Page 2085 – Christianity Today (2024)

Tribulation

The Land Between

Finding God in Difficult TransitionsJeff ManionZondervan, 2010224 pp., $12.99

Between a Rock and a Grace Place

Divine Surprises in the Tight Spots of LifeCarol KentZondervan, 2010240 pp., $16.99

Manion lost his mother at an early age and has since walked with many others through painful trials. He invites readers to enter into the biblical narrative of the Israelites in the wilderness as a way to find God. The backdrop of Kent’s book is her son, who is serving a life sentence for murder. Kent weaves letters from her son with other “grace place” stories to underline hope and joy in Christ.

Christianity

Everything You Know about Evangelicals is Wrong (Well, Almost Everything)

An Insider’s Look at Myths and RealitiesSteve Wilkens, Don Thorsen (Baker)Baker Books, 2010224 pp., $11.99

The Next Christians

The Good News About the End of Christian AmericaGabe LyonsDDay Religion, 2010192 pp., $13.99

Wilkens and Thorsen do a good job of explaining what evangelicalism is and isn’t, exploding some myths and reinforcing the reality that the movement is much more diverse that the media let on. Lyons, coauthor of the popular UnChristian, argues that younger Christians are trying to forge a new way of being Christian that rejects a lot of what evangelicals (or, à la Wilkens and Thorsen, a segment) currently represent.

The Mind

Think

The Life of the Mind and the Love of GodJohn Piper Crossway Books & Bibles, 2010192 pp., $14.99

Apologetics for the 21st Century

Louis MarkosCrossway Books & Bibles, 2010256 pp., $13.99

Has Christianity Failed You?

Ravi ZachariasZondervan, 2010208 pp., $11.99

Ultimately, argues Piper, there is no dichotomy between thinking about God and experiencing God, for thinking is “indispensable when it comes to having a passion for God.” Markos summarizes some of the most cogent albeit popular thinking about the faith—that of Schaeffer, Lewis, Chesterton, Lane Craig, and Strobel—on the way to defending the faith today. Zacharias answers questions from skeptics in his usual engaging manner.

Evangelism

More Questions Than Answers

Sharing Faith by ListeningEleanor Shepherd Resource Publications, 2010164 pp., $18.90

NetCasters

Using the Internet to Make Fishers of MenCraig von BuseckB&H Publishing Group, 2010192 pp., $10.99

Shepherd would probably eschew Markos’s “neatly packaged answers,” for she favors a probing listening as a kind of “spiritual accompaniment” to encouraging people into the faith. Von Buseck guides readers in how to use blogs, chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, and other tools to share the gospel in the virtual world.

Justice

Exodus from Hunger

We Are Called to Change the Politics of HungeDavid BeckmannWestminster John Knox Press, 2010192 pp., $11.99

The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor

Seeing Others Through the Eyes of JesusMark LabbertonIntervarsity Press, 2010224 pp., $14.99

Beckmann, president of the Christian nonprofit Bread for the World, lays out his case not just for the priority of dealing with hunger, but also for the need to deal with it with political solutions, not just through charity. Labberton argues persuasively that engaging injustice in the world must go hand in hand with a renewal of our hearts.

Spirituality

Ancient Paths

Discover Christian Formation the Benedictine WayDavid RobinsonParaclete Press, 2010234 pp., $12.99

Journey with Jesus

Discovering the Spiritual Exercises of Saint IgnatiusLarry WarnerIntervarsity Press, 2010260 pp., $13.99

Spiritual Formation

Following the Movements of the SpiritHenri Nouwen, with Michael Christensen and Rebecca LairdHarperone, 2010192 pp., $17.99

Forgiving As We’ve Been Forgiven

Community Practices for Making PeaceL. Gregory Jones and Célestin MusekuraIVP Books, 2010156 pp., $11.99

Both Robinson and Warner mine the riches of Catholic spirituality for readers of a non-Catholic persuasion. Christensen and Laird make lectures of the late Henri Nouwen accessible. And Jones and Musekura buck the trend and set spiritual formation primarily in a community context.—Books reviewed by Mark Galli

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

The books reviewed are available from ChristianBook.com and other books retailers.

Christianity Today has more music, movies, books, and other media reviews.

Remember Terry Jones? No? Big mustache, tiny congregation? He put up a notice on Facebook that he was going to burn a Qur'an on September 11 and ended up in every major media outlet in the world? There have been a few media panics since mid-September, so it's okay if you forgot. But it's worth considering how Jones drew attention to the way things work now.

How did the pastor of a church of 30 to 50 congregants, someone who was already known locally as a publicity-hungry crank, become so "relevant" and "culture-shaping" that President Obama, General Petraeus, and nearly every Christian leader imaginable felt the need to weigh in?

Mostly because Jones took advantage of an impoverished media environment that values outrage and eyeballs above all else. Publications that have not been able to con-vince their online readers to pay for articles must instead find as many people as possible to read them for free. The more eyeballs, the more ad impressions, the more revenue. Pageviews have become the metric most synonymous with success in our media landscape.

Once upon a time, we imagined that readers would go to the website of a publication they liked, look at the headlines, and click on what they wanted to read. In reality, search engines drive at least 40 percent of the traffic to news stories, and readers don't particularly care who is publishing them. As investor and blogger Ben Elowitz noted, summarizing several recent reports: "The average U.S. Internet user tunes in [to] 83 different domains per month and a staggering 2,600 web pages per month, and goes to Google 13 times per day just to decide where to go."

