Page 4604 – Christianity Today (2024)

Your book displays the earmarks of a dispassionate observer—but at the same time you seem to understand the lingo and the thought processes of fundamentalists and evangelicals. How did you come by that understanding?Well, I didn’t hold any revivals myself until I was 14. I was a boy preacher and preached in the Churches of Christ from the time I was 14 until I was about 31, though not full-time. Most of that time I was in college or graduate school.

Unlike many academics who grew up in such a setting and have become very angry at it, I didn’t regard it as a liability. I’ve appreciated its strengths and have felt that I could be a sympathetic explainer to people who don’t understand this world, and I could also speak to that movement so as to be heard and appreciated for my criticism.

What would you say about the theologically conservative Christians on the moderate Left politically who are trying to put together a counterpart to the Christian Coalition?I think they have a chance for success. A group like that could serve as a corrective, even if it does not mobilize the same number of troops. By offering an alternative view from within the same general camp, it has a better chance of giving judicious criticism that can be heard than do critical voices from outside.

On the other hand, I think a great many evangelicals already feel more comfortable with the kind of views expressed by Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo than they do with a harder Right position. Wallis’s and Campolo’s appeal to moderation in politics is likely to be received more enthusiastically than their plea for economic and personal simplicity.

You wrote about the independence of the leaders of the Religious Right. Why can’t Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Randall Terry coordinate their efforts for greater effectiveness?An enduring characteristic of fundamentalism is its vulnerability to a sectarian spirit. Sectarianism is almost by definition fissiparous.

In addition to ideological conviction, other things enter in: personal ambition, a desire to be the leader of one’s movement or the leader of a large movement. Those quite human and understandable characteristics exist in any kind of organization. But they are exacerbated in organizations which have people of great zeal and conviction.

Many of the leaders of the Religious Right are broadcasters. Does that contribute to the lack of cooperative effort?One of the things we’ve learned over the last 15 years is that while the audience for religious broadcasting is quite substantial, it’s also finite. People are going after the same audience. That can foster a tendency to want to be distinctive—and, more negatively, to want to portray oneself positively and to portray others negatively.

Catholics and evangelicals have gotten to know each other in pro-life and profamily politics. How has this changed the dynamics between the two groups?Working together on issues helped to break down some of the barriers and stereotypes that many evangelicals and fundamentalists felt about Catholics. Basically it came to be a matter of being happy to have anybody who shares most of your views on your side if you know you can’t possibly win without them.

But evangelicals still say things like, You know, I think Christians and Catholics can get together. Or they will draw in apocalyptic language that is going to put Catholics on their guard.

Now, the Catholic Alliance of the Christian Coalition seems to be having limited success. Catholic social teaching on economics, capital punishment, immigration policies—a variety of things—is pretty different from that of the Religious Right. And while the Catholic Alliance may appeal to many laypeople, it’s not going to get much support from the priesthood and the hierarchy—which will put a brake on the level of participation by Catholics.

The thought leaders are completely missing from your book: For example, Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things; Marvin Olasky, whose The Tragedy of American Compassion informed Newt Gingrich’s notions of welfare reform; and George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Why?I’m not through with this topic. The book came in about 50 percent longer than it was supposed to. There were a number of things we didn’t get to cover. Though not bound precisely to the television series, I was naturally expected to track it closely.

I’m working now on a book that will concentrate on the Religious Right and education.

Presidential politics has been a disappointment for the Religious Right. As the movement works for cultural transformation, where is the biggest payback for their efforts?School boards, city councils, and state legislatures. One of the reasons I’m writing my next book about the range of issues associated with education is that under that umbrella you’ll find a major aggregation of cultural institutions that I think the Religious Right intends to influence as fully as possible.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

In 1955, Billy Graham called a group of evangelical leaders to gather in Cincinnati “for prayer, for consultation, advice, to seek the will of God” over the possibility of starting a new magazine to be called CHRISTIANITY TODAY. “As evangelicals,” he said, “I am convinced that we are in the majority among both clergy and church members. However, we have no rallying point, we have no flag or organization under which we can all gather. We are divided, confused, and in one sense defeated. We need a new strong vigorous voice to call us together.”

The evangelist went on to present a nine-point editorial plan for the magazine. Point nine is the most relevant for our current issue: “Book reviews—these book reviews should be the very finest of any magazine in the United States, covering not only the religious, but many outstanding secular books.”

While much has changed in the 40 years we have been publishing ct, book reviews are still a significant part of our marching orders. And the man doing much of the marching for point number nine is our book review editor, John Wilson. Trying to produce reviews that are “the finest of any magazine” is a heavy burden, but one that John relishes.

Since arriving here in 1994, John has been busy sharpening our review section, fine-tuning our now widely noticed book-awards program, and inaugurating our annual books issue. This is his third. Such special issues of CT remind us that we have always been a people of the Word, and since the sixteenth century, a people of many books.

But that is not all John has been up to.

Not only is there a much greater number of Christian books being published now than in 1955, the number of vital books from secular publishers has skyrocketed as well. We simply cannot fulfill Dr. Graham’s dream in the pages of CHRISTIANITY TODAY alone. Which is why we hired John also to oversee the development of a new magazine, , to properly showcase the best and finest voices of the church as they grapple with the most important books, events, and trends facing us today. Since being launched in the fall of 1995, has garnered wide acclaim and quickly become a “must read” for Christian thought leaders. While is not for everyone, the mission John carries out directly echoes Dr. Graham’s: to be a rallying point, a home for those who want to engage our world with the gospel in all areas of thought and at the deepest levels.

Because of the good work of staff members like John Wilson, we still live under the vision.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Mark of the ManMost readers’ responses to published articles are critical, frequently offering opposing opinions. Yet, in the case of Michael Hamilton’s reflective article on the work and ministry of Francis Schaeffer (Mar. 3), overwhelmingly the sentiments expressed by the many who wrote were appreciation and gratitude for Schaeffer’s impact on their own lives.

Over and over readers responded with comments like this one by Gerald Rodriguez of San Jose, California: “Schaeffer’s writings, and the writings of others influenced by him, have helped to shape and define my place in this world as both a Christian and a citizen.” And Charles McCoy of Watchmen Fellowship in Mt. Hermon, California, observed: “It would be interesting to know how many of us were deeply touched by his life and work despite his feet of clay. With all of his limitations, he was a pivotal figure for twentieth-century Christianity.” Well said.

A Faithful DiscipleThank you for Michael Hamilton’s insightful treatment of the ministry of Francis Schaeffer, a Christian whose desire to be a faithful disciple of our Lord could not be captured by any of our labels [“The Dissatisfaction of Francis Schaeffer,” Mar. 3]. Perhaps reflection on his life would help us avoid the temptation to dispose of others by categorizing them.

Prof. Stanley K. FowlerHeritage Baptist College and SeminaryCambridge, Ont., Canada

In my view, there are two things wrong with the article. One was that it seems to relegate Schaeffer to history—in fact, a history that existed in the 20 years prior to his death, the 1960s and 1970s. Nothing could be further from the truth. The world Francis Schaeffer fought against is still the same—only much worse.

The second missing element is intellectual passion. Schaeffer was a true believer and a prophet as well as an evangelical and activist. When he wrote to my family from Switzerland about the “Christians thundering in the background” without providing alternatives to abortion, he was reminding us that faith without works is dead—or quite useless.

B. J. WheelerCedar Falls, Iowa

* I have had the Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer on my shelf for several years. Though I know the writings of Francis Schaeffer are considered watershed material, they have always been books that seemed too daunting to try to read. And so they have sat unread. Your article has stirred me to make the effort to read his works and have my mind and faith challenged. Hopefully, your article will introduce many more to Francis Schaeffer and they will be enlightened by the thinking of this intellectual giant of the evangelical world.

Gregory WoodardEmmanuel Christian CenterMinneapolis, Minn.

* My campus ministries pastor at the University of Iowa in the mid-1970s helped me to apprehend the works of Francis Schaeffer. Since then, I have recognized that there are two types of Christians: those who read Schaeffer, thus identifying the “Line of Despair” in art, science, and contemporary culture; and those who refuse to read Schaeffer and in bewilderment ask, “What in the world is happening, and how did our culture get so messed up?”

Steven J. BakerMissionary with New Tribes MissionUrbandale, Iowa

Michael Maudlin’s introductory article (“Inside CT”) leaves a completely wrong impression concerning two matters. First, Schaeffer’s last book, The Great Evangelical Disaster, was his own book in every respect. Though I worked closely with Schaeffer in putting the book into final form, the content was Schaeffer’s own material—namely, his lectures, notes, and articles that he had assembled over a number of years (as well as his two-page outline that determined the structure).

Second, Maudlin’s statement that many people think Schaeffer is an extremist (these were not my words) also leaves a wrong impression. In reality, Schaeffer was a radical thinker, who was committed to understanding all of life in light of God’s Word. Because of this, he was able to understand the root, spiritual causes that underlie the radical breakdown of contemporary life and culture, perhaps more clearly than any other Christian thinker of our time.

