Page 4821 – Christianity Today (2024)

A blueprint for moral education in a pluralistic age.

Are America’s public schools graduating a generation of moral illiterates? The question has stirred intense public debate. One educator joining the chorus of questioners is Christina Hoff Sommers. Fifteen years of teaching ethics at the university level has convinced Sommers that something in the classroom has gone fundamentally wrong. “We may be one of the few societies in the world that finds itself incapable of passing on its moral teachings to young people,” she told CT. When it comes to character development and moral education, it is as though “we’ve forgotten several thousand years of civilization—the great moral, religious, and philosophical traditions.”

Two experiences in particular convinced Sommers that public education must find a better way. One was becoming a parent. She saw firsthand how public schools retreat from the “traditional task of helping parents to civilize the child.” She therefore felt grateful to be able to enroll her child in a private Jewish school where the teaching staff was “not afraid to teach ethics and kindness, where morality was woven into the daily lessons.”

What she saw in her college students was just as unsettling. She came face to face with a “surprising number of young people who think there’s no right or wrong, that moral choices depend on how you feel.” While many were decent and kind, and “the vast majority could never really harm another person or steal, they could not justify or defend ethical values.” They had no sense that morality could be normative and absolute.

While Sommers realizes that separation of church and state may not encourage the use of specifically religious texts in government schools, she does believe educators can do a great deal more than they do. Western philosophy, much of it with roots in Judeo-Christian teachings, can prompt classroom discussion in which teachers insist on certain kinds of behavior and “cultivate what Aristotle called a love of the good.” Even classics of literature from the likes of Tolstoy or Shakespeare, she believes, can yield insight in ethical living, if educators will only shed their moral relativism.

Here Sommers gets specific about what that means for classrooms across the land.

Some time ago, I published an article titled “Ethics Without Virtue,” in which I criticized the way ethics is being taught in American colleges. I pointed out that students taking college ethics classes debate abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, DNA research, and the ethics of transplant surgery, while they learn almost nothing about private decency, honesty, personal responsibility, or honor. I argued that the current style of teaching ethics, which concentrates so much on social policy, is giving students the wrong ideas about ethics. Social morality is only half of the moral life; the other half is private morality. I urged that we attend to both.

A colleague of mine did not like what I said. She told me that in her classroom, she would continue to focus on issues of social injustice—women’s oppression, corruption in big business, transgressions of multinational corporations in Third World countries. She explained, “You are not going to have moral people until you have moral institutions. You will not have moral citizens until you have a moral government.” She made it clear that I was wasting time and even doing harm by promoting bourgeois virtues and not awakening the social conscience of my students.

At the end of the semester, she came into my office carrying a stack of exams and looking very upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“They cheated on their social justice take-home finals. They plagiarized!” More than half of the students in her ethics class had copied long passages from the secondary literature.

“What are you going to do?” I asked. She gave me a self-mocking smile and said, “I’d like to borrow a copy of that article you wrote on ethics without virtue.”

Cheating has plagued many of our best universities. A recent survey reported in the Boston Globe says that 50 percent of all college students admit to cheating; for high-school students, the figure is 75 percent. A U.S. News & World Report survey asked college-age students if they would steal from an employer. Thirty-four percent said they would.

Many people come to college dogmatically committed to a moral relativism that offers them no grounds to think that cheating is simply wrong. With first-year students, I often have them try to find some act they will condemn as morally wrong. The reply is often, “Torture, starvation, and humiliation may be bad for you or me, but who are we to say they are bad for someone else?”

Of course, not all students are dogmatic relativists, nor cheaters and liars. Even so, it is impossible to deny that students’ ability to arrive at reasonable moral judgments is being severely, even bizarrely, affected. A few years ago, a Harvard University professor, who annually offers a class on the Second World War and the rise of the Nazis, was stunned to learn that the majority of his students did not believe anyone was really to blame for the Holocaust. In the students’ minds, the Holocaust was like a natural cataclysm: It was inevitable and unavoidable. The professor refers to his students’ attitude about the past as “no-fault history.”

What’s gone wrong in class

In nineteenth-century America, the ethics course was a high point of college life. It was taken in a senior year and was usually taught by the president of the college, who would uninhibitedly urge the students to become morally better and stronger. The senior ethics course was, in fact, the culmination of the students’ college experience. But as the social sciences began to flourish in the early twentieth century, ethics courses gradually lost prominence until they became just one of several electives offered by philosophy departments. By the mid-1960s, enrollment in courses on moral philosophy reached an all-time high.

At the end of the 1960s, there was a rapid turnaround. To the surprise of many a department chair, applied-ethics courses suddenly proved to be very popular. Philosophy departments began to attract unprecedented numbers of students to courses in medical ethics, business ethics, ethics for everyday life, ethics for lawyers, for social workers, for nurses, for journalists. More recently, the dubious behavior of some politicians and financiers has added to public concern over ethical standards, which in turn has contributed to the feeling that college ethics is needed. Today American colleges and universities are offering thousands of well-attended courses in applied ethics.

I, too, have been teaching applied-ethics classes for several years. Yet my enthusiasm tapered off when I saw how the students reacted. I was especially disturbed by comments students made again and again on the course evaluation forms: “I learned there was no such thing as right or wrong, just good or bad arguments.” Or: “I learned there is no such thing as morality.” I asked myself what it was about these classes that was fostering this sort of moral agnosticism and skepticism. Perhaps the students themselves were part of the problem. Perhaps it was their high-school experience that led them to become moral agnostics. Even so, I felt that my classes were doing nothing to change them.

The course I had been giving was altogether typical. At the beginning of the semester we studied a bit of moral theory, then took up topical moral issues such as abortion, censorship, capital punishment, world hunger, and affirmative action. Naturally, I felt it was my job to present careful and well-argued positions on all sides of these issues. But this atmosphere of argument and counterargument was reinforcing the idea that all moral questions have at least two sides, that all ethics is controversial.

Perhaps this reaction is to be expected. In a course specifically devoted to dilemmas and hard cases, it is almost impossible not to give the student the impression that ethics itself has no solid foundation.

On not being bullied

The relevant distinction here is between “basic” ethics and “dilemma” ethics. It is basic ethics that G. J. Warnock has in mind when he warns his fellow moral philosophers not to be bullied out of holding fast to the “plain moral facts.” Because the typical course in applied ethics concentrates on problems and dilemmas, the students may easily lose sight of the fact that some things are clearly right and some clearly wrong, that some ethical truths are not subject to serious debate.

I recently said something to this effect during a television interview in Boston, and the skeptical interviewer immediately asked me to name some uncontroversial ethical truths. After stammering for a moment, I found myself rattling off several that I hold to be uncontroversial: It is wrong to mistreat a child, to humiliate someone, to torment an animal, to think only of yourself, to steal, to lie, to break promises. And on the positive side: It is right to be considerate and respectful of others, to be charitable and generous.

I am aware that not everyone will agree that all of these are plain moral facts. But in teaching ethics, one thing should be made central and prominent: Right and wrong do exist. This should be laid down as uncontroversial lest one leave an altogether false impression that everything is up for grabs.

The average student today does not come to college steeped in a religious or ethical tradition in which he or she has uncritical confidence. In the atmosphere of a course dealing with hard and controversial cases, the student may find the very idea of a stable moral tradition to be an archaic illusion. I am suggesting that we have some responsibility for providing the student with what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called “moral common sense.” I am also suggesting that we assess some of the courses we teach for their edificatory effect. Our responsibility as teachers goes beyond purveying information about the leading ethical theories and developing dialectical skills. Dilemma ethics is especially lacking in edificatory force and may even encourage a superficial moral relativism or agnosticism.

I will not really argue the case for seeing the responsibility of the teacher of ethics in traditional terms. But the burden of argument belongs to those who maintain that modern teachers of ethics should abjure the teacher’s traditional concern with edification. Moreover, it seems to me that the hands-off posture is not really as neutral as it professes to be. Author Samuel Blumenfeld is even firmer on this point. He says, “You have to be dead to be value-neutral.” In tacitly or explicitly promoting the doctrine that there are no “plain moral facts,” the teacher condones the student’s lack of confidence in a moral life that could be grounded in something more than personal disposition or political fashion. I am convinced that we could be doing a far better job of moral education.

Aristotle and relativism

If one accepts the idea that moral edification is appropriate in teaching ethics, then the question arises: What sorts of courses in ethics are effective? What ethical teachings are naturally edificatory? My own experience leads me to recommend a course on the philosophy of virtue. And Aristotle is a good place to begin.

Exposure to Aristotle makes an immediate inroad on dogmatic relativism; indeed, the tendency to discuss morality as relative to taste or social fashion rapidly diminishes and may vanish altogether. Students find a great deal of plausibility in the philosopher’s theory of moral education, as well as personal relevance in what he says about courage, generosity, temperance, and other virtues.

Once the student becomes engaged with the problem of what kind of person to be, and how to become that kind of person, the problems of ethics become concrete and practical, and, for many a student, moral development is thereafter looked on as a natural, even inescapable, undertaking. And though the writings of Aristotle and of other philosophers of virtue are full of argument and controversy, students who read them with care are not tempted to say they learned “there is no right or wrong, only good or bad arguments.”

At the elementary and secondary level, students may be too young to study the philosophy of virtue, but they certainly are capable of reading stories and biographies about great men and women. Unfortunately, today’s primary-school teachers, many of whom are heavily influenced by what they were taught in trendy schools of education, make little use of the time-honored techniques of telling a story and driving home “the moral of the story.” What are they doing, instead?

Values obfuscation

One favored method of moral education that has been popular for the past 20 years is called “values clarification,” which maintains the principle that the teacher should never directly tell students about right and wrong; instead, the students must be left to discover “values” on their own.

One values-clarification technique is to ask children questions about their likes and dislikes, to help them become acquainted with their own personal preferences. The students’ reactions to these wide-ranging questions—from “What is your favorite color?” to “How do you feel about hit-and-run drivers?”—are elicited from them in the same tone of voice, as if one’s personal preferences in both instances are all that matter.

