Page 4404 – Christianity Today (2024)

Several years ago, Michael Bailey (Northwestern) and Richard Pillard (Boston School of Medicine) published sophisticated studies on the genetic contribution to the development of male and female hom*osexuality. These studies reported very high estimates of genetic influence and garnered much media attention. Newsweek had a cover story on the research, asking in the cover headline, “Is this child gay?”

Follow-up research that refutes earlier findings seldom receives the same level of coverage. It should, because Bailey’s most recent study (forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) suggests that genetic influence on hom*osexual development may be dramatically less than his earlier studies projected.

In their earlier studies, Bailey and Pillard searched for gays who were twins and investigated the sexual orientations of their siblings. Research subjects were solicited through advertisem*nts in openly progay magazines and tabloids. (This method raised the concern that scientists call sample bias.) They found a “Probandwise Concordance” (PC) of 52 percent for male identical twins. For fraternal male twins, the PC was 22 percent. Similar concordances were reported for lesbian twins.

Other research had failed to produce estimates of genetic influence as strong as those of Bailey and Pillard. Now, Bailey himself (to his credit) has provided the crucial refutation of his earlier estimates. To avoid possible sample bias, Bailey sent a questionnaire on sexual preferences and experiences to the entire Australian Twin Registry, an exhaustive listing of all twins born in its population.

The influence of genetics on development of hom*osexual orientation would, on the basis of this superior research, appear to be half or less of the estimates of the earlier research. Only 3 pairs of identical male twins were both hom*osexual out of a total of 27 male identical twin pairs where at least one twin was hom*osexual. For fraternal male twins it was 0 out of 16. Concordances for lesbians showed similar reductions.

In addition, it has become clear that Bailey’s statistical methods leave ample room for confusion. His PC percentage counts each gay person in a gay twin pair as a concordance event. So even in his earlier flawed study, it turns out, his 52 percent concordance for identical male twins did not mean that half of the twin pairs had both twins hom*osexual. Rather, it appears that the earlier, biased research actually found about one-third of the identical twin pairs to be concordant for hom*osexuality.

Only time will tell if these findings make their way into public awareness, or whether the public will continue to think, on the basis of old headlines, that it is settled that “genes cause hom*osexuality.”

By Stanton L. Jones, provost at Wheaton College, and Mark A. Yarhouse, assistant professor of psychology at Regent University. This article is adapted from a forthcoming book on the topic of hom*osexuality, science, and Christian faith to be published by InterVarsity Press.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Pat Boone is at it again. His next record, We Are Family, is a spirited collection of R&B favorites that features the singer dueting with an array of soul luminaries, including James Brown, Smokey Robinson, and Sister Sledge. The CD promises to garner some attention—how could Entertainment Weekly and Access Hollywood resist the quintessential white guy crooning “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”?—but the singer knows it will be nothing like the tempest generated by his last outing.

Boone’s last album was the cause of the most fascinating event in the history of Christian television. It happened on the Trinity Broadcasting Net work, April 15, 1997, when Boone stood trial for allegedly becoming a hard-rockin’ apostate.

While not as legendary as the scandals of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, Boone’s TBN inquisition was replete with heady moments of real-life drama. Where else on the tube could you find a fifties teen idol, a blustery Pentecostal media mogul, a revered megachurch minister, a frizzy-haired ex–Black Sabbath lead singer, and a vaguely familiar black-movie-star-turned-evangelist all on the same stage, praising Jesus Christ and debating the merits of “secular” rock music?

The bizarre saga had begun two months earlier when Boone, dressed roguishly in a leather vest and studs, showed up on the nationally televised American Music Awards accompanied by his friend, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper. Boone was poking fun at his squeaky-clean image and creating some buzz for Pat Boone in a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, his just-released album of classic heavy-metal songs set to big-band arrangements. He knew people would be surprised by his outrageous appearance (an earring and stick-on tattoos completed the rebel effect). That was the point. What he didn’t know was that the name he had earned as a celebrity ambassador of conservative Christianity would be thrown into jeopardy.

The mainstream media lapped it up, relishing the idea of the born-again crooner posing for the dark side. Newspapers pasted the new-look Boone on their front pages; Entertainment Tonight flashed footage of his head-banging transformation.

America seemed to get the joke. But many among Boone’s Christian fan base were not laughing. Genuinely puzzled by his erratic behavior, and wondering whether he had backslidden into some wanton lifestyle, viewers of Boone’s TBN music program, Gospel America, wrote and phoned the network demanding an explanation. Feeling the heat, the viewer-supported TBN yanked the weekly show until the singer could justify his actions. Hence his appearance on TBN’s flagship talk show, Praise the Lord, to answer his critics and assure his audience that Pat Boone was still safe, saved, and square.

Metal memoriesBoone is still smarting from his heavy-metal escapade. But he’s not regretting it. In a Metal Mood was his first album in more than 30 years to hit Billboard‘s Top 200 charts. More important, it launched Boone back into the mainstream consciousness as an entertainer who, while outspoken about his Christian faith, is not afraid to laugh at himself or rub shoulders with folks whose public images are decidedly less virtuous than his own. Most of all, the controversy has presented him with a compelling metaphor for the church’s often uneasy relationship with popular culture.

“Christians don’t understand the business of what is really happening in pop culture,” Boone says, sitting in his Sunset Boulevard office. “They don’t understand that if you don’t do something out of the ordinary—something truly eyebrow-raising—to an extent, you’re not going to get heard.” He doesn’t say this in a sour or condescending way but as hard truth, wisdom gained from more than 40 years of moving and shaking in the heart of America’s entertainment world.

The huge window of Boone’s tenth-floor office offers a glorious view of Hollywood’s dry, sprawling hills. But the real attraction of the office is the colorful, some might say cheesy, memorabilia strewn throughout the room: a Barbie-size Pat Boone doll from the fifties, a wooden bust of the singer, a bronzed pair of his trademark white bucks, gold 45s from his original Dot Records label. Interspersed with the kitsch are a cluster of family photos, a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, a large painting of Daniel Boone (the singer claims to be a descendant of the legendary frontiersman). Propped in the corner is a banjo. Taken together, the decor could be a portrait of Pat Boone himself—larger-than-life glitz fused with a homespun sensibility.

Boone’s hazel eyes still have their youthful shine, but his hair is now frosted with gray, and a close inspection reveals assorted creases in his face. But at 65, this grandfather of 15 is no golden oldie.

It’s hard to believe anyone could think Pat Boone had lost his religion. An unabashed charismatic who speaks nostalgically of his first “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” the man oozes evangelical zeal. “I’ve been using this One Year Bible for a while now, and I love it!” he says. “July 8, 1996, is the day I began recording In a Metal Mood, and the last words of the reading for that day come from Psalm 81: ‘You would be fed with the finest of wheat, with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.’ ” He stares dreamily at the text before looking up. “I know, when Asaph wrote that, he wasn’t referring to my heavy-metal album, but I knew that morning, as I dropped to my knees, that the Lord had something special in mind for that project.

“Some Christians were looking down their noses at me, saying, ‘It’s a disgrace the way Pat Boone looked on that awards show. He must be having some midlife crisis or something.’ Meanwhile, going through airports and public places, I see college kids and bikers and metal heads saying, ‘Yo! What’s happening, dude? You looked great! We like that album.’ And I got calls from all over the nation—from Howard Stern and New York magazine, wanting me to do a joint interview with [techno-music artist] Moby. I got to speak to people I ordinarily wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet.”

At first, Boone did not think of In a Metal Mood as an evangelistic endeavor. Then his American Music Awards cohort and occasional golf partner Alice Cooper turned him on to the possibility. Cooper, whose creepy rock-concert persona belies his deep Christian faith, assured him: “God’s in this. I feel it. You feel it. You didn’t know this was going to happen, but God is doing something.”

When you see the black-and-white footage of the 1950s Boone in his white bucks, argyle socks, and collegiate sweater, singing “Tutti Frutti,” two words spring to mind: white and sanitized.

What God was doing, Boone now says, was changing something inside of him. No one truly understood the in tense spiritual struggle that was going on during that time, he says.

To observe the media’s take on the episode, one could come away with the impression that it was all a farce, a case study in evangelical buffoonery: Pat Boone hyping a record to jump-start a dormant music career and getting slammed by his fundamentalist constituency in the process; angry Christians doing what they do so well—exuding self-righteousness and mean-spirited intolerance.

In truth, the media could not comprehend the flesh-and-blood reality behind the stereotypes. Boone’s detractors were not necessarily reacting out of intolerance but out of genuine fear that they had lost yet more ground in the culture wars, that a cherished hero who had been faithful for so long had finally fallen victim to the lures of Babylon. And Boone, although he put on a brave public face, was deeply wounded by the situation. Many of the letters he received were “downright vicious,” he says, and having his TBN program taken off the air so abruptly suggested a lack of trust and loyalty on the part of the network, despite his years of unblemished service. His statements to the media during this period reveal not only a renewed passion to reach the lost but a sincerely fractured heart: “I have been identified in the minds of millions of people as another one of those metal scourges and scumbags, and I am being judged in the same way that I judged,” he told reporters. “Christians have got to deal with this judgmental, self-righteous, opinionated attitude that if somebody doesn’t dress like we dress, or doesn’t like the same music, or maybe rides a Harley-Davidson, he must be a heathen. That mindset—’we don’t want to have anything to do with you or anything like you’—is a turnoff to the very people we would like to reach.”

Red, white, and BooneIt’s a splendid trivia question: Who was the second most-successful rock star of the fifties after Elvis Presley? The list of likely candidates is stellar: Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis. But the answer is—Pat Boone.

His stats were truly impressive. From 1955 to 1962, the singer registered 54 hit singles. For four consecutive years, 1955 to 1959, he was never off the pop charts. “It’s a record I still hold,” Boone says matter-of-factly. “Elton John is the only artist who has come close to matching it.”

When you see the black-and-white footage of the 1950s Boone in his white bucks, argyle socks, and collegiate sweater, singing Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame” or Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” two words generally spring to mind: white and sanitized. His moves seem mechanical. The voice feels sterile, technically precise but void of the guttural soul needed to make the songs convincing. It’s like hearing Chopin played on a Casio keyboard or Coltrane on a kazoo.