Lane T. DennisCrossway BooksWheaton, Ill.

Schaeffer was—to many of us who matured in the neo-evangelical movement—the first person who excited us about the possibility of thinking Christianly, a pioneer in exposing what Mark Noll would later call the scandal of the evangelical mind.

However, as Hamilton notes, there was a shift in Schaeffer’s work after the How Shall We Then Live? series in the 1970s. From that point on, the Schaeffer legacy grows contentious. Those of us on the evangelical Left who parted with Schaeffer in the end lamented the turning; those who joined Schaeffer in the end said the later work was the culmination of the earlier. I was concerned that works like Christian Manifesto were not only out of place with the earlier work, but also that they might incite to precipitous action some of the wild folk of the evangelical Right. Indeed, when I read in Hamilton’s article that certain notorious organizations founded their work on the points in Manifesto, I say “just so.” To politicize today’s moral environment on the basis of a latter-day Machen-like antithetical Reformed fundamentalism is to legitimate an extreme form of intellectual reductionism.

I will always cherish the impact that the early Francis Schaeffer had on me and on my generation. We cannot always account for what became of that memory in the hands of others, and, perhaps, of our teacher himself.

Ronald A. WellsCalvin Center for Christian ScholarshipGrand Rapids, Mich.

Hamilton’s characterization of Schaeffer’s “version of Christianity” as being “tightly sectarian” is hardly an accurate description of Schaeffer’s much broader vision of the church. In an address to the Presbyterian Church of America on June 16, 1982, Schaeffer strongly appealed for a nonsectarian view of Christianity. He said:

We are to be Presbyterian and Reformed, but that is not the limiting circle of our responsibility. I would say to you, I plead with you concerning this, we are to be Reformed and Presbyterian but that is not the limiting circle of our responsibility. Our distinctives are not to be the chasm. We hold our distinctives because we are convinced that they are biblical. But God’s call is to love and be one with all those who are in Christ Jesus and then to let God’s truth speak into the whole spectrum of life and the whole spectrum of society. That is our calling. The limiting circle is not to be just that we are Presbyterian and Reformed. We hold these things because we believe indeed they are that which is taught in Scripture. But out beyond that there is the responsibility, there is the call, to be something to the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and out beyond the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to the whole society and to the whole culture. If we don’t understand this we don’t understand either how rich Christianity is and God’s truth is, nor do we understand how wide is the call placed upon the Christian into the totality of life [italics mine].

Can this view of our Christian calling rightly be labeled tightly sectarian?

Prof. J. Robert VannoyBiblical Theological SeminaryHatfield, Penn.

In the mid-1970s, while editor of Moody Magazine, I was profoundly impacted by Schaeffer’s film and lecture series How Shall We Then Live? That led to two different cover stories on Schaeffer.

However, the most profound impact Schaeffer had on me had less to do with his prodigious intellect and philosophical acumen and more to do with how his view of God was actually lived out. Twenty years ago he appeared in person at the Arie Crown Theatre at McCormick Place in Chicago for the showing of the film series. At the end he took questions from the audience of more than 4,000.

At one point a young man in the balcony began a question in a halting, nearly incoherent growl. Clearly, he suffered from cerebral palsy. Schaeffer closed his eyes in concentration as the question went on and on. I understood maybe one-fourth of the words. When the man finished, Schaeffer said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand the last three words.” The young man repeated them. “Forgive me,” Schaeffer said, “the last word again, please.” Then Schaeffer restated his question and answered it with the time and dignity he had accorded all the other questions. When the young man asked yet another lengthy question, some in the audience shook their heads as if irritated that he would take so much time.

But Schaeffer repeated the process, being sure he understood every word and answering fully. It struck me that he had been kinder than the incident called for. He could have asked someone else to interpret for him. He could have asked to speak to the young man later. But everything he had expounded in his book and film was tested by this seemingly insignificant incident.

Jerry B. JenkinsZion, Ill.

Of history and worship* Like Wendy Zoba [“Where Have They Laid My Lord?” Mar. 3], my pilgrimage to the Garden Tomb and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was filled with ambivalence. There is no question that the open-air, garden setting of Gordon’s site appeals far more readily to the American evangelical’s sensibilities than the dark reaches of the church.

On seeing the encrustation of candles and icons inside the church, one of my seminary classmates mumbled nervously, “I don’t think Jesus would like this.” But what I found most curious was the behavior of my evangelical companions in contrast to the local Orthodox faithful. The Orthodox knew exactly what to do when coming to, say, the Holy Sepulcher proper: cross themselves and kneel to pray. My companions were far less certain what to do. Look, gape, shuffle, take a picture—this was the response of tourists, not pilgrims.

We who rightly place so much importance on the historicity of our Lord’s footsteps and now-empty grave seem not to have figured out an adequate way to experience such places. Are we so eager to worship “in spirit and in truth” that we have no way to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices”?

Pastor Russell YeeNew Life Christian FellowshipOakland, Calif.

Zoba’s article brought back memories of my own two trips to the Holy Land. On both occasions, most of the people on the bus had the same reaction the author did to the Garden Tomb.

However, cold facts are all against its authenticity. General Gordon did not pick this place as Golgotha because he saw a face on the rock. It is even unlikely that a structure like that could have kept a skull-like appearance through the many earthquakes and wars that Jerusalem has endured. According to his own words, his reasons were more esoteric. In a letter he put forth the notion that Jerusalem was like a reclining man, with the three valleys of Jerusalem making the breaks between the arms and legs. Calvary (he reasoned) must be the crown of the body and the head. Therefore, it had to lie to the north, in the direction of the Garden Tomb. He further based his opinion on typology, not exegesis. Since the sacrifices were slain northward of the altar, therefore Calvary had to be to the north—not the west, as the traditional site was.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher has good reason for not looking like it is supposed to look—it has been fought over, prayed over, destroyed, rebuilt, and gilded for 20 centuries. It is the most hallowed place in Christendom, and it satisfies all the biblical requirements—it was near a main road; it was at that time outside the city gate; it was on a rock outcropping in full view of Herod’s palace, the fortress Antonia, and the city wall.

None of this is, of course, relevant to the spiritual impact that the Garden Tomb has on modern pilgrims. He is not in either place, nor was he—for long.

Bill FlemingRock Hill, S.C.

Having served as chaplain of the Garden Tomb, I was moved by Zoba’s touching article. During the past 30 years, a lot of hallowed traditions about the history of Jerusalem have been shaken. One might suppose the archaeologists could give a firm ruling as to which of the “Christian holy places” were authentic. No such proof is available. As Teddy Kollek, long-time mayor of Jerusalem and also historian of the city, pointed out apologetically, the New Testament events did not seem very important at the time. “The death of Jesus caused scarcely a ripple in Jerusalem … and there is nothing to mark any of the sites, in Jerusalem or elsewhere, associated with the life of Jesus.”

However, the distinguished professor of New Testament, John McRay, states that “the memory of a place so sacred would not be forgotten.” I suggest it was not the empty tomb but the risen Lord that became the center of attention, and there is not a shred of evidence that the early Christians bothered to visit the empty tomb for another three or four centuries!

The test of tradition is how near to its source it starts. It is interesting that ten years after the mother of Constantine picked out the spot, Eusebius wrote that the discovery on that spot was made “contrary to all expectation.” This shoots down the theory that “the memory of a place so sacred would not be forgotten.”

We do not worship locations—we worship the Risen Lord. Through the visual aid the Empty Tomb stands as a symbol of hope in a world of despair.

John WoodsBradenton Beach, Fla.

Not head hunters* The last paragraph on page 51 [of the News] article “A Nation Out of Control?” [Mar. 3] said that the Batak were headhunters. The Batak have never been headhunters. My ancestors never treated human beings as toys or animals. In the same paragraph, the article mentions the Batak church. The church described is one of several Batak churches. It is HKBP (Huria Kristen Batak Protestant, Church of Batak Christian Protestant), the biggest and oldest one. Its congregations not only were established across Java island but also across the nation. At least two congregations were also established in Singapore and California, U.S.A.

Marolop NainggolanClaremont, Calif.

The women on the NRB boardThanks for the good article on women broadcasters and the report on NRB 97 [“Women Broadcasters Make Inroads, Slowly,” Mar. 3]. However, there is one small clarification I’d like to make: NRB has nine women on its 90-member board, including one female executive committee member. [The board make-up] can be confusing because we elect our board in 30-member classes each year (each class is for three years on a rotational basis, so one is up for election each year).

Sarah SmithNational Religious BroadcastersManassas, Va.

The article incorrectly stated that four of thirty NRB board members are women. —Eds.

Wishful thinking?With regard to the News article “Evangelicals Join in Inaugural Events” in North American Scene [Mar. 3] and the remarks of certain evangelicals as a result of their relationships with President Clinton: Given the almost daily revelation of scandalous allegations relative to his administration, comments like “the development of your [Clinton’s] heart, your increasing desire to know God and to live for him” seem aberrant. Or do such comments just represent wishful thinking? The words that come to my mind include stonewalling, whitewashing, and damage control, among others.

