by Steve | Sep 23, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: Don Wildmon
The Methodist The Networks Love To Hate
by James S. Robb
The United Methodist ministry is not exactly overloaded with famous people.
Switch on your local Christian radio station and wait for a syndicated program to air featuring a UM minister—but don’t wait too long.
Or check out Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” TV show to see if any of our ministers are being interviewed.
Try picking up your local newspaper to look for national news quoting a Methodist pastor. It’s unlikely you’ll find any.
So what’s the big deal? We hire our preachers to preach, not showboat, right? Right.
Yet every denomination needs some leaders who cast a shadow outside the rarified walls of the institution. Today the UMC has very few.
And then there’s the Rev. Donald E. Wildman, director of the Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association and a member of the North Mississippi Annual Conference of the UM Church.
He’s on 200 Christian radio stations every day. Ted Koppel interviews him frequently. As for news, writing stories about Wildman and his work has turned into a minor cottage industry—recent coverage has included the front page of The Wall Street Journal and a long interview in Time.
In all probability Wildman is now the best-known United Methodist minister in all the world.
Increasingly, moreover, he’s one of the most influential Christian leaders in this country.
By organizing an alliance called Christian Leaders for Responsible Television (CLeaR TV), Wildman has garnered support for his efforts from prestigious leaders of nearly every U.S. denomination—including the Roman Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church, the Assemblies of God and the Southern Baptist Convention.
His goal? To clean up television.
“We have focused on TV because it’s the most pervasive, persuasive medium in our society,” says Wildman.
The fact is Americans, and especially American children, are influenced more by TV than any other source, at least in terms of time. The average U.S. TV set is on more than seven hours a day. Television is frequently used as a cheap babysitter. And in too many homes “the tube” has replaced reading and family conversation as the evening leisure activity.
These facts are scary enough, but the big problem is not that people are watching so much TV. It’s what’s on the TV when they are watching.
In Wildmon’s new book, Don Wildman: The Man the Networks Love to Hate (Bristol Books, 1989, $8.95), he relates how he awakened to the problem one pivotal evening in 1976.
Then a pastor in Southaven, Mississippi, Wildman, like most pastors, had little time for television or any other recreation. But one December evening his wife, Lynda, and his four kids gathered in their living room, and Wildman flipped on the TV. In the book he explains what happened next.
“As the TV picture filled the screen, we found ourselves witnessing the romantic overtures of an attractive married couple. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that they weren’t married to each other. When the seductive dialogue stopped and mouth met mouth, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what the actor and actress were about to do. I didn’t wait to see what happened. I asked my son Tim to change the channel.
“I’m afraid that I can’t even begin to tell you about what we saw next. That’s because we only had the show on for a half minute or so before it had filled our cozy den with an outburst of offensive expletives.
“Tim’s third try seemed to be the charm. He had found my favorite kind of program—a “Who Dun It?”—and in no time I was wrapped up in a well-written and well-acted story. A quick look around the room revealed that everyone else, including little Mark, was hooked on this suspenseful mystery as well.
“But then the scene changed. Without warning, we found ourselves watching a scenario similar to those found in grade B Hollywood slasher films. To my horror one character, brandishing a hammer, was literally beating the life out of a terror-stricken, defenseless victim who had been bound and gagged.
“This time I told Tim to turn the set off. I’d guess that it took him about ten seconds to get up, cross the room and push the knob. But as far as I was concerned, that was ten seconds too long. This graphic brutality had not been a welcome holiday guest in our family room. I especially had not wanted such savagery imprinted on my five-year-old’s consciousness right before bedtime.
“When Tim suggested that we watch television, I had thought that my family might laugh together or that we might all hold our breath in suspense. Ideally, I had hoped to find a program that would teach us something positive about the fascinating and complex world we live in—a program that would mix some mind-stretching nourishment into the entertainment.
“Instead, however, our three choices on the prime-time television menu (these were the days before cable TV) were promiscuous sex, crude profanity and gratuitous violence!”
For Wildman the experience was like getting ice-cold water thrown in his face. All of a sudden he was alive to a national program he had not realized even existed.
Soon Wildman hit the library, figuring he’d better research TV programming before he did anything. What he found was shocking. He learned children entering kindergarten in 1976 (such as his son Mark) could expect to witness 13,000 TV killings by the time they entered high school. At that time little information existed about the amount of sex on TV, but Wildman suspected it was a big problem too. He found that respected voices, from the PTA on up to Senator Hubert Humphrey, were beginning to speak out against TV excesses. But so far no one had organized to do anything.
So in typically Methodist style, Wildman decided he must take action. He organized a ‘Turn-The-TV-Off Week” in early 1977. Although it was a one-congregation, local protest against exploitive programming, Wildman was savvy enough to send news releases about it to area news organizations.
The results were stunning. First the area TV and radio stations interviewed him about this up-to-then-unheard-of action. Then it got into the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper. Then the Associated Press picked the story up nationwide. Before he knew it Wildman was giving interviews to news outlets across the country about his “Turn-The-TV-Off Week.”
