Page 4456 – Christianity Today (2024)

Douglas A. Sweeney

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In late December 1656, over the course of several days, the 38-year-old Quaker leader James Nayler was punished severely. He had been convicted of “horrid blasphemy” by the entire British Parliament after a ten-day meeting devoted to the consideration of his case. Having escaped a sentence of execution by only a very narrow margin, Nayler was pilloried twice and publicly whipped on three separate occasions, suffering over 300 excruciating lashes altogether. According to one report,

there was not a space bigger than the breadth of a man’s nail free from stripes and blood, from his shoulders [to] near his waist. And his right arm was sorely striped. His hands also were sorely hurt with the cords, that they bled, and were swelled. The blood and wounds of his back did very little appear at first sight, by reason of the abundance of dirt that covered them, till it was washed off. … And others saw that he was much abused with horses treading on him, for the print of the nails were seen on his feet.

As if this were not enough, Nayler’s tormenters bored his tongue with a red-hot poker and, among other afflictions, branded his forehead with a burning, iron-letter “B” (which event “gave a little flash of smoke”). They threw him in prison in London on a woefully indefinite basis and assigned him to manual labor to earn his keep. Though he was released on a general amnesty in September of 1659, he died pitifully the following year after being robbed on the highway while heading back to his home in the county of Yorkshire.

What had Nayler done to deserve such punishment? He had carried out a prophetic “sign” before the citizens of Bristol by re-enacting Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. During a “pelting downpour” in late October 1656 “in which they ‘received the rain at their necks and vented it at their hose and breeches,’ ” a small band of four men and three women, all followers of Nayler, shouted hosannas as he rode slowly into town. They entered “‘the dirty way in which the carts and horses and none else usually go,'” trudging “knee-deep in mire” due to the rain. Their blatant imitation of our Lord incited such outrage that they were arrested straightaway and held in jail until their hearing.

During his trial, Nayler insisted that he had only enacted a sign of Christ; he had not presumed to be the Lord himself. And in The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, Leo Damrosch confirms that “on the whole, … Nayler’s testimony … should have convinced any fair-minded observer that he clearly distinguished between himself and Christ.”

Damrosch has undertaken in this gripping historical monograph to explain what he refers to as “the meaning of the Nayler affair.” Against the background of the political culture of the Interregnum period, he seeks to unpack the rich significance of Nayler’s mistakenly blasphemous “sign.” To his credit as a self-professed secularist, Damrosch refuses to reduce his discussion of the “meaning” of this affair to the terms of social-scientific explanation, treating the intense debate concerning blasphemy waged by Nayler and his critics as simply a cover for the expression of more important, social concerns. Rather, Damrosch argues, while “modern interpreters sometimes regard the worldly arguments as the ‘real’ ones and the religious ones as a coded translation of them,” we must recognize that “such a distinction would have made no sense” to his book’s early modern subjects. “In their minds religious considerations were worldly ones,” for, in their world, religion and politics “ran in tandem.”

What, then, was the real meaning of the Nayler affair? For Damrosch, the answer has several dimensions. First, the Quakers posed a very serious threat to the stability of the fledgling Puritan government. While not as radical or political as groups like the Levellers or the Diggers, they too blamed the Puritans for having “sold out the revolution.” To their minds, what had started as a movement to oppose governmental oppression and put an end to religious “priestcraft” had become as elitist and controlling as the monarchy it had deposed. In protest, as the Quakers rose to prominence in the 1650s they practiced customs that defied the Puritans’ newly established social order.

Their preachers—often young men fresh out of Oliver Cromwell’s co*cky New Model Army who were fiercely independent and alarmingly egalitarian—had a reputation for being well-trained, ideologically driven, obnoxious religious hecklers. Breaking up Puritan worship services and tearing down the established ministry, these preachers proclaimed a commitment to what they called the doctrine of “the inner light.”

Their followers—many of whom, significantly, were forceful women—supported the likes of James Nayler and fellow Quaker luminary George Fox in undermining England’s institutional religion. Forgoing propositional theology in favor of the immediacy of divine truth, they distrusted biblical literalism disconnected from the Word within; they opposed the support of professional ministers and withheld the taxes that paid their salaries; they refused to swear any oaths and thus disrupted judicial proceedings; they declined to doff their hats as a sign of deference to social “superiors” (they usually removed their hats only for prayer); and they insisted on addressing these superiors with the diminutive “thee” and “thou,” using only people’s first names and ignoring formal titles.

More important, according to Damrosch, the Quakers upheld a threatening form of religious antinomianism, one that stood too close to Protestant orthodoxy to be ignored. Believing with many of their Calvinist neighbors that Christ communed directly with the elect, they found little use for the mediatorial role of laws, doctrines, and churches. Though not opposed to Christian mores, they thought that most Christians observed them too slavishly, missing the freedom that comes from genuine, immediate, and full participation in Christ. While the Puritans had been free spirits, they thought, at the beginning of their rise to power, their movement had since become petrified and now proved much too authoritarian.

For Damrosch, then, it comes as little surprise that the Puritans persecuted Quakers with zeal, for, in doing so, they were purging themselves of their own, original antinomian tendencies. He writes,

the early Quaker movement … played the role of scapegoat for the ascendant Puritans. In effect, the Puritans ascribed to Quakers versions of beliefs and practices for which they themselves were criticized but wished to repudiate, and they confirmed their sense of righteousness by throwing Quakers in jail.

It was Nayler’s fate in this culture of fearful moralistic backlash to serve as a “double scapegoat” for the antinomian cause. There is “great paradox,” according to Damrosch, in “the crisis of authority that developed when the Puritans, who had always defined themselves as individualist and oppositional, found that they had no choice but to assert control in much the same ways as their predecessors had done.” But “still more paradoxically, the Quaker movement too, despite its ideology of absolute individualism, was forced in its turn to impose discipline.” Significantly, Nayler was not only punished for impersonating Christ on behalf of his movement, he was also written out of Quaker history by his fellow religionists. An embarrassment to a movement trying to gain respectability in a hostile religious environment, he was abandoned by his friends and foes alike.

The Nayler affair, then, sheds much light on what Damrosch characterizes as “the fatal logic by which every antinomianism contains the seeds of its own collapse. Rather than representing an exhilarating challenge to order posed by freedom,” he argues, “[this affair] represents the systematic transformation of freedom into order as each radical movement in turn becomes conservative in order to survive.” In the end, he concludes, “it was an anti-antinomianism that asserted itself within the Puritan and the Quaker movements, and the Nayler case is indispensable in exposing how it did so.”

But is Damrosch right to portray James Nayler as a victim “crucified” hypocritically in a culture struggling to repress the free spirit within its soul? And is the conservative Christian tendency toward institutionalization and dogmatization really—as scholars like Damrosch have suggested frequently at least since the days of Adolf von Harnack—one that proves by definition inherently oppressive? Though the Quakers deemed Puritans dull to the inner meaning of the Incarnation, taking a nearly gnostic pleasure in the Christly glories of the light within, perhaps the Puritans saw (however dimly) that to take the Incarnation seriously means to seek the presence and purpose of God in the world of flesh, fixture, and form. As Irenaeus asserted long ago against his antinomian Gnostic foes, the Incarnation reveals that God takes our world and its structures very seriously. Rather than resting with smug complacency in an apocalyptic antinomianism (whether that of ancient spiritualists or early Quakers) then, and ignoring the carnal world without our walls, devoted citizens of the city of God, from ancient days to our very own, have been called to the service of institutions and dogmas that make Christ tactile to those in need.

Clearly Nayler’s punishment, as well as the persecution of Quakers generally, is reprehensible to those of us who value religious liberty. But despite our well-placed objections to Nayler’s truly horrid treatment, it may remain possible to interpret his case as something more than a brutal “crackdown” enforced by a group of increasingly cautious Christian bureaucrats. Certainly the Puritans of the Interregnum were becoming more powerful and less sectarian than they had been in the days of their own suffering under the Stuarts. And, as Damrosch illustrates so vividly in this superbly crafted book, there is a very real (and dangerous) sense in which all power does corrupt. But while it is difficult to be incarnational in this sinful world of power politics without also becoming conservative in the worst sense of that ambiguous word, the effort to flesh out God’s earthly kingdom in ways that endure and prove reliable may well be worth the risk of a bit too much Christian bureaucracy.

Douglas A. Sweeney is assistant professor of church history and the history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

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Terry C. Muck

Meet the bodhisattva from Nazareth

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Who do you say I am?” Jesus asked his Jewish disciples. Peter responded with a Jewish answer: “You are the Messiah” (Matt. 16:15-16).

Christians over the centuries have continued to ask Jesus’ question. As Jaroslav Pelikan shows us in Jesus Through the Centuries, we have continued to add richness and breadth and depth to the disciples’ first answer: the Messiah Jesus is the Son of God, the Good Shepherd, the Lord of the Harvest, the Liberator.

