Theological Digest & Outlook

Selections from the March 2000 issue (Vol. XV, No. 1)

NOTE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THE SIGNED ARTICLES ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT ENDORSEMENT BY CHURCH ALIVE.

• How Did We Get Here? or The Origins of the Operative Theology of The United Church of Canada (Victor Shepherd)
• Of a Whirlwind (Ian Hunter)
• A Brief Critique of Bearing Faithful Witness (Ralph Garbe)
• Church or Cult? (Don Faris)
• Psalm 51: Revision of a talk given at the Cedar Glen Retreat on Wednesday, October 13, 1999 (Graham A.D. Scott)
• The Educational Ministry of the Church (Victor Shepherd)
• BEING A CHRISTIAN IN POLITICS: A Speech to the First Hungarian Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Ontario (Tom Wappel, M.P.)
• The Godbearing Life: The Art of soul Tending for Youth Ministry (Paul Miller)
• An editorial feature: Palms & Scorpions, Cheers & Tears

by Victor Shepherd

Early in his adult life Schleiermacher (1768--1834) became aware of the contempt that cultured (but not necessarily snobbish) people poured on the contemporary articulations of the Christian faith. He insisted that these people were held off faith not because of the offense of the gospel but rather because of the offensiveness of its current, less-than-sophisticated expression. Knowing that these people were part of that world which "God so loves", he maintained that the church, and especially its theological spokespersons, were to love them no less. To love them meant at least to take seriously the reason they found faith repugnant (S. said it was merely the crude way faith was voiced that these people found unacceptable), and to address their objections sincerely.

Moreover, S. knew that the Christian mission is never served by the church's deliberately refusing to relate the gospel to human reflection at its profoundest and human achievement at its loftiest. Here he could only recall God's word to Jeremiah millennia earlier, "Seek the welfare of the city [i.e., Babylon, the place of exile where Israel was thoroughly despised], for in its welfare you will find your welfare." (Jeremiah 29:7) The church is never to huddle inwardly in attempted self-survival; it must always face outwardly, forever wrestling with the connection between the substance of the gospel and the thought-forms of the culture. To fear for the gospel in its engagement with society is only to declare one's lack of confidence in the gospel's inherent integrity and vitality and militancy. In a word, not to adapt "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) to modernity is to render the church and its proclamation museum pieces that nostalgically recall a bygone era but lack all relevance to the world around us.

Schleiermacher was born in Breslau, Germany, where he was schooled at the hands of Moravian Pietists. S.'s philosophical brilliance, however, soon transgressed the intellectual boundaries of the Pietists, and he found himself studying modern philosophy and classical Greek at the University of Halle. Here he supported himself by tutoring aristocratic families who in turn exposed him to the higher reaches of German culture, his exposure issuing in his epoch-making Addresses on Religion to it Cultured Despisers. At the University of Berlin he taught several hours per week in every subject of the theology curriculum (apart from the Older Testament), published volume after volume, and never skimped on the preparation for his weekly sermon. He remained a much-loved pastor at the same time that his intellectual gifts found him appointed to the highest echelons of the Academy of Berlin. His misshapen body, ill health and near-chronic pain never found him bitter or resentful.

From 1880 to 1930 S. was studied more than any other theologian in Europe (Luther excepted.) His thinking dominated the church in the 19^th century and continues to dominate most of it in the 20^th.

Schleiermacher begins his theology by identifying the nature of religion. Religion isn't morality. (People can be moral without being religious. Furthermore, the truly free person doesn't submit to an external moral law.) Neither is religion the rational apprehension of doctrine. (People can finesse doctrine yet remain unacquainted with God.) Neither is religion philosophical insight. The seat of religion is neither the will (as with moralists) nor reason (as with philosophers) but feeling. The religious consciousness is the "feeling of absolute dependence." Did S. mean "the feeling of absolute dependence upon the Absolute"? Alas, he never resolves the ambiguity that surrounds him here, often speaking of "God" and "nature" interchangeably. Pantheism (the notion that God is the essence of everything) or panentheism (the notion that the essence of everything includes God) haunts S.'s theology throughout. Since religion consists in the feeling of absolute dependence, doctrine is virtually insignificant. S. assigns no weight to any statement we formulate concerning God. We can merely represent God to ourselves pictorially, imagistically, as shepherd, king, father, etc., without every saying something true of God himself.

Not surprisingly, S. everywhere reinterprets Christian vocabulary, with the result that biblical distinctiveness is forfeited and the substance of the faith evaporates. While S. retains the word "redemption", for instance, his doing so appears pointless (even misleading) when his understanding of "sin" bears virtually no resemblance to what prophets and apostles and the church have always understood.

In the same way all the major building blocks of the Christian faith are recast. Convinced that the particularity of Jesus' Jewish background is simply something that the "universal" Jesus must repudiate (and no doubt aware too of virulent anti-Semitism in Berlin), S. denies that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. His denial of Jesus' messiahship is matched by his silence concerning the Incarnation. Instead of the Incarnate "God-with-us", Jesus happens to one who possesses intensified God-consciousness. To be sure, all humans possess it in some degree; Jesus, however, more than anyone else. Jesus' mission is to stimulate our God-consciousness until it becomes the determining influence in our life. Whereas the apostles everywhere confess Jesus of Nazareth to be the Son of God, and are careful to distinguish the Son as begotten from sons and daughters who are made such by faith, S. is content to speak of Jesus as quantitatively superior in terms of God-consciousness.

Insisting on the feeling of absolute dependence (God-consciousness) as the focus and origin of all theological expression, S. draws attention to the fact that no reflection upon religious awareness yields anything remotely resembling the church's historic statements concerning the Trinity. The Trinity too is an instance of antiquated theological "baggage" that now understandably occasions the contempt of the cultured. Then the Trinity must be jettisoned. (Needless to say, as soon as S. forfeits the doctrine he forfeits what the doctrine always preserves; namely, the bedrock truth that what God is in himself eternally he is toward us, and what God is toward us he is in himself eternally.)

Since Incarnation is the presupposition of atonement, pivotal distortion in the former can be expected to garble the latter. S. omits any understanding of atonement as God's making "at one" with himself those who are unable to "rightwise" their relationship with God. Reconciliation with God isn't primarily wrought by God and owned by believers in faith. Rather, it's something we effect as our God-consciousness frees us from self-rejection. Where scripture speaks of propitiation and expiation, the averting of God's wrath and the sacrifice which effects this, S. says nothing. His silence here is one with his silence on other matters that loom so very large in the bible: the forgiveness of sins or justification. S. never acknowledges that sinful men and women are exposed to the judgement and condemnation of God.

In view of the fact that S. has set aside as non-essential all the historically-affirmed building blocks of the Christian faith (the election of Israel, the Incarnation of Israel's greater Son, and the Incarnation's raison d'etre, Christ's atoning death -- the cross being the one "word" that the apostles insist gathers up all that God as ever said or will ever say) we can only ask where S. appears to have set out on the wrong path. Most elementally he went wrong when he set aside the Older Testament. (Recall he taught every subject except the Older Testament.) This omission was his Achilles' heel. When he denied that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel; when he denied that Jesus' relationship to Israel's scriptures differs in any way from Jesus' relationship to pagan religion; when he insisted that Jesus even contradicts the Hebrew bible (since the Hebrew bible is essentially legalistic(!) while Jesus is not), modern theology was undone.

The Hebrew bible provides the unsubstitutable grammar and logic of faith in Jesus Christ. Whenever it is rejected the Newer Testament is invariably skewed to the point of being falsified. Whenever the Newer is read without the Older, the Newer becomes merely a collection of moralistic teachings (the teacher himself rendered superfluous as soon as his teachings are appropriated), or merely the depiction of a model to be imitated (imitation of the person now superseding the claim of his teachings), or merely a popularized, pictorialized illustration of existential philosophy.

S. enormously undervalues the significance of the sole physical description we have of Jesus: he was circumcized. For the apostles, plainly, it's crucial for Christian faith that Jesus is a son of Israel. For S., however, the Jewish provenance of Jesus is an impediment to the faith of us Gentiles -- and therefore must be erased. The resulting de-judaized Jesus isn't the fulfillment of God's centuries-long struggle with Israel. This "universal" figure is now "ideal manhood (sic) achieving itself under the conditions of history." Religious reality isn't the result of God's incursion in Israel; instead it's the product of human achievement, world history ultimately generating Jesus' God-consciousness.

Everything in S.'s theology, every aberration in 20^th century liberal theology, unravels from this point. According to scripture faith in God begins (and continues) with the fear of God -- fear of the One who transcends his creation and is never to be identified with it, whether in whole or in part, or be viewed as an extension of it. S., however, illogically makes his understanding of the creation (specifically, of the contents of humankind's consciousness) the "whence" and "whither" of his understanding of God. (Here he anticipates the "creation spirituality of the 1980s.) S.'s anthropology everywhere controls his understanding of God (so-called.) He could have avoided the disaster that overtook his theology (even as he never perceived it) if he had begun with theoanthropology, the Incarnation. If he'd begun with a full-orbed Christology he would have found himself emerging amidst the riches of the 16^th Century Protestant Reformers, for whom theology ultimately is Christology -- as it is in scripture. When he began, however, with anthropology alone (albeit anthropology of religion), he couldn't avoid the abyss into which he fell, taking all of 19^th and most of 20^th Century Protestant theology with him. Man, even man at his noblest, is simply not the measure of God.

Victimized by his failure to grasp the Holy One of Israel's uncompromised "Otherness", S. appeared to confuse God with nature or at least with some aspect of nature. Not surprisingly, S. characteristically confused an experience of the admittedly awe-full, mysterious depths of the creation with an experience of the mystery of God. "God" was simply the exclamation of someone moved by the creation's inherent beauty and depth. The confusion, while easy to make and easy to understand, wasn't thereby rendered any less idolatrous.

S.'s misunderstanding with respect to the creature leads to his misunderstanding with respect to sin. For him sin appears to be the arrears or residue of biological primitivism. He maintains (correctly) that God ordains the conditions of human existence; he goes on to say (incorrectly) that sin arises from these conditions. Plainly he's confused sin with creatureliness, depravity with finitude. To be sure, creatureliness is the human condition (we aren't divine), but the human condition as created, not as fallen. Moreover, it's human creatureliness that God fashions uniquely for dialogical partnership with him. (In scripture God clearly loves all his creatures but he speaks only to men and women. His speaking to us renders us "response-able" and therefore "response-ible.") Sin doesn't arise from this! S. fails to grasp the essence of sin. It's not a carryover from biological primitivism; rather it's disdainful, disobedient rebellion against and perverse defiance of the One to whom we owe everything. With sad but appropriate consistency S. never deploys the appropriate (biblical) categories for discussing the remedy for sin: reconciliation rooted in atonement and issuing in regeneration.

Displaying his era's the immense confidence in the outcome of historical processes, S. regarded process as progress. And just as obviously the Hebrew mind doesn't. S. denied that Jesus is the Son of God Incarnate according to the purpose and act of God, and affirmed instead that Jesus is someone whom history inexplicably spawned as extraordinarily God-conscious. His affirmation concerning historical processes contradicts the logic of scripture. Biblical thought, illuming this point through the Virgin Birth, insists that history cannot generate the redeemer of history. History's redeemer must be given to it. History's prideful insistence that it can redeem itself is reduced to absurdity by history's oft-repeated horrors, as the genocides of our era alone attest.

Perhaps the nature of S.'s theology is most evident in his discussion of doctrine. He maintains that doctrine says nothing about God; doctrine merely reflects an aspect of human consciousness. For this reason he can say virtually nothing about truth. In scripture "truth" is used as a synonym for "reality", and also as a predicate of statements that express this reality. Doctrine, then, is the articulation of the truth of God on the part of those who have been included, by God's grace, in God's self-knowing. Doctrine is the human expression of the truth of God vouchsafed to believers through God's self-disclosure. Since it's a human expression, any doctrinal expression is provisional; there's no formulation concerning the being or activity of God that is beyond re-articulation. To say this, however, isn't to say that all such formulation is dispensable with respect to the church's life and mission. Neither is it to say that all such formulation is presumptuous. S. appears to have thought that either doctrinal statements are purely speculative (guesswork) or such statements presumptuously and prematurely (even preposterously) claim to comprehend God, humans taking it upon themselves to speak "the last word" about God. He appears not to have understood that doctrinal statements are the grace-wrought apprehension of God. Believers are admitted, by God's grace, to a genuine knowledge of God without claiming an exhaustive knowledge of the One whose depths can never finally be plumbed. While it's plain that knowledge of God born of an encounter with him can never be reduced to any statement about God, it's also plain that the truth of God and faith in him can never be commended as true (i.e., real) apart from such statements. S.'s failure here meant he could never commend Jesus Christ as truth; S. could only attempt to foster the emergence of a God-consciousness that he assumed somehow to be contagious.

Yet even the crux of S.'s approach overlooked a simple point. Since nothing can be articulated of God himself, said S., and since what is commonly affirmed to be the Holy One of Israel is no more than religious primitivism that cultured people rightly despise, exactly who is the "God" of whom we are supposed to be conscious? of whom Jesus was conscious? It can't be the God of whom the prophets spoke and whose Son the apostles recognize Jesus to be. Then "God-consciousness" is a vacuous term.

S.'s approach to doctrine (at best, undervaluation; at worst, out-and-out dismissal) continues to characterize much liberal theology, while the vacuity of his major item appears undetected.

S.'s attempt at "adapting" was commendable; his unwitting move from adapting to adopting, however, was fatal. For in adopting the assumptions of the world he de-natured the gospel, turning wine into water, when all the while water can be found everywhere and wine nowhere. Here the gospel was reduced to little more than a mirror reflecting the world's self-understanding back to the world, even as the world's aching spiritual need remains unaddressed because unnoticed. In moving from a commendable "adapt" to a fatal "adopt", S. ultimately confused the offensiveness of a less-than-cultured expression of the Christian faith with the irremovable offense of the gospel itself. S. assumed the truth of the world's postulates. Liberalism always does. These postulates are (a) the world has an accurate and adequate understanding of its own condition, (b) this condition, while perhaps needing adjustment or even correction here and there, isn't grievous, let alone both grievous and blind, (c) if the gospel is to be heard, the church must fit its proclamation to the world's self-understanding.

Surely the horrors of our century alone have exposed the liberal theology of the last two centuries to be intellectually shallow and substantively dilute. Then why does it continue? Why is some variant of it still the dominant theological ethos of mainline North American churches and seminaries? The reason is, liberal theology doesn't challenge the assumption that the world has access to the ultimate truth about itself. It doesn't question the facile confidence that the eyes through which the world sees itself have no need of corrective lenses. It doesn't show that the presuppositions of the world contradict those of the kingdom of God. It doesn't highlight the truth that morality and religiosity (and much "spirituality" today) are neither the same as the kingdom and therefore the solution to the world's ills, nor even the vestibule to the kingdom. Rather they are monuments to humankind's defiance of God and barricades behind which it attempts to hide from God. It leaves unchallenged the biblical conviction that the worst consequence of sinnership is blindness to one's sinnership, and in the wake of such ignorance of one's sinnership, further immersion in it.

The most chilling aspect of S.'s theology, and that of the theology of his offspring, is this: S.'s God doesn't so transcend the world as to be able to visit it with mercy. Chilling or not, this aspect of his theology only magnifies the tenacity of those for whose theology mercy would be but an alien category. Liberal theology dominates the ecclesiastical landscape in that the majority of humankind, including the church, remains unaware that in light of the undeflectable judgement of God mercy is the one thing needful and humankind's only hope.

Of a Whirlwind

Ian Hunter

On November 11^th each year, most of us stand respectfully silent for one minute of remembrance. We remember fathers or uncles or grandfathers who six decades ago fought a war in part at least to preserve democratic ideals against tyranny. But when we look around in Canada today, what do we see? Do we see the realization, or the degradation, of those ideals? Do we see stability or do we see breakdown? It seems to me that we owe it to two generations-the previous generation and the next generation-to take a critical look at ourselves and our nation, and to make an honest appraisal of what we have become.

In the last two decades we were warned: I mention only the voices of Malcolm Muggeridge and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Both repeatedly warned us that we were on a false path, a path whose destination was not stability but breakdown and chaos. We did not listen. Today there is much evidence that such prophetic voices were right; that we have sown the wind, and now we reap the whirlwind. What is that whirlwind? Let me try to sum it up in seven broad categories:

(1) A breakdown of the metanarrative:

A metanarrative is a primal myth or story that tells us who we are. Our metanarrative used to begin with the Book of Genesis, with man attempting to comprehend where he came from, whither he goeth, the knowledge of good and evil, why life is as it is; it ended with the revelation given to John, on the island of Patmos, who saw the heavens open and a new Jerusalem descending.

The metanarrative of Christendom has today been replaced by a metanarrative based on science, materialism, and rationalism. I cannot overstate the importance of this point. The metanarrative shapes who we are, what we believe, what we aspire to be, and what is our vision of truth.

A recent survey revealed that only 40 per cent of adult North Americans know which biblical figure delivered the Sermon on the Mount. A bare 30 per cent of teenagers can recount the Easter story. On the Tonight Show a group of American university students were asked to name one of the Ten Commandments; the only student to respond said: "Freedom of speech?"

The generations of Canadians who preceded us, who built Canada and who fought her wars, were shaped by the biblical metanarrative. We no longer are.

(2) A breakdown of national cohesion:

It has been reported that only one out of four public school students, two out of four high school students, can name the Prime Minister and the ten provinces of Canada. Most university students cannot name the three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial; this in a country where expenditure on public education is counted in the tens of billions. In other words, the rudimentary understanding required for exercise of civic responsibility is no longer present.

(3) A breakdown of neighbourhoods and communities:

We see today "gated" communities; private policing; we now spend considerable sums of money on private security systems in order to feel safe in our own homes. We spend large sums on jails, reformatories, and penitentiaries. Have these expenditures made us safer, more secure? Do our prisons and reformatories, in fact, reform?

(4) A breakdown of authority:

would anyone contend that the authority of parent, teacher, priest, judge etc. has not been eroded? Gradually we are realizing that without a moral authority, society can have no civic, legal, or any other kind of authority. Is this a new problem? Twenty-seven centuries ago the prophet Micah described his times in these words: "In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did what right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6). It is not that similar times have not been lived through; it is that such times usually precede disintegration and collapse.

(5) A breakdown of family life:

Surely I need not cite statistics on divorce; teen pregnancy; single-parent homes; abortion rates. This point is so obvious as to require no elaboration.

(6) A breakdown of public education:

I allude here to children preyed upon by schoolyard gangs; to schools that do not know what to teach or how to teach it.

Note, please, this is not just a characteristic of public schools. In his most recent book, Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, William F. Buckley, Jr. investigated 12 private Catholic schools in the USA; of those Catholic schools, Buckley writes: "...this much is absolutely plain: there is today another God, and it is multiculturalism" (p. 37).

As for the universities, to put it politely, they are a shambles, dominated not as they like to claim by teaching, research and scholarship, but by political correctness, rock bottom morale, and widespread mediocrity.

Let me give you one tiny illustration. Last fall I taught a course called "Trials that Shaped Civilization" for the University of Western Ontario's Continuing Education Department. The Department made no inquiry into my qualifications to teach this course, not into my knowledge, if any, of the subject matter. Their only requirement was that I complete a form certifying that I had read, understood, and would comply with the University's equity policies on racial and sexual harassment.

I read recently that the average North American University student has a vocabulary of 3,000 words; by comparison, Shakespeare's plays employ a vocabulary of 30,000 words.

(7) A breakdown in law:

Since this is the theme of my Dominion Chalmers lectures, published under the title Three Faces of the Law: A Christian Perspective (1996), I shall not reiterate what is said there (see review in Catholic Insight, October 1996, p. 20).

These seven symptoms I have enumerated are just that, symptoms. Underlying these symptoms is a deeper pathology, a malignancy, which unless properly identified and treated will eventually destroy the patient. What is that underlying malignancy? Call it original sin to express it theologically; call it human perversity to express it historically; call it a breakdown of natural law to express it legally. Each explanation strives to express the same underlying notion; that without a conception of the Good, of God, then the triumph of evil is assured.

Who is responsible for our plight? This question reminds me that the London Times once invited its readers to respond to the question: "What's Wrong with The World?" The most succinct and honest response was this: "Dear Sir: I am", and the letter was signed "G.K. Chesterton." This is true. As I shall touch upon, the courts bear a part of the blame. No doubt television and the mass media bear great responsibility. But Dr. John Stott, Rector Emeritus of All Souls, Langham Place, and the most influential evangelical voice within the (Anglican) Church of England, lays the major blame squarely at the door of the institutional church. He writess: "When any community deteriorates, the blame should be attached where it belongs: not to the community which is going bad but to the church which is failing in its responsibility as salt to stop it going bad. And the salt will be effective only if it permeates society...."

Now I acknowledge that what I have said so far will seem to many of you a bleak picture. But it is reality, at least it is reality as I perceive it. At this point, people naturally want solutions. I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that I have no solutions, no magic bullet to offer. But I have something better, not a solution, but a promise. A promise made, not yesterday, or last year, or this century, or even during what is still called, in antediluvian circles, Christendom. It is a promise as old as recorded time, a promise of God Himself. And, as Woody Allen might say: "If you can't believe God, then whom can you believe?"

The central event of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch, is the deliverance of Israel from captivity in Egypt. The Book of Exodus tells of the liberation of a nation from bondage, thirteen centuries before Christ was born. That nation, Israel, was no sooner liberated than it experienced a breakdown every bit as serious as what today we see in Canada. When Moses despaired of the people, and of his capacity to lead the, God made a promise; you will find it recorded in the book of Exodus, Ch. 17, v.6. The text says: "You will find me waiting for you there, by a rock in Horeb."

