Page 5522 – Christianity Today (2024)

For biblical leadership to work properly in the family, the husband must be willing to take the leadership and the wife must be willing to let him have it. My husband Hale is an easy person for me to yield to as head of our home. He exemplifies the gentleness, goodness, and humility of Christ. While it hasn’t always been easy for me to agree with his decisions, he has not been a heavy-handed authority figure handing down ultimatums. This is how I have responded to his headship.

Hale and I have varying tastes in music, literature, hobbies, home decorating—and even in Christmas trees. He doesn’t like Christmas trees, and wouldn’t care if we never put one up. My family always had real trees that scraped the ceiling and filled the house with their fragrance. The conflict came when we were given an artificial tree as a wedding present.

For the first several years we had more than just a “discussion” on real versus artificial trees. Finally, my husband said he didn’t want to hear about it any more. So, during some years when the children were temptable babes, we didn’t put up any tree; the rest of the time I have had to be satisfied with an artificial tree, with no mention of a real one at all.

Last Christmas Hale asked me if I would like to have a real tree, since my sister, brother-in-law, and their children would be joining us. As missionaries on board ship, they have no access to any trees—let alone live ones. The incident illustrates that when I have “given up” to his leadership, and been willing to put aside my own desires, he has met me halfway.

Another area of tension has been in raising our children. The hardest decision was whether we should send our daughter to school as a five-year-old or wait, and whether it should be to public or Christian school. Although I agreed in theory with my husband, it was hard for me to send her to public school. I am deeply concerned about humanism, materialism, and undermining of parental authority, and I wanted her “protected” by a loving Christian environment. Hale thinks it is better to let the child be exposed to problems, then deal with them as they arise. So she went to public school; but it took me a few months to get my attitude right.

We try to present a solid front when it comes to discipline. When we take different approaches, we sit down and discuss why our actions aren’t effective. We refer to books to gain insight, and we reach agreement before we finish.

Hale is interested in our home life and is actively involved in making decisions. I am glad he enjoys doing so, even though this brings some differences. For example, we live in an older home that we ourselves have been remodeling. Our tastes and ideas—even in color schemes—are extremely different. Yet this is not my home, but our home. I want him to share in these decisions so he will feel the same way. Sometimes, however, as in the case of the living room ceiling, I am adamant: no acoustical tile! But we talk things over and such a decision usually involves a compromise.

Fortunately, in the realm of finances we rarely disagree. We look at all we have—both money and material possessions—as from the Lord. At the beginning of each new year we plan first where to put our money for the Lord’s work, and then how to budget the rest. We discuss all major purchases and many minor ones.

Concerning Hale’s spiritual leadership, he exercises his headship by showing the family his priorities: family devotions; his daily conversation in the home. Every morning at 6:15 the alarm goes off, and he gets up for his time with the Lord. Sometimes I join him. I want to do it more often, but frequently I wait for “Captain Kangaroo” or our toddler’s nap time. Hale’s example is a constant challenge to me, even though I don’t always rise to the occasion.

I’m glad for my husband’s headship in our home, and for the way he exercises it. I am especially thankful for his relationship to God. I appreciate so much the Lord’s (and my husband’s) patience with me in waiting until my inward attitude matches my outward acquiescence. For myself, I know there is no substitute for the peace and security of having a biblically ordered home.

MOLLY JOHNSON¹Mrs. Johnson, former missionary to Indonesia, now lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

An increasing number of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship girls are saying, “I’m confused about i my role. Magazines say this. Speakers say that. Suppose I get married: what’s a Christian woman supposed to do?” I’d like to respond with a few observations, because I’m worried by what I see, read, and hear. My views are based on Scripture (as best I understand it) and clarified by counsel from my wife, our two married daughters, several IVCF staff wives, and countless college women.

One area causing confusion. I believe, is that of “headship.” In the New Testament the noun “head” occurs 58 times as translated in every instance from the same Greek work: kephale. In 45 of those instances kephale refers to physical anatomy. For example, “the hairs of your kephale are all numbered”; “give me here John Baptist’s kephale …”; “having shorn his kephale in Cenchraea …” (Matt. 10:30; 14:8; Acts 18:18).

In 13 of those occurrences, kephale refers to relationships between persons. For example, “But I want you to understand that the kephale of every man is Christ, the kephale of a woman is her husband, and the kephale of Christ is God”; “… and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the kephale over all things for the church which is his body …”; “rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the kephale, into Christ”; “For the husband is the kephale of the wife as Christ is the kephale of the church, his body, and himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands”; “He is the kephale of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent”; “And you have come to fulness of life in him who is the kephale of all rule and authority” (1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 1:22; 4:15; 5:23–24; Col. 1:8; 2:10).

Question: How does the foregoing apply to Christian men and women whom God calls to marry? It seems to me that kephale in those references connotes in part love for, concern for, service to, support of, partnership with, participation with, responsibility for, and so on.

So far so good. Probably all evangelicals would agree up to this point. But that isn’t the whole story. The disagreement comes here: kephale also connotes accountability for and authority over. The first marriage that God established illustrates that fact. After the pair sinned, God did not summon both Adam and Eve to give account as coequals in responsibility. He summoned the husband as if to say, “You are the responsible partner in your marriage, and I am calling you to give account.”

There is more. If God gives children, it is the father whom God holds primarily responsible for the behavior of those children. If they are denied sound training in the home, the father cannot alibi by blaming his wife (see 1 Tim. 3:4).

I believe God’s design is “husband headship”: the husband is to be the kephale of his wife and family and will be held accountable by God for the manner in which he fulfills that headship. We violate that design by deviating to two extremes: distortion and abolition.

“Last summer Mary, a Canadian woman visiting a Christian couple in the U.S., noticed that Sheila, the wife, was uncharacteristically silent. Shortly Mary realized, to her astonishment, that Sheila only spoke when Joe, her husband, gave permission. This he did either verbally or by some nonverbal signal such as a nod of the head. ‘What’s going on?’ Mary asked. ‘We’ve discovered what headship really means,’ Joe replied, ‘and how Sheila must show she is a submissive wife in every way. So I decided I must signal when she can speak. Also, Sheila has cut down almost all her church work so that she can devote herself entirely to being a real woman and wife.’ He added, ‘We want to live out the fullest meaning of the gospel’” (HIS magazine, May 1978, p. 17).

Such deviation needs to be corrected. But an overcorrection is not a good correction, and I am sobered at what I see happening in evangelicalism by going to the other extreme.

Second, abolition. God’s design is violated by abolition of “husband headship.” This overcorrection can occur in two forms: “coheadship” and “wife headship.” “Coheadship” is sometimes termed “egalitarian marriage” and is widely advocated in numerous evangelical magazines and books and by many evangelical speakers. Husband and wife are equal in authority for decision making and accountability. Let’s admit that in a healthy marriage neither partner makes all the decisions; responsibilities are delegated within the partnership. The crunch comes when the partners disagree on decisions felt by each to be equally significant. Who decides then? Who is the final authority? Suppose Abraham and Sarah belonged to our modern “coheadship” philosophy? 1 Peter 3:6 indicates (1) she obeyed her husband, and (2) her good example is to be emulated. Looking at Christian marriages around America, my impression is that most “coheadships” (or “egalitarian marriages”) evolve into “veto-power-for-the-wife.” Husbands gradually give in on more and more decisions. I believe that “coheadship” (“egalitarian marriage”) is a mistake. It is an overcorrection.

“Wife headship” is even more extreme. Apparently some marriages from the outset are of this type. In some instances it is the woman’s dominant power grasping the headship. In others, she simply receives it by default as her husband passively abdicates his God-given responsibility. In “wife headship” Eve becomes accountable for Adam. (The most extensive book I know written against the “abolition” philosophy is The Castrated Family, by Dr. Harold Voth [psychiatrist with Menninger Clinic]; Sheed Andrews & McMeel, 1977). In view of the new opinion sweeping our society, it is surprising to me that a publisher would have the courage to publish a book such as Voth’s.

God’s plan moves between those two extremes and calls for a Christ-centered husband and a Christ-centered wife to love, serve, and support each other within an authority structure where Christ is kephale of both of them within his body and husband is kephale within the marriage.

It seems to me the world is conforming us to its mold—pressing an increasing number of Christian marriages into the two extremity traps of distortion. Let’s build our marriages according to God’s plan—and train our students (if God is calling them to marry): instructing them and preparing them for “husband headship” marriages under the kephale of Christ, warning them against the dangers of husband dictatorship on the one hand and the pitfalls of “coheadship” or “wife headship” on the other.

Copyright 1979 by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of the United States of America.

What did the Apostle Paul mean when he wrote, “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body” (Eph. 5:23)? And, “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3)?

Discussion about the biblical role for men in church, society, and home is based on these verses. The meaning of these verses rests largely on the meaning of the Greek word kephale, translated “head” in the New Testament.

One possible way the word “head” is used today means leader, chief, or director. We say, “He is the head of his company,” or, “He is the department head.” In husband-wife and male-female relations this idea popularly carries over to suggestions of authority. The husband is said to be the boss of the family. Before we accept that idea, we must ask what the Greek word kephale (head) meant to Paul and to his readers.

To find the answer, we must first ask whether “head” in ancient Greek normally meant “superior to” or “one having authority.” In the first half of this article we will introduce three kinds of evidence:

1. Lexicographers Liddell, Scott, Jones, and McKenzie (A Greek-English Lexicon, ninth edition. Clarendon Press, 1940, a really comprehensive Greek lexicon) give no evidence of such a meaning.

2. The Septuagint translators took pains to use different words than “head” (kephale) when the Hebrew word for head implied “superior to” or “authority over.”

3. In his commonly used lexicon (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, William Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds., U. of Chicago Press, 1957/1979), Walter Bauer gives little or no salient support for such meaning outside of his personal interpretation of five Pauline passages in the New Testament.

In the second half of the article, we will answer the fundamental question: If “head” does not normally mean “superior to” or “authority over,” what does it mean in those seven New Testament passages where Paul uses if figuratively?

First, what about the differences in the lexicons? One of the most complete Greek lexicons (covering Homeric, classic, and koinē Greek) is the work by Liddell, Scott, Jones, and McKenzie. It is based on examination of thousands of Greek writings from the period of Homer (about 1000 B.C.) to about A.D. 600, which, of course, includes New Testament times. Significantly, for our purposes here, it does not include “final authority,” “superior rank,” or anything similar as meanings of kephale. Apparently ordinary readers of Greek literature would not think of such meanings when they read “head.”

However, another commonly used lexicon is the koinē Greek lexicon by Arndt and Gingrich (usually called Bauer’s). It does list “superior rank” as a possible meaning for kephale. It lists five passages in the New Testament where the compiler thinks kephale has this meaning. As support for this meaning in New Testament times, the lexicon lists two passages from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, where kephale implies leadership or authority.

Those who support Bauer’s view that kephale meant “superior rank” point to these passages in the Greek translation of the Old Testament as evidence that this meaning of kephale was familiar to Greek-speaking people in New Testament times.

However, the facts do not support that argument. About 180 times in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word ro’sh (head) is used with the idea of chief, leader, superior rank (similar to the way English-speaking people use “head”). However, those who translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek (between 250 and 150 B.C.) rarely used kephale (head) when the Hebrew word for head carried this idea of leader, chief, or authority. They usually used the Greek word archon, meaning leader, ruler, or commander. They also used other words. In only 17 places (out of 180) did they use kephale, although that would have been the simplest way to translate it. Five of those 17 have variant readings, and another 4 involve a head-tail metaphor that would make no sense without the use of head in contrast to tail. That leaves only 8 instances (out of 180 times) when the Septuagint translators clearly chose to use kephale for ro’sh when it had a “superior rank” meaning. Most are in relatively obscure places.

Since kephale is so rarely used when ro’sh carried the idea of authority, most of the Greek translators apparently realized that kephale did not carry the same “leader” or “superior rank” meaning for “head” as did the Hebrew word ro’sh.

There are seven passages in the New Testament where Paul uses kephale in some figurative sense. The concept of a hierarchy, with men in a role of authority over women (at least over their wives) rests largely on two of these: 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23. When Paul used kephale in these two passages, was he thinking of one of the usual Greek meanings of head, or a common figurative Hebrew meaning?

Paul knew both Hebrew and Greek. Although he was a Pharisee who knew Hebrew well, he grew up in Tarsus, a Greek-speaking city. Greek was his native tongue. In all the passages where he used kephale, he was writing to Greek-speaking people in cities where most Christians were converts from Greek religions. Their contact with the Old Testament would be limited to hearing parts of the Septuagint read in their services. They might go to church for years without ever hearing those eight relatively obscure places in the Greek Old Testament where kephale seemed to have a different meaning from the usual meanings in their own language.

Since Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew, he would likely write to Greek-speaking Christians using Greek words with Greek meanings they would easily understand.

If “head” in Greek did not normally mean “supreme over” or “authority over,” what did it mean in those seven New Testament passages where Paul used it figuratively? Careful examination of context shows that common Greek meanings not only make good sense, but present a more exalted Christ.

1. Colossians 1:18 (context 1:14–20); kephale means “exalted originator and completer.” “He (Christ) is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Paul seems to be using kephale with common Greek meanings—“source or beginning or completion” (Liddell, Scott, et al.)—in a sense that Christ is the exalted originator and completer of the church. Bauer does not list this passage among those where kephale means “superior rank.”

2. Colossians 2:19 (context 2:16–19); kephale means “source of life.” Christ is the source of life who nourishes the church. Christians are told to hold fast to Christ, who is described as the “head,” from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.” Bauer agrees that in this passage kephale does not mean “superior rank.”

3. Ephesians 4:15 (context 4:11–16) is very similar to Colossians 2:19. It reads, “We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.” This passage stresses the unity of head and body, and presents Christ as the nourisher and source of growth. Bauer classifies kephale here as meaning “superior rank,” although he does not see that meaning in the very similar Colossians 2:19.

4. 1 Corinthians 11:3 (context 11:2–16); kephale seems to carry the Greek concept of head as “source, base, or derivation.” “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (NIV). In this passage Paul is discussing how men and women should pray and prophesy in public church meetings. His instructions apparently relate to the customs, dress, and lifestyle in Corinth and the tendency of the Corinthian believers to be disorderly. Paul discusses women’s and men’s head coverings and hair styles. (Veils are not mentioned in the Greek text.) Paul says, “man was not made from woman, but woman from man” (v. 8); he also says, “woman was made from man” (v. 12). This suggests that Paul used “head” in verse 3 with the meaning of “source or origin.” Man was the “source or beginning” of woman in the sense that woman was made from the side of Adam. Christ was the one through whom all creation came (1 Cor. 8:6b). God is the base of Christ (John 8:42: “I proceeded and came forth from God”).

When we recognize one Greek meaning of kephale as source or origin, as Paul explains in verses 8 and 12, then verse 3 does not seem to teach a chain of command. Paul’s word order also shows he was not thinking of chain of command: Christ, head of man; man, head of woman; God, head of Christ. Those who make it a chain of command must rearrange Paul’s words. In fact, Paul seems to go out of his way to show that he was not imputing authority to males when he says, “For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God” (1 Cor. 11:12).

