Timothy K. Jones
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The shadows of four army transport helicopters could not have swept over us at a more ironic time. I had just read aloud, “Blessed are the meek.… Blessed are the peacemakers.” We were 18 American Christian journalists, in the Holy Land at the invitation of the Israeli government, sitting in a circle on the Mount of Beatitudes. There, tradition says, Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. For a moment, the roar of the four choppers passing over us almost drowned out the sounds of our hillside worship service.
It was not the only time I wondered why peace seems so elusive in the land called holy. I had flown into a country of great beauty, where the very soil seems to give rise to anger and hurt. The fight over “turf” elicits a passion that is hard for many Americans, with their history of an ever-expanding frontier, to grasp. I was only scarcely prepared for the utter complexity of the claims and counterclaims made on the land where once Jesus walked. But I also discovered the longing for peace in surprising places.
“There’s been a slight change in your accommodations,” Mike, our tour guide, told us. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and entourage, due in town for a round of peace talks, were taking over several floors of the venerable King David Hotel. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but think of it this way,” he said: “You’re giving up your rooms for the cause of peace.”
If only it were that easy. Just outside Ben Gurion airport, where our El Al 747 landed, we had seen two Israeli soldiers hitchhiking. None in our group worried about safety. We would walk down few Jerusalem streets where we did not see soldiers, on watch, carrying M-16s.
Beside the road to Jerusalem, we saw rusted hulks of armored trucks, part of a convoy blown up during the 1948 War of Independence, when Zionists and Palestinian farmers traded fierce gunfire. The ill-fated trucks—protected only by steel sheeting fashioned into a homemade armor—had been sent to bring provisions to Jews holed up in Jerusalem. Someone turned the wrecks into makeshift memorials, draping them with Israeli flags in honor of the impending Memorial and Independence Day holidays.
This corridor has seen battles as far back as the dawn of the Iron age, when Israel confronted the Philistines. An old Crusader fortress, now little more than broken walls and piles of stone, stood as a silent reminder of still another era of war between Christians and “Turks.”
Just outside Jerusalem, Mike read us Psalm 122: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.… For my brethren and companions’ sake, I will say, ‘Peace be within you!’” Has such prayer been in vain?
As we neared Jerusalem, I realized our group was not so different from this conflicted country. We were a microcosm of Christendom’s own history of religious wars, however amiable our conversation. A couple seats down from me was the religion editor for the WashingtonTimes, a follower of Sun Myung Moon. Several rows back was a research scholar for a publication of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, a group with interesting theories about how the lost tribes of Israel eventually became the ethnic stock of Britain and America. Around me was an assortment of Southern Baptists, liberal Catholics (including one fascinated with reincarnation and the appearances of the Virgin Mother at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia), a Mennonite, a member of the Church of Christ, and a member of the Plymouth Brethren.
One of our first stops was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, built on sites where many believe Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected. It is more than a church, more like a Romanesque mall of alcoves, altars, and chapels, represented by groups almost as diverse as those on our bus. Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic—all have control over certain parts and access to the holiest sites at prescribed times. “Each tile and each pillar is under carefully allotted ownership,” says Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in My Jerusalem. “Who cleans what door handle takes on crucial significance since cleaning represents ownership.” In the words of a Wall Street Journal writer, “There’s a lot of coveting of thy neighbor’s chunk of church.” Apparently Christians are not leading the way in forging peace here.
In past centuries, our guide reminded us, denominations sometimes shed blood, contending for control of such holy places. And a decade ago, Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs was about to step in to repair this crumbling church, in disrepair because the Franciscan, Greek, Coptic, and Ethiopian clergy could not agree on a course of renovation. “The potential embarrassment of a Jewish government fixing up the church of all Christians finally prompted action,” he told us.
Our visit to the tomb itself, the heart of the church, was blocked by just such an uneasy truce; we arrived there just as the transition was to be made to the Catholic time slot. Their own altar ornaments would have to be set up before anyone could enter, a process our busy itinerary would not accommodate.
The even grittier conflict, of course, is between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. One evening in Jerusalem I met several persons who had marked views on those tensions.
The first was Jimmy DeYoung, head of Shofar Ministries, an evangelical Christian media service based in Jerusalem. Our tourism department hosts had invited several guests to join us, and Jimmy must have been high on their list. At Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim restaurant, with its view of Jerusalem’s Old City, the tanned, white-haired Jimmy sat across from me and talked eschatology with the zeal of an evangelist.
“The only thing the Palestinians understand is a fist,” he told me. “The only way they will talk peace is if they have no choice.” What about the complaints of the Palestinians that their schools have been virtually shut down since the late eighties? Such harsh action was justified, DeYoung said, because Palestinians gather not to educate their children, but to talk about “how to kill Jews.” His solution for the conflict seemed to depend on removing Arabs from the region.
His view of the end times, which expects the Jews to rebuild the temple on the current site of the Muslim Dome of the Rock as a precursor of the return of Christ, was popularized by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth. Some forms of that view hold that two-thirds of all Israeli Jews will be killed at Armageddon, with the remaining third converted when Christ returns. In her book Prophecy and Politics, journalist Grace Halsell poses the obvious, but insistent question: “Knowing that Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson and most major TV evangelists believe every Jew will be either killed or converted to Christ, why should Jews seek to collaborate with them?” Support from politically conservative dispensational Christians, she concludes, is worth it all to Israel.
Also at dinner was Ed McAteer, a former Colgate-Palmolive salesman who was credited by many with helping Ronald Reagan win in 1982. He now heads the Religious Roundtable, an organization that promotes traditional values and supports Israel in the public-policy arena. McAteer is well-connected both in Southern Baptist circles and with principals of the evangelical political Right. He had just accompanied a planeload of Russian Jewish émigrés, some of the vast number Israel expects to resettle over the next few years in the land it controls. McAteer was launching an appeal to Christians to support the flights.
McAteer has a good-natured manner and a Walter Brennan smile, but his views on the Palestinian question leave little room for small talk: The pamphlet he gave me, “Will Israel Be Forsaken?” concludes, “May each of us resist the temptation to sacrifice Israel on the altar of political expediency. It won’t work. God himself covers Israel—and his hand is turned against her adversaries.”
That night at dinner, Jackie, an editor for a Franciscan publisher, told Ed of an encounter she had just had while strolling in the Muslim quarter of old Jerusalem. She had watched a nine-year-old Arab boy run from an Israeli soldier on patrol. The soldier had done nothing to provoke the boy, but in his haste and fear, the boy tripped and gashed his cheek. The mother approached Jackie asking if she would help get medical attention, an extraordinarily difficult task for Jerusalem Arabs since the intifada began. Jackie recounted the story, and suggested that Ed would do his image among Arab Christians no harm if he would use his contacts to organize and fund a medical clinic in the Muslim quarter. “You could have a Christian doctor, a Jewish doctor, a Muslim doctor, all working together,” Jackie brainstormed. She urged him to call a press conference the next day while the media were still in town for Baker’s visit. I was surprised that Ed seemed open to the idea. How tempting to believe some small effort could bring peace when the wheels of international politics were turning exceedingly slow.
My third conversation that night confirmed that the problem needs more than medical clinics. I snuck away from our meal at the restaurant to visit a Palestinian pastor whom friends said I must see while in Israel. Although it was the eve of Sabbath, I found a cab driver who would take me to the Arab section of the city. Saint George’s Cathedral was the destination, where Naim Ateek is the canon and pastor to its Arabic-speaking congregation.
Naim’s hair is silvery white, but his broad face is more boyish than you would expect for a 54-year-old. He told me his story in the simply furnished parsonage:
In 1948, just after he turned 11, Naim was displaced from his home in Bet She’an during the Zionist occupation of his town. Since then, he says, Palestinians in Israel—Christians and Muslims—have lived as “hewers of wood and carriers of water,” much like blacks in America.
“The daily humiliation of the people [in this congregation] is almost unbelievable,” he said. During the Gulf War, when a curfew was in effect continuously, medical care was almost impossible. Palestinian Arabs had to get a permit from Israeli soldiers to travel to a hospital, but that meant violating the curfew. And he worries that the Israeli government is growing less willing to negotiate with Palestinians. “They are shifting from a Zionist [that is, political] understanding of history to a point of view that is more religious.”
When I suggested that that should temper the political claims, he disagreed. “It’s caused things to harden. Since 1967 and the Six Day War, Israel has been guided more and more by a religious vision. They think they cannot give up any of the land because God has given it to them. Israelis begin with the assumption, ‘Everything is ours. You don’t belong here.’”
One day, as we left Jerusalem for the Dead Sea and Masada, we saw a sign by the road—“Peace Research Institute.” “I suppose it is the height of optimism,” Mike offered with a smile, “to think there’s anything about peace worth researching here.”
Israel’s parched desert, with its angry heat, has an impressive religious history. “The people who fled to the desert came for both religious and expedient reasons,” Mike told us. Harsh hills like these were the haunts of Elijah, David, the Essenes, John the Baptist, Jesus, Jewish zealots, fifth-century monks—and the martyrs of Masada.
At Masada, Herod the Great built a massive cliff-top fortress in the first century. He built the lavish citadel as a place of escape should disgruntled subjects revolt. But Jewish fighters retreated here after Jerusalem fell in A.D. 70; here they made a heroic last stand. For all the impressive ruins, it is the story of their fierce resistance and courage that makes this a virtual shrine to Judaism, and the most popular historic site in the country.
