Page 4505 – Christianity Today (2024)

Two decades ago, conservative activist Paige Patterson began laying the groundwork to gain control of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) agencies and institutions.

The strategy of Patterson and retired Houston judge Paul Pressler to reshape the 15.9 million-member denomination through presidential appointments has been wildly successful.

Patterson, who last month became the first seminary president to lead the SBC since 1940, told CT the methodology used to wrestle the denomination back may not have been wisest. Nevertheless, he called the battle “an essential and necessary exercise for self-definition.” He has no plans to offer an olive branch to those not in his camp.

“Anybody who wants to believe that the Bible is true and is deeply concerned about reaching the world for Christ is going to be increasingly happy in the Southern Baptist Convention,” Patterson told CT. “Those with serious questions about the validity and veracity of certain portions of the Word and who do not have a deep commitment to evangelism and missions will be less comfortable with the Southern Baptist Convention of the twenty-first century.”

The pursuit of doctrinal uniformity by Southern Baptist leaders has come at a price. Deep fractures within the denomination are still evident.

“The controversy that has been settled at the national level has moved to the state conventions and local congregations,” says Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest Divinity School. “There are diverse responses at the state level. It’s not a slam dunk for either side.”

Bitterly fought battles throughout the 1980s spurred disenfranchised Southern Baptists to form a separate yearly Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) gathering in the 1990s, complete with their own missionaries and chaplains.

Meanwhile, six SBC seminaries, two mission boards, and the presidency are in the hands of what Southern Seminary president R. Albert Mohler, Jr., calls those who are “pure in doctrine.”

Patterson, 55, had no opposition in running for the presidency. In fact, at last month’s annual SBC convention in Salt Lake City, registration secretary Lee Porter acclaimed Patterson president without even a show of hands.

Patterson, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, since 1992, earlier served as president of Criswell College and as associate pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas. Southeastern has grown to 1,705 students from 748 students in his six years there.

Unified, Patterson says, Southern Baptists should now focus on soul winning. But several speakers at the meeting warned the faithful to be vigilant. “The battle for the soul of our denomination, our colleges and seminaries, our churches, even for the Bible itself, will never be over,” advised James G. Merritt, chair of the SBC executive committee. “There may be a cease-fire, but … we can never let our guard down.”

BATTLEGROUND SHIFTS: The 8,586 SBC messengers represented the lowest convention turnout in 47 years, both because of the geographic isolation from the heart of the denomination’s base and the lack of major issues at this year’s meeting. Much of the business finished earlier than anticipated at the three-day gathering. The now comparatively calm convention will become a two-day annual event next year.

While moderate Southern Baptists largely ignore the national meeting, they are more active at the state level. Moderates are in control of the Texas and Virginia conventions, and conservatives have formed separate affiliations in those two states. In November, the Texas Baptist Convention is expected to give final passage to a bylaws change that will make it more autonomous and will allow official links with the CBF and the Baptist World Alliance. Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has become a center for moderate Baptists.

MESSAGE TO MORMONS: Weeklong witnessing efforts resulted in more than 1,700 regional residents—most of them without a religious affiliation—making salvation decisions. Baptists staged an aggressive billboard, television, newspaper, and door-to-door witnessing campaign (CT, June 15, 1998, p. 24).

Anticipated fireworks between Latter-day Saints (LDS) residents and SBC visitors did not materialize. In fact, SBC leaders, including Patterson and North American Mission Board Interfaith Witness Division director R. Philip Roberts—who has written two new books on the dangers of Mormonism—had a friendly meeting with LDS leaders before the convention. They affirmed likemindedness on issues such as religious liberty, abortion, and p*rnography.

“But we are light years apart doctrinally,” Patterson said. “I hope a day comes when Mormon friends would say Jesus is the only way to be saved, and by grace alone.”

FAMILY VALUES: Messengers approved a statement lauding marriage as “the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.” It is the first amendment to the Baptist Faith and Message, the closest the SBC comes to a creed, in 35 years.

The most controversial section of the statement involved a phrase declaring, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

The two women—both of them wives of high-profile seminary presidents—on the seven-member panel that devised the statement cited Colossians 3 and 1 Peter 3 as reasons why wives should be submissive.

“As a woman standing under the authority of Scripture, even when it comes to submitting to my husband when I know he’s wrong, I just have to do it and then he stands accountable at the judgment,” Dorothy Patterson said.

“Submit may be a politically incorrect word,” Mary Mohler said. “But it is a biblically correct word, and that’s what counts.”

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Church history as taught in American seminaries and church colleges often portrays Christianity as a largely Western religion, which did not become a global faith until the modern missionary movement. “Thus, it appears that it took nineteen hundred years for the Great Commission to be realized,” says New York Theological Seminary professor Dale Irvin.

But recently, church scholars and missiologists have more fully realized that the history of the modern missionary movement has largely been told from the perspective of the Western sending churches, which was never the whole story.

In April, 40 scholars and church leaders met at Fuller Theological Seminary in part to recover the hidden histories of Christianity worldwide at the “Christian History in Global Perspective” consultation.

MODERN-DAY PARALLELS: Andrew Walls, former missionary to Sierra Leone and professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, says Christianity in its early centuries spread into Europe, Asia, and Africa. Even as a new faith, Christianity had a global reach.

Today, at the brink of a new millennium, Christianity’s identity as a Western religion is being challenged and changed as never before. Due to the growth of Christians in the developing world, the church’s demographic center of gravity has shifted from the north and west to the south and east: Latin America, Africa, and Asia (CT, May 19, 1997, p. 38). This shift happened quickly, and the church in the West has hardly begun to grasp this reality, Walls says.

One implication of this reversal is the growing need for new historical perspectives on church growth and missions. Younger churches outside the West are sparking greater interest in a non-Western view of mission history.

Philip Yuen-Sang Leung, historian from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that China missions histories “are dominated by missionary heroes, martyrs, the mainline denominations, and the home missions based in Europe and America.

“The role of the Chinese converts and the domestic sociocultural forces in China have not been taken significantly in the history-writing process.” He seeks to develop a mission history told from the standpoint of the receiving churches rather than the sending churches.

But Fuller professor Wilbert Shenk believes that two simultaneous and complementary movements are needed. The first will trace the development of a local church and its relationships, both local and global. The second movement will develop a synthesis of many “locals” into global relationship.

Irvin and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Scott Sunquist are working on the kind of local-global synthesis prescribed by Shenk. Irvin and Sunquist, both evangelicals teaching in mainline Protestant seminaries, have been commissioned by Orbis Books, a Catholic publisher, to write a two-volume history of world Christianity. The most important need now is for textbooks that can be used in places such as Beijing and Bogot‡ that tell the history of Christianity as a world movement, Sunquist says.

EVANGELICAL GROWTH: The global spread of evangelicalism has become another focus of scholarship. Of the nearly 1.8 billion Christians worldwide, more than half—most of them in non-Western societies—are evangelical.

According to Regent College historian Don Lewis, most evangelicals in the West are unaware that the rapid growth of evangelicalism is in the Two-Thirds World or that it is largely nonwhite, Pentecostal, and non-English-speaking.

To understand this new reality better, Lewis and a corps of evangelical scholars are planning two international gatherings, one at Oxford University in 1999 and another in South Africa in 2001 as part of the “International Project on Evangelicalism and Globalization.” The project will examine the past 300 years and eventually produce a textbook on world evangelicalism.

One challenge of developing global church history is garnering the resources for historical research on the local, national, and regional levels among the younger churches outside the West. Training nationals to gather and preserve source materials is critically important.

Sunquist, who formerly taught at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, reported on an experimental program in which Southeast Asian Christians were told how to write their own local or national histories.

The experiment revealed that Asian Christians do not know much about Christianity outside their own countries. “Such a focus on the history of Christianity within the local political borders denies the ecumenical and transcultural nature of the gospel,” Sunquist says. “This narrow focus also ignores the reality that ethnic groups and historical movements cross boundaries.”

This effort to rewrite church history in global perspective will focus less on denominations, yet draw together the separate, sometimes intertwined, stories of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism, along with the indigenous churches. Modern church history, told in global perspective, will also need to give an account of the incredible rise and spread of world Pentecostalism, whose “significance for world Christianity may well be as far-reaching as the Protestant Reformation,” says Lewis.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

He was a pillar in the church and the community,” says Joy Getty. “He was a success.” Getty and her husband lost $133,000.

“I knew him through church,” says Tex Kazda, who lost his $119,000 retirement account. “He seemed honest and smart, and had lots of assets and a happy family.”

Two years ago, such plaudits were common for Philip Harmon, a Christian businessman with a seemingly thriving investment and insurance business empire based in Camano, Washington.

This month, Harmon, 61, entered a federal prison to begin serving an eight-year sentence for conspiracy and tax fraud. His businesses have crumbled, and in their place Harmon faces, besides a penitentiary, a court order to repay $16 million dollars to his investors, a debt he is unlikely to repay.

Behind the turnaround of events lies what Seattle federal prosecutor Steve Schroeder calls one of the biggest pyramid schemes he has seen in two decades of fighting white-collar crime. It comes on the heels of a $4.4 million fraud case involving Priscilla Deters, convicted of taking funds from mainly evangelical Nazarenes and Friends in 21 states (CT, April 27, 1998, p. 19).

“They did not ask to see prospectuses for the investments,” Schroeder says. “It was simply a matter of good people placing their trust in someone whom they thought shared their values for honesty and integrity. They were wrong.”

ELDERLY VICTIMS: Although final figures are not yet available, investigators told the court the total in the Harmon case could reach $40 million. The number of victims is also large: 230 mostly elderly investors, many of them widows, lost their retirement nest eggs. And more than 300 people were abruptly left without health insurance and stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid doctor bills.

Harmon’s fraud is further distinguished by the fact that almost all of it involved members of two churches to which Harmon belonged: an Evangelical Quaker (Friends) church and an independent congregation, the Camano Chapel. The chapel’s pastor and its school building fund were among the local victims.

Prosecutors explained that Harmon’s scheme was not typical. Schroeder says that, in most pyramid schemes, “the victims have some larceny in their hearts too, because they’re promised unreasonably high returns.

“But Harmon didn’t promise his investors outlandish returns, just a few points higher than more conventional stocks or funds. So his investors thought they were being reasonable and prudent.”

But in reality they were not. Harmon’s “investments” may have sounded reasonable, but he had nothing to back them up. Instead of providing solid information, Harmon exploited the trust of personal contacts among the evangelical Quakers he had known while growing up, a technique investigators call “affinity group crime.” Among Harmon’s victims were his own brother and sister, and his son-in-law’s widowed mother.

LUXURIOUS LIFESTYLE: When an investor wanted a payment, Harmon used funds from later investors, in classic Ponzi-fraud fashion. The same was true of his insurance program, the National Friends Insurance Trust: medical claims were paid late, falsely, or not at all, as Harmon took advantage of businesses as well as policy-holders.

