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him. “I would have liked very much to know that a loving heart existed somewhere in the center of this universe,” he wrote in his early book, Tortured for Christ. “Since I had known few of the joys of childhood and youth, I longed that there should be a loving heart beating for me, too. I convinced myself that there was no God, but I was sad that such a God of love did not exist.”

Wurmbrand’s encounter with this God of love came when he was “irresistibly drawn” to a certain village in the Romanian mountains where an old carpenter had been praying to bring a Jew to Christ. Seeing that the new arrival was a Jew, the old carpenter courted him like a young man courting a beautiful girl. Wurmbrand had read the Bible before, but when given one by the carpenter he saw in it not mere words but “flames of love.” Weeping, he accepted Christ, and shortly afterward Sabina 1909 – 2001 came to Christ as well.

During World War II, Richard and Sabina evangelized to the occupying Born into Judaism, sidetracked briefly by German forces, preached in bomb shelatheism, and then converted to Christ- ters, and rescued scores of Jewish children ianity, Richard Wurmbrand, the “Iron from the ghettoes. For these activities, they Curtain St. Paul,” endured 14 years of were arrested repeatedly. Wurmbrand’s harsh imprisonment and brutal torture connection with Russia began during for his faith under communist rule. But this same time period. His own miracuunlike Paul, he regained his freedom and lous conversion had given him an intense was able to devote the next 35 years to sorrow for a people raised from childhelping other persecuted Christians. hood in atheism, and during the war he Wurmbrand was the fourth child of had an opportunity to minister to Russian a Jewish Romanian family. He grew up soldiers held in Romanian prisons. Seeing in bitter poverty, was orphaned in child- men who had lost the ability to think hood, and by 14 had become, in his own for themselves, Wurmbrand vowed to words, “as convinced an atheist as any dedicate his life to such men, “to give communist.” As a young man he was them back their personalities and to give drawn to the left-wing politics that them faith in God and Christ.” flourished in Bucharest in the 1930s. In Nine months before the end of the October, 1936, he married Sabina Oster, war in Europe, Wurmbrand got all the also a Jew by birth. potential converts he could hope for Wurmbrand’s conversion took place when 1 million Russian troops marched two years after his marriage. By his own into Romania. The communists seized admission, he considered the very notion control of the government, and a nightmare of God and Christ harmful to the human of oppression and capitulation began. mind, but still there was yearning inside The Russian occupiers convened a con-

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gress of religious bodies, attended by over 4,000 ministers, priests, and rabbis.

Joseph Stalin was named honorary president of the convocation, and one by one the religious leaders swore their allegiance to the new government. Sabina turned to her husband and said, “Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ!” Wurmbrand rose to his feet and told the delegates that their duty was to glorify God and Christ alone.

Over the next two years,Wurmbrand distributed 1 million Bibles to Russian troops and also smuggled Bibles into Russia. By now he was head of the Norwegian Lutheran Mission in Bucharest, a position which helped cover his underground activities. His time ran out on February 29, 1948, when the secret police kidnapped him and threw him into prison with the designation “Prisoner Number 1.” He was held there for over eight years, subject to horrific torture.

In a general amnesty brought about by the Khrushchev-Eisenhower “thaw,” Wurmbrand was released in 1956.

Although warned never to preach again, he soon resumed his underground work.

In 1959 he was rearrested, this time sentenced to 25 years. Among the tortures he endured were being placed in a wooden box with nails driven through the sides and repeated imprisonment in a “refrigerator cell,” where he would be frozen to the point of death, thawed out, and then frozen again. In 1964 Wurmbrand was released and then ransomed for $10,000 so that he could leave Romania with his family.

The following year he appeared before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, at one point stripping to the waist to show 18 deep torture wounds. In 1967 the Wurmbrands began a ministry to the persecuted church in communist countries. Called the Voice of the Martyrs, the organization was established in 80 restricted countries by the mid-’80s.

He died February 17, 2001, active in his ministry to the end. ■

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quence, Libanius groomed him for a career in law, but the young man became uncomfortable with his mentor’s pagan views and turned instead to studies in line with his Christian upbringing.

Chrysostom’s new teacher was Diodore of Tarsus, who believed in a literal interpretation of Scripture, as opposed to the allegorical method which was popular at the time. Around 375, Chrysostom decided to become a hermit monk and spent the next four years living in isolation in the nearby mountains and then two years alone in a cave.

During this latter time, he did not allow himself to lie down, either by day or night, which seriously damaged his internal organs and ultimately forced him to return to the church in Antioch.

Chrysostom was ordained a deacon in 381 and a priest in 386. Over the next decade he gained recognition for his public preaching, which not only reflect347 A.D. – 407 A.D. ed the oratorical excellence seen by his old teacher, Libanius, but also was easily understood and applied to daily life In a culture where religious officials were by the crowds who came to hear him. expected to cultivate the rich and pow- In 397 he catapulted to prominence with erful, John Chrysostom, patriarch of his handling of a situation in which the Constantinople, defied the unspoken citizens of Antioch went on a rampage, rules by constantly crusading against mutilating statues of the emperor and excessiveness on the part of the wealthy his family. His healing sermons led to and advocating tirelessly for the poor and numerous conversions and averted oppressed. For this he earned the love of extreme reprisals by the emperor. the common people and the mistrust of The following year, Chrysostom was the privileged classes, a mistrust that would elected patriarch of Constantinople, a lead to exile and an early death. post he was reluctant to assume because Chrysostom was born in 347 in of the privilege that accompanied it.

Antioch, Syria. His father, a high-rank- Expected to host lavish gatherings, he ing military officer, died when he was instead undertook an outspoken caman infant, and he was raised by his mother, paign against the misuse of riches on Anthusa, a devout Christian. Antioch the part of both the aristocracy and the was a leading intellectual center of the church. On one occasion he went so far civilized world, and Chrysostom was as to sell the chalices from the church given the best education available, study- where he ministered and give the proing under Libanius, a highly respected ceeds to the poor. “You make golden classical rhetorician who was deeply chalices,” he chastised, “but fail to offer involved in the Emperor Julian’s cam- cups of cold water to the needy. Christ, paign to revive the old Greek and Roman as a homeless stranger, is wandering gods. Impressed with his pupil’s elo- around and begging, and instead of

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receiving Him you make decorations.”

He also instituted reforms of the clergy, telling the priests who were enjoying the high life in Constantinople to return to the churches they were supposed to be serving. He made two powerful enemies at the outset: Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria; and Empress Eudoxia, who took his denunciation of extravagance as a personal attack.

When it was discovered in 403 that Chrysostom had harbored four Egyptian monks excommunicated by Theophilus, his enemies joined forces and charged him with treason. Chrysostom was deposed and banished, but he was immediately recalled when the people became “tumultuous” over his departure. For two months, an uneasy truce existed between Chrysostom and the throne, but he soon offended the empress again by denouncing the erection of a silver statue of her outside his cathedral.

Two failed assassination attempts were made against Chrysostom, and in June 404 he was exiled to Cucusus in the remote mountains of Armenia, where he lived in extreme deprivation. His spirit was unbroken, however, and he kept up an active correspondence with his supporters, directed from a distance a missionary outreach he had established to the Goth and Scythian tribes along the Danube, and even raised money for those suffering from the effects of famine in the area where he was being held.

Seeing him as a continued threat, Emperor Arcadius signed an order to exile him to an even more remote region.

Forced to march while in weakened health, Chrysostom collapsed in Comana, 350 miles from Cucusus, and died on September 14, 407.The last words from his lips were said to have been, “Glory be to God for all things!” ■ Leslie Hammond is PRISM’s copy editor and has also edited works as diverse as a prison diary, a stock market textbook, and books on character education.

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honors in 1627 and receiving ordination two years later. While serving as personal chaplain to a country gentleman, Williams met and married Mary Barnard. One year later, the couple set sail for the New World after reports of the young minister’s liberal preaching and dissenting views drew negative attention from the Church of England.

Not surprisingly, these same reports stirred excitement among the officials of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and upon arrival Williams was offered the coveted position of minister to the Boston congregation. To the consternation of the Massachusetts officials, the young minister turned the offer down on principle, saying that the Boston church was not sufficiently “separated” from the Church of England and that the colony was wrongfully turning religious 1603-1683 matters into civil matters by seeking to enforce biblical commandments.

Williams’ criticism offended the powAlthough he often drew epithets such erful Boston congregation, and when as “offensive rebel” and “evill-worker” he was subsequently offered the position from his contemporaries, history has of minister in nearby Salem it was strongaccorded Rhode Island founder Roger ly suggested that the Salem congregation Williams his rightful place as a man of reconsider the appointment. Roger and deep faith and passionate principles and Mary Williams then headed to Plymouth, as a person far ahead of his time in his where the Pilgrim settlers shared their views on religious freedom, separation separatist views. Williams spent much of church and state, and fair treatment time among the local Indians, trading of Native Americans. with them and learning their languages The son of a merchant-tailor, and ways. He wrote that it was his “soul’s Williams was born around 1603 in desire to do the natives good.”

London. As a teenager,Williams studied In August 1633, the Williams’ first the Bible avidly, poring over the pages child, Mary, was born, and they returned of the newly published King James trans- to Salem, where one year later Williams lation. Skilled at shorthand, he gained became acting minister. Now holding the notice of the influential jurist Sir his own pulpit, Williams began clashing Edward Coke, who hired him to be his openly with colonial leaders, avowing secretary. Coke was an early advocate of that all religions should be tolerated and individual rights, and his liberal views none persecuted and condemning the and stirring Parliamentary speeches had Puritans for believing they had the only a deep impact on his protégé. path to God. In July 1635 the General The jurist arranged for Williams to Court charged him with spreading “erroattend the Charterhouse School, a newly neous and very dangerous” opinions, founded preparatory academy. He went particularly in his stand against the swearon to attend Cambridge, graduating with ing of oaths in civil matters.The situation

Photo by Mary Kate MacIsaac

Roger Williams

became tense, with Boston temporarily denying some choice lands to the Salem congregation unless it curbed its minister and Williams threatening to resign if Salem did not separate itself from the Boston congregation.

After a fierce public debate with famed Puritan minister Thomas Hooker, Williams was more defiant than ever and in October was sentenced to banishment. Because of his wife’s pregnancy, he was given until spring to leave the colony, provided he no longer spread his radical beliefs. Standing on his principles, Williams continued his inflammatory preaching. Soldiers were dispatched to Salem to seize him and place him on a boat back to England, and Williams and a few followers fled into the wilderness in the dead of winter.

Only the kindness of the local Indians, whom he’d earlier befriended, saved the group from starvation.

In spring, 1636, Williams’ small band emerged from the forests and crossed the Seekonk River, where they obtained land from the Narragansetts and declared the establishment of a new colony. To show their thanks to God, they named the colony Providence.

The new colony offered all heads of household a voice in government, and town meetings gave everyone a chance to be heard. According to Williams’ longheld views, separation of church and state was strictly upheld. There was no class consciousness or religious prejudice, and Providence and its nearby sister communities soon became a place of refuge for both the poor and those seeking asylum from religious persecution.

Massachusetts elders disdainfully referred to the new colony as the “Sewer of New England” but were nonetheless worried about its appeal to settlers and began campaigning to take it over. In the summer of 1643 Williams journeyed to England and came back with a charter for the “Providence Plantations in Continued on page 5.

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away. They will be as active as ever during the upcoming presidential election.

But what is different is that growing numbers of American Christians are turning away from the polarizing ideologies of America’s culture wars.

I urge all those who join me in celebrating the creation of Christian Churches Together—and its potential

witness to a gospel that transcends the agendas of the polarized extremes—to contact CCT today and tell them of your prayers and support. In fact, why don’t you join me in emailing CCT to ask how we can support this remarkable coalition of American Christians that has the potential to speed the end of the polarization of both the church

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ing post at North Kingstown and often served as peacemaker between the Indians and neighboring colonies. He served as governor of the colony between 1654 and 1658. Sadly he saw almost all of Providence burned during King Phillip’s War (1675-1676) but lived long enough to see it rebuilt and to see the colony thrive. Until his death in 1683, he con-

Narragansett Bay,” which incorporated Providence, Newport, and Portsmouth.

During his sea voyage, he produced an authoritative volume on American Indians, Key into the Languages of America.

Williams established an Indian trad-

and society? You’ll find complete contact information at www.christian churchestogether.org. ■ Tom and Christine Sine share this column.

Visit their Mustard Seed Associates website at msainfo.org for great resources and to network with other Christians committed to decoding the culture and conveying the Kingdom of God.

tinued to preach and remained intensely involved in community affairs. He is now known as the “Father of Religious Liberty” in America. ■ Leslie Hammond is PRISM’s copy editor and has also edited works as diverse as a prison diary, a stock market textbook, and books on character education.

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NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Father Damien 1840-1889 When God chose to identify with his creation by sending his son to live among us, he sent us love incarnate.When Christ entered the heart of Joseph de Veuster, that same dynamic went to work, and de Veuster based the rest of his life on incarnating the love of Christ.

De Veuster was born in Belgium in 1840, the seventh of eight children. His father wanted him to take over the family business of farming, but the young man felt a call to the church, and at 18 he joined the Sacred Hearts Community, where he began his study for the priesthood. At his request, the community sent him to Hawaii as a missionary in 1864, where he was ordained in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu and immediately adopted the name Father Damien.

Colonization had brought to Hawaii diseases previously unknown there, such as influenza, syphilis, and Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy. King Kamehameha IV had created a colony for lepers on the

island of Molokai, hoping that by isolating them he could keep the disease from spreading. Accounts from Molokai speak of the smell of decaying flesh and of the cries of those dying on the beach, having been kicked out of the huts by other lepers.Young girls sent to Molokai were attacked and preyed upon by other lepers, who literally had to fight each other to survive.The government had planned to care for them there but was overwhelmed by the appalling conditions.

It was to this lifestyle of chaos and misery that Father Damien was drawn.

When he moved to Molokai in 1873, he was presented to the colonists by Bishop Maigret as “one who will be a father to you, and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you; to live and die with you.” And this is exactly what Father Damien became to the lepers of Molokai. He built homes for the people, made coffins for the dead, and grew food for the hungry. He worked tirelessly among a people who were not his own and who had an illness that he did not have.

In addition to providing care for the leprosy victims, Father Damien worked as an activist and social reformer, advocating on their behalf. Thanks to his dogged efforts, the Hawaiian government eventually agreed to send much-needed supplies to Molokai. He also used his influence with the Church of Rome to garner attention for the lepers. An official biography of Father Damien states, “He was not afraid to badger the Church for help.”

Because of his determination, the Molokai community received worldwide attention, and supplies arrived from around the world.

One evening, when Father Damien went to soak his feet in a pot of hot water, he found he was unable to feel the heat.

He had contacted the disease of the people he served. A biography of this great man states, “Over the years he had done nothing to separate himself from his

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people. He dipped his fingers in the poi bowl shared with other patients. He shared his pipe. And he did not always wash his hands after bandaging open sores.” He had so wanted to relate to his people that he allowed nothing to separate him from them. Father Damien had truly become one of them. He died on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49.

