Page 4464 – Christianity Today (2024)

Sunrise to an Era

Thank you for the special issue “Now That We’re Global” [Nov. 16]. It demonstrates what Charles Van Engen, professor of biblical theology of mission at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote in the foreword to the Billy Graham Center monograph Supporting Indigenous Ministries: “Although more than four billion people still do not know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, around one-and-a-half billion people now consider themselves Christian, circling the globe. In spite of the obvious needs facing the church, Christians around the world today speak more languages, possess greater resources, have the Bible available in more languages, have greater facility of travel and communication, have more qualified leaders, have a deeper awareness of the cultural imprisonment of the Gospel, and possess a deeper sensitivity to the cultural issues in mission than at any time in the church’s history. We are not at the sunset of Christian mission, but rather at the sunrise of the most exciting and extensive era ever in its history.”

The reality now facing the church calls for all of us to awaken to the power of brotherhood in Christ.

Daniel RickettModesto, Calif.

Reading the article on Mexico by Juan M. Isais, I was saddened to learn how virulently Roman Catholic mobs, stirred on by a priest, harassed and injured evangelicals in Chiapas. The tragedy hits me hard because it was in the Catholic church where I became a born-again Christian. I am well aware few Protestants know that a dying pope, John XXIII, prayed specifically for the coming of the Holy Spirit to the world—a prayer stunningly answered in his denomination, as well as in many others.

In succeeding years, the charismatic renewal faded in an onslaught of traditionalism within Roman Catholicism; I decided I would be disloyal to the Holy Spirit of Christ if I remained a Catholic.

It is well past time for followers of Christ to eradicate past jealousies, reject jockeying for power, and band together, in emulation of the Lord’s footwashing example, to help the suffering and des-titute in Chiapas, as well as the Central Americans overwhelmed by the ravages of Hurricane Mitch.

Ginger O’NeilAnnandale, Va.

I want to thank you for Luis Palau’s article “Which Part of the Great Commission Don’t You Understand?” It is thrilling to see what God is doing around the world, especially through the churches in the Two Thirds World. Thanks for the strong emphasis on evangelism.

George W. Murray, Executive DirectorThe Evangelical Alliance MissionCarol Stream, Ill.

David Kasali [Kenya] portrays that the early missionaries’ method of ministry was to build their homes on top of a hill, come down to the bottom of the hill to minister to the people, then retreat to the security of their homes. Early history and missionary biographies contradict this. Read the history of the Sudan Interior Mission where two young men under insurmountable odds were determined to bring the gospel to tribes in the interior only to lose their lives in the attempt. Notwithstanding, others followed—many having the same fate. Read the many biographies of courageous people who, at great cost, for the love of the people, gave their lives to bring them the gospel. It’s good the African church is looking for new ways to spread the gospel, but let us not forget the contributions of the early missionaries.

Eleanor CowellAloha, Oreg.

Having served as a missionary teacher in Africa, I was interested in David Kasali’s report. I feel the statistics in the top corner of page 57 give a misleading picture of the situation in these countries in light of Kasali’s subtitle, “Cursed by Superficiality,” indicating that many, if not most, of the “Christians” are nominal only, showing no transformation of life.

Kasali says, “Rwanda was the site of the 1994 genocide in which a half-million people were murdered.” (He states earlier that the country was 80 percent Christian at that time.) “Christians were slaughtering Christians. How could this happen?”

The answer is: It couldn’t happen. These people were not Christians! First John 3:15 says, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” True evangelism must include discipleship.

Fred ManningChattanooga, Tenn.

Thank you for Michael G. Maudlin’s comments about Overseas Council in his “Inside CT” editorial. My family discovered this “hidden mission” 15 years ago and continue to be amazed at the scope of their influence in kingdom building through the global church.

The feature story, “Now That We’re Global,” is the best, most concise description I have seen of missions in today’s world. Thanks to the Overseas Council’s “vision tours,” we saw firsthand the unique contribution these leaders are making to the “global church” as well as in their own countries.

I would encourage your readers to be changed forever by one of the “executive vision tours” Overseas Council makes each year. As a widowed mother of baby boomers, I celebrated my 63rd, 64th, and 65th birthdays in Russia working with CoMission. I highly recommend a second career in short-term missions. The benefits are life-changing for the retiree and her family.

Ernstena ParkerColfax, N.C.

Crippling the Message

I find Charles Colson’s article “Poster Boy for Postmodernism” to be reactionary, simple-minded, unbalanced, and unfair [Nov. 16]. As a doctoral student at a major theological seminary, I have studied the philosophy of postmodernism a great deal. I am familiar enough with the literature available on the subject to know that these sources vary greatly with regard to both philosophical perspective and cultural bias. While this variety is not itself bad, it does make it possible for even bright individuals to acquire a very partial understanding of the subject if they do not make a conscious effort to sample this literature broadly. The issues involved are much more complex and legitimate than Colson seems to admit. I would encourage an even-handed approach.

Christopher RichardsonRichmond, Va.

Ethiopia’s Treasures

Having lived in Ethiopia for 30 years, I was especially interested in your article “Centuries Old Treasures Pilfered” [World Report, Nov. 16]. How tragic that Ethiopia’s wonderful religious art should be so treated by those who are appointed to guard it. How fortunate I am to have visited Lalibella and to have seen the magnificent gold cross before it was stolen.

The Ethiopia of the Bible is not today’s Ethiopia, but the Kingdom of Meroe in what is now Sudan. The Ethiopian eunuch (A.D. 34) returned to what we know now as Sudan (not the present-day Ethiopia). Until the twentieth century Ethiopia was called Abyssinia, where the gospel arrived A.D. 330.

Harry R. AtkinsMonterey, Calif.

Oops!

Thank you for your fine article on the Finishers Forum conference [Nov. 16]. You accurately represented my thoughts in the article, but you erred on my name. You are not the first; many people have made the same mistake of substituting Gibson for Gilson. I would like to ask you to print a correction.

Thomas A. GilsonCampus Crusade for Christ InternationalOrlando, Fla.

A Fresh Look at the Prodigal

I hadn’t realized how starved I was for Christian materials in the English language until a friend sent me your annual Bible issue [Oct. 26]. Receiving it was like receiving an enormous steak dinner—plus apple pie and free refills on my drink!

The Prodigal Son parable is a Bible story that has been beaten with the same stick, from the same angle, for years. Nevertheless, you managed to compile articles and artwork that were not only engaging but offered completely fresh perspectives. (Thank you for recognizing the visual arts as a powerful study tool!)

What impressed me most was the diversity of the contributors’ perspectives and the fact that within each article the author chose to plumb the depths of God and humankind. I suppose this mirrors the very nature of the parable itself—a gut-wrenching interaction between God and man.