No linguist am I, nor biblical scholar, but here is a fascinating point. Horeb, in the Old Testament, is the alternate name of Mount Sinai. So God says: You will find me waiting for you on Mount Sinai. Now what happened on Mount Sinai? As we all know it was on Mount Sinai that God delivered to Moses the first codified law, the primal law-the ten commandment. The Book of Exodus also twice calls Mount Sinai "the mouth of God" (Exodus 3:1;4:27).

So, first we have the promise: "Go forth and you will find me waiting for you, by a rock in Horeb." And waiting not with empty hands, but with laws fit to govern a society; a society that, like ours, was visibly breaking down. May I commend this text to you as having some relevance to our current Canadian discontents/

Now, of course there are some people who deny that the signs I have enumerated are symptomatic of breakdown. They say: "This is just change, and change is essential". The notion that human beings, as individuals, necessarily change or evolve into better and better people is now recognized as baloney-nonsense on stilts in Dr. Johnson's felicitous phrase-by any thinking person who casts an eye over the daily press; but the collective concept-that our society is evolving, and therefore all change is progressive-remains deeply rooted. Hence to change anything, whether it be the education curriculum or the church's liturgy or hymnals, is per se to improve it.

The patriarchal family is in shambles: well, good riddance to it. The abortion rate in Canada now exceeds 110,000 annually; well, that's a price we're prepared to pay for a woman's right to choose. I recently watched a program on CBC Newsworld "celebrating" the 10^th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada's Morgentaler decision, striking down our abortion law. At the CBC this does not produce a program called "Lament for a Nation", but rather a celebration. Our universities substitute courses in "gender studies", and now "queer studies", for the classic disciplines; that's called "curriculum reform". The Scriptures, two thousand years of Christian tradition and teaching, are by some of the churches stood on their head; well, that's called making the church "inclusive". What I call a breakdown of cultural cohesion, the government of Canada calls "official multiculturalism". And so on.

so how is one to choose between these two views of modernity? How choose between Hunter's jeremiads and the pollyannic voices-as common within the church as outside it-who tell us that every day in every way we are becoming a better, more tolerant, more caring society? Obviously each of you must make up your own mind. But I say to you this: "You must judge the tree by its fruits. A good tree brings forth good fruit." Ask yourself whether the signs I have been talking about are signs of stability and creativity; if you honestly conclude that they are, then truly I have nothing more to say to you.

If you look at the fruits as poisoned, if you see breakdown and conclude that the night is far gone, then I return to the promise which God made to Moses: "You will find me waiting for you, by a rock, in Horeb."

First, a promise that we are not abandoned. This is good news. This is gospel. However precarious the social order, however deafening the sound of collapse, of chaos, there remains reason for hope. We are not forsaken. By a rock in Horeb, I will meet you, says our God.

Second, however aimless and random events seem, in fact they move inexorably towards a person and a place. There is a place. By a rock in Horeb. And there is a presence. The creator God. That is a Christian view of history. Of His-story-God's story. When I was young, my father used often to quote the American nineteenth-century poet, James Russell Lowell:

Careless seems the Great Avenger,

History's pages but record

One death-grapple through the ages,

'Twixt old systems and the word.

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne,

but that scaffold sways the future,

And behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow

Keeping watch above his own.

Third, our text promises that in the right place we shall find God. In other words, ur search is not for a new ideology or a new political party; our search is for God. At all times in human history this has been true; sixteen centuries ago, St. Augustine said: "Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

Finally, it is only after we make our way to the right place, and only after an encounter with God, only then are we fit to receive laws. Not to make laws but to receive them. On Mount Sinai, on Horeb, God did not strike a parliamentary committee, or invite the Law Reform Commission of Canada to make recommendations. He handed down to Moses a code of law, Natural Law if you like, which must shape and inform positive law if positive law is to be effectual.

In other words, law schools, and law reform commissions, and governments in Canada, have got the process backwards: law cannot be drawn up, shaped and reformed, from the top down by human dictate. The law is more than legislated rules. Positive law derives its validity from an encounter with natural law, from interaction with the source of all law. Incidentally, this is not a novel idea. Two and a half millenia ago, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus recognized the same truth when he wrote: "All human law is nourished by one law, which is divine."

If we take seriously these four lessons that I have drawn from the text in Exodus: "You will find me waiting for you there, by a rock in Horeb", how would things be different?

Well, the first point is directed to me more than to anyone else, and it is to be more hopeful. By temperament I am inclined to despair, to being overcome by the immensity of problems, to be cynical or scornful or simply to give up, rather than to seek Christian solutions. This is not a Christian outlook, and I must pray for an increase of faith.

Maurice Boyd used to say that the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is fear. As God increases our measure of faith, our fear should diminish. This does not mean we should become pollyannas, convinced that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, but rather that we should retain a deep, settled, inner conviction that God never quite abandons us to our folly.

To confuse the stability of society with the vitality of the Christian faith, or even with the strength of the church, would be to commit the error that Stanley Hauerwas has called "Constantinism". Historically the faith has thriven in times of adversity, and the blood of martyrs has rightly been called the seed of the church. Also, it is worth noting that all of Jesus' Kingdom parables have one common element: God's Kingdom always comes with what Philip Yancey calls "resistible power". In other words, there is no coercion. Yancey writes: "[The Kingdom] is humble, unobtrusive, and co-existent with evil".

How easy it would be in times of stability to accept the pretensions of earthly authority; as it is, we can see the ship of state shorn from its moorings, listing badly, if no already submerged. It is in such times that the light of Christ shines more clearly for those who have eyes to see. Nor do I suggest that Christians should hearken back to some golden age of faith when it was easier to be a Christian. Even assuming there ever was such a time, God has deigned that we should live at this time, in this place, and it is here and now that we must let our light shine.

Nor do I suggest that we should be so paralyzed by the symptoms of breakdown that I have enumerated that we fail to see good news. The best news today, I think, is that this is a moment of unparalleled opportunity for ecumenism-I do not mean the kind of ecumenism that the World Council of Churches often seems to represent: a lowering-down of Christian doctrine until the soggy mush left over is indistinguishable from secular humanism.

No, I mean rather the kind of ecumenism represented by Evangelicals and Catholics Together, the movement founded by Charles Colson and Father Richard John Neuhaus. I mean the Christian intellectual revival, exemplified by the American monthly periodical First Things. I mean the conviction, expressed as often by Protestants as by Catholics, that so long as that holy and righteous man, Pope John Paul II, occupies Peter's seat in Rome, all is not lost.

In this context, I was interested to read the words of a Baptist seminarian following the Pope's visit to Cuba; speaking from a denomination which once considered Catholicism apostate, this Baptist seminarian said: "The Pope has done everything right; he has challenged Castro to the very limit. Fidel no doubt has his plans. But this much I know: God has his plans, and the Pope is His instrument for opening Cuba to the gospel of Jesus Christ." Not coincidentally Pope John Paul II has written that the kind of ecumenism I am talking about "stands at the very heart of Christ's mission".

We worship a God who promises to make "all things new". We must remember that it was from the detritus of an expiring Roman civilization that God brought forth the Christian millennia, whose legatees we are.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am convinced that the problem of Canadian Protestant churches is theological. Churches that have nothing definite to say about revealed truth, churches that do not unashamedly spread the good news of redemption from sin, of a God both of love and of judgment, are churches that have no convincing reason to go on existing. They have ceased to have any claim on the attentions of a distracted culture.

The New Testament Book of Jude is so small as to be almost unnoticeable: it fits on a page, contains only one chapter, 25 verses. But verse three speaks a powerful word to our age; it says: Join in the struggle in defence of the faith, the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all.

This verse tells us several important things. It tells us that the Christian faith is not our creation. The authorized King James renders this passage "the faith once delivered to the saints". Delivered, not discovered. What is that faith? In one sentence it is that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Or as the British theologian P.T. Forsyth succinctly summed it up: "The Gospel descends on man; it does not rise from him. It is not a projection of his innate spirituality. It is revealed, not discovered or invented. It is of grace, not works. It is converred, not attained. It is a gift to our poverty, not a triumph of our resources."

The third verse of Jude also tells us that we are trustees of a faith; trustees have a duty to pass the inheritance on to the children and grandchildren. This Christian faith, Jude declares, must be defended, or else we shall have nothing left to pass on, and we shall have failed in our duty as trustees.

But, most important, Jude was not writing of those who would destroy the faith from without, but from within. The Christian church has always had less to fear from enemies without, than from destroyers within, those who within its precincts deny its creed.

A recent survey of Canadian Protestant theological colleges revealed that only 24 per cent of their faculty are prepared to teach their students that Jesus Christ is Saviour and Lord. The moderator of the United Church of Canada has repeatedly denied the two cardinal tenets of the Christian faith: the divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ. An Anglican bishop's recent book denies Christ's unique claims, putting Christianity on an equal footing with other world religions. What are we to do in the face of such apostasy? Should we give up on the institutional church?

I am often tempted to say "yes", and for extended periods of time have lived outside the church. But I suspect that our duty is not to abandon but to seek the renewal of the church from within-at least until the church itself has become openly apostate. It is difficult to say when that point is reached. But it is worth remembering that when St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians he was writing to a church rent asunder by factions; Paul condemned its doctrine, its leadership, its open immorality, but he still addressed it as "to the church of God which is at Corinth" (I Corinthians 1:2).

Perhaps the Book of Jude has the best answer for us: it says we are not responsible for moderators and bishops. We are responsible only for ourselves and those whom we can influence. If we ourselves are not prepared to affirm the Incarnation then we have no claim to call ourselves Christian. As Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote: "We and the Incarnation stand or fall together: to abandon or repudiate its circumstances, as set forth in the New Testament, is tantamount to tearing up the title deeds of a property and inviting in the squatters and the demolition men."

At the end of his life, Muggeridge also wrote that in the years to come Christians would have to "lash themselves to the reality of Christ...as, in the old days of sail, sailors would lash themselves to the mast when the storm blew up and the seas were rough."

In what has already been an unduly discursive talk, let me turn briefly to my own professional discipline, the law. I believe that an important aspect of our contemporary malaise lies in the cutting off of positive law from natural law. At the rock in Horeb, God delivered the law-the ten commandments. Now I recognize that the ten commandments may not sort out mortgage obligations, or may not correctly order the priority of creditors on a corporate bankruptcy, but I am convinced that if we drain positive law of its Judeo-Christian heritage, what we shall be left with are rules of straw, rules insufficient to govern a nation of pygmies. The common law which Canada inherited from England was suffused with Judeo-Christian principles; to the extent that we have sought to extirpate those principles from our law, we have foundered.

The clearest illustration of the extirpation of the Judeo-Christian tradition from our law is that subject which decent people strive to avoid thinking and talking about: abortion. For centuries English common law prohibited abortion. In its 1988 Morgentaler decision the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal code abortion prohibitions; today, Canada is unique among countries in the Western world in having no legal restrictions on abortion. In Canada today abortion is legal, for any reason or for no reason, until the moment of live birth. The Morgentaler decision is an egregious example of the Supreme Court radically uprooting our moral tradition.

Abortion is not the only example of Canadian Courts refusing to accept the natural law roots of legislation. But the abortion issue goes to the heart of our legal system because it asks the fundamental question: "Who belongs to the human community? For whom do the protections of the law exist?"

The vacuum created by the Supreme Court's striking down of the abortion law in Morgentaler has brought us within one judicial vote of endorsing doctor-assisted suicide in the Rodriguez case. And two of the majority judges in Rodriguez, Laforest and Sopinka JJ, are no longer on the Supreme Court. The aged, the infirm, and the mentally vulnerable, no less than the unborn, have reason to wonder what sort of law it is that regards certain lives as expendable. And given the disposition of Canadian courts, where shall they turn for protection?

One reason that a secular mindset has triumphed in Canadian law-indeed in Canadian public life generally-is that Christians, whatever their denominational adherence, seem to be embarrassed to publicly declare their allegiance. If, greatly daring, they do venture to put forward a Christian point of view, they often do so in enlightenment language; they seek to make the transcendent ordinary; they accept the secular terms of reference as set by their opponents, and the wonder why the debate seems already lost.

My friend Rev. Victor Shepherd once wrote that in life there are two camps: the "pine, whine, and decline" camp; or Isaiah's camp. You will no doubt characterize my remarks tonight as belonging to the "pine, whine and decline" camp. So be it. But to conclude, let me cast a glance in the direction of the other camp, Isaiah's camp.

Isaiah's camp takes us back to where I began, with the Pentateuch, and words first addressed to Jewish slaves in captivity: "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God. He does not faint or grown weary. His understanding is unsearchable" (Isaiah 40:28).

The prophet here does not patronize his people. He does not offer sentimental bromides, or a three-point Christian program of action. He does not jolly them along by saying: "Cheer up, things are not as bad as they seem". He does not decry pessimism. He does not even hearken back to better times in the past. He does none of those things. Instead, he directs the people's attention away from themselves, and their genuine predicament, to God. Don't you know? God does not grow weary, no, never. His understanding is unsearchable. His ways past finding out.

The situation, I believe, is as I have described it. The post-Christian-or "pagan" might be more accurate-era is upon us. Well these are the times we are fated to live through. And let us not be pious about it; by my own repeated sinfulness I contribute to this pagan culture. Our Christian witness, such as it is, seems to fall upon stony ground. So be it. We can do nothing about how our words are received; we can do something about our resolve to speak them clearly, in love and in truth, whenever the occasion permits. The hearing we receive in an alien culture is hostile; we are disdained or mocked. Well, this is not new. St. Paul told the Corinthian church that people "are so blinded by the god of this passing age that the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the very image of God, cannot dawn upon them and bring them light" (2 Cor. 4:4).

And so, finally, I have reached the image and the words I should like to leave with you: the image and the words of the patronym of my own church, Saint Paul. The image is this: Of a man beaten, scourged, and stoned, times without number; driven out of communities; slandered and vilified; twice imprisoned; three times shipwrecked, once cut adrift on the open sea. Paul wrote: "I have been constantly on the road; I have met dangers from rivers, danger from robbers, dangers from my fellow countrymen, dangers from foreigners, dangers in town, dangers in the country, dangers at sea, dangers from false friends." (2 Cor. 11:25-27)

What an experience of the world St. Paul had, in a man deeply conscious of his past as the chief persecutor of the new way, conscious in the present of a thorn in the flesh that will not leave him, conscious daily of being a sinner in need of forgiveness. A prophet to an unheeding world. Living in such a time, what lesson did all this suffering, indifference, mocking and adversity teach St. Paul? Simply this lesson: "I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor tribulation nor peril, nor nakedness nor the sword, nothing in the world as it is or in the world as it shall be, nothing in all creation, can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

If this be not a hope for the next millennium, a hope for Christians to live by-and to die by-then truly I know not what the word hope means. Thanks be to God.

This article was originally a talk delivered at St. Peter's Basilica in London, Ontario on May 18, 1998, and later published in Catholic Insight, October, 1999.

A Brief Critique of Bearing Faithful Witness

Ralph Garbe

In bearing faithful witness, we must be clear what we bear witness to.

It is clear what the early church bore witness to Jesus as Messiah (Acts 2:36). The hope and expectation of Israel for Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The church, composed of Jew and Gentile was now the new Israel (Galatians 3:28,29; 6:15,16), fulfilling God's promise to Abraham that in him "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:8).

It is clear also that the first "Christians" were Jews. These Jews who believed Jesus to be the Messiah sought to reach their fellow Jews. (They were the Jews for Jesus of their day.) The apostle Paul made it a principle that the first people to hear the good news of Messiah in any city where he ministered were Jews. His Heart's desire was for his fellow Jews to believe in Jesus the Messiah as well (Romans 10:1).

To say that Jesus had no understanding of himself as Messiah is false. The Triumphal Entry" into Jerusalem was an acting out of his self- understanding.

This conviction of the disciples that Jesus is Messiah, which was consistent with Jesus' self-understanding and disclosure is more than an "interpretation." It is revelation. This is faithful. To say that this is merely "interpretation" is unfaithful.

It is clear from the New Testament witness, that Jesus was Messiah for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. This is part of our faithful witness. We must be clear about this.

What we must also be clear about is that Christianity, at least as it is presented to us in the New Testament, makes no sense apart from the foundation of its Jewish roots. The language of the New Testament is based on the imagery of the Old Testament. The central theme of the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice makes no sense apart from understanding the sacrificial system practiced in the Old Testament. His claim to Messiahship as fulfilment of the hope of Israel makes no sense apart from our Jewish roots. As well, reference to Christians as receiving spiritual circumcision in Jesus Christ (Col. 2:11), and being described in such terms as the "Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16), "a chosen race" a "royal priesthood" and a "holy nation" (I Peter 2:9) makes no sense apart from knowing our Jewish foundation.

Therefore, the report is right, that to bear faithful witness is to understand our Jewish roots and express our heartful appreciation for these.

The report is also right in repenting of any anti-Jewish or anti-semitic teaching in and through the church and explain any portion of scripture which might on the surface seem anti-Hebrew. We routinely explain the cultural context of scripture to gain understanding and appreciation of its true message. Similarly, we do not take at face value a teaching such as Jesus' teaching: "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away...." (Matthew 5:29) We attempt to understand its meaning. Therefore, when the gospel of John talks about "the Jews" being in opposition to Jesus, we do not take this at face value. We can easily explain that it is not a generic term, but refers to the Jewish leadership. It is clear from the gospel of John that there were Jews who did indeed believe. The Gospel also quotes Jesus in his conversation with the Samaritan woman that " Salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22) This is hardly an anti-Jewish teaching.

In regard to the crucifixion, the narrative tells us that both Jew and Gentile participated in the crucifixion of Jesus. If people can justify slavery from the misuse of Old and New Testament scriptures, so people can twist the clear witness of scripture to the universal guilt for the death of Jesus into the false teaching that Jews were solely responsible for the death of Jesus. It has always been a puzzle to me how anti-semites have been able to get so much mileage out of the death of one who was himself a Jew. In reality, the death of Jesus is a universal responsibility. I put him on the cross! My sins put him there. Jesus died because of me and for me. Surely Jews along with us should be able to understand our universal responsibility for the death of Jesus.

While the report calls for some necessary and commendable corrections and changes in the way we as Christians and in particular United Church Christians view Jews, Judaism, and our relations with Jews in order to bear faithful witness, the report makes a tragic mistake by compromising Jesus Christ and the church's historic witness to him. To me this report does not call us to a faithful witness as much as it calls us to a "whimpering" witness. The church of Jesus Christ would not be here today, if the first century Jewish believers and later believers, both Jew and Gentile, took the stance of this report. A Jewish person said jokingly, "The early Jewish believers did such a good sales job that they convinced all the Gentiles to believe!" Times may have changed, but Jesus Christ has not. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8) And the "whosoever" found in John 3:16 still applies today, to Jew and non-Jew alike.

As an end note, I would like to say, that I have a Jewish heritage. My grandparents and other relatives were killed in the holocaust. My mother became a Christian when she married my father, and a symbolic funeral was conducted for her when she converted. In spite of her conversion, she was slated to be transported to a concentration camp, but the allies were victorious and the War mercifully came to an end before she had to go. After the war my parents, brother and I became grateful immigrants from Germany to the United States. I still have Jewish relatives. The holocaust must not be repeated. Jewish folk need to be treated with respect and dignity, and if they choose to remain in their faith, respected for it. Bat at the same time, I have tried to bear faithful witness. I would hope that my church, the United Church of Canada will do the same and not compromise our witness to Jesus Christ as Messiah, the fulfilment of the hope of Israel, the fulfilment of God's promise to Abraham-Jesus Christ, Saviour of humanity, light of the world and hope for all.

If the United Church of Canada approves the recently circulated new book of services it will cease to be a biblically-based ecumenical Church and will become an emotionally-based politically correct cult.

The new Book of Services: Celebrate God's Presence (hereafter referred to as CGP), contains prayers and services which are nothing less than an attack on the Father, the Faith, and the Family.

Even the most radical scholars agree that one of the unique characteristics of Jesus was that he addressed his prayers to his Father (abba) and when asked for a model prayer by his disciples he taught them to address their prayers to "our Father". CGP follows Voices United in a scorched earth approach to "Father".

For example, in the first 100 pages of prayer (over 500 prayers) only one is addressed to the Father. Instead we get the generic "God", the impersonal "Creator" of the politically correct "Mother and Father" (p.10), "father, mother God" (p.22), or simply "Mother God" (p.43). Political correctness demands that "Grandfather" be allowed in an Ojibway prayer (p.58).

For 2,000 years Christians have spread the gospel around the world following the risen Jesus' command to "...make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of The Father and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). But now the politically correct CGP will give permission to congregations to choose among 4 different baptismal formulas, only one of which is Christian! (p.244). They do this even while they acknowledge they are breaking ecumenical agreements and this "may jeopardize the ecumenical recognition of a baptism" (p.230).

This clearly moves the United Church away from its original intention of being an ecumenical church to becoming an isolated politically-correct cult!

This move is reinforced throughout the prayers and services by changing the name of God, "Father, son and Holy spirit" into three functions of God (e.g. Creator...Liberator...Healer). Of course there are many more than three abstract functions of God and one prayer on page 77 is addressed to the four-fold God. "The Creator... The Redeemer... The Sustainer... The Sanctifier". While this is bad, it is no worse than the prayer addressed to the pseudo Triune god "Mother God... blessed Jesus... Holy Spirit (p.43).

Even good moves, such as adding John Wesley's Covenant Service are marred by political corrections. The real ending of the Covenant Service as written by Wesley is:

And now glorious and blessed God

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

You are mine and I am yours

to the glory and praise of your name. Amen.

CGP changes this to:

And now, O glorious and blessed Triune God,

You are mine and I am yours (p.123).

Apparently "Triune God" means whatever you want it to mean-a unitarian naming of three functions of God-a Mother God combined with a function of God and perhaps a spirit-anything but the name which Jesus taught us, which is Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

The attack on the Christian family as the lifelong, loving marriage of one man and one woman is obvious in CGP. To make room for gay/lesbian/bisexual couples there are several examples of a Covenant of Marriage and Partnership service. The services are full of references to a marriage/partnership and people are declared to be husband and wife/life partners. All previous United Church marriage services have required the reading of Jesus' words of institution of marriage from Matthew 19:4-6.

