Page 4568 – Christianity Today (2024)

For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?”Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, and later commented: “The very factthat you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeatedalready. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” (1 Cor. 3:3and 6:7; all quotations taken from the NIV).

“Worldly.” “Completely defeated.” Would the apostle Paul use similar wordsto describe the vital, innovative, quarreling church in America today?

I was startled recently when I went through the news columns ofChristianity Today for 1996 and found over a dozen good-sized fights reported among American Christians. (No doubt hundredsof other fights were too local to make national news.) They included thefull gamut of quarrels over property, doctrine, money, leadership. Even thoughI had read all these stories as they appeared, I had not taken in theircumulative effect. The frequency of our fighting left me numb.

Fighting among Christians is nothing new, of course; it dates from New Testamenttimes. It’s hard to say whether we fight more than Christians in previousperiods. I suspect more, but I can’t prove it. I do know that we fightdifferently.

CASE STUDY NO. 1: ACALet me tell you what I know about a very public fight in a well-known evangelicalChristian organization, which I will leave unnamed since it could serve nopurpose for me to republicize these wounds. Plus, the unfolding of thecontroversy is so frustratingly common that any of a large number of groupscould be substituted for this one.

I stumbled into the beginning of this fight several years ago while researchingan article. The founding figure of the organization—I’ll call itACA, for A Christian Agency—had recently moved on. The boardhad turned over leadership to a new man from outside the organization.

I was not long in their building before I sensed a culture gap. The staffwere a bookish group, deeply dedicated to thoughtful, measured approaches.The new leader was a hard-charging crusader, eager to put his distinctivestamp on the organization. Most of the staff members lived on a pittance.They had grown up in the organization and saw themselves akin to missionaries.The new leader was accustomed to living well, and he had no sense that becauseothers had lived frugally he should do the same.

While I visited ACA, a strained cordiality reigned. Apparentlythat did not last long. Some staff left ACA voluntarily; agood number were “laid off.” After one particularly large group lost theirjobs, they made their complaints public. One laid-off staff member suedACA for wrongful dismissal. ACA filed acountersuit. This dispute was eventually settled out of court.

Meanwhile, other former staff members formed a committee to approach theACA president and his board with their questions and concerns.They got nowhere. Their entreaties, they say, were answered with threateningletters from ACA’s lawyers. They got neither a face-to-facemeeting nor answers to their complaints. When you listen to members of thisgroup, it sounds as though they did everything they could to reach a meetingof minds but got stonewalled.

ACA leaders say they willingly met with individuals. But theysaw the committee as a power tactic, intended not to facilitate communicationbut to force the board’s hand. ACA leaders were not willingto accord the committee the status it sought by granting a meeting. Nor didthey feel obliged to answer every charge the committee raised.

To this day, both sides consider themselves essentially blameless. They havenever met to try to resolve their differences, and they aren’t talking toeach other yet. Both sides grow frustrated at the very mention of the otherside’s names. It is a thoroughly nasty and unresolved quarrel.

AN OUT-OF-CHURCH EXPERIENCEMuch about the above fight is classic, especially the noncommunication betweenstaff and board. ACA’s case, though, represents several newtrends in how we Christians fight.

First, it is more likely today for Christians to turn to litigation. Of course,Christians have been suing each other at least since the time of the Corinthianchurch, but I believe it would be accurate to say that lawsuits have beenexceptional. Our grandparents would never have pondered their chances ofbeing sued as they steered their way through church quarrels. Today, it isa rare battle that doesn’t have a lawyer involved.

Steve McFarland of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) saysthat Christians go to court thinking they are going to get justice. Instead,they get incredible delays, terrible costs, and in the end, a very doubtfulchance at justice. In the case of ACA, the moment a suit wasfiled, lawyers were advising all parties not to talk to each other for fearof damaging their “case.” (Of course, this can be an excuse; after the suitswere dropped, the parties still wouldn’t talk.) Lawyers’ tactics arerarely designed to bring reconciliation.

A second modern distinctive: the parties to the ACA fightwere board members, staff members, lawyers. Church authorities—pastors andelders—did not play a significant role. No church or denominational structuresintervened or provided a place to air differences.

Sociologist Tony Campolo notes that over half of American Christians nowattend an independent church, detached from any intercongregational structurethat has the power to encourage reconcilation. And in many congregations,independent or otherwise, church discipline is weak or nonexistent.

Nonetheless, even independent churches retain one tool for resolving conflictthat was missing in the ACA example—namely, a real community.Parachurch organizations have grown dominant in missions and evangelism,in all forms of communication (print and broadcast), in service to the poor,in political and social advocacy, and even in defending doctrinal orthodoxy.The battles of parachurch organizations like the ACA arenecessarily outside the discipline of any church body. They are governedultimately by each organization’s constituents, who are often “constituents”only through the checks they write.

Many modern Christian fights carry on in this netherworld of independentdirect-mail-funded organizations, where fundraising and communication withdonors are the most pressing realities. (Modern American politics is carriedon in a similar environment.) They provide no nexus for resolving conflict,and no community to press the partisans to make peace.

There can even be an incentive to quarrel. If you can make the case in yournewsletter or on your radio show that you are fighting for principle (andwho isn’t?), then your “community of donors” may actually give more. Fightingtends to shut down contributions in a local church, but it may increase givingto parachurch organizations that successfully spin the dispute into a matterof honor or a point of identity.

EMPOWERING PEACEMAKERS“I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other inthe Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women” (Phil.4:2-3). Fighting Christians need help. They could make peace bythemselves—nothing stops them. Frequently, however, they need the pressureand assistance of other believers.

Who will give it? American Christianity is increasingly fragmented. QuarrelingChristians nowadays don’t meet accidentally, as people did in small townsor small denominations. The social structures that would make the other partydifficult to avoid are not there.

This is not to suggest that people in small towns don’t fight. They do, ofcourse. Euodia and Syntyche did in the first century. They needed someoneto step in and help them. Paul took their quarrel on and enlisted someonein the Philippian church to take an active, hands-on, peacemaking role.

What would that look like today? A peacemaker needs to have authority inboth persons’ (or both organizations’) lives. In ruptured modern society,such a person may not exist. That’s why structures need to be reinvented.

The leaders of Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR),an umbrella group of apologetic and cult-watching organizations, have triedto invent such a structure. They observed “an increasing number of disputesand unhealthy divisions” and so developed a detailed “Manual of Ethical andDoctrinal Standards.” The 45-page document (released this year) spells outstandards on such matters as plagiarism, self-representation, reporting onand criticizing other Christians, and divorce and remarriage. It also setsout a process for ethical complaints against other members ofEMNR, beginning with the private and church procedures outlinedin Matthew 18:15-20, going on to Christian mediation or arbitration, andfinally, if no successful reconciliation can be reached, ending with disciplinaryaction by the EMNR board.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether and how the process will be used.The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) have long had amuch-less-detailed code of ethics, including a process for bringing complaintsagainst other members. The climate of religious broadcasting has not beennoticeably peaceful, however, probably because broadcasters feel little concernover the censure of the NRB. Would their donors and viewersbe moved?

Nonetheless, we need umbrella groups that are willing to spell out rightbehavior and to provide an authority that insists that wrong be made right.No power on heaven or earth can force people to behave like Christians; youcan’t coerce reconciliation. Structures can, however, provide peacemakersand moral pressure. The more they are used, the more their significance willgrow.

This has become a hallmark of the work of the Evangelical Alliance in England(which has a mission similar to the National Association of Evangelicalsin the U.S.). When the “laughing revival”/Toronto Blessing jumped the oceanand landed in Britain, it threatened to divide evangelicals alongcharismatic/noncharismatic lines. EA’s then director, CliveCalver, now head of World Relief in the U.S., intervened by calling a meetingof various institutional heads of the conflicting groups. He locked themin a hotel room with instructions that they could not come out until theyissued a joint statement on the Toronto Blessing. Amidst some grumbling,the group eventually earned their liberation by coming up with a list ofaffirmations and warnings that they could all sign. The subsequent “laughingrevival” has been remarkable for its lack of controversy. Everyone knew thecriteria by which it would be judged.

While protest is not new, it hascome to be our first and mainreflex when something troubles us.

Another strategy for peacemaking is the use of mediation ministries. Evensecular corporations increasingly rely on mediation and arbitration simplybecause it saves time and legal expenses. In nearly all states, a contractcontaining a “conciliation clause” stating that disputes must be resolvedthrough mediation (voluntary agreement) and arbitration (a mandated settlementdetermined by an arbitrator after a formal hearing of evidence) will be enforcedby the courts.

Christians have an added incentive for using mediation and arbitration: theycan settle disputes in a Christian way. The CLS’s Steve McFarlandrecommends that every church and Christian organization include a conciliationclause in its terms of employment and other contracts. People fear, he says,that mediation will try to impose a kiss-and-make-up solution, bypassingthe facts that require justice. In reality, he says, properly conducted mediationand arbitration seeks justice as well as peace. Mediators can and shouldbe experienced and knowledgeable in the area of dispute. They gather factsand offer carefully constructed settlements.

Several national organizations offer trained, Christian mediation and arbitrationservices. Best known are Mennonite Conciliation Services, Peacemaker Ministries(a spinoff of the CLS), and the Alban Institute. Peacemaker’sKen Sande says that most of their work is at a local level, helping to resolvefamily and business disputes. Occasionally Peacemaker is asked to help with“major Christian figures,” but Sande has often found them resistant toconciliation. “They have a hard time believing there are people competentto deal with their cases. When threatened, they tend to go quickly to anattorney. They’re usually more comfortable with an attorney.”

CASE STUDY NO. 2: ECTAnother very different kind of fight was prompted by the 40-page statement“Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT), issued in Marchof 1994. ECT tried to define the basis for a working alliancebetween evangelical and Catholic Christians, particularly regarding socialissues such as abortion and family life. Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colsonand First Things editor Richard Neuhaus originated the idea and persuadedprominent Christians in both communities to sign.

The statement soon encountered strong opposition on the evangelical side.R. C. Sproul, Michael Horton, and other Reformed theologians complained thatthe statement compromised on basic theological positions, particularly theReformers’ creed of “salvation by faith alone.” The dispute became quitepublic, fittingly for a concern over foundational doctrine. But as oftenhappens, both sides grew entrenched in their positions, and emotions becamehot.

Then, wonderfully, peacemakers stepped in, asking the evangelical partisansto talk through their differences. After protracted negotiations, a meetingwas planned for January 19, 1995, at pastor D. James Kennedy’s Fort Lauderdalechurch.

It was an extraordinary all-day meeting of leaders. Campus Crusade for Christ’sBill Bright, theologian J. I. Packer, and Colson represented those who hadsigned the declaration. The anti-ECT faction included pastorJohn MacArthur, theologians Sproul and Horton, television host John Ankerberg,and Kennedy. Joseph Stowell, president of Moody Bible Institute, served asmoderator. John Woodbridge of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School came tofacilitate discussion.

Both Jesus and Paul spoke harshwords of truth on occasion,but they were best known forbuilding a new community of love.

The morning’s talks were brutally frank and highly emotional. By the endof the day, however, these leaders had come together. There were tears andembraces as they signed a statement clarifying the theology ofECT. Colson called the meeting “a beautiful example of howChristians should deal with their differences.”

Several participants said that Stowell had done a masterful job of moderating.I asked Stowell what such a peacemaking meeting required. He mentioned severalfactors:

First, he said, it is very important that all participants really want aconstructive result. The goal may be simply to understand each other. Butif participants aim only to vent their anger, to “get” or “reprove” the otherparty, reconciliation is unlikely.

Second, he said, you need something drafted ahead of time if you hope toemerge with an agreement. Packer had brought a statement to Fort Lauderdalethat served as a solid starting point. “If you have no predraft,” Stowellsaid, “then trying to write in a group like that is an excruciating thing.You’ll never get it done.”

Third, Stowell noted, a neutral meeting place is important. While Kennedy’schurch was not perfect (Kennedy’s sympathies were clear), it at least avoidedthe headquarters of one of the more outspoken battlers.

