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Charismatic and Mainline

On Passion Sunday in 1960, the Episcopal pastor of a growing parish in suburban Los Angeles revealed his covert spiritual experiences of recent months. Unknown to most parishioners, he and 70 other members had been "speaking in tongues" -- making utterances that most mainline churches equated with overheated Pentecostalism and Holy Roller tent revivals.

Dennis Bennett got through the 7:30 service without causing a commotion at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which had 2,500 people on its rolls. At the end of the second service, however, an assistant priest pulled off his vestments, put them on the altar and stalked out, saying, "I can no longer work with this man!"

Tumult reigned in the patio. One man stood on a chair, shouting, "Throw out the damn tongue speakers!" according to Bennett.

The parish treasurer at the time, M. Scott Pruyn, in a letter to this writer years later, said that he and the senior warden confronted Bennett in the sacristy and told him he had broken a "solemn promise" that he would not preach on tongues --speaking "without first discussing the matter in executive session with the officers and vestry." Bennett promptly agreed to resign.

Episcopal Bishop Francis Bloy of Los Angeles quickly forbade group meetings "under any semblance of parish auspices to be held where speaking in tongues is encouraged or actually engaged in." Indeed, most tongues-speaking members stopped going to St. Mark’s.

The crisis at St. Mark’s escaped public notice until Jean Stone, a laywoman active in St. Mark’s tongues-speaking group, contacted Newsweek and Time. Both magazines carried stories about St. Mark’s that summer. Stone kept up her nationwide publicity campaign with letters, pamphlets and a quarterly magazine. Bennett accepted a post as rector of a struggling urban parish in Seattle that quickly flourished, lifting up Bennett and his wife, Rita, as leaders in a burgeoning neo-Pentecostal movement.

Thus, a mere 16 miles away from the site of modern Pentecostalism’s American beginnings in 1906 at Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles, an Episcopal church in the Van Nuys section of the city sparked a latter-day Pentecostal revival.

Believers eventually took the name charismatics (from the Greek word for "gift") partly to distinguish this movement of better-educated, higher-income Christians from that of Pentecostals such as those belonging to the Assemblies of God, the Foursquare Gospel and the Church of God in Christ. Yet no less than the "classic" Pentecostals, the new charismatics saw themselves as reclaiming spiritual blessings of the type cited in the book of Acts, which recounts in chapter two how the apostles spoke in strange languages on Pentecost, and in 1 Corinthians 12, which refers to "gifts of the Holy Spirit" such as tongues, prophecy, interpretation and healing.

Over the next dozen years, the charismatic movement stirred controversy in virtually all mainline and traditional Protestant denominations. It rose to an exhilarating peak in the late 1970s, then scattered into other movements. Mainline charismatics today are arguably inconsequential -- except for the strain that is an integral part of the dissident Anglican movement battling U.S. Episcopal leaders over homosexuality and other concerns.

Studies of Pentecostal influence within world Christianity for the past hundred years are hardly complete, scholars say, without tracing the second stage that began in 1960 with the mainline Protestants and in 1967 with the Catholic charismatic renewal. The Catholic renewal gathered momentum initially at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, then at the universities of Notre Dame and Michigan. U.S. Catholic dioceses, after some hesitancy, decided to permit Catholic renewal worship and activities as long as they stayed within institutional oversight.

Many traditional Protestant churches in the late 1960s and early 1970s criticized charismatic beliefs as divisive and questioned whether the spiritual gifts described in the New Testament were identical to those practiced by contemporary Christians. When mainline churches proved inhospitable, "spirit-filled" believers often formed support networks within their traditions or drifted to independent charismatic and Pentecostal megachurches. Southern Baptist, Missouri-Synod Lutheran and Nazarene churches, among others, discouraged such practices to the point of disfellowshiping clergy and churches.

Yet because charismatics and Pentecostals generally shared with evangelical Protestants a conservative political-moral outlook, many in these Protestant groups toned down their hostility and made peace in various ways.

Leading charismatic pastors tended to de-emphasize tongues-speaking as the required sign of the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." Billy Graham crusades and Bill Bright’s Campus Crusade eventually welcomed charismatics as co-workers for Christ. Pentecostal televangelists Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker and Paul Crouch often led the charge for evangelical and charismatic Christians against secular humanism, sectarian cults, homosexuality and liberal theology.

The high point for organized charismatic activities, according to most accounts, was in 1977 when 50,000 believers from dozens of denominations displayed their ecumenical enthusiasm at a gathering in Kansas City, Missouri. A follow-up conference ten years later in New Orleans urged charismatics and Pentecostals to work together on world evangelization. A leading expert, Vinson Synan of Regent University, estimated that in 1977 there were 50 million Pentecostals and charismatics worldwide. The number surpassed 200 million in 1987.

Today, many scholars and participants agree that the charismatic movement as a distinct phenomenon has fizzled out, and survives in niches of broader movements.

"At first, people wanted to celebrate. Some got goose bumps and fell onto the floor -- but that got boring," said J. Lee Grady, editor of the Florida-based 250,000-circulation Charisma magazine, a flagship journal for both charismatic and Pentecostal believers. "The spirit came to empower us to plant churches and feed the poor."

The terms charismatic and Pentecostal have become virtually interchangeable, and both labels tend to be avoided by mainstream Christians who have incorporated various "Spirit-filled" beliefs or styles into personal and congregational life. Worshipers raising hands while praying and church services using repetitious "praise" music -- once signs of Pentecostal-charismatic piety -- are no longer predictable indicators of charismatic identity. A crossbreeding was at work in the 1980s and 1990s. Former Fuller Seminary professor C. Peter Wagner, for example, spoke of a "third wave" of evangelicals who believe "signs and wonders" will accompany the proclamation of the gospel. John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard churches, was an early proponent of this strain of the charismatic movement.

Remnant charismatic groups in mainline Protestant circles persist, sometimes identifying with socially conservative renewal groups that oppose progressive leaders in mainline denominations, attacking their liberal social stances. But there are exceptions.

· The charismatic Aldersgate Renewal Ministries is part of the United Methodist Church’s structure. Executive director Gary Moore of Goodlettsville Tennessee, said that about 1,500 to 2,000 people attend the ARM annual meeting and 3,000 are on its support list.

"Being within our denomination opens some doors and acceptance it would not otherwise have, and it also gives us a line of accountability that maintains equilibrium," Moore said. "We’ve not gotten involved in internal politics," he added, "Groups like Good News are flag bearers for political [change] we chose to focus on bringing personal and church renewal."

· Presbyterians may have been the first to form a national charismatic network associated with a mainline denomination. The group cites as forerunners Dennis Bennett at St. Mark’s Church -- despite his Episcopal affiliation -- and pastor Louis Evans Jr. who introduced charismatic ministries in 1963 at Bel Air Presbyterian Church outside Los Angeles. In May 1966, Presbyterian pastors formed a "charismatic communion" at Lake Murray, Oklahoma.

In 1984, with the addition of Reformed church members, the group adopted the name Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International (PRMI). According to its apolitical Web site, Zeb "Brad" Long, a former missionary to Taiwan, became its executive director in 1990, and the group hopes to establish a permanent center in Black Mountain, North Carolina. While grounded in Presbyterian-Reformed theology and biblical interpretation, PRMI says it identifies with the "third wave" movement in its understanding of the Holy Spirit.

At the same time, Torn Swieringa, a charismatic working among Christian Reformed members, said that PRMI teaches ‘that we are saved by grace ‘alone and do not need anything else for salvation." Gifts of the Holy Spirit are welcomed "for the shaping of our character to ref1ect Jesus" and for having an impact in mission, he said.

In at least three other mainline traditions, the charismatic and social-moral conservative wings are often indistinguishable

· In the United Church of Christ, the charismatic Focus Renewal group has become smaller and less active, said David Runnion-Bareford, who edits its newsletter. He is also executive director of the conservative Biblical Witness Fellowship. "Once distinctly non-charismatic, the Fellowship evolved in such a way that many of its key people would consider themselves charismatic," said Runnion-Bareford, who lives in Candia, New Hampshire.

"Most of the UCC-related and non-UCC settings I move in that are evangelically inclined include people who pray in tongues and people who don’t [but who] mingle without discomfort," he said. The transition of charismatic practices into wider circles "has contributed significantly to the realignment of the church at large," the minister added.

· A schismatic shift has occurred in the charismatic group within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Paul Anderson, a spokesman for Lutheran Renewal, said many of the 2,000 or more people who attended Holy Spirit conferences years earlier "have jumped ship and found new homes" outside the ELCA.

Anderson belongs to the 8,000-member, two-campus North Heights Lutheran Church in St. Paul, a self-described "spirit-filled" congregation which left the ELCA a few years ago. In a July 2004 posting on Lutheran Renewal’s Web site, Anderson suggested that it would not be appropriate for conservative fellow members to stay loyal to the denomination. "The ELCA has been experiencing a theological and moral landslide since its inception," he wrote.

North Heights is the flagship church for the Alliance of Renewal Churches, which is composed mostly of Lutheran churches with a charismatic background. "There is still plenty of interest in the Holy Spirit," Anderson said, "but we don’t use the word charismatic much anymore. That movement peaked in the 1980s." The ARC calls itself "Spirit-empowered," which he said was more user-friendly for open-minded evangelicals.

· The Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship, founded in Dallas in 1973, has undergone two name changes and several location changes. ACTS 29 Ministries, as it is now called, has relocated to Atlanta. The group has struggled like other specialized charismatic fellowships to keep the movement relevant to mainline churches.

Instead, the Anglican-Episcopal charismatic influence shows significant strength as part of the theological mix in two other movements.

First, the popular Alpha courses that introduce Christianity, originating in London’s Holy Trinity Brampton Church in the 1970s and ‘80s, have helped put "gifts of the Spirit" belief’s into a broader framework, say Protestant charismatic groups. "The Alpha course is used extensively in diverse Protestant settings in the U.S.. including dozens of UCC congregations around the country," said Runnion-Bareford of Focus Renewal.

Second, the primary traditionalist groups fighting the U.S. Episcopal Church over the election of an openly gay bishop and use of same-sex blessings have embraced charismatic worship and a charismatic worldview. They share that perspective with often-charismatic African Anglican bishops who also seek to isolate the U.S. church leadership from the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Asked to characterize the American groups, sometimes called "orthodox Episcopalians," Leslie Fairfield, professor of church history at Trinity Episcopal School of Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, said in an interview: "In general, they are Anglo-Catholic in liturgy, evangelical in theology and charismatic in piety." His seminary is considered the seminary of choice for the movement, just as the large Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, is the flagship congregation.

"Take somebody like David C. Anderson," said Fairfield, referring to the president and CEO of the conservative American Anglican Council. Fairfield said that Anderson, a retired pastor, prefers "Anglo-Catholic haberdashery, candles and stained glass; in theology he is thoroughly evangelical; and he is open to people who pray in tongues and, with appropriate accountability, who have prophecy with wisdom from the Holy Spirit." Anderson’s last parish was the large St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach, California, which, along with two other solidly charismatic parishes, is battling the Los Angeles Diocese in court to keep its church properties.