Most surprising of all, letters of support began pouring into his church—more than 1,500 in all!
The indignation against bad TV was so strong in those letters Wildman decided to act again, this time by forming The National Federation for Decency (now called the American Family Association). He soon received a special appointment from his bishop to direct the new group.
“We’ve grown because we’re dealing with issues that people want something done about,” he explains. “Also, AFA crosses all denominational and theological lines.”
Today the AFA has a well-trained staff and a mailing list in the hundreds of thousands. But it didn’t start like that. At first it was just Wildman with a secondhand desk set up in his Tupelo living room.
From being a local church pastor, Wildman turned himself into one of the leading experts on TV in a remarkably short time. A key part of this transformation was his decision to gather hard data on sex and violence on TV.
He arranged with churches supporting his efforts for volunteer monitors to collectively view every minute of prime-time television and mark down on special questionnaires every instance of profanity, violence, illicit sex, etc.
The result was that his federation soon had a listing of the most and least responsible TV shows on the air in a number of categories. Among the worst in the late ’70s were ABC’s “Three’s Company,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Soap.”
Armed with this information, Wildman and his supporters contacted ABC and the other networks and protested the worst programs.
He got back polite letters from the officials assuring Wildman that they would never “be swept by fad or surrender those durable moral values that give our nation its spiritual foundation,” as one put it.
But when it was all said and done, the network people promised nothing and delivered less. As Wildmon puts it in his memoirs, “It became clear that network officials were using the same words I used, but we weren’t speaking the same language.”
It soon became clear the only dialect these people spoke was money. If it made a profit, they’d do it. And the ones who governed which shows made a profit—and thus which shows would be kept on the air—were the advertisers.
After reaching this conclusion Wildmon decided to determine which advertisers tended to sponsor the worst shows and talk to them.
So his volunteers went to work again, marking down which advertisers sponsored which shows. The results were shocking. None other than Sears Roebuck turned up as one of the least responsible advertisers.
Wildmon, unhappy to have to confront such a venerable institution, contacted Sears’ advertising executives with the bad news. Their reaction was disbelief. It couldn’t be! they claimed. But the federation’s research was solid; Sears advertised on the worst shows.
So Wildmon declared his first nationwide boycott for May 1978. He flew to Chicago to personally lead picketers in front of the Sears Tower. He only had a small band of protesters with him, but the effect was gigantic and nearly instantaneous.
After being there for just one hour a newspaper reporter rushed up to Wildmon and asked, ” Have you heard? Sears just announced that it is pulling its ads from ‘Three’s Company’ and ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ Your comments, please!”
The protest worked because advertisers sponsor shows to gain business, not lose it. If sponsoring a show makes large numbers of citizens angry, Wildmon discovered, most advertisers would rather switch than fight.
In the years since that first boycott Wildmon and his American Family Association have taken on many other bad-boy companies and, not too infrequently, have turned them into model gentlemen.
One recent TV target has been CBS’ attempt to put the sadistic Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, which feature cartoons such as children being put in blenders, on Saturday morning TV. Wildmon responded by launching a letter campaign to CBS and the leading sponsors of children’s programs warning what would happen if the poisonous program ever aired. The program never aired, and CBS lost $3 million in the process.
Another horrid kiddie show episode occurred when the cartoon character Mighty Mouse sniffed cocaine on Saturday morning TV. (See article on page 18 for full details.)
Wildman has also made his voice heard in areas other than television. He led a several-year battle against 7-Eleven, the giant chain of convenience stores. Its vice was selling Playboy and Penthouse magazines. In fact 7-Eleven was the nation’s biggest distributor of those magazines.
This highly publicized campaign included a boycott and nationwide picketing of the stores. But in 1986 7-Eleven gave in and pulled the magazines. Many other convenience store chains followed suit, causing the circulation of the soft-core pornography magazines to plummet.
Then there was last summer’s boycott of “The Last Temptation of Christ,” the movie which most Christians found insulting to their faith.
Wildman comments, “Boycotting ‘The Last Temptation’ was different because dozens or hundreds of national church leaders got involved and became united. That’s never happened before.”
With this new-found support from actual denominational leaders, “Temptation” was stopped in its tracks. Few theater owners risked showing it in the face of universal church denunciations.
Fortunately, the momentum was not lost. Wildmon and his allies spent the last year lining up church leaders for his Christian Leaders for Responsible Television (CLeaR TV) group. It wasn’t enough to stop one blasphemous film—TV must be reformed as well.
This very large, very prestigious alliance includes UM Bishop Schowengerdt of New Mexico. The group’s strategy was to warn all advertisers that research would be conducted in May 1989 to find the worst all-round TV sponsor. Then that company would be boycotted by Christians nationwide for an entire year without mercy.
In July the results were announced. The Mennen company, maker of deodorants and similar products, and Clorox, the bleach king, were tied. All the products made by these two firms should be bypassed until next summer.
The idea is to teach profit-hungry corporations that sponsoring decadent TV programming is no longer the quick road to riches.
