From Guilt to Affirmation in the Mainline Churches

The decline of members and dollars among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics since the mid-’60s is nowhere more graphically portrayed than at church convocations and national assemblies. Witness the graphs with their plummeting lines, the anguished presentation of statistics by the denominational hierarchy, and the curious blend of pessimism and hope communicated through such newly coined phrases as a “decrease of the decrease” to describe a “bottoming out” of the downward curves. All the while considerable guilt is being generated. The implication is that the causes of the malaise are internal; they are to be found in the structure of the church, the curriculum, the strategy for evangelism, the quality of pastoral leadership, or the general level of Christian commitment. The credibility of this diagnosis is evidenced by the intense, almost pathological navel-gazing posture the churches have assumed for the past two decades, and by their endless internal reforms: denominations have applied their energies to saving themselves through new structures, new curricula, new evangelism materials, new approaches to the role of the pastor and the people. But whatever benefits may have accrued, these efforts have apparently had little impact on the membership and dollar trends, which seem to have a life of their own.

An Astounding Boom Period

What is too often missing is the ability to see the recent church-member and dollar depression from the perspective of broader developments in the society at large and from a longer view of the life of the church in this country. I suspect that a future observer, looking back from some distance on the church in 20th century America, will not be half so impressed by the decline of the ‘60s and ‘70s as by the astounding boom period of the late ‘40s and the ‘50s. Edwin Scott Gaustad in his Historical Atlas of Religion in America (Harper & Row, 1962) takes us back to that time, citing a March 1957 Bureau of the Census survey in which persons 14 years of age and older were questioned about their religious preference.

The result gave some indication of the numerical strength of various religious bodies, but the amazing statistic from a long-term point of view is that an astounding 96 per cent of the respondents expressed a religious preference of some kind! To be sure, “religious preference’ is not the same as church membership or attendance, but it does depict a reality that is connected to church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette’s finding that in 1961 the proportion of church members to the general population in the U.S. was the highest ever in the nation’s history (Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, Vol. V [Harper & Row, 1962]). The overall proportion has not changed appreciably since then, though there has been a steady decline in mainline Protestant bodies and in the Roman Catholic Church. In terms of history and statistics, it would be much more accurate to describe this decline as a return to a more normal level of response following the unique and unprecedented heights of the churches’ bull market after World War II. And to understand this return, one would have to discover the factors contributing to the boom period -- factors no longer a part of the scene today.

The ‘American Way’

Two components of the postwar boom in the churches are unmistakable. The first is the inclusion of church affiliation in what we refer to as “the American way of life,” Franklin D. Roosevelt, the primary spokesman for the American cause in World War II, articulated the four freedoms for which Americans were fighting; one of these was freedom of religion.

All war is ambiguous, but there has been no other war in our history in which we were so convinced of our own righteousness and the evil of the enemies as we were in World War II. The country has never felt itself validated as fully as it was through that military victory and has never been more tempted by events to identify the cause of God with the world role of the United States of America. Victory ensured a preservation of our way of life with its four freedoms, and peace brought an uninhibited participation in this American way. Church membership became for a time what it has never been before or since -- an extension of citizenship. In a country where the separation of church and state is constitutionally guaranteed, the two were psychologically united. The church became for countless people a divine sanction of the American way.

A second prominent ingredient in the post -- World War II church boom was a quality of escapism and nostalgia. Several sociologists -- notably Gibson Winter in The Suburban Captivity of the Churches -- observed the connection, particularly in the mainline Protestant churches, between the creation of the suburbs and the institutional expansion of the church. It was in the suburbs that the new church buildings mushroomed. The churches became a significant part of the opportunity the suburb offered its residents to retain a bit of American rural life in an essentially urban environment. The suburb gave at least the appearance and perhaps the experience of retreat, quiet, rest and stability, so that family life could be enjoyed and traditions preserved. The church not only willingly bought into the setting, but then shaped its ministry so as to be able to provide the very benefits that people sought. If the suburb was the reverse side of the American family’s plunge into the rush, complexity and work of urban life, it was there that people were met and received by the Christian church.

Violating the Unwritten Contract

As one who was a pastor during the ‘60s and early ‘70s I find it relatively easy to identify the issues faced by the church in those years which generated the most controversy and which from an institutional standpoint resulted in the greatest losses. And it is not hard to trace their direct connection to the two factors above which had contributed so dramatically to the church’s boom period.

One issue was the church’s visible participation in the dominant political issues of the day notably the struggle for civil rights for minorities and the protests against the Vietnam war. Obviously there were countless levels of involvement, ranging from congregations that ignored, suppressed or resisted such issues to a few local churches that took direct action through deliberate corporate strategies. It could be argued that only a small minority of church members and congregations were participants in these issues. However, in this minority were leaders of protest movements as well as prominent national leaders of denominations, and right beside them were agents of national media. No one of the 96 per cent of all Americans expressing a religious preference in 1957 could miss the connection that Martin Luther King drew between the God of the Judeo-Christian story and the liberation of black people in our own society. No Presbyterian could bypass the arrest of then Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake for demonstrating against a segregated amusement park in Maryland, and no Presbyterian would be unaware of the $10,000 which the United Presbyterian Church later contributed to the legal defense of Angela Davis.

Whatever the individual’s own point of view and whatever the degree of involvement evident in a particular congregation, the church member belonged to a movement that was related, if not directly connected, to a Martin Luther King, a Eugene Carson Blake and, however remotely, an Angela Davis. The church which he or she joined to receive sanction for a way of life, to be assured that all was well with the country and that God’s blessing continued with us -- this same church was now confronting the country with its national fears and distortions and acting out not God’s favor but God’s judgment. One of the basic tenets of the unwritten contract between countless individuals and the church was thus violated by the church itself.

A second volatile issue of that period was raised by the changes occurring in worship. The most dramatic change was the Catholic transition from Latin to English, but there was a sense in which almost every denomination’s “Latin” was being translated into “English,” at the point of music, liturgy, symbol, color and style. These changes signaled not so much a rejection of tradition as an attempt to renew the tradition by placing it in the contemporary language of the world. People reacted simply because the symbols were changing, and there is no kind of change more difficult to bear. But the reaction was intensified as another basic presupposition of membership was contradicted: the experience of church, rather than providing a way out of this world, was increasingly being set in the context and language of a very disturbing and complex “now.” The new liturgy was encouraging people to come to terms with their world in the strength of the gospel. However legitimate from the standpoint of the gospel itself, such a movement was a denial of the church’s location in suburban retreat, at cross-purposes with the national definition of Sunday, and a repudiation of the member’s participation on the basis of the church’s ability to provide yet another route out of the world. Pulling crabgrass in the backyard, weekending at a cabin in the mountains, watching televised NFL football games -- these offered themselves as activities more harmonious with the established rhythm of life than attending church.

Thus those who had ridden the ‘50s treadmill into the church had the rug pulled out from under them in the ‘60s by the church itself. The crowd departed, a few of the leave-takers making a noisy exit, but most just slipping away, to be recognized in later years only as names on the long list which the discouraged governing board removed from the membership roll.

Yielding to Temptations

The point, of course, is that the church should not be discouraged. Historically the church has never been able to accommodate itself to a mass movement without surrendering much of its identity, and our history since World War II has given us yet another example. Surely the church is overextended in providing sanction for any nationally based life style, and betrays its own world-affirming faith by submitting to a movement of retreat and escape. The church does much better when it functions as its founder envisioned -- as salt or leaven -- rather than when it attempts to be the whole loaf. So set in the context of the church’s postwar boom, during which many people became members for the wrong reasons, our present decline is actually a growth, our slackening of institutional strength a recovery of identity, and our loss of members a renewal of integrity. Away with guilt and remorse!

For many the temptation now is, instead of serving faithfully and patiently out of this new strength, to submit to a panic strategy for recovering the lost institutional power. Were it not for the gospel’s continually checking the church’s gross inclinations, such a strategy would not be hard to devise. Given a blank check to build the church institutionally, one could still reap an impressive dividend by sustaining the forces and themes that were the attraction of the ‘50s -- that is, by offering a blend of the gospel, the American way, and nostalgic escape to an earlier era. Some other sure-fire ingredients of contemporary institutional success continue to make their appeal.

There is, for instance, the theory that one should treat church members as consumers, just as they are treated throughout the rest of the society. The ministry would then be confined to a professional elite, clearly identified and permanently detached, of those who see themselves as dispensers of the church’s goods to the members. The gospel, however, summons the whole church to ministry, both within and beyond the congregation.

Closely related is the temptation to package the gospel as an available component for individual personal growth. If the church’s ministry could become one building block in each person’s quest for fulfillment, it would find itself with a very salable item in a popular contemporary market. But the gospel calls us to a responsible and sustained participation in a community of persons and declares that we will come to ourselves only as we are willing to give ourselves away -- a course of action that has never sold well.

