain the stomach, and you will enter Paradise. But if you please and pamper your stomach, you will hurl yourself over the precipice of bodily impurity, into the fire of wrath and fury, you will coarsen and darken your mind, and in this way you will ruin your powers of attention and self-control, your sobriety and vigilance.”

If that doesn’t make you take a second look at your second helpings, nothing will.

The key word in the passage above is self-control. Gluttony is not wrong because it makes you fat; it is wrong because it is the fruit of self-indulgence. Gluttony says, “Gimme”; Jesus says, “Come to me.” When we come to him, we give up all claims to be coddled; we come to shoulder our own rough cross. The path to the buffet table and the path to sanctification lie in opposite directions.

Yet anyone who has tried to diet knows that the will to eat indulgently is surprisingly strong and unruly. Plans to eat reasonably and with an eye to good health may look attractive on Sunday night, when sketched out on a full stomach. (Oh yes, and we’ll get up early every day to jog, too.) About 3 p.m. on Monday afternoon, however, it’s a different story. The stomach that was placid and amiable has become a bucking, rebellious pony, with a defiance that was never evident until it was made to wear a bridle. Dieters are often shocked at their deep-seated and ungovernable compulsion to eat, as facets of unconverted willfulness, never suspected, are being brought to light. What makes gluttony such a hard sin to break?

FOOD AS POWER

Of course, food is pleasurable; that alone can make a sin enticing. But while some pleasures can be relinquished with a melancholic pang, the attempt to discipline food sins prompts a ferocious, angry resistance. Something more is going on here. The urge to overindulge in food is powerful, I think, because it is linked to a desire for power. A complex net of submerged assumptions teaches us that food grants some limited, but tangible, control over the exterior world. We bite the apple (or the doughnut) because we have heard a whisper, “You shall be as gods.” This plays out in various ways:

1. Emperor baby. Eating is the first pleasure. Researchers have found that if amniotic fluid is sweetened, unborn babies will gulp it more greedily. For a newborn, many sensations are unpleasant or frightening, but food, glorious food, is a constant and dependable comfort. Controlling access to food, crying to be fed, and winning the reward of sweet, warm milk is the first task of newborn life. No wonder we retain into adulthood a zeal to gather as much good, sweet food as we can grab; it was the first job we ever had, and it felt like an urgent one, indeed.

“I don’t think it’s fair that they changed the rules,” my husband said one day, looking forlornly at the ends of his belt; they would no longer quite meet in front. “I can remember a time in my life—in fact, it lasted quite a long time—when people were constantly affirming me with, ‘My, you’re becoming such a big boy!'” He tried once more to make the belt ends meet. “Now that I’ve gotten really good at it, suddenly they changed the rules.”

His whimsical protest conceals a grain of truth. The baby that focuses all its attention on getting food soon grows to be a child that is praised for eating, indulged with treats, and admired for getting bigger. Not only is getting food our first job, not only is it intrinsically pleasurable, but it’s a talent for which most of us were praised throughout our childhoods, the way in which we elicited praise and admiration from our elders.

2. I’m in control. Succumbing to the desire to overeat may be a straightforward way that people demonstrate power. Life is complicated and fraught with compromises, unmet desires, and nettling disappointments. We cannot make other people do right. Friends, neighbors, spouse, children all may resist our will, but, darn it, that chocolate cream pie is going to know who’s boss.

Overeating can become a secret, habitual way to reassure yourself that you are not powerless, that you can subdue and conquer as much food as you choose. Viewed in this light, anorexia has the same root as gluttony: a desire to demonstrate control. Women starve themselves to prove that they are the Empresses of Ice Cream, wielding a scepter of iron rejection where a plumper sister might choose the tactic of conquering by consuming.

3. Squirrel away. A related impulse is the need to hoard. Perhaps a cream pie this perfect will never cross my path again; it is only wisdom to tuck away as much as possible before the waiter clears the plates and we must part forever. Hoarding food discloses our need to establish ourselves as independent resources, free from dependence on God. There is an intrinsic mistrust of his ability to provide, though he owns the cream pies on a thousand hills.

4. Boredom. A constant stream of pleasant sensations coming in may help keep more troubling self-confrontation at bay. The continuing work of repentance is lifelong, and comparatively less jolly than a bag of gumdrops; those gumdrops may be just enough to keep us distracted one more day. Bishop Brianchaninov, cited above, insisted that an evil of gluttony was its ability to dull the mind. Pennsylvania pastor Pat Reardon says, “When people ask me why God seems so distant, I ask them ‘How much TV have you been watching? What thoughts are you allowing into your mind?'” We could add: And how much idle junk food do you nibble for no apparent reason?

