Page 4924 – Christianity Today (2024)

“It’s easy to make judgment calls between right and wrong.… The tougher calls are the ones where you have to decide between good and better. And the worst of all are the ones where you have to decide between bad and worse.”

As a born-again Christian, says Oliver North, he grappled earnestly with the moral/ethical issues surrounding his role in the Iran-contra affair. In an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, North disputed the image of himself often conveyed by the news media: that of a cold, calculating ideologue. Describing himself as a “frail, flawed mortal,” the 48-year-old former marine admitted he has “made mistakes.” But he also argued that the “moral quandaries” he faced were much more complex than most people acknowledge.

One of his biggest mistakes, he said, was lying to members of the House Intelligence Committee during a 1986 meeting in the White House Situation Room when he was asked if he had given aid to the contras. “Clearly, what I did in front of that congressional committee was wrong; I know it was wrong.” But, North said, he feared for the safety of the Nicaraguan resistance if he told the truth. And he emphasized that he never lied to Congress during the televised hearings of 1987.

North made his comments to CT during a promotional tour for his new book, Under Fire, copublished by HarperCollins and its evangelical division, Zondervan Publishing House. The tour is the first time North has granted interviews to reporters since the Iran-contra story began to break. In September, a federal judge dismissed the case against North involving obstruction of justice, making false statements, and theft of government property. The dismissal came after special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said he would abandon efforts to reinstate the convictions, which had been set aside on appeal.

Throughout the book, North discusses his faith, including coming to know Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. North and his family are long-time members of Church of the Apostles, an evangelical Episcopal congregation in Northern Virginia.

North said that he had “great, great qualms about putting the price of 500 TOWs [missiles] on a human life,” during the administration’s efforts to give arms to the Iranians in return for their help in freeing Western hostages held in Lebanon. “But with the administration that I served having made that judgment call before I got involved, it seemed to me that the right thing to do was to get as many Americans back as free and safe as we possibly could,” he said.

“I’m not asking that everybody stand up and endorse what we did, or certainly what I did,” North said. But he hopes people will at least try to understand better “the incredible dilemma” he faced. “Am I open to challenge? Yes. Am I forgiven? Yes. Maybe not by the Washington Post, but I know where I’m going, and it’s not because of anything that I’ve done.… It’s all because God cared enough to send his Son to die for me,” North said. “I know that I’m forgiven.”

North makes no apologies for keeping military secrets. “The Bible is full of times when the leaders of Israel, for example, had to keep secrets. Any one of us can turn to the Old Testament and find reference to Rahab, when she denies to the king’s inquisitors that Joshua’s spies are hiding on her roof.… Rather than being tried or dragged through a congressional tribunal, she’s one of the few that was spared when Jericho was captured.”

North said his experience does make him wonder whether Christians can be in sensitive military and government positions if they are constantly faced with choices that compromise their values. However, he added, “things could have been a whole lot worse if we didn’t have at least a handful of [Christians] around.”

Among North’s other comments:

• On media coverage that has ignored his Christian faith: “I don’t expect that your average media mogul, your great press and broadcast elite, is going to pick up on that.” North said he is hopeful that readers, drawn into the book by media attention on other issues, will “see a very clear Christian witness there.”

• On prayer: North said he has “absolutely no doubt” that the prayers of Christians sustained him and his family during the congressional hearings and the trial. They met weekly with a Bible-study group from their church, who also prayed regularly. “It’s been a tremendous resource that a lot of people didn’t have during this thing.”

• On reaction from the Religious Right to his assertion that “President Reagan knew everything”: North, who has been a popular figure among conservative Christian groups, said the conclusions in his book are nothing different from things he said at the congressional hearings in 1987. “Those in the big media are trying to make something new out of an old story. My hope is that those people who loved Ronald Reagan and supported me will read the whole book. I have not changed in my belief that this nation is better for having had Ronald Reagan as President.”

• On congressionally appointed prosecutor Lawrence Walsh: Forgiving Walsh, whom North describes in his book as a “vigilante,” has been “very difficult,” he said. “I don’t understand what motivates the man, particularly in that this has been the longest-lasting, most-intrusive, most-expensive, special prosecutorial investigation ever launched in this nation.”

Zondervan’s Covert Operation

When Zondervan decided to copublish Oliver North’s new book, Under Fire, the evangelical organization found itself in the midst of a covert operation with logistics that sounded like a good spy thriller. The book was dubbed the “Mr. Smith Project,” inspired by the movie classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. For most of the two years the book was in development, only a half-dozen people at Zondervan knew anything about Mr. Smith. Clandestine meetings between Zondervan representatives, North, and his writer, William Novak, were held at hotels where North was registered under an assumed name and hid in the bathroom when room service came. Books were shipped to stores in plain brown boxes with no identification on the outside.

“There was a little bit of cloak and dagger effect to the whole thing,” said Zondervan trade books publisher Scott Bolinder. North and his attorneys insisted upon the secrecy out of fear that the federal grand jury would “subpoena the manuscript or stop publication.” According to Bolinder, the book contains no information that had not been available to the courts and the special prosecutor, but North was concerned “about his effort to tell his side of the story being sabotaged.”

North told CT his desire to reach the Christian market was a major factor in his decision to sign with Zondervan and its parent company, HarperCollins. But before the final agreement was signed, Bolinder said Zondervan officials met at length with North, “asking pretty hard questions about his faith and his willingness to be straightforward and honest.” They came away convinced of North’s sincerity.

According to Bolinder, Zondervan editors had significant input to help North “integrate his faith into this book in a clear way.” Editors also went through and cleaned up some of the rough language contained in earlier drafts of the U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel’s book. “We tried to protect for any gratuitous use of language, but we didn’t want to sanitize it to the place where it lost some of its realness,” he said. Zondervan says it has received only about a dozen complaints during the first week of release, most relating to the surprise arrival of the book.

Judging by early sales reports, the Christian market’s reception of Under Fire appeared favorable during the first week after publication. Paul Van Duinen, Zondervan vice-president of sales for books and Bibles, said figures from Zondervan Family Bookstores indicated Under Fire ranked fifth on their week’s best-seller list. Zondervan initially shipped 46,000 copies of the book to Christian Booksellers Association stores and, after the first week, ordered 20,000 more. The book also got a boost in the Christian market when North was featured on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show.

Purveyors fear extinction, while antip*rn activists take heart from high-level government support and press their efforts.

In the summer issue of Adult Video News, Clyde DeWitt sounded more like a doomsday prophet than a civil libertarian attorney who makes his living representing the p*rnography industry. Lamenting the growing number of legal restrictions on “adult businesses,” DeWitt raised the possibility that many “adult businesses may be largely on the way to extinction.”

“Given the regulation of adult businesses and other potential outlets, where is the public going to get adult product? Not cable. Not adult bookstores. Not liquor stores. Not mail order. Where?” he asked.

DeWitt may have been trying to rally his own troops, but it was the antip*rnography activists who took his remarks to heart. “Lately, we’ve seen a lot of stuff from them that has Armageddon language in it, and we find that very encouraging,” says Deen Kaplan, vice-president of public policy for the National Coalition Against p*rnography (NCAP).

Indeed, opponents of obscenity and child p*rnography meeting in Washington, D.C., last month took encouragement on several fronts. President Bush and top administration officials pledged strong government action against illegal p*rnography. Grassroots groups from around the country reported creative and effective efforts on a community level (see “Community Action Against p*rn”). And new battle plans were drawn to expand the scope of the fight. All this leads antip*rnography activists to the optimistic belief that a new momentum is building to make the situation DeWitt fears become a reality.

“We believe we’re seeing the team grow up across America that’s going to win this effort,” said Jerry Kirk, chairman of the Religious Alliance Against p*rnography (RAAP), a broad-based coalition of Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, Mormon, and Jewish leaders.

Tough Talk From The Top

At last month’s conference, which was organized by RAAP, NCAP, the National Women’s Leadership Task Force, and the Business and Professional Leaders’ Council, participants appeared to draw the most encouragement from a White House speech by George Bush, who, for the first time, publicly linked himself with their fight. “We’ve all heard the stories—innocent children drawn into the world of p*rnography, victimized by crimes whose consequences are beyond imagination,” the President said. “This horror must stop.”

Bush, who has met privately with RAAP leaders in the past, pledged that his administration is committed “to the fullest prosecution of obscenity and child p*rnography crimes,” and he added that “this will remain a priority” under his watch.

Joining the President was William Barr, the man Bush has nominated to succeed Richard Thornburgh as attorney general. Antip*rnography activists were concerned this summer when Thornburgh resigned to run for the Senate. As attorney general, Thornburgh had led the Justice Department to take a tough stance against illegal p*rnography, including the creation of a new permanent section, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CT, Dec. 15, 1989, p. 48).

Barr used the opportunity to allay any concerns about where he stands. “I want to assure you that child exploitation and obscenity [prosecution] remains a high priority at the Department of Justice,” Barr told the group. “There will be no slackening in our effort and no diminution in our commitment. The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section does have and will continue to have the full backing of the department’s leadership.”

Other Justice Department officials also addressed the group, as did Federal Communications Commission commissioner Ervin Duggan, who called for a society-wide recovery of virtue. He promised to use his position “to regulate in matters of broadcast, material that is actionably indecent or obscene.”

Kirk called the combined support from so many levels of government “truly exciting,” adding that this is the first time in his eight years of involvement that the movement has enjoyed such broad official support.

Citizens’ Movement

While official support is necessary, Kirk emphasized that the antip*rnography effort is ultimately a “citizens’ movement,” which depends on religious and civic leaders and grassroots activism. In an effort to revitalize that element, NCAP announced it will launch in 1992 its “Enough Is Enough” campaign, aimed at mobilizing women to take leadership in the battle. “Women cannot afford to ignore the effects of illegal p*rnography on this nation and in their homes,” said national campaign director Dee Jepsen. She said the campaign will focus on educating women about the harms of p*rnography and encouraging them to action. A primary goal will be the elimination of child p*rnography and illegal obscenity from “the open market,” Jepsen said.

Organizers hope the campaign will draw support from feminists as well. Kaplan said he thinks the movement, some of whose members are often at odds with feminist views, has a “decent chance” of gaining their help. He noted that some feminist leaders in the past have strongly opposed p*rnography.

One factor that may help antip*rnography efforts is the furor over sexual harassment prompted by allegations leveled at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Kaplan was careful to make no assessments about the veracity of those allegations, but he said he was pleased by the “broad spectrum of the liberal community that was vehement” about how “p*rnography inhibits the rights of women in our society and in the workplace.”

“It is our firm hope that the concern expressed … by policymakers will be buttressed by their supportive votes on future legislation dealing with the problem of p*rnography and sexual violence,” he said, adding, “This has not always been the case.”

Hurdles Ahead

While they find many reasons to celebrate, antip*rnography activists admit that not everything has been going their way in recent times. Despite the strong endorsem*nts, Kaplan said his group is concerned about the level of commitment of several federal agencies. The U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation appear particularly reluctant to initiate investigations into child p*rnography and obscenity violations, he said.

Speaking to those concerns, Robert Muller, head of the Justice Department Criminal Division, acknowledged that “this is a continuous issue that never leaves us.” But he assured the group that “at the top levels … commitment is there.”

Conference organizers had also hoped that new policy initiatives would be announced during the White House meeting, but none were introduced. Muller said some initiatives were “on the drawing boards,” but he added he did not want advance publicity because it might make the package “lose some of its impact.”

More troubling to the movement, however, are recent developments in two federal court cases. Just days after the conference, a federal judge in Dallas struck down his jury’s decision to seize more than $10 million in assets from one of the nation’s largest purveyors of X-rated videos (CT, Sept. 16, 1991, p. 70). Antip*rnography groups had applauded the seizure, hoping it would lead to other racketeering decisions against p*rnographers. In a second case, a federal jury late last month was unable to come to a decision in the obscenity and racketeering trial of another major distributor of p*rnographic films.

