Page 5115 – Christianity Today (2024)

SUPREME COURT

The U.S. Supreme Court began its 1988–89 term last month amid questions about whether Justice Anthony Kennedy’s first full session will tip the Court in a more conservative direction. So far, the most volatile issues before the Court involve racial discrimination, p*rnography, the death penalty, and drug testing, with less attention being given to abortion and church-state issues.

Volatile Cases

On its opening day, the high court heard arguments about whether state prosecutors may use antiracketeering laws to crack down on X-rated bookstores and other p*rnography businesses. At issue is the Indiana Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—RICO—which includes obscenity as a criminal and civil offense. Twenty other states have similar laws. Several Fort Wayne (Ind.) “adult bookstores” accused of violating the state RICO law are challenging its constitutionality, claiming they were unfairly forced out of business.

The Court will also be looking at the death penalty in three separate cases. Two cases concern state laws that allow the execution of murderers under 18 years of age. Last term, a divided Court struck down all state laws allowing the death penalty for murderers who commited the crime when they were under 16, but newly confirmed Justice Kennedy did not participate in the case. In addition, the Court will be considering the constitutionality of the death penalty for murderers who are mentally retarded.

In a civil rights case that took many by surprise, the justices will be reconsidering a 1976 Supreme Court decision, Runyon v. McCrary, that declared “whites only” private schools unconstitutional. If the justices do overturn Runyon, many legal experts say it could be a sign that a conservative majority on the Court may begin chipping away at some of the more liberal decisions of the past.

Wait And See

Conservatives consider abortion an indicator of how Justice Kennedy will influence the Court, but no cases were scheduled at the opening of the term. However, at press time, the justices were considering whether to accept a case concerning a Missouri law that places restrictions on abortion. Missouri Attorney General William Webster has asked the Court to defend a law that, among other things, declares life begins at conception and prohibits the use of public funds, facilities, or employees for abortions unless the life of the mother is in danger. The law was struck down by lower courts.

If the justices agree to hear William L. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, it could be a significant case because Webster also asks the Court for a “conditional reconsideration” of its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. “If Missouri’s carefully drafted statutory provisions are unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade … as the lower court below maintains, Roe v. Wade should itself be reconsidered,” Webster said in his appeal.

In church-state issues, another key area concerning conservatives, the Court does not have any high profile cases on its docket. “We are really in a holding pattern [on church/state issues],” said Baptist Joint Committee (BJC) General Counsel Oliver Thomas.

In one case, the justices will decide whether city officials can place a crèche and a Jewish Menorah in municipal buildings during the Christmas season. Three lawsuits charge that the displays in Allegheny County (Pa.) violated the First Amendment and previous Court rulings. With the case, Allegheny County attorneys have asked the high court to clarify its 1984 decision that ruled a crèche could be placed on city property as part of a larger holiday display.

In addition, the Court has taken on two cases that examine the extent of tax exemptions for religious groups.

Looking Ahead

Observers agree this presidential election will be crucial in determining the philosophical make-up of the high court well into the future. Three of the justices considered most liberal—William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry Blackmun—will be in their eighties by Inauguration Day.

Noting that these men all voted for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Americans United for Life education director Laurie Anne Ramsey said the next President’s judicial appointments will “do more to determine policy and laws regarding abortion into the twenty-first century than perhaps any other single factor.” Ramsey said rumors of possible resignations by Justices Byron White and Sandra Day O’Connor also contribute to the importance of the election. Her group believes a George Bush administration would appoint justices who would vote for a reconsideration of Roe v. Wade.

In the church-state arena, Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead said the impact of this election will be felt for the “next 30 or 40 years.” In recent years, there have been several 5-to-4 decisions on church-state issues. Sam Ericsson, executive director of the Christian Legal Society, said, “If Bush appoints someone who is more in line with [the conservatives on the Court], then some of those close decisions could build into a much more accommodating view of the role of religion in the public square.”

NEWS

UPDATE

After a summer of cordial arrests, prolife activists faced new police tactics in Atlanta.

Gone are the days when Atlanta police used stretchers to transport prolife activists to nearby paddy wagons. Last month they dragged demonstrators along the pavement, in some cases causing injury. Police also bent fingers and arms, and applied pressure to the soft spot under the ear: “Physical incentives,” explained police Maj. Kenneth Burnette, “to move from point A to point B.”

Alleging excessive force, representatives from Operation Rescue countered with a lawsuit on behalf of an Indiana man who was injured. Clearly, the stakes are rising in the street fight to stop legalized abortion.

Galvanized By Force

Even representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports legalized abortion, expressed disapproval at the strong-arm tactics used by police during a weeklong series of demonstrations and rallies organized by the prolife group Operation Rescue. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported that three protesters requested medical treatment for scrapes, shortness of breath, or neck injuries. One of them was hospitalized overnight.

But Randall Terry, founder and leader of Operation Rescue, told reporters the harsh treatment would only galvanize the movement—a movement that proponents of legalized abortion are beginning to take seriously (see “Prochoice or No Choice?” p. 35).

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation’s largest prolife organization, continues to ignore the rescue movement in its newspaper, NRL News, which purports to be the prolife movement’s paper of record. But according to Terry, a growing number of national and local prolife organizations are warming up to the Operation Rescue approach.

Tom Glessner, executive director of Christian Action Council (CAC), said there is scriptural basis for what Operation Rescue is doing. He added that, while the CAC does not officially endorse Operation Rescue, it is “giving freedom to local people to be involved as individuals.” The rescue movement has also been endorsed by several Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson, James Kennedy, and Jerry Falwell.

Falwell said he supports any nonviolent effort to end the “biological holocaust” in this country. He compared the rescue movement to the Underground Railroad during the time of slavery in the U.S. and to the efforts of Corrie ten Boom to save Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis. “Randall Terry has moved out ahead of us in this effort,” said Falwell.

Atlanta: A Test Case

Operation Rescue has dug in its heels in Atlanta largely because the opposition has met it there. Terry said organizations such as the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League are trying “to write the book on how to curb the rescue movement” as it takes root in other cities, and are using Atlanta as a test case.

Recently Atlanta Roman Catholic Archbishop Eugene Marino called Operation Rescue “a courageous response to injustice,” stating that nonviolent resistance “has an honorable place in the history of this nation.”

Operation Rescue sought, without success, a similar endorsem*nt from Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta, and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Several members of First Baptist have been arrested. But a two-page statement released by the First Baptist pastoral staff and deacons concluded that, despite the church’s opposition to abortion, Operation Rescue’s approach does not meet the biblical criteria for civil disobedience.

The statement describes women as “free moral agents responsible before Almighty God for their actions, including the excercise [sic] of the rights of their innocent, unborn child.” According to the statement, biblical civil disobedience is justified when man’s law “requires an act which is contrary to God’s Word” or “prohibits an act which is consistent with God’s Word.” If the law required abortion, according to the statement, civil disobedience would be justified.

In response, Operation Rescue spokesperson Juli Loesch said, “Our point is that the law does forbid what God requires, because God requires rescue.” James Wood, pastor of the Mount Vernon (Southern) Baptist Church in Atlanta, called Stanley’s statement “absolutely illogical and self-contradictory.” Said Wood, a trustee of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, “You cannot state that abortion is murder, as [Stanley] does, and then state that you can’t trespass to prevent it.”

Prochoice Or No Choice?

Abortion proponents’ growing concern about the rescue movement is evident. Full-page ads supporting abortion have appeared in some of the nation’s leading newspapers. And on the eve of Operation Rescue’s demonstrations in Atlanta last month, about 200 advocates of legalized abortion attended a rally at Atlanta’s Central Presbyterian Church “to celebrate the right to choose.”

Attorney Margie Pitts Hames, whose victory in Doe v. Bolton helped pave the way to legalized abortion, told the Atlanta audience, “We will meet Operation Rescue with resistance, and call ourselves Operation Resistance.”

Some speakers who addressed the rally, however, appeared to disagree on the rationale for this resistance. Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said that “honest people can differ on the issue of abortion” and that “nobody who opposes abortion should ever be pressed or coerced into having one.” She added that the “right to decide if and when to have children belongs to women and families, not to the government.”

But Molly Yard, president of the National Organization for Women, implied that government ought to take a more active role in limiting childbirths. She said, “We are going to have to face, as China has faced, the policy of controlling the size of families.” (According to the Chinese government’s one-child policy, couples may have only one child. Women pregnant with a second child are pressured to have an abortion.)

A common theme of the rally was that recriminalizing abortion would not cause abortions to stop, but would instead lead desperate women to seek illegal, medically unsafe procedures. Alice Kirkman, director of public affairs for the National Abortion Federation, contended that recriminalizing abortion would produce an “increased maternal and infant death rate resulting from forced childbearing.” She said there would also be an “explosion” in the ranks of unwed mothers, citing statistics that over one-fourth of those who have abortions are between the ages of 15 and 19.

Rally participants did not try to disguise their contempt for Republican presidential candidate George Bush and their support for the candidacy of Democrat Michael Dukakis, two of whose campaign representatives were in the audience. Michelman accused Bush and the “religious extremists” of Operation Rescue of a “striking lack of concern for the lives and dignity of women.”

Though they disagree, Falwell said Stanley’s “heart is right in this.” He added, “Right now popular opinion inside the family of God is not with Operation Rescue.” Falwell said he would be teaching the “biblical correctness of Operation Rescue’s philosophy” and that he was “sensitive to the Lord’s leading” as to when he himself would be arrested. “In due time,” said Falwell, “if it is necessary in order to bring an end to abortion in this country, you will find the Pat Robertsons, Jim Kennedys, and Jerry Falwells—and I predict one day the Charles Stanleys—willing to go to jail to save unborn babies.”

Civil Disobedience?

Despite the debate over tactics, the leaders of Operation Rescue say civil disobedience is not what the movement is about. Terry said that Stanley, in issuing the statement against Operation Rescue, “framed the wrong question.”

Civil disobedience is defined generally as breaking laws regarded as immoral or unjust in order to effect social or political change (see “Is It Justified” below). Joseph Foreman, regional director for Operation Rescue, said the movement does not fit this definition. “We haven’t broken any laws,” he said. “There’s no law that says you can’t trespass if human life is at stake.” Leaders of the movement stress also that the main purpose of Operation Rescue is not to change public policy, but, in Terry’s words, “to save children from death and mothers from exploitation.” He said, “There is no other remedy for the babies who are about to die today.” (The NRLC claims such activity detracts from their goal of electing a President who will be in a position to make abortions illegal, thus saving millions of babies rather than a few.)

Is It Justified?

Civil disobedience is commonly defined as public, nonviolent violation of the law for the purpose of protesting some actual or proposed law, policy, or practice. The goal of civil disobedience is to bring about social or political change.