One wonders if those evangelicals who have met with him have ever urged an honest assessment of himself, with remorse, confession, and apologies where needed. Such openness would be a wonderful example and point America back to the God who has been so gracious to us all.

Robert C. StevensConcord, Calif.

Not just for PentecostalsThank you for the mention of our organization in David Neff’s editorial (“Dare We Be Colorblind?” Feb. 3). Neff refers to our organization as publishing “magazines for Pentecostals and charismatics.” While this has historically been our core market, two of our five magazines never have been focused toward charismatics and Pentecostals: Christian Retailing, which serves the general evangelical Christian products industry, and New Man, which serves the growing evangelical men’s movement.

You had one small factual error: When we set a goal to double our minority hiring, we started at 9 percent, rather than the 4 percent mentioned in your column. But, as you reported, we have grown to 25 percent minority staff.

Stephen Strang, PresidentStrang Communications CompanyLake Mary, Fla.

Brief letters are welcome. They may be edited for space and clarity and must include the writer’s name and address. Send to Eutychus, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188; fax: 630/260-0114. E-mail: cteditor@christianitytoday.com. Letters preceded by ” * ” were received online.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Cigar, the champion racehorse, is a dud as a stud. Attempts to impregnate numerous mares have failed. But his handlers are not discouraged. They think they might try to have Cigar cloned.

If a sheep and a monkey can be cloned—and possibly a racehorse—can human clones be far behind? The process is novel, though the concept is not.

We have long known that virtually every cell of the body contains a person’s complete genetic code. The exception is sperm or egg cells, each of which contains half the genetic material until the sperm fertilizes the egg and a new human being with a complete genetic code begins growing.

We have now learned that the partial genetic material in an unfertilized egg cell may be replaced by the complete genetic material from a cell taken from an adult. With a full genetic code, the egg cell behaves as if it has been fertilized. At least, that is how Dolly, the sheep cloned in Scotland, came to be. Hence, producing genetic copies of human beings now seems more likely.

We have been anticipating this possibility in humans for decades and have been playing with it in our imaginations. The movie The Boys from Brazil was about an attempt to clone Adolf Hitler. And in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, clones were produced to fulfill undesirable social roles. More recently the movie Multiplicity portrayed a harried man who jumped at the chance to have himself copied—the better to tend to his office work, his home chores, and his family relationships. It all seems so attractive, at first glance, in our hectic, achievement-crazed society.

The costs of clonesBut how do we achieve this technologically blissful state? Multiplicity is silent on this matter, implying that technique is best left to scientists, as if the rest of us are interested only in the outcome. But the experiments of Nazi Germany and the resulting Nuremberg Trials and Code taught us long ago that there is some knowledge that we must not pursue if it requires the use of immoral means.

The research necessary to develop human cloning will cause the deaths of human beings. Such deaths make the cost unacceptably high. In the process used to clone sheep, there were 277 failed attempts—including the deaths of several defective clones. In the monkey-cloning process, a living embryo was intentionally destroyed by taking the genetic material from the embryo’s eight cells and inserting it into eight egg cells whose partial genetic material had been removed. Human embryos and human infants would likewise be lost as the technique is adapted to our own race.

Goal rushYet, as we press toward this new mark, we must ask: Is the production of human clones even a worthwhile goal? As movies and novels suggest, and godly wisdom confirms, human cloning is something neither to fool around with nor to attempt.

Cloning typically involves genetically copying some living thing for a particular purpose—a wheat plant that yields much grain, a cow that provides excellent milk. Such utilitarian approaches may be fine for cows and corn, but human beings, made in the image of God, have a God-given dignity that prevents us from regarding other people merely as means to fulfill our desires. We must not, for instance, produce clones with low intelligence (or low ambition) to provide menial labor, or produce clones to provide transplantable organs (their identical genetic code would minimize organ rejection). We should not even clone a child who dies tragically in order to remove the parents’ grief, as if the clone could actually be the child who died.

All people are special creations of God who should be loved and respected as such. We must not demean them by fundamentally subordinating their interests to those of others.

There is a host of problems with human cloning that we have yet to address. Who are the parents of a clone produced in a laboratory? The donor of the genetic material? The donor of the egg into which the material is transferred? The scientist who manipulates cells from anonymous donors? Who will provide the necessary love and care for this embryo, fetus, and then child—especially when mistakes are made and it would be easier simply to discard it?

The problems become legion when having children is removed from the context of marriage and even from responsible parenthood. For instance, Hope College’s Allen Verhey asks “whether parenting is properly considered making children to match a specific design, as is clearly the case with cloning, or whether parenting is properly regarded as a disposition to be hospitable to children as given.” Clearly, from a biblical perspective, it is the latter.

Further, the Bible portrays children as the fruit of a one-flesh love relationship, and for good reason. It is a context in which children flourish—in which their full humanity, material and nonmaterial, is respected and nourished. Those who provide them with physical (genetic) life also care for their ongoing physical as well as nonphysical needs.

As Valparaiso University’s Gilbert Meilaender told CT, this further separation of procreating from marriage is bad for children. “The child inevitably becomes a product,” says ethicist Meilaender, someone who is made, not begotten.

“To beget a child is to give birth to one who is like us, equal in dignity, for whom we care, but whose being we do not simply control. To ‘make’ a child is to create a product whose destiny we may well think we can shape. Hence, the ‘begotten, not made’ language of the creed is relevant also to our understanding of the child and of the relation between the generations.”

“If our purpose is to clone people as possible sources of perfectly matching organs,” says Meilaender, “that clearly shows how we could come to regard the clone as a being we control—as simply an ‘ensemble of parts or organs.’ “

Xeroxing MichaelIt is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that people are more than just physical beings, Meilaender’s ensembles of organs. What most excites many people about cloning is the possibility of duplicate Michael Jordans, Mother Teresas, or Colin Powells. However, were clones of any of these heroes to begin growing today, those clones would not turn out to be our heroes, for our heroes are not who they are simply because of their DNA. They, like us, were shaped by genetics and environment alike, with the spiritual capacity to evaluate, disregard, and at times to overcome either or both. Each clone would be subject to a unique set of environmental influences, and our loving God would surely accord each a unique personal relationship with him.

The problem with cloning is not the mere fact that technology is involved. Technology can help us do better what God has for us to do. The problem arises when we use technology for purposes that conflict with God’s. And, as C. S. Lewis argued, technology never merely represents human mastery over nature; it also involves the power of some people over other people. This is as true in the genetic revolution as it was in the Industrial Revolution. When human cloning becomes technically possible, who will control who clones whom and for what ends? Like nuclear weaponry, the power to clone in the “wrong hands” could have devastating consequences.

There is wisdom in President Clinton’s immediate move to forestall human cloning research until public debate and expert testimony have been digested and policies formulated. But there is even greater wisdom in never setting foot on the path that leads from brave new sheep to made-to-order organ donors, industrial drones, and vanity children.

-John F. Kilner is director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, Bannockburn, Illinois. The center’s annual conference, this year on managed health care, resource allocation, and patient-caregiver relationships, will be held July 17-19.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Institutional apologies are charged with significance, since they not only say, “We’re sorry,” but also tend to signal realignments and new directions. In February, the archbishop of Perugia, speaking for the Italian Roman Catholic bishops, apologized to Italy’s Protestants for the “suffering and injury” inflicted on the country’s Protestant minority over the centuries. The request for forgiveness was offered during a special service in a Waldensian church less than a mile from the Vatican.

The Waldensians were proto-Protestants, followers of Peter Valdes, a wealthy, twelfth-century merchant who gave his goods to the poor and, over the protests of his bishop, began to preach the gospel. Excommunication and persecution followed. In an era when the Roman church was able to absorb reformers like Francis and Dominic, it failed to profit from Valdes and his passions.

Now comes this apology, just in time for the second European Ecumenical Assembly to be held on the theme “Reconciliation—Gift of God and Source of New Life.” What this apology means we can only speculate, but surely European Christians must sense what many American Christians know: that it is important to transcend many historic disputes within the body of Christ (while recognizing the importance of some of our doctrinal distinctives) in order to face together the moral and ethical challenges of our time.

Convergences like this (with apologies for past wrongs and a firm grasp on essentials) are a hallmark of our time. Evangelicals and Catholics are warily working together. Pentecostals and Wesleyans are rediscovering each other. Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Orthodox are converging.

In all these converging movements, it seems, expressions of regret for bad deeds and bad faith are foundational, as are gestures of forgiveness. As the Waldensian moderator said, “We are only at the start of a long and difficult road. But God knows where it will lead us.”

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in AmericaBy William MartinBroadway Books418 pp.; $27.50, hardcover

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.

—Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science

When Washington Post writer Michael Weisskopf called the followers of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command” (Feb. 1, 1993), he was wrong in every particular, but perhaps right in a fundamental assumption: The followers of Falwell and Robertson (like many other evangelicals) are political and cultural outsiders, marginal to his Beltway universe. They are like hungry children looking in through the picture window on the feasts of the powerful. After Robertson read Weisskopf’s statement on the 700 Club, more than 500 of his “followers” called the Post to declare (rightly) that they were not particularly poorer, less educated, nor easier to command than any other identifiable voting population.