Some modern Jewish scholars, who reject their brother Peter’s assessment of Jesus as Messiah, have nevertheless seen Jesus as an important religious and historical figure: Jesus as everyday Jew, Jesus as rabbinical teacher. Muslim scholars see in Jesus a great prophet of Allah and accord him religious respect as a fundamental tenet of their religious tradition.

Given the plurality of religions in the United States today, it is perhaps inevitable that other religions, even those not historically connected to Christianity, would recognize the pivotal nature of Jesus of Nazareth for Christian faith and human history and comment on his life and times.

Recently three prominent Buddhists have written books assessing Jesus from a Buddhist point of view. These three books help us begin to articulate a complex and not always consistent answer to the question “Who do Buddhists think Jesus was?”

THE GOOD-HEARTED JESUS

Arguably, the most famous Buddhist in the world is the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists. In some ways it is both misleading and un-Buddhist that one man represent the world Buddhist community. Buddhism is much less hierarchically structured than Christianity, and one of its principle teachings, anatta or no-self, discourages individualism. Further, Tibetan Buddhism represents only one aspect of the world Buddhist community, and a smallish one at that.

In other ways the Dalai Lama’s notoriety is understandable.

He represents an oppressed people—the Dalai Lama himself is in exile in India, driven out by the Chinese colonization of Tibet. The plight of Tibet has become a cause celebre among the Western intelligentsia and several Hollywood personalities. Further, the Dalai Lama is charismatic, dedicated, and wise. His celebrity is earned. So his book, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, merits consideration by Christian readers.

The book itself is a collection of eight Bible studies on Jesus’ words given by the Dalai Lama at a Buddhist-Christian interfaith conference. He reads the text, giving a Buddhist gloss on the content, and in the process, on Jesus himself. Each commentary is followed by a Christian respondent’s thoughts on both the passage and the Dalai Lama’s exegesis. Thus this is an exegetical approach to understanding the historical Jesus. Using Jesus’ words, filtered through a Buddhist world-view, the Dalai Lama paints a biographical portrait.

The focus of the picture is on Jesus’ teachings about mental attitude and Jesus’ own mental attitude. For the Dalai Lama, Jesus is the model of a “spiritually mature, good, and warm hearted person.” To emulate him, we should practice meditation.

The Dalai Lama freely acknowledges the philosophical differences between Christianity and Buddhism; he does not attempt to reduce the two religious systems to a lowest common denominator. But because each of these religions centers on the life and teachings of a single man, and because these exemplary teachers, Jesus and Buddha, showed their disciples how to develop “good hearts,” Christians and Buddhists alike should be able to agree on the importance of the devotional life and realize the benefits of that particular focus—mutual good will.

Mutual good will means the two religions can practice mutual appreciation toward one another, recognizing their potentially complementary nature even as each fulfills its distinctive “missionary” calling through advocacy. The goal is freedom on both sides—freedom to champion the gospel of Jesus and the dhamma of Gautama without disparaging the other’s path.

How can this be done in a world where cutthroat competition is the rule? The Dalai Lama begins by personifying this cooperative competition. He is very humble about his attempts to understand Jesus and his words—”this is my understanding of Christian theology,” he says with a twinkle at one point. He is not apologetic about what he offers in the way of commentary; still, he never loses sight of the fact that he is dealing with the scriptures of another religious tradition. In the end, he defers to Christians’ self-understandings where they might conflict with his own.

He obviously believes that others can learn this goodheartedness. He urges Buddhist and Christian scholars to meet and talk regularly. He is enthusiastic about the rich conversations already taking place among Buddhist monastic meditators and Christian monastics.

He promotes pilgrimages to one another’s holy sites. All of these things, he believes, will deepen friendships among adherents of the two traditions.

The Jesus who emerges from this exegesis is a person remarkably similar to the Dalai Lama himself: someone able to hold passionate commitments about the religious life, to advocate those teachings to others, but to do so in a way that unifies people around their common humanness rather than destructively promoting division. The key to combining passionate commitment and unswerving openness is the good heart.

THE ENGAGED JESUS

Thich Nhat Hanh presents a different vision of Jesus in Living Buddha, Living Christ. He too likes Jesus. He likes him very much indeed, and does not hesitate to tell readers, especially Christian readers, why. Yet his is a very different approach to Jesus from the one taken by the Dalai Lama.

If the Dalai Lama’s approach could be likened to that of a biblical exegete (or more precisely, a Bible-study leader), Thich Nhat Hanh’s resembles that of a philosopher of religion. He attempts to distill from what Christians say and believe about Jesus Christ a picture that comports well with a similar picture of Gautama Buddha—someone interested in the health and welfare of all sentient beings. This picture does not emerge from Jesus’ meditative practice but from what Jesus taught and did in his public life.

There is a certain congruence between this picture of Jesus and the trajectory of Nhat Hanh’s own life. He practices Zen Buddhism, but a Zen heavily influenced by a life of social activism. As chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation during the Vietnam War, he was nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, like the Dalai Lama, he lives in exile from his home country. From his base in France he carries on his teachings of peaceful coexistence by writing, lecturing, and leading retreats.

Nhat Hanh is interested in emphasizing the activist side of Jesus’ ministry, and that interest emerges in the descriptions he gives of how Buddhism, true Buddhism, and Christianity, true Christianity, relate to one another. He uses his philosophy-of-religion approach to demonstrate how congruent Buddhism and Christianity are on this point, and how congruent the life and teachings of Jesus and the life and teachings of Gautama are when it comes to their core messages: “I do not think there is that much difference between Christians and Buddhists.”

Here the contrast between his approach and that of the Dalai Lama becomes sharper. First, Nhat Hanh is more interested in right understanding than in the good heart. By all accounts, mind you, Nhat Hanh has a good heart and endorses others’ good hearts. But when it comes to establishing a base for cooperative action among Buddhists and Christians (and this is his goal), Jesus’ casting the money changers out of the temple is the paradigmatic act, not the meditative reflectiveness of the Beatitudes.

Second, this understanding is not understanding for understanding’s sake. It is understanding discovered in practice. This reflects both a core Zen focus on the importance of practice as the base of the religious life, but also extends the idea of practice, praxis, in a manner akin to Christian liberation theology. Traditionally when Zen masters say practice they mean mindful sitting, zazen. Practice, yes, but not social activism. Nhat Hanh extends the meaning without giving up on meditation.

Third, the content of this joint practice is what we together must do in order to address the injustices of human political and economic structures. That is not only Nhat Hanh’s common ground, but, he argues, the essence of both religious traditions: “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way,’ he meant that to have a true relationship with God, you must practice his way. In the Acts of the Apostles, the early Christians always spoke of their faith as ‘the Way.’ To me, ‘I am the way’ is a better statement than ‘I know the way.’ “

In arguing his case, Nhat Hanh does not hesitate to tell Christians what the true core of Jesus’ teachings is. He explains Christianity to Christians: “Jesus taught a gospel of nonviolence. Is the church today practicing the same by its presence and behavior?” He does not hesitate to exclude those who do not agree with his right understanding of Jesus’ message. One suspects he would do the same to fellow Buddhists in reference to Gautama’s teachings.

The implications of this approach for interreligious dialogue are profound. Whereas the Dalai Lama uses the concept of the good heart as a vehicle to promote interreligious harmony while continuing to recognize the differences between the two religious traditions, Nhat Hanh presses his argument about a common core to unite Christians and Buddhists who agree with his analysis while recognizing that some Buddhists and Christians don’t see this analysis as central to the two traditions.

In other words, the key division is not between Buddhists and Christians per se, but between Buddhists/Christians who see human flourishing as the essence of the two traditions and Buddhists/Christians who don’t. This approach is well illustrated by Thomas Merton’s laudatory comment: “Thich Nhat Hanh is more my brother than many who are nearer to me in race and nationality, because he and I see things in exactly the same way.”

ZEN MASTER JESUS

In the Zen Teachings of Jesus, Kenneth S. Leong is neither exegete nor philosopher of religion. He is, first, a comparative religionist and, second, an apologist for Zen Buddhism, or more precisely, for a Zen way of apprehending the world. As comparative religionist he chooses a category from one religious tradition (in this case Zen Buddhism) and then traces affinities between that category and the teachings and practices of another religious tradition, in this case Christianity. He does not work toward a common ground amidst diversity (as did the Dalai Lama), nor does he seek out a dynamic equivalence between two traditions (as did Thich Nhat Hanh); rather, he argues for a recognition that “Zen is everywhere.” In Leong’s approach, it would be appropriate to call Jesus “an anonymous Zen Buddhist.”

Just as the Jesus depicted by the Dalai Lama closely resembles the Tibetan spiritual leader, and the Jesus of Nhat Hanh bears a remarkable resemblance to the activist Vietnamese monk, so Leong’s conception of Jesus reflects his own experience. Leong was converted from Christianity to Zen Buddhism as a teenager: “I left Jesus to search for the Tao when I was sixteen. Now I am forty and realize I could have found the Tao in Jesus.” He now teaches Zen practice at Wainwright House in Rye, New York, encouraging Christians to reinterpret their religious tradition in light of Zen.