That is why we see so many headlines with Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan in them. (For those who found this editorial online by Googling one of those names, welcome!) News organizations (and their aggregating rivals) are using Google Insights and other analytics resources to find out what people are searching for; then they assign news stories to capture the ready-made audience.

The drive for traffic has turned too many stories into a version of the Balloon Boy hoax (in which a Colorado couple falsely claimed their son had been carried away in a helium balloon, garnering international attention), complained Washington Post columnist Roxanne Roberts in the Columbia Journalism Review. Indeed, the Qur'an burning bears similarity to that 2009 hoax: The only thing keeping it in the headlines was outrage.

It's An Outrage

At the recent Religion Newswriters Association meeting, panelists discussed how to capture online audiences. The panelists (from The Washington Post's On Faith site, CNN's new Belief blog, and the Huffington Post's religion section) talked about how free opinion pieces had garnered truckloads of pageviews.

The good news: Editors and publishers now know that their readers want to read about religion. The bad news: Editors and publishers now know that those readers are more likely to click on an inflammatory rehashed column on hom*osexuality, Islam, atheism, or evolution than on a deeply researched report that illuminates important but less controversial issues.

With fewer professional religion reporters on the beat, mainstream religion coverage is falling back to tropes and shop-worn narratives that we thought were being laid to rest, especially, "Religious people sure are crazy," and, "Religious leaders condemn [insert current outrage here]." It's not surprising that Jones's name first spread through a wire service story prompted by a press release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group known for perpetual outrage.

Eventually the news world was overtaken by headlines about the latest person outraged by Jones's proposal. As September 11 drew closer, Fox News and the Associated Press promised to downplay the event. "AP policy is not to provide coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend," the news service said—the day after it ran the headline, "Angelina Jolie Condemns Planned Qur'an Burning."

By September 11, the news trucks had left Gainesville, and pundits were back to debating Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga.

This is the strange media world we all—both journalists and readers—now live in. It calls for more discernment than ever, because the next Gainesville frenzy will come upon us before we know it.

The questions are: Will you reflexively click on that headline to satiate some trivial curiosity? Will leaders again announce their outrage over a non-event? Will bloggers pour fuel on the fire? Will we report on it just to increase pageviews?

We can all do better. To paraphrase Paul, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just—read about and report on these things."

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Christianity Today's coverage of the previously planned Qu'ran burning included:

Qur'an Burning: The Neverending Story | Everybody who is anybody has said something about what may be nothing. (September 10, 2010

Militia Group Says Burning the Qur'an is un-Christian | The pastor behind next month's event accuses the armed conservative group of "giving in to pressure and fear." (August 25, 2010)

Evangelical Leaders Pan Qur'an Burn Plan | NAE issues public plea. Richard Land calls it "appalling, disgusting, and brainless." (July 30, 2010)

Previous Christianity Today editorials include:

An Equal-Opportunity Destroyer | How p*rn damages women—and what churches can do about it. (September 21, 2010)

Let the Sea Resound | We can no longer act like creation care is a secondary issue. (July 30, 2010)

Bearing True Witness | Why we are tempted to embellish conversion stories. (June 28, 2010)

Eugene Peterson tells a wonderful story in his memoir, The Pastor. (By the way, it’s a fabulous read. If you are a pastor, or were a pastor, or might be a pastor, or know a pastor, or can pronounce pastor, you should get it.) Eugene (I call him “Genie”) and his wife were visiting a Benedictine monastery named Christ in the Desert. On their way to the refectory where they were to have lunch, they walked past the graveyard and noticed an open grave. Eugene asked which member of the community had died recently.

“No one,” he was told. “That grave is for the next one.”

Each day, three times a day, as they walk from praying to eating, the members of that community are reminded of what we spend our waking hours trying to forget.

One of them will be the next one.

The contemplation of death used to be a regular feature of spiritual life. Now we live in what Ernst Becker called “The Denial of Death.” Woody Allen wrote that he didn’t mind the thought of dying; he just didn’t want to be there when it happened.

Frances de Sales wrote long instructions designed to help believers reflect on their deaths as vividly as possible. Human beings are the only creatures whose frontal lobes are so developed that they know that the game will end. This is our glory, our curse, our warning, and our opportunity.

In Jerusalem, hundreds of synagogues have been built by Jews from around the world. One was built by a group from Budapest, and according to an ancient custom, they had a coffin built into the wall. There is no body in it, they would explain to visitors. It is present as a silent witness to remind us: Somebody will be the next one.

The Talmud teaches that every person should fully repent one day before his death. When a visitor asked, “But how will I know when that day is?” he was told: “You won’t. So treat every day as if it were the day before your last.”

I thought of that this summer. One of the most formative people in my life was a red-headed professor of Greek at Wheaton College named Jerry Hawthorne. He is something of a legend in Wheaton circles. He was the kind of teacher who made everyone want to be a better student. He was such a diligent person that if you did not do your best, you felt shabby and ill-hearted by comparison. He took everyone’s failure personally; as if your failure as a student were really his failure as a teacher.

One of the students in our class was showing up sporadically. A friend and I snuck up to Dr. Hawthorne’s office, stole some stationery, and wrote a note “from Dr. Hawthorne” apologizing for being too poor a teacher and promising to teach better if only this student would give class another, better try.