In the meantime, Harmon and his family lived in style. He bought a mansion overlooking Puget Sound, acquired beachfront condos in Maui, and purchased dozens of other properties, a 53-foot yacht, and scores of antique autos.

Contributions to church groups earned Harmon seats on the board of George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, and other institutions where he could keep potential critics at bay. When Quaker superintendents asked questions, he stalled some, charmed others with opulent dinners and yacht cruises, and even put a couple of them on his payroll.

Investigators charged that Harmon had been defrauding investors and health-plan members since the mid-1980s, taking in millions and shuffling the money among an ever-expanding network of shell companies. When state investigators began looking into his business practices, they quickly realized there was more involved than they could handle and went to federal officials. Ultimately, a multiagency task force was set up, involving the fbi, the Justice and Labor Departments, the IRS, and state insurance and investment investigators. The probe received its own code name: Operation Island Scam.

LIFE SAVINGS LOST: Harmon was arrested in March 1997 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud last October. At the sentencing hearing in May, victims denounced Harmon and the damage his thefts had done to their retirement hopes. Other victims had already said their piece, including Esther Hardinger of Coldwater, Kansas.

A retired schoolteacher, Hardinger invested with Harmon after her husband’s death. She put in her entire savings of $40,663. “Because of him, I lost my financial security,” she says.

Hardinger’s sister, Lois Hutson of Wichita, Kansas, also had been victimized after her husband’s death in 1992.

Based on trusting an investor within her denomination, Hutson turned over nearly $100,000 to Harmon. “I can only hope to get back a tiny percentage,” she says.

“The most severe damage flowing from all of this is not the financial devastation, but the damage to the sense of trust in fellow humans that so many of the victims have experienced,” says Judge William L. Dwyer. “That’s something that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repair.”

Prosecutor Schroeder says the case is not over. Harmon’s son Steve and son-in-law Terrill Beebe both worked in the business, and both were named as coconspirators and could be indicted. Other U.S. attorneys have pledged to file negligence suits against insurance companies that did business with Harmon in an effort to recoup some of the victims’ losses.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The dynamic builder of a 6,500-member congregation bent on winning Seattle’s upscale Eastside suburbs for Christ has resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Bob Moorehead, senior pastor of Overlake Christian Church since 1970, steadfastly maintains his innocence, but stepped down June 15 because his credibility in the community had been “seriously damaged.”

Overlake’s board of elders decided to dismiss the allegations of 17 accusers, based upon “the biblical process” for handling accusations against an elder. Moorehead, 61, was one of 14 elders governing the nondenominational evangelical church, which in November moved into a new $37.5 million facility in Redmond, Washington.

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR HIRED: The events that led to Moorehead’s resignation began in July 1996 with his arrest on a charge of indecent exposure in a public restroom near his vacation home in Daytona Beach, Florida. Under controversial circ*mstances, charges were dropped. But news coverage of the story prompted four men to make accusations that Moorehead had molested them during adult baptism and wedding ceremonies. A private investigator hired by the elders interviewed 17 men who gave similar accounts of events that occurred as long as 20 years ago. The statute of limitations has expired in nearly all the cases.

The overseers of the largest church in Washington State interpret 1 Timothy 5:19 to require another witness, besides the accuser, in order to consider an accusation against an elder. The elders conceded, however, that Moorehead was not “above reproach” as required by 1 Timothy 3:2 and consequently needed to resign. They presented a verbal summary of their decision to the congregation on May 27, based on information from the private investigator’s report and their own interviews with the accusers.

“This is not like a secular case, where conviction can be based on a preponderance of evidence, or evidence that’s beyond a reasonable doubt,” elder Duane Atkins told a hushed Wednesday-night gathering of more than 2,500. “Ours is a biblical investigation.”

The congregation erupted in a standing ovation when elder Gary Scott declared that the leaders found “no basis for church discipline” against Moorehead. Most church members interpreted that to mean that their pastor had been exonerated.

OTHER PASTORS SPEAK: Two days later, however, four area pastors who originally had been asked to help oversee the investigation, held a press conference claiming that Overlake elders misinterpreted key biblical passages and failed to settle the question of Moorehead’s guilt or innocence by not releasing the investigator’s report as originally expected. The pastors lamented the “firestorm” of division that the decision had provoked and called for the elders to resolve the matter for the sake of church unity.

“My English language and my biblical understanding don’t allow me to accept the position they came up with,” Jerry Mitchell, pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church in Bellevue, Washington, told CT after the press conference. “If the man is not innocent, which they have said, then in my estimation he is guilty. They say, ‘No, he’s not guilty’; therefore, in my estimation he’s innocent. Where in the English language and where in the Bible is the in-between stage?”

Overlake’s elders and staff declined interview requests from CT, saying the May 27 verbal report “stands on its own.”

Phil Ling, pastor of the largest of Overlake’s eight daughter churches, Northshore Christian Church, agrees that the issue is unresolved. “If you set yourself up with We’re not going to deal with the world; we’re going to use a biblical process to deal with this issue, then the eldership is the judge and the jury, and they have to come to a verdict; and I haven’t read any verdict,” Ling says.

Critics of Overlake’s interpretation of Scripture point out that cases of abuse are rarely witnessed by a third party and insist that the requirement for more than one witness is not confined to each individual case.

Seventeen cases add up to “a preponderance of evidence that can’t be ignored,” says Jan David Hettinga of Northshore Baptist Church in Bothell, Washington. Hettinga, one of the four pastors publicly challenging the decision, says the group is now “in dialogue” with Overlake about the possibility of re-examining the biblical premise for the decision.

SATANIC SCHEME? Communications from Overlake elders to their congregation in the months leading up to the resignation evoked images of spiritual warfare and included numerous references to “persecution” and an “orchestrated” attack on the church being carried out by the news media and the alleged victims.

Overlake’s elders say their decision took into account Moorehead’s 41 years of ministry without “a chink in his armor.”

Known for his aggressive evangelism and powerful expository preaching, Moorehead had a daily radio program and wrote a dozen books.

But focus on Moorehead’s fate, critics say, has ignored the accusers, who need either discipline or ministry, depending upon who is telling the truth. Moorehead has called on those who brought the “horrible, perverted” charges against him to repent.

“I would have a particularly challenging time with this congregation, because they are fishing in Scripture in a way that is not going to be very healing for them,” says Kibbie Ruth, senior consultant for the San Mateo, California-based Kyros Ministry, formerly known as the Pastoral Center for Abuse Prevention. “It makes them an unsafe congregation for anyone else who has been wounded by one person in a one-on-one situation.”

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

One of the most important stories of recent months was Dr. Diane Meier's change of heart about physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Meier, a New York physician and professor of geriatrics, is a specialist in "palliative care"—pain relief—for dying patients. For some years, she was an influential advocate of the legalization of PAS. But this past spring, Meier publicly reversed course. In a column in the April 24 New York Times, Meier made public the reasons for her change of mind. Her insights suggest broader connections for those committed to the sanctity of human life.

First, according to Meier, PAS advocates assume patients are mentally alert and competent to make a rational choice to end their lives. Meier now argues that these patients rarely are able to exercise such judgment. Normally they are confused, anxious, depressed, or simply incapable of thinking clearly—hardly a propitious context for making an important, life-or-death decision.

Second, those in favor of PAS normally would restrict its use to situations in which patients are within six months of death. Meier argues that it is nearly impossible to predict when patients are going to die until the last few days of their lives.

Third, PAS advocates claim that patients can be protected from coerced decisions to end their lives through the use of a doctor's signed certification. Meier now claims that noncoercion is impossible for a doctor to certify. Especially given the enormous financial pressures that medical bills impose, the availability of PAS is itself coercive. Dying patients know that merely by signing a document they would reduce the financial pressure on their families. No one needs to say a word about it.

Why this sounds all too familiarAdvocates of PAS have succeeded in only one state: Oregon. The regulations Meier discussed in her article are drawn from the Oregon law. Already at least two assisted suicides have been performed there, though public officials are keeping such a tight lid on information that no one can know for sure how many assisted suicides have occurred or will occur. But the explicit goal of PAS advocates is to go national, making the Oregon experiment the American way of life.

According to David P. Gushee, director of the Center for Christian Leadership at Union University, it is deeply disturbing to compare early returns from the Oregon PAS experiment with an experiment in medicalized killing with which we are all familiar: abortion. Gushee, who is also vice president of Evangelicals for Social Action, notes that initial advocates of full legalization of abortion operated from a model strikingly similar to the medical and regulatory milieu envisioned by supporters of PAS and currently operating in Oregon. Women facing unwanted pregnancies would undertake a rational conversation with their physicians, who would guide them through their medical options to the best choice for them.

In fact, what emerged was a pattern in which emotional, confused, and frightened women turned to impersonal specialized abortion clinics staffed by marginally competent doctors whose full-time medical chore day by day is the termination of pregnancy. This fundamental corruption of the doctor-patient relationship, observes Gushee, is repeating itself with the Oregon PAS experiment. Both of the two known PAS victims in Oregon were refused PAS by their own physicians, only to receive referrals to death doctors from the Oregon branches of Compassion in Dying and the Hemlock Society. One can imagine a new industry of such physicians if PAS goes national, says Gushee, just like with abortion providers.

Likewise, advocates of full legalization of abortion assumed that this option would be selected by a small number of women under specialized circ*mstances. Abortion would be "safe, legal, and rare." This assumption parallels that of PAS advocates who intend to restrict that procedure to "the last six months of life" for certifiably terminally ill patients.

However, it is fully to be expected that just as abortion came to be the option of first rather than last resort for so many, so will PAS grow into a widely used procedure that far exceeds its originally envisioned boundaries, especially given the nebulous definitions of those boundaries.

PAS advocates are concerned to protect patient autonomy and noncoercion. Interestingly enough, Gushee notes, so were advocates of abortion; indeed, autonomy, noncoercion, and self-determination are the watchwords of the pro-choice movement. But such autonomy for women facing crisis pregnancies has turned out to be quite elusive. Many women end up at abortion clinics due to pressure from their fathers, husbands, boyfriends, and sexual partners. Just so, we can fully expect that patient autonomy in the area of assisted-suicide will erode under psychological, financial, and social pressures.

Fortunately, PAS has not won universal support. Dr. Meier's reversal is a hopeful sign. Perhaps we have learned a few things in the 25 years between Roe v. Wade and the Oregon PAS experiment.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

A pastor went to a massage therapist for back treatment. Once on the masseuse’s table he noticed crystals used by New Age channelers on the floor. What was he to do? Tell the therapist to remove the crystals? Rebuke the therapist? Get up and leave?

