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Toni Morrison and the Color of Life

One of the distinctive features of American black slaves’ secret religion was the ring shout, probably adapted from African memories. A singer -- whoever felt so moved -- would step forth from the circle of worshipers. By chanting, dancing and clapping, the community provided a base beat upon which the singer would create his or her own distinctive musical text. This image of a physically engrossing community worship service that supported the individual voices is a fitting symbol for understanding the work of Toni Morrison.

In an interview in the Women ‘s Review of Books (March 1988) , Morrison talks about the necessity of black people sharing the story of slavery rather than "rushing away . . . because it is painful to dwell there." When people are able to tell their story, "they are not only one, they’re two, three and four, you know? The collective sharing of that information heals the individual -- and the collective." Like the ring-shout leader, Morrison’s voice-from-community has moved with increasing power to reclaim the whole story on behalf of a people.

Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye (Washington Square Press, 1970) , is a poetic tragedy about color that concentrates so much on the horror of racism that it is difficult to read. The highly acclaimed Song of Solomon (Knopf, 1977) , however, reveals a voice of restoration from within that community of pain. Milkman, propelled in search of his family history, finds it embedded in the history of slavery, recorded in the rhythmic chants of children’s games, like a miniature ring shout. Morrison’s comment on her most recent novel, Beloved (Knopf, 1987) , also suggests the guiding idea in Song of Solomon:

"There is a necessity for remembering the horror, but of course there’s a necessity for remembering it in a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not destructive."

Beloved, winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and nominated for the National Book Award and the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award, has been controversial. Critics have found it melodramatic, if not self-indulgent. Admirers of the novel, however, say these criticisms fail to appreciate that Morrison’s imaginative risks are necessitated by the magnitude of her topic. This is how one must write even to begin to assess and comprehend the legacy of slavery.

The novel takes place after the Civil War, in a small Ohio town. Sethe, her daughter Denver, and her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, live a reclusive life in a house haunted by Sethe’s dead child, Beloved. The ghost is temporarily banished from the house by Paul D, Sethe’s lover, but Beloved returns with a vengeance as the teenager she would have been had she not been slain. Beloved functions not as a supernatural but as a frightening natural presence, in her double significance as both the child killed by her mother to spare her a life of slavery and the haunting memory of all blacks who suffered and died under slavery. Isolated even from the black community because of the infanticide, Sethe barely survives both histories. She is given the possibility of healing, finally, by a community of women who gather to banish the voracious Beloved, and by the love of Paul D, who gathers himself to banish the equally insatiable guilt Sethe levels against herself. Morrison communicates an unforgettable sense of the strength, terror and devastation that is part of the black community, while skillfully portraying the unalterable connections between spiritual and physical life.

Their lovemaking and reconciliation begin with the image of a tree. Sethe’s tree is carved upon her back, "the decorative work of an ironsmith too passionate for display," and Paul D "rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it, its wide trunk and intricate branches, . . . and he would tolerate no peace until he had touched every ridge and leaf of it with his mouth." In this intimate image, the ear of his mouth hears her story from the speech on her back -- mute, eloquent body language. "He wants to put his story next to hers," and he does so with a tender, sensual touch -- in natural, wordless communion.

The holiness of the body and the power of speech are also brought together in the figure of Baby Suggs. Baby Suggs is an unchurched preacher who calls her people to love themselves by speaking in love each part of the battered body:

"Here, . . . in this place, we flesh; Flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it, love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. . . . Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them, touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face, ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, You! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. . . . You got to love it. This is flesh that I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance, backs that need support; shoulders that need strong arms. . . . More than eyes and feet. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear em now, love your heart. For this is the prize" [pp. 88-89].

This is a physical resurrection brought on by speech, for with Morrison -- as with Walker and Hurston -- word and flesh, body and soul, belong together. Black writers know what it means for the flesh to be despised, and know that there is no life of the spirit without the body and community.

The affirmation of the physical loving body is a triumph, but pleasure taken in this achievement must not minimize its cost or the enigmatic evil that continues to haunt black writers. For white writers, the puzzle of the flesh usually has to do with the uneasy relationship of body to spirit. But many black writers observe no such distinction; their knowledge of the connection between body and spirit grows directly from personal and community history. In Morrison’s work, the enigma of bodily life revolves around color. Baby Suggs stops preaching because there is no word, words or Word that can free her from the evil of racism. "God puzzled her and she was too ashamed to say so." So she takes to her bed "to think about the colors of things." "I want to think about something harmless in this world," she says, and "except for an occasional request for color," she utters nothing, silenced by color. "‘Bring me a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don’t.’ And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue. . . . Took her a long time to finish with blue, then yellow, then green. She was well into pink when she died."

Color is something typically associated with women, which means that color is usually considered a trivial matter. Women have innumerable names for the nuances of colors (pistachio, fuschia, teal) when a few words would do (green, pink, blue). Women have their colors "done," and it is usually women who worry about whether or not the choir robes will match the chancel rug. More significant than this, however, is how much we use color as a metaphoric shorthand in assigning value. For example, to be colorless is boring, and to have many colors is to be rich (as in Joseph and his coat). We can be green with jealousy (or pea green with envy) , see red when angry (although anger can also blacken one’s face) , write purple prose, or get the blues (a term that originated in black culture). Yellow symbolizes cowardice, lavender is for gay people, and babies look best in pastels.

Artist Wassily Kandinsky argues that "the psychological power of color calls forth a vibration from the soul . . . which can influence the entire human body as a physical organism." He goes on to describe the power of particular colors, depicting black and white as partnered antimonies. White is "the vestment of pure joy and immaculate purity," while black represents the "greatest and most profound mourning [as all symbol of death." White represents the possibility of beginning and birth, black represents the silence of death, an inner sound of nothingness (On the Spiritual in Art [Hall, 1912], pp. 148, 183-189).

Against the essentialist mysticism of this thinking, it is important to ask: Whose face is blackened with anger, and whose babies look best in pastels? Who is announcing white to be purity and black to be death?

Black Muslim leader Elijah Mohammed told a creation myth that reflects how culturally conditioned our sense of color can be. According to his story, a tribe of beautiful, gentle black people settled in the Nile valley. One of them, however, was peculiar -- a "big-hearted scientist" who performed eugenic experiments through which he gradually lightened the skin of successive generations. By lightening their skin and taking away their deep rich color, he bred the humanity out of them and created a race of white devils. These white people were so degraded that the black people were forced to exile the scientist and his monstrous creations to Europe, where they continued to grow in strength and evilness, until they finally enslaved the black people around them. Or, as Baby Suggs says, "Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed. . . and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks." Obviously, the intrinsic value of black and white depends upon who defines their significance.

This was the point of the "Black is beautiful" slogan of the Black Power movement in the ‘60s in America and the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa. Conscientious white readers may be cognizant of such issues of linguistic racism. However, contemporary black writers go on to challenge the liberal assumption that we should erase color consciousness as a factor in human relations. Too often, white liberals try to demonstrate their racial generosity by insisting that color doesn’t make a difference, and that aside from the natural accident of color we have in common our humanity. Black writers know better. Color has made every difference in the world to the black American, and it continues to do so despite others’ good intentions. To be a colored body was to be under sentence of death, and Morrison does not flinch from trying to communicate what it means to be living color in a racist world.

Beloved is full of color: gravestones, vegetables, walls, quilts, clothing, flowers, houses, emotions, bodies. The accumulation of color is so powerful that by the time one of the characters finds "a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet wooly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp" on the bottom of his boat, readers must resonate with his exhausted fury -- if they have not been reading with an utterly blank heart. "Red" is all that Morrison need say, for she shows us what it means to know color as a matter of life and death.

Baby Suggs goes to bed to think about color because "she never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before." Sethe, on the other hand, having seen the red of her baby’s blood and the pink of her gravestone, hasn’t been able to see color since. Sethe tries to live in a world devoid of color. Baby Suggs tries to fill what world she has left with the very thing that is the excuse for her brutalization. Color itself is not demonic, and both characters know this. Sethe tries to claim color in her feverish last days with Beloved. She plans a garden of vegetables and flowers, "talking, talking about what colors it would have," and she buys ribbons and cloth to make garments for her Beloved. Color is life, and Sethe is trying to restore life. She nearly kills herself in the process, for the claim of tragic history can be overwhelming and insatiable. When Beloved is exorcised -- that is, when the community asserts the claim of the present over the torment of the past -- Sethe takes to her bed like Baby Suggs.

With heaps of brightly colored clothing on the floor around her, Sethe lies "under a quilt of merry colors," blanketed by a cherished symbol of women’s work. She is in pieces, like an unraveled garment or an unsewn quilt, and when Paul D returns for her, Sethe worries that if he bathes her in sections, "will the parts hold?" What she has given of color, however, Paul D gives back to her. He returns because Sethe "is the friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind." Paul D contemplates the quilt "patched in carnival colors" and Sethe at the same time, and remembering how Sethe treated him as a man and not a slave, he helps her become whole. "You your best thing, Sethe, you are." And so her shattered self, like so many fragments of color waiting to be made into a quilt, is restored by the loving work of the colored heart.

To reclaim color, all color, as Morrison does, is part of reclaiming the inseparability of body and spirit and the historic witness of the enduring community. Shug Avery’s famous advice to Celie about the color purple might well be taken by the white reader as a message about another important color, black. "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it." Maybe it pisses God off if we try to ignore color, because for Morrison, color, once part of the language of oppression, is being transformed into the language of life itself.

Blaming Women for the Sexually Abusive Male Pastor

With the exception of a few recent articles, most of them cited here, studies on clergy sexuality published in sociological, psychological or religious periodicals -- as well as fictional treatments -- have focused on male clergy adultery without mentioning the consequences suffered by women involved. Not only does the literature say almost nothing about the other woman," but it fails to pay any serious attention to the fate of the minister’s wife when she discovers her husband’s sexual betrayal.

The term "adultery" does not adequately define male ministers’ sexual involvement with female parishioners. Marie Fortune, executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle, suggests that a male pastor’s sexual advances toward a woman that occur while he performs his professional duties are better understood as "sexual abuse." Whereas the term "adultery" implies that both participants are consenting equals, the term "sexual abuse" assumes that a person has used personal, social or physical power to coerce sexual intimacy.

Sexual abuse by pastors exhibits the same dynamic as incestuous abuse, which takes place within the context of an intimate relationship (family, church, counseling) between an authoritative and powerful person (a relative or minister) and a person who is vulnerable to and trusting of that power (a child or counselee) Victims often feel responsible for the abuser’s activity and so are bound in secrecy by a double burden of guilt and shame. Even if the victim does speak up, she or he may not be believed.

Pastoral counseling is one of the pastor’s professional tasks that is likely to offer opportunities for sexual abuse. We know that about 10 percent of professional therapists admit to sexual contact with clients, and we can guess that the same figure applies to clergy (see Marie Fortune, "Betrayal of the Pastoral Relationship," unpublished article available from the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, 1914 N. 34th St., Suite 105, Seattle, Wash., 98103). We guess, because our knowledge of the circumstances and frequency of inappropriate sexual behavior is largely anecdotal.

Many women don’t speak out about sexual abuse by pastors because, along with enduring terrible damage to their own self-esteem and relentless public shredding of their reputations, they will suffer the loss of personal and community relationships -- what may amount to a devastating social and spiritual exile. The time-honored response to such situations is to blame women -- the "other woman" or the pastor’s wife -- for the sexual transgressions of a male minister.

Typical of recent treatments of the topic is "The Sexual Hazards of Pastoral Care" (Christianity Today, November 8, 1985) , by Dean Merrill, which describes the minister as an attractive target for "the Enemy," or a "sitting duck for the romantically starved." The pastor’s work "allows for a flexible schedule with little accountability"; he is "attuned to the aesthetic, emotional and interpersonal side of life" -- all reasons why "moral failure in the ministry is more often the result of inattention than intent." These excuses portray him as a misguided but innocent victim of circumstances -- he was manipulated by a predatory female; he suffered from flextime confusion.