At one time, evangelicals were largely working-class Americans who did not seek higher education, except for Bible colleges and seminaries. But the economic boom after World War II, combined with the surge of evangelical institution-building, helped take care of that. Today evangelicals are none of the things Weisskopf suggested. But while there may be minivans in every garage and framed diplomas on the walls of their studies, they still feel shut out of the centers of influence in our society: segregated de facto from the media elite, the universities, and other mavens of liberal culture.

William Martin’s fall 1996 book, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, can be read as the story of how these outsiders decided they weren’t going to stand for exclusion anymore. Martin quotes Guy Rodgers, the Christian Coalition’s first national field director: “One of the best ways to understand people in the grassroots of the pro-family movement is to understand their perception of being outsiders, either because they chose to be out of the process or because they wanted to be involved but always met resistance.”

If to be a fundamentalist used to mean to be separate from the world, then to be an evangelical meant regarding the world as a fallen sphere of activity that is nevertheless under the lordship of Christ. The result was a kind of oscillation between two poles: kingdom anticipation (God will bring his kingdom; we are to wait in holy faithfulness) and kingdom building (God will bring his kingdom, and we are called to help build it on earth as it is in heaven). This sometimes comic, sometimes tragic oscillation continues among thoughtful evangelicals. But when enough separatist fundamentalists, once committed to cultural and political isolation, now convinced that political activism is their calling, throw their considerable bulk and heft onto the other side of the tippy canoe, you get movements characterized by enthusiasm and enormous energy—and intolerance and unreasonable expectations.

What it took to shift fundamentalists from separatism to activism was an invasion of their privacy: The Stamp Act of the Religious Right was the interference of the federal government in the Christian school movement. Political activist Paul Weyrich, founder (with Coors funding) of what was to become the conservative Heritage Foundation, tried for years, but to no avail, to bring fundamentalists into an active political coalition. Then the Carter administration handed him the issue he needed: a proposal to revoke the irs tax-exempt status of segregated Christian schools. Martin quotes Weyrich:

“What galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the ERA. I am living witness to that because I was trying to get those people interested in those issues. … What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.” Weyrich explained that … Christians … could avoid having abortions, put their children in Christian schools, and run their families the way they wanted to, all without having to be concerned about public policy. But the irs threat “enraged the Christian community and they looked upon it as interference from government, and suddenly it dawned on them that they were not going to be able to be left alone to teach their children as they pleased. It was at that moment that conservatives made the linkage between their opposition to government interference and the interests of the evangelical movement.”

Weyrich discovered what Will Rogers knew when he called Calvin Coolidge “the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone.” But when they feel that their families are threatened, fundamentalists, like mother bears, turn into fighters.

Family issues, including education, are at the heart of the politics of the Religious Right. The sense of the sacred trust of bearing and nurturing children is so strong that in some quarters something like a cult of the Christian family has emerged. Some critics like to claim that the conservatism in gender roles and sexual practice proceeds from a repressive fundamentalist and conservative Catholic obsession with sex. But surely it is rather a deep seriousness about our divinely ordered purposes as human beings, a sense of our calling to be fruitful and raise godly offspring, that gives birth to these things. Indeed, unless economic and other political issues are framed in family terms, the business interests that wield the power in the Republican party will be unable to connect with these voters.

Thus Martin tells of Reagan staffers for whom the economy was the top agenda item and who isolated the President from one of his most devoted constituencies. And he writes of George Bush, tone deaf to the music of the evangelical spirit, who repeatedly bungled his contacts with the Christian Right. For example, Bush refused to interrupt his vacation to meet with Randall Terry, who flew to Kennebunkport, hoping the President would involve the Justice Department in fighting off Federal District Judge Patrick F. Kelly’s harsh treatment of Operation Rescue protesters. “Golf days,” the President explained. “Means an awful lot to a fellow.” Golf days mean zip to pro-life activists.

Though the economy grew, Reagan delivered little but rhetoric to his conservative Christian constituency. (But, ah, what rhetoric!) Bush could not even manage the rhetoric. Ultimately, conservative Christians fighting to protect the sacred integrity of the family had to downgrade their expectations of what presidential politics could bring them and turn to the “stealth politics” that made the Christian Coalition famous—but not before they got a glimpse of power.

Martin writes of the “bedazzlement” felt by former Falwell associate Ed Dobson when suddenly exposed to the corridors of power. Dobson himself recognized it was the reaction of an outsider:

One of the things that drove fundamentalists to get involved was the feeling that they were a disenfranchised people. They didn’t belong in the mainstream. No one invited them to the banquets in the public square. They were just kind of idiots, basically. … Then Ronald Reagan and others recognized that we had made a difference. … We were invited to the table for the first time. And that was a great feeling. I remember the first time I went to the White House with Jerry Falwell and ate at the mess hall with two key people in the president’s inner circle, and I’m thinking, “Wow, I am sitting here at the White House.”

Such inclusion raised unrealistic hopes, of course. And when hope maketh ashamed, anger ensues. This writer once sat with a group of Christian leaders who were preparing for an Oval Office visit with President Bush shortly after evangelical Doug Wead of the public liaison office had been fired. One prominent evangelical spokesman complained bitterly that he had not been consulted by the White House staff when they chose Wead’s replacement. His sense of entitlement was intense.

It should be noted that evangelical access to the White House has perhaps been greater under the Clinton administration than it was under previous administrations. Key evangelical leaders have become the President’s spiritual advisers, and still others attend the upscale houseparty known as Renaissance Weekend, elbow-to-elbow with the Clintons and other wonks and achievers. But none of this contact seems to issue in policy under either Republican or Democratic administrations.

That may sound pessimistic. But the fat lady has not yet sung, and Martin is not done writing. As a companion to the eponymous pbs television series, With God on Our Side is crafted largely from extensive on-camera interviews. Unlike a history based primarily on documentary evidence, one built from largely oral material will have the warmth and immediacy of its subjects. On this score With God on Our Side does not disappoint. But the book also seems to take these personal reminiscences at face value. Interpretation is largely postponed until the final chapter. There is no flavor of “investigative journalism,” and much that is seamy is merely ignored. Martin is a friendly interpreter who finds it necessary to gently correct his subject from documentary sources only twice—occasions where Jerry Falwell’s memories served his reputation better than did the facts.

The author, a sociologist at Rice University, stuck close to the documentary’s outline, omitting some key players and underplaying others because of the limits of time and the scope of the project. Yet what was published is likely to become the standard account of the Religious Right for both scholars and laity.

The book’s 385 pages of body text are scribed with solid, sensible prose. It is the kind of storytelling in which the writer’s craft waits in the wings and lets the story take center stage. On rare occasion, Martin’s irreverent wit pokes its nose out from behind the curtain to play to the audience. After recounting Pat Robertson’s boyish readiness to repeat his 1985 rebuke of Hurricane Gloria, he writes: “If Robertson saw no problems in mixing faith and meteorology, it is hardly surprising that he regarded the wall between church and state as permeable.” And of the Moral Majority’s demise Martin says: “Jerry Falwell clipped his own wings in 1986.”

Martin is not a hack writer hired simply to do the spin-off book to a media event. His interest in the Religious Right is longstanding and began with his personal fascination with radio preachers. In an interview, he told CT, “When I was driving out to preach while I was a student at Abilene Christian College in the 1950s, I used to amuse myself coming back from my preaching appointment on Sunday night by listening to radio preachers on Mexican stations. Then in the late 1960s while working on my dissertation at Harvard and driving back and forth to Rochester, New York, I listened to some of the same preachers on wwda from Wheeling, West Virginia.” After Martin got a teaching job, he wrote an article for the Atlantic on radio preachers, and that led to about two dozen other articles on the electronic church—and, he says, 800 pages of a book that never got finished. That experience led him to write a widely noted article about Billy Graham for Texas Monthly, which in turn led him to write the most extensive Graham biography to date, A Prophet with Honor. That biography in turn caught the attention of TV producer Calvin Skaggs, who felt Martin had the kind of approach that he wanted in the TV series as well: one that, in Martin’s words, “tried to be fair and non-judgmental but also informed with a critical eye.”

God works in mysterious ways. And we thank him that he turned a green student preacher’s amusem*nt with radio preachers into a mature sociologist’s benevolent scholarship.

-Susan P. Jones, pastor of Arbutus United Methodist Church, Baltimore, Maryland.

Richard Hays’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (Harper San Francisco) should come with a warning: “This book is hazardous to shallow thinking and careless living by Christians.” In a time when biblical illiteracy is on the rise and moral vision on the decline, Hays offers a strong antidote to both. I found his book to be profound yet accessible; I hope it will be widely read by scholars, clergy, and laity alike.