5. Big. The title is clumsy and forbidding, but Fat Is a Feminist Issue delivers a startling insight. Author Susie Orbach writes that many dieters self-sabotage because they fail to realize that “compulsive eating is linked to a desire to get fat. … Many women are positively afraid of being thin.” This strikes us as howlingly counterintuitive, but Orbach’s research is intriguing. She has women imagine themselves in a social situation; they are to envision every detail of dress, posture, with whom they talk, how others react to them. Orbach has them imagine themselves in the same situation, but immensely fat; then she has them repeat the exercise, but imagine themselves with ideal slimness.

In a culture where slimness equals beauty, women have powerful reasons to want to be thin; but, surprisingly, when they imagined it, they found they did not enjoy it. Slimness was associated with being “cold and ungiving,” “self-involved,” burdened with others’ expectations, the object of unwanted desire from men and uncomfortable jealousy from women. The fat self, on the other hand, was relaxed, free from unwanted sexual attention and the need to compete, and able to talk comfortably with others.

As the study demonstrated, another reason people subconsciously desired a greater girth was because they sensed that, as a result, they had more authority. One woman put it this way: “The fat in the situation [made] me feel like a sergeant major-big and authoritative. When I go through the fantasy of seeing myself thin, what immediately strikes me is just how fragile and little I feel, almost as though I might disappear or be blown away.” Men have as many reasons as women do—maybe more—to want to be bigger. Our attempts at self-control in eating fail, in part, because part of us really doesn’t want to risk shrinking. We want to be big.

A “Bizarro” cartoon by Dan Piraro showed an enormously fat man looking into a refrigerator, while a smaller man stood nearby, holding up a finger of admonition. “You are what you eat,” the scolder said. The fat man replied, “Good. That makes me omnipotent.”

SATAN’S PLOY

One of the crueler tricks of temptation is that it exacts painful dues while failing to deliver the promised pleasure. A really clever temptation can impose the very opposite of what was promised. This is the case with gluttony. If overeating is about gaining power, the stomach may indeed feel a gratifying, temporary dominance-after which the overeater will likely feel ashamed and, ironically, out of control. Overeating may be an assertion of power, but the classic confession is, “I have no will power.” Far from establishing the glutton as a master, it exposes him as a slave.

This is not a slavery merely to self; it is worse than that. The apostle Paul speaks of those whose “god is the belly” (Phil. 3:19; all Scripture references quoted are NRSV), and Saint John Climacus, seventh-century abbot of the monastery on Mount Sinai, writes of “that clamorous mistress, the stomach.” Those who succumb to gluttony experience themselves not as rulers, but as helpless prey. Prey, indeed, we are; this is not just a matter of deficient self-control, but of slipping under another’s control, into another’s trap. “Like a roaring lion, your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). It is in the nature of evil to consume, and those who feast wantonly become themselves morsels.

In “The Screwtape Letters,” C. S. Lewis has the senior devil write to his nephew: “To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy [God the Father] demands of men is quite a different thing. … We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in; He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”

When Screwtape’s nephew finally fails in his mission, the senior devil gloats in a fashion that any glutton would find chilling: “I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on.”

“He is full and flows over,” Lewis’s devil wrote. The flowing over by which God would fill us extends from Genesis to Revelation. He does not merely decline to devour us, he feeds us. Eden was planted with “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9); in the New Jerusalem there is “the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month” (Rev. 22:2). In the Song of Solomon we sing, “He brought me to the banqueting house” (Song of Sol. 2:4), and at the end we hear, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9). We are invited to ask, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

He feeds us. Safe in his pasture, we will not become food. The task is learning to eat the food he gives, in the measure he gives it. Our whole lives consist of learning what he meant when he said: “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (John 4:32).

Satan came to Adam in Paradise; he came to Christ in the desert. He came to two hungry men and said: eat, for your hunger is proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food. And Adam believed and ate; but Christ rejected that temptation and said: man shall not live by bread alone but by God. By doing this, Christ restored that relationship between food, life, and God which Adam broke, and which we still break every day. (Alexander Schmemann, “On Fasting at Great Lent”)

THE GRAYNESS OF GLUTTONY

“Which we still break every day.” How do we restore the food-life-God relationship? Mastering gluttony is a tricky task, because you can never be sure you have arrived. With the broader sins, you can swear off the behavior and know with certainty at the end of the day that you either kept your promise or did not. The thief does not wonder whether or not he stole. The person struggling with homosexual longing either went out and picked up a date, or didn’t. With some sins, there is not much gray area.

With gluttony, it is almost all gray. You cannot simply swear off eating, and learning to eat aright seems such a slippery, indefinable goal. The standards we concoct for ourselves seem to mock us. Sallie Tisdale wrote of dieting in “Harper’s” (March 1993), “Eating became cheating. One pretzel was cheating. Two apples instead of one was cheating—a large potato instead of a small, carrots instead of broccoli. … Diets have failure built in, failure is the definition. Every substitution—even carrots for broccoli—was a triumph of desire over will. … I saw that the real point of dieting is dieting—to not be done with it, ever.”