Ministers’ wives, on the other hand, are often indicted for being discontent with their role, uninterested in sex and less spiritually committed than their husbands, forcing the pastors to seek support and adoration elsewhere. Robert J. Stout’s article "Clergy-Divorce Spills into the Aisle" (Christianity Today, February 5, 1982) blames women who encumber the pastor’s career. "Women of today" are not content sharing their husband’s vocation; perhaps her paycheck is larger than his; the wife does not understand the personal sacrifice necessary "for the work of the Lord to be effective," and so hampers the work of the church’s leader. Finally, "there is a percentage of women who consider the sexual conquest of a pastor a goal worth pursuing." The author makes no mention of the pastor’s possible interest in sexual conquest.

In short, most discussions of the sexually abusive pastor perpetuate the misogyny of our theological heritage. The excuses offered -- female turpitude, wifely incompetence and diabolic intervention -- relieve the male pastor and the institution he serves of responsibility for his actions.

If anything, 20th-century writers are more hostile toward women than were 19th-century novelists. A number of parsonage romances produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries use theological/social drama as a vehicle for the romances. Writers such as Jane Ludlow Drake Abbot (1888-1962) , Elsie Marion Oakes Barber (1914-?) , Ruth Lininger Dobson (dates unknown) , Louis Platt Hauck (1883-1943) , Agnes Sligh Turnbull (1888-1982) and Nelia Gardner White (1894-1957) give the reader the impression that falling in love with one’s minister has something to do with restoring a purer gospel and a better world.

In such novels the minister is always boyish and innocent of the darker designs of natural life, yet possessed of an irresistible virility. While fending off pathetic spinsters, he courts/converts a rebellious but ultimately tractable young woman, while on a third front he just barely evades the clutches of the attractive but unscrupulous divorcée. Because of the divorcée’s malice he is accused of sexual improprieties, but is always proven innocent in the end. At the same time that he wins the girl he defeats the local captain of industry.

When marriage rather than courtship receives fictional scrutiny, the heroic and boyish young minister patiently trains an unsuitable wife for her role or he becomes a martyr to her unworthiness. He bravely renounces his attraction to another woman, whom he may kiss once but will never marry. Wives in such novels are overbearing and selfish; in one temperance tract novel the minister’s wife is a morphine addict and drunkard who inadvertently kills her children (Annette L. Noble, The Parsonage Secret, 1898).

The stylized romance plot, then, expresses a good deal of hostility toward both the wife and the "other woman." If a woman is previously married she is unworthy of the minister’s affections (all the seducing women in these novels are widows or divorcées, reflecting vintage attitudes about divorced and single women) , yet once married to him she again turns out to be unworthy. Women are "good" only when poised on the brink of matrimony -- a fragile moment indeed.

Corra May White Harris (1869-1935) , herself a minister’s wife, offered this description of the sexual hazards of the ministry in a popular fictionalized autobiography, A Circuit Rider’s Wife (1910) :

When we hear of a minister who has disgraced himself with some female member of his flock, my sympathies are all with the preacher. I know exactly what has happened. Some sad lady who has been "awakened" . . . by his sermons goes to see him in his church study. First she tells him she is "unhappy at home," . . . finally [she] confesses she is troubled with "temptations." . . . He sees her reduced to tears over her would be transgressions, and before he considers what he is about he has kissed the "dear child." That is the way it happens nine times out of ten, a good man damned and lost by some frail angel of his church.

Harris goes on to say that the minister’s wife has a duty to cultivate the wisdom of the serpent, and she advocates a "new set of civil law that would apply to the worst class of criminals in society. . . , the women who make a religion of sneaking up on the blind male side of good men" (pp. 162-170)

Harris’s vehemence is replicated in a much later novel by Agnes Sligh Turnbull. In The Bishop’s Mantle (1948), the young minister contemplates his precarious position:

In spite of himself he thought of the ministers, from Beecher down, who had had trouble with women. Every city clergyman had to recognize this menace. A few to his own knowledge through the years, in spite of their utter innocence, had yet escaped scandal by a hair’s breadth. A few here and there had not even escaped. There were always the neurotic women who flocked not only to the psychiatrists but also in almost equal numbers to ministers, pouring out their heart confessions and their fancied ills. There were those pitiable ones in whose minds religion and sex had become confused and intermingled; there were those who quite starkly fell in love with a clergyman and wanted love from him in return. Yes, a man of God had to be constantly on his guard in connection with this problem of women [p. 267, italics mine].

Beecher (1813-1887) , known for preaching of God’s comforting love, was the pastor of the powerful and wealthy Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Elizabeth Tilton was a parishioner married to Beecher’ s friend Theodore. Beecher became intimate with Elizabeth sometime in 1868, opportunity having been afforded by pastoral visits to console her for the death of her infant child. Henry advised Elizabeth that the world would not understand their love, and so they must practice "nest-hiding." But despite such pastoral counsel the emotionally vulnerable Elizabeth confessed to her husband that Henry had justified their union by an appeal to "pure affection and a high religious love."

Rumors of the affair went beyond the Tilton household in 1872. The pressure of the scandal was varied but ultimately unrelenting, and in 1875 Theodore Tilton sued Beecher in the first of several ecclesiastical and legal actions. Despite "almost irrefutable evidence," the congregational investigating committee "issued a report completely exonerating Beecher." In fact, Beecher’s suffering provoked it to express "sympathy more tender and a trust more unbounded" than ever before. Because its confidence in Beecher’s integrity was incompatible with the evidence, it considered the evidence false.

This congregational charity was not extended to Elizabeth, who along with all the others who testified against Beecher was finally, excommunicated in 1878. Unlike Beecher, Elizabeth had no office to protect her, and even less cultural or religious power. "Ostracized by Plymouth Church, Elizabeth Tilton died in 1897, lonely and blind, at the home of her daughter in Brooklyn," Altina Wailer reports in Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton (University of Massachusetts Press, 1982). Beecher’s wife’s fate and feelings are also missing from the historical record.

One of the few contemporary accounts I have found that speaks for the woman involved is a pseudonymous, first-person narrative by a former church secretary ("My Minister Kept Making Passes at Me," Ladies Home Journal, July 1985) Joan Clayton, working as an essential wage earner for her family, says her minister made repeated sexual advances to her, and her efforts to repel or avoid him were unsuccessful. She finally confided in another church member and learned that several other women in the congregation had endured such harassment. When these charges were brought before the personnel committee, however, the minister, called Smithson in the article, denied the allegations, and the committee immediately dropped the matter.

Clayton filed a letter of intent with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Evidence surfaced showing that members at Smithson’s previous church had leveled similar charges, which were dropped for insufficient evidence. Smithson finally admitted to "hugging and embracing," but said the women had misinterpreted him. It was recommended that he be transferred and that he seek counseling.

But Clayton, who suffered debilitating stress-related illnesses during this ordeal, reports that this was not the end of the matter. "Overwhelmingly, the congregation supported the minister," she complains. People told her that she was at fault for not being able to handle the situation. An anonymous letter accused her of being a liar; she was snubbed at church and labeled a troublemaker. She resigned her job, although that caused great financial hardship for her family. "What hurt me the most was the automatic assumption that because the charges were made against a minister, they must be lies," she says.

Although clergymen protest that they are vulnerable, they in fact enjoy some powerful social protection. Traditional respect for the office, along with the congregation’s unwillingness to believe it could have misjudged its pastor, constitute two parts of his protection. Often congregations are remarkably ready to believe the woman involved to be the greater of the two sinners. Like a rape victim, a woman who becomes sexually involved with her pastor is frequently considered to be the most guilty party -- and it is she, not he, who is ultimately put on trial.

Churches must also stop making excuses for ministers. They should not deny the often unreasonable theological and institutional pressures that pastors endure. But they must acknowledge that a pastor possesses a unique amount of power. Like a doctor or a therapist, he sees people at their most vulnerable, but unlike the other two, his interest is freighted with a divine imprimatur. A sexual encounter between pastor and counselee is a profound violation not only of the body but of the spirit as well. Only death exposes more clearly the mutual vulnerability of body and spirit.

Andre Bustanoby has suggested in his article "‘The Pastor and the Other Woman" (Christianity Today, August 30, 1974, pp. 7-10) that sometimes the ministry attracts a competitive and narcissistic kind of male whose goal is ego gratification and for whom sexual conquest is a key source of gratification. "Those who are concerned about the problem of the other woman in the minister’s life should not look first for a seductress in the congregation. They ought first to concern themselves with the ‘top dog’ minister who grasps at every opportunity to fortify his faltering ego."

Clearly, a man who engages in sexual abuse of female parishioners is sick, and in need of treatment and support. But legitimate concern for a pastor’s well-being ought not to draw support away from the women who are victimized by him. Fortune asserts that "pastorally, the response to the victim is the first priority." Mary Pellauer believes pastors should assent to the guidelines and ethics of accountability applied to therapists. "Professional counselors view any sexual contact between the counselor and the client as the deepest breach of professional ethics. The professional is always responsible; sex with a client is never okay " ("Sex, Power, and the Family of God," Christianity and Crisis, February 16, 1987, p. 47)

We must also be sensitive to the vulnerability of the minister’s wife. Although ministers’ wives may now experience more freedom of personal identity than when Corra May Harris was writing, many marriages still operate on the assumption that the male minister’s vocational identity will determine his wife’s identity as well. If she fails to defend him even when he has clearly betrayed her, she risks doubting the value of her own life dedication, and she calls into question the efficacy of her husband’s entire ministry as it is exemplified in his loving, forgiving wife. Can she expect concern for her welfare from the congregation that may be trying to protect him? Who will minister to her needs, whether she stays with him or chooses to leave? Many ministers’ wives will not risk joining the "other Woman" in exile, and unfortunately traditional responses to male-female dynamics encourage women to blame each other, which only further ensures their own victimization.

No one -- minister, congregation or woman -- escapes unharmed from the church’s failure to confront sexual abuse. But we apologize for the male minister as we do not for women, and our knowledge is seriously skewed. We have only some anonymous stories told by frightened, humiliated women who are trying to speak to an institution that has blamed them in advance because of their female sexuality and bids them be silent. Because of his professional power in an androcentric institution, the male minister is responsible for sexual violations that he commits while tending to his professional duties. Until there is cultural and institutional parity between male clergy and their female parishioners, the church must listen to victims of sexual abuse, speak for those who are afraid or cannot speak for themselves and respond with justice and compassion.

The Unsung Work of Padre Manuel Freire

Ecuador is an oil-producing country, and most of its wealthiest citizens are connected with the international oil community -- people who use gold credit cards, live in high-security mansions and drive Mercedes-Benzes. For the country’s poor, however, life is one long struggle to survive. Despite laws prohibiting the hiring of children under 15 years of age. the cities’ streets are filled with barefoot, unkempt youngsters peddling whatever it takes to bring home the equivalent of 25 cents a day. Public schools are free, or nearly so. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of parents cannot afford to lose the pittance that a four-year-old child can earn; thus even free primary education is an unaffordable luxury for many. The official minimum wage in Ecuador is 3,000 sucres per week, which works out to less than 600 sucres per day -- or $1.50 at the current exchange rate -- as the average work week is five and a half days.

Teachers in Ecuador’s public schools often must contend with overcrowding (60 students per class) , a dearth of books -- even at the university level -- and students fainting from hunger (according to the government’s own figures, half the nation’s children suffer from malnutrition)

One of the Ecuadorian cities that has more than its share of deprived, undernourished children is Guayaquil, a sweltering coastal metropolis of nearly 2 million inhabitants. Built on a former swamp, humid, tropical Guayaquil is pervaded by a festering stench that rises out of the sewer-like waters of the inlets that crisscross it. Drinking water is often unobtainable for a week at a stretch, so people store it in open tanks. But those tanks breed mosquitoes, and in recent months mosquitoes have brought an epidemic of dengue, a painful viral disease that has affected almost one-fourth of the city’s population. Government health officials have advised the people not to store water in open tanks, but they have no alternative.

Such is the world to which Padre Manuel Freire has given the past 20 years of his life, in an effort to bring affordable, relevant education to La Chala, an extremely poor neighborhood in Guayaquil.