“Masada must not happen again” is not just a slogan etched onto the wall of a nearby youth hostel. It is a key to understanding Jewish insecurity and defensiveness in the Holy Land.
A short drive south of Jerusalem, Tantur ecumenical institute sits on a hill like an oasis in the arid land surrounding Bethlehem. Begun in the early seventies to promote ecumenical dialogue among Christians, it now also serves as a meeting place for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. “One thing that impresses you,” says Robert O’Donnell, vice-rector of Tantur, “is the number of Jews and Arabs who want to live together in peace. They don’t agree with terrorism, nor with the policies of the Israeli government.” The institute leads visits to Arab refugee camps, to Jewish kibbutzim, to other sites where people from every background live. As much as anyone, O’Donnell has seen firsthand how biblical Palestine has become a hotbed of emotions, of guarded rights and remembered wrongs. He has also seen how putting hostile groups together to tell their stories can soften the emnity and strengthen their resolve to see peace established.
Indeed, many Americans are surprised to find that surveys of Israelis show that a slim majority favor granting land to the Palestinians for the creation of a Palestinian state, a compromise that most government leaders want to avoid. And many Palestinians, I learned from conversations with Ateek and others, also long for a peaceful resolution.
Clearly, no partisan answer will solve the conflict—whether from ultra-Orthodox Jews, militant Muslims, earnest dispensationalists, or even a pilgrim Christian journalist. Christians must listen to all sides. We should begin to care about people, not just Armageddon calendars. And we must do all we can to help all the citizens of a hurting land do more than posture and fight, but also learn to listen.
My last day in Israel left me with a telling glimpse. It was not in Jerusalem, or by the sea of Galilee, but in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, on the waters of the Mediterranean. I was out jogging under a cloudless sky along the beach promenade. I saw a young woman soldier, lovely, dark-haired and dark-eyed, who must have been on break. She was talking with her boyfriend, first sitting on a bench, then walking the promenade with him, hand in hand. They strolled, he in blue jeans, she in army fatigues, with her rifle slung low over her back.
I realized how apt a metaphor it was: One hand holds a loved one; the other holds a gun.
Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.
- More fromTimothy K. Jones
Tim Stafford
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
That I became interested in old age during my thirties I owe to my father-in-law. Not long after I married his daughter, while we were still in our twenties, he began asking us, “How are you going to take care of me when I get old?”
I disliked the question. It seemed awfully personal, and the time when he would need to be taken care of seemed impossibly remote. I avoided any very specific answer—largely because I didn’t have any specific answer. Old age was something I did not want to think about, at least not so personally and practically.
He kept on asking, though, persistently and almost belligerently. Years went by, and I was still dodging him. Eventually, though, he brought me to an arresting conclusion: It was a fair question. He was going to get old, as were my own parents, and I had no idea what would be required. All I had was a certain amount of fear, and a good deal of avoidance. I started asking my friends what they thought and found them no help. I decided to get some answers and share them—I am a writer, after all—by writing a book, a book about old age and its impact on families.
I approached the subject by immersing myself in the extensive literature on aging: medical, sociological, financial, and theological. I also interviewed many older people and their families, asking about the joys and struggles of their lives. (These were often poignant and moving.) For several years, while researching and writing, I “thought old” more or less continuously.
As Our Years Increase came out and made a splash that has been felt all the way from here to my neighbor’s front step. Since the book’s publication, I am no longer reading, talking, and thinking continuously about old age. But what I learned about old age affected my view of life profoundly, and I find myself acutely aware when the topic is raised. Here is what I have noticed, repeatedly: People are a lot like I was. People don’t like to talk about it.
When the subject comes up they give it polite attention, showing their conscientious concern. But after a few moments of doleful reflection, people change the subject. I have seldom been in an unstructured conversation about old age with anybody, young or old, that lasted more than five minutes.
Mostly the topic doesn’t come up. If I don’t raise it, no one does. Somehow, people go easily for weeks and months at a time without ever mentioning (or thinking of?) this inevitable aspect of life, one that affects every last person who does not die young.
Why the silence? Why the palpable discomfort? I have a theory: It is because people in America have a spiritual disease. The spiritual disease is based on a mistaken view of life. According to it, life is lived on a big bell curve. You go up, up, up to the age of, say, 50. (Where you put the top of the curve depends on your vantage point. But there is a top.) And then you go down, down, down, until you die. This view claims, “Life is accomplishing things. Life is looking good and feeling good. Life is (here’s the ‘Christian’ version) doing good for God, your family, your neighbor.”
No wonder old age is such a problem. Every year you can do less. Every year you look worse. Every year a little more life drains out of you.
Given how widespread this spiritual disease has become, it is no wonder that euthanasia has the appeal of mercy, while those who oppose it come off as harsh and doctrinaire.
The contrast between how we think and how the Bible presents old age is like emerging from a tunnel into sunlight: At first you cannot see, because you are used to the darkness. In the pages of the Bible you will find no trace of our spiritual disease, except possibly in the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes. (You can find a lot of spiritual diseases in that book.) The Bible has its full quota of old people, and they have the usual infirmities. (Think of David in his last years, unable to get warm even in bed. Think of Isaac, unable to tell his sons apart by sight or touch.) Yet no great stress is placed on their age, and none at all on their infirmities. There is very little information on how to treat the problem of old age in the Bible, because in the Bible old age is not a problem. Rather, old age is consistently treated as a blessing. To die “full of years” is the fondest wish of biblical characters, and one of the greatest gifts of God. The psalmist prays, “Teach us to number our days” (Ps. 90:12; all Scripture quotations are from the NIV), not, “Help us escape them.”
Zechariah paints this lovely portrait of the restored Jerusalem: “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with a cane in hand because of his age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there” (Zech. 8:4–5). As the prophets envision the great things God will do, they see death swallowed up. But old age—weak old age, needing a cane—remains, will be seen on the streets, will mix with playing children. “He who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed” (Isa. 65:20).
We might think this positive view is typical of preindustrial society, for a persistent mythology tells of the good old days (or the underdeveloped society on the other side of the globe) full of loving families caring devotedly for the elderly. It is not necessarily so. Aristotle, for example, wrote extensively about the disgusting degeneration of the old. You can get a good idea of common Western attitudes in former times by thinking about old people in the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. The older, the nastier—right? Often the elderly are witches in disguise.
Unfortunately, Aristotle’s and the Grimms’ views make more sense to us than the Bible’s. We, looking through the eyes of our spiritual disease, have a hard time seeing the value of old age. The benefits are assumed in the Bible, not explained. Old age looks terrible to us. Why want to grow old?
So we ask—it is the question behind euthanasia, and asked often enough by old people themselves—What is the meaning of old age? Is it, like the mosquito, one of God’s mistakes?
But the answer is not so hard to find. What is the meaning of life, young or old? Any Christian should know: we were made to glorify God. Life is loving. Life is prayer. Life is reflecting the goodness of God through the joyful acceptance (and transformation) of all things. Old people are as good at these activities as younger people, or better. At least they can be.
A friend of mine, who has worked extensively in nursing homes, says that if the paths to heaven and hell diverge visibly on earth, they begin to split in the nursing home. There is a vast difference between those who have lived the lie, and now have nothing left but their memories, and those who can see themselves still growing into love. Most nursing homes, which are not pretty places, have at least one resident who continues visibly to learn the lesson of growth—someone who, despite disability, despite suffering, is not wrapped up in his or her problems but seems wrapped up in something else—in God’s glory, or in love for others. It is a great encouragement to be around such persons. They give you some idea of why the early church honored the martyrs.
I think of my grandfather. A stroke gave him global aphasia for the last ten years of his life, which meant that he could not communicate verbally—neither read nor write, speak nor understand. His thinking was unimpaired, but he was cut off from human fellowship. The frustration and loneliness showed.
Yet something else showed. There was something strong and beautiful in the way he lived and suffered. People saw it, people who did not even know him before the stroke. He was always in church on Sunday morning, always singing the hymns with God’s people in a bellowing, tuneless gibberish. His face was eloquent. “He has so much love,” people said.
Most of us move toward that kind of life only through struggle, or even suffering. Often God has to strip away our lies in order to teach us the truth. That is what old age is about. It may involve a painful stripping. It may take real effort. But what in Scripture would lead us to expect anything else?
God makes no mistakes. He intends people to grow old, if only so that they can learn what life is, and what life is not. Old age teaches that life is not doing things, even great things for God. Life is not activity and good looks.
The lie says that life is lived on a bell curve: up, up, up, then down, down, down. Scripture teaches that life is meant to be up, all the way to heaven. There is a goal, and the goal determines the process we must go through to get there. Whatever is valued in heaven grows more and more valuable on earth. Whatever matters not in heaven, matters less and less on earth. The longer you live, the more it is so.
As one older person put it, “They say we are going downhill, but they have it wrong. It is uphill. That’s why it is such hard work!”
Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.
- More fromTim Stafford
Robert C. Kallgren
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Outside mainstream evangelicalism and fundamentalism, the Bible-college movement is little known. And even in these circles, it is often little understood. Bible colleges tend to suffer from an image problem. Many perceive them as extended Bible conferences—or, at best, “junior” Christian liberal-arts colleges. Neither is true.
Bible colleges are similar to seminaries in that they are professional schools whose primary purpose is to train students for vocations in Christian ministry. This focus of purpose influences all aspects of these institutions. Training is provided for a number of roles, including the pastorate, Christian education, youth work, music, missions, and other church-related vocations. Christian liberal-arts colleges have a valuable role to play, but it is a much less-focused one than for Bible colleges.
