Orthodoxy II

Here are some earlier editions of Ted and Virginia Byfield's weekly column about Christianity, culture and current events.

Read the Byfields' latest column

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As the United States moves toward God,
Canada moves away -- and there's a reason

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 11, 2001

The government at Ottawa served notice last month that it does not accept the idea there is a God. It did so in a national memorial service for the victims of the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, by carefully editing out any reference to a deity. No, this was not an oversight. It was clearly a matter of deliberate, conscious, obviously considered policy. Canada, insofar as the Ottawa government is concerned, is now officially godless.

There was an earlier foreshadowing of this development: the Ottawa-directed memorial service for the victims of the SwissAir disaster, wherein mention of Jesus Christ was forbidden by the Prime Minister's Office. And now, in the aftermath of an attack far closer to the heart of the continent than was Pearl Harbor, Ottawa discloses that if war should now follow, we will fight it as a godless nation.

This surely is of no small significance. For one thing, it highlights the immense and fundamental chasm which is developing between Canada and the United States. The American memorial service was held in Washington National Cathedral. (In Britain a similar memorial was held in St. Paul's Cathedral.) At the Washington service, four hymns were sung, followed by four scripture readings, a blessing, four more hymns and a sermon by Billy Graham. A Muslim imam intoned a prayer from the Quran, a rabbi read from the Torah. President George Bush mentioned God 15 times in his talk, and 10 times called for prayer.

The Americans, that is, who like us are a "pluralistic" society, nevertheless manage to have and to use a national cathedral. Although it is run by the Episcopalian Church, it serves as a national shrine to which every citizen can resort in times of great trouble, and feel that he belongs there.

Notice the implication. The Americans use their "pluralism" as an opportunity to pull together all people who believe in God. They don't speak of the Christian God, or the Muslim, or the Jewish, nor of "your God" or "my God." They simply speak of God. He is there. He is real. We can call on him.

They recognize that there are significant theological differences, of course, but they mourn and regret those differences. Their service is a prayer that somehow, without compromising the truth, these differences can be resolved. That is the Washington message.

What is the Ottawa message? We have used our "pluralism" in precisely the opposite way. We have seen it as an opportunity to abolish God as a recognizable factor in state affairs. We have decided that no power higher than man shall be acknowledged in the conduct of government. We are thereby left with no standard above government by which government itself can be judged, no moral criteria, no firm basis for the critical assessment of government.

Symbolically, therefore, we Canadians had to hold our memorial at the only national shrine we are encouraged to recognize: the Parliament Buildings. How fitting. The Americans look to God. Our god is Government. If we are impoverished or sick or distressed, if we need help giving birth, being educated, being buried or anything else, it is to Government that we are to turn. That's the Canadian Way.

We are allowed to believe in God, of course, but only as a "private" activity. We must keep God to ourselves. We must not assert anything as true, because then we would have to reject any incompatible as false, which could lead to "intolerance." Nor must we criticize any kind of conduct on the basis of our beliefs, because that could lead to "judgmentalism." Nor must we try to persuade anyone else of the truth of our beliefs, because that would be "proselytizing." So God is okay, provided we do not mention his name in public, or insist he actually exists.

Why, you wonder, have the Americans gone one way and we another? The answer is evident. They carry enormous world responsibilities. The only reason the Soviet slave system is not in operation in Canada today is that we were protected by the United States. The jets hit the World Trade Center in New York, not the TD Centre in Toronto, because the country the terrorists must defeat is the United States. If they do that, Canada will automatically be defeated as well.

Now, people who must look after themselves, rather than depend on others to care for them, soon discover their own inadequacies. Therefore they reach out for help, and -- so they often tell us -- they find that help in God. Dependents like us, who need concern ourselves with little beyond our own routine necessities, never experience this inadequacy and thus see no reason to seek God.

The Americans have a national cathedral because they know they need God. Canada has no national cathedral because Canada has the Americans, and most of us individual Canadian citizens seem convinced we need only direct our prayers to Ottawa. Such is the New Canada, the godless Canada. How can anyone take pride in such a country?

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Which is the real face of Islam? Is it the
terrorist, or that nice guy next door?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 1, 2001

One of the many things that frighten and bewilder North Americans this month, indeed bewilder people all over the world, is this: The Muslims who rule in Afghanistan declare with obvious conviction that killing thousands of American civilians fulfills the will of Allah, and affords the killers a sure ticket into Paradise. So do many other Muslims elsewhere. Are they right? Are they being true Muslims?

Meanwhile, people who live down our street, work hard, send their kids to the local school and volunteer at the community club, declare with equally obvious conviction that killing several thousand civilians is an abomination in the sight of Allah and absolutely contrary to the Islamic faith. Are they right? Are they the real Muslims?

What is it that Islam requires or recommends? We ask the Muslims themselves, of course. But that doesn't help. Those living in the Western world say one thing, while those living in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Indonesia say quite the opposite. And you suspect that the Quran, like the Old Testament, can provide texts supporting both viewpoints.

In our own limited experience of Muslims, they seem pretty much like us. Those who take their faith seriously are honest, sober and friendly, and as concerned for their neighbors as Christians who take their faith seriously. It is very difficult to imagine them calculatedly murdering thousands of unsuspecting people. Moreover, some unquestionably reflect the peace of soul that can come only from God. Holiness is the only word to describe that quality. This is one side of the coin.

History provides the other side of this coin, one of which few Christians are aware. Muhammad, founder of Islam, had very little in common with Jesus Christ. Jesus was a field preacher; Muhammad was an army commander. Jesus was celibate; Muhammad had something like 10 wives and a number of concubines. Jesus preached peace, and when arrested refused to resist; Muhammad preached peace of soul, but definitely not military peace. By force of arms he soon overcame most of the tribes of the Arabian peninsula, and wiped out two Jewish settlements then existing there. Then he commissioned his armies to begin the military conquest of the world, a task at which they came close to succeeding. Jesus had died on a cross (a fact which, curiously, Muslims do not accept). Muhammad died in bed.

Immediately after Muhammad's death, his followers, many of them brilliant soldiers, launched in the seventhth century one of the most successful campaigns of conquest the world has seen. Arabia stood between two empires: the Persian to the northeast, and what still called itself the Roman to the northwest. For nearly a thousand years these two had coexisted, recurrently making unsuccessful bids to overthrow each other.

The Roman Empire was centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and was by then Christian. The entire Middle East, nearly all of it Christian, was under Roman jurisdiction, as were Christian Egypt and Christian North Africa. Constantinople also held a historic claim to Western Europe, reduced by barbarian invasions some 200 years earlier to mere subsistence level, but still Christian too.

Out of the desert stormed the Islamic armies, to conquer and totally subdue the Persian empire. Then, in a series of extraordinary victories, they crossed the intervening desert, attacked and defeated the Roman army, then swept through Egypt and North Africa. Navigating the Strait of Gibraltar, they subdued most of Spain, then invaded France. They were stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 and chased back into Spain, which they occupied for the next 700 years until the Christians finally drove them out.

To the people of each conquered city the Muslim commanders offered three choices: "Islam, the Book, or the Sword." First, they could become Muslim. Second, they could live in ghettos as Jews or Christians under their own biblical rules, paying heavy taxes and enduring severe restrictions on their activities. Or they could choose the sword (i.e. beheading). Since distinct privileges came with conversion to Islam, most took choice No. 1. Thus did the Middle East, North Africa and medieval Spain embrace Islam.

The Crusades, whereby Western Europe sought to regain by military conquest one of the lost Christian lands, followed. For 200 years they succeeded, but then failed. Meanwhile what is now Turkey, then still largely Christian, also fell to the Islamic armies, which in 1453 conquered Constantinople itself, renaming it Istanbul. The Christian Balkan countries fell too, and by 1683 Islam stood at the gates of Vienna. But there the Christians blocked them. They were driven back to the bounds of modern Turkey, with a surviving presence in the Balkans (the root cause of the recent Balkan wars.)

That is the history, and that is the other side of the coin. Whether it provides an answer to the baffling question now posed once again by Islam, however, is another matter. But one rule seems imperative. Whatever happened at New York and Washington, don't take it out on your Muslim neighbor. He's probably more horrified than you are.

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After Britain departs from Christianity
will London become another Antioch?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 23, 2001

Something future historians will certainly note, which contemporary journalists missed when it happened, is the fact that during the 20th century the center of Christianity moved away from western Europe. Moved to the United States, many might say, but there, too, a Christian decline has been going on. More discernibly, it has been moving in two directions -- to Africa and to Southeast Asia. Perhaps also it may revive in Eastern Europe, though that trend is not yet assured.

The evidence for the Asian and African movement comes in many forms, not the least among them demographic. In terms of numbers, Africa is now the largest Christian continent, with Asia second. Moreover, the theology and moral philosophy of these bishops cannot, as was once the case, be largely dictated by their white brethren. They increasingly incline to think for themselves.

This became distressingly evident last year when American and British Anglican bishops brought before an international congress a proposal to ratify gay marriages. They quietly assumed that when the bishops from the more "backward" countries observed the unanimity among the "progressives," they would rapidly fall into line.

Well, they didn't. Instead, the Third-World bishops trounced the proposal by a ratio of about seven to one, sending the enlightened progressives home thunderstruck. One said the black bishops were "just out of the trees." A Boston lesbian bishop, herself black, observed: "If asses had wings, this place would be an airport." Since these Americans and British ecclesiastics had proclaimed themselves as champions of racial equality and tolerance, their tirades against the black bishops were scarcely elevating.

In response, the Southeast Asian bishops have consecrated two conservative Americans as "missionary" bishops to pagan Anglicans in the United States, much to the scorn of the American Anglican establishment. The underlying message is unmistakable. Liberal theology is not Christian and its devotees are therefore proper subjects for evangelism. The Asian-based mission seeks to convert the U.S. to Christianity.

But Britain, far more pagan than the United States, is a much more challenging target. The Edmonton Journal last month carried an interesting story on missionaries from South America, Africa and the former Czechoslovakia who have been sent to Britain to help return it to the Christian fold. It is now one of the least Christian countries in Europe, with church attendance somewhere below 5% of the population (against roughly 20% in Canada and 30% in the U.S.). More Britons now attend mosques than churches.

Ironically, some of these Third-World evangelical initiatives are the work of the 200-year-old Church Mission Society, which in the 19th century sent thousands of missionaries out from Britain to countries that are now sending missionaries back. This, however, is only one of a number of agencies that have sent more than 1,000 missionaries into Britain from 60 countries.

The spectacle of a country which was Christian at one time and isn't any more is not new to Christian history. In the fifth century, much of western Europe was Christian. By the seventh it had returned to paganism. More accurately, it had returned to a state of semi-wilderness, after the invasion of the pagan barbarian tribes from the East and the fall of the Roman Empire.

But there was one western European country the barbarians failed to overrun -- notably, Ireland; and Thomas Cahill's delightful book, "How the Irish Saved Civilization," tells how Irish missionaries returned to the once-Christian continent and restored the faith across western Europe.

Today's barbarians, of course, did not invade Britain from without, but arose from within, not burning the churches but emptying them. G.K. Chesterton envisioned them in his book-length poem on King Alfred's defeat of the pagan Danes:

They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands.
They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen,
And backward shall ye turn and gaze
Desiring one of Alfred's days
When pagans still were men.

Whether western Europe will be regained for Christianity we cannot know. What we can know is the fate of great Christian centers lost to Christianity -- Ephesus, Antioch, Damascus, Roman Carthage. These were once magnificent citadels of culture and trade. When Paris was a collection of mud huts, Antioch was the third-greatest city in the western world. Today these are gone, or are mere vestiges of that which once was.

Is this perhaps the future of London, Paris and Berlin? When the cross disappears, and with it the vigor and imagination which Christianity affords, does everything else follow? We cannot see the future, but that is the lesson of the past.

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If there is no national moral consensus,
how are our schools going to teach it?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 3, 2001

"Readers of Orthodoxy are presented with a false dilemma: either teach Christianity -- and of a pretty specific sort, one supposes -- in the schools, or suffer the confusion and chaos of an `anything goes' philosophy." -- From a reader's letter.

The contention of this correspondent, Glen Koehn of Kitchener, Ontario, obviously requires a response. Surely, he argues, it is unreasonable to contend that moral chaos is the inevitable consequence unless we teach traditional Christianity in our schools. What about the Greeks? They had a moral system long before Christianity. So did other societies. Why can't we? If Christianity again became an official state religion, the result would probably be as horrible as a society with no morality at all.

In fairness, however, we did not advocate the return of state-supported Christianity -- only that parents should determine the educational philosophy in which their children are educated. Christian children would be taught in Christian schools, children of secular humanists in secular humanist schools, and so on. The state would only assure that they all were adequately instructed in skill subjects like English and mathematics. Parents, through their school, would decide what ``values'' they learned.

This is not the reassertion of a state religion. It merely repudiates the cherished assumption that a public system, divorced from religion, can sustain a nation's moral basis. We keep encountering evidence that it can't.

The public system is only about 130 years old. For centuries before that, almost all schools were run by the churches. For most of this 130 years, our schools operated on an implicit Christian morality. The teachers were nearly all Christian. While the schools did not teach Christianity, a distinct Christian ethos, represented by such things as Bible readings, Christmas concerts and Easter holidays, prevailed.

As long as this situation obtained, we enjoyed a distinct social stability. It wasn't flawless, but it was there. Academic standards were maintained; laws were mostly obeyed and crime was mostly controlled; family life was stable; science advanced; our economic productivity was high, and our standard of living steadily improved.

All the while, however, a process of erosion was occurring. Apart from the child-like version imparted by Sunday schools, Christianity was almost nowhere being taught. As a religion for adults, people knew nothing about it, and much of the content of public education began to argue against it. Eventually popular rejection of Christianity became inevitable. Now, although it sustains many thousands of individual Canadians, as a nation we have lost it. And with it we have lost the moral foundation it once provided.

So to what are we to turn instead? Mr. Koehn urges upon us the example of the Greeks. But Greek morality. like Roman morality, emerged out of antiquity with the Greeks and Romans themselves. They didn't adopt it; it was a part of them. Modern Canada is in a very different situation. We are an amalgam of many cultures. The Globe and Mail celebrates our "pluralism," blandly assuming that we we will continue to enjoy the moral benefits of the Christian society whose demise it paradoxially also celebrates. Like Mr. Koehn, it seems to assume that a broad general moral consensus underlies Canadian society and all we need do is teach it.

But does it? Can we even agree on the Ten Commandments? We reject theft, except of course from the rich, who may be pillaged at any time by the government. We reject telling lies, unless of course it benefits us. We reject murder, but we depict it in lurid detail as a favourite entertainment. As for adultery, what is that anyhow? Some of us favor "family values" while others indignantly demand, "Whose family values?'' Some want national school testing, while others say this would make our schools the tools of corporatism. And while science continues to be revered by some, environmentalists see it as a villain incarnate, and feminists see it as the ultimate expression of "male thinking." Where is the consensus? And without some consensus, where is society?

Doesn't all this argue that our "pluralistic" school system cannot work, and that the time has therefore come to return effective authority over education to the parent? We think it does.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in March 1993.

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More bad news from a reputable source:
Within the churches lies deep unbelief

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 27, 2001

For the second time in a year, we have received bad news, again from a respected publication. As usual, this news isn't really new, except in pointing out an evident fact we have been subconsciously evading. Now we are forced to look at it.

The last such revelation, you may recall, was an article in Touchstone magazine on the "feminization" of the churches: the fact that mainline congregations are now mostly female, and the more liberal the church, the fewer the men in it.

Since then, one of us encountered an Anglican professor in a Catholic college who stressed the importance of, in effect, "mis-translating" the scriptures into "inclusive language" so that women can feel more "comfortable" in church. Asked why the need to make women feel more at home in congregations that are already anything up to 80 percent female, he seemed to have no answer. Neither has anybody else.

The latest bombshell comes from the Barna Research Group of California, which discloses some distressing facts about America's eight largest churches. Barna does statistical surveys on American religious practice which seem uncomfortably accurate on the basis of what you can in fact see for yourself. Their data don't cover Canada's churches, but here the news would have been more doleful still, because Canadian church attendance is already lower than the American.

This time Barna examined the "born-again" phenomenon, plumbing what lies behind a statistic that shows anything up to 75 percent of Americans describing themselves as "born again." The researchers defined "born agains," not on the basis of this self-description, but rather on what such people actually believe. Have they made a personal commitment to serve Jesus Christ? Does this commitment direct their lives? Do they believe they will go to heaven solely because they confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior?

If all the answers were yes, the surveyors classified the respondee as "born again." Curiously, it found that proportionately more Mormons (34 percent) qualified as born-again Christians than Anglicans (30 percent) and Catholics (25 percent). This despite the fact that many churches do not consider Mormonism a Christian religion.

The surveyors then proceeded to further questions. Did the respondents believe the Bible "totally accurate?" Did they believe they had a personal responsibility to convey their faith to others? Did they believe Satan was a real being who can influence people's lives? Did they believe Jesus Christ led a sinless life? Did they believe God all-powerful, all-knowing and perfect? Those with affirmative answers they labeled "evangelical."

Among denominations, they found the highest degrees of "evangelicalism" in the Assemblies of God, Pentecostal and non-denominational Protestant churches. Catholics and Anglicans ranked lowest by far.

Then came the real downer. On this basis only 8 percent of American adults qualify as "evangelical," as against 12 percent a decade ago -- a drop of one-third in 10 years. The cultural influence of anti-Christian elements in the movies and on television, implicitly anti-Christian assumptions in public and higher education, and an anti-Christian bias in the news media have clearly been taking their toll. We should have expected they would, of course, but we hoped they would not.

Judged on the detailed evidence Barna was collecting, the American Catholic church is in deep trouble, while the Anglican or Episcopalian is rapidly ceasing to exist as a Christian institution.

"The Christian body in America," commented one researcher, "is immersed in a crisis of biblical illiteracy. How else can you describe matters, when most church-going adults reject the accuracy of the Bible, reject the existence of Satan, claim that Jesus sinned, see no need to evangelize, believe that good works are one of the keys to persuading God to forgive their sins, and describe their commitment to Christianity as moderate or less than firm?

"The Episcopal (Anglican) Church certainly stands out as one that is struggling to find its theological identity and equilibrium, but millions of individuals who attend Protestant churches are going through similar redefinition."

It should be noted, of course, that one of Barna's criteria for "evangelicalism" -- the belief that our "good works" (i.e., how we actually behave)is a factor in our redemption -- is an article of faith to Catholics. That is, if they said our behavior didn't ultimately matter, they might qualify themselves as "evangelicals" but disqualify themselves as Catholics. (At the Reformation, Luther contended we are saved by faith alone; the Catholic position was that we are saved by faith and works. However, in recent discussions Lutheran and Vatican theologians began to see that the 16th-century controversy was not so much substantive as a matter of what both these terms are taken to mean.)

But the other Barna questions generally define both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, and the survey's consistently negative findings disclose a profound depth of unbelief within the churches as well as without. If we discover ourselves politically powerless, should we be surprised? How can we spread our beliefs to the world, if we ourselves don't know what they are?

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Why would a scientist be shocked
to find there's no mercy in nature?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 20, 2001

``Nature doesn't care. There was no mercy out there.'' -- Scientist Andrew McFarlane, quoted in Time magazine, after narrowly escaping from the unexpected explosion of the Galeras volcano in Colombia, which killed six of his fellow scientists.

Dr. McFarlane and other volcanologists from around the world were atop the cone of Galeras installing equipment to monitor its activity when suddenly the ground beneath their feet shook, the volcano sucked in air as though taking a deep breath, and then it exploded.

Several scientists were incinerated immediately in 600-degree C temperatures. Others were killed by flying rocks the size of television sets which were hurled from the volcano's mouth. When these hit the ground, they glowed red.

But what shocked Dr. McFarlane was the blind fury of unleashed nature. Somehow he had subconsciously expected nature to be ``merciful.'' It wasn't.

But why, you wonder, should Dr. McFarlane expect a kind of soft, affectionate, acquiescent quality in our natural surroundings? Such an expectation did not come to him as a child of science, but rather as a child of late 20th Century urban living.

Nature is increasingly represented to us as something man has ``conquered,'' as a victim of man's acquisitiveness, as a would-be partner and companion of man whose benevolence man constantly exploits and destroys. In this romantic illusion, wolves become puppy dogs, bears are lovable fluffy balls of fur, and killer whales are folksy friends in the sea.

It is our technological proficiency, of course, that has made it possible to portray nature so deceptively. It's significant that those who must work closer to some of these creatures often do not share this rapturous intimacy with them. Ranchers and sheep-herders have no great fondness for wolves or bears. The sailor may love the sea, but he does not regard it as his partner or companion because he knows from acquaintance how ready it is to kill him.

Only occasionally do some of us city dwellers see how far from ``conquered'' nature really is. Dr. McFarlane sees it as the volcano explodes. The victim of the grizzly sees it as its great paw comes tearing into his face. The suburban Edmonton woman who had to stand by helpless while a ``playful'' coyote ripped her little dog to pieces doubtless had the same reaction as Dr. McFarlane. There was no mercy there.

When we hear people talk this way about nature -- about man's deplorable ``conquest'' of it, and our forming ``partnerships'' with it -- we should perhaps bear two things in mind.

One is that nature is far from ``conquered.'' True, we may find ourselves for the moment relieved from the onslaught of some of nature's more virulent diseases -- bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and myriad strains of influenza -- but many of these are suddenly reappearing in new and more dangerous forms. Similarly, creatures which once destroyed our crops and left us to starve have been banished by insecticides, but now return, having demonstrated an unpleasant genetic capacity to arm themselves against us.

And even if man overcomes all these obstacles, the universe itself is said to be running down, or wearing out, or going out, so that eventually man and everything else will vanish away. In the meantime, ``nature'' will have long since conquered man.

The other point to notice is this: Somehow, men in cultures all over the world have acquired the idea that God, the creator of nature, is ultimately friendly and sympathetic to man. We believe in a ``good God.'' Where, you wonder, could such an idea have come from?

Certainly not from nature. Not from that fierce force that rains flaming rocks upon us from volcanoes, that afflicts our bodies with disease, that comes growling and snarling out of the woods for us by night, that floods out our homes and devours our crops. How could we conclude that all this horror is somehow the work of a good God?

Plainly, any such notion must have arisen in spite of nature, not because of it. We must have acquired such a conviction some other way. It must have come as a thought within us, perhaps, cherished and preserved despite all that nature can assail us with. Not from nature could it have come, but from something or somewhere beyond.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in March 1993.

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Give Jim Buckee a message -- if he's coming
down the street, cross to the other side

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 13, 2001

We remember those adult conversations around the dining table back in the late '30s. As children we didn't understand it all, but there was constant talk of "Germany," of "Hitler," of "Nazis," of "the Japs," of "suffering China." There were accounts related by refugees of jailings, beatings, murder, people disappearing. The words "concentration camp" came into the common vocabulary. Horror stories were increasingly told of what was happening to "the Jews," whoever they were. We were WASPs, living almost entirely among other WASPs.

There was also talk of companies that were selling vital war materials to Germany, and scrap steel to Japan. This occasioned much grave shaking of heads and muttering. We would come to rue it, some said. If events went the way they seemed to be going -- meaning war -- such companies would stand condemned. They always had the same reply: "If we don't do it, someone else will." So they did it, and 50 million people died in the ensuing war.

Those memories came alive last week as we read a column called "Bearing the Cross," in Christianity Today, a monthly newsmagazine we greatly respect. It tells of Christians in southern Sudan -- Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians -- who for believing that Jesus is God are being raped, beaten, enslaved, burned alive and otherwise killed by their Islamic Arab countrymen. The specifics are hideous: infants spiked to trees or beheaded; people tortured and their lips then punctured and padlocked; schools and hospitals and marketplaces bombed and strafed.

All this and much more is contained in a report to the U.S. House Committee for Refugees which describes the Sudanese government as the worst abuser of human rights in the world. This report caused the House to vote 422-2 last month for a bill condemning human rights abuses in Sudan. It would also deny access to U.S. capital markets to companies doing business with the Sudanese government at Khartoum, which is conducting the genocidal campaign against the Christian population of southern Sudan. The bill, however, is not yet law.

But what can we Canadians do about it, we ask ourselves, so far removed from the scene, so remote from events? Quite a bit, as it happens, especially if we live in Calgary. For a Canadian company is deeply involved in Sudan, by contract with the government that is nailing babies to trees. This government is largely financed by the proceeds of the Sudanese Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, which is 25% owned by Talisman Energy Inc. of Calgary, formerly BP Canada. The biggest shareholder is the Chinese state oil company.

Dr. James Buckee, Talisman's president, has cited a number of justifications for his company's partnership with this bloody-handed government. When Talisman first went into the deal he had a ready and reasonable explanation. Oil would mean prosperity for Sudan, he said, "and peace will follow prosperity." However, peace did not follow prosperity. Instead the Khartoum government used its revenues to intensify its campaign in the south. Survivors who escaped told frightful stories, which refugee aid agencies confirmed in every detail.

"What about this?" Dr. Buckee was asked. "It's not up to us to tell a sovereign government how to spend its revenue," he replied.

The reports grew worse. People were being slaughtered wholesale. Christians were being literally crucified, one of the most ghastly methods of execution ever devised. "What about this?" Dr. Buckee was asked again. "We're building schools and hospitals and digging water wells," he replied.

And this is true. They are providing schools and hospitals and wells -- for the new citizens from the north who move in after those Christians still alive have been driven from their homes. In other words, Talisman is underwriting the government's restoration program. In any event, Dr. Buckee reiterates, "if we don't do it, someone else will."

If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by President George W. Bush, the New York Stock Exchange will have to de-list Talisman, thus ending its role in Sudan and denying the consortium access to American investment funds. But please observe that what will have forced this Canadian company to terminate its partnership with some of the world's worst monsters will have been the U.S. Congress. Mr. Chretien and his pack of sycophants and cronies at Ottawa will have been, as usual, too gutless to do anything--with one distinguished exception. Edmonton Liberal MP David Kilgour jeopardized his cabinet standing by urging Canadians to sell off Talisman stock.

However, if the bill does not carry, Talisman may very well stay in. So what else can Canadians do? Calgarians, anyway, can do this. They can refuse to shake hands with Dr. Buckee. They can cross to the other side of the street when they see him approaching. They can move to another table if they find themselves near him at the Petroleum Club. Give him a message. We're ashamed and disgusted. Albertans don't make deals with the Devil.

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Let's for once take a close look at
the `horrors' laid to the Church

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 29, 2001

``We are only beginning to see the devastation that `Christian values' have heaped upon our age, and it would be ironic if we once again find ourselves at the mercy of an organized bevy of Christian mullahs.'' -- David McMullen in his column, ``Twenties' Viewpoint,'' in the Victoria Times Colonist.

Mr. McMullen, a fourth-year University of Victoria student, is alarmed at the influence of Christians in the Canadian Reform Party and the possibility of a Conservative-Reform coalition government,

``Many might ask: What devastation am I talking about? I suppose I could start with the Holy Roman wars and then move on to the Inquisition, but that's old news.

``In more modern times we have Mount Cashel and church-sponsored abuses on the aborigines, the marginalization of women, of homosexuals and of those who wear their hair too long. The Church, and the Church when meshed with politics, has a very long history of creating pure, unadulterated havoc.''

Let's take these instances individually:

``The Holy Roman wars.'' There are no wars known to history as ``the Holy Roman wars.'' Does he mean wars within the Holy Roman Empire? The Crusades? We can't comment on wars that didn't happen, though his imprecision certainly reflects a significant ignorance.

``The Inquisition.'' This could mean the effort of the church to maintain a common theological and philosophical basis for Christendom, or more specifically the Spanish Inquisition, which was purely political. Again, the imprecision. The victims of the Spanish Inquisition number in the low thousands. However, contrasted with the persecutions of 20th Century Europe (six million Jews under the anti-Christian Nazis, and eight million Ukrainians under the anti-Christian Bolsheviks), the Spanish Inquisition loses much of its prestige.

``Mount Cashel.'' The horrors perpetrated by some homosexual pedophiles in the Christian Brothers' Newfoundland orphanage ought properly to be deplored and prosecuted, as should those that occur in public schools. Significantly, all the Mount Cashel offences occurred during the ``sexual revolution'' of the '60s, evidencing what can happen when the church follows the world. Of course, hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of Canadian children have been educated without molestation by priests, ministers, nuns and other Christian teachers who gave their lives to the work. To denounce them all on the basis of Mount Cashel is absurd.

``Church-sponsored abuses of the aborigines.'' The European invasion of North America instanced a superior technology overcoming an inferior. In these circumstances, the inferior is invariably doomed. That's the way the world has always been. You can blame God for creating it, but not the church. It is noteworthy, however, that among the invaders, the only people who paid the least heed to the plight of the natives were, one and all, Christian clergy, both Catholic and Protestant. They helped the natives, established schools and hospitals, and tried to ease the transition the natives inevitably had to face. Sometimes they failed, sometimes they gravely erred, sometimes they succeeded. But they, and virtually they alone, made the effort. That would seem good, not bad.

``The marginalization of women.'' This suggests that where women were respected in other cultures, they were ``marginalized'' in the Christian one. The reverse is true. In Christian countries, more than any others, women were respected and idealized. All one need do is regard the fate of women in other cultures even today to see how true this is.

The ``marginalization of homosexuals.'' In Christian morality, sodomy -- like pedophilia, bestiality and adultery -- is considered a perversion of God's purpose and therefore wrong. This creates ``havoc'' and ``devastation,'' says Mr. McMullen. Is he thinking of AIDS? But it has been chiefly spread by the acceptance of homosexuality, not its rejection.

So where exactly is this ``devastation?'' It was Christianity that established the universities of Europe. Christianity has been by far the strongest influence in the music, art, literature and culture of the western world. It established the great hospitals, founded our political institutions, spread this culture to North America, and has brought about a society that peoples from all over the world now seek desperately to share in.

Our record is far from perfect, but it's the best there is. That Mr. McMullen should reach fourth-year status without discovering any of this does not flatter either him or the University of Victoria.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in February 1993.

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Christians needn't worry about the Narnia deal,
but maybe HarperCollins shareholders should

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 22, 2001

Christians have many things to concern themselves about these days, but protecting C.S. Lewis is not one of them. True, his estate seems to have made a deal with HarperCollins to publish a raft of new Narnia books. True also, one executive warned in a leaked memo that "we'll need to be able to give emphatic assurance that no attempt will be made to correlate the stories to Christian imagery/theology."

Since correlating the Narnia stories to Christian imagery/theology was Lewis' whole purpose, you can see why some people are concerned. Nor do we know just who is in charge of these decisions. Lewis' estate is controlled by his two stepsons, one of them an active evangelical Christian. But the commercial aspects of his books are handled by the C.S. Lewis Co., which may no longer be under the control of the estate.

Another ominous comment came from a woman who was to produce an illustrated book and companion video on Lewis for Zondervan Publishing, a HarperCollins subsidiary. This project had crumbled, said Carol Dean Thatcher, because of pressure from the publisher and the estate to eliminate script references to Christianity. None of this is reassuring.

Nevertheless, there are mitigating factors. For one, HarperCollins has been strongly promoting Lewis' "Mere Christianity" and other apologetic works. If it has fallen under some sinister anti-Christian management, why would it be doing this? Clearly the motive is not ideological, but pecuniary. Lewis sells. Besides, any success achieved by the New Narnia books may focus attention on the originals, which HarperCollins is also in the business of selling.

So perhaps HarperCollins need not worry too much about how Christians may react to the New Narnia. Perhaps they should be worrying instead about what their shareholders may say if the scheme falls flat. What then?

Is this likely? We think so. Posthumous imitations do not have a history of big pay-offs. Moreover, Lewis' children's books have sold some 65 million copies since his death, an amazing record, but this is not due to clever promotion. It is due to his superb plotting and writing and, far from least, to the fact they are securely based on "Christian imagery/theology."

If HarperCollins planners think they can recruit a team of writers to equal this accomplishment, and in a non-Christian or un-Christian Narnia (which for Lewis fans seems a contradiction in terms) they must be dreaming. Are they going to hire J.K. Rowling away from Random House, have her abandon Harry Potter, maybe, or turn him loose in Narnia? If we were shareholders we would be wondering about this.

Whether Lewis himself would be upset about this development is highly debatable. For one thing he would no doubt be surprised and delighted to see that the children he created for the Narnia series had proved so durably appealing to generations of children and their parents. You get the impression he was astonished at the reception accorded them even within his own lifetime.

He would be the first to say that the basic Christian ideas embodied in them -- some fairly obvious, like the heroic lion, others much more subtle but no less effective -- were certainly not his own. His every presentation of Christian belief, whether theological or ethical, he would say, was an adaptation of somebody else's, often somebody who had lived hundreds of years before. The inspiration for the Narnia series in particular he credited to George MacDonald, the Scottish pastor whose Christian fantasy writing for adults particularly captivated Lewis' imagination and drew him along the road to the Cross. (MacDonald also wrote for children.)

But more than any of this, you suspect that Lewis would respond to the "threat" posed by this undertaking much as the great rabbi Gamaliel responded to the threat posed by Christianity. If this movement is not from God, said Gamaliel, then we don't need to worry about it. It will destroy itself. And if it is from God, then there's nothing we can do about it anyway.

It can be argued that there are rules for children's fantasy stories, rules which we did not invent and cannot change. The Narnia stories work because they appeal, in terms children can comprehend, to the human inner craving for goodness. We want right to win; we want evil to lose. We want purpose to be achieved, heroism to be rewarded; we want cowardice to be revealed; we want craftiness thwarted, hypocrisy exposed, meanness punished, generosity recognized, heroism celebrated, sacrifice enshrined. (The Harry Potter books, be it noted, incorporate some of these same elements.)

If HarperCollins's new writers, using Lewis' characters, do these things, they will succeed, thus furthering the work he began. But if they try to use Narnia to advance all the tawdry, shallow and phony "values" we associate with the term "politically correct," then readers will detect the fraud, the books will fail, and HarperCollins will at best be looking for new management. So, as Gamaliel said, why not just leave this alone?

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New judge's reassurances
are not at all reassuring

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 15, 2001

``I'm laughing because I sometimes ask myself the same question.'' -- Mr. Justice John Major's response to the inquiry, ``Do you believe in God?'' quoted in the Globe and Mail.

``And in what kind of a God?'' continues Mr. Justice Major. ``I don't think the scientists have convinced me that the Big Bang is the complete answer.

``Now, my perception of God is difficult for me to describe. I have an open mind. I guess some days you do and some days you don't. I don't think of myself as a religious person who wants to convert and show people the light. But when he (the questioner) says `God,' I guess he's talking about a Supreme Being of some kind, some power, some force. And I think most of the time I do. Now that's not a very precise answer.''

Mr. Justice Major, newly appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court, had agreed to answer a number of questions about his beliefs and convictions submitted to him by a panel of lawyers, academics, politicians and two laymen. The query about God was submitted by one of the laymen, who is, significantly, a security officer.

The questions were submitted in advance, so he had time to consider them. Most concerned his view of a judge's job, whether he was out to sustain or reform society, how he would define human rights, and so on. All these questions Mr. Justice Major took seriously.

The one about God he plainly regarded as frivolous. He's thought about God sometimes. Yes, probably there is ``some force, some power'' out there. But he has an ``open mind,'' and he certainly isn't out to ``convert'' anybody. Plainly this was intended to set all our minds at ease.

Unhappily, if you think about this at all, it doesn't.

As a Supreme Court judge, Mr. Justice Major's central responsibility is, surely, The Law. He must therefore take some interest in why people obey The Law -- and also, perhaps, in why they don't.

These days you find two distinct answers to that question.

Some people obey The Law simply because they have to, and for no other reason. If they break it, they might get caught. Other people obey The Law because they think they should obey it, that in order to have any society at all you have to have laws, and having a society is a good and beneficial thing, and therefore even if there's no chance at all of being caught, you should obey The Law anyway.

Now if you believe in a ``good'' God -- that is, if you are Christian, a religious Jew, or a Muslim, or a Unitarian who ascribes goodness to a Divine Creator -- then obviously you fall into the second category.

Or even if you do not believe in something called a ``God'' at all, but you nevertheless believe that there is some ultimate Truth behind reality, and that it is what we call ``good,'' then you, too, fall into this second category.

This is not to say you will invariably obey The Law. There are certainly Christians, Jews and Muslims and even, no doubt, Unitarians, who fail to live up to their beliefs. They may break laws. But in so doing, they are conscious of the fact they have done that which they ought not to have done. Whether they get caught or they don't, they are still very much in the wrong and they know it.

On the other hand, suppose you have ``an open mind'' on such questions. You don't pretend to know whether there's a God or there isn't. In that case, why should you obey The Law?

Well because, you say, you might get caught and put in jail or fined.

But suppose you're sure you won't. You absolutely know you'll get away with it -- evading taxes, say, or stealing, or even murder. Why not do it? If the only reason for restraint is getting caught, then you have no reason for restraint.

Here is the point: What can Mr. Justice Major say to such a man?

Nothing, obviously. One day he might have answer, the next not. He has an open mind. He's not trying to convert anybody, has no special ``light.''

And this, he tells us to set our minds at ease. Well, it doesn't.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in February 1993.

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This actress knows what many theologians don't;
by changing God's 'gender,' she's left the faith

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 8, 2001

Actress Cybill Shepherd has confided to the Vancouver Sun that she now sees God "as a woman," a change representing "a fundamental shift" in her approach to life. While we can scarcely agree with her, we think she deserves congratulations for perceiving something which seemingly escapes many liberal theologians: that by changing the gender which she ascribes to God, she has changed her religion. She is no longer Christian.

She grew up, she said, in a traditional Christian family. But as she matured as an actress (from "Memphis Belle" through sex siren to lead character in Anne Wheeler's new film, "Marine Life") she also changed her view of God. "I remember thinking that if God is a man, then man is God -- and that didn't work for me. So I feminized the divine. I started to see God as a woman." Her Trinity now consists of "Maiden, Mother and Crone," she said, which has made a profound difference.

Blasphemous perhaps, but nevertheless it faces up to a reality. She has knowingly left the faith. Far more typical, however, is an old friend we heard from last month. Now somewhere near his early 50s, he had just completed a course in contemporary theology. "While you and I may not agree on much as far as theology goes," he wrote,"we serve the same Lord."

This man is a good and valued friend, but we seriously doubt we "serve the same Lord." We know he approves of rewriting the Bible, for instance, to conform to current standards of "gender equality," so that God becomes "He/She," alternated with "She/He," where "mankind" becomes "personkind" and "Our Father" becomes "Our Parent."

If the determined promoters of this endeavor know that changing the language we use to describe God will change our entire concept of God -- and thus our religion -- few admit it. They are merely perfecting the Christian religion, they say. But Paul C. Vitz, professor of psychology at New York University, whose books include "Psychology as Religion: the Cult of Self-Worship," strongly condemns so-called "inclusive language" in a recent article in Touchstone magazine.

"It should be clear," he writes, "that when people change their name for God they have changed their religion. If a small group began to refer to God as Zeus, we would know that something non-Christian was going on. Likewise, when neo-pagans begin speaking of the 'Horned God,' this modification is not without significant theological impact, to put it mildly.

"Changes in the name of God, therefore, are truly great changes. . . . For example, to reject God the Father as a name is to deny the basic Christian creeds. It is to deny the language of baptism, and of course to deny the entire theology of the Trinity upon which Christianity and its theology have been constructed."

It was Jesus Himself, he notes, who specifically instructed us to refer to God as Father. "He expressed Himself in this language often, and with emphasis, in the Gospels, and it is clear that the notion of God as Father is a major new theological contribution of Jesus himself. This means that to deny the language of God as Father is to repudiate Jesus and his message. Therefore, whether one admits it or not, to do this is to reject Christianity."

Major publishing houses are now turning out "Bibles" in inclusive language, volumes which Prof. Vitz rejects as essentially fraudulent. However august their academic accreditations, they are not Christian and not Bibles. So how, you wonder, can the publishers defend themselves against such criticism?

The inclusive-language lobbiers have their answers ready. Jesus, they explain, was a product of his own era. His teaching must therefore be regarded as tainted by the flawed perceptions of those times.

Since he lived in a patriarchal society, he necessarily held at least some of the same unfortunate world views as his contemporaries. But we, beneficiaries of 20 centuries of progress, are not so handicapped. We can see things far more clearly and broadly than Jesus could, and we can serve him best by correcting his misapprehensions.

But there are two very dubious assumptions here. First: since our current view is more recent, it must be closer to the truth than Our Lord's. Today's thought, that is, must always represent an improvement on yesterday's thought. Every change must be an advance.

Second: since we know God loves all people, therefore we must all be equal. Therefore, we must all be the same. Therefore, maleness cannot impart qualities that femaleness does not. Therefore, by rejecting the masculine pronoun we make no significant change in our concept of the Deity.

Frankly, these assumptions do not seem all that self-evident to us. Indeed, they seem just plain wrong. We do not believe all change is for the better. We do not believe that the difference between male and female is entirely a matter of bias and biology. So we continue to pray: "Our Father . . . "

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When a killer kills, who's to blame?
Society, or maybe the man himself?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 1, 2001

Unless we all take responsibility for criminality and feel like abysmal failures, every time a Terrance Matthews appears, society will continue to churn out murderers, rapists and monsters. -- from a letter to the editor in the Vancouver Sun.

Terrance Matthews, 40, hanged himself in an Ontario jail after receiving a life sentence for rape. It was his sixth sexual assault in 16 years and it nearly cost the life of the victim. He committed this sixth offense 13 hours after being released from a 10-year sentence for the fifth, a sentence he had served in full without parole.

But Matthews is not to blame for these crimes, says the writer of this letter. Criminal behavior, she believes, is the result of adverse social conditions. Matthews had been sent to a succession of youth centers where he learned criminal ways, eventually becoming a chronic offender and rapist. Thus society, not Matthews, is responsible. Everyone should feel ``abysmal'' about this.

She is not alone in this view. It underlies much of our present educational system and our penology. Neither is it particularly new. It goes back at least to the 18th Century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who taught that man in his original state lived individually or in small groups like some animals. Then followed, according to Rousseau, a golden age when people came together communally and learned both good (in the forms of love, friendship, songs and dancing) and evil (in the form of jealousy, hatred and war). In a third and final stage they discovered iron and grain, which made necessary private property and eventually government.

Out of Rousseau's ideas, subsequent educators developed the thesis that man is corrupted by authoritarian societies organized to protect private property. To be successfully educated means restoring man to his natural inclinations, protecting him against coercion, and developing societies that do not thrust demands upon him.

Thus, Terrance Matthews was the victim of a grasping society. That society, not Matthews, is responsible.

Rousseau himself long attempted to reconcile these ideas with traditional Christianity, but his teachings were repudiated by Protestants and Catholics alike. The reasons are plain in the Vancouver Sun letter.

Certainly societies can do wrong. Our own century has accommodated the Ukrainian famine, the Nazi holocaust and the horrors in Cambodia. Our own society, too, can inflict suffering, and disregard suffering.

But to go from there to the conclusion that all human evil is social in origin, and that consequently the individual can somehow be exempted from all individual blame, is to reach a conclusion for which there is no supporting evidence. Indeed, in our own experience we find evidence to the contrary. In a fit of temper, we might hurt someone, or alarm them, or otherwise cause them pain. Are we to escape blame for this by attributing it all to something called ``society''? No one knows better than we ourselves that things could have been otherwise if we had willed it. Society had nothing whatever to do with it.

Even more important, if we ever do get into a frame of mind in which we blame society, or our unfortunate upbringing, or our bad genetic heritage, or assorted ``circumstances beyond our control,'' for our bad conduct, we lose all impulse to change. Who, after all, is ``society''? It's everybody in general, which is another way of saying nobody in particular. Social sins are comfortable sins in that no one person need repent of them. We should all feel abysmal, says this letter writer, but the truth is that we all won't.

Usually people who speak of the ``sins of society'' want us to vote in a certain way, sign a certain petition, or subscribe funds to a certain cause. It's inconvenient, perhaps, but nothing as inconvenient as repenting of personal sin, changing our way of life, giving up something we especially like, or taking on something we especially don't.

Most of us can do very little about changing the world. All of us can do one very specific thing about changing ourselves, if we really want to. Namely, asking God to make the change in us. He will do it, of course, but the catch is always in the really wanting Him to.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in February 1993.

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The blind rage that Christians often arouse
has two causes, one of them purely spiritual

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 25, 2001

Jesus told his followers that their faith in him would "scandalize" the world. They would arouse hatred, he said. They would be shunned by respectable society, and ostracized even by their own families. People said the Messiah would bring "peace on earth." This was not true, he warned. He came "not to bring peace, but a sword."

Now examine, in the light of this warning, a recent sports column in the Chicago Tribune. The writer described an incident that followed an NBA basketball game. As the players filed out, some members of the winning team gathered in the middle of the court for prayer. One of them invited the losing coach to join them.

The coach shook his head and said, "Not now." Whereupon the Christian player's face "hardened," writes the columnist. He called the coach "a jerk." Not very Christian, the columnist observes, and of course he's right -- if that's what actually happened.

Then he continues. "Among the most pitiful scenes in sports is to watch basketball players in prayer after games. What do you suppose many are praying for? That their drug tests come back clean, or the blood tests didn't show they were the father?"

But not all basketball players behave like this. He names others who are "good citizens, honest, respectful and considerate," and "you don't hear them offering you much advice on how to live your life." Implication: genuinely good people keep their religion to themselves; those who don't, the professing Christians, are probably on drugs or father illegitimate children.

"The obvious problem is that the teams are providing a forum for this with pre-game chapel meetings and post-game prayer sessions. What other companies do this? Just why are these things allowed in sports?" Notice the use of the word "allowed." The columnist wants basketball players forbidden from publicly expressing their faith.

"The history of religion in this country is grounded in respect for each individual's religious beliefs and private worship." Private worship? The American tradition protects "religious belief and worship." That word "private" he has quietly added on his own.

He closes on the same curious note. To prayers for the success of the team, he says, "maybe we can all say, 'Amen.' " Provided we do it "privately."

Now what needles this man is not Christianity per se. It's the public display of Christianity. What we do in private he does not quarrel with -- not yet, anyway. But we must not make it a public act. We must not parade it. We must keep it to ourselves, like the reputable basketball players do, not flaunt it like the disreputable ones.

He wants the state to back him up. He's ready to give this sentiment the force of law. Public prayer after the game ought not to be "allowed." It should be prohibited.

This would require a new law, which would in fact abrogate a fundamental democratic principle, the right of assembly. But he endows this suppression with a false aura. He's not inventing, he would insist, he's merely upholding tradition. The American way is to protect "private worship," he says, thereby concealing the fact that the American way protects public worship as well.

Surely we're not suggesting that beneath the benign mask of this well-intentioned, good-guy sports columnist there lurks the autocrat, the despot, the inquisitor, the suppressor of human liberty. As a matter of fact we are, though he'd be genuinely shocked to hear it, certainly never intended it, and would be appalled if such a law ever actually happened. He just gets irritated, he would say, when he sees these smug holier-than-thous out there grandstanding their purity.

Right. But if he looked into his own motives, or those of others who agree with him, he would find there are two reasons they respond as they do to public demonstrations of Christian belief.

One is strictly practical. Christians spread their faith by what they call "bearing witness." That's what the basketball players are doing. If along with it a genuine concern for other people is reflected, it can be very powerful. Calling others "jerks," of course, diminishes that possibility, but nevertheless Christians were told to bear witness to Christ, both privately and publicly.

Those who oppose Christianity -- and we should be quite clear that a great many of these are in the media, though they may not be conscious of it -- realize this. They therefore seek to keep the Christian faith locked up, to keep it "private."

The second reason is purely emotional, and that's the one driving this sportswriter. He has a contempt for these people. He wants them stopped, blocked, removed, taken from his sight, not "allowed" to do this. It infuriates him.

This is no doubt the sentiment that Christ foresaw his followers arousing. It was certainly the one he sometimes aroused himself. But "emotional" may be a poor word to describe it. "Spiritual" would be a better one, and not all the spirits are on the heavenly side.

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Sure, take Christianity out of the schools,
but then, what exactly do you have left?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 17, 2001

For the most part, Christians have come to accept the wisdom and justice of taking a particular religion (i.e., Christianity) out of the public schools. -- from an editorial in the Globe and Mail.