Fourth, Stowell felt it was important not to rush into a solution. “You haveto let people vent enough so that they actually get all the junk on the table.If guys have really been wounded, those wounds have got to show. It has toget personal enough so that guys really get honest about what they feel.”

Part one of two parts; click here to read part two.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Part two of two parts; click here to read part one

All this was accomplished. The conferees left in a happy hopefulness. Unfortunately, the peace began to unravel in less than 24 hours. As most of the leaders caught planes for home, MacArthur and Sproul headed for a tv set to film a prescheduled John Ankerberg show critiquing the ECT statement. When this show was aired nationally, the ECT signers were shocked. They felt that the show renewed the attacks on ECT just as though the Fort Lauderdale meeting had never happened. From that point on, relations have gone from bad to worse.

It is a sad situation—not that the dispute continues, for there are profound and profoundly important theological issues at stake—but that evangelical leaders who share so much have become so alienated from each other. The story is not over yet. Attempts are being made to organize another meeting. But for now, the terrible irony is that an attempt at reconciliation probably made things worse.

It seems that in the flush of reconciliation, the principals thought they had accomplished more understanding than they really had. Those who had signed the ECT statement believed they had resolved misunderstandings. The critics thought otherwise. While they were glad that ECT signers would affirm Reformed orthodoxy, they still did not understand how they could also affirm ECT. As Kennedy told me, “We all felt that was not the full result that [we hoped for]. We would have preferred that they removed their names [from the ECT statement].”

Media exposure broke open these cracks. Michael Horton told me, “For these really sensitive topics, every word needs to be chosen. Emotional rhetoric, which comes easily when you are playing to an audience, needs to be kept to a minimum.” He pointed out that both sides have made public statements that upset the other. Television, never a subtle medium, particularly smashed their growing rapport. It is very hard to hold on to a developing understanding while arguing your point on TV.

I suggested to Stowell that the leaders had needed to go further at their meeting, discussing what they would do and say differently as a result of the meeting. They needed, that is, to agree not merely on doctrine but on conduct. He readily agreed. All the leaders, he thought, faced pressures from their own constituencies. It might have saved the meeting if they had made time (there was none, as they all had evening plans) to discuss how they would present the results of the meeting to their supporters. “What difference will this make? What pressures will this cause?”

“For me,” Horton says, “the meeting was like a seven-day tour of Europe. It was a blur. Everybody had said something, and we all remembered what we had said. Some of the people involved were so anxious to walk out with a contract that we didn’t really settle on what we had achieved.”

Nevertheless, Stowell talked about the breakdown as more than a lack of time or procedure. “We end up in the midst of an emerging controversy, talking to everybody on our side, rarely talking to our brothers on the other side. It’s kind of weird that Matthew 18 still doesn’t ring true in our lifestyles.”

The ECT battle shows all the marks of the disputatious style now dominating American discourse. Leaders who shared long histories and very deep agreement in theology, who represented much of the leadership of evangelical Christianity, could not achieve a conciliatory solution to their differences. Some expressed their concerns through cries of alarm and betrayal, while others were stunned by the attack. It was extremely difficult to get them to meet, and when they did meet, their agreement quickly fell apart.

Concern for unity brought the ECT partisans together to seek reconciliation. The urgencies of their particular constituencies, the sense that proclaiming prophetic truth from “outside the walls” is every leader’s first duty, the lack of deep community pressures toward reconciliation, even among leaders who have been friends and comrades for years, drove them apart.

WHAT THE SIXTIES REALLY TAUGHT USDoctrinal battles are nothing new. In this sense the ECT dispute is a throwback—it might have been fought in the sixteenth century.

This controversy, too, had little or no intersection with the institutional church. Broadsides were published in parachurch publications or on TV and radio shows. Compare this with previous doctrinal disputes of American Christianity, fought in church councils and denominational publications. Church splits occurred regularly, but they led to the establishment of new churches and new denominations. Churches have members. Parachurch organizations have donors.

The novelty of the ECT fight goes deeper than its institutional setting, though. Like many modern disputes, it is dominated by a style that the sixties made famous: protest.

Protest is a strong, often symbolic public statement aimed at shaping public opinion. While protest is not new (Luther started the Reformation by nailing a protest on a church door), it has come to be our first and main reflex when something troubles us. Everybody today pictures himself or herself as an embattled prophet, shouting the truth from outside the walls. Our motto might be Yell First, Talk Later.

Where once protest was the last resort of people with no other access to power—in 1955 blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, could not form a committee to visit the mayor—protest has become the first resort of those who are unhappy, even if they have substantial power. Protest is the preferred tactic of both sides of the abortion debate, of every wing of the political parties, of fundamentalists and antifundamentalists, of feminists and antifeminists. Protest is perpetual.

Protest also “works.” Many commentators lament the increased rancor of American politics, often bemoaning the bad manners of the people involved. Much more than character is involved, however. Rancor fits our circ*mstances. In a fractionated society, linked mainly by media and money, protest offers strong, clear gestures to attract like-minded people (donors). You can build a constituency around dissent, the feistier the better.

The media love protest. For reporters, it’s the easiest story to write, offering two neatly separated sides. Protest suits the talk-show format, while centrism and alliance-building are boring fare on tv or radio. Protest goes well on the Internet, too, where flaming charges and sourceless reports get traded in chat rooms. Accusations and counteraccusations can move faster and reach more people than ever before.

The career of Billy Graham is, by way of contrast, instructive. He forswore protest as a tactic. All his life he has felt deeply concerned about liberal tendencies in American Christianity. The launching of this magazine was, in part, a protest against them. Yet Graham’s ministry expressed those concerns in an overwhelmingly centrist way. He sought links to everybody from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Pope John Paul II. His crusades are known for their inclusive and unifying effects. It is this concern for harmony, as much as anything, that has won Graham such wide admiration. Yet, as much as Graham is admired, few leaders today seek to emulate his style.

CONSTRUCTING PEACEWe receive plenty of guidance from Scripture bearing on how we should handle disputes. “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Col. 3:13). “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong” (1 Thess. 5:15). “[Love] keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:5).

There is a cost to conciliation. You must be willing to answer softly. You must be willing to give up the final word. You must be willing to lose your dignity, if it comes to that.

A person who seems not to remember that he was wronged, a person who returns love for hurt, does not seem very potent. Neither did Jesus, through most of his life. Jesus’ example stands behind Paul’s admonitions not to repay wrong with wrong, but to forgive. Paul certainly does not require compromising the truth or ceasing to speak strongly for it. Jesus did not; Paul did not. Yet love was preeminent. Its absence, Paul tells us, would make the greatest miracles meaningless (1 Cor. 13:2). Both Jesus and Paul spoke harsh words of truth on occasion, but they were best known for building a new community out of love.

How can we build this new community today in American Christianity?

More and better structures for resolving conflict would help. The attempts of groups like EMNR to clarify standards and develop accountability are admirable. So are conciliation efforts such as those that Peacemaker Ministries offers (largely through volunteers). Christians need others who will press them, gently but insistently, to seek reconciliation. We never seem to have enough such persons.

Structures work when they encourage and enable such personal contacts. Administrative machinery by itself is unlikely to reduce conflict, because each dispute is different (or seems so to the participants), and because reconciliation is a matter of the spirit more than the law.

Still, most of us do not participate directly in these controversies. But we do play a role. As controversies heat up, we are often asked to take sides, to act. Ordinary Christians can play a role in resolving quarrels by resisting beguiling versions of the truth and demonstrating wisdom in the way they respond to appeals for support. Many fights will die down if a broad Christian audience proves unsympathetic. While quarreling Christians claim they are fighting for principle, Christian constituents would be wise not to take this claim at face value but instead to ask the following questions:

1. Has there been a sincere attempt to make personal contact before concerns are aired publicly? Have the quarreling parties met and talked over their differences? This is especially important when the issue is one of personal conduct, but it applies even when differences in belief are being aired and the reputations of the people involved are at stake. Personal interaction does not, of course, guarantee agreement, but it does tend to limit the distortions and extremes we are prone to make when we only speak about each other, not to each other. Plus, Scripture demands it.

2. Would the other side recognize their position as fairly portrayed? Ten years ago Ron Sider wrote in Transformation, “There is a fairly simple way to check whether we have accurately understood and fairly summarized another’s views. We can ask the other person! I suspect that at least half of the current battles in church circles would end if the major contestants merely consulted each other personally and directly to see if the views they were denouncing were actually held by the other person.”

3. Are sensational crowd-pleasing formulations used as a substitute for measured analysis? Last April World magazine created a stir when they used terms such as “feminist seduction,” “unisex language,” and “stealth Bible,” in an article describing the International Bible Society’s plans to revise its New International Version. Such sensational language clouded, rather than clarified, this important subject. World came in for scrutiny as print journalism. How many donor letters and talk shows would be similarly censured if similarly examined?

4. Is guilt by association an important part of the charges? We do well to remember that Jesus was known to associate with people no one could approve.

5. Is evidence for the charges presented? If quotations are used, are they extensive, or are fragments strung together? Is the source cited so that anyone can look it up for himself or herself?

6. Have independent leaders whom you respect voiced their opinion about the dispute? Muted comments or silence from others may indicate reasons for caution. Other leaders often have information that is not generally known.

7. If expert opinion is relevant, how much are you hearing from such experts? If, for example, the concern is over book royalties, are legal and publishing authorities cited? If someone is accused of New Age sympathies, do reputable scholars support the allegations?

8. Does someone benefit from the controversy in terms of enhanced reputation, publicity, or greater power? Is it in his or her interest to keep the fires burning? Such benefits prove nothing, but they should inject a note of caution.

9. Does a generous attitude show itself in the way the dispute is presented? Is the other side given credit for good deeds or good intentions? Is there some attempt to distinguish between first- and second-level concerns? Does there seem to be a genuine wish for compromise or reconciliation?

By the grace of God we are what we are: a freewheeling, innovative, independent, and highly differentiated people. American Christians are not bound together by a church hierarchy or an ethnic consensus, but only by our call from Christ Jesus. The imperatives of the media and fundraising push us to define ourselves over and against others. By sociology, you might say we are bound to fight. But what are we bound to by the Holy Spirit?

We can, if we choose, create better structures for resolving disputes, and we can, if we try, become more discerning about the charges and countercharges we hear. More fundamentally, we who claim loyalty to Scripture need to heed what Scripture says. Again and again the Bible demands that followers of Jesus live together in peace. “All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another” (John 13:35).

As American Christians, we need to ask God to make us a people who share his heart, not only in his love for the lost and for truth, but also in his love for unity in the family of God. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Everything about the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests mystery.Collected by a radical Jewish sect, perhaps Essenes, who lived monasticallyin the arid and almost lifeless Judaean wilderness, the scrolls include over800 Jewish manuscripts—many biblical—dating from as early as 250B.C. The scrolls were hidden in the caves ofQumran, on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, so that the Roman armieswould not destroy them on their way to conquer Jerusalem. The Essenes, ofwhom we know little, expected to liberate the scrolls when their communitywas liberated by the Messiah. The Romans prevailed, however, and so the scrollsstayed hidden for almost 1,900 years. But the mysteries don’t end with thescrolls’ discovery 50 years ago, which many label the archaeological eventof the century. Since then, the scrolls have been a pawn of Mideast politicsand the cause of an unusual number of academic scandals.

Which makes Trinity Western University in verdant British Columbia in Canadaan unlikely port into this cryptic world. A half a globe away from the cavesof Qumran, the campus’s spiraling western cedars and low-hanging utilitylines have nothing in common with the stark terrain of the Judaean desert.And when it comes to history, the school boasts only its Seal Kap House,where the sealable cap for milk bottles was invented.

But step through the front door of the Seal Kap House and you are transportedback to ancient Palestine. The languages of choice are Aramaic and its descendantSyriac, Hebrew (biblical, Qumranic, and rabbinic), Greek, and Latin. Theresidents are twentieth-century evangelical Christian scholars Peter Flint,Martin Abegg, and Craig Evans, who form the core of the school’s Dead SeaScrolls Institute, but the guests of honor are the Essenes.