One of my favorite anecdotes concerns a teacher in Massachusetts who had attended numerous values-clarification workshops and was assiduously applying their techniques in her class. The day came when her sixth-graders announced that they valued cheating and wanted to be free to do it on their tests. The teacher was very uncomfortable. Her solution? She told the children that since it was her class and since she was opposed to cheating, they were not free to cheat. “I personally value honesty; although you may choose to be dishonest, I shall insist that we be honest on our tests here. In other areas of your life, you may have more freedom to be dishonest.”

Now this sincere teacher was doing her best not to indoctrinate her students. But what she was telling them is that cheating is not wrong if you can get away with it. Good values are “what one values.” She valued the norm of not cheating. That made this value binding on her and gave her the moral authority to enforce it in her classroom; others, including the students, were free to choose other values “in other areas.” The teacher thought she had no right to intrude by giving the students moral direction. Of course, the price for her failure to do her job of inculcating moral principles is ultimately paid by her bewildered students, who are being denied a structured way to develop values.

This Massachusetts teacher values honesty, but her educational theory does not allow her the freedom to take a strong stand on honesty as a moral principle. Her training has led her to treat her “preference” for honesty as she treats her preference for vanilla-over chocolate-flavored ice cream. It is not hard to see how this doctrine is an egoistic version of ethical relativism.

How sad that so many teachers feel intellectually and “morally” unable to justify their own belief that cheating is wrong. It is obvious that our schools must have clear behavior codes and high expectations for their students. Civility, honesty, and considerate behavior must be recognized, encouraged, and rewarded. That means that moral education must have as its explicit aim the moral betterment of the student. If that be indoctrination, so be it. How can we hope to equip students to face the challenge of moral responsibility in their lives if we studiously avoid telling them what is right and what is wrong?

The elementary schools of Amherst, New York, provide good examples of an unabashedly directive moral education. Posters are placed around the school extolling kindness and helpfulness. Good behavior in the cafeteria is rewarded with a seat at a “high table” with tablecloth and flowers. One kindergarten student was given a special award for having taken a new Korean student under her wing. But such simple and reasonable methods as those practiced in Amherst are rare. Many school systems have entirely given up the task of character education. Children, having been denied access to moral knowledge, are left to fend for themselves.

But the question comes again: Is there really such a thing as moral knowledge? The reply to that is an emphatic yes. Have we not learned a thing or two over the past several thousand years of civilization? To pretend we know nothing about basic decency, about human rights, about vice and virtue, is fatuous or disingenuous. Of course we know that gratuitous cruelty and political repression are wrong, that kindness and political freedom are right and good. Why should we be the first society in history that finds itself hamstrung in the vital task of passing along its moral tradition to the next generation?

Some opponents of directive moral education argue that it could be a form of brainwashing. That is a pernicious confusion. To brainwash is to diminish someone’s capacity for reasoned judgment. It is perversely misleading to say that helping children to develop habits of truth-telling or fair play threatens their ability to make reasoned choices. Quite the contrary: Good moral habits enhance one’s capacity for rational judgments.

The paralyzing fear of indoctrinating children is even greater in high schools than in elementary schools. One favored high-school teaching technique that allegedly avoids indoctrination of children—as it allegedly avoids indoctrination of college students—is dilemma ethics. Children are presented with abstract moral dillemmas: seven people are in a lifeboat with provisions for four; what should they do? Or there is developmental theorist Lawrence Kohlberg’s famous case of Heinz and the stolen drug. Should the indigent Heinz, whose dying wife needs medicine, steal it? When high school students study ethics at all, it is usually in the form of pondering such dilemmas or in the form of debates on social issues: abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and the like. Directive moral education is out of favor. Storytelling is out of fashion.

Who is the hero?

Let’s consider just how the current fashion in dilemmas differs from the older approach to moral education, which often used tales and parables to instill moral principles. Novelist Saul Bellow, for example, asserts that the survival of Jewish culture would be inconceivable without the stories that give point and meaning to the Jewish moral tradition. One such story, included in a collection of traditional Jewish tales that Bellow edited, is called “If Not Higher.” I sketch it here to contrast the story approach with the dilemma approach.

There was once a rabbi in a small Jewish village in Russia who vanished every Friday for several hours. The villagers boasted that during these hours their rabbi ascended to heaven to talk with God. A skeptical newcomer arrived in town, determined to discover where the rabbi really was.

One Friday morning the newcomer hid near the rabbi’s house, watched him rise, say his prayers and put on the clothes of a peasant. He saw him take an ax and go into the forest, chop down a tree, and gather a large bundle of wood.

The rabbi proceeded to a shack in the poorest section of the village in which lived an old woman. He left her the wood, which was enough for the week. The rabbi then quietly returned to his own house.

The story concludes:

The newcomer stayed on in the village and became a disciple of the rabbi. And whenever he hears one of his fellow villagers say, “On Friday morning our rabbi ascends all the way to heaven,” the newcomer quietly adds, “If not higher.”

In a moral dilemma such as Kohlberg’s Heinz stealing the drug, or the lifeboat case, there are no obvious heroes or villains. Not only do the characters lack moral personality, but they exist in a vacuum outside of traditions and social arrangements that shape their conduct in the problematic situations confronting them. In a dilemma, there is no obvious right and wrong, no clear vice and virtue. It may engage the students’ minds, but it only marginally engages their emotions and moral sensibilities. The issues are finely balanced, listeners are on their own, and they individually decide for themselves. As one critic of dilemma ethics has observed, one cannot imagine parents passing down to their children the tale of Heinz and the stolen drug. By contrast, in the story of the rabbi and the skeptical outsider, it is not up to the listener to decide whether or not the rabbi did the right thing. The moral message is clear: “Here is a good man—merciful, compassionate, and actively helping someone weak and vulnerable. Be like that person.” The message is contagious. Even the skeptic gets the point.

Stories and parables are not always appropriate for high-school or college ethics courses, but the literary classics certainly are. To understand King Lear, Oliver Twist, or Huckleberry Finn requires that the reader have some understanding of (and sympathy with) what the author is saying about the moral ties that bind the characters and that hold in place the social fabric in which they play their roles. Literary figures can thus provide students with the moral paradigms that Aristotle thought were essential to moral education.

Hungry for moral sustenance

I am not suggesting that moral puzzles and dilemmas have no place in the ethics curriculum. To teach something about the logic of moral discourse and the practice of moral reasoning in resolving conflicts of principles is clearly important. But dilemmas are not the place to start, and, taken by themselves, provide little or no moral sustenance. Moreover, an exclusive diet of dilemma ethics tends to give the student the impression that ethical thinking is a lawyer’s game.

So where do we start? What I am recommending is not new. It has worked before and is simple:

1. Schools should have behavior codes that emphasize civility, kindness, self-discipline, and honesty.

2. Teachers should not be accused of brainwashing children when they insist on basic decency, honesty, and fairness.

3. Children should be told stories that reinforce goodness. In high school and college, students should be reading, studying, and discussing the moral classics.

I am suggesting that teachers must help children become acquainted with their moral heritage in literature, religion, and philosophy. I believe that virtue can be taught and that effective moral education appeals to the emotions as well as to the mind. The best moral teaching inspires students by making them keenly aware that their own character is at stake.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

It is time to recognize that a new tradition has been added to Christmas. As surely as trees and lights and reindeer, December now brings Christian complaints about the secularization of the holiday. T-shirts and posters and preachers declare, “Jesus Is the Reason for the Season,” but their protests are drowned in the commercial deluge.

Christmas is ruled not from Jerusalem or Rome or Wheaton or any other religious center, but from Madison Avenue and Wall Street. In a revealing symbolic act, President George Bush two years ago inaugurated the season not, mind you, in a church, but in a shopping mall. There he bought some socks and reminded Americans their true Christmas responsibility is not veneration but consumption.

To some, Christmas also seems less Christian because many of the nation’s institutions are less and less willing to prop up the church. So some disgruntled believers—misguidedly, by my estimate—do battle with various courthouses that no longer allow creches on their lawns.

Sometimes outsiders glimpse our own dilemma more acutely than we can. Last Christmas, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman wrote an article in Cross Currents entitled, “Being a Jew at Christmas Time.” In it he observed, “There is nothing wrong with sleigh bells, Bing Crosby, and Christmas pudding, but I should hope Christians would want more than just that, and as Christmas becomes more and more secularized, I am not sure they get it.” He went on: “In the end, the problem of Christmas is not mine any more than Christmas itself is. The real Christmas challenge belongs to Christians: how to take Christmas out of the secularized public domain and move it back into the religious sphere once again.”

The rabbi is right on both counts. For Christians, Christmas definitely loses something—in fact, loses its core—as it gets more and more secular. But the solution is not to worry over courthouse creches: The real Christmas challenge belongs to Christians. The church and not city hall is charged with witnessing to the gospel and remembering to the world the birth of Jesus Christ.

Seasonal humbug

Here I want to suggest that Christians may best reclaim Christmas, indirectly, by first reclaiming Easter. Ours is an ironic faith, one that trains its adherents to see strength in weakness. The irony at hand could be that a secularizing culture has shown us something important by devaluing Christmas. In a way, Christians have valued Christmas too much and in the wrong way. I defer again to Hoffman, who writes,

Historians tell us that Christmas was not always the cultural fulcrum that balances Christian life. There was a time when Christians knew that the paschal mystery of death and resurrection was the center of Christian faith. It was Easter that really mattered, not Christmas. Only in the consumer-conscious nineteenth century did Christmas overtake Easter, becoming the centerpiece of popular piety. Madison Avenue marketed the change, and then colluded with the entertainment industry to boost Christmas to its current calendrical prominence.

The Bible, of course, knows nothing of the designated holidays we call Easter or Christmas. But each holiday celebrates particular events, and there can be no doubt which set of events receives the most scriptural emphasis.