5. Ephesians 5:23 (context 5:18–23); “head” is used in a head-body metaphor to show the unity of husband and wife and of Christ and the church. “For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body.” Paul often used the head-body metaphor to stress the unity of Christ and the church. In fact, this unity forms the context for this passage. The head and body in nature are dependent on each other.

This verse follows Paul’s explanation of what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. His last instruction is, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (v. 21). This is addressed to all Christians and obviously includes husbands and wives. Naturally, as part of this mutual submission of all Christians to each other, wives are to submit to their husbands.

The Greek word “submit” or “be subject to” does not appear in verse 22. It says only, “wives to your husbands.” The verb supplied must therefore refer to the same kind of submission demanded of all Christians in verse 21.

To stress the oneness of husband and wife, Paul then returns to his favorite head-body metaphor: “For the husband is the head (kephale) of the wife as Christ is the head (kephale) of the church, his body.”

Paul develops his head-body metaphor at length in 1 Corinthians 12:22–27. If he thought of “head” as the part of the body that had authority over the rest of it, would not that meaning appear in this long passage? We know that the brain controls the body. But Paul did not use that concept in his metaphor. He refers to the ears, eyes, and nose; the head as a whole is mentioned only in verse 21: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.’” Paul taught here the unity and mutual dependence of all parts on each other: “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (v. 26). There is no suggestion that the head has authority over other parts of the body.

Christ does have authority over the church (Matt. 16:18). But most of the passages that deal with Christ as the head of the church do not point to his authority over the church, but rather the oneness of Christ and the church. In Ephesians 5:18–33, this oneness is applied to husband and wife.

If we are to see a meaning in “head” in Ephesians 5:23 beyond the head-body metaphor of mutual dependence and unity, we must do so on the basis of the immediate context. Christ’s headship of the church is described like this: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (v. 25). Christ gave himself up to enable the church to become all that it is meant to be—holy and without blemish.

As Christ is the enabler (the one who brings to completion) of the church, so the husband is to enable (bring to completion) all that his wife is meant to be. The husband is to nourish and cherish his wife as he does his own body, even as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church (v. 29).

The concept of sacrificial self-giving so that a spouse can achieve full potential has been the role that society has traditionally given to the wife. Here Paul gives it to the husband. Of course, giving oneself sacrificially for the other is an excellent example of the submission wives and husbands are to have toward each other (v. 21).

6. Ephesians 1:20–23 (context 1:13–23): kephale means “top or crown.” Paul presents an exalted picture of Christ and his authority over everything in creation: “… when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.” The authority of Christ, established in verses 20–21, is extended to every extremity from crown (head) to feet—including the church which is his body.

7. Colossians 2:10 (context 2:8–15); kephale again seems to have the Greek idea of life-source, as well as the idea of top or crown. This verse emphasizes the church as the “fulness” of Christ. “For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority” (vv. 9–10).

Paul uses two metaphors here—the head-body metaphor, with the church coming to “fulness of life” in Christ (the life-source, nourisher, enabler), and also the concept of top or crown when he speaks of Christ as the head of all rule and authority. In these two passages, “top” or “crown” emphasize Christ’s position by virtue of the cross and resurrection. He is the victor, and is crowned with glory and honor (Heb. 2:9; Ps. 8:5).

These are the only passages in the New Testament where kephale is used figuratively. They include the five given by Bauer as examples of kephale meaning “superior rank.” despite the fact that such a meaning for kephale does not appear in the secular Greek of New Testament times. If Paul had been thinking about authority, or leader, there were easily understood Greek words he could have used, and which he did use in other places. He used exousia (authority) in Romans 13:1–2; and archon in Romans 13:3.

The passages where Paul used kephale in a figurative way make better sense and present a more exalted, completed view of Christ when kephale is read with recognized Greek meanings that would have been familiar to his original readers. Among these meanings are: exalted originator and completor; source, base, derivation; enabler (one who brings to completion); source of life; top or crown.

Can we legitimately read an English or Hebrew meaning into the word “head” in the New Testament, when both context and secular Greek literature of New Testament times seem to indicate that “superior rank” or “authority over” were not meanings that Greeks associated with the word, and probably were not the meanings the apostle Paul had in mind? Has our misunderstanding of some of these passages been used to support the concept of male dominance that has ruled most pagan and secular societies since the beginning of recorded history? Has this misunderstanding also robbed us of the richer, more exalted picture of Christ that Paul was trying to give us?

The role of women in the church continues to provoke discussion among the churches. For instance, the United Presbyterian Church is demanding that women be represented on every session (church governing board). Evangelicals in particular are discussing the role of women. Consider the numerous books and articles on the subject in recent years.

I believe the New Testament makes a two-fold declaration: first, men and women stand equal in Christ (Gal. 3:28), and second, women are not to lead and teach either the church corporate or men in the church (1 Tim. 2:11–14; 1 Cor. 14:35ff.).

Men and women in their humanity are equally image bearers of God and, in their redemption, joint heirs of the grace of Christ. So they participate equally in all the aspects of the priesthood of believers in church life. But God has also created us male and female, and arranged that we reflect these different aspects of our humanity in the matter of leadership in the church and in marriage.

Does the Bible really teach this? Let’s look at some important passages. The New Testament seems to forbid “a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12) in the life of the church. When Paul says, “I do not permit,” he issues as much of an imperative as one can have in the first person singular, “I” form. Also, the present tense does not mean he limits the prohibition to that time only. Rather, it indicates the kind of action, so he means “I am continually not permitting.” Further, the word translated “permit” in the King James Version and is quite strong as used in the Greek world, and in the New Testament. Paul employs it in 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 16:7. It is especially strong with the negative.

The phrase “exercise authority” is sometimes wrongly interpreted to mean “domineer.” Some argue, therefore, that such action is not forbidden to women only; it would be inappropriate for any Christian to act domineeringly toward another person. When we examine the word, however, we find it will not permit this stronger and universally objectionable meaning.

The Greek word authenteō, rendered “exercise authority,” occurs only here in the New Testament. In “Authenteō in Reference to Women in 1 Timothy 2:12,” an article to appear in the journal, New Testament Studies, I have examined the occurrences of the word elsewhere. I conclude that its meaning here is “to have authority” or “to exercise authority” in a positive or neutral sense, and that the meanings “domineer” or “to bring pressure in a sexual sense” are inappropriate and especially in 1 Timothy 2:12.

The context of 1 Timothy 2:11–12 bears this out. The words and concepts used in verse 12 are the converse of verse 11 and flow out of it; learn (verse 11) but do not teach a man (verse 12); learn with submissiveness (verse 11) but do not exercise authority (verse 12) over a man. Both the teaching and the exercising of authority that Paul does not allow relate to men in the church corporate, because “a man” is the object of both verbs.

This follows not only from the context, in which Paul is addressing the question from the male/female relationship exclusively. It is also evident from parallel passages where Paul, who does not contradict himself, permits women to teach other women (Titus 2:3–5). The prohibition of 1 Timothy 2:12 is made in connection with general instructions for order in the church. Compare chapter 2 in its entirety and then chapter 3, especially verse 15: “I write so that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living god, the pillar and support of the truth.” There are four possible ways to take 1 Timothy 2:12–15. Is this prohibition a Pauline error? Or is it a part of the culture that Paul supports simply to maintain good order? Or is there something unique about the situation in Ephesus (1 Timothy) and Corinth (I Corinthians) that causes Paul to write instructions applying only under that unique situation? Or, last, in appealing to the order God instituted and established at Creation, the creation order, does Paul show he understands his instructions to have the most fundamental basis—that is, the creation and our continued sexuality, male and female? If this last explanation is the case, the prohibition is permanent and universal.

Marriage

In choosing among these alternatives, we can get help by considering the New Testament’s teaching about roles in marriage. We find that uniformly it teaches that there are to be different roles for husband and wife (Eph. 5:22–33; Col. 3:18–19; Tit. 2:4–5; 1 Pet. 3:1–7). Those roles are assigned simply because one is the husband and one is the wife. The basis is their maleness or femaleness, even though both husband and wife are joint heirs of the grace of life (1 Pet. 3:7). In each passage, the role is described either directly or indirectly in terms of the husband as the “head” or leader of the marriage, and the wife as one who, though equal, is asked to submit herself as an equal to the headship of her husband.

Significantly, each spouse is required to exercise his or her role with just the appropriate attitude and conduct that will offset a misuse of that role. For example, husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and as they love their own bodies (Eph. 5:25, 28; Col. 3:18). This is grace’s antidote to the tyranny with which sin poisons leadership. So the apostles reject not the role of leadership, but its abuse.

But some may object that these passages are only expressions of the apostles’ ordering of society along the lines that then existed. After all, most of these passages speak of slaves and masters in close connection with husbands and wives. Are the apostles teaching only that when masters had slaves and husbands had wives, both were to submit? Was this the Christian way of living only in that time and situation? Before we accept such a domino theory we need to recognize that children and parents are also mentioned here, and their relationship becomes another domino that may be toppled.

It is necessary to ask whether Paul groups together regulations for members of the household not because the relationships are parallel, but for mere convenience since all deal with the membership of many households of that day. As a matter of fact, it would appear that these relationships have quite different bases. Paul is quite willing for the slave’s status to change to one of freedom (compare Philemon and also 1 Cor. 7:21). He never insists that slavery is instituted by God and therefore to be perpetuated. Paul is simply giving directions on how slaves and masters should live if they are in that situation, just as Moses gave directions as to how a person should put away his wife if he divorced her (Deut. 24). But Jesus indicates that Moses’ instruction about divorce does not indicate God’s desire about marriage (Matt. 19:8); so neither do Paul’s instructions about slaves and masters indicate God’s desire for the way people are to relate in this area.

We face a different situation concerning children. Paul grounds his word to children in the permanent word of the Ten Commandments (Eph. 6:1–3). And, likewise, when we ask about the basis for the uniform teaching on the role relationship of husband and wife in marriage, we find it is God’s activity in Creation (just as Jesus appealed to that activity to answer the question about divorce and marriage). He also appeals to the analogy of Christ as the head to the church, but this too is related to the bridegroom-bride, husband-wife imagery of both Old and New Testaments.

The evidence that the apostles root the uniform teaching about headship and submission for husband and wife in the creation order of God surfaces in the quote from Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31. It is made explicit in Paul’s full use of Genesis 2 to establish the roles relating to headship in 1 Corinthians 11. We must admit that Genesis 2:24 seems to surface only in Ephesians 5:31. But consider also the nomenclature and development of thought in Ephesians 5 and the specific correlation of Genesis 2 with headship in 1 Corinthians 11. Clearly the Genesis 2 truths are the basis for the apostles’ consistent teaching about headship and submission.

Paul is quite specific on what Genesis 2 teaches about how men and women are to relate to one another in terms of headship. His exegesis and application of Genesis 2:21–23 is given in 1 Corinthians 11:8–9: “For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake.” This understanding undergirds his early statement covering headship: “Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:3). Here headship is unfolded not only between man and woman, but also between God and Christ.

The headship in view must not be restricted to origin, for the headship referred to in marriage concerns the wife’s submission (this is not the question of her personal origin, but of leadership). Likewise, the reference to the relationship of God the Father to Christ his incarnate Son concerns relationship, not to origin of being.

Here we have the most perfect example to encourage women and provide them with a model. In marriage and in the church they are, as equals, to submit to the headship of men. The example? Christ has submitted to God as his head!

This removes once and for all the charge that submission means inferiority and denies equality. At the same time it shows that Paul is zealous to make this point of headship. Not only does he appeal to the creation order which continues in the face of our masculinity and femininity. He also appeals to Christ’s act of submitting to the Father. He does not write later in the chapter on the equality of men and women and their mutual dependence on one another (1 Cor. 11:11–12) in order to set aside his earlier teaching on the headship of men. Rather these verses are to remind all that it is a headship among equals and to remove any tendency to arrogance by men or to servility by women. Likewise Peter refers to men and women as fellow heirs (1 Pet. 3:7) in his statement on the roles of headship and submission in marriage (1 Pet. 3:1–7).

Marriage And The Church

The significance of this look at marriage is, first of all, that we find here the same features in marriage that we find in the larger family, the church. In both, with similar terminology, headship or leadership is required of the man, and submission to that headship or leadership is required of the woman. Also, either indirectly or directly, women are denied that headship. In both marriage and church the appeal is to God’s order of Genesis 2.

Second, notice how Genesis 2—the differentiation and role relationship established by God at Creation—is the connecting link for both and at the same time their foundation. Paul establishes the principle of headship for man in 1 Corinthians 11 (note especially vv. 3, 8, 9). In 1 Timothy 2:13, when Paul gives the reason why a woman may not teach or exercise authority over a man, he also cites the significance of the order of creation in Genesis 2. Likewise, when Paul prohibits a woman speaking in church he also appeals to the Law (1 Cor. 14:34). This cannot include a prohibition against praying or prophesying (he has already approved them in 1 Corinthians 11), so we must liken it to teaching, the function in view in the parallel passage, 1 Timothy 2. Since the Law to which he has appealed in the parallel or analogous passages (1 Cor. 1:8–9; 1 Tim. 2:13) has been the order of creation in Genesis 2, we shall also presume what is in view here is that same emphasis in Genesis 2 and not, as some say, the judgment upon sin in Genesis 3:16.

What is the meaning of Genesis 3:16? It is saying how sin will affect the previously established relationship; it is not saying how that relationship is to be conducted, and it is certainly not the basis for the principle of headship and submission. The reference in 1 Timothy 2:14 to the deception and transgression of Eve gives an illustration of the effects of reversing the leadership role, not an additional basis for it.

We see, therefore, that the role relationship for men and women in marriage and in the church is the same, and that the basis given for both is the same: God’s creation order determines for the sexes once and for all how they are to relate in the area of leadership in marriage and in the church. New Testament teachings on the role relationship of men and women in marriage and in the church stand or fall together.

Let us take as proven that Paul’s appeal for the headship of man in marriage and in the church is to God’s creation order differentiating male from female. If this is true, then prohibiting women from headship in marriage or from teaching and authority in the church corporate must be the permanent and universal teaching of the Word of God. Paul further indicates this character of his teaching by asserting in 1 Corinthians 14 that what he is teaching is the commandment of God (v. 37) and that this is to be observed in the churches (plural, v. 34, compare v. 33).

It may be objected that there are things difficult to understand in these contexts, such as veils (1 Cor. 11), the asking of questions by women (1 Cor. 14), and jewelry and hair style (1 Tim. 2; 1 Pet. 3). Many of these are indeed only concrete applications of a principle to a specific cultural setting. For instance, this is true of the veil and the significance of the hair style and use of jewelry as an indication of immodesty and ostentation in the apostles’ day. (Compare 1 Tim. 2:9 “modestly and discreetly, not with …”)

But the difficulty of these contextual matters or even their local cultural character does not topple the teaching of the role relationship. We should understand these other matters as applications of a principle, whereas the role relationship in marriage and the church is itself a principle.

According to the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, clergymen favor the ordination of women by 49 to 43 percent; 8 percent have no opinion. As might be expected, 60 percent of the Catholic clergymen oppose such ordination, while 40 percent of the Protestant clergy are negative.

