by Steve | Mar 2, 1979 | Archive - 1979
MAN …
broken, twisted, dead ..
reaching for God and seeming almost to touch Him …
Though in reality, separated from Him
by the infinite gulf of sin.
GOD … the fire that consumes
and the love that warms …
redeeming us through
The Cross of Christ
by Dr. David F. Wells, Professor of Church History Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois
The New Testament never says that Christ lived for us, thirsted for us, was tempted for us, or became weary for us, true as all this is. What it says, and says repeatedly, is that He died for us. More precisely, it says that He died for our sins, bearing them as His own, assuming responsibility for them, and suffering the full wrath of God in consequence. In view of the clarity and insistence of this apostolic witness, the fact that it is so commonly misunderstood is remarkable.
In 1894 R. W. Dale wrote in Christian Doctrine that there were two types of belief about the Atonement, and his division still holds. According to the one conception, “Christ achieves our redemption by revealing God’s love to us,” and according to the other, “He reveals God’s love to us by achieving our redemption.” In both views, Christ’s life shows human life in its perfection and His work [on the cross] divine love at its height. But to the question, “Does Christ redeem us by revealing God, or does He reveal God by redeeming us?”, they give differing answers.
That Dale’s delineation is still strikingly accurate suggests that despite the more Biblical insights injected into Protestant theology during the Barthian era, matters now stand more or less where they did during the age of classical Protestant liberalism. Indeed, theologians today are not infrequently pleased to speak of themselves as “chastened liberals.”
Protestant liberals like Ritschi and especially Harnack expressed an optimism that grew out of their evolutionary understanding of life. They announced the coming Kingdom that would consist of the realization of God’s universal fatherhood and man’s corresponding brotherhood. Jesus was the historic Pioneer of this message, they said, and His pioneering, in revealing God’s love, is redemptive. This conception evoked the scathing response from Niebuhr that it offered a God without wrath who had brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a real cross. The shallow optimism that underlay it was shattered by the First World War in Europe and the Depression of the 1930s in America.
Although the same optimism has not reappeared, there is nevertheless a widespread understanding of Christ’s death that is still classically liberal. For instance, the 1973 Bangkok assembly of the World Council of Churches defined salvation as freedom from societal sins. Working back from the effects of sins, it then deduced from these the nature of the Atonement.
Sin was here conceived in a purely horizontal manner: what we need to be saved from is racial oppression, economic injustice, sexual prejudice, class distinctions, and psychological inhibitions. Jesus is important because He exhibited freedom from, and opposition to, these evils. Indeed, His example, by which the love of God was revealed, has provided our redemption. The Church’s mission is to call men to a full humanity through Jesus, whose “salvation” brings liberty, unity, justice, and peace.
During the last 10 years, the same model of understanding the work of Christ has been used in the so-called “political theology” that has refined the horizontal understanding of salvation in relation to the political order. [Here], salvation means freedom from economic injustice, political corruption, and class oppression. Towards this end a Christian-Marxist dialogue has been established, and the cost of discipleship has been described in terms of revolution by Jurgen Moltmann, or at least active resistance by Daniel Berrigan. Similarly, James Cone has made black racial identity the basis for his assertion that “Black Power” demands are Gospel correlates. Different as these conceptions may be in details, they agree that sin is a disruption of just horizontal relationships in society, that salvation is the rectification of these, and that insofar as Jesus is important, it is because He pioneered this movement as a Revolutionary, or at least a Dissenter.
Sin undeniably has horizontal ramifications, though this is hardly the discovery of the World Council of Churches. While government exists to curb lawlessness, it is sometimes the vehicle of it; minorities are oppressed in spite of the law and sometimes because of it. Given man’s inherent greed, it is a foregone conclusion that the American economic system, even if it is preferable to the alternatives, will never deliver equitable treatment to all who are embraced by it. And sin, even if it is at root a religious concept, issues in psychological disruptions and even personality derangements.
The basic divergence in interpreting Christ’s death, then, does not arise because some think of sin societally (horizontally) and others think of it only religiously (vertically). New Testament faith acknowledges the horizontal dimension, but the new liberalism denies the vertical aspect.
Is sin most to be feared because it breeds distrust, foments greed, causes personality to disintegrate, fuels cruelty, and leads to institutional corruption? Not according to the New Testament. It is most to be feared because it draws down the anger of God. What makes man’s predicament hopeless, on the one hand, and what necessitates a Gospel, on the other, is not man’s inhumanity to man, ghastly as that sometimes is, but the fact that the world lies under God’s condemnation. The Atonement, therefore cannot be understood merely as the genesis of societal reform; it must be seen, centrally and primarily, as God’s provision for averting His own anger.
This vertical dimension to the Atonement gives God’s love its real sanctity, but for several reasons it has not been as prominent in evangelical thought and preaching as I believe it is in the. New Testament.
It is obvious that the notion of God’s wrath is subject to serious misunderstanding, for it could be equated with human anger. Human anger is invariably tainted with and becomes the servant of evil. With anger comes malice, hatred, revenge, jealousy, distrust, and uncontrolled passion. Clearly, God’s anger is free of these defilements. What, then, is divine wrath? According to Frederick Godet, it is:
… moral indignation in all its purity, the holy antipathy of the Good Being for that which is evil, without the slightest alloy of personal irritation, or of selfish resentment. It is the dissatisfaction which is excited in a pure Being by the sight of impurity; it signifies the outward manifestations which testify to this deep dissatisfaction, and the sufferings which result from it to him who has provoked it. The wrath of God, so understood, is a necessary consequence of the profound difference which separates good from evil. To deny this would oblige us to consider evil not as the opposite, but simply an imperfect form, of good.
[Godet’s Biblical Studies: Studies on the New Testament, ed. by W. H. Lyttleton, London, 1895, p, 152]
What God’s wrath achieves primarily, says P.T. Forsyth, is the practical recognition that His holiness is still unchanged and unabated. “Without that God cannot remain God; He would be Father, but a partial not Sovereign Father,” as Samuel Mikolaski puts it in The Creative Theology of P.T. Forsyth. Brunner, who speaks of wrath as “the negative aspect of holiness,” goes on to say that it is necessarily an “objective reality” that stands between God and man. The price of affirming all this may be the appearance of “foolishness,” as Paul said, a lack of sophistication; but it is that kind of “foolishness” in which God excels.