Closely related to the American Anglican Council is the Anglican Communion Network (ACN), moderated by Episcopal bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a charismatic who is prominent among more than a dozen conservative bishops and dioceses. They formed the ACN early last year as a "confessing" association of Episcopal dioceses and congregations that, its Web site says, expects "the appearance among us of the fruits and gifts of the Spirit."

Another leading figure was the late Diane Knippers, longtime head of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, known for its sustained criticism of liberal Protestants. Once a Methodist who worked for the Good News magazine, Knippers later become an Episcopalian at Truro Church, where she served on the vestry.

Calling himself a "spiritual mutt," Charisma editor Grady said that he now attends Orlando’s New Covenant Church, which broke from the Episcopal Church to align itself with the Anglican Mission in America and the Anglican bishop of Rwanda. Raised a Southern Baptist, Grady became a charismatic in college, attended an independent charismatic church, then was ordained by the Pentecostal Holiness Church before being drawn to the conservative Episcopal parish.

The rise, fall and diffusion of the charismatic movement that erupted over 35 years ago in mainline Protestantism may have been driven in part by changes in American culture. "It’s not so coincidental that the movement arose in the ‘60s and ‘70s," said Frank D. Macchia, who teaches systematic theology at Vanguard University of Southern California in Costa Mesa.

"There was a spiritual quest in the general culture," said Macchia, editor of Pneuma, the journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. "There was the search for community, whether in parachurch groups or forms of communal life; a quest for ecstasy or an alternate form of consciousness along with a disillusionment about Western rationalism; and, thirdly, a search for new forms of healing."

As church membership loyalties frayed in the 1980s, "post-denominational influences" probably contributed to the downsizing of mainline charismatic groups, Macchia said. In addition, the distinctive Pentecostal practices perhaps lost their shock value as Americans also encountered New Age ideas, religious gurus and increasing religious diversity.

For signs of the domestication of the charismatic movement, one need look no further than St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys. Still in the same building on Sherman Way, the church now has 350 members and about 170 attending services. For Pentecostal students at nearby King’s Seminary, founded by pastor Jack Hayford of Church on the Way, St. Mark’s is part of a tour of historic Pentecostal Sites. In the early 1990s, St. Mark’s rector was Gary Hand, who says he volunteered the fact that he is charismatic when he interviewed for the post. At one point, Hand led classes on "gifts of the Holy Spirit" and a charismatic praise service one Sunday night each month. About 10 percent of members were charismatic, not counting a charismatic Ugandan congregation that met there, he said. "People would hardly ever hear me speak-big in tongues because I do it quietly in prayer language," Hand said in an interview.

The current rector, Norman Hull, said that he is not a charismatic at all, but that "we have people who have an incredible healing ministry with the laying on of hands" They were never part of the Bennett era, he said, and they eschew the charismatic label. The Ugandan congregation still worships at the church, which now also houses an independent Filipino congregation.

"We have all sorts of people who say they are helped by the Holy Spirit, who has brought them joy, healing and comfort," Hull said, "but they would never call themselves charismatics."

Mark’s Enigmatic Ending

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone,for they were afraid. -- Mark 16:8

 

At the end of the Gospel of Mark, three women come to Jesus’ grave, where they encounter a young man sitting in the empty tomb who tells them that the crucified Jesus has risen and left for Galilee. Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of James; and Salome run from the tomb. And though the young man instructs them to tell the disciples and Peter to meet Jesus in Galilee, the women say nothing to anyone.

That’s the end. The earliest Gospel never mentions -- at least not in the best ancient manuscripts -- the risen Jesus’ reunions with his followers as described in Matthew, Luke and John. Accounts of the appearance of the risen Jesus were added to the end of Mark by later scribal hands. The NRSV labels these as "shorter" and "longer" endings, and relegates to footnotes a discussion of how these endings were fashioned.

A few New Testament specialists maintain that the original ending to Mark was lost. But most scholars of Mark today accept the likelihood that the original first-century author meant to end the narrative exactly -- and abruptly -- at chapter 16, verse 8.

One of those was Donald H. Juel, a Lutheran minister and longtime professor at Luther and Princeton seminaries, who died three years ago. In honor of Juel’s work on the ending of Mark, Princeton professors Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Patrick D. Miller edited essays by colleagues for a book published last year as The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God (Westminster John Knox).

The essay by Juel that opens the book says that "the history of the Markan ending in manuscript and commentary betrays an unwillingness or inability to take the disappointment seriously." Juel differed with scholars who turn the women at the tomb into heroic figures or who try to transform the trio’s trembling and astonished response into "positive emotions."

Nor did Juel adopt two increasingly popular ways of understanding Mark’s disturbing ending. One is the belief that Mark implies that the women would have eventually overcome their fear and told Peter and the disciples of the resurrection, reminding them of Jesus’ earlier prediction: "After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee" (14:28). But the three women, Mark emphasizes, tell no one. Juel observes that like Peter, the women "come closer to genuine greatness than the other disciples, only to fall further. Even in the face of an empty tomb and testimony to Jesus’ resurrection, the women cannot believe in such way as to perform the most basic task of disciples: testimony." Juel continues: "They tell no one the good news. They flee, and we are left to imagine what became of them, and we are left to imagine the fate of Judas, and the young man, and Peter, and the Twelve."

Another favored solution, based on what some call "reader response" analysis, is to say that this pioneering Gospel writer sought with the sudden ending to challenge Jesus’ followers to overcome their own lapses of understanding, courage and loyalty. The audience circa AD 70 presumably would say something like: "If the closest male and female followers failed Jesus and still became admired figures and leaders in the churches, surely we too can be forgiven and serve God."

Juel insists on the enigmatic nature of the ending. "If the unresolved ending offers promise, it surely is not because we are encouraged to believe we can do better than the disciples or the women," he writes. "We do not ‘have’ Jesus even at the end of the story, and there is no guarantee that we can wrest a promise from him or lock him safely away by hermeneutical tricks."

Juel chose an open-ended stance, one that defies containment of Jesus and God when reading or hearing Mark. "Jesus is out of the tomb; God is no longer safely behind the curtain (torn asunder in the Temple as Jesus breathed his last)," he writes. "Jesus has promised an end; that end is not yet."

Viewing Mark through a literary-theological lens, Juel and other scholars working in narrative criticism have contributed to a new appreciation of Mark as a storyteller. In an earlier time, when historical and source criticism held sway, Mark’s Gospel was often considered a collage of episodes, miracles and teachings leading up to stories about Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. "Narrative criticism has recovered the story as a whole, instead of the fragmented pieces of historical criticism," says David Rhoads, whose Reading Mark: Engaging the Gospel (Fortress) reprints seven of his articles.

The colorful, fast-paced Markan story is said to lend itself to public recitation (and not merely because it is the shortest of the four Gospels). Juel and his students sometimes read aloud sections of the Gospel. Rhoads and Richard W Swanson (Provoking the Gospel of Mark, Pilgrim Press) are among those who have done oral performances of Mark. Whitney Shiner suggests in Proclaiming the Gospel (Trinity Press) that the chiastic, or concentric, word patterns in Mark were likely fashioned as memory aids to performers.

Mark’s writing techniques are pleasing for audiences that recognize the author’s use of tripled actions (for example, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection three times and tries three times to rouse the sleeping disciples before his arrest). Furthermore, Mark’s distinctive "sandwiched stories" -- he starts an episode and then tells another before finishing the first one -- offer ironic commentary on the interwoven episodes. Readers and listeners are "insiders" to Mark’s plot; they are informed very early of the divine identity of Jesus (and even told at times what Jesus and his opponents are thinking). The audiences can alternately wonder at those who misunderstand Jesus and admire those who immediately grasp his divine mission.

In Mark, those closest to Jesus tend to be dense, quarrelsome or fearful. Paul L. Danove’s The Rhetoric of Characterization of God, Jesus, and Jesus’ Disciples in the Gospel of Mark (T & T Clark) deals with Mark’s negative treatment of the followers of Jesus, showing that at times the denigration is even harsher than is evident in English translations. The fear and silence of the women at the tomb is an obvious failing. A more subtle negativity is found in the language. When the young man says, "Do not be amazed, you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified," the innocuous-sounding seek (RSV) or looking for (NRSV) translates the same Greek word used when Jesus’ mother and brothers, hearing rumors that Jesus had gone out of his mind, were "asking for" him. Elsewhere in the Gospel, religious authorities seek signs or seek how to destroy Jesus, and Judas seeks to betray him. In all, the last eight of nine uses of the word usually translated as seek (zeteo) in Mark have negative connotations.

Readers puzzling over the text’s abrupt ending are left asking how the "good news" ever got out. Danove notes that "the implications of the women’s failure to deliver the young man’s message could be circumvented if another appropriate bearer of the message could be found." Who would that be? John the Baptist would know, but he was beheaded. The disciples are absent.

How about the "young man" in the tomb? Danove rejects that notion, saying that the youth’s white robe and the fact that he is portrayed as "sitting on the right side" of the tomb "assert a heavenly origin for the young man and preclude his consideration as a disciple." However, this does not appear to be a figure like the one the Gospel of Matthew portrays -- an explicit "angel of the Lord, descending from heaven [whose] appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow." Nor is he like what the Gospel of Luke describes as "two men in dazzling clothes" before whom the women bowed down. Marvin Meyer and Herman Waetjen are among scholars who see the youth in Mark not as an angel but as an exemplar or "idealized disciple."

This positive character portrayal -- together with Mark’s negative treatment of Jesus’ family and the 12 disciples -- arguably constitutes a full-scale polemic against the earliest church leaders. The details are too complex to cover here, but the fact that the young man in the tomb is sitting on the right side may be the author’s last dig at James and John, who had asked to sit on either side of Jesus "in glory" (10:35-37). This young man, perhaps initiated into the faith by Jesus on an earlier occasion, appears to be the one destined for that spot in the next life.

The young man is one of many exceptional figures in Mark who make cameo appearances and who seem to have the perception needed to spread the good news. Another is the woman in Bethany who poured costly ointment over Jesus’ body, as if anointing him for burial. At this Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her" (14:9). Unlike the three women who went belatedly to the tomb, this unnamed woman braved criticism about wasting money and performed the Gospel’s "first complete and unequivocal act of faith in Jesus’ suffering and rising destiny," according to John Dominic Crossan, known for his studies of the historical Jesus.

Besides the young man in the tomb, other enigmatic figures are the "young man" who barely escapes capture at the time of Jesus’ arrest (14:51-52) and the awed centurion who sees Jesus die and says, "Truly, this man was God’s son" (15:39).

The Roman soldier’s "confession," as it has been called, has been read as sarcastic by Juel and others. Because the wording is not "the" Son of God, but should be translated, "a son of God" or "God’s son," the comment has been likened to the preceding taunts by soldiers, priests and bystanders. The centurion "witnesses Jesus’ miserable death and guffaws, ‘Yeah, right, this guy was the Son of God,"’ writes Brian K. Blount of Princeton Seminary in the book published in memory of Juel.

