Page 5418 – Christianity Today (2024)

If so, should it be celebrated now with a meal?

In most Protestant churches, celebration of the Lord’s Supper means consuming a tiny, tasteless slab of bread and a tongue-tickling trickle of grape juice. Though the New Testament has no chapter on “How to Observe the Lord’s Supper,” Jesus’ institution of the ordinance together with Paul’s comments suggest that current forms for it are far removed from those of the New Testament.

Controversies over Communion have raged for centuries, but the church has largely ignored the question of its proper setting. The predominant Protestant answer—that the written and spoken word must interpret the “visible word”—has led Protestants almost exclusively to celebrate the Lord’s Supper at the end of a preaching service.

The Old Testament Passover, forerunner of the Lord’s Supper, was a meal. Jesus instituted this ordinance during a Passover meal: it was embedded in the Passover meal, not sharply distinguished from it. Jesus did not say, “Excuse me! Now we are going to stop eating and have a ceremony called the Lord’s Supper.”

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians twice addressed the problem they had in observing it. Each passage assumes the Corinthians were eating a meal when they gathered for the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 10:16–22; 11:17–34).

Every name given to the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament suggests that the church was eating a meal. The Greek term for table commonly means the table on which a meal is spread (1 Cor. 10:21), and the Greek term for supper means evening meal, main meal, or banquet (1 Cor. 11:20). In light of all this, one must admit that there is far more scriptural warrant for placing the Lord’s Supper in the context of a meal than a teaching or preaching session.

We lose much of the meaning of the Lord’s Supper when we ignore the biblical pattern of sacrament, or ordinance, and meal. Mealtime is a time of fellowship, of communion and intimacy. People who share a meal share the stuff of life. Because of Christ’s death for our sins and resurrection, we can have intimate communion with him; we can share a meal with him. So it is fitting to take Communion with a meal. When we reduce the Lord’s table to a few morsels of food eaten quickly and virtually in seclusion we deprive ourselves of both aspects of the Lord’s Supper. The symbolism suggests that we do not commune with each other and our Lord, and subtly encourages the idea that piety is a private affair.

Moreover, the brief, almost solitary observance of the Supper encourages the widespread semi-Zwinglian misconception that our mental effort to produce certain thoughts is the essence of the Lord’s Supper.

Furthermore, the distribution of nothing more than wafers and sips of grape juice may even be detrimental to the symbolic weight of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus says, “I am real food and drink. Feed on me.” By offering minuscule portions of food we may suggest the opposite: “Try to feed on Jesus and you will go hungry. You can only nibble on him.” If Jesus truly nourishes us and the Lord’s Supper is to remind us of that, we should eat food that truly nourishes.

The Lord’s Supper also anticipates the wedding supper of the Lamb, when Christ takes his bride, the church. If the supper is to signify that eschatological feast, it ought to be part of a genuine meal.

But the Lord’s Supper should not itself be a feast. Paul approved the Corinthians’ eating, but he chastised them for gluttony and for ignoring their needier brethren (1 Cor. 11:17–34). When we eat the Lord’s Supper we look to a better meal.

But several questions remain. First, if the biblical pattern and its rationale are so obvious, why does the church not follow it? There are several partial answers: we must not underestimate the power of sin and the human capacity to err; developments in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in the Middle Ages utterly prohibited practices advocated here—transubstantiation barred the laity from even touching the elements, let alone relaxing with them around a table; Christians have gone too far with Paul’s warning to the Corinthians, acting as if the best way to prevent abuse of the meal is to stop eating it; and finally, the church has been preoccupied with other questions about the Lord’s Supper.

Second, how can these ideas be put into practice? My congregation observes a monthly fellowship dinner with the Lord’s Supper, meeting in the homes of members. We share a meal opened by a prayer of thanksgiving, eat the Lord’s Supper, sing a song or two, receive some teaching from the Word, and take an offering for the poor.

Third, does the biblical pattern require us to stop observing the Lord’s Supper the traditional way? Or should we observe it both in the traditional way and in conjunction with a fellowship meal? It may be preferable to partake of the Lord’s Supper in the context of a meal at times so that we can have a richer understanding of the Lord’s Supper. There may also be reason to observe Communion in another way, as when a congregation is too large for an intimate meal.

The Lord’s Supper is not just another form of preaching and teaching. Visibly and efficaciously it shows us that Jesus is present to feed and strengthen us spiritually, and that we have intimate communion with him. And it conveys these ideas best when celebrated with a meal.

DANIEL DORIANI¹Mr. Doriani is pastor ofKoinonia Presbyterian Church, LaVale, Maryland.

The Philippian Fragment, by Calvin Miller (IVP, 175 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Lawson Lau, editor at large, Impact magazine.

After months of meticulous letter writing in the twentieth century, Calvin Miller has come up with a long-lost second-century manuscript. It is one of the finest pieces of Horatian satire on the church, its leaders, and parachurch organizations that I have stumbled upon.

A mysterious and elusive German scholar, Helmut Niedegger, a specialist in Egyptology, Assyriology, and Coosiology opened a cryptic door on the milieu of Roman lions and gladiators. Stripped of its ravenous lions and quaint togas, the candid observations in The Philippian Fragment laugh at the foibles, and suggest strengths and models for present-day Christian living.

This figment of Miller’s imagination consists of seven letters from Eusebius, a newly appointed pastor of Philippi, to Clement, pastor of Coos. From Eusebius’s mind flowed such thoughts as: “A thin winebibber is no less credible than a thick teetotaler,” and, “There is something official and evil that always lurks around the board meetings of our church. When it is most blatant it disrupts the work of feeding the hungry or visiting the prisons.”

Strutting through the Philippian church were two strong-willed leaders. One was rich Coriolanus. His epitaph could very well read, “Where riches are, there lies unbridled power.” Then there was Elder Scrubjoy. Observed one of Scrubjoy’s former friends, a non-Christian: “He knew more funny stories than the god of wine himself. But he became a Christian and I haven’t seen him smile since.”

In the realm of eschatology, Eusebius wrote of his uneasiness over the urgent ministry of Quintus Quick, an itinerant preacher. The bumper sticker on Quick’s chariot, which read “In Case of Rapture, This Chariot May Become a Runaway,” bore ominous witness to his devastating scroll titled, The Late Great Date of Human Fate. He even promised to reveal the mysterious identity of 666. Eusebius’s unease was not quieted by the preacher’s making “a lot of denarii” in his crusades. Making many quick bucks meant that when the imminent Rapture came, the doomsday preacher would “float upward in the best of threads, leaving the planet in class.”

Fortunately for the Philippian community, not everyone else besides the pastor was imperfection personified. Helen of Hierapolis was “a dynamic lover of people.” She befriended lepers, amputees, and cripples. When Eusebius was imprisoned, Urbanus, who survived martyrdom, took over his work in a leper colony. And Phoebe was not afraid to visit him in jail.

Eusebius’s manuscript does not have the decorations of the illuminated manuscripts of the monastic era. But artist Joe DeVelasco makes a second appearance (the first was in Miller’s Singer trilogy) and enhances the book with his highly imaginative sketches. They subtly blend the second and twentieth centuries: besides its bumper sticker, Quintus Quick’s chariot has a “start” pedal.

The second and twentieth centuries have other subjects in common: sinners are saved solely by grace.

An Old Earth

God Did It, but How? by Robert B. Fischer, (CalMedia, 133 pp., $4.00), is reviewed by Tom Minnery, CHRISTIANITY TODAY news editor.

Scientific creationism is in the news often lately. Many people are no doubt coming to believe that in order to be a Christian you must believe that the world and all that is in it were created in six literal days approximately 6,000 years ago. That is generally the belief held by the “young-earth” creationists who are pressing to have their views taught in public school science classes. So far they have not done so well, as their defeat in the Arkansas creationism trial shows (CT, Jan. 22, 1982, p. 28.)