Yet overcoming gluttony must mean getting a handle on our intake of food, and Christians through the ages have discovered various helps. For example, Saint John Climacus gave his monks specific, concrete advice. “He who fondles a lion tames it, but he who coddles the body makes it still wilder,” he warned. But he cautioned against excessive discipline, criticizing one who advised taking only bread and water: “To prescribe this is like saying to a child: ‘Go up the whole ladder in one stride.'” Saint John recommended, rather, varying one’s discipline: “Let us for awhile only deny ourselves fattening foods, then heated foods, and only then what makes our food pleasant. If possible, give your stomach satisfying and digestible food, so as to satisfy its insatiable hunger by sufficiency, and so that we may be delivered from excessive desire.”

Learning to eat rightly usually means, in our modern age, dieting. But dieting can merely be a substitute of one of the Seven Deadly Sins for another: forsaking Gluttony, we fall into Vanity. Christians have, from the earliest times, wrestled with the temptation to misuse food, but the weapon they used wasn’t dieting. It was fasting.

FASTING FOR THE MASSES

Many Western Christians, particularly Protestants, think of fasting (if they do at all) as a tool for intensifying prayer; Richard J. Foster, author of “Celebration of Discipline,” says that “the central idea in fasting is the voluntary denial of an otherwise normal function for the sake of intense spiritual activity.” Narrow-focus fasting like this can powerfully enhance intercession, repentance, and other spiritual undertakings.

There is a broader use of the discipline in the history of the church, however: regular, corporate, extended fasting, as a means of broader spiritual growth. The earliest existing Christian document outside Scripture is the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (dates vary; but it may have been written as early as A.D. 70). The Didache reminds believers that the Jews fast on Tuesday and Thursday-remember the publican in Luke who stated, “I fast twice a week”? But the Didache does not say, “So avoid that foolishness, because we don’t need it.” No, this earliest church-discipline text instructs that Christians should fast as well, but on Wednesdays (the day of Judas’s betrayal) and Fridays (the day of the Crucifixion).

Doesn’t this veer uncomfortably close to salvation by works? Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard writes in “The Spirit of the Disciplines,” “We have simply let our thinking fall into the grip of a false opposition of grace to ‘works’ that was caused by a mistaken association of works with ‘merit.’ ” This confusion results in lives that are not spiritually pure or healthy, as we do not know how to harness the power that made Christians of other ages spiritual giants.

Willard proposes that we take seriously the disciplines of the spiritual life: “Disciplines of Abstinence” (including solitude, silence, fasting, chastity, and sacrifice) and “Disciplines of Engagement” (like study, worship, service, prayer, and confession). If we want truly changed and empowered lives, we must be as self-disciplined, and as constant in our disciplines, as an athlete. Willard says that it is not enough to be like the boy who, admiring his baseball hero, imitates the way he holds his bat. The athlete did not win success by holding the bat a distinctive way, but by disciplining himself to a lifetime of training and practice.

Willard is not the first to use this analogy, of course; Paul wrote, “Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. Well, I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air, but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after preaching to others I myself should not be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:25-27).

Fasting is a key, not only to overcoming gluttony, but to other self-disciplines as well. Willard writes: “Since food has the pervasive place it does in our lives, the effects of fasting will be diffused throughout our personality. In the midst of all our needs and wants, we experience the contentment of the child that has been weaned from its mother’s breast” (Ps. 131:2).

This psalm had always puzzled me; it was only in researching this article that it became clear. I had seen the contentment of a nursing child and wondered why the psalmist didn’t use that image. I believe the point is this: the weaned child has learned to be satisfied with another food. We do not live by bread alone.

While the discipline of fasting has gone through seasons of use and disuse in the West, Eastern Christians have maintained it consistently. In fact, from the date of the Didache to this, Eastern Orthodox Christians still abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the weeks before Easter, Orthodox heighten their fasting; for those seven weeks they eat no meat, fish, or dairy products. It is a rigorous discipline, one eased by the knowledge that millions of other Orthodox around the world are fasting at the same time. It is not seen as a way of earning salvation or anything else; the recurrent metaphors are of “exercise” or “medicine” for the soul.

DARE TO BE DISCIPLINED

In the midst of Lent, I spoke with several Orthodox Christians about the experience of that discipline. Because several had previously been members of other churches, they were able to contrast this extended, corporate discipline with individual, one-day fasting. Among the comments:

“There’s definitely strength in numbers.”

“Because it’s not just intensely focused on one day or one prayer need, it can spread through all your life and change you.”

“We all fast together, just like we all feast together. It wouldn’t be fun to feast by yourself.”

“The first year I did this, it was like ‘Let’s hurry up and get through this and get to Pascha [Easter], get back to regular eating.’ Now its more like a chance to get back on track, to try to bring the rest of the year up to this mark of discipline.”

One woman had been Orthodox for all her 86 years. She said, “My mother taught us as little kids to thank the dear Lord for the opportunity to have this fasting. I feel like it cleanses my body. I look forward to it every year.” In fact, many Orthodox I talked with agreed: somewhat to their surprise, every year they look forward to the Lenten fast, much like an athlete, on arising in the morning, may look forward to going for a jog.