Workers For The Harvest
The 1880s witnessed the emergence of the Bible-college movement in the United States. A. B. Simpson founded the Missionary Training Institute (now Nyack College) in 1882 in New York City; Dwight L. Moody established the Training School of the Chicago Evangelization Society (now Moody Bible Institute) in 1886 in Chicago; and A. J. Gordon began the Boston Missionary Training School (now Gordon College) in 1889 in Boston. (Of these, only Moody remains today a traditional Bible school.)
The primary motivation behind all these institutions and their kin was a renewed vision for evangelism in their local communities and in the world at large. These early visionaries recognized that the established seminaries of the day would never be able to provide sufficient numbers of clergy to cope with the challenges of world evangelization. They viewed lay men and women as a legitimate resource for recruits for evangelistic and missionary ministry. The Bible-college movement was less a reaction against the seminaries than a mobilization of laypeople to reach the lost.
The early institutions offered basic training in English Bible, doctrine, and Christian ministry skills, all within an ethos of personal piety and a love for the lost. Though the facilities were humble, the founders’ dedication and zeal left their mark on the world.
A century later, the estimated 500 Bible colleges and institutes in North America still bear a strong resemblance to their ancestors. The contemporary Bible-college curriculum includes a core of biblical and doctrinal studies, liberal arts, and ministry-skills training, with hands-on Christian-ministry assignments through which the student applies what has been learned in the classroom. The Bible-college ethos can still be characterized as evangelistic, devotional, family-oriented, and disciplined.
Most offer programs in biblical studies, pastoral ministry, missions, Christian education, music, and preseminary training. Many also sponsor programs in elementary education, youth ministry, urban ministry, church administration, and evangelism. A few offer specialized programs, such as deaf ministry, social services, recreation, pre-nursing, aviation, and other technically oriented programs. Some schools are strictly undergraduate institutions, while others offer seminary or graduate programs, or even operate publishing houses, radio stations, and other enterprises.
Bible colleges are distributed throughout North America, with stronger concentrations in the Southeast and Midwest. They are located in urban, suburban, and rural settings, with campuses that range from basic to beautiful. Twenty percent are nondenominational, and the balance represent various denominations, particularly the Church of Christ/Christian Church, Baptist fellowships, Wesleyan groups, and the Assemblies of God. Enrollments range from 50 to 1,500, with a mean of 300. Annual tuition and fees average $3,500 (less than half the average tuition and fees for independent liberal-arts colleges).
Bible-college student bodies tend to be more male, Caucasian, and have a much larger portion of older and married students than most colleges. Bible-college students demonstrate an unusual service orientation. Through Christian-ministry assignments and personal initiative, many hospitals, retirement homes, prisons, and rehabilitation centers have been brightened by these students’ ministry.
One illustration: After Hurricane Hugo smashed through South Carolina in September 1989, the Columbia Bible College student body voluntarily formed itself into dozens of independent teams and, with the guidance of the governor’s office, fanned out across the state to help citizens clean up the devastation.
An Ambiguous Future
Bible colleges rarely travel the “easy street.” With the exception of the period following World War II and the baby-boom market of the sixties and early seventies, recruiting students has been a challenge. My doctoral study, which included 42 Bible colleges, indicates significant current pressure in both student enrollment and institutional finances. This sample of established, mature Bible colleges experienced an aggregate 15 percent decline in enrollment between 1979 and 1986 (though this has turned around somewhat in the last few years). In contrast, a sample of Christian liberal arts colleges (the members of the Christian College Consortium) experienced an aggregate enrollment increase of 16 percent during this same period.
The study also indicated that, according to American Association of Bible Colleges standards, half of the institutions suffer financial stress.
So what of the future of the Bible-college movement? A survey involving 42 Bible-college presidents reveals some ambivalence. While they are convinced that Bible colleges should not become “Christian liberal arts colleges,” they “anticipate decreasing enrollments” and “increased competition from local churches and other providers of biblical/theological instruction.” (Indeed, among some larger churches there is a trend toward establishing programs for ministry training within the confines of the local congregation.) These presidents view the declining commitment to biblical priorities among evangelicals and the changing moral values in North America as contributing to the problem.
Surveys of the traditional employers of Bible-college graduates also provide insight for the future. Mission agencies look to Bible colleges as a significant source of recruits for such traditional hands-on ministries as evangelism, discipleship, church planting, and urban ministry. Survey responses from the chief executives of 113 agencies indicate that while Bible colleges will continue to be a major source of missionary recruits, graduate or seminary credentials are growing in importance.
A survey responded to by the administrators of 151 Christian day schools indicates significant opportunities for Bible-college graduates in Christian-school ministry. These administrators express a strong preference for teachers who are committed to a biblical world view. They are cool toward prospective teachers who are Christians but essentially secular in their education and outlook. They do, however, prefer that Bible-college programs be professionally approved or state certified.
Today the minimal credential for entering many vocations is the college degree, rather than the high-school diploma. Likewise, fewer pulpits are open to the inexperienced, aspiring Bible-college graduate. A seminary degree is becoming the credential of choice. This development will require the Bible-college movement to assess its market with a view toward finding those educational niches that they are uniquely qualified to serve. For many, the process will be difficult and painful. To fit those niches may involve a great deal of change.
Bible colleges are accurately characterized as being conservative institutions. The concept of a liberal Bible college is an oxymoron. This conservatism is essential as it pertains to doctrine, the treatment of the Word of God, and personal ethics and behavior. In some ways, however, this conservative stance also sometimes serves to hinder necessary changes in traditions of an extra-biblical nature.
The Bible-college movement needs to expand its constituency among minorities. The very nature of a Bible college should make it attractive and beneficial to minorities, especially African-Americans and Hispanics. While some Bible colleges have specific ethnic constituencies, all Bible colleges need to provide for ethnic and cultural diversity. Bible colleges will achieve progress in this area only by persistent hard work and sacrifice.
The Bible-college movement has provided trained workers for Christian service for more than a century. Its graduates are a major force in world evangelization. Facing a period of contraction, these institutions must re-evaluate and reassert themselves, perhaps in a modified role, in the future of theological education. The spiritual needs of the world are greater now in depth and scope than they were a century ago. The issue is not whether there is need for training God’s people for service, but rather, how will that enormous need be met? Bible colleges, along with evangelical seminaries, have the primary responsibility for this critical ministry of the church.
Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.
- More fromRobert C. Kallgren
Randall Balmer
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Multnomah School of the Bible sits on a 17-acre campus in a blue-collar residential neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Whoever designed the buildings (some of which orginally housed the Oregon State School for the Blind) clearly believed in the superiority of function over form and, accordingly, created an architectural paean to painted bricks and flat, warehouse-style roofs.
The students who enroll at Multnomah, however, care little about architectural niceties. They come to study the Bible.
“I think that we do Bible better than most places,” Ronald Frost, who teaches in the youth-ministry program, declared. “That’s the genius of the Bible school.”
The school’s motto, repeated often in promotional materials, reads: “If it’s Bible you want, then you want Multnomah.”
The school stipulates that 52 credits out of a total of 96 required for an associate degree or 128 for a bachelor’s degree fall in the area of biblical literature and theology. Every student majors in Bible at Multnomah, and each may choose to specialize in one of the following fields: Christian education, music, missions, journalism, pastoral youth ministry, biblical languages, or women’s ministries.
The curriculum emphasizes basic biblical literacy, but it also offers an interpretive template through which to view the Bible. Duane Hallof, an upperclassman who also works part-time in the school’s development department, characterizes Multnomah’s theology as “very conservative, but not limiting God. It’s definitely not a charismatic school. They don’t encourage the controversial gifts.”
Biblical inerrancy, he said, is “very high” on Multnomah’s list of theological priorities, as is dispensationalism. Multnomah’s theological pedigree, like that of many other Bible institutes in North America, is very much tied to that of Dallas Theological Seminary, which accounts for the strong emphasis on both biblical inerrancy and dispensationalism. Out of 33 full-time faculty at Multnomah, 16 hold at least one degree from Dallas. John G. Mitchell, the school’s founder, was a member of the first graduating class at Dallas Seminary, and he sought to bring its brand of evangelical theology to the Pacific Northwest when in 1936 he mobilized a group of Portland-area ministers and businessmen behind his idea for a Bible school.
Accordingly, then, the curriculum includes courses in English Bible and theology as well as missions, evangelism, and spiritual life. Students pursuing a B.A. must learn New Testament Greek. Professors are eager to demonstrate the internal harmony of the Scriptures as well as to advance particular interpretations. For example, in a course I visited on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), Prof. Dale Wheeler devoted most of his 50-minute class period to a demonstration that an apparent numerical discrepancy between Genesis and the Acts of the Apostles was really no contradiction whatsoever.
“Does that blow the doctrine of inerrancy and inspiration?” he asked rhetorically after setting out the problem. “No, not at all.” In the Acts passage, he said, Stephen was quoting from the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible popular during the time of Christ), which had the number wrong. “You will find places where writers quote sources that are inaccurate,” Wheeler conceded, “but if it had been important to the point, the Spirit would have made sure that Stephen did not quote an inaccurate number.”
In a course entitled Ecclesiology and Eschatology, John Lawrence tried to impress upon his charges the importance of understanding eschatology, the doctrine of the end times. “Don’t say prophecy is of no value,” he said. “If it was of no value, God wouldn’t have given us so much of it.”