If the scholars at the Seal Kap keep one eye focused on the past, they trainthe other on the late twentieth century. Two tabloids pinned to a bulletinboard outside Flint’s office proclaim “Startling Revelations from Dead SeaScrolls: 1997 Weather to Be Worst Ever,” and “Lost Prophecies of the DeadSea Scrolls: Christ Reborn—Woman in Idaho Will Be New Virgin Mother.” Nextto them a newspaper clipping announces the latest discoveries of the JesusSeminar—phrases from the Gospels they determined Jesus could never haveuttered.

While not intended as a most-wanted list, the bulletin board profiles thetrio’s top foes—sensationalism and biased scholarship. Armed with directaccess to the ancient manuscripts—Flint and Abegg are members of the officialteam of 70 Dead Sea Scroll editors worldwide—Trinity’s triumvirate is waginga new evangelical battle for the Bible. It is a war fought among mysterioustexts, tantalizing New Testament parallels, and theories as quirky as theexperts who conceived them. And so to solve the mystery of the scrolls wego to Langley, British Columbia.

BURIED TREASURE

I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me.
—Isaiah 65:1

Half a century ago this year a young Arab shepherd crawled into the mouthof a cave near the Dead Sea in Palestine and re-emerged with the oldest Biblemanuscripts now known. One was a complete scroll of the Book of Isaiah, copiedby scribes 100 years before the time of Jesus. Additional findings in tenother caves in the Qumran region over the next decade gave the world a jigsawpuzzle of 100,000 pieces of ancient Jewish religious texts that were theremains of about 870 distinct scrolls. Written in varieties of Hebrew, Aramaic,and Greek, 220 of these were biblical scrolls representing at least portionsof every book of our Old Testament except Esther.

The remaining 650 nonbiblical texts contained an intriguing assortment ofreligious prose and poetry, including plans for building a new temple thesize of Jerusalem (the Temple Scroll), a secret list of buried treasure (theCopper Scroll), and a prophecy of how the Sons of Light would defeat theSons of Darkness in the last days (War Scroll). In addition, there werecommentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures, books of the Apocrypha, calendar texts,rules for achieving ritual purity, and documents outlining community lifeand initiation rites. Some referred to a Teacher of Righteousness and a WickedPriest.

This Isaiah matches the A.D. 1000 MasoreticText upon which all modern translationsare based 99 percent of the time.

Taken together, they raised the question of who the members of this communitywere, and who the revered Teacher of Righteousness might have been. For overfive decades now, experts have offered a variety of colorful—if sometimesfar-fetched—answers. But until the early 1990s, those seeking to answerthese and other questions faced a handicap: the refusal of the official scrolleditors to release the remaining manuscripts to outside scholars before theyhad completed their own work on them.

By the late eighties, these outside scholars would mount a growing protestagainst what came to be labeled “the scrolls cartel” and “the academic scandalof the century.” The liberation of the scrolls, surprisingly, would beginwith the gutsy sleuthing of a young graduate student at Hebrew Union Universityin Cincinnati named Martin Abegg.

THE SCROLLBUSTER

From all tribes of Israel they shall prepare capable men for themselves to go out for battle …
—War Scroll, column 2

In the fall of 1991, Abegg rounded the corner of a convention booth at theannual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)and came face to face with his former Jewish professor Emanuel Tov. He hadstudied for several years at Hebrew University in Jerusalem with Tov, whowas now chief editor of the international scrolls team. Mysteriously, Tovgreeted Abegg with the Hebrew phrase banim giddalti v’romamti (“Ireared children and brought them up”).

Abegg replied with an unsure thank-you; later that evening he looked up thephrase, which he recognized from Isaiah. In chapter 1 he found the versethat his mentor, in good rabbinic fashion, had left unfinished: v’hempash’u bi, “but they have rebelled against me.”

Rebellion, controversy, and outright war have surrounded the scrolls fromtheir ancient birth and burial in Palestine to their modern resurrectionin the high-tech presses of popular and academic publishing. Many scholarsbelieve that the scrolls belonged to a Jewish sect that lived communallyat Qumran near the caves where the manuscripts were found. The puritans oftheir day, they became disillusioned with the political corruption of thepriesthood in Jerusalem under the Jewish rulers known as the Hasmoneans.Around 166 B.C., the group withdrew to thedesert dwelling in Qumran, about 20 miles east of Jerusalem. There they ralliedaround a teacher they believed God had blessed with a special ability tointerpret the Hebrew prophets.

This Teacher of Righteousness, as the scrolls cryptically call him, saw inthe events of his day, and particularly in the calling out of the Qumransect, a prophesied division of the forces of darkness from the forces oflight. The pure remnant would soon wage a final and preordained battle againstthe Romans and their puppet Jewish temple leaders, and with the help of amessiah, they would victoriously usher in Israel’s redemption.

War against the Romans did come with the First Jewish Revolt inA.D. 66. But instead of giving rise to theirhoped-for messiah, it led to the destruction of not only Jerusalem and thetemple in A.D. 70, but also the Qumran settlementit*elf. Before its destruction, however, the members of the sect had hiddentheir sacred scrolls in the surrounding caves for safekeeping—expectingto reclaim them after their victory.

For nearly two thousand years the scrolls lay undisturbed in their dark,dry cavities. When uncovered shortly after World War II, the first moderneyes to read their scripts and recognize their antiquity were those of E.L. Sukenik, a specialist in Jewish paleography. Coincidentally, it was November29, 1947, the very day the United Nations voted to partition Palestine inorder to create a Jewish state. The timing was not lost on Sukenik as heread with awe these manuscripts he was sure dated to the time when Herod’stemple still stood proud.

One result of the UN partition was that when the team of eightscroll editors was formed in 1952, most of them were Catholic. By order ofthe Jordanian government, into whose territory the scrolls fell, none ofthe team could be Jewish. That would change, however, during the 1967 SixDay War when Israeli solders captured the Palestine Archaeological Museumin East Jerusalem, where the scrolls were housed. It was renamed the RockefellerMuseum, and Jewish scholars were added to the team.

While fighting sometimes erupted around the museum over the years, the editorsinside soon began having skirmishes of their own. As early as 1956, scrolleditor John Allegro, an agnostic who vowed he would one day undermine thefairy tale of Christianity, announced to the press that he had found a 100B.C. manuscript containing an Essene storyof a messiah’s crucifixion and resurrection. It showed, he claimed, thatthe Christian Gospels were nothing more than later adaptions of this earlierEssene story, and that Jesus was a fictional character derived from the historicTeacher of Righteousness.

Allegro also maintained that his Catholic colleagues on the team were suppressingscroll texts for fear of the damage they would wreak on the church. EvenJewish scholars roundly dismissed Allegro’s imaginative readings; nonetheless,the same basic theory of a Catholic conspiracy would resurface as late as1991 in a book by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh called The Dead SeaScrolls Deception (Touchstone).

Other specialists over the decades seemed equally eager to find the fantasticin the scrolls. In the 1980s, Barbara Thiering, an Australian scholar, claimedthe scrolls were encoded with secret messages; when the Gospels are readusing these codes, they tell us that Jesus was the Wicked Priest, was crucifiedbut kept alive with snake poison, and eventually married and bore two children.In California, historian Robert Eisenman found in the scrolls evidence thatafter Jesus was executed as a Zealot, his brother James became leader ofthe Qumran sect and then ousted the apostle Paul from the group for hisblasphemous teachings about Jesus.

Added to this volatile environment was the impatience of many mainstreamscholars with the slow pace of publication of the scrolls. While in the earlyyears scroll editions had come out in a timely fashion, as the editors sensedthe growing importance of the scrolls to the scholarly community they beganwriting comprehensive commentaries on the texts instead of simply publishingthe texts and photographs and thereby allowing other scholars to make theirhistorical and critical evaluations.

It was a situation Abegg saw from both sides in the late 1980s. He remembersthe instructions that his Professor Tov had given him as Abegg was preparingto leave Hebrew University in Jerusalem and move to Hebrew Union Universityin Cincinnati to complete his doctorate under Ben Zion Wacholder. As oneof the scroll editors, Tov had sometimes given Abegg and the other studentsunpublished scroll materials to work on. “He told me directly, ‘Don’t showthis to your professors back in the States.’ “

“That was the first of the bells that went off in my head,” says Abegg. “HereI am a master’s student, and I’m going back to work with men that have gonea whole generation before me, and I can’t show them this. That seemed strange.”

In the press, perceptions of a scrolls cartel were not at all dispelled whenJohn Strugnell, the chief editor of the scrolls, in 1991 called outside scholarswho wanted access to the unpublished manuscripts “a bunch of fleas who arein the business of annoying us.” Soon after, in a statement to a reporterfor an Israeli newspaper, he asserted that the Jewish faith was “a horriblereligion.” Having undone himself, Strugnell was replaced by Tov as chiefeditor. In Cincinnati, in the meantime, Tov’s former student had alreadybegun his deed of rebellion.

As early as 1988, rumors had circulated that a concordance existed for theunpublished Dead Sea Scrolls. In magazines such as Biblical ArchaeologyReview, these rumors were flatly denied, but when Abegg’s professor Wacholdermet Strugnell at a conference in Israel, he learned that the concordancedid exist, and that in the early years after the scrolls’ discovery the editorshad created 3×5 cards with transcriptions of corresponding fragments of themanuscripts. This helped them in their work and prevented them from overhandlingthe scrolls and scraps themselves. Wacholder, using his connections, eventuallysecured a copy of the secret concordance.

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Recalls Abegg: “I was hoping all the time Wacholder was doing these negotiationsthat it wasn’t just a word list, that it was a key word in context, likeStrong’s concordance. Actually, I found it was better than that, becauseif you looked up the last word in an entry or in a verse, Strong’s wouldn’tgive you the next word in the next verse; but this concordance did.”

Because the cards were keyed to each other, Abegg could type one card afterthe other into his word processor until he had reconstructed whole texts—textsthat had never before been published. When in 1991 the editor of BiblicalArchaeology Review, Hershel Shanks, who since the mideighties had beencalling for the “release” of the scrolls, caught wind of Abegg’s reconstructedtexts, he encouraged Abegg to let him publish them.

Abegg found himself facing an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, there wasthe academic protocol against publishing other people’s work—coding the3×5 cards represented hundreds of days of piecing the texts together. Onthe other hand, says Abegg, “we saw that this material had been done in thelate fifties and could have been published then. They had held on to thismaterial, were telling everyone it couldn’t be published because there hadbeen no transcriptions. And then we found out that, indeed, there had beentranscriptions back in the fifties—they were pulling the wool over our eyesall these years.”

The texts went to print in September 1991. The Huntington Library in Californiaquickly followed by making public actual photos of the manuscripts. And finally,even the Israel Antiquities Authority, which controlled the scrolls, ruledthat it now supported open access to copies of the scrolls. From the NewYork Times to Newsweek, Wacholder and Abegg were declared theliberators of the scrolls. “Andy Warhol talks about your 15 minutes of fame,”says Abegg, whose steady gaze and conventional haircut make the 47-year-oldfather seem anything but a publicity-seeking renegade. “I had my 15 minutesmany times over that year.”

The limelight has faded in the six years since. Abegg is now busy doing whathe loves best: teaching and working on the scroll texts themselves. And evenTov, whom Abegg always deeply admired, has apparently welcomed back his prodigalson: this past summer Abegg was invited to become one of Tov’s official scrolleditors.

OUR OLD TESTAMENT TO THE “T”—ALMOST

( … just as) it is written in the b(ook) of Isaiah the prophet …
—4Q265, fragment 2

Abegg and Flint, who together are codirectors of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute,are two of nearly a dozen evangelical scholars who have been added to theinternational team of scroll editors in the last decade. Not surprisingly,says Flint, their presence is influencing the scholarly discussion surroundingthe scrolls. “Just as Jews have helped focus on things like ritual purity,food laws, and things of interest to Jews, I think evangelicals have helpedfocus the interest on the reliability of the Bible, how we got our Bible,and also on the relation between Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he says.

