Page 5512 – Christianity Today (2024)

Old document confirms Missouri faction’s position.

When the founder of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith, Jr., was assassinated in Illinois in 1844, a squabble erupted over who would succeed him. Brigham Young convinced a majority that the leadership should pass to the body known as the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. As head of that group, Young accepted the mantle of succession and led the party westward to Utah.

Dissenters, including Smith’s mother, widow, and brother, believed that Smith wanted his son, Joseph Smith III, to be the heir. The younger Smith’s followers remained behind, eventually settling in Independence, Missouri, under the name Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (only the church based in Utah uses the name “Mormon”).

A problem in the Missouri faction was that no one could prove the founder wanted his lineal descendents to succeed him. There were only reports of conversations about his wishes. It was an important discovery, therefore, when a young collector of Mormon artifacts recently came across the transcript of the blessing Joseph Smith pronounced upon his son five months before his death. The blessing contained this crucial wording: “… the anointing of the progenitor shall be upon the head of my son, and his seed after him, from generation to generation. For he shall be my successor to the presidency of the high priesthood, a seer and a revelator, and a prophet unto the church, which appointment belongeth to him by blessing and also by right.”

The document was dated January 17, 1844, and for the first time it pinpointed what the reorganized church in Missouri always believed: that their wing was in the line of succession ordained by Joseph Smith.

Although the document was an important historical find, neither branch of the church is making a big deal out of it. “We have no interest in pursuing old nineteenth-century battles,” said Richard Howard, historian of the reorganized church in Independence. “The Mormon church has settled the issue of descent to their satisfaction and we have settled it to ours.”

The Missouri church has been led by Smith’s descendents ever since his death (currently, the prophet is Wallace Smith, the great-grandson of the founder), but the church does not believe it is locked into the Smith family forever. More important considerations when a prophet chooses his successor are a sense of divine will and acceptance by the church members.

Besides that, there is some doubt that when Joseph Smith, Jr., blessed his son, he really intended the blessing to mark him as successor since the boy was only 11 years old at the time and did not understand the blessing to be a sign of succession. Although he led the Missouri church for 54 years (1860–1914), the son acknowledged that “It is not a birthright to be president of the church. [It is] by virtue of fitness and qualification, I may say, and good behavior and the choice of the people.”

What is most likely to happen is that the Missouri church, numbering 224,000, will continue to live in harmony with, and be out-numbered by, the Utah Mormons, who have some 2.6 million members (4.7 million worldwide). For one thing, the reorganized church in Missouri does not employ temple worship as do the Utah Mormons with their highly secretive and exclusive liturgy. And the two branches are far apart theologically. The Missouri church is far closer to orthodox Christianity in its views of Scripture and the Trinity than the decidedly unchristian brethren in Utah.

The IRS Alerts Its Agents

Courts Check Spread Of Phony Mail-Order Ministers

People have become mail-order ministers to evade the draft, avoid taxes, and even to keep a disco open after 2:00 A.M. as a “religious establishment.” All of this has the Internal Revenue Service agitated enough to issue instructions to tax agents that tell them how to spot phony ministers.

The mail-order ministers are so called because they are ordained through the mail, paying a small fee to companies willing to give them credentials. But the IRS suspects as many as 10,000 persons are now mail-order ministers so they can illegitimately enjoy the tax benefits of religious organizations.

Judges, sensitive about church-state separation, have upheld the right of mail-order churches to exist. But blatant abusers of tax exemptions for religious organizations are consistently losing in tax court.

The biggest problem, said a spokesman for the IRS, is the person who gets ordained and starts a church merely to funnel his normal living expenses through it. Then the typical offender claims deductions because he supposedly has given his income to a nonprofit entity. Early this year, the IRS took 10 Braniff International airline pilots to court, alleging the pilots’ Basic Bible Church was bogus as a church, but the real thing as a tax fraud.

Mail-order churches claim they fulfill many traditional church functions. California’s Mother Earth American Fellowship Church, for example, claims its ministers will conduct weddings and funerals.

One Mother Earth minister, Mark Hackman, admitted he presides over no regular meetings; neither does he even have a set meeting place. He, said applicants for ordination are not questioned about their motives, although Mother Earth Church does disapprove tax evasion. Some ministers may abuse their mail-order ordination, he said, but any freedom can be abused. “More people are benefitted by this service than are harmed.”

The president of Mother Earth Church, Ted Swenson, defends his operation and others like it in light of the First Amendment: “In this country, anyone can establish a religion, no matter how nuts.”

Americans like credentials, and Swenson’s service offers help for “people who just feel that they are not worthy because they don’t have a credential.” Having such documents may give some applicants a boost in morale, but Swenson said his church leaves spiritual growth and development to the individual.

The IRS stipulates that any agency claiming benefits as a religious organization must “actually be operated for religious purposes.” The organization also “cannot be operated to further the private interests of its founder or other individuals.”

In at least two cases last year, the tax court ruled against organizations it considered to be in violation of that stipulation. In Walker v. Commissioner, the court said it would not allow tax law to be “subverted by those who would twist it to their own private benefit—regardless of the scheme or artifice by which it is attempted.”

The ‘Jupiter Effect’

Scientist Retracts Theory But Believers Won’T Budge

A book published in 1974 has many people believing 1982 will be a year of earthquakes terrible enough to destroy Los Angeles. Some pastors are still preaching about the “Jupiter Effect,” even though one of the authors of the book that started it all has denounced his earlier claims. “If anyone tries to warn you about the Apocalypse coming in 1982, just tell him that the old theory has long since been disproved,” wrote scientist John Gribbin in the June 1980 issue of Omni magazine.

Gribbin and coauthor Stephen Plagemann wrote The Jupiter Effect, they said, to warn Californians that a unique alignment of the planets might result in catastrophic earthquakes in 1982. Gribbin and Plagemann surmised that the San Andreas Fault was due for collapse, and that the slightest nudge would aggravate the fault, shaking major cities to their foundations.

The authors, according to science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in a foreword to the book, went looking for the fatal nudge on a trail that took “them not only over all the earth, but to the Sun and through all the Solar System and even beyond.” The chase was, it turns out, a wild goose chase.

Astronomers never took The Jupiter Effect seriously. One called it “absurd and inaccurate.” Another, who said his California observatory still gets at least two calls a week on the Jupiter Effect, labeled it “nonsense.”

Finally, Gribbin himself lashed out at The Jupiter Effect in the June issue of Omni. “I have bad news for the doomsayers,” he wrote. “The book has now been proved wrong; the whole basis for the 1982 prediction is gone.”

Rumors, however, die hard. Some Christians are still looking to 1982 as a year of quakes that will echo the words of Christ about his Second Coming: “… and there will be famines and earthquakes.”

The Gospel Tract Society of Independence, Missouri, has printed two million copies of a tract that warns of “Strange Events Forecast for 1982.” The Southwest Radio Church, based in Oklahoma City, continues to expect the Jupiter Effect. Christian college astronomy professors report being consistently questioned about the seven-year-old book.

All this was enough to convince Kansas minister Donald Wells that the Jupiter Effect needed investigation. Spurred by his amateur interest in astronomy, Wells researched scientific journals, queried astronomers, and wrote “What Alignment of the Planets?”—a six-page paper debunking the rumor and chiding Christians for buying it.

Exactly what is the Jupiter Effect? Gribbin and Plagemann’s cosmic chase convinced them a complex chain of events would climax in 1982 with serious earthquakes. Their chain included these links:

•The contention that planets exert tidal forces on the sun (much the same way the moon does on earth) and that all planets would align on the same side of the sun in 1982, maximizing the tidal force.

•The tidal force would provoke an overabundance of sunspots, with more sunspots meaning the higher probability of eruptions on the sun. The eruptions would shoot solar particles into the earth’s upper atmosphere.

•The increased solar particles would cause unusual movements of large air masses in the earth’s upper atmosphere, slowing the rate of the earth’s rotation.

•The change in the rate of the earth’s rotation would shake geological faults (like San Andreas) and cause massive earthquakes.

This chain was called the Jupiter Effect since Jupiter’s size and proximity to the sun makes its gravitational pull the greatest in the solar system. Soon after the publication of the book, Edward Upton of Los Angeles’s Griffith Observatory said, “There is not one solid link in the entire Gribbin-Plagemann chain. The combined chain, as a basis for predicting earthquakes, has the same credibility as a reading of tea leaves.”

A special weakness of the theory was the idea that all planets aligned on the same side of the sun would maximize the tidal force. Not so, say astronomers. In reality, planets can create equally strong tidal forces when some are on opposite sides of the sun, forming an “anti-alignment.”

Christians who tied the Jupiter Effect into their expectations of the end times also read the alignment as being a “perfect” arrangement of the planets, all in a straight line from the sun. Gribbin and Plagemann did write of an “unusual alignment” where “every planet is in conjunction with every other planet.” They also spoke of a “superconjunction with all nine planets in line on the same side of the Sun.” But astronomers know the alignment, though it will be unusual, will hardly be perfect. The planets will actually be spread out around one-fourth of the solar system, not aligned one behind the other like soldiers on parade.

Still, tracts continue to circulate the warning that “fearful things are shaping up in our solar system!” David Buttram, manager of Gospel Tract Society, said his company will continue to print “Strange Events” until “we are determined it is not accurate.” He said he was trying to reach Gribbin on the subject.

David Webber, president of Southwest Radio Church, was aware of Gribbin’s retraction, but still circulates “Apocalyptic Signs in the Heavens,” with 30,000 copies in print. He is convinced that heavenly signs are accumulating. “They bring evidence to bear on these things which suggest we may be living in the end times,” he said.

“Apocalyptic Signs” says Gribbin’s retraction reflects his concern for scientific respectability: “In reading the [Omni] article carefully, it seems evident that Mr. Gribbin disavows his theory more for the sake of appeasing his fellow scientists than anything else. All he actually does is move the date for increasing earthquakes and other astraterrestial predictions in The Jupiter Effect up a few months,” the booklet reads.

Gribbin does admit in the Omni article that he was probably more rash than good science allows, but it is not accurate to say he merely “moves the date for increasing earthquakes … up a few months.” In fact, Gribbin moves the date up two years, noting that sunspot activity reached its peak in 1979 and 1980, and that Los Angeles would fall before the end of 1980 if at all.

“But if Los Angeles is still standing by the end of the year, the rest of our forecast will have been invalidated,” he wrote. 1980 has passed. Los Angeles has not.

Christians, such as those Gribbin calls “weirdos” and “cultists,” have been expecting Christ’s Second Coming a long while. But those like Baptist pastor Wells, who says he also looks forward to the Second Coming, lament Christian gullibility. “What I can’t understand is why Christians are flocking to this book. Is it that they don’t care?” Wells writes in his paper. “Or is it that Christians simply never bother to check the facts?” Unfortunately, he believes, “Either answer is a sad commentary on our faith.”

RODNEY CLAPP

UPCUSA tenses for crucial May general assembly.

A church historian has called denominational splits the “favorite sport” of Presbyterianism. If that is so, the May meeting of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) general assembly could determine whether the “sport” becomes even more popular or less so. It depends on how the United Presbyterians settle the serious issues facing them at the assembly.

At least 46 congregations have left the denomination since last spring and, in the aftermath of an official decision to accept a pastoral candidate considered by some conservatives to be weak on the deity of Christ, many more are threatening separation. Three reasons are consistently given when the disgruntled congregations (mostly evangelical) list their grievances:

•The UPCUSA decision to mandate ordination of women and require that women elders be elected in each church.

•The probable passage of a measure to insure the denomination’s right to the church property of a separating congregation.

•The decision of the permanent judicial commission (the denomination’s “supreme court”) not to overturn a presbytery’s acceptance of ministerial candidate Mansfield Kaseman, who, in presbyterial examination, declared Jesus is not God, “God is God.”

Evangelicals in the UPCUSA are divided on the Kaseman case; the majority agree that, at most, the permanent judicial commission’s decision was a disciplinary error. This sector is represented by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns and the Presbyterian Lay Committee, two evangelical renewal groups within the denomination.

Richard Lovelace, a Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary professor and prominent member of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, has said the Kaseman testimony was too “ambiguous and ambivalent” to declare Kaseman unsound on Christ’s deity. He said the decision should not be interpreted as a change in the church’s doctrine.

Other evangelicals, who admit they are a minority, disagree. Former Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor John Gerstner served as counsel in the case against Kaseman and said the Kaseman decision “constitutes apostasy.” As far as Gerstner is concerned, “The UPCUSA doesn’t exist as a Christian church anymore.”

“It won’t do for the denomination to say it affirms the deity of Christ and then to legitimatize someone who doesn’t,” Gerstner said. But he is advising disappointed congregations to stay in the denomination until May, when the general assembly gathers.

To rectify the Kaseman decision, Gerstner believes the only thing the assembly can do is repudiate the decision and reaffirm Christ’s deity. “This is a dreadful thing and we want to give the church every conceivable possibility to repent,” he said.

Robert Stevenson, UPCUSA associate stated clerk, said such a view is a misunderstanding of the Kaseman decision. Instead, he said, the permanent judicial commission sought to reaffirm the right of the local presbytery to accept or reject ministerial candidates. In its written opinion, the commission noted some of Kaseman’s answers “may appear to be weak, or less than wholly adequate,” but declared it was loath to substitute its judgment for that of the lower body.

The opinion also restated and reapproved the denomination’s belief in the Trinity, Christ as God’s Son and second person of the Trinity, the Atonement, and the Bible as the Word of God. Just the same, “There are some churches which are rumbling,” Stevenson said. The UPCUSA officer who has been charged with monitoring church separations said no “rash of exits” followed the Kaseman ruling.

If anything is causing churches to bolt hastily, it is the property issue. Known as Overture A, this measure would close a constitutional loophole that allowed congregations to leave the denomination and take their property with them.

Overture A was approved by the general assembly last spring. Under United Presbyterian polity, it is now being considered by the 152 presbyteries in the denomination. If the majority approves the measure, it will take effect after this May’s assembly.

Though UPCUSA headquarters will not divulge the tally on Overture A, observers believe its passage is assured. By the count of Charles Ecker, an official of the Presbyterian lay committee, the vote is “lopsidedly in favor of it.”