The Globe writes editorials on Canada's educational system at least 50 times a year. On 49 of those occasions it demands that ``standards'' be put back into the public schools. On the 50th, usually around Christmas, it demands that Christianity be taken out of the public schools.

This time the Globe was commending the Toronto school system for prohibiting the singing of anything religious at Christmas concerts. There must be no hymns, no carols. Songs about Santa Claus are fine, or about snow. References to Bethlehem, shepherds, wise men, Mary and Joseph are now forbidden by law.

While this may not be an ``easy transformation'' for some Christians, says the Globe, it is nevertheless the necessity of a ``pluralistic'' society. The schools must be de-Christianized, not only because many new immigrants are not Christian, but also because our society has otherwise changed. ``Secularism, feminism and the flourishing of different cultural ideas, orientation and lifestyles has occurred.''

Still, the Globe insists there must be ``standards'' in the schools. Obviously, an awful thought has not yet occurred to it. Perhaps you can't have the one without the other. As Christianity over the years was taken out of the public schools, academic standards began vanishing as well. The explanation is no mystery. When they lost their Christianity, they lost the only basis they ever had for their academics.

That's because there are other necessities of a ``pluralistic'' society that the Globe has not come to terms with. One of them is establishing any kind of public consensus on what education is supposed to be about.

The Globe, of course, adheres to the old classical Christian ideal that it's about learning skills, learning to think, and acquiring virtue. But that view has long since been abandoned by public educators who have come to see that mere skills -- reading, arithmetic, factual knowledge, etc. -- are not really what schools are for. Education has been transformed. Today it is about adjusting, about self-actualization, about self-esteem.

Now one perceives that for the Globe and Mail this has not been an ``easy transformation.'' It still seeks to impose the narrow educational view it derives from the past. It does not realize that as regards things like education, Canada has changed. Secularism, feminism and the flourishing of different cultural ideas, orientation and lifestyles have occurred. Standards? They vanished with the shepherds. Where there were three wise men, there are now none.

Christian schools know what they must teach and how they must teach it. They can speak of parental duty to children and children's duty to parents, and the duty of all to our neighbors and our country. They can pronounce a need to work, a need to think, a need to love, and a need to pray. They can speak of God-given talents, not to be buried. They can recommend discipline and recommend mercy. They can celebrate the arts, and glory in the language, and cherish nature as the gift of God. These things we knew we must teach when our schools were Christian.

But what do we teach now that our schools are ``pluralistic?'' Who is to say? Surely some things we might agree upon. Could we not perhaps teach children to earn a living, say? ``Aha,'' says the educator, ``so you would make our schools the tools of the industrial establishment, would you? Can you not see that technology is now abolishing work? We should be teaching our children how to use leisure.'' The problem is that to be pluralistic is to be nothing whatever. It is purely negative. It blocks the way; it does not point it.

For most Christians, of course, this is a resolved issue. We argued a century ago about whether to have public schools. Catholics and many Protestants held you couldn't divide education from religion. What you teach must ultimately depend on what you believe, they said. Christian children should be educated in Christian schools. More and more of us now see how right they were.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in February 1993.

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The man who planned a new world religion
loses his wife and is dogged by misfortune

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 10, 2001

In a cover story last August, the Report newsmagazine reported on the grandiose plans of media magnate Ted Turner to establish, through the United Nations, what purported to be a new world religion. Having bankrolled various UN projects to the tune of about $1 billion, he launched this one with a World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders.

Christians became understandably uneasy, since Mr. Turner habitually dismisses them as "Jesus freaks," contemptuously sneers at Pope John Paul II and calls him names, and has composed his own replacement for the Ten Commandments. Dismissing Christianity as a 2,000-year failure and utterly obsolete, he proposed a new faith based chiefly on environmental preservation.

That was nine months ago; much has since changed in the life of Ted Turner. By fall he lost effective control of his greatest pride, the CNN news channel, as well as Turner Broadcasting and a dozen other media organizations. When Time Warner and AOL merged, he said, he was "fired."

But that was not all. His third wife, Jane Fonda, became a Christian and left him after eight years of marriage. Both say they still love each other, although she professes to have her doubts about his idea of love. A 20-page New Yorker article on Mr. Turner's problems quotes her as observing: "He needs someone to be there one hundred per cent of the time. He thinks that's love. It is not love. It's baby-sitting."

Then he smashed his foot in a skiing accident. His cherished Black Labrador was briefly paralyzed with coonhound disease. Two grandchildren were diagnosed as having a sometimes fatal enzyme disorder. His back hurt so much he was persuaded he needed surgery. Mr. Turner did not suffer silently. He felt like committing suicide, he said, as his father had done after a business failure. Before a large Harvard audience he rambled incoherently on, says the New Yorker, then "seemed to lapse into self-pity. 'I'm just trying to do the best I can,' he said."

He "raced from subject to subject -- how as a youth he had been rejected by Harvard, and how he had given Jane Fonda a hundred million dollars, and how, just recently, she bestowed more than twelve million of that on Harvard for the study of gender education, and how he wasn't a journalist but had related to the species since he sold newspapers as a boy," and on, and on. One graduate student assumed he was drunk.

To suggestions that he follow the example of Henry Ford and use his billions to establish a foundation for the good of mankind, he replied: "I am. No other individual in the world is giving as much to the poor world as I am. I'm spending fifty million dollars in the United States, mostly on environmental and family planning causes. Ahhhhhhhhh . . . I mean, family planning is under attack. You know, pro-lifers have got control of the White House. Roe vs. Wade is hanging by a thread. A woman's right to choose -- they want to take it away. We're fighting global warming."

When he was told that the Bush administration had abandoned plans for mandatory reduction targets for carbon monoxide emissions, he seemed to take it personally. "That's heart-breaking news," he said. "I mean, I can't take any more bad news. I've lost my job and my wife."

All of which seems to evidence the disintegration of a brilliant human being, no doubt a well-intentioned one. But it was the marriage breakup that seemed to hit him hardest, something which he attributed directly to his wife's conversion to Christianity.

"I had absolutely no warning about it," he complained. "She didn't tell me she was thinking about doing it. She just came home and said, 'I've become a Christian.' Before that, she was not a religious person. . . . That's a shock. I mean, normally that's the kind of thing your wife or husband would discuss with you before they did it, or while they were thinking about it."

To which Ms. Fonda replies: "My becoming a Christian upset him very much. He's my husband and I chose not to discuss it with him -- because he would have talked me out of it. He's a debating champion."

She is not persuaded, however, of his avowed atheism. She thinks he has a guilty conscience: "He went much further than his father thought he would. So what's left? To be a good guy. He knows he won't go down in history as a greedy corporate mogul. Although he claims to be an atheist, at the end of every speech he says,'God bless you.' He wants to get into heaven."

Mr. Turner may indeed be showing symptoms displayed by many converts; the turn to the faith is often preceded by an increasingly virulent attack on it. And so the Christians he so vociferously despises should, as an ancient liturgy directs, "Pray for the soul of Ted Turner."

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Christ was no harmless simpleton:
he used state-of-the-art communication

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 3, 2001

``Jesus wouldn't have much use for television if He were around today.'' -- Rev. John Hagman, president of the Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario Conference of the United Church of Canada, testifying before the Canadian Radio-Telephone and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

The CRTC was considering the application of several Christian groups, both Protestant and Catholic, to use for religious broadcasting some of the scores of channels now opening in the upper ranges of the television dial.

Unlike the United States, Canada bans religious television, except on a single channel. Mr. Hagman wanted the ban continued.

Jesus, he said, would have eschewed the theatrics of modern television evangelism. He concentrated his efforts in Palestine, a ``backwater'' of the Roman empire, rather than travel to Rome and appear before the vast crowds. A simple man, Jesus ``walked with the people,'' he said.

This image of the gentle preacher of Galilee who ``walked with the people'' and shunned the limelight is currently popular, but is it really the picture that emerges from the New Testament record?

Certainly, when Jesus was in the Roman province of Galilee, north of Jerusalem, much of his work seems to have been ``one on one.'' Many stories are told of how he met the situations with which individual people confronted him. Such crowds as he addressed would have been relatively small local congregations.

But when he ``went up to Jerusalem'' a very different set of circumstances obtained. (Three of the four New Testament books on his life -- Matthew, Mark and Luke -- record one trip to Jerusalem. The fourth, John, which is far more personally detailed and intimate, recounts two earlier visits as well.)

In Jerusalem, he was at the center of the Jewish world. Jerusalem mattered (and still matters) far more to a Jew than Rome ever could. Thus when Jesus went to Jerusalem he was at the top, and preaching in the temple there meant preaching to the world.

The ``services'' in the temple were not like those in a modern cathedral. The preacher was subject to questioning, indeed heckling, from the crowd. The confrontations could become violent, because beliefs were held fiercely. It called for a quick mind, a vast knowledge of the Talmud, and an ability to state a case in terse, lucid, captivating language -- all aptitudes required of the modern television debater.

And He was certainly equal to this demand. Consider just two of the scenes that are given:

Who, he is asked, shall be greatest in this kingdom he speaks of? It's a trap. If he answers that he who obeys best the letter of God's law, the Pharisaic party will applaud him because they are dedicated to diligently legalistic observance, but the other parties will all jeer and boo. If he says he who is faithful in attending the temple sacrifices, the Sadducees will applaud because they run the temple services, but the Pharisees will boo. If he says that he himself will be greatest, they'll all boo and probably throw things at him. Instead, he took a child from its mother's arms and held the child high. He who has the honesty, humility and eagerness of a child, he says, will be greatest in the kingdom. Among the common people, the answer is a sensation. The trap has failed.

Then comes an even tougher question. Should a loyal Jew pay taxes to Caesar? If he says yes, he will demonstrate himself a quisling, easily sacrificing Jewish autonomy to ingratiate the occupying Roman power. If he says no, that people should refuse to pay their taxes, he would be arrested. His answer was this: ``Show me the tribute money. Whose inscription do you see on there? Caesar's. Therefore, give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.'' It was a shrewd and calculated response, but it left no doubt as to its meaning. Let this world's powers have the things of this world, but what belongs to God is yourself. Give Him that.

So surely our answer is this: In his generation, Christ used state-of-the-art methods of communication, and used them with superb skill. It's up to us to do the same. That's what these evangelical and Catholic groups want to be able to do. Pray God they can.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in January 1993.

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A leading Bible scholar learns a lesson
about the people who work in the media

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
April 26, 2001

British television this season has finally made the discovery that American television made last year, notably that religion, especially the Christian religion, is a highly attractive subject for millions of viewers.

A two-part ABC series last year and a three-part CBS series on Jesus astonished the producers by the enormous audiences they attracted. Christian books, once banned from the New York Times best-seller list because the Times did not consider them "literature," now appear on the list and often run high.

This season the BBC has produced a three-part documentary entitled Son of God, while another British network is launching a 10-part series called The Apostles.

These television endeavors have one thing in common: they are dismally unsatisfactory to almost all practicing Christians. They generally bill themselves as "controversial," which means they try to say something new about Jesus. But there isn't anything new to say, so they trot out the time-worn trumperies of the past -- Jesus the social reformer, Jesus the freedom fighter, Jesus the fierce opponent of religious institutionalism, Jesus the quintessential Nice Guy who is incomprehensibly crucified because of those nasty Romans.

(The Romans, not having been around for the last 1,500 years, can't easily defend themselves. The Jews, on the other hand, are very capable indeed of defending themselves, as the producers well know. So the Romans make a safe target and always get the blame. Christianity, we might note, blames neither the Romans nor the Jews for Christ's execution, but human nature itself, a disability shared by all of us, individually and collectively.)

Christians therefore regard suspiciously these media ventures into their faith. One Christian who was given grave cause to discover why they do was Canon Tom Wright, eminent defender of the faith in the world of biblical scholarship. Canon Wright acted as a consultant on the new BBC series, and when he saw it was horrified to discover they had ignored almost everything he had recommended.

The series paints an essentially political Jesus, he said. "While there was plenty wrong with the wealthy and oppressive aristocracy, his movement was far more than a center-left protest march. Jesus was saying that God's new day was dawning, and that now everything was going to be different. Unfortunately, the BBC didn't want to know about that. Their audience wouldn't understand it, they said. But without it, they won't understand the rest either."

What Canon Wright himself did not understand, unhappily, was the attitude towards Christianity of the media people he was dealing with. Having ourselves been media people for the last half century, we know something about this, and offer the following points about entrenched media attitudes on Christianity:

1. The percentage of media people who believe Christianity true and go to church is something less than five. In a count of one western Canadian newsroom that employs about 120 people, three were church attenders. Even this is a little on the high side, we suspect.

2. Though they say they have read the Bible, and no doubt think they have, few have actually done it. Those who tried opened the New Testament beginning with Matthew and gave up before they finished the "begats." (They did not, incidently, ever actually discover what "begat" means, and it's just as well. They think it means "gave birth to." If they discovered it means "became the father of," they would be glad to have abandoned such a sexist document.)

3. They do not believe in "sin." They have a fairly clear idea of what the word means, but they assume that modern psychology has rendered it obsolete. They assume human conduct is entirely determined by our genetic heritage and the societal and familial conditions in which we were raised. So what we do is beyond our control and we can't be held responsible for it. Thus the statement "Christ died for our sins" is incomprehensible to them.

4. They do not believe in objective truth. Things can be "true for me" or "true for you," but nothing can be "true for everybody." The assertion of such a phenomenon they regard as "bigotry." Similarly, they do not believe in what they call "moral absolutes." Each person must make up his own morality, and any suggestion that certain forms of behavior are simply wrong will represent "intolerance" or "hate." (The implication that "hate" and "intolerance" must therefore be objectively wrong is a difficulty they have not considered. If you point it out, they will say you are "playing mind games.")

5. They know almost no history. What they do know is a collection of terms. They are certain, for instance, that "the Crusades" and "the Inquisition" were bad things, though they could not state when, where and precisely what they were.

These, then, are the assumptions of the people who write most newspaper articles and make most television programs, and that's why their work turns out as it does. Canon Wright now knows this. So should the rest of us.

What ordinary Christians understand
that the media never do quite grasp

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
April 19, 2001

Antonella Milani said she thinks it's a shame that a bishop should be involved in such a scandal, but she cautioned people not to tar the entire priesthood with the same brush. __ From a report in the Vancouver Sun on the trial of Bishop Hubert O'Connor on a charge of sexually assaulting a young woman in a church school.

Ms. Milani is quoted as a Christian layman who was asked for her reaction to the trial of Bishop O'Connor. The comments of other church members were similarly balanced. ``We should never expect saints in human beings,'' said another, meaning of course that even the saints aren't ``saintly.'' Indeed, no people are more conscious of their frailty than the great saints of Christendom. When they speak of their sins, they are not indulging in false humility. They mean it and they're right.

``Men err as much as they want, but God will always be the same,'' says another church member. And still another comments: ``People recognize that possibility [of scandal in high places] and they don't hold it against the person. They recognize that everyone is weak.�

The reaction of these Christian people is significant, Only one implied that the case had weakened her allegiance to the church. Indeed, much the same steadfastness was evidenced by Protestant lay people after the frailties of two much-publicized television evangelists, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert, were loudly made public.

The damage, in other words, is not so much to the faithful as it is to those who are considering Christianity. They simply do not expect people in senior positions to behave like this.

And yet, if you stop to think about it, errant behavior among senior clergymen can hardly be considered novel. In fact, there was one significant occasion in Christian history when an obviously weak and undependable man was preferred for high office over another whose loyalty was unshakeable.

The man chosen had repeatedly demonstrated his undependability. He had questioned the wisdom of his superior, repeatedly denied his faith when threatened with arrest, even opposed mission work among foreign people because it might cause scandal. He seemed, indeed, a hopeless prospect.

The other candidate, by contrast, plainly had a far deeper understanding of Christianity and remained loyal under the immediate threat of arrest and probable death.

Now the name of the first, as you have probably by now guessed, was St. Peter, and the name of the second was St. John. And yet Christ chose not John but Peter as the ``rock'' upon which the church would be built. Peter was a liar and a coward, and this kind of conduct did not end with his denial of Christ during the crucifixion after which he ``wept bitterly.'' It continued during the years when the church was formed when he resisted St. Paul's mission to the Gentiles.

Even many years later, according to one church legend, Peter fled from Rome rather than face execution. But he met Christ on the road, hurrying toward the city. ``Quo vadis, Domine?'' asked Peter. (``Where are you going, Lord?'') Christ replied that he was on his way to Rome to be crucified in Peter's place. Chagrined, Peter returned to Rome and suffered the death that Christ had foretold for him many years before.

But why choose this obviously undependable man over St. John who stood by Christ at Calvary, whatever the risks, right to the end?

The answer is probably this: There are very few Johns in the world, but there are any number of Peters. He is the rock of the earth, the common man. Upon him, not upon paragons like St. John, must the church be built. The media may not understand this, but the lay people at Vancouver plainly do. They had a certain understanding for Bishop O'Connor, not because they know him, but because they know themselves and they know Christ.

``Peter is the stone,'' wrote Dorothy L. Sayers, ``wherein the world was made. So stands the church, stone upon stone, and Christ the corner-stone, carved of the same stuff, common flesh and blood, with you and me and Peter. And He can, being the alchemist's stone, the stone of Solomon, turn stone to gold, and purge the gold itself from dross, till all is gold.''

That is His promise.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in January 1993.

Surely religious skepticism can offer us
something better than this brand of atheism

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
April 12, 2001

Much has been written of late on the decline of Christianity -- receding church attendance, the dubious quality (though soaring sales) of end-times novels, the bizarre speculations of the "Jesus Seminar," and so on. Something else, however, goes unobserved, and that is the dismal performance of the other side. Religious skepticism is in an even worse case. Instead of the formidable scorn of the Shaws and the Wellses, we're reduced, in Canada anyway, to the asininities of the Globe and Mail, whose latest champion of doubt writes under the curious name of "Spider Robinson."

Maybe, for all we know, it isn't a pseudonym. Maybe his parents actually called him that, honoring perhaps a revered old aunt, the Black Widow, who spent a lifetime mourning a long-lost husband. More probably he chose the name himself. Jackie Parker used to be known as "Spaghetti Legs," but he never wrote under it. Anyway, it's difficult to respond to a column written by somebody named Spider. What do you write? Spider says this and Spider is wrong? The reader is distracted. If there actually is somebody named Spider, he reasons, how could it matter what he says?

Well it does matter. The man wants to be taken seriously, whatever his name. So we shall. Last month in Canada's "national newspaper" he makes the following points:

1."We in the western world believe in the separation of church and state. It is an article of faith with us." 2. "We know, because we read history, that governments based on a particular religion are invariably corrupt, oppressive, and worst of all incompetent." 3. "Faith has consistently proven a horrible way to decide public policy." 4. That's why "we look with contempt upon nations too backward to grasp this" -- like the fundamentalist Islamic government of Afghanistan, which has banned photography, outlawed television and severely restricted the rights of women.

5. However, we in Canada last month witnessed a persecution that ought to have raised "a similar fuss" and didn't, notably the announcement of Calgary Bishop Frederick Henry that Conservative leader Joe Clark will not be allowed to speak in Catholic schools because he supports "the current law of the land," meaning the law that permits the killing of unborn children. 6. "My understanding is that Bishop Henry does not, in fact, speak for the Catholic Church which does not forbid a man to follow the dictates of his own conscience." 7. "In one stroke Bishop Henry set his church back at least 40 years."

Spider confessed himself particularly aggrieved because the victim of the bishop's persecution was Joe Clark--"the most honorable man in Canada, one of the very few elected officials since Pierre Trudeau of whom we need not be ashamed, has been publicly slagged by someone who purports to be a moral authority. For what? For having a mind and conscience of his own, and the temerity to use them."

Taking his points one at a time, we may note: 1. Not all countries in the western world subscribe to the separation of church and state. One exception is a country called Canada. The existence of a state-supported Catholic school system evidences this. 2. The country with the greatest cultural, social and political influence in modern history is Great Britain, which gave most of the world representative democracy. The government of Great Britain is founded on the Christian religion. 3. Faith was the basis of the establishment of the first universities, of our public welfare system, of our hospitals and medical services, and of its concept of equality before the law. Faith abolished slavery. Faith founded our concept of universal education. 4. That we "look with contempt" on non-Christian nations is probably true, but regrettable. We might note, however, that people from nations that did not emerge from Christianity seem remarkably keen to migrate to those that did.

5. Joe Clark was not repudiated by the Bishop of Calgary "because he supports the current law of the land," but because he refuses to amend that law to prohibit the killing of unborn children. 6. Bishop Henry very definitely spoke for the Catholic Church, whose rules say that anyone who has, performs or in any way assists an abortion automatically excommunicates himself. 7. Let us indeed hope that Bishop Henry set his church back 40 years. In that 40 years it has been in steady retreat, chiefly because its bishops constantly bewildered the faithful with their acquiescence in the moral and cultural decline. Going back 40 years is therefore an advance.

Whether Joe Clark merits the encomium Spider bestows upon him is debatable. One thing is certain. The church, not the politicians, sets the church's rules. If Mr. Clark supports abortion, that's certainly his right, but it involves leaving the church. To remain in it is to mock it. The man who does merit such an accolade is Bishop Henry, for formally divorcing his church from the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. This, in our opinion, took far more courage than anything we've ever seen from Joe Clark.

A cardinal in trouble for daring
to suggest evil acts intelligently

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
March 29, 2001

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do.

The Christians are in trouble with the liberals again. A Catholic cardinal has dared to set forth a list of 10 rules for resisting the temptations offered by the Devil. Archbishop Dionigi Tettamanzi of Genoa, a contender to succeed Pope John Paul II, published his rules in his Lenten letter. The Devil, he said, is charming, shrewd and very real.

That, in fact, is Rule 1. "Do not forget that the Devil exists." Rule 2: "Do not forget that the Devil is a tempter." Rule 3: "Do not forget that the Devil is very intelligent and astute." The other rules recommended vigilant prayer, the adoring of God, reading God's word and so on.

His Rule 10 was especially offensive to the liberals: "Be humble and love mortification," a word so seldom heard today it needs explanation. It means deliberately denying physical cravings as a spiritual discipline. No, you do not really need that second helping, or that glass of wine, or that extra hour in bed, or whatever.

What particularly annoyed the Theological Studies Center in Milan, which is not part of the Catholic Church, was the cardinal's raising the spectre of diabolical machinations "rather than human evil." The center declared: "The cardinal was reaching back into the Middle Ages and ignoring scientific advances in psychology. To attribute guilt to the Devil could encourage people to be irresponsible. In the past the church exploited Satan to persecute heretics and cultural minorities such as gays."

Which of course raises the question of the nature of evil itself. The liberals have problems here. On the one hand they deplore the concept of human "guilt," assuring us that what we call misbehavior is properly blamed on our social and genetic heritage. No one, in other words, should be "guilty" of anything. No one can "sin."

But on the other hand, this exemption from guilt is distributed with notable favoritism. Reprieve is urged for the murderer, but rarely for anyone who, say, questions the acceptability of sodomy, or would deny a woman the right to abort an unborn child. This evidences intolerance, and intolerance is, well, intolerable. It's just plain bad.

But Christians have always contended that evil acts intelligently, that it's not a "blind force," but an altogether perceptive and wily one. Some of the thoughts that run through our minds, they say, do not originate with ourselves, but are put there. We are whispered to. The contention that there is no material evidence for this is probably true. But then there is no such evidence for thought itself.

The cardinal, we're told, "is ignoring scientific advances in psychology." What scientific advances these might be we are left to wonder. A senior devil in C.S. Lewis's brilliant The Screwtape Letters offers diabolical advice on how to bring a human soul safely down to hell: "Let him read no science, but give him a grand general idea that he knows it all, and that everything that he has happened to pick up in casual talk is 'the results of modern investigation.' " Perhaps, in other words, the cardinal might make a rule or two for the Theological Studies Center.

Lewis himself was thoroughly convinced as to the reality of the Devil. So too was G.K. Chesterton, whose poem, "The Aristocrat," quoted above, concludes:

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place at What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse forever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains forever and April comes no more,
Where the splendor of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark;
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman and doesn't keep his word.

Even if most of his facts are wrong
should we doubt a man's competence?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
March 22, 2001

``Methodius was a ninth-century Thessalonian monk who upset the Vatican by saying mass in Slavonic, a language whose alphabet his brother Cyril is reputed to have devised. His other claim to fame is that he wrote an awful biography of the fourth-century bishop St. Nicholas.'' -- Jack Kapica, religious editor of the Globe and Mail, in an article on St. Nicholas.

To Christians of Slavic origin the names Cyril and Methodius have a mystical ring, and with good historical reason. The brothers are revered in church history as the great missioners to the Slavic peoples.

Since these peoples today compose the populations of most of the Balkans, of Poland, Ukraine and Russia, since Christianity in Poland played such a key role in emancipating the country from Soviet Communism, and since the Eastern Orthodox Church all over the world is now experiencing an amazing renaissance, we are still seeing the fruition of the labors of Cyril and Methodius.

It seemed therefore appalling to have the brothers dismissed in this curiously cavalier fashion. We thought it might be good to find out something more substantial about Cyril and Methodius. (No offense to Mr. Kapica). Who exactly were these brothers?

They were certainly 9th Century monks from Thessalon. To say that Cyril ``is reputed to have devised the Slavic alphabet'' -- it's called, of course, Cyrillic -- is like saying John A. Macdonald ``is reputed to have been'' the prime minister of Canada at the time of Confederation, or that Washington, D.C., ``is reputed to be'' the capital of the United States.

In other words, there is no doubt whatever about it. In providing the wild Slavic peoples with a means of writing, Cyril made possible their literature and the preservation of their culture.

He and his brother learned the Slav languages after the patriarch of Constantinople sent them as missionaries to the Slavic peoples in 863. Christianity spread rapidly among the Slavs because the brothers preached and said the mass in the Slavic languages. When some of the German princes objected, insisting they use Latin, Pope Adrian II summoned the brothers to Rome, heard their case for a Slavonic mass, and strongly supported them.

Cyril died in Rome. But Methodius returned to the Slavs, where he was brutally treated by the German clergy for insisting upon the Slavonic mass. He again appealed to Rome where the new pope, John VIII, again strongly supported Slavonic.

By now the influence of the two brothers was spreading rapidly among all the western Slavic tribes. The peoples of Moravia and Bulgaria owe their Christianity directly to the two brothers. In the liturgy of the church in Poland they are recognized as the apostles of Poland. ``The posthumous influence of Cyril and Methodius,'' says the Encyclopedia Britannica, ``reached distant Kiev in Russia and left traces among the Slavs of Bohemia and Poland.''

After both were dead, a subsequent pope, Stephen V, forbade the use of the Slavic liturgy. However, his ruling was later reversed. As every eastern Christian knows, in both the Uniat Church (which recognizes the Vatican) and the Orthodox church (which does not), the mass has been said for a thousand years in the language of Slavic peoples.

One thing, however, neither Cyril nor Methodius did do, and that's write a biography of St. Nicholas. How, we wondered, could Mr. Kapica possibly have come up with that idea?

Then we figured it out. Another Methodius was patriarch of Constantinople and a prolific writer, but only two of his works survive, one of them a pair of sermons on St. Nicholas. These, we presume, must be the ``awful biography'' referred to by Mr. Kapica, as one of the two ``claims to fame'' of St. Methodius, the second being that Cyril was his brother.

Now would it be uncharitable to reach any conclusions from this on the competence of Mr. Kapica? Surely not. True, in his account of Methodius and the pope, he got the wrong Methodius and the wrong popes, and rather under-represented the work of the right Methodius. But no doubt he meant well.

However, two conclusions we might legitimately reach. One is that Christian history is fascinating. The other is that there are better places to find out about it than the Globe and Mail.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in January 1993.

Here begins a $30-million project whose aim
is to produce dangerously informed people

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
March 15, 2001

We ask readers of this column to forgive the departure from its usual format so that we can recount something that has been preoccupying us personally for 18 years. Since it bears directly on Christian "orthodoxy," we felt this the proper place to explain it.

We are about to set in motion the publication of a 19-volume history of Christianity. It is being undertaken as a business enterprise because that's the only way funding can be found. It will cost -- counting editorial, printing and marketing expenses -- nearly $30 million.

Its initial capitalization, just under $4 million, has now been raised, most of it from the Alberta oil patch, never renowned for its religiosity. (However, this indifference to "First Things" among supposedly crass entrepreneurs we have discovered to be pure fake. People who often live on the razor's edge between boundless affluence and total ruin tend to resort to prayer.)

The five-year project will involve about 30 writers, most of them Americans, all Christians, and nearly all journalists. It will also involve a team of historians to assure it's academically sound, and some of the most accomplished artists in the United States who will produce 800 works of original illustrative art. It will be pre-eminently a "people history," running from Pentecost to the 20th century. Denominational differences will be explained, but not resolved. The reader can do that.

The books will be telemarketed throughout North America on the mailing lists of Christian publications. Editions in other languages will follow. The books will also become the basis of a series of videos, and of a Christian history course for home-schoolers and educational institutions. All of this will be directed from Edmonton.

Why Edmonton? Because we live here, and the idea for the series came from us -- or, more accurately, to us. "Are you saying," scoffs the skeptic, "that God told you do this?" Well, yes, let's face it, that's what we are saying.

It happened like this. In the early '80s, about 10 years after we founded our magazine, it was already evident that much of what we were writing was distinctly negative. That is, as society moved ever farther away from its Christian origins, the general news media moved with it, making our publication increasingly different, finally radically different.

We vigorously objected to the changes we saw going on around us. We deplored this; we were appalled at that. Abortion, sexual libertinism, collapsing educational standards, the repudiation of reason and objective truth, increasing reliance on government, zooming taxes and governmental debt. We fought them all and we constantly lost.

Yet this negativity was absolutely essential. If nothing else, it slowed down the process of disintegration. But you couldn't win with negatives. It was always a retreat. We needed to find how to advance.

This column was one of the consequences of that thought process. "Why don't you do a column on Christianity?" said an old friend, Ralph Hedlin. We then realized we could use the frequently asinine assertions about Christianity in the news media as an opportunity to make the Christian case, and that case would be positive. Thus began "Orthodoxy," a name we pinched from the title of G.K. Chesterton's wonderful book.

But we saw a far greater opportunity in the field of history. The modern educator had abandoned it. He didn't teach it, and for a reason. His goal was the "socially adjusted" citizen. "Adjusted" meant brainwashed, captive to the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. By discovering the viewpoint of the past, the student acquires a different perspective on the present. Different and therefore dangerous. That's why in the Orwellian state it was against the law to teach history.

So we began 18 years ago to undertake the project, and we rapidly failed. For one thing, we found two people couldn't possibly do it alone. For another, the recession hit Alberta and we had to find a new stream of revenue for the magazine. We found it in our "Alberta in the 20th Century" history series, now publishing the ninth of 12 projected volumes. The series became a major money-earner and saved the company.

It taught us something else. All journalists write in essentially the same way. That's why they can move easily from one newspaper to another. Therefore a team of them can turn out one book, each doing a chapter, and preserve a consistent literary style. Journalism, after all, is history, the history of yesterday. We found we had developed the publishing formula that would make the Christian project possible.

The history of Christianity, we know, includes some dark pages and they must be disclosed as such. But it includes far more bright ones. It includes people, thousands of them, of astonishing goodness. "Let your light so shine before men," they were told, and so they did. Down through the centuries it shines, lighting even our dismal age with a brightness which, we suspect, will change many hearts and the direction of many lives.

Please pray, therefore, for the Christian Millennial History Project.

It's funny how the New Morality
is just disjointed bits of the Old

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
March 8, 2001

I would suggest that two basic virtues be added, namely tolerance and compromise. -- from a letter to the editor of the Vancouver Sun signed by Glenn Hardie.

We have heard much in the last 20 years about a ``New Morality.'' But the more you look at the New Morality the more obvious it becomes that it is drawn from, and therefore depends entirely for its validity upon, the Old Morality.

It carves out elements from the Old Morality and asserts these as dominant, meanwhile declaring that other aspects of the Old Morality may be disregarded.

It commands us, for instance, to strive for ``social justice.'' And what, we might ask, constrains us to care about justice at all, social or otherwise? Simply that justice is in itself right -- period. There can be no other reason. In other words, it's part of the Old Morality.

But the New Morality simultaneously assures us we can indulge in ``free love,'' ignoring the Old Morality's insistence upon sexual limits.

But if the only credential social justice can produce is the Old Morality, how can we consider this part of it crucially infallible, and other parts casually disposable? How can we lean on it one minute and throw it out the next?

There is a similar weakness in the suggestion that ``tolerance'' and ``compromise'' be set forth as ``virtues.''

A virtue is a quality of character considered good. Christianity recognizes four ``cardinal'' virtues inherited from the Greek culture (fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence), and three theological virtues, inherited from Judaism (faith, hope and charity, the latter sometimes translated as ``love.'') You'll notice they are not so much about what we do, as about what we are.

Mr. Hardie offers ``tolerance'' and ``compromise'' as qualities of the same order. But are they? Is tolerance necessarily a good quality? He no doubt has in mind toleration of such things as different races, religions, lifestyles and forms of sexual conduct. Accepting these variations, he would say, is virtuous.

And no doubt it sometimes is. But consider this example. Last week the German government banned the singing of Nazi songs. That was intolerant -- but was it wrong? If we see a gang of hoodlums beating up a homosexual, should we tolerate that? What about a man who slugs his wife, or has sex with a child? Is toleration called for?

In short, tolerance is often right -- and often wrong, in fact actively sinful. The same is true of ``compromise.'' In the 1930s, the Allies repeatedly compromised with the German government, until it became powerful enough to declare war and very nearly win. Was this virtuous? If a man insists upon sex with children, what does compromise recommend? That he be limited to one or two kids? Obviously what is often needed is an uncompromising and singularly intolerant attitude.

The same is not true of the Christian virtues, however. Prudence, for instance, means ``using your head,'' thinking a thing out. Are there occasions when it's wrong to think something out? Justice means fairness. Are there frequent occasions when being unfair is virtuous? Fortitude means having courage. Is being gutless ever an admirable human quality? Temperance (usually applied to physical appetites and behavior) means going the right length and no farther. Are there times when going the wrong length would be right? It's hard to imagine.

So too with the theological virtues. Is faithlessness sometimes good? Or despair, the opposite of hope? Charity is the quality of having real concern for people. Are there times when we oughtn't to give a damn about them?

Tolerance and compromise are not in themselves virtuous. They may be, or they may not be. And we can only discover which way to go -- whether to tolerate or not tolerate, compromise or not compromise -- by bringing in the other virtues, the real ones. Is what we are being asked to tolerate just? Would tolerating it be prudent? Is it the courageous thing to do? Is it excessive or intemperate? Is this what we would do if we really cared about the people involved?

Once again, the Old Morality is the only one there is, or ever could be. And most of our problems arise, not because we haven't invented a new morality, but because we have not heeded the old one.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in December 1992.

We find the idea of 'divine retribution'
outrageous because we fear it may be true

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
March 1, 2001

A cabinet minister in the Congress Party government of the Indian state of Karnataka has had to resign, because he claimed that the devastating January earthquake in India was the result of violent persecution of Christians by Hindu extremists. He described the disaster as "divine retribution."

Hard-line Hindu groups had for some time been destroying churches and attacking missionaries in the north Indian state of Gujarat, ruled by the radical Hindu BJP party. Quake casualties in Gujarat when the remark was made stood at 7,100, and were expected to reach 20,000. "Injustice was done to our people. For this, God has punished them," observed T. John, minister of civil aviation in the South Indian state of Karnataka, addressing a function organized by Christians. Mr. John's remarks were broadcast on local television and an uproar followed. The Karnataka wing of the BJP demanded that he be fired, ousted by the Congress Party, impeached as a member and criminally charged. He resigned, and his premier said that would suffice.

These violent objections were both predictable and entirely understandable, but such hostility does not occur because people believe the statement unlikely, or absurd or preposterous. What actually unnerves them is the cold fear that it really is true.

For months the persecution of Christians in India had been filtering into Western newspapers: people driven from their homes, fired from their jobs, jailed, tortured and killed. All this would sit uneasily on the minds and consciences of both the people doing the persecuting and of bystanders. Some victims would have prayed for the mercy of God. Others, unable to follow Christ's directive that we are to love and forgive our enemies, may have levied imprecations on their tormentors in the fierce tradition of the Old Testament: "God will smite you!"

Then suddenly one day, the unthinkable occurs. The ground shakes alarmingly, huge buildings shudder and crash, fires break out, and amidst the dust and debris the trapped and maimed cry for help. When the dust settles, and the grim search for the dead begins, the bereaved find the crushed bodies of their loved ones. Thousands of human beings contemplate a desolate world and a desolate future. Then in another city far to the south an incautious politician speaks the thought that is haunting many minds, yet few dare speak aloud.

An incomprehensible act of nature is bad enough, but what if it really is God himself expressing disapproval? We are not reduced to rage or horror by this notion because we believe it false, secure in the scientific knowledge that there is no known connection between the movement of the world's tectonic plates and whatever Intelligence lies behind nature. No indeed; the horror comes with that fear of the numinous which asks, "Was this really all mere coincidence? Or was there a connection? Have we brought it upon ourselves?"

The very suggestion seems so unfair, so opportunistic, so downright callous -- and so dangerous to a political cause. If the state that elected a BJP government suffers 20,000 casualties, what then? Fire the man who made the connection, oust him from the legislature, throw him in jail. The reaction is altogether understandable.

Here in North America we have an instructive parallel. Confident in the wisdom of the technological age, our society diligently strove for most of the past century to amend the age-old rules of sexual conduct. We did not invent the sexual libertine, of course; he is as old as humanity. Our great "reform" was in what we regarded as "acceptable." Cohabitation outside marriage was first openly practiced, and then more or less accepted, until it became if not the norm at least the predictable. Abortion stopped being a crime and became a human right. Licentious literature became required reading. Bawdy music moved from the stag party to the hit parade. Pornography became art.

The greatest change of all concerned homosexuality, where society has done a total about-face. Where it was once an offense to practice sodomy, it now became an offense to criticize it. God will not tolerate this, some warned -- but they could be dismissed. They were so clearly piteous souls: hidebound, repressed, out of touch.

But then one day medical science recognized a new disease, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, from which tens of thousands of North Americans have since died horrible deaths. Could this be "divine retribution?" Some said so, thereby provoking rage just as Mr. John's earthquake comment did, and for the same reason: not from conviction they were wrong, but from dread that they were right.

Unlike earthquakes, of course, the AIDS connection between cause and consequence was soon known. The disease is introduced to the blood, frequently through intermingling of what are delicately referred to as "bodily fluids." The old prohibition against sodomy spelled out in the Bible acquired the validation of medical science as well, which lent to it an eerie authority. No wonder the response was such furious outrage.

Was Jesus a social activist?
Not according to the record

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 22, 2001

``As a Christian I practice a religion whose central figure is a man who was arrested and executed for peacefully and non-violently struggling against the unjust economic and social structures of his time.'' -- Susan Watson, described as a ``Catholic lay missionary,'' in asking for a suspended sentence as a Clayoquot Sound logging protester.

Whether Ms. Watson or any of the other logging protesters should have been sent to jail it is not the business of this column to discuss. However, her portrayal of the ``central figure'' of Christianity as a prior-day social activist is worth examining. Many people have certainly embraced it, but does it accord with the only historical accounts of what Jesus Christ said and did?

These accounts are the four gospels of the New Testament, and the facts they disclose of their ``central figure'' do not at all fit Ms. Watson's description of him. For example:

Why was Christ arrested? There were various charges against him. He had broken the rules concerning the sabbath day, contending that it was made to serve mankind, not so that mankind could serve it. He had also broken the rules for fasting, and declared that no one need fast while he was there. He had damaged public property -- there was one celebrated incident when a tree was damaged to demonstrate the point of a story, and another in which a herd of pigs were driven mad. He was also accused of making extravagant and seemingly seditious statements, such as a claim that he could destroy the Jewish temple and rebuild it in three days. (Only later did his followers realized that he was referring to his own body.)

Was he executed on these charges? No, he was not. According to the record, the charges would not stand up because the witnesses who testified against him could not agree on the detail of what he said or did. So the case was about to be thrown out when the senior ecclesiastical official present put him under oath and demanded who he was -- an irregularity in questioning, apparently, under Jewish law. He replied with the name of God, whose mere utterance meant death, declaring that at the end of all time he would reappear as judge of the universe. This was sheer blasphemy, and gave the court grounds to pass the death sentence.

(Because the Jewish ecclesiastical court did not have the power to carry out an execution, the sentence had to be submitted to the Roman governor, Pilate, for ratification.)

So he was not executed for ``struggling against the unjust economic and social structures of his time,'' but for calling himself God, a purely theological offense.

But was his teaching not in the nature of a social protest? He certainly offended respectable society, in particular the Pharisaic party, the strict religionists. He called on people to help one another, to be merciful, to be single-minded in the service of God, to live day by day without anxious preoccupation over the future, and above all to forgive those who offended them. There was an extraordinary emphasis on human sin and how we could escape its consequences, but always in the context of individual sin rather than communal or corporate transgression. Again and again, he ``forgave'' people their sins, as though he himself was the chief party offended when anybody did anything wrong.

Above all, his teaching seemed to center upon his own identity. He called himself the Truth, the Light of the World, the Way, the very Life of humanity -- all wild insanity or blasphemy, unless, of course, it happens to be true.

As for non-violence, this too encounters problems. At one point he caused a near-riot in the temple by taking a horsewhip to the people who changed Roman coinage into ritually acceptable Jewish money, making a rakeoff in the process. They were desecrating ``my Father's house,'' he said. In his several encounters with Roman soldiers he seemed to approve of them, and certainly never advised them to abandon their violent profession.

None of this really seems to describe the man that Ms. Watson portrayed to the court. Is it possible that people who speak as she does are under some sort of misapprehension? Perhaps they should read those accounts again.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in November 1992.

Hark, the Herald's angel sings
of secularity and things

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 8, 2001

"We are now a secular society, and God belongs in one's heart, not in one's laws.'' -- Catherine Ford, editor of the Calgary Herald.

Ford was writing on the occasion of the Canadian Thanksgiving Day. She noted that in 1957, when the second Monday in October was designated as the Thanksgiving holiday, the proclamation read: ``Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God in His great goodness to vouchsafe many blessings throughout the years to the people of Canada. . . .''

Our laws no longer talk about God, she said, because we are now ``a secular society.'' She adds that nevertheless, ``God or no, the blessings we should be thankful for have not changed.''

Notice her moral directive: ``We should be thankful for our blessings.'' It raises questions:

How does Ms. Ford come to know that other people, people she has never so much as met, have this duty to feel a sensation of thankfulness? Who is she to ``impose,'' as it were, this obligation upon others? If she herself senses some sort of debt, well that's her business. But here she is imposing this debt upon the entire populace.

And second, to whom is this debt owed? Who is it that we are supposed to thank? She does not say.

And how must we do the thanking? This, she answers. Her column, read to the end, turns out to be, not about theology, nor about Thanksgiving but about politics. We were to be thankful by voting Yes in the recent referendum.

However, this raises theological difficulties: If there is no God, then why are we duty-bound to be ``thankful?'' And who is it we're supposed to be thankful to? Since Ms. Ford doesn't tell us, we'll have to think it through on our own.

First, we should note that being thankful does not mean the same thing as being pleased. You can be pleased without being thankful. If something good happens, you can be pleased. Only if someone else did it for you need you be thankful.

Thus, if everybody but me gets the office cold, I should no doubt be pleased, and might certainly say I was ``thankful.'' But do I really mean thankful? Did somebody else choose to do this for me? If I don't believe in God, then who exactly should I thank? To whom, that is, should I sense this indebtedness?

Thinking it over, I did not really mean I was ``thankful.'' I meant only pleased, happy, relieved, but not somehow obligated.

So is that all that Ms. Ford means when she says we have this moral obligation to thank somebody, without knowing who or what it is?

If so, then perhaps in this new ``secular society'' we should stop calling it Thanksgiving Day and call it ``Good Luck Day,'' or ``Comfy Day,''or ``Sitting Pretty Day,'' getting away from this bothersome sense of owing and debt and ``thankfulness'' that Ms. Ford wants to drag in.

Of course, some might say that when they are thankful for their ``blessings'' they only mean that they are thanking ``Fortune'' or ``Fate'' that things turned out the way they did.

But then if Fortune or Fate had any choice about the way things turned out, if they actually decided to favor me with escaping the cold instead of the other people, then no doubt I owe them and should feel thankful to them. But there's a problem: If Fortune or Fate can choose, then what is the difference between them and a God? Inanimate things can't choose. And if they couldn't choose, that is if they acted blindly, then why should I feel any gratitude to them?

So this is the problem. Unless there is somebody or something to thank, how can you be thankful and how can you have a Thanksgiving Day? And if there isn't any God, who exactly is that you should thank?

The people who drew up the act, in the dark days before we voted to have a secular society -- and, by the way, when did we vote to have a secular society? -- seem to have foreseen this problem and answered it with the only possible answer. We should be thankful to God, they said. But if we don't have any God to thank, how long will it be before we aren't thankful either?

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in December 1992.

The means were there to stop the brutalizing
of once-gentle Britain, but they were ignored

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 1, 2001

Peter Hitchens, a conservative British journalist, has lately published a book of social commentary entitled "The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill To Princess Diana." Its message is as applicable to Canada as it is to Britain.

Author Hitchens catalogues the astonishing transformation of the Britain of 1965 which buried Sir Winston Churchill, into the Britain of 1997 which buried Princess Diana. He contrasts two astoundingly different funerals. The Britons of 1965 were a "gentle, law-abiding, reticent people," he writes, "one of the happiest, fairest and kindest societies that ever existed." By 1997 they had become "a crude and sentimental mob" living in a "brutalized popular culture."

But the older Britain, he contends, did not simply decline. It was "abolished" -- through changes deliberately wrought "by political and cultural bureaucrats." Its education system was intentionally "dumbed down." History was rewritten "to replace pride in the nation's past with a fashionable racial guilt." Anglican Christian belief was "hollowed out" by "prelates who preferred the options of politics to the certitudes of faith." A "welfare mentality" undermined and promoted dependency on the state, while sexual reticence was eroded "by an increasingly vulgar popular culture."

Ever since the 17th century, Mr. Hitchens contends, revolutionary forces had been at work to destroy the age-old British culture, but had always failed because the old order was so obviously successful. The tiny island became the creator of an enormous empire, defeated Napoleon, and provided a language used the world over, and through it an unsurpassed literature.

In the 20th century, however, the United States began to eclipse Britain. The friendly American "invasion" during the Second World War further destabilized British confidence. Then Thatcherism swept away the old Tory bastions of British life: male-dominated professions, a largely male working class and a host of other hoary institutions.

Fellow journalist and reviewer John O'Sullivan takes serious issue with these theories. Germany suffered an American invasion that was distinctly unfriendly, he counters, but recovered to great power status within two decades. As for Thatcherism, the cultural revolution was far advanced before Margaret Thatcher took office. Moreover, he concludes, while Britain's culture has undoubtedly coarsened, it still boasts magnificent universities and fine theatre, and highly competent armed forces.

We disagree with both these gentlemen -- on the basis of long, if largely distant, contemplation of British life, mores and literature. We do not believe, for instance, that Britain's descent into vulgar mawkishness began after the Second World War. We believe its cause lies in the 19th century, that the process was accelerated by the tragedy of the First World War, and that it was well under way in the 1920s.

True, the current brutality and sentimentality which so offends Mr. Hitchens were not yet evident, but the social conventions which produced Britain's characteristic civility ultimately depended on an underlying moral order, which in turn depended on an underlying religious faith. By 1900 that faith was already under sharp attack. The Darwinists had "proved" there was no need for a Creator. The literary historians had "proved" that the main assertions of the Bible were fiction, not fact. And the Freudians had "proved" that what we call morality could be explained away as misplaced sexual guilt. These factors completely discredited (or so it was supposed) the core beliefs of Christianity. The concept of morality went next, and the "gentle, law-abiding, reticent people" went last.

One curious irony, however, remains to be explained. While all this deconstruction of belief was taking place, there arose in England an equally forceful and equally intellectual refutation of it. G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers, supported by biblical historians such as J.B. Lightfoot and theologians such as the saintly Charles Gore, had by 1960 thoroughly demolished the attack on the faith. Yet the Anglican Church and many Catholics ignored them.