It is well known that all four Gospels build toward and focus on the events leading up to and including what we commemorate at Easter. One-quarter to one-half the chapters in each of the four Gospels deal with Easter events. Clearly, the gospel traditions see these as the crucial episodes, the events that identify and ratify Jesus as God’s Messiah. In fact, two of the four Gospels (Mark and John) have no birth, or Christmas, narratives. This means certain of the earliest Christian communities knew no Christmas (at least, not from their basic texts). To put it another way, we could be Christians without the stories of Christmas, but not without the stories of Easter.

The rest of the New Testament does not deviate from this pattern. The earliest recorded Christian sermon (in Acts 2) proclaims the Easter message of the world’s Savior crucified and then raised by Israel’s God. And what can we say of Paul, who nowhere speaks of Jesus’ birth, but everywhere heralds “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) and warns that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (15:14)?

To this day, Christian worship is marked by Easter more than by Christmas. Consider the sacraments (or ordinances, if you prefer). Baptism is baptism into Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. As Paul writes, “We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4, NRSV). Celebrating the Eucharist, or Communion, includes rich themes drawing both from Christ’s passion and his resurrection. And of course, we gather to worship on the day of the Lord’s rising, so that Christians for centuries have thought of each Sunday as a “little Easter.”

The recovery of Easter as our pivotal holy day may best be served by a recovery of the Christian calendar, complete with the cycle of seasons that recall the gospel from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter and Pentecost. The calendar, like the gospel narrative, builds toward and pivots around the focal events of Christ’s passion and Easter. Recognizing the liturgical year is a large step toward seeing Easter as the main Christian holiday.

Christmas re-envisioned

In calling Christians to return to the Christian calendar and return Easter to its rightful prominence, I am not implying that the events of Christmas are trivial or untrue. The nativity stories help us to remember key and glorious truths, such as the Incarnation. But surely Easter, and not the Christmas on which we modern Western Christians focus most of our attention, is the “fulcrum that balances Christian life.”

Christmas celebrated without the events of Easter overshadowing is too easily sentimentalized and secularized. A baby in a manger, angels hovering overhead, cattle lowing nearby—surely this idyllic world needs no redemption. A dechristianized Christmas is the ultimate Pelagian holiday; for at what other time of the year can we seem so certain that, merely with good feelings and good will, humanity can save itself? Annually, in fact, newspaper editorials and television commentators say exactly that, pleading that all the world needs is to spread Christmas cheer through the year.

But Easter—Easter is on the other side of a cross with nails, of confrontation and beatings and death, and then, only then, resurrection and new life. Christmas we can too easily teach to our kids (and ourselves) without blinking, free of strain or discomfort (provided we gloss, as we usually do, such details as Herod’s slaughter of the innocents). Easter is harder, for it requires facing death, the shortcomings of the disciples, the bloody lengths God must go to in order to rescue a confused, hateful world from itself.

All of this is to say we have worried about Christmas too much. Christians in an indifferent and even hostile society need to learn cultural jujitsu—to sometimes let the culture push at points where it wants to, and there collapse of its own momentum. This is especially important in our cultural situation, where resistance is so easily itself turned into a marketable commodity. T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming “Jesus Is the Reason for the Season” make the message itself into a consumer item.

So let the pagans have Christmas as their most significant holiday. Easter is the central Christian holiday. And when we are known for our Easter, then we will have our Christmas back.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

A plain photograph of the birth of Jesus would be altogether unremarkable—except that it showed a woman bearing her baby in a public place. That might cause a remark or two. Polite society could find the photo offensive (“Rifraff, as shameless of private bodily functions as the homeless in New York City”). Social activists could criticize polite society itself (“Don’t blame the victim! Bearing babies in stables is a sign of the country’s unkindness”).

But no one would call the photo holy.

That which the camera could record of the nativity of Jesus does not inspire awe. It is either too common or too impoverished. A cold, modern scrutiny, a searching of the surface of things, reveals nothing much meaningful here.

Let me put it another way: If, for us, reality is material only; if we gaze at the birth with that modern eye which acknowledges nothing spiritual, sees nothing divine, demands the hard facts only, data, documentation; if truth for us is merely empirical, then we are left with a photograph of small significance: a derelict husband, an immodest mother, a baby cradled in a feed-trough in an outdoor shelter for pack animals—a lean-to, likely, built behind a mud-brick house where travelers slept both on the floor within and on the roof without. Simple, rude, dusty, and bare.

Ah, but those for whom this is the only way to gaze at Christmas must themselves live lives bereft of meaning: nothing spiritual, nothing divine, no awe, never a gasp of adoration, never the sense of personal humiliation before glory nor the shock of personal exaltation when Glory chooses also to bow down and to love.

Such people have chosen a shell-existence, hollow at the core. Today, a fruitless rind; tomorrow, quintessential dust.

Our seeing reveals our soul—whether we conceive of one or not. So how do we see Christmas?

If we do not recognize in the person of this infant an act of almighty God who here initiates forgiveness for this rebellious world; if we do not see in Jesus the Word made baby flesh, nor honor him as the only premise for any Christmas celebration, then we see with that modern eye merely. Stale, flat, unprofitable.

If the “true meaning of Christmas” is for us some vague sentiment of fellowship and charity and little else, then we see with that modern eye merely. Human goodness is a poor alternative to Immanuel, the active, personal presence of God among us. Human goodness is unstable. God is not. Moreover, to celebrate human goodness is to celebrate ourselves—and there never was a self that could elevate itself by staring at the self alone. Mirrors are always experienced on exactly the same level as oneself, neither higher nor lower.

If the “spirit of the season” is for us a harried getting and spending, an exchanging of gifts, we see with that modern eye merely. Instead of the love of God to redeem us from dying (and so to cause in us his ever-living love), we have that halting human love that might redeem a day from loneliness but that itself must, at the end of that day, die.

Or if we reduce the glory of the Incarnation to craven phrases like “Season’s Greetings” (for fear of offending some customer, some boss, some someone who finds no Christ in Christmas), then we offend God by bowing down before those who see with the modern eye merely. Likewise, “Peace!” is rendered an empty wish and “Joy!” is sourceless if ever we are ashamed of the Prince of Peace. For the world can make an illusion of joy, but illusions, when they shatter against experience, leave people worse than before. And this world has never, never, by its own wisdom and strength, compacted a lasting peace.

No. I will not see the scene with that empirical, modern eye. I refuse to accept the narrow sophistications and dead-eyed adulthoods of a “realistic” world. I choose to stay a child. My picture shall not be undimensioned, therefore, neither as flat as a photograph nor as cold as news copy—no, never as cold as my scientist’s case study.

Rather, I will paint my picture with baby awe, wide-eyed, primitive, and faithful. More medieval than modern. More matter than material. And I will call it true: for it sees what is but is not seen. It makes the invisible obvious.

My painting is immense. Stand back to look at it. It is composed of seven concentric circles, each one lesser than the last, and all surrounding Jesus.

Orbis primus. The widest circle is the whole world, dark and cold and winterfast. The universe. All creation yearning for this birth and all of it mute until a word is put within its mouth. This word: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That one.

Orbis secundus. Just inside the first sphere is another, scarcely smaller than the first because it touches that one everywhere and serves the whole of it. The second is a choir of angels countless as the stars, bright with white light and expectation, gazing inward, full of news—for heaven itself attends his Advent here!

Orbus tertius. The third circle is trees, great ancient trees, the giants that stand in shadow outside civilization, northern forest, the jungle that ruins every human road, mountain escarpments covered with timber, the cedars of Lebanon—for it is from the simplest growing things that the beams and boards of the Lord’s rude birthing-room is built. The third circle is poor and dark and huge with groaning. When you hear it, you might call that sound the wind; I tell you, it is the travail of trees long ago made subject unto vanity, who even now await with eager longing the manifestation of the Son of God.

Of these trees is fashioned a stable—order emerging from the wild world. But the stable lacks all sign of wealth. It offers no comfort of civilized life. For this King shall be lowborn in order to lift the low on high. The abandoned, the rejected, those that sit outside the gates—trees and slaves and the poor—shall be delivered from bondage and lifted to the glory and liberty of the children of God!

Orbis quartus. Next are animals, herds and flocks afoot, great streams of obedient beasts and the untamed, too, circling though the midnight forest, gazing inward like the angels, yearning to know the fate of their young: for there are ewes here whose lambs have gone inside the stable; there are cows whose calves are representing the whole species; and there is a donkey whose daughter has borne a woman to the very center of the universe, a woman great with child.

For nature makes a harmony at this Nativity. Fur and feather and human flesh, myriad shapes and yet more myriad voices. Listen! Listen with the ears of your faith and hear in the roaring of all creatures a choral praise and piety, the melody of the turning earth and the music of the spheres: “Blessing and honor,” they sing, “and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb forever and ever!”

And the lesser lambs and the oxen and that singular donkey say, “Amen.”

Orbis quintus. The circle in the circle of the singing animals is a gathering of shepherds whom I paint with the faces of children, smiling, shining, breathless, and reverent. You can see their expressions. There is a lantern in this more intimate space, a single flame, and orange light. Warmth. Fire.

These are the people of every age who, hearing the news, believe it. Of course they are children! These are those who, believing the good news, rushed to see it for themselves and have now come in from deepest darkness—through the circles of angels and trees and beasts—to behold with their own eyes a Savior, their Savior, their dear One, their Lord.

Some of the shepherds hold hands. Two are giggling. One weeps. She can’t help it. It is what she does when she encounters joy—she weeps.

And one near the back of the bunch is called Wally.

That’s me.

Orbis sextus. Circle six is a man and a woman, one standing, one reclined in weariness. The man is Joseph, the stepfather who lends house and heart and lineage to his foster child. The woman is Mary, the mother, regal and transcendently beautiful, for heaven crossed all the circles to choose her; and she, when heaven came near nine months ago, said, “Let it be.”