The moral justification for civil disobedience is similar to moral justification for war. Those considering civil disobedience must determine: (1) if the end is just, (2) whether other channels have been tried without success, (3) whether the disobedience will be effective, and (4) whether the probable negative consequences of civil disobedience, including possibly the threat to law and order, outweigh the evil of the unjust law or policy.

Some Christians categorically oppose civil disobedience in relatively just democratic states, arguing that preserving law and order should be the prime concern. Others hold that, regardless of the nature of the government, there are times when civil disobedience is not only morally justified, but morally obligated.

Adapted from: The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Westminster Press, 1986).

Foreman said there is no doubt rescuers are preventing women from following through on their appointments for abortions. He added that, according to Planned Parenthood, which favors legalized abortion, two of ten women who do not meet their appointment for an abortion will carry the baby to full term.

But despite the emphasis on saving lives, the Operation Rescue strategy does not ignore the movement’s image in the public mind. Foreman acknowledges that “saving lives of babies is not the only issue,” adding that it is “important to do it in such a way today that draws out more people to save more babies tomorrow.”

Thus, the leaders recommend nonviolent strategies, such as going limp when being arrested, apparently to achieve sympathy from the media and the public. Foreman said that when demonstrators suffer for their beliefs, they choose the “way of the cross” in an act of repentance for the church’s “sin” of allowing a moral climate tolerant of abortion. Foreman also said that violence against an abortion clinic “is not an immoral solution” since abortion is murder. But he does not espouse violence because “it does not cut to the heart of the issue.”

Even as the debate over the wisdom of rescue demonstrations continues, it has caused many Christians to consider seriously the implications of their faith. As one pastor put it, “I’m tired of making my life count for cars and houses and land.”

By Randy Frame in Atlanta.

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

“Squeezed like a lemon”

We must strive for sanctity, for holiness, to the point that we show up at Heaven’s gates “squeezed out like a lemon.” This image is vivid and challenging—at once heroic, romantic, and intimidating. Indeed, it is in striking, almost shocking, contrast to the consumerist, hedonist, and materialist deliriums of our decadent society.

—From an editorial in the New Oxford Review (July–Aug. 1988)

Words, words, words

The Bible tells us that the most vital and yet the most difficult thing to master is our words.

It is not so much what goes in one ear and comes out the other that bothers us, it is what goes in one ear, gets garbled in the process, and then comes out the mouth!

—Fay Angus in Running Around in Spiritual Circles

Leaving the comfort zone

If we would be enlarged, we must accept all that God sends us to develop and expand our spiritual life. We are so content to abide at the old level that God often has to compel us to rise higher by bringing us face to face with situations that we cannot meet without much greater measures of His grace. It is as though He had to send a tidal wave to flood the lowlands where we dwell to compel us to move into the hills beyond. God, like the mother bird, sometimes has to break up the comfortable, downy nest, letting us drop into empty space. There we must either learn to use an entirely new and higher method of support or sink into failure and loss. We must do or die, fly or fall to our destruction.

—A. B. Simpson in A Larger Christian Life

Worship begins at home

In early America, home was a sanctuary of worship; the father was the priest of his own household; the open Bible was the sourcebook for Christian worship, the textbook for his education, and the inspiration for the establishment of his political institutions. We have not outlived the need for the open Book, for the message of God in and through the family, and for the spiritual discipline of prayer. Perhaps we would be better people now if the home were still honored as a sanctuary of worship.

—Edward L. R. Elson in Wide Was His Parish

No freedom without discipline

Freedom and discipline have come to be regarded as mutually exclusive, when in fact freedom is not at all the opposite, but the final reward, of discipline. It is to be bought with a high price, not merely claimed.… The [professional] skater and [race]horse are free to perform as they do only because they have been subjected to countless hours of grueling work, rigidly prescribed, faithfully carried out. Men are free to soar into space because they have willingly confined themselves in a tiny capsule designed and produced by highly trained scientists and craftsmen, have meticulously followed instructions and submitted themselves to rules which others defined.

—Elisabeth Elliot in All That Was Ever Ours

Prayer for understanding

Grant me, O Lord, an understanding heart, that I may see into the hearts of thy people, and know their strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and their despairs, their efforts and their failures, their need of love and their need to love. Through my touch with them grant comfort and hope and the assurance that now life begins at any age and on any day, redeeming the past, sanctifying the present and brightening the future with the assurance of thy unfailing love and grace brought to us in Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.

—George Appleton in the Oxford Book of Prayer

A significant breakdown

To say what is untrue, what is unkind, or to say it unkindly, constitutes failure in Christian living and Christian witness.

—George Duncan in Every Day with Jesus

Unavoidable choices

The higher a man’s call and vision, the more choices are given him. This is our work in creation: to decide. And what we decide is woven into the thread of time and being forever. Choose wisely, then, but you must choose.

—Stephen R. Lawhead in Merlin

Will Campbell—unconventional Southern Baptist preacher and the widely acclaimed author of Brother to a Dragonfly—published his third novel in September. With The Convention, he peers into the future of the Southern Baptist Convention and imagines that the tensions within it have led to the reorganization of the denomination. It becomes the Federal Baptist Church, and it is dominated by fundamentalists closely allied with right-wing political leaders. That scenario is not too flattering to today’s conservatives, but moderate Southern Baptists are not the heroes of the book either. As one of Campbell’s characters laments, “Not enough moderates or fundamentalists care about where we Baptists came from.”

Indeed, Southern Baptists are engaged in a struggle—perhaps to the death—over their identity. Conservatives within the convention believe it forgot where it came from when it became too loose and easy about its theology, especially its theology about the authority of the Bible. Moderates believe the convention forgot where it came from when it began fighting about the precise definition of doctrines and hedging on the Baptist hallmark of individual soul competency, which holds that each person is able to understand truth and live by it before God. Yet many other Southern Baptists, like Campbell, eschew the labels “conservative” and “moderate” and say the denomination forgot where it came from when it got enmeshed in power politics and obscured the simple, straightforward concentration of its laity on evangelism and missions.

In a sense, then, this still-burgeoning denomination is like a teenager sliding uneasily into adolescence—full of conflicting impulses, overcome with vitalities both exciting and disconcerting, uncertain what he will be tomorrow because he is unsure what “self” to claim from the past. The beleaguered teenager is confused, but only he can pronounce with any degree of authority what his future will be.

Likewise, only Southern Baptists can pronounce on the future of their remarkable denomination. So CHRISTIANITY TODAY visited San Antonio last June, attending this year’s convention to ask Southern Baptists about what should and will become of the Southern Baptist Convention. The persons we talked to have widely divergent hopes and expectations for the convention, but all of them, in the words of one speaker, are “Baptist born, Baptist bred, and when they die, they’ll be Baptist dead.”

Split Or Splinter?

The most obvious question about the denomination, given ten years of furious infighting, is Will it split? Most leaders think not. Jerry Vines, the staunchly conservative new president of the convention, believes the denomination will stay together because “the overwhelming majority of Southern Baptists are Bible-believing and happy with the conservative resurgence.” Paige Patterson, president of Criswell College and a primary force in the conservative resurgence, agrees: “The only way the convention will split is if there is a reversal of the conservative resurgence.”

John Bisagno, pastor of First Baptist Church in Houston, reminds onlookers that the “great majority of moderates are inerrantists.” (Patterson suggests 80 to 85 percent of the entire denomination is.) Bisagno has another reason for, as he puts it, “leaning toward” an answer of no to the question of a split. “I don’t think the convention will split because everybody so desperately wants it not to,” he says.

But if few people expect the SBC to split down the middle, they are not so optimistic that it will avoid splintering. That is, many expect there will be some attrition in the denomination, and that some SBC churches will create alternative funding sources for their own, more agreeable programs. Richard Jackson, pastor of North Phoenix Baptist Church and the moderate candidate who narrowly lost to Vines in San Antonio, says, “There will be no settlement without fallout and some attrition. We will lose extremists on both sides. And, with all God’s blessings on them, the extremists on the Left and the Right should leave the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Bill Leonard, a church historian at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, looks for no major split soon, but he does expect to see “some groups pulling back from the national convention.” Leonard, a moderate, suggests some churches will opt for dual affiliation, linking themselves with the SBC and less conservative denominations, such as the American Baptists. A current example of a group taking an “intermediate step”—not leaving the SBC but weakening ties with it—is the Southern Baptist Alliance.

The alliance is a coalition of moderates that will, for example, channel funds for Southern Baptist churches wanting to support women pastors (currently difficult through the SBC’S official boards). In San Antonio the alliance issued a statement inviting disenchanted Baptists to join them “as a clear alternative to fundamentalism, authoritarianism, hierarchical, and right-wing political ideology.” Alan Neely, acting executive director of the alliance, admitted that many in the group “still want to resuscitate the denominational mother.” Neely himself is equivocal about whether or not the alliance is a “denomination in a birthing stage,” but says he does not see it “immediately becoming a rival of the SBC.” He admits it is now of modest size (43 congregations are members) and budget (about $125,000 last year).

As for the possibility of an eventual split, moderates paint a scenario the exact opposite of that imagined by Vines and Patterson. In the words of Bill Leonard, “If, for 15 to 20 years, the fundamentalists continue to appoint only people narrowly in agreement with them, then we could see larger and larger segments pulling away from the denomination.”

However broad the appointments of the conservatives may or may not be, most observers expect them to remain in control for the next several years. Leonard believes they will retain dominance for at least ten more years, though he thinks “some of the fundamentalist support is soft. Some have jumped on the fundamentalist bandwagon.” Jackson says that, by their own count, conservatives now dominate all but two of the boards and agencies of Southern Baptist institutions. Still, he does not think it impossible that control could be lost within three or four years.

At the other end of the spectrum is Ed McAteer, a Southern Baptist layman who is famous as an architect of the Religious Right. McAteer expects the conservatives to remain on top in the SBC for at least a generation.

What Are We Fighting For?

To avoid splitting or splintering, the denomination must heal its divisions. How likely is that to happen?

Perhaps a sign of the profound division within the convention is the fact that Baptists cannot agree exactly what they are fighting over. For conservatives like Paige Patterson, the root issue is clearly theological.

Ten years ago, he says, three of the six Southern Baptist seminaries were without a single biblical inerrantist on their faculties. “Conservatives had a conscience problem,” he says. “We either had to leave the convention or redirect it.” Patterson does not insist that his fellow Southern Baptists use the word “inerrancy” to describe the authority of the Bible, but, he says, “My theology will not allow me to support someone who calls into question the veracity of the Word of God.”

