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Thoughts on Smashing Idols: Church Music in the ‘80s

All the popular indicators of health and vitality suggest that church music is alive and well in the ‘80s. Almost every parish boasts (or aspires to boast) of some sort of choir to assist in leading in worship. Church music publishers report increasing sales. The sheer volume of choir and organ music published each year continues to grow. Experts in church music are regularly imported from abroad to hold forth on the latest developments from their corners of the world. Attendance at workshops and conferences continues to rise, and new ones crop up every year. Even in a time of belt-tightening, church music is involving more and more people.

‘Hymnbook Explosion’

The most recent impetus for this upsurge of interest and activity in various aspects of worship and church music has undoubtedly been the "great hymnbook explosion" of the past 15 years or so. In the latter ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s virtually every major denomination in the United States and Canada set about revising, updating or producing a worship book or hymnal for its constituency. Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Christian Reformed, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Moravians, the United Church of Christ and Lutherans have already produced such material. Episcopalians and some other Lutherans will soon have books ready.

Broadly characterized by greater attention to the historic forms, structures and shapes of worship, by greater concern for the action of the liturgy, and by greater care in the selection and use of both older and newer hymnody, these books are providing the context in which the worship and church music practices of most American denominations will be carried out in the years ahead. Whatever ancillary materials may be produced, it is nevertheless these basic denominational publications that are establishing the general boundaries within which worship and church music in American churches will be practiced.

In the midst of this flush of new worship books, hymnals and liturgical possibilities, congregations, church musicians and pastors need to be reminded of some persistent problems that continue to rear their heads, usually in new guises.

Perhaps it is not too early for a new iconoclasm to be directed against the current crop of idols that plague worship and church music in our time. From the current batch of idols we might mention three of the most insidious. Problems of every age, they threaten, basic understandings of what Christian worship and church music are really all about. They are entertainment, mediocrity and massiveness.

Focusing on the Machinery

One of the most widely promoted emphases in some parts of the church in recent years has been the idea that in words and music the church music heard in most congregations has been hopelessly out of date. For church music to survive, it must in some dramatic way become more contemporary. "Contemporary" in such discussions at first meant the adoption of the folk-pop-rock mentality. More recently, it has come to include wholesale embrace of the country-and-western, Bible-belt, gospel-song tradition spruced up with all the trappings of the electronic church.

From the too-clever, flippant and sometimes irreverent texts and tunes of Richard Avery and Donald Marsh beginning in the late ‘60s and early 70s (Hymns Hot and Carols Cool and More Hymns Hot and Carols Cool), this view of church music has expanded to include a veritable flood of mini-musicals (Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat, It’s Coal in the Furnace, 100% Chance of Rain) on the one hand and a host of singing groups with cutesy names like "Joynoise," "The First Chapter of Acts," "Sonrise" and "Matthew, Mark, Luke and Fred" on the other. With ruffled shirts, expensive audio systems, and microphones in hand, they have spread like a plague over the church music scene with a brand of television-inspired religious music that has everything to do with entertainment but little, if anything, to do with the corporate worship of the people of God.

One does not have to question the sincerity of those involved to note that suddenly church music in this perspective has gone completely out of focus. Rather than centering on the proclamation of the Word and the praises of the people God and their response to the Good News, the attention is now on machinery. Amplifiers, speakers, microphones, electric pianos and showmanship occupy center stage. The voices of young and old, many of whom have yet to learn the rudiments of singing, are amplified beyond the bearable, squelching any need, desire or possibility of participation on the part of faithful.

Church Music as Entertainment

What has gone out of focus is the perception of church music as the people’s song, dissolving to a view that relegates the congregation to the role of spectator. Rather than being regarded as a vehicle for edifying the whole body of Christ, church music is seen primarily as entertainment. That this approach has been warmly embraced among churches of the Reformed tradition should be enough to make John Calvin wince. That it has been espoused in the so-called liturgical churches is the ultimate irony.

What was the Reformation -- or Vatican II -- about, if not in significant part about the restoration of the church’s song of proclamation, praise and thanksgiving to the people? No longer were they to be passive listeners; they would henceforth be participants in the psalms, hymns and spiritual songs of the church. Where the medieval church seemed to suggest that the faithful were spectators before the holy mysteries, the churches of the Reformation emphasized the involvement of all the faithful in the song of the church. What an irony that churches that have stoutly upheld the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers are now, in an important part of their worship life, content to sit back and be entertained.

Especially appalling is the theological content of much of this worship material. Many of the songs are characterized by a superficial moralism, a cheap grace and an easy and comfortable gospel. The hard word of sin and grace, law and gospel, death and resurrection is -- if not obliterated -- at least seriously muted. The Word around which Christians gather as they meet to worship is the good news of the gospel, or it is no word at all. Whatever else it may be, the word of God to humanity is the word of guilt and forgiveness, of estrangement and reconciliation, of death through sin, and of life through Jesus Christ. That word must sound out loud and clear in the music of the church. All other words may be entertaining, interesting, enticing and provocative, but they are not the words that nourish and build Christians in the faith.

And this is precisely the point that church music as entertainment has missed. For when entertainment has become the aim -- inadvertently or by design -- the central focus of the gathering of God’s people for worship and praise has become blurred.

Perhaps the surest sign that many church musicians, congregations and pastors have lost sight of the purpose of Christian worship and the place of music in the life of God’s people is the tremendous popularity which such trivializations of the gospel presently enjoy. On the one hand sincere purveyors of such pious pap can simply say, "Sour grapes! It works! Everyone seems to enjoy it!" And church musicians had better consider seriously such comments. But it is also true that this is not the first time that a popular piety has subtly reshaped worship to serve its own ends rather than the glory of God and the edification of his people.

Church Music as Mediocrity

Anyone who has the opportunity regularly to assess the flood of church music spewing forth from the presses catering to church musicians cannot help being disheartened by the mediocrity of much of it. Of course the judgment of mediocrity assumes the existence of criteria by which church music can properly be judged. Those criteria have generally been of two kinds: suitability (Is it appropriate to the demands of the liturgy?) and craftsmanship (Is it a well-made example of its art?). Those who assume that church music is, after all, a matter of individual taste must either reject the idea of any kind of objective criteria, or they must plead that if such criteria do exist, works that fall below such standards must nevertheless be admitted to use if many people find them attractive.

The movement for liturgical renewal in churches of all denominations has made church musicians more aware that music in worship must be more suitably tied to the forms, structures and action of the liturgy than has often been the case. Such an awareness needs to be reinforced and strengthened at every opportunity. Likewise the criterion of craftsmanship needs to be reinforced by the regular and recurring demonstration in the church music of the parish that within the limitations of particular circumstances there is abundant room for satisfying the needs of composers, choirs, organists and people alike. Within those possibilities there can be music for worship that is appropriate, challenging, exciting; music that involves, all the people. There is so much attractive and significant music at hand -- even at simple levels of difficulty -- that no parish can possibly exhaust it in a lifetime. Why then do so many insist on the trivial, the superficial and the shoddily made?

Mediocrity thrives where the superficially attractive is held in high regard, where the easy effect is too readily applauded, and where the trite rhythm or the maudlin or treacly melody too easily satisfies. The ideals of craftsmanship and liturgical suitability are upheld and reinforced when the hymns and the choir and organ music are models of those ideals. The best chair, we need to remind ourselves, is not only one which is well built and does not fall apart at first or second use, but one which serves well the purpose of sitting and continues to serve its purpose well as one grows more comfortable with it over a period of time. Such simple criteria, widely applied to church music, might result in a revolution in what is heard in our churches.

Perhaps the frantic search for something new each season may reflect, in part at least, that we have become rather quickly tired of last year’s novelties. There has been precious little to keep us interested over the long pull; too much of our worship music is material which we rather quickly grow out of rather than something which we can grow into.

Part of the problem is undoubtedly of our own making. Publishers, after all, will not print what church musicians are not willing to buy and use. If we insist on the mediocre and the maudlin, there are publishers only too happy to serve those needs if it is financially profitable. In church music, as in politics, we usually get what we deserve and are willing to pay for. If a sufficient number of church musicians would insist (through their purchases of music) on liturgical suitability, craftsmanship and quality, that concern would ultimately be reflected in the products available. To topple the idol of mediocrity will require a clear-sighted vision of what is necessary and crucial for worship by God’s people. It will also require perseverance in the pursuit of that ideal in every facet of church music.

Church Music as Massiveness

The idol of massiveness is seen in our attempts to impress with sheer size, numbers and volume. It crops up in our concern for the big choir, the large organ, in our one-upmanship as to who has the largest church music program, in fascination with the big effect. None of us is exempt from this kind of idolatry.

One problem with placing an inordinate emphasis on size and numbers is that there are few parishes where that is a realistic possibility. Most parishes are small, and most church music programs of necessity work with modest musical resources. Are these by definition situations whose only hope for making a significant contribution to the worship life of God’s people lies in recruiting more members to the choir or in installing a newer and larger organ? Instead of espousing the idea that "Big is beautiful," perhaps we need to learn that "Small is salutary" or "Small is seemly" -- seemly in the sense of being "agreeably fashioned, suited to the purpose"; salutary in the sense of "promoting health, and of beneficial effect." To think in such terms, however, will require -- for many -- a reorientation of priorities.

While one recognizes the important role of large parishes with large church music programs, it needs to be said that it is often easier to work where the resources are abundant. It is precisely where the resources are more modest that the ingenuity, flexibility and creativeness of the church musician are most crucial. Resourcefulness is required when the choir is made up of eight or ten singers, none of whom can read music, and the accompanying instrument is the wrong size for the building, ineffective, and in need of repair. Perhaps we need to recognize that when the smaller parish does not seek to imitate the larger church down the block but rather builds on its own strengths, fashioning a worship style and church music program suited to its resources, we will be on the road to a more meaningful, realistic and effective church music style geared to the situations in which most parishes find themselves.

Servants of Worship

What would this mean for the smaller parish and its church music? It would mean first of all a redirection of the expectations of the music-makers, as well as of the parishes themselves. Emphasis would be placed on what is really central to music in the life and worship of God’s people. It would mean a concentration on essentials -- essentials which can easily be overlooked in situations where the "big effect" is what too easily impresses pastors, congregants and church musicians alike.

It is precisely in the smaller parishes, where the pretensions of larger musical forces and more massive resources are neither possible nor available, that such a reorientation is most likely to occur. The question is no longer "How do we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ on Easter morning with six singers, a spinet organ, one trumpet and a piccolo?" The simple answer is that such a parish shouldn’t be attempting it in the first place. The question is rather, "How can available resources be marshaled to focus on what the Easter celebration is really all about?" To accomplish this will mean using the literature increasingly available from many publishers that directs attention first of all to more effective ways of singing the hymns and the liturgy, to those proper texts which give richness to particular celebrations, and to those materials which help us see more clearly the respective roles of congregation, choir, organ and composer as servants of the worshiping assembly.

"Small is salutary" is not a theoretical accommodation to an otherwise poor or hopeless situation. The reality of the smaller parish can help us all by focusing on the essential thrust of music in worship and how it functions in a congregation -- no matter what the extent of resources.

Big may well be beautiful in particular situations and circumstances. But many church musicians and worship leaders can confidently assert that God reveals himself not only in the noise and power of the musical whirlwind, but also in the smaller voice of church music whose primary considerations are liturgical suitability and musical craftsmanship. The more modest musical resources found in the parishes most of us serve can be exciting and creative stimulants and can free us from the tyranny of the idol of the massive.

The church has always struggled to maintain the connection between two terms which signify what congregations, church musicians and pastors are about as they gather for worship: the dogma (or teaching), and the doxa (or praise). Perhaps we all need to remind each other that dogma and doxa are best held together when the church sees itself first of all as a worshiping community, that orthodoxy means "right praise."

To realize this truth more faithfully and effectively in parish practice may well require a smashing of idols that hinder its fulfillment, and a realignment of priorities on the part of congregations, church musicians and worship leaders alike. But that is precisely what all of us as worshiping Christians are to he about. When this begins to happen in the local parish, then -- and only then -- will worship become the exciting and enriching experience that all Christians instinctively know that it can and should be.

Church Music in the ‘90s: Problems and Prognoses

Anglican churchman W. R. Inge once wrote, "When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: ‘My dear, we live in an age of transition."’ The song of God’s people in the ‘90s -- as in every other decade -- is also in transition. For some people "transition" means abandoning the old to embrace the new; for others it means abandoning the new to embrace the old. Adherents of both views -- from the terminally hip to rigid repristinators -- have their advocates today. For most church musicians, however, transition means building on the foundation of the old and moving toward a future where both old and new can contribute to the song of God’s people at worship.

Church music is in a time of exciting change. Many church musicians have lost -- or perhaps never found -- their bearings. Far too many church musicians take their cues from a variety of factors having little to do with what is at the heart and center of the church’s worship and the church’s song. Where you stand, says one, depends on where you sit. Here I stand, says another, although I could just as well stand over there . . . or there . . . or there.