The leader of this gigantic effort feels properly somber about what may happen next.
‘We have to be successful in this. Once Mennen and Clorox get the message that bad sponsorship doesn’t pay, all the others will learn from them.
“But if we fail, ‘Katie, bar the door!’”
James S. Robb is senior editor of Good News magazine and editor-in-chief of Bristol Books.
by Steve | Jul 24, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: What C.S. Lewis might say to the United Methodist Church
By Lyle Dorsett
C. S. Lewis would have applauded the UMC’s emphasis on being Christian in a more inclusive and less sectarian way than many of the reformed and creedal denominations. The Methodist emphasis on being primarily Christ-centered rather than doctrinally directed would have appealed to the man who wrote Mere Christianity. Through that book he underscored the essentials of the Christian faith without insisting that all believers rally around secondary issues such as specific confessions, creeds, modes of baptism, definitions of the sacraments and adherence to church law and traditions.
Indeed, Lewis’ refusal to get bogged down in denominational issues kept his books free of sectarianism, which is reason for the lasting popularity of his writing.
Although Lewis would have enjoyed the inclusiveness of modern American Methodism, he would have been appalled by the ordination of women. Extremely traditional in his view of the female sex, Lewis wrote an article entitled “Priestesses in the Church?” for Time and Tide in 1948. Reprinted in God in the Dock, this article contains a logical if not fashionable case against having a female serve as priest to represent God to the Anglican church. It is true that Methodists have deacons and elders rather than priests. Nevertheless the priestly function of administering the sacramental elements of God’s grace to God’s Church is, to Lewis, an image of God feeding His flock. To say God’s representative here can be a woman as well as a man is to say that the role of the bride and bridegroom can be reversed at will. According to Lewis, if we reverse the church (bride) and the Christ (bridegroom) at will, we have a goddess rather than a God, and we have the groom subject to the will of the bride.
In this same 1948 essay Lewis addressed the non-sexist language issue that currently occupies much attention among United Methodists, especially in our seminaries. Lewis admits that God is a biological being without sexual identity. This admission notwithstanding, it does not follow that we are therefore at liberty to call God She, Mother or Daughter. Why? Because through the biblical revelation, “God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is,” according to Lewis, “to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential.” This latter view, says Lewis, “is surely intolerable.”
Because of his high view of Scripture, Lewis would also have opposed the teaching that a homosexual lifestyle is consistent with the Christian faith. In letters, in his autobiography Surprised By Joy and elsewhere, Lewis made it clear that he saw the practice of homosexuality as sinful and destructive.
Lewis’ commitment to scriptural Christianity would have placed him at odds with much that is taught in United Methodist seminaries today. He wrote an entire book, Miracles, where he presented a powerful treatise on the myopia of philosophic naturalism that has permeated our thinking and caused us to doubt the “great occasions” when God has intervened and set aside natural law.
The biblical basis of Lewis’ faith not only led him to embrace miracles such as the Virgin Birth and physical resurrection of Christ, it likewise led him to assume the veracity of Jesus’ teaching on sin and hell. Lewis would have been appalled by the liberal promulgation of cheap grace. Modernist universalism, manifested in the preaching of forgiveness of sins without repentance, absolution without personal confession, and baptism and church without obedience and discipline, would have bothered him as much from today’s Methodists as it did from his own Anglican tradition.
Inasmuch as Lewis deplored the peddling of cheap grace, he advocated a vigorous emphasis on evangelism. It is true that he disliked the highly emotional appeals of some fundamentalists and evangelists. Nevertheless, he noted in his “Rejoinder to Dr. Pittinger” (God in the Dock) that since his conversion “most of my books are evangelistic.” And Lewis himself did a fair amount of evangelistic preaching to Royal Air Force crews during World War II. Furthermore the Oxford Socratic Club, of which he was an active participant, had as its primary objective the conversion of non-believers to faith in Jesus Christ.
In brief, Lewis would never have applauded the Methodist trend of making social issues a higher priority than missions and evangelism. To Lewis the Good News is Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected, not the correction of political, economic and social ills. Because of this assumption Lewis would have applauded attempts to make evangelism a priority once again in mission work and to reintroduce professors of evangelism in the United Methodist seminaries.
I am certain Lewis would have urged all Methodists to do two things: First, “be busy learning to pray.” This was how he exhorted one brother in Jesus Christ to progress in the faith, and most certainly he would have urged the church to get on its knees and make prayer a priority. Second, Lewis would have urged a turn from self-analysis and self-absorption to a clear focus on Jesus Christ.
As he put it at the end of Mere Christianity, “Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” I have no doubt C. S. Lewis would apply this principle to the United Methodist Church as well as to individuals.
Dr. Lyle Dorsett is director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
by Steve | Jul 20, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: God Lets me in on the Fun
By Sara L. Anderson
Bob Tuttle cannot be appropriately wrapped up in a box and labeled. Every time you think you have him tagged, he’ll do something that surprises you.