Because some churches consider the ratification of Overture A imminent, they are not waiting to see what happens at the May assembly. Ecker said congregations are frightened. “The property measure is a threat to the local congregation,” he said. “It is a potential club that could be very dangerously abused.”

It would definitely be more difficult to exit if the property had to be left to the UPCUSA, he noted. One pastor whose church has already left spoke for his congregation: “We don’t buy the idea that the denomination owns what our fathers and mothers worked to build.”

Finally, the women’s issue has been aggravated by the outcome of Kaseman. To persons like Stewart Rankin, who was a complainant against Kaseman, the UPCUSA has contradicted itself and exposed a prejudice against conservatives.

Rankin recalls the Wynn Kenyon case of 1974. A ministerial candidate, Kenyon did not believe in women’s ordination. He was accepted by his presbytery, but the ordination was challenged and referred to the permanent judicial commission. In that instance, the commission considered the circ*mstances “extraordinary” and overturned the decision of the presbytery.

“But when a man denies the deity of Christ, doubts his sinlessness, and doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection, to them that is not an ‘extraordinary’ case,” said Rankin. The minister said his Silver Spring, Maryland, congregation has had enough. “We’ve stayed in this as long as we possibly can.”

Meanwhile, others who are withdrawing are already pondering a new denomination. While those delegates were considering a denomination, UPCUSA was looking forward to its own general assembly. The denomination will meet May 19–28 concurrently with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Meeting in Houston, the churches will do their denominational business separately, but they will worship together and have some joint committees.

UPCUSA is hoping for a reunion with PCUS, the largest southern Presbyterian denomination, which split from what is now UPCUSA in 1837. PCUS has had separation problems of its own, with three churches currently threatening to leave.

Its withdrawal problem is not as severe as that of UPCUSA, said Flynn Long, associate stated clerk for the southern Presbyterians. He said PCUS’s crisis was in the early 1970s when several conservative churches exited and formed the Presbyterian Church in America.

On the plausibility of reunion with UPCUSA, Flynn is noncommittal. Right now, whether or not the reunion attempt will be successful represents a “pretty subjective judgment,” he said. However, according to Flynn, 14 PCUS presbyteries have already united with UPCUSA presbyteries. Those “joint presbyteries” constitute one-fourth of the 60 PCUS presbyteries.

The target date for total reunion is 1982. Even then, the issues of women officers and Christ’s deity may haunt UPCUSA. Observers say the more conservative PCUS is likely to balk at the required election of women elders and what some consider doctrinal lassitude.

United Presbyterians such as scholar Lovelace hope UPCUSA can solidify and invite reunion. He feels the “broad center” of the denomination is opening to “progressive” evangelicalism. “It is closing to the far left and people on the right who want to replay the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s,” Lovelace thinks. The question many evangelicals are raising is: How far can a church move before it ceases to be evangelical?

Turmoil’S Fallout Includes Birth Of New Denomination

To the alphabet soup of Presbyterian denominations (which already includes UPCUSA, PCUS, ARPC, PCA, OPC, RPCES, CPC, RPNA) one more may be added: EPC—the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The EPC was officially launched in a two-day convening convention last month, setting the dates of September 22 to 24 for its first general assembly.

Some 113 participants gathered in Saint Louis to consider the proposed Articles of Agreement, Book of Government, and Book of Worship of the EPC. After consideration of the documents, 43 ruling elders and ministers (representing 15 churches) signed a Covenant Book agreeing to lead their congregations into the fledgling denomination.

Organization of the EPC started in the fall of 1980 (CT, Oct. 10, 1980). Stung by developments in the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), ministers from Missouri, Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, and Maryland met to consider the feasibility of a new denomination. The ministers, most of whose churches had already withdrawn from the UPCUSA, were concerned about the denomination’s apparent doctrinal laxness on the deity of Christ, the required election of women elders, and claim that local church property belonged to the denomination. Those concerns were repeated at the convening convention.

Calvin Gray, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, Michigan, and moderator of the EPC, noted that “freedom issues” had brought diverse churches together. EPC leaders say the new denomination will avoid cumbersome bureaucracy and allow differences of conscience in several areas.

That freedom of conscience has attracted some churches that, for one reason or another, would be uncomfortable in the already existing Presbyterian bodies. One participant, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, said his dispensational theology would be frowned on in other conservative Presbyterian groups. The EPC is open on that issue, as well as to questions of charismatic gifts and women’s ordination or election to church office. It also will not claim rights to congregational property.

Though leaders admitted the EPC was off to a modest start, there was talk of the denomination lasting hundreds of years—“if the Lord doesn’t return first.” Speakers also tended to emphasize that Lord’s deity. Hugh McClure, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, said Jesus was God and declared, “It makes all the difference in the world who this Person is.” Bartlett Hess, senior pastor of Ward Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan, said, “If we don’t have a Savior who’s fully God and fully man and died on the cross so that we poor, lost sinners might have salvation, we might as well shut up the church doors. It’s all a fraud.”

L. Edward Davis, executive pastor in Hess’s church and clerk of the EPC, said the denomination does not consider itself in competition with other Presbyterians. The EPC, he said, will be “Reformed in doctrine, Presbyterian in polity, and evangelical in spirit.” Davis is optimistic: he expects the EPC to have up to 50 congregations by next year. That, he notes, compares well with many conservative Presbyterian denominations. “We just want to haul up the flag and let people know a fellowship of this nature really exists,” he said.

Guards Patrol Maryland Church Rent By Controversy

Lockouts, armed guards, threats to “knock the door down”—all these would seem to belong more in a western movie than a church feud. But those elements are part of the bitter fight of a local church belonging to the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) in Towson, Maryland, and they represent the larger struggle being waged on many fronts in the denomination.

Babco*ck Memorial Presbyterian Church, say various members, has been in ferment since 1974 when the issue of women pastors and elders first shook the UPCUSA. The ferment came to a head in late March, however, when Babco*ck’s session (church board) decided that the church should leave the denomination—and the presbytery disagreed.

Ruling elders Bruce Bums and James Pfeiffer said the session determined it would leave the UPCUSA in an orderly, peaceful fashion. By the session’s reading of Presbyterian governmental rules, that meant a meeting for congregational vote on the matter needed to be announced twice.

The first announcement was made smoothly; the second was to be made on Sunday, March 23. But before the March 23 worship service, presbytery officials met and took three actions: they removed Babco*ck’s pastors, Robert Louthan and Howard Hill, from that pulpit; they deposed the church’s session; and finally, they replaced the former session with a new one.

The deposed session, said ruling elder Bums, attempted to make the second announcement at the March 23 service, but its members were blocked from the pulpit by the newly appointed session. “The congregation was furious,” Bums said. “Some people were in tears.” The new session also announced that a scheduled Monday night meeting—which had been called by the old session for the express purpose of voting on secession—was canceled.

Reinforcing its announcement, the new session hired and posted armed guards at Babco*ck on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, members of the church were told to leave the premises. Richard Werely, chairman of a presbytery commission appointed to oversee the Babco*ck case, said the guards became necessary when church members began carrying typewriters and stationery out of the building.

Werely said dissidents in the congregation realized the building belonged to the presbytery and were taking materials in order to set up shop in another location. Mark Werner, Baltimore attorney hired to represent members wanting to leave the UPCUSA, said no church property was being carried out of the building. He claimed the choir director had returned to the building to get sheet music that belonged to him, but was prevented from taking it by the guards. A woman, he said, also went to the nursery to remove some personal belongings. She also was stopped.

By Monday afternoon, the new session had engaged a locksmith to change the locks on the building, since, said Werely, about 100 members had keys to the old locks. The group wishing to secede was therefore especially infuriated when it managed to gather on Monday evening.

Elder Bums said the meeting was held despite attempts of the new session to cancel it, and even to frighten members away from it. A vote was cast: 228 voted in favor of leaving the denomination, 6 against departing.

Both sides disagreed on the actual numbers involved. Those for and those against leaving both claim a majority of the congregation sympathizes with their viewpoint. Babco*ck was estimated by the now-deposed session to have 430 active members. Burns said a vote taken in early March disclosed 320 in favor of departing. He claims 184 of about 200 church teachers and officers were in favor of leaving, and that 13 of 15 ruling elders (on the now-deposed session) wanted to go.

Werely begins with an entirely different set of numbers. He said a 1980 report showed 684 on the roll, with 484 (not 430) active. He also said 311 (not 320) voted to leave in early March. He contends the members who did not show up for the embattled Monday night meeting agreed with the new session that that meeting was illegitimate, and thus did not show up to cast a vote. “[The vote of] 228 to 500 does not come up to 50 percent of the congregation,” Werely said. “More than 50 percent wish to remain United Presbyterian.”

A further complicating matter is the legal ownership of the church property, valued at $2 million. On March 14, the now-deposed session sensed the coming storm and, under the advice of attorney Werner, gave its property to Merritt Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.

Presbytery official Werely said such a move was illegal—that any transfer of property had to have prior approval of the congregation and the presbytery. The antidenomination forces claim Presbyterian rules will not allow the leasing of property as transfer. They believed they found a loophole by giving away, not selling or leasing, the property.

Furthermore, Werely claims Merritt Boulevard Presbyterian Church is not a legitimate church. He said the church was incorporated by attorney Werner only to serve as a sort of holding church for refugee UPCUSA congregations. Werner admits he established the Merritt Church in April of 1980, together with his law partner and their wives. He denies it was constituted simply to serve as a legal loophole, and said the church has 12 members and regular Sunday night meetings, with about 60 to 75 people usually present.

Werely also contends the Merritt church ironically had ruling women elders. This would have been embarrassing in that the Babco*ck church would have deeded its property to a church with women elders (the wives of Werner and his fellow attorney). The Babco*ck congregation had wanted to leave, Werely said, because it was required to have women elders.

Attorney Werner said the women were on the session of the church but were never ruling elders: “They were never ordained, we never acknowledged them as elders.” Rather, he said, they served more as trustees to get the church started. Now, said Werely, a new session has been elected.

One Babco*ck member who is against leaving the UPCUSA, George Hatfield, said a majority of the congregation is agreed on one thing. “We are convinced there is considerable evil and heresy in the Presbyterian Church,” he stated. “We divide at what the proper action should be.”

Members like Hatfield, who has been a member 30 years and is a ruling elder, cite Matthew 13 and believe “the sorting of the tares should be left to the Master of the harvest.” He quotes D. L. Moody, who said heresy should simply be allowed to melt in the “warm glow of the full intensity of truth expressed in love.”

Hatfield believes 300 to 500 members favor staying in the denomination. Like parties on both sides, he laments the hostility of the situation. “A part of the bride of Christ is seeking a divorce,” he said, calling that “dreadful.” But Hatfield said “both sides have offended.”

Those wanting to leave the UPCUSA attempted to repossess the Babco*ck property on March 27. Attorney Werner presented the gift deed to police officials and requested the building be opened up. The police refused, however, deciding to leave the property in presbytery hands.

This decision was a “disappointment” to Werner, who argued the presbytery “has no way of showing it has any legal claim to the property” and that it has taken the law into its own hands by occupying the church.

Earlier this month Werner was gathering legal documents in order to seek a temporary injunction that would allow the church to regain the property. He anticipated the sticky problem would ultimately be resolved in civil court: “Unfortunately that is the direction we’re heading.” Werner criticizes the presbytery for using “raw power,” and wonders how that relates to Christian principles. While the presbytery would certainly give another story, he summarizes the problem by saying, “We have bent over backwards to accommodate the presbytery, and all they do is step on our hands.”

RODNEY CLAPP

Personalia

Quentin D. Nelson has been named vice-president for academic affairs and dean of North Park College of Chicago. He has been a professor of education and chairman of the social science division. Nelson spent 14 years in Africa as a missionary of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, with which North Park is affiliated.

Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair has gone into hiding during her hours away from work because she said she was tired of busloads of hymn-singing youngsters appearing on her front lawn to serenade her. Besides the singing, local Baptists kept showing up trying to convert her, and her mailbox has been flooded with “Praying Hands” post cards. Although she still shows up for work each day at her American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, she said she is living under an assumed name in her new residence.

Thomas L. Phillips, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Raytheon Company, has been named national chairman of the forty-first annual National Bible Week, a nondenominational event set for November 22 to 29. Phillips is a member of the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Wayland, Massachusetts.

S. Bruce Narramore has been named dean of the new School of Psychology at Biola College, starting in September. At that time the school’s graduate and undergraduate psychology programs will merge, along with the Rosemead Graduate School of Professional Psychology.

Gregg O. Lehman was elected president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. At 33, he is the youngest president in the school’s history. Lehman, who has been vice-president of business affairs and executive vice-president at Taylor, will succeed Milo Rediger, effective July 1.

North American Scene

A group of Texas Methodists has launched a national weekly religious newspaper, called the National Christian Reporter. Spurgeon Dunnam III, editor of the Texas Methodist/United Methodist Reporter, from which the new newspaper sprung, said it will take a theological position somewhere between Christian Century and CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination for hom*osexuals, has applied for membership in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Both organizations had urged the church to join, said Adam DeBaugh of the church’s Department of Ecumenical Relations. It is expected that the church will have no difficulty being accepted into the two organizations.

Andover Newton Conference

Old-Line Churches Rally To Evangelism Banner Again

“This was a watershed, for Andover Newton at least, but probably for many churches as well.” That is how John Douhan, associate executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts, summed up the four-day conference, “The Church Reaches Out; Evangelism in the 80s,” held in March at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS) near Boston.

“I left there three feet off the ground,” said Gordon MacDonald, pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. From all indications, he was not alone. There were 600 registered conferees, but attendance swelled to nearly 2,400 for worship services with Charles Adams of Detroit and Oregon’s Sen. Mark Hatfield.

Sponsored by the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., along with their state agencies and ANTS, the conference was held at area churches and on the campus. The focus of the program was congregation-level evangelism. What emerged was articulation of a new wholeness in witness for mainstream churches.

“A great new spirit is abroad in the church today. We rejoice in the gospel, and we affirm the evangelistic task in our day,” said conference director George Peck in his opening remarks. The spirit identified by Peck, ANTS dean and conference organizer, brought liberal and evangelical thinkers together in a major reexamination of the role of social concern, proclamation, and the lordship of Christ in the church.