“We have a lot of momentum going, and we are making good progress, but this is the kind of battle where you can never let your guard down,” Kaplan said. Nonetheless, he is optimistic his movement has the kind of staying power that will help it ultimately prevail. “We’re not there yet, but we’re a lot further than we used to be.”

By Kim A. Lawton.

Community Action Against p*rn

In setting up its three-pronged test to determine illegal obscenity, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Miller v. California, made “contemporary community standards” a key component of the definition. And national antip*rnography leaders say local community efforts are in many ways the most important part of their battle.

“Without people active on a grassroots basis in every community in this country, regardless of the efforts of the Justice Department and national organizations, we’ll never finish the job,” says Deen Kaplan, vice-president of public policy for the National Coalition Against p*rnography. Among the efforts under way across the country:

One-person possibilities. The California Care Coalition is mobilizing grassroots action through its instructive handbook, “What Can One Person Do About p*rnography?” The manual, which is being widely distributed in churches and Christian organizations, gives guidelines and addresses for writing letters to local and national government officials, local newspapers, and video-store managers. It also includes voter-registration deadlines and a “personal legislator listing and voting record,” where citizens can fill in the voting patterns of their officials.

Zip Code campaign. Concerned citizens in Orlando, Florida, have organized the “Zip Code Coalition,” an alliance dedicated to eliminating obscene video material from the city, one Zip Code at a time. Participants within a designated Zip Code mobilize their neighborhoods with a rally, distribution of fliers, and voter-registration drives. Greater Orlando Coalition Against p*rnography executive director Julie Drake says local churches pick a month to campaign against hard-core p*rnographic videos and then “pass the torch to another church in the next Zip Code.”

p*rn as trash. Despite strong opposition from local media, the Coalition Against p*rnography-Kansas City (CAP KC) has been trying to shift the debate from censorship issues to “values orientation.” Billboards across the city proclaim, “Real men don’t use p*rn,” and bright yellow garbage bags with the words p*rnography destroys attempt to associate p*rnography with trash. But CAP-KC executive director Chris Cooper says theirs is not just a campaign against adult businesses. CAP-KC has also developed “sex-aholic” support groups, victims’ assistance programs, and date-rape prevention seminars.

Out of business. More than five years ago, citizens in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, led by retired grocer George Harper, began pressuring officials to crack down on sexually oriented businesses in their community. Today, the antip*rnography activists say those efforts have produced dramatic results. In 1984, there were 13 p*rnographic bookstores, 11 peep-show booth operations, 75 topless/bottomless bars, 21 houses of prostitution, and three XXX theaters. According to Oklahoma County district attorney Robert Macy, of all those businesses, only one bookstore remained open by the end of 1990.

In addition, Macy recently testified before Congress that during the same six-year period, the county’s rate of reported rapes decreased by nearly 25 percent, while rape rates in the rest of the state continued to escalate. “The evidence speaks for itself,” Macy told members of Congress.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY Readers’-choice Awards

Help us choose the winners of this year’s CHRISTIANITY TODAY Book Awards. Below you will find books nominated by publishers in seven categories. Please vote for one book in each category that you believe has had the most significant impact on the Christian community in the past year. In addition, you may write in the title and author of the book you feel transcends its category and should be declared “Book of the Year” (choose from any book on the ballot). Your ballot must arrive before January 1,1992. The results of the ballot as well as the results from our Critics’-choice Awards will be published in our April 6, 1992, issue. Thank you for your participation. Vote today! Tear out the page and mail to:

Readers’-choice Book Awards

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

465 Gundersen Drive

Carol Stream, IL 60188

Biography And History

□ 101.Adventure in Africa, Charles B. Partee

□ 102.Biography of Bromley G. Oxnam, Robert Moats Miller

□ 103.Community in Paraguay: A Visit to the Bruderhof, Bob wagoner

□ 104.Divine Dramatist, Harry S. Stout

□ 105.Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory, C. Smith

□ 106.Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke-Heinemann

□ 107.Fall of Tyrants, Laszlo Tokes with David Porter

□ 108.Geno: Life/Mission of Geno Baroni, L. M. O’Rourke

□ 109.God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius, Richard A. Mueller

□ 110.In Pursuit of God: Life of A. W. Tozer, J. L. Snyder

□ 111.Liberty of Conscience, Edwin S. Gaustad

□ 112.Making Saints, Kenneth Woodward

□ 113.Making Sense of Your World from a Biblical Viewpoint, W.Gary Phillips and William E. Brown

□ 114.Memoirs in Exile, John Tietjen

□ 115.Middle East Maze, David A. Rausch

□ 116.Modern American Religion, Vol. 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941, Martin E. Marty

□ 117.My Life: A Guided Tour, Kenneth Taylor with V. Muir

□ 118.On Call, David C. Thompson, M.D.

□ 119.Out of Ashes, Helen Wells Quintela

□ 120.Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, V. I. J. Flint

□ 121.Sons of Susanna, Gien Williamson

□ 122.Standing on the Promises, W. A. Criswell

□ 123.Stories I Couldn’t Tell While I Was a Pastor, B. Mclver

□ 124.There Is a Balm in Gilead, Lewis Baldwin

□ 125.30 Days to Understanding Church History, Max E. Anders and Judith A. Lunsford

□ 126.Time of Awakening, Mary Irene Zotti

□ 127.Tom Landry: An Autobiography, Tom Landry/G. Lewis

□ 128.Up from the Rubble, Peter and Elfrieda Dyck

□ 129.Variety of American Evangelicalism, Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston

□ 130.We Signed Away Our Lives, Kari Malcolm

□ 131.Why I Believe in a Personal God: The Credibility of Faith in a Doubting Culture, George Carey

□ 132.World Shapers: A Treasury of Quotes from Great Missionaries, V. Hampton and C. Plueddemann

Christion Living And Spirituality

□ 201.Caretakers of Creation, Patrick Slattery

□ 202.Changing on the Inside, John White

□ 203.Cry for Myth, Rollo May

□ 204.Decision-Making by the Book, Haddon Robinson

□ 205.Disciplines of a Godly Man, R. Kent Hughes

□ 206.Don’t Just Stand There, Pray Something, R. L. Dunn

□ 207.Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje, Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz

□ 208.Faith’s Freedom, Luke Johnson

□ 209.Finding Spiritual Direction, Douglas Webster

□ 210.God Is My Delight, W. Phillip Keller

□ 211.Health, Money, and Love … and Why We Don’t Enjoy Them, Robert Farrar Capon

□ 212.Here All Dwell Free, Gertrud Mueller Nelson

□ 213.How to Be a World-Class Christian, Paul Borthwick

□ 214.Hunger for Significance, R. C. Sproul

□ 215.In the Eye of the Storm, Max Lucado

□ 216.Life’s Bottom Line, Richard Exley

□ 217.Men and Women, Larry Crabb

□ 218.Morning and Evening, Charles Spurgeon

□ 219.Of Human Hands, Gregory Pierce

□ 220.One I Love, Ruth Dourte

□ 221.Passages of Marriage, Minirth/Newman/Hemfelt

□ 222.Prayers of the Martyrs, Duane W. H. Arnold

□ 223.Psalms for Contemplation, Carlos G. Valles

□ 224.Released from Shame, Sandra D. Wilson

□ 225.Remarriage in Midlife, Helen W. Hunter

□ 226.Restoring the Christian Soul Through Healing Prayer, Leanne Payne

□ 227.Revenge Redeemed, Bob Stewart

□ 228.Sandwich Years, Dennis Gibson and Ruth Gibson

□ 229.Secrets of Your Family Tree, David Carter et al.

□ 230.Seeking God, Joni Eareckson Tada

□ 231.Simple Faith, Charles R. Swindoll

□ 232.Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible, M. E. Williams

□ 233.Today for Eternity, Darryl Delhousaye

□ 234.To Pray and to Love, Roberta Bondi

□ 235.Transforming Your Prayer Life, Bob Beltz

□ 236.Upside of Down, Joseph Stowell

□ 237.Wanting to Follow, Forced to Lead, Elizabeth Baker

□ 238.A Western Way of Meditation, David B. Bryan

□ 239.When You Lose Someone You Love, Richard Exley

□ 240.Window to My Heart, Joy Hawkins

Commentaries

□ 301.Amos (Hermenia), Shalom Paul

□ 302.Book of Genesis, Ronald Youngblood

□ 303.Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC), Peter O’Brien

□ 304.Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, F. Gaebelein

□ 305.Galatians, Richard N. Longenecker

□ 306.Gospel According to John, D. A. Carson

□ 307.Gospel and the End of Time, John Stott

□ 308.Isaiah 1–12, Hans Wildberger

□ 309.Jonah (AB), Jack M. Sasson

□ 310.Matthew (BCBC), Richard B. Gardner

□ 311.Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible

□ 312.New Commentary on the Whole Bible, New Testament Volume, J. D. Douglas, ed.

□ 313.1 Peter (IVPNTC), I.Howard Marshall

□ 314.Psalms 51–100 (WBC), Marvin Tate

□ 315.Romans: Righteousness from Heaven, R. K. Hughes

□ 316.Romans 1–8 (MNTC), John MacArthur

□ 317.Romans 1–8 (WEC), Douglas Moo

□ 318.With the Word, Warren Wiersbe

Contemporary Issues

□ 401.Addicted to “Love,” Steve Arterburn

□ 402.Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves, Robert Wuthnow

□ 403.And Who Is My Neighbor? Gerald Schlabach

□ 404.Catholic Bishops in American Politics, Timothy Burns

□ 405.Choice in Schooling, David W. Kirkpatrick

□ 406.Choices of the Heart, Douglas D. Webster

□ 407.Cities of Lonesome Fears, Gordon McLean

□ 408.Coming Economic Earthquake, Larry Burkett

□ 409.Coping with Cancer, John E. Packo

□ 410.Culture Wars, James Davison Hunter

□ 411.Dancing in the Dark, Roy Anker et al.

□ 412.Darwin on Trial, Phillip Johnson

□ 413.Dismantling Racism, Joseph Barndt

□ 414.Doing Faithjustice, Fred Kammer

□ 415.Double Life, Sheila Hood

□ 416.Earthkeepers, Art and Jocele Meyer

□ 417.End Times, the Middle East and the New World Order, Ed Hindson

□ 418.First Do No Harm, Bruce Hilton

□ 419.Fundamentalisms Observed, Marty and Appleby, eds.

□ 420.Global Trends, Gordon Aeschliman

□ 421.Going Broke: Bankruptcy, Business Ethics, and the Bible, John R. Sutherland

□ 422.Healing Adult Children of Divorce, Archibald Hart

□ 423.Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just-War Tradition, Richard B. Miller

□ 424.Jesus and the Single Mother, B. Rogers-Gardner

□ 425.Keeping Your Head Up When Your Job’s Got You Down, Doug Sherman

□ 426.Love Broke Through, T. Stribling with V. Becker

□ 427.Making Moral Decisions, Paul Jersild

□ 428.Marriage and Divorce: God’s Call, God’s Compassion, M. G. McLuhan

□ 429.Myths of Sex Education, Josh McDowell

□ 430.Naming the Silences, Stanley Hauerwas

□ 431.New World Order, Pat Robertson

□ 432.Nine Great American Myths, Pat Apel

□ 433.Outer Limits of Life, John Medina

□ 434.Overture to Armageddon, M. Rosen with B. Massie

□ 435.Satan’s Underground, Lauren Stratford

□ 436.Secret Shame, Martha Janssen

□ 437.Single Adult Passages, C. Koons and M. Anthony

□ 438.Spiritual Warfare, Timothy Warner

□ 439.Televangelism and American Culture, Q. Schultze

□ 440.Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, James G. Friesen

□ 441.User Friendly Churches, George Barna

□ 442.What Americans Believe, George Barna

□ 443.When There’s No Place Like Home, Noah Snider

□ 444.Why America Doesn’t Work, C. Colson and J. Eckerd

□ 445.Women in Travail and Transition, Maxine Glaz and Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, eds.

