Page 5274 – Christianity Today (2025)

From the boardwalk you can see him, with his beard and dark curly hair, half-kneeling and half-lying on the mound of sand. He carefully shapes the sand—carving, patting, piling more on, scooping some away, spraying it down, standing back to survey, returning to make a change here or there. Gradually, a larger-than-life figure of Christ on the cross emerges. As a passerby on the boardwalk, you feel as though you have watched prayer become an art form.

For four years, Randy Hofman has been ministering in a unique way to thousands of tourists and locals who come to the beach resort of Ocean City, Maryland. The 33-year-old, who actually is an ordained minister, now has boardwalk vacationers for a congregation, a biblical scene sculpted in sand for a text. An expanse of beach is his peripatetic pulpit. Each evening during the summer season, you can walk out on the beach at Second Street and join the crowd of admiring onlookers.

Hofman’s ministry has evolved over the past 11 years. After studying at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, he came to Ocean City to do seascapes and landscapes. Instead, he began working with Marc Altamar, an artist who was then doing sand sculptures on the beach and religious chalk drawings on a concrete slab on the boardwalk. When Altamar moved to Florida, Randy took over as unofficial sand sculptor-in-chief for the resort town. (In daytimes, he works as a professional sign painter.)

Randy’s daily routine is a rigorous one. Every afternoon at about 4, he comes to Ocean City from his home in nearby Berlin. He gathers his hose and flat shovel from the shed loaned to him by a nearby hotel. His only other tool is a plastic crab knife (for the fine work).

The first project is to dig a huge pit so his figures can be at an angle, thus less exposed to wind, rain, and gravity. As he digs, he wets the sand, giving it the adherence he needs. By 6 P.M., he is usually ready to start sculpting.

Often Hofman chooses his theme just an hour before, selecting from among his repertoire of about a hundred biblical settings. His choice is not entirely due to artistic motivation or the moving of the Spirit. “Actually, it’s a pragmatic approach, according to what’s left over from the night before, what the pile lends itself to, whether I have help that night, how much energy I have,” Randy admits.

His favorite theme is the Crucifixion, the “center of our faith.” Yet the crowds seem to like the more grandiose scenes, such as the Last Supper. The larger scenes, with their magnitude of intricate detail, tax Hofman’s stamina.

The Last Supper, for instance, demands attention not only to composition (“It’s basically the Leonardo da Vinci composition of the table”), but to dozens of smaller matters. He gives Peter a bald head, and also identifies Judas and Matthew. “But the rest of the guys I make a cross section of humanity—a giant guy, a skinny guy, a fat guy, a happy guy, a tough, stern guy,” Hofman reports. Randy uses workers at the local hotel as his models of humanity.

“They usually turn out to be the best portraits of the disciples sitting at the table.”

Cast in marble, his figures might serve as a monument to Christian faith. Cast in sand, they are often destroyed by the elements before morning. Yet Randy sees a message even in their temporariness. His work is to glorify God and to bring hungry souls to salvation in Jesus, not to bring himself acclaim. Passersby may also be reminded of their own transience.

Hofman hopes they will understand that “today is the day of salvation. People get bugged that I don’t make the sculptures in more solid forms. That’s flattering, but I think the Lord has been gracious to me in allowing me to practice on sand.”

At 9 P.M., tired and covered with his artistic medium, Randy faces the gathered crowd. Now, leaning on his shovel, wandering from spot to spot, he preaches—this time a sermon with words. He wants his 15-minute sermon heard by all who come to hear him, whether out of curiosity or desire to praise God.

Randy’s initial ministry did not include the preaching. “I’m not by nature a public speaker. People think I’m very bold and courageous and dynamic out here. I used to worry about preaching, but now it’s like it was for the apostles: It comes in the hour I need to know. I quiet down and think just before I preach. The only thing I try to prepare is the opening line—something relevant to the evening’s theme—to get people’s attention.” Each sermon ends with a basic proclamation of salvation.

At 9:30, Randy’s informal sermon is over. He moves closer to the attentive group gathered on the boardwalk. Some have questions; some seek counsel; some just listen.

By midnight (on some nights it’s later), as the artist begins to put his tools away, the elements are already erasing his message in the sand.

By Sara Lewis, a free-lance writer living in Ocean City, Maryland.

There were two deacons in my boyhood church, Bee Taylor and Orva Jordan. The reason for only two was obvious—they were the only men active in the church. Others moved in and out of the church fabric, but Bee and Orva were the only “deacon material” who were willing to do the job.

That boyhood church of long ago was, in a word, small (although at the time it seemed more than big enough). Rarely did Sunday school attendance exceed 100; and more often than not it numbered only 70 or 80 of the “faithful.” Most of the attendees were hard-pressed culturally and economically, with many families, including my own, struggling to survive in post-Depression America.

Still, I owe that small, culturally and economically deprived church a debt of gratitude for giving me a basic foundation in Bible and Christian living, and ultimately directing me into the ministry. Despite its size (or lack thereof) and low visibility, it did its job.

Today, our high-visibility mentality too often obscures the significant impact of these low-visibility influences. And yet the fact of the matter is that there are more small churches in America than large churches. Anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of most denominations are “small church” (usually under 200 people). And when you have weeded out the deceased, nonresidents, and dropouts, most church rolls could probably be cut as much as 50 percent—all of which means that small churches are often much smaller than their membership rolls indicate.

