Page 4381 – Christianity Today (2024)

In 1993 I read a news report about a “Messiah sighting” in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Twenty thousand Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews live in Crown Heights, and many of them believed the Messiah was dwelling among them in the person of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Word of the rabbi’s public appearance spread like a flash fire through the streets of Crown Heights, and Lubavitchers in their black coats and curly sidelocks were soon dashing toward the synagogue where the rabbi customarily prayed. The lucky ones connected to a network of beepers got a head start, sprinting toward the synagogue the instant they felt a slight vibration. They jammed by the hundreds into a main hall, elbowing each other and even climbing the pillars to create more room. The hall filled with an air of anticipation and frenzy normally found at a championship sporting event, not a religious service.

The rabbi was 91 years old. He had suffered a stroke the year before and had not been able to speak since. When the curtain finally pulled back, those who had crowded into the synagogue saw a frail old man with a long beard who could do little but wave, tilt his head, and move his eyebrows. No one in the audience seemed to mind, though. “Long live our master, our teacher, and our rabbi, King, Messiah, forever and ever!” they sang in unison, over and over, building in volume until the rabbi made a small gesture with his hand and the curtain closed. They departed slowly, savoring the moment, in a state of ecstasy. (Rabbi Schneerson died in June 1994. Now Lubavitchers are awaiting his bodily resurrection.)

When I first read the news account I nearly laughed out loud. Who are these people trying to kid—a nonagenarian mute Messiah in Brooklyn? And then it struck me: I was reacting to Rabbi Schneerson exactly as people in the first century had reacted to Jesus. A Messiah from Galilee? A carpenter’s kid, no less?

The scorn I felt as I read about the rabbi and his fanatical followers gave me a small glimpse of the kind of responses Jesus faced throughout his life. His neighbors asked, “Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” Other countrymen scoffed, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” His own family tried to put him away, believing he was out of his mind. The religious experts sought to kill him. As for the common people, one moment they judged him demon-possessed and raving mad, the next they forcibly tried to crown him king.

It took courage, I believe, for God to lay aside power and glory and to take his place among human beings who would greet him with the same mixture of haughtiness and skepticism that I felt when I first heard about Rabbi Schneerson of Brooklyn. It took courage to endure the shame, and courage even to risk descent to a planet known for its clumsy violence, among a race known for rejecting its prophets. A God of all power deliberately put himself in such a state that Satan could tempt him, demons could taunt him, and lowly human beings could slap his face and nail him to a cross. What more foolhardy thing could God have done?

“Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator,” said G. K. Chesterton. The need for such courage began with Jesus’ first night on earth and did not end until his last.

Who Is He In Yonder Stall?

Christmas art shows Jesus’ family, the Holy Family, as icons stamped in gold foil. In the paintings, a calm Mary receives the news of the Annunciation as a kind of benediction—but that is not at all how Luke tells the story. Mary was “greatly troubled” and “afraid” at the angel’s appearance, and when the angel delivered the lofty words about the Son of the Most High whose kingdom will never end, Mary had one thing only on her mind: “But I’m a virgin!”

Once, a young unmarried lawyer named Cynthia bravely stood up in my church in Chicago and told of a past sin of fornication, which we already knew about: we saw her hyperactive son running up and down the aisles every Sunday. Cynthia had taken the lonely road of bearing him and caring for him after his father decided to skip town. Cynthia’s sin was no worse than many others, and yet, as she told us, it had such conspicuous consequences. She could not hide the result of that one act of passion, sticking out as it did from her abdomen for nine months until a child emerged to change every hour of every day of the rest of her life. No wonder the Jewish teenager Mary felt greatly troubled—she faced the same prospects even without the act of passion.

In the modern United States, where each year a million teenage girls get pregnant out of wedlock, Mary’s predicament has undoubtedly lost some of its force, but in a closely knit Jewish community in the first century, the news an angel delivered could not have been entirely welcome. The law regarded a betrothed woman who became pregnant as an adulteress, subject to death by stoning.

Matthew tells of Joseph generously agreeing to divorce Mary rather than press charges, until an angel shows up to calm his feelings of betrayal. Luke tells of Mary hurrying off to the one person who could possibly understand what she was going through: her relative Elizabeth, who has miraculously become pregnant in old age following another angelic annunciation. Elizabeth indeed believes Mary’s story and shares her joy, and yet the scene poignantly underscores the contrast between the two women. The whole countryside is talking about the miracle of Elizabeth’s healed womb; meanwhile, Mary has to hide the shame of her own miracle.