Much critical discussion of Hays’s work will undoubtedly focus on his discussion of selected ethical issues (e.g., violence in the defense of justice, abortion, hom*osexuality). Even so, I hope more attention is paid to his provocative and insightful proposal that the moral vision of the New Testament is shaped by the interrelations of community, Cross, and New Creation. Taken together, these themes offer a rich context for helping the contemporary church learn to appropriate the ethical witness of the New Testament—a daunting, yet urgent challenge for our time.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Knowing the Name of God: A Trinitarian Tapestry of Grace, Faith and CommunityBy Roderick T. LeuppInterVarsity Press, 1996204 pp.; $14.99, paper

The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological StudyBy Thomas MarshTwenty-Third Publications, 1994201 pp.; $14.95, paper

Modern Trinitarian PerspectivesBy John ThompsonOxford University Press, 1994165 pp.; $35

Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the TrinityBy Peter ToonVictor Books/Bridgepoint, 1996271 pp.; $17.99, paper

The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic ChurchBy Thomas F. TorranceT&AMPT Clark, 1993358 pp.; $31.95, paper

Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal AgreementBy Thomas F. TorranceT&AMPT Clark, 1994149 pp.; $37.95

The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three PersonsBy Thomas F. TorranceT&AMPT Clark, 1996260 pp.; $39.95

Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and ArtEdited by Christoph SchwobelT&AMPT Clark, 1995176 pp.; $35.95

Times have changed. In the theologically charged atmosphere of the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa grumbled that it was impossible to accomplish even simple tasks without being challenged to doctrinal debate by the local banker or baker. “If you ask for change someone philosophizes to you on the begotten and the unbegotten. If you ask the price of bread, you’re told the Father is greater and the Son inferior. If you ask is the bath ready, someone answers the Son was created from nothing.”

By way of contrast to Gregory’s complaint, note the frustration and skepticism of Enlightenment figures such as Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson over the logic and practical value of the doctrine of the Trinity. Kant, for example, argued the doctrine had no practical significance. “The doctrine of the Trinity provides nothing, absolutely nothing, of practical value, even if one claims to understand it; still less when one is convinced that it far surpasses our understanding. It costs the student nothing to accept that we adore three or ten persons in the divinity. … Furthermore, this distinction offers absolutely no guidance for his conduct.”

Jefferson seems particularly irritated by the complexities of “Trinitarian arithmetic,” as he called it, a theological mathematics that only served to blur our vision of who Jesus truly was:

When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the very simple structure of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have unlearned everything which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples.

So which is it? Gregory of Nyssa or Kant and Jefferson? Most conservative Christians would say Gregory, but in the back of our minds doubts linger. What difference, we ask ourselves, does such an apparently esoteric doctrine really make after all? Is it not, in the final analysis, more a theological mind game than a creedal statement by which orthodox belief stands or falls? In Knowing the Name of God: A Trinitarian Tapestry of Grace, Faith and Community, Roderick T. Leupp captures our hidden reservations about the Trinity well:

For most people and, sadly, for most Christians also, the Trinity is the great unknown. The Trinity, to use a familiar equation, is viewed as a riddle wrapped up inside a puzzle and buried in an enigma. A riddle, for how can any entity be at the same time multiple (three) yet singular (one)? A puzzle, for the Trinity is so clearly contrary to any rational thought as not to warrant a second thought from sensible people. An enigma, for even if the Trinity could be understood, of what practical value, even what religious value, would it have for ordinary people?

Not much, many of us might be tempted to say. As Karl Rahner notes, “Despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere monotheists.”

Despite these apparently deep-seated misgivings about the practical value and intellectual coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity, there has lately occurred a striking resurgence of interest in this very topic among theologians. John Thompson ably maps this reawakening of Trinitarian reflection in Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. In the past five years alone, Catherine LaCugna, Thomas F. Torrance, Thomas Marsh, Colin Gunton, Christoph Schwobel, Peter Toon, Millard Erickson, Jung Young Lee, Ted Peters, Alan J. Torrance, Thomas G. Weinandy, and Roderick T. Leupp have authored or edited significant works devoted specifically to the Trinity. Other writers such as Clark Pinnock, Donald Bloesch, Alvin F. Kimel, Charles J. Scalise, and Philip Walker Butin have explored Trinitarian connections to broader theological, historical, cultural, and hermeneutical issues and figures.

What’s going on here? To what can we trace this marked renewal of Trinitarian reflection? Is it an important development for the evangelical tradition or simply the in-house sport of professional theologians? Does the exploration of God as Trinity—in God’s acts toward us in Christ and in God’s own nature—genuinely make a difference for the practical realities of daily Christian life?

Perhaps the best place to start in answering these questions is with the New Testament writers’ presentation of the gospel itself. Thomas Marsh, author of The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Study, catches the heart of the matter when he asks the question: if God has acted to save humanity in Christ in the manner portrayed in the New Testament, what are the implications?

Athanasius asked much the same question in the fourth century. If Christ saves human beings from sin, in some way, in a reality that exceeds the capacity of language to capture adequately, Christ must be God. After all, biblical writers are in one accord that only God can save. As Marsh explains, “if it now emerges that Jesus, in and through the events of his human career, is salvation, then it has to follow that now and finally Jesus defines and expresses God.” That is to say, New Testament testimony unapologetically asserts that Jesus must in some way be God, while simultaneously affirming the deity of the Father and Holy Spirit. As Marsh expresses it, “If all reality were divided by a vertical line into two sections representing God-reality and non-God-reality, the New Testament would place Christ, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the Father on the God side of the line.”

One can sense Jefferson and Kant beginning to squirm. What, however, if God is simply more complex than the simple Jesus Jefferson seeks? As New Testament writers explain the meaning of Jesus’ life, are “the pure and simple doctrines” Jefferson sought as simple as he had hoped? Only if one ignores or excises large sections of the New Testament.

Here, then, is the heart of the problem and the motivating force behind the development of Trinitarian language and doctrine. In faithfulness to the Scripture, the church produced a language and grammar that moves beyond the Bible’s specific boundaries as Christians sought to worship and understand the complex God the gospel revealed. Still, as Donald Bloesch puts it in God the Almighty, Trinitarian doctrine is “the immediate implication of the fact, form and content of biblical revelation.”

For the next 350 years the church was to investigate this Trinitarian mystery, asking, “How can we most effectively, truthfully, and reverently speak of the wondrous God we worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit on the basis of the biblical testimony itself?”

“Fine,” an evangelical layperson might respond. “I respect the decision of early Christian leaders to set a perimeter around what Christians mean when they speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, I have two specific problems. First, I don’t understand what Christian thinkers meant and mean when they speak of God as both three and one. And frankly, despite the biblical testimony that God is in some way triune, I don’t perceive such a doctrine’s possible relevance for my life. Why not stay with the testimony of the Bible and leave the theological niceties for the theologians to debate?”

Many of the recently published books on the Trinity are encouragingly helpful in responding to such reasonable questions. Trinitarian language can be extremely confusing, especially for modern Christians. When Christians speak of God as three “persons,” for example, what do we mean? Can we equate what North Americans understand a “person” to be with what early church fathers meant by the term in formulating the doctrine of the Trinity? Most assuredly not. Roderick Leupp comments that American culture “values the single and the solitary. But the typical American prescription for mature selfhood—symbolized by the cowboy, the mountain man, the business mogul, the entertainer who ‘did it my way’—is flawed and skewed.”

Peter Toon also emphasizes, in Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity, that the current meaning of person “is inextricably bound up with notions of personality and the input of psychology in a culture where individualism is dominant.” Both Toon and Leupp insist that we must avoid putting an equal sign between person and individual. ” Indeed, the shocking possibility exists that the isolated individual, seeking to preserve an autonomous self at all costs, might not be a person at all in the biblical and theological sense of the term.

Back to the Trinity. When we speak of God as three persons, what do we mean? As we have seen, surely not three isolated individuals. If such were the case, Christianity would indeed be a polytheistic religion. Instead, what if the divine nature manifests genuine personhood only in relationship or communion with another person, as Christoph Schwobel phrases it, “in freedom and love”? Rather than the divine persons existing as isolated, autonomous selves, they would then find their distinctiveness in their relationship of communion one with another. What if the genuine personhood shared within the divine nature provides a fundamental model for understanding human nature and other social relationships? What if the primal source and paradigm for all personhood is to be found in the loving network of relationships that have existed always between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? What if God’s wondrous saving act to redeem humanity from sin manifests these relationships to us and thereby invites the church to ever deeper meditation, prayer, worship, and adoration?

Thomas F. Torrance has cogently explored these questions in a significant trio of books: The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement, and The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons. Torrance is clearly excited about the blossoming interest in Trinitarian reflection taking place within the church at large. He writes that the “theology of the Trinity today has a new appearance to it.” It has a “vibrancy and vitality to it unknown in this field since the stormy days of the fourth century.”