President Vines is equally pointed. “There is one central issue: the nature of Scripture—what it is, not what it says.” Vines believes the theological threat within the SBC is not from classical liberalism but neo-orthodoxy. “The neo-orthodox use our vocabulary but not our dictionary,” he asserts. “They take the position that the Bible contains the Word of God. Southern Baptists have historically believed the Bible is the Word of God.” He adds that neo-orthodoxy has not been “necessarily the dominant view in our seminaries, but it was there enough to disturb many folk.”

First Baptist of Houston’s Bisagno concurs that the original and continuing issue is theological. Neo-orthodoxy, he suggests, is an approach to Scripture that views the Bible as a vehicle through which truth comes. The vehicle may or may not be historical, and “if you question the vehicle, sooner or later you will question truth conveyed by it,” he fears. John Thomason, president of the Southern Baptist Alliance and pastor of Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, frankly acknowledges the presence of neo-orthodoxy in Southern Baptist circles. “It was characteristic of Southern Seminary when I was there in the early 1970s,” he says. “But I don’t see this as a problem. There are things to object to in neo-orthodoxy, and it was never set up as the orthodoxy of Baptist seminaries. For me, it has been a very helpful bridge between classical faith and the modern world.”

There is yet a third camp, represented by the likes of Richard Jackson. Jackson is himself an inerrantist, but he does not see neo-orthodoxy as a real and palpable threat to the convention. “It’s almost as if people are saying we have to defend God and the Bible,” he says. “Is neo-orthodoxy rampant? It’s dead to theologians the world over.”

So for Jackson, the problem is “not really theological, it’s spiritual.” It is not difficult for academia to “get sterile” and begin to adjust theology to the lack of contact with the everyday, practical world. Many Southern Baptists moved north and created “y’all clubs,” Jackson adds, which became sterile because they were inbred. “We’ve all got to get off our seats and into the streets, witnessing to Jesus Christ.”

Bill Leonard offers a similar, but more complex analysis. Differences began to strain unity in the denomination when it became less culturally hom*ogeneous. Yankees became Southern Baptists, and the South itself became more pluralistic. “We got cable television,” says Leonard. “We read magazines other than Southern Baptist magazines. Before, to marry ‘outside the faith’ meant to marry a Methodist, not a Muslim.”

Leonard believes these cultural pressures created a strain on the theological compromises cobbled so carefully by old denominational loyalists such as Herschel Hobbs, president of the convention in 1962–63. “The genius of the SBC,” Leonard says, “was that it developed statements of faith that followed Baptist doctrines but refused to define them so precisely that they alienated people. So some of the statements require affirmation of biblical authority, of eschatology and ecclesiology, but with no theories of any of these.”

Just As They Are

Nancy Hastings Sehested

One of the first women to serve as senior pastor in the SBC.

Memphis, Tennessee

Generations of Southern Baptists: Four

Have you ever denied or wanted to deny being a Southern Baptist?

It is embarrassing to be a Southern Baptist these days. The way that minorities, laypeople, and women are treated is appalling. The current controversy within the SBC is tragic.

When are you most proud to be Southern Baptist?

When I hear of missionaries, like Lillian Isaacs, who opened doors for many people through her literacy work.

On growing up Southern Baptist:

My Southern Baptist family gave me a strong biblical foundation. The Bible continues to mediate life to me, and challenge and strengthen me as a follower of Jesus.

Southern Baptists put me on an incredible journey to open the Bible.

Khomeini And The Convention

Now that conservatives have, in a manner of speaking, called the bluff on the less-precise statements that held the denomination together, the convention seems divided between those who refer primarily to inerrancy (though they often protest that the word itself need not be employed) and those who refer primarily to “characteristic Baptist beliefs,” such as soul competency and the priesthood of all believers. Moderates fear the conservatives are authoritarian and jeopardize soul competency. Conservatives insist that the accusation is a smoke screen.

Vines calmly observes that the “Bible is essential. Soul competency is derived from Scripture, not the other way around.” As Bisagno puts it, “Soul competency and the priesthood of all believers are well and good. But there are parameters. We don’t have Mormons teaching in our seminaries.” Patterson phrases the matter more sharply: “Competency of the soul and the priesthood of believers cannot mean you can believe anything and be a Southern Baptist. The Ayatollah Khomeini’s not going to teach at Southwestern Seminary.”

Yet some fear that Patterson and his colleagues have a yen for power not totally unlike that of Khomeini. Richard Jackson, tending again to look for a “spiritual” rather than a “theological” problem, candidly suggests, “Power is a heady wine to drink. There are a few—a very few—power brokers, and if they would just be quiet for two or three years, this thing would be over.” Referring to the prominent layman Paul Pressler and to Patterson, Jackson says, “It would help if the judge from Houston would stay in Houston and the educator from Dallas would stay in Dallas.”

All said, then, there is mixed optimism at best about the healing of Southern Baptist dividing points anytime soon. A worried Bisagno admits, “Maybe my dream is a pipe dream. Maybe you can’t commit to inerrancy and save the ship too. It’s very frustrating.”

Vines, on the other hand, is more sanguine. “Southern Baptists have great doctrinal unity,” he says, “which produces tremendous programs of missions and evangelism.” As president, “I desire to create an atmosphere or set a tone for reconciliation in the denomination. I hope to be able to indicate to our denomination that, whereas we may disagree on many levels, we can agree on Christian behavior towards one another.”

The potential of Vines’s success at his goal is strengthened by the fact that for appointments he can draw heavily from a pool of moderates who are inerrantists. In this way he can be true to his own theological convictions and simultaneously demonstrate that he wants to reach beyond the confines of the so-called Pressler-Patterson coalition.

Bill Leonard thinks, “If fundamentalists want to save the convention, they will begin to appoint people such as Winfred Moore [an Amarillo pastor, conservative on biblical authority but classified as a moderate] and Jackson. If they do that they might develop a new coalition.” Leonard fears such may not happen because conservatives have “made promises to people on their right.” Still, such mending is exactly what moderates like Jackson hope for. “Don’t give up on Dr. Vines,” he counseled his fellow Baptists in San Antonio. “Ask God to make him the greatest leader we’ve ever had, because that’s what we need.”

Bigness, Next To Godliness

Perceptive Southern Baptists see other profound challenges in their future. They see the convention increasingly concerned with celebrity, with an unbridled church growth that focuses single-mindedly on numbers, with a growing gap between the incomes of “super pastors” and their congregants (see p. 20), and with uncritical attitudes about national political entanglements that foster cultural captivity.

As the publisher of Will Campbell’s book summarizes the author’s concern, fundamentalists and moderates “prove themselves to have risen steadily up the steeples of power—so high that they have lost sight of the homeless people on the streets, lonely Vietnam veterans in the parks, Blacks and Orientals and Hispanics in mission chapels, and even the aging membership of the Women’s Missionary Union, who still meet faithfully in church basem*nts while the male pastors and deacons concern themselves over eighteen holes of golf.” In other words, nothing may be so dangerous to this church as success.

John Thomason, a third-generation Southern Baptist and president of the Southern Baptist Alliance, speaks of seeing famous pastors followed by flocks of overeager disciples. “We’ve come to see bigness as next to godliness,” he believes. “The normative model in the SBC is now the superchurch. But for every 100 people who join those churches, there are thousands driven away from the faith by their style and tone. Yet we can’t see this because we are basking in success—in numbers.”

The plain-spoken Jackson agrees there is a danger of superpastors accruing too much power. “Get a roomful of Southern Baptist preachers together and you’ve got enough ego to blow Washington, D.C., off the map,” he cracks. He concurs with a “messenger” (a delegate to the convention) who, nominating the sole lay candidate for president this year, said the convention was by default “creating a College of Cardinals of our own,” leaving laypersons to watch the white smoke ascend from the midst of the magisterial clergy. That nominating messenger lamented that lay strength is the uniqueness of the convention, yet it has had only three lay presidents in its 143-year history. Comments Jackson: “The greatest thing that could have happened to us would be to have had a qualified layperson as president of the convention.”

Just As They Are

Bill Reedy

Church planter.

Bolingbrook, Illinois

Generations of Southern Baptists: Two; three in my wife’s family. I didn’t realize there was any other kind of Baptist!

Most memorable sermon from childhood:

“God’s Axe.” It was delivered during an area-wide “tent revival” with a traveling evangelist. There was a large tent, folding wooden chairs, sawdust on the ground.

Memorable summer camp experience:

Every Southern Baptist teenager who grew up in Oklahoma in the sixties spent a week at Falls Creek Baptist Assembly, located near Davis, Oklahoma. There were at least three weeks of camp with four or five thousand attending each week. The music, preaching, summer heat, and holding your girlfriend’s hand made the experience quite memorable.

Personal doctrinal struggle:

My struggle deals more with how to practice my beliefs and share my insights without being labeled a “liberal.” For instance, I believe in the authority of Scripture, but I am not a “literalist.” Many of my colleagues seem to equate the two.

Leonard, too, is concerned about what he calls the “clericalization” of the convention. He says there are churches splitting in the denomination because of authoritarian ministers, a style he thinks fundamentalism fosters.

In short, these and other Southern Baptists fear the cultural captivity of their denomination. That is, because Southern Baptists as a rule do not smoke, drink, or dance, they may believe they are free of undue cultural influence. Yet culture can influence in more subtle—and perhaps more destructive—ways. The style of “doing church” chosen by many conservative leaders may call for scrutiny and criticism.

Strength And Hope

Southern Baptists have been in an earnest fight among themselves for a decade now. All are tired of the battle, even those who thought it necessary to wage it. Yet the Southern Baptist spirit, overall, remains indomitable. The leaders we talked to refer to several strengths that give the convention real hope with which to face the challenges ahead.

Foremost is the continuing power of the SBC’s evangelism and missions. As Paige Patterson puts it, “We are still the most aggressively missionary and evangelistic of any of the mainline denominations.” (The SBC, he adds, has 3,800 career missionaries overseas.) Leonard finds cheer in the “deep and genuine” piety so pervasive in the denomination: “On a day-to-day basis, in local and regional areas, we do well at feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and providing a witness to the gospel.” Bisagno even sees the possibility of denominational healing in a continuing, if intensified, commitment to missions. “If all you did was preach the gospel to the ends of the earth,” he says, “you wouldn’t have the problem of division.”

There are other strengths. Patterson mentions an emphasis on religious liberty and congregational autonomy as “a major contribution to the nation.” He thinks the six Southern Baptist seminaries—three of which are among the largest in the world—continue “to pour into America a strong emphasis on private education, which is now somewhat endangered in our country.” Finally, he doubts that many denominations have as many expert pulpiteers as the SBC.

Whatever his fears about clericalization, Jackson takes heart in the “rock-ribbed faith of the laypeople in our church.” Southern Baptists, to their advantage, continue to be “people of the pews” and “people of the Book.” Jackson remarks, “I think our people have enough knowledge of the Bible that they will not forever be fooled.”