The label seminary professor doesn’t seem to match the vision of Tuttle tooling around Chicagoland in his Jeep-like Suzuki 4 x 4—top down, Christian music blaring from the speakers (and it ain’t Bev Shea, folks). No sedentary academic life will do for Dr. Robert G. Tuttle Jr., E. Stanley Jones professor of evangelism at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. The man who reads several books a week “just to keep a day or two ahead of my students” runs three miles four or five days a week and bench presses 200 pounds.
The hugs he gives and gets from students in chapel and warm conversations punctuated with “bless your heart” belie an intensity anyone conversing with Tuttle for more than ten minutes discovers.
There you are, sitting across a restaurant table from him. He leans over to make a point, his face inches from yours; his eyes seemingly pierce to the hidden recesses of your soul. You wonder if this isn’t a little like what Adam and Eve felt when they encountered God in the garden, and you wish you could grab some emotional fig leaves.
“Do you believe God cares about the details of your life?” he asks. The tone demands a response.
“Uh, yes,” you say, determined to meet the gaze.
“But, do you really believe that?”
“Yes,” you say again, this time with more conviction.
“I know you do,” he says, leaning back, “but I wanted to make sure you knew that you believed it.”
Bob Tuttle is intense. Bob Tuttle cares. Bob Tuttle cares intensely. Those qualities are not lost on his students. At the beginning of each quarter, Tuttle lets it be known that he will disciple a half dozen students that term. Within a few hours his calendar is filled. He meets with each student for an hour every week. They commit themselves to pray for each other, and Tuttle directs the students to keep a daily journal—to record what they are learning and how God is working in their lives.
For evangelical students in particular, whose theology is challenged every day, Tuttle’s office is a safe haven, a place to be encouraged, a place “off-limits to the devil.” One of his disciples said of Tuttle, “I wouldn’t have made it through seminary without him.” A sign on his wall in cloister-like Pfeiffer Hall reads “Hang Tough and Press On.”
Garrett-Evangelical, on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has long been labeled ultra-liberal by evangelicals and shunned by many theologically conservative students. But Tuttle feels the assessment has been too harsh. “The Spirit of God is at work on this campus,” Tuttle says.
He points to a revision of Garrett-Evangelical’s statement of purpose and philosophy drafted by seminary president Neil Fisher and refined by the entire faculty. Previously three emphases ruled the seminary—Women’s Images, the Church and the Black Experience, and Peace and Justice.
However, the revision paper reestablishes the priorities of Garren-Evangelical as Critical Reason, Evangelistic Commitment and Prophetic Witness (the three emphases of the previous 10 years are now under this category). “You can’t talk too much about social justice,” Tuttle says. “But it’s faith in Jesus Christ which releases the power of the Holy Spirit, which empowers social gospel. Now evangelism has equal emphasis with the other three [emphases] together,” Tuttle affirms.
Tuttle labels himself evangelical and charismatic, yet shows (and has earned) profound respect for (and from) colleagues not of his theological persuasion. “We’re a faculty because it takes all kinds of body parts to minister effectively,” he says. “The only way for the needs to be met is to let everyone in on our fun. Other faculty members may not agree with me, but as far as I can tell they are all affirming of me. And I am affirming of them.”
Check out Bob Tuttle’s resume and you’ll find him even more difficult to box up. He earned an undergraduate degree at Duke, a master’s in theology at Wheaton College, a bachelor of divinity at Garrett and a Ph.D. at the University of Bristol, England. He has served in local churches in Illinois, North Carolina and Colorado, was visiting preacher for the Bristol Circuit in Bristol, England, then taught at Fuller Theological Seminary (the first Wesleyan-Arminian seminary) and Oral Roberts University before coming to Garrett-Evangelical.
So how did he wind up in Chicago? While Garrett-Evangelical had evangelicals on the faculty, it was expressly looking for one to fill the E. Stanley Jones Chair of Evangelism. When Tuttle came for the interview he pulled no punches about his concern for evangelism and his theological perspective. In true Tuttle style he told his questioners, “I’m not going to interview one way and act another. I’m not going to lay low for a year; I’m going to hit the ground running.”
His honesty was obviously appreciated, and he got the job. “My Garrett-Evangelical colleagues appreciate that in me—the fact that I am an upfront evangelical,” Bob says.
While Tuttle has had his share of influence at the Evanston school, he has also received an education there. “Garrett- Evangelical has helped me articulate my views on social justice and has made me far more aware of feminist and racist issues,” he says.
Early in his tenure Tuttle came face-to-face with feminist issues. In one of his first classes Tuttle referred to Susanna Wesley as a great lady. Several female students slammed their books on their desks and walked out, leaving Tuttle wondering what on earth he had done. He later learned that to the feminists, lady is a demeaning term used by white southern males to keep women on the pedestal and out of the work force.
This understanding and his concern for communicating the Gospel clearly has led Tuttle to avoid language which would create unnecessary barriers between him and his students. “I don’t give an inch theologically, but I don’t make gender references to God because I want to keep as many people on board as possible,” he explains. “When I’m in my closet I pray to God the Father. I will not refer to God as Mother. I baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I don’t try to rewrite Scripture, but I try to be sensitive to words that heal.”
