Articles – Page 129 – Religion Online

Soul-Saving via Video

It has been estimated that Jesus Christ preached to no more than 20 to 30 thousand persons during his lifetime. Even if this total is underestimated, the number is trifling in contrast to the audiences reached today by his disciples who utilize the airwaves. Many ministers, perhaps scores, speak to significantly more people every time they preach than did Christ in his lifetime.

Considered in historical context, the vast numbers tuning in every week -- and in a few instances, every day -- to the so-called electronic preachers with national audiences constitute truly a phenomenal development. Moreover, the technology is now in place so that, theoretically at least, a billion persons could be reached simultaneously with the gospel message.

For many evangelicals this is indeed good news. But if those Christians are elated with the potential for electronics to beam the gospel across the globe, some are uncertain whether the airwaves constitute the best -- or even a proper -- way to spread the Goad News. Still others see the phenomenon we call the "electronic church" as a threat to developing and sustaining local Christian communities.

To a sociologist, two concerns about the electronic church are of particular interest. The first is to account for the growth and development of the phenomenon. The second is to attempt to understand the rather considerable consternation that has arisen over it.

Electronic Communication

The growth and development of the electronic church parallel the development of all electronic communication. Historically there have been three major communications revolutions: the invention of writing, the invention of movable type, and the advent of electronic communication, which is barely 100 years old, dating from the invention of the telephone.

The development of the electronic church,: has been affected by three distinct generational phases of electronic communication. The first began with the inauguration of professional radio broadcasting in late 1920 in Pittsburgh -- and the church was there almost from the beginning. Radio exploded in America in the 1920s; within five years there were over 600 stations, and most engaged in some form of religious broadcasting.

The second generation of electronic communication emerged with television during the 1950s. By the end of that decade nine of every ten households possessed at least one set. Religious telecasting was available almost from the beginning of this marvelous new medium; its first star was Fulton Sheen, the Catholic bishop with a twinkle in his eye, an impeccable delivery -- and an angel to clean his chalkboard.

The third phase is not so easily dated. In some respects it can be considered an integral part of electronic ministries from the outset. In another sense, the sophistication of the communication techniques, based on computer technology which permits rapid storage and retrieval of information, is so vastly improved as to represent a qualitative rather than a quantitative advance.

From fairly early in radio broadcasting, many religious programs were financially dependent for survival on listening audiences. The most common and probably most successful technique to encourage listener support was to offer free printed materials (at times these were available for sale or for a "love offering"), and to compile a mailing list of names of those who responded. For the most part, early electronic preachers knew little about the audiences they were dependent upon for contributions. This remained essentially true well into the 1960s.

Development Through Technology

In its development, the electronic church is first of all a manifestation of a rapidly expanding technology which has revolutionized all communication. At the core of the revolution is the computer, with its continually accelerating speed of operation and a sharply declining per-unit cost. This technology is applied widely in voluntary associations, business, government and politics. Unlike the original undifferentiated mailing lists, the new systems are such that a substantial amount of information about the people behind the names and addresses can now be compiled. This information can be stored, sorted and retrieved with lightning speed at nominal cost.

When the electronic church sends out mailings and appeals for funds, they can be targeted to fit the characteristics of the recipients. Through phone banks with toll-free numbers and/or regional centers, hundreds of calls can be processed during a telecast. Each phone call, whether making a financial contribution, requesting free materials, or asking for counsel and prayers, represents another name to be readied for a variety of subsequent appeals and solicitations.

People in the electronic church encourage their listeners and viewers to write or call and share their problems and needs. The more personal information available, the easier it is to target responses directly to individuals. If the caller is faced with family or marital problems, difficulties with children or with managing money, etc., most likely there are enough other people with the same type of problem so that materials have already been prepared.

The mailrooms of the more successful electronic church practitioners are paragons of modern communication technology. Mail is sorted first by the presence or absence of money. Then letters are sorted by topics, and appropriate paragraphs are retrieved by computer and woven into some appropriate prepared response that can thus be "personalized." On-line printers dash off these individualized answers. Several organizations reportedly have a mailroom capability for processing 20,000 or more letters a day.

If all of this seems crass, commercial and even cynical, perhaps some awareness is needed about the many ways in which this same electronic communications technology is routinely a part of everyone’s life. Each membership or subscription we hold is a clue to our interests, values, socioeconomic level and life style. When we travel, our credit cards leave a trail of information about us and our interests. Our contributions to charitable organizations and political parties offer insights about our values.

Many organizations are prepared to sell and/or exchange the information they have about us. Then others in the marketplace in turn will use it to try to sell us something or entice us to contribute to a cause. There are scores of organizations that "have our number," and, in many cases, we have been coconspirators in assisting them to track us down.

So we see the importance of the communications technology revolution in accounting for the electronic church. It has merely adapted to, rather than invented, technologies to reach its audience.

Control by Evangelicals

This technology is compatible with evangelical Christians’ theological stance toward proselytizing. Even the most casual observer can note that the airwaves are dominated by evangelicals, and this is not accidental. For better or worse, air time in our society is seldom available for free. And, generally, the larger the audience one wishes to reach, the more it Costs. Because utilization of the airwave means participation in the free-enterprise market, those who do so are overwhelmingly the ones who have something to sell.

Evangelicals fit this criterion rather well, for they take literally Christ’s command to "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16: 15). The airwaves have opened up, as never before, the possibility of spreading the Good News from sea to sea and around the globe. The only question is: How are they to pay? And the answer is not difficult to find. While spreading the gospel, they encourage those who are already saved, or who have benefited from this electronic ministry, to contribute to the continuation of the good work.

The mainline traditions, with a rather different concept of evangelism, witness and Christ’s command to spread the Good News, do utilize the airwaves, but not nearly so successfully. Most of their programming is local and tends to be less professionally packaged than broadcasts reaching national audiences. Another factor working against mainline Christians is that what suits their tastes in worship does not appeal to the masses, who think that Bach is a beer and Haydn is the quarterback of the Rams. Further, the absence of strong emotional appeals in the solicitation of funds results in placing the burden of fund-raising on the local congregations or the denominations.

By contrast, the evangelicals go directly to the heartstrings. Get right with God. Get right with your loved ones. Get right with yourself. However the appeal is made, it is almost always emotionally charged. The evidence is not very clear or detailed regarding who is attracted to the evangelical message of the electronic church, but recent research on the growth of conservative churches would suggest that the viewers are primarily those who have drifted away from church participation, rather than new converts. The large number of unaffiliated but at least nominally believing Christians -- the unchurched, as shown by a 1978 Gallup study -- constitutes an enormous audience potential for the electronic church.

Evangelicals have a good understanding of this audience potential. When audiences are large, modest contributions from even a very small proportion of the viewers or listeners pay for the air time and then some. Recent breakthroughs in satellite broadcasting and cable TV have expanded the options for reaching even larger audiences through a broader range of programs broadcast on an extended schedule with continually declining per-unit cost.

What we are seeing is a confluence of theological orientation toward proselytization and an organization of broadcast media which works to the benefit of evangelicals but against other religious groups.

Success and Cultural Factors

The phenomenal success of the electronic church in recent years is, I think, best understood by coming to grips with the reality that evangelical faith has indeed been a persistent and significant component of American culture. For many years -- perhaps since the Scopes trial in 1925 -- the eastern secular and liberal Protestant establishments treated evangelical religion as though it were an archaic religious form, peculiarly persistent in some regions of the country, but not a significant factor in American culture.

George Gallup declared 1976 "the year of the evangelical." but what that date really symbolized was the nonevangelicals’ discovery that this sector of American society, previously presumed to be an insignificant fringe, was in fact very large. Perhaps it was also a turning point for evangelicals when they found that their world view was shared by a far larger proportion of American society than they had previously imagined.

The social contextual factor contributing to the success of the electronic church is rooted in the malaise this society has experienced, dating roughly from the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We lost our leaders. We lost a war which tore us apart at home. We lost confidence in business and government. A president once admired by millions left office in disgrace. Inflation soars. Energy is scarce. International tensions mount one upon another. And for many who were over 30 during the ‘60s, the radical changes in young people’s values and life styles underscored the loss of a taken-for-granted morality that was once as integral to American culture as baseball, popcorn and Chevrolet.

And the malaise being felt is all the more traumatic because that marvelous little box that brought us the joy of Milton Berle and Red Buttons during the ‘50s now pours into our homes all the blood and guts and gore and hate of war and civil strife. Through the tube, we are losing our innocence.

But the tube now brings as well the electronic church, and its message is comforting to many and challenging to others. It offers hope, meaning and certainty while the other TV channels continue to present us with more bad news, series about crime, and dramas that, seem to condone life styles and language which affront the old values. Though little is known about the audiences of the more successful electronic church programmers, it doesn’t take much data to realize that a lot of people out there prefer the religious shows on the airwaves today to what the networks are offering.

The electronic church’s success reflects the cultural drift -- some would say stampede -- toward conservatism. Financially, since there is such a large population of evangelical Christians in our society, even modest contributions from a small proportion of them can sustain fairly extensive broadcasting. Culturally, large segments of our population are ready for change. Conservative political and economic views have much greater credibility than at anytime since before the Great Depression. The electronic evangelists offer something that works, something to believe in.

Investigating the Criticisms

Ben Armstrong, executive director of National Religious Broadcasters, is very upbeat about the "exciting" and "miraculous" possibilities for religious broadcasting. In his recent book The Electronic Church (Nelson, 1979), he writes:" I believe that God has raised up this powerful technology of radio and television expressly to reach every man, woman, boy, and girl on earth with the even more powerful message of the gospel."

Not everyone, of course, shares this wholly positive view. The major criticisms of the electronic church fall into four groupings. First, it is charged that the electronic church succeeds at the expense of the local congregation. This is by far the oldest and most frequently recurring criticism. Those who first used radio for religious broadcasting saw it as a way of extending worship to the sick and elderly. But even this altruistic use of the airwaves met with criticism. Would the people come back to the pews after they had enjoyed worship in the comfort of their living rooms?

The controversy heated up when some preachers actually used the airwaves to invite people to come to their churches. Generally, concern about the effects of religious broadcasting has been in direct proportion to the threat perceived by the critic. Mainline Protestantism has never been very alarmed about the "Night Riders" on the high-voltage radio stations because these preachers are seen as appealing to a different clientele. But there is very deep concern today that highly successful nationwide television programming is cutting into both the attendance and the revenues of mainline churches.

Those associated with the electronic church deny the alleged effects, To the contrary. they argue, their broadcasting schedules are set up to complement and augment the activities of the churches. Most can honestly point to repeated appeals to their audiences to get involved in a local congregation.

The most amazing thing about this debate is that it has been allowed to thrive for so long when, in fact, the issue is an empirical one. The research methods of the social sciences are quite capable of providing very substantial insight, if not definitive answers, to this question. All those who have an interest in the electronic church, whatever their ideological predispositions toward it might be, would be well advised to give a high priority to the gathering of systematic data about the phenomenon. The stakes are too high to permit ignorance to keep the flames of prejudice alight, spawn counterproductive efforts to solve real problems, and send gallant knights into the darkness to attack imaginary problems.

Concern over Political Efforts

The second concern is that the electronic church is part of a broader effort to reshape American culture. It is time we recognize this criticism to be absolutely true. Formerly, the broader society believed that, although the conservative electronic evangelicals wanted to change society, they did not have enough clout to be taken seriously. Today, many are hoping that the politically minded evangelicals are not really serious.

They are. At the moment, most of them are political novices, but that situation is not likely to last for long. The important questions: (1) How are the evangelical leaders going to get politically involved? (2) What will be their goals? (3) With whom will they form alliances? (4) Will their constituents follow them? Or, like the liberal Protestant clergy of the 1960s, will they get too far out in front of their flocks? (5) And what will be their level of success?

The apprehension felt by mainline Protestants and eastern secular journalists when they contemplate this prospect is considerable. Such apprehension is understandable, for they perceive genuine life-style interests to be at stake. To some degree this perception is true, but a more precise analysis is needed. The fears being expressed by many liberals today bear a striking resemblance to the conservative utterances during the ‘60s about religiously motivated liberals.

What we need now is quiet discussion among leaders of both camps, not escalating rhetoric. No useful purpose will be served by labeling everyone with whom we disagree as a "right-winger." There are many shades of evangelical conservatism. Liberal Protestants would be wise to understand the differences among evangelicals and to treat them with the same cognitive respect they would hope to accord those in their own tradition with whom they disagree.

I fully expect evangelicals to make a significant impact on the political scene in America during this decade, and they will utilize the electronic church to gain a power base. Some of their achievements will run counter to the values and beliefs of many liberals -- Protestants, Catholics and secularists. But the evangelicals will neither run roughshod over the First Amendment nor dominate the political scene. And contrary to the fears of many, they just may exert a positive influence on politics and American culture.

Moral Issues: Methods and Motives

Third, it is alleged that the electronic church is immoral. This critical reaction is usually encountered in the form of innuendo rather than direct accusation. Jerry Sholes’s recent indictment of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, Gave Me That Prime Time Religion, is easily the most sweeping critique of this genre. Other organizations in the electronic church establishment have faced legal indictment -- or the threat of it -- for financial mismanagement or misconduct, but the outcomes of these investigations have usually worked to the advantage of the accused.

Now, with Sholes, we have a detailed description of the activities and alleged motives of individuals in one of the electronic church’s giants. Though the Roberts organization challenges Sholes’s motives and credibility, his critique is too far-reaching to be easily swept aside.

For analysis of Sholes’s charges, two dimensions need to be separated. He finds fault with both the methods and the motives of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association. He believes it is fundamentally dishonest to tell an audience that every letter will be answered personally when, in fact, the answers are prepared by a vast organization utilizing technology to make the responses appear personal -- even the signature. He considers it is dishonest to claim to pray over letters when, in fact, it is a computer printout of the names of people who have written to Oral Roberts, not the letters themselves, that is carried to the Prayer Tower. He believes it is dishonest to invite people to "seminars" which are designed not for study but for employment of peer-group pressure and mass psychology techniques to raise money. And, having become disillusioned with the methods, Sholes came increasingly to find fault with those who employed them.

It is unfortunate that Sholes’s critique so inextricably laces method and motive, for the two need to be considered separately. There is a real danger that readers who, like Sholes, mix method and motive will hastily conclude that the methods are corrupt, and/or only corrupt people would employ such methods. I would neither condemn nor condone the methods per se. Perhaps a code of ethics is needed regarding the application of electronic communication technology, but if so, it should apply to all organizations that use the technology and not just to religious organizations.

Similarly, any ethical discussions should consider the broad use of the technology, not simply its application by those in the electronic church. Whatever, if anything, may be necessary to regulate electronic communication, I hope we won’t reach the point of enacting a law requiring all "personalized" messages to begin with the disclaimer: "Caution. Contrary to possible appearance, this is not a personal message. Those who construe it as such do so at their own risk."

TV’s Harmful Effects

Fourth, television itself is accused of being harmful to our health. This criticism, like the third, is directed not so much at the electronic church as at TV itself. The criticism contends that television, along with its many technological and social byproducts, is altering consciousness to the detriment of individuals and society as well.

One of the most recent and persuasive presentations of this theme is Jerry Mander’s book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Morrow, 1978). Mander argues that the intrinsic logic of the technology leads inevitably to abuse and misuse. Form replaces content; the mind is muddied. Those with power, whether achieved by economic or political process, will use the technology to control the rest of us. The only way to prevent this development, he maintains, is literally to abolish television.

The issues Mander raises are not easy to address. Much of the research on the effects of television on viewers and on culture more generally has been initiated by people with highly partisan motives. After a quarter-century of mass television, we know very little about its effects. Given its pervasiveness in our lives -- most studies indicate that the average citizen watches over 20 hours a week -- it is important that research on a national and impartial level be undertaken, so that we can understand TV’s effects.