However, the highest percentage of opposition comes from Southern Baptists (74 percent), while the Methodists are far and away the most in favor (83 percent).

Middle-aged clergy (30 to 39) are most in favor, but only slightly more so than older clergy. Younger clergy (18 to 29) are most opposed.

Among evangelical clergymen, those who identified themselves as “liberal” (referring generally to social and political views rather than to theology) were strongest in favor of ordaining women, while those calling themselves “conservative” were strongest against it. “Middle-of-the-roaders” gave a 65 to 25 percent edge to ordination of women.

Women As Deacons?

Nor can appeal to the extensive involvement of women in the ministry of Jesus and Paul overturn this teaching. Such examples are analogous to the involvement of wives in marriage. Yes, women are also in the broad ministry of the church just as wives are in the marriage, but not in a leadership role. A careful examination of every case will make it plain that no example sets aside the prohibition of women from a leadership role in the church. Passages often cited include Phoebe in Romans 16:1–2; Prisca in Romans 16:3; Euodia and Syntyche in Philippians 4:3.

Consider Phoebe’s role (Rom. 16:1–2). An appeal to the usage of the feminine word prostatis (NASB and RSV: “a helper of many”) is often made to attempt to establish Phoebe as a leader in the congregation. The argument often proceeds from this word to a verb with the same root (proistēmi) and the similar masculine noun (prostatēs). It usually insists that since the masculine noun and the verb are directly associated with leadership, the feminine noun must be also. As a matter of fact, New Testament Greek lexicons and classical Greek lexicons consistently indicate that this is not the case, and that the feminine noun indicates one who is a “helper” or “patroness” but not a leader. Paul Jewett, although contending that the word means more than that she was only a deaconess, candidly admits that “in this passage, prostatis, literally ‘a woman set over others,’ should hardly be taken to mean that Phoebe was a woman ‘ruler.’ Rather the meaning would seem to be that she was one who cared for the affairs of others by aiding them with her resources” (Man as Male and Female).

Furthermore, the argument often appeals to the word diakonos to indicate that Phoebe is a “deacon” of the church and thus an officer. We must make three observations about this. First, diakonos is not always used as a technical term for a “minister” or “deacon” in the New Testament because its most basic general meaning is that of “servant.” It is rendered this way in other places in the New Testament as well as here.

Second, the fullest treatment of deacons in the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3:8–13, describes deacons as men, and refers to women in that context in distinction from the men deacons. It does not apply the term diakonos to them in that technical sense. This explains why so many translations have not used “deacon” in Romans 16:1; they are aware that the more definitive Pauline usage in 1 Timothy 3:8–13 does not apply the term in a technical way to women.

Third, even if for argument’s sake we say that Phoebe is a “deacon,” the apostle’s prohibition is not overturned. The very distinction in the New Testament between the official deacon and elder (or bishop) is that an elder holds the teaching or ruling office, while the deacon is in the serving office, one not inherently involving teaching or ruling. Thus even if we grant that Phoebe is a church deacon, the New Testament has still not placed her in the ruling or teaching office. Many churches who hold to the apostolic prohibition on teachers and rulers have ordained women as deaconesses.

Furthermore, according to a principle of biblical interpretation, we should understand practical examples in light of broad teaching, not pit them against such teaching. We can at least grant that Paul practices what he preaches.

We also see another set of parallels. Denial of headship to the woman does not change her equality or her full involvement in the ministry of marriage. Likewise, in the church the denial of the leadership roles does not deny her equality as a human being or as a joint heir in the body of Christ. Nor does it deny her full involvement in all aspects of ministry to which Scripture welcomes the whole priesthood of believers. Nor are women excluded from teaching per se, for they are encouraged to teach women (Tit. 2:3–5). And they are to be involved in the full range of worship activities and diaconal service where these do not involve leadership offices or functions (compare, for example, 1 Timothy 3:11 and 5:10).

Gifts

But finally, some may object that this denies freedom to God’s Spirit to impart gifts to women, predicted by Joel (2:18) and reaffirmed by Peter (Acts 2:17–18). That same kind of objection could be raised against men as being the only heads of marriage, for does not God equip some women in the natural realm to be better heads of marriage than men? But there are other solutions to this seeming dilemma. May not the gifts be used both in marriage and the church in a way that does not violate the principle of male headship? In Titus 2, for instance, Paul urges some women to teach other women and exercise leadership with them. In 1 Timothy 2:12 he prohibits women only from teaching men and the church corporate, not from the act of teaching itself.

Is not this question of spiritual gifts versus God’s order raised in the context of the entire fourteenth chapter of I Corinthians? And is not this why it deals with the question of women speaking in church, that is, because some were claiming that spiritual gifts would now enable women to speak? The apostle Paul insists that such an appeal cannot set aside the creation order taught by the Law (verse 34), recognized in all the churches, and now taught by him as an apostle giving the Lord’s commandment. In summary, Paul is saying that the grace of redemption and the work of the Spirit do not overturn God’s creation order, just as he said that God’s order in general may not be ignored or overturned by the activity of spiritual gifts (compare vv. 27–33, and v. 40).

Considerate Leadership

Does this mean that the church is the last bastion for male dominance, the sanctified domain of male bigots and chauvinists? God forbid! Jesus’ word about leadership is the final word in working out and applying God’s creation order: “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all” (Mark 10:42–44). What God requires of male headship in marriage he also requires of male headship in the church—men must be loving, considerate, humble to all over whom they exercise oversight, whether male or female. He equally requires all people under that oversight to be submissive, respectful, and supportive, whether they are male or female.

We are not engaged in a political or sexist power struggle; we are engaged in deciding the biblical prescriptions for marriage and the church. These prescriptions balance two insights: the God-given equality of the sexes, and the God-given differences.

With heated convictions, evangelicals dogmatically dismount at different levels from the precipitous ladder ascending to sexual equality in the ministry. If our inconsistencies were not so tragic they would at times be humorous.

We permit women to teach Sunday school but not mixed adult classes. We commission women to administer mission compounds and ordain them to minister to the distant lost, but they are barred from church boards and ministry at home. Their testimonies or “sermonettes” are acceptable if the pastor pronounces the benediction. With determined religious fervor we withstand the “women’s libbers” and entrench ourselves firmly in our literal biblical bases (man was created first; Paul tells women to be silent; etc.).

Or we throw all caution—and biblical conviction—to the wind and conclude the Bible to be antiquated and uninspired or Paul to be chauvinistic and inconsistent, and we write our own rules at the expense of scriptural authority.

As one firmly committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God and who turns to it as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, I must ultimately settle all such issues on the basis of “What saith the Lord?” in Holy Scripture. When our conclusions on this issue are drawn from the Bible rather than church tradition (which we respect, but do not treat as the final authority), we discover that women have full equality with men in church functions.

Equal In Creation

Certainly nothing in either Creation narrative (Gen. 1 and 2) suggests anything less than male and female equality. Both genders equally are created in the image of God (“… in the image of God created he him, male and female he created them” Gen. 1:27 [all Scripture quotations are NIV unless otherwise specified]). Similarly, the mandate to “be fruitful and increase … fill the earth … subdue … rule over …” (Gen. 1:28) was given jointly to both sexes. Eve was not told some of these leadership functions were limited to Adam.

In the second Creation account, God promises to make a “helper suitable” for Adam (Gen. 2:18–20). Some have seen this Hebrew word, yezer, as reflecting subservience. In fact, the term had no such connotation, for it is even used of God toward us. The psalmist speaks of him as being “an ever present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:11). Nor does Adam view Eve as something less than himself. His exclamation, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23) is an exclamation of equality and completeness—“This is part of me; now I’m all here!”

Equal In The Fall

Many hold that women deserve to be limited in the ministry because Eve was the first to yield to sin and then caused Adam to sin. In the account of the fall (Gen. 3) the Tempter tempts Eve who in turn tempts Adam to sin. Does that sequence of temptation make Eve guiltier than Adam? The Bible does not emphasize Eve’s causing the transgression of the whole female race; it places the blame squarely on Adam for the sin of both genders. 1 Corinthians 15:22 states, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,” and Romans 5 explains death as caused by the trespass of “the one man” (vv. 16–19).

“Agreed,” some respond, “but don’t forget 1 Timothy 2:14; ‘And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.’” Even Calvin argues that since woman had “seduced man from God’s commandment” it was only fitting that she be “deprived of all her freedom and placed under the yoke.”

But wait: that is not at all Paul’s point. This passage is so crucial we shall later exegete it more thoroughly; but his point here is not that Eve’s sin was greater than Adam’s. In fact, Adam’s was worse because he sinned with his eyes wide open, without being deceived! Eve’s fault, on the contrary, was less serious because she was deceived and only acted in ignorance.

Some argue that God directly decreed women’s submission to male and church authority as a result of the Fall. They cite Genesis 3:16: “To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Larry Christenson has even written that woman was created subordinate; the decree only increased her subordination. Yet Genesis presents this not as a decree of what ought to be but a curse because of sin. It is a description of what would happen. Man, now in a sinful, fallen state, has found it convenient to use his superior strength to dominate the physically weaker sex.

Equal In Christ

Many current books amply illustrate how our Lord consistently broke societal taboos relating to women. But of greater controversy is Paul’s teaching on women’s position “in Christ.” Although this seems patently obvious in Galatians 3:28, Paul, on superficial reading, then seems to contradict himself in other portions (1 Cor. 11; Eph. 5; 1 Tim. 2, etc.). A more careful analysis, however, shows that all of Paul’s teaching is consistent with the rest of Scripture.

In Galatians 3:26–28 Paul reminds us that we have all been baptized into Christ and there is no longer “Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”; for we are “all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul is speaking of three different dominant-submissive catagories, all of which have been nullified by our being baptized into and clothed with Christ. The baptized Greek, clothed with the all-sufficiency of Christ, is as much a son of God as is the previously preferred Jew. Similarly, the emancipated slave of early America, once clothed with Christ, met all qualifications for any church office—contrary to the convictions of many church teachers of that era. Any dissection of this passage that offers less to women than other categories would suggest a prejudiced exegesis. The passage goes on to affirm the purpose of Christ’s coming: “to redeem those under the law [Greek, slave, female] that we [all] might receive the full rights of sons” (v. 5).

The emphasis on women “in Christ” is also crucial to an understanding of 1 Corinthians 11:3–12. For brevity, I must avoid the temptation to explore the “head covering” principle in this passage. It will suffice to observe that women are permitted to pray or prophesy as long as they meet the cultural expectation of covering, showing they have the authority to do so. The reason for the covering seems to be spelled out in verses 8–10: woman came from man and was created for man. Yet Paul makes very clear that he does not mean that women are in any sense inferior. Immediately he adds: “In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman.” In other words, Paul is saying, “The first fact, that woman found her source in man, parallels the second fact that every man since (or, possibly, the man-Christ) has found his source in woman.” (See also 1 Tim. 2:15, to be discussed later).

Once again in Ephesians 5:22–24, woman’s position in Christ is emphasized. This is one of Paul’s five “hupotassō” passages, so named because of the Greek word used in each instance, translated, “submit” or “submission.” It is also used in 1 Corinthians 14:34; Colossians 3:18; 1 Timothy 2:11, and Titus 2:5. Although a full study of male/female roles would require a careful exegesis of all these passages, the present point of importance centers on the phrase “as to the Lord.” It is clear that Paul was not the first to tell women to submit to men: Jewish women had been taught submission for centuries. Paul, ever careful not to upset the delicate cultural fabric of his day, encouraged women to continue to submit. What is new is how they are to submit: as to the Lord.

Equal At Pentecost

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:17–18).

There is no record of women speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost—in fact, there is no record of women being present. Yet it is plain that as Peter quotes the prophet Joel on this occasion (Joel 2:28–29) he is admitting the possibility of spiritual messages by women. The term “last days” is never limited to Pentecost, but refers to all this present age. A “prophet” need not be a foreteller of future events, but is “a person gifted for the exposition of divine truth” (Harper’s Greek Lexicon). Ever since the Holy Spirit first came, he has been at liberty to impart his gifts to each person “just as he determines” (1 Cor. 12:11). Pentecost represents a divine sanction for prophetic ministry by women every bit as much as by men.

Equal In Society

“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him … Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect … Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands … Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives” (1 Peter 2:13–14, 18; 3:1, 7).

Peter makes an interesting point about the position of women. He argues that we as Christians should submit ourselves to every man-made institution, and goes on to list several of those authorities “instituted among men”—kings, governors, masters. Then in 1 Peter 3:1 he states that in the same way wives should submit to their husbands, because—it is implied—female submission is “instituted among men.”

In other words, Christians are expected to operate within the parameters placed around them by society. If slavery is an unchangeable part of the society, then servants are expected to obey their masters—until slavery is no longer “instituted among men.” As we earnestly seek a true biblical role for woman, God forbid that we withhold any gift he desires her to exercise for even one day longer than society requires!

Equal In Ministry

Even those who believe certain ministries must be restricted to men cannot help but notice that Paul is anything but chauvinistic toward women. Paul refers to Junia as “outstanding among the apostles” (Rom. 16:7). Of the 29 people Paul greets in Romans 16, many are women he addresses by name, contrary to Jewish custom: Phoebe, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Julia, Mary. He entrusted his letter to Rome to Phoebe, a task many of our churches would delegate only to men.

It has been argued that Paul’s injunction to women to keep silent in churches (1 Cor. 14:34–36) would prevent them from exercising the preaching gifts. However, he has already agreed that they can pray and prophesy publicly (1 Cor. 11:5). It is unreasonable to think he would contradict himself just a few sentences later. Rather, as in the other instructions in this same epistle, he directs his remark ad hoc to the specific situation in Corinth. In chapter 14 he admonishes the women to be quiet, not because it is wrong for women to speak out loud in a public service. (He has just told them that they may pray aloud and speak in a public worship service so long as they act modestly.) His purpose here is to remind them that “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (14:33), and that in the services “everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (14:40).

If anything, the passage reaffirms that Corinthian women knew they were now equal to their husbands before Christ and had every right to speak out in church (14:35). But they were misusing their newfound freedom by disrupting the services to get answers to their questions, and it was because of the disorder they were creating that Paul gives his counsel. Therefore, in the light of the situation at Corinth, he requires two things of them: first, they are to remain silent while in church and save their many questions to ask their better-informed husbands at home; Paul’s command not to speak in no way limits their previous license to pray or prophesy under normal circ*mstances. Second, Paul tells them to be in submission—not to their husbands, for the context does not suggest it here—but to the church body. Paul requests the same submission of the entire gathered church body at Ephesus: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21).

1 Timothy 2:11–12 presents a similar situation, and the apostle prescribes a similar remedy. “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” Corinthian women were speaking so as to create disorder in the worship service. In Ephesus, women who were uninstructed in the faith were leading the church into false doctrine.

In verse 11 most people wrongly assume that Paul’s emphasis is on silence and submission. Actually, Paul is emphatically commanding that women be taught (manthanetō is imperative). The quietness and “full submission” (again, to the church body or teacher) is what any teacher would ask of his pupils. Verse 12 is not stated imperatively; rather Paul returns to the indicative mood in the present tense. A legitimate rendering of 1 Timothy 2:11–12 thus would be: “I command that women learn [be taught] in quietness and full submission [to the teaching authority]” (v. 11). “I am [presently] not permitting a woman to teach and she is not to exert evil influence over a man” (v. 12).