My guess is that at least 60 percent of you reading this column carry the spiritual legacy of a small church. I would also guess the influence of your small church was disproportionally large for its size. Handicapped by lack of resources, small churches often rise to the challenge and leave big footprints behind them.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m for church growth. Stagnation and ingrown vision are never worthy goals. We are mandated to go and disciple, and therefore we must be in a growth mode.

But despite all our efforts to promote growth, there will always be the many small churches, quietly and in various degrees of effectiveness doing their job. Let me, therefore, draw upon my own small-church experience and suggest four reasons why these low-visibility ministries are so effective.

1. The church was there when I needed it: a small, flickering light, to be sure—but it was a light and it was there.

2. The two deacons, Bee and Orva—low-profile, ordinary men—were there, and they did the job other men would not do. And they kept on doing it when others would have quit. With them, a small band of the faithful cleaned the church, taught Sunday school, gathered funds, played the piano (which was usually out of tune), sang, wrapped Christmas candy, and performed a hundred other tasks in the name of Jesus.

3. A stream of faithful pastors, including the local village blacksmith, served faithfully despite starvation wages—encouraging, winning, praying, preaching, visiting, discipling. Not one of them ever wrote an article or a book, appeared on radio or TV, or attracted much attention beyond our church. But each left important footprints.

4. A family spirit prevailed, with prayer, faithfulness, persistence, and love outweighing human ingenuity and carefully crafted programs.

So, I pay tribute to my boyhood church, and to the tens of thousands of small churches just like it. I salute them all for a quiet but effective job well done.

V. GILBERT BEERS

Youth, Faith—And Baptism

I approached with great interest “The Mystery of Building Faith: How a Child Learns to Love God” [CT Institute, June 13]. I was disappointed: You did not include a traditional Lutheran point of view in the discussion. Not to include a conservative, confessional Lutheran is all the more amazing in that a Roman Catholic theologian was one of the conversational partners. On the surface there seemed to be little difference between his view and that of the evangelical position that sees the age of accountability as necessary for baptism. It becomes clear that Lutherans and evangelicals are operating with a different concept of faith. A more nearly complete point of view would have been reached if the Lutheran view would have been included. As one of my colleagues remarked, that concept of infant faith is unique to the Lutheran position.

Lutherans hold with evangelicals to the same firm convictions of the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures. This common conviction makes it all the more necessary that Lutherans be allowed to engage in dialogue with evangelicals where their differences are contributions that could not be made by others.

DAVID P. SCAER

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Ind.

I noted the emphasis on the presence of the parents. However, a basic contradition gnaws away at my conscience. How can mission boards mandate or even encourage missionary parents to place their children in a school hundreds of miles from their home?

Is there any adequate justification for this practice that continues to tear apart the very fabric of the family unit you have so poignantly focused on as the role model for spiritual training?

There appears to be a contradiction when an evangelical expert states that “there is no substitute for the parent—a parent who not only lives with the child, but interacts with the child …” (Joy). Yet the message to missionary parents is that theirs is a godly sacrifice. Does a double standard exist?

MARJORIE ALFANO

Vincentown, N.J.

I understand darku not as a verb, “the way he should go,” but as a simple possessive noun, “his way” (Prov. 22:6). Simply put, “Train a child in his [own] way; even when he is old he will not turn from it.” Let a child have his way and even when he is grown up, he will be a spoiled brat.

Too many Christian parents have mistakenly taken the traditional King James rendering as a promise of God and let their teen and adult children stray without a word, hoping in that promise of restoration. Parents should pray for and plead with their children who have turned away from faith. Proverbs 22:6 is a warning for child rearing.

REV. MICHAEL J. IMPERIALE

First Presbyterian Church

Greenlawn, N.Y.

Job’S Journey Of Faith

Thank you for Philip Yancey’s insightful look at Job’s experience of the journey of faith [“When the Facts Don’t Add Up,” June 13]. I am grateful for his opening for me new vistas of the mind and love of God. Surely, it helps us to see that the reality of the Sacred Pages is a theology of the Cross, rather than of glory—until we reach that glory.

This one article is well worth the price of a year’s subscription.

REV. N. F. SPOMER

Christ Lutheran Church

Egan, Minn.

Yancey’s analysis of the Book of Job is one more demonstration of his insight into the issues of pain and faith. I would, however, come to the defense of Job’s friends on one score: As soon as they heard of their friend’s misfortune, they came and sat with him in silence for seven days and nights. Perhaps Job could have done without the insipid advice that followed this vigil. I wonder, though, if he would have forgone the close companionship his friends offered. (In fact, Job never dismissed his friends, only their counsel.)

And I wonder how often we offer the Jobs of our world our prayers rather than our presence. Job tells his friends, “If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.” To come alongside the injured and share their sufferings in silence would, for many of us, be wisdom.

STEVE SWAYNE

Seattle Pacific University

Seattle, Wash.

In this life, so often filled with difficulties, one often comes to the conclusion, “Boy, could I write an article about the meaning of suffering after this experience is over,” only to open CT and find an article such as Philip Yancey’s on the meaning of Job’s suffering has said it so much better. It has been this way time and time again.

LESTER H. HOLLANS

Southern Free Enterprise Center

Birmingham, Ala.

Yancey’s Job article was excellent. His writing is cogent, his imagery lucid. Each paragraph pushed me to the next.

RICH KUBOW

Jackson, Miss.

Card Shuffling

For years I’ve read, enjoyed, and tried to support Christian magazines. But alas, their persistent annoyance in one area has almost driven me mad. It’s those insufferable “blow-in” cards.

You know what I mean: those little subscription cards they insist on sticking in the magazine even though the person holding the magazine obviously already has a magazine.