The student rushed up to Dr. Hawthorne’s office; we stood outside the door as he apologized profusely saying it was all his fault, not Dr Hawthorne’s; he was the failure. To which Dr Hawthorne could only reply, “What are you talking about?”

He was the heart of our little community. He was deeply humble and deeply pious and at the same time deeply earthy. He was the worst joke-teller I have ever known—he would turn beet red and mangle whatever joke he was telling long before the punchline and jab whomever sat next to him in the ribs, apparently under the theory that if humor could not induce the appropriate amount of laughter, then pain would.

He was the man who challenged a number of Wheaton students—including me—to consider devoting our lives to church ministry. He changed my life in more ways than he could ever know.

This summer I got a call from Jane, his wife, that he was ill, and it was severe. His family created a website so people could follow updates about his health; in a matter of days over 400 people had written tributes about how this skinny, humble, reticent Greek professor had changed their life.

When he died, all seven of us who had roomed together and been shaped by him 30 years ago gathered from around the country to remember, and laugh, and cry, and pray, over the man who had been our friend, who had been in the best and deepest sense of that holy word, our teacher.

I am so grateful he was in our lives, and grateful I got the chance to tell him. If you are reading this, if you are involved at all in serving the well-being of the church, you have your own Dr. Hawthorne. And it is a gift beyond words to be able to express what they have meant to you. If your Dr. Hawthorne is still alive, I strongly suggest: make a call, write an email.

I also thought, looking at the lives that Jerry touched, about what matters and what does not. It is people who count, when a life is spent. It is hearts and not resumes that get poured out before open graves.

It is the reality of the Next One that makes time so precious, makes life so weighty, makes love such a gift.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

DVD Curriculum

Where Faith and Life Meet (101 Distribution-EMI, 2009)

The Facts: Basically, best-selling author Donald Miller hosts conversations with notable authors, pastors, and theologians on camera about issues related to putting faith in practice. And we watch. Each conversation consists of three 15-minute episodes. The producer identifies the target audience as people “out of college.”

The Slant: It’s not a lecture. It’s not simple Q&A. The conversations are informal, but structured and well-edited, so you don’t feel like you’re simply listening to unscripted ramblings. Miller asks good, probing questions. His conversation partners are thoughtful and articulate. For example, “Frustration and False Gods” with Dan Allender. Tremper Longman has a fabulous conversation about how our misconceptions of the Christian life affect our conduct.

Book

Ethnic Blends Mixing Diversity into Your Local Church, by Mark DeYmaz and Harry Li (Zondervan, 2010)

The Facts: This is Mark DeYmaz’s second book on multi-ethnic ministry. The first, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church (Jossey-Bass, 2007), was an argument for the biblical mandate and cultural need for intentionally multi-ethnic churches in America. Ethnic Blends moves the conversation in a more practical direction. Written with co-pastor Harry Li, the book addresses seven common challenges to diversifying your local church.

The Slant: There’s no way around it: this is an important conversation. Most books on this subject seem to be aimed at making us feel guilty that our churches aren’t more diverse. DeYmaz and Li do a good job of talking about the brass tacks of this sort of ministry—things like “Overcoming the Relational Obstacles.”

Books

Making Green Disciples

Amid the flood of resources aimed at making us more eco-friendly, here are a few of particular interest for the local church.

Green Like God by Jonathan Merritt (Faith Words, 2010)

The book is part memoir of conversion—from apathetic litterer to environmental champion—part biblical exposition, and part practical guidebook. And it’s short.

Zealous Love: A Practical Guide to Social Justice, by Mike and Danae Yankoski (2009)

Not strictly about environmental care, the book nevertheless has several chapters on increasing ecological awareness. The chapters include several essays on an issue of social concern, followed by several pages of very practical steps toward living more justly.

Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People, by Scott C. Sabin (Judson, 2010)

A well-written and engaging book on the relationship between the gospel, justice, and creation care.

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Coastal Church was known to welcome broken people. With about 75 members, this small Boston-area congregation offered Divorce Care and Celebrate Recovery groups. One of the people who started attending was a convicted sex offender who had been released from prison after serving a 17-year sentence for the rape of his 8-year-old daughter. While incarcerated, this man had committed his life to Christ. He had even earned a seminary degree online. People in the prison system affirmed the changes in his life.

Although several other churches in the area turned this man away, Don Bryant, then pastor of Coastal Church, and others within the congregation did not feel they could look him in the eye and deny his request. “In my 30-plus years as a minister, I have never asked someone to leave the church because their redemptive process was too messy,” says Bryant. “I met with the parents of our church to get their input. Although there was some uneasiness about letting him attend, our mindset as a church was so set in the direction of recovery-type ministries that it was too hard for them to say no.” While saying no would have gone against this church’s nature, saying yes would prove to be even harder.

According to a new national survey, most churches in America would have done the same as Coastal Church. In April 2010, Christianity Today International (CTI) conducted a survey of 2,864 people, including ordained church leaders (15 percent), church staff (20 percent), lay leader and members (43 percent), and other active Christians (22 percent). Respondents were drawn from the readers of CTI publications and websites, including Leadership.

The purpose of the “Sex Offenders in the Church” survey was to explore attitudes and beliefs on whether to allow sex offenders to participate in faith communities. The survey explored what practices churches use to keep their congregations safe when sex offenders are welcomed.Pastors, lay leaders, and churchgoers overwhelmingly agreed that sex offenders who have legally paid for their crime should be welcomed into churches. In fact, 8 in 10 respondents indicated that registered offenders should be allowed to attend church, although under continuous supervision and with appropriate limitations.