How so? First, in Torrance’s somewhat dense language: “The basic insight which has grounded and fueled the new development has been the thesis that the God who relates to us is the Triune God of Godself: the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.” To paraphrase: the complex God revealed to us in the gospel teaches us much about God’s own nature in itself. Torrance insists rightly that we should never assume that God is simple; we should always expect God, if he really is God, to be mysterious and indescribable. God does not merely send Jesus to bring love to us; God is love, and he eternally shares that love with God the Son and God the Spirit at exactly the same throbbing moment God the Son is sharing his love with us through that same Spirit. “This insight,” Torrance believes, “has led to a comprehensive review of trinitarian theology and to the development of a range of new interests and possibilities.” Such as?

For one, Torrance suggests that God’s existence itself is personal, communal, loving, and altruistic. In a wonderful divine surprise, God, within his own being as one God, exists as a living relationship of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Hence, the God celebrated and adored in Christian worship exists and has always existed as a communion of infinite, self-giving love. There is no solitary God lurking behind the communion of the divine persons. Rather, the divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are that very God. And this is as much to say what Jonathan Edwards expressed when he referred to the Trinity as a “sharing in divine love.”

If we were to ask Torrance or Edwards how they know this, they, along with Catherine LaCugna (God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life), Colin Gunton (The One, the Three, and the Many), Christoph Schwobel (Trinitarian Theology Today), and Roderick Leupp would respond: we know God exists as loving communion because God has shown that love to us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. If so, Leupp is right in writing that “self-giving love is the Trinity’s signature,” as is LaCugna in insisting that God is “not self-contained, egotistical and self-absorbed.”

Since God has chosen to reveal the mystery of his triune nature, can the evangelical tradition embrace the whole counsel of God and simultaneously succumb to the temptation to peripheralize the Trinity in evangelical teaching, worship, and practice? Why, as Torrance gently points out, have Western Christians generally failed to grasp the grammar of the Trinity as “the fundamental grammar of Christian theology”? Why the “strange paucity of Trinitarian hymns in our modern repertoire of praise”? Or, for that matter, in evangelical praise songs, hymns, and choruses? Have we, as Torrance suggests, “worked for so long in the West with a notion of God who is detached from this world, exalted inaccessibly above it, remote from our creaturely cries and prayers,” that we fail to grasp the Trinitarian implications of the Incarnation?

Perhaps for many of us God the Father has remained a distant reality because we have unwittingly focused on the Incarnation as the loving act of the Son on our behalf, forgetting that it is the Father who in love has sent his Son to us and who continues to nurture us in Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is precisely the doctrine of the Trinity that prevents us from separating the loving work of the Son from the Father or Holy Spirit.

So, too, evangelicals working within the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions do well to remember that the person and work of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the wider communion and purposes of the Trinitarian community. Hence, it is heartening to see Clark Pinnock carefully laying a Trinitarian foundation for his theology of the Holy Spirit in Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit.

One in three. Three in one. At first glance, Jefferson’s incomprehensible Trinitarian arithmetic. Upon closer examination, the incomprehensible mystery of the divine nature—a wondrous communion of love demonstrated and communicated to us in Jesus Christ. To quote a different Gregory (the fourth-century bishop of Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzus): “I cannot think of the One without immediately being surrounded by the radiance of the Three; nor can I discern the Three without at once being carried back to the One. … When I think of any One of the Three I think of him as a whole, and my vision is filled, and the greater part of what I conceive escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to others. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one luminary, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”

-Christopher Hall teaches biblical and theological studies at Eastern College.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and ReconciliationBy Miroslav Volf Abingdon 336 pp.; $19.95, paper

If you've browsed lately in a seminary bookstore, you will have noticed the shelf-straining quantity of new or recently published works of systematic theology and the even greater volume of biblical commentary—including many books in both categories by evangelicals. And a few blocks away in the mall, the Christian bookstore will be well supplied with popular guides that offer practical application of Christian principles to every manner of concern, from child-raising to love-making to managing your finances. But where do you go to find books that bridge the gap between the seminary and the mall—books in which theological reflection and biblical interpretation are brought to bear on our common lives with clarity and intellectual rigor?

Miroslav Volf displays such ability in his powerful new book, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Volf's concerns about the dynamics of exclusion and embrace are significantly shaped by his identity as a Croatian. He was once asked whether he could embrace a cetnik, one of the notorious Serbian fighters who were destroying his country and his people. He knew immediately how he wanted to respond: "No, I cannot—but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to."

Exclusion and Embrace provides a poignantly honest and profoundly theological account of the moral significance of both sides of that response. As Volf puts it in his preface,

The tension between the message of the cross and the world of violence presented itself to me as a conflict between the desire to follow the Crucified and the disinclination either simply to watch others be crucified or let myself be nailed to the cross. An account of an intellectual struggle, the book is also a record of a spiritual journey. I wrote it for myself—and for all those who in a world of injustice, deception, and violence have made the gospel story their own and therefore wish neither to assign the demands of the Crucified to the murky regions of unreason nor abandon the struggle for justice, truth, and peace.

The book is moving and insightful as a record of a spiritual journey, a journey that Christians from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds can travel with Volf. After all, Volf begins his reflections by invoking hatreds that have led not only to the shelling of Sarajevo, but also to the racial tensions and riots in Los Angeles, and to Neo-Nazi skinheads marching in Berlin. These cities have particular significance for Volf, for they represent the country of his origin, the location of his residence (he teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary), and the place where, in 1992, he gave a lecture on the social and cultural upheavals in Europe. Such cities, close to Volf's own experience (he has lived and taught in Germany as well as in Croatia and the United States), are emblematic of so many of our communities, near and far, which harbor legacies of divisiveness. Whether the news is coming from Africa or the former Soviet Union, from Brooklyn or from Paris, it drives home the harsh realities of cultural and ethnic conflict.

As Christians, we wonder how we ought to respond to such situations. We know somehow that we ought to invoke God's love and forgiveness, and we recognize our dismay or even horror at the effects of sin and evil in our world (no less than in our own hearts). But, we wonder, can our responses do justice to the pain and suffering of others, or do we tend to offer cheap grace? Further, how should we respond when Christians are so often found on both sides of cultural and ethnic conflicts? Perhaps most pointedly, in a world in which we are often more marked by our cultural identities than our Christian faith (for many of us, we are Americans first, Christians second), we are forced to ask whether Christ really has "broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us," so that we are "no longer strangers and aliens," but rather "citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God" (Eph. 2:14, 19). No longer strangers? Or estranged as a result of hostility?

The power of Volf's spiritual journey in confronting such issues is complemented by the richness of his account of "an intellectual struggle." He does not shy away from knotty theological, philosophical, and political issues that can help to illumine our perplexities. Even so, Volf wears his scholarship lightly; his lucid writing and deft use of examples make the book accessible to general readers and professional theologians alike. Indeed, one of the unexpected delights of the book is his insightful engagement with Scripture. He offers powerful interpretations of such well-known biblical stories as Cain and Abel, the parable of the prodigal son, the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate, and Pentecost.

It might be tempting to suggest that this is a book for "excluders," for they are the ones who need to repent. But that is precisely the trap that Volf's analysis resists; he recognizes that even he, as a Croat, must resist the temptation of placing all blame on the Serbian side, thereby preserving a false innocence for Croats. More generally, Volf notes the glaring incongruity that "in a world so manifestly drenched with evil everybody is innocent in their own eyes." This is as true of Serbs and Croats as it is of Jews and Palestinians, and of Americans whose social lives are built on more subtle means of excluding strangers from our midst. Unless we have a sense of belonging and distance in relation to our own identities, unless we unmask our own illusions of innocence in confrontation with the crucified and risen Christ—the only truly innocent victim—we will condemn ourselves to go on drenching our world with sin and evil. For, as Volf accurately notes, our contemporary problem with "identity politics" is not merely some peculiar feature of contemporary life, much less a sign of cultures that have not progressed to the bright lights of modernity. Rather, our problems with strangers and enemies, and our constructions of our own innocence, are signs of our separation from the God of Jesus Christ.

By contrast, the metaphor of "embrace" in the book's title suggests the welcoming of the other by which we have ourselves been welcomed by God through Christ (see Rom. 15:7). This metaphor draws together three of Volf's central theological themes: (1) the mutuality of self-giving love in the Trinity, (2) the outstretched arms of Christ on the cross, reaching out to the "godless," and (3) the open arms of the "father" receiving the "prodigal." In response to God's work of salvation, we are called to learn to embrace others, including those who are strange to us and those from whom we have become estranged in often bitter conflicts. Volf's emphasis on the importance of embrace, however, should not be taken as a fashionably pluralistic appeal to "inclusivity"; both exclusion and embrace, in Volf's analysis, are defined and shaped by Christ.

After the chapters on exclusion and embrace, Volf develops his account through provocative analyses of Gender Identity, Oppression and Justice, Deception and Truth, and Violence and Peace. Though in some ways the chapter dealing with gender seems peripheral to other aspects of the book, it provides a crucial test case for Volf's reflections on identity and otherness. It also enables him to explore important feminist theological concerns about the priority given to "self-giving love." Throughout, Volf weaves together social analysis, biblical interpretation, and theological reflection in order to deepen our understanding of how to follow faithfully the crucified and risen Messiah without abandoning the struggle for justice, truth, and peace.