Jerry Vines names similar strengths: “Our position as a Bible-believing denomination; our congregational form of government; and our inclination to work together on the basis of voluntary cooperation.”

Given the recognition by this variety of Southern Baptists of what is important to the convention, one suspects even the sardonic Will Campbell might find some room for optimism about the denomination. Moderates and conservatives alike, when asked to state what remains good and right about their denomination, point to the emphasis on the importance of local congregations and their liberty, a solid biblical base, and the centrality of the laity. Perhaps the moderates and the conservatives have failed to “care about where we Baptists came from.” But they haven’t forgotten it.

Southern Baptists have no formally adopted articles of faith, and are in no sense officially bound by creedal affirmations. Inevitably, then, diversity is a trademark of Baptist life. At the same time, Southern Baptists do have distinctive, unifying doctrinal beliefs. But since they are not creedalists, perhaps the best way to explain what they believe is to look at the matter historically.

The Origin Of Baptist Beliefs

In general, Baptists do not look to anyone other than Jesus Christ as the founder of the church. Most Baptists believe the apostolic churches were “Baptist” churches since, as Baptists interpret history, the apostolic churches baptized believers by immersion to symbolize the death, burial, and resurrection motif; they partook of a memorial Lord’s Supper with historic and eschatological implications; they sought a congregational consensus in matters of local church governance; they had no formal hierarchy (though they did recognize the legitimate authority of spiritual leaders); and they exhibited a spirit of voluntary cooperation in generous missionary and ministry support.

Baptists do not believe that the apostolic churches were perfect, nor do they deny that doctrinal development has occurred through the centuries. But they do believe that Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Rome, and the other early churches were all at first free congregations. As churches gave up their freedom through institutionalization, various groups sought to keep the authentic faith alive. Novatianists (third century), Donatists (fourth century), Paulicians (eighth century), and the Cathari (various groups stressing purity in the Christian life) were not Baptists in the modern sense, but they sought for pure congregations of born-again believers, and they opposed the ceremonial dominance of the church in Rome.

The simple preaching of Peter Waldo (the twelfth-century founder of the Waldenses), and his opposition to the Mass and to the worship of saints, restored for many the emphasis on the spiritual life, repentance from sin, and true conversion as the basis for church life. The fourteenth-century reformer John Wycliffe taught that only the “born again” believer is a true church member, and favored the idea of placing a Bible in the hand and in the language of the common man.

Modern Baptists also feel a close kinship to the doctrinal developments of the Reformers. Luther’s cry for justification by faith and Calvin’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty have been major emphases in Baptist life. Baptists, however, do not think the magisterial reform ever went far enough. Thus they look to Anabaptists such as Felix Manz, who refused to baptize infants, and Balthasar Hübmaier, who held out for the right of free men to respond to God directly without the intervention of priest, pope, or institutional church.

Baptists In America

In 1639, Roger Williams of Rhode Island founded the first Baptist church in America. He is remembered primarily for his contribution to the principle of religious liberty. What is not as often remembered is that his defense of liberty arose strictly from Calvinistic theology (only God is sovereign, not the state).

The Great Awakening of 1734 had a tremendous influence on Baptists, and for the first time they really began growing in numbers. In 1742, Baptists in Pennsylvania adopted the Philadelphia Confession. This Calvinistic confession was also adopted by the church at Charleston, South Carolina, and from there the influence of the confession spread through Baptist life.

In 1833, the New Hampshire Baptists condensed the Philadelphia Confession, modifying it slightly. A moderately Calvinistic evangelical confession, it was soon widely accepted both in the North and South.

Baptists In Dixie

A debate over the propriety of slave holding led, in 1845, to the formation of what is now known as the Southern Baptist Convention. J. R. Graves of Tennessee had a tremendous influence on the churches of the South, teaching them dispensational premillennialism and emphasizing the autonomy of the local church. But the major writing theologian of the period was John L. Dagg, a practical theologian and an evangelistic Calvinist.

Dagg’s “Landmark” (his term for the key elements of New Testament Christianity) emphasis led many Baptists to believe they were the only authentic New Testament body that could trace their beliefs historically all the way back to Christ. J. M. Carroll’s Trail of Blood was widely accepted as an authentic successionist theory of the church in history. (Only within the immediate generation has this view lost its influence.)

An important theologian in the early twentieth century was E. Y. Mullins, of Mississippi, who served as president of Louisville Seminary. He was influenced by prototypical liberal Friedrich Schleiermacher’s emphasis on religious experience, though he was never satisfied with Schleiermacher’s liberal ecumenical perspective. Mullins emphasized soul competency (the individual’s ability to follow God’s way without hierarchical intervention) and religious freedom. He saw “experience” not as a negative subjective factor but as a revitalizing element, necessary for true conversion and thus a necessary presupposition of Baptist theology. The frontier revival spirit of many Baptist people led them to adopt the soul competency emphasis of Mullins. Emphasis on an emotional conversion soon came to dominate, and today many Baptists are calling for a solid discipleship ministry to accompany the invitation-conversion model.

Due to Mullins’s leadership, the convention formally adopted a version of the New Hampshire Baptist Confession, not as a creed for individual churches, but as guidelines for convention agencies and institutions. The confession unified Southern Baptists and prevented the separation and division experienced by Northern Baptists in those days.

The Baptist Faith And Message

Until the 1950s, Southern Baptists were not significantly influenced by modern biblical criticism, but a conservative form of higher criticism entered the seminary classrooms during that decade. The impact was felt when the denomination’s publishing house, Broadman Press, released Ralph H. Elliott’s The Message of Genesis. Elliott implied the nonhistoricity of Adam and Eve and basically adopted a higher critical approach to the text. Convention debate was so intense that the book was withdrawn from circulation, and a special committee was formed to re-evaluate the convention’s statement of faith.

The SBC (meeting in Kansas City) responded positively to Herschel Hobbs of Oklahoma and his committee by adopting the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message Statement. (The statement was not considered a creed, but presented as “information” for churches and “guidelines” for convention agencies and institutions.) This document, a slightly revised version of the 1925 confession, remains unmodified as the convention’s current doctrinal statement, and is crucial for understanding what Southern Baptists believe (see sidebar below, “What Southern Baptists Tell on the Mountain”).

Baptists Today

Contemporary Baptist laymen are devout, mission-minded, Bible believers. But they are not necessarily well informed about the details of their belief. Only a small percentage, for instance, have ever read the entire 1963 confession. And most oppose Calvinistic doctrine (they think it is antievangelistic) without even being aware of the strength of that tradition in Baptist history.

A church training program that emphasized doctrine and daily Bible reading was strong in the fifties, but almost completely disappeared in the seventies. Many Baptist youth have had virtually no training in church history, doctrine, or biblical hermeneutics. The great struggle in the SBC today is related to this loss of denominational identity.

What Southern Baptists Tell On The Mountain

The Baptist Faith and Message Statement, adopted in 1963, is the clearest and most comprehensive declaration of what contemporary Southern Baptists believe, and so worth considering at length.

The last part of the statement’s preamble reads: “Baptists emphasize the soul’s competency before God, freedom in religion, and the priesthood of the believer. However, this emphasis should not be interpreted to mean that there is an absence of certain definite doctrines that Baptists believe, cherish, and with which they have been and are now closely identified.”

Article 1 treats the Scriptures: “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. It reveals the principles by which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”

Article 3 says “Man was created by a special act of God.… Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence; whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin, and as soon as they are capable of moral action become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship.…”

Article 4 defines regeneration as “… a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Article 5 affirms election as the gracious purpose of God. Election is “… consistent with the free agency of man, and [it] comprehends all the means in connection with the end.… All true believers, endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.”

The church, in Article 6, is defined as “… a local body of baptized believers … associated by covenant[,] … observing the two ordinances of Christ.… The church is an autonomous body, operating through democratic processes under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.… Its Scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.”

The full consummation of the kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ. But historically, Southern Baptists have not made eschatology a test of fellowship. Article 10 says only that “God in His own time and in His own way will bring the world to its appropriate end.” (It does affirm the personal, visible return of Christ, a judgment, and a literal heaven and hell.)

Article 12 affirms Christian education, but says: “The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the preeminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.”

One other article, 17, is of note because of its affirmation of religious liberty: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines of men which are contrary to His word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate.… A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.…”

By L. Russ Bush.

Conservatives in the convention have sought a doctrinal basis for unity, and have encountered opposition even to a call for a common affirmation of biblical inerrancy. So it seems the influence of modern biblical criticism has been strongly felt.

The convention “moderates” are much more diverse than the “new conservatives.” A few are quite liberal, but most are conservative in personal convictions. But for some, financial support of the denomination’s unified budget (the Cooperative Program) has become the essence of denominational unity. Others have seemingly identified the priesthood of the believer as the psychological equivalent of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Their cries for “doctrinal freedom” clash with traditionalist cries for legitimate centers of authority, such as the pastoral office, or Scripture itself. Authority (its nature, source, and application) is the most critical issue facing Baptists today.

Religion departments in some Baptist colleges have at times ignored evangelical scholarship, preferring to teach traditional neo-orthodox and/or higher critical theories about the Bible. This antievangelical, procritical mindset (though advocated by only a few) is a serious threat to denominational unity.

A handful of contemporary issues particularly concern Southern Baptists. Abortion divides them as it does Americans generally, though most Baptists probably oppose “abortion on demand.” The majority of Baptists also oppose the charismatic movement; they deny the second-blessing doctrine, and find tongues to be a divisive activity—not a true work of the Holy Spirit. Universalism is also opposed by most Baptists, who see it as heretical.

There has been some controversy over the role of women in the church, though the media have perhaps blown this out of proportion. Baptists do not officially require ordination for any form of ministry (including preaching), and local churches call their own pastors without any direction from denominational leadership. Women often teach men in Sunday school classes; and the Woman’s Missionary Union is one of the most active organizations in SBC church life. Southern Baptists generally have not approved of women as pastors, but a few urban churches have moved to use women as deacons.

Baptists In General

In general, Baptists historically have been a free, evangelistic people, holding to divine sovereignty, trinitarianism, the deity of Christ, election resulting in regeneration, the necessity of visible repentance and faith, salvation that begins and perseveres by grace alone, believer’s baptism by immersion, a symbolic Lord’s Supper, a gathered church, and a congregational polity. Baptism is not thought of as an essential for salvation nor even a means to it. Likewise, the Lord’s Supper is a strictly memorial communion celebrated by the gathered body of true believers.

Under Christ each church stands alone, but because all serve the same Christ, they join in voluntary associations to enhance the work of missions.

Just As They Are

Quentin Kinnison

Student.

Phoenix, Arizona

Generations of Southern Baptists: Two

Why I’ve stayed a Southern Baptist:

I’m sure one of the main reasons is that it is how I grew up. But I’ve studied other doctrines, and I believe Southern Baptists are the most correct.