Although the conference had been in the making for two years, the size of the turnout, especially by liberal pastors and lay leaders, was seen as a reflection of the new concern for evangelism among mainstream denominations.

Some perceived Peck negative explanations. “The reason why you have so many mainline church members talking about evangelism is the same reason the American Civil Liberties Union has been gaining so many members since Reagan’s election,” commented R. Alan Johnson, secretary for evangelism for the United Church Board of Homeland Ministries. “They have been shell-shocked by the success of the fundamentalists and they are wondering what they can do.”

Whether Johnson’s explanation is valid or not, positive results were evident. People with widely differing theological viewpoints became excited about learning from one another. “There was an air of mutual respect and affirmation. There was honesty and openness,” summarized MacDonald. “I have to say I’m extremely excited.”

The addresses and Bible study sessions were dominated by affirmation of the deity and lordship of Christ, and of co-equality in evangelism of proclamation and of the quest for a just and merciful community of faith. Traditional formulations and pronouncements, from both liberal and evangelical perspectives, were noticeably absent.

Each speaker, rather, began with an appraisal of a sphere of practice in church or society in America. The problems and failures identified drew each presentation back to examination of what role the affirmation of the deity of Christ and of the two dimensions of evangelism could have in restoring the health of the church and society.

Gabriel Fackre, Abbot professor of Christian theology at Andover Newton, and a United Church of Christ clergyman, stressed the content of evangelism in his address. He surveyed both the current state of evangelistic excitement and the gamut of Christian theologies in the church worldwide: elemental and propositional (fundamentalist and evangelical), relational, liberation, process, existential, secular, and others.

Fackre observed that Christians today have two things in common with the church at the end of the apostolic age—“on the one hand, a major mobilization for mission, and, on the other hand, a lack of clarity about the content of the gospel.” He then explored the creeds developed by the early church fathers to cope with their problems, and applied them to the church today.

“The Evangel is the Good News,” Fackre concluded. “He brings forgiveness for our sins, but more; he liberates from oppression, but more; he brings hope to the sick and suffering, but more; he brings knowledge and light to our night, but more; he conquers our last enemy, death … [It] is nothing less than to say He is Lord and Savior …

“Faithful evangelism requires a mind thoughtfully stretched as well as a heart strangely warmed. [For] … the fulness of the gospel is matched by the fulness of Christ himself. Particular perspectives on who he is and what he does must grow up into the fulness of Christ.”

The other speakers, Orlando Costas, dean Peck, Senator Hatfield, and ANTS president Gordon Torgersen echoed similar themes.

Elizabeth Achtemeier, professor of homiletics and biblical interpretation at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and Bible teacher for the conference, emphasized the point in her final Bible study, saying, “This is a life-and-death matter. Jesus makes all the difference in the world. That is what we have forgotten. That is what the conference is all about.” She was greeted with standing applause.

JOHN RODMAN

What will make a difference are daily ethical patterns like those that caused some in the past to say, “I did what had to be done.”

In spite of all the publicity, evangelicals know little about the history of the Holocaust and its ramifications for the Christian community. Too often they view it only as something that happened to the Jewish people. It is not their problem, but a Jewish problem or a Nazi German problem or a radical liberal problem or a European problem. It is anything but an evangelical problem.

And yet, as this country enters a period of economic instability and we hear more and more reports of racial tension and violence, there are some nagging questions that keep plaguing some of us. How could some Christian people in Germany sit quietly by and without protest allow the extermination of six million Jews? Even more, how could “good, decent citizens” become even indirectly accomplices of such an unspeakable offense against humanity? Could it happen again? Could it happen here?

But there is one overriding question that must be faced above all others: What made the difference between the few who helped the Jewish people during their awesome persecution and the multitude who turned their backs on them? Why did a few put themselves, their families, their possessions, and their careers on the line for a persecuted people while most did not? What is there in evangelical theology that should make evangelicals react differently than do other people in the face of prejudice, scapegoating, caricature, oppression, and outright physical violence to a race or religious group different from their own?

This is a difficult question because, as one studies the Holocaust, it seems that only a few evangelicals, a few Protestants, a few Catholics, a few Orthodox, a few agnostics, and a few atheists helped the Jewish people during their persecution (and, not necessarily in that order). Evangelicals must face honestly the fact that being an evangelical was simply not enough. To make the problem worse, even those who risked their lives and the lives of their families to protect Jews often said they really don’t know exactly what factors led them to do what they did.

A recent book by Philip R. Hallie (Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, Harper & Row, 1979), however, gives us the clue to answer our question. Hallie went to France to find out why a diverse French Huguenot community put their lives on the line to save Jews during the Holocaust. As a philosopher and a human being, he wanted to know why “goodness” occurred in Le Chambon as the specter of evil surrounded it. While there is much more to the book, the real key to their response was the daily ethical patterns established within individuals of the community—patterns that made them say, “What do you mean ‘why did you do it?’ I did what was right and what I had to do. That is all!” Corrie Ten Boom tells us in The Hiding Place of her “crooked little Dutch house” where she and her beloved family risked their lives (and in some cases gave their lives) to snatch Jewish lives from worse than death. For them, too, it was no great decision. They simply did it because it had to be done.

What was there about those unheroic heroes that really made the difference? If you asked Corrie Ten Boom, she herself would no doubt reply (as she does in her book): Jesus helped me. God gave me and others the power to stand firm. I didn’t do it. I certainly didn’t have the strength to withstand the mad opposition.

And of course she was right. No doubt her particular belief in Jesus provided the spiritual and moral power to motivate her to act and to sustain her through the dark hours. But as you read The Hiding Place, it is evident that certain basic convictions, certain circ*mstances of experience, and especially certain deep-seated patterns of daily family life, structured their responses in crisis and prepared the way for heroic action.

Briefly, let me suggest three characteristics of the Ten Booms, of some Huguenots, and of some German evangelicals that worked to “make the difference.” No doubt additional factors worked in all these people, and in many more, who, for the sake of others, did not count their own lives dear. Yet in the case of these evangelicals, the following characteristics were important.

The first area of difference lay in their thinking. They believed in God, and because they did, they could also believe in man as being of infinite value, created in the divine image with an immortal soul. For them every Jew was a person—one worth dying for. Hadn’t Jesus died for every human being? They also believed in the truth, and they refused to allow their minds to be bent by caricature and stereotype. How one’s latent prejudice against any group can be nourished and cultivated is one of the most disturbing revelations of the Holocaust. Prejudice is a learned behavior and is bolstered and sustained by community attitudes and conduct.

The Holocaust built upon centuries of anti-Semitism and stereotyping of the Jewish people, and it gave the Nazi regime a firm foundation upon which to build and ultimately to dehumanize the Jewish people in the eyes of the world. Joseph Goebbels bragged that if one told a lie big enough and often enough the people would ultimately believe it; the Nazi minister of propaganda was able to convince many that the Jews were responsible for capitalism and communism—simultaneously. At any rate, the people as a whole became convinced that their economic and political frustrations were linked to the Jewish people. It seems when people’s pocketbooks are hit, a “suitable” scapegoat can easily be found. All of this the Ten Boom family forthrightly repudiated; but, unfortunately, many more did not.

In view of what led to the Holocaust, I do not believe 1 am overreacting when I find that ethnic and religious jokes ring hollow. Even “innocent” caricatures and stereotypes mold our attitudes and future behavior. It grieves me when I know how easily “good” people can be convinced that “all Jews are rich,” “Jews control the world,” and “blacks are mentally inferior to whites.” It grieves me how many evangelicals fall into this snare of latent prejudice, caricature, and stereotype. And many times, they are buttressed by their interaction with supposed “experts” on the particular ethnic or religious community.

For example, one well-meaning evangelical leader recently declared during a seminar on Jews: “Many of the key media people are Jewish”; and he added, “Anything that displeases the Jewish people is very likely to have an effect in the media, television, and newsprint.” Jewish control of the mass media has been an effective lie of anti-Semites for decades. It was used by the Nazis, and it is used by neo-Nazi groups today.

Prejudice infests us all, and the most dangerous attitude one can have is to think that he or she has no prejudice. The next danger is to believe that it cannot make you cold and indifferent. Caricature and stereotype can have awesome ramifications. The Polish people hated the Nazis, but Nazi propaganda nourished such hatred of Jews, even in Poland, so much so that even after the detested Nazis were defeated, some Poles pulled emaciated Jews who had survived the work camps off trains headed for safety and killed them themselves. For years their hatreds had been transferred to “the international culprit,” the Jew; they had to vent their frustrations in an “appropriate” manner. Evangelicals know all too well how they themselves have been stereotyped and ridiculed. Should not this foster some sensitivity as to where the pejorative comment can lead?

The second area in which the Ten Boom family countered anti-Semitism was by nourishing love through personal relationship. They not only believed Jews have “souls of infinite value,” they were acquainted with individual Jews that put the lie to Nazi propaganda. Evangelicals should cultivate personal acquaintances among not only Jews but among all minority peoples. This must be done in true friendliness, in an attitude of learning, humility, love, and sharing (rather than of “conquering”). Getting to know someone breeds sensitivity to that person’s true nature and inevitably breaks down stereotypes and prejudices. Many pastors today are concerned about their congregations living within Christian “ghettos,” and their concern is justified. Without individual relationships with those outside our immediate community, we become so ingrown that we begin to use an “us-them” jargon that can easily disintegrate into a “we-it” terminology. Eventually we stand by unmoved when the “thing” is destroyed.

The third area is closely akin to the first two. It is the area of daily patterns of life. The Ten Boom family practiced living for others; they lived daily for God and for others. They learned what it meant to consider others before themselves. In their daily lifestyle, they practiced sacrificing for others, so when crisis decisions arose, they faced no crises. There was a need; it had to be met, and they did it. Our lives, too, must exhibit such sensitivity in the “little” areas of ethical judgment that when the “big” decisions arrive, we have established a firm foundation from which to stand strong.

Right thinking about the worth of a human life with the determination to reject caricature and stereotypes of fellow human beings; right relationships nourished by personal acquaintance and friendships; and right patterns of sacrificial living for others: these, therefore, were the crucial factors that “made the difference” in the past. Those same ingredients of life will make the difference in the future. History can be a help to us, but we must dare to ask ourselves, “What would I have done if my life, the lives of my family, my career, were all on the line for an oppressed minority group?” How does my theology affect my reactions when the subtle prejudices of the public grow into hatred and the search for a scapegoat? What do I do when my peers tell me it is only right and safe to do nothing. Indifference and apathy, like sin, grow and solidify. Soon they encrust one to such an extent that they become the only “proper” way. Quickly—so very quickly—even to raise a question becomes unthinkable.

Finally, a healthy recognition of the biblical doctrine of original sin will keep us alert to the human potential for another Holocaust. We cannot rest upon any false sense of human decency that would make such a thing impossible. We are capable of another Holocaust; even evangelical Christians are capable of tolerating it. But by the grace of God it can be avoided. With his help evangelicals must battle daily against the seeds of incipient racism lest they sprout, take root, and bring forth the awful fruit of another Holocaust.

To shun sharing Jesus with Jews constitutes an eternally damning anti-Semitism, but to share Jesus without love may have the same effect.

For all the radical differences between Judaism and Christianity, these two monotheistic religions share striking similarities. Theirs is a kind of mother-daughter relationship. Or, as the apostle Paul explains, Christianity is a branch grafted into the olive tree of Israel. Both faiths venerate the Old Testament as Holy Scripture. Both worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Both believe in a promised Messiah, whether as in the case of Judaism it is still a prospective belief or, as with Christianity, retrospective. Both subscribe to the same moral principles in the Ten Commandments; hence, both highlight love, justice, and personal responsibility. In addition, both religions recognize the duty of bearing witness and making converts.

As for Christianity, its very genius is evangelism. In Emil Brunner’s aphorism, “The Church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning.” Christians have become tireless evangelists, carrying their message to the ends of the earth, indiscriminately viewing every non-converted human being—pagan, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, animist, and atheist alike—as a soul for whom the Savior died and with whom the Good News must be shared. The apostolic teaching challenges Rabbi Alexander Schindler’s opinion that, “There is no clear New Testament basis or mandate to justify the efforts to convert Jews.” Christians cannot accept his assertion that Jews are “outside the need for a Christian form of redemption.”

This position, however, lays evangelicals open to the charge of being proud and arrogant. Christianity in its evangelical branch claims to possess Almighty God’s fixed and final truth. Their view of salvation also exposes evangelicals to the charges of dogmatism and exclusivism as well. Still further, evangelicals are accused of narcissism, a “vulgar group narcissism,” to purloin a phrase from John Murray Cuddihy. Evangelicals are accused, too, of triumphalism, or of what an early fundamentalist, Ford Ottman, called the imperialism of Jesus, a crusading mentality that engenders fanaticism and motivates an aggressive, coercing, high pressure proselytism. Consequently, in the name of God, evangelicals might be sowing the poisonous seeds of anti-Semitism.

Evangelicals are not unaware of these charges. While conscientiously thinking through and living out their faith, they struggle to prevent deep conviction from developing into the kind of deadly animosity that stoked the furnaces of Auschwitz. Not only that: they are compelled to deal with the question Rabbi Schindler raises. Why do we contend that Jews are not, definitely not. “outside the need for a Christian form of redemption”? Why do we teach and preach that Judaism as a religion fails to qualify Jews as noncandidates for evangelism? Alienated from God by sinful disobedience, Jews, together with all members of the human family, are lost. But in his unchanging faithfulness and fathomless grace, God has been redemptively at work in history reconciling the self-estranged race of Adam to himself. In doing that, he long ago challenged Abraham to enter into a unique relationship with himself and thereby to embark on a unique mission. In faith, Abraham responded.

The subsequent history of Israel issues from the covenant thus established. The Jews, God’s chosen people, became the recipients of supernatural truth and an efficacious system of atoning sacrifice. The Israelitish theocracy, however, was simply a framework within which God was providing the possibility of faithful relationship with himself according to the Abrahamic pattern. From among these people who were Jews ethnically he was drawing into redemptive fellowship with himself a people who were Israelites spiritually. Yet he intended that Judaism qua religion be temporary and preparatory, the foundation on which a new faith, a new covenant, and a new relationship would in the fullness of time be established.