And is it really so unsophisticated?
What the divine judgment tells us is that good and evil are not equally ultimate, they are not on the two ends of a cosmic seesaw tilting up and down eternally. The days when error can be on the throne and when truth can be condemned to the scaffold are numbered. The time is coming when God’s zeal will “burst into flames.” What opposes His will, on earth and in heaven, will be destroyed.
This fact alone gives us both a mandate and a rationale for interpreting life in moral terms. This is what provides a major incentive to be moral, and this is why the New Testament, which is so intensely ethical, so insistent upon our choosing good, is so often eschatological.[1] To speak of God without acknowledging His wrath is to postulate His ethical indifference. More than that, it is to require man’s ethical indifference, too. What at first sight may appear to be rather cross, and has no doubt been treated crassly in innumerable “fire and brimstone” sermons, is actually of the essence of the nature of God and the whole moral order. Inevitably, then, it is of the essence of the Atonement, too.
We should be grieved that eschatology has been so trivialized by the recent rash of popular books on the subject. Some of these books amount to nothing more than Christian horror stories; they pander to the same morbid interest that leads people to read cheap scandal sheets. Eschatology, instead of dealing with the deep and profound issues of good and evil, has been reduced to a calendar of events, a fair number of which, I dare say, Jesus Himself would have been amazed to learn. This is not the level on which we are invited to think about good and evil in Scripture; if we insist on doing so, our grasp of the Atonement will be correspondingly shallow.
The work of Christ [on the Cross] is a complex mystery, and the New Testament writers ransack their vocabulary to find language to express it. Their chief words are: redemption, by which Christ delivers sin’s captives from their bondage at the ransomed price of His life; sacrifice, by which our guilt, both as subjective shame (its psychological dimension) and as objective blame (its metaphysical dimension), is dealt with; propitiation, the way in which God’s wrath is averted; and reconciliation, the restoration of fellowship between God and man.
Although each of these words focuses on a different aspect of this mysterious exchange, whereby our sin is imputed to Christ and His righteousness to us, the theme of reconciliation probably takes in as much of the work of Christ as any. Reconciliation presupposes a prior hostility between two parties. At first sight it may appear that man is hostile toward God but that God is not hostile toward man, for in Romans 5:10 and II Corinthians 5:20 only man’s reconciliation is mentioned, and in II Corinthians 5:18, Ephesians 2:16, Colossians 1:20, God is spoken of as reconciling us to Himself. If this were the case, then Christ’s work would be directed only toward changing our distrust of God and not toward changing His disapproval of man.
In the other instances of reconciliation in the New Testament (Matthew 5:23, 24; I Corinthians 7:10,11), however the focus actually falls, not on the enmity of the offending party, but on the need to assuage the anger of the person against whom the offense was committed. This pattern is duplicated precisely with respect to the Atonement. In Romans 5:8-11, for example, what is underlined is not primarily that Christ has changed our feeling about God but rather that He changed God’s feelings about us. The enmity to which Paul refers (v.18, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled …”) is clearly God’s, not ours; otherwise he would have said: “If, when we felt enmity toward God, we were able to lay it aside through Christ’s death …. ” On the contrary, what He affirms is that in reconciliation, no less than in justification, we are helplessly passive; we must be reconciled and we must receive, rather than effect, our reconciliation (v.11). Man is therefore separated from God by sin and God is separated from man by wrath. For reconciliation to be effective, God must be able to look on man without displeasure and man must be able to look on God without fear. And what was required has been done, as the words of that wellknown hymn affirm:
Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood; Sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! …
In the reconciliation of Christ, sin is expiated, wrath is propitiated, and our alienation from God is overcome.
Our redemption is not achieved by Christ’s revealing God’s love to us; rather, Christ reveals God’s love to us by achieving our redemption. Indeed, the apostle John goes so far as to say that we would not even know the real nature of love (I John 3:16) unless God had undertaken to shoulder our guilt and make common cause with us in our sin. Divine love, therefore, is not even understood outside the context of this Cross. It is with the Cross that we must begin, and it is with the Cross that we will end (Revelation 5:9,10). The simplest message of the evangelist and the profoundest message of the theologian are the same: Christ bore our sins, mediating between the estranged parties. There was no other Gospel known in the early Church; there should be no other Gospel known in ours.
[1] Having to do with God’s plan for ending history and completing His Kingdom through the return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age.
by Steve | Mar 1, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: Taking On the TV Goliath
An exclusive interview with Rev. Don Wildmon, founder of the hard-hitting National Federation for Decency.
Q There has been some debate over how much influence TV exerts. What do you see as the nature and extent of this influence? How does it measure against principles and teachings of the Bible?
A Its influence is absolutely tremendous! Ask a five-year-old how you spell relief, he will reply ROLAIDS.
TV has such an influence that no politician would dare oppose it. Why? Television can make or break a candidate. We have seen that in our lifetime. So the politicians are not going to do anything about TV programming. The Federal Communications Commission is not going to do anything. They have let us know that they are not in the “moral” business. They are there to license the stations, not to influence the content of the programs.
How does TV’s influence measure against principles and teachings of the Bible? Basically TV is teaching principles totally opposite of those taught by the Bible. Inch-by-inch, little-by-little, TV programmers are moving us into an area where we will accept right as being wrong. In the Old Testament it says “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 16:25 RSV) Television is teaching America that adultery and pre-marital sex, homosexuality, violence, etc., are all acceptable … that profanity is normal … that the name of God can be casually used in vain like you would say, well, “have a coke.”
Ten years ago if you would have heard a “hell” or “damn” on television you would have been shocked. But now such words are commonplace. In fact, there are very few words of profanity which have not been used on prime time television.