Fiction

□ 501.Backwater Blues, Ernest Herndon

□ 502.Beyond the Golden Hills, Anne L. Squire-Buresh

□ 503.The Birth, Gene Edwards

□ 504.Children in the Night, Harold Myra

□ 505.Dead Air, Bob Larson

□ 506.The Dean’s Watch, Elizabeth Goudge

□ 507.Fallen Angel, Roger Elwood

□ 508.Good News from North Haven, Michael L. Lindvall

□ 509.The Hawk and the Dove, Penelope Wilco*ck

□ 510.Holy Masquerade, Olav Hartman

□ 511.Orphan Train Trilogy, Jane Peart

□ 512.No Clock in the Forest, Paul J. Willis

□ 513.An Ordinary Exodus, Roger Bichelberger

□ 514.An Overture of Light, Calvin Miller

□ 515.The Paradise War, Stephen Lawhead

□ 516.Petals in the Storm, Carole Gift Page

□ 517.Pinnacles of Power, Michael Phillips

□ 518.2084, Larry W. Poland

□ 519.Wisdom Hunter, Randall Arthur

□ 520.Wise One, Roger Elwood

Reference

□ 601.Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Amihai Mazar

□ 602.Beginner’s Guide to Reading the Bible, C. Koester

□ 603.Bible Reader’s Companion, Larry Richards

□ 604.Bible Study Tool Kit, Balchin/Field/Longman

□ 605.Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, Roy Zuck

□ 606.Christian Education: Foundations for the Future, Robert Clark et al., eds.

□ 607.Dates with Destiny, Curtis/Lang/Petersen

□ 608.Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, G. Wainwright, ed.

□ 609.Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel L. Migliore

□ 610.Guide to Selecting and Using Bible Commentaries, Douglas Stuart

□ 611.Handbook of Denominations, 9th ed., F. Meade

□ 612.Modern Psychotherapies, Jones and Butman

□ 613.My Father’s Names, Elmer Towns

□ 614.NRSV Concordance Unabridged, John R. Kohlenberger III

□ 615.NRSV Exhaustive Concordance, Metzger

□ 616.New Twentieth-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, D. Douglas, ed.

□ 617.Religion in the New World, Richard E. Wentz

□ 618.Survey of the Old Testament, Hill and Walton

□ 619.Take Up Your Cross, compiled by Mark Sedio

□ 620.Topical Analysis of the Bible, Walter Elwell, ed.

□ 621.Tree of Life, Roland E. Murphy

□ 622.What is Narrative Criticism? Mark Allan Powell

□ 623.Willmington’s Complete Guide to Bible Knowledge, New Testament People; Life of Christ, Harold Willmington

Theology/Biblical Studies

□ 701.Approaching God, Paul Enns

□ 702.Drudgery Divine, Jonathan Smith

□ 703.Engaging the Enemy, C. Peter Wagner

□ 704.Good and Evil, Edward Farley

□ 705.Gospels in Context, Gerd Thiessen

□ 706.Göttingen Dogmatics, Karl Barth

□ 707.Heaven, W.A. Criswell and Paige Patterson

□ 708.Introduction to the Bible, James Beasley et al.

□ 709.Learning About Theology from the Third World, William A.Dyrness

□ 710.Life in Christ, John Stott

□ 711.Living by the Book, H. Hendricks and W. Hendricks

□ 712.Made in America: The Shaping of Modern Evangelicalism, Michael S. Horton

□ 713.A Marginal Jew, John P. Meier

□ 714.More Hard Sayings of the New Testament, P. Davids

□ 715.Our Idea of God, Thomas V. Morris

□ 716.The Presence and the Power, Gerald Hawthorne

□ 717.Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds.

□ 718.Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, Wolfhart Pannenberg

□ 719.Theological Crossfire, Pinnock and Brown

□ 720.Time and Eternity, Brian Leftow

□ 721.The Word Became Flesh, Millard J. Ericson

□ 722.Walking Through the Darkness, Neil T. Anderson

□ 723.Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth, John H. Gerstner

Book Of The Year

The success of novels with the names Oke, Peretti, Thoene, and Lawhead on their covers has spurred evangelical publishers to produce more fiction. There is more variety, the quality is up, they are less preachy, and they are less self-conscious. More and more tell a story that provides old-fashioned entertainment.

Books that take the reader away from the hassle but at the same time nourish the spirit are among the best gifts a person can give (even if the gift is to oneself). With Christmas fast approaching, there are many novels to choose from. Some of the most popular are genre novels, such as westerns, spy thrillers, love stories, historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. People often buy their books according to the kind of story they can expect, whether it’s about the Old West, East Beirut, or a woman with unrequited love.

Spies And Cowboys

Sequoia Scout (Bethany, $5.95) continues the Saga of the Sierra, developed by Brock and Bodie Thoene when they saw how few westerns were being written for the Christian market. Over 175,000 copies of the four-book series have sold. Sequoia Scout tells how Will Reed, a simple trader gets caught up in the swirl of cultures in California: the newly independent Mexicans, the Mojave Indians, the Yokut Indians, and a few settlers. In Hard Winter at Broken Arrow Crossing, by Stephen Bly (Crossway, $7.95), Stuart Brannon can’t just hole up in his cabin. He must brave several blizzards, rescue a stranded family, and secure food. He must also face the age-old question: Why does God allow suffering? Each novel is a page turner full of heroes who try to do the right thing with integrity and godliness.

A sort of woman’s western, A Woman Named Damaris, by Janette Oke (Bethany, $6.95), tells of a young woman who hops a wagon train west as she runs from her father’s alcoholism. She helps a young mother care for her energetic children until she reaches the frontier town of Dixen. Despite near-crippling shyness, she finds the meaning of her name, new friends, and a young family whose need is greater than her own. Janet Oke has over 8 million books in print, but her popularity does not detract from the simple, literary quality of stories that stand alongside those of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Christian writers have tried their hand at creating spy thrillers (James L. Johnson’s Sebastian series is a fine example). Now John Haworth joins them with Henry Stanwick, a limestone geologist who finds himself entangled in international espionage. Continuing a story begun in Heart of Stone, Rock of Refuge (Crossway, $9.95) finds Stanwick married and traveling to East Beirut to save a friend who has been taken hostage by a Lebanese warlord. It isn’t long before Stanwick realizes the Group, a mysterious organization he tangled with in Madagascar, is behind the kidnaping. In Rock of Refuge, Haworth adds some new twists to the spy novel and offers an apocalyptic vision that leaves the reader with hope.

Through The Ages

For the reader who enjoys a good love story, there is Fragile Dreams and Old Photographs, by Elizabeth Gibson (Bethany, $8.95), a wonderful story about a woman in love with a family that has taken her under its wing when her parents divorced. Margaret is best friend and roommate of Ellie McEnroe and loves Ellie’s brother Don, but it takes a tragedy for Don to return her love. Fragile Dreams shows how unrequited love can break down walls and open a person’s eyes to God’s love.

A peasant and her mistress grow in their friendship, and their love for the special men in their lives matures in The Crown and Crucible, by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella (Bethany, $8.95). Set in nineteenth-century Russia, the novel offers insight into the current upheaval in the Soviet Union as its characters’ lives are intertwined with the political turmoil surrounding the ineffectual Czar Alexander II.

Fans of biblical fiction will be happy to note two good choices. In The Master’s Quilt, by Michael J. Webb (Crossway, $8.95), a Roman officer witnesses the death, burial, and disappearance of Christ. Deucalion Cincinnatus Quinctus knows the official statements have been altered, but he must contend with Pilate’s guilt, Herod’s ambition, and Saul’s violence. Escape from Ephesus, by Lance Webb (Nelson, $9.95), fleshes out Paul’s shortest letter in the Bible, Philemon. Son of a Roman aristocrat, Onesimus is sold into slavery. He resents his servitude and escapes, seeking freedom at all costs.

A bit closer to our own time, The Hawk and the Dove, by Penelope Wilco*ck (Crossway, $7.95), and The Finnsburg Encounter, by Matthew Dickerson (Crossway, $9.95), are stories of monks and kings in the Middle Ages. The first is a collection of warm, wise tales of souls facing life’s big questions: Where do I belong? How do I handle failure? The Finnsburg Encounter expands the Beowulf retelling of the story of Finn, king of Freisans, and Hildeburgh, daughter of the king of the Danes, who married to unite the kingdoms. Seeds of betrayal are sown by three brothers, and Christianity is planted by a young monk.

An Ordinary Exodus, by Roger Bichelberger (trans. by Toby Garfitt, Lion, $19.95), is reminiscent of old newsreels showing miles of people trudging with wagons piled high with possessions. The villagers of Lastingen-Lorraine flee the Nazi occupation and settle for a while in the south of France where they discover there is more to the village simpleton than they first thought. This lyrical novel shows what happens to a community with a holy fool in its midst.

Imaginative Spins

Another popular genre for Christian authors is the fantasy novel—perhaps because it is easier to show spiritual truths when the imagination is given free rein. In Whalesong (HarperSan-Francisco, $8.95) and White Whale (HarperSanFrancisco, $15.95), poet Robert Siegel performs the imaginative task by swimming inside a whale’s flesh. He reveals the world through whales’ eyes. Whalesong tells how the humpback whale Hruna looks for God, showing how he draws near to the heart of the world. White Whale tells how Hralekana, a white humpback, travels throughout the world, exploring sunken ships, encountering oil spills, getting beached and shot by humans.

Harold Myra, in Children in the Night (Zondervan, $9.95), creates a world without light. Yosha, an orphan and outcast, searches for a deeper spiritual reality than mere liturgy. Asel, a young woman initiated into a woman’s society similar to that of the Amazons, seeks the lost in the world of the damned. They marry to unite forces as their people battle foreign invaders.

Even though Walter Wangerin’s Elisabeth and the Water-Troll (HarperCollins, $14.95) is ostensibly for children, its moral is for everyone, teaching the possibility of love from ugly, mysterious creatures and showing the evil that ordinary people’s fear can spawn.

After the westerns, the spy thrillers, the biblical fiction, and the fantasy, a reader may long for a story of ordinary people in a contemporary setting. Brothers for Life, by Keith Wander (Crossway, $8.95), portrays four fraternity brothers meeting at a wedding and finding that their lives have not measured up to their expectations. Before they know it, the reunion has developed into a murder mystery. The story is told with compassion, humor, and grace.

By Katie Andraski, a poet and writer living in Rockford, Illinois.

Made in America: The Shaping of Modem American Evangelicalism, by Michael Scott Horton (Baker, 198 pp.; $13.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Robert W. Patterson, a minister of the Presbyterian Church in America, who serves as associate to the executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals.

One of the most peculiar facets of contemporary American life is the resilience of evangelical religion as the tide of secularization and modernity rolls on unabated. At the very time American society seems driven more and more by rampant materialism, extreme individualism, and blatant consumerism, evangelical religion, rather than diminishing, appears more popular than ever. Church attendance has reached new highs; Billy Graham ranks among the nation’s most respected persons; and Bibles sell several million copies a year.

These two apparently contradictory phenomena may baffle the social scientists, but a young Reformed Episcopal rector from Southern California, Michael Scott Horton, believes the two realities are not antithetical. In fact, in his new book, Made in America, Horton advances the thesis that American evangelicalism is uniquely an American product, shaped more by the American experience than by apostolic substance and the classic Reformation heritage. Because of its symbiotic relationship with American culture, evangelicalism has both contributed to and reflected the very forces of modernity and secularism over which evangelicals so frequently lament.