By contrast, an essay by C. Clifton Black, another Princeton specialist in New Testament, emphasizes the significance of the voice from heaven that proclaims at the start and middle of Mark that Jesus is "my Son, the beloved," and relates it to the centurion’s observation. Black concedes that there is an ambiguity in the centurion’s statement, but he sees its placement as a sign that it should be read positively. Believers reading Mark "have been given access, at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration, to faith’s evidence that what the centurion says is indeed true -- whether he knows it and believes it or not," Black says.

After the disciples deserted Jesus upon his arrest, "a certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and [fled] naked" (14:51-52). Some scholars have called this mysterious young man a symbolic representative of the just-scattered disciples (who also "fled," as would the three women from the tomb). But his fleeing should not be taken as a defining act of character. Equal weight should be given to his other actions in a narrative loaded with irony. The young man is "following" the arrested Jesus so closely that he risks arrest himself. Guards grab his covering, but he escapes naked. This youth has literally left everything to follow Jesus.

Is this the same young man who appears in the empty tomb? Probably not. More likely, both symbolize in Mark the faithful and usually unnamed followers of Jesus, such as those given the "secret of the kingdom of God" (4:11).

The first young man wore a "sindon," or burial cloth identical to the material wrapped around Jesus’ body. The second young man simply wore "a white robe." Studies of early Christian baptisms, as reflected in Pauline letters and writings of the church fathers, indicate that converts to the faith wore a garment symbolic of the old life, and when they arose from baptism their new life was symbolized by the donning of a white garment. The Roman Catholic Church still uses similar baptismal rites for adult converts. Some conjecture that the two young men were the same new recruit of Jesus, but Mark’s storyline seems to preclude that the two figures are the same character. If Jesus was initiating the young man in the faith in the Garden of Gethsemane (besides prayerfully agonizing over his own fate), it would seem from the youth’s burial-cloth garment that there was no opportunity to complete the rite.

Narrative critics have long noticed parallels in words and images between the beginning and ending of Mark. These parallels seem to enhance the positive roles of the Roman soldier and the young man in the white garment.

At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens open (schizo) as the spirit (pneuina) descends on Jesus, whereupon a voice (phone) from above says, "You are my Son, the beloved." At death, Jesus gives a loud cry (phone) as he breathes (ekpneo) his last; the curtain of the Temple rips (schizo) and the centurion says, "Truly, this man was God’s son.

Also, at the very start (1:2) a prophesied "messenger" is "sent before thy face" to prepare the way of the Lord -- just as at the very end, the young man in the tomb is the only human left to testify to the risen Jesus, who "went ahead" to Galilee.

In Provoking the Gospel of Mark, storyteller Richard Swanson, who teaches at Augustana College in South Dakota, says the difficulties of Mark’s ending become very clear when one performs it. The story leaves "the young man onstage alone at the end with no clear notion of what to do next."

Swanson does not suggest this possibility, but one can imagine the audience at a performance of Mark shouting, "Author, author!" The young man could then open his arms as if to say, "That’s me."

If the evangelist John hinted that he is the unnamed beloved disciple in his Gospel, perhaps Mark did the same with the young man in the empty tomb. At the least, there is a messenger at the end of the story bearing good news, who with the others who met Jesus "on the way" can tell the story.

A Pioneer Figure in Church-State Rulings

When justice Hugo Black wrote in 1948 for the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, "The First Amendment has erected a wall between the church and the state which must be kept high and impregnable," he was acting to bar required religious classes from public schools, in a case called McCollum v. Board of Education.

The high court would subsequently prohibit state-sponsored prayers in schools in a New York case (1962) and then rule against devotional Bible readings in classrooms (1963). The latter case involved, in part, objections by Madalyn Murray on behalf of her son.

Murray, who after remarrying took the name Madalyn Murray O’Hair, became the major figure held responsible (by her opponents) for "taking God out of the schools" -- an epithet she welcomed while leading a controversial atheist organization.

But defenders of church-state separation point out that years before, another homemaker and mother, Vashti Cromwell McCollum of Illinois, played a key role in legal history.

McCollum died August 20 at an assisted-living facility near Champaign, Illinois, at the age of 93. She had been in declining health in recent years, said James MeCollum, the first of her three sons and the one who was required to take religious classes during the regular school day in Champaign.

James McCollum said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that he tolerated the religion classes in the fourth grade but decided in the fifth that he did not want to continue, and his parents supported him. Rebuffed by school officials, his mother sued the city school board in July 1945 with the help of a Unitarian minister and a group of Jewish businesspeople in Chicago.

The religious instruction was upheld by a circuit court and the Illinois Supreme Court, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that the classes violated the First Amendment clause barring the "establishment of religion."

In reflecting upon Vashti McCollum’s death, J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, told the CENTURY: "The 1948 case that bears her name set the tone for the Supreme Court’s view on the proper relationship between church and state in public schools."

Walker noted that the Court would later permit religious instruction that was voluntary and held off-campus -- distinguishing that from required religious teaching in classes during the school day. "These lines continue to protect students’ rights," he said.

The McCollum case occasioned one of the first amicus briefs by the Baptist Joint Committee, which supported McCollum’s position. "J. M. Dawson, the then -- executive director of the BJC, took no little grief for filing that brief. It was not a popular position in Baptist life in those days, but it was the right position."

(Another Baptist -- Joseph R. Biyson, a member of Congress from South Carolina -- wrote in the CENTURY for June 30, 1948, that the McCollum decision "is a victory for freedom of thought and freedom of conscience -- two principles which lie at the base of all religious freedoms. We must not allow our religious fervor to blind us to the essential fact that no religious faith is secure when it meshes its authority with that of the state. Separation is not relative. It is absolute, or it is nonexistent. Protestants have more reason to cheer than to fear the Supreme Court decision in the McCollum case." The CENTURY earlier had editorialized in much the same vein, expressing delight that "the First Amendment has teeth!")

Coincidentally, in late August, BJC’s Walker issued a statement critical of Representative Katherine Harris (R., Fla.) for published remarks that church-state separation is a "lie" and that only Christians should be elected to office.

Walker said the Constitution is a secular document that never mentions Christianity and specifically bans a religious test for public office. Because the U.S. has not allowed government to take sides in matters of religion, Americans have avoided the kind of religious conflicts that plague much of the world, he said.

When McCollum brought her suit against the Champaign school board, however, Protestant perspectives dominated public life and institutions. "It was traumatic and expensive," McCollum told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch much later. "But we had a happy home life and were sufficient unto ourselves and not dependent on others," she said.

She lost a part-time job as a dance instructor at the University of Illinois campus, but her husband kept his faculty position because he had tenure. The family received phone threats, and the family cat was killed. Son James was sent to live with his mother’s parents in New York state for a while.

Years later, Champaign evidently made peace with the McCollums, electing son Dannel as mayor for three terms. He said he was the first atheist to serve as mayor of the city.

Vashti McCollum always said she was a humanist, not an atheist, and she served as president of the American Humanist Association for two terms.

In her book One Woman’s Fight, published by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, she said she was sure that "I fought not only for what I earnestly believed to be right, but for the truest kind of religious freedom intended by the First Amendment, the complete separation of church and state." Dean Peerman also contributed to this article.

Debunking Some Pentecostal Stereotypes

Pentecostalism and related "Spirit-filled movements" are rightly seen as a hard-driving engine fueling the global spread of Christianity, but their adherents are often wrongly seen as apolitical, otherworldly enthusiasts bent on "speaking in tongues," according to two separate studies on the century-old phenomena.

A groundbreaking survey of such believers in 10 countries, including the United States, where they account for 23 percent of Americans, was released this month by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Pentecostal and charismatic Christians still hold conservative views on the Bible, end-times prophecies, faith healing and traditional morality. But in six countries at least four of every 10 Pentecostals surveyed say they never speak or pray in tongues -- the utterances unintelligible to the believer that were commonly ridiculed in the past by Christian and non-Christian critics.

And researchers said "they were taken aback" by discovering a range of views among Pentecostals on sociopolitical issues -- views sometimes similar to outlooks more characteristic of progressive churches.

When U.S. adults in the survey were asked if they agree that Christians have a responsibility "to work for justice for the poor" -- a phrase often identified with liberal Christianity -- 90 percent of Pentecostals and 85 percent of charismatic believers agreed. Between 93 and 72 percent agreed in Brazil, Chile and Guatemala; in Kenya, 97 percent agreed.

"I find that extremely interesting," said sociologist Donald E. Miller, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Miller and colleague Ted Yamamori have completed research on what they are calling "progressive Pentecostalism" for a book to be published next year {2007 – Ed.}.

Miller pointed also to the Pew finding in which most Latin American respondents disagreed with the statement that "AIDS is God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior." In South Africa 53 percent of Pentecostals and -- 44 percent of charismatics disagreed.

"The point is," said Miller in an interview, "that you get split opinions, and that tends to deflate the idea that you can stereotype charismatics and Pentecostals." Miller is outgoing president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Miller said his research on global Pentecostalism, done before he knew of the Pew study, was bolstered by the 10-nation survey funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He spoke at an October 4-6, {2006 – Ed.} symposium at the USC campus in Los Angeles where the results of the Pew survey were released.

Luis Lugo, director of the Washington-based, nonpartisan Pew Forum, noted that at least a quarter of the world’s 2 billion Christians are estimated to be Pentecostal and charismatic believers. About two-thirds of survey respondents said they speak to others about their faith at least once a week, Lugo said, adding: "No wonder they are growing and retaining their people."

Lugo said the Pentecostal success stories in Latin America and Africa are understandable. African converts "don’t have to leave behind their world of spirit. . . and Pentecostalism is second to none in providing a sense of community," especially in countries affected by massive displacement and migration.

"I don’t think it’s too farfetched at this point to seriously consider whether Christianity is well on its way to being Pentecostalized," Lugo said, "certainly in the developing world." Like Miller, Lugo said that "contrary to widespread perceptions, Pentecostals are anything but apolitical."

The Pew study settled on renewalists as an umbrella term for Pentecostals and charismatics. Miller objected that the word connotes a fringe movement, which the movement is not. "We had quite an argument on how many categories to use, said John Green, the Pew Forum’s senior fellow in religion and American politics, in an interview. "I personally prefer Spirit-filled movement as an umbrella term."

In the study, Pentecostals included people in churches like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ that formed in the wake of the 1906 Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, as well as later Pentecostal denominations such as the Brazil-founded Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Charismatics were defined as part of the late 20th-century movement who attend Catholic, mainstream Protestant and independent churches or worship in fellowships such as Calvary Chapels and Vineyard churches.

Jn the U.S., charismatics outnumber Pentecostals (the former group accounts for 18 percent of the population; the latter, 5 percent). But in Kenya and Nigeria, Pentecostals are more numerous than charismatics. The largest charismatic populations are in Guatemala and the Philippines (both at 40 percent) and Brazil (34 percent).