Some of the critique of the electronic church pivots on this more general proposition about the alleged ill effects of television, although the critics are not always explicit in this regard. As with the differentiation between methods and motives, we need to avoid confusing the effects of television generally and those of the electronic church specifically.

Lagging Behind

The development of the electronic church, its dominance by evangelicals, and the reasons for its recent phenomenal success are to be seen as part of the electronic communications revolution. Neither the technology nor its application is unique to the electronic church but rather is in fairly extensive use in many sectors of our society. Because evangelicals have access to the electronic technology, we can anticipate an increasing measure of success for them.

Whether it is proper to utilize such powerful technology, with its "personalized" feedback loops, for the purpose of saving souls in this nation is an ethical question. However, consideration of the question should not take place in a vacuum, independent of awareness of the technology’s wide use in many sectors. Similarly, a generalized critique of the electronic church should not be divorced from an empirical assessment of television in our modern world. Knowledge of the effects of television on our lives lags far behind the current philosophical-ideological critique.

Myths and Realities About Prisons and Jails

The return of capital punishment, the use of sterner sentencing procedures, the provision of more weaponry and technology for the police, and a multi-billion-dollar prison and jail construction effort are all indicators of the current mood of the country in regard to crime and criminals.

Public frustration with existing criminal-justice procedures has encouraged a what-else-can-we-do attitude. Media exploitation and rising crime statistics establish a cover of credibility for a get-tough policy. In such an atmosphere the alternatives to prison, jails and execution are labeled "soft" and unworkable.

The swing of the pendulum back to capital punishment suggests the direction of movement on the criminal-justice front. Appeals to ethics, experience and facts are swept aside. The theory that capital punishment deters crime is reestablished by proponents of the practice despite evidence that there is no measurable difference in the homicide rates of capital-punishment and non-capital-punishment states.

It matters not that the concept of deterrence is largely inoperative in relation to crimes of passion committed against family members, friends and close acquaintances. The use of capital punishment is problematic in another respect. Almost without exception it is the poor and minorities who die in the gas chamber or electric chair. So too are they represented disproportionately in the prison and jail populations.

The United States is alone among the Western democratic nations in increasing its use of incarceration. During one recent five-year period the prison and jail population jumped by 200,000 inmates. Only South Africa kept pace with that increase at a time when all other Western industrial nations were systematically reducing prison populations. The U.S. trend, of course, has resulted in overcrowding and a demand for larger state and federal corrections budgets to build more prisons and jails.

The negative trend in criminal-justice procedures in the U.S. was dramatically illustrated in the recent New Mexico State Penitentiary tragedy, where 36 inmates died and a prison was destroyed. Designed to accommodate 850, the institution was an overcrowded melting pot that indiscriminately housed 1,110 prisoners, from petty thieves to murderers. Only 50 of the hard-core types were involved in instigating the revolt. Authorities cited lack of money as the reason for the incarceration within the same institution of prisoners of such diverse backgrounds. In this respect New Mexico is like most other states, and for good reason.

Prisons are a costly enterprise. Prisoner maintenance a few years ago averaged around $7,041 a year per prisoner for adult jails and $9,439 for adult prisons. In a few states the figure exceeded $20,000 per prisoner. Construction costs range from $25,000 to $50,000 per bed. Nationwide this price has meant a $5 billion construction bill for the 800 local, state and federal institutions that in January 1977 were planning to add 200,000 prison beds. The state lost tax revenue, and welfare costs for inmate-related families added still another layer of expenditures that governmental agencies had to build into their expanding criminal-justice budgets.

The tough approach to crime is further underlined in the operations of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). The agency was first authorized in the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. It was to wage a "war on crime." LEAA tipped its hat to the idea of pursuing alternatives to prison and jails, but that was only a polite gesture -- it has consistently emphasized bricks and hardware.

By 1976 LEAA had poured close to $5 billion into the nation’s criminal-justice system, with no measurable effect on crime rates. In all, it had funded some 100,000 programs. Small amounts went to noninstitutional reform projects. But the biggest winners in the LEAA sweepstakes were the manufacturers and suppliers of computers, electronics equipment and surveillance devices. The list reads like that of the top 500 defense contractors: IBM, Burroughs, Motorola, RCA, Westinghouse, Litton, Honeywell, Bell Helicopter, Hughes Aircraft. Much of America’s counterinsurgency arsenal, field-tested in Vietnam, has been converted to the law-enforcement market.

After a dozen years and billions of dollars spent, realistic LEAA officials conceded that their efforts had not reduced crime in the United States. They reached the same conclusion as the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards. A decade ago the commission observed that

institutions do succeed in punishing, but they do not deter. . . . They change the committed offender, but the change is more likely to be negative than positive. It is no surprise that institutions have not been more successful in reducing crime. The mystery is that they have not contributed even more to increasing crime.

The commission’s observations and LEAA’s confessions fuel the long-existing suspicion that the get-tough, hardline approach rests on unexamined fears and myths. George Eliot, the 19th century British author, may have described our attitudes rather accurately when she said that "to fear the examination of any proposition appears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever."

The minutes of the 1870 Congress of the American Prison Association/American Correctional Association quote a Judge Carter of Ohio as saying that any system of imprisonment or punishment is degradation, and cannot reform a man. The minutes continue: "[Carter] would abolish all prison walls, and release all confined within them."

Three-quarters of a century later Judge Carter’s sentiments were sustained by the distinguished newspaper correspondent, U.S. ambassador and biographer John Bartlow Martin in his book Break Down the Walls: "The American prison system makes no sense. Prisons have failed as deterrents to crime. They have failed as rehabilitative institutions. What then shall we do? Let us face it! Prisons should be abolished. . . . The behemoth, this monster error has nullified every good work. It must be done away with."

Despite the efforts of Carter, Martin and more recent advocates, the prison abolition movement in this country is still small. Nonetheless, the abolitionists seem to have breathed new life into some tested and sensible ideas, including bail-bond reform, suspended sentences, work release, and liberalized probation and parole policies. They want to extend these long-accepted reform measures to the nonviolent poor and minority populations who take up three-quarters of the bed space in prisons and jails.

My first contact with prison abolitionists was at a two-day "Alternatives to Prison" seminar where the leadership was provided by Fay Honey Knopp and Jane Kathryn Vella of the Prison Research Education Action Project (PREAP). The organization conducts workshops nationwide for religious and community groups. This one had been organized by Gerald Cunningham, criminal justice staffer for the Division of Homeland Ministries, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It was an interesting mix of legislators, ex-offenders, prison program administrators, reformers and abolitionists.

III

If the idea of prison abolition at first seems a bit impractical even to liberals, it becomes somewhat more plausible as the ideology is examined in juxtaposition with strategy and tactics. Advocates of this reform conceive of the abolition of prisons as a long-range goal. They persistently ask, "Why put people in prison?" They want citizens, legislators and administrators to shake off the moral palsy that grips intellectual efforts to cope humanely but realistically with crime and criminals. The abolitionists and their allies first try to put our fears in some kind of orderly perspective. Victims of crime and those who read about crimes have legitimate fears.

But Hans Mattick, criminologist, has this to say to the fearful: "If the prisons were opened tomorrow, it wouldn’t make any difference. The fear of crime is a greater problem than crime itself." He explains that for every 100 serious crimes reported, there are 25 arrests and 12 convictions with only three imprisonments. He doesn’t think the release of the three would make much difference in the crime rate. Mattick’s thesis is supported by the President’s Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence, which estimated that "only 1.5 per cent of the perpetrators of the approximately 9 million crimes committed annually end up in prison."

The awareness that only a minuscule number of law violators go to prison at least raises serious questions about the prevailing mythology that we are significantly safer because several hundred thousand people are behind bars. It sets the stage for several other questions: Why are these people incarcerated? Who are they? And is their interest and ours better served by their imprisonment?

As a beginning point in the search for answers to these questions, a profile of the prison and jail population is instructive. Those incarcerated are largely from minority groups and the poor. Jesse Jackson, director of Operation PUSH, estimates that of the approximately 400,000 persons being held in American jails and prisons, 300,000 are either black or brown. A typical example that confirms Jackson’s estimate is the infamous Attica Prison in New York at the time of the 1973 massacre. Blacks and Spanish, speaking inmates made up 70 per cent of the population.

The poor and the minorities also account for nearly all of the 50,000 people in county jails on an average day as pretrial detainees. They are there because of an archaic bail-bond system that favors the professional criminal (who counts bail as a business expense) and the affluent. Despite pious constitutional prohibitions against "excessive bail," all bail is excessive to those who cannot afford it. Bail was designed to assure the defendant’s appearance in court. That is its only constitutional purpose. It has, however, been distorted into a weapon of discrimination used against the poor, who tend to show up for trial as readily as their more affluent neighbors.

Another large bloc in the inmate population consists of those involved in so-called "victimless crimes." US. News and World Report has calculated that these offenses account for $20 billion of our $51 billion annual crime bill. The best-known example is the annual figure of 2 million arrests for drunkenness, This constitutes the largest single category of all arrests -- somewhere between one-fourth and one-third, and approximately one-half of all convictions.

The arrest of drunks is a costly, counterproductive and demeaning response to an illness. One survey showed that six men had been arrested a total of 1,409 times and served 125 years in jail, at a cost of $600,000 to the taxpayers. If vagrancy and loitering charges are combined with those for drunkenness, the total reaches about 3 million annually. The half-million marijuana arrests annually, constituting 70 per cent of all drug-related arrests, fall into the same category of "victimless crimes" which many reformers believe should be decriminalized. To the extent that these victimless activities are a matter of public concern, they require medical treatment, income-maintenance and education. Imprisonment benefits neither the inmate nor the public.

The genuine fear felt by the public is associated with violent crime. Those who seek alternatives to prisons and jails understand this. They recognize that there are some in our society who must for their own good and ours be institutionalized. These people account for no more than one-fourth of all prisoners, and some estimates put the figure as low as 10 per cent. It is an underexplored and underfunded area where treatment rather than imprisonment could produce beneficial results. In any event, the separation of violent from nonviolent prisoners can make the idea of "alternatives to prison" more palatable.

The alternatives are familiar enough when we view the prison and jail population from another angle. White-collar criminals are usually big-timers in terms of the gross annual larceny take from the public. But they are nonviolent, their activities are distant from the average citizen’s experience, and therefore they are less feared. They include public officials, embezzlers and those convicted of consumer fraud. Their "status" makes imprisonment less likely. Alternatives to imprisonment seem acceptable in these circumstances.

Only 18 per cent of the embezzlers, for example, end up in prison, but nearly all bank thieves who use a gun are put behind bars if they are apprehended. The size of the take matters little, but the method does. If violence or potential violence is to be the dividing line, it is interesting to compare the nonviolent embezzler with the nonviolent auto thief. Whereas less than a fifth of the embezzlers go to prison, over two-thirds of car thieves do. The majority of the white-collar criminals get suspended sentences or probation; they also- may pay fines and take part in programs of restitution to their victims. The nonviolent poor rarely are offered these nonprison alternatives as a way of paying their debt to society.

In addition, so far as the public is concerned, imprisonment offers potential victims short-term security at best, Ninety-five per cent of those incarcerated are released after serving an average sentence of from 24 to 32 months. With rare exceptions, they are less likely than those not imprisoned to adjust to normal legal social patterns. This should not be surprising. The prisoner has lived in an atmosphere of distrust and violence that tends to exacerbate existing antisocial attitudes. An ex-convict comes home with few marketable skills and a prison record that is a barrier to any stable employment.

Alternatives to prison and jail have long been available to certain classes of criminals and are increasingly being pilot-tested for others. The Des Moines program is an example of a growing nationwide movement for bail-bond reform. In a five-year period it produced a 95 per cent show-up-at-trial rate in securing the release of 3,800 poor defendants. It equaled the show-up rate of those set free on money bond or their own recognizance. The county and state saved money in prison costs, family welfare benefits and tax revenues since the pretrial defendants could work. Counseling was provided in such areas as family life, employment, alcoholism and law. The success of the project led to a decision to shut down two maximum-security institutions and to use the money saved to duplicate the program throughout Iowa.

In Massachusetts all juvenile institutions were closed out over a three-year period. The young people were sent home or to alternative projects, depending on circumstances. In this instance an enlightened administrator used federal funds (LEAA) to engineer the abolition of all juvenile institutions in the state. As a result, the negative effects of incarceration were replaced by a positive thrust to prepare the young people to return to school or the workaday world.

Georgia, Alabama, Florida and California are examples of states where court orders forced the early release of inmates, with positive results. Because of overcrowding, the first two states were held to be in violation of the Constitutions "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. In California the issue was the arbitrary administration of indeterminate sentences which invariably led to the longest possible term. Florida had to give early release to 1,252 poor felons who were convicted without counsel.

The postprison experience of the Florida inmates is typical of other men and women released early. They had a recidivism rate of only 13.6 per cent, compared to 25 per cent for those who served their full time. The early-release people adjusted better on the outside and helped to puncture the myth that longer sentences are better for the community.

Sentencing laws are under review by many state legislatures and the Congress. The prevalent indeterminate sentence (one to ten years, two to 20 years, etc.) once was considered a liberal reform that would allow well-adjusted prisoners time off for good behavior. Instead, prison and parole authorities have tended to use it as a club to punish inmates for the most trivial infractions of institutional rules. As a result, the trend has been for inmates to serve longer terms and to suffer the uncertainty of not knowing when they will be released. Most prison reformers would like to see shorter determinate sentencing. But in the present political climate, legislators enacting determinate-sentence statutes have provided only the "certainty" that a longer maximum sentence will be served. Indeterminate sentences, in these instances. may provide a thin line of hope for early release.

The impossibility of stamping "determinate sentencing" as good or bad in any given political climate points up the fact that reform measures ultimately depend on an informed, caring and articulate minority of citizens who can influence public opinion. Reform measures can be, and frequently are, corrupted by established institutions, traditions and fears. Bail, suspended sentences, probation, parole -- like determinate sentences -- all have been touted as progressive steps.

They were, up to a point. Their failure lies in the inability of reformers to extend these practices to the poor and minorities who make up the bulk of the prison and jail population.

Hans Küng and Tübingen: Compromise and Aftermath

The Tübingen compromise, which allowed Hans to remain on the university faculty and to retain his status as director of the Ecumenical Institute but at the same time removed him from the Roman Catholic theological faculty, appeared initially to resolve a delicate situation. It relieved all parties concerned from a lengthy and costly court hearing; it freed Küng to do his work, and it allowed the university to settle its own affairs.

Under terms of the compromise, Küng retains the title professor of ecumenical theology and is free to give university lectures and seminars. He can supervise doctoral students, but his students must be presented for their degrees (and thus approved) through the Catholic faculty. Küng will no longer teach any of the required courses in theology for Catholic students. Although Catholic students can attend his lectures and seminars, they will not be examined on Küng’s materials, and his lectures will not count for credit in theology for them. As a result, there are now three tracks in theology at Tübingen: Protestant, Catholic and Küng’s ecumenical theology. Like most compromises, this one has left many people displeased, and it may create more serious problems than it solves.

The German Model

It is now possible to trace the steps in the Küng case because of the publication in Germany of a full documentation of all the letters, resolutions and theological statements involved, beginning with Küng’s "Appeal for Understanding" in January 1978 and concluding with his public statement on April 10, 1980. The book, published on May 21, is titled The Küng Case: A Documentation (Der Fall Küng:Eine Dokumentation, edited by Norbert Greinacher and Herbert Haag [Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag]). To set the Küng compromise in proper perspective, however, one must initially note some of the special circumstances in Tübingen and consider the pattern of theological education in Germany. Tübingen is a beautiful university city nestled in the hills of Swabia some 25 miles south of Stuttgart. It has one of the oldest theological faculties. in Germany and is today not only the largest center for theological study in Germany but one of the largest in the world. Gabriel Biel and Melanchthon taught here; Hegel, Schelling and Hölderlin studied here; David Friedrich Strauss and Ferdinand Christian Baur developed the famous "Tübingen school" of historical-critical approaches to the Bible in... the mid-19th century; Adolph Schlatter, Gerhard Kittel and Ernst Käsemann brought distinction to New Testament studies in the 20th century; and Karl Heim and Gerhard Ebeling gave the university international theological visibility in the previous generation.