Most of the book details the nature of what can be found in Jesus that is so appropriate to Zen meditation. Leong is especially interested in discovering what he calls “the lost dimensions” of Jesus’ spirituality. Leong especially emphasizes our failure to appreciate Jesus’ sense of humor. We are far too serious about Jesus, he asserts, and this inhibits our ability to practice everyday spirituality, because seriousness is a sign of an overactive ego.

In order to unearth Jesus’ Zen side, two things must be done. First, certain ways of apprehending the Christian Gospels must be seen for what they are: blocks to fully understanding the radical nature of Jesus’ teachings and, in some cases, actual perversions of the teaching itself. In this category, Leong is especially critical of Western approaches to rationality and truth, which he calls absurd and tyrannical. He is also opposed to all forms of institutional religion, because institutional life filters out “soul competency,” the ability to feel and intuit Jesus rather than rotely understand him.

The second task, the more positive side, is to give a Zen-style reading of Jesus’ life and teachings. Leong begins by spending two chapters attempting to describe what Zen is: not a religion as much as a mental culture, a way of approaching life. Chapters 3 through 11 bring interesting Zen insights to bear on familiar gospel stories. A new picture of Jesus emerges from this reading, reminding us how much our understanding of Jesus is colored by the cultural world-view we bring to the reading.

MISSING PIECES AND FRESH INSIGHTS

Three different readings. In some ways, one can see the similarities, owing to the fact that all three authors are Buddhists and are unapologetic about letting their religious categories shape their readings. In other and equally important ways, one can see sharp differences in the way Jesus is portrayed. Still, we can make some common observations:

1. All three portraits are properly appreciative of what a great man Jesus was. All three recognize Jesus as a great teacher. Nhat Hanh “came to know Jesus as a great teacher” from his early friendship with Christians and his early contact with French missionaries in Vietnam, although this contact made appreciating some other elements of Christianity difficult. Leong’s whole premise is that Jesus was a great, albeit unrecognized, teacher of Zen.

In addition, all three recognize in one way or another that Jesus was a pivotal figure in human history. Nhat Hanh perhaps pays him the highest compliment by pairing him with the Buddha as the two most pivotal figures in all human history. Leong considers Jesus the most famous person in human history.

They also recognize and appreciate Jesus’ role as a spiritual figure, not just in the public sense, but in his essence. The Dalai Lama claims his reverence for Jesus stems from his understanding of Jesus as a fully enlightened human being, a bodhisattva. Although it is difficult to know just what he means by using this language, Leong says, “we can certainly see Jesus as Savior, Messiah, Son of God.”

It may be only common sense that anyone who writes an entire book on a person will have a high regard for that person. Still, it is important to rehearse the answers, the positive affirmations given to Jesus. The answer to this question might help uncover any inappropriate religious or cultural biases being brought to the readings. All three authors pass this test. Although Hanh and Leong, especially, are critical of certain understandings of Jesus and certain types of followers of Jesus, neither is critical of Jesus himself.

2. They don’t see Jesus the way confessing Christians see Jesus. Or put another way, when I read these descriptions as a confessing Christian, I found something missing. I am not sure it is “my” Jesus they are talking about. As we have seen, these authors are properly appreciative, but they are not confessionally committed to what Jesus stands for. So what is missing in these portraits?

Jean Luc Marion in God Without Being makes an interesting distinction between idols and icons, a distinction that might help us in answering this question. An idol acts like a mirror, reflecting our own understandings of a subject as much or more as it does the essence of the subject itself. An icon propels us toward the essence by encouraging us to look through and beyond the graphic representation, on toward the thing in itself.

We have already noted above the irony that Jesus turns out to be, in each author’s description, a person interested in the very things the author is most interested in: Jesus the meditator par excellance for the Dalai Lama; Jesus the social activist for Thich Nhat Hanh; Jesus the Zen teacher for Kenneth Leong. These are idols, if we can use Marion’s images, idols in the best sense. They are not simply inaccurate, and they are not meant to belittle Jesus by any means. But they mirror what these Buddhist authors see as important qualities, qualities they think we should endorse and emulate.

Christian descriptions of Jesus often have this mirror quality also, of course. But the best Christian theological and devotional writing has the ability to point us toward the transcendent reality of Jesus, the surplus of meaning, the mystery that we can only experience in our day-to-day walk with the risen Christ. As the Dalai Lama puts it, “[T]he meaning of the themes [that he highlights in Jesus’ words] may be slightly different [from Christian meanings] because of the uniqueness that is accorded to Jesus as the Son of God.”

3. All three authors appropriate Jesus for their own ends. And of course, those ends are Buddhist ends, although all three probably would want to make the case that those “Buddhist” ends coincide with more general human ends. Again we should not be surprised at this, nor should we assume it is sinister. As Christians, when we read the life story of the Buddha and contemplate his teachings, we naturally do so from a Christian point of view.

Still, the fact that such a reading is inevitable does not mean that we should accept such readings uncritically. The question is not really whether or not such authors appropriate Jesus for their own ends. Even Christian authors do that. The real question is how they do it. Basically there are three roads such an appropriation can take.

First, one can appropriate by reduction: limit Jesus to one aspect and claim that that is the key to understanding his person and work. Jesus is a great teacher of Zen principles, and that is the key to understanding him. Or one can reduce by leveling, by claiming that Jesus is just one of a general class of religious teachers/ leaders: he may not offer the only path to spiritual enlightenment, but he does offer one path.

All three authors, to some extent, practice this kind of reduction when it comes to Jesus. Leong sees in Jesus a Zen teacher and little more. He is a teacher of Zen but not the teacher who has inspired 2,000 years of Christian orthodoxy. The Dalai Lama wants to endorse Jesus’ meditative practices without necessarily endorsing the logic and rationale behind those practices. By saying that we should not spend our life “tasting just one kind of fruit,” Nhat Hanh seems to imply there are many religious fruits of equal value, and we should not be afraid to sample as many as we want, measuring them by how much they contribute to peace and justice.

Second, one can appropriate by changing the life and teachings of a religious founder in order to make them compatible with one’s own world-view. None of these three authors does this. All work hard to understand Jesus as he truly was and as the Christian tradition has understood him. All three are well informed regarding the biblical record of Jesus’ words and base their arguments on those words. We may disagree with some of their interpretations, but most of us disagree with a lot of Christian commentary on Jesus’ life and times.

A great irony emerged as I read these three books. These Buddhist authors showed far more respect for the traditional historical Jesus and the devotional attachment Christians have for him than do the Christian exegetes who make up the Jesus Seminar. These Buddhists see Jesus as one of the world’s great religious resources; the Jesus Seminar sees Jesus as a problem to solve, a cipher to get right. What the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Kenneth Leong lack in confessional commitment they balance by their goodhearted desire to see Jesus as Christians see Jesus.

Third, one can appropriate by using the lessons one learns from another religion or religious figure to augment the teachings of one’s own religion. All three authors do this. They see the richness of Jesus’ teaching as a mother lode of wisdom for their respective Buddhist constituencies. As we have noted, all three carry significant takeaways for their Buddhist lives because of their study of Jesus.

Their motives go deeper than that, however. They also think Christians can learn significant lessons, without ceasing to be Christians, from these Buddhist readings of Jesus. This is a truth that we need to be reminded of constantly. Christian theology has always developed out of missional settings, in contact with other religions and world-views. It is not a matter of simply comparing or leveling all religions. It is a matter of Christians reappropriating lessons learned from these Buddhist appropriations of our most sacred heart. How does the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist understanding of Jesus’ good heart enrich my Christian understanding of Jesus? How does Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist understanding of Jesus as human liberator deepen my Christian understanding of Jesus? How does Kenneth Leong’s Buddhist understanding as Jesus as Zen master broaden my Christian understanding of Jesus?

Perhaps that is the way we should, in the end, view these fine books. We should not dismiss them out of hand as suspect, non-Christian poachings on themes more properly reserved for Christians alone. We should rejoice in the interest Jesus of Nazareth creates whenever people are made aware of his story. It is a powerful story.

As a graduate student at Northwestern University, I studied with a great Buddhist scholar from Sri Lanka, Walpola Rahula. After two years of study with him, I asked him one day at lunch, “Have you read the Bible?”

“I have read the Gospels,” he replied.

Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance

By Kathryn Stoner-WeissPrinceton University Press240 pp., $35

When are local heroes not persons? When they are in the hands of a social scientist. Then they are … something else—forces maybe, abstractions. This book seeks to discover how post-Soviet Russia is faring by looking at some of the regions, and the premise that “Moscow isn’t Russia” is sound. Yet the only persons who get more than the skimpiest passing mention are Moscow players Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, plus favored Western scholars.

The regions studied are four oblasts, or provinces, out of 89 territorial units, one of them twice the size of Texas. So the heroes are not very local, either. To be exact, the local heroes are “high-performance governments” of sizable territories. In case you’re interested, Nizhni Novgorod is doing better than Tyumen, which is doing better than Yaroslavl and Saratov. The desiderata are democracy in politics and the free market in economics, a combination only recently established among Western scholars as unassailable.