Robert B. Fischer, vice-president for academic affairs at Biola College, has written a helpful little book dealing with biblical origins, questioning the literal six days of creation and the young-earth theory. It is written in simple terms, and will be reassuring for laymen who wish wholeheartedly to believe in the Bible—all of the Bible—but who cannot ignore the very strong scientific evidence suggesting that the earth, and perhaps the life that inhabits it, has been around quite a lot longer than 6,000 years. Fischer has solid conservative theological credentials, and is a scientist as well. He holds a B.S. degree from Wheaton College and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry and electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. For 16 years he was dean of the school of natural sciences and mathematics and a professor of chemistry at California State University-

Fischer suggests in his book that one cannot argue evolution versus creationism, for the two subjects address different questions. Evolution answers the “how,” whereas creationism answers the “who.” He examines the key biblical terms in Genesis: “day,” “create,” “form,” and “make,” and concludes that the creation account could allow for natural processes and for geological ages. He argues that the Bible simply does not say precisely how God created the world and all that is in it, only that he indeed did so. His arguments have all been made before, but Fischer writes believeably, probably because his theological and scientific credentials are sound.

Alternative approaches bypass the one true way.

Although mass starvation and the threat of nuclear war are monumental concerns, the ultimate issue confronting people of every generation is how one comes to know the living God.

Christians have historically affirmed that to enjoy a life-transforming relationship with God a person must believe and obey the gospel. Augustine insisted that since the plan of salvation lies beyond the grasp of the natural mind, saving knowledge of God is impossible without intellectual assent to the revealed truths of Scripture and commitment to the person of Christ. Calvin held that from nature, history, and conscience man can know the hands and feet of God but not his heart. Only God’s special revelation in Christ and the Bible, applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit, leads to sound doctrine and true religion.

Many contemporary theologians claim that God can be savingly known in ways other than explicit assent to Christ and the gospel message. The most popular nonevangelical path is the experiential route. Depreciating the cognitive dimensions of revelation and faith, many contemporary thinkers insist that man as man engages God in the depths of everyday, nonreligious experience. J. A. T. Robinson argues that since the Numinous dwells at the center of human existence, every person is claimed and renewed by God simply by being human. The Presbyterian philosopher of religion John Hick adds that every person of serious intention—Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist—lives in the presence of God and is imbued with a deep religious sense.

Leading Roman Catholic theologians such as Karl Rahner and Hans Küng insist that man discovers the supernatural and grace in every dimension of human experience in the world. As a person reflects on his experience and commits himself to the meaning of life, he subconsciously comes to know God. Since a profound inner experience of the Ultimate is the birthright of every human, Vatican II speaks of non-Christian religionists as “implicit believers,” and Rahner describes humankind as an “anonymous Christianity.”

Other churchmen, particularly in the developing world, pursue the quest for God along political lines. Liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez teach that faith is not assent to propositional truths or a sentiment that emerges from the spiritual life, but is defined as involvement in the struggle on behalf of the poor and the exploited. Gutierrez insists that God is authentically known whenever a person strives on behalf of his neighbor to overthrow oppression and to implement social and political justice. A person enters into a redeeming relationship with God as he commits himself to the revolutionary transformation of society. For the liberationist, “I found it!” means “I have been involved in the revolution!”

Still others claim that God is known by pursuing the path of Eastern mysticism. Increasingly theologians such as the Indian Raimundo Panikkar have sought to wed Christian faith to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. It is alleged that God, the Real, or Brahman, is known through a silent experience of grace in which consciousness is overcome and the self is ontologically united with the world Soul or Ground of everything. As proponents of this model would have it, to know God or Reality is to achieve oneness with it. A person knows God and is released from the anguish of earthly existence when through meditation, chants, or other ascetic exercises the human spirit (Atman) is absorbed into the Great Spirit (Brahman).

In addition to depreciating objectively held beliefs (doctrines being but culturally skewed mappings of one’s religious experience), each of the alternative approaches tends to view God pantheistically, either as the transpersonal ground or the impersonal sum of all reality. Moreover, advocates of these alternative paths deny that Christianity is the uniquely true religion. Just as many paths lead up the mountain and many spokes lead to the center of the wheel, so it is claimed that all the great religions lead to God realization.

Thus, much of nonevangelical theology today is avowedly universalistic. All people are said to be called in Christ to communion with God. As for the missionary enterprise, advocates of the foregoing ways urge Christians to desist working for the conversion of other religionists to the Christian faith. The Christian mission is said to succeed if it makes Hindus better Hindus or Muslims better Muslims.

In its understanding of God, faith, and salvation, theology in the West is becoming more and more Eastern. We should not be surprised to witness a growing convergence of world religions toward a synthetic model resembling Hinduism or Buddhism. Such a nondogmatic, inclusive religion is likely to be perceived by political and religious leaders as providing a framework for overcoming ethnic and religious fragmentation in a new world civilization.

Christians today need to reaffirm on the basis of Scripture who God is and what he accomplished through Christ’s death. In the face of the mounting tide of relativism, syncretism, and universalism, the church must enunciate its message with clarity and conviction and live in a manner that validates the reality of Christ to a confused generation.

BRUCE DEMAREST¹Dr. Demerest is professor of theology at Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, Colorado.

Every member of the shepherd’s flock deserves sympathy and understanding at a time of death.

We were relaxing in the lovely family room of one of our elders after eating a delicious meal. Members and spouses of the “Personnel, Policy and Pastoral Relations Committee” were comfortably seated around the room.

I asked them for input. “What concerns do you have about Trinity Church? What suggestions for my ministry? Tell me what 1 need to hear, not what I want to hear.”

Some small talk followed; compliments, appreciation. Then the ax fell.

Said Dave, “I think you have been inconsistent in your ministry to church members who have experienced a death in the family. I know of two families who weren’t contacted at all after the loss of parents—yet other families not only were visited but were sent flowers.”

Dave’s wife, Kathy, then reminded me that I had not visited her after the death of her father.

I did remember seeing both Kathy and her father in the hospital. Cancer was ravaging his body. The father’s own pastor was also there that day, and was asked to conduct the funeral services for the father when he died.

I wasn’t sure what was expected of me. Should I visit the funeral home? Where did I fit in as Kathy’s, not her father’s, pastor?

Now I asked, “What should I have done?”

“You are my pastor,” Kathy said. “I needed to have a personal visit from you after Dad died to ease my grief.”

The answer was so obvious!

The next day in my office I wrote a specific procedure to insure consistent pastoral response to the needs of all church families who experience death. Included in this procedure are the following steps:

1. After the church is notified about a death in a church family, the information is passed on in writing to the pastor.

2. The pastor then telephones the family immediately, offering personal sympathy and comfort.

3. The church secretary sends a letter to the family from the pastor along with a helpful booklet (such as Kairos’s “To Everything There Is a Season: For the Bereaved Christian”).

4. The secretary puts a notice in the church bulletin about the death. It might read: “We extend our love, prayers, and sympathy to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and family in the death of Mrs. Jones’s father.”

5. The secretary then contacts the deacon responsible for shepherding this family. The deacon contacts the family, offering sympathy and specific assistance for food needs, lodging for overnight guests, or any other needs they might have.

6. The deacon sends flowers for deceased church members to the funeral home. (This is not done, however, for members’ relatives who have passed away.)

7. The pastor visits the funeral home, if it is local, during the wake when family members are available to talk. If he himself conducts the funeral, he also visits with the family before the service. At the time of this visit he offers the following pamphlets: “In Time of Sorrow,” from the American Bible Society, or “His Comfort,” by Norman B. Harrin (Free Church Publications).

8. The pastor tries to visit the family the week after the funeral, especially if it is not local and no personal contact has been made with them prior to the funeral.

Every member of the shepherd’s flock deserves sympathy and understanding at a time of death. Inconsistent attention to the entire flock can only serve to heap hurt upon hurt.

Let the ax fall—if the blade hews away what never should have been there in the first place.

WILLIAM C. MOORE¹Mr. Moore is pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Plymouth, Michigan.

No one, including him, expected Dean T. Simon Farisani to survive the torture he suffered at the hands of the South African police. Before his imprisonment, Farisani, a black Lutheran pastor from Venda, South Africa, weighed 200 pounds. Two months later, he weighed only 120 and had to be hospitalized for almost four months. During a recent visit to the United States, sponsored by Lutheran World Ministries, the 35-year-old Farisani told his gruesome story.

“They banged my head against the wall, pulled off my hair and my beard,” he said. “They made me lie on my back, raise my legs and they kicked me in my private parts. There was blood all over, my head was swollen, and I was breathing through the ears because my eardrums were punctured. I had holes in my knees I could put my fingers in.”

He continues: “Then they took me to a more sophisticated torture station. They undressed me, covered my head in a canvas bag, poured water on the floor and over my head, and connected an electric wire to my ear lobes and to the back of my head. They poured a gluelike substance down my spinal cord and they set the electric current on. I fell into the water; it was terrible.”