Manuel Freire was born in 1924 in Solano, Ecuador, a tiny village high in the Andean province of Cañar. The ninth of ten children, he entered the Salesian seminary in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1940. His first assignment after ordination to the priesthood was in the city of Manta in the province of Manabi. The parish house there was so poor, he says, that "we went each day to the beach to pick up what the fishermen threw away and made our dinner from it. We lived that way for three years." (To this day he rarely eats fish.) Padre Freire is the administrator of two schools, the Instituto Stabile and the Colegio O’Neil. Coming from the healthier climate of the Ecuadorian Sierra, Freire does not like Guayaquil; but, he says, that is where he is needed most.

Built in 1967, the Institute Stabile was originally intended to house the homeless. In order for it to serve as an educational center, parts of it had to be rebuilt, and it was opened as a school (grades one through eight) for the first time in 1969. Since then, thousands of students have graduated from it.

In 1974 Freire began raising the money for a new school, the Colegio O’Neil (which includes secondary as well as elementary grade levels) "I found this spot and started to build on it. At that time, it was nothing but a garbage dump. There were no plants, nothing. We opened in 1975, but not with the whole complex; we started with only two classrooms, and for three years we added on to that. Every time we received some help, we would build a little more."

How did Freire come to choose education as his life’s work? "I used to belong to a Salesian community," he explained. This community is completely dedicated to teaching. But it was generally dedicated to the teaching of the rich. I taught in Riobamba, Quito and Cuenca, but always the students were from families who were more or less rich. And I feel -- coming from a poor family myself -- that I prefer to be among poor people. It’s much more satisfying, compared to what I was doing before. It’s much pleasanter to be helping the poor. They work hard, they are more open-minded, more receptive and much more appreciative. And I feel personally much more at home in this environment than with rich people. Because I have seen over the years how children who have had an opportunity to go to school now have a change to help themselves and others too. Just giving them handouts of money or food is not enough in itself. The salvation of our country is education. At the beginning of each school year I tell the students that we must help ourselves -- that we shouldn’t wait for the United States to come here with money, that if we don’t lift ourselves up, nobody will do it for us. And the way to lift ourselves up is to develop our minds."

Padre Freire went on to speak of the complications involved in dealing with people. "The interrelations between individuals are always the hardest part of building a school -- or anything. else, for that matter. To transform the students is always more difficult, and takes more time, than the actual building of a school’s physical structure. But this is also the work that is the most effective and rewarding, because what you do with a student on all levels -- Christian, developmental or intellectual -- is the work that lasts."

The padre admits, however, that his work is not always 100 per cent effective; progress is very slow, and there are a lot of failures. Every student who graduates constitutes a triumph; so few Ecuadorians complete college-level education that the title Licenciado ("One with a college degree") is still used in front of people’s names with as much solemnity as others might use "Doctor." Hence the motto of the Instituto Stabile: "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.’’

Says Freire: The satisfaction is in seeing these children growing not only in height. but in every sense of the word -- developing a future for themselves, being good children and eventually good parents. They have the chance to progress much further than their parents could ever hope to do. To see that a child is following the right path, is building a better life and is able to continue his or her studies in a university -- that affords all the satisfaction in the world! My triumph is seeing the students triumph." When asked what part his faith plays in his efforts, Freire replied, "Without my faith, I could not do this type of work. I learned how to empathize with hardship when I was with the Salesians during a major part of my formative years, and this is what keeps me going. For there are many difficult moments, and they stem primarily from solitude. A priest is always alone. There are economic difficulties, as well as problems which arise due to people’s incomprehension: until you are established, people refuse to put their trust in you. They don’t know you. Now it’s easier. At the beginning no one liked me, because they thought that I had come to put them out of their homes, that I was going to take what little they had away from them. Now that the neighborhood families are sending their children to classes here, the situation is changing. At first they were afraid, because they have always associated priests with power. It does happen that the government comes and takes land away, especially from poor squatters without legal claims to the property. I received death threats . . .

"But the principal difficulty for me is the sheer immensity of the problem: all of the homes are in need of so much help, and what we are actually able to do is only a small part of what is needed. Compared to what needs to be done, what I am doing here is very little indeed. So sometimes I get discouraged, and I imagine how much would really be required to help all of the people around me to rise above their present condition, which is one of constant poverty and misery."

Guayaquil has a very large number of squatters, who invade landfills and build whatever type of dwelling they can. The largest of these squatter neighborhoods, El Guasmo, houses over 200,000 people within a vast network of unnamed, unmapped streets. The area has neither water nor telephones, and electricity is stolen, via occasionally fatal, jerry-rigged splices, from the power lines that pass overhead on their way to the busy commercial seaport. Sometimes the immense problems facing Padre Freire -- and all Guayaquil -- appear to be utterly unsolvable.

"If I did not have God as an intermediary in my life," Freire says, "I would have almost no reason for continuing. God gives me strength, and at the same time I believe that many are in fact benefiting from the small things that I am doing to help them, and that as a consequence things are changing for the better. The little that I can do is at least something -- and something is better than nothing."

Many of Freire’s students go on to trade schools -- such as SECAP (Servicio Ecuatoriano de Capacitación Profesional) , where in two years they can learn to become electricians. Some of them start their own small businesses, and many of them enroll in universities. Having new students with new problems each year breaks up the monotony, says the padre. Each year has its new personalities to adjust to and new worries: "Often it’s a matter of parents getting divorced or separated, or abandoning the children; another problem is that often the children who come to us are malnourished, or have other health problems that have not been properly treated. Last year we set up a tiny infirmary here, staffed with a doctor. But the medicines he prescribed were too expensive for the families to buy. So even though I had brought in a doctor who diagnosed the students’ ailments, telling them, ‘You need such-and-such medicine,’ many of them were unable to obtain it. This problem of health and malnutrition is one that cannot be allowed to continue, but neither can it be easily resolved. We need to find a way to restructure our system. We have to feed these children before we can educate them."

But adding a kitchen, or some kind of food service, to the schools "is going to be difficult," says Freire, "First of all, we would need to hire more people -- to cook, to serve, to clean up -- and of course we would need to build a place to put it all."

In terms of the future. Padre Freire has been thinking that the schoolchildren should derive some benefit from their winter vacation by spending some time at the seashore. The hottest months in Guayaquil are February, March and April, and schoolchildren have these months off. Owing to Guayaquil’s proximity to the equator (about 130 miles) , this season is called "winter." "The sea is always healthy," says Freire, but as a rule the children cannot go there because transportation is very expensive for them -- and once they were there, where would they stay? Hotel accommodations are out of the question. And of course they have to eat. So for them it is prohibitively expensive. The padre points out that although the people spend all of their lives on the coast -- Guayaquil is by far the busiest seaport in Ecuador -- many of them never see the ocean. "So if we built some dormitories in Playas, we could put up a busload of children for the night." Playas is the nearest beach town, about 65 miles from Guayaquil.

"I have been thinking that it would be a good idea to build a better school than the Instituto Stabile, which, to tell the truth," Freire acknowledges, "is quite ugly. But at present in Guayaquil it is very difficult to find a piece of property on which to build. It’s very expensive, and I do not think that I am likely to have either the time or the money to do that. But I am also thinking of building a small school in Playas -- attached to the dormitories, of course -- for the children of the fishermen."

I couldn’t help asking Padre Freire why the Bible in the institute’s chapel is in English. "That is to show the children that the word of God is the same in your country as it is here -- and so that people won’t steal it," he says, laughing.

The Liberated Legalist

Perhaps that is why the Scriptures often construe the ethics of the believing community by various codes of rules. Such codes ordered the moral life of each community in terms of specific, historical and relevant descriptions of God’s will. which in turn made obedience easier and covenantal blessings more immediate. It is interesting, for instance, that the New Testament book James describes law as the instrument of liberation, and provides the essential content for that "law of liberty" from the Old Testament "Code of Holiness" (2:8-11; cf. Lev. 19:12-18). To obey the whole law is to obey each part -- a commitment to obedience which ensures the salvation of the community at the end of time (2:12-13). Of course, James was concerned with orthopraxy far more than with eschatological reasons; while obedience to the law leads to God’s approval, it also liberates those who are impoverished and promotes the well-being of the community as a whole.

It is clear from the history of Israel and the church, however, that certain dangers lurk behind a rule-based ethos, always ready to destroy faith and to pervert Christian notions of freedom and justice. In such a system, human authorities replace the Divine, thus reversing the direction of a truly biblical ethic, which always begins with God, who makes a moral claim on his people in the light of his transcendent reign. In such a reversal, three things seems to occur: First, there is a tendency toward legalism, in which relationships with God and with one another are controlled by rules determined by self-interest rather than by grace. The atmosphere of a legalistic ethos is filled with criticism, conditional fellowship based on preformed judgments of right conduct and right doctrine, and communication rooted only in having common ground. Such denial of those who differ is a denial of grace.

Second, one also finds that codes are often rigidified and made absolutely binding without being shaped and reshaped by a conversation between a living God and a living people. Codes are worshiped as godlike and are imposed in inhumane ways to exclude and to judge others. Such a reversal of the law which liberates is in fact a denial of history, blunting the living character of God and the dynamic, ongoing communication of his will to his people by his Spirit.

Finally, a rule-based ethic has led tragically to a religious triumphalism in which one’s status or spirituality within the church is measured by one’s conformity to the codes in effect. Rather than securing the community’s presence in society -- the unwritten intention of such forms of social control -- this attitude most often leads to a denial of forgiveness, without which there is no reconciliation; and without reconciliation there is no community (Matt. 18:15-22). The survival of the church as the people of God depends on its incarnation of a gracious, living and forgiving God.

The kind of ethic promoted here by Paul is one which stresses liberation from the law -- from those rules which prevent the maintenance of a loving community and for a freedom which accommodates differences between a people called to share in faith and life. This Pauline corrective is a participant in the larger "canonical conversation" between those who, like James, might advocate a definition of Christian freedom by the law, and those who, like Paul, bear witness to the dangers of that ethic and so advocate a freedom from the law. To be sure, Paul himself recognized the limitations of his own corrective, which during the course of his mission led some of his followers to reject any kind of law. They embraced a limitless, autonomous freedom, promoting an amorality which turned against the gospel and jeopardized the reputation of the church. Consequently, in Paul’s letters we find an apostle who was deeply concerned about the moral purity of the church both on theological grounds and for practical reasons. Yet Paul consistently calls his audience away from a legalistic reading of law and toward the Spirit whose law delivers life.

The implications of reading this canonical conversation between James and Paul as "Scripture" -- itself the "rule" for the church -- are enormous. In this age of moral relativity, when relationships seem to be so easily trivialized and the impoverishment of other people is so easily neglected, it seems necessary to hear the Word of God from James, who chastises us for not living by the rules of right conduct. However, in our cultural shift to the right we have become overly dependent on codes which promise us socioeconomic and even spiritual, wellbeing. We have become a country and a church of legalists in need of liberation from our laws, which often oppress and fail to redeem. Let me illustrate.

I teach at a Christian university. Many come to the school with various codes of right conduct and right doctrine, shaped by different subcultures and confessional traditions. Yet too often they are codes accepted and even championed by rote rather than by reflection. These students hold uncritically to the promises of well-being enshrined by their laws and come to distrust any who might disagree with them. Thus they enter into classrooms and share in dorm life, where they confront, perhaps for the first time, a plurality of codes. Often their response is one of condemnation: a form of legalism that excludes ideas as well as the people who suggest them. Professors and classmates who challenge them to think in new ways or who critique their preformed notions of truth are often dismissed as less than Christian. In fact, legalism tends to collapse the value of human beings along with the values they espouse. In reality, such denials prevent both learning (the mission of our university) and community (the context of personal and spiritual growth).

Paul cautions Christians against legalistic protests; he challenges us to repent of our rigid conceptions of truth and to turn to Christ and find in him both the pattern of life and the gospel of faith. Anyone who thinks he or she knows all things -- whether in innocence or in arrogance -- in fact does not know enough of God and his messiah. A Christian, liberal arts education demands the very humility which intellectual or religious legalism often rejects. A student is educated only when liberated from an ethic of "election" which excludes new ideas and new friendships. Education demands that preformed notions of right conduct and right doctrine be suspended so that the student can study and evaluate them at a distance, in the context of diverse possibilities, and take them up again only if they are tested and found to be true. Then and only then are students -- and all Christians -- truly enabled to know the truth and set free to be a thoughtful and an understanding people, able to shape and even to change our worlds with true ideas.