Jesus said: "have you not read that he who made them from

The beginning made them male and female, and said, For this

reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined

to his wife, and the two shall become one?" So they are no

longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together,

let no one put asunder". (Italics mine)

These words are deleted as they do not apply to the newly invented "life partnerships". And, of course, the splendidly stated purpose of marriage has been removed from the service.

God established marriage that man and woman might have

life-long companionship, that natural instincts and affections

might be fulfilled in mutual love, that children might have

the benefit of family life, and that society might rest on a

firm foundation.

It is clear that what distorts the new service book (CGP) are the ideologies of radical feminism and the gay/lesbain/bisexual agenda. Celebrate God's Presence celebrates these ideologies.

Is there any recent book of prayers and services which is better? Yes, I would recommend the beautifully bound United in Worship (1988) published by the Uniting Church in Australia. It honours the Father, the Faith and the Family. It is written for a Christian Church, not a cult.

Psalm 51, which we just prayed together, is surely the greatest of the seven penitential psalms. It happens to be the psalm most used in Orthodox worship, being part of Matins, the Third Hour and Compline, as well as the Liturgy. The Interpreter's Bible's Exposition calls it "One of the most familiar and favored passages of the O.T." (IV, 267).

I did not always share that sentiment. I didn't particularly like confessing my sins. I used to think that the psalm grovelled more than necessary. It was negative: mentioning sin or equivalent 11 times in only 19 verses! It was a put-down. At most it was suitable for Lent or Good Friday.

I think differently now that I have spent five years or more praying this psalm at least once a day. Far from thinking of it as grovelling and masochistic, I now see it as realistic, remarkably positive and directing us to holiness.

1. Author

The superscription to the psalm says that it was David's, after the prophet Nathan had come to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Many scholars regard the author as anonymous and dating from after the exile, that is, from after 516 BC rather than 990 BC. Mitchell Dahood in the Anchor Bible Commentaries argues that the word "Create" and other vocabulary show that it was influenced by the priestly writers. My own humble opinion is that the priestly tradition goes back to Moses and Aaron, who flourished around 1250 BC, and that the priestly vocabulary need not be confined to post-exilic times. David himself reigned from about 1010 to 970 BC.

It is of course possible that this psalm is only attributed to David and that the author is anonymous. In this case it is somewhat parallel in composition to the Prayer of Manasseh in the Septuagint, which was the Greek version of the Old Testament containing more books than the Hebrew. In any case the psalm is part of the canon and the church has used it profitably. We may assume that God has provided it for us as a model of confession and supplication, much as our Lord Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer.

The Interpreter's Bible's Exposition doubts that David wrote this psalm, but goes on anyway to say that David "has something of every man in him that excites the interest of every man. He was the great lover, the great rogue, the great saint; he was Robin Hood hidden in the Cave of Adullam, Bernard in mystic rapture at Clairvaux, Francois Villon [roguish French lyric poet, 1431-1463+] surprised at prayer in a temple. ... We recognize the plausibility of the earlier allocation" (idem). For myself I think that the earlier allocation of the psalm to David is not only plausible but probable, and I accept that this psalm is David's composition.

2. Relevance

How then can it relate to me, to you? We have not murdered a trusted co-worker, as David did, having arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle, and that as a cover-up for his adultery with Uriah's wife (2 Samuel 11). But in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be danger of judgment.' But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment..." (Mt 5:21-22 NKJV). Jesus also said, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28). And John's first letter says, "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 Jn 3:15).

Moreover in Matthew 15 Jesus has this to say about the heart: "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man..." (Mt 15:19-20). It is because of the human heart which we share with David and Bathsheba and indeed with Adam and Eve, that you and I can relate to this psalm.

But it is not simply because we share the human condition of separation from God, that we can relate to this psalm. We share also with Adam and David our creation in God's image. We have a destiny and a lifetime in which to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12-13), trying to make our daily lives in the likeness of God as well as having the God-given image of God. Unlike Judas Iscariot, who focused only on his folly and hanged himself in despair, David remembered that he belonged to God, that he was in a covenant relationship with God, that he had a destiny with God.

St John Chrysostom has a message for back-sliders. He says, "Though one be sunk down to the extremity of wickedness, let him not despair of the change for the better.... Let no man then of them that live in vice despair; let no man who lives in virtue slumber...." (Comm Mt 21, Hom. 67, 3-4) St Augustine also has a message for sinners, a message of hope and of the urgency for repentance: "... in order that men might not live the worse from despair, He promised a harbour of forgiveness; again, that they might not live the worse from hope of pardon, He made the day of death uncertain... God hath promised thee pardon; no one promised thee tomorrow" (Comm Ps 102, 10).

David remembered that he belonged to God, that he was in a covenant relationship with God (hesed). The opening words, "Have mercy upon me, O God, / According to your lovingkindness" evoked God's hesed, his steadfast, covenantal love. And so David not only faced up to his own sinfulness, to his own warped nature and to his own crimes, but he remembered his covenantal relationship and consequent destiny with God. He therefore not only confesses his sin but makes supplication for forgiveness (vv. 1c, 2, 7, 9, 14), for wisdom (v. 6), for joy and gladness (v. 8), for a new nature (v. 10), for God's presence (v. 11), for the Holy Spirit (v. 11), for restoration and preservation (v. 12), for salvation (vv. 12, 14), for the power to worship in spirit and in truth (vv. 14b, 15). For this reason Psalm 51 is in fact much more positive than negative, more focused on future growth in grace than on past sins, more concerned with justification and sanctification than with repentance--gloriously joy-producing as repentance must always be to the angels, and indispensable as it always is to reconciliation with God.

(a) Against God only?

There remain three problems for me and perhaps for you. First is David's cry, "Against you, you only, have I sinned..." In truth it was not only God against whom David sinned; he also sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba, not to mention the people entrusted to him. How can he possibly say that he sinned only against God? This seems to trivialize his crimes against his fellow human beings. But the problem is only in one's own western-educated head. Derek Kidner (Psalms 1-72, IVP, 1973-77) regards the problem as a quibble and says that David's cry "is a typically biblical way of going to the heart of the matter. Sin can be against oneself (1 Cor. 6:18) and against one's neighbour; but the flouting of God is always the length and breadth of it, as Joseph saw long before" (p. 190). Joseph was withstanding temptation from his master Potiphar's wife and said to her, "How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Gen. 39:9).

Not only this, but the Hebrew mind made extreme contrasts. Whereas we would say this rather than that, the Hebrew mind would say not that, but this. Kidner suggests the example of Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice..." I would suggest the example of Jesus, saying, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Lk 14:26). When I was a boy, I thought this meant that I had to hate myself, and this misunderstanding caused me considerable grief. But what Jesus is obviously saying is this: "If anyone comes to me and loves his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, more than me, he cannot be my disciple." That's hard enough, but that's what the Hebrew way of talking meant. So also with David's cry, "Against you, you only, have I sinned." David is praying, "Against you above all I have sinned." End of problem, which existed only in my mind.

Calvin

Now we can understand Calvin, who commented, "I conceive his meaning to be that, though all the world should pardon him, he felt that God was the Judge with whom he had to do... His eyes and his whole soul were directed to God, regardless of what man might think or say concerning him. To one who is thus overwhelmed with a sense of the dreadfulness of being obnoxious to the sentence of God, there needs no other accuser. God is to him instead of a thousand. There is every reason to believe that David, in order to prevent his mind from being soothed into a false peace by the flatteries of his court, realized the judgment of God upon his offence, and felt that this was an intolerable burden, even supposing that he should escape all trouble from the hands of his fellow creatures. This will be the exercise of every true penitent" (Comm Ps 51, 4).

Second, nearly everyone chokes over the verses, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, / And in sin my mother conceived me." The Interpreter's Bible even wondered what David's mother might have thought about this. In fact even St Augustine way back in the 400's saw that David was not talking about his mom. Augustine said, "Was David born of adultery--being born of Jesse, a righteous man, and his own wife? What is it that he saith himself to have been in iniquity conceived, except that iniquity is drawn from Adam?" (Ps 51, sec. 10).

Derek Kidner comments, "David is, of course, not speaking against his mother in particular, nor against the process of conception. Nor is he excusing himself. It is the climax of the facts that he is facing: that his sins are his own (the fivefold my in verses 1-3), and inexcusable (4); worst of all, they are the very element he lives in (5). End of problem, unless you do not believe in what Augustine called original sin, but which is more accurately called Adamic sin or the all-pervasive predeliction to sin.

Calvin is instructive here. In verse 5 David "now proceeds further than the mere acknowledgement of one or of many sins, confessing that he brought nothing but sin with him into the world, and that his nature was entirely depraved. He is thus led by the consideration of one offence of peculiar atrocity to the conclusion that he was born in iniquity, and was absolutely destitute of all spiritual good. Indeed, every sin should convince us of the general truth of the corruption of our nature." Note that "his nature was entirely depraved" is explained by "absolutely destitute of all spiritual good."

Calvin continues: "The Pelagians, to avoid what they considered to be the absurdity of holding that all were ruined through one man's transgression, maintained of old, that sin descended from Adam only through the force of imitation. But the Bible, both in this and other places, clearly asserts that we are born in sin, and that it exists within us as a disease fixed in our nature. David does not charge his parents, nor trace his crime to them, but sits himself before the Divine tribunal, confesses that he was formed in sin, and that he was a transgressor ere he saw the light of this world. ... it is enough that we hold that Adam, upon his fall, was despoiled of his original righteousness, his reason darkened, his will perverted, and that, being reduced to this state of corruption, he brought children into the world resembling himself in character. Should any object that generation is confined to bodies, and that souls can never derive anything in common from one another, I would reply that Adam, when he was endued at his creation with the gifts of the Spirit, did not sustain a private character, but represented all mankind, who may be considered as having been endued with these gifts in his person; and from this view it necessarily follows that when he fell, we all forfeited along with him our original integrity" (Comm Ps 51, 5).

Barth

Karl Barth comments on verse 5, "This obviously means that the request for forgiveness corresponds exactly to the situation of the one who makes it. He is the man who has sinned, who has sinned against God, who has done that which is displeasing to Him, against whom God is absolutely in the right, who is himself absolutely in the wrong against God and therefore guilty, not merely in individual thoughts and words and works, but, as expressed in these, in the very root of his existence (in what will later be called his heart). And conversely, his situation corresponds exactly to his request for forgiveness. The request is not addressed to God incidentally. It does not simply express one disposition of man. It is not disposable. For man himself, the whole man, just as he is, is expressed in it. This is what he is, the one who is with God and before Him, who has transgressed against Him, who can only displease Him, who is entirely in the wrong against Him, not merely on the surface but to the very core, not partially, but in the unity of his existence" (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, 579).

Third, for me at least, there was the problem of the only acceptable sacrifice to God being a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. To my western, 20th century mind, this made God something of a sadist; he was only happy if I was broken and humiliated and perhaps if I were dead. But Ezekiel set us straight on that score; God says, "Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? ... and not that he should turn from his ways and live? ... I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies... Therefore turn and live!" (Ezek 18:23,32). And of course St Paul wrote that incomparable sentence: "God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8). God is not a sadist. Why then this necessity of a broken spirit and heart?

Again Ezekiel comes to the rescue. Speaking to the remnant Israel God says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them (Ezek 36:25-27). The human heart needs to be broken because it is a heart of stone.

When David prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God,/ And renew a steadfast spirit within me," the first step in the answer to this prayer was breaking his heart of stone so that a clean heart could be transplanted within him. Who but a man with a heart of stone would sleep with a fellow-soldier's wife while her husband was away on duty? Who but a man with a heart of stone would think only of how to cover up the affair? Who but a man with a heart of stone would think of covering-up by arranging his fellow soldier's death in battle? The heart of stone is a heart full of pride--a pride that will not bow down to God or plead for mercy--a pride that thinks only of oneself and forgets the covenant relationship one has with God and one's fellow human beings.

It is the heart of stone that is sadistic, not the God of love.

Jeremiah spoke truly: "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jer 17:9)

Calvin

Calvin commented, "The man of broken spirit is one who has been emptied of all vain-glorious confidence, and brought to acknowledge that he is nothing. The contrite heart abjures the idea of merit, and has no dealings with God upon that principle of exchange. Is it objected that faith is a more excellent sacrifice than that which is here commended by the Psalmist, and of greater efficacy in procuring Divine favour, as it presents to the view of God that Saviour who is the true and only propitiation? I would observe that faith cannot be separated from the humility of which David speaks" (Comm Ps 51, 17).

St Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022) wrote, "Humility is as it were a treasure that cannot be stolen, which is formed in the mind that bears a conviction that only by the power of grace received from Christ are there any good qualities to be shown in oneself--that is, truth, meekness and righteousness" (Sin of Adam, Hom. 10).

4. Continual repentance

Yet Holy Scripture speaks of David as a man after God's own heart! Samuel said so (1 Sam 13:14); the apostle Paul said so (Acts 13:22). I suggest that David was a man after God's own heart because he had enough humility left in him to repent--to turn to God and look to God for the forgiveness of his sins. How many times in the past years have we heard of Government officials being charged with negligence or breaking the law or immorality and yet issuing press releases denying any wrong-doing? Many human beings are in a state of denial--the denial that they are sinners, that they have fallen short, or that they have done wrong.

David was not like that. Indeed, as his acceptance of Abigail's appeal shows (1 Sam 25), and as his refusal to accept his brave soldiers' offering of Bethlehem well water shows (2 Sam 23:13-17), he had a genuine concern for justice and righteousness, for human limitations and the rights of God.

Nonetheless, great, gifted and good as he was, he fell for Bathsheba's temptation, as she bathed on her rooftop in sight of the palace. Psalm 51 is so remorseful because this great and good man knew he had fallen very low, had broken four if not five of God's Ten Commandments, and had deliberately sinned against the God whom he loved and who had blessed him so greatly. The more one grows in grace, the more aware one becomes of one's sinfulness, and the more imperative it is that one return to the Holy Friend of Mankind for being put right with him.

St Dorotheos of Gaza (6th C.) said that "The soul, when it is humbled, begins to bear fruit, and the more it bears, the lowlier it becomes. So also the saints; the nearer they get to God, the more they see themselves as sinners" (Discourses).

Abbot Vasileios of Stavronikita, Mt Athos, writes, "The Lord's call to repentance does not mean that we are to be converted once only, nor that we should repent from time to time (though one ought to begin with that). It means that our whole life should be a conversion, a constant repentance; that in us there should always be a state of repentance and contrition. We ought not to speak or think or do anything outside that atmosphere, that attitude of penitence and contrition which should fill our whole being" (Hymn of Entry, SVSP, 1984, p. 124).

Calvin

Calvin helps us here. He comments, "David might be much relieved by the announcement [of forgiveness] of the prophet [Nathan], and yet be visited occasionally with fresh convictions, influencing him to have recourse to the throne of grace. However rich and liberal the offers of mercy may be which God extends to us, it is highly proper on our part that we should reflect upon the grievous dishonour which we have done to his name, and be filled with due sorrow on account of it. Then our faith is weak, and we cannot at once apprehend the full extent of the divine mercy; so that there is no reason to be surprized that David should have once and again renewed his prayers for pardon, the more to confirm his belief in it. The truth is that we cannot properly pray for the pardon of sin until we have come to a persuasion that God will be reconciled to us. Who can venture to open his mouth in God's presence unless he be assured of his fatherly favour? And pardon being the first thing we should pray for, it is plain that there is no inconsistency in having a persuasion of the grace of God, and yet proceeding to supplicate his forgiveness. In proof of this, I might refer to the Lord's Prayer, in which we are taught to begin by addressing God as our Father, and yet afterwards to pray for the remission of our sins. God's pardon is full and complete; but our faith cannot take in his overflowing goodness, and it is necessary that it should distil to us drop by drop. It is owing to this infirmity of our faith, that we are often found repeating and repeating again the same petition, not with a view surely of gradually softening the heart of God to compassion, but because we advance by slow and difficult steps to the requisite fullness of assurance" (Comm Ps 51, 9).

J. Neville Ward

In his classic, The Use of Praying (Epworth, 1967-1978), Neville Ward writes that the sense of sin "is the result of adoration. It flows naturally out of a security that comes into one's life as one is led to a positive view of the goodness of life and the glory and love of God. It flowers and fruits only in fertile stretches of happiness. If any one had the luck really to see life as a welcoming love he would begin to feel nervous and ashamed about what his current attempt at being human amounted to. This nervous hesitation and its gentle but inexorable defeat is set out perfectly in George Herbert's poem 'Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back'. It is marvellous how much Christianity goes into so small a space.

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

'A guest,' I answered, 'worthy to be here';

Love said, 'You shall be he.'

'I the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on thee.'

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth, Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.'

'And know you not,' says Love, 'who bore the blame?"

'My dear, then I will serve.'

'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'

So I did sit and eat.

"The sudden recognition of the mystery of goodness and holiness in life as a whole, or gathered intensively in some representative being, may well draw from the astonished heart something like Peter's 'Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord!'. But normally the process is gradual. As your conviction that God is love, that life is good, increases, automatically your defences crumble, you wish to be occuplied more in loving life than in protecting your self and shoring up its pretentions. Trust becomes stronger than recoil, and you find yourself willing to be exposed to at any rate much more of the truth than you ever thought you could endure. Finally, from the depths of the self, there rises the desire to offer one's life to the truth, ready to see what that light candidly shows. ...

"As it naturally derives from thankfulness and adoration, confession should return into thankfulness as soon as possible. The mind cannot take the truth about itself without the truth about God. ..." (pp. 42-43).

Was David justified by his faith so movingly shown by this psalm? Yes. Yes of course! But that is not the end of the story. David no where suggests that his feeling bad made everything right. David must have known that it would take an act of God to put him right. David knew he needed an act of creation as to his heart and spirit ("Create in me a clean heart, O God, / And renew a right spirit within me"). And David knew that animal sacrifices on the altar would not in themselves put him right with God, as he says very plainly in this psalm. David was surely looking for a sacrifice analogous to his own broken spirit and broken and contrite heart but greater--far greater--than what he could offer. What he could offer in his brokenness and humility could only be an anticipation of a greater sacrifice than his.

Now in hindsight we know that Christ Jesus is the one sacrifice by which human beings are reconciled to God through faith and that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5). I therefore wonder if by God's grace David had some vision of Christ's sacrifice and of his gift of the Holy Spirit?

I believe so, but I think the vision is kaleidoscopic; and yet, altogether in the psalm, the pieces of the vision add up to an anticipation of Christ himself. Let us consider the most obvious connections. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, / A broken and a contrite heart-- / These, O God, you will not despise." The Greek for broken suggests being cut in pieces, as Jesus' flesh was cut by the lash and then by the nails. The Greek for contrite suggests "humbled", and we know from St Paul that Christ Jesus humbled himself not only by becoming one of us but by dying on the cross (Phil 2). Moreover Jesus himself said, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart..." (Mt 11:29).

I believe that David's threefold supplication for washing anticipates the baptism into Christ of which Paul speaks in Romans 6. "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity." "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." (Some commentators think that the purge me and the second wash me are not prayers but future indicatives; God will purge me, God will wash me, God will make me hear joy and gladness. In any case) David's references to washing come certainly from the ceremonial washings of the law, but that does not close the door on his anticipation of something greater, something coming from God's act of creation on sinners, namely baptism from God himself. After all he knows he needs an act of creation for a clean heart and a steadfast spirit.

David addresses God as the God of his salvation, and it is not an accident that the angel told Joseph to name Mary's baby Jesus, that is, roughly speaking, Salvation. David did not anticipate Jesus in this address to God, but God took it up at the right time in the naming of his Son. God is the God of salvation and his means of reconciling us with himself bears that name, Salvation--Jesus.

Not only does David, however dimly and in part, anticipate God's act of salvation in Jesus Christ crucified, but he anticipates the future pouring out of the Holy Spirit. He does this simply by showing how much he needs God's presence and Holy Spirit: "Do not cast me away from your presence, And do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, And uphold me by your generous Spirit." For David the Holy Spirit is personal, relating to him as an individual. It would remain for the prophet Joel to anticipate the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on all flesh. It would remain for centuries of Church experience to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet here a thousand years before Jesus' birth we see David's deep, profound and urgent sense of need for forgiveness and peace with God touching on and anticipating what would later become clear, namely, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on all believing flesh, making us a new creation (2 Cor 5).

We have the same need as David. That is why his psalm is as useful to us Christian today has it was for him, for the faithful Israelites and for the faithful remnant.

The 19th Century elder, St Seraphim of Sarov, described the purpose of Christian life as nothing else than the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. He said, "The true main of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit" (quoted in Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1964, p. 235). If this seems oversimplified, St Pachomius' disciple Theodore said, "What is greater than to possess the Holy Spirit?"

Ward

Methodist Minister J. Neville Ward echoes these sentiments in his The Use of Praying: "If we are in touch with the source and substance of all good we shall be fools to ask for anything less than this, for anything less than the best. The best thing in life is the kingdom of God. The best that can happen to anyone, or to the world, is to be filled with all the fullness of God. One cannot stand within the purpose of God, ready to pray in his name, and ask for anything less, or anything else" (p. 90).

Then come the last two verses, relating to Zion, Jerusalem's walls and animal offerings on the altar. Many modern commentators insist that these verses are later additions, even corrections of the radical notion that God does not desire such sacrifices. But not all modern commentators say this, nor do I accept this, because such a position does not take into account the Hebrew idiom of not that but this, meaning this more than that.

Moreover it does not consider just who David was, that is, king of a people. So far his psalm has been almost entirely between him and God--though there is that reference to his teaching transgressors (v. 13). But a king is concerned with his people, and in truth one's relation to God will sooner or later effect one's relation to other people (Mt 22:37-40; Lk 10:25-37). So here. David ends his psalm on a note of intercession for his people as personified by his city. And his certainty that animal and farm sacrifices will be offered anticipates the ultimate need for the shed blood of Jesus Christ. The act of creation of a new heart and a steadfast spirit had yet to be done, and it was done at Pentecost only after Christ had died for us and risen from the dead in accordance with the Scriptures.