Immediately upon her faithful response it did begin to be!

It happened! It happens still because it happened once.

Ah, children, the sixth circle must be the circle composed of time: the year in the middle of all years, the first day of that year. For this woman’s riding on one daughter of the donkeys; for her lying down on straw, her straining forward to bear a King and crying out in dear pain her own verse of the universal hymn; for the crowning of her baby, the infant-skull pressing against the deeps of her most human womanhood—all this is the beginning of the meaning in the history of humankind.

For it is this that keeps creation from the annihilations of absurdity, that on a particular day, in a particular place, within the womb of a particular woman, the fullness of God was pleased to rise through human flesh to be born as flesh himself into the world.

It happened! She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and—

Orbis septimus.—and the smallest circle of seven, meaner than the others, is a manger of wood.

Wood, lumber from the forests: for Jesus is born material truly, bone and flesh and a red-running blood.

But wood, rough planks hewn by human hands: for one day wood will kill him.

Wood is the bracket of the earthly existence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Wood is the smallest compass around him, for it is our sinning and his loving—which, taken together, shape the very person of the Christ. This is his personal form both visible and invisible, a servant, a slave, a body obedient unto death.

For here, in a sphere which is the size of any human being, is the truth that cannot be seen but which my painting depicts in an outrageous round of wood as in a carving: his life, enclosed by a cradle and a cross, saves ours thereby. Oh, my dear, you are in the picture, too! Do you see yourself? Kneeling next to Wally? And in your hand, a hammer.

In his tiny baby hand, a nail.

Centrum orbium omnium. But then here, in the perfect center of all my circles and of all the spheres of all the world; here, in the center of all galaxies; in the center of thought and love and human gesture, blazing with light more lovely than sunlight, a light that makes of Mary a madonna, light that can kindle wood to burn a sacred flame, light that cancels in fire your hammer and that shows on your brow even now a crown of life, light that lightens the Gentiles and the deepest pathways of all creatures and the forests once sunk in shadow—

—here, I say, in the center of everything, brightening all things even to the extremes of time and eternity—

—here, himself the center that holds all orbits in one grand and universal dance, is Jesus!

Here! Come and look! Do you see the tiny baby born? Do you see that Infant King? And do you recognize in him Immanuel?

Amen, child! O wide-eyed child all filled with awe, amen: for now you are seeing Christmas.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Why are there more converts from Islam to Christianity than at any time in history?

Last March, deep in the bush of northern Chad, a team of Chadian students and missionary Larry Gray explained salvation through faith in Christ to the people of a mostly Muslim village. As the students sang the words of invitation, “Today is the day of grace,” a villager shouted to his compatriots, “Today is the day! We have prayed that this message would come to us. God has heard us. Now is the time for our decision!”

“Without hesitation,” reports Gray, a missionary with the Evangelical Alliance Mission and the Evangelical Church in Chad, 56 Muslims stood and came forward to commit themselves to Christ. Included were the chief of the village and his three wives.

It is a response being repeated in many parts of the world. Christians working among Muslims in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia report unprecedented openness, overturning conventional wisdom that Muslims are impenetrably resistant to the gospel. This religion of one billion adherents is like the crescent moon that symbolizes Islam in many parts of the world: As the moon never remains long in the crescent phase, so the Islamic world is changing. That change is explained not only by Islam’s interaction with modern cultural forces, but by the work of Christian missions.

“There are probably more people engaged in Muslim outreach in the world today than at any time in history,” says Howard Brant, international coordinator for evangelism and church growth for SIM International, Charlotte, North Carolina. “And there are more converts from Islam to Christianity than at any time in history.”

Dudley Woodberry, dean of the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, is also optimistic. The noted scholar of Islam observes, “We’re seeing breakthroughs today we have never seen before.”

A holy war?

The missionary picture has not always been so encouraging. Islamic expansion from present-day Saudi Arabia across North Africa and into Asia has been powered over the centuries by the Qur’anic command to spread Muslim rule through jihad, the Arabic word meaning “striving” in the way of God. In a military context, jihad is often interpreted to mean “holy war.” This has sometimes led to cruelty and bloody battles.

While history indicates that the Islamic world generally has understood jihad to mandate physical warfare against non-Muslims, not all Muslims or Islamic scholars today would agree. Some Muslims through the centuries have defined jihad as the individual’s inner struggle to live a disciplined, submissive lifestyle. Others emphasize more the intellectual clash of worldviews in which Islam will ultimately prevail.

Despite the one-sided picture of blind Islamic fanaticism that the news media often present today, an educated, tolerant elite has existed, even flourished, within Islam for centuries. In many ways, the Muslim world was more cultured than the Christian West at the turn of the millennium. The world owes a debt to Muslim scholars and philosophers such as Avicenna, al-Farabi, and others for their contributions to the arts and sciences.

Today, however, their descendents—authors, poets, academics, and journalists—are under pressure from extremists in their societies who want to turn back the clock to the seventh century. Today many in Islam’s cultural elite are speaking out bravely for human rights and religious freedom, often at great personal risk. Militants have murdered Islamic liberals this year in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey. But the intellectuals are not alone. Many Muslims, from simple villagers to schoolteachers, abhor violence and deplore the actions of militant Islamists.

History, however, shows that the traditional, militant interpretation of jihad has often carried the day. Muhammad (570–632), the founder of Islam, and his successors spread Islamic rule primarily through conquest. Shortly after Muhammad’s death, his successors conducted a series of blitzkriegs against Christendom from which the church has yet to fully recover. Jerusalem fell to the Muslims in 638, followed in rapid succession by Caesarea, Alexandria, Carthage, and most of Spain. Although the Muslim advance into Europe was halted at Tours in 732, suspicion of Islam in the West continued for centuries. The 1453 capture by the Turks of Constantinople (today, Istanbul) confirmed the worst fears of many.

Militant in some places but not in others, Islam today is nonetheless agressively expansionist worldwide. Many of its followers look with disdain upon the decadence of the secularized, post-Christian West and the seeming impotence of a rich but marginalized church. While the Muslim world has many fault lines—Sunni and Shi’ite, Arab and Persian, pro-Saddam and anti-Saddam—its missions movement is surprisingly unified. And fueled with abundant oil money, this movement is making up ground lost by the graying and still-splintered Protestant missionary establishment in places such as Central Asia.

According to Patrick Sookhdeo, head of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, London, Muslims are highly advanced “in terms of their infrastructure, the materials they are producing, the amount they spend on global Islam, and their mosque-building program. They can replicate virtually every aspect of Christian mission—from research and development to ‘pioneer’ evangelism.”

Brant says, “Muslims have used petrodollars to expand in incredible ways. Along the coastal nations of East Africa, a mosque has been built every 25 kilometers [15 miles] along major routes.”

How the church is reaching Muslims

The response of the church to Islam’s sometimes bloody conquest has fallen short of her Lord’s injunction to turn the other cheek. The crusades to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control (1095–1291) left Muslims with a bad taste. States historian Ruth Tucker in her book From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, “So bitter was the animosity of Muslims toward Christians, as a result of the savage cruelty of the Crusades, that even today the memory has not been erased.”

Ron Peck, a missionary of 32 years to the Muslim world with the Assemblies of God, has been organizing a prayer fellowship in which thousands of Christians in over 30 countries fast and pray for Muslims at noon on Fridays, one of the chief times of prayer in Islam. Peck urges Christians to get beyond the media stereotypes of radical Islam.

“We have looked at Muslims almost as if they were nonhumans at times,” Peck said. “Muslim people are some of the most wonderful, warm-hearted, hospitable, family-centered, and, in many cases—particularly with those who are devout—God-conscious people. You can’t win people to Christ if you don’t respect them.”

Among the most notable Christians in history to reach Muslims were thirteenth-century reformer Francis of Assisi and missionary Raymond Lull. According to Tucker, while the number of converts was vanishingly small, these two “paved the way for others to view Muslims as potential brothers and sisters in Christ.” Another was Samuel Zwemer, the American “apostle to Islam” of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Zwemer worked in the Persian Gulf and Egypt. Although his contributions in apologetics and public speaking laid the foundation for Muslim missions in this century, he, too, saw a small harvest, as have most since him.

If the aphorism “out of sight, out of mind” is true, so is its reverse. Media coverage of the various hostage crises, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Persian Gulf War has sparked new interest among Christians in missions to Muslims. Says Ray Tallman, formerly chairman of the Department of World Missions at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, and now international director of Arab World Ministries, London, “There’s a new spirit among the youth who are committed to reaching the world for Christ. They recognize that the most unevangelized areas of the world are Muslim areas, that the last wall to fall before the Great Commission is anywhere near completion is primarily the Muslim world.”

Woodberry also notes the emergence of agencies devoted exclusively to reaching Muslims, such as Frontiers, and an increase in so-called Christian tentmakers, who work in the marketplace in countries closed to missionaries. Rick Love, U.S. director of Frontiers, in Mesa, Arizona, says the agency has seen “hundreds” of converts throughout the Muslim world in the last ten years.

However, Woodberry Some estimate that roughly only 2 percent of the Protestant missionary force is focused on Muslims, who make up almost 20 percent of the world’s population. According to the fifteenth edition of the Mission Handbook, the number of fully supported U.S. personnel overseas has declined from 50,500 in 1988 to 41,142 in 1992. The conviction has grown in the West that Christians in the so-called Third World, where the missions force is growing as much as five times faster, will have to do most of the work. With and without Western help, believers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are beginning to do just that.

In Latin America, where the number of evangelicals was a mere 50,000 at the turn of the century but is surging to a predicted 100 million by 2000, Christians feel a strong burden for Muslims. William Taylor, executive director of the Missions Commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), says, “Physically, they blend in easier. Second, they’re willing to suffer economic hardships and go on a very low budget. They don’t have all the middle-class expectations or all the benefit packages and financial obligations of the North Americans. Third, they’re willing to suffer.”