Among the various longer-range challenges facing church music in the ‘90s, four seem to be occupying center stage: the challenge of providing church musicians in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of parishes throughout the land in almost every denomination; the continued search for musical roots in many denominations; the ongoing debate between those advocating the worship and musical tradition of the church catholic and those advocating a variety of trendy fads; and the impact of pragmatism and consumerism in determining worship practice and musical style and substance.

But basic to an understanding of each of these concerns is the growing conviction that the church musician is not simply one who, in Robin Leaver’s words, "produces nice noises at various points in worship." Rather, the church musician is being seen increasingly as a liturgical-musical theologian who reflects particular theological understandings about church music and its use. The question is whether such a church musician -- United Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal or Reformed -- is a good or bad liturgical musical theologian.

Perhaps the most obvious fact facing the churches in the ‘90s is that there simply will not be enough well-trained church musicians to meet the demand. Many congregations already face vacant organ benches and empty podiums because not enough young people are seriously considering church music as a viable career.

Despite many innovative and ingenious programs by congregations, schools and colleges and American Guild of Organists chapters, the demand will continue to exceed the supply. A congregation in Cheshire, Connecticut, is hoping to assure its own musical future by setting aside a regular scholarship to help a deserving high school student study organ. Another, in East Lansing, Michigan, sponsors a yearly competition for young organists and fledgling composers. The Association for Lutheran Musicians, among other groups, has an aggressive placement service to help congregations find church musicians. The supply, nevertheless, continues to fall short of the demand.

On the other hand, the prospects are encouraging for those looking for formal training in church music in the ‘90s. Programs at the undergraduate and especially at the graduate level continue to develop, particularly in denominations which understand the necessity for training church musicians theologically and liturgically as well as musically. In fact, as a result of their study of both theology and church music, many church musicians are finding themselves better educated and prepared in these subjects than their pastors. Some pastors welcome the help; others view church musicians with suspicion and their suggestions as invading the pastor’s turf. The greatest problem is the drop in enrollment in undergraduate church music departments throughout the country.

Students attracted to church music in the ‘90s will find the prospects of employment excellent -- a simple case of more churches chasing fewer graduates and offering higher salaries. Of course, countless churches will continue to be served by dedicated volunteer church musicians at various levels of competence who are often trained, educated and inspired only by summer workshops and weekend institutes.

The quest for musical roots also continues, especially as churches reach out to people and cultures new to their experience and their origins. For some churches this quest entails a return to ethnic origins, practices and traditions. For others it involves a search for an elusive "American" church music identity.

This search is most clearly reflected in each new denominational hymnal and worship book as it shapes worship practices and wrestles with what it means to be Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran or Reformed in the last decade of the 20th century. The impact of hymnals and worship books produced in the ‘80s such as Lutheran Worship (1982) and its late ‘70s predecessor Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) , Hymnal 1982 (Episcopal, music edition, 1985) , the Psalter Hymnal (Christian Reformed Church in North America, 1987) , Worship (Roman Catholic, third edition, 1986) , Rejoice in the Lord (Reformed Church in America, 1985) , the United Methodist Hymnal (1989) , and similar denominational hymnals has already been significant. Their full impact will be felt in the ‘90s.

Other hymnals will be published in the ‘90s, including ones by the Moravian Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) , the Wesleyan Church, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Disciples of Christ, the Friends General Conference (Quakers) and, in Canada, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, to name only a few. Many of these new hymnals and worship books, like their predecessors, will spawn new congregational, choral and organ music to support their use. Their influence can hardly be overestimated. In addition to the denominational hymnals are plans for any number of nondenominational hymnals, together with a proliferation of hymnal supplements intended in some cases to promote hymns not ordinarily found in mainline hymnals.

All of these books include an increasing number of new hymn texts and tunes written by contemporary poets and musicians. Such American hymn writers and translators as Jaroslav J. Vajda, Thomas Troeger, Gracia Grindal, Martin Franzmann, Herbert Brokering, F. Samuel Janzow and such British writers as F. Pratt Green, Timothy Dudley Smith and Brian Wren are rapidly becoming household names. Using new melodies by musicians Peter Cutts, Gerald Near, Richard Hillert, David Hurd, Erik Routley and Alec Wyton, among others, countless congregations are singing new hymns and finding them immensely satisfying.

Probably at no time in American church music history since the advent of the gospel song in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has there been such an outpouring of new texts and tunes. Many of these new hymns are of the highest quality and thus will become a permanent part of the church’s inheritance from the 20th century. The search for musical roots goes on in many ways, but in the hymnals and worship books -- the basic resources of the church musician -- one sees the process focused more clearly than in any other endeavor.

For some, tradition means "how we did it last year," a tradition based all too frequently on the personal and idiosyncratic projections of worship leaders. But for many churches in the ‘90s the return to the tradition of the church catholic will mean an increasing reliance on the historic experience of the church at worship. Materials produced by virtually all main-line denominations are emphasizing the stability and continuity of the historic dimensions of worship and church music. This approach is finding a welcome reception by many pastors, church musicians and congregations exhausted by impossible demands for a constant variety. The losers seem to be those who continue to advocate the trendy style of worship characteristic of the late ‘60s, ‘70s and early ‘80s. The ‘60s folk mass, for instance, is almost dead. Many Catholic parishes have outgrown their ‘60s-style musical heritage. In most Protestant traditions the mandatory weekly or monthly folk mass has all but disappeared, continuing to find a place only where aging graduates of the ‘60s and ‘70s attempt to relive their memories of bygone days.

While one might expect the case for ordered worship in the tradition in Episcopal, Catholic and Lutheran churches, its resurgence is being felt also among groups whose contact with the church’s tradition has been minimal. In Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacraments, Thomas Howard chronicles his evangelical encounter with the rich tradition of the early church. Robert E. Webber of Wheaton College -- a center associated more with mass evangelism and crusades -- advocates in Celebrating Our Faith: Evangelism Through Worship an approach to the unchurched which he calls "liturgical evangelism."

While the wider impact of such appeals is not yet clear, the call to consider the catholic tradition of the church is receiving an ever-wider hearing. The field belongs increasingly to those who have experienced the richness and depths of the tradition and who are restive with the something-new-every-week folks who, in Luther’s words, have "no more than an itch to produce something novel so that they might shine before men as leading lights."

The concept which has caused the most consternation on the part of church musicians has been that modern heresy that sees worship as a tool and a vehicle for various other agendas and music in worship as an entertaining diversion along the way. These ideas, in marked contrast to the whole of Christian experience, have most recently been embraced by the church growth industry, which, together with its basically sociological approach, promotes those quintessential American values of pragmatism and consumerism.

Pragmatism asks: Does it get results? Are we attracting people to our worship? If we are, we must be doing something right. If not, we must be doing something wrong. The devastating implications for the church musician are obvious. Such pragmatism, critics of the church growth industry say, tends to quantify success. For church musicians, a "successful" music program would thus be identified by the size and numbers of our choirs, the breadth of our music program, the number of people involved and, most important, its attractiveness to outsiders. We aspire -- as congregations and as church musicians -- to emulate the fastest-growing and the biggest. And whatever it takes, musically speaking, for that to happen is its own justification.

Consumerism asks its own set of questions: How do we compete in the denominational marketplace? How do we get our piece of the pie, our market share? Are we giving people what they want, musically speaking, when they come to church? Or the even more insidious question, Are we meeting people’s perceived needs (as if we ever could) ? We tend to shop around; if a church does not offer our kind of religiosity -- and our kind of music -- we will go down the block to one that does.

Such questions, critics of the church growth industry suggest, reflect basic misunderstandings about worship and its music. We do not come to worship to shape it to our own ends, but to be shaped by God who calls us together to hear his word and share his meal. Likewise, calls for a more pragmatic, consumer-oriented worship and church music are more concerned with sociology and psychology than with theology. The claim that such approaches are theologically neutral is sheer nonsense. The medium is the message; there is a close connection between what we believe and how it is expressed and celebrated, whether in word, action or music.

The church growth industry has thrived in mainline churches that are panicked by declining memberships and looking for a quick fix to reverse the trend. Church growth has strong adherents, both within and without church bureaucracies -- adherents who are just beginning to be challenged by serious theological voices. One can anticipate the musical aspect of the dialogue to get more heated in the ‘90s.

As leaders of the people’s song, church musicians in the ‘90s will be increasingly at the forefront helping pastors and congregations understand the role of music in their life together as the people of God. The central act by which the church is constituted is at stake as people, pastors and church musicians alike continue to determine the doxa and the dogma.

Censorship or Education? Feminist Views on Pornography

Pornographic images have been proliferating at a remarkable rate. What was a $5 million-a-year enterprise merely 25 years ago has boomed to a $7 billion to $10 billion-a-year industry today. Pornography turns a larger profit than the conventional film and music industries combined. This surge is due in part to the discovery of new markets. While adult bookstores, peepshows and movie theaters still thrive, the fastest growing sectors of the industry are pornographic video cassettes, cable television, and phone sex. Pornography is no longer confined to the seedier sections of town. It is readily available to all, including children, and in the privacy of our own homes. It reflects not only the increasing privatization and fragmentation of our culture, but also our ambivalence about sexuality.

To the religious, no images are neutral. Liberal and conservative churches have sought to reverse the proliferation of explicit and degrading depictions of human sexuality. But their approaches have varied considerably. Groups on the religious right have focused on the sexually explicit and sexually arousing characteristics of pornography, which they denounce as obscene. The Catholic Church, drawing on natural law theology, has condemned pornography as undermining human dignity and subverting the common social good. In its most recent resolution on the subject, the Episcopal Church declared in July 1988 that hard-core pornography abuses the self-images of women, children and men, and urged congregations to support then -- Attorney General Edwin Meese’s report with its call for stricter and tougher enforcement of already existing laws against pornography.

Some denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church, have expressed special outrage over child pornography and have also called for telephone and television companies to do more to restrict access to pornographic materials. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) , in an exhaustive and exemplary report on the subject in June 1988 ("Pornography: Far from ‘The Song of Songs’") , condemned the proliferation of sexually explicit materials that demean men and women. Unlike religious right groups and the Catholic Church, which, insist that freedom of expression is not absolute and that human dignity is a greater good than the right of the pornographers to freedom of speech, the mainline Protestant churches have shied away from efforts to restrict expression, tending to recommend that church members register their objections with distributors of pornographic material (boycotting them, if necessary) and stressing the importance of education. Both mainline Protestant and Catholic churches have been addressing the degradation of human sexuality and especially of women that pornography entails rather than emphasizing as the religious right groups do the inherent objectionableness of sexually explicit and sexually stimulating material.

The traditional definition of pornography -- material that is sexually arousing or appeals to prurient interests -- is no longer satisfactory. The critical feature of all pornography is not that it deals with sexual themes, but that it eroticizes violence, humiliation, degradation and other explicit forms of abuse. Churches disagree widely over how we might best cope with the rapid and relentless growth of the pornography industry. One possibility, suggested by religious right groups and the Catholics, is censorship. The mainline Protestant churches, by contrast, have urged education and consciousness-raising.

The debate over the appropriate response to pornography is not limited to the churches. Since women are the most frequent victims of pornography, feminists, too, have debated how to respond to it. The churches can learn from their discussions.

The objection that much of pornography is demeaning to women surfaced early in the contemporary feminist movement, particularly in Kate Millett’s 1970 book Sexual Politics, which analyzed some of Henry Miller’s limited and negative portrayals of women. The antipornography fight gained its greatest momentum in 1975 with the appearance of "snuff" films in the U.S. Claiming to depict the actual killing and dismembering of female actors during explicitly sexual scenes, these films highlighted the link between sex and violence that frequently characterizes pornography. The antipornography movement that flourished in this climate reached its most stringent form when feminist activists Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon drafted the Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance in 1984.

This ordinance defined pornography as anything that presents women as sexual objects, as enjoying pain, humiliation or rape, or as being physically harmed. It also identified as pornography material that depicts women in "scenarios of degradation, injury, abasement, or torture" and as "filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual." Underlying the ordinance is the assumption that pornography plays an important role in causing rape and domestic violence, and therefore is not only demeaning but constitutes an overt physical threat to women. The ordinance would have permitted any woman who felt degraded or victimized by a piece of pornographic literature or pornographic film to have a court injunction issued against the booksellers, theater owners, publishers and distributors to prevent the marketing of the offending material. The ordinance, which the city government passed and the mayor approved, was opposed by a group of book publishers, distributors and sellers. The resulting court case (Hudnut v. the American Booksellers Association) went as far as the U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of the booksellers. The U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to review the case, confirmed the lower court’s decision. But both MacKinnon and Dworkin have stated they will continue their campaign against pornography through all available channels. Thus the Indianapolis ordinance remains a live issue.