This is also the story of God relating to his people. Paul, in a letter to the church in Philippi, wrote: Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death— and the worst kind of death at that —a crucifixion (Phil. 2:5-8, The Message).

In June 1995 Father Damien was beatified by Pope John Paul II. In December 2005 he was voted the greatest Belgian of all time. On April 15 of every year, while most U.S. citizens are thinking about the deadline for filing federal income taxes, Hawaiians remember Father Damien on the anniversary of his death. As you think about the incarnation, think of Father Damien and his gift to the lepers.

Think of God revealing himself in human form through Jesus the Christ, and ask yourself the question,“How will I incarnate God to others today?” ■ J. Monty Stewart is the pastor of Kona Church of the Nazarene, a multicultural church in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

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ried in 1811 and moved to Philadelphia, where her family had relocated two years earlier, and James Mott joined his father-in-law in business. Lucretia gave birth to a daughter in 1812, and a son came along two years later.

After her father’s untimely death in 1815, both the Coffin and Mott families were left with heavy debts. James Mott decided to become a cotton merchant, a business he had learned from his uncle, but this did not sit well with Lucretia. As a girl she had read accounts of the slave trade, and she urged her husband to cease dealing in anything created with slave labor. Mott, who himself had abolitionist leanings, took little convincing and began to deal exclusively in wool.

In 1817 the Motts’ young son succumbed to typhoid fever. Lucretia’s grief led to a period of deep spiritual introspection, and she emerged with renewed 1793-1880 devotion to her faith and to social issues.

She began speaking frequently and eloquently in meeting, often exhorting Though she stood barely 5 feet tall and others to join her and her husband in never weighed more than 100 pounds, boycotting slave-created goods. In 1821 Lucretia Coffin Mott was and remains she was formally recognized as a Quaker today a giant in the fight for equality— minister and in this role became acquainta founder of the women’s rights move- ed with many prominent abolitionists. ment and one of America’s leading Lucretia began to travel extensively abolitionists. throughout the East and Midwest. Her Lucretia was the daughter of a Quaker preaching focused increasingly on antiwhaling captain and spent her early slavery issues, for which she drew critiyears on Nantucket Island. The family cism from Quaker elders who preferred moved to Boston in 1803 when her that she avoid such divisive social issues. father decided to exchange the hazards In 1833 Lucretia caused a stir by rising to of the sea for a merchant’s life. speak at the National Anti-Slavery ConLucretia showed early signs of a vention in Philadelphia. (Unlike Quakers, quick mind, and when she turned 13 the population at large—even a segment her parents decided she should attend a that advocated human rights for slaves Quaker boarding school in New York. —did not consider females equal.) She After completing her course work, 16- responded by forming the Philadelphia year-old Lucretia was asked to stay on Female Anti-Slavery Society and helped as a teaching assistant and in that capac- draft its constitution. ity came to know fellow teacher James Women’s rights were added to Mott. As they spent long hours talking, Lucretia’s reform agenda when she she found him sympathetic to some of attended the International Anti-Slavery her early “radicalism.”The two were mar- Convention in London in 1840 and was

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placed in a roped-off area, hidden from the males in attendance, simply because she was a woman. This did not stop Lucretia from rising to speak, which drew the attention of the young Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was also attending the convention. The two women bonded and resolved to hold their own convention to further the rights of women.

During the next eight years Lucretia traveled widely, speaking vociferously against slavery and, increasingly, for women’s rights. In her Quaker dress and bonnet, the diminutive woman was always a surprise to audiences, who expected a female activist to be somehow more intimidating and eccentric.

A chance meeting in 1848, while Lucretia visited Seneca Falls, N.Y., where Elizabeth Cady Stanton now lived, led to the convention that the two women had planned back in London. It is now known simply as the “Meeting at Seneca Falls” and the beginning of the women’s rights movement. Held in July 1848, the two-day convention drew an astonishingly large attendance of 300.

The women present drew up a resolution to secure the right to vote, an act of effrontery that drew derision from newspapers of the time. When asked by a journalist what women of her type were seeking, Lucretia replied with dignity, “She asks nothing as a favor, but as a right ... She is seeking not to be governed by laws in the making of which she has no voice.”

When the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 ended slavery, Lucretia expressed delight that the “consummation” of the abolitionist cause was attained in her time. However, when the 15th Amendment was passed seven years later, prohibiting the denial of voting rights on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” she could not resist pointing out that the Constitution still excluded half the population.

By 1878 Lucretia had long since Continued on page 5.

him in his death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10,11). By sharing in the suffering of others we also share in Christ’s suffering and move through crucifixion towards the healing balm of resurrection. As Francis McNutt, a Catholic authority on healing, explains, “Through the power of the resurrection, God’s life is breaking into our wounded world, and he gives us the

power to cooperate with him by healing and reconciling man and all of creation” (in Healing, Ave Maria Press, 1974).

I still struggle with the problem of suffering and find that all our explanations are inadequate to explain the extent of misery we see in the world around us. However, just as God was able to transform the horror of Christ’s crucifixion and death into the glory of res-

urrection, so God is still at work transforming the horror of suffering and pain into healing and wholeness. How can we refuse to enter into the suffering of life when we know that by so doing we actually cooperate with God in healing our broken world? ■

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applause from her fellow “soldiers.”

Two years later, the frail activist received word that a resolution had been passed by the American Equal Rights Association paying tribute to “its venerable early leader and friend, Lucretia Mott, whose life in its rounded perfections as wife, mother, preacher, and reformer is the prophecy of the future

of woman.” Lucretia died in her sleep on November 11, 1880, just days after receiving word of this homage. ■

ceded most of her leadership role to younger women, but she was able to walk unaided into the 30th anniversary convention of the Meeting at Seneca Falls.

Greeted from the platform by Frederick Douglass, the 85-year-old received warm

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Offender Program (STOP) as a means of providing treatment for men in the county jail system. They spend their incarceration time in a special facility that provides them with drug and alcohol treatment, from psychologists and counselors who deal with their situations to drug educators and other professionals who help them develop the coping skills needed to live a life of abstinence after their release. Through partnerships with halfway houses, the Veterans’ Administration, and other organizations, they develop aftercare systems for support upon release. Several churches, including Dayton’s Omega Baptist, provide pastoral and worship services, and even a 12-step Bible study using the Life Recovery Bible.

But STOP doesn’t begin to address the vast numbers of incarcerated persons who need treatment. And it won’t as

long as the county reflects the national consensus in favor of punishment. In 2004 voters had an opportunity to pass an initiative that would broaden the availability of treatment for offenders with substance abuse problems. They soundly rejected the initiative. According to one of the church volunteers, “They just determined that these people were criminals and belonged in jail.They don’t understand addiction.” Nor will they have to as long as the national consensus— including people of faith—is that punitive treatment is preferable to healing treatment.

It is particularly regrettable that the church’s attitude is not recognizably different from the rest of society’s.

Researchers like Baylor University’s Byron Johnson have demonstrated the strong correlation between faith and sobriety. The faith component of treatment both reflects the hard work of volunteers and forms the foundation of 12-step recovery. The founders of PRISM 2007

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Visit Christine and Tom Sine’s Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org.

Leslie Hammond is PRISM’s copy editor and has also edited works as diverse as a prison diary, a stock market textbook, and books on character education.

Alcoholics Anonymous affirmed the alcoholic’s inability to change without the assistance of God (generically referred to as “higher power” in an effort to spread recovery beyond religious communities) and the necessity of self-examination (referred to in AA as a personal inventory) and accountability (people in recovery are told to “get a sponsor” who serves as a mentor through the recovery process).

The power of God, self-examination, and accountability—sounds a lot like what Christ calls us to. Treatment programs require this from those desiring to live sober lives. Surely sober-thinking citizens should support such opportunities for incarcerated men and women who will one day soon be our neighbors again. ■ Harold Dean Trulear is a pastor, associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity, and a fellow at the Center for Public Justice inWashington, D.C.

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After completing a degree at St. Quentin University in 1918, Trocmé went to Paris to study religion at the Sorbonne. During his six years there, he was increasingly drawn to the beliefs of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), an ecumenical pacifist organization founded in response to the horrors of the recent war in Europe, and in 1923 Trocmé helped establish IFOR’s French chapter. In 1925, seeking a course of study that emphasized social action as well as theology, he enrolled at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Upon his return to France the following year, he took a pastorate in a northern mining village. There he brought out his pacifist beliefs in full force, giving sermons on the subject, hosting pacifist youth groups, and giving testimony at trials of conscientious objectors.

1901-1971 Called to task by the Reformed Church for violating their express ban against preaching nonviolence, Trocmé decided “These people came here for help and to take his cause somewhere that would be for shelter. I am their shepherd, and a more sympathetic to his beliefs and less shepherd does not forsake his flock,” visible to church authorities. Le Chambon André Trocmé told Vichy authorities in was the perfect spot—a small village that 1942, calmly defying their orders to stop had provided refuge for Huguenots fleeaiding the Jewish refugees who were mak- ing Catholic persecution three centuries ing their way into his village in south before. Trocmé became pastor to the central France.The Protestant pastor knew Protestants of this village, and in 1938 he that he was risking both his freedom and and a university friend, Edouard Theis, his life, but his conscience gave him no established a pacifist Christian high school other way to respond. As many as 5,000 called College Cevanol, which was soon Jewish lives would eventually be saved drawing students from around the world. because of the unshakable moral convic- Comfortably dividing his time between tions of this remarkable man and the the flourishing school and his pastorate, village he served.

Trocmé had no inkling of the role he and Trocmé had arrived with his wife, his quiet village would soon be playing.

Magda, and their four children in the In 1940 Nazi Germany invaded France small mountain village of Le Chambon and set up a puppet regime (the Vichy sur Lignon eight years earlier. He had government) under Marshal Petain. Antideliberately sought a remote parish where Semitic doctrines and laws were soon in he could quietly pursue his belief in place throughout the country. Petain pacifism, a belief for which he had already signed a treaty with the Nazis, agreeing gotten in trouble with the leaders of his to hand over all Jewish refugees requestReformed Church denomination and ed by the Germans. The day after Petain a belief which had been taking root in put his signature to the treaty, Trocmé him since childhood. preached the following words to his

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congregation: “Tremendous pressure will be put on us to submit passively to a totalitarian ideology... The duty of Christians is to use the weapons of the Spirit to oppose the violence that they will try to put on our consciences. ... We shall resist whenever our adversaries demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the gospel. We shall do so without fear, but also without pride and without hate.”

With these words Trocmé defined the extraordinary role that the village would take over the next few years. The first line in the sand was drawn when Trocmé and his colleagues at the high school refused to pledge their loyalty to the Vichy regime. Trocmé then met with leaders of the American Friends’ Service Committee and agreed that Le Chambon would become a safe haven for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.

Homes, shops, and even public buildings became hiding places for the refugees who began arriving in hordes when word got out that Le Chambon offered sanctuary. When the Nazis or their French collaborators made sweeps through the area, the Jews were spirited away to the countryside and hidden on the farms.

Not a single Jew was ever turned over to the authorities by a villager. Staff and students at the high school forged identification and ration cards for the refugees, and other villagers risked their lives to smuggle these displaced persons across the Swiss border.

Le Chambon was often called the “Village of Children,” for the simple reason that it became a haven for Jewish children whose parents were rounded up by the Nazis. In July of 1942, 28,000 Jews were deported from Paris alone, and many of the children left behind were brought to Le Chambon by the Quakers and other Protestant denominations. Trocmé’s cousin Daniel set up group homes for them, and the children were educated right alongside the Continued on page 5.

Community Health Evangelism (CHE) is an integrated holistic strategy that equips and empowers communities to discover and implement effective and lasting solutions to their problems through the combination of disease prevention, economic enterprise, and social and spiritual renewal. People from over 150 organizations are using CHE training and materials to serve the poor around the world.

God does will healing, not just for us but also for all humankind. Incredibly, we are asked to become participants in the process and to bring God’s healing and wholeness to others.The statistics are overwhelming, but fortunately God calls us not to change statistics but to trans-

form lives. Even providing a cup of clean water can make a difference. And as Matthew 10:42 reminds us, “if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.” ■ (Note: God wills healing, but pain and suffering play an important role in our redemption process, a subject I will deal with in the next issue).

Christine and Tom Sine share this column.

Visit their Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org.

ried out the orders, arresting both Trocmé and his colleague Edouard Theis.

While in prison Trocmé and Theis Chambonnaise children. conducted Bible studies for fellow detainIn that same summer of 1942 the ees, most of them French communists who Vichy government officials informed had been rounded up by the thousands.

Trocmé that they knew what was going Ordered to sign a loyalty oath to the on in the village.The Nazis arrived two Vichy government, the ministers refused. weeks later with buses to take the Jews Amazingly the government yielded to away, but Trocmé had warned everyone public outcry and released them after just who was hiding them, and the soldiers a few weeks, but the danger increased found the entire village packed into the once they were back in Le Chambon. church and no Jews to be found. These The men received warnings that they were raids happened again and again, and each marked for death by the Gestapo, and time the buses went away empty. One they went into hiding for the duration of villager recalled that the townspeople the war.Trocmé’s cousin Daniel was arrestwould go into the forest and sing a cer- ed along with the children he had been tain song after the soldiers left, and the hiding and taken to the Majdanek conJews would emerge, “knowing it was safe centration camp. He was gassed and to come home.” incinerated in 1944.

In February 1943 Trocmé was visited After the liberation of France, André by two French policemen acting on behalf Trocmé emerged from hiding and resumed of the Nazis.Their orders were to arrest his pastorate in Le Chambon. His pacifist the minister for his activities in hiding work continued as well. He died in Jews and take him away. Ever the pacifist, 1971, and the following year his widow Trocmé invited the arresting officers to attended a ceremony in Israel where share the evening meal with him and his her husband was awarded the Medal of family, and as they dined villagers began Righteousness by a grateful people. ■ arriving with items their pastor might need in prison. The police are said to Leslie Hammond is PRISM’s copy editor. have been moved to tears, but they carNot to Be Forgotten continued from page 3.

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NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

John G. Paton 1824-1907

BY ELIACÍN ROSARIO-CRUZ

Spear-carrying cannibals setting his house afire, an irate chief stalking him for hours with a loaded musket, a native suddenly rising up from sickbed and holding him captive with a dagger to his heart—the life of John Paton reads at times like a lurid adventure story, with the hero saved at the last possible moment by his own death-defying heroics. But it was not derring-do that carried the Scotsman through—rather a steadfast faith in God and a total willingness at each cliffhanging juncture to either meet his Maker or pick up his Bible and plow forward with his work among the tribes of the New Hebrides.

John Gibson Paton was born in 1824 near Dumfries, Scotland, to a humble, God-fearing family of the Reformed Presbyterian tradition. As the eldest of 11 children, he was forced to leave school at age 12 to work alongside his father in the family trade of stocking-making, but he pursued serious religious studies whenever time and money permitted.