At every level of the church’s life, polarities can be found. We must learn to celebrate such diversity, and to use such polarities as the context for conversation which corrects our legalisms and informs us about the whole truth of the matter. The ecumenical movement fails when it attempts to unify our diversity; rather, it ought to foster and encourage the kind of conversation found within our common Bible. There is still a tendency on the religious left to dismiss the religious right as simplistic or individualistic, while the right distrusts the left for being too uninterested in more personal forms of piety. Confessional traditions still tend to appeal dogmatically and exclusively to their versions of the gospel while failing to learn from the insights of others. The church has its own self-correcting apparatus, even as the Scriptures do. We must have ears to hear one another so that together we might hear God’s Word to his whole church.

Religious Communities in the Struggle for Human Rights

Religious support for human rights may seem commonplace today, but this was not always the case. The growing consensus about human rights among religious leaders is a new development that has yet to be widely recognized and understood. This revolution in religious thought is exemplified by religious leaders’ current support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was drafted by the UN Commission on Human Rights.

The UN General Assembly unanimously approved the declaration on December 10, 1948, partly in response to the growing awareness of the Nazi concentration-camp horrors. When the Nazi officials on trial at Nuremberg argued in their defense that they had merely obeyed the laws of the state, public opinion quickly agreed that there ought to be a law proscribing such crimes against humanity. The Universal Declaration was the first step in this direction.

It asserts that "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." It acknowledges that "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts" that have outraged the public conscience. And it affirms that justice and peace require the protection of human rights by the rule of law.

The declaration presents no philosophical justification for human rights, nor does it describe in detail what political arrangements they might require. It merely notes that "the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom." As early as 1951 Jacques Maritain referred to this notion of an international consensus as a kind of "secular faith."

The text sets forth "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." Never before had the treatment of the citizens of a state been recognized as an international authority’s legal concern. Despite obvious and continuing difficulties in enforcing human rights law, "there has been no more radical development in the whole history of international law than this bursting, as it were, of its traditional boundaries," John Humphrey remarks in "The Revolution in the International Law of Human Rights" (Human Rights, Spring 1975, p. 209)

The Universal Declaration begins by affirming that .human beings, "born free and equal in dignity and rights," are entitled to human rights "without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. The rights set forth are primarily civil and political and include the rights to life, liberty, security, protection against torture and arbitrary arrest, equal protection of the law, freedom of movement, participation in government, religious freedom, freedom of assembly and association, and ownership of property. The declaration also affirms social and economic rights. Everyone "is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality."

Therefore, the declaration upholds "the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment," as well as the right to leisure time and education. And it affirms that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

When the United Nations approved the declaration, only a few representatives of religious institutions were, among the advocates of this historic statement. In particular, Lutheran theologian O. Frederick Nolde, who represented the Federal Council of Churches and was the first director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), lobbied very effectively for inclusion of human rights in the UN Charter and for specific provisions in the Universal Declaration.

However, many religious communities expressed substantial opposition to the Universal Declaration. Islamic Saudi Arabia abstained from voting for the declaration because it did not explicitly acknowledge that all rights come from God. Many Protestants were also concerned that the declaration did not refer directly to God as the creator of rights. And while the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignor Roncalli -- later to become Pope John XXIII -- aided René Cassin in drafting the declaration, the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano attacked it for failing to recognize the sovereignty of God.

Now, forty years later, it seems that all the major religious traditions claim to have fathered human rights. For instance, in writings such as Judaism and Human Rights (Norton, 1972) , edited by Milton Konvitz, Jews argue that human rights are rooted in the Jewish tradition. David Daube elucidates examples of human rights in rabbinic literature, and Konvitz is joined by Emmanuel Rackman and Herbert Brichto in asserting that the democratic ideals of freedom and equality are derived from Jewish values. In Human Rights in Religious Traditions (Pilgrim Press, 1982) , Rabbi Daniel Polish concludes that the idea of human rights "derives in the Jewish tradition from the basic theological affirmation of Jewish faith." Furthermore, Israeli legal scholar Haim H. Cohn has recently published a commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights titled Human Rights in Jewish Law (KTAV, 1984) In this detailed study, Cohn concludes that both Jewish law and the declaration support the fundamental notion that those who claim any right have the fundamental duty to secure respect for the rights of others.

In the Christian community, conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics have joined liberal Protestants in affirming support for human rights. As early as 1946 Jacques Ellul published a theological argument for human

rights in a volume that was republished in 1960 as The Theological Foundation of Law. Only recently, however, have other conservative Christians voiced theological support for human rights. John Warwick Montgomery, a lawyer and philosopher as well as theologian, provides perhaps the most comprehensive argument by a conservative in his recent book Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Apologetic for the Transcendent Perspective (Zondervan, 1986) He concludes that rights derived from the inerrant teachings of the Bible give authority to the rights set forth in the Universal Declaration, even exceeding its claims in significant ways.

Carl F. H. Henry, founding editor of Christianity Today, used Warwick’s biblical argument for human rights in "The Judeo-Christian Heritage and Human Rights," his 1986 Paine Lecture in Religion delivered at the University of Missouri-Columbia. However, he criticized the Universal Declaration for not acknowledging that rights are derived from duties to God and to one’s neighbor. Other conservative Christians have been less reluctant to embrace the Universal Declaration. For example, as early as 20 years ago General Frederick Coutts of the Salvation Army wrote: "Salvationists are identified with the high ideals of social justice and acceptance of the unchallenged rights of every man as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (Human Rights and the Salvation Army [Campfield Press, 19681, p. 5)

However, it is undoubtedly Roman Catholics who have made human rights a central issue for Christian ethics around the world. John XXIII first broke ground with the encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) , which put human rights at the center of Catholic social teaching as the necessary condition for human dignity. In this watershed in Roman Catholic social teaching, John XXIII identified the Universal Declaration as a sign of the times and an important step in the journey toward a world community subject to the rule of law.

Paul VI made the Universal Declaration the cornerstone of all his work. And John Paul II has reaffirmed the declaration in his recent encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis. It may be that John Paul II is the single most important human rights advocate alive today, for on his travels around the globe he has proclaimed again and again that human rights are part of the church’s message and are fundamental for worldwide justice and peace. Through encyclicals and the statements of recent synods, human rights have become the centerpiece of Roman Catholic social teachings all over the world.

The centrality of human rights to Catholic social teaching is made clear in the opening chapter of the National Conference of Bishops pastoral letter on the U.S. economy. This critique of economic life is based on teaching about human rights. The extent to which this teaching pervades the Roman Catholic Church is further evident in the church’s activities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 1976 Roman Catholics joined Methodists and Lutherans in Bolivia in organizing a "Permanent Assembly on Human Rights" for the stated purpose of enforcing the Universal Declaration. Moreover, in 1970 the Associated Members of the Episcopal Conference of Eastern Africa, which includes the Catholic bishops of Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, affirmed the declaration as a basis for parents’ right to choose their children’s education and for the right of free expression and association.

In the Philippines, Bert Cacayan describes how his devout mother was "converted" to human rights activism by the church’s teachings:

Now my mother still goes to church every day. She is a prayer leader and still sings in the church choir. But more than that, she attends conscientizing seminars, she joins mass demonstrations and rallies protesting violations of human rights. She visits detainees and leads the apostleship of prayer group in taking radical options on certain political issues like boycotting sham elections. She teaches her children that the struggle for freedom and justice is an imperative of the Christian faith [‘The Humanizing Breeze of Vatican II," Asia Link, March 1986, p. 5].

And in Africa, prayers for human rights have been explicitly incorporated into stations of the cross, as J. M. Waliggo reports in his article "A Prayer of Solidarity with the Suffering and the Oppressed of the World" (African Christian Studies, December 1986, p. 59)

Among Protestants advocating the theological necessity of affirming human rights are Jurgen Moltmann, who elaborated on this concern in his book On Human Dignity:

Political Theology and Ethics (Fortress, 1984) , and Walter Harrelson, who in The Ten Commandments and Human Rights (Fortress, 1980) embraced the Universal Declaration as a modern statement of biblical values. In addition, many Protestant denominational and ecumenical statements support the Universal Declaration.

In 1980 a seminar on human rights in Islam sponsored in part by the Union of Arab Lawyers reaffirmed this position in its report Human Rights in Islam. The following year the Islamic Foundation published the "Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights," which is considered sufficiently authoritative to be cited in an Islamic court decision in Pakistan. And in 1987 a "Draft Charter on Human and People’s Rights in the Arab World" received the unanimous support of the 1,500 members of the Arab Union of Lawyers. Both of these statements support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but justify and define these rights in terms of Islamic law and Scripture.

Thus support for human rights in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities follows a pattern: each group believes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights standards established through international law derive authority from the teachings of its own religious tradition. To be sure, Jews, Christians and Muslims differ on some specific issues, but they disagree about these issues within their own traditions as well. For instance, Christians disagree about the equal rights of men and women -- which the Universal Declaration affirms -- even as some Christians differ on this point with some Muslims (who also differ about this among themselves)

Jews, Christians and Muslims do agree that rights are gifts from God, and that people have duties toward one another and God that require the recognition of fundamental human rights. In this regard, these traditions have more in common with each other than with secular humanists who seek to justify human rights on the basis of reason alone. It is significant that Jews and Christians joined forces to establish human rights law through the United Nations. And it is significant that recently Muslims joined Christians in South Africa to protest human rights violations.

Perhaps, as John XXIII proposed, the Universal Declaration is a sign of a new world community in which the religious traditions will find common ground for resolutely resisting the dehumanizing forces of this age. In opposition to the blatant violation of human rights everywhere in the world, perhaps the faithful of all religious traditions will join together to do the will of God for the sake of all humanity.

Charismatics and Change in South Africa

Imagine 5,000 young South Africans of all races living together for a week as part of a multiracial mission festival. They share accommodations in hotels and holiday apartments and eat their meals at festival gatherings. The speakers are drawn from all racial groups. Following one black evangelist’s powerful gospel message, the whole assembly breaks out in spontaneous dancing. Black, white, "coloured" and Asian people link arms and dance joyfully in large circles. Others simply take the hand of their neighbor. regardless of color, and jump for joy. This seemingly fantastic scene has already happened. In June 1987 a multiracial group of 5,000 young South Africans met in Durban to celebrate "GO-FEST," organized by Youth with a Mission (YWAM) , a charismatic movement. Without any hoopla or extensive publicity, the organization held a press conference, but no members of the secular press attended. And yet YWAM pulled off an amazing feat by conducting a multiracial conference where delegates actually lived together in racially mixed housing.

The scene was electric. During one evening meeting, black evangelist Michael Kolisang preached, making the usual evangelistic appeal after his sermon and leading a healing service. When everything seemed to be over, the dancing began. To the chorus "What a Great God We Have," the audience began to celebrate their love for God and each other. Then they called upon the band to play the song "Jabulani," which was recorded by the South African charismatic pop music group Friends First. More than any other music, . ‘Jabulani" seemed to express the mood of the crowd. One participant claimed that collectively the group ‘saw a new Africa.’

Cynics might be tempted to dismiss such enthusiasm as an emotional release in a tense situation. It undoubtedly had elements of that, but it was far more. Since 1979, hundreds of new, independent charismatic churches have formed throughout South Africa. They bridge racial barriers as no other groups do. For years mainline churches like the Anglicans, Lutherans and Roman Catholics have talked about reconciliation and multiracialism. but their weekly services have achieved only tokenism. The new charismatics are different.

For four months in 1987 we researched the growth of these new churches. We encountered much resistance to this study from members of established churches. reminding us that during the early 1970s studies of Afrikaners were unpopular and discouraged. Since then much has changed, as a result of the publication of T. Dunbar Moodie’s The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (University of California Press, 1975) The odium once bestowed on Afrikaners has been shifted to charismatics. This switch may be partly due to the apparent crisis and decline that Afrikaner nationalism was experiencing by 1975. Today many observers believe that charismatics are on the rise and therefore to be feared as constituting a new form of reaction.