The efforts of MacKinnon and Dworkin have helped us recognize the inadequacy of the "sexual arousal" definitions of pornography; they have made us aware of the profound misogyny in pornography, and revealed how extensive pornographic images are in our culture. Because it called for a form of censorship, however, the Indianapolis ordinance raised a red flag before publishing houses and a number of feminists. One such group of feminists fears that the censoring of sexually explicit materials would violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and backfire on women by permitting the censorship of feminist speech. Some lesbians have objected to the ordinance out of fear that it would serve to permit certain expressions of sexuality and discourage others. Eventually, the discomfort over the Indianapolis ordinance gave birth to FACT (Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce) , which filed an amicus curiae brief with the court on behalf of the book publishers opposed to the ordinance.

FACT argued that the ordinance reinforced the prevailing prejudices that women are not interested in sexual expression, that sexually explicit materials are degrading to women, and that women cannot make choices about sexual matters for themselves but need the paternalistic protection of the law. We do not have to look far for examples of these assumptions, FACT contended; for example, a number of states until recently restricted the circulation of birth-control information on the grounds that it fostered immorality and undermined the family, and statutory rape laws still assume that young men are responsible for their sexual behavior and young women are not.

FACT argued that very little social-scientific evidence substantiates the assertion that pornography causes violence. Misogynist images exist everywhere in our society, it noted; we cannot possibly control all of them. It pointed out that violence itself is the problem, not just violence linked to sex. Therefore, to be consistent, the ordinance should have tried to censor all displays of violence.

FACT claimed that the Indianapolis ordinance perpetuated gender stereotypes by implying that women are helpless victims who don’t enjoy sex and that men cannot control their sexual urges and can be incited to violent action by the mere sight of pornography. These stereotypes are precisely what feminists should be fighting, FACT insisted.

Finally, FACT argued that the ordinance could not be effective because sexual meanings are generally determined in relation to a context, and because sexual messages are notoriously complex and ambiguous. For instance, feminists disagree on the interpretation of Swept Away, a Lina Wertmuller film that portrays an upper-class woman who is sexually dominated by her servant and who eventually begins to enjoy the domination. Some feminists find this theme objectionable, whereas other feminists find illuminating the movie’s exhaustive examination of a relationship of domination and submission. Terms in the ordinance such as "sex object" and "subordination" are vague, FACT asserted, and could be interpreted in a number of ways.

In essence, FACT has called for the protection of sexually explicit speech. It argues that an author could portray, for example, a rape scene -- even a scene in which a woman enjoys rape -- in constructing a story that is ultimately and thoroughly feminist. It believes that the stifling of erotic imagery would ultimately deter the feminist imaginations and voices that strive to remove female sexuality from patriarchal control.

The FACT brief reveals that censorship creates far more difficulties than it solves. And yet the problem remains: women’s bodies are used to sell everything from whiskey to tractor parts; heavy-metal rock-and-roll bands sing songs glorifying sexual violence; and hard-core pornography depicts virtually every form of torture and mutilation imaginable. The FACT stance seems to downplay the fact that as members of our society none of us avoids being affected by prevailing images. While it may be impossible to prove that a particular pornographic image or text has actually caused a rape, the proliferation of such images certainly helps create a climate in which rape gains a certain level of acceptability. (By portraying gang rape as entertainment, Hustler diminishes for its readers some of the horror of this crime.) FACT appears to support the call to assert one’s autonomy from cultural images, but its assumption that we are completely unaffected by cultural images is as incorrect as assuming, with Dworkin and MacKinnon, that we are completely at the mercy of such images. Therefore, while I share FACT’s opposition to censorship, I nonetheless believe we must recognize pornography’s destructive influence, and that it runs counter to the foundational Christian feminist understanding that men and women are created equal and that both sexes were made in the image of God. Christians and feminists believe that pornography calls for concrete response.

Action against pornography can take many forms and still steer clear of censorship. It is certainly appropriate for churches to boycott and demonstrate against objectionable films and images. Churches can urge phone companies and video stores to make it difficult for minors to use phone sex and X-rated films. They can lobby for restrictive zoning to curtail the spread of pornography into residential areas. All congregations should support rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters that assist the ultimate victims of our pornography-ridden society.

I would warn Christian feminists that it would be a strategic mistake to forge an alliance with groups on the religious or political right simply because they, too, oppose pornography. Although they have used feminist language at times, their opposition to pornography stems much more from their nostalgia for a "purer" America, and they disagree with feminists on crucial issues such as sex education and day care.

My own experience suggests that the most effective means of attacking pornography is education. In ethics classes, in which most of the students are in their first or second year of college, I first show (after giving advance warning and making it clear that attendance is optional) the Canadian Film Board’s documentary Not a Love Story, which portrays some of the most violent and degrading pornography available. I show the film not for its shock value but to alert my students to the extremes of misogyny represented in the pornography industry. Before seeing the film, most of my students define pornography as material that is merely sexually explicit. Afterward they find this equation questionable. After viewing and discussing the film, we analyze images from a much milder source, Playboy magazine. Again, almost all the students have considered the pictures in Playboy objectionable only because of the nudity. But once they have examined the models’ poses, the contexts in which the models appear and the overall format of the magazine, they recognize that pornography does in fact degrade women, that it invariably shows women and not men in positions of submission and weakness. I conclude by having the class scrutinize images in advertising, fiction, the conventional film industry and other conventional media for more subtle portrayals of pornographic themes. My students’ remarks suggest that as a result of this analysis they are less likely to become consumers of pornography or of products that are advertised with pornographic themes. Churches may wish to follow this approach.

To construct a precise and effective critique of pornography, we must also have a clear idea of what we consider normative sexual expression. Unfortunately, throughout much of its history the church’s views of sexuality have differed little from those of contemporary pornographers. Many Christian thinkers have expressed contempt for human physicality and for women, a contempt that pornographers clearly share. But Christianity contains more positive attitudes as well, including biblical affirmations of the human body -- evident in the creation story, the concept of the incarnation and the Roman Catholic notion of the unitive purposes of sexuality. This social and communal understanding of erotic life is totally absent in the privatized world of pornography. Churches, in their teachings about sexuality, must resist the isolation and fragmentation that pornography represents. A sound theology of the body must not only celebrate male and female physicality but also acknowledge that sexuality is meant to help unite individuals, and ultimately communities.

The Lure of Upward Mobility

Henri Nouwen once referred to the incarnation as God’s act of "downward mobility." Scripture assures us that God even exhibits downward mobility within the race -- God is partial to the lowly and downtrodden. God liberated and commissioned the Egyptians’ slaves to be the "chosen" ones, and the "people of the land" -- who believed they were unacceptable to God because they were not religious like the Pharisees -- received special attention from Jesus.

Within the Presbyterian Church the opposite dynamic is at work: "upward mobility." We have become seduced by large numbers, wealth, class and education. As a result, our written materials require a college education to understand, denominational leaders are drawn from large congregations only, seminaries train ministers to work mainly in large churches, and even presbyteries devalue those who work and worship in small-membership churches by rarely making use of their leadership.

Not surprisingly, churches are losing members year after year. The worst part of that is not the fact that the church is Jesus Christ in our society. In aiming our mission at the upper levels of society, to the neglect of the common people, we have become an elitist church.

The upward mobility is evident in three areas: the neglect of small-membership churches, the failure to develop an American reformed liturgy lively and flexible enough to adapt to our pluralistic culture, and the unfair method of paying clergy.

Though most Presbyterians belong to large-membership churches, most of our churches are small -- fewer than 200 members. These are frequently regarded as failures because they do not become large.

In spite of the glory heaped on large-membership churches and the fact that the church draws its denominational leaders from them, these are not self-sustaining churches. They do not reproduce over the long period of time. Rather, they depend upon "feeder churches," which are small churches. When we neglect them or allow them to drift into some other denomination, we cut off our own root system.

Years ago, a study of the four Presbyterian churches in Ann Arbor, Michigan, showed that of all the Presbyterians who moved to the city, 80 percent would attend prestigious First Presbyterian (no matter who the senior minister might be) The three other small churches would divide up the remaining 20 percent -- and recruit new members to survive.

Think of the real purposes of any church: to worship God, to grow in knowledge of God and the human situation, to provide resources to support Christ’s kingdom and to minister to church members, the community and the world in the name of Christ. Small churches perform these vital functions as well as big churches do and frequently much better. On average in a small church the attendance at worship represents a much higher percentage of the membership, the stewardship is better per member, the instruction is in smaller groups and may therefore be more effective, and leadership development is much better because there isn’t pressure to function on a "professional" level.

Seminaries provide very little instruction about the unique ministry required for success in small-membership churches, and no one is inspiring seminarians to aim their work in this direction. Yet at least 60 percent of Presbyterian churches are this size. Seminarians who will be called to serve them would be happier and more productive with specialized training. (Presbyterians can point enthusiastically to the fact that more support for this ministry is developing. James Cushman, author of Beyond Survival and Evangelism in the Small Church, is now working with Tom Deitrick in Louisville with small-membership churches, in particular, through the department of Evangelism and Church Development.)

The frontispiece of any church is its worship service. When tragedy strikes or people feel the need to grow or when they simply yearn for meaning in their lives, they usually start by attending the worship service. The average Presbyterian service these days is "high church" to most Americans, and far too many turn away dissatisfied.

The recent "liturgical renewal" has focused Presbyterians’ attention on what seemed proper in Reformed worship 400 years ago. We went back to John Calvin. The results of that worship in Europe today may well be a demonstration of what we might expect here in the future: church attendance down to 2 percent of the population west of the Iron Curtain. If we must go back to the Reformers, why not go to Ulrich Zwingli, who developed a popular liturgy and led the Reformation over most of Switzerland with great zeal? John Leith, in Introduction to Reformed Tradition, writes: "It is probably impossible today to realize the spiritual excitement of the congregation when [under Zwingli] for the firsttime, believers passed the bread and the wine among themselves using wooden plates and cups."

The "primitive" order of worship developed in the U.S. isn’t the answer either, although it was appropriate for its time and place. Leith writes: "Criticism of American patterns of worship became finally too easy. Those patterns had been created by exposure to the realities of American life. The percentage of American people involved in the church and in worship rose from less than 19 percent before 1800 to above 50 percent by 1950."

To visit many Presbyterian churches on Sunday mornings, as I do, is to discover that the services are about the same -- usually rote-like and dull. Why can’t we develop something that is appropriate, dignified and yet lively, genuine worship in the language of Americans in 1990?

In her book Holy the Firm Annie Dillard writes:

The higher Christian Churches -- where if anywhere, I belong -- come to God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of the liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.

We are a pluralistic church in a large country of many cultures. Let us develop a worship service where we can praise and worship God in dignity, joy and in the language of the common people!

Finally, we seem to agree with our culture that big is better and that a minister’s worth is determined by how much money he or she produces. This seems to be the logic we use to pay our ministers. Furthermore, we hold those clergy who labor for little in low esteem. Some of our clergy are paid four or five times as much as those who work in rural or small-membership churches. When this uncomfortable fact comes up it is usually justified by saying that the highly paid ones are "more skilled." But what is more demanding than the work of a small-church pastor? To be a "general practitioner" of ministry in such a church means that one must do all the preaching, counseling and visitation, teach the teachers, administer the details of the church and be the Presbyterian representative in that community -- and more.

We haven’t taken the trouble to work out a fairer system, so that all ministers will receive enough to get by. Sometimes people say they want the pastor to get about what they, on the average, receive. Yet our General Assembly continues the inequity after retirement, through the pension program, with some minor adjustments. Those who had the most retire with the most.

Scripture advises us not to give special care or attention to those who are well dressed or wealthy. If God is on a journey of downward mobility and we are caught in the throes of upward mobility, aren’t we in danger of passing like ships in the night?

A New Day for Jewish-Christian Partnership

Jews have learned through bitter experience to expect the worst. We joke about the proverbial Jewish telegram: START WORRYING LETTER FOLLOWS. I am the grandson of gentle and loving Jews who lived through Polish pogroms, saw a son trampled under the hooves of horsemen whom they identified only as "Christians," and who fled to America to escape what they saw as Christian persecution. Quite understandably, those gentle people who showered me with love taught me to cross the street and spit when passing a church. That generation of immigrant Jews met Christian hate with Jewish hate, Christian contempt with Jewish contempt. They had no other choice.

But what about my generation, the generation of American liberal Jews who feel increasingly alienated from old-world Orthodoxy and increasingly wooed by Christian denominations that are publishing position papers that redefine Christian attitudes toward Jews and invite us to dialogue? These Holocaust-inspired documents begin with the frank admission that for centuries the church has been guilty of teaching that Christianity superseded Judaism. They go on to explain that Christianity and Judaism are two legitimate paths to the one God and that any Christian who is guilty of anti-Semitism is guilty also of the denial of Christ.