I have only scratched the surface of this priceless psalm. Let me close with three prayers, two from the eastern tradition, and one from the western. First, a small portion of a meditative prayer by St Andrew of Crete (c. 606-740); second, the tenth prayer of the priest at Matins; and third, a poem by John Donne (c. 1571-1623), Dean of St Paul's, London:-

(1)

I have sinned, I have offended, I have set aside thy commandments; for in sins have I progressed and to my sores I have added wounds. But in thy compassion have mercy upon me, O God of my fathers. ...

David, the forefather of God, once sinned doubly, pierced with the arrow of adultery and the spear of murder. But thou, my soul, art more gravely sick than he, for worse than any acts are the impulses of thy will.

David once joined sin to sin, adding murder to fornication; yet then he showed at once a twofold repentance. But thou, my soul, hast done worse things than he, yet thou hast not repented before God.

David once composed a hymn, setting forth, as in an ikon, the action he had done; and he condemned it, crying, "Have mercy upon me, for against thee only have I sinned, O God of all. Do thou cleanse me." ...

I have discoloured thine image and broken thy commandment. All my beauty is destroyed and my lamp is quenched by the passions, O Saviour. But take pity on me, as David sings, and "restore to me thy joy."

Turn back, [my soul,] repent, uncover all that thou hast hidden; say unto God, to whom all things are known: Thou alone knowest my secrets, O Saviour; "Have mercy on me," as David sings, "according to thy mercy." (The Lenten Triodion, tr. Mother Mary & Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, Faber & Faber, 1978; St Tikohon's SP, 1994, pp 402-404)

(2)

O Lord our God, you have granted humans pardon through repentance and have set us as an example of the acknowledgment of sin and of the confession which is unto forgiveness, the repentance of the prophet David. Since you are the same Lord, have mercy on us according to your great mercy, despite the manifold and great iniquities into which we have fallen; and through the multitude of your compassions, blot out our transgressions. For against you we have sinned, O Lord, who know the secret and hidden things in the human heart and who alone have the power to remit sins. And as you have created a clean heart within us, and established us with your guiding Spirit, and made known to us the joy of salvation, cast us not away from your presence. But since you are good and love mankind, graciously consent to give us grace, that until our last breath we may offer you the sacrifice of righteousness and an offering upon your holy altars. Through the mercies and bounties and love toward mankind of your only-begotten Son, with whom you are blessed, together with your all-holy, and good, and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

(Adapted from Service Book..., Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, 1987, pp. 55-56)

(3)

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in, a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore;

And, having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.

1633

Victor Shepherd

The problem with the person suffering from amnesia isn't that he can't remember where he's left his umbrella and will have to spend another $15 to replace it. The problem isn't even that he's going to get wet and will be inconvenienced before he arrives home. The problem with the amnesiac, rather, is that he doesn't know where home is and therefore will never find his way there. More tragically, the person with no memory doesn't know who he is. No less tragically, the person with no memory can't be trusted. This isn't to say that the amnesiac is unusually nasty. It is to say, however, that the person with no awareness of his identity behaves erratically, and behaves erratically just because he has no sense of anything that might be "out of character."

The church's educational ministry seeks to prevent a similar development from overtaking the church. A congregation or denomination that suffers from collective loss of Christian memory lacks a Christian identity. Lacking Christian identity, it can only behave erratically, all the while thinking itself to be the soul of consistency. Once again, this isn't to say there's treachery here born of mean-spiritedness, but it is to say that without a Christian memory people meander without knowing themselves to be meandering, forever losing their way without knowing the way.

Concerning the church's educational responsibility, the Protestant Reformers liked to speak of the church as "the school of faith." While "school" may call up "schoolish", replete with associations that many find dull if not distasteful, our Reformation predecessors were at least aware that the church's educational ministry has to do with truth, with substance, with elementary beginnings that develop cumulatively with the result that "everyone may be presented mature in Christ." (Colossians 1:28) Our foreparents knew, as did the Hebrew prophets before them, that the living God is anything but ephemeral, vague, "will-o'-the-wispish", abstract. The Holy One, rather, is concrete, denser than the utmost density we can imagine, opaque, solid, substantive. And not only dense but so very immense too - filling all space - that God is the one prophet and apostle know to be inescapable. God can always be fled, to be sure, but not escaped. Then who this God is whom we can't escape and who - thanks to the Son's absorbing in himself the God-forsakenness of Gethsemane and Golgotha - will never forsake us; who this God is is the "Other-with-us" in which the church endeavours to school its people from the youngest to the oldest.

Mind and heart must be steeped in the truth of God as relentlessly as a youngster learns the alphabet, then assembles words and phrases, then grasps something of the grammar that orders human discourse and without which what is known can never be communicated profoundly. That's it! It's only as grammar is learned too can we commend to others what we've come to comprehend for ourselves. And of course we soon discover that to commend what we comprehend is to find our own comprehension gaining depth and breadth. "Force-feeding", however, is like "cramming" for exams: the momentary glut disappears as quickly as it was acquired. Better by far is the gradualist approach that Isaiah cherished when he spoke of "teaching knowledge" and "explaining the message": "For it will be precept upon precept…line upon line…here a little, there a little." (Isaiah 28:10) Surrounded as he was by Canaanite nations, Isaiah knew that that as surely as the unique substance of Israel's faith thinned out through dilution, distraction and detraction, "faith" would become indistinguishable from the idolatry that faced his people wherever he looked.

It is God who is to be loved with the mind. Apart from the church's ceaseless effort at educating its people, the Holy One won't be loved with the mind; which is to say, won't be loved at all.

With respect to children, I still think Northrop Frye's advice to be sound: there's no substitute for scripture's delight in story telling. The stories are to be told and re-told at every age and stage of the younger person's development. Needless to say, this doesn't mean that the stories are to be regurgitated year after year in mind-numbing monotony, devoid of subtlety, sophistication and application. Neither does it mean that these stories only are to be told. But it is to say that regardless of pedagogical technique, and regardless of the much-needed variety in the content and manner of presentation, somehow the ongoing educational task of the church always manages to recycle the "old" stories. For to recycle the stories is to find them newly pertinent to the newly-recognised problems and perplexities besetting humankind. Northrop Frye argued that only as these stories sank down to the bottom of the English student's mind and remained embedded there - but not buried "out of sight, out mind" - would that student have any chance of understanding the tradition of English literature and of western culture in general. How much more is it the case that only as these stories remain embedded in the developing Christian's mind can they be revisited at any period of that person's life and be found to speak with ever-fresh relevance. More to the point, because they speak with conclusive relevance they are acknowledged to speak authoritatively.

Admittedly, at first the youngest child won't be able to make much of many of the stories, despite the best efforts of parent or Sunday School teacher. Still, as long as the stories remain part of the hearer's mental (and cardiac!) furniture, the stories can be probed in ever-greater depth as the hearer is granted ever-more intimate access to the One of whom they speak.

Think of the story of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah. For the many the story's grotesqueness will be bizarre at best; for others, repulsive at worst. Still, for good or ill, the story is a vivid aspect of the church's memory. Abraham, the prototype of the person of faith, has been promised spiritual descendants as numerous as the sands on the seashore. If the promise is to be fulfilled, then two conditions must be met: Abraham must persevere in faith (or else he can't be the foreparent of descendants-in-faith), and Abraham's son, Isaac, must survive (or else there won't be descendants-in-faith.) Abraham, then, is wracked with this dilemma: if he obeys God and offers up his son Isaac, then God's promise is null and void, since Isaac hasn't survived; if, on the other, hand, he second-guesses God and preserves Isaac, then God's promise is null and void, since his disobedience exemplifies his unfaith. Abraham's obedience nullifies the promise as surely as his disobedience nullifies it. With an anguish that the old story heightens by means of such literary devices as "Take your son, your only son…" (Genesis 22:2), Abraham decides to stake everything on trusting God to fulfil God's promises in ways that Abraham can't even imagine at this point. He will obey God even though such obedience, from a human perspective, ensures the non-fulfilment of the promise.

Years later, the child-become-adult, now part of a church growing ever smaller in a secular society, understands with fresh comprehension the force of Christ's promise concerning the inviolability of the church before the powers of death. (Matthew 16:18) The child-become-adult is equipped, able to assess assorted responses to the church's retraction. Some responses, of course, are gospel-generated; other "solutions" are little more than techniques, tools, gimmicks of one kind or another. Of all the proffered programmes for assisting the church today, which are to be endorsed and which declined? The person possessed of Abraham's faith will continue to uphold the gospel, even though it is fidelity to the gospel that appears to be shrinking the church in an era and a society that insists the gospel to be obsolete. The dilemma, again, is Abraham's: do we obey God, counting on God's fulfilment of the promise concerning the church, or do we second-guess God, assuming we "know better", preferring to do what we think will ensure the church's future, even though this latter approach entails forfeiting the gospel? Abrahamic faith means that we trust God to fulfil God's own promises in ways that we can't imagine now.

While it's one thing to speak of the need to preserve biblical substance in the church's educational ministry, finding the vehicle for this is another. Twenty-five years ago, in one of my postgraduate courses, James D. Smart, well-known bible scholar, theologian, translator and Christian educator, commented that any minister would be fortunate to find 10% of the worshipping congregation in an adult study group. The 10% of 25 years ago has shrunk, I fear, to 5% in 1999. Still, there remains a place for the small group. Streetsville congregation had a C.S. Lewis reading group that met monthly for four years, reading its way through all of Lewis's popular writings. Alpha and Bethel courses in our congregation continue to help many. Again, our congregation has had a bible study that meets one Sunday evening per month, or meets Sunday morning before worship for six consecutive Sundays only. (People will commit themselves to a study programme with a predetermined conclusion when they often won't to one that remains ongoing.) I have found that the latter arrangement (Sunday morning) attracts far more people, since they were coming to worship on Sunday morning in any case. (Modernity's busyness finds even Sunday evening too much for many to manage.)

While not unappreciative of the vehicles I've just mentioned, I have yet found, over a 21-year ministry in the same congregation, that the Sunday morning sermon remains a most effective "delivery system." Each autumn for over a dozen years now I have placed a small insert in the bulletin, "I should like a sermon on…." Worshippers fill in the insert and place it on the offering plate. These requests are gathered up and become the roster for my preaching throughout the following spring. In addition to providing "fodder" for sermons, the requests tell me where people are living, what they are thinking, how they are suffering, and why they are perplexed or angry or anxious. The requests vary from the expected (the struggle for faith in a world riddled with evil) to those that I didn't foresee (the neurophysiology of endogenous depression.) By means of this vehicle I've found myself schooling the congregation in such matters as euthanasia, the sin against the Holy Spirit, whether the bible should be censored, the nature of psychopathy, angels, life-as-relationships, gossip, the meaning and timing of confirmation, the ethics of organ transplants, and even "revival and Jonathon Edwards."

The opportunities here for deepening a congregation as contemporary issues are related to the "old, old stories" and such stories are seen to be normative; such opportunities are limitless. The congregation also prints each sermon for pick-up the following week. With the chance to read the sermon at their leisure, people find they absorb far more than they do when they hear it from me once only at 130 words per minute. Frequently the vehicle of the sermon fosters another vehicle; namely, formal and informal conversations on the same topic.

Evidently the educational ministry addresses two kinds of needs: the perennial human need rooted in the human condition, as well as contemporary needs arising from the modern-day situation. The human condition - we are fallen creatures, alienated from God on account of our defiance and disobedience - is the deeper of the two. In other words, the human condition always underlies the human situation, while the situation, changing from era to era, finds symptomatic expressions that vary kaleidoscopically. Still, in addressing the situation the educational ministry has every opportunity to address the human condition.

Yet in all of this we must take care to understand that the educational ministry of the church isn't one-sidedly cerebral. (I say "one-sidedly" rather than "over": since God is to be loved with the mind and is never honoured by slovenly thinking, we can't be over-cerebral, whereas we can always be one-sidedly so.) Jesus both taught and healed. His teaching rendered his healing intelligible, while his healing embodied his teaching. If he had merely taught, his kingdom would have remained unembodied, a "head-trip" for amateur, armchair philosophers who like to muse on religious themes. If he had merely acted, his action would have remained ununderstood with respect to the kingdom. The kingdom of God (which is to say, the whole creation healed), is found in the singular fusion of his head, heart and hand. Throughout Christ's public ministry the person healed (or in need of healing) was related to the community and restored to the community, as was the case with the Gadarene demoniac, now found not only seated and right-minded but clothed; i.e., he belonged to that community to which he had been readmitted. (Mark 5:15) Community ever remains essential to the educational ministry of the church. Without community and the suffering found in it, the educational ministry of the church will inevitably slide from a much-needed reasonableness into a dry-as-dust rationalism. If this happens a Christian anthropology is denied, for then reason, rather than spirit, has come to be regarded as the essence of humankind; and reason, rather than spirit (Spirit too), has come to be viewed as both ultimate reality and the access to it. The community ever remains the venue of the church's educational ministry; which is to say, human suffering is always the context that lends the educational ministry of the church as much credibility as it will ever need.

The collective memory of the church is like the ballast in a sailing ship's keel. The ballast consists of lead, isn't particularly pretty, and is found below the waterline in any case. Without ballast, however, the ship, top-heavy with sail, capsizes in the first squall. Everyone knows that the more sail a ship carries above the waterline, the more ballast it needs below it. A ship with no sails never leaves the docks. Herein it resembles Admiral Nelson's Victory: the brass is polished every day, the ceremonial cannon is fired for reasons of nostalgia, people even pay significant sums of money to climb on board - but the ship never goes anywhere. A ship with no ballast, on the other hand, naively thinks it can best the sea, only to find that the first storm leaves it foundering. The lesson here for the church is plain.

The church today is eager to hoist sails to catch the wind of the Spirit (not always recognising, however, that some spirits are less than holy) while disdainful of adding weight to the ballast. The educational ministry of the church, however, always pertains to both sails and ballast. And in our era, impatient with history and tradition and anything substantive, renewed attention must be given to ballast. For the neglect here has been long and persistent. We aren't the first generation of Christians. Appreciating the wisdom of those who ventured before us will ensure that our immediate parents in faith weren't the last.

BEING A CHRISTIAN IN POLITICS: A Speech to the First Hungarian Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Ontario

Tom Wappel, M.P.

Reverend Vass, Reverend Clergy, Ladies and Gentlemen:

When Reverend Vass called and asked me if I would consider being the guest speaker at this year's dinner, I was, of course, flattered. I said yes immediately. I asked him what he thought I should talk about, and he suggested the topic, "Being a Christian in Politics". Again, I said yes, already thinking about some of the things I could talk about. It was then that Rev. Vass sprung the trap. "Of course, your speech should be in Hungarian". Well, for me, this is no easy request. As many of you know, I was born right here in Toronto and the only reason I speak any Hungarian at all is thanks to the foresight and perseverance of my parents and my grandmother's stubborn refusal to speak English. As you can imagine, my Hungarian has generally been limited to everyday conversation, supplemented by legal language during my days as a lawyer. However, I am always willing to accept a challenge, so I decided that I would try to talk about being a Christian in politics in Hungarian.

The way I figure it, if you listen and do not understand, I will be able to blame it on my Hungarian, rather than my speech writing skills, or lack thereof.

How do we approach such a topic as "Being a Christian in Politics"? Well, being a lawyer, I try to look at things logically and analytically, so, we should start with a definition of what is a Christian?

Have you ever thought about it? What is a Christian in 15 words or less? Well, I think that, at its most fundamental: being a Christian means accepting that Jesus Christ is God made Man. That is from the opening sentences of the Gospel according to John. I will repeat: Being a Christian means accepting that Jesus Christ is God made Man.

From this we can conclude two other things:

1. What Christ said is what God says.

2. Since God says it, it is a good idea to try our best to follow what he says.

We also know that being a Christian means living your beliefs in everyday life, trying as best as we can, to live our lives as God intends, knowing that we are sinners, that we will sometimes falter, but that God forgives our failures and imperfections, provided we truly recognize them and want to be forgiven.

I am not a Priest or a Reverend. I have no theological training. I have not studied the Scriptures extensively. As such, I am like the vast majority of us. So, however imperfect is my attempt at a definition, it is a starting point for my discussion.

When I was first elected on November 21, 1988, I was elected by some, perhaps most, because I was the Liberal candidate. Others voted for me in spite of the fact that I was the Liberal candidate. But whatever the reason, they elected a person who had opinions, beliefs and life experiences. As a politician, it is my view that I bring to the political arena the sum total of what I am, not a "tabula rasa" as they say in Latin, a "blank slate" for others to write on.

So I brought with me opinions on most topics of the day, including topics everyone would consider controversial. These opinions were formed over the course of the thirty-eight years prior to my election, including the tenets of my faith.

Have I encountered problems with my Christian beliefs clashing with the political system? Absolutely!

When I was first elected, and for six years thereafter, until 1994, the House of Commons began each day with the prayer that Jesus Christ taught us. This was clearly a manifestation of the Christian heritage of our country. It had been so since 1867. In 1994, with no debate and no vote, the Rules of Procedure were changed, quietly, privately, by the House Leaders of the then three officially recognized parties, the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and Reform. The Lord's Prayer was abolished from the daily Opening of Parliament.

It was done before most of us MPs knew it had even begun. Why did it happen? Because we must not impose our religious beliefs on others, say the secularists. But surely those who wanted change imposed their beliefs on those who were happy with things as they were. Why was the imposition by one group acceptable, but not by the other group? Because the other group is Christian.

During the first part of my political career, there were many issues, which faced us, and me in particular, but none was so divisive as the issue of abortion. Did you know that abortion, while frowned upon, was not legal under Roman law? Early Christians, anxious to distance themselves from pagan Rome and its pagan laws, very soon decreed that abortion was wrong and was, in fact, a crime. This decree was based upon, among other things, certain references in the Scriptures, directly and indirectly, to the unborn child. This decree and law has remained in force in countries with a Christian heritage for over 19 centuries, in Canada until 1969.

While this issue has divided the Christian community in Canada, I think it is fair to say that most Canadian Christians would agree that fully tax-funded abortions, for any reason, or no reason, from conception to birth, which is the law in Canada, is too broad. Here again, those who disagree have forced their beliefs on the rest. But they are the first to say that Christians should not impose their religious beliefs on others. Their position seems to be, it is acceptable to impose your beliefs on others, provided these beliefs are not religious beliefs. How absurd!

During the 1988 election campaign, I made my views known on the issue of abortion, as I did on all other issues. My position was and remains what I will call the orthodox Christian position, that life is sacred, from conception to natural death and it is society's duty to protect those who are most defenceless and cannot protect themselves, in this case, the unborn child.

I was immediately branded by my opponents and by the media as a one-issue, bigoted, woman-hating Christian zealot! It didn't matter that I opposed to the death penalty, or that I hold liberal positions on economic issues. No, I was marginalized as a fanatical Christian. But, I was elected.

The name-calling continued when I ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party, and never far away as a supposed badge of dishonour was the word "Christian". However, I remained true to my beliefs and my position, proud to call myself a Christian. I did not back down. In 1993, I was re-elected.

By then the issue of abortion had died down in the minds of the public at large and the media, but nature abhors a vacuum, so it was replaced by the issue of homosexuality. As with abortion, early Christianity quickly condemned homosexual acts as abnormal and sinful, based on very direct references in both the Old and New Testaments. Homosexual acts remained outlawed in countries with Christian heritages until the 20^th Century; in Canada, until 1969.

In 1994, the activist homosexual movement began to push its agenda forward. I was there to oppose it, again based on my Christian heritage and belief system. Suddenly, abortion was forgotten, I was no longer referred to as a one-issue, bigoted, woman-hating, Christian zealot. I suddenly became a right-wing, fundamentalist, Christian homophobe!

When you go home tonight, go to your dictionaries and look up the words "homophobia" and "homophobic". Unless you have a 1999 edition of one or two "new wave" dictionaries, you will not find these words. Why not? Because they did not even exist until 1994 when they were invented by the radical homosexual movement as a tactic to marginalize and embarrass those, like me, who do not agree with their agenda. What is this agenda? It is to force everyone, not just to tolerate homosexuality, but to actively accept and embrace it as normal, and to teach our children that it is normal, so as to permit homosexual marriage, adoption and benefits. They want to make it illegal to say anything negative about the practice, even if you, as a matter of religion, believe it to be abnormal and sinful. The activists are well on their way to the successful completion of their agenda.

Again, those who support the status quo, are being forced to accept the beliefs of others, which are totally contrary to theirs, yet they are the first to be criticized if they try to retain the Christian principles upon which Canada was founded.

Finally, we have the issue of euthanasia. Christianity tells us that we are to kill no one. It is a mortal sin. But to some, those who oppose euthanasia are heartless, uncaring, unfeeling, right-wing fundamentalist Christians, as if being a Christian was suddenly the worst thing one could be. However, in accordance with my Christian beliefs, I support the sanctity of life. I support the view that only God Almighty may take life from us. And for that belief, I and others, are deemed heartless. But, I was re-elected in 1997!

Did you know that early Christians were called names too? Yes, polite Roman society called Christians sexual deviants who practised orgies, this based on the fact that they celebrated Christ's Last Supper in groups, in Christian houses, in private, giving each other the kiss of peace. Christians were accused of cannibalism too because they said they ate the body and blood of someone called Jesus.

If the early Christians had been intimidated by this name calling, by their persecution at the hands of others, from confiscation of property to martyrdom in the most barbaric and painful ways, we would not be here today gathered in a Christian Church. We owe our early Christian ancestors great gratitude for their strong faith. It is the foundation upon which we all rest.

So, being a Christian in politics today is certainly not easy, particularly when one's Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed to what seems popular. However, we are called not to succeed necessarily, but to serve, certainly.