Farisani was one of four clergymen among 20 people arrested in connection with the bombing of a police station in October 1981, in which two were killed. A close friend of Farisani’s, a lay preacher named Tshifhiwa Muofhe, was also arrested. Muofhe died during imprisonment and a Venda inquest court determined in July 1982 that Muofhe had been tortured to death by the same policemen who tortured Farisani.

Farisani was never formally charged with the bombing incident. At the time, he was in Johannesburg, hundreds of miles away, attending a council meeting of the Evangelical Lutheran church, and he claims police knew it. Farisani believes he was tortured for his strong stand against apartheid, which, he preaches, is the policy of the devil. From 1973 to 1975 Farisani was president of the Black People’s Convention, which he describes as the founder of the black consciousness movement in South Africa and the main black political organization of Africans, coloreds (people of mixed race) and Indians. The organization was banned by the government in 1977.

Farisani was jailed a month after the bombing incident. He said security police told him he had to die because of his antiapartheid philosophy. They ordered him to write a letter to his superior bishop, his church, and his wife saying he had escaped. Had he done so, he says, he would have been killed immediately. But he refused to write the letters, so about a month after his imprisonment, the torture began. It lasted from 6:30 in the morning till the afternoon. He says that when he screamed, the police would mock him with shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord,” before suggesting he call on his God for help mocking his faith.

Finally he could take no more. “I could not afford to be brave,” he says. “I tried but failed. I was defeated.” He wrote what the authorities wanted, but soon after that he told a magistrate that he wrote it because he was being tortured. Meanwhile the word of his imprisonment and of Moufhe’s death had spread, even beyond South Africa’s borders. Farisani says that it would have been politically unwise for authorities to kill him or hold him any longer. He was released.

Farisani plans to return to South Africa, but he has no plans to modify his antiapartheid theme. He predicts what this could cost him: “One day I will be punished horribly for every word and syllable I have uttered, and then I will curse the day I was born.” But apparently his suffering has only made him more loving. “I thank the Lord,” he says, “that I have emerged from this without hatred; the more you suffer, the more difficult it is to hate.”

Pat Robertson believes a “law of reciprocity” operates in God’s universe, assuring that those who give will receive. For further proof of its existence, he need only check the sales receipts from his new book, The Secret Kingdom.

For years, Robertson has spent considerable time giving advice on his television program, “The 700 Club,” and in a sporadic newsletter called Perspective. He interprets world events in light of biblical prophecy, filtering them through his background in law, economics, and theology, and packaging the result in a way that makes sense to Christians hungry for a faith with practical application.

In return, loyal viewers—and seemingly all their cousins—are buying his book at a rate that far exceeds any other Christian best seller in the first few months after its release. Four months after its September 1982 publication date, the book entered its eighth printing with 288,000 copies in circulation. Contributors to Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network received 102,000 copies as gifts, and the rapid sale of the remaining 186,000 astonished even the book’s promoters at Thomas Nelson Publishers in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mark Cady, national sales manager for Nelson’s book division, said, “We would have been quite pleased to sell 75,000 copies,” ranking the book in its early-month sales with other Christian best sellers such as Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto, Charles Colson’s Born Again, and Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth.

Manifesto sold 51,000 copies in the three months following its release in November, 1981, and total sales are just over 276,000. Lindsey’s end-times analysis got off to a sluggish start in May 1970, taking eight months to sell 135,000 copies. To date, its sales surpass 10.5 million.

Cady said buyers at two leading secular bookstore chains, Dalton and Walden, were initially as reluctant to accept Robertson’s book as they are with most Christian titles. But after a few copies sold out, both chains retrieved the book from the far reaches of the religion section and gave it prominent frontdoor display.

A brief shelf life at a Dalton store helps ensure notice on secular bestseller lists—a prize beyond the grasp of almost all Christian titles. The Secret Kingdom, however, rose to fourth place on Time magazine’s nonfiction list and cracked the top ten with Ingrams, the nation’s largest secular book wholesaler.

It held the number-one spot on Bookstore Journal’s list of top sellers in Christian bookstores in January and February. Unlike secular best-seller sales, which Cady said “explode and then die after about six months,” most Christian books gain in popularity gradually, becoming known by word of mouth.

In Robertson’s case, that process is accelerated by his daily television broadcasts reaching 3 million viewers per week. But he has written two other books, Shout It From the Housetops and My Prayer for You, which lacked a broad mass appeal.

His new volume, written with CBN executive vice-president Bob Slosser, is an apologetic of Christ’s statement that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” The book identifies eight laws, or “kingdom principles,” which are “every bit as valid for our lives as the law of thermodynamics or the law of electricity.”

They form a biblical blueprint for conduct and attitude among citizens of “the secret kingdom.” The eight laws “pose a realistic alternative” for a society rapidly running short of solutions. They accommodate neither left-nor right-wing politics, consisting instead of virtues to be cultivated individually and corporately in order to know and act on God’s will. These include humility, servanthood, good stewardship, perseverance, generosity, diligence in work, unity or harmony with others, and dominion over the rest of creation.

Robertson arrived at his conclusions by pretesting the kingdom principles in his own life and at CBN. His “law of reciprocity,” for example, is derived from Christ’s words in Luke 6:38: “Give and it will be given to you.” CBN has made a practice of tithing its income to other Christian ministries, making sizeable donations to groups including the National Association of Evangelicals, Christian Legal Society, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The ministry of Operation Blessing distributed $2 million in cash through 8,500 churches nationwide to help the needy in 1982. Robertson attributes a double-digit percent increase in contributions to CBN during recession-wracked 1982 directly to a commitment to conscientious stewardship.

The Secret Kingdom avoids specific speculation about the future—a characteristic of Robertson’s earlier newsletter and some of his broadcasts. Instead of rushing headlong toward Armageddon, Robertson believes the world is presently in a holding pattern, and he has compared President Ronald Reagan to the Bible’s King Josiah, whose benevolent rule over Israel postponed God’s inevitable judgment.

Shortly before his newsletter ended last year, Robertson warned of multiple crises that could “see the world in flames” with “near panic in financial markets” by the end of 1982. Robertson’s readings of Isaiah and Ezekiel led him to conjecture about imminent Soviet adventurism in the Middle East.

But these events did not materialize, and Robertson said he experienced a direct leading from the Lord. In a letter to supporters, he wrote that God told him, “You take care of my work, and I will take care of the world’s crises.” Robertson was to turn his attention to the “primary mission of bringing the knowledge of the kingdom of God and of his salvation in Christ to entire nations around the world,” the letter said.

Churches planted a generation ago in Cuba by one missionary agency are alive and growing today. That is the report of Carl Walter, the overseas director for United World Mission (UWM), a group whose original focus was on Cuba but whose staff left the island 22 years ago. He visited Cuba last fall, visiting churches and speaking at an all-day retreat for pastors and their families without restriction. Last summer the UWM-initiated denomination held its thirty-sixth annual conference at Cabañas.

World Radio Missionary Fellowship, best known for its radio station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, has set up a network of three affiliated stations in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. Two new stations will carry gospel broadcasts in Spanish full-time.

The Church of England rejected unilateral disarmament by 338 votes to 100 at its general synod in London in February, and supported in principle the British nuclear deterrent. At the same time it appealed to all nuclear powers to renounce formally the first use of nuclear weapons. Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie told a packed house: “Since I believe that the unilateralist approach would undermine disarmament negotiations in progress, without exerting much exemplary influence, I cannot accept unilateralism as the best expression of a Christian’s prime moral duty to be a peacemaker.”

Billy Graham was turned down by the Council of Churches in the Netherlands when he asked its churches to furnish lodging for the 2,500 participants expected in Amsterdam in July for his conference for itinerant evangelists. In declining to help, the council voiced the view that the kind of evangelism fostered by the conference is too aggressive and does not show proper respect for other religious traditions. The council sent a note to its churches, giving them the option of participating in the event if they choose to.

Churches in Mozambique have grown dramatically over the last 20 years in spite of rigid control. A retired missionary with Africa Evangelical Fellowship, after a seven-week visit to northern Mozambique, reported that the churches formerly affiliated with AEF had multiplied ten-fold to 450 churches with 44,000 baptized believers. Church meetings may be held only with government permission and only in registered church buildings.