A few months later, the birth of John the Baptist took place with great fanfare, complete with midwives, doting relatives, and the traditional village chorus celebrating the birth of a Jewish male. Six months after that, Jesus was born far from home, with no midwife, extended family, or village chorus present. A male head of household would have sufficed for the Roman census; did Joseph drag his pregnant wife along to Bethlehem in order to spare her the ignominy of childbirth in her home village?

C. S. Lewis has written about God’s plan: “The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear—a Jewish girl at her prayers.” Today as I read the accounts of Jesus’ birth I tremble to think of the fate of the world resting on the responses of two rural teenagers. How many times must Mary have gone over the angel’s words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? How many times must Joseph have second-guessed his own encounter with an angel—just a dream?—as he endured the hot shame of living among neighbors who could plainly see the changing shape of the woman he planned to marry?

We know nothing of Jesus’ grandparents. What must they have felt? Did they respond like so many parents of unmarried teenagers today, with an outburst of fury and moral lectures and then perhaps a period of sullen silence until at last the bright-eyed newborn arrives to melt the ice and arrange a fragile family truce?

Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal—it seems almost as if God arranged the most humiliating circ*mstances possible for his entrance, as if to avoid any accusation of favoritism. I am impressed that when the Son of God became a human being, he played by the rules, harsh rules: small towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity.

Malcolm Muggeridge observed that in modern times, with family-planning clinics offering ways to correct “mistakes” that might disgrace a family name, “It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable … that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circ*mstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born.”

The virgin Mary, though, whose family was not planned, had a different response. She heard the angel out, pondered the enormous consequences, and replied, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” Every work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain, and in that matter-of-fact response, Mary embraced both. She was the first to accept Jesus on his own terms, regardless of the personal cost.

Continued on next page | How Silently, How Silently, the Wondrous Gift Is Given

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How Silently, How Silently, the Wondrous Gift Is Given

In the birth stories of Luke and Matthew, only one person seems to grasp the mysterious nature of what God has set in motion: the old man Simeon, who had long clung to the belief that he would not die before seeing the Messiah, instinctively understood that conflict would break out. “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against … ,” he said, and then gave the prediction that a sword would pierce Mary’s own soul. Somehow Simeon sensed that though to all appearances little had changed—Herod was still king, Roman troops were still stringing up patriots, Jerusalem still overflowed with beggars—under the surface, everything had changed. A new force had arrived to undermine the world and its powers.

At first, Jesus hardly seemed a threat. He was born under Caesar Augustus, at a time when buoyant hope wafted through the Roman Empire. More than any other ruler, Augustus raised the expectations of what a leader could accomplish and what a society could achieve. It was Augustus, in fact, who first used the Greek word for “gospel” or “good news” as a label for the new world order represented by his reign. The empire declared him a god, and established rites of worship. His enlightened and stable regime, many believed, would last forever, a final solution to the problem of how to structure a government.

Meanwhile, in an obscure corner of Augustus’s empire under the local dominion of Herod the Great, King of the Jews, the birth of a baby named Jesus was barely noticed by the chroniclers of the day. We know about him mainly through four books written years after his death, at a time when less than one-half of 1 percent of the Roman world had ever heard of him. Jesus’ biographers would also borrow the word for “gospel,” proclaiming a different kind of new world order altogether. They would mention Augustus only once, a passing reference to set the date of the census that ensured Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.

God’s visit to Earth took place humbly, in a berth for animals with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough. Indeed, the event that divided history, and even our calendars, into two parts had more animal than human witnesses. For an instant, the sky grew luminous with angels. Yet, who saw that spectacle? Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, “nobodies” who failed to leave their names. Shepherds had a randy reputation, and proper Jews lumped them together with the “godless.” Fittingly, it was they whom God selected to help celebrate the birth of one who would be known as the friend of sinners.

Perhaps the best way to understand the “underdog” nature of the Incarnation is to transpose it into terms we can relate to today. An unwed mother, homeless, was forced to look for shelter while traveling to meet the heavy taxation demands of a hostile government. She lived in a land recovering from violent civil wars and still in turmoil—a situation much like that in modern Bosnia, Rwanda, or Somalia. Like half of all mothers who give birth today, she gave birth in Asia, in its far western corner, the part of the world that would prove least receptive to the son she bore. That son became a refugee in Africa, the continent where most refugees can still be found.