As I continue my political career, for however long I am privileged to do so, and as I am taunted, ridiculed or called names, I take comfort in the words of Christ's Apostle, St. Peter, who wrote in I Peter 3:17:

"For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil."

The Godbearing Life: The Art of soul Tending for Youth Ministry

Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster, Nashville Upper Room Books, 1998

220 pages, $23.99

In her book A Tribe Apart, Patricia Hersch explores in depth the strange world of North American adolescents. The title of her book expresses her main thesis: that adults tend to see youth as an alien tribe, impossible to understand and somewhat threatening in their strangeness. Contrary to the popular belief that youth want nothing to do with adults, it is adults who want nothing to do with youth.

I had Hersch's book very much in mind as I read The Godbearing Life by Dean and Foster. They identify clearly the schizophrenic attitude towards youth that exists in many churches. We want youth. It's a matter of survival. We are pained that 80 to 90 percent of our youth drop out of church. We are puzzled by it. What do they want? Don't they like us? Don't they know how much we want them to be here? And yet, when churches do make an effort to "attract" more youth, the young people must always come in on their parents' and grandparents' terms. They are expected to do as they are told, not rock the boat and keep their feet off the furniture.

Dean and Foster challenge the common approach that sees youth ministry as something the church "provides"-and sometimes pays for-to try to hold onto youth. The problem is that youth ministry is unconnected to the larger life of the congregation. In effect, churches say, "Here's a room and a basketball-now go to it and don't bother us." There is a basic contradiction between the stated aims of the church to connect with youth and the way they approach youth ministry which often increases the distance between adults and teens rather than bridging it.

The Godbearing Life lays the foundation for an approach to youth ministry that has genuine theological and pastoral integrity. It is written from a mainline perspective. This is significant because the bulk of youth ministry resources come from evangelical and fundamentalist traditions which do not translate easily to a mainline context. Moreover, this book has plenty in it for churches without paid youth pastors or the close-knit, "sold-out-for-Jesus" youth subcultures that are well entrenched in more conservative churches.

Dean and Foster remind us that youth ministry is first and foremost ministry, and for that reason it is not fundamentally different from the ministry we seek to have with and for adults. Youth ministry is not an esoteric art but the application of principles that are valid for the entire Body of Christ. Hence, this is a very useful book on ministry in general and will be helpful to anyone interested in the spiritual formation and growth of mature Christians.

The book is based on the image of the Godbearing life. They take the figure of Mary as a starting point. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is known in the Orthodox tradition as "Theotokos"-the "God-bearer." She was also a teenager. What youth desperately need are not more wacky program ideas but meaningful relationships with Christian adults who can be God-bearers to them.

Many churches ghettoize their youth. They separate off their meeting-times and their programs from the larger life of the congregation and rarely inquire into whether their youth program is producing Christians or not. Dean and Foster argue that that tradition must be reversed. Youth must be reintegrated into the Christian community in such a way that their unique identity and gifts are respected and nurtured. "What youth need more than gung-ho adults are Godbearing adults," they write, "people whose own yes to God has transformed them into messengers of the gospel."

This challenges the time-honoured axiom that only the young can relate to youth. What happens most often is that youth ministry is done by the least experienced and least mature members of the pastoral team or the cadre of volunteers. The God-bearing approach to youth ministry means a radical shift in priorities.

Such an approach will be threatening to many congregations. If Dean and Foster are right, then the failure of churches to hold their youth is centred not on the rebelliousness of the youth, but on the adults who have not acted as God-bearers. The starting-point for youth ministry, then, will be a long hard look at the spiritual growth and commitment of adults. Adults who are growing in their faith will have to offer themselves as mentors and guides to youth, learning to speak their language and listen to their concerns. Churches who profess a desire to "get the youth back" need to think long and hard about the commitment that is implied by that sentiment.

Thankfully, the book is not all theory. There are some good practical suggestions for introducing the practices and disciplines of the Christian life to youth in such a way that they will form their identity as Christians. Dean and Foster also make a plea for discernment in the use of youth ministry resources, many of which simply reinforce the narcissistic attitudes that young people encounter daily in our culture. They advocate doing that which is effective in forming faith and not merely providing entertainment. They also insist on the importance of churches receiving the ministry of youth beyond appointing a token "youth rep" to the Council or seeing youth as pool of compliant volunteers.

The community in which I live has many Mennonite churches. Generally speaking, these congregations do not experience the massive post-adolescent hemorrhaging of youth so prevalent in mainline churches. Mainliners tend to dismiss this by saying that such churches use guilt and fear to hold their young. In my observation, there is much more to it than that. These churches have continued to provide meaningful opportunities for young people to be integrated into the faith community. Even more importantly, the families of these youth continue to support and validate the faith journeys of their children. As we search our souls concerning the loss of our youth, we need to begin with deeply ingrained family and congregational attitudes that have given youth no good reason to maintain a relationship with the Body of Christ.

The Godbearing Life is a deeply thoughtful attempt to put youth ministry on a sustainable foundation of both theory and praxis and is a worthwhile read for anyone with a passion for ministry.

Notice: We repeat the long-standing notice in the box on page two, namely, that "The opinions expressed in the signed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect endorsement by Church Alive." This notice obviously applies to this editorial feature, which has long been written by Graham Scott as editor.

Notice: Fallible and sinful as we are, we continue to award tokens of praise or of disapproval to those who, in our opinion, have said or done things of which Scripture and/or Tradition would approve or disapprove. Palms celebrate primarily faithful acts. Scorpions call for repentance. Tears indicate our dismay and sometimes our hope for repentance. Cheers usually indicate approval for primarily decent or courageous acts. Occasionally cheers are ironic.

We expect to make mistakes in the course of this editorial feature, which concludes with this issue. To date we have not been made aware of any serious mistakes. We expect that we have missed many worthies, and we know we have; their reward is in heaven or hell, as the case may be. It is because we believe that there is a hell--Jesus is said to have preached more about hell than has any other biblical figure--that we call those apparently heading there to repentance and to reconciliation with God, who does not want anyone to perish.

This editorial feature has not been easy to write, especially the Scorpions. It is with a sense of relief that we conclude it with this issue, which is our last as editor. Our term began with the special August 1990 issue, reviewing the unfortunate decision of the 1990 General Council to reaffirm the Membership, Ministry and Human Sexuality document, and publishing the Commissioners' Covenant as a means of maintaining integrity despite MMHS. This Covenant can be viewed on the Church Alive website under Faith Statements: www.itcanada.com/~theology or www.churchalivecanada.org Ten years as volunteer editor is sufficient. We wish the new editorial team headed by the Rev. Dr. Paul Miller as Coordinating Editor God's blessing and grace as they continue Theological Digest & Outlook.

[cheers] Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, for helping people in the world's trouble spots, such as Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and East Timor. It is significant that the physician who accepted the prize on behalf of MSF is a Canadian, Dr James Orbinski. The Canadian MSF was founded in 1988 by McMaster graduate Dr Richard Heinzl and the first project in the field was in Cambodia. Dr Orbinski is quoted as saying that the Nobel Peace Prize provides "an opportunity to highlight the precarity of the populations we work for. And to highlight the responsibility of individuals and the responsibility of political power to recognize the dignity of human beings, and to not simply reduce that responsibility to a Band-Aid for a bullet wound." (National Post, Dec. 4, 1999)

[palm] The Vatican and the World Lutheran Federation, for the common statement on justification by faith signed at Augsburg, Germany, in 1999 on October 31, Reformation Day. Luther regarded justification by faith alone as the key doctrine of the Church. A Roman Catholic-Lutheran celebration of the joint declaration in Winnipeg affirmed "that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation...and that good works...follow justification and are its fruits." The joint declaration concerns only one theological issue, but it is crucial to any serious conversations between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

One irony of the signing is that the conservative Missouri Synod Lutherans did not sign, although their stand against abortion is in accord with Rome's. At the same time those Lutherans who signed generally accept abortion on many grounds. Nonetheless we rejoice in this step toward doctrinal unity.

[palm] Rev. Tony Van Hee, SJ, for a decade of picketing Parliament Hill on behalf of the unborn. Father Van Hee recently hit the headlines when on December 4, 1999, NDP MP Svend Robinson damaged the sign that read, "Sexual orientation. Defeat of reason. Protecting disorder."

[cheers] Festival of Praise International, for its September 11, 1999, parade of the centuries from Genesis to 2000 AD. Held in downtown Toronto, the parade included banners, musical floats and many people dressed in costumes depicting Biblical characters and representing every book of the Bible. The Canadian Bible Society's Central Ontario District supplied many Scripture selections to be handed out to spectators. Plans are already underway for next year's parade.

[palm] Thomas Cardinal Winning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, for offering and providing financial support to help women carry unwanted pregnancies through to birth. In two years 250 women have been helped and 180 children (mis-named the Cardinal's babies) have escaped abortion, with 60 more on the way.

Cardinal Winning says, "The Church has to put its money where its mouth is. We need to say to people that, in this big controversy about human life, the Church is with you, the Church is not just here to judge and condemn but wants to help you fulfill the moral law."

The Cardinal found himself again in hot water when he helped a learning-impaired 12 year-old bring her baby to term. But he told critics, "Every innocent unborn human being has the right to life. Whether [the mother] is a 12 year-old child or a 40 year-old woman, there is a human being there, and it has to be protected at all costs."

Winning's staff refuse to brow-beat or brainwash those who come to them. Their aim is to address the practical worries arising from an unwanted pregnancy, and then let each woman make the moral decision herself. Help comes in many forms, cribs, baby carriages and clothes, even rental deposits, but not cash. Staff give advice on social services and accompany women on hospital visits.

The program in some respects resembles the non-denominational, confidential Birthright approach in Canada and the United States (see www.birthright.org or phone hotline 800-550-4900). In 1999 Birthright's hotline had over 50,000 calls.

[cheers] Rev. David Mackenzie, Devon United Church, Alberta, for calling on sister churches of other denominations to pray all day for mainline churches like the United Church of Canada. The response to this initiative has been considerable and enthusiastic. The INTER-SEED rally will be held at Castledowns Pentecostal Church, 9949-169th Ave, Edmonton, Alberta, on Saturday, April 1, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. local time. Other cities may be holding their own INTER-SEED rallies, and we would encourage them to do so.

Mackenzie has also sponsored a petition through Yellowhead Presbytery, asking the United Church General Council to authorize a remit saying, "Is the Christian Doctrine expressed in the Basis of Union's Twenty Articles of Faith essential for United Church members to profess or not? Yes or No.". Yellowhead Presbytery voted non-concurrence, but must send the petition to Alberta Conference, which can do likewise and even decline to forward it to General Council. Contact David at hollisMACK@aol.com.

[tears] Lord Immanuel Jacobovits, Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue of Great Britain, died in November, 1999. An advocate of hard work and civic responsibility, Jacobovits' first concerns were the commandments of God, which he said should be applied to the ethics of the nation. He denounced abortion, sex outside marriage, easy divorce and slackness in the instruction of children. He said, "When government propaganda promotes something that comes to terms with evil without saying so, then that is inherently unacceptable." He also noted, "Today it's a sin to speak about moral wrongs." Rabbi Jacobovitz was knighted in 1981, made a life peer in 1988, and received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1991.

[cheers] Rabbi Daniel Lapin, for much politically incorrect discernment in his book, America's Real War (Multnomah). Lapin's book represents a growing realization on the part of conservative Jews that they have more in common with like-minded Gentiles than with their own secularized or liberal brethren.

Lapin takes aim at modernism, "the odd notion that...revolutionary change [is] inherently good." He believes that the choice in America is between a benign Christian culture and a sinister secular one. Although he is firmly convinced that Judaism is true and basically incompatible with Christianity, he regards both Judaism and Christianity as "serious religions." And he argues that they have arrived at similar answers to basic ethical questions and should take courage and should fight from the high ground of faith for morality in the public square. He says, "Some things are wrong simply because God said so."

Lapin sees one common thread in today's trendy causes of radical environmentalism, homosexuality, abortion rights, euthanasia, gun control, opposition to school prayers and education reform. That common thread is hatred of God. (Source: Shafer Parker in Western Report, Oct. 11, 1999)

[cheers] Rev. Zander Dunn, Minister of Knox Presbyterian Church, Guelph, Ontario, for proposing that another way to celebrate the Millennium is to begin talks with the United Church. Writing in the June issue of the Presbyterian Record, Dunn argues that much water has passed under the bridge since 1925. The two denominations already have much in common. Members of the two churches transfer back and forth without difficulty. In many places Presbyterian and United congregations combine for summer worship. The governances of the two churches are similar. Both churches are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Thinking about his experience of crossing denominational lines in Guyana out of necessity, Dunn says, "In Canada, so far, we are rich enough to remain separate. Before the time comes when we are forced to unite, why not become informed about one another? Let us be intentional about working together and about planning for that day when those things that separate us can be removed."

Dunn applauds suggestions for dialogue with Lutherans, but thinks that United Church conversations should come first. "To begin talking officially in the year 2000 would be an excellent way to celebrate the unity that is already ours in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Even more important, it would help both churches open up to the Spirit of God."

Our only worry is that as Presbyterians get to know the United Church better, they will see that the Unitarianism of the majority of our ministers is an insurmountable impediment to closer ties. Perhaps ecumenically-minded Presbyterians might consider talks with the Reformed and the Christian Reformed as well. Canada would benefit from an association or council involving all these three (or even all us four) presbyterian bodies, providing a national group in concert with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

[cheers] Presbyterian Ministers Chris Vais, Andrew Fullerton, Jim Thompson, Philip Lee and Cameron Brett, for founding a religious order for clergy called The Company of the Transfiguration. Members of the Company are called companions, "those with whom you share bread." The new order was launched on October 17, 1999, feast day of St Ignatius of Antioch.

The founders of the order want it to embody the Church's catholicity by making the fullness of its tradition visible in faith and oractice, especially in sacramental and liturgical life. They have adopted a Rule of Life, encompassing worship, stewardship and the life of the mind.

They vow to work toward a celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday in their own churches. They also vow to pray the Daily Office (morning and evening prayer), They vow to promote the Church's tradition of social justice, to care for the sick and the poor, and to give two per cent of their income to the Company.

For more information write, The Company of the Transfiguration, c/o St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, 25 St Andrew St., Stratford, ON N5A 1A2.

(Presbyterian Record, March 2000)

[cheers] Sir Cliff Richards, for daring to sing the Lord's Prayer, albeit to the tune for Auld Lang Syne, and for his charity work. His single, entitled Millennium Prayer, topped the charts in Britain, despite being boycotted by radio stations, fellow stars and his own recording company. All profits from the record are being donated to charity.

We have not heard this song and we cannot imagine how the Lord's Prayer can possibly be sung to that tune. But more power to Sir Cliff.

A Christian musical for the new millennium called "Hopes and Dreams" concludes with this song.

[tears] Carla Hochhalter, 44, mother of a 17 year-old Columbine High School student partially paralyzed by the shooting rampage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, shot herself to death on Friday, October 22, 1999.

Earlier, on Tuesday, a 17 year-old Columbine student was arrested after allegedly threatening to "finish the job" that Harris and Klebold started on April 20. (See TD&O, Sept. 1999, beige pp. 10-11.)

On Monday, February 14, 2000, two Columbine High School sweethearts were found shot to death at a popular sandwich shop just two blocks from the school. Dead are Stephanie Hart, 16, and Nicholas Kunselman, 15. Police are treating the deaths as a double murder.

What people think effects what they do, and what they do effects others. The tragedies in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, suggest that human evil can only be seriously countered by the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ and by continual prayer for grace and for deliverance from evil.

[scorpion] George Roche III, 64, former president of 156 year-old Hillsdale College in Michigan, for allegedly committing adultery and incest over 19 years. His alleged partner was his son's wife, Lissa Roche, 41, who committed suicide when she learned that the senior Roche had made up with his new spouse (after having divorced his wife of 44 years).

Hillsdale College has built a national reputation as a citadel of conservative family values. Conservative stars like William F. Buckley and William J. Bennett are on the search committee for a new president. Charles Colson tells of a revealing experience he had with George Roche III. Colson had given a lecture, "Can man be good without God?" He answered no, and he insisted on the necessity for the transforming power of Jesus Christ. Roche wanted to publish the talk. When Colson read the proofs, he noticed that every reference to Jesus Christ had been omitted. He called Lissa Roche to protest and was finally allowed two references to Christ. What seemed to be happening was that George Roche was trying to make a strong pro-family, pro-traditional values institution on a secular or at most a theistic basis. Colson says the obvious: it cannot be done. "The human will is not strong enough to maintain a life of decency and morality apart from the transforming power of Christ" (Breakpoint, Nov. 30, 1999).

Hillsdale College issues a monthly publication, Imprimis, which we have recommended and whose January 2000 issue quotes Acting President Robert W. Blackstock as saying, "...the College redrafted its core curriculum in the 1990's without one nod to political correctness or moral relativism." May Hillsdale's commitment to excellence and morality continue and deepen in the lives of its faculty, students and friends. And may the transforming power of Christ touch their hearts and souls. (To request a free subscription to Imprimis, phone 800-437-2268, e-mail imprimis@hillsdale.edu or write Imprimis, Hillsdale College, 33 East College St., Hillsdale, Michigan 49242, USA.)

[scorpion] Steven Weinberg, physicist and Nobel laureate, for this slanderous nonsense uttered in April 1999 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science:-

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."

How does Weinberg know what is good or evil? What evidence does Weinberg have that religion is the cause of good people doing evil? And if his thesis that the good do good and the evil do evil with or without religion is true, how come good people with religion suddenly do evil? He said the good do good with (or without) religion.

Clearly Calvin is right on when he says that reason is effected by sin. Weinberg reminds me of the astronomer who told a pastor that his religion was to do good. The pastor told the astronomer that his astronomy was "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are." We hereby award Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Award for pride presuming to pontificate.

[tears] Pregnant women addicted to cocaine and crack, for bringing drug-injured children into the world. Dr Gifford Jones discussed the growing problem in a recent newspaper column. He refers to Toronto's Dr Gideon Koren's book, The Children of Neverland. The problem is that the placenta does not protect the unborn from cocaine or crack and that the drug involves serious health hazards to the fetus. Gifford Jones writes, "For instance, cocaine-exposed children are more likely to suffer growth restriction, stillbirth and premature separation of the placenta. And the effects of cocaine on fetal brain development is a major concern."

Add to this the effects of smoking, drinking and sexually transmitted diseases, and we have the makings of a serious public health problem. (We heard a recent report that four hours of drinking by a pregnant woman will cause fetal brain damage.) Koren put it this way: "Neverland is the place where many children will reside permanently, not being able to reach their full potential. When millions of children world-wide are afflicted by drugs, illness or poverty, this stops being a scientific issue and turns into a global disaster."

John Wesley faced similar problems in his day. With Christ he made a difference. So should we. With level-headed evangelism and responsible social service, Christ-centred believers can make a real difference.

Even if we helped only one individual, St Thomas Aquinas's view that one human soul outweighs the entire material universe in value remains true. As Jesus said, "I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance" and "I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" (Lk 15:7, 10).

[scorpion] The United States Air Force, for forcing ultra-feminist dogma down servicemen's throats, specifically, for insisting that First Lieutenant Ryan Berry, 24, serve a 24 hour shift in a closed underground Minuteman bunker about the size of a school bus with a female colleague. While one officer sleeps in the bunker's only bed, the other stays on alert at the control panel. Sometimes the shift is extended to 48 hours.

Lt Berry is married and a Catholic and believes that serving in such a space with a woman not his wife conflicts with Catholic teaching on temptation. His bishop and a professor of moral theology agree. Monsignor William Smith questioned the bed and bathroom arrangements in the bunker and wrote, "Such arrangements for 24 or 48 continuous hours seem to me to offend common sense, even basic Christian standards of scandal."

Berry's lawyer, Henry Hamilton, says, "What you have here is a clash between the feminist ideology and Catholic theology. The armed forces have again opted to come down on the side of the feminists and against traditional morality." Noting that the Army permits soldiers to practise Wicca at various bases, Hamilton said, "The military can accommodate whatever they want to accommodate. ...The reason the Air Force is not accommodating Lt. Berry is because his views conflict with the feminist agenda, not because of any difficulty in implementing the accommodation."

First Things, February 2000 issue, has an article on the matter, Daniel P. Moloney's "Sex and the Married Missileer," pp. 45-51.

[tears] EgyptAir flight 990's crash, off the coast of Nantucket, on Sunday, October 31, 1999, included a former student at Toronto's Tyndale Seminary, Salah Adam, his wife Shaline and their two children, Joshua, 4, and Rebecca, 22 months. Salah, a Moslem, converted to Christ in 1991 because of his wife's witness. He had been away from home for ten years and the flight would have brought his wife and children to meet his parents in the Sudan for the first time. Tyndale College asks alumni and friends to pray that out of this tragedy will come hope and faith, for in all things Jesus Christ reigns.

[cheers] Governor George Ryan of Illinois, for calling a halt to the death penalty, when he discovered that more men on death row had been exonerated and set free than have been executed.

We believe that Scripture upholds the death penalty, but Scripture also hedges it with safeguards, such as two witnesses rather than merely circumstantial evidence. The sanctity of human life is not honoured if an innocent man or woman is wrongly put to death.

Governor Ryan wants "moral certainty" that no innocent man or woman is facing the death penalty in Illinois. Would that Governor George W. Bush of Texas would take the same stand.

[palm] Archbishop Moses Tay, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, Bishop John Ruchyahana, Bishop Fitzsimmons Allison, Bishop Alex Dickson, and Bishop David Pytches, for providing the Episcopal Church of America with two faithful missionary bishops, Charles H. Murphy III and John Rodgers Jr. The former six consecrated the latter two at St Andrew's Cathedral, Singapore, on January 29, 2000.