Abandoning The Puritans

Horton’s book is a refreshing alternative to the many that express anxiety over changing American society or lament a country that has drifted from its founding principles. Instead, Horton vents his concern over what he considers a bankrupt evangelicalism that has drifted from its theological and biblical roots. He challenges evangelicals to embark on a pilgrimage from a cultural evangelicalism to a more authentic variety that is both “in theory and practice a worthy successor to the apostolic faith.”

He begins by questioning the idea of a “Christian America,” a powerful idea that sustains the popular notion that secular humanists have recently hijacked the nation away from its religious past. While recognizing the Christian basis of the Puritan experiment in New England, Horton traces how very quickly (within a generation) the original vision of a Holy Commonwealth had become secularized. By the time of the American founding in 1776, the idea of a Christian nation was far from the minds of the founders, whether Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams.

But Horton’s major concern is not with the country in general, but how quickly American evangelicals in particular abandoned the Puritan ideal, particularly its Calvinist theology and world view, and accommodated themselves to whatever the culture dictated.

Successive chapters examine how American individualism, pragmatism, consumerism, the pursuit of pleasure, sentimentality, relativism, and loss of community have shaped evangelical religion over the years. Whereas the Puritans and the Reformers before them championed a sovereign God to whom the entire world and all aspects of life were subject, evangelical religion increasingly narrowed its concern to the individual alone and his or her personal relationship with Jesus. The transition naturally led to secularization. Writes Horton: “We ourselves left the neighborhood of ideas and retreated into our own private ghetto, where evangelical religion has been aptly, though tragically, characterized as privately engaging but socially irrelevant.”

Pristine Abstractions

While Horton’s analysis is penetrating, the book possesses some flaws. First, nowhere does Horton define what he means by “modern evangelicalism”—a troubling omission in a day when scholars are wrestling with the difficulty of defining an increasingly diverse movement or family of movements. Much of Horton’s criticism is directed to the more visible elements of anti-institutional, popular Protestantism, whether the revivalists of the nineteenth century or the televangelists and megachurches of the twentieth. But these easy targets may not be a fair representation of the movement.

Failing to grapple with the complexities of evangelicalism today in turn leads Horton to uphold a pristine evangelicalism of the distant past that may never have existed. He clearly sees the Protestant Reformation and the New England Puritans as the ideal, but he fails to recognize that few evangelicals today trace their roots through New England to Westminster, Geneva, or Wittenberg. Horton may wish otherwise, but many evangelicals—especially those in the free church, holiness, and Pentecostal traditions—do not look to the magisterial Reformers for inspiration and therefore may not respond to his appeal to return to a faith they never shared.

Second, Horton does not acknowledge the extent to which even the New England Puritans and Jonathan Edwards represent a modification of the Reformation ideal. Although Calvinists, they had little appreciation for the Reformed emphasis on organic relationships (which recognized that God worked through communities and institutions) and were unable to maintain the Reformed balance between nature and grace. In practice, they adopted an Anabaptist piety and polity, framing Christianity primarily in terms of the individual’s relationship to God. Even Charles Hodge lamented how the Great Awakening proved disastrous for the institutional church, a key concern of the Reformers. While Horton sees the Second Great Awakening as a turning point, the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century may equally mark a departure from the Reformation toward a more secular society.

Third, those who do not share Horton’s love for the Five Points of Calvinism may find his constant harping on Arminianism excessive. Arminianism indeed represents certain shifts away from the Reformation, but Horton may be overstating its role in contributing to secularization. Elements in the Reformed community have also contributed to the process of secularization, and they, too, as much as the followers of John Wesley, need the self-examination called for by Horton.

In spite of these shortcomings, Made in America is indeed a worthwhile book. Because the book raises so many probing questions, it would have been enhanced with a chapter setting forth practical suggestions on where evangelicals go from here. This may not have been Horton’s intention, but one is left wondering how Horton would go about reforming the evangelicalism he finds wanting. Horton may not have given this much thought, possibly because he relies far too heavily on other writers, especially Christopher Lasch, Martin Marty, and Richard Hofstadter. But it is a task he should nevertheless embark on, possibly in other books, so that American evangelicalism might be increasingly shaped, not by the spirit of the age, but by the Spirit of God who forms through Word and sacrament a people who serve Christ and his kingdom.

Evangelical Cornucopia

The Variety of American Evangelicalism, Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston, eds. (University of Tennessee Press, $39.95, hardcover; InterVarsity Press, $ 19.95, paper; 285 pp.);Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, by George M. Marsden (Eerdmans, x + 198 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by John G. Stackhouse, Jr., who teaches in the Department of Religion, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.

“Defining evangelicalism has become one of the biggest problems in American religious historiography,” asserts Timothy Weber. Moreover, warns Robert Johnston, “the present contest over the definition of American evangelicalism has caused frustration, hostility, and increasingly, boredom.” These two volumes, however, do much to ease the frustration, to curb the hostility, and to interest readers.

Donald Dayton and Robert Johnston, of Northern Baptist and North Park Seminaries, respectively, have brought together reflections on American evangelicalism from a wide range of reputable scholars. They discuss the similarities and differences between evangelicalism and each of the following traditions: premillennialism, fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, Adventism, the holiness movement, restorationism, black religion, Baptists, pietism, Anabaptism, Reformed Protestantism, and Lutheranism. Indeed, a number of the essays use stereotypes of other traditions (for example, “pietism” is intellectually and socially passive, or “Anabaptism” is isolationist) to define their own, and the value of this volume lies perhaps as much in its authentic definitions of these various groups as in its definitions of evangelicalism.

Concluding essays by Dayton and Johnston, however, refocus the book squarely on the matter of definition. Dayton argues provocatively that the category “evangelical” is now useless: “Is there, for example, a line that binds ‘holiness churches’ closer to ‘Orthodox Presbyterians’ than to mainstream Methodists? If so, I fail to see it. What sense does it make to put Missouri Synod Lutherans and pentecostals in the same category?”

Johnston responds with a summary listing of a number of definitions of “evangelicalism” that he sees as coming down to a threefold pattern: “Evangelicals are those who believe the gospel is to be experienced personally, defined biblically, and communicated passionately.” While some would take issue with Johnston’s terse and lively formula (for instance, in seeing instead a fourfold pattern implicit therein of commitment to an authoritative Bible, a basic gospel message, personal holiness, and evangelism as the church’s chief mission), the unique glory of this book lies in enabling the reader to judge it and any other definition precisely by all of these “test cases.”

A Bird’S-Eye View

In his book, George Marsden of Duke University, one of the leading experts on American fundamentalism and evangelicalism, makes two quite different contributions to our understanding of these movements. The first part of the book reworks material presented elsewhere into a historical overview of the context out of which fundamentalism emerged in the first quarter of this century and of the “new evangelicalism” that succeeded it. Marsden provides both more and less here than he does in his book-length studies on these periods. The chapter covering 1870–1930 sets out what amounts to a history of American Protestantism in this time (reflecting its earlier form as a textbook chapter) while giving due attention to fundamentalism within this story. The chapter covering developments since 1930 deals with the new evangelical “denomination” from a bird’s-eye view rather than from the specific vantage point of the history of Fuller Theological Seminary (which he covered in Reforming Fundamentalism).

The second part of Marsden’s book includes five discrete essays: two on evangelicals and politics, two on evangelicals and science, and a concluding reflection on J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937), a pivotal figure whose career illustrates some of the broader themes covered in other essays. Marsden rightly focuses on the two topics of politics and science since these are the points at which evangelicalism has come into the most public prominence of late, and he illuminates these subjects with characteristic thoroughness and insight.

Leonard Sweet wrote recently that the study of the history of American evangelicalism has produced some of the best scholarship in American religious history in general. These two volumes proffer some of the ripened fruit of that scholarship. They go beyond clarifying intellectual issues per se, however. They challenge the attitude, pervasive among all sorts of evangelicals, that “our way” is “God’s way.” They advertise corrective and complementary riches available to us in other traditions. And they direct evangelicals to distinguish between “essentials” and “nonessentials,” so that appropriate attention will be paid to the crucial things, the things of the “evangel.”

Worship At The Relativist Shrine

The Search for God at Harvard, by Ari L. Goldman (Times Books/Random House, 283 pp.; $20, hardcover). Reviewed by Doug LeBlanc, a journalist based in Colorado Springs who writes frequently on religion and culture.

Harvard Divinity School has long been regarded with a certain suspicion by evangelicals. If mainline Protestantism has strayed from its roots, there is no more vivid example of the crisis than Harvard.

The college itself was founded in 1636 for educating Puritan ministers. But by the nineteenth century, as Goldman writes, “Harvard Divinity was for all purposes an arm of the Unitarian church and served as a principal training ground for its ministers and church leaders.” The Divinity School is not captive only to Unitarians these days, but it will not give Fuller or Gordon-Conwell any competition for evangelical trust.

This book of reportage and autobiography by Ari Goldman, one of two full-time religion writers for the New York Times, will confirm some of evangelicals’ worst fears about what passes for theology at Harvard. It also demonstrates, however, that even Harvard Divinity School is not devoid of serious biblical scholarship.

As a Times religion writer, Goldman covers faith with a healthy curiosity. It helps that Goldman not only is an Orthodox Jew, but proudly observant of Orthodox laws. Goldman wrote the book after studying religion full-time during 1985 at the Divinity School. Goldman suggested the year of study to improve his understanding, and treatment, of religions other than Judaism.

The Search for God at Harvard is a sometimes amusing, often sobering, but never boring account of the pre-eminent seminary in mainline Protestantism (with the University of Chicago Divinity School being the only other serious contender for the position). Goldman captures the “Div School”—as some students call it—in all its relativist and “politically correct” glory. His tone is ironic, but never mocking.

In one tragic scene, a Christian Scientist student is snickered at by her classmates (excluding Goldman) because she reads the resurrection of Lazarus as proof of eternal life. Literalism is, perhaps, the only sin at the Div School, where gay students dance openly with their lovers at a social in the Refectory.

Goldman also reports on feminist rage, unabashed syncretism, and students’ desperate attempts to find the sacred amid the mundane. Goldman himself agrees with Divinity School professor Diana Eck’s contention that “If you know [only] one religion … you don’t know any.”

“I see God in language, as well as in being,” says Ann, a lifelong Unitarian. This is Ann’s sense of sacrament: “In some ways, working with words substitutes for a prayer life. When I do The New York Times crossword puzzle, for example, I feel an emptying of conscious thought, free associations. It leaves me in a better place.”

Goldman leaves his year at Harvard with a better understanding and a strange new respect for Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, even Islam. He accepts certain claims far too uncritically, such as one student’s certainty that the Hindu deity Krishna is mentioned with seeming approval in the Book of Esther. Even so, he exhibits tolerance and compassion toward believers, and he maintains a keen sense of his own identity. Goldman shows that the Div School, for all its glib rejection of anything perceived as fundamentalist, cannot destroy the faith of a person anchored in truth.

Indeed, an education in the theological crucible that is Harvard Divinity School should be ideal training for ministry in the wildly eclectic culture of mainline Protestantism. A student who enters and leaves Harvard Divinity as an evangelical will be able to withstand almost anything else from mainline Protestantism.

Deconstructing Reconstruction

Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, edited by William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey (Zondervan, 413 pp.; $15.95, paper). Reviewed by Bruce Barron, author of The Health and Wealth Gospel.

A handful of Christian Reconstructionists, advocating the application of biblical law (“theonomy”) to all of modern society, have carved out a niche for themselves on the evangelical landscape. The surest sign that they have “arrived” is Zondervan’s interest in publishing this book of essays by 16 Westminster Seminary faculty professors who take theonomy very seriously.