Protestantism, I realize, has many voices. And while most of the mainline, liberal churches are coming to a new appreciation of their Jewish roots and are condemning old anti-Semitic attitudes -- and while some right-wing evangelicals have become more Zionist than Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir -- some strident Protestants still teach that the Jews were guilty of the death of Christ and that anti-Semitic acts and attitudes are justified.

On this topic the official voice of Catholicism, Pope John Paul II, is hard to pin down. On the one hand, he refuses to recognize Israel, has granted audiences to Yasir Arafat and Kurt Waldheim, has called for Israel to withdraw from Jerusalem and has preached that Christians have superseded and replaced Jews as God’s partners in covenant. On the other hand, he has poignantly elegized Jewish martyrdom while condemning Nazism, declared at the synagogue of Rome that the Jews are the legitimate and honored older brothers of Catholics, stated on the 20th anniversary of Nostra Aetate that "anti-Semitism, in its ugly and sometimes violent manifestations, must be completely eradicated" and, after months of equivocation, indicated that he would like the Carmelite nuns to withdraw from their Auschwitz convent.

Let me be so bold as to suggest that, as we approach the 21st century, either Christians will have to concede that the Sinaitic covenant between God and Israel is an eternal covenant and that to teach, practice or even hint at anti-Semitism is to deny the teachings of Christ, or Christianity is doomed. If Christianity is to endure into its third millennium as an intellectual, moral and spiritual force, it can do so only arm-in-arm with Judaism. For as learned and committed Christians are all too aware, the Holocaust raised agonizing questions about the validity of Christianity.

As for us on the Jewish side, we must learn to accept the fact that we are living in a Christian country. As much as we might fight against prayers in public schools, churches on city property and political leaders who have the nerve to declare that this is a Christian country, we must accept the fact that we are a minority. Jews constitute only 2.5 percent of the population. Though the other 97.5 percent are not all confessing Christians -- many profess other religions, or are secularists, humanists and outright pagans -- Christianity defines the religious climate of America.

American Jews must be aware of what Christian churches are teaching and practicing -- not in order to emulate Christians and certainly not in order to convert them, but quite simply because Christianity defines religion in America. If Jews want the Jewish message to be heard and understood, if they want to participate in the marketplace of ideas, if they take seriously the sacred Jewish mission "to be a light to the nations," then they must express the Jewish message in a vocabulary comprehensible to Christians. That is one of the realities of American life. I, for one, find it a stimulating and challenging reality.

Given this climate, what options are available to Jews? One choice is to turn inward: to renounce Christianity, recalling the inquisitions, pogroms, crusades, cross-burnings and the instigations of anti-Semitism that were a part of Christianity from the days of the early Church Fathers through the Holocaust. We can opt to go it alone -- a choice Orthodox Jews have clearly made. They are more and more becoming a separatist elite, retreating to ethnic enclaves in a few big cities. It is rare today for an Orthodox rabbi to participate in interfaith dialogue.

The other choice? It is not to forgive and forget; Jews were never taught to turn the other cheek. Rather, it is to work honestly and lovingly with that growing body of righteous Christians who look to Judaism as to an older sibling, who are seeking to expiate Christian guilt for the Holocaust, and who recognize that Christianity and Judaism need each other desperately if religion in 21st-century America is to offer a compelling alternative to unbridled consumerism, self-centeredness and arid secularism.

Honesty and love are essential to the latter option. One of the great problems in interfaith relations is politeness, the fear of offending. I believe that the majority of well-meaning Christians do not understand why Jews were so upset by a Christian convent dedicated to prayer for the souls of all those who died in Auschwitz. Certainly Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the primate of Poland, does not understand why it is inappropriate for an order of Christian nuns to he praying there, in the shadow of a 23-foot cross, for the souls of Jews. His change of mind resulted from political pressure, not from having seen the light.

Yes, non-Jews perished in Auschwitz as well. But for Jews Auschwitz is a synonym for the Holocaust. A third or more of the Jews killed by the Nazis perished in that one place. To Jews, Auschwitz is the Holocaust. We Jews must honestly and pointedly ask Cardinal Glemp, Pat Buchanan and all well-meaning Christians who did not understand Jewish objections to a Christian convent in Auschwitz if they believe that those millions of innocent Jews who died so cruelly there would want a Christian house of worship to mark the place of their martyrdom, their Passion? Those murdered Jews had heard the joyous pealing of church bells from towns around Auschwitz and Birkenau every Sunday morning. The good Christians who prayed in those churches in 1943 and 1944 were not praying then for the souls of Jews. Would those murdered innocents want the Carmelite nuns to pray for them now?

One hundred Christs crucified on crosses from Calvary to Krakow to that Carmelite convent could not begin to atone for the cruel and coldly calculated criminal acts committed against our people by people raised as Christians. Many of my Christian colleagues respond by saying that the killers were really pagans, that their acts denied Christian doctrine. But almost all of the persecutors were raised as Christians and thought of themselves as Christians.

The second crucial element for dialogue is love. Having said what I just did about Christians, how can I ask Jews to work with righteous Christians lovingly? Am I being patronizing or hypocritical?

I call for love because I have come to understand that despite the tragic Christian-Jewish conflict that has darkened the history of Western civilization and shrouded the presence of God, my faith and hopes for the future of our civilization are closer to those of liberal Christians than they are to the Hassidim of Brooklyn and the black-hatted zealots of Jerusalem. I wish this were not true, but it is. Religious liberals, Christian and Jewish, need partners in a world that is hostile to rationality, morality and freedom of conscience. We need partners who share our deep concerns about homelessness, hunger, environmental pollution and basic human rights. We need partners who believe that governments should be more concerned about the care of the aged and indigent than the protection of fertilized ova, flags and nuclear stockpiles. We Jews hope to find such partners in the ranks of those people whom the ancient rabbis called hasidei umot ha-olam -- righteous gentiles.

Visitors to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, weeping at the pictures of murdered innocents and the artifacts of the most technologically efficient death industry in the history of inhumanity, can feel their hearts filling with hatred. I once actually heard a man, standing at the exit of that dark hall that houses the eternal flame, sobbing: "I wish God would send down a fire on all of them." But outside of the museum, on the way to the parking lot, stretches a tree-shaded lane called "The Path of the Righteous Gentiles." The base of each tree displays a little plaque listing the name and country of a Christian who risked his or her life in order to save the lives of Jews. There are hundreds of such trees -- one might wish that there were thousands, but there are hundreds. Every one honors a Christian hero.

We Jews must seek out with love the righteous Christians among us. I am certain that there are thousands of them, ready and waiting to enter into dialogue. They need us, and we need them. We need each other, not so that we might blend into a Jewish-Christian mishmash, but for dialogue that can stimulate, enrich and deepen our respective faiths. We need each other to prove to the world that, with honesty and love, two great and separate traditions can work together to fashion a nobler society.

It was with love that I read the open letter of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston to the Carmelite Sisters at Auschwitz. He began by telling of his lifelong admiration for their contemplative vocation. He went on to describe a pilgrimage that he had made to Auschwitz a few years ago group of Catholics and Jews. He wrote:

We walked in numbed silence through this monument to inhumanity, to sin in all its horror. The barbaric cruelty was made poignantly present by the survivors in our midst. We gathered at the memorial wall, Jews and Catholics, and raised our hearts and voices in prayerful remembrance of all who had died. . . . Our prayer concluded as, through our tears, we greeted one another with "Shalom."

He went on to plead with the Carmelite sisters "to go the extra mile," to withdraw willingly from Auschwitz for the sake of reconciliation. What would then happen to the present convent?

It could be a place to further understanding, a place where your gracious act could be studied as one way. . . to overcome barriers between peoples. In a world so painfully divided between rich and poor, black and white, Moslem, Christian and Jew, that sign of reconciling love which is within your power could have a meaning far greater than the immediate context of controversy. It could become a place which gives substance to the cry of all civilized people, "Never again" [The Pilot, August 30, 1989].

I pray that I am not revealing naïveté when I say that I resonate to the words of a prince of the church that for so many centuries despised and persecuted my people. I feel a greater spiritual kinship with Cardinal Law and many other righteous Christians than I do with Jews who are more concerned with the details of the dietary laws and the length of their side-curls than they are with their daily ethical conduct -- Jews who demonstrate more love for an acre of Gaza Strip sand than for basic human rights.

Thank God, there are many, many Jews who are deeply concerned about ethics and human rights. My own people will always be closest to my heart because I share with them both my universal human concerns and my parochial Jewish concerns. But my heart is warm enough to radiate love to people of any religion, nationality or color who live and work for the benefit of the human race. Cardinal Law remarked:

How necessary it is for men and women of differing faiths and backgrounds to meet one another in mutual respect and love. How necessary it is for us to share our personal and collective memories, and to allow the balm of genuine, mutual love to heal the wounds that for too long have divided us.

His voice is surely not a lonely one in Christian circles today.

Shall we join the ranks of those Jews and Christians who live only in the past, whose hearts are governed by hate and who live for dominance and revenge? Or shall we join the ranks of those Jews and Christians who have dedicated their lives to fashioning a new a better world, one firmly rooted in the rich soil of diverse traditions but joyously open to the possibility of "love they neighbor as thyself"?

I have made my choice. I hear my sacred Torah calling to me from Sinai: "Choose life!" I choose a world where brothers and sisters wipe away each others’ tears and greet one another with "shalom."

Ending the Abortion War: A Modest Proposal

As we enter the 1990s with modest hopes for world peace, a particularly bitter and seemingly intractable domestic war continues unabated. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services has mobilized armies of supporters and opponents of legal abortion.

Explicitly, the court let stand a provision of a Missouri law that required testing to determine fetal viability in pregnancies of 20 weeks duration and longer (it should be noted that no such tests exist) The court further curtailed poor women’s ability to choose abortion by substantially expanding its prior rulings on public funding. It ruled that states are free to prohibit abortions at any health-care facility that receives any public funding. Even private doctors who perform abortions on private patients with private funds will be affected by the ruling if their admission privileges happen to be at a hospital that receives public money or has contractual arrangements with state or local governments.

In a move troubling to most religious groups, the court also let stand the preamble to the Missouri law, which declared that life begins at conception, saying that the preamble represented a permissible value judgment by the state, that would have no effect on the legality of abortion.

Implicitly, the five-justice plurality opinion warned that the court would no longer apply strict scrutiny to limitations on a woman’s right to choose abortion. No longer would legislatures or regulatory bodies need to show a compelling state interest in order to intervene in women’s decisions. The decision was interpreted by those who favor and those who oppose legal abortion as an open invitation to state legislatures to enact restrictive legislation designed to test further and possibly overturn Roe.

Both sides responded aggressively and passionately. Faye Wattleton, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, declared, "Make no mistake about it. This is war." Kate Michelman, director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, told elected officials, "Take our rights, lose your jobs." Randall Terry, leader of the controversial Operation Rescue, said: "We’re calling on thousands of pro-life Americans to peacefully blockade these killing centers with their bodies to prevent children from dying and we will launch an equal force against state legislatures to chip away at Roe." (By quoting Terry alongside Wattleton and Michelman, I do not mean to imply any philosophical or strategic equivalence in their viewpoints or actions. It is simply that these were the voices most frequently heard and quoted in the last half of 1989.)

By any reasonable measure, so far, my side, the side that favors legal abortion, is winning the war. On the electoral front, not only have candidates like Governor Douglas Wilder (Virginia) and Governor James Florio (New Jersey) made their pro-choice positions central to a winning strategy, but politicians considered pro-life are defecting to the pro-choice camp daily.

Perhaps more significant -- and substantial -- is that pro-choicers have partially shifted the terms of the debate from the question of whose rights will prevail, the woman’s or the fetus’s, to who will decide, women or the government. This is not to say that questions of rights or of the moral value of fetal life are insignificant in evaluating the act of abortion. However, to claim that the central conflict in the debate is between women and fetuses incorrectly and unfortunately casts a woman as the adversary of the fetus and in no way acknowledges her role as moral agent. Moreover, in light of the growing attempt to subordinate individual rights to a somewhat undefined "community," even opponents of legal abortion should exercise caution in making rights arguments paramount. In framing the question "who decides?" NARAL has moved subtly from the concept of "choice," a principle that has come to be seen as related to the trivial or selfish, to the concept of "decision making," which implies greater seriousness and complexity.

Webster’s threat to legal abortion has also significantly increased the number of organizations, generally liberal to progressive, adding abortion to their portfolio of issues. The pro-choice coalition is bigger, stronger, more cohesive and better financed than ever before. It is convinced that given enough time and money it has the capacity to build the political machine necessary to win the war and preserve Roe.