We once asked the late Trueman Dicken, himself a traditionalist theologian, why this had happened. When such a powerfully reasoned response was put into their hands like a weapon, why did they not use it? "Because," he responded, "they opted instead to follow the Germans." He was referring to the "demythologizing" German school headed by Rudolf Bultmann, whose theories framed the basis of theological thought in British seminaries after the Second World War. The result, by the 1980s, was the virtual collapse of the Church of England.

In the meantime the Chesterton-Lewis-Sayers influence crossed the Atlantic to the United States, where the work of all three has provided powerful incentive to evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics. Ironically, the center for C.S. Lewis studies is Wheaton College in Illinois, while the Chesterton Institute is headquartered at Seton College in New Jersey.

These Brits, through the grace of God, have enabled American Christians to challenge the challengers and resist the disintegration, so that today the United States is a far more Christian country than either Canada or Britain. That irony has escaped Mr. Hitchens, and would make a far more interesting book.

If so many teenagers believe in God,
why aren't churches teeming with them?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 25, 2001

While only 18% of Canadian teenagers attend church, a new book called "Teen Trends," by researchers Reginald Bibby and Don Posterski, shows that 80% of teenagers still believe in God and the divinity of Christ. -- From an article in the Vancouver Sun.

This disclosure raises an immediate question: If so many teenagers believe in God and Christ, why aren't the churches teeming with teenagers?

The obvious answer is that their belief neither obligates nor inspires them to attend a church. They think, as do so many people, that "you can be a good Christian without going to church." They see no reason and feel no need.

And there is a possible explanation for this, which Messrs. Bibby and Posterski may one day investigate: Do Canadian teenagers have any sense of personal moral failure? In fact, do they believe that moral failure is even possible in the personal sense? Undoubtedly they believe society can be immoral -- in damaging the environment, for example, and "exploiting nature." But apart from the insignificant responsibility they must take as a member of this society, do they believe they themselves can "do wrong" in any other way?

The answers to this question may be surprising. A great many teenagers, and adults too, no longer sense any great shortcoming in this regard. But this is not because they consider themselves "sinless." Rather, they have come to regard "sin" or "doing wrong" as an outdated concept, out of touch with modern realities.

This conclusion, of course, is precisely what their education has been aiming at for the last several decades. They have been schooled to believe that right and wrong are purely personal standards, so that each person can invent his own, and change them as he goes through life.

For instance, a man today might say something like this: "Some years ago, I regarded keeping promises as an invariable moral obligation. But now that I have `matured,' I can see that promises are not necessarily irrevocable. That promise I made to my wife when we were married -- that I would remain faithful to her until death -- I can now see to have been somewhat jejeune. My view has broadened. I understand so much more than I did then. Moral values are personal, and mine tell me that leaving her to raise the three children on her own is in no sense reprehensible. It is merely the consequence of my own advancement into a richer and more productive view of life. Bad, you say? Surely we have advanced beyond such a simplistic and narrow view of human relations."

Now, in Christian theology, Christ died to deliver us from the final consequences of personal moral failure, in other words of sin, which is our eternal separation from God. And the church is the chief agent of that deliverance, the central means by which it is accomplished.

But for someone who believes there can be no such thing as moral failure, that "rules" of right and wrong are entirely self-produced and can be invented or set aside any time we please, then plainly there is nothing to be delivered from. If Christ died to deliver us from sin, it was a wasted effort because now we know there's no such thing. Sin has been abolished as an obsolete concept. So what is the point in going to church?

That is one of the results we can expect in a society that has rid itself of the idea of personal moral responsibility.

And of course one can envision other results in such a society. You would expect to see an alarming increase in criminal activity, particularly among young people. You would expect to see a diminution of familial and neighborly obligation, a widening expectation of dishonesty, a loss of confidence in leadership, and an increasing loneliness as each person learns to live only for himself, serving only his own interests. In other words, you would expect to see a society that gave every evidence of disintegration.

Some might say that this is precisely what we see today. But we can reverse the process. We can restore the idea of objective moral principles apply to us all. And that in turn will restore the relevance and point of the Christian religion.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in November 1992.

A left-wing editor ponders a baffling question:
why is youth captivated by this iron-law Pope?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 18, 2001

In an article looking back on the millennial year, John Lloyd, former editor of the left-wing British newspaper, The New Statesman, raises an interesting question. Why, he wonders, does Pope John Paul II command such respect and loyalty from a younger generation, when he stands so firmly against the lifestyle so many of them embrace?

One highlight of the millennial year -- fundamentally a Christian event in that it marks 2,000 years of Christianity -- was the mass rally in Rome of 1.5 million young people, many of them couples arm in arm.

"You are thinking about love and the choices it entails," Pope John Paul told them. "But be careful! Every human person has inevitable limits. Even in the most successful marriages there is inevitable disappointment. Only Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Word of the Father, born 2,000 years ago at Bethlehem in Judea, is capable of satisfying the deepest aspirations of the human heart."

The Pope's youthful hearers responded with such heartfelt enthusiasm that one reporter was prompted to ask why they so admire him. He is opposed to abortion, sex before marriage, gay sex, women priests -- all things they seem to favor. So why cheer him? "Because," replied one young man, "he's so extreme."

Nor is this phenomenon confined to Catholics. The Protestant churches that seem to best hold their youth are those which adhere most steadfastly to biblical teaching. Paradoxically, the liberal churches which distort and dilute both their moral teaching and their theology, specifically to appeal to modern youth, are rapidly shrinking.

Thus Billy Graham, arguably the 20th century's greatest evangelist, is distinguished by the orthodoxy of his message. His sermons could have been preached with equal power to any Christian congregation from the 1st century to the 21st. Today, even in translation into other languages, they are eagerly received by young people all over the world.

In the church we attend, an English-language Orthodox church in Edmonton, Canada, the same phenomenon is evident. In theology, worship and moral teaching it makes no concessions to youth, modernity, popular assumptions or the barest physical comfort. Most of the congregation are on their feet for the full Sunday liturgy (90 minutes to two hours), written incidentally by St. John Chrysostom in the 4th Century. There are no guitars, or any other instrument -- only voices (which are fervent). Yet it does not seem to lose its young people. Youngsters in their mid-teens when we joined in 1995 are now around 20 and still very much in evidence. Perhaps the explanation is the same -- it's so extreme.

But why does "extremism" hold such appeal? Mr. Lloyd surmises that our enthusiasm for it is distinctly qualified. He writes: "We may like and admire John Paul II because of his 'extremism,' because he comes right out and says what he means. But we elect leaders who compromise because we want to live well, short of the extremities. The Pope's millennial call will not change this. For we have observed that relativism is more conducive to the peaceful life, precisely because it is a series of compromises. Not a stirring message, but the one we live by."

Notice Mr. Lloyd's assumptions: young people admire the "extreme" Pope only because they respect his courage -- not because they agree with him. The evidence is that they vote otherwise, electing leaders who are relativist, who do not share the Pope's unassailable moral standards, who compromise. Youth is, in other words, essentially hypocritical, cheering for one thing but voting for its opposite.

However, the facts do not support this hypothesis. The chief electoral inclination currently demonstrated by young people, sadly enough, is not to vote at all. Less than half of Americans vote; the Canadian percentage is almost down to the same dismal level; and the absentee vote is largely the youth one.

The compromising politicians are not elected by youth but by their parents, the so-called '60s people. Youth is inclined to write off the whole political process as ineffectual and irrelevant. Our political leaders are not delivering a very "stirring message," Mr. Lloyd notes. No, indeed -- and that is why young people are looking past them to John Paul II and Billy Graham -- frail and elderly, but still defiantly and valiantly orthodox.

Something else is also observably occurring. Sociological data on the '90s reflects a strange turn towards moral rectitude among the young. They are not so likely to "shack up" as were their parents. Outside the ghetto, the use of drugs is declining. Youth pregnancy rates are down, and in the United States so are abortion rates. Couples are postponing marriage because they don't want to make vows they fear they won't keep. They have even rejected sex as the be-all, end-all, central activity of life; other things are beginning to matter more. Which of course is exactly John Paul's counsel.

So they cheered the extremist Pope because they knew that Jesus Christ was also an extremist, and they sensed this extremist within themselves, ready to come forward and take hold.

Dan Quayle's 'Murphy' speech revisited

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 11, 2001

 ``Dan Quayle isn't defending the family; he is defending male privilege and the misery it produces.'' -- Susan Riley in the Vancouver Province.

Columnist Riley was referring to the infamous ``Murphy Brown'' speech, the one that provoked a huge media chorus lampooning the U.S. vice president as an ill-natured, ignorant clown.

When television sitcom character Murphy Brown deliberately decided to become a single mother, Mr. Quayle had observed, she presented the nation with a bad role model. His remarks were ``ridiculous,'' wrote Ms. Riley, but beneath them lay ``hatred and fear of women.''

The Globe and Mail contemptuously observed that Mr. Quayle had ``taken up'' the issue of family values ``with boyish glee.'' Any reasonable person could see, said the Globe, that family values are in no danger whatever: ``The family is not disintegrating, it is being redefined.''

The American reaction was far more vicious. ``Murphy Brown or Dan Quayle? Which one is the most wretched role model for this country?'' one U.S. columnist demanded. Newspapers ran headlines like, ``Murphy has a baby, Quayle has a cow.'' He was the favorite target of TV comedians. Quayle jokes inundated the country.

But just what had the man actually said that was so ludicrous, deplorable, or plain stupid? The newsletter of Focus on the Family printed extensive excerpts from the controversial seven-page speech and invited readers to judge.

State welfare checks are no adequate substitute for missing husbands and fathers, Mr. Quayle had asserted, and American inner cities are demonstrating how quickly civilization disintegrates when families fall apart. Some changes to the government welfare system might help, but ultimately ``marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. . . . Failure to support children one has fathered is wrong.

``We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn't help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of a father by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another `lifestyle choice.'

``I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV and the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in this room know that some things are good, other things are wrong. Now it's time to make the discussion public.''

The portrayal of Dan Quayle as super-lout still lingers, but three curious elements have become plain. First, what he said (in context) seems eminently reasonable; in somewhat different words it is expressed by police and social workers everywhere. Second, most citizens, as demonstrated in poll after poll, agree with him.

Third, and most significant, the media reaction was widely at variance with that held by much of their audience. In other words, the philosophy of life we get from our news and entertainment industries is largely incompatible with the one many of us in fact embrace.

This is particularly true of religious people, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, none of whom could possibly endorse the concept of marriage and family presented by the Murphy Brown program. Yet the media have so wholly embraced it that they regard Mr. Quayle as ridiculous for rejecting it.

This media prejudice is not confined to family lifestyle, of course. It influences much of the material the media disseminates, thereby confronting us with a serious difficulty. As citizens, we need the facts they provide, but we must somehow disentangle them from the omnipresent bias. Everything they show us is founded upon presuppositions and assumptions, many of which are incompatible with our own. So what can we do?

We can do two things. First, we can offset the secular media with information sources (like the Focus on the Family bulletin) whose values we can trust. Second, we must learn to read and view with profound scepticism, telling ourselves always: ``This is the other side talking. Watch out!'' It isn't easy. But who ever told us a Christian life -- or a Muslim one, or a Jewish one -- was going to be easy?

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in September 1992.

Total separation of church and state?
Of course -- until you think about it

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 4, 2001

``The 'wall of separation' the Founding Fathers built between church and state is one of the best defenses freedom has ever had.'' -- From "Why the Religious Right is Wrong," an essay by Barbara Ehrenreich in Time magazine.

Ms. Ehrenreich's essay deplores the current appeal of the Republican Party for the return to ``family values'' as they are expressed in the Judao-Christian tradition. She sees this as a violation of the sacrosanct American principle of a separate church and state. ``The government the Founding Fathers designed could not do things in the name of a Higher Power,'' she declares.

Her contentions find much support these days in Canada as well. We continually hear people asserting that ``the separation of church and state'' is also a Canadian principle, though in fact it is not.* Whatever the historical basis, however, we'd be well advised to figure out just what we mean by that term, ``separation of church and state.'' Does it mean that ``the church'' (i.e., any church) should not run the government? Most people, Christians included, would assuredly agree.

Or does it mean the government should not run the church? Anyone who agrees with that proposition, of course, must logically go on to conclude that a human rights commission could not require a church to ordain homosexual clergy. And that a Catholic or Mormon school could not be required by law to hire non-Catholic or non-Mormon teachers. Things get complicated, don't they?

Or does this ``wall'' between church and state mean that the church should not advise its members on what stands to take on public issues? Here things get hotter still, since many churches urge their members to oppose abortion, and many ask them to vote against political parties they believe to be advocating evil policies. Is this a violation of the ``separation of church and state?'' If so, were those Catholic priests who urged their people to oppose Nazism wrong to have done so? Have the clergy who oppose what they view as tyranny in Latin American countries stepped over the wall?

How come a church which supports the political left is seen as doing what is good and admirable, whereas one that influences its people to the right is sinister and ``theocratic?'' If ``the religious right is wrong,'' what about the religious left?

The point is, of course, that all political controversy is over what should be expressed in our laws. And all laws -- even the most mundane -- are rooted in some moral principle. Take something as prosaic as safety requirements for elevators. Is there a ``moral'' here? Certainly. The law expresses the moral principle that those who propose to elevate people from floor to floor ``ought'' not to drop them to the basement. The same is true of every law from income tax to fishing licenses.

That's why today's media ideologues end up in a bind. Moral ideas are all right, they have to concede (since society can't get along without them), but only if you get them from secular sources like Karl Marx, the Humanist Manifesto or the CBC. If you get them from the Bible, that's all wrong because you're supposedly breaching ``the wall'' between church and state. Nor do the popular pundits seem to notice that the best of these secular moral precepts turn out, on closer examination, to be somewhat distorted borrowings from the New Testament.

Christians can be very clear on this point, however. We get our moral ideas from three sources: from the Bible, from the teachings of the church over the centuries, and from prayer. On this basis we decide how to deal with people, how to spend our money, how to run our families, how to regard the world, and how to vote. If doing so means violating ``the separation of church and state,'' then that's just too bad.

How strange that Ms. Ehrenreich doesn't so much as touch on these awkward questions. Do you suppose she hasn't really thought this out?

* FOOTNOTE: Since 1774, the church has not been separated from the state in Canadian law. That's when the Quebec Act, among other things, effectually assured public support for Catholic schools, which since then has been enshrined in the laws of some provinces.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in September 1992.

If politics clouds Christmas, take heart:
Nations come and go; Christmas remains

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 28, 2000

There's an old saying from somewhere -- "I pitied myself because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." Canadian Christians, many of whom discerned in the political leadership of Stockwell Day the chance that perhaps general public disfavor towards their religion is mitigating, saw this hope thoroughly dashed in the recent federal election.

Since Mr. Day's chief political disability was his confession of faith in Christ, we discovered ourselves, so to speak, shoeless. For some of us this has even clouded the approach of Christmas -- something it ought not do.

The only victory we are advised to have faith in is the one that occurred on Good Friday. Elections, wars, nations, empires all come and go. Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. Sometimes we think we've lost, when it later turns out that we won. And vice versa.

Canada, like every political entity that ever existed, is a passing phenomenon, and things like elections matter only insofar as they affect the eternal souls of the people involved, including, of course, us electors. People live forever, whereas all the institutions we create -- political, financial, social, technological -- perish.

That's why political candidates and their activist supporters are more likely to be hurt or helped spiritually by the way they fight elections than by whether they win, and we voters are less decisively affected by the result than by our response to it. And if we let it diminish Christmas, we aren't responding very well.

We might consider, for instance, the situation of our brothers and sisters in Sudan or Indonesia or China this Christmas, where thousands have been executed for their faith, or sold into slavery, or jailed.

Current news reports from the South Chinese province of Zhejiang disclose that more than 1,000 temples, churches and ancestral halls there were shut down last fall, converted into recreation centers or demolished. A 400-square-meter church in Wenzhou city was specifically mentioned as having been dynamited on government orders.

This may not seem too horrible a development until you stop to think about it. Anyone who has worked on a church building campaign, even in our ostensibly tolerant society, knows the angst you go through over raising money, planning, unforeseen construction problems, and finally congregational squabbles over what goes where -- all the kinds of questions that can become the Devil's playground.

But just imagine what building or acquiring premises for a church must be like in Communist China. The hostility of the authorities, the disfavor of your boss, the suspicions of the neighbors, the scraping together of funds, the anguished prayers of the little flock -- it's not too hard to envision.

Then comes the wonderful day when the job is complete and the building is finally dedicated. But not for long. The police arrive. Sorry, but this structure has been deemed to have been dedicated to a subversive purpose. And then you stand and watch while all your hard work is blown to pieces -- in truth, the Christmas of the man who has no feet.

And yet that man knows something else. His building was demolished because it and he were considered dangerous. Too many people were going his way. Through this building he could have lured others on his wayward path. He has been punished because he was doing the Lord's bidding, and in the pitiful rubble he sees the Star of Bethlehem shining brighter than ever. He knows the little building will rise again, as it always has.

Perhaps we, with our comparatively minuscule burdens, should take heart from the fact that Stockwell Day was declared "scary" -- and by implication we are too. His Christianity made him a public menace, too risky for office.

Thus school trustees in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey were deemed by a B.C. Supreme Court judge as unfit to hold office because they acknowledged the moral authority of the Bible, and their decision on a question of public policy had been influenced by clergymen.

Thus, too, Vancouver's Union Gospel Mission, which has been feeding homeless and hungry people since the Depression, may have to cease operations because the government has declared it must use "qualified" (read: union) staff to serve the meals, not volunteers. The Mission can't afford that, so to keep the operation going they would have to apply for government funding, something they have never had. That in turn would mean they must strip the operation of any Christian overtones (or undertones), thereby negating the primary reason for running it. Even feeding the hungry is apparently "scary" if you do it for a Christian reason.

Put all these fragments together and you can see the dynamite may not be too far down the road. But what of that? The Star shines, and the brighter it shines the more thoroughly it upsets what Jesus Christ called "the world." In "the world," he said, we would have "tribulation." Well, we're having some of it -- and perhaps that gives us more reason than ever to say: "Merry Christmas to all."

Candidate was 'scary' all right -- he posed
a threat to established religious philosophy

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 21, 2000

Whatever else may have contributed to the failure of the Canadian Alliance to win Ontario in the recent election, one major factor was certainly the candid confession of Christian faith made by its leader, Stockwell Day.

This rendered Mr. Day "scary," the media reported, suspecting that because he is a Christian, he harbors a "hidden agenda." Prime Minister Jean Chretien began making eerie references to "dark forces" -- i.e., sinister Christian influences -- behind the Alliance movement.

All of which was apparently swallowed whole by hundreds of thousands of Ontario voters, thereby raising an important question: why is Mr. Day's Christianity so "scary," while Mr. Chretien's religion is not? Similarly, former Prime Minister Joe Clark says he's a Catholic (although Catholic doctrine severely censures anyone who furthers abortion by supporting it politically, so presumably he isn't). Why isn't he "scary"?

The simple answer -- that Mr. Day is Evangelical, while Messrs. Chretien and Clark declare they're Catholic -- won't do. Jason Kenney, a Calgary MP and Mr. Day's campaign chairman, is also Catholic, but is considered scarier yet. So what's the explanation?

We think Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson gives it best in his book, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Religion (InterVarsity Press, 1995). Every society, he writes, must of necessity have an "established religious philosophy." He doesn't mean an established religion. He means an Establishment view of religion, one common to academe, the media, the education system and government bureaucracy alike. This philosophy determines how the law will regard religion, what will be taught in public schools, what moral values will be generally endorsed, and how we can acquire reliable knowledge about ourselves and the world.

This philosophy determines vital social attitudes and policies. Should girls be educated primarily as future mothers or as future income-earners? Has the purpose of life been established by a Creator, or is it up to us to decide? Should children be taught rules for sexual conduct, or merely informed of sexual mechanics and hazards and then encouraged to make up their own rules?

"The philosophy is established, not in the sense that it is formally enacted or that dissenters are subject to legal punishment," Mr. Johnson continues, "but in the sense that it provides a philosophical basis for law-making and public education. The content of established philosophy may be controversial and change over time, but something of the kind must necessarily exist or government will become incoherent and even chaotic."

At the beginning of the 20th century, the established religious philosophy of the United States was largely based on Protestant Christianity. By the century's end, it had become something else -- what Mr. Johnson defines as "naturalism."

Naturalism is the belief that our only legitimate source of factually true information is the activity of nature as observed and defined by the natural sciences. Everything else must be regarded as purely speculative. Religion may certainly be practised, but must be seen as a strictly "personal," private activity. It can have no role in forming public policy, in developing public school curricula or in enacting laws.

Such is the current religious philosophy of the United States. In Canada, naturalism is even more deeply entrenched. We are still a pre-eminently conformist country. Unlike the Americans, we were not founded upon revolution, but upon acquiesence with the status quo. That's why our mainline churches -- United, Anglican, even most Catholic bishops -- bow before secular authority. When that authority changes, they change with it.

What made Stockwell Day "scary" was the fact that he does not subscribe to this Establishment religious philosophy and he said so, whereas all the other leaders clearly conform. In short, Mr. Day threatened change -- real change. They did not. Mr. Day pledged to submit all so-called "moral" questions to public referendum. This pledge was not accepted. There were two reasons.

For one, the Establishment itself is not sure the public supports what it's doing. Aborting babies early in pregnancy may have majority support. Aborting them in the final stages does not. Letting children decide their own sexual morality most certainly does not. So referendums are too risky.

Worse still, referendums might bring the whole Establishment view into question. People might ask awkward questions, such as: if the only reliable source of truth is nature, then why stop at abortion? Why not infanticide? Why not euthanasia? Why not pedophilia? Why not eugenics? Why not sterilize the less productive elements in the population? Nothing in nature prohibits any of this. All that nature teaches is that the powerful rule; the strong overcome the weak; the fit survive and the unfit become extinct.

That is the lesson of nature. And if the suggestion that there's something beyond nature -- meaning God -- is purely a marginalized, "personal" affair, precluded from public discussion, then precisely how and where do we find authority to arrest what is usually referred to as "human progress" or "the advance of science?"

Mr. Day, through his referendums, would bring such questions into public discussion. That's why he was "scary." Whereas Jean and Joe, they're not scary at all.

Citing the Bible to prove the Bible wrong
does pose peculiar difficulties in logic

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 7, 2000

Submissive. Passive. Obedient. These words, says Rev. Lois Wilson, characterize the picture of women one gets frequently while reading the Bible. ``An increasing number of women won't go to church because of this,'' she said. -- Thomson News Service.

Ms. Wilson, first woman moderator of the United Church (Canada), wonders what can be done when the Bible becomes an obstacle that prevents people from joining the church. The solution, now widely advocated, is simply to rewrite the Bible, to make it conform to modern thinking.

But this raises a fundamental question: Did God make us ``after His own image'' as the Bible says? Or do we make God after our own image?

Atheists and agnostics, of course, hold the latter view. They say either that there isn't a God, or that if there were, we couldn't know it. They say that this whole idea of God was invented by wishful-thinking human beings. And when they see people rewriting the Bible to ``bring it up to date,'' they naturally laugh and say, ``What did I tell you! You make up your God as you go along.''

Any stigma, says an old saying, will do to beat a dogma -- meaning that as soon as a dogma of the church becomes intellectually unpopular enough to attract public disfavor, the church will get rid of it. Which, of course, is exactly what happens when we rewrite the Bible to ``bring it up to date'' with modern thinking.

Not that rewriting the Bible is something new in this century. When Hitler took power in Germany, one of the first moves of his chosen minister of religion was to abolish the Old Testament entirely, and rewrite the New Testament to make it ``correspond with the demands of National Socialism.'' Hundreds of Protestant and Catholic clergy who refused to go along with this were thrown into concentration camps for failing to keep ``up to date with modern thinking.'' Their leaders were murdered. Thereafter a ``National Reich Church'' was created, one of whose 30 articles demanded ``immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany.'' It didn't work, by the way. German Christians kept the Bible anyway.

But besides this rather unencouraging recent past, rewriting the Bible poses other difficulties. One of them is purely logical. Why are we proposing to rewrite the Bible? To rid it, comes the answer, of its chauvinistic masculine bias. God is referred to as ``he'' and ``father,'' Christ as ``son,'' and men figure at the center of most of the stories. Clearly the Bible is ``intolerant.'' So we are rewriting it to improve its morality. We are ``morally edifying'' the Bible.

But wait a minute! Where, after all, do our ideas about morality come from? Where did we get our ideas of justice, of tolerance, of respect for others, of giving everybody a fair chance? Certainly one of the chief sources for all this -- some Christians would say the only source for it and all Christians would say one of the best sources for it -- is the Bible itself.

What we are therefore doing is using the Bible to repudiate the Bible. We are saying that the Bible is flawed, that it needs fixing. How do we know this? Because the Bible says so. Back here, where it talks about justice for all, means that up here, where it uses a masculine pronoun for God, it has to be wrong.

But why could it not be similarly argued that up here, where it uses a male pronoun for God, proves that back there, where it talked about justice, it must be wrong? If we use A to prove B wrong, we could just as legitimately use B to prove A wrong. The Bible improvers don't ever seem to contend with this question.

And the other difficulty is much simpler, and it is this. To describe the women in the Bible as ``submissive, passive and obedient'' is simply not true. Some are, some are not, and some are quite the reverse. They are, that is, just like women in Real Life. Maybe that's because they were women in Real Life.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in November 1992.

Yet another momentous Christian event
escapes the news media's attention

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 30, 2000

A sad fact of modern life is the difficulty of discovering what's really going on in the field known as "religion." The news media are the last place to look. They report only on novelty, on things that are changing. God, the unchanging, is therefore rarely news.

Neither are those churches or Christian institutions in which He is most obviously present. That's why major developments can occur within such places, and the general news media never find out.

We encountered just such a situation this month. Twenty-one years ago Campus Crusade for Christ commissioned Hollywood producer John Heyman to make a two-hour film on the life of Christ as told in St. Luke's gospel.

They invested a great deal of money in it, shooting much of it on location in Israel, using 5,000 Israelis and Arabs for crowd scenes. The clothing, architecture, even the food, was authentically that of 1st-century Palestine. Actor Brian Deacon played the role of Christ. The film was entitled simply Jesus, and the story line was strictly St. Luke's.

Since then 3.9 billion people have watched the film, the biggest audience for any movie ever made. It has been distributed in 233 countries, and translated into 624 languages. (The runner-up in multi-language editions is the movie Gone With the Wind, which has appeared in 34 languages). Twenty-four million cassettes of it are now in circulation, and 121 million people have dedicated their lives to Christ after watching it.

Very little of this has ever been noted by the North American entertainment news media. Movies such as Jesus Christ Superstar and The Last Temptation of Christ, being "new" views on the subject, have attracted far more publicity.

We discovered this month in attending a Campus Crusade conference in Vancouver that something else has now happened. After more than a year of discussions between Campus Crusade and officials of the International Catholic Program for Evangelism, the film has been adopted for the "Evangelization 2000" project of the Catholic Church.

It has been enthusiastically endorsed by Pope John Paul II and has been repackaged for distribution by Millennium Films International, a Catholic organization, and six million copies are on order. The Catholic version is somewhat shorter, but the cuts were made for practical, rather than theological, reasons. Essentially it's the same film.

"I am profoundly convinced," said Cardinal Josef Tomko, Vatican prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, "that this film will be a useful instrument for the mission of the Church to spread the Gospel. I want to encourage every parish community to view this film." Added Archbishop Angelo Comastri, president of the National Committee for the Jubilee of 2000: "The film represents a creative answer to our Father's will that the Gospel must be communicated to every man. I pray for many men and women who have forgotten about Jesus that, viewing this film, they may receive the Good News of love and salvation that the Son of God brought to us."

The Catholics plan to show the film to 58 million people. One million copies were given to those who visited Rome this year in connection with the millennium observation.

Campus Crusade officials said that the adoption of the film by Catholics, made official at a conference in April 1999, was actually a gradual process over several preceding years. Individual Catholic groups began using it in the 1990s. One Catholic evangelical organization began with 100,000 copies and eventually acquired 600,000.

Some individuals played key roles. At the Vancouver conference, for example, a presentation was made to Jack Klemke, a member of Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton, for the part he and his wife Carol played in bringing the film to Catholics. A tribute was paid to the couple by Father Tom Forrest, a Redemptorist priest from Washington, D.C., who advanced the project on the Catholic side.

The implications of this development could be very wide and very lasting. All Christians carry within their minds a vision of Christ. It is built up over a lifetime, beginning with what they absorb from children's books and Sunday school lessons, widened by their personal study of the gospels, from good sermons, from adult classes and discussions with other Christians.

What often happens, however, is that some book or play or movie pulls all the fragments together, provided of course it's consistent with what they already know. (That's why productions such as Superstar and Last Temptation, being utterly inconsistent, influence few instructed Christians.) We two were thus affected by Dorothy L. Sayers' 12 superb radio plays, made in the 1940s. An earlier generation was similarly moved by books like those of Fulton Oursler.

Now, if through this movie millions of Catholics and millions of Protestants are embracing the same image of Christ, an ecumenical outcome is inevitable. It will not resolve the doctrinal differences, which are real and inescapable. But it will help remove the belligerence and even hatred that in the past those differences have so devastatingly produced. And that will be a very great work indeed.

If doleful stats get you down,
try a strong dose of St. Paul

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 23, 2000

"I know people who have suffered divorce, abuse, rape and harassment -- but they don't constitute the numbers that are normally quoted. . . . I do not want to live in the atmosphere of psychological McCarthyism that these accumulated statistics suggest." -- Robin Roger, a Toronto freelance writer, in the Globe and Mail.

We are bombarded nonstop by dismaying statistics, columnist Roger complains. The headlines cry that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Incest and child abuse happen in 10% of families. Forty percent of women are "sexually harassed," one woman in four is "battered," one in three is "sexually assaulted." With such hazardous prospects, he observes, it's a wonder women can get out of bed every day. As for the rest of us, how are we to fend off despair for our society and our own lives? His eminently sound advice is to use healthy scepticism, common sense and careful personal observation.

How right he is. For one thing, the statistical process itself is to a degree suspect. The methods and "facts" of one statistician are frequently challenged by other statisticians. Secondly, Mr. Roger notes, the percentages disaccord with his personal experience. Are his acquaintances just lucky, or are these figures nonsense?

But even supposing the statistics do represent a considerable degree of reality, another important point must not be forgotten. There are at least two sides to every statistic, and sometimes more. We are assured, for example, that "nearly 50%" of high school girls have had sexual intercourse "at least once" by the time they graduate. This statistic, if valid, also tells us at least two other things. First, more than 50% of high school girls do not have sexual intercourse by the time they graduate. Second, for some unspecified percentage of those who do, it is a matter of "once." So they are no longer participants; they belong on the other side.

The people regarded as authorities on these matters, and endlessly quoted, never seem concerned with this positive element. Mostly social workers and social scientists, their entire professional careers are concentrated upon human failure. Small wonder the world soon seems to them a veritable cesspool. Should we blame social workers for distorting the picture? Not really. Their obsession with misery is natural enough. But they may be the last ones we should consult about how to encourage success and happiness.

Since virtuous high school girls are not a "problem," the experts ignore them. Governments, ever anxious to "help," concentrate public policy on social aberrations, not social strengths. What happens? The aberrations spread. Regarding school sex, the experts decreed that in view of all this sexual activity, kids obviously needed condom dispensers in the school washrooms. Teen sex gets the seal of official approval; clearly "everybody's doing it." For any youngster to remain chaste becomes harder than ever.

The news media themselves are another major negative factor, of course. "That 75% of wives are never battered by their husbands is not a story, even on a slow day," Mr. Roger wryly observes. But should we blame the media? Inasmuch as the statistics represent genuine societal problems (exaggerated perhaps, but genuine nonetheless) we should be told about them. Beyond that, however, the media know that we human beings get a certain morbid satisfaction from the failures and tragedies of other people. Our own problems seem smaller by comparison; we feel better about ourselves; the news media pander to this tendency.

It's a tendency we should guard against, said St. Paul. Christian love "rejoiceth not in iniquity." Or, in J.B. Phillips' modern translation, "Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by the truth." In other words, we are supposed to celebrate what is good, rather than what is bad.

That's why we must be sure to subject all those statistics to the test of sceptical common sense -- and, especially, to look at both sets of facts they're giving us, the negative and the positive.

For it is the positive we really need to hear and, in our better moments, really want to hear. In time, we become oppressed by the evil and the false. We yearn for the good and the true.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in September 1992.

How the new CBC-TV series treats the Jesuits
may determine how Canadians treat the CBC

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 16, 2000

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation this month releases the first of Mark Storowicz's 16-episode, $30-million television series on Canadian history. It is described as the biggest and most expensive production ever undertaken by the public broadcaster, and on its success the fate of the CBC is said to depend.

That is, if the series "succeeds," then the value of public television in Canada will be affirmed. Its failure would hasten the disintegration of the CBC, which presents itself as the only force offering effective resistance to the relentless advance of American culture here.

We need to ask, however, what constitutes success. If the series is hailed at the Cannes Film Festival as a triumph in avant-garde television, and garners all the accolades the Canadian arts establishment can bestow, but fails to make a dent in the numbers of Canadians watching American programming, is that "success?" We don't think so. Neither will the politicians (whatever their public pronouncements).

In other words, the first criterion of genuine success is that it command a sizeable Canadian audience, actually pulling people away from things like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" Whatever its artistic merits, if it isn't watched it fails.

But there is another and crucial criterion. If the series leaves Canadians with a positive view of their country, that is success. If it's another CBC effort to show us how intolerant, exploitive, racist, sexist, bigoted, stupid and generally awful our forebears were, that is failure.

That is, if it turns out to be merely a conglomeration of faked quotes, half truths and fiction masquerading as history -- another "The Valour and the Horror" effort, five times longer and 10 times as costly--then why bother watching it? Bury it, and the CBC along with it.

It is instructive that about the same time the Canadian McKenna brothers (with public funding from the CBC and the National Film Board) were producing their politically correct view of the Second World War, two American brothers (with private foundational funding) were producing their view of the U.S. Civil War. The contrast is startling to say the least.

The Americans, Ken and Tim Burns, made no effort to disguise or conceal the ugly human failures that produced and made hideous the Civil War. Yet Americans watching their series -- eight 90-minute episodes, 12 hours of television in total, viewed by 40 million in the U.S. -- could come away with only one major impression: we are a magnificent nation. But Canadians watching the McKenna opus could come away with only the opposite impression: we are a nation of gullible fools.

What chiefly determines this difference are the values and beliefs the producers bring to their subject. Whatever prior assumptions and attitudes Mr. Storowicz brings to Canadian history are those he will probably come out with. The rest of us will have to enjoy or endure them -- but we will not endure them long. We can always go back to "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?"

But what, readers of this column may understandably ask, has all this to do with Christian orthodoxy? Just this: in the first episodes Mr. Storowicz must deal with a subject that will tell us exactly which way he's going, the McKenna route or the Burns route. That subject is the Jesuit missions.

In the 17th century the Society of Jesus embarked upon a futile, but magnificent, endeavor. They tried to create a new nation that was (a) purely native and (b) purely Catholic, which would restrict the English colonies to the Atlantic seaboard.

Although this effort inevitably failed, it produced the most exciting and inspiring stories in the annals of early Canada. The men involved -- Jogues, Br�beuf, Lalemant and the rest -- were paragons of Christian virtue, sacrificing every human comfort in the service of their Lord and the native peoples.

Most died horrible deaths; all remained to the end steadfast in their faith. Even the 19th-century historian Francis Parkman, a militant Protestant initially hostile to the Jesuits, was so swayed by their courage and devotion that his history, "The Jesuits in North America," became a panegyric to them.

How will Mr. Storowicz treat this subject? Will we get the Parkman version? Will we see the early Jesuits as the Robert Lantos production saw them in its admiring 1992 film "Black Robe"? Will he see them the way the Burns brothers saw Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson -- remarkable men serving a doubtful cause with undoubted courage and nobility?

Or will we get an interest group-dictated, McKenna-style version, with wicked religious fanatics exploiting and perverting an untarnished, earth-friendly, utterly pacifist people? There is a marvellous opportunity here to present real and valid Canadian heroes. Is this what we'll be given? Or will we be endowed with yet another CBC expos� of the failings and frailties of all pre-1960s Canadians?

The answer will disclose the direction of the whole series, and perhaps also the fate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Would journalist David Staples please stop
imposing his agnosticism on the rest of us?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 9, 2000

The most intriguing commentary we�ve read to date on the current Canadian election was written by David Staples of the Edmonton Journal and republished by other Southam newspapers.

Mr. Staples, who contributes to our Alberta in the 20th Century history book series, is a perceptive journalist, so perceptive as to raise a question other political commentators seemingly do not. "Why," he asks, "are people -- including me -- annoyed by Stockwell Day�s aggressive Christianity?" Other columnists certainly note Mr. Day�s Christian proclivities, usually with disapproval. What they do not explore is the reason these proclivities render him so "scary" (to use the Maclean�s magazine word) or "dangerous" or "offensive" or "narrow." Or, putting it the other way round, as television reporter Mike Duffy did: "I never thought I�d see the time when a man was disqualified from holding public office because he went to church."

But columnist Staples actually undertook to investigate this curious phenomenon. That is, why do Christians who take their faith seriously enough to actually try to fulfill Christ�s commission to "go forth and teach the nations" become such pariahs, both politically and socially, for doing so? Mr. Staples cites the case of Dirk Been, a 23-year-old farm boy who appeared on the "Survivor" television series. Mr. Been, a practicing evangelical Christian, was ousted by three others: a female truck driver, an ex-Navy SEAL and a gay corporate executive.

"Dirk lost because his Christianity annoyed the others," writes Mark Burnett, who created the "Survivor" series. "There seems to be something threatening to non-believers about a devout person of any faith. It�s as though a mirror is being held up to their faults. They feel judged. Whenever an individual closer to life�s ideal state comes in contact with those drifting away -- a physically fit person among smokers, a mentally balanced person speaking with someone fragmented and dysfunctional -- that person is scorned as a reminder of imperfection. Thus the universal dislike for those seeking a higher plane."

Mr. Staples doesn�t accept the Burnett explanation. For one thing, he asks, "Who�s to say Dirk was closer 'to life�s ideal state' than the others?" He personally preferred the ex-SEAL: "a veritable beach Buddha, not preaching to anyone, just smiling his wry smile, soaking up the sun, watching the waves, tending the fire, cooking rice." Notice what this discloses, however, about Mr. Staples.

Producer Burnett sees Dirk as fulfilling the "ideal." Mr. Staples sees the non-preaching "beach Buddha" as closer to the "ideal." And who is to say, he implicitly asks, that one person�s "ideal" is right and someone else�s wrong? What strikes him as basically objectionable is that anyone should offer his particular belief as the "right" or "true" one.

Inescapable conclusion: Mr. Staples is convinced that no one can really know what is right, true or good (i.e., "ideal"), and that therefore anything incompatible with it is wrong. The technical name for this philosophical position is agnosticism. Dirk is wrong because he claims to have answers, to know a religious truth. But Mr. Staples is, so to speak, absolutely certain that nothing can be absolutely certain.

Therefore he writes accusingly, "Dirk proselytized" and the others did not. Dirk "was the smug one with all the answers. ... Not once did Richard (the gay executive) tell Dirk he should become gay. But Dirk implied to Richard that unless he adopted Christian views he was going to hell." "That is why the evangelical mindset can be so annoying," Mr. Staples concludes. "Evangelicals are as generous, friendly and competent as any group, but a certain amount of busy-body baloney is built into their belief system."

Thus, Stockwell Day is sure to "meddle in other people�s lives." For example, the Alliance, if elected, would hold a national plebiscite on abortion. "This means if Day�s side wins the plebiscite, he�ll employ the brute force of the majority to do his dirty work for him, telling individuals they have no right to decide whether or not abortion is for them." Again, notice the reasoning. An abortion concerns two people: the mother and the child. (Canadian law allows an abortion right up to birth.) Mr. Day would save the child from death by imposing a jail sentence on the abortionist. Mr. Staples would save the mother from unwanted parenthood by imposing a death sentence on the child.

So whose view is to prevail in law? The Day view or the Staples view? Let the people decide the law, says Mr. Day. Let ME decide the law, says Mr. Staples, and I say if the mother thinks she ought to kill the child, let her. Now ask yourself: who exactly is imposing his view upon society? Mr. Day or Mr. Staples?

But there�s one further and important point. David Staples has two habits that will surely prove fatal to his agnosticism. He observes, and he reasons. We�d be willing to bet this will eventually lead him to God. How�s that for "meddling"?

Confronting the human realities:
Not a job for the faint-hearted

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 26, 2000

``It's a relief to look at the human realities of death and suffering for what they are.'' -- Joan Thomas, a Winnipeg school teacher, writing in the Globe and Mail.

Ms. Thomas is celebrating in print the exhilarating relief she feels from her emancipation from ``organized religion.'' She had been brought up, she explains, amidst the strictures of ``fundamentalism.'' Her life had been haunted by ``an exaggerated sense of guilt'' and constricted by a family ban on movies, school dances, drinking and smoking.

When she went to university, however, she acquired, to her surprise, friends from various religious backgrounds (Catholic, Jewish, Muslim) who were ``also busy reinventing the world for themselves.'' They regaled each other with the absurdity of it all -- how her mother couldn't use vanilla flavoring because it contained alcohol, how Orthodox Jewish parents published a daughter's obituary when she married a Gentile.

Gradually, says Ms. Thomas, she moved away from the church entirely. Faced with such things as death and suffering, she no longer need try to console herself with such ``ritualized denial as `She's better off with the Lord.' '' Now she can enjoy the ``relief'' of looking at ``the human realities of death and suffering for what they are.''

All right then, what are they?

Ms. Thomas tells us what she doesn't believe about them, not what she does believe. But the realities remain -- people are still suffering and dying, often quite unfairly, through no fault of their own and with no evident justice. So how does she contend with them?

Let's look more closely at this ``reality.'' Examined ``realistically,'' the world we live in is a terrible and dangerous place. Its creatures all survive by devouring other creatures. The process of evolution through natural selection (doubtless taught as irrefutable fact in Ms. Thomas's school), explains human ascendancy as the result of a process of annihilation. We humans beat all the other creatures and came out on top. That is one of the ``realities.''

Occasionally we produce a ``civilization'' in which conditions briefly improve. But all civilizations have ended, plunging us once more into conditions of bare survival. The life of most human beings, at most places in history, most of the time, has been one long, anguished struggle -- against the elements, against disease, against the other creatures, and against one another. Even in our own century, where a civilization is occurring, we have nevertheless experienced Auschwitz, the Ukrainian famine, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Cambodia, starvation in Ethiopia, Somalia, Bangladesh and elsewhere, and two world wars that claimed the lives of millions upon millions of people.

This is all part of the ``reality'' which Ms. Thomas finds such ``relief'' in contemplating. The only possible conclusion you can draw from it alone is that everybody should look out for No. 1 with the greatest possible energy and vigilance, because if you don't destroy the other guy -- or germ, or animal, or natural obstacle -- then he or it will destroy you.

Now of course Ms. Thomas doesn't believe this. She wants, she tells us, to do the ``best'' for her family. She wants all of us to be concerned for ``the environment.'' But all these concerns require some degree of self-sacrifice, and nothing in the natural environment suggests we should make such a sacrifice. Some argue that it will be good for our species in the long run if we do. But then why should you or I or Ms. Thomas worry about our species?

Unless you introduce into this ``reality'' something else, something that you could not have derived from it, you will live of a life of total self-absorption and self-gratification. Call the something else God. Call it goodness. Call it duty and responsibility. Call it social awareness. Call it anything you like. The point is you cannot derive such an obligation from the ``reality'' of nature. Therefore it must come from an entirely different source.

Perhaps, then, when the Ms. Thomases of this world really do ``look at the human realities of death and suffering for what they are,'' they will have taken a very important step beyond the mere ``relief'' of escape from religious moral stricture. But this is a step which, followed logically, will lead them straight back to the church from which they came.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in October 1992.

Perhaps our floundering symphonies have
a message young people desperately need

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 19, 2000

What do the Romantic belvederes of Chopin's First Piano Concerto offer in an age of plague and homelessness and diminished expectations but a kind of blind escape? -- Music critic Michael Scott in the Vancouver Sun.

Mr. Scott is concerned with the plight of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra which, like most Canadian symphonies, faces financial ruin unless it can increase its audiences.

The VSO opened its new season last week with a program that Mr. Scott considered ``a museum of old-fashioned music sensibility, musty and shopworn.'' He concludes: ``The longer we treat our concert halls like museums, the more the audience will erode and the more young listeners will turn to the imaginative developments of multi-disciplinary art, multi-media, rock videos and other new and emerging art forms.''

There is a curious incompatibility between Mr. Scott's thesis and what we are told is transpiring in Toronto, where one radio station now plays exclusively classical music -- not 20th Century ``innovative'' classics but very old ones -- to an amazingly young audience that has doubled in two years. The violinist Nigel Kennedy, studiously unkempt with bandana and unshaven face, draws larger and larger young crowds to hear the works of composers like Brahms, Mozart and Liszt.

Meanwhile, some of the ``emerging new art forms'' that Mr. Scott mentions -- rock videos, for example -- are deplored by psychologists and police because of their imagery and symbolism. They often depict women being sexually abused and beaten, and are suspected as powerful influences in the current explosion of violent criminal behavior among young males.

It's a safe bet, nevertheless, that Mr. Scott is dead right in one respect. The kind of ``museum'' program he deplores will not easily attract a young audience. But this is not necessarily because young people have listened to the classics and rejected them. It's because most of them have scarcely ever heard them. ``Music appreciation,'' as it was once called, is a learned skill. If you are never exposed to classical music, you will not appreciate it.

Does it matter if the Vancouver Symphony doesn't acquire young audiences? It certainly hurts the Vancouver Symphony. But does it also hurt the absent young audiences? That is, is there a real value here which benefits people whether young or old, and of which they are being deprived?

The answer would seem to be yes, and Mr. Scott himself provides the reason. This is an age, he says, of ``plague and homelessness and diminished expectations.'' Young people discover themselves the victims of an encompassing recession which shows every evidence of getting much worse. They see the structures of society disintegrating around them. Their parents were the beneficiaries of that great era of foolish fantasy called the 'sixties, and it appears that they will be its victims.

Isn't it ironic that the late 20th Century in the western world, probably the most privileged and pampered generation the human race has ever procreated has produced so little in the field of the arts? We see only sad absurdities and fads that vanish as fast as they appear.

The question is whether the old and timeless things can be of help to today's youth. Not just timeless music, but the classics of all the arts, the monuments of human thought and imagination that have been with us from the beginning -- Plato, Aristotle, Michelangelo, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and, above them all, the Bible itself? Do these things have anything to say to ``the suffering and lost"?

The answer, surely, is that they have everything to say. Works that endure are those that can speak beyond their era. They are glimpses of the eternal, and they have survived through the centuries specifically because they have something to say to every generation.

Mr. Scott calls listening to Chopin ``a blind escape.'' The durable classics of art, literature, philosophy and theology do indeed offer an escape for young people floundering in a mean-spirited social morass. But it is not a blind escape. Moreover, some of this generation of diminished expectations are looking hard. They hurt. They are stricken, and they know it.

It's only the sick, said Christ, who know they need a doctor. But the doctor, when he comes, makes them far healthier than those who think they are well.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in October 1992.

Is it good if religion divides a city?
It depends whether the religion is true

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 12, 2000

"The Hope Calgary Christian crusade will destabilize families and communities of other faiths. . . . It is a very bad thing for the community and the spirit of unity of the community.'' -- John Hick, Scottish author, lecturer and a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Humanities, speaking at a conference at the University of Calgary.

Hope Calgary is a consortium of churches whose goal is to present the Christian gospel to every person in Calgary over the next five years. Such an endeavor, if successful, would cause grave disruption in a pluralistic community, says Mr. Hick. People of other traditions, such as Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Jewish, would be distressed if they saw their members converting, and would no doubt launch similar missions of their own.

However, says Mr. Hick, he is not opposed to religion. It offers people a moral anchorage. ``It provides us with a framework of meaning . . . and that ultimate meaning is good.''

It would be facile to simply deny Mr. Hick's trepidations, to say that no such disruption could possibly happen. Unfortunately, however, such reassurance ignores two realities, both of which need to be faced squarely. For one, when people change from one religion to another (or from no religion to), this does indeed cause the very consequences he foresees. We've all seen the kind of thing he means.