Still, despite his blandness, you can see the warmth and charm in his eyes. You recognize the commitment to excellence and the youthful determination to engage the audience, to translate what might have been a risque lyric in its former life into a sweet, harmless melody for the kids of Middle America.

Boone has been lambasted by some rock historians as a white singer who exploited the racial Zeitgeist of the fifties by recording cover versions of black R&B songs that white radio stations refused to play. The mention of this ongoing criticism visibly rankles the singer; his golden grin morphs into a frown. “I was not a rip-off artist,” he insists. On the contrary, he believes he helped open the door for white acceptance of black artists by bringing more attention to their songs.

“I call myself a midwife of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says. “I was not, like Elvis, a watershed performer; he was a white boy who could legitimately sing black music. But I provided a necessary transition. I was a bridge.”

He was born Charles Eugene Boone in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 1, 1934. (His parents took to calling him “Pat” after the daughter they had hoped to name Patricia turned out to be him.) The Boone family later relocated to Nashville, where Pat, the eldest of four children, excelled as a student and as an industrious singer. He sang hymns, gospel tunes, and Bing Crosby standards. He sang at his Church of Christ congregation, at ladies’ club meetings, at ice-cream socials, and in the barn as he milked the family cow.

It was during those moments in the barn that Boone dreamed about his future, about how he might one day appear on television and use his singing talent to get a college education and become a schoolteacher. “I would sit there, praying about how an entertainment career could be a springboard to ministry, to having an influence as a teacher and preacher.” The prayers were answered. Soon Boone was on national TV, winning the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and then Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. Next came a recording contract with Dot Records, then movies and television.

Along the way, Boone managed to court Shirley Foley, a fellow student at his high school and the daughter of Grand Ole Opry star Red Foley. The couple eloped in 1953 and went on to have their four daughters in rapid succession. As Boone’s career boomed, he attended college at Columbia University in New York, majoring in English. While he juggled classes and celebrity, Shirley kept the family running.

By the time he graduated in 1958, Boone’s star was at its zenith. He had two bestselling books of advice to teens, a string of hit records, a five-year television deal with ABC, a seven-year movie contract with 20th Century–Fox, dozens of concert dates, and the promise of several million dollars in income.

For the most part, Boone remained levelheaded despite the fame and riches. He did, however, abandon his lifelong dream of teaching. “I decided that whatever influence I had as an entertainer, God had given it to me, and I was going to use it to the maximum of my ability. I was going to use it for good.”

Boone carried his Church of Christ sensibilities with him throughout much of his early career. He tweaked racy lyrics, turned down questionable film roles, and even refused to kiss a young Shirley Jones in the 1957 movie April Love. In Hollywood circles, he developed a reputation as, in the words of one gossip magazine, “a too good to be true goody-goody.” The late Dean Martin, renowned for his hep, boozed-up stage persona, frequently joked about the young star. “That Pat Boone,” he quipped, “he’s so religious that when I shake hands with him, my whole right side sobers up.”

“I replaced Shirley Temple as the epitome of square,” Boone says in a plaintive voice. “I became the butt of so many jokes.” Eventually, he says, he began to chafe against his wholesome image.

A personal PentecostIn the sixties, the spirit of the times conspired against Boone: The Beatles, Motown, the civil-rights movement, the Vietnam War. Suddenly the singer seemed even more out of step. He attempted to gruff up his image with an earthy role in 1962’s The Main Attraction, but the movie bombed. By decade’s end, he was doing the Vegas circuit, wearing love beads, telling crude jokes, imbibing at parties, getting friendly with attractive young groupies. A prodigal Boone had usurped the goody-goody family man.

“I used to come home late at night, smelling of alcohol, and, of course, that drove a wedge between Shirley and me,” he says. “Gradually I broke every vow and would still get up in the morning to take my family to church. I convinced myself that I could lead a double life.”

Boone’s deliverance from his reckless slide has been well documented, particularly in his 1970 spiritual memoir, A New Song. In short, Shirley’s revival of faith, through a charismatic encounter with the Holy Spirit, convinced the singer of his waywardness and slowly, radically, led him and his daughters to awakenings of their own.

When Boone talks about his revived faith, he is visibly moved. He gets teary-eyed as he recounts how close he came to destroying his marriage and family, of becoming just another Hollywood casualty. He beams as he recalls the peace and reconciliation that came through his personal Pentecost. His “infilling” of the Spirit, evidenced by his speaking in a foreign “prayer language,” revolutionized his outlook. “How can I describe such a thing?” he writes in A New Song. “It was an uplifting, inspiring, joyful experience—the most profound of my life. I had a deep sense of knowing that I was singing a new song to God.”

Boone’s “song” was a tune heard across Hollywood in the early seventies. He and Shirley hosted Bible studies for celebrities and others at their Beverly Hills home. Doris Day, Glenn Ford, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Priscilla Presley, and many others would come to sit in on the meetings. The Boone residence became an unofficial church to the stars. “Many of those people were distrustful of the church,” Boone says, “and they didn’t think they could make any type of commitment without harming their careers. Our meetings were a nonthreatening, nonpublicized opportunity for them to hear about Jesus.”

While the stars were getting religion, Boone’s Church of Christ elders (and other “concerned Christians”) were getting mad. After the release of A New Song, a virtual infomercial for charismatic belief, Boone says he was variously branded a “heretic,” a “mystic,” a “spiritual deceiver,” a “doctrinal lamebrain.” In one of many meetings with his elders, he was told how wonderful it was that his family was demonstrating a fresh love and spiritual zeal. “We don’t want to rob you of that,” one elder said. “If it just wasn’t mixed up with this ‘Holy Spirit’ bit!” Boone says he chuckled and replied, “What you’re saying is you like the fruit you see, but you want me to get that tree out of my backyard. Brother, it can’t be done!” The Boones were soon “disfellowshiped” from their congregation.

For the past 29 years, Boone has been a member of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, a Foursquare Gospel congregation led by well-known pastor Jack Hayford. The huge Pentecostal church is home to numerous celebrities. Boone has been an elder for the last 20 years.

Hayford, Church on the Way’s senior pastor since 1969, has become one of Boone’s closest friends. “Pat has been a committed part of this church, faithful in his service to the Lord,” Hayford says. “The fact that he is Pat Boone isn’t impressive to me from the standpoint of fame. But I’ve watched Pat through the years, and I can tell you he is an intelligent, godly man who’s able to graciously communicate with people in both the secular and Christian arenas.”

Musician and Los Angeles talk-radio host Jerry McClain is another long-time Church on the Way member. A show biz veteran, he had a hit in the seventies with the theme song from Happy Days. “No one in this town is more solid than Pat Boone,” McClain says. “He is really the pioneer for all of us Christians who work in Hollywood. He has never caved in to the traditionalists in the church, to do things the way they think he should. Yet he has never forsaken his beliefs.”

Showdown on TBNThe night of his TBN appearance, one could sense the lingering uneasiness beneath Boone’s upbeat demeanor. But the singer was not alone. The studio audience offered an extended ovation when he took the stage. And out in the stands, in addition to the Praise the Lord show’s usual flock of innocuous groupies, sat an entire row of rugged, leather-clad bikers. They had come to cheer on their new friend.

Jack Hayford was one of the featured guests that evening. A thoughtful, professorial-looking preacher, Hayford was joined by a ragtag lineup of TBN regulars: musical evangelist Jeff Fenholt, a former singer for Black Sabbath; actor Leon Isaac Kennedy, who starred in such forgettable eighties films as Penitentiary and Body and Soul; and TBN founder and Praise the Lord host Paul Crouch, a sort of Pentecostal Ted Turner in both looks and tenacity.

“We’re gonna give the Devil a couple of black eyes tonight, in Jesus’ name,” said Crouch to a wave of applause. “If you tuned in thinking there was going to be a knock-down, drag-out brouhaha, you’re going to be disappointed. You’re going to see brothers come together in love tonight.”

Crouch knew that the widespread publicity surrounding his network’s conflict with Boone would ensure a larger-than-usual viewing audience. He predicted it would be the most-watched event in his network’s history, so he wanted to use it not just to clear up the controversy but to tell curious viewers about Jesus. The son of Assemblies of God missionaries, Crouch launched TBN in 1973 with one low-power TV station near Los Angeles. Twenty-six years later, the network is carried on more than 700 stations worldwide. It does not receive Nielsen ratings, so it’s hard to know how many viewers actually tuned in to watch the Boone saga play itself out. But even people normally turned off by TBN’s nightly schedule of taped preaching shows, with their clashing theologies and predictable appeals for cash, could find this evening’s Praise the Lord palatable.

Perhaps unbeknown to himself, Paul Crouch was creating a new type of television when he decided to broadcast the resolution to the Pat Boone fracas. The Praise the Lord studio, with its crimson carpeting, shiny-white grand piano, garish chandelier, and thronelike red-velvet chairs, made Crouch and his guests look like actors in a community-college production of Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap. But there was a deeper drama going on beneath the over-the-top, Christian-TV veneer. As the men began their forum on Christianity and popular culture, the TV cameras were capturing life moments usually reserved for the private, informal environs of Christian-college classrooms or Wednesday-night small-group meetings. The gritty interaction that followed was part Oprah, part McLaughlin Group, and part men’s Bible study.

“Pat Boone’s leather-and-tattoos masquerade (at the American Music Awards) was not unforgivible, but neither was it a harmless spoof.” — Richard Mouw

They debated the evils of secular rock music but also the secular roots of such hymns as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Amazing Grace.” They discussed the world’s need for Christ, and then the church’s need to reach out to the world. Fenholt, preferring a Sunday-morning tenor over the Black Sabbath wail, sang a rousing worship song. Kennedy explained how famous entertainers are often unfairly judged and exploited by the church after they be come Christians. Crouch read letters from viewers who had been offended by Boone’s awards-show get-up: “Are we attempting to take the place of the Holy Spirit when we say we must act like and dress like the world in order to reach the world?” asked one letter; another one questioned the sadomasoch*stic origins of the spiked dog collar Boone had worn. Hayford defended his famous parishioner, suggested that Boone might do well to apologize to those whom he may have unintentionally offended, and finally stressed how imperative it was that the body of Christ refrain from attacking one another out of personal fear and distaste.