Pro-life leaders, while stung by the losses of 1989, are equally committed to the long war and will surely win some victories in the next (or some subsequent) foray into the courts or state legislatures. The Catholic bishops have re-entered the political arena with a bang, declaring abortion -- not the degradation of the planet, the economy or racism -- their number one concern. Catholic legislators got a hint of the kind of political muscle the bishops are prepared to use when Bishop Leo T. Maher of San Diego announced in the midst of a special election for the California state senate that candidate Lucy Killea could no longer receive communion in the Roman Catholic Church because of her pro-choice position. Catholic legislators in Montana, Rhode Island, Washington, Connecticut and Minnesota have reported that their bishops have warned them that public pro-choice positions create "problems" for the church. With 28 professional statewide lobbying offices from Hartford to Sacramento, the bishops have a political machine capable of seriously restricting Roe at the state level.

How all this hardball political gamesmanship and bellicosity will contribute to sound. stable public policy on abortion remains to be seen. If the past 20 years are any model for the next 20, we can expect abortion to remain both an issue that is ideologically shaped and a problem that is unsolved.

One would hope, however, that this new moment in the abortion debate could be seen not only as a time of crisis by those of us who are pro-choice (and I speak only to that group, having neither the right nor the interest to suggest a course of action for the opposition) but as an opportunity to examine our own beliefs in light of the signs of the times and the experience of 17 years of legal abortion. Perhaps it is time, as one good friend so aptly put it, for those of us who are pro-choice to "take the high dive"; that is, to resist the temptation to think and act in 30-second sound bites and engage instead in serious moral discourse on abortion.

Perhaps we need to listen to the wisdom of more than 50 percent of our population. They hold in creative tension a basic sense of fair play in wanting women, with consultation, to make the decision about abortion or childbirth and a concern for the value of fetal life and the quality of women’s decisions. Only then will we be in a position to advocate public policy that respects each individual woman and expresses our concern for human life and the community at large.

Abortion is not fundamentally a political question; it deals with people’s deepest, most unconscious feelings about life, the power of creation and the survival of our species, those in the so-called ‘muddled middle" understand this better than those at either end of the public opinion spectrum. They understand abortion -- and reproduction -- as both a private and a social phenomenon. They wait for one side or the other to answer such questions as: "How will we bring new life onto this planet?" "How will we treat the rest of life?" These elements are not unconnected. Just as we challenge pro-lifers to care about more than prenatal life, so must we challenge ourselves to talk about more than the life that is here. We must also talk with reverence of the life that is to come. Most important, this conversation cannot be viewed as a threat to the rights of women, but as an enhancement of the responsible exercise of those rights. We must not let our own justifiable fear of the opposition shape the dialogue.

Concretely, we must stop criticizing moderate pro-choice voices: public officials (like Governor Mario Cuomo) who speak of the "tragedy" of abortion; columnists (like Anna Quindlen of the New York Times) who express concerns about late-term abortions; and theologians (like Giles Milhaven of Brown University) who speak of women’s sadness after abortion. All contribute a richness of spirit to the debate that needs to be encouraged, not crushed.

Our own inability to acknowledge the tragedy of abortion makes us suspect. Our continuous talk about wanted children does not inspire confidence but fear. We live in a world where our value is increasingly equated with wealth, brilliance or success. Many rightly perceive that they are powerless and unwanted. For the powerless, the fetus is a ready symbol of their own vulnerability -- a symbol exploited by right-wing leaders.

Acknowledging fetal life as valuable and as an important factor in decision making about abortion need not be linked to a specific religious doctrine. The Christian respect for life has never required the absolute protection of life. It does not require conferring personhood or rights on the fetus, nor does it suggest limiting the legal rights of women to decide whether to bring new life into the world or to have an abortion.

On the other hand, an enhanced sense of the value of fetal life should move us beyond the status quo on abortion and beyond an absolutist interpretation of the fundamental rights articulated in Roe v. Wade. On both principled and practical grounds, pro-choice advocates need to see Roe as a framework for good policy on abortion, not as a fortress against policy.

By no means should the pro-choice movement abandon, at this time, the rights framework implicit in Roe. Given the unrelentingly punitive, hostile approach to women in our society, we continue to need the strongest legal protection available to enable our full and equal participation in society. This includes legal control over fertility.

An equally compelling reason for maintaining a rights framework is the unprecedented assault on individual rights mounted by the Reagan administration. Individual rights for women are inseparable from individual rights for people of color. Efforts in both progressive and conservative circles (from Stanley Hauerwas to George Will) to portray individual rights as a threat to the community must be resisted. Individual rights, once they include women and people of color, are a threat not to the whole community but to the community of white men.

A theory of community that places unequal burdens on women in welcoming and respecting new life is inherently unjust and doomed to fail. That injustice is obvious in our society and while lip service is paid to sharing the burden, there is little evidence that the architects of communitarian models or their admirers are moving toward a concrete embodiment of equality and responsibility.

Individual rights cannot, however, be slavishly pursued. Even the most fundamental rights are regulated under the Constitution. Many of us support even more regulation for any number of rights, such as the right to bear arms. Pro-choice advocates -- not just those whose goal is prohibition-need to explore regulations that will enhance women’s decision making in a manner that respects fetal life without making protection of fetal life absolute. (At the same time, we must strongly reject policy measures whose only purpose is to limit or prohibit access to legal abortion.) We must see that such regulations, once enacted, are enforced scrupulously and noncoercively and that penalties for deliberately misinforming, coercing or unfairly influencing a woman’s ability to make good decisions are promulgated and used.

Finally, all regulations need to be looked at individually and cumulatively to ensure that they do not prevent the poor or people of color from exercising their right to act as decision makers. Walter Dellinger, professor of law at Duke University, pointed out recently in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review:

A 48-hour waiting period, for example, may not be an ‘undue burden’ for affluent professional women, and a hospitalization requirement may only serve to make her abortion more expensive. But for an 18-year-old girl in the rural South, unmarried, pregnant, hoping to finish school and build a decent life, who has little or no access to transportation, a hospitalization requirement can mean an abortion that will cost nearly $1000 and involve a trip of hundreds of miles; a waiting period can mean two long trips and an overnight stay in a strange and distant city. For such a woman, the burden would be absolute.

While it is premature to move from a brief exposition of some of the principles needed to inform public policy initiatives on abortion to a recommendation of specific measures, the state legislative season is upon us. Many legislators and advocates will not stop to reflect before running headlong to pass new laws. And it is important, as many rush to the "middle" on abortion, that those who seek to be consensusbuilders or compromisers be held to a high standard of specificity. What do we think policy on abortion should be? Are we really listening to the middle or simply attempting to co-opt it?

Here, then, are some immediate guidelines and specific elements of a sound, stable public policy that can be implemented now and contribute to a balanced, long-term approach to the issue.

First, abortion laws need to acknowledge women’s right -- and need -- to make reproductive health decisions free from coercion, as well as both women’s and society’s responsibility to create conditions for women to bring life into the world.

Either in the body of the law or by reference to other existing legislation, the community’s reverence for life should be expressed in support of social and economic programs for children and families. A good model for this can be found in the legislative program of the Children’s Defense Fund.

The balance between women’s rights and reverence for life is best expressed by making resources available to assist women in good decision making and in preventing pregnancy. We should advocate a series of initiatives that signal government involvement as opposed to intervention. Among them: funding for voluntary nondirective, comprehensive and confidential counseling services for women and their partners who are contemplating abortion (no funds should be made available to groups that favor one decision over the other or that preclude any legal option from the range of choices offered) ; funding for more measures designed to prevent pregnancy, including contraceptive research and testing as well as contraceptive education and services; and equitably distributing funds for adoption, abortion, childbearing and child rearing.

These funding proposals represent a major shift in policy and would be a significant compromise for both sides of the debate. Pro-choice advocates will need to accept greater government involvement as an expression of community consensus; in turn, the community, through the government, will need to back up its involvement with resources.

Among the particularly thorny issues confronting legislatures this year are requirements for parental consent for minors’ abortions, prohibitions on gender selection and postviability abortions, and so-called informed consent statutes. Critical to the pro-choice movement’s ability to forge consensus on the general question of legal abortion will be its ability to respond rationally and concretely to these issues. Up to now, a fundamental rights approach and our fear of the "slippery slope" has led us to reject outright all regulation in these areas. But a blanket No is simply not a sufficient response to these complex questions.

In the case of parental consent requirements, we need to acknowledge young women’s special need for adult involvement. Indeed, we want to protect teens from either coercive abortion or coercive childbearing. Form letters mailed to parents do not adequately or effectively discharge our obligation to these women. Neither does the absence of policy.

Provisions for nondirective, confidential counseling by health-care workers, ministers and other qualified professionals would enhance decision making, and a record of such counseling could be kept as part of the medical file. Statutes similar to that passed in Maine, which demand involvement by a parent -- or, when that is inappropriate, an adult family member, minister, teacher or counselor -- should be applauded.

While there is no evidence that some women seek abortions solely for gender selection, pro-lifers have seized on this possibility as a convenient and gruesome example of the extremes to which abortion liberty will drive us. But in fact the devaluation of women in society is the cause of gender-selection abortion. The few reports of abortion in which gender was a factor point to those communities, primarily Asian and African, where male children are still considered a necessity. Indeed, in Africa a woman is called infertile if she does not produce boys, while some Asian wives are abused and abandoned. As odious as I would find the practice of gender selection even in these hard cases, I would be loathe to take responsibility for any prohibition that could cost these women dearly.

However, the notion that women would seek abortions in the mid to late second trimester because the nursery is painted blue or hubby’s family has had firstborn boys for generations is ludicrous. It really deserves no response. It also deserves no defense. I would seek no laws to prevent that which does not happen, but I would not oppose such laws. This is an area for self-regulation, and one hopes that responsible providers of abortion would decline their services in such cases.

In a similar vein, I think the question of postviability abortions is of little practical significance and of enormous symbolic importance. In practice, it is extremely difficult to find a physician who will perform such abortions unless there is a serious, physical, life-threatening condition for the woman or the fetus is diagnosed with profound abnormalities. There is no evidence that the right to such abortions is necessary for women’s wellbeing or full participation in society. These facts, combined with the growing sense that fetal life deserves increasing respect as it develops should lead pro-choice advocates to accept legislation limiting postviability abortions to life-threatening or disabling cases.

Another frequently cited set of regulations on abortions are those requiring "informed consent." Up to now, the court has struck down such measures. In the post-Webster climate they will once again be raised. Without exception, all past informed consent laws were drafted by opponents of legal abortion -- not to assist in good decision making but to prevent abortion. The information mandated was often biased, inaccurate and simplistic: "life begins at conception," "the heart beats at eight weeks," "abortion is dangerous and will make you sterile." Nondirective counseling is far more appropriate and respectful of women’s capacity to make good decisions than existing informed consent approaches. Moreover, I cannot stress too strongly my belief that if the government is to be involved in the process of women’s decision making, those who are entrusted with helping women need to be held to the highest standard of care.

For those whose interest is in outlawing abortion, the rather modest shift in both laws and values set forth here offers little. In the short run, these policy measures will not reduce the current number of abortions, which is troubling. It is important, however, that we not reduce abortion policy and values to a numbers game. The goal of caring people -- eliminating all abortions -- will require a radical transformation of society. We should focus our efforts on correcting the disease, not the symptom.

Beyond Slogans: An Abortion Ethic for Women and the Unborn

Never did a waning follow so closely a waxing. On July 3, 1989, the Supreme Court in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services seemed to give the pro-life movement a stunning victory. Sixteen contentious years after Roe v. Wade, the court returned to the states at least some power to rule on abortion. The court implied that the machinery of democracy might be needed to resolve this issue satisfactorily.

The first several months of applying democracy to abortion did not favor the pro-life side. The Florida state legislature -- at least the key committees controlled by Democrats -- refused in a special session called by the governor to consider abortion restrictions. Democrats whose support for abortion rights was central to their campaign won the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. Of great significance was the fact that two black Democratic candidates, David Dinkins in New York City and Douglas Wilder in Virginia, used their support for legalized abortion to persuade white voters that their politics were "moderate" and "mainstream." Both Dinkins and Wilder attracted the necessary numbers of Republican voters from Rudolph Giuliani and J. Marshall Coleman, both of whom in the past (but not in these elections) had to some degree opposed legalized abortion. Of most significance over the long range was prominent Republican fund-raisers’ declaration after the Republican mayoral loss in New York City and gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey that they would not support Republican candidates who opposed legalized abortion. "Stalwart fund-raisers will aid only ‘pro-choice Republicans’," was the caption under a New York Times picture of three wealthy Republican women (Nov. 11) The next day, the Washington, D. C., police estimated that about 150,000 people attended a pro-choice rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Few fresh pro-life initiatives countered these events.

Certain lines of development in the post-Webster world are clear. One is the media’s tendency to describe abortion-rights activists as. "pro-choice" while referring to their opponents as "anti-abortion" rather than by their preferred term "pro-life." This change seems one-sided to me; if most Americans accept this change of terms as fair, the pro-life movement faces certain moral and political defeat. If the debate remains on the level of slogans, pro-choice will win; it is politically more convincing.