Seeking a wider influence than his small village could offer, young Paton obtained a position as district visitor and tract distributor for a church in Glasgow, with the privilege of attending the Free Church Normal Seminary. In addition to his divinity studies, he studied medicine at Andersonian Medical University.

In 1847 Paton began an enormously fruitful ministry as a city missionary in one of Glasgow’s poorest districts. He brought hundreds of unchurched people to his Bible classes and services, and his admirers were shocked when he announced after 10 years that he intended to leave Glasgow and volunteer for the mission field in the New Hebrides.

It was a hazardous field: The first missionaries to this South Seas island chain, sent by the London Missionary Society, had been killed by cannibals immediately after going ashore in 1839, and the next team (1842) had been driven off after seven months. Missionaries sent from Nova Scotia in 1848 and Scotland in 1852 fared far better, with about 3,500 people on the island of Aneityum renouncing their idols and accepting Christ, but assignment to the New Hebrides was still perilous when Paton made his decision.

Events moved swiftly. Paton was ordained as a missionary in March of 1857, married Mary Ann Robson a week later, and set sail for the South Seas with his bride two weeks after the wedding.

After a brief landing on Aneityum, the young couple was sent to Tanna to establish a new mission station. The Patons found themselves surrounded by “naked and painted wild men” who had no regard for human life and no sense of ordinary human kindness or orderly conduct. A few months after their arrival, Mrs. Paton gave birth to a son, but she suffered immediate attacks of ague, fever, pneumonia, and delirium and died three weeks later.Two weeks after her death, the little boy succumbed to the same sickness, and John Paton dug a second grave beside PRISM 2006

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the little house he had built upon their arrival.

Paton toiled on alone for the next four years, coming back to the graves of his wife and son whenever he needed comfort. “That spot became my sacred and much-frequented shrine,” he wrote in his autobiography, “during all the following months and years when I labored on for the salvation of the savage Islanders amidst difficulties, dangers, and deaths ... But for Jesus, and the fellowship he vouchsafed to me there, I must have gone mad and died beside the lonely grave!”

During these early missionary years, Paton suffered repeated bouts of the same fever and ague that took his family from him, but the main danger to his life came from the very natives he was trying to convert. Over and over he was attacked by angry tribesmen with spears, axes, and muskets, but each time his life was spared.“Looking up in unceasing prayer to our dear Lord Jesus,” he wrote, “I left all in his hands till my work was done. Trials and hairbreadth escapes strengthened my faith, and seemed only to nerve me for more to follow; and they did tread swiftly upon each other’s heels.”

Even though Paton won the confidence of several warrior chiefs during these years and made many conversions, the superstitious natives blamed the “white devils” for an epidemic that swept the islands in 1861 and all his progress seemed to come undone. A Canadian missionary and his wife were slaughtered on neighboring Erromango, and the emboldened Tannese intensified their attacks on Paton. After several narrow escapes, including a miraculous deliverance from fire, he was finally rescued by ship, taking with him only his Bible and some translations he had made into the native language.

After a brief respite at Aneityum, Paton sailed to Australia and immediately began making fervent pleas on Continued on page 5.

taking the right steps toward claiming their dignity and rights. Through trial and error, these communities are playing a crucial role in creating a new America Latina. Clinics, educational centers, and agricultural cooperatives are just a few of the organically grown services blooming all over.

This expression of life in America Latina is, for the first time since the Spanish Conquest, giving real voice and participation to the indigenous people of the South. As a Latin American Christian I am filled with anticipation by what I

see happening in this “upside-down” version of the world. Looking at it, I am reminded of the values of justice and freedom in God’s Kingdom.

To the question, “Is it possible [to build] the Kingdom of God on Earth?” the former Nicaraguan Minister of Culture, poet Ernesto Cardenal, answered, “How come a Christian cannot believe in that, when it is the unique thing that Jesus came to preach? A liberation theologian has said that when Jesus used the words God’s kingdom it was equal to the word revolution. It was something com-

pletely subversive.”

I pray that we as believers and agents of that Kingdom will be wise and pay attention to the prophetic voices coming from the South. To ignore them would only perpetuate and promote the myth that in order to find direction we only need to look north. ■

Introducing Christian ideas into such an atmosphere often seemed impossible, but the couple pressed on.

Paton learned the Aniwa language and reduced it to written form, then trained native teachers and sent them to outlying villages to preach the Word of God. His wife organized classes of women and girls and taught them Christian hymns as well as how to read and sew.

Together the couple ministered to the sick and dying, held worship services, and instructed the natives in the use of tools. Tribal members continued to launch plots against the missionaries, but the Patons lived to see the entire population won for Christ.

Six of the Patons’ 10 children were born on Aniwa, but sadly four of them died in infancy or early childhood. The missionary couple stayed on the island until 1881 and then began making frequent pilgrimages to Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States to promote interest in New Hebrides missions. Paton was an incredibly successful fundraiser, particularly after his

autobiography was published in 1889, but he always insisted on frugal use of the moneys raised. Paton also wielded his influence to get British and American authorities to crack down on local traffic in firearms and alcohol and was vociferous in fighting a proposed annexation of the islands by the French.

In 1899 he saw his Aniwa translation of the New Testament printed and the establishment of missionaries on 25 of the 30 islands of the New Hebrides.

Attending the Ecumenical Missions Conference in New York City in 1900, he was hailed as a great missionary hero.

Mrs. Paton died in Melbourne in 1905.

Although quite frail by now, John Gibson Paton continued to preach the cause of missions in churches across Australia until his death in 1907. ■

Eliacín Rosario-Cruz works as the adult formation associate at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, Wash., and is part of the staff at Mustard Seed Associates. Contact him at eliacin@gmail.com.

Not to Be Forgotten continued from page 3. behalf of missions to the New Hebrides.

His eloquence and rather startling experience gained him a rapt audience and much-needed financial support. From there he went back to Scotland to recruit missionaries for each of the islands and to raise money for the construction of a sailing vessel to help them in their evangelical work.

Arriving back in the New Hebrides in August, 1866, Paton brought with him a new wife, Margaret (“Maggie”) Whitecross Paton. Together they established a mission station on Aniwa, the nearest island to Tanna, living in a native hut until they built a home for themselves as well as two houses for orphan children. On Aniwa they found the natives to be very similar to those on Tanna—practicing cannibalism, widow sacrifice, infanticide, and ancestor and idol worship. Chiefs were deified and had great influence for evil.

“Their whole worship was one of slavish fear,” Paton wrote. “And so far as ever I could learn, they had no idea of a God of mercy or grace.”

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Leslie Hammond is PRISM’s copy editor and has also edited works as diverse as a prison diary, a stock market textbook, and books on character education.

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Josephine Butler 1828-1906 Described by contemporaries as “touched with genius” and “the most distinguished woman of the 19th century,” Josephine Butler launched the first international anti-trafficking movement on behalf of prostituted women. Born into the prominent family of John Grey, a slavery abolitionist and cousin to a prime minister, Josephine was raised in a household that was politically influential, deeply religious, and characterized by a sense of social responsibility and “fiery hatred of injustice.” In 1852 she married George Butler, a respected scholar and cleric.

The death of their only daughter, Eva, in 1863, led Butler to seek solace by ministering to people with pain greater than her own.

Against the advice of family and friends, Butler began by visiting Liverpool’s Brownlow Hill workhouse.

There she encountered destitute, desperate, and “criminal” women, including unwed mothers and prostitutes—those whom society viewed as beyond hope of restoration. Undaunted by cultural norms, Butler visited these women, built

friendships with them, and ultimately began offering former prostitutes refuge in her own home.While also campaigning for women’s suffrage and higher education, in 1867 she founded the House of Rest, a home to rescue those in danger of falling into prostitution.

But the great crusade of Butler’s life was her fight against the 1864 Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA), the first of a series of acts that legalized prostitution in several of England’s towns where military troops were garrisoned. Butler rightly viewed this as government-sanctioned enslavement of women and argued that the CDA rendered them “no longer women, but only bits of numbered, inspected, and ticketed human flesh, flung

by Government into the public market.”

In 1869, she helped found the Ladies’ National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (LNA).

Under her direction, the LNA relentlessly led petition drives and processions, published pamphlets and monthly newsletters, sponsored political candidates, and garnered the support of such well-known figures as Florence Nightingale andVictor Hugo. Eventually, Butler’s campaign for abolition spread to the European continent and led to the formation of the International Abolitionist Federation, which she helped establish.

Butler was unique in her day. Instead of pouring out moral outrage on those who were caught up in prostitution by force, fraud, or economic necessity, she reserved her wrath for those who tolerated prostitution and engineered its expansion. She understood that lack of education and work opportunities drove more women into prostitution “than any amount of actual profligacy.”

She insisted on the humanity of those caught up in the sex trade: “When you say that fallen women in the mass are irreclaimable, have lost all truthfulness, all nobleness, all delicacy of feeling, all clearness of intellect, and all tenderness of heart because they are unchaste, you PRISM 2006

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are guilty of a blasphemy against human nature and against God.” Moreover, she rocked the social norms of her time, not only because she spoke about the shameful subject of prostitution, but because she dared to address audiences of men at a time when women were expected to be silent regarding public affairs.

Butler saw her campaign as analogous to that of abolitionists like William Wilberforce and her father, who a generation before had fought against the African slave trade in the British Empire.

She cleverly criticized the CDA’s existence with this question: “Shall the same country which paid its millions for the abolition of negro slavery now pay its millions for the establishment of white slavery within its own bosom?”

The CDA were not repealed until 1886, but by then Butler had already succeeded in revolutionizing the role of women in politics and elevating countless women to places of safety and positions of dignity and respect.

More than a century later, alarm has spread over one of the largest illegal commercial sectors in today’s world— the trade in human beings. It’s estimated that up to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year.

Yet it is little known that the contemporary movement for the abolition of sexual trafficking is a rekindling of an earlier one, as the work of Josephine Butler attests. Those fighting sex trafficking today should know and be proud to carry on the legacy of those who, like Butler, fought relentlessly to protect “the down-trodden mass of degraded womanhood.” ■ Lisa Thompson is liaison for the Abolition of Sexual Trafficking for the Salvation Army National Headquarters (iast.net).This essay was adapted from the Spring 2006 issue of Christian History & Biography magazine and is reproduced here by kind permission.

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

William Carey 1761-1834 “When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey—speak about Dr. Carey’s savior,” the dying missionary remonstrated as a colleague sat by his bed and began to list all that he had accomplished during his 40-year tenure in India. Despite his recognition in Protestant circles as the “Father of Modern Missions,”William Carey had no use for accolades and considered himself a mere “plodder” for his faith.

Born in 1793 in the small English village of Paulerspury, Carey was the son of the town’s schoolmaster and his wife.

His formal schooling ended at age 14 when he was apprenticed to a local cobbler. A fellow apprentice, who was a member of the Nonconformists, began speaking to Carey about his faith, and in 1779 Carey had a conversion experience that led him firmly and permanently to Christ. He married at the age of 19 and three years later joined the Calvinist Baptists and began to pursue ordination. Slight of build, prematurely balding, and an unimpressive speaker, Carey was not an obvious candidate for the ministry, and it took him two years to gain ordination and a pastorate.With a fam-

ily to support, Carey had to supplement the meager pastoral income by working as a schoolmaster and shoemaker. Even so, the family often went without meat for a month at a time.

During these early years of ministry, Carey applied himself to language study, always an interest of his, and was soon able to read the Bible in Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, and French. In those years he was also pursuing a conviction that had been growing in his heart—namely that the church had a responsibility to take the message of Christianity to the dark corners of the world.

In his spare time he began making maps of heathen lands, complete with data about indigenous populations and religions.The result of his work was a lengthy pamphlet entitled An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, which concluded with the words,“Surely it is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our might in promoting Christ’s kingdom!” This pamphlet, along with an impassioned sermon he gave to a 1792 meeting of the Northamptonshire Baptist Association, led to the formation of the first Baptist missionary society. India was selected as the fledgling society’s first mission outpost, and William Carey was selected as its first missionary.

Along with a Dr. Thomas, a British surgeon, Carey set sail in November 1793 for Calcutta. Carey’s wife, who had been largely unsympathetic to her husband’s passion for missions, joined the voyage at the last moment, accompanied by their four small children.

The missionaries faced difficulties from the outset, largely because they had no precedents to guide them. The funds they brought with them were soon spent, and Carey and Thomas were forced to take employment with an indigo plantation in order to survive. In 1796 fever swept through the area, and the Careys’ 5-yearold son succumbed to it. Mrs. Carey sank into mental instability, a condition from which she would never recover. At the time, Carey wrote these wrenching words PRISM 2006

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in his diary: “This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me...But I rejoice that I am here, not withstanding, and God is here, who can not only have compassion, but is able to save to the uttermost!”

Seven long years went by without winning a single soul to Christ, but Carey at last was able to establish a missionary colony at Serampore, and here he baptized his first Hindu convert, a man who lived to preach Christ for the next 20 years.

From this point on, Carey’s work took on huge consequence. His bent for linguistics allowed him to gain fluency in Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindustani, and other native tongues, and he was given a prestigious professorship of Indian languages at Fort William College in Calcutta. He held this post for the next 30 years and poured all but a few rupees of his salary into the spreading of the gospel.

After the death of his wife in 1807, Carey married a Danish missionary, Charlotte Rumohr, who proved to be a great helpmate in his biblical translation work. Convicted that the Indian people must be able to read the Word of God in their own vernacular, Carey set up a paper mill and printing house and eventually was to oversee the translation and printing of the Bible in 40 Indian dialects.

Among Carey’s other accomplishments were the establishment of over 100 rural schools devoted to the education of females, the first Indian newspaper, and the first horticultural society, and the founding of a Christian college at Serampore. By 1814, he and his colleagues had planted 20 mission stations in India, and over half of them were led

by Indian pastors. Carey was also devoted to social reform, and his efforts led to the banning of infanticide in 1802 and to the abolition of sati (where widows were burned on their husbands’ funeral pyres) in 1829. He also campaigned vociferously against child prostitution, slavery, and the caste system. ■ Leslie Hammond

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Elizabeth Fry 1780-1845 The first evidence of Elizabeth Fry’s reforming spirit was her own powerful transformation at age 18 from a frivolous girl who boldly wore scarlet-laced boots to Quaker meeting to a serious young woman who put social outreach above social pleasure. She went on to become one of the strongest voices for prison reform in England as well as an advocate for numerous other causes.

Elizabeth was the third of 12 children of a prominent banking family in Norwich, England. Although her parents were devout Quakers and active in the Society of Friends, the family wore bright and stylish clothing rather than typical Quaker dress. Elizabeth became fond of fashion and amusement and in her teen years often gave excuses for not attending meeting.

Her epiphany occurred in February 1798, when she met William Savery, a Quaker minister from America. “Today I felt there is a God,” she wrote after hearing him speak. “We had much serious talk, and what he said to me was like a refreshing shower on parched up earth.”