Adhering strictly to the Gospel of Statistics, the author ladles out charts and graphs to show that early progress comes fast when businessmen and politicians are in cahoots. Or, as she prefers, the “central argument of this book” is that “civil society in the post-Soviet context is poorly organized and that coterminous political and economic change made economic actors particularly important to the functioning of regional governments.”

It’s what comes next that will please those who exercise the hermeneutics of suspicion on social-science “literature.” Positivist methodology’s one very small step for mankind leaves us with the puzzle of why “clearly some regions were better governed than others, although on paper their institutions were identical.” And so the operative word of the book’s final movement is may. Stoner-Weiss comes to the “potentially unsettling prediction” that over the long haul decentralization may be better than the company-town model. That would clear the way, of course, for true heroes truly local.

—Edward E. Ericson, Jr.

The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions

By Freeman DysonOxford Univ. Press124 pp.; $22

Freeman Dyson hopes that technology—which he broadly describes as the fruit of applied science—can become an agent of positive social change. He knows that the events of this century have amply demonstrated the ability of technology to achieve the opposite result when misused, but his hope lies in the fact that the same human beings who misused technology in the past can now use it for more noble ends.

Dyson has the good sense to know that technological advances will inevitably have an impact on society, for good or ill. In The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, Dyson offers one view of how the technological tools presently available can be used to create a better world. The title of his book reflects his belief that solar power, genetic engineering, and the Internet offer the latest and best hope to create a world where the lives of all people will be dramatically improved.

To that end, he applauds advances in genetic engineering that have led to the sequencing of genomes. His view, which seems to be correct, is that this work will continue to benefit humankind as diseases and birth defects are progressively eradicated. He also suggests that if humans ever wish to colonize outer space, they must create genetically engineered plant life that can survive in extreme environments.

Dyson also argues that the Internet can help promote social justice and improve the standard of living of all people. He argues that if the information and channels of communication provided by the Internet were accessible to all, it would lead to a more equal distribution of wealth among nations and bring about the most massive improvement in the human situation that the world has ever known. Technologically speaking, this global network would be brought about by a series of low-orbit satellites. Those in remote or poverty-stricken areas would be able to use solar-powered receivers to tap into this global network.

Dyson knows that many of his predictions will be wrong. His concerns, however, transcend the specifics of technology. The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet is really a challenge to those of good faith, including Christians, who hope and pray that such technologies will improve the world rather than exacerbate existing problems. Because his book is more a manifesto than a roadmap, it is left to the reader to work out the details.

The one major failing of the book is that Dyson does not seem to have a sufficient awareness that “technology is only one of many forces driving human history, and seldom the most important,” even though he writes the words. As a result, the book never quite manages to offer the nuanced analysis of the role of technology in society one would have expected. Dyson instead leaves to others the complicated task of understanding the past, present, and future of technology against the backdrop of larger religious, economic, and cultural trends and histories.

—Matt Donnelly

Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information

By Erik DavisHarmony Books353 pp.; $25

Erik Davis has provided us with an important book on the symbiotic relationship between technology and the spiritual imagination. Following Neil Postman and others, he begins with the premise that “Culture is technoculture.” Davis goes further, however, to suggest that all technology, because it is imagined and created by human beings, is infused with “metaphysical concerns.” Out of humanity’s “spiritual imagination,” technological artifacts are created and infused with religious meanings as diverse as humanity itself. (Some, for example, have argued for the Buddhist nature of cyberspace.)

Davis’s argument for the link between spirituality and technology is persuasive. He provides a useful overview of spiritual interpretations given to technology in the twentieth century—even as the Western world has become increasingly post-Christian. Another line of supporting evidence is to be found in the various religious uses and understandings of the Internet, amply documented in Jeff Zaleski’s groundbreaking work The Soul of Cyberspace.

It is Davis’s analysis of the “metaphysical concerns” revealed by technology—and given new life to some degree by technology—that makes his book worthy of attention from the church. Particularly instructive is Davis’s suggestion that mystical understandings of technological innovations have almost inevitably been placed within larger utopian frameworks tinged with ancient gnosticism. Techgnosis itself is driven by the human-centered search for transcendence that lies behind the religious eclecticism of modern cyberculture and in a real sense propels cyberculture forward. The sad truth lurking just below the general optimism of Davis’s book is that the attempt to find meaning within a heterogeneous inner universe can never fully satisfy a human soul thirsting for truth and permanence.

Davis agrees that all human beings desire “meaning and connection,” yet he and other techno-pundits can offer no place within the confines of our brave new world where meaning and connection may be found, either in cyberspace or elsewhere. In the end, it seems, technology and all of human culture must be understood or interpreted in light of something beyond themselves if they are to be intelligible.—MD

Fiction

Hints of His Mortality

By David BorofkaUniv. of Iowa Press235 pp.; $22.95

It’s too bad that David Borofka’s Hints of His Mortality won the 1996 Iowa Short Fiction Award. It’s not surprising that it won the award—it is among the best short story collections published in more than a decade. It’s too bad, though, because the University of Iowa Press has not been able to market the book as effectively as a more popular press. Hints of His Mortality may be difficult to find. But it is certainly worth the effort.

The 13 short stories that make up the book are unified by voice and theme. The voice—articulate, compassionate, sometimes funny, always engaging—is that of a middle-aged, middle-class male. The theme is the distance between what life promises and what it delivers (“I craved importance,” one narrator writes, “but I sold insurance”), between the ideal and the real, the spiritual and the physical. “What can I say,” writes the narrator in the epilogue, “but repeat the usual cliches?” Turns out, he can say plenty.

And that’s one of the things that is so impressive about this volume—that the narrators can invoke cliches and breathe new life into them, can describe the mundane events, the ordinary misfortunes and insecurities and infidelities, both physical and metaphysical, that mark our age and make readers, as Joseph Conrad put it nearly a century ago, see. And what readers see are characters who wanted to be more than what they ended up being, characters struggling to be human as they witness heaven’s glory, “fade into the light of common day.”

The stories are filled with spiritual, as well as physical, searches for meaning and significance. In an age when “statements of piety” are difficult to make “without some shade of irony,” as one narrator puts it, Borofka manages both to raise religious issues with irony and to take them seriously—to be moral, that is, without being moralistic. In California, where most of the stories are set, a place that “does not lend itself easily to either liturgy or reflection” but where “sex … is a banquet,” Borofka manages to create both a kind of literary liturgy and a place for reflection.

The narrators are disappointed—with the human condition certainly, misfortune, instability, loss, and loneliness even in the midst of material plenty; but they are also disappointed with themselves, their own capacity for cruelty and selfishness. But Borofka doesn’t leave either his characters or his readers in that despair. While he articulates the human need for forgiveness as well as any contemporary writer, he also—and this is what is lacking in much of contemporary fiction—articulates the presence of grace. In Borofka’s world, though an Episcopal priest can fall in love with organists and secretaries, and his estranged sister-in-law declares love “the most highly overrated thing on God’s green earth,” that priest’s brother can be saved by a drunk in a cafe who will wake the next morning “to see the daily miracle of rebirth and admonition.”

But this description doesn’t do justice to the volume, for theme is abstract and Borofka’s stories are particular, concrete. They are also a joy to read.

—Joey E. Horstman

Matt Donnelly is assistant editor of Computing Today magazine. William A. Dyrness is dean and professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. Joey E. Horstman teaches English at Bethel College (Saint Paul, Minn.)

Michael Maudlin, Managing Editor

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Christianity Today, has been riding the bucking bronco known as the Internet since 1994. And we have surprised even ourselves that not only have we managed to stay on but have actually won a few prizes. The main prize is the number of people making “page impressions” (which is geek talk for a discrete downloaded page; an average visitor may make several impressions for each visit): Christianity Online (CO) overall garners 5.1 million impressions a month (with CT collecting over 100,000 of those), which translates into over half a million people visiting us online.

CO began this journey as a small lifestyle niche within America Online (keyword: CO). In 1996 we expanded to the Web (www.ChristianityToday.com) as well. Along the way we have added many services:

A search engine for finding past articles and topics covered in CT;
The Christianity Online Shopping Mall where you can purchase books, Bibles, music, and videos;
Fellowship Hall where believers converse;
Net/SEARCH, a searchable directory of over 10,000 Web sites (with links) of interest to Christians;
Special interest areas, such as the Christian Career Center, Singles Connection, Church Leadership Network, and Bible and Reference;
The contents of all 13 of our company’s publications, such as , CHRISTIAN HISTORY, and LEADERSHIP.

In the coming months we will add new services and features. In fact, that is our dream: to make a subscription to CT an ongoing dynamic relationship that provides many tools for equipping God’s saints to better fulfill his calling on their lives.

Magazines, essentially, document an ongoing conversation. For CT the conversation involves the whole church: Christian thought leaders, scholars, pastors, ministry workers, and churchgoers all trying to discern what God is doing in the world and how we can best engage the culture with the gospel. We invite you to become an active participant in that conversation.

And I hope you enjoy the ride.