Crouch asked Boone how he could remake a song like Led Zeppelin’s “Stair way to Heaven”: “Can you take a demonic, worldly song like that and get it saved?” Boone, not missing a beat, replied: “Well, since we serve a Redeemer, my answer is yes.”

Crouch’s most compelling argument against Boone came from an unlikely source. Richard Mouw, president of the progressive Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, had earlier submitted a brief op-ed piece to the Los Angeles Times that took Boone to task for his awards-show appearance. Crouch read the editorial on the air:

Pat Boone’s leather-and-tattoos masquerade was not unforgivable, but neither was it a harmless spoof. We evangelicals have come a long way since the days when we simply issued whole sale condemnations of worldly music. We’ve become more discriminating, even creating our own versions of contemporary music. But there is much about the heavy-metal culture that, with its in-your-face flaunting of promiscuity and satanic imagery, we find deeply repulsive, indeed blasphemous. For Boone to proclaim his innocence in donning the attire that many of us associate with moral ni hil ism, and for the court jesters to treat the controversy as a joke, is to display an amazing naivete about the power of symbols.

In person, Richard Mouw is no less forthright regarding his misgivings about Boone’s behavior. He elaborates on the power of symbols: “We say a lot by our use of symbols,” he says. “For Christians, the display of the cross or the fish or the dove is meant as a message about deeply held convictions. The secular rock culture has also made extensive use of symbols, many of them borrowed from religious contexts as a way of showing disdain for the religious beliefs traditionally connected to the symbols. For a Christian to make use of these symbolic expressions is a very sensitive business.”

Boone’s antics at the American Music Awards were not an “attempt to show that Christ can transform rock culture,” Mouw argues, adding that the singer’s “dress-up act” was “needlessly offensive to Christians and not a very effective witness to the larger world.”

Mouw, however, concedes that Boone has a “good record of representing the cause of the gospel in the larger arena of pop culture.” He adds: “We desperately need a well-thought-out Christian aesthetic that includes serious attention to so-called entertainment, and Pat Boone has much to contribute to this.”

Back on Praise the Lord, Boone calmly listened as Crouch read Mouw’s editorial and the comments of other critics. His nervous smile and pensive stares hinted at a restlessness with the proceedings, but his the-show-must-go-on pluck, no doubt infused with a sense of divine mission, carried him forward. He picked up a Bible and read from 1 Corinthians 1:27—”But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.” He explained how he had discovered true artistry in hard-rock songs that he had once summarily dismissed, how God had opened his eyes to his own prejudice against certain members of the pop culture, how he had built new relationships with heavy-metal musicians during the making of his album. “I just wanted to record some great songs,” he said, “but later I began to see a purpose in it. I saw an opportunity to have communication with talented people who were really nice when I got to meet them in person. We have common ground, now, to share ideas and thoughts.”

A chorus of amens rolled through the audience.

In the end, the TBN viewers were asked to call in and vote on whether Boone’s show should return to the air. The response was overwhelming: Gospel America—and Pat Boone—should come back. The night’s business resolved, the men embraced, prayed, and expressed their solidarity.

TBN would soon revert to its usual formula of made-for-TV church services and Southern Gospel hoedowns, but at least for one night, the network had given the world a glimpse of what Christian television might look like if its purveyors were more willing to engage and grapple constructively with the world outside insulated church walls. What Boone had tried to impress upon his panel of TBN peers, and those who tuned in that April evening, was that having a positive influence on the wider society is not just about changing it but also changing ourselves.

Still crossing overMore than two years later, Boone’s Gospel America is still not back on TBN. Though Boone and Crouch remain close friends, the network has not made reinstating the show a priority. In Boone’s mind, it’s probably just as well. The singer’s packed schedule keeps him busy enough. In addition to hosting two syndicated radio shows, performing live, and producing music of his own, Boone is a tireless entrepreneur: He has launched PatsGold.com, a colorful Web site selling classic CDs and videos to nostalgic consumers, and he recently started the Gold Label, a record label for veteran singers who, because of age and changing tastes, were without recording contracts. The company has signed such notables as Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Roy Clark, and Connie Francis.

Boone’s civic pursuits keep him hopping as well. As a board member of the Year 2000 National Educational Task force, he was one of the first in what has become a glut of high-profile Christians warning the public about the Y2K computer bug. In fact, the New York Times dubbed him “the Millennium Spoke singer.” Boone also serves as a spokesman for the Easter Seals Society, the Israeli Tourism Department, and Mercy Corps International, a faith-based humanitarian group. And, of course, he stays active in conservative politics as a card-carrying supporter of the Christian Coalition.

Yet it’s heavy metal that has become his most provocative theme. One suspects you will never be able to mention the name Pat Boone again without resurrecting thoughts of his In a Metal Mood persona. It has reinvigorated the singer, given him a new platform in the entertainment community.

“God definitely has worked through it,” Boone says. “He has taught me about my propensity for judging mainstream culture wholesale, without looking for anything good in it. If we’re going to communicate with our culture, we’ve got to find ways to commend as well as to condemn. Otherwise, what kind of ministry are we going to have?”

Boone points to the ongoing debate stirring in the church regarding the phenomenon of contemporary Christian music artists “crossing over” into the mainstream as an example of how difficult it is for Christian entertainers to plug into the culture. “I greatly honor the gospel artists who have been willing to cross over into the secular arena,” he says, “people such as Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Kirk Franklin, and Jars of Clay.

“Amy, especially, has taken such heat because she dared to sing songs that weren’t all overt gospel songs. I went to see her at the Greek Theatre, and the place was packed. Sure, she did a lot of her pop songs, but when she got around to singing ‘Father’s Eyes’ and some of her other Christian music, it had a great impact because the audience realized that they were listening to somebody who was in touch with what they consider reality. She earned their respect.”

Boone seems to like this idea. Earning their respect. In a way, this is what he’s been doing in show biz all along: working unapologetically in the mainstream; slowly, naturally, building relationships with his fans and celebrity peers, sharing his faith with them whenever appropriate. Laugh at his wholesome image all you want (he welcomes it), but the guy was “crossing over” long before Christians had a name for it.

Still, Boone’s inherent optimism is tempered by a serious awareness of what he’s up against as a Christian in Hollywood. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s any chance of some massive revival in this town,” he says bluntly. “There’s too much concern about image and money.”

He pauses, smiles thoughtfully, then adds: “If there’s going to be any change, it will come one on one, one heart at a time.”

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Jamaica guards its reputation as a tourist paradise—literally. Earlier this year, the government dispatched its military to make sure nothing bad happened at or near tourist destinations such as Negril and Montego Bay.

Meanwhile, throughout the spring and summer, the cities most Jamaicans live in were war zones, claiming the lives of residents, soldiers, and gang members. More than 500 people were killed between January and July on this island nation of 2.6 million. Prime Minister P. J. Patterson instituted a curfew in the capital city of Kingston and its suburbs and sent troops into the city with wide-ranging powers, saying they will be “a permanent fixture.”

Violence has flared up every few weeks in Jamaica for various reasons. In April, nine people were killed in island-wide riots after the government attempted to institute a 45-cent increase in the gas tax. In June and July, a spate of gang warfare forced hundreds of Jamaicans to flee their homes. Also in July, the unprovoked killing of a former police officer by other officers inspired riots. (Jamaican police have killed 240 civilians since January 1998.)

“These riots were really just an outgrowth of other difficulties,” says Rennard White, director of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals. “People are demanding to be heard and will show their discontent in extreme measures.”

VISIBLE, BUT DIVIDED, CHURCH: As social problems and violence reach a boiling point in Jamaica, many have turned to the church for assistance and guidance.

“Jamaica is a very religious country in many ways,” says White. “And the church is one of its strongest voices.”

It is also Jamaica’s most visible institution. There are more churches per square kilometer on this island nation than anywhere on earth—a statistic cited even in tourist brochures.

Unlike most other Caribbean nations, the vast majority of those Christians is Protestant. The largest Protestant denomination is the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which claims 5 percent of the population. Nearly a fifth of the entire country—18.5 percent—is evangelical, according to Operation World. Another 11 percent is Pentecostal. The missions handbook says the Caribbean as a whole is only 11.5 percent evangelical and 5.4 percent Pentecostal.

But beneath these statistics lies the reality that though the Christian church in Jamaica is visible, it has not been united.

“One of Jamaica’s biggest problems is the disunity and turf battles among the churches,” says Anthony Bailey, former pastor of Kingston’s North Street United Church. “Our main challenge is one of unity and integrity.” Recent developments such as a Franklin Graham evangelistic crusade in March and unified efforts in religious broadcasting have inspired church leaders to work more closely together; but much remains to be done.

PARADISE LOST? The American image of Jamaica is provided by tourist brochures: immaculate beaches of white sand spotted with shaded hammocks. On paper, Jamaica looks great. The country’s literacy rate is 89 percent. Its death rate is lower than that of the United States.

And, from appearances, Jamaica seems to be in love with unity. Reggae superstar Bob Marley’s lyric “One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right” is practically a national anthem. But Jamaica is a splintered society.

Jamaica has one of the highest income disparities in the world. Remittances (money sent privately to the island by Jamaicans living abroad) have become an even larger source of income for the country than tourism, its largest industry. Stately manors and plantations overlook shantytowns made of corrugated metal. Billion-dollar resorts attract wealthy foreigners, but Jamaicans earn, on average, $20 a week.

Unemployment is 16 percent and rising, and the government has had to rescue Jamaica’s financial institutions. In fact, all 22 Jamaican banks are in re ceiv er ship. Only a U.S.-based bank and two Canadian banks are solvent.

The financial problems mirror the country’s social ills: an astounding 85 percent of all births in the country are illegitimate. Almost one-quarter of children are born to adolescents. That statistic is coupled with a relatively low infant mortality rate, meaning a third of the country is under the age of 15.

The history of Jamaica, by and large, has been one of oppression. Following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494, the Spanish used Jamaica as a base for their conquest of the Americas. After the British took over in 1655, it became a hub for the world slave trade.