Rarely do pro-choice activists any longer describe the fetus as something less than a developing human life or treat the relationship of the fetus to its mother in terms of property rights. Rhetorical simplicity once resided primarily with the pro-life movement, which tirelessly insisted that abortion stopped a human life. But now their opponents have become just as reductionistic. Pro-choice activists now simply ask, "Who should decide, the woman or the government?" This question effectively presumes that some abortions are inevitable and that government coercion in this matter is likely to be ineffective. But the slogan also dangerously implies that government intervention in social problems should always be regarded with distrust.

Before Roe, the arguments of the pro-choice advocates raised difficult questions: When is it morally right to stop a developing human life? How do we know that making abortion legal will not diminish our respect for other forms of sometimes unwanted life, such as the mentally and physically disabled or the infirm old, or for life in general? Can a constitutional amendment protecting unrestricted right to abortion be justified in view of traditional church teaching, common law and 19th-century state laws that condemn abortion? After years of "focus interviews" with a cross section of Americans and careful public relations consultation, abortion-rights advocates no longer address such difficult questions. But others, including those with a Christian conscience, cannot rest as easily with the slogan, "Who decides?" They are obliged to ask the further questions, "Decides what? And with what help from the community?"

Now the pro-life movement faces all the difficult questions, and on its own it seems unable to answer them. For example, since the mid-1970s approximately 1.5 million women annually have procured abortions. Could a legal prohibition stop almost all such abortions? Would a more dangerous "underground" and unregulated abortion industry rise to meet the demand for abortions?

These unresolved questions keep many from embracing the pro-life movement. Still, its central point cannot be evaded. One cannot quiet the inner voice that speaks of abortion as morally significant. To reduce the issue to the question of "Who decides?" is politically shrewd but morally disquieting. Besides, casting the question of abortion in libertarian terms that rely on a strong distrust of government undercuts the many areas where women, the poor and the handicapped ask the community through its government to intervene in the marketplace.

The current strategy of pro-choice advocates seems to further the moral relativism and the survival-of-the-fittest ideology that lurks in our society. Certainly one of the strongest and most evocative values undergirding the belief that a good society cares for all its members is the religious conviction that each human life has a sacred origin and a sacred destiny. Every authentic humanism considers each human life a carrier of an ultimate dignity that warrants respect. The pro-choice assumption that this conviction excludes the developing human life of the fetus is not convincing. Unchallenged, legally unrestricted abortion will in the long run deepen the nihilism that already threatens to engulf other areas of our society. In Roe, the Supreme Court in effect affirmed this moral intuition by ruling that after determining "viability," the community through its laws can exercise its interest in protecting life.

How can we develop a moral stand on a debate that seems to be polarized by those who consider abortion simply a matter of private choice and those who support no legal abortions save those very rare ones necessary to save a mother’s life? All of us, even those who lean toward the pro-choice side of the issue, should question whether the choice to abort is truly a choice. Freedom requires more than one true option. Society must provide women enough help so that none feels that she has no choice but abortion.

The prolife movement rightfully fears that in time "pre-choice" will become, especially for poor women, less a choice of moral freedom and more an act compelled by economic necessity. The very first argument advanced in the first congressional debates over extending Medicaid funding to abortion referred to the many millions of dollars in future welfare costs that abortion would save. At political debates in the New York City area I have often heard angry voices mock pro-life activists with the question, "But who is going to support all those welfare babies?"

I wonder how many high school and college counselors have heard young women say that their male friends insisted that love required sex, and that if contraception failed, there was always abortion. In a society hungry for ever more affluence, where resources will seem permanently scarce, the decision not to abort might in time seem a willful act of self-indulgence whose costs should be borne only by the self-indulgent woman herself.

Not only the young and the poor confront severe social pressures to abort. Lower-middle income women have felt similar coercion. The New York City Department of Investigation disclosed last fall that their supervisors urged pregnant women correction officers in New York City -- mostly minority women -- to obtain abortions ("Women Given Cruelest Choice Now Fight Back," New York Times, Oct. 21, 1989) The lower levels of the criminal justice system receive little funding, and New York City prisons are crowded. Where resources are scarce, management’s pursuit of efficiency can clash with the needs of pregnant women.

Women on the fast track in white-collar careers learn that male competitors consider pregnancy an indication that women are not seriously seeking corporate advancement. Kristin Luker, in Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (University of California Press, 1984) , found that the desire to eliminate barriers to success in a male-dominated world was a major motivation behind pro-choice advocates.

I think the most powerful arguments against unrestricted legal abortion are made by Feminists for Life, which organized in 1972 when the National Organization for Women would not reconsider its official position on abortion. Although they receive little funding apart from membership dues and attract little media attention, FFL has almost 2,000 members, and chapters in every state. Members support all the mainstream feminist positions except legalized abortion, arguing, as 19th-century feminists did, that abortion requires women to adapt themselves to the economics and the politics devised by men. It is significant that statistically the strongest supporters of unrestricted legal abortion are affluent white men.

The phrase "pro-life" does not express a unified philosophy shared by all abortion opponents. The pluralism usually unacknowledged within the pro-life movement is such that those with a troubled conscience, uneasy with slogans and moral simplicities, can find some pro-life group that mirrors their view. For example, the first national pro-life organizations were not political but service groups that sought to provide direct aid to women who would otherwise be tempted to abort. Birthright was founded in 1970 and Alternatives to Abortion International the following year. In the U.S. there are at least 3,000 emergency pregnancy centers, 20 percent of which offer not merely counseling and emergency funds but also hospital coverage, housing, job training and postnatal care. Several other groups, such as Women Exploited by Abortion and American Victims of Abortion, support women who years after having an abortion are confronting loss and guilt.

Many pro-life advocates have moved the social-service approach to embrace the "consistent ethic" or "seamless garment" position. In their November 1975 "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities," the Roman Catholic bishops in the U.S. proposed that opposition to abortion morally requires a consistent and comprehensive approach: "The program must extend to other issues that involve support of human life. There must be internal consistency in the pro-life move-ment." Among the groups seeking a consistent approach to abortion, poverty, inequality and violence are Prolifers for Survival, American Citizens for Life, JustLife and Evangelicals for Social Action. Influential Christian pacifist groups such as Sojourners and Pax Christi have characterized abortion as a violent solution to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. The frequent soul-searching letters and articles in the magazine Religious Socialism also indicate that many religious groups committed to nonviolence and equality question arguments that try to justify abortions in cases that are not life-threatening. The position these groups take could better inform a comprehensive and consistent argument about the rights of the unborn and the rights of women than can the simplistic debate of the sloganeers.

Most Americans probably support the implicit moral position of mainstream Protestantism and perhaps of America’s religious traditions in general: permit as few legal abortions as possible without damaging women’s rights and without making it necessary for women to perform abortions on themselves or seek clandestine and possibly dangerous abortions. But this magical solution, one not affirmed by either the pro-choice or pro-life movements as presently constituted, is not likely to develop without a deep collective conversion to the principle that even the developing pre-born person is part of the human family and deserves our welcome.

That welcome must be expressed in part in the world of work, by no longer letting pregnancy detract from a woman s opportunities for prestige, power and advancement. A moral strategy would explicitly relate how the law treats fetuses to how it treats mothers. Any change in the abortion law should be accompanied by changes in health-care benefits for women and children, in child care, in job protection, in comparable worth and in career advancement. Every gain for the unborn should be accompanied by greater gains for women. The pro-life movement has always known that in order to help the unborn women must also be helped, but it has not yet found a way to make this moral insight the operative and unquestioned premise of the entire movement. Perhaps mainstream Protestantism could bring this contribution to the pro-life movement. Without it, any satisfactory end to the social conflict over legal abortion is hard to envision.

The Politics of U.S. Refugee Policy

A few years ago the United States refurbished and rededicated the Statue of Liberty, a powerful and oft-used icon of our generous and hospitable national spirit. However, in the light of the U.S. refugee policy over the past ten years, Lady Liberty may have taken on the function of a border guard. While the U.S. controls over half the world’s resources. it settles less than 1 percent of the world’s refugees. According to the World Refugee Survey 1988, it ranks only ninth in per capita giving among nations contributing to international refugee funds.

International law defines a refugee as one who must flee his or her country because of a well-founded fear of persecution, and who because of that fear is unable or unwilling to return. Today approximately 15 million refugees have reached countries of first asylum and are officially classed as such by the United Nations. There are also about 15 million people who are internally displaced. Many Americans mistake refugees for immigrants or illegal aliens.

U.S. law follows international law, recognizing that refugees need protection. However, our country repeatedly disregards the UN 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Congress attempted to ensure compliance by passing the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980. The accompanying table shows U.S. admissions proposed for 1990, comparing the number to be admitted from communist and non-communist nations.

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Communist Noncommunist Uncertain

East Asia 51,500

Soviet Union 50,000

Eastern Europe 6,500

Near East/South Asia 2,000 (Afghan) 4,000 (Iranian) 500 other

Latin America 3,000 (Cuban) *500 (other)

Africa 2,000 (Ethiopian) 1,000 (other)

Unallocated 4,000

*In 1998, non-Cuban admissions were 210 from Nicaragua, two from El Salvador (Refugee Reports, September 22, 1989, p. 16).

_________________________________________________________________________________

Four million African refugees and 2 million South American refugees are not included in U.S. resettlement plans. Even though they fit the definition of refugee, they cannot -- with the exception of Ethiopians -- pass the ideological test of coming from a country considered "unfriendly" to the United States.

The official position on this issue seems to derive from a very selective reading of the Refugee Act of 1980 that has hardened into permanent practice. In June 1988, Jonathan Moore. coordinator for refugee affairs during the Reagan administration, wrote in a letter reprinted in a report to the chairman of the Sub-committee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs that

there is in fact a broad consensus within the Congress and the executive branch that foreign policy considerations should play an important role in the refugee admissions program. The refugee act of 1980 explicitly recognized this. . . . The administration is required to provide information to Congress concerning, among other things, "the nature of the refugee situation," "an analysis of the conditions within the countries from which [the refugees] come," "the extent to which other countries will admit and assist the resettlement of such refugees" and -- not least -- "the impact of the participation of the United States in the resettlement of such refugees on the foreign policy interests of the United States" [emphasis added].

On the contrary, section 202 (a) of the Refugee Act begins, "No person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against . . . because of his race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence." Section 207 (e) ,) from which Moore quoted, defines consultation as a discussion of "the reasons for believing that the proposed admission of refugees is justified by humanitarian concerns or grave humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest." Of the seven considerations listed, foreign policy places sixth.

This emphasis on national interest has been used to violate the spirit and the letter of the law ever since it was written. However, the numbers tell only part of the story. The Immigration and Naturalization Service seems to have found additional ways to stall, pass inequitable regulations and judge cases so harshly that even those who have some slight hope of making it into the meager allotment from Africa will not get processed during fiscal year 1990. As a result, the ceiling number for Africans (3,000) will probably not be reached.

Gemal Ali Abdi is an elementary teacher who has been on the run for nearly ten years. He has escaped from Ethiopia and been deported twice, and a good friend was killed during one of the escape attempts. His sister filed for him when he first attempted to gain refugee status in Djibouti in September 1986. Processing was stopped there before he was called for an interview. Gemal has been in Rome seeking refugee status since March 1988, but is racing against a cutoff date because he did not arrive in Rome by January 1. (There is no cutoff date for Eastern Europeans awaiting processing in Rome.) Gemal, 43, has a wife and five children in Somalia. He has a kidney disease, and his sister is afraid he will not live long enough to make it to the U.S. An interview has been urgently requested for Gemal at the U.S. Embassy, but without success.

The distinction between refugee and immigrant becomes blurred in this country because refugees who join relatives who are U.S. citizens usually receive immigrant status. Immigrants get no aid, whereas those with refugee status get airfare loans and are entitled to refugee assistance for one year after arrival. Refugees who qualify can instead request medical assistance and AFDC for two years. Drastic cuts are probable this year because appropriated federal funds do not match the admissions figures. Many refugees use very little assistance, yet it is an important safety net for those who arrive traumatized, knowing little English and facing vast cultural adjustments.

When a refugee joins a relative who has become an American citizen, the government assumes that the relative can support the newly arrived family member. The relative files affidavits of support promising not to use any public assistance. While in some situations this approach is justified, it seems to be used to stall refugees, sometimes for years, until their relatives who preceded them as refugees wait the required five years to become U.S. citizens. Like so many domestic budget-cutting efforts, this shows little sensitivity to the human cost involved.

Another difficulty is that the INS has historically been a law-enforcement agency instead of a protective one. Interviewers at this understaffed agency are not necessarily sympathetic to refugees, many of whom are frightened, are intimidated by officials, find it difficult to communicate, and have no legal representation and no right of appeal.