At first, I felt some sort of misguided responsibility to “save” the silly things. I would attempt to make them useful as bookmarks. I saved them in shoeboxes until I ran out of closet space. I tried to convince friends and family they were a novel collector’s item of the future.

The problem is that they all appear so—valuable. Coupons, savings vouchers, no-risk offers, certificates; soon I found myself tentatively opening hymnals, Bibles, commentaries, even closet doors, always expecting little cards to blow out.

I know I sound a little irrational or unstable. And I have been seeing a therapist. He’s encouraged me to use the cards for gift subscriptions to my friends, thus converting a source of frustration and hostility into a positive act that benefits others. So tomorrow I’m going to put my frustration to rest. I’m mailing in my 15 shoeboxes full of coupons from 1959 to provide gifts for all my friends—at over 93 percent off the current cover prices.

EUTYCHUS

The Mystique Of Celebrity Aid

Charles Colson [“We Aren’t the World,” June 13] provides Westerners, especially Christians, with some excellent food for thought concerning our malnourished view of helping starving people. He helpfully challenges the burgeoning mystique of celebrity aid, but he also points toward the fact that providing food for the starving people of the world is a complex and sensitive matter.

Giving people food in crisis situations and enabling them to more adequately feed themselves are acts that need to be done with careful thought, fervent prayer, and deep humility. Doing this only when an emergency hits the headlines is not enough. As someone said at the MCC [Mennonite Central Committee] discussion on food aid and development: When the media discover a famine, Christian aid agencies should already be preparing to move to other areas of still-invisible crises.

LARRY KEHLER

Conference of Mennonites in Canada

Winnipeg, Man., Canada

I believe Colson is completely off the mark when he compares musicians’ well-publicized efforts to biblical allusions to displaying one’s piety in public. But these musicians do not need public acknowledgement of their actions. They make their public displays very obvious for another, completely different, reason—which also has biblical parallels. If we are given a gift, do we hide it under a bushel? No; we put it on a stand so that all in the house will have a light to live by. Similarly, these musicians have been given a gift of tremendous media attention. They have taken this gift and put it on the pedestal so that the world can see the good they are doing and be moved to action.

Colson is correct in his assessment; yet it would do us good to give the performers the benefit of the doubt. The bottom line is this: It would behoove Colson to admit that these events are sincere, heartfelt efforts by their organizers to heighten consciousness and to spur action for the downtrodden.

STEVEN M. GANDT

Topsfield, Mass.

Money? Evil?

I was amazed that a journal as theologically sophisticated as CT would print a statement that “Money is evil” [“Reflections,” June 13]. Scripture states that “the love of money is the root of many evils,” but nowhere does it condemn money as evil. Affluence, whether of individuals or institutions, produces a need for extra vigilance. But so do the cares of the world or persecution and tribulation, legalism, youth, et cetera. Yaconelli’s approach reminds me of someone I heard who was going to do away with crime by abolishing money because money is the root of every evil. Wouldn’t it be nice if wickedness could be so easily abolished?

DAVID F. SIEMENS, PH.D.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

No Disarmament

I must comment in response to Kenneth Kantzer’s “One Cheer for Carl Sagan” [Senior Editor, June 13]. Throughout Jesus’ teachings, or those of the other New Testament writers, I see no reference to disarmament, peace negotiations, or even any political action. Instead, I see Christians playing the part in society that they are uniquely prepared for, telling the lost about salvation. That is how we will preserve this planet or make political change!

STEVE HEESE

The Church in South Denver

Denver, Colo.

Timely Words On Alcoholism

The editorial “Tough Is Not Enough,” by Kenneth S. Kantzer [May 16], has come 40 years too late—but yet, at a most opportune time. As a Lutheran, I was raised to react to life that goes by me. Yes, we should punish this, yes, we should send this man to drunk-driving school, and yes, we should support MADD. Times are changing; the system doesn’t work. Kantzer is correct when he says, the “root answer: an abiding concern.”

RICHARD L. JENSEN

Mission Hills, Calif.

Kantzer’s editorial only grazes the surface. Drunk driving is merely part of a much deeper problem. For years, prosecuting attorneys have fumed because jurors would not convict drunken drivers. In today’s society, drinking is accepted as a normal life pattern. Beyond that, during the last decade, sales of retail liquor stores have increased almost $1 billion each year. Christians, one hundred million strong, must recognize and emphasize to others the heavy toll taken in lives by alcohol. This occurs not only in front of careening cars—but behind closed doors.

CHARLES W. JAMISON

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Kantzer states: “We need to be committed most fully to the current research into discovering a chemical pill to counteract the effects of alcohol on the human brain.” This is no more a solution to the problem of drunk driving than abortion is to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. What society really needs is self-controlled individuals who are disciplined enough to abstain from this potentially deadly drug that offers absolutely no good consequences.

PAMELA A. POULHUS

Mohopac, N.Y.

Heresy Hunters’ Paradise?

Your presentation on the New Age movement (May 16) makes us think—and sometimes this is a painful experience. Congregations are weary of the steady reminder that man is a miserable, hopeless, self-destructive sinner.

People hunger for a more spiritually uplifting message that awakens in them newborn thinking, that stimulates them to be twentieth-century practitioners of Christ’s more abundant life. In short, the great put-down has gone far enough.

Did we bring the New Age religious movement on ourselves? Is it all so bad? Christianity should be out front, ahead of the pack, not engaged in creating a heresy hunters’ atmosphere.

DR. JOHN CHRISCI

South Miami, Fla.