Only by testing can believers discover whether fasting bears fruit for them. Taking on fasting means pursuing self-discipline through some irksome trials, an ability many modern-day Christians can well afford to learn. But heed Saint John’s advice: Do not attempt too discouragingly much at once; do not try to go up the whole ladder in a single step.

The law of the jungle is “Eat or be eaten.” Indulging in gluttony seems like a private vice, a “cute sin,” a matter between only the tempted diner and the eclair. But undisciplined indulgence in the pleasure of food costs us more than we dream: it coarsens and darkens our minds and ruins our powers of attention and self-control, of sobriety and vigilance. It hobbles and confuses us. It makes us prey for another Eater.

The one who bids us to his marriage supper will not devour us; in fact, he promises to feed us. But there is more; he does not feed us only with the good things he has made, or even the goodness of supernatural food like manna. He feeds us his very self. It is this other bread we must learn to eat, not “bread alone” but the Word of God himself. At the Communion table this becomes not just theory, but a true encounter-a feast that binds hungry sinners together and links us to the One who alone can feed our souls.

“Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. … Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:49-53).

Lord, give us this bread always!

Frederica Mathewes-Green is the author of “Real Choices” (Questar), a syndicated columnist with Religion News Service, and khouria (priest’s wife) in the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Chinese church has experienced phenomenal growth despite four decades of religious repression and persecution. While definitive numbers are difficult to obtain, the Chinese Church Research Center (CCRC) in Hong Kong estimates the church in China has grown from about 840,000 Protestant believers in 1949 to over 60 million today. (While other experts place the number of believers much lower, all are agreed on the fact of the phenomenal growth.) Approximately 90 percent of these Christians meet in unofficial house churches scattered throughout the countrysides and cityscapes of this vast and populous nation.

From an office complex crammed amidst the teeming business world of Hong Kong’s endless high-rises, Jonathan Chao tirelessly researches and ministers to the ever-developing church in the People’s Republic of China, whose border lies only 25 miles from Hong Kong Island. He has demonstrated his special burden for the Chinese church through various activities: he is the founder and director of the CCRC, founder and president of the Chinese Mission Seminary in Hong Kong, and founder of China Ministries International, to mention just three of his many accomplishments. When not in Hong Kong, Chao teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and at Wheaton College in Illinois.

While Hong Kong has been an effective base for Christian missionary efforts in China for the past century, Chao anxiously anticipates July 1997, when Hong Kong—now run as a British colony—will be taken over by China, pursuant to a long-standing political agreement between Britain and China. It is unknown whether the Chinese government will allow Hong Kong Christians like Chao to enjoy their present level of religious freedom. With an eye toward this coming event, Chao spoke about the present and future state of the Christian church in China.

WHAT IS THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT’S PRESENT ATTITUDE TOWARD RELIGION IN GENERAL AND CHRISTIANITY IN PARTICULAR?

For the past 45 years, the Chinese government’s religious policy has assured “freedom of religious belief.” In reality, the Communist party would like to see religion completely dismissed from China, and official state policy has been designed to do just that. However, because this plan has been unsuccessful, China’s present policy is to tolerate religion within the confines of government control. To do this, the Chinese government has set up “patriotic religious organizations.” This includes, among others, the organization under which Protestant Christians are supposed to operate, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).

These organizations are led by the Communist party of China through progovernment clergy. Believers in these religious groups meet in designated places of worship and are led by state-approved pastors. Any Christian activity outside of these government-approved organizations is illegal, and violators are subject to arrest.

HOW ARE CHRISTIAN LEADERS WHO PRACTICE CHRISTIANITY OUTSIDE OF THE APPROVED TSPM CHURCH TREATED?

Many itinerant evangelists and house-church leaders who are not licensed with the government and who engage in evangelism outside the TSPM churches are arrested and often suffer torture. Still, the house churches make up the vast majority of Christians in China today, led mostly by lay leaders who receive no salary and whose basic needs are provided by their churches.

HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO WITNESS THE ACTIVITY OF THESE CHURCHES?

Since the mideighties, I have visited house churches in villages in many parts of China and have conducted leadership training at these churches and at underground seminaries located in subterranean caves. I have seen all-day Sunday house-church worship services with 300 to 400 persons.

During the last 15 years, the house churches in China have developed considerably. Initially, house churches were independent and separated, but gradually they have united into regional groups of churches. Many of them now have national affiliations. Some of the larger house-church affiliations have over 3,000 full-time evangelists; one of the largest I know of has some 8,000 full-time evangelists at work in every province throughout China.

Committed to evangelism and missions, Chinese Christians train the young people in their late teens and early twenties to become missionaries for several years. These evangelists purchase a one-way train ticket to wherever they feel the Lord is calling them; usually, within three to six months they establish a church. In this way, evangelism and church planting are crisscrossing China, and the gospel is being spread like wildfire.