The new charismatics’ numbers are significant. We estimate that between 5 and 10 per cent of white South Africans belong to independent charismatic churches. If one includes traditional pentecostals and the charismatic black independent churches, the total portion of South Africans involved in some form of the charismatic movement could well be as large as 35 per cent. Historically, members of the black independent churches avoided contact with white Christians. Today leaders and, to a lesser extent, followers of black and white independent charismatic churches enjoy more frequent contact. Despite repeated attempts, mainline denominations and groups like the South African Council of Churches and the now banned Christian Institute have failed to establish strong contacts with the black independent churches. This failure is perhaps due to the cultural distance between the English-dominated mainline churches and working-class blacks -- many of whom also find the charismatics’ conservative theology more appealing.

The growth of independent churches is noteworthy because they reject sanctions and violence as a means to change South Africa. By contrast, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) which represents approximately 22.5 per cent of all South Africans, and the Roman Catholic Church, which claims 9.5 per cent of the population, have recently endorsed the use of violence as a "necessary evil" to "free" black South Africans. And their spokespersons are well known to advocate economic sanctions. On the other hand, both black and white charismatics seek change but reject violence.

These differences seem to mirror current opinion polls. Approximately one-third of all South Africans claim to support nonviolent change, another one-third admit to being confused, while the remaining one-third support the use of violence. Black support for violence accompanies a call for economic sanctions and a desire to overthrow the existing power structure. White supremacists want to "solve the kaffir problems once and for all" by preserving apartheid with a vengeance and instigating a repressive regime which would make P. W. Botha’s government look as passive and non-threatening as a group of left-wing Sunday school teachers.

The future of South Africa clearly lies with the undecided. This is a battle for minds and souls, and the charismatics are determined to do their part. They are not simply calling for a religious revival but are also very actively carrying out programs to help blacks and initiate meaningful change.

Though living conditions for blacks and the vestiges of apartheid are still appalling, conditions have vastly improved at an ever-increasing rate over the past 20 years. Today, the Group Areas Act, which regulates where people of different races may live, is apartheid’s last remaining cornerstone. But it is rapidly being eroded. Some areas, like the Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow, are already integrated, and similar "gray" areas are quickly developing throughout the country. Of course, there are local setbacks, but the general trend away from apartheid is evident.

The most impressive progress is taking place among young people. One church, whose members are all under 35, meets alternately in a school hall in Johannesburg and a school hall in Soweto. Thus, 250 young South Africans cross racial and geographic barriers to witness to the love of Christ. This group, the Vineyard Fellowship, is led jointly by a white and a black pastor. It also operates a communal farm known as the Joweto Project.

Other churches, each in its own way, also reach out to embrace people of all races. Of the 2,000 members of the Durban Christian Centre, led by Fred and Nellie Roberts, 60 per cent are black. In Pretoria. Ed Roebert heads the 3,000-strong Hatfield Community Church. Although predominantly white, it has managed to bridge the chasm between Afrikaner and English-speaking South Africans. This is a rare achievement. especially since 80 per cent of the congregation speak Afrikaans at home but attend English-language services.

As Afrikaner-English tensions disappear, people question other old prejudices. One Hatfield pastor told us how he grew up to "hate the English." Following his conversion, however, he realized that if he could love the English he could also love blacks. As a result, the church, as a body, reaches out to blacks.

Most impressive of all is Ray Macaulay’s Rhema Church in Randbury with its 12,000 members, of whom some 25 per cent are black. Black radicals scorn Rhema and claim that only upwardly mobile, middle-class blacks attend. Though that may be true, the interracial contacts are impressive.

The New Covenant Church in Randburg takes a different approach. Here the emphasis is more on community and direct political involvement. Already the New Covenant Churches have produced some damning "prophecies" and booklets condemning apartheid as evil and calling for rapid social change. They appear to be in the forefront of the South African charismatic movement.

South Africa’s charismatic churches are loosely linked by three umbrella organizations. The least structured is the Fellowship of Christian Churches, which is led primarily by Fred Roberts. The Relating Churches of the New Covenant look to Dudley Daniels, who is seen as having a prophetic or apostolic role. A third group is the newly formed International Fellowship of Christian Churches, led by Ed Roebert, Ray Macaulay, Tim Salmon and the Afrikaans evangelist Nikki van der Westhuizen.

Together, these organizations represent at least as many whites as does SACC. Joined with other charismatic Black Independent Churches, they constitute a sizable proportion of the entire South African population. They are building interracial bridges by organizing significant evangelistic, social and educational projects for black areas. Simply entering black areas and seeing how the people have been forced to live is such a revelation to most South African whites that it inevitably changes their outlook on political issues.

The sociological evidence from which Morran and Schlemmer draw generalizations is questionable. Their study sampled a mere 80 people, only 30 of whom were members of the new charismatic churches. The others represented a control group. The sample was far too small to allow statistically valid inferences. Yet many South African mainline Christians accept Faith for the Fearful as proof that the new charismatic churches are reactionary.

Mainliners may be predisposed to this opinion because of theological and political differences between the two groups. First, charismatics espouse a conservative morality that, reflected in their traditional interpretation of Romans 13, seems to offer uncritical support to the government. However, some charismatics have published books that denounce the government’s racist policies. Perhaps mainliners have paid little attention to these works because they embarrassingly reify evil spirits and demons -- though their diagnosis of Botha as being "oppressed by the demon of apartheid" is not dissimilar to mainliners’ more sophisticated condemnation of the "evil structures of South African society."

Mainliners, especially those from other countries, also suspect charismatics’ politics because the latter don’t demand an unrealistic amount of radicalism from those who must live and work in South Africa. Actively opposing the governmental and societal systems of one’s own nation requires great risk, something that few who live outside the system can appreciate.

These prejudices against charismatics could lead mainline sociologists like Morran and Schlemmer to express a bias in their studies of charismatics. But most of our data contradict their conclusions, including their suggestion that the new charismatics are predominantly white. Though political equality and complete justice for blacks is still a long way off, it is no longer out of sight. Internal cultural change is providing hope. In the forefront are the charismatics, who are offering blacks and whites alike a new vision of the future. This hopeful vision of a land where all South Africans live together under the Lordship of Christ is the charismatics’ greatest contribution to the nation’s gloom and increasing political violence.

Theologians from mainline churches protest against what they see as undue praise for charismatics, and claim that their own churches have made similar attempts at integration for years. It is true that many white South Africans have firmly opposed apartheid and through church organizations like SACC have attempted to reach blacks. Such efforts cannot be underestimated and deserve our admiration.

However, most of these efforts lacked wholehearted involvement by entire congregations. Individuals and church leaders have made strenuous efforts to overcome apartheid, but rank-and-file members of mainline churches have not really resisted apartheid. Many of these churches’ self-conscious attempts at integration through organized celebrations and other meetings have failed. By contrast, charismatics are changing themselves, their attitudes and their interracial activities at the grass-roots level.

Another source of hope lies in the disintegration of the myth upholding apartheid. It had always contained Calvinist and nationalist elements. To Calvinists, the myth of apartheid had a powerful appeal in that it served to justify nationalism. But nationalists considered the Calvinist element in the mythology as simply a characteristic of being an Afrikaner. The myth of apartheid bore within itself the seed of the destruction of that nationalism. Afrikaner nationalists recognized this fact and replaced the Calvinist elements with a vague civil religion. On the other hand, Botha is attempting to rule South Africa and introduce meaningful change with pragmatic judgments devoid of mythological legitimations. But in the charismatic movement we see the growth of a new mythology that originated in Afrikaner circles yet offers all South Africans a vision of a new Africa.

We do not claim that South Africa is changing for the better. However, the potential for significant change exists and should be encouraged -- even though equally powerful forces threaten to create an increasingly repressive society. We are not alone in seeing some positive signs. The South African Institute of Race Relations, the oldest antiapartheid body in South Africa, is also cautiously optimistic about the possibility of reforming South African society without a violent revolution. Neither we nor the Institute of Race Relations are talking about the reform of apartheid; we foresee significant social change that will lead to the complete destruction of apartheid, and the creation of a multiracial, democratic society.

An American black once remarked to us that "feeling is the heart of black religion, and black religion is the heart of black politics. If black and white South Africans learn to dance together, then they are doing far more than simply learning that apartheid is wrong. It’s easy to condemn apartheid intellectually. But to feel it’s wrong -- that’s different."

Dorothy Dohen’s Reclamation of Virginity

On January 3, 1984, Dorothy Dohen, noted Catholic journalist and sociologist of religion, died of cancer. Dohen was one of a small cadre of exceptional laywomen who helped to transform the consciousness of American Catholics during the decade prior to Vatican II. Textbooks in Catholic history have not yet acknowledged her contributions, but then, neither have they noticed most of the lay constituency whose spiritual experiences Dohen struggled to understand and articulate. In her obituary in the June 1, 1984, issue of Commonweal, Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J., professor emeritus of sociology at Fordham University (where Dohen had received her Ph.D.), mentioned among her achievements and deepest commitments her chosen vocation of virginity. Fitzpatrick did not linger over this very personal aspect of Dohen’s life, but the fact that he mentioned it, however briefly, is significant.

After her death, as in her life, Dohen raises important questions concerning women’s spiritual status and the Catholic community’s perception of women. Harvard sociologist David Riesman acknowledged this in a letter to the editors of Commonweal (August 10, 1984) in response to Dohen’s obituary. He devoted one third of his letter to Dohen’s virginity, and used the occasion to protest young women’s changing assessment of virginity. Riesman affirmed:

Dorothy Dohen had something to say to the young women who today are often ashamed of their virginity, some of whom take refuge in a form of defensive lesbianism, discovering no legitimate way they can defend themselves against the importuning of aggressive (and also vulnerable) men.

It would take a long time to explicate the problems with Riesman’s remarks, from his suggestion that lesbians are really reticent virgins in disguise, to his inference that we should somehow allow for the vulnerability of men who force themselves sexually upon women, to the implications that today’s young women are the first to feel uncomfortable or impatient with their virginity. Nevertheless, his comments show why it is worthwhile to examine the meaning and significance of Dohen’s chosen vocation of virginity.

Dohen was raised on the customary sermons on chastity delivered to all-female audiences at Catholic missions and (later) retreats, homilies that all sounded a bit like the exemplar in The Mission Book (Catholic Publication Society, 1870) :

Innocence, young Christian maidens, is the most precious treasure you have on earth, and you ought to prefer death to losing it. In order therefore, that you may not lose it, fly from every danger, even the most remote, which could rob you of it. In every danger which you cannot avoid, fight like Christian heroines for the preservation of your purity; employ every possible means to guard it unstained, not only before man, but also in the eyes of God, and of your own conscience [pp. 460-61].

The church’s endorsement of virginity extended beyond such formal appeals and into policy decisions pertaining to female sexuality. Nineteenth-century Sisters of Charity found little support for their work with "delinquent girls" from powerful ecclesiastics like New York Archbishop John Hughes, who sincerely believed it impossible to rehabilitate a woman once she had relinquished "the glory of her womanhood." Early in the 20th century, a former midwife was unable to enter the Daughters of Charity either in England or in France because the heads of that order were convinced that detailed knowledge of the female reproductive system was "dangerous to the chastity, of the consecrated virgin" (Mary Ewens, The Role of the Nurse in Nineteenth Century America [Ayer, 1984]. p. 104).

During the first half of this century. Catholic educators refined their teaching on virginity so that it had at least two major components: a practical "hands off’ approach bolstered by examples from the saints, notably St. Maria Goretti, and a healthy dose of Mariology. It was impossible for a girl to attend a parochial or convent school at any time during the six decades prior to Vatican II and not learn about Maria Goretti, who constitute the core curriculum in moral theology for Catholic girls during this period. Goretti was an 11-year-old Italian girl who died in 1902 of stab wounds inflicted by a would-be rapist armed with a stiletto. She was canonized in 1950, only 48 years after her death -- a speedy transaction, in part because Pius XII made it an important priority. In 1947, when Goretti was beatified, the pontiff declared her a "model and protector" of young girls trapped in a "cruel and degraded world," and gave thanks for "the little maid Maria who sanctified the opening of the century with her innocent blood."