I sometimes wonder what Mary thought about her militant Magnificat hymn during her years of exile in Egypt. For a Jew, Egypt evoked bright memories of a powerful God who had flattened a pharaoh’s army and brought liberation; now she fled there out of desperation, a stranger in a strange land hiding from her own government. Could her baby, hunted, helpless, on the run, possibly fulfill the lavish hopes of his people? Even the family’s mother-tongue summoned up memories of their underdog status: Jesus spoke Aramaic, a trade language closely related to Arabic, reflecting the Jews’ history as a subject people.

Growing up, Jesus’ sensibilities were affected most deeply by the poor, the powerless, the oppressed. Today theologians debate the aptness of the phrase “God’s preferential option for the poor” as a way of describing God’s concern for the underdog. Since God arranged the circ*mstances in which to be born on planet Earth, his “preferential options” speak for themselves.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The World in Solemn Stillness Lay

There is one view of Christmas I have never seen on a Christmas card, probably because no artist, not even William Blake, could do it justice. In Revelation 12, the Bible contains a scene that pulls back the curtain to give us a glimpse of Christmas as it looked from somewhere far beyond Andromeda: Christmas from God’s viewpoint.

The account in Revelation differs radically from the birth stories in the Gospels. Revelation does not mention shepherds and an infanticidal king; rather, it pictures a dragon leading a ferocious struggle in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and wearing a crown of 12 stars cries out in pain as she is about to give birth. Suddenly, the enormous red dragon enters the picture, his tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the sky and flinging them to the earth. He crouches hungrily before the woman, eager to devour her child the moment it is born. At the last second, the infant is snatched away to safety, the woman flees into the desert, and all-out cosmic war begins.

Revelation is a strange book by any measure, and you would need to understand its style to make sense of this extraordinary scene. In daily life, two parallel histories occur simultaneously: one on earth and one in heaven. Revelation, however, views them together, allowing a quick look behind the scenes at the cosmic impact of what happens on earth. On earth, a baby was born, a king got wind of it, a chase ensued. In heaven, the Great Invasion had begun, a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.

John Milton expressed this point of view majestically in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, poems that make heaven and hell the central focus and Earth a mere battleground for their clashes. The modern author J. B. Phillips also attempted such a point of view, on a much less epic scale, and last Christmas I turned to Phillips’s fantasy to try to escape my earthbound viewpoint.

In Phillips’s fantasy, a senior angel is showing a very young angel around the splendors of the universes. They view whirling galaxies and blazing suns and then flit across the infinite distances of space until at last they enter one particular galaxy of 500 billion stars.

As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.”I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.”Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me,” said the little angel. “What’s special about that one?”

When I first read Phillips’s fantasy, I thought of the pictures beamed back to Earth from the Apollo astronauts. They described our planet as “whole and round and beautiful and small,” a blue-green-and-tan globe suspended in space. Jim Lovell, reflecting on the scene later, said, “It was just another body, really, about four times bigger than the moon. But it held all the hope and all the life and all the things that the crew of Apollo 8 knew and loved. It was the most beautiful thing there was to see in all the heavens.”

To the little angel, though, Earth did not seem so impressive. He listened with shocked disbelief as the senior angel told him that this planet, small and insignificant and not overly clean, was the renowned Visited Planet.

“Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?” The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?” “I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping, crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him.”The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

It is almost beyond my comprehension, too, and yet I accept that this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith. If it is true, this Bethlehem story, it is a story like no other. Never again need we wonder whether what happens on this dirty little tennis ball of a planet matters to the rest of the universe.

How did God the Father feel that night, helpless as any human father, as he watched his Son emerge smeared with blood to face a harsh, cold world? Lines from two different Christmas carols come to mind. One, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes,” seems to me a sanitized version of what took place in Bethlehem. I imagine Jesus cried like any baby the night he entered the world, a world that would certainly give him much reason to cry as an adult. The second, a line from “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” seems as profoundly true today as it did two thousand years ago: “The hopes and fears of all the years / are met in thee tonight.”

Related Elsewhere

Philip Yancey writes a column for Christianity Today. The most recent, “Doctor’s Orders,” also has links to past columns.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Two Southern Baptist congressmen have issued a letter demanding the resignation of presidential press secretary Joe Lockhart following comments Lockhart made about Southern Baptist evangelism efforts during a White House press briefing.

Reps. J.C. Watts and J.D. Hayworth wrote the December 23 letter in response to Lockhart’s suggestion that Southern Baptists’ efforts to minister to Muslim and Hindu groups “perpetuate religious hatred.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican and Southern Baptist church member, told Baptist Press he would not rule out a resolution calling for Lockhart’s ouster when Congress reconvenes.