To have people involved in the institution at all, some response must be solicited, but the temptation is to suggest that it be sought only at carefully specified points. For instance, the response should be directed toward the support of the institution itself -- giving money, ushering, church administration, the kinds of roles that provide the advantage of available handles and the measurable satisfaction in being able to make some obvious contribution. Any ministry out in the society should preserve the distinction we have come to know between social service, which is okay, and social action, which creates controversy and disaffection. Those denominations that have been institutionally burned lately are now in the mood to guard that distinction with diligent caution. But the gospel addresses the total person and calls for an application to the whole life of the world.

A final temptation -- now that we have learned that the medium is the message -- is to make our appeal slick, glamorous and attractively packaged. This approach has application to all the communication that occurs in the church but particularly to its public displays: music, preaching, the performance of the liturgy. To keep the people in the posture of spectators while at the same time affording them the vicarious experience of participation via professionals enables the church to reap the benefit of one of the most powerful dynamics of our time. The gospel, however, describes the Christian community as a gathering of persons, each one of whom is particularly gifted by the grace of God, and it defines the church as the place where these individual gifts are to be discovered and expressed. This understanding militates against an attitude of professionalism and commits the church to an ongoing volunteerism and a permanent amateur standing -- hardly the ingredients for a slick operation.

Resisting the Gospel’s Hard Demands

While guarding against a rush to judgment, we can easily think of ministries that are pushing all or many of the current success buttons: they are carried out by a professional elite; they utilize the best marketing and media techniques; they dispense a personal fulfillment strategy to essentially anonymous folk who are regarded as consumers and called to respond in carefully prescribed ways which do not implicate them or their leadership in the more complex and controversial human issues. At the same time, the mainline churches, with some forgivable nostalgia for the crowds and dollars of the ‘50s, struggle with a much smaller community, encouraging persons to express their gifts in responsible ministries within and beyond the walls and to pursue the application of the Good News to every area of life -- most of all the places of conflict and pain. The “unpopularity” of this approach can be demoralizing, but such a ministry must be encouraged and sustained by a long view of its essential truth, derived not from the current standards of success but from a stubborn faithfulness to the gospel itself.

Let’s not be too smug, however. It may well be that for all of their culturally based success ingredients, some of the “popular” ministries are still much less embarrassed and much more effective in facilitating the reality and experience of God’s grace than the mainline churches are. The call to develop a responsible Christian life style within the community may be resisted because of the hard demands of the gospel. It may also be resisted because at the heart of the church there is not much gospel exposed, so that it all comes out as just another prescribed and peripheral way of life without any energy or motivation from the center.

Bruce Reed of the Grubb Institute of London has given a provocative picture of the essential ministry of the church from the vantage point of the behavioral sciences (The Task of the Church and the Role of Its Members [Alban Institute, 1975]). He sees contemporary persons involved in what he describes as a process of oscillation: at those times when people have their bearings, there is a sense of wholeness, power and integration that encourages creativity and expression; at times of anxiety or weakness in the face of difficulties, there is a need to reach beyond the resources available in oneself to regain a sense of well-being and to “get it together.” The first experience is characterized by what Reed calls intradependence, a self-sufficiency, and the second by extradependence, or seeking support beyond oneself. He speaks of religion “as the social institution which provides a setting in ritual for the process of oscillation in a society.”

Reed has described quite accurately a familiar back-and-forth of life and demonstrated the pertinence of the church community to our human experience. A much less sophisticated description of the church’s task in this light is to say that we are together to enable people to be born again, and again, and again. Without this center there will not be much life in the rest of the church, however much integrity we ascribe to ourselves against the servants of success.

A Community That Lives Sacramentally

The heartening reality is that the typical mainline church, by maximizing its advantages, can provide an environment that encourages this kind of continuing renewal. If Jesus Christ is the model of God’s being in the world, if the word does indeed become flesh, then God addresses us in person, as “you”; God comes to us through human beings, and God has touched the whole of human experience.

The response, then, is a community that lives sacramentally, and that is precisely what the contemporary church is capable of being. We must not be offended by the personal “you” that God speaks, or embarrassed to reply directly. We must wrestle with God in person and as persons together. We must enlarge the sacrament so that it embraces the world, so that our symbols, celebrations and proclamations affirm God’s presence throughout. We must enhance the qualities of community that contribute to growth, specifically the sense of history, of being connected to others. What the church really offers is the experience of being in it together.

This kind of community-building is an arduous and consuming activity often frustrated by its opposition to so much in the current mainstream. It is certainly not a strategy for success but only an effort toward faithfulness,

The Reformed Churches: Enlarging Their Witness

The churches that bear the name “Reformed” are only a fraction of the churches in this country that represent the Reformed tradition. It is one of the curiosities of that tradition in the U.S. that, while Baptists are always called Baptists and Methodists are always called Methodists, many Reformed Christians are called Presbyterians! The difference, of course, goes back to the place of origin. Though both groupings belong to the Reformed family, the Presbyterian churches look to Great Britain for their beginnings, while the churches that are called Reformed had their origin in a variety of countries on the continent of Europe.

Two denominations in the U.S. include “Reformed” in their titles today -- the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church. Both look to the Netherlands as the country of their origin, though in different ways. The Reformed Church in America, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 1978, goes back to the earliest colonial times when New York was New Amsterdam; in addition, it has been enriched and enlarged by many immigrants from the Netherlands in the eighth century. The Christian Reformed Church was made up almost totally of 19th and 20th century immigrants from the Netherlands who represented a division that took place in the Reformed Church there in 1834.

By American standards, both churches are small. The total membership of the Reformed Church in America is 360,000, and that of the Christian Reformed Church is 288,000 -- far less than 1 million in total. Over 25 per cent of the CRC’s membership is in Canada, where that church has ministered extensively to Dutch immigrants since World War II. While there are a few RCA congregations in Canada, they represent only a tiny fraction of the denomination’s total membership.

Ecumenical Considerations

Perhaps the best way to begin discussing the future of these churches is to consider their relationships with each other. Though closely related historically and theologically, they have had very different ecumenical histories. As one of the oldest American denominations (and one of the strongest in two of the original 13 colonies), the Reformed Church in America has always had an ecumenical posture, dating back to the early United Missionary Societies. It was an original member of the Federal Council of Churches, and of the National and World councils.

Despite this history of ecumenical openness, however, the RCA has had a consistent record of refusing to combine with other denominations in organic union, beginning with the old northern Presbyterian Church in 1876, followed by the then Reformed Church in the United States (now part of the United Church of Christ) in 1889, the former United Presbyterian Church in 1949 and, most recently, the southern Presbyterian Church in 1969. From this record it should be abundantly clear that while it in no way rejects a posture of ecumenical cooperation, the Reformed Church in America is nonetheless unwilling to surrender its denominational identity.

The Christian Reformed Church, on the other hand, has followed a much more isolationist course from its beginnings in this country in 1857. Though it has from time to time looked favorably on some conservative alliances, it has eschewed joining either the National or the World Council of Churches, seeking fellowship rather with groups like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or, more recently, with the new Presbyterian Church in America.

Within this decade, however, the two Reformed churches have begun conversations with each other. Not surprisingly, these talks have been disconcerting to the liberal wing of the RCA, which sees in them the threat of a church locked into Reformed confessional orthodoxy. The conversations have been equally distressing to the conservative wing of the CRC, which sees any cooperation with the RCA as leading to all the evils of participation in mainstream American Protestantism. But a strong middle group in each denomination has insisted that the two churches must address themselves seriously to the schism which has marred the lives of both for more than a century.

It would be impossible to predict where these conversations may lead. Probably no organic merger will take place within the next decade; many stubborn problems still must be resolved. But there is no doubt that talks will continue with greater seriousness. Instead of seeking ways in which they can react to each other -- the pattern of the past -- the two denominations should in the coming decade seek increasing areas of cooperation. It would be foolish to predict exactly what areas those may turn out to be, but it would be equally unwise not to point out a growing pattern of walking together for the future of the two churches.

Growth, Decline and Stagnation

During the past few years neither denomination has grown; both have stagnated. At an earlier period the Christian Reformed Church enjoyed a pattern of growth, but it seems to have been the result of heavy Dutch immigration to Canada; the rise leveled off when the’ immigration ceased. Despite protests to the contrary, neither church has yet discovered how to break out of its ghetto. In the case of the CRC and the midwestern section of the RCA, church growth has been largely a matter of remaining within areas where the denominations have had historic roots.