Nine or ten years ago we would not have accepted the sexual contents of many present shows. But TV has de-sensitized us, little-by-little. The ultimate end of all of this is hard-core porno on television.
I made that statement over a year ago to a newspaper and they laughed. But about one month later a TV critic for the New York Daily News interviewed Tony Randall. He said they would put porno on tomorrow if they could get away with it. Tony Randall is a man who has been in the television industry for 20 years. He quit because he would not put more T & A’s in his program (T & A’s refer to the parts of the female anatomy).
So, little-by-little TV is teaching us to accept things we should not accept. Recently I saw a show with a man and woman undressing … getting into bed. Then I saw the man getting on top of the woman before the scene was cut. Little-by-little. Eventually they are going to show the whole thing.
Ninety percent of all sex shown on television is presented outside of marriage. Thus, the sacred side of sex—as it was intended by God to be a beautiful sharing experience between a husband and a wife—is rarely presented by television. Instead, sex on TV is usually exploitive, manipulative, perverted.
Homosexuality is hardly ever shown in a bad light. The public doesn’t realize that the organization which has the most influence on television, other than television itself, is the homosexual group. They pre-screen and approve every television script dealing with homosexuality. They spend 20 hours a week in an office in New York going over proposed television scripts. That is why you are not going to see homosexuals ever presented honestly on television. How contrary can you get to the Bible?
Q You have been quoted as saying that TV is a drug. Please explain.
A Check it out with your children. Set a child down, let him watch TV. Your son or daughter will watch, hour after hour. If there is not something on he or she really likes, then the child will find something and will watch that.
Television takes no effort. You don’t have to move a muscle; all you have to do is turn it on and sit. You don’t even have to use your mind; somebody else does your thinking for you. So you become addicted. You don’t have to relate to anybody. You don’t have to go through the necessary turmoil or exercise of learning how to relate or talk or do. You just sit there being entertained passively. That’s why TV is a drug. We become addicted to it and we have to watch it.
Q Some people are saying that Americans (and United Methodists) have lost the capacity to get angry about evil. Do you agree?
A Yes and no. You can’t say that about all UMs. But as an institutional church, we have lost much of our righteous indignation, our holy anger about personal sin. Because the moral changes in our society have come about little-by-little, inch-by-inch, we have been conditioned gradually to accept them without getting angry or very upset.
However, there are still United Methodist lay people, pastors, and local churches who do get angry at evil. The trouble is, they don’t have a channel to express that righteous anger adequately. Our church institution stifles that anger, sometimes because they say expressing it is negative and not loving.
Q What is your organization, the National Federation For Decency?
A At the current time NFD is spending 99 percent of its efforts trying to make TV a clean, wholesome, constructive influence in our society. We are almost two years old. We are not sponsored or affiliated with any particular church. I happen to be a UM minister, a member of the North Mississippi Annual Conference, under appointment to the NFD by my bishop. But that’s the only relationship between the N FD and my denomination. The NFD is independent, something like Good News, as I understand your movement. Working with us are Catholics and Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists, Mormons and Jews.
Q How did NFD begin?
A One night I was watching TV with my children during the Christmas holidays of ’76. The three choices on our three channels offered sex, violence, and profanity. I decided that I had had enough; I was not going to take any more without fighting back. I did not know what I could do, but I knew I had to do something, as a Christian and a parent.
It began with a “turn-the-TV-off week.” Then our efforts mushroomed. I felt increasingly that this was God’s will for my life, to give myself to trying to make TV a clean, wholesome, constructive influence for our families. So we founded NFD.
We are non-profit. My board is made primarily of UM members including ministers, housewives, a basketball coach, insurance people, and some others. I have had contact with these people for several years. On our board, we have no people with money, no well-known people, no national personalities.
Q How does NFD operate?
A On a basis of knowledge, facts. We have a process by which we monitor programs on prime-time TV. We invite people in different parts of the country to participate as evaluators. We train them to monitor for us. The results are sent back to us, tabulated, and put into a computer. This is how we know precisely what advertisers sponsored what shows, what the content of each show was, how much sex and how sex was presented. We get to know a tremendous amount about each particular show. As we compile data over a period of 12 weeks, this gives us a pretty good knowledge of the practice that an advertiser follows. Then, when we talk to that advertiser, we can talk from a basis of fact—not emotion. This is the reason for our success in dealing with Sears, Ford, and other large companies. They know what we are talking about, and we can back it up.
Q How is NFD financed?
A We began on faith—we had no money. For the first seven months while I was with NFD I received only $1,400 salary. I invested nearly $5,000 of my own money to get the NFD going. But for the last year we have been able to pay our own way.
We receive not one penny from the UM Church as an institution. We receive no money from our annual conference or any other conference. We receive no money from the government or any foundation. We have no “big money” on our board.
Our organization is financed entirely by individuals and local churches. Ninety-five percent of all our gifts are in the $10 or less class. We have a subscription fee of $10 a year to our NFD newsletter. It goes out once a month. From that money, basically, we survive. The biggest gift we have received from any church or individual was $300.
Q Boycotting your activities. How do you answer people who think that boycotting is not an appropriate strategy for Christians?
A When I started NFD, boycott was a very dirty word for me. Why? Because boycott was the method that the blacks had used indiscriminately against whites in our state. Some innocent people were hurt unjustly.
For the first few months of the N FDs existence, when we tried to get someone to boycott, it was nearly impossible.
My attitude about boycotting changed. One day I was sitting in a UM church at a meeting of the Board of Christian Social Concerns. We were discussing TV and its influence, and somebody said that the answer might be to boycott sponsors who help pay for this trash. I shuddered. But across the table from me was a young mother with two small children. She spoke up: “What’s wrong with boycotting? As a Christian and as a mother, I have not only the right but the responsibility NOT to spend my money with those companies that help destroy values that I believe in.”
For 20 years I had preached Christian stewardship from the pulpit. But now, for the first time, I suddenly realized in a new way that Christian stewardship goes beyond giving your tithe to the church. It also involves where you spend your money and who you help with your money.