While it should be clear that, in my judgment, Exclusion and Embrace is that rare theological book equally significant for laypeople, clergy, and theologians, it is not without weaknesses. Any book that ranges over such wide terrain is likely to hit some rough stretches. Here I briefly identify two central issues that remain unresolved.

First, while Volf rightly emphasizes the fluidity in how our cultural and Christian identities are constructed over time, he does not adequately articulate how our "basic Christian commitments" are to be formed in the absence of coherent traditions and in the presence of hybrid cultural contexts. At least part of the problem here is Volf's relatively scant attention to the role of the church—and, specifically, local congregations—in the dynamics of exclusion and embrace.

Second, Volf offers a highly suggestive analysis of the possibility of "forgetting" past sin and evil as a "divine gift of nonremembering." Though Volf's concerns are well placed, and his argument is quite subtle, he does not seem adequately to explore the issues surrounding the claim that the risen Christ continues to bear the wounds of the crucifixion. To be sure, Volf concludes his reflection by suggesting that the cross of Christ provides the context for that "divine gift of nonremembering." Yet one is compelled to ask, Does not God remember the full range of human history precisely in the wounds of the Lamb who was slain, albeit wounds that are healing?

Such issues and questions are themselves a testimony to the wide-ranging significance of Exclusion and Embrace. In conclusion, I draw on one other feature of the book: Volf suggests that we can help to overcome exclusion and cultivate a will to embrace others if we learn the practice of "double vision." By this he means that we need to let the voices and perspectives of others—especially those with whom we have been in conflict—resonate within us. He argues that this is a recommendation drawn from the inner logic of the Cross, from the identity of the Triune God.

Volf's own work embodies precisely this "double vision." He consistently draws others into his analysis through charitable interpretation, considering potential objections to his argument, and self-critically assessing his own potential blind spots. One senses that, in his life as well as in his writing, Volf has been "quick to listen, slow to speak" (James 1:19)—a habit as necessary to overcoming division as it is difficult to learn. We will have traveled a long way toward living as faithful citizens of the household of God if we can learn, from Volf's analysis and his style, to practice such double vision ourselves—with friends, strangers, and those from whom we have become estranged.

-L. Gregory Jones is associate professor of theology at Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland, and author of Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Eerdmans).

John Ortberg, teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Illinois, and author of The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Transformation for Ordinary People (forthcoming from Zondervan).

You'd think that after writing one best-seller on forgiveness (Forgive and Forget), Lew Smedes's well would be about dry on that subject. Turns out he was just priming the pump. He has forgotten more about forgiving and forgetting than most of us will ever know.

The Art of Forgiving (Moorings) is a gem of a book. Where Smedes's earlier work was devoted to what exactly forgiveness is (and is not), this book teaches us how actually to pursue it. It bears the mark of his best stuff. It is literate—graced by the presence of Dostoevsky and Simon Wiesenthal and Henrik Ibsen. It is gritty and realistic, embracing the difficulty of forgiving real people—including difficult people, undeserving people, even dead people. There is a school of thought that forgiving ought always to include reconciliation. But there is none of that here; Smedes recognizes that in this world there are times when reunion is impossible and yet forgiveness is indispensible. Best of all, it is genuinely helpful. Smedes helps us tease out when forgiveness is needed, how we go about pursuing it, and what the signs are that we may have actually done it.

Forgiveness, he says, is the hardest chord to play in the human concerto. This is the book for anyone who wants to hit the right notes.

Diane Komp, professor of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine and author of Breakfast for the Heart: Meditations to Nourish Your Soul (Zondervan).

Imagine this: A publicity-seeking, death-delivering doctor signs to star in a film that is a thinly veiled fictionalization of his most notorious case. Kevorkian gone Hollywood? No—at least not yet. In The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (Oxford University Press), historian Martin S. Pernick treats us to some fine writing on the fascinating and bizarre career of Dr. Harry Haiselden, a Chicago surgeon who "delivered" infants with birth defects from their "defective" lives on this earth.

In a 1915 film also named The Black Stork, Haiselden played himself as "Dr. Dickey," who refuses to perform surgery on a handicapped child. The film ends with the mother agreeing with Dickey's judgment and the baby's soul leaping into the arms of a waiting Jesus.

Like Kevorkian, Haiselden had glowing letters of support from families whose children he "delivered." Unlike Kevorkian, he was never brought up on charges for euthanasia or infanticide, although there were strong grounds under laws extant at the time to charge both the doctor and the parents with neglect of their respective duties to the babies. As the dust jacket warns us, "Pernick's narrative is a strong warning about the slippery slope of determining what life is worth living."

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The advertisem*nt in the airline flight magazine shows a smug CEO who boasts, “I ‘read’ 15 books on my flight from New York to L.A!” Thanks to a book-synopsis service, the busy executive can get the gist of leading bestsellers in minutes. Increasingly, magazine articles come with brief abstracts for readers in a hurry. Newspapers and even weekly news magazines have fallen victim to Mc-journalism first introduced by USA Today.

We live in an age of exploding information and expanding communications technology. Not surprisingly, we also live in an age of “information anxiety,” the fear that one will become hopelessly out of touch with the postmodern juggernaut. In New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, the upwardly mobile dare not show their faces in public without a quick perusal of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or Variety. These publications define the “reality” of their respective professional communities.

Every pastor, teacher, parent, and mature apprentice of Jesus needs to develop a cultural radar. A system of reading and reflection helps us master the proliferation of information we encounter daily, decide what is important, and evaluate its meaning.

A meaningful cultural radar needs to be reasonable in its demands on time and money. It needs to touch on all aspects of cultural formation, specifically those that are outside of one’s particular interests or professional responsibility—politics, economics, sociology, and technology must all be covered. Elite culture must be balanced with popular culture, fringe with mainstream, and traditional with futuristic.

We can each develop our own cultural radar, but over the years, I’ve found the following resources to be particularly fruitful sources of information and perspective. In my opinion, these cultural resources should be in every Christian college and seminary library, every pastor’s study, and in the home of every thoughtful layperson.

* The Wilson Quarterly (800-829-5108; $24) is the publication of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It is a “newsmagazine of the world of ideas,” particularly new understandings. Lengthy articles are combined with thoughtful book and periodical reviews and reports on current research.

* Utne Reader (800-736-8863 or www.utne. com; $19.97) is a bimonthly compilation of the alternative press: Think of it as an alternative Reader’s Digest. (Some original material is included as well.) Culling from a wide range of periodicals and ‘zines, it provides a synthesis of alternative, progressive, and libertarian viewpoints. In short, this is the voice of those who question authority. Each issue focuses on a particular theme, such as “The Future of Love,” “Cyberhood vs. Neighborhood,” or “Who Cares About the Kids?” The magazine seeks to identify subjects that are being debated in the alternative press long before they surface in daily newspapers and the evening news.

* First Things (800-783-4903; $29) is the inspiration of Richard John Neuhaus and is the voice of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Since its inception, it has grown in stature to be one of the most important commentaries on public life from the perspective of orthodox faith. Conservative in its political perspectives and moderately Catholic in its leanings, but with substantial contributions from evangelical and Jewish thinkers, it has become the voice for the “public intellectual” concerned to “advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.” Each issue contains book reviews as well as an idiosyncratic survey of religion and public life by Father Neuhaus.

* Books & Culture: A Christian Review (800-523-7964 or www.ChristianityToday.com/bc/; $24.95) is among the most thoughtful and valuable evangelical publications. It has replaced the New York Review of Books on my cultural radar. If there is one publication that gives voice to the laudable depth and breadth of evangelical scholarship, this is the one. A bimonthly publication of Christianity Today International, provides thoughtful reflections on both Christian and secular books and interviews with leading cultural thinkers.

* Wired (800-769-4733; $39.95) is the cheerleader and champion of cyberspace and the voice of virtual reality. It provides a valuable resource in connecting the latest trends in computer research and communications technology with their social and cultural implications. Its avant-garde layout makes mtv seem old-fashioned, and its adulation for techno-utopia may put some off, but it is the best source for information and reflection on the culture of technology.

* Rolling Stone (303-604-1465; $25.94) was the original rock ‘n’ roll music and entertainment publication. It is not the most far-out or specialized, but it provides a good overview of contemporary youth culture—its views, music, films, and styles. I work and live with teenagers and read Rolling Stone cover-to-cover every month. From issues of suicide, drugs, and sex to emerging artists, films, and television, this is my outside source of adolescent enculturation. (For lyrics of specific artists or songs, try using the Internet, which frequently has the lyrics of all of an artist’s songs even when they are not included with the CD.)