Flint, 46, believes that evangelicals have arrived late on the scene in exploringthe significance of the scrolls for Christian faith. So when Trinity Western—aschool of the Evangelical Free Church begun in 1962—called in 1995, askinghim to help begin the institute in conjunction with the school’s graduateprogram in biblical studies, he was more than ready. And more than qualified.

Flint is no journalist’s dream to interview—he is painstakingly methodical(try getting him to answer even one question out of the logical order ofthe discussion), contentedly introverted, and exasperatingly careful. Butit is exactly those qualities that make him a top candidate for editing somethingso intricate as the scrolls.

Raised in a Christian family in South Africa, he eventually came to the UnitedStates with the specific goal of studying with the best of the Dead Sea Scrollsscholars. His Ph.D. adviser at the University of Notre Dame was Eugene Ulrich,chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls for North America. After serving fora number of years as Ulrich’s research assistant, Flint was asked to jointhe official team of scroll editors in 1991. He brought with him his knowledgeof 11 modern and ancient languages.

Like the Jesus Seminar, which over the years has publicized its work on theGospels, Flint and his colleagues seek to educate both specialists and laypeopleabout their work. They do this by speaking in churches, participating inlearned societies such as the Society of Biblical Literature, presentingpapers at archaeological and ancient-languages seminars, and conducting anannual Dead Sea Scrolls symposium at Trinity Western. But in marked contrastto the shock tactics of their ideological counterpart, says Flint, the instituteseeks to instill in its audiences a reasoned confidence in the Scriptures.

At one level, the Dead Sea Scrolls provide a wonderfully affirming resourcefor this job. For years, biblical conservatives have pointed happily to theGreat Isaiah Scroll, which was among the original seven scrolls found inthe first cave in 1947. With all 66 chapters completely preserved, this versionof Isaiah—though copied down around 100 B.C.—matches the A.D. 1000 Masoretic Text upon which all modern Old Testament translations are based 99 percent of the time. Nearly the same level of accuracy is found in the other biblical manuscripts found at Qumran. “This confirms to us that our Hebrew Bible was wonderfully preserved,” Flint says.

When it comes to the 1 percent that does differ, Flint gives the discrepanciesa positive, pastoral take. “I’m happy to say in a rather dramatic fashionthat the scrolls often sort out problems that we’ve known about for ages.They give us in black and white a better reading of the biblical text.”

One example is an ambiguous Hebrew phrase in Psalm 22:16. Translators haveoften rendered it “They have pierced my hands and feet,” followingthe reading of the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures,the earliest complete manuscripts coming from the late third centuryA.D.). The more direct translation from theHebrew Masoretic Text, however, is “Like a lion are my hands and feet.”But in a technical monograph, just off the press in July, titled The DeadSea Psalms Scrolls (Brill), Flint shows that the “pierced” reading isindeed the preferred option in the Hebrew Dead Sea Psalms—dispelling chargesthat the phrase was a later Christian messianic misrendering. Other interesting“textual variants” include the following:

—Goliath’s height in a Hebrew manuscript of Samuel dated to the mid-thirdcentury B.C. (4QSam-b) is given as six foot,nine inches, not nine foot, nine inches, as found in the Masoretic Text (4QSam-bdesignates the text as being the second—or b—Samuel manuscript foundin Cave 4 at Qumran).

—The number of Jacob’s descendants who traveled with him to Egyptis 70 in the Masoretic Text, but 75 in 4QExod-a. This corresponds to thenumber Stephen uses in his sermon in Acts 7:14 as well as to the Septuagint,which Stephen may have been using.

—A new text found in 4QSam-a contains a paragraph at the end of 1Samuel 10 that explains that “Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievouslyoppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eyeof each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer.” These words, missingfrom our Bibles, provide the context for Nahash’s threats to gouge out theright eyes of the Israelites in chapter 11. The New Revised Standard Versionis the first translation to incorporate this new paragraph.

While leapfrogging back to a cache of manuscripts a millennium older thanour previous Old Testament texts has affirmed “our” Scriptures, it also landsus in a murky pond called canon formation. It is a subject, says Flint, thatsome of his lay listeners find unsettling.

A case in point is a slide Flint shows of himself in which he is scrutinizingthe original manuscript of 4QPs-a in the editors’ workroom at the RockefellerMuseum in Jerusalem. “I’m holding in my hands the oldest copy of the Bookof Psalms in the entire world,” he says with obvious emotion. “It’s datedto about 150 B.C., which is over 1,100 yearsolder than the Book of Psalms we use in all our seminaries. It is a veryhumbling experience as a biblical scholar.”

The consensus from almost allquarters of Bible scholarshipis that the Dead Sea Scrollsroot the Gospels inextricablywithin the Jewish tradition.

This particular set of psalms, however, contains only 89 selections—or thefirst three books of the five books found in our Masoretic-based Psalters.Other Qumran Psalters, by contrast, include Psalm 151, which appears in theSeptuagint but not in the Masoretic Text or our modern Bibles (which containonly 150 psalms). In addition, some of the scrolls contain psalms not previouslyknown. The different collections and varying orders in which the psalms arearranged, scholars agree, point to an unsettled canon of sacred Scripturein use by the Qumran sect.

For Bible historians, this evidence of canon formation at the time is nothingnew—the closure of the Jewish Scriptures is thought to have occurred atthe end of the first century A.D. What is neware the clues the Qumran scrolls give about varying textual traditions behindthe Jewish Scriptures. The clearest and most dramatic example of this canbe seen in the Qumran copies of Jeremiah.

Some of these Jeremiahs are direct ancestors of theA.D. 1000 Masoretic Text. The much-touted 99percent correspondence of the Qumran Scripture texts applies when theseproto-Masoretic versions are compared with their later medieval Masoreticdescendant. But critics soon found that other of the Jeremiah manuscriptsrepresented a distinct Hebrew text tradition—one that appeared to lie behindthe Greek translation of the Septuagint. As in the Septuagint, this separateHebrew Jeremiah presents material in a different order and is about an eighthshorter than the proto-Masoretic manuscripts. Which of these equally ancientbut independent Hebrew versions of Jeremiah is closer to what Jeremiah andhis scribe actually penned remains an open question.

“What the scrolls are telling us,” says Flint the scholar, “is that whenthe canon was incomplete, there were different versions of certain books:the Septuagints chose one version, and the Masoretics chose the other.”

But Flint the evangelical is careful to add: “While we know that at the timeof Jesus there were different canons of the Old Testament because the canonicalprocess was not yet complete, the glorious truth is that God has invitedhumans to be partners in the putting together of Scripture. I think theimplications are that you cannot have Scripture without the community offaith. It’s not just a private revelation. God gives us Scripture, but thenthe community of faith, by God’s guidance, has to choose what’s in and what’sout.”

DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE JESUS SEMINAR

If a prophet or interpreter of dreams arises among you and … says, “Let us go and serve other gods” … you shall purge the evil one from your midst.
—Temple Scroll, column 54

In the 1940s, just prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, EdgarGoodspeed wrote his scholarly opinion that “the Gospel is Christianity’scontribution to literature. It is the most potent type of religious literatureever devised. To credit such a creation to the most barren age of a neververy productive tongue like Aramaic would seem the height of improbability.For in the days of Jesus the Jews of Palestine were not engaged in writingbooks. It is not too much to say that a Galilean or Jerusalem Jew of thetime of Christ would regard writing a book in his native tongue with positivehorror.”

That’s the kind of quote that gets Craig Evans going. Professor of BiblicalStudies at Trinity Western since the early eighties, he was the drivinginspiration behind starting Trinity’s Dead Sea Scrolls Institute. Today heserves as the institute’s spokesman on the relationship of the scrolls toJesus and the New Testament. A strapping six-foot-two with a bushy mustacheand a charismatic personality, Evans, 45, is the most articulate of the Trinitytrio. He is also the most prone to hyperbole.

“One after the other, certain nonevangelical so-called critical hypothesesare being blown out of the water by tidbits of information that the scrollsprovide,” he says, showing a text of 4Q246. Its title—”The Aramaic Son ofGod Text”—is one that would have made Goodspeed blush. Aramaic, it turnsout, is the language found in one of every six nonbiblical Qumran scrolls.

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Document in hand, Evans moves in for the rhetorical kill: “Here we have a text written in Aramaic from first-century B.C. Jewish Palestine that envisions the coming of a figure, probably a messianic figure, in terms of being called the Son of God and Son of the Most High. Bultmann and other critics said that the Son of God language that shows up in the Gospels was evidence of further reflections outside of Palestine in the Greco-Roman world. It’s not Jewish—it’s reflecting the worship of the Roman emperors as gods and sons of gods. Christianity must have adopted that terminology and now applies it to Jesus, but it really doesn’t come from Jewish soil. Well, when you have a first-century B.C. Jewish text that uses the same language, what does that mean? And it happens to be in Aramaic, which we think was the language of Jesus and his followers.”

He cites another example—a phrase from 4Q521, one of the nonbiblical scrolls scholars could not access until the fall of 1991. On a first reading, the phrase seems but a familiar quotation from Isaiah 61, the same Isaiah passage Jesus alludes to when John the Baptist sends a message from prison asking if Jesus is the one who is to come. Jesus replies that the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them, and “the dead are raised.”

This last phrase—which Jesus speaks but which significantly does not appear in Isaiah 61—appears in 4Q521, written in Hebrew around 30 B.C. More important, the Qumran phrase is used in the context of explaining the wonders the Messiah will do when he appears—when “heaven and earth will obey his Messiah.”

For Evans, 4Q521 demonstrates that Jesus’ answer to John was a messianic one. “That’s what has been disputed in the past. Some have thought here was Jesus’ perfect chance to answer John, saying, ‘Yes, I’m the Messiah’; but he doesn’t do that. Instead, he allusively appeals to Isaiah 61. Is that the best he can do? Well, 4Q521 makes it clear that this appeal to Isaiah 61 is indeed messianic. So, in essence, Jesus is telling John through his messengers that messianic things are happening. So that answers his question: Yes, he is the one who is to come.”

If an evangelical arguing that the words Jesus spoke were not completely unique seems an odd approach to defending the historical Jesus, it seems less so when it is understood that the real affront to the gospel accounts over the years has come from scholars discounting the Jewish context of gospel portraits of Jesus and denying that Jesus understood himself to be Israel’s Messiah.

Today the consensus from almost all quarters of Bible scholarship is that the Dead Sea Scrolls do, indeed, root the Gospels inextricably within the Jewish tradition. If Bultmann and his ilk decried the Gospel of John as blatantly Greek (Gnostic) and of late origins because of its dualism between light and darkness, Miami University’s Edwin Yamauchi today believes it is “now shown by the Qumran parallels to be the most Jewish of the Gospels.”

While none of the scrolls names Jesus or any other New Testament characters, they do shed light on some previously contested passages. For example, New Testament specialists were surprised to find in the scrolls an argument that “the works of the Law … will be reckoned to you as righteousness, in that you have done what is right and good before Him … ” Located in 4QMMT, the phrasing is the same as that found in Galatians, where Paul writes that Abraham’s faith was “reckoned to him as righteousness” (3:6). Paul, in contrast to MMT, insists that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (2:16).

Until MMT became available to the scholarly community in 1991, Paul was considered by many to be making a straw man out of his opponents. What evidence was there in Jewish history that anyone seriously made the case for righteousness by works of the Law? In keeping with his conversion to Christianity, it was claimed, Paul had unfairly caricatured Judaism by arguing against a position that didn’t really exist.

“We don’t talk about a straw man any longer,” says Evans. “4QMMT seems to be the very argument that Paul is reflecting. He is definitely debating different aspects of Judaism and how it understood itself.”