To the consternation of her family, Elizabeth took up the plain language and dress of the traditional Quakers. She devoted herself to helping the sick and needy and even set up a Sunday school in her family’s home to teach the poor children of her district to read. In July 1999 she met Joseph Fry, son of a successful merchant and also a plain Friend, and married him a year later. During the first 12 years of marriage Fry gave birth to eight children but managed to devote many hours to teaching boys and girls in the local workhouse and also became a preacher for the Society of Friends.

Despite all that she did, Fry wrote in her diary in 1812, “I fear that my life is slipping away to little purpose.” Soon after Fry wrote these plaintive words, Stephen Grellet, a prominent Quaker missionary and friend of the Fry family, paid a visit to Newgate Prison to learn of the conditions there. When he told Fry of the appalling way the women prisoners were treated, she decided she must see the conditions for herself.What she found was horrendous: over 300 women and their children in two wards and two cells, forced to sleep on the floor without nightclothes or bedding.Prisoners found guilty and those awaiting trial were commingled in these crowded and unsanitary conditions, and the mood was unruly and often violent.

Fry immediately organized a network of Friends to make warm clothing for the naked newborns she saw (rape by jailers was common, with resulting pregnancies and births), and she brought in clean straw for the women and children to lie on. In subsequent visits to Newgate, Fry prayed with the inmates and comforted the ill. The birth of three more children to the Frys and then the death of one of their daughters put a temporary halt to Fry’s prison visits, but in 1816 she returned. Touched by the plight of the children, who in effect were prisoners along with their mothers, she came up with the idea of a prison school to PRISM 2006

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give them a better start in life.

Rebuffed by the men she approached for backing, she turned instead to her own sex and soon had a working committee of 12 women called the Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. This energetic band not only established the prison school but also introduced a system whereby women prisoners were supervised by a matron and female monitors, provided with materials and instruction in order to be able to make and sell goods, and received regular visits by volunteers who also read the Bible to them.

In 1818 Fry was asked to address a House of Commons committee about prison conditions. This was the first time a woman had been called by such a committee as an expert witness, and Fry, accustomed as she was to speaking in Quaker meeting, gave her testimony clearly and powerfully.

Impressed by what they knew of Fry’s work as well as by the clarity of her testimony, the Members of Parliament were receptive until she voiced her opinion that capital punishment was “evil and produced evil results.” At this time in England criminals could be executed for over 200 offenses, including stealing clothes or passing forged banknotes, and Fry had been grieved the previous year when she was unable to gain reprieve for two women sentenced to hang for forgery. A month after expressing her views to the House of Commons, Fry again took up the case of a woman condemned to the gallows for forgery, and for this she was branded by Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth as a “dangerous” person. He warned that Elizabeth Fry and other reformers were trying to “remove the dread of punishment in the criminal classes.”

Fry and her fellow prison reformers were more successful under the next Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, and the 1823 Gaols Act incorporated many Continued on page 5.

If you are an urban dweller who does not have the opportunity to get out of the city, make an effort to get outside into God’s creation during your lunch hour over the next week.Whether it is sunny or rainy, sit in a local park and reflect on God’s glory shining through the plants and animals around you. Visit a local farmer’s market; buy the foods that are in season and plan a feast with friends;

spend time praying for farmers around the world whose livelihood is in jeopardy because of environmental degradation or unjust trade agreements.

Early Celtic Christians believed that creation was translucent and that the glory of God shone through it. They also believed that all of life reflected God’s creative presence and sustaining love. The wonder and glory of God are all around

us. May we all open our eyes to see and to experience God in new ways over this summer season. ■

Reflections continued from page 2.

care for a parent or child, those blessings that so beautify and frame the tapestry of our lives? And where is my gratitude for the food I am blessed enough to cook or the clothes I have to wash, for the relationships I enjoy that require sacrifice and humility, or the forgiveness I have through Christ?

But when, by grace, I see myself in proper relationship to God and his creation and recognize the larger story in which I play only a small (albeit beloved) part, even the most repetitive of daily tasks suddenly crack open to reveal a promise of joy. Life is indeed relentless —relentlessly good, because its Creator is relentlessly loving and eternally with us. When we are most overwhelmed or most bored, we are most blind.

As G.K. Chesterton explains it,“A child

kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say,‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again,’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again,’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” ■

on the subject of prison conditions. She also took up other causes: setting up District Visiting Societies to help the of her recommendations. Unfortunately, poor, libraries for the Coast Guard, and Peel’s reforms did not apply to debtors’ a nurse’s training school whose graduprisons or local jails, and Fry and her ates accompanied Florence Nightingale brother Joseph Gurney toured through- to the Crimea. She campaigned for the out the British Isles, gathering evidence London homeless, sought better treatto bring about further reform legislation. ment for patients in mental hospitals, By the 1820s Fry was a well-known and promoted the reform of workpersonality whose advice was often sought houses and hospitals.

The young Queen Victoria was a great admirer of Fry, writing in her journal that she considered her a “very superior person.” Fry continued her work until October 1845, when she succumbed to a brief illness. Over 1,000 people stood in silent respect as the “Angel of Newgate” was laid to rest in the Society of Friends graveyard at Barking. ■

veterans have observed, nearly once every day the Divine struggle for justice should make us laugh—for the juxtaposition of the grandness and glory of the calling with the quality of his recruits is sure evidence of a comic heart within the Sovereign.

Harvest, fellowship, beauty, truth, joy, laughter, justice: these are just a few of God’s gifts that we celebrate in this issue.

And this brings me back to the beginning of this reflection, which finds me whining about life’s relentlessness. It happens whenever I place myself on center stage —suddenly my privileges look strangely like burdens. But is it not an honor to

Not to Be Forgotten continued from page 3.

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Christine and Tom Sine share this column.

Christine’s latest book is Sacred Rhythms: Finding a Peaceful Pace in a Hectic World (Baker Books, 2003).Visit their Mustard Seed Associates website at msainfo.org and join the discussion.

Leslie Hammond

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

St. Vincent de Paul 1580-1660 Born of peasant stock in a small village in Gascony, France, Vincent de Paul never envisioned that he would devote his life to the cause of the poor. His strongest boyhood ambitions were to escape his own poverty and elevate himself socially, and it was for these practical reasons he chose the priesthood—the best career path at the time for an intelligent boy of humble background.

Young Vincent applied himself diligently to his studies with the local Franciscan friars and was able to enter the University of Toulouse in 1596 at the age of 16. At 20 he achieved ordination, and the next several years saw him well on his way to the notable ecclesiastical career he desired—serving with the papal vice-legate in Avignon, undertaking a secret papal mission to Henry IV, and becoming almoner to Queen Marguerite of Valois.

In 1612 Vincent took charge of the parish of Clichy near Paris, but he quickly left the parish to take the pres-

tigious position of tutor to the children of the wealthy de Gondi family and spiritual director to Mme. de Gondi.

Early on in this new position, however, Vincent found his heart turning away from the quest for advancement and toward the plight of the peasants on the de Gondi estate. He started a mission outreach toward the estate workers, whose physical and spiritual needs had been largely ignored by the local parish priests. His preaching to these peasants was simple and direct and focused on confession, repentance, forgiveness, and the love of God. Leaving the de Gondi estate for a few months in 1617,Vincent returned to Paris and established the first conference of charity for the assistance of the poor.

When he returned to the de Gondi estate that same year, he was accompanied by several priests who worked with him in his peasant outreach.Together they founded conferences of charity in Joigny and three other villages in Bourgogne.

One of the positions held by his patron, M. de Gondi, was that of general of the galleys of France, and Vincent’s empathy was soon captured by the abysmal conditions to which convicts were subjected before being placed aboard the galleys. Wearing leg chains, they were crowded into damp and vermin-infested dungeons, where they were given only black bread and water. Concerned with their low moral state as well as their physical deprivation,Vincent began visiting the convicts, telling them of God’s love for them and caring tenderly for their physical afflictions. Many convicts were converted, and Vincent soon enlisted other priests and lay people to visit the dungeons. This public interest led to the establishment of a hospital for convicts in Paris and another in Marseilles and to Vincent’s appointment as almoner of the galleys.

Encouraged by the accomplishments of his missions and with the support of Mme. de Gondi, in 1625 Vincent founded PRISM 2006

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a religious institute dedicated to countryside evangelism, calling it the Congregation of Priests of the Mission. Soon wealthy men and women came to him, expressing a wish to amend their lives with good works, and he organized them into a confraternity of charity dedicated to caring for the poor and visiting the sick.

At the time there was a scarcity of seminaries in France, and candidates for the priesthood often received little more than instruction in how to administer the sacraments. At the urging of the Bishop of Paris,Vincent began to conduct retreats for young men about to be ordained, although he was loath at first to dissipate the resources of his mission institute. He recognized, however, that building up the clergy would ultimately benefit the poor, and he proceeded in trust that God would provide the means, which he did, in the form of a wealthy benefactor. Vincent’s retreats, which at first lasted only 10 days, gave rise to full-fledged seminaries with courses of clerical instruction lasting for two or three years. Eventually Vincent accepted the directorship of 11 such seminaries throughout France.

Out of Vincent’s charitable works arose an order of nuns called the Daughters of Charity, which today is the largest Catholic order for women worldwide.

Of them he wrote, “Their convent is the sickroom, their chapel the parish church, their cloister the streets of the city.” When Vincent became aware of the huge number of infants abandoned in Paris every year, he established an orphanage and often was seen wandering through the city slums, rescuing the babies he found.

Vincent de Paul died in 1660 and was cannonized in 1737. In 1833, an organization called the Saint Vincent de Paul Society was founded to carry on his work for the poor, and today it boasts more than 1 million members in 120 countries. ■ Leslie Hammond

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Iva Durham Vennard 1871-1945 The deaconess movement in American Protestantism emerged in the late 19th century concomitant to a dramatic increase in women’s public service opportunities, and it provided a valuable venue for women’s full-time service for God, church, and society. To become a deaconess, one completed a course consisting of training in academic subjects, including the Bible, church discipline, and church history, and in practical work, such as nursing, teaching, or evangelism. For many deaconesses, there existed an inherently reciprocal connection between evangelism and their practical work. Such was the case for Iva Durham Vennard, founder of a deaconess training school.

Iva Durham Vennard became a Methodist at the age of 12 when she was converted at a revival meeting. Five years later she claimed the experience of entire sanctification. After teaching for several years, she attended Wellesley College for a year and was poised to complete her college degree at Swarthmore College

when her educational plans were altered at a camp meeting by a call to evangelistic work. Opportunities immediately came her way to participate in revival meetings, first as a singer, then as a preacher.

While in her early 20s, she attended a speech on deaconess work by Lucy Rider Meyer, founder of the first Methodist deaconess training school.

Vennard heard something in Meyer’s words that resonated with her call to evangelistic work, and she immediately enrolled for deaconess training in the Deaconess Home in Buffalo, N.Y. She was soon assigned to be a deaconess evangelist, and in this capacity she held revival meetings in churches throughout the state of New York.

After several years as a deaconess evangelist, in 1902 she founded Epworth Evangelistic Institute, a deaconess training school in St. Louis, Mo. As its name suggested, her school was characterized by its intent to train deaconesses in evangelism. “Real, genuine, soul-saving work,” she once wrote, “is the fundamental mission of all deaconess work, and no deaconess measures up to her privilege in service or fulfills her responsibility toward God who does not aim persistently at the definite regeneration of her people.”

While Vennard cared passionately for evangelism and devoted her life to training students in its practice, she brought similar zeal to humanitarianism, which she understood as attending to temporal benefits such as better living conditions and social improvements. Humanitarianism, she believed, encompassed three areas: industrial, medical, and educational.

For that reason, students at Epworth were trained in settlement work, nursing and hygiene, and industrial training. Their curriculum in these areas was complemented by practical experience, which was readily at hand since Vennard purposely chose to situate Epworth in a notorious tenement district called Kerry Patch.

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The deaconess work sponsored by Epworth in Kerry Patch included a combination of evangelism and humanitarianism. Deaconesses visited in homes, jails, the juvenile court, and in the red light district. They ran a travelers’ aid ministry to care for runaway children and unprotected girls. They also provided nursing care in homes and city hospitals, pursued evangelistic work in city missions, and staffed the Epworth Emergency Home, where girls considered incorrigible by the Juvenile Court were sheltered. In addition, some deaconesses lived in Epworth Settlement, an outreach house which offered programs for the community, such as a Sunday school, kindergarten, sewing school, girls’ and boys’ clubs, a library, and a thrift fund.

In the following quote, an Epworth graduate articulates what she received from her deaconess training:“We find our pattern in the example of our Saviour Who while he pitied the suffering body, pitied the sin-sick soul more, and we hear Him not only say take up thy bed and walk, but thy sins which were many are all forgiven.

Every field thus far opened up to the deaconess offers peculiar advantages for transforming the lives of those with whom she comes in touch.”

After nearly a decade as principal of Epworth, Vennard moved to Chicago and in 1910 founded Chicago Evangelistic Institute, where she continued her holistic training in evangelism and practical work for women and men who intended to be ministers, evangelists, and missionaries. Shortly after her death, the school was relocated to rural Iowa and continues today, under the name of its founder, as Vennard College. ■ Priscilla Pope-Levison is professor of theology and assistant director of women’s studies at Seattle Pacific University and author of Turn the Pulpit Loose: Two Centuries of Amer ican Women Evangelists (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Matteo Ricci 1552-1610 Conversion of the Chinese people to Christianity seemed a fruitless cause in the late 16th century. The early influence of Nestorian missionaries in the 7th century and Catholic monks in the 13th and 14th centuries had withered completely, and recent missionary efforts by various Catholic orders had been stonewalled by Chinese authorities.

Into this atmosphere came an Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, who confounded his coreligionists by taking a different tack in bringing Christianity to China. Rather than taking the attitude that he was bringing enlightenment to an ignorant people, he armed himself with knowledge about the culture he was entering and demonstrated respect for the profound intellectual curiosity he encountered. He also demonstrated infinite patience and tact, knowing that the message he was carrying was worth the wait.

Ricci was born in 1552 in Macerata, Papal States. Discussion of religion was prohibited in his home, but the young

boy was increasingly drawn to the theological teachings at the local Jesuit school he attended. At the age of 17 he went off to Rome to study law but soon yielded to the call of the priesthood, entering the Society of Jesus at the College of Rome in 1571. In addition to studying philosophy and theology, he studied mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy under the celebrated Christopher Clavius, studies that would later serve him well in China.

In 1577 Ricci announced his desire to become a missionary to the Far East, and the following year he was dispatched by the Jesuits to the Portuguese Indies, where he spent the next four years in ministry and teaching. Finally he received the summons to come to Macao and prepare to enter China. There he waited for five years, enduring obstacle after obstacle, until the authorities finally admitted him and a fellow Jesuit, Father Michele de Ruggieri, to take up residence at Chao-k’ing, the administrative capital of Canton, in 1583.

While waiting in Macao, the Jesuit fathers had applied themselves to learning the Mandarin language and had also learned something of the Chinese mindset. While they did not hide their faith or the fact that they were priests, they knew they had to overcome Chinese pride and fear of foreign influence before they could take the initiative in sharing their Christian message. Their first step was to display in their house a picture of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms. Chinese visitors always inquired about the meaning of this picture, and this gave them an opportunity to share the basic tenets of Christianity.