Joe and Mary were just ordinary people. They had a nice family, a comfortable income, minded their own business, and talked about things like hockey, grocery prices, the weather and sometimes politics. Then they started going to this evangelical (or Catholic, or Pentecostal, or whatever) church, and almost overnight became unrecognizable. They talked of nothing but religion, practically lived in church, began to give money away, even adopted two refugee kids from Somalia. Somehow, they weren't really, well, among us any more. Their parents couldn't understand it. Joe's brother tried to talk them out of it. But they were really determined. It's almost as though they were different people.

Very much of this, Mr. Hick would say, and a community finds itself divided, particularly if Joe and Mary came from families deeply rooted in a very different tradition. Hence this kind of thing can seriously wound the ``unity'' of a ``pluralistic'' city.

Moreover, Mr. Hick is not the only one to foresee such disruption. Christ himself foresaw it. ``Never think that I have come to bring peace upon earth, '' he said. ``No, I have not come to bring peace but a sword, For I have come to set a man against his own father, a daughter against her own mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies will be those who live in his own house.'' In short, the ``divisiveness'' of Christianity was not something invented by wicked priests who corrupted the teachings of a ``gentle'' and ``mild'' Jesus. It goes back to the teachings of Jesus himself.

Nor is it confined to Christianity. Some liberal Jews we know speak in shocked and hushed tones of their daughter. She migrated to Israel a dozen years ago, married, turned Orthodox and now has nine children and plans more. Her family still love her and she seems, they admit, supremely happy. But she is living in a different world than her parents. They no longer understand her. Indeed, conflict between Orthodox and liberal Jews now gravely divides Israel.

To the religious, this phenomenon seems utterly reasonable and only to be expected. To a non-religious sociologist it seems outrageous, something that ought at least to be discouraged.

The reason for these opposite reactions is altogether apparent. The sociologist accepts religion because it tends to provide stability, unity, purpose and morality to the community. If it ceases to do so, its usefulness is at an end.

But the believer embraces a religion because he thinks it's true. Its effect on the community is strictly secondary. He does not say, ``I believe in God because it will be good for society.'' He says, ``I believe in God because He's there. He's real. He is an actual presence in my life.''

Reconciling these two viewpoints is clearly impossible -- but this is something pragmatic sociologists can scarcely be expected to understand.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in October 1992.

Why a Vancouver columnist is
not what he pretends to be

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 5, 2000

``Being an agnostic isn't the easy cop-out people think. . . . It means you have to think for yourself.'' -- Columnist Shane McCune in the Vancouver Province.

Mr. McCune makes this observation in commenting on a new catechism being developed by the Roman Catholic Church, fragments of which have been leaked to the media.

It will show Roman Catholics how eternal moral principles apply to contemporary society. Moses' commandment ``Thou shalt not steal,'' for instance, would mean that you must not evade taxes. His admonition against ``bearing false witness'' means you shouldn't bribe government officials to lie or look the other way on your behalf.

Taking such advice, Mr. McCune believes, means letting someone else do your thinking for you. But many unbelievers do the same, he says. So he then goes on to offer a ``catechism'' for them.

We would like to tell you what's in Mr. McCune's catechism, but we can't because that would be yet another form of stealing. However, we can say that it is very funny. And we can say something else: Mr. McCune himself is ``bearing false witness.'' He says he's an agnostic and he isn't. Indeed, few people are.

An ``agnostic,'' says the dictionary, is a person who believes that human beings cannot know whether anything is really true, apart from what we can see, touch, feel and hear. No one can know whether there's a God. No one can know whether one form of conduct can be ``better'' than another. No one can know whether there is any purpose to life at all.

Notice that the agnostic is not saying he doesn't know. He's saying he can't know and that nobody else can know either. Many people think if you haven't decided whether there's a God, this makes you into an agnostic. But that's not so. It doesn't make you into an anything.

Yet the agnostic indeed has decided. He has decided that we cannot know. He has decided that religious people who say there is a God, and atheists who say that there isn't, are both wrong. No human being could have knowledge of such a thing.

Now of course there is one great logical problem with agnosticism. If we cannot know anything beyond the facts of the material world, then how can we know that? How can we know for sure that we cannot know anything for sure? The instant the agnostic gives the human mind access to this one assertion of a truth beyond the material world, he has ceased by his own definition to be an agnostic. It's like saying, ``I can see plainly that no one can see plainly.'' Or, ``I just heard that no one can hear anything.''

However, this difficulty does not assail Mr. McCune because he isn't, as we've pointed out, an agnostic at all. He keeps giving himself away.

If you read his column regularly -- as we do because it is often well worth reading -- you find that he is frequently telling us what this or that politician ought or ought not to do. He deplores one public official for having done this, and derides another for not having done that.

But notice this: If the only thing Mr. McCune pretends to know is the facts of material existence, then while he can certainly know what the politicians are doing, how can he know what they ought to be doing? He is claiming, you see, to have knowledge beyond the merely material. He is claiming to know not only what people do, but what they ought and ought not to do. In fact, every time he criticizes human conduct in any way, implying somebody or ought or ought not to have done something, he is demonstrating he is not an agnostic.

And then, too, he says being an agnostic means you ``have to think for yourself.'' But what is the point of thinking at all, for yourself or for anybody else, if you can't know whether anything is good, bad, right, wrong, true or false, beyond what you can see, hear and touch?

Mr. McCune is obviously no agnostic. But he writes a very good column all the same.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in October 1992.

'Black Jack' Robinson is alive and well
and writing for the Ottawa Citizen

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 28, 2000

In a musty old red stone building at the corner of Matilda and Bay Streets in the heart of downtown Toronto, a dark-complexioned old man used to pace the floor and rant. He ranted against Liberals, against socialists, against unsuitable immigrants, against French Canadians, but most fiercely of all he ranted against the Pope. His furious, often brilliant, dissertations highlighted the editorial page of the Toronto Evening Telegram, long that city's principal daily, at the top corner of whose front page ran a Union Jack above the mantra: "One Flag, One Fleet, One Throne" -- which neatly summed up what he and his newspaper most fervently believed in.

The man was John R. "Black Jack" Robinson, the Telegram's editor-in-chief, still recognized as one of Canada's greatest journalists. Although Scots-born, he looked so dark he was taken to be black (hence the nickname). When he married, fashionable Toronto people warned his wife she could expect to have half-caste children.

Their three girls and one boy, however, all turned out emphatically blonde. One daughter, Judith, through the '30s, '40s and '50s wrote a column for the Telegram which was so popular that it helped keep the old paper alive. Their son, a lawyer, himself had a son, Reverend Harry Robinson, who in the '80s drew to St. John's Shaugnessy Anglican Church in Vancouver a congregation of young people probably unsurpassed by any Anglican church in Canada.

Black Jack Robinson is now long gone. So is Judith. So is the Telegram. So is the old building. So even is Matilda Street. But not everything is gone. A contemporary journalist is carrying forward one of Black Jack's most cherished causes. Her name is Susan Riley, she writes for the Ottawa Citizen and Southam newspapers, and she targets the Pope at least as savagely as Black Jack ever did.

What set her off last month was the Vatican statement entitled Dominus Iesus (Lord Jesus), issued to keep wayward Catholic theologians from straying so far into ecumenism they cease to be Catholics. While Protestant churches may preach much of the truth, it declared, and "can be used as instruments of salvation by the Spirit of Christ," they must nevertheless be considered "defective." Non-Christian religions may also contain many spiritual truths, but are even more "deficient" and might actually pose "an obstacle to salvation."

Curiously, the most ferocious response did not come from Protestants or from other faiths, but from the media. A World Council of Churches representative hoped the statement would not undo 35 years of ecumenical dialogue. An evangelical Lutheran bishop noted that "we haven't heard that reasserted for a while." The Archbishop of Canterbury said the Vatican statement "seems to question the considerable ecumenical gains we have made." A Muslim spokesman was unruffled too. "We knew all along the Catholic position," said Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America. "Our position is the same thing -- that the Catholic position is deficient."

Pretty mild stuff compared with this effusion in a Vancouver Province lead editorial: "The Catholic Church's latest holier-than-thou declaration is likely to do more to spook potential recruits than to convert them. Pompous, arrogant . . . can only accelerate the arrogance of all religions gracing this planet."

But even this was too wishy-washy for a successor of Black Jack Robinson. Susan Riley devoted a whole column to the evils of the Pope. He deals in "fear and tradition," she charged. "Moral certainties" are his "stock and trade." He can "silence" critics like the CBC's Michael Enright. His pronouncements are "nothing more than outdated prejudice dressed up in ecclesiastical splendour." And on and on.

Old Black Jack Robinson would surely approve. But when, he might wonder, will she get on to the French Canadians, immigrants, Liberals and socialists? When will we hear it for One Flag, One Fleet, One Throne?

There's a reason, of course, why other Christians are so much less indignant than the media. Obviously, all Christians believe that what they think about the church and God is true. It logically follows that where their beliefs are incompatible with those of other Christian denominations or other religions, then clearly the others must be wrong.

To hold a thing true, while simultaneously regarding contradictory beliefs as also true, is not to be tolerant. It is to be illogical and, ultimately, idiotic. Catholics think Protestant beliefs in some particulars defective. Protestants think Catholic beliefs in some particulars defective. This is hardly news. We need to be mutually charitable about our disagreements, but they cannot be compromised.

However, to many (probably most) media people, belief that anything at all is true, and therefore what disaccords with it is false, automatically constitutes unconscionable intolerance. Truth, they think, simply cannot be known. But as we have so often pointed out, this is itself a definite religious position -- and judging by the fervid reaction of young Black Jack Riley, quite an intolerant one.

Half the born-agains are still lost souls,
a researcher finds, and there�s a reason

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 21, 2000

Christian researcher George Barna, surveyor for more than 20 years of the beliefs and habits of American Christians, is not always the bearer of good news.

In his "State of the Church, 2000" report, for instance, he describes the oft-described Christian revival of the 1990s as "a myth." Polled surveys of 1,000 adult Americans back in 1991 found that 49% said they had attended church within the previous seven days. By 1995 this figure had dropped to 42%, and by this year to 40%.

For Protestants, the three figures were 56% for 1991, and 47% for 1995 and 2000. For Catholics, the tally was 59%, 46% and 49%. Notice that the major drop-off occurred during the early �90s, with Protestant numbers stabilizing at mid-decade and Catholic numbers slightly improving since then. But the data provide no evidence of a "return to the church" in either case.

More significantly, Mr. Barna found an astonishing deficiency of spiritual confidence and elementary Christian knowledge among people who described themselves as "born again" -- 41% of those polled (60% of the Protestants and 23% of Catholics). However, the consequences for many seemed to be disappointing; nearly half said they were still searching for some "purpose and meaning" in life.

In many respects, Mr. Barna reports, they were little different from anybody else in the U.S., with 31% describing themselves as "stressed out," 49% as "too busy," 40% as deeply "in debt" and 90% as "self sufficient" (meaning, presumably, self-dependent as against God-dependent). These numbers are almost identical with those of the non-born-agains, conveying the implication that the experience had little if any permanent effect.

Such results suggest, Mr. Barna concluded, that most Americans are looking for friends and meaning in life, but try to do so by filling their lives with a succession of "new experiences." None of these lasts, and the disappointment "just prolongs the inner despair that eventually cannot be suppressed any longer."

The report brings to mind Christ�s parable of the sower. All the seed lands on the ground somewhere, and much of it takes root. By no means all of it grows to maturity and bears fruit, however. Some is eaten by birds, some perishes on thin and rocky soil, some begins to grow but is choked out by weeds.

The seed, Jesus explains, is the Word of God. From some hearts it is immediately crowded out by distraction. Others accept it, but can do nothing with it because it finds no depth within them. Still others embrace it, and try to live by it, but give up when the cares and fears of the world assail them.

That this parable appears in all three synoptic gospels -- Matthew, Mark and Luke -- suggests it must have been a central aspect of the Lord�s teaching. The problem of the falling-away born-again has long been with us.

Countering it, however, may be even more difficult now than it used to be. People have always looked for "new experiences," but in other days the range of possibilities was more confined. Trace most of us back three generations and we�re on a farm (in this country or elsewhere), and rural life did not exactly abound in "new experiences."

The faith, that is, did not have nearly as much competition, and people who were "born again" may have been more persistent in pursuing what they had discovered. Today, however, our world presents a huge variety of activities, forms of entertainment, philosophies, ideas, assumptions -- many of them utterly incompatible with Christianity.

The church is therefore facing a gigantic, perhaps an unprecedented, educational task. Most people today are the product of an educational system whose basic assumptions are fundamentally alien to religion, particularly Christianity. Moreover, they have been powerfully influenced by news and entertainment media that are similarly incompatible. Thus the whole inclination of their minds must be redirected towards realities never previously considered.

This amounts to a massive job of adult education. Yet few churches now pay more than transient attention to adult Christian instruction. The message conveyed to the faithful, explicitly or implicitly, is this: if you go to church every Sunday, you will learn what you need to know. Well, the blunt fact is you probably won't. Anyway, Christians these days do not primarily regard the Sunday worship service as a process of instruction so much as an opportunity for renewed exhilaration. More likely, we go for a kind of spiritual shot in the arm, a "good feeling" fix.

Which may be all right so far as it goes, but it's unlikely to go far enough. There are new things that need to be learned, new attitudes that need to be shaped, new thoughts that need to be implanted, new arguments that need to be met. This may not involve a lot of thrill, but when the birds come, or stones clutter the ground or thorns threaten, the seed has a lot better chance of surviving and thriving.

Without this process, the born-again may find himself still wondering what life is all about. Which, unhappily, is the situation Mr. Barna seems to have uncovered.

An odd remedy for church growth
that includes no mention of God

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 14, 2000

``In 30 years of rapid change in worship styles, moral values and doctrinal interpretations by historic churches, the shocker has been that the churches that have changed the least are the ones that have grown the most.'' -- Anglican theologian Reginald Stackhouse, writing in the Globe and Mail.

Dr. Stackhouse points out that since the 1960s membership in his own church, the Anglican, has declined in Canada from 1,300,000 to 800,000, a drop of 38%. By contrast, the Pentecostal Church between 1981 and 1986 grew from 125,000 to nearly 190,000, an increase of 52%.

One might easily conclude, he allows, that this proves people reject novelty in religion, and that offering something new (in theology, in morals, in worship) is therefore a mistake. But look at the Mormons, he says. Look at the Jehovah's Witnesses. Relative to the mainline churches, they're certainly new. Yet they too have been growing phenomenally.

No, Dr. Stackhouse implies, the answer is not a return to moral and doctrinal traditionalism. Rather, the mainline churches should note and imitate three characteristics of the healthy upstarts. First, they all make ``growth'' (i.e., adding members) a top priority. Second, they provide ``fellowship.'' Third, they fulfil individual ``need'' (i.e. are therapeutic).

There is a curious omission from Dr. Stackhouse's list of Dependable Remedies for Ailing Churches, of course -- namely any reference to something called God.

Looking again at these ``successful'' churches -- meaning the ones that are adding members -- could it not be said that they all have three other qualities which many mainline churches seem to lack?

First, they have a consuming interest in God, and especially in Jesus Christ, whom they define as the Son of God.

Second, they say that God, if you let him, will become a discernible and overwhelming factor in your life. You won't be imagining it, they say. It's entirely real. Your life will change. You will do things you could not previously do. You will become in fact a different person. That, anyway, is what they claim.

Third, they say that the source of all moral authority is not ``public opinion,'' the media, the psychologists, the New Wave theologians, the family next door, nor the lifestyle currently prevailing at the office. It's the Bible. What the world favors is of no account. Popularity and public opinion have nothing to do with morality. It comes from the Bible.

In other words, the characteristics Dr. Stackhouse quite correctly observes in the growing churches are arguably not the primary cause of that growth. They are themselves consequences of a central emphasis upon God and his Word. The ``therapy'' that people find there is God's therapy. The fellowship they find is the fellowship of those united in a common cause. Without the cause, ``fellowship'' is likely to be illusory.

Finally, those growing churches do not exactly make growth their priority. Their priority is preaching the gospel, ``bringing people to Christ'' as Christ himself commanded them to do. This naturally results in growth.

The question therefore is: Can the mainline churches grow without having a clear gospel to preach? Can they offer fellowship merely for the sake of fellowship itself? Can they fulfil human ``needs'' unless they have something genuinely soul-satisfying with which to do it? In short, can they have the fruit without the tree that grows it?

As regards that tree, the mainliners have been suffering in this century from a terrible disability: the perception that Christianity's claim to present eternal truth is intellectually and sociologically disreputable. As one Anglican bishop typically explained it, the church is not in the business of providing ``pat answers'' and ``certitudes.'' In that case, however, just what business is it in?

What theologians like Dr. Stackhouse seemingly fail to notice is that Christian revival -- and over the centuries the faith has had many such resurrections from seeming death -- is always based on a return to the central verities. The effective reformers recover Christian beginnings. Strange as it seems, in religion you go forward by going back.

When the mainline Christian churches realize this, the consequence will be spectacular growth -- but by then they will know that ``growth'' is not the main point.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in August 1992.

A study finds Christians supremely `happy'
but `happiness' is a byproduct, not a goal

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 7, 2000

``Results from a preliminary study of 299 students at the University of Western Ontario indicate that those with `a significant commitment to their faith' are healthier, are more satisfied with life, can deal better with stress, and have shorter hospital stays than those who do not practice any religion.'' -- From an article in the Globe and Mail.

This study left the two sociologists who conducted it ``excited,'' said the news report. The students involved in it were 172 members of 11 Christian denominations, and 127 non-religious students. The results were sufficiently definitive, said one of the researchers, to warrant much more investigation: Sociologists should find out, ``What is it about being religious? Is it because you feel closer to God? Is it membership in a group? Or is it the values and practices that lead to membership in the group that are the key?''

These findings closely parallel those of George Gallup Jr., who heads the Gallup poll organization, and has also released extensive research on the attitudes of Christians. His polling, he says, found Christians not only far better able to cope with life generally but, surprisingly, much more tolerant of other views and even of other religions than were non-religious people. In an age when the popular media equate religious conviction with intolerance and bigotry this, you would think, would be news. However, few papers carried it.

Both these studies are certainly helpful to Christians, coming as they do when the disclosures of the Mount Cashel orphanage and assorted other ``wounds in the body of Christ'' have provided us with a great deal to be unhappy about. It's doubtful, however, that such revelations about our inherent joy and happiness will bring many people to us. The reason is this: If people come to our churches seeking happiness, there is a very good chance they won't find it. Because happiness is something you cannot find by looking for it. It is always the ``byproduct'' of something else.

For instance, a man who falls in love with a woman, courts her, and marries her may find great happiness in the outcome. But he wasn't seeking happiness. He was seeking her. Indeed, if he had been seeking happiness, and decided to ``use'' her as a means of providing it, the marriage would probably fail.

Similarly, if you seek happiness and look around for the kind of job that will provide it, you will probably never find such a job or happiness in your work either. But if you discover yourself fascinated with a certain type of work, and the kind of life that work will provide, you may take on the work and enjoy an immense happiness in it. But being happy wasn't what you were after. You simply wanted the job.

The same is true of Christianity. If you go to a church to find God, or because you're looking for what's ultimately true in life, or because you sense your own inadequacy in meeting the problems that life poses and think the church may somehow provide you with the strength to meet them, the likelihood is you will find these things in church and one day realize that you are unaccountably happy with life. Even its pain and difficulties become, strangely, sources of happiness because they enable you to share, in a very small way, the pain which Christ bore for us in his life on earth.

But if you go to church seeking some vague ``happiness'' you will probably not find it. It is always a byproduct, an incidental, and often you have it in full measure long before you even realize it that you have found it. You were not thinking about happiness; in fact you were hardly thinking about yourself at all. You were thinking about God, and other people, and the work he gives you to do. You just didn't have time to even ask yourself whether you were happy.

This paradox -- that you can only please yourself by forgetting about yourself -- is the major difference between Christianity and the current educational theory called ``selfism.'' The ``selfists'' say: Pleasing and satisfying yourself is the most important thing you can do. The Christians say: Forget about pleasing yourself. Look away from yourself. Look at other people and other things. Above all, look at Christ. And without even noticing it, you will become very happy indeed.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in August 1992.

That nice-guy, limp-wristed Jesus comes
straight out of the movies, not the Bible

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 31, 2000

``Christ stood for forgiveness, understanding and tolerance. We can't wait for the Catholic Church to catch up.'' -- From an editorial in the Vancouver Sun deploring the Vatican's assertion that homosexuality ought not to be advanced as an optional lifestyle.

Wherever the Vancouver Sun may get its ideas about either the Vatican or homosexuality, there is no doubt where it gets them about Jesus Christ. They're from the movies, or television. Where it does not get them is from the Bible.

For the Sun's view of that remarkable person who flashes through human history 2,000 years ago, literally dividing it in two, is the one held commonly today. He was, above all, a nice man, forgiving, understanding, tolerant, meek, mild, rather limp-wristed really, the man portrayed in Superstar or in Last Temptation, both as far removed from the only records we have of this man as they are from the realm of likelihood.

Two aspects of the really nice-guy Christ-of-the-movies rouse suspicions if you stop to seriously think about it. For one, how was it that so many down-to-earth men -- fishermen, for instance, or even a tax collector -- should have chosen to follow him? People, then or now, do not respect wimps, let alone abandon all their worldly possessions to follow them. And second, why would anyone have bothered to crucify him? Nice guys may not win ball games, but they aren't publicly executed as trouble-makers, either. If he existed at all, there must have been much more to this man.

From an historical viewpoint, there can be no question he existed. His life is as well attested as just about anybody else's at that time, and the documents increasingly hold up to historical criticism, meaning they were written sufficiently soon after the events they describe to be considered reliable.

And even from the most superficial reading of the four accounts of his life that survive as the first four books of the New Testament, the movie image bears almost no resemblance to the character who appears. Here was no wimp, yet other very different qualities do emerge:

One is that of utter self-assurance. He does not cite authority for what he says. He speaks as his own authority, citing the predecessor ``prophets'' only to show what they meant.

More alarming still, he claims the right to forgive people their sins. This is surely monstrous -- or true. One person may forgive another for a wrong done. But who's he? He wasn't even there, yet he talks as though he was the party chiefly offended. Similarly he says that to help those in need is to help him; to deny them is to deny him.

Again, there is a certain shrewdness to his moral teaching. It deals almost exclusively with what goes on in the mind, because it comprehends that what we do is the consequence of what we think.

He seems unimpressed, even disdainful, of religious authority. Respected church officials are denounced as ``whited sepulchres,'' meaning as death itself, painted over to look like something new and fresh. The person who imagines himself ``good'' dooms himself, where the person who recognizes and admits he is not good is somehow saved.

There are curious surprises. The person who whines but does what he is supposed to do is commended; the person who smiles compliantly but doesn't is condemned. The life-long servant is worth no more to God than the deathbed penitent. Most curious of all, the unscrupulous manager who cheats his boss by bestowing favors on his boss's creditors to prepare for the day when the boss fires him is, for reasons that are not at all clear, congratulated (Luke 16:8).

Finally, he warns repeatedly that we all walk a knife-edge between a final and indescribable misery and an inexpressible happiness. He himself is executed on a charge of blasphemy, for identifying himself as God and contending he was the means of human deliverance.

Is he ``forgiving?'' Certainly. But if you deny what you're doing is wrong, then how can you be forgiven? There would be nothing to forgive. Is he ``tolerant?'' Of course, he is. He tolerated everything human society could do to him, but this does not mean he approved of it. Is he ``understanding?'' He is entirely understanding, and that is perhaps the whole trouble. He understands us too well, far better than we understand ourselves.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in August 1992.

A lesson learned among pots & pans
could resolve a modern moral dilemma

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 24, 2000

"While the Catholic bishops condemn sexism as a `moral and social evil,' they reaffirm the Vatican's insistence on an all-male (and celibate) clergy, and condemn artificial contraception and abortion." -- Religion columnist Jack Kapica in The Globe and Mail.

Mr. Kapica is explaining the dilemma of the Catholic bishops of the United States. They want to reassure American Catholic women that their church condemns ``sexism,'' but at the same time, he says, they must uphold ``sexist'' doctrines. Only unmarried males may become priests. Abortion is prohibited, as is ``artificial'' birth control. This, says Mr. Kapica, is hopelessly ``contradictory.'' But is it, really?

Mr. Kapica is making what today is a very common assumption. To draw any distinction whatsoever between the roles of men and women amounts, he is sure, to sexism. After all, by insisting that women cannot properly function in the role of priest, and by requiring that in marriage women ought to have children (if they can), and by denying women the right to abort unborn children, the bishops are denying women rights and freedoms that are not denied to men. Therefore, whatever the bishops may say, they're ``sexist.'' They favor discriminatory treatment of women.

Christians, however, have always believed that there is a huge difference between treating people differently and treating them unfairly. Different treatment and unfair treatment are not the same thing at all. To pay a woman less for doing a job as well as a man would do it, for example, would be unfair. But to give her maternity leave that a man does not receive, or to exclude her from certain physically strenuous work that men are routinely required to do, would not be unfair. It would be different, but not unfair.

This habit of treating people differently according to their role in life is very ancient in Christianity. Christians believe that all people have ``callings,'' a special life work that God wants them to do. But they do not believe that these ``callings'' are the same, or open to all of us. ``To each of us is given his measure of grace from the richness of Christ's gift,'' wrote St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (4:7). ``...Some he made his messengers, some prophets, some preachers of the gospel; to some he gave the power to guide and teach his people.''

St. Paul went on to compare the great body of Christendom, all Christian people, to another of God's creations, the human body. The body, he said is composed of different members with differing functions, but all operating in harmony together. All are important, all are essential. (In a 20th Century Christian novel, a great artist arrives in heaven and asks: ``Who are the important people here?'' Comes the reply: ``Everybody is important here.'')

No doubt St. Paul wrote this reassurance to combat a kind of equal rights movement in his own time. Some Christians in Ephesus were probably contending that if those people over there could be ``prophets,'' then why shouldn't everyone be allowed to be a prophet?

But according to Christian teaching we are not judged by whatever it is we are called to do, but by whether we accept the call and how well we fulfil it. A good chambermaid might be very much closer to God than a bad pope. A clerk in McDonald's, whose charity shines brightly before those he serves and those he works with, may be doing more important work than a world-renowned television evangelist. We cannot tell.

Christians are urged to emulate an ex-soldier named Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, who joined the Carmelite order about 1655. The Carmelites put him in charge of the monastery kitchen -- a job he hated. But he deliberately taught himself to praise God through his demeaning work among the pots and pans and thereby became a great Christian mystic, known to history by the new name the Carmelites gave him, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. His renowned book, The Practice of the Presence of God, has strengthened many of his fellow Christians ever since.

The key to a happy life, said Brother Lawrence, lies in accepting the role God has given you, and in performing it as a kind of prayer, however unattractive that role may at first seem. ``Perfect abandonment to God,'' he said, ``is the sure way to heaven, and a way on which we will always have sufficient light for our conduct.''

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in August 1992.

How to be P.C.: Just assume that most people,
past and present, were wrong about everything

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 17, 2000

``It's pretty obvious that [Christian] inhumanity flows not from aberrant individuals but from the relentless hubris of religious thought -- the conviction that `we alone have the perfect system.' '' -- Ralph C. Deans of Ottawa in a letter to the Globe and Mail.

Mr. Deans was writing in support of a Globe and Mail article that was critical of the attitudes of fundamentalist Islamic attitudes, and in critical response to two Muslims who objected to the article. For good measure he enlarged his attack to include Christianity as well, and the prevailing nastiness "commonplace in every religion." Religious people defend themselves by dismissing any unfortunate developments as "aberrations." But in fact, Mr. Deans wrote, the rot lies right at the core of religious-minded: in the ``hubris'' (the Latin word for the sin of pride) that insists they are right and everybody else is wrong.

But whatever may be the case for other religions (and one could be made for them) Christians do not believe that "we alone have the perfect system" and everyone else is entirely wrong. In the first place, Christianity teaches that no human being can be entirely ``right'' about God, who is uncreated, eternal and infinite, the creeds tell us. The human mind can comprehend such an entity only marginally more than a statue, say, can be expected to comprehend the sculptor. We know that all religions are attempts to do so, and that all necessarily fall short of the reality.

Moreover, Christianity actually agrees on important points with with other religions. We all believe that a supernatural power or powers created the world and takes a continuing interest in its welfare. We all agree that this deity requires human beings to adhere to certain moral rules. With the Jews and Muslims, we believe that this creator is a single deity, not a multiplicity. This is quite a lot of agreement. By contrast, it should be noted, atheists and agnostics must assume that most of the world's peoples, past and present, have been simply wrong about everything.

Mr. Deans is correct to some extent, however. We do also hold that where the beliefs of other religions are incompatible with Christianity, the others are wrong. Similarly, we assume that followers of other faiths think the same -- where we differ, they assume that they are right and we are wrong. To do otherwise would not constitute being ``tolerant.'' It would merely be illogical. Two contrary beliefs might both be untrue, to be sure, but to suggest both were true would be a contradiction in terms.

Where things can go off track, of course, is in what we do about our differences. What Christians are supposed to do is to try to peaceably convince non-believers of the truth. On the occasions when we have exceeded that mandate, as in the more extreme practices of the Inquisition for example, we have admittedly been guilty of something that cannot be justified by Christian tenets.

Curiously, if we look about us today we see strong evidence of the attitude Mr. Deans deplores. That is, we see people who claim to have a deeper understanding of the shape society should take, the attitudes people should have, the thoughts we should be allowed to express and those that must be forbidden, the words we should be allowed to use and those that should be banned, how we should be allowed to raise our children, and how we should not, what should be taught to them and what should not, and so on ad infinitum.

We see these things being imposed upon people, whether or not they agree with them, by a select group within society who believe this knowledge has been conferred upon them and them alone. Indeed, they very much do say, ``We alone have the perfect system'' and are working zealously to impose that system on everybody else.

But these select few are not Christians, nor Muslims or Jews either. They are the advocates of the various rights movements -- feminist rights, native rights, homosexual rights, all those movements that have made the Politically Correct movement the power it has become.

A better example of what Mr. Deans calls ``hubris'' would be difficult to imagine.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in August 1992.

When you envision God as `The Force,'
exactly what picture of Him do you make?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 10, 2000

The members of a Congregational church in Long Beach, California, were asked to develop ``modern images of God.'' One said he thought God was ``like a cloud,'' another like a ``formless spirit.'' Another concluded God was ``like atoms.'' -- From a report in the National Review.

In the scientifically oriented world of the 20th Century, many thinking people reached two conclusions. First, they rejected atheism. To believe that the physical universe came about by accident, they reasoned, requires more faith than believing it was somehow planned. And if planned, there must be some sort of Planner. In other words, God.

But second, they naturally rejected the ``anthropomorphic'' images they were taught in childhood -- the Old Man with the beard, sitting on a cloud, sometimes with a somewhat Younger Man, the ``Son of God,'' positioned behind him. So, like the California congregation, they try to develop a more sophisticated and more intellectually respectable image of the Planner.

Some say, for instance, that they can believe in a ``Force,'' the word and concept actually used in the Star Wars movies. But then, as C.S. Lewis observed 40 years ago, when people are asked what they actually picture when they try to envision a ``Force,'' the answers are revealing. Some see in their minds a pattern of iron filings on a piece of paper (magnetic force). Some think of an electric spark, or a streak of lightning (a Great Big Spark, as it were).

Similarly, one member of this California congregation pictures a cloud, a huge white puff. What the individual who opted for a ``formless spirit'' might have had in mind we can only guess. A kind of ghostly, blurred light perhaps. As for the atom image, it would likely come to mind as the conventional depiction of electrons whirling about a nucleus -- a number of little balls circling a big one.

The thing to notice about all these images is that every one of them is something considerably less sophisticated than a human being. A human being is a living biological organism with an amazing complexity of constantly changing cells, nerves, sensors and defenses, all intricately inter-dependent in ways we are only beginning to understand. It has intelligence; it observes; it discovers; it communicates; it creates. It is, in fact, the most highly sophisticated entity we know -- nature's crowning achievement.

Thus the image of an aged human being represents human life in completion, a life that carries within it the whole accumulated experience of childhood, youth and maturity, the completed work. In imagining God as an aged human being, therefore, the child is in fact envisioning the highest thing we can observe.

So the question is this: If we change from the picture of the old man to the image of the spark, or the cloud, or the big ball and the little balls, are we actually going from something less appropriate to something more representative of the unknowable reality? Or is it the other way around? Is the child, in fact, cherishing a more ``reasonable'' image than these earnest Long Beach adults? The answer seems obvious.

Adult Christians are not expected to believe that God is an old man, however. Indeed, the Christian creeds pronounce God both ``infinite'' and ``incomprehensible,'' meaning that we cannot even begin to get our tiny created minds around the reality of our creator. We know the ``old man'' is an attempt to express, in our terms, what is actually inexpressible. In the same way, physicists give us the ball and the whirling electrons as the picture of the atom. But they warn us that the picture is not the reality, and we must not take it literally. Christian theology does the same with the old man picture.

The old man image, of course, comes from Christ himself, who constantly described God as ``Father.'' And whenever we try to improve on this biblical imagery, we find that our minds inevitably shift from human being to wind or waves, magnetism or electricity. That is not an instructive improvement.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in July 1992.

The Times discloses a frightful reality:
Christian books outsell everything else

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 3, 2000

Something akin to consternation, we can legitimately suspect, has overtaken the American literary world of late. The New York Times, whose weekly "Best Seller" list is the most authoritative index of what Americans are reading, was finally pressured into including the sales reports of so-called "Christian" bookstores. To the literati the result is, to say the least, simply appalling.

What Americans are reading more than anything else are books about Christ and Christianity -- so much so that one of them has now topped the list. Charisma magazine reported on June 8, 2000: "The latest book in the wildly successful 'Left Behind' fiction series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins will become the first Christian novel ever to be listed as No. 1."

This novel, entitled "The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession," also held top spot on the Amazon.com list in April on the basis of advance sales. In the last five years the seven-volume series, which fictionalizes the world after the Rapture, has sold 17 million copies. The advance printing of "The Indwelling" was two million and the publisher, Tyndale House, has had to build a new warehouse at Carol Stream, Illinois, to accommodate the inventory.

The authors say they have made $10 million on the series, much of which they've donated to Christian causes. "More than 2,000 people have written that they have received Christ through reading the books," Charisma said -- one of them on death row in Texas.

Meanwhile, something else has occurred on television. All the major networks in the last year have done special programs on Jesus and Christianity. All attracted astoundingly large audiences, in one case the biggest ever to have watched a U.S. television show, outpulling even the NFL and NBA finals.

To the literati, television hardly matters. But who reads books does matter, and they're supposed to know who that is. So why the surprise?

The explanation is amusing. Some 30 years ago, when Smith and Coles were expanding in Canada, long before the advent of Amazon and Chapters, Christians discovered that major bookstores didn't carry what they wanted to read. So "Christian" bookstores were established, and have flourished. Since by "industry standards" these were not proper bookstores, however -- no Margaret Atwood, Susan Musgrave, John Ralston Saul et al. -- the industry saw no point reporting their sales figures.

Within the last two years, however, certain American magazines, such as National Review, which enjoy poking fun at the intellectual establishment, began investigating. Christian book sales, they discovered, were well up there with the respectable part of the industry.

Finally, even the New York Times actually had to concede that Christian books are, in fact, books and therefore would have to be included in the weekly list. Otherwise, it could hardly qualify as a compendium of what Americans are reading. It would only be what certain Americans are reading, notably those whose choices the Times approved. And that couldn't be defended as very liberal, could it?

By conventional standards the literary value of many of these books may not, in truth, be very high, a criticism with which more erudite Christians would no doubt reluctantly concur. However, this deficiency makes not the slightest impression upon the millions who buy and read them.

Moreover, those of us who hew to more orthodox literary and theological lines can on occasion badly misjudge the impact of this sort of popular offering. When the two of us, for instance, read the reviews of Martin Scorcese's "Last Temptation of Christ," we agreed with its Christian critics that the film was close to scurrilous.

But neighbors of ours, a pleasant, responsible, hard-working couple who never went to church and knew hardly anything about Christ or Christianity, saw the film and were much moved by it. We asked our neighbor about the notorious scene in which Jesus is portrayed as having sex with Mary Magdalene. "Oh that," he replied. "That wasn't supposed to have really happened. He's only imagining it, thinking about the kind of life he'd given up in order to do his Father's work. It's a temptation, you see. In the end he rejects it and suffers as he was supposed to."

Then our neighbor asked: "He was human, wasn't he? So he must really have been tempted. He must really have suffered. If he didn't, then how could his temptation and suffering have saved us?"

This from a man who had never raised a single question about God or faith before. Soon after that he and his wife were asking about getting their children baptized.

"God," observes St. Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, "is no respecter of persons." Nor is he necessarily any respecter of literary conventions, either. Nor of the delicate sensibilities of his more priggish servants (like us, for example). It seems he can even live with the messy reality of sex. But then, why not? He invented it.

Why the press hates to hear
from a Christian politician

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 27, 2000

``Stand up on a stage and quote Buddha, Gandhi, Nietzsche, Mao, Lenin or Nixon. That's okay. People can deal with that. They might even call you an intellectual. However, mention the name Jesus Christ and people get a little fidgety.'' -- Columnist Shane Mills in the Cariboo Observer.

``The press,'' notes Mr. Mills, ``is a terrible offender. For whatever reason, they feel Christians, especially those of the evangelical bent, have checked their brains at the door of the church. They have a difficult time believing these people capable of rational thought."

He is discussing the reaction of the media to the assertion of Reform Party leader Preston Manning that he is a practicing Christian. It intrigues columnist Mills that only Mr. Manning is subjected to incessant questioning and prodding about his faith. Reporters do not inquire about the spiritual state of Brian Mulroney, after all, who never mentions his faith. Nor do they subject Audrey McLaughlin and Jean Chretien to searching religious analysis. Political commentators seem to abhor the notion of electing a leader who admits to having a clearly defined moral stance.

Mr. Mills thinks this surely calls for explanation. Are the media afraid Mr. Manning would ``impose his beliefs'' (as the catch phrase goes) on the country? And yet, he notes, in the case of Mr. Manning in particular this seems especially unreasonable. He and his party have specifically committed themselves to referendums on key contentious moral issues, like abortion and capital punishment, even though many Christians consider this to be a fatal moral compromise.

Meanwhile the rest of Canada's political leaders would presumably ``impose'' something on the country -- either something that stems from their own moral beliefs (but no one ever seems to ask what these are), or perhaps simply from whatever pressure groups have caught their political ear. But either way, some kind of morality is being ``imposed,'' whenever any law is passed. So what is it about the Christian one that arouses such instant suspicion?

Mr. Mills offers one possible explanation: Christians are considered ``irrational.'' They believe in miracles. They believe God ``speaks'' to us from within. How could such people be trusted in public office?

And yet, says Mr. Mills, is belief in God ``irrational?'' Is it somehow unreasonable to believe that there is a kind of Mind behind reality? Have we found some scientific evidence proving it impossible for whatever it is that made us to be able to communicate with us? Is not the ``rational'' answer to both questions simply, no? In plain fact, Christianity is a ``rational, thoughtful and defensible faith.''

Then why this automatic hostility to Christianity?

Though Mr. Mills doesn't venture beyond this point, permit us to try to do so. Most of us are inclined to believe that morality is all very well up to a point. Indeed, we could scarcely live without it. A world without morals -- in which nobody felt obliged to do things like keep promises, or tell the truth, or not to hurt other people whenever you felt like it, or to show the slightest interest in anything but themselves -- would be both an impossible world and an unknown one. Every society has morals.

But the trouble with Christians is that they take morality too far. They seem to make ``being good'' the be-all and end-all of life, the thing that life is all about. And that's downright dangerous and offensive.

We all have a conscience, of course. And we follow it up to a point. But we all know that if we follow it as far as it would take us, there would be nothing left of us. Doing good would take all our thought, time, money, everything. There'd be nothing left for ourselves. So we draw lines, beyond which we do not feel impelled to go.

The Christians do, too, of course. But they keep talking as they ought not, and some of them -- a Mother Theresa, say -- look dangerously as though they're not drawing any line at all. And that is very upsetting, even hateful.

Christ, of course, foresaw this. Be very happy when men hate you, he told his followers, when they think they are serving their best interests by getting rid of you. That means you're on the right track. That's what they did to the prophets of old, of course. And that's what they did to him.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in July 1992.

While liberal clerics deplore conversion,
Jane Fonda and a porn king defy them

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 20, 2000

The phenomenon of conversion to Christianity has been suffering from bad press lately. Many liberal clergymen are denouncing the preaching of the gospel as incompatible with "a pluralistic society" because, of course, preaching leads people to conversion.

And converts are, they fear, notoriously illiberal. Having concluded that the gospel is true, the convert is forced by reason to conclude that which is incompatible with it false. This could lead to intolerance, bigotry and other nasty things. So we should give up preaching the gospel and preach goodwill and tolerance instead. Such is the thinking.

One might argue, true enough, that if the gospel actually is true, then that which is incompatible with it would indeed be false and therefore rejectable. Moreover, converts habitually seek not to harm the unconverted but to persuade them to follow in their path. Since you do not generally persuade people by beating them up, the convert is an unlikely persecutor. Theological liberals are rarely convinced, however.

Even so, conversions continue to occur, sometimes to people who have been lifelong churchgoers. Not long ago we told the astonishing story of Tom Monaghan, a cradle Catholic and founder of the Domino's pizza empire. After reading C.S. Lewis' chapter on the sin of "Pride," he felt so convicted he began to explore the whole vista of Christianity.

Perhaps his decision occurred when he came to the story of "the rich young ruler" who was told to give everything away and follow Jesus. In any event, that's exactly what he did. He sold his yacht, his vast estates, his baseball team and his stock in Domino's and is now using a billion or so dollars to, among scores of other things, create a Catholic law school founded on the ancient premise of "natural law."

Last month there were two more interesting conversions, one of them involving an internationally known figure, the other a man who once rejoiced to be known as Calgary's top pornography pedlar.

The celebrity was, of all people, Jane Fonda, now 62 -- "Hanoi Jane," as the troops in Vietnam called her when she was photographed cheering on the North Vietnamese who were firing on American planes.

That was a long time ago, of course, and a great deal has happened since. There were the Jane Fonda exercise courses, the Jane Fonda soft-porno pictures, the Jane Fonda marriage to Ted Turner, the Jane Fonda separation from Ted Turner, finally the Jane Fonda ventures into every manner of "spirituality."

All of which has culminated, she explained in an interview with Oprah Winfrey's new magazine, O, in her joining a black evangelical church in Atlanta where she talks of "an incredible connection to God, or what I call the Holy Spirit."

"It's been difficult," she says, "because when you're famous and the word gets out that you're a Christian, every church is saying,'Even Jane Fonda.' People come up to me in airports and throw their arms around me."

Her response to questions about "Hanoi Jane" make her conversion very convincing. She answers with uncharacteristic apprehension. "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me on an anti-aircraft carrier which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless."

Calgary's self-described king of second-hand pornography accompanied his conversion with decisive action. "Saturday is my last day of selling this crap," said Harold Harcus, 60, who ran Dr. Hook's Used Tapes and Books.

In January a friend had invited him to attend a nearby non-denominational church which ministers to some very poor people. "Just walking up the stairs changed my life," he said. "I felt the Spirit of God within me. Once I started going to church, I realized that what I was doing was not right. It's not what God wanted."

The following Sunday he and the congregation, led by Pastor Don Delaney, shredded 30,000 magazines and smashed hundreds of pornographic videos. What he will now do for a living doesn't worry Mr. Harcus. "Because of my faith I know I will find work somewhere."

Christians have been witnessing conversions since the ministry of Jesus himself. G.K. Chesterton wrote a poem he called "The Convert," he himself being one:

The sages have a hundred maps to give,
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Worshiping the environment means
worshiping the end of all stories

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 13, 2000

``Environmental religion in this day and age, without a doubt, serves a greater purpose and makes more sense than our traditional religions do.'' -- David McMullen, in his final year of Pacific Rim Studies at the University of Victoria, writing in the Victoria Times Colonist.

Noticing the proliferation of symbols of ``exotic'' religions worn by young people, and the ``greying'' of congregations in churches, Mr. McMullen predicts the rapid decline of Christianity in favor of what he calls ``earth religions.'' The ``one God in heaven above'' will be supplanted by ``the demands of the Goddess Mother Earth,'' he proclaims.

Mr. McMullen writes, of course, very much from a western world (especially west coast North American) perspective. The decline of Christianity is largely confined to western Europe and Anglo North America. In modern China or Russia or Brazil or Mexico he would notice, not a decline, but a marked new interest in Christianity.

Moreover, what he and his teachers in the environmental movement are celebrating is not the advent of a new religion. Nature worship -- the deification of what we can see and touch and feel -- can be considered the ``natural'' state of humankind. It's what was there before religion, as such, made its various appearances in the world between roughly 600 B.C. (Buddha) and 600 A.D. (Mohammed), with Christ appearing about the middle of the period.

Why, you wonder, was this pre- religious condition rejected? For one thing, embedded in the human soul is a keen desire for permanence. Nature promised only destruction. It still does; there is nothing permanent about it. The sun will grow cold, the scientists tell us, and even the universe itself is running down. If nature is all there is, then all stories, all causes, all moral victories come to nothing.

But nature worship had another deficiency as well. Forests, for example, have two very different aspects. They are exceedingly beautiful, something that disciples of ecology gurus like David Suzuki celebrate. But they are also exceedingly ruthless, something the Suzuki School ignores. A forest is a battleground where each tree tries to choke out its neighbor, each species to proliferate at the expense of the others. The ``balance of nature'' is achieved through a vicious process in which the stronger continually destroy the weaker.

Since mankind is one of the species, if we chop down all the cedars we're doing a perfectly ``natural'' thing. In urging us to revere nature, the Suzuki disciples are doing something entirely unnatural. Oh yes, they say, but we need the forests. If we destroy them we will eventually destroy our own species as well. Maybe so, replies the ruthless industrialist, but why should I worry about that? I'm looking out for No. 1. That's nature's lesson, the one taught by ``the Goddess Mother Earth.''

To counter such an attitude, the nature worshippers must reach beyond the Goddess to the much-despised ``God in Heaven above.'' For it is He, not Mother Earth, who calls us to be ``stewards'' of his creation, required to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others, to behave ``unnaturally'' so the natural can survive.

Thus columnist McMullen's message is very much a borrowed one, borrowed from the churches he sees as doomed. But are they really doomed? How often has Christianity been doomed before?

It would perish, we were assured, with the Darwinian triumph in this century -- but now Darwinism is questioned, while science and religion find increasing common ground. It was pronounced dead in the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, which left urban churches as empty as human souls -- but suddenly burst forth again in the 19th. It was to perish forever with the Middle Ages -- but instead exploded around the world. It should have died with Christian Rome in the 5th Century -- but proceeded to erect the whole medieval order. And after that first Good Friday the disciples on the road to Emmaus mourned, ``We believed him, but now we know not.'' In fact, they were about to launch the conversion of the then known world.

The young believe in environmentalism because they are taught it. There is actually nothing about it that argues against the truth of Christianity, but they are not taught Christianity. There is surely a message in this for the churches.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in July 1992.

If sexual morality is purely `relative,'
then so, too, is environmental morality

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 6, 2000

This is ``an age of relativity, both in science and religion.'' -- George Cornell, religion writer for the Associated Press.

Mr. Cornell is describing the amazing jumble of beliefs which recent Gallup Polls reveal as crowding together in the minds of modern Americans. The same chaos is certainly evident in the working philosophies of most Canadians.

Sixty-three per cent of people, for instance, say they do not believe in moral ``absolutes,'' meaning moral rules which apply no matter what the situation.

But at the same time 70% say it's important to do what God and the Bible tell them is right. They do not want moral absolutes, but they do want to obey the Bible -- which abounds in moral absolutes.

Such confusion is not new. The Oxford literature professor, C.S. Lewis, published his fanciful The Screwtape Letters 50 years ago, in 1942. He imagined Screwtape, an elderly devil in hell, advising his nephew, a junior tempter on earth, what thoughts to put into the mind of ``the patient'' (a poor, unsuspecting human) to assure his delivery to ``Our Father Below.''

``Your man,'' writes Screwtape, ``has been accustomed ever since he was a boy to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily `true' or `false,' but as `academic' or `practical,' `outworn' or `contemporary,' `conventional' or `ruthless.' Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true. Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous -- that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.''