Yes, boycotting is a very definite part of our strategy. Our boycotts are not directed against innocent people and innocent businesses that have no power to change anything. Instead, our boycotts are directed against companies which have complete control over their advertising policies and choose to sponsor harmful TV. Here is our philosophy: Where advertisers spend their advertising money is their own business. If they want to sponsor “Deep Throat,” it is their money. Likewise, where we spend our money is our business. We have the right to spend our money where we want. And certainly we have the right to say to any company, “If you want to sponsor ‘SOAP’ or ‘Charlie’s Angels’ or ‘Vegas’ or some filthy movie, go ahead. But if you do that, then we are going to make sure that we spend our money with your competitor.”
That is as American as apple pie. And I am convinced it is also thoroughly Christian. For the Christian has the positive responsibility to help promote clean, wholesome, constructive values. Also, there is an opposite and negative responsibility—Christians should refuse to support and encourage those who encourage the breaking of God’s laws. Remember—part of the money you spend on a product is used to pay for TV advertising. Will you thus be a party to promoting values which destroy the very foundation of the church and society?
Q How can individual United Methodists and/or churches tie in with your activities in behalf of wholesome TV?
A Write and tell us that you or your church want to become a part of NFD. Send $10 so we can send you our monthly NFD newsletter. It will show precisely what you can do … and it tells a lot about the world of television as it really is. This would make a good project for a Sunday school class, circle, prayer-sharing group, or council on ministries in your church.
Q Is there any overlap between your work in NFD and work being done by the official communications agency of our church?
A Yes and No. Our church helped to develop what I consider to be the finest teaching instrument about TV, Television Awareness Training workshops. This is a tremendous educational study of TV and we recommend it to everyone.
But as far as getting involved directly to change TV by putting pressure on somebody, we don’t see any overlap. I have to be perfectly honest (and it hurts me to have to say this) but I have been disappointed by the silence of our institutional church in this particular area of TV. And also as far as alcohol, drugs, and pornography.
Indeed, what good will it do if we provide a “Great Society ” with adequate housing, good medical care, food, clothing, etc., if our society becomes a moral pig pen?
If the church had been doing an effective job, I would never have begun the NFD. I try to work through the church where possible, but there is not an organization in our church that is doing the work that NFD seeks to do.
I wish that our church would do more. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t expect it will as an institution. Individuals in the church, and local churches, yes. And this is the reason for the NFD-to give you a place to tie in, so that many people can work together for the principles of Biblical morality.
Q If you had one wish concerning the UM Church, what would it be?
A I wish that we would find something that seemingly we have ignored if not lost entirely—awareness that sin is real, that sin can destroy us, and that in order to be saved from sin you have to be saved through Jesus Christ. This applies in every area of life, not only social but personal also. Salvation involves life transformed according to the righteousness of Christ, so I wish our church would speak to some of the personal and moral issues of our society. We do a pretty good job speaking about the Panama Canal and some of the other issues such as abortion, law of sea, and the Kent State killings, etc. But somewhere along the way, I wish we would say something also about the sacred worth of individuals … about pornography and how it degrades human worth … about TV that teaches profanity and immorality and violence. And it ought to have some kind of program to act for righteousness and justice in the realm of personal morality.
by Steve | Jan 7, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: Now is the Time to Begin!
The first in a continuing series of articles intended to help United Methodists make a positive impact on the 1980 General Conference of our church.
by Rev. Dr. Robert W. Sprinkle, Good News Political Strategy Chairman and Director, UM District Urban Ministries, St. Petersburg, Florida
General Conference of 1980 is only 1½ years away. This means that it is time for evangelicals to gear up the political machinery that we can use to give our faithful witness to the direction we see Christ leading His Church.
Why so much lead time? One reason is that the next meeting of your annual conference (most of them will meet in May or June of 1979) will elect the delegates who will represent you at General Conference in Indianapolis in the spring of 1980. To be prepared for those delegate elections from annual conferences, evangelicals will need to begin soon to organize efforts in your annual conference to elect the best possible delegates. (Electing these delegates will be the subject of this column in the next issue of Good News).
So we need to elect delegates who preferably represent, or at least are sympathetic to, the concerns of evangelicals. This, in turn, implies that we need to be able to state clearly what those concerns are. There is no one “Good News position,” or official evangelical position, on a great many issues. But it is possible to reflect here some of the concerns that surface repeatedly when evangelicals within the UMC discuss the state and future of our denomination.
These concerns, modified and applied to your local situation, can form the basis of discussion with persons who are likely candidates to be elected as General Conference delegates. So here are some sample questions that might be grist for a questionnaire to prospective delegates (in no particular order):
1. Membership Decline:
The UMC has lost over a million members in the last decade.
A. What are the causes of this membership decline?
B. Are there any theological factors in this loss?
C. What should be done to change this trend?
D. Would you favor the development of a separate Board of Evangelism and Church Extension?
2. Missions Retrenchment
The UMC’s total number of missionaries serving overseas has declined from 1,500 to under 700 in recent years.
A. What are the causes of this decline?
B. What theological factors are at work?
C. What should be done to change this trend?
D. Should the Board of Global Ministries retain the prerogative to decide which UM agencies may work overseas?
E. Should alternate, voluntary missionary societies be permitted within the UMC, in addition to BGM?
3. Abortion:
At least one UM board is a member of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, and RCAR operates from an office in the UM Building in Washington, D.C.
A. Should the UMC and/or its boards participate in RCAR?
B. Should the UMC and/or its boards participate in “pro-life” groups?
C. Should the UMC and/or its boards not join coalitions on this issue?
D. Is there some other position the UMC should take regarding abortion?
4. Superintendency:
Proposals will probably be submitted again regarding “term episcopacy” and elected district superintendency. (There is no evangelical consensus on these issues at present.)
A. Do you favor or oppose “term episcopacy?”
B. If you favor it, would you wish to see 8- or 12-year terms?
C. Would you support or oppose a proposal to change the Discipline to allow for the election of district superintendents by all the members of an annual conference (as the EUB’s formerly did)?