Following the New Testament argument, therefore, as elaborated especially in the Letter to the Hebrews, evangelicals maintain that by the whole Christ event, Judaism qua religion has been superseded, its propaedeutic purpose accomplished. Since Messiah has come and offered his culminating sacrifice, there is no temple, no priesthood, no altar, no atonement, no forgiveness, no salvation, and no eternal hope in Judaism as a religion. Harsh and grating expressions as to its salvific discontinuity are called for—abrogation, displacement, and negation. Those expressions are set down here, I assure you, with some realization of how harsh and grating they must sound to Jewish ears.

Evangelicals who embrace a premillenarian eschatology foresee a prophetic future for the Jews as an ethnic entity, with Palestine as the center of Christ’s planetary kingdom. But this restoration nationally does not affect the destiny of Jews individually. God’s prophetic promises will assuredly be kept; but if a Jew is to experience the Abrahamic relationship to his Creator, it must be through faith—yes, faith in the Messiah who has already come. Jesus Christ. In short, as James Parkes, the distinguished Anglican scholar who was an authority on Jewish-Christian beliefs and a devoted friend of the Old Covenant people, summarized the relationship between these two biblical faiths, Judaism is “not an alternative scheme of salvation to Christianity, but a different kind of religion.” That is why from the evangelical perspective Jews qualify as candidates for evangelism: there is no “alternative scheme of salvation to Christianity.”

This evangelical position seems so offensive that some theologians and church leaders have been joining with Jews to bring about its modification or, preferably, its abandonment. The battle is going on along three fronts. First, civility: evangelicalism ought to consider far more seriously the virtue of a kind of henotheistic tolerance. Second, an appeal is made to history: evangelicalism ought to ponder far more deeply the horror of anti-Semitism. Third, an appeal is made to theology: evangelicalism ought to evaluate far more open-mindedly the option of doctrinal reconstruction.

Take the appeal to civility. Reinhold Niebuhr, the world-renowed Protestant ethicist, long a luminary at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, in a 1958 address on “The Relations of Christians and Jews in Western Civilization” opted outright for a permanent moratorium on the evangelization of Jews. He endorsed the view proposed by philosopher Franz Rosensweig that Christianity and Judaism are “two religions with one center, worshiping the same God, but with Christianity serving the purpose of carrying the prophetic message to the Gentile world.” This, Niebuhr avowed, is a far better view than those conceptions of the two faiths “which prompt Christian missionary activity among the Jews.”

He had his reasons for advocating this radical break with Christian tradition. After all, doubt, humility, and toleration on his reckoning are the earmarks of a truly religious person. Certitude, pride, and intolerance are, on the contrary, unacceptable. In Niebuhr’s judgment. “Our toleration of truths opposed to those which we confess is an expression of the spirit of forgiveness in the realm of our own virtue … toleration of others requires broken confidence in the finality of our own truth.”

Those reasons struck John Murray Cuddihy as specious. In his study, No Offense: Civil Religion and Protestant Taste, he wonders whether the root motive for Niebuhr’s proposal is civility, a desire to avoid being a Pauline scandal and stumbling block to his numerous intercredal friends. Never once apparently does Niebuhr raise the issue of truth. Cuddihy answered his own question, “Why, then, was the Christian mission to the Jews abandoned by the Protestants?… Not because Christ and Paul had not commanded it (they had): not because it was false to Christianity (it was of its essence); but because of appearances; it was in bad taste. As Marshall Sklare notes, by 1970 the Jewish community was publicly opposing the Christian mission to the Jews ‘on the grounds that Reinhold Niebuhr had elaborated a decade before,’ namely—in Sklare’s words—because of ‘the unseemliness’ of such evangelization.”

However, I place more weight than Cuddihy does on Niebuhr’s epistemological skepticism. The inability to apprehend truth with certainty and finality means we can repose only a “broken confidence” in our faith formulations. Civility and relativism, in other words, are Siamese twins. Why risk social ostracism by insisting that one’s friends embrace his dubious surmises about reality and destiny?

In the second place, there is the modification (preferably the abandonment) of the traditional Christian assumption that Jews, like the adherents of all other religions, need to accept the gospel as being urged as an antidote to the recurrent malady of anti-Semitism. Thus an appeal is made to history. Evangelicals are rightly exhorted to ponder the heart-breaking pages of Israel’s tragic saga: realize that it is Christianity which at bottom has been either primarily, or at any rate largely, responsible for the centuries-long persecution that reached its nadir in the Nazis’ ghastly “final solution of the Jewish problem.” Trace the connection between New Testament anti-Judaism and the anti-Jewish pogroms in Christian (I choose to let the adjective stand without enclosing it in exculpating quotation marks) Europe and America. When you do that, you may find you come to the conclusion that a moratorium on the evangelism of your Jewish friends and neighbors is really in order.

Here, frankly, evangelicals are hard put to gain clear perspective: not regarding the incredible, emotion-numbing insanity of an Auschwitz, but instead, in evaluating objectively the allegation that the preaching of the gospel has inspired anti-Semitism and may—God forbid!—do so again in the future. How just is that allegation? And as we compel ourselves to examine the historical evidence, we are in turn compelled to confess that again and again a dark and destructive attitude toward Jewish people has developed as a concomitant of gospel proclamation. Israel has been a sort of lightning rod drawing down upon itself the sizzling flame of Christian wrath.

As evangelicals, what then is our responsibility? We have an inescapable obligation to do whatever we can to clear away the misunderstandings and misinterpretations that have dyed the pages of history with Jewish blood. We must point out, for one thing, that the nation of Israel as an entity was no more guilty of crucifying Jesus than we were. Suffice it to say that a careful examination of the Gospels puts the burden of responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus on the shoulders of the imperial government in Palestine. Hence, in refuting the charge that the Jewish people were Christ killers, evangelicals must attest with Roy Eckardt that “‘Roman responsibility’ is a purely historical, superseded matter, while ‘Jewish responsibility’ is hardly at all a historical matter: it is an existential one.” For what Christian today, he asks, would ever taunt a citizen of Rome with “You killed Christ!”? That would be the nonsensical equivalent of indiscriminately charging a crowd of contemporary Americans. “You killed Abraham Lincoln.” So evangelicals must attest that any Jewish guilt was limited entirely to a handful of corrupt leaders and their hangers-on.

Evangelicals must likewise attest that, since Jesus died for the sin of the world, every human being bears responsibility for the cross—Christians no less than Jews. The recognition of our personal responsibility for the Savior’s death is, as James Daane suggests, “the spiritual solvent that ought to dissolve anti-Semitism in the Christian community.”

Consider, in the third place, the appeal to theology as a ground for imposing a moratorium on the evangelization of Jews. In the aftermath of Vatican II and with the increase of Jewish-Christian dialogue, Catholic and Protestant scholars have pushed for a drastic revision of traditional Christology and the revision of traditional soteriology. For example, Rosemary Reuther in her book, Faith and Fratricide, boldly raises this explosive issue: “Is it possible to say ‘Jesus is Messiah’ without, implicitly or explicitly, saying at the same time ‘and the Jews be damned’?” Reuther’s purpose is to demonstrate that “The anti-Judaic root of Christianity cannot be torn out until the church’s Christology is rid of its negation of the ongoing validity of the Jewish faith.”

Reuther has an ally in John T. Pawlikowski, professor at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and chairman of the National Council of Churches Faith and Order Study Group on Israel. He finds fault with Paul’s vision of the Jewish future sketched in Romans 9–11 because it “ultimately ends on a conversationist [sic: conversionist?] note that I find unacceptable.” So, for him, “More radical surgery is imperative.” In his judgment “… parts of our traditional Christology [are] severely inadequate and should in fact be discarded … as Christians we should come to view the Jewish ‘no’ to Jesus as a positive contribution to the ultimate salvation of mankind, not as an act of unfaithfulness or haughty blindness.”

Pawlikowski is aware that his reformulated Christology “will profoundly alter Christianity’s self-definition,” but he is persuaded that it will “make possible a more realistic relationship to Judaism and to all other non-Christian religions.”

According to Thomas Indinopulos and Roy Ward, this reformulation has so distanced itself from historic Christian belief that what is presented as “Christological” will not “… prove intelligible, much less acceptable to any of the recognizable branches of Christianity.… The implication of our author’s Christological ‘reinterpretation’ is that in order for Christology to cease being anti-Semitic, it must cease being recognizable as Christology, that is, ‘salvific.’ To us, this appears as self-defeating—a case of stopping the disease by shooting the patient.”

Which is why Indinopulos and Ward warn the ecumenical advocates of reconstructionism that the “inherent contradiction” between the two divergent religions, Christianity and Judaism, cannot be overcome “without either the Christian quitting his faith or the Jew converting to Christianity.”

We come back, then, more or less full circle, to the problem of witness and conversion. Since Christianity, as evangelically construed, is of necessity evangelistic, can Christians earnestly share their faith with Jews and not come under censure for proselytizing? I think they can. As an evangelical, I draw a sharp distinction between proselytizing and witnessing, rejecting proselytism as a perversion of witness.

In his helpful analysis, “A Phenomenology of Proselytism,” James Megivern indicates three major dynamics that seem to underlie the proselytizer’s activity: first, the “necessary-for-salvation” motive; second, the “one-and-only-truth” motive; and third, the “obedience-to-a-divine-command” motive. Also, operating in the proselytizer may be latent and “less exalted motives, with consequences that no respectable religion could ever want to justify”—a “dominion motive,” an “insecurity motive,” and an “egocentric motive.”

However, while appreciating the subtlety and strength of these perhaps unconscious dynamics, I do not draw from them or Megivern’s other arguments a warrant for declaring “a moratorium on Christian missions as we have known them.” Instead, I am constrained to view positively the three major motives that he mentions. Christianity, as the flower and fulfillment of its Old Testament root, is both the one and only truth and the only saving religion. At the same time, we must not be obtusely insensitive to the enormous problems inherent in that conviction, and to the difficulties that our truth claim creates in intercredal dialogue. With regard to Megivern’s other motive, obedience to our Lord’s mandate, “Preach the gospel to every living person” (Mark 16:15), we must add to this the master motive in Christian theology, ethic, and mission—love.

Motivated by love and nothing but love, God has undertaken the whole process of creation and redemption in order to share the beatitude of his love which, at an incalculable cost to himself, God freely offers to all of us. Illuminated by God’s Spirit, we respond in faith. And having experienced personally the wonder of his love, we are motivated to love him and obey him. “If you love me,” Jesus said, “keep my commandments” (John 14:15). One of his commandments is universal evangelism.

If love motivates us (though its motivating power is confessedly often weak, ineffectual, and short-circuited), we rejoice to share with our neighbors the best we have to give, and that best is the gospel of Jesus Christ. George Knight, a sympathetic friend of Israel, speaks for evangelicals when he writes: “There is one thing, and only one thing that we must communicate to all men, and that is Christ. To refrain from doing so … is a form of religious anti-Semitism which is as basically evil as the philosophy of the Nazis.”

In the end the problem is not why but how: as undeserving recipients of redemptive love, how can we lovingly share the gospel with Jews? If we share it prayerfully, graciously, tactfully, honestly, sensitively, and noncoercively, we will not be guilty of the proselytizing that understandably disturbs Rabbi Brickner: “It is not the gospel that is a threat to the Jews. The threat is from those who use the gospel as a club to beat others into a brand of belief and submission with which they may disagree or find no need.” Our evangelism, if love-motivated and love-implemented, will fall within the category of witnessing approved by Rabbi Bernard Bamberger: “I see no reason why Christians should not try to convince us of their viewpoint, if they do so decently and courteously; and I believe that we Jews have the same right.”

One might devoutly wish for a theological genius and a sociological wizard capable of undoing the Gordian knot of Jewish-Christian relations. But that tangle will stay tied, I fear, until, as an evangelical might exclaim, the millennium has dawned. Meanwhile, Reuther charts the path that we must follow with a measure of resignation and a capitulation to realism: “Possibly anti-Judaism is too deeply embedded in the foundations of Christianity to be rooted out entirely without destroying the whole structure. We may have to settle for the sort of ecumenical good will that lives with theoretical inconsistency and opts for a modus operandi that assures practical cooperation between Christianity and Judaism.”

Is that too modest an agreement? Or can evangelicals oppose any least anti-Semitic innuendo, carry on their evangelistic mission, and still cooperate ecumenically with their Jewish friends and neighbors? My hope, my prayer, is that they can.

It will strike some as paradoxical or bewildering that Jewish religious thinkers and leaders find it more compatible to dialogue with authentic evangelical Christians than with so-called Messianic Jews.

That is not a matter of elitism or of social etiquette. Rather, it derives from profound theological conviction as well as from prudential considerations.

Jews and evangelicals (and other) Christians share a rich inheritance of biblical belief, values, and ideals about God, man, nature, society, history, and the kingdom to come. At the same time, Jews and Christians differ over critical affirmations about the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, and the forgiveness of sin. (For an excellent discussion of the Jewish theological reasons for these differences, read Jews and Jewish Christianity, by David Berger and M. Wyschogrod, Ktav Publishers, New York.)

Jews stake their existence on the truth of their 4,000-year-old belief in ethical monotheism. “On the day when the Lord spoke to you out of the fire on Horeb, you saw no figure of any kind; so take good care not to fall into the degrading practice of making figures carved in relief, in the form of a manor a woman” (Deut. 4:15). As formulated by the great scholar and codifier, Maimonides, in thirteenth-century Spain, Jews believe that the God of Israel “has no corporeal image and has no body.” Judaism is incompatible with any belief in the divinity of a human being.

While Judaism believes that all Gentiles are obligated to observe the seven Noachian principles of moral and ethical behavior in order “to be assured a place in the world to come.” Jewish tradition allows that Gentiles can believe in the Trinitarian concept, termed in Hebrew as sh*ttuf (partnership). Belief in sh*ttuf, Judaism affirms, does not constitute idolatry for non-Jews, but does so for Jews.

Jews, born of a Jewish mother, who become so-called Messianic Jews, are bound by the Covenant of Sinai, which explicitly excludes the possibility of any belief that God shares his being in any partnership with any other being (Exod. 20:2–6; Deut. 4:15–21).