Realizing that the Chinese had a natural intellectual curiosity, they also displayed other things they had brought with them—clocks, mathematical and astronomical instruments, books, paintings, maps, and architectural drawings.

Word soon spread of the marvels the PRISM 2005

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European priests had in their home, and the object that drew the most interest was a beautifully drawn map of the world. The Chinese had maps, too, but they showed the world beyond China as consisting only of a few islands totaling a size less than the smallest of the Chinese provinces. Although Chinese scholars at first protested the validity of the European map, they eventually accepted that it had been carefully constructed by learned geographers and asked Father Ricci if he could draw a replica with the names of the countries, rivers, and oceans in Chinese.When it was completed, the governor of Chao-k’ing had it printed and gave copies as presents to his influential friends.

Father Ricci wrote in his journal of the importance of this map to his missionary efforts: “This was the most useful work that could be done at that time to dispose China to give credence to the things of our holy Faith.… Their conception of the greatness of their country and of the insignificance of all other lands made them so proud that the whole world seemed to them savage and barbarous compared with themselves; it was scarcely to be expected that they, while entertaining this idea, would heed foreign masters.”

Soon the Chinese were evincing interest in what the Jesuit fathers had really come to lay before them: their Christian faith. The Jesuit priests were careful to show respect for their audience’s beliefs, explaining how the laws of God conform to reason and to many of the teachings of the ancient Chinese sages. After this introduction, they talked to them about the falseness of idolatry and about the love of Jesus and the promise of eternal life. For those wanting to know more about Christianity, the fathers printed a Chinese translation of the Ten Commandments. This moral code found favor with the Chinese, and thousands of these translations were Continued on page 5.

expectations of the communities in which they live.They are usually sincere believers who find that they have very little time for things of the Spirit and even less time to invest in service to others. I find these people seldom even wonder aloud whether their enthusiastic consumerism is serving the common good or not.

Those who choose the second option, of seeking first the kingdom, don’t find their lives easy either in this very demanding world. But they typically attempt to focus their lives both inwardly and outwardly, taking time both to nourish their relationship to God and to explore how they can use their mustard seeds to

make a difference in the world. Instead of being preoccupied with the symbols of status, prestige, and wealth creation, they are constantly seeking to imagine new ways to steward their time and resources so that they can free up more of both to invest in the work of God’s kingdom.They are convinced that their small efforts make a difference in working for the common good of their neighbors near and far.

The question on the cover of The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience is “Why are Christians living just like the rest of the world?” The answer is this: While many American evangelicals have com-

mitted their lives to Christ, they have not allowed the call to give their lives in service to God and others to be the foundation of their Christian worldview.

This is a critical failing, and I predict that it will seriously undermine the vitality and commitment of the American church in the coming decade. ■

city of Peking. When he was finally allowed to enter the capital in January, 1601, he befriended the emperor,Wan-Li, by repairing two small clocks for him.

This and his mapmaking skills impressed the emperor so much that he opened doors for him, and Ricci was allowed to stay in the capital for the next 10 years while he carried on his apostolate.

Although now accepted by the Chinese and their government, Ricci drew fire from the Catholic hierarchy in his later years. Wanting to honor local traditions, he allowed his converts to carry on their tradition of burning incense in honor of their dead, concluding that it was not really ancestor “worship” but rather a way of showing respect for family members who had gone before. Ricci was criticized for this, especially by other orders that had not enjoyed his success. The affair became known as the “Chinese Rites Controversy,” and Rome took the side of the other orders and tried to cur-

tail Ricci’s work. Peking, however, sided with the Jesuit priest, now known to them as “Li-Ma-Teu,” and he continued his work with government protection until his death in 1610.

During his 27 years in China, Ricci wrote many books and tracts that were widely used in the mission field, but the most influential was his T’ien-chu-she-i (The True Doctrine of God). Reprinted four times before its author’s death, it led countless numbers of Chinese to Christ, and the perusal of it led a later emperor, K’ang-hi, to issue his edict of 1692 granting liberty to preach the gospel. In 2000, Pope John Paul II paid tribute to Ricci with these words: “The authentic way of the Church is man: a way intertwined with profound and respectful intercultural dialogue, as Father Matteo Ricci taught us with wisdom and skill.” ■

Tom and Christine Sine share this column.

Their latest book is Living on Purpose: Finding God’s Best for Your Life (Baker, 2001). Visit their Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org.

Not to Be Forgotten, continued from page 3. distributed, along with a catechism in which the rudiments of Christian doctrine were explained in a dialogue between a pagan and a European priest.

Father Ruggieri was called back to Europe in 1588, and Ricci carried on with only the assistance of a young cleric. He experienced a setback the next year, when a Chinese official took over his house and expelled him from Chao-k’ing, but he soon set up residence in Shao-chow, where he dismissed his interpreters and began wearing the dress of the educated Chinese. After a failed attempt to enter Nan-King, he went instead to Nan-ch’ang, a city famous for its great number of learned men. There he established a Christian church and gained a hearing among the intellectuals by the deep knowledge of Confucianism that he had acquired along the way.

For the next decade, Ricci worked steadily toward his goal of gaining a hearing for Christianity in the capital

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Leslie Hammond

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Emma Ray 1859-1930 For nearly 30 years Emma Ray, who was born into slavery and raised in poverty in Missouri, ministered to the homeless and transient in the slums of Seattle, along with her husband, L.P. They arrived in Seattle immediately following the devastating fire of 1889 in order for L.P. to find work as a stonemason. They also came to Seattle to give him yet another clean start to overcome alcoholism.

Not long after their arrival, Emma was converted at a service in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. L.P. was converted soon after. Immediately they went to their acquaintances,“with whom we had danced, drank [sic] beer, and played cards,” and told them about their conversion. Emma and L.P.’s religious experience continued as they were entirely sanctified, in Wesleyan/Holiness language, with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now they were ready, as Emma explained in her autobiography, for the next phase of their life:“We were standing in our places ready for the battle, and

waiting for orders at the Spirit’s command.”

From that time on, Emma and L.P. immersed themselves in evangelistic work with the poor and oppressed.They visited places where those in trouble could be found, particularly the jail and hospital. Their regular jail visitation led to holding services on Sunday afternoons, where a bathtub doubled as an altar. For those prisoners who responded favorably to the gospel message, the Rays offered their home as a temporary refuge, along with new clothes, a bath, food, some jobs to do, and money for a shave. Emma recalled one occasion when she washed a man’s old coat that was “full of vermin,” but she sang while washing and received “one of the greatest blessings ever” by the time she reached the chorus.

Emma also teamed up with “Mother” Ryther, who ran an orphanage in Seattle.

On Wednesday afternoons, the two women visited prostitutes and held meetings in the brothels.They also searched for homeless dope addicts, who hid away “under the wharves, upstairs in old deserted buildings,” even in “deserted outhouses in the mud flats.” On one occasion, a young addict, who had been arrested as a vagabond, asked Emma to stay with her in jail. Because the jailer knew Emma from her frequent visitation, permission was granted. In her autobiography, Emma gave an account of that experience: “We went into our cells.They gave me a hammock right alongside of hers. I had taken from my home a pillow and a blanket.They locked the door beside us, and there we were to wait upon the Lord until we got a sign that the appetite was gone.” After some setbacks, the woman was freed from her addiction.

From 1900 to 1902, the Rays returned to Kansas City, Mo., to reconnect with their families. While there they founded a mission as an outreach for children in an impoverished area known as Hick’s Hollow.They provided clothes, meals, a warm place to gather in the winPRISM 2005

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ter, trips to the park in the summer, and a weekly afternoon Sunday school.“We couldn’t have it until one o’clock,” explained Emma,“as the people caroused all night and didn’t get up early enough in the morning for the children to come at the usual hour.”

Before departing for Kansas City, they had joined the Free Methodist denomination because of its adherence to the doctrine of entire sanctification and its commitment to urban mission work.

For nearly 15 years, until their early 60s, Emma and L.P. preached the Sunday evening evangelistic service at The Olive Branch Mission, which was run and staffed by Free Methodists. Both of the Rays were licensed as Conference Evangelists, and they preached revival meetings in Free Methodist churches throughout the state of Washington.

In 1926 Emma published Twice Sold, Twice Ransomed:Autobiography of Mr. and Mrs. L.P. Ray (Free Methodist Publishing House), taking her title from this neat summary of her life:“I was born twice, bought twice, sold twice, and set free twice. Born of woman, born of God; sold in slavery, sold to the devil; freed

by Lincoln, set free by God.” Near the close of the book, Emma reflected on the color of her skin:“I am perfectly satisfied with my color, and I would be almost frightened to death if I should turn white.I can truly say that I have never seen anyone with whom I would change faces or places. I am satisfied with the way God made me. I want to be just myself in the Lord, because it pleases Him to have it so. ... The Lord has a peculiar armor which just fits Emma Ray, and to be a success in Him I want to wear my own,for another person’s armor is a misfit.” ■ Priscilla Pope-Levison is professor of theology and assistant director of women’s studies at Seattle Pacific University, and author of Turn the Pulpit Loose: Two Centuries of American Women Evangelists (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Thomas Chalmers 1780-1847 Although best known for his role in the “Disruption of 1843,” which led to the creation of the Free Church of Scotland, Thomas Chalmers was a man of diverse talents and undertakings,to each of which he brought enthusiasm, energy, and a power to arouse others to action. One biographer called him a “theologian who could speak to the man in the street.”

Others cited his social projects, his powerful oratory, his gift for mathematics, and his prolific writing. There was no single occupation:Chalmers was a teacher, a preacher, a church statesman, a scholar, a social reformer, and, above all, a man who looked to the Bible as a guidebook for living.

Born in 1780 in the small Scottish fishing village of Anstruther Easter on the southeastern coast of Fife, Chalmers was the sixth of 14 children in a middleclass merchant family. His parents enrolled him at age 12 in the University of St.Andrews, where his natural enthusiasm and curiosity found its focus in the study of mathematics, politics, and

ethics.At age 15 he took up a course in divinity and at age 19 graduated with a presbytery license to preach the gospel.

The ministry was put on hold while he spent two years studying higher math at the University of Edinburgh, but in 1802, after a brief stint as an assistant minister in the Scottish Borders, Chalmers was given the living of the parish of Kilmany, not far from St.Andrews. Here he managed to serve two masters,preaching at Kilmany on Sundays and working as assistant professor of mathematics at the university during the week.Although he was noted for eloquence in both roles, his sermons tended to follow the high moral tone of the day rather than stemming from any real commitment to the gospel.

After nine years of able but uninspired ministry, a bout with serious illness— coupled with the reading of William Wilberforce’s A Practical View of Christianity and Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts on Religion—finally brought Chalmers to a spiritual awakening. He realized that it was acceptance of the message of salvation that brought about real change within a person and that moral exhortations from the pulpit had “no more weight than a feather.”A new fervor came to his preaching, and people streamed from the outlying districts to hear him speak on the saving grace of Christ.

He also began to demonstrate a leaning toward evangelism and became an enthusiastic supporter of Bible societies and foreign missions.

Marriage to Grace Pratt in 1812 produced a lively household of six daughters, a prolificacy matched by the writing that began to pour from his pen. Beginning with an 1813 article on Christianity in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, Chalmers’ published works would run to 32 volumes over his lifetime. In 1815 he was appointed to the Tron Church in Glasgow, where his natural warmth and passionate preaching drew overflow crowds at both morning and evening services. A series of PRISM 2005

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midweek talks on “God, Man, and the Universe” was hugely popular and sold 20,000 copies when distributed in printed form.A second lecture series, entitled “The Application of Christianity to the Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life,” was also printed and widely distributed.

Chalmers’ fame began to spread, and in 1817 he was invited to speak in London, where his talks were attended by prominent political, literary, and religious figures, including William Wilberforce, who had been instrumental in his spiritual rebirth.“All the world has gone wild about Chalmers,”Wilberforce wrote at the time.

Although this celebrity status led to talk of a leadership role in the evangelical faction of the Church of Scotland, Chalmers was leery of fame and spoke of the “treacherous quicksand” of popularity. Instead of focusing his attention on the fashionable people who came to hear him preach, he began to concentrate on the poor. He was keenly aware that one of the most dreadful slums in Europe lay within sight of the Tron—a place called the Calton, which was a labyrinth of dilapidated tenement buildings housing 13,000 of the city’s most impoverished citizens. Chalmers believed that parish churches should be responsible for the poor within their boundaries, and so he convinced the Glasgow Council to build him a church in the very heart of the slum. He was released from his charge at the Tron on June 14, 1819, and inducted as minister of the new St. John’s Church the same day.

Calling upon his motivational and organizational skills, he assembled a dedicated squad of elders and deacons, many of them from the Tron, whose job was to visit and reclaim the destitute, teaching them the redemptive power of Christ and the power also of self-reliance. Sabbath schools were created, and two day schools were built to supply a full education to the children.The seats of the new church Continued on page 5.

single-parent families, the disabled, veterans’ healthcare, and the elderly, as we have seen in the proposed federal budget cuts. But I remain confident that if we help lighten the tax load on our wealthiest citizens it will so grow the economy that it will prove to be absolutely the best thing we can do to help our poorest neighbors, if they can just hold on a while longer.

Some Democrats are raising a stink about a deficit of $427 billion those tax cuts help to create. But I see no reason to join these liberal worrywarts. I am convinced that these tax cuts for the super-rich will enable us to grow our way out of this huge debt and to experience an expansion of consumer choices and extravagant lifestyles that today we can only dream of. Most importantly, this kind of economic growth will increase the power and influence of America throughout the world.

There are a small but troubling number of Christian writers and pundits—

like my friend Ron—who spend a lot of time bad-mouthing materialism, greed, and covetousness.With sincere remorse I confess that at one time I, too, was among those seriously confused believers.

But one has only to look around to see the tremendous benefits of what our new economy has achieved by persuading us to be chronically discontented and to devote our lives to the constant quest for more of what God intended.

Materialism is as American as apple pie. Shouldn’t the pursuit of material gain be a foundation stone of any modern Christian worldview, since it recognizes that the ultimate value of human existence, for both individuals and nations, is defined primarily in terms of economic success? ■ Tom and Christine Sine share this column.

Their latest book is Living on Purpose: Finding God’s Best for Your Life (Monarch Books, 2004).Visit their Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org.

Not to Be Forgotten, continued from page 3. were soon filled with district residents brought to active Christianity at the same time that they were brought out of the trap of poverty.

In 1823, worn out from ceaseless toil in the parish and assured that his welltrained team could carry on his work, Chalmers left St. John’s Parish to lecture on moral philosophy at St. Andrews.

There his evangelistic spirit was influential in inspiring the first generation of Church of Scotland missionaries to India. In 1828 he became professor of divinity at Edinburgh and poured his still considerable energies into lecturing, preaching, and writing.When the Church was split by the Disruption of 1843,

Come to Washington September 18

which came about as a result of longstanding interference by the state in church matters, Chalmers became first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland.