What I found in your annual Bible issue were intensely personal explorations of God’s Word that did more to leave me in awe and reverence of him than any speech by a great theologian. I am left with greater clarity of understanding and yet still so much to chew on, still so much about which I want to dialogue with God.

Liza LangrallTokyo, Japan

Sharing God’s Love for Israel

Your October 5 cover article “How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend,” is emblematic of Christianity Today‘s hardening tone toward Christians who share a God-given love for Israel and the Jewish people. In his neatly packaged but seriously flawed analysis of the “dispensationalist” movement, Timothy P. Weber charges past adherents with being “elated” over wars and suggests that pro-Israel Christians are heartless and mindless in addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Weber is simplistic in lumping as one many distinct prophetic viewpoints and unfairly selective in recounting the development of Christian thought on the coming of the Lord and its relation to a restored nation of Israel. For instance, he ignores the many honorable men of faith since the Reformation who were martyred (e.g., Francis Kett) or persecuted (the Puritans) or esteemed (Lords Shaftesbury and Palmerston) for advocating Jewish return to the Land of Israel. Sadly, Weber also fails to identify the core motivating factor for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and many other Christian Zionists today—the belief that this return to Zion emanates from the very heart and mind of God himself.

As for the Palestinian Arabs, the Christian Embassy has an established record of reaching out to them in sincere expressions of the love of Christ. We do believe, however, that the Palestinian national movement, with its self-destructive history of violence and terrorism, has managed to manipulate world opinion against Israel. It stands perilously in direct opposition to God’s revealed will. Yet we genuinely care and pray for the Palestinians and consider it to be one of the most “anti-Arab” things we could do if we hid from them the eternal truths of Scripture concerning Israel.

God has laid down clear markers in his Word as to the signs of Messiah’s soon coming, and none is more unmistakable than the restoration of Israel. To this, all the prophets agree. We view Israel’s rebirth and survival against incredible opposition as a miraculous testament to the irreversible nature of this prophetic fulfillment. Our stand with Israel is not based solely on prophetic insights, but also on sound biblical principles that challenge us to “bless” the children of Israel and to “show them mercy.” Ultimately, our message is one of “humility and hope” (as called for by Weber), in that we seek to responsibly proclaim these biblical truths, and their accompanying warnings, to the church and the world in the fear of God .

David R. ParsonsInternational Christian EmbassyJerusalem, Israel

Professor Weber would have us believe the citizens of the tiny newborn State of Israel were a well-trained and well-equipped army up to the task of defending themselves from hostile neighboring countries. Quite a feat for many of them, newly arrived and weakened from their time in Europe’s concentration camps!

The article also states, “In August 1947, the UN Special Committee on Palestine also recommended that the area be partitioned into Arab and Jewish states; but Arabs refused to relinquish their land, so the UN abandoned the idea. By the spring of 1948 it was obvious to everybody that a political solution was not possible.” I do not know what Professor Weber means by “the UN abandoned the idea,” but on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 181, which approved a partition of British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions, and one absent. This resolution called upon “the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put this plan into effect.”

Had the Jewish state been legally able to train and equip troops during the time between this UN resolution and the withdrawal of British forces on May 14, 1949, perhaps the hand of God would not have been so evident in their victory. As it was, for Israel not only to survive but to win the war that immediately followed was no less of a miracle than that of David defeating Goliath. Happy anniversary, Israel.

Marcia MullinsHuntington, W. Va.

Brief letters are welcome. They may be edited for space and clarity and must include the writer’s name and address if intended for publication. Due to the volume of mail, we cannot respond personally to individual letters. Write to Eutychus, Christianity Today, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188; fax: 630/260-0114. E-mail: cteditor@ChristianityToday.com.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Depending on whom you talk to, the Greater Ministries International Church (GMIC) is either the biggest religious Ponzi scheme since the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy scandal or God’s greatest gift to Christian missions in decades.

Organizationally, GMIC offices are in Tampa, Florida, where services are held several times each week, but the ministry is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Staff members give varying answers as to its inception, ranging from 1968 to 1988. It claims to have several hundred “affiliate” churches but is not a denomination. Its founders share many of the ideas of the “common law” and militia movements, and several have prison records. But all insist they are not antigovernment. GMIC appears to handle multimillions of dollars in donations to its “Faith Promise Plan” but operates largely in cash and makes no annual reports or other financial figures available, even to members. As its founder and leader, Gerald Payne, told an Ohio audience last year, “For those who really want a financial statement, I can get you one—we’re doing real good!”

MULTIPLE INVESTIGATIONS:

Such a response did not satisfy the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, which issued a cease-and-desist order against GMIC in 1995 that it renewed in 1996. In November, state Attorney General Mike Fisher charged in Harrisburg that GMIC is engaged in “fraudulent activity in the name of religion” and obtained an injunction ordering it to stop soliciting new donors in Pennsylvania.

Similar cease-and-desist orders have been issued by authorities in Ohio and California. In late 1997, one of the church’s key leaders, Patrick Henry Talbert, was indicted on 15 counts of fraud, racketeering, and grand theft, and has since left the group.

After the Pennsylvania injunction was issued, Payne reacted defiantly. “As long as we pay strict attention to God’s holy word how can we go wrong?” he told the Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune-Democrat.

The controversy and litigation swirling around GMIC does not bother Lisa Calkins, a Pentecostal pastor in Confluence, Pennsylvania. “It’s been a blessing for us,” she told CT.

What kind of blessing? How about monthly payments of as much as $1,000, with which she and her copastor husband, Merle, have purchased a home and visited Ukraine to buy a church building there? “When we got that first $100 back, I was totally shocked, and I figured, what the heck—might as well try again,” Lisa Calkins says.

UNADVERTISED MEETINGS:

The Calkinses are two among 20,000 to 80,000 (reports vary widely) participants in what GMIC calls its Faith Promise Plan.

The plan’s operation is simple: supporters, such as the Calkinses, send a “gift” to GMIC each month, usually in cash. And each month, GMIC returns a sheaf of crisp $50 bills, via Priority Mail, in amounts that ultimately add up to twice the original “gifts.”

GMIC insists the plan is a purely religious “gift-in, gift-out” relationship. Securities regulators in California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio call it an unregistered and hence illegal investment program—or worse, a Ponzi scheme, one with potential to rival New Era (CT, Oct. 27, 1997, p. 86), which had $135 million in losses.

GMIC “gifters” are recruited at unadvertised meetings across the country. Many sessions are small, conducted in living rooms. Others draw hundreds. One of the largest occurred in the Expo Center at the Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Fairgrounds on November 21, less than three weeks after the state issued its injunction. The meeting drew nearly 1,000 people.