The essays cover a variety of topics, as befits the wide-ranging implications of theonomy: biblical exegesis, eschatology, church history, political theory. Almost every chapter takes the obligatory jab at theonomists’ rigid insistence on reviving Old Testament penal sanctions. But despite disagreement on many specifics, the authors generally appreciate theonomy’s effort to relate biblical law to the modern world.

The writers’ familiarity with theonomy is inconsistent—understandably so, since the theory is complex and frequently misinterpreted. Two essays on the relation of law and gospel miss the point completely, as they fail to address specifically whether Old Testament civil law remains binding under the New Covenant. On the other hand, John Frame and Vern Poythress have a solid grasp of theonomy, and their lucid essays pinpoint the theory’s crucial weakness: its exegesis, especially regarding the relation between Old and New Testaments, is dependent on debatable interpretive frameworks and “inordinately dogmatic claims.”

Those who consider theonomy a wild aberration will fault the Westminster professors for taking it too seriously, as the authors patiently scrutinize theonomy’s use of Scripture and church history in great detail, identifying strengths as well as weaknesses. On the whole, however, this volume strikes a proper balance. Beneath the uncompromising rhetoric and dogmatism to which theonomy is prone lies a treasure of serious scholarship and provocative challenges that can help Christians re-examine their social and political thinking.

This book will help move Christians beyond ridiculing theonomy and toward responsible appropriation of its positive insights.

The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.

—Genesis 4:4–5, NIV

In Iowa two years ago, two young women—both striking beauties—found themselves grappling for the same boyfriend. Sonya and Cindy had grown up together, gone to school together, and had competed in local beauty contests. Sometimes one would win, sometimes the other. Cindy, for instance, became the county’s Miss Harvest Princess, while over at the high school Sonya had been named Miss Homecoming.

But the main competition between these two women flared in the area of romance. It happened that both were in love with Jim, a strapping young man, and the most promising one in the area. I have no idea what Jim thought of the spectacle of two beautiful women fighting over him. Maybe he found this spectacle embarrassing. Maybe he blessed it with all that was within him, but in any case, he lived in Iowa, not Utah, so Jim had to choose. He quit Cindy for Sonya, and Jim and Sonya announced that they planned to get married.

When Cindy heard the announcement, she felt as if she had been stabbed. She felt spasms of pain and envy and rage, as if Jim and Sonya were trying to twist some primitive knife between her ribs. Cindy wasn’t used to disappointment, and she had no idea where to buy an antidote for it. It was bad enough to have lost Jim, but what really poisoned Cindy was the thought that her rival had walked off with the prize, that her rival was filled to the brim with bliss. So Cindy rose up and slew Sonya. One September night in Iowa, Miss Harvest Princess strangled Miss Homecoming with a leather belt and left the whole community choking with grief.

This story is based on an actual incident (though details were changed), but it also is a story we have heard before. It is a crime story so old and deep in our race that it has assumed the status of a legend—a true legend.

In the biblical story of Cain and Abel, the crime is murder and the motive is envy. And the biblical postmortem tells us that a murder is never really over. Abel’s blood keeps bubbling up out of the earth, and Cain becomes a fugitive and wanderer, protected from vigilantes only by a mysterious mark that God has placed on him. This is not just a story of two brothers who come to grief over a sacrifice. It is a paradigm, the first case in Scripture of a pattern that will appear again and again.

In this pattern, God surprisingly prefers one person over another—typically the younger over the older. And then God has to deal with the loser and the loser’s lethal envy. So when we read Cain and Abel, other names should be lining up on the horizon—Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel, Joseph and his brothers, even Herod and Jesus.

Or think of Saul and David after David’s earliest military campaigns. For years Saul had been Israel’s undisputed war hero. But now a talented Young Turk comes up—David, who has the touch of God on him; David, who is a more gifted killer than Saul. And Saul, the old warrior, feels the demons beginning to stir in him. How ominous to see these young hotshots lining up to take aim at your job. How appalling to hear the crowds roaring for them and women singing about them. One song, in particular, sticks in Saul like a syringe: “Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.” In this classic case of a star eclipsed by a superstar, Saul sees, and fears, and murderously resents, the changing of the guard.

Cain and Abel is the story of Saul and David. In fact, the story shows us a pattern woven into all of humanity, into a whole race that has been banished from Paradise. Cain and Abel is the story of Saddam Hussein who murders rich Kuwaitis, of Miss Harvest Princess beginning to wind a leather belt around her fists. Above all, this ancient story is about us—people in whom innocent Abel and guilty Cain are still fighting for supremacy.

When you go back to it, the story makes you wonder. You wonder why Abel’s offering was blessed but Cain’s was not and how they could tell. Did the smoke from Abel’s sacrifice rise straight to heaven like some homesick angel? Did the fire under Cain’s vegetables just smolder and stink? Or did these early human beings make an offering to God and then keep a six-month growth chart to see what happened to their gardens and flocks?

What is clear is that right at the beginning of our racial history something goes seriously wrong in one man’s attempt to worship God. It is the first time God takes an offering—and also the first time he turns one down. “The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.”

Something in us understands this anger. A friend mentioned the other day that when he was a child and heard the story, he always felt sorry for Cain. And—initially, at least—why not?

Suppose you are a fourth grader. It is December, and in class you have been working for a week on a Christmas-tree ornament to bring home to your parents. One day the ornament is finished, and you carry it home in a small box to protect it. You bring it home with the eagerness of a child who yearns for the approval of the biggest people in his or her life. What you had forgotten was that your second-grade sister had been working on a similar project in her class and so two ornaments would be presented to your parents.

Of course, wise parents know how to play these scenes. They measure out their enthusiasms to ensure each child gets an equal share. The same number of “oohs” and “ahs” go to each kid.

But suppose you opened your box, lifted out your handmade ornament, and discovered that your parents were uninterested. Or worse, suppose they ridiculed your gift. What if your mother turned a hard eye on you and said, “Did you think we’d like something like this? Look at it! You think we want a miserable little amateur bauble? Why can’t you be more like your sister? Her ornament makes yours look like junk!”

You would be momentarily stunned. Then you would be humiliated and wounded to the quick. You had brought a gift from the center of your nine-year-old life, a gift made at the limit of your skill. You thought about how much pleasure it would bring to people you loved. So you wrapped it and offered it up, and what they did was to crush it right back into your face.

“On Cain and his offering [the Lord] did not look with favor.” How are we to understand this? Is Cain like an innocent fourth grader whose ornament gets tossed out with the trash? And is God like some brutal parent who keeps shredding the tenderest gifts of his children? I suspect that if the generations of Jews and Christians to follow had felt locked into this interpretation, their reading of the Bible would not have gone much beyond Genesis 4.

Fortunately, the narrator of the story is leading us another way. His first hint is the description of the offerings. Cain “brought some of the fruits of the soil.… But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock” (Gen. 4:3–4, NIV). Of course, there is nothing wrong with bringing asparagus to God instead of loin chops—certainly not from a contemporary perspective. There is nothing wrong with being a farmer instead of a shepherd and giving what you have to give. That’s not where the distinction lies.

Instead, I believe the narrator wants us to think of Abel offering what really cost him something—the choicest cuts from his most valuable stock. And he wants us to think of Cain bringing a perfectly ordinary offering, not first-fruits, but garden-variety produce. “Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil.…” Abel, on the other hand, brought “fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.”

One man’s worship is focused, thoughtful, self-giving. And the other man—well, he may be the one we know better.

All of us are, after all, deeply divided creatures whose impulses toward God may be simultaneously noble and tacky. For instance, as theologian Geoffrey Bromiley says, we may despair of ourselves and our own efforts and all along be “fiercely aware” of this despair and keenly interested in its merit. We may humble ourselves before God in repentance—and be proud of it. More than one preacher has confessed that he was deep into a congregational prayer—one he had worked on so that it would express the fears and longings of his congregation—when he caught himself admiring it and wondering what grade heaven would assign it.

Or suppose we are listening to a sermon. Suddenly it occurs to us that we have just been nailed by a word of the Lord. We honestly try to heed its warning. Still, we don’t want to take the whole warning because we want to make sure plenty of it is left over for folk who need it more than we do. Everybody knows, Helmut Thielicke once observed, that while we are at worship the wolves may be howling in our souls.

So it is with Cain. Something is wrong in his worship. It doesn’t take. And Cain gets depressed and angry. Not puzzled. Not humbled. Angry—even though God gives Cain a chance to redeposit his offering: “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?” (Gen. 4:7).

But Cain does not want to do what is right. He is inconsolable. And somewhere, so quietly and subtly we can hardly see it happen, Cain’s anger pivots. He had hated this mysterious God who was so hard to satisfy, this inscrutable God who was such a finicky eater that he would not even touch his vegetables. But gradually Cain swivels around until he has Abel in his sights.

Who is it, after all, that turned God against him? Who is it that seems to win at everything? Cain looks over at Abel and no longer sees his brother. All he sees is a rival. Not somebody to love and lift up, but somebody who needs to be cut down to size. Who does Abel think he is? Making people feel like losers! A fire is eating Cain’s innards. And his terrible conclusion is that only his brother’s blood can put it out.

Was Abel’s offering more costly and generous? Or was Abel preferred by the same mysterious providence that for centuries has been parceling out gifts unequally?

I think the text leads us to see a difference in both the offering and the character of these two brothers. The writer wants us to find self-sacrifice and integrity in Abel’s worship. Abel is not just blessed out of the blue; there is some reason why he is preferred.

To Cain it doesn’t make any difference. An envier does not care whether we have earned our success or whether some golden parachute straight from heaven has dropped into our lap. To an envier, either way is totally unfair. Enviers are theological switch hitters. Sometimes they are Arminians, and sometimes Calvinists. But all of them are potential killers.

From the time of Cain and Abel to the time of Miss Harvest Princess, the goal of envy has always been to strip and destroy. What envy wants is to strip another person of some vital good and thus destroy his or her happiness.

Why? The reason is not covetousness. What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has. What an envier wants is for the other not to have it. That is the deep reason for vandalism. Deeper than the surface reason of idle amusem*nt is a desire to kill. A vandal cannot let beauty and wholeness be, nor can he tolerate anyone else’s delight in these things. Confronted by beauty or blessing, a vandal wants to raise Cain and let him go to work.

That is why Saddam Hussein torched oil fields he could not harvest and polluted beaches he had to abandon. The envier is a child of Satan. If he cannot have heaven, he can at least raise hell in the lives of others.

Maybe out in Iowa, Cindy hoped insanely that with Sonya gone Jim would come back to her. But what Miss Harvest Princess wanted above all was to keep her rival from having him.

For all of us who live east of Eden, the story of Cain and Abel needs to be on our minds and in our hearts. Why? Because we have a lot of Cain in us. Because sin is crouching at our door. Because the blood of our victims is crying out from the ground—people, for example, whose character we have assassinated; people we have resented because we had to grow in their shade; people who irritated us for no better reason than that they had integrity.

If you are an envier, you have got to get free. Envy will rot your bones. How do we get free? We do some spiritual behavior modification. We make ourselves praise others for their gifts, their graces, their accomplishments. We include them in our prayers, and we thank God for them—even if we have to grit our teeth to do it at first. And always, always, we need to foster in each other the sense of belonging to a community—a civic community and, above all, the community of God’s people—a community in which the gifts of others, properly used, bless us all. If you ride the bench for the Chicago Bulls, how foolish it would be to envy Michael Jordan. You ought to thank God that he is on your team.

For all of us who live east of Eden, Cain and Abel need to be on our minds and in our hearts. Why? Because we have a lot of Abel in us. If you are a person God has favored, you may have attracted a certain amount of envy.

Of course, everybody knows that envy poisons the envier. But being envied is, at least for a person of character, no delight either. To be envied is to have something venomous aimed at you. And it is hard to find the right antivenom. If we do well, we will be resented. If we try to be kind to the envier, we may be thought condescending. Even a whiff of pity in our attitude is natural gas to the fires of envy.