5. Exemplary Behavior of Ministers:
An avowed, practicing homosexual has been reappointed to the pastorate of Washington Square UMC in New York City. The case was made by non-evangelicals that the Social Principles Statement, which speaks to this issue, is intended only as a set of guidelines and not as binding church law on the subject.
A. Would you favor or oppose adding specific language to the Discipline that would prohibit any practicing homosexual from being appointed as pastor of a UM congregation? From continuing under episcopal appointment?
B. Are there other forms of behavior which should be specified in the Discipline as contradictory to receiving an appointment?
C. Should the Social Principles Statement be kept or changed? If changed, what do you suggest?
6. Itinerancy / Appointive System (whereby pastors are appointed annually by the bishop):
A study report is soon due on the status and future of the itinerant ministry.
A. What changes, if any, would you like to see in the appointive/itinerant system?
B. Should local pastors have voting rights at annual conference?
C. Should an ordination and conference membership procedure be reinstituted that provided an alternative to eventually attending seminary?
D. What initiatives and prerogatives should local churches have in the appointment-making process?
7. Church Structures:
Several proposals are already being discussed that would affect church structure, and perhaps evangelicals too:
A. Should there be quotas for ethnic minorities and women on general boards and agencies?
B. Should UM Women’s units be optional or mandatory in the local church?
C. Would you favor one general program journal, the Interpreter, to cover the programs of all work areas? If so, would you favor ending subsidies to other special interest official periodicals such as response, engage/social action, New World Outlook, etc.?
8. Priorities:
In addition to the three existing missional priorities, there is talk of adding priorities on worship, family life, UM higher education, and perhaps others.
A. Do you favor designating some causes for church-wide emphasis over the next four years?
B. If there are officially designated priorities, how many can be practically pursued?
C. Are priorities permanent? If not, how would you de-prioritize a cause?
D. Which items would you name as missional priorities for the next quadrennium?
E. What “mix” of apportionment (required) and Advance Special (optional) giving should be used to fund missional priorities?
9. “Sexist” Language:
A concern has emerged that the UMC eliminate “sexist” language from liturgy, curriculum, and printed program resources.
A. Do you consider use of terms such as “men” in reference to people generally to be “sexist”?
B. Do you consider use of “Father” in reference to God, or to Jesus as His Son, to be “sexist”?
C. If a decision is reached to make some changes to avoid “sexist” language, would you favor it affecting only newly-produced materials or should there be a revision of traditional resources (creeds, hymns, etc.) as well?
10. Curriculum:
Church school curriculum income reported by the UM Publishing House have fallen 6.8% and 3.3% in the last two years, respectively. Several suggestions have been made to change this trend:
A. Would you favor or oppose a specifically evangelical “track” of literature for all age groups published by our church?
B. Would you favor or oppose a process whereby materials produced by other publishers could be reviewed by the UM Curriculum Review Committee for consistency with Wesleyan doctrine; and if consistent, materials could be sold through Cokesbury as approved curriculum?
C. Do you favor or oppose the present policy under which UM congregations are limited to using UM curriculum?
D. Are there other suggestions that you have for improving UM curriculum?
11. Doctrine:
The UMC, under the doctrinal statement added to the Discipline in 1972, operates in a pluralistic context. A matter for clarification is how pluralism relates to doctrine, and particularly to the Wesleyan concept of “a core of doctrine.” This core, which for Wesley was composed of beliefs necessary to salvation and full Christian faith, is left undefined in the 1972 doctrinal statement. There will be efforts in 1980 to specify some beliefs as belonging to the core of doctrine.
A. Do you think that beliefs belonging to the core of doctrine can be specified?
B. If so, what are some elements that you would identify as being essential within the core?
C. Would you favor or oppose dropping the 1972 doctrinal statement (Paragraphs 67 and 69) from the Discipline?
D. Would you favor or oppose naming at least one basic doctrine, for example the necessity of Christ’s atoning death on the Cross for our salvation, as belonging to the essential core of doctrine?
12. Stewardship:
Each General Conference decides on priorities for church funding, apportioned and Advance Special categories, and the overall financial plan for the coming quadrennium. Some likely issues include:
A. Should the overall level of apportionments be increased, kept where it is, or decreased; and by about what percentage?
B. Are there items now a part of apportionments which you believe should not be under apportionment?
C. Are there additional items or causes which should be apportioned?
13. Other Topics
This is a good sample of possible questions to raise in interviews or questionnaires with prospective delegates. Some evangelicals are considering joining with other caucuses to do joint questionnaires.
Other topics could be easily added, regarding the ethics of boycotting, the quality of seminary education, etc. And although this article lists some of the basic questions, these questions merit some reflection as to what answers evangelicals want to hear. We hope that this list will spur our thinking about the issues likely to face the 1980 General Conference, and that your thinking will lead to action in making an evangelical witness felt in the political arenas of our denomination.
Thoughtful church members need to reflect on these questions and come together to discuss them. In so doing you will be strengthening the UM Church by thoughtful participation in the democratic process which our church wisely provides.
Why not form one or more study/discussion groups to explore these and other significant issues? We would like to hear what is happening in your church. – The Editors
by Steve | Jan 6, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: On Polarizing the Church
The following is reprinted with minor modification from our issue of April/June, 1970.
Recently, some United Methodist laymen met with their bishop. They came to talk about things that were bothering them.
“What happened?” we asked, afterward.
“The bishop accused us of making trouble. He said we were dividing the church. He said loyal Methodists go along with the Program.”
Across the continent, some pastors met with their bishop.
“What happened?” we asked, afterward.
“The bishop told us to stop polarizing the church.”
Such warnings have become commonplace. Out of the present turmoil and tension, United Methodism has developed a new litany: You are dividing the church! You are being disloyal! You are polarizing!
Most of the time, such warnings are directed at evangelicals. Often, we are condemned for polarizing (i.e., causing people to take strong positions for and against, thereby abandoning middle-of-the-road neutrality).
The time has come to look calmly at the polarization furor.
Why the alarm?
Who is frightened?
Is polarization really happening?
If so, who is responsible?