In the RCA there have been some recent exceptions to this traditional pattern. One is the development of a sizable number of Hispanic (and, to a lesser degree, black) congregations in northeastern urban areas like Brooklyn, the Bronx, Newark and Hudson County, New Jersey, which once were centers of traditional Reformed Church strength. The usual pattern of church flight from these areas seems to have been arrested as the RCA has begun to minister to the groups that have moved in. The fact that a denomination which had no record of previous work in Hispanic countries has had some success in meeting the needs of Hispanic immigrants to northeastern Cities may mean that, on this front at least, the RCA has been able to break out of its ghetto.

The other obvious exception is the enormous success of Robert Schuller in Garden Grove, California. While all kinds of questions have been raised about Schuller from within the Reformed Church -- some arising from petty jealousy and some based on serious concerns of theological integrity, the fact remains that the Schuller pattern has worked in Orange County, California, at a time when the rest of the church has been in stagnation or decline. The question for which no one seems to have the answer is how much of the Garden Grove Community Church’s success is the result of its leader’s charisma (at least several attempts at imitation elsewhere have been disastrous failures) and how much is the result of principles applicable elsewhere in the country.

The RCA’s top leadership has obviously decided to bet on the thesis that at least some principles of Schuller’s successful church are transferable. The denomination has recently raised a $5 million church growth fund, part of which is to be used in developing new congregations in the Sunbelt, particularly in Texas, where up to this point the Reformed Church in America has been totally unrepresented. Realizing that congregations, like individuals, do not do well in isolation, and that isolated congregations of the RCA have not been successful in the past, church leaders plan to develop clusters of congregations, rather than lone outposts, in these new locations.

At this point, therefore, the RCA is on the threshold of expanding into a rapidly growing area of the country where it has not previously had congregations. It should be pointed out that expansion of this kind seems necessary, since demographically the church is locked into areas like the northeast (where population is declining) and the midwest (where it is at least stagnant). Assuming that the move works, a decade hence there may be a growing number of healthy Reformed churches at various places in the Sunbelt.

If this happens, given the churches which already exist in southern California, Arizona and Florida (to say nothing of the growing number of Hispanic congregations back in the northeast), then at least two predictions of trends for the next decade would seem to be in order. The first would be a shifting of the power centers away from New York and Grand Rapids to some unspecified location where the growth of the church will be taking place.

Theological Positions

The more important prediction, however, has to do with what this shift could mean to the theological character of the Reformed Church in America. That character in recent years has been a middle-of-the-road ecumenical Protestant stance, hotly challenged but never dominated by a much more conservative evangelicalism in certain parts of the midwest. Given the overwhelming evangelical ambience of the Sunbelt, however, and the safe assumption that the RCA must reflect that attitude in order to succeed in the area, it is not difficult to predict that what has been the dominant theological position of the church may very well in the next ten years become a minority one as the conservative evangelicalism of the new Sunbelt churches joins forces with the existing strength of that position in the midwest.

The Christian Reformed Church presently contemplates no such massive, invasion of new territory, but population movements have already involved it in areas where there has hitherto been no Reformed witness. The usual pattern has been for a new church to be formed with a nucleus of Christian Reformed people whom industry has transferred to an area in which there is no existing CRC congregation. The nucleus is hardly enough to sustain congregational life unless other people in the community can he attracted. It is here that the enterprise has met with serious problems, for the CRC has always insisted on a life style different from that of its Reformed sister -- the maintenance of Christian schools, opposition to secret societies, two worship services (morning and evening) on each Lord’s Day, etc. By and large, the American Protestant world has not been sympathetic to these demands, and CRC growth in new areas has therefore been small.

It is safe to assume that the next decade will see questions being raised in the CRC about the essential character of many of these traditional demands for the life of the church. To what extent are they holdovers from situations in the Netherlands in which they were meaningful, and to what extent are they applicable in the U.S. in the last quarter of the 20th century?

Though the Christian Reformed Church is geographically limited and has usually chosen to live outside the mainstream of American Protestantism, it ought not to be cast in its traditional stereotype of hopeless Dutch conservatism. While there are undoubtedly those in that church who would like nothing better than to perpetuate the pattern of the past, there are a growing number of people in the CRC who believe that their inheritance has something significant to offer to the U.S. Already the holistic approach of Abraham Kuyper to theology and society has enabled the Christian Reformed Church to undertake some significant ministries in u

rban areas. It will be interesting to see how this group will seek to enlarge the future ministry of the denomination in other areas of this country.

Women and Ordination

In the recent past the attention of both Reformed denominations has been taken up with the role of women in the ministry. In 1972 the Reformed Church in America repealed its ancient prohibition against women serving as elders and deacons in consistory (both ordained lay offices) but retained the prohibition against their serving as ministers of the word. Since 1972 repeated attempts to do away with that prohibition have fallen just short of the two-thirds of the classes (presbyteries) necessary to make the change. Since the language of the denomination’s Book of Church Order already reads “persons” and not “males” in its rules governing ordination to the ministry, what is at stake here is really the repeal of a 400-year-old interpretation rather than of a specific law. Because of that fact, after it was announced to the 1978 General Synod that the proposed change had again failed to win a two-thirds majority, several classes proceeded to ordain women on their own. One class had in fact already ordained a woman in 1973, but in compliance with a strong request from General Synod, no other ordinations of women took place between 1973 and 1978.

Now that the issue has been joined in such a way that the question must be decided judicially rather than legislatively, some provision for ordaining women in the RCA seems assured. Since several ordained women are already serving in the ministry, it is hard to imagine any ecclesiastical action returning matters to their earlier status quo. Since at the 1977 General Synod a woman elder did well in the race for the vice-presidency (in the RCA the vice-president of General Synod is heir presumptive for the presidency the next year), it seems well within the realm of possibility that during the coming decade a woman (elder or minister) will be elected president of the General Synod, the highest office the church can bestow.

In the Christian Reformed Church the debate is at a much earlier stage; it may be longer and more heated, but advances have already been made. At its 1978 Synod the denomination voted to open the office of deacon to women. Whether the CRC will proceed to admit women also to the offices of both elder and minister remains to be seen. It is as deacons that conservatives can most easily envision women serving. The CRC may adopt the gradualist pattern of the RCA, or it may be forced to follow the more authentically Reformed tradition of viewing the three offices as a unity that cannot be broken.

Liturgical Change

Theologically speaking, the RCA is now more at peace with itself than it has been for many years. While there is still a very vocal and active right wins, a broad centrist evangelicalism across the church gives a more unifying position than has previously been the case.

Attracting much discussion is the recent proposal of the RCA’s theological commission that baptized children be allowed to receive the Lord’s Supper. In a church that has a strong commitment to covenant theology, that practice would seem to be the logical outgrowth of the theological premises, but the measure is being strongly opposed by those who feel that it would represent a serious lowering of the solemnity of the sacramental occasion. Paul’s admonition that “everyone should examine himself first and then eat the bread and drink the cup” is usually cited by the opposition. But since no change in the Book of Church Order is required, it seems likely that the new practice, which has already begun in some congregations, will be taken up by many others, though the whole question of Christian initiation will continue to be an unresolved problem in both churches -- as it is in Western Christendom generally.

Liturgically speaking, both churches have come a long way in the past decade, and attention to liturgical integrity and significance seems to be a sure characteristic for both in the future. Gone are the days when liturgical concern could be dismissed as the hobby of a few aesthetes. The CRC has at least one congregation which realizes Calvin’s ideal of the celebration of Word and Sacrament every Sunday. While no such congregation exists in the RCA, a growing number of churches have forsaken the traditional pattern of a quarterly and very penitential observance for a more frequent and joyous form of celebration. The number of congregations which celebrate the Supper monthly or on the great festival days is a growing one.

In times past, committees have been appointed to “revise the liturgy”; their task was to alter the punctuation and modernize the language of the 16th and 17th century liturgical forms. Those forms are still printed for congregations that wish to use them, but the number is a decreasing one, even in parts of the church where a few years ago the traditional forms were virtual “sacred cows.” The traditional revision committee has been replaced by a permanent worship committee which is to continue to suggest meaningful liturgical forms for congregational use.

Worship and Preaching

The charismatic movement has undoubtedly played a part in freeing up the liturgical life of both churches. Though it has had almost no strength in the CRC and only a small representation in the RCA, it has had a much larger effect on the worship of both churches than its numbers would seem to indicate. Worship had been almost uniformly stiff and formal and largely dominated by the domine (the traditional Dutch term for minister) to the extent that in many congregations he read the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer as a solo; in recent years the liturgy has become more varied and relaxed, with a great deal more participation by the people.

While there are still some congregations in which the traditional patterns are maintained, the number is increasing in which the old Calvinist liturgical framework (preparation, proclamation, response) is being restored; the fleshing out of this liturgical skeleton is done in a variety of ways, depending on the situation, of the individual congregation. It is not difficult to imagine that within the next few years this pattern will become almost universal in Reformed churches, together with an even wider observance of the Christian Year than is now the case (and the present practice is far more extensive than it was a decade ago).