What can an Abel do? He can make sure his gifts go to God, that they are not flaunted, but offered. And he or she can foster that sense of community in which gifts—intelligence or moral goodness or money or skill, or maybe the sheer gift of youthfulness—bless us all.

Cain and Abel keep struggling down the ages. They struggle in us. But we have reason to think the struggle will one day cease. That is because Cain and Abel were both alive in Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus Christ, the naturally innocent one, became sin for us. He took Cain’s place as well as Abel’s. And when the terrible struggle between them was over, on resurrection morning, God raised the one who had been slain, the one whose blood had been crying out from the ground for so many centuries.

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. is a professor of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“We are fascinated by what you’ve told us about Christ and we’d like to give this information to our students.” The well-dressed Russian teacher appeared to be about 50 years of age and spoke into the microphone with confidence and authority. “But you must understand, for the last 75 years we have learned and taught atheism. How can we teach Christianity in our schools when here in Russia we have separation between the church and the state?”

I glanced at the other American scholars and educators sitting on the stage in Leningrad. Since I was the panel member who had wrestled most with the church/state issue, I realized I would have to answer.

“It’s a crucial question,” I began. While I waited for the interpreter to translate, my mind raced across the past four months. This question had haunted me from the beginning of this improbable project.

Virtues Of Being Voluntary

The phone call that launched me into this vortex of controversy had come from my old friend Blair Cook, a pioneering director of many international projects for Campus Crusade for Christ.

“Alan, I’d like your help. The director of Crusade’s Jesus Film Project, Paul Eshleman, just completed an astounding set of meetings with the deputy minister of education for the Russian Republic. The minister is interested in having us produce a curriculum to present Christianity as a basis for morality. We will have a chance to introduce the curriculum to hundreds of Russian teachers in a series of three-day convocations in Moscow, Leningrad, and Vologda. Then the teachers will show the Jesus film and teach our curriculum to their students.”

Blair paused to let what he had said sink in.

“But there’s a catch—they want the convocations four months from now.”

From the start, I had two concerns: Is it possible? We can’t even do this in American schools. And then, Is it wise? Even if they are willing, do we want to make Christianity mandatory in publicly funded education?

When the curriculum writers assembled two weeks later, we discovered that even as American evangelicals, we were far from united.

“Let’s not impose our American ideas of pluralism on the Russian culture,” one professor said. “Their educational system and whole society has been ‘top-down.’ They have always been told what to believe. We now have an opportunity to tell them the truth. Let’s take advantage of it!”

Others urged caution. “The history of state-imposed Christianity has been mixed at best. We would be doing them a disservice to encourage the return of government-sponsored religion.”

Because I was writing an introduction to orient the teachers to the ten lessons, the task fell to me to chart some kind of middle course for the curriculum. I puzzled and prayed. In the end, I included a page addressed to the teachers entitled, “The Power of Voluntary Commitment.” I wrote, “One of the benefits of Christianity is that it appeals to the individual heart and conscience. When students freely choose to follow Christ, they are transformed from within in a way that surpasses the effects of any imposed ethical system.”

I also warned the teachers that “one of the dangers of teaching religious ethics in a state-supported school is that students may see it as imposed morality or enforced belief.” I made it clear that this was not the desire of the writers. But I assured them that “when Christianity and Christian morality have been studied in an atmosphere where belief is optional and voluntary, many individual lives are transformed, and those individuals go on to constructively influence their society.”

A Precarious Balance

I offered three specific suggestions for safeguarding the free choice of the students. First, I explained that many sessions include a survey of one or more non-Christian viewpoints. I warned the teachers to “be sure the students understand that intelligent, respectable people hold these other views.… This will help the student grasp that accepting Christianity or Christian morality is his or her own choice.”

My second suggestion flew in the face of 70 years of Communist-dominated education. I told them to “encourage students to ask questions and even challenge (privately or during appropriate times in class) the Christian perspective presented in this unit.”

My final suggestion also required a break with the “read the curriculum verbatim” approach common in the Soviet system. “Feel free to express your own opinion when you feel it fits in the lesson or when a student asks what you believe.” I encouraged the teachers by saying, “Whatever your beliefs about morality or Christianity, be careful to label them ‘my viewpoint’ or ‘my opinion,’ and respect and encourage students who disagree.”

Two months later, as our 747 was headed for Moscow, I discussed the delicate balance with one of our convocation speakers, Ronald Nash, then professor of philosophy and religion at Western Kentucky University.

“We do want to avoid advocating a state-imposed Christianity,” Ron said, “but I would hate to think that 20 years from now we would look back and say, ‘We had a chance to get Christ in the Soviet schools, but because we were so anxious to be fair, the New Age movement came, Islam came in, but there was little Christianity.’”

Apartment Tour Guides

As the aging teacher in Leningrad waited patiently for her answer, I remembered an idea from the preface of Mere Christianity.

“C. S. Lewis, a professor at Oxford University,” I told the gathering of several hundred teachers, “compared Christianity to a house with many rooms; one room might be the Orthodox church, another Catholic, another Baptist. Imagine that here in Leningrad there is a large building of flats that for years has been overgrown with plants; the windows are cracked and the doors locked. But suddenly it is being refurbished; people are living there again, and it is open for visitors.

“Many in the city are curious about what was closed and hidden for so long. Some might even want to consider living in one of the flats.”

Heads were beginning to nod in comprehension.

“I see your role as teachers like that of a tour guide who points out the building and explains something of what it is like to live there. Your job is not to argue whether one of the flats is better than another. If some of your students decide to live in this building called Christianity, they will eventually have to choose a particular apartment: Orthodox, Baptist, or whatever.

“But I think it is beyond your role as public-school teachers to argue for or against any particular church. However, Christianity has played an important historic role in Russia, and I see evidence it is becoming important again, so you perform a valuable service to introduce your students to this dwelling called Christianity and to the common beliefs of all who live there.”

I paused and perused the intent faces of teachers obviously wrestling with radically new thoughts.

As the third convocation ended in Leningrad, I felt hopeful for Christianity’s future in Russian education. Many of the teachers impressed me with their sense of humor and sharp analytical minds. They were quick to question and debate various new ideas, both political and religious. And they were quick to laugh at the foibles of their society and its leaders. I was also impressed with the courage of the officials in the ministry of education. They were willing to experiment with teaching Christianity in a school system in which the official textbooks still taught that God and the human soul do not exist. They also invited us back to hold teacher convocations in many other Soviet cities.

But most encouraging was the response of the teachers. Of the 840 attending convocations, 45 percent of those who turned in written evaluations indicated they had received Christ during the three days. Over 90 percent of the teachers indicated they plan to teach the curriculum and show the Jesus film in their classrooms.

Predicting the future of Russia and its sister republics is risky in this period of tumultuous political and social change. However, what I saw in the response of the Soviet teachers convinced me that Christianity can play an unprecedented role in the educational formation of a new Russia.

Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.

It was enough to make a grown man cry. The voice pouring out its story to a telephone Gamblers Anonymous volunteer was choked with tears. It was Friday, payday, and “Bruce” had cashed his check. But before he could get home, he had lost it all on what he thought was a sure win at the track. Was there any hope?

This broken man, his counselor, and many of the 8 to 10 million other Americans who are gambling addicts would probably agree with Saint Augustine: “The devil invented gambling.” They feel out of control, manipulated by an evil force.

They may indeed feel manipulated. But it is not just the Prince of Darkness who is to blame. Many get started gambling in the not-unwholesome environments of church basem*nts, flag-draped VFW halls, or in their brightly lit neighborhood convenience stores. And the appeal to play is made by upright, God-fearing citizens who want to benefit charity or fund education.

Now, those who run “Las Vegas Nights” or sell lottery tickets are not demons, but the consequences of their actions may seem to some to be demonically inspired. Says Valerie Lorenz, executive director of the National Center for Pathological Gambling, “People don’t see the devastation and the despair and the pain that we see. The person out there in the community only sees that there’s a million-dollar lottery and thinks: ‘Let’s buy a few tickets and maybe I can win and pay back all my bills and take a nice vacation.’ That person does not think about the gambling addict, about the broken home, about the suicide that accompanies gambling addiction.”

That is a bleak picture. If we saw it daily, as Lorenz does, our passions and priorities might change, and the issues surrounding gambling might suddenly outrank many other causes.

Revisiting Pandora

From an ethical standpoint, gambling is not a single issue. Indeed, it can be thought of as three related questions: Should Christians gamble? Should gambling be legal? Should states sponsor and promote gambling?

This sequence of questions can be likened to the mythical Pandora’s box. Individual and charitable gaming is like Pandora’s fascination with the mysterious box. Legalized gambling is like lifting the lid. And when government sponsors gambling, one can only stand back and watch the evil influences escape into the world.

First, is it right for Christians to gamble?

To gamble is to put at risk something of value in the hopes of getting something worth far more. It usually involves artificially created chance (dice, roulette wheels, and cards, for example) or an event that is hard to predict (a horse race or a co*ck fight). And the winnings of a few are usually financed by the losses of the many.

Many conservative Christians were taught to stay away from dice and dog races, but the heart of the issue has nothing to do with dice or dogs. It has to do with dissatisfaction with what we have and a desire to take a shortcut from the path that God has prescribed for us to earn our keep. It has to do with, in the words of Bill Hybels, “the monster called ‘More.’” The popular pastor of the Chicago-area Willow Creek Community Church surveyed his Sunday-morning congregation and found that nearly 20 percent of the respondents had participated in some form of gambling in the previous six months. In response, Hybels offered these wise words:

Part of what motivates a gambler is the hope for a windfall without having to submit to the discipline and rigors of working and budgeting and saving.… There’s the draw of easy money associated with gambling, there’s the hope for the quick hit, and it might even be more complicated than that.… At the root of wanting a windfall in the first place, is a deep, gnawing dissatisfaction with your current level of provision that God has made for you in your life. Maybe underneath it all is a monster that lurks in the shadows of almost every person’s heart, the monster called “More.”

That monster called “More” can drive some people to petty theft or even grand larceny. It can drive others to risk all their energies on the elusive deal and starve their families for attention and love. But for an increasing number of Americans, that monster will drive them to gambling.

Whether that monster is stirred by a “You may have already won …” message from Ed McMahon or by the pot of gold on some lottery advertisem*nts, it runs deep in the human psyche and runs counter to the teaching of Christ. Jesus taught his followers to be content, and he grounded that contentment in God’s good will toward his creatures. In Matthew 6, he urges us not to lay up treasure on Earth (which will inevitably be ruined or lost); he urges us not to try to serve both God and Mammon (for they are both jealous gods); and he urges us not to worry about our own food, drink, and clothing (for our heavenly Father knows our needs and will take much better care of us than he does the resplendent grass of the field).

Christian contentment is no psychological trick that tries to starve the monster by denying our legitimate needs and desires. Some ascetics (both Christian and Buddhist) have tried that route. But the creation is good, says God, and our interest in material things can be healthy. What we need is not denial, but trust. Paul learned that trust, and he maintained his ability to enjoy the good things of life, while at the same time, he learned how to do without them: “I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circ*mstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want” (Phil. 4:11–12).

In addition to the More monster, some people are attracted to gambling by the sense of adventure and risk, the sheer excitement of the game. But where that ambiance of excitement prevails—whether in Las Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City, or Monte Carlo—so does the atmosphere of luxury, indulgence, and lack of moral restraint. Showgirls and glitter mask prostitution, drunkenness, and organized crime. While the excitement of playing a game is not inherently wrong, it, like any other thrill, can lead to excess and distract us from kingdom values. Somehow, casino glitz does not invite us to feed the hungry or house the homeless.

