Page 4320 – Christianity Today (2024)

In 1890 William D. Bloys, a Presbyterian Army chaplain at Fort Davis, Texas, began a regular outdoor service in a pasture 19 miles from the fort. Officially the “Bloys Camp Meeting,” his motley gathering of cowboys and ranchers became known as the “Spiritual Hitchin’ Post of West Texas.” Bloys never tried to force a man to accept a faith he didn’t feel he needed, but many men in that wild country did accept—and cleaned up their lives. One observer remarked, “No boy raised up at Bloys ever ended in the Jeff Davis County Jail.”

Though such signs of spiritual life appeared all over the western landscape, they are completely absent from most people’s visions of the nineteenth-century American frontier. Names like Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Billy the Kid, and Wyatt Earp are almost synonymous with the West, while names like William D. Bloys, Daniel S. Tuttle, Charles Sheldon, Sheldon Jackson, and Brother Van Orsdel ring few bells. Yet if one looks at actual accomplishments, the situation might well be reversed. Most western communities owe far more to these unheralded clerics than they do to the high-profile outlaws or icons.

From about 1840 to the end of the century, these largely anonymous ministers shaped the contours of western life in three major ways. They formed the first churches and Sunday schools, which promoted social stability while reining in local violence; they developed a distinctly western style of Christianity that emphasized a non-denominational message of salvation and personal ethics; and they helped lay the institutional foundations—orphanages, hospitals, and schools—for scores of western communities.

Into the fray

The American West of the Civil War era was full of violence. In 1859, for example, an observer noted that the only need El Paso, Texas, had for a minister was to bury the dead. Presbyterian minister Alexander T. Rankin described Denver of 1860 as a town of no laws, jails, or courts, and thus a land with “no restraint on human passion.” The bodies of six recently hanged horse thieves greeted Episcopal rector John Cornell when he first stepped off the train in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1866. Even in the 1880s, Baptist James Spencer noted that he could postmark his letters from Butte, Montana, as sent “from Hell.”

The clergy naturally hoped that by organizing fledgling churches they could stem this tide. Thus their initial response was to scour their area for enough people to found a “First” (Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc.) church. The mobility of both pastors and parishioners, however, meant that these “First” churches remained small for years.

Frontier clerics discovered that it was often easier to organize a Union (multi-denominational) Sunday school instead. Really a Bible class for adults, these Sunday schools often developed into genuine churches. In 1914 the Presbyterians estimated that about 80 percent of their new churches in western areas had originally begun as Sunday schools.

Modest though they might have been, these churches and Sunday schools served as bulwarks of social stability. Not only did they provide venues for regular services, their rooms held a variety of social gatherings as well, thus functioning as training grounds for political democracy. The numerous church meetings introduced people to such basic democratic principles as how to conduct public meetings via accepted rules of order, how to speak to the issue at hand, and (usually) respect for majority rule. Thus, the church and political gatherings of the era overlapped and reinforced each other.

On rare occasions, the pioneer clergy actually brought order out of chaos. Famed Methodist itinerant John “Father” Dyer reportedly staved off an 1880 anti-Chinese riot in the mining town of Breckenridge, Colorado. When an angry mob began to shout, “The Chinese must go,” Dyer mounted the nearest steps and began to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” He paused after several verses to launch into an extemporaneous sermon, preaching that God’s love was intended for all humanity and that all men were brothers. Eventually the mob dispersed.

Although there were exceptions, most western communities treated their ministers with respect. The more educated clergy were frequently called upon to deliver graduation addressees, preside at civic functions, and serve on local school boards. Realtors and civic boosters touted the presence of ministers and churches as a mark of a community’s “maturity.”

A gospel with grit

The major Protestant denominations moved West at approximately the same time, but none could claim dominance in any one region. Instead, a rough-hewn ecumenism emerged as both clergy and parishioners found themselves in a decidedly minority position. Consequently, many western clerics modified their gospel presentations, giving frontier Christianity a character distinct from its eastern incarnation.

Slighting denominational concerns, these western ministers generally sought out universal themes. Methodist William B. Goode, for example, resolved never to use his sermons to condemn but always to look for the good that he could find in a frontier situation. Congregationalist James Walker tried to temper the prevailing Colorado ethos of “self-made men” by noting that both success and failure were played out against a background of Divine Providence. Arizona Baptist Romulus A. Windes confessed that whenever he delivered a sermon, he simply tried “to get people to do better.”

Improving behavior was often as lofty a goal as preachers dared aim for—and they weren’t afraid to use an emotional appeal to reach it. When popular Montana Methodist minister William Wesley Van Orsdel (“Brother Van”) preached to a tough crowd of miners or cowboys, he would often begin with the song “Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight,” which contained these lyrics:

O where is my wandering boy tonight,
The boy of my tenderest care,
The boy who owes me my joy and light,
The child of my love and prayer?

At the end of his sermon, Brother Van would remind his listeners, “Now don’t forget your Ma and Pa. There is a light shining in their window for you. At least write and tell them what you are doing. Do it before you pull off your boots tonight.”

Many a western cleric proved quite creative in shaping his message to the circ*mstances at hand. When Reverend Melton Jones preached in a Clifton, Arizona, saloon in 1899, he compared the religious figures of the past to the images on a deck of cards. (Another version of this theme—the Ace, one God; the deuce, Adam and Eve; the trey, the three wise men; the four, the four evangelists, etc.—was later turned into a popular song.) A Southern Methodist preaching in Phoenix in August 1898 compared that desert climate with what sinners might expect in the next world.

The original WWJD

Perhaps the best example democratizing the western gospel message is the career of the Congregational minister Charles Sheldon, who first arrived in Topeka, Kansas, in 1888. To bolster his sagging Sunday evening services, Sheldon began reading to his congregation from a novel he had underway, and, like a movie serial, left his audience hanging in suspense when he broke off his narrative for the night.

In October 1896, he began reading from his seventh and most recent work, a study titled In His Steps. The book opens with the arrival of a poor wanderer, who is clearly not an ordinary tramp—”not more than 30 or 33 years old, I should say.” The man collapses and dies before the astounded congregation of the fictional Reverend Henry Maxwell. The man’s death so unnerves people, they vow for one year to ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” before acting. The book revolves around how a newspaper editor, businessman, singer, college president, and clergyman use their talents in this new light.

The book sold incredibly well. Due to a technical error by the publisher, In His Steps entered the public domain, where it is still in print in numerous editions. Sales estimates range from 6 to 23 million, and in common parlance, it became known as “the second best seller to the Bible alone.” By condensing personal ethics into a single phrase, Sheldon’s book serves as the ultimate embodiment of the western ecumenical experience.

Body and soul

Throughout the region, western clergy also helped lay the institutional infrastructure for their communities. Except for the territorial and state governments and the saloons—which received near-universal condemnation—the West lacked permanent institutions of any sort. Thus the ministers found themselves called upon to fill a genuine need by founding orphanages, hospitals, and schools.

Virtually all the early western hospitals (those of the U. S. Army excepted) had some sort of denominational affiliation. The makeshift hospital in the Catholic mining town of Price, Utah, drew its funds from a compulsory donation from every miner. The nursing nuns left only when the ores played out. The Protestant Episcopal Church established a small hospital in Indian territory to aid “Natives,” miners, and railroad men, and also set up a larger facility on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Brother Van led the Methodists in establishing at least nine hospitals in Montana.

Since these church-run hospitals in the rural and mining areas functioned on a modest scale, most of them eventually disappeared. But the clergy in the urban centers could draw on both a wider financial base and a larger number of patients. Many of these church-run health care institutions remain vital yet today: St. Anthony’s hospital in Amarillo (Catholic); St. Luke’s in Boise (Episcopal), and so on.