Equal In The Diaconate

One could wish that the office of deacon (diakonos) had been carefully spelled out in the New Testament. The closest semblance to a job description appears in 1 Timothy 3:1–13, which initially seems to limit the office to men with marginal reference to their wives. Most commentators, however, exegete 1 Timothy 3:11 to refer to female deacons (technically not “deaconesses,” for it is a neutral term, like “teachers”). The absence of the article and the use of gunaikas may favor “women” over “wives”; F. F. Bruce suggests that “‘their wives’ (KJV, NEB) is probably to be rendered ‘women’ (RSV), that is, ‘women-deacons’.”

Only one N.T. woman is spoken of as a deacon, but the passage is significant. In Romans 16:1, Paul says, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea.” Paul uses the word diakonos, a masculine term with no article. Every other time it is used in the N.T., the KJV translates it either “deacon” (3 times) or “minister” (18 times). Only here is “servant” used. Whether it is necessary to confer the title “deacon” on Phoebe, one must concede that the burden of proof is on those who would translate the word “servant” in this passage while rendering it deacon or minister in every other passage.

Equal In Ruling

One is hard pressed to discover N.T. passages portraying women in ruling roles. Yet even at the risk of reading too much into the passage, we must once again observe Phoebe. Most significant in Romans 16:1–2 is not that Paul refers to her as a diakonos, but as a prostatis pollōn—which, if it were addressed to a man, would probably be translated “ruler of many.”

The verb, proistēmi, occurs eight times in the N.T. and usually connotes governing or ruling. In Romans 12:8, Paul states that if one’s gift is “leadership, let him govern diligently.” In 1 Thessalonians 5:12, Paul mentions those “who are over you in the Lord.” Twice Paul tells Timothy that an elder should manage (KJV. “rule”) his family well (1 Tim. 3:4–5) and sets the same requirements for deacons in verse 12. Finally, he recommends double honor for those elders “who direct the affairs of the church well” (1 Tim. 5:17). In the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Reike concludes his article on Proistēmi: “In I Timothy again, where the verb and especially the participle occur repeatedly, the idea of guiding and caring are both present.… In all these instances, however, the verb has in the N.T. the primary sense of both ‘to lead’ and ‘to care for’ …”

Yet when this same word in feminine form is used of Phoebe it is translated “a great help” (Rom. 16:2). Indeed, the variety of English renderings may indicate the biased reluctance of translators to admit what Paul wished to say—“succourer” (KJV), “helper” (NASB), “assistant” (Berkeley), “good friend” (Good News, NEB), “given protection” (Williams). But Paul presented her as “leader,” “governor,” or “manager.”

Look again at 1 Timothy 2:11–15. This greatly misunderstood passage is imbedded in a context of five sections dealing with false teaching. Consequently these words to women fall in a context (historically as well as literally) of rampantly deceptive and maliciously clever false teaching. The immediate context also is usually misinterpreted. As noted earlier, “be taught” is the imperative, and the focus of the passage is on the danger of misconstrued and ill-informed Christians taking the lead in teaching and guiding the church. Verses 11 and 12, therefore, deal with the importance of adequate preparation, and the need to guard against an excessive dependence upon emotional wiles of uninstructed women in influencing the church for false doctrine.

Verse 13 directs us to an illustration from the story of the first man and his new bride. The Greek gar, for, is not causative but explanatory and illustrative—so, as we can see in the creation story, new and ignorant believers are easily led astray and, if allowed to teach others, will also lead them astray. Eve’s fault, quite to the point of Paul’s instruction to the women of Ephesus, was that she should not have taught Adam because she was in ignorance, being deceived herself. Hence, careful and extended instruction in quietness and submission to the teaching authority is essential for anyone (and any woman) who would teach.

The word often translated “have authority over” (v. 13) reinforces what we have just noted. The word is translated by such terms as murder, perpetrate, author, master, domineer, or hold absolute sway over. The word was considered vulgar and almost invariably was used in a bad sense. Thus Berkeley Mickelsen writes, “It is found in contexts and used of those who are authors or originators of evil action. It is found in unsavory sexual contexts. So the translation have authority over is really far too polite. Here a woman is not to be teaching or using the wrong kind of emotional or sexual pressure over a man to dominate him.”

The force of this entire passage cannot rightly be applied to women as women but to women as ignorant and uninstructed people employing unworthy means to influence the church. By contrast it ought to be applied to the frequent practice, directly proscribed in Scripture, of exalting novices to dominant roles in the church, with disastrous results for the entire body.

Finally, observe one more facet of 1 Timothy 2:12. Some interpreters, basing their view wholly on the King James Version, take the verse to mean that teaching a man and having authority over a man are linked together, and are both wrong for women. But the structure of the verse does not imply that the teaching is limited to men. The literal Greek sentence structure would be something like this: “But to teach, a woman I do not permit, nor to exercise authority of [over] a man but to be in silence.”

In the context to which the apostle addresses himself, teaching of any kind is no more acceptable for a woman than having authority over a man. If one is wrong, they both are wrong! It is more rationalization than exegesis to excuse present practice by limiting the prohibition to teaching at public assemblies of the church or where men are present.

If expediency permits us to let a woman exercise the gift of teaching, we can do no less than let her exercise the gift of ruling. In both cases she is merely exercising the authority of her gifts, not her sex. However, if on the grounds of this verse she cannot exercise authority over men, then let us at once remove every female teacher from our departments, recall every female missionary, and denounce books written by women. But such is not the meaning of this verse when it is interpreted in context.

Therefore, in faithfulness to the teaching of the whole of Scripture, let us permit women to exercise both teaching and authority to the fullest extent of their gifts without unbiblical restrictions based on sex.

The right to ordain women does not mean they must be ordained.

In north america, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe, two new issues have arisen to trouble the church: (1) the role of women in church leadership, and (2) the role of women in the home. Evangelicals are deeply troubled and divided over questions posed by the modern women’s liberation movement. The appeal for justice for women strikes a responsive chord in our hearts. We believe in full justice for all and in the full equality of every person before God.

We acknowledge that women have been discriminated against; they have not always stood equal before the law; they have suffered physical abuse. They also have been injured in more subtle ways by egotistic males. A double standard in sexual ethics and in marital fidelity still prevails. Few men are aware of how easy it is to read the morning paper while their wives are busy at arduous household chores. Wrong patterns of male dominance flow from selfishness and sin.

Yet along with the influence of the women’s liberation movement and the general desire to promote complete social and economic equality of men and women, our families have suffered, some of our children have been deprived, and family life in general has deteriorated. These matters are not unrelated.

In addition, we acknowledge the Bible as our final authority in these concerns. What it says on these topics is supremely important; it speaks forthrightly about men and women in both church and home. We have the uneasy feeling that some Christians who interpret the Scriptures to support various objectives of women’s liberation are really being molded by a modern cultural (and American) trend that warps their understanding of the text. They are so pressured by the surrounding culture that they are unable to see clearly and apply honestly what Scripture really teaches. Their thinking has not been shaped by the pure Word of God, but perhaps by the fear of being old-fashioned, or of not being “with it,” or of bringing the gospel into disrepute in our excessively egalitarian society.

To us the Bible is clear regarding the role of women in the church. The apostle Paul explicitly instructs us that in Christ there is no difference between male and female (Gal. 3:28). Addressing a special problem relating to women participating in church meetings at Corinth, he rules that if a woman dresses decorously, she may then both pray and prophesy (1 Cor. 11). In context, these ministries of women cannot possibly be restricted to children, or to women only, or even to private gatherings in the home. Paul’s instructions are for the assembly of the church in Corinth. Accordingly, in the church at Ephesus, Priscilla is as free as her husband to instruct Apollos in the faith (Acts 18:26).

It is true that Paul also instructs women to be silent in the church (1 Cor. 14). But we must not try to draw the full doctrine of women in the church from a single passage. In the past, heresies have arisen because someone planted himself on a single verse, drew what he considered to be the logical implication of that verse, and ignored the larger body of Scripture. We must be guided by the whole teaching of Scripture (not by Scripture as a whole, but by the whole as the integrated sum of all its parts). 1 Corinthians 14 must be understood in light of 1 Corinthians 11. When Paul addressed the issue of tongues speaking, he spoke directly to the problem of the moment. In the specific matter of speaking in tongues, untaught women were breaking the peace by causing disturbances and disrupting the worship. He warned them to keep quiet and to ask their questions of their husbands at home. Women may speak, pray, and preach in the church; but where this creates a problem, either by their abuse of the privilege or for any other reason (such as custom), they are not to disturb the peace of the church.

Similarly, according to 1 Timothy 2:11 and 12, the apostle is concerned about immature, ill-taught Christians who, by unskilled and sometimes false teaching, were making the church a helpless prey to heresy. In that specific context he insists that women must not teach (men or anyone else). Both there and in 1 Corinthians 14, if we were to universalize these prohibitions, we would extend the passages beyond the scope the apostle intended. It would conflict with other Scriptures, Paul’s own clear statement in Corinthians, and his general teaching.

Of course, the right to ordain women does not mean that women must be ordained for every church ministry. Just as we deem it unwise to assign women to front-line trenches in time of war, so we may choose not to commission women to a similar role as chaplains. In some cultures women might prove ineffective for certain tasks. But where a woman can be effective in Christ’s service, she must not be barred because of her sex.

Further, we do not believe that a church body should be required to ordain women. Denominations that raise to a test of orthodoxy the requirement that women be ordained are going beyond the Word of God and are wrong.

Of course, if a candidate for the ministry believed women are inferior beings or that their religious experience is necessarily less than a man’s, that would present a different problem. But no teachings like these are at issue. While agreeing to the full personal and spiritual equality of men and women, some evangelicals believe Scripture teaches that women should not be ordained to the teaching ministry. We respect their position. They are not arguing for selfish gain or on the basis of male pride. At considerable personal cost, they are holding to their view solely because they are convinced it is the teaching of Scripture. And they have most of the Christian church across the centuries on their side. We believe they fail to see exactly the total thrust of Scripture in this matter, but for a denomination to refuse to ordain evangelicals on such grounds is spiritual arrogance.

The role of women in the home is more difficult to determine, because of the interlacing of Scripture and cultural patterns both ancient and modern. We agree that the Greek word sometimes translated head ordinarily means source and not leader (see p. 20). Therefore, we must not infer from the English word “head” in 1 Corinthians 11:3 that the husband is the ruler of his household. On the other hand, the principle of representative headship pervades the whole of Scripture so thoroughly, and is applied so frequently to the husband in the family, that we are compelled to reaffirm the traditional biblical view of the husband as the head of the house. As F. F. Bruce notes: Scripture does draw a parallel between Christ as Lord of the church and the role of the husband in the family. Obviously this comparison suggests no identity of role between Christ and the husband, but only an analogy. We must apply it with great caution; we must learn the exact meaning for the husband from what Scripture itself tells us. It is wrong for a husband to dominate his wife; he is not her boss; she is not his servant (though we are servants of Christ).

Scripture defines the husband’s role in other terms: he is to love his wife, to care for her, to see that she is provided for. He is to rule his own household, though clearly this must be a rule of equals (unlike Christ’s rule over us). In modern application his role is better understood as that of the executive chairman of the family. We cannot assume that the husband is always superior in administrative skills, or in intelligence (often he is not). But we do insist that Christians follow a prearranged order that delivers a family from internal rivalry and jockeying for position, and instead makes for peace and order within the family circle. For this to happen, the wife’s obedience and respect for her husband are also essential.

The scriptural analogy between Christ and the husband is not only complex, but its application to people in diverse cultures is even more difficult. Where love is lacking, the husband’s headship can descend to tyranny. But where true love abounds, the wife is dignified and God’s order is both a protection and a blessing to husband and wife, and to their children. They become models of the Christian’s oneness with, and submission to, Jesus Christ as Lord.

It has been 56 years since a 25-year-old biology teacher named John T. Scopes lost his right to teach the theory of evolution in a Dayton, Tennessee, public school. But although fundamentalist Christians won the day, they lost the war. It was inevitable, because the country is too deeply committed to the principle of academic freedom for one group to be able to banish an unwelcome idea.

In the creation-evolution debate, the shoe is now on the other foot. In state after state, science teachers have begun teaching the scientific aspects of creationism alongside evolution. Last year, at least 11 state legislatures were dealing with legislation designed to guarantee, or at least to permit, the practice to continue. Scientists who maintain faith in evolution—and that is the vast majority of them—are contemptuous. They are not willing to face creationism on its merits, but want to stop the arguments for it from reaching public school students.

Some of their statements are strikingly unscientific: “It is a dangerous view,” said Wayne A. Moyer, executive director of the National Association of Biology Teachers. “There is not one shred of evidence to indicate any scientific basis for the creationist view. They have the big truth and are trying to give it to everyone else. It is the big lie.”

How can creationism be dangerous? If it is presented as science in the classroom alongside evolution, and there is no evidence for it, it will fall of its own weight. And serious creationists wish to do nothing more than that: to present it alongside evolution in a two-model approach.

W. Scott Morrow is an associate professor of chemistry at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His expertise is biogenesis, that is, the origin of life. He identifies himself as an evolutionist and a non-Christian. In a letter to the state biology teacher’s association, he wrote: “The balanced treatment for scientific creationism and evolution is a reasonable alternative to the current state of affairs for one powerful reason: students would have available a realistic set of options to explore, discuss, evaluate, and if they so choose, from which to select a personal answer to the problem of the origin of life.” Would that such a clear understanding of scientific principles and of responsible academic freedom be heard from some of the more prominent dwelling places in the scientific community.

The fundamentalist Christians of the last generation found they could not obliterate a disagreeable idea simply by having it banned from academic discussion. The evolutionists of today should learn from that experience.

Evangelical Soap Opera, Or, Who Taught J.L.?

The current excitement over television dramatic serials has prompted one of my publishers to suggest that I write a similar serial—for another publisher. It must be evangelical, of course, and deal with the burning issues of our day. I have accepted the challenge.

My story centers on the Reverend Dr. Jeroboam Liddon (call him Ishmael for short), the senior (and only) minister of the Little Church Next to the Sewer on the north side of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I seek to answer the burning question: Can a bankrupt, middle-aged, evangelical minister, who has forgotten all his Hebrew, honestly use “The Four Spiritual Laws”?

The story opens in Jeroboam’s kitchen where the minister is severely reprimanding his Saint Bernard, Tinker Bell, for burying the neighbor’s Toyota. Tinker Bell slinks under the sink, gets caught in the dispose-all mechanism, and is flushed down the drain. At that point, Mrs. Liddon enters.

“Jeroboam!” she shouts. “Why aren’t you in your study preparing spiritual nourishment for your flock? Tomorrow is Sunday!”

Slinking past the sink and his wife, Jeroboam goes to his study; but in his nervousness, he knocks down his shelf of Kittel. This triggers a scene of wild confusion in German, as Liddon throws books all over the room. “Sermons!” he shouts. “Always sermons!”