Since the establishment of a Roman Catholic theological faculty in 1817 (an unusual move in a predominantly Protestant region of the country, but reflective of a conciliatory ethos at that time in Württemberg), a long history of engagement between the two faculties has evolved. In a situation rare in Germany, the two now share space in the same building, and students from both traditions can attend lectures and seminars in both faculties. In times past, various ecumenical seminars have been held, growing mostly out of Kung’s ecumenical interests -- his seminar with Jürgen Moltmann on "Contemporary Christology," one with Heiko Oberman on "The Concept of Justification in Luther and the Council of Trent," and another with Eberhard Jungel on "Natural Theology in Barth’s Church Dogmatics."

Unlike theological schools in the United States, however, these university faculties are closely tied to the Protestant and Catholic churches: The ipso facto establishment of the two major Christian traditions via West Germany’s church tax means that few people here question the close relationship of the faculties to the churches. German theological faculties are thus much more similar to sophisticated denominational seminaries than they are to American divinity schools at private universities. They are not even comparable to our interdenominational but independent seminaries such as Union in New York or the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. The American pattern of a religion department in a state university is totally different from the German model, though a few small departments for the study of comparative religions and the sociology and philosophy of religion exist in various German universities.

The point, however, is that the faculties have the basic task of preparing young people for careers in the church -- as ministers, priests and teachers in the school system. The professors enjoy the status of civil servants and in that sense are one step removed from direct ecclesiastical control; but their primary responsibilities are clear, and all theological work is done in a distinct confessional mold. Sensitivity to church needs and to the concerns of ecclesiastical authorities is consequently more acute than has traditionally been the case in America’s private divinity schools or independent seminaries.

Although the contacts between Protestant and Roman Catholic colleagues have been generally cordial in Tübingen over the years, there nevertheless exist two totally separate faculties, two libraries, two patterns for examinations and, in the last analysis, two ways of doing theology. No cost accountant would ever say that this is the most efficient way to organize a program of theological studies, but it works for the German scene. The Protestant faculty, some 30 professors with 1,700 students, is substantially larger than the Roman Catholic faculty, which has 12 professors and about 600 students.

A Deep Split

In this context the Küng settlement takes on a significance not immediately understood in America. Neither faculty is happy with the prospect of there being a third option for theological studies. While the compromise was a pragmatic solution to a delicate local situation,, both faculties fear that it might set a precedent in German universities for the establishment of an alternative approach to theological studies which transcends confessional boundaries. In a time of tight fiscal allocations no one wants to see a new trend that could call into question the present comfortable arrangement. An independent or ecumenical option is thus seen as a threat, not as an opportunity, even by more progressive spirits on both faculties.

Consistent with that concern, the Protestant faculty recently voted not to allow students from Roman Catholic backgrounds to work for degrees with the Protestant faculty. Such arrangements were never common but were at least possible in an earlier ecumenical era. Although the main line of the argument was that students should pursue theological studies within their own confessional tradition, the hidden premise was that such experiments could eventually undermine the status quo of having two separate faculties. If students can do degrees with either faculty regardless of their confessional background, why do we need two faculties? Economic fears -- the possibility of losing a number of positions if the faculties were combined -- are clearly apparent.

A second major consequence of the compromise has been a deep split within the ranks of the Catholic faculty. The decisive event in the whole Kung episode was the declaration issued by seven (out of 11) of Küng’s colleagues on the Catholic faculty on February 5, when they maintained that any professor without a missio canonica (i.e., official endorsement as a teacher of Roman Catholic theology) should not remain on a Roman Catholic faculty (Der Fall Küng, pp. 235-44). That declaration -- published simultaneously by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the local Schwäbischen Tagblatt -- was a dramatic reversal of an earlier public stand taken on December 8, when the full professors of the faculty unanimously expressed their support of Küng and pointed out the dangers for freedom of theological research and teaching intrinsic in the German bishops’ position (ibid., pp. 100-101). Again on January 10, the larger group of the Catholic faculty (including some student representatives and the equivalent of American instructors and assistant and associate professors) issued a declaration expressing hope for an amicable resolution of the conflict, and insisting on faculty, autonomy in all academic matters. Something happened between December 18 and February 5 to change the minds of the majority of full professors on the Catholic faculty. What was it?

No one apart from the seven professors involved -- Alfons Auer, Walter Kasper, Gerhard Lofink, Ludger Oeing-Hanoff, Rudolf Reinhard, Max Seckler and Hermann Josef Vogt -- knows for sure, and they have taken so much heat about it that they do not discuss the circumstances, apart from their own group and some trusted friends. It is generally believed, however, that Kasper and Seckler drafted the public statement. Although the statement was not polemical in tone, it had a caustic quality and clearly suggested that under the circumstances Küng should not remain on the Catholic faculty.

By those sympathetic to Küng, the February 5 statement was regarded as a betrayal in the midst of battle. The Protestant faculty, which on December 19 had endorsed Küng on the principle of freedom of theological inquiry (Der Fall Küng, p. 292), was stunned because its members had assumed that on this fundamental principle they were at one with their Catholic colleagues. Küng was taken completely by surprise and deeply hurt personally; as one of the senior members of the Catholic faculty, he had been a key figure in the appointment of all seven persons and had regarded them as supportive friends as well as colleagues.

Protests against the methods of the seven (they caucused secretly and did not discuss their intentions with other members of the faculty) were made

by Wolfgang Bartholomäus, dean of the Catholic faculty, and Küng’s other colleagues Norbert Greenacher, Bernard Lang and Herbert Haag. Petitions and declarations of support for Küng came from other theological faculties in Europe (both Catholic and Protestant), but the deed was now done: Küng could not count on the support of his own colleagues in what had initially appeared as a "showdown" struggle against Rome and the German bishops.

‘Dancing on Eggs’

Reactions to the statement of the seven varied depending on political and theological sympathies. On the progressive side in Germany and Europe generally, the response was one of amazement and rage. On February 6 the well-known Dusseldorf historian Christoph Weber, who had been invited by the Catholic faculty to give a lecture at Tübingen during the summer semester, sent a telegram to Dean Bartholomäus canceling his lecture. He spoke for a wide circle of liberal Catholics when he said: "Of all the documents I know in German church history of the 19th and 20th centuries, today’s declaration of the seven Tübingen professors is the most shameful. . . . This agonizing dancing on eggs [Eiertanz] with all of its delicate apprehension is only a testimony to cowardice and hypocrisy" (ibid., p.244).

Whatever the motives and the causes of this shift, the action of the seven has caused what may be an irreparable cleft in the Catholic faculty. Anyone who has ever lived through a major crisis on a university or seminary campus knows that once events come to the point where everyone has to take sides, no one forgets in future years who stood where when the chips were down. Personal relationships have been ruptured, and professional life has been rendered unpleasant and awkward. Some theorize that the seven got a call from Rome or were subjected to intense pressure from the German bishops.

Surely the dimensions of fear and even jealousy cannot be discounted. It is a sad truth that although Küng is regarded as one of the world’s most influential theologians in wider circles, there have been resentments locally about his popularity, his penchant for getting into headlines and his "superstar" status. There is some speculation that the seven used this occasion to express some long-standing personal resentments. Kasper, who had earlier criticized the Christology and method of Küng’s On Being a Christian but who most persons close to the scene felt would be supportive on the issue of the boundaries of theological inquiry, has become one of the primary leaders of Küng’s opposition in Germany (the other being Karl Lehmann of the University of Freiburg) and has now emerged as the major theological adviser to the German Bishops’ Conference,

The most puzzling signatory was the progressive ethicist Alfons Auer. Even his friends were confused when just one week after the original statement of the seven, Auer (along with Heinrich Fries of Munich and Bernhard Welte of Freiburg) drafted a letter to Cardinal Hoffner of the German Bishops’ Conference urging his support for freedom of theological inquiry. The letter was sent to the cardinal with 145 signatures of Catholic professors in Germany (ibid., pp. 249-53). No one with whom I spoke could reconcile Auer’s two contradictory positions; they may be symbolic of the conflict of emotions generated in a circumstance like this.

Deficient in ‘Churchliness’?

At a deeper theological level, it is worth noting that 11 of the 12 members of the Catholic faculty are priests, and there is a fundamental difference of opinion at the bottom of this dispute over what is called Kirchlichkeit -- perhaps best rendered "churchliness." It is one of three criteria -- along with academic thoroughness (Wissenschaft) and openness to the times (Zeitoffenheit) -- which Kasper has developed as the basic criteria for a valid Catholic theology. Kung’s theological views, as understood by the seven, may be academically thorough and sensitive to the times, but they are deficient in Kirchlichkeit -- for Küng is believed to be not properly respectful of the lines of authority that are at the very heart of the church. This point is so crucial that it must be considered in more detail.

The seven articulate a position that the faith of the church is preserved in the magisterium (i.e., the official teaching office of the church) and that theologians should interpret that given body of truth.

They also feel that power and authority are rightly vested in bishops and in the pope. Although there are some legitimate zones for theological disagreement, this viewpoint holds that there are some fundamental Roman Catholic truths, and that if one is not in agreement with them, one simply no longer stands in the Roman Catholic tradition. At the core of those fundamental truths are the classic creedal statements on Christology and the special mystique about the authority of the pope.

The issue of loyalty to authority is important. For priests of this persuasion, both Küng’s bold attack on papal infallibility in 1970 and his critical public assessment of the first year of the pontificate of John Paul II would be examples of bad judgment, bad timing and bad taste. This general viewpoint fits well with traditional Roman Catholic conservatism, and is one in which most Catholic theologians implicitly worked prior to Vatican II. For priests -- even those with some theological openness -- this matter of Kirchlichkeit goes to the marrow of their self-understanding.

Kirchlichkeit means something else for the minority of the Catholic faculty, as symbolized by Küng but likewise cogently articulated by Greinacher and Haag. They are basically committed to a historical-critical methodology that recognizes the fact that all human institutions have a political and ideological orientation. This methodology regards all theological "truths" as molded by circumstance and culture; it takes more seriously the pluralism of the modern world and the importance of democratic consensus in church government. It maintains that New Testament exegesis is important for dogmatic theology, and does not shirk from the tensions created by such exegesis for the proclaimed faith of the church. It does not deny the legitimacy or importance of the magisterium but would differ from the majority group concerning the methods and practices of the magisterium. In this view the intervention of the magisterium in the church’s intellectual life should be, limited to those occasions when the church is dealing with matters of ultimate loyalty, such as confrontations of church and state, confrontations with other faiths, or internal schismatic movements.

In matters of church life and style, this minority viewpoint values openness, collegiality and democratic procedure more than submission, episcopal authority and .the mystique of Romanitá. It is fundamentally distrustful of a hierarchy which under the aura of Kirchlichkeit bypasses openness and due process. The minority stands self-consciously in the tradition of Tübingen Catholic independence from Rome, expressed so vividly over a century ago in the Tübingen opposition to the infallibility decree of 1870 and subsequently to the anti-Modernist oath imposed by Pius X in 1910. Because of Küng’s prominence, most Americans have assumed that his perspectives on theological method and the nature of the church have been widely shared in the Tübingen Catholic faculty. The definitive action of the seven, however, has put that myth to rest.

Hardened Attitudes of Protestants

Prior to this last pressure move by Rome and the German bishops, these "two ways" of being a Catholic and of doing Catholic theology coexisted with some gracefulness in the Catholic faculty. If they created tensions for each other, they nevertheless represented important alternatives within the world of Catholic scholarship. The repudiation of the minority view by the majority, however, has deeper implications than the compromise worked out for Küng. It raises serious questions about how much diversity (or creativity) one can expect from Tübingen Catholic theologians in the future.

A third consequence of the compromise is that it has hardened Protestant attitudes toward Roman Catholicism. The pope’s public statements addressed to all persons of goodwill, and his assurances of Roman Catholic interests in ecumenism, are less than persuasive when set against the hierarchy’s treatment of Catholicism’s leading ecumenical theologian. Jürgen Moltmann assessed the significance of the Küng case for Protestants in an article titled "Hans Küng, Rome and the Gospel" in Evangelische Kommentare. He noted that the procedural methods of the Roman church raise serious questions about human rights in the church, and also that the action of Rome has essentially destroyed the basis for ecumenical discussions on the nature of papal authority and primacy. His conclusion seems to reflect a broad Protestant consensus: "Unfortunately the Küng case will demonstrate to Protestant theology what happens to you if you extend even a little finger to this primate" (ibid. p. 445).

I could find little charity among Protestants here concerning the Catholic Church; the assumption is that in recent months the church has shown its true colors, and that in essence it is still triumphalistic, autocratic and inflexible. Many persons fear for the future of the joint Protestant-Catholic faculty colloquium, which in past years has met monthly and has been cochaired by Moltmann and Küng. Küng, of course, can no longer represent the Catholics, and it is unclear under the circumstances whether the Protestants will want to continue this professional interaction at all.

Frozen Out

A final result of the compromise is the way in which it seriously curtails Küng’s influence in Germany. His theological writings (in Roman Catholic circles) are now viewed as perhaps "academically interesting" but not as representative of what the church teaches. As a result Kung will be virtually frozen out of all conferences, assemblies or workshops which are under the official control of the German hierarchy. That ban will probably be honored in France, Italy, Spain and Catholic Switzerland -- all areas where Küng has had considerable support. He will find it difficult to place his doctoral students and assistants who aspire to academic careers in Germany, since endorsement of prospective faculty members by the German Bishops’ Conference is required for all Catholic faculties. (It is reflective of such pressures that Küng’s senior assistant, Hermann Haring, has recently accepted an appointment in Holland.) So long as German theological faculties are organized as they are, the Catholic bishops can keep Küng’s viewpoint from spreading directly to other universities.

Küng has always had, however, a substantial following among both clergy and laity in most of the countries of western Europe, and there will continue to be ecumenical, civic and academic occasions that will give him a public platform. The enormous range of support attested to in the Documentation volume shows that he speaks for many influential people over several continents. The United States, with its private universities and seminaries and vigorous centers of liberal Catholicism, has long provided a supportive climate for Küng, and it is possible that he will spend more time on our side of the Atlantic. Various forms of media will see to it that his viewpoint continues to get a wide hearing.

On the Tübingen scene, no one is quite sure how many students Küng will be able to attract to his fall semester lectures on ecumenical theology, since that course will be optional. There is on one side of this coin the students’ tendency to attend lectures which they need for their examinations; on the other side is the fact that there is strong political support for Küng among the students (there was a huge rally and torchlight parade last December on the night following the Roman edict to withdraw his missio canonica), and for many students, both Protestant and Catholic, the issues in the Küng case are larger than the man himself, Küng’s status at the university is not dependent on the number of students who come to his lectures (nor on the number of his doctoral students), but the fall semester will be some index of the viability of this new "third track" in theology.

Not surprisingly, Küng’s support comes from the better-educated stratum of German society; it is more urban than rural; it is more extensive in northern Europe than in southern Europe. He has spoken persuasively to that large number of Germans who, although they still pay the church tax, have not been active in church life, The bishops’ strategy is to isolate Küng so that he will appear to be a religious philosopher (one thinks of Bloch or Jaspers) without a visible community. Küng hopes that his ecumenical theology will continue to be a viable alternative to Rome even within the Catholic tradition, thus demonstrating that the life and spirit of the church are broader than the official posture of the hierarchy.