The fin-de-siecle concern over tuberculosis (TB) drew many western clerics into health care. Episcopal Bishop Leigh Richmond Brewer founded St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena in 1884, and his Idaho counterpart, James B. Funsten, founded St. Luke’s in Boise 18 years later. Baptists established TB hospitals in El Paso and Tucson, while the Methodists set up Good Samaritan in Phoenix, and the Episcopalians, St. Luke’s in the Desert in Tucson. (Other religious leaders became involved in this work, too: the crowning accomplishment of Denver’s leading Reform rabbi, Joseph Friedman, was the creation of the National Jewish Hospital, which provided free care for TB sufferers.)

The Reverend Hugh A. Cooper, who arrived in Albuquerque with TB, opened a five-room cottage for indigent health seekers, which later grew into the extensive Presbyterian Hospital system of New Mexico.

Though founding hospitals is hardly reflected in many popular accounts of how America “won” the West, nineteenth-century westerners took note. As Episcopal Bishop Daniel Tuttle remarked in his Reminiscences, “When the church takes the lead in beneficent activities for human welfare, sneering at or capricious criticism of her is never heard.”

“Send us a teacher”

This same pattern can be seen in education. Ministers who arrived in the West were virtually expected, by believers and religious skeptics alike, to become involved with some form of education. In Cottage Grove, Oregon, a group of militant freethinkers encouraged Cumberland Presbyterian Will V. McGee to establish a school, reluctantly concluding that a church education was preferable to no education at all.

In areas with established public schools, ministers were encouraged to sit on local school boards or serve as superintendents. The first three territorial superintendents of public instruction in Nevada—a territory that insisted on no sectarian teaching in any public school—were all Protestant clergymen. Church leaders were instrumental in establishing school systems all across the West, from El Paso to Alaska. The motto of the Congregational Church in Dakota Territory reflected this emphasis: “Evangelism and education.”

Because of limited budgets, many western local governments were unable to establish comprehensive public school systems until the early twentieth century. Thus, the educational network of the West from 1840 to 1900 remained a patchwork of public, Roman Catholic, and Protestant parochial education.

Western parochial schools, naturally, varied from place to place, but in two areas, New Mexico and Utah, the Protestant clergy turned education into a central feature of their mission. Congregational, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, and especially Presbyterian clerics and laywomen erected entire school systems. They did so to instruct the “exceptional populations,” as they politely termed the Hispanic Catholics and Latter-day Saints, in the manners and mores of mainstream America. By 1883, for example, the Presbyterian school system taught about 2,000 Utah children and perhaps a thousand New Mexicans.

Churches had already discovered that neither Hispanic Catholics nor Mormons would listen to traveling Protestant ministers. So while male ministers often supervised educational operations, middle- and upper-class women almost always taught the classes. As Presbyterian Sheldon Jackson (see “Out There on the Edge of Things,” page 30) once observed, “They won’t come hear preachers; send us a teacher.” Another writer, expressing the biases of his time, penned, “Christ’s command, ‘Go preach,’ is not more obligatory on man than his command ‘Go teach’ is on women.”

The Protestant concern for education culminated in the establishment of numerous small denominational colleges all through the West. The Presbyterians founded Hastings College (Nebraska), Austin (Texas), and Occidental (California), while the Disciples of Christ established Pepperdine (California) and Texas Christian University. The Methodists founded Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Nebraska Wesleyan in Lincoln (for years known as “Northern Methodist”), and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The USC athletic teams were proudly called the “Methodists” until 1912, when a local sports reporter noted that the football team fought “like Trojans,” and they assumed their current name.

These denominational colleges were especially important in the historically under-churched Pacific Northwest. At a time when the state schools, such as the University of Washington, Washington State, University of Oregon, and Oregon State, remained small, denominational colleges educated many a young northwesterner: Gonzaga (Catholic), McMinnville (Baptist), Whitworth (Presbyterian), Linfield (Baptist), Whitman (Congregational), Pacific Lutheran, and so on.

The Episcopal Church played a special role in the western Protestant educational crusade. Unlike the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, which established a range of primary schools, middle schools, academies (high schools), and colleges, the Episcopal bishops concentrated mostly on erecting academies, often directed toward educating young women. From 1870 to 1918, western missionary bishops established about 20 such academies throughout the region. Over time, most of these academies disappeared as nearby colleges flourished and people became more suspicious of schools with religious ties.

In the early 1900s, Idaho Episcopal bishop James B. Funsten found himself on the defensive. Critics began to question the need for church involvement in western health care and education. But Funsten vigorously defended the Episcopal institutions. As he saw it, the overall mission of the church was to treat the whole person, mind, body, and soul. In a sense, the schools, hospitals, and churches combined to do just that.

From the 1860s to about 1900, then, western Protestant ministers helped lay the institutional foundations for their regions. In truth, the various denominations were the only organizations that had the funds and personnel to do so. As a Denver observer noted in 1902, “If a new hospital is wanted or a new college is wanted, it is the church people of the locality who are called upon to meet the expense of it.” This had been the case in the American West for almost half a century.

Ferenc M. Szasz is professor of history at the University of New Mexico and author of the forthcoming book Religion in the Twentieth-Century West.

Related Links:

Start your search for academic information on the American West here: www.academicinfo.net/amwest.html

Find articles on Charles Sheldon (In His Steps) from the Topeka Capital-Journal at: http://cjonline.com/sheldon/.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

As North and South clashed in the Civil War, Americans saw hope in one direction: West. This mural study was commissioned during the Civil War for the House Wing of the U. S. Capitol to reflect the country's optimism. (The mural itself, modified slightly from the original, was finished a year later.) The painter, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, described his intention: "To represent as near and truthfully as the artist was able the grand peaceful conquest of the great West."

A sense of God's providential will—America's "manifest destiny"—infuses the painting. In his notes, Leutze described the emigrants catching their first view of the "'promised land' … having passed the troubles of the plains, 'The valley of darkness' &c." Of the woman near the center of the composition, he wrote that she "has folded her hands thanking for escape from dangers past (religious feeling indicated)."

The western "conquest" Leutze noted was not always peaceful, which is hinted in the painting's top border, where Indians flee the descending eagle. An official, though incomplete, Army compilation shows 1,065 engagements between U. S. troops (and occasionally civilians) and Native Americans between 1866 and 1891.

The struggling wagon toward the back of the picture is a more accurate depiction of westward travel than the jubilant faces toward the top. The most challenging of early overland routes, the Oregon Trail, covered 2,000 miles of barren plain and steep mountains and required 150 to 180 days to traverse. Traffic along the route didn't really begin until the 1836 party that included missionaries Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spaulding (the first white women to cross the Rockies) demonstrated the trip was feasible.

Just ahead of the wagon train, beneath a shaded cross on the rock, a small group of pioneers buries one of their company. Overland travel was dangerous, as was life in the early West, where medicine and hospitals were in short supply.

Missionary Mary Walker, who went with her husband to Oregon in the 1840s, worried about her newborn son: "What is to become of him? His parents one or both may soon be taken away, and then who will care for my child? I hope I can, with some degree of faith and confidence, commit him to the care of his Maker."

Next to the wounded boy at the bottom is a woman who "hopes to meet the father of her child, who has preceded them." At least until rail travel and established roads made the trip easier, men outnumbered women in the West by a wide margin—eight to one in Idaho and Montana in 1870. When Wyoming became the first state to grant women's suffrage, in 1869, only about 1,000 white women over the age of 10 lived there. "Wyoming gave women the right to vote," a writer for Harper's Weekly quipped, "in much the same spirit that New York or Pennsylvania might vote to enfranchise angels or Martians."

The portraits in the lower margin represent two phases of America's westward expansion. Daniel Boone (1734-1820), at left, was already a legend for his explorations in and around Kentucky. William Clark (1770-1838), at right, had traveled with Meriwether Lewis from 1803 to 1806 to map the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase.