On the Southern Baptist image:

Going to college, people hear you’re Southern Baptist and they assume you’re going to slam Jesus down on them with a big, heavy, family Bible. They see us as being much more strict and rigid than we really are.

There are things we’re strict about, like the inerrancy of the Bible, but there are things—dare I say it—like dancing, that we’re not as strict on anymore. At one time that was a main issue, but for the younger generation it’s not.

What I did as a teen that the church said I shouldn’t do:

Used profanity.

Personal doctrinal struggle:

In some churches, unless you are Southern Baptist baptized, you have to be rebaptized before you can join the church. I think that misses the meaning of what baptism is all about.

If God will bring Southern Baptists back together emotionally, psychologically, and doctrinally, they can still heal their political divisions. Southern Baptists may be evangelical Christianity’s greatest potential resource for world evangelization. Their goal is to reach every person in the world with the good news of Jesus Christ. When this gospel is sufficiently preached, then, they believe, shall the end come.

L. Russ Bush is associate professor of philosophy of religion at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

Southern Baptists have been hard to ignore in recent years. Jimmy Carter called attention to them by his regular church and Sunday school attendance and his talk of being “born again.” And their noisy family feud over control of their convention has captured headlines in both the religious and secular press.

Who are the Southern Baptists? And why are they so much in the news? What is their impact on American culture? And what is the culture’s impact on them?

Though they still use a regional name, Southern Baptists have long since become a national body. In the early 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention overtook the United Methodists as the largest Protestant group in America. In 1987, it reported 14,730,000 members in more than 37,000 local congregations scattered throughout the United States.

At the end of 1987, the convention’s Foreign Mission Board supported 3,839 missionaries in 115 nations, while the Home Mission Board had 3,746 home missionaries stationed throughout the United States.

The convention sponsors six theological seminaries, which enroll more than 20 percent of all students in all the accredited seminaries in America; and it maintains about 60 colleges and universities. For its various ministries beyond the local church, the convention received about $240 million for the year ending September 30, 1987. And last year, SBC churches baptized 338,495 new converts, the fewest in several years.

Southern Baptists are part of a large Baptist family that numbers about 35 million members worldwide. In the United States, Baptists are divided into more than 50 different groups, ranging from the SBC with almost 15 million members, to the tiny Duck River Baptists with fewer than 100 members.

Perhaps no religious group in America represents more diversity under the same generic name as do Baptists. Yet to many Americans, a Baptist is a Baptist. They may not be aware, for example, that Baptist Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. On the other hand, Pat Robertson, the erstwhile presidential candidate, was active in Southern Baptist life in his youth and has retained his membership, though not his ordination, in a Southern Baptist church.

The Baptist Tradition

As a distinct denomination, Baptists emerged out of the English Reformation in the early seventeenth century. English Christians in the Reformation era passionately sought to recover biblical patterns in church and ministry. Frustrated in their efforts at reform, many of these “Puritans” separated from the state church and thus were nicknamed “Separatists.”

Some of these Separatists, seeking to recover exact biblical patterns in doctrine and practice, came to the conviction that baptism should be applied only to professed believers, and not to infants. They concluded that baptism is a symbol of personal faith and, since infants cannot yet affirm personal faith, they do not qualify for baptism.

By 1609 John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, English exiles in Amsterdam, formed a church on this basis. Many regard this as the earliest identifiable Baptist church of modern history. By 1611, Helwys led a remnant back to London where they formed a General Baptist church, so named for their teaching of a “general atonement” (Christ died for all).

The Particular Baptists, who taught that Christ died only for the elect, emerged from Separatist churches in London in the 1630s. Their seven congregations issued a joint confession of faith in 1644, a document that helped shape Baptist beliefs and identity for generations.

By 1640, some of these baptizers came to the further conviction that baptism of believers should be applied by total immersion. Their practice of this ancient rite in public streams and rivers attracted public attention, most of it unfavorable, and earned them the nickname of “Baptist.”

Historians debate which was the earliest Baptist church in America, but all agree that it was in Rhode Island. The First Baptist Church of Providence and the Clarke Memorial Baptist Church of Newport both claim to be first. Both claim 1638 as their founding date. However, the best evidence seems to point to 1639 for Providence and 1644 (or possibly 1641) for Newport.

Baptist churches soon emerged elsewhere; about 24 were meeting in America by 1700. However, it was not until the Great Awakening, a nationwide revival in the 1730s, that Baptists had their first major period of growth.

A House Divided

The split of Baptists between North and South in 1845 was in some ways a prototype of the split of the nation in 1861, and resulted from some of the same issues. Richard Furman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and for whom Furman University is named, wrote in 1822 what is still regarded as the most able American defense of slavery. Though most Baptists in the South were too poor to own slaves, they vigorously defended the practice.

Baptists in the North, whose region profited more from the importation of slaves than from their labor, developed a sensitive conscience on the subject, especially after importing slaves was outlawed. The denomination split in 1845 when the mission boards declined to appoint slave owners as missionaries.

Other issues contributed to this division. Baptists in the South preferred a strong central denomination, while Baptists in the North preferred a loose-knit system that conducted benevolent ministries through independent “societies” not connected with the churches. Baptists in the South also complained, with some justification, that the American Baptist Home Mission Society, headquartered in New York City, failed to send a fair share of home missionaries to labor in the South.

Just As They Are

Jan Hall

Pastor’s wife.

Simi Valley, California

Generations of Southern Baptists: At least two

Have you ever denied or wanted to deny being a Southern Baptist?

I’ve never wanted to deny it, but I have run into problems when people here in California don’t understand or have misconceptions of what “southern” means. So I sort of object to the “southern” in the title.

Favorite potluck dish:

Chilis rellenos.

Least favorite:

Jello.

On growing up Southern Baptist:

I feel very fortunate to have been raised in a Southern Baptist church. Each church is autonomous, and the authority in each church is the Bible and the Holy Spirit. If you have a question, you don’t go to Nashville or the state office or wherever, you go to the Bible.

It’s important for young Christians to get that foundation, as I did. Baptists will fight tooth and nail for that.

Though Southern Baptists entered the twentieth century as a minor-league denomination, the spiritual climate of the South seemed to fit hand-in-glove with the Southern Baptist ethos, and their numbers grew rapidly. Southern Baptists’ emphasis upon religious individualism matched the cultural individualism of their environment. Their fervent evangelism represented a spinoff from the older camp meetings that formed such a vital part of Southern social as well as religious history. And perhaps no religious group in America so clearly addressed the hungers and aspirations of its host culture, leading to what Martin Marty dubbed the “baptistification” of American religion. Soon their appeal—and their numbers—spread to other parts of the country.

Out Of Dixie

As late as World War I, the term “Southern” in the convention title reflected accurate geography. However, by 1950 more Southern Baptists lived outside the Magnolia Belt than in it.

Southern Baptist churches now meet in all 50 states. And on any given Sunday, they conduct worship in more than 80 different languages in this country alone. Growth is especially pronounced among Asian and Hispanic communities.

Places such as Macon, Mobile, and Savannah were once centers of Baptist strength; now Dallas, Houston, and Oklahoma City are emerging as key cities, joined by Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Portland. In the future, expansion may carry the Southern Baptist name into such un-Southern venues as Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton.

This expansion out of Dixie has brought Southern Baptists into conflict with other Baptists. Leaders of the Northern Baptist Convention (which changed its name to the American Baptist Convention in 1950 and to the American Baptist Churches USA in 1972) described the encroaching Southern Baptist presence as an “invasion.”

Before World War I, Baptists North and South had agreed that each group would stick to its own territory. These “comity agreements,” however, never worked well, and after 1942 did not work at all.

In 1950 and 1951 the SBC met in Chicago and San Francisco, hardly typical Southern sites. The 1951 convention adopted a tart resolution that Southern Baptists would henceforth hold themselves free to plant churches and minister to “any community or any people anywhere in the United States.”

Inevitably, the issue of a name change was raised. Advocates pointed out that in the North, the regional adjective brought the same reaction as a red flag to a bull. They wanted a name change to reflect the new geographic realities and to avoid barriers to their work.

Others defended the name on the basis that it represented more than geography; it had acquired a theological image that would be damaging to lose and difficult to rebuild under another name. The issue was further complicated by the fact that no acceptable alternative was found.

In 1973 the convention voted to keep the present name, though many churches outside the South have learned how to maintain their SBC identity without calling undue attention to it.

See You In Sunday School

A major factor in the twentieth-century growth of Southern Baptists has been their Sunday schools. For most denominations, and for most Baptists, Sunday school is a training center for children. But to most Southern Baptists, “Sundayschoolandchurch” has become one word and one experience. And more important, the Sunday school has been adapted to all ages, including adults.

Just when “adult education” became important to a generation of Americans, Southern Baptist churches had in place a structure that afforded adult study and discussion groups. In 1987, they enrolled almost eight million persons, with almost 50 percent of them attending Bible study classes on any given Sunday.

How The Convention Works

A Southern Baptist church is independent. The church owns its own property, sets its own budget, employs and dismisses its own pastors and staff, is responsible for its own debts, and in general runs its own affairs. This autonomy is balanced by voluntary cooperation with other churches in associations and conventions.

The association covers a small area, perhaps a county, where churches group together for communication and fellowship, and to extend their ministries at a local level.

The state convention, as the name implies, includes churches within a state. These churches work together on such projects as planting new churches, sponsoring Baptist colleges and universities, and strengthening the educational and evangelistic ministries of the churches.

The Southern Baptist Convention is the national structure through which more than 37,000 churches pool their resources for missions, evangelism, theological education, and other ministry causes.

These levels of Baptist structure are independent areas, rather than a hierarchy of organization. Each is autonomous in its sphere; no level extends its authority to any other level. Each local church decides whether to affiliate at all, or in which levels of denominational work it will participate. Each local congregation sends representatives directly to each body.

These representatives are called “messengers” rather than “delegates,” to emphasize that they vote their own convictions. They carry no delegated authority from the churches to association, state, or national bodies; and they carry no authority from these bodies back to the churches.

Ministries beyond the local church are funded through the Cooperative Program, a kind of ecclesiastical United Fund. Each church decides independently how much money it will contribute to the Cooperative Program. It sends its contributions to the state convention, which retains a percentage for work in that state, and forwards the balance to SBC offices in Nashville. The Executive Committee recommends a proposed budget, by which the funds are parceled out to the mission boards, seminaries, and other causes. The convention must ratify that budget.

The president of the SBC appoints the committees that, in turn, appoint the groups that exercise direct control over the mission boards, seminaries, and other convention agencies. This appointive power makes the SBC president one of the most powerful ecclesiastical figures in America.