Nowhere is this jumbled thought more evident than in the field of morality. People who reject Christian rules that prohibit adultery or the practice of homosexuality, for example, typically argue that all morality is ``relative.'' There are no blacks and whites, only shades of grey. What's wrong for some people may be right for others. Something considered ``sinful'' in one generation may become right in another because public attitudes change. Nothing is really right or wrong. Everybody makes up his own rules. There are no moral absolutes.

In the next breath, however, when talking about industrial polluters, or clear-cutters, or racial persecution, the same people suddenly become morally authoritarian. It doesn't matter whether the management of this or that company thinks a practice right. It's wrong, period! There's nothing relative about it. Moral absolutes have unaccountably returned, with a vengeance.

But personal morality (governing your relations with individual human beings) and social morality (governing your relations with groups of human beings -- your community, your country, your employees, the people who live downstream from your plant) are of the same order. Both are rules about how we should behave. So how can anyone justifiably contend that personal morals are relative, and social morals absolute? If the one can be dismissed as ``relativistic,'' then so can the other. If one person can escape the claims of some personal moral rule by maintaining that it's ``all relative anyway,'' then the industrialist who wants to escape the claims of some social moral rule can do precisely the same. It, too, must be ``all relative anyway.'' If relativism destroys the basis of one, it destroys the basis of the other as well.

What has heightened this confusion in the 20th Century is no doubt the very association which Mr. Cornell implies, namely the notion that the Einsteinian Theory of Relativity has somehow provided a scientific basis for moral relativism.

It has done nothing of the kind, however, and no one was more horrified when he saw it being so interpreted than Dr. Einstein himself. ``Einstein was not a practicing Jew,'' writes Paul Johnson in his history of the 20th Century, Modern Times (Harper Collins, 1983), ``but he acknowledged a God. He believed passionately in absolute standards of right and wrong. . . . He lived to see moral relativism, to him a disease, become a social pandemic, just as he lived to see his fatal equation (the Theory of Relativity) bring into existence nuclear warfare.''

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in June 1992.

The world knows how to save the church,
and the world, as usual, is dead wrong

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 29, 2000

The mass exodus from the mainline churches, particularly the United and Anglican, is beginning to alarm the outside world. As usual, the outside world knows exactly what to do about this. The Christian churches, they say, should forget their foolish divisions over mere dogma and unite before they vanish altogether.

Such advice was proffered last month, for example, in the church newspaper Christian Week by Gerry Bowler, identified as "a Winnipeg writer and historian." Teaching denominational doctrine is "all a waste of time," writes Mr. Bowler. "The percentage of the population that takes religion seriously is declining. The faithful are an aging bunch. Denominations that used to embrace the majority of Canadian Protestants are rapidly shrinking. . . .

"So what to do? I'm calling for a moratorium on the teaching of denominational theology and history until priorities are straightened out. . . . Aren't all religions really the same? Why are Christians so hung up on sexual matters when there is so much poverty and injustice in the world? Why do Christians always want to impose their spiritual beliefs on others? I can find God in my own way. . . ."

We could answer him, of course. We could say that what people do is based on what they really believe, and what we believe about God is theology. So surely theology must be the first priority to "straighten out." And though they have wide areas of agreement, no, all religions are not the same. There are definitely some bad ones, as anyone who has lived through much of the 20th century has had good cause to discover.

And Christians want to persuade others of our spiritual and moral beliefs because we think those beliefs true -- not true just for us, but true for everybody. Period. If you believe that no one can really know the truth anyway, that's fine, but this isn't Christian; it's another religion called agnosticism.

It's noteworthy that Mr. Bowler writes this as the United Church celebrates its 75th anniversary, the United Church being the embodiment of Mr. Bowler's proposal. When they created the church out of the Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, its founders also decided theology was "a waste of time." So while they adopted a "Statement of Faith," they never did enjoin their ministers to unreservedly accept it. You could believe pretty well anything and still be a member.

Many Presbyterians couldn't swallow this. That's why we have a continuing Presbyterian Church of Canada. To create a church without a creed which the members agreed upon as true, they said, would be like building a house on sand. When the rains came, and the winds blew, it would fall. The church would be founded on Jesus Christ, replied the advocates of union. But who was Jesus Christ? the dissenters asked. Was he a man? God? A man so good as to be called Son of God? Or was he "perfect God and perfect man, of reasoning soul and human flesh subsisting," as the fourth-century creed declared him? Trying to resolve that was futile, the advocates decided. The church must be founded on Jesus Christ, but who he was they would rather not say.

A half century later the rain and the winds arrived. Protestant Christianity in any form, it was becoming evident, was no longer the unofficial religion of the English Canadian establishment. The intelligentsia, academe, the high thinkers in the bureaucracy, the luminaries of the media now had a new religion.

God, they concluded, must no longer be regarded as a fact. We could know the facts of nature, but religion and morality could not be considered factual. That would lead to intolerance, bigotry and judgmentalism. Views of God and morality must therefore be regarded as strictly personal, above all never cited as authoritative on matters of public policy. By the 1960s, that's what "informed" people believed.

Was this new establishment religion compatible with the beliefs of the United Church? Who could say? The United Church didn't have any notable beliefs. Hence its response to the rain and the wind, with some notable exceptions at the congregational level, was to collapse before the storm. The seminaries and church bureaucracy, rather than resisting, simply adopted the new establishment creed and preached it.

The laity, meanwhile, discerning little distinction between what the world said and what the church said, saw little use for the latter. The statistics tell the rest of the story. Membership down from 1,064,000 in 1965 to 650,000 now. Sunday school enrolment down from 757,000 to 170,000, an 80% drop. Weekly church attenders running at 10% to 15% of membership, lowest of any denomination. He's weary of hearing of imminent doom, says moderator Bill Phipps. No doubt he is. No doubt Nero grew weary of hearing about that fire.

The fact is that "forget doctrine" is the recipe for disaster. No doctrine means no faith which means no church. What's desperately needed is a return to doctrine, not a departure from it.

When majority rules,
is it always right?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 22, 2000

``The Church is not in a popularity contest; nor is its authority a case of majority rule.'' -- Thomas Langan, professor of philosophy, University of Toronto, writing in the Canadian Catholic Review.

Christianity, Prof. Lagnan pointed out, has never decided what it believes true or right on the basis of a popular vote of the membership. Churches are not democracies.

To people of the western world, who imbibe with their mother's milk the moral absolute that ``the people must decide,'' the professor's assertion will come as downright offensive, even wicked. Christians, like everyone else in our society, they would say, should be ``democratic.''

But then what does ``being democratic'' mean? Surely it means that the majority of the people being governed should decide what kind of laws the government will enact and enforce. It does not mean believing that those laws will be just and good. Obviously the people who lose an election, the minority, may believe that the laws the majority adopt may be quite wrong, but they will obey them anyway.

It therefore becomes evident that a great many people are not really democratic. The Americans in the '60s, for instance, who defied the draft laws did so because they believed the war in Vietnam wrong, that there was a law above the civil law that mattered more. Similarly today, many people who oppose abortion believe it violates a moral law that the civil law should enforce and doesn't.

In short, in a democracy the majority decide what shall be done, not whether it's right or wrong, true or false.

And if you think about it, very few of our ``beliefs'' are decided ``by the majority.'' Scientists, for instance, do not determine whether a theory is true or false by taking a popular vote of scientists, or the general public, but rather by how convincing is the experimental evidence. Neither, for that matter, do any of us really decide our beliefs about geographic or historical facts on the basis of popular opinion. If we really want to know whether, say, Singapore is north or south of Tokyo, we do not take a poll, we look at a map. That is, we consult an ``authority'' which we respect. If we want to find out whether Pierre Trudeau could ever have known Wilfrid Laurier we do not consult the feeling around the office. We look it up. We consult ``authority.''

In one of his hilarious sketches, Stephen Leacock spoofed the notion of theology being decided by popular vote. One of the congregations in his fictitious little town of Mariposa was divided over the question of whether Jesus Christ is ``really'' present in the Christian rite of Holy Communion. It was settled ``democratically.'' Very well, says the minister, we now know by a vote of 67-48 that Jesus is really present in the Communion. But last time, argues one membver, the vote went the other way. Well, says the minister, then at that time Jesus was not present in the Communion.

But, it is therefore asked, if Christians do not decide what they believe ``democratically,'' then how do they decide? Generally, they have three ways of deciding these questions:

First, on the basis of ``authority'' - - the authority of the Bible and the authority of the teachings of the church over the ages. Protestants tend to put the Bible first, Catholics and Orthodox the teachinbgs of the church, but all strress that you should use both.

Second, they are encouraged to think things out, to use the reason that God gave them. Common sense is to play a part in developing belief.

Finally, they are taught to pray, to ask God to directly influence their thoughts and to determine their innermost beliefs.

The amazing thing, they find, is how frequently all of these elements concur. When they do, you have what can be called a ``deep'' conviction.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in June 1992.

Science may at last join religion,
but science itself is now in bad odor

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 15, 2000

``This may answer to some degree the question of how we are here. What it does not answer is why we are here. That is the profound and deeper question that science is incapable of answering.'' -- Jesuit Father Chris Moss, dean of St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, commenting on the observations of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite which many said confirm the religious view of creation.

What COBE actually recorded several weeks ago [in 1992] is pretty abstruse stuff for laymen to understand, never mind the supposed theological implications, but the popular media did their best. COBE had detected apparent temperature fluctuations in the microwave radiation of deep space, they explained: a ``radiation signature'' released billions of years ago. This supports the Big Bang theory that the universe originated as a primeval fireball and, as it cooled and expanded, that the galaxies formed from irregularities in the background density. COBE's findings are the first clear confirmation that such irregularities did indeed exist.

Most scientific observers seemed to agree that the new data reaffirm religion in two ways. First, they suggest the universe had a definite beginning (a hotly disputed point among cosmologists) and therefore by implication a definite end as well. This is the traditional Judaeo-Christian view. Second, as one scientist put it, the very fineness of the fluctuations implied purposeful creation. Complete regularity would have produced no galaxies -- a uniform universe. Greater variation would have produced chaos.

Agnostics and atheists feared the worst. ``Please don't call it the fingerprint of God,'' pleaded Prof. Richard Dawkins, a zoologist and religious sceptic who occasionally stages public arguments with clergymen. ``Religious people will just seize on it like ferrets.'' But the ferrets, insofar as media reports reflected them, were being rather cautious, and for very good reason.

Personal religious faith rarely if ever rests primarily upon scientific observation. People may begin to suspect the existence of God from what their minds and senses reveal. But true faith follows from and supersedes this; it is something that goes on inside. The fact that science may today be pointing to God, while for at least a century it seemed to point away from Him, would come to the religious as a commonplace. ``Of course,'' they would say. ``We expected that all along.'' More important still, as Father Moss observed, science cannot deal with why the universe (and we humans) exist, whatever it may find out about how. That question lies outside its established parameters.

The COBE discovery could be profoundly important to non-believers, however. Throughout this century, as the late Bishop Charles Gore of the Church of England noted in 1921 in a book called The Reconstruction of Belief, science has been a major factor in discouraging the very possibility of belief in God. Charles Darwin with his theory of evolution and the development of species by means of ``natural selection'' was seen at the time as the major scientific discreditor of belief in God as creator (or as anything else).

This was a false perception even then, Bishop Gore observed. Evolutionary theory was neither original with Darwin nor antithetical to traditional Christian belief. ``Augustine himself,'' the bishop wrote, ``following St. Gregory of Nyssa, propounded the view that God in the beginning created only the germs or causes of the forms of life, which were afterwards to be developed in gradual course.'' What was original with Darwin was his proposal that natural selection (i.e. survival of the fitter species, and gradual extinction of the unfit) was the mechanism by which evolution was accomplished. Interestingly enough, this is now regarded as highly dubious by most biologists.

Thus science has certainly been -- or seemed to be -- a formidable enemy of religion. Whether it will be a desirable ally, however, even if it does incline that way in the 21st Century, is doubtful. And there is a further and final irony. Science itself is now rapidly losing popular credibility. No longer is it universally regarded as the means by which humanity can rise to dizzying heights of material wealth, comfort and satisfaction. With the environmental movement, man's ``conquest of nature'' is increasingly viewed as an alien invasion, and technological capability seen as the destroyer rather than the savior of the earth.

It is altogether possible that in the 21st Century religion and science may at last be linked, only to find themselves both denounced as villains in the great drama of humanity.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in May 1992.

Are the courts dooming the Anglican Church,
or is the hand of God perhaps rescuing it?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 8, 2000

Last Sunday, Anglican congregations across Canada listened to an extraordinary letter from their primate. "I want to assure all Anglicans," one section ran, "that what is at risk financially are our assets, not the contributions that provide for the ongoing ministry and mission of the church at parish, diocesan and national levels. Your contributions serve the mission of the church -- not the costs of litigation." In other words: keep sending money; we won't give it to the lawyers.

The letter was extraordinary for several reasons. For one, it affirmed reports that the corporate body which runs the church nationally is facing imminent bankruptcy, because of litigation costs and probable court-imposed penalties for abuse of aboriginal children at church-run schools.

For another, as noted by columnist and law professor Ian Hunter (an Anglican), the church, by rushing to apologize for its Indian schools, has significantly strengthened the case being made against it. (Also notable about this apology was its magnitude; it implicitly repudiated the work of the saintly, intelligent and decidedly non-abusive men and women who over many years devoted their lives to the aboriginal people.)

A third reason was the letter's apparent assumption that "assets" don't include cash. But they do. When the judgments come down, the cash on hand will be even more vulnerable than the buildings. Efforts to seclude it, by the way, are known as "hiding assets," an exercise for which people can be jailed.

So the letter contained bad news and good news. The bad news was that the people running the Anglican Church don't seem to know what they're doing. The good news is that the aboriginal lawsuits may wipe out the church's national bureaucracy, one of the two sources of most of its troubles, the other being its seminaries.

We two go back a long way in the Anglican Church. We were confirmed in it as teenagers, dropped out, returned as young adult converts, then helped establish and served for 18 years in an Anglican lay society which founded three boys' schools and a magazine that eventually evolved into the one you are reading. We are now members of the Orthodox Church in America, whose Canadian bishop is an ex-Anglican priest, as are two of the three priests at our own parish in Edmonton.

Orthodoxy, that is, serves as one refuge for disillusioned Anglicans. There are others -- the Anglican Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and various Evangelical churches like the Alliance, all home to contingents of ex-Anglicans. But we escapees must not gloat ("We told you so") over the agony of our former church, a human but very unjustified response. There are many devout people still aboard, valiantly trying to save the ship, who probably deserve more respect than we do.

We suspect, however, that many of these people will be something less than dismayed at the possible annihilation of their head office, known as "Church House." Like us, many of them are old enough to have watched as the unofficial "establishment" religion of English Canadian society was transformed over the 20th century from Protestant Christianity into secular humanism. The Anglican Church, always prone to represent the respectable establishment view, changed with it.

Hence by the year 2000 such phenomena as agnostic theology, women priests and sexual libertinism, all unthinkable in the year 1900, were well entrenched in the Anglican Church. Thus it would hardly be surprising if by the '60s and '70s a few wayward teachers in isolated Indian schools should decide to express their particular "orientation" by sexually exploiting the youngsters entrusted to them. Had not the primate of the day explicitly assured his flock that "God is speaking to His church in new ways?"

Nor was it surprising that the "progressive" clergy most enamored of the New Theology should gravitate towards the church bureaucracy and the seminaries. The New Theology had little to offer the front-line pastoral ministry. What, after all, could it say to a grieving widow? That heaven is a "state of mind"? That Christ's resurrection is "a beautiful mythology "? Much better to stick to writing papers for synodical commissions, articles for the church press, policy programs for church "activism" and doctoral theses on Rudolf Bultmann.

So there soon developed two Anglican Churches -- the one that ran at the parish level, most of which was Christian, and the one that ran at Church House and the seminaries, most of which was theologically heretical and politically socialist. Gradually, however, the former receded into pockets of active and vibrant Christianity which survive to this day, surrounded by a moribund institution that currently loses 20,000 members a year, closed three churches per week between 1992 and 1995, apologizes for the work of its greatest saints, and celebrates one archbishop who has in writing rejected nearly all the Nicene Creed, and another who doesn't know that cash is an asset.

Now it is threatened with the loss of the head office which has masterminded most of the above scenario. Could this, we wonder, be the hand of God?

A reader points out the fatal folly
of talking about movies you didn't see

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 1, 2000

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Byfield:

The word that came to mind after reading your opinion on the movie, "The Rapture," was Oops! You warned us, of course, that you hadn't actually seen it, and were judging from the reviews. [See "Orthodoxy," May 11, 2000, below.]

My wife and I saw it with high hopes Hollywood would at last portray Christians as we really are -- normal people. And through the first half of the film, one might almost believe that that Hollywood had changed its Christian stereotype.

However, "The Rapture" suddenly takes a bizarre twist. A born-again Christian takes her daughter out of school to sit in the desert and await Christ's return. After waiting for days, the mother shoots the daughter in the head so her daughter can go to heaven sooner.

Then "the rapture" occurs and the movie ends in a distorted, ambiguous manner. If you weren't a Christian before seeing it, you'd be thankful for that after you had. Who would want to be "born again"' if it persuades you to kill your own kids?

Hollywood gets away with this because nearly every political party, organization and lobby group has a fringe of fanatics. These are people who don't represent the norm and strive to impose their own agenda upon their fellow members. So why should Christianity be different? It's not. By no means, though, does the fanatical fringe represent the body of the Church.

Still, Christians get the bad rap. They're identified with strange street-corner and door-to-door tactics, with New Agers who adopt a quasi-Christian veneer but hold unscriptural beliefs, with renegade groups promulgating their odd theologies and ideologies. Such people have often divorced themselves from Christianity, but the world doesn't know this.

Worse, there are others who claim to be Christians and show up on Sundays, only to live the rest of the week by the world's standards. And there are those whose morals change with the cosmic tide of mother earth.

The news and entertainment media, now almost solidly anti-Christian, haven't been much help. News stories about Christian moral debates are routinely slanted to the anti-scriptural side. Unfortunate incidents in the religious community are often sensationalized, while great and sometimes miraculous events are virtually disregarded. It is within this media context that movie-makers continue to portray their own stereotyped version, the Bible-thumping, cross-waving, loud-mouthed, priggishly-obnoxious hypocrite. It's the only one they know.

But if the stereotype is unfair, what image of Christianity would be a fair one?

First, Christians aren't fanatics. By today's standards, though, they are radical. Their values, once the norm in schools, bookstores, workplace and home, are no longer widely shared. Lobby groups pressure governments to isolate Christian morals from public life and policy. Their success in this regard is evident. Christian thinking is excluded from questions concerning the environment, human rights and freedom of expression because Christianity places a higher priority on moral standards. Hence public acceptance of non-Christian values is greatly increasing. Elementary students are learning how to put on condoms while blatant sexual promiscuity is prevalent on prime-time TV. Gradually, Christianity becomes fashionably unacceptable.

But what really distinguishes Christians is this. They have a firm set of convictions which provide both spiritual strength and inner peace that carry them through life. Amidst family trials, personal victories, layoffs, promotions, even death itself, Christians have a limitless well to draw from, namely the saving power of Jesus Christ. Like everyone else, Christians experience ups and downs in life. But how they get through them never seems to hit the screen.

-- Mark Mallett,
Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

We are most grateful to Mr. Mallett, a news reporter in Red Deer, for correcting the gravely mistaken idea we gained of this movie from the reviews of it in the media. And we promise never again to comment on a movie actually seeing it, no matter what the reviewers said. -- Ted & Virginia Byfield.

Under a one-column heading deep in the paper,
a noted professor drops a major bombshell

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 25, 2000

The size of the headline doesn't necessarily reflect the significance of the news. The National Post, for instance, lately carried a story that may well portend a major change in Canadian education. It ran under a restrained one-column headline at the front of an inside section. What it said rated far more than this, and what it implied more still.

The article was by Michael Ruse, a University of Guelph philosophy professor, called to testify in the American courts in the 1980s against an Arkansas law requiring that the Genesis story of creation be given equal school time with Darwinian evolution. Science teachers and the American Civil Liberties Union successfully attacked the legislation and Prof. Ruse helped them. He is a philosophical naturalist, holding that what we call nature is all that can be known to exist. Science, he would say, deals in observed natural phenomena. Religion, by contrast, deals in belief, a subjective exercise with each of us in effect formulating our own God.

However something at that trial disturbed Prof. Ruse. "You don't play fair," said Duane T. Gish, appearing for the biblical side. "You evolutionists want to stop the religious people from teaching our views in schools. But you are just as religious in your way. Christianity tells us where we came from, where we're going, and what we should do on the way. I defy you to show any difference with evolution. It too tells you where you came from, where you are going, and what you should do on the way."

Prof. Ruse scoffed at this notion, but later came to see it as essentially true. The position taken by eminent evolutionists like Stephen J. Gould is not a scientific but a philosophical one. Suppose scientists were to conclusively discover something beyond nature, affecting nature, perhaps even bringing it about. Would this be an acceptable scientific proposition? Evolutionists would say certainly not. Because science, as they define it, must preclude such a possibility. To qualify as truly scientific, only phenomena within the natural order may be considered.*

But why? Why must discussion of the existence of God be forbidden within the orbit of science? What is the scientific basis of that? As Prof. Ruse came to realize, there isn't one. This requirement is simply an act of faith, a dogma. What the evolutionists are therefore propounding is not science, but a religion, something constitutionally forbidden in American public schools. Both Canadian and American schools are doing it anyway, with the zealous support of the liberal media.

The word for this scientistic (as distinct from scientific) religion is "naturalism" and it is lucidly explained by Berkeley law professor Philip E. Johnson in his 1995 book, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Scientism (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois). He portrays naturalism as the unofficial "religion" of modern America, embraced unexamined by most academics, educators and media commentators. Mr. Johnson sees it as "the creation myth of the 20th century" which has replaced Protestant Christianity as the religious assumption underlying the law and the academy. His book is an attack on naturalism's inadequacies, both as a philosophy and as a pattern for human conduct. If there is no God, then what we consider good and how we behave is ultimately subject to no guiding principle beyond ourselves.

Prof. Johnson advocates the theory now called "Intelligent Design." This assumes there is some Mind or Intelligence beyond nature, about which we know very little through science -- other than the fact that it -- or He -- must be there.

Now Prof. Ruse presumably does not subscribe to Intelligent Design. But he does firmly support the Johnson contention that what is now being preached in the schools via science textbooks is not science, but a religion, and his assertion is very important. Since he was called as a witness on the side of the evolutionists, his article adds great weight to the case of those who argue that the Darwinian hypothesis should certainly be taught in the schools -- but as theory, not proven fact, and its scientific deficiencies should be taught as well, with students encouraged to argue the issue.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the Ruse article appeared in the National Post. We have seen nothing like it in the Globe and Mail, or the Edmonton Journal, or the Vancouver Sun. Mr. Johnson's book has not been reviewed by these papers, so far as we know; neither was his earlier book pointing out the dearth of convincing evidence to support Darwin's theory. Neither was Michael Behe's work, mentioned in the footnote. Apparently one must not raise doubts among columnists, editorial writers, professors, teachers and other pious believers in the creation myth of the 20th century.

* This is precisely the contention of biology professor Michael Behe of Pennsylvania. Prof. Behe notes that what Darwin regarded as "the simple cell," and as the elemental root building block of all biology, has now been opened. Far from elemental, it turns out to be a thing of such dazzling complexity and efficiency that it could not possibly have come about by happenstance as the Darwinists contend.

Defining the elusive 'fundamentalist' --
Susan Riley and Lois Wilson take on the job

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 18, 2000

The news media these days are being forced to define the word " fundamentalist," a term they have long used with such liberal abandon that even they are beginning to notice there is very little agreement on what it means.

Back in the dark 1950s, for instance, it was usually applied to people convinced that God had directly dictated every word of the King James Bible. (A more appropriate term in this instance, however, might be " biblical literalist.") But as the century progressed, the term "fundamentalist" widened. The Khomeini theocracy in Iran was described as an instance of "Muslim fundamentalism." Assorted violent acts -- blowing up airliners or public buildings, say -- in the supposed service of God became further forms of "fundamentalism."

When the "Christian Right" emerged in American politics the term spread to anyone who "sought to impose" Christian morality through law. Few journalists seemingly paused to notice that every criminal law -- against theft, cheating, sexual exploitation, whatever -- is in fact an imposition of Christian morality, and every law an imposition of morality of some kind. In which case, all our past and present legislators would have to be categorized as "fundamentalists."

In Canadian politics we have Preston Manning and Stockwell Day branded as fundamentalists, apparently because they regard their religious beliefs as in some sense true. Which means Pope John Paul II must be one as well, since he plainly believes Catholicism to be true. And since millions of Canadian Catholics believe what the Pope believes (or are supposed to), they too must all be fundamentalists. So we have a country positively awash in fundamentalism. In fact only the seminaries, some Anglican bishops and United Church moderators, who don't seem to believe in much of anything except sodomy and socialism, seem safeguarded against it.

Now this is a mighty unsatisfactory situation for columnists and commentators. How can you dismiss or deplore someone as a "fundamentalist" if nobody's sure what it means, or if you're only identifying him with 80% of other Canadians? Syndicated Susan Riley in the Victoria Times Colonist, for instance, appeared at first to favor the view of Senator Lois Wilson, ex-United Church moderator, that whether you're fundamentalist depends on "whether you want to impose your beliefs on others."

Neither Ms. Riley nor Ms. Wilson seems to have really thought this out, however. Take, for instance, our human rights legislation. It entirely consists of "moral beliefs" plainly being imposed upon somebody. A law forbidding sodomy would certainly represent the imposition of a belief, but then so would a law requiring everyone to accept and respect sodomy. Therefore, by the Lois Wilson definition, the entire human-rights agenda is clearly the work of fundamentalists.

Would Ms. Riley accept this proposition? Apparently not. Instead she offers another definition. Fundamentalism, she writes, "promotes views rooted in intolerance, ignorance and simplistic good-versus-evil morality."

Let's try applying that formula. We, both of us, firmly reject racism. We believe that to condemn or advance a person purely because he's yellow, black, white or red is intolerable. We believe this on a simplistic good-versus-evil basis -- that racial impartiality is good and that racism is evil. Whether this intransigent intolerance of ours is based on "ignorance," we don't know. We think it's based on an ephemeral phenomenon called justice, for the truth of which there is no scientific evidence. So it must be rooted in ignorance. Thus our racial tolerance -- by the Susan Riley formula -- turns out to be yet another instance of fundamentalism at work. If not, then we presume her further definition fails as well.

Karen Armstrong, a British writer who seems to have pursued the subject somewhat further than Ms. Riley and has written a book on it, "The Battle for God" (Knopf), discovered that the more she looked into it the more sympathy she had with fundamentalists -- much to her horror. For fundamentalism, in fact, confronts us with a fundamental problem. To believe anything at all is to believe it true. To believe something true is to believe that whatever is incompatible with it must be false. And to believe somebody else's belief false is implicitly intolerant. Therefore, if intolerance is an evil, belief itself -- in anything -- is an evil. So the only way we can get rid of intolerance is to prohibit belief. Which, of course, would be very intolerant indeed.

Meanwhile, over at the Vancouver Sun, religion writer Douglas Todd unearthed still another definition for fundamentalism, a checklist developed at the University of Chicago. A fundamentalist, it says, (a) is militantly violent, (b) is given to scandalizing his enemies, (c) seeks converts, (d) supports patriarchy, (e) can manipulate the media, (f) is convinced he's under persecution, and (g) uses scripture selectively.

Which rather exempts Preston Manning and Stockwell Day, neither of whom has lately blown up airliners, public buildings or sour gas wells. A pity, that. Susan Riley would so like to brand them as fundamentalists.

What's all this `born-again' business?
It's never been all that easy to explain

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 11, 2000

In director Michael Tolkin's movie, The Rapture, a single mother, who had become any man's easy conquest, suddenly questions her purposeless life, and Christ changes her whole existence. A Calgary Herald reviewer notes in astonishment that Mr. Tolkin does not go on to "cynically dismantle evangelical Christianity and proffer its warts as proof of an underlying disease."

As every movie-goer knows, Christian themes disappeared from the North American movie industry some time in the 1950s. The same has been true of television. For the characters in any popular TV series to go to church, for instance, or exhibit any other sign that religious faith has some place in their scheme of things, is something that's just not done. Then, when Hollywood recently rediscovered Christianity, the apparent aim was to distort and discredit it (as in The Last Temptation of Christ), or at least to include enough "warts" to cast serious doubt upon it.

We haven't seen The Rapture, but judging by the reviews it exhibits no such intent. It actually presents a couple of door-to-door evangelists as the catalyst that ultimately rescues the heroine from degradation and despair, and turns her life around, although Christian evangelists are standard objects of scorn to non-believers. So of course is the premise on which they operate: the idea of conversion, of being "born again." Surely this kind of spiritual hype is unnecessary and uncivilized, the critics argue. The only legitimate purpose of Christianity or any other faith, after all, is simply to encourage decent, ethical behaviour.

About the purpose of the world's other major religions -- Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism -- the critics are largely right. About Christianity, however, they are quite wrong. Its aim is not just to create somewhat better people, but new people. Being "born again" is not some odd peripheral doctrine; it is central to the faith.

This was no easy doctrine then, either. Nicodemus, a man prominent in the religious establishment of the time, sought a discreet night-time interview to acknowledge the Galilean preacher as "a teacher come from God." It wasn't just a matter of teaching, he was told; there was more to it. Only if people are "born again of water and of the Spirit" can they become part of the Kingdom of God.

The experience of being born again has been integral to Christianity ever since, although there's considerable argument about how it works, and in particular how quickly it should occur. Some see it as blindingly instantaneous, like the vision that blinded St. Paul on the road to Damascus and led to his conversion, or the slightly less dramatic order to St. Francis of Assisi: "Build my church." Others contend it can, and usually does, happen gradually, over a lifetime.

But all agree there is always a definite turning point -- an instant of commitment in which a human being as it were calls God in. It is a drastic move, full of pain and full of promise. The whole offer that Christianity makes, wrote C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, is that if we let God have his way we can come to share in the life of Christ. This new life is not just different in degree, but in kind. Our natural, created life is taken up into the radiant, uncreated life of God.

The pain comes in because the two kinds of life are not only different but in many respects opposed. The idea of actually becoming a new person may have great appeal, but there's a major downside. All the self-centeredness that wants to take advantage of other people, and exploit the whole universe if possible, sooner or later has to go. This is not so appealing as it works out in daily detail.

Fortunately, people don't have to achieve this new life by themselves. That was why God took human form, and did it for us in his life and on the cross. As millions of Christians have since discovered, he still does it, for them and in them. That no one really knows how it works doesn't matter. As G.K. Chesterton put it in his poem, "The Convert:"

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in May 1992.

Change society and you change
people -- but has it worked?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 4, 2000

She pointed out that while AIDS is caused by risky behavior, social ills such as drugs, alcohol, sexual, physical and emotional abuse encourage such behavior. -- from a news story in the Kamloops (B.C.) Daily News.

The story concerned Kecia Larkin, a former Victoria, B.C., prostitute, infected by HIV, who has dedicated her life to warning young people of the dangers of AIDS. Her mission will no doubt save lives because many will heed her where they won't heed others. And this news story was probably intended to help her.

Yet it may not do that. If you reflect on the above sentence, you see it reinforces one of the unexamined assumptions of the 20th century, an assumption which Miss Larkin must destroy in the individuals who accept her message.

The assumption is this: that ``social ills'' create ``risky'' behavior, that social conditions cause people to misbehave. It seems at first logical enough. In the squalor of poverty and ignorance, people inevitably behave irresponsibly. From this follows the further assumption: if you correct the social conditions, people won't misbehave any more: in short, that social action will create the perfect society.

We have spent about one century acting on this assumption. We have instituted the most all-embracing social programs of any society, anywhere, any time. Universal education, welfare and medical care are all part of it. So too are human rights legislation, affirmative action laws, multiculturalism, subsidies for lobby groups, child care, prisoners' support, victims' support, and old age pensions. We have now largely bankrupted ourselves in the unstinting service of that one assumption. So human behavior, you would think, should be getting better and better, ever closer to the promised goal.

But it obviously isn't. Indeed, it seems pretty clear we're getting, if anything, worse and worse. Never before have we had to deal with things like armed violence and hard drugs in school. Not for 200 years has physical safety on public streets been in such question. And while physical abuse of women is certainly not new to humanity, it is hard to escape the impression, as one criminal horror follows another, that it is far worse than anything the western world has seen before, other than in war.

Indeed, the whole effort seems to have backfired. Instead of people saying, ``How fortunate I am to have all these things given to me. Now I had better smarten myself up, and make my own contribution to our wonderfully benevolent society,'' they seem to regard the services as a debt due, and dismiss their own misconduct as the inevitable consequence of their conditions. The effect is exactly the reverse of what was expected.

We're compelled therefore to re-examine the assumption. Do social conditions cause people to misbehave? Or is it perhaps the other way around -- that the misbehavior of individual people causes social conditions to deteriorate? It was Chesterton who asked: Are the poor impoverished because they drink? Or are the poor drinking because they're impoverished? Where do you start? With society or with the individual?

Christians, of course, are told to look back to the example of Christ. His appeal was always to the individual. The question was not, what will society do? But what will you do? And you? And you? Though he came to proclaim a new kind of ``kingdom,'' he said it was ``not of this world'' and that it would spread from one individual to another as yeast spreads through dough. Though he launched what eventually proved to be (among other things) the biggest and broadest social movement in human history, it was always on the basis of you, and you, and you.

Now all this would seem of great relevance to the work Miss Larkin has undertaken, and for this reason: To succeed, she must persuade people to change their patterns of behavior. But as long as they think of their conduct as something largely determined by their social status -- the 20th century assumption, in effect being reaffirmed by the Kamloops news story -- they will not be able to make that break. It would mean separating themselves from their group. It would mean saying, ``I don't care what everybody else is doing, I'm not going to do that because it's dangerous and wrong.''

Our society says it favors such determined independence, but in practice it doesn't. It has norms, and it demands they be observed. Ask anyone who has voiced the politically incorrect. Ask anyone who has borne a Christian witness at a cocktail party.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in May 1992.

What has Christianity to offer the man or woman
who feels faultless? Answer: Nothing at all

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
April 27, 2000

``Every time I enter a church, an act that has become less and less frequent, I am struck by the difference between what society teaches us to believe about ourselves and what the church would have us believe.'' -- Heather Ferguson, a Toronto public relations consultant, in the Globe and Mail.

Since all Christians are called upon to spread Christianity, Ms. Ferguson's article makes valuable reading. It tells us what we are up against.

``While the words of Christ have great meaning,'' she writes, ``the words of the church seem to exist in another era.'' She is offended by terms like ``sinner'' and ``repent'' and ``help.'' She objects that ``the inherent assumption of the church is that you are always in a state of sin.'' The church assails her with sins ``of which I am not even aware.'' She refuses, she declares, ``to be a quivering supplicant begging for mercy.'' The God of the church ``is a fiction created by humans for the detriment of humanity.''

Her education, she says, enabled her to make these perceptions. Unlike her parents who learned everything ``by rote,'' her generation has been provided with ``a questioning mind'' and will not ``follow blindly'' an ``egocentric'' God. Still, she feels the need of a church, and would like one where she could ``walk hand in hand with God, in harmony and union.''

From this case study, several conclusions may be drawn. First, Ms. Ferguson has not, as an adult, read the New Testament. The terms she objects to -- sin, repentance, help, salvation -- breathe from almost every verse and chapter, the central point of the story. Her impression of Jesus Christ is more probably an amalgam of childhood stories, fragments of church liturgy, and the ineffectual ``Last-Temptation-of-Christ'' figure habitually portrayed by the media -- insipid, pale, utterly unhistorical, and so sweet it's mystifying why anybody would bother crucifying him. Of the fascinating figure in the real biblical record, the healer, teacher, quick-witted debater, who was recognized by authority as a dangerous firebrand, and put to death for declaring himself God, she knows almost nothing whatever.

Again, she does not seem to believe in a Creator God. Instead of the awesome and unimaginable Power depicted in the Psalms, who fashioned the heavens, who caused the earth to come into being, who shook the great mountains so they ``skipped like rams,'' whose arm swept into existence the seas, who roars in the thunder and the earthquakes, we have instead a kind of Pal God, somebody you walk arm in arm with, a good Sunday afternoon companion. Nice guy. Person, rather. Very much the equal of herself.

Finally, she is not conscious of any serious personal fault, but regards herself as, frankly, sinless. Oh there's the odd misdemeanor, no doubt, but nothing to justify the grim language of liturgy. The message of the church therefore -- salvation through Christ for personal sin of omission or commission -- is to her simply meaningless.

She correctly attributes this to her education. She has been taught to believe that self-aggrandizement (she would call it self-fulfilment, or self-actualization) is not only right, but the only serious individual obligation. Evil is a purely social problem that can be corrected by education and legislation. The individual need take little or no personal responsibility for it. The idea of rules or laws to which the individual is expected to adhere is entirely foreign to her, the relic of a bygone era.

Equally foreign, one suspects, is Christ's moral dictum that we should ``love our neighbor as ourselves.'' What can this mean? Obviously, that we must be as concerned when our neighbor has a cold as when we have one. That our neighbor's unemployment must be as serious to us as our own, that a starving child in Ethiopia must merit as much of our concern as would our own child's being hungry. Do we Byfields adhere to this appalling standard? We certainly do not. To the Christian, that shortcoming measures his sin. Does Ms. Ferguson? Apparently she feels she does. For if Christ's words have the ``great meaning'' she attributes to them, then to do less is sin, and all this talk of sinfulness, she declares, cannot possibly apply to herself.

How can the church ``reach'' such people? That answer, unhappily, has been provided for us. We can't. When the Pharisees came to Christ declaring themselves the faultless adherents of the Jewish law, his answer was unequivocal: ``They that be whole need not a physician. . . . I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'' It's harsh, but that's what he said. However, for us, and for you, and for Ms. Ferguson, the story isn't over just yet.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in April 1992.

Believing, as against 'feeling,' is fraught
with danger, but it's believing that matters

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
April 20, 2000

We are indebted to a reader of this column for a letter which succinctly encapsulates a position we suspect may be shared by the vast majority of Canadians. Since we strongly disagree with this position (in fact, one of the chief reasons for writing this column is to challenge it) we are grateful for the chance to tackle it head on.

The reader was disputing our contention that "feelings" are not "beliefs"; that to believe something means to think it true -- true for everybody, including those who reject it; and that anything incompatible with it is therefore false. (See "When belief becomes merely a subjective feeling," Feb. 10, at Orthodoxy II.) A "feeling," by contrast, is a sensation experienced within the individual self, which may or may not apply to anyone else.

"Are [the Byfields] saying that beliefs are truths?" the reader asks. "By their logic they're saying Christianity is the only true religion. . . . But what of the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.? Do they not have strong beliefs in their religions as well? Of course they do. So on and on the conflict.

"The real truth is that nobody knows for sure who or what God is. . . . I don't for a moment believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection as I was taught as a child. I do, however, believe emphatically that God is love, simple as that.

"If the whole world's population worshipped love and truly practised it, there would be no more wars, poverty or starvation. Pretty simple, but I have this 'feeling' and 'believe' it would work."

First, let us state clearly that Christians do not (or should not) contend simply that we are right and everyone else wrong. To use a classic analogy, in an arithmetic problem there's only one right answer, but some wrong ones come closer than others.

Christians, Muslims and Jews, for instance, naturally share a vast theology because our beliefs have a common historical origin. Where we differ, each thinks the others wrong, but this doesn't make us all bigots -- merely rational. To claim you believe something while at the same time believing something else utterly incompatible, is not tolerance. It's just woolly-mindedness.

Second, we don't even remotely claim to know everything there is to know about God. How could a character in the story know everything there was to know about the author of the story? That's why one of the ancient Christian creeds pronounces all three Persons of the Trinity "incomprehensible." God has enabled us human beings to know what we need to know, but we cannot comprehend the whole story.

Third, what does our reader mean by declaring he "really does believe that God is love"? That he believes as ultimate truth that the best word we have to describe the nature of God is conveyed by the word "love"? But what if he encounters someone who rejects belief in any sort of God, insisting the world came about by accident and that its inhabitants evolved via the survival of the fittest, and therefore our best bet is just to look after No. 1?

Would he consider such a person, well, wrong? Not merely wrong "by my personal standards," but wrong period, wrong in absolute terms? If he answers "yes" to this, then he believes. If his answer is "no," that we cannot know what's really right, that in the end there are no answers, then he merely feels. Rather than say he "really believes," therefore, he'd be more accurate to say he "really feels."

It must certainly be acknowledged that sincerely held "beliefs" have wrought great evil in the world, as Christ himself foretold. But it's also true that sincerely held beliefs have wrought most of the good as well. Nearly all our originating educational institutions, hospitals, democratic processes and, yes, welfare programs too, were inspired by sincerely held beliefs, particularly Christian ones. And the people who created these good things, down through the ages, as their written records make clear, were acting out of belief, not just feeling.

It's also true that if we all based our actions on "love" there would be no more wars, poverty and starvation -- at least if we define love as benevolent concern for our fellows. It is excellent advice, and every great moral teacher since the dawn of human history has given it to us.

The problem is that recalcitrant humanity has never followed it. And if the sum total of the world's religions, as our reader suggests, is merely to reiterate this ancient advice, we are indeed doomed. But Christianity does not end at this point. This is where it starts, with the recognition of human sin, and dealing with sin requires more than pleasant feelings. It's a difficult and rigorous process, and it must be based on solid belief.

Any similarity between Lewis' heretical bishop and
B.C.'s is surely coincidental, however striking

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
April 13, 2000

C.S. Lewis, in his fascinating allegory on heaven and hell called "The Great Divorce," portrays a heretical Anglican bishop, smiling and cherubic, who has "advanced" well beyond what he considers the stultifying traditionalism of his church. Having rejected its ancient dogmas as obsolete, he is eagerly engaged in soul-liberating speculation upon hitherto unexplored realms of theological thought.

This bishop, however, is dead. As with everybody else in The Great Divorce, death has delivered him to a murky city of endless grimy streets and vacant billboards. In this "grey town," time has stopped; a gloomy, drizzling, autumn twilight perpetually prevails.

It is a place of universal boredom and depression where cravings and appetites are instantly gratified, but never fulfill their promise. When these endlessly broken dreams lead to despair, irritability and rage, people tend to move farther and farther away from one another, to end up in self-obsessed and agonizing loneliness. Ultimately the name of the grey town is Hell.

But there is another possibility. Anyone in the grey town who wishes to do so finds himself waiting in line for a bus whose destination, so it is said, is a very different place of sunny vistas and dazzling beauty. Most reject this story as "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die," and struggle on in the grey town. Those who do board the bus, however, find it really does take them to a land of spectacular beauty -- but not of comfort. Everything there is so extraordinarily solid, and they themselves so unsubstantial by comparison, that the very grass is painful to their feet.

The bishop, eager to explore every new avenue of human experience, makes the trip. Like the other passengers, he is met in this new land by an old friend from back on earth, a man who disappointed him in later life by returning to the intellectually impoverished faith of his childhood. Too bad, really, is the bishop's charitable thought; he once showed such promise. And here he is now in this new setting, but grown solid and shining like everything else here. Stay, the friend urges the bishop, and you too will soon grow solid.

But the bishop knows better. "For me," he declares, "there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow through the mind." So he serenely boards the bus to return to the grey town "with its field for indefinite progress. . . . In a sense, it's Heaven, if only we have eyes to see it."

The Right Reverend Michael Ingham, Anglican bishop of Vancouver, was probably a mere boy when Lewis wrote "The Great Divorce." Bishop Ingham could hardly have served as model for Lewis' ghostly prelate. Yet the similarities are so striking, you almost wonder if Lewis' prelate served as a role model for Bishop Ingham.

Like Lewis' character, Bishop Ingham has rejected virtually all the foundational beliefs of Christianity: the Virgin Birth, Resurrection, occurrence of miracles, and the historical reliability of the New Testament. Like the prelate, he has "dared" to speak out, braving such dire consequences as lavish public attention, high book sales, television coverage, and the approving patronage of the intelligentsia.

And while he is all in favor of free and frank discussion of "the issues" -- i.e., sodomy, adultery, abortion, etc. -- he is less free about who's allowed into the discussion. The heretical American Bishop John Spong was warmly welcomed to Bishop Ingham's diocese, while the traditionalist Archbishop Moses Tay of Singapore was forbidden to visit. After an aging Anglican priest allowed a traditionalist Anglican congregation to use his church, the bishop virtually excommunicated the old man on his deathbed.

And now that the troublesome Archbishop Tay and fellow traditionalist Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda have consecrated two American clerics as missionary bishops dedicated to the re-evangelizing of North American Anglicanism, Bishop Ingham has sternly warned his parishes against any thought of joining that cause. "In this diocese," he ironically writes, "we are trying to respond to the challenge of changing social and moral attitudes to sexuality through parish-to-parish dialogues. It is especially important that we strenuously avoid the temptation to politicize the process in any way or to act without authority."

It is perhaps noteworthy that the church whose authority he represents has lost 20,000 members annually for the last decade. Since 1970, when its bishops and bureaucracy began adopting liberal theology, it has lost 269,000 members; its rolls now stand where they were in 1928. Between 1967 and 1995 it closed 954 churches, 526 of them between 1992 and 1994 (that's five a week). Baptisms fell from 31,215 in 1967 to 13,493 in 1995, confirmations from 26,676 to 7,183.

Nevertheless, Bishop Ingham would doubtless reply, the church must "advance" with the times -- advance, that is, courageously back to the grey town.

Maybe avoiding pain isn't really
the most important thing in life

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
March 2, 2000

"I served my medical internship in London during the Blitz. Physical hardship was a constant companion, the focus of nearly every conversation. Yet I have never lived among people so buoyant. Now I read that 60% of Londoners who lived through the Blitz remember it as the happiest period of their lives." -- Dr. Paul Brand, leprosy specialist and clinical professor emeritus of orthopaedics at the University of Washington, writing in the newsmagazine, Christianity Today.

Dr. Brand has spent much of his life as a medical missionary in India, and has had years of opportunity to observe the effect of physical and psychological pain, both in a Third World country and in modern American society. He notes three ways of dealing with it: that of the Londoners, who suffered pain gladly for a cause; that of the Indians, who expect suffering in life and learn not to fear it; and that of modern North Americans, who suffer less but fear pain far more.

As a Christian, Dr. Brand knows that pain presents a powerful argument against the existence of a good God. How, the argument goes, could a benevolent God construct a universe that inflicts suffering so frequently and so unjustly upon his innocent creatures? Theologians refer to this as "the problem of pain."

Dr. Brand does not pretend to have an answer to this theological obstacle, but he has made some cogent observations that bear upon it.

For one, he sees that most great human satisfactions or pleasures involve pain. Sitting by the fire feels so pleasurable because we have endured the cold and fatigue of the trail. The immense satisfaction of passing the examination emerges from painful worry about failing it. The relief and joy we sense at the bottom of the ski slope is intensified because of the painful terror we felt on the way down.

If human beings are not plunged by their circumstances into pain, an English bishop once noted, they go looking for some. They spend the evening playing cards, precisely to create situations of stress. They embark upon an adventure because of the thrill, meaning fear, it promises. And as a Chinese philosopher asked: "To be dry and thirsty in a dusty land and to feel great drops of rain on my bare skin -- ah, is this not happiness?"

St. Augustine noted the exultation felt by sailors when the sky clears, and thought it directly dependent upon their terror of imminent death in the preceding storm. "What is it," he wondered, "that goes on within the soul, since it takes greater delight if things that it loves are found or restored to it, than if it had always possessed them?"

But North American society, says Dr. Brand, "seeks to avoid pain at all costs." Although his American patients live at a greater physical comfort level than any he had ever treated, they seem less equipped to handle suffering, and far more traumatized by it. The sale of pain relievers is a $63 billion a year industry. The three best selling drugs in the U.S. are one for hypertension, one for ulcers, and a tranquilizer.

Yet the result of this frantic flight from pain is not in any sense a happy society. Discontent and boredom seem its most outstanding qualities.