The main part of the lower margin, a panorama of the "Golden Gate," or entrance to San Francisco's harbor, is tied to the painting's manifest destiny theme and its title, found in the banner at the very top. The title comes from the final stanza of a poem by Bishop George Berkeley :

Westward the course of Empire takes its way
The first four acts already past.
A fifth shall close the drama with the day
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

"The drama of the Pacific Ocean closes our Emigration to the west," Leutze wrote. (The poem also prompted the University of California to name its town Berkeley.)

Related Links:

See the painting and read more commentary here:www.davidson.edu/academic/english/oldenglish/steiner3.html

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

MONTANA’S EVANGELIST-AT-LARGE

Brother Van (William Wesley Van Orsdel)

1848-1919

After stepping off the steamboat at Fort Benton, Montana, on a June Sunday in 1872, this penniless, sandy-haired, Methodist “evangelist-at-large” was ready to preach. When his impromptu Sabbath service at the Four Deuces saloon came to an end, listeners didn’t want to let him go. They asked his name, but since it was a mouthful, they dubbed him “Brother Van.” Practically everyone in Montana would know that name before long.

William Wesley Van Orsdel’s parents died before he turned 13. An aunt raised “Willie” and his siblings on a small Pennsylvania Dutch farm near Gettysburg. At 15 Van Orsdel was soundly converted at the little Methodist prayer meeting the family attended.

Sometime in the next few years, he was roused by “a mighty vision.” He later recalled, “I could see the miners, stage drivers, freighters, cowboys, and here and there among them a copper-colored native, beckoning and calling. To me these were Macedonian cries, and with the all-impelling word ‘go’ locked up like fire in my bones, I felt like Paul—’woe be unto me if I go not.'”

At 22 he retired the plow, packed up his Bible and carpetbag, bid Pennsylvania farewell, and headed for Montana.

In his 47 years of ministry there, he helped convert Indians, miners, farmers, drunkards, brothel keepers, and saloon owners. He was once shot at by Indians and another time mistaken for a horse thief and nearly hanged. He gained a reputation for caring about his listeners, so that even when he preached uncompromisingly to hardened “sinners,” he often managed to win them over.

From 1892 to 1918, as superintendent of the Methodists’ North Montana Mission, he built 100 churches, 50 parsonages, six hospitals, a school for orphans, and Montana Wesleyan college. He never married, and upon “retirement” at age 68, he continued to preach every Sunday and speak at missionary conferences across the country.

At 71 he suffered a paralytic stroke and lay in a coma. A few days later, he suddenly awoke and began to sing and converse with old friends long dead. Near the end, he said, “I haven’t an enemy. Only friends. Tell the people of Montana that I love them all.”

DOCTOR TO NEW MEXICO OUTLAWS AND INDIANS

Taylor Filmore Ealy

1848-????

On April 1, 1878, the sheriff of Lincoln, New Mexico, was shot dead in the street. The man who dashed out to pick up the sheriff’s gun and turn it on the assassins was shot, too, but he managed to get himself over to Dr. Taylor Ealy’s house. Ealy wrote:

“The report was that he shot him through the bowels, but it was a mistake. … The ball passed through his left thigh. I drew a silk handerchief through the wound, bound it up and he was taken charge of by [a friend].”

Though Ealy never mentioned his patient’s name, the only man reported wounded in the gunfight was Henry McCarty, alias William Antrim, alias William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid.

Ealy, a Presbyterian educated at both seminary and medical school, had arrived in Lincoln with his family at the onset of the infamous Lincoln County War. The man who’d requested a Presbyterian presence in town, lawyer Alexander McSween, led the faction that included Billy the Kid. The Ealys ministered as best they could in the bullet-ridden town until McSween was murdered. The lawyer’s enemies then targeted the preacher, who barely escaped with his life.

In the fall of 1879, the Ealys took an assignment from Sheldon Jackson to start a school among the Indians at Zuni Pueblo. But after two grueling, frustrating years, Taylor was discouraged. A son had been born and died there, and the Indians were so deeply entrenched in their cultural and spiritual traditions that they wanted little to do with the white man’s school or his religion.

In the end, the West proved to be poor match for the Ealys, and in June 1881, they returned to their native Pennsylvania, where Taylor lived out the rest of his life as a country doctor.

“Father’s work may appear to many unimportant,” said Ealy’s daughter Ruth after his death. “He was always, though, a fighter for the cause of righteousness. Wherever he went, in the West, on the mission field, in his home in Schellsburg [Pennsylvania], he worked faithfully to advance the cause of the great Master, under whom he enlisted.”

TOMBSTONE’S REFEREE

Endicott Peabody

1857-1944

The story is told that when the Reverend Endicott Peabody was raising funds for his new church in Tombstone, Arizona, he entered one of the town’s saloons and walked up to the table at which sheriff Wyatt Earp was playing poker. Earp had been winning, and a pile of chips lay before him. When Peabody asked for a donation, Earp pushed a stack of chips his way. “Here’s my contribution, Mr. Peabody.” Then Earp turned to the other players and announced, “Now each of you has to give the same.” Peabody’s St. Paul’s Church stands in Tombstone today.

“Cotty” Peabody was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family in Salem, Massachusetts. He was educated in England, excelled in academic and religious studies, and was so taken with athletics, it was said that Peabody “made a sacrament of exercise.”

Upon returning to America, he enrolled in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While still a student, he accepted a pastoral call to the now famous silver-mining town of Tombstone.

“I bought a little horse,” he said, “and with a broad brimmed white felt hat, a grey flannel shirt, riding breeches with yellow gaiters, and blankets strapped on behind and a gun hung on the pommel of the saddle, you would have taken me for the worst kind of a western rough instead of a quiet man of peace.”

His arrival in Tombstone on January 29, 1882, came a few relatively peaceful months after the infamous shootout at the O. K. Corral. He wrote home that “the ordinary citizen is unmolested and the only danger is from a stray shot from [the feuders] or some incensed gambler … but in my circ*mstances … there is little cause for anxiety and I feel … it is best to leave it all to him for whom I am trying to work.”

Peabody stayed in Tombstone only six months, but he made a favorable and lasting impression upon the community—from the mining magnates and city officials to the miners, muckers, saloon keepers, and gamblers. His candor and his love of sports won him the role of referee in all outdoor games played by Tombstone’s young men. He loved a good horse race, attended the gymnasium religiously, and never refused a challenge to strap on boxing gloves.

And the church he built (debt-free) was the territory’s first Protestant church.

He returned to Massachusetts to complete seminary, after which he founded, in 1883, a boy’s prep school in Groton dedicated to cultivating “manly, Christian character, having regard to moral and physical as well as intellectual development.” Groton’s most illustrious graduate was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

WYOMING’S KINGDOM CRUSADER

Josiah Strong

1847-1916

On a cold night in 1873, the town of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was set afire. The arsonists were the town’s former brothel-keepers, who had been forced out of business by Pastor Josiah Strong’s call for a moral cleanup. The flames did nothing to melt Strong’s resolve.

Strong had been just a greenhorn graduate of Cincinnati’s Lane Theological Seminary when he married Alice Bisbee on August 29, 1871. Ten days later, the newlyweds were setting up house in Cheyenne, where Strong was ordained and installed as pastor of a Congregational church. He stayed long enough to lead the anti-prostitution crusade (and suffer the consequences mentioned above), but he soon headed back east to take a chaplaincy at Western Reserve College in Ohio.

As the years passed, Strong’s passion for societal reform grew. In 1885 he published his most famous and influential book, Our Country. By 1916 it had sold over 125,000 copies. The book drew heavily on his western experience but also recalled the ideals of his Puritan ancestors. He challenged the nation and the church to transform society with biblical principles and thereby establish the Kingdom of God on earth.