It is the faith of Israel that God’s election of his holy people is eternal and irrevocable (Deut. 7:9, “He is God, the faithful God, which keepeth the covenant and mercy to a thousandth generation”). God’s law remains binding for all Jews for all times. A Messianic Jew can stop obeying the Law, and usually does. He can marry out of the faith, so that within two or three generations the golden chain of Jewish continuity is broken. Throughout the centuries, this is exactly what happened to Jews who left the synagogue and entered the church.

While humanly one might empathize with Messianic Jews who wish nostalgically to retain some cultural linkages with the Jewish people—whether for guilt or other emotional reasons—in point of fact, reenacting Jewish rituals of the Sabbath, the Passover, the bar mitzvah, without commitment to the convictions they symbolize, soon make a mockery of their sacred meanings.

When those rituals are employed as a ruse or a device to trick other Jews into believing that they can remain both authentic Jews as well as authentic, believing Christians, that is nothing less than deception, which is not worthy of any high religion such as Christianity.

MARC H. TANENBAUM¹Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee and coedilor of the book Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation (Baker, 1978).

Jewish leaders have assumed that messianic congregations are really churches with bits of Jewishness sprinkled on top for effect. Contrary to this, we say we are legitimately part of the Jewish community.

We take our cue from the apostles, including Paul, who not only observed Jewish practices and continued to worship in the temple (Acts 2:46; 3:1; 18:18; 21:20–26), but celebrated the holidays as well (Acts 20:5–6, 16; 27:9). In fact, Paul defended himself by asserting that he had “not transgressed the customs of our fathers” (Acts 25:8; 26:5; 28:17). Irenaeus, an early church leader, attests to this: “But they themselves … continued in the ancient observances.… Thus did the apostles scrupulously act according to the dispensation of the Mosaic law” (Against Heresies 3:23:15).

Building on this apostolic model, messianic congregations, or synagogues, have developed a worship and lifestyle incorporating Jewish traditions and synagogue practice to varying degrees. For example, in our congregation we use the traditional synagogue prayers, and our worship is similar to a Conservative synagogue except that we include the New Testament. Our members observe the holidays, and most light the Sabbath candles. The compatibility of the traditions—most of which were in place before Jesus’ time—with messianic faith makes this possible. In fact, it appears that Jesus drew on parts of two standard Jewish prayers, the Amidah and Kaddish, for the Lord’s Prayer.

The traditions and holidays provide beautiful pictures of God’s actions in history centered in Jesus, or Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus). A knowledge of the holidays is crucial to a complete understanding of numerous biblical passages (e.g,. John 7:37–39; 8:12; 1:29). This messianic fulfillment perspective is what some Jewish people find objectionable or label as a distortion of Judaism, but which is nevertheless validated by Yeshua’s resurrection. But the holidays and traditions have meaning apart from their fulfillment in Yeshua; they are vehicles for conveying important truths about God and his universe, and they add beauty to messianic worship.

Messianic Jews seek to live consistently as Jews, as did the apostles (Acts 22:3f.; 1 Cor. 9:19f.). For many of us, this means the integrity of terminology and theological expression.

Terminology is important. While boldly affirming that we follow Yeshua, our Messiah and Lord, we do not call ourselves Christians, since most Jewish people associate Christians with centuries of persecution. In addition, we feel a deeper affinity to our first-century forebears than to the historical developments growing out of the first-century movement as they became formalized in the church. We call ourselves Messianic Jews, Jewish followers of the Messiah, Yeshua, whom we call the Messiah rather than the Christ, because “Christ” has no legitimate Jewish connotation. While affirming the unity of believers and the truth of the corporate body of Messiah, we call our gatherings “congregations” or “synagogues” (cf. the Greek of James 2:2) rather than churches because this better describes us. Some may consider these as semantic exercises or word games. But since words are the vehicles of communication, we must carefully choose those that will accurately reflect the realities we affirm, and be understood correctly within the Jewish community.

Our theological expressions also need to be relevant to the Jewish culture. Our formulations, therefore, bear a close kinship to those found in the Bible rather than those developed by historical Christendom. Thus we speak of God’s unique unity rather than the Trinity. The first-century expressions far better reflect and relate to Jewish ways of thinking and speaking.

Even with all this emphasis on Jewishness, we encourage Gentile involvement in our congregations and abhor any expressions of Jewish superiority. Many non-Jewish believers have responded to the challenge, have found a warm home among us, and have been most effective in communicating the biblical faith to Jewish people.

Because our messianic faith and our Jewish heritage and traditions are so organically connected, when properly understood, we need not feel torn between Yeshua and Jewishness.

JOHN FISCHER¹John Fischer is a vice-president of B’ rit Shalom, the messianic Jewish agency in Chicago. He is also a visiting faculty member in Jewish studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

We desire appreciation for our retention of the Jewish roots of our Christianity and the ways God used us, as a people, in working out man’s salvation.

Not long ago a girl came to us from a very troubled Jewish home. She had accepted Christ, had joined a Pentecostal church, hut was still very confused about her Jewish identity. We discovered, too, that she was diagnosed an incurable schizophrenic. She had undergone the voltage of shock treatments during ten years of intermittent hospitalization. She had lived in hospitals and was on such a high level of medication, her psychiatrist warned she would never be cured.

Her experience was amazing. We invited her into our congregation, which at that time was in Chicago, and the community reached out to her with open hearts and hands. We listened to her, prayed for her deliverance from satanic oppression. We prayed for her parents, who, when she had a relapse, blamed us for making her illness worse. The psychiatrist, however, convinced them to let her continue in the therapy she was receiving through fellowship with loving Jewish believers. It took time, but eventually she greeted the love and listening with noticeable health. When she was nearly free of all medication, she left for a year’s study at Moody Bible Institute, and was completely restored to her parents.

This true story, one of many in which our congregation has played a part, might have been just another page in the diary of some well-known, mainstream denominational church, whose fruits are known by traditions of soul winning and legacies of people healed of their hurts by faith in Christ and Christian discipleship. Instead, this page is from the diary of a modern messianic congregation—something many evangelicals might label “a bewildering territory.”

Messianic Jews understand this bewilderment. In many ways our recent history has contributed to it; we freely admit to our mistakes. In the past, we have conveyed a sense of superiority to other Christians. We have called ourselves rabbis without qualifying the term and responding adequately to the New Testament’s in junction against the title. We have even spoken as if we were just another branch of Judaism, neglecting to affirm our part in the universal body of believers. Let us seal these mistakes up in the dark dungeon of the past.

What modern Messianic Jews find difficult to understand is evangelicalism’s failure to appreciate our evangelicalism or, in the light of the history of the earliest churches as recorded in the Book of Acts, our deep loyalty to Jewishness (cf. Acts 21; 28:17).

To be sure, though our basic confession is in conformity with mainstream evangelical Protestant denominations, we maintain certain aspects of Jewish culture in our worship of the Messiah. Our congregations, for instance, do not reflect the usual evangelical symbolism. You will not see giant crosses protruding above a baptistry, nor will you see walls of stained glass pictures of Christ and his disciples. You will rather see a candle, symbolizing the eternal light of God, just above the ark containing the Torah. To the Messianic Jew, the inclusion and placement of the Torah (the body of Jewish scriptures) in no way symbolizes bondage to the law; it is actually an expression of Jewish affinity to the laws of God, but against the backdrop of God’s gracious favor in forgiving us through the Messiah’s atonement.

You will also find a departure from the traditional nineteenth-century hymns in favor of Scripture songs taken verbatim from Old and New Testaments. The songs are often chanted; many move rhythmically with fast-paced staccato character; some flow smoothly in slightly somber minor keys. Scripture reading, prayer, and Jewish elements such as the Kiddush—a blessing and prayer over wine—interspersed with the singing, provide the structure from which spontaneous praise and worship come. This traditional Jewish worship material coalesces in harmony and unity of spirit to point to the centrality of salvation in Jesus.

In affirming the basic evangelical concepts of the authority of Scripture, salvation by grace through faith, the triune nature of God, the resurrection of Jesus, the Second Coming, and so on, we further incorporate our Jewish biblical heritage into our expression of faith. In affirming the triune nature of God, for instance, we are at pains to draw attention to God the Father in special ways. I once conducted a small survey as I listened to a Christian radio station. For every single instance God the Father was mentioned—in praise, adoration, or just conversation—Jesus was mentioned nine times. Yet when I searched the New Testament, I found that God was prominently mentioned as many times as Jesus. The Father was most often addressed in prayer and glorified through what he had done through his Son, and Jesus was considered the mediator as prayer was given in his name. Consequently, when Messianic Jews pray, sing, and worship, we frequently address the Father in an effort to establish a perspective toward the Trinity that is consistent with our heritage and with Scripture. In our worship we are theo-centric rather than Jesuscentric. We do not, of course, leave Jesus out of our worship; we try to maintain balance between the Father and the Son in our verbal addresses to God.

Another aspect of our Jewishness is our celebration of the Second Coming of Christ. We tie our hope to the orthodox Jewish hope that a personal Messiah is indeed coming. Our distinctive, of course, is that Messiah is coming—again; but the dynamics of the celebration remain basically Jewish. Also, concerning the authority of Scripture, the validity of our faith is sometimes questioned because we do not blatantly reject rabbinical teaching. The traditional Jewish community is under rabbinic authority almost the way a Catholic is under the authority of the Catholic church. Although Messianic Jews may learn certain things from rabbinical sources, the Bible is our final arbiter and all other teaching is measured according to how it aligns with Scripture.

Perhaps the affinity we feel so deeply for our biblical heritage is best seen in our celebrations of (1) the Passover, as the Exodus from Egypt as well as the death and resurrection of Christ; and (2) the Sabbath, as the memorial of Creation and the day of rest that is uniquely Jewish. Each activity, each observance, is carried out with the utmost sincerity, with hearts bursting in appreciation for our own heritage and destiny as a people.

During the Passover celebration we meet together in homes. We walk once again onto the pages of the Exodus and remind ourselves that it was the hand of God that delivered us from the mud and chains of bondage and made us a free people. The elements we eat further bring this to life: the apple mixed with cinnamon and wine reminds us of the color of mortar used in making bricks; the bitter herbs, usually horseradish, remind us of the bitterness of slavery; the parsley dipped in salt water reminds us first of tears, then of new life. Then we prepare for the Messiah’s supper, and bread is broken and later eaten in remembrance of the Messiah’s broken body. Finally, the cup symbolizing his sacrificial blood is consumed.

Our observance of the Sabbath is of a similar character as we share a meal together and conduct a service whose emphasis is to divide the Sabbath from the rest of the week, committing the entire day to the Lord. Spices that remind us of the sweetness of the Sabbath rest are passed around as we sing songs of praise. At the end we extinguish a candle in wine. We feel a certain sadness in the day’s ending, but joy that a new week is beginning.

What is the value of holding steadfastly to cultural practices that wind tortuously back through the centuries? It is first in relating culturally to our own people that we might win them to Jesus. Paul’s words ring in our ears with authenticity: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win the Jews.”

To “become as a Jew” means to us continuing to value and take part in activities such as the bar mitzvah. This is a time of serious instruction for the child entering sexual maturity, a moment when he or she can contemplate responsibility before God in entering adulthood. In messianic congregations, the young person is taught what it means to be a follower of Jesus. If the youth does not understand the seriousness of this, we caution him to not go through the ceremony.

We have found the bar mitzvah to be a ministry to families of Jewish young people going through the ceremony. Recently, the son of one of our church elders went through his bar mitzvah. This elder had been branded the family black sheep for his acceptance of Jesus, and he doubted the family would even attend the ceremony; they seriously mistrusted his new-found faith values. At the last minute they did attend and were softened by the warmth and fellowship of the congregation. Later, as the family prepared to leave, the old Jewish grandfather said, “I thought you had forsaken your Jewish heritage in accepting Jesus as the Messiah. I never thought it was possible to accept Jesus and to be Jewish. You have proved otherwise. You are more Jewish than the rest of your family.” There was a great deal of rejoicing. We have since continued to share the Messiah with this family and are praying for their salvation.

It is a rock of truth that non-Jewish believers can witness to traditional Jews without success—until they are blue in the face. Perhaps this is what prompted the School of World Missions at Fuller Theological Seminary to state: “We heartily encourage Jewish believers to retain their Jewish heritage, culture, religious practices and marriage customs within the context of sound biblical theology, expressing Old and New Testament truth. Their freedom in Christ to do this cannot but enrich the church in our day.” Just weeks ago a middle-aged Jewish woman came to us on the invitation of one of our members. She had been witnessed to for five months in a weekly, non-Jewish Bible study. She told her friends at the study, “This is very nice; I appreciate what you’re doing.” But because there was no Jewish significance in what they were doing, she left the group without accepting Jesus. When she saw the vibrant fellowship among our people, along with our reverence for Jewish things, she gave her life to the Lord in less than two hours.

As Jews, therefore, we Messianic Jews discover that we are better able to lead Jews to an acceptance of Jesus as Messiah and as Lord and Savior. Nevertheless, our Jewishness is by no means an evangelistic gimmick. We choose to remain Jews because we love the Jewish people and wish to identify with them. Indeed, we find our own identity not just as Christians, but also as Jews and, therefore, most fully as Christian Jews. Our own Jewishness thus leads us to a heartfelt identification with all the elements of history and personality that have produced the Jewish people. One has to be Jewish to relate in total compassion to the hearts of people who have been through the Holocaust. The love of the Messiah does not lessen our Jewishness. Rather, it actually strengthens it and deepens our love for our people and the cultural heritage which has contributed to our Jewish identity in this world.

Are we a legitimate part of the body of Christ in the practical eyes of evangelical believers?

Our congregations are growing significantly. We are seeing many come to New Testament faith in Jesus. Our people are being discipled in the Scriptures. When someone invites Christ into his life, the new believer is immediately taken in hand by a member who spends time each week with him in Bible study, prayer, witnessing, and just doing things together in the development of a biblical lifestyle. We practice water baptism, which we call Mikvah. In one 13-month period we saw 53 people baptized.

We have Gentile believers in our congregation, and all non-Jewish members are treated on an equal basis with Jews. We continue to invite non-Jews into our fellowship as well. We encourage our people to visit other local churches and to take part in weekly fellowship groups with other believers and pastors. We do this with regularity, as our main fellowship takes place on Saturday.