After gaining independence in 1962, Jamaica faced another crisis. The island’s economy snowballed when fuel costs rose. The leading political party in the 1970s began experimenting with noncapitalist/socialist policies. Tourism dried up, and the export of bauxite, Jamaica’s main re source, shriveled. By the end of the decade, the country was begging for international aid.

CLASS DIVISIONS IN CHURCH: As a result of its economic woes, Jamaican society is split. And that division is reflected in the island’s churches.

“One result of all this is you have traditional churches versus the more independent churches,” says Bailey, who returned to pastor in Canada after eight years in his Kingston church. “The Anglicans and Catholics, and to a lesser extent the Baptists, are identified with the ‘brown’ upper class. Whereas the Apostolic churches, the New Testament Church of God, and the hybrids that incorporate some of the African traditions are more popular.”

More recently, however, Pentecostal churches, as well as those that have incorporated African styles of worship, have been attracting members of the traditional churches. “Established churches are straining to hold onto their members,” he says.

Even in the most impoverished areas, where styles of worship are similar and demographics are unchanged, the fragmentation of Jamaica’s church is evident. Some crossroads can have as many as four churches—and more than one may be affiliated with the “Church of God.” Driving through Kingston, the statistical concentration of churches is evident. Even in corrugated metal shantytowns, signs proclaiming “Church of God” sprout up every half block or so.

“A number of these are personality- driven churches,” Bailey explains. In these shantytowns of abject poverty, some enterprising Jamaicans have realized they can increase their social status by founding a church and declaring themselves pastor.

Jamaican pastors’ biggest concern about having so many churches in so little space is the competition and sheep stealing inherent in such a situation.

“A lot of switching goes on naturally,” Bailey says, “but some churches make a point of it.” He is most concerned about Jamaica’s Seventh-day Adventists, who have nearly 500 congregations on the island.

“It’s big and it’s growing,” he says. Bailey contends that Adventists’ evangelistic campaigns are geared to “scaring people into the church” by preaching “they’re going to hell” if they do not join the denomination.

Adventists disagree with the complaint.

“There are different philosophies in evangelism,” says Noel Fraser, Kingston-based secretary of the West Indies Union Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. “That’s always been the sore point among Protestants everywhere. No pastor wants to see people leaving their church for another. But if they agree with freedom of religion, they have to be big enough to accept it when people leave.”

But Fraser readily concedes that competition among churches is the biggest issue facing Jamaica’s Christians. “In tolerance has always been a defect among us, even though there’s a greater spirit of tolerance today than there has been,” he says. “Every one’s work is essential.”

BLAME AMERICA FIRST? Jamaica’s current problems are its historical ones, compounded with centuries of oppression from the outside. So it goes with the disunity of Jamaica’s churches.

Gerry Seale, general director of the Evangelical Association of the Caribbean (EAC), says that, for better or worse, the missionary zeal of evangelicals in the United States is one of the largest causes of Jamaica’s proliferation of churches.

“Throughout the Caribbean we have a lot of evangelical churches because of our proximity to North America,” he says. “During the era when North America dominated the world’s missionary force, the Caribbean was easy to reach, was much less expensive than going to Africa or Asia, and produced relatively quick results.”

Though Seale bemoans the competition among Jamaica’s churches, he sees the plethora as beneficial. “The gospel is now within the reach of every Jamaican,” he says. “Every Jamaican can walk to church.”

Indeed, that has been the goal of many church plantings by North American missions groups visiting the island. But now that Jamaica is saturated with congregations, why are some groups still planting more? Some church leaders disagree with Seale’s statement that everybody can walk to church.

“There are still sections and communities not served by churches,” Fraser explains. “There are even many places in and around Kingston that are not heavily evangelized. As the population increases, we have to plant new churches.”

And leaders in many denominational churches with strong doctrinal beliefs are not concerned that Jamaica has more churches per square kilometer than anywhere else in the world. They merely see that their congregations are not as widespread as they would like. For example, the Church of Christ, which is concentrated mainly in the southern United States, is well on its way to fulfilling its goal of planting a church in every city, town, and village in Jamaica.

Historically speaking, however, when missionaries pull out, more than just new church buildings remain. Many missionaries have sowed discord. “Throughout the Caribbean there is definitely a strong competitive spirit left behind by the missionaries who taught us to distrust people outside our own denominations,” Seale says.

In light of the personality cults and fly-by-night churches, wariness was necessary.

“Ecumenism has its pluses and minuses,” says Adventist Fraser. “Churches can be corrupt.” In many cases, wariness became distrust.

COMPETITION STIFLES PROJ ECTS: North Street United Church’s Anthony Bailey also attributes much of the religious competition to political competition. “The church is seminally involved in state issues here and always has been,” he says. “At every official function, clergy are invited. There’s an unbreakable link between church and state that you don’t have in the States.”

On one hand, that has been a good deal for both church and state. The church has been able to take stands, such as coming together last spring to fight casino gambling on the island.

Because tourism is Jamaica’s biggest industry, casinos seem to be a natural moneymaker. “Politicians have had their own opinions, but they’ve listened to the churches so far,” says Fraser. “Each time the issue comes up, it looks more likely to happen, but so far they’ve listened to the church.”

But Fraser and other pastors lament that some of their colleagues have been mesmerized by their political role.

“You know the saying about power corrupting? Even the church, if it gains power, will become corrupted to some degree.”

But even if pastors steer clear of corruption, there are so many competing for leadership positions and governmental dollars that some relief projects are rendered impotent.

“Not everybody has to build a school, for example,” says Bailey. But doing so is a proven way for pastors to become more prominent in their community. “So when we tried to start one, the funding dried up because there’s so many people trying to do it.”

The EAC’s Seale agrees that the competition is stifling evangelical efforts at urban reform. While he finds hope in the sheer number of churches in Jamaica, he says he is “trying to balance that statistic with the reality of so many children born in Jamaica outside of wedlock. There remains much work to be done in discipleship to complement the work being done in evangelism.”

SUSPICIONS SUBSIDING: Though the efforts may not be as coordinated as some would like, many of Jamaica’s churches have seen themselves as essential to the country’s relief efforts. The Jamaican people have seen the churches that way, too.

“With the financial crisis and the riots, people have been coming to church as never before,” says Rhoda Williams, secretary of the Jamaican Evangelistic Association. “They’re coming seeking help—not just spiritual help, but also to help them find jobs and other assistance.”

But to be truly successful, Jamaica’s church leaders agree they need to coordinate their efforts better. And they are working together more than ever before.

“I sense an openness and a willingness to work with other groups,” says White of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals (JAE). White says competition is still common among Jamaica’s churches, but adds, “I wouldn’t call it fierce.”

Bailey points to the JAE, a member body of the World Evangelical Fellowship, as evidence of hope for the future. He says congregational and denominational leaders have awakened to the lack of communication and trust among themselves and started crossing traditional boundaries.

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “even these umbrella organizations are fragmented.”

The JAE is only one ecumenical organization on the island. Mainline churches meet in the Jamaican Council of Churches (JCC), and Pentecostals have the Jamaica Association of Full Gospel Churches (JAFG), the Jamaican Pentecostal Union, and the Association of Gospel Assemblies. There is some crossover, but it is not widespread. The Salvation Army, for instance, belongs to both the JAE and the JCC, and some Full Gospel churches have dual membership in the JAE. The groups had not worked together on a major project until this year.

In March, the umbrella organizations joined to organize Celebrate Jesus ’99, a monthlong, islandwide evangelistic crusade of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). Franklin Graham was the main draw, attracting 70,000 to services in Kingston. Meetings were also held in nine other cities, and the BGEA estimates that more than 250,000 people attended—about 10 percent of Jamaica’s population.

Alston Henry, pastor of Kingston’s Open Bible Church and chair of the crusade’s local executive committee, says the crusade was the most extensive in the nation’s history, and the cooperation among churches was unprecedented. It marked the first time the JAE, JCC, JAFG, and Church of God in Jamaica ever officially coordinated their efforts.

“The support came in across the church not only in terms of volunteers but also financially,” he says. “I’d be very surprised if these churches and umbrella groups didn’t work together again very soon. There is every indication that there was enough goodwill expressed here that they will.”

UNITING THEIR VOICES: Noel Fraser says the Seventh-day Adventist Church is “moving along with caution” in its process of joining the Jamaican Council of Churches. It now retains observer status and is not a full-fledged member. As the largest denomination in Jamaica—and as one accused of causing some of the rifts among churches—involvement could help the umbrella organizations have a stronger voice.

In the meantime, the umbrella groups are trying to present a united voice through the National Religious Media Commission, which runs Love FM (now Jamaica’s third-ranked radio station) and launched Love TV last summer. The commission has an even broader backing than the Franklin Graham crusade, sponsored by all seven of Jamaica’s umbrella organizations: the JAE, JCC, JAFG, the Church of God in Jamaica, the Jamaican Pentecostal Union, and the Seventh-day Adventists.

Jamaica’s churches have also come together to sponsor ecumenical prayer breakfasts and prayer vigils in the wake of the country’s recent violent outbreaks. Though some pastors have criticized the breakfasts as cozying up to the government, even these critics hope to combine forces with other denominations to re duce the nation’s crime and violence.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

On a cold night in early March 1943, Metropolitan Stefan, head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Sofia, Bulgaria, came to a stop at an isolated railroad crossing. A train was slowly passing by. From its cars, Stefan heard cries—the sobs of men, women, and children begging “for mercy, for help, for water, for air,” as he wrote immediately in protest to Bulgaria’s king.

The train he had seen was carrying Jews from Bulgaria’s western territories, which Bulgaria had newly acquired by treaty from Germany, to the gas chambers in Treblinka, Poland. Over the next few days, those cars would deport over 11,000 Jews to their deaths. Stefan, who was already vigorously opposing Bulgaria’s new Law for National Defense that severely restricted the rights of Jews, now promised himself he would renew his efforts to help his country’s Jews.