Maria Goretti suffered another type of abuse after her canonization. A whole industry of Maria Goretti paraphernalia proliferated: books, holy cards and statues geared to the grade-school and high-school markets. The piece de resistance was a recorded dramatization of her rape, replete with heavy breathing, plaintive cries, groans and the like. In this way the institutional church successfully, if unwittingly, exploited the sexual assault of a little girl, and spiritually terrorized Catholic females of the baby-boom generation. (One can only be grateful that Goretti’s popularity declined before the age of videos.) The Maria Goretti hype drove home the message that all Catholic girls should be willing to die to preserve their virginity, because Catholic educators told them so and because the alternative was unthinkable.

Thus it appears that the church’s admonitions to young women to preserve their virginity at all costs consisted chiefly, at least in the past, of dramatic warnings: what one might call "spiritual terrorism" -- ranging from alarming, realistic renditions of Maria Goretti’s suffering to more pedestrian prescriptions pertaining to patent leather shoes. The second component of the church’s teaching on virginity, the Virgin Mary herself, complicates the picture. As Marina Warner’s classic Alone of All Her Sex (Vintage, 1983) makes clear, there is no one way to present Mary: equally diversified are Mary’s "uses" by different constituencies within and without the church. Novelist Mary Gordon, a perceptive interpreter of Catholic women’s experience, affirms that Mary’s submissive obedience has become "a stick to beat smart girls" ("Coming to Terms with Mary," Commonweal, January 15, 1982) Warner painfully recalls her own adolescent realization that the symbol of Mary as a model of chastity actually denigrates women and humanity, an understanding that transformed her perception of the church.

The Virgin Mary remains the church’s major theological justification for emphasizing virginity as an ideal. The Word made flesh needed a spotless vessel. Mary’s virginity, as well as her Immaculate Conception, qualified her to be the mother of the incarnate Savior. All women, as daughters of Mary, are thus called to emulate her total submission to the will of God, including her virginity. Young women have been trained to venerate Mary and to ask her help in following her example. The imitation of Mary presents problems, however. One might try to remain chaste; young people of both genders have been enjoined by the church to do so. One might even succeed in remaining chaste, in preserving one’s virginity. Still, as feminist theologians have frequently pointed out, one can remain a virgin for all the wrong reasons. As Mary Daly explained in Beyond God the Father (Beacon, 1973) , some Christians have used the Virgin Mary to enforce a narrow biological definition of the ideal of virginity: Mary has been raised up as a model simply because of what she does not do sexually. This latter perspective has been the thrust of the Maria Goretti sighs and screams school of Catholic social ethics.

Daly’s and Dohen’s interpretations of virginity are compatible with Augustine’s position. All three hold that virginity is a virtue for those mature women who deliberately choose it for the proper reasons. Augustine, Daly and Dohen might differ, however, on what reasons are proper. In her book Pure Lust (Beacon, 1984) , Daly reclaims, on behalf of womankind, a meaning of "virgin" that she considers more authentic than the customary one, based on what a virgin "does not do sexually." According to Daly, a virgin is a woman who has never been captured or subdued. Virgins are, in Daly’s words, "the proud Prudes who prance through the Realms of Pure Lust fiercely [focusing] our Fury, firing! inspiring ourselves and each other with renewed commitment to the cause of women and all Elemental beings" (p. 262) Daly’s definition suggests a strong element of women’s will and refusal to accept an identity or an experience imposed from without. Compared to this, the Maria Goretti model appears rather arbitrary, impersonal, shallow, even wimpy.

Dohen’s views on virginity bear some affinity to those of Augustine and Daly. but they are grounded in her own experience as an American Catholic laywoman at mid-century. She came of age during the American Catholic Church’s golden era of lay activism and initiative of the quarter-century prior to Vatican II. She became involved in two Catholic Action movements imported from Europe: the Grail, dominated by strong, visionary, single women who sought to convert the world to a new vision of Christ-centered humanity; and the Young Catholic Workers, who envisioned the transformation of the workplace and ultimately society according to a Christian vision emerging out of the experience of individual workers. As editor of the lay Catholic journal Integrity (1952-56) , Dohen worked hard to articulate the Christian (Catholic) vision so that it reflected people’s changing needs. Meanwhile, she engaged in a private struggle to define her own vocation as a consecrated virgin.

In order to see Dohen’ s struggle in its proper context, one must acknowledge the single laywoman’s position in the Catholic Church during the ‘40s and ‘50s. Essentially, Catholic women had two vocational options, each with its own rules and spirituality. The first, the celibate life in a religious order, was a movement of organized, ecclesiastically sanctioned virginity. The second track required marriage and motherhood (of many children) The single woman, presumably, was merely in transition between girlhood and one of these established tracks.

Upon this orderly, ecclesiastically manageable scene burst the lay activists of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, including Dohen and her colleagues in the Grail movement. A core group of activist laywomen gravitated toward a vocation of personally chosen, individually implemented virginity -- what one might call "free-lance" virginity. For Dohen, a sensitive observer and interpreter of Catholic life in the U.S., the choice of "free-lance virginity" was far more full of trials than one might think; adherents battled not sexual temptations so much as inner struggles with the church’s expectations of women to follow one of the two established vocational tracks. As a single woman in the modern Catholic Church, Dohen recognized the Catholic community’s ambivalence toward single women, and forthrightly addressed it. "The single woman," she asserted, ". . . has a bad enough time in America anyway since Kinsey and his associates thought they had discovered that if she has preserved her chastity she is in an abnormal condition." Dohen elaborates:

Single Catholic women are told by one pamphlet writer that they are not missing anything. There is nothing to sex anyhow; no reason why anyone should want it or feel frustrated without it. In fact, the priest-author goes on to declare, single women should be glad they are not married since spiritually they are well-circumstanced. and have -- even -- a slight edge on salvation. The single woman might well be confused by all of this, especially if she heard the Sister President say at the time of her graduation from college that if she remained single she was selfish. No Catholic woman should choose to remain single: she must either go in the convent or get married. Who is right? Father X or Sister Y? It is especially disconcerting since, as usual, they both quote from Saint Paul! [Women in Wonderland (Sheed & Ward, 1960) , p. 6].

Because she had to work out for herself the problem of being a laywoman claiming a personal vocation of virginity, Dohen could articulate clearly the difference between the vocation of consecrated virginity and the situation of singleness. She called for a halt to the "unnecessary mystification of virginity" and challenged the popular position that virginity was always inherently more holy than marriage. She maintained that "consecrated virginity [was] as far removed from bachelorhood as it [was] from marriage." She insisted that it would be "disastrous" for a single woman to make a vow of chastity simply because she was unwed and thereby forbidden by the church to engage in sexual relations ("Virginity is More Than Singleness," Catholic World, September, 1960) Like Augustine, Dohen asserted that intentionality is crucial to the vocation of the consecrated virgin. Unlike the propagators of the Maria Goretti model, who enjoined girls to embrace virginity for its own sake out of deference to ecclesiastical authority, Dohen affirmed that the consecrated virgin freely chooses to sacrifice marriage, which she called "the greatest natural means to holiness and the source of the greatest human love" for the sake of "something else" (Vocation to Love [Sheed & Ward, 1950], p. 56) In her writings, that "something else" appears to include the spiritual status of a "bride of Christ," lonely confrontations with God and, above all, the freedom and detachment necessary to serve God in the world. Recalling the lives of the consecrated virgins who lived during the few centuries prior to the emergence of structured religious orders, Dohen claimed for herself an ancient precedent for the life of freedom and union with God.

Free from the lesser entanglements of husband and children, the "free-lance virgin" could experience a special sense of spiritual power. This kind of virginity cannot be homogenized and packaged for popular consumption. Like contemporary feminist spirituality, Dohen’s chosen vocation of virginity was grounded in her own experience as a woman and in her own autonomous will. It was simultaneously the product and part of the process of her own liberation from external ecclesiastical and spiritual controls. In an article with the prosaic title "Answers for Single Women" (Ave Maria, December 14, 1957) , Dohen conveys the sense of liberation she felt when she founded her own spirituality on her virginity:

Single means one, and one is an individual. I am an individual, not everyone in general.. . . I can’t expect general answers to my individual situation.

I’m not going to find my personal answer spelled out in a book. And I am mature enough at this point to know that there aren’t any pat solutions to really tough problems for any human beings -- married or single.

I have to accept myself as I am -- not the ideal me but the real me. . . . perhaps love is the only answer I’ll ever get, and all I can ask is that God will help me to understand it [p. 14].

In Dohen’s humble, very personal statement of faith in her own spiritual autonomy, we see some of the seeds of the feminist movement that would burst forth within the U.S. Catholic community during the late ‘60s. No one could predict the fruit these seeds would produce. During the decade between the late ‘50s and Humanae Vitae, vast numbers of Catholic women made their own decisions to act, not expecting pat answers spelled out with catechetical clarity. Like Dohen, they felt mature enough to decide for themselves. Somehow, in the midst’ of this process, the hierarchy lost control of these women’s minds (and bodies) Maria Goretti was no longer relevant. And in the midst of this transition, virginity lost its meaning for a large segment of Catholic women. Those who still cherish it do so more quietly than even the low-key Dorothy Dohen. And yet there is something in Dohen’s virginity that remains arresting. The consensus between Augustine, Mary Daly and Dorothy Dohen, minimal though it may be, should make us pause and wonder if a positive creative approach to virginity as a calling can be recovered.

Clergywomen and Senior Pastorates

It is a pleasant spring evening in New England. The first meeting of the newly appointed search committee of the Shelbyville Congregational Church (UCC) has been called to order. Because I am the conference minister who relates to this church, I have joined the group to explain the placement process in the United Church of Christ. Shelbyville is a typical northern New England church: a small congregation of 120 members located in a town with 1,000 residents; many of the members are elderly, and finances are a constant concern.

After I review the placement process, I discuss the Conference policies regarding fairness in employment opportunity. I remind the committee members that we expect them to evaluate all candidates on the basis of experience, skills and competence in ministry, not on the basis of such factors as age, sex, race, marital status or handicapping conditions.

At this point, several people begin to make comments about female candidates. One man says, ‘I like the way Elizabeth McKinney preaches when she fills in for John during vacations.’ Another committee member adds, "The woman pastor in Drummond has been wonderful with our teachers and children during joint vacation church school." A third person quickly interjects, "My sister says that the members of the Parker Church are not happy with the woman they hired."

The remarks about clergywomen give rise to questions:

Question: "How many women will apply for our position’?"

Answer: "Approximately 40 to 45 per cent of the applicants will probably be women.

Question: "What do we say to people in the church who have already told us they will be upset if we recommend hiring a woman?"

Answer: "How do you think you should respond?" (Lengthy discussion)

Question: What about the men? Will they want to participate in a church with a woman minister?"

Answer: "Why don’t you ask them?" (More discussion)

The members then go on to speak of their fear of conflict and their desire to choose a candidate who will please everyone in the church. Most of them take time to process their concerns and feelings. Eventually we move on to the remaining agenda items and then conclude the meeting. When I leave, I sense that this search committee will struggle to be as fair as possible in its dealings with women candidates.

The next evening I am scheduled to meet with another search committee. Located in one of New England’s small cities, the Woodbury Church, which has 725 members, is considered to be a "prestigious" congregation. Most of the members are professional people. The church owns an attractive, historic downtown building which is supported by a substantial endowment. The senior pastor recently resigned to accept a call from a denominational agency. There are three other members of the professional staff: a young man called two years prior as associate pastor, administrative assistant and a 30-hour-per-week director of music.

Again I explain the placement process, and again I discuss the Conference policy concerning fairness in employment. But the response is different from that of the previous evening. There is a general reluctance to discuss the topic of clergy-women, and the committee members do not have personal stories to share. Two of them have heard women preach; otherwise, the group has had very little contact with female clergy. The members acknowledge that women serve as associate pastors in churches similar to theirs; they are aware that women serve as sole pastors in neighboring towns. But it is clear that concepts of "clergywoman" and "senior pastor" are mutually exclusive; the topic does not merit serious or lengthy discussion.

When I try to probe the subject again, I receive a businesslike response. Several members work in professions where they are required to follow fair employment guidelines; they understand about "those rules." They assure me that they intend to treat all candidates fairly.

I leave this meeting discouraged. No honest feelings about women in ministry have been expressed. Correct and polite comments have been shared in place of a more serious engagement with the issue of sexism. I know there is little possibility that this church will call a woman.