On occasion, Evans has been called on to debate representatives of the Jesus Seminar. It is an opportunity he relishes, he says, because of the simple fact that his use of the Dead Sea Scrolls allows him to argue from Palestinian manuscripts preceding and overlapping the first century A.D., when the New Testament was composed. The Jesus Seminar, on the other hand, relies chiefly on manuscripts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, which were composed in the centuries after the New Testament texts had already been written.

In one debate with John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar at an annual meeting of the SBL, Evans found that in making the case for the historicity of the trial narrative of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark he “had the overwhelming support of the audience. Crossan was basically shot down.”

This reaction from the crowd, Evans believes, reflects a larger moderating force within Bible scholarship, due in large measure to the Dead Sea Scrolls. If the SBL includes a true cross section of 5,500 members of every religious background, the Jesus Seminar by comparison is “this funny, quirky little thing” that “started out with 300 members but now only lists about 75, and that’s inflated since only about 35 are even active. Their numbers are dwindling. But the leadership—Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan and a few others—are movers and shakers. They like to persuade the media that they are cutting edge, that they are out in front of the rest of us. They also like to portray themselves as a very fair representative cross section of Jesus scholars. All that is illusory. And their infatuation with the Gospel of Thomas and other apocryphal gospels is just laughable. In Europe they’re just laughed to scorn. It’s looked upon as a silly American phenomenon.”

According to Evans, not only the scrolls but also the growing prominence of evangelical scholarship over the last several decades has changed the landscape of the profession. Seen historically, he says, when the modernists and fundamentalists split in the first half of the century, “the modernists ended up with the seminaries, libraries, and the endowments,” while the conservatives retreated to small, safe Bible colleges.

Today, by contrast, a significant portion of members in the profession’s SBL is evangelical. This is especially true in the Historical Jesus section of the SBL, the area in which Evans specializes. Additionally, he notes, “Almost all the chairs of the biblical studies sections at SBL are evangelical.

“Nonevangelicals have lost momentum because of a fragmentation of method. They’re into deconstructionism, and nobody can agree on anything. Does the Bible mean anything? Can you find out if the ancient texts mean anything? With authorial intent in question, it’s just fragmenting. In a lot of their seminaries, Bible isn’t even required any longer, and the biblical languages aren’t taught.

“The only seminaries that are still growing and healthy, with a few exceptions, are evangelical seminaries. And in terms of biblical studies, who are the guys emerging who take the Bible seriously? They’re predominantly evangelicals. They do their homework, learn the languages, know their critical stuff well, go to Israel and do the digs. They’re doing what the nonevangelicals used to do well 30 or 40 years ago. So we’re taking over, partly through getting better on our part and partly because of the abdication and irresponsibility of the nonevangelicals.”

By doing their homework with the Dead Sea Scrolls as their textbooks, Evans, Abegg, and Flint hope to do their part in shaping the modern history and interpretation of the scrolls and, indirectly, that of the Bible. “The scrolls don’t prove that the Gospels always have it right,” says Evans. “The scrolls don’t prove certain theological things like inerrancy. What they do is tend to corroborate and support what I would regard as responsible exegesis that interprets Scripture in the Jewish context, and it tends to run against the sensationalizing of the Jesus Seminar and others who want to drag Jesus into a different environment and say he was only a Cynic philosopher.”

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls 50 years ago, few believed any Palestinian manuscripts from the time of Jesus had survived. Today some archaeologists point to the possibility of even more scrolls being uncovered—literally—when the next big earthquake in the region loosens rocks and exposes hidden caves. For now, though, the scholars at the Seal Kap are more than content studying the scrolls they do have. By scrutinizing each jot and tittle, they are gaining new glimpses into first-century Palestine, a world ready and waiting for Messiah.

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A coalition claiming to represent 250 Maryland congregations is thumbing its nose at Gov. Parris Glendening’s call for help in moving welfare recipients off the dole. In what the Washington Post calls a “grassroots rebellion against welfare reform,” religious leaders are accusing the government of abdicating its responsibilities and “dumping” the poor on the churches. “We will not participate in this dehumanizing, misguided effort called welfare reform,” declares the coalition’s leader, the Reverend Doug Miles.

It is difficult to imagine a more unhelpful response to the new welfare regime. Like it or not, the old entitlement system is dead, and it is not going to be resurrected. For churches genuinely concerned about the poor, it is time to redouble outreach efforts and creatively adapt to the new era.

Step one is admitting that the church’s welfare system needs serious reform, because it makes many of the same mistakes that crippled the government’s old system. Both have too often helped people to manage their poverty rather than to escape from it. Both have too often handed out Band-Aids—cash and commodities to meet immediate material needs—instead of offering developmental assistance that provides a hand-up to self-sufficiency. Both have too often been clinical, bureaucratic, and impersonal in their interactions with needy families. And both have engendered dependency.

The new welfare bill demonstrates that politicians have recognized the problems in the government’s system. Now, as the state looks increasingly to civil society—and particularly to churches—to assume greater responsibility for the poor, church leaders need to re-evaluate and, in many instances, dramatically change their benevolence programs. Scripture, church history, and the example of effective church-based community ministries provide helpful guidelines on how to do so.

JESUS’ MINISTRY MODELSome liberal Christians seem to consider Jesus a lobbyist. For them, love of the poor equals political efforts to advance “social justice”—pressuring the government to provide big, expensive programs while neglecting to remind church members of their personal responsibility to love the needy. Some conservative Christians are also guilty of truncating Jesus’ multifaceted ministry. They proclaim Christ as Savior and engage in vigorous efforts to “win souls,” but fail to address physical needs or fight injustices. Neither approach adequately grasps Jesus’ example of holistic ministry that meets material and spiritual needs and challenges both personal and social sin.

Jesus’ compassion leads him not only to feed the 5,000 but also to exhort them to seek the Bread of Life (John 6:1-13, 25-58). He physically heals the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25-34) but also encourages her emotionally. Given her medical problem, she would have been considered perpetually unclean. Ashamed, she wants to remain unnoticed. Yet Jesus insists that she tell her story and then publicly praises her for her faith. Jesus deals with people as whole persons, and our outreach must similarly touch heart and mind, body and soul.

Jesus also rails against social injustices while not failing to confront individual sin. Incensed at the exploitive temple merchants who prey on the poor, Jesus scatters their tables (John 2:13-16). His eyes flash with anger at the cruelty of legalistic religious leaders who oppose his sabbath healing (Mark 3:1-5). In both instances, Jesus delegitimates unjust structures erected by the powerful. But Jesus is much more than a political revolutionary. He insists on personal holiness and obedience by the poor as well as by the rich. He loves not the proletarian masses but each individual person. He disciples 12 close, personal friends and heals people one at a time.

This means that churches should not merely lament or laud the welfare reforms. Critics and supporters alike should be in the trenches, actively assisting low-income families. Such personal engagement makes our voice in the public square more credible. In addition, frontline experiences can help us more wisely to evaluate specific policies.

THE SAMARITAN RISK TAKERThe holistic outreach we Christians need to pursue will be personal and often risky. In the third century a.d., a terrible plague struck the city of Alexandria, claiming many lives. The pagans interpreted the event as the gods’ punishment and refused to help the sick since they “deserved” their calamity. Alexandrian Christians responded differently. Out of love for God, they nursed the weak and buried the dead—often contracting fatal illnesses. These brave souls won the nickname paraboloni, which means “one who takes a risk.” Today, we should make it our aim to earn this title of honor.

As pastor Tim Keller notes in his helpful book Ministries of Mercy, the Good Samaritan was a risk-taker. The treacherous, winding road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a frequent site of crime and violence. Keller likens the Samaritan’s compassion for the wounded traveler to that of a brave person who, while walking down a littered street at night in the inner city, hears a moan from a darkened alley, and rushes in to help. May God grant us such courage as we go to the unfamiliar and disconcerting places “on the wrong side of the tracks” to attend to the needy.

When the Good Samaritan encounters the battered victim, he doesn’t toss the man money, canned goods, used clothing, or religious tracts. Instead, he gets up close and personal. He dirties his hands tending to the man’s wounds. He gives sacrificially—of his time and money. By contrast, many of our traditional outreach programs keep the poor at arms’ length and offer merely “commodified” mercy.

We need instead a relational mercy ministry. The church father Gregory of Nyssa defined mercy as “a voluntary sorrow that joins itself to the sufferings of another.” Genuine compassion entangles our lives with the lives of the needy, and sometimes brings grief. On Thanksgiving Day, the 23-year-old mother of a little boy in our church’s urban tutoring program was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. There were few dry eyes in our sanctuary when our pastor announced the tragedy. Because of the church’s connection to this family, because this was the mother of one of “our” students, the news pierced us more deeply than if this were merely another grim crime statistic. True mercy is rarely sterile; it allows pain into our lives that we would rather avoid.

Sometimes, mercy cannot be confined to a predictable schedule but spills over into time slots that we would rather protect. It requires building genuine friendships with poor people—friendships where mutual learning and giving occurs. Anything else, as Octavia Hill, a daring Christian who battled poverty in the slums of nineteenth-century London, argued, is a cheap benevolence that wants to help poor people but isn’t willing to know them.

Ed Kirk, a retired businessman in a Maryland suburb, has lived out this kind of mercy. Last year he helped “Jane,” a 32-year-old single mother, to get off welfare. It was a 14-month roller coaster ride of hirings and firings, health problems, an eviction, and family reconciliation. For four months, Ed rose daily before 7:00 a.m., picked up Jane and her son, dropped the toddler off at the babysitter’s, and drove Jane to work. During the day, Ed tried to resolve the numerous administrative nightmares in which Jane was enmeshed. She had had her license revoked because of unpaid traffic fines. She owed back taxes. An acquaintance had borrowed, and crashed, her car. Her family had disowned her years ago, when she was hooked on drugs.

“To get people back on their feet,” Ed explains, “is not just about getting a job. It’s about getting all their problems solved.”

Ed met Jane through the Community-Directed Assistance Program, an initiative of Maryland’s Anne Arundel County’s Department of Social Services in which churches are matched with individuals trying to get off welfare. Similar welfare-to-work mentoring efforts are under way in Mississippi, Michigan, and Virginia. These programs offer a greater promise of success than do traditional social-service initiatives because they provide poor people with volunteers who can give substantial amounts of time and personal support. Social workers struggling to manage anywhere from 50 to 100 or more cases cannot offer the individualized attention welfare recipients need to overcome the multifaceted obstacles they face in achieving independence from the dole.

New welfare rules give recipients two years to find stable, permanent employment. In many states, transitional assistance in the form of Medicaid, daycare, and transportation vouchers is available in the third year. Properly mobilized, churches can help a significant portion of families on welfare to make the transition to the workforce. Some individuals—like those recipients who are finishing college degrees or who have been on welfare only briefly due to temporary unemployment—need just a little extra help. It could come in the form of a daycare scholarship to a church preschool, a one-time grant to a student for her final semester’s tuition, or a donated used car that would enable an unemployed person to widen her job search.

Other individuals—like the woman Ed Kirk’s church helped—have been out of work longer, have multilayered personal problems, and confront significant barriers to self-sufficiency (such as lack of affordable child care). They need persevering, intense assistance. These realities are sobering; nonetheless, most congregations possess key resources for aiding welfare recipients, though they may not realize it.

In Mississippi, churches that participate in the Faith and Families Welfare-to-Work program are providing such resources: budget counseling; modest financial aid; and assistance in finding affordable daycare, writing a resume, and preparing for job interviews.

The Stronger Hope Baptist Church in Jackson has helped five welfare recipients to locate stable employment. In areas of the state where the unemployment rate is higher, Faith and Families churches have facilitated recipients’ enrollment in six-month certified nurse’s assistant (CNA) programs. Upon graduation, these individuals are qualified to work in hospitals and nursing homes. A rural Methodist church in the delta has hired its Faith and Families participant as a pastor’s assistant and has plans to aid a small team of welfare recipients in opening a daycare center that will offer evening and weekend care. Business is likely to be good since many area residents with children work odd-shift jobs in a local factory and need child-care at nontraditional hours.