Just four years later, at the time of the General Assembly, Dr. Chalmers was missed at the morning session, and someone was sent to his quarters to check on him. There it was found that he had “suddenly and unexpectedly slipped peacefully away.” His funeral was the largest ever seen in Edinburgh, with thousands of his fellow Scots paying their respects as the cortege took his body to its resting place in Grange Cemetery. ■ Leslie Hammond

For the first time in the history of the United States, a broadly based Christian organization, representing all the major streams of American church life, is being formed. All the major Christian families— evangelicals/Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, historic ethnic, and mainline Protestants.

—are launching a new process, Christian Churches Together in the USA. This has never happened before in American history.

The national launch will take place in Washington, D.C., at the National Cathedral at 4:00 p.m. on September 18. You are invited to attend!

I have had the privilege of serving on the Steering Committee, working especially on encouraging evangelical/Pentecostal denominations to join.

Seven have already decided to do that and many more are discussing it.

Evangelicals for Social Action and World Vision will also be founding members.

For details on the event, go to www.christianchurchestogether.org Ron Sider PRISM 2005

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NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Frances Willard 1839-1898 “Two things must occupy your thinking powers to the exclusion of every other thing: first, the goal; and second, the momentum requisite to reach it.”

Remarkably, when Frances Willard penned these words three years before her death, she was not looking back at her work as leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, her tenure as a college and university administrator, her tireless stumping for women’s suffrage, her battle against prostitution, her advocacy of prison reform, or any of her other social causes—but was rather referring to her late-life attempt to master the riding of a bicycle!

Goal and momentum were watchwords for Willard throughout her life.

Born in Churchville, N.Y., in 1839, Willard moved with her family six years later to a farm in Wisconsin Territory.

From childhood she had her eyes fixed on acquiring a higher education. She first attended Milwaukee Female College with her sister, Mary, and then trans-

ferred to Northwestern Female College near Chicago, Ill., where she graduated with honors and served as valedictorian of her class.

Known as “Frank” to her family and friends,Willard held a series of teaching posts in the years after graduation and then in 1868 embarked on a lengthy tour of Europe to study firsthand its art and classical ruins. Upon her return in 1871, she was named president of the newly established Evanston College for Ladies, which was absorbed into Northwestern University in 1873.Willard was named dean of women of the newly coeducational institution and also served as a professor of aesthetics. Although she achieved a major goal by bringing self-government to the student body, she was in constant conflict over other issues with the newly appointed university president, Charles Henry Fowler (who happened to be her former fiancé), and she found her administrative power diminishing. She resigned her position in 1874.

Writing of Willard’s leave-taking, one of her former students recalled that she knew then the great future that lay ahead for her beloved teacher: “There could be no bounds set for her that had such inimitable mental power, such unwavering purpose. Her amiability, her originality, her talent for organization, and her silver-tongued oratory rendered her a leader and won for her sincere devotion.”

It did not take long for Willard to take up a new mission.The temperance movement, which had been around in one form or another since Colonial days, was suddenly being invaded by women. In 1873 the Women’s Temperance Crusade had swept over 23 states, with women church members going arm-in-arm into saloons, where they sang hymns, prayed, and implored saloonkeepers to stop selling liquor. In November, 1874, a coalition of temper-

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ance crusaders was formed under the banner of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

Turning down a position as head of a prestigious girls’ school,Willard threw her energies instead into the temperance crusade and became secretary of the Illinois chapter of the newly formed WCTU. Her gift for public speaking soon gave her a prominent role on the group’s lecture circuit, and she traveled ceaselessly to present the temperance message at home and abroad. In 1879 she became president of the national organization, a position she held until her death.

Willard saw the WCTU as a platform from which women could address a variety of social ills and injustices, and under her leadership the organization expanded its conscience far beyond the issue of temperance. She declared a “Do Everything Policy” and set up departments to address such causes as a living wage, an eight-hour day, courts of conciliation and arbitration, an improved Indian policy, abolition of prostitution, reform of civil service and prisons, and the thorny issue of women’s suffrage.

The latter cause had been a focus of Willard’s since girlhood. In a journal entry written in 1856, the 17 year old wrote of watching with her sister as their 21-year-old brother, Oliver, rode off in the family wagon with their father and the farm’s hired hands to vote for “freesoiler” candidate John C. Fremont in the presidential election:“Somehow I felt a lump in my throat, and then I could not see their wagon any more, things got so blurred. I turned to Mary, and she, dear little innocent, seemed wonderfully sober, too. I said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to vote as well as Oliver? Don’t you and I love the country just as well as he, and doesn’t the country need our ballots?’”

Willard began her campaign for suffrage by calling for a “home protection ballot,” which would give women a Continued on page 5.

us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 John 3:16-18).

Through his life and actions Jesus showed us a God of love and compassion and encourages us to go and tell others about this God—not just through our words but through our actions as well.

What is our response to disaster and calamity in our own lives and in the broader world? Do we respond out of love or fear? Do we isolate ourselves behind walls of indifference or break down barriers with our compassionate response? My prayer is that the outpouring of love and compassion following the disastrous tsunami at the end of 2004 will not only be sustained but will also spread out and break down the barriers that fear has created over the last few years. May our eyes be opened to remember the millions who face the possibility of death, starvation, and disease daily because of poverty, injustice,

and oppression so that we will extend our love and compassion to them, too.

As we continue to pour out our love to victims in Southeast Asia, may it broaden our understanding of what it means to be Christ’s representatives of love in a broken world. This kind of love transcends culture, language, ethnicity, and religion. It breaks down barriers, overcomes fear, and brings the offer of new life in the midst of disaster. As Michael Leunig writes,“Love one another and you will be happy. It is as simple and as difficult as that.There is no other way. Amen.” ■ Christine’s latest book is Sacred Rhythms: Finding a Peaceful Pace in a Hectic World (Baker Books, 2003). Christine and Tom Sine share this column.Visit their Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org.

Not to Be Forgotten, continued from page 3. limited right to vote on temperance matters. In 1881 she introduced leading suffragist Susan B. Anthony from the WCTU podium, and in 1882 she brought the WCTU firmly out in support of suffrage. Although Willard was largely successful in bringing WCTU members to that cause, she was not able to bring them to the other political activism that she felt was essential. In 1882 Willard joined the Prohibition Party and in 1890 plunged her energies into the new Populist Party, but she was unsuccessful in bringing the populists to support women’s suffrage or the prohibitionists to embrace populism.

In 1892 Willard began spending much of her time in England. There,

under the influence of the Fabians she came to see poverty rather than intemperance as the chief cause of social ills.

At the 1897 conference of the national WCTU she shocked delegates by embracing socialism: “Socialism is the higher way; it enacts into everyday living the ethics of Christ’s gospel. Nothing else will do.”

Willard, who remained unmarried all her life, died of influenza while visiting New York City in February 1898, her position with the WCTU largely eroded by her embrace of broader political causes. ■ Leslie Hammond

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Eastern Seminary and the Sider Center/ESA announce an opening for a joint appointment for a full-time tenure track position in Theology and Holistic Ministry. The position starts in September, 2005.

This person would teach four courses in the M.Div. and D.Min. Programs at Eastern University and serve as the Director of Network 9:35, a Sider Center/ ESA ministry that provides resources for congregations seeking to combine evangelism and social ministry. Qualifications include skills and interest in combining scholarship, activism and popular communication.

Interested persons should contact Ronald J. Sider at: rsider@eastern.edu PHONE: 610-645-9354 6 East Lancaster Avenue Wynnewood, PA 19096

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

St. Peter Claver 1580-1654 Nearly two centuries before the evils of slavery came to the attention of the political world, a young Catholic priest made the protection and salvation of African slaves the focus of his life, vowing at his ordination to be “a slave of the slaves forever” and spending his remaining 40 years ministering to the urgent needs of their bodies and souls.

Born in Spain in 1580, Peter Claver studied at the Jesuit College of Barcelona and entered the novitiate in 1600.While studying philosophy at the Jesuit College in Majorca, he came under the influence of Alphonsus Rodriguez, the school’s wise and saintly doorkeeper, who exhorted him to evangelize Spain’s territories in the Americas.

In 1610 Claver sailed to Cartagena, a Caribbean port city at the northernmost point of South America. Due to its excellent harbor and its location just east of the Isthmus of Panama, Cartagena

was the center of the slave trade for the Spanish possessions. Picking up captured Africans for four crowns a head in Guinea, Angola, or the Congo, slavetraders would subject their human cargo to a two-month ocean voyage (during which a third to a half would typically die), and then sell the survivors for 200 crowns or more to work in the fields and goldmines.

When Claver arrived in Cartagena, trade was brisk, with over 1,000 slaves arriving by ship each month. It is said that the young Jesuit was “transported with joy” each time a slave ship arrived, but his ministrations to the captives were as practical as they were spiritual. After allaying the Africans’ superstitious fears that their fat was to be used to grease the keels of the ships and their blood to dye the sails, he would distribute food and medicine and administer baptism to the newborn and the dying. Although he was a little man, he often carried the sickest slaves off the ships in his own arms, transporting them to special carts that would take them to lodgings where he cleansed and dressed their sores and sponged their brows with scented water.

As the displaced and terrified Africans cried out to their tribal gods, Claver moved among them, giving gentle assurance that henceforth he was their defender. Knowing that many diverse languages were spoken by the captives, Claver assembled a group of interpreters to translate the message of salvation and employed simple pictures to convey to the slaves that God loved them and that they had dignity and worth in their Father’s eyes.

The little priest’s tireless and passionate dedication to the cause of the African slaves made him a thorn in the side of those who sought fortune in the bustling city of Cartagena. He followed his converts to the plantations where

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they labored, bringing them into the churches to give confession in the same confessionals used by the fashionable wives and daughters of the Spanish slave owners and to receive Communion wine from the same cup. He was vigilant against inhumane treatment of the slaves and constantly reminded the slave masters of the Spanish laws that honored the Africans’ marriages and forbade the breakup of their families. He preached the Christian duty of compassion and humanity wherever he went—to both Catholic and Protestant slave owners and traders and also to the Moors and Turks who participated in the business of selling their dark-skinned brothers.

Father Claver toiled 40 years for the cause of the slaves, ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the newly arrived captives in the summer, fall, and winter and conducting missions to his converts at the outlying plantations and mines every spring. He became known as the Apostle of Cartagena, hearing confessions for hours on end not only from the converted slaves but also from the sailors who transported them and the traders who bought and sold them.

When plague hit the city in 1650, the frail priest, now 70, was among the first victims, and for four years he lay bedridden and largely untended in the humble cell where he lived. As death approached in September, 1654, Cartagenians became suddenly mindful of his saintliness and came to ask his blessing and to steal “relics” from his meager possessions. At the time of his death,he had baptized over 300,000 souls.

Peter Claver was canonized by Pope Leo XII in 1888, along with the man who had inspired his ministry,Alphonsus Rodriguez, the doorkeeper of the Jesuit College in Majorca. ■ Leslie Hammond

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Lillian Trasher 1887-1961 In 1942, as Nazi General Rommel pushed deep into Egypt’s northern desert and soldiers of fortune pillaged the rest of the country, a middle-aged American gazed at the hundreds of hungry Egyptian children under her care and prayed for another miracle.The Lord had always provided, she reminded herself.

Lillian Trasher had been relying on God’s provision ever since arriving in Egypt in 1910 as an independent Pentecostal missionary.When she was a young child growing up in Georgia, she had promised God she would do anything he asked, and at the age of 23 she heard him clearly calling her to go to Africa. Convicted, she broke off her engagement to a young minister, sold her possessions, and sailed to Alexandria, Egypt. From there she traveled south by train to Cairo and then by boat down the Nile to Asyût, where she entered a mission compound and waited to hear what

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God had in store.

Within three months Trasher’s life’s work was laid before her—in the form of a malnourished infant given to her by a dying Egyptian mother. The mission directors ordered her to return the child to its village, but Trasher refused to abandon it to a life of certain poverty. In February, 1911, she rented a small house, bought a few pieces of furniture, and set up housekeeping for herself and the baby.

She would later date this as the beginning of the Orphanage at Asyût.

Trasher’s immediate concern was feeding the child she had taken in, and—no longer supported by the mission station —she was reduced to begging.The first donation she received was 35 cents, enough for the day’s food. It wasn’t long before the young woman began collecting other orphans, and with each additional child she had to plead longer and harder for the money to feed and clothe them. But always the Lord provided.

By 1914 Trasher had become affiliated with the newly formed Assemblies of God and began receiving occasional donations from the United States, but still she depended mostly upon the charity of her Egyptian neighbors. By 1915 she had 50 orphans in her care. In 1916 she bought additional land, and she and the older children made bricks in their own kiln to construct new buildings.

Then in 1919 political turmoil hit the country. Unable to guarantee Trasher’s safety, the British authorities ordered her out of the country. She wept as she left but spent the next year garnering increased support.When she returned to her beloved Egypt in 1920, she was resolved to take in anyone in need.

By 1923 the Orphanage at Asyût was also housing widows and the blind, and the head count was 300. Sometimes the orphanage ran out of food, but miraculous intervention always arrived in time.

On one such occasion, the residents woke up to find nothing to eat—not even day-

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old bread or sour milk. Unfazed,Trasher gathered her charges around the empty table and told them to thank God for the wonderful meal he would send them.

After the Amen was uttered,a truck pulled up to the back of the orphanage and unloaded sacks of flour, rice, beans, and peas and crates of milk, bread, and eggs —the gift of an anonymous donor.

During the American depression of the 1930s, donations from the States fell to almost nothing, but the orphans continued to arrive and Trasher turned no one away.And again a miracle occurred.

In 1935 Lord Maclay of Scotland visited the orphanage and soon after gave her a check for $5,000 and two years later another check for $25,000. The work could go on.

With the arrival of World War II survival again became a daily struggle for Trasher and her charges. As Rommel’s tanks threatened to take Cairo, bandits were terrorizing the cities to the south.

The city of Asyût had been pillaged, and the bandits’ lead scout had scaled the walls of the orphanage compound, when suddenly he was felled by a single stray shot.

His comrades fled, and the women and children were left unharmed.

And then came a second miracle.

Word arrived from the north that the British had captured a German supply ship and wanted to know if the American missionary and her orphans could use a boatload of food.Two days later a convoy came down the Nile with enough supplies to last the rest of the war, and Trasher’s confidence in the Lord’s provision was once again affirmed.

In the next two decades Lillian Trasher would see a school, dormitories, a chapel, and sports facilities built on the orphanage grounds.When she died in December, 1961, she had become known all over the world as the “Mother of the Nile,” with 25,000 Egyptian children having come under her care. ■

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Edith Stein (St.Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)

1891-1942

BY DAVID L. O’HARA

Edith Stein was born on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in 1891 in Breslau, Germany. The date is auspicious: Her writings illustrate her constant concern for atonement, community, and reconciliation, and her life is an example of faithful stewardship of her talents on behalf of the oppressed and in the face of enormous resistance.

Stein’s life was anything but ordinary.