The hierarchy clearly has political power; Küng must rely on the informal power of the written and spoken word, on the university tradition of inquiry and discussion, on the theological ground of ecumenical consensus, and on the democratic ideal of due process. The Tübingen compromise is not the last word in this struggle, but it shifts the context for future encounters and obviously makes Küng’s task more difficult.

Broadened Interests

Where does this leave Küng? Contrary to some popular sentiment in America, it does not mean that he has, or will, become a member of the Protestant faculty. In this context, one does not just slide across to the Protestant faculty because of a dispute with the German bishops. Küng continues to see himself as a Catholic Christian and retains his status as a priest. In an attempt to find some humor in the situation, he told me, "At least I don’t have to go to faculty meetings any more!" He may well turn now to other audiences and address other problems on the world’s theological agenda. He is interested in broadening his ecumenical interests to include serious dialogue with Judaism and other non-Christian faiths. Although the German cultural setting has kept him from serious engagement with feminist theologians and other representatives of liberation theology I would not be surprised to see him take those movements more seriously.

Some of his good friends, as well as his critics, have chided him for a number of years for spending too much time on structural problems of the church and internal issues of ecclesiology; I would now predict a broadening out of various issues of religion and culture. Some indication that he has been moving in this direction is seen in his Terry Lectures at Yale, Freud and the Problem of God (Yale University Press, i979), and his German lectures on Art and the Question of Being (Kunst und Sinnfrage [Benzinger, 1980]).

Ecumenical theology does not have a natural base in Germany; it falls between two fairly rigid ways of interpreting the Christian tradition. In Protestant circles Küng is generally regarded as a Catholic theologian with some peculiarly Roman Catholic problems. I came to Tübingen expecting to find a whole theological community shaped by the progressive spirit of Ernst Käsemann, Jürgen Moltmann and Hans Küng. I found that Käsemann’s approach to the New Testament has been almost totally repudiated by his New Testament successors; that Moltmann stands virtually alone in the Protestant faculty with his interests in liberation theology and the problems of other cultures; and that Küng, though supported by his small group of assistants at his Ecumenical Institute, is officially embraced by neither Catholics nor Protestants.

Pain and Ambiguity

All of these discoveries have sobered me; Tübingen, for all its charm, is not the theological symbol I thought it was. Yet for all the conservatism -- political and ecclesiastical -- which I found among the full professors of both faculties, it was heartening to find a substantial number of younger scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, who both personally and professionally are committed to keeping lines of communication open. They want a genuinely ecumenical climate. Both deans -- Karl Nipkow of the Protestant faculty (long active in the World Council of Churches) and Wolfgang Bartholomäus of the Catholic faculty -- are open and gracious men. So there is some hope, and surely currents of academic vitality, but candor requires the conclusion that the ecumenists in Tübingen are going against the stream.

One should not, however, be excessively pessimistic. It is easy to idealize places -- and academic institutions -- about which we know little. I gained some perspective on the present situation in Tübingen when I read extensively about the history of theology there and reviewed the controversy evoked by the famous "Tübingen schools" (both Protestant and Catholic) in the 19th century.

The fact is that every creative thinker and movement at this place for 200 years has had to fight the parochialism of Swabia, the wrath of the pietists (Germany’s historic version of fundamentalists) and the power of church officials, both Protestant and Catholic. No theological faculty anywhere ever totally transcends the limits of regionalism, class, nationality and ecclesiastical tradition. If a closer look demythologizes Tübingen’s mystique as a world ecumenical center, at the same time one can be grateful that at least two leading contemporary figures and a number of their younger colleagues continue to show a vision for the whole church, and provide creative thought that is worthy of the Tübingen legacy of several centuries.

The future, of course, remains open, as do Küng’s strategies. Perhaps the Spirit can bring some healing in the days ahead. At the present time, however, this famous center of theological inquiry is obviously in transition, and feels much pain and ambiguity.

Dangers of the Church Growth Movement

It ever seems to be my lot in life to find it necessary to deal with half-truths which have a germ of validity but which accepted in their distorted form constitute a heresy -- which is exactly what I think we are dealing with in the "church growth movement."

As I contemplate the church today, I would judge it to be an institution in very serious trouble; every mainline denomination is faced with the same agonies of declining membership. I feel considerable ambivalence concerning what to do about this trouble. Part of my feeling comes from my very conservative roots, which influenced the value system that remains with me. At the same time, I hold no brief for those who talk about the church as if smallness in and of itself were a guarantee of quality.

My own Baptist church had been in a state of very serious numerical decline since the early 1950s. Then out of nowhere came the promised salvation: the "church growth movement." I bought every book and I read every manual on the subject. Now I am more concerned than ever because I believe this movement to be one of the worst distortions of the church that American ingenuity, born of an outworn capitalist mentality ("if it succeeds, it is right"), could possibly devise.

‘Our Kind of People’

The center of the church growth movement is the School of Missions at the Institute of Church Growth at interdenominational Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. California. Church growth people attempt to apply to the American scene the scientific principles of church growth as developed by Donald McGavran, based on his 30 years of missionary work in India. McGavran created the Institute of Church Growth first at Northwest Christian College in Eugene, Oregon, and wrote Understanding Church Growth, considered the "Magna Carta" of the movement. Popularizers (although they don’t come from the same roots) include such people as Robert Schuller, author of Your Church Has Real Possibilities.

The primary leader, however, is McGavran’s successor and disciple at Fuller, C. Peter Wagner, whose books are selling like wildfire. Two of them in particular outline the movement’s methodology and objectives: Your Church Can Grow, subtitled seven vital signs of a healthy church," and Our Kind of People, subtitled "the ethical dimensions of church growth in America." A whole cadre of professionals has grown up in the movement, and they are flooding the country with institutes and seminars. Illustrations of their success are Redwood Chapel of Castro Valley, California; First Nazarene Church of Denver; First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana; Thomas Road Baptist Church of Lynchburg, Virginia; and First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

The basic thesis of the movement is that congregations must be built from homogeneous groups of people. Movement adherents suggest that a higher rate of conversion growth can be predicted for the homogeneous church; it is important that people can "feel at home" and know that they are among "our kind of people." Over and over, the literature stresses that "men like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers." The movement seeks to rebut the work of Jürgen Moltmann, for instance, who argues in his Religion, Revolution and the Future that the church, to be authentic, must be heterogeneous, reconciling the educated and the uneducated, black and white, high and low. Moltmann sees the church at its best when it contradicts the natural groupings of human beings, while Wagner sees the church as at its best when it conforms to such groupings. Wagner and McGavran give attention to the work of H. Richard Niebuhr. They both use his book The Social Sources of Denominationalism to contradict the work of Liston Pope, The Kingdom Beyond Caste, and Gibson Winter, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, in order to undergird the thesis that the church ought to accommodate itself to social and caste systems.

Following the Leader

The second thesis can be called "the multi-individual or multi-independent decision-making" basis for growth. It is not easy for persons to become Christians individually. Therefore, factors which emphasize separateness in the Christian life should be ignored and a group comfort should be developed. Because people have prejudices, these biases should be used and made an aid to Christianity. A tribal consciousness should be developed, according to which main leaders are captured first for the church, and then everyone else follows. McGavran and his disciples suggest that those desiring church growth should become more conscious of sociological "people movements" and encourage people to become Christian through the people-movement route. The "one-by-one" option will never be satisfactory.

Church growth professionals believe that most opposition to the Christian movement arises not from theological causes but from sociological ones. They believe, for example, that if Jews could come to Christ without losing their Jewish identity, most of their theological differences with Christianity would be greatly reduced. Thus, church growth would advocate a kind of "Jews for Jesus" movement in which people could try to have the best of both worlds.

The third contention of the church growth people is that the pastor must be master. Wagner suggests that the first vital sign of a healthy and growing church is a minister who is a "possibility thinker" and whose dynamic leadership has been used to catalyze the entire church into action for growth. Because the pastor is the catalytic growth factor in a local church, he or she is encouraged "not to be afraid of power." One does what is necessary to stimulate the people to think of their pastor as the greatest. One must build a kind of personality cult. One should secure a staff that has no interest in doing the things that the senior pastor does, thus clarifying pastoral authority. One should be the company commander who receives orders from the commander-in-chief, doing away with a plurality of committees that may dilute the power. Wagner suggests that the pastor may appear to be a dictator but "to the people of the church his decisions are their decisions. They should realize that almost as if he had a sixth sense the pastor knows how to lead the church where the people want to go." Wagner concludes this particular emphasis with "scratch them where they itch."

Separate but Equal

The fourth tenet of church growth is "segregation is a desired end." Wagner devotes much attention to the failure of the social movement in the 1960s and suggests that it turned out the right way. In the section on "creation" in Our Kind of People, Wagner argues that because God created us this way then we had better stay this way. Biblical justification is sought: Genesis is used in the reverse. Church growth enthusiasts say that people were supposed to be separated into groups but didn’t want to be; therefore they were punished. John 4 is used to cite the separation between Jews and Samaritans as proof that homogeneity is desirable (negating the chapter’s emphasis on one spirit and one worship). In stressing the separate but equal principle, the church growth movement proposes to preserve the strength of each group. But in this "cultural circumcision," as Wagner calls it, the strengths of various peoples are never shared.

Church growth enthusiasts also argue that social action in the church must be denied. They state quite bluntly, "To the degree that socially involved churches become engaged in social action as distinguished from social service they can expect church growth to diminish." The primary thrust must be toward the multiplication of cells of Christians, and church growth considers the social order as outside of that task. Supporting social causes gives "mixed signals."

The movement’s sixth basic principle is that church ministry and mission must be located where they succeed. We must go only where people respond. According to church growth theories, the early church allowed the numbers baptized to determine the direction and intensity of mission. The New Testament church went where people responded, believing this to be God’s Will. We are cautioned by Wagner "not to peer into ravines where there are no sheep."

Pseudo-gospel

The dangers inherent in the church growth movement are many, and the crucial issue in assessing those dangers is whether we are talking about becoming Christians or about building institutional membership. The greatest danger in the movement may be that it obviously succeeds. If one tailors the church to identify with its culture and engages in the pseudo-gospel of "possibility thinking," promising to assuage guilt with the minimum of pain and connecting that promise with marketing techniques, there will be success. The question is whether the result will bear any similarity to the church.

A second danger is that the movement encourages sinful prejudices. A third is that it misses the major gospel note of reconciliation, forgetting that the key theme of the Christian gospel is the breaking down of the walls of partition between male and female, Jew and Greek and so on. The body of Christ should not be merely a reflection of the divisions that exist on earth predetermined by the exterior similarity of social class and cultural background.

The church growth theology is also dangerous in dooming the city to hopelessness. The strong emphasis on choosing target populations according to the criterion of success leads the church growth people to neglect the city with its economic mobility, its changing neighborhoods and racial mixture. The preference is for the suburbs and for each succeeding suburban ring which mobility and economics establish. One suburb gets old, so emphasis shifts to the next one because that’s where the best possibilities are. The biblical concern for the powerless is totally overlooked. The movement also sanctifies the unholy status quo. In regarding the church as "our kind," church growth sees no problem, for example, with apartheid churches in South Africa, regarding them as routine.

In warning against any ecumenical concerns, the movement also violates the unity of the church. Followers suggest that ecumenical concerns drain away energies and smooth the sharp edge of competitiveness that beats out the other person and leads to success.

In truth, the movement prostitutes the church. Wagner calls on Dean Kelley’s book Why Conservative Churches are Growing for theological support, yet the church growth thesis and Kelley’s are opposites. Kelley portrays the successful church as being against culture, whereas Wagner wants the church to identify the given culture as "my culture." This is surely a sell-out for the gospel which often calls us to leave father and mother and brother and sister.

Finally, church growth theories neglect the biblical dimensions of truly meaningful growth, such as those discussed by Jitsuo Morikawa in his little book of sermons, Biblical Dimensions of Church Growth. In it the author examines the call to grow as individuals and as a faith community -- adhering to qualitative, not merely quantitative, standards.

Most of us in mainline and liberal churches have used a remnant theology for so long as a justification for our failure to grow that we have lost the motivation to be Christ’s evangelists. In our defensive posturing we have been guilty, I think, of a good deal of faulty logic. I agree, for instance, with the major thrust of Robert Hudnut’s book Church Growth Is Not the Point. But I certainly do not, as he does, see it as a good sign that people are leaving the churches. Nor would I, as he does, rationalize "that loss of growth in statistics has meant increase in growth in the gospel."

We must recognize that there is some validity to the thesis of homogeneity; it is when it is made the norm that it loses validity. The old melting pot idea is not satisfactory. An assimilation model, usually of the Anglo-conformative variety, will not do. But neither will a mosaic model, according to which there is a dwelling side-by-side with no touching and no flavoring. Maybe there is value to Andrew Greeley’s "stew pot" vision, in which each ingredient adds its own characteristic flavor but in some way maintains its identity. One does not have to lose individuality or identity in order to be part of the new creation, the new humanity in Christ.

The church growth movement might serve to jolt mainline church people from a timidity which blocks out all growth efforts. On the other hand, we might wonder whether it is possible to be the church and a "successful" institution at the same time. The church growth people would of course say Yes, but I’m not convinced.

Christianity and New Feminist Religions

One week during our usual Thursday chapel hour at United Theological Seminary, the women’s caucus organized and led a well-constructed and skillfully enacted worship service for the seminary community. Most of the imagery, the visual symbols and the language expressed the spooking, sparking and spinning which Mary Daly in her recent book Gyn/Ecology proposes to women as the way to true liberation. Following Daly’s model, language addressed to the Deity either spoke of the divine as the Goddess or used nonpersonal terms. Afterward, almost every man and woman present spoke enthusiastically about the excellence of the service, and some of the possibilities it displayed for the use of nonsexist language. At the same time, several voiced uneasiness that no traditional Judeo-Christian language had been employed and that Christ was not mentioned. They wondered what this model signaled for women and men who are feminists but also identify themselves as Christians.

Although one must be careful not to magnify the significance of any one event, that chapel service focused, for many of the seminary community, some basic questions about the relationship between feminism and Christianity. In addition, many people began to rethink the relationship between Mary Daly’s style of feminism and their own religious commitments.

A New Religion

For me, the service crystallized a need to come to terms with the intention of such radical feminists as Daly to reject traditional patriarchal religion and substitute something new. They propose a new religion, one that has emerged from their feminism and from their rejection of their traditions. Because of the close identification of Mary Daly and other theologians with feminism, their new religion appeals to many of the women students in the seminary, as well as to some of the men. Thus we find ourselves occupied with the continuing question of to what extent and for what reason Christianity and contemporary feminism are compatible and even in need of each other.

"The entire conceptual systems of theology and ethics, developed under the conditions of patriarchy, have been the products of males and tend to serve the interests of sexist society." So wrote Mary Daly in 1973 in Beyond God the Father. She concluded that women should leave behind the patriarchal past and its institutions, and begin a new period of sisterhood that will create its own forms and its own religion. Ever since Daly and other feminist writers formulated the challenge, many feminists have been acutely aware of some fundamental issues feminism raises about Christianity. Is its foundation so sexist that it must be rejected, or is there some hope of reconstruction and reappropriation?

Growing in importance among feminists is the response to the Judeo-Christian tradition which Rosemary Ruether calls "countercultural feminist theology," and Carol Christ terms "revolutionary feminist theology." The feminists who adopt these responses regard Christianity as so hopelessly corrupt that it should be rejected by any woman who hopes to achieve her own integrity. In place of oppressive patriarchal religion, they are constructing a new religion, one they intend to be authentically feminist and liberating.