“This is one of those moments when we Southern Baptists need to stand up and be counted,” Wamp said. “I believe we need to respond to people in a spirit of love and a Christlike manner, but there are times to be tough and this is one of those times.”

“No amount of spin from Mr. Lockhart can hide his blatant bigotry against one of the leading denominations in the United States,” said Hayworth, a Republican from Arizona, in a prepared statement after Lockhart’s December 16 comments. “He should have been fired last week, but you can never count on this White House to do what’s right.”

Wamp, who teaches a Sunday school class in his Chattanooga congressional district, said he first heard about Lockhart’s comments during morning worship services December 26. “I believe for the president to do anything but fire Mr. Lockhart would be a double standard by the Clinton administration,” he said.

Watts, an Oklahoma congressman who chairs the House Republican Conference, noted that he was “appalled to read the recent comments” by Lockhart. “What makes it even more disturbing is that in making these hateful remarks, Lockhart was supposedly expressing the president’s views.”

Hayworth said sharing one’s faith should not be considered a hate crime. “Almost every major religion has as one of its goals the conversion of those of other faiths,” he said. “I am deeply offended by the insinuation that the constitutionally protected work of the church is somehow hateful and sinister.”

According to the Associated Press, Lockhart later apologized for his remarks. However, that’s not enough for Hayworth. “If he had a shred of honor, he would do the decent thing and resign. Absent that, the president should fire him forthwith.”

The response from political leaders came following remarks issued by Southern Baptist leaders condemning Lockhart’s statements.

Paige Patterson, president of the 15.8-million-member SBC, said Patterson was trying to bully Southern Baptists for upholding their beliefs about sharing the Christian faith with others.

“Apparently, because the president has very few convictions, he harbors deep resentment against those who do,” Patterson told Baptist Press on December 21.

Copyright 1999 Baptist Press. Used with permission.

Related Elsewhere

See more coverage of this topic from the Washington Post and the Associated Press.According to the full text of Lockhart’s December 16 press briefing, available at the White House Web site, Lockhart’s comment was in answer to a journalist’s comment one would think Southern Baptists would be even more upset over:

“Joe, India is one of the few countries in the world issuing a special standard on prisoners which will be unveiled by the Prime Minister of India, and to mark the 2,000 years of but in this country, again, despite President Clinton’s call, the Southern Baptists are still issuing a warning against Hindus first, then Jews, and now this week they did against Muslims during the special holidays. So we’re trying to repair and to bring peace in the twenty-first century, when they are trying to take us into this twentieth century again

Lockhart replied,Question? Comment? I think the President has made very clear his view from any quarter, no matter what quarter it comes from, his views on religious tolerance, and how one of the greatest challenges going into the next century is dealing with intolerance, dealing with ethnic and religious hatred, and coming to grips with the long-held resentments between religions. So I think he’s been very clear in his opposition to whatever organization, including the Southern Baptists, that perpetuate ancient religious hatred.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

A Filipino Christian employed for 14 years as an engineer in Saudi Arabia has been detained by police authorities since December 1 for suspected Christian activities.

Edmar Romero, 40, was arrested about 9:30 at night by plainclothes police who came to his home in Dammam, on the coast of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province.

When Romero returned home from his engineering consulting firm in Al-Khobar on the evening of December 1, he found several men waiting for him downstairs in his apartment building. The police escorted Romero up to his third-floor flat, which they then entered. They closed and locked the door, and proceeded to search the entire premises.

“I don’t know just what all they took,” said his wife Arsenia, who is a high school teacher, “but some of my lesson plans and even grade sheets for my students are missing.” She confirmed that her husband’s personal Bible and a set of Christian leadership training materials he was studying had been confiscated.

When the officers insisted Romero leave with them for further questioning, but refused to explain why, the engineer telephoned his employer. The Saudi owner was reportedly told by the officials that they had been sent by the Ministry of Interior and needed to question Romero about the items they had confiscated in his home.

“No reason was given,” Mrs. Romero said. His company, however, has since concluded that his arrest was “all about religious matters.” An English-language Bible was reportedly found after a police search of Romero’s locker at his office, where he has been employed for the past four years.

A week after the arrest, Romero’s wife was allowed to meet with her husband briefly. She said she asked everyone repeatedly why her husband had been detained and what evidence had been found against him.

“I was only told that it was for ‘a very small thing,’ but when I asked what that was, they said, ‘We can’t tell you. Your husband knows’.”