This is because pain serves an indispensable purpose, Dr. Brand says, as the body's warning system. If you eat too much, drink too much, work too much, abuse or misuse your body, it sends out signals: hypertension, heart troubles, venereal disease. In ancient societies, people heeded the signals because they had to. In the Third World they still do. We, rather than heed the warning, try to silence the signals with drugs -- to turn off the alarms.

Western society, in other words, may have made a theological error. We have come to regard pain as entirely and inevitably evil, something that must be removed as soon and as completely as possible. But is it? Might there not be times when any one of us ought properly to be allowed to suffer? Because only by doing so will we get the message the pain was put there to convey.

Modern society would probably be horrified even to contemplate such an attitude. We doubt that Dr. Brand would.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in February 1992.

The world can't evade its moral dilemmas
by redefining them as `ethical problems'

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 24, 2000

"Real ethics, as journalists and politicians and business persons know, have nothing to do with morals." Columnist John "Joey" Slinger in the Toronto Star.

Mr. Slinger says he's sceptical when people in journalism, politics or business talk about "ethics."

Prime Minister Chretien, he notes, did not consult his "ethics adviser" until three weeks after he discovered one of his cabinet ministers lobbying the Canadian Radio and Television Commission on behalf of a radio license applicant. As for journalism and business, there "good ethics are whatever you can get away with."

However, writes Mr. Slinger, "since moral philosophy is my particular area of expertise, the ethical situation in the country has grabbed me by the lapels." He was thinking of becoming ethical counsellor to the premier of Ontario, where he could collect a big salary for telling him that good ethics are whatever you can get away with.

In any event, Mr. Slinger does not want ethics confused with morality, his own "area of expertise." He doesn't explain why, so we'll try explaining for him.

The word "morality" during the 20th Century has suffered grave depreciation in two ways. First, it has been divorced from any possible reference to authority. No longer can a thing be proved right or wrong from the Bible because the world does not accept the Bible. Popular consensus is sometimes vaguely cited. ("What would people say if they knew you did so-and-so?") And great credence is often ascribed to a nebulous modernity. ("Surely you don't object to that in this day and age?")

But none of these references carries authoritative weight, and morality is increasingly regarded as a mere feeling or emotion. People say, "I felt that was wrong" rather than, "I thought that was wrong."

Second, in a further disservice, the word "moral" has been restricted to the disreputable sins. The police "morality squad," for example, deals with drugs, alcohol, gambling and prostitution.

If you suggested to the head of the squad that, by the traditional definition of the word, he should also be dealing with avarice, envy, sloth and pride, he wouldn't know what you were talking about. If you said that some wealthy man had made his money "immorally," you would be understood to mean he'd made it through prostitution.

The world therefore concluded that "morals" were something we had grown out of. They belonged to our "Puritan past." We didn't need them any more.

But of course we do. No society can exist without them. Every civil and criminal law is the expression of some moral principle, and most of the heated debate between left and right, East and West, liberal and conservative, is a debate about morality.

When Human Resources Minister Lloyd Axworthy accuses Alberta's government of disregarding the effects of its cutbacks on unfortunate people, he's citing the responsibility of those with wealth to care for those without it, which is a moral principle. When Alberta Provincial Treasurer Jim Dinning replies that his government wants people to take more responsibility for themselves he is calling for initiative and prudence, both moral values.

Every time you expect someone to pay back a debt, or keep a promise, of return a favor, you are relying on a moral principle. Expecting a society to live without morality would be like expecting it to live without water. It can't be done.

As the implications and impossibility of a moral-free society became evident, the world had to look for another way of establishing rules by which government and business could be dependably conducted. If a politician was abusing the powers of his office, what could he be accused of? You couldn't call him immoral -- though that would be a proper use of the word -- because this would convey the wrong message. What was needed, obviously, was another word.

The word "ethics" already existed, and for many years was considered synonymous with morals. In this century, however, it came to be considered a "science" and, says the philologist H.W. Fowler, "there is an impression that ethics is somehow more definitely than morals disconnected from religion."

But of course this is a fallacy. There is no way of scientifically proving that a man should act ethically, any more than that he should act morally. In the end they both come down to an act of faith.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in December 1994.

Our allegedly fearless media have questions
they won't ask and stories they won't cover

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 17, 2000

We had occasion last fall to visit L. Brent Bozell III, who heads the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Now he has sent us the results of some of the center's research concerning the American media's coverage of two separate crimes. One was exhaustively reported and deplored for several weeks by U.S. newspapers and television networks, and Canadian ones too. The other was barely covered at all. Yet the two incidents are remarkably similar.

The first was the notorious murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old homosexual who died October 21, 1999, after following two men out of a bar and into a pickup truck. They beat him mercilessly; he died five days later. The story led the national news wire of the Associated Press, and was a topline item on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CBC and CTV. It received major play in Newsweek and U.S. News and became a Time cover story. Outrage over this crime received national media attention for a full month. Columnists and commentators blamed "conservative Christians" for the incident, not because the assailants belonged to a church, but because the killers had supposedly been incited to it by Christian rejection of homosexual activity as sinful.

The other crime was the murder two weeks previously of Jesse Dirkhising, 13, who was bound, blindfolded, gagged with his underwear, taped to a bed, and sodomized by one gay man while the man's "lover" looked on. In the process, the child suffocated.

Covered only locally, this story became a minor 200-word item on AP's regional news wire, with the crime described as a "sex game gone bad." It was not carried by any national television network except Fox, nor by any national news magazine. Among the big American papers, only the Washington Times and the New York Post printed it. In Canada it was reported in one National Post editorial, one Calgary Herald column, and by this magazine.

After the Washington Times pointed out the astonishing contrast, a commentator on the Time.com website felt called upon to defend the media performance. There was no bias, he said; the two cases were quite different. The Shepard killers acted out of "hate," while in the Dirkhising case the motive was merely "sexual." Moreover, the Dirkhising killers were pedophiles, not gay. Which of course is simply a lie; they were both.

Notice the curious moral distinction. If you kill someone because you hate what he is, that's a national outrage and merits severe punishment. But if you kill because human suffering, especially of a child, gives you a sexual thrill -- well, that's too bad, but hardly of national significance. Perhaps you are sick and need care and treatment. The fact you also happen to be homosexual is irrelevant and ought not to be mentioned.

What's really sick, however, is the media itself. When the murder of a gay man becomes an international concern, while the sex-thrill murder of a child by a gay man is just an unfortunate local incident, something has gone very wrong indeed. Either the first case was vastly overcovered, or the second not covered enough, or both.

Mr. Bozell suspects both, and so do we. We believe the Canadian and American media have an agenda they see themselves obligated to fulfill, a professional stance now so ingrained they seem barely aware of it. The Shepard case was wildly overplayed because it fulfilled their agenda, the Dirkhising case suppressed because it cast doubt on it. They are not reporting, they are cause-pleading.

For instance, the proportion of pedophiles who prefer boys is way out of line. The overall proportion of hetero- to homosexuals is about 98% to 2%. (Kinsey's 90% to 10% claim has been wholly discredited, ashas most of his other work.) Thuus you would expect only 2% of pedophiles to prefer boys. But the actual figure is about 50% -- and the media never ask why.

Then too, many male homosexuals are known to have multiple partners, sometimes running into the hundreds, which is why AIDS struck them so hard. What are the implications of this to society? To public health? More questions the media don't ask.

Christian columnist Frederica Mathewes-Green, who sympathizes greatly with homosexuals although she regards what they do as definitely wrong, notes that they frequently take peculiar pleasure in inflicting pain, both physical and mental, on one another. They are actively cruel to their own kind. So are cruelty and hatred attributes of the "gay lifestyle"? Once again, the media never ask.

They have, in short, established "gayness" as sacrosanct. To criticize it is "hate," to question it "unprofessional." That's why we see such a glaring disparity in their treatment of these two frightful crimes.

When belief becomes merely a subjective
feeling, then it isn't really belief

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 10, 2000

In Canada, or almost anywhere in the Western world, polls show that about 90% of people "believe in God" -- but also that only a half to three-fifths of these believers regularly attend church, the percentage varying widely with the locale. In Canada the regular church attendance figure floats between 15% and 20% of the populace; it is considerably higher in the United States.

Confronting this mysterious 70% of the population who believe in God yet won't turn out on Sunday, the churches have concluded that atheism is not the cause. Rather, they discern a widespread rejection of what is usually called "institutional" or "organized" religion. When we "religionists" form groups, as we inevitably do, we are seen as dangerous. There is a widespread assumption that if we start acting collectively, especially in the realm of politics, we become an ominous threat to peace, order and good government.

Though they may not admit it, this is the view of many judges, politicians, reporters, radio commentators and editorial writers. Religion is seen as a "personal thing" which one should keep to oneself, and certainly not something that ought to be applied to public policy. You must not pass laws based on what you think God approves or disapproves of. There has to be a better reason than mere God.

But this surely requires explanation. If so many of us think that God is really "there," why not act accordingly? The explanation, we suspect, is that the mysterious 70% do not in fact believe in God. They say they do, but they don't.

It comes down to the meaning of that word "believe." To Christians it means, "to think something true." A Christian believes in the existence of God much as he believes in the existence of Tokyo, let's say, or in the rules of mathematics. That is, he's never seen Tokyo, never been there. But he is absolutely confident he could get there if he had the desire and the money.

Similarly he believes in the multiplication table. Contemplating a pattern of dots on a page, in five rows of five dots each, he firmly believes they will total 25. He doesn't need to count them. That is, he believes five times five equals 25. It's a blind, unquestioning, unexamined conviction, a dogma drummed into his head in childhood.

As he believes in Tokyo and the five-times table, so he believes in God. If somebody were to tell him Tokyo is nothing but a false rumor promulgated by unscrupulous tourist agencies, he would not say he and that person had "a difference of opinion." He would instantly become "judgmental" and declare the other man dead wrong. And he would do the same when confronted with anyone who insisted that five times five occasionally equals 10, or with the person who insists there is no God.

But that would be "intolerant," would it not? Ought he not to respect all views? That surely would depend upon what he wants to do about this divergence in beliefs. If he wants to jail, publicly flog or behead non-believers in the existence of Tokyo, that would be very intolerant indeed. On the other hand, if his tolerance leaves the impression that whether Tokyo (or God) exists is merely a matter of "personal belief," then tolerance itself becomes intolerable. And ridiculous too, for that matter.

The current social rule forbidding us to dispute other people's views, no matter how much we disagree, is a bad rule. Think about it. In the last century, many people believed Jews were a blight on humanity and should be exterminated. Ought we to have "respected" that view? Others thought that aboriginal Canadians and the chronically poor should be sterilized. Was that view worthy of "respect"? Tolerance is not a virtue. Some circumstances call for it. In others tolerance is an active evil and what's needed is intolerance.

It's sometimes instructive to ask a person who says he "believes in God," but doesn't go to church or synagogue, the following question: "You say you believe there is a God. Now this man over here says he believes there isn't. Are you suggesting you are right and he is wrong?"

Whenever we ask this question we meet the same response: "Oh, certainly not. I'm not saying that. He's entitled to his point of view, just as much as I am to mine."

But this cannot be so. If something really is true, then it necessarily follows that anything incompatible with it is false -- not just a "different point of view," but false. Clearly, the so-called "belief in God" of that 70% isn't really belief at all, but merely a subjective "feeling." The churches are, in short, confronted with what amounts to atheism. Feelings are not beliefs.

It's not a case of reason vs. faith
for reason, too, depends on faith

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
February 3, 2000

"If God knows everything, including the future, then surely the Christian concept of free choice is silly and irrational." -- Reader Garth Klatt of Calgary, in a letter.

Mr. Klatt wrote to dispute our contention in this column that if human affairs are determined entirely by natural forces, then human life is entirely predetermined and people are in effect machines. Why, therefore, argue about politics, morality, anything? What any individual does is already decided. He cannot change the course of events, and thus never deserves blame. Man cannot sin. Whatever he does, his nature made him do it. Such, if man is purely mechanical, was our contention.

"These arguments are sound as far as they go," counters Mr. Klatt, "but apply just as well to the religious side of the debate." If God knows the future, then surely the Christian concept of free choice is likewise "silly and irrational."

He adds: "Religious belief is not founded on logic, but in faith, which is irrational by definition. The fundamental premises of religion, such as the existence of God, can neither be proved nor disproved."

Mr. Klatt in fact raises two points. The first is that if God knows the future, then everything must be pre-determined. Our decisions cannot change it.

We ourselves pondered this years ago, when we were considering a return to the Christian faith. We could believe our wills to be free at this moment, we said. But if our actions five years hence are known already to God, they must be pre-determined. We are not free to do otherwise.

The Christian answer was this. Imagine time as a line, stretching from a beginning far back in pre-history to a hypothetical end when the natural universe passes away. Each of our lives represents an infinitesimal segment of that line, and as we live we travel along it.

But God, said the Christians, has to be envisioned as outside the whole line, looking down upon it. So all moments are present to him. He sees us at every phase of our lives, birth to death. And here, of course, is the point. He does not interfere with us anywhere along the line, not now, not in the past, not in the future. Our will is always free.

It is curious that long before physicists began to conceive of time as a dimension, before scientists wondered if there could be an "outside of time," the theologians had long pondered such a concept.

The other question Mr. Klatt raises is equally important. Christianity, he says, is "irrational by definition" because it is "based on faith." This is certainly a commonly held notion -- but a false one. Christians have been legitimately using reason as an instrument of their faith as long as there have been Christians.

They admittedly agree that reason can carry you only so far. Then you must act on the basis of what reason has persuaded you to be true; this is "an act of faith."

But reason itself also depends on a kind of faith. That is, unless we are satisfied that our minds are capable of discerning truth, then we can't trust our minds. And how could our minds be so dependable unless we assume they were designed for that purpose? If they came about by mere accident, how can we trust them? But in order for them to be designed, there must be a Designer, which of course means God. To conclude anything through reason, therefore, requires belief that behind reason there must be a God.

In one of G.K. Chesterton's delightful Father Brown stories, the great criminal Flambeau poses as a priest in order to commit a theft, and in the process talks at length with Father Brown about theology. In the end Father Brown thwarts the theft, however, and the horrified Flambeau realizes that the old priest has seen through his disguise all along. How had he done it?

"Has it never struck you," replies Father Brown, "that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest."

"What?" asks the thief, almost gaping.

"You attacked reason," says Father Brown. "It's bad theology."

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in May 1995.

Two cases before the courts will disclose
how close we are to Orwell's police state

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 27, 2000

'Tolerance' is a loaded word that suggests a person must 'put up' with another person's behavior -- as opposed to accepting it." -- Marie Kerchum, deputy registrar of the British Columbia College of Teachers, quoted in the Globe and Mail.

One of the more bizarre phenomena in the last century's visions of a forthcoming omnipotent state -- George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" -- is the concept of "thought policing." The totalitarian state must control not only what we do, but also what we think. Illegal thoughts are punishable by compulsory mind retraining, a.k.a. brain washing.

We became accustomed during the 20th century to dismiss the Orwellian nightmare as a horror that became real only in such Marxist "paradises" as the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia. But maybe Orwell erred only in his dating. Maybe the threat to the West is still to come. Note, for instance, two cases the Supreme Court of Canada will soon consider, both from British Columbia.

In the first, the British Columbia College of Teachers opposes authorizing Trinity Western University, Langley, B.C., to train teachers. A Christian university which receives no government funding, Trinity requires its students to pledge that they will not smoke, drink, swear, take drugs, fornicate or have "gay" sex.

At present Trinity can provide four years of a five-year education course. For the fifth the students must attend Simon Fraser University -- presumably, explains a Globe and Mail report, to have these Christian prejudices "drummed out of them before they can be let loose on the public school system." Trinity wants to provide the fifth year too; the B.C. Teachers College is fighting the proposal.

The university contends that its rejection of certain forms of human conduct is derived from its Christian foundation, and to deny it the right to graduate teachers because of this is a denial of the religious liberty guaranteed in the charter.

The teachers' college, however, argues as follows. People educated in a milieu that rejects homosexual activity cannot qualify as teachers in the public system. They will have been led to "think" wrongly. It's not how they behave that matters, but how they think. They may "tolerate" homosexual activity, explains its deputy register, but just "putting up" with it isn't good enough. It must be "accepted" -- i.e., considered good.

This, from the official spokeswoman for the official body that sets teacher qualifications in British Columbia, vividly evokes the Orwellian nightmare. And the second case represents an even more blatant venture into thought control.

The Surrey School Board, on the advice of school administrators, rejected three books proposed by a local homosexual group for sex education courses. Their contents, the trustees said, would appall parents. The homosexuals took the board to court, where Justice Mary Saunders examined the statements made by the people involved.

Two trustees had voted in favor of the books, and four against them. These four were all Christian, although only one cited his religious faith as the basis of his decision. However, the learned judge decided, the other three cited parental insistence, and submissions from parents disclosed their views to be almost wholly influenced by religion: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh.

Since these people were clearly trying to bring religious influence to bear on the public school curriculum, Madam Justice Saunders ruled, the disputed books must be accepted. Notice the implication. If any trustee casts a vote rooted in his religious convictions, his vote is disqualified. But how can a Christian -- or a religious Jew, Sikh, Muslim or Hindu -- somehow amputate his religious convictions from his thought process?

The entire moral system of religious people is ultimately rooted in their religion -- not just sexual morality, but questions of truthfulness, loyalty, work, property, respect for others, family obligations and community obligations. But if such thinking determines the way a school trustee votes, says Madam Justice Saunders, then he is not fit to serve. The effect is to disqualify from the office of trustee anybody with functioning religious convictions. Notice also that to reach this conclusion she had to examine how everyone involved in the case had been thinking -- the trustees first, and then the parents.

So we seem to be getting closer all the time -- in British Columbia anyway -- to Orwellian thought policing. Will we soon see "mind-cleansing" courses established there, to rid prospective teachers and school trustees of their unfortunate religious values? Is this already the function of Simon Fraser? Or will the powers that be simply disqualify anyone known to have been connected with a church, mosque or synagogue?

It will be interesting indeed to see what the Canadian Supreme Court does with these two cases.

Now what would gentle Jesus have to do
with those `brutal' football players?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 20, 2000

"Football players' public outpouring of thanks to the Lord raise questions about what role athletes believe the Christian God plays in a brutally violent game." -- Religion reporter Douglas Todd, describing in the Vancouver Sun the activities of the Christian organization Athletes in Action.

The spectacle of B.C. Lions quarterback Danny McManus giving thanks to God before a television audience of hundreds of thousands, following his team's victory in the Grey Cup semi-finals last month, piqued the curiosity of the Vancouver Sun's religion reporter.

What happens, he wondered, if the members of Athletes in Action on two rival teams are all praying for victory? Both sides can't win. When he took this question to some of the 15 Athletes in Action members on the 37-man B.C. team, they produced an altogether adequate reply. They don't pray for victory, said the men, because they believe God knows the outcome before the game begins. Rather, they pray that they will play well.

"I bring Jesus out on the field with me," said Mr. McManus, "and put him the huddle. I always take time to share a word with God. In all the excitement, that brings me back down. . . . I think God is with both teams. He knows who's going to win because He's God. . . . I pray for the ability to do the best I can."

The men seemingly didn't answer Mr. Todd's question as to why "the Christian God" would have anything to do with such a "brutally violent" game -- or perhaps he didn't put it to them. The question itself implies a certain assumption, however, namely that Christ would not keep company with people of "violence." Where, one wonders, does this idea come from?

From the New Testament, the reply might be. Christ eschewed violence. He is the "Prince of Peace." Anyone who takes up the sword, he warned, will perish by the sword. When he was arrested he could have summoned "12 legions of angels," but instead submitted meekly to trial and execution. So why would he become the companion of men who make a living bashing into each other and knocking or dragging one another down?

All true, of course, but other elements in the New Testament present a very different aspect. At one point Christ tells his followers to go out and buy swords (Luke 22:36). At another he warns that he came not to bring peace on earth but a sword (Matt. 10:34). And his expulsion of the tradesmen and coin exchangers from the temple sounds like a pretty violent incident.

Moreover, the Christian faith was spread through the Roman empire in large part by Christians in the ranks of the Roman army, and figures of Christian soldiers are familiar throughout history. They include the centurion who expresses his faith at the cross, St. Alban the martyr in England, Sir Francis Drake, General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, and tens of thousands of ordinary private soldiers who felt the presence of Christ with them, despite the "brutality" in which they were engaged.

The picture of Christ that many media people carry in their minds these days plainly derives from some other source. Judging by the questions they ask and the points they make, one suspects that Jesus Christ Superstar or The Last Temptation of Christ is the real origin of their Christology. And neither of these bears much resemblance to the startling figure who emerges from even a cursory reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The Gospel, in fact, must have been carried from Palestine to the ends of the world in large measure by men very like these football players, both in physical appearance and mental attitude. The latter, attitude, is especially significant. For the world in which the athlete lives has a crucial resemblance to the world in which the Christian lives. In sports there is of necessity a clear structure, as there is in war. Good and bad, well done and poorly done, the right way and the wrong way, are far less misty than they are in the lives of most people today. To the football player, the game is won or lost. To the Christian, the same is true of the game called life.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in December 1994.

The secular age poses two big challenges
but academe's dabbling isn't one of them

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 13, 2000

The Center for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria now refers to dates Before Christ as "BCE" (Before the Common Era) and dates after Christ as "CE" (Common Era) because the center does not want to "upset" non-Christians. --a news item in the Victoria Times Colonist.

"Out goes another benchmark along with Christmas," the Times Colonist commented on what it saw as the latest amputation of Christian tradition from current Canadian usage. The question this sort of thing raises for Christians, of course, is how forcefully we should resist such changes. Should we be writing indignant letters to the Times Colonist, cancelling financial support for the university, striving to gain representation on the board of governors?

Perhaps we should first examine this process in its full context. In every facet of society throughout this century -- criminal law, education, our concept of the family, medicine, sex, welfare, public holidays, and in a thousand other ways -- we have seen the relentless repudiation of Christian principle and practice.

This is usually explained as a transition from a Christian to a "pluralistic" society, though there is something curious about it. Although we are a democracy, there was certainly never a vote. No political party ever ran on the platform of abolishing Christendom in Canada, and even now it's doubtful that a referendum approving such a change would carry. Nevertheless the change is undeniable, and we have to respond. But how?

One point to note is that such a rejection of Christianity is nothing new. It happened all over western Europe in the 18th Century and all over eastern Europe in the 20th. Revolutionary France strove hard with sword and guillotine to wipe us out and tens of thousands of us perished in that bloodbath, yet within two decades we were back in every French city and parish.

Marxist Russia liquidated hundreds of thousands of us in a ferocious resolve to abolish Christianity, and also unleashed upon us all the power of educational technology and propaganda. Yet this decade saw the Russian government restore to Leningrad its historic name, St. Petersburg. Thus, a Jewish peasant fisherman named Simon Peter, dead nearly 2,000 years, meant more to the people of Russia than the 20th Century's most renowned revolutionary.

In those 2,000 years, the Christian gospel has spread from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but this success has certainly not been one of unrelieved triumph. There have been frightful setbacks and disasters. The history of Christianity has been "messy," notes the Catholic writer Peter Kreeft, like the history of the human race.

So what do we do when the University of Victoria decides it will henceforth refer to the Common Era? Three things suggest themselves:

First, we should do nothing about superficial trivialities like these dabblings in the Politically Correct which so engage the modern academic -- apart perhaps from pointing out their absurdities. After all, what is common to the Common Era, other than Christianity?

Second, we should strive to preserve the principle that universal moral law must underlie the laws of the state. Otherwise the latter become absolute unto themselves. That is, unless we assume that the state's laws can be good or bad by some standard that lies beyond them, there is no basis upon which they can be assessed. Thus, all our efforts to preserve such things as family integrity, respect for human life, and genuine equality before the law, are well worth making.

Finally and most important, we must learn to propagate the faith, to spread the gospel, to modern man. In every era the task of evangelism has changed as human societies changed. We learned how to "reach" the citizan of imperial Rome, the barbarian of northern Europe, the Slav of the Steppes and the tribesman of central Africa. Now we are confronted with a new challenge, modern materialistic suburban man, who is as thoroughly ignorant of Christianity as any of the others were, but who, curiously, is far more open to our message than was his pseudo-Christian father.

When we are shown how to do this, we will find that Christendom returns, that our Leningrads again become St.Petersburgs, and that the Common Era fades away and the Christian era survives. But of course whether such things as the University of Victoria survive is far more open to doubt.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in July 1995.

Ever notice the curious similarity between
biblical literalism and devout Darwinism?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
January 6, 2000

Since we began this column in 1992 (the present one must be about the 380th), we've provoked the most controversy, even anger, whenever we cast doubt upon Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, colloquially (and somewhat inaccurately) known as "evolution."

This always brings a flurry of protest, and not necessarily from non-Christians -- often from believers. The tone is always one of outrage, as if we've offended a cherished conviction or espoused a dangerous heresy. Here, for example, are excerpts from a Toronto letter:

"It would probably be of interest to many readers just exactly what modern-day Creationists espouse. . . . Do they believe in the biblical account of how the world was created, and Man introduced in approximately 4004 B.C.? That the estimated 5.9 billion people started from two people nearly 6,000 years ago?...How did they ever have grandchildren without some form of incest? Who did Adam and Eve's children marry?

"If we start off with two people, the next vexatious question is when did God introduce genetics into the equation? It wouldn't have taken too many generations of Adam and Eve's descendants before the effects of inbreeding would have been observed. If the laws of genetics had been in effect at that time, that is."

Our offense had been to question once again the Darwinian insistence that the world's myriad species came about entirely by sheer happenstance, that freak occurrences of certain traits bestowed upon individuals thus endowed a biological advantage over their fellows, and therefore while others perished, these individuals survived and passed on their fortuitous variation.

Darwin was emphatic that no element of "design" could be involved; everything is "random," he wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed in numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Natural selection became a dogma in modern science, although it is now being challenged by a small but growing number of scientists dismayed at the lack of supporting evidence.

To demonstrate its truth, the fossil record and other surviving evidence should reflect millions of transitional species-creatures, for instance, halfway between reptile and bird. But 150 years of earnest search have found very few. Then too, the fruit fly and speckled moth examples, beloved of high school textbooks, were revealed as mere variations within their species. Worse still, what Darwin regarded as the "simple cell," nature's basic building block, has turned out to be a lot less simple than a modern computer. It could not possibly have occurred by happenstance, says biologist Michael J. Behe.

But our reader's response remains typical. He doesn't defend natural selection, or answer the criticisms. He attacks the biblical creation account instead, although the Bible is not what's on trial here. Anyhow, for what it's worth, our reply went like this:

"It seems to us there are two propositions which are equally indefensible, either rationally or scientifically. They are:

"1. Biblical literalism. We don't think Genesis was written as a scientific document; the ancient Jews were not noted for their scientific outlook. It is their creation myth. To reject it as being paleontologically inadequate is to miss the point entirely -- like rejecting "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" as ornithologically inadequate as regards albatrosses.

"But 'myth' does not equate to 'false.' Four major theological points are made in Genesis. (a) That man is a creature, made by God. (b) That man was given free will; he isn't entirely mechanical. (c) That what we call evil is intelligent; it is not a "blind force." (d) That man chose to rebel against his Maker. This we believe to be a fair and accurate interpretation, and it has been a recognized Christian position since the 4th century. Insistence upon total biblical literalism dates only from the 16th century.

"2. The doctrine of natural selection. This requires us to believe that everything happened by sheer accident; that by total happenstance something broke the earth from the sun (or from wherever else it originated) and brought it precisely to the point where it could sustain liquid water (about one chance in several million); that by a whole chain of other exceedingly improbable coincidences (the odds being one in several quadrillion) the single cell came about; and then by an even longer chain of equally chance occurrences, the various species just happened to develop. This, incidentally, is the creation myth of the 20th century.

"Both these positions -- biblical literalism and devotional Darwinism -- are in effect religious ones, and both call for a certain shuttered mindset. They require their disciples to bestow a bizarre credence upon the incredible. Finding ourselves incapable of this kind of faith, we have chosen a third position known as 'I.D.,' for Intelligent Design."

Is it possible to love someone coldly?
Indeed it is, say the Christians

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 30, 1999

"Need, not love, is the strongest reason motivating adult children to provide care for aging parents, Winnipeg researchers say." -- The first paragraph of a story in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

This article described the results of a study made in Winnipeg last year on why children offer care and support for their parents when the parents are no longer able to care for themselves.

The children do not act out of "love," the story explains. "Neither the desire to repay a parent's care nor the degree of attachment between parent and child are factors that determine the amount of care an adult child will provide. . . . Rather, `perceived parental dependence' -- how much adult children feel the parents rely on them -- emerged as the strongest reason for being involved in parental care."

"Previous research on care-giving was based on the assumption that adult children help parents because of their emotional bond."

What interested us in this news story was not its content, but the meaning given to the word "love" -- either by the reporter who wrote the Globe article, or possibly by the study itself.

The assumption is that if the children act out of an "emotional bond," they are acting out of "love." If they act simply because they perceive the parents' need, they are not acting out of "love" but out of some other motive.

Love, that is, must always spring from emotion. If you "feel deeply" about the person, you love them. If you feel nothing whatever about them, but simply sense that you have a duty towards them, you do not love them. Love must always be warm and affectionate. There can be no such thing as loving "coldly."

Since this is very much the connotation of the word "love" as it is popularly used these days, it is of considerable importance to Christians. After all, Christ told us we must "love" our neighbor. He also made it clear that our "neighbor" referred to everyone we came in contact with, including our enemy.

Now if by "loving" someone, he meant we should have a deep, emotional fondness for them, then he was asking us to have this fondness for people we loathe, or for people who are trying to injure or even destroy us.

In other words, he was asking us to do the impossible. For no matter how hard we strive, it is impossible for us to manufacture "feelings." Feelings either come to us or they don't. We can't force them to arise in us by an act of will.

Christ's command, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," therefore seems to many people absurd. They take it to mean that we are to say people are nice when they're obviously not, to smile benevolently on perfectly awful behavior, and to feel a warm glow deep down in our hearts for people into the seat of whose pants we would dearly love to plant our foot.

But "loving" people in the Christian sense never has meant having nice feelings about them. Rather, it means wishing them well (which of course would entail wishing they would desist from whatever behavior renders them so obnoxious). It also means being ready to meet their needs, wherever we can. Whether we do this passionately or dispassionately is irrelevant.

And if you stop to think about it, that is exactly how we love ourselves. We do not have a deep, warm sense of fondness and affection for ourselves. We do not have an irrepressible urge to embrace ourselves as we might a dear old friend, or to pat ourselves as we might the family dog or cat. Our self-love is in fact fairly cold. But we certainly do have our best interests at heart; there's no doubt about that. In fact, our self-preoccupation can easily become all-consuming.

Thus Christ's directive turns out to be something more than an absurd demand for the impossible. That dispassionate love which we have naturally for ourselves is the kind of love we should have for other people. It's hard, yes, but not impossible.

You can also see the implication of this to the Winnipeg study. The world says that in caring for their aging parents children are not acting out of love, but out of a sense of duty and responsibility. The Christian says that when they act out of duty and responsibility the children are in fact acting out of love. Indeed, they are loving their parents as they love themselves.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in January 1995.

A gifted novelist confesses faith in Christ
but shrinks from a step he dreads to take

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 23, 1999

The blurb for Time magazine's Christmas cover story made our hearts groan. "Jesus at 2000," said the headline, followed by: "Novelist Reynolds Price offers a new Gospel based on archaeology and the Bible." Another weirdo, we assumed, trotted out at Christmas to assure us there's nothing worth celebrating. Compliments of "the Season."

So imagine our delight when we found we were quite mistaken. Mr. Price's "new Gospel" turns out so much like the old Gospel that we wondered why he doesn't just say so. But of course, he cannot. To sell magazines, it must be "new," even if it isn't.

In a nine-page dissertation, this gifted fiction writer who also happens to be a New Testament scholar constructs what he considers one possible historical recapitulation of Jesus' earthly ministry. For a "biblical scholar," a term now frequently synonymous with agnostic, he makes some unusual assertions.

For instance, he allows the literal virgin birth as a distinct possibility. He envisions the "temptation in the wilderness" in somewhat altered terms, but the tempter is still evil personified. He doesn't seriously challenge the healing miracles or the Transfiguration, and allows that Christ's resurrection probably happened. He suggests that Judas betrayed the Lord through pride and hanged himself upon discovering that his doubts about Jesus were absolutely unfounded -- the same theory propounded by Dorothy L. Sayers in her magnificent radio plays, "The Man Born to be King."

So perhaps Jesus, concludes Mr. Price, "was what he claimed to be -- the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel. Since his resurrection he has become in the minds of billions a transnational Messiah who continues to care for individual humans and to save them from internal and external evil."

Then comes a personal testimonial. "I am one who believes himself a direct recipient of such care. Fifteen years ago I was about to undergo five weeks of withering radiation for a 25-cm-long cancer inside my spinal cord. I found myself -- an outlaw Christian who had, or has, no active tie with a church -- transported, thoroughly awake, to another entirely credible time and place. I was lying on the shore of the Lake of Galilee with Jesus' disciples sleeping around me.

"Then Jesus came forward and silently indicated that I should follow him into the lake. Waste-deep in the water, I felt him pour handfuls down the long, fresh scar on my back -- the relic of unsuccessful surgery the month before. Jesus suddenly told me, 'Your sins are forgiven.' Appalled by my dire physical outlook, I thought ungratefully, 'That's the last thing I need.' So I asked him, 'Am I also cured?' He said, 'That too.' Then, as though I'd forced his hand, he turned and climbed ashore with me well behind him."

The damage to Mr. Price's spine was not cured; years of surgery followed that left his legs permanently paralyzed. But to the astonishment of doctors the cancer was gone. Further, his life ever since has been far more productive.

Then why, you wonder, does he continue to shun the church? He explains this too. As a committed member he would have to accept Jesus' final instruction to his disciples: "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

This, writes Mr. Price, he cannot accept. "In the light of the appalling failings of Jesus' followers, that last command goes on contributing heavily to the evils of national and religious warfare, institutional and individual hatred, imperialism and enslavement." Along with this admittedly go "the most far-reaching movements of mercy, tolerance and human freedom," but he is resolved nevertheless to stay out.

Of course, he thereby escapes other hazards too -- such as finding himself ostracized from establishment academe, as were other talented writers who did not stay out: C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Sayers, Evelyn Waugh, even T.S. Eliot after he published "The Cocktail Party" and thereby disclosed his commitment to the faith.

And there's a further cost, steeper still. Notice Mr. Price's use of the word "tolerance," the code word of his generation. The problem with accepting something as true is that you must logically reject as false that which is incompatible with it. However much you sugarcoat the message, you are calling the other guy wrong. And that's "bigotry." That's " judgmental." That's "intolerant." And we wouldn't want to be any of those awful things, would we? Better to be blurred, uncommitted and above all "tolerant," meanwhile sitting safe and cool on the sidelines.

Original sin: A 'creepy' concept
that kids might find very useful

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 16, 1999

``I don't want kids to actually believe in original sin -- a creepy idea if there ever was one. I just want them to know about it.'' -- Linda Bates in the Vancouver Sun.

Ms. Bates, in an observant article, notes how impoverished most modern children are because they know nothing whatever of the Bible or the Christian tradition.

When Michael Jackson sings, ``Hold me like the River Jordan,'' they haven't the slightest idea what he's referring to. They know all about Madonna, the sex symbol, but nothing whatsoever about Madonna of Bethlehem. In the public schools they may study Greek and Roman mythology and aboriginal creation stories, but they must be given no inkling of the biblical creation story.

Consequently, Ms. Bates notes, most Canadian children have no basis whatever for understanding western culture, from which their own society emerged. The tradition which produced Michelangelo, Milton and Bach remains utterly unknown to them. She wishes they could at least be acquainted with Christianity. For instance, she'd like them to know what ``original sin'' means, although not to actually embrace the ``creepy'' belief that ``you're born sinful and need to be baptized.''

For people raised in North America or western Europe since the Second World War -- blessed with probably the most comfortable and painless existence in the entire history of the human race -- it may indeed seem creepy to view humanity as unerringly prone to sinful behavior. People in eastern Europe would likely find this doctrine a good deal easier to believe, however, and citizens of modern Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia or Viet Nam would probably find it highly convincing.

The problem in North America is not that most non-Christian children don't know what original sin means, but that most non-Christian adults don't know either. Christianity asks us to make two observations about human behavior. One is the fact that we automatically expect each other to observe certain rules of conduct. We assume other people will keep promises, for example. In a line-up at a ticket counter we assume they'll keep their place. We expect them to tell the truth, and to help people who have helped them. We expect parents to care for the children they bring into the world, and we expect that the strong will not bully and torment the weak.

Curiously enough, this code of human conduct is very much the same in all societies, even those known to have had no early historical contact with one another. There are differences, of course, but they are peripheral, not central. That is one observation. All we humans recognize a similar code of behavior.

The second Christian observation is that we all break this code. That is, we can scarcely look back on a month in our lives (or a week, or even a day) when we did not fail to keep a promise, or say something we regret having said, or lose patience with someone, or shade the truth to our own benefit, or shirk some responsibility.

In other words, all of us recognize certain rules of behavior and do not follow those rules. We do not meet the standards we expect others to meet. We do not do unto others as we would have others do unto us. If we are accused of breaking these rules, of course, we are quick to find justification. There was a good reason we didn't keep the promise; we were aggravated into saying what we said; we told the white lie to save everybody embarrassment; we just didn't have time to meet that responsibility. And anyway, nobody's perfect.

Which is, of course, precisely the point. Everybody is imperfect. Can that be called ``creepy?'' You bet it can, because every broken home, every economic deprivation, every war -- in short, most human misery -- ultimately derives from the cumulative effect of all these individual imperfections.

Christians call this human condition ``original sin.'' They offer an explanation for it, and an assertion of what the creator of the world has done about it. Ms. Bates is certainly right that children should know what it is. Thus, later on, they might address their minds to discovering some explanation for these two curious facts of life. They might even decide that the Christian account makes more sense than any other.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in December 1993.

How's that again? Is it that Christmas
is tainting business, or business Christmas?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 9, 1999

Apparently Christians don't mind having their religion hijacked for various and sundry non-religious activities. -- Nancy Millar, in the Calgary Herald.

Ms. Millar, who writes a weekly column, was complaining about the playing of Christmas carols to spur buying in shopping malls. Obviously the use of Christian music to commercial ends seriously aggrieves her.

But it is difficult to tell why. In her column the week before, she mentioned the same thing -- the carols in the shopping malls. Then, however, it was because she feared that Christian music in a secular setting would be offensive to non-Christians. In other words, the religious was being allowed to pollute the secular.

But now it seems to be the other way around. Crass commercialism has taken over Christian hymnology. The secular, that is, is being allowed to pollute the religious.

So which is it? Ought we to be protecting commerce against the sinister intrusions of Christianity, or Christianity against the ruthless exploitations of commerce?

We cannot answer for Ms. Millar, of course, but we suspect she would say both -- namely, that there is a proper place for religion: in church, in the home perhaps, but not in the shopping mall. Religion is a deeply personal thing. It should remain closeted within its stained glass confines. It is obviously liberal and healthy to have homosexuality come out of the closet, but surely not Christianity.

Now of these two fears -- the fear of Christianity in the shopping mall, and the fear of the shopping mall (as it were) in Christianity -- one is altogether valid, and the other altogether invalid. The shopping mall (Christianity calls it ``the world'') has much to fear from Christ. But Christ has little to fear from the world.

Christians have always pictured Christ as ``invading'' the world. He begins as the inspiration of a single tribal people; then is embodied as an individual man; then, as a new kind of life, he spreads like an infection from one person to another, from one country to another, all over the world, through 20 centuries of history.

The world's reaction, naturally, is to resist, to confine him, if it can, safely between those stained glass windows. For the threat he always poses to the world -- the threat, that is, of conversion to Christianity -- rarely begins in a church. It's always something outside the church: maybe an observation made by a Christian over coffee in a restaurant or over a back fence, or a remark in a pub, or a thought that enters your mind in a quiet walk, or the conclusion from some personal tragedy, or perhaps a wistful recollection triggered by a Christmas carol in a shopping mall. This kind of thing leads people to the church, and the church leads them to Christ.

So the world's fear is well founded. What begins as an emotional charge can lead to a curiosity in the mind, which in turn can result in an act of the will, which Christians call ``the heart.'' From the world's viewpoint, therefore, those carols in shopping malls, in fact the whole chaotic and boisterous phenomenon of the secular Christmas, are lethal, loaded and dangerous.

But what of the reverse fear? Is Christ somehow threatened when the world adopts the symbols and practices of Christianity? He said not. ``Cheer up,'' he told his followers. ``I have overcome the world.''

``We need not play nursemaid to the Babe of Bethlehem,'' writes Dorothy L. Sayers,

``To shield Him from the harlot and the thief,
Or keep those tender, innocent hands from harm,
That bear the sharp nails' imprint, and uphold
The axis of the spheres. He can touch dirt
Without defilement, for Himself hath said,
`What I have cleansed, that call not thou unclean.' ''

Merry Christmas!
-- Ted and Virginia Byfield

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print in December 1992.

A chronic irritant to bureaucracy
pays attention to its 'pluralism"

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
December 2, 1999

Kathleen Gow is a Toronto business consultant, an Anglican Christian and a nuisance -- a nuisance, that is, to those who favor what is sometimes called "the smooth running of government." Lately she has again been asking disconcerting questions of bureaucracy and, as usual, rejecting evasive answers. The result, also as usual, is that she has exposed a major deficiency in the way government seeks to function.

Dr. Gow was much heard of in the '70s when, in her book Yes, Virginia, There Is Right and Wrong, she tackled the educational bureaucracy on the morality (or otherwise) of "values clarification/moral reasoning" education, then a much-favored pedagogical innovation. She demonstrated at the time a singular talent for exposing inadequate bureaucratic answers with devastating clarity, and she can take major credit for alerting parents to the destructive excesses of moral relativism in the public schools.

"Values clarification" was, of course, one consequence of our religiously pluralistic society. Of late Dr. Gow has turned her attention towards another consequence. Not that she's against pluralism. She simply believes we should be quite clear about its limitations. We should realize, for instance, that the government of Canada can no longer appropriately involve itself in the holding of "memorial services."

What led her to this conclusion was some persistent research into the circumstances surrounding the government-directed memorial service following upon the Swissair disaster at Peggy's Cove, N.S., last year. Readers may recall how a United Church minister and Catholic priest were both warned in advance they must not mention Jesus Christ or quote the New Testament, because the service was to be "non-denominational."

No such proscription, however, was imposed upon other participants. The rabbi read from the Hebrew scriptures, the Muslim leader from the Koran. Christians saw such blatant discrimination as evidence of an anti-Christian mindset extending right up to the Prime Minister's Office. From numerous interviews and a reading of the ensuing correspondence, Dr. Gow has reached a somewhat different conclusion. This exclusion of Christians, she believes, is simply one possible outcome when a "pluralistic" state begins involving itself in affairs spiritual, such as "memorial services."

She has also pieced together the sequence of events leading up to the Peggy's Cove contretemps. It began when a local United Church minister proposed a memorial service to comfort the kinfolk of the victims, envisioning a relatively small event, for perhaps a few hundred people. Soon, however, government stepped in. Prime Minister Jean Chretien would take part, making it an international occasion that involved the Prime Minister's Office, the RCMP and the Federal Protocol Office.

The challenge arose when the local Jewish community was asked to participate. As the chairman for community relations of the Atlantic Jewish Council later explained in a letter to the newspapers, a rabbi cannot reasonably be asked to take part in a service where Jesus Christ is proclaimed as Messiah, or "Lord," or "Savior." Jews do not believe this, and therefore could not be involved in a memorial where such terminology was to be used.

The two Christian clergy were thereupon given the conditions of their participation. An exhaustive chain of equivocal responses would later obscure whether it was the local federal protocol authority that did this, or the national authority, or the PMO, or none of them.

To Kathleen Gow, however, the evasion of truth in this instance is of less importance than the basic question: What should have happened? Should the Christians have been permitted to use the name of Christ and read from the New Testament, thereby excluding the Jews? Or should the Jewish condition have been met, thereby excluding the Christians? No one wants to say, least of all anyone from the PMO. And where, to be consistent, will this policy, whatever it is, leave such affairs as Remembrance Day ceremonies?

Some resolution of the matter there clearly must be. At a public forum in October, Lois Wilson, former United Church moderator, revealed that proposed "guidelines" are even now on the prime minister's desk. What, one wonders, is the content and tenor of them? Who gets to ratify them? Surely we have a right to know.

As for Dr. Gow, she agrees with the Atlantic Jewish Council's community relations chairman. If we are to function as a "pluralistic" society, government must stay out of these things. Victims of tragedy, seeking for hope, may find it supplied by priests, ministers, rabbis or imams. Not by bureaucrats.

The lady in the gallery may be a kook,
but she sees a reality most media don't

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 25, 1999

There occurred in the Canadian House of Commons last month the sort of untoward incident the media usually ignore. A woman in the gallery threw sheets of orange paper down on the floor. She was hastily escorted out.

Paul Wells, youthful columnist for the National Post (youthful in his picture anyway), and obviously hard up for an angle, used the incident in a column, citing the text on the orange sheets.

The message warned that because the Liberal government does not "support the family," because it is changing 58 laws to declare homosexual unions legal marriages, and because it refuses to overrule the courts on the kiddie porn possession case, therefore: "They are the anti-christ. Let it be known that the Lord will remove his hand of protection from this godless nation." Which gave Mr. Wells opportunity to make sport. The paper had fallen on the Tory benches. Wasn't that funny? "And I thought the big problems were high taxes and the brain drain," he wrote, "and now here's this stuff about the hand of the Lord. Surely a hand-of-the-Lord drain is worse than a brain drain."

One aspect of the incident Mr. Wells did not consider. Was the woman, however eccentric or even deranged, perhaps also right? Maybe "the hand of the Lord" is already being removed from this country -- which might result in, among much else, the brain drain.

The "judgment" of God, according to the British Christian essayist Dorothy L. Sayers, may not take place before some cosmic court. Rather, judgment befalls us as the direct consequence of what we do, or don't do.

That is to say, each moral choice we make turns us into a slightly more heavenly or slightly more hellish creature. Each law we change or convention we adopt or abandon makes our country a slightly better or slightly worse place to live in. If as individuals we make enough bad choices, and if we live eternally, hell is the state in which we will exist forever. If we make enough bad choices as a society, the civilization our forebears bestowed upon us will collapse.

We may spoof and sneer at this idea, but every past civilization did indeed collapse -- probably while merrily scoffing at the warning signs. What are the warning signs? Some historians have spelled them out. Moral rules are gradually abandoned -- not just sexual moral rules, but all moral rules governing such things as simple honesty, keeping promises, caring for one's children, respecting other people's property. To preserve order, they must be replaced by statute laws. The law consequently becomes increasingly complex and unenforceable.

Taxes rise so wildly as to become unpayable. Tax evasion consequently ceases to be reprehensible. Families become smaller because women refuse to have children; people must be brought in from other societies to maintain the workforce. Popular entertainment delves ever more deeply into the bizarre. Educational standards decline. And before all else, the religion out of which the society grew ceases to seriously commend itself to the populace.

You don't need much prophetic talent to observe that every one of these symptoms is now evidencing itself in Canada -- far more, indeed, than in the United States. Our abortion rate continues to climb while theirs declines. Our teenaged pregnancy rate remains alarming while theirs recedes. Our tax rates are far higher. Our courts are far more powerful. As a result we are increasingly beset with unenforceable laws.

We are not correcting the appalling flaws in our education system as quickly as they because the power groups -- teachers' unions, education faculties, bureaucracies, etc. -- are far more deeply entrenched. Finally, our church attendance rates run at about half the American. Much more than they, we have given up on God.

You wonder: Is Paul Wells conscious of any of these things? It seems not. Which means, of course, that the orange pamphlet was more perceptive of events than his column.

But there may be another explanation. It's the habit of youth to regard the probable as the inevitable. Since the woman is probably a kook, that means what she says must be kooky. But you can be fooled. Take, for instance, the recent Saskatchewan election. The polls said the Romanow government would win an easy majority. The early returns from the city constituencies gave him a landslide. So the probable result became the inevitable result, and one columnist, faced with an immediate deadline, leapt to the inevitable conclusion and wrote that the government had won a sweeping majority. He thereby created the headline that is now part of Saskatchewan memorabilia. For the government, when all the returns were in, was very nearly defeated.