Hearing the commotion, Mrs. Liddon comes to the door and is seriously beaned by volume II of Edersheim. As the volume (and the woman) fall to the floor, a piece of paper flutters out from the book. Jeroboam picks it up.

“My dear, do you know what you have found?” he cries. “This is a savings bond worth thousands of dollars!”

His wife slowly gets to her feet and takes the paper from his hand. “Don’t be a dunce,” she moans. “This is a Chrysler stock certificate.

The picture fades as both fall to the floor and the paper sails into the kitchen where it drops into the dispose-all and disappears.

EUTYCHUS X

A Bright Beacon

Your editorial, “The Difference CT Means to Make” [Jan. 2], achieves a high crescendo. Yes, “Christians across the land are looking for leadership.” One of the foremost qualities of a good leader is a sound sense of direction. Sharp delineation of key guides in this article provides every committed believer with bright beacons for facing into the crucial problems before our church and nation in the years just ahead.

CHARLES W. JAMISON

Santa Barbara‚ Calif.

I don’t really know for which Christians CT is written. Your editorial leads me to believe it is written for an all-encompassing audience. For me, it is good when you cover a subject from the technical point of view and from the point of view of the pastors in the trenches. For example, “It’s Time to Excise the p*rnographic Cancer” hit it from one side, and “One Town Made a Clean Sweep of p*rnographic Films: Here’s How” from the other. I can go right to the “practical” article and read it quickly. Then, if I need the more technical view, I can flip over to it.

REV. RUDY MASON

Loomis, Nebr.

Thinking Rationally

I hope that Dr. Outler [“Loss of the Sacred,” Jan. 2] is not equating “linear” and rational thought. While I hope it’s Theodore Roszak’s definition and Dr. Outler’s, it also happens to be the definition that has gotten many a Western missionary in trouble when dealing with thought patterns of African or Asian minds. Regrettably, our Aristotelian bias tends to show through—suggesting that unless sequential logic prevails there can be no order.

If such definitions were valid, we’d be hard pressed to deal with such biblical incidents as visions, the work of the Spirit, and a host of nonlinear yet perfectly rational communication forms God has chosen to use.

PHILLIP BUTLER

Seattle, Wash.

Deeper Issues

While I do not want to deemphasize the importance of the presentation by ORU professor Charles Farah and the “faith formula” teaching controversy [Dec. 12], this was not the only thing—or even the major thing—the SPS [Society for Pentecostal Studies] meeting was about. SPS members seem unified in opposition against “faith formula” teaching; the Farah paper thus did not symbolize tensions withinSPS. More important, mention should be made of what is happening within the organization itself.

There is a struggle for recognition by blacks and Hispanics. The installation of Dr. Ithiel Clemmons as the new SPS president makes him only the second black president in its history; he is a bishop in the Church of God in Christ.

There is a serious battle taking place between representatives of the classical white Trinitarian bodies, who belong to the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, and representatives of charismatic “Oneness,” and black/Hispanic bodies, who can only be associate members of SPS if they sign the PFNA doctrinal pledge. The SPS appointed a committee to study the matter and bring back a possible recommendation to open full membership to all Pentecostals and charismatics at the next meeting.

Intraevangelical issues such as the inerrancy debate, the social dimension of the gospel, political activism, and the relationship of tongues speaking to a postconversion experience or as evidential “proof” of such experience, are also creative tensions within SPS.

In addition, the Tulsa conference was marked by two other significant items: the nonappearance of Oral Roberts or any member of the Roberts family at any of the SPS sessions; and a lengthy and rousing debate between Pentecostals supporting the new wave of “born-again” conservative politics, and those opposed to identifying Christian faith with conservative politics.

JAMES S. TINNEY

Howard University

Washington, D.C.

Community Action

“One Town Made a Clean Sweep of p*rnographic Films” [Jan. 2] brought to mind how La Mirada, California, prevented a p*rnographic bookstore from being established. Less than one year ago one of the largest purveyors of p*rnographic literature in the United States attempted to occupy one of our city’s satellite shopping centers. The city resisted in a number of ways, a few of which were: (1) not granting the occupancy permit of the proposed store site; (2) turning off the electric power; (3) imposing stringent code enforcement. I am convinced this bookstore was prevented by an overwhelming outpouring of community resistance, coupled with swift and appropriate city response. While the bookstore did not find its way into La Mirada, a very solid, carefully worded antip*rnography ordinance did!

C. DAVID PETERS

Councilman

La Mirada, Calif.

Transatlantic Viewpoint

There is absolutely no electronic church in Britain, virtually none in Australia, and indeed very little in all of Europe—by government decree. In such an atmosphere, reading your article made us long for the U.S. situation where an electronic church can exist. Trans World Radio at Monte Carlo and Radio Luxembourg, where occasional time is on sale, are two stations which are kings—because in a land where no one has a nose, a man with a nose becomes king!

Unlike America where most programs are geared to Christians, there are programs here which reach completely pagan listeners. I am left wondering if our American friends know that there are parts of the world where radio is front-line evangelism and that it never makes any money for the broadcaster.

REV. ERIC HUTCHINGS

Hour of Revival Association

Sussex, England

A Preference Declared

It seems so terribly true to form that the National Council of Churches is setting about to conform Christ to culture or to exorcise from Scripture all that they perceive to be “sexist, racist, classist, and anti-Semitic” [News, Jan. 2]. If I had to choose, I should prefer George Burns, whose Americanization of God is done with better humor, and with at least a modicum of tongue in cheek.

JOHN OLIVER

Malone College

Canton, Ohio

Ambiguous Text

You imply that Psalm 68:11 has been translated with a male bias because the Hebrew is “explicitly feminine.” Hebrew nouns that are grammatically feminine do not necessarily refer to feminine persons or objects. Closely parallel to Psalm 68:11 is Ecclesiastes 1:1, where the feminine participle gohelet (“the preacher”) refers to a man. In translating Psalm 68:11, “Great was the company of those that published the word of the Lord” (not specifying men or women), the KJV has left an ambiguous text ambiguous in translation. The RSV and NIV rightly do the same thing.

WAYNE GRUDEM

Bethel College

Saint Paul, Minn.

Exonerating Lewis

Your review of They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963) [Jan. 2] says that “sensitive” parts of the letters were deleted by Lewis himself and restored by the editor, Walter Hooper. However, Hooper states in his note that the deletions were made by Arthur Greeves, not by Lewis.

REV. DAVID DEVORE

Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Carbondale, Ill.

True Social Gospel

Why are you taking up so much space in CHRISTIANITY TODAY for social issues?

Before I was saved, I belonged to five liberal churches and they all talked about the social gospel, but I never saw that they practiced it. They taught me how to dance, drink, smoke, go to nightclubs, shows, and so on. When I got converted at the age of 19, I met God’s people who believed in the Book, the blood and the blessed hope. They took me to the rescue missions where I dealt with dope addicts and drunkards. They took me to prisons where I had the privilege of winning to Christ rapists, murderers, robbers, and so on. Isn’t this the real social gospel? Haven’t God’s people always been zealous of good works?

Let’s not get caught in the trap that the liberals have something to offer us in their so-called social gospel. While they are talking about it, let’s keep doing it.

JACK WYRTZEN

Word of Life

Schroon Lake, N.Y.

A major goal of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to provide a forum in which evangelicals can work out solutions for current problems facing the church. Evangelical leaders can make better decisions and serve the church better if they are informed. Too often decision makers are sincere people, thoroughly committed to Christ and his church, who do not possess information necessary for good decisions; and the church suffers accordingly. Wise leaders must know both the clear teaching of Holy Scripture and the reality of the world in which they wish to apply divine instruction. CHRISTIANITY TODAY therefore seeks to provide articles on what the Bible teaches about subjects currently troubling the church. We do not consciously avoid even the most sticky issues on which Scripture speaks. We also wish to help church leaders understand the world in which we must all live and work so they can apply the Word of God more effectively to the difficult problems of our day.

In this issue, we explore a controversy that deeply troubles and sharply divides the evangelical church: the leadership of women. Some who claim to be evangelicals defend the right of women to teach in the church, but reject Scriptures they believe set forth the opposite. In so doing, they jeopardize the basic evangelical principle of the complete and final authority of the Bible. Some evangelicals, fully committed to the authority of Scripture, interpret these passages as addressed to a particular cultural situation, but fail to show how to distinguish the culturally relevant from the universally binding. Still others acknowledge these passages as directly applicable to the church everywhere, but sometimes do not show how this can be intermeshed with the equally clear teaching of Scripture on the freedom of the Christian woman.

Readers may be interested in how we selected the authors for our major pro and con articles. We inquired far and wide for the evangelical scholar who had written most knowledgeably on this topic. Again and again we were pointed to Dr. George Knight. Then we discovered a fine monograph by Dr. Austin Stouffer defending quite a different view. We believe the two articles here will not merely stimulate you, but will help your understanding of Scripture and how it may be faithfully applied to a vexing problem in the church of our day.

The editorial presupposes that you will have read these articles. Much is at stake and evangelical convictions run deep and strong. But more than anything else, an evangelical wants to obey Jesus Christ and his written Word. My prayer is that the articles may help us to do just that.

When evangelist Billy Graham arrived in Cracow, Poland, in October 1978, to preach at Saint Ann’s Roman Catholic Church, he was to have been hosted by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. The cardinal, however, was out of town getting elected Pope. Both spiritual leaders have been wanting to meet each other ever since.

After short visits to Poland and Hungary last month, the evangelist dropped by the Vatican and spoke privately with John Paul II in his library for half an hour. “We are brothers,” said the Pope in welcoming Graham. Both declined to divulge details of their conversation, but an official release said they talked about “inter-church relations, the emergence of evangelicalism, evangelization, and Christian responsibility towards modern moral issues, in light of values of the gospel.”

“We had a spiritual time,” Graham told a press conference later in London. “He is so down-to-earth and human, I almost forgot he was the Pope.”

Their visit was cut short by the Pope’s busy schedule. Prior to the meeting with Graham, he received diplomats from 60 nations and issued a call for the world’s leaders to work for peace. It was a note Graham had sounded in his meetings with government and religious leaders in Poland and Hungary.

The evangelist had been invited to those countries to receive honorary doctor of theology degrees. They were conferred by the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw, the only Protestant university-level theological school in Poland, and the Reformed Theological Academy of Debrecen, Hungary, reputedly the oldest Protestant seminary in the world (it was founded in 1538).

Graham was the first American to be so honored by the Warsaw institution and only the seventh non-Pole in its history to receive an honorary doctorate. (Unlike most American universities, European schools issue honorary degrees sparingly, and only to persons deemed worthy of highest honors.)

In both instances, the degrees were given in recognition of Graham’s ministry and interest in the respective countries. He preached to an open-air crowd of 10,000 and held other meetings in Hungary in 1977, and in 1978 he preached to large crowds in both Catholic and Protestant churches in six Polish cities.

Graham deftly avoided choosing sides in Poland’s internal crisis during last month’s visit there, but he did refer to the nation’s troubles several times publicly and in talks with government and religious leaders. “It is not my intention,” he said, “to intrude in your domestic political affairs: you and you alone must work out solutions.” He said he was “praying that the voices of reconciliation, common sense, and responsible moderation would prevail.”

The evangelist gave major addresses on the church’s mission in the world today to leadership audiences in both countries. He focused on two themes: proclamation and service. Part of the Christian’s service to God and man, he declared, is to work for peace. Among other things, that means working to end the arms race. He did say, however, that he believes in multilateral negotiated disarmament, not unilateral arms reduction. (Sources close to Graham say that Senator Mark Hatfield has influenced Graham’s recent thinking on the arms issue.)

Graham kept returning to an evangelistic theme. War, hate, and greed originate in the heart of man, he declared, “and that is why proclamation of the gospel is so important: man must be born again, he needs a new heart.”

Ramsey, Graham Cambridge Bout Is Gloves-On Affair

The Cambridge University Church of Great Saint Mary’s was packed last month for a dialogue between American evangelist Billy Graham and former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. Each spoke briefly on the subject of “the church’s mission in the eighties,” and a wide measure of agreement was evident between the Southern Baptist and the high church Anglican as they spoke of mission in terms of proclamation and service.

“A caring Christian fellowship,” Lord Ramsey pointed out, “is not only a corollary of proclamation, but a necessary part of it.” In the nicest way, the 76-year-old exprimate pointed out with twinkling eye that the kingdom of God was not “a kind of sanctified American way of life,” and added that he knew Billy was helping people out of that fallacy. Ramsey expressed misgivings also about those who use the formula “the Bible says …” for God used a great variety of literary forms in revealing his truth.

Both speakers spoke strongly on the need to achieve peace in a troubled world. During a period of questions from the floor, Graham outlined his attitude toward those of other faiths. He conceded that an element of truth is found in all religions, but he ruled out any form of Christian syncretism, pointing out the uniqueness of Christ as declared in Acts 4:12.

At one point Lord Ramsey asked Billy Graham if he had found his theological understanding changing during his evangelistic career. Graham admitted that in the early 1950s he tended to identify American nationalism with Christian understanding, but he stressed that his essential message has been unchanged.

On the subject of the World Council of Churches, Graham asked Ramsey if he thought the evangelistic emphasis found at Amsterdam and New Delhi had been maintained. Ramsey replied that while the council had been characterized originally by German theology, Dutch bureaucracy, and American money, it had directed Christian interest into a wider world, and into thinking that the Third World was nearer the center of Christianity than we are. “In doing so,” he commented, “it involved itself in social issues more and more, and in evangelism less and less.”

Billy Graham saw in the WCC a lack of emphasis on the atoning work of Christ, and a certain ambiguity of language. He reminded his hearers that John Mott, father of the modern ecumenical movement, had asked to be remembered as an evangelist.

In closing the 100-minute meeting. Great Saint Mary’s vicar Michael Mayne called it a “marvelous irenic occasion.”

For Billy Graham, it was the last leg of a 24-day journey that had taken him to Poland, Hungary, the Vatican, and (two days earlier) the Royal Albert Hall, London, where he participated with Christian pop singer Cliff Richard in celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Crusade magazine, founded after the evangelist’s first long campaign in Britain.

J. D. DOUGLAS

South Africa

Independent Black Churches On Their Own Again

The Reformed Independent Churches Association (RICA) had a thriving theological college for training pastors and church leaders. Now it finds its college, the South African Theological College for Independent Churches (SATCIC), the center of a messy controversy involving the South African Council of Churches (an affiliate of the World Council of Churches) and the Christian League of South Africa, a quasi-religious, political organization that has been financed by the former South African Department of Information. Association members have therefore removed themselves from the fray and plan to start all over.

Their story has a long history. RICA was formed by a group of fundamentalist black churches, independent of any mission society. The association members, now numbering some 864 churches with a membership of 2.5 million, were concerned about the lack of sound theological education at an advanced level available to their black pastors and church leaders. The association decided to set up its own school to train pastors and leaders for its churches.

Financing the school was a problem, however, so the association contacted the South African Council of Churches for help. This was readily forthcoming. The school was established at an SACC-owned mission property, Saint Ansgars, west of Johannesburg. Under the leadership of Bishop Isaac Mokoena, it was evidently well on its way.