When his wife saw him on December 8, Romero told her that he had been informed that his investigation was finished, and that he expected to be released very soon.

According to sources in the Philippines, Romero was put under investigation because his name was found on a computer disk confiscated two months earlier in a raid of two private Christian worship services in Riyadh by the muttawa, Saudi’s religious police. The authorities had questioned all 267 worshippers during the October 8 raid, arresting 13 men identified as their leaders and eventually ordering their employers to fire and deport them.

Mrs. Romero told relatives in the Philippines’ Mindoro island that her older children were in a “traumatic condition” over the arrest of their father. “They won’t eat or go to school, they’re so upset,” she said. “And now that we’re on winter break, they are praying for their Daddy to come home for Christmas.” The Romeros have five children from age 14 down to a three-months-old baby.

The engineer’s wife has asked Saudi authorities to release her husband for the children’s sake. Despite daily inquiries by his employer, however, there has been no known update on Romero’s situation for the past two weeks.

The Philippines Embassy, which has been monitoring the case from the capital in Riyadh, confirmed to Compass that an embassy official visiting the Eastern province today will attempt to meet with Romero and discuss his case with local officials.

Saudi Arabia practices a strict interpretation of Islamic law, under which non-Muslim worship is forbidden within the country. An estimated six million expatriates live and work in Saudi Arabia.

Leading members of Saudi’s royal family insist that the government does not interfere in the private practice of other religions unless foreigners attempt to proselytize Saudi citizens, who are required by law to be Muslims. During 1999, at least 15 expatriate Christians have been arrested and deported from Saudi Arabia for their alleged involvement in religious activities.

Copyright © 1999 Compass Direct. Used with permission.

Related Elsewhere

See our earlier coverage of Filipino Christians in Saudi Arabia, “Filipino Christians Released By Saudi Authorities | Local Employees Ordered to Fire and Deport Imprisoned Worshipers” (Nov. 3, 1999) and “Two Filipino Christians Beheaded” (Sept. 1, 1997)

The U.S. State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom includes a lengthy section on Saudi Arabia’s religious freedom.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Amid the continuing crackdown on unregistered Christian churches in the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan, the secret police have raided four Baptist congregations and arrested two senior Baptist leaders. The two—Vladimir Chernov and Anatoly Belyayev—are pastors of the Ashgabad congregation of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christian/Baptists in the Turkmen capital.

According to information from Baptist sources in the country reaching the U.S.-based Russian Evangelistic Ministries, the two pastors, together with Chernov’s wife Olga, were seized in what appears to be a concerted campaign to stamp out their church. The location of the three is unknown.

Fifteen agents of the National Security Committee, the KNB (formerly the KGB) raided the Baptist church in Ashgabad on December 16 at 11 p.m. The facilities were guarded by a 17-year-old local believer, Dmitry Milnichenko. After breaking down the door of the sanctuary, the KNB agents reportedly assaulted Milnichenko while others searched the premises, turning everything upside down.

When they had completed their search and realized that Milnichenko was the only person there, the KNB agents took him to their headquarters for interrogation, during which he was reportedly beaten and threatened. The KNB warned him that when he reaches the age of 18 and has to perform compulsory military service, he would be “repaid for his faith in Jesus.”

The KNB reportedly tried to induce Milnichenko to collaborate, but he declined. He was released at 6:30 p.m. today, exhausted and suffering from the beatings.

Belyayev was also arrested before dawn this morning. The four men that came to his house refused to show any identification papers. Forcing their way in, they said, “You are under arrest!” The minister’s wife responded, “Have we returned to the Stalin era? What is going on?” The men replied only that as soon as Chernov was in custody, Belyayev would be freed. Although legally registered in Marakh, Belyayev ministers in the Ashgabad congregation.

The KNB finally tracked down Chernov and his wife Olga late today while they were traveling by train to visit Baptists in the Caspian port town of Turkmenbashi. They were taken off the train by police and handed over to the KNB.

Also during the night of December 16-17, KNB officers raided other Baptist churches, including congregations in Turkmenabad (formerly Chardjou), Mary and Turkmenbashi, the church that the Chernovs were due to visit. An unknown number of Baptists had their identity documents confiscated.

The congregations of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christian/Baptists have suffered relentless persecution over the past years in Turkmenistan as the government has stepped up its campaign to crush unregistered religious activity. Facing similar harassment, which includes fines, interrogations, beatings, detention and expulsion from the country, have been other Baptist communities not affiliated with the Council of Churches. Adventists and other Protestants, as well as non-Christian groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishna devotees have also been harassed.