That ties in with another perspective Tuttle has developed at Garrett-Evangelical: “Theology has to be lively, to be relevant to where people hurt. I was orthodox before I came here. Now I have more freedom to make sure that not only do I preach the truth, but I preach the truth in such a way that I am sensitized to what people are hearing.”
He also makes sure he has opportunity to practice such preaching, warning that professors become “dangerous” when they remain in the classroom. He solves this problem by spending one weekend per month (he doesn’t want to be gone more than that—he and his wife, Artie, have five children, aged seven to 27) preaching in a local church. The focus of these Faith Renewal weekends is often on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, prayer, evangelism and understanding the importance of the body of Christ. Once a quarter he takes students with him, and they do most of the speaking. Bob is booked until ’92.
Maybe that’s because these preaching excursions do not merely serve as continuing education to keep his preacher’s license from getting dusty. They are borne of his concern for people and their hurts. “You stand up in front of people, and it brings tears to your eyes,” he says. “That compassion was the source of Jesus’ anointing. Turn the pages of Scripture,” Tuttle says. “Jesus is healing everything that wiggles—sometimes stuff that’s stopped wiggling.”
But compassion in healing or evangelism does not exist apart from love. “You must always see the great commission in light of the great commandment,” he says. “I don’t love you to evangelize you. I evangelize you because I love you.”
Still, his ability to see needs and his desire to minister to those needs are not oppressive to Tuttle. “The Gospel doesn’t increase our burden,” he says. “The Gospel increases our vision.
“Ultimately God does all the changing; God does all the converting,” Bob continues. “But God loves me so much, God lets me in on the fun.” And whether he’s teaching, meeting with a disciple, preaching or running three miles with President Fisher, Bob Tuttle is having a ball at Garrett-Evangelical.
Sara L. Anderson is associate editor of Good News and of Bristol Books, Good News’ book publishing arm.
by Steve | Jul 20, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: The Infant Baptism Controversy
By Ben Husted
Charlie and Helen were the kind of people any pastor would like to have in the church: they tithed, taught Sunday school, worked in United Methodist Men’s and Women’s groups, studied, witnessed for Christ and loved every pastor. I was interested, then, when they asked me to “come by sometime.” They had, they said, been thinking about something for a long time and wanted to talk with me about it.
When I made it a point to visit them they talked about having been baptized as infants and raised in the church. As adults they had experienced the new birth and for years had wanted to be baptized by immersion. When they had visited with previous pastors about this they had been rebuffed, and the significance of infant baptism had been explained to them. The conviction of their consciences, however—what they perceived as the direction of the Holy Spirit—did not cease. “Will you,” Charlie asked, “baptize us?”
Years later a young couple joined our church. She had been raised in the Disciples of Christ Church, he more or less in the Baptist Church, but now they had joined the United Methodist church their friends attended, where people were warmly concerned for their spiritual welfare and where they felt at home.
When their child Lauren was born we visited about infant baptism. They did not want her baptized, but they did want her presented to God at the altar of the church in infant dedication. Using an appropriate ritual, without water, Lauren was dedicated to the Lord at the altar of the church in a beautiful moment of worship. One long-time member of the church, however, missed part of the proceedings and asked on the way out, “Why didn’t you use water when you baptized that baby?”
Do we “rebaptize”? Do we “dedicate” infants in the United Methodist Church? These are questions every United Methodist pastor is asked. They are often answered, sometimes abrasively, in the negative. These questions, though, are answered in a surprisingly clear affirmative in our tradition!
The United Methodist Church, as we all know, is the child of a Methodist parent and an Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) parent. Our grandparents on the Methodist side are British Wesleyan Methodism and American history, and on the EUB side they are the United Brethren (UB) and Evangelical Association (EA).
Wesley’s position on baptism was the same as the Church of England’s position. When, in 1758, he published the treatise “On Baptism” it was simply a condensation of his father’s longer work on the subject, which was, in Albert Cutler’s words, “a square-toed summary of what was already essentially commonplace in central Anglican sacramental theology.” It was a treatise on infant baptism.
In 1784, when Wesley sent documents to America to help organize the Methodist Episcopal Church, Article XVII stated in part, “The baptism of young children is to be retained in the church.” This article, with the others, was adopted and protected from change, at least until 1972, by the First Restrictive Rule.
So for more than 180 years we were, as Methodists, bound to believe in infant baptism. And we were content to defend it with Wesley’s arguments, borrowed from a long list of ancestors reading back at least to Martin Bucer and Ulrich Zwingli during the Reformation.
Our forebears on the EUB side are not so well-known, nor are their practices so easily explained. Understanding them must take in the full sweep of the history of the Christian practice of baptism. The brief glimpse we can take here will be too limited, but perhaps it can show the major lines of the picture.