HAVE YOU SENSED A GREATER SPIRITUAL OPENNESS AMONG THE CHINESE PEOPLE IN RECENT TIMES?

Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, thousands of Chinese youths have come to Christ, especially in the cities. Also, there is a new openness among the Chinese intellectuals to the gospel. Just two weeks ago I was at a Chinese university, ministering to a group of graduate students and young instructors. They acknowledge an emptiness as they study science and technology and want to know where China is headed, what the meaning of life is, how to rebuild a value system for China.

Once such students in China believe, they simply eat the Bible up. They read it quickly and often lead other students to Christ. So, as a result, many Chinese intellectuals are turning to Christ.

IS THERE A WIDESPREAD DESIRE FOR A FREER CHRISTIANITY?

Yes, especially for freer opportunities to proclaim the gospel. For this reason, many Christians refuse to join the TSPM church. If evangelicals from America align themselves with the TSPM churches or accept invitations to speak at those churches, house-church leaders interpret such visits as endorsing the TSPM, abandoning the lordship of Christ, and forsaking the commitment to evangelism. They wish to preserve the right to preach the gospel in spite of the dangers of persecution for doing so.

(Ed. note: CT is aware of missionaries who work with TSPM in good faith and who report that their work is helping Chinese Christians.)

THEOLOGIES OFTEN ARISE FROM PARTICULAR HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. DO YOU SEE ANY PARTICULAR THEOLOGICAL EMPHASIS EMERGING FROM THE CHINESE CHRISTIAN CHURCH?

Through years of persecution, Chinese Christians have developed a theology of suffering; they call it the “Theology of the Cross.” This way of life emphasizes faithfulness to Christ, following him at all costs. And they have paid the costs. These Christians believe that suffering is concomitant with discipleship, with faith in Christ.

Along with this theology of suffering, Chinese evangelicals see that the Christian life really arises from union with Christ’s death and resurrection. I think many Christians understand the cross simply as Jesus’ objective work, accomplished. But unlike the Chinese believers, they often fail to see that the cross is also where we are nailed when we believe in Jesus, where we are united with him in his death, burial, and resurrection. Christians in China have not invented a new theology. They are simply reliving New Testament Christianity.

WHAT CHALLENGES AND ISSUES ARE CHINESE CHRISTIANS FACING NOW AND IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE?

I think the greatest challenge for many Chinese Christians will occur when China opens up more and large numbers of foreign mission groups come. Many house-church leaders wonder how their people will respond to an influx of financial attraction and theological diversity. Will their faith, developed through the years of persecution, be diluted? Will their unity as Christians be fragmented into quarreling denominations, as has happened in the churches in the former Soviet Union and as existed in China in preliberation years? And they also fear the return of “missionary imperialism.”

Some older house churches are so afraid of these possibilities that they refrain from even meeting outsiders, including overseas Chinese Christians. They fear they may lose, by outside influence, the purity of faith that has taken 45 years to gain.

WHAT DO YOU SPECULATE WILL HAPPEN WHEN CHINA’S PRESENT PREMIER, DENG XIAOPING, DIES?

It is quite likely that the transition of power will be smooth. Assuming the political situation remains as it is now—rather stable—the church will also probably stay the same for a while. Eventually, however, I think Chinese Communist religious policy will become more tolerant as China continues to pursue a market economy and becomes more open. There will probably be less persecution, and house churches might even become legalized.

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CHINESE PROTESTANT CHURCH IF THIS HAPPENS?

The TSPM church will likely undergo internal reform. True believers in that church will purge it of the government-appointed clergy, who are considered by many as rascals uninterested in spiritual growth. As the government withdraws its control and accepts that Christianity is a positive influence for China, then the TSPM churches will become purer. Christianity will then become a vital force for the rebuilding of Chinese morality, culture, and society.

IN JULY 1997, THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE OVER HONG KONG. WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL BECOME OF THE CHURCH THERE?

According to the “Basic Law,” which will govern Hong Kong after June 30, 1997, there are to be three mutual understandings regarding religion: mutual respect, mutual nonsubmission, mutual noninterference. I think the Chinese churches in Hong Kong will continue to enjoy freedom of worship after 1997. Likewise, seminaries will continue. There is no need for China to close the doors of existing churches in Hong Kong.

But will China allow the church of Hong Kong to grow in the way that it has, letting churches establish sanctuaries in apartment buildings, where most fellowships meet today? Also, nearly half of the primary and high schools in Hong Kong are run by churches that teach the Bible. Will the new government allow such church-sponsored schools to continue teaching the Bible and having devotions?

IT SOUNDS AS IF YOU HAVE YOUR DOUBTS.

I do.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR CHRISTIANS OUTSIDE CHINA TO KNOW OR DO TO HELP THE CHINESE CHURCH?

My dream for Christians who love China is that they would develop and work on missions to China. I pray that Westerners will see themselves as we overseas Chinese see ourselves: as helpers and partners with the church in China. Let the Christians in China take the lead. Respect them. Work with them, and assist them as they need it.