If so, is this necessarily harmful to the cause of Christ?
Is polarization an end in itself? Or is it really the means leading to a greater and more significant end?
Most UM laypeople are not often worried about the danger of polarization. The hue and cry comes from church officials at all levels. Those in the United Methodist Establishment show the greatest dread. The charge, “you are polarizing!” often becomes an institutional reflex action when questions are raised about United Methodist finances, theology, programs, and operating methods. The shrill cries of alarm, so often repeated, betray uneasiness in high places.
Those familiar with the Bible can recognize here the same sort of anxiety shown by the Pharisees, those ancient guardians of the church status quo. Remember? They reacted violently to a Polarizer named Jesus of Nazareth. He rocked the Jewish nation, polarizing the people called Israel into two opposite factions: (1) for the Pharisees and their religious system, (2) those whose religion boiled down to “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind … [and] you must love your fellow-man as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-40, TEV)
Our Lord’s three-year ministry was one continuing polarization. He drew a clear distinction between believers and unbelievers (John 3:16-21). And He revealed an eternal polarity between the children of God and those whose real father was the devil (John 8:43-47).
Said the Prince of Polarizers: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world: no, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law; a man’s worst enemies will be the members of his own family.” (Matthew 10:34-36, TEV)
To top it off, He said to the Church at Laodicea: “I know what you have done; I know that you are neither cold nor hot [unpolarized]. How I wish you were either one or the other! [polarized] But because you are barely warm, neither hot nor cold, [unpolarized again] I am going to spit you out of my mouth!” (Revelation 3:15-16, TEV)
Jesus polarized because He was incarnate Truth. And Truth always does polarize against falsehood. The two will not mix any more than oil and water. Thus polarization is inevitable, indeed often desirable, as long as the world contains both truth and falsehood; good and evil. Polarization is one way opposites are separated.
This means that polarization began when evil entered the world through the unwise choice of Adam. And polarization will continue until, in God’s good time, the universe is finally cleansed of evil. Then polarization will cease and our Lord’s great prayer petition will have come true. “Our Father in heaven, may Your name be kept holy, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-10, Jerusalem Bible) Until then, polarization is inevitable.
The Bible is a record of Godman polarization. And it is amazing how the anti-polarization sentiments of Bible times are being repeated today. Consider the feisty prophet Amos. He did a mighty work of polarization at Bethel when he condemned the hypocrisy and corruption of the king’s own church. Fearing polarization, the priest of Bethel, Amaziah, told Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah. …” (Amos 7:10-17)
A similar response sometimes greets polarizers today. The wife of one United Methodist pastor recently told a layman, “You are a fundamentalist. Why don’t you get out of the church? You don’t belong here!” Of course it was the layman’s fault that polarization was happening. … He, in the spirit of Amos, had dared to question how church money was being spent. He had stated his belief in the Bible’s authority, and the need for people to be saved through faith commitment to Jesus Christ. According to the pastor’s wife there was no room in the church for such a radical polarizer!
Before Amos, there was a polarizer named Joshua. He declared to God’s people, “Fear the Lord and serve Him sincerely; put away the gods that you and your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if you will not serve the Lord, choose today whom you will serve. … As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14,15)
Church history reveals that leaders of the church have often feared polarization and tried to stamp it out. The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated a polarizing priest named Luther.
Our own John Wesley, though never excommunicated, was a polarizer of no little ability. Consider his standing before a bishop of his church and refusing to accept episcopal restrictions on where he could preach. Out of this clash came the now-honored Methodist dictum, “The world is my parish. ” We forget it was born out of intense polarization between the Gospel and the self-preservation urge of a church establishment that wished to avoid rocking the boat (which always happens when the Gospel is preached and believed).
Last year, some laymen met with their bishop and cabinet. They came to speak of their concerns for the church. Especially, they urged the importance of laymen having the right to designate · their money for support of special causes and/or institutions, rather than just giving to the conference. At one point a superintendent said that if the laymen could not go along with the conference program, they could “go to hell, ” as far as he was concerned.
Naturally, it was the laymen who stood accused of polarizing. …
Today, strong currents of polarization are running. Not only in United Methodism, but in other churches-and throughout the world. Young are polarized against old; black power against white power; tradition against innovation; new morality against old morality. The local church, in United Methodism, is increasingly polarized from its annual conference-making the classic Methodist connectional system harder than ever to maintain.
To deny polarization is futile as soaking up the ocean with a blotter. The truth is, polarization has already torn to shreds the fiction of church unity and brotherhood. The popularity of these slogans cannot conceal their absence in wide areas of church life today in ours and other churches.
Increasingly, the polarization is between the Institutional Church and its Program, and Christ and His Gospel. The two should be synonymous. But unfortunately more and more people perceive a wide difference. For example, a leading denominational official tells his annual conference that the only relevant part of the Gospel today is Christ’s call to social service. On the basis of this serious distortion the annual conference built its official program.
Thus, the Institutional Church abdicates as the Body of Christ by radically altering His Gospel. This is reinforced by a bishop declaring that his pastors’ supreme loyalty should be to the church. It is further reinforced by another bishop declaring this a time to proclaim the glory of the church. (Has “church” now replaced Christ as the object of United Methodist witness and devotion?)
Such developments accelerate polarization of the church. They force people with a serious commitment to Christ to “choose ye this day whom you will serve.” And so the polarization grows more intense.
An interesting polarization myth is that we evangelicals are largely responsible. Those quickest to condemn us seem to overlook the polarizing influence of the radical Left.
Who cried, “Polarization!” in the late 1960’s when cadre groups spawned by the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago set up revolutionary “cell groups” in annual conferences across the country?
Who cried, “Polarization!” when United Methodist seminaries started producing ministers primarily dedicated to social change and openly scornful of historic Christianity? Who cried, “Polarization!” when the denomination’s Board of Education started producing church school materials casting doubt on the Biblical miracles?
Let’s be honest—polarization is caused by no single group or ideology.
But is polarization necessarily harmful to the cause of Christ? This depends upon the issues or principles which form the poles around which people are drawn.