The theological distinction has traditionally been that Pentecostal churches say that believers receive "the baptism of the Holy Spirit" when they speak in tongues, whereas charismatic groups are not so rigid on that point. The gifts of the Spirit, which include healing and prophecy, are expected to be put to use freely. Some Pentecostal leaders have lamented in recent decades that tongues-speaking has fallen off.

Yet, the study said, spirit-filled believers, especially Pentecostals, "stand out for the intensity of their belief" in traditional doctrines and practices compared to other Christians.

In the U.S., 62 percent of Pentecostals and 46 percent of charismatics said they have experienced or witnessed divine healings; only 28 percent of other Christians said so. Asked if they ever had "direct revelations from God," 54 percent of Pentecostals and 39 percent of charismatics said they had, whereas 25 percent of other Christians said they had. One-third of U.S. Pentecostals also said they had experienced exorcisms or witnessed them.

"They feel they are very much in the grip of the supernatural," said Green. The vast majority of Pentecostals (more than 80 percent in each country) believe in "the rapture of the church," a teaching that in the end times the faithful will be lifted into heaven. As a group, charismatics affirm such beliefs less often, but still more often than other Christians.

On political questions as well, Pentecostals are more conservative. Fifty-two percent of Pentecostals in the U.S. believe that the government should take special steps to make America a Christian country. "In Latin America, however, fewer believers want a Christian nation, and they tend to support church-state separation," Green said during a news conference.

According to Miller, Spirit-filled believers in the Pew survey often reflect their country’s cultural attitudes. When asked to rate themselves on a political spectrum, 47 percent of American Pentecostals saw themselves in the middle and 14 percent on the right. "It’s not that much different from the U.S. general population with 54 percent in the middle and 17 percent on the right," he said.

Looking at churches overseas, Miller said they are "not left-leaning, out to change the structures of society." The sociologist said he agreed with a theologian in Argentina who quipped, "Liberation theology opted for the poor, and the poor opted for Pentecostalism."

But Miller said Pentecostal churches "have been more successful [than the ‘base communities’ of liberation theology] in dealing with the felt needs of poor people -- and especially women." The warmth of the Pentecostal churches and their opposition to drinking, gambling and womanizing by the husbands has helped to create stable families, Miller said.

Last February, officials of the World Council of Churches, at their General Assembly in Brazil, said they wished to add more Pentecostal churches to their membership ranks, citing their ecumenical outlook and considerable social work. Indeed, Miller said that his study found "really creative programs involved with education, medical care and AIDS " including programs encouraging economic self-sufficiency.

"Sectarians do tend to withdraw from the world, and in the beginning Pentecostals were sectarians, but they were also part of the poor," he said. "As they become more educated and sophisticated, they bring that understanding into the job."

Jesus and Paul Versus the Empire

The "Kingdom" of God and "gospel" are usually thought of as terms unique to Christianity. And who else but Jesus was called not only "the son of God" but also "Lord" and "Savior"?

In fact, say biblical experts, these terms and concepts were already familiar to residents of the Roman Empire who knew them as references to the authority and divinity of the emperors, beginning notably with Caesar Augustus before the dawn of the first century.

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC. When a comet was later visible on July nights, Octavius, the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar, promoted the idea that it was a sign that the divine Caesar was on his way to heaven. When Roman law in 42 BC deified Julius Caesar, the status of Octavius, who took the name Augustus, was strengthened by adding the phrase "son of God." Poets celebrated the divinity associated with Augustus, and across the empire coins, monuments, temples and artwork promoted the cult of Augustus and other emperors who adopted Caesar as an honorific title.

To many in the empire, Roman civilization brought stability and wealth. And the people were urged to have "faith" in their "Lord," the emperor, who would preserve peace and increase wealth. "In the Roman imperial world, the ‘gospel’ was the good news of Caesar’s having established peace and security for the world," wrote Richard A. Horsley in Jesus and Empire.

Christians gave secular words associated with the empire a new meaning. The Greek word parousia referred to the triumphant arrivals of emperors into cities. In churches it meant the expected return, or second coming, of the heavenly exalted Christ. Churches, literally "assemblies," were the Christian counterparts to the Roman ekklesiai where Caesar was celebrated, according to Horsley, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "Caesar was the ‘Savior’ who had brought ‘salvation’ to the whole world."

In that context, the Christmas passage in the Gospel of Luke has a subversive tone, says Horsley. Angels bring "good news" of joy "to all the people," because of the birth of a "Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord." A heavenly multitude joins the angels in proclaiming "on earth peace among those whom he favors." For the Romans, peace was the militarily imposed Pax Romana, and it was already guaranteed by Rome.

Horsley has been a pioneer among biblical scholars who have emphasized the anti-imperial, political strategies of the Jesus movement. He has been joined in recent years by a growing number of colleagues, including prolific authors N. T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan. The latter’s latest book, coauthored with Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul, is subtitled: How Jesus’ Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom.

About seven years ago, Horsley edited an influential book, Paul and Empire, and started a "Paul and Politics Group" that met at annual sessions of the Society of Biblical Literature. "We launched a serious consideration of Paul as [being] opposed to the Roman Empire," he said. "But I think it was 9/11 and the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq that really provoked interest." At last November’s SBL meeting, a new program on Jesus and the Roman imperial world attracted ten speakers and required overflow rooms, Horsley reported.

The escalating attention to the biblical-era empire has been amplified by the open lament of some ethicists, church leaders and politicians that the U.S. has assumed aspects of an empire -- complete with religious imagery to assure skeptics of its benevolent motives. Despite the many differences between ancient Rome and present-day Washington, a growing number of critics are eager to draw comparisons and note the historical irony -- whereas the early church reconceptualized the meaning of empire, current leaders have invoked Christian language to support the American empire.

In October about 200 Christian ethicists issued a statement "about the erroneous use of Christian rhetoric to support the policies of empire," as it was put by one signer, Glen Stassen, who holds an endowed chair at Fuller Theological Seminary. The statement declared that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." The Christian call to peacemaking has been co-opted, the group said, when "a ‘theology of war’ is emanating from the highest circles of American government; the language of ‘righteous empire’ is employed . . . [and] the roles of God, church and nation are confused by talk of an American ‘mission’ and ‘divine appointment’ to ‘rid the world of evil."’

Also in October, Brazos Press published a collection of essays, Anxious About Empire, edited by Wesley Avrain of Yale Divinity School. Interviewed by the school’s Reflections magazine, Avrain likened the Republican convention to a megachurch where President Bush spoke from a pulpit. "You realize that he is using a kind of language that’s so infused with religious symbols that one wonders how the church can speak, when its language is so taken over by the culture," he said.

Only days before the November 2 elections, Union Theological Seminary in New York held a two-day conference on analogies between the Roman Empire and the American one. "This conference will explore how the imperial presumptions of American power today can find resonance with early Christian resistance to the Roman Empire," said organizer Brigitte Kahl, professor of New Testament. Fewer than 100 attendees were expected; 300 showed up.

In opening remarks, Hal Taussig, a visiting professor at Union and a pastor of a United Methodist congregation in Philadelphia, said he found it "stunning" to consider how early Christianity adopted Roman imperial terms as its own. "We were not quite listening in the 1990s" when scholars like Horsley and Crossan, two speakers at the Union conference, were proposing that Jesus was crucified primarily for his political opposition to Roman rule. "It has taken us too long to get here."

Taussig credited another speaker, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, with breaking new ground in 1985 with her commentary on the Book of Revelation. "She made it clear that it was a message of oppressed people" against Rome, he said.

Those Revelation themes were also treated in Unveiling Empire, a 1999 book by Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther. They suggested that the author of Revelation, John of Patmos, wrote his visionary text to shake the complacency of the churches in Asia about the cult of Caesar as well as about Rome’s economic exploitation, violence and arrogance. "For him, Rome was not an order with which one could cooperate," they wrote. "It was, instead, an incarnation of ‘Satan.’ It was both a ferocious Beast and a seductive Whore."

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, in a blurb for Unveiling Empire, praised the writers for their critique of the "contemporary preoccupation with apocalyptic" themes. "Howard-Brook and Gwyther understand that the Book of’ Revelation is an exercise in ecclesiology. That is, how to be the Church in the face of a powerful and seductive empire?"

Some years before Revelation was written, Paul was sending letters to churches in Asia Minor and Greece to build up the Christ-rooted societies with an egalitarian credo, recognizing believers whether they were Greek or Jew, male or female, slave or free, These assemblies stood "in contrast to the hierarchical social relations" in the empire, Horsley wrote in Paul and Empire, a book deemed significant by Wright, a New Testament scholar and the Anglican bishop of Durham. "Tom Wright was one of the first to pick up on that theme, and he has run with it," Horsley said in an interview.

In a lecture at Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry, Wright, like Horsley, tried to anticipate the objections of those who doubt there is political protest in Paul’s message.

"It is important to stress, as Paul would do himself were he not so muzzled by his interpreters, that when he referred to the ‘gospel’ he was not talking about a scheme of soteriology. Nor was he offering people a new way of being what we would call ‘religious,"’ said Wright. "For Paul ‘the gospel’ is the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is Israel’s Messiah and the world’s Lord. It is, in other words, the thoroughly Jewish message which challenges the royal and imperial messages in Paul’s world."

Rome regarded itself as the fount of justice that flowed to all its conquered nations. A temple to the Roman goddess Justice was established in Rome in 13 BC, and "justice" had already been celebrated as one of the virtues of Caesar Augustus, Wright noted. To be successful, he said, the gospel of the Christians had to be positive, not merely subversive: "It claims to be the reality of which Caesar’s empire is the parody; it claims to be modeling the genuine humanness, not least the justice and peace, and the unity across traditional racial and cultural barriers, of which Caesar’s empire boasted."

In his Letter to the Romans (13:1-7), however, Paul counseled believers to be subject to and pay taxes to the governing authorities, which he said were instituted by God. Wright and Crossan both think that such passages reflect Paul’s strategic decision not to invite punishment with open defiance of the empire.

Pauline scholar Neil Elliott, chaplain at the University Episcopal Center in Minneapolis, wrote in Paul and Empire that within the rhetorical structure of Romans "these remarks have an important function: to encourage submission, for now, to the authorities, rather than desperate resistance" that would endanger Christian Jews in Rome who were recovering from earlier imperial violence.

But didn’t Jesus himself, on the question of paying taxes, advise inquirers to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s and to God what was God’s? For some scholars, Jesus’ answer indicates that the kingdom of God can coexist with the Roman power structure. But Horsley and some others view Jesus’ response as a clever, indirect way to foil his foes’ attempt to entrap him. In Israelite tradition, everything belongs to God and nothing to Caesar, said Horsley in Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel.