The SIM-related Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) in Nigeria is actively evangelizing Muslims despite heavy persecution. ECWA has about 3,200 churches and more than 900 cross-cultural missionaries. Nominally Muslim animists in the country’s midsection, disgusted by the atrocities of radical Muslims and attracted by the generally nonviolent Christian response, have been turning to Christ in large numbers, according to Dean Gilliland, Fuller’s professor of contextualized theology and African studies.

Groups of converted Muslims, although small, now exist in areas closed to the gospel for centuries. Abe Ghaffari of Iranian Christians International, Colorado Springs, Colorado, estimates that the evangelical church in Iran, not including secret believers, numbers about 14,000—half of whom are converts from Islam. Phil Parshall, a long-term missionary to Muslims and author of five books on Islam, counts 10,000 baptized believers in Bangladesh, compared to a “handful” before 1975; some estimates are much higher. Steve Hagerman, director of the Grand Junction, Colorado-based Friends of Turkey ministry, says there are “well over 1,000 Bible-believing Turks from Turkish Muslim background” in Turkey.

Churches are sprouting in the barren soil of North Africa, too. William Saal, U.S. director of Arab World Ministries (AWM) and author of Reaching Muslims for Christ, estimates there are thousands of Christians in North Africa. He says the church is growing “by leaps and bounds” in Egypt, where a revival in the historic Assemblies of God churches in the south has swept at least 20,000 nominal Christians into the kingdom. Across Egypt’s denominational spectrum, he said, churches are rejecting their former reticence and winning Muslims to Christ.

“I think almost every Christian church in Egypt has contact with Muslim converts,” he stated. “I think the reality must be dawning on some of these brothers and sisters that no matter what they do, they’re a targeted minority, so they have nothing more to lose,” he said. Minority groups in other Muslim areas, including the Kurds and the southern Sudanese, are showing openness to the gospel.

In Sudan, where a Muslim government has declared holy war against opponents, the church is growing. A Sudanese Christian leader says that as tens of thousands of southern Sudanese have fled their homelands to the relative safety of the Arab-dominated north, Christians among them have begun planting churches and reaching out to their Muslim neighbors. Patrick Johnstone, author of Operation World, says the church in Sudan “is growing fast with a great ingathering of people in the midst of terrible suffering through war, famine, and persecution.”

Even puritanical Saudi Arabia, where there were no known Christians only a few years ago—and where conversion from Islam to Christianity can be met with death—has a growing underground church.

The pain of persecution

Though conversions are coming more frequently, they do not come easily. Often Islam “retains its people by intimidation,” Tallman states. “Anyone who converts is in danger in the context of the Muslim community.” From Nigeria to the Middle East to Asia, examples abound. Here are just a few.

• Last year Saudi Arabia beheaded a convert from Islam who was evangelizing; two imprisoned Filipino Christians were saved from death sentences and released only after the intervention of Philippine President Fidel Ramos.

• Fundamentalist Muslims in Sudan, bankrolled and trained by Iran, are waging genocidal campaigns against Christians that have been ignored in the international media.

• In Bangladesh, two Bengali Christians were falsely charged with kidnapping a young Muslim and imprisoned for two weeks. In October of 1992, Muslim fundamentalists, angered by the conversions of some local Muslims, attacked a Christian village and the Memorial Christian Hospital, run by the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

• Last year Coptic Christians in Asyut Province, Egypt, saw 30 of their people killed in a four-month orgy of arson and violence instigated by militants.

Despite the long history of animosity and sometimes outright warfare, Christians in general seem more motivated now to follow Jesus’ words to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Last February and March, Youth With a Mission organized 30 days of prayer for the Muslim world during the Islamic month of Ramadan; thousands participated around the world. Other Christians intercede one Friday each month for the Persian-speaking world.

Woodberry, noting the similarities between Christianity and Islam, says we should be extremely reluctant to call Muslims enemies. He even sees room for joint work against secularism and injustice. “When people suffer injustice,” Woodberry said, “it provides an opportunity for Muslims and Christians and Jews to work together for justice and peace.” Pointing to the different responses Jesus had to the Jewish leaders of his day, Woodberry commented, “Anybody who locks him- or herself into one approach or attitude is certainly not reflecting our Lord.”

To reach Muslims with the gospel, Woodberry counsels Christians to build friendships with Muslims that are not contingent on Muslim conversion, and to try genuinely to understand them in order to present Christianity as a relevant answer to their felt needs.

Signs of discontent

While some Christian observers look almost with despair at Islam’s revived militancy, others see the violence and repression as signs of weakness and the return to fundamentalism as an opportunity for witness.

“Where Muslim fundamentalism comes to the fore and dominates,” says Robert Douglas, executive director of the Zwemer Institute of Muslim Studies in Pasadena, California, “it’s not long until sensitive Muslims come to a point of saying, ‘There has to be something different.’”

Tallman speculates that if predominantly Muslim countries were to open their borders, 50 percent of their young people would emigrate to the West. Brant discerns a change in Islamic writings: “Their own literature displays a kind of paranoia about people leaving Islam.” “They appear to be very concerned about their educated youth. They seem to feel that as young people develop a more scientific mentality and scrutinize the claims of Islam, many will defect.”

The influences of modern culture—scientific discovery, pluralism, humanism—have put Islam, the most insulated of all the major religions, next in line for significant change. Western influence, boosted by the Persian Gulf War, is evident not only in the reactionary fall of the “Muslim curtain” in places such as Sudan and Iran, but also in tentative moves toward democracy in Yemen, Kuwait, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia. Arab liberals are searching for ways to unite democratic principles with Islamic faith, and ideas of political freedom and religious tolerance are competing with the exclusive call from the minaret.

Woodberry has developed a nine-page questionnaire to find out from former Muslims why they became followers of Christ. The single biggest motivation among the 130 replies he has received so far is dissatisfaction with Islam. “In the Qur’an God forgives whom he wills and does not forgive whom he wills, so there’s never the assurance of salvation,” Woodberry writes. “Generally, orthodox Muslims … have not felt close to God.”

Other factors noted in responses to the survey include the breaking of anti-Christian stereotypes through contact with believers; hearing Christian truth through print and radio ministries; and displays of God’s presence through dreams, visions, and miraculous events.

Tallman notes that in Algeria and Egypt, where Muslim fundamentalist movements are mounting strong challenges to authoritarian regimes, record numbers of conversions from Islam occurred during 1992 and 1993.

Where the challenges lie

It still will not be easy for Christians to respond to Muslims’ spiritual discontent. For example, of the 64 million Iranians worldwide, Ghaffari estimates 10 million are open to the gospel—but there are not enough Iranian believers, Bibles, and pieces of literature to meet the need. With an “anything but Islam” attitude, many are turning to other options, such as Zoroastrianism. That mood could be repeated in other areas of the Muslim world.

Phil Parshall also cautions Christians not to underestimate Islam’s staying power. “I regularly read of unqualified assertions that Islam will soon be totally defeated by the gospel,” he said. “We should be wary of unfounded Christian triumphalism, and at the same time realize our Lord is quite capable of intervening in history and bringing to pass a major breakthrough in Muslim evangelism.”

With that in mind, Christians, both nationals and missionaries, are using a variety of methods to respond to the spiritual needs of their potential brothers and sisters in Christ in the Muslim world:

• Bible distribution. Arab Christian leaders report an almost insatiable demand for Bibles and say Scripture distribution has never been higher in the Middle East, making this one of the most effective ways to introduce Muslims to Christ. Jordanian believers and others have sent more than a quarter of a million Scriptures into Iraq since the Gulf War. The evangelical church in Baghdad, where many of the Bibles have gone, had only five members in the 1970s. Today it has 300 to 500 people attending every Sunday.

Several Muslim clerics in West Africa’s Burkina Faso have come to faith in Christ after studying the Scriptures in Arabic, reports Tite Tienou, professor of theology and missiology at Alliance Theological Seminary, Nyack, New York.

• Relief and development. As long as Muslims suffer, Christian humanitarian aid combined with evangelism will continue to open doors to sharing Christ.

When the Communists in Bulgaria lost power in 1989, most of the Bulgarian Turks returned. Last year some Christian organizations brought relief supplies to Burgas, Bulgaria, home to many of these returned Turks. Unasked, the mayor came to the Christians and said, “While you’re helping us physically, don’t forget about our spiritual needs.” The Christians got his permission to use the city stadium for an evangelistic crusade, at which hundreds came forward to receive Christ. In the last four years, between 3,000 and 4,000 Bulgarian Turks have made the same decision.

Relief efforts by national Christians and outside agencies have advanced Christianity in Mali, where the desert is inexorably moving south and displacing Muslim herders and farmers, according to Jim Taylor, vice president in charge of Europe and Africa for Gospel Missionary Union, Kansas City, Missouri. There were just 6,000 believers in 40 churches back in 1980, he said; today there are 22,000 believers in 300 congregations. “Christianity has a very pleasant ring to it in Mali today,” Taylor said.

A similar story is told of the Kurds in northern Iraq. “The Kurds have no friends,” a Kurdish proverb states. When a team from WEC International visited the Kurds of Northern Iraq to explore ministry options after the Gulf War, Kurdish authorities asked them, “Are you missionaries?” When they admitted they were, the officials answered, “You are most welcome. Bring as many of your friends as you can.”

• Media ministries. Islam’s crescent moon may not symbolize a satellite dish, but Muslims are increasingly media conscious. Growing numbers of Muslims across Asia and the Middle East are picking up television and radio programs through an array of international satellite broadcasters, which are sprouting like mushrooms. Christians are capitalizing on it, Brant says.

“Christian media have played a significant role in opening up the Islamic world,” Brant says. “It is no longer possible for Muslim leaders to play mind-control games. There is too much out there on the airwaves and in the media today.”