“Free institutions are safe only when the great majority of the people have that reverence for law which can spring only from reverence for God,” he wrote. “The most striking defect of young America is the lack of reverence.” To remedy this, he exhorted the church to roll up its sleeves, work hard, pray always, and seize the day for Jesus Christ.

After the initial success of Our Country, Strong dedicated himself fully to biblical social reform, first in America and then in Britain and in South America. His efforts gave birth to the “Safety First” movement, the American Institute for Social Service (and its British counterpart), and the Federal Council of Churches in America.

Mark Ammerman is author of The Rain From God, The Ransom, and The Longshot (all Horizon Books), a historical fiction series set in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England.

Related Links:

For an interesting history of Christian missionaries in the West, see:www.insiders.com/yellowstone/main-worship2.htm

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

In a story full of cowboys, sheriffs, saloon girls, outlaws, gunfighters, prospectors, and stagecoach drivers, the church was, at best, the place where frightened townspeople gathered to sing hymns and await rescue by the all-too-worldly hero … ,” writes Patricia Nelson Limerick in a 1996 essay “Believing in the American West.” “If one went in search of the classic heroes in the mythic turf of the Old West, one would not bother to look among the clergy.”

Limerick’s next sentence, though, is the most intriguing: “In the quest for western heroes, there is good reason now to look in unexpected, less explored places.” Good reason indeed, and if you look in this issue of Christian History, you will find some of those unexpected heroes.

The topic—Christianity in the American West—is as big as the region, and as diverse. There is no one overarching narrative like the Puritan story that dominates early New England. There is no single figure whose presence is felt throughout the region, such as George Whitefield in the eighteenth-century colonies. Sheldon Jackson (“Out Yonder, on the Edge of Things“) is one of the largest personalities of the West, and as such deserves the attention we give him. But others could have been singled out as well, like Bishop Daniel Tuttle, “Brother Van” Ordsel (“Local Heroes“), and many others.

All in all, local heroes and local stories dominate the West, and unfortunately, we can tell only a few of these stories.

Some stories we’ve consciously left out for lack of space. Roman Catholic missionaries like Franciscan Marcos de Niza, for example, were already evangelizing the West nearly a century before the Pilgrims landed at Jamestown in 1620. But you won’t find much information on Catholic efforts in this issue.

Be that as it may, what you have in your hand is a pretty fair picture of Protestantism in the trans-Mississippi West from about 1840 to about 1910. Some of the heroes you’ll encounter here are nameless; others are flawed. But overall, you’ll see a diversity of men and women who brought the gospel to the West at considerable personal sacrifice, and who lived out their faith with immense courage—and thus shaped the region more than western mythmakers have led us to believe.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed," said philosopher Francis Bacon (d. 1626), "and some few to be chewed and digested." Here is Christianity Today's list of 1999 books most worth chewing on. A couple of things were different in this year's selection process. First, we returned to a system in which books competed in categories. (How do we weigh a commentary against a work of fiction?)We asked dozens of publishers to nominate books for one or more categories (as a result, some significant books were simply not nominated—a flaw we'll fix next year). We then polled about 160 pastors, scholars, and general readers, asking them to vote for the books they believed were "the most significant books of the year," meaning books that "have brought, or will eventually bring, insight to an issue or prompt a significant segment of the Christian world to believe or act differently."Second, we asked voters to mark the nominated books they had also read. When we added the votes, the "read" votes weighed more heavily. (It is one thing to vote for a book based on reviews, a writer's reputation, or a colleague's judgment; it is something altogether different to support a book actually read.)This system has its disadvantages. For one, it weighs fiction (which received the fewest number of votes) equally with books on Christianity and culture (which garnered the most votes). Thus the Awards of Merit, our wild-card winners: books (listed by category in order of votes received) that amassed a significant number of votes but not enough to win their respective divisions.Every system has a bias. Ours bias tilts toward the concrete: these awards favor books that made a difference and that people actually read. Yet to evangelicals like us—who long to make an impact on the world—that is not a bad bias. So, taste, chew, and digest.

Apologetics/Evangelism

IS THE BIBLE TRUE? How Modern Debates and Discoveries Affirm the Essence of the ScripturesJeffrey L. ShelerZONDERVAN

Biblical Studies

A COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEWCraig S. KeenerEERDMANS

Christianity and Culture

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: The Bridge Between Science and TheologyWilliam A. DembskiINTERVARSITY

Christian Living

THE BIBLE JESUS READPhilip YanceyZONDERVAN

The Church/Pastoral Leadership

LEADERSHIP THAT WORKS: Help and Hope for Church and Parachurch Leaders in Today's Complex WorldLeith AndersonBETHANY

Fiction

A NEW SONGJan KaronVIKING

History/Biography

SAINT AUGUSTINEGarry WillsVIKING

Missions/Global Affairs

THE DESECULARIZATION OF THE WORLD: Resurgent Religion and World PoliticsEdited by Peter L. BergerEERDMANS

Theology/Ethics

THE STORY OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and ReformRoger OlsonINTERVARSITY

Spirituality

THE UNKNOWN GOD: Searching for Spiritual FulfillmentAlister McGrathEERDMANS

Awards of Merit

Christianity and Culture

JUST GENEROSITY: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in AmericaRonald J. SiderBAKER

HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?Charles Colson and Nancy PearceyTYNDALE

BLINDED BY MIGHT: Can the Religious Right Save America?Cal Thomas and Ed DobsonZONDERVAN

History/Biography

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Redeemer PresidentAllen C. GuelzoEERDMANS

Theology/Ethics

EVANGELICAL TRUTH: A Personal Plea for Unity, Integrity, and FaithfulnessJohn StottINTERVARSITY

Related Elsewhere

These books are available for purchase at the Christianity Online bookstore. Click here for our special CT Book Awards page.Christianity Today's book awards for 1999, 1998, and 1997 are also available online.

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There’s so much trite and recycled in Keeping the Faith, a romantic comedy that plugs a priest and a rabbi (ha ha) into a love-triangle formula, that it’s hard to believe the film scores the minor coup of being the first mainstream recognition of today’s “seeker church.” Father Brian Finn (Edward Norton, who also directed) and rabbi Jacob Schram (Ben Stiller), friends since childhood, begin to attract crowds to their respective places of worship with a combination of energy, humor, and Ross Perot-style straight talk. (Schram even brings in a gospel choir to help teach his congregation sing with more pep.) While these stunts might be over the top, they do replace the common images of withering religion with those of resurgent religious communities working to stay relevant to a rapidly changing culture. It’s a quite accurate peek into the modern American church, which has entered a “difficult yet exciting period of transition from modernism to postmodernism,” according to Eric Stanford, a contributing editor for Next-Wave, an online magazine that serves church leaders pioneering this transition. Keeping the Faith reflects many of the trends Stanford identifies in today’s church, including “innovative new alliances in missions, social service, and every other kind of Christian work … a decreasing inclination of people to get exercised over secondary theological differences … [and] the growth of indigenous Christian movements that are dynamic yet in some respects make other Christians uncomfortable.”Even more remarkable is that the film doesn’t ignore these tensions between old-school and newfangled philosophies. Schram’s determination to reinvent the image of his synagogue gets him in trouble with his superiors, who explain quite convincingly the value of tradition in worship and faith. Where many films would have written off the traditionalists as fuddy-duddies, Keeping the Faith reveals the benefits of both traditional and modern worship styles.Alas, these moments of accuracy in spiritual matters are sparse. Norton seems to grasp how one might worship through song and prayer, but not through one’s very life. Away from the office, our rabbi and priest use God’s name in vain more than in reverence. Finn gets drunk, and Schram sleeps with his girlfriend (Jenna Elfman). No one in the film suggests this might be immoral; nor does anyone suggest he might not want to date a woman who’s spiritually bankrupt. No, his hang-up is that she’s not Jewish.This wild difference in tone, mixing truthful worship with spineless faith, is easily explained in Norton’s interviews. He says in Interview magazine that after his first reading of the script, he thought, “You are doing a story about a rabbi and a priest and you are avoiding the subject of God. You can’t avoid talking about God.” Clearly, the more accurate scenes were grafted on later in the evolution of the script, while the central characters remained the same. The scenes of corporate worship might reflect real-world Christians, but the movie’s concept of personal spirituality is something straight out of Hollywood. When Finn tries to explain faith, it ends up sounding remarkably like the Force in Star Wars; in practice it’s not much more than mishmash of self-help and the Golden Rule.I don’t believe Norton’s misrepresentations were a matter of hostility toward religion, but merely a matter of ignorance and insufficient research. World Entertainment News Network quotes him as saying, “The synagogue where we shot, there was dancing and all these young people and it was so clearly a vibrant part of the community. … It was impressive to me because in some sense we see ourselves as a secular society but it’s still so much a part of many people’s lives.” Perhaps, if he could have started his story from scratch after seeing such a scene, he might have done more justice to the truth of religious life rather than merely depict his preconception of it.