Negative attitudes toward the idea of women as senior pastors are well documented in Edward C. Lehman, Jr.’s, sociological study Women Clergy: Breaking Through Gender Barriers (Transaction, 1985) The author analyzed detailed responses from 1,720 Presbyterian lay-people and 1,143 Presbyterian clergy concerning a wide range of attitudes toward women in ministry. He found that both groups strongly prefer a male as head of a church staff. In addition, the resistance to clergywomen performing supervisory/administrative functions is even stronger than that to their performing worship/sacramental functions. The research leads to the clear conclusion that the more highly a church values management skills, the greater the likelihood of its strong preference for male pastors. When Lehman isolated individual factors, he found that members of large, wealthy multiple-staff churches were more resistant to clergywomen than were members of small churches (which were experiencing financial difficulty).

What Lehman quantifies with his research, clergywomen and denominational placement officers confirm from personal experience: small churches are more open to women pastors. It is unfortunate that some small, struggling churches have selected clergywomen because they thought they could pay them less; this issue of justice has made it more difficult to define the real differences in attitudes between the members of small and large churches. In small congregations which pay all benefits, which meet all salary guidelines, and which are not exploitative, the fact remains that there is more openness to the leadership of women than is found in large churches.

One aspect of this difference can be explained by the value the wider society continues to place on male leadership. The greater status associated with a position -- in educational or religious institutions, in business, government or industry -- the greater the likelihood that the position will be filled by a male. The more a church is identified as "important" or "prestigious," the greater the likelihood that its members will expect and assume that its senior pastor will be a male.

In addition to general cultural dynamics, there are other reasons why large churches are more resistant to women’s leadership; these reasons are related to some of the basic differences between small and large churches. The differences are evident both in the congregations as a whole and in the working styles of search committees. In a small congregation, relationships resemble those in a family. People know one another too well to worry about impressing each other. There is a willingness to argue and struggle together, and people are not guarded in expressing opinions. All of these characteristics influence the work of a search committee in a small church. Because personal relationships are so important, the members take the time necessary to deal with difficult issues so that there is some sense of resolution. Ample time is devoted to exploring every aspect of a controversial topic such as calling a woman pastor.

In a large church, less emphasis is placed on personal relationships. People tend to be connected with subgroups rather than with the whole faith community. Committee work is focused on the task rather than on relationships between persons, and fulfilling an agenda often takes precedence over processing individual concerns. In the search-committee setting, people often come together initially as strangers -- people who do not know one another well enough to discuss complex and sensitive issues such as sexism. The tendency to be more businesslike often means there is less room for deep exploration of feelings.

Members of large churches are at an added disadvantage because they have generally had less exposure to clergy-women. Within our denominations, we have allowed a peculiar kind of elitism to develop around the senior pastorate. There has been a separation (whether clearly identified or not) between senior pastors and "other parish ministers." Clergy who serve as heads of multiple-staff churches form a separate group, one in which only others in similar situations are seen as true peers. The women who belong to "the Senior Pastors’ Club" are so few in number that they are effectively dismissed as tokens. Senior pastorates are still modeled on a working assumption that the "real" minister is male.

Furthermore, we cannot assume that this situation will change automatically as clergywomen experience more ministerial longevity. In denominational systems which rely on placement appointments, an increase in the number of women in senior pastorates is slowly beginning to occur; but in systems which rely on a call from a congregation, the availability of highly qualified and experienced clergywomen has made little difference in the tendency of large churches to call male ministers.

Justice is never achieved automatically. Nor do attitudes of either laity or clergy change easily. Such change will occur only through diligent work and intense consciousness raising efforts. If we are to move toward a more just placement system for women, there are three groups of persons who can play an important role in bringing about such change: the men who currently serve as senior pastors, the men and women who serve as denominational placement officers, and the clergywomen themselves.

Clergymen who occupy senior pastorates have an unusual opportunity to advocate on behalf of women, and a small number have chosen to use their positions to do just that. Attitudes have begun to change in churches where the senior pastors have made a regular and conscientious effort to use clergywomen as supply preachers, as workshop leaders and speakers, and as substitutes during pastoral emergencies or vacation times. Demonstrating sensitivity to language is another way in which male senior pastors can identify themselves with one of the major concerns of clergywomen. Learning to refer generally to pastors as "she" as well as "he" can make a big difference.

Lehman’s research indicates that the hiring of a clergywoman as an interim pastor can be helpful in terms of attitude change among the laity. Senior pastors who are resigning or retiring can encourage that possibility by advising church leaders to explore the names of ordained women as potential candidates for filling the positions.

Placement officers face a different challenge, that of developing a pool of female interim pastors as well as one of clergywomen who wish to apply for senior pastorates. Before that can happen, women candidates need unequivocal assurance that their candidacies for such positions will be taken seriously. In addition, if placement officers are to be advocates for a more open and fair process, they must create opportunities for search committees seriously to confront the topic of sexism. Committee members will not be able to be honest and to share feelings and fears (thereby, one hopes, resolving them) unless a basic sense of trust is cultivated.

Finally, women in ministry must begin talking with one another more seriously about the reservations they sometimes have concerning senior pastorates. Many clergywomen are ambivalent about applying for such positions. Keenly aware of the placement realities and barriers, they do not wish to expose themselves to virtually certain rejection. Until they experience stronger support from one another. from denominational officials, and from male clergy colleagues, many will continue to be tentative about such positions.

Some highly skilled and talented clergywomen have actually made conscious vocational choices never to apply to a large church. Women have obvious difficulties carrying out ministry in church structures which are still heavily patriarchal. Women often see the large church, with its traditional male model of organization and decision-making, as the embodiment of all that is frustrating for them in parish ministry. They feel an understandable reluctance to apply for positions that will entail painfully difficult work. Small churches, with their typically more cooperative style of governance and greater emphasis on community, provide opportunities more congruent with the priorities of many clergywomen.

A small group of clergywomen is beginning to accept the challenge of analyzing feminist styles of working and seeking to relate them to the large-church setting. Feminist theology requires that we reflect on all that is dehumanizing and oppressive, everything that stands in the way of the liberation of all people. For women who have chosen to serve in parish ministry, such reflection must include careful scrutiny of the large church. We must, with utter seriousness, address the question of whether it is possible to be an agent of transformation in such a setting. As part of that exploration, we must begin to talk about new styles of church management, styles which emphasize partnership rather than hierarchy. We must be creative and share our dreams and visions for ministry.

It has taken a number of years for women to realize that to be a "good preacher" does not mean preaching "like a man." We have finally claimed our own unique and authentic styles of preaching, by which countless church members have found their lives enriched. Women have equally strong skills and gifts in the areas of church management, finance, administration and supervision; many of us have been reluctant to exercise those skills or claim those gifts because they may differ from male leadership styles. It is time for clergywomen to claim their places as strong candidates for senior pastorates. And it is time for large churches to open their pulpits to those women, whose new and dynamic styles of leadership can enhance the faith experiences of Christians.

Ministering to the Unemployed



These days the domestic issue gaining the most attention in the United States is our high rate of unemployment. Regardless of one’s socioeconomic class, ethnic background or religious tradition, unemployment can be devastating. It can create social unrest and economic despair leading to many forms of destructive behavior. Many of us have tended to ignore these problems as endemic to the lower class. But now unemployment is hitting the middle class.

Americans have retreated from recognizing the benefits of full employment and are now beginning to experience the consequences of that retreat. Private enterprise has neither the capital nor the motivation to create jobs. For small businesses, the current goal is survival. For large, successful corporations, the aim is to protect and enhance investments and to make a profit. Creating jobs does not directly accomplish any of these goals.

To complicate matters, the job market is changing. The day of the white-collar generalist is rapidly waning. Jobs can be found in the technical fields, but educational institutions are only now beginning to adjust to meet the training demands of these areas. The liberal arts degree, once touted as an insurance policy against joblessness, has lost its clout in the marketplace. It is a brand-new day; millions of middle-class Americans are coming home on Friday night with no job to go to on Monday morning.

The pervasiveness of the problem hit me when several members of my congregation found themselves out of work. I asked myself, “How can the church offer a tangible and significant response?” The church is not equipped to function as a job service agency. Even if it were, there simply are not enough jobs to go around. What could we do?

It became increasingly clear that, along with the unemployed members’ anxiety about finding work, they felt a persistent loneliness and alienation because of their joblessness. Loneliness and alienation were something to which the church could respond. Historically, one thing the church has done well is providing support for people in times of crisis.

Consequently, the jobless church members and I formed a support group for unemployed people, both churched and unchurched. We announced through the Evanston and Chicago media that our group would begin meeting the first Tuesday in February and continue as long as need for it persisted. Since the first February meeting, 75 people have participated at one level or another. While support helped people cope with joblessness, however, we found that their ultimate concern was to find a job. The group discovered that by thinking imaginatively together, we could develop resources which would facilitate each other’s job search.

First we sent a letter to members of First Baptist Church in which we identified the experience and qualifications of the group members. We asked for information about job opportunities of which church members might know. Many church people responded with ideas, which were passed along to group members. Second, we invited personnel managers of major Evanston and Chicago companies to meet with the group and comment on resumes, the interview process, and the impression a job applicant makes. Finally, we discovered that the most significant resources lay within the group itself. Group members became agents for one another. When scrutinizing the “help wanted” section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune or “pounding the pavement,” each person remained attuned to the needs of other group members. Participants also shared what did and did not work in obtaining interviews and job contacts.

This group process has provided a context in which the moral consequences of unemployment have become apparent to all of us. I use the term “moral consequences” because being unemployed affects the meaning and quality of life for the person concerned, his or her family, and society as a whole.

Particularly as people find themselves unemployed for increasingly longer periods of time, the personal and social dimensions of coping with unemployment become critical. The jobless person is forced to ask, “How can I feel worthwhile without my work? How can I cope with mounting financial pressures? How can I overcome my sense of guilt about losing my job?”

Or perhaps the questions are more relational in nature. An unemployed person may ask, “How can I face my family and friends? How can I adjust to my changing environment and changing acquaintances? How can I deal with being rejected by potential employers?”



Especially for members of the middle class, work and a sense of worth go hand in hand. Out of work, one finds oneself faced with a real identity crisis. We have grown up with the notion that we must “do something for a living.” The implication is that without a meaningful job, one isn’t really living.

It was Max Weber who first saw clearly the roots of the current middle-class work ethic. The Protestant Reformation, he said, was the source of capitalism. Daniel T. Rodgers, in his book The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850 to 1920 University of Chicago Press, 1978), enlarges upon Weber’s original thesis, suggesting that “at the heart of Protestantism’s revaluation of work was the doctrine of the calling, the faith that God had called everyone to some productive vocation, to toil there for the common good and for His greater glory.”

Rodgers goes on to suggest that the Protestant Reformation in general and English Puritanism in particular instilled the monastic ethic of asceticism but reinterpreted it to fit the context outside the monastery:

Puritanism saturated its believers with an acute sense of the dangers of idleness, enjoining them to guard against the misspense of time and to improve the passing moments, each of which, in the end, had to be accounted for in heaven. This was an asceticism of a novel sort, worldly and systematic, looking forward to the time-and-profit calculus of industrial life rather than backward to the flesh-denying torments of the desert hermits. Joined with the doctrine of the calling, it demanded not only that all men work, but that they work in a profoundly new way: regularly, conscientiously, and diligently.

By the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution was beginning to make a profound impact on life in Europe and America. Gradually the population was shifting from rural to urban settings, and the meaning and nature of work was being defined in a secular context. The religious roots of the work ethic were giving way to its secular interpretation. Comments Rodgers:

The old ideas never completely died out, but gradually the term “calling” faded from common speech and with it the idea that in work one labored in the first instance for the glory of God. Increasingly the moralists talked instead of usefulness. Benjamin Franklin helped set the new tone in his tireless strings of maxims and projects for the public good, and by the era of the American Revolution, political writing was saturated with the ideal of public usefulness.

It should therefore come as no surprise that millions of unemployed middle-class Americans are discovering that when they lose their work, they run out of self-esteem.

The social matrix in which we live contributes to this dilemma by reinforcing one’s acquiescence to the work ethic through personal and institutional relationships. For example, the first experience of a newly unemployed person is rejection. Whether it comes across a desk, over the telephone or through the mail, the message received is that one is no longer needed.