By H. Leon McBeth.

The results of the Sunday school movement have been far reaching. Many Southern Baptists can tell more about the geography and history of Palestine than of their own country. And the Sunday school has probably helped condition a segment of American citizens to support the nation Israel on the assumption that modern Israelis are the same “children of Israel” they met in Bible study.

The Sunday school also provides an evangelistic avenue: People who attend Sunday school are far more likely to join the church. And it serves as the major financial collection agency for Southern Baptists. Most members make their offerings not in the collection plates in church, but through the Sunday school classes.

Movin’ On Up

Are Southern Baptist ministers moving up the social ladder?

I recently addressed that question in a study identifying several indicators of upward mobility (personal income, professional education—both discussed here—public acceptance, and performance in ministry) and applying them to SBC ministers. The results pointed to an upward mobility little known to the denomination before the 1950s.

Sizable salaries

For starters, there is the matter of money.

Wages among Baptist ministers were low in earlier times, typified by an incident related by J. M. Carroll, a noted Texas Baptist leader. He had been pastor of a rural church in Texas where he preached on one Saturday and the following Sunday of each month. His salary was set at $75 per year. The amount bothered some of the church members, and a motion was made to reduce his salary to $25 per year. According to Carroll, the argument in support of the motion went something like this:

“The pastor gives to us but two days in each month, and one of these days is Sunday. It is not right to charge for or pay for Sunday work, so the pastor gives us only twelve work days in the year. Even $25 a year is large pay—a little more than $2 a day. We can get good hands on the farms for 50 cents a day.”

Compare that with the revelation that the highest local church pastor’s salary in the nation ($149,150) is claimed by a Southern Baptist pastor in Dallas, Texas (not W. A. Criswell, pastor of the Dallas First Baptist Church). But that figure must be balanced with the fact that 61.5 percent of the churches cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention have a membership of 299 or less; and only 7.136 percent of Southern Baptist churches have more than one thousand members. In Texas, 65 percent of the churches are single-staff churches in which the pastor is the only paid staff member. And 20 percent of the churches and missions have a bivocational pastor who also works at secular employment.

Those figures must also be balanced with the understanding that the average total compensation for pastors in the smaller churches is just above the bottom 20 percent of median family income. Commenting on the salary findings of a survey sponsored by the Minister’s Financial Services Association, Michael J. Springer, the executive director of the association, said that when compared with the $50,525 median income for people across the nation with graduate education—equivalent to seminary—many ministers “could possibly be significantly underpaid.”

Trained “professionals”

Along with buying power comes education as a sign of upward mobility. Prior to the American Revolution, Baptist ministers were secured from four sources: immigrants from the British Isles, some of whom had received theological training in their homeland or on the Continent; preachers from other faiths who accepted Baptist views and continued their ministry; graduates from schools such as Hopewell Academy (formed in 1756) and Brown University (1764), later aided by Colgate University (1819), Columbian College (1821), and Newton Theological Institute (1825); and preachers who were privately tutored in the homes of older, experienced Baptist ministers. Added to this were the men in local Baptist churches who were set aside as ministers, usually without the benefit of theological education.

The lack of an educational requirement for ordination meant that a large percentage of Baptist ministers had no formal theological training. More were self-educated than seminary educated; most of their reading was the Bible.

Today, however, the Southern Baptist Convention operates six seminaries in addition to a Seminary Extension Department. In 1985–86 (as reported in the 1987 Annual), the total cumulative enrollment was 14,947. In that same reporting period, 3,922 students graduated from Southern Baptist seminaries.

When churches expect their pastors to have both college and seminary experience, the level of ministerial education is raised. And more churches are expecting a more highly educated ministry.

The combination of higher wages and academic training is unquestionably transforming the image of the Southern Baptist pastor. That that transformation remains for the good is a critical challenge facing the denomination in the days ahead: power and money have a way of undermining even the most respectable ministries.

By James E. Carter, director of Church-Minister Relations Division, Louisiana Baptist Convention, Alexandria, Louisiana.

The Baptist Way

Novelist William Faulkner once quipped that being Southern Baptist is a state of mind that has nothing to do with God, man, the universe, or anything else. At the core of Southern Baptist beliefs, however, are the ame basic doctrines as other evangelical Christians (see “What They Believe,” page 22).

Worship varies in Southern Baptist churches, from liturgical styles that include a robed minister presiding in a divided chancel, to informal revivalistic services with gospel songs and fervent preaching. Most sermons conclude with a “gospel invitation” in which the preacher urges people to come forward to signify they wish to receive Christ as personal Savior.

Like most in the free-church tradition, Southern Baptist congregations run their own financial and ecclesiastical affairs. Each church, not the denomination, decides whom to ordain as deacons and preachers. Because of this freedom, ordination standards are not uniform. Some SBC churches ordain women as well as men; others do not.

This congregational autonomy is balanced by cooperation with other churches in associations and conventions. However, these denominational structures are advisory only and have no control over the local congregations (see “How the Convention Works,” page 19).

At their formation in 1845, Southern Baptists refused to adopt any confession, preferring the direct authority of the Bible alone. But in 1925 and again in 1963, the SBC adopted a confession of faith. In 1987 the convention voted an official interpretation of the confession, which, some say, moves Southern Baptists further from the Bible itself and another step toward creedalism.

The old image of Southern Baptists as people who don’t dance, drink, or play cards—fortunately or unfortunately—no longer holds true. While Southern Baptists seek to teach and practice a lifestyle of rigorous morality, social dancing is increasingly common and social drinking is not unknown, though still frowned upon by most.

On weightier moral issues, most Southern Baptists oppose abortion on demand, the use of narcotic drugs, and alcohol abuse. They tend to favor a strong military, a capitalist economy, a limited government, and rigorous law enforcement. Most still favor complete religious liberty for all, safeguarded by separation of church and state (though in recent years some appear to be softening on this issue).

Just As They Are

Brad Creed

Pastor, First Baptist Church.

Natchitoches, Louisiana

Generations of Southern Baptists: Four

On being “born again”:

I can’t remember when I was not aware of the love of God. At age 11, I made this important faith commitment to Christ. A counselor at camp led me in a prayer of salvation—nothing intensely emotional, but earnest, real, and life changing.

What I did as a teen that the church said I shouldn’t do:

Laughed and cut up during worship service, especially when Mrs. H. sang a solo.

Favorite potluck dish:

Bertha Williams’s cornbread casserole.

Least favorite:

Anything with mushroom soup and Velveeta cheese.

Personal doctrinal struggle:

In college, I struggled to reconcile science (biological evolution) and the Scriptures. Today, I struggle with reconciling Baptist individualism with the New Testament church.

Unlike most prominent denominations, Southern Baptists have little to do with ecumenical ventures. The convention has no official relation to the World Council or National Council of Churches. However, many individual Southern Baptists attend these meetings, and local churches usually cultivate cordial relations with neighboring churches of other denominations.

Moderates And Conservatives

Baptists are no strangers to controversy, but as recent headlines show, Southern Baptists seem especially contentious. The present conflict between “moderate” Southern Baptist leaders and their “conservative” or fundamentalist counterparts has convulsed the convention for more than a decade.

At stake is nothing less than control of the whole denomination, including its mission boards, seminaries, and considerable resources.

In 1979, the conservative faction, led by Dallas minister Paige Patterson and Houston judge Paul Pressler, launched a bold campaign whose goal was announced in advance: to capture control of the SBC. The conservatives saw clearly that the key to control was the convention presidency, and they have succeeded for the past ten years in electing their candidate. As a result, most of the mission boards and seminaries are now controlled by conservative/fundamentalist trustees. It remains to be seen whether their actions will be as radical as their rhetoric has sometimes been (see “Where They Are Going,” page 26).

Perhaps the conservative movement in the SBC is best understood as part of the overall American resurgence of conservatism during the Reagan era. Many Southern Baptists seek a return to traditional values in society as well as in religion. They helped put President Reagan in office, and have generally supported his conservative political and social agenda.

Whatever the outcome of this battle for control of the convention, it is clear the controversy has adversely affected financial contributions and growth, and has devastated the public image of Southern Baptists.

The Southern Baptists have provided one of America’s ecclesiastical success stories. In a system sometimes described as “a rope of sand,” they have balanced autonomy with cooperation to survive and prosper as a body of believers. Their future, to a large extent, will depend upon the outcome of their present internal crisis. So far, the rope has held.

H. Leon McBeth is professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and author of The Baptist Heritage (Broadman).

The symbol of the sixties is desecrated, and a generation falls headlong into its midlife crisis.

You know it ain’t easy

You know how hard it can be

The way things are going

They’re going to crucify me.

—John Lennon, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”

Just call it “The Last Temptation of John Lennon.” A new biography (The Lives of John Lennon), depicting the ex-Beatle as a drug-crazed, sex-obsessed introvert, has caused a media-grabbing stir among rock ‘n’ rollers and baby boomers alike. No less than one-time partner Paul McCartney says the book is full of lies. And a recent poll revealed that 97 percent of those questioned “have their doubts about the book.”

Talk of a “bio boycott” is in the air: A symbol—perhaps the symbol—of the sixties is being threatened. And with it, the legacy of a generation that promised the world peace, love, and community—qualities, according to Tom Morganthau of Newsweek, “that have sadly proven as ephemeral as flower power.”

Lennon was, perhaps, the last, best hope for a now middle-aged generation wanting the assurance that it did not demonstrate in vain; that its youthful idealisms really do have a place in the real world—venereal disease and drug addiction notwithstanding. A fallen hero, a martyr (Lennon was murdered in December 1980), Lennon died—or so public perception goes—with his idealism intact, his vision for peace in focus. Now we are told his life was programmed to self destruct.

In our more common-sensical moments, age and AIDS tell us it could be no other way; Lennon simply lived out the consequences of a self-indulgent ideology. Says Morganthau: “The boomers are losing the hubris of youth in the big-little struggles of daily life: children must be fed and taught, bills and taxes must be paid. Drugs and promiscuity are every bit as dangerous as mom and dad said they were. Che Guevara is dead. Vietnam is drearily imperialistic and Jane Fonda has apologized for her pilgrimage to Hanoi.”

You say you want a revolution?

Well you know we all want to change the world.

—John Lennon, “Revolution”

From the lofty perspective of middle age, neither the Lennon revelations (be they true or false) nor the sixties postmortems currently in vogue hold any surprises, really. Yet there is a darker reality underlying these media machinations that demands more than fond memories and quick-fix therapies: A nagging sense of hopelessness (the antithesis of the sixties spirit) persists in the subconscious of a generation in the throes of its own midlife crisis.

“‘We are the world,’ we shouted just a couple of years ago. And just a couple of years ago we were,” writes “investigative humorist” P. J. O’Rourke. “How did we wind up so old? So fat? So confused? So broke?”