The consecrations have been condemned as irregular by liberal bishops in Canada and the U.S.A. The Archbishop of Canterbury has declined to recognize the new bishops' authority. There is no doubt that the consecrations by-passed American canon law. But there is no doubt that Bishop John Spong's Call for a New Reformation, including his twelve theses, has received no rebuke from the Episcopal House of Bishops. In other words, the Episcopal Church's leaders have declined to dissent publicly from the virtual atheism and homosexual ideology espoused by Bishop Spong.

(For the text of Spong's twelve theses, see TD&O, Sept. 1998, p. 20. Perhaps Theses 1 and 2 are sufficient for a taste of the 12: "1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found. 2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.")

In such a situation the consecrating bishops in Singapore did what faithful bishops of the early church did. They consecrated faithful priests as bishops to carry on the work of the faithful Church.

In reaction to the consecrations some critics aver that American conservatives had bought the overwhelming Lambeth vote against normalizing homosexuality by means of free-spending lobbying. Such criticism is recycling the libel of gay and lesbian activists that conservative US bishops had spent $400,000 to buy the Lambeth vote. The Church Times investigated the allegation and concluded that only $30,000 had been spent, mainly for the rental of the Franciscan Study Centre, which was used by both liberal and conservative groups, as well as sub-committees of the Lambeth Conference.

It is perhaps amusing that voices that called the irregular ordination of the eleven American female priests in 1974 courageous can only react in horror, libel or nit-picking at the irregular Singapore consecrations. (And we are informed that not one of the eleven female priests so "courageously" ordained irregularly is still in a priestly ministry.)

[scorpion] Judge Paul Vezina, Quebec Superior Court, and an Arizona Judge, for ordering abortions, the former for a mentally ill woman who did not ask for an abortion, and the latter for a 14 year-old. The Arizona judge actually ordered Arizona child welfare officials to arrange the abortion out of state, as the baby was already in its 23^rd week and Arizona bans abortions after 20 weeks. His order therefore probably contravenes that Arizona law.

Quebec Judge Vezina ordered not only the abortion but tubal ligation, that is, sterilization. His reason was the claim of a hospital psychiatrist that the woman would suffer psychological hardship in giving up her baby for adoption. No one said she might suffer from being forced into the abortion. Perhaps Vezina never heard of the forced sterilization cases in Alberta recently granted multi-million dollar compensation by the courts.

The woman's lawyer did not call opposing testimony or challenge the need for a forced abortion. No one represented the baby. A National Post editorial commented, "...the major argument for legal abortion is that a woman has a right to control her own reproduction. The new phenomenon of judges ordering abortions should offend pro-life and pro-choice Canadians just about equally" (Aug. 30, 1999).

[scorpion] Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John J. Donohue of Stanford, for arguing that aborting millions of unwanted fetuses in the 1970's resulted in half the recent drop in crime.

Steve Sailer asks if babies born soon after Roe v. Wade in 1973 have grown up especially law-abiding teens in the early 90's. Answer: they went on the worst youth murder spree in U.S. history. Sailer argues that the rise and fall of the crack cocaine epidemic largely drove crime up and then down.

David Curtin, editor of The Interim, cited certain cases fitting the unwanted child profile of Levitt and Donohue, as well as that of the notorious Henry Morgentaler. First, the boy whose parents already had 14 children and lived in grinding poverty. Second, the boy whose mother had tuberculosis, and whose siblings were disabled and ill. Third, the girl whose mother was raped at the age of 13. And fourth, the boy whose teenage mother found herself pregnant, but not by her fiancé. The first child was John Wesley; the second, Ludwig Beethoven; the third, gospel singer Ethel Waters; the fourth, Jesus of Nazareth.

[tears and cheers] The abortion of Ximena Renaerts and the surgery on unborn baby Samuel Armas. It's a tale of two babies and how each was treated.

Ximena was aborted at seven months and was left to die in a bedpan in a storage room containing dead fetuses at Vancouver General Hospital. A passing doctor who noticed her resuscitated her. She was cared for in a group home. Bert and Margaret Renaerts heard about her and decided to adopt her. It took four years. She joined a family with 15 children, of whom 12 were adopted. Of the twelve eight were handicapped and two have since died.

At a doctor's appointment Margaret remembers that the physician paused over Ximena and her chart and then broke into a dance around the office. It turned out that he was the physician who had resuscitated her and he called her his daughter. As a result of this discovery the Renaerts began to piece together the history of their disabled daughter.

Ximena is about 13 years-old but has the mental capacity of a four year-old because she had been left to die. She is quadriplegic and has cerebral palsy. Her adoptive parents contacted a Christian lawyer and three law firms later, legal fees of $1.9 million, 13 commissioned experts and 20 discoveries including international travel, the lawsuit was settled for $8.7 million. Bert said, "The money will help us buy whatever Ximena will need without struggling. But it will never bring back the injustice that was done. She was an innocent with no chance to fight back when society discarded her with the rest of the dead fetuses." (Lorna Dueck, Christianweek, Oct. 19, 1999)

Samuel Armas was a 21 week-old fetus when he was diagnosed with spina bifida, a condition in which the developing backbone and spinal canal fail to close. It can lead to disabilities including paralysis of the legs, incontinence, learning problems and hydrocephalus.

Some would have aborted the baby. Julie and Alex Armas opted for a risky experimental surgery performed on August 19, 1999 at Vanderbilt University. When Samuel's tiny hand slipped out of the incision in Julie's womb, surgeon Joseph Bruner slipped his finger into the baby's fist, and a USA Today photographer snapped the picture. The photograph has travelled around the world. Most Canadian newspapers appear to have ignored it; National Post published it in colour on the front page on Saturday, January 8, 2000, a few inches under a formal photograph of the new Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin in her ermine-lined robes.

Samuel Armas was born on December 2, 1999. He is still too small for doctors to make a long-term prognosis. But his mother says he's alert and has good head control for a five-pound baby.

What different treatment was accorded unborn baby Ximena and unborn baby Samuel. Ximena's mother didn't want her; the Renaerts did. Samuel's parents wanted him. Why didn't Ximena's mother bring her to term and give her up for adoption? Many childless couples would give anything for a child. Let us pray that the photograph of baby Samuel's tiny hand around Dr Bruner's finger will convince more and more parents that the unborn child has a right to life.

[scorpion] Canada regulates trade in elephant ivory but not in aborted baby parts. This is shameful. The University of British Columbia bought aborted baby lungs from the ironically named Anatomic Gift Foundation. The University of Alberta obtains its material from local private abortion clinics.

Brokers based in the United States circulate lists of body parts. The going rate for a brain is $999 and for eyes, $50.

A National Post editorial asked, "What information about this trade is given to women contemplating abortions? Are they even advised of the fate of their aborted children? Are such emotionally torn women in a position to give meaningful consent to this trade? Are they pressured into it by ambitious researchers or by profit-seeking U.S. brokers?" (Nov. 30, 1999)

A visiting pianist was not allowed to bring his piano into Canada because its keys were made of elephant ivory. But there is no regulation for fetal body parts.

How we handle the traffic in fetal body parts will have an effect on the sale of adult body parts. For a biblical treatment, see Victor Shepherd's award-winning article, "You Asked for a Sermon on the Ethics of Organ Transplants," TD&O, Sept. 1997, green pages 3-5.

[tears] Manitoba's Court of Appeal has capped the price of a life in cases of wrongful deaths at $10,000, say lawyers, under the category of care and guidance. The cap arose out of lawsuit for negligence in the death of a 32-year-old woman. This amount is separate from compensation for economic losses. In British Columbia the maximum award under the care and guidance category is $30,000; in Alberta, $25,000. We suppose we are to be grateful that the individual is worth so much.

[cheers] The Canadian Museum of Civilization marked Christianity's 2,000^th birthday with an exhibition entitled, Under the Cross, which opened November 5, 1999. Focusing on creative expressions of Christianity in Canada, 140 artifacts are shown ranging from a crucifix in a bottle to a print by B.C. native artist R.H. Vickers depicting Christ as a Haida wearing a crown of thorns.

Curator Robert Klymasz said that Christianity "is something that has touched everybody. It's not a dead issue." He noted that although 83% of Canadians identify themselves as Christians, most know relatively little of the history of Christianity in Canada, because schools and churches do not teach it. (Bob Harvey, NP, Sept. 15. 1999)

Churches do not teach the history of Christianity in Canada? What are our preachers and Sunday Schools doing?!

[scorpion] Chris Olfili, Tamara Sanowar-Makham and their supporters, for blasphemy and crudity masquerading as art. Olfili's Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung and pornographic cut-outs was recently exhibited at New York's Brooklyn Museum amid controversy and a consequently soaring sale prices. The museum's exhibition was sponsored by auction house Christie's, which made a commission of at least fifty million dollars on sales.

Sanowar-Makham's vestment with 200 maxi-pads entitled "Ultra-Maxi Priest" was banned from an art exhibit in Oakville's town hall. Shock-art strikes us as parasitic. What would such self-styled artists do without something holy to mock and ridicule?

[scorpion] The Canada Council, Telefilm Canada, the Ontario Film Development Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, for funding the pornographic and lesbian-friendly movie "Bubbles Galore." According to press reports, the Canada Council provided $60,000; Telefilm Canada, $10,000; the Ont. Arts Council, $40,000. Cynthia Roberts, the 34 year-old director, said that the numerous acts of simulated hetero and lesbian sex in the film flow from the plot.

Not content with only this funding, the Canada Council has also given $60,000 to a lesbian movie, "The girl who would be king."

Heritage Minister Sheila Copps blamed the Mulroney Government for setting the precedents for the grants.

[scorpion] Thomas Harris, Delacorte Press, and his readers, for celebrating a cannibalistic serial murderer, Hannibal Lecter, psychiatrist extraordinaire, in the third of the Lecter series, "Hannibal." The other two are "Red Dragon" and "Silence of the Lambs." As if the celebration of evil were insufficient, Harris compares Lecter's cannibalism to transubstantiation, the medieval Roman Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion.

Let there be no mistake: in the Lord's Supper Christ is renewing his own Body, the Church, just as an individual renews his or her own body through blood circulation. Our eating the Body of Christ by faith and drinking his Blood by faith are the actions of his own body, the Church, and can in no way be compared to cannibalism, in which one human being eats another. Christians are members of Christ's Body. Holy Communion is within the one body.

How anyone could read through Harris's appalling series is beyond our conception. It must be a kind of communion with evil and death. Hannibal Lecter is a perfect representative of the culture of death. The Lecter series should be avoided like the plague.

Reviewer Lynn Crosbie in the National Post waxes eloquent on Harris's "highly poetic and well-crafted novel which forges affinities and analogues through metaphor." If Harris is so talented, we would only say corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best is the worst.

[tears] University education isn't what it used to be. Steve Penfold is doing his Ph.D. on the doughnut. He presented a paper at the June meeting of the Canadian Historical Association. Meanwhile Lennart Aastrup is suing Langara College in B.C. for wrongful dismissal, after he allowed his class to strip naked during his course on shamanism.

[tears] Is environmental education education or propaganda? A geography textbook states, "Humanity is becoming a super malignancy on the face of the planet." It says that our population is growing like cancer cells on our fragile planet. Sounds like propaganda. Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder and former president of Greenpeace, wrote, "As a father and an environmentalist, I am often discouraged by the amount of misinformation conveyed to our young children through the school system and the media" (Introduction to "Facts, Not Fear," by Michael Sanera and Jane Shaw).

[cheers] Graeme Hunter, professor of philosophy at the University of Ottawa, for his article, "What's going on behind school walls?" (National Post, Feb. 14, 2000). Reacting to Ontario Education Minister Janet Ecker's response to the school shootings in Toronto and elsewhere, Hunter noted that Ecker had only surveillance systems and such as a remedy, as if the real problem were security rather than education.

Hunter focuses on three missing ingredients of Ontario education: no moral instruction, no religious instruction, no Socratic self-knowledge. No moral instruction in the so-called "morally neutral" system means an open door to moral nihilism. No religious instruction results in a bad society because "a society cannot be good without God." No Socratic self-knowledge leaves children with a life not worth living. Self-esteem is no substitute for self-knowledge in the Socratic sense of the word.

Hunter's university students tell him they have wasted the first 20 years of their lives. "They are angry at a school system that relentlessly told them they were banqueting, but left them empty; that praised their beauty, while disfiguring their souls; that told them of their rights, while disregarding their responsibilities." Not surprisingly, Prof. Hunter home-schools his own children.

We are not that enthusiastic about home-schooling, since we have heard from teachers in the public system how patchy the schooling can be and how socially awkward the children can be. Neither are we enthusiastic about Ontario's "neutral" system of education.

We believe that both many parents and many students want schools with a clear moral basis. Jewish parents and Christian Reform parents in particular have petitioned the United Nations to nudge Ontario into funding their religiously oriented schools. Other provinces fund private schools. Why won't Ontario?

There is no question but that an increasing number of parents are either home-schooling their children or paying the price of private education or switching to the Roman Catholic system. And the public schools lose the grants which would have come from

all those children. Isn't it time that our supposedly pluralistic society had a pluralistic system of public education?

We believe that, where numbers make it feasible economically, public schools should reflect parental convictions. That is, if a sufficient number of Jewish students live in a city to fill a school of, say, 500, then they should have a publically-funded school with a Jewish orientation. And the same for Christians, Muslims and even atheists.

Fears that this would ghettoize students would be reduced by inter-school sports and debates and by community orchestras. In any case morally neutral education is bad education leading to empty and nihilistic lives. We don't want that for our children and grandchildren.

[palm] The Canadian Bible Society, for the September 1999 Statement from the national Board of Governors:-

"Throughout our national history the words of the Holy Bible have served as a strong foundation upon which Canadian society has been built.

"Many of the values of tolerance, fairness and equality, which are found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and legislation at every level of government, spring from a Biblical heritage. These values have shaped our culture and heritage, and have given us our national identity.

"The recent decision of the Halvorson Board of Inquiry to strike down the use of the Lord's Prayer and Bible readings in the saskatoon School Board District, even on an optional, non-compulsory basis, strikes as well at the core of practices which are clearly identified as essential patterns of Canadian community life.

"The National Board of Governors of the Canadian Bible Society affirms the efforts of all those who seek to ensure that a time for prayer and a reading of Holy Scripture continue to serve as a regular feature of the programme offered in the public education systems across Canada.

"Freedom of religious expression which reflects the diversity of Canadian society is essential to ensure that an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and understanding will continue to be fostered in the hearts and minds of the future leaders who are being educated in Canadian schools today."

[scorpion] Retired Judge Ken Halvorson, a one-man human rights tribunal, for over-riding the Saskatchewan constitution mandating the Lord's Prayer in schools, and for discriminating against the expression of Christian faith in Saskatoon classrooms under the guise of religious freedom.

Halvorson actually and incredibly argued that reciting the Lord's Prayer each day interfered with the rights of school-children to enjoy religious freedom. Does he seriously imagine that forbidding Christian children to say the Lord's Prayer fulfills their religious freedom? On the pretense that minority children are traumatised by the Lord's Prayer, he makes sure that there is no religious freedom for Christians in Saskatoon schools. Such is the double-speak of the human rights elites.

Mordecai Richler ridiculed the traumatisation argument, specifically that of witness Karen Mock, Director of the B'nai B'rith's Human Rights League. He pointed out that Saskatchewan had all of 615 Jews as of the 1991 census. He remembered being in the school hallway "while sleepy-headed Christian kids mumbled their morning prayers." Neither he nor his Jewish friends lacked self-esteem or were charged with self-hatred because they were excused from opening exercises. "On the contrary, in our Montreal case we felt blessed, running free in the hall. While the less fortunate goyboys fulfilled their tribal functions, we could catch up on the sports pages, tell dirty jokes, play nearest-to-the-wall with bubble-gum hockey cards or just horse around." (NP, July 24, 1999)

The doublespeak of human rights commissions and backers disguises an anti-God, anti-religious and anti-Christian agenda. They insist that they are working for religious freedom but they deny religious freedom to Christians, and, in many cases, to Jews and Muslims who want their children educated in a religiously oriented school. Whose reason is more blinkered than a statist human rights enthusiast?

The concept of state education started with Bismark's Prussia and has aided and abetted totalitarian governments ever since. The concept of parent-directed education started with Deuteronomy 4:9, 6:7 and 11:19 and is affirmed by Catholic and Christian Reformed Churches to this day. The founder of the Ontario public school system, Egerton Ryerson had this to say:

"I assume, also, that Christianity--the Christianity of the Bible-regardless of the peculiarities of Sect, or Parties is to be the basis of our System of Public Instruction, as it is of our Civil Constitution" (J.G. Hodgins, Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada, VI, 73).

"The cold calculations of unChristianised selfishness will never sustain a School System. And if you will not embrace Christianity in your School System, you will find that the Religious Persuasions will commence establishing Schools of their own; and I think they ought to do so, and I should feel, that I was performing an imperative duty in urging them to do so" (Hodgins, VIII, 241-242).

Elementary and secondary schools should not be experimental laboratories for amoral or nihilistic educators; children are not guinea pigs. Schools should not be training grounds for statist governments; children are not cannon fodder. Schools should not be mere preparations for business; children's destiny is more than work. Without a religious orientation, schools will fail to meet legitimate parental expectations, will fail to meet their students' human needs, and will fail to prepare students for democratic responsibility.

EUTHANASIA

[scorpion] The Netherlands and Belgium, for introducing legislation to permit doctors to continue to kill patients whose unbearable suffering makes them ask to die or who are in an irreversible coma and have signed a request for termination under such circumstances within five years. The Netherlands would permit children as young as 12 years of age to request euthanasia.

The Journal of Medical Ethics found that in the Netherlands almost two-thirds of all cases of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in 1995 went unreported. Nearly 20% of deaths took place without the patient's express request; in 56% of the cases the justification for killing was not "unbearable suffering" but "loss of dignity." The earlier Remmelink Report found that more than half of euthanasia cases go unreported and at least 1,000 cases of mercy killing in the Netherlands occur each year without formal patient request.

If Dutch and Belgian doctors have played rather fast and loose with the strict guidelines for euthanasia prior to the present legalizing of current practice, why would they not continue to play so cavalierly and perhaps more so?

The case of the popular and trusted Dr Harold Frederick Shipman, 54, from Hyde, near Manchester, England, suggests that a doctor can get carried away with euthanizing patients. Shipman was convicted this year of killing 15 patients and falsifying a patient's will (in his own favour). The police suspect that he killed at least 130 women during his 29 year career.

If Shipman is thought to be an exception proving the rule, consider the report of Consultant Dr Adrian Treloar, who alleges that "involuntary euthanasia" is going on in National Health Service hospitals. He said, "There are severe pressures on beds and in order to relieve this there may be a tendency to limit care inappropriately where you feel doubtful about the outcome."

Police are investigating 60 cases of pensioners who died after allegedly being deprived of food and water by hospital staff.

Recent British Medical Association guidelines say doctors should be allowed to authorize withdrawal of food and water by tube for stroke victims and the confused elderly, even when they are not terminally ill.

Clearly the European medical profession is well on the way down a slippery slope. No wonder that Dr Margaret A. Somerville should react with indignant passion to Dr Philip Hebert's appalling statement, "If we are going to do it [euthanasia], we should at least learn to do it well."

Dr Somerville wrote, "We cannot afford to underestimate the desensitization and brutalization that both teaching medical students how to carry out euthanasia and their doing this would have on them. We must also consider whether patients' and society's trust in both their physicians and the medical profession depends in large part on this absolute rejection by physicians of intentionally inflicting death" (National Post, March 1, 2000, p. A18).

In at least two cases Canadian courts have made judgments consistent with the easy attitudes to euthanasia in the Netherlands, Belgium and even Britain, illustrated above. First, the Robert Latimer case in Alberta, and second, the Lisa Thompson case in Niagara Falls.

Robert Latimer killed his disabled daughter and received an extraordinary two year sentence, rather than the mandatory 10 year sentence. The two year sentence is now being appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The lenient sentence shocked disabled Canadians.

Lisa Thompson gave her daughter a near-lethal dose of prescription drugs and turned herself in. She was found guilty of attempted murder and was given a conditional sentence of two years less a day that will be served at home.

These cases are signs that euthanasia may become as common, as unregulated and as government-funded in Canada as abortion is.

[scorpion] Justice Minister Anne McLellan and the Chretien Government, for Bill C-23, which will have the effect of relativizing marriage by extending the benefits and obligations of married people to unmarried couples, including homosexual couples who have lived together for a year or more. The legislation will replace the word "spouse" with the words "spouse or common-law partner."

Minister McLellan said, "This legislation is about tolerance and fairness."

In answer to Eric Lowther's question if C-23 passes, will there be any differences in public policy toward married couples and unmarried couples who live together in a 'conjugal relationship,' McLellan flippantly asked, "Are you familiar with the Divorce Act, Mr Lowther?" There you have it. For Justice Minister McLellan the only differentiation between marriage and sodomy is the Divorce Act.

The National Post editorialized, "Her new legislation, if passed in its present form, may soon become known as the End of Marriage Act" ("Is marriage passe? Feb. 15, 2000).

The Canada Family Action Coalition commented, "This legislation is not about fairness and equality; it represents the abolition of the institution of marriage."

Commenting on the Vermont Supreme Court's decision that gay and heterosexual couples are equal under the law, Charles Colson said, "This decision, like previous decisions in Hawaii and Canada, treats marriage as nothing more than a status that qualifies people for government benefits. It essentially deconstructs marriage" (Breakpoint, Dec. 22, 1999).

Colson went on to say that marriage is "the institution that civilizes and protects children. It's society's most basic institution." We agree and we believe that McLellan's bill to relativize marriage to the level of gay sex sustained for a year or more is anti-social, irrational and utterly immoral.

McLellan and the Chretien Government are putting themselves (and Canada) on the level of the Emperors Caligula, who married his horse, and Nero, who married a boy. Those emperors had the power to do whatever they liked, as do the imperial Prime Minister of Canada and Justice Minister McLellan. Rome fell, corrupted from within. Does anyone doubt that the Chretien Canada will avoid Rome's fate?