Preaching continues to be central in the life of both denominations, and there is no indication that this focus will shift. It may well be that sermons will continue to grow shorter (they have already shrunk from 45 minutes to 20 within living memory), but that trend will persist because of increasing congregational liturgical and sacramental life and not because of any lack of emphasis on preaching. A move toward de-emphasis of preaching did appear in the ‘60s, but it has now been completely reversed; there is every indication from this generation of Reformed seminary students that good biblical preaching will be a continuing interest for some years to come. While Reformed churches have not recently produced any great preachers in the traditional sense (what denomination has?), both the RCA and the CRC have more than a fair share of competent preachers who take their task seriously. One likes to think that the next ten years will see that number increase.

The Future of Missions

The Reformed Church in America became involved in the world missionary movement much earlier than did the Christian Reformed Church. The RCA has therefore had to face, in a way the CRC has not, some of the problems which that movement today involves. Specifically these are a shrinking financial base at home and the rise of the indigenous churches of the Third World. Numbers of Reformed Church members have decried what has happened to the world missionary movement as a result of these factors and have urged a return to “old-fashioned” missionary work in a hitherto untried territory.

Partly in response to these pressures and partly in connection with its church growth movement, in 1977 the RCA decided to launch a new venture in Venezuela; it already has one missionary in the field. It would not be accurate to call this an “old-fashioned missionary effort among the heathen,” since there are Pentecostal groups in the area with which, it is hoped, close cooperation will be possible. In that sense, the new program is more in line with the mission philosophy of those who advocate working in concert with an indigenous church. The fact remains, however, that the project in Venezuela represents the first new missionary move in a long time in the Reformed Church in America and may well be a harbinger of things to come in a reinvolvement with the world mission of the church in the next decade.

Since allusion has already been made to the charismatic movement in connection with liturgical life, something more ought to be said about the future of that movement in the Reformed churches. In a real sense, it depends on the future of the charismatic movement in Christianity generally. Is it a wave of the future, or will it, having done its work, subside and become lost in the general life of the church? Because of a traditional Dutch rationalism (which can be conservative as well as liberal), it has never made the headway in the Reformed churches that it has in some others, though there are some RCA congregations in which the charismatic movement has proved to be divisive.

My own hunch is that, so far as the Reformed churches are concerned, charismatics may continue as a small minority for some time to come, but the movement’s principal effect on these churches has already been felt. Especially in the RCA, where for more than two centuries a theology based on experience has been a lively tradition, it has been able to reinforce that tradition and enlarge its sphere of influence. In both liberal and conservative wings of the RCA there is less rationalism and more piety than was the case 20 years ago. That fact may well account for the apparent growing theological consensus, but it would seem to be the lasting effect of the charismatic movement in the Reformed churches and one that probably will not change in the future.

Five or six years ago, when enrollments in the three seminaries of these two denominations began to show a marked increase, there were dire warnings about the placement problems that were being created for the future with an increasing number of ministers for a shrinking number of congregations. There can be no question that the situation has been tight, though it has never reached the proportions that were predicted. But given the quality of the large number of men and women who have been preparing for the ministry, it would almost seem that the Lord of the church knew more about the future than the church did!

Certainly the great thing that has happened in the Reformed churches recently -- something which one hopes can be continued into the foreseeable future -- is a new awareness of themselves and of their responsibilities and their possibilities. For the moment at least, they have put behind them any thought of looking to another denomination for their future -- unless it be that more of their future lies with one another. They have realized that while their smallness is something that can be a hindrance in many fields of endeavor, it can also be a virtue enabling them to do at least some things which cannot be undertaken by many larger denominations.

As for the immediate future of the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America, many problems lie ahead: many tensions that will have to be resolved and at least some tendencies that make me personally uneasy. But I am also aware of a Spirit and sense of excitement that may well ensure for these churches a better future than their recent past would indicate.

Feminism and Ministerial Education

The recent revival of the women’s movement is affecting every area of American life. The term “revival” is used because an earlier movement culminated in the voting amendment of 1919, which women had hoped would become instrumental in achieving other forms of equality. The movement slowed during the 1940s and ‘50s until books by Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan stirred a new feminism, later institutionalized in the National Organization for Women and presently focused on the Equal Rights Amendment and other issues.

The church, as a conservator of societal values, is understandably slow to affirm a movement that espouses change. But the church can hardly expect to remain untouched by this pervasive cultural development. The current task of biblical interpreters on the subject of women’s rights should begin in the theological seminary, where a variety of efforts may be undertaken to assist students in meeting this change during their professional preparation.

I

The knowledge/feeling level of the instructor is of basic importance. Students frequently regard their teachers as models by whose attitudes they are reassured, antagonized. reinforced or encouraged to change. What, in fact, do those who teach know about the present feminist ferment with reference to women and the Bible, theological insights or historical development? Some of the most thoughtful work in the field today is being written by evangelicals, to whom the authority of God’s word in Scripture is paramount. Two examples are Man as Male and Female by a Fuller Seminary scholar, Paul K. Jewett, and Virginia Mollenkott’s Women; Men and the Bible -- excellent both as book and as study course complete with cassettes. Other books about women in the Old Testament and about Paul’s view of women have appeared recently, as has a source-book of excerpts from historical writings: Women and Religion, edited by Elizabeth Clark and Herbert Richardson. Also to be considered are the thoughtful histories of church women’s societies that have been issued by several denominations.

Reading, however, is not enough. Highly educated people like to read about issues and digest them intellectually, but often prefer to avoid becoming inwardly affected. They can read about the misogyny of the church fathers and understand the cultural situation of biblical people, but remain personally untouched by their reading. If we are to fulfill our task, it is important to let this reading speak to us inwardly, compel us to think and feel deeply, affirm us where indicated and change us where necessary. Exploring one’s feelings can be uncomfortable, but it is important not to deny them; they will find expression in some form. Students can discern attitudes in the voice or manner of an instructor. Thus, no teacher should ignore the present situation.

The members of a seminary community also have pastoral responsibilities to one another. They ought to become aware of the needs that prompt a radical response to feminism on the part of some women and develop an empathy with their sense of frustration. Also, if it is concluded that women need to develop a more aggressive stance in order to minister in today’s world, attention should be paid to those women who are content with traditional roles, affirming those who know reasons for their stance and encouraging exploration on the part of those who seem unsatisfied but have defined no clear direction to follow.

II

What kind of help do women students receive from advisers? Some faculty see their advisory role primarily as that of assisting students to choose courses that will meet interests and fulfill degree requirements. Women should be encouraged to explore the full range of academic offerings -- especially those that would strengthen skills in theology and/or biblical languages, for example. In the past, women were advised to enter religious education, not because of special gifts, but because no adviser would have thought of suggesting a Ph.D. in theology or New Testament. Also, special female “sensitivity” to others often led to a hospital chaplaincy but not a pastorate, marriage counseling within a community setting rather than in a church. Sometimes it seems as though men are threatened by the aesthetic component in liturgy; in theory, women are supposed to appreciate the aesthetic but in ecclesial settings men are supposed to practice it. All of these attitudes need examination and revision.

The majority of seminary students may be male. If a teacher’s own inclination is to affirm traditional roles for men md women, some seminarians will be reassured -- but they will not be prepared or the future. Presumably such preparation is part of the educational task. There is no blueprint, but flexibility toward change is an essential element in vocational training. One might help by saying, “This is the way I still view the situation, but I can’t guarantee that it will not change in five, ten or 20 years” -- and then introduce options even if one does so on an intellectual level, with reservations and disagreements. If male students are involved in what some people like to call the new humanism, they will welcome affirmation from their instructors as they try new roles and modifications of accustomed ways.

III

Student responses to the women’s movement are as varied as those of their professors. Any class will encompass many viewpoints -- including reflections of wives’ feelings. Some student wives desire only to be a “good” minister’s wife. Some female members of the local church will affirm these women in a traditional role, while others, who work and are sensitive to matters of promotion and salary, as well as to the social and political implications of the rights movement, may wish for a pastor’s wife to be more supportive of their needs.

Certain women are abrasive in urging their case -- a posture which some people on campus will affirm, while others will withdraw in discomfort. In any case, confirming the proverb “The wheel that squeaks gets the grease,” emphatic protest has won some changes for women, frequently in terms of admissions policies, appointment to faculty positions and representation on committees.

Students are obviously aware of one another’s feelings. Women students are no longer tolerant of what they consider “put-downs” by men, such as the male seminarian’s remark that “women don’t need power in the church. They already exercise it through the kitchen and bedroom.” Male discomfort with the subject of women’s changing roles in the church is understandable: men will face stiffer job competition and will be threatened by more people within the power structure. Males who have learned how to deal with indirect power plays by women often do not find it comfortable to meet challenges directly. Whereas they have been able to joke about women “having their way,” they are not prepared to see them have their way through regular channels.