Infant baptism is a practice whose origin is simply lost in antiquity. There is no indisputable evidence that it was an apostolic practice, but it was practiced in some areas, at least, in the early second Christian century. It was not universally practiced, though, until sometime after the middle of the third century. During the Reformation the issue simply exploded into controversy.
Ulrich Zwingli was a Swiss Reformer who benefited from Luther’s pioneering work and, thus free from some bondage, went beyond Luther into what he considered new freedom, freedom to follow the Scriptures alone. Others followed Zwingli and took his approach a little further; they found in the Scriptures neither the state church nor infant baptism.
These issues were intimately related; infants were baptized into the church to which all citizens of a state belonged. Contending for a “called-out church” rather than a state church, the so-called Radical Reformers or Anabaptists also contended infant baptism was, on scriptural grounds, invalid—no baptism at all. So they baptized believers, which was recognized by the state church as rebaptism—theological heresy.
In contending for the baptism of believers into a called-out church, the Anabaptists were attacking the entire social order. Emotions ran high and feelings ran deep. Lines were drawn and blood was shed by both sides. For two centuries Anabaptists, such as the Mennonites, were persecuted by Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed alike, hunted from country to country, looking for a home. Some found tolerance in the new world.
Against the backdrop of the Reformation’s violence between Anabaptists and the state church, surely one of the most beautiful pictures of all Christendom is that of the first meeting between Phillip William Otterbein and Martin Boehm, fathers of the UB Church.
Otterbein, it is well known, was the scholarly pastor of a Dutch Reformed church. As a Reformed pastor, however, he had experienced an evangelical awakening just as had the Methodists. He and Methodists preached the same doctrine, followed the same disciplines and fraternized openly.
In 1766 or 1767 Otterbein went to a meeting of German Christians at Isaac Long’s barn near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This was a so-called “Big Meeting,” something like the camp meetings of a later age. Preaching at the Big Meeting was Martin Boehm, a Mennonite preacher who had also experienced, and preached, the new birth.
Otterbein was greatly moved by Boehm’s simple preaching of the Gospel, and after the service he made his way to the front where he embraced the bearded, plainly dressed Anabaptist and said, “Wir sind Bruder! ” or “We are brethren! ”
The new birth and a bear hug swept away 200 years of hatred and bloodshed. A bond of fellowship and love was formed that was strong enough to accept different views and practices of baptism. The church that eventually formed around those two men included not only Reformed, who baptized infants by sprinkling, and Mennonites, who baptized believers by pouring, but also Dunkers, who baptized believers by trine immersion, and Schwenkfelters, who did not practice outward baptism at all. No wonder the Statement of Faith of the United Brethren, when it was organized in 1800, simply said, “We recommend that the outward signs and ordinances—namely baptism and the remembrance of the Lord in the dispensing of bread and wine—be observed; also the washing of feet when the same is desired.”
This confession continued in effect until amended in 1889 when a similarly accepting confession was adopted. Article VII reads in part, “… the mode of baptism and the manner of observing the Lord’s Supper are always to be left to the judgment and understanding of each individual. Also, the baptism of children shall be left to the judgment of believing parents.”
Our other grandparent from the German side was the Evangelical Association (EA), established in 1803 around the work of Jacob Albright. Albright was a baptized Lutheran who experienced the new birth about 1790 through Methodist neighbors and Otterbein’s associates. An accepting attitude toward baptism was held in the EA, and both believer and infant baptism were practiced.
However, in 1829 an EA pastor rebaptized someone who had received infant baptism. This caused a major stir, and the matter was taken to the Western Annual Conference where the vote was unanimous in condemning that action and forbidding rebaptism.
The matter did not end there, however; it was taken to the EA General Conference in 1839. The decision of the Western Conference was overturned, and it was established that “rebaptism was permitted when desired, but that it should not become a frequent practice, and pastors must not advocate it.”[1]
Having drawn these elements from the history of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, we must also note that as time went on both parents of the EUB, and then the EUB Church itself, moved more toward a general practice of infant baptism. This is reflected in the Articles of Confession adopted at the United Conference in 1946 and still carried in our Discipline. Article VI states in part, “We believe children are under the atonement of Christ and as heirs of the kingdom of God are acceptable subjects for Christian baptism.”
This being said, though, it is also true that the EUB Church never officially moved away from its more inclusive position. This is evidenced by the fact that the Ritual of Dedication of Infants was still part of the official ritual of the EUB Church in 1968. A small concession to this was made in the UMC Discipline of 1968. In a change from the Methodist Discipline of 1964, children were to be added to the Preparatory Membership Roll who were “baptized or dedicated,” rather than only baptized.
This wording remained in the Discipline until it was quietly dropped in 1980. Since that time we seem to have no recollection of our EUB tradition in that part of our Discipline.
This being the case, it may come as a surprise to many, as it did to me, that the ritual of the Dedication of Infants is still a part of our official United Methodist ritual. According to the information recently circulated by the United Methodist Book of Worship Committee, “Currently, the United Methodist Church recognizes that ‘The Ritual of the Church’ is that contained in: 1. The Book of Ritual of the Evangelic!! United Brethren Church (1959). …”[2]
I was able to find this Book of Ritual, actually a part of the 1959 Discipline, in the archives of a UM university library. There, paragraph 2071 is the ritual for “The Baptism of Infants”; paragraph 2072, “The Baptism of Adults”; and paragraph 2073, “The Dedication of Infants.” Yes, UMs dedicate infants.