Some of these revolutionary feminists embrace the notion of full participation of men and women in their new religion or spirituality; others exclude men from the circle, either temporarily until women regain their sense of true selfhood, or permanently. Goddess worship is characteristic of most; some -- Naomi Goldenberg, for example -- regard the force inside women as the appropriate power for them to venerate and cherish. Regardless of variations, one fundamental, obvious and significant conclusion is to be drawn, These women must all be taken seriously as the founding mothers of a genuinely new religion. Rosemary Ruether and other sympathetic but critical scholars have noted this point as observers of such groups; Goldenberg, Christ and Daly have made the claim from within their movement.

Looking at the Differences

As Ruether and others have observed, whatever may be said of the goddess worship of antiquity, or medieval witchcraft, contemporary revolutionary feminist religion has, by its own admission, created itself as a new entity. Christian women of a reformist orientation -- who regard themselves as feminists and yet claim the Christian tradition as bearer of a liberating truth, capable of reform in a more humanizing direction -- find themselves addressing sisters who share some fundamental positions but who reject some that are to the reformers at least of equal importance.

When addressing a revolutionary feminist sister, the Christian feminist encounters a relative who has chosen to leave the family and establish a separate household. Because of shared background, certain patterns and activities will be similar, and the division lines will not always be clear, even to one who has left the family. Nonetheless, it will be of great help for both to realize that they are in dialogue in a fashion analogous to the Jew and the Christian, or the Christian and the Muslim. In order to understand each other, they must, recognize their similarities, but must be equally honest about their differences.

In Womanspirit Rising Carol Christ set forth some of the major characteristics of revolutionary feminist religion, and Rosemary Ruether critiqued some of these in a Christian Century article ("Goddesses and Witches: Liberation and Counter-cultural Feminism," September 10-17, 1980). Revolutionary feminists assume that men and women are fundamentally different because of their bodies, which are shapers and receivers of experience. Some theorists underline the commonness of humanity as well as the differences, while others emphasize the distinctions, but all agree on a separateness of males and females that has some specific consequences.

For these religionists, female humanity is normative. Either explicitly or implicitly males are regarded as in some way inferior to the female norm. Quite frequently this assumption of inferiority depends on acceptance of the 19th century romantic notion that women are more intuitive and affective than men, These qualities are exalted over rationality and logic, the province of males. Revolutionary feminists generally accept this vision of each sex’s characteristics, turning on its head the scientific age’s glorification of "male" empirical reasoning, and making that age’s notion of feminine nature the dominant and superior ideal.

Some other assumptions aid in constructing a new religion. Revolutionary feminists employ a variation of the Marxist use of history as an agent of change in the revolution; they assert that history is a means for transformation of the feminine self-image, so that women may increase their self-esteem and actualize themselves fully rather than be suppressed as during patriarchal history. History as a tool for self-development is substituted for the modern scientific notion of history. The revolutionary feminist religious person does not seek to understand the historic past, or to extract from it cautionary tales or encouragement for the present or the future. The goal is to construct a history as it ought to have been to authenticate women’s aspirations and sense of self.

‘The Divine You’

Religion itself is understood as a means for women’s self-fulfillment and is constructed as such. Goldenberg asserts that theology ought to be understood as psychology, that we should stop theorizing about a God "Out there," and reflect on the forces and values within us. Some of the rituals of Dianic witchcraft demonstrate this viewpoint quite clearly. For instance, Zsuzsanna E. Budapest’s self-blessing ritual articulates this notion; she asserts that self-blessing is to affirm "the divine you." Religion controls the inner self; the goddess is a symbol of the "divine within women and all that is female in the universe." Such theorists as Mary Daly appear to employ goddess imagery as a symbolizing of the Verb which is divine power within us and sustaining the universe, but increasingly, revolutionary feminism insists that religion is both an expression of the self and the means by which we control the inner self.

Related to this idea is a denial of transcendence, not only in the extreme form which opposes itself to immanence and the realm of daily experience, but in any sense. Ruether has aptly observed that revolutionary feminism or countercultural religion an immanentist religion. The vast majority of revolutionary feminists deny any reality that may be analogous to the Ultimate, the Absolute, God, Goddess, or even to process theology’s primordial or consequent natures of God. What you see is what you get, and the ultimate is found either within women as individuals or as groups in union with natural forces. Some persons and groups place their emphasis on individual women, whereas most focus on women in community with nature; but the vision assumes that all energy and good are present within nature now, and that ‘women must learn to unite themselves to it in order to experience their own wholeness.

Experience is claimed by revolutionary feminists as the norm for truth and discernment of spirits. Carol Christ sees women’s experience, the spiritual quest, as the key to discovering reality and clarifying the vision of the powers that truly are. Budapest, at the opening of her self-blessing ritual, introduces the rite as coming from the oral tradition of witches throughout the ages; her justification is that it "feels very ancient." Regardless of the particular emphasis in various groups, the experience of women, individually or as a community, is the determiner of truth and, as we have seen, the force that determines how history is to be interpreted or remade. Sometimes explicitly, at other times implicitly, women’s experience as norm is understood as replacing the previous domination of patriarchy and male interpretation.

These various characteristics intertwine and are present in varying degrees in different revolutionary feminist groups. They form the ideology of a new religion, and make up a relatively complete and internally, consistent explanation of humanity, the world, and human destiny, asserting that this vision is true and others are, at best, less true. Increasingly, as Ruether has observed, these religious believers have become more and more intolerant toward others who have rejected the new faith or who depart from it.

It would be most interesting to draw a religious map of revolutionary feminist religion, showing the range from those who regard men as equals (though benighted), to those who would separate from men and from women who have anything to do with men; from those who reject Christianity and Judaism to worship the divine under female form to those who value the symbolism of the goddess because of its beneficent effect on women. Such a picture would clarify the variety among revolutionary feminists, including the growing numbers of radical separatists, and underscore the need to appreciate the diversity as well as the common elements.

The Reformist’s Response

But what is to be the response of the Christian feminist? On the one hand, she or he recognizes the revolutionary as struggling against the same bonds of patriarchy as the Christian. Both have experienced oppression, heard offensive and exclusive language, and experienced the effects of discrimination in the religious establishment. But the Christian feminist is by definition a reformist, regarded with suspicion by males and, alas, females who cling to an outmoded patriarchy, and at the same time labeled as a "moron" by such separatists as Mary Daly. Such wrath is merited in the revolutionaries’ eyes. The Christian reformist rejects patriarchy; but she asserts that while the social context for Christianity is indeed patriarchal, its fundamental meaning is not to be identified with its patriarchal context. The reformist feminist claims that ultimately Christianity still witnesses to a divine reality who is both incomprehensibly transcendent and immanently present to human beings created in the divine image.

A Christian feminist cannot accept all of the assumptions that are at the base of the new feminist religion. She or he refuses to assume that Christianity, simply because its structure and history are in great measure interpreted by men, is inherently irredeemable and useless. The Christian feminist has observed the power of Christianity, despite patriarchy, to free and give life and meaning to persons both male and female. Jesus Christ is not perceived as a useless remnant of patriarchy but as a human being who offers a hope and vision of God that is not sex-linked. Much work needs to be done to incorporate women’s experience into Christian tradition and its theology, but Christian feminists regard the core of Christianity and at least some elements of its tradition as being life-giving for women. The Christian feminist knows the power of Christianity, is conscious of how this religion has worked to the detriment of women, but also knows of the good it has done, and of the good it could do if its liberating message were heard.

Feminist religions define women as being in some sense fundamentally different from males. Such a dichotomizing of the human race is unacceptable to the Christian feminist. One basic assumption of Christianity is that men and women are equally human and essentially the same. Because of their equality both males and females can be baptized and share in the Eucharist, and must be treated as equally responsible children of God.

The feminist reformist recognizes that that ideal is not fully achieved, and that there were times when male Christians refused to accept the full humanity of women, but they consider those failures as expressions of inadequacy and human perversion of the gospel. To assert an essential difference between women and men appears to turn the oppression of women on its head and to accept an oppressor’s romantic definition of women. Instead of upholding the fundamental kinship between women and men, such a separatist definition inevitably divides human beings, and invites new variations on the old sorts of oppression. While Christian feminists willingly admit that women and men have often been differently socialized, and that there may even be some differences in human capabilities between the sexes, that is no more fundamentally constitutive of humanity than place of birth or color of skin. Sex is one of many variable factors which combine in humans, not a definitive dividing line between two species of persons.

Feminist religions are focused on the self, assuming that not only is the self good, but that esteem and care for the self and for one’s own experience are primary. Religion is a means either for giving and nurturing a good self-concept, as in Goldenberg, or for connecting the self with the immanent but unrealized power within the self or within the community in harmony with nature. But the Christian feminist, though sympathetic to the rejection of an oppressive ideal for self-giving that had worked against women’s self-actualization, rejects this equally distorted notion of the human. Morally, as Ruether has noted, the individual is ambivalent, fundamentally good but capable of great evil; consequently, a feminist critique must keep hold of a judging as well as an affirming dimension if it is truly to respond to the human condition. Human beings find themselves in self-transcendence as well as in self-realization in the human community, and in friendship with the divine within, who is also the awesome and incomprehensible One. To establish the self as the center of a religion is to ignore our global interdependence and truncate our notion of self.

Taking the New Religion Seriously

Though rejecting some of the fundamental assumptions of the new feminist religions, the reformist Christian takes these religions seriously. After all, their members are sisters and brothers, and without doubt, the forms and language of the new religions depend very heavily in either negative or positive ways on the historic Judaism and Christianity which they repudiate. Never must one of these new religions be laughed at or dismissed easily; rather it must be understood on its own terms and as a serious response to some fundamental issues raised by the women’s movement. One would be foolish to overlook the appeal it has for women and men offended by the real sexism in the churches’ theories and practice.

Christian feminists must continue their contact and dialogue with practitioners of the new feminist religions because they are asking crucial questions about the meaning of religion. As a friend observed, perhaps the greatest importance of the feminist movement to the church is that it makes the church ask itself questions it ought to have been asking all along. That may be why, by and large, neither theologians nor ecclesiastical hierarchs have taken seriously the challenge of reformist feminism within the church or radical feminist religion without. Feminist Christian thought acknowledges that it shares many of the questions which revolutionary feminism raises. The Christian asserts that responses to these serious inquiries are more adequately constructed within the Christian tradition than outside it.

Feminists within the church, listening to the radical feminists who have formed new religious structures, are challenging the church to reform itself. For instance, feminism has again posed some of the perennial questions about the inclusiveness and exclusiveness of Christ. How much of Christ’s redemptive activity is tied to maleness, to Jewishness, to a particular time and place? How can one conceive of the relationship between Christ and the church and the world without using sexist images of dominance? How in this context does one rethink and reformulate some of the understandings of God as the "Father of Jesus Christ" as feminist theology reinterprets the relationship of the divine and the human in and through Christ? If a new Christology is articulated, how will the Christian life as imitatio Christi be rethought?

Meeting the Challenge

Unquestionably the issues raised are of far more fundamental theological and religious importance than cleaning up sexist language and electing women bishops, important as those achievements are. Basic changes in Christianity’s self-understanding and its very being are required because of its encounter with the feminist movement. From the point of view of the Christian tradition itself, such a renovation is not merely a capitulation to one more cultural expression, ‘but a new stage in the ongoing shaping of the gospel in different times and contexts. Repentance, renewal and transformation have always been at the core of the Christian faith. Radical or countercultural feminist religion offers a rejection of biblical faith and the creation of a new faith to respond to a vision of the equality of men and women; Christianity could offer an even more comprehensive and profound vision. Will Christianity have the strength and courage for such a challenge?

Sharing a Language of Faith

"Isn’t that a bit unfair?" I replied. "You too are an educated man. Couldn’t I ask you the same kind of question about the myths and legends of the Buddhist tradition?"

He lowered his gaze, then looked up again with a gentle smile. "Quite so . . . but I am not required to believe anything, in order to be a Buddhist, that I do not find to be true in my own experience." Then he quoted the famous aphorism: "The dharma is a come-and-see thing; it is self-realized; its fruits are immediate."

This conversation occurred on my first trip abroad, during my first exposure to Asian culture, and as part of my first encounter with the Buddhist tradition outside the classroom and the study. I had already experienced my students’ fascination with the Buddhist tradition, including the great interest of one very bright student who dropped out of the university to enter a Zen Buddhist training institute, from which he emerged, almost a year later, a transformed person. What had, up to that point, been for me an intellectual problem -- the problem of "comparative religion" -- became, on that evening, a spiritual problem. How are we to affirm our own traditions in the presence of those of other traditions? How was I, a Christian, to understand and interpret the faith of a Buddhist, or my own faith in relation to that of a Buddhist? Can we experience the liberating power of another tradition, or make accessible to another the liberating power of our own traditions?

Yet somehow I felt then -- and I still feel -- that the communication of one’s own faith to another must be more than a repetition of statements referring to some external truth and one’s "belief" in it, whatever that might mean. It seems to me that what is required is a translation from the categories of one tradition into those of another, to communicate with the person whose faith has been formed by that other tradition.

The analogy with translation from one language to another has helped my understanding of this process of transtraditional dialogue. When I first meet someone who speaks a language foreign to me, what I hear will be unintelligible gibberish. If communicating is important, and I persist, I may come gradually to recognize patterns in what was once unintelligible noise; eventually it may happen that the language is no longer foreign to me, and I am able to communicate with another person in that person’s language. Always, however, I will be confronted with the problem of translating from my native tongue into that of another -- consciously or unconsciously -- in order to maintain the lines of communication between us.

How will I know if I understand, or am understood? This is not an easy question to answer. Imagine a conversation between a native speaker of English and a native speaker of, say, Japanese, both of whom know the other’s language, about the meaning of a poem in Japanese. The speaker of English might convince the speaker of Japanese that she understood the poem. She might then present the Japanese with a translation of the poem into English. They might agree on the accuracy of the translation. But if they happen to disagree, how will they resolve the disagreement? We can imagine them arguing, in a friendly way, of course; the English-speaker insists that a certain phrase in the translation is adequate, even though the Japanese-speaker insists that it is not. Who is right: the one whose native language is Japanese, or the English-speaker? And where could we find a third party to judge between them?

To press the analogy a bit further: the English-speaker might realize that there can be no fully adequate translation of the poem -- as an aesthetic whole -- into English. A fully adequate response to the poem would require not a translation, but an English poem which embodied the aesthetic whole first manifested in the Japanese poem. Imagine the consternation of the Japanese-speaker now, when confronted by a new poem, supposed by the English-speaker to embody the same reality first apprehended in the Japanese poem. How can the adequacy of this effort be judged?

Conversations between people of different religious traditions have a great deal in common with this situation, I think. The Buddhist and the non-Buddhist "speak different languages," in a sense. The non-Buddhist may convince the Buddhist that he understands some aspect of the dharma; yet an attempt to respond to a particular insight in non-Buddhist terms may not please the Buddhist, and once disagreement arises, there seems to be no way to resolve it.

Speaking historically, one becomes a Buddhist by "taking refuge"; that is, by a public acknowledgment of this truth, both as an act of commitment and a determination to enter into the discipline. On the basis of our initial impression of the truth of the dharma, we resolve to begin testing its precepts against our own experience -- to "taste and see that the dharma is good, well-pleasing, and leads to enlightenment."

There are outward, visible signs of this resolution, principles by which we measure our progress: rules, if you please. We resolve that we shall not deliberately cause harm or bring suffering to other living creatures; that we shall not benefit ourselves dishonestly or unfairly at the expense of others; that we shall be truthful and serious in our conversation; that we shall not indulge our impulses to sexual misbehavior; and that we shall not abuse our own bodies. We resolve that we shall gain our livelihood in a manner consistent with these principles. Finally, we resolve that we shall train our minds and emotions to conform to our experience of truth, however distasteful it may at first seem to do this. We adopt these principles not on some higher authority but because they appear to us to reflect the truth about our human situation, because our experience confirms this truth, and because we see that this truth is indeed liberating and ultimately leads to our highest happiness.