Lawrence was only beginning to warm to his point. “Don’t let me hear from any of you that prophecy is not important,” he said, his voice rising in earnestness. “I’m reacting to a generation that has said prophecy is not important, that only now is important. That’s poppycock!” It was crucial for believers to locate themselves in God’s plans for the end times, Lawrence said, and he went on to argue forcefully for a literal interpretation of the apocalyptic passages in the Bible. Allegorizing those passages was a “dangerous principle,” he said. “If the literal meaning makes sense, seek no other sense, lest it become nonsense.”
A World Apart
Multnomah School of the Bible was part of a much larger effort on the part of evangelicals in the middle decades of the twentieth century to establish or shore up their institutions of learning against what they regarded as the threat of “modernism” in the broader culture. In the years after the Scopes trial of 1925, which convinced fundamentalists that American culture had turned against them, evangelicals withdrew from institutions they believed had become controlled by liberal ideas and established their own institutions as alternatives. Evangelical schools, associations, and agencies flourished in this period as Christians channeled prodigious amounts of money and energy into this effort.
Because the modernists generally prevailed in the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that convulsed American Protestantism—that is, liberals managed to retain control of denominational machinery and assets—fundamentalists had to start anew, constructing their alternative organizations from the ground up.
Bible institutes, which originally built upon the revival successes of Dwight L. Moody and others late in the nineteenth century, appealed to twentieth-century evangelicals for several reasons. First, they provided refuge from the critical scholarship that called into question traditional notions of biblical authorship and cast doubts on the reliability of the Scriptures.
Bible institutes also offered an alternative environment for the education of evangelical youth apart from the corrupting influences of secular colleges and universities, many of which had only recently “gone liberal” and forsaken their religious heritages. With their sons and daughters at a Bible school, evangelical parents could rest assured their offspring would have plenty of help navigating clear of the intellectual shoals of liberalism and the seductive currents of “worldly” behavior.
With the proliferation of such institutions across the North American landscape, from Florida to Alaska, from Texas to Alberta, the Bible-school movement constitutes an intriguing chapter in the history of twentieth-century evangelicalism.
Bible schools were an important component of the evangelical subculture, this network of institutions—churches, denominations, Bible camps, colleges, seminaries, publishing houses, mission societies—that evangelicals built in earnest after 1925. The subculture made possible a wholesale retreat from the larger culture. An evangelical could socialize almost entirely among friends at her church, send contributions to trustworthy evangelical agencies and missions, purchase reading materials from a Christian bookstore, and send her children to a Bible camp in the summers, to a Bible institute for higher education, and, perhaps, to an evangelical seminary for further professional training and a career in “full-time Christian service.” This sense of envelopment within the cocoon of the evangelical subculture held strong appeal for evangelicals who believed that the larger culture was inherently both corrupted and corrupting.
Students With A Mission
Despite the presence of practical courses like Chalk Drawing and Christian Camping, the curriculum at Multnomah is fairly demanding, if for no other reason than the sheer number of Bible courses required for graduation. By the standards of adolescent tastes, the curriculum is also boring. What, then, draws students to Multnomah?
Every answer I received to that question might have been lifted from the school’s public-relations material. “It’s an excellent school,” said John Salters, who wants to go into mission aviation. “The teaching is excellent.”
Brian Stubbs, who transferred from Moody Bible Institute, agreed. “I think all the professors here are right on,” he said enthusiastically.
Gwen Durland, a first-year student from Tucson, Arizona, said she had gravitated to Multnomah because she was thinking about missions. “Basically, I asked God where he wanted me to go, and also my pastor said Multnomah was an excellent school.”
Blaine Butcher, a senior, said he “wanted to learn about the Bible and youth ministry and discipleship.” He pronounced himself satisfied with Multnomah.
“You get the dynamic of the truth set down in the class with the parallel of love to work that truth into the fabric of your life,” Duane Hallof said. “It’s a neat dynamic. I’m a completely different person than I was three years ago.”
Indeed, the school’s new public-relations slogan reads: “Multnomah deals in life change. Don’t settle for less.” Hallof credits the school with helping him to work through a troubled home life. “Multnomah is a general hospital for the church,” he said, “and each individual receives intensive care.”
Several alumni I spoke with expressed appreciation for the spiritual direction they had received at Multnomah. Butcher claims that Multnomah altered his notions about vocation. “Before I came to Multnomah, I was a Christian and all,” he said, “but I didn’t realize that I could have an impact in whatever field of work I chose. Multnomah has shown me how our Christian walk can affect every part of our lives, the way we view the world.”
Rhetoric about the world frequently creeps into conversations at Multnomah, as when Durland describes her “life change” at the school. “One thing I’ve been noticing lately,” she said, “is that before coming to Multnomah I was really conditioned to worldly things, but being away from it and studying the Bible has shown me how conditioned a Christian can become when you’re living in the world daily and you don’t have your focus straight on God. It’s also increased my desire to go into missions, either here or overseas, just seeing how bad the world is. I want to do my part. The world seems so hopeless and desperate.”
Multnomah provides a reassuring environment for adolescents reared on the rhetoric of separatism and suspicion toward the world. “We draw in a number of students who have separatist tendencies,” according to Frost, a graduate of Multnomah and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Identifying yourself as part of the righteous remnant in the midst of a society in moral decay, moreover, allows you to claim the moral high ground. “A lot of schools are really liberal, but Multnomah has held to traditional values,” Durland told me. “Some schools say they’re Christian, but they don’t expect their students to live up to moral standards.”
A Crumbling Fortress
In the broader evangelical subculture, this suspicion of “the world” has dissipated considerably. In the last several decades, and especially since the mid-1970s, evangelicals emerged, albeit tentatively, from their self-imposed exile. The antipathy toward the broader culture so characteristic of evangelicals in the twenties and thirties has given way to ambivalence. Even as many evangelicals retain the old rhetoric of opposition to the world, they are eager to appropriate many of that world’s standards of success.
Whereas once evangelicals intentionally spurned higher education as a species of arrogance and compromise with the world, many now openly court such approval. Students who were once content to receive a Bible-school degree now want university or even advanced degrees, which are recognized signs of status within the broader culture.
Bible institutes have keenly felt these changing cultural forces within evangelicalism. With the attention to dualistic attitudes—us versus the world, righteousness versus unrighteousness—the image of the Bible institute as a kind of fortress against the assaults of intellectual liberalism no longer resonates as it once did.
Many Bible institutes accordingly have undertaken their own quests for respectability. The patterns, in fact, are remarkably consistent. With an eye toward accreditation so that it can offer a bachelor’s degree instead of merely a diploma, the school will shore up its offerings in the sciences and the liberal arts. This has the inevitable effect of deemphasizing classes in the Bible, which had been at the core of its curriculum. At some point in the process the parietal rules ease a bit, and the name changes from Bible school or Bible institute to Bible college, then simply to college, and sometimes, with the introduction of advanced degrees, to university.
There are numerous examples of this phenomenon, but none illustrates the process more completely than Biola in southern California. The name Biola originally was an acronym for Bible Institute of Los Angeles, but the school changed its name to Biola College in 1949 and in 1981 became Biola University.
To be sure, there are still many Bible colleges in North America that cling to their heritage: Prairie Bible College, Toccoa Falls College, Alaska Bible College, Columbia Bible College, and many others. Moody Bible Institute of Chicago is probably the best known and the most prominent of the Bible schools. But for every Bible institute that remains, there are two or three that have evolved into liberal-arts colleges or even universities.
What accounts for the difference? Why have some institutions contented themselves with their status as Bible schools while others have sought to redefine themselves? Surely the pressures of alumni and constituency play a role. Some see the introduction of a liberal-arts curriculum as the catalyst for transition from Bible school to Christian college, a kind of slippery slope that leads ineluctably to an emphasis on so-called secular learning at the expense of the Bible.
Multnomah’s president, Joseph Aldrich, and others at the school have reservations about moving toward a liberal-arts curriculum—what Aldrich called the “first-round temptation” for Bible institutes. “We may have to tune our model a bit, perhaps by cutting back from 52 hours of Bible,” Aldrich confessed. “It will be a real challenge for the current and subsequent leadership of Multnomah to resist moving from the heart to the head in what we do. I resist moving toward an environment where the academic reigns.”
Students concur. “They don’t want the liberal arts because that will dilute the emphasis on the Bible,” Duane Hallof said. “History will repeat itself,” he added, citing the examples of Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, all of which, he said, began with evangelical principles but were seduced into liberalism.
Another factor influencing which schools remain as Bible institutes and which evolve into something else may be their geographical and cultural locations. The schools situated in rural areas—Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada, for example—have maintained their insularity, drawing on the Jeffersonian ideal of the virtuous farmer as opposed to the less-virtuous urban dweller. Likewise, the schools in cities seem to derive their very identity from the juxtaposition of good with evil, righteousness with unrighteousness.
Ever since the late nineteenth century, when non-Protestant immigrants who did not share evangelical scruples about temperance flooded American cities, evangelicals have looked at the city with a mixture of repugnance and missionary zeal. Urban schools like Moody, for instance, with its civil-defense architecture and its maze of underground tunnels, even look like fortresses—an image softened at Moody by some of the campus’s newer buildings. By sending their students out into city streets on evangelistic and social-service forays, these schools act as an evangelical beacon in a hostile and godless environment.