Finally, although we believe in our calling to maintain our identity as Jews, we do not see our identity as having anything to do with our salvation, which is solely by grace. And we do not expect Jewish conformity from the Christian church at large, although we desire a measure of understanding and appreciation for our Jewish roots of Christianity.

In his album Saved, Jewish believer Bob Dylan cries out, “There’s only one road, and it leads to Calvary.” Messianic Jews know the terrain of that road, its lumps, its bends, its detours. We have made our mistakes; what we need most now is the encouragement and prayerful support of the entire Christian community. In your prayers, consider especially these areas of need for Messianic Jews:

1. Capable leaders and church planters. We have new congregations that do not have any idea of congregational life, discipline, and polity. We are not like Presbyterian or Methodist churches with handy books of procedure in our pockets.

2. Biblical education materials that are sensitive to the Jewish culture. We hope eventually to write our own, or to see a curriculum publisher restructure materials to suit our needs.

3. Continued understanding by traditional Jews and Jewish leaders. We are sometimes accused of adulterating traditional Jewish practices by adhering to them in the context of our Christian faith. When we drink the cup symbolizing Messiah’s blood, for instance, we are said to make the cup mean something it was never intended to mean. Pray that we will learn to cope with such tensions—there are many for a Jew who has committed his life to the Lord.

Sometimes we are accused of deception—of pretending to be Jews only to win unsuspecting Jews to Christianity. To this we can only reply that we too think this would be despicable. We call ourselves Messianic Jews because we are Jews, we treasure our Jewishness, and we wish to remain Jews. We are also Christians and we treasure our New Testament faith. Whatever may be said of Christianity as developed in Christendom through the centuries, we find nothing in the New Testament that conflicts with our Jewishness—only that which strengthens and reinforces our Jewish identity and our love for Jews and our Jewish heritage.

There was a young man who accepted Jesus, whose father made him move out of the house because he thought he had thrown off his Jewish heritage by becoming a Christian. The father would have nothing to do with our congregation; he wouldn’t even talk to us. The young man was absolutely torn between his family and our community. Finally, the father told his son, “If you want to please me, you’re going to have to go to Israel to study” under a specific program to convince people to desert their Messianic beliefs. To maintain the dialogue with his father, the son went to Israel to study under this system, which absolutely downplays the New Testament.

The son has retained his faith. Yet, in pleasing his father, he is torn by the forces seeking to pull him away from that faith in Messiah. This is an example of extreme tension. However, we can say with joy that most families have eventually become reconciled to the Messianic faith of their members due to their Jewish fidelity. In some cases Messianic Judaism has been the means of reuniting torn families. May this be the case in the future.

Individual treatment and a high regard for human dignity mark the best nursing homes.

In 1965, the u.s. Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid legislation, and the nursing home industry boomed overnight. Motel chains snapped up independent pursing homes in large numbers, and stocks issued by nursing home chains rocketed on Wall Street. Financial analysts advised their customers to jump in, and they issued profit predictions of 20 percent or more. From 1960 through 1976, nursing home expenditures rose from $500 million to $10.6 billion, and the number of homes soared by 140 percent.

The rest, as they say, is history. Throughout the seventies, newspaper after newspaper carried scandalous tales of financial fraud and horrible mistreatment of nursing home residents, the result of unscrupulous owners trying to increase profits by cutting corners. Even before the Medicaid era, old-age homes were not generally regarded as gracious places to be. In many minds that image still endures: one of a large, white, ramshackle house converted for the purpose, with old folks whiling away the hours on the front porch, watching the world go by.

It’s scant wonder, then, that many people are nervous at the prospect of what lies ahead when they can no longer care for themselves, or that children feel guilty to find themselves even thinking that a nursing home might be the best place for an aged parent. This situation is a tragedy in itself, for across the country, Christian organizations, mostly church denominations, are running nursing homes and retirement centers that are models of love and devotion, and exemplify the best of what Christians are called to do here on earth. Most of these enterprises belong to the minority of homes that function on a not-for-profit basis.

Marvin Johnson operates Fairhaven Christian Home in Rockford, Illinois, owned by the Evangelical Free Church, in a modern, clean, pleasant-looking building. Said Johnson, “People say to me time and again: ‘Marv, if I had known it was going to be like this, I would have come here five years ago.’” Johnson and the administrators of other such homes are unanimous in their belief that the public, Christians included, have woeful misconceptions about what their enterprises are really like—both because the unsavory images from the past still linger, and because some homes are still far short of what they could be. Said one director of a well-regarded home: “I don’t remember ever reading an article saying that a retirement home is a good thing. Not ever.”

The fact is, many nursing homes are no longer just nursing homes. The trend is toward “continuing care,” especially among the nonprofit homes ran by Christian organizations. If you enter when you’re healthy—and the cost is considerable—you’re cared for when you’re sick, even if you can no longer afford it.

The Calvary Fellowship Homes of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is one such continuing care center. It is basically a retirement community of apartments and cottages, as well as a nursing facility. The administrator, George Baumgartner, left a career in research chemistry to manage the center, because he saw it as a ministry to which he was called. He said, “People are gradually learning that retirement homes aren’t just places you go to when you’re sick and need help.… Most of the people who enter retirement homes want a place where they can live and be happy and perform volunteer service for the Lord and still be healthy, but have the assurance that should they need [nursing care] assistance, they’ll be taken care of.”

Like Marvin Johnson, Baumgartner is convinced that it makes a difference to run a retirement home as a Christian ministry, not simply as a business. “I have people who walk into our home who can sense a difference, and the only difference is the Christian influence,” he said. “The building itself is certainly not elaborate, and we [administrators] all hire the same types of people.” He recalls a meeting of the state nursing home board where a speaker said, “All of you here look upon this as a job, as a way of making a living.” That struck Baumgartner: “I had to say to myself. No, that’s not the case. I and one other person on the board at the time entered this not to get jobs, because we already had jobs, but as a ministry. That’s the difference.”

A lot can happen when that attitude is brought to nursing care. The president of a large construction company recently wrote a letter to Franklyn Dyrness, president of the Quarryville (Pennsylvania) Presbyterian Home, just after the contractor had visited the home. The man wrote: “I was much impressed by your personal concern for all your guests. You knew each and every one by name, and you were able to communicate with them in some kind of personal pleasantry.” The man then said that his mother-in-law had once been confined in a nursing home, and he and his wife visited her weekly. “When I saw the desperate condition of some of my dear, old adult friends, it upset me tremendously.” He confessed, “In fact, I became fearful of growing old.… For some reason, the kindness you shared with your people that day has changed my attitude considerably. I feel now that there will always be someone who will care. Just maybe, there is not anything too bad about growing old. In fact, I think maybe it can become very peaceful and rewarding.”

The Quarryville Presbyterian Home is widely respected, and Dymess has run it ever since it opened 33 years ago (he recently turned over the administrator’s title to his young assistant, G. Keith Mitchell, Jr.). The home is not connected with a Presbyterian denomination, although its board members, who serve without pay, are all from two conservative branches of the church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It has space for 375 residents, making it larger than the average, and it is well off financially, having just completed a $2 million expansion without borrowing.

The home has no fund-raising drives, doesn’t advertise, and has no capital debt. Ask Dyrness to explain it, and you’ll get a sermon—and a pretty good one: “It’s a dedication, and if it’s anything less than that, there is something wrong with it. This is the Lord’s work, and he will be exalted through it. When we started, we didn’t have the money or the skill to cause us to take credit for it now. We’ve seen God come to our rescue over and over again.”

Dyrness operates on the principle that people must feel important to feel happy, and his efforts to accommodate the residents are obvious. One man who entered the home to retire had a well-equipped machine shop in his basem*nt. Dyrness invited him to bring his tools along, and the shop was set up in one of the garages. Next to the machine shop is a mechanic’s shop, and it is the province of another resident who had retired from his job as a master mechanic for a Cadillac dealer. The men work on useful projects at their own pace, and they are paid by the home for what they do. One lady handles all the bookkeeping for a denominational insurance program at a fraction of what that service would cost otherwise. The result is less expensive insurance as well as therapy for the woman. One man with a love for flowers asked if he could have a patch of ground on which to raise a few, and Dyrness promptly bought 130 rosebushes for him. The man tended those bushes lovingly until he died, and now someone else who loves roses has assumed responsibility for them.

Dyrness said many people have approached him about establishing homes like Quarryville Presbyterian elsewhere. He’s been offered several sites: a fruit farm in Michigan, a mansion with 60 acres in Baltimore, a building near the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, as well as a site near Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, offered by two businessmen who assured him that money was no object. Dyrness turned them all down—although he can envision more homes like his around the country. It’s just that he is convinced money is not the key to a successful Christian retirement home. The key is dedication; that is, men who believe they have been called by God for the purpose of tending his aging sheep. “Show me a person who has given his life to God’s work, and I’ll show you a successful person,” he said. “God’s work, done in God’s way, and done to God’s glory, will never lack for supply.”

The costs of retiring in a Christian home are high, as they are everywhere, and it is quite obviously not something everyone can afford. The smallest “independent living” arrangement at the Fairhaven Christian Home in Rockford is an 11′6″ by 10′10″ living room-bedroom combination with a shared half bath. It requires a “founder’s fee” (a one-time lump sum payment) of $8,000 and a monthly charge of $330, which can rise as costs rise. The smallest apartment has a living room and a bedroom, each 10′6″ by 10′8″, plus a kitchenette and a full bath. For that, the founder’s fee is $18,700 and $420 a month, or, for two people, $23,500 and $755 a month. These figures rise with the apartment size. The fee in the home’s nursing center is the customary monthly charge plus an extra $15 a day. Fairhaven’s fees are actually lower than at many other homes, but the fee structures are similar elsewhere.

At Quarryville, however, financial arrangements are altogether different. Residents pay $500 entrance expense, plus a monthly room or apartment charge ($275 for the smallest room), and in addition, they turn over all other financial assets to the home, according to a legal contract with an escape clause. Those assets are pooled and invested, and interest of 8 to 9 percent is paid. When the resident dies, the assets are distributed to the heirs less 5 percent for each year the resident has been at the home up to four years. During the contract period, the money actually remains the property of the resident, and is available for his use should the need arise.

In 1977, a book titled Too Old, Too Sick, Too Bad. by Sen, Frank Moss and his assistant, Val Halamandaris, was published. Moss headed a Senate subcommittee that investigated nursing home abuses brought to light in newspaper stories during the seventies, and the subcommittee was able to substantiate the astonishing extent to which elderly nursing home patients were made to suffer at the hands of nursing home owners whose primary motivation was profit. The authors wrote about the investigation in their book of more than 300 pages; it took only two pages to explain what makes a good nursing home. Part of that conclusion says: “The lesson appears to be that it is an intangible—esprit de corps—a sense of motivation manifested in individualized treatment and maximizing human dignity that marks the best nursing homes. Neither this esprit nor tender loving care can be imposed by government fiat. It must be the result of the desire and commitment on the part of nursing home personnel. All American homes can provide superior care. All that is required is the will to do so.”

Even if they had been trying to do it, the authors could not have painted a more accurate picture of homes operated on Christian principles. How could there possibly be a better way to “maximize” human dignity than simply to believe that people are made in the image of God, and that, therefore, their dignity is beyond measure? What better motivation can there be for “tender loving care” than the belief that when a patient dies, he is merely being transferred from nursing care to the Lord’s care?

“Many times,” said Marvin Johnson of Fairhaven, “I have been at the bedside of a dying person, and I’ve found there is nothing more beautiful than to be there, with someone I’ve known for five years or so, and to have them say thanks, that they appreciated so much what the home has meant for them, and to know that they’re going to be with the Lord. It’s an experience I’ll never forget. It makes me feel that my life has a real purpose, that society has a real purpose.”

Such things have even been known to turn nursing home owners into committed Christians. That was the case with Clifford Fischer, who became administrator of the Brookside Manor Home in Overbrook, Kansas, in 1965, at the tender age of 23. He said that even at that age he feared death, and in his job he naturally confronted it frequently. Said Fischer, “I had the opportunity to be with a lot of Christian people when they faced death, and I just didn’t understand how they could have the peace they had. It was out of those experiences that I started searching, and I ultimately came into contact with a young man who had the same peace these older people had. Through a sharing time with him, and after about seven years of Bible study, I finally came to realize what that peace was. Of course it was knowing Jesus as my personal Savior.”

Although Brookside Manor did not start out to be a Christian nursing home, it surely is one now, said Fischer. He owns the home, and it is run for profit, so by no means are all profit-making homes unsatisfactory places. But, says Fischer, “I hope that people really see something different about us than they see in the so-called secular world, because we really do care for our people. I’ll go out of my way to demonstrate to them how good God has been to me, and how in turn he expects me to be the same way toward other people.” Fischer sees his business as a missionary field that God has given to him, along with gifts of administrative ability and compassion that enable him to run it successfully.

Most of the church-sponsored retirement and nursing homes in the country are operated by mainstream Protestant denominations. Evangelical churches have not entered the field in anywhere near the same numbers. One reason for that, according to Bernard King, executive director of a large retirement center in Florida owned by the Christian and Missionary Alliance, is that these churches have seen evangelism and missions work as their calling, rather than social needs, such as caring for the elderly.

King manages Shell Point Village in Fort Myers, which has about a thousand residents. He said his denomination is happy to have it, but “I don’t think the Alliance now would ever spend the money or the organizational energy to start a place like Shell Point.… This kind of social program does not have the highest priority according to the goals that are being looked upon in the 1980s, because we feel that God has given us an evangelical missionary goal.”

Nonetheless, it is safe to say that conservative Christian churches will be faced ever more directly with the burden of caring for their aging members, if only because the elderly are growing faster as a group than any other segment of the population. But beyond that, it seems that evangelicals, who have captured the attention of a cynical nation in the last year or so, will be challenged by the doubters and the skeptics with the very challenge thrown down by James—the challenge to prove their faith by their good works. But perhaps most importantly, as the building contractor in Pennsylvania found out, the atmosphere of a Christian retirement home can dissipate the greatest fear that possesses people, the fear of dying.