Probably because the gods of the sixties proved too uncontrollable and destructive. In the aftermath of a distant dream called the “Woodstock Nation,” a community that was to have been built on the gospel of “luv,” has come a disturbing alienation—the sense of every man for himself, by himself. “The communal ideal depended on an equal sharing of the load,” reflected sixties musician Peter Tork, “and who in the 60s wanted that kind of hassle? The perpetually stoned ideal presupposed no commitments in the real world.” Frustrated idealism has given way to the rabid demand for consumer goods in the seventies and eighties, and the growing realization that the one who dies with the most toys doesn’t really win.

What this alienation will mean over the next 30 to 40 years for the largest single generation ever to populate the United States is anyone’s guess. No doubt a common cause or two will momentarily capture our imaginations, complete with heroes articulating a new way to a brighter day (and, we can hope, symbolizing something more permanent and positively life transforming than Lennon, or Hugh Hefner, or Ivan Boesky did). But one thing is certain: In this search for a meaningful tomorrow, the church has a mission field cut out for it that 20 years ago it was unwilling to acknowledge.

God is a concept

by which we measure our pain.

—John Lennon, “God”

The flower children of the sixties identified the church as a tradition of the “old way,” and the church, in turn, responded by criticizing or ignoring the “new way.” The church, which should have been a community of hurting and healed people (a model that, had it been preached, would have attracted more social dropouts than it eventually did at the time), polarized around sociopolitical issues and became a closed community instead.

Ironically, the wall separating “them” from “us” was eventually breached by an uncritical “do your own thing” ethic. Its legacy within the church, then and now, is the temptation to water down doctrine in an effort to be all things to all people.

But those who withstand that temptation today hold an unusually strong attraction to sixties survivors: the epithet, “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” has been replaced by an intensified search for something—or someone—with a vision that can be trusted. The generation that is still struggling with a decade of bad drugs and bad dreams may finally be willing to heed the call to true servanthood as revealed by the God of the Bible rather than to sacrifice to the short-sighted gods of a particular age.

“I can’t handle the uppers, downers, and all-around-towners which have skewed my life since the Sixties,” said a former society dropout quoted recently in Mother Jones. “The means (drugs) gradually superseded the ends (decency, community, peace, love),” this Great Plains rancher wrote in his Christmas letter. “The party was over, but we didn’t leave. It’s time for me to take it the way the Lord made it. Turns out that isn’t half bad.”

The potential for spiritual renewal among the survivors of the sixties is abetted by the presence of their own children—a new generation destined, like the preceding one, to wander from acid to ashram to whatever is next in search of truth. For the generation once committed to the folly of “endless youth,” the future is now. Living in the moment is no longer possible, as former flower children grow older, and their children need something to believe in that will help them avoid the mistakes of their parents.

The halcyon days of the sixties were short-lived and short-sighted. And a nation that mourns their passing is itself short-sighted, or frustrated that its “best” efforts lead to the same meaninglessness and alienation that its “flower power” was to have resolved once and for all. Burned by sensuality, hedonism, and materialism, the sixties generation is now primed to give true peace a chance. And the church is in a position to provide a Way that will finally lead us out of the past, and into a brighter day.

By Harold Smith.

One of the most enduring biblical images of leadership is Moses with raised arms presiding over the battling Israelites in the Rephidim Valley below. When his arms were raised, the battle went well. When he tired and let them fall, the Amalekites began to win. One can well imagine how quickly the Israelite warriors caught on to this dynamic and how, when fatigue or fear began to get the better of them, they would steal a glance to the top of the hill and see Moses’ triumphant gesture outlined against the horizon. Then, reinspired by this charismatic figure of power and the mysterious connection between his posture and their well-being, they would redouble their efforts.

The contrast between this picture of Moses and the political leadership in the United States is jarring. Even allowing for different cultures, there still seems to be little comparison between the two brands of leadership. Our leaders today rarely attempt to inspire with a vision of the future or even a symbolic gesture of potential power in the present. On the rare occasions when they do, we virtually ensure it won’t happen again by dismissing it as public relations hokum. We are too cool to be led by such nonsense.

Indeed, our coolness ensures that we won’t be so led. As we go to the polls, we can be sure that we will select a President who will not inspire us. George Bush and Michael Dukakis can both manage the affairs of state. They are experienced politicians with records studded with deeds of legislative savvy and bureaucratic cow-punching. But neither has a hint of the mystique of great leadership; if either raised his arms heavenward in an attempt to inspire, the press would report on the perspiration stains underneath, and the two would respond by defending their brand of deodorant.

Perhaps there is no way to restore the charisma of leadership to the presidential office, of ensuring that our system will promote rather than discourage leaders with skill from rising to positions of power. We live in a secular, individualistic age that discourages leadership with a spiritual vision or bold authority. Stung by excesses of power on many different levels of American society, our middle-aged and young people developed an understandable dislike for authority. But have we gone too far?

There is certainly no shortage of either leadership or authority in Christianity. Our faith demands both a belief in the mystery of incarnational power and humility before the common good. If only a fraction of those two characteristics—just a faint, secularized hint of these essential Christian attributes—could be reinjected into the characters of our national leaders by Christians who understand them, then perhaps we could do more to revitalize our political process than we can with all the rest of our political activism put together. We need to encourage (vote for) young political leaders who are willing to take the risks of good leadership rather than play it safe on the managerial middle road. As it stands, leaders are discouraged from such action. It will take time, but we could change that.

By Terry Muck

People give for all sorts of reasons. Some are praiseworthy (to meet needs or express deeply held convictions), some are not (to get something in return or avoid paying taxes). Truly Bible-based fund-raising efforts should humbly address the former without pandering to the latter. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, as these real-life examples show:

Televangelist “Richards” sends to his millions of “prayer companions” a small, glassine envelope containing a few “seeds for needs.” His cover letter announces that God told him to hold a special service on June 15, when seeds planted in faith by him and his “companions” will induce God to care for their physical, spiritual, and financial needs. The process might be helped along, Richards suggests, if the “companion” sends a gift of $66 or $666. Why? Because “faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:26, NIV)—“deeds” here interpreted as “donations.”

Pastor “Marquardt” provides his parishioners with a pledge card. If they agree to tithe their income for the next 60 days, they sign the attached “divine guarantee” stub. If God has not blessed them by the end of the assigned period, Marquardt will return the money in full. How can he afford to make such a promise? Because of Malachi 3:10: “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it’”—“storehouse” here being interpreted as “local church” and “test me … and see” as a “money-back, 60-day guarantee.”

Deacon “Appleton,” to stimulate a building-fund campaign, emblazons across the front of the church sanctuary: “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18, KJV). The perils of lack of foresight are real enough, of course, but correctly understood, the verse has nothing to do with fund raising. The King James Version’s vision is a technical term for “prophetic revelation”; perish is a mistranslation for “show lack of restraint.” In other words, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the law” (NIV).

What The Bible Really Says

The Bible, which consistently describes the lavish generosity of God, does indeed have a great deal to say about proper human stewardship of divine resources. Wallis Turner, a fund-raiser friend of mine, appropriately stresses three biblical points: the source of the Christian steward’s ability to give (“it is [God] who gives you the ability to produce wealth,” Deut. 8:18); his responsibility to the Owner of everything (“the land is mine and you are but … my tenants,” Lev. 25:23; see also Ps. 24:1); and his accountability to the Lord of all (demonstrated by the principle set forth in Rom. 14:12: “Each of us will give an account of himself to God”).

In addition, we should give cheerfully, because God loves those who do so (2 Cor. 9:7). We should give liberally, because much has been and will be given to us (Luke 6:38). We should give sacrificially, because we walk in the footsteps of others who have done the same—and more (2 Cor. 8:1–5). We should give systematically, because there will then be no embarrassment later on (1 Cor. 16:2).

We should give in proportion to need (the “cup of cold water” of Matt. 10:42) and to resources (Deut. 16:17; 2 Cor. 8:12). And we should give as those who live in the light of the Incarnation: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

David Allan Hubbard has observed that the Book of Exodus, within a few short chapters, contains two examples of fund raising—one negative, the other positive. Aaron said to the people, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me” (Exod. 32:2). The result? A golden calf, fashioned in violation of the first and second commandments and therefore an abomination in God’s eyes.

Moses said to the people, “From what you have, take an offering for the Lord. Everyone who is willing is to bring to the Lord an offering of gold, silver, and bronze.…” (Exod. 35:5–9). The result? A tabernacle and its furnishings, fashioned exactly in accordance with the pattern that God himself had revealed.

Proper and heartfelt motivation, humble sensitivity to God’s will, honest simplicity in promotion, establishment of biblical priorities—these and similar principles, while not absolutely guaranteeing the success of our fund-raising efforts, may at least make possible the delightful serendipity enjoyed by Moses: “And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work” (Exod. 36:6–7).

Ronald Youngblood is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Bethel Seminary West in San Diego, California.

Speaking Out offers responsible Christians a forum for their views on contemporary issues. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

I have been thinking a lot recently about John.

A cheerful, genial little Welshman who could have become a professional cricketer (ballplayer to you), John chose instead to be a clergyman in the Church of England. He served small congregations for a quarter of a century before a brace of massive coronaries took him to glory.

A few of us thought of him as one of the best Reformed pastors in the business, but he was not well known. Balaam, the Faustian prophet who found himself unable to curse Israel even though he had sold his soul in order to do so, said, pathetically enough (for his sin had already ensured that in his case this could not be), “Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my end be like theirs!” (Num. 23:10). Though the world and the church hardly noticed John, I think of him every time I meet Balaam’s words.

He was a revival convert, brought to faith in his early teens when the Holy Spirit moved powerfully through his high school. I only found this out a decade after his death, but I should have deduced it from the start. I have never seen revival, but I have known enough revival converts to perceive that they are in a class by themselves. In revival, God comes close; the light of his holiness shines into the depths of memory and desire, highlighting the ugliness of one’s sins and making the burden of them intolerable. The conscience-cleansing blood of Christ becomes precious as never before, and the revival convert remains supremely sensitive to sin, both in himself and in others. Certainly, this was so with John all the years I knew him.

Our first conversation (in seminary) lasted about three hours. Its theme throughout (don’t laugh; it may sound funny, but it wasn’t) was the mortification of sin, a subject that had come up over the meal table. (“Mortification!” he said. “Let’s have a talk.”) Our shared awareness that salvation is neither in sin nor for sin, but from sin, was a factor that made us friends for life.

John’s pastoral preaching gained notice everywhere (not always friendly notice, be it said) because of the amount of pulpit time and analytical care he invested in detecting and exposing sin. That did not discourage him; he knew that invalids often dislike the taste of their medicine. In his later years, God used him to bring to chastity a number of practicing hom*osexuals, referred to him by other pastors and physicians who could do nothing with them.