- More fromMichael Maudlin, Managing Editor

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Those Messy Gray Areas* Daniel Taylor’s article on tolerance [“Are You Tolerant? (Should You Be?),” Jan. 11] recalled a line from Oswald Chambers: “There never was a more inconsistent Being on this earth than Our Lord, but He was never inconsistent to His Father. The one consistency of the saint is not to a principle, but to the Divine life.” The easy answer to tolerance is to see issues in black and white. Taylor’s admonition to practice unconditional love often leads us into the messy gray areas where it turns out we find the face of Christ as we serve our brothers and sisters. And that love is never understood by either side as the Cross demonstrates; but take heart, the One who died on the cross understands and empowers.

Bob MartinWalnut Creek, Calif.

We must be mindful of the fact that we are Christ’s witness in our society. If every Christian were to demonstrate the love of Christ, to every sinner, the often flippant use of the word intolerant would become powerless in silencing the voices of many thoughtful Christians. Let us not become accepting of sin, but in all cases certain to temper our outrage with love.

Joseph C. WiseMilligan CollegeMilligan College, Tenn.

It is amazing that the misunderstood and ambiguous charge of “intolerance” can compel so many to oppose Christianity. Taylor correctly showed that we have two weapons against tolerance. One is education. If national discussion of tolerance could be brought about, many would recognize its self-contradictory nature and flee from it. Our other weapon is love. Christians need less hating of sin and more loving the sinner. By showing Christ’s love to hom*osexuals or abortionists we will enact more moral change than a thousand social agendas will.

Jonathan M. FrizSt. Louis, Mo.

* This issue is not as easy to sort out as those on the extremes seem to find it to be. Taylor’s pointing us in the direction of Jesus’ example is wholly appropriate and proper.

Those who were the target of Jesus’ most virulent condemnation were not the most obvious and notorious sinners. They were the biblicists who rightly knew and taught reverence and obedience to Scripture, but whose self-righteous judgment had no mercy. As Eugene Peterson interprets Matthew 7:4-5, “Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.”

Ron SchoolerLos Angeles, Calif.

* The answer to the question depends upon how one defines tolerant. In some of the categories that appear on your cover, the proponents of those items claim to be seeking “tolerance,” but what they are really looking for is affirmation. Anything less, they call “intolerance.” For them to consider one “tolerant,” an endorsem*nt is usually required.

Christians are seen as “intolerant” unless they agree with hom*osexuality, abortion, divorce, and so on. Such is cultural surrender, not “tolerance.” The meaning of tolerant has been changed right under our noses.

David BlockCarrollton, Tex.

* I agree wholeheartedly that Christians in our culture (myself included) too often lack a real love for those with whom we disagree, and that lovelessness sabotages an otherwise effective witness of God’s people to effect change.

Having said that, I was bothered by the tone of the article in one respect. Taylor argues that “the single most enlightening story for thinking about God’s attitude toward tolerance is the gospel story of the woman caught in adultery.” The problem is that this woman was truly broken and repentant. In many, many other situations where our Lord confronted sin and evil (exhibiting his lack of tolerance), He used words like “you hypocrites”; “you blind guides (and fools)”; “you snakes … you brood of vipers.” The point is: While loving the sinner, God’s law is inviolable, and his truth never changes. It’s not us judging sin; God has already judged it.

David P. ClarkeNorfolk, Va.

Taylor asks, “How differently would conservative Christianity be perceived today if we had been the first and most passionate of those offering practical help to aids sufferers?” Well, look no further than New York City, where the Catholic church is the number one organization caring for aids victims; the annual “Gay Pride” parade marches past Saint Patrick’s Cathedral so that the marchers can demonstrate their hatred of the church—and they do so in ways that would have outraged the news media if they were a Christian group marching past an abortion clinic.

Don SchenkAllentown, Pa.

* Bravo on shifting the debate from tolerance/intolerance to the balance of sin and love. A couple of comments: (1) Why is it that Christians seem to be the least “tolerant” of people who sin in areas where they are the least tempted to sin themselves (hom*osexuality, abortion) but are more tolerant of people who sin in areas where they are more likely to be tempted themselves (gossip, pride, etc.)? (2) In order to appear less intolerant, some Christians have resorted to evangelizing with the appeal that you should become a Christian because “Christianity is good for you” rather than because “it is the truth.” Since Christianity can lead to suffering and persecution, we are giving people an excuse to reject the truth as a “lie” because it was not “good” as promised.

Gerald NanningaNew Hope, Minn.

Nothing like showing two men kissing on page 44 in your article on tolerance. Spare me! In so doing, you forced me, against my will, to tolerate, in a Christian magazine, a graphic representation of a sin. Is this not what the world asks me to do every day? Be separate from the world!

John TaftTeaneck, N.J.

Several readers wrote to express their discomfort with (and even intolerance of) that photograph. Their reaction showed how much more powerful than words visual representations can be. We apologize for upsetting some readers. Our hope was that seeing, rather than merely reading about, immoral activities would help us face and deal with the “tolerance” issues that our culture confronts us with.

—Eds.

Of Burning Coals and HugsAfter I finished “It’s Hard to Hug a Bully,” by Barbara Brown Taylor [Jan. 11], I decided to comment. The author quotes from Romans 12:20 (also Prov. 25: 21-22) about feeding one’s hungry enemy. She interprets “heaping coals” as a negatively aggressive act, hurtful to the enemy. It is my understanding that Paul’s statement, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,” is consistent with the act of feeding, and with the following verse (Rom. 12:21): “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” The people of Jesus’ locale and time needed to keep cooking and heating fires going, since it was difficult to start a fire. If it did go out, they would carry baskets or bowls on their heads to collect coals from their neighbors. Thus, giving burning coals to an enemy would be like feeding him. Like the fat little one-year old, hugging his bully friend!

Betty GregoryEast Rockaway, N.Y.

* What a great article! It seems I have always understood what Paul meant, but I lacked the ability to see how to do it—I suppose because I have never been able to live this way myself, nor have I seen it modeled often. Now I have a fresh new perspective and a wonderful slice of truth to carve out for this church family.

Pastor Eddie ThompsonFairview Baptist ChurchApex, N.C.

The Old Testament’s Real People* Philip Yancey’s article [“The Bible Jesus Read,” Jan. 11] is penetrating. I preach from the Old Testament frequently because of the impact it has on the New Testament. The Old Testament is chock-full of real people who struggled with sin; many overcame by God’s grace. I look forward to reading Yancey’s latest book.

Rev. John HigginsBridgeport, Ill.

Yancey’s article on the Old Testament was provocative and informative. His description of the OT as “The Bible Jesus Read,” however, is misleading. Jesus never enjoyed the luxury of having a neatly defined, closed canon of Scripture because the Judaism of his day had not yet determined what that Canon was. The schools of the great rabbis Hillel and Shammai could not agree whether the Book of Ecclesiastes “defiled the hands,” (i.e., was so holy that one must wash hands after touching the scroll). The Pharisees argued amongst themselves whether doctrinal problems found in Ezekiel, Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Esther were so serious that these documents should be “stored away.” And as late as a.d. 90, influential rabbis gathered in the city of Jamnia to determine, among other things, whether Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs defiled the hands or should be stored away.

The earliest Christians, for their part, had an expansive view of Scripture that encompassed much more than the documents that eventually became our OT. It is also clear that there was no consensus amongst the church fathers on the official contents of the OT.

Steve BaughmanSan Francisco, Calif.

* I so much appreciated the quality of the article that I used it for teaching my senior high Bible class. (Not that I would expect any less from Philip Yancey. I have been impressed with Yancey ever since I read his book What’s So Amazing About Grace.) I am afraid many of us in fundamental circles have forgotten that there is a wonderful part of our Bibles called the Old Testament and that, though perhaps a bit more difficult to understand in places, holds rich treasures of God’s marvelous grace and goodness.

Tim QuinnBloomingdale, Mich.

What Does Fat Mean?Thanks to Virginia Stem Owens for her courageous and provocative article on the “Fatted Faithful” [Jan. 11]. Her insights provide a spotlight (or in this case should we say floodlight?) on a broad subject.

One caveat should be made, however, about her concern that the “fat” that has melted away from modern translations of the Hebrew Bible may reflect “changes in our economy and our cultural attitudes.” This trend is probably not due to any concern for modern cultural correctness but rather for the continuing concern for accuracy in communication of the original ancient text. After all, the Hebrew text does not use fat or prosperous but words that can mean either (or both) depending on context and usage. For modern readers, the word fat usually connotes obesity—which is not necessarily “wealth.” Her own example of the “fat cat” amply illustrates that a very lean and gaunt ceo could carry this nonliteral label, but this is a specialized use within a specific expression. Most modern Bible readers would confuse biblical “fat” with modern obesity. The OT does not seem to carry our modern concern for “overweight,” which after all varies greatly among different cultures.

Readers who take literally the literal rendering “the liberal soul shall be made fat” (Prov. 11:25) could draw some conclusions far removed from the intended meaning of the original statement!

Larry L. WalkerJonesborough, Tenn.