Mark Tusken, rector of St. Mark’s Church in Geneva, Illinois, said his church would be among the 8 in 10. “Many people view child abuse as the unforgivable sin,” he says. “But Jesus said there’s no unforgiveable sin except blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.”

Before taking on the leadership of St. Mark’s, a mainline church with an average attendance of 425, Tusken learned that there was one man in the congregation who had been convicted of a sex offense years before. He befriended this individual.

“Within our first year of meeting, he told me what had happened. I took that as a great sign of health on his part, that he came to me and told me about his past.”

Tusken also maintained the church’s previous policy of not allowing him—or anyone with a potentially dangerous criminal record—to serve or be near minors in the church.

“One of the great things that Jesus said is, ‘I am the light of the world.’ I want to live into that,” says Tusken. He doesn’t mean this figuratively.

A sign by the front door at St. Mark’s states the church’s safety policies. More than 300 adults in the church have gone through its child protection training program, and all adults who want to serve in the children’s ministry agree to undergo a background check. When the church underwent a recent renovation, interior windows were added in every area so that all rooms could be monitored. Tusken calls these safety efforts “highly effective light.”

“When you teach healthy people in the parish what to look for, what to be aware of, what the rules are, and how we can create safe boundaries, this creates a safe environment where Christ’s light can shine,” he says.

Do They Belong?

In your opinion, do convicted sex offenders who have been released from prison belong in a church?

79% Yes, as attenders, under supervision, and subject to appropriate limitations

24% No, if one or more of the offender’s victims attend the same church

21% Yes, as a member

5% Yes, as an attender (no limitations, no supervisions required)

4% Yes, as a leader

3% No, convicted sex offenders do not belong in church

A test for the church

According to the survey results, 2 in 10 respondents said they are aware of a church attendee or member who had been convicted of a sex offense.

“More than being a big issue in terms of actual numbers of sex offenders who want access to a faith community, I think this issue poses a test to the church,” says Bryant. “Our culture is wondering what the church is going to do. And the church needs to send a signal: who are we, what do we believe, how far we will go—do we have the troops that can storm beaches, go into dark places, and in hard circ*mstances find our way?”

If offenders aren’t beating down church doors to attend, is the time sink it takes to create policies and implement safety procedures to integrate them worth it? According to noted church attorney Richard Hammar, yes, the time and effort it takes is definitely worth it, particularly from a legal liability standpoint.

In a Church Law & Tax Report article titled “Sex Offenders in the Church” (September/October 2010, Christianity Today International), Hammar notes, “The U.S. Department of Justice’s Sex Offender Registry is nearing a staggering 550,000 names and rising. Plus, there are millions more offenders who don’t appear on the registry for various reasons.” A few of the reasons: many sex offenders are never reported or apprehended, minors who commit sexual offenses ordinarily will not show up on a sex offender registry, many offenders have committed crimes prior to the formation of a public registry, and depending on the type of crime committed, names are cleared from the registry after a certain number of years.

Regardless of whether a church intends to allow a former sex offender to work with children, a church still has a duty to supervise a sex offender at church once they become aware of him or her.

“A church does not eliminate its legal risk for sex offenders’ acts of child molestation simply because they are not allowed to work in children’s or youth ministry,” Hammar says. “Liability may arise if church leaders are aware that a known sex offender is attending church services or activities and yet fail to institute appropriate safeguards.”

Most churches who took the “Sex Offenders in the Church” survey say they have a good idea what steps they should take once they learn an offender wants to attend their church, but actually taking these steps is another matter.

When comparing answers for, “What response strategies do you think church leaders should take when they become aware that someone (a church attender or member) is a former sex offender?” versus “When you learn an attender or member from your church is an offender, which of the following steps do you take?” the same top three emerge—pray, talk to elders, talk to staff—although the percentage drops dramatically when comparing opinions to actual practice.

Seacoast Church, a multi-site megachurch in the Carolinas and Georgia, keeps its staff informed of any known sex offenders attending the church.

“If something comes up, we sit down and talk about it so that we can make appropriate plans,” says Glenn Wood, church administrator for Seacoast’s 13 campuses. “In our larger campuses, we keep a book that informs our security team of the known offenders attending church.” Seacoast also talks with local police, and in some cases parole officers, to find out what the parameters of the offenders’ probation agreements are.”

Many churches also create covenant agreements or conditional attendance agreements for offenders to ensure that they are closely supervised when on church property. (To learn more practical ways to handle sex offenders in the church, see the downloadable training resource, Sex Offenders in the Church, available on ChurchLawAndTaxStore.com).

Steps Taken

When you learn an attender or member of your church is an offender, which of the following steps do you take?

What Leaders Do

43% Pray about it39% Talk to elders39% Talk to staff23% Draft conditional attendance agreement20% Contact their probation officer

What Leaders Say Should Be Done

82% Pray about it76% Talk to elders76% Talk to staff57% Draft conditional attendance agreement57% Contact their probation officer

Ministering to the offender

Don Bryant learned of the offender at Coastal Church when the individual self-disclosed his past. According to the CTI survey, more than half of the time (55 percent) this is how churches discover an offender in their pews. In 34 percent of churches, someone from the congregation tipped them off, like in Tusken’s case. Wood says Seacoast has made it their mission to learn who is living in the 13 communities in which their churches are located.