Even if the reason for termination is economic, the employer has communicated that the former worker is no longer useful and has no more economic value to the organization. Worse yet is the ongoing sense of rejection that accompanies the job search. Members of my support/resource group are finding that they are out of work for a period of from four months to two years. During such a prolonged time, the job seeker must go through multiple experiences of rejection at the hands of potential employers overloaded with qualified applicants.

Thus the unemployed person develops a feeling of powerlessness that becomes a fiercer foe as time wears on. The feeling begins when one loses a job. One’s emotional and material power base has been removed. After all, money is power; having a reason to get up and go out the door is power (power of purpose); being in a position in which people are dependent on the services one renders is power (the power to influence). Suddenly, one’s income, motivation and influence are all gone.

Furthermore, one discovers that the feeling of powerlessness is compounded when one has to conform to the demands and schedules of possible employers. As one of my group members said, “We are forever filling out their applications, being interviewed at their convenience and waiting to hear from them when they decide to call.”

The pressure of a work-oriented society combined with the relational dynamics of feelings of rejection and powerlessness pose a real danger to the emotional health of all unemployed people. This is particularly true for those of the middle class who have been nurtured in the secularized version of the Protestant work ethic.

Thus, what appears on the surface to be a secular and social problem is ultimately rooted in a deeply religious ethic. The solution to the problem appears to be simply one of finding work, thus restoring one’s self-esteem. As long as joblessness remains a threat to their identities, however, middle-class Americans will continue to fear the possible loss of self-worth. Thus, losing another job will raise the old issues of work and worth, of rejection and powerlessness.

The role of work is an old theological problem dressed up in new clothes in an industrial/technological society. The real solution to the problem of joblessness is not simply to find another job -- that would only mask the symptoms of the illness. Whether people are employed or unemployed, the real question is whether a new ethic can be found to replace the old work ethic.



My unemployed friends have taught me about the roots of the work ethic. Most of them have stumbled into our meetings for the first time pouring out feelings of self-doubt, rejection and weakness. I have heard them ask, “Who am I, anyway? What can I do apart from my work? What is wrong with me? How can my life be useful to anyone now?” When they raise these questions, they are really asking, “How can I find a sense of worth that will stick with me?”

No one in the group has yet responded by saying, “Relax; when you get another job, you will recover.” Quite the contrary. People have listened, shared their experiences and responded with care. They offer one another personal support and a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves -- a community of shared pain. To use Henri Nouwen’s term, they have become wounded healers. It is a miraculous transaction of emerging wholeness among people.

The work ethic is being replaced by a relational ethic here. The people in this support group have discovered that one is not what one earns, does or has; one is as one loves.

Frequently people who come into the group are alienated, hopeless and frustrated. Through their relationships their alienation becomes reconciliation, their hopelessness becomes hopefulness and their frustration, while still present, becomes diffused. This transformation occurs because they face their present and future not alone, but in the context of community.

One member is a divorced mother of two. She lost her job because of school funding cuts in the spring of 1981. As of this writing, she has been unemployed for one year. She has made every conceivable effort to find a job. Her lack of emotional and financial resources has taken her to the precipice time and time again. When she joined the group, she was angry, isolated and despairing. In applying for new jobs, she had been rejected again and again. She had seemingly lost her sense of self-worth, and in her view, there was only one solution: finding another job.

Recently she shared with the group a job opportunity for which she felt qualified. With tears in her eyes, she told how it had become impossible for her to go through the motions of preparing a resumé and cover letter to apply for this job. She simply couldn’t bear another rejection. Hearing her desperation, the group members offered to write the resumé and letter for her. Feeling their support gave her strength to go ahead and apply for the position.

To date the woman has received no response to her application; but since that experience, she has discovered energy and new purpose. For now, at least, she has hope. Her motivation for finding work has increased. Why? Because her self-concept is changing. She is finding worth apart from work. That, I suspect, is why she said, “Something special is happening in these group meetings. I really can’t put my finger on it, but it is real.”

This little secular community of unemployed people who meet in a church once a week is discovering spiritual truth more deeply than many of them ever had. What ultimately matters is their recognition that they are more than their work. What matters is their seeing that they are really not alone. What matters is that they find meaning apart from their work. They are discovering usefulness in who they are and what they mean to each other. If they ever run out of work again, perhaps they can hold on to their worth, no matter what happens.

Pro-Family Public Policy: Creating a Just Society

In their introduction to Domestic Revolution: A Social History of Domestic Family Life (Free Press, 1987) Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg paint a portrait of family life today:

Today the term ‘family" is no longer attached exclusively to conjugal or nuclear families comprising a husband, wife, and their dependent children. It is applied to any grouping of two or more people domiciled together. These family groupings include single-parent households, blended families made up of stepparents and stepchildren or adoptive parents and their children, and couples cohabiting outside wedlock, including gay couples.

Through documenting the changing patterns and forms of family life in America, Mintz and Kellogg dispel the popular sentiment that the American family is in a state of decay. Instead they convincingly argue that the roles and responsibilities of families have always been in flux.

In colonial America, the family was the primary foundation of economics, education, religion and politics. It was the hub from which society’s structures emerged. Those who insist that the solution to contemporary family problems lies in a return to this way of life are wishing for something that is irretrievable. Arguing that family morality is based on a patriarchal form and its past function poorly conceives the modern family.

Mintz and Kellogg contend:

Since the late 1950s, confidence that the American family is growing progressively stronger has eroded. The family, once viewed as the deepest source of affection and emotional support, increasingly came to be seen as an impediment to individual self-fulfillment. In those years the relationship between family values and the values of individualism and personal autonomy has grown ever more problematic. One source of the strain lies in a continuing escalation in the expectations of what a marriage can and ought to fulfill. Rising expectations have proved difficult to meet, and the result has been mounting divorce rates. A further source of strain has been individuals’ increased desire for personal fulfillment, especially the middle-class belief that happiness can be achieved only through a successful, independent career.

A confrontation of family needs with the drive for personal fulfillment among individual members has forced an emerging constellation of family forms. The cultural emphasis on the value of the individual has created a tension in contemporary domestic life. Around whom -- the father, the mother, the children -- should the family be centered’? What happens when assertion of one individual’s rights subverts the needs of the rest of the family? By what moral standards do we establish a social context for the family?

In every culture, the family is a microcosm of social reality. Therefore, a healthy society depends on vigorous families. Public policies can create structures that encourage the cultivation of even the most private of our cherished institutions. Public policies that treat every member as integral to the entire family’s health will diffuse the destructive tendency toward narcissism which is the real threat to family stability and strength. It is the proper role of government not to intervene in family life, but to make possible a healthy, strong and productive life for all families.

Current U.S. income-tax regulations are an example of inadequate public policy. Forty years ago income-tax policy was based on the family wage. In this scheme a breadwinner could support and meet all of his or her family’s needs. At that time a tax deduction of $600 for every child was considered adequate in order to make family life viable. If that deduction were updated for "viability," the child exemption would be $5,600, over twice the $2,000 exemption that exists under current law.

David Blankenhorn, executive director of the Institute for American Values, argues for this kind of pro-family tax reform: Such a family tax credit would boost real income by about $750 per child for precisely the families who have suffered an economic squeeze over the past 15 years." He suggests that such a weighty deduction could be eliminated for the wealthy and a refund given to disadvantaged families. A social policy that truly values the family will offer its most cherished institution the resources necessary to remain economically viable.

Additionally, a society that places a premium on family life must give children their proper role as the custodians of our future. One out of every four preschool children will live below the poverty line sometime in his or her life. From 1982 to 1985 the Reagan administration cut nearly 30 per cent of the budget for school nutrition programs, the Child Care food program and the Summer Food Program. The rationale for these cuts was couched in national budgetary terms, sung with the continuing refrain, "We simply can’t afford these programs." The truth is that we simply cannot afford to ignore our children’s health needs.

It costs about $30.00 a month to provide a supplemental nutrition package to a pregnant woman who cannot afford a sufficient diet. After delivery it costs taxpayers an additional $35.00 a month to offer good nutrition to her infant through the Women, Infant and Children program. If we aren’t willing to pay for family programs now, we will pay much more later. It costs an average of $1,400 a week to hospitalize a malnourished infant. Good nutrition now for the most vulnerable of our family members will minimize future healthcare costs.

Immunization policies are inadequate, too. Thirty per cent of all children -- 50 per cent of black children -- are inadequately immunized against preventable diseases. As with nutrition, each dollar spent now on childhood immunization will save Americans $10.00 in future medical costs. Moral sensitivity and fiscal responsibility are not mutually contradictory.

Pro-family public policies will recognize that preventive medicine is good not only for our children’s bodies, but also for their minds. A child’s education begins at birth, and half of all learning takes place before entering kindergarten. Because one out of four of our children suffer from poverty, they need the advantage of early educational opportunities. The Head Start program has demonstrated that education is a great preventive medicine for poverty’s liabilities. Quality early-childhood education programs that involve families reduce school dropout rates in later years, diminish welfare dependency and teenage pregnancies, and result in lower crime rates when children grow up. Unfortunately, Head Start serves only 18 per cent of eligible disadvantaged children.

Approximately 500,000 of the nations children are homeless. Some live on the streets, others with their families in welfare hotels. Homelessness breaks the spirit, shatters hope and creates a living nightmare for children and their families. Society must refuse to rest until every child has a place to call home, a place where the spirit is nourished in hope. The Chicago Tribune reported on a family living in a welfare hotel in Manhattan. A ten-year-old girl named Olga, who lived in the hotel with her father and sister, spoke of her frightened and broken spirit: "Sometimes when I wake up and Daddy is in a separate bed, and I see I’m in a shelter, and all of the people in the same room . . . there’s no privacy." Olga talked of nightmares. She said that sometimes in her sleep it seems everybody is going to get her. "When I wake up," she said, "there are bad faces all around"

The prevalence of homelessness, whether among children or adults, is indicative of our failure to comprehend the real moral issues of family life. Our domestic public policy is essentially reactionary, developing programs after a crisis hits. It was only after the Reagan administration recognized the reality of homelessness that it reluctantly agreed to restore federal money that had been cut from the Housing and Urban Development budget.

One family member’s problems are inextricably bound up with those of other members. It is inaccurate to see one member’s crisis as solely an individual crisis For this reason contemporary families need local family resource centers where they can talk about their stresses, receive guidance from family caseworkers and share problems with other families. In such supportive settings, families may not only deal with their problems but may discover their strengths.

Workers at these resource centers would be trained to recognize the whole range of family needs. For example, if a lesbian couple adopts a homeless girl, a resource center could assist the couple with child rearing and assist the child with adjusting to a stable home. Or, if a monogomous gay couple provides for a foster child diagnosed with AIDS, hoping to give him a few years of loving care, a resource center could help the couple with support and information as well as helping to add social dignity to their compassion.

If a middle-class couple is having financial difficulties. a family resource center could help put their money in order. If middle-aged parents are struggling with an elderly relative’s future, a resource center could become an essential source of encouragement. The possibilities for family resource centers are limitless.

We must help keep or make possible the life-giving family connections that sustain us all. This advocacy must mandate that every place of employment become family -sensitive by offering flexible work hours, parental leave, job sharing and on-site or nearby childcare; We cannot continue to value the family and work independently. Family life will be strengthened by minimizing the conflict between home and job, fostering cooperation rather than competition between them.

We must teach the responsibilities and consequences of family life. Almost 1 million teen-age girls become pregnant every year and nearly one-half of these have abortions. Some high schools have begun teaching family planning by bringing in teen-age mothers to talk about the responsibilities of caring for a baby. Several schools have even created a pro-family environment for teen-age mothers, providing daycare so they may bring their children to school. This enables the teenage mother to complete her education -- and it shows her classmates the consequences of pregnancy.

We need a national vision that unifies the many and complex issues facing families, that understands that human need always exists in the context of relationship. This vision could lead to a national agenda that makes family life the cornerstone of all domestic public policy. This is an enormous task requiring a partnership between the public and private sectors. And it will obviously cost money. But it is by the way we order our lives and spend our money that we reveal who and what we truly value.