RICA got something other than what it bargained for. SACC preaches a black liberation theology, which, in South Africa, stands more for political liberation of black people than for spiritual liberation. In fact, a former teacher at the school and RICA executive member, who prefers to remain unnamed, found that most of his students had not experienced salvation, and were not even from RICA-affiliated churches.

How did RICA get itself into such a situation? The same teacher remarks, “Though RICA pastors preach a gospel of salvation by grace through faith, they don’t know much more than that about theology. They know what they don’t want: the patronizing domination of white missions. But beyond that they are easily swayed.”

In this situation, RICA found itself no further ahead in the matter of providing sound theological training for pastors.

At this point RICA fades out of the picture and the SACC and the Christian League—arch enemies—begin to take center stage, apparently played off against each other by the wily Bishop Mokoena.

Besides being college president, Mokoena was also director of church development and on the executive for the SACC. During 1979, he was suspended from both his director’s post and the SACC executive for misappropriating funds.

The SACC took Mokoena to court over his mishandling of funds, but the case was thrown out. The judge called Desmond Tutu, general secretary of the SACC, a “vague, evasive, and contradictory witness who wanted to place his colleague in a bad light.”

The general feeling among staff of the college, however, is that the charge was valid. More than once, they said, their salaries were not paid on time or in full. Yet they knew of the generous grants, the transportation money, and the building funds that church leaders received from Mokoena. They say he had no way of ladling out such grants other than by siphoning off money from his church development department or from the college.

“Mokoena didn’t benefit himself personally with SACC funds,” says the RICA executive member and former SATCIC teacher. “But with these handouts, he managed to keep a large following of loyal church leaders at his side.”

At the time of his suspension from the SACC posts, Mokoena also appropriated the college. In defiance of the SACC and without the knowledge of RICA, he moved the college from Saint Ansgars to space rented from an African Methodist Episcopal school in Evaton, a black township southwest of Johannesburg. Then, since money was no longer available from the SACC, he set about finding funds for the school from other sources.

That is where the Christian League comes in. The league calls itself evangelical. It is strongly anti-liberation theology and pro-government. It has mounted a fund-raising campaign on behalf of SATCIC, saying that, “… the future witness [of the gospel] among blacks in this land lies with these people and others like them.”

What is not very clear is this: Is the Christian League unaware of the bishop’s and the school’s stand on liberation theology? Or has the bishop set aside his liberation theology in order to raise funds?

According to the RICA executive member and former SATCIC teacher, the Christian League must be aware of the bishop’s stand on liberation theology, because, he says, “I personally confronted Fred Shaw, director of the league, with this issue not long ago.” He added, “Bishop Mokoena is a great compromiser. He will preach the gospel of the highest bidder.”

Furthermore, though the Christian League is raising funds on behalf of RICA, it seems unaware that RICA has broken with Bishop Mokoena and SATCIC.

RICA is now making plans to reestablish a theological college that will be truly independent. And it plans to be more selective in seeking donors.

KARIN JOHANSSON

North American Scene

The Unification Church announced the mass engagement of 843 couples during a ceremony in New York presided over by the church’s head, Sun Myung Moon. Many of the participants were strangers until they met their intended spouses on the day of the ceremony. The church says Moon has married 3,300 couples since 1960, with a divorce rate of under 5 percent; they note that arranged marriages have been practiced in various parts of the world for centuries. The engagements took place on New Year’s Day, which is celebrated in the Unification Church as “God’s Day,” one of the church’s two holiest days of the year.

Those wondering how much attention people really pay to witchcraft and the occult might consider this: in 1980, there were 208,302 buyers of the Handbook of Supernatural Powers, which gives directions for casting spells; 91,846 people bought the Magic Power of Witchcraft at $9.98 each; and there are 16,842 members of the Circle of Mystic and Occult Arts Bookclub, which is owned by the Prentice-Hall publishing company. In addition, some 86,000 people paid $8.40 each for genie-in-the-bottle good luck charms, and 339,660 people subscribed to horoscope services, paying between $4 and $10 each. The available mailing lists of names of people involved in the occult now stands at 3.8 million.

Romania

The Footing Is Precarious, But Church Inches Ahead

Correspondent Alan Scarfe, who lived in Romania for two years, filed this report after a return visit last October. He is executive secretary of the Orange, California-based Society for the Study of Religion Under Communism.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY news reports occasionally are read with passion by officials in Communist countries. I discovered this during a recent family trip to Romania. The authorities were obviously aware of our presence. They provided a secret escort during our five-day drive through the country. (I now hear of interrogations of those suspected of having had contact with us.)

Two policemen visited our hotel room in Cluj one morning to make inquiries about “certain irregularities.” They escorted me to the local passport office, a deserted suite of rooms downtown. I was politely asked to leave and was told that we would never be allowed to return to Romania. When I asked to know the basis for the decision, I was told that my writings reflected an unreal perspective on the state of religious freedom in the country and therefore was no longer welcome. I replied that rather than risk confirming a person in his alleged misconceptions, the better course of action would be to invite him to see reality more often. They were unimpressed by my argument.

Three years have produced noticeable change. Since 1977 there has been an increasing degree of evangelistic activity, centered in the evangelical churches. Western preachers, too, have become a more common sight. We saw several new churches, opened without authorization by congregations willing to pay large fines to retain possession of their buildings. And we heard of the unauthorized opening of 48 Baptist churches, closed since 1960.

But each change creates new problems. Evangelism has greatly enlarged the congregation of Bucharest’s Mihai Bravu Baptist Church to 800 persons in a building designed for only 300. I preached to a packed congregation sweltering in its own heat at the onset of winter. While the threat of demolition hangs over the building, the authorities give no indication that they will grant permission for relocation. The church looks to Western support to assist it in getting the ear of President Nicolae Ceausescu, since that tactic has proved successful for other churches in similar straits.

The increase in conversions among young people also creates a need for deeper training in discipleship. The Baptist Seminary is limited for the next few years to a reduced new student quota (ostensibly for building code reasons), and the lack of trained leaders will hinder the maturing of the work in the 1980s. Already the dropout rate among young converts is reported to be high. The 1970 gains could, without adequate pastoral programs, be lost in the 1980s.

Emigration of prominent and potential leaders compounds this problem. Emigration is a hot issue for the churches and missions in Eastern Europe today. A number of missionaries who advocate nonemigration may be deluded about how they would react under the same stresses.

Some emigration is encouraged by outsiders. The deplorable aspect of this practice is that the invitees typically are then abandoned by their hosts to make it alone in a land both spiritually and culturally strange.

But many leave because of the hidden realities of daily life in Romanian society. Most are concerned for the future of their children. In a country where nine university faculties—journalism, law, internal law, psychology, education, sociology, economics, philosophy, and history—are closed to believers, such a preoccupation is not surprising. Many of those now coming to the United States are professional people who fought hard to obtain their visas. They knew they might never achieve equivalent status in the U.S., but wished to give their children that opportunity in freedom. A select few have been secretly expelled because of their key activities as believers in Romania. Others are simply tired of fighting and want to settle down.

Emigration is a threat to the churches, but it also represents a danger to the state’s international image, for it reflects the harsh realities of daily life for Romanian believers. Emigrant Romanians are locating near political spheres of influence in the United States, and this cannot be good news for the Romanian government. There is evidence that for this reason the Romanian secret police have intensified supervision of emigrés, and, as one Romanian told me in Bucharest, now have as good a listening post in the West as in Romania itself.

Surveillance continues internally, with three areas of special concern. The first is the Christian Committee for the Defense of Religious Freedom (ALRC). Though several times forced to change leadership, the committee still puts out regular monitoring reports of religious discrimination. Its most recent leading spokesmen, Radu Capusan and Dimitrie Ianculovici, are due to emigrate soon. Ianculovici, along with other committee members, was beaten during the winter into renouncing his membership in the committee. Ianculovici is nevertheless actively involved in gathering support for Orthodox priest Gheorghe Calciu, who is seriously ill and serving the second year of his 10-year sentence.

The committee’s growing link with nonevangelical causes is the second area of government concern. In October a small group of young Orthodox priests was held for questioning in Bucharest after being caught petitioning on behalf of Calciu. As long as Calciu remains in prison, he will serve as a catalyst among Orthodox youth and as an embarrassment to apologists for the “Romanian solution” between the Orthodox church and the Romanian government.

Two of Calciu’s associates, Gheorghe Brasoveanu and Ioan Cana, jailed in 1978 for their participation in a free trade union, have now been pardoned. But there are no indications that Calciu will be released. It is possible that he is resisting pressure to emigrate. His reemergence in Orthodox circles could serve as a potent stimulus to his young admirers. It is clear that his spirit has not been broken, though he is critically ill. He went on a nearly fatal hunger strike for three weeks prior to the November Helsinki review conference in Madrid.

The third area of concern is emigration. While the authorities are glad to see the backs of certain citizens, this is not so for everyone. Since last April, more than a dozen believers of Pentecostal and Baptist persuasion have been imprisoned for several months after they requested emigration papers and announced their intentions abroad. There is no pattern discernible in the authorities’ actions, which we must assume are often determined by local conditions. Certainly to appeal abroad for help, especially through Radio Free Europe, is to invite closer scrutiny.

Emigration will probably be the path all Christian committee members will take. It is difficult to predict what difference their absence will make. If they are marginal to the current religious scene, we shall see little change except for a lessening of police activity. The committee has always had the honor of attracting that. But if, as I suspect, they are the voice for a silent majority, which acknowledges their courage but does not always appreciate their way of doing things, then a return to a tighter situation is predictable.

There is evidence this is already the case. In October, two believers were picked up in Moldavia with a cargo of Russian Bibles. By year’s end according to unconfirmed reports, 30,000 Bibles had been confiscated, and up to 35 believers were due for trial in connection with a Bible courier network operating into the Soviet Union.

Elsewhere, eight churches, notably one in Bujac and a second in Motra, which had been closed, are under pressure for opening without permission. Though it is too early to be sure, some speculate a minicentralization campaign akin to that of the early 1960s is under way. The authorities are anxious to show strength in the face of the unceasing tide of religious enthusiasm that has swept the country for the past seven years.

As we left Romania, after an intimidating three-hour search at the border, we pondered the ways Romania’s need for propaganda affirmation and its fear of criticism belied its claim to religious freedom.

The Middle East

Pressured Arab Believers Capitalize On New Openness

Middle East turbulence, with its religious overtones, can exert both negative and positive influences on the church in the Arab world. Egypt’s Coptic church has undergone a wave of persecution by extremist militant groups that in turn was prompted by the Iranian revolution. The continuing warfare in Lebanon, although basically political, is not devoid of religious feeling.

These tensions, plus unrest in and between other Arab countries, are responsible for much of the uncertainty and fear Christians experience. As a result, many church leaders and educated lay members took refuge in the more stable West.

Despite this, the church is growing and new leadership has emerged. Several activities of the church have moved in the direction of self-support, reducing dependency on the Western dollar.

Across the Arab world, evangelists and Christian workers report that both nominal Christians and Muslims are more open than ever before. The demand in Egypt for Bibles exceeds the supply. Moreover, the church there now enjoys more freedom than it has experienced in over 30 years.

Last year churches and mission organizations serving in the area broke new ground in a commitment to reach out to those from contrasting traditions. They sponsored major ministries—many evangelistic in emphasis—whose effect should be felt throughout the decade:

• The film Jesus was screened throughout Lebanon. Thousands of Christians and non-Christians viewed it in churches, schools, and theaters. Campus Crusade for Christ’s Adel Masri coordinated door-to-door visitation by hundreds of young people, who distributed Christian literature and invited people to the film. Scores of conversion professions and hundreds of commitments to study the Bible resulted.

• The Bible Society, under Lucien Accad’s leadership, staged a Scripture distribution campaign last summer in many parts of Lebanon. Young people from several denominations met for training conferences at three points along the Lebanon range and at one in the Bekaa valley, then fanned out to villages and towns, carrying Scripture portions and selections. They reported a good reception in both Christian and Muslim homes.

• Last July, Southern Baptist leaders and pastors—both national and missionary—met in Cyprus for a week of evaluation and planning. The Baptists, led by Finley Graham, agreed to concentrate their efforts on reaching out to the Muslim majority. Task forces and special committees were formed to study and implement specific aspects of that thrust, including improved personnel training and cooperation between Arabs and missionaries, and expansion of student work, hospitals, radio, publications, and correspondence course ministries.

• The Navigators, led by Bob Vidano, lured Arab professionals who have settled down in the West back to the Arab world. The idea was to help them explore job prospects in hopes that they would return and buttress witness to professionals and collegians. Three groups spent time in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt separately, moved on to the other two countries, and then grouped in the mountains of Lebanon with Navigator staff. They shared their observations and impressions and learned how they might support a strategy for evangelism for the region. Such tours could be effective in reversing the brain drain and placing “tent makers” in various Arab world locations.

• In student ministry, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in the Arab world, led by Colin Chapman, brought together some 52 students and graduates from as far away as Morocco and Sudan. Two-thirds of the conferees were at this IFES regional annual conference for the first time.

• A theological education by extension (TEE) conference met during November in Amman, Jordan. Bruce Nicholls, executive director of the World Evangelical Fellowship’s Theological Commission, met with about 15 representatives of evangelical missions and national bodies from Lebanon and Jordan. During the course of the two-day conference, plans were made for organizing an evangelical association for TEE in the Middle East and North Africa. John De Pasquale, Evangelical Free Church missionary to Jordan, was elected to direct the formative stages leading to formal organization in May. Three committees to work on organization, objectives, and a common core curriculum are to report to the group at its next meeting this month, when it is expected that the organizing documents will be finalized for dissemination to potential member groups.

GEORGE HOUSSNEY

Urban it was; Urbana it was not.

Over the last generation Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship has earned a reputation for meticulously planned and precisely synchronized conferences on foreign missions. Last month it tried its hand at a different kind of a conference—on North American urban issues and ministries.

The truth was that “Washington 80” came perilously close to being a smoothly programmed failure.

Instead, the four-day event housed in Washington, D.C.’s Shoreham Hotel breathed a mildly chaotic atmosphere. The hotel staff was stretched to deliver continental breakfasts to small clusters of people all over the building. Participants had to figure out how to grab their own lunches as they fanned out all over downtown D.C. for briefings and “experiences.” One evening’s featured speaker blanked out, leaving musicians to an impromptu fill-in performance while he struggled in vain to collect his evaporated thoughts. And the schedule was typically slightly off track.

But however much the conference’s skeletal structure may have suffered, it succeeded because it came across as authentic. It had soul.

Some of the elements that made it that way:

• Small group gatherings designed to forge more than casual acquaintances across racial lines as the members shared breakfast, interacted with assigned Scriptures, shared their personal experiences and feelings, and prayed together.

• Plenary sessions in which men who have poured their lives into serving the cities—from D.C.’s Foundry United Methodist Church pastor Ed Bauman to Brooklyn’s Bethany Baptist Church pastor William Jones, Jr.—laid a biblical basis for Christian involvement in them and suggested fruitful approaches.

• Briefings covering 23 different topics from “models of inner-city church activity” to “political organization and participation.”

• On-site “experiences” at D.C. churches, housing projects, institutions, and government offices that deal with urban problems.