“Seacoast’s main goal has always been to reach the unchurched,” says Wood. “About 12 years ago, we decided to figure out who was on the sex offender registry near our main campus in South Carolina. Learning that there were many offenders in close proximity to the church drove us to start Celebrate Recovery (CR), which deals with all kinds of addictions, as well as other recovery-type ministries.”

Although Seacoast has been committed to recovery programs, Wood says they require extensive volunteer manpower, an ongoing challenge for their smaller congregations.

Their solution: group smaller campuses (which run from 90-300 in attendance) together and only offer CR at some of the locations, thus enabling them to pool their resources and maximize volunteers. This provides the additional benefit of anonymity among recovery group members who can attend CR at one Seacoast location and worship at another on Sundays.

Bryant agrees with the wisdom of Seacoast’s approach. “Our church was too small. We just didn’t have enough people to sustain the level of care and attention the sex offender’s presence required.” Sex offenders don’t come from only one particular economic level, Bryant points out. But by the time they come out of prison, often they are homeless, jobless, and friendless. “A church will be dealing not only with someone who has committed what author Martha Nussbaum calls a ‘disgust-based’ crime, but also someone who needs a great deal of support at every level to re-enter society.”

He also learned that having more people in a church gives people options about how close to get to one another. “At a small church like ours, comfort zones got pressed beyond normal ranges because people were forced to interact with the sex offender, whether they wanted to or not,” he says. One by one, Bryant noticed families going out the back door.

“Good people who gave a ‘yes’ to this, and who I think meant well, ultimately just couldn’t tolerate it.” Although no one ever said out loud that they were leaving because of the sex offender, Bryant sensed diminishing energy among his congregants for having to deal with him. By the time the church dwindled to 35 people, Bryant knew it was time to shut down.

“We fell into ministering to a sex offender by virtue of having recovery ministries at our church,” he says. “We didn’t go out looking for a sex offender; he found us. But we weren’t prepared for it. We had to catch up really quick. Ultimately, I think we did it well, but it didn’t end well. This was a function of not having wheels on our intention.”

Ministry To The Sex-Addicted

Does your church provide recovery ministry to people with sexual addictions, including cyberp*rn addiction and other sex-related problems?

15% Local ministry plus referral24% No, we do nothing49% Referrals are given12% Ministry provided at church

Can a sex offender change?

While 49 percent of churches surveyed said they offer referrals to individuals struggling with sexual addictions, and some 12 percent offer in-house recovery ministries, 24 percent said they do nothing.

Another survey finding may provide a clue to why nearly a quarter of the churches surveyed stay away from addressing sexual addictions. According to the survey, 62 percent of respondents say they are either not sure or do not believe sex offenders can be rehabilitated to the point where they no longer pose a threat to others.

The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), the largest professional organization on treating sex offenders, states on its website that “although many, if not most, sexual abusers are treatable, there is no known ‘cure.’ Management of sexually abusive behavior is a lifelong task for some sexual abusers.” The organization says repeat sexual crimes can be reduced significantly through prevention, assessment, treatment, supervision, and collaboration involving all parties.

Reducing sexual crimes is a far cry from finding a cure. Wouldn’t it be easier to exclude them, even though 95 percent of sex offenders are eventually released from prison? Not according to CTI survey respondents.

Only 3 percent believe sex offenders do not belong in church. The majority says exclusion may be justified, but not for the sake of convenience—66 percent think registered offenders should be excluded if their victims attend the same church; 61 percent said that before permitting an offender to attend church, they would review the offender’s probation terms and criminal record.

Tusken says: “We’re meant to be a place where people can be helped both out of their prejudices, out of their disgust, out of their fears, and also helping people who have fallen into a hole so deep, so dark that they can’t find a way out by themselves. That takes God raising them out of that place through others. That’s the body of Christ. Galatians 6—’Bear ye one another’s burdens’ is the old translation that still rings in my heart. We have to be there for each other or healing can’t occur.”

Whether 8 in 10 churches will be there to bear the burden of the sex offender is a test that has yet to be taken. At least half a million convicted offenders one day may be ready to grade us.

Marian V. Liautaud is resources editor for Christianity Today International’s Church Management Team. She helped develop Reducing the Risk: Keeping Your Ministry Safe from Child Sexual Abuse.

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Once again, we are hearing about “the two-state solution” to the intractable Israel-Palestine conflict, construed as something only dolts, dullards, and vicious ideologues refuse to recognize as deriving from the highest of laws in place in the cosmos. To turn one’s back on the two-state solution, we’re told, is to turn one’s back on all that the diplomats have allegedly accomplished since 1993—and to do so at the very moment when even the hereditary enemies of Israel (the Saudis, the Egyptians, and even (if you believe Jimmy Carter, the Syrians, the Iranians, Hezbollah and Hamas, in their heart of hearts) have come to recognize its sublime character.

Time to reach for the shelf that holds Benny Morris’ One State, Two States, published last year by Yale University Press. For this book, Morris, who is generally regarded as the dean of academic revisionist Israeli historians, went back to all the notes he had gathered over the course of the years of writing The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004), Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (1999), and 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008; see the review in Books & Culture, March/April 2009, pp. 40-42). He sifted everything carefully for examples of all the many proposals of the past for reconciling Jewish and Arab designs upon the land the British governed as the Palestine Mandate (from 1922 to 1948).