I read the Burrows article with great interest since I have spent the last several years studying the New Age movement. He states that Cumbey and Hunt are incorrect when they imply that “the NAM rejects Christianity and that it is intent on exterminating it.”

With my extensive study of the New Age movement, I can assure your readers that it is Cumbey who is correct, not Burrows. I can emphatically state that the NAM is very definitely planning to exterminate the Christians. Seeds of Peace, a New Age newsletter, states that “those who are attached or committed to a belief system [Christians] will also fall along with the system when it’s eventually shattered.”

DR. CATHY BURNS

Mount Carmel, Pa.From the Senior

Editorial healing. Change is a certainty of editorial life: rewrites, revisions, schedule shifts. When the August issue was first planned, the cover was to have emphasized a three-article series on the black church in America. Research and writing moved along smoothly until staff determined more time was needed. Editors and writers wanted to make sure the articles addressed more than needs that had been reported on a hundred times before.

All of this was fine and good, but it left us without an August cover story (and a deadline breathing down our necks)—until senior writer Tim Stafford submitted his piece on John Wimber and the healing ministry of California’s latest boom church, The Vineyard. After one reading, we knew our editorial problem was solved.

In typical Stafford style, “Testing the Wine” is more than a simple collection of facts and figures about a person and a movement: It is a personal look at what makes this controversial ministry tick—complete with sights, sounds, and the charismatic personality of John Wimber.

“Exorcisms. Physical healings. Resurrections. Frankly, I was skeptical,” Tim said, reviewing with us the makings of his third cover story for CT in two years (all, interestingly, featuring cover caricatures). But after spending some days with Wimber and others at their “Signs and Wonders” outpost, Tim felt he was able to look objectively at a ministry that is changing lives, but not without its outspoken critics.

As for that three-part series on the black church, it will appear in the September 19 issue.

Love letters in the sand. Just in time for the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer—sand evangelism. A look at the man who sculpts the Scriptures is the focus of this month’s Church in Action.

HAROLD SMITH, Managing Editor

Walker Percy begins his splendid book The Message in the Bottle with a series of questions, six pages of questions in all, including the following:

“Why does man feel so sad in the twentieth century?

“Why does man feel so bad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in satisfying his needs and making over the world for his own use?

“… Why is a man apt to feel bad in a good environment, say suburban Short Hills, New Jersey, on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon? Why is the same man apt to feel good in a very bad environment, say an old hotel on Key Largo during a hurricane?”

Percy’s interrogative style got me thinking of some of my own questions, and I began a list that applies directly to us Christians. I came up with so many that I decided to devote a whole column to the questions, without attempting any answers.

WHY DO SO FEW CHRISTIANS read Walker Percy?

Why do we shake our heads and bemoan the dearth of Christians in art and culture when the nineteenth century’s best novelists (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) and two of the twentieth century’s best poets (Eliot and Auden) were avowedly Christian?

How many of us read any of the four today?

Why do we still shake our heads even though one of the dominant authors of this century, who lives in Vermont, writes like a modern Amos or Isaiah? Why do so few Christians get around to reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn?

What do we read?

WHY IS IT that only about 10 percent of the Bible—the Epistles—is written in a straight didactic form while the rest of the Bible relies primarily on more indirect forms, like history, poetry, and prophetic visions?

Why are 90 percent of the sermons that we hear preached in evangelical churches based on that 10 percent?

Why is the Song of Solomon in the Bible?

Why is the Song of Solomon, alone of all biblical books, interpreted allegorically when in fact the Bible gives no clue of any allegorical intent?

How did a religion that includes a book like the Song of Solomon among its sacred writings get branded as an enemy of sex?

Why do modern authors like John Updike and modern TV shows like “Dynasty” seem so obsessed with human sexuality while the topic is barely mentioned in church, except as a warning?

Why do virtually all instances of church discipline involve sexual sins?

Why do I hear so few sermons on the sins of pride, greed, sloth, and gluttony?

Would Christians support a national Prohibition movement against the major health hazard of obesity?

WHAT IS ECCLESIASTES doing in the Bible?

Why do so few sermons get preached on Ecclesiastes?

Why did Solomon, who showed great wisdom in writing Proverbs, spend the last years of his life breaking all those proverbs?

Why is the Book of Job in the Bible?

Has anyone proposed an argument against a loving God that does not appear in some form in the Book of Job?

If Job emerges as the hero and his friends as the villains, why do Christians paraphrase Job’s friends more often than they quote Job himself?

Why didn’t God answer Job’s questions?

Why didn’t Job seem to care?

WHY DO SO FEW CHRISTIANS exhibit joy?

Would a joyful person look more like Mother Teresa or Victoria Principal?

Why do so many Christians feel more guilty than forgiven?

What does feeling forgiven feel like?

Why do sinners feel so attracted to Jesus but so repulsed by the church?

If the gospel consists of grace, acceptance, and forgiveness, why do counselors see so many Christian clients riddled with guilt, self-hatred, and a spirit of criticism?

WHY DO WE NOW THINK we have the New Testament prophecies figured out, whereas in the Bible no one managed to figure out key Old Testament prophecies (such as Isaiah 53) until after the events occurred?

Is it right to support the nation of Israel’s policies in order to further prophetic history even when some of those policies are morally questionable?

Would Christians who support Israel for that reason knowingly vote for the Antichrist, who will also further prophetic history?

How can TV evangelists so buoyantly promote a health-and-wealth theology in a world as full of injustice and suffering as this one?

Do any Iranian Christians believe in a health-and-wealth theology?