One of the first in her family to attend university, she earned a doctorate, summa cum laude, in philosophy under Edmund Husserl, one of the greatest philosophical minds of the 20th century. Born Jewish, she declared herself an atheist, then later converted to Christianity after her studies in philosophy.At age 42, she became a Carmelite nun.

Denied a position as a university professor because of both her gender and her Jewish ancestry, Stein labored on behalf of humanity through her writings.

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She polemicized against Nazi propaganda; argued for richer, biblical conceptions of gender, race, and personhood; and petitioned the Roman Catholic Church to protect the Jews. Her legacy is as interesting as her life. Much of her work was unpublished during her lifetime due to anti-Semitic prejudice, but her writings are richly suggestive for addressing modern concerns. In 1999, she was beatified and named Co-Patroness of Europe.

World War I broke out shortly after she began her university studies, and Stein volunteered as a Red Cross nurse in an infectious diseases hospital. She soon became ill, and returned to her studies.

While working with Husserl, she became interested in the philosophical problem of empathy: Simply put, how do we know other people as other people and not merely as objects? Her work served as a corrective to the solipsistic tendency in much modern philosophy and established her path as a philosopher and theologian concerned with community and reconciliation.

After completing her degree, Stein sought a professorship but was rebuffed by law and tradition. Converting to Christianity in the early 1920s, Stein joined the Catholic Women’s Movement in Germany and helped win the right for women to teach in universities. Still unable to find a university position (now due to anti-Semitism), she turned her sights to Christian philosophy and wrote a number of original works on women, race, and personhood. She joined the Carmelites in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. Her works became increasingly theological but were always marked by a practical advocacy on behalf of the oppressed.

The Nazi slogan “race is destiny” meant that those who had the “right” bloodlines were destined to power, while others could be trampled on. On the contrary, Stein argued, race is not destiny but heritage. Human racial diversity shows the adaptive nature of God’s creation and PRISM 2004

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is the mark of human commitments to each other and to a common life on common land. It is not fixed destiny at all, but a testimony to our ability to change and to live in community. Furthermore, she argued, people are not mere biological bodies. Rather, each person bears the mark of the Trinity:We are all complex unities of body, soul, and spirit, and we are at our most human when we are bound by mutual commitment.

Modern philosophical misunderstandings of humanity extended to gender as well. Stein argued against both narrow feminist quests for total equality and narrow traditionalist views of women.

Education, she said, does injustice to women if it fails to educate the whole person and attend to the ways in which men and women differ.

Keenly aware of rising anti-Semitism in Germany, she could have kept silent in her convent and so escaped notice.

Instead, she petitioned for an audience with the Pope and entreated the Catholic hierarchy to oppose the persecution of the Jews. Her outspokenness against state policies earned her the Nazis’ animosity, and, fearing that her presence endangered her Carmelite sisters, Stein asked to be transferred to a convent in Echt, Netherlands.

In 1940 she escaped to Holland and took up residence there, but Holland was soon under Nazi rule. The Nazis had promised to leave Jewish converts alone in exchange for official church silence.

In response, the clergy of 10 denominations publicly denounced Nazi deportations of Dutch Jews. Stein and other Jews were promptly arrested and deported.

Stein was murdered in Auschwitz shortly after her arrival there on August 9, 1942.

A modern-day Esther, Stein was an outsider who used her influence on behalf of others who were even less empowered. She used her philosophical training to remind other philosophers of the importance of community. She used Continued on page 5.

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The growing marginalization of our faith not only threatens our spiritual vitality but also our authentic witness in an increasingly secular world. morning in which they prayed for the coming of the Holy Spirit. They had prayers for milking the cows, planting the fields, and harvesting their crops.

Farmers even routinely stopped in the fields during the day for times of prayer as the Celtic monks stopped to pray.

In this pre-modern faith all of life became a sacrament and every act a liturgy. One has only to read the rich prayers of the Celtic Christian tradition or listen to the towering grandeur of the Celtic hymn “Be Thou My Vision” to experience something of the depth of their spirituality.

We urge busy believers in our modern world to join with these saints and recover a sense of the sacred in all of life.

We challenge you to free up time for your spiritual disciplines throughout the day, observe a weekly Sabbath, and take periodic prayer retreats.

In Prayers for the Fast-Paced and CyberSpaced by William John Fitzgerald (Forest of Peace, 2000), the author offers daily prayers for us to use as we go online, are held up in traffic, or stand in line at the grocery store.We need to find imaginative ways to connect our entire lives with impulses of our faith instead of allowing them to be preoccupied with the addictions of our culture.

There is a growing hunger in the Western church for a more vital spirituality. Saint Thomas Anglican Church in Sheffield, England, has recently insti-

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tuted a new lay order, much like the rule of life of Third Order Franciscans. It is called the Order of Mission. Growing numbers of younger Christians are adopting this rule and carving out much greater space in their lives for spirituality and mission (www.sttoms.net).

Several months ago I attended a conference called “A New Monasticism,” put on by a group of young Christians who are a part of experimental new Christian communities, such as Communality, the Simple Way, and Rutba House. These young people are keen to find a spirituality that not only nurtures their spirits but also equips them to work more effectively with the poor in their communities. (For more information you can contact Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove at jwh16@duke.edu.)

In 1989 we mortgaged our house to purchase 40 acres on an island north of Seattle. Our dream was to create a residential community designed in a way that reflects the early Celtic Christian tradition, and today we hope to use this place to expose young believers to a broad range of Christian spiritual traditions, including the Celtic, to help them design their own spiritual practices.Together we hope to learn to live in community, with spiritual directors who offer two prayer offices a day. On the weekends we hope to use it as place for directed prayer retreats for Christians of all ages.We are always looking for fellow dreamers (email us at mail@msainfo.org).

We urge those interested in a more serious whole-life faith to begin by discovering a sense of God’s call on your life through Scripture study, prayer, and community.We urge you to express that sense of call in a biblically shaped mission statement and then to use that statement to create a liturgy of life, family rituals, and celebrations that bring your faith into every part of your life, creating a richer, more festive way of life than anything modern culture and the global consumer mall can offer. ■ PRISM 2004

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Visit the Sines’ Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org, where they host online forums on such topics as culture, faith, future trends, and God’s alternative vision for our world.

Not to Be Forgotten continued from page 3. her academic credentials to fight for women in academia.As a Jewish convert to Christianity she did not reject her people, but attempted, as she put it, to bear the cross for them. Her advocacy for disenfranchised people works out the heart of her Christian thought, and her example is worth our long reflection. ■ David O’Hara is a graduate student in philosophy at Penn State University. He is the author, with Matthew Dickerson, of a book on understanding myth and fantastic literature (forthcoming from Brazos Press) and is currently editing the religious writings of the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce.

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Matthew Anderson 1845-1928

BY WILLIAM ALLISON

In 1879, Matthew Anderson was an energetic and ambitious young pastor on his way from Yale to the South to lead a school when he accepted an invitation to meet with Dr. John Reeve, the senior pastor of Philadelphia’s Lombard Central Presbyterian Church. Dr. Reeve wanted to meet Anderson, believing the young man was divinely equipped for a greater challenge, right there in Philadelphia, than any the South could offer. As the first person of color to graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary, perhaps the only Presbyterian pastor of color in the world at that time, Anderson possessed the rare gifts so desperately needed to bridge the racial gap that was widening in the North.

Thousands of African Americans were streaming north to escape the Jim Crow system and take advantage of America’s Industrial Revolution follow-

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ing the Civil War, only to be disappointed by inadequate housing and limited employment options. Socially conscious white leaders, trying to cross a chasm of suspicion, were failing to reach the city’s African-American population.

Born in 1845 to free people of color in Pennsylvania,Anderson learned high expectations from childhood. His family owned a lumber mill and farm. From their home—a “station” on the Underground Railroad—Anderson witnessed history in the making during his teenage years.The Andersons counted back five generations of Presbyterians, members of integrated congregations that believed in the Calvinist work ethic.They taught their children to expect equality and provided Matthew a secondary education, a rarity for many Americans—black or white—at that time.

The young man attended Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the few integrated, co-educational colleges in the world at the time. Working at manual labor jobs, Anderson earned his way through college, mastering the ancient languages (a prerequisite for Divinity School),and applied to Princeton in 1874.

The application form did not request any ethnic identification, so Anderson did not notify them of his race. Impressed with his qualifications, Princeton offered him a scholarship with room and board in the seminary’s dorm. All went well until Anderson appeared in the president’s office, his letter of acceptance in hand. The president hedged, proposing accommodations in the “colored” neighborhood of Princeton, but Anderson insisted on the original offer. Supported by fellow seminarians, he integrated the dorm and completed his Doctor of Divinity.

While at Oberlin College, Matthew Anderson met his future wife, Caroline Still, daughter of a leader of the Underground Railroad. While he completed his divinity degree, she became one of the first African-American women docPRISM 2004

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tors, graduating from the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia. Their marriage was a partnership of pioneers.

Accepting Dr. Reeve’s invitation to serve Philadelphia’s mission of racial reconciliation with the same audacity he had applied to his education, Anderson advocated a vision for self-determination and pride for African-American people.

He called his vision the Berean Enterprises, and its three-pronged approach involved building a congregation, encouraging home ownership,and developing a school.

When Anderson welcomed wealthy industrialists to contribute, he determined to “resolve from the very first to compel respect for himself and the congregation he represented.” He vowed that if he encountered prejudice he would “never allow an insult to pass unnoticed.”

Once snubbed by a railroad executive, he wrote the man a scathing letter, saying “five hundred souls as small as yours could dance on the head of a needle.”

Stunned by Anderson’s courage, the official apologized, sending a contribution.

Anderson’s first step in realizing his vision was to establish Berean Presbyterian Church, an independent congregation.

Next, he undertook his mission to offer better housing to people of color. From the church basement, Reverend Anderson began the Berean Savings & Loan Association to collect savings.The first home was bought with a $1,000 mortgage.

Then he tackled education.Anderson organized the Berean Manual Training and Industrial School, starting with 35 students at the tuition of a dollar a month.

Within two years the student population grew to over 300.Anderson wrote, “No people becomes strong financially which neglects the industrial training of its youth.”

Ahead of his time, Anderson envisioned a future, which he described in a speech in 1902, “when the American people will not ask whether the workman is white or black,but whether he has Continued on page 5.

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about social justice. In fact, leaders on the religious right often favor tax policies that benefit the wealthiest Americans while cutting social programs to our poorest neighbors.

There is another reason for this enormous migration of American evangelicals into the Republican Party. In Battle for the Mind (Fleming H. Revel, 1979) Tim LaHaye presented an extremely polarizing notion of what has gone wrong in society.Without any evidence, he argued that a small group of secular humanists had already taken over our public schools, universities, and all the major communications networks. He insisted that this conspiratorial elite is intent on collectivizing us into a Godless, one-world gulag.

This, of course, is the political subtext of the popular Left Behind series.

What’s more, this insistence that secular humanists have taken over public schools has undoubtedly led to the growing evangelical animosity towards public education and the recent call at the Southern Baptist Convention for Christians to take their children out of public schools.

As I mentioned in the last issue of PRISM, nowhere else in the world have I ever heard evangelicals spouting the mantra, so common on Christian radio in America, that a sinister elite of secular humanists, liberals, and feminists in Washington, D.C., is out to destroy the Christian family, take away our liberties, take away our guns, and get us ready for a one-world socialist takeover.

This type of polarizing analysis makes those on the other end of the political spectrum cosmic enemies instead of just people with whom the religious right disagrees politically. Listen to the fearful warnings of one Presbyterian pastor in Portland, Oreg., who has obviously embraced this conspiratorial fiction: “Western European socialists and their American supporters want to dominate the world as much as militant Muslims want Islam to. Their vehicles are the

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United Nations, the European Union, and international institutions such as the International Court.”

This kind of fear-mongering not only has been remarkably effective at galvanizing evangelicals around a very conservative political agenda but also makes an evangelical voting for a Democratic candidate an unthinkable possibility as we approach the 2004 election.

So how should Christians who do not subscribe to either this very conspiratorial view of what has gone wrong or to a very politically conservative advocacy seek to have a Christian influence in the complex world in which we live?

Let me outline one proposal to begin taking back American evangelicalism around a biblical agenda that transcends the deep polarizations of our culture wars.

I propose that ESA host an international conference with the National Association of Evangelicals (in the United States) and its equivalent abroad, the Evangelical Alliances, which are currently in 33 other nations, including Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. I suggest that evangelical scholars be invited to work with these other evangelical leaders to (1) provide a new biblically informed analysis of what has gone wrong in society to replace the highly politicized secular-humanist critique; (2) offer a new biblically shaped view of Christian social responsibility of compassion that not only transcends right and left but also transcends the self-interested agendas of modern nations, including the United States; and (3) challenge all those of Christian faith to set aside the politics of polarization and address the urgent and difficult issues facing our nation and our world with humility and in the spirit of the reconciling Christ. ■ Visit the Sines’ Mustard Seed Associates website at www.msainfo.org, where they host online forums about culture, faith, future trends, and God’s alternative vision for our world.

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Not to Be Forgotten continued from page 3. the qualifications and the skill to do the work required as well…as any other man.”

Matthew Anderson died in 1928 but his work lives on today in Philadelphia, where all three components of the Berean Enterprises thrive independently.

Berean Savings & Loan makes home loans as part of a national AfricanAmerican-owned financial corporation.

The Berean Institute instructs 500 students in courses ranging from cosmetology to IT, and Berean Presbyterian Church still serves its congregation near Temple University. ■ A retired school administrator,William Allison writes about history, religion, and travel from his home in Narberth, Penn.

“Loose the chains of

injustice...”

–Isaiah 58:6

Stand with us as a voice for the poor and oppressed.

Advocate for justice.

www.seekjustice.org

World Vision is an international Christian humanitarian organization serving the world’s poorest children and families in nearly 100 countries.

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Eliza Shirley 1863-1932

BY LESLIE HAMMOND

In September 1878 a 15-year-old girl boldly stepped forward to speak at an outdoor meeting of 5,000 “Salvationists,” who had come from all corners of England to celebrate the establishment of the 35th Corps of the Salvation Army in Coventry. General William Booth, who was on hand as young Eliza Shirley gave testimony of her recent conversion, was so impressed that he delegated a corps leader to approach her about becoming a full-time Salvation Army evangelist.

He had no idea that he would soon be giving his permission for this same young girl to carry his work across the Atlantic and that her fledgling efforts would be the beginning of an American branch that would someday boast over 3.5 million volunteers.

After interviewing with General Booth on that September weekend, Eliza Shirley was convinced that her future lay with his movement. Her parents

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agreed to let her join a corps in the coalmining town of Bishop Auckland, 185 miles from home,and within a few months the teenager had risen to the position of lieutenant. Early in 1879 she received a letter from her father, telling her that he was seeking work in America. A skilled silk weaver by trade, he quickly gained employment in the Kensington section of Philadelphia and wrote to his wife and daughter, asking them to join him.

Amos Shirley had worked as a parttime preacher in England and understood that his daughter would find it hard to leave her evangelistic work, but he managed to capture her interest with the suggestion that she bring the Salvation Army to American soil. “You have no idea of the great numbers of people here who never go to church,” he wrote.