A new note of adventure was added to this mix of traditions at General Conference last year when we adopted a much more Anabaptist doctrinal statement than we have ever had. Now our Discipline reads, “Scripture is the primary source and criterion for Christian doctrine,” and “Scripture remains the norm by which all traditions are judged.”
While I do not doubt that with that statement we had in mind a correction to the problems of pluralism—the growth of new “traditions” not rooted in Scripture—the new statement invites us to examine not only someone else’s favorite traditions but ours as well. I believe it invites us to an examination of our traditions concerning baptism under the searching light of Scripture.
In that light infant baptism cannot be presented as a litmus test. Scripture simply does not conclusively demonstrate the practice of infant baptism. We recognize this fact when we say “Scripture implies it”[3] or when we join Zwingli in stretching infant baptism into a parallel with circumcision. Those arguments are convincing if we really want to be convinced, but they simply are not definitive.[4]
All of these considerations invite us to move forward into a new attitude among United Methodists toward infant baptism. Yet that step forward can be simply a step back to reclaim a powerful and beautiful part of our tradition, the tradition of tolerance found in our United Brethren and Evangelical Association grandparents.
I believe it is time to recognize that neither Scripture nor our tradition as United Methodists has a clear and unquestionable word on the mode and practice of baptism. It is time for all of us to openly affirm that Charlie and Helen are “good United Methodists” and that Lauren is just as much a preparatory member as any baptized infant.
Is there room in our church for Martin Boehm? Is there room for our Mennonite, Dunker and even Schwenkfelter forebears? I believe our answer must be yes. There was room in the early church, and there is room in the church today.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Behney, J. Bruce and Eller, Paul H., The History of the Evangelical United Brethren Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), p. 148.
[2] Morrison ,Susan and Langford, Thomas A . III, in an insert between pages 14 and 15 in The Circuit Rider, February 1989.
[3] Robb, Ed III, ‘Why We Baptize Children,” Challenge to Evangelism Today, Summer 1988, p. 8.
[4] Beasley-Murray, G. R., Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1962), ch. 6.
by Steve | Jul 20, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: How Many People Does Bill Hinson Pastor?
New Year’s Day 1989 found Dr. William H. Hinson, pastor of the world’s largest United Methodist church, living on the streets. And though Hinson was there for only one night (with four other Houston clergymen) to experience and dramatize the plight of the homeless, it wasn’t an empty gesture—Bill Hinson’s 13,500-member church responded to their pastor’s experience with $20,000 over the $35,000 homeless-aid budget.
By Amy Rabinovitz
“The wonderful power of First UMC, Houston is the way the people understand the beautiful Methodist balance,” says Hinson. ” They aren’t afraid of paradoxes—personal holiness and social holiness, pietism and activism. They accept paradox as both/and rather than either/or.”
Such balances characterize the ministry and charisma of this southern-bred preacher.
In person he is soft-spoken and gracious. In the pulpit, dramatically distinct.
His sermons are replete with down-home homilies of old saints in nursing homes and young couples in distress, but equally peppered with serious concepts from Scripture.
His strong preaching is “a gift of the Lord, an endowment to someone He’s called to the pulpit,” but in addition to inspiration, Hinson has added a certain amount of perspiration. “I minored in speech in college and took as many preaching courses as the seminary curriculum would permit. When I went to Boston University for my master’s degree in homiletics I studied with A. K. Chalmers, a flamboyant and dramatic preacher. I earned my doctorate under the direction of John Brokhoff, a strong, biblical preacher.”
Bill Hinson also displayed a delicate balance when he came to Houston in 1983. After the retirement of the highly-respected Dr. Charles Allen, some outsiders predicted the church would lose ground. But by respecting the existing, strong structure while pursuing aggressive church growth, Hinson avoided the settle-in-and-die syndrome.
“This church has 500 people on the administrative board, and during my first summer as pastor I met personally with 367 of them.” (The others, he explains, were out of town and unavailable.) “That entire summer I listened and asked questions. ‘What are your dreams?’ ‘What do you want to see God do through our church?’
“Over and over I heard that they wanted to serve. The possibilities of this church are staggering. We’re strategically located in the heart of one of America’s largest cities. We’ve been on ABC television for 35 years, so thousands beyond our sanctuary walls look to us for spiritual guidance.
“Countless people feel involved in the church. One television viewer, a 100-year-old woman who hadn’t been in our church in 20 years, wrote and asked us to turn the television cameras to a certain area so she could see who was sitting in ‘her’ section.” (Yes, the cameras ministered to the home-bound member’s request.)