Steve Lansingh, who writes the weekly Film Forum for ChristianityToday.com, is editor of thefilmforum.com, a weekly Internet magazine devoted to Christianity and the cinema.

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Books of the Century (Apr. 24)

Picking only 100 had to be a daunting, if not near impossible, feat. Nevertheless, I am surprised by the omission of Rudolf Bultmann's Kerygma and Myth. Love it or hate it, the book shaped debate for decades. Also, its inclusion is necessitated if just for the one quote: "It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles." The quaintness of that quote is priceless.

Robert PosticI just don't see how Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy could have been left off the list.

Phil FrankI would liked to have seen Eugene H. Peterson's A Long Obedience In The Same Direction included in your list of the best religious books of the last century. Reading the list reminds me that I still have a lot of important reading to do. I must be more selective.

Rev. Gary Archer Director of Church Relations, Vanguard University Costa Mesa, California

Christian History Corner: When Is Easter This Year? (Apr. 20)

I too was born on Easter and it occurred again when I was 11, and not again till I'm 71, I thought this was strange, but your article help some in understanding,

Barb Rollins Easter Sunday (Apr. 20)

I wish to commend Philip Yancey on his thoughtful observations concerning Christianity and our role as children of God. I felt a certain revulsion to the church for many years due to much of the hypocrisy within the walls of my childhood church. I still felt drawn to Jesus yet I often despised Christians as being holier-than-thous who looked down on the different. The more I have learned about God and his relationship to us the more I realize just how ignorant I am especially in my self righteous attitude concerning others. Philip Yancey has done a great service not only in seeking to promote the true spirit of Christianity, but in humbling himself in his writings. He does not pretend to know it all and dictate to the masses exactly how everything is and should be done. He also reveals his own failings in what I presume to be an earnest desire to communicate honestly to others. I look forward to his future works and feel a debt of gratitude for the spiritual shake-up his writings have given me.

Aaron Heine The Scars of Easter (Apr. 18)

I am so moved by the article I just read about the hands of Christ. As we know, Jesus Christ knows our suffering and today, of all days, we recognize that suffering. As a Christian, I know I am loved. But to fully understand my personal suffering is some thing only God can do. This article uplifted my spirit and I am grateful for reading it now. Praise the Lord for his impeccable timing!

Anita Sardina

Thanks for your articles. They are great reading. I've thought over maybe the reason some had problems recognizing Jesus after he rose from the grave. I'm not dogmatic (mainly because I've never heard preaching on this) but Jesus "was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men," right? And He had holes in His hands from the nails and a pierce wound in His side from the spear of the centurion, right? Well, what kept Him from having all the scrapes, cuts, wounds, and bruises such a marring would cause? The face carrying bruises beyond belief from the beating of the guards. Hands and feet that were tore up from the weight of the body pushing up on the nails that had pierced them, along with the bruises of whips and the scourge along the arms, legs, chest and back. The body, after such a beating, would have much more wounds to it than just the tradition scars of Jesus.

Mary did not recognize Jesus in the garden (just after the resurrection) until she heard His voice. She thought He was the gardener. A good area of work for folks who wouldn't be seen much. The apostles were terrified at His appearance (Luke 24:37). In heaven, John says the "Lamb as it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6), was worthy to open the seal. Yes, I believe that the resurrected body of Jesus can heal, but I believe there's a reason people didn't recognize Jesus for a while after the resurrection. It was not another body, as some cults have made up. It was more than just His hands, feet and side that were effected.

Kevin Trontl Columbine's Tortuous Road to Healing (Apr. 14)

Columbine is a sad but touching story to me. I know it has helped put me back on the right road. I know if I had a gun held to my head and asked if I believe in Jesus I would say "yes with my whole heart I do believe and trust him." The story of Rachael Scott and many others touched me tremendously and by reading more into it I am proud of the way that the parents of the youth are carrying out their children's stories and lives. I would like to know them personally if I could I want to send my prayers as well as all of God's love to them. May God bless every life, heart, and mind touched by their doing. I will be praying for the families everyday.

Lori Landry

I live in Littleton and the anniversary of Columbine is bringing the whole community together again for prayer vigils and services. As April 20 approaches, people are pulling together more and more. The last thing the Columbine students need is a bunch of press people all up in their faces about going to school on the anniversary. Nobody needs that. These kids have been through so much, right when they were getting back to normal, the kids were shot at Subway. These are some of the bravest people I know and all of this press and attention isn't doing anybody any good. They are going to have a hard enough time with this as it is.

Stephanie Babco*ck, age 14Littleton, Colorado

Weblog: Family of Christian Research Institute founder wants Hanegraaff's resignation (Apr. 18)

Lesson One: Never choose a brown-nosing, book-educated novice (without clear giftings for relational communication, just mentored by the founder) to ascend to the headship of that founder's ministry without exhaustively testing the accuracy of the subordinate's assimilation of the doctrine, vision, character, calling and attitude about response to opponents of a ministry's teaching for likeness to the founder's own behavior. Hanegraaff's brutal treatment of Spirit-baptized ministers and movements widely considered innocent of heresy and error can only owe its origin to a carnal fear. Mrs. Walter Martin correctly believes there is room for growth by Hanegraaff in agape love.

Second Lesson: It is never ever premature to develop a sound, predigested succession plan for a church, para-church ministry or Christian media publication. This distinguishes a excellent work from a mediocre, money-eating shell, living off the memory of the founder. Such decayed works are best closed down and rebuilt as new.

Lawrence Eugene Dunlap Houston, Texas

Letters (Apr. 14)

My name is Mike Hoffman and as a Christian of Jewish heritage I must say that I was deeply offended by Manula Torres's letter to the editor that expressed her view that the Holocaust was God's punishment to the Jewish people. I wanted to throw up. Maybe someone should remind Ms. Torres that it was not just Jews who died in the Holocaust. Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, hom*osexuals, and Gypsies were among the others slaughtered. With theology like that, Ms. Torres out to shave her head and get a swastika tattoo. I know this may be a bit extreme but I hope you understand. I'm assuming that this is a minority view in the Church.