I asked him the secret of his effectiveness. “They have got to see that it’s sin,” he told me; “I hold them to that.” I could see that there was more to it; had John not been a relaxed man’s man who walked with the strugglers in disciplined accountability relationships marked by warmth of pastoral friendship, I do not suppose he would have had this success. But insisting on the sinfulness of the sin was the hinge on which his entire therapy turned.

In the pulpit he explored tirelessly the realities of the life of faith, as God’s way of deliverance from the misery brought by disobedience and unbelief. He saw all our lapses, beginning with Eve’s in Eden, as springing from thoughtlessness that lets blind impulse take over, and insisted that under God the cure for sins and the road to righteousness starts with right thinking. As a biblical expositor he hammered away at this, modeling and enforcing it in message after message. Those who wanted a quick fix spiritually lost patience and left, but others found the diet nourishing and became increasingly human and wise in Christ.

John loved life and had not expected to die as early as he did, but during his ten days in the hospital before the second coronary struck he was a very peaceful patient. “I’ve done all I could, and I’m ready to go,” he said. He went, unnoticed by anyone, during a moment when the nurse’s back was turned. I think that is how he would have wished it; no self-advertisem*nt, and no fuss. For the Puritans, making a good end was the proper climax of discipleship. If you and I make as good an end as John, we shall do well. I hope we shall.

J. I. PACKER

Which Family Is First?

The article “Is the ‘Traditional’ Family Biblical?” [Sept. 16] sounds like the answer to every problem that faces today’s beleaguered family. Unfortunately, its idealism doesn’t always translate to healthy family life, if my experience is any indication. My husband and I, very young and idealistic, raised our children exactly as this article recommends. Our ties with our church family were more important than blood family ties. It was years before my husband and I, thoroughly inculcated with the “First Family” mindset, fully understood what our children had experienced. In some strange way, the church members became the enemy who robbed them of their family’s importance.

Our experience proves that to submerge blood family ties into a “First Family” is confusing for children. Children find their identities within the blood family unit.

ARLENE ANDERSON

Wheaton, Ill.

Amen to Clapp’s article. Over the past ten years I have had a nagging sensation that the family altar has become just that—a place to worship the family. As a pastor, I continually see the needy neglected in the name of “family.” As Clapp pointed out, the family of human blood and the family determined by the blood of Jesus are not in opposition to each other, but can only work when the blood of Christ is deemed greater. REV. RANDALL D. AHLBERG

Oxlip Evangelical Free Church

Isanti, Minn.

Clapp’s message is especially important for the church in light of the response to Ruth Tucker’s “When Mothers Must Work” [July 15]. Evangelicals are in danger of idolizing the traditional family to the point that they ignore their true responsibilities and potential ministry to working mothers. Judging by the response to Tucker’s article, Christians can’t seem to agree on the statistics of how many mothers work and for what reasons. But the issue is that many mothers work—for many reasons. And the confusion over statistics indicates that few Christians are aware of the social and economic realities for women in America today. Perhaps the best environment for children is not one in which the mother stays home, but one in which the whole family, as part of the larger family of God, reaches out to meet the needs of others.

JERON ASHFORD FRAME

West Chicago, Ill.

God’s vengeance and Universal Studios

Thank you for printing excerpts from your interview with Paul Schrader, who adapted the novel The Last Temptation of Christ for Universal Studios, and for your thorough reporting of the ongoing controversy [News, Sept. 16]. It hurts me to see my Christian brothers and sisters seeking to carry out what they believe to be God’s vengeance on Universal and MCA, especially in light of Paul’s admonitions to “bless those who persecute you” (Rom 12:14).

I applaud the NAE for having arranged to screen the film prior to publishing their statement. I also appreciate their balanced judgment, their noncondemnatory recommendation to Christians not to see the film, and their support of Universal’s right to make and distribute the picture. Truly, if one goes to the film wanting or expecting to see the Jesus of the Bible, one will be disappointed and, probably, disturbed. But if one is open to the possibility that through the vehicle of this film, we can join Kazantzakis in wrestling with the relationship of flesh and spirit, this film might just bring us to the conclusion—as it did one prominent film critic—that, if Jesus could be tempted as we are and yet resist that temptation, there is hope we can, too. I pray that those who have been called to see this film might grow in grace, even as those who have been called to oppose it.

REV. DOUGLAS A. ASBURY

Mount Hope United Methodist Church

McHenry, Ill.

Our brother’s keeper

George Brushaber [“Minding Someone Else’s Business,” Sept. 16] is one of those refreshing writers who reminds us that we are “our brother’s keeper.” I agree thoroughly that unless a Christian puts himself into the biblically prescribed discipline of the body (whether as disciple or discipler), he will be “unsuccessful” as a Christian, with all that may portend.

RUSS BURCHAM, JR., D.D.S.

Kennet, Mo.

Sweet Dreams Of Success

I was sleepily watching TV late the other night, catnapping between old reruns and grade-C movies, when I thought I came across a fascinating religious talk show.

The first guest was a pro football quarterback—third string. A low draft choice out of a small college, he’d bounced from one team’s bench to the next. He didn’t have much fame or fortune to gush over, just a full measure of faith that had carried him through injuries and disappointments.

Next came an attractive young woman who had competed in this year’s Miss America contest. No, she hadn’t won. In fact, she hadn’t even made the finals.

After being introduced, she sang a classic hymn in a simple, straightforward style—and without commentary. The song wasn’t on her latest album. In fact, she’d never recorded an album. She sang because she enjoyed it.

The third guest was the pastor of a church that had grown by only one member in the past month—a man who had finally responded after 20 years of loving, patient witness by members of his congregation.

And the last guest …

“Euty, wake up,” my wife said as she jostled me on the shoulder.

“No, it can’t be,” I mumbled to myself.

With a click on the remote control I blackened the snowy TV screen and shuffled off to the bedroom—eager for a rerun of my dream.

EUTYCHUS

Paranormal: Real or unreal?

Thank you for printing the Hexhams’ article on the dangerous New Age mythology [“The Soul of the New Age,” Sept. 2]. Their description of New Age beliefs as well as their assertion that many of these heretical beliefs rest upon evolutionary assumptions is helpful. However, they note the importance of recognizing that many paranormal pieces of the New Age belief system (such as stories about UFOS, ghosts, occult encounters, and miraculous healings) are not real, but frauds. This is true; but if they are suggesting there are never any real paranormal experiences of the types above currently happening in our world, I disagree. The Bible and Jesus Christ clearly teach us the existence of real, normally nonmaterial entities, known in our world as God’s angels and Satan’s demons. The experience of many people today, including my own as a pastor in occasionally exorcistic ministry, validates the real existence of these entities. REV. MARK WINSLOW

First Mennonite Church

Allentown, Pa.

So often we speak of UFOS, “fauns and spirits, who control both nature and human destinies,” and occult experiences of many kinds as if they were not real, did not happen, could not happen, and are to be explained away with “the truth.” The trouble is, they are true. Saul went to the witch of Endor and called up Samuel. But the Bible also says this is not of God and not to be done. When do we come to the point of saying yes, these things are so, but we are not to deal in them? Satan has not yet been chained, even though Christ has been victorious over him, and we can be, too.

As the Hexhams mentioned, there are a lot of uninformed and confused Christians, or almost Christians, who can be snatched from Satan’s grasp before it is too late. JERRAL B. WIMBERLEY

Buhl, Idaho

Many serious Atlantis scholars equate the fabled lost city (not continent) with the sunken “Tartessus” near Cadiz: “Tartessus” in turn is identified with “Tarshish.” If this is accurate, Atlantis is not only historical, but a biblical reality as well. H. L. JONES

Montclair State College

Upper Montclair, N.J.

One of us?

I noticed that the article on Pannenberg [“Reasonable Christianity,” Sept. 2] tended to treat him as if he is “just one of us.” This was truly courteous, but could also be misleading. In his Anthropology and Theological Perspective, Pannenberg does not acknowledge the personality of the Holy Spirit, accepts evolutionary assumptions, and treats death as a result of our humanness rather than as a result of the Fall. Would not a more balanced perspective have been more helpful to most readers?

VERNON C. LYONS

Chicago, Ill.

Is Satanism alive?

Katherine Kam’s article about Satanism [News, Sept. 2] was unfair to Edward J. Gallup. To place his photo alongside the headline, “Ritual Killings Have Satanic Overtones,” and to quote prosecutor Bill Lasswell that “children have alleged chanting, wearing black robes, and burning of candles” cruelly insinuates he is a practicing Satanist. What could, and should, have been added was that despite exhaustive investigations and searches of the Gallup homes and schools, no evidence was collected to support these or other allegations. Many of us are praying, as are the Gallups, that justice will ultimately prevail. L. A. SUITER

Nampa, Idaho

Following a severe depressive breakdown, I have been in Christian psychotherapy for three-and-one-half years. Memories of ritualistic abuse surfaced, which I had long repressed. I have found few people in the church to talk to about the pain I suffered. Most American Christians believe these things only happen elsewhere (Haiti, Africa, etc.), and Satan is primarily active here in X-rated films. How spiritually blind many of us are! The abuse is hard to believe, but I believe it has been and is occurring.

NAME WITHHELD

Teaching in L.A.

The honesty and fairness one expects in CT was absent when Stand and Deliver was reviewed more as a documentary than a film 8 based on a true story [The Arts, Sept. 2]. To highlight the protagonist and introduce conflict and tensions, script writers take much dramatic license, and the words according to the film should thus have preceded the statement “The reigning wisdom at Garfield High dictates that Hispanic kids are dim bulbs.” By itself, that statement is a lie. Advanced Placement (college credit) classes are not uncommon at Garfield. Future-oriented clubs are sponsored. (Significantly, our library was rejected for the film because it was “too modern.” All library and other indoor shots were taken at another school.)

Escalante is without question an outstanding teacher; but ignored for the sake of the story line are some of the most creative teachers in Los Angeles.

BETH BARNHART

Garfield High Teacher

Los Angeles, Calif.

Ministering to the disabled

Cheers for the three-day congress on the church and the disabled held in July [News, Aug. 12]. Human disability cuts across every boundry of denomination and label. It is not quite accurate to claim the congress as a first-of-its-kind event, however; I attended a similar gathering at Kansas City in 1981 sponsored by the American Lutheran Church.

We need to learn about, respect, and coordinate better the church’s various ministries; further, we need to aim them more at activities with, instead of to, those living in handicapping conditions. The chronically mentally ill—underserved by all—represents one starting point. STEWART D. GOVING

Pacific Lutheran University

Tacoma, Wash.

Letters are welcome. Brevity is preferred, and all are subject to condensation. Write to Eutychus, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.