MOTHER AND CHILD

Mother, my most recent child,

Wrapped in wool and scanning space,

Is to age unreconciled.

She who reared me, taught me grace

And thoughtfulness, commands me now

With strident voice and stormy face.

She who loved my gifts is slow

To use and quick to criticize

The offerings I now bestow.

Discontentment fills her eyes.

Age and loneliness combine

To shake her family with surprise.

We who love will not resign

Her failing self to others’ care;

Her petulance serves to refine.

She who nurtured us with prayer,

Shared our sorrows and our bliss,

She was gentle once and fair.

What trick of motherhood is this

Which overwhelms a child with guilt

And makes her offspring feel remiss?

Self-pity is by illness built.

My mother’s gone—this is a child

Who needs my love. Lord, as Thou wilt.

Grant me patience, manner mild;

This charge I will accept from Thee,

To tend with love my mother-child

Until she gains eternity.

GERALDINE CRAIG

In early spring of each year, Jews around the world celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a reminder to Jews and Gentiles alike of the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust under Hitler and the Nazis. Jews will never forget it, and they vow it shall never happen again. CHRISTIANITY TODAY joins with the Jewish people in remembering this infamous event. With them, we are determined that nothing like it shall ever happen again.

We believe it is specially appropriate on this occasion to raise six hard questions for both evangelicals and Jews:

1.Are evangelicals anti-Semitic?

2.Who killed Jesus?

3.Is the New Testament anti-Semitic?

4.Should Christians seek to evangelize Jews?

5.Should Jews fear evangelicals?

6.How can evangelicals and Jews work together?

No doubt it would be easier to avoid these sticky questions. But the occasion is far too momentous, the day too serious to allow ourselves to drift apart simply because we are unwilling to take the trouble to understand each other. We evangelicals and Jews need each other too much to gloss over our differences with superficial banalities. We owe it to each other to speak with open hearts and complete honesty.

Are Evangelicals Anti-Semitic?

Anti-Semitism is, of course, difficult to define. It includes infinitely more than genocide; for that is only the worst form of anti-Semitism—the final step in a long journey. On the other hand, anti-Semitism must not be so broadly defined as to preclude criticism of particular acts or of specific groups of Jews. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” says Scripture. It is possible to criticize a Jew without being anti-Semitic, just as it is possible to criticize an evangelical without being anti-evangelical.

On the whole, evangelicals tend to slough off suggestions that they are anti-Semitic. They admit that nominal Christians, particularly medieval Catholics and some members of the liberal church in modern Germany, were anti-Semitic; but evangelicals stand opposed to this. Beyond that, however, we must confess that Luther and the Reformers and many evangelical Protestants since then have made statements that Jews certainly have a right to consider anti-Semitic. We regret these anti-Semitisms of the past and present. Southern Baptist president Bailey Smith vigorously insists that he did not intend as anti-Semitic his recent remark that God does not hear the prayers of Jews. He says he loves and honors the Jews and that he was simply expounding a fine point of Baptist theology in his well-known reference to Jewish prayers. At any rate, other evangelical leaders, including such thorough conservatives as Jerry Falwell, have publicly dissociated themselves from Bailey Smith’s remark. Says Falwell. “God hears the cry of any sincere person who calls on him.” These leaders have vigorously rejected the Smith statement and made clear their opposition to all anti-Semitism. Still, we sorrowfully acknowledge anti-Semitic statements and actions. We are thankful, therefore, that we detect a spirit of repentance among evangelicals.

But repentance without restitution, like faith without works, is useless. What must evangelicals, and especially evangelical leaders, do to show that their repentance is sincere?

1. It is important that, where guilty, they publicly acknowledge past anti-Semitism, and declare it to be sin. If evangelicals are unwilling to set the record straight on this matter, any mouthing of repentance is rightly suspect.

2. Evangelical leaders must avoid any direct or indirect support for anti-Semitic causes. We believe contemporary evangelicals pass this test fairly well. Anti-Semitic leaders of the past, such as Gerald L. K. Smith and Gerald Winrod, and the anti-Semitic movements of the present such as the Ku Klux Klan, have absolutely no following among even the most conservative evangelical leaders. Of course, some evangelicals have espoused political and social causes that are not generally popular among Jews (who have tended to be liberal in these matters). But so far as we can see, they do this without any anti-Semitic overtones. And many evangelicals favor middle-of-the-road or liberal policies more congenial to the Jewish mainstream. It is also striking that the most politically conservative evangelical spokesmen are frequently the most pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist in their convictions. At any rate, evangelical leaders do not now align themselves in any way with anti-Semitic causes.

3. It is not enough just to condemn anti-Semitism in the past and remain aloof from anti-Semitic causes. Evangelical leaders and pastors must also use their teaching ministries to present solid instruction as to the antibiblical and anti-Christian nature of all anti-Semitic attitudes or actions. To heighten evangelical sensitivities concerning the horrors of anti-Semitism and the need Jews have for true Christian friends, church leaders would do well to show films like Avenue of the Just or Night and Fog, and discuss them as a deterrent to future wrongs.

4. Further, evangelical leaders must ferret out, expose, and actively oppose incipient and overt anti-Semitism that creeps into a society structured for centuries along anti-Semitic lines. Hitler did not arise in a cultural vacuum. His persecution of the Jews was the end product of a long history of anti-Semitism in which, alas, evangelicals too played an ignoble part. Incipient anti-Semitism leads to gross anti-Semitism, which may terminate in genocide. So evangelicals must root out even the incipient forms we often think are harmless. Are we careful to show an appropriate respect for Jews in our casual remarks, attempts at humor, or social and business relations?

5. Evangelicals must guard against the unconscious anti-Semitism in themselves and others that lies concealed in the structures of society. Jews, naturally more sensitive to this, can help evangelicals here by forthrightly pointing out such attitudes. A public school English teacher, for example, can instill prejudices for life by his treatment of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

6. As evangelicals demonstrate in tangible ways their abhorence of anti-Semitic actions, they will declare a crucial truth to the Gentile world at large: to attack Jews is to attack evangelicals, and such attacks will be resisted by evangelicals as attacks against themselves. Only in this way can evangelicals make their repentance credible. Evangelicals, we grant, may well have begun to move in this direction. They may well be the Jews’ best friends, but they certainly still have a long way to go.

Who Killed Jesus?

Careful students of Scripture may regard this question as irrelevant, if not ridiculous. But among untaught evangelicals and nominal Christians it is significant. The blame Gentiles heaped on Jews for the death of Christ created a profound sense of unfairness and resentment that has become a fixture of Jewish culture. Today, the repetition of this unjust charge produces an emotional, unconscious antagonism deep in the hearts of many Jews. Evangelical scholars, in writing on the New Testament, must bear this in mind, and show uninformed readers the scriptural teaching. A superficial reading of the New Testament leads some to conclude that the Jews as a whole condemned Jesus to death and the Romans performed the execution. A more careful reading shows it was only certain Jewish leaders who brought the charge and stirred up the mob. Romans executed Jesus partly because Pilate lacked the courage to stand against those leaders and the excited mob.

But this is only part of what the New Testament says on this question. Christians also believe that the death of Jesus was part of God’s overall plan. He chose the Jews to be a messianic people—a people through whom the world would be richly blessed (Gen. 12:1–3: “Thou shalt be a blessing … and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”). In his perfect life and sacrificial death, Jesus was the representative of the Jews in their messianic role to bring ultimate blessing to the whole human race (John 4:22: “Salvation is of the Jews”).

But the world today does not accept Jesus and his salvation, just as earlier it rejected God and his messianic people. In this sense, the Jewish leaders (and Pilate) were more representative of the unbelieving world than of the Jews. Jesus presented himself as the true Jew doing God’s messianic work as their representative. It is important that evangelical pastors, teachers, and leaders spell out clearly and specifically to their churches and constituencies that neither Jews of Jesus’ day nor Jews of today are corporately to be held responsible for the death of Jesus.

Is The New Testament Anti-Semitic?

Closely related to the question of who killed Jesus is the broader question of anti-Semitism in the New Testament. Paul, who is often considered to be the most anti-Semitic of all the New Testament writers, was himself a Jew, intensely proud of his Jewishness. The same is true of John, who, for all he said about Jewish leaders, left no doubt that Jews were the true people of God. All the New Testament writers except Luke were Jews. They boldly identified with the Jews, who, in contrast to Gentiles, cherished the Hebrew Scriptures and the idea of a coming Messiah.

One practical application of the alleged anti-Semitism of the New Testament requires special consideration. We must distinguish between what would not be anti-Semitic in the mouth of a first-century Jew and what those same words might convey about a Jew when spoken today. Both Christian and Jewish scholars recognize that the so-called anti-Jewish polemic in the New Testament is in reality an in-house debate among Jews.

But 2,000 years of anti-Semitism provide a wholly different context from that of the first century. New Testament words repeated in today’s context are interpreted to mean something quite different from what these same words meant in their New Testament context. This is not so much a theological problem as a hermeneutical one, and it demands very sensitive, discerning action on the part of the church. Whenever a pastor or leader reads or refers to a passage from the New Testament relating to this topic, it is imperative that he interpret it so that he places it in its wholistic Bible context, for these passages are misunderstood, perhaps not by the well-taught, but by the ill-taught. To avoid a misunderstanding of the New Testament message, therefore, evangelicals must provide their hearers with a careful interpretation set in its original Jewish context. Christians are not sensitive to this problem, but they would be if their grandfather, two uncles, and six cousins had died in the furnaces of Buchenwald.

Should Christians Seek To Evangelize Jews?

From its very beginning, Christianity sought to win converts to its faith. Evangelicals believe that Jesus Christ is their divine Lord and Savior and wish to share this good news with all others. Ultimately, salvation depends on faith in Christ. Any evangelical who does not believe this either is not a genuine evangelical, or is a very poorly instructed one. Jews, therefore, can expect evangelicals to seek adherents to Christian faith. They would be poor evangelicals if they did not.

But is it possible for evangelicals to obey the biblical mandate to evangelize in ways acceptable both to them and to Jews?

We begin by noting that both Jews and evangelicals today are firmly committed to religious freedom. Every religious group has the right to practice and propagate its own faith. At times Judaism has been a missionary religion. Jews have every right to seek to convert Christians to the Torah of God. They, in turn, must grant evangelicals the right to seek to win all people to the Christian message.

Of course, both Jews and Christians must repudiate certain kinds of evangelism. Some evangelistic techniques are not consistent with true respect for other people and, therefore, with the respect that every biblical Christian should have for every Jew. Evangelists ought not place unworthy pressures on Jews to induce them to become Christians. Any sort of manipulation or bribery is wholly out of order. We abhor any deception in seeking to present Christ to Jews. A small minority of Jewish Christians disguise their Christianity to attract unsuspecting Jews to accept Christianity. This is deceitful, contrary to the New Testament teaching, and unworthy of evangelical Christians. Evangelicals have more reasons to oppose this type of deception than do Jews, but we have often failed them by our silence. Evangelicals must speak out boldly and unequivocally against any deceitful practices. We must insist on ethical integrity as the first law of any Christian witness.

Should Jews Fear Evangelicals?

On what grounds, then, can we argue that Jews should not be afraid of evangelicals who are open and sincere in their evangelizing of Jews? We believe a number of reasons show that Jews ought to trust evangelicals as true friends.

1. Events of the last few years have shown that evangelicals have sought to identify with Jews. At times they may have embarrassed Jews by their well-meaning but not very sophisticated support, but in public and private they have made known their backing of Jewish causes; many have consistently supported the nation of Israel and Zionism; and they have defended the Jew in high and low places. G. Douglas Young, late president of the Israel American Institute, and Arnold T. Olson of the American Bible Society and president emeritus of the Evangelical Free Church of America, are only two of many evangelical leaders who have staunchly supported Jews at home and abroad.

2. Our next point is extremely sensitive, and we do not wish to introduce a red herring. Yet we fail to see why evangelicals’ support for Jews is negated by their desire to evangelize. Just the opposite is true. Their special concern for the Jew, drawn from the Bible, often translates into an even stronger motivation to share their faith with those toward whom they feel a unique relationship. Moreover, a Jew does not necessarily cease to be a Jew when he becomes a Christian any more than a Gentile ceases to be a Gentile when he becomes a Christian. Would he not technically remain a Jew—even though he might be reckoned apostate—since Judaism teaches that a Jew who sins is still a Jew?

We do object when Messianic Jews disguise their true intent and claim to be simply a Jewish party for the purpose of attracting Jews to Christianity. But if a Jew is defined as the son of a Jewish mother who voluntarily identifies himself as a Jew, one with other Jews of the past and present, brings himself under the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures, and follows Jewish practices as a true expression of his own piety, then surely there is no reason why his acceptance of Jesus as Messiah means that he ceases to be a Jew. We do not accept the view of Chaim Potok that a Jew cannot become Christian without converting out of Judaism. Christianity, Potok argues, destroys the essence of Judaism by completing its messianic goal, so the Jew who becomes a Christian has no further purpose in existing as a Jew. As we read the Bible, however, the messianic role of the Jew is permanent, both as a burden and as a glory, and will never be accomplished until the end of history (Isa. 2:1–4 and Rom. 11:26: “And so all Israel shall be saved”).

3. This leads us to a third reason why Jews can trust evangelical Christians for continued support: the role accorded to Jews by the Bible. This provides Christians faithful to both Old and New Testaments with powerful built-in safeguards to keep them from falling into anti-Semitism. They owe a great debt of gratitude to the Jewish people. According to the Bible, God chose them to be the instruments for his redemptive purposes in the world. Through them God gave his revelation in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and, finally, the Christian Messiah and Savior.

But if gratitude has a short memory, evangelicals have an even more compelling reason for special concern over Jews: many of them believe Jews are specially protected by God. Jews also have a future role in God’s plan; therefore, to fight them is to fight God (the Jews are still specially loved by God for “his gifts and call are irrevocable,” Rom. 11:28–29). God has even specially commanded them, so many evangelicals believe, to treat Jews well (“I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse,” Gen. 12:3).

4. Finally, Jews can count on evangelical concern because of the general stress in both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures on the fundamental nature of the ethic of love. Evangelicals do not always act in love, but in their Bible they have an immensely powerful and continuous encouragement to love Jews. And it warns them that eventually they are accountable to God for their deeds.