How can TV evangelists promise prosperity and security to the faithful, even though Jesus promised them a cross, sent them out as lambs among wolves, and left 11 of his 12 disciples to die martyrs’ deaths?

I WAS JUST wondering.

Reviewers in the major British newspapers raved about Shadowlands, a portrayal of the last years of C. S. Lewis’s life, during which he befriended, fell in love with, and married a dying Joy Davidman Gresham. This coproduction of BBC-TV, the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation, and Gateway films recently received “best single television drama” and “best televison actress” awards from the British Academy of Film and Television (roughly equivalent to the American groups that hand out Oscars and Emmys). American admirers of Lewis will certainly want to see this film (available in 16mm from Gateway Films), despite some flaws that the British press appears to have overlooked.

The film is technically very good. The acting is excellent, with Joss Acklin as Jack (Lewis’s nickname) and Claire Bloom as Joy. Each delivers a strong, but subtle performance, taking care not to exploit the sentimentalism of the great-man-marries-dying-woman story, as this would have been untrue to the Lewis-Davidman relationship. Together, Acklin and Bloom suggest something of the power and pathos § in this fascinating couple’s love. The well-chosen settings are especially helpful in giving an American audience a sense of Lewis’s England.

Taking Liberties

However, this is not a documentary, but a drama; and though it is based on history, it does not always remain true to history. The usual liberties are taken with chronology and facts: Lewis makes radio broadcasts during the fifties that were actually made during World War II, and Joy’s son, Douglas, is said to be 8 when his mother dies, when in actuality he was 14. The altered names of most of the secondary characters is particularly distracting since the viewer familiar with Lewis’s life constantly has to be guessing whether or not these characters are supposed to be the real people.

Most of us have learned not to trust such productions as sources of facts. But even if the film attempts to be true to the spirit if not the letter of Lewis’s life, it is flawed by resting too heavily on Lewis’s book A Grief Observed. In an unpublished letter, Lewis described this book, written in the wake of Joy’s death, as “‘A Grief Observed’ from day to day in all its rawness and sinful reactions and follies. It ends with faith but raises all the blackest doubts en route.”

Shadowlands reflects the book’s structure by focusing on the most difficult period of Lewis’s life without providing a context for his struggle. Though Shadowlands opens with some brief scenes intended to establish that Lewis is a noted Christian author, the nature of his faith is not made clear; one gets the image of an intense, somber academic whose Christianity is a function of his intellect. When he begins to interact with Joy and has to deal with his emotions, his religion merely gets in his way. Throughout the film, for example, Lewis’s relationship to his priest is adversarial rather than supportive. Finally, after Joy’s death, the faith that is depicted is not strong because hard won (as in A Grief Observed), but shaky because its foundation was never established. In fact, the film ends with Jack and Douglas just beginning to deal with their grief and only hints that they will do so successfully.

To a certain extent, this film is a reaction to many people’s tendency to venerate Lewis. Whatever its motives, it emphasizes the emotional side of this remarkable man and shies away from the spiritual. Unfortunately, and ironically, in attempting to humanize Lewis, Shadowlands actually distorts him.

Let us not deny that Lewis was human: he loved and suffered; he got angry and wrestled with God. But by all accounts, he was a deeply spiritual man who, even in his darkest moments, continued to worship God and proclaim the gospel. It is this balance that still attracts people to his work—and it is this balance that Shadowlands does not portray.

If its problems are kept in mind, viewing Shadowlands can be enjoyable. It should generate valuable discussion on the nature of Lewis’s marriage and A Grief Observed, as well as spark further interest in both the man and his work.

God’s Mother

“The film you are about to see was panned by two of the world’s biggest film critics,” the chairman of the theater’s board of directors told us. “Roger Ebert and the Pope.”

There wasn’t an empty seat in the Facets Multimedia screening room for the Chicago opening of Jean-Luc Godard’s controversial Hail Mary (CT, Nov. 22, 1985, p. 54). “We haven’t had such a large crowd since our annual erotic film festival,” quipped the chairman. An impressive turnout for an art film.

But the crowd outside the theater was almost as impressive. By the time the film began rolling, nearly 100 protesters were tracing an oval in the Fullerton Avenue asphalt outside the theater. The mixture of Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Lutherans smiled and waved their signs for the local news minicams. They recited the rosary and sang hymns of devotion to the Mother of God. “God’s Mother Wanted Her Child,” said one sign in English. “Blasphemy Against the God-Bearer Is a Great Sin,” said another in Greek.

Godard’s twentieth-century update of the story of Jesus’ conception and birth does not violate the canons of orthodoxy. He retains the virgin birth (scientifically confirmed after a pelvic exam by Mary’s gynecologist). He retains the annunciation by an angelic visitor (who takes an airplane and a taxi to get to the gas station where Mary works). He even retains a young Jesus who resists Joseph’s authority, announcing as he runs into the woods that he must be about his Father’s business.

“The film’s nudity is about as erotic as a LaMaze childbirth training film,” said Nicole Dreiske, the theater’s codirector. And while Mary’s nudity is not quite that neutral, it definitely is not designed to appeal to anyone’s prurient interests.

Body and soul

The film seems to be an excuse for Godard to have his characters speculatè about the influences souls have on bodies, and vice versa. For those not au courant with contemporary French philosophy, reading this film’s esoteric subtitles is like walking midway into a conversation and neither comprehending nor caring what’s being said. There might be some theological problem here. But 99 percent of the faithful could see the film without knowing what was said, much less being poisoned by the message.