How to save the lives of 20,000 malnourished children each day.

Despite what most people think, the 14 million Third World children who die of malnutrition each year do not succumb simply to lack of food. The complications of a weakened body are many. What actually kills more children than anything else—fully 5 million a year—is dehydration brought on by diarrheal infection. It’s a common ailment in the large areas of the world lacking proper sanitation and personal hygiene. The fact that primitive wisdom calls for withholding food and water from those suffering diarrhea only compounds the problem.

The health hazards of bodily dehydration are far from being solved. But, thanks in part to a discovery that a leading British medical journal has called “potentially the most important medical advance of the century,” the prospect of greatly limiting death caused by diarrhea is no longer an impossible dream. The discovery is oral rehydration therapy (ORT), a process that not only replaces salt and water in children (and adults) who are fighting diarrhea, but actually helps to cure the victim. The “therapy” consists of drinking a very simple solution of water, sugar, and salt. The ultimate cure for diarrhea lies in modernized sanitation systems and improved personal hygiene. But until that goal can be reached, experts believe ORT will definitely limit deaths and alleviate suffering.

Although the benefits of ORT have been known for more than a decade, the idea of putting it to work has only recently gained momentum, according to Roger Goodal of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). UNICEF said in its annual “State of the World’s Children” report in December that ORT was the key element in a plan that could save the lives of 20,000 children a day.

For decades it has been known that simple replacement of bodily salt and fluids could prevent death from dehydration. But before 1971, the only known way the body could absorb the needed material was intravenously. Then it was discovered that if sugar were taken with the oral salt solution, absorption through the small intestine would increase by 2,500 percent. Another bonus: because of the simplicity, mothers now have the chance to play an important role in the recovery of their children.

The first wide use of oral rehydration therapy was among refugees from the 1971 India-Pakistan War, where ORT was credited with having dropped the refugee mortality rate of cholera and other diarrheal diseases from 30 percent to 1 percent. Since then, controlled studies have been done in several countries, each concluding that ORT had accounted for major reductions in diarrhea-related deaths. The research that produced the best-documented studies was conducted at the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, located in Bangladesh. In their village and urban field study centers, officials to monitor ORT’S impact.

UNICEF can produce ORT packets for 5¢ apiece. Currently it sends out 24 million packets a year while it estimates that more than 600 million are needed. Fortunately, however, nobody needs a UNICEF packet to reap the benefits of oral rehydration therapy.

The ORT solution is simple: a teaspoon of salt and eight teaspoons of sugar in a liter of water. According to physician Howard Searle, medical director of the Wheaton, Illinois-based MAP International (Medical Assistance Programs), “in our days of increasingly sophisticated medicine, oral rehydration therapy is an extremely simple process that has a phenomenal impact on saving lives.” Searle believes that ORT can be most widely used if it is taught to mothers. Today mothers from across the world are learning to prepare and use the ORT solution for treating simple diarrhea. Even in the United States people are slowly recognizing its merits.

According to Jeannie Thiessen, a nurse and the director for community health resources at MAP, anyone can use it. She says, “Research shows that ORT is more effective than a variety of medicines many take for diarrhea. We encourage the use of ORT, because if we show it is used in the United States, it is easier to encourage our Third World friends to use it.” Many mission groups, private relief organizations, and foreign governments have combined their resources in an attempt to make ORT available. One of MAP International’s functions is to spread the word at its workshops and through its literature. In addition to teaching the method itself, MAP provides illustrations of how the message can be contextualized. In western Africa, for example, ORT is taught through storytelling. In some parts of the world, beer or soda bottles are used as liter containers. In Bangladesh, women know what is meant by a “three-finger pinch of salt and two four-finger scoops of sugar.”

UNICEF’S Goodal believes that ORT will play an important part in the attempt to reach the goal set by UNICEF and the World Health Organization in 1978. That goal is “health for all by the year 2000.” Goodal says, “The goal is reachable, but it won’t be reached without a concerted effort on the part of everyone who wants to bring it about.”

RANDY FRAME

Campaign Begins Against Irs Decision On Clergy Taxes

A campaign is under way to reverse an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruling that will mean less income for clergymen who own their homes. A Houston lawyer who is helping to organize the campaign believes pastors will lose, on the average, $1,500 to $2,000 a year in spendable income when the tax change takes effect in July.

The ruling prevents pastors from taking mortage interest as a tax deduction, if they already take the customary housing-allowance exclusion permitted for ministers. It is this “double benefit” that the IRS wants to prevent.

Michael Riddle, a Houston lawyer, contends the IRS overstepped its legal authority in making the change. He argues that only Congress has authority to change tax laws. An IRS spokesman said, however, that the ruling does not change a law, only an interpretation of a law. The spokesman said the change corrects a misinterpretation made in a 1962 ruling, which permitted the double benefit. A minister’s housing allowance is income that is excluded from taxes. The IRS code does not permit nontaxable income to be used for a tax deduction elsewhere on the tax return. That is why the IRS is within its bounds in correcting the double benefit for clergy, the spokesman said.

Ministers who pay mortgages, and whose actual housing costs exceed the housing allowance provided them by their congregation, may still deduct a portion of the excess, IRS publication no. 525 deals with taxable and nontaxable income and will explain the change when the pamphlet is updated for 1983 tax returns. The new ruling on clergy income does not apply to 1982 income.

Attorney Riddle believes the new policy is inconsistent with congressional intent to ease the financial burden on people who work for the common good. “In a time when nonprofit organizations are struggling to continue to help society, it seems incomprehensible that such an enormous change in policy will benefit the general public,” he said. Riddle speculates that by its action, the IRS is actually fishing for public opinion, and he urges immediate action. “We have until July to let our congressmen know that we object to what the IRS has done,” he said. Donald Gardner, a former missionary and pastor and now president of Partners for Christian Education, a resource center in Houston for schools connected with the Churches of Christ, is trying to coordinate what he hopes will be a massive national campaign to make congressmen aware of how church-goers feel about the issue.

North American Scene

An illegal, third-trimester abortion on a 12-year-old has resulted in the dismissal of a Florida physician. Following the abortion, the girl was taken to South Miami Hospital where a hysterectomy and a colostomy were required to stem bleeding and save her life. The state Board of Medical Examiners voted unanimously to revoke the license of Edgar Gonzalez. The Department of Professional Regulations charged Gonzalez with fraud, illegally terminating a pregnancy, and “the killing of an unborn child by injury to his mother.”

Six presbyteries of the Southern Presbyterian church (Presbyterian Church in the United States) voted to rejoin their counterparts in the North (United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.), clearing the way for a formal vote in June, which could end a 122-year schism started by the Civil War. Three-fourths of the southern church’s presbyteries had to assent, and the six presbyteries that voted in late February brought the number to the necessary 48. Eight presbyteries have voted no. The northern branch of the church has already agreed to the merger.

A new report on the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis says that American Jews did not object strenuously because they were slow to believe such an atrocity actually was occurring, and because the American Jewish community during World War II had too little wealth and influence to mount a strong condemnation. These are the interim conclusions of the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust, chaired by former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg. An earlier interim report by the privately funded organization was more critical of American Jewish response to the Holocaust. The commission’s final report will be finished next year.

Robert Schuller is the most-watched television minister in the nation, according to Arbitron figures on the major syndicated religious programs. The Arbitron survey puts Schuller’s audience at 2,667,000, barely edging out second-place Jimmy Swaggart with 2,653,000 viewers. Rounding out the top five are Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and Jerry Falwell, in that order.

A Gallup survey has revealed that poor people gave far more money proportionately to churches and charitable organizations in 1981 than did the rich. The survey found that households whose earnings ranged between $50,000 and $100,000 gave between 1 and 2 percent, whereas families who earned less than $5,000 gave nearly 5 percent of their income to churches and charities.

The sexual therapy programs offered by the Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota are under fire from Minnesota Lutherans who believe the workshops are p*rnographic. David Barnhart, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Minnehaha Falls, says that a 16-hour workshop of the service constitutes a “journey to the pits of hell and degradation.” Barnhart alleges that films shown to families at the workshop routinely depict deviant sexual behavior.

The charismatic movement within the Episcopal church, recently renamed Episcopal Renewal Ministries, is gaining acceptance. A recent Gallup poll estimated that some 18 percent of the nation’s 2.7 million Episcopalians are charismatic. The movement’s national coordinator, Ohio rector Charles Irish, said the change reflects a more mature outlook by Episcopal charismatics, as well as the church’s greater openness in a time of falling numbers.