With the people’s mandate for ministry, Hinson initiated several discipleship programs including three Bible studies—a men’s breakfast study, a women’s afternoon study and a lunchtime businesspersons’ study—which he personally taught. These Bible studies have been a source of support and guidance for both pastor and church. In his guide to church evangelism, A Place To Dig In (Abingdon Press), Hinson credits the church’s 100 percent increase in giving to the power of laity nurtured through core groups such as these.
The church also initiated Disciple Bible Studies which have grown from 4 groups to 20, with an additional 20 slated for 1990; and an Aldersgate Club, numbering 700, in which members agree to try to bring others into the church.
The catalyst for two new programs came when Hinson heard about a young couple expecting their first child. During her pregnancy the wife had to stay in bed for several months. The couple dropped all activities, but not one person from church called and asked why they hadn’t been attending.
“When they told me their experience,” Hinson remembers, “I realized that the worst thing isn’t when a member drops out. It’s when no one notices.”
Bill Hinson preached this couple’s story from the pulpit. He called the staff together and asked for ideas. The result was the Barnabas Committee, which follows up with each new member and helps newcomers find a place in the church. A Nurturing Committee reviews each Sunday’s attendance and calls anyone who has missed three weeks.
Opportunities for such extensive ministry are a far cry from Bill Hinson’s home church, the 22-member First Church, Snipesville, Georgia. It was there he was called to the ministry, and from there he was sent to his first congregation (39 members).
Hinson attributes much of his ministry’s success to his wife, Jean. “She is the best Christian I’ve ever known and a model of how to listen to people. She has been a nurturer and supporter to me. Her own quiet commitment to Christ is a great source of strength. She helped me balance my family time, and when I had to be away she involved the children in such a way that they became a part of my ministry. As a result all three of our children, Elizabeth, John and Cathy, are deeply committed to the church.”
The Hinsons were serving in First Church, Albany, Georgia, when Bill was called to Houston. Though he had already achieved a reputation as a powerful preacher who carefully tended his congregation, he was a dark horse candidate for Houston.
“I was at a pastors’ conference in Alabama and, as pastors will, everyone was talking about who was going to fill the spot in Houston. Everyone’s name was mentioned but mine.”
In the end a funny turn of the Lord’s hand helped Hinson. “I had been interviewed by several members of the committee, but I hadn’t talked with the chairman. So I kept waiting and waiting for him to call. Then one cold Monday in February he called and asked if I’d be preaching Sunday.
“Saturday night I couldn’t even pray. Jean asked me why I was home so early, and I said, ‘I feel like it’s been decided. Either I’m going or I’m staying, but I’m happy either way.”‘
The normal pattern of the Houston committee was to fly in Saturday night, watch the early service on television and attend the second service.
“That Sunday in early service all I could think about was the chairman watching me on TV. The Lord couldn’t have gotten into that service because I wasn’t thinking about Him. So I bombed. I was awful. I went to Sunday school knowing that I should stay in Georgia. And that was okay. Then after class the chairman walked in and told me, ‘We had the wildest time. Our plane iced up in Atlanta, and we had to rent a car and drive like mad to get here. We just arrived.’ The next service I preached for the Lord.”
By the time he got home that afternoon, “I told Jean to go to the alley behind the liquor store and get some boxes. Any God who could work all that out could put me in Houston.”
That the hand of the Lord is on this preacher is obvious in several ways, including this 150-year-old church’s defiance to all downward trends. Though membership in United Methodist churches has dropped 18 percent and the denomination influences only about the same percentage of Americans as it did 160 years ago, First Church claims more than 600 new members a year, and the ministry has expanded into video and cable TV. In 1988, 200 of the 673 new members came through professions of faith.
God was also evident when a fire caused millions of dollars of damage to the church and heavily damaged their magnificent organ. Hinson had only been pastor six months. Houstonians were so distressed over the loss that one person wrote to the local paper, “That fire wouldn’t have happened if Dr. Allen were still pastor.”
However, Bill Hinson views the experience as having a good side. “The church grew even while meeting in a hotel ballroom. And going through the trauma, challenge and suffering together created a unique bond between us.” He likens it to being together for five years of normal emotional involvement.
If Bill Hinson has a mission, it is to share the need for leaders to challenge and enable the laity. As one of the key organizers of the Houston Declaration, he was responding “to what I saw over and over again in my travels—an alarming gap between the official church position and what people actually believed and wanted.
“The Houston Declaration started as just a few phone calls between friends, talking about the pattern we saw developing.” By coming together and organizing a statement, Hinson and the other organizers of the Houston Declaration have encouraged thousands of people. “This General Conference was more responsive to the grassroots than any in my memory,” he says with pleasure.
Even fiery issues, however, are balanced by Bill Hinson ‘s southern-gentleman approach, and his ministry is, in many ways, like one of his favorite hobbies. “I love to plant things. When I first got to Houston I planted an oak tree. Not one that would live only 50 years. One that would live more than 100.”
A thoughtful expression lights his face. “I like,” he explains, “to plan for the long haul.”
Amy Rabinovitz resides in Houston, Texas, and is a staff writer for Chosen People magazine.