So why the protest? The answer is in their signs. “God’s Mother Is My Mother,” said several. “Our Mother Doesn’t Deserve This. We Want It to Stop Now,” said another.

Of course we wouldn’t want a French filmmaker’s camera to capture our own mothers in the nude, having pelvic exams, wondering whether they really wanted to bear us. This film displays and even celebrates things we might intellectually acknowledge about our mothers, but which few of us would want to discuss with them. These protesters feel the same way about their beloved Mary.

Our cautious respect for our own mothers is precisely the feeling that energizes the protests against Hail Mary. And while most Protestants can never share Catholic rage about this film, at least our filial loyalties can help us to begin to understand.

By David Neff.

The Firm Bond—Linking Meaning and Mission in Business and Religion, by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and George T. Geis (Praeger, 1984, 207 pp.; $21.95, cloth). Reviewed by Joseph M. Hopkins, professor emeritus of religion, Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and author of The Armstrong Empire (Eerdmans).

Two ex-members of the late Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God (WCG) have written an important book about commitment. Robert Kuhn, former administrative assistant to Garner Ted Armstrong, left the controversial sect in 1979, several months after the younger Armstrong’s ouster by his father. George Geis was summarily dismissed from the faculty of wcG-related Ambassador College, from the ministry, and from the church in January 1985, after the hierarchy learned he co-wrote this book (CT, Feb. 15, 1985, p. 44).

The Armstrong connection aside, The Firm Bond is a significant study for leaders in business and academia as well as in organized religion.

The authors hold impressive credentials. Kuhn’s include degrees from Johns Hopkins (Phi Beta Kappa), UCLA (Ph.D. in neurophysiology), and MIT (Sloan Fellow). He has published widely, edits Texas Business magazine, and teaches at both New York University and the University of Texas at Austin. Geis, a summa cum laude graduate of Purdue with a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Southern California, is research coordinator for UCLA’s Institute of Industrial Relations.

Commitment

By “the firm bond” the authors mean commitment—“the link between personal meaning and organizational mission. Mission is the heart of group existence just as meaning is the soul of member devotion. Each is driving energy and directing force—groups seek to achieve objectives, members strive to fulfill purposes. Personal meaning and company mission are the two poles of our axis, and around them the book revolves.”

The authors contend that “understanding the fidelity of church members” can “improve the loyalty of factory workers.” Asked how employee commitment can help companies, Kuhn replied, “Efficiency, creativity, and productivity work together. Motivation is the key.… Personal fulfillment and company success are targets, with religion our guide and business our goal.” When “the firm bond” is weakened, church members and company employees cease to perform at high efficiency levels, and corporate achievement declines.

Numerous real-life case studies illustrate this thesis throughout the book. Most of the “religious” examples are drawn from Armstrong-type authoritarian churches. The stories tell of individuals who affiliate with a particular body, become increasingly committed, then (in some instances) become disillusioned and alienated when “commitment breakers” intervene to weaken or sever “the firm bond.”

An Amazing Understatement

The Creation of Wealth: A Christian’s Case for Capitalism, by Brian Griffiths (InterVarsity, 1984, 160 pp.; $5.95, paper). Reviewed by James L. Sauer, director of library, Eastern College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

Is capitalism Christian? In his recent book by that title, evangelical polemicist Franky Schaeffer brought together a collection of authors to address Christian economics. To no one’s surprise, they answered with a resounding yes.

Griffiths, a British economist, business school dean, and former director of the Bank of England, asks a similar question in his book. His answer is also affirmative, albeit qualified. Like neoconservative writer Irving Kristol, Griffiths finds himself a procapitalist cheerleader who can only manage two cheers. He defends capitalism with elegance and reason, but he cannot help looking askance at some of his ideological teammates.

The argument of the book can be easily summarized:

First, the socialist command economy is an abysmal failure; while the free-enterprise market economy works well at producing wealth. Proof is everywhere to be seen.

Second, capitalism contains an inherent temptation toward gross materialism, affluent pride, and an indifference to injustice. But this same capitalism provides the ladder out of poverty and gives the greatest alms to relieve poverty.

Third, Christianity places strictures on economic sins—fraud, stealing, unfair business practices—but not against the economic enterprise of “private property, profit and inequality of income and wealth resulting from freedom of choice exercised within the bounds of justice.”

Finally, the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and contemporary libertarian defense of capitalism are mechanistic, and deny the personal nature of the created universe. Christianity must avoid these secular defenses and forge a biblical apologetic for free enterprise. Griffiths argues for Christian economic separatism.

My mechanic’s world view

Griffiths’s fear that secular ideologies will taint our Christian moral capitalism seems overstated. The laws of supply and demand are not different for Christians and non-Christians. Profits are needed by socialist or Randian capitalist to overcome the law of scarcity. I do not need to know whether my car mechanic agrees with Voltaire; all I need to know is if he can fix my brakes. The genius of capitalism as an economic system, like democratic constitutionalism in the political sphere, is that it can operate to everyone’s satisfaction regardless of the beliefs they hold.

Griffiths’s “conclusion is not that capitalism is Christian. Neither is it that the market economy is the only economic system compatible with Christianity. It is simply that wealth creation within a market economy bounded by a concern for justice is compatible with Christian faith.” These are reasonable words, articulately spoken; but considering the alternative dictatorial command economy, the moral and rational arguments presented within this book for the justice of capitalism, and the fecundity of the free enterprise system—it is an amazing understatement.