Several meetings have been held here, deep in Pennsylvania Dutch country—an area thickly populated by Mennonites, Amish, and others with Anabaptist roots—where GMIC programs seem to have a special appeal. These groups’ memories of religious persecution run deep.

CLAIMING PROSPERITY:

Where does GMIC obtain money to double donations? “I don’t know how it works,” Merle Calkins says. “I don’t want to know.” But others, especially authorities, are more curious.

GMIC’s own explanations are both vivid and vague: There are many claims of an international trading empire that is purportedly producing huge profits. But the organization’s bottom line, they insist, is biblical, not economic. The Scriptures are their main financial adviser.

In GMIC’s February 1997 newsletter, Payne wrote: “God has given us a system by which we can take the blessings of God and cause them to increase.” At one videotaped session, Donald Hall, GMIC director of world missions, went further: “The Lord spoke this program into existence by prophecy,” Hall said. “The church has always thought that the best thing is to be humble and poor. Hogwash. Be humble; but you don’t have to be poor.”

Luke 6:38 is the warrant and warranty for GMIC’s program, a rationale and refrain repeated at every opportunity: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again” (GMIC relies solely on the King James Version).

A second key text is the fifth chapter of James, with its opening warning, “Come now, ye rich men, weep and howl … ” Writing under the heading, “Christianomics,” in GMIC’s December 1997 newsletter, Payne asserted, “It’s virtually impossible for anyone who is serious about God’s word to study James 5:1-5 and fail to see evidence of an end time transfer of wealth.” At one videotaped meeting, Talbert informed an audience that “God said in James chapter 5 he’s going to transfer the wealth of the heathens. This is gonna be end-of-time transfer of the wealth, and you’re a part of that.”

These texts are explanation enough for many participants. Bobby Clark, a Clyde, Ohio, used-car seller, told a state securities attorney why he had been in the program for a year: “This thing, when you operate with God, it works. There’s crooks out there, but these people aren’t.”

Beyond the Bible, GMIC’s main published text is a 50-page booklet, written by its senior pastor, Charles Strickland. The title sums up its contents: You Are Bound to Be Blessed—Prosperity, Wealth, and Riches.

GLOBAL INVESTMENTS:

GMIC has preached its prosperity gospel with evident success. Besides payments to thousands of givers such as the Calkinses and Bobby Clark, GMIC has bought a large hotel and conference center in Owensboro, Kentucky, and a four-story former bank building in Tampa, Florida, for its offices. The church also had tens of millions of dollars on deposit in a Colorado bank.

None of this impresses Michael Byrne, director of enforcement for the Pennsylvania Securities Commission. Byrne believes GMIC is using the money of new gifters to pay off previous participants, and thinks it is likely near collapse. “This is a pyramid scheme,” Byrne insists.

GMIC spokespersons tell a different story. They assert that the church makes money by pooling gifters’ funds, then using them to buy and sell gold and silver on international markets, regularly making large profits on the trades. These profits, besides funding the “gifts out” to members, they say are building a large-scale corporate African empire centered on gold and diamond mining, especially in Liberia.

Liberia is still recovering from a long and devastating civil war, which destroyed much of its infrastructure and left tens of thousands dead, missing, or homeless (CT, Dec. 5, 1998, p. 24). Communications facilities are uncertain, making it difficult to check on these claims.

At the Lebanon meeting, Payne boasted that GMIC had just taken ownership of “the tallest skyscraper in Africa,” a $300 million edifice, for the bargain price of $8 million. He also stated that the ministry possesses its own airplane and has obtained rights to a Liberian gold mine containing “forty billion dollars” worth of gold.

Those assembled also heard the contents of a November 16, 1998, letter signed by Ernest Eastman, Liberian minister of state for presidential affairs. The letter praised the “invaluable assistance you have already rendered to our people” and announced the appointment, by president Charles Taylor, of Greater Ministries Africa Foundation as the government’s “sole agent” to “monitor and verify all donations and funding raised for humanitarian purposes for our country.”

By press time, the Liberian embassy was unable to confirm the authenticity of the letter. But officials from other relief groups such as World Vision and Catholic Relief Services, which have been active in Liberia for years, even throughout the civil war, were surprised by such a proclamation.

MULTILEVEL HERB MARKETING:

Along with GMIC’s reportedly burgeoning and lucrative overseas program, its leaders have announced new plans for its work in the United States: a bank debit card for members, run electronically from its own bank in Liberia; a new Greater Bible College in Tampa; and a newspaper.

One of the most aggressively promoted initiatives announced at the meeting involved the introduction of a line of “Greater Life” herbal remedies and food supplements, through a new Greater ministry, the Health Benevolence Christian Fellowship.

Nontraditional medicine has been a keen interest of Payne and his wife, Betty, and an herbal research center has been part of GMIC’s Tampa headquarters complex since 1995. Payne described his hopes for cancer treatment at the center in a deposition: “We actually pull the cancer right out of your stomach,” Payne said. “We never cut the cancer because if you cut it, it spreads through the body and you’re finished.”

The centerpiece of the “Greater Life” line is a nutritional supplement called “Beta 1, 3rd Glucan,” and the Health Benevolence Christian Fellowship is a multilevel plan for its distribution. Program literature insists that the supplement, described as a powerful immune system booster derived from baker’s yeast, is not for sale, but rather is to be distributed solely as “gifts” by the fellowship. The goal is to help believers survive the predicted series of “end-time plagues.”

To receive such “gifts,” however, participants agree to send the program regular donations. Those who send at least $50 monthly can become “fellowship builders.” In addition, for each pair of new donor-recruits signed up, a fellowship builder qualifies for increasing levels of bonus “charity blessings.” These can be redeemed for more supplements, or cash.

ESTABLISHING A NATION:

Greater Life supplements were the newest venture on display at the meeting, but not the ministry’s most ambitious project. That distinction belongs to GMIC’s plan to establish its own country, to be called Greaterlands. This will be, according to its literature, “an Ecclesiastical Domain, i.e., similar to the Vatican.”

The benefits of such statehood are expected to be enormous: “We will become an embassy and our ministers and missionaries may become immune from unwarranted prosecution, and Greaterlands will rule under God’s law in our own courts.” For a $10,000 donation, early supporters are promised a Greaterlands passport, driver’s license, business domicile, and one square foot of land dedicated in their name. Prospective donors are also assured, “You can hold more than one citizenship.”

Payne told listeners after the Lebanon meeting that he is negotiating with the Liberian government to locate Greaterlands on the coast not far from its capital city of Monrovia.

FINANCIAL SETBACKS:

Despite the lengthy list of initiatives, the tone of GMIC’s November 21 meeting was not all upbeat. As Hall explained, in the past several months, “Satan has hindered us. But he cannot stop us.”