Dawit (David) was 15 when he escaped to the Sudan in 1987 following several incidents of harassment and imprisonment in Ethiopia. His sister filed for his refugee status in the U.S. at that time, but the INS rejected him for having "willfully misrepresented a material fact" -- which it did not explain -- during his interview conducted without legal aid. Dawit’s only appeal has been in the form of letters from his sister and those in voluntary agencies who have written to the Department of State that "Dawit was extremely frightened at the time of his interview. . . . It is difficult for a minor to articulate a well-founded fear of persecution." The INS is advising Dawit’s sister to apply for him to come as an immigrant. If that happens, his family cannot expect to see him before eight years or so.

Occasionally, intensive advocacy can turn a case around. The relatively large number of Soviet Jews who will be coming this year (40,000) represents a good third of the total of all those to be admitted as refugees. This success is due to their having a major constituency in the U.S.

The case of Pho and Dock Souvannasane is a good example of a rare successful advocacy. Their son, Detsouvanh, escaped from Laos and arrived in the U.S. in 1980. Pho was in prison at the time for having served in the Royal Laotian Army as an American ally during the war in Vietnam. Det was 21, the oldest of ten children. He has worked hard and made a lot of friends. At the same time, he did not for a moment forget his family. For years he creatively hid extra income in the caps of aspirin bottles and in syringes that he mailed to his sister, who was in medical training. In May 1986 he became an American citizen, and at about the same time his family escaped to Thailand. Det’s siblings were granted refugee status in the U.S., arriving in December 1988. However, his parents were delayed, and eventually they learned that they would have to come as immigrants. Months went by without news. The children, four of whom were minors, attempted to adjust without their parents to their first winter in Minnesota.

Finally the children learned that upon review of the case, officials had decided Det did not make enough money to support his parents. This meant that they would be delayed indefinitely. This so frustrated and outraged all who had cared for the family that they pulled out all stops. The two churches that sponsored the children (a United Church of Christ congregation and an Episcopal congregation had worked through a Lutheran agency) signed additional affidavits of support. They contacted members of Congress and sent letters and telegrams to government officials. They informed the news media. The effort led to a stunning and unprecedented reversal, allowing the elder Souvannasanes to obtain refugee status and enter the U.S. in November 1989.

The treatment of refugees from countries in this hemisphere is even more disturbing. Hysterical media coverage of illegal aliens, fear of losing control of our borders and popular perception that drug trafficking and the entry of "undesirables" are related have made many Americans indifferent or punitive toward people who seek asylum.

Ironically, while the U.S. criticizes those who are violating the human rights of Cambodians who have long lived along the Thai-Cambodian border, it detains Salvadorans and Haitians in prison camps. The detention centers are far removed from populated areas, offer limited access to legal assistance, and often cause the separation of families. The thousands who do return home face certain persecution or death.

U.S. policy of interdicting Haitians at sea and returning them to Haiti is not unlike that of those who have turned back the Vietnamese boat people -- and thus received loud condemnation from the U.S. Since 1981, 20,000 Haitians have been interdicted, and only six have been allowed to pursue asylum claims. All are assumed to be merely economic migrants with "frivolous" reasons for seeking asylum.

How will recent events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union affect refugee resettlement? The processing of Soviet Jews is reported to be so far along that the allotted 50,000 will be resettled by spring. Processing of Poles and Hungarians will undoubtedly end, except for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. The Romanian situation is still questionable, but the country’s full allocation will probably be honored. Congress may have to establish a new status of "not-quite refugee" to have an equitable policy for those coming out of Europe. It remains to be seen if the fewer number of refugees from Europe will allow more to come from Africa, or if their places will simply be eliminated.

Churches and synagogues have devoted substantial funds and millions of voluntary hours to refugee resettlement. Those who have become involved find the work immensely rewarding. Many churches also contribute to a very effective advocacy organization, the U.S. Committee for Refugees (whose publications are excellent)

Those wishing to advocate on behalf of any refugee issue can start by writing to Congress. Senator Edward Kennedy is chairman of the subcommittee that creates legislative reform; Representative Bruce Morrison is his counterpart in the House. President Bush has stated that he will attend to refugee concerns, and letters to his office could prod him. A new refugee coordinator, Jewel Lafontant, oversees the participation of the various government agencies involved. Refugee settlement is a large and complicated bureaucratic pie, but there is good reason to hope that Lafontant may be up to the important task of humanizing the system. Lady Liberty must be blushing. I pray that she will cease merely to obscure reality and will again express the American spirit.

From Preaching to Painting: Van Gogh’s Religious Zeal

He has sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, declared Vincent van Gogh to his brother, Theo, in a letter dated 1876. For the next three years van Gogh singlemindedly pursued his calling to the ministry, first as a student of theology and then as a missionary to the coal miners in the Belgian Borinage. Deeply moved by the poverty surrounding him, van Gogh gave all his possessions, including most of his clothing, to the miners. An inspector of the Evangelization Council came to the conclusion that the missionary’s excess de zele bordered on the scandalous, and he reported van Gogh’s behavior to church authorities. Although van Gogh was successful in his ministry, the hierarchy of the Dutch Reformed Church rejected him, and at the end of 1879 he left the church, embittered and impoverished.

Van Gogh remained in the Borinage after the church withdrew its support, and he began his artistic career by making drawings of the simple life of the Belgian peasants. He described this as a kind of conversion experience: "Even in that deep misery I felt my energy revive, and I said to myself, in spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I had forsaken in my discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. From that moment everything has seemed transformed for me." Although most of van Gogh’s biographers view this transition as a rejection of religion, in fact art rather than preaching became van Gogh’s chief form of religious expression. His faith in God and eternity as well as his respect for unadorned piety and the word of God remained firm.

After van Gogh’s "conversion" to art, he rejected the religion of his parents for what he thought was true piety, which he called "the white ray of light." The work of the peasant painter Millet, he noted in an 1883 letter, has a gospel and "this white light." "The sermon is black by comparison." For van Gogh, to believe in God now meant not that one should believe all the sermons of the clergymen or "the arguments and Jesuitism of the bigoted, genteel prudes," but rather that there was a God, "not dead or stuffed, but alive, urging us to love, with irresistible force." Van Gogh pursued his art with his former religious zeal and mission, claiming, "Our purpose is self-reform by means of a handicraft and of intercourse with Nature -- our aim is walking with God."

Rather than choosing the traditional subject matter and iconography of the academic, religious-history painting, van Gogh tried to capture what he saw of the infinite in the subjects of everyday life. "I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals," he wrote, "for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing the latter may be -- a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker, is more interesting to me." When recounting the birth of a coal miner’s calf he described it as a sacred event, analogous to the birth of Christ, with the numinous quality of a beautiful painting:

Once I saw this in reality, not of course the birth of Christ, but the birth of a calf. And I remember exactly how the expression was. There was a little girl in the stable that night -- in the Borinage -- a little brown peasant girl with a white night cap; she had tears of compassion in her eyes for the poor cow when the poor thing was in throes and was having great trouble. It was pure, holy, wonderful, beautiful, like a Coreggio, a Millet, or an Isräels.

Van Gogh’s first major painting, The Potato Eaters (1885) ,) illustrates his commitment to religious themes and his appreciation for true piety. The painting depicts a family crowded around a small table, sharing a simple meal of potatoes and coffee by the dim light of an overhead lamp. Van Gogh wrote that he had painted the figures in the dark colors of a "very dusty, unpeeled potato." Because of its rough-hewn style, the painting is often noted as the first realist painting of peasants. The mood of the painting is deeply somber, and the sharing of their meager repast alludes to the Eucharist. The ritualistic distribution of the meal also acknowledges a holy presence among the humble peasants gathered around the table. Associating religious themes with the sharing of food was a common artistic device in 19th-century realist art. For example, the Dutch painter Joseph Isräels (Frugal Meal, 1876) attempted to show that the most mundane acts of human experience conveyed the presence of the divine with far more poignancy than the traditional subjects of cross and cathedral.

The figures in The Potato Eaters do not engage each other in conversation, but seem preoccupied with the ritualistic act of serving the meal. The man seated in the chair that bears van Gogh’s signature ("Vincent") stares into infinity with an expression of profound loneliness. The small crucifix hanging on the wall in the background is the only overt reference to Christianity. The painting might seem rather discordant but for its one unifying element: the lamp, with its warm glow piercing the isolation. The lamp was van Gogh’s symbol of love and recalls the light of the gospel which he once brought into the huts of the peasants and miners. In the context of The Potato Eaters, the lamp represents a nontraditional symbol of the "Ray of Light from on High," which van Gogh saw in the literature of Victor Hugo and the paintings of Corot and Millet.

Van Gogh’s other major oil painting of his Dutch period, Open Bible (1885) ,) shows that while his attitude toward conventional religion had changed, he still maintained both a respect for the Bible and, more important, an appreciation of Christ the Redeemer. Open Bible depicts a large gold-leafed family Bible open to Isaiah 53, a small tattered copy of a French realist novel, Emile Zola’s Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life) ,) and a snuffed-out candle in the background. With this combination of motifs, van Gogh recalls the Dutch "Vanitas" tradition of the 17th century, which emphasized the transitory nature of human existence. As such, it may have been a tribute to van Gogh’s father, who died a few months before.

Virtually all art historians who have critiqued this painting see it as a rejection of religion (particularly the Bible) for the modern, joyous lifestyle of 19th-century France. But van Gogh continued to study the Bible even after abandoning his ministerial calling. He still held the Bible in high esteem, writing in a letter to Theo in 1883:

"I told father that in the Bible itself maxims can be found by which we may test our convictions to see whether they are reasonable and just." His interest was in the Bible’s application to modern life: "Now take Michelet and Beecher Stowe, they don’t tell you the Gospel is no longer of any value, but they show how it may be applied in our time, in this our life, by you and me, for instance." Also, Paul Gauguin, who lived with van Gogh in Arles from October through December of 1888, tells us that "his Dutch brain was afire with the Bible."

In addition, the literal interpretation of the "joy of life" ignores the irony of Zola’s title, since the hero in Joie de Vivre, Pauline, perseveres through great suffering (and little joy) as a kind of Christ-figure, much like the hero in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Jean Valjean. The continuity between the image of the Bible in the painting and the image of the French novel thus lies in its emphasis on the Christ-figure -- even more apparent when one considers the subject of the biblical passage depicted in the painting. Although the exact verses are not decipherable, van Gogh was well acquainted with Isaiah 53:3-5, which foretells the suffering of Christ as the sacrificial lamb. During his preparation for ministry, van Gogh admired Christ’s humility as a common laborer and "man of sorrows" whose life he tried to imitate.

Jesus Christ is the Master who can comfort and strengthen a man, a laborer and working man whose life is hard -- because he is the great man of sorrows who knows our ills . . . and God wills that in imitation of Christ, man should live humbly and go through life not reaching for the sky, but adapting himself to the earth below, learning from the Gospel to be meek and simple of heart.

As an artist, van Gogh remained fascinated by Christ. "Oh, I am no friend of the present Christianity, though its founder was sublime." He described Jesus as "the supreme artist, more of an artist than all others, disdaining marble and clay and color, working in the living flesh." Finally, van Gogh’s preoccupation with Christ is visually apparent in his rendition of the Pietà, in which he depicts the Christ figure with the features of his own face and red beard, languishing in the arms of Mary.

One of van Gogh’s first successful lithographs, At Eternity’s Gate (1882) ,) depicts an old man seated by a fire, his head buried in his hands. Near the end of his life, while recuperating in the asylum at St. Rémy, van Gogh re-created this image in oil. Bent over with his fists clenched against a face hidden in utter frustration, the subject appears engulfed in grief. The work would convey an image of total despair if not for its title. Even in the deepest moments of sorrow and pain, van Gogh clung to the faith in God and eternity, which he tried to express in his work:

The expression of such a little old man -- perhaps without he himself being conscious of it -- is unspeakably touching when he sits so quietly in his chimney corner. It reveals something which cannot be destined for the worms . . .this is far from all theology, simply the fact that the poorest little woodcutter, heath peasant or miner can have moments of emotion and a frame of mind which give him a feeling of an eternal home to which he is near.

As van Gogh pointed out, the sentiment in this painting is "far from all theology," but he wanted to show that though he had rejected institutional religion, he remained profoundly religious and firmly believed in a spiritual life after death.

He once wrote to his brother about his "terrible need of -- shall I say the word, religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars." In the stars, as well as in the everyday facets of the simple life of the peasants, he felt the presence of the divine. Along with the old man in At Eternity’s Gate, van Gogh believed that he, too, would find an eternal home after death:

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to Tarasçon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. One thing undoubtedly true in this reasoning is that we cannot get to a star while we are alive anymore than we can take a train when we are dead.

So to me, it seems possible that cholera, gravel, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means. To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.

In the careworn, bedraggled old man of At Eternity’s Gate, van Gogh portrayed a soul at the end of his earthly journey on his way to "reach a star."