Something happens, however, when a Bible school relocates to the suburbs, as many have done in the past several decades. Suddenly, the environment looks less threatening than it did in the city. The dualistic rhetoric softens, almost imperceptibly at first. The fortress mentality gives way to an accommodation to the surrounding culture—or at least an uneasy peace. It strikes me as no coincidence, for example, that Trinity Seminary and Bible College in Chicago became Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School about the time the school took possession of its new campus at Deerfield in the affluent northern suburbs or that Detroit Bible College dropped “Bible” when it moved to Farmington Hills and changed its name to William Tyndale College.
Managing Decline
With its unabashedly conservative theology and social values, an institution such as Multnomah tends to embrace change about as eagerly as a salmon seeks encounters with a hungry bear. The students I spoke with seemed entirely innocent of the cultural forces buffeting Multnomah, but faculty and administrators were keenly aware that the school faced some difficult choices in the coming years.
“We’re just about the last Bible school around, at least in the traditional sense of the three-year program,” Garry Friesen, Multnomah’s academic dean, said, his voice betraying a mixture of pride and apprehension. Even Moody, which most people at Multnomah regard as the school’s closest kin, has recently moved in the direction of offering full-fledged baccalaureate degrees. “That leaves us pretty much alone out there,” Friesen said, “with the exception of some of the smaller schools.”
President Joseph Aldrich is an alumnus of both Multnomah and Dallas Theological Seminary. From the perspective of the president’s office for the past 13 years (succeeding his father, who led the institution for 35 years), Aldrich has witnessed important changes in evangelicalism, and he understands better than most the predicament of institutions like Multnomah. “Survival is a real issue in the Bible-school movement,” he said flatly. Thirty years ago a diploma from a Bible institute was sufficient for placement on a church or missions staff, he said, but no longer.
“Our students simply cannot compete for jobs with other candidates who have bachelor’s or master-of-divinity degrees. Increasingly, the rural community is the only one that a die-hard Bible college graduate can service.”
In addition, changes in American culture have left their mark on places like Multnomah. In Ronald Reagan’s America, evangelical adolescents were caught up like everyone else in the headlong quest for affluence, and the road to riches seemed to lead through colleges, universities, and business schools rather than through a Bible institute.
“Like it or not,” Aldrich said, enumerating the difficulties facing schools like Multnomah, “divorce has hit evangelicalism.” As a consequence, he said, the percentage of female students at Multnomah has dropped in recent years as evangelical fathers counsel their daughters to seek an education to prepare them for a career, in the unfortunate event that they might someday find themselves divorced and in need of work. More and more households are two-career families; wives are working. Increasingly, a place like Multnomah finds itself fighting social and demographic trends in the larger culture. “We don’t want to be culturally driven,” Aldrich said, “but we have to be culturally aware.”
Simply swimming against the cultural currents, however, is a good bit different from staking out a positive identity. That leaves Multnomah School of the Bible searching for a niche. The commercial success of Multnomah Press, which publishes books by faculty and other evangelical leaders such as Chuck Swindoll, most of them addressing some dimension of the Christian life, has burnished the school’s image among evangelicals. But that notoriety alone will not ensure the school’s survival.
“We may be managing decline at the undergraduate level,” Aldrich said candidly. The school has added a Graduate School of Ministry to offer professional degrees, including the master of divinity, a three-year program with an emphasis on internships. Even Aldrich, however, seems to have reservations about shifting the locus of pastoral training from the undergraduate to the graduate level. “The seminary movement is not congenial to pietism in the same way that a Bible school is,” he said. “That’s a real loss.”
Multnomah officials also recognize that theirs is a regional school. Out of a total student registration of 761, considerably more than half, 454 students, come from Washington and Oregon. California accounts for another 132 students. Such reliance on the region, however, implies a precarious dependency on what Aldrich calls “the spiritual wasteland of the United States.” Several people during my visit cited statistics indicating that the rate of church attendance in Washington and Oregon is the lowest in the nation. Only 3 percent of the population in metropolitan Portland attend church.
Of the 108 different ethnic groups in Portland, however, no more than a dozen or so are represented at Multnomah. With the exception of a few Native Americans, the racial, social, and ethnic composition of the student body is decidedly monochrome and homogeneous, a generalization that also applies to the faculty. One professor referred to one of his colleagues as “our avant garde figure” because “he goes to jazz festivals and things like that.”
Believing the school’s future is tied inextricably to the spiritual welfare of the Pacific Northwest, Multnomah, in cooperation with the Navigators, has initiated an evangelistic campaign called Mission Portland that in many ways represents a return to the heroic ideals that animated the Bible-school movement. “Mission Portland is a pilot project to see what it will take to conquer an entire city for God,” said Greg Hicks, a Multnomah graduate and communications coordinator for the enterprise, “looking at all facets of ministry required to accomplish the Great Commission in an urban context.”
Only a year into what is shaping up as a ten-year project, it is much too early to guess how successful Mission Portland might be and what effect it might have on Multnomah’s enrollments in the coming years. The effort, however, has drawn early praise for its interdenominational focus and for its ability to bridge the chasm between charismatics and noncharismatics. Some evangelicals in the region even dare to use the term revival. Whatever the outcome, however, it is clear that Mission Portland will have a salutary effect on Multnomah School of the Bible, if only because it revives the place of evangelism and renewal that largely defined Multnomah in its early years, thereby reiterating the school’s importance as a beacon to a sinful world.
Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.
- More fromRandall Balmer
Ideas
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Playing on fears of conspiracies and Antichrist lookalikes may sell books, but it subverts the gospel’s confident hope.
Four friends gathered for overpriced milkshakes in a posh Orlando hotel. The annual Christian Booksellers Association convention was nearly over, and it was time to take stock. There had been many solid books from reputable publishers; we chuckled over the march of the “recovery book” clones. Nevertheless, we were each troubled by the same discovery: an increase of fear and scare tactics driving the marketing of many books.
Perhaps most outlandish was a stack of books with the title Satan-Proof Your Home, apparently treating the Devil as if he were radon gas. Most were more tasteful, yet clearly appealing to readers’ self-protective instincts: there were books that played on fear of psychologists, fear of charismatics, fear of 12-step programs, fear of the Antichrist, fear of school-teachers, and fear of New Age influences.
What these publishers’ wares tell us about the Christian public should give us cause for concern. Christian book publishers have become savvy marketers. If they have placed their bets well, it means some of the Christian public is driven by fear, and that’s not a good thing.
Fear was designed by God to give our bodies the sudden bursts of strength and speed we need in emergencies. But when fear becomes a permanent condition, it can paralyze the spirit, keeping us from taking the risks of generosity, love, and vulnerability that characterize citizens of God’s kingdom.
In a famous 1964 essay, Richard Hofstadter identified a “paranoid style” in American politics, which he characterized as “overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression” and which assumes a “hostile and conspiratorial world.” What Hofstadter said of a political style applies as well to a style of religion—at least the style of religion expressed at this year’s CBA convention.
The paranoid spokesman, according to Hofstadter, is never at a loss for facts; indeed, he can outdo anyone in the amassing of details, footnotes, and bibliographic references. Christian authors who peddle fear often boast of the number of footnotes in their books. But the arguments are often characterized not only by a massive collection of data, but by a massive leap from the data to the conclusion, which may be more related to the interpretive construct (a conspiracy theory, for example) than to the data.
But, as it is said, just because you’re paranoid does not mean they’re not after you. The real question is whether, in the face of a challenge, the Christian reaction should be fear or something else. As the Bible says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship” (Rom. 8:15).
That verse occurs in the context of one of the most confidence-building chapters in the Bible. And the confidence it builds is confidence, not in ourselves, but in God. The reasons Paul gives are capsulized in words that outline the nature of our relationship with God. We are “sons”; we are “loved”; we are “led by the Spirit”; we are “predestined”; we are “elect”; we are “called according to his purpose.” And in all this we are “more than conquerors.”
The message of Romans 8 encourages neither “positive thinking” nor flight from reality. It lists graphically the challenges and obstacles we face: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword. But it finds confidence in a greater reality, the overwhelming love of God. Unfortunately, this message may not sell as many books.
By David Neff.
Demonizing The Head Doctors
The psychotherapy establishment has hardly been a trustworthy ally of the Christian church. Among the major problems: many mental-health professionals are antagonistic toward religion; each of the major secular psychotherapy approaches makes assumptions that are somewhat at odds with a Christian view of persons; the mental-health field has contributed to the development of a “therapeutic culture” that emphasizes personal growth or happiness over all other ends, including following Christ; some psychotherapists have promoted a “pathologization” of life wherein all unhappiness is seen as “mental illness”; finally, overpromotion of professional services has undermined the confidence of clergy and laypersons in their capacity to minister effectively in the name of Christ.
But does psychology and the mental-health field deserve to be regarded by Christians as the latest version of “the Great Satan”?
Such extreme criticism used to circulate at the periphery of the church, but antipsychology sentiment is now emerging from more visible leaders, most recently from John MacArthur. In Our Sufficiency in Christ (Word), the California pastor and author calls psychology one of “three deadly influences that undermine your spiritual life.”
While the psychotherapy establishment has many flaws, there are important factors that should prevent us from an extreme rejection of psychology.
First, a high view of Scripture does not require that all knowledge must come from the Bible. If we are consumers of any of the advances of science, we acknowledge that things of value can be discerned by sustained human inquiry into the natural order. The apostle Paul goes so far as to say that we can even learn some things about God through the created order (Rom. 1).