So much imagination and invention, so much idealism and so much cunning, so much propaganda and so much double talk, went into these many now-forgotten proposals for “resolving the Jewish-Arab (or “Israeli-Arab,” or later still, “Israel-Palestine”) conflict! The permutations and combinations of the terms of these projects are astronomical in number. Long before the vote for Partition was taken in the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947—a vote that was supposed to settle the matter for eternity—there had been advocates (all of them Jews) of a one-state solution in which Jews and Arabs would share. Practical details varied greatly: there was the “bi-national state”, as proposed by Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, and there were “cantonal” arrangements, under which Jews and Arabs would live separated lives while some other, imposed authority, usually pictured seated in internationalized Jerusalem, would represent the general interests of all in such matters as defense and international relations.

By November 1947, the leaders of the Jews—not only those living in Palestine but those all around the world—had become reconciled to the Partition of the Mandate, even though the portion to be assigned to the Jews was only about one-quarter of what the State would become following the War of Independence of 1948 and the Six Day War of 1967. But the Arabs living within the Mandate adamantly refused to concede any part of what was, they said, one great Arab patrimony. And so they appealed to the god of war—accompanied by the armies of the several Arab states then in the world and by Arab and Muslim volunteers from all over the world.

Morris shows that at no point in this entire record is there any evidence of Arab support for the concept of a binational state such as the Jewish idealists were still proposing at the time of the UN’s debate on Partition. On the other side of the coin, Morris has no difficulty demonstrating that that when the senior Zionist statesmen, led by David Ben-Gurion, stood up and saluted the two-state solution in 1947, many of them, if not most of them, secretly expected that, as Ben Gurion put it, the State achieved in 1948 would serve as “a Jewish Piedmont”—meaning that, as the minor Kingdom of Piedmont grew and grew by picking quarrels with its neighbors until it became the Kingdom of Italy (1848-1870), so opportunities would ere long be provided by the military failures of the Arab leaders to enlarge the borders of Israel, so that in due course there would be a single State of Israel with borders more like those of David’s Kingdom, and perhaps extending further, all the way from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates. But Morris also shows that the painful experience of governing Arabs who found themselves within Israel’s real borders eventually turned the leaders of all of Israel’s mainstream parties against the one-state vision. Only among a small minority at the fringes of Israeli politics is that pre-emptive vision of the One State still saluted.

Historians have had to reckon with a kaleidoscope of transient banners appearing and then disappearing over the heads of the leaders and the crowds on the Arab side. There was Ottoman unity, Arab Nationalism, Syrian Nationalism, and most recently Palestinian Nationalism. But from beginning to end it has always been (as Morris shows) about the rights of Islam—and those rights are exclusive, pre-emptive and zero-sum in character. The objection to the existence of a Jewish polity in the region follows from a deeply entrenched, religiously based contempt for the Jews, the sons of pigs and monkeys.

In short, the secretaries of state and foreign ministers who speak about how much has been accomplished recently toward achieving acceptance on all sides to the “two-state solution” are refusing to acknowledge that the original “solution” was a two-state one, the one that Israel has been abiding by from the first day. Furthermore, Morris shows that what the statesmen portray as recent Palestinian acceptance of the two-state solution is all smoke and mirrors. “Palestinian Arab Islamic fundamentalists, of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad varieties, have always advocated the elimination of Israel and a one-state – a Muslim Arab state-solution for the Israel/Palestine problem,” he writes. This is generally conceded. But what is not understood in our part of the world is that this is the program of all the principal players on Arab Palestine’s political scene—that even the “moderate Palestinians … had always believed, and continue to believe, that all of Palestine belongs to them, the Palestinian Arabs; that a Jewish state in any part of Palestine is illegitimate and immoral; and that in the fullness of time, the whole country will eventually revert to Arab sovereignty.”

During the 1990s, the Fatah Party and the PLO publicly espoused “a two-state solution” as the price of admission for their freedom fighters into the land, and their establishment as the government of the Palestine Authority. The PLO promised solemnly and publicly to amend their Charter so as to accommodate the thinking preferred by the Western statesmen and required by the terms of the Oslo Accord – two states, living side by side in peace. But in fact they have never done so (see especially, pages 118-123, 130-133, 166-169). It should have been clear to even the starry-eyed that when Arafat cast off with contempt Barak’s proposals at Camp David in July 2000 and President Bill Clinton’s “parameters” for further negotiation in the first days of 2001, that he was spitting upon the vision of a world in which a Palestinian State, or indeed any Muslim state, and a Jewish State could co-exist. Arafat’s oft-expressed disdain for the notion that there had ever been a Jewish presence at any time upon the Temple Mount (page 150) reflects contempt for historical facts and historical claims based upon them. This note, Morris writes, “has been the constant refrain of Palestinian leaders, from [Haj Amin] Husseini [the leader of the Arab jihad against the Jews in the 1920s and 1930s] through Abbas, throughout the history of the Palestinian Arab movement.”

While the Palestinian nationalists have been performing what Morris calls their “duplicitous and reluctant” recital of the American and European governments’ “two state-mantra,” a number of anti-Israel intellectuals in the West have been going back to the “one-state” vision with which the PLO began, and have been turning it against the Israelis. Leftist intellectuals argue, for example, that “[in] a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry … Israel is truly … [a] dysfunctional [anachronism]” (quoting an article written by Tony Judt, “Israel: The Alternative”). Clearly, says Morris, “it is not “Israel’s reform or the reform of its policies” that the anti-Zionist intellectuals want, “but its disappearance.”