Acceptance of denominational programs is increasingly stressed by the Establishment as a “must.” Thus, conformity is rapidly becoming the major point of polarization. Conformity is urged, not only for programs, but for whatever interpretations of theology are in vogue at the moment. The organization’s full power may be exerted against ministers and laymen who fail to conform. Thus, the United Methodist system [ too often] breeds subservience—a quality strangely lacking in prophets!
Conformity is perhaps the most powerful polarization point for the church institution. But different groups within the church choose other points around which to polarize: [ free choice abortion, ERA, boycott of selected companies, support of terrorist groups, quota systems, or social action of the church, etc.] Both Left and Right polarize oppositely in regard to these and other basic issues.
Scripturally, however, there is only one proper point of polarization. It is around Jesus Christ. To unite with Him is good polarization which will surely work the purposes of God. But polarization around any other person, principle, or program will cause unproductive chaos within the church.
Let all United Methodists be very sure we are polarized around Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. And let us be careful it is not our private interpretation of Christ, but that which is revealed by the full Gospel and by authentic experiences of His resurrection power and His Holy Spirit. Only this can lead us toward the ideal Church, “in all its beauty, pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle, or any other imperfection.” (Ephesians 5:27)
by Steve | Jan 5, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: More About WCC Grants to Terrorists
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor, Good News Magazine
The Nov/Dec issue of Good News, contained an editorial titled, “Angry, Embarrassed, and Ashamed.” It discussed the gift of $85,000 given to two African terrorist groups by the World Council of Churches.
Three new developments deserve reporting and comment.
- Early in September, WCC announced granting a new gift of $125,000 to yet another African “liberation” group: SWAPO (South West African People’s Organization). This action was taken in the face of heavy worldwide criticism generated by the Rhodesian guerrilla grants. Therefore the SWAPO gift underscores the WCC’s determination to support “liberation”-styled terrorism in Africa. This latest grant is not an accidental blunder-rather, it evidences a deliberate and deeply-rooted policy which swings WCC straight in line with advocates of “throw a hand grenade for Jesus” liberation theology.
- When the Nov/Dec issue of Good News went to press, we had not yet received a reply to our letter to WCC, asking them to identify contributors to their Special Fund to Combat Racism, source of the terrorist grants. The reply to us contained no list of contributors; instead it was a sheaf of propaganda justifying the WCC actions. So we ask again: Who are these mysterious benefactors of African terrorism? One donor has surfaced, somewhat surprisingly. Which leads to …
- At the Fall 1978 meeting of the UM Board of Global Ministries, a paper was circulated under the title, “The World Council of Churches and the Grant for Humanitarian Services Through the Zimbabwe [Rhodesia] Liberation Leadership.” The author of this paper is identified as United Methodism’s top ecumenical expert, Robert W. Huston, “Associate General Secretary, Ecumenical & lnterreligious Concerns Division, Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 1300, New York, NY 10027.”
This document is written with great subtlety; the truth is stated artfully. Reproduced below in italic type is what seems to be the crux of this paper. Those wishing to read the entire four-page document can get a copy by writing to Good News, 308 E. Main St., Wilmore, KY. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed return envelope.
In the discussions about the grant there are several key points, however.
[1] Only funds specifically designated for this purpose are used in this program. They come from groups, individuals or governments (Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands). No United Methodist contributions to the Interdenominational Cooperation Fund (from which all our basic support of the WCC comes) have ever been or will ever be so designated or used. [Emphasis added]
[2] The Commission for the Programme to Combat Racism does not make grants unilaterally. It studies situations where racial oppression exists and makes recommendations. The Executive Committee makes the final decisions. The Executive Committee can and does delegate the final decisions to the officers. For obvious reasons, the general policy has been not to make grants to governments. But prior to this grant, nearly $112,000 had gone to the African National Council (Bishop Muzorewa’s movement before he became part of the interim government) while only $58,000 and $52,000 had gone to the other two movements. This puts it in some perspective. It should be remembered that the issues basic to the program were raised at the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in 1975, at Central Committee meetings since then and always solidly affirmed by the majority voting. The PCR Commission is charged with responsibility for aiding oppressed persons fighting for their rights in racist situations. [Emphasis added] Whatever doubts one may have about the wisdom or timing of this specific grant should be looked at in this perspective.
[3] The Programme to Combat Racism receives its funds directly from special gifts. This means that contributions which our church, as a denomination, makes to the central budget of the WCC, as part of our Interdenominational Cooperation Fund, are not placed in this program. Its budget is made up of gifts designated to the Fund from local churches, individuals, denominational agencies, and even governments (Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands). The World Council lists no contributions from United Methodist agencies to the Special Fund in 1971 or 1972; $1,800 in 1973; $5,000 in 1974; none in 1975; and $7,820 in 1976. In 1977, the World Division sent $10,000, and the same amount in 1978. However, these latter two gifts were not designated specifically for the grants; as a result, they were placed in the budget for staff and office expenses and special projects. [Emphasis added] No gifts are included as “grants” unless they have specifically been so stated, though it is not possible for designation of which movement, since that decision is made by the Advisory Committee with final approval given by the WCC Executive Committee or its officers.
[4] In any event, funds are not used for military purposes. Doubters may be helped by the fact that in official inquiries by the governments of Rhodesia and South Africa (who would have interest in this) no evidence was discovered that funds from any of the PCR grants have ever been used for military purposes.
[5] The situation in Rhodesia is much worse than most can imagine and the abatement of the racist stance of the minority government hardly noticeable.
[6] Compassion for the plight of refugees from Rhodesia is a consideration the Christian cannot ignore. Many of these refugees are in camps in Botswana and Mozambique that are aided by the Patriotic Front and thus by the grant.