Mike Hoff

This is in slight reply to Kelly Woodall's letter on apologies of Roman Catholics and Pentecostals. According to the creeds (Apostle's and Nicene) there is only one church that Christ Jesus was the founder of. Everyone baptized with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are members of it, forever! We may back out on God, but He doesn't back out on us. If anyone is interested I belong to the Episcopal part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Michael Gillum

Weblog: Soldier penalized for drunken beheading (Apr. 3)

OK, they arrested a guy for breaking an angel in Italy. And well they should. Even though the KFOR soldier seems to have damaged the statue accidentally rather than maliciously, obviously he had no business rock-climbing on a religious monument in the first place. When are we going to arrest the NATO military that damaged or destroyed such religious and cultural treasures in Yugoslavia, such as churches both old and new, monasteries, icons, frescoes, and public monuments? Destroying religious and cultural sites is considered to be a war crime. Let's arrest all those NATO pilots, as well as, their commanding officers.

T. V. & Alida Weber

Receiving the Day the Lord Has Made (Mar. 16)

I enjoy your magazine, and I have for years. There is something I wanted to add to the article on the Sabbath. In regards to keeping the Sabbath, Exodus is clear that it not only includes you, your family but those who serve you as well. As a pastor who does "tent making" in the restaurant business, this is important to me. My co-workers "demographically" are most likely to be abusing alcohol, doing drugs, young and living life from one day to another. However, many would attend or consider attending church on Sunday if given the chance. Many would just like a day that they knew they could rest (like in the article). However, Christian culture is no longer one that goes home for Sunday dinner. They go out to eat. Therefore, restaurant owners take advantage of this. Somebody must work those shifts. It is getting worst. Now restaurants are staying open on Thanksgiving and Easter. Recently, one owner I worked for wanted to stay open on Christmas because he believe he could get the business from people going to movie theaters on that day. (the poor theater workers). My point, Sabbath should mean everybody gets a rest. Most restaurants wouldn't be open Sunday morning if it wasn't for Christians wanting to be served.

Rev. Chris Griffin Norcross Community Church

Scouts Defend hom*osexuality Policy (Mar. 14)

Your article on the Supreme Court Decision about hom*osexuals and the Boy Scouts of America is a disturbingly accurate analysis of where the "Politically Correct" movement is taking us. Influencing even the highest court in the land. We are becoming a nation of "disturbing" no one. The watering down of our founding father's values is almost complete. It would be helpful to publish these articles in a format where they could be easily printed and/or forwarded for more mass consumption. Thanks again for your insight.

John W. Ott

Letters to the Editor (Mar. 17) / Mormon-Evangelical Divide (Feb. 9)

In light of the recent efforts of Blomberg & Robinson ("How Wide the Divide?"), the Ostlings ("Mormon America") and others to evaluate what Mormons actually emphasize and teach in their communities, it is worth noting that the LDS Church has now published on the Web its 393-page handbook and study guide entitled "Gospel Principles" at http://www.lds.org/library/gos_pri/gos_pri.html Here you will find in straight-forward, readable text, "approved" descriptions of many LDS doctrines. You won't find esoteric speculations like the Adam-God theory, but you can certainly clear up what the LDS are teaching about the Virgin Birth or Second Coming, for example. The text is fully searchable using the engine at http://www.lds.org/search/search.html For example, searching for "grace and works" will turn up 14 hits, including the 1998 address by Mormon scholar-now-apostle Dallin H. Oaks entitled "Have You Been Saved?" Certainly, these resources should be checked by anyone wishing to further explore the LDS-evangelical divide. It might also help avoid the misstatements of LDS doctrine that often appear in evangelical summations.

Sullivan Richardson Henderson, Nevada

Weblog: Episcopal, Methodist churches don't act on hom*osexuality (Feb. 14)

Thank God that some churches are enlightened

Stuart Stumac

Take a Little Time Out (Feb. 1)

Wendy Zoba has wasted your print space and my time perpetuating rumors and innuendo. No one, except Amy Grant, Vince Gill and God, Himself know what happened in this relationship. What's the matter? Is Ms. Zoba jealous or angry that Mrs. Gill wouldn't grant her an interview, as she did CCM, so she has instead used second or third hand information gleaned from an weekly entertainment rag? Rather than reprinted entertainment weekly rag fodder, an article about those who are being misled and used by the Jehovah's Witnesses would have been much more appropriate in this instance. If I was ever interested in a subscription to your magazine, I have been cured.

Valisa Schmidley

Thank you for speaking openly and honestly about this matter. I too have been very disturbed by Amy's actions and find them very inconsistent with her previously spoken life philosophy and ministry. I do believe as a child of God she is afforded the grace and forgiveness of Christ, but I am troubled by the rush to grace before repentance and restoration has occurred. Many are left in the wake to pick up the pieces of ruined ministry and lives, while she remarries and walks off into the sunset without missing a promotional beat! Let us be people that extend loving kindness to bring people to repentance, but not forget the price paid for that privilege. I believe that Amy Grant does need to take a little time and let healing and restoration begin before continuing on in ministry.

Alisa M Risso

Why We Like Harry Potter (Dec. 13)

What kind of Christianity are you presenting by saying that: "the literary witchcraft of the Harry Potter series has almost no resemblance to the I-am-God mumbo jumbo of Wiccan circles." Author J.K. Rowling has created a world with real good and evil, and Harry is definitely on the side of light fighting the "dark powers." I have read portions of the books for myself and they have every resemblance to the Wiccan "religion" today. To say that Harry is "definitely" on the side of light fighting the dark powers goes directly against God's Word since he is a Wizard and practices witchcraft. What Bible are you reading? And which part of God's Word don't you understand about His hatred of anything to do with witchcraft? I'm a Bible Translator and am very surprised that you ride the fence on this issue. God's Word definitely does not. I'm sorry to say that I've lost respect for your magazine for leading so many parents and children down the wrong road with your compromising position.

Tommy Logan Papua New Guinea

ChristianityToday.com

Thank you so much for the new daily CT format! I love it!! I use it to help in my teaching a married 30's Sunday School class and in my own daily walk. Thank you very much for bringing back the newsletter and I love the new format!

M. McCracken

Brief letters are welcome. They may be edited for space and clarity and must include the writer's real name (and preferably city, state, and country) if intended for publication in the ChristianityToday.com letters area. Due to the volume of mail, we cannot respond personally to all e-mail messages.

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A journey of a dozen blocks begins with a single step—in my case, stepping into the front seat of a cab on the Harvard campus while Gloria Steinem stepped into the back. My eyes were still red from crying. How I got there is another story.

During the conference, the two dozen evangelical women who attended would meet in the hallways and over coffee to chat. Yes, we seemed to constitute only about ten percent of the participants. Yes, the plenary and panel speakers were heavily weighted toward a perspective different from our own. Yes, reflexive disdain for evangelicals kept popping up during question-and-answer periods, so much so that none of us felt comfortable getting into the question lines.

Nevertheless, we could tell the organizers and other participants were trying. There was a genuine desire to broaden their awareness of the range of political and religious viewpoints women bear. Most slights were not intentional, but more in the nature of oversights—simple unfamiliarity with others’ beliefs. All in all, it was good to be there.

Friday night I participated in a small group discussion about the high rate of childlessness among high-achieving women. The setting gave me an opportunity to hold forth on some of my cranky ex-feminist ideas. I explained that I thought feminism went astray in the mid- to late 70s, when it abandoned its early hippie style with its “mother earth” flavor. Though naive, that strain of feminism at least affirmed women’s domestic and child-rearing lives. Later “power feminism” adopted the contrary view, that housewives were stupid and that value came only from corporate success. Ironically, this was exactly what “male chauvinists” thought; feminism adopted a contemptuous male attitude toward women’s work and rejected that which our foremothers had found honorable and fulfilling. (Of course, the male model—that career comes before all else—has never been all that healthy for men, either.)

Helen Hunt happened to be present in this small group, and told me afterward that she was very intrigued by my comments (though, frankly, I don’t know if they were all that original). As we parted that evening she said, “Feminists need to hear from you on this.”