[scorpion] Ontario Premier Mike Harris and Attorney General Jim Flaherty, for Bill 5, extending the same rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples to same-sex couples, instead of using the constitutional "Notwithstanding" clause. They compounded their sin by forcing Bill 5 through the legislature in three days (Oct. 25-27), virtually without debate and with no recorded vote.

The legislation was the Harris Government's response to the M vs. H decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. When first told of the decision during the election campaign, Harris said that while he didn't agree with it personally he would comply with it. In this regard Harris becomes a perfect example of the new hypocrisy, which pretends virtue by saying it's wrong personally but it will have to stand legally. When law is not based on moral right, it becomes an instrument of injustice. And it soon bends to the classic misdefinition that might is right (Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic).

The thanks which Mr Harris has received from the gay community, at least as represented by M, of M vs H infamy, is that Bill 5's legislation is not good enough. Fifty year-old M is returning to the high court, because gays and lesbians were not given status as spouses under Ontario law. Her lawyer, Martha McCarthy, says that creating a new category for same-sex couples rather than defining them as spouses is akin to segregation.

With gratitude like that perhaps Mr Harris may be less reluctant to use the constitutional "Notwithstanding" clause the next time, which will be when the Supreme Court agrees with M and orders him to legislate homosexual marriage.

Not all gays wanted Bill 5. John McKellar, national director of Homosexuals Opposed to Pride Extremism (HOPE), wrote Premier Harris in August, "Do you wish to be remembered as the PC premier who was cowed by the liberal elite? Or the PC premier who surrendered to the counterculture prelates bent on subverting and reshaping the traditions, institutions and values upon which this country was built?"

McKellar also wrote, "The truth is that, notwithstanding the specious allegations and vociferous demands of the gay lobby, homosexuals in 1999 experience no more or less discrimination than any other segment of society. The truth is that, under the guise of civil rights, the primary goals of my radical brothers and sisters are: (1) To normalize all sexual behaviour; (2) To gain official approval and validation of their lifestyle; (3) To infect the masses with the nihilism and narcissism of "Pride"; (4) To exact revenge upon the 'bigoted, heterosexist' culture for 'centuries of oppression.'"

[cheers] Doug Koop's editorial, "Registered domestic partnerships," (Christianweek, Jan. 25, 2000) for proposing an alternative to what McLellan has introduced in parliament, namely, registered domestic partnerships which would include siblings who live together and other long-time housemates. Koop argues that registered domestic partnerships would link benefits to economic dependency rather than sexuality. Such a proposal would not redefine family or spouse or marriage, but would benefit housemates where the dependency of one can create economic hardship for both.

[scorpion] Secretary of State Hedy Fry, for paying out, under the Status of Women, $253,918 to lesbian causes in the fiscal years 1996-1998. In 1999 the pro-marriage REAL Women of Canada was denied a grant by Status of Women.

[scorpion] Gay/lesbian activist leaders and fellow-travelers such as the American Counseling Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Psychological Association, National Association of Social Workers and the National Educational Association, for denying "Ex-gay" claims and condemning reparative groups like Exodus in a 12 page propaganda booklet entitled, "Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation & Youth."

The booklet was distributed in December to 14,700 school districts in the United States. It says that homosexuality is healthy and does not need to be cured. It warns that attempts to change sexual orientation "may cause harm to young people." It concludes, "School officials should be deeply concerned about the validity and bias of materials or presentations that promote a change to a person's sexual orientation as a 'cure' or suggest that being gay, lesbian or bisexual is unhealthy."

Jason Thompson, who ministers to youth through the Portland (Oregon) Fellowship, noted, "When I was growing up, being encouraged to be gay left me empty and suicidal. What I desperately needed, as a youth, was to know my options." He said that the booklet is "very biased in many ways. It fails to address the thousands of men and women who have successfully overcome homosexuality, whose lives lives have been dramatically changed for the better."

"Just the Facts" is short on facts like the finding of the American Public Health Association that more than 75% of all homosexuals acquire a sexually-transmitted disease at least once. Charles Colson commented: "...the gay lobby is not really interested in the truth. Its real goal is to pressure schools to present homosexuality as normative--and to paint anyone who opposes their agenda as an intolerant bigot."

One American educator, Antioch, California schools chief Lee Jenkins, dismissed "Just the Facts" as "mere opinion." He added, "Probably the most reliable source is former homosexuals who have given up that lifestyle." Right on!

[scorpion] Toronto School Board, for banning "homophobic behaviour" that includes any opposition to homosexuality on moral grounds, as reported in Campaign Life Coalition Canada's National News (Jan. 2000). A board spokesperson told TD&O that although the sexual orientation document was endorsed, it is not yet policy. Procedures had as yet to be developed.

Idrahin El-Sayed, president of the Toronto District Muslim Educational Assembly said that homosexual acts are not normal and "we don't want it pushed on our kids and we won't stand for it to be in our schools."

Mr El-Sayed is fortunate not to be a Toronto student, for his comments would be banned. Such is gay tolerance. Such is secular tolerance. No dissent is permitted. Acceptance of the unacceptable is mandatory.

[scorpion] Most media and the American political establishment, for trivializing gay crimes and blowing up crimes against gays. The Matthew Shepard murder in Wyoming in October received 200 stories by CNN and ABC news. President Bill Clinton called for new laws against hate-crimes. Fourteen thousand memorial Web sites have been set up in Matthew's memory. We do not begrudge him this kind of support.

But consider the murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising by two gay men, who raped and tortured him to death in Arkansas about the same time. Neither CNN nor ABC reported his murder. President Clinton had never heard of Jesse. No web sites were dedicated to his memory. The story appeared only in a handful of newspapers.

All are equal, but some are more equal than others.

In 1981 American sociologist Robert Lichter discovered that at least 81% of the new media people had voted for the left-leaning presidential campaignin every election going back to 1964. He found that 90% of them favoured abortion; 76% approved of homosexuality; 53% thought adultery acceptable personal behaviour; and 86% seldom or never attended a church or synagogue.

With such convictions and habits the media can hardly claim to be objective on any moral issue, and their ignoring Jesse Dirkhising's murder at the hands of two gay men becomes less incredible, though no less deplorable..

[scorpion] Toronto Police senior command, for allegedly making a secret deal with owners of gay bars that officers would turn a blind eye to illicit sex activity as long as it remained behind closed doors. After Detective Dave Wilson refused to drop charges against the notorious Bijou, Superintendent Aidan Maher called on Toronto's senior Crown Attorney to withdraw the charges.

This, despite the fact that Toronto's vice squad had then been cracking down on heterosexual sex clubs involving hundreds of criminal charges. This, despite police roughing up the gentle pro-life advocate and grandmother Linda Gibbons during her arrest on October 15 within a bubble zone and then, incredibly, arresting the journalists (Sue Careless, Stephen Jalsevac and Gord Truscott) covering her arrest.

All are equal, but some are more equal than others. Just ask the current Toronto Police senior command. We hope that in-coming Police Chief Julian Fantino cleans house.

[cheers] Dr Laura Schlessinger, for supporting California's Proposition 22 that would bar same-sex marriages. The referendum is scheduled for March 7. Dr Laura, broadcasting from 450 radio stations in the U.S., said that Proposition 22 "affirms our society's traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and woman."

The homosexual Horizons Foundation has placed ads in San Francisco and Los Angeles newspapers accusing Schlessinger of "contributing to the fear and hatred of gay and lesbian people." The ads call Dr Laura "America's No. 1 messenger of anti-gay advice."

Dr Laura denies making any anti-gay commentary, saying, "What these people are trying to do is demonize me in an effort to help their political campaign against Proposition 22." If this sounds paranoid, we need only remember what militant gays did to Anita Bryant of former Florida orange juice fame.

Of course not all homosexuals are like the militants; lesbian rock singer Melissa Etheridge said that Schlessinger "has her own opinion. If people want to listen to it, it's fine... I don't believe in shutting anybody up."

Horizons Foundation is not the only critic of Dr Laura. Reform Rabbis like Denise Eger regard Dr Laura's advice as "Lashon Harah," or "evil tongue," which some rabbis say can be worse than murder. Referring to Dr Laura, Eger said, "She is entitled to her personal religious beliefs. But to set herself up in the public marketplace of ideas, and hold herself out as a religious authority, to use those religious beliefs to incite hurtful and hateful words and actions in others, that is troublesome."

In other words, if Dr Laura doesn't agree with Rabbi Eger, she should shut up. Moreover, Eger is begging the question that Dr Laura is inciting hurtful and hateful words and actions in others. What Dr Laura is doing is advocating an affirmative vote for Proposition 22, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Dr Laura also recommends reparative counselling for homosexuals and this is anathema to the militant gay agenda.

According to Rabbi Denise Eger, Reform Judaism in the U.S. has been on record since 1996 as supporting civil marriage for gays and lesbians. No wonder orthodox and conservative Jews have serious misgivings about much in Reform Judaism.

[cheers] Thomas Cardinal Winning, of Scotland, for opposing the Blair Government's proposal to scrap the Thatcherite Clause 28 of the Local Government Act, which bans public bodies including schools from promoting homosexuality.

Cardinal Winning said, "It pains me to use the word 'perverted' when discussing the homosexual act but that is what it is."

Tory leader William Hague responded by reaffirming his own support for Clause 28 and by accusing the Blair Government of intolerance. He said, "We should be tolerant of each other. Yet true tolerance also involves a minority accepting and understanding the experiences and beliefs of the majority. It is intolerant to take taxpayers' money and spend it on political causes of which the majority disapprove. It is intolerant to teach children lessons about family relationships which people may deeply disapprove of for moral or religious reasons." (Paula Adamick in Catholic Insight, March 2000, p. 9)

A February 8 news report states that the House of Lords rejected government plans to repeal clause 28 and accepted an amendment retaining it by a vote of 201-165.

[tears] UNICEF and Elections Canada, for their absurd project to hold a vote on November 19 in Canadian schools on students' favourite human right. UNICEF picked ten rights from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and children were to pick their favourite right. In fact very few schools participated, and the outcome was that most children involved voted for their families.

One provision of the Rights of the Child accords children "freedom of thought, conscience or religion." Sounds great, but does it mean that kids should have the right to object to their parents' insistence that they go to church? Would it make children easy targets for cults by undermining parental authority?

Another provision of the Convention guarantees children "freedom of expression...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds... through any media of the child's choice." What then about pornography on the internet? Is this a right of the child?

The more serious objection to the vote is the vote itself. If we can vote for our favourite human right, we could also vote against our most annoying right or against the rights of someone whom we dislike. The question is whether human rights can be given or taken away by a vote. Are human rights inherent or state-given or ego-given?

If human beings have rights, these rights are surely not subject to the whims of an electorate or government or court. Rights are basic, fundamental, constitutional. And they are a package. Vote away one right and you could vote away another or all of them.

[scorpion] B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary Southin, for countering Focus on the Family's argument that Canada's Charter of Rights recognized the supremacy of God, and therefore that religious values should be considered, by the comment that the supremacy of God was "a dead letter." If so, then human rights in Canada are in danger of becoming a dead letter too.

For we believe that genuine human rights such as the right to life are God-given. They are based ultimately on the creation of all human beings in God's image. All human beings are innately persons of dignity and worth because we are all created in God's image.

We believe also that genuine human rights are based on the commandments of God revealed in Holy Scripture. We have a right to obey God's commandments. For example, the first of the Ten Commandments forbids any other gods before the God of the Exodus. From this commandment it follows that we have a right to worship this God. The right to freedom of worship follows from this revealed commandment. And it is not subject to a vote by an electorate or to approval by any government. Many governments have enacted laws to take away this right. The Seleucid monarchy did in the case of the Jews; Roman emperors prior to Constantine did in the case of Christians. Such laws as the Seleucids and the anti-Christian emperors enacted were unjust laws and not binding in the sight of God.

Rights in the Canadian Charter can quickly become mere paper rights, as were such rights in the U.S.S.R., and as the right to freedom of conscience and religion is becoming. For the public expression of religion and worship has been severely curtailed by court decision after court decision. Municipal councils are now forbidden to start their meetings with the Lord's Prayer. Nor are schools exempt from a judicial ban. Even a constitutional guarantee to pray the Lord's Prayer in public schools in Saskatchewan is dismissed by a human rights commission appointee.

Governments and human rights commissions seem to think that they grant human rights, and that as they grant rights, so they can take them away or limit them. The right to freedom of worship in Canada is being limited to private life. Little or no public expression of faith is permitted. Indeed mayors are ordered to proclaim Gay Pride Days against their will, against their religious conviction, against the will of the electorate.

Genuine human rights can only be limited justly by other genuine human rights. My right to life does not permit me to disregard your right to life, nor yours mine.

The clash between the right to freedom of religion and worship and the right to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is the clash between a genuine right and a fictitious right (a legal fiction). Yet the clash is very real. Lesbian lawyer Barbara Findlay said, "The struggle for queer rights will one day be a showdown between freedom of religion and sexual orientation." She is probably correct in her forecast.

An example of fictitious rights is the demand of a prison inmate for a sex change. Richard Chaperon, 57, now styled Synthia Kavanaugh, has appealed to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to get the operation for his peace of mind. Chaperon/Kavanaugh is serving a life term for murdering his best friend Leo Black with a hammer, delivering 20 blows to his head. Corrections Canada's policy forbidding sexual reassignment surgery is said to be discriminatory. If the tribunal finds in Chaperon/Kavanaugh's favour, then the right to change one's sex will be added to the list of fake human rights in Canada.

Here are some examples of how the freedom of worship is in jeopardy in Canada.

(1) The Quebec Human Rights Commission has ruled that the Town of Outremont and the Montreal Urban Community must cease the practice of opening their meetings with prayer as of January 7, 2000. Moreover both municipalities were ordered to make formal acknowledgment that their tradition of asking for divine guidance was offensive.

(2) On September 24, 1999, the Ontario Court of Appeal issued an injunction preventing councillors from the Town of Penetanguishene from reciting the Lord's Prayer. Reciting the Lord's Prayer was said to be an imposition of "a Christian moral tone on the deliberations of council." (Does the court want a biker moral tone on municipal councils?)

(3) Hugh Owens published an ad in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper in June of 1997. The ad contained Bible verses condemning homosexual practice and a graphic of two stick-men holding hands with a red circle and slash superimposed. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission hauled both Owens and the Star-Phoenix into their kangaroo court. The fact that the newspaper also published ads promoting gay pride week did not cut any ice with the commission. Mr Owens said he doesn't support hatred and violence toward gays. But "If my message is in violation of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, so must be the Holy Bible."

(4) In 1988 the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that compulsory reciting of the Lord's Prayer violates the Charter of Rights. It could be recited only if other religions were equally represented. But this would relativize the Christian claim that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14:6).

(5) In July of 1999 retired Judge Ken Halvorson ordered the end of reciting the Lord's Prayer in Saskatoon classrooms. He said reciting the Lord's Prayer interferes with the rights of school-children to enjoy religious freedom. Presumably religious freedom for him and the Human Rights Commission means freedom from anything Christian. His report recommended that the Saskatoon Board develop a multicultural religious proposal, but stated that the plan "should not include any prayer or readings from any form of Bible."

As for religious freedom for Christians to pray their Lord's Prayer, this is apparently considered as a non-issue. Are Christians in Canada today gradually becoming what Jews in Nazi Germany were: non-persons?

(6) Before the September 9, 1998, inter-faith memorial service at Peggy's Cove, the Roman Catholic priest and the United Church Minister involved were warned by a Chretien Government official to omit any reference to Jesus and any reading from the New Testament. But no such censorship was required of the Jewish Rabbi or of the Muslim leader who read from the Koran. Are only Christians to be discriminated against? Are Christians in fact becoming non-persons in Canada?

(7) Radio talk show host John Collison of Winnipeg was fired after the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission complained about his opposition to "anti-homophobia policies" which the local school board was imposing on city schools. A CRTC member, Alison Wylie, acknowledged to an American journalist that the CRTC's action was a chill on free speech, but she said it was a reasonable chill. She actually told journalist Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post, "We don't have the hang-ups you Americans have with free speech." "No, indeed," commented Ian Hunter (NP, Jan. 13, 2000).

(8) Scott Brockie, an owner of Imagining Excellence Inc., Toronto, was fined $5,000 in late February or early March of this year by adjudicator Heather MacNaughton of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, for refusing to print letterhead for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Mr Brockie refused this business because of his Christian belief that the Bible condemns homosexual behaviour. On other counts he has done business with homosexuals, but doing work for an organization whose only reason for existence is the promotion of homosexuality was more than his conscience could take. Brockie said,"I didn't discriminate against the person. I discriminated against the philosophy, the lifestyle, the cause. I'm not prepared to compromise my beliefs for the sake of a printing job." He is appealing from this kangaroo court to the real courts of justice.

These then are examples of definite restricting of freedom of conscience and religion in Canada.

Now the actual decisions of courts suggest that spontaneous recitation of the Lord's Prayer (or any Christian prayer) would not transgress the court's bans on compulsory recitation (at least until the courts rule that anything Christian must be hidden in the closet).

We would therefore encourage municipalities and schools to provide opportunities for silent or spontaneous prayer, and if some of those present break out into the Lord's Prayer or the Gloria Patri, no one can object that the prayer is compulsory.

Meanwhile Erie-Lincoln MPP Tim Hudak and Minister of Mines is sponsoring a petition to the legislature that it "continue the parliamentary tradition of beginning the start of daily business in the House with the reading of the Lord's Prayer by the Speaker;" and "vigorously defend the reading of the Lord's Prayer in the Ontario Legislature against any legal or constitutional challenge." House Speaker Gary Carr is reported to favour strongly the reciting of the prayer against the Ontario Human Rights Commission challenge. Contact Mr Hudak at timhudak@niagara.net or 416 325-8454 or 800-665-3697.

[scorpion] Ontario Attorney General Jim Flaherty, for failing to withdraw the charges of obstructing a peace officer against three journalists covering Linda Gibbon's arrest outside the Scott abortuary in Toronto on October 15, 1999.

The three journalists were Sue Careless, who writes for The Interim, Steve Jalsevac, a videographer for LifeSite News, and Gordon Truscott, who writes for the Royal City Journal in Guelph. The three were detained by police and their film and materials were seized. To date the charges remain in place, despite six or seven court appearances. The earliest available court date for Sue Careless's trial on charter rights was in September (!) but her lawyer needed a later date and got October 30, over one year later than the charges. In our opinion the charges are a monstrous violation of the freedom of the press. And the delay is yet another example of justice denied. (Are we to suppose that the Supreme Court's Askov decision in 1990 applies to criminals and not to journalists?).

David Curtin, Editor of The Interim, told The Endeavour that the charges could have a chilling effect on journalists who want to cover stories that a government wants kept quiet. "The people responsible for laying the charges don't care if they stick. They want to intimidate people, knowing this type of harassment is possible."

In the September 1999 issue of TD&O we reprinted an editorial by National Review about the deleterious effects of abortion. The editorial was entitled, "Dead Reckoning," and said, "Everything abortion touches, it corrupts. It has corrupted family life...It has corrupted the Supreme Court... The law on everything from free speech to biotechnology has been distorted to accommodate abortionism..." (p. 29). Now we see abortion touching the freedom of the press.

[cheers] Canadian Church Press, for the following open letter to James Flaherty, Attorney General of Ontario:-

"Freelance journalist Sue Careless was arrested on October 15^th while taking pictures of the arrest of Linda Gibbons who was deliberately inside the protected, no protest area, at an abortion clinic here in Toronto. I am writing on behalf of the Canadian Church Press, an association of Christian publishers representing 80 member publications and 15 associate members. Sue Careless is an associate member. We deplore this outrageous infringement of the freedom of the press. The injunction banning protesters in the area surely does not apply to journalists and photographers in the performance of their duty of informing the public.

"Not only was Ms. Careless arrested, her film was seized, along with the film from two other photographers on the scene, leaving no record of the arrests to be presented to the public. We are indignant when such muzzling of the press occurs in countries like the former Soviet Union which are at the mercy of non-democratic regimes. However, we all believe, perhaps naively, that such a thing could not happen in Canada.

"I strongly urge you to investigate this matter, and take the appropriate action to return the film to the photographers in question as quickly as possible so they can complete their task of providing information to the public.

"I am distributing copies of this letter to the 80 member publications represented by the CCP as well as to Premier Harris, Mayor Mel Lastman, and Sue Careless.

"I will be happy to forward your explanation of the situation to the same group as soon as I have your reply.

"Rose Anne Hart, President, The Canadian Church Press."

The attorney-general's office replied with a standard stonewalling response that they could not comment on a matter before the courts. But they put the matter before the courts and had no business doing so if the Charter means anything.

Theological Digest & Outlook is a member of the Canadian Church Press.

[cheers] Justice Minister Anne McLellan, for considering raising the age of consent to sex from 14 to 16. A December 4, 1999, report says that the federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers almost unanimously agreed that 16 is the appropriate age for consent.

Earlier the Justice Department released a discussion paper calling for public input into how Canadian law can be improved to protect children from sexual exploitation. Among other things Ottawa is asking whether a young person is emotionally capable of consenting to sdex at age 14, or whether it should be raised to 16 or even 18. Clearly the consensus is for age 16.

Concern was expressed that any law not criminalize consensual sex between young people under 16 or else the courts would probably strike it down. We do not want to see teen-age sex criminalized, but we do think that it should be discouraged at all levels of government and education.

At least the age of consent is likely to be raised to 16, perhaps within the next two or three months or years, and this might protect some young people from predators.

[scorpion] The 14 year old boy from Sheffield, U.K., for getting his 12 year-old girl friend pregnant. He attributed his prowess with this and other girls to sex education classes at school, but he didn't like the recommendation to use condoms. The girl lives with her mother and three sisters. She told her mother, "I want a baby of my own. I want somebody to love." As for the boy father to be, his comment was, I love being around kids and I reckon I'll be a good dad."