“Chicken Little” Mentality?* Thanks for the informative article “Y2K: A Secular Apocalypse?” [Jan. 11]. I’m amused by the “Chicken Little” mentality of many Christians today. Some believers seem to need an annual dose of bogeyman to scare the daylights out of them. If it’s not the New Age movement, then it must be the “secular humanists.” Now comes along (God help us!) Y2K. When I first became a believer in 1949, Christians were afraid those newly invented computers would work too well and spew out 666, the Antichrist. Now Christians are afraid the computers won’t work well enough, so we all might end up having to pump our own water, or walk to work like our grandparents did. This survivalist mentality is not productive, even if it is profitable for some. Telling people to grab their gold, groceries, guns, Gospels, and head for the hills is hardly my understanding of the Great Commission.

Ivan A. RogersUrbandale, Iowa

Grace-filled WisdomThanks for your review of The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard [Books, Jan. 11]. I have been struck by the grace-filled wisdom and theology of this teacher and author ever since reading his two other books and hearing a tape series, “The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven,” which focuses on the Good News Jesus taught concerning God’s kingdom. The Divine Conspiracy is largely a discription of what that kind of discipleship means. It would be hard to summarize briefly what makes Willard’s teaching so vital to Christians and to the whole church at this present time.

Wyman T. KurtzChicago, Ill.

Serving and Idol?I was gratified to see Gilbert Meilaender’s article “Biotech Babies” [Dec. 7], with its conclusion that the child is a gift, not an entitlement, and that breaking the life-giving/love-giving connection is fraught with problems that threaten our grasp of this scriptural reality. At least, the purpose of these techniques is to ensure a living child as the “product,” even if a few “spares” must be eliminated along the way. But what are we to make of embryos specifically cloned or donated to provide stem cells, having first been mutilated so that they cannot receive nutrition and continue their development? Our resemblance to the Old Testament idol which required children to sate its desires seems to increase apace.

Carol E. BishopLong Beach, Calif.

Brief letters are welcome. They may be edited for space and clarity and must include the writer’s name and address if intended for publication. Due to the volume of mail, we cannot respond personally to individual letters. Write to Eutychus, Christianity Today, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188; fax: 630/260-0114. E-mail: cteditor@christianitytoday.com ( * ).

Patricia C. Roberts in Portland.

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In the largest judgment ever levied against anti-abortion activism, a federal jury in Oregon in February assessed $109 million in damages against two pro-life organizations and a dozen individuals associated with the Nuremberg Files site on the Internet’s World Wide Web.

Planned Parenthood, All Women’s Health Services, and four abortionists had filed a $200 million civil lawsuit in Portland, Oregon, against the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), Advocates for Life Ministries, and a dozen individuals in the first case of its kind. The three-week trial focused on the content of an Internet Web site and two “wanted”-style posters.

Defendant Joseph Foreman, the Presbyterian minister who helped draft ACLA’s constitution, said, “There’s been only one death threat in this entire case and that’s the threat to the First Amendment.”

Attorney Christopher A. Ferrara of the American Catholic Lawyers Association said, “If these posters are threatening, then virtually any document which criticizes an abortionist by name could be construed as threatening.” Ferrara promised to appeal.

Defendant Charles Wysong, founder of the American Rights Coalition—which files malpractice lawsuits against abortion providers—sees an ulterior motive. “This was a strategic lawsuit against political participation.”

CYBERSPACE RIGHTS: As more organizations have used the Web to get out their message, the rights of free speech in cyberspace are being challenged.

In the past, only physical actions had been targeted as the basis for lawsuits against pro-life activists, using both the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

FACE, passed during President Clinton’s first year in office (CT, Jan. 10, 1994, p. 55), makes it a federal crime to threaten, commit violent acts, or physically block entrances to abortion facilities. Although FACE has been used as a deterrent to on-site protests, this is the first time it has been applied to a Web site. Since the passage of FACE, nonviolent protests have fallen out of favor, and there has been a rise in violence against abortion facilities.

Soon after Congress passed FACE, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the RICO law, intended to fight organized crime, could be applied to pro-life groups if activities showed a pattern of conspiracy.

THREATENING SPEECH: The suit charged that the Nuremberg Files Web site constituted a “true threat” by comparing abortionists to Nazis tried for war crimes at the end of World War II. The site, which has a heading declaring “Visualize Abortionists on Trial,” contains wanted-style posters, including a “Deadly Dozen” unveiled in 1995 by ACLA, which had spun off from Operation Rescue but disbanded by 1997.

Prosecuting attorneys sought to prove that the Web site and posters, even though void of directly threatening words, established serious threats when taken in the context of an atmosphere of violence coupled with the killing of two abortionists who had appeared on similar wanted-style posters. After the verdict, plaintiffs said they would push for the posters and Web site to be shut down legally.

The Nuremberg Files (www.christiangallery.com/atrocity) accuses listed persons of being guilty of “crimes against humanity” and requests any information that would help bring conviction “once the tide of this nation’s opinion turns against the wanton slaughter of God’s children.” It displays dripping blood and lists names and detailed information—including license plate numbers and names of abortionists’ children.

Abortionists who are murdered, such as Barnett Slepian of Amherst, New York, last October, are crossed off the list. The site’s creator, Neal Horsley, Jr., of Carrollton, Georgia, testified that the files “were never intended to be a threat against abortion providers.” If the files are ordered removed from online, Horsley plans to distribute CD-ROMS so the “evidence” will not be lost.

Witnesses for the prosecution testified about the fear they felt due to having their names displayed. Some wore bulletproof vests into the courtroom.

FREE SPEECH VERSUS FEAR: The jury had the task of deciding whether this information, along with the posters, was legally protected free speech. The judgment, according to free-speech experts, may sharpen the line between provocative political rhetoric and illegal threats.

Defendants claimed that much of the information could be found in telephone books, and no lawsuits had been filed related to plaintiffs’ words in other media. Lawyers for the defendants repeatedly called for a mistrial. Judge Robert E. Jones, who at one point lectured defense attorneys about pro-life literature left in nearby bathrooms, ordered all pro-life lapel pins to be removed and required participants to use the term abortion providers rather than abortionists. Jones ordered the names of the jurors sealed after the ruling.

Several defendants testified that the rights of a fetus deserve protection. “Whatever is justifiable to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to use in the defense of an unborn child,” said defendant Michael Dodds.

While pro-lifers stressed differences between philosophy and action, abortion-rights advocates said it does not take a lot of prodding to cross the line to violence.

- More fromPatricia C. Roberts in Portland.

Chuck fa*ger in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Greater Ministries found in contempt of court.

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Legal challenges to the Tampa, Florida-based Greater Ministries International Church are piling up. On January 20, Pennsylvania Judge Eunice Ross granted the state attorney general’s request for a sweeping contempt of court order that may cost the ministry millions in fines and jail its leader, Gerald Payne. The contempt ruling also sets the stage for a freedom of religion appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Greater Ministries has operated what it calls a “gift in, gift out” program, which promised that contributors would receive double their money back within 18 months as a takeoff on Jesus’ advice on giving in Luke 6:38 (CT, Jan. 11, 1999, p. 16). Its leaders claim to have distributed more than $500 million in such “gifts,” to between 20,000 and 80,000 contributors, in all 50 states.

Greater’s statements and literature claim that this doubling of gifts has been financed with profits from foreign trading in precious metals and gold mining. No financial reports about its activities have been made public, however, and most payments to donors ceased several months ago.

Securities regulators have called Greater Ministries a Ponzi scheme, and it has been dogged by an escalating series of legal attacks. Calling the gifting program an unregistered investment plan, regulators in California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have issued cease-and-desist orders against it. Last July, Greater lost an estimated $20 million in the failure of a Colorado bank.

On December 11, two of Greater’s California representatives pleaded no contest to state securities violations. Four days later, Florida officials obtained a guilty plea from Jonathan Strawder on grand theft and securities fraud charges. Strawder had been running a spinoff of Greater Ministries called Sovereign Ministries, which also promised to double investors’ money (CT, Feb. 8, 1999, p. 14).

JUDGE ISSUES ORDERS: In late January, Pennsylvania’s Judge Ross ordered Greater Ministries to refund all contributions to the “gifting” program by Pennsylvania citizens since a preliminary injunction against the program was issued last November. To verify the refunds, the ministry must turn over the names and addresses of all contributors in the state and the amounts they gave. Ross likewise ordered Greater to stop promoting its new herbal food supplement program in the state. The program, Health Benevolence Christian Fellowship, distributes food supplements, which the ministry claims will help users avoid “end-time plagues.” All donations made to it in the state are to be refunded.

No firm data on the number of Greater’s contributors in Pennsylvania are available, but hundreds are concentrated in the “Dutch country” in and around Lancaster County. Nearly a thousand people crowded into a November meeting in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Ross’s order imposed two sets of fines: Greater Ministries is to pay $500 daily until written proof of such refunds is furnished to the court. Greater is also to pay an additional fine of $5,000 apiece for every Pennsylvania resident solicited by mail for donations during November and December. Records of all these solicitations are to be furnished to the court. Total fines could easily reach several million dollars.