Male students who have internalized the pastor-laity roles with which they grew up struggle to restructure this role for their own ministry. But no one can live in the past, and the young, especially, should be alive to the future, The openness, even aggressiveness, of some women students in seminary could be positively construed as an opportunity for males to try out new roles in this supportive community before entering into the ambiguities of the parish situation. Presumably those preparing for pastoral or teaching ministry are alert to the feelings of others. They have it on good authority that this attitude was central to the life and ministry of Jesus. Support should go out to those men who are open to the aspirations of women and who are finding new directions for themselves.

One essential role for a teacher can be to act as a catalyst in restructuring perceptions among faculty. Every faculty is a team, and members know the others’ responses very well (more so within a small faculty than a large one). There are those who pay lip service: “I’m all for women studying for the ministry, but . . . Substitute “women becoming ordained” or “becoming pastors” or “having tenured positions”; the game of “yes, but . . .” continues. However, this game can be challenged. For example, it is important to note to what extent personality factors enter into faculty discussions about women students. Is this the case more frequently than in discussions of male students? Is the faculty more or less indulgent in carrying along the female student whose work is substandard? Equal treatment is what women want today, and faculty can help each other in seeking to establish uniform standards for student evaluation.

The place of women faculty on the functioning committees should also be explored. Is there at least one woman on each? I do not advocate proportional representation per se; it could result in unqualified committee members and would help neither the school nor the women s movement. But increasing female representation has the practical effect of bringing more women into the decision-making process, giving them opportunity to exercise their abilities and make their viewpoints known.

IV

In addition to amassing knowledge and analyzing feelings and interactions, seminary communities may take further steps to enrich educational perspectives on feminism. The most obvious is to schedule campus visits by people who represent new roles for women. However, to encourage positive reaction, visiting speakers will have to be chosen judiciously. This does not mean never to invite a woman who is overly aggressive in pressing her viewpoint; prospective clergy need to learn how to face acerbic approaches. since they cannot be guaranteed a lifetime of serene pastorates. They need to learn how to hear what people are saying instead of defensively turning off an unpleasant message, and they need to understand both the personal and tactical reasons why the speaker uses this approach.

Another goal should be to develop courses about women and religion. These ought to reflect on the subject biblically, theologically and historically. They may also explore feelings and attitudes and be designed to help women broaden their self-image in the religious professions, as well as to help men accept them there. In addition, there is a need for conscientious examination of all seminary courses to determine whether the roles of women have been ignored, neglected or distorted. A study of church history should not only include the council at Whitby but note that the head of that monastery was the Abbess Hilda. The Avignon period of the papacy cannot be seen in proper focus without examining the role of Catherine of Siena, who acted as mediator. No study of Christian spirituality is complete without the writings of Theresa of Avila.

And so it goes. Women have been heroic figures in the history of Protestant missions. The development of women’s societies within American churches made possible effective education and financial outreach for home and foreign missions. Women studying today want to know more about the biblical understanding of women. It comes as a surprise to some to realize (although they have read it many times) that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection. Women are also asking theological questions about the biblical understanding of God, seeking to comprehend what it means that God nurtured, led and fed his people.

V

It seems astonishing to one acquainted with the world of publishing that some teachers and many students in theological schools see no reason for changing their writing or speaking style to reflect present-day trends. Many women no longer hear themselves as being included in the terms “man” and “mankind.” Do teachers and clergy really want to remain unheard by part of their class or congregation? Women are discovering that the word “man” has sometimes been inserted and mistranslated in the Bible where Greek, Hebrew and Latin used a generic word whose English equivalent is “human being” or “humanity.”

The McGraw-Hill guidelines for non-sexist references in writing have been widely adopted among general secular publishers, a development to be noted in 1977-78 books. Some, but not all, church-related publishing houses are also sensitive to the trend. Students should not be permitted to hand in class papers written incorrectly. Admittedly one’s first attempts at change may be awkward, but writers soon learn ways in which plural forms and third-person usage can ease the transition. In a short time, one is making few lapses that a careful rereading does not uncover.

It is also important to become more sensitive to hymns and other liturgical materials used in worship services. Some women are looking for new worship materials. Others are asking only that the most blatant examples of sexist language be omitted. There are at least 500 hymns in any hymnal, and one does not have to choose “Rise Up, O Men of God.” Besides, its theology is bad. The kingdom does not tarry; nor does the church (her strength unequal to her task) wait for men to make her great. Women are not brothers of the son of man.

VI

In religious education, which has frequently been considered primarily a woman’s field, there are and have been few women attaining to the rank of full professor in theological seminaries. In the past generation, few women have been appointed ministers of education in large or “key” churches. Seldom have they been called as pastors even to medium-sized parishes. Rarely have there been women in top denominational or judicatory positions. In recent years, even the field of children’s ministry has been co-opted by men on the grounds that it needed more male figures (but no corresponding need voiced for adult ministry to have more female figures). A key responsibility will be to see that such positions are open to women, instead of wondering aloud how, with the increased numbers of women students, there will ever be found jobs enough to go around.

Some new positions may be opening, but not quickly enough to meet the needs of seminary graduates. Faculty members ought to use all the influence they have in finding openings and in encouraging laity to accept women In unfamiliar roles. At present, such efforts may be more difficult in the pastorate than in the fields of teaching or administration.

Where do all of these developments and suggestions leave male students and professors? They are left, as are men in other vocations, learning to look at women as persons and co-workers. They are learning that they can no longer protect certain boundaries, at the same time as they are gaining freedom to adopt life styles more open and less competitive. Their sometimes oppressive machismo role may vanish, opening the road to a new humanization. Aware of the importance of roles, models, methods and language, each professor and each student -- male and female -- can be a catalyst to help seminary communities move positively and creatively in the present situation of change.

Process Thought and the Liberation of Homosexuals

In the small southwestern Iowa town where I grew up, there were three churches -- each with its own unique appearance and reputation. The largest church seemed rigid, formal, uncompromising, intractable. Its church plant was a huge, imposing brick structure designed to last forever. Not even a midwestern tornado could threaten to dislodge it. The medium-sized church was flexible, informal, accommodating and very much “up front.” Its buil

ding was an unpretentious frame edifice, built to accept all kinds of additions appropriate to the changing times. It had long since lost any trace of architectural symmetry. The smallest church was somewhere between these two. It advertised itself as the “via media.” As I recall, the church building was a symbolic mixture of brick and wood: anchored to the rock, but geared to the times.

It was fascinating to observe both the contrasting appearances and the diversified styles according to which these churches dealt with continually surfacing theological and social problems. There was always a conflagration. If the issue wasn’t ecumenicity, then it was civil rights, or the liberation and equality of women, or the immorality of war. No sooner was one fire extinguished than another started to inflame the congregations.

A New Debate

It is reasonable to assume that these three churches continue to carry on as usual, fueled by a fresh incendiarism. The current cause, no doubt, would be the desire of self-acknowledged, practicing homosexuals to be recognized as full and equal church members whose sexual orientation is irrelevant. At first glance, acceptance of homosexuals appears to be another on that homogenous list of liberation causes faced courageously and openly by some churches; another minority group which has experienced oppression by the majority would now be granted status as full participants within the Christian community. To the triumph of blacks and women would be added the freedom of another of God’s tyrannized persons -- the homosexual.

If this is the case, all Christians ought to welcome the event. As Robert McAfee Brown put it:

It is clear in the Biblical drama as a whole that when God takes sides, he sides with the oppressed. . . . God did not side with Pharaoh, the powerful political leader, but with the oppressed menial servants, the slaves. God sides with the oppressed. The oppressors are on the wrong side. It is as clear as that!

Is the homosexual issue in fact comparable to those other liberation movements of recent decades? At least in one very significant aspect, the answer is No. Quite simply, the Bible explicitly and repeatedly condemns homosexual acts. A task force of the United Presbyterian Church U.S.A. set up to study homosexuality summarized its examination of the relevant biblical material by stating that “homosexuality is a minor theme in Scripture.” To substantiate this assertion, the group offered a list of 14 passages. Collectively, these references constitute more than 275 verses. Rather than documenting the contention that homosexuality is a minor theme, the verses appear to have quantified the seriousness with which the Judeo-Christian communities regarded the problem. A reading of these scriptural materials can only lead to the conclusion that both the Old and the New Testaments emphatically oppose homosexual practice. In this important aspect, homosexuality must be viewed differently from the other liberation movements.

Rejecting Scriptural Authority?

The current debate has ramifications far exceeding the particular issue. At stake is not only the acceptance or rejection of a minority group; even more important is the question of whether Christians can accept a style of conduct which the Bible pronounces unacceptable. For many persons, an endorsement of homosexuals is tantamount to a rejection of biblical authority, and opens the door to an arbitrary selection and elimination of biblical standards. Surely this license must appear to be a radical departure from the confessions of many churches in which the Scriptures are declared to be “not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel.”