I urge young people in the West to hear God’s call. China will become the largest mission field in the world as we enter into the next century. If God calls you to full-time ministry in China, study the Chinese language and culture well. We need Christians from around the world to do the work of evangelizing China. It is too big for any one country or group to handle the task.

The next ten years are most critical. This is the time of harvest for China. If we do not harvest when the crop is ready, the opportunity will be wasted.

It is a strange phenomenon that when the church enjoys freedom, people cease to grow spiritually. But when there is persecution, hearts flourish. While China’s door is politically only half-open, the door of China’s heart is quite open. But it will not remain so for long. When the political door opens wide, the door to people’s hearts will gradually close, and Christian ministry to China will be harder, even though it will be freer.

Thomas F. Taylor is the director of the Institute for Ministry, Law & Ethics (e-mail: imlemain@aol.com).

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, by Andrew Sullivan (Alfred A. Knopf, 209 pp.; $22, hardcover); Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexual Debate, by Thomas E. Schmidt (InterVarsity, 240 pp.; $10.99, paper); Scripture and Homosexuality: Biblical Authority and the Church Today, by Marion L. Soards (Westminster John Knox, 84 pp.; $9.99, paper).

Twenty years ago, most homosexuals guarded their sexuality as a shameful secret. Today homosexuals march into the White House to see the President, who hopes to secure their votes in the next election. Homosexuals have emerged from the shadows not as perverts but as co-workers, family members, and political operatives. Unwilling any longer to remain hidden, they have framed their public appeal as a matter of civil rights. Homosexuals are ordinary people, they say, despised for an attribute as accidental as skin color. Should they not be free from prejudice? Should they not teach school, adopt children, fight as soldiers, become pastors like any other person? Isn’t that the American way?

Christians who think hard about homosexuality—and surely we must—have found this hard to answer. To begin with, scholars have argued furiously about the Bible’s message; many contend that it says nothing about modern homosexuality at all. Even if we agree about the Bible’s prohibitions, we have the difficult task of applying its message in a way that meets a new situation. It is one thing to condemn homosexual behavior, another to offer pastoral care to those with fierce homosexual longings. And even if we know how to treat homosexuality in the church, we have further questions of how to apply the Bible’s message in a pluralistic society.

First, what does the Bible say? Thankfully, as two of these books show, a degree of clarity has emerged after much vexed exegesis. Thomas Schmidt, who teaches New Testament at Westmont College, gives a persuasive, detailed, verse-by-verse response to revisionist critics. He shows that the biblical injunctions clearly apply to homosexuality as it is practiced today and not only to its forms in the ancient world.

Another New Testament professor, Marion Soards of Louisville Seminary, may be more helpful for the general reader. Soards writes to his own Presbyterian church’s confused situation, but his brief, lucid overview of the biblical evidence will aid anyone seeking a pathway through conflicting claims.

Soards has a habit of putting matters into perspective with only a few sentences, and doing it convincingly. After reading his summation of John Boswell’s work, for example, it would be difficult for anyone to quote Boswell as an unchallenged authority on the history of homosexuality and the church. Soards gives no detailed prescription for the church (neither does Schmidt), but he makes clear that both Old Testament and New consider homosexual behavior “outside the boundaries of God’s intentions for humanity.” From the beginning, God intended for sexual union to be experienced within marriage between man and woman.

WILDFLOWERS AMONG WHEAT

It is not easy to apply such an answer today, however. Why such one-note absolutism? Why can’t we simply live and let live—appreciating, as Andrew Sullivan poetically puts it, the wildflowers among our wheat?

As Schmidt sees it, these are questions born of individualism, while sexuality is a communal endeavor, with each of us bearing responsibility toward others for the way we live. Homosexual behavior undermines marriage, he says. Unlike the celibate person, who, though unmarried, testifies to the good of marriage, the active homosexual pursues sexual union according to his own private principles of individual self-fulfillment. Like adultery, homosexuality cannot be judged just by how it seems to the individuals involved. It must be considered in the broader context of what it does to the whole community’s understanding of sex. Same-sex intimacy offers an alternative “good” that undermines a community’s marriages, Schmidt contends.

This is an argument that Andrew Sullivan, editor of “The New Republic,” takes up from the other side. It is refreshing that he even recognizes the issue of communal interests. Unfortunately, he argues the issue within strict categories of his own invention, which (while they enable him to answer every argument that he imagines) do not fit the actual content of Schmidt’s (and many others’) position.