Only recently, with the collapse of communism, have the details of Stefan’s work as well as that of his fellow priest Metropolitan Kyril, and the keen political maneuvering of Dmitur Peshev, vice-president of Parliament and an Orthodox Christian, been publicly acknowledged in Bulgaria. What these three men and other people of like mind accomplished through their opposition can be seen in one telling statistic: more than 50,000 Jews resided in Bulgaria before the war; by war’s end that number had actually slightly increased. That Bulgaria’s Jews were largely spared is all the more remarkable considering that Bulgaria was allied with Germany and had thousands of German troops on its soil. Here is the untold story of the massive rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews—a story of faith in God, of clear-headed convictions, and of righteous action.

By the beginning of World War II, a pro-German government had been installed by Bulgaria’s pragmatic King Boris, even though the king’s personal sympathies were Anglophilic. A formal alliance with Germany followed in 1941, which allowed German troops to pass through Bulgaria and for naval and military installations to be based there. In return, Germany gave back to Bulgaria regions over which it had long claimed sovereignty. There was an additional price for the new territories: the Law for the Defense of the Nation that was modeled on the Nuremberg Laws. It not only severely restricted Jewish participation in Bulgarian life but also imposed an economic burden through special taxes on Jews.

If the repossession of lost lands (Dobrudzha, Macedonia, and Thrace, which were lost again at the war’s end) was popular among the Bulgarian people, the anti-Semitic laws were not. Though they were passed by Parliament after just three days of debate, various church leaders, intellectuals, and professional organizations protested. The Germans were soon complaining about the laxity of enforcement of the new laws. One telltale sign: the size of the Stars of David that all Jews were required to wear was the smallest in all of Europe, and only 20 percent of the total number of stars set to be manufactured were actually made—”electrical problems” halted production.

At the time of the war, Jews were well integrated into Bulgarian society. The original proto-Bulgarians were themselves an ethnically mixed group (“Bulgar” derives from the Turkish verb “to mix”), and during 500 years of Ottoman rule, Greeks, Armenians, and other nationalities were at least as active as the Jews in commercial activities and banking. But if there was little anti-Semitism in general, admirers of Hitler had gained powerful positions in Bulgaria’s government, and they had plans to implement Hitler’s Final Solution—the extermination of all Jews.

The deportation of Jews from the new territories was part of a larger plan to remove all Jews from Bulgaria proper. The first phase of this operation was to begin on March 9, not long after Stefan had witnessed the death train. But leading Jews in the provincial city of Kiustendil who had learned of the plan (ironically, from the mistress of the head of the Bulgarian agency administering it) contacted Peshev, their representative in Parliament.

Outraged, Peshev, with several other representatives, marched into the office of the minister of the interior, Petur Gabrovski, and demanded an explanation. A startled Gabrovski denied any knowledge of the deportation order, but Peshev promptly called the governor of his province, who confirmed it. Peshev then demanded that Gabrovski cancel the order, which, by his own admission, had been issued without his authorization. Otherwise, Peshev insisted, he would raise the issue in the Parliament that evening, discrediting the government. Cornered, Gabrovski said he would comply.

Not trusting him, however, Peshev called the district governor from the minister’s office. The other representatives began to follow suit. Gabrovski, realizing he had been defeated, summoned his secretary and ordered him to telegraph the news to every district governor.

Some regions did not receive the telegram in time, however. In Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city, Jewish homes were raided at 3 o’clock the next morning and residents herded into a local high school and several other buildings. Metropolitan Kyril, the head of the local church and a staunch opponent of the anti-Semitic laws, reacted immediately, firing off a telegram of protest to the king in which he threatened that he would lie across the tracks in front of the first train leaving with Jews. He then headed for the school where most of the Jews were being held. Barred from entering by a cordon of police, Kyril informed the police that he felt himself no longer bound by the decrees of the government and that he would act henceforth according to his conscience as a minister of Christ. He pulled up his robes and climbed the fence. “Wherever you go, I’ll go,” he promised the Jews who gathered around him. The cancellation of the deportation order finally arrived from Gabrovski’s office, and the Jews were permitted to return to their homes.

Back in Parliament, Peshev, though victorious in stopping the deportation, was expelled from the vice presidency of the Parliament and censured. In the meantime, the Gestapo and its supporters adopted a more devious strategy, presenting to the king two options: deport the Jews to Poland or expel them from the cities into the countryside.

As they anticipated, the king quickly chose the second alternative. The Nazis and their collaborators, however, hoped the presence of large numbers of Jews in rural areas would trigger anti-Semitism and generate pressure to begin deportations. And once one concession had been granted, the Nazi sympathizers reasoned, others would follow. They did not count on Metropolitan Stefan.

Stefan had been born Stoion Shokov in a mountain village in southern Bulgaria. Early on he had made a reputation for himself as a brilliant student and a rebel, leading a local tax revolt as a teenager. After four years at a seminary in Kiev, he surprised his superiors by enrolling in a military academy. Soon, however, he resigned his lieutenant’s commission and finally took his priestly vows. For opposing his country’s entry into World War I, he was exiled to Switzerland, where he earned a doctorate from the University of Geneva.

A charming, cultured man, Stefan was accused of worldliness by his enemies, and there was some basis for the charge. But Stefan was also profoundly devout and deeply principled. Calling Hitler insane, Stefan bitterly opposed the alliance with Germany. His scathing criticism was a constant embarrassment to the collaborationist government. Chided at a diplomatic reception for being anti-German, he responded by observing that, on the contrary, he was very fond of German literature, then recited the names of some of his favorite authors, all of whom, he well knew, happened to have been banned by the Nazis.

Now, with the order to move the Jews to the countryside, he convened a meeting of the Holy Synod, which unanimously condemned the order. It was conveyed to the king with a warning from Matthew 7:2: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

Government officials, however, secretly decided to continue with their plan, choosing a national holiday for the deportation in the hopes that the festivities would divert those who might pro test. But the plan backfired.

Walking with his entourage to Nevski Cathedral where a ceremony was to be held, Stefan learned that the expulsion had begun. He left the procession to phone the palace to protest, but the king was incommunicado. So from the steps of the cathedral where he was scheduled to talk as part of the festivities—and with the collaborationist cabinet seated ceremonially behind him—Stefan addressed the enormous crowd filling Nevski Square. Scrapping his prepared speech, he strongly condemned the persecution of the Jews, appealing to the government to resist “foreign indoctrination, influence, and orders.” He continued, “I beg of those of you guiding the ship of state to cancel all policies that discriminate, persecute, and divide.”

When Stefan was finished, Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, one of the dignitaries in attendance, heatedly warned the prelate to stop interfering with government policies and to cease badgering the king. The expulsion proceeded as planned.

Stefan ignored Filov’s threats. He promptly sent off a letter to the king. Filov this time threatened to arrest him for “anti-state activity,” but Stefan stepped up the confrontation. At the end of May 1943, he offered to christen all Jews who so desired, thus sparing them from the deportation most people believed was imminent. The government responded by refusing to recognize all christening certificates issued after January 1, 1943.

Stefan protested vehemently and threatened to send a circular to all parish priests, informing them in detail of the fate that awaited Jews in Poland. The interior minister then took a step unprecedented in Bulgarian history, ordering the closing of Sofia’s churches in order to prevent mass christenings. “The Church will not obey the order,” Stefan quietly informed the minister and sent off his circular. The government once more prepared to arrest Stefan but, fearing public reaction, backed down again.

The churches remained open until the war’s end, and the Jews were allowed to remain in Bulgaria. More than 10,000 Jews from the newly acquired provinces had early on been deported, and the Jews in the cities of Bulgaria proper had been removed from their homes; but tens of thousands emerged from Nazi occupation with their lives and families intact. Half a century later, Stefan and Kyril and Peshev are rightfully emerging as heroes who risked all on behalf of their neighbors—Good Samaritans we who follow Christ are compelled to emulate.

Jeff Lipkes is visiting assistant professor of history at Eckerd College in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

In an article titled “Stop Sending Money!” in the March 1, 1999, issue of Christianity Today, Robertson McQuilkin presented the problems that often follow when pastors and churches in poorer countries are financially supported by foreign organizations. He noted that jealousies arise, divisions occur, workers become materialistic, recipients are ungrateful, and church members tend to be irresponsible. His solution was simple: send no money.

Most mission specialists, myself included, agree that churches, by their very nature, should be self-supporting. Many would also agree in principle that the most effective indigenous missions organizations are those independent of foreign control and not affiliated with foreign denominations or mission organizations. But that is where the agreement seems to end.

Instead of helping these independent and indigenous mission organizations carry out their God-given ministries, many evangelical mission leaders in America have disparaged or discredited them. Like McQuilkin, they are especially adamant about not sending financial support of any kind to them.

The reasoning is simple—but perhaps too simple. In my experience at the head of an organization that sends missions money abroad I have found that providing financial support to indigenous ministries is effective if a clear distinction is made between directly supporting individual workers, on the one hand, and, on the other, supporting such workers indirectly through indigenous mission boards that give oversight to the handling of funds.

In the New Testament, we see evidence of funds being distributed in various circ*mstances. In the Jerusalem church, for example, the entire congregation pooled its resources to provide for the whole church, including the more than 3,000 who were visiting pilgrims. A year later, after the pilgrims had left and a famine hit Judea, the believers in Antioch sent relief, some of which most certainly was used for the support of the apostles (Acts 11:29). Still later, when believers in Jerusalem were devastated by persecution, Paul instructed the churches of Macedonia and Achaia to collect funds for their fellow believers. The other mention of finances concerned offerings that were sent to Paul for his personal support as well as for those on his team.

Whatever direct examples we may have or not have of the New Testament church helping others with financial gifts, the fact is that the huge fundraising operations of present-day mission organizations have no biblical precedent. So decisions regarding such finances need to be made on the basis of wisdom and common sense rather than divine revelation.

As a result, I believe that a blanket rule against sending money to foreign ministries is untenable—and even self-serving—for two reasons. First, historically and currently, many U.S. mission boards have themselves collected funds outside our borders. Hudson Taylor started the China Inland Mission in England but soon received support from the Continent. His 1888 U.S. trip, with backing from D. L. Moody, produced $500,000 for CIM work and workers (about $10 million in today’s dollars). The Scandinavian Alliance Mission began by raising support around the Baltic Sea, but found green pastures in America also. Its mission headquarters were eventually moved to Wheaton, Illinois, and the name changed to TEAM. More currently, World Vision raises millions of dollars in other countries.