It seems obvious that such a resolution, while it may demand a radical reorientation of our lives, need not require that the non-Buddhist "convert" from another religious tradition to that of Buddhism. In that sense, "being a Buddhist" might be compatible with affirmation of some other religious tradition, or even membership in some other religious community. From its beginnings, the Buddhist tradition has acknowledged this possibility, although it has not always been explicit in proclamation of the dharma.

The problem of an adequate response to the liberating truth of the dharma in a non-Buddhist context is the non-Buddhist’s, not the Buddhist’s, even when the Buddhist is willing to help in the process of "translation," or consider such assistance an important aspect of responsibility to the non-Buddhist. And, for the most part, I have found my Buddhist peers remarkably open to attempts at appropriating the truth of the Buddhist tradition in non-Buddhist contexts. My friends seem to feel that an adequate, if minimal, non-Buddhist response to the dharma in a non-Buddhist context would require simply that the non-Buddhist strive to grasp the vision of the world, and our place in it, presented in the dharma, and, concomitantly, strive to embody the truth of that vision in daily living.

Christians must learn to affirm the possibility of non-Christian responses to the gospel which are appropriate to the situation of the non-Christian. I profoundly hope that Christians become as open to this possibility as are, in general, Buddhists. Just as I have met some Japanese who have great difficulty entertaining the idea that a foreigner can really speak and understand the Japanese language, most Christians find it very difficult to accept that anyone who is not a "native speaker of Christian" could ever grasp or appropriate the reality to which the Christian tradition points. Needless to say, such persons have even greater difficulty conceiving of a non-Christian mode of being in the world which might really embody the liberating power of the gospel. Just as we should gently continue to insist that it is not a priori impossible to communicate something by translating from one language to another, so we must continue gently to insist that those who feel that a saving truth can be grasped only in Christian categories are mistaken.

Jesus, of course, was not a Christian, nor were his first disciples; Jesus’ faith, and his disciples’ allegiance to his cause, were, for them, a way of being Jewish. To put it another way, the "religious" faith of Jesus and his disciples was informed by the Jewish tradition.

Very early in the movement which began from Jesus’ career, the issue of a non-Jewish response to the gospel arose. How was the gentile to identify with the movement? It was very difficult for the earliest followers of Jesus to conceive of an adequate non-Jewish response to the gospel. Many assumed that it would be necessary for the non-Jew to participate in the Jewish tradition, to learn to "speak Jewish," in order to become a follower of the way of Jesus. Jesus’ career was understood in the categories of Jewish messianic hope and apocalyptic expectation, and the place of the non-Jew in this frame was determined by the "opening" of Israel to the nations -- the inclusion of all humanity in the final culmination toward which all history pointed. It is understandable that people whose faith was informed by such definitions would see little possibility of expressing their truths in other forms.

Partly because of the vicissitudes of history (the increasing separation of the movement from normative Jewish life, the tragic war of 68-70 AD., the emergence of forceful advocates like the Apostle Paul, the rise of strong non-Jewish leadership in the movement) and partly because of the inner dynamic of the preaching itself, the view that non-Jews could respond to the gospel in ways not determined by the norms of Jewish tradition slowly gained strength in the movement.

It is easy to mistake the meaning of this change. Could Jesus and his first followers have been made to understand our question -- What is your religion? -- (which is doubtful), they would surely have answered: I am a Jew. From our perspective, it appears that the issue was whether one who would respond to the gospel must first "become a Jew" in order to become a Christian. But the transformation was more subtle. A better way of putting it might be to ask (again in our terms, not theirs): must the hearer of the gospel accept the religion of the preacher in order to respond adequately? To this question, the tradition answers emphatically: By no means!

This resolution was not without its ambivalence; it produced tension and animosity between Jewish and gentile followers of the way of Jesus that could easily deepen into mistrust and even hatred, as the movement spread into the cities of the Greco-Roman world, where the synagogues of the diaspora constituted a strong and highly visible presence. And the problem was further complicated by the emergence of a new tradition, bearing the name "Christian," with its own integrity, its own symbols of participation, its own structure. It is rather like the emergence of a "new" language from an already existing one. At what point does the new language have its own integrity, apart from its relation to the language from which it emerges? At what point can the new language stand on its own, as a self-contained means of expression?

In this instance, the figure of Jesus had remained an attractive center of the emerging Christian tradition. Allegiance to his cause became the hallmark of a specifically Christian faith. The meaning of his career -- his life, death and final triumph -- was the focus of celebration in the emerging community. As the term "Christian" itself suggests, the formative experience of this community was the opening of modes of Jewish experience -- messianic hope, apocalyptic expectation -- which had been taken as content within Jewish tradition, so that these modes of experience became forms within which new content could be apprehended and expressed. The crystallization of the new tradition, the new language of faith, the embodiment of the liberating power of the gospel, was the result of this process. The older question about an adequate non-Jewish response to the gospel was thus translated into a question about an adequate non-Christian response to the gospel.

If, by our reflection on the emergence of a self-consciously Christian tradition, we can recapture the meaning of this transformation, we will have gained an important resource in our present situation. We can learn to ask ourselves: Must the hearer of the Christian gospel accept the religion of the preacher, in order to respond adequately? Must the bearer of the Christian gospel become a Christian in order to respond adequately? And we can raise an analogous question: Must one who would grasp the truth embodied in a given language learn that language as the only means for expressing this truth?

Like those first followers of the way of Jesus, we will be tempted to reply: Of course, how else will they understand and respond? But perhaps, like they did, we will learn to see our language of faith as one way, but not the only way, to express the truth to which we are witnesses. Perhaps we will learn that there is indeed a liberating power in the gospel that transcends any form in which it can be expressed. In learning this, we will begin also to learn how to be Christian in our world.

Family: Crisis or Change?

From pulpit and newsmagazine alike comes the message that the family is in crisis. Concerned clergy and laity are asking, "What can we do to solve its problems?" But to solve a problem, one must first ask the right question. "How many miles can I sail before my ship falls off the end of the world?" was a terrifying question to ancient seafarers, and one that puzzled people until the time of Columbus. But Columbus asked instead, "How far must I sail from my western coast before I arrive at my eastern coast?" And the discoveries that followed made the old question about "falling off the earth" irrelevant.

During the 14th century, millions of Europeans died from the "black plague." "Why is God displeased with us?" they asked. The answer they got was "our sin." The authorities ordered "that everything that could anger God, such as gambling, cursing, and drinking, must be stopped" (A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara W. Tuchman [Random House, 1978], p. 103). But to ask why God was displeased was the wrong question. Five hundred years passed before Louis Pasteur asked the right question: "What are the tiny organisms that carry the black plague?" That question led him to the right answer -- an organism that traveled in the stomach of the flea and the bloodstream of the rat. And that answer brought an end to the black plague.

Similarly, to inquire "Why is the family falling apart?" or "What’s wrong with the family?" is as pointless as asking "How far till I fall off the ocean?" or "Why is God sending us the plague?" The question to ask if we want to improve the quality of family life is this: "Why are families changing?"

The Good Old Days

Historians observe that every generation idealizes the one preceding it -- we magnify the good things and forget the bad. And that sort of image-making is prevalent when it comes to the family. Take divorce, for instance. We like to think that in the "good old days," there was little or no divorce -- marriages were stable. But were they? It is true that there were relatively few legal divorces prior to the Civil War. It’s also true that the frequency of divorce has been growing ever since.

But historians are uncovering increasing evidence for the "poor man’s [or "poor woman’s"] divorce," namely desertion (Marital Incompatibility and Social Change in Early America, by Herman R. Lantz [Sage, 1976]). Throughout colonial times and the 19th century expansion of the western frontier, it was exceedingly simple for men especially -- but also for women -- to slip away from their families undetected and never return. And it was almost impossible to trace them. There were no social security numbers, no FBI, no computers, no effective way to track down someone who left a family in Cincinnati and took off for Walla Walla. While the actual numbers of annual desertions are unknown, they are thought to be substantial. And since no one knew you once you arrived in Walla Walla, you could claim to be unmarried, and then remarry without anyone’s ever being able to trace your former family connections.

In this century, there have been many more legal divorces for a number of reasons, but one factor is that it’s harder to "drop out" and resurface without being detected. In short, when we look longingly to the past and say, "My, wasn’t it grand when marriages were stable." we have to face the hard fact that they weren’t as stable as we once thought.

We like to think also that our ancestors had harmonious and happy families, and that the violence characteristic of contemporary families didn’t exist. However, social historians are becoming increasingly aware of just how much violence went on in pre-20th-century families (A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women, edited by N. F. Cott and E. H. Pleck [Simon & Schuster, 1979], pp. 107-135). While a great deal of violence occurs today, there was probably more of it during earlier times because there was then greater community support for it. A "good" husband routinely beat his wife to keep her in subjection; "good" parents often beat their children in order to "get the devil" or the "sin-nature" out of them.

In a study of 18th century family life, one historian tells us that walls were paper-thin and houses crowded. One source quotes a woman who said of her neighbors, "We lived next door, where only a thin partition divided us and have often heard him beat his wife and heard her scream in consequence of the beating" (ibid.. p. 111). In short, family violence was not invented during the 1970s -- it’s been around for a long time.

A third "problem area" has to do with children. Certain observers argue that our ancestors cared more for children than do today’s parents. Critics complain that modern mothers go to work and leave their kids with sitters or in nursery schools; and when they’re home, parents plunk kids down in front of the TV. The charge is that parents don’t "relate" to their children the way they used to. Observers also worry about the family’s helplessness to protect young children from exposure to sex and violence.

Here again, historians are helping us sort fact from fiction. Take, for example, the idea of working mothers. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most women were married to farmers or shopkeepers. They worked with their men from dawn to dusk and simply had no time for "full-time motherhood" as it came to be defined in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Women and Men: Changing Roles, Relationships and Perceptions, edited by L. A. Cater and A. F. Scott [Praeger, 1977], pp. 93-118). But who took care of children while mothers and fathers -- and all other able-bodied adults -- struggled to survive economically? The truth is that no one gave the matter much thought. Any available adult, or older brother or sister, who happened to be around when the child needed something, did what had to be done for the child.

But the idea that the child is a "special" person requiring extraordinary attention, nurture and care never entered their minds. Only in relatively recent times has there been concern about "child development" and "quality children." One historian describes the experiences of most children during that pre-industrial era as a "nightmare" (Cott and Fleck, op. cit., p. 118). Clearly, many of today’s children suffer a great deal. But along with that suffering is a societal concern to alleviate childhood suffering -- a concern that did not exist years ago.

Sexual Behavior

And then there’s the matter of the child’s exposure to sex. Historians are discovering that because houses were small and crowded, adults could not conceal their sexual activities from children. There were no "private bedrooms," and children understood sexual details at a very early age from watching adults (ibid.). They also watched farm animals have intercourse and give birth. But no one thought that such "sexual exposure" would harm a tender child’s innocence.

A fourth "problem area" has to do with sex itself. Many people -- especially those under 30 -- seem to have the idea that sex came in with the space age: that people didn’t have sexual "highs" before then, that married people didn’t really enjoy the sex they had with their own spouses, that unmarried people weren’t having sex or that married people didn’t have sex with persons to whom they weren’t married -- that somehow all of this sexual behavior is new. Our difficulty in understanding today’s sexual patterns is that we compare them with the 19th century Victorian middle class and stop there. The prevailing idea during the 19th century was that women were passionless. As one writer puts it, women "were [thought to be] less carnal and lustful than men" (ibid., pp. 162-181).

But historians tell us that prior to the 19th century, female sexuality had not been "suppressed," and it never occurred to anyone that women were less sexual beings than men. In fact, precisely the opposite was true. A 15th century "witch-hunter’s guide" warned that "carnal lust in women is insatiable" (ibid.). After analyzing 18th century Massachusetts divorce court records, one historian concludes that the prevailing wisdom was that "if women made advances they were irresistible" (ibid., p.125).

In short, prior to the 19th century women as well as men thought of themselves, and of each other, as passionate sexual beings, and often their passion led them to deviate from existing community norms. Studies comparing marriage and birth records during colonial times show, for instance, that Elijah and Hannah married on January 1, and on June 1, Hannah gave birth to an eight-pound, six-ounce baby girl! That kind of historical evidence has emerged often enough to suggest that rather than having enormous premature babies, ordinary people like Hannah and Elijah were having premarital sex (Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations, by P. Laslett [Cambridge University Press, 1977]).

So when critics today say that premarital and extramarital sex are destroying. the family, what they may have in mind is the 19th century middle-class family, in which women were supposed to be passionless. But before the Victorian era, sex was much less suppressed, and yet families somehow persisted.

The Erosion of Traditions

Therefore, when we consider all four of these areas -- divorce and marital stability, family violence, the unique needs of children, and sexuality -- and then compare yesterday’s with today’s families, the contrast is not so striking as some would have us believe. To be sure, there have been and continue to be significant changes in the family. But the "problems" that observers perceive are simply the surface manifestations -- the symptoms of the underlying changes. Therefore, rather than focus primarily on symptoms -- or family problems -- it makes more sense to focus on the changes themselves. Why is the family changing?

As we think of the four problem areas we have considered, one central theme emerges: a developing concern for the rights, privileges and, well-being of the individual as over against the maintenance of traditions. That development is brilliantly illustrated in Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye, the village milkman, struggles with tradition versus freedom. "On the one hand," he says, "parents should arrange their children’s marriages." But on the other hand, he sympathizes with the freedom sought by his daughters to choose their own husbands -- to marry the men they love. He experiences enormous dissonance coping with the erosion of tradition; he sees the whole of family and society collapsing around him, culminating finally in the decision of his youngest daughter to marry a gentile rather than a Jew.

If we probe for the why of family change and the symptoms that inevitably accompany it, we discover that the changes result from the erosion of ancient traditions -- traditions that favored the family as an institution over its individual members. During past eras, the institution had priority over the individual; and for the sake of the institution the individual was called upon to sacrifice. Even today some observers continue to perceive family as being larger than life -- larger than people. They see the family as a pattern into which people are fitted. It’s like getting on a bed in a cheap motel -- if your legs are longer than the bed, trim your legs; if your legs are shorter, stretch them. But while some people believe in trimming the person, others believe in trimming the bed.

Something similar has been happening to the family for the past 200 years. We’ve been trimming here, adding there, modifying that, elaborating this, and so forth. If there was any sort of unconscious intention through all of this, it was to make family the servant of people, rather than to have people serve family.

Marriage and Divorce

In the 17th century, John Milton insisted that God did not create human beings for marriage; rather, God created marriage for human benefit. Therefore, said Milton, how much sense does it make to assert that a loving God forces people to suffer in an arrangement that God originally designed for their happiness? "No sense at all," he concluded, arguing that the churches and government of his day should allow divorce on the grounds of what we now call "mutual incompatibility."

In fact, it took more than 200 years for Milton’s ideas to permeate the thinking and behavior of ordinary people. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that divorce became relatively common in America; and immediately, certain critics began to predict the extinction of family and society. Interestingly enough, many critics connected the rising divorce rate with feminism and its goal of suffrage (Divorce in the Progressive Era, by W. L. O’Neill [Yale University Press, 1967]). But, of course, feminism was and is much more than that: it is the right to be an autonomous person -- one who acts out of self-determination and for self-actualization. Milton says that marriage should serve the person; the feminist argues that marriage has ill served women (as well as men) and that marriage must change to better serve the needs of women (as well as men). The logical outcome of the argument is that if a particular marriage doesn’t change, it becomes legitimate to leave rather than to endure it.