One set of hindrances is the spate of cease-and-desist orders, and the Pennsylvania injunction, which the meeting seemed in part designed to test. A sheet headlined “Churches Under Siege” was distributed to all attenders as they entered the hall, along with a second flier describing GMIC’s 1997 legal victory in Florida, where an appeals court had ruled that its gifting program, in its latest incarnation, did not constitute an investment plan.

Besides ongoing legal challenges, the ministry suffered a serious financial setback in July when Best Bank of Boulder, Colorado, failed. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has sued the bank’s president and chairperson for $300 million, alleging massive fraud. GMIC was a major depositor in the bank. GMIC lost more than $20 million in uninsured deposits, though the organization hopes to recover some of the funds.

BIG-TIME LOSSES:

Because of the huge loss, by September the stream of Priority Mail envelopes stuffed with $50 bills all but stopped arriving in gifters’ mailboxes. In the wake of missed payments, many GMIC gifters have felt financially pinched.

Michael E. Miller, part-owner of a personal-care home in Confluence, Pennsylvania, felt especially hard hit. Miller had heard about the gifting program in 1996 from his pastor, Merle Calkins. He attended a meeting where he heard the enthusiastic testimony of an acquaintance who had “maxed out his credit cards and put everything he had into the gifting program,” and learned of others who had done likewise.

Soon, Miller followed their example, holding meetings himself to line up new recruits, selling property, refinancing his home, borrowing heavily, then putting all the proceeds into the program. He even drove to Tampa once to make sure $40,000 of his money arrived at GMIC offices in time for a monthly closing date.

Miller says he put in a total of $98,000. Soon he too received the Priority Mail envelopes full of new $50 bills, along with printed account statements that he could not decipher.

In the summer of 1998, an expected payment of $13,000 did not show up. Miller contacted Payne and informed him he wanted his $98,000 returned. “I was told many times I could get my money back anytime,” he now says. Payne reportedly offered to send him only $18,000 and Miller would then be out of the program.

Miller eventually received $13,000, but no more. He says he has had to sell more property to keep up with his bills, and he has been ostracized by other gifters in his area for speaking out. Miller says GMIC never informed him about the 1995 cease-and-desist order. “If I had known about this order, I would never have invested in Greater,” he says. “I was deceived.”

CT made numerous unsuccessful attempts to talk to Payne. However, videotapes of meetings show Payne and Hall repeatedly assuring audiences that “nobody has ever lost a dime” in GMIC. Miller is one of only two participants to go on record with formal statements to the contrary.

The other is June Smith, a retired businesswoman from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She told investigators last spring that she put $261,500 into the program, expecting to receive twice as much in return. However, her affidavit states that she received only $129,265—less than half of what she invested—before being “prayed out” of the program. After she protested, Smith testified to Pennsylvania investigators: “Greater placed a curse on my family.”

UNEASY DONORS:

Neither Miller nor Smith has any direct recourse for their claimed losses. Despite what Miller may have been told about receiving his original deposits back, the GMIC gift form, which each donor is required to sign, states that funds deposited are “donations,” and “there are no guarantees implied and the only promise involved is the promise God gives in His word.”

The tapes also show Payne and Hall warning that they have little patience for the querulous. “We don’t want anybody in the program that is a continual doubter,” Payne told an Ohio audience. “If I catch you doubting, guess what happens? You come out. If you doubt, you come out. I don’t care if you’ve got about six million, seven million—don’t make any difference.”

At the Lebanon meeting, Hall repeated the theme: “God has let this [trouble] happen to us in the last five months to shake out all the investors, and all the doubters, and all the unbelievers.”

In the face of such warnings, Michael Byrne of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission complains that it is hard to find people ready to come forward to tell stories in public similar to those of Miller and Smith. But at the Lebanon meeting, it was clear that many such stories had recently filled the phone lines to GMIC offices.

“Some of you are in a financial strain because of Greater Ministries,” Hall told the standing-room-only crowd. “But trust in God, and God will take you through.” He prayed loudly for God to “loose a financial miracle” on those who needed it most.

“A man called me on my cell phone,” Hall acknowledged, “and asked, ‘Why didn’t I get any money this month?’ I told him, ‘You’re one of 80,000 that need it!’ ” (A GMIC spokesperson later told CT that 20,000 is a more realistic figure.) “Brother Gerald,” Hall added sadly, “gets calls all day and night.”

But the interruption in payments, Hall assured the group, is only temporary. “If you’ll hang on and buckle your seat belts,” he declared, “God will give you back seven times more than you gave.” The new $40 billion Liberian gold mine would soon deliver them all, he promised. “We’re going to have more credibility than ever before.”

After the meeting, small groups clustered around the GMIC staff, some holding sheets of paper they had been sent instead of payments. The papers, headed “Storehouse #1, Gold/Silver Receipt,” announced that future payments would be made in the form of IOUs that could be redeemed 30 days after issue for gold, silver, or cash. GMIC staffer David Whitfield also announced that future gift payments would be made through the ministry’s Liberian bank, making use of the new debit card the group would soon issue, with which cash could be withdrawn from many automatic teller machines.

PERSECUTION CLAIM:

Will GMIC get its payments back on track? Or will the cries of “Ponzi” prove prophetic? The ministry’s legal troubles are mounting: Responding to rumblings about a federal subpoena demanding to see GMIC records, Payne adamantly responded at the Lebanon session, “In a pig’s fanny.” He then boasted of going through GMIC offices and “purging the computers” so federal authorities could not hack into them.

Pennsylvania state agents in the crowd did not like what they saw. On December 2, state Attorney General Fisher went back to court in Harrisburg, seeking a sweeping contempt order against GMIC, Payne, and Hall. Fisher called for the surrender of all GMIC records of gifts to or from Pennsylvanians since the November injunction, and refunds of all gifts made in the state since then. He also asked for fines of up to $2,000 per day for noncompliance and an arrest warrant for Payne if he did not cooperate. A contempt of court hearing is set for January 20.

The latest Pennsylvania action sets up a confrontation in court over the limits of freedom of religion. At press time, CT learned that GMIC had retained a new general counsel, Al Cunningham of Redding, California. He told CT he has specialized in religious freedom since a controversial 1981 Nebraska church school licensing case when a pastor spent several months in jail for refusing to submit his church school to state licensing laws.

GMIC attorneys have made religious freedom the basis of their defense in hearings both in Pennsylvania and Ohio. “It’s really very inappropriate for a state to come in and tell religious groups how they should believe and how they should raise money,” says Paul B. Johnson, one of the GMIC attorneys.

Another advocate, Susan Gellman, insists that GMIC’s understanding of what is promised in Luke 6:38 is not within a court’s jurisdiction. “The state’s arguments that this is not, in fact, a gift,” she said in an Ohio hearing, “rely on its rejection of all these witnesses’ beliefs, their religious beliefs.” But, she declared, tribunals and courts “are simply precluded from weighing the merits of those beliefs” by the Constitution.