THE GENEVA METHODThese successes are not achieved “without bruises,” as Ed Kirk is quick to admit. But real people are winning independence from welfare with the help of ordinary church members. It can be done—though it involves a deliberateness that is too often missing in church benevolence endeavors.

In John Calvin’s Geneva, the church operated a thoughtful, well-conceived, effective assistance ministry that today’s churches could imitate. Poor families in Calvin’s Geneva were categorized according to the different nature of their needs. Some were unable to work and required charity. Those who could work—and were willing to do so—were given tools or no-interest loans to start their own businesses. The able-bodied poor who refused to work were exhorted to change their ways. Deacons paid quarterly home visits to every family that received financial aid from the church. They knew personally those they helped and used their knowledge to shape an individually tailored, strategic assistance plan. In the context of these personal relationships, they could address recipients’ spiritual needs. They encouraged the drunkard toward sobriety, gave practical money-management advice to the young widow, and placed orphans into apprenticeships. They personally investigated needs to prevent fraud, and they refrained from indiscriminate charity that engendered dependence. In short, they employed their minds as well as their hearts when loving the needy.

As Marvin Olasky has described in his important book The Tragedy of American Compassion, evangelicals in nineteenth-century America conducted similarly clear-headed, warm-hearted outreach ministries among the poor. These Christians befriended just a few families at a time and worked with them over the long term, until they no longer required help. By contrast, today we too often practice a “bigger is better” approach. We are busy doing many charitable things—like operating soup kitchens or handing out holiday baskets at Christmas—but we are changing nothing. Our efforts gloss over real needs and fail to encourage lasting change.

Community outreach programs that truly transform lives share several common features. First, they employ a team approach, rather than one-to-one mentoring, in their welfare-to-work initiatives. This reduces the chances of volunteer burnout, enlarges program participants’ network of contacts, and allows volunteers to find their particular niche in the ministry.

Second, successful programs clearly define expectations, so that church members and welfare recipients each know what their responsibilities are.

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Third, they are marked by regular, face-to-face, structured contact betweenthe volunteers and the participants. They do not rely on spontaneous interactionbut set defined meeting times and articulate specific goals and deadlines.The friendship developed between the participant and the church volunteersis purposeful, directed toward a specified end.

Fourth, effective programs demand individual responsibility. They challengeparticipants to take small steps toward change and provide incentives fortaking those steps. New Focus, a Christian nonprofit that shows churcheshow to transition from commodity-based ministry to relational, holistic ministry,encourages congregations to establish a weekly “life skills” training class.Individuals who have a history of repeatedly requesting financial help fromthe church must attend the weekly class and meet regularly with a budgetcounselor in order to receive further aid. They are also linked with a CompassionCircle of six to eight church volunteers who provide practical help (suchas temporary babysitting, transportation, car repairs, or help with jobsearching) as well as prayer and emotional support. Participants and churchvolunteers draft a strategic plan for achieving independence from the public(and private) welfare system. As participants complete aspects of that plan,they receive groceries or household items in recognition of their progress.

Making the shift to relational ministry is difficult because it requiresthat we give more of ourselves and our time, as well as our money. Byconcentrating church resources on fewer families, though, we are able tomake a long-lasting impact. Through time-intensive, individually tailoredaid, we can address the root causes of persistent poverty and help peoplebecome economically self-sufficient. As participants no longer requireassistance, our funds are freed up to help new families. As a deacon froma New Focus-affiliated church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, noted, this is just“better stewardship of God’s money.”

And there is another important benefit. As the Warrenton Baptist Church innorth-central Virginia discovered, relational ministry can invigorate greatercongregational participation in community outreach. When this 350-member,middle-class church ran its Deacons’ Family Ministry, it provided groceriesand cash aid to about 50 families each month. But only a few deacons andchurch members volunteered in the initiative. Pastor Doug Harris admits thatno ongoing relationships with the assisted families materialized. “Follow-up,”he recalls, “was basically zero.” There was no ministry that addressed thefamilies’ spiritual needs, and since the same families returned again andagain for assistance, the temporal help the church was providing accomplishednothing.

Last year, Harris was approached by local officials of the Department ofSocial Services. They wanted to know if Warrenton Baptist would “adopt” twowomen and their families who wanted to get off welfare. Harris agreed—andthe congregation’s response was overwhelming. A committee of several womenstepped forward to befriend the two families. The youth group began meetingweekly with one of the families and raised money to purchase business attirefor the mother so she would look nice at job interviews. A group of seniorcitizens wanted to know what they could do to “help our families” and endedup sewing window treatments. Benevolence programs aimed at “the poor” rarelyexcite concern. But when the poor become specific families with faces andnames, church members enthusiastically assume ownership of outreach efforts.

INVESTING IN ANATHOTHIn Jeremiah 32, God tells the prophet to purchase a field in Anathoth, acommunity outside of Jerusalem. It is a bewildering request, for the Babylonianshave already attacked Israel and laid siege to Jerusalem, and the fieldsof Anathoth lie behind enemy lines. Jeremiah wonders why God would ask himto make such a foolish real-estate investment. God answers by promising toredeem Israel from her oppressors; he foretells the day when feasts and weddingswill sound in the fields of Anathoth and across Judea when he restores thefortunes of his wayward children. As Chris Rice, an inner-city missionary,explains, God is asking Jeremiah to invest in a neighborhood others havegiven up as lost. By doing so, Jeremiah makes tangible God’s future promiseto reclaim and restore.

God is still in the reclamation business. He is still calling his followersto “foolish” investments. Impoverished neighborhoods in our communities arealso behind enemy lines; Satan has a grip on them through drugs, crime, violence,abuse, and despair. But God has not forsaken this territory, and neithershould we. Moreover, he has followers in these neighborhoods—even if theymay be besieged by the destructive “street culture” that surrounds them.Christians outside such troubled neighborhoods should invest in them, embracingthese brothers and sisters.

When “the poor” become specificfamilies with faces and names,church members enthusiasticallyassume ownership of outreach efforts.

Such investments can take at least two forms. First, suburban churches canreach out to urban congregations that are trying to improve their communities.In Richmond, Virginia, a network of suburban churches is partnering withan urban church, Victory Christian Fellowship, located in the heart of theGilpin Court public housing complex. These churches work together in a ministrycalled S.T.E.P. (Strategies to Elevate People), which runsan adult education and job-training program for Gilpin residents (most ofwhom are on welfare). Suburban churches provide financial support, and volunteersserve on Family Share Teams that are linked with residents participatingin the S.T.E.P. Academy. Victory Christian Fellowship suppliesmotivational speakers to the academy and offers participants pastoral counselingand discipleship programs for themselves and their children. Through theacademy, high-school dropouts are receiving their GEDcertificates; some have even gone on to college. Others have secured newjobs and have left welfare behind.

Second, in the absence of a Christ-centered urban mission, churches outsidetroubled communities can establish their own presence in the neighborhood.My church is doing this in the low-income Blue Ridge Commons housing communityin Charlottesville. Through our Abundant Life Family Center, a renovatedthree-bedroom townhome in the housing complex, we offer educational programsfor children and job skills training for adults.

Another church that is following this model is Christ United Methodist Churchin Jackson, Mississippi. This 4,000-member, white, middle-class congregationis making a difference in North Midtown, an inner-city neighborhood. A fewyears back, crime and violence were so rampant in North Midtown that residentswould not allow their children to ride bikes outside. Elderly folks wereafraid to walk to nearby shops. Christ United hooked up with Habitat forHumanity and provided financial aid and volunteers to build four new homesin the neighborhood. The church also rented an apartment in the center ofNorth Midtown and hired an African-American pastor to serve as the directorof this urban outreach. Neighborhood residents and church members work togetherrunning an after-school tutoring program, boys and girls clubs, and parentingclasses. As Habitat continues to buy up abandoned properties, the crack dealershave gradually been pushed out. Pride in the neighborhood has returned; theNeighborhood Association has been resurrected, and a “beautification committee”has cleaned up the streets and yards. For the first time in many years, childrenare once again able to play outdoors in safety.

These outreaches in Richmond, Charlottesville, and Jackson are incarnational.Each church has established a physical presence in the target neighborhoodto demonstrate its long-term commitment to the community and its identificationwith the residents’ sorrows.

Some church members have relocated into the neighborhoods; others visit regularlyand have developed genuine friendships with locals. By focusing their resourceson a single community, these churches have been able to make a noticeableimpact.

RECONNECTINGChurch leaders desiring to strengthen their community outreach should investigatewhat is already going on in their community and learn how they could assistsuccessful, established ministries. They can also contact their local socialservices department to hear how they could help a needy family get off welfare.For inspiration and practical advice on how to start a new ministry, churchleaders can attend the annual conference of the Christian Community DevelopmentAssociation. The conference brings together thousands of Christians engagedin urban ministry and offers numerous workshops.

Relational ministries like Faith and Families, New Focus, andS.T.E.P. build bridges that reinvigorate civic connectedness.Many welfare-dependent families are isolated from much of mainstream society,unable to access educational and vocational opportunities others take forgranted. Middle- and upper-class families are increasingly isolated in gated,“comprehensive service” communities.

Welfare reform offers us the opportunity to bring the disadvantaged and theadvantaged together. And the haves, as well as the have-nots, need thisreconnection. Our culture is in danger of imploding in self-indulgence;recapturing a commitment to others beyond our small circle of family andfriends may prove an essential step in avoiding the traps of hedonism,materialism, and anomie.

In short, Christians must reform church benevolence not only for the sakeof the poor, but for the sake of the church itself. The absence of anincarnational, holistic, befriending ministry among the poor impoverishesour own spiritual health. As Charles Spurgeon argued:

A church which does not exist to do good in the slums … of the city is a church that has no reason to justify its longer existence. … Not for yourself, O Church, do you exist any more than Christ existed for himself. His glory was that he laid aside His glory, and the glory of the church is when she lays aside her respectability and her dignity and counts it to be her glory to gather together the outcasts, and her highest honor to seek amid the foulest mire the priceless jewels for which Jesus shed his blood.

Amy L. Sherman is director of urban ministry at Trinity Presbyterian Churchin Charlottesville, Virginia. She is the author of Restorers of Hope:Reaching the Poor in Your Community with Church-based Ministries That Work(Crossway).

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It is to the prodigals … that the memory of their Father’s house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.
—Simone Weil

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from aroundthe world were discussing whether any one belief was unique to the Christianfaith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religionshad different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again,other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on forsome time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?”he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’sunique contribution among world religions. In his forthright manner Lewisresponded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God’s lovecoming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against everyinstinct of humanity. The Buddhist eightfold path, the Hindu doctrine ofkarma, the Jewish covenant, and the Muslim code of law—each of these offersa way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional.

Aware of our inbuilt resistance to grace, Jesus talked about it often. Hedescribed a world suffused with God’s grace: where the sun shines and rainfalls on people good and bad; where birds gather seeds gratis, neither plowingnor harvesting to earn them; where untended wildflowers burst into life onthe hillsides. Like a visitor from a foreign country who notices what thenatives overlook, Jesus saw grace everywhere. Yet he never analyzed or definedgrace, and he almost never used the word. Instead, he communicated gracethrough stories we know as parables—which I will take the liberty of transposinginto a modern setting.

A vagrant lives near the Fulton Fish Market on the lowereast side of Manhattan. The slimy smell of fish carcasses and entrails nearlyoverpowers him, and he hates the trucks that noisily arrive before sunrise.But midtown gets crowded, and the cops harass him there. Down by the wharvesnobody bothers with a grizzled man who keeps to himself and sleeps behinda Dumpster.

Early one morning when the workers are slinging eel and halibut off the trucks,yelling to each other in Italian, the vagrant rouses himself and pokes throughthe Dumpsters behind the tourist restaurants. An early start guarantees goodpickings: last night’s uneaten garlic bread and french fries, nibbled pizza,a wedge of cheesecake. He eats what he can stomach and stuffs the rest ina brown paper sack. The bottles and cans he stashes in plastic bags in hisrusty shopping cart.