At first this pastor was fearful of subjecting himself to spiritual forces. Then he remembered that in Christ “all things in heaven and on earth were created … whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16, NRSV). This pastor decided the “all things” included these crystals. So he prayed that Christ would exercise his lordship over them and any evil spirits in the room.

Illness makes people receptive to all kinds of nostrums and remedies, particularly chronic health problems that don’t yield easily to conventional treatment. A whole industry is emerging that provides alternative medical treatments, including acupuncture, biofeedback, homeopathy, massage therapy, and therapeutic touch (TT; see “Winding Paths Meet,” p. 16). A third of all Americans have tried some form of alternative medicine or therapy.

Even health-insurance companies are starting to see the benefit of alternative forms of treatment. Alternative medicine tends to treat people holistically, inviting the patients to participate in their healing. There is not always a pill or injection for everything that ails us. Sometimes lifestyle changes are needed, such as diet and stress management. The best approaches blend conventional and alternative medicines: conventional medicine for trauma or major illnesses, alternative treatments for chronic conditions such as pain, headaches, fatigue, or recurring back pains. Yet, as the pastor’s experience illustrates, Christians must be on their guard: alternative treatments sometimes come packaged in world-views more akin to New Age philosophies and plain old paganism than to orthodox Christian faith.

Alternative medicine sometimescomes packaged in world-viewsmore akin to New Age philosophiesand plain old paganism thanto orthodox Christian faith.

Of course, bona fide methods have to be sorted out from the bogus. This past April the influential Journal of the American Medical Association published an article that debunked the claims of therapeutic touch. TT is practiced by more than 43,000 medical professionals in more than 80 hospitals nationwide. Behind TT is the theory that each person emits an “energy field.” Practitioners claim that by manipulating this human energy field, they can heal numerous conditions, from Alzheimer’s to ulcers, without actually touching their patients (CT, Feb. 5, 1996, p. 96).

What was most surprising about the JAMA article debunking TT was that the supporting research was done for an elementary-school science project by nine-year-old Emily Rosa. Emily set up a simple experiment using a cardboard screen with two holes cut in it for TT practitioners to put their hands through. When Emily would place her hand over a practitioner’s hand without touching it, the “healer” was asked to say which hand Emily’s hand was near. In the 280 tests involving 21 different TT practitioners, the correct response was given only 44 percent of the time—a worse outcome than mere coin-flipping might produce. Predictably, TT advocates have contested Emily’s findings, but it appears that TT may stand for “tall tale,” not therapeutic touch.

While being on guard against evil spirits connected to some instances of alternative medicine, Christians should not be locked into an Enlightenment perspective that maintains healing can come only through modern medicine. Emily’s work contrasts with a host of studies in recent years that have demonstrated a positive correlation between healing and faith, prayer, and association with a supportive, religious community. There is now clear empirical evidence that “religious involvement helps people prevent illness, recover from illness, and—most remarkably—live longer” (Dr. Dale A. Mathews, The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer). Some of this benefit can be attributed to people of faith living more healthfully—not smoking or drinking, for example. But not all. Sound scientific studies show there is curative power in prayer and regular participation in a supportive religious community.

As Dr. Mathews says, “The faith factor is not a panacea—the mortality rate for human beings still remains 100 percent.” Why and when some people experience healing or remission is still a mystery to researchers. The faith factor allows for this mystery—for a God who gives and takes life and health in his own good timing.

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During China’s brutal Cultural Revolution in 1968, Peter Xu Yongze, newly called to Christian ministry, surveyed the bleak future facing Christianity in China and was overcome with grief.

Climbing a mountain near his village in the rugged Henan Province, Xu stopped and prayed, “Dear Lord, please revive your church!”

During the intervening 30 years, Xu evangelized, planted new house churches, and trained local church leaders, eventually creating the Born Again Movement (BAM), which has an estimated 3 million followers independent of the official registered church in China. Spinoffs from BAM, one of the fastest-growing religious groups in China, have an estimated 20 million followers, nearly twice the size of the registered church, which was re-established in 1979.

HERETIC OR HERO? This year, however, Xu will not be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of his mountaintop plea. Last September he was sentenced to serve ten years in a “re-education-through-labor” camp in Henan. Chinese authorities arrested Xu, now 58, on charges of being a leader of a banned religious cult, disrupting public order, and spreading religious heresy about the imminent end of the world.

After Xu’s arrest, the official Chinese news agency compared him to David Koresh, the Branch Davidian leader who in 1994 died in a fiery apocalypse in Waco, Texas, as the fbi attempted to arrest him. Both registered-church and house-church leaders, including Samuel Lamb and Allen Yuan, have criticized Xu and his movement for alleged doctrinal aberrations, such as the expectation that new converts weep for three days to bring about forgiveness for their sins.

Yet, other Christian leaders have defended Xu, saying that his harsh sentence exposes how the Chinese government has not changed in its essentially hostile attitude toward religion as a superstition.

While evangelicals have noted that Xu’s movement is emotional and highly expressive, Brent Fulton, managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies based at Wheaton (Ill.) College, says Xu is no heretic and his theology is sound. “Xu is caring, very sincere. He is smart in a strategic sense. He knows how to organize a huge band of evangelists. Most of his followers have a junior-high education.”

Pastors in BAM believe “jail is their seminary,” says Jonathan Chao, president of China Ministries International, a leading house-church advocacy group that recently relocated from Hong Kong to Taiwan. “Jail is like a battery that charges the believer and movement.” Xu had been imprisoned twice before, including in 1988 when he attempted to meet Billy Graham during the evangelist’s trip to China.

According to sources in China close to the Xu family, “They say our church is a heresy. This is a very bad word to use about us. Xie-jiao [heresy/evil religion] is like when a person kills somebody or a group always killing.

“People say that we say that you can only be saved if you cry for three days or even three days and nights. This is not true. We are saved by Jesus’ grace.”

SERIAL HOSTAGE-TAKING: For Paul Marshall, author of Their Blood Cries Out (Word, 1997), Xu’s arrest and imprisonment is another odious example of China’s “serial hostage-taking,” in which emerging Chinese Christian leaders are locked away as they reach their most productive phase. Years later, they may be released or exiled. Recently, China freed an aging Catholic leader from prison, only to put him immediately under house arrest. “I’ve met with people from 17 provinces in the last 12 months,” Marshall says. “They said they are suffering the worst crackdown since the 1980s.” Xu is one of hundreds or perhaps thousands of religious leaders who have been arrested or jailed in China during the 1990s. As recently as May 31, officials reportedly detained Roman Catholic Bishop Zhang Weizhu, one of the millions of underground Catholics who recognize Vatican authority. (China requires all Catholics to join a government-controlled association.)

The imprisonment of Xu comes at a time when American religious and political leaders are focusing on religious persecution as never before. Congress, which is targeting China’s abuse of human rights, has passed legislation prohibiting imports of Chinese products made by slaves or prisoners and banned from visiting America those Chinese officials responsible for religious persecution or forced abortions.

Conservatives have renewed efforts to oppose most-favored-nation trade status for China because of human-rights abuses (CT, June 16, 1997, p. 54). This fall more than 100,000 congregations are expected to participate in the third International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

The most critical debate among church and ministry leaders is how best to bring about greater religious freedom in China. Traditionally, missions leaders have focused on evangelism and relief work, not human rights, for fear that public criticism could jeopardize their ability to work in the country.

But as abuses of religious freedom have persisted, missions and church leaders have been forced by circ*mstances to re-evaluate their methods and strategies.

Meanwhile, outspoken religious-freedom advocates have steadily increased the political pressure in Washington to put religious freedom near the top of America’s foreign-policy agenda.

Last month more than 200 American religious leaders, representing Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Scientologists, signed a letter urging President Clinton to persuade the Chinese government to release all religious prisoners, to revoke mandatory church registration, and to relax restrictions on Buddhists in Tibet.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the Center for Jewish and Christian Values, initiated the letter to Clinton, whose historic nine-day trip to China was scheduled to wrap up July 3. Last year Eckstein presented to Chinese authorities a petition with 12,000 signatures calling for Xu’s release. But Eckstein does not want to be counted among the growing number of China-bashers.

“One of the things I’ve learned in my dealings with the Chinese is they want to see that Americans are not using them or bashing them,” he says. “China-bashers don’t acknowledge the changes that have taken place.” He advocates greater religious freedom in China’s policy, using what he calls “prodding engagement.”

Although China’s constitution enshrines freedom of belief, there is no corresponding constitutional protection for freedom of worship or freedom from state control. Through the Chinese government’s Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB), the Public Security Bureau, and the Communist party’s United Front Work Department, every aspect of religious expression is managed.

“Those Chinese who seek to express openly dissenting political and religious views still live in an environment filled with repression,” the U.S State Department reported in January.

The Chinese government places boundaries on religion at every key point: 1. Worship places must be registered, and members must have joined one of five officially recognized religious associations (Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, or Taoist). 2. Publication of Bibles, religious books, magazines, and other materials must be state approved. 3. Admission to seminaries or other religious training for registered-church pastors or lay leaders requires permission of local authorities. 3. Individual believers may be required to provide identification on receipts when purchasing Bibles at a registered church. 4. Communist party members are prohibited from expressing religious beliefs. As a result, only atheists are allowed to head government offices that regulate religion. 5. Government officials determine which religious beliefs are heretical, and therefore illegal, for anyone to espouse. 5. No religious group outside China is permitted to have control over any Chinese religious body or religious affairs, or to establish an independent operation.

Chinese who stray outside permitted religious activities have frequently been detained without being charged or having legal counsel. The U.S. State Department declares, “The judicial system continues to deny defendants basic legal safeguards and due process because authorities attach higher priority to maintaining public order and suppressing political opposition than to implementing and enforcing legal norms.”

Amnesty International, in its 1997 human-rights report, estimates that China’s prisons detained 200,000 people without charge or trial. In the main Chinese prison in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, one out of six prisoners is a Buddhist monk or nun who had most often been accused of “endangering public security.”

A GOLDEN PERIOD? Although the Communist United Front Work Department establishes China’s overall policies toward religion, no individual has greater influence over day-to-day government oversight of religious activities in China than Ye Xiaowen, the ambitious and energetic director of the RAB, which has officials in every province and major city.

During Ye’s first American appearance one year ago, he met with leaders from the Christian Leadership Exchange of California, an influential group composed mostly of overseas Chinese Christian leaders.

Ye, 45, plays the role of an intimidating police officer well. “The ancient Greeks have a saying: The most difficult thing is to know yourself. I am a tiger, having the willingness to have the boldness and braveness characteristic of a tiger.” The RAB and other Chinese leaders have not been reluctant to demonstrate the power of the state in limiting religious practice. In May 1997, according to Amnesty International, about 5,000 Chinese troops were deployed to the village of Donglu, Hebei Province, to bar Catholics from making an annual pilgrimage.