• A special New Year’s Day service observing the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation (on January 1, 1863), complete with a volunteer student choir led by Henry Greenidge, urban youth ministry director with Young Life in Seattle, singing “O, Freedom Over Me.”

• City and area receptions that threw together students and workers in often highly individualistic urban ministries. (Participants from at least one metropolitan area agreed on the spot to launch a monthly fellowship meeting.)

The unique program mix resulted from widespread input by diverse people from across the continent. The story of how that happy result was achieved is intertwined with IV’s progress in engaging itself in black campus ministry.

Inter-Varsity’s dawning realization that it would have to reshape its thrust to reach the downtown campuses came relatively recently. Paul Gibson, IV’s first continuing black staffer, signed on only in 1968. By the 1977–78 academic year the number of blacks on staff had gradually climbed to 10. But it was apparent that black students had not bought into the student movement in any major way. At the Urbana 70 missionary convention blacks in attendance confronted speakers over inattention to this country’s needy urban areas.

From the mid-1970s, IV began to work harder at recruiting black leadership. It brought John Perkins, president of Voice of Calvary Ministries, into its 60-member corporation in 1978. Last year the corporation voted him on to its 25-member board of trustees. Last year it brought George McKinney, pastor of Saint Stephen’s Church of God in Christ in San Diego, California, into the corporation.

For Urbana 79, IV made a special effort to involve blacks. Michael Haynes, pastor of Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church, was a speaker. A special luncheon was held for black leadership, and IV brought 45 or so black VIPs to the convention as its guests. But still there was only a sprinkling of blacks among Urbana’s 15,000 student participants.

A month after Urbana 79, James McLeish, IV’s executive vice-president, had okayed the decision to sponsor a separate conference the next year devoted to ministry to the cities of North America. John “Pete” Hammond, director of IV’s specialized ministries, who had previously served as director for IV’s Southeast area campus ministry and as assistant director of Urbana 79, was assigned to direct the conference.

The tacit assumption was that IV basically needed to apply the logistics know-how it had acquired over 11 Urbanas to the new conference, locate experts on the urban scene, and plug them into the speaking slots.

Planning had proceeded on this basis for three months when the alarm siren sounded. It came in the form of a conference call to IV’s Madison, Wisconsin, headquarters from black staffer Tony Warner in Atlanta, and from Elward Ellis, the new director of IV’s black campus ministry, in Pittsburgh. Warner, who joined IV in 1973, and Ellis made clear to Hammond their apprehension that planning and conducting an urban conference without major black input would destroy their credibility in the black community: “You’ll kill us, if you go ahead like this.”

Hammond grasped the urgency of their plea and asked them to fly in the next day for a lunch meeting with the IV leadership.

At the meeting, IV scrapped its planning to that point and started over. Ellis was appointed codirector with Hammond. The decision was made to hold “listening” sessions around the country to find out what black church leaders had on their agenda.

Hammond was scheduled to meet with Ozzie Edwards the next day at Detroit’s Metro-Wayne County Airport with the hope of recruiting him to head the academic aspects of the conference. Edwards directs the Center for Urban Studies at Harvard University. Like most black leaders, he needed to be convinced that IV was serious enough about incorporating black personnel and concerns to make contributing to its conference worth his while. It was immediately obvious that Ellis needed to stay over and be part of that approach. He did, and Edwards agreed to contribute his time.

That evening Ellis, who grew up in the heart of Newark, New Jersey, felt keyed up by the rapid developments and decided to do something to relax. He caught a ride into Detroit and pounded the city streets until composure returned. Hammond, who a year earlier had returned from a sabbatical study year in the Philippines, says he was struck by the incident. He thought back on the many missionaries he had met in Manila who were from suburban and rural backgrounds and obviously found functioning in the city a trial. How much more natural, he mused, to recruit city Christians for city ministry.

In July, a series of weekly listening conferences was held in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. (with people brought in from Atlanta). The outlines of Washington 80 emerged from that listening.

The planners progressively sharpened the subject focus: large cities, the inner core of those cities, 10 specific cities, and then Washington, D.C., as exhibit A.

They decided to push for participants from the cities and to seek to influence the ethnic makeup. Promotion was targeted to the 10 cities and to heads of college urban studies departments. Ellis was dispatched to the black ministerial alliances in the cities. Black campus staffer George Laws traveled to black schools and promoted the conference to their deans. A target for student participation that was 40 percent ethnic minorities was set. The numerical goal was 2,400 attenders, although pragmatist McLeish said he would be satisfied with 500—the attendance goal at the original 1946 “Urbana” in Toronto (actual attendance was 650)—as the benchmark.

Recruiting minority participation was an uphill struggle. Blacks say they find it difficult to participate in an event closely linked to the white establishment. Pastors in the congregation-centered black social web are suspicious of any parachurch organization. And although the majority of black churches are theologically conservative by instinct, they are liberal in other spheres. In the resulting us-them tensions, evangelical is most often perceived as a “them” word.

As it turned out, the registrations topped 1,100, with the ethnic composition approaching the target: 30 percent were black and another 5 percent of Asian, Hispanic, and Native American origins. Just over half the students registered to receive academic credit for attending seminars on various aspects of urban life. The low Hispanic turnout could be attributed to IV’s less developed campus ministry in that direction (only one staffer is Hispanic), and to inexperience that allowed them to schedule the conference over New Year’s Day, when Hispanics are loath to leave their families.

Congressman Walter Fauntroy (D.-D.C.), the chairman of the congressional Black Caucus and pastor of Washington’s New Bethany Baptist Church, welcomed the participants because they had “come to respond to our Lord’s inaugural address” (Luke 4:18–19). He said that humanism and more-righteous-than-thou liberalism had proved inadequate to the needs of the poor. But he exhorted his hearers to acknowledge that the gospel is not just good history but also good news for “the least among us.” He chided the white Christian right for focusing on what he branded a narrow range of secondary issues. But he handed blacks their lumps, too. They have left most service to the inner cities to whites, he said. He counseled them to move beyond “self-hatred,” and to lead a Christian return to the central cities.

Virgil Wood, director of the African-American Institute at Boston’s Northeastern University, said bluntly at one of the supper-hour forums for adult leaders that the white community has been running from the black community for several decades. During that period, he noted, personal racism has been outmoded largely by institutional racism. When, he asked, will the church retrieve the cross from the Ku Klux Klan, and cooperative economic credit (as described in Acts 4:32) from the Marxists?

William Bentley, board chairman of the National Black Evangelical Association, observed more gently in a briefing session that church members have become caught up in the upward mobility syndrome. He asserted that a basic part of Christian experience is lacking if we are not involved with the poor.

Not only the message but also the way it was packaged was a new experience for most of the nonblack two-thirds of the participants. The running barrage of calls from the audience (“well!,” “careful!.” “tell us Street know that the Spirit of God acts as well as speaks through Staggers and One Ministries. They have seen roofing, plumbing, wiring, and pest extermination performed in their homes. The elderly are visited and driven to appointments. Children take part in field trips and recreation programs. Last summer. One Ministries was host to 40 teen-aged government job program participants, who were supervised by 20 Christian college volunteers. They termed the program a success, unlike many other sponsoring organizations in the city.

Staggers shows up most Wednesday mornings at Third Street jovial and eager to hear “what the Lord’s been doing in your life.” In turn, he can share exactly what the Lord expects from him and his team: “Let us as Kingdom representatives exalt Christ. Let us relate to the least as brothers and sisters, seeking God’s grace to set us free from differences. Let us become one with Him and with each other.”

One Ministries: A Case Study In Urban Evangelism

The Third Street Church of God, in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., comes to life early on Wednesday mornings. From 7:30 A.M. until whenever, a hot breakfast followed by warm fellowship and prayer attract a roomful of people—black and white, from city and suburb.

“Great to see you here. No question about it,” says John Staggers as he greets newcomers, often with a bear hug. Staggers directs One Ministries, which “adopted” the square block of slum housing that surrounds the church. The group works in tandem with the Third Street pastor and congregation, ministering to residents and “making life more livable while we earn the right to present the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Named for Christ’s prayer for his disciples in John 17:21–23 (“That they all may be one …”), One Ministries has become a model of urban evangelism, emphasizing close cooperation with a local congregation. They are working as catalysts to involve other churches and agencies in adopting blocks similarly throughout the city. A long-range goal, says Staggers, is to link up white, middle-class, suburban churches with inner-city congregations, with the dual intent of ministering to the poor and allowing “rich and poor, black and white, powerful and powerless” to experience their oneness in Christ.

One Ministries, part of Washington’s Fellowship Foundation, was featured as an experience site for participants at Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s “Washington 80” conference last month. Staggers worked closely with the conference’s codirectors throughout the planning stages and assigned one of his ten team members as a full-time liaison with IVCF. The group also conducts an outreach to inmates of Lorton Prison, the city’s correctional facility located in Virginia.

Staggers previously taught sociology at Howard University in Washington, and later worked in the city’s administration. His “bottom line” in serving the poor is simply Jesus Christ. Apart from changes taking place in hearts, he explains, all the programs in the world won’t work.

He made that discovery the hard way. In 1970 and 1971, Staggers directed the Model Cities program in Indianapolis under former Mayor (now Senator) Richard Lugar. Admittedly a nominal Christian at the time. Staggers initiated a massive program of prayer breakfasts, viewing them as a good social vehicle for racial reconciliation. Then, he came to know a personal Christ, changed his emphasis, and returned to Washington. Instead of just generating talk through prayer breakfasts. Staggers now is generating action that he perceives as being in line with biblical mandates. “We have to be more than just a voice. The Word has to become flesh through practical involvement.”

Richard Halverson, new chaplain of the U.S. Senate, once wrote “I have never known a more effective communicator and motivator than John Staggers.… The Spirit of God speaks movingly and convincingly through him.” The residents of Third about it”) were unsettling to some from more staid backgrounds. The conference swayed to soul music paced by soprano Margaret Pleasant of East Orange, New Jersey, pastor-musician Richard Farmer of Pittsburgh, pianist-composer James Ward of Chattanooga, and “sanctified saxophonist” Sylvester Brinson of Chicago. Many even found it awkward to keep time to the music, conditioned as they were to clap on the (white) downbeat instead of the (black) upbeat.

By the end of the second day, when participants separated for “ethnic receptions,” many exhibited the symptoms of culture shock from a conference that codirector Hammond acknowledged was predominantly black in content and style. He told his segregated audience that God had made no mistake in creating them white, and that failure to accept that truth would make them psychological cripples, unable to help in the healing of the cities. “God wants redeemed whiteness to show to the world,” he concluded.

The older white IV leadership fretted some about the loss of precise control over the conference that was the price of the deliberate spontaneity sought and obtained by the blacks. “Is Inter-Varsity running this conference?” Hammond asked rhetorically? Then he added that he was learning that servant-leadership meant not being in full control. From their perspective, the content was heavy on exhortation in the black church style and light on the urban analysis that would have provided academic weight. But once the decision to bring in Ellis as codirector was made, the IV establishment allowed the blacks basically to shape the program.

Those concessions were rewarded by new respect from black civic and church leadership. Some were unprepared for the extent of student concern. Executive assistant to the mayor of Pittsburgh, James Simms, came to give a briefing on redevelopment, revitalization, and planning. He expected only a handful would attend his session in a large University of D.C. classroom. Arriving to find a wall-to-wall crowd, he was momentarily overwhelmed. “They did more for me than I could possibly do for them,” he said afterwards.

Persons as diverse as a black seminary dean and an Operation PUSH official agreed reluctantly to participate and came in what they afterward acknowledged was a skeptical frame of mind. They said they left convinced that IV’s commitment to take minorities and the cities seriously is genuine.

Ozzie Edwards of Harvard, who agreed to work with IV on Washington 80 only if there were a follow-through plan and he could be involved in it, perhaps analyzed most perceptively why he allied himself with a traditionally white evangelical organization:

He said he is willing to work with any group prepared to do something for inner-city residents, so long as he is convinced their agenda is not simply to revitalize the cities for whites.

But beyond that, he sees evangelical groups as potentially effective change agents. He assesses them as naive on social issues but strong on Christian commitment. That combination, he said, holds more promise than one of social sophistication not anchored in moral commitment. Only those motivated to do good simply because it is right will stick it out when the solution requires actions that are to their personal disadvantage. “Fundamental change must be in individuals. That can only come through Christ.”

Finally, Edwards said, he saw hope of Washington 80 evolving into a broader thrust—repeated and improved, replicated in individual cities for more specific application, and placing a growing number of interns in Christian ministry into the cities.

That, of course, is Inter-Varsity’s goal. And it was willing to sink several hundred thousand dollars into getting that dream off the ground.

HARRY GENET

The National Black Evangelical Association

‘Bind Us Together’: Black Evangelicals Make It Work

The National Black Evangelical Association has successfully healed a breach that had surfaced within its membership last April. At a protracted biannual board meeting held in Chicago in October, three members who had tendered their resignations at last year’s annual meeting in Dallas retracted them. And two of the three were assigned speaking roles at this year’s April 22–25 annual convention in Chicago.

The three who agreed that their grievances were sufficiently considered and dealt with to enable them to reverse their actions were former NBEA president Ruben S. Conner, former first vice-president Anthony T. Evans, and Dallas chapter chairperson Eddie B. Lane (CT, May 21, 1980, p. 44).

The three had expressed concerns about what they judged to be theological latitude within the NBEA, about the adequacy of its doctrinal statement, and about the degree of emphasis placed on the black experience alongside that placed upon Scripture in determining the association stance. They also had raised questions about the NBEA financial structure.

An official release from the NBEA described the October meeting, chaired by board chairman William H. Bentley, as characterized by “conciliation but not capitulation.” Working through recommendations drawn up at a special May board meeting in Dallas, the board arrived at a new agreed understanding by taking the following actions:

• It confirmed the NBEA umbrella concept of leadership, bringing together diverse elements within Christian orthodoxy.

• It reaffirmed the role of the Word of God as the final authority in matters of faith and conduct. It likewise reaffirmed the role of culture in mediating and expressing the gospel.

• It acknowledged that the existing doctrinal statement could stand strengthening at certain points, and agreed to draft alternate wording.

• It rejected allegations of theological liberalism within its ranks. Those charges, the board concluded, had arisen from a “misinterpretation of emphasis rather than a qualitative deviation” from orthodoxy.

• It agreed to instruct its officers to draw up a plan for fiscal restructuring for presentation to the board at its April meeting.

The year has been a difficult one for the NBEA. But the self-analysis and adjustment required to head off schism laid a basis for growth and new strength. The association’s structure is being streamlined and its role and stance has been delineated more crisply.

Retirements Homes

Methodists Win Settlement Of Pacific Homes Law Suits

If a special session of the Pacific and Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church later this month (Feb. 26–28) approves a $21 million settlement plan for the bankrupt Pacific Homes retirement complex, almost four years of tangled litigation that twice reached the U.S. Supreme Court will be ended. The constitutional question of whether the denomination as a whole is a suable entity that can be held responsible for actions of its constituent units has attracted wide attention among denominational and ecumenical groups.