Some seem to confuse the legitimate charge that we are to follow God’s counsel and reject Satan’s counsel with the mistaken notion that all assertions of nonbelievers are Satan’s counsel. The truth itself is God’s counsel, wherever we encounter it. The presence of truth mingled with error in the works of nonbelievers should not intimidate us; we find the same mingling in the works of every Christian theologian, pastor, and professor. All of us are fallen. Psychology is an area of valid inquiry where we may learn from the insights and discoveries of nonbelievers.
MacArthur admits that in “rare” cases specialized help from a mental-health professional may be advised, giving such examples as rape, incest, or addiction. He portrays the help obtained in such instances as necessary but “superficial.” This is the beginning of a reasonable position. But we must recognize that such cases are not as rare as one might think. Yet they may seem rare in congregations where psychology is portrayed as the enemy.
Here is a dilemma: pastors must emphasize the sufficiency of Christ, but an emphasis on this doctrine can communicate to parishioners that their faith is deficient if they seek professional help. After all, “seeking help” has been labeled a declaration that they have not found Christ sufficient.
The healing that can come from psychotherapy is not equivalent to salvation. But balm for the wounds that many carry can only be dismissed as “superficial” if medical and relief missions are also judged as superficial. If temporal ministry is superficial, why did Christ care for the physical and emotional suffering of the people of Palestine? We must not treat human pain lightly; that is not the way of Christ.
Salvation and ultimate wholeness are through Christ alone. Yet in this life, not every autistic child is healed, not every learning-disabled child empowered, not every depressed person encouraged, not every panic-stricken person comforted. Psychology can help some of these people and more.
If the errors mentioned earlier are avoided, we have no justification for declaring psychology contrary to the Christian faith.
Guest editorial by Stanton L. Jones, chairman of the psychology department, Wheaton College, and author, with Richard Butman, of Modern Psychotherapies (IVP).
Let My People Stay
In Jerusalem, Bethlehem—indeed, wherever one looks in Israel—the presence of Christians is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. Believers in the West should be concerned about this modern-day exodus.
Modern Palestine, says Jerusalem cleric Naim Ateek, is in danger of becoming a mere museum, rather than host to a “living community in the land where our Lord lived, died, and was resurrected.” Whereas some 30,000 Christians lived in Jerusalem when Israel was founded in 1948, the figure is now estimated to be 9,000. Some put it thousands lower.
The causes for the flight of the region’s faithful are many. The intifada, along with the Israel government’s harsh response, have left many in Israel’s largely middle-class Arab-Christian community weary of the hardship and violence. Nightmarish economic conditions make it impossible for many Palestinians to earn a living. Complicating things further, says Bob O’Donnell, vice-rector of Bethlehem’s Tantur ecumenical institute, Palestinian Christians fear that a longed-for Arab-Palestinian state will be Muslim. They wonder if there will be a place for them in the theocratic state envisioned by more fundamentalist Muslims.
But American Christians also need to face ways that they may contribute to the problem. Many are surprised to discover that most Christians in Israel are Arabs. Unquestioning support for the Israel government—in spite of its antagonism to Arab Palestinians—unwittingly contributes to the exodus.
The departure of Christians from the cradle of their faith dismays us. We cannot forget our brothers and sisters—many of whom are Palestinians—who seem to be finding the land where Jesus walked increasingly inhospitable. Christians here have a responsibility to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to find the resolve to make and keep peace.
Guest editorial by Stanton L. Jones, chairman of the psychology department, Wheaton College, and author, with Richard Butman, of Modern Psychotherapies (IVP).
By Timothy K. Jones.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
“Guenevere never much cared for God. She was a good theologian, but that was all.” So wrote T. H. White of the aging heroine of his Arthurian romance. The queen sought to free her beloved Lancelot to pursue God as he passionately desired. So she became mother abbess of a convent and an eminent theologian, though her profound capacity for love never fixed upon God.
This month many students will enter seminaries. Most will study theology, and we should hope and pray that no one will ever be able to say of them that they “never much cared for God.”
Most seminary students come with a sense of “call.” But discovering the full meaning of that call will require prayerful exploration and a deepened understanding of self and God’s purposes. The church, of course, needs these students to become good theologians, but heaven help us if that is all that can be said of them.
This fall, seminary students are likely to find theological education in a state of ferment. Seminaries, whatever their theological persuasion, have been among the most change-resistant educational institutions. But there is a growing awareness that the way the church selects and equips its leaders should be undergoing a fundamental revolution.
Some of this change is “market-driven,” giving potential employers what they want; but that is not necessarily an unwarranted compromise. It is often an overdue response to the seminary’s long-standing mission to serve a changing church. The church is changing—in styles of evangelism and worship, in demographic profile and cultural diversity, in the multiplication of specialized ministries, and in stronger demands for effectiveness. In addition, the world is also a rapidly changing, fast-moving target. It is more post-Christian, secular, and pluralistic.
Students heading to seminary inevitably hear sarcastic warnings about going to the “theological cemetery.” But this fall most students will find seminaries more intentional in nurturing their fellowship with God. Seminaries have learned that more is needed than a special course or lecture in “spiritual formation.” Edward Farley, Richard Muller, and others have rightly argued that the study of theology in ministerial preparation must include cultivating a godly and Godward disposition. This must not be merely intellectual and theoretical. It must be emotional and attitudinal—a growing personal love for and fellowship with God.
Of course, the responsibility for spiritual growth and intimacy with God belongs primarily to the student. It is encouraging, however, to see seminaries offering students more direction and support in their quest for godliness.
Abraham Kuyper, always wise, said the study of theology could only be true and effective if three conditions were present. First, student and teacher alike must be regenerated by God’s grace. As I write this, I have just returned from the memorial service for Bob Guelich, a distinguished professor and New Testament scholar. The most fitting tribute was the report of one student who emerged from Bob’s office and exclaimed with joy, “I’ve just accepted Jesus in Dr. Guelich’s office.” Now the student is ready to study theology.
The second condition is that the student of theology be enlightened by the Holy Spirit. In worship, filled with wonder and awe, comes understanding. In obedience is found deeper understanding of who God is. The “mystery” of godliness is only grasped as the Spirit works within us.
Finally, Kuyper insists, theology is not done in isolation, but in the “communion of the saints” and the active fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ. Seminary community and church life are more important than most students are prepared to acknowledge under the pressures of study, job, and family.
Such heavy counsel needs the balance of Tom Oden’s perspective. He writes: “Keep in due proportion the pompous pretensions of the study of divinity,” and remember that “the most enjoyable of all subjects has to be God, because he is the source of all joy.” That, too, is learning to do theology and to care much for God.
GEORGE K. BRUSHABER
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The students in my class on media and the church were smiling, but it was easy to see that some were puzzled. A few were troubled. Why was it so important, someone had asked, for seminary students to learn how to analyze the secular news and entertainment media? Why should evangelicals worry about pop culture?
“Tell me a subject that seminary students worry about,” I said.
A master of divinity student in the front row quickly answered: “Discipleship.”
“What does discipleship mean?” I asked. “Pretend that I don’t speak fluent evangelical.”
His bottom line: He wanted his ministry to affect people’s views on the big issues of life: marriage, family, money, success, sex. “I want the faith to affect the way they behave, to change how they live,” he said.
I agreed. Discipleship will affect wallets, bedrooms, and pocket calendars. Then I pointed at the blackboard, where I had listed the major forms of today’s mass media: television, advertising, movies, the news media, popular music and video, magazines, and newsletters.
So the secular media, I joked, have no influence on how Americans view money, sex, marriage, divorce, children, jobs, life, death, eternity? The people in our pews, and the unchurched, are never influenced by the media as they face the “big issues”? And, I suppose, the people who run the media never ignore God. Right?
Lights came on.
Here’s the point of the story: When we train foreign missionaries, we assume they are heading for a foreign culture. We assume they must learn how it affects daily life, and in light of that culture, how to live the Christian faith and proclaim the Good News. Missionaries must be skilled observers who can debate other cultures.
Today, we must realize that America is a foreign culture, as far as the life of the church is concerned. Our popular culture has baptized the churched and unchurched alike in its media messages to the point where we can no longer even attempt to state a case for faith without some knowledge of the marketplace. We must approach pop culture with the same earnestness that we invest in missionary endeavor.
In the past year or two, movie theaters have featured dozens of movies about death, eternity, and spiritual pilgrimages. Television series have wrestled with a long list of real-life subjects and moral issues. Yet God is rarely mentioned. No one prays. The few Christians shown are portrayed as morons. What is our response?
We watch. We complain. What we don’t do is listen carefully and study our opponent.
Recently I played the final 30 minutes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in class. Students were instructed to look for religious symbols and themes and take notes. When the film clip ended, one student complained that the exercise was a waste of time. Films like this didn’t affect him, he said. He was an evangelical; he wasn’t typical of the culture.
His notepad was empty. The truth is, I told him, he was very typical. The Indiana Jones clip contained two-dozen or more religious images and themes, blended into an entrancing but spiritually confusing brew. But he had been trained by years of television and movie viewing to absorb visual information without challenging it.
Pop culture must, for us, be more than mindless entertainment. Today’s Christian leaders must have a Bible in one hand and a notepad in the other. We cannot let information from our newspapers, cable channels, video stores, and stereos wash over us, unchallenged and unanalyzed. It is time to tune in and pay attention.
Terry Mattingly is communicator in residence on culture at Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary and writes the weekly column “On Religion” for the Scripps Howard News Service.
Speaking Out does not necessarily reflect the views ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The Last Word
Instead of arguing whether executions should be public (on TV), Charles Colson needs to reconsider whether they should be at all [“Prime-time Executions,” July 22]. Christian support for the death penalty is forbidden by the Golden Rule, just as slavery is.