Ye was influential in developing the Chinese government’s conviction that Christianity played a critical role in the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Although one American evangelical leader who is knowledgeable about Ye says he is a “hardcore materialist,” Ye’s main philosophy seems to be pragmatism within the context of the directives of the top leadership.

Ye, like China’s President Jiang Zemin, represents a new attitude that is not personally hostile to religion but expects religious leaders to buttress state and party control. Some of China’s leaders, including Ye, a sociologist by training, have closely studied American culture. Ye finds one secret to American success in Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904. Weber, also a sociologist, compared the West and China, concluding that a missing element in Chinese culture had been, up to that time, a strong antimagical religion like Christianity, with its emphases on a transcendent God, transcendent laws, and spiritual calling above all human favoritisms and local superstitions.

China’s leadership still has difficulty comprehending basic Christian concepts, says Richard Cizik, policy analyst for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE): “They don’t understand the power of faith to change people’s lives, the Christian teaching of the soul, or the Christian teaching of the conscience. They view [religion] through a political lens.” Cizik and other evangelicals have attempted to counter the belief among China’s leaders that Chinese Christians pose a threat to the state by arguing that good Christians are good citizens and good workers.

In 1994, as new regulations governing religion in China were being implemented, Ye became RAB director and quickly positioned himself and the RAB as protectors of the religious status quo. In suppressing house churches, the RAB most often labels them as secret cults with an antisocial agenda. In addition, Ye says the RAB protects registered churches from corrupt local officials who may harass faithful believers.

While in Washington, Ye declared that religious believers in China had entered “a golden period.” Last October, an official Chinese government white paper, which focused on all religious activity in China, listed 100 million religious believers, 85,000 worship sites, 300,000 clergy or priests, and 74 schools for clergy training, far more than in 1949 when Communists took control. The report also noted: 1. Since 1980, more than 600 Protestant churches have been reopened or rebuilt annually. 2. More than 18 million Bibles have been printed. 3. The official number of baptized Christians in registered churches has risen to 10 to 15 million in 1997, from fewer than 1 million in 1949.

The document defends the Chinese government’s regulation of religious activity, saying, “No one in China is punished because of his or her religious belief. But no country that practices the rule of law in the world today would tolerate illegal and criminal activities being carried out under the banner of religion.”

However, the report does not detail the ideological work of the Communist United Front Work Department. In a September 1996 article in its journal, the United Front detailed how 400 religious leaders had been “trained politically on how to get the religious organizations to cooperate with the [Communist] party.” In 1992, Tong Zhan, a former United Front leader, published an inside view on how the United Front works behind the scenes in the appointment of key religious leaders. He said the United Front follows a “divide and rule” strategy to keep religious groups in check.

Even by official accounts, Christianity among the Chinese is experiencing the kind of stunning revival and explosive growth that would test the structure of any religious organization. In Guizhou Province in the rural southwest, there are more than 360,000 Christians. About half of them await baptism, and many baptized believers go more than one year without celebrating Communion.

“The Chinese church today is the most charismatic church in the world. They rely totally on the Holy Spirit,” says David Wang, international director of Asia Outreach. “With all the persecution and harassment and suffering, the church is still exploding. Growing is too tame a word.”

HAZARDOUS PILGRIMAGE: In February, a delegation of three American religious leaders, at the invitation of President Jiang, made an unprecedented pilgrimage throughout China.

During their three-week tour, then-president of the National Association of Evangelicals Don Argue, Roman Catholic archbishop of Newark Theodore McCarrick, and Appeal of Conscience Foundation president Rabbi Arthur Schneier met with China’s president, held discussions with about 60 other top leaders, and traveled to Tibet to visit Buddhist leaders (CT, April 6, 1998, p. 26).

Although the threesome described the trip’s mission as focused on deepening dialogue with China’s leaders, they frequently brought up issues of human rights and religious freedom.

In a lengthy interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY (see pg. 34), Argue says that they inquired about the cases of 30 persecuted believers. He said Chinese authorities have responded with details about some, but not all, of the individuals.

From the beginning, American political and religious leaders sharply questioned the wisdom of the effort, saying that China would manipulate domestic media coverage to its own advantage. While the delegation was in China, the front page of the People’s Daily published photos of President Jiang and Argue, but quoted only Jiang.

American critics of the delegation’s visit cut across a wide spectrum, including Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, Nina Shea of Freedom House, and Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches.

During the delegation’s visit, Shea charged, “Beijing manipulated the group’s visit throughout, even detaining priests and the families of Christian prisoners so that the group could not meet with them.”

But after the visit, one Chinese official in Beijing said, “These people were very well briefed, and actually disputed some of our versions of events, and expressed strong discontent with our religious policy. This we were not used to.”

When the delegation returned, they held a press conference in New York City, where they issued a 12-page report. Their findings included: 1. Official government statistics significantly undercount Christians. 2. Chinese leaders view religion as a potentially destabilizing force in society, particularly among China’s large peasant population. 3. “Joint ventures in understanding” between the United States and China on religious belief and practice should be undertaken as soon as possible.

Cizik, who traveled with the American delegation, told CT that China’s leaders are “being forced to acknowledge by the faith of their own people that religion isn’t a Western phenomenon only. It’s a church that is growing. And, to some degree, [it] poses a threat to the power of the state.”

A BIGGER CAGE? Even as the Chinese government has moved to marginalize underground churches, it has given the registered church more room to breathe. But its critics still view the registered church as a caged bird.

With the retirement of Bishop Ting in 1997, the China Christian Council (CCC) is now under the leadership of Han Wenzao, a lay church leader. The CCC and the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), which promotes the doctrinal ideals of self-propagation, self-government, and self-support, form the central nervous system of the registered church.

During an in-depth interview with CT at Nanjing Seminary, Han struck a conciliatory note toward the house-church movement. But he did not repeat Ting’s call in 1994 for the Chinese government to recognize house churches.

Han says many unregistered churches have become registered in Jiangsu Province. “We have two problems with registration. Government officials are reluctant to get more churches to be registered. On the other side, some congregations, I’m sorry to say, are influenced by outsiders who advise them not to get registered.”

Han says the relationship between house and registered churches is not black and white. Some believers, especially in urban areas, may attend services at both kinds of churches. In addition, some registered churches allow house-church leaders to use their facilities.

In calling for greater cooperation and Christian unity, Han says, “We also have to confess that we have done some things wrong to our brothers and sisters. A divisive church cannot be very strong for our Lord, especially in China. Yet we fight each other.”

Some house-church leaders have shown a willingness to register with the local government, but they resist joining the TSPM, which falls under government and Communist party control.

But Han says, “The Three Self does not have a political nature. It’s just a people’s organization to show our fellow Christians that we Christians are fellow Chinese Christians.”

Han disputes the allegations that freedom is nonexistent for the registered church. “We have enjoyed a reasonable amount of religious freedom,” he says, “because the context is very different around China.”

“We can do much. Within the framework, we can move around much. So my observation is that we have enjoyed a reasonable amount of freedom within the churches.”

Although Han is striking a conciliatory note in comments about house churches, he has not minced words when condemning the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention for “covert missionary” activities within China (CT, Jan. 12, 1998, p. 64).

Last year, Han broke off relations between the CCC and IMB because he alleged that Southern Baptists were pursuing an illegal “two-track” strategy of working openly with registered churches, but covertly as well through setting up businesses for missionaries to use as a front for evangelistic outreach. There have been estimates that as many as 200 IMB missions personnel in China are involved in such work.

Werner Burklin, whose German missionary parents raised him in China until they were forced out in 1949, has worked with registered churches since 1981. He has also had contact with house-church members. Burklin says, “To the local Christians, it really doesn’t make too much of a difference with whom they are registered. They would like to see the church expand.” Burklin believes if the Communist state collapses, Chinese Christians will lose an important unifying force.

Burklin observes Chinese Christians across the board have taken responsibility for outreach and missions, unlike their dependency on foreigners prior to the 1949 revolution. “Chinese Christians are strengthening the social arm of the church to win the hearts of the people. I know of churches that even take offerings for [state] schools.”

LIMITS OF COOPERATION: In spite of the ongoing dramas of religious repression in China, Christian ministries worldwide have regained a strong presence throughout the country, in relief work, adoption, pro-life advocacy, church support, Bible publishing, and leadership training.

Increasingly, American-based ministries are openly attempting to establish relationships with house-church and registered-church leaders. The 1998 Missions Handbook, published by the California-based Mission Advanced Research and Communications Center, reports that 155 Americans from more than 40 Protestant agencies work inside China. In addition, more than 660 Chinese citizens who are active in Christian ministry receive support from American missions organizations in the form of training, materials, or money for building improvements or construction.

Much of the support comes from the estimated 7,000 Christian churches for overseas Chinese, many of whom fled following the Communist revolution.

George Chen is a significant example of how Americans and Chinese are rewriting the ministry playbook. Born in Shanghai 64 years ago, Chen gave up university studies in economics for Bible school and began working as a missionary at age 18. “God called me to spread the gospel to the poor of the villages,” Chen explains. “The cities have made progress. But in the villages, it’s the same as ever. The people are very poor.”

After the 1949 Communist revolution, Chen’s work grew increasingly hazardous. He was jailed for religious activities in the 1950s. In 1960, he was sentenced to hard labor at a prison in Anhui Province in eastern China.

With a wife and son still in Shanghai, he saw little prospect for survival. “They tried to make things really bad for me by putting me to work in the cesspool,” Chen recalls. “I spent my days deep in human waste, turning it with a shovel to make compost. They thought I’d be miserable, but actually I was happy. It smelled so bad that no one would come near me, so I could pray and sing aloud all day.”

Yet physical adversity was only part of the hardship at the camp. “The brainwashing was the worst,” Chen says. “If God had not been with me, I’d have collapsed under it. People who were physically stronger than I did.”

In 1978, as official attitudes toward religion changed, Chen was finally released. He discovered that the churches he planted had grown to 5,000 from the original 300 members.

Now a U.S. citizen, Chen travels for nine months each year throughout China organizing churches, preaching, training leaders, and raising funds.

Because Chen works mostly in rural areas, he has been able to enlist the cooperation of local government leaders as well as house-church leaders in his ministry efforts.

In May, a journey brought Chen deep into the rugged wilderness of Yunnan Province to show the needs of Lisu tribal people to Ralph Plumb, president of International Aid, a relief and mission-support agency of Spring Lake, Michigan.

Wedged between Tibet and the countries of Southeast Asia, Yunnan remains one of the least-known areas of China.

The Lisu were converted from demon worship early in the century by missionaries. In the early years of Communist rule, the tribal people were forbidden to worship. Their Bibles were confiscated, and some of the people were imprisoned or killed. Many fled across the mountains to nearby Myanmar (Burma). Yet most remained faithful. The year that brought Chen’s release also brought them freedom to worship openly again.