As marriage has changed to accommodate individual rather than traditional interests, Milton’s ideas have become increasingly acceptable. During prior decades, for instance, men married for sex, but they also wanted their family’s life style to be a showcase proving to themselves and to the world that they were worthy providers. Women, on the other hand, married mostly for companionship and to have a provider. But since World War II, certain demands have been added to marriage. Women want satisfying sex out of marriage, and they want intimacy -- deep friendship. Some men are beginning to want intimacy as well.

Furthermore, increasing numbers of women want their marriages to facilitate their occupational efforts in the same way that marriages have made it possible for men to pursue their occupations. Many women see occupational involvement as the only sure means to guarantee their autonomy. Given this enlarging range of significant demands placed upon marriage, it’s no puzzle that there are so many divorces. Perhaps we should ask why there aren’t more.

But plainly, divorce is a symptom of underlying changes. It is a painful symptom that no one welcomes.

Patterns of Violence

The same basic reasoning that explains changes in divorce patterns also explains changes in patterns of family violence. Recent research has shown that next to the police, the family is the most violent institution in American society. Most murders are committed by people who know their victims personally, and a great proportion of these involve the killing of a family member. Besides guns, those who engage in family violence use an assortment of other weapons, including knives, boiling water, and just plain old fists. But since men are generally stronger than women, they almost never lose a fist fight. Hence, the term "battered wife" has entered the English language during the past decade. While the term is new, battered wives have been around for a long time.

But why is the term so new, if the behavior is so ancient? The answer has to do with a change in traditions, with the individual coming to be valued as much as, or more than, the institution. While wife-beating has apparently always been common, it was in earlier times accepted as being a "normal" part of family life. As long as most women believed that tradition, they never complained about their beatings, nor dared talk about them openly with other similarly abused women. But that tradition is being eroded. It is being replaced with the idea that protecting a woman’s body is more important than holding a family together, that violence need not be tolerated for the sake of perpetuating a marriage.

Today virtually every city in America has a shelter where battered women can go to flee their husbands. In many cases the husband pursues his wife and wants her back -- not that he intends to stop beating her, but chiefly because he insists on holding his family together. Consequently, because women are rejecting the idea that family itself is more important than one’s own physical well-being, the violence that has been hidden for centuries is finally being talked about, and emerging into public view, And that’s the very sore "problem" called "family violence" of which we’re becoming increasingly aware. But the emergence of the "problem" is symptomatic of underlying changes -- changes away from traditions that made the family pre-eminent over the individual, and gave the man unquestioned authority over his wife -- all in the name of family stability. And in place of those former traditions, the care of the woman’s body and of her human dignity have come to be regarded as more significant than the institution itself.

That same shift -- from institutional pre-eminence to individual rights -- also applies to sexuality. Just as family violence was tacitly accepted during former times, so was violation of community sexual standards -- especially by men. While they had the privilege of discreetly looking for sex both before and after marriage, women were not supposed to have that privilege. That "double standard," along with the Victorian idea that women were passionless, placed 20th century men at a substantial advantage over women. But why did men have these freedoms while women did not? There were many reasons, but the idea that "nice virtuous women" were the foundation of the family and of society had much to do with women’s sexual limitations. These limitations were defended in the name of the family as an institution.

But throughout the past 25 years we’ve seen that tradition being replaced by the idea that women have the same sexual rights as men, Moreover, if sexual liberties are indeed a threat to the family, as some critics maintain, the current idea is that men are as responsible for the situation as women. Increasingly, women refuse to be the sole moral guardians of family -- insisting instead that if the family requires "moral guardianship," then men have to become co-partners with women in that enterprise.

Perhaps the most troubling byproduct of this increasing sexual freedom is the steep rise in the numbers of unmarried adolescent mothers. More and more teen-age females are having intercourse at an increasingly younger age. Yet the males with whom they’re having sex seem to feel little responsibility to protect their partners from pregnancy. These teen-age males seem to be the last bastion in the long history of the sexual exploitation of women. Adolescent women have accepted the idea that they have the right to enjoy sex. Unfortunately, they don’t have the sense of autonomy that would lead them to refuse sex if their own life-chances (as well as those of their as-yet-unborn children) are in danger of being damaged by male reluctance to use the simple means of contraception readily available.

Among adults, a troubling byproduct of increasing sexual liberty is the discovery that sex does not equal intimacy. Gay Talese’s recent best seller Thy Neighbor’s Wife, filled with page after page of extramarital affairs, including his own, missed the distinction completely. While in years gone by the kinds of marriages held together solely by the tradition that "stability is the best policy" often lacked intimacy, relationships held together solely by sex may be equally devoid of intimacy. And yet, as part of the pursuit of individual rights that is changing the American family, intimacy is coming to be valued as highly as sex.

Children’s Interests

The difficulty of balancing differing interests also emerges in the last of the four "problem areas." Critics worry that while adults are busy pursuing their own rights, children get left in the backwash. There are, for example, the alleged negative effects on children of divorce and of working mothers. More recently, the question of children’s own rights has come into sharper focus. What demands can children legitimately make on their parents? Some children in their 20s have gone to court to sue their parents, alleging that they were not raised properly, were mistreated as children, and as a result suffer from poor self-esteem. Recently we have read of the case of Walter Polovchak, the 12-year-old son of Russian immigrants who in 1980 refused to leave America when his parents decided to return to the Soviet Union. The U.S. government granted the boy temporary asylum, but some critics disagreed with that decision. As one put it, "I think it’s a bad precedent to let a 12-year-old boy tell his parents what he wants to do."

Clearly, the question of how to do right by today’s children is an unsettled one. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the basic trend of changing relationships between adult men and women can simultaneously be enormously beneficial to the rights and well-being of children. The desire of growing numbers of women to seek autonomy through activities outside the household can be a great boon to children if, alongside this trend, there occurs a corresponding move to bring men into the household -- to involve them as fully as women in child care and child nurture. Films such as Kramer vs. Kramer help to impress the public with the fact that some men want to be deeply involved in parenting; moreover, they can be just as good at it as women.

The tradition that every male must be a successful achiever dies hard. Nevertheless, some men are coming to realize that for decades they’ve been cheated by being cut off from child nurture. It was thought that the family as an institution would suffer if men gave up their work roles for parenting roles. But once again we observe the force of individual rights changing the family. As men come to believe that they personally will be better off if they get more involved in child nurture, and that the children will be better off as well, we can expect greater numbers of men to begin pursuing those kinds of benefits. And if men actually do change their parenting patterns, while women change their occupational behaviors, the positive consequences of that kind of parental symmetry could be profoundly beneficial for the family.

Balancing the Individual With the Family

"But," responds the critic, "with all this talk about individuals having their rights and ‘doing their thing,’ is there any place for the family as an institution? Is there any sense in which family traditions and family obligations remain important in today’s world?" Of course there is, and the trick is to balance the well-being of the institution with the wellbeing of the individuals that make it up.

But how can that be done? Freud said many things that today we totally reject. But now and again, he made statements that remain simple yet timeless. One of these classic insights was his assertion that more than anything else, adults need to work and to love (Themes of Work and Love in Adulthood, by N. J. Smelser and E. Erikson [Harvard University Press]). And we might add that children need to love and they need to learn to work. Therefore, to identify the optimal conditions under which the family can be a prosperous and robust institution, and to establish the kinds of traditions that will best meet the needs of its members during the decades ahead, we need to consider Freud’s insights. The ideal family institution is one that provides maximum opportunities for all its members to love and to work to the fullest extent possible.

Traditional family structures have prohibited most women from enjoying meaningful work experiences. Their labors were generally limited to the home, even if their talents would have permitted them to enjoy the rewards of paid employment. And those same family structures have prohibited men from enjoying meaningful love experiences. They were too busy making money to learn to love and to share themselves, and to participate fully in the nurturing of family relationships. And who suffered from these limitations on both sexes? Women suffered, not only because they lacked meaningful work, but also because they didn’t get the kind of love from their men that they needed and deserved. Men suffered because they couldn’t enjoy the release from financial anxiety that comes from having a co-provider in the household, and also because they were unable to receive and participate fully in the love their wives and children held out to them. And children suffered because they grew up repeating the same dreadful patterns.

Those patterns sprang from traditions in which the whole assumed more importance than its parts. We are heading now toward new traditions that balance individual with institutional well-being. That balance comes about through the total involvement of all family members in meaningful work and intense love and caring.

What can our churches do to help achieve that balance? First, they must resist the temptation to doomsaying: "Never ask ‘Oh, why were things so much better in the old days?’ It’s not an intelligent question" (Eccl. 7: 10, TEV). Second, they should encourage married persons to analyze their own marriages and consider whether they are governed either by traditionalism or by some form of individualism. In either case, couples should then ask themselves whether theirs is a satisfactory arrangement, or whether a richer marriage might be possible through a greater balance of the two poles. For those seeking greater balance, the challenge is to provide practical suggestions for involving all family members in meaningful work and love opportunities.

It is also vital that the local church become a support group -- a caring community -- for persons struggling with these sorts of difficult but not insuperable tasks. Often churches are faulted for following instead of leading society. In this case, however, the church may be the one institution in our society uniquely suited to raise aspirations aimed at new family traditions, and to provide a framework for their attainment.

Resurgent Fundamentalism: Marching Backward into the ‘80s?

Sometimes seemingly disparate events form a highly significant pattern. In December 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was imposing his own brand of medieval Islamic fundamentalism on the most westernized of Mideast countries. Then Pope John Paul II stripped Hans Küng of his teaching Post. The well-known Catholic theologian was found in "contempt" of church doctrine by a Vatican department known in earlier times as the Inquisition. In that same month Peking’s "Democracy Wall" was abolished. The one place in China where various forms of political expression had been tolerated is no more. The wall posters have come down, and the vendors of fresh ideas have been squelched.

Finally, there was Harold O. J. Brown, commenting in Christianity Today: "[Francis] Shaeffer asks whether Evangelicalism can tolerate in its fellowship those who are unwilling to condemn abortion on demand; [likewise] the inerrancy group is asking whether it can tolerate within its leadership those who will not affirm inerrancy" ("Assessing the Church of the 1970s: A Decade of Flux?," December 21, 1979). The tenor of Brown’s article is but a variation on the theme found in Tehran, the Vatican and Peking. Their goal? Conformity of thought and action. The means to the goal? The punishment and purging of renegades to keep the fellowship "pure."

Church and Sect

As Brown ponders the future of evangelicalism, he leaves no doubt as to the goal on his mind. He maintains that "the probable consequence of the inerrancy dispute will be a paring away from the evangelical body of some conservatives." Acknowledging that such paring would result in "numerical weakening," he adds that there would be a correspondingly greater "internal strength" which would "probably determine the character of evangelicalism in the 1980s." Indeed it would! And that character would revert to early 1950s fundamentalism!

The earlier evolution of evangelicalism out of fundamentalism and its current atavistic tendencies back toward fundamentalism represent a striking illustration of Ernst Troeltsch’s notions of sect-to-church-to-sect development (The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches [Macmillan, 1931]). Recall that Troeltsch described a "church" as a religious organization that seeks to work in and with society in order to leaven it. While it is sometimes at odds with society, the church is not inherently suspicious of it, nor is the church viewed with intrinsic mistrust. Above all, this institution is flexible and open to changes in the larger society. Moreover, it seeks to adapt to and with those changes; and it may sometimes seek to precipitate change.

In contrast, according to Troeltsch, the Sect rejects cooperation with society. It is in constant tension with society, viewing it with suspicion and mistrust. Furthermore, since the sect identifies the church with society, it sees itself in conflict with the church as well. Criticizing the church for having left some earlier pristine state, the sect calls for a return to that state.

Moreover, the sect perceives within itself the constant threat of an insidious "laxist tendency." The prime means of retarding laxity or corruption is to insist on conformity to certain ideas, to purge those who disagree, and thus, with a smaller but "purer" fellowship, to propagate the sect’s viewpoint.

Above all, the sect resists change both in its own religious patterns and in society. Change is in and of itself suspect since it may be, and often is, a modification of ideas considered sacred by the sect. Nevertheless, Troeltsch believed that the sect embodies a stirring appeal that attracts people to its cause. With the prospects of increased growth, "compromises" are made in its ideas and ideals, the "laxist tendency" sets in, and soon a "church" has evolved. In reaction to that development, another sect emerges, and the inevitable developmental process keeps propagating itself.

Widening the Gap

Fundamentalism was a sectlike reaction to mainstream Protestantism -- the "church" -- of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Much has been written about how fundamentalists perceived corruption in both church and society. But in Troeltschian fashion, fundamentalism prospered and evolved to the point that during the 1940s and 1950s some of its young men began to earn theological degrees from some of the most prestigious faculties in America and, in some cases, Europe. Thus began the flowering of "evangelicalism," the "laxist tendency." And for some 30 years evangelicals have tried to widen the gap between themselves and fundamentalists. They have wanted to repudiate their roots in at least two ways. One, they have sought to remove the obscurantist image by developing a body of conservative biblical and theological scholarship. Their goal has often been to develop a unique and viable alternative to modern "liberal" scholarship. Second, they have tried to repudiate the charge of "individualistic salvation" by developing a program of "social outreach" that is uniquely evangelical.

According to James Barr, evangelicals have not succeeded in their first goal (Fundamentalism [Westminster, 1977]). While there are excellent and well-stated "conservative positions" with regard to certain biblical issues, there is, no such thing as an "evangelical body of scholarship" which constitutes anything like a rival "school" to mainstream scholarship. (As a footnote to evangelical aspirations in biblical and theological studies, there have been concurrent attempts to establish a "Christian psychology," a "Christian sociology" and so forth. Proponents of this approach take a sectlike stance and assume that the behavioral and social sciences have been hostile to evangelical Christianity. Hence, their objective -- also unattained -- has been to try to establish a body of sociological or psychological thought that is distinctively "evangelical Christian," yet as viable as the mainstream discipline.)

The outcome of the second, or social-outreach, goal is similar. Richard Quebedeaux has written about the "new evangelicals" and their varied and vigorous efforts to pursue social justice with regard to blacks, poor whites, women and others. But we discover that the practical measures taken to alleviate the suffering and injustice are in no way unique to evangelicals. Such means are the common property of concerned Christians everywhere.

A Summons to Retreat

In their continuing quest for relevancy and repudiation of fundamentalist roots, some evangelicals have moved to what is known as a "left-wing" evangelical position. Evangelicals further to the right, such as Brown, view that trend as alarming evidence of an extreme "laxist tendency," and thus they call for the purification described above. The tendency of the sect mentality to revert to pristine states is found in Brown’s observation that early evangelical leaders should have faced the "inerrancy" question 30 years ago instead of leaving it for their heirs to resolve.

But how many evangelicals will heed Brown’s summons to retreat and march backward into the 1980s? Undoubtedly some will; but there are others who are rejecting the call for what it is -- a re-emergence of the fundamentalist sect mentality that has lain beneath the evangelical surface for three decades. As Barr and others describe it, that mind-set is nothing more than sheer arrogance -- the dogma that "we have all the answers which we must disseminate." Genuine dialogue, leaving open the possibility of mutual change, is by definition unknown to fundamentalists. "We will talk to you, but never actually with you." It is that incipient sect mentality that has tended to plague evangelicalism, and which has often kept it from building bridges with mainstream Christianity.

However, evangelicals repudiating sect mentality are seeking to forge links that further common aims of social justice and first-rate scholarship. They want "evangelical" to have an "on to" instead of a "back to" thrust. That thrust is based, on the semantic roots of "evangelical" -- "evangels" who proclaim the Good News of new life in Jesus Christ, and the vital importance of personal commitment to Christ. The sect mentality is considered "excess baggage" that only retards the thrust.