Can the church adhere to the authoritative witness of the Bible and still accept homosexuals? Is there a methodology whereby the God of the biblical community can be understood as having modified his ethical stance on such an important issue? There is such a theory, and it may be illustrated by an analogy built on the three small-town churches.

The indestructible brick church can represent a theological understanding known as classical theism, which eventuated as an alliance of biblical theology and Greek philosophy. The Bible defined God as perfect, and Plato and Aristotle argued persuasively that perfection implies changelessness. After all, they reasoned, if something changes, it must change either for the better or the worse. If it changes by adding something to itself such as a new idea or novel experience, then it must previously have been lacking this knowledge or awareness and, to that degree, it must have been deficient and imperfect. Since the biblical God is perfect, he must be complete and incapable of change. Theology and philosophy conspired to give us the Unmoved Mover, the Perfect Being with whom “there is no variation, no shadow of turning,” the One who announces, “I am the Lord, unchanging.” His son incarnates this immutability: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.” The favorite hymn of the brick church must be

“Great is thy faithfulness,” O God my Father.

There is no shadow of turning with thee.

Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;

As thou hast been thou forever shalt be.

In accepting this classical theistic understanding, one must relate to a God who never changes his mind, never alters his judgments, never allows himself to be moved by the exigencies of the world. His ethical pronouncements are binding on all persons in all places for all times. If homosexuality was an abomination in biblical times, it is still wrong today and will be wrong in the eschaton.

The second church model is the frame building with the asymmetrical proportions. Here, nothing remains constant. Change dominates. The concept this structure symbolizes is of a God who is not very dependable or predictable. He has no absolutes, no fixed character, no qualities which transcend the vagaries of time and place. A God ruled by change is not available to assist in solving ethical dilemmas. For either he continually changes himself, in which case his character lacks substance and stability; or he is determined by circumstances outside of himself, in which case he is powerless to direct and assist others. An entirely arbitrary and capricious God may inspire awe and fear, but he offers no model for formulating a coherent social ethic.

Finally, there is the heteromorphic church with the mixture of brick and wood. Such a structure symbolizes both change and permanence, both alteration and constancy. As applied to God, this idea suggests that in some ways he is immutable and absolute, while in other ways he is changeable and relative. This is the position of process theology -- an understanding which has much to offer the church in its current struggle.

A Creative Compromise

First, consider God’s changeless attributes. His love for his creation, his concern for persons, his availability to those who seek him, his sensitivity toward those who are wronged, his disdain for cruelty, his desire for the best, his keen awareness of our condition, his patience in the pursuit of value -- these are absolute and unshakeable characteristics of God. In us, these attributes are relative and variable, but God does not share this liability.

Second, consider the manner in which God changes. All of the above-mentioned characteristics of God are relational. They show what kind of God he is by showing how he relates to his creation. His awareness, concern and love are absolute in the sense that they are constantly present and continually expressed to us in our daily lives. However, we are creatures of temporality and we find ourselves thrust into a world of becoming and change. “There came a storm and a blinding rain, and the world was never the same again.” Therefore, if God is going to relate absolutely to us, to be genuinely aware, concerned and loving, then he must take into account the variables of our changing situation. God’s love is absolute and unchanging; but the particular manner in which that love expresses itself must be relative to time, place and person.

Viewed from this process perspective, God’s ethical judgments are manifestations of his absolute character. The biblical mores are expressions of that character, and any attempt to dismiss them as insignificant mitigates God’s seriousness in relating to his people. However, since these mores are relational and since at least one of the parties in that relationship changes, it follows that the mores must take into account the changing situation. Suppose that a child were fortunate enough to have a deeply concerned father. The father would demonstrate his concern by offering various commands and proscriptions which prohibit the child from staying outside after dark, from attempting to drive the car, from playing with matches. Relative to the development of his child, the father’s commands are absolute and they give evidence of his caring. However, 20 years later these same commands would not only be irrelevant but counterproductive. Instead of manifesting and enhancing the father’s love, they would show a possessiveness and insensitivity which would be in direct contradiction to the parent’s intentions.

Similarly, biblical mores ought to be perceived within the context of God’s dipolarity. They express the absoluteness of his love, relative to that community. As conditions and persons change, the particular mores may change as well, but God’s loving never changes. This is not an advocacy of cultural relativism or personal subjectivism in ethics. All changes must be defined through the absoluteness of God’s changeless attributes.

From the viewpoint of process theology, the question of homosexuality can evoke a new interpretation. There is no need to suggest that the Scriptures are perennially averse to this form of human sexuality. Instead, the church can affirm the validity of those proscriptions in manifesting God’s absolute concern for the nascent Jewish and Christian communities, and then raise the question concerning their value for contemporary society. Given the demographic situation of the early communities, God’s care might well have been expressed through his insistence that sexuality always be open to the possibility of reproduction. Therefore, homosexuality would be wrong. However, the situation has changed, and this same insistence may not now be advantageous or propitious. Relative to the mission and the stance of the 20th century church, the question would be whether the affirmation and acceptance of homosexuals is harmonious with God’s changeless love for his children.

No Easy Answer

Process thought pictures God as being passionately engaged in this evolving world. His nature is such that he continually urges the accomplishment of the best that can develop in each relationship. This desire, like that of the father with the maturing child, reveals itself in his constant love, and in his relative ethical injunctions commensurate with that love.

Process thought insists that there must be at least three ingredients in every meaningful experience. There must be an ideal or a goal to be achieved. There must be some elements of novelty, daring and freshness so that our experiences are not merely repetitious and anesthetizing. And there must be enough control and order so that our adventures do not result in a feeling of chaos and disintegration. These ingredients are relevant to the decision currently facing churches. Can the inclusion of homosexuals be integrated with the operative understanding of human sexuality which is a legacy from our previous conditioning in such a manner as to result in creative, exciting growth?

Certainly the process model does not offer an easy answer to the question of homosexuality, but it does provide a conception of God in which some positive affirmations can be made. Biblical authority can be recognized and taken seriously, and the possibility of affirming homosexuals can remain a viable option, regardless of the decision which the church has made in the past or makes in the present. Also, this interpretation offers the church an opportunity to realize that, like us, God is hard at work attempting to eventuate this conflict into a creative, liberating experience for all his people.

Amid the furor periodically aroused by B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism, scant attention has been given to the intriguing relationship between his ideas and Christianity. The shortcomings of Skinner’s theory -- that human acts are the product of heredity and environment -- are well known; I shall return to one of them later. At the same time, criticism of Skinner’s work tends to be marred by emotional overreaction and by downright inaccuracy. Defensiveness about behavior modification’s apparent threat to “freedom and dignity” has to some degree blinded critics to its positive value -- both as it illuminates human behavior and as it has proved to be a means of helping persons. In contrast, I believe that Skinner’s work and the growing influence of “behavior mod” techniques in educational, mental health, and penal programs need to be responded to in a constructive and integrative way. Here, then, is a modest attempt to spell out the implications of Skinner’s thought for religion.

The Earnest Adventure That Failed

No unusual or significant involvement with religion seems to have touched Skinner’s own life, at least as he describes it in the first volume of his autobiography, Particulars of My Life (Knopf, 1976). He attended the Presbyterian Sunday school regularly in his hometown of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, and he recalls being terrified as a young child by his grandmother’s vivid description of the hell that awaits children who tell lies. In the classes of a revered English teacher, Mary Graves, Skinner appears to have received a thorough exposure to the Old and New Testaments taught as literature. But in terms of serious personal involvement with faith, his experience was textbook-typical: an intense but brief period of religiosity as an early adolescent that accompanied and conflicted with his awakening sexual awareness. As Skinner described it in a “historical-religious” account of his religious education, written a year after graduating from college: “Religion and religious ideas bothered me and I thought a great deal about them. I had never associated freely with other boys [as he began to do at that time] and now my doubts about things and my sex shame drove me almost to solitude” (Particulars, p. 110).

The adolescent Skinner considered the recovery of a lost watch a divine revelation; Elijah-like, he believed that faith really could move mountains, and he tried to demonstrate it with an experiment in levitation that failed. But the earnest adventure with faith was short-lived. Having come up against the usual sorts of doubts about religion that arise for persons as intelligent as Skinner, he marked the end of this period of religiosity by announcing to Miss Graves that he no longer believed in God -- to which that fascinating woman replied (sardonically? sympathetically?), “I have been through that, too” (p. 112).