Sullivan’s book aims to deal with the politics of homosexuality, which he describes in four categories: Prohibitionist, Liberationist, Conservative, and Liberal. Sullivan is brilliant at many points. His recounting of how liberals have found themselves at odds with their own principles is particularly illuminating. However, his book is weakest in considering positions furthest from his own, those that would discourage rather than defend homosexual practice. For reasons unclear, Sullivan identifies the Prohibitionist position with the Catholic church and/or religious fundamentalists. To my knowledge, the modern Catholic church does not favor laws that would prosecute homosexuals; and while I do not doubt that there exist Christian fundamentalists who would seek to root out homosexuality through punishment and incarceration, Sullivan cites none and would, I suspect, have to concede that this punitive stance represents a minority view within fundamentalism rather than a consensus. Sullivan—who comes from a devout Catholic family and is himself a practicing Catholic—tries to do justice to a biblical understanding of homosexuality but is clearly out of his depth. He seems to have swallowed Boswell whole.

That aside, Sullivan compellingly puts forward the great fact that all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, must confront: homosexuals exist. If they have not (Sullivan to the contrary) existed at all times and places, certainly they exist in our time and place. While all three of these authors accept that the cause of homosexuality must be more complex than a “homosexual gene,” they all acknowledge that homosexuality is a condition homosexuals “find themselves in”—they do not consciously choose it.

Sullivan is very good at explaining the difficulty of the homosexual’s position. Remembering his first adolescent experiences with sexual desire, he writes, “It was like getting on a plane for the first time, being exhilarated by its ascent, gazing with wonder out of the window, seeing the clouds bob beneath you, but then suddenly realizing that you are on the wrong flight, going to a destination which terrifies you. … And you cannot get off.” He says that a homosexual teenager learns that “the condition of his friendships is the subjugation of himself.” Sullivan hopes that a more tolerant culture may develop in America, yet he believes that homosexuality is bound to be marked by deception and hiding, simply because homosexuals are a small minority and the issue is such a fundamental one. Homosexuals, he says, can never be “just like other people.”

DEEPER THAN FAIRNESS

Schmidt widens and darkens this portrait, giving a well-documented account of the experience of homosexuals. He demonstrates from a thorough review of the evidence that “Promiscuity among homosexual men is not a mere stereotype, and it is not merely the majority experience—it is virtually the only experience.”

In a group of ten randomly selected homosexual men in their thirties, he summarizes, only one is faithful to his partner, and he will not be within a year. Four have never had a relationship that lasted a year, and only one has had a relationship that lasted more than three years. Six regularly have sex with strangers; three participate in orgies. Three are currently alcoholics; five have a history of alcohol abuse. Five regularly use at least one illegal drug, three are multiple drug users. Four have a history of acute depression, three have contemplated suicide, two have attempted suicide. Eight have had sexually transmitted diseases, three are HIV positive, one has AIDS.

This portrait, like the more personal one that Sullivan offers, should surely elicit compassion. These are sufferers. But it should also remind us that the “homosexual issue” is much deeper than a matter of “fair treatment.”

Fair treatment is all that Sullivan asks for at the political level. He proposes simply that homosexuals receive equal treatment under the law—no more, no less. For him this includes—and demands—the legalization of homosexual marriage. Conservatives, he says, should face the fact that homosexuality exists and encourage steps to domesticate it. He is eloquent in describing the homosexual’s longing for lasting intimacy that cannot (by society’s laws) be fulfilled. He presents a wonderful vista of what marriage would offer.

But he seems not to realize that marriage is prelegal and preceremonial, that law does not create marriage but only regularizes it. Where was the law in Eden? Marriage would surely exist very much as it does whether or not it were officially recognized. Where it does not exist, the legal opportunity hardly can create it. (Today’s urban ghettos are a horrid proof of that.) Homosexual marriage—exclusive and lifelong sexual relationship—is virtually nonexistent, as Schmidt’s summary of the evidence shows. Homosexuality is not simply a different flavor of sexuality, it is a different type, following its own nature.

Sullivan, surprisingly, acknowledges that legalized “domestic partnerships” undermine traditional marriages, yet seriously suggests that homosexual marriages would enrich heterosexual relationships through “greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets,” by which he means adultery. Perhaps this reveals the degree to which he does not know what he is talking about when he talks of marriage. Open marriages, as studies have consistently found, are those with the bottom falling out.

If “marriage” is not an answer to homosexuality, and “fairness” is too simple a prescription, how should Christians treat homosexuality? I suspect a great many Christians wish it would simply go away. They would be happy to live and let live, so long as homosexuals stayed in the closet and left others blissfully ignorant of their condition. That, however, is not really an option for those who care about pastoral ministry.

People who “find themselves homosexual” need help to find a pattern of life that is fruitful and appropriate for their condition.

Surely the ancient and biblical tradition of celibacy is relevant, even if our society is reluctant to acknowledge it. (Sullivan apparently cannot even imagine it. He treats singleness as synonymous with promiscuity.) Some progress in ministry has been made, particularly by “ex-gay” groups, but in most churches, homosexuals are still invisible and uncared for.

As to public policy, Sullivan’s book is an excellent spur to thinking through various issues, from gays in the military to laws against prejudice in private housing. (Sullivan is for the former, against the latter.) Sullivan’s positions will be anathema to most conservatives, but he covers a range of issues acutely and, for the most part, fairly.