With special permits to enter the territory normally closed to foreigners, Chen and Plumb traveled in trucks provided by the provisional government to the distant village of Kang Po near the upper Mekong River.

Mountain people waited to lead them up a steep foot trail into misty green valleys. They passed log and plank houses clinging to slopes. Meager crops of corn, rye, and wheat smear mountainsides so steep that farmers lie on their sides when they plant and harvest to keep from tumbling downward.

“I’ve never seen people in China poorer than the Lisu,” Chen says. “They have not enough food.”

Yet the welcome at a village named Wahsaluke was lavish. Many of the 900 residents lined both sides of the trail applauding the visitors and shaking their hands. They provided basins of spring water for washing and feasts of freshly killed chicken, eggs, fried ferns, corn cakes, rye pancakes, and honey.

“The Lisu people love very much,” Chen explains. “Really, they follow the teaching of the gospel.”

Plumb saw the log frame of a new school his agency financed through Chen. The visitors worshiped with villagers in a dark and primitive log-and-plank church building so rotted that local officials fear it might collapse.

Both Chen and government authorities encouraged International Aid to finance a new church structure. Chen had also arranged a cash gift to buy 100 goats loaned to families for breeding then returned for reloaning. “But the greatest need of all,” Chen emphasizes, “is for trained church leaders. Christianity is growing, but because we don’t have trained leaders, cults and heresies are springing up. Nine thousand evangelists should be trained,” he says.

But the spirit of cooperation that Chen has forged in rural areas has not always translated into urban settings. When Chen traveled to a major urban area in southern China, he was invited to preach at a Sunday service. But at the last minute, officials denied permission for him to preach because he is a foreigner.

MORE TURNING TO CHRIST: China missions experts who have studied the growth of Christianity during the past 35 years often say that the decade-long cultural revolution in the 1960s and ’70s was the church’s time of greatest persecution and greatest rate of growth.

But in the late 1990s, the economic revolution in China is a central element in driving individuals toward religion and spirituality. China scholars say the surge of working-age adults from rural villages to industrial areas, along with urban unemployment, has created a displaced “floating population” of 100 million people, desperate for work and living on the margins of society.

Among China’s 1.2 billion people, more than 700 million are considered nonreligious, making them the largest group of unchurched people in the world. With the collapse of communist ideology, Chinese society is facing a vacuum of values and beliefs, and many Chinese are turning to nationalism, consumerism, or religion.

“The prestige of the party has gone,” says Daniel H. Bays, history professor at the University of Kansas and author of Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford, 1996). “Nobody believes in communism anymore. This is one reason why people are becoming Christians. There is a lot of corruption, people are cynical, and ever since the 1980s, there’s been a good bit of public anger with the government officials lining their own pockets.”

New research on Christian growth in certain provinces reveals how China in some regions is turning to Christianity. In the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, the site of the nationalist capital of Nanjing, there are 890,000 Christians, four times as many as a decade earlier.

Tony Lambert, director of Chinese research for a large mission agency, says China’s leaders are well aware of Christian meteoric growth rates, which drives their need for stricter control. “I did a sampling and analysis of letters we are receiving from China,” he said. “I grouped them by province. Jiangsu [Province] letters reported the worst persecution. Anhui and Henan [Provinces] also reported very tight control in some localities.”

For Lambert and other scholars of Chinese Christianity, the growth of new religious sects, Christian cults, and heresies in many ways poses a greater threat to the church than the state.

While some heresies develop from non-Christian religions, dozens of heretical groups in China that are drawing millions of followers develop from distortions of Christian theology, teaching, and practice. These include: 1. Lightning from the East, which promotes the idea that Christ has come again, bodily reincarnated in a woman named Lightning, and that only those who believe in this female messiah will be saved. 2. The Disciples (Mentuhui Society), started in 1989 by farmer Ji Sanbao, who has a strong end-times orientation and calls for overthrow of the government. 3. The Lingling Cult, which was begun as a religious movement in 1985 by Hua Xuehe, who sees himself as a second Jesus and in 1990 prophesied the second coming of Christ.

THE GOSPEL THREAT? The Chinese government has increasingly employed the strategy of associating charismatic religious leaders with antisocial cults and charging those leaders with violating criminal laws, not religious regulations.

In the case of the imprisoned evangelist Xu, the founder of BAM, the government has alleged that Xu holds beliefs similar to the Weepers sect and that church members have committed suicide amid intense religious fervor.

But it was not Xu’s theology itself that posed a threat to the Chinese government, China scholars say. Xu’s covert, independent network of evangelists was the true target of the state. Last year, six other house-church evangelists were arrested with Xu as they apparently laid plans to coordinate their outreach efforts.

In a discussion with CT, a Chinese central government official who asked not to be named reported that the government’s actions in the Xu case reveal the depth of its concerns about independent Christian evangelists. But he said, “I don’t think it’s important for the church in China to get Xu out [of prison]. No matter how many people or church leaders are put into jail, the church keeps on growing.

“The reason is that the church is not controlled by these leaders. The church develops in China in a very strange and incredible way.”

As Xu serves out his prison sentence, hidden Chinese evangelists travel to western China, Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, and Outer Mongolia with no visas, passports, or support. Asia Outreach’s Wang says, “But they have feet. They travel as far as transportation will take them; then they walk into those countries.”

With reporting in Chinaby Tony Carnes, Bruce Brander,Carol Thiessen, and Alex Buchan.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

A member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, Don Argue helped marshal evangelical leaders to the frontlines in the international campaign on behalf of persecuted Christians.

In February, Argue, then president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and now president of Northwest College, Seattle; Catholic Archbishop McCarrick; and Rabbi Schneier traveled to China for three weeks of meetings with top leaders in China’s government and Communist party (CT, Apr. 6, 1998, p. 26). While security concerns prevented Argue from meeting with members of China’s house churches, Rich Cizik, an NAE policy analyst, and Brent Fulton, managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies, both of whom traveled with the delegation, met one-on-one with house-church members to hear their views.

David Neff, CT executive editor, conducted the first in-depth interview of Argue following the delegation’s return from China.

You have said your trip to China was not a fact-finding mission, because persecution is already well documented. But did you find out anything that surprised you? Did your perceptions change?As far as we know, our trip was the first time the government officials at that level have been willing to sit down and talk about religious persecution and religious-freedom issues in China. I was surprised by that.

During your meetings, did you sense any resistance from Chinese officials?The resistance from Chinese officials was the feeling that we’d come there to inspect, and they made it very clear on the first day, “We’re here to talk about the issues.”

We got to ask whatever we wanted to ask within certain constraints that they imposed on us. On one occasion with the vice chair of Jiangsu Province, after we had raised the question of religious freedom, he said abruptly, “It’s time for dinner.” And we all knew it was going to be time for dinner.

It was a subtle contest of wills to ascertain who was going to control a meeting. You are given high-level access if you are forthcoming with favorable comments about China. But we didn’t give them what they wanted in order to get the access.

Why has the National Association of Evangelicals resisted efforts for the U.S. government to end most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status for China?Part of the church says that the way to get to China is on MFN. But we did not feel that we should just proceed without checking with the people who are in ministry in China.

Across the board their message was unanimous: “Don’t politicize MFN.” The moment you make that a bargaining chip on religious persecution, you’ve politicized it, and that is the last thing we want to have done.

So we followed the logic of the people who are doing the most effective ministry in China. We took a neutral position.

When the church in China says, “Don’t touch it,” and those on this side of the water who are having very effective ministry in China say, “Don’t touch it,” I don’t understand why some people would rather blatantly say we should use MFN as a bargaining tool.

What was accomplished in your meeting with the president of China?The attention of the Chinese government has been focused. If they’re going to continue in dialogue with American leaders, they have to address human-rights issues. That, to me, was a very important part of what we were doing.

President Jiang Zemin clearly stated that these issues are on the agenda for Sino-American talks.

The wheels in China move very slowly. We look at something and say, “What do we do to fix it?” The Chinese look at a situation and say, “What relationships do we need to develop to deal with this situation?”

So we were building bridges, explaining the importance of separation of church and state, a concept that is foreign to them, dealing with the practice of faith and the fact that Christians are good citizens. Christians pay their bills, they show up for work on Monday morning, they put in an honest day’s work, they have good families, and they will be productive people in China. Christians are not to be feared; they’re to be encouraged.

In our main meeting with President Jiang, the subjects discussed included the value of religion to society, the positive role of religion in the United States, and the genuine concern of American religious believers about the status of religion in China. Questions were raised about human rights, abuses, and torture, and how the proper agencies can improve conditions.

We also stressed the need for China’s religious believers, particularly Christians, to relate more fully with international church bodies. We explored the possibility of expanded exchanges of religious leaders, scholars, and others. We discussed the possibility of opening dialogue with the Holy See.

President Jiang observed that the reality of religious practice has not always fulfilled the founders’ ideals. Foreign powers had bullied China during the nineteenth century, he noted, and many improper acts were carried out in the name of religion. Nevertheless, working from the “basis of a clear understanding of history,” Mr. Jiang said, “Differences can be gradually narrowed, and common ground can be broadened.”

The meeting, in fact, the whole mission, was unprecedented. Never before have three American religious leaders been invited to discuss religious issues at China’s highest level.

At one point, President Jiang changed the subject and looked at me. He said, “Dr. Argue, some don’t think I know much about religion. I know about your coreligionists.”

He said, “I was a youth in a Shanghai hospital. I watched an older single lady in one of your hospitals work with the patients and take care of the patients,” including him. He emphasized she was old and single. He said, “She never cared for herself. But from early, early morning till late at night until she was extremely tired, she gave of herself to us.”

He said, “I know who you are.” And then he went back to his dialogue. One plants. Another waters. And God gives the increase.

Second, he stopped in the discussion and turned and looked at me again and said, “You know, I’ve been having trouble understanding the Bible.” It’s interesting that he would admit in that forum that he was reading the Bible.

Before I left the hotel, I felt prompted to go back up to my room and get a Bible. That was a little risky. But I was obedient to the inner prompting, and I had a Bible with me (of course, it was one printed in China), and I felt this was the opportunity.

So after our formal discussions, I said, “Mr. President, you said you were having trouble reading the Bible.”

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “May I give you a Bible?”

He said, “Please.”

I said, “Let me recommend that you read the Book of John.”

A high-level U.S. embassy official was in the meeting. I turned and shook his hand and said, “Thank you for your good work. This is a result of your good work.” The official said, “Oh no. This is the Lord’s doing.” And then he became very serious and said, “God is at work in China.”