For Christians, the commands of Jesus are absolutely final. Moses may have had the first word; Jesus is the last Word. Vengeance is his; he will repay. We are to love our (and society’s) enemies.
John Goodwin
Sisters, Oreg.
Vets need 12-step programs
[“The Hidden Gospel of the 12 Steps,” July 22] is long overdue. A lot of Vietnam Christians [vets] could have used a healthy Christian 12-step program.
Robert (Bob) Sarlo
Point Man International
Ogden, Utah
Although A.A. has benefited many people, it should be emphasized that the 12-step approach might not be the best choice for everyone. Your readers should be informed of three other national recovery groups recently reviewed in Health magazine: (1) Rational Recovery, (2) Secular Organizations for Sobriety, and (3) Women for Sobriety. Their approaches are secular, but would offer alternatives for people who dislike A.A.
Mary E. Bonneson
Brookfield, Wis.
The only problem with the [12-step] cover of your July 22 issue is that you have the picture upside-down. Any “gospel” that conceals the claims of Christ is a staircase leading downward to hell. The error is epitomized by Tim Stafford’s concession that A.A. groups are tolerant of Christians unless they undermine the pluralistic assumptions of the group by suggesting that non-Christian views of God are misguided. In fact, the greatest unkindness you can do a person is to save his body from drink, drugs, and so on while failing to point him to the only Savior of his soul.
Steve Hays
Kirkland, Wash.
Addicted for life
What a sad commentary on our society that books need to be written on “religious addiction.” Your review “When Religion Makes Us Sick” [Books, July 22] makes “religious addicts” like me feel about the same way. I can only point to the New Testament church for a pattern of radical Christianity most churches sadly lack today. How many books would have been written about one of the most militant street evangelists of all time, the apostle Paul? Can’t these authors, and others who so quickly condemn “religious addiction” (i.e., “commitment”), read the Book of Acts? What would be written today if Jesus himself preached in our society the strong statements of commitment in John 6, which led most followers to turn back and brought the commitment of the Twelve into question?
I’ve gone to jail for preaching the gospel in a public park, as have several members of our church (we were acquitted), and I’d do it again. If that qualifies me as a “religious addict,” I’m hooked for life!
Pastor Steve Brazell
The Door
Glendale, Ariz.
Women without confidence
I enjoyed the timely and relevant editorial “Women in the Confidence Gap” [July 22] and encourage you to develop this theme into an article.
I am a committed Christian woman whose confidence has been eroding since I left graduate school. In the first 7 years of my walk with God, I led Bible studies and prayer meetings, and counseled students. During 11 postcollege years, the trend was reversed in five churches in two states. My career has progressed, but my ability to minister in a church setting has been significantly reduced—due solely to the fact that I am a woman. In my church, only men may preach, teach, lead worship, lead Bible studies, give announcements, usher—even act as greeters; the pastor desires to develop leadership skills in the men.
Consequently, my ministry in the church is limited to nursery duty, babysitting, and cooking for ill members. My ministry outside the church, in parachurch organizations, has included training Christian counselors, serving on the boards of active ministries, working with the homeless, and spending vacations on foreign mission fields.
Three times a week I park myself in a pew, convinced no one will expect any performance from me. Sometimes I wonder whether God will remove my teaching talent because I have failed to use it. Do I quit a church just because it has a restrictive theology towards the role of two-thirds of the congregation?
L.M.
Address withheld on request
A significant social issue
Thank you for your informative news article [“Religious Right Rallies for “Gay-rights Battles,” July 22].
The Christian Civic League of Maine, a Christian political action organization representing 240 churches and 4,400 families, is launching a statewide voter referendum on gay rights this year. If we are able to gather 60,000 signatures by February 3, the question of the people’s right to decide the issue of homosexual-rights legislation will appear on the general election ballot in November 1992. This would be the first-in-the-nation statewide referendum on gay rights and afford an unprecedented opportunity to publicly discuss this significant social issue.
Jasper S. Wyman
Christian Civic League of Maine
Augusta, Maine
People who won’t listen
Guy M. Condon, in “You Say Choice, I Say Murder” [June 24], argues that prolifers need to pay close attention to the language they use. He hints there is a communication problem between prolifers and the rest of the world, but he only touches the tip of the iceberg.
The larger problem is that neither prolifers nor prochoicers listen to the other side. How about some new verbs—to be used by both sides of the debate? Verbs like “listen,” “sit down with,” “communicate with,” and “talk with” would serve us all well. I am tired of being told what to do by people who will not listen. Perhaps this is close to the heart of the feminist prochoice arguments.
Judy C. Knupke
Newton Lower Falls, Mass.
Condon has hit the nail on the head. One of the Devil’s favorite tricks is to make righteousness appear self-righteous. Perhaps out of frustration, some prolifers succumb to—even relish—their identity as a culturally marginalized, hypersectarian remnant. To the unsympathetic ear, they celebrate their hatred of abortion like Jonah eagerly awaiting Nineveh’s fall from outside the city walls.
While this may gratify a certain apocalyptic mania, it won’t do much to stop the killing nor advance respect for human life. The prolife agenda must become proactive, not simply reactive, and always reflect a genuine spirit of charity. Moreover, as essential as a “radical” Christian witness is, ultimately you have to be on the inside to be effective.
Stephen Settle
New Holstein, Wis.
Condon, although making some good points, seems oversensitive to proabortion (“prochoice”) criticism of the prolife movement. It is the proabortion bias and tunnel vision of the news media that have all but totally censored or distorted our message. On an even playing field, legalized abortion might have been rejected long ago as barbaric, as the general public became aware of the reality of the living, preborn human baby, and the detailed violence of the killing act of abortion.
Dan Garrison
Middletown, Pa.
Shortly after reading Condon’s excellent article, I listened to a press conference by Planned Parenthood’s director. How skillfully she used rhetoric to make their positions sound reasonable, inclusive, and American! I agreed with almost nothing she said but admired her ability to pose abortion in terms of liberty, women’s rights, and privacy.
However, Jesus taught us to hate sin but love the sinner. Surely words like murder and kill do not demonstrate compassion for women who have made a mistake and ended a pregnancy. They need our prayers, not words likely to elicit pain and guilt.
Mark Blackwell
St. Louis, Mo.
Normal usage of rhetoric seems always to be in a derogatory sense. Thanks to Condon—with an assist by my dictionary—I was delighted to learn rhetoric isn’t at all the dirty word it’s commonly made out to be.
Peter Kushkowski
Haddam, Conn.
Condon’s article exemplifies the dangerous trend toward appeasement now being pursued by many in prolife leadership ranks. The prolife effort did not become the largest and most important social movement of our time by watering down the truth about abortion to please men and accommodate polite society. Abortion is what it is, and it does no good to go soft on the heart of the issue.
Dan Allison, Executive Director
Pinellas County Right to Life
Clearwater, Fla.
A proabortion friend, now 70 and childless, told me, “My mother would have been better off if she could have had an abortion instead of me.” I now understand my friend’s debilitating depressions. I wonder how many other prochoicers share her feelings of guilt and worthlessness and might be helped, even healed, by compassion.
Condon is right to urge us to create the vision of compassion in our language. We need also to create it in our hearts.
Carol DeChant
Chicago, Ill.
Gordon president still at work
We appreciate the attention given to Dick Gross’s decision to leave the presidency of Gordon College [North American Scene, June 24]. We would, however, like to correct the impression that he has resigned, past tense, and maybe even left the campus. Dick has announced his intention to step down, future tense, at the end of the 1991–92 school year after a careful trustee committee study on the future of the college, then a search for his successor. He will be very much with us for the coming year.
Harry M. Durning, PR Director
Gordon College
Wenham, Mass.
Target group: People!
Your editorial “Church Growth’s Two Faces” [June 24] was a tremendous relief to me. It seems every article I’ve read lately was on “targeting” certain people in the community, leading me to believe that if we aren’t targeting, we’ll never be “successful.” The articles caused me to meet with our church staff. “Do we seem to be ‘targeting’ any certain group in our church?” I asked.
“Yes, said one. “Single moms.”
“I think we’ve targeted senior citizens,” said another.
“True,” said a third. “But I think you judge by the music. It looks to me like we’re targeting youth.”
“We’re forgetting our children’s daycare center and our Christian school,” I exclaimed. “And the latchkey program for kids after school!”
We were depressed. No wonder we weren’t “successful.”
Then CT arrived in the mail. Your article said, “The goal of the church is to help bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and then to aid their spiritual growth.” People! That’s all of them, isn’t it?
Thanks for always being on the cutting edge. We’ve decided just to keep ministering to those added to the church daily by the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Marjorie Kitchell
Foursquare Gospel Church
Boulder City, Nev.
I take exception to Parro’s remarks in his guest editorial. Anyone familiar with George Barna’s work knows he credits the Holy Spirit in convicting and calling unbelievers and lays prayer as the foundation of church growth. Marketing in church-growth strategies is merely a servant’s mindset. That is, doing everything possible to reach the unsaved without compromising the gospel. Again and again Barna emphasizes the need for relevant, authentic Christianity.
Paul J. Rottler
Glendale, Calif.
As a church growth/marketing consultant, I think the view given was too narrow. To say that marketing generally operates on unbiblical assumptions is wrong. Every church that ever existed has done marketing. The style of your building, the condition of your facilities, the music provided, the church bulletin, how the gospel is presented, as well as many other factors, are all involved in the marketing of a church. The sad fact is, all churches do marketing, but most do it terribly.