* Regeneration Quarterly (800-783-4903; $19.95) is a one-of-a-kind intellectual journal by “Gen Xers” who share a common orthodox faith expressed variously within Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. rq offers robust debate among Christians who might otherwise be separated by conviction, circ*mstances, and geography. Typically, each issue features a section focusing on a single theme (similar to the Utne Reader). Old questions take a new twist when seen through the eyes of these bright young believers. And some questions might never have occurred to their parents’ generation. The seriousness and civility of this dialogue is a worthy model in itself. If this is the future of the Catholic church, let us rejoice and learn.

* Mars Hill Tapes (800-331-6407; $36) is a bimonthly audio magazine covering significant events, trends, and personalities in the arts, sciences, humanities, education, public policy, and popular culture. Here one finds sophisticated cultural commentary informed by Christian orthodoxy. Ken Myers, the producer and host of the Mars Hill Tapes, was the former cultural producer of National Public Radio’s popular Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Creatively produced, combining interview, commentary, and outtakes from film, television, and music, the Mars Hill Tapes make one long for a longer commute. More than once, I’ve sat in my driveway to finish an animated and thoughtful interview.

* Echoes (804-924-7705 or postmod@virginia. edu) is the quarterly publication of the Post-Modernity Project at the University of Virginia. James Davison Hunter, one of America’s leading sociologists of religion and cultural commentators, serves as the project director. The purpose of this multiyear research project is to map the shifting social contours of the emerging postmodern society. Hunter writes in the inaugural issue of Echoes, “If there is a shift from the ‘modern’ to ‘post-modern’ in philosophy, literature, and the arts, to what extent does this transformation take concrete institutional form in the ordering of public life and the moral frameworks of people’s lives? The questions this transformation poses are as basic as they are urgent: What kind of society will now take shape? And what are the implications of these changes for American social life?” Echoes provides findings from front-line research on the nature and consequences of contemporary social change.

* Invitation to the Classics (800-585-1070; forthcoming from Baker) will be a valuable introduction to the works that have shaped the modern world. Edited by Louise Cowan and Os Guinness, the book brings together reflection by leading scholars on the greatest literature and the most important authors. Without the perspective afforded by the classics, one cannot maintain the critical distance needed for biblical faithfulness within contemporary society. The timeless is finally that which is most relevant, and we dare not forget this fact in our own pursuit of relevance.

Other publications and resources certainly bear mentioning; what is offered here is a selection of essential resources. The information available on the Internet almost defies description, yet it has a twofold danger: (1) few controls exist on the quality of information provided, and (2) in surfing the Net one often gets lost in the trees and loses all sense of the forest. More information does not automatically translate into more understanding. Sometimes less is more.

Should we then consider abandoning the task of cultural reflection altogether and simply read the Bible? While this sounds pious, it is finally impious. We all live inescapably within a cultural context—it sets the terms for the taken-for-granted reality of daily life. Faithfulness to Christ means that we cannot afford to leave our culture unexamined. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; applying wisdom in our day is the end of lordship.

Johnny Seel teaches at the Stony Brook School in Stony Brook, New York, where he holds the Grace Palmer Johnston Chair of Religion.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Ronald J. Sider would rather not be known as a one-book author—over the last two decades he has written over a dozen books (Genuine Christianity being his latest). But he is most remembered for his first book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Its haunting title alone transformed the way many North American Christians—mainline, Catholic, and evangelical—viewed their worldly possessions and the plight of the poor.

Over the last two decades, the book has moved through several editions and has been translated into half a dozen languages, and this month it is being reissued in a twentieth-anniversary edition that contains some significant revisions. “The times have changed, and so have I,” says Sider. Here the Yale-educated Ph.D., who prefers to describe himself as a simple Mennonite farmer, explains how he has changed and where he still stands firm. Sider is president of Evangelicals for Social Action and professor of theology and culture at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Why did you write Rich Christians?I wanted to juxtapose the reality of world hunger and the massive amount of biblical material on God’s special concern for the poor with what Christians were doing, weren’t doing, and could do.

You succeeded in making a lot of us feel guilty!I had no interest in trying to psychologically manipulate people into some kind of false guilt. That’s wrong. But sin is a biblical category. Given a careful reading of the world and the Bible and our giving patterns, how can we come to any other conclusion than to say that we are flatly disobeying what the God of the Bible says about the way he wants his people to care for the poor? While 85 percent of Americans claim to be Christians, we give only 2.5 percent of our income to churches. We are involved in objective sin.

Who is a rich Christian?When I speak of rich Christians in an age of hunger, I include myself. And I struggle with that. I mean, 1.3 billion people in the world today live on a dollar a day. So anybody with our incomes is incredibly rich. I struggle with whether I should buy this new fishing rod or have a second used car. But after prayer and careful thought, I do choose to have some things.

Like sending your children to Christian colleges.Not only to Christian colleges but also to Christian high schools.

How did you justify that when children were starving in India?My wife and I chose to be harder on ourselves than on the kids. We also think each person is called to become all that God wants that person to be—and education is a crucial part of that. One thing I don’t really know how to resolve is our relative obligation to a growing circle of people. I don’t think my obligations to poor neighbors in India are identical to my obligations to my family. That’s an area of Christian ethics we need to work on.

Why are people poor?Some people are poor because they're lazy or because of wrong choices, like drugs and alcohol. Some are poor because of natural disasters or because they lack basic technology or hold world-views that don't encourage the right kind of approach to the natural order—Hinduism’s “untouchables” are a classic example. In addition, significant numbers are poor because of unjust structures and great imbalances of power. When Michael Jordan earns as much promoting Nike shoes as 18,000 Indonesian workers together make in a year, you’ve got a fundamental problem of justice.

Some have criticized you for viewing wealth as a pie, where my big slice leaves you with a smaller slice.I have never believed economics to be a zero-sum game—that if somebody else is going to have more, then somebody has to have less. I admit, though, that I didn’t know a great deal of economics when I wrote the first edition of Rich Christians. In the meantime, I’ve learned considerably more, and I’ve changed some things as a result of that. For example, in the new, twentieth-anniversary edition, I say more explicitly that when the choice is democratic capitalism or communism, I favor the democratic political order and market economies.

So capitalism is God’s economy of choice?Free-market economies are more compatible with human freedom and dignity and are more efficient in the production of wealth. One of the exciting changes in the last 20 years is that the percentage of chronically malnourished people in developing nations now is lower—35 percent in 1970 compared to 20 percent today. And much of the credit goes to the success of market economies in Asia. In contrast, wherever you have centralized power, as in Marxist economies, you get unfair use of it.

Still, there are fundamental problems with today’s market economy. The Old Testament principle of Jubilee tells us, in effect, that property is so good that everybody ought to have some. In our day, that means everybody ought to have the economic and educational resources they need to earn their own way. Unfortunately, the capital is divided so that roughly half of the world’s people have virtually none and therefore cannot earn a decent living.

Today’s market economy also exacerbates environmental pollution and consumerism by operating from a sort of centralization of economic power—large corporations merge and buy the media outlets and, indirectly, the politicians. They use their media to do their advertising, telling us the big lie that we get fulfillment through more and more things. This is in some ways analogous—although not yet nearly as serious—to what we saw in the communist system where power was centralized.

Do you believe Christians should live at a subsistence level?I don’t believe we should live in poverty. But in a context where over a billion people are in near absolute poverty and probably a couple billion people have never once heard the name of Jesus, for the sake of evangelism and for the sake of empowering the poor, we ought to spend less on ourselves and give more to others.

Let me add, however, that one area in which I’ve changed significantly since the first edition of my book is that I am no longer as concerned as I was earlier with the ratio of money between the rich and poor. The biblical understanding of equity (which might loosely be defined as economic fairness) requires you to take human freedom seriously. If some people are poor because they’re lazy, that's not unfair. So equity would not only permit but in fact require that kind of inequality.

Do you think evangelical Christians are more concerned for the poor today than they were several decades ago?At the leadership level we have come to understand clearly that we’ve got to do evangelism and social action. That’s a phenomenally important development. But if you ask, Are American evangelicals more, or less, caught in consumerism now than when I wrote the book? I’m almost certain the answer is far more.

What practical steps can individuals and families take to act more biblically with their resources?I would say to each person what I want to say to myself: I don’t think God wants me to feel guilty every time I enjoy a Christmas feast or buy something for my wife. But I think God does want me to regularly—once a year is a good time—look at my income and to consider again what the Bible says about the need for evangelism and empowering the poor. If we as Christians would do that, we would move in the direction of spending less and sharing more.

What can congregations do?They should look at their programs and ask a simple question—is there as much emphasis here on the poor as there is in the Bible? And then be prepared to change. I wish most churches undertaking construction projects would raise matching funds for evangelism and empowering the poor. That would say clearly, We’re not going to be seduced.

Along with preaching and teaching on the subject, we need small-group accountability structures, because the only way we’re going to resist the fundamental consumerism and materialism inherent in society is through, in effect, a countercultural understanding.

Do you see yourself as a prophet?I don’t like that term. My deepest passion in life is to be faithful to Jesus, and I’d like somehow, as God gives me grace and wisdom, to be able to persuade the church to be faithful. I’m absolutely convinced that genuine, biblical Christianity is what this desperate world needs most.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.