The 1.75-million-member United Church of Christ and the 1.2-million-member Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are talking about uniting. Recently a joint steering committee of the churches proposed that their central assemblies vote on the matter in 1985. If the churches like the idea, the union will be accomplished gradually through shared activities and joint theological inquiries.

Plans for “Custer’s Revenge,” a video arcade game featuring a naked male ravishing an Indian woman, have been dropped by its national distributor in Canoga Park, California. The Episcopal church council last year passed a resolution condemning the game as “prurient, lascivious, and p*rnographic.” The council urged pressure from church groups. A spokesman for the distributing company said the game symbolized rape and rascism “in the eyes of too many people.”

“My personal feeling is that the painting is miraculous. I don’t think anyone will ever explain it.” So said Florida scientist Philip Callahan after an extensive investigation into the origin of the famous 350-year-old painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a painting many Catholics believe to be of divine origin. Using infrared film, Callahan took 40 photographs of the painting and reported that he could not find any semblance of brush or spatula strokes. “There’s no sizing under it,” he said. “It’s not done in oils; it’s not done in watercolor. I don’t know what it is.” Unlike a colorful border later painted around the Virgin, the painting itself has neither cracked nor aged over the years. The famed shrine is located in Mexico City.

Fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell has entered the theological controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention, urging the denomination to sever ties with universities he considers liberal. Falwell’s comments, in an interview with editors of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, drew immediate criticism from several Southern Baptist leaders, including James T. Draper of Euless, Texas, the president of the convention. Although Falwell is a Baptist and lives in the South, he is not a Southern Baptist. His Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, is an independent congregation.

Liberalism in the Southern Baptist Convention has become one of the fundamentalist leader’s latest targets. The February issue of his Fundamentalist Journal contains several articles on the subject, including one, “Liberalism Brews Within the Southern Baptist Convention,” by William A. Powell, Sr., editor of the independent Southern Baptist Journal, which has publicized any sign of liberal teaching in the denomination’s seminaries for the past decade.

In his interview with the Fort Worth newspaper, Falwell said he felt churches “ought to dissolve connections with those schools that no longer support them theologically.” He singled out Baylor University in Waco, Texas, as one school that should no longer get Southern Baptist support. With regard to the denomination’s six seminaries, Falwell said “hard-handed” actions should be taken to remove liberal influences from them.

In response to Mr. Falwell’s comments, Draper said, “I think it was a generalization, and any generalization goes too far. In every school we have some very fine conservative teachers. We have some at Baylor and we have others there that aren’t as conservative as we would like them to be.” Draper opposed the suggestion that Southern Baptists withdraw support from schools considered too liberal. “Most of us would prefer not to give up the millions of dollars we’ve invested and the years and years of influence these colleges have had,” he said. “We would rather stay and try to make changes if they are necessary.”

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

Evangelical Nuclear Conference Will Hear All Views

Concern over the nuclear arms build-up was the top religious news story of 1982, and interest in the issue shows no signs of waning. To freeze or not to freeze—that is the question to be discussed in Pasadena, California, May 25–28, at a conference called “The Church and Peacemaking in the Nuclear Age.” The conference is unprecedented in that outspoken representatives from all sides of the issue will sit at the same table, express their views, and, hopefully, lend their ears to other alternatives.

“We believe we’ve succeeded in bringing together people who represent the diversity within evangelicalism on the nuclear arms issue,” says Chuck Shelton, a conference codirector. But the fear among some conservatives, dubbed “peace through strength” people in conference lingo, is that the conference will be weighted with liberal opinion.

Shelton and his associates have tried to emphasize that the purpose of the conference is to educate, and not to offer a statement, to raise issues, and not to show favoritism to a particular viewpoint.

Some conservatives, however, are skeptical about the supposed balance. The National Christian Action Coalition (NCAC), for example, stated in its February newsletter: “We have heard that there will be a meeting in May in Pasadena, California, of ‘evangelicals’ supporting a nuclear freeze.” The NCAC’s director of operations, Bob Billings, could not easily conceive of a conference without the purpose of advancing a position. “It would be a waste of time just to hold a discussion,” he said. “You don’t change a whole lot of minds on this issue.”

Billings said that in conservative circles, the talk is that the conference will wind up favoring a nuclear freeze.

If the liberals do have a hidden agenda, it is very well hidden. While the list of participants includes such noted pacifists as Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action and Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine, it also includes conservatives such as U.S. Senator William Armstrong. (R-Colo.), John Perkins of Voice of Calvary Ministries, Ed Robb of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and David Allan Hubbard, president of Fuller Theological Seminary. Other participants include Bill Pannell of Youth for Christ, Ted Engstrom of World Vision International, who chairs the board of organizers, and John R. W. Stott.

The list of sponsoring organizations is also well balanced. It includes Calvin College, Eternity magazine, Evangelicals for Social Action, Fuller Theological Seminary, the National Association of Evangelicals, Sojourners magazine, Voice of Calvary Ministries, Young Life International, and Youth for Christ.

Just a few months ago there was concern among organizers that the “peace through strength” advocates were a minority among those leading workshops at the conference, and that this could hurt the cause. Many who were asked to participate, including Billy Graham, Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colson, the “700 Club’s” Pat Robertson, Sen. Mark Hatfield, theologians Carl F. H. Henry and Francis Schaeffer, former Wheaton College president Hudson T. Armerding, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Vessey, Jr., declined. Shelton and Bauldauf are convinced that nobody is running away from the conference and that those who declined did so because of schedule conflicts.

Late last year, the National Association of Evangelicals aired publicly its concern that the conference would be imbalanced in favor of a freeze. The NAE recommended the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Robb, who later accepted a major speaking role. Both Robb and NAE Washington lobbyist Robert Dugan believe that profreeze workshop leaders still outnumber “peace through strength” leaders. However, neither thinks this will prevent both sides from being heard.

Personalia

Lloyd Elder, executive vice-president of Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has been selected to be president of the Sunday School Board, the huge publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. He succeeds Grady Cauthen, who is retiring. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest American Protestant denomination, with 13.6 million members. The Sunday School Board publishes its educational literature, music, books, and Bibles, and operates two conference centers and 65 bookstores.

Deaths

Lillian Dickson, 82, for 50 years a missionary to Taiwan, founder of the Mustard Seed, Inc., an organization created to underwrite support for urgent needs on the mission field, author of the book These, My People, subject of the biography Angel at Her Shoulder; January 14, in Taipei, Taiwan

The church moves closer to schism.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) has taken its strongest action yet to quell the theological controversy that has been erupting over one of the church’s basic doctrines—the investigative judgment of Christ, which the church believes was revealed to prophetess Ellen White in 1844.

Church officials have “annulled” the ordination of Desmond Ford, an eminent Australian theologian who has been kindly—but persistently—denying that anything of heavenly significance occurred in 1844. Efforts are under way to revoke his Adventist church membership. Two of Ford’s colleagues, Smuts van Rooyen and Noel Mason, have also lost their ordinations, and two Adventist college presidents have resigned. Ford estimates that in all, some 150 Adventist pastors and teachers have been fired or forced to resign recently for their theological dissent. (A church official puts that number at far less.)

The action against Ford and the others was precipitated by an official committee, responsible to Adventist World President Neal Wilson and his advisers. The committee held a last-ditch meeting January 14–17 at the El Rancho Motel near the San Francisco airport with Ford and three other prominent men accused of “heresy, apostacy, rebellion” in the rhubarb over the investigative judgment.

They studied hermeneutical approaches to prophecies in Daniel and Revelation, with Ford denying that 1844 or any other apocalyptic date could be found in the two books. Ford presented 80 “implicit” teachings on the investigative judgment, which he claimed were not biblical. None of these were accepted by the official group. Ford maintains that a “cordial spirit” existed throughout the meeting. Nevertheless, the official committee reported back to Wilson that the gap was too big to make further study profitable.

Wilson then telephoned Ford on January 27 that he was giving the Australasian division the go-ahead to revoke Ford’s ordination. Three days later, Ford received a telegram from his home division stating that his ordination had been “annulled.” A follow-up letter also said he would be stripped of his church membership. However, Ford’s membership is with the Pacific Union College Seventh-day Adventist Church in Angwin, California, and he expects support when the issue comes up there.