What specific measures did you take on behalf of imprisoned religious leaders?I saw the sovereign hand of God in this trip again and again, orchestrated in ways that showed a divine plan at work. We presented a list of 30 names of specific people. We were expecting to have some results back. Some of these are people in prison. Some are people who have been persecuted enough to be on the list. Arriving at that list was not easy. How do you isolate just 30 people? They have answered 8 so far. But they are inadequate in their details and scope. We’re not satisfied.

What about discussions concerning the house-church movement? Did you meet with any of them?We had multiple contacts with unregistered people. We did not want to put anybody in the church—registered or unregistered—in harm’s way. There are those in the United States ready to skin us and send us up a flagpole because we did not spend our entire time with the unregistered church. But that was not the purpose, and the criticism was part of the risk of what we were doing.

While the underground church does not want persecution, they are not afraid. It is a way of life for them.

Are house-church members penalized for their Christian activities?We had a unique situation where we were given a certificate with the stamp of the village committee, telling about the restrictions put on a particular group of Christians. We were able to hand that to one of the officials.

It said, “If you don’t stop going to the Christian church, your work team will not be included in the distribution.” Which I took to mean distribution of funds. “Your electricity will be cut off, and your kids will not be able to go to school.”

We presented a document in English in one meeting. And a woman official, said, “Oh yes, I’ve been given a copy of that in English. We’re looking into it.”

Then we asked about it in another meeting, and there was confusion. They said, “We’ve seen it in English, but we’re not really sure if it’s authentic. We’d like to see it in Chinese.” So we presented a copy of the original Chinese certificate. At least four times we presented it but did not get an adequate reply.

What messages do you want to convey after this historic trip to China?We often talked about the Ping-Pong diplomacy that took place in the seventies: the result of a full, open relationship with China. This was certainly much more significant than Ping-Pong diplomacy. This was diplomacy at the highest level, where the case was made for America’s concern with religious freedom.

Americans do not understand that at any time the Chinese government can come in and require a church to register. That is foreign to Americans. If China’s leaders are going to understand the American Congress, they’ve got to understand the meaning of religious liberty.

Second, I feel it was the opening of the door for the beginning of continuing and further dialogue. Once I was specifically addressed: “Until you die, any time you come into these offices, you will be our guest.” We now have a degree of stewardship and responsibility—as God leads—to provide for further dialogue and further opportunity for continued development and diplomacy along this line.

Also, in the case of the 30 people, it was very clearly articulated, these are only 30 out of a large body of individuals. We want to hear an answer. We want action on these.

Was one of your goals to understand more deeply the push and pull over religious issues within Chinese society?That’s right. The religion issue has to be understood in light of a changing China. China couldn’t feed their population when they had the collective farms. The basic profile of the Chinese psyche is that they are not collective-farm people.

They are entrepreneurs, the business people of the Far East. They’re hard workers. They’re creative. They’re bright. The Chinese government gave farmers the opportunity to develop some of their own land and sell the excess. It worked so well that most collective farms are history in China today.

Has the evangelical movement appropriately engaged itself on the issue of religious persecution?We have a tendency to polarize and to make it black and white. And I’m very concerned about the whole move of American evangelicals speaking out against religious persecution be focused on the facts and not undocumented stories. NAE provided the catalyst document in our statement of conscience [www.nae.net]. It’s the benchmark, but so many have gone beyond that statement.

I’m also concerned about how much of the public’s concern is being used now to raise money to perpetuate ministries.

Tremendous things are happening on this issue. The silence about religious persecution worldwide is being broken. We are getting the attention of the right people.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

We are at an impasse over race because we cannot forgive, declared Spencer Perkins in what became his last public statement. Speaking at a conference on racial reconciliation last January, the activist and writer confessed his past struggles in dealing with “white folks” and how he discovered a radical way forward in healing our racial divide. The following week he died of heart failure at the age of 44. Perkins, along with Chris Rice, directed Reconcilers Fellowship in Jackson, Mississippi, coauthored More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (IVP), and coedited Reconcilers magazine.

It was winter 1970, and my mother was taking my seven siblings and me to visit our father in the hospital. No auto accident or natural illness had landed him in this life-threatening condition. Rather, it was the nightsticks and fists of white law-enforcement officers that had nearly beaten him to death for his civil-rights activities.

My sister Joanie, then 14 years old, took one look at my battered father and stormed out of the room repeating angrily, “I hate white people. I will never like them!”

My mother tried to convince her that her attitude was not very Christlike. But at that moment, with my father lying bruised and swollen, I could tell that even though my mother knew the right things to say, her heart was not in the words she spoke.

Not that it would have mattered. My sister was having no part of those tired, old words—love and forgiveness—anyway. Those white people were not going to get off that easily. All of us siblings wanted those men to get what they deserved. To our knowledge, they never did.

Today, to the casual observer, my sister looks as though she has reneged on her vow. She has white friends, attends an interracial church, and functions well in a white environment. But all her life, like many African Americans, Joanie has had a safe, time-tested method for emotionally dealing with whites.

There is a scene from the movie Roots that illustrates the way blacks tend to label whites. Tom and his family (newly freed slaves) have befriended a poor white couple. Against tradition, George and Mary treat their new black friends as equals. One night Tom is visited by white night riders, tied to a tree, and about to be horse-whipped for being “uppity.” In a backhanded way, George saves Tom’s life by demanding that he deliver the whipping.

Afterward, Tom’s young son sits in tears on the porch with Mary. Summoning all the hate and bitterness an eight-year-old can muster, he vents his feelings. “I hate white folks,” he sobs bitterly. “And if I get a chance I’ll do to them what they did to my daddy.”

“But what about me and George?” Mary asks. “We’re white.”

The boy looks up as if surprised that Mary could say such a silly thing. “But you and George are different,” he says. “You good white people.”

This is precisely how many blacks deal with whites today. From a distance, they are “white folks” and therefore suspect. Once we get to know them up close and personal, we may mentally remove them from the “bad” category.

Explaining this procedure is risky. Generalizations are always dangerous; and many of my black brothers and sisters feel that revealing our secrets in mixed company borders on treason. But there are also many of us African Americans who are growing tired of the tiptoeing that takes place in so many racial-reconciliation gatherings. For us, it is time to move into deeper waters.

White folksThere is an automatic mental procedure that takes place for many blacks upon first meeting a white. First a decision must be made as to whether or not we will give him or her the time of day. If so, then, immediately the “Is he for real or phony?” antennas are raised, the “white superiority” sensors powered up, and the “racism” detector activated—all in an effort to analyze quickly any “vibes” and interpret any data, verbal or nonverbal, from the subject. All this is necessary to determine whether the white person deserves special consideration as an “individual,” that is, a “good white person,” or as a “typical” white person who should be quickly relegated to the simple category “white folks,” as in “You know how white folks is.”

Whether the label is deserved or undeserved, in the minds of most blacks, all white people are “white folks” until they prove themselves “different.” It is part life experience, part self-preservation, and part projection. I have questioned very intelligent black people who admit that this “sizing up” of whites is often not very objective. But it takes place just the same.

Now, before you white readers get too indignant, you need to acknowledge that many of you do something similar when you meet a black person: “Is this a run-of-the-mill black or is he or she an exception that I can respect and treat like a peer?”

This is not intended to be another hoop for whites to jump through. This is about black responsibility in the reconciliation process.

Obviously, this judging is unfair to whites. But most blacks don’t care about the fairness of it. They have a convenient ration-alization that goes something like this: In the grand historical scheme of fairness, the incidence of blacks beating the system, blacks placing unfair demands on whites, and whites getting the short end of the stick today is only a brief moment in history—whether this happens through the courts or through affirmative action. And these minor inconveniences whites experience don’t even deposit an ounce of weight toward balancing the cosmic scales of historical justice.

There is a problem for those of us who believe that God intends for all believers to be one family and that our faith should supersede our race: We sense that something is not right in our attitudes about whites. Something has been conspicuously missing in our dialogue about racial justice and reconciliation. It is the one characteristic that sets our God and faith apart from all the other religions. It is our secret weapon and the major reason why Christians have the best shot at making racial reconciliation a reality.

I am not all that excited about bringing up the subject of grace. It’s similar to the way white people don’t like apologies for slavery and the injustices of the past because of where that may lead—to a demand for reparations.

Part of my consciousness trembles because it has already calculated the consequences of allowing grace to take its rightful place in reconciliation. That part of me already knows where I am heading with this and that it will not go over very well with my homeys. Still, I know that it is the truth according to the gospel of Jesus.

Irreconcilable differencesFor more than 10 years, Chris Rice, my white ministry partner, and I have preached the importance of relationships in achieving racial reconciliation. We are so adamant about this because most of what we have learned and now teach comes out of our own relationship.

For what was not the first time nor likely to be the last, Chris and I had come to what seemed like insurmountable obstacles in our relationship. By summer’s end, both of us held tightly to a long mental list of ways that each of us had hurt or disappointed the other. We were close to settling for irreconcilable differences and going our separate ways.

But in order to demonstrate that we were good Christian boys, we sought the counsel of some dear friends. In my mind, we were just going through the motions. The damage was already done. The pain was too great. Neither of us was prepared for the overwhelming simplicity, the complete absurdity, and illogical genius of God’s amazing grace.

The brand of Christianity that both Chris and I feebly attempt to live by demands that we make a good-faith effort to follow when we feel God is leading. Trying to live up to that commitment allowed us to be bushwhacked by John and Judy Alexander and their ramblings about grace.

Practicing forgiveness will meanbeginning to dismantle the old“white folks” category and practicingseeing whites as individuals.

“Yeah, yeah, I know all about grace,” I thought. I could quote John 3:16 when I was knee high to a duck. Grace is God’s love demonstrated to us, even though we don’t deserve it. But in all my 43 years of evangelical teaching, I never understood until now that God intended for grace to be a way of life for his followers. Maybe I’m the only one who missed it, but judging by the way that we all get along, I don’t think so. Sure, I knew that we are supposed to love one another as Christ loved us. But somehow it was much easier for me to swallow the lofty untested notion of dying for each other than simply giving grace to brothers and sisters on a daily basis, the way God gives us grace. Maybe I’m dense, but I just never got it.

At our relationship’s weakest moment, Chris and I saw, as clearly as we had ever seen anything, that only by giving each other grace could we find healing and restoration. We could either hold on to our grievances and demand that all our hurts be redressed, or we could follow God’s example, give each other grace, and trust God when we lacked the ability to forgive. We chose grace.

I heard a well-known Christian black woman tell about her grown daughter getting into a fight with a white woman on an airplane. Although she taught her children all their lives to be nonviolent, a smile crept across her face and a gleam of pleasure twinkled in her eyes as she described how her daughter “gave that white woman a black eye.” Although this woman believed wholeheartedly in racial reconciliation, there was still something deep down in her that felt it was payback every time a white person got the short end of the stick at the hands of someone black. And she’s not alone.