Ironically, sources in Turkmenistan reported that just a few days before the raids and his own arrest, Pastor Chernov had been sharing with fellow Baptists his joy at the apparent relaxation of the persecution of believers after a spate of raids in November and the first week of December.

Related Elsewhere

See our coverage of an earlier arrest of a Baptist pastor by Turkmen authorities here.

The U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom examines Turkmenistan religious freedom from political and societal perspectives, and remarks on what the U.S. government has done in response to human rights infringements in the country.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

1. Christians worldwide resist religious persecution.
2. After Communism’s collapse, missions surge into East-bloc nations.
3. Promise Keepers encourages men to refocus on faith, family.
4. Revivals in Toronto and Pensacola draw a global audience.
5. Lutherans, Catholics ink justification accord.
6. Christian Right bolsters GOP majority in Congress.
7. Physician-assisted suicide legally authorized in Oregon.
8. Northern Ireland’s Protestants, Catholics embrace peace.
9. Gender-inclusive language debate derails NIV Bible changes.
10. (tie) Christian leaders implicated in Rwandan genocide. Seeker-sensitive worship renews mainline congregations.

Related Elsewhere

See our year-by-year coverage of the 1990’s top stories here.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998

1991’s Top Ten Stories (from our Dec. 16, 1991 issue)The following items were selected by the CT news staff as the year’s top stories, based on the stories’ impact on the evangelical community.

1. War in the Gulf. The conflict heightened not only interest in the end times, but also concern for peace in the Middle East.
2. Reforms in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Continued restructuring created new opportunities for believers.
3. Denominations address sexuality issues. Traditional standards of personal holiness were considered, and, by and large, upheld.
4. Euthanasia. Court cases, a suicide machine, a best-selling how-to suicide book, and a state referendum put the issue high on the public agenda.
5. Religious liberty. Lower-court interpretations of a landmark Supreme Court decision eroded constitutional protections of religious practice, said church/state experts.
6. Operation Rescue in Wichita. The controversial movement once again claimed the national spotlight, fanning the already-hot abortion debate.
7. Southern Baptist moderates. After more than a decade of conservative victories in the Southern Baptist Convention, moderates formed their own fellowship.
8. Protestantism in Latin America. The changing religious landscape in this part of the world was highlighted by major visits from both Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham.
9. Economic recession. Troubled times pinched Christian ministries and denominations, resulting in layoffs and cutbacks)
10. Dead Sea Scrolls. After decades of frustration, scholars finally gained full access to the 2,000-year-old documents.

Top Religion Stories, 1992 (from our Dec. 14, 1992 issue)David Briggs,Associated Press: (only four noted)

1. Religion and politics
2. Church debate on hom*osexuality
3. Decline in denominational giving (as percentage of income)
4. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) statement on abortion.

Steve Rabey,Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph:

1. The (political) “Righting” of American evangelicalism
2. Popular culture wars
3. Supreme Court graduation prayer decision
4. Battle over hom*osexual rights
5. Christian publishers and musicians in mainstream markets

Richard Vara,Houston Chronicle:

1. Christian political activity
2. Church debate on hom*osexuality
3. Continued demise of televangelists
4. Continued organizational separation among Southern Baptists
5. Evangelical activity in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

David Crumm,Detroit Free Press:

1. Church debate on hom*osexuality
2. Religion and the presidential campaign
3. Abortion
4. Sexual misconduct of religious leaders
5. Columbus quincentennial

Gustav Niebuhr,Washington Post:

1. Religion and the presidential election
2. Ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia
3. Supreme Court and religious freedom
4. Southern Baptists and hom*osexuality
5. Decline in denominational giving (as percentage of income)

Gayle White,Atlanta Journal-Constitution

1. The Religious Right at the grassroots
2. Supreme Court and church/state relations
3. Restructuring of mainline Protestantism
4. Debate on cultural morality
5. Competition to evangelize Eastern Europe and former USSR

Top Religion Stories of 1993CT survey of religion writers and editors (from our Jan. 10, 1994 issue)Tom Roberts,Religion News Service

1. Branch Davidian tragedy in Waco
2. Passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
3. Israeli-PlO agreement
4. Pope’s Denver visit and World Youth Day events
5. New use of religious language and symbols and an openness to a wider range of religious groups in the White House with the election of Bill Clinton