The ordination of Ford’s colleagues, van Rooyen and Mason, were also annulled, with calls issued for loss of their church membership. No action reportedly has been taken yet on the standing of Calvin Edwards, editor of Good News, the journalistic voice of the dissenters.

“We’re not antagonistic to the church,” Ford insisted in a follow-up statement. “We just want to see it come into full harmony with Scripture. The big problem is that administrators are not well informed. SDA scholars haven’t been teaching or writing on the investigative judgment for decades.”

Ford says that besides the 150 Adventist pastors and teachers who have been forced out over the investigative judgment doctrine, “thousands of others are just hanging on.” Ford thinks “pressure from mainline evangelicals for the SDA to be biblical” could prevent mass firings. C. E. Bradford, vice-president of the Church’s North American division, said only about 20 pastors and five or six teachers are out.

Sources say that numerous SDA ministers have had to take loyalty oaths on the investigative judgment issue, with some sending in manuscripts and cassettes of sermons to be checked. Many are reportedly reluctant to identify with Ford because of fear of being unable to find other remunerative work in a time of recession.

Several college administrators are reported to have been caught in a squeeze, trying to protect assertive faculty—who sympathize with Ford—from traditionalist trustees and denominational officials who want a further cleansing of the ranks. Two—Jack Cassell and Frank Knittle, presidents of Pacific Union College (near San Francisco) and Southern College (near Chattanooga) respectively—have resigned, ostensibly to take sabbaticals. Knittle says openly, “Ellen White should not be considered as an authoritative source in the development of church theology.” Knittle, who in 12 years saw his enrollment increase from 600 to 1,200, maintains that this has always been the official position of the church. “Many of our people talk about historic Adventism and have never taken time to research what Adventism really is. They would be surprised to find that some of those accused in the present controversy are more in harmony with historic Adventism than their accusers.” Knittle said he became tired of the “hassle” of being an administrator and will look for a job in his scholarly field of medieval studies.

The doctrinal struggle is rooted in the very founding of Adventism. William Miller, a Baptist preacher and Bible scholar of the last century, predicted that Christ would return on October 22, 1844. He based his stand on the cleansing of the temple mentioned in Daniel 8:14. After the “Great Disappointment,” two of Miller’s followers, Hiram Edson and Ellen Harmon (the future Mrs. White), reported having visions of Christ’s entering “the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary,” just as the priest entered the Holy of Holies in the temple to make atonement for sin. This is what Christ actually did in 1844, the visionaries said, and thus the movement was saved.

Later, Ellen White expanded her vision into the doctrine of the investigative judgment. It holds that although man’s sins are forgiven at the Cross, they must be blotted out by Christ before man can enter heaven. This blotting out of sin is what Christ has been doing since 1844, but only after evaluating the life of each believer to see whether he is worthy. Thus salvation is never secure.

Ford and many other Adventist theologians say the investigative judgment is nonbiblical, denies justification by faith, produces a remnant mentality, and encourages perfectionism. Removal of the doctrine from the Adventist statement of faith would put the church close to mainstream evangelicalism, Ford contends (although Ford and other dissenters continue to worship on Saturday).

The investigative judgment doctrine has been further undermined by evidence, long known but newly public, that White borrowed liberally in her writings, even though traditionalists in the church have believed that what she wrote was inspired, as were the Old Testament prophets. Last year a California minister and researcher, Walter Rea, dropped a bombshell in his new book The White Lie. He said White appropriated as much as 90 percent of some chapters of her books from other authors, often quoting verbatim.

Rea also charged that much of what is credited to White was actually written and/or edited by her husband, James, and various editorial assistants. Defenders of White, while giving ground, said it was possible for her thoughts to be inspired even though her language was not original in all cases. On November 13,1980, after giving an interview to the Los Angeles Times, Rea was fired for “negative influence upon the church in regard to an important church doctrine.”

Unlike Ford’s manuscript, which is irenic in tone, Rea’s work is punctuated by bitterness and cynicism. Sample: “Past heretics found … it did not pay to rummage around too much in Ellen’s pawnshop and look at the labels on her merchandise to see if they were firsthand or second. Some who did were silenced, shifted from place to place, or rejected as unfit for God or his work.”

Adventist history shows a steady parade of defections since the beginning, most over White and the doctrines she delivered to Adventism. One splinter group is the tiny Seventh-day Church of God. However, not until 1976 did many problems in her writings become widely known.

That year SDA historian Ronald Numbers published his much-contested Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White. Numbers documented how White was influenced by other health reformers, including Sylvester Graham (Graham crackers) and John Kellogg (corn flakes). Numbers noted that much of White’s health ideas were sound and some even far advanced, yet at some points she was ridiculous by modern standards. Examples: Wearing of wigs could lead to insanity and moral recklessness. Masturbation could result in “imbecility … and deformity of every description.” Wasp waists, produced by wearing tight corsets, could be passed on to children.

Numbers’s book provoked spirited defenses in Adventist curriculum and more scholarly interest in White’s writings. But the book raised few ripples across Adventist constituency.

Then a long-suppressed transcript of a leadership Bible conference in 1919 turned up in the May 1979 issue of Spectrum, the unofficial but sanctioned Adventist Forum’s journal for discussion. Many Adventists learned for the first time that leaders had long known of serious problems in White’s writings. One officer admitted in the 1919 meeting, “We have not taught the truth, and have put [Mrs. White’s] Testimonies on a place where she says they do not stand.” Some conceded that James White and secretaries had doctored White’s works to put them in good literary form and even added material.

The Spectrum disclosure sent tremors through Adventism. Some who had passed off Numbers’s book as a biased secular history had to respect the words of long-revered leaders, some of whom were now urging caution in using White’s works.

Four months later, Ford told a forum at Pacific Union College that there was no biblical support for the investigative judgment (CT, Feb. 8, 1980, p. 64).

Ford was given a paid, six-month leave to prepare a defense of his position. In August 1980 he brought a 990-page document to a restricted gathering of 100 SDA administrators and scholars in Glacier View, Colorado. The group pored over Ford’s manuscript, some agreeing and some disagreeing at various points. But because Ford wouldn’t back down, his ministerial credentials were revoked, and he was fired from his teaching job at Pacific Union (CT, Oct. 19, 1980, p. 76). Ford later said he was booted out “because I dared say in public what many other Adventist scholars have long been saying in private.”

The strong action against Ford, van Rooyen, and the others indicates that Adventist officialdom is determined to eliminate public dissent in the matter of the investigative judgment, even though there seems to be some softening in the doctrinal belief about just how Ellen White should be regarded today. Bradford, the head of the North American division, said, “We’re now looking at Mrs. White’s fidelity to Jesus Christ, and how she relates to the main pillars of our faith.” A dissenting Adventist, however, says: “The question isn’t what we will do with Ellen White. It’s what we will do with Jesus Christ.”

No, Says the judge. That would be illegal.

A federal judge in New York City has blocked—at least temporarily—a federal regulation requiring parents to be notified when minors receive prescription contraceptives. The rule would have applied to all family planning clinics receiving any federal financing. It was set to take effect late last month.

Judge Henry F. Werker said the regulation is invalid because it subverts the intention of Congress to combat teenage pregnancy, and that notification of parents when minors receive contraceptives would work against that intention. The temporary injunction applies to some 5,000 family clinics around the country. The Justice Department will appeal the action.

In 1970, Congress added a section known as Title 10 to the Public Health Service Act. The provision provided federal money for public and private family-planning agencies. Congress amended the law in 1978 to require that services be given to adolescents, because it said teen-age pregnancies were a critical problem.

The rule would have required that parents be notified within 10 days when prescription contraceptives were given to teen-agers under 18 and under parental care. There were exceptions in cases of suspected child abuse or incest.

During congressional hearings on the regulation, George Ryan, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, called it a smokescreen for “turning back the clock on sexual attitudes.” He said, “The idea that we’re all going to have a Robert Young, ‘Father Knows Best’ kind of family is just not reality.”

Richard Schweiker, then secretary of Health and Human Services, argued however that “in every other area of their lives, parents are involved and held responsible.… It is paradoxical that when it comes to prescribing drugs and devices with potentially serious health consequences, federal policy has not recognized parental responsibility and involvement.”