In effect, the current reigning missions orthodoxy says that it is fine for European and American missions to raise funds internationally, but if Indian or African missions do so, they are in danger of dependency.

A second reality check is that in anti-Christian countries there are no such things as self-supporting Scripture-translation ministries, radio broadcasts, free medical clinics, literature-distribution services, Bible schools, Christian orphanages, evangelistic teams, or even mission boards. These parachurch ministries need support beyond what local churches (which are often small and oppressed) can provide. A lack of outside support would greatly reduce the scope of these ministries.

I once heard Bakht Singh, a mission worker in India, say: “There is no distinction between Indian money and foreign money. Church offerings are given as unto the Lord, so they should be used as needed for his entire body. We are on our knees daily praying that God will supply our needs, and he does. Support comes from Bombay, from Madras, Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, London, Toronto, and Chicago, but it’s all from the Lord.” The “needs” he spoke of included supporting almost 1,000 missionaries, an extensive literature minis try, a headquarters complex in Hyderabad where 100 trainees received food, housing, and daily instruction, and annual “holy convocations” attended by up to 25,000 delegates. Should his ministry have been limited to receiving support from inside India? The answer on our part must be a wise-as-serpents no. We should share our resources with fellow believers in India and other poorer countries because of our oneness in Christ as well as our unity in the church’s missionary mandate.

Kingdom—or brand—extension?So why have traditional mission agencies been reluctant, if not opposed, to using their billion-dollar donor base and fundraising capabilities to support native missionaries who serve with indigenous missions? Part of the reason, I fear, is that mission executives are preoccupied with extending their own operations into foreign countries, not unlike the brand-extension strategies of a Ford or co*ke or Nike.

Whatever we do in foreign countries should stengthen the indigenous works that are already there, not compete with them.

The experience of P. N. Kurien of the All India Prayer Fellowship (AIPF) in Delhi is a clear example. While AIPF was struggling to find support for 246 pioneer missionaries and 40 students plus faculty in their Bible school, a prominent U.S. mission leader visited them. “Why don’t you be come our Baptist work in India?” he asked. “We could give you everything you need.” Kurien knew that it would hurt their testimony if the mission was identified with a foreign organization, so he declined the offer, explaining that it would be better for them to go hungry than to compromise their image in such a way before the local people.

Another example: When Prem Pradhan had started the first churches in Nepal in the 1950s, he faced crushing financial burdens. Many new believers were put out of their villages and dispossessed of their property. After some adults were imprisoned, their abandoned children faced starvation. Some meeting places constructed by new believers were burned by Hindus. During those difficult days, Prem was approached by a procession of missionary tourists who offered financial help if the Nepalese churches would affiliate with their respective denominations. Prem turned them all down, and it saved his life. When he was arrested for preaching Christ, the first question asked was, “Where are your headquarters?” Had he named a foreign country, he likely would have been executed. Instead, he received a six-year sentence.

Giving Acts a second lookThis desire for brand extension has another ugly side to it. Christians in Two-Thirds World countries today speak of “neo-colonialism” as they witness U.S. organizations hire workers away from their indigenous ministries. Some of these missions have been devastated by the practice. They have also seen U.S. mission groups set up competing Bible schools and take away students and teachers from their schools. They are learning that those who say, “We use nationals,” sometimes mean they extend their organizations into other countries by weakening local ministries. My observation has been that the nationals they employ gain financially but lose their effectiveness spiritually.

Ironically, the independence movements that spread through Asia and Africa after World War II signified an end to the colonial era. But it was the Communists, rather than Christians, who seized the opportunity. Christians did not follow the missionary model of the Book of Acts.

There is no record in Acts of a missionary being sent where he would be looked upon as an alien or did not know the language. While there are traditions to the contrary, nothing is said in the New Testament of the original 11 disciples going to work in distant countries. Instead, they won 3,000 foreign visitors in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and presumably on similar feast days thereafter. God sent those pilgrims home as missionaries to their own people. To plant his witness in Greece, our Lord chose Saul of Tarsus, whose mother tongue was Greek. He sent Barnabas back to his native Cyprus, and Andronicus and Junius back to Rome.

When I arrived in China as one of 6,000 foreign missionaries there in 1948, I found that our presence was an embarrassment to Chinese believers because people said we had been sent by the CIA. Communists were everywhere, busily winning converts to their atheistic religion; their missionaries were all Chinese—no Russians, Americans, or Europeans. But they had financial backing from fellow Communists all over the world. Nine out of ten of their top leaders had studied in Europe or America, a parallel to the Pentecost converts who returned to various nations of the Ro man Empire.

Asian and African missionaries are not inferior to Americans in the sight of God. In the context of their own culture, they are actually superior. Then why should we expect our Lord to send Americans as his ambassadors to peoples whose languages we cannot speak, while hundreds of less costly native missionaries are available who speak those languages fluently?

When communism collapsed in the USSR, thousands of zealous Christians emerged from the shadows and began to spread the gospel from Uzbekistan to Ukraine to Vladivostok. They desperately needed finances for Bible schools, transportation, literature, and missionary support. But what American mission would help them? Instead, we saw the spectacle of would-be missionaries soliciting our churches for $60,000 annual support each so they could “rush to Russia” where they didn’t know the language. If there were no Soviet missionaries, it would be a different matter. But hundreds were available, willing to live on two dollars a day. Is one American who can’t speak Russian more valuable in the service of Christ than 50 Ukrainians who do? Why can’t we see things from God’s perspective?

Giving wiselyThe point is that whatever we do in foreign countries should strengthen the indigenous works that are already there, not compete with them. We should help indigenous ministries in poorer countries without colonizing them.

Having said these things, I must also sound a note of caution. We all know of cases where church funds have been misused. It happens in America; it can happen anywhere. Wisdom and experience suggests the following guidelines for helping God’s servants in poorer countries:

1. Never support individual missionaries directly. Choose only those who work under the oversight and discipline of well-established native mission boards or evangelistic teams. Send all support to the parent mission.
2. Hold the mission board accountable. Funds should not be controlled solely by one person. Make sure that both the leader of the group and also a treasurer or other unrelated party knows of funds being sent so that nothing is hidden.
3. Require audited financial statements from each mission showing all funds received from all sources, foreign and domestic, and an itemized report of all disbursem*nts.
4. Obtain reports from trustworthy Christians who have visited the ministry and can vouch for its integrity and effectiveness. The word of the leader should be verified by added witnesses.
5. On the other hand, don’t necessarily be deterred by negative criticism. Every good work will be condemned by someone who is envious or jealous. Evaluations must be impartial and without prejudice.
6. Don’t send too much too soon. Very few works can handle a sudden influx of cash.

And one last note: Think twice before sending support for distribution through a U.S. mission that maintains a branch operation in the same locality as the indigenous mission. U.S. missionaries may be tempted to use the funds to exercise control or even divide the indigenous work.

Bob Finley is chairman of Christian Aid Mission in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Men with long braids and rings in their eyebrows fill the Basie Ballroom at the Kansas City Marriott. A few women, hair peroxide-blonde or tar-black, sport skimpy halter tops that reveal tattoos of flowers and colorful butterflies. The country’s most acclaimed body-piercing artist shows off pictures of his new house outside of Albuquerque and tells a story about going hiking clad only in cowboy boots, socks, and skull-and crossbones boxer shorts. (“I like to buy my underwear around Halloween.”) Welcome to Tattoo Rendezvous ’99, where 40 or so tattooists have gathered to tout their wares. It’s an unlikely place to find a strong Christian witness. But along the back wall, under a banner advertising Cherry Creek Flash, sits Rand Johnson, vice president of the Christian Tattoo Association. He hasn’t come to do any tattooing, though he does decorate plenty of skin at his tattoo parlor in Willmar, Minnesota. Johnson has come to share the gospel with his fellow tattooists.

The Christian Tattoo Association (CTA) was born on a January night in 1998 in Willmar when Johnson and Daniel Ostrowski (a.k.a. Hoss, after the character on Bonanza) were sitting around lamenting the fact that there was no organization for Christian tattooists. “We were brainstorming about how many Christians in the business we knew, and we were really surprised we knew so many,” recalls Hoss, now president of the CTA (he’s also an ordained minister with the Association of Faith Church). Although there may be more Christian tattoo enthusiasts than one might expect—the CTA boasts about 100 members from Arkansas to Alaska, as well as from Guam, Norway, Canada, and South Africa—the vast majority of tattooists do not know the Lord. “There’s probably a group that evangelizes bowling leagues,” notes Johnson, “but there was no group that targeted tattooists. And this industry is in desperate need of evangelism.”

Rather than tattoists’ being hostile to Christianity, believers at Tattoo Rendevous find that it’s Christians who are hostile to tattoos.

Johnson, who was a commercial artist for 25 years before he learned the tattooing trade, is an ordinary-looking man with a gray goatee and unfashionable aviator glasses. Compared to many other artists at Tat too Rendezvous, Johnson is lightly adorned—the only visible tattoo is a large cross on his right forearm. But he’s something of a star in the tattoo world. When you walk into a tattoo parlor, the walls are covered with colorful art called “flash.” If you want a rose, for instance, finger the one displayed on the wall and the tattooist will use it as his pattern. John son is the foremost flash artist in America. During the first day of the convention, at least half a dozen tattooists stop by Johnson’s booth to tell him that almost everyone who steps into their shops wants a tattoo of one of his clowns or fish or stars.

The message the CTA presents to fellow tattoo artists is simple. Hoss, who once won a copy of The Message on a radio show contest for the strangest job (“No one could beat full-time pastor/full-time tattooist”), says the CTA is “just trying to get back to the basics.” His Web site, which has about 1,500 hits a day, reminds visitors that “The Artist of the Universe loves you. Just as you are. Right now. His mercy opens the door. His grace invites you in. And His Son paid your bill.” God’s “Eternal Ink” is free—”It has to be free,” the Web site re minds us, “be cause you can’t be good enough to deserve the Master Tattooist’s ink.”