Don Ake
Akron, Ohio
C. Peter Wagner’s daunting comment [in the related News story] deserves our attention: “Maybe something else is needed.” Could part of that “something else” be a gospel message that places at least equal emphasis on confrontation and contradiction to that of contextualization and commonalities? Has an emphasis on felt needs advocated in much church-growth literature resulted in a half-gospel being understood by its hearers? Do recipients of the gospel message recognize their world view must be challenged and transformed? An old Korean proverb states: If the water is dirty downstream, it’s dirty upstream. If our churches are not growing, it would probably be advantageous to re-evaluate the touchstone to the churches’ formation, the gospel message, and our presentation of it.
Tom A. Steffen
Biola University
La Mirada, Calif.
Listening to Jesus
Once again Philip Yancey was outstanding, this time in “General Schwarzkopf Meets the Beatitudes” [June 24]. How refreshing to read someone not toeing the usual Persian Gulf line. But, of course, listening to Jesus will do that to you.
Rev. Peter Stitsinger, Pastor
St. Paul United Church of Christ
Davis, Ill.
I appreciate Yancey’s honest conclusion that “I am beginning, I think, to understand the Beatitudes.” The apostle Paul points out simply and clearly that these same blessings are ours today through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It would be so much easier to let the Spirit do his work—but then we would not have the endless volumes and endless discussions that fascinate us so because we cannot understand them in this age of Grace.
Vincent G. Gustafson
Morenci, Ariz.
Hentoff and intellectual freedom
Marvin Olasky’s treatment of Nat Hentoff is approving but less than fair [“The Village’s Prolife Voice,” June 24].
Hentoff is not simply a defender of pornography; his devotion to intellectual freedom has made him an outspoken foe of the “political correctness” movement since long before anyone thought to call it that. In that, too, he departs from the prevailing mood at the Voice.
And to say that Hentoff, of all people, toes a party line is to impugn the integrity of anyone—Christian, atheist or otherwise—who holds liberal or leftist views. Olasky could have mentioned that Hentoff is an admirer of John Cardinal O’Connor at a time when O’Connor-bashing is part of the liberal “party line” here in New York.
Miriam Weiss
Astoria, N.Y.
Are we to the point that a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” and an avowed atheist must be featured in your magazine to support Christian views on abortion? I fail to understand publicizing an atheist simply because he believes in one aspect of what we Christians believe.
Patricia Kastama
Conowingo, Md.
No civil authority for schools
Ken Sidey’s editorial “The Hazards of Choice,” [June 24] ignores the fundamental issue: Is public education a biblically valid alternative?
Using the Reformed theological concept of “spheres of responsibility,” many in the Christian-school and home-school movements reject public education as an option for both Christians and pagans. From this model, parents have concluded that civil governments have no biblical authority to establish and maintain general educational programs and facilities. Therefore, the state’s presence in the educational market is seen as an intrusion into an area of responsibility that God has granted exclusively to the family unit. In consistent obedience to this belief, these parents oppose all government schemes designed to sustain this encroachment. The primary criticism of public schools is not their poor performance but their very existence.
Thus, public education is “beyond redemption” because it is an illegitimate human undertaking.
George A. Mindeman
Siloam Springs, Ark.
Are you trying to bait your readers or are you serious that Christians should be patrons of the godless government school system that arrogantly calls itself the “public” school system, despite the fact that every school (system) performs a public service? Is Christian endorsement going to “bring good news to the next generation” via the most paganizing institution(s) in the nation?
Gordon Oosterman
Address unknown
Almost all proponents of choice also include in their plans an opportunity for parents to choose among public schools in a given area, some even suggesting vouchers might be used for children to attend public schools in neighboring districts.
Thus, far from creating the kind of two-tiered, racially segregated system your editorial envisions, this plan will in fact free children from disadvantaged and poor backgrounds to choose other alternatives, whether public or private, which will liberate them from the imprisonment of often substandard inner-city schools.
Pastor David F. Crow
Pennsylvania Furnace, Pa.
To be sure, tuition vouchers, as Sidey notes, could work against the interests of the poor. Christians should insist that the dollar value of vouchers be inversely pegged to family income levels, thus empowering the poor to compete more successfully with the affluent.
We now may have the opportunity to implement structural changes that would end unnecessary government coercion in schooling and respect the consciences of those families who feel violated by our present monopoly system. It’s hard to see how Christians can do anything but give their enthusiastic support to such a change.
Prof. Richard A. Baer, Jr.
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.
Letters are welcome. Brevity is preferred, and all are subject to condensation. Write to Eutychus, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.
What’s in a name? Apparently not enough “consumer orientation,” as far as some churches are concerned. It’s not enough to set good old “First Presbyterian” on the church sign, or marquee, or in the ads in the local paper. It needs a little more drawing power: “The Friendly Church,” or “A Place to Grow,” or something like that.
Frankly, it’s time for some truth in advertising. Maybe it doesn’t deserve the top spot on the church’s list of priorities. But I’m beginning to think that nonchurchgoers may be smarter than we think. They can see through all the grand and glorious descriptions. When it comes to truth, the church needs to lead the way. Here are a few examples. The descriptions are true; the names have been left off. But you’ll recognize the churches I’m talking about, I’m sure.
“We can’t stand sin, and we like sinners even less.”
“Our church is about as lively as a 91-year-old (in dog years) basset hound.”
“If you show up at our door, you’d better be in a three-piece suit. And if you think someone will say ‘Hi’ to you, forget it.”
“Come as you are, but be sure to leave your mind at the door.”
“We’ve had some financial problems lately, and we want your money.”
“You’ll feel right at home here—if you don’t wear a beard, a pantsuit, necklaces, bracelets, or earrings, and have never heard of Sandi Patti.” Maybe it won’t have them pouring into the pews. But with some churches I know of, the truth couldn’t hurt.
EUTYCHUS
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Last November we renewed our acquaintance with Columbia University’s Randall Balmer over red beans and rice in New Orleans’s Vieux Carré. Balmer was adapting and expanding materials in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, his book-length portrait of American evangelicalism, in preparation for a PBS television series. The great omission from the book, critics had noted, was Christian higher education, and thus he had recently made a pilgrimage to Multnomah School of the Bible, one of the last three-year Bible school programs.
What were his impressions? The biggest surprise, Balmer said, was student attitudes. Anyone who deals with college students knows their habitual complaints about their chosen institutions. But, Balmer said, the comments he heard from students were eerily like public-relations copy, yet transparently genuine. These students actually liked their school.
Faculty and administrators were less sanguine. They know who holds tomorrow, but few know what tomorrow holds for Bible colleges/schools/institutes. Are these venerable institutions anachronistic in a day when a liberal-arts degree is the “union card” for most jobs?
In this issue, Balmer (a Bible-school outsider) reports on his field trip to Multnomah, while Robert C. Kallgren, executive assistant to the president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary (and the epitome of an insider), shares the results of his doctoral study of 42 Bible colleges and how they are coping with the pressures.
DAVID NEFF, Managing Editor
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Abortion Ad Battle
Advocates and opponents of abortion have launched a wave of dueling political advertisements over the Bush administration’s regulations separating abortion from the nation’s Title X family-planning program, upheld by the Supreme Court last May. According to president Faye Wattleton, Planned Parenthood will be spending between $3 million and $5 million for print, television, and radio ads urging Congress to overturn the regulations, which prohibit any federal money from going to family-planning clinics that counsel or refer clients for abortion.
A broad-based prolife coalition is countering with its own effort based on the theme that “abortion is not a method of family planning.” The coalition, already comprising 17 prolife groups, will spend at least $1 million to produce print and radio spots they hope will dispel the “disinformation abortion advocates are putting forward” on the issue.
Dueling lobbying efforts have also been taking place. Last month the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights sponsored a “Direct Action Day” on Capitol Hill, urging members of Congress to vote against the regulations. Meanwhile, supporters of Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition have been tying up phone lines at the White House and the Capitol urging that the rules be retained.
Number-Three Dem Is Prolife
House Democrats last month overwhelmingly elected prolife Rep. David Bonior of Michigan to the number-three slot in the Democratic Caucus (majority whip). Despite the party’s firm platform support for “reproductive rights,” Bonior has accumulated a solid prolife voting record during his 14 years in the House. “If I am called on to express my views, I will express the views of my party … but reserve for myself the ability to vote my conscience,” Bonior said about his position on abortion.
Bonior will replace Rep. William Gray (D-Penn.), who is resigning from Congress to become president of the United Negro College Fund. A Baptist minister, Gray said he wanted to spend more time with his family and his church.
Hatfield Removes Name
Faced with ongoing federal investigations into his financial practices, U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg.) is removing his name from official association with several Christian organizations. Christian College Coalition (CCC) vice-president for advancement Rich Gathro confirmed that Hatfield has requested his name be taken off the CCC board of reference to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest. Several news reports on the investigations have noted that former CCC president John Dellenback forgave about $75,000 in personal loans to Hatfield (CT, June 24, 1991, p. 63).
Hatfield has also asked the Christianity Today Institute to remove his name from its list of resource scholars. “While this is a draconian step, I am convinced it is one I must take to avoid any opportunity for my official actions to be linked to some presumed self-interest of mine,” the senator wrote to Christianity Today, Inc.
Hatfield is also on the advisory board of Evangelicals for Social Action, but at press time, the organization said it had not received information that Hatfield planned to resign.