The morning sun, pale through harbor fog, finally makes it over the buildingsby the wharf. When he sees the ticket from last week’s lottery lying in apile of wilted lettuce, he almost lets it go. But by force of habit he picksit up and jams it in his pocket. In the old days, when luck was better, heused to buy one ticket a week, never more. It’s past noon when he remembersthe ticket stub and holds it up to the newspaper box to compare the numbers.Three numbers match, the fourth, the fifth—all seven! It can’t be true.Things like that don’t happen to him. Bums don’t win the New York Lottery.

But it is true. Later that day he is blinking in the bright lights as televisioncrews present the newest media darling, the unshaven, baggy-pants vagrantwho will receive $243,000 per year for the next 20 years. A chic-lookingwoman wearing a leather miniskirt shoves a microphone in his face and asks,“How do you feel?” He stares back dazed and catches a whiff of her perfume.It has been a long time, a very long time, since anyone has asked him thatquestion. He feels like a man who has been to the edge of starvation andback, and is beginning to fathom that he’ll never feel hunger again.

An entrepreneur in Los Angeles decides to cash in on theboom in adventure travel. Not all Americans sleep in Holiday Inns and eatat McDonald’s when traveling overseas; some prefer to stray from the beatenpath. He gets the idea of touring the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Most of the ancient wonders, he finds, have left no trace. But there is amove under way to restore the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and after a lotof legwork, the entrepreneur lines up a charter plane, a bus, accommodations,and a guide who promises to let tourists work alongside the professionalarchaeologists. Just the kind of thing adventure-tourists love. He ordersup an expensive series of television ads and schedules them during golftournaments, when well-heeled tourists might be watching.

To finance his dream, the entrepreneur has arranged a million-dollar loanfrom a venture capitalist, calculating that after the fourth trip he cancover operating expenses and start paying back the loan.

One thing he has not calculated, however: two weeks before his inauguraltrip, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and the State Department bans all travelto Iraq, which happens to be the site of the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

He agonizes for three weeks over how to break the news to the venture capitalist.He visits banks and gets nowhere. He investigates a home equity loan, whichwould net him only $200,000, one-fifth of what he needs. Finally, he putstogether a plan that commits him to repay $5,000 a month the rest of hislife. He draws up a contract, and even as he does so, the folly sinks in.Five thousand a month will not even cover the interest on a million-dollarloan. Besides, where will he get the $5,000 a month? But the alternative,bankruptcy, would ruin his credit. He visits his backer’s office on SunsetBoulevard, nervously fumbles through an apology, and then pulls out the paperworkfor his ridiculous repayment plan. He breaks out in sweat in the air-conditionedoffice.

Suddenly the venture capitalist holds up a hand to interrupt him. “Wait.What nonsense are you talking about? Repayment?” He laughs. “Don’t be silly.I’m a speculator. I win some, I lose some. I knew your plan had risks. Itwas a good idea, though, and it’s hardly your fault that a war broke out.Just forget it.” He takes the contract, rips it in two and tosses it in thepaper shredder.

One of Jesus’ stories about grace made it into three different Gospels, in slightly different versions. My favorite version, though, appeared in another source entirely: the Boston Globe’s account in June 1990 of a most unusual wedding banquet.

Accompanied by her fiance, a woman went to the HyattHotel in downtown Boston and ordered the meal for her reception. The twoof them pored over the menu, made selections of china and silver, and pointedto pictures of the flower arrangements they liked. They both had expensivetaste, and the bill came to $13,000. After leaving a check for half thatamount as down payment, the couple went home to flip through books of weddingannouncements.

The day the announcements were supposed to hit the mailbox, the potentialgroom got cold feet. “I’m just not sure,” he said. “It’s a big commitment.Let’s think about this a little longer.”

When his angry fiancee returned to the Hyatt to cancel the banquet,the events manager could not have been more understanding. “The same thinghappened to me, Honey,” she said, and told the story of her own brokenengagement. But about the refund, she had bad news. “The contract is binding.You’re only entitled to $1,300 back. You have two options: to forfeit therest of the down payment or go ahead with the banquet. I’m sorry. Really,I am.”

The notion of God’s lovecoming to us free of charge,no strings attatched,seems to go againstevery instinct of humanity.

It seemed crazy, but the more the jilted bride thought about it, the moreshe liked the idea of going ahead with the party—not a wedding banquet,mind you, but a big blowout. Ten years before, this same woman had been livingin a homeless shelter. She had got back on her feet, found a good job, andset aside a sizable nest egg. Now she had the wild notion of using her savingsto treat the down-and-outs of Boston to a night on the town.

And so it was that in June of 1990 the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosteda party such as it had never seen before. The hostess changed the menu toboneless chicken—”in honor of the groom,” she said—and sent invitationsto rescue missions and homeless shelters. That warm summer night, peoplewho were used to peeling half-gnawed pizza off the cardboard dined insteadon chicken cordon bleu. Hyatt waiters in tuxedos served hors d’oeuvres tosenior citizens leaning on aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addictstook one night off from the hard life on the sidewalks outside and insteadsipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake, and danced to big-band melodieslate into the night.

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above TraverseCity, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to hernose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They groundher a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you!” she screams at herfather when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and thatnight she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. Sheruns away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youthgroup to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City reportin lurid detail the gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludesthat is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California,maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s everseen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay.He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before.She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from allthe fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with thebig car—she calls him “Boss”—teaches her a few things that men like. Sinceshe’s underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and ordersroom service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folksback home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she canhardly believe she grew up there. She has a brief scare when she sees herpicture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, “Have youseen this child?” But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeupand body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child.Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes herhow fast the boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around,” he growls,and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name.She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, andall the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herselfsleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” isthe wrong word—a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relaxher guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.

One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everythingabout her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world.She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She beginsto whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. Shepulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’spiled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single imagefills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloomat once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomytrees in chase of a tennis ball.

God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart.My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and sheknows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to gohome.

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answeringmachine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, butthe third time she says, “Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybecoming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnighttomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus untilit hits Canada.”

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroitand Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan.What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she havewaited another day or so until she could talk to them? Even if they are home,they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given themsome time to overcome the shock.

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Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech sheis preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s notyour fault, it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?” She says the words overand over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologizedto anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hitthe road, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at nightout here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often,a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest,the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes,folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life. Shechecks herself in a compact mirror, smooths her hair, and licks the lipstickoff her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wondersif her parents will notice. If they’re there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, and not one of thethousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what shesees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in TraverseCity, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great-auntsand uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. Theyare all wearing ridiculous-looking party hats and blowing noisemakers, andtaped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated bannerthat reads “Welcome home!”

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She looks through tearsand begins the memorized speech, “Dad, I’m sorry. I know … “

He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time forapologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.”

We are accustomed to finding a catch in every promise,but in Jesus’ stories of extravagant grace there is no catch, no loopholedisqualifying us from God’s love. Each has at its core an ending too goodto be true—or, so good that it must be true.

How different are these stories from my own childhood notions about God:a God who forgives, yes, but reluctantly, after making the penitent squirm.I imagined God as a stern taskmaster, a distant, thundering figure who prefersfear and respect to love. Jesus tells instead of a father publicly humiliatinghimself by rushing out to embrace a son who has squandered half the familyfortune. There is no solemn lecture, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson!”Instead, Jesus emphasizes the father’s exhilaration—”this my son was dead,and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”—and then adds, “they beganto make merry.”

What blocks forgiveness is not God’s reticence—”But while he was still along way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him”—butours. God’s arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.

I have meditated enough on Jesus’ stories of grace to let their meaning filterthrough. Still, each time I confront their astonishing message I realizehow thickly the veil of ungrace obscures my view of God. A housewife jumpingup and down in glee over the discovery of a lost coin is not what naturallycomes to mind when I think of God. Yet that is the image Jesus insisted upon.

The story of the Prodigal Son, after all, appears in a string of three storiesby Jesus—the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son—all of which seemto make the same point. Each underscores the loser’s sense of loss, tellsof the thrill of rediscovery, and ends with a scene of jubilation. Jesussays, in effect, “Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? Whenone of those two-legged humans pays attention to me, it feels like I justreclaimed my most valuable possession, which I had given up for lost.” ToGod himself, it feels like the discovery of a lifetime.

Strangely, rediscovery may strike a deeper chord than discovery. To lose,and then find, a Mont Blanc pen makes the owner happier than the day shegot it in the first place. Once, in the days before computers, I lost fourchapters of a book I had been writing when I left my only copy in a motel-roomdrawer. For two weeks the motel insisted that cleaning personnel had thrownthe stack of papers away. I was inconsolable. How could I summon the energyto start all over when for months I had worked at polishing and improvingthose four chapters? I would never find the same words. Then one day a cleaningwoman who spoke little English called to tell me she had not thrown the chaptersaway after all. Believe me, I felt far more joy over the chapters that werefound than I had ever felt in the process of writing them.

That experience gives me a small foretaste of what it must feel like fora parent to get a phone call from the fbi reporting that the daughter abductedsix months ago has been located at last, alive. Or for a wife to get a visitfrom the army with a spokesman apologizing about the mixup; her husband hadnot been aboard the wrecked helicopter after all. And those images give amere glimpse of what it must feel like for the Maker of the Universe to getanother member of his family back. In Jesus’ words, “In the same way, I tellyou, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinnerwho repents.”

Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out, “God rejoices.Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all humanpain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people havebeen converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoicesbecause one of his children who was lost has been found.”

If I focus on the ethics of the individual characters inthe parables—the vagrant of Fulton Street, the businessman who lost a milliondollars, the motley crew at the Boston banquet, the teenage prostitute fromTraverse City—I come up with a very strange message indeed. Obviously, Jesusdid not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe,to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

In the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice there hangs a painting by Paolo Veronese,a painting that got him in trouble with the Inquisition. The painting depictsJesus at a banquet with his disciples, complete with Roman soldiers playingin one corner, a man with a bloody nose on the other side, stray dogs roamingaround, a few drunks, and also midgets, blackamoors, and anachronistic Huns.Called before the Inquisition to explain these irreverences, Veronese defendedhis painting by showing from the Gospels that these were the very kinds ofpeople Jesus mingled with. Scandalized, the Inquisitors made him change thetitle of the painting and make the scene secular rather than religious.

We are accustomed to finding a catch inevery promise, but in Jesus’ stories ofextravagant grace there is no catch, noloophole disqualifying us from God’s love.Each has at its core an ending too good tobe true—or, so good that it must be true.

In doing so, of course, the Inquisitors replicated the attitude of the Phariseesin Jesus’ day. They too were scandalized by the tax collectors, half-breeds,foreigners, and women of ill repute who hung out with Jesus. They too hadtrouble swallowing the notion that these are the people God loves. At thevery moment Jesus was captivating the crowd with his parables of grace, Phariseesstood at the edges of the crowd muttering and grinding their teeth. In thestory of the Prodigal Son, provocatively, Jesus brought in the older brotherto voice proper outrage at his father for rewarding irresponsible behavior.What kind of “family values” would his father communicate by throwing a partyfor such a renegade? What kind of virtue would that encourage?

The gospel is not at all what we would come up with on our own. I, for one,would expect to honor the virtuous over the profligate. I would expect tohave to clean up my act before even applying for an audience with a HolyGod. But Jesus told of God ignoring a fancy religious teacher and turninginstead to an ordinary sinner who pleads, “God, have mercy.” Throughout theBible, in fact, God shows a marked preference for “real” people over “good”people. In Jesus’ own words, “there will be more rejoicing in heaven overone sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do notneed to repent.”

In one of his last acts before death, Jesus forgave a thief dangling on across, knowing full well the thief had likely converted out of plain fear.That thief would never study the Bible, never attend synagogue or church,and never make amends to all those he had wronged. He simply said “Jesus,remember me,” and Jesus promised, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”It was a shocking end to a shocking message of grace, a scandalous reminderthat grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what Godhas done for us.

Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, “Be good.”Jesus’ stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, “Help!” Godwelcomes home anyone who will have him and, in fact, has made the first movealready. Most experts—doctors, lawyers, marriage counselors—set a highvalue on themselves and wait for clients to come to them. Not so God. AsSoren Kierkegaard put it,

When it is a question of a sinner He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, “Come hither”; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes—yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.

Kierkegaard puts his finger on perhaps the most important aspect of Jesus’parables. They were not merely pleasant stories to hold listeners’ attention,or literary vessels to hold theological truth. They were, in fact, the templateof Jesus’ life on earth. He was the shepherd who left the safety of the foldfor the dark and dangerous night outside. To his banquets he welcomed taxcollectors and reprobates and whor*s. He came for the sick and not the well,for the unrighteous and not the righteous. And to those who betrayedhim—especially the disciples, his children who forsook him at his time ofgreatest need—he responded like a lovesick father.

Theologian Karl Barth, after writing thousands of pagesin his Church Dogmatics, arrived at this simple definition of God:“the One who loves.” Not long ago I heard from a pastor friend who was battlingwith his 15-year-old daughter. He knew she was using birth control, and severalnights she had not bothered to come home at all. The parents had tried variousforms of punishment, to no avail. The daughter lied to them, deceived them,and found a way to turn the tables on them: “It’s your fault for being sostrict!”

My friend told me, “I remember standing before the plate-glass window inmy living room, staring out into the darkness, waiting for her to come home.I felt such rage. I wanted to be like the father of the Prodigal Son, yetI was furious with my daughter for the way she would manipulate us and twistthe knife to hurt us. And of course, she was hurting herself more than anyone.I understood then the passages in the prophets expressing God’s anger. Thepeople knew how to wound him, and God cried out in pain.

“And yet, I must tell you, when my daughter came home that night, or ratherthe next morning, I wanted nothing in the world so much as to take her inmy arms, to love her, to tell her I wanted the best for her. I was a helpless,lovesick father.”

Now, when I think about God, I hold up that image of the lovesick father,which is miles away from the stern monarch I used to envision. I think ofmy friend standing in front of the plate-glass window gazing achingly intothe darkness. I think of Jesus’ depiction of the Waiting Father, heartsick,abused, yet wanting above all else to forgive and begin anew, to announcewith joy, “this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and isfound.”

Mozart’s Requiem contains a wonderful line that has become my prayer,one I pray with increasing confidence: “Remember, merciful Jesu, That I amthe cause of your journey.” I think he remembers.

This article is an excerpt from What’s So Amazing About Grace?(Zondervan), now available at bookstores.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

In August, less than a month after the second cease-fire took hold in Northern Ireland, thousands of Presbyterian pastors and lay leaders gathered in Belfast to make a historic public recommitment to peacemaking between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Michael Cassidy, a South African evangelical influential in producing open elections and the end to apartheid in South Africa, challenged them to a new level of personal responsibility for bringing about reconciliation and tolerance. At his invitation, nearly two-thirds of the 3,000 in the audience stood up to signal their pledge to peacemaking. Earlier this year, the Anglican Church of Ireland took similar steps when its general synod voted to condemn the presence of sectarian views within their denomination and to conduct an inquiry to determine how severe the problem is.

“Many of my friends are now becoming leaders in the movement of reconciliation. Some are working on the commission on marches, some in mediation,” says Cecil Kerr, an Anglican priest who founded the Christian Renewal Center, one of several reconciliation groups that minister to the survivors of the sectarian violence, which has been responsible for 3,225 deaths since 1969.

RESTARTING PEACE TALKS: As religious leaders concentrate on personal efforts at reconciliation, official talks began September 15. For the first time since 1921, the British government is allowing Sinn Fein, the political counterpart to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), into multiparty political discussions on the future of the six counties that make up Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland, which was created by partition from the Republic of Ireland 76 years ago.

Ray Burke, Irish foreign minister, called on Northern Ireland’s pro-British leaders to take a “leap of faith” in participating in the official negotiations on a political solution as well as the surrender of guns, bombs, and other weapons.

But already two of three leading pro-British political groups are hesitant, including the Democratic Ulster Party, headed by conservative politician Ian Paisley, the renowned fundamentalist Presbyterian minister and prolific author. However, the largest of the pro-British parties, the Ulster Unionists, as of early September was willing to participate in “proximity talks” in which differing parties are in separate rooms, while intermediaries shuttle between them.

ONGOING BLOOD FEUDS: The climate for the talks has slowly improved despite ongoing brutalities and killings. In July, the Protestant Orange Order, under extreme public pressure, agreed to reroute marches away from Catholic areas. These marches, commemorating the 1690 Battle of the Boyne military victory of Protestant William of Orange over Catholic James II, each year revive long-standing sectarian animosities. In 1996, two people were killed and hundreds of vehicles and buildings destroyed in the wake of the Protestant marches (CT, Dec. 9, 1996, p. 69).

For some Northern Irish people, the terms Catholic or Protestant are essentially tribal labels. But by no means are church leaders indifferent to the struggle over Northern Ireland’s fate. “The churches on both sides of the divide want to have political power and want the state to reflect the ethos of their religious and theological convictions,” says David Porter, executive director of the Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland (ECONI), a leading peace organization based in Belfast.

Although both the IRA and pro-British paramilitary groups are abiding by a cease-fire, personal blood feuds endure. In July, a Catholic teenager was murdered in her Protestant boyfriend’s home, apparently by an anti-Catholic militant. In June, a gunman shot and killed Robert Bates, reformed member of the Shankill Butchers gang responsible for murdering 19 Catholics in the 1970s. Bates, who served 19 years in prison and had become a born-again Christian, was working at a Belfast ministry in prisoner rehabilitation when the fatal shooting occurred. “Bates was trying to help young people in the Shankill to give up violence,” notes Sam Burch, active in the Cornerstone reconciliation group. “This was a vengeance killing.” Authorities suspect a murder victim’s son carried out the killing.

Violent conflict in Northern Ireland takes other forms as well. The number of arsons involving churches and Orange lodges has escalated resentment between Protestants and Catholics. About 50 churches have been torched since mid-1995. Starting in late 1996, Protestant youth each Saturday evening harassed Catholic worshipers on their way to mass in Harryville, Ballymena. After 41 tense weeks, the local priest suspended the Saturday service until this fall.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein and the IRA, after abandoning an initial cease-fire in 1996, have purposefully followed a bullets-and-ballots strategy in which Sinn Fein has gained political ground by winning political office for its candidates even as IRA operations persist, including the murders of two Ulster police officers in July. Voters earlier this year elected Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to the British Parliament.

A TAINTED WITNESS? Among Northern Ireland’s Protestants, the evangelical community is predominant. Patrick Johnstone, a missions demographer and author, notes in Operation World that the greater Belfast area may have a “higher concentration of evangelical churches than possibly anywhere in the world.”

Indeed, public announcements of revival services and evangelistic crusades are commonplace in newspapers and on billboards, and they often draw large, enthusiastic crowds. “You can’t walk down the street without a preacher pushing a tract into your hand,” says David Bruce, a Belfast leader for Scripture Union, a leading publisher of Sunday school curriculum in the United Kingdom.

But long-standing sectarian hostilities blunt the impact of evangelistic outreach. Bruce recalls a recent tent revival that focused on an impoverished Catholic neighborhood. After threats of arson, organizers hastily erected a chain-link fence around a 3,000-seat tent and hired security officers. During the revival, 800 Protestants nightly were bused in from their own neighborhoods to attend the revival, but few Catholics visited. “It was a fiasco,” Bruce says. “I’m ashamed to have been a part of it.”

The origin of conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants dates to the Protestant Reformation era and English attempts to colonize Ireland with plantation settlements. After the conquest of Ireland by the English, the fate of Irish Catholics and religious nonconformists worsened during the period of the Penal Laws (1690-1829), which severely discriminated against religious groups outside the established Church of Ireland.

Catholics were not allowed to vote, own land, or train priests. The enduring legacy of anti-Catholicism has a deep hold on Northern Ireland, leading to widespread segregation of housing, education, and employment. Tom Hannon, a Catholic lay leader in Belfast’s Springfield Road area, says unemployment in some Catholic neighborhoods reaches nearly 70 percent. “Young men see no future,” he says. “The discipline of work is gone. A lot of people [are] going around with little or no hope. It lends itself to a gang situation.”

DYNAMIC MIDDLE EMERGES: Since the outbreak of violence in 1969, small-scale efforts at reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants have taken root. They have borne meager fruit, but that may change provided the official talks make concrete progress.

As individual Christians have labored intensively and persisted in seeking reconciliation, they have carved out a growing and dynamic middle ground where Catholics and Protestants rebuild relationships and honestly discuss their differences. Some of these efforts have concentrated on children and feature programs in which youth are sent to the United States during the summer (see “The Kids Are the Candles,” below).

Two well-established efforts are the Corrymeela Community (www.corrymeela.org.uk), founded in 1965 and winner of the international Niwano Peace Prize, in the rural northeast and the Christian Renewal Center, started in 1974, in Rostrevor.

Both communities aim to bring Protestants and Catholics onto more neutral sites and away from their sectarian surroundings in hopes of stimulating discussion and reconciliation.

The beautiful village of Rostrevor, sheltered by the mountains of Mourne and in Ireland’s northeastern corner, lies on the shores of Carlingford Lough between the border town of Newry and the fishing village of Kilkeel.

The Christian Renewal Center faces Carlingford Lough and has been a place where many have found peace and encouragement.

But the signs of conflict are not far away. A British naval gunboat can often be seen patrolling offshore. The white, green, and gold Irish tricolor is flying from a mast in the center of the village, which is mainly Nationalist. Opposite the flag is a dilapidated Royal Ulster Constabulary police station, with its windows bricked up and painted red, a Loyalist color.

The center principally works with individuals and families who have been touched by violence. In 1987, a bomb exploded in nearby Enniskillen, killing 11 people, injuring 16 others, and causing extensive property damage. Bert Armstrong, a retired Methodist pastor, lost a brother and a sister-in-law in the bombing. While grieving his loss, Armstrong says he realized his own need to forgive the killings. “I knew that if I did not do that,” he says, “I could not stand in the pulpit and preach again.”

Armstrong has been able to counsel and speak publicly to many of the families devastated by the deaths. In another instance, a school headmaster who was injured in the bombing has been in a coma for ten years, but his wife has spoken out eloquently about forgiveness.

“There’s no recrimination in her even though she daily suffers. There’s no bitterness in her heart,” says Cecil Kerr, the center’s founder and director. “I believe that those people are the future. If there’s to be a future for peace, it will be built on those blocks of forgiving love.”

ON THE PEACE LINE: Other peace-minded Christians have centered by design on reconciliation at the front line of the conflicts.

The modest, two-story Cornerstone community house lies on the Peace Line between the Protestant Shankill and the Catholic Springfield Road. Although called the Peace Line, it is composed of barbed wire, gates, and 20-foot-high iron fences. As an armed police vehicle passes by with “Crimestoppers” and a telephone number painted in bright red on its gray sides, Cornerstone’s Burch points out the railings where the kids from each side throw stones at the other side. But there are no British army soldiers walking around now. It has been quiet since the latest IRA cease-fire.

Nearby, there are row upon row of red brick houses, all Protestant homes. At the end of each row, the windows are boarded up because any window that is close to the Catholic side is shattered by stone-throwing youths.

Cornerstone’s members sponsor clergy lunches for Protestants and Catholics, visit families who have lost children or parents in violent clashes, and hold joint prayer services.

Their work has had many setbacks. Burch has found that youth from ages 5 to 11 are generally untainted by sectarian prejudice. “The young kids are still at an age when they’re not tribalized,” he says. Yet, by the adolescent years, youth become much more antagonistic toward each other. Cornerstone and other groups, such as the nearby Clonard Catholic monastery, usually work with single-identity groups. “We try to mix them, but in very carefully controlled situations, because it can get out of hand,” Burch notes. “They can end up attacking each other verbally or physically.”

Part one of two parts; click here to read part two

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.