The Ohio hearing officer was not moved by these assertions, concluding that “Constitutional arguments are often used to cloak impermissible conduct.” Similar arguments carried no weight in Pennsylvania.

In a flier distributed at the Lebanon meeting, GMIC alleged, “Silently, but methodically, local, state, and federal agencies are crossing the line between church, state, and in so doing violate freedom of religion.” Mark Stewart, a Pennsylvania deputy attorney general, retorts, “Individuals’ religious beliefs do not excuse them from complying with otherwise valid laws.”

Thus far, securities agencies in Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with a Pennsylvania judge, have agreed with Stewart. It seems certain that there will be more court fights over GMIC’s programs.

In the coming months, this high-stakes conflict will be played out in lofty courtroom language and in the bank accounts of thousands of ordinary Christians.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

—Luke 6:38, KJV

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

—James 5:1-4, KJV

Greater Ministries bases its “Faith Promises Program” on two key scriptural passages, Luke 6:38 and James 5:1-4. Followers believe the Lukan verse, “Give and it will be given unto you,” guarantees that donors will receive twice as much money back as contributed. And they take James’s warning that “Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you,” to be prophesying an “end-time transfer of wealth” from the unidentified “heathen” to God’s specially chosen followers, particularly those organized under the Greater Ministries banner.

This exegesis does not much impress Wayne Grudem, professor and department chair of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

Grudem told CT that “it will be given” only implies that God is the giver and does not specify what the blessings are or when they will be given. “Are they spiritual or material blessings?'” Grudem asks. “Are they given now or in the age to come? That’s up to God to decide.” Grudem says the verse gives no justification for a promise of material blessings here and now, in every case, without exception.

He is similarly unimpressed with the Greater Ministries approach to James 5. In a newsletter, founder Gerald Payne rephrased the text of verse 3, “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days,” as “Ye have heaped a treasure for a Christian collection for the last days,” based on reading the word together to mean “specifically a Christian meeting.”

Grudem scoffs at this wordplay, judging it as nonsense. “There is no word meaning together in the Greek text, or any implication of a Christian assembly,” he says. “The word in question means ‘to store up treasure.’ When they claim the wealth will be transferred to some specific group (like themselves), they are reading something into the text that just isn’t there.” Further, Grudem asserts, “the phrase ‘for the last days’ is a King James mistranslation of the Greek, which more accurately reads ‘in the last days.’ “

Grudem is no more sympathetic to Greater Ministries’ take on the archaic term canker. “The Greek words for cankered (KJV) and rust have no meanings even remotely like the sense of their reading of ‘to send down’ or transfer.”

Grudem is troubled by such idiosyncratic readings. “These are not just innocent errors in interpretation,” he says. “They are distorting the Word of God for their own personal gain. They are like the false teachers in 2 Peter 2:3: ‘In their greed, they will exploit you with false words.’ “

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In June 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the four-year-old federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), alarming many in the broad-based religious community that had supported the legislation (CT, Aug. 11, 1997, p. 48). The Supreme Court ruled that Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by trying to expand the definition of religious freedom.

While no new federal legislation has been adopted to limit government regulation of religious expression, at least a dozen states have considered implementing similar provisions. The latest measure passed in Illinois, where both legislative chambers met in special sessions. Lawmakers voted to override Gov. James Edgar's amendment to the bill, in which he had tried to limit the scope of a state version of RFRA. The House overrode the amendment 110 to 3 on November 17 and the Senate followed 55 to 0 on December 2.

The final bill declares that when a state or local jurisdiction acts in a way that would curb free exercise of religion, the burden falls on the government to prove the curb is necessary. Edgar had inserted a clause exempting prison inmates from the protections.

PRISONER EXEMPTION JUSTIFIED?

Opponents of the original Illinois bill, dubbed a "clean" RFRA because it contained no exemptions, included not only corrections officials but groups such as the 36-member Illinois Municipal League and the Northwest Municipal Conference. Local governments raised concerns about the impact of RFRA on zoning (CT, Oct. 26, 1998, p. 23) and employment issues. Attorneys for the city of Chicago argued the bill would make employment policies virtually unenforceable as long as a worker identifies a religious basis for his refusal to comply with an employment policy.

"It's true that RFRA limits governments; that's the point," says Steffen Johnson, a Christian attorney who works with the Illinois RFRA Coalition. "But this 'parade of horribles' is not grounded in fact."

Nevertheless, John W. Mauck, a Christian zoning attorney in Chicago, says, "Municipalities had been working against the bill behind the scenes. They definitely wanted to choke this baby in its cradle."

Supporters of a prisoner exemption to Illinois' RFRA law argued that prisoners lose certain rights when they are incarcerated and prison officials must have the flexibility to maintain a safe and controlled prison environment. Without the exemption, they say, prison gangs could claim RFRA protection under the guise of holding a religious meeting when they actually planned an insurrection.

However, Steven T. McFarland, director of the Christian Legal Society's (CLS) Center for Law and Religious Freedom, says any exemption—especially for prisoners—is unacceptable. "A prison warden is going to use any leverage he has to elicit favorable behavior. If a warden knows a guy wants to go to a Bible study on Friday nights, he will hold that out as a privilege the prisoner will lose if he doesn't toe the line," McFarland says. "Religious liberty is not a privilege; it is a right."

Richard Hammar, editor of Church Law & Tax Report, agrees there should be no exemptions, but he also knows nobody despises RFRA more than wardens. Each year Hammar reviews every U.S. federal and state case involving the exercise of religion in prisons. He says most RFRA cases involve claims made by prisoners, the majority of which are ultimately thrown out. "Any prisoner can state that his religion commands that he be fed lobster three times a day, served on a silver platter by the warden of the prison."

Despite the abuses, Hammar says, "The federal judiciary has become quite astute in recognizing spurious religious claims by prisoners. State judges, as well, will become capable of sifting out the legitimate from the illegitimate." Hammar sees that as a far better response than trying to exempt prisoners. "In so doing, you are adversely affecting some prisoners who present legitimate claims."

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is working for clean RFRA laws with coalitions in several states. Colby M. May, ACLJ's director of government affairs, says exempting prisoners from RFRA laws is the beginning of a slippery slope. "What you can deny to the least of us you can deny to the rest of us," May says. "It's a long way from prisons to the rest of us, but it's the beginning of that erosion that's of most concern."

GROUND SWELL OF SUPPORT:

Florida, Connecticut, and Rhode Island already have clean RFRA laws. California passed a clean RFRA, but Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed it over the prisoner issue. The Virginia legislature narrowly defeated a RFRA bill in its last session. Alabama voters approved a clean RFRA in November as an amendment to the state constitution. Supreme courts in Minnesota and Massachusetts have adopted expansive interpretations of their state constitutions to protect religious liberty.