How Can Jews And Evangelicals Work Together?

Jews and evangelicals must join in working for racial and human justice in our homeland and in the Middle East, and for Jews and all people everywhere. They must stand united against all kinds of man’s inhumanity to man. For their part, Jews should not limit their opposition to anti-Semitism, but also stand against the hatred and superpatriotism that can foster it. Christians, on the other hand, need to share equally with the Jews in the ongoing battle against anti-Semitism. They must make all legitimate Jewish concerns their own, and they must especially identify with Jews and join with them in equally vigorous opposition against even incipient forms of anti-Semitism. We evangelicals need to make our identification with Jews so plain that—let us repeat—when anyone attacks Jews as Jews, or displays any form of anti-Semitism, he must know that he is also attacking evangelicals and violating their basic convictions. And he will then need to do battle against both Jews and evangelicals.

We would do well to heed the warning of a Christian of a former day. In his later years, German pastor Martin Niemoeller lamented: “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” God forbid that American evangelicals will bring such a fate upon themselves.

But evangelicals and Jews have much more in common than a mutual desire for survival. Under God, both know themselves called by God to work for human good. Jews and evangelicals can cooperate to preserve all truly human values. We share the ethics of the Ten Commandments and the prophets. We are deeply committed to both political and religious freedom. In America, at least, we are committed to the separation of church and state. But we are also coming more and more to see that Western society, our nation, and even our public schools dare not be value free. Actually, there is no such thing as a value-free society. Our Western culture cannot hold together as a society where we should like our children to live without the Judeo-Christian heritage on which it was built. To remove these commonly held religious and moral values from Western society would be wholly undesirable and even disastrous for both Jews and Christians.

Rather, we should gratefully accept and promulgate the common values of our Judeo-Christian faith: the sanctity of human life, the stewardship of the earth’s resources, the importance of the family as the basic unit of society, respect for the individual and his inalienable rights, and the moral imperative to love one’s neighbor.

Of course, these are religious values, but they are also values to be preserved and defended by any stable government for the common good, for the personal and social welfare of the nation. We dare not permit those who reject these basic human values to prevent Christians and Jews from building them into our government, our public schools, and the basic social fabric of our society. Evangelicals and Jews must stand together to preserve our freedoms, our democratic society, and most of all, those basic values we owe ultimately to the Jews. As the messianic people of God, they have brought these infinite blessings to us Gentiles; and for this we evangelical Christians are deeply thankful.

The Atlanta murderer(s) will soon be found. But whether found or not found, they have revealed a festering sore in the heart of a great American city. And it could have been any city—yours or mine.

What caused this hideous outbreak that turns our stomachs sick just to hear of it? At this stage, with the crime yet unsolved, it seems to reflect at least two ugly motifs: hostility to children and racism. As New York pastor Alan Johnson points out, “Children are seen by many people as a hindrance, a source of competition with one’s felt need for self-expression, work, and freedom. The transition to two-income nuclear families, the gnawing experience of supporting children in one-parent homes during economic upheavals, cause some people to feel children as a burden and annoying presence. We become hostile to children and build up our arms to make ourselves safe. We enact policies which do not care about children and refuse to accept their needs.”

If hostility to children is newly surfacing, racism is a social wound with long history. But it is no more excusable for that reason. Nor can it be tolerated by any Christian who finds guidance for his life and thought in Holy Scripture. At this point, there is no evidence of Ku Klux Klan responsibility for the atrocities in Atlanta; but in other cities, they have displayed increasing outbursts of militant racism. As evangelicals we dare not push these disturbing events out of sight and out of mind. They will only explode in our faces later with more devastating fury than ever.

What can evangelicals do at this moment? Write to local papers. Contact other public communications media wherever possible. Write to congressmen asking provision of additional funds needed in Atlanta to continue the investigation. Assist Atlanta churches and organizations formed to bring criminals to justice and to alleviate the causes of child abuse and racial tension (CT, April 10, p. 62). And don’t forget to pray for the families in Atlanta.

Crisis Intervention: Coffee And Cake

The other day I completed one of those self-analysis surveys in a psychology magazine, and I discovered I was going through a mid-life crisis. I casually mentioned it to my wife and she replied, “I didn’t even know you were in mid-life.” So much for domestic sympathy.

“Why not throw the magazine into the trash can?” I asked myself. Then I answered myself: “Won’t do any good. I would just go looking for it, only to discover it had been burned, and then I would feel worse. Imagine having my mid-life crisis go up in smoke!”

No, the only manly thing to do was to take myself by the nape of the neck, shake myself soundly, and face my crisis honestly. I did this two or three times, and spent the rest of the morning lying under a deep-heat, infrared lamp. Next time I will shake myself from some other part of my anatomy.

Finally my spouse got the message. “So you’re going through a crisis! So what? Being in the ministry is one crisis after another anyway. First it was getting into seminary. (How did you get in, by the way?) Then it was paying for seminary. Then it was getting a church. Then it was staying in a church. So, what’s one more little crisis. You’ll live.”

Alas, she did not understand. This was a mid-life crisis, totally unlike any other crisis in a man’s life. I could never again be in this same crisis, and it had taken me many years to get there. I had to savor it and make the most of it. It would be tragic to come this far and not enjoy my own crisis.

I sat in my favorite rocking chair and pondered the mysteries of mid-life. I wished Gary Collins or Jay Adams were there to assure me that everything would be all right. I was wondering if anybody really understood.

About midway through my mid-life meditation, I smelled fresh coffee being brewed, and I heard a voice call. “Care for a cup of coffee? Mrs. Johnson brought us one of her famous Swedish coffee cakes.” Somebody did understand! A cup of coffee, a loaf of coffee cake, and thou!

Some crises are easier to get over than others.

EUTYCHUS X

“A Cup Of Cold Water”

I say “Yes, and amen!” to your editorial of March 13, “Public Aid and the Churches’ Duties.” Of course, there are those who may try to take advantage of the church’s generosity. And we don’t want to equate the church with a religious welfare agency. Despite the pitfalls, the church should be encouraged to care for the needy, especially those of the “household of faith.”

Case in point: our little church (less than 100 members) has managed to distribute several thousand dollars in the last few years through a special “prosperity fund.” We also collect for weekly food baskets.

Offering the Living Water and “a cup of cold water” is not an either/or proposition. It is both/and!

RICK A. SANDERS

Cantonment, Fla.

Too Favorable

In the article on the retirement of The Way’s leader and founder, Victor Paul Wierwille [News, March 13], you devoted nearly 11 column inches to almost praising the accomplishments of The Way and only 3 to a very inadequate refutation of The Way’s doctrines.

I have dedicated my life to researching and preaching against such groups and I can honestly say that this article is much too positive in their favor. This group is most definitely a cult. Their teachings are outright blasphemous, not mere “deviations” as your article puts it.

TIM BRIGGS

Lexington, Ky.

Is That All?

How you, Eutychus [March 13], underestimate the pill-swallowing abilities of us Americans. Only seven million aspirin tablets a year?

DAVID OLSON

Monrovia, Calif.

Delighted And Bewildered

The article on Dr. Henry was excellent [“The Concerns and Considerations …” March 13]. He should be interviewed like that once a year. He always seems to have a broad and balanced perspective which he articulates clearly, forthrightly, and sensitively. The only thing that could have improved the interview was his own definition of “evangelical” for the record.

MARK D. DATTOLI

Elmhurst, Ill.

Carl Henry’s usually flawless research broke down significantly in his references to Moral Majority. Henry says we claim a “block of 30 million votes.” We have never claimed that, nor have we claimed we were solely responsible for the outcome of last November’s elections. We have never promoted a “Christian litmus test.” Other groups have, but not Moral Majority, which is political, not religious in its make-up. Since we do not endorse candidates, we had nothing to say in the national office concerning Abscam congressmen or those caught in hom*osexual acts.

CAL THOMAS

Vice President, Communications

Moral Majority

Lynchburg, Va.

Was the interview with Henry written for us ordinary laymen or for overeducated, abstruse thinkers with a string of Ph.D.’s after their names? For example, in response to the question “What religious trends do you consider most important?” some of his answers were: “The continuing deterioration of older liberal theology and its evident drift toward secular humanism”; and “The vulnerability to attack and negation of conventional ethics wedded to naturalistic metaphysics.”

There’s no excuse for a religious leader writing for the average Christian in such a confusing, excessively profound style. I’m just a plain, blunt man, as are most of your readers, who were probably as bewildered as I was after reading his views.

GEORGE COOKLIS

Corry, Pa.

Children Of The Light?

The idea that puberty might be postponed by sleeping in total darkness sounds just about as preposterous as the notions that sexual drive can be cooled by cold showers or that nocturnal emissions can be prevented by not sleeping between flannel sheets [“‘Premature’ Puberty: Advice to Parents” March 13]. But stranger things have been true, though they deserve documentation. So, could Donald Joy please identify the research behind and source of such a theory to establish its credibility before parents frighten their little kids by turning out their Mickey Mouse night lights or chase them away from the comforting glow of the fire (where they’ve slept for milleniums) or shield them from moonbeams.

DAVE JACKSON

Evanston, Ill.

Find full documentation on “light” in “Trust Your Body Rhythms,” by Gay Gaer Luce (Psychology Today, April 1975, pp. 52–53)—Eds.

Growing Up

Christians have too readily assumed the sequence of education, emancipation, and then marriage. Now Koteskey [“Growing Up Too Late, Too Soon,” March 13] and Joy have challenged this sequence with sober observations that should strike a responsive chord in those not too far removed from their own adolescence. To those who respond, “Let them take cold showers,” it should be pointed out that the scriptural way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13) from lust is 1 Corinthians 7:9, and that this verse is not restricted to college graduates over 21.

Besides the generally wise course of giving children real work and responsibilities, two modern fallacies need to be confronted if our biologically mature children are to be ready for “early marriage” The first is that the meaning of life is found between the bedsheets. The second, which is more broadly applicable, is that love is emotional rather than volitional, and that if the feelings pass then the will is powerless to carry on.

Parents and the church should consciously seize the many opportunities offered by cinema, television, and literature, and use them to label these assumptions for the folly they are. With the stars out of their eyes and room made for serious commitment, there should be no reason why today’s late teens cannot form perfectly sound marriages with fellow believers.

ROGER W. BENNETT

Bloomington, Ind.

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that adolescence as we experience it in our culture is a rather recent phenomenon. My thinking is that it has the effect of extending childhood far beyond historical norms. I was not sure that we recognized that as a society and as Christians. The insight has become my personal guiding concept in developing relationships with the youth of my congregation and now my own children entering their teen years.

I was certain that my ideas were not original, but until now I have never read anything on the subject. It appeared there was nothing available. Apparently that is no longer the case. I would appreciate very much the opportunity to keep in touch with what I hope will be a growing literature on the subject.

REV. KEITH MATTSON

First Baptist Church

Chisholm, Minn.

Fraud Exposed

Recently my attention was called to the March 13 issue which included an excellent exposé of a virulent, slanderous anti-Catholic publication [“Jack Chick’s Anti-Catholic Alberto Comic Book Is Exposed as Fraud”]. It is unfortunate that there are men who will stoop to such lies in an attempt to defame the Catholic church.

There was a statement in Alberto which is an exceptionally blatant lie. It seems that Chick stated that [Saint Ignatius] Loyola, the founder of the Catholic Jesuit Society was, … a member of the Adumbrados, or the Illuminati …” Had Chick investigated, he should have learned that Loyola died some 200 years before the founding of the infamous Illuminati.

ANTONIO N. PAOLANTONIO

Reseda, Calif.

As a former Catholic priest and now director of Mission to Catholics International, which specializes in effective Roman Catholic evangelism, I read with interest the report concerning “Alberto.”

It is my conviction that faith doesn’t come from sensational stories, but by the hearing of God’s Word (Rom. 10:17). Both Alberto and Double Cross lack solid Bible meat and are somewhat inaccurate regarding Catholic teaching.

“Alberto” has deliberately avoided fellowship and communication with at least three ministries to Catholics. Of the pastors we have contacted, all have reservations about the magazines concerning his life.

The Catholic hierarchy categorically denies that “Alberto” was ever ordained a Catholic priest. It would be impossible to cover up all evidence of such facts. A lot of people. Catholics and non-Catholics, have been hurt by this bogus priest.

BARTHOLOMEW F. BREWER

San Diego, Calif.

I am very disappointed to read your hatchet job on Jack Chick. Chick is certainly not perfect. I have been concerned that he has become overly preoccupied with the evils of Catholicism of late, but your article gives the appearance that the Church of the Inquistion has no faults and Mr. Chick has no good points.

STEVE BYAS

Sapulpa, Okla.

Thank you very much for your report on Alberto Rivera. The Mechanicsburg Ministerium made a statement last December concerning a local bookstore selling the Chick materials. The bookstore still sells the materials and does not believe the articles that present him as a fake. It is sad that some in the name of Christianity believe this kind of material.

I know that the hate letters will start. I have a collection, because I was quoted in several newspapers speaking against the publications.

REV. CHARLES D. HILLER

First United Methodist Church

Mechanicsburg, Pa.

Appeal For Discernment

Kuhn’s article, “Out-of-Body Experiences: Misplaced Euphoria” [March 13], disturbed me a great deal for two reasons. First, he said that “all who take the Christian message seriously should be interested in the phenomenon of death, including no doubt, researches into out-of-body experiences of those resuscitated after clinical death.” Studies in this field often are nothing more than research into the occult. To suggest that all should be interested in such research is ill advised, as very few are prepared to deal with the vast implications. These studies can be likened to the field of parapsychology, which is basically a pseudoscience researching the realm of the occult.

Second, before they attribute more credibility to their findings than is due, the readers should be aware that some scholars believe Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Raymond Moody are involved in the occult. They are not exactly unbiased in their conclusions.

Christians need to be aware of the growing research into the realm of the occult that is being done in the name of science. The impact has been so dramatic that even religious writers are now proclaiming the merits of such work to the extent of recommending that one’s ESP abilities be developed.

DON ROGERS

Huntingdon Valley, Pa.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published; all are subject to condensation. Please address letters to “Eutychus and His Kin.”