One of the things that does not pass away is the Something on High and the belief in God, too, though the forms may change -- a change which is just as necessary as the renewal of the leaves in spring. I think it a splendid saying of Victor Hugo’s, "Religions pass away, but God remains," and another beautiful saying of Gavarni’s, "What matters is to grasp what does not pass away in what does pass away."

In the humble repast of a peasant family, the juxtaposition of the Bible and Zola’s novel, and the grieving old man sitting by the fire, van Gogh depicted the infinite in the mundane, the existence of God and eternity, "which does not pass away."

Is the Church an Addictive Organization?

We are slowly and painfully becoming aware of the role of addiction in our society. We are learning not only about chemical dependency but about codependency and the roles played by members of dysfunctional families.

Alcohol and drug addiction are just the tip of the iceberg. Many experts are recognizing that there are various other forms of addiction. Some involve substances introduced into the body, such as alcohol, drugs, nicotine, caffeine, salt and sugar -- substances that can be mood-altering -- but others involve a process: extreme preoccupation with relationships, money, sex, religion, gambling, romance, violence, the arms race, television and so on. In such cases, one becomes addicted to the "process" of the addiction. For example, someone addicted to money is more concerned with having (or not having) it than with money itself. Both types of addictions interfere with people’s ability to be in touch with themselves, their spirituality and their world. The addiction changes behavior, distorts reality and fosters self-centeredness. Any addiction can kill; some do it more slowly than others.

No one has only one addiction. As addicts begin recovering from their primary addiction and achieve some sobriety, other addictions emerge. The addictive process is like an underground river. The mainstream may be drugs and alcohol; when that branch is blocked (with recovery) the river finds another channel, then another, and another. To recognize the underlying addictive process is to acknowledge that society itself operates addictively; its institutions perpetuate the addictive process. Individual addicts are characterized by self-centeredness, dishonesty, preoccupation with control, abnormal thinking processes, confusion, denial, perfectionism, judgmentalism, repressed feelings and ethical deterioration. Society exhibits these same traits. It does not merely encourage addictions; it regards them as normal.

This addictive process can be seen as part of what Jesus called "principalities and powers." By shutting off our awareness of ourselves and our spirituality, addictions make us easier to manipulate and control. The person who is best adjusted to an addictive society is like a zombie, neither dead nor alive.

The church, too, can take on the characteristics of an addict. Matthew Fox has argued that the Catholic Church is functioning like an addictive organization. Addictive leaders, he says, "have the power to bring an organization to the brink of destruction." "The Vatican’s obsession with sex is a worldwide scandal that demonstrates a serious psychic imbalance," Fox claims. He also sees an illusion of grandiosity" in the church, which he believes serves as a kind of "fix" for the addict obsessed with power. Citing another trait of addictive behavior, Fox says that the church functions out of an "illusion of control." It does not communicate directly with those it has censored, but rather, like a dysfunctional organization, communicates only indirectly. He also believes that the Catholic Church, like the typical dysfunctional family or organization, refuses to engage in self-evaluation and self-criticism. "Differences are seen as an attack," he says. It therefore isolates itself and relates only to those who think as it does.

An organization can function in an addictive way on four levels. These levels can occur simultaneously or by themselves, though the fourth level is not usually found without the first and second. The addiction grows more complex on the higher levels.

The first level occurs when there is an addict in a key position. First-level addiction in the church usually means that the minister or someone in leadership is an addict. Such people may be substance abusers, but usually in the case of church leaders the problem is an addiction to work, sex, romance, self-abuse, power or money.

For example, I know a minister’s adult daughter who was exploring her own workaholism. She had become exhausted and realized that she did not feel she had any value unless she was "productive." "I learned to be a workaholic in my home," she told me. "I have always been obsessed with work, and this has been unhealthy for me and often interfered with my relationships. One day I picked up a book on adult children of alcoholics and was mesmerized. I couldn’t put it down. There was no drinking in my family, but the dynamics described in that book were my family.

"My dad was never home," she said. "He was always working. Even when he was home, he was ‘in the study’ and we kids were not allowed to ‘disturb’ him. His work was the most important thing in our family. If any of us complained about never seeing him, he always had the excuse that he was doing ‘the Lord’s work’ and working himself to death was justified.

"Because he was always tired and overextended, he was always irritable. When I read the descriptions of the rages and mood swings of the alcoholic father, I realized that we had the same thing in our family. The entire family was always walking on eggs around him, and our lives were geared to his life and his moods. Nothing else mattered.

"Because of his intensity about his work, his constant ‘cause’ and his overwhelming obsession with money, my family was oriented toward crisis. We were always on the edge of some disaster.

"He ran the church the same way. The only people who were worthy of his respect were those who were willing to ‘suffer for Christ.’ He was respected for being a hard worker, but he was never loved. Just as we kids always felt guilty and bad about ourselves in his presence, the parishioners were always uneasy and felt guilty in relation to him. No matter what they did, it was never enough.

"Although he was always working and on the run, his actual productivity decreased. He recycled old sermons more and more often. He died in his late 40s and no one ever knew him. I feel like I had a nonrecovering alcoholic for a father. He did not really serve Christ or the church. I now know he served his disease."

Recent research has shown that workaholism is one of the more socially accepted addictions. Yet, contrary to common assumptions, workaholics are generally less productive than others and are destructive to their organizations. They develop other symptoms of addiction, such as a preoccupation with control (a desire to control themselves, the church and everyone around them) , confused and abnormal thinking patterns, judgmentalism, dishonesty, perfectionism and self-centeredness.

A sexual addict is anyone who is obsessed with sex and whose life has become unmanageable in relation to sex. Sexual addicts are not only those who obsessively engage in sexual activity. People and institutions that make sex the most important aspect of any relationship and read sex into every behavior or relationship yet claim a "pure" attitude about sex are also likely to be sexual addicts.

Addictions invariably arise from certain dualisms that are, in a strange way, mutually supportive. In sexual addiction, the most common dualism is obsession-repression. When addicts repress something they become obsessed with it, and when obsessed with something they try to repress it -- a cycle that supports the addiction.

Recent scandals in television ministries and investigations of clergy accused of molesting children are signs of sexual addiction in the church. The church’s repressive approach to sexual matters has often curbed healthy sexual development and expression. One of my Catholic friends has said, "The message I received from the church about sex was, ‘Sex is dirty. Save it for your husband!’" By focusing on premarital sex rather than on whether people love one another before marriage or if they have a relationship before marriage, the church makes sex the most important aspect of any relationship. The information I have been gathering from the people with whom I work suggests that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with the recent exposé of priests and clergy molesting children. Incest perpetrators are often respected members of the church and community. When we ignore these matters, they flourish.

Romance addiction is an addiction to illusion or appearances, or to a cause that puts one in an illusionary world. Those addicted to a cause become controlling, demanding, self-centered and even dishonest for the sake of the cause. Those who truly believe that the end justifies the means are romance addicts. For example, I knew a pastor who strongly opposed war but verbally and psychologically abused those who differed with his opinions. He had become so obsessed with the righteousness of his cause that he no longer valued individuals.

Self-abuse, an addiction just beginning to be recognized, seems to underlie many other addictions. It is closely tied to workaholism and chemical addiction. Seminaries and churches talk about valuing the children of God, but they can encourage self-abuse by turning pastors into "Type A" personalities. Few seminaries with which I have consulted offer courses in nutrition, exercise and wellness. While many do offer classes on prayer, they allot little time for students to pray. After classes, studies, fieldwork, family and community responsibilities, students have little time or energy for caring for themselves.

Addiction to self-abuse not only affects individual leaders of the church but is also integrated into the structure. Churches expect clergy to be workaholics and clergy spouses and families to serve as unpaid workers. The pay scales for the ministry -- salaries that parishioners would find inadequate for themselves -- often assure suffering for the clergy family.

Addiction to power is also evident in churches. It may be encountered in individuals or groups, or be integrated into the church structure. No alcoholic or drug addict trying to get a fix was ever more determined than a power addict. I know a church in which by polity decision-making is in the hands of the congregation, but the minister almost always manipulates or withholds information to get his way. Among clergy he is respected as a powerful and skilled leader. In the congregation he is viewed with suspicion by all but the few who operate like he does.

The second level of addiction in organizations occurs when people support addicts in their addictive behavior. Many forms of codependency exist in the church, usually in very "nice" people. Since they have a poor sense of personal identity, they seek their identity and validation from outside and are terribly fearful of alienating others. Though "nice" on the outside, they are often angry on the inside; one never quite knows what their real feelings are. They have probably learned that anger or "negative" feelings are unchristian, so they repress these feelings and let them out indirectly with great force. Because they are so confused about their feelings, they are unable to interact straightforwardly with others.

Codependents or relationship addicts cannot distinguish between "taking care of’ (which often involves manipulation and control, and can be very destructive) and caring for someone. People who "take care of " others often believe that ignoring some behavior is a caring act. The clergy and the laity in one church that had an alcoholic in a key lay position spent an inordinate amount of energy "ignoring" the fact that he was not doing his job on a very important committee. They griped and complained behind his back when he did not follow through on his responsibilities or when he came to a meeting drunk, but everyone covered up for him and did not want to hurt his feelings" by confronting his behavior or asking him to resign. Everyone around him suffered gallantly. They believed they were caring for him. What they were doing was not helping him recover from alcoholism.

People from dysfunctional families follow certain patterns of interacting in an organization. For example, those who had taken the "hero" role in their family (i.e., have been the "good," obedient children who try to bring the appearance of order to the family) are often very hard workers and seem to benefit the organization greatly. Unfortunately, they can almost never cooperate on a team and almost always need to work alone. They are often perfectionists, very demanding of themselves and others.

People who grew up in dysfunctional families are accustomed to crisis. When things are going well, they get anxious. They are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, a crisis to arise, so they can use their skills. When things are going well they have trouble knowing what to do, so they create a crisis.

All of these behaviors wreak havoc in an organization. Yet probably the most damaging is the learned behavior of covering up and enabling the addictive behavior, as evident in the above-mentioned case of the alcoholic layperson. "Hero" children of addictive families tend to enter the helping professions, making this type of addiction common in churches and especially among clergy. The church can also act as a codependent. Some engage in social ministry by deciding what the recipients need and how they should receive it, without asking them what they believe they need or helping them achieve it for themselves. Such churches can be oppressive in their care-taking.

The third level of organizational addiction is when a person becomes addicted to the organization -- when the organization itself provides the fix. This level of addiction includes work addiction, addiction to the mission of the organization or addiction to the promise of the organization. A person addicted to the promise of the organization is willing to endure any amount of bad experiences to hold onto that promise, which can be anything from "life everlasting" to a sense of belonging to a community or being accepted. One young woman shared with me how lonely she had been as a child and young adult. She looked to the church to be the family she never had and was led to believe that she would be affirmed if she just did the right things. After being molested by the minister and finding no acceptance among her church "family" for her assertions or pain, she left the church, realizing she had been hooked on an empty promise.

The church is especially vulnerable to these types of addictions. Even when their addiction is to a good cause, a good organization or a worthy promise, addicts lose touch with their spirituality and their relationship to God; the addiction takes over their life, their relationships and their being.

The fourth level of organizational addiction is when the organization itself functions as an addict. In these cases, there is an incongruity between what the organization says its mission is and what it actually does. An organization’s personnel practices, its emphasis on control, and how it interprets and works with power can all reveal signs of addiction.

The Christian church espouses a theology of pluralism; it claims there is no discrimination in the eyes of God, who loves and respects all creatures. Some time ago, however, some consultants studied the decision-making process of a national church organization that strongly espouses pluralism and found that at every level decisions were made in a way that actively inhibited pluralism. Not all minorities (including women, gays and racial groups) had access to major committees. Some, like gays, had to hide that part of their identity in order to participate.

Unlike that of the dominant group, the culture of some of the minority groups did not make decisions using Robert’s Rules of Order or by politicking. Thus they had to lie about how they made decisions when reporting to the dominant group, which would not accept other methods. The national church governing body agreed that these findings were accurate, but it decided to drop the project because it would be too disruptive to the church (as if the lack of a genuine pluralism was not already disrupting the church)

Another example of such an inconsistency is the way many recovering addicts are ignored or rejected by the church. If grace is available to all, why is it offered to some and not others? A minister who is a recovering addict told me that he often experienced more grace in the basement of the church during a Twelve-Step support group meeting than he did in the sanctuary.

A control ideology also indicates an addiction. How does a church share the gospel? Those that impose their belief system on others contradict the notion that the gospel and the teachings of Jesus are powerful in their own right. Can we not trust that simply sharing will be powerful enough?

Churches that are closed systems are so insecure that they believe their survival depends on destroying everything that differs from them or does not support them. Such churches lack faith in the gospel’s inherent power.

These are some of the addictions that I have found operating on many levels of the church. Addictive behavior robs Christians and churches of their full spirituality. Confronting these addictions offers the possibility of recovery and grace. It is a long process; as the Twelve Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous states, addiction is cunning, baffling, powerful and patient. The first step is naming and facing the addiction.