South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan won passage in only one legislative chamber in 1998 and must start over. Texas lawmakers will consider RFRA legislation in January.

Attorney Johnson is grateful for the overwhelming Illinois override to Edgar's amendment. "It's a testimony that religious liberty is a God-given right to which all people are entitled," Johnson says.

CLS's McFarland says Illinois lawmakers' lopsided rebuke of Edgar's attempt to remove inmates sends a message to other states forging RFRA legislation: Watered down laws are unacceptable. "This train is leaving the station and isn't coming back." he says. "And we're not about to leave prison ministries at the station."

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Two years after popular radio preacher and pastor Guillermo Osorno won a seat in Nicaragua’s legislative assembly, bringing three members of the evangelical political party he founded with him, evangelicals whose interests he claims to represent still do not agree whether his venture into government has been fruitful.

Political observers estimate that as few as 5 percent of Nicaragua’s 600,000 evangelicals voted for Osorno and the Christian Way party in his 1996 run for president (CT, March 3, 1997, p. 60). Osorno finished a distant third to the winner, Arnoldo Aleman, and former President Daniel Ortega. Many voters wearied of Osorno’s claims that God had assured him a presidential victory, as well as his denial of ever having said it following the loss. Voters became further disillusioned when he joined Ortega in alleging election fraud, though international observers had found no such evidence.

Nevertheless, Nicaragua’s Evangelical Alliance president and Assemblies of God vice superintendent Roberto Rojas recognizes that Osorno, a former Assemblies of God pastor, and others in his party are fulfilling vital liaison roles between church and state in the nation, where four out of five profess Roman Catholicism. “Through Osorno, evangelicals for the first time can sit down at the same table with leaders in national government,” Rojas says.

Marvin Lazo, the Evangelical Alliance’s executive secretary, agrees that Osorno has given evangelicals an unprecedented voice. Christian Way legislators now serve on key committees, including human rights, education, and governance, the latter having authority to grant legal status for all organizations, including churches.

But Gustavo Parajon, founder of the Evangelical Churches Pro-denominational Alliance, expects evangelicals in public office to address more pressing issues that affect the nation, such as hunger, illiteracy, lack of health care, unemployment, poverty, and rising violence.

“In the midst of all these things, there has been silence from Osorno and his group,” Parajon says. “He has not touched on any of the significant issues that are important to the Nicaraguan people.”

Despite such criticism, Rojas still believes Osorno can effect change. “He is a man in the process of learning,” Rojas says. “He has changed his attitude.”

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The bomb that exploded in Brighton, England, on October 12, 1984, targeted then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Instead, it blew Harvey Thomas through the roof of his southern England hotel.

Left dangling on girders, he survived. Five of his friends did not. For years, Thomas, Thatcher’s former public relations spokesperson, struggled with bitterness toward the Irish Republican Army.

But Thomas now plans to send letters of forgiveness to IRA leader Gerry Adams and those jailed for the attack. “I thought I should see if I can open a door of Christian communication [that] the Lord can use,” the international consultant told CT. “The Lord put it strongly on my heart.”

Promise Keepers vice president Raleigh Washington shares a similar story about a visit to a predominantly white U.S. church. Though challenging the congregation to cross racial boundaries, he first accepted responsibility for violence perpetrated by African Americans. Afterward, a 22-year-old woman revealed that she had been raped six months earlier by a black man who “beat the rap.” Though she had forgiven him, she had been unable to sleep.

“Nobody took responsibility,” Washington says. “But at the moment I said I take responsibility as a black man for rape and murder, God gave her healing instantly. She held me and wept for three or four minutes.”

The power of sharing such testimonies before international audiences drives Reconciliation Networks of the World (RNOW). The nascent, all-volunteer organization held its second conference in November in Louisville, Kentucky.

Around 800 attended, twice as many as at last year’s inaugural gathering in England (CT, Oct. 27, 1997, p. 106).

As organizers plan for the next conference, in Boston in 2000, they believe the increasing diversity of its audience signals God’s activity.

“We’re a loose fellowship,” says Reid Hardin, a former Southern Baptist lay renewal director who founded RNOW. “We don’t have an agenda.”

Methodist Hour president John Wolfe believes the example of Jesus’ many parables deeply touching crowds demonstrates the power of such a forum. “Most of us have never had an opportunity to hear stories of what people in other countries and cultures have experienced,” says Wolfe, RNOW’s codirector. “We’re discovering a community we never realized existed. It’s giving us the courage to do the hard work of reconciliation.”

While race is a prominent topic, the conferences also discuss denominational, class, gender, cultural, and marital differences.

The SBC has shied away because Catholics are involved. But Hardin dreams of one day sponsoring a meeting to try to heal conservative and moderate rifts within the SBC. “We hope the global stories can affect the local church,” he says.

Hardin credits God with drawing prominent leaders to volunteer in the movement, including Thomas, pk founder Bill McCartney, and South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, who played a role in forming the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CT, Feb. 9, 1998, p. 18).

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On October 13, a court in the northern Laotian province of Luang Prabang sentenced six Christian leaders to prison for holding an “illegal” meeting. The court convicted the Christians, who received sentences ranging from eight to eighteen months, for gathering without official permission of local authorities “in order to stir up opposition or cause damage to Lao society.”

Though still a tiny minority in the nation of 5 million, Christians in Laos, particularly in Luang Prabang province, face intense hostility from majority Buddhists and persistent discrimination from the country’s Communist rulers.

Even though the Lao Constitution guarantees freedom of belief, evangelism, training, and church planting are illegal. Religious groups must be registered with an arm of the Communist party. Sale or distribution of Bibles is illegal.

The ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party came to power in 1975 and has since run the tiny landlocked country in Southeast Asia with communist-style leadership. Around two-thirds of Laotians are Buddhists, while most of the rest practice animism. Christians represent around 1 percent of the population, with estimates ranging from 36,000 to 72,000.

The government uses Buddhism as a cultural tool to maintain controls. Buddhism legitimizes social and economic inequalities, while communism legitimizes suppression of the spread of Christianity. Christians have become a blatant target for persecution, particularly since the implementation of a new economic policy earlier this decade.

Laos had nearly 15,000 Christians before Communists took over in 1975. Most of the Christians belonged to the Hmong tribe and went into hiding or fled the country as refugees to avoid imprisonment. In 1990, revival swept Laos, bringing courage and confidence to beleaguered believers. They began evangelizing cautiously, one on one.