The CTA members are passionate about evangelism. “If Christians put their faith in their mouth, there’d be a big change in this country,” says Johnson. Hoss concurs: “It’s time for Christians to come out of the closet. Some Christians meet new people, and they are afraid the people they’re meeting will find out they’re born again; I’m afraid I’ll meet someone and they won’t know I’m born again. I want everybody I meet to know I’m nuts for Jesus.”

Hoss does not aim to get every tattoo enthusiast he meets to say the sinner’s prayer. “Just today on the plane down here I met a woman who was real hostile to Christianity. I had the opportunity to share my faith with her, and I know she left the plane a little more open. That was definitely evangelism, even though I didn’t say, ‘Kneel with me.’ ” Gesturing to the tattooed and pierced bodies in the ballroom, Hoss says, “Lots of people in here have been burned by Christians; so if we can simply get them to understand that not all Christians are going to judge them, then we’ve evangelized. Everybody everywhere is moving toward a decision about Jesus Christ or building on the decision they’ve already made. Our job is to help move them toward that decision, even if we’re not there to see the decision made. If you start with someone who doesn’t even believe in God, and after getting to know you, they are more open to the idea that there is a God, then you’ve evangelized.”

While the group’s main purpose is evangelistic, the CTA is also devoted to “encouraging and letting other Christians in this industry know, ‘No, you’re not alone.'” On that count, the CTA is a success. Glancing at the CTA fliers on John son’s table, a young man in a Tattoo Rendezvous staff T-shirt hazards, “Are you a Christian?” When Johnson answers in the affirmative, the staffer introduces himself as Colby Hendrickson and declares, “I am too. Nice to know there are a few others here.” On Hendrickson’s right arm is a tattoo of a band of thorns; above the thorns is a large tree with a tombstone—Satan’s—marked 2-6-98, the day Hendrickson was saved.

Sometimes Johnson’s and Hoss’s colleagues rib them about their faith, but usually they’re respectful and curious. A few hours into Tattoo Rendezvous, a tattooist named Bubba approaches Johnson and tells about a Christian minister who called him up and threatened fire and brimstone if Bubba tattooed his 22-year-old daughter. “It was so judgmental,” Bubba spits, disgusted. But he’s interested nonetheless. “I grew up Catholic and then I kind of fell away. Well, I did fall away. Then I moved; I did a lot of reading about Native [American] stuff. I think of myself as spiritual.”

Johnson seizes the moment, explaining gently that while lots of Americans are spiritual or believe in God, “it comes down to his Son, Jesus.” Bubba is due back at his own booth, but before he leaves, he gathers a stack of CTA paraphernalia and jots down Johnson’s phone number, with a promise to call.

Rather than tattooists’ being hostile to Christianity, the believers at Tattoo Rendezvous find that it’s Christians who are hostile to tattoos. Hoss is a devoted fan of Philip Yancey’s—next to the Bible, What’s So Amazing About Grace? changed his life “more than any other book except the Bible.” That’s why it was all the more disappointing for him to read Yancey’s paraphrase of the Old Testament prophetic writings in his newest book: adopting the voice of God, Yancey describes how God feels when Israel rebels against him. “I feel like a parent,” Yancey writes, who adopts a baby girl, feeds her, showers her with jewelry, pays for the finest education. Then the girl runs away, and God hears that “she’s a drug addict somewhere, covered with tattoos.”

“There is a lot of bias against tattoos out there,” Johnson warns prospective clients, despite the fact that tattooing has “become much more mainstream” in the last eight years, with middle-class, educated young folks shelling out big bucks in record numbers for body art. Christian parents shouldn’t overreact, Johnson says, when their daughter comes home from college with a hummingbird emblazoned on her shoulder blade or a moon on her ankle: A tattoo does not mean your teen is wandering into a foreign subculture of drugs and debauchery. “If that’s your child’s rebellion, rather than drinking heavily or getting into marijuana and cocaine, then you don’t have much to worry about.” Nor do CTA members have much patience for the reproach that Leviticus 19:28 forbids tattooing. They tackled the question in the second issue of their newsletter, Eternal Ink. “So you’re going to hell if you get a tattoo. And if you eat pork or shrimp,” sighs Johnson, noting that Leviticus 19 also prohibits trimming one’s beard and mixing linen and wool in fabric. “Fortunately, there’s a New Testament.”

Christians have other questions about tattoo theology. One asked Johnson: Will we still have our tattoos on the resurrected body? “Well, sometimes I imagine that every tattoo I’ve ever put on somebody else will be on me,” Johnson jokes. “The ink sure will be radiant.”

For more information about the Christian Tattoo Association, check out Hoss’s Web site, which has a link to the official CTA site, at http://home.dwave.net/~hoss

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Q: The New Testament seems to support divorce for a narrow range of reasons, but does it support remarriage?—K.A.Miller, Wheaton, Illinois

A: There are three New Testament passages that bear most directly on the subject of divorce and remarriage. I suggest that when they are carefully considered, they prove to be both more demanding and less restrictive on the question of divorce and remarriage than evangelicals have often acknowledged.

Luke 16:18 is a very bold, straightforward saying that seems to settle the issue quickly: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery" (all quotations from the NRSV). Both divorce and remarriage are just plain wrong—right?

Almost all New Testament scholars agree that this saying is an abbreviation of a saying of Jesus that appears in its fuller form in Matthew 5:3132 in the Sermon on the Mount. After discussing his views contrasted with those in Judaism, Jesus remarks, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

It is noteworthy that Jesus clearly sees some circ*mstances that legitimize divorce. A marriage continues to be valid until one party dissolves the marriage through unfaithfulness. This so-called exception clause appears here in Matthew 5 and again in Matthew 19 but does not occur in either Mark or Luke.

Churches and Christian institutions are mistaken when they indiscriminately deny the possibility of leadership positions or remarriage after men and women have divorced.

In a similar passage in Mark 10:1112, Jesus widens the scope of the teaching to show that such dissolution may apply to the behavior of either the man or the woman (even though in Jewish custom women could not divorce their husbands, Jesus includes women equally in his charge): "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." A more literal translation of "she commits adultery" reads, "she is adulterized," meaning if a woman is divorced without just cause, she is left in a valid marriage. Remarriage for her would, therefore, be adultery. In saying this, Jesus may very well have had in mind the practice of men discharging their wives without just cause, thereby exploiting them.

But how do we apply the "exception clause" today? Does Jesus only accept divorce as legitimate—but not remarriage for the innocent partner? In the Jewish society of Jesus' day, remarriage was always assumed for the innocent party unless prohibited for some particular reason. Unfaithfulness, therefore, would make a marriage invalid since a valid divorce canceled the marriage bond and allowed the innocent party to remarry exactly like a single person.

Jesus, in his radical kingdom commands, takes divorce very seriously. There is serious judgment for sin, but, at the same time, there is and should be no condemnation for the innocent.

"Why did Moses permit divorce?"The second crucial passage is Matthew 19:312 (see also Mark 10:212). Here some Pharisees are testing Jesus' reading of divorce law. Jesus defends the permanence of marriage by appealing to Genesis—that the "two shall become one flesh." To answer why Moses permitted divorce, Jesus replies, "It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery."

Note that again Jesus includes the "exception clause," which legitimizes divorces dissolved through unfaithfulness. The problem here has to do with Jewish laws that let men freely discharge their wives, often on spurious grounds. One great rabbi, Shammai, taught that the only basis for divorce was sexual unfaithfulness or adultery. But the Rabbi Hillel was more generous: "A man may divorce his wife even if she burned his soup … or spoiled a dish for him." Rabbi Akiba taught that divorce was acceptable "if he should find a woman fairer than his wife." Such divorces left women adrift in a male world, without hope of remarriage, and completely at a loss. Jesus is standing against such divorces of convenience.

He was also standing against the teaching that a man was required to dispense with his wife when he suspected unfaithfulness. (Consider Joseph's reaction when he learned of Mary's surprise pregnancy.) Jesus amends this, finding such behavior intolerable. Moses did not command his people to divorce wives, he permitted it. The springboard for right action should not be hard-heartedness, but charity. Jesus affirms once more that only if the woman has done something herself that irreparably ruptures the marriage can such a divorce be right. But it isn't a necessary response.

Many today have misread this particular passage to make two statements: (1) One cannot divorce his wife unless she has been unfaithful; (2) Whoever remarries commits adultery. But this is not the meaning. The active verb here is "commits adultery," and the entire sentence must be held together. It should be read, "Whoever does the following commits adultery: divorces his wife (except for immorality) and remarries another." Judgment is being placed not on someone remarrying but on someone remarrying after pursuing an illegitimate divorce. If the divorce is invalid, so is the remarriage. But the reverse is also true: if the divorce is valid, then re marriage must be acceptable, just as it was in commonplace Jewish custom.

"Not bound" to the marriageA third important passage is found in 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul discusses Christian marriage. He echoes the teaching of Jesus, saying that husbands and wives are not permitted to leave each other but should work toward reconciliation. Then Paul addresses a subject that was foreign to Jesus and the Gospels. What if a Christian man or woman had a pagan spouse? Could there be spiritual union between two people when one worshiped idols? Paul affirms that Christians should not initiate a divorce because of the spouse's spiritual deficiencies: "If any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her" (v. 12). The presence of a Christian in the marriage, Paul is saying, brings hope of salvation to the children and the family.

But then Paul makes one exception to Jesus' rule on divorce: If the unbelieving spouse deserts the marriage, the innocent spouse must work on reconciliation (vv. 1011), but in the end "is not bound." This final phrase in verse 15 is crucial. The innocent party is not bound to the marriage, and this includes women or men equally. This language echoes words directly from Jewish divorce law: "not bound" means that the innocent person is free to remarry.

Paul even reinforces his thought in 7:2628: "I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin." More literally rendered, Paul does not say "are you free," he says, "are you freed," meaning, someone who has been freed from a marriage, namely, someone who was married and divorced. Paul prefers they remain single because of the suffering of this age, but if they marry, according to verse 28, they do not sin.

In sum, Paul adds one more possible reason for a valid divorce: the desertion of a marriage by an unbelieving partner. In such a case, while the Christian spouse should not be eager to divorce, still, if he or she is a victim of divorce, he or she may remarry.