Because blacks have suffered unjustly at the hands of whites, our brand of Christianity has allowed us to hang on to this particular category of unforgiveness. Sure, we say that we are willing to forgive, and we do. But that special dispensation is reserved for whites who prove that they are “worthy.”

I stumbled across Philip Yancey’s landmark book, What’s So Amazing About Grace, just when Chris and I were discovering grace all over again. God was attacking me with grace from all angles. According to Yancey, “Grace is unfair, which is one of the hardest things about it. It is unreasonable to expect a woman to forgive the terrible things her father did to her just because he apologizes many years later. … Grace, however, is not about fairness.”

It is just as unreasonable for blacks to forgive whites for past and present mistreatment. But grace is not about being fair. We wouldn’t dare demand fairness from God. What’s so amazing about grace is that God forgives us and embraces us even though we don’t deserve it. What’s new about grace, at least for me, is that because we are grateful for what God did for us, we allow him to do the same to others through us. This means that if I know this loving God who is so full of grace, then I will forgive, accept, and embrace those who, like me, don’t deserve my grace and forgiveness.

Our willingness and ability to give grace or to forgive others is an accurate indicator of how well we know God.

A new playerWe African Americans have rightly considered much of white Christianity illegitimate because it accommodated itself so conveniently to racism. But lately I have been questioning our own brand of Christianity. What does our inability to forgive and embrace undeserving whites say about our knowledge of and intimacy with this God of grace?

When I was much younger and just beginning to wrestle with the concept of reconciliation, I was occasionally asked if I had forgiven the men who beat and almost killed my father, or the white classmates who made my life hell while I was integrating a segregated school. At that time, my response always focused on the ones who had committed the offense. “They’ve never asked me to forgive them,” I would say. End of discussion.

However, Jesus knew that the only sure way to peace on earth and peace of mind was for humans to practice forgiveness. His last words on the cross were spoken aloud so that we would have an example to follow. “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus forgave without being asked. For our own sakes, not the offenders’, we are expected to do the same.

Black Christians possessing a truly Christlike faith would not only be compelled, but would also be willing and empowered to forgive specific white offenders. Moreover, we would have the faith and compassion to begin practicing forgiveness to the nameless collective we refer to as “white folks.”

I believe that African Americans will easily grasp the implications and magnitude of totally and unconditionally forgiving “white folks.” Some blacks will find ways to justify themselves. Others will rise to the challenge. My sister, who vowed as a child never to like white people, is just now beginning the process.

In December she participated in a first-of-its-kind gathering in our city. We brought together 25 black Christian leaders and 25 white Christian leaders for an intense, honest, off-the-record dialogue on racial reconciliation. I have been participating in racial dialogue gatherings for more than 15 years, and everyone agreed that none of us had ever been involved in anything this honest. Two days after the gathering, in our small group meeting, my sister bravely confessed through her tears that she, for the first time in her life, had begun the process of forgiving “white folks.”

For Joanie and many other African Americans, practicing forgiveness will mean beginning to dismantle the old “white folks” category and practicing the discipline of seeing whites as individuals. It will mean responding with Christlike compassion and kindness to whites who reach out a hand, instead of going through the process of determining whether or not they are “worthy.” It will mean no longer being obsessed with the blindness of our white brothers and sisters at the expense of tolerating our own.

And finally, reconciliation will ultimately mean not only forgiving and tolerating, but fully embracing each other as brothers and sisters, all of us equally unworthy in the eyes of God.

No, it ain’t fair, but it’s right. And God understands that there will be slip-ups and wrong turns, moments of anger and unforgiveness. But as we grow in our discipleship of grace, each day will bring more victories. And when we fail, our God, who is full of grace, is eager to forgive. The more I have come to know this divine quality, the dearer he becomes to me, and the more I want to demonstrate this quality to others.

What about justice?I grew up in one of the most justice-oriented families in this country. My father has been called a modern-day prophet of justice. Two of his most popular books are entitled Let Justice Roll Down and With Justice for All.

Nothing that I have been learning about grace and forgiveness diminishes my belief in Christians working for justice, especially on behalf of the poor and oppressed. I know many tired soldiers who, like me, have fought for social justice most of their lives. Nothing in the Scriptures even hints that these modern-day prophets of justice should soften their message.

But I know that some of them have carried an extra weight of resentment against people they consider oppressors and against people of privilege who seem to care nothing about the poor. I recognize it in them because I feel it in myself. But what I have found and latched onto is a whole new way of looking at those who refuse to hear the message of justice.

Although we must continue to speak on behalf of those who are oppressed and warn oppressors, my willingness to forgive them is not dependent on how they respond. Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free. We no longer need to spend precious emotional energy thinking about the day oppressors will get what they deserve.

What I am learning about grace lifts a weight from my shoulders, which is nothing short of invigorating. When we can forgive and accept those who refuse to listen to God’s command to do justice, it allows them to hear God’s judgment without feeling a personal judgment from us. Which, in the end gives our message more integrity. The ability to give grace while preaching justice makes our witness even more effective.

Taking baby steps“Daddy, come quick,” shouted my four-year-old daughter. “Someone stole the presents from under the Christmas tree.”

At first I thought it was a joke that the children were playing on me. But immediately I could see that they were visibly upset. Apparently someone had come into our house while we slept, picked out some choice presents, removed the blanket that covers my favorite chair, and used it to haul away about a dozen or so gifts that were to be given to the children and to friends and family on Christmas morning.

To say that the children were angry would be an understatement. My 11-year-old son, Jonathan, after realizing that among the gifts stolen were his brand new Nike sneakers, stormed out of the house in tears.

I sat silent on my coverless chair, stunned, fuming. I had seen the children’s Christmas special How the Grinch Stole Christmas dozens of times since childhood. But I never believed such a tale could come true. How do you forgive a person like this? How do I teach my children to practice forgiveness?

Because it is unnatural, we have to practice forgiveness, like any other discipline. According to Dr. King, “Forgiveness is not just an occasional act: It is a permanent attitude.”

Later that day I put the question to my son, “How should we respond as Christians to the person who tried to steal our Christmas?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Dad,” he said. “Even though he doesn’t deserve it, we’re supposed to give him grace.”

Sure, I knew that the words that came out of his mouth were almost the complete opposite of what he was feeling in his heart (I knew because I felt the same way). But I also knew we had to start somewhere. And if, one step at a time, our discipleship as Christians could include giving each other grace, if our children could learn and practice forgiveness as well as they practice praise and worship, if we could literally create a counterculture of grace, then just maybe, as we all mature in our faith, our hearts could finally line up with our words.

And the world would have to take notice.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

When I moved back this year to Huntsville, Texas, my childhood home, only one small cloud shaded my anticipation of warmer weather, a longer growing season, and waking up to mockingbirds calling through the morning mists. Though it has grown a good bit since I lived here as a child, my hometown has remained verdant, well kept, and user friendly. Live oaks still arch the walks of the state university. Redbuds, jonquils, and bluebonnets paint the early spring hillsides. The crime rate is low and church attendance high. Huntsville’s public-spirited citizens volunteer to teach literacy classes, sort used clothing for Good Shepherd Mission, and serve as docents for the historical museum.

Such manifest virtues got Huntsville named the most desirable place to live in Texas on a recent survey of the nation’s best small cities. But the compilers failed to mention the distinction that darkens my hometown’s history: Huntsville is also the execution capital of the nation.

If you drive just two blocks east of the courthouse square, past the auto-parts store, the shop advertising Perfect Nails, and the First Baptist Church, you come to The Walls, the prison where the state of Texas last year put to death 37 men—a number that equals the combined executions in all the other states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment, one-third of all the nation’s executions have taken place in this small town. At this moment, 446 people wait on Death Row at the Ellis Unit, a few miles outside the city limits.

Huntsville citizens are not proud of this distinction. In fact, it makes them—or I should say us—downright uncomfortable, especially since the executions, which used to be done in the dead of night, are now performed at six in the evening, right about the time most of us are sitting down to our suppers. And “performed” became the operative word last February at the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who, 14 years earlier, had taken a pickax and, with a friend, hacked the life out of two people. A week before her sentence was scheduled to be carried out, camera crews, international news teams, Amnesty International representatives, and victims’-rights advocates crowded our town to chronicle the event. Every motel room was booked, the town’s restaurants were packed, the Enterprise car rental office overwhelmed. Even the stylist who did Bianca Jagger’s hair for the occasion got interviewed by the press.

No one denies that the town is economically dependent on the prison system—or as it is now called, the Department of Criminal Justice. Crime pays in Huntsville—the salaries of our six prisons’ 7,000 employees, to be specific. Gray TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) uniforms show up everywhere—shopping at Kroger, picking up children at daycare centers, eating at fast-food restaurants. If Texas felons suddenly reformed or went elsewhere to rob banks or shoot their wives, the Wal-Mart superstore out by the Interstate would have to shut its automatic doors.

Yet incarcerating criminals is not quite the same as executing them, especially when they turn into born-again Christians. Though the local newspaper’s informal poll showed most of Huntsville’s citizens favored executing Karla Faye, despite her religious conversion and changed life, the citizenry would still have preferred the sentence be carried out elsewhere.

So even as the city’s tourism board met to figure out a way to bring good out of this evil, ordinary townsfolk retreated to their homes to wait out the media invasion, the way they would batten down against a hurricane blowing in off the Gulf. Everyone knew that rowdy fraternity boys, drinking beer and waving Rebel flags, would treat the execution like a human fox hunt. Yet even diehard death-penalty advocates shuddered at the bad impression of our town these unseemly shenanigans would make. We expected that the world’s media, camped on our small doorstep, would portray Huntsvillians as uniformly sanctioning and collectively responsible for killing this repentant woman.

Huntsville has always been the location for executions in Texas, yet until Karla Faye Tucker’s execution we had never felt our imputed guilt quite so keenly. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling against capital punishment had given Huntsville a respite from its dark heritage, and even after the death penalty became legal again in 1976, another six years would pass before anyone was actually executed in Texas. That decade-long hiatus temporarily lightened the dark cloud over our town.

But during the past decade, steadily growing numbers of convicted murderers have been making their way to the gurney waiting on the second floor of The Walls. Before the ban on capital punishment, prisoners had met their end strapped down in Old Sparky, the low-tech electric chair now displayed in the Texas Prison Museum on the courthouse square between Rogers Shoe Store and Ernst Jewelers. As a child, I had listened to the local legend telling why these executions were carried out at midnight. Supposedly, the lights dimmed all over town when the switch was thrown. But I never quite understood the point. Was the late hour meant to avoid an inconvenient interruption of services, or to evade an unpleasant reminder of what was happening across town?