Few Christians boggle at the idea of risking a 29-cent stamp on the millions offered them by Ed McMahon. The consequences don’t seem very large. And our common sense tells us that these small risks will drive few people to poverty by instilling a compulsive need to spend their lives and substance in pursuit of a fantasy. But the closer we get to conventional gambling, the more we sense the stirrings of the monster More, the more we find we are in the kingdom of Mammon.

The values of the kingdom are often in radical opposition to those fostered by gambling. Those Christians who have kept away from lotteries and the gaming tables are offering their witness to the clear difference between the culture of God’s kingdom and the cultures of this world.

For Duke University ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, the gambling problem is bound up with the lack of distinction between the church and the surrounding culture. “When you say, ‘Are we going to allow gambling?’” Hauerwas asked CT, “who do you think the ‘we’ is? The problem is the conservative Christians who keep letting politicians who are doing this remain in the church. They ought to excommunicate them.” Added Hauerwas, “Tell people who are involved in gambling that as Christians they can’t do it. Otherwise, you’re just caught in pluralist politics that will ultimately destroy the church.”

Legalization

Even if Christians should themselves not gamble, the question remains, Should government allow gambling?

The answer to that question will depend on what one believes is the basic business of government. One theory says that government’s business is to build good citizens. If the state’s business is to inculcate virtue in its people, it will tend to restrict practices, like gambling, which can lead to immorality and wasted lives.

If, however, the state’s business is simply to protect the lives and liberties of its citizens, it may allow potentially dangerous practices (such as tobacco smoking) because it prizes the ideal of individual freedom above such statistically predictable realities as lung cancer and emphysema.

In the United States, we have balanced these two impulses, banning substances such as cocaine and heroin while permitting and regulating the sale of alcohol and handguns. We regulate those things because we know they are dangerous, but we permit them because we value liberty and believe in the wisdom of the people. That solution has been a reasonable one politically. But under the Christian command to love one’s neighbor, it is a tenuous balance.

What about gambling? Politically, it seems to be well entrenched. Yet everything that is legal is not necessarily moral. And anything that can ruin lives is a prime candidate for moral scrutiny. Just how does government-approved gambling impact people’s lives?

• Legalized gambling sidetracks a lot of money. In 1990, Americans placed legal bets worth over $286 billion. That is 5 percent of the nation’s gross national product. It is well over the $213 billion that was spent on elementary and secondary education, and nearly four times what was given to religious organizations. When Americans complain about their inability to pay their bills and educate their children, we wonder how many families’ lives would be enriched if legal gambling were to disappear?

• Legalized gambling handicaps a lot of people. There are now 8 to 10 million compulsive gamblers in the U.S., or about 3 to 4 percent of the population. One recent study of several states with legalized gambling bore this out, finding that over 4 percent of the adult population can be classified as “problem gamblers” or “probable pathological gamblers.” Those technical phrases stand for gut-wrenching realities often associated with poverty: marital strife, child abuse, job loss, homelessness, and hunger.

• Legalized gambling victimizes vulnerable members of our society—women, youth, and ethnic minorities. While over 90 percent of the members of Gamblers Anonymous are white males (and they are typically pushing 40), a New York State study found that 36 percent of problem gamblers are women, 32 percent are nonwhite, and one-third are under 30 years of age. Scripture commands us to pay extra attention to the welfare of those less able to look after themselves (Jas. 1:27).

Considering the impact gambling has on many lives, Christians who oppose legalized gambling are witnessing to more than their kingdom values. They are testifying to their concern for the victims of this fantasy industry.

Government Sponsorship

Beyond legalizing gambling, should the government be allowed to sponsor and promote gambling?

This is clearly a step beyond mere legalization. Many people reluctantly tolerate the sale of p*rnography in their communities because they believe the activity is covered under the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of expression. Yet they would be hard put to imagine the government getting into the p*rnography business. But by not only legalizing gambling but also sponsoring it, government has taken just that kind of leap.

When governments begin to sponsor gambling, one can only look on as the evils fly forth from Pandora’s box.

First, government sanctions lessen the stigma associated with gambling, leading to increased gambling addiction. Government sponsorship has sent a clear message to the populace, says the National Center’s Lorenz: “Many years ago it was seen as sinful or immoral; nowadays it is seen as an act of civic responsibility. If you buy your lottery ticket, if you do your charitable gambling, you are supporting your community, you’re raising money for the homeless, for education.”

That positive message has its impact on our youth as well. The percentage of southern California high-school students who participate in gambling in any form rose by 40 percent after that state’s lottery was introduced in 1985, a recent study found.

State-sponsored gambling also seems to break down the resistance of people who would not otherwise indulge. The number of gambling addicts has doubled during the eighties, the boom decade for state lotteries. And according to Duke University economists Charles Clotfelter and Philip Cook, “Increasingly the gambling clinics and hotlines are hearing from people whose primary or only gambling involvement is with the lottery.”

Second, government sponsorship of gambling has forced the states to create a market for their dubious product. This means advertising that is false. When billboards proclaim, “Play today, cash tonight,” or announce, “The shortest route to Easy Street,” they can be called misleading at best. According to Curt Suplee of the Washington Post, “Statistically you are seven times more likely to get hit by lightning than to become a millionaire in state lotteries.”

Beyond giving false promises, the ads promote materialism and the fantasy of a life of luxury without labor. This is particularly harmful to the poor, who are heavily targeted by lottery advertising. Apparently that strategy is effective. Ten percent of those who play the lottery account for 50 percent of the sales, and many of them are poor; a New Jersey study found that more than one-third of families with annual incomes of less than $10,000 spend one-fifth of their incomes on lotteries. And according to Will Willimon, dean of the chapel at Duke University, a study of the Maryland lottery showed that people earning less than $10,000 annually buy more tickets than any other income group. Thus lotteries used to fund education and other public projects are actually a regressive form of taxation, placing the biggest burden on those least able to pay.

Third, the economic and social side effects of state-sponsored gambling are greater than anything states are reinvesting in the common good. “We looked at the economic impact [of problem gambling],” Valerie Lorenz told CT. “What’s the cost of lost work productivity? Of monies that are stolen or embezzled or state taxes that are not paid? [In the state of Maryland] that comes to $1.5 billion.” Incidentally, the Maryland State Lottery netted less than one-fourth that amount—$335.3 million—in fiscal 1990. That is hardly a good bargain, considering the human anguish involved.

Besides costing states nearly as much as they raise, the lotteries’ effectiveness as a source of education funds should be questioned. California public-school superintendent Bill Honig says that for every $5.00 the lottery gives to the schools, it takes away $4.00. “The public is now reluctant to pass education bond issues because they think we’re floating in lottery money,” Honig says in Fortune. Lotteries may not increase state funds for education; often they only free up other funds in the state budget.

Pandora’s box is open. The evils of gambling have escaped. But as in the myth of old, hope remains. Christians are a people of hope, and they live as if God’s kingdom is possible in the present moment. We should therefore work to restrain and alleviate the pervasive influences of the gambling industry. Lotteries have a life cycle. And some states, already suffering from the public’s waning interest, are pressing new forms of gambling on their citizens. Eventually, the gambling market will reach its limits. And Christians need to be ready to act.

Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.

There was plenty of historical precedent when the voters of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and surrounding Warren County rejected a referendum last December that would have allowed riverboat and dockside casino gambling. And considering what happened 155 years ago, the modern-day gambling promoters ought to be happy that all they lost was a vote.

The good people of nineteenth-century Vicksburg were nobody’s fools. The river pirates, blackguards, and run-of-the mill thieves sporting fancy new clothes and stylish women about town were the same scoundrels they always were. The only difference was that they were now members of a newly acceptable—at least in the eyes of the law and the city fathers—and revenue-producing trade, a new class of citizenry: professional gamblers.

“Even magistrates passed whole evenings at the roulette or faro table,” folklorist B. A. Botkin writes of those days in the 1830s, “and gamblers contributed to the income of the town by paying large license money into its treasury.”

But money and morality did not often keep company along the river. The people of Vicksburg only had to look downstream at Natchez. A whole section of that town was gambling heaven, but it was off-limits to any good citizen fearful of getting his throat slit and prematurely swimming into eternity in the muddy Mississippi.

When rumor spread that a local, wealthy, gambling-prone planter had met such a fate in their own town, Vicksburgians decided they had had enough. So, as they celebrated Independence Day 1836, they gathered in the courthouse and agreed to kick every gambler out of the city within 24 hours. The townspeople proved they meant business, Botkin writes in Mississippi River Folklore, when five of the city’s roulette and faro players waged a downtown gun battle rather than leave. Overtaking the fine-clothed scoundrels, the citizens of Vicksburg publicly hanged all five in the courthouse square, including one who had been seriously wounded during the gun battle.

Thus ended legalized gambling—at least for the time being—in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

One-In-A-Million Wish

Elsewhere across the country, however, doors are swinging wide open, not only for five-card stud, faro, roulette, and slot machines, but also for the biggest gamble of all: the one-in-a-million wish known as the state-sponsored lottery. Five counties in economically struggling Mississippi recently approved riverboat gambling, putting the Lower Mississippi River area in competition with gambling operators upriver in Iowa, where floating casinos are already in business.

The states of Illinois and Louisiana have approved riverboat gambling. The Missouri legislature gave its nod this year to a voter referendum on the issue. Lotteries now exist in 33 states. The Georgia legislature recently removed a state constitutional prohibition against lotteries. And strong prolottery movements exist elsewhere, particularly in other hard-pressed states such as Alabama and Arkansas.

Many states across the country are reeling from budget cutbacks and slumping economies. A decade of tax-eschewing Presidents has spoiled the waters for any politically palatable tax hike. Thus, more and more political leaders at the state and local levels see lotteries and gambling as their best—and easiest—way out of an untenable situation. For them, gambling is a pain-free alternative to tax hikes and budget cuts. Armed with vague projections of new revenues, politicians are able to forestall fiscal austerity and even promise new, politically popular programs.

What’s more, if lotteries or riverboat casinos fail to produce the projected revenues, political leaders need only point an accusing finger at the gaming promoters who lobbied to get gambling approved. Yet such failure has little effect on the promoters. They usually get their share, even if the states they successfully lobbied do not.

“The crucial thing in Mississippi and in most states is whether people have the right to vote on whether they want it or not,” Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus says. He has pushed unsuccessfully for a state-lottery referendum and a tax on video poker games to help pay for a stalled education-reform package he has yet to fund. “States are trying different things. People are pretty fed up with tax increases every time you turn around,” says Mabus, a staunch opponent of tax increases who ran for re-election this year. “This is voluntary, not mandatory, [and] at least you have a chance to win.”

That is another bonus for any politician pushing gambling: he doesn’t even have to identify himself as progambling. He only has to say, “Let the people decide.”

Methodist preacher Donald Wildmon, who heads the Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association, says lotteries and gambling are a bad bet, morally and otherwise. “The thing with gambling is we were sold a bill of goods and we ate it up,” says Wildmon. “We have been told gambling was going to solve our problems. Look at Atlantic City [New Jersey]. Everybody was going to be driving Cadillacs … and see what they got: gambling on one side of the tracks and slums on the other.” Wildmon adds, “People say you can’t legislate morality. Every law legislates morality. What you are doing is you hurt the very people you were trying to help.”

Unfulfilled Dreams

Choosing between the preacher and the politician is easy for George Blackburn, 57, a lottery and bingo lover from Pensacola, Florida. Lottery players “got a chance to be a millionaire,” said Blackburn as he stood in front of the majestic, Taj Mahal—like Hadji Shriners’ Temple in Pensacola to help sell raffle chances on a new Ford Tempo. “I’d like to see casino gambling come here. We’ve got a good place right up the road,” he said, pointing past the palm trees toward the road that runs parallel to the Gulf Coast.