Peter Steinfels,New York Times

1. New charges of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests
2. Branch Davidians
3. Examinations of Islam in America stirred by World Trade Center bombing
4. Pope’s Denver visit and encyclical
5. Israeli-PLO agreement

Jim Franklin,Boston Globe

1. Papal participation in World Youth Day
2. Muslims as threats and victims in the news
3. Clergy sexual abuse
4. Abortion
5. Papal encyclical on moral teaching

Jeff Sheler,U.S. News & World Report

1. Israeli-PLO agreement
2. Branch Davidian tragedy
3. Pope’s Denver visit and encyclical
4. Passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
5. Discovery of House of David inscription in Israel

Jim Jones,Fort Worth Star-Telegram

1. Branch Davidian tragedy
2. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin accused of sexual abuse
3. Papal participation in World Youth Day
4. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America sexuality statement
5. Passage of Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Top Religion Stories of 1994 CT survey of religion writers and editors (from our Jan. 9, 1995 issue)Terry Mattingly, syndicated religion columnist

1. Black and white Pentecostal Christians form umbrella organization
2. Religious Right’s most talented members turn pro
3. Re-Imagining conference fuels financial revolt in Protestant pews
4. Promise Keepers movement for men grows
5. Southern Baptists experience unrest at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Texas Baptist General Convention

John Dart, religion writer, Los Angeles Times

1. Controversy in Presbyterian and United Methodist churches over Re-Imagining continues
2. Vatican okays altar girls, but Pope rules out women priests
3. Pentecostalists reform North American fellowship to end racial separation
4. Republican election victories revive goals for school prayers
5. Vatican efforts, partly with Islamic allies, influence world population conference in Cairo

Peggy Wehmeyer, ABC News

1. Cairo conference on population
2. Church-state issues, especially in schools
3. Christian Coalition’s political power
4. Pope’s reaffirmation on women ordination ban
5. America’s search for spirituality

Thomas Billitteri, Religion News Service

1. The Republican sweep of Congress and heightened visibility of Religious Right
2. The papacy: John Paul II’s failing health and the Vatican’s increasingly authoritarian stance in the face of dissent
3. Passage of the Oregon right-to-die measure
4. Carnage in Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and other trouble spots
5. The renewed emphasis on sexual morality in religious and secular circles, including True Love Waits campaign

Chris Woehr/Kim Lawton, News Network International

1. Martyrdom of Iran’s top three Protestant church leaders
2. Continued enforcement of Pakistan’s blasphemy law against Christians and moderate Muslims
3. Mexican government failure to ensure safety of indigenous Protestants, leading to murder of leader of exiles for Chiapas
4. Targeting of Catholic clerics in Rwanda’s civil war
5. Rise of nationalism and Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe, leading to increased repression of religious minorities

Top Religion Stories of 1995 As selected by 10 CT editors and news writers (from our Jan. 8, 1996 issue)

1. Nonprofits claim $725 million in losses from New Era debacle
2. Southern Baptists, other Christians, acknowledge need for racial reconciliation
3. Billy Graham’s health falters; son Franklin named successor
4. Evangelical-Catholic accord draws praise, criticism
5. Promise Keepers men’s meetings draw 725,000
6. Christian Right gains influence in GOP Congress
7. Spiritual renewal and confession sweeps college campuses
8. Religious freedom disputes occupy courts and Congress
9. Worldwide, Muslims and Christians clash violently
10. Christian singer Sandi Patty confesses infidelity.

Top Religion Stories of 1996 As selected by 10 CT editors and news writers (from our Jan. 6, 1997 issue)

1. Worldwide persecution of Christians increases.
2. Black church arsons trigger new focus on racism.
3. Romer v. Evans ruling bolsters hom*osexual-rights movement.
4. Partial-birth abortion veto override fails.
5. New Era bankruptcy agreement forged.
6. Central African conflicts limit Christian relief.
7. Episcopal Church rocked by heresy trial, clergy misconduct.
8. Welfare reform includes “charitable choice.”
9. Promise Keepers expands, reviving Christian men’s movements.
10. Call to Renewal forms as alternative to Christian Coalition.