If we could compel all those statesmen and commentators who are currently rehearsing their two-state sermons to take two weeks off and read this scholarly, calmly argued, thoroughly researched book, there might then be a true “breakthrough”—one which brings the controversy back to where it began, with the Two State solution of 1947. But they should be warned: brief as it is, this book is tightly packed with history. History is harder to digest and less amusing than the briefings which the State Department provides for the use of policy-makers whose vocabulary derives from Schools of Conflict Resolution and whose arguments stand upon colorful “narratives'” in lieu of documentation.

Paul C. Merkley is the author of American Presidents, Religion and Israel (Praeger).

Copyright © 2010 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

Is the number of women in politics growing? It’s the type of question news talk-show hosts are asking now, thanks to competitive election races in states such as Delaware, Nevada, and California, where women are serious contenders in elections taking place next Tuesday.

Republican candidate Sharron Angle isn’t pulling her punches in Nevada, currently running in a tight race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Angle told Reid to ” man up” in a recent debate, pushing him on issues such as health care and unemployment. Reid called Angle “extreme” in response, wisely steering clear of any gender-related advice. Vice President Joe Biden didn’t fare so well later in the week, lumping together two very different—and, according to him, “extreme”—female candidates as “these women.”

The other woman was Christine O’Donnell, Republican Senate candidate in Delaware. Reminiscent of Sarah Palin, who endorsed her, O’Donnell is the type of woman who has many fellow conservatives racing to disassociate themselves. O’Donnell hits a lot of strong points and is an outspoken Christian. But she also has made flamboyant statements—about witchcraft, masturbation, teaching evolution in schools, and the separation of church and state—that have raised eyebrows and set off “airhead” alerts across media. O’Donnell, like Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), also has been noted for wearing pearls and peep-toed shoes and the color of her toenails. It seems that an emphasis on fashion accompanies female candidates who don’t fit the mold of the traditional political candidate.

Hair became a talking point in California’s Senate race, which happens to be between two women: incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer and Republican candidate Carly Fiorina. Fiorina was caught on microphone criticizing Boxer’s hair. The incident was blown up into a “cat fight,” which seems out of proportion to the level of impropriety involved, and more a result of how unusual it still is for two strong female candidates to compete. Beyond hair, the two women hold deep differences of opinion, particularly on off-shore oil drilling and Proposition 8. (Boxer supported the ruling overturning California voters’ decision to ban gay marriage, while Fiorina disagreed.)

But at least nobody was called a “whor*”—a term thrown around in reference to Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for governor in California, in a taped conversation between her Democratic competitor and his staff. Shockingly, the National Organization of Women’s California branch defended the word choice rather than the woman.

Media lightning rod Sarah Palin looms over this year’s elections, supporting Angle in Nevada along with other preferred candidates, both male and female, across the country. Some have wondered if Palin’s media presence in this year’s race has brought more attention to women in politics. Yet the trend is not really new: In the past decade alone, women held two of the most powerful positions in the world, with Condoleezza Rice and then Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. Interestingly enough, despite the number of high-profile Republican women running this year, the upcoming midterm election will mean a net loss of women in Congress with many Democratic women currently in office—several in senior positions—considered vulnerable.

Whether or not women-in-politics is a growing trend, I like that more female candidates are capturing our attention, and I hope having women in political positions is leading more female citizens to go out and vote. To me, it’s not about more women breaking into the good-old-boy realm of politics (though there is some of that going on) as much as pulling politics out of the backseat of our celebrity-obsessed society. I don’t know why it seems like conservative women are more comfortable these days being both outspoken women and outspoken candidates. Palin made enemies for her personality alone, pushing her Alaskan mommy-ness on the American public. But she does seem to be paving the way for female candidates who can disregard old anxieties about androgynous politics.

If more women are going to get into politics—which I believe it’s a good thing—then I’m all for embracing their femininity. God created men and women differently, and, as I can personally attest, women hold political stances just as firmly as men, regardless of whether they also paint their toenails (O’Donnell) or drive a truck (Fiorina).

Voter turnout in the U.S. usually tops out at about 60 percent. I hope more people—especially more women—pay attention to the elections this year. If taking time to look up a candidate’s record starts with Googling a hairstyle or a Cosmopolitan spread (e.g., Senator Scott Brown, because men are also capable of surprising us), that’s just fine with me.

New Reformation

Ever since Martin Luther Christians have been calling for new reformations, with varied levels of seriousness. (In 1982 Robert Schuller published Self-Esteem: The New Reformation.) However, Chris Wright’s call on Saturday morning of the Cape Town 2010 congress had a note of unusual authenticity. His address was followed by Femi Adeleye’s take-no-prisoners talk on prosperity teaching, which he labeled “another gospel.” More to the point, much of Saturday was devoted to repentance and prayer, as participants were asked to reflect deeply on their lack of humility, integrity and simplicity.

Wright made a detailed comparison to the state of the church now and in the Roman Catholic church before Luther. In both cases, he said, the ordinary people were deprived of the word of God, but rather were offered a religion based on a bargain: give to the church and reap blessings. The clergy in both cases often benefit, with sumptuous lifestyles and unaccountable power.

“What is the greatest obstacle to God’s mission in the world?” Wright asked. “It is not other religions, or a resistant culture. Our idolatry is the single biggest obstacle to world mission. We are a scandal, a stumbling block to the mission of God. Reformation is the desperate need of our day, and it must start with us. If we want to change the world, we must first change our world.”