Christians face the problem of influencing a public order that does not necessarily share our basic values. We cannot turn America into the church, but how far can we push our sexual values, or accept others’ that we believe are destructive? Conservative Christians, clinging to Scripture, have sensed that the welfare of marriage and the family is involved in the way our nation treats homosexuality. We know what the Bible teaches. We have at least some idea how homosexuality should be treated within the church. In the public sphere, we are a long way from home.

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Daybreak, by Harold Fickett (Bethany House, 288 pp.; $14.99, hardcover; $8.99, paper); The Crying for a Vision, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Simon & Schuster, 279 pp.; $16, hardcover).

The purpose of art, the Russian critic Viktor Shklovsky said, is to make us see that to which we’ve become blind through custom or habit. Art is a “making strange,” as in Tolstoy’s story “Kholstomer,” where we see human institutions from the viewpoint of a horse—and experience the uncomfortable shock of recognition.

Like all theories of art, Shklovsky’s is ultimately too confining, but it yields more insight than most. Familiarity dulls perception. How, for instance, can a pastor preach his twenty-seventh Christmas sermon without going on automatic pilot? How can his congregation hear him? That challenge continues all year round.

Two new books by Christian writers reveal art’s power to renew vision. In “Daybreak,” billed as the second installment in a six-book series, Harold Fickett gives us what at first glance appears to be a historical saga a la John Jakes. In the opening volume in the series, “First Light” (CT, Sept. 12, 1994, p. 75), young Abram White made his way from Ireland to colonial America, endured years of indentured servitude at sea, built a modest fortune, and wed the beautiful and wealthy Sarah Nicholls.

“Daybreak” picks up the story almost ten years later, in 1765, with signs of friction between the still-childless couple. The cover illustration shows a ruggedly handsome dark-haired man flanked by two women—one dark, one fair—and, to balance the composition, a fair-haired man, not quite so impressively masculine: a painter at work at his easel.

In short, “Daybreak” looks like the kind of book that is consumed like candy—and that literary types notice only when slumming. Appearances are not entirely deceiving. Fickett has made himself a master of the historical romance, and his superbly researched, deftly plotted tale offers all the traditional pleasures of the genre. But there is much more, as the tension between the novel’s two epigraphs suggests: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5:48) and There is none righteous, no, not one (Rom. 3:10). What is played out allegorically in Daybreak is the story of the biblical Abraham and Sarah, here “made strange” in a way that permits us to see them-and our own lives as God’s plan is worked out in us—afresh.

On the dust jacket of “The Crying for a Vision,” by Walter Wangerin, Jr., a young Indian man stares into the distance, his serious face framed by long, black hair. Something about the art suggests that the book is being pitched to teenagers (or rather to their teachers and librarians), and indeed, Simon & Schuster marketed the book in the “Young Adult” category. Taking its cue, the Library of Congress classified “The Crying for a Vision” as “juvenile fiction,” with a subheading as “fantasy.”

Juvenile fiction? Well, yes, if you put Wangerin’s book on the same shelf with “Huckleberry Finn,” “Lord of the Flies,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” But unlike those books, which it resembles in seriousness of purpose, “The Crying for a Vision” is not a novel, and readers who come to it with such expectations will be disappointed.

Fantasy? That’s not very helpful, either. Imagine trying to explain that concept to the Amazon Indians whose myths Claude Levi-Strauss elaborately decoded, or to the Lakota in whose culture Wangerin has steeped himself. No, when native peoples told stories such as ethnographers gather—stories heard and remembered and passed on orally, with a set of conventions quite alien to the economy of our written tradition—they were not composing “fantasy.” They were telling the tale of the tribe, the essential knowledge to be transmitted from generation to generation.

In “The Crying for a Vision,” Wangerin has sought to recreate the thought-world of the Lakota as they lived before the incursion of the white man. He has read collections of their tales, he has studied their ways, he has spent time with their living descendants. Wangerin clearly loves the Lakota. He does not write about them; rather, he wants us to see the world as they saw it. (Thus the Lakota words sprinkled generously through the book and defined in the glossary at the end, for it is in a people’s language that their outlook is most powerfully compressed.)

“The Crying for a Vision” consists of a series of tales centering on a Lakota boy, Waskn Mani, or Moves Walking. To the people in the village he is a bastard, his father unknown, and soon an orphan when his mother is killed. But we who are hearing the story know that he was born from the union of a mortal woman with a star. We are not surprised when Waskn Mani turns out to possess unusual powers, nor even when, finally, he sacrifices himself for the good of his people.

The surprise comes with the realization that throughout the narrative, in which Wangerin has interwoven traditional Lakota tales with material of his own invention, there are echoes of another story, the Story of Stories. That is perhaps the greatest gift Wangerin has given us: Reading “The Crying for a Vision,” we can understand what it might be like to hear the gospel for the first time, not as part of our familiar culture but as an urgent intervention, its message at once strange and hauntingly familiar.

Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.