Just how do people come to identify emotionally with institutions, submit to their authority, and devote themselves to furthering their goals? And what factors cause commitment to deteriorate? The authors analyze both positive and negative aspects with compelling logic and clarity. But there is a significant omission: Christian conversion, when the new-born child of God is compelled by the Holy Spirit to devote his or her life to God and others, more than any other factor, generates “firm bond” commitment. Ideally, Christ’s “constraining love” (2 Cor. 5:14) is then channeled into every activity.

Nevertheless, The Firm Bond provides an excellent manual for institutional self-study. It convincingly demonstrates that the same personal and organizational factors operate in both businesses and churches. The authors’ analysis will be helpful not only to business leaders but also to church executives, pastors, and boards.

The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge (Univ. of Calif. Press, 1985, 571 pp.; $14.95, paper). Reviewed by Robert Webber, professor of theology, Wheaton (Ill.) College, and author of the forthcoming book Celebrating Our Faith (Harper & Row).

During the past decade, we have heard much about the secularization of the West. And both religious and nonreligious forecasters have proclaimed the impending death of religion.

In this detailed and provocative work, Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge pose serious questions about this supposed dawn of a religionless society.

Their starting point does not proceed from any religious bias. They are not saying, “We want religion to be preserved in the West, and here’s how to do it.” Instead, they approach the future of religion with the tools of social science. And their conclusions (based on surveys, consensus, historical case studies, and ethnographic field expeditions) run counter to the social theorists who predict the death of religion in our time.

Stark and Bainbridge do not deny that secularization has occurred in the West. Nor do they deny that the revolutions of science, reason, technology, and new world views based on naturalistic assumptions are not formidable foes to religion.

But their underlying thesis is that secularization stimulates religious innovation. Consequently, history is cyclical—a reciprocal action takes place between the erosion of old religion on the one hand and the rise of new religious institutions on the other.

The Need For Transcendence

Stark and Bainbridge define religion as human organizations primarily engaged in providing general compensators based on supernatural assumptions. By this definition, of course, they purposely include all religious faiths (including Christianity) that have some kind of otherworldly belief. They make no attempt to distinguish between the truth content of religions. The issue they address is not the truth, but the persistence of religion. Thus, they argue, religion will survive, not because it is true, but because there is a universal human need to experience transcendence.

Two of their findings are of special interest to CT readers:

First, the recent popularity of occult beliefs and movements does not stem from the rise of new kinds of “consciousness,” but from weakness in conventional religions. This conclusion highlights the need to maintain healthy churches and evangelistic outreaches. While exposes of cults and sects will always have their place, a church with the gospel at its center and a community of people living in a mutually supportive relationship is most effective.

Second, secular meaning systems cannot provide general explanations about life that replace religion. This is good news for those who are given to hand wringing over the pervasive influence of secularism. It supports the scriptural assertion that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

The thesis of Stark and Bainbridge seems to explain the phenomenal rise of evangelical Christianity and the charismatic movement in this country. The more the secularists proclaim the absence of God, the greater is the recovery of the presence of God. As the authors themselves put it—“We explore the meaning of the aphorism that trying to drive out religion is like driving a nail—the harder you hit, the deeper it goes.”

A Compassionate Vision

If I Should Die Before I Wake by Jerry Falwell (Nelson, 1986, 219 pp.; $12.95, cloth). Reviewed by LaVonne Neff, special projects editor for the publishing division of Youth for Christ.

Six years ago, I was asked to lead a discussion following an antiabortion film then making the rounds of college campuses. Watching the film for the first time along with the young adult audience, I grew more and more concerned.

The film’s content was not the problem. It was well documented, biblical, and scientific. What troubled me was what the film did not say.

I knew that, by the law of averages, there would be girls in the audience who had had abortions, pregnant students who did not know which way to turn, and boys who had persuaded their girlfriends to terminate a pregnancy. For these hurting young people, the film showed no compassion and offered no hope of forgiveness. Sin was denounced, and sinners were left out in the cold.

When the news media have caricatured antiabortion crusaders as caring more for an inch-long fetus than for an adult woman, they have been interpreting early films, speeches, and writings that paid more attention to the intellectual than to the human aspects of abortion. In early chapters of If I Should Die Before I Wake …, Jerry Falwell admits that he too once paid scant attention to the needs of young women who were pregnant and terrified.

Jerry’s vision; Jennifer’s story

His new book could not be more compassionate. Chapters alternate between “Jerry,” who summarizes his antiabortion work and outlines his new plan to set up a network of homes for unwed mothers, and “Jennifer,” who tells her own gripping story.

It is Jennifer’s story that will sell the book. A likable young woman from a middle-class suburban home, Jennifer had already had an abortion (at the request of her churchgoing parents) when she became pregnant a second time. Her experience of pregnancy at a group home and then at a private home, both sponsored by Falwell’s ministry, is the heart of the book.

The small beginnings of a national network: Liberty Godparent Home in Lynchburg, Virginia, cares for women with unwanted pregnancies and provides an alternative to abortion. Inset: writer Jennifer Simpson.

It would be a shame, however, for readers to skip Falwell’s chapters, because his vision of a national network of caring, nonjudgmental, supportive homes for pregnant girls and young women deserves a serious reading and a widespread response.

Six years ago, the antiabortion movement was young. In its immaturity, it may have alienated some young people who most needed to face their sin so they could go on to forgiveness and healing. If I Should Die Before I Wake … reflects the movement’s coming of age. Without compromising its stand against taking human life, it seems to be turning to compassion and reconciliation. Law is supplanted by gospel. Falwell’s—and Jennifer’s—book is a big step in the direction of grace.