Middle East Media (MEM)’s Magalla magazine, with a circulation of 460,000 readers in 13 Arab countries, is the largest Christian literature program in the Middle East. Bible-correspondence courses are answering the questions of spiritually hungry Muslims from North Africa to Turkey. In one Muslim area, more than 30 Christian agencies are sharing resources and coordinating media and tentmaking strategies to reach Muslims.

MEM and many other mission groups are working cooperatively to establish a 24-hour Christian Direct Broadcast Satellite station to air culturally sensitive programming. MEM has also produced a series of half-hour children’s video programs that a spokesperson says will be slated for distribution in the 22 countries of the Middle East. The programs, produced in a predominantly Muslim country, are educational and carry Christian themes.

Making the gospel hearer-friendly

In contrast to previous generations, almost all Christians working among Muslims today agree on the need to contextualize the message—that is, to communicate the gospel in culturally appropriate ways. The key question is “To what extent may we incorporate Muslim forms and vocabulary without compromising our message?” There is no universal agreement.

“I think everybody is committed to contextualization to a degree,” says the Zwemer Institute’s Douglas. “The mere translation of the Bible into the host language is an act of contextualization.”

Phil Parshall says 1975 became the “turning point” for Muslim evangelism in Bangladesh when a group of missionaries decided Western approaches were totally ineffective and turned to a more culturally sensitive approach. They adopted a simple lifestyle and wore local clothing; they followed Muslim dietary restrictions; they used Muslim worship forms, including where believers sat and what religious vocabulary was used; new converts kept their Muslim names and were told to remain within their communities; and attractive evangelistic literature with Muslim artwork was produced. Covert messianic mosques, where Muslim converts use Islamic forms to worship Jesus, have sprung up in both Nigeria and Bangladesh since then.

An ever-present danger of contextualization, however, is syncretism. While it would be too much to expect Christians to reach full agreement on how to present the essentials of the Christian faith in ways relevant to Muslims, we must at least agree on what the essentials are.

For example, in Nigeria there is a small group of excommunicated Muslims called Isawa (literally “Jesus-ists”) who have concluded, by reading the Qur’an, that Jesus is superior to Muhammad. However, also following their holy book, they deny his death and resurrection, which are foundational to the Christian faith. Without Jesus’ death and resurrection, there is no sacrifice for sins, no atonement, no trusting in the finished work of Christ—in short, no salvation. Yet a prominent Christian expert on Islam has withheld judgment on whether the Isawa have saving faith, saying, “I would see salvation as being through Christ, even though I might not be able to tell in some cases whether a person’s following of Christ is a saving following.”

Power encounters?

In diverse parts of the Muslim world—such as Nigeria and Indonesia—Christians are making progress in evangelism because of what Woodberry has called “evidences of God’s power.” Gilliland says “power encounters” seem to be a significant way that God is drawing folk Muslims to himself.

“Folk Muslims are seeing more power in Christianity than in Islam and seeing much more evidence of God,” Gilliland said. “We don’t do evangelism simply by trying to win the minds of Muslims. We have got a history from the very beginning of the Muslim-Christian theological encounter to prove that that just does not work.”

Woodberry recounts an incident in Nigeria where a Muslim man paid a local shaman to curse a group of evangelizing Christians so that they would die. But instead, the Muslim got sick, and the shaman could not lift the spell. So in desperation, the Muslim asked the Christians he tried to curse to pray for him. They did, and he was delivered. Realizing where the power came from, the Muslim became a follower of Christ.

Jim Reapsome, editor of Evangelical Missions Quarterly, notes, “Experienced missionaries among Muslims know that many conversions come not from winning theological debates but from God’s intervention through dreams and healings. But they also know it is cruel and unfair to expect new missionaries to be miracle workers.”

Dreams, visions, and miraculous events are happening, but they, are not everyday occurrences. Many argue we should break down the barriers of Islam both through disciplined study of apologetics and through faith in God’s ability and willingness to intervene miraculously. All agree Christians should prayerfully depend upon God, the source of all wisdom and knowledge and who answered Elijah in the confrontation with the priests of Baal.

Events across the world show that the Islamic crescent is being illuminated by the light of the gospel. Spiritually hungry Muslims are finding a peace and forgiveness unknown in Islam. But making Muslims brothers and sisters in the faith—not the estranged half-brothers and -sisters they are now—will require continued work worldwide. In area after area across northern Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, unprecedented numbers of Muslims are becoming believers in Jesus Christ through such accelerating efforts.

Stan Guthrie is associate editor of Pulse, an evangelical missions newsletter in Wheaton, Illinois, and a columnist for Evangelical Missions Quarterly.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

To Houston Oilers’ starting right tackle David Williams, birth is no time for playing games. Williams skipped his team’s 28–14 away game win over the New England Patriots in October and remained home with his wife, who had just given birth to their first child.

The Oilers management was not amused and docked Williams’s pay $111,111. Offensive line coach Bob Young compared Williams’s action to a soldier deserting his comrades in wartime. “I don’t regret what I’ve done,” said Williams, noting that his wife had a miscarriage last year. “My family comes first.”

The playing field is not a war zone, even for those who roam it professionally. When even one pro football player puts family before football, he puts many of us Sunday afternoon armchair quarterbacks to shame. Williams made a wise choice despite its financial consequences. He realized that tiny infants rapidly grow into boisterous children, and for that process, there is no instant replay.

By John W. Kennedy.

Essay

How Lutherans Justify Sex

An ELCA commission looked immorality in the eye and called it sin. So why did they blink when they came to hom*osexuality?

The release this fall of a draft statement on human sexuality by a task force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) resulted in several days of distorted news reporting. Media coverage focused on the statement’s suggestion that the ELCA affirm lifelong, committed, faithful, same-sex relationships. And it typically reported only half of a statement about masturbation, omitting the cautionary phrase “unless it becomes compulsive or hinders development of life-fulfilling relationships.”

But the news media missed the real news: that in 1993 a mainline Protestant denomination was:

• releasing a sex statement that used the word sin freely to talk about that which the statement’s authors saw falling short of God’s ideal for his human creatures: adultery, for example, and promiscuity, p*rnography, sexual abuse, and prostitution;

• basing a sex statement largely on Scripture and theology, rather than social science and pop philosophy;

• thinking about sex as much in terms of its relationship to the community as to the individual, and as much in terms of right and wrong as in terms of compassion and caring.

The ELCA task force even called on unmarried couples to abstain from sex and not to live together until they could tie the knot. We commend the task force for not concocting some abstract principle such as “justice-love,” as a commission of the Presbyterian Church (USA) did several years ago, overhauling Christian sexual ethics. The Lutherans listened instead to Scripture and theology.

Gospel myopia

When the ELCA task force listened to Scripture and theology, however, it listened in a very Lutheran way. Every theological tradition has its strength; and every strength can also be a weakness.

Lutherans traditionally read Scripture Christologically and evangelically; that is, they emphasize whatever is of Christ and of the good news of God’s grace. We find strength in that approach. In the context of Lutheran theology, it is hard to miss the gospel and difficult to become distracted from the one big message of Scripture by its other messages.

That strength, however, can make it more difficult to find the truth embedded in Scripture’s account of how God ordered creation and made his covenant with Israel. (This is the kind of truth that Calvinists and Catholic natural-law theologians naturally emphasize.) Thus, Old Testament prohibitions against hom*osexuality do not automatically carry as large a weight for the Lutheran task force, and whatever smacks of law is suspect. In this statement, even the normative creation order of one man—one woman—one flesh—one lifetime seems to be relativized by Jesus’ pattern of welcoming sinners.

At one point, the task force says that ethical standards ought to be dispensed with when they seem to inhibit the spread of the gospel. Surely, the statement here confuses ethics with mores.

The Lutheran perspective need not lead in this direction. In its statement on marriage, the task force notes: “Jesus placed the faithful, mutually loving permanent ‘one flesh’ union of male and female at the core of the church’s teaching regarding marriage.” They could have carried over Jesus’ explicit affirmation of the two-sex nature of creation to their section on hom*osexuality. But in that section, the seamless robe of biblical ethics is ripped, and the task force stitches in a vague patch of “neighbor love” to guide us. They call for faithfulness, mutuality, and permanence in same-sex relationships, but they fail to see the implicit critique of any attempt to construct a pattern for same-sex marriages in Jesus’ words that “he who made them from the beginning made them male and female.”

Lutheran Christians will be discussing this statement over the coming months. Their feedback is due to the task force by June 30, 1994; after that, another draft will be prepared, to be voted on in August 1995. The ELCA has, for the most part, built a good foundation. May they have the wisdom to apply the whole counsel of God to the church’s understanding of sexuality.

By David Neff.

The Cybergeneration

Consider this scenario for Christmas morning: Instead of gathering your family around the Christmas tree, you all don helmets and special gloves and enjoy whatever holiday pleasure your little heart desires. None of you would have to leave your bed. Far fetched? Not really, thanks to a high-tech concept called “virtual reality,” or VR. The race is on to perfect this new technology.

VR merges your television, telephone, VCR, CD, and computer. Instead of being a passive user of these tools, in VR you become an active participant. VR creates an electronic environment—“cyberspace”—so real that you feel as if you’re inside it. In the most common form, a 3-D helmet and a “dataglove” wired to a computer enable you to see, hear, and touch objects in the simulated world.

What makes VR potent—and potentially dangerous—is the way it interfaces with the brain. Experts say the mind can only read about 100 bits—or characters—per second of text. But visually, we can absorb the equivalent of a billion bits of information per second. Like any technology, VR inherently is neither good nor bad. In the right hands, it promises beneficial applications in science, medicine, industry, and in potentially helping the church spread the Good News in dramatically new and imaginative ways.

A big breakthrough commercially will be interactive video games. If you are used to the rather crude, cartoonish images on your home video games, the quantum leap in realism may shock you. Within a few years, VR cyberspace should reach photographic quality.

For many people, especially teenagers, VR can be more enticing than the real world. It offers power, control, thrills, anonymity, and a second chance if you fail the first time. Already we are recognizing the harmful effects of just watching violence on television. What will be the social behavior effects of children spending hours each week realistically decapitating their foes in VR games that become an extension of their own hands, feet, and minds?