That columnist, needless to say, was Paul Wells. He was wrong about the election. He may also be wrong about the orange pamphlet.

As studies affirm the power of prayer,
Christians are curiously unresponsive

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 18, 1999

Two major research studies in the last decade have provided statistical evidence that prayer cures or alleviates illness -- even if the people prayed for don't know about it, or if the people doing the praying do not personally know the subjects of their prayers.

In the latest project, whose results were announced this month, 990 patients suffering "serious, life-threatening cardiac conditions" at the Mid-America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, were discovered to fare 11% better when volunteers prayed for their "speedy recovery with no complications."

Neither the patients nor their doctors were told about the study. Doctors considered the 11% difference in infection rates, heart attacks and treatment failure very significant. "If this was a drug, a device or a standard medical procedure, there would be no question there was an effect," said Dr. William Harris, a Christian and the lead researcher.

The results were published in a respected journal called the Archives of Internal Medicine. A similar study, carried out in 1988, involved 393 patients at the coronary unit of a San Francisco general hospital. It showed similarly beneficial results and inspired a series of books on spiritual healing.

However, something else was remarkable about both these studies, notably how little public recognition and comment they provoked among practicing Christians. There were a few letters in the newspapers, but church leaders hardly commented. It was as though the Christians were being told something they had known all along.

And so they were. Many Christians (nearly all of those who have been long in the faith, we suspect) are aware of events or situations in their lives, and in the lives of those around them, where the power of God has been made quite clear. They prayed and curious "coincidences" followed. They found a job they thought they had no hope of finding; they received financial help of which they had despaired; they or some friend or kin was cured of a supposedly incurable disease; they found a wife or husband; they broke a habit they had all but given up hope of ever breaking. These events were rarely so odd that chance circumstance couldn't possibly account for them. In every case the outcome could have been blind luck, and sceptical friends would tell them so. Yet they don't believe this, if only because it seems ungrateful, even treasonous. They asked for help; the help came; to casually dismiss it as mere coincidence smacks of deep ingratitude.

It's also true, of course, that sometimes what follows from a prayer seems the very reverse of what is asked for. Many years ago we prayed for the success of a little newspaper we started in northern Ontario. It failed miserably nonetheless. Impoverished, we moved west, and there began experiencing a whole new life in Christ and his church which eventually led to the establishment of this magazine [National Report]. So in the end our prayers were answered in the affirmative after all, but far more fully than they could have been answered in northern Ontario. And along with this, infinitely more besides.

Christians find themselves inhabiting two worlds at once. First, we share the world that everyone else lives in, a world of joy, pain, uncertainty and elapsing time, a world that comes inevitably to one end-death. But we also discover ourselves living in another world, about which we can perceive only the barest details: a world of prayer, light, increasing certainty and "coincidence," where odd things constantly happen to, in and around us, becoming ever more difficult to ascribe to mere chance.

Non-Christians often speak of faith as something one must sustain, with jaw firmly clamped, by force of will. As Dorothy L. Sayers so cogently put it, the modern sceptic thinks that faith consists in "resolutely shutting your eyes to scientific fact." But this is not true. Faith is in part founded on simple reason. To believe that the world came about by sheer accident, for example, requires far more "faith" (of a sort) than to believe that some kind of Mind or Intelligence must lie behind it. Beyond this, however, faith is something built upon personal experience. We pray, and certain things subsequently occur. Just simple happenstance? This explanation becomes more and more improbable as such events multiply.

So when we read that people praying for total strangers produced medically and statistically significant results, we are not astonished. "Well, of course," we say. Not that these studies are unimportant. By demonstrating a truth not widely recognized, they may help bring round some of the sceptics. But Christians shouldn't be astonished; again and again we have seen the equivalent. In fact, the only surprise lies in the numbers. The difference came in at only 11%. We would have put it higher.

If drums and drama draw people to God,
why quibble, editorialists notwithstanding?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 11, 1999

"It's unclear how (or even if) churches can re-assume any meaningful moral leadership in Canada. But trying to accomplish that goal by offering slick entertainment strikes us as demeaning." -- From an editorial in the Victoria (British Columbia) Times Colonist.

Three things concern this Times Colonist editorial writer.

First: attendance at mainline churches is dropping precipitately. The proportion of Canadians regularly attending church went from 53% in 1957 to 23% in 1993. Sunday attendance is "shrivelling."

Second: "Today's society needs moral guidance more than ever. Governments and quasi-judicial groups have tried to fill the vacuum left by vanishing churches (ever more laws, codes of ethics . . . and the like) but many of our children are inevitably absorbing the hedonistic lifestyle portrayed in movies and television." In other words, effective religion is essential to social survival.

Third: Nevertheless, "the lengths some churches are going to attract new adherents" are appalling -- rock music, dramatic skits, "soulful songs" and other things "demeaning" to religion. A church poster, for example, displays an attractive Jesus over the line: "You won't find God's gift to women in a singles bar." One minister's sermon is preceded by a few drum numbers. "A 25-minute monologue called a sermon doesn't fly any more," another clergyman explains.

On this note the editorial writer gives up in despair. Church attendance must somehow be restored, he laments, but he doesn't know how, and he greatly dislikes some modern methods.

His message evokes many echoes from the past. Half a century ago, for instance, when God was seen as necessary to international relations, there were calls for a "return to religion" to preserve peace. Now, in another sort of social necessity, we are to bring back God to protect young people from "the hedonistic lifestyle portrayed in movies and television."

But such reasons, unfortunately, are not what persuade people to belief in God. Is the Victoria editorialist likely to show up at some church next week because he's worried about society? Obviously not. And neither will anybody else.

Then what does draw people to God, and to church? And if rock music and crude dramatizations succeed in doing so, why condemn them? Because they may offend the aesthetic sensibilities of refined people? But Christianity has been distressing the respectable since its Founder kept company with tax collectors and sinners. As St. Peter observed, "God is no respecter of persons."

The exuberance of evangelicalism, although seemingly successful, offends the intelligentsia. The doctrinal desertions of liberal Protestantism (and more lately Catholicism too), although usually commending themselves to those same worthies, invariably fail. Thus when clergy of "advanced views" abandon the Bible's "discriminatory" teachings, denounce the "judgmental," scrap the hymns that suggest "conflict," and certify God as sweet, nice, broad-minded, liberal and tolerant, editorial writers nod approvingly and the churches go on emptying.

Naturally enough; people are not fools. If various human commissions can rewrite the Bible to conform to the latest social trends, they reason, just how can it be seen as the source of eternal truth? So Christian liberalism isn't the answer. Indeed, the rule seems to be, the more liberal the church, the emptier it gets.

What then is the answer? What are we Christians to do about the phenomenon of empty churches, geriatric congregations, declining revenues, and the relentless attack being made upon us, particularly in the movies and on television?

One thing to notice, surely, is that all churches are not declining. Some are prospering. Young parents fill their pews; their Sunday schools are heavily enrolled; they do not lack for funding; frequently they cannot accommodate the numbers in their congregations. These include both Protestant and Catholic churches, and may be found in both city centers and suburbs.

It is noteworthy that these churches make no attempt whatever to compromise Christian teachings to make them more palatable to people of modern values. If you want to be a Christian, they say, you will have to abandon modern values. You'll be in the world, but not of it. Notably also, their members always seem eager to tell others what wonderful things have happened to them since they found this church and the God it has presented to them.

Whenever there is a church revival, and history has seen many such, this is how it comes about. People find God where the Gospel is still preached. But few editorial writers, alas, are likely to be impressed.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print on June 5, 1995.

A return to nature worship,
a return to an immoral age

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
November 4, 1999

Nature worship, says Robert Mellert, will be the religion of the new millennium. His prophecy appears in a collection of essays called "Frontiers of the 21st Century" and was described last month in the Vancouver Sun. If it proves to be true, then something else will also be true. We won't be going forward into the new millennium; we'll be going backward into it.

Mr. Mellert doesn't call this religion nature worship, of course. He calls it by its correct name, pantheism. It's older than Christianity, he says, and it recommends itself to the modern world because it insists upon no specific dogmas, demands no adherence to moral codes, is not "institutional" (or not yet anyway), and does not recognize any sort of central authority. All this is congenial to modern attitudes, he observes.

Yet it also offers all the emotional thrills of religion -- in beholding with awe such things as the stars, sunsets, great forests -- and it has a cause too, the cause known as environmentalism. "With pantheism," says Paul Harrison, president of the World Pantheist Movement, "it is possible to have all the benefits of religion without the sacrifice of having to believe the improbable or the impossible." Mr. Harrison identifies Albert Einstein as a pantheist, an assertion which is open to serious doubt.

There used to be a distinction between worshipping nature itself and worshipping a god who manifests itself or himself in nature. (Or more probably "herself," because nature has traditionally been viewed as female.) Simple nature worship is sometimes called "the lower pantheism," a religion in which primitive peoples do things like dance around sacred trees and sacrifice babies to the new moon and so on.

The "higher pantheists," not wanting to be too closely identified with the goings-on of the lower group, do things like write essays that dance around issues, and sacrifice reason to the New Age. But in the end, as Bishop Charles Gore noted, the higher pantheism always seems to wind up in the lower pantheism. Or as Rudyard Kipling put it:

On the first Feminian sandstones, We were promised the Fuller Life, Which started by loving our neighbor, And ended by loving his wife.

However, essayist Mellert is certainly right about one thing. Pantheism is much older than Christianity. It goes back to the Stoics, he says. In fact it goes back far beyond the Stoics. It's the religion of primitive man, the first recorded religious response of our species.

Oddly, it was characteristically attended by grotesque cruelties -- the immolation of babies, the drinking of human blood, other forms of human sacrifice and assorted sexual excesses. Why the worship of nature should so frequently have resulted in this sort of thing isn't clear, but it did.

And maybe it is not so odd after all. Nature exhibits two qualities, the one which captivates the environmentalists, and the one they so singularly fail to observe. They properly cherish the beauty of nature. But they seem not to notice that nature is also vicious, cruel, fiercely competitive and exceedingly dangerous to man. The people who fight to preserve bears (a good cause, by the way) have rarely if ever seen a grizzly on the attack. Their ancestors regularly did -- and fled in terror. Man has survived by overcoming nature because if he hadn't nature would have certainly overcome him.

However, at some time around the 9th century before Christ, there began appearing in the world what were then new and shocking ideas: that God was above nature; that God had created nature; and finally that God was essentially "good" -- that he regarded human sacrifice as abominable, that he wanted people to love one another, that the competition so inherent in nature did not reflect him but a perversion of him, and that men should live according to new rules and new attitudes. These ideas appeared more or less simultaneously all over the world in the great religions, and everywhere launched the repudiation of nature worship.

With the emergence of the "super-natural," human beings gained a new way of regarding nature. It became possible for us to view some of the unattractive spectacles which it exhibits -- disease, cataclysms, slums, murder, slavery, rape, war -- and pass judgment on them. However "natural," we could declare, these things ought not to be.

The pantheist, of course, can behave as morally as the next man, but in so doing he must quietly set his pantheism aside. He can pass judgment on nature only by invoking a morality which must derive from something or somewhere beyond nature. According to his avowed religion, however, there is nothing beyond nature. Nature is all there is, and therefore everything in it is equally good or valid. Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler, in the end, are both "aspects of God."

That nature worship is going to make a comeback in the third millennium may be so. But that is not good news.

Those 'radical visions' of Jesus
may not be so new after all

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 28, 1999

``Biblical historians are attracting major-league audiences with radical new visions of the early church, and the resulting pressure on the traditional image of the faith is immense.'' -- Religious reporter Jack Kapica, in the Globe and Mail.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, missionary, theologian, physician and the world's foremost authority on J.S. Bach, once conducted an exhaustive inquiry into the ``radical new visions'' of Jesus Christ that were ``attracting major-league audiences.'' He published the results in a book called The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

There were, he found, many ``historical'' Jesuses -- Jesus the Mystic, Jesus the Revolutionary, Jesus the Communist, Jesus the Heretic, even Jesus the Lunatic, the last proffered by devotees of psychiatry, then a new field. All were advanced as alternatives to the Jesus that Christianity had been believing in for 1,900 years, the one that emerges if you accept the biblical records as true.

And all, Schweitzer realized, were proving attractive to ``religion reporters,'' a sub-species within our cyncical industry, usually atheist, who must contend with a besetting problem. Like other reporters, they are expected to write about whatever's new. Anything that's been the same for 19 centuries suffers a permanent disability. You can make more noise by smashing icons than by revering them, and it's a whole lot easier.

In Schweitzer's day there were far better reasons to search for an ``historical Jesus.'' Most German scholars had concluded, with the usual grave finality, that the books of the New Testament were all written a hundred years or more after the events they purported to describe, and were therefore pseudographic. The Jesus of Christianity was as dead as the corpse on the cross, and the field lay open to find the ``historical'' one.

Then came a disconcerting trend. New scholarship and textual discoveries utterly vindicated the dates traditionally ascribed to the books. Critics agreed they must have been written before 90 A.D. and were therefore historically sound. The tomb, so to speak, was found empty. An historian might reject the miraculous element which the records depict because he did not believe in miracles. But his rejection of the miraculous would be a theological judgement, not an historical one.

Schweitzer, meanwhile, reached his own conclusions. He found that each historical Jesus was incompatible with all the other historical Jesuses. One ``authority'' was not building on another's work. All were lone speculators, and if one was right, the others were wrong.

Second, all began with an unexplained rejection of the traditional. ``Since we know,'' they would say, ``that miracles cannot happen, and we know that Jesus could not possibly have said what is ascribed to him here and here, then what kind of `historical' figure can be reconstructed out of the `valid' material that remains?'' But how did we ``know'' that miracles cannot happen, or that Jesus' claims about himself must be spurious? That was always taken as self-evident. In short, the only Jesus automatically ruled out was the one the records describe.

Often, of course, the character thereby composed would remain inconsistent even with the fragmential evidence that had been retained. For instance, why would a political revolutionary invite his own condemnation by applying to himself the name of a God, a purely theological offense? Would this not leave the wrong message? ``My Jesus,'' replies the innovator, ``could not have done that.'' Therefore his ``historical'' Jesus did not do it. Any record contrary to the thesis must be false.

Thus every historical Jesus was in fact unhistorical. Historians take the pieces and put together a picture. But these people were concocting a picture and then throwing away all the pieces that didn't fit into it.

Schweitzer published his book in 1906, meaning that Mr. Kapica's ``radical new visions'' are now about a century old. But plainly they've excited Mr. Kapica's enthusiasm, and he rejoices to tell us that one liberal theologian is currently offering the ``Mediterranean Jewish Peasant'' who ``challenges social codes.'' Another describes the ``Marginal Jew'' who ``threatens, disturbs and infuriates people'' in high places -- greatly incompatible, of course, with the Hollywood Jesus who is unfailingly crucified for being such a wonderfully nice guy. But not with the Jesus of the Bible who is condemned as a danger to established authority and has been so described by the church for 1,900 years.

Here's a ``radical new vision'' Mr. Kapica might explore. Could it be that the records are true, and that the only possible historical Jesus is the biblical one? That news might be 1,900 years old, but those who receive it tell us it comes with the freshness of the dawn.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print on April 27, 1992.

The Kremlin: Its vanished atheist spirit
has found a home in Canada's capital

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 21, 1999

An instructive drama has been playing out this year in the labyrinthian bureaucracy of the United Nations, a drama of particular significance to Canadian Christians.

It began with a news dispatch on the new International Criminal Court of Justice. The formation of such a court has been agreed upon in principle by the UN, and various national representatives are now compiling the rules according to which it will function.

Canada, said the news agency, was advancing a plan that would deny clergy the right to refuse testimony on anything they heard in the confessional. That is, priests could be compelled to disclose what they heard, as could pastors of any other religion.

Eventually the story found its way into our magazine and soon thereafter into the National Post. In Ottawa, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman vigorously denied it. Canada, he wrote, "has never submitted, formally or informally, any proposals on the subject of privileges, let alone any proposals to revoke priest-penitent privilege."

Ottawa had reason to distance itself from such a proposal. The sacrosanct confidentiality or "seal" of the confessional is of ancient precedence. In the words of the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Regarding the sins revealed to him in sacramental confession, the priest is bound to inviolable secrecy. From this obligation he cannot be excused, either to save his own life or good name, to save the life of another, to further the ends of human justice, or to avert any public calamity. No law can compel him to divulge the sins confessed to him, or any oath that he takes, i.e., as a witness in court."

Ottawa's denial sent the news service tracking back to discover how such a false story had arisen. The following facts then emerged. The question of priest-penitent privilege had been discussed with the Vatican in 1998, and those drafting the court's rules had declared that it would be preserved. However, when the proposed rules were published this year, the protection was not provided in them.

The Vatican protested and at a subsequent meeting the Canadian delegate had given assurance the rules would be redrawn and the protection added. It was left to Canada and France to redraw them. On July 27 this year the redrafted rules were published and the protection still wasn't there. A Vatican representative described himself as "amazed" and called the re-drawn rules "an abomination."

But how then could it be said that "Canada has never submitted, formally or informally, any proposals on the subject," as the Ottawa spokesman asserted? Why, obviously, because priest-penitent privilege isn't mentioned in the proposed rules. However, not to mention it is to do away with it. Ottawa didn't disclose that.

But would such a cheap, verbal sleight of hand, whose obvious intention would be to misinform, be played by a senior Canadian bureaucrat? Who knows?

As it happens, two people did know. Professor Richard Wilkins of Brigham Young University, who was present at all the discussions drawing up the rules, and Kathryn Balmforth, a civil rights lawyer who is following their development, both agreed that Canada has plainly been opposing the privilege. "It appeared to everyone attending the preparatory commission," Prof. Wilkins said, "that Canada (at the very least) was not in favor of the privilege. . . . In any event, under any view of the facts, Canada was no friend of the privilege."

Where the matter stands now is not clear, though one fact seems evident. Even if the Catholic confessional is in the end protected, there is absolutely no assurance pastors of other faiths will enjoy the same privilege, which is the concern of Prof. Wilkins and Ms. Balmforth.

To Canadians, however, this raises another important question. Why would the government of Canada oppose such a protection for Catholic and other pastors? If Soviet Russia or Red China, avowedly atheist states, had opposed it, that would make sense. But why Canada?

The answer is becoming increasingly clear. There is, deeply entrenched at Ottawa and in the mindset of the Canadian intellectual establishment, a fierce antipathy to Christianity.

Perhaps it could be described more accurately as a firm commitment to the omnipotent, paternal state as ultimately responsible for the well-being of all and as the source of all truth and authority. Through devices like the "child rights movement" it seeks to supplant the family. By a hundred other means it seeks to destroy the churches and Christianity itself. Thus if people feel the need of confession, they should make it to a state social worker, not a priest.

Moreover, that the churches, representing the old order of things, should have a legal right to obstruct the sovereignty of a multi-state instrument like the proposed International Criminal Court of Justice is utterly unacceptable to such a mindset. Therefore pastoral rights must be abolished, by whatever means necessary.

Such, apparently, is the regime under which we now live.

Quebec's naive assumption that it can
dump God and still preserve the `sacred'

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 14, 1999

"One doesn't have to be religious, one doesn't even have to believe in the existence of God, to know that human life is sacred." -- Montreal journalist Lysiane Gagnon, in a column in the Globe and Mail.

A columnist who usually concerns herself with Quebec politics, Ms. Gagnon reached westward last week to commend the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal for upholding the conviction and sentence given to farmer Robert Latimer, the man who deliberately asphyxiated his severely handicapped daughter.

The decision, she writes, affirms the "sanctity" of human life. "Civilized governments go to great lengths to preserve life. This is why unnecessary wars are harshly judged by history. This is the major reason people are opposed to the death penalty. This is why policemen who shoot at suspects end up in court."

It is also why we have medicare, she continues, and why doctors struggle to save patients who have incurable diseases. It is why care-givers wash and feed the very kind of people that Mr. Lattimer, and people who think as he does, "would consider not worthy of living." Then Ms. Gagnon makes a remarkable assertion. "You don't have to believe in the existence of God," she declares, "to know that human life is sacred."

A stickler might ask, of course, how a person who did not believe in God could consider anything sacred. The word means "made holy by religious association," says Oxford, and Webster defines it as "consecrated to or belonging to a deity."

Obviously, therefore, Ms. Gagnon could not have meant "sacred" in the literal sense. She perhaps meant you that you need not be a believer to regard human life as important or worthy or, perhaps, as paramount over everything else. This last could cause difficulty, however, since both we and our values have frequently been preserved at the expense of many lives, often self-sacrificed.

But Ms. Gagnon and her whole province have another and far graver problem, to which this assertion about the "sanctity" of life is directly related. Within two generations Quebec has gone from being Canada's most Christian province to being its least Christian. Church attendance is lowest there and so are birth rates, and religious antipathy characterizes Quebec's leading intellectuals, particularly those pursuing sovereignty.

For those of us who loved and admired the Old Quebec, the new one is an object of disgust. We see Quebeckers turn upon the religion that formed and sustained their culture, while supposedly demanding independence so they can preserve it.

A strange course of action indeed. In almost every particular -- the names of their streets and towns, their mythology and the historic record, their music and poetry, the foundation of their great educational institutions -- their culture is thoroughly Christian. The French version of the national anthem, O Canada, is a militant Christian hymn. At the center of every village and town stands a church. Go back three generations in any Quebec family and you encounter a multitude of priests, nuns, monks and bishops.

The founders of Quebec would have known that if its Christian element were lost there would be little left, save the language of course. And what can be more impermanent than a language? The one in which we are writing is an amalgam of at least four others. New English words are constantly appearing, while others vanish. If language is the New Quebec's only rallying point, then the New Quebec will not last anything like as long as the old one did.

You don't need to believe in God, says Ms. Gagnon, to know that human life is sacred. You don't? Her non-believing province has Canada's highest abortion rate. How does she account for this? If Canadians see human life as sacred, then why are we annually destroying more than 100,000 instances of it?

Moreover, the century in which Ms. Gagnon lives has seen three holocausts -- in Ukraine, Germany and Cambodia -- in which human life was valued at zero. And all three were conducted by governments operating on political philosophies that repudiated Christianity.

The builders of the New Quebec assume that the values they inherited from their Christian past will survive into their secularist future -- that the "sacred" will continue to be sacred after God has been eliminated. Nothing in the 20th Century gives them cause for such confidence. Their ancestors must groan at their naivete.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print on August 7, 1995.

Major dailies give up on religion --
and for religion, that's good news

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
October 7, 1999

In the summer edition of the Ryerson Review of Journalism, a student journalist named Suzanne King presents an unusually perceptive account of the way Canadian newspapers cover religion. Among other things, she writes, they are giving up on it.

Ms. King notes that the number of major Canadian dailies with full-time religion reporters has shrunk from five to three. Both the Globe and Mail and the Edmonton Journal have cancelled religion as a full-time beat, leaving Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun, Gordon Legge of the Calgary Herald and Bob Harvey of the Ottawa Citizen as the only full-time religion reporters left. The country's biggest paper, the Toronto Star, has no full-timer on that beat, nor has the new daily, the National Post.

Now this is hard to explain. About one-fifth of Canadians attend church weekly. Since little social prestige attaches to this any more, presumably they attend because they believe. Most are readers as well, of the Bible and devotional material, and thus would seem promising prospects as newspaper readers too.

Nowhere near a fifth of Canadians attend professional sports events, yet newspapers will devote as many as six pages a day to sports and no more than one a week to religion. (This contrast admittedly disregards a salient factor: Most sports fans follow the game on television, whose playoff audiences may easily exceed 20% of the population.)

However, there's a more compelling reason to cover religion. Many issues we assume to be political are in fact religious. Controversies over education, law, sexual conduct, international relations, science and the arts are frequently rooted in religious belief. The media, not really fathoming this, observe people becoming incomprehensibly obstinate, angry or violent. Reporters covering the event can't adequately explain why because they are religiously ignorant.

But they may also be religiously hostile. Ms. King's article quotes Jack Kapica, who used to cover religion for the Globe and Mail until he was finally able to escape the job. He sees the lack of coverage as evidence of outright hostility to religion. "Newspapers," he says, "are filled right now with basically old, recycled hippies from the '60s and '70s. We all have these attitudes and the attitudes are basically: Religion is evil." Where something close to 90% of Canadians believe in God, Ms. King notes that only 31% of journalists do. (More curious still, about 65% of Canadians believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but only about a third of them go to church.) William Thorsell, former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, told a conference last year that newspapers shrink from covering religion because it often incites such heated protest.

There's a further considerable explanation for this journalistic evasion, one we've discussed here before. Newspapers thrive on novelty. The noun "news" derives from the adjective "new." And while it's true Christianity comes to mankind as "good news" (that's what the word "gospel" means), it's the same good news that broke upon the world nearly 2,000 years ago.

To the media, this is too old a story. By habit they seek the unusual, the maverick, which is why non-conformity in religion always gets such good press. It has the indispensable quality of novelty. The traditional doesn't. This is why churches, and Christianity generally, are so much better off being ignored by an ignorant press than they are being incompetently covered by it. No information is better than misinformation.

You can see the same reality in another paradox. Back in the 1950s the churches' own newspapers, from a purely journalistic viewpoint, were plain, amateurish and dull. Publications like the old United Church Observer and the Anglican Canadian Churchman focused on presbytery and diocesan reports. The photography consisted almost entirely of rows of smiling people at conferences or banquets. There were sermons and homilies on inspirational topics, and only very occasionally a "controversial" article on, some such thing as the lamentable "commercialization of Christmas." Yet these were the house media of institutions that were bursting with new growth, building countless new churches, teeming with children and young people.

Today, when church publications are journalistically much better and abound in contentious coverage of human rights, crime, the courts, lifestyle and the hitherto undiscovered beauty of things like sodomy, the institutions they supposedly serve are fading away. There has to be some sort of lesson here, although we're not quite sure what it is.

Ignorance, not prejudice, to blame
for media's anti-Christian bias

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 30, 1999

Nobody has complained more than we have about the general anti-Christian prejudice of the North American print news media. They don't like Christianity and it shows. However, if you examine carefully how they cover a major story where Christianity is involved, you discern something else. The problem is not so much prejudice as sheer ignorance.

Take, for example, the coverage of the Kansas State Board of Education's recent decision to remove "evolution" as a required subject in the state science curriculum.

We were told how the Kansas board had forbidden the teaching of evolution in public schools. (Which it did not.) How Kansas schools were ordered to teach only the biblical account of creation. (Which they were not.) How the change was dictated by "the Christian right." (Which it was not.) And how in the words of the Edmonton Journal "there is not one credible scientist on the planet who questions the fundamental truth of Darwinian evolution." (Which there are, and their numbers are increasing.)

To remind people that evolution is an unobservable theory and not a fact, writes nationally-syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe is "like debunking the atom because you can't see it." (But of course atomic theory and the evolutionary theory are fundamentally different. You can test one by experiment and you can't test the other.)

An editorial in USA Today observes: "Because evolution deals with the origin of life, teaching it will always be controversial. But it can be presented in a way that respects religious diversity." (Which in fact it cannot.)

This last assertion is particularly instructive. Like most journalists, that writer plainly considers there are two views of our origins -- the biblical, seven-day creation portrayed in Genesis, and the "evolutionary" view which sees the world created over millions of years, with the various species descending from one another. This latter view he doubtless believes "proven," universally accepted by thinking people, and rejected only by the abysmally ignorant Christians.

By "evolution," however, the scientist means something more. He means that all the species came about by sheer accident, that the chance occurrence of some distinction in one reptile, for instance, gave it an advantage over others. The creature with a funny bump on its forelegs procreated others with the same bump which over millions of generations "evolved" into a wing and the lizard became a bird.

Thus -- by absolute happenstance -- life evolved from the "simple cell." If any exterior influence were shown or implied, said Darwin, "my theory falls." God, in other words, must be ruled out of the process. How do you do this and also "respect religious diversity?" You can't.

However, from the time Darwin propounded it about 150 years ago, certain essentials in his theory bothered some scientists. For it to be true, they said, the fossil records would have to teem with evidence of "transitional species," that is creatures that are, say, halfway between lizard and bird. A century and a half of diligent search hasn't produced one unchallenged instance. Why is this?

There's another problem. A fully-developed wing gives a creature undoubted power. But what is the evolutionary advantage of, say, 1% of a wing, of a bump? There has been no convincing answer to this.

Supposed "proofs" of the theory repeatedly fail. Notice, said the Darwinists, how the black moths in Britain's coal towns survived where the white moths disappeared. And so they did until the mines closed, and then the white moths returned. They hadn't "evolved" into anything.

Notice, said the Darwinists, the strange changes that occur in fruit flies when they're subjected to certain rays. And so they did change from one fruit fly into another fruit fly, but still a fruit fly, nothing else.

These and other doubts were assembled by a Berkeley law professor named Philip Johnson in a book called Darwin on Trial. The scientific establishment tried desperately to suppress it. The theory, that is, has become a dogma.

Two years ago came another bombshell. Darwin could speak of the "simple cell," wrote Pennsylvania biochemist Michael Behe in his book, Darwin's Black Box, because in his day the cell was like a box that no one could open. Well now it has been opened and it's about as simple as a Boeing jet. There is no chance whatever, he concludes, that it happened by accident.

Considerations like these, not the "Christian Right," led the Kansas board to let local school districts decide whether and how to teach evolution. So the board was not living in the past, but very much in the present. It's the journalists who are living in the past.

Quite a large contrast between
St. Paul and Anglican primate

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 23, 1999

While we can be absolutely sure that Jesus lived and that he was certainly crucified on the cross, we cannot with the same certainty say that we know he was raised by God from the dead. -- Most Reverend George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury and titular head of the world's Anglicans, in a Church of England pamphlet marking the 2,000th year of Christianity.

Archbishop doubts the resurrection of Jesus Christ -- headline in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, referring to the archbishop's statement.

Given the continuing chaos in the Anglican Church, it is hard not to conclude that this venerable institution is in its death throes. The above incident is so typical. A copy of Archbishop Carey's article reaches the media, a reporter excerpts one notable sentence, and a headline writer draws a conclusion which creates yet another Anglican uproar.

A church spokesman deplored this "mischievous journalism," pointing out that the archbishop had also declared his own personal belief in the resurrection, which the newspaper didn't bother reporting. While it is convenient to blame the media for "mischief," however, something remains unexplained. What was Archbishop Carey trying to achieve in this declaration of his?

St. Paul, for example, disputing precisely the same question with his fractious flock in Corinth, reflects a very different attitude. "And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile," he tells them. "You are still in your sins. Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. But now is Christ risen from the dead. . . ." (I Cor. 15:17-20)

It's quite a contrast: Paul's aggressive assertion versus the archbishop's tenuous (one hesitates to say "pussy-footing") tones. Perhaps this explains why St. Paul was leading a church which was adding thousands to its numbers, while Archbishop Carey leads a church which is diminishing at about the same rate.

Although Christ's resurrection is historically dubious, he tells us, we can be "absolutely" sure that he was crucified. But can we? Muslims, for example, deny the crucifixion -- absolutely. Any historical statement must in the end be accepted on faith -- faith, that is, in the authority and dependability of its sources. The factuality of Christ's life, death and resurrection are better documented than many other contemporaneous events which are generally accepted without demur.

So why this distinction between Christian claims? Less sensational accounts of the pamphlet controversy provide a clue. Archbishop Carey has much else to say in it, the National Post reports. The church has "let Jesus down," he writes, by contributing to oppression of women and repression of free speech, and by supporting imperialism and slavery. But then, he adds, Christ himself described priests as "hypocrites" and "spent little time in religious buildings." So here we have another church orgy of guilt and self-recrimination.

Possibly Archbishop Carey even believes his indictment -- but it is manifestly false nonetheless. Did the Christian church oppress women? Women have fared far better in Christian countries than in any others the world over; just look around. Repression of free speech? Modern democracy arose in Christian societies, and today is repressed almost exclusively by political regimes which have denounced and rejected Christianity. Slavery? The fight against slavery across the world was (and still is) led by Christians, in the name of Christ. Imperialism? Certainly the churches operated in concert with imperialistic societies, but in their day these often represented sheer benevolence in contrast to the brutalities they supplanted.

There's another possibility, namely that the archbishop is tossing this stuff off in the hope of winning converts to Christianity. That he wants to say the ingratiating word, conform to currently accepted ideological convention, demonstrate our readiness to admit and abjectly repent past errors. Doubts about the historicity of Christ's resurrection nicely fit this hypothesis. We know it's hard to believe in miracles, he may be saying, and we want to assure you that it is not required. All are welcome, whatever their beliefs may be.

This message will attract no one, of course -- nor should it. Only if the Anglican Church abandons such foolish meanderings, and asserts once again that some things are true which the world rejects as false, some things are evil which the world embraces as good, and some of us are going to heaven and some to hell in consequence of decisions we are even now making, can it hope to survive.

We hope it will survive. It has had wonderful revivals before -- but none inspired by messages like the one implied by this pamphlet.

He'll just live by Christ's commandments, he says.
But has this columnist and radio host read them?

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 16, 1999

"I have abandoned the corporate church and have reduced my faith to the essentials as laid down by Jesus -- `Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' " -- Columnist and radio host Rafe Mair in the Vancouver Province.

Rafe Mair, British Columbia's best known radio host and a columnist for B.C.'s most widely circulated high school newspaper, a.k.a. the Vancouver Province, returned this month to the subject of his religion after a lapse of more than three years.

Not that his religious life has been dormant since that 1995 Christmas tirade, when he proclaimed his doubts about the Bible and much else, castigating Christians for trying to influence others with their faith. You can believe anything you like, he declared then -- but keep it to yourself and don't try to persuade others that it's true.

He has seemingly struggled to observe this rule of silence-- until this month he could no longer contain himself and has, so to speak, mounted the pulpit again.

"I've taken a great interest in matters religious in the past few years," he writes, "and am now a fairly regular communicant at St. Christopher's in West Vancouver. I'm there because the priest, the Venerable Lou Rivers, agreed to marry Wendy and me, even given my track record in that department."

He now realizes, says Rafe, that there was an original church founded by Jesus Christ. But hundreds of "corporate churches" sprang up after "the Council of Nicea" in 325. (For heaven's sake, Rafe, let's at least spell it right: "Nicaea." But Rafe's mostly a radio man; all they need to do with a word is pronounce it.)

Although he attends an Anglican church, he writes, he regards it merely as a "clubhouse." He rejects any form of "corporate" church because they insist on rituals, start wars and burn people such as heretics and homosexuals. So he'll just stick with Jesus Christ and the two great commandments. He needs no doctrine. He need only love God with his whole heart, soul and might, he says, and his neighbor as himself.

Now if Rafe really does "live by" these two commandments, that is very admirable indeed. Our own experience is that we can't seem to live by them. We find we do not by any means love God with our whole heart, soul and might, or with our whole mind either -- a further requirement specified in the New Testament references. Not even, sad to say, with half.

"Heart" means "will," and we frequently find our wills taking us in very dubious directions. "Soul" refers to our inner being, and we sometimes shudder to think what our wilfulness might be doing in that department. And "mind?" Serve God with all our mind? Our minds for 99% of the day are on a thousand things whose connection with God we only occasionally consider.

Nor do we qualify in "loving our neighbor as ourselves." If we did, then when our neighbor was ill we would feel just as concerned as we do when we ourselves are ill. If our neighbor lost his job, we would be as anxious as if we too were unemployed. If our neighbor were bereaved, we would grieve as if we were bereaved. We don't do all that. In truth we come nowhere near loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Rafe might accuse us of taking these scriptural injunctions "literally." But how else can you take such an instruction? Are we to "more or less" love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind? In that case what's this word "all" doing in there?

And what of our neighbor? Are we to "sort of" love him as ourselves, say hello to him from time to time perhaps, lend him the wheelbarrow, smile when his kids trample on the peonies? One suspects that those words "as ourselves" imply something considerably more.

Indeed it seems plain that the two great commandments, the second enshrined as the "Golden Rule," assert moral demands of almost unthinkable magnitude. If Rafe can "live by them," fine and good. But most of us fall short. And it's only when we realize this, when we apprehend that our lives come nowhere near fulfilling Christ's two commandments, that all the dire Christian doctrines of sin, repentance, atonement and salvation begin to make sense.

Anyway, at least he's back in church. That's progress.

Quest for the new spirituality may
lead in the end to the old religion

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 9, 1999

"Spirituality is missing in our society, and spirituality is absolutely necessary to find the right way." -- Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien, addressing a "sacred assembly" of native delegates at Ottawa.

"Spirituality is in," a lapsed Roman Catholic friend remarked last year, "and religion is out."

Obviously he knew what he was talking about. Since then in numerous secular publications, particularly the religion pages of the Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun, we have seen repeated references to "the new spirituality," or the "spiritual dimension," or "spiritual consciousness," or the "spiritual outlook." But rarely have we seen any attempt to define the term, or to explain how "spirituality" differs from "religion."

We recounted recently how the principal of St. Stephen's United Church College in Edmonton vaguely described spirituality as searching for truth, which presupposes there is such a thing as truth. Otherwise, why search for it? And truth, once found, would be identical with religion in the traditional sense. So in this case spirituality would be a search for religion, rather than a refutation of it, and religion represent the fulfilment of spirituality.

We have seen no other explanation. Spirituality is something people embrace, warmly advocate, regard as indispensable to life. The prime minister says it's indispensable to national survival. But they don't seem to know what it is. Or at least, they don't want to say.

On the basis of surmise, however, one discerns three distinctions between religion and spirituality:

1. Spirituality seems to be individual, religion corporate. That is, spirituality people say they reject "institutional religion" because it insists on doctrinal beliefs, whereas spirituality is very personal.

2. Spirituality is something you experience, whereas religion is more a matter of going through a ritual.

3. Spirituality is concerned about non-material things, whereas religion, Christianity in particular, always inclines to be materialistic.

Two of these distinctions are belied by experience. Our ex-Catholic friend, for instance, having rejected the ritual of his upbringing, gathered in the woods with other devotees of the men's movement, to beat drums, or whittle spears, or whatever. Did this not strongly suggest both the corporate and the ritualistic? "Yes," he said. "But it's different." How? Well, that's hard to explain.

Then too, few Christians would agree that their religion is not "experienced." Certainly the immediate followers of Christ experienced it. The authors of the epistles experienced it. The early fathers of the church and the great saints through 20 centuries seemed to experience it. Go to any church where the faith is seriously believed and ask people if they "experience" it; you will be amazed at the positive response. The pastor of our own church said last Sunday: "If your faith does not make a felt difference in your life, then there is something seriously wrong." It cannot be said that "experience" distinguishes "spirituality" from religion; it appears go characterize them both.

But in the third distinction, the acceptance of the material, there probably is a real difference. Christianity, alone among the world's great religions, believes that material things -- the world, nature, our bodies, our natural appetites--are real. They have been corrupted, but they are in their origins both good and godly. Indeed, Christianity believes that God himself took on a material human body, not by himself becoming part of his natural creation, but by drawing nature up into himself, as one of the creeds describes . *

This belief plunges Christianity dynamically into the affairs of the world, which of course gets us constantly into trouble, as it did Christ himself. But it also genuinely distances us from "spirituality."

To scoff at this quest for the spiritual among modern people, however, would be both discourteous and unwise. For many, it is the first tentative step along a road they have never travelled.

There is an old Christian story about a man who lived by a mountain and who had a vision of a beautiful home in an idyllic setting. Struggling up the mountain in search of it, he reached the top, then turned to look back. And there below him in the valley he beheld at last the home of his vision -- the very same house he had lived in all his life. But he had to climb to the mountaintop before he could really see it.

* "[Christ]... although he be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; one, however, not by conversion of Godhead into flesh, but by taking of Manhood into God." -- The Athanasian Creed.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print on December 18, 1995.

Here's a theory on why scientism allows
for only two views on the origin of life

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
September 2, 1999

"Polls consistently show that nearly half of all Americans reject Darwin's theory of evolution. They prefer to believe, against all scientific evidence, the Old Testament account of how God created the world in seven days." -- Michael D. Lemonick, in an essay in Time magazine.

In the enduring conflict over the origins of life and of the earth, those who espouse what they consider the "scientific" view have developed a distinct mindset. It seems they will recognize only two views. Americans, says Mr. Lemonick, either (A) accept "evolution" as the explanation for life, or (B) believe the world was created by God in seven days. He allows for no other view.

Now this is strange. Are we alone in suspecting that most Americans, and Canadians too, fall into neither of these camps? Because nearly all the people we have discussed this with, a few of whom are reputable scientists, are neither (A) nor (B).

That is, they do not believe that the process known as "natural selection" -- the survival of the fittest -- is what produced us. They think there are too many impossible long shots involved, too many glaring gaps in the evidence, too many weird assumptions, some of them founded on what amounts to bizarre speculation, too many unanswered questions, (a few of which we summarized in an earlier column). It's frankly easier for them to accept that there must be some kind of Mind or Intelligence at work here than it is for them to accept that the myriad and marvellous diversity of nature was all the result of random chance and freaks of nature.

But at the same time, neither do they believe in a world that is a few thousand years old and was created by God in seven literal 24-hour periods. They definitely believe in the antiquity of the earth. They think it is hundreds of millions of years old. They regard the book of Genesis as allegory, not as science. But its central point, that we didn't come about by some kind of incalculable accident, they assume to be true. We were made; we didn't just happen.

Now notice that in Mr. Lemonick's summation of American thought, such a view is nowhere represented. He allows only for biblical literalism or evolution. Nothing else. We are all in one camp or the other, he declares. Which of course is nonsense.

But why, you wonder, does he do this? Could it be that people who take his position do not want to recognize this third view because they realize it is far too tenable? Too attractive? Too altogether probable, maybe? So they set up a straw man: Everybody who doesn't accept natural selection must believe the earth is about 7,000 years old.

When you can successfully force them to consider this third view, their answer is curious. A scientist, they say, does not "believe" things. He accepts theories -- the theory of relativity, say, or the theory of evolution. But he only accepts them until some new theory is advanced that successfully replaces the old one. Then he accepts that instead.

(Mr. Lemonick in his essay makes this very point, equating evolution with relativity. He conveniently ignores the fact that Einstein's relativity was confirmed shortly after he advanced the theory by the famous experiment of 1917. Natural selection, on the other hand, has never been confirmed by any experiment, whether in the laboratory or in the field, after some 140 years of trying.)

Therefore when you ask an evolutionist why he embraces evolution, despite the dearth of supporting evidence and the accumulating evidence against it, he replies that evolution is all there is. Nobody has offered any other theory. So evolution stands, whatever its deficiencies.

Well, you ask, why not assume the obvious? Why not assume an Intelligent power? Ah, he replies, that would not be scientific. So what? Well, we can only accept the scientific. Anything else would not be science but philosophy or theology, and therefore, in the scientific view, not entertainable.

What we're beholding, in other words, is not really science at all, but the workings of the philosophy known as scientism, which holds that only physical things can be considered real. Which is fine until one wants to make a case in favor of, say, human virtue, or against, say, the thinking that produced the Holocaust. The minute we say that something ought to be that isn't, or ought not to have been that was, we are invoking something beyond the merely physical.

How odd therefore that of all things a government supposedly founded on the utterly unscientific principles of social justice should enthrone such a philosophy in the classroom. Yet that is exactly what has occurred in British Columbia and elsewhere.

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in print on March 25, 1996.

Whither the shepherds? It was the presence of clergy
in the moral majority that caused much disaffection

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 26, 1999

The case made by columnist Cal Thomas and pastor Ed Dobson against all organized political activity by Christians appears to be, as we pointed out in a recent column, an invitation to disaster. Disenchanted veterans of the American Moral Majority movement, they now propose that we entirely abandon such activity and just get back to preaching the Gospel.

But they are ignoring an important fact: We Christians have enemies. Just now the chief opposition comes from inside the church, where rebels against Christian belief and tradition are working to destroy it. Theologians, academicians, clergy and journalists, they have induced whole denominational bureaucracies to renounce doctrines and moral principles unreservedly embraced by their founders. Thus we see the United Church "apologizing" for the work of the McDougalls, and Catholic Oblates implicitly condemning the ministry of Father Lacombe.

In the name of "tolerance" these people will not hesitate to prohibit the preaching of the Gospel if they can, and they will use the law (i.e., political activity) to do so. Failure to recognize such dangers constitutes stupidity, not piety.

Moreover, abandoning "the public square" to our opponents means abandoning the world to its fate. Do the public schools want to teach children that any sexual activity is just fine so long as it doesn't "hurt anybody"? None of our affair. Does the law regard the defenseless -- unborn babies, say, and the very old -- as without civil rights? So be it. We Christians are above such worldly things. But this is hardly the attitude of a God who died for the sake of his creatures. He did not leave us to our fate.

Entirely forgoing political activity is therefore not really an option, but neither should such activity be our central Christian work. We have seen in this century the tragic consequences of "liberation theology," the effort of some Christians to convert the church into a left-wing political movement, just as the Moral Majority is accused of seeking to convert it into a right-wing movement.

Liberation theology began early in Canada, when clergymen like J.S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas founded the old CCF. It has ended in the NDP fervidly supporting abortion and gay rights, while a frontbench member enthusiastically backs a petition to remove the word "God" from the constitution. (Briefly scolded for this, he is now forgiven.)

In Latin America and Africa, however, liberation theology is rather less comic. There it results in church funds being directed to the purchase of weapons, while thousands desert Christianity on the reasonable grounds that if it's purely political, who needs it?

It's a familiar situation, with error appearing on either side, and the right course probably lying squarely down the middle. To transform Christianity into a political movement is wrong. To ignore politics completely is also wrong. But where is the middle?

We believe the Thomas-Dobson book provides a clue. What appears to concern them most is the presence of "pastors" in the Moral Majority. The movement was primarily the creation of clergymen, as was "liberation theology."

This is natural enough. Since the apostles themselves, church leadership has largely been the vocation of "professionals." These pastors are especially designated and educated, we lay people assume, to train us as befits creatures intended for another life beyond this one, and to shepherd us towards it.

Therefore when they appeared to be primarily preoccupying themselves with politics, this seemed to be a very drastic change of duty, a dereliction of the responsibility they had undertaken. Suddenly the next world didn't matter; it was this one that counted.

In addition, they necessarily began involving themselves in the complexities of economics, finance, defense and political organization, fields in which few of them had any expertise. Catholic bishops suddenly felt ordained to speak out on the functions of the World Bank or intercontinental ballistic missiles. Protestant pastors became authorities on strategic voting and media targeting. We sheep began wondering just what had become of our shepherds.

Therefore, we believe, Christian political activity should best be left to us sheep. Naturally we need experts: Christian economists, diplomats, journalists and, of course, Christian politicians. They should be lay people, not clergy, but lay people whose loyalties lie first and foremost with Christ. They can help shape policies which we should pursue with all the grace God gives us -- yet always remembering that this world is not our true home. We're just passing through. We belong somewhere beyond it. And it is the function of the clergy never to let us forget this fact.

Why Christians don't find evil as hilarious
as the Toronto Globe and Mail does

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 19, 1999

Probably we all remember from our youth the high school atheist, he of the superior intellect, who regaled the lunchroom crowd with clever spoofs of the gullibly religious. "Frankly, I don't want to spend eternity playing a harp," he would jibe. . . . Ho, ho, ho. Ever wonder what happened to that young man? As a matter of fact, he became a Globe and Mail editorial writer.

He's older now, physically anyway, but otherwise much the same, and last week he was back at his old lunchroom routine. He wants us to get a load of this. "Pope John Paul says there is no hell. Or rather, there is a hell, but it is cunningly concealed inside each of us where our friends won't notice and the government can't tax it. . . ." Ho, ho, ho. . . .

"It's certainly a shock to realize that the Devil, after years of making work for idle hands, is now idle himself, fired from a job that he now learns never existed. . . ." Ho, ho, ho. . . . "And if each of us creates his own personal hell, we are doing the Devil's work, depriving him of a job. (`It's the lawyer for Mr. Beelzebub on the phone with a $1-billion suit for wrongful dismissal. . . . '" Ho, ho, ho. Our old friend has matured -- in the predictable way, that is -- from the juvenile into the sophomoric.

He did make us wonder, however, what John Paul II had actually said.

The Pope was preaching to an audience of 8,000 at the Vatican. "God is an infinitely good and merciful Father," he explained, "but unfortunately man, who is called to respond freely, can choose to reject God's love and forgiveness absolutely, and remove himself forever from joyful communion with Him.