The next night the closing plenary speaker was Gloria Steinem, and I arrived late, as usual. The place, a small amphitheater, was jammed. One solitary seat was open, right in the middle of the front row. I settled in there next to my friend, Lilian Calles Barger of the Damaris Project, and we prepared to hear a legend speak.

The speech was a bit nonlinear and seemed to be coming nearly off the top of Gloria’s head; as she turned pages we could see they were handwritten in pen, as if recently dashed off. As she spoke of the confluence of religion and politics, it became apparent that Gloria is of the school that religion is a resource to be reinterpreted and reinvented. Indeed, this seemed to be the governing presumption of the conference. The presumption is that we should explore the spiritual realm and discover what best pleases and supports us, while discarding the rest. Spirituality is a powerful resource that women have too long neglected, they would say. Much of it is stale and patriarchal, though, so we must sieve through it to select those elements that seem true and right to us.

Some of us who were attending the conference—not just the evangelical Christians, but possibly also the Buddhist nun in her habit, and the Muslim women in their veils—see things differently. We believe that we are inheritors of a faith tradition that is coherent, rich, and profound. We have no desire to tamper with it. Instead, we want to listen attentively to it and learn.

These ancient faiths, because of their continuity over centuries, possess a multicultural validation that is worth weighing. Communities widely separated by geography as well as time have lived their lives exploring these beliefs, and found in them cause for awe. This cumulative wisdom is something that no single one of us, trapped as we are in our own cultures and wearing our own blinders, is smart enough to second-guess. We might explain our disagreement with the “buffet” school of spirituality, then, by saying that we respect the witness of generations of women and men before us, and come to our faiths as followers and disciples, not as critics or shoppers.

But Gloria was on an entirely different track, one which seemed the broadly-accepted starting point of her audience. She is still very striking: tall, slim, and dressed that evening in form-fitting red. Everything about her is long, even the palms of her large hands; her very long fingers were accentuated by a coiled-snake ring. She stood behind the podium at ease, enjoying herself, offering an analysis of religious themes and trends in an amused tone. The audience adored her.

There I was, sitting front-row-center, my knees about six feet from the podium. I noticed after a while that I was gradually feeling more and more besieged. I felt slyly insulted; things I held dear were being sneered at. I slumped down and leaned toward Lilian. My mind wasn’t quick enough to come up with responses and explanations for everything Gloria was saying. Her comments were being received enthusiastically. I felt very lonely.

About this time we hit the low point of the evening. Gloria began describing an interpretation of church architecture that she had read, which drew parallels between the various structural elements and female reproductive anatomy. You can imagine what the church door and narthex and center aisle represented. This, I thought, was just silly. Then she completed the analogy by saying that the altar was the womb, “the site where childbirth takes place.”

I felt slapped, and then quickly felt very, very sad. Lilian must have had the same reaction, because she threw her arm around my shoulder and held on like she was drowning.

Why did this image wound me, when so much of the rest could be dismissed with, “Oh well, she just doesn’t understand”? Never mind that the idea was illogical; as an old natural-childbirth teacher, I’m pretty sure the birth itself would transpire on the church steps. The problem with the analogy was not its confused view of female anatomy, but its obliviousness to the original, deeper meaning of the altar. Ignorant, cavalier, it didn’t care to listen to what the altar meant to the people who built it, or those worshiped there for millennia.

It wasn’t the altar that was being insulted, I felt, but Jesus himself. The altar for me is the place where I remember Jesus’s sacrifice for us, his torture and death, his overwhelming love and willingness to give everything for our sakes. What I heard instead was that Jesus doesn’t matter, his love is forgettable, his suffering is invisible. All the nails and blood and thorns were obliterated in favor of a cheap giggle. It seemed to me one more example of the feminist narcissism that makes everything about women, and cannot see suffering and sacrifice if it is done by men. Jesus’ broken body on the cross? Shrug. Let’s be naughty, and talk about wombs instead!

I tried to choke them back, but tears started trickling down my cheeks. I felt so sad. The person I loved most had been insulted and trivialized, and I could do nothing. For the rest of Gloria’s speech I sat there, thinking about this and leaking slow tears. I hoped she couldn’t see me, though I was right in front of her and only a few feet away.

When Gloria finished her speech, Swanee Hunt stepped to the podium to say she’d been watching body language during the talk, and while some in the audience appeared energized, sitting up straighter and looking more alert, others had been “wilting.” She reminded the audience that everyone should be respectful of others’ beliefs, and to remember that we might be talking of things that others hold sacred. Think how you would feel, she said, if a speaker at the podium said lesbians were going to hell.

The kindness of these words had an effect the previous mockery had not, and I started to cry in earnest. Something had been released, and now I couldn’t stop. Snuffling and sobbing, right in the middle of the front row, parked under the podium, with no way to escape. Through 45 minutes of question-and-answer I sat there gulping back sobs, feeling like a conspicuous idiot.

As the crowd dispersed I wandered around till I found my roommate Caroline Langston. We went in the ladies’ room where we talked it all out, and I finished boo-hooing and washed my face. By the time we came out everyone else had gone, and we stepped outside into the cool early evening air.

Just as we were going across the lawn we came upon a small knot of people discussing whether to walk or take a cab across campus to the banquet that was next on the schedule. There stood Swanee and Helen Hunt, Divinity School dean Anne Braude—and Gloria Steinem.

Helen immediately called me over and had me shake hands with Gloria. Swanee commented quietly, “Frederica is one of the ones who was wilting.” (I could have hugged her for that.) Gloria looked at me frankly and said, “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” I replied, “I know that is not what you intended to do.”

Helen then suggested that I come along in the taxi with her, Gloria, and Anne for the short ride to the banquet; Swanee and Caroline would walk. So we crammed into the cab, me in the front, Gloria in the middle of the back with Anne and Helen on either side. The cab was dark and seemed cavernous, with a plexiglass shield that effectively segregated me and the driver from the others way in the back. I looked at the photos of the driver’s children, illuminated by the dashboard lights. As we pulled away from the curb, Helen’s voice came from the back seat: “Frederica, tell Gloria your critique of feminism. Gloria, this is so interesting!”

Picture it. My critique of feminism, in five minutes, for the elucidation of Gloria Steinem. From the front seat of a cab, no less. I turned around to peer through the little round opening in the shield. Gloria’s face hung in the dark like a disk, large, pale, and impassive as the moon.

My sympathies at that moment lay all with her. She was probably thinking, “Here’s some kook I never heard of, who was crying all through my speech, and now she’s going to deliver a thumbnail criticism of my entire life’s work.”

I figured the best thing I could do in the circ*mstances was tell a story. I recounted a scene from my own feminist college days: I had been attending a consciousness-raising session at the home of lesbian friends and had gone upstairs to use the bathroom. There I discovered that the bathtub was full of cow manure. Why? “We’re trying to raise psilocybin mushrooms.”

This, I said, was a very different kind of feminism from the one we’re familiar with now; this was not a kind of feminism that was going to climb the corporate ladder. For all its foolishness and flaws, mother-earth feminist resisted the idea that power-seeking and masculine-style careerism was life’s highest goal. I could remember the day a friend told me enthusiastically that a woman had been made a vice president at AT&T, and I responded, “Why is that good news? We’re not fighting for a bigger piece of the pie. We’re after a different kind of pie altogether.”

But “power feminism” won the struggle, I said, and Gloria interrupted me to say she’d never heard the term “power feminism” before Naomi Wolf coined it. I said that feminism had made a mistake as well in adopting another unhealthy male value, promiscuity, as liberating. Gloria interrupted me again, to say that others would charge feminism with being anti-sex, rather than promiscuous, because it opposes p*rnography. I couldn’t see any way to get past this Ping-Pong game to real discussion, not in a cab in five minutes. It was a relief when we pulled up to the dining hall and I could politely sidle away.