"The husband of one wife"Finally, Paul makes some remarks about the nature of marriage in his pastoral letters that reflect on the issue of divorce and remarriage. In both 1 Timothy 3:2 and in Titus 1:6, Paul stipulates that bishops (1 Timothy) and elders (Titus) should be "married only once" or "the husband of one wife." These verses have led many Christian organizations to disqualify potential leaders who have ever been divorced. But I doubt that this is even near what Paul is thinking.

First, he may be referring to polygamy. While having multiple wives was against Roman law, still, it was legal in Palestinian Judaism even though monogamy was the norm. Jewish oral tradition, in fact, justifies having 18 wives. Thus, Paul may be saying that these Christian leaders must have "just one wife."

Second, evidence from Greco-Roman society indicates that some men did have concubines even though they were illegal in both Greek and Roman society. Paul may be making it absolutely clear: Christian men must be pure and moral in their marital relations. He is looking for leaders with stable family lives.

The New Testament, therefore, tells us that marriage is to be seen as a divinely instituted relationship between a man and a woman. It should be monogamous and permanent. However, there are two exceptions where divorce is valid: when a spouse is unfaithful and when an unbelieving spouse deserts the marriage. In each case, the marriage is dissolved and the innocent partner is free to remarry.

Divorce is the tragic result of what be comes of humanity as it wrestles with sin and brokenness. Whenever a marriage fails, we should mourn it as tragic. But there should be no error so grave that it cannot be forgiven; no mistake beyond the reach of grace.

Likewise, our God is a God of renewal and restoration. In some cases, this means restoring a marriage to its original partnership. In other cases—and I can think of many—it means that remarriage is an opportunity for renewal and new hope. This is why churches and Christian institutions are mistaken when they indiscriminately deny the possibility of leadership positions or remarriage after men and women have divorced. Such a position denies not only the spirit of Jesus' ministry but also misunderstands the grace of God in a broken world.

By Gary M. Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School. Send questions for Directions to Christianity Today, 465 Gundersen Dr., Carol Stream, IL 60188; or to cteditor@christianitytoday.com.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Some say American opera is a contradiction in terms. The U.S. may have given the world great jazz, but during the years when Europe was producing the greats that dominate public radio’s daily programming, Americans were lagging behind. Classical music generally, never mind opera, was not our strength.

Until, that is, Carlisle Floyd (b. 1926) hit the scene. Hailed internationally as America’s opera writer, Floyd premiered his first full-length opera at the University of Florida in 1955. Based loosely on an apocryphal addition to Daniel, Susannah was an instant hit.

Floyd—not unlike Aaron Copland in Appalachian Spring—succeeded in a European musical form because, rather than imitating Puccini, he drew his melodies from the folk tunes of his native South Carolina. Floyd has gone on to write a number of other arresting operas, including Wuthering Heights (1958); The Passion of Jonathan Wade (1962), which recounts the struggles of a Yankee in the post– Civil War South; Of Mice and Men (1970); Bilby’s Doll (1976), based on the Esther Forbes novel about the witch hunts in Salem; and Willie Stark (1981), an adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. But Susannah has remained the most popular, receiving over 800 performances worldwide since its Florida debut. Last spring marked Susannah‘s Met debut: the opera opened last March with a star-studded cast—Renee Fleming, Samuel Ramey, and Jerry Hadley—and, as usual, striking sets.

The music did not disappoint—the opening square dance scene alone justifies critics’ initial praise in the 1950s—but the story did. Set in a small town in eastern Tennessee, Susannah opens with all the locals—churchgoers, of course—gathered together for a dance. Folks are unusually excited, because the renowned Reverend Olin Blitch is arriving that evening: he will preach a revival, and these pious valley-dwellers are hopeful Blitch will draw in many of their unconverted neighbors. Blitch enters, notices Susannah, who is 19 and comely, and asks her to dance. The church elders’ wives—older than 19 and not so comely—gossip nastily about Susannah and wonder out loud how anything other than tawdry behavior can be expected of her since she has been raised by her hard-drinking brother Sam.

The next day, Susannah is innocently bathing—nude—in a creek on her family property. The male church elders are, coincidentally, out scouting for a pool that Blitch can use for baptizing. They catch Susannah “sinfully” bathing and run back to their busybody wives and the other congregants with the news: Susannah is a temptress, of the Devil. She must repent or be driven out of the valley. Susannah is shunned; her neighbors spread false rumors that she seduced one of the elders’ sons (who, naturally, is sweet on her). Sam sings comfortingly to his sister, musing aloud that it must break the good Lord’s heart to see people acting so despicably in his name. Blitch preaches a fiery sermon, pleading with Susannah to repent (and, to his credit, Floyd’s upbringing as the son of a Methodist minister guaranteed that the rhythms of this scene would be dead-on) and then takes Susannah, too drained and exhausted to care about her fate, to bed.

After having sex with Susannah, Blitch realizes she was, indeed, chaste and had been falsely accused. He begs the townsfolk to forgive her, but they refuse. Meanwhile, Sam, Susannah’s devoted if besotted brother, learns of Blitch’s dastardly deed and shoots him. As Sam runs off into the woods, the locals gather at Susannah’s house to tell her she must leave the valley at once, but she drives them off her property with a shotgun and a maniacal laugh. The end.

Moral of the story: Christians are hypocrites who can’t think for themselves and only act as one overwrought mob mentality; the only folks who truly understand God’s love and beneficence are the unsaved—Sam and Susannah—who, indeed, are saved from sinning by their very unconverted state. Whereas the biblical account points out hypocrisy to vindicate biblical faith, this update points out hypocrisy to condemn the same.

Two other works written in the same era leave the audience with similar impressions of sanctimonious Christians: The Crucible and Inherit the Wind. It is no coincidence that all three were written in the flush of McCarthyism. Can American cultural critics please find a stand-in for McCarthyesque hysteria other than self-righteous Christian condemnation?

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Augustine may well be the most gifted, and most influential, theologian the Western church has ever produced—and perhaps the most misunderstood. Garry Wills’s compact 152-page portrait is an impressive corrective.

Wills is an adjunct professor (Northwestern University) and a writer of books about more recent figures like Richard Nixon and Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer). In Saint Augustine, Wills looks all the way back to 354, the year of Augustine’s birth in Thagaste, North Africa. He follows Augustine’s life and career until his death in 417, in the city of Hippo, not far from where he was born.

Even those of us who nurture a love for tradition have, Wills argues, a skewed understanding of Augustine and his work. Augustine was a bishop during a time when there were nearly 700 bishops in Africa alone, and so his significance rests somewhere else: in his writings. Wills says they are “staggering in quantity”—93 books and 300 letters and 400 sermons (out of an estimated 8,000 he preached) remain extant. What Augustine said of the historian Varro was even more true of Augustine himself: “Though he read so much we are amazed he found time to write, he wrote so much that few, we believe, can have read it all.”

From the first page of the introduction, Wills works hard to reorient our thinking. For example, he says, “People feel … that they understand intuitively Augustine’s testimony to his own sexual sins. They are convinced that Augustine was a libertine before his conversion and was so obsessed with sex after his conversion that they place many unnamed sins to his account”—that he had incestuous feelings for his mother and possibly even hom*osexual longings for a friend.

The truth is, as Wills takes pains to point out over a number of pages, Augustine’s early sexual activity “was not shocking by any standards but those of a saint.” Early in his life, he lived with and was entirely faithful to only one woman, named Una, a relationship that was sanctioned by Roman law, and with her he conceived one child, named Godsend.

When Augustine moved to Milan, and to a higher social plateau, his mother arranged an engagement to a Christian heiress, and Una and Godsend moved out. Biographers wonder at Augustine’s treatment of them, as Wills does: “There is no way to excuse Augustine. … But can we say he ‘dismissed’ her? She presumably had some say in the matter.” Still, it isn’t the sex but his attempt to get Una to forsake her Catholicism, Wills argues, for which Augustine “would later reproach himself bitterly.”

Another misconception has to do with the nature of Augustine’s best-known book, usually called Confessions. But “Augustine was not confessing like an Al Capone, or like a pious trafficker of later confessionals.” Instead, Wills prefers to translate the Latin Confessiones as The Testimony, which is not only more accurate but also a better description of what Augustine sets out to do. Rather than a recital of Augustine’s profligate youth, as some have assumed, The Testimony is a declaration of Augustine’s faith. As Augustine himself defines the word in his commentary on John’s gospel, “This is to testify, to speak out what the heart holds true.”

Wills describes Augustine as “a tireless seeker, never satisfied. Like Aeneas, the hero of his favorite poem, he sailed to ward ever-receding shores.” Augustine thoroughly shopped the ancient marketplace of ideas before he ultimately embraced the Christian faith (though Wills’s account of Augustine’s conversion is not exactly thrilling). Augustine’s first-rate mind was not only attracted by the Christian faith but remained fully engaged by it: “Impatient with all preceding formulations, even his own, he was drawn to and baffled by mystery: ‘Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God.'” Augustine’s intellectual wrest ling is an important story, and Wills does a good job of reminding us that faith has been, and can be, challenging to some of the best minds in human history.

After Augustine finally came to the conclusion that Christianity could answer most of his questions, he threw himself for the next 44 years into the task of teaching, preaching, and writing about his faith.

One of Augustine’s most enduring contributions to theology was his defense of the Trinity. De Trinitate is arguably one of Augustine’s greatest, though perhaps not most popular, works. With it the doctrine of the Trinity came to a mature and final expression in the Western church. And yet Wills has relatively little to say about it or the thinking that produced it. On the other hand, Wills has a great deal to say about Augustine’s controversies involving the Donatists and Pelagius (“a quagmire in which he would thrash about for the remaining fifteen years of his life”). He also outlines Augustine’s thinking in City of God, a book Wills says is not “a system” or a “fixed doctrine of church-state relations” but a “dialectical process in Augustine’s thought on grace.”

For those who are curious about Christians who have thought deeply about the faith, and who have shaped much of what today we would call Christian orthodoxy, Wills’s Saint Augustine is a terrific and accessible place to begin.

Douglas Brouwer is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Wheaton, Illinois, and author of Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe (Eerdmans).

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.