"This is precisely the tragic situation described by Christian doctrine when referring to damnation or Hell. It is not a punishment from God inflicted from outside, but the result of positions taken by man already in this life. The same dimension of unhappiness that this dark condition entails can be understood to a degree in some of our terrible experiences which turn life, as the saying goes, `into a Hell.'

"In the theological sense, Hell is something else. It is the final consequence of the very sin that turns back on the one who committed it. It is a situation in which the one who rejects the Father's mercy, even at the last moment of life, finally places himself. Redemption remains as an offer of salvation, which man should freely embrace. This is the reason why each one will be judged `according to his works.'

"Moreover, the pictures of Hell given to us in Sacred Scripture must be correctly interpreted. They express the total frustration and emptiness of a life without God. More than a place, Hell is a state of one who freely and finally removes himself from God, the source of life and joy."

This is the statement the Globe editorialist found so hilarious. You wonder how he himself conceives of evil. Does he believe there is such a thing, or does he consider it a mere "point of view?" Whether some unusual sexual conduct is acceptable depends entirely on one's "viewpoint," he might say. But what about the acceptability of Auschwitz in the 1940s, or Ukraine in the 1930s, or Cambodia in the 1980s? Does this also depend on the "point of view"?

And if not, if these horrors are decidedly and incontrovertibly wrong, just where does he get this concept of "wrong"? And is it always a social affair, something done en masse so to speak, or can it also be an individual affair? Was Paul Bernardo, in torturing those teen-aged girls, doing something actually evil, or just expressing his "point of view"? Did the Globe also find this hilariously funny? If not, how do Globe editorialists justify condemning such activities? They never attempt their own explanation. Spoofing other explanations is so much easier.

When most Christians say they believe in "the Devil," they mean that evil is a force in the world, manifesting itself both in human conduct generally and also within each one of us. Moreover, it is not a blind force, but an intelligent one, the product of a mind, a diabolical mind. Christians say that the evil thoughts which often run through our minds do not originate with us, but are put there. They believe that most human misery, both individual and collective, derives from this source. That's why they do not find it funny.

Judicial jockeying or not, Christianity
is returning to U.S. public schools

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 12, 1999

There were two developments last month in the 150-year-old problem of religion in the public schools.

The first, attracting much national attention, was the decision of a Saskatchewan judge, sitting as a one-man human rights "board of inquiry," to stop Saskatoon schools from beginning the day with the Lord's Prayer, despite clear constitutional guarantees that they can.

The second, gaining no national media attention whatever in Canada and little in the United States, was the appearance of a magazine article describing how American Christians are restoring the Christian faith in U.S. public schools, all well within the law.

The Saskatoon decision, like so many judicial rulings these days, possessed an element of the bizarre. The Saskatchewan Act, passed by Canada's Parliament in 1905, is the province's foundational constitutional document. It specifically guarantees that Saskatchewan school boards have the authority to "direct" public schools to initiate each school day with the Lord's Prayer.

But years passed, Saskatchewan grew more enlightened, and its Legislature (also created, of course, on the authority of the Saskatchewan Act) adopted a human rights code. "Every person and every class of persons," it declares, "shall enjoy the right to freedom of conscience, opinion and belief, and freedom of religious association, teaching practice and worship."

Non-Christian pupils could be excused from the Lord's Prayer, the Saskatoon Board of Education decided, if their parents so wished. Not good enough, replied a group, variously representing Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian and atheist viewpoints. Their youngsters were being ostracized, they said. This was discrimination.

The "board of inquiry" (meaning Judge Ken R. Halvorson), after hearing a number of highly articulate teens and parents describe the grievous effects of exclusion, decided it did indeed "interfere with the complainant's right to freedom of religious practices, and denied their children's right of education without discrimination because of religion." Therefore the judge ordered the Saskatoon board to "cease sanctioning the Lord's Prayer at assemblies in public schools."

But what about the constitutional guarantee? Quite true, ruled the judge, but the Saskatchewan Act authorizes school trustees to "direct" the saying of the prayer. The Saskatoon board had merely "sanctioned" or "encouraged" it, so the guarantee did not apply.

He then penalized the Saskatoon board by requiring it to pay everybody's legal costs, chastised it for passing discriminatory legislation and "recommended" that, constitutional guarantees notwithstanding, the Saskatchewan Legislature repeal any provisions in the law that invokes the guarantee and cease supporting "antiquated thinking."

The spectacle of some unelected judge pontificating to elected school trustees and an elected Legislature is irksome until you put the affair in context. Just about every province in Canada has done away with the Lord's Prayer and Bible reading in public schools. Besides, some might wonder whether anyone was ever led to Christ (or anywhere else) by such purely formalized school exercises.

It remained for columnist Mordecai Richler to calm things down with his own memories of exclusion from Christian school prayer. Far from losing "self esteem," he was delighted to be ostracized. It was such a grand opportunity to do other things instead: smoke, trade hockey cards, exchange dirty jokes, etc. But there was another elementary school practice, he says, that did seriously damage his youthful psyche: being constantly required to sing, with appropriate gestures, a certain ditty that went: "I'm a little teapot, short and stout/ This is my handle this is my spout. . . ." etc. This exercise had him screaming in the night: "I don't wanna be a teapot. I wanna be Jewish."

Another response came with the August issue of the Focus on the Family magazine, which has a huge U.S. subscriber list and a considerable Canadian one. It describes how in thousands of American public schools these days, students themselves are forming after-hours prayer groups, and how parent prayer groups are now working with teachers, tutoring slow learners, leading class outings, raising money for schools and successfully generating respect for teachers, for academic performance, for honesty, integrity and kindness.

State sex-ed courses remain a problem, along with occasional heterosexual or homosexual exhibitionism. But these influences can be easily overcome. And when school facilities are unavailable, kids meet at nearby churches.

The message is plain: Whatever guarantees, prohibitions and manipulations are made through the law, the public schools in the end effectually belong to the parents, the teachers and the kids who attend them. If they can really pray and work together all will be well. We won't need to worry about Caesar -- which is to say, Judge Halvorson.

The hymn-book purge of all things military
will oust some rather notable Christians

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
August 5, 1999

"We've deleted the hymn, `Onward Christian Soldiers' because of the extreme militarism. People who are in favor of peace are not wildly enthusiastic about warlike language." -- George Black, chairman of the task force that revised the Anglican hymn book, quoted in the Globe and Mail.

The people who make decisions in the rapidly declining mainline Protestant churches all seem agreed that "Onward Christian Soldiers" is inappropriate. It has been removed from about half the hymnals that once included it, the executive director of the Hymn Society, an American organization, has reported, although in one American church, the United Methodist, its removal occasioned such an outcry that it had to be restored.

This purging of all things militaristic from the most popular form of Christian poetry, the hymns, is worth exploring. Peace-loving people "are not wildly enthusiastic about warlike language," says Mr. Black, a professor of liturgy at an Anglican college in Ontario. Many other hymns that emphasized struggle and conflict have therefore been similarly banished, including Julia Ward Howe's Civil War anthem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which she wrote as she heard Union army recruits marching through the night towards the front lines, singing "John Brown's Body." It contains some stirring verses:

We have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps,
We have builded him an altar in the evening's dews and damps,
We have read his fiery message by the dim and flaring lamps,
His truth is marching on.

The "truth," of course, was that the Negro should be free. Hymns expressing other military metaphors, such as Bishop William Walsham How's "Soldiers of Christ, arise!" or the naval hymn "Eternal Father, strong to save," or the 1,400-year-old "Sing my tongue the glorious battle" are all deemed unsuitable for today.

But the most purely internal and spiritual battles are also apparently now verboten. The song John Bunyan gave Mr. Valiant-for-Truth in The Pilgrim's Progress, similarly rejected, is hardly militaristic: "He who would valiant be,/ 'gainst all disaster,/ let him in constancy,/ follow the Master." (This in itself, of course, had already been somewhat toned down from Bunyan's original: "Who would true valor see,/ let him come hither./ One here will constant be,/ come wind come weather.") However, there's this about it: You don't need a Mr. Valiant-for- Truth, or any valor for that matter, if you don't believe there is any truth.

For you can easily infer from all this the underlying perspective of the hymnal revisers. Christianity is to be advanced as a religion without conflict, without struggle, without battle. All is to be peaceful, meek, mild and wonderful. Perhaps also, a sceptic might add, just a touch boring. But the real problem is that such an undisturbed tranquillity bears no resemblance whatever to the lives most of us must lead. No immediate military confrontations, perhaps, though we have no ground for believing such ordeals unlikely. But other forms of conflict, struggle and strife of one kind or another constantly assail us. If we make any serious effort to follow the example of Christ, they become very frequent indeed, something the composers of these disfavored hymns wholly understood.

That's why every great Christian writer from St. Paul's century to ours has recognized this element of conflict. Paul tells us to "put on the whole armor of God," from the "shield of faith" to the "breastplate of righteousness" and the "helmet of salvation." Bunyan describes Mr. Valiant-for-Truth as "a man with sword drawn and his face all bloody." C.S. Lewis's exceedingly popular Narnia books for children are battles, strife and adventure from cover to cover, and G.K. Chesterton tells the 20th Century Christian:

You have wars you hardly win,
And souls you hardly save.

So you wonder: If "people who are in favor of peace are not wildly enthusiastic about warlike language," what about someone who said he would not bring peace to the world, but a sword? Would such a one be welcome in their church? Which is significant because the man who actually said that, if we are to believe St. Matthew's gospel (10:34), was Jesus Christ.

Forget politics, preach the gospel, they say,
but retreating to the ghetto isn't an option

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 29, 1999

Christian columnist Cal Thomas and ex-Moral Majority leader Ed Dobson have lately divided the faithful in the United States with their renunciation of Christian political action. The churches, they urge, should give up trying to reform the world through government policy and get back to saving it through the gospel and redemption.

Whatever they intend, they appear to recommend that Christians retreat into a sort of ghetto. Christians would presumably still concentrate on winning others for the faith, drawing them into the ghetto as well. But they would leave affairs of government entirely to the politicians and secular political activists. Politics would become a pursuit largely divorced from the concerns of Christians.

This was much the position taken by the early church, Thomas and Dobson could argue -- and the early church, over time, converted the whole Roman world to Christianity. Moreover, staying clear of politics could safeguard Christians against the pitfalls and temptations of worldly affairs. It would also safeguard the church from becoming an avenue to worldly advancement, and thus attracting people for the wrong reason.

Their case, although compelling, involves two dubious assumptions. First, they assume Christians will continue to benefit from the tolerance upon which our society prides itself. They take it for granted we'll be allowed to continue operating our own schools or home-schooling our children, reading and distributing the Bible, publishing Christian literature, speaking openly of Christ, and worshipping as we please. But what makes us think such privileges will endure?

Why, because they are the essence of democratic government, ex-political activists Thomas and Dobson might argue. True enough, they are. But it was Christianity that brought democratic government to Canada and the United States, and most of our rights and privileges are rooted in Christian moral principles, often established after bloody struggles.

As we have seen in recent years, however, no Christian principle is ineradicable, and many people are bitterly opposed to Christianity. If we vacate the political arena, leaving it open to our opponents, might they not seize the opportunity to move against us? Preach the faith, say Messrs. Thomas and Dobson. But preaching the faith is, among other things, a political privilege widely denied in the 20th Century. If Christians don't safeguard it, who will? And this safeguarding, like it or not, involves political action.

The second dubious assumption is this. Its authors presuppose that what people would learn in a society whose government was largely uninfluenced by religiously grounded morality would have no effect on their response to the Christian gospel. But this is not so.

The early Christians did indeed address themselves to a Roman world whose government for three centuries was actively hostile, but their hearers were a highly moral people. Rome's codes of conduct were categorical, demanding and harsh. The Romans knew all about right and wrong behavior and were acutely conscious of their own shortcomings. That's why St. Paul could appeal to the fact that "Gentiles" with no knowledge of Jewish moral law often "do by nature the things contained in the law." (Romans 2:14).

But today we face a society which is deliberately renouncing all categorical rules of right and wrong. Enjoined to make up their own individual moralities, people naturally tend to amend them according to whatever they feel like doing at the moment. Guilt, the element that leads them to repent and accept the gospel, is viewed as a psychological disability, calling not for repentance but for a cure -- via therapy, counselling, "medication," whatever. To anyone indoctrinated in this view the word "sin" is meaningless, and so therefore is the Christian gospel.

It seems plain that if any society fully embraces this disastrous doctrine it will rapidly disintegrate, and signs of disintegration are already evident. Meanwhile, however, preaching the gospel involves first disabusing people of this belief, which requires changing the educational system that propagates it, which in turn requires political participation.

So while Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson are unarguably right in saying only the gospel can save humanity, we still cannot be exempted from political responsibility. Our right to preach the gospel can be denied by the state, and whether people can understand our message depends very much on what is taught in the state's schools.

If we Christians ignore politics, therefore, we may find ourselves unable to speak intelligibly to our fellow citizens. So the question is, how can the church participate in politics without subverting its central mission? We think there is an answer, but it will require a fourth (and final) column on this subject.

The new minority: Let's face it, that's the status
of Canadian Christians; time to act accordingly

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 22, 1999

The controversy described in our recent column, wherein some Christian leaders in the American Moral Majority movement have abandoned and denounced it and other Christians have denounced them for doing so, has no precise parallel in Canada.

While we have certainly seen Canadian law transformed from a Christian to an agnostic basis, we have not been anything like as politically active as American Christians in opposing the changes. Small groups within Catholic and Protestant churches have resisted mightily, but the majority of Christians have never moved massively behind them. So those inclined to abandon political action haven't as much to abandon.

Some would ascribe our relative acquiesence to the Canadian habit of acceptance. Adorn anything in the garb of respectability and Canadians, Christians unhappily included, will conform. We affirm order. We don't rock the boat.

(That's why we find, heavy with the advertising of Molson Breweries, an Edmonton homosexual newspaper with a full color photo of two naked men embracing. Such support from a national retailer conveys the essential respectability. Rather than protest by drinking somebody else's beer, Canadians will accept the change, unresisting. Molsons knows sales won't suffer. It's doubtful any national American brewery would feel so confident.)

But something else distinguishes the two countries. Canadian church attendance runs from 15% to 20% of the population, about half the American figure. The U.S. is a much more Christian country. In Canada, Christians, Catholics and Protestants together, are a definite minority.

The sooner we realize this, the better. First, because it will prevent us from reacting with shock and horror whenever we see laws being shaped to conform to other, alien philosophies. Why, for instance, should Alberta Christians expect Premier Ralph Klein to make provincial laws accord with Christian principles? He has never pretended to be Christian. He has never remotely suggested any commitment to biblical teachings. We assumed a Christian attitude because he's, well, Canadian, isn't he? Aren't all Canadians really Christian at heart? Answer: No. He's "conservative," isn't he? Aren't all conservatives Christian in their values? Answer: No. We are only now discovering this reality.

Second, realizing our minority status will force us to think like a minority. Thanks to our system, inherited from our Christian past, minorities have certain rights and responsibilities. As Christians we believe that the civil law should reflect the moral law, that a human being comes into existence at the instant of conception, that marriage is the sanctified union of man and woman, that no one should have the unilateral right to destroy a human life, however nobly, that sex outside marriage is wrong. The civil law will reflect somebody's values. We have as much right as anybody else to advance ours as the basis.

Third, as a minority, Christians will realize that to be effective we must tend to act and vote as a bloc. We must somehow arrive at the same political positions, and have a powerful consensus on which party is most likely to form a government and come our way when it legislates. No government will come entirely our way, of course, but if we're "wise as serpents" we will en masse see which party is most in accord with us and vote for that party. This means we must have our own sources of information and our own intellectual leaders whose Christian commitments supersede their political commitments.

Fourth, one way a minority can render itself powerless is by forming its own political party. Since it is a minority it will never form a government. It may say that it "influences" government, but this is nonsense. What influences a democratic government is votes, and if all the minority's votes are parked in some corner so that they appear as "also-rans" in every election, no major party will heed its opinions.

Finally, and this is most important, we should never be a "dependable" vote. Another way to be utterly written off is to be the unswerving supporters of any one party. Other parties come to regard the votes of your group as unattainable and ignore you, while your own party can safely ignore you as well because it knows you have nowhere else to go. Ideally, therefore, neither the Tories nor the Liberals should be certain which way the Christian vote will go, and both will consequently cater to it.

In Alberta, for example, if Mr. Klein had thought there was an active possibility that the whole Christian vote could shift massively to the Liberals, his resolution overriding the Supreme Court in the Vriend case would have been at the top of the order paper the very next day. As it was, he knew he could ignore the Christians because there was no other party they could vote for. The others were even further removed from them. This is the price of unswerving support.

All of which hardly endorses the contention of Mssrs. Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson that Christians should get out of politics. But we don't think this is what they really meant, and we'll deal with that in a further column.

Some see 'Star Wars' as Christian mythology;
others add a caveat about the epic series

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 15, 1999

"Star Wars" offers lessons about redemption, reconciliation and the triumph of good over evil, in a language children can understand. -- United Church minister Ed Scarlett, quoted in the Edmonton Journal.

The release of the newest chapter of Star Wars has set off much speculation about the "message" of the series. Some, like Rev. Mr. Scarlett, see it as essentially positive and amazingly compatible with Christianity, almost as though its creator-writer-director George Lucas had this in mind.

"I think," says Mr. Scarlett, "that a lot of the theological language we use is so archaic. The universes to which those words are attached are not the universes our kids live in. But Lucas was able to upgrade a whole bunch of stuff that grabs kids in a universe they DO live in."

A report on Zenit, a Catholic Internet news service, details Christian parallels in the first Star Wars series -- "the religious-sounding karmas like, `The force be with you,' and the Franciscan-looking warrior monk, Obi-Wan Kenobi." In the new episode, the character Anakin is "virgin-born," is seen as "the Promised One" of prophecy who will bring peace, and is intimate with the "Force," as was Christ with the Holy Spirit.

Other Christians, however, are not so confident about these perceived biblical affirmations. In World Magazine, R. Arthur Mohler dismisses Star Wars as "paganism" that is "perfectly adapted to the spiritual confusion of postmodern America. `Go with the Force" is about all many citizens can muster as spirituality."

Mr. Lucas himself denies any intended "message" in his work, but avoids discussing one very pertinent fact. He was the confidant, in a sense disciple, of eminent mythologist Joseph Campbell, a man who early rejected Christian theology as unbelievable. Moreover, as PBS movie commentator Michael Medved has noted, it is naive to accept any director's contention that the "messages" of his work are purely unintentional. They are inevitably very intentional indeed.

Zenit composed an interesting contrast between Mr. Lucas's observations in an interview on the "theology of Star Wars" and past comments of Pope John Paul II on the same questions. One example:

Question: "Some people have traced the notion of the `Force' to the Eastern view of God -- particularly Buddhist -- as a vast reservoir of energy that is the ground of all our being. Was that conscious?"

Lucas: "I didn't want to invent a religion. I wanted to try to explain in a different way the religions that have already existed. . . . I put the Force into the movie in order to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people -- more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system."

John Paul lI: "Certain practices originating from the great Oriental religions are especially attractive to contemporary man. To these, Christians should apply a spiritual discernment, so as to never lose sight of prayer as it is illustrated in the Bible. . . . This necessary discernment does not impede religious dialogue. . . . Nevertheless, mysticism can never be invoked in favor of religious relativism, in the name of an experience which diminishes the value of God's revelation in history."

To believers, Eastern and Christian alike, God is a constant presence in our lives, although one we are no more capable of completely understanding than a statue could understand the sculptor who created it. But the Pope's reference to "history" pinpoints one supremely significant difference between Christianity and the eastern religions.

For this is the central and astounding Christian belief: that God, in the tiny fragment of time within which man inhabits the earth, revealed Himself to us by actually becoming one of us, living and enduring a human life, dying a human and particularly horrible human death, and in this way triumphing over death itself.

This is not some primeval, mythological event. It is hard, historic fact, knowable and known, well within the time frame of human history. God's whole Being is "incomprehensible," says one of the creeds, but we can, through Christ, know what we need to know to go where He wants to take us.

Star Wars may start young people searching. God through Christ provides some definable answers. It would be a pity if in embracing the movie mythology, young people never get beyond it to the real thing. And this, of course, is the pitfall that both the Pope and columnist Mohler (a Protestant) have in mind.

Small wonder Alex Colville finds himself
so disgusted with a limp-wristed Christ

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 8, 1999

"I guess I kind of think of Christianity as being sort of soppy and vague." -- Artist Alex Colville, interviewed in the Vancouver Sun.

Alex Colville is the true non-conformist, a person who lived utterly at odds with his times. His was an era which specialized in the subjective. Some artists contended that if ordinary people found anything recognizable in their work, this proved it a failure. Mr. Colville, pursuing precision and order, made himself one of the few Canadian artists whose name is known far and wide.

At age 75, he confessed in this interview his disillusionment with modern Christianity. He was brought up a Catholic and was exceedingly devout as a teen-ager. But he slid into indifference, became a Protestant to satisfy his wife's family, and now attends a United Church occasionally. The defining experience in his life was military service during the Second World War where he acquired an admiration for order and discipline which shaped his art.

His religious disillusionment, according to the interview, centered upon the personality of Jesus Christ. "I guess I think of Jesus as a remarkable man . . . but it's like when a person tells you that someone else they know is perfectly wonderful. And then you meet that person and you end up thinking that person is not all that remarkable."

More likely, however, Mr. Colville has not met the Jesus depicted in the actual biblical records -- a man of such forceful personality he literally broke history in two -- but rather the feeble, insipid, pastel creature portrayed by modern liberal churches, of whom Swinburne observed: "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from Thy breath."

This came to mind because we ourselves are currently in a church group reading the radio plays on the life of Christ which Dorothy L. Sayers wrote for the BBC. Miss Sayers, best known for her detective stories (still running on television), was an eminent classics scholar and devout Christian. She sought above all to do away with the pale Galilean Jesus, and present the actual biblical one. Her own commentary on this cannot be improved upon:

"We are so much accustomed to viewing the whole story from a post-Resurrection point of view that we are apt to attribute to all the New Testament characters the same detailed theological awareness we have. We judge their behaviour as though all of them -- disciples, Pharisees, Romans, and men-in-the-street -- had known with Whom they were dealing and what the meaning of all the events actually was. If the Chief Priests and the Roman Governor had been aware that they were engaged in crucifying God, they would have been quite exceptionally and diabolically wicked people. And indeed, we like to think that they were: it gives us a reassuring sensation that 'it can't happen here.' The characters are not men and women: they are all 'sacred personages,' standing about in symbolic attitudes, and self-consciously awaiting the fulfilment of prophecies.

"Sacred personages, living in a far-off land and time, using dignified rhythms of speech, making from time to time restrained gestures symbolic of brutality. They mocked and railed on Him and smote Him, they scourged and crucified Him. Well, they were people very remote from ourselves, and no doubt it was all done in the noblest and most beautiful manner. We should not like to think otherwise.

"Unhappily, if we think about it at all, we must think otherwise. God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own -- in the over-ripeness of the most splendid and sophisticated Empire the world has ever seen. In a nation famous for its religious genius and under a government renowned for its efficiency, He was executed by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators. His executioners made vulgar jokes about Him, called Him filthy names, taunted Him, smacked Him in the face, flogged Him with the cat, and hanged Him on the common gibbet -- a bloody, dusty, sweaty, and sordid business."

Because of Christians like Miss Sayers, we were fortunate enough to have long ago encountered the real Christ, as distinct from the phony, limp-wristed figure that properly disgusts Mr. Colville. However, like the two men from Emmaeus, Mr. Colville is still travelling down the road. He may yet be surprised at whom he encounters.

Two big names in the Moral Majority
turn against the movement and 'repent'

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
July 1, 1999

"We have come to believe that a delicate balance exists between church and state and that if each fulfils its proper role, the other is positively affected. But if one assumes the role of the other, or ignores or rejects that role, then both suffer. If the so-called Religious Right focuses mainly on politics to deliver us, we will never find deliverance because politics and government cannot reach into the soul. That is something God reserves for himself." -- Columnist Cal Thomas and ex-Moral Majority leader Ed Dobson in their controversial new book, Blinded by Might. (Zondervan Publishing).

Not for years has a book divided Christians quite so sharply as this one has divided the faithful in the United States. Mr. Thomas is a highly respected conservative and Christian newspaper columnist. Mr. Dobson (not to be confused with Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family) was a key leader in Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority" movement.

Both now renounce this movement as not only ineffectual but as fundamentally un-Christian: an attempt by church members to achieve by political action what can only be achieved through the grace of God, to replace prayer with propaganda, and to resort to political manipulation in the name of Jesus Christ.

They write as penitents, they say, confessing to have themselves participated in the dark deeds of which they accuse their Christian brothers. They ask American liberals to forgive them. They repudiate further political action in the name of Christian morality. They vow to resume the primary task of preaching the gospel, and let it redeem America.

Disagreement has been explosive. Randall A. Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, in an article carried on the Internet news service World Net Daily and headed "Treachery in Our Midst," eclared: "I believe this book is in many ways more dangerous than the child-pornography at Barnes & Noble, and certainly more deplorable (in content and aim) than some of the most villainous books of history.

"These men are using out-of-context Bible verses and fatally flawed logic to emasculate and disembowel the church, her pastors, and ultimately the rank and file," he continues. "They seek to pervert or dismiss our duty; and they seek to justify cowardice, retreat and escape-all in the name of Christ. . . . They have falsely misrepresented Jesus and they have spoken treacherously concerning our duties as Christians." He cites several dozen scriptural verses, mostly Old Testament, urging direct political action by the people of God. Whatever else this controversy might demonstrate, it is certainly not new. Ancient Israel was a theocracy, a state run by a religion, which explains the many Old Testament passages that vindicate, indeed demand, a political role for God. A theocratic state is similarly presumed by Islam (the word itself means "surrender" to God).

Christianity too became the state religion of both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires in the fourth century; it remained so in the east until the Turks conquered the Eastern Empire in 1453. The Balkan countries were thereafter split three ways, creating conflicts that continue to this day.

So are Messrs. Thomas and Dobson right, or is Mr. Terry right? There is obviously no easy answer. On the one hand, the Thomas-Dobson side can convincingly contend that only God can bring about the kind of changes of heart among tens of thousands of people that will be necessary to arrest the plunge of modern society into a seeming cesspool. On the other, Mr. Terry can reply that the laws of the land not only reflect our moral values, they also determine them. Nothing is quite so compelling as the observation that "everybody's doin' it."

Thomas-Dobson supporters argue that the chief necessity is that we ourselves live good lives and teach goodness to our children. Terry supporters reply that what our children learn will be heavily influenced, perhaps largely decided, by the entertainment media and the state school system. What is the point, they ask, of teaching a youngster sexual propriety, if his whole public education is urging him to "broaden his mind" and "learn to accept?" Unless Christianity became a virtual ghetto, on the model of the Hutterite colonies, they insist, then some of the business of government must also be the business of Christianity.

So what are the answers? We submit that there are some, though they may be a little different in Canada than they are in the U.S. We'll try to deal with them in a further column.

Catholics crack down on errant bishops;
pity the poor Anglicans, who don't

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 24, 1999

When the Vatican last month prohibited Vancouver Island's retired Catholic Bishop Remi De Roo from addressing a conference that will advocate married priests and women priests, two unexpected events followed.

First, Bishop De Roo obeyed the order. This surprised the organizers of the Atlanta conference, sponsored by the International Federation of Married Catholic Priests. The bishop's past activities had led them to assume he would ignore the papal instructions. They were wrong.

Bishop de Roo's prior non-conformities have rarely if ever concerned matters of church doctrine or discipline. While his outspoken economic and political views have been so left-wing as to earn him the nickname "Red Remi," they seldom touched on Catholic doctrine or represented specific defiance of church rules.

Now, however, the Pope has declared the issues of women priests and clerical celibacy "closed," which provided grounds to forbid Bishop De Roo's addressing the Atlanta meeting. Even to attend, said a letter from the Vatican envoy in Ottawa, "would be a great source of possible scandal and confusion to the faithful."

The second event was more of a non-event: No protest from lay Catholics has been reported by the media. Ten years ago this would not have been so. Dissident Catholics were then far more vociferous and (outwardly anyway) numerous.

Similarly, the world religious press paid little heed in April when the Greek Orthodox Church ordered one of its bishops to stand trial over an interview in the Greek edition of Penthouse magazine, in which he appeared to advocate pre-marital sex.

Bishop Crysostomos of Zakynthos said last year that he believed unmarried people are better off in monogamous relationships that could lead to marriage than in a succession of brief sexual encounters. He also advocated the death penalty for drug dealers. Orthodoxy forbids pre-marital sex, opposes the death penalty and considers magazines like Penthouse anathema.

The bishop must stand trial before an ecclesiastical court that has power to defrock him. He was charged after a series of incidents in which Orthodox lay people severely criticized him. A 50-year-old woman on the Ionian island of Zakynthos was actually jailed for a year for hurling tomatoes at him during a Divine Liturgy. The woman seemed unrepentant. She was disgusted, she said, that a bishop would say such things.

Such disciplinary actions, objectionable though they may be to modern persons of democratic outlook, are entirely appropriate in the Christian church, an institution which has seldom entertained pretensions to democracy. Trials for "heresy" are far from unknown in the history even of Protestant churches. In the era of 20th-century "freedom of speech" and general permissiveness, they are rare, of course, and the consequences are everywhere apparent.

In Alberta, Canada, for instance, a United Church minister is suing his church for abandoning the doctrinal commitments it held when he was ordained. By changing their church's beliefs, he argues, its leaders have effectually taken away his vocation and he is demanding compensation.

Anglicans meanwhile must contend with the various doubts and doctrinal aberrations of Vancouver Bishop Michael Ingham. These became so blatant that one Calgary priest, Reverend Christopher Jukes, quit the church, taking a large proportion of his congregation with him. If the other bishops did not specifically rebuke and reject Bishop Ingham's pronouncements, Mr. Jukes charged, then they were implicitly agreeing with him.

In New Jersey, meanwhile, Anglican Bishop John Spong has rejected most of the Nicene Creed and remains comfortably in office. In Massachusetts last March one Anglican congregation was reduced to holding services on the sidewalk outside the church building. Their bishop had ordered them locked out for withholding their "apportionment" (i.e., financial contribution to the diocese) in protest against his ordaining openly homosexual priests.

This, no doubt, is the kind of thing the Vatican had in mind in its reference to the "scandal and confusion of the faithful." What disturbs the faithful, of course, is not that bishops should lose their faith. This can happen to anybody. It's that they should insist on remaining bishops, even while implicitly repudiating the vows they took when they were consecrated.

The faithful have far more respect for a woman like Mary Malone, an ex-nun and much-publicized theologian whose anti-clerical fulminations soon became anti-Catholic and then anti-Christian. Any woman who called herself a "feminist" and a "Christian" was a fraud, she declared. Then she quit. You'd think errant bishops would have the honesty to do the same.

In T.S. Eliot's delightful portrayal,
each marriage has a unique purpose

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 17, 1999

"Marriage is a contract between two adults. A contract that proves unbearable can be undone, broken. Parenthood is not a contract -- it's a blood relationship, and unbreakable." -- Calgary single parent Joan Donaldson, writing in the Globe and Mail.

Ms. Donaldson, a Calgary school teacher, made this observation in a Globe article protesting her church's attitude towards single parents. The local parish had angered her by offering prayers for children of broken homes, thus implying, she said, that single parents are inadequate to their job.

But in making her case Ms. Donaldson went a step further. Whereas parenthood, she said, is an unbreakable bond because it is a "blood relationship," marriage is merely a contract between two adults. Therefore, as with any contract, if it proves "unbearable" it is eminently breakable.

Unquestionably Ms. Donaldson expresses the current view of marriage in the industrialized world. Marriage contracts are routinely broken. Third and fourth marriages are now common. Some newlyweds sign divorce agreements beforehand, to avoid bitter and costly court struggles when the inevitable happens. But since she presented herself as attending church, the implication was that Christian morality also sees marriage as a mere contract between two adults, nothing more. And that is not the case.

Curiously, the Bible portrays marriage in much the same terminology that Ms. Donaldson uses to describe the parent-child relationship. Through marriage a couple are said to become "one flesh," meaning one living organism. They become two halves of a whole, like a light bulb and socket, or a lock and a key.

This new relationship between the two is intended to be taken literally, not as mere metaphor or sentiment. Some Christians say it is as though a whole new being is created. Where before there were two, it is now as though there were three -- each of the two parties to the marriage, plus an entirely new entity brought about by the union of the two.

This union is capable of producing a great many other things. The most obvious, of course, is children, each one unique and each deriving qualities not only from the two parents but from their ancestors as well. "That baby which you refused to have," says the magician Merlin to a young childless wife in a modern Arthurian novel, "had been planned for 10 generations."

The union can produce countless other things as well as children, of course: a warm home, a wonderful garden, roars of mutual mirth and laughter, great parties, shared disasters, a whole history of pain, perils, tragedies and triumphs, all enjoyed and endured together. G.K. Chesterton in The Marriage Song imagined two people mounted on horses, and riding through life side by side:

 
        We break the line with stroke and luck,
         The arrows run like rain,
        If you be struck, or I be struck,
         There's one to strike again.
        If you befriend, or I befriend,
         The strength is in us twain,
        And good things end and bad things end,
         But you and I remain.

T.S. Eliot seemed to believe that every Christian marriage has a unique purpose. In his witty play, The Cocktail Party, a couple intending divorce hold their last cocktail party. There, through the prayers and influence of three closet Christians, several of the guests begin a process of conversion. All meet the fate which God prepared for them, one as a martyr in an African village. Now converted themselves, the couple save their marriage and wonder what God wants them to do. By then it's obvious. Their vocation is to introduce people -- in other words, hold more cocktail parties. But now they know why they're doing it.

Is divorce possible? Some Christians say yes, some no. Eastern Orthodox Christendom has always recognized that in certain circumstances a marriage can die; the West until this century has been far stricter. But all agree it is an horrendous event -- more like major surgery than breaking a contract. Indeed, in her article, Ms. Donaldson describes her own divorce as a catastrophic experience, and at one point equates it with life-or-death heart surgery. In other words, it represents major tragedy. Unhappily, these days we're surrounded by it.

It behooves us to discover just where dogmas
come from, and whether or not they're true

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 10, 1999

"This is, after all, not about dogma, but survival." -- Columnist Naomi Lakritz in the Calgary Herald

Columnist Lakritz was writing about Tyrell Dueck, the 13-year-old Saskatoon boy who, with his parents, wanted to give up chemotherapy treatment for his bone cancer condition and instead take faith-based "alternative therapy" in Mexico.

Tyrell had already endured two rounds of chemotherapy. When the Dueck family balked at a third, his doctors got a court injunction ordering the treatments to continue. But they then pronounced Tyrell's case hopeless, which freed the Duecks to take him to Mexico. Little has been heard about him since.

Ms. Lakritz's response to the case is instructive. "Survival (of the boy) is what all sides in the Dueck case desperately wanted for Tyrell," she writes. But the controversy had degenerated into a conflict between science, as represented by chemotherapy, and faith, as represented by the Duecks' determination to take Tyrell to Mexico.

However, she maintains, this was an argument about the boy's survival, not about "dogma."

Now Ms. Lakritz, unlike most media people, was not deploring the "superstitions" and "bigotry" of the Dueck family. She respects their decision to refuse further chemotherapy, and observes that if Sikh or Muslim parents had done likewise, their position would have been gingerly respected by these same media critics as stemming from their "culture."

"You can't fail to note the hypocrisy with which our ever-so-tolerant culture picks and chooses just whose beliefs and cultures it will condescend to tolerate," she observes.

What she does not see, however, is that while what the Duecks wanted was a matter of "dogma," so too was what the doctors wanted. A dogma of some kind lay behind both positions.

The Dueck dogma is probably something like this: There is a creator God. He has intervened in his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ heals the people who come to him, sometimes through doctors, sometimes directly. Since chemotherapy seems not to be working, perhaps Christ means us to try something else.

The doctors' dogma would read something like this: There may or not be a creator God, but since we can't prove scientifically that he exists we have no basis for assuming so. We must act solely according to the only things we know to be true, meaning what can be demonstrated by the scientific method, i.e., by repeated experiment. Therefore Tyrell should be compelled by the law to submit to the third treatment.

At the very core of the second dogma, however, stands the dubious assumption that what cannot be proved by the scientific method cannot reasonably be believed. But many vital things are not provable by the scientific method. We cannot actually prove, for example, that men should be truthful, just and honest, or refrain from murder, rape and theft. No moral principle is provable scientifically. We must deduce moral truth on some other ground.

Thus the court, in deciding for the doctors and against the Duecks, upheld one dogma and rejected the other. It took a distinctly religious position -- namely, the position that we cannot know whether or not there is a God. Putting it another way, we can know that no God exists who reveals himself to his creatures. This position has now, in Saskatchewan anyway, gained legal status, although it's doubtful the judge involved saw this implication in the ruling.

We point it out, not because we think Ms. Lakritz an unobservant columnist, but because we think her an exceptionally observant one. In her work, which we read regularly, you can watch her figuring out various things. Already she has discerned the frightful folly that so often besets our educational system, for example, and her comments on the Colorado school massacre were altogether perceptive.

Now she comes upon this loaded word "dogma," and falls into the trap of assuming that religious people like the Duecks act on dogmas, while practical people like doctors do not. Nevertheless, she is uneasy about it.

The word signifies a principle, tenet or belief, usually held on religious authority. But other people also act on principles, tenets and beliefs, although generally without realizing it and hardly ever knowing what authority, if any, lies behind them. The supposedly "practical" have to operate on dogmas too. Discovering where these come from and what makes them valid is something, we're sure, to which Ms. Lakritz will soon apply her mind. She will find it a very interesting exercise.

'Welcome to the parlor,' said the
newspaper to the Christian schools

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
June 3, 1999

(Editor's note: American readers unfamiliar with Canadian schools will find mention of a Christian school operating within the public school system puzzling, but in the Canadian province of Alberta, schools with religious affiliations may receive major amounts of their support from taxes.)

- - - "In order to make this affiliation work, the Christian schools will have to surrender some of their autonomy." -- from an editorial in the Edmonton Journal on the decision of three schools operated by the Christian Reformed Church to affiliate with the Edmonton public system.

The several schools operated by the Christian Reformed Church in Edmonton represent the labors of many people over many years. They were built and developed largely by Dutch immigrants who came to Canada after the Second World War, worked hard, prospered for the most part, and contributed generously to maintain for their children schools whose values reflected their faith. Outsiders, including one of our sons, sometimes benefited from them too.

In recent years, however, the Edmonton public system has changed considerably. It has reintroduced a degree of standardization into its curriculum, restoring objective examinations, measurable courses of study and so on. And it has enabled the creation of several alternative schools. These things have doubtless reassured the Christian Reformed educators. It remains to be seen, however, whether they can join the system without losing much of the Christian identity their founders worked so hard to establish.

Frankly worrisome in this regard is the approval bestowed upon the move by the Edmonton Journal. This newspaper (along with the Globe and Mail in Toronto) continually evidences barely veiled hostility to traditional Christianity and Christian morality. It champions unrestricted abortion. It regards moral rejection of homosexual practice as evidence of "hate." It deplored the firing of an outspoken homosexual advocate on the staff of a Christian Reformed college.

The Journal's sole religion columnist more or less makes a career of candidly rejecting much in the Christian creeds, and no columnist so far as we know has ever been invited to dispute his assorted scepticisms. Any off-the-wall apostate who arrives in the Alberta capital can count on lavish attention, crackpot Anglican Bishop John Spong being the latest example. Earlier this month he got about a half page that included a soulful portrait photo, eyes peering sage-like towards the horizon.

That the Journal should warmly endorse the Christian Reformed school move is therefore cause for misgiving. The editorial itself evidenced why: "The Christian Reformed schools," it said, "should agree to conform to the public school curriculum and to grant the Edmonton public board the ultimate power to hire and fire staff. And they should be expected to open their doors to new students from outside the Christian Reformed Church."

But you wonder, if the public system sets the curriculum and controls the choice of teachers, in what sense can the school be "Christian"? The public curriculum forbids the teaching of Christianity. Furthermore it demands "acceptance" of assorted sexual proclivities which the Christian Reformed Church rejects. Many public school sex-ed courses advance abortion as "a woman's right," meaning that the unborn child has no rights. Is this to be taught in the Christian Reformed schools?

Moreover, Christian education involves a great deal more than doctrine and morality. Christians have traditionally laid great emphasis on the teaching of history, because their religion is historically rooted. They also tend to emphasize those subjects, such as English grammar, which inculcate the mental habit of reasoning from principle to practice (e.g., I should use the objective case of the pronoun because it's the object of a preposition and prepositions take the objective case).

This is because Christian morality so frequently requires the same habit of mind. You go back to biblical principle to decide what you should do in a given situation (e.g., I should renounce the thoughts now going through my mind because it is a grave sin to think yourself "better" than someone else). A Christian education is, in other words, the direct antithesis of a Deweyist education -- not surprising, since John Dewey was militantly anti-Christian.

Only very lately and partially have the public schools begun to rid themselves of Deweyist influence, and there's no guarantee they will continue to do so. They are just as likely to go shillying off in some other direction in response to some whim or experimentation. Will the Christian schools follow them? The Journal thinks they must.

One is driven to conclude that the reason the Journal wants to see the Christian schools "affiliated" with the public ones is that this will spell the end of their Christianity. It's hard to imagine a clearer warning to those entrusted with their administration.

'You believe in God?' 'Yes,' she replied,
and the teen-aged killer shot her dead

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 27, 1999

"Some people become missionaries and things, but what about me? What does God have in store for me?. . . Isn't it amazing, this plan we're a part of. I mean, it's a pretty big thing to be a part of God's plan." -- From a letter written last June by Cassie Bernall, 17, slain in the Littleton, Colorado, high school massacre after affirming to her killer her belief in God.

Cassie Bernall, one of 12 students slain in last month's rampage at Columbine High School, may not technically qualify as a Christian martyr -- but then again she may.

The circumstances of her last three years are pertinent. At 14, we are told, she was a rebellious adolescent who delved into drugs, dabbled in witchcraft and contemplated suicide. She was involved, that is, in the same sort of thing that fascinated Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, her killers.

But while Eric and Dylan went on to assemble a lethal arsenal and embark on their plans of destruction, Cassie's life took a different turn. Her parents persuaded her to accompany them to West Bowles Community Church, where she was interviewed by youth pastor David McPherson.

Pastor McPherson thought her hopeless. "There's some kids you meet that you think there's a chance," he recalls, "and other kids you say, 'She's gone.' I never gave Cassie a hope. She was disconnected. She wasn't going to listen to anything. She was into black magic, the dark stuff."

But her parents enrolled her in a Christian school, where a friend invited her to a Christian camp. There she accepted Christ and an amazing transformation took place. "Before, she was extremely shut down; she wouldn't talk," youth leader Jeremiah Quinonez remembers. "When she came back from that trip she was glowing."

Sullen, introverted Cassie became bright, happy Cassie, who with boundless energy joined West Bowles Church and ventured back into the old drug districts -- to lead other kids out of that morass. Finally she insisted on leaving her Christian school. "I have to go to public school," she told one friend, "to be a witness to those kids."

At Columbine the new Cassie was universally admired, carried a Bible to school every day, and wrote poetry for her friends. Her favorite film was "Braveheart," in which the hero dies a martyr's death.

On April 20, writes Matt Labash in the American Spectator, "she came to school in a turquoise shirt. She had a white undershirt, her favorite jeans and her beat-up Doc Martens. A bracelet pinned on her backpack read: 'What would Jesus do?' "

Eleven o'clock that morning found her in the school library reading her Bible when the gun-toting pair burst into the room. With other students she cowered under the tables. Of the 13 murders, 10 occurred in that library. The pair shot school athletes first, then a black. Then they came to Cassie, praying beneath the table. "Do you believe in God?" one demanded. He spoke "in a cruel way," says a survivor of the carnage. "It was almost like Satan was trying to talk through him."

Cassie paused, then replied with a firm "Yes." The other student recalls: "She was scared, but she sounded strong, like she knew what she was going to answer." Her assailant was not satisfied. "Why?" he snapped. But before she could reply he shot her through the head.

Was she a martyr? Did she know that by confessing her faith she doomed herself to death? Who can say? However, everyone in the school, including presumably her killers, knew she was Christian and presumably also knew she had explored their world and rejected it. A highly attractive victim. And she must have realized the significance of her answer.

Police officer Wayne Depew, walking among the corpses, saw Cassie Bernall lying on her back under the table. At first he didn't notice the bullet hole in her temple, but he saw her hands were clasped as if in prayer, and "she had a real soft look on her face, with a slight smile."

A week after the event, reporter Labash visited West Bowles Community Church. "What was surprising," he wrote, "is that I didn't find any of her friends still crying." Pastor McPherson explained why. "We can sit in this building and grieve, or we can go out and spread the Gospel. A week ago I couldn't have mentioned God in school, and now everybody wants to talk about God. So we're ready to go, and Cassie gave us the opportunity."

What do you mean, every law expresses
a moral principle? Here's what we mean

By TED and VIRGINIA BYFIELD
May 20, 1999

"The law that requires us to drive on the right-hand side of the road is there for a good reason, but it isn't a moral one." -- From a letter to this column written by veteran B.C. newspaper columnist Paul St. Pierre.

Mr. St. Pierre, one of his province's greatest raconteurs and historians, has never concealed his distrust of orthodox Christianity. His letter deplores what he calls Ted Byfield's "tireless campaign to turn Canada into a priest ridden-state like Israel, Iran and Ireland."

But this, the male half of our duo hastens to protest, is not in any sense his intention. Rather, his "tireless campaign" is intended to assure that the Case for Christianity is represented somewhere in the popular media. He also aims to point out some of the sweeping assumptions which opponents of Christianity often make without realizing it -- such as the notion that something besides morality can lie behind the law. "All law, whether civil or criminal," he wrote, "is based on some moral principle."

But take the law requiring us to drive on the right side of the road, argues Mr. St. Pierre. What "moral principle" could possibly lie behind that? And consider murder, he continues: "After all, killing isn't always morally bad, a concept with which many fine men have wrestled in wartime. We don't punish murderers because they're wicked. . . . We punish murderers so that society can be safer and fairer for the rest of us."

Before replying, we must clarify an important point. The word "morality" has two meanings in modern English usage. Some see it as applying solely to sexual or addictive behavior. Thus the police "morality squad" customarily deals with things like prostitution and the drug trade.

In its wider sense, however, morality deals with "good" and "bad" behavior of any kind. Bad behavior includes not only what the old moralists called "the sins of the flesh" -- Lust (i.e. illicit sex), Gluttony and Wrath -- but also the more serious (to Christians anyway) sins of the spirit -- Envy, Covetousness, Sloth and Pride. In this sense, a man who makes acquiring money the center of his life may be more "immoral" than a hooker.

Similarly, good behavior concerns the four cardinal virtues: Temperance (moderation), Fortitude (courage), Prudence (using your head) and Justice (fair dealing).

Therefore, within this wider definition of the word, all the following sentences, which we hear every day from both adults and children, invoke some moral rule: "But you promised you'd do it. . . . I helped you -- why won't you now help me?. . . . Quit picking on him; you're twice his size. . . . You can't have that; it isn't yours."

We are continually conscious of such rules, and some of them, by no means all, we regard as so important that we make them compulsory. That is, we make them into laws of the state. Every law of the state has morality behind it. Every section of the criminal code -- murder, stealing, lying under oath, cheating, etc. -- is the expression of a moral principle. Not so, says Mr. St. Pierre. "Murder is made illegal so that society can be safer and fairer for the rest of us." But then, why should we worry whether society is "fair?" Isn't our duty to be "fair" itself a moral principle?

This is true even of laws less obviously moral. The graduated income tax, for example, expresses the moral principle that wealthier people should pay more towards the general good. Engineering codes express the principle that if you're going to erect a building, you have moral duty to be sure it is safe. And we passed that law requiring drivers to stay on the right hand side of the road because it is morally incumbent not to drive in such a way as to kill or maim each other -- which is an application of Justice.

The crucial question, of course, is where these rules come from. Christians say that ultimately they are part of our nature. We can "just see" that we should behave fairly and so on, in the same way that we can "just see" the rules of reason and logic. In that sense they came from God and we should therefore obey them (although often we do not, which is a further story). But where, you wonder, does Mr. St. Pierre think we got them? Does each of us make up his own? Perhaps he'll write us another letter and explain.

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