But Blackburn’s friend Charles Shook, 56, a faithful, weekly lottery player, has some misgivings. “The only bad feeling I’ve got about lotteries is that people have a big dream,” he says, but often never fulfill it. “That’s what’s bad about it.”

It is not just the players who see their big dreams fail. Statistics show that a lot of states are in the same boat. Of course, that’s not the story you will get from the promoters. As an industry that deals in numbers, the gaming and wagering business likes to talk in big figures.

For example, the trade magazine Gaming and Wagering Business says that states allowing lotteries, plus the District of Columbia, gross $20 billion annually. By 1995, lottery revenues will top $30 billion annually, the magazine says. By the same token, the nation’s 17 nonlottery states are losing a combined $5.5 billion in first-year sales alone.

While conceding a recent slump in lottery sales due to the recession and other factors, Gaming and Wagering senior editor Terri La Fleur sees a bright future; specifically, a 9 percent increase in lottery sales this year alone.

“Current players … continue to spend billions of dollars annually on their favorite pastime—dreaming about the day when they fax their boss their resignation because they hit the big one,” La Fleur says. “It may not actually happen in their lifetime—considering the astronomical odds for lotto—but ain’t it fun dreaming about it?”

In spite of gambling’s booming business, the dreaming has not been fun for some. States like Florida and California, where lottery revenues were targeted for education and other needs, have found that gamblers are not good fortune tellers. Drooping revenues in California, where 34 percent of lottery proceeds go to education, have contributed to major problems in the state’s public-education system, which faces possible layoffs of thousands of school teachers. The Florida lottery last year produced big headlines for its winners, but it offered little help in staving off an estimated $300 million education-budget shortfall.

Ed Foglia, former president of the 230,000-member California Teachers Association, says his organization fought hard to get education included as a targeted beneficiary of the state’s new lottery in 1984. He says he learned a hard lesson. “The only thing I could suggest to people considering the lottery is … if you are going to vote on it, a portion should go to education to enhance the program, not to fund the basic program,” Foglia says.

The numbers on other kinds of gambling also raise questions. The Iowa Gaming Commission says revenues from the riverboats operating on the upper Mississippi River are about $5 million over the $31 million projected thus far this year. But per capita spending by gambling visitors is as much as one-third below what boosters expected.

Local enthusiasm has also been tempered by concerns about increasing competition. Other states along the Mississippi River have approved riverboat gambling without the restrictions that Iowa attached to the casinos: players there are limited to $5 maximum bets and $200 maximum losses per excursion; operators must limit gambling activities to no more than 30 percent of the operations on board and must provide alternative activities for children. Nearby Illinois is placing no such restrictions on its riverboats. Neither are most of the states downriver.

There are second thoughts, as well, about the side effects of gambling fever. The added revenue states find may in some cases be quickly spent in dealing with the increased crime that inevitably follows gambling, from illegal bookmaking to political corruption. South Carolina state Rep. Paul Derrick was convicted recently of accepting a $1,000 bribe to support a bill that would have allowed a referendum on horse and dog racing. An FBI sting operation in South Carolina over the past three years has resulted in similar indictments against more than two-dozen lawmakers, lobbyists, and others.

“I would suspect that pari-mutuel betting has taken a back seat for the rest of the century,” says long-time state Democratic party activist Bud Ferillo.

Former Mississippi Senate President Pro Tempore Tommy Brooks pulled a prison term for a similar conviction on a horse-racing bill in 1985. And Iowa’s riverboat gambling director, Chuck Patton, admits the casinos have brought an increase in crime to his state.

State and local governments can get as addicted as any person feeding nickels into a slot machine. When New Jersey legislators approved casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1978, they rejected efforts to allow 24-hour gambling. But with Atlantic City casinos now struggling, lawmakers recently agreed to allow round-the-clock gambling on weekends, holidays, and for special events.

Making Losers

With all the economic, political, and social concerns come underlying questions about the morality of state-sponsored games of chance. “The whole system of gambling itself, whether lottery or whatever, presupposes that the bulk of people lose so a few can win,” says Paul Jones, executive director of the Mississippi Christian Action League. “So the state says we must make losers out of the people.… That is a moral problem that is unconscionable.”

Just as in the days when characters like the fictional Yancy Derringer and the real-life Jim Bowie stalked the saloons and alleyways of Natchez-Under-the-Hill, the gambling issue has brought forth a colorful assortment of slicked-back salesmen, Bible-thumping preachers, and accommodating politicians. The clothing styles may have changed, but the odds are just as long and the issues are little different.

“The argument used by gamblers is that gambling is there, so let’s use it,” says Jones. “That was the same argument used for slavery. We’d better watch out. We are falling into a trap that has historically taken us down.”

Eugene H. Peterson is pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, and author of A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity) and Answering God (Harper & Row), both of which are about the Psalms.

Private Lessons

In the past, evangelical Christians have turned the tide in the battle against illiteracy. We can do so again.

For children raised where drugs, violence, and ruined families reign, education may be the only way out. Yet any child, no matter how motivated, would have a hard time getting a good education in the inner-city schools described by Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. In dismaying detail, Kozol portrays the decaying buildings, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate equipment, and dispirited teachers.

Ideas for redressing the inequalities that exist between mostly black or Hispanic urban schools and mostly white suburban schools have multiplied. Some writers highlight the disparity in funding. Others point at the public-school monopoly, arguing that a voucher system would improve quality. Still others argue for experiments, such as all-male schools.

Such public-policy debates are crucial to the future of American education. Public policy, however, is not the only possibility. Evangelical Christians should explore private policy as well.

Early in the last century, American Christians did just that when they launched the Sunday-school movement. Sunday schools were intended to provide a basic education to poor children (and adults) who could not afford regular schooling and had to work six days a week. Education and Christianity went hand in hand; the desire to read the Bible motivated many to learn to read. (It still does.) Only after free public schools became common did Sunday schools shift their attention to more “spiritual” content.

Today many evangelical Christians are again involved with education, having launched schools in reaction to the secularization of the public system. Often, however, Christian schools aim at the children who need help least: those from white, middle-class, churched families. What about those who need education most, and have the least chance to get it?

Some urban churches, such as Chicago’s La Salle Street Church, have made education a ministry for decades. In 1963, La Salle began offering tutoring for children in the nearby housing projects. Now 1,200 kids are involved in their programs, which have spun off from the church. A scholarship program identifies promising students and pledges substantial college aid if they keep their grades up and graduate. Over 50 kids are now in college, monitored by program staff.

In Newark, New Jersey, the evangelistic Tom Skinner Associates offers students after-school training in five basic skills: education, “coping,” employability, leadership, and moral excellence. School dropouts come to prepare for the high-school equivalency exam.

In Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhood, World Impact, which regards itself as a “mission society in the traditional sense,” is building a Christian elementary school. “The goal is to build Christian leadership in the community,” says principal Michael Reed, “that promotes academic excellence, knowledge of Christ, and the ability to share that with others.”

Such groups won’t wait for public-school reform. Neither will they wait for needy people to change their values, or for drugs and crime to vanish from the streets. They see education as a matter of justice: these kids deserve a chance.

They also see it as evangelism. Their involvement in education gives opportunity to teach and demonstrate integrity, family, community, morality, hope—and the love of God. This is social action close to the heart of the evangelical vision. The challenge is enormous. So are the opportunities.

By Tim Stafford.

Scaring Churches To Death?

Last year in a speech before the American Society of Association Executives, President Bush called for nonprofit associations to join together in the fight to solve America’s problems of hunger, drug abuse, homelessness, illiteracy, and the breakdown of the family by “placing community service at the center of their agenda.” The President’s plea reflected the vital role that more than 1 million nonprofit groups already play. Providing everything from prenatal care to meals for the elderly, from consumer hotlines to Bible-study booklets, nonprofit organizations employ nearly 8 million U.S. citizens. One out of every two adult Americans serves a nonprofit organization as a volunteer, giving a total of some 15 billion hours last year.

Apparently some Washington officials have missed Bush’s cue. In what management expert Peter Drucker has characterized as a “consistent, determined, deliberate attack to destroy the non-profit sector,” government bureaucracy is hiding many of the President’s “thousand points of light” under a bushel full of regulations, or snuffing them entirely.

The attack has come on several fronts. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has become increasingly “creative” in its interpretations of the tax code, to the detriment of nonprofits, explains Charles Elbaum, publisher of Association Publishing.

A push continues for changes in the unrelated business-income statutes, which would result in tax on previously exempt insurance programs and other activities. On the state level, property-tax exemptions for nonprofits are being withdrawn. In addition, nonprofits can expect yet another increase in third-class postal rates, coming all too soon after last February’s 35 percent rise.

Nonprofit groups are “scared to death” of transgressing ever more complicated laws, says Nancy LeSourd of Gammon and Grange, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm that specializes in nonprofit corporate law. In order to stay up to date and in compliance with regulations, groups are forced to divert more and more resources toward in-house experts and legal fees. Clearly, something is wrong when churches must work as hard to please the IRS as they do to please God.

Tighter tax laws and higher postal rates “just make it harder for those of us in the nonprofit sector to do the kind of thing that the administration calls us to do—that is, contribute in a voluntary way to the moral character of the country,” says John Stapert of the Associated Church Press.

Why the attack on nonprofits? In Congress’s ongoing battle with the budget deficit, nonprofits appear an easy target for “revenue enhancement” programs. But we fear the root of the attack lies with lawmakers’ failure to recognize and appreciate the full value of nonprofits’ contribution to society.

If nonprofits are to continue playing their vital role, two things need to happen. First, the public must recognize the irony behind government attacks on the part of the American community that contributes so much to so many. Second, the public must make this clear to legislators. If the government wants nonprofits to continue to house the homeless and feed the nation’s hungry, then it must give them the flexibility to develop methods of self-funding and stop asking them to solve its own budgetary problems.

Says Stapert, “We all do for free in our voluntary associations a lot of things that contribute to the health of this nation, because we care about our communities—things that we might not be willing to do for pay.” As some diners at the congressional cafeteria recently learned, there is no such thing as a free lunch. They should also learn that if someone else is willing to pick up the tab, don’t pocket the tax and ask for a tip.

By the editors.

Cynical We Fall

“It’s a season for scandal,” says the men’s magazine M, Inc. The names and the misdeeds change from month to month, but no arena of public life—law, finance, politics—goes for long, it seems, without some revelation of wrongdoing in high places. And Americans have thoroughly learned—if they missed the lesson before—that even church leaders are not exempt from a fall from grace. How shall we respond?

One answer is cynicism. From Watergate on, we have not only become more willing to talk about the failings of our public figures, we have come to expect sins in the closet. Some greeted the recent disclosures of “Rubbergate,” where members of the House of Representatives routinely overdrew their accounts in the House bank, more with snickers than outrage. We have become more jaded and less shocked by our leaders’ liaisons and improprieties. It is no surprise, perhaps, that researchers James Patterson and Peter Kim report in The Day America Told the Truth that 70 percent of Americans say they have no living heroes.

Christians, however, can ill afford to have the same cynicism about their religious leaders as Americans show politicians. Which leads to a different response: placing our confidence not in leaders, but in God. We who talk of original sin know as well as anyone about the dark side of the human heart. But we also know something about God’s sovereign ability to work through people and see his purposes fulfilled. It will take more than the outrageous spending or sexual misdeeds of famous preachers to derail the church’s forward movement.

If we forget that, cynicism could drive us even further apart as the people of God and make united witness a mere wish. In a recently completed survey on evangelism, we asked CT readers what obstacles kept them from evangelizing (watch for detailed results in our next issue). The most common obstacle cited was the prevailing image of TV preachers as “religious hucksters.”

While cynicism may make us overly wary, a false compassion could make us lower the standards we hold our leaders to. Both would be mistakes. Both would make the bad news about Christian leaders we sometimes hear even worse.

By Timothy K. Jones.