One evident slap at Roman rule in Mark is the story of Jesus healing the demoniac that no one had the strength to subdue. Jesus asks the man’s unclean spirit for its name. "My name is Legion; for we are many," replies the man, using the Latin word for a large unit of Roman troops. The demons beg Jesus not to send them out of the country, but instead into a herd of swine; when he obliges, they promptly rush down a steep bank into the sea. Horsley believes the symbolism is unmistakable: Jesus takes control of the Roman forces who have brutalized people and foretells the army’s demise.

The Gospel episodes of exorcisms depict a power struggle "at three levels -- the individual possessed, the spirit world where God is battling Satan, and by implication the political level," said Horsley at Union Seminary. "If God/Jesus is winning the battle at the spirit level, as manifest in his exorcisms, then Roman rule is about to be terminated."

Roman rulers are the doomed "rulers of this age" in I Corinthians 2:2-8, but Paul may also have alluded to malevolent cosmic powers, scholars say. Paul lauds God’s power and secret wisdom "decreed before the ages for our glory" over against the "wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. . . .None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

If more scholars come to accept the thesis that many of the New Testament writers were arguing with Roman rulers and their collaborators, that does not necessarily mean they will conclude that Jesus was primarily a political reformer or social revolutionary. Such theories, when broached in the past, have tended to be discounted for lack of evidence.

However, Horsley and Crossan, as well as Wright, argue that the longstanding desire in Western countries to separate politics from religion has inhibited the view that Middle Eastern and Mediterranean religion and politics were as tightly enmeshed 2,000 years ago as they are today.

"Depoliticized views of Jesus have trouble explaining why" Jesus was crucified by the Roman governor in Judea and why another attention-getting figure in the mid-first century named Jesus (ben Hananiah) got off easy, Horsley said. This other Jesus also predicted doom for Jerusalem, but was deemed simply crazy and was beaten and then released. Horsley suggests that the accusation that Jesus of Nazareth pretended to be "king of the Jews" in Mark’s passion story indicates that the Romans believed he deserved "the tortuous death reserved for provincial rebels as well as slaves."

Though the Lord’s Prayer seeks forgiveness of sins, the petition also asks for God’s kingdom to come and "focuses on the people’s economic needs, concretely sufficient food and mutual cancellation of debts," said Horsley, explaining how the sociopolitical side of Jesus’ message is downplayed.

Crossan, an emeritus professor at DePaul University, published extensively on the "historical Jesus" from 1991 to 1994 and summarized his conclusions in Who Killed Jesus? (1995). "The kingdom of God movement was Jesus’ program of empowerment for a peasantry becoming more steadily hard-pressed . . . through insistent taxation, attendant indebtedness and eventual land expropriation, all within increasing commercialization in the booming colonial economy of a Roman empire under Augustan peace," he wrote. Jesus lived an alternative life of shared meals itinerancy and human contact without discrimination. "That was how God’s will was to be done on earth -- as in heaven," Crossan said.

Crossan and recent coauthor Reed, interviewed together at the University of La Verne in California, where Reed teaches, agreed that "kingdom of God" was a phrase chosen by Jesus to confront the divine Roman Empire.

"Jesus could have talked about the Community of God or the People of God," said Crossan.

"Or the family of God, the synagogue of God," interjected Reed.

"But as soon as you say the kingdom of God, you’re taking over Roman terminology," added Crossan. "Jesus picked the one term that was really going to raise eyebrows."

Their book may in turn raise the eyebrows of some scholars. "I know we will get the accusation that it lacks spiritual content because it is too political," said Reed. "However, this is one of the few books on Paul that takes his ecstatic experiences seriously; there is a spiritual component to Paul."

Crossan added: "People have no problem with the statement, ‘Not Caesar, but Christ, is Lord.’ That’s fine. But then we say, ‘Here’s Caesar’s program and here’s Christ’s program.’ Now we are getting into politics."

Asked what will happen if they relate their historical work to 21st-century politics, Crossan replied, "Then it will be called partisan politics."

Nonetheless, in both their book and the interview, the coauthors emphasized that they think neither the Roman Empire nor the U.S. empire can be called "evil." The early Christian conflict with Rome came because Rome "represented what we call ‘the normalcy of civilization,"’ said Crossan, noting that civilizations can be beneficial as well as unjust and oppressive.

"So Paul’s language about a ‘new creation’ -- starting all over again -- has to be taken seriously, because we’re trying to get to a nonviolent civilization, and we don’t have a clue what that looks like."

The Roman Empire, they wrote, was based on faith in achieving peace through military victory. Opposing the Roman philosophy, Paul the Jew followed in Jesus’ footsteps by proclaiming a covenant of nonviolent justice and true peace.

Crossan and Reed were asked to what extent America can embody those Christian ideals. They agreed that inasmuch as Rome was the greatest preindustrial empire and the U.S. is the greatest postindustrial one, "Paul’s challenge is as forceful now as it was then."

The Value of a Theological Education: Is It Worth It?

DANIEL ALESHIRE has been executive director of the Association of Theological Schools since 1998. The Pittsburgh-based association is the accrediting and program agency for graduate theological education in North America. The ATS has 244 Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox member schools. Before joining the ATS staff in 1990, Aleshire, an ordained minister with a Ph.D. in psychology, served on the faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for 12 years. I asked him about recent trends and challenges in theological education.

Many theological schools linked primarily to one denomination have long accepted students from various church backgrounds. This raises a question: Would some seminary mergers be in order for those struggling to meet expenses? To put it bluntly, are there too many theological schools?

That’s really like asking "are there are too many congregations or too many denominations?" The answer is yes if religious sentiment were organized on the basis of efficiency.

Most Protestant congregations are small, and given the apparent shortage of candidates financially willing to serve pastorates in small congregations, it would be more efficient to determine the "right" size for a solo pastor congregation and merge smaller congregations into larger congregations. I don’t think that will happen, because congregations are communities of history, connection and value. Most will not give up that community for a more efficient operation. There are many Protestant denominations with declining memberships, and it would be more efficient for them to merge into larger and more robust denominations, But most won’t. Denominations reflect historically and theologically diverse visions of faith and ecclesial order.

For the same reasons, theological schools do not organize themselves on the basis of efficiency Seminaries are enduring legacies of theological visions, historical movements and ethnic communities. The mergers that do occur are the result of denominational unions (like the creation of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, formed with the merger of the Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist churches); of efforts to enhance similar confessional or academic commitments (Oberlin merging with Vanderbilt Divinity School, or Rochester with Colgate and Crozer), or of changing educational needs (such as the mergers of freestanding schools of Christian education with seminaries).

Are alternatives to mergers afoot?

Yes, I see the emergence of new patterns of cooperation. During 2003, McCormick will complete a new building on the campus of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and this partnership will help both schools. It probably will never be a merger, but it will enhance an already good institutional partnership. In the 1960s, the seminaries in and around Berkeley formed the Graduate Theological Union. While the California schools keep their distinctive ecclesial identities, their joint venture creates economies of operation and an enriched theological education for all. Within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, new systems of seminary relationships ensure more cooperation among clustered seminaries, and less duplication of effort and expense. Union in New York is developing a partnership with Columbia University to maintain its enduring institutional contribution to American religion in general and liberal Protestantism in particular.

Are denominationally sponsored seminaries getting ever-smaller percentages of financial support from the related church? And if so, does that translate into less control?

The contributions from denominations dropped dramatically in the past 30 years, according to a study of seven mainline denominations begun by Badgett Dillard, who was once treasurer of the ATS, and continued by Anthony Ruger, who is analyzing the 2000-01 data at the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education. The data tell the story. In 1970-71, seminaries that were related to five of the seven mainline denominations in the study received approximately 70-80 percent of their total gift income from the denominations. (The percentage for the other two mainline denominations was smaller.) By 1990-91 the range was 30-60 percent, and in the 2000-01 analysis, it looks as if the average percentage of gift income from these five mainline denominations will be less than 40 percent.

Sometimes this reduced contribution reflects less control by the denomination, but not necessarily. The seminaries related to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are experiencing a declining ratio of gift income from the denomination, but the ELCA continues to elect all of their boards. Other mainline schools have self-perpetuating boards of trustees and thereby less direct control by the church.

You have said that the prolonged dip in the stock market is hurting some schools more than others. Why is that?

ATS schools can be divided into four major groups in terms of their primary sources of income: 1) interest from endowment funds, 2) student tuition payments, 3) denominational and/or individual gifts, and 4) balanced revenue from at least two of these sources.

Obviously, schools hurt most by the bear market are those most dependent on endowment. To determine how much to spend from their endowment, schools average the value of their endowment over 12 quarters. This keeps them from overspending if the endowment suddenly increases (as in the late 1990s) or underspending if the investment suddenly decreases (as in the past three years). The U.S. stock market has ended its third consecutive year of losses, and this trend has caught up with those schools.

Some schools that are primarily tuition-driven are actually doing fairly well because university enrollments, and to some extent seminary enrollments, tend to increase in hard economic times. Schools with balanced sources of revenue are, as you would expect, in the middle. Their endowment income is down, but the total budget is not as stressed.

The now-lengthy trend of "older" students choosing to enter ministry and attend seminary has helped churches gain some knowledgeable clergy in recent years, has it not?

Indeed, the average age of M.Div. students is much older than the average age of law or medical students. One Auburn Center study found that law and medical students decide on their plans in late high school or early college years, and that seminary students, on average, think about theological education after college. Older students bring life experience, needed diversity, and more commitment to congregational ministry.

My concerns about older students are twofold. The first is financial. This year it costs between $75,000 and $100,000 to educate a student through a three-year M.Div. program. The students pay, on average, about 30 percent of this amount in tuition, and the rest comes from endowment, gifts and grants. A 50-year-old graduate will get 15 years of ministerial work for this investment, while a 30-year-old graduate, if he or she stays in ministry, will get 35 years of work. If you want to talk "efficiency" in theological education, older students make for less "efficient" use of educational dollars than younger students. Yet I think it would be silly to discourage older students from attending seminary for financial reasons. Theological education is still inexpensive compared to almost any other form of graduate, professional education, and the benefit is greater than the cost.

My second concern is more subtle. We know from several studies that an increasing percentage of church members belong to larger congregations. These congregations are complex ministerial environments that need pastors with a decade or so of experience by early mid-career, so that they come to these congregations with experience and high career energy. By the time older graduates can accrue the experience that large-membership congregations require, they are close to retirement. Admittedly, these two worries are routinely proven to be unfounded by the presence of highly talented, energetic older graduates.

We do hear church leaders say that a continued low ratio of younger clergy candidates could be harmful to church life.

Speaking only for myself I have a religious worry: Why has the church not attracted its own youth to the hard work and great joy of vocational ministry? Other professions have attracted younger aspirants, why not ministry? At a more practical level, younger graduates can "make do" more easily with the lower starting salaries in congregational ministry as well as bring youthful enthusiasm to churches. And an inadequate number of younger ministry candidates could exacerbate the tendency toward older and older mainline congregations.

Are there any significant shifts today in the enrollment of minorities?