The Christianity ‘Phenomenon’

The adult Skinner evinces in his writings a literate awareness of the phenomenon of religion, specifically of Christianity. References to religion are scattered liberally throughout his works. He recognizes religion as one of the chief social and ideological elements in human experience. Frequently, Skinner’s references to aspects of religion are illustrations of behavior or behavior control, as for example when he writes in Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Bantam, 1972): “Heaven is portrayed as a collection of positive reinforcers and hell as a collection of negative, although they are contingent upon behavior executed before death” (p. 129). Only in his early, very systematic work Science and Human Behavior (Free Press, 1953) does Skinner deal with religion topically. There he devotes a chapter to it as one of several “controlling agencies” -- along with government and law, psychotherapy, economic control, and education (pp. 350-58).

Religion also figures importantly, if briefly, in his historical analysis of how scientific explanation developed. In Skinner’s perspective, prescientific humans needed the gods -- mythical “theoretical entities” -- to explain natural and human phenomena. Our continued belief in mind as an “indwelling agent causing the behavior of a body is a relic of the old unscientific belief in invisible causes of phenomena. “Physics and biology soon abandoned explanations of this sort,” says Skinner, “and turned to more useful kinds of causes, but the step has not been decisively taken in the field of human behavior” (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 5).

Skinner’s characterization of the gods as explanatory fictions is, of course, a very familiar partial truth: it constitutes the least interesting aspect of his treatment of religion. He also persists’ in attacking the “homunculus” caricature of mind or self even after nearly all sophisticated accounts of the human being and behavior have long abandoned mind/ body dualism.

‘Walden Two’: Human Utopia, Not Machine

Significantly, it is in his popular fictional work Walden Two (1948) that Skinner chiefly manifests a fascinating relationship to Christianity. Almost 30 years after its publication, this novel remains the best introduction to the man and the spirit of his behaviorism. More fully than any of his nonfiction writings, Walden Two reveals Skinner’s humanity and humanism, his wide reading and general literacy, his wit and imagination, his loves and aversions. In personal passion it much surpasses his autobiography. Walden Two also has the virtue of making appealingly clear the fully human face that “behavior mod” has always had for Skinner and his followers -- over against the sinister, mechanistic caricature of the Skinnerian world.

Walden Two lets us see the principles of behaviorism ideally at work among concrete, normal human beings interacting in a social setting. In the course of the story Skinner touches on a remarkable number of issues large and small, dramatizes specific examples of behavior-changing techniques, and reveals a larger appreciation of the nuances in actual human behavior than is apparent in his other books. In one way (but only one!) he is like some of the existentialist writers: he seems to state his position more clearly and compellingly in fiction than in nonfiction.

It is commonplace for novelists to warn us against identifying them with any of their fictional creations or the particular views that characters express. As it happens, however, in a 1956 American Psychologist article we have Skinner’s own word for it that his protagonist, Frazier, is to a large degree a spokesman for himself -- boldly setting forth some ideas that Skinner at the time was not prepared to advance in his own name. Even without the author’s confirmation, the reader is most likely to infer such an identification from the clearly didactic -- indeed, evangelical -- tone of the book, a tone which is also the source of its artistic flaws. There is no reason to believe that Frazier’s remarks about Christianity do not reflect something of Skinner’s own thinking.

Frazier turns out to be a warm admirer of Jesus -- not, of course, as a religious figure, but as a person with great psychological insight. Burns, the narrator of the story (Burrhus Frederick Skinner’s questioning alter ego?), relates that Frazier “spoke as if Jesus were an honored colleague whose technical discoveries he held in the highest esteem” (Macmillan, 1962, p. 299). Jesus’ greatness lay in his being “the first to discover the power of refusing to punish” Frazier is deeply impressed by Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies. This he sees as an effective method of avoiding both self-punishment and the use of physical force to control other people’s behavior:

To “do good to those who despitefully use you” has two unrelated consequences. You gain peace of mind. Let the stronger man push you around -- at least you avoid the torture of your own rage. That’s the immediate consequence. What an astonishing discovery it must have been to find that in the long run you could control the stronger man in the same way [p. 261].

Frazier chides Castle, the philosopher who is a wretched caricature and little more than a foil for his arguments, because the latter sees only two alternatives -- free will on the one hand, and on the other, control of behavior by physical force or threat of force: “Not being a good behaviorist -- or a good Christian, for that matter -- you have no feeling for a tremendous power of a different sort” (p. 259). What Frazier is talking about is positive reinforcement as a means of changing behavior; he seems to equate it with what Jesus and Christianity are trying to get at with the notion of agape, the power that alone overcomes evil and reconciles human beings to one another. Of course, Frazier goes on to say, Jesus discovered and articulated the principle but lacked the knowledge we now possess: through reinforcement theory we can deliberately create social conditions in which punishment has been eliminated as a way to control behavior.

As exegesis, of course, all this is seriously wanting. But as a practical contribution to the Christian “art of loving,” Skinner’s work on the effectiveness of positive reinforcement and the ineffectiveness of punishment continues to deserve serious attention.

Frazier’s Providential Economy

In Walden Two Skinner indulges in a bit of fun directed, I think, at both himself and his critics. Frazier confesses that, as the designer of the Walden Two community, he “likes to play God”; jokingly, but not altogether facetiously, he compares himself to the Creator-Father and to Christ the Son. At one point his physical posture even mimics Jesus on the cross.

“In many ways the creation of Walden Two,” its creator says, “was closer to the spirit of Christian cosmogony than the evolution of the world according to modern science” (p. 299). That is, Walden Two was brought into being by Frazier’s purposeful design; it did not evolve hit-and-miss. The “science of behavior” enables Frazier to design the community so that he knows what the consequences of each aspect of its design will be -- just as in traditional theology it is according to God’s eternal plan and purpose that the universe as a whole and in all its parts unfolds. In a key passage, Frazier goes on to relate this creation analogy to what he calls “the old question of predestination and free will.” As he describes it to Burns:

All that happens is contained in an original plan, yet at every stage the individual seems to be making choices and determining the outcome. The same is true of Walden Two. Our members are practically always doing what they want to do -- what they “choose” to do -- but we see to it that they will want to do precisely the things which are best for themselves and the community. Their behavior is determined, yet they’re free [pp. 296-7].

Skinner’s Denial of Freedom

It is the linkup Frazier makes here -- between Walden Two’s “behavioral engineering” and a classical theological determinism -- that provides the touchstone for the rest of this essay. Skinner’s explicit and robust determinism is of course well known, not to say notorious among his detractors. He grants that determinism is unprovable; nonetheless he claims that it is axiomatic for scientific inquiry and continually vindicated by it. Frazier makes this claim unmistakably: “I deny that freedom exists at all. Perhaps we can never prove that man isn’t free; it’s an assumption. But the increasing success of a science of behavior makes it more and more plausible” (p. 257).

There is no contradiction in Frazier’s two statements -- his assertion of freedom and his denial of it. In the first he uses “free” in the everyday sense of being able to do what one wants to do. In the second he uses the term “freedom” to refer to the idea of a causal agent, a personal author of actions, whose agency is necessarily but not sufficiently accounted for by its antecedent conditions.

John Hick very aptly describes this concept of freedom in Evil and the God of Love: “Whilst a free action arises out of the agent’s character it does not arise in a fully determined and predictable way. It is largely but not fully prefigured in the previous state of the agent. For the character is itself partially formed and sometimes partially re-formed in the very moment of decision” (London: Collins, 1968, p. 312). It is this basic notion of freedom as indeterminisin that Skinner denies. (I shall return shortly to Frazier’s positive use of an “everyday” notion of freedom.)

According to Skinner’s behaviorism, all human behavior results from the interaction between genetic-evolutionary endowment and environmental contingencies. He grants that human actions are highly complex and that frequently we cannot predict them accurately because of the many factors involved. But he believes that all actions are predictable in principle. He is. furthermore, convinced by the actual successes of behavior-modification experiments that empirically we can learn enough of the relevant factors to predict and bring about desired behavior.

Other references in Skinner’s writings indicate as well that Skinner is clearly aware, at least in broad outline, of the tradition of theological determinism in Christianity. Theologians, perhaps more than any other humanistically oriented inquirers, should be able from out of their own biblical and theological tradition to appreciate the Skinnerian picture of our utter creatureliness and interdependence. Admittedly, his narrowly physicalist conceptual scheme and terminology are off-putting. Those who are scandalized by Skinner, however, should recall that some of Christianity’s finest minds have been driven into a theological determinism by central elements in the biblical and theological portrayals of the Creator and his relationship to his creatures. I am speaking, of course, of Augustine and those other luminaries of the Augustinian tradition: Luther, Calvin and Edwards.

Edwards’s Necessary World

Jonathan Edwards in fact provides an excellent example: the exponent of a thoroughgoing, consistent theological determinism, he brilliantly reworked theology in the light of that early modern philosophical and scientific knowledge which made possible Skinner’s work. Edwards was overwhelmed by the mystic contemplation of the infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient Being whose creative power and wisdom brings into being out of nothingness, alone sustaining the whole universe of myriad creatures visible and invisible.