In a subsequent press conference Wright said the congress should not be “a jamboree of evangelical triumphalism.”

Wright serves as International Director of Langham Partnership International, which supports ministries to strengthen Christian leadership and preaching in the Majority World.

Quite a number of Sudanese Christian leaders have come to Cape Town 2010. Yesterday they held a press conference along with the leaders of the World Evangelical Alliance to draw the church’s attention to the upcoming referendum on January 9, 2011. Sudanese citizens of the South–largely Christians and animists in an Islamic country–will vote on whether to secede and form a new nation. The church leaders, including Anglican bishop of Khartoum Ezekiel Kondo, spoke of the deep anxiety of Christians as the day of the referendum approaches. It is not clear whether the north-dominated government will allow the referendum to go forward. Should the referendum proceed and the citizens of the South elect to secede, there is great uncertainty about the possibility of civil war. And even in the best of circ*mstances, Southerners displaced to the north may be prevented by force from returning to their southern homes. If they return they face dangers from land mines planted during the civil war, massive problems of food supply, and other issues. Christians who make their home in the north pleaded for Christians around to globe to advocate for them, too. Reverend Elizabeth Aya, head of the Anglican Mother’s Union, pleaded for Christians to help. “We need you to join us in prayer,” she said. “We want our freedom. We have been suffering.”

The World Evangelical Alliance under Geoff Tunnicliffe, who also participated in the press conference, is organizing churches to pray and volunteer as election monitors.

At a conference of 4,000 Christians from every part of the world, the most fascinating learning doesn’t necessarily come from the platform addresses. It can come from introducing yourself. Seated next to you is likely to be someone from a different world and with an incomparable experience. Here are notes on three fascinating conversations I have had:

Finny Philip did his PhD in NewTestament at Durham University under James Dunne, but he hardly lives in an ivory tower. The school where he is principal, Filadelfia Bible College, is the training institution for a denomination that began with a dream in 1981. Finny’s father in law, Thomas Mathews, attended a meeting in the Indian state of Rajasthan led by the famous missiologist Donald McGavran. Seized by McGavran’s message on church growth, a small group began to pray about their response. They were drawn to pray for the state of Maharashtra, even though none of them knew a single person there. Eventually five of them boarded a bus, sure that God was calling them.

When they arrived at their destination in Maharashtra, a man approached them. “Are you from Rajasthan?” he asked. They said they were. “I had a dream, in which I was told that five people were coming from Rajasthan with suitcases. I was told to meet you and take you home.”

The five followed him home and stayed with him for one month. By the end of that month they had baptized 500 people. Since the converts knew nothing at all about the Bible, training was called for. An informal school at first moved from place to place. Gradually the church multiplied to include hundreds of congregations; gradually the training courses became the permanent institution of Filadelphia, which offers courses up to the master’s level.

The church has continued to grow. Persecution of new believers is very strong, Finny told me, so nearly all their converts are serious in their commitment. A strong academic curriculum serves a lively, expanding church.

Ivan Satyavrata is a pastor in Calcutta, India, who spun off for me the following statistics. His congregation each Sunday comprises 4,000 people, meeting in eight different services in eight languages. (Periodically, they all meet together as one congregation.) The church is also a mission center, which has planted and helps sustain 400 congregations and 30 “mercy centers” in three states. The church supports 14 schools in Calcutta, ten of which serve the poor, providing free primary and secondary education and one hot meal a day. Altogether there are 2,000 students. Ten thousand people are fed free meals every day on the streets of Calcutta. The church has 830 employees, counting teachers; over 200 work in the office.

And you think you have responsibilities!

Hwa Yung is a Methodist bishop in Malaysia. He told me of growing up in a world of active and potentially malevolent spirits, where superstitions were strong. He often saw people walk on fire or put skewers through their cheeks or other body parts.

As a science student who became a Christian in high school, he pushed that world away. Doing his college education in Australia, he appreciated the rational arguments of Francis Schaeffer and others. He knew nothing about the charismatic gifts.

When he finished school and returned to Malaysia to teach school, however, he found himself in a different world–the same world he had grown up in. Those rational arguments provoked mystification in his friends. “Rational arguments were not a way to come to any kind of belief.”

Hwa Yung’s world cracked open when one of his best students became one of his worst, almost overnight. The girl eventually quit school. Her best friend told Hwa Yung why she had cracked up. Another student, a boy, had been attracted to her, but when she didn’t respond he had put a charm on her.

“I was 24 or 25 years old. The girl and her friend came to see me and another teacher. This whole situation was totally new to me. I listened in fascination as I heard how her family had taken her to temples seeking a cure, as well as seeking the best psychiatric help. Nothing helped. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t even help her mother in the kitchen.

“‘We can’t help you,’ I told her, ‘but Jesus can.’ She accepted Jesus as her savior, and within two weeks she was completely back to normal.”

That began a re-thinking of supernaturalism. He took years reading deeply into Christian history, the Bible, and Asian Christian leaders like Sunder Singh. Now, as a bishop, he is committed to spreading a supernatural faith that holds word and Spirit together.

This afternoon I was talking to Ian Buchanan, the leader of a prominent Christian organization in the UK, Langham Partners. He mentioned how encouraging it was to encounter people like these. When he looks at the shrinking church in the UK he finds it easy to become discouraged. But at Cape Town he is constantly reminded of the greatness of the church around the world. There really are amazingly fabulous things going on through the lives of wonderful people whom you have never heard of. And they are seated next to you.