Racial/ethnic students constituted 20 percent of the total enrollment in ATS schools in 1999 -- a huge rise from 30 years before, of course. In more recent statistics, the number of racial/ethnic students increased 24 percent from 1997 to 2001, while the number of white students increased 7 percent over the same period. These are pleasing trends, but African-American and Hispanic/Latino students continue to represent a smaller percentage of students enrolled in seminaries than their percentage in the general population. Hispanic/Latino students are the most underrepresented of any minority group.

What about women at theological schools?

The most telling enrollment data about women is the number of them seeking the M.Div. degree. Steadily increasing since the early 1970s, the total number of women in this program has grown from 8,203 (of a total enrollment of 28,283) to 9,722 (of a total enrollment of 30,763). In the last five years, women in the M.Div. programs grew by 1,519, while the number of male M.div.-seekers has grown by 921. Women represent nearly one-third of the students enrolled in ATS schools.

Theological education still lags behind other graduate and advanced professional education when it comes to women students. In 2000, the last time we checked the comparison data at ATS, women constituted just over half of the enrollment in law schools, just under half in medical schools, and about half in graduate education overall. This overall percentage includes higher numbers among mainline Protestant schools that are offset by the lower numbers in conservative Protestant and Roman Catholic schools -- though a growing number of women in these latter two groups of schools are pursuing non-ordination M.Div. degrees.

What is the major issue facing mainline theological educators?

I think that the major issue is this: What is the value of seminary-educated religious leadership? As membership in mainline Protestant churches declines, alternative patterns of education and routes to ordination are increasing. As new paradigm" churches exercise leadership among evangelical Protestants, questions about the relevance of theological education drift through the hallways at megachurch conferences.

Mainline Protestants have assumed the value of theological education, and for most of the 20th century had sufficient cultural status and membership strength that the assumption was never challenged. It is different now. Sometimes, people ask if it is "just" to have students spend three years in graduate, professional education, given the earning potential of ministerial careers. Or questions are raised about whether seminaries educate students adequately for the practices of ministry in increasingly complex congregational work. And some ask whether graduate-level ministerial training is an elitist form of education that excludes racial-ethnic and other culturally marginalized candidates.

This question, in its many forms, requires a compelling answer. In my judgment, the only satisfying one will be demonstrating that theological education adds enough value to religious leadership that it is worth the effort, time and money. Seminaries that do their work well should turn out graduates who do their work well, and we hope people in the pews will appreciate the difference.

What other challenges confront mainline Protestant seminaries?

It appears to me that schools are changing in three very fundamental ways.

First, seminaries are among the last institutions that denominations have. In an earlier era, the denominations had tightly related social ministry agencies, health-care agencies, colleges and universities, seminaries, child-care agencies and publishing houses. These organizations functioned in addition to the denomination-controlled missions, education and benevolence entities. Now, most of the related institutions have distanced themselves from, or been distanced by, the founding denominations.

The seminaries, though less tightly related today to denominations, are still called upon by denominations to participate on committees, provide lay education and offer programs that, in another day, would have been shared among a larger constellation of denomination-related institutions. As a result, seminaries have more to do on behalf of the denominations, even thought they are not as well funded by the denominations.

Second, the students coming to seminary are less religiously formed than previous generations of students appear to have been. Compared to the scene 50 years ago, schools today have to provide formation in faith as well as education for ministry.

Third, every seminary is educating a wider range of students, in terms of denominations represented by the students. It is easier to educate students for ministry when they all come from and will stay in the same denomination. It is more complex to educate mainline Protestants, black Pentecostals and Unitarians in the same M.Div. program. These factors, among others, create an educational and institutional setting that is new, different and very demanding.

Stressed Out

The most common reason Protestant pastors leave parish ministry is an experience of stressful conflict, usually arising from differences with laity or staff but sometimes with denominational officials. Compounding these stresses, ex-pastors say, is a lack of support from church officials and fellow clergy.

Former pastors said they are in a Catch-22 situation when thinking about discussing problems with church higher-ups or ministerial colleagues, according to a study termed the best yet on why clergy leave pastoral work.

Pastors found it difficult to confide their problems in denominational leaders because they did not want to jeopardize future calls and promotion," according to surveys and follow-up interviews by sociologists Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger. In a paper presented at the Religious Research Association’s annual meeting last month, Hoge and Wenger said of pastors: "They felt constrained in seeking support from other clergy because of the enormous competition that exists among them."

Lowest on the list of stressful issues were the contentious matters most visible at the national level -- disputes over doctrine, homosexuality, racial issues, outreach programs and church growth. When pastors reach the breaking point, it’s usually over organizational issues and internal disputes at local churches.

A decision so momentous for the unhappy pastor involves many factors, said Hoge. When asked their motivation for leaving, most pastors said "an opportunity came for new ministry." But the study found that a combination of problems led to the departures.

The survey taken in the spring and summer of 2002, involved 963 ex-pastors from the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Assemblies of God. Respondents included those who switched to a ministry other than shepherding a congregation as well as those who left the ministry altogether. About one-third in the survey had no choice but to leave -- they were forced out by lay or denominational leaders because of a divorce, allegations of sexual misconduct or unmanageable conflicts.

Many of the ex-pastors surveyed were women, notably 41 percent in the Presbyterian sample and 29 percent in the United Methodist. In both of those denominations, 18 percent of active clergy are women. About 15 percent of women ex-pastors said a prime motive for leaving was to care for family or children, Hoge and Wenger conceded that it was likely that "the angriest and most alienated ministers tended not to return the questionnaires [and] are therefore underrepresented."

Nevertheless, "you are not going to get a better study" identifying the most frequent points of strife precipitating a break with the pastorate, Hoge said. The veteran sociologist, a Protestant, is a longtime faculty member at Catholic University of America. The study, part of the Pulpit & Pew research project at Duke Divinity School, also derived data from surveys on pastoral satisfaction conducted by Carroll, project director.

Compared with the views of current pastors in three mainline Protestant denominations (PCUSA, ELCA and United Methodist), the ex-pastors were not especially unhappy about living arrangements, salaries and benefits, spiritual life and relations with other clergy. But whereas 56 percent of current pastors said they were satisfied with their relations with their leaders, only about 30 percent of the ex-pastors had satisfactory relations with lay leaders in the final years of their pastorates.

The same disparity existed among the two groups on questions about family life: ex-pastors reported much less satisfaction, and said they experienced "resentment from their spouses because of the high time demands and low pay of ministry."

In pinpointing the nature of congregational conflicts, the study showed that disputes over "pastoral leadership style" ranked first, particularly among Presbyterian and Assemblies of God ministers. Next was finances, especially troublesome for Methodist and ELCA clergy "Changes in worship style" was the third highest source of conflict. Close behind were conflicts with staffers, differences over a new building or renovation, changes in music and congregational programs, and lay leadership styles.

Not surprisingly, problems arose for "innovative young pastors faced with traditional don’t-change-anything older adults and new pastors in churches that had just experienced long-gratifying pastorates," the study said. At least half of the ex-pastors contended that seminary training is "not practical and realistic enough" in preparing people for parish ministry.

Former pastors also tend to feel that ministerial placement systems need to be reformed. United Methodists (79 percent) agreed emphatically on that point. Asked for recommendations, many onetime pastors told researchers that denominational leaders need to be more candid about the congregation a pastor is going to. "No one told me that the last two pastors there had fled from that church," said one, according to Wenger.

Ex-pastors called for improved communications and support at the regional level. "Having skilled and effective conflict-helpers on a synod staff would be very helpful," said a former ELCA pastor. "Without exception the people in the synod that I served in were not good at it." A United Methodist minister who left at age 49 was pessimistic about getting support from a district superintendent. "The bishop certainly is not a shepherd to the shepherds in that structure where he really becomes the judge, jury and, by and large, the executioner," he said.

A Presbyterian pastor who resigned at 62 said he thought that pastors often felt they were "out there by themselves." Regional leaders may bring pastors together for retreats and other such events, he said. "But when push comes to shove. . .they sort of leave the ministers alone, and that’s not good."

Young, Male and Married

Churches seeking a new pastor tend to want a man under 40, preferably married to a nonworking woman who volunteers on church committees. It’s a caricature, but only slightly so, says sociologist Adair Lummis, who is describing not congregations from the 1950s, but those today. This preference exists "even in those denominations which have ordained women to full ministerial status for 50 years or more, according to her little-publicized nationwide study.

The preference for a male may be unspoken or obliquely voiced by search committees, especially in liberal Protestant denominations where "it is totally unacceptable to refuse" pastor candidates because of gender, race or ethnicity and it is "frowned upon" to make age or marital status an issue, said the study, published last year as part of the Pulpit & Pew project at Duke Divinity School.

But Lummis, who works at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, said interviews with regional church officials in seven denominations showed they "can guess quite well the search committee preferences." As put by two unnamed officials she quoted:

They tell me they want "someone" in the pastor’s family [meaning a wife] "who can help with small groups or children’s ministries." I look at them and say, "Well, do you know that a third of our UMC pastors are single now, and 50 percent of the people in the seminary are female?"

If I send out a profile of a pastor who is mediocre along with a picture of him with his family, and he is 35 years old, has a cute wife and two beautiful children, I guarantee he will be interviewed if not called.

Though lay members of search committees may feel that to attract young couples to church they at least need an under-50 clergyperson with church experience. Lummis said the chances are relatively slim with so many older students in theological schools. "Our average seminary graduate is in his or her 40s, and our average UCC pastor is 57," said one regional church official. "Everybody is looking for a 32-year-old with 15 years’ experience -- we have one [candidate who is both young and experienced]."

More important than gender or age is the pastor’s sexual orientation, Lummis wrote. Even in the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ, where gay and lesbian pastors are sometimes permitted. "search committees may not be so accepting," she said. Lay leaders that Lummis interviewed in the fall of 2001 were forthcoming about why not, a number of them saying that the congregation, to begin with, was not "open and affirming" in relation to gays.

By contrast, another congregation that was officially open and affirming said it wanted a pastor who agreed with that stance whether or not he or she was gay. "We had a lesbian-partnered woman as interim, and now we have a [heterosexual] black woman pastor who is a wonderful minister to everyone here," the lay leader said.

Lummis said that regional leaders across denominations "also tend to be exasperated with those search committees and congregations who say they want a pastor who will ‘grow their church,’ but then do not want to undertake the necessary changes for this to happen." One official put it this way: "A lot of parishes say, ‘We want younger people’ -- except that younger people bring new ideas and that is what they do not want. They want to incorporate younger people so that they can teach them the ways of the old school."

That’s not all. When trying to fill a pulpit vacancy, churches capable of paying a full-time salary have expectations of finding a fine preacher and spiritual leader, an innovator with good "people skills" who can build consensus, and a person who will be devoted to ministry pretty much around the clock.

The stereotype of a pastor on call 24-7 "is seriously questioned today," Lummis wrote in her report, What Do Lay People Want in Pastors ? "Clergy psychologists and others who have to deal with clergy health problems and burnout’ now strongly caution pastors that to enhance their overall physical, mental and spiritual well-being and maintain effectiveness as pastoral leaders, they must learn to maintain boundaries, particularly between church work and private time."