Ross directed Greater Ministries’ founder Gerald Payne to appear in court March 1 to testify about the ministry’s compliance with the order or face arrest.

Payne—who did not respond to CT‘s request for comment—and the ministry are expected to appeal the case. Greater Ministries’ attorney, Al Cunningham, sees threats to religious freedom in Pennsylvania’s action against the ministry. Cunningham also represents another controversial ministry, the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, which is in a parallel feud with government officials. Cunningham told CT he expects the issues in these cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court as a way of challenging the Court’s 1992 ruling Oregon v. Smith.

Cunningham has determined the basis of his appeal: “If a church is not getting government benefits, if it claims no tax exemptions, then at that point the public has no interest in the ministries of that church and the relationships of the church and its members.”

REPENTING ON PAPER: An effort by Greater Ministries to reposition itself for an appeal is evident in papers filed with the Pennsylvania court. In the filing, Greater Ministries made public recent changes in its structure, dissolving its corporations and repudiating any claim of tax-exempt status. It now pronounces itself a “New Testament Church,” of which Christ alone is the “sovereign Head.” All property and assets of the church have been transferred to Payne as pastor.

To explain the changes, Payne also submitted a “Statement of Repentance.” In it, he said that although Greater Ministries had previously set up corporations and trusts “in ignorance,” the ministry had now learned as the result of “recent judgments on the Church” that these structures amounted to “unholy alliances with the state.” Thus Payne is ready to “confess my sin” and “turn from my wicked way.”

“As Pastor,” Payne declared in the affidavit, “I cannot, by reason of my religious convictions regarding the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the Church, submit the ministries of the Church to governmental authorities. To do so,” he asserted, “would recognize a sovereign greater than Jesus Christ with authority over the Church and its ministries.” The statements echo the positions of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple and suggest an alignment of legal strategy.

- More fromChuck fa*ger in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

By Art Moore.

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In September 1995, Madalyn Murray O’Hair vanished without a trace from her home in Austin, Texas, along with her son Jon Garth Murray, adopted granddaughter Robin Murray-O’Hair, and $629,500 from the coffers of atheist organizations she founded.

A plausible theory regarding the disappearance of O’Hair and her relatives has been pieced together by San Antonio Express-News reporter John MacCormack. “I believe that they were kidnapped and taken to San Antonio, held for a month, and then, after procuring a half-million dollars in gold, they were murdered,” MacCormack told CT. William J. Murray, O’Hair’s estranged son, believes MacCormack has solved the mystery, and Ron Barrier, spokesperson for the American Atheists group started by O’Hair, says the theory is credible.

“I would like to think there was foul play involved because it would absolve the image of Madalyn O’Hair and the organization of being thieves or running off with money,” Barrier says.

While O’Hair is long gone, William Murray contends that organized atheism has both won important victories for its ideas and lost a key reason for its existence as an insurgent social movement. “It is the liberalization of theology in America that has spelled the death knell for atheist organizations,” says Murray, who became a Christian in 1980 at age 33 and now directs the Religious Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C. “I can find Baptist preachers—in big churches—that will tell me that Christ isn’t the son of God. I don’t need to go to the atheists to have somebody to tell me that.”

On January 23, the image of O’Hair, who was 76 when she vanished, came to a new light with the auctioning of her diaries. The Internal Revenue Service ordered the sale after seizing her property to pay back taxes and creditor fees. The auction raised around $25,000.

The diaries chronicle O’Hair’s passion for power. A 1973 entry reads, “By age 50, I want a $60,000 home, a Cadillac car, a mink coat, a cook, a housekeeper. In 1974, I will run for the governor of Texas and in 1976, the president of the United States.”

While O’Hair did amass wealth, she never realized political power. By 1977, the diary shows a more pessimistic view. “I think atheism is done for this time,” she wrote. “I have failed in marriage, motherhood, as a politician.” In at least a half-dozen entries she pleaded, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.”

RETURN TO INFLUENCE? Her atheistic heirs are not dwelling on the past, however. Following in the tradition of some influential activist feminist and abortion-rights groups, small atheist organizations are trying to wield momentous clout for their size.

O’Hair is still reviled by religious leaders as the woman who removed God from public education, accelerating America’s moral decline. In reality, her case, Murray v. Curlett, was but a companion to two more significant cases upon which the Supreme Court based its 1963 decision to prohibit public schools from initiating prayer. O’Hair’s reputation grew in the wake of the 1963 Murray v. Curlett decision, in which her then 16-year-old son William was the nominal litigant. O’Hair proudly adopted the “America’s most hated woman” moniker.

In 1999, American atheists still see courtrooms and classrooms as their most important battlegrounds. Today they are strategizing to gain credibility by enhancing their social and intellectual respectability. And while continuing to make legal challenges to what they consider government entanglement with religion, they are recruiting youth, engaging in public debate with conservative Christians, and promoting atheistic “values,” all as a way of establishing a positive public image of atheists as America’s most reasonable freethinkers.

Evangelical apologist Paul Copan of Atlanta observes an impact on culture in the “groundswell of more philosophically inclined atheists banding together and displacing the village atheist approaches to theism that Madalyn Murray O’Hair represented.”

LOSING THEIR RELIGION: Atheist organizations want to capitalize on those who have no use for religious belief or practice. “Many atheists and agnostics are afraid to be identified,” says Dan Barker, a former Christian evangelist, missionary, and songwriter now affiliated with Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) in Madison, Wisconsin. “So even though the polls show a huge chunk that don’t believe in God, very few join.” Established in 1978, FFRF has 4,000 paid members who subscribe to its monthly magazine, Freethought Today.

Freethinkers by nature shun getting together, but they find encouragement in knowing others share their views, says Ken Bonnell, who cofounded Atheists United in Los Angeles in 1982. “There are an extremely large number of people who come about atheism on their own, who become disenchanted with church—some by reading the Bible and realizing absurdities in it,” Bonnell says. “These are the people we are trying to reach.”

By the late 1980s, O’Hair had established eight satellite groups, each with a board that she dominated along with Jon and Robin, who is William’s daughter. Madalyn had adopted Robin by the time William became a Christian.

Atheists United and FFRF are not affiliated with American Atheists, but are part of a coalition of a dozen groups under the umbrella of the Atheist Alliance, all of which lobby for separation of church and state.

REVIVE US AGAIN: Today, American Atheists, which has moved its national headquarters from Austin to Parsippany, New Jersey, is experiencing a resurgence following a decline in membership before O’Hair left. The membership roll had dipped to under 1,400, but homemaker Ellen Johnson has built it to 2,500 since becoming president three years ago.

Barrier says the group’s goal is to reach 10,000 members in the next four years, which would exceed its peak of more than 6,000 in the 1980s. Johnson and American Atheists magazine editor Frank Zindler receive a small stipend, Barrier says.

Johnson acknowledged in a letter to members, “We’re not as big as the Christian Coalition or the Family Research Council, but we’ll get there.”

Barrier shares Johnson’s optimism. “I think that the millennialist angst that is gripping the faith community will help create a backlash, and people who think a little bit more critically will see that there is an organization that speaks out for them and represents them.”

HIGHER PROFILE: Barker, whose group won a lawsuit two years ago to ban Good Friday as a state holiday in Wisconsin, thinks FFRF plays an important role. “They don’t need to be big groups to affect a law,” he says.

Last May, a contingency from American Atheists met for the first time with White House personnel, presenting a paper on the concerns of nonbelievers in the United States. In August, the government flew Johnson to Seattle to present a paper at a hearing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, discussing religion and the public schools.

But the Christian Legal Society’s Steve McFarland, who last year participated in a televised debate with Barrier on Cable News Network, points out that groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union push the same cause but have more clout. Several denominations now actively oppose legislative efforts on issues trailblazed by atheists, such as sponsored prayer in public schools.

Barrier counters that atheists have a unique role. “Our organizations cater specifically to the nonbeliever,” he says. “We do not feel that religion is very good for society.”

ATHEIST FAMILY VALUES: This year’s silver anniversary American Atheists convention, on Easter weekend, will feature the theme “Atheist Youth and Families.” Barrier says many atheist youth feel ostracized, and his address will aim to instill “in them a pride in their ability to think for themselves and to not take their doubt or skepticism of religious beliefs as any sort of moral misgiving or ethical breakdown.”

Apologist Copan says the advent of atheistic Web sites and journals such as the Skeptical Inquirer and the Humanist “makes some of their arguments more appealing and more accessible to people who don’t have a natural resistance to atheism. There aren’t the barriers that there were a generation ago.”

He points to a number of freethinkers who have “rallied around” Paul Kurtz’s Humanist Manifesto (Prometheus Books, 1973) and taken to scholars such as Michael Martin, author of Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Temple University Press, 1992).

Barker believes that free thought is growing because more people are receiving advanced degrees. “The higher you go in education, the less religious people are,” he says. Barker also says atheists are becoming less staid. “Traditionally atheists have tended to be the older, more philosophical types, and there hasn’t been much of an expression in art and beauty; but now more young people are involved.”