We don’t have to worry about execution brownouts nowadays, however. After the right to rid themselves of their worst offenders against peace and safety was restored to the states, Texas initiated a purportedly more humane method of execution—lethal injection. Now the smell of singed feathers no longer pervades the execution chamber. The prisoner’s limbs don’t jerk, and there’s no danger the body will catch fire as one did in Florida last year. The only accouterments are a white-sheeted hospital gurney and a doctor with a syringe containing pancuronium chloride. The process is quick—the chemical takes effect in 18 to 20 seconds—and the experience is certainly easier on the survivors’ sensibilities. But I wonder if such medically modeled executions are good for our collective soul? Does this switch in styles show we have grown more humane or merely more fastidious about our own feelings?

My grandfather, who worked as a prison guard during the chain-gang era when a prison was still called a penitentiary, insisted on the justice of the death penalty as retribution. A life for a life. At the same time, he considered executions occasions of high seriousness. He debated the subject with rhetorical passion, but also with a reverential awe that today seems almost antique. To take a human life was to put oneself in the place of God, who only could give it. Though he upheld society’s right to exact retribution for capital crimes, he owned that pulling the lever that released the necessary voltage to kill a man might be beyond his personal capacities. And he pitied the man whose job it was.

By that simple confession he early and unwittingly influenced my own attitude toward this thorny subject more than any theologian or legal expert since. Could I throw the switch? It came down to that simple question. As a child, I could feel my skin grow cold when I pondered an answer. However, since coming back to Huntsville, I have yet to hear anyone wonder aloud if he could depress the plunger in the syringe.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out the elephant in the living room. The town’s Episcopal rector, still considered a newcomer here after four years, decided last year to see for himself what goes on outside The Walls during an execution. He stood in the parking lot across the street from the prison on an evening when the death sentence was served on one of the 37 men last year. Groups for and against the death penalty clotted opposite corners of the parking lot, he reported. Some had come to celebrate, some to accuse. “One side was yelling ‘Kill him!’ and the other side was yelling ‘Murderers!’ ” he said. “I didn’t feel like I belonged on either corner.”

Still, he felt the church should be taking some notice of such a momentous event. Among the town’s 31 churches, no congregation had ever met to pray on the day of an execution. However, on February 3 at 5:30 p.m., just as Karla Faye Tucker was being readied for the gurney, some of the members of Saint Stephen’s parish, along with a number of other townsfolk, gathered at the church to pray. Television camera crews, getting wind of this new angle, asked to film the service but were turned away. The service was not a demonstration for or against capital punishment. We were there to pray for someone who was dying, for those already dead, for those they left behind.

In my pew that evening, I feel my skin grow cold again the way it did when I listened to my grandfather telling about the man throwing the switch for Old Sparky. I think about the husband of the woman Karla Faye killed. His wheelchair is parked now, facing a plate-glass window through which the state’s invited guests view executions. He has told reporters he will relish watching Karla Faye die.

Could I throwthe switch?It came downto that simplequestion.

A church member who leads weekend prison retreats reads the Old Testament lesson—Genesis 4, the story of Cain. “Sin is crouching at the door. … Am I my brother’s keeper? … Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. … My punishment is more than I can bear. … Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him” (NIV).

I recall the slogans on the placards I saw in the parking lot across from The Walls. “Hands off Cain,” demand signs on one corner. “Forget the injection, use a pickax,” the other side’s say.

A man who works as a prison guard reads the New Testament lesson—Luke 23, the thief on the cross. “Are you not the Christ? … we are receiving the due reward for our deeds. … [T]oday you will be with me in Paradise” (RSV).

I think about the brother of the murder victim, a thin, sad man I saw interviewed this afternoon. His sister’s death opened a way for him to find peace in Jesus, he told the reporter. Otherwise, he would still harbor the same rage the rest of his family feels. They don’t speak to him anymore, he told the reporter. “I understand. I just don’t know what they’ll do when they wake up a year from now and find the pain is still there.”

The Prayers of the People are led by a retired parole officer. We pray for Karla Faye’s sincere contrition and confidence in Jesus Christ, for eternal peace for her victims, for forgiving hearts for their families, for the guards that are preparing Karla Faye for execution, for the chaplains, the warden, the judges, the jury, the attorneys. The board of pardons and paroles, the governor. For the executioners.

And last, we pray “for the people of Huntsville, that we remain distressed and avoid complacency.” I find the words sticking in my throat. It was easy to pray for the others. It’s harder to pray for ourselves.

In fact, I find the experience both an upper and a downer. Holding a person, rather than an issue, in your mind makes it more painful to picture the scene unfolding on both sides of the plate-glass window at The Walls. Nevertheless, I feel a strangely incongruous surge of joy as we stand and hold hands to sing “Amazing Grace,” the default setting these days for expressing the spiritually inexpressible. Where does this joy come from, I wonder? It feels like some kind of victory—not ours, certainly. We are merely witnessing that repentance counts, even when the cost is everything. That forgiveness alters reality.

The next week, however, we discover to our dismay that we have to come back and do it all over again. This time we’re praying for Steven Renfro who, on August 25, 1996, according to his confession, took 70 Valium tablets, washed them down with liquor, then dressed in camouflage clothes, blackened his face, and shot his girlfriend, Rhena, and her Aunt Rose, who lived with them in the East Texas town of Marshall. Afterward, armed with four guns, one an assault rifle, and 500 rounds of ammunition, he went to a nearby trailer house and shot George Counts, a man against whom he had a grudge. He fired 150 rounds into the trailer, and when police turned up to check out reports of gunfire, he turned the patrol car “into Swiss cheese,” hitting an officer in the shoulder.

The state of Steven Renfro’s soul remains a mystery. Unlike Karla Faye, he has granted no interviews from prison, nor has he appeared on television or developed a Web page. We only see video clips of him on the evening news the day he dies. Surrounded by a phalanx of gray uniforms, the prisoner moves in the protracted bob of slow motion along the hall as if they are all—the condemned man and his guards—swimming through the same thick tide of time. His hair is dark, as is the full mustache weighting his grim mouth. His eyes catch the camera only briefly before turning back to focus down the hall where they are leading him.

As soon as he was taken into custody, Steven Renfro confessed to the arresting officers and has never gone back on that confession. As it turned out, Rick Berry, the district attorney who prosecuted this case, had gone to high school with the accused. Steven Renfro made it easy for his former classmate by assuring the jury at the conclusion of his trial that he deserved to die for his crime. They didn’t argue with him. Neither did the judge. In the months that followed, Steven Renfro was adamant that no appeals be filed on his behalf. He wanted the death sentence carried out as soon as possible.

The state of Texas obliged him. It took 14 years to kill Karla Faye Tucker. It took only 10 months to execute Steven Renfro. Karla Faye had thousands of supporters. Steven Renfro had Rick Berry.

After the hearing to set the execution date, the district attorney picked up hamburgers at McDonald’s and shared them with the murderer in his office. As they ate, they reminisced about growing up in Marshall, then talked about life and the death penalty. “We had a kind of handshake deal,” Rick Berry says, “that we were going to see this thing through.”

Twelve hundred demonstrators, both for and against the death penalty, along with two hundred reporters, had poured into Huntsville days in advance of Karla Faye Tucker’s execution. The next week, a scant two dozen people showed up less than an hour before Steven Renfro was scheduled to die. Rick Berry was one of them.

Though Steven Renfro had refused to give any interviews from Death Row, Rick Berry, his prosecutor and friend, provided the public some interpretation for his unusual—and some would say misguided—resistance to judicial appeals. According to Berry, Steven Renfro’s religious convictions governed those decisions as surely as Karla Faye’s conversion guided hers. He saw his execution “as a way to get to heaven,” the attorney says. “By voluntarily going ahead and being punished, it’s like atonement. He was pretty adamant about this.”

The notion of atonement, of making up for, of balancing moral accounts in some cosmic zero-sum game, has little currency in contemporary Western culture. It’s the opposite of filing for bankruptcy. It’s like submitting to elective retribution. Even Christians struggle to understand the concept. Most of us find atonement efficacious only when applied to Jesus.

Karla Faye Tucker’s supporters, especially evangelicals, based their opposition to her execution on the changes her conversion effected in her. Even inside the prison’s walls she was making a positive contribution to society. So why wipe out her potential for doing good? For years the same argument has been made by those who see prison as a means to rehabilitation, a position evangelicals have not always taken. They have tended to agree with Steven Renfro and the Old Testament: criminals must pay with their own lives for the ones they take. Retribution makes sense in a tit-for-tat world. It elevates the value of human life by putting a high price on it. But can one life make up for the three Steven Renfro took? Can anyone work the moral arithmetic required to solve this problem, I wondered. Only a few people came to the service that evening. How do you weigh the mere handful of prayers for Steven Renfro?

Two weeks later, though, the church is full again. It’s Ash Wednesday, and the execution scheduled for that evening has been stayed, pending an appeal. Instead of the Litany for an Execution, we are starting our series of Lenten soup suppers and speakers. Tonight the soup is vegetable and the speaker James Brazzil, chaplain at The Walls unit, the man the state of Texas pays to provide spiritual counsel for the people it puts to death.

At supper, I sit across the table from a man in a deep blue shirt who identifies himself as a producer from National Public Radio. He explains he came to Huntsville to do a story on the execution scheduled for that day. “I guess I’ll have to leave though,” he says, hunkering over his bowl. “I know it sounds callous, but the execution is the story. If it doesn’t happen, there’s not any story.”

Chaplain Brazzil, his reddish hair thinning and his sport coat barely buttoning across his middle, begins by telling several stories. As he speaks, his fair skin flushes peach with fervor. His deft narratives soon put us in the damp palm of his hand. We feel the urgency in these stories that come from the borderland between life and death. He reads us the note Karla Faye wrote in his Bible the day she was executed, the first time he has shared it in public. He also tells of men he has accompanied to the death chamber whose faith he found as authentic as hers.

From his Bible he pulls another letter, this one written to one of those men by his 16-year-old daughter the week he was executed. In it, she tells her father she thinks about him often, even though she has not seen him since she was two years old. She says she has never really known him and recognizes she will never have that chance now. She tells him she wishes she had the faith he has told her he’s been given, but he’ll be gone, and no one else has ever spoken to her about Jesus.

The chaplain folds the letter carefully and puts it away. In the morning, he tells us, he will be out at Peckerwood Hill, the graveyard for inmates who die unclaimed in prison. Except for the two bodies he’ll be burying and the inmates operating the backhoe, he’ll be the only one there.

I glance over at the npr producer who said there is no story without an execution. I wonder if he can feel the weight of the stories filling up this room. Maybe not. Maybe you have to live here in Huntsville.

Virginia Stem Owens is former director of the Milton Center in Wichita, Kansas, and author of Looking for Jesus, forthcoming from Westminster-JohnKnox.

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