Christians operate quietly, though still under surveillance by suspicious officials. Church leaders are often called in by police for questioning. Despite persecution and a lack of significant resources, the church in Laos continues to grow. The greatest response has been from the Khmu people—an ethnic tribe that has been the most emotionally and socially oppressed in the country. Christianity has been part of a renaissance for the Khmus. There are three churches under the Lao Evangelical Church in the capital, Vientiane, each with between 200 and 250 congregants.

ENFORCED BUDDHISM:

After closing the door to the world for nearly two decades, the Lao government has designated 1999 as tourism year, with a goal of attracting a million tourists.

Nevertheless, Christians in Laos say that 1998 has been the worst year for persecution since the Communists came to power.

Eight Christians who attended a home Bible study received three-year prison terms in May for allegedly creating division among the population, undermining the government, and accepting foreign funds to promote religion.

Amnesty International, in a recent report, said 19 Laotians were arrested in 1998 because of their religious beliefs. The report criticized the government’s “growing intolerance of individuals choosing to worship in churches which do not have state approval.” The report said the “intolerance is particularly noticeable when the individuals concerned have had contact with foreign organizations.”

In 1997, the government conducted a survey in Luang Prabang and learned that 200 villages in the area had a majority population of Christians. At the same time, the United Nations Education Program declared Luang Prabang a heritage site. Using the designation as an excuse to reinforce Buddhism in the province, the government began a crackdown on Christians, declaring that the “Jesus religion” had no part in Lao culture.

Armed soldiers sometimes surround a village in efforts to force Christians to renounce their faith. Those who resist are chased from their villages. Those who comply must attend government re-education seminars and sign affidavits stating they “mistakenly believed the luring and deceitful propaganda” to become Christians. Due to the crackdown, civil servants who are Christian have been dismissed from their jobs, and Christian students have been prevented from entering college or obtaining employment.

FOLLOWING JESUS’ EXAMPLE:

Faced with such a dilemma, Christians take courage from 1 Peter 2:21: “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” They say Jewish leaders and Roman officials collaborated to persecute Jesus because his views clashed with the power structures of his time. “If that was all right for Jesus, it’s all right for me,” a Laotian Christian says. “It is a blessing the way we are—but we pray that it will not continue forever.”

The National Front is aware of the symbolism of the year 2000 and the desire of Christians to see the gospel have a big impact in the country. Observers say that efforts of the government to restrict and divide the church may eventually result in increased church growth.

“We have enemies, and there are pressures on us,” one Christian leader says. “It is a very real threat. The government resentment against Christians is deep rooted.”

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On November 18, 1978, Tim Stoen and his wife, Grace, sat anxiously in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown, waiting for the right time to return to the jungles of Jonestown to try to reclaim their only child, six-year-old John Victor. Then they heard the news: Jim Jones had led more than 900 of his Peoples Temple followers—including their son—in a mass murder-suicide.

Jonestown residents had been forced to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. “It was the most miserable night of my life,” Tim Stoen, now 60, recalls.

A 1960 Wheaton College alumnus, Stoen had been an active member of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California, when he met Jim Jones in 1967. Jones’s concern for the poor and minorities impressed Stoen, an idealistic civil-rights lawyer. He joined the Peoples Temple in 1969 and became Jones’s attorney.

In 1977, Stoen moved to Jonestown, the Peoples Temple commune that had migrated from the San Francisco area, to raise his son in the socialist utopia. Because of his high position in the commune, Stoen was allowed to leave on a trip to the United States. He thought his son would be well cared for at the commune during his absence. But through media accounts, he came to realize the warped nature of Jones’s plans.

Jones suspected Stoen’s defection and claimed Stoen’s son as his own. “My intuition said if I went back I’d be a corpse in 30 days,” Stoen says. “It was not an easy decision to make.” He decided he could help his son more by lobbying the government. U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of California went to Jonestown in part as an emissary in Stoen’s custody case against Jones. Just before the mass suicides, Jones’s guards shot and killed Ryan and four U.S. journalists. Jones videotaped a suicide message that blamed Stoen for causing the massacre. “We win,” Jones said on tape. “Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate. Then he’ll destroy himself.”

CULTS ON THE RISE:

The horror lingers 20 years later, but the tragedy served as a catalyst for research on the growth of aberrant groups and improved rehabilitation for ex-members. Academics and ex-members gathered November 13-15 in Chicago to discuss lessons learned since Jonestown.

Experts agree that cultic activity has increased since Jonestown, with anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 groups existing today. An estimated 100,000 to 300,000 people move in and out of aberrant groups each year, and the total continues to grow.

The number of groups varies based on the definition of cult. Evangelicals identify groups outside orthodox Christianity as cults because of their aberrant religious beliefs. Secular researchers define cults by their abusive behavior; they can include political or paramilitary groups, or even some Protestant churches.

The rise of such groups is attributable in part to the transient nature of society. “We’re becoming very aware of what a scattered society we are,” says Margaret Thaler Singer, emeritus psychology professor at the University of California- Berkeley. “People are very lonely.”

The coming millennium is spawning dozens of new groups, particularly those with a doomsday vision (see “Y2K: A Secular Apocalypse?” p. 54). “There are people starting deviant, off-beat groups all the time,” says Paul Carden, executive director of the Centers for Apologetics Research, an evangelical countercult ministry network in San Juan Capistrano, California. The growth of information technology—from the Internet to cable television—has contributed to the rise of “garage cults,” Carden says, making it less expensive for leaders to communicate with potential followers.

LOST HOPE?

Although not all aberrant groups are religious, experts realize that the terror of a cultic experience can obliterate hope in a loving God.

Brenda Daeges, 29, a participant in the Jonestown conference, grew up in the Apostles of the Infinite Love group in Montreal. Although not affiliated with the Catholic church, leaders dressed as nuns and priests. Daeges says the “nuns” sexually abused her, beat her with a crucifix, and tied her to a bed. “I was beaten five to six times—on a good day,” she says. In her presence, nuns strangled a stray kitten that she had befriended. After Daeges, then 17, threatened to kill one of the nuns, they allowed her to leave. Daeges has started to find help from the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center, a residential rehabilitation center for ex-cult members in Albany, Ohio.

However, she no longer believes in God. Daeges recalls the times nuns tied her to a tree in nearby woods, where a bear once approached her. “I was less afraid of the bear than I was of the nuns,” she says. “The worst the bear could do was kill me.”

Tim Stoen and his wife divorced a year after their son died at Jonestown. For years, Stoen lived in fear of being killed by an angry Peoples Temple member. He wrestled with Jones’s final words blaming him for the tragedy. But he eventually faced those who accused him of causing the massacre and learned the power of forgiveness. In 1991, he recommitted his life to Christ. “When you screw up, your life’s not over,” Stoen says. “Recognize that you have a loving God that loves you.”

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“Compassion is more than a pretty word,” Vice President Al Gore told fellow Democrats at a December meeting. “There is a long road between rhetoric and results.”