Months later I got a second-hand message that Gloria was very sorry to have hurt me. I don’t doubt that it’s true, and know that I must hurt people, myself, sometimes, by trampling without realizing it on things they hold dear. Probably she still doesn’t know just why I was hurt, or just chalks it up to Christians being generally parochial and touchy. I hope someday we have an opportunity to talk further. But not through a plexiglass porthole.

Related Elsewhere

Visit Books & Culture online at BooksandCulture.com or subscribe here.

Frederica Mathewes-Green’s Web site, www.frederica.com, offers more of her writing, including ”Twice Liberated | A Personal Journey Through Feminism.”

Mathewes-Green is also a columnist for Christianity Today.

Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:

I Read the News Today | Finding the most important story in headlines’ sum. By John Wilson (Mar. 27, 2000)

Peace Be With You | Looking beyond naivete and cynicism about peacemaking at Wheaton’s Christianity and Violence conference (Mar. 20, 2000)

Putting the Poor on the National Agenda | Ron Sider’s timely proposals. By Amy L. Sherman (Mar. 13, 2000)

“To Know the Universe” | Well, sort of. By John Wilson (Mar. 2, 2000)

Guelzo’s Lincoln Book a Winner | Established by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman to honor the best historical work each year on Lincoln and the Civil War era, the prize is now in its tenth year. By Allen C. Guelzo (Feb. 21, 2000)

Nancy Drew and the Wine-Dark Sea | The importance of good literature—and how to get young people to read it. By Sarah Cowie (Feb. 14, 2000)

Spring in Purgatory: Dante, Botticelli, C. S. Lewis, and a Lost Masterpiece | The most popular illustration of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” has remained effectively “lost” for 500 years—although millions have seen it and admired it. By Kathryn Lindskoog (Feb. 7, 2000)

Playwright, Dissident, Czech President … Who Is This Man? | A new biography of Václav Havel fills in important blanks, but omits his theology. By Jim Sire (Jan. 31, 2000)

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Priest confesses sins of Roman Catholics against Pentecostals

“I believe I am led by the Spirit to confess the sins that Roman Catholics have committed against classical Pentecostals,” said Kilian McDonnell at a session of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. “I confess the sin of arrogance with which Catholics have treated Pentecostals, leading to intolerance, discrimination and exclusion. … We have employed methods of evangelization not in keeping with the Gospel, using the state to harass and oppress Pentecostals. When we were in the majority, we deprived Pentecostals of their civil rights; when we were in the minority, we demanded our full rights as citizens. … Many Catholics have failed to recognize the true ecclesial and sanctifying elements in Pentecostal churches. … We have labeled them ‘enthusiasts’ [and ‘sects’] and have not received with gratitude the gifts and spirituality they offer.” The impromptu statement was very well-received by both Catholics and Pentecostals in attendance, reports Religion News Service.

Soldier penalized for drunken beheading

It was the headline that grabbed Weblog’s eye: “U.S. soldier handed sentence for cardinal’s head.” Whoa! Turns out the headline was wrong (the solider is Canadian) and misleading: the head was that of a statue, not an actual human cardinal. Still, it was the head of a statue on the 18th-century Column of the Immaculate Conception in Rome, and that’s a big deal. Handed a hefty fine and a one-year suspended sentence, the Canadian solider now faces a court-martial. (See an earlier story, with photo, here)

Messianic Jewish congregants not all alike, or even all Jewish

Many attend as a compromise measure in an interfaith marriage, reports the Chicago Tribune. Others are Christian Gentiles who want to explore the Jewish background of Christianity. Of course, to traditional rabbis, they’re all deluded non-Jews. “They attempt to put a Jewish label on Christianity, and that causes us a great deal of pain,” Rabbi Harvey Markowitz tells the Tribune.

Christian organizations in Israel protest new anti-volunteer regulations

Israel’s Christian organizations, from schools to hospitals to tourism sites, depend heavily on volunteers from overseas. New regulations from the country’s Interior Ministry are cracking down on companies who bring in foreign workers as volunteers, and Israel’s Christians are worried that many of their organizations will be forced to close.

Twin Cities television stations ramping up religion reporting

“Imagine, a story on a religious topic before the first car wreck or homicide,” writes Saint Paul Pioneer Press media columnist Brian Lambert. “What is TV news coming to?”

Coltrane Church in trouble

St John Coltrane African Orthodox Church is facing a doubling rent and may have to close. The San Francisco church worships God using Coltrane’s jazz music.

Tony Blair reads the Koran

In a Muslim News interview that has garnered worldwide attention, British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he “read[s] a lot about Islam now and [is] now the proud possessor of two different translations of the Koran.” He also compares public perception of Islam with his region’s troubles: “Often what happens is that if there are extreme groups, and the term ‘fundamentalist’ gets applied to them, people end up thinking, well this is the Islamic religion – well it’s no more the Islamic religion than the Spanish Inquisition was the Christian religion. Nor indeed that some people who in the name of religion-the Christian religion-do terrible things in Northern Ireland are the true reflectors of Christian faith.”

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Just as the international spotlight reached the persecuted Christians of southern Sudan, more than a dozen humanitarian groups—including World Vision, Oxfam, and CARE—withdrew their operations over a dispute with rebel leader John Garang.

The southern commander demanded that humanitarian groups sign a memorandum of understanding by March 1 recognizing his Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) as the governing authority on aid efforts in southern Sudan.

Some groups say the agreement would force them to take sides in the civil war.

“We feel our objectivity is at stake here. The agreement is primarily aimed at aligning non-government organizations or humanitarian groups with political factions,” says Bruce Wilkinson, senior vice president of World Vision.

The aid groups also object to terms that would give the SPLA the right to restrict aid groups’ public meetings, oversee their budgets, and access their trucks and relief supplies that then could be used in the war.

“Garang has chosen to shoot himself in the foot by making himself look more interested in the politics of the situation than the needs of his people,” warns Robert Seiple, U.S. Ambassador for Religious Freedom.

The withdrawal of “blue chip” relief groups may mean that aid to southern Sudan will drop by a third, Seiple says. Hundreds of thousands of southern Sudanese may still be at risk of severe malnutrition, according to the U.N. World Food Program.

Most groups are staying, however—including World Relief and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse—placing Christians agencies on both sides of the issue. U.N. relief efforts throughout the country will continue, as will World Vision’s efforts in northern Sudan.

On the deadline day for signing with the SPLA, Sudanese government forces bombed a hospital run by Samaritan’s Purse in southern Sudan. Since then it has been bombed three more times. A hospital sponsored by Voice of the Martyrs and Far Reaching Ministries was also bombed, killing one aid worker.

The dispute raises the troublesome issue of when a rebel movement becomes a legitimate state. A senior U.S. official warns that Africa “is a continent with lots of rebel leaders. If the aid groups sign this memo, they would be asked to do so elsewhere.”

But, says Steve Wondu, SPLA representative to the U.S., “These are our families we are fighting for. We ought to be able to have a say where you are spending millions of dollars for our children.”

“When we started working in Sudan, we decided not to let the Khartoum government dictate whom we could and couldn’t help,” says Franklin Graham. “Since 1998, our hospital has helped more than 100,000 Sudanese patients, and our doors will remain open.”

Tony Carnes is Senior News Writer for Christianity Today.

Related Elsewhere

See our earlier coverage of this issue, “Bombs Continue to Fall on Ministry Hospitals in Sudan | Samaritan’s Purse hit for fourth time, two killed in Voice of the Martyrs bombing” (Mar. 24, 2000)

See press releases from World Vision and CARE about why they left Sudan, as well as information from Samaritan’s Purse and World Relief about the challenges of staying.

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.