VR defenders say such activity provides a healthy outlet for frustration and aggression, and that kids have no difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Try telling that to the parent of the teen who was killed trying a stunt he saw in the film The Program. Many kids, especially those with tragic lives, already struggle with what reality is. The greatest risk will be for children who, due to divorce, abuse, or parental neglect, desperately long to escape reality.

Naturally, the p*rnographers eye this technology with dollar signs in their eyes. It offers yet another way to exploit an addiction, something they have already done with computer software.

VR has already spawned discussion about the meaning of reality as we have more “virtual” experiences. If there is virtual reality, is there also virtual truth, virtual spirituality, virtual love, or virtual virtue? What is the dividing line between virtual and actual? Will temptation yielded to in cyberspace become impossible to resist in reality?

Because VR is more than a new gadget on someone’s Christmas list, Christians cannot ignore the changing technology. For starters, we should:

• Be informed. Follow new developments in your newspaper or newsmagazine about VR.

• Know what your kids are doing with their video games and computers.

• Take prudent advantage of the positive potential of VR technology, including new ways to explore the world, to study science and other fields, and eventually to study the Bible or explore ministry opportunities. Imagine a VR treatment of first-century Jerusalem or one of Paul’s missionary journeys.

• Consider a career in VR if you are a student or looking for a career change. Our society badly needs people who will bring a solid Christian perspective to this emerging area. If we do not try to shape it, we should not complain when we see what VR brings us.

• Deepen your ties of genuine face-to-face Christian community. In the end, this is the best way to experience that depth of reality in comparison to which anything else can only be “virtual.”

By Howard A. Snyder, contributing editor and professor of evangelization and church renewal at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio.

This year at Beeson Divinity School we had a bumper crop of seminarians. As diverse as the churches they will one day be called to serve, the students came from near and far. There they sat, willing to listen to a word from the dean, but really wanting a word from God.

As I spoke to our new students, I told them of another student I had taught during my first year as a professor. He had not done well on his examinations; there were family and financial pressures. As he was describing all of this, he stopped and asked, “When you were a student, did you ever feel like quitting? And did it ever seem that things would never get any better?”

My answer was yes. Brought up in buckle-belt fundamentalism, I was a boy preacher, a fiery youth evangelist, and a student pastor of a small-time, milltown church. Then I decided to study theology at Harvard Divinity School, a thousand miles and a million world-views from my Bible-believing home in Tennessee.

Appointed to serve an old inner-city Boston congregation with a Gothic sanctuary seating over eight hundred, I was greeted on my first Sunday with an attendance of six—including my wife and me! Struggling with strange theologies by day and wrestling with demons of discouragement by night, there were indeed many moments when it seemed things would never get any better. Long ago, Jeremiah cried out, “O Lord, we are called by thy name; leave us not” (Jer. 14:9). That prayer was often on my heart—if not my lips.

Renegade preacher Will Campbell tells about a Southern Baptist pastor he once knew named Thad Garner. Despite his affable smile and trips to the Holy Land, he was not a model pastor. One day Campbell cornered him with the question, “Thad, why did you ever decide to be a Baptist preacher?”

“’Cause I was called, you fool!”

During my seven years in New England, my calling was confirmed and clarified in unexpected ways. Two episodes I remember still. One was a late-evening Eucharist shared with a group of new believers, street Christians, who still looked and smelled like they belonged more to the street than to the church. No silver chalice, no lengthy liturgy, just the simple words of institution. “This is my body, this is my blood.” But in my mind, the words of Nicaea rang out like a peal of bells shattering all the revisionist Christologies I had been taught, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, … who for us and for our salvation came down and was incarnate.” In that moment, I knew, as never before, the grip of a call from beyond myself.

The other incident involved my role as a backup minister at a funeral home. The arrangement was simple: in a pinch they would call on me to preside at a funeral when no other minister could be found, in exchange for a fee of $50. Hard up for cash, I rushed over one day to discover a deceased veteran of the Spanish American War who obviously had outlived all of his friends and loved ones. They thought a few old cronies might come, but no one did. I could take the money and run, they said; no need to do the service. I knew that funeral services were meant for the living, not the dead. Nothing I could say would alter the eternal state of this old soldier.

Yet I could not walk away. So while the organist and florist performed their rituals, I read from Holy Scripture about the God of all comfort and offered a simple prayer of thanks for the gift of life and the grace of death.

Charles Spurgeon used to say that many of the young preachers who came to his school in London had the same idea of being a minister that he once had of being a huntsman: The horn blowing, the red coats, the thrill of the chase, a life of respectability and ease. A fine profession, truly!

But the ministry is really more like marriage. There comes a time in every lasting marriage when the roses have faded, the music has stopped, and the candlelight flickers. Looking at one another across a plate of leftover Tuna Helper, you know the only thing that keeps you going is the fact that once upon a time, in the presence of Almighty God, you said to one another, “I do.”

The joys and the victories of being a shepherd of God’s flock are real. But in those times when we stumble for our footing in the awful swellings of the Jordan, and the Evil One whispers in our ear, “Why did you ever decide to be a preacher anyway?” the right answer can only be, “’Cause I was called, you fool!”

Truth About Our Sin

CT has done the white evangelical community a service by allowing us to hear from our black brothers and sisters the truth about our sin [“The Myth of Racial Progress,” Oct. 4]. As evangelicals, we know there is only one acceptable response to sin—repentance.

Thanks to the rich African-American community who one more time make themselves vulnerable by sharing themselves with us.

David J. Frenchak, President

SCUPE

Chicago, Ill.

The “Myth of Racial Progress” focused on a symptom of the church’s problem, racism, but missed the etiology. There is a whole plethora of social ills that are important diagnostic clues that the church is neither salt nor light in today’s American society.

The history of Israel demonstrates what happens when God’s people move from God and begin to worship Baal. As in ancient Israel, has this loss of commitment to God and biblical standards created a climate of darkness that allows social ills to flourish?

Hycel Taylor quoted Martin Luther King: “All you need for evil to triumph … is for good people to do nothing.” Jesus warned that “no man can serve two masters … you cannot serve God and mammon.” Could it be that evil is triumphing because good people are serving the wrong things and doing nothing to exercise spiritual muscles in active commitment to God and biblical principles? The expected race wars, economic collapse, AIDS devastation and other plagues will testify to our failure. Is there no prophet in the land to address the causes of the cancer in the necrotic organ known as the body of Christ?

Jack Given

Valparaiso, Ind.

Tony Evans and William Pannell said it in truth. The others, too.

Please continue stories that incarnate hope in accounts of congregations and teams of shared life in Christ and ministry.

H. Eugene Herr

Three Rivers, Mich.

The resentment expressed in your article toward white evangelicals was unchristian. You can justify it with modern sociology, but not biblical theology.

The electronic and elite voices of liberalism have long nurtured the lie that racism is closely related to conservatism or evangelicalism. Everyone from right to left and black to white has been guilty of segregation, voluntary or not. But it was fueled more by the “Social Darwinists” than any other force over the last two centuries. Christians erred in letting progressive and positivist values corrupt their minds into believing that groups, skin colors, and material factors are primary.

The church is not perfect, but the real enemy still stands outside of us pretending to be the savior of society and the black community, persuading them to resent “white evangelicals.” Meanwhile, they poison our family values (black and white) and the ethics of personal responsibility held so dear by evangelicals. They foster resentment with a focus on rights and entitlements. They teach us to keep score, and remember all the debts owed to us. Grace suffocates. Unity disintegrates.

Our racial divisions simply reveal our theological bankruptcy and our love affair with modern sociology and secular culture.

Joel Solliday

Moorpark, Calif.

Two additional forms of racism have affected the black community and church. One is the interventionist welfare state, which has destroyed families. The other is the failure of the church to train preachers and teachers adequately in the historic Christian faith. The neglect of biblical theology lies at the heart of the churches’ ineffectiveness—whether white or black.

Rev. Timothy R. Bennett

Binghamton, N.Y.

Revival At The Box Office

Christian values and themes are having a revival at the box office. One film that has theological appeal, of course, is Free Willy, though good reviews from Calvinists are hard to come by. Yet, the film with the greatest box-office draw for Christians is Homeward Bound. Not since Pilgrim’s Progress has the Christian life been so vividly portrayed.

Homeward Bound is an exciting and instructive allegory. Christians from three denominations are represented by three pets: a Siamese catechist and two dogmatists, separated from their parishes. They set off together to find their way home.

From the start, personality conflicts threaten their unity. Back-biting and scratching get out of hand with the spread of pride, envy, and a nasty case of fleas. Doctrinal questions also become div.isive. Veneration of the saints? Two votes for St. Bernard. Purrfectionism? One vote. Clergy vestments? Collars only. Speaking in tongues? Only if panting, cleaning, and licking are equally encouraged.

Yet, in the course of their perilous journey, an amazing transformation takes place. They face common enemies and discover they actually need each other. Like the church in Revelation doing battle with the great beast, these three Christians fight their own beasts: bears, porcupines, skunks, cougars, and crayfish.

Hats off to Hollywood! This is far superior to earlier films like 101 Denominations.

Regent makes Happy changes

On the concerns of Regent University’s law school, let me assure readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY that Regent is aggressively pursuing full accreditation with the American Bar Association [News, Oct. 4]. Following their recommendations, we have constructed a $14 million law and government building, designated an additional $500,000 for law library enhancement, improved the faculty-to-student ratio, and are raising faculty salaries. Also, the law school is establishing a constructive association with the prominent American Center for Law and Justice. Since your article, we hired a dynamic and forward-looking new law dean, J. Nelson Happy, who will lead us from provisional to full ABA accreditation.