To Edwards it was metaphysically preposterous to think that there was anything whatsoever, whether in the “natural” or in the “moral” order, that did not have a necessary and sufficient cause. In Freedom of the Will he wrote: “So that it is indeed as repugnant to reason, to suppose that an act of the will should come into existence without a cause, as to suppose the human soul, or an angel, or the globe of the earth, or the whole universe, should come into existence without a cause” (Bobbs-Merrill, 1969, p. 54). As for the Arminian notion that the will is self-determined, Edwards attempted to show that the very concept of self-determination is riddled with contradictions.

The alternative to self-determination is other-determination. Edwards’s analysis of human behavior might be called “environmental,” in Skinner’s sense of the total environing field -- physical, social, linguistic -- to which human behavior is a response. According to Edwards, volitionally the human mind is determined by the strongest among the various “motives” that it perceives. A motive is any sort of fact -- or environmental contingency or set of contingencies, if you will -- perceived as an object of choice or preference. Volition or “willing” is inseparable from motivation so understood. In his classic study of Edwardean theology, Piety Versus Moralism, Joseph Haroutunian -- writing in the heyday of the earlier (and much less sophisticated) Watsonian behaviorism -- made this striking observation:

A modern rendering of this analysis is the study of human behavior in terms of “stimulus and response.” A stimulus is Edwards’ “motive,” and response is volitional behavior. Such a study is based upon the principle that where there is no stimulus, there is no response; where there is no action, there is no reaction; where there is no cause, there is no effect. The nature of a given stimulus is irrelevant to the fact that it acts as a stimulus. An “S-R bond” may be physical or it may be moral, and in both cases it is a “certain connection” between a “motive” and an act of volition. Edwards’ metaphysical principle of necessity is the modern methodological principle that all action is reaction [Harper & Row, 1932, p. 225].

Like the other Augustinians, Edwards considered the “ordinary language” definition of freedom to be the only coherent and usable one: “power, opportunity or advantage that any one has, to do as he pleases” (Freedom of the Will, pp. 31-2). I am free insofar as I am able to carry out in action without impediment what I prefer to do. But of course what I prefer to do is determined by the strongest motive that presents itself. It is certainly the case that I may or may not be able in any given circumstances to do as I please, but it is not the case that I am similarly able or not able to “please as I please.”

As we have seen, Frazier expresses an analogous notion of freedom in Walden Two. Persons in the utopian community do what they want to do -- and hence are “free” in the ordinary sense. But what they want to do is determined by environmental contingencies of reinforcement. A chief difference, of course, between Walden Two and God’s world is that behavior in the former is a predictable and humanly desirable consequence of reinforcers that are designed and controlled by human beings.

The Limits of Determinism

Of course, theological determinism is utterly out of fashion -- for what are generally good and substantial theological reasons. As for Skinner’s contemporary naturalistic determinism, many natural scientists would simply deny that the deterministic hypothesis is absolutely necessary to scientific inquiry. They would point to the indeterminacy principle in physics, which establishes at least the possibility that scientific theory may have to adapt itself in some areas to phenomena that are insufficiently determined by general laws. Some scientists engaged in the biological study of human behavior would go on to say that a strictly determinist theory is not adequate to explain the nature and complexity of data such as self-awareness, self-criticism, symbolization and choice-making.

There are several other important criticisms to be made of Skinner’s theory that I shall not go into: his apparent obliviousness to the inherent limitations of his and every particular theoretical model, his methodological tunnel vision, and his explanatory superficiality. And yet even when the severe inadequacies of Skinner’s portrayal of the human situation are taken into account, we must go on, I believe, to acknowledge the sobering measure of truth contained in it. For Skinner is simply an extreme and provocative exponent of a persuasive general proposition with which we have long been familiar, chiefly through the work of the social sciences: that human being and behavior are, at least to an indeterminably large degree, shaped by the interaction between biological nature and social/physical environments.

Skinner’s challenge to the defenders of human freedom is one of his most important and useful contributions. There is still far too much unwarranted confidence, careless equivocation, unexamined assumption, and plain self-deception in our talk of personal liberty. Skinner forces us to face up to the formidable reality of genetic-environmental conditioning, the elusive nature and scope of freedom, and the far-reaching ethical, social and theological implications of such data.

In the continuing debate about human freedom, not only determinists but also nearly all indeterminists (the early Sartre is the notable exception) recognize that our behavior is at least to a very large degree determined by heredity and environment. C. A. Campbell, one of the most distinguished philosophical defenders of freedom in this century, believed that very few human actions qualify as free behavior. And in The Ghost in the Machine -- a brilliantly creative synthesis of recent work in the biological study of human behavior, albeit a dismal caricature of Skinner’s behaviorism -- Arthur Koestler defends human freedom on biological grounds, while concluding nevertheless that it is impossible to decide whether or not anyone’s actions in a given situation are free. “How am I to know,” he asks, “whether or to what extent his responsibility was diminished when he acted as he did, whether he could ‘help it’? Compulsion and freedom are opposite ends of a graded scale; but there is no pointer attached to the scale that I could read” (London: Pan Books, 1970, p. 251). Koestler here puts his finger on the dilemma: on the one hand, if we are faithful to the full range of the data of human selfhood we need to be open, pace Skinner, to genuine indeterminacy. On the other hand, such indeterminacy is impossible to identify.

A Balanced Response to Persons

Skinner’s work -- and 20th century advances in the social and natural sciences generally -- poses a practical moral question for all of us: How can I respond compassionately to the bondage in your and my character and actions, while at the same time nurturing the elusive, unbound dimension of our selfhood? The balance between these two responses is extremely difficult to strike; we are hampered by our deep-rooted assumptions about freedom, as well as by the nature of our involvements with other persons. Nonetheless, it is just such a balanced response to persons that the data of human behavior demand of us.

Contemporary knowledge of human nature and action gives new force to the commandment to love my neighbor as myself. It is typically the case that I rationalize my own behavior -- in part, that I excuse it with causal or determining explanations: “I’ve had a bad day,” or “It’s just the way I am.” At the same time, I tend not to excuse other persons in this way but to hold them fully responsible for their actions. In other words, generally speaking I am a determinist with regard to myself and an indeterminist with regard to others. To love others as myself means, in part, that I must be compassionate enough to recognize in their actions the determining factors that I recognize honestly in my own life.

The balanced response of love also demands that I recognize, challenge and nurture both in others and in myself, in a quite unmoralistic way, that mysterious and hidden center which is an unpredictable source of creative response-ability. The elusiveness of freedom that should make us charitable in our judgments about other persons is that same freedom which renders all of us responsive to challenge and which enables us to grow in surprising ways.

A Powerful Reminder of Creatureliness

In the final analysis, Christianity does not need to be reminded of human freedom -- quite the contrary. However, neither classical nor modern Christian thought, I believe, has faced with utter seriousness the heavy “weight” of biology and environment as they shape human actions. Even the Augustinian theologians indulged in tortuous verbal gymnastics at they attempted, for example, to hold persons responsible for their sins within the context of a theological determinism. (In view of my previous remarks, the vital notion of responsibility must be justified on pragmatic -- behavioral -- grounds; it cannot, it seems to me, be defended “ontologically” by arguments for human freedom.)

Skinner’s work is an invaluable, if clearly limited, reminder to Christians of some of the radical implications of our earthly creatureliness and interdependence within the web of nature and society. In depth and explanatory power, the psychoanalytic tradition remains a far more illuminating interpretation of human bondage, one that (in good “Augustinian” fashion) graphically accounts for the demonic character of that bondage over against Skinner’s irrepressible optimism. Nevertheless, his single-minded scientific labors, in spotlighting what is surely the enormously important role of environmental reinforcers in human behavior, are of real practical usefulness in understanding and helping persons. Skinner’s work also forms yet another essential piece in that whole puzzle of human nature and behavior which theologians are obliged to integrate into a realistic picture of human life and the cosmos.

Archives: Articles

From Guilt to Affirmation in the Mainline Churches

An Astounding Boom Period

The ‘American Way’

Violating the Unwritten Contract

Yielding to Temptations

Resisting the Gospel’s Hard Demands

A Community That Lives Sacramentally

The Reformed Churches: Enlarging Their Witness

Ecumenical Considerations

Growth, Decline and Stagnation

Theological Positions

Women and Ordination

Liturgical Change

Worship and Preaching

The Future of Missions

Feminism and Ministerial Education

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Process Thought and the Liberation of Homosexuals

A New Debate

A Creative Compromise

No Easy Answer

The Prints of Sadao Watanabe

V

Faith in Learning: Integrative Education and Incarnational Theology

The Human Context

The Quality of Life

From Theory to Practice

A Drastic Change

Myth and Incarnation

Shaping and Being Shaped

The Death of God: A Belated Personal Postscript