Instead Of Jail, She Is Sentenced To A Religious Community

Last November 21, 18-year-old Ann Marie O’Brien set fire to her house, resulting in the death of her nine-year-old brother. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and could have been jailed for 10 years. But the judge, family members, even the prosecuting lawyers, agreed that this time imprisonment was not the answer. O’Brien reportedly wept openly, sometimes uncontrollably, at all her court appearances. Her attorney explained that she lit the fire to express pent-up frustrations over parental restrictions on her social life and that “she very honestly had not thought of the consequences.” Four court-appointed psychiatrists who examined O’Brien said her guilt would be with her a lifetime. They advised against incarceration.

After extensive conversations with the attorneys, a probation officer, O’Brien’s parents, and the psychiatrists, and after summoning O’Brien to his chambers four times to discuss the crime, Superior Court Judge Fred Galda determined that “jail would kill her.” He decided instead to allow O’Brien to spend 30 months at a Newark, New Jersey, Roman Catholic charismatic community called the People of Hope.

Newark Bishop Joseph Francis called the sentence “very unusual, but very creative.” He said, “The prison system as we presently have it is too harsh and too cruel punishment for certain offenders, especially in the category of this girl.” Richard Muti, the prosecutor, stated in court: “The event may well be categorized more a tragedy than a crime. Incarceration in prison will destroy this person. The state has no wish to compound the tragedy the O’Brien family has suffered.”

The People of Hope, started 11 years ago, is a close-knit community of more than 1,000 members. Some of them have troubled or rootless pasts, but O’Brien will be the first member accepted in lieu of a jail term. The community’s director, James Ferry, says they are taking a risk. “A few years ago we would not have had the stability to do this,” he said. “Today, when the need arose, the Lord wouldn’t let me get it out of my mind.”

If Jesus had been born in the twentieth century, would he have chosen the image of transfusion for his forgiveness, love, and healing?

This is the final in a series of three articles on the physical properties of blood, and the spiritual truths those properties may illumine. In it, Paul Brand reflects on the startling blood transfusion that inspired him to become a surgeon. Brand’s provocative thoughts were gathered by writer Philip Yancey.

My entire career in medicine traces back to one dreary night at Connaught Hospital in East London. Until then I had stubbornly resisted all family pressures to enter medical school. Instead, I had entered the building trade, apprenticing as a carpenter, a mason, a painter, and a bricklayer. My goal was to use these skills back in India. Evening classes in civil engineering had exposed me to the theories behind construction. One obstacle to my return to India remained: the mission required a one-year course in hygiene and tropical medicine at Livingstone College. I was assigned to a local hospital to do dressings in the wards and to learn basic principles of diagnosis and treatment.

It was during one evening of my stint at Connaught that my whole view of medicine—and of blood—permanently shifted. Hospital orderlies wheeled a beautiful young woman into my ward. She had lost much blood in an accident. It had drained from her skin, leaving her an unearthly pale color, and her oxygen-starved brain had shut down into an unconscious mode.

The hospital staff lurched into their controlled-panic response to any patient near death. A nurse dashed down a corridor for a blood transfusion bottle while a doctor fumbled with the apparatus to get the transfusion going. Another doctor, seeing my white coat, thrust a blood pressure cuff at me. Fortunately, I was trained to read pulse and blood pressure, but I could not detect the faintest flicker of a pulse on her cold, limp wrist.

She looked like a waxwork madonna or an alabaster saint in a cathedral. Her lips, too, were pallid, and as the doctor searched her chest with his stethoscope I noticed that even the nipple of her small breast was white. Only a few freckles stood out against her pallor. She did not seem to be breathing, having long before passed through the desperate phase of heaving breathing. I felt sure she was dead.

The nurse arrived with a bottle of blood, which she buckled into a high metal stand as the doctor punctured the woman’s vein with a large needle. They had mounted the bottle high and were using an extra-long tube so that the increase in pressure would push the blood into her body faster. The staff told me to keep watch over the emptying bottle while they scurried off for more blood.

Nothing in my memory can compare to the excitement of what happened next. Certainly the precise details of that scene remain vividly with me to this day. As I nervously held her wrist while the others were gone, suddenly I could feel the faintest press of a pulse. Or was it my own pulse? I searched again—it was there, barely perceptible but regular, at least. The next bottle of blood arrived and was quickly connected. A spot of pink appeared on her cheek, and spread into a beautiful flush. Her lips darkened pink, then red, and her body quivered in a kind of sighing breath.

Then her eyelids fluttered lightly and at last parted. She squinted at first, as her pupils adjusted to the bright lights of the room, and at last she looked directly at me. To my enormous surprise, in a very short time she spoke, asking for water.

That young woman entered my life for only an hour or so, but the experience left me utterly changed. I had seen a miracle: the creation of Eve when breath entered into and animated her body, the raising of Lazarus. If medicine, if blood could do this …

I picked up the empty glass bottle, with traces of blood still smearing its side, and read the label. Who had given these pints of life? Later, I looked up its source in our registry. I discovered the donor lived in Seven Kings, Essex, a town where I had worked in a building constrution firm. My eyes closed and I thought of a burly workman from that blue-collar neighborhood. As he climbed ladders or laid bricks, exuding strength and vigor, did he know about the trembling young woman being revived by his own blood cells miles away? How many others in Seven Kings and Ilford and Stratford would live because of this one man’s donations?

In all of medicine, a blood transfusion is probably the purest example of shared health. Watching its effect transformed me. By the time I finished my year at Livingstone College I was incurably in love with medicine. With some shame at my vacillation, but drawn by a compelling inner sense, I entered medical school.

Twelve years later, with medical and surgical training behind me, I found myself back in India, in a culture that still reacted with fear and revulsion to the idea of mixing one person’s blood with another’s.

I arrived as an orthopedic surgeon at the Christian Medical College in Vellore just as the college was recruiting specialists from all over the world. Among these was Reeve Betts from the Lahey Clinic in Boston, who was to become the father of thoracic (chest) surgery for all of India. Betts immediately ran up against a roadblock: the lack of a blood bank. In our surgeries we had been relying on a jerry-rigged device that suctioned out and recycled the patient’s own blood. But chest surgery required a prepared supply of 5 to 10 pints of blood, which in turn entailed an efficient collection and storage procedure. Reeve Betts had the experience and skill to save the lives of patients who began streaming to him from all over India, but he could do nothing without blood.

In 1949, a blood bank thus became my number-one priority. I had to learn the skills needed for typing, crossmatching, and screening donors for health problems. We had to develop ways to provide pyrogen-free water and to sterilize all our reusable equipment (India, wisely, did not know the word “disposable”). Time after time we suffered heartbreak when a transfusion intended to bring health instead damaged the patient; somewhere along the line the blood had become contaminated or was not a perfect match. Those accustomed to the smooth efficiency of blood banks today should pause and be thankful for the pioneers who tackled the many hazards of the transfusion process. In the hot, dusty atmosphere of Vellore, with so many people afflicted with parasites or a hidden virus of hepatitis, we had to struggle constantly to make our system foolproof.

Indian people themselves offered the biggest challenge. To them, blood is life, and who can tolerate the thought of giving up lifeblood, even to save someone else? I have vivid memories of a scene that transpired again and again in Vellore as Reeve collided with ancient prejudices. To begin with, Reeve had little sympathy for the endless questions and discussions involved in an Indian joint-family system. “How could anyone not give blood to save his own child?” he would mutter darkly after emerging from a lengthy family council called to discuss the need.

In most cases, a whole tribe of relatives would accompany a patient facing major surgery. There was never a lack of family to consult with, and conferences usually required translation into a local dialect.

I remember the case of one 12-year-old girl when Reeve informed the family that the patient had a very bad lung. To save her life it must be removed, he continued, as the family members nodded with appropriate gravity. The surgery required at least three pints of blood, and we had only one, so the family must donate two more. At that news, the family elders huddled together, then announced a willingness to pay for the additional pints.

I watched Reeve flush red at their response. The veins in his neck began to bulge, and his shining bald head was an excellent index of how much patience he had left. Working to control his voice, he explained that we had no other source of blood—it could not be purchased. They might as well take the girl home and let her die. Back to the conference. After more lively discussion the elders emerged with a great concession. They pushed forward a frail old woman weighing perhaps 95 pounds, the smallest and weakest of the tribe. The family has decided to offer her as a transfusion donor, they reported. We could bleed her.