For example, "evangels" specifically recognize that most Christians in fact are not evangelicals. Nevertheless, evangels know that they have far more in common with all Christian believers than they do with nonbelievers. Therefore, they want to enter into genuine dialogue with all Christians, believing that they themselves can learn and change, as well as help other Christians to learn and change.

Evangels want to replace the spirit of sect hostility and conflict (so evident in Brown’s article) with a spirit of cooperation vis-à-vis mainstream Christians. They want to bring whatever insights they have to the common task that faces all Christians of "glorifying God" and of assisting humankind to "enjoy God forever." Evangels recognize that first and foremost the Scriptures describe a God of love and justice, and that all Christians must shape their theology and practice upon these dynamic potter’s wheels. By comparison, all of the rigidity and vitriolic disputes that inevitably pervade a sect-type institution (fundamentalism/evangelicalism) pale into insignificance.

That is the vision "left-wing" evangelicals (evangels) carry with them into the 1980s. Their hope is that it also has long-term implications for the 21st century and beyond. Barr concludes that fundamentalism may survive "for five hundred or a thousand years" (p. 315). Perhaps, but as it backs into the future, let us hope and pray that it will gradually diminish and be replaced by the sort of "sect-free" evangelicalism whose outlines are only now becoming dimly apparent.

Reflections on ‘Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic’

It is now 50 years since Reinhold Niebuhr published his little book Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic. Certainly it is one of his lesser works, but its influence may have been as great as that of his Gifford Lectures, published 14 years later; for of all his writings, Learns has had the widest reading. It is a short book. By Niebuhr’s own estimate, it bore the marks of immaturity; he was but 23 when he began recording his observations on parish life. In an introduction to a 1956 reprint edition he remarked:

The notes are primarily a record of the experiences of a young minister, and they will have interest primarily to other young ministers . . .

I regret the immaturity with which I approached the problems and tasks of the ministry but I do not regret the years devoted to the parish.

Despite the uneven quality of his writing, and some self-consciousness evident in the latter part of the book, marked as it is by Niebuhr’s awareness that the entries were destined for publication, there is a refreshing, contemporary quality to Leaves. It has staying power; today it provides high-quality reflections for the occupiers of uncomfortable pulpits, for those engaged in the rewarding and frustrating occupation of the pastoral ministry.

Called recently to a new parish in a small city, I took some time to reflect on the quality of my go years of ministry. Some of my thinking was stimulated and informed by a rereading of Niebuhr’s early effort. I found in this slim volume insights that resonate with my own pastoral struggles. Leaves was written during the days of Detroit’s great industrial expansion, and Niebuhr was pastor of a rapidly growing church; my own experience in rural, small-town and semi-suburban congregations has been markedly different. Nonetheless, Niebuhr’s notebook seems to speak directly to my focal concerns in ministry.

Granted that present circumstances are different from those of World War I and the following decade, ministry today is also practiced in a time characterized by great unrest, by the specter of armed conflict, and by the tremendous problems of the poor, the aging, the emotionally disturbed. The religious questions are the same as in that earlier era. The church is still uttering its profundities and its platitudes to small audiences, and ministers -- well, they are hardly wielding the sharpened sword of the Lord these days. Despite the passage of 50 years, only the faces and the names have altered. The individual and collective sins and associated guilt of the people of God remain unchanged.

The later theological and political writings of Reinhold Niebuhr have overshadowed Leaves, and rightly so. Even such extensive works as the Gifford Lectures have been found wanting by the present generation of theological students, who may be put off by the dogmatic flavor of them, preferring works less overtly theistic and christological. The current influence of both Leaves and The Nature and Destiny of Man seems diminished by the ascendancy of modern scientific and political thought, but such overshadowing may be for the moment only. Perhaps students 50 years from now will dust off copies of Niebuhr’s works, read them, and find as I did in the late 50s a gold mine of creative and caustic commentary. Niebuhr would, of course, understand that nothing he wrote had eternal value; his cautions that we should be sparing in handing out bouquets are found on virtually every page of his writings, along with his affirmation of such old-fashioned doctrines as original sin and the transcendence of God.

However, in this 50th anniversary year of the original publication of Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, I want to mark three entries which I believe reflect concerns common to all ministers. The first has to do with the minister’s frustration in going about the daily round. What to do? How much time to spend?

I am glad there are only eighteen families in the church. I have been visiting the members for six weeks and haven’t seen all of them yet. Usually I walk past a house two or three times before I summon the courage to go in. . . . Usually after I have made a call I find some good excuse to quit for the afternoon [p. 3].

The problem of setting pastoral priorities, of keeping spiritually alive while ministering to the needs of people, is much greater than seminary presidents and professors of pastoral theology ever reveal to their fledgling students. How hard it is for a pastor to establish any kind of meaningful relationship with a congregation. Whether in Niebuhr’s Detroit or in the places where I have done what I perceived to be ministry, the problems and opportunities rest uneasily upon structures of time, skill and energy.

I suspect that Niebuhr soon met the challenge of pastoral priorities, and visiting may have become easier for him. Bethel Church certainly grew far larger than its i8 original families. I wonder, though, whether the same problem of budgeting time and the vexing difficulty of developing intimacy with people remained long after he had attained personal success as a teacher, as a trenchant writer, and as a preacher to the cultured despisers of religion.

All I know is that even with a wealth of practical experience and with some professional skills, I still find it hard to order my time so as to visit the homes of the people I am called to serve.

A second area of resonance is with Niebuhr’s description of having relearned, or learned for the first time, the core of the faith from the people he was sent to preach to.

The way Mrs. ________ bears her pains and awaits her ultimate and certain dissolution with childlike faith and inner serenity is an achievement which philosopher, might well envy. I declare that there is a quality in the lives of unschooled people, if they have made good use of the school of life and pain, which wins my admiration much more than anything you can find in effete circles [p. 189].

He realized that his parishioner was probably to some extent deluded by her fundamentalism, but his comment reflects on the lack of moral fiber of many of faith’s more sophisticated exponents. He frankly admired what he perceived to be her pioneering and profound faith: She thanks me for praying with her, and imagines I am doing her a favor to come to see her. But I really come for selfish reasons -- because I leave that home with a more radiant faith of my own" (p.189).

Here again, I find consolation in the area of pastoral care and its companion -- pastoral faith. I am still struggling particularly with the use of prayer in visiting the sick. How, I ask myself, can I use this valuable resource without being manipulative, or without preaching my theories through pious utterance? Niebuhr found one secret: the value of his people’s own faith. He may have despised the simple catechism of his German congregation, just as we "moderns" take offense at the minimalistic theology of many of the folk who inhabit our standard-brand churches, but he knew also that they had a great deal to teach the young pastor by virtue of having surveyed the land "across the river" and having dared to cross the chilly waters of Jordan with a sense of divine protection.

It is the parish, said Niebuhr, that is the true school of the prophets. People involved in the comprehensive seminary programs of our own time may take exception to this notion, but the bald truth is that it takes an immersion, a second baptism, in the life of the congregation to give the pastor the combination of tenderness and toughness needed to survive its rigors. There are many Mrs. _____ among us. They have much to teach us doting disciples of the academic theologians, many of whom have little recent contact with the sights and smells of the assembled people of God.

III

The third resonance has to do with worship and preaching. Niebuhr’s commentary on worship in the Church of England comes to us fresh across the gap of 50 years:

We began the day with a visit to the York minister and ended it with a dinner at the Rountree cocoa works. Some of the men thought there was more spirituality in the discussion of the ethical problems of modern industry in which we engaged in Rountree’s than in the communion service we heard so atrociously read in the minister [p. 55].

After a nod in the direction of a moderate amount of ceremony and of the need for an architecture that witnesses to the presence of the Divine, Niebuhr continues: "Without an adequate sermon no clue is given to the moral purpose at the heart of the mystery, and reverence remains without ethical content (p. 55)

When I first read these words, I wondered whether people seeking the presence of God, a prophetic word and a priestly blessing find in the place where I stand to preach the Word the same emptiness that Niebuhr found in Yorkminster. Are silly pastors still speaking in well-modulated tones about a fire which was aglow sometime in a glorious past, but which is today a collection of embers growing cold and soon to be scattered? In other, more biblical words, is there a Word from the Lord today? Is there a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole?

Having come into the ministry in the years between two bloody conflicts, I find that my constant question has been the one about the Word from the Lord. Niebuhr spoke out of his own conviction and his own doubt to that part of the world which would listen to his impassioned prose. No one could have accused him of lacking a clear and certain tone. Some of the notes may have been misplaced, off-pitch, or unduly accented, but never was the sound of his clarion muffled by lack of force.

Was his voice simply that of another dogmatism amid the rampant but insecurely grounded certainties of his own time? Would he not have answered that any dogmatic certainty is but a dim projection of an ultimate truth, and that all of our "truths" are only artistic elaborations, accentuations, embellishments of a Truth greater than our visions?

Though the concern Niebuhr raised about worship is never fully resolved in any time (nor is the conflict between priestly and prophetic roles), he reminds us of the necessity of living in this world, in the tension between it and the "other world," inescapably related to the ethical and social problems of the time.

Fifty years have passed -- five decades of major advances in humanity’s ability to enhance life and also to snuff life out swiftly, slowly or horribly. But the passage of 50 years has not diminished the message Reinhold Niebuhr addressed to the young ministers who he felt might read his diary in the midst of their busy days. His words are a testimony to faith’s fragile but necessary character: "There has never been a time when I have not been really happy in the relationships of the parish ministry. The church can really be a community of love and give one new confidence in the efficacy of the principles of brotherhood outside the family relations" (p. 197).

Perhaps this testimony can stand as a light in the shadowy places of the parish, where most of us are to spread our lives. And perhaps his more somber reflections may cast useful shadows within the glare of some of the false and deceiving lights by which we live.

Deafness: Physical and Spiritual (Mark 7:34)

Then Jesus looked up to heaven, gave a deep groan, and said to the man, Ephphatha, which means, "Open up!" [Mark 7:34].

As I write these words, I am enjoying the sound of rain spattering on the windowsill outside my study. I’m also enjoying the excellent music shimmering in the room, courtesy of the Public Broadcasting System -- lovely strains of Mozart. These days, I take such sounds for granted, but ten years ago I would have worked in a muffled, partially silent world. Unless the radio had been turned to its highest volume, or I had somehow actually felt the rain, I would have typed away in a cocoon of silence. I was becoming deaf, and all the while I was denying the fact. The growing degree of my hearing impairment was beginning to cut me off from the society of my friends, from my profession, from everything. My family was aware of my deafness, and they grieved over it. But in addition to my physical loss I had developed a psychic unawareness. I was, in effect, a victim of both spiritual and physical deafness.

That I can now enjoy Mozart and take pleasure in the sound of the rain is not the result of a single miracle, or a consequence of one of those wonderful operations which have helped so many. I hear today, in a limited fashion, because I wear a hearing aid. For the rest of my life I will receive sound via a transistorized amplifier and a plastic plug in my ear. Never again will I hear (as I once did) the full range of musical sound. The music I hear today is truncated, roughly equivalent to the scratchy sound of a primitive, windup phonograph. But I hear, and as a consequence of the "miracle" of modern electronics I have had the veil lifted from my ears.

Because I am a religious person, and because without this hearing aid I am almost deaf, the stories of Jesus healing deaf people are particularly meaningful and poignant to me. When I read about Jesus healing the deaf man by means of groanings and prayers and signs, I am deeply moved, since buried in such stories is my own.

Physical deafness and spiritual deafness are alike; Jesus confronted one type in the man born deaf, the other type in the Pharisees and others who were dulled to his message. I would like to share out of my own experience some of the insights I have gained about both kinds of impairment.

Many of the deaf tend to be closed to new ideas. In part this is owing to their physical lack of receptive ability, but in the main it is because they are without the desire to perceive what they can. When I was growing deafer, I shut myself off from what I could understand, what I could hear -- simply because it was not as beautiful and as perfect as what I remembered from my days of better hearing. I will, I said to myself, retreat into my inner world. I stopped singing, stopped listening to records, and I left my beloved piano alone. I was, in short, a retreater. Resentful at what I perceived as my fate, I fell into some negative patterns of thought and behavior. I became a repeater of old orthodoxies, increasingly rigid, increasingly afraid. Spiritually, I was dulled to new ideas -- and to the joys of caring for others in my desire to be protected and cared for. The wonderful world out there was shut off in favor of the safe world in here.

As my hearing diminished despite three surgical procedures, I wondered what would become of me. I feared I would not, could not, make it. But here I am, 44 years old, holding a responsible job, singing in the choir on "good days" and generally enjoying life. Of course, the old insecurities pop up from time to time, especially when my hearing aid begins to fail. Yet the weight of the curse has been lifted.

The worst attribute of some hearing-impaired people is a tendency toward extreme conservatism with emotional and fiscal resources. Saving is a virtue; spending is a vice. To risk, either by loving or giving, is difficult for a person who has become rigid and unbending. My experience is that many of the deaf are acquisitive to a degree unknown in the hearing world. It can be a vice of the sensorily deprived that they are unwilling to take risks which might result in a capital loss. Also, because of their physical deprivation and spiritual dimming, they tend to feel that they are of little use in the world. I recall saying to myself: if I am hired, I will fail, or at best succeed only to a limited degree.

Such thinking was, of course, unfounded. In my case, offers of employment have not been lacking. But this crippling adjunct to my hearing impairment remains, and I continue to be plagued by a desire to conserve my emotional and spiritual resources -- which I resist with great difficulty. The trade-off is the fantasy that I will have what I need on a rainy day. What about the Day of Judgment?

To all of us, hearing or deaf, Jesus says, Ephphatha! He quickens in us the hope of a cure, even a partial cure -- a rehabilitation, if you will. The command "Be opened!" comes as a joy -- and as a threat as well. Which brings me to a couple of final thoughts. I have to want to "be opened." At one time in my life I became accepting of the compensations, the lack of responsibility, and the "strokes" which came from sympathetic friends and co-workers. In order to be healed, I had to desire healing. There was no more difficult time for me than that day exactly eight years ago when I walked into the hearing-aid dealer’s store, presented my audiogram, and turned my case over to him and his electronic devices. Then I had to decide that I would wear this contraption all the time, every day, even during naps (lest I miss the phone) and even while making love. What a burden! How much easier it would have been to sit in my little study in silence. There I could think, read, write and listen -- to the waterfall pounding in my cranium.

But in a secular way I had heard the command "Be opened!"

III

We have little information about how the healings the evangelists tell us of were accomplished. But buried in the stories are some analogies to my own experience. There are the friends who bring the afflicted to the point of healing. There are the physical signs, the eye contact, the prayers, and then, in the case of the man deaf and speechless, Jesus’s mysterious word, Ephphatha! -- be opened! How much power must have flowed from him! How weary he must have been at the end of the day! How depleted his, powers!

Here is congruence with my own experience. One of my healers was a not fully trained hearing-aid dealer -- a kind, caring man who went the second mile for me many times, I still remember the agony on his face when he sought in mine signs that I could hear. I almost heard his deep groan, his Ephphatha!

Is this not a word for us who deal with deafness of whatever sort? If cure is to come, there must be an alliance among the healer, the friends of the afflicted, and the candidate for healing. And in all there is a great expenditure of emotional strength, there are prayer and groanings -- and a command.

One day I was standing on the sports field of a school for the deaf and I watched the kids at play. I was amused to see two girls signing to each other -- about me. I was taken aback to see one of them signing, "Is he dead?" I quickly sensed my error. I had misread her rapid spelling; what she had actually asked was: "Is he deaf?" Mulling that over as I walked back to the classroom building. I realized that there is a mere letter’s difference between being deaf and being dead. From that moment on, I decided that I would rather be alive and a little deaf than dead in any way.