There has been an increase in freethinking groups on college campuses and even a high-school free-thought club in Alabama, Barker says, as a counterpart “to all of these aggressive Christian groups” such as Campus Crusade for Christ.

William Craig, research professor at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, has publicly debated atheists, including a Willow Creek Church event in South Barrington, Illinois, that drew 8,000 people. He asserts that secularism’s primary influence on culture is not emanating from free-thought organizations, but from universities. “In the U.S. you have a populace as religious as India being led by an elite as secular as Sweden,” Craig says. “The movers and shakers of our culture are secular, but on a popular level there is all kinds of interest in spirituality.”

- More fromBy Art Moore.

Steve Rabey.

Prison ministers embrace ‘restorative justice’ methods.

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Crime rates in the United States have been steadily falling this decade, but the declines have not slowed the growth of the nation’s prison population. Due in part to a wave of get-tough laws, many of them requiring longer sentences, almost 1.8 million Americans are incarcerated, giving the land of the free the second-highest confinement rate in the world behind only Russia.

America’s punishment-heavy approach to crime carries a big price tag. State and federal governments, faced with prison overcrowding problems, are spending billions of dollars on new prison-construction projects, or on contracts with a growing industry of private “corrections” firms.

And many observers say the criminal- justice system exacts an even higher social cost. Studies have found that as many as 75 percent of those released from jails or prisons will be back behind bars within four years, and in many cases, these men, women, and juveniles have neither the desire nor the ability to become productive members of society.

“Our current system of retributive justice is focused on who did what, and how much we are going to hurt them for doing it,” says Emmett Solomon, a Southern Baptist from Huntsville, Texas, who has been working in prisons since 1956. He is co-organizer of a Dallas conference in April that promises to be one of the biggest gatherings of prison ministries ever (for details, call 1-800-949-0063).

Solomon and others are at the forefront of a revolutionary approach to prison ministry that is simultaneously working on two distinct levels. Methodologically, these cutting-edge prison ministers are transitioning from traditional evangelistic prison ministry to more holistic approaches that focus on discipleship and relationships, both within prison walls and after prisoners are freed. Even more intriguing is the philosophical sea change that has been quietly transforming the face of modern prison ministry. This shift involves a transition from punishment to redemption, and from retributive justice to “restorative justice.”

REVENGE TO RECONCILIATION: For most of American history, Christians have helped articulate a philosophy of corrections that advocates the moral reformation of offenders. But that approach has largely been abandoned in the latter third of the twentieth century as voters often approve measures to keep offenders locked up longer.

“Americans are lied to by politicians every four years, and this affects the way prisons are run in our country,” says Jeff Park, executive director of the 18-year-old Coalition of Prison Evangelists (COPE) in Charlotte, North Carolina, which now has 600 ministry members. “Politicians know absolutely that treatment is more effective and more cost-effective than punishment, but harsh sentences get votes.”

Solomon, who founded the Restorative Justice Ministry Network last year, says theology plays a major role in views on criminal justice. “We have so stressed holy living that we’re mad at anybody who doesn’t live up to that,” he says. “The back side of this emphasis on holy living is a lack of forgiveness.”

Motion pictures such as Dead Man Walking (CT, April 8, 1996, p. 93) and individual cases such as that of Karla Faye Tucker (CT, April 6, 1998, p. 19) have aroused more compassionate responses, but evangelicals have traditionally been among those favoring get-tough approaches.

That may be changing, according to Ron Rosenberger, director of conferences for Justice Fellowship, a 15-year-old affiliate of Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship. “Rather than being primarily about punishment or retribution or vengeance, restorative justice is primarily about healing the damage done by the crime,” he says.

So far, more than 300 communities have instituted restorative approaches, which force criminals to see the real-life human victims of their crimes and work toward restitution and reconciliation. Rosenberger admits that the approach is counterintuitive to the ways evangelicals have traditionally approached criminal justice, but says the approach “helps us get back to our biblical roots.”

NEW MINISTRY METHODS: Prison ministers also have been placing greater emphasis on “aftercare,” which involves helping ex-offenders become reintegrated into communities and churches. “In the past, Christians have been good at going into prisons, giving people the gospel, and leading them to Christ,” says Dave Haidle, interim coordinator of the Institute for Prison Ministry at the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. “But when these people were released, it was as if they dropped off the face of the earth, and often we’d see them back in prison again.”

COPE’s Park agrees. “The most significant trend I see is a movement from in-prison church services toward building relationships and being good stewards of the relationships that are built.”

Solomon says these new forms of ministry will require committed volunteers who can befriend, mentor, and teach prisoners, adding love and nurture to the prison’s rigid discipline. “This is a large mission field,” he says, “and it deserves from the church anything any mission field does.”

- More fromSteve Rabey.

Ideas

The freedom to choose religious belief is under assault globally.

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Worldwide, the right of an individual to convert to another religion is under assault in dangerous and unprecedented ways.

In India, Hindu nationalists accused Christians of forcing the rural poor to become Christians. Prime Minister Vajpayee, a moderate Hindu nationalist, called for public dialogue on religious conversion. Yet, instead of talking, Hindu fundamentalists are engaged in one of the worst outbreaks of violence against Christians in India’s modern history (see “The Fiery Rise of Hindu Fundamentalism,” p. 46).

But the issue of religious conversion is not confined to one region of the globe. In Israel, Jewish emigres who openly affirm Jesus as their Messiah are considered Christian converts and thereby may lose their citizenship rights, while ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists single out Messianic Jews for harassment and intimidation. In Egypt, a Muslim who accepts Christianity is prevented from legally changing his official identity papers. In Eastern Europe and Russia, Orthodox clergy frequently use their influence with local government officials to interfere with evangelistic outreach by Protestants. In Mexico City in January, Pope John Paul II, in a veiled reference to the rapid growth of charismatic and Protestant congregations, urged Catholics to confront “the challenge of the sects.”

Meanwhile, in Chile, evangelicals are working for passage of a Worship Law that would remove preferences for the Roman Catholic church. But the measure would also grant Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses equal rights under Chilean law, causing some evangelicals to oppose it.

Evangelicals who embrace the right of an individual to religious conversion must resist any attempt to use government to give themselves special privileges. Whenever the right to religious conversion is in jeopardy, the truths of Christianity are at risk.

A right worth defendingThe world’s major religions all call for people to respond as individuals. Why then is the religious conversion of anyone so threatening to others? It is because religious conversion has public consequences, even though it is a personal act. History reveals that immigration and conquest greatly influence which religion is a majority within any one nation. Religious conversion also has awesome power to accelerate social and political change.

Religious conversion is potentially a threat to marriage and family tradition as well as to culture and government. Historically, new Christian converts who live in repressive societies have introduced equality, democracy, and modernization. When individuals at the lowest rung of society become Christians, they may shake the established order.

Most of the attempts at restricting religious conversion focus on unprincipled proselytism. Yet, fear of that prospect should not empower the state to regulate the spread of religious ideas or religious expression.

The attempt in India by Hindu extremists to link Christian charity work and care for the poor with inducement to religious conversion is based on false and perverse reasoning. Spreading the gospel and caring for the poor are specific mandates Jesus gave to his faithful followers. The enduring theme of the apostolic witness is a suffering church focused on persuading Jews, Greeks, and Romans that Christ died to save all people.

The right of an individual to convert to another religion must be considered a universal human right and should be vigorously defended by Christians and other religious leaders. No state, church, or institution should stand in the way of an individual’s pursuit of religious truth.

Strong protections for the right to convert promise several things: that government will avoid attempts to manage religious expression; that differing religions operate on a level playing field, free of discrimination; and that an individual has not only the right, but also an opportunity to evaluate religious ideas openly and without harassment.

Truth at riskAlthough government regulation of religion is one peril to be avoided, there is another equal danger. Unless the religious marketplace operates in a moral and just fashion, the resulting free-for-all will greatly harm individuals, families, and society. Christian mission organizations should have high standards for their overseas outreach operations to avoid the charge that they are buying converts, breaking local laws, undermining social order, or using political influence to gain an advantage.

Local church leaders should be encouraged to undertake the cause of evangelism as soon as they are capable. The gospel lived out in a local church congregation, in any culture, is a public witness to nonbelievers and persuasive evidence that Christianity is for one and all.

Many governments around the world, including communist China, have laws protecting the freedom of religious belief. But when such freedom means that Christians may not function outside their church walls or may not spread the Good News, the power of the gospel has unjustly been sanctioned.

The surest way to secure the right of an individual to religious conversion is to press for legislation guaranteeing the equality of all religions; and second, where possible, to require government neutrality on religious issues.

Johan Candelin, chairman of the Religious Liberty Commission, World Evangelical Fellowship, believes, “The best way to protect the right to convert is to build bridges of friendship and dialogue to leaders and national Christians.” The power of personal relationship to improve the climate for religious freedom cannot be underestimated.

Freedom to believe without freedom to spread that belief is nothing but bondage.