Another pregnant 12 year-old gave birth to a baby boy in her parents' bathroom in the neighbouring town of Rotherham. The girl's mother, 26, produced her fifth child a week before the girl did, having had her first baby at the age of 14.

The United Kingdom has Europe's highest rate of teenage pregnancies, many of them involving underage girls.

[cheers] Young people in France today, for favouring commitment and continence over promiscuity, which they regard as "tacky." The institution of marriage is more popular among young French people than at any time since the 1970's, and the number of divorces in France is falling for the first time in 30 years. Sociologist Hugues Lagrange said, "It appears that we're in a period of enormous social change." May this kind of change spread, especially to the U.K.

[cheers] Eric Lowther, MP, and majorities in the House of Commons and the Senate, for passing Bill C-7 (formerly known as C-69), which will have the records of convicted sex offenders flagged, so that the criminal past of these offenders can be determined if they apply for a position of trust over children, even if a pardon has been granted.

The Canada Family Action Coalition (www.familyaction.org) distributed over 650,000 postcards to support the passage of this and other measures to protect Canada's children.

[cheers] The Polish senate and lower house, for approving a total ban on pornography on March 3^rd. They amended the criminal code to outlaw the production and dissemination of all pornography, though they weakened the punishments somewhat. The amendment still requires the signature of President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

In our opinion only a total ban on all retail pornography will make possible any ban on child pornography. (See TD&O, March 1999, p. 29 and Sept. 1999, pp. 32-33 for our comments on the Robin Sharpe affair.) Solidarity politician Stefan Niesiolowski said, "This means that pornography, which is disgusting, demeaning to women, and leads to violence, evil and human suffering, will completely disappear from Polish stores." Would that such would be the case in Canada and the United States.

[cheers] The Judicial Committee, for its decision "that a Remit is required to alter the wording of the baptismal formula in The Basis of Union, section 2.16.1."

In her February 2nd letter to the General Council Executive, General Secretary Virginia Coleman wrote, "In my opinion, in light of this ruling, it would not be acceptable for the alternative baptismal formulae to be included in 'Celebrate God's Presence.'"

The Judicial Committee's ruling vindicates the opinion of the National Alliance of Covenanting Congregations, the Community of Concern, Morgan's Point/Fork's Road East Pastoral Charge, North Lonsdale United Church and Streetsville United Church that the alternative formulae were ultra vires. The dissenting bodies were concerned also that the alternative baptismal formulas would undermine other denominations' recognition of United Church baptisms.

The Judicial Committee's ruling also suggests to us that the dissenting bodies are in truth less dissenters than constitutionalists.

[tears] Celebrate God's Presence still has objectionable material in it. The baptismal service includes feminist and heretical language such as we find in two of the optional professions of faith addressed to the parents: "Do you believe in one God: Creator, Christ and Spirit?" or "Do you believe in God, Source of love; in Jesus Christ, love incarnate; and in the Holy Spirit, love's power?" (p. 236)

A serious objection to the proposed new service book arises from its marriage services. Of the services available the format is virtually the same for both heterosexual marriage and same-sex partnerships. The result is that the biblical doctrine of marriage is left out, as is shown by Don Faris in his article, "Church or Cult?" in this issue.

[tears] The 1999 Faith and Public Life Conference at Queen's Theological College, Kingston, for a report that it was seriously lacking in prayer and in Christian conviction. An attender reported that she expressed her wish that the meetings had been opened and closed with prayer, "recognizing and honouring the supremacy of God." On the third panel session someone did pray--"to the sun, the moon and the created creatures". Lois Wilson, former Moderator and

a Senator called on those present to dialogue in unity with Wicca.

Said the attender, "I have never experienced a greater display of idolatry on the part of the institutional church, than that which surfaced at this so-called Faith and Public Life conference." She should see some of the material coming from the DMC's Worship Desk. (See TD&O, March 1999, pp. 28-29).

[palm] Thomas C. Oden, responding to critics that the Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church was divisive and patriarchal. He said what many of us would like to say to our United Church of Canada brethren and sistren. He wrote (in part):-

"Orthodoxy has spent many centuries defining parameters, for the purpose of showing how those parameters are scripturally grounded and commendable to the communion of believers. They help us not to be blown by every wind of doctrine. It is an odd idea that orthodoxy is not concerned with unity of faith. That is its central intention, and it defines boundaries only in order to insure the unity of faith in the apostolic witness. We are indeed free 'for faithful theological explorations' within these boundaries, but not apart from them, which appears to be the consistent intention of our critics. If not, they need to inform us where the boundaries lie....

"We respectfully make a distinction between evangelical feminists and those feminists who advocate abortion and lesbian legitimization. In order to make this distinction we have sometimes used the term 'radical feminists,' but that is only to distinguish one type of feminism, not all types. It refers specifically to that feminism which is strongly shaped by social location arguments that are largely grounded in a quasi-marxist understanding of oppression, and an interpretation of religion as power, along with a very determined lesbian and abortion advocacy. The women of the church are not all 'radical feminists'. This is a mistake that only a few feminists make nowadays, and it is indeed a fatal mistake to make.

"Those who speak up for the apostolic tradition are not divisive; it is rather the objectors to the apostolic witness that are divisive. The most divisive event in recent years is the Reimagining Conference which wrongly linked ecumenical advocacy with abortion advocacy and lesbian advocacy. We are responding to such divisiveness with a search for unity grounded in truth, that truth that is in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Lord, which makes us free.

"It is an insult to women who died for the ancient ecumnical faith defined by the ancient ecumenical councils, and there were many women who died, to assume that they had no level of consent to these teachings. That would make their martyrdom disingenuous. Some forms of feminist advocacy insult the integrity of the women martyrs who died on behalf of their triune baptismal confession. The seventh ecumnical council in particular shows the decisive role that women have played in ecumenical consent to apostolic teaching. Christian women have a profound history of fiercely resisting all attempts to dilute conciliar teaching. Such attempts are at stake today in some hyper-feminist attacks on the atonement, the eternal Sonship of christ, the servant or submission ethic for men and women, and the protection of life." (Taken from "We Confess," Vol. 5, No. 3, May/June 1999)

[cheers] That at least $500,000 of the $20,000,000 given by the estate of Dr Richard Lindsay Morrison to the United Church were put toward the Healing Fund. Dr Morrison was born in Ontario but moved to the United States in 1914. He was a devoted Methodist. He died in 1954. His will stipulated that on the death of a certain grandson all remaining funds were to be transferred to the United Church of Canada. The grandson died in November. This bequest is the largest ever received by the United Church.

We applaud $500,000 being given to the Healing Fund because this fund represents the voluntary good will of United Church people toward native people abused as children in the residential schools. We believe that while the Healing Fund money with God's help will bring about some healing, any money compelled by future court settlements will likely impoverish the church and corrupt the plaintiffs--a 'lose-lose' situation for sure. It is therefore much better to give now, voluntarily, and let good will facilitate the healing process.

[scorpion] Allan Early, lawyer for former residential school students suing both the federal government and the United Church, for hyperbole in his statement quoted by the National Post: "We will argue this was a genocidal system..." (Apr. 19, 1999).

Many adjectives could be used to describe the abuse in the residential schools, but surely "genocidal" is utterly inappropriate. The fact that the former students are alive and suing is evidence against the accuracy of this adjective. Indeed the absurdity of this charge casts doubt on the credibility of the abuse allegations presently wending their way through the courts. How many of them are for real? Early's allegation is certainly not.

[scorpion] The Supreme Court of Canada, for its vicarious liability ruling (Bazley v. Curry, June 17, 1999), namely, that the employer is responsible for abuse committed by an employee if there is a "significant connection between the creation or enhancement of a risk and the wrong that accrues."

Barry Bussey puts it this way: "In other words a church may be liable for the gross misdeeds of its employees even though it is not at fault." And not just employees but volunteers too.

There is some point to the SCC ruling, for a church should ensure that opportunities for abuse are minimal. But the ruling needs much more nuancing to come anywhere close to justice. For example, we would suggest a diminishing rate of liability as the distance between employee or volunteer and the organization increases and as the length of time between an employee or volunteer's offence and the plaintiff's suit increases.

The court seems to be expecting an administrative perfection in charities, which neither it nor any government exemplifies. Consider the SCC's 1990 Askov decision, with the effect of dismissing thousands of criminal cases just because the cases were not tried within a desirable period of time. Would the court accept vicarious liability for all the wrongs not rendered justice because of its Askov decision? Not likely. Why then does it expect, indeed demand, such perfection on the part of charities funded much less certainly and generously than governments and courts?

[scorpion] The Ministry Study Group, for its hyper-functionalist "Report on Ministry in the 21^st Century" (September 1999). In particular we question the recommendations on pages 43 and 46, pertaining to ordination and to the presider at the celebration of the sacraments. We note that the report is for study and feedback only, but we suspect it will go to General Council virtually as is.

(1) The recommendation on page 43 "that all members of the Order of Ministry be ordained to the ministry of Jesus Christ and then commissioned to a particular function or role within the one Order of Ministry..." subverts the United Church doctrine that the church as a whole is called to the ministry of Jesus Christ.

See the statement to be read at ordinations: "Jesus Christ came into the world to be the servant of God and man. As servant Lord, he calls his church to a ministry of worship, witness and reconciliation. In baptism we were received as members of his church and at confirmation we committed ourselves to its ministry..." (Service Book for use in Church Courts, 1980, p. 12).

The recommendation as written might also be taken to mean that those already ordained be re-ordained to this supposedly new idea of ministry. It refers to "all members of the Order of Ministry" and says that they should "be ordained." Normally one becomes a member of the Order of Ministry after ordination or commissioning. The recommendation probably needs editing for clarification.

(2) The recommendation on page 46 "that the responsibility of granting permission for lay persons to preside at the sacraments be given to the Session (or its equivalent)..." subverts the Reformed doctrine that the one who presides at the sacraments be the one who is called to preach the Word.

The Scots Confession of 1560 states the matter succinctly: "Two things are necessary for the right administration of the sacraments. The first is that they should be ministered by lawful ministers, and we declare that these are [persons] appointed to preach the Word, unto whom God has given the power to preach the gospel, and who are lawfully called by some Kirk. The second is that they should be ministered in the elements and manner which God has appointed" (Chapter XXII),

Once again we call attention to the 1926 publication of the General council entitled, "A Statement Concerning Ordination to the Ministry in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Methodist Church (Canada), the Congregational Churches of Canada and The United Church of Canada" (pp. 263). The current report would nullify this foundational document on the ordained ministry of the United Church.

The authors of the report expect that it would take from five to ten years to implement its recommendations, if the DMPE and the General Council approve them. They also realize that remits would be necessary. The Basis of Union Doctrine, Article XVII, "Of the Ministry," would have to be radically re-written.

The members of the Ministry Study Group are: Jeraldine Bjornson (Chair), Rev. Steven Chambers, Rev. Ron Coughlin, Caryn Douglas, DM, Rev. David Galston, Rev.Won Heo, Betty-Jean Klassen, Rev. Susan MacAlpine-Gillis, Doris Major, Sheila Snelling and Keith Stam.

To obtain a copy of the report, please see Cheers immediately below.

[cheers] The Ministry Study Group, for recommending "that the General Council express its support of the exploratory work and affirm the principle of developing a First Call type programme for all ministry personnel within the United church."

The First Call programme began in response to concerns about ministers making the transition from theological school to their first Pastoral Charge. Research by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America indicated that there was a very high rate of ministers leaving their first charge soon after their settlement, sometimes because of stress related illnesses and disability; and that there was a high level of frustration among these ministers. The ELCA has been operating the First Call programme for three years.

We applaud this recommendation.

Since the report has not be sent out to all pastoral charges, we suggest that interested parties write for a copy to the Division of Ministry, Personnel & Education, 3250 Bloor St West, Toronto, ON M8X 1Y4 or download from the United church Home Page at www.uccan.org or phone 416 231-7680.

[tears] New Sections 107, 422.1 and the second sentence of 505(l) of the 1998 Manual, for opening the way to arbitrary decisions by presbyteries effecting pastoral charges, conferences effecting presbyteries and General Council effecting conferences. The new provisions are more general than those recommended by the General Council's Sessional Committee. Compare:-

107 ACTUAL: "Where, in the opinion of Presbytery, the functioning of a Pastoral Charge is ineffectual or the Pastoral Charge fails to take appropriate action, or where the Pastoral Charge requests the Presbytery to take action on its behalf, the Presbytery shall adopt such measures as it may deem necessary."

107 RECOMMENDED: "Where, in its ongoing care and oversight of Pastoral Charges, the Presbytery discerns that a Pastoral Charge is unable or unwilling to fulfill its duties and responsibilities, or the Pastoral Charge requests action on its behalf, the Presbytery shall adopt such measures as may be deemed necessary...".

The recommended 107 brings "ongoing care and oversight" to the fore and specifies inability or unwillingness of a pastoral charge "to fulfill its duties and responsibilities" as grounds for presbytery action. The actual 107 has no such safeguards. The same may be said of the other new sections of the 1998 Manual. This lack of context and specificity is why we believe that the new sections open the way for arbitrary decisions.

We understand that the new sections in the 1998 Manual were not as such approved by the General Council, but by the Executive of General Council. Manual changes have often been referred to the Executive for approval when the Council has not had time to deal with them. But these changes seem too sweeping for approval by a much smaller body than the General Council itself.

Rev. David M. Fisher comments, "To me the issues are twofold. First that insofar as these charges effect the government of the Church, a remit must be held. Second, given the content of the changes in the Manual, the potential for the abuse of power is great." (E-mail, April 29, 1999) We thank Mr Fisher and others for bringing this matter to our attention.

[tears] The Task Group on Church Membership, for its report, "Membership: Privilege and Responsibility", which revived a proposal twice rejected by remits (Option 2) and which proposed a basis for membership that is simply anarchical and unbiblical (Option 4). Option 4 is entitled "Open Concept," and reads: "There would be no process required for gaining access to governance. Anyone who wanted to be involved could be involved" (p. 10).

We received the report on June 22, 1999, but a response was required by November 19, 1999. It takes time to get a church board to study a report, and the time frame here is not generous.

We believe that there are too many task groups trying to change everything every two or three years.

[scorpion] Working Group on the Changing Church, for its report, "The Changing Church: The Church Hall Meeting Phase III", 1999. We thought we disliked the current structures of the United Church, until we read those recommended in this report.

Its Federated Style Model includes the proposal that "Conference Assessment provides funding for national work" (p. 6). We looked at figures in the 1998 Year Book. We assumed that expenses stay the same, that such an assessment would reduce M&S contributions to nil; that resident membership would stay the same; that court awards would reduce investment income to zero; that annuity gifts and legacies would dry up; and that other income would remain the same. Taking expenses of $52,545,946 less income of $14,061,719, divided by 550,825 resident members, we would have an assessment of $69.87 per resident member over and above current presbytery and conference assessments. This is of course a worst case scenario, but it suggests that this model requires a lot of caution.

The Three-Court Model would have General Council, Districts and Pastoral Charges. We considered three of the Hamilton Conference presbyteries (Niagara, Hamilton, Erie) combining to form a district, and wondered if such a district of 166 preaching places would be workable. We also wondered if the five General Council commissioners designated (p. 9) would have time to serve as proposed on the GC Executive and/or Divisions.

The Revised Four Court Model saw conferences assuming the responsibilities of presbyteries in the areas of finance and Ministry Personnel and of oversight of presbyteries and pastoral charges. We think this proposal is unworkable, but even if it could work, why bother making all that change? Are we to change for the sake of change?

We believe that with good will almost any structure will work. Without good will and trust, how can any church structure work?

We wonder if it makes sense to propose major changes in structures of the denomination when major lawsuits could have a major impact on denominational structures? (Don't count on the $20,000,000 windfall bailing us out.)

We also wonder what likelihood is there that a remit to presbyteries would approve abolition of presbyteries (Three Court Model) or a reduction of their role (Revised Four Court Model and the Federated Style Model)? If there is no likelihood of remits passing, why bother proposing such changes?

We believe that there are too many task groups and working groups making reports and proposing major changes every two or three years. It's either much ado about nothing or an implicit wish to commit denominational suicide.

[cheers] A. Gardiner "Fred" Skelly long-time United Church Minister, published a limited edition of his "Prayers for Public Worship and Private Devotion" in 1998. We hope Fred reprints this collection, for many United Church ministers would find it a helpful resource. We give a sample of his section on Thanksgiving prayers, for the good of United Church reform and renewal people:-

"Father in heaven, we are not true to the Gospel if we allow a sense of defeat to dominate us. So we lift our eyes from the sorry inward searching of our confessions, we turn from our painful preoccupation with our failures and we thank You that our story has not been one of total disaster.

"For the good choices and the wise decisions we have been able to make; For the sense of integrity which would not let us sell out to political pressure or to cheap expediency; For the courage which enabled us to face unpopularity for the sake of what was right; We lift up our hearts in gratitude to You, O God.

"For the compelling sense of compassion which moved us to bind another's wound and to bear another's burden; For the challenging sense of concern and responsibility which moved us to share our bread with the hungry; For all such moments, however brief or infrequent, of victory over failure and selfishness; We lift up our hearts in gratitude to You, O God.

"But above all, for the great promise of pardon and peace which is ours in Jesus Christ, our Lord; And for the good news of the Gospel which assures us that we are acceptable to You, not because of anything we achieve, but because of Your sovereign grace; We lift up our hearts to You, O God. Amen."

On Wednesday, September 15, 1999 a gunman entered Wedgwood Baptist Church. In the foyer he shot two persons; he entered the sanctuary and shot into the congregation of teenagers attending a post See-You-At-The-Pole Prayer and Praise rally. Eight are dead. Forty were injured. The gunman finally shot himself. Pray for this congregation: www.wedgwoodbc.org.

On Sunday, November 28, 1999, a naked man armed with a three-foot long samurai sword and a knife attacked worshippers at St Andrew's Thornton Heath. Five victims were in critical condition; six suffered slash and stab wounds. Pray for this congregation.

Not only Christians but Jews have been attacked in 1999. In August Buford O. Furrow Jr allegedly fired 70 bullets in the lobby of a Jewish community centre in Grenada Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles, wounding five people, including three children. Furrow is also accused of killing a mail carrier.

The good news is that those in the community centre fled to the nearby Episcopal Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Charles, where Temple Beth Torah worships Friday nights and Saturdays. The two religious bodies had shared the facility for ten years but had little in common. Mary Simmons, a parish administrator, said, "That man did more to hurt his cause than anything else he could have done. He brought us together, binding us forever in this community--Jewish and Christian."

[scorpion] Talisman Energy Inc., Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy, and United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first, for ignoring government genocide and slave-trading while it pumped oil in the Sudan; the second, for ignoring church and NGO reports about the same; and the third, for the shocking statement that "the human rights situation in the Sudan is not marketable to the American people."

In the 17 year long civil war between the Muslim North and the Christian and animist South in the Sudan, two million people have been killed--more than all the people murdered in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Checnya and Somolia combined. Five million more Christians have been driven into internment camps, where forced conversion to Islam is government policy.

We are appalled that the West ignores the millions of deaths of Sudanese blacks. We suggest that there is an ugly racism at work in this pointed ignoring of the situation. We mourn the deaths of millions of Christian Sudanese over the past 17 years.

And we applaud the efforts of Christian Solidarity International in buying freedom for as many Sudanese slaves as they can--5,942 Sudanese children since 1995.

But the United Nations Children's Fund's Marie Heuzer described their slave redemption plan as intolerable! For its part UNICEF appealed to the Sudanese Government to cooperate in stamping out slavery and said that private aid groups who buy the freedom of the captives are not helping the situation. And what has UNICEF done in this situation other than appeal fatuously to murderers to stop slaving? And while we are at it, what have the Muslim states like Saudi Arabia done to redeem the name of Islam so irreparably sullied and damaged by the murderous and slave-trading Sudanese Muslims just across the Red Sea from them?

[scorpion] Pakistan, for gross discrimination against Christians, detailed in the Reader's Digest article, "Pakistan's War on Christians," by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy (January 2000, pp. 146-154). The Muslim country has turned Christians into second or third class citizens. Muslims assault a girl; her father complains to the police and is arrested 19 months later for a murder whose only witnesses are the Muslims who assaulted his daughter. The word of a Muslim is worth more than the word of a Christian. That is the way law works in today's Pakistan.

A 1992 law states, "Whoever, by any imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, shall be punished with death." This law's susceptibility to arbitrary abuse should be obvious.

The examples of persecution in the Reader's Digest article turn our stomach. Pray for Christians in Pakistan; they are martyrs.

Rashida, widow of Manzoor Masih, who was cleared of chalking blasphemy on a mosque wall but was later shot by gunmen on a motocycle, was quoted, "I was driven from my home and my friends became my enemies after Manzoor died, but I'll never give up my faith--it is all we have left."

Why is Pakistan still a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations?

[tears] The pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor has killed many Christian leaders, in addition to the devastation it caused after the East Timorese voted for independence. The head of the Christian (Reformed) Church, Rev. Francisco de Vasconcelos, was shot by militia members on September 10, 1999, on the road between Dili and Baucau. His death follows the killings of numerous leaders of Catholic churches in East Timor.

As of September an estimated 120,000 to 150,000 displaced East Timorese are in a "humanitarian situation" that "remains very serious." The delivery of basic humanitarian aid was made difficult by the fact that the militia control access to those displaced in camps. Presumably the UN peacekeepers have eased the situation, but the militia's scorched earth policy will take years to overcome.

Pray for our fellow Christians in East Timor and in Indonesia, where tension between Christian and Muslim has been high.

The United Church works through Action by Churches Together (ACT), an international ecumnical network which responds to emergency situations throughout the world. Donations may be made through the United Church.

Mark cheques clearly for East Timor and make them out to the order of The United Church of Canada. Mail to the Division of World Outreach, 3250 Bloor St West, Suite 300, Etobicoke, ON M8X 2Y4.