Classic and contemporary excerpts

A Man’S Books

Reading on wise and virtuous subjects is, next to prayer, the best improvement of our hearts. It enlightens us, calms us, collects our thoughts, and prompts us to better efforts. We say that a man is known by the friends he keeps; but a man is known even better by his books.

—William Law, Christian Perfection (a contemporary version by Marvin D. Hinten)

The Celebrity Syndrome

Bible-signing can be very humbling. On occasion, when I have spoken at the same church several times, I have had to tell a child that my name is already in his Bible. This is a painful reminder to us both that he does not really know me.

I am not even sure what these signatures mean. I don’t think they are endorsements.… I always sign Bibles when asked because I don’t want to look like some reluctant, pompous athlete, but I feel stupid, and I always want to preach a sermon to those who ask. I really can’t see Paul autographing a parchment of Isaiah!

—Truman Dollar in Fundamentalist Journal (April 1986)

A Noisy Horn

A Pharisee’s trumpet shall be heard to the end of the town but simplicity walks through the town unseen.

—Thomas Shepard in The Parable of the Ten Virgins

Touching Hearts, Not Turning Heads

An increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat.… Our people do not so much need to have their heads turned as to have their hearts touched, and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching which has the greatest tendency to do this.

—Jonathan Edwards in Religious Affections

What’S Our Fog Index?

Two Indians who had been watching a lighthouse go up came over to see the thing open on the big day. It was all set up with the lights and the bell and the horn; but the day it was due to open, the worst fog of all fogs came in.

One Indian said to the other, “Light shine, bell ring, horn blow, but fog come in just the same.” We’ve never had more lights shining, and bells ringing, and horns blowing in the church than we have today. We’ve never had more fog.

—Vance Havner in On This Rock I Stand

Prayer’S Relationships

Real prayer is a serious concern, for we are speaking to the Sovereign Lord of all the universe, who is willing to move heaven and earth in anwer to sincere and reasonable prayer. Prayer is not a mechanical duty, but a wonderful opportunity to develop a loving and caring relationship with the most important Person in our lives.

—John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Prayer Book, edited by Louis Gifford Parkhurst, Jr.

Where Does Intolerance Begin?

Our society wrestles with many passionate social movements, including pleas for tolerance. But the capacity to know the difference between tolerance and intolerance seems in short supply. Most of us cannot think far past our provincial interests and pet theorems. We need intolerance for our troublesome biases and tolerance for whatever is straight, though it may come from our most needling adversaries. We are often dragged, kicking and screaming, into enlightenment by the Spirit who best mends our slothful thinking.

It is not intolerant to reject falsehood, neither are we tolerant when we warmly appraise and accept screwy ideas. But in our wise intolerance we must not lose our love; and in our tolerance we must not give away our souls.

—Lloyd H. Ahlem in The Covenant Companion (April 1986)

Getting what we have

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

—Garrison Keillor in Lake Wobegon Days

Life Without Christ

Herein lies the Christian motive; it is simple. We cannot live without Christ and we cannot bear to think of men living without him.… We believe in a Christlike world. We know nothing better; we can be content with nothing less.

—from the International

Missionary Council,

Jerusalem, 1928

Real Christianity

The main distinction between real Christianity and the system of the bulk of nominal Christians chiefly consists in the differing place given to the gospel. To the latter, the truths of the gospel are like distant stars that twinkle with a vain and idle luster. But to the real Christian these distinctive doctrines constitute the center in which he gravitates like the sun of his system and the source of his light, warmth, and life.

—William Wilberforce in

Real Christianity

A Greek appeals court has overturned a lower court’s conviction of three Protestant Christians on charges of proselytism. However, the court upheld the constitutionality of Greek laws that limit the activities of religious minorities.

Greek pastor Costas Macris and missionaries Don Stephens and Alan Williams were found guilty of proselytism in 1984 and were sentenced to three-and-one-half years in prison. Their sentences were postponed pending the outcome of their appeal. Stephens, a U.S. citizen, and Williams, a Briton, work for Mercy Ships, a California-based maritime relief agency. Macris is president of the Hellenic Missionary Union.

The proselytism charges grew out of a friendship between the defendants and a young Greek named Kostas Kotopoulos. In 1981, Stephens and Williams befriended Kotopoulos, then 16. They eventually gave him a modern-language Greek New Testament and directed him to a youth ministry headed by Macris. The youth responded to the gospel, but he maintained his membership in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Charges were brought against the defendants by Kotopoulos’s mother, Katerina Douga. During the appeals court trial, Douga testified that the defendants saturated her son with ideas contrary to the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church. However, the court found insufficient evidence to uphold the proselytism conviction against the men.

The court’s ruling represents “a major breakthrough on behalf of religious freedom for minority religious groups in Greece,” Macris said. “It sets a precedent that the handing out of Bibles can no longer be construed as an illegal means of proselytism.”

Virginia Tsotherou, a member of the Greek Parliament, testified on behalf of the defendants. She said the Greek Orthodox Church should not feel threatened by the ministries of Protestant Christians. She also criticized the law under which the three men were prosecuted.

“It’s embarrassing to us and we must change it,” she said. “If you bring down a guilty sentence on these men because of this law, it will be a shameful day for Greece.”

In contrast, a priest and a Greek Orthodox theologian testified that the differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism are fundamental and that there is no ground for cooperation.

Greece’s laws against proselytism, enacted in 1938, make it difficult for non-Eastern Orthodox Christians to carry out any ministries away from church properties. Critics say the proselytism laws violate religious freedom clauses in several human rights declarations signed by Greece.