[7] It would be naive to claim that even humanitarian purposes cannot be twisted for use in political struggles in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe that are complicated, tension filled and have potential for the escalation of violence. Perceptions of these issues may be influenced by the simple fact that a United Methodist bishop has taken an active political stance in a hope for peaceful transition to majority rule. … [End quote]
Stripping away the bafflegab, it boils down to this: Unspecified United Methodist agencies, principally the World Division, Board of Global Ministries, have contributed $34,620 to the WCC racism thrust since 1973. At least $20,000 of this was apparently used to pay administrative/overhead costs of operating the Fund’s program. Thus, technically, UM money did not go directly to the terrorists; it only made possible the giving of such grants by supplying the essential administrative services.
To argue, therefore, that UM money has not gone to the terrorists is something like arguing that a clerk at the Auschwitz concentration camp, in ordering gas for killing Jews, did not actually kill any Jews.
Notice also, under #2, the assumption of equality between grants given to a United Methodist bishop working non-violently within the legal process and money given to Marxists publicly committed to violence. That both are equally supported and no distinction is made constitutes an amazing blurring of moral values. In effect, this says that the end (Rhodesia’s “liberation”) justifies any means. This, of course, is simply situation ethics applied to the spending of church money.
It is time for well-meaning apologists, who have been busily denying that UM dollars support terrorism, to admit now that a serious mistake has been made. Misappropriation may not be too strong a word, for how many people who put their money into the offering places of their local churches (or into their UM Women pledges) intended one penny to be used in support of African terrorism?
The next General Conference ought to take strong and decisive action. First, as a witness to the fact that we still follow the Prince of Peace, we should end the $300,000 annual UM pledge to the violence-promoting World Council of Churches. To do less than this will further implicate all United Methodists in the financing of violent, Marxist revolution.
Second, General Conference should reprimand and replace those UM executives who spent church dollars in this unbelievably irresponsible manner. It should be easy to find new executives with enough common sense to know the difference between the cause of Jesus Christ and the causes of Marx.
by Steve | Jan 4, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: On Being a Christian Cop
Meet Don Osgood, a United Methodist layman who shares his faith on and off the beat.
by G. Wayne Rogers
“Every morning when I go to work I ask God to let me be the policeman He wants me to be and to guide me and protect me. I know that any day could be my last.”
“Christian policing” is the business that United Methodist layman Don Osgood of the Montgomery, Alabama, police department is in. And it isn’t an easy business. Especially when a bank robber is firing at him with a rifle, or when he’s storming a house where an armed man holds hostages.
But it seems to be his calling in life and he enjoys it. “I thank God that He allows me to live a Christian life policing,” says the affable 6’4″ officer. “I know that as long as I follow God and hold the hand of Christ, everything will turn out all right regardless of what happens. Being a Christian cop I’m not fighting a losing battle because I know that I have Christ to help me.”
A family man with a wife and two teen-age sons, Don has been a policeman for over 20 years.
Although a Christian policeman may seem hard to come by in larger American cities these days, Chief Osgood insists that he is only one of many. A number of men on the Montgomery force hand out tracts and are not ashamed to witness for the Savior, and five of his friends have left the force to go into fulltime Christian service.
Don does a lot of witnessing himself, both to those he meets in the streets everyday, and to other policemen. One night when he was cruising the city alone, a rookie called on his car radio about midnight asking Osgood to meet him.
Pulling up alongside, he snapped off his engine and radio and turned to the young man. “Cap,” he began, “what do I have to do to be saved?”
Slipping his fingers into his shirt pocket, Osgood took out a New Testament and showed him the plan of salvation. The boy accepted Christ.
The hardy police officer busies himself with the Lord’s work when he’s off duty, too. Since his conversion in 1955, Don has been involved in countless revivals and lay witness missions, giving his testimony in both word and song in churches, prisons, and many other places.
Last October he was leading the singing during a revival at Asbury United Methodist Church in Montgomery, when he got involved in a new kind of ministry-missions. The Rev. Maurice Stevens, a United Methodist evangelist who founded Missionary World Service and Evangelism, was preaching.
One evening Maurice told Don, “Your ministry lacks one thing-a trip to the mission field.”
The very next evening a couple informed him that God had spoken to them about paying his expenses to Colombia on a work crusade with MWS&E.
That’s where Don Osgood went the following January, with 16 other United Methodist laypeople from the United States.
Three weeks before time to leave, his plane fare was unexpectedly paid from Montgomery to Florida where the crusade group was to meet.
Osgood was shaken at the sight of little children sleeping in the streets of Bogota, huddling in doorways, covered only with old newspapers and cardboard boxes. He had seen poor children in ghetto areas of American cities, but this was unlike anything he’d known.
Working on a missions construction project for most of the Colombia crusade, Don had lots of time for spiritual reflection while he mixed and poured concrete.
Commenting on the Spirit-filled life as he worked, the 44-year-old Alabama man observed to a fellow-laborer, “It’s a tremendous thing that the Holy Spirit can dwell within a human being and give him joy that he never had before, a joy that’s unspeakable. It’s like the beauty of the mountains here in Bogota and La Mesa.
“And there’s no way in the world for me to be able to explain to anyone what it really means to know Christ and have the Holy Spirit dwell within me and guide me. I just can’t explain it.”
As he spread concrete under the broiling Colombian sun, Assistant Chief Osgood thought back to 1955 and his conversion to Christ in a little church in a jungle on Guam. He was in the Air Force, and that Sunday morning the chaplain had preached on Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Walking back to the barracks that humid evening, God started dealing with him. Quickly doing an about-face, he headed into the base chapel to pray, and there accepted the Lord as Savior.
Twenty-one years had passed, and now Don looked back praising the Lord as he worked building the chapel in Bogota. “It’s a great life!” he exclaimed aloud with a glitter in his eye, as wet concrete splattered his shoes. “I tell people that I’ve lived on both sides of the river, so to speak, and I don’t intend to go back to the other side.”
Like many other United Methodists, Don and his family had helped support missionaries—to Haiti, Mexico City, Africa, and other places. But he discovered a new awareness of missions when he went to Colombia, a new consciousness of boys and girls, and men and women who have never heard about Jesus Christ.
Though he thinks often of the richness of his Colombian experiences, Don Osgood knows that God’s work for him at present is on the police force of Montgomery. For that city also, as for Bogota, Jesus died.