Reeve fixed a stare on the sleek, well-fed men who had made the decision and then his anger took over. The bald spot atop his head turned blazing red. In halting but more-than-expressive Tamil he blasted the dozen or so cowering family members. Few could understand his American accent, but everyone nearby caught the force of his torrent of words as he jabbed his finger back and forth from the husky men to the frail woman.

Finally, with a melodramatic flourish, Reeve rolled up his own sleeves and called over to me, “Come on, Paul—I can’t stand this! I won’t let that poor girl die just because of these cowardly fellows. Bring the needle and bottle and take my blood.” The family fell silent like birds before an eclipse, and watched in awe as I dutifully fastened a cuff around Reeve’s upper arm, swabbed the skin and plunged the needle into his vein. A rich red fountain spurted into the bottle and a great “Ahhh!” rustled through the family and spectators.

At once there was a great babel of voices. “Look, the sahib doctor is giving his own life!” Onlookers called out shame on the family for allowing the great doctor to give himself in the presence of so many kin. With a well-rehearsed tone I would reinforce dramas such as this one by warning Reeve that he had better not give too much this time because he had given blood last week and the week before. “You will be too weak to do the operation!” I cried.

Usually in such cases the family got the message. Before the bottle was halffull, two or three would come forward and I would stop Reeve’s donation and take their trembling, outstretched arms. Ultimately I had to end the dramatic procedure Reeve had developed because, although he never donated much blood at one time, he gave with such regularity that his blood-forming cells strained to keep up. Nevertheless, his reputation spread: if the family refused blood, the great doctor himself would give his own.

The Blood Of An Overcomer

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

—(Heb. 2:14–18, NIV)

Somehow, by drawing on the resources of Christ, I become better equipped to meet temptation. Let me explain what happens, using the analogy of blood. Some years ago an epidemic of measles struck Vellore, India, and one of my daughters caught a severe case. We knew she would recover, but another infant daughter was dangerously vulnerable. When the pediatrician explained our need for convalescent serum, word went around Vellore that the Brands needed the “blood of an overcomer.” We did not actually use those words, but we called for someone who had contracted measles and had overcome it. Serum from such a person would protect our little girl.

It was no use finding somebody who had had chicken pox or had recovered from a broken leg. Such people, albeit healthy, could not give the specific help we needed to overcome measles. We needed someone who had experienced measles and had conquered it. We located such a person, withdrew some of his blood, let the cells settle out, injected the convalescent serum. Thus equipped with “borrowed” antibodies, our daughter suffered no ill effects. She overcame measles not by her own resistance or vitality, but as a result of a battle that had taken place previously within someone else.

There is a sense in which a person’s blood becomes more valuable and potent as that person prevails in numerous battles with outside invaders. After antibodies have locked away the secret to defeating each disease, a second infection of the same type will normally do no harm. A protected person has “wise blood,” to borrow a term from Flannery O’Connor. Could this process cast light on the description of Christ being “made perfect through suffering” (Heb. 2:10)? Or this verse: “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:18, NIV). And again, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Heb. 4:15, NIV).

The blood of Jesus Christ has overcome. It is as if he went out of his way to expose himself to temptation, to encounter the stresses and strains you and I will meet—to gain wise blood, for our benefit. Beginning with his personal temptation by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus declined to use naked power to overcome temptations toward success, power, and an escape from the limitations of humanity. In the Garden of Gethsemane those temptations put him to the ultimate test. But “for the joy set before him [he] endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Heb. 12:2, NIV).

Now today at the Communion table, when we partake of Communion wine, it is as though our Lord is saying to us: This is my blood, which has been strengthened and prepared for you. This is my life, which was lived for you and can now be shared by you. I was tired, frustrated, tempted, abandoned; tomorrow you may feel tired or abandoned. You may use my strength and share my spirit. I have overcome the world for you.

We do not gather around the table as an exclusive club, a smug collection of mystagogues partaking of a secret potion that will protect us magically for another week. Rather, we come as humble, thirsty, fallen human beings to partake of a resource—his wise and powerful blood—that will help us overcome what we could not alone.

As i ponder the ancient symbolism behind the word blood in the Christian religion, especially as suggested in Jesus’ statements, I keep returning to the relatively modern procedure of blood transfusion. Obviously, Jesus and the biblical authors did not envision a Red Cross blood supply depot when they used the term. And yet something about the image expresses for me the deep and sacred meaning behind the Christian symbolism. The waxlike madonna in Connaught Hospital resurrecting before my eyes while elsewhere an Essex builder climbs another scaffold, oblivious; an Indian teen-ager, waiting with her chest heaving while family members debate who should spill their lives—these are the images of shared blood that hold most meaning for me today. It would not surprise me at all were Jesus, if born in the twentieth century rather than the first, to choose the image of transfusion rather than a parallel one of drinking blood.

When Jesus invited us to drink his blood, to take the cup that is the new covenant of his blood, he invited us to share in the rich resources of his ongoing life. While a blood transfusion procedure certainly does not describe the theological process of the Eucharist, it does help reveal the meaning behind the symbol. Indeed, who can describe the process by which his body and blood become a part of our own? Theologians have tried without agreement for centuries.

The Lord’s Supper is a celebration of the new intimacy won for us by the blood of Christ. We are made near to him; we participate in him; he feeds us—any phrase only hints at the mystery. Jesus used the analogy of a branch attached to a vine; the image of blood transfusion speaks most forcefully to me. As a branch separated from a vine withers away, so also a limb severed from the blood supply quickly atrophies and becomes gangrenous.

Blood feeds life. The Lord’s Supper joins together the diverse cells of his body with his river of life. Every cell is linked, unified, and bathed by the nutrients of a common source. Herbert Spencer expressed the scientific principle: Whatever amount of power an organism expends in any form equals the power that was taken into it from without. George Macdonald expressed the spiritual principle: “He requires of us what we cannot effect without Him.”

Some have asked, “The meaning, yes; but why the ceremony? Why must we repeat this ritual?” Robert Farrar Capon answers such an objection against formality with his own questions. “Why go to a party, when you can drink by yourself? Why kiss your wife, when you both know you love her? Why tell great jokes to old friends who’ve heard them before? Why take your daughter to lunch on her birthday, when you’re going to have supper together anyway?” The real question, Capon concludes, is, “Why be human?”

Sit down sometime and read through the Old Testament Books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Imagine yourself obligated to fulfill every requirement of the Law, with scrupulous attention to each rubric of worship. And then consider that Jesus left only two ordinances for us to follow: baptism, a one-time act, and the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist.

Each ordinance manifests a common theme of personal, intimate union with God. In one, a representative of God physically brings you in contact with water as a purifying symbol of new life. In the other, each person, one by one, pauses to ingest the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus. Under the old covenant, worshipers brought the sacrifice—they gave. In the new, believers receive tokens of the finished work of the risen Christ. “My body, which was broken for you.… My blood, which was shed for you.…” In that phrase, Jesus spans the distance from Jerusalem to our town, cuts across the years separating his time from ours.

When we come to the table we come pale, with light breath, a weakened pulse. We live in a world far from God, and we find ourselves doubting during the week. We muddle along with our weaknesses, our repeated failings, our unconquerable sins, our aches and pains. In that condition, bruised and pale, we are invited by Christ to his table to celebrate life. We experience the gracious flow of his forgiveness and love and healing—a murmur to us that we are accepted and made alive, transfused.

“I am the Living One,” Christ said to the awestruck apostle John in a vision. “I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever!” (Rev. 1:18). The Lord’s Supper sums up all three tenses: the life that was and died for us, the life that is and lives in us, and the life that will be and will come for us. It offers a personal participation in the timelessness of God’s provision for man. In the experience of Eucharist, I focus on transfused life, not on death.

Jesus Christ did not convey himself through writing. Nor did he convey himself genetically; if he had, his offspring would have been one-half Christ, one-fourth Christ, one-sixteenth Christ, until today when faint evidence of his bloodline would remain. Rather, he conveys himself personally, nutritiously, offering to each one of us the power of his own resurrected life. No other New Testament image—shepherd, building, bride—expresses the concept of “Christ in us” so well.

Recall the words that scandalized his followers: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6:54–57). He is real food, and real drink. The Anglican priest and poet George Herbert expressed this in “The Agonie”:

Who know not Love, let him assay

And taste the juice, which on the cross a pike

Did set again abroach; then let him say

If ever he did taste the life.

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,

Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.