Top Religion Stories of 1997 As selected by CT editors and writers (from our Jan. 12, 1998 issue)

1. Promise Keepers’ Stand in the Gap draws 1 million men to Washington, D.C.
2. Gender-inclusive New International Version canceled.
3. Supreme Court rules RFRA unconstitutional.
4. Churches worldwide unify against religious persecution.
5. New Russian law restricts freedom of religion.
6. Oregon favors first law for physician-assisted suicide.
7. U.S. State Department notes global religious persecution.
8. New Era’s John Bennett imprisoned for fraud.
9. Disney boycott gathers momentum.
10. Partial-birth abortion battle moves to states

Top Religion Stories of 1998 As selected by CT editors and writers (from our Jan. 11, 1999 issue)

1. Congress enacts law against religious persecution.
2. Midterm election jolts Christian Right.
3. Worldwide body of Anglicans rejects ordination, “marriage” for hom*osexuals.
4. Clinton seeks pastoral counsel after Lewinsky scandal.
5. Papal visit to Cuba stimulates religious freedom.
6. Christians in southern Sudan victimized by war, famine.
7. Public-school vouchers gain court approval.
8. Lutherans, Catholics draw closer on justification.
9. Protestants, Catholics in Northern Ireland vote for peace.
10. National Baptists retain indicted leader Lyons.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Why E.J. Dionne likes Bauer’s religion talk better than Bush’s

“If presidential candidates choose to express their religious views to us, they have an obligation to explain themselves in ways accessible to all of us, and provide information that has some bearing on how they would govern,” writes the Washington Post columnist, who notes that religion is becoming a key theme if not in the campaigns themselves, then in the campaign coverage.

Most British clergy don’t believe Bible’s creation story, says BBC survey

Only three of 103 church leaders told the BBC they believe in a literal, six-day creation story, only 13 believe in an actual Adam and Eve, and a quarter of those surveyed don’t believe in the Virgin Birth.

Clinton pushes for more faith in schools

“Studies show that children involved in religious activities are less likely to use drugs. Experience tells us they’re more likely to stay out of trouble,” Clinton said in his radio address. But church-state watchdogs are nervous.

Who bears the heaviest cross? Jesus-oriented ‘Tough Guy’ contest will see

“Jesus Christ was not meek and mild. He is the toughest Tough Guy of all time,” says the promotional material for the January 30 event, in which thousands will carry crosses through obstacle courses. England’s churches are already moaning.

What color is your Bible?

Black biblical action figures reignite questions over which figures where what color. But the questions, according to the Los Angeles Times, are unanswerable.

Herod gave orders to kill Bethlehem boys. Isn’t that funny?

Apparently is its in the Philippines, where Ni˜os Inocentes Day is a kind of April Fool’s, according to the Philippine Star and the Manila Times.

Columbine ‘Yes’ debate rages on

“This rethinking can be chalked up to media scrutiny, which I think the faithful would dismiss as a cynical attempt to debunk the story,” CT regular Randall Balmer told the Associated Press. “In some ways, it may make the faithful dig in a little bit deeper and resist those attempts.”

Apocalypse No: Christian Y2K doomsayers are retreating

At the top of Washington Post writer Hanna Rosin’s list are Left Behind authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, who made suggestions not predictions that Y2K could lead to Antichrist dominations. The story is old news, but a fun read.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The younger generation is suddenly flocking into China’s churches, radically transforming the composition of many congregations from mainly elderly people to over 50 percent young people. But according to the Rev. Sun Xi-Pei, Vice-Chairman of the China Christian Council, “We can only keep about one third of these young people. Our big challenge is to turn growth into quality.”

Churches of the official Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) are bursting at the seams with young people, at least in the larger cities. House churches also report a similar increase in young people and are often the beneficiaries when many tire of the official church.

A Three Self pastor in Wuhan told the congregation of St. Michaels on December 5, “It used to be in this city that the Religious Affairs Bureau would say ‘one more Christian, one less Chinese’ but now they say, ‘one more Christian, one less criminal’.”

Meanwhile, the TSPM’s educational institutions are also bursting. Its 18 seminaries are expanding rapidly as they seek to overcome a chronic shortage of pastors.

The 13.3 million members of the church have barely 1,300 ordained pastors. Most seminaries cannot train more than 200 pastors at a time.

Despite the expansion, the needs are overwhelming. Even with expanded campuses, seminaries are still taking in barely 20 percent of the applicants.

And, if the official church has problems—with under 14 million members—the problem of theological training for the 50-million-plus members of the house churches is even more acute. They cannot receive foreign donations or rent large premises to hold seminars for fear of discovery by the authorities.

“There is no more important work, nor more hazardous work, than training a new generation of leaders in the Bible and the issues of leadership,” said a Shanghai church leader.

Related Elsewhere

See our July 13, 1998 cover story, “A Tale of China’s Two Churches.”

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.