Regent University humbly walks in the splendid tradition of Christian institutions of higher learning that have remained faithful to their calling. As an original faculty member of Regent, I affirm that we have not strayed from our evangelical roots. As far as a philosophical shift, we have only turned from H. Richard Niebuhr’s posture of Christ against culture to Christ transforming culture. We continue to affirm our commitment to the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds, and the great evangelical tradition of our Lord’s church.

Terry Lindvall, President

Regent University

Virginia Beach, Va.

Chambers’s insights are timeless

Thank you for the article “My Search for Oswald Chambers” [Oct. 4], My mother gave me my first copy of My Utmost for His Highest sometime in my high-school years for my daily quiet time. I later wore out a second copy and continue, daily, with my wife, to read from a well-worn third copy.

Christians from the earliest days of the church have needed the insights stressed by Chambers—in particular, his reminder that we find Christ because he first seeks us, and, as Dr. Sam Shoemaker often repeated, “We cannot keep Christ until we give Him away.”

Griffin C. Callahan

Bluefield, W.Va.

No “social progress” advocate

I’m grateful to Robert Yarbrough for his gracious review of Paul, Women and Wives [Books, Oct. 4] and appreciate his evaluations of both its strengths and its shortcomings. I was, however, surprised to read of my acceptance of the myth of U.S. “social progress.” I actually believe U.S. trends like rampant promiscuity and abortion invite God’s judgment; I just do not associate them with biblical teaching on mutual submission, and I am trying to learn to write one book at a time. A reader of the review could also get the faulty impression that I limit Paul’s authority; to the contrary, I believe that though he often communicated in his audience’s language, he always did so under the Spirit’s inspiration.

Craig S. Keener

Salisbury, N.C.

“Perverse mythology” known before New Testament era

The review of our book [I Suffer Not a Woman, Oct. 4] created the impression that the distortion of the Adam and Eve story was not known until well after the New Testament era. Philo of Alexandria (died A.D. 45) allegorized the Adam and Eve story so that Eve was the bringer of the enlightenment and meaningful existence to Adam. In the ensuing centuries, the Gnostics would further embellish the theme; but the perverse mythology was already in place by the first half of the first century. Philo’s treatment is discussed on pages 65, 146–148, and 151 of our book, and a translation of the actual text is provided on pages 215–216. Josephus (born A.D. 37) was also aware of contemporary mishandling of the Adam and Eve story (pp. 149–150) and deplored it.

Catherine Kroeger

Brewster, Mass.

Robert Yarbrough’s dismissal of the Kroegers’ work is both unfair and unprofessional; your presenting it as a book review is irresponsible. If Yarbrough chooses to disagree with the Kroegers’ thesis, fine. But he refuses even to interact with it in a meaningful way. The Kroegers have presented a thoughtful, well-researched interpretation that deserves to be taken seriously.

Mark D. and Kari C. Ifland

DeRidder, La.

Searching for middle ground

Philip Yancey struck a chord noting the modern trend in church music [“Having a Bad Hymn Day,” Oct. 4], Musical expression presents a dilemma, especially for those of us over 40. To paraphrase the Bard, we are bombarded by cacophony sung by the inept, filled with noise and error, signifying confusion. “Can this be worship?” we ask.

Finding middle ground takes discernment, skill, and tact. We allow for sincere folks whose taste needs cultivation. Although much should be discarded, we do not arbitrarily refuse the new as if only the old songs are worthy vehicles of praise. Through the years, we also have sung poor theology to trite tunes and been blessed. Humility becomes us all.

Some words have changed their meaning. God is awesome in David’s sense: “Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.” But the Lord must not be equated to a rock star or a fast car.

Esther Siemens

Mesa, Ariz.

SBC’s relationship with Clinton

I was intrigued by your News article “Clinton Affirms Faith, Humility” [Oct. 4], and I’m puzzled by the statement, “Those invited were expected to be already sympathetic to the President’s concerns or at least open to civil dialogue on issues of mutual concern.” Is this CT’s characterization or that of the White House?

Since officials of the Southern Baptist Convention were not invited to the “interfaith” breakfast, I hope it is not the opinion of CT that the SBC is not open to “civil dialogue” with the White House. While we as Southern Baptists have clearly separated ourselves from Clinton’s policies on abortion and hom*osexual rights, we have made it clear that we are willing to work with the President on “issues of mutual concern.”

I would not want readers left with the impression that since representatives of the SBC were not invited to the breakfast, we are not being civil in our relationship with the President.

James A. Smith

Christian Life Commission of the SBC

Washington, D.C.

For decades, prayer letters from missionaries to Muslim countries focused on faithfulness—on why they must press on despite little or no fruit for all their toil. It was not unusual to hear of a decade of effort resulting in two or three converts. But over the last few years, new themes have been explored in these home-bound epistles: stories of a new interest in Christianity, of a thirst for Bibles, of conversions, of secret meetings of Christians—in other words, stories of churches being born.

As the mainstream media focus on the political churnings in the Muslim world—from bombings and assassinations to wars and peace talks—we thought we would explore a different Muslim story, one that few have heard unless they happen to support the right missionaries. To do this, we wanted someone who kept his pulse on the mission world, which led us to the missions newsletter Pulse, which led us to its associate editor, Stan Guthrie.

We also realize that in December there is more to think about than how the gospel is faring in the Sahara. Advent is here, and Christmas is coming. Which raises a problem: In the post-Christian, materialistic, hedonistic, and consumerism-obsessed culture we live in, how are we to celebrate the incarnation of our Lord and Savior?

We offer two solutions. Christian writer and minister (and long-time friend of Christianity Today) Walter Wangerin, Jr., encourages us to have a bigger view of Christmas. Christian writer and former CT associate editor Rodney Clapp wants us to have a smaller view of Christmas. Without committing ourselves to relativism, we think they are both right.

Merry Christmas.

MICHAEL G. MAUDLIN, Managing Editor

To fight soaring crime, President Clinton has proposed a national police corps—an idea some find ominous. “Is Clinton paving the way to a police state?” a friend asked me in hushed tones. I dismissed his fears. Over the years, I’ve run into lots of semiparanoid folks who detect conspiracies everywhere.

But the thought lingered in my mind. It could happen here in America—not from anything Clinton does, but from what we do to ourselves.

As I write, troops in camouflage uniforms are patrolling the beaches of Puerto Rico, M-16s in hand as they weave through crowds of children playing in the sand. No, this is not Lebanon, it is an American territory. The National Guard was called in as an emergency response to skyrocketing crime. But after several months, they are still on the streets, and civil-rights leaders warn that using the military for police work could be “a dangerous step toward the militarization of a democratic society.”

The same things could happen anywhere. Crime rates are soaring in every major city. There are areas so dangerous that police officers no longer walk the beat but cruise the neighborhood behind the locked doors of their patrol cars. And as civil disorder spreads, governments inevitably resort to military might.

A hundred years ago, Lord Acton foresaw the process leading to a police state. He is best known for the dictum memorized by civics students that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But few students know how Acton proposed to avoid absolute power: through religion. The Christian religion, he argued, “creates and strengthens the notion of duty.” It creates an invisible bond of duty that yokes every citizen. It gives a reason to deny self-interest, obey laws that are irksome, and sacrifice for the common good.

When religion decays—as it has in the West today—duty loses its hold on our hearts; we are left with no reason to restrain our impulses or obey the law. Crime and lawlessness are unleashed, as our rising crime statistics demonstrate. And the government, no longer able to motivate its citizens by duty, falls back on force and fear. If people are not “kept straight by duty, they must be by fear,” Acton argued.

If people are not governed by internal values, they must be governed by external force. Take away the Bibles that direct a nation’s soul, and the government will bring out the bayonets.

“Covenants with the past”

This is the threat hanging over our entire nation, not just Puerto Rico. Yet, ironically, our cultural leaders are blind to the connection Acton saw so clearly. In fact, they reverse it: Whereas our founders celebrated freedom of religion, novelist Tom Wolfe recently hailed America’s freedom from religion, as though it were a positive development.

Admittedly, duty can flow from sources other than religion. In his book Gratitude, William Buckley grounds duty in the gratitude owed to our forefathers—those who shed their blood to defend our liberty and traditions. Buckley calls for “covenants with the past.”

Yet duty based on anything less than religion can lose its compelling force. In the sixties, thousands of young men repudiated any duty to serve their country. This is what rankles veterans about President Clinton—who was one of those young men. On Memorial Day, when Clinton visited the Vietnam Memorial, some vets booed.

Clinton tried to mollify them: “Some have suggested that it is wrong for me to be here with you today,” he said, “because I did not agree a quarter of a century ago with the decision made to send the young men and women to battle in Vietnam.” But Clinton missed the point. The vets were not angry because he disagreed with the war—many of them did, too. They were angry because they felt that—agree or disagree—citizens have a duty to their country. If you cannot in good conscience fight as a soldier, you go as a medic or in some other noncombatant role.

This vital concept of obligation to one’s country was fading in the sixties, and it is still receding today. “Covenants with the past” have little grip on a generation that lives for today. The only dependable source of duty is religion. Religion musters a more profound sense of gratitude than the sacrifices of our forefathers ever can.

Maly! Maly! Maly!

I witnessed this profound sense of duty vividly in a Czechoslovakian priest, Václav Maly. In the early eighties, Maly was defrocked by the Communists and dispatched to clean subway toilets. Yet he continued to preach the gospel.

When Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” broke out, it was Maly who led hundreds of thousands of exuberant demonstrators through the streets of Prague. “Maly! Maly! Maly!” the crowds shouted. Later, when a democratic government was formed, he was offered a position of power. But he declined public service in favor of spiritual service.

When I met Maly in his tiny Prague apartment, I told him what a hero he was to many of us in the West. He smiled but shook his head. “Oh, no. A hero is someone who does something he doesn’t have to do. But me—I was merely doing my duty.”

This is the vital sense of duty we need to rekindle among our own compatriots—before soldiers with M-16s start patrolling our streets and shopping centers. Without it, we do indeed face the prospect that troubled my friend. But we will have only ourselves to blame.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.