Agreement in principle to a plan of reorganization for the chain of seven retirement facilities in Southern California, Arizona, and Hawaii, and suspension of all pending litigation, was announced in San Diego Superior Court on December 10. The announcement followed months of intensive negotiation by attorneys and came while a class-action suit on behalf of about 1,450 of the elderly residents was in its fourth month of trial. Under the proposal, the Pacific and Southwest Conference will provide $21 million to the homes—$15 million by mid-1981 and the rest during the next several years. Once the homes are on a sound financial basis, the money is to be repaid the conference. The annual conference, to which Pacific Homes has been related for 65 years, must borrow heavily from national-level agencies of the church in order to make the money available.

At a special assembly February 26–28, the 196,000 members of 488 United Methodist churches in Southern California, Arizona, Hawaii, and Southern Nevada will be asked to raise $6 million by midyear and another $6 million “over the next few years.” Los Angeles Bishop Jack M. Tuell said he was “grateful” for the anticipated settlement, which must also be approved by the federal bankruptcy court and the bankruptcy trustee.

“Quite apart from the question of legal liability,” Tuell said in a statement, “I believe every United Methodist in this conference would like to do something to respond to the loss which many residents have suffered.” About $5 million of the settlement package would go to elderly plaintiffs to compensate them for Pacific Homes’s failure to honor “lifetime care” contracts many of the residents entered into when they moved into the retirement centers.

The plaintiffs’ case was designed to show that the United Methodist Church as a denomination, the Pacific and Southwest Conference, the board of global ministries, and the general council for finance and administration, were liable for damages. The suit alleged that fraud and mismanagement had occurred over several decades.

Representatives of UM agencies feared a precedent would be set if the courts held a national denomination responsible for actions taken in its name. That is why all settlement moneys are to be channeled through the regional conference.

Attorney Samuel Witwer of Evanston, Illinois, who represents several UM agencies, had said that an adverse Supreme Court ruling could have broad implications for all U.S. religious institutions and breach the separation of church and state by interfering in the church’s organizations and activities. The out-of-court settlement, of course, leaves the constitutional question unanswered—perhaps an expensive alternative for the church, but one that could be less damaging in the long run.

If the plan of reorganization is finally approved by all parties, the church as a denomination, the general council on finance and administration, and the board of global ministries and its health and welfare ministries division, will be dismissed as defendants. This part of the case cannot then be reopened; dismissal of the regional conference is contingent upon performance of the agreement.

The court proceedings, described by San Diego Judge Edward T. Butler as “the most complex litigation we have had in this courthouse in some time,” followed four years of growing media attention to the financial woes of Pacific Homes and other retirement complexes. Many have foundered over inflation problems and unexpected longevity of retirees who paid lump-sum fees for health care with the expectation they would pay nothing more the rest of their lives.

In 1977, the Pacific and Southwest Conference approved a nine-year, $9 million plan to bail out Pacific Homes, but the class-action suit, seeking $220 million in damages and fulfillment of the contracts, aborted the plan. Litigation then mushroomed to six suits with pleas totaling $600 million. At least seven law firms had been engaged to defend the denomination, its units, and individuals, and litigation costs for the church at the time the trial was recessed in December had already topped $4 million. The 1980 UM General Conference authorized up to $1 million annually for the next four years to maintain the legal battle.

Under the proposed settlement, about $16 million, less certain fees and deductions, will be used to reorganize Pacific Homes and enable it to remain open and carry out the terms of the lifetime care contracts. About 175 residents who had moved out will be able to return and share the benefits. Although monthly payments now made by the residents will not be entirely eliminated, the fees—averaging about $500 a month—will be reduced to about $185 a month.

Pacific Homes will provide supplemental Medicare Medi-Cal insurance for class-action plaintiffs as well as “residential, clinical and skilled nursing, convalescent hospital and custodial care.” The annual conference will maintain a resident assistance fund to ensure that no plaintiff will ever have to move out because of inability to pay the monthly fees.

Also, the plaintiffs will be represented on the Pacific Homes board of directors for several years to assure that their interests are protected.

Bankruptcy trustee Richard Matthews, who has been operating the homes by court appointment, filed a report with the bankruptcy judge charging that for years Pacific Homes’s management defrauded elderly residents, with the knowledge and approval of some church officials, through a “pyramid scheme” that required new lifetime care contracts to finance current expenses.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Personalia

Ronald Reagan’s pastor, Donn Moomaw, of the Bel Air (Calif.) Presbyterian Church, will take a year’s leave of absence in 1984 to run the weightlifting competition at the Olympics in Los Angeles, for which he’ll be paid $70,000. Moomaw is a former All-American football lineman at UCLA.

Volunteer missionary work in Africa helped Air Force Capt. Jonathan Scott Gration, 29, earn a place among the Jaycees’ Ten Outstanding Young Men of America. Gration, whose parents were long-time missionaries with the Africa Inland Mission, helped buiid airstrips and medical clinics during a stint in Kenya in 1974. Following the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979 he went to Uganda and repaired vital hospital equipment, using mostly crude tools he had improvised. His air force career has taken him back to Kenya, where he serves as an F-5 instructor pilot.

Hudson T. Armerding has announced his intention to retire as fifth president of Wheaton College (III.), by June 1983. He will then be 65, and has been president for 16 years.

Summit on Human Life Amendment

Anti-Abortion Groups Spar Over Amendment Tactics

The numerous lobbies fighting for an antiabortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution are facing a critical struggle over just what that amendment should say. There is concern that if the groups don’t coalesce in a united front, they will dissolve into factionalism and be far less effective in convincing Congress to pass such an amendment.

To try and solve the problem, two summit meetings were scheduled for Washington, one last month and one this month, in an effort to hammer out acceptable terminology. One meeting was held by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the largest prolife group, with 10 million members nationwide and chapters in all 50 states. The other will be conducted by Moral Majority. “The biggest ballgame in town,” said NRLC president John Willke, “is the reopening and reexamination of the human life amendment.”

NRLC’s winter board meeting on January 23 centered on a final report—in preparation for six months—by a committee of four lawyers and a physician: Robert Byrn of Fordham University; Charles Rice of the University of Notre Dame; Joseph Witherspoon of the University of Texas; Matthew Bulfin, a physician; and James Bopp, the NRLC legal counsel. Their efforts represent the first time since it was drawn up in 1973 that their human life amendment has been reconsidered.

As it now reads, NRLC’s proposed amendment would prevent all abortions, and would allow “only those medical procedures required to prevent the death of the mother.” This would include, for example, an operation to correct a fallopian tube pregnancy, in which the fetus develops outside the uterus, or an operation to remove the cancerous uterus of a pregnant woman. In both cases the fetus must be destroyed to save the mother’s life, but Willke and others say these are not abortions because the intent is not to kill the child, but to save the mother’s life.

Judie Brown, who heads an active prolife group called American Life Lobby, fears that if this wording is adopted, critics who don’t buy that reasoning will charge that prolifers consent to “just a little bit of abortion.” She and others back the Helms-Dornan Amendment (named after its Senate and House sponsors), which guarantees the right to life for each human being from the moment of fertilization, and stops with that. It assumes that tubal pregnancy operations and cancerous uterus operations will be done, but since they are not abortions, they need not be mentioned. Adding any stipulation to the basic right-to-life declaration could be a crack in the dam, which could eventually burst into a new flood of abortions after the courts get through interpreting it. Willke believes the best way for the amendment to survive court tests is to stipulate which medical procedures don’t apply; that is, those necessary to save the mother’s life, and limit it to that. “If you don’t put it in and limit it to that, the court will put it in,” he said. He fears any broadening of the meaning through court interpretation, because it would probably be a first step to unlimited abortions.

Both sides thus have the same goal; they differ only in how to reach it. In light of the factionalism that seems to be developing, sources said at press time that it was possible the NRLC committee would recommend altering the wording of its amendment when it met last month. That would be momentous, because support for the present amendment is widespread, having been approved by nearly every state NRLC organization.

The prolife lobbyists fear that if they do not somehow hang together behind strong language, any right-to-life amendment reaching Congress will be watered down by compromises. Some of those compromises might include abortions allowable as a result of rape or incest; those permitted when the “health” of the mother is at stake; or simply turning the whole matter over to the states. (In the past, an exception for the health of the mother has been interpreted broadly to include mental health, which has resulted in abortion on demand.)

Moral Majority plans to sponsor a two-day meeting in Washington in late February. The first day will be public, with some hard issues to be addressed, such as why there can be no exceptions for incidents like rape or incest. The second day’s meeting will be closed to the public, and will focus on getting the organizations to agree on wording.

Karl Moor, political activities coordinator for Moral Majority, emphasizes that although his organization has been in the spotlight, it “intends very much to work with people who’ve been here before, and not set ourselves up as the spokesman for the issue.” He plans to spend as much as three-fourths of his lobbying time on abortion, because “this won’t be a roll-over, play-dead thing for the proabortionists. We’re threatening their economic well-being as well as their principles.”

Another key figure is Connaught (Connie) Marshner, who is the chairman of the Library Court group, a coalition of 30 conservative, profamily organizations. She said, “We will pull out all stops in favor of the human life amendment, but first we want to see the people who are leaders in the movement get their acts together.”

Roman Catholic support for the amendment finds expression through the National Committee for the Human Life Amendment. Ernest Ohlhoff, executive director, said, “we’ve never taken a strong position on any particular wording. We want to see the strongest, best possible wording. When a serious amendment is proposed, it will be evaluated on its own merit.”

Rallying all who support an end to abortion behind an effective human life amendment is viewed by Moral Majority’s Karl Moor as paramount. “We’re not looking for ideological purity as much as we are numbers on this issue. What would be worse than nothing would be passage of a vague statement that is absolutely meaningless in terms of protecting the unborn.”

After the strong showing by conservatives in the November election, particularly Ronald Reagan’s victory and the Republican capture of the Senate, prolifers were euphoric over the chances of getting a right-to-life amendment passed during this Congress. Much of that hope has dissipated, however, because the numbers required for passing a constitutional amendment, two-thirds in each house, still don’t appear to be there. Willke said his organization counts a simple majority in the Senate, but not 67, and it counts only about 250 supporters in the House, well short of the 290 necessary. Consequently, it appears unlikely that an amendment will pass Congress before the 1982 congressional elections.

In the meantime, some organizations will turn to remedial measures, such as a permanent prohibition against spending federal money for abortions. Until now, makeshift amendments preventing expenditures for abortion have been attached each year to appropriations bills.

Douglas Badger, legislative director of the Christian Action Council, the evangelical lobbying group, said there will also be attempts to extend federal assistance to indigent pregnant women, who now can qualify for aid only if they are dependents of welfare recipients. Without federal aid, it is still cheaper for them to scrape up enough money for a private abortion than to bear the child, he said.

World Scene

The Protestant church in Mexico now accounts for 3.5 percent of the total population, up from 1.8 percent in 1970. That is what preliminary returns from the official Mexican 1980 census show. According to the census, Mexico’s total population reached 67.4 million people last year, 2.4 million of whom are Protestants. Evangelical church leaders believe that for various reasons, official figures tend to understate their numbers, principally because census takers in some cases assume everyone is Roman Catholic without actually asking the question. The 1980 census shows more than 88 percent of Mexicans as Catholic, down from a 96 percent figure a decade earlier.

The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization is moving its internal headquarters office from Kenya to England in April, LCWE chairman Leighton Ford said the decision to move was based on travel convenience, ease of international communications, and comparative costs. Gottfried Osei-Mensah, a Ghanaian who pastors the First Baptist Church of Nairobi, has been reappointed executive secretary.

Denmark has the highest suicide rate in the Western world, followed by two other Scandinavian countries, Finland and Sweden. 1979 Danish statistics show that almost twice as many people took their own lives as were killed in automobile collisions. The Danish suicide rate is 26 per 100,000 of the population, as compared to the American rate of 13 per 100,000. Niels Juel-Nielsen of Odense University is leading research into the causes of suicide in Scandinavia with its high standard of living. According to a Reuters report, he cited as causes the complex nature of urban life; unemployment; Denmark’s social welfare system, which he says can destroy personal initiative; a decline in spiritual values; materialism; and the breakup of the family unit in moving from an agricultural to an industrial society.

The French government recently approved Trans World Radio’s request to add a 500,000-watt, short-wave transmitter to its two present 100,000-watt transmitters at Monte Carlo, Monaco. Negotiations had continued for several years. The extra wattage, together with the addition of two new antenna systems, will permit more thorough saturation of key areas of Europe. TWR has been broadcasting from Monaco for 20 years.

Polish Catholics have won another concession from the state. This year they broadcast a Christmas Eve Mass for the first time in 30 years. Earlier they had won permission for broadcast of a weekly Sunday Mass. At the same time, the church leadership has come to the aid of the Stanislaw Kania government by urging restraint on workers. A West Germany guest observer says that meanwhile, greater Roman Catholic self-awareness has only increased the disadvantaged position of Protestants. “It is not socialism that is the problem, but the Catholic church,” asserted Karl Inmer, president of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. He said that for this reason Protestants especially appreciate visits by Christians from the West.

The Walayta Christians of southern Ethiopia got the New Testament in their language in time for Christmas. Until the mid-1970s, printing materials in tribal languages was prohibited. As soon as the restrictions were eased, the Sudan Interior Mission initiated a translation program. The 675 Walayta Word of Life congregations until now have used Scripture portions on cassette tapes. Some 2,400 Bible study groups, with an estimated attendance of 30,000, used the cassettes as the basis for study and memorization.

The printing press of a Lutheran denomination of South-West Africa (or Namibia) has been blown up for the second time in seven years. Located in Oniipa, the press belonged to the Ovambo-kavango Church, begun by Finnish missionaries, whose membership includes about half the Ovambos, or roughly one-fourth of the country’s population of one million. Reporter Joseph Lelyveld wrote in the New York Times that South Africa, which rules the country, has viewed the church as a threat because it instills values and aspirations that make the Ovambos hard to manage. He reports that it is widely, “even universally,” believed that efforts to still the church’s voice in 1973 and last December were engineered by South African security police, although no proof has materialized.

An ecumenical youth conference opened and then disbanded after security officers were discovered to be present. The December conference in Manzini, Swaziland, organized by the All Africa Conference of Churches youth department and the World Christian Federation, had assembled more than 20 youth leaders to discuss the liberation struggle in Southern Africa. Police officials confirmed, when approached, that Swaziland law demands police monitoring of all meetings. The AACC youth secretary, Costa Magiga, explained that continuing with the planned discussion would have jeopardized “the safety and interest of our delegates.”

Paving stones from the Herodian period have been unearthed in Jerusalem’s Old City and were raised and incorporated into a repaving of the Via Dolorosa, the traditional route Jesus traversed from Pilate’s judgment hall to Golgotha. Municipal workers, upgrading the Old City’s rudimentary sewage system, encountered the stones—some weighing as much as two tons—under a collapsed sewer dating from the last century, and 12 feet below street level. The stones cover a stretch of about 30 feet between the third and fourth stations of the cross.

The Indian government has decided against evicting all missions agencies from tribal areas, but will follow a case-by-case approach. That was the gist of remarks by Home Affairs Minister Yogendra Makwana in response to questioning in Parliament. Adverse notice of any foreign organization’s activities, he said, would lead to appropriate action. He said the West Bengal authorities had so far identified some nine organizations and had instructed them to shift their operations out of tribal areas.