The vice president’s comments were pointed commentary on a new hybrid political label, “compassionate conservative,” popularized by George W. Bush, the recently re-elected Republican governor of Texas. A Bush aide’s rejoinder to Gore was: “I wonder which part the vice president disagrees with: compassionate or conservative.” (At the moment, talk of the 2000 presidential campaign focuses on Bush and Gore as likely opponents.)

If American political debate refocuses on the definition and practice of compassion, it would be a breath of fresh air after the recent election season of attack ads and combative campaign rhetoric. Compassionate conservatism has its roots in Sen. Dan Coats’s Project for American Renewal, which sought to enact legislation to empower the private sector and individuals to do the practical work of compassionate care. Compassionate conservatives favor greater accountability, tax credits for charitable giving, and in the words of Governor Bush, “making sure that government is not the answer to people’s problems.”

Public or private?

Especially since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inaugural address, in which he identified government as “the problem,” there has been an ongoing political debate over whether government or the private sector (churches and charities) is better suited to help the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.

For much of American history, care for poor people was almost exclusively a private sector concern. But that all changed during the Great Depression with the enactment of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs for the elderly, needy families, and the unemployed. While those programs enjoyed a broad support born of an emergency, conservatives today say it is time to re-evaluate government’s role.

Advocates of a cradle-to-grave federal welfare state say that social ills would be dramatically worse if government were not involved. The private sector, they point out, does not have sufficient resources to care for all the poor, all the time. However, conservatives counter, some government entitlements financially reward bad behavior and thus trap individuals in a self-destructive cycle of dependence.

Gore’s suggestion that the road is long between the rhetoric and the results of compassion is not always so. Compassionate action improves with practice. And while the road to some of our goals may be long, the practice of compassion can begin immediately. With the advent of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, there are powerful new incentives for local involvement with poor people (see next editorial).

The shrunken common good

This renewed politics of compassion is a hopeful sign in a society that has seemed to surrender any political vision of the common good in favor of the pandering of interest-group politics.

At the end of the 1990s, Americans have a much-diminished understanding of their obligation to the common good. Being part of a community, Thomas Aquinas pointed out, requires that we “fall into subordination to the common happiness in a way properly expressed by law.” But that requires a sense of national community and a willingness to sacrifice.

In a New York Times magazine article, acerbically subtitled, “Government of, by and for the comfortable,” Nicholas Lemann highlights a new national “consensus”: “a kind of one-way libertarianism [in which] the average citizen has no obligation to the country, but the government has a very serious obligation to that citizen.” Lemann concludes: “Any project that entails government acting in the broad national interest (rather than in the narrower interest of the suburban middle class) probably won’t get done.”

With the country in that kind of mood, the new politics of compassion is just what we need to turn us away from individualism and toward right relations between people in community.

No one is exempt from the social and moral call to compassion. However, effective compassion does not come cheap. But the American willingness to sacrifice for the benefit of others, for the common good, has its limits, and woe to any political campaigner who talks of sacrifice, mutual or otherwise.

How to make compassion effective

Loving one’s neighbor is a zealously political act, aimed not only at relieving suffering but at transforming both individuals and society. Any truly compassionate program that extends beyond mere emergency relief will be characterized by two things:

1. accountability (it will require responsible behavior on the part of recipients), and
2. positive results (it will aim at building life skills and increasing independence in those it serves).

These are truths we know both from family life and from ministry. Wise relief organizations do not just ship food to the hungry. They also dig wells and teach agriculture. Wise parents do not just meet their children’s needs for food, clothing, and shelter; they teach skills and match increasing maturity with increasing independence. Truly compassionate programs for the poor require the same common sense.

But all of that requires that we establish an intimate and ongoing connection with people in need, for the essential foundation of compassion is relationship. And there is no better place than a local church congregation to reconnect rich and poor. God’s compassion, which is universally effective, is the yardstick we should use in measuring our own acts of compassion.

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The jury is still out on the welfare reform law of 1996. Government officials boast about how many people have been taken off welfare rolls, but the welfare rolls had been diminishing before the act went into effect. In fact, between January 1993 and March 1998, welfare rolls decreased by 37 percent—a statistic that does not tell the whole story. It does not say how many of those moved off the welfare rolls have gotten living-wage employment that can be sustained over time. (One study done in New York City predicts that it will take 21 years to absorb all of their adult welfare recipients into that job market. Yet, the new law puts a five-year limit on welfare benefits.)

In the short term, charities that provide the most basic human needs—homeless shelters, rescue missions, food pantries—see worrisome trends. Catholic Charities reported a 26 percent increase in requests for emergency food relief in the first half of 1998. According to Bread for the World, “one in eight families in the United States is still on the edge of hunger … partly because Congress has slashed vital food and nutrition programs. Hardest hit are … infants, women and the elderly.” This in a robust economy. What is to happen when, not if, the next recession hits?

Whereas society as a whole has a responsibility toward the least among us—and therefore government has a role to play—the church too needs to step up to the challenge (see “After the Revolution,” CT, Dec. 7, 1998, p. 50). There is an opportunity staring churches and other faith-based organizations in the face. That is the charitable choice provision of the welfare reform law that makes it possible for charities, churches, and other faith-based organizations to deliver publicly funded services to the needy—especially mothers and children—under contract with the states. Faith-based organizations may provide such services so long as contract funds are not used for worship, sectarian instruction, or proselytization.

According to Stanley Carlson-Thies from the Center for Public Justice, congregations or other religious organizations interested in providing services to needy people in their communities should contact their county or state governments to see what kinds of programs and funding are available. In opening a conversation with the appropriate jurisdictions, faith communities should consider advocating additional, necessary services. “I think it is particularly important to remind us evangelicals too that we need to serve as advocates for people in the welfare system or for public policy measures which are needed to meet their needs,” adds Carlson-Thies.

Churches that want to take advantage of charitable choice should keep three groups in mind: the hidden poor, people on the bottom rung, and children.

First, churches in rural and suburban areas should not think of poverty as an urban issue only. The absence of inner-city ghettos does not mean there is no hunger or homelessness.

Second, government officials’ claims of success blur the fact that our real goal should be to help those on the bottom rung of society to climb out of vicious cycles of poverty and to take responsibility for their own lives. For those who lack job skills, have chronic medical problems or chemical dependency, this is a monumental task.

Finally, the children. Poverty almost always involves children who can do little to help themselves. In 1996, one in five children in the United States lived below the poverty line—about 14.5 million! John DiIulio, Jr., an urban analyst and a Christian, has proposed a simple and direct challenge to all the churches of America—that through both public and private means we work to insure that no child goes without the basic human needs of food, shelter, and health care. Are the churches ready to suffer the little children to come to them?

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