Executives at regional denominational offices, whose authority varies according to denomination, try to recruit pastors with the ability and "self-assurance" to negotiate boundaries for personal and pastoral time. One official advised: "If they are wishy-washy, they are going to get walked all over in a lot of congregations. If they are strident people, the congregations are not going to appreciate that either,"

Lummis found plenty of search committees that encountered candidates lacking that self-confidence ("Several members on our committee voted against him because he would not make eye contact with us when he talked"). Some showed inordinate interest in other activities. One asked "whether he could find a small farm so he could bring his [exotic animals] with him." Another was rejected as "a person who wanted to play more than work -- a person who was also into sailing." Lummis indicated that some lay leaders knew that a pastor with good time-management skills could establish agreed-upon office hours or other policies that would strike a reasonable balance.

Small churches, alas, cannot be so choosy. Fewer and fewer congregations are able to pay a salary sufficient to support a pastor and his or her family, Lummis said. Graduates with a M.Div. degree have a pile of debt to pay off, a factor that virtually forces them to cross small churches off the list. Moreover, any pastorate is difficult in rural areas since a part-time job for pastor or spouse may be hard to come by.

One regional church official said bluntly: "The small churches that cannot afford to pay even a beginning full-time pastoral salary in many cases now are happy to get anyone with blood pressure of ten over five! They are not very particular. They fall in love with some preacher who ‘loves the Lord,’ and that is the end of that."

As for ideas to help small congregations, Lummis discussed a) developing financial supports and incentives from denominational sources, b) using retired clergy, c) employing clergy from other denominations, d) ordaining people to less-than-full clergy status and e) using lay pastoral leaders or cluster teams of clergy and lay leaders.

Budget problems faced by small churches, and even larger ones, could be alleviated if a new passion for tithing were to catch hold in church life, said Anthony Pappas, an American Baptist area minister in southeastern Massachusetts who commented in the study on Lummis’s findings. Saying that the average family in mainline congregations gives about 2.5 percent instead of 10 percent, Pappas added, "How many small churches could be players in the pastoral ‘market’ if spiritual passion and faithfulness governed their priorities?"

Pappas also declared that too many seminary students are being equipped to be "chaplains" for local churches rather than being prepared as "entrepreneurs." That conclusion, he wrote, came from seven years trying to place "some of the nicest, sweetest, caring-est persons God ever created into congregations that desperately needed total transformation."

More advice came from William Claris Hobgood, top executive of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in his commentary printed in the Lummis report. When he wrote his analysis, Hobgood was regional minister for the Disciples in Washington, D.C., and a longtime consultant to the Alban Institute. Hobgood called for some bold changes "in this important post-mainline time." He said that seminaries should prepare would-be pastors for a "tent-making" option.

"We are today becoming more like the frontier church, where most pastors had second jobs," Hobgood said, and alternatives to traditional seminary degrees need to be further developed, and "they need to be accorded real credibility and dignity."

First among Hobgood’s recommendations, however, is to create "a massive education program" especially for lay leaders, to convince them that good pastors are available in the female gender and in all colors. "Sticking with that bias for a 35-year-old man, married, etc, -- unless challenged directly -- will leave many congregations without pastors in a few years," he said.

Balancing Out the Trinity: The Genders of the Godhead

It was not a typographical error, said Sanders, a professor at the School of Theology at Claremont and president of its Ancient Bible Manuscript Center for Preservation and Research. Citing the familiar theological-linguistic problem of addressing the biblical God with a pronoun other than "he" -- despite the consensus that God embraces both the masculine and the feminine -- Sanders explained that he decided simply as a matter of personal choice to use "she" for the Spirit of God.

Sanders’s precedent is the fact that the Hebrew word for spirit, ruach, is of the feminine gender. The neuter word pneuma is used for spirit in the Greek-language New Testament. But the pronoun found in those texts is not "it," since Christian theology regards the Holy Spirit as a person rather than an impersonal force; "he" was the pronoun selected for the enabling power and earthly agent of God the Father.

However, the use of "she" as a pronoun for the Holy Spirit is more than a matter of personal choice; such usage appears to have some theological possibilities, especially if serious attention is given to certain research on early Christian texts, apocryphal as well as canonical. Initial suggestions to regard the Holy Spirit as feminine have been made by some theologians -- mostly male academicians -- who stay within canonical and church perimeters. However, women scholars are unenthusiastic about the idea. "It’s still two against one," says one feminist of such a revamped Trinity.

There are biblical research findings that nonetheless could "balance out" the genders of the Trinity -- a step true to an early strain of Christian thinking, although not to what developed as orthodox church tradition. The balancing would require rescuing two primitive ideas found among Jesus’ followers.

One concept is that the Holy Spirit was the "mother" of Jesus, and consequently of believers. The written evidence for this is both earlier and much broader than had been previously thought.

The second concept has to be presented as a theory, though a plausible one: that Jesus was considered by followers as androgynous in a significant symbolic sense. A persuasive theory proposed nine years ago holds that an early baptism brought forth a new androgynous person in the initiated Christian believer, "neither male nor female." The idea, apparently inspired by first century Jewish speculation that Adam was originally male and female, goes on to suggest that the "last Adam," as Paul once referred to Jesus, provided the model for the new believer.

If the first century notions of a maternal spirit and an androgynous Jesus were indeed early teachings that the developing church subsequently rejected (for whatever reasons), then a "balanced out" theology of the Christian godhead, informed by psychological insights, has both "modern" relevance and "ancient" precedent.

A Moltmann lecture about the feminine aspects of the Holy Spirit prompted Neill Q. Hamilton, professor of New Testament at Drew University School of Theology, to develop the idea further. The contemporary emphasis on God as father figure, he said, "in effect makes us deprived children of a one-parent family." Drawing on certain biblical depictions of the Spirit, especially in the Gospel of John, Hamilton went on to say that Christians will find "the Holy Spirit begins to perform a mothering role for us that is unconditional acceptance, love and caring. God then begins to parent us in father and mother modes."

Catholic scholar Franz Mayr of the University of Portland in Oregon also finds the feminine image of the Holy Spirit to be appropriate. He notes the remark of St. Augustine (354-430) that some Christians of his day were wrongly believing that the Holy Spirit was "mother of the Son of God and wife of the Father." Augustine then cautioned, in his book on the Trinity, that even when a maternal Holy Spirit was "most chastely thought of by the pure to whom all things are pure," outsiders would think in crudely physical terms.

Mayr, on the other hand, feels that Christianity could manage a "father-mother-child" Trinity today without lapsing into physical images or watering down the unity of God. Augustine "skipped over the social and maternal aspect of God," which Mayr says is best found in the Holy Spirit.

Evangelical scholar Donald G. Bloesch makes a modest concession to views of the Spirit as feminine in his recently published book Is the Bible Sexist? (Crossway, 1982) by granting that the Holy Spirit could be portrayed as feminine "as the indwelling presence of God within the church, nurturing and bringing to birth souls for the kingdom." But he maintains that the Spirit who acts on humanity with transforming power "is properly designated as masculine."

With but a few exceptions, the gender-issue discussion is being carried on by male scholars. One feminist, Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, in a study of repressed female deity images in antiquity, The Feminine Dimensions of the Divine (Westminster, 1979), suggested three ways to restore that dimension in Christianity. Future theology, she wrote, might (1) develop the female nature of each member of the Trinity; (2) add a fourth member to the godhead in the person of the Virgin Mary; or (3) pick the Holy Spirit to describe as feminine.

At that time favoring the latter, Engelsman wrote that "the Holy Spirit is the least sexually defined member of the Trinity and . . . it is often symbolized by feminine images -- by fire and the dove." (The dove, a visible sign of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ baptism, was a bird often linked to female deities in the ancient Near East.) However, she now prefers her first alternative -- to bring out the feminine side of all members of the Trinity.

According to Rosemary Radford Ruether, considering the Holy Spirit as feminine makes the female "side" of God subordinate to the dominant image of male divine sovereignty. Even a form of divine androgyny must be questioned, she says, if it assumes that the "highest" symbol of divine sovereignty is exclusively male.

Evangelical theology professor Paul K. Jewett of Fuller Theological Seminary in The Ordination of Women (Eerdmans, 1980) dismisses the significance of two texts indicating a belief in the Holy Spirit as a mother figure. He claims that the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Acts of Thomas, two apocryphal works, "are late second or even third century documents, belonging to the rubric of romance rather than history."

The Gospel of the Hebrews is known only through quotations from it given in the writing of early church fathers. In one such, a feminine Holy Spirit, descending upon Jesus at his baptism, says: "My Son, in all the prophets was I waiting for you that you should come and I might rest in you." Another quote, this time from Jesus: "Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away to the great mountain Tabor." The Acts of Thomas, a legendary account of the apostle Thomas’s travels to India, contains prayers invoking the Holy Spirit as, among other titles, "the Mother of all creation" and "compassionate mother."

In dismissing the feminine Holy Spirit as an idea present only in "obscure and heretical sects on the periphery of the Christian church," Jewett had relied on research that did not take into account the 1945 discovery near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of some 50 ancient texts. Subsequent translations and studies of these Coptic manuscripts, translated from the Greek in the fourth century, revealed the views of Gnostic Christians from the second century onward. In addition, there are elements which some scholars say are non-Gnostic Christian thought from the first century.

The best-known find was the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. In one of them, Jesus declares that his disciples must hate their earthly parents (as in Luke 14:26) but love the Father and the Mother as he does, "for my mother [gave me falsehood), but [my] true [Mother] gave me life."

Another Nag Hammadi discovery is the Secret Book of James, in which Jesus refers to himself as "the son of the Holy Spirit." The Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Book of James, and the Gospel of the Hebrews have such close affinities that most scholars assume the maternal Holy Spirit is meant in all three texts, even though it is perfectly clear only in the Gospel of the Hebrews.

But what about dates? Harvard’s Helmut Koester, one of the principal interpreters of the Gospel of Thomas, believes that it was composed at about the same time as the biblical Gospels. Ron Cameron of Wesleyan University agrees. In The Other Gospels, a collection of 16 apocryphal Gospels (Westminster, 1982), he also dates the Gospel of the Hebrews as circa 100 AD. or earlier, and the Secret Book of James in the first half of the second century. However, he says, all three could have been written as early as the middle of the first century (about the time of Paul).

To Rosemary Ruether, the evidence assembled in recent times makes it difficult to conclude that female imagery for the Spirit is a late deviation of heretical Christianity. "Rather, we should see an earlier Christianity, which used such female imagery, gradually being marginalized by a victorious Greco-Roman Christianity that repressed it," she says. Her conclusion is that Gnostic Christians merely expanded on traditions once shared widely.

Even so, Ruether balks’ at claiming a historical precedent that might perpetuate a lesser status in Christianity for the female divine dimension. Nevertheless, one teaching attributed to Jesus might challenge any thoughts that God the Father is much more important than the Holy Spirit. The synoptic Gospels all have a version of the saying, admittedly mysterious, that no blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is ever forgiven, unlike sins or blasphemies against sons of men (Mark) or the Son of Man (Matthew and Luke). Thomas 44 says it more strongly: blasphemies against Father and Son will be pardoned, but those against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven on earth or in heaven.

Writing in a 1974 issue of History of Religions, Wayne Meeks of Yale University Divinity School proposed that congregations founded by Paul used a baptism ritual which reunified the male and female in each new believer. The key verses are in Galatians, the much-quoted 3:27-28: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Meeks wrote:

The symbolization of a reunified mankind was not just pious talk in early Christianity, but a quite important way of conceptualizing and dramatizing the Christians’ awareness of their peculiar relationship to the larger societies around them. At least some of the early Christian groups thought of themselves as a new genus of mankind, or as the restored original mankind.

According to Meeks, the Christian baptismal initiation reversed the division of male and female, returning to the gender unity found in Adam before Eve and in God. Paul also uses reunification language in I Corinthians and Colossians, but without specific reference to male and female. Meeks contended that the androgynous concept received expanded -- even "luxuriant" -- treatment from Gnostic Christians, some of whom developed the sacrament of the bridegroom chamber to reunite the two halves in the believer. (In the Second Epistle of Clement, a second century sermon, appears a saying not inconsistent with Galatians 3:28: "When the Lord himself was asked by someone when his kingdom would come, he said, ‘When the two become one, and the outside as the inside and the male with the female neither male nor female.’")

Meeks said that he suspected Paul did not always accept the androgynous interpretation of the baptismal formula, and that he probably did not coin it. Further, Meeks argued, it proved too dangerously ambivalent for the emerging church and "faded into innocuous metaphor, perhaps to await the coming of its proper moment." And Hans Dieter Betz, of the University of Chicago Divinity School, agreed with Meeks that "this doctrine of an androgynous nature of the redeemed Christian seems to be pre-Pauline."

That rite’s imagery can be linked with the imagery of Jesus as the reappearing Primal Man, the androgynous Anthropos, or, as Paul expressed it, the "Last Adam" (I Cor. 15:45). Paul does not bring up questions of androgyny. Nonetheless, Betz leaned cautiously toward the understanding that the androgynous anthropos myth lies behind the Galatians 3:28 teaching of the dissolution of sexual distinctions. Being baptized into a new, androgynous person would be a form of "imitation of Christ," he said.

Such an imitation, the desire of the disciple to emulate the teacher, would be natural. Also, Jesus urged his followers to become his equal -- Luke 6:40, the Gospel of Thomas 13, 108, and in the Secret Book of James. "Make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit," Jesus says in the latter text; and again, "If you . . . do his [the Father’s] will, I [say] that he will love you, and make you equal with me."

It is not too surprising that many of Jesus’ early followers could see the feminine dimension of divinity in their teacher when one remembers that some Jesus sayings depicted him as the voice of Wisdom, a personified female aspect of God popular among Jews at the turn of the era. Jesus is particularly seen as Wisdom personified in the Thomas sayings and also in the "Q" source of Matthew and Luke.

And yet certain apocryphal works are valuable for a fuller understanding of teachings attributed to Jesus -- some teachings only dimly seen in the New Testament. Two theologians who hold this view are Helmut Koester and James M. Robinson. Koester, in a 1980 Harvard Theological Review article, said of examples from five apocryphal gospels: "They are significant witnesses for the formation of the gospel literature. . . . The term apocryphal with all its negative connotations should not prejudice us any longer."

Robinson, in his address as outgoing president of the Society of Biblical Literature in December 1981, presented a detailed case for the argument that the earliest resurrection traditions were luminous appearances of Jesus, while stories of physical resurrection were secondary. Adducing his points from both canonical and noncanonical sources, he said that what long ago became known as heresy was sometimes a relatively valid claim rooted in an original Christian emphasis. Suggesting in an interview that the contemporary ecumenical mood be extended back to the "losers" of the early centuries, the Gnostic Christians, he concluded: "I would hope we could open minds to a big hunk of early Christianity and rethink our conceptions of what was ‘heresy’ and ‘orthodoxy."’

Fragments from an Earthen Jar–James Robinson and the Nag Hammadi Library

By the close of 1977, Theologian James M. Robinson of Claremont, California, had reached the end of what he called "a forced march" of more than a decade. All 13 books, or codices, of the Nag Hammadi (NAHG Ha-MAH-dee) Library had been put into the public domain with the publication in December of the tenth and final volume of photographs of the papyrus pages and fragments. E. J. Brill of Leiden, which published these "facsimile" editions, also combined forces with Harper & Row to issue the complete collection in English translation, unveiling the 493-page book just before the new year at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco.

Robinson "has done more than any other single person to revive studies in Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi documents," said Harvard’s George MacRae, former SBL executive secretary. Gnosticism is commonly remembered as a hydra-headed heresy of the second century attacked at length by several church fathers. Many Gnostic Christians believed that, because of his divine origins, Jesus did not suffer on the cross, that the heavens were populated by all sorts of entities including a lower Creator God and a superior God of Light -- and that knowledge of one’s ultimate origins from the latter was the key to salvation.

Prodding and Persuading

The writings of Gnostics themselves were relatively rare until December 1945 when 52 partial and whole texts, written in fourth century Coptic (Egyptian), were found in an earthen jar. Two brothers, peasants from the nearby village, were looking for fertilizer at the base of a cliff about a dozen miles across the Nile River from Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt when they found and broke open the jar. It wasn’t until late 1947 that a Western scholar recognized the significance of some of the texts he saw at Cairo’s Coptic Museum, where they are now all kept.

For various reasons, progress was slow in getting the works into the hands of scholars. An international colloquium on the origins of Gnosticism convened in Messina, Sicily, in 1966, but the participants had little to discuss intelligently from the largely Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library. Notable texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Apocryphon of John had been published, but little else.

That was when Robinson, a relative newcomer to Gnostic studies, began his prodding, persuading and perhaps purloining to assemble transcriptions of practically the whole library in a year or two. Whether he was called secretary or editor, depending on the committee, he convinced UNESCO to speed up its photographing of manuscript pages, even reshooting some pages. While holding appointments at both the School of Theology at Claremont and the Claremont Graduate School, Robinson helped establish a translation team based at a new Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont.

First-draft translations into English were beginning to circulate widely by 1968. "Whatever we had access to, everyone had access to," said Robinson of his sharing principle. The process was working against the usual system of private assignments of texts to individual scholars. "The sociology of scholarship has been such as to reward those who get exclusive rights and then climb up the academic ladder with the status of those publishing important materials," Robinson said in the SBL conference. "In reality, they are not publishing it but blocking its publication."

Robinson blistered the European scholars who had had possession of the so-called Jung Codex from Nag Hammadi (smuggled out of Egypt by an antiquities dealer) since 1952 but did not publish the last of five text translations and commentaries until 1975. He also alluded to delays in Dead Sea Scroll accessibility and wondered about the future of newly discovered 24th century BC. tablets from the surprisingly large kingdom of Ebla in northern Syria (earliest-ever mentions of Jerusalem, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.).

Gnostic Texts

How significant is the Nag Hammadi Library? In strictly archaeological-historical terms, of the 52 titles, 40 were writings found for the first time ever, said Robinson. Ten are in poor condition, leaving 30 in "relatively good condition and rescued for posterity." Among the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Jewish Essene sect, the previously unknown treatises which survived intact are considerably smaller in number, he said.

The most famous of the Nag Hammadi texts is the Gospel of Thomas -- not the fanciful infancy gospel preserved through the centuries but a collection of 14 sayings attributed to Jesus. Modern critical research on Matthew and Luke has worked under the assumption that those Gospel writers used collections of sayings of Jesus to build up their narratives. Thomas, as it turns out, is material confirmation that such collections of sayings did exist. Very little dialogue accompanies the sayings, and there is no account of Jesus’ life and passion.

Because it was one of the books rejected by the developing church orthodoxy and because a number of scholars today claim that Gnostic influences dominate most of Thomas, the Gospel has not caused much stir.

But Helmut Koester of Harvard may be the harbinger of a new perspective on the text. In his introduction to Thomas in the Brill-Harper Nag Hammadi Library in English, Koester says that a comparison of its Jesus sayings with synoptic parallels "suggests that the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas either are present in a more primitive form or are developments of a more primitive form of such sayings." In other words, Thomas, though perhaps written in final form about mid-second century or shortly thereafter, may preserve an independent tradition of sayings more reliable in some cases than those found in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

To the extent that contemporary biblical analysis gets a hearing in Christian circles, the Nag Hammadi Library is a potential bombshell. The tendency in church circles is to think comfortably that "archaeology always proves the Bible." The Nag Hammadi Library, perhaps like some other discoveries, is likely to "disprove" further the harmonizing view of the New Testament as the product of entirely like-minded writers and to "prove" additionally the great diversity of early Christianity through critical study of the biblical and extrabiblical books.

"The shadow-boxing with invisible opponents going on in the New Testament can be fleshed out more fully with the new materials," said Robinson, referring particularly to Gnostic Christian beliefs that the resurrection had already arrived for believers. Whether Jesus’ teachings were horribly misrepresented or not may now be judged by modern scholars.

Scholars who have doubted that Gnostic redeemer myths could have influenced the Gospel of John’s Imagery of Jesus as the heavenly redeemer often cite European scholar Carsten Colpe as having debunked the thesis soundly in 1960. However, Robinson noted that Colpe enthused in a 1974 article over the "stupendous parallels" to the prologue of John in a Gnostic "classic" in the Nag Hammadi collection --the heaven-sent Logos of the Father who makes frequent "I am" statements in the text Trimorphic Protennoia. There are some references to Christ, but there is strong suspicion that the text has been Christianized from an earlier version.

Possible Jewish origins of Gnostic thought are stimulated in part by the wealth of material about Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. First century Jewish historian Josephus referred to Jewish beliefs about the greatness of Seth, but only in the Gnostic works does one find extensive literature about Seth. Many Gnostics apparently identified with the "seed of Seth," including tile believers who used the Apocalypse of Adam, perhaps the oldest writing in the Nag Hammadi Library.

The female side of the deity and the prominence of women disciples in Gnostic Christian writings should interest feminist theologians regarding a discarded side of early Christianity.

New Excavations

Are there any more writings like this to be had from Upper Egypt? Following a trail about 30 years old, Robinson found one of the brothers who made the discovery and others who handled the texts only in the past couple of years. The discovery site, now surveyed, doesn’t promise to yield any more, but Robinson’s institute is engaged in its third year of excavation at the nearby ruins of the fourth century -- founded basilica of St. Pachomius, where the first Christian monastic communities were formed. The Nag Hammadi codices may have been copied and bound there.

And on his most recent trip there, Robinson also learned that the Bodmer Papyri (canonical and apocryphal texts) may have been found in a cave north of the monastery ruins. A few days after the biblical scholars’ conference in San Francisco, Robinson was back in Egypt.