With her customary boldness Eliza approached General Booth. He was not sure America was ripe for opening and at first resisted Eliza’s proposal. Finally he gave his blessing and told her that if she kept to Army principles and enjoyed some success he would send reinforcements later. Traveling with her mother and 100 penny song books, Eliza set sail for Philadelphia in September 1879.

By the time they arrived, Eliza’s mother had decided to join her daughter’s work, and the two women began searching out a home for the proposed Philadelphia Corps of the Salvation Army.

Finally they found an abandoned chair factory, and the Shirleys soon had the building spruced up.They put up posters promising that “Two Hallelujah Females” would appear at an open-air meeting in a nearby vacant lot on October 5, 1879.

The family’s early efforts drew only curiosity-seekers and troublemakers, but in November an act of providence (assisted by some delinquent boys) brought them their first success.

As the Shirleys approached their vacant lot one evening, ready for another sparse crowd and the usual peltings

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with mud and rotten vegetables, they saw a glow in the sky, brought about by a tar-barrel fire the young rowdies had started. Attracted by the flames and the clang of fire trucks, hundreds of people thronged the lot, and the family seized the opportunity to evangelize. They swooped into the crowd, singing and preaching with great fervor, and in the excitement of the moment the worst inebriate in Kensington, a man named Reddy, came forward and asked if God would forgive a drunk like him. The Shirleys assured him of God’s forgiving heart and led him back to their meetinghouse, with the curious crowd following.

Eliza then preached to Reddy and had him kneel and pray, after which he arose cold sober. News of Reddy’s miraculous conversion appeared in the local newspapers, and from that moment on the Shirleys’ work took off.Amos Shirley,given a choice by his employer between his job and his Salvationist work, chose the Army, and Eliza put her parents in charge of the Kensington mission while she started a new station on the west side of Philadelphia.

General Booth responded to the American success by promoting the Shirleys to captains and sending George Scott Railton from England to take charge of U.S. operations. Eliza, still in her teens, was put in charge of a new station in the Germantown section of Philadelphia but

by August had become so run down that she was sent back to England to recuperate.Despite her ill health,she was soon on a countrywide speaking tour, telling a fascinated English public about her American experiences.

In 1882 Eliza married a Salvation Army captain, Phillip Symmonds, and in 1885 the couple was sent back to America, where Captain Symmonds was made a divisional commander. Eliza was widowed early in life and left with small children, but she remained in Christian service for her remaining years, most of them spent with the Salvation Army. ■

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Susanna Wesley 1669-1742

BY LESLIE HAMMOND

Although she is firmly entrenched in Christian history as the “Mother of Methodism,” having given birth to its founder, John Wesley, and its greatest hymn-writer, Charles Wesley, time has shown Susanna Wesley to be a rare intellect who cast her influence well beyond her own domestic walls.A recently published collection of her letters, spiritual diary, and treatises runs to 538 pages and reveals her to be not only a devoted and nurturing mother but also a learned theologian and a remarkably empowered woman for her time.

Susanna was the twenty-fifth and youngest child of Rev. Dr. Samuel Annesley, a man of strong Puritan convictions who had been ejected from the ministry seven years before her birth for refusing to obey the Act of Uniformity, which required all clergy to adhere to Church of England doctrines. Susanna enjoyed an invigorating intellectual environment from babyhood, with great Puritan writers and leaders flowing

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through the family’s London home, debating the right to dissent.When government policies loosened, Dr.Annesley was allowed to resume preaching in 1672 and established a thriving nonconformist congregation.A frequent topic of his sermons was “freedom of conscience.”

Susanna evidently absorbed the message.At age 12 she decided that her own conscience was leading her away from her father’s beliefs, and she left his church for the Church of England.Already wellread in history and theology, she did not make the decision lightly, and seven years later she reinforced it by marrying Anglican clergyman Samuel Wesley, who also had left the nonconformist movement.

The marriage took place in November, 1688, at St. Marylebone Church in London, and in 1690 the couple left the bustling city for Lincolnshire, where Samuel had been given a curacy at South Ormsby. Seven years later they moved to the parish of Epworth in the bleak Lincolnshire Wolds, where they would remain for the next 38 years.

Nineteen children were born to Susanna and Samuel, 10 of whom survived infancy. Susanna approached motherhood seriously and established an ordered routine of exercise, schooling, prayer, and Bible study, even writing for her children a manual of doctrine and expositions on the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments. Desiring that her sons and daughters have not only head-knowledge but also a deep personal relationship with Christ, she set aside one hour a week for each child, gently probing for areas of character that needed perfecting and spiritual questions that needed answering.

Susanna’s own strength of character and conscience often came out in her relationship with Samuel. Although she was a loyal wife, she firmly believed that women were the masters of their own minds and souls. In 1702, 14 years into their marriage, she suddenly refused to say “Amen” to Samuel’s prayers for King PRISM 2004

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William III, whom she considered to have usurped the English monarchy from James II. This infuriated Samuel, who proclaimed, “If we have two kings, we must have two beds,” and took himself off to London for several months. Evidence of their reconciliation is to be found in the birth of their son John in 1703.

Susanna again showed her steadfastness of conviction during the winter of 1711-1712 while Samuel was at a Church of England convocation in London.It was Susanna’s custom to conduct services for her household during her husband’s absences, reading printed sermons aloud and leading children and servants in psalmsinging and prayer. During this particular winter, an ineffectual curate had been left in charge at Epworth,and parishioners began to show up at Susanna’s meetings. In a letter to her husband, she spoke of “above 200” attending her services and many being turned away “for want of room.”When Samuel passed along the curate’s complaints about the congregation’s defection, Susanna wrote to her husband that he would have to order her to stop rather than merely telling her he desired it: “…send me your positive command, in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Her stand was effective, and her services continued.

Despite chronic ill health, Susanna lived to the age of 73, remaining intellectually active to the end. She was converted to Methodism after receiving a personal assurance of salvation in 1739.

An excerpt from a letter written to her son Samuel in 1709 expresses the platform on which she conducted her own life: “In all things endeavor to act on principle, and do not live like the rest of mankind, who pass through the world like straws upon a river, which are carried which way the stream or wind drives them.” ■

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Lott Carey c. 1780-1828

BY LESLIE HAMMOND

“I have counted the cost and have sacrificed all my worldly possession to this undertaking.I am prepared to meet imprisonment or even death in carrying out the purposes of my heart,” Lott Carey said before leaving a life that was relatively prosperous for a black man of his time and sailing from Virginia to West Africa to serve as a missionary to his own people.

Lott Carey was bor n a slave in Virginia’s tobacco country in or about the year 1780 and, like his parents, was illiterate. It was common in those days for businesses to hire skilled slaves from their masters, and Carey was sent to work in a tobacco warehouse when he was a young man. In early adulthood he was inclined to profanity and drunkenness, but conversion to Christianity at age 27 changed his life profoundly. He married, joined the First Baptist Church of Richmond, learned to read so that

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he could experience the Bible for himself, and was soon licensed to preach.

Carey’s employers took notice of the changes in him and promoted him to shipping clerk, often giving him bonuses, which, along with a portion of his wages, he was allowed to keep for himself. His wife’s death in 1813 left him with two young children to raise, but he had been setting aside a portion of his pay and was able to purchase freedom for himself and his family that same year.

In 1815 Carey remarried and became minister of his own church in Richmond while continuing to work in the warehouse. He purchased a home, made an annual salary of $800, and was a respected citizen in his community. Carey’s grandmother, who had become a Christian after arriving in America as a slave, always believed that her grandson would someday preach the gospel in her homeland, and, despite his comfortable circumstances, Carey began to move steadily in this direction. He became a leader in the African Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, which was the first organization for world missions founded by African Americans in the United States, and was co-founder of the Richmond African Missionary Society.

Despite his obvious interest in Africa, his employers were surprised when he announced in 1820 that he was resigning and sailing to the mission fields in Sierra Leone. They offered him a $200 annual increase to remain, but Carey did not allow himself to be tempted. His words, before leaving on the 44-day ocean voyage, resonated then as they do now: “I am an African,” he said in a parting sermon, “and, in this country, however meritorious my conduct and respectable my character, I cannot receive due to either. I wish to go to a country where I shall be estimated by my merits, not by my complexion, and I feel bound to labor for my suffering race.”

Carey’s second wife died shortly after

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their arrival, and in 1822 he moved with his children from Sierra Leone to Liberia, an adjacent colony which had just been established for the repatriation of American slaves who had purchased their freedom or had otherwise been emancipated. He built the colony’s first church and ministered not only to these freed blacks from America but also to members of outlying native tribes, some of whom walked nearly 100 miles to attend services.

Carey’s determination to “labor for his suffering race” was evidenced by his intense activity over the next few years.

Besides preaching several times a week, he gave religious instruction to schoolage children and used his own personal funds to found a charity school in Monrovia and another in Cape Mount near Sierra Leone.The latter was fiercely opposed by Moslems of the Mandingo Tribe, but Carey persevered and was soon writing to friends in the United States to send 40 suits of clothes “as soon as practicable” so that native students at his new school would be properly attired.

Carey’s missionary career was marred in 1823 when he sided with insurgent Monrovian citizens dissatisfied with the American Colonization Society’s distribution of land to them.The conflict reached such proportions that an armed American ship was sent to quell it, and Carey was barred from preaching because of his involvement. He responded with humility, however, and kept up his mission work as well as the lay doctoring he had taken up when large numbers of arriving American blacks fell ill upon exposure to African diseases and climate. He soon reconciled with the Society’s leadership and became vice agent for the colony, in which position he was responsible for not only freed blacks arriving from America but also Africans recaptured from auction blocks and slave ships.

Continued on page 5.

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away from God’s priorities.

When our friend Matthew recognized his need for daily faith observances, he also realized that taking a large chunk of time before work would be impractical. Instead he set aside five-minute periods four times a day for prayer and reflection. Upon rising in the morning, he recites a short prayer and reads a psalm.

Arriving at work a few minutes early, he sits in his car thinking about the day ahead. He prays for his colleagues and those he will meet with during the day, asking how he can express God’s love and compassion to each of them. Returning home at night, Matthew again spends a few minutes sitting in the car, this time focusing on his family and how he can show God’s love and compassion to his wife and children. Before retiring for the night, he reads a Gospel portion and spends a few minutes thinking about what God has accomplished through him that day. He ends with a short prayer releasing the day to God and praying for needs in the world he has heard about during the day. Matthew says this practice has revolutionized his life. “Now everything I do feels connected to God and God’s purposes,” he explains.“I enter each day excited by what God can accomplish in and through my life.”

Rituals of transformation are the second type of practice that Dr. Hiebert believes we need in order to create healthy spiritual rhythms.These provide a structure that enables us to change and grow. In Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues (Baker Books, 1994), Hiebert explains that these rituals “cut through the established way of doing things and restore a measure of flexibility and personal intimacy.” Prayer retreats, pilgrimages, and mission trips are all transformative rituals that enable us to continue to nurture our faith and mature as Christian disciples. Because our consumer culture is so forceful in trying to

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get us to focus our lives on materialistic values, we need to be just as intentional in focusing on God’s biblical values in order to stand against these pressures.

For Tom and me, regular prayer retreats have become transformative rituals that enable us to adopt a whole new rhythm of life. As a result, we are able to pace our activities more in synch with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ than with the dictates of secular culture.

In an effort to transform their lives, one family we know decided to establish a rhythm of Christian service revolving around the events of the school year. In early September, when buying clothes and books for their children’s return to school, they now donate money to an organization that provides books and school supplies for inner-city kids who lack the resources to provide for their own school needs. At Thanksgiving, in gratitude for the education they are receiving, they contribute to a literacy program for young girls in Africa who would otherwise go unschooled. During the second half of the year, they tutor at-risk kids in their community who have no access to computers, and over the summer months they take some of their vacation time to go on short-term mission trips. Not only has this ritual approach changed the focus of their lives but they’ve found,too,that their children’s academic performance has improved.

Teaching others has enabled them to learn, too.

Lent is meant to be a time of reflection and refocusing to prepare us for the joyous celebration of Easter and the resurrection. Fasting during Lent was established as a way for Christians to free up time and resources to focus on God’s priorities. Spring cleaning began as a ritual that symbolized the cleansing God was accomplishing in our spirits so we could be better able to reach out to our needy world. We can all benefit from

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finding ways to reintroduce these important practices into our Lenten observances: a television fast to turn our attention away from advertising that so insidiously draws us into the consumer culture or a prayer retreat to help focus our lives more intentionally on the values of our faith.

There’s a song from the 1960s that asserts,“Yesterday he died for me—this is history.Today he lives for me—this is victory. Tomorrow he comes for me— this is mystery.”Why not develop some short rituals for you and your family to use throughout the year that will enable you to enter into the history, victory, and mystery of Christ’s glorious love for you? ■ (Christine Sines’ latest book is Sacred Rhythms: Finding a Peaceful Pace in a Hectic World [Baker Books, 2003]. Go to the Sines’ Mustard Seeds Associates website for more information: www.msainfo.org.)

Not to Be Forgotten continued from page 3.

When Liberia’s chief colonial agent returned to America in early 1828, Carey was effectively in charge of the settlement.

Morale in the colony was running high, new schools were being established, and Christianity was flourishing where heathenism had once prevailed. Carey was being considered for appointment as chief agent when he was mortally wounded in a munitions explosion and died on November 10 that same year.

Today the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention, founded in his memory, operates in Liberia, Haiti, India, Jamaica, and South Africa, equipping converted Christians within those countries to minister to their own people in the areas of child development, health, and education. ■

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William Booth 1829-1912

BY LESLIE HAMMOND

He captured the world’s imagination by putting his street-corner evangelists in military-style uniforms and sending them into town with marching bands. He gave his women members equal responsibility for preaching at a time when it was considered unseemly for the “weaker sex” to take such a role (“My best men are women!” he once said). He singled out the wrongs in British society and wrote a controversial 300-page book that outlined precisely how they could be made right.

William Booth, founder and leader of the Salvation Army, was determined to take people out of lives of degradation and bring them to new life in Christ.

He believed that those who have been in the dark are often the best ones to describe how beautiful it is in the light, and many of his evangelists were the very

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prostitutes and drunkards he’d saved from the streets. But Booth did not reach out only to “sinners.” He was also the champion of those trapped in poverty by uncaring government and industry and he fought in very practical ways to improve their lot.

Booth first became aware of the desperation of the urban poor when his father’s early death caused him to take a pawnbroker’s apprenticeship in his hometown of Nottingham at the age of 13.

On a daily basis he saw men and women coming in to hock wedding bands to buy food for their families or to sell the coats off their backs to buy the intoxicating spirits that would numb their misery.

In 1849, at the age of 20, he moved to London to take work as an assistant pawnbroker, and there he met Catherine Mumford, the woman who would become a lifelong partner in his mission to help the downtrodden. They married in 1855, and two years later Booth, who had been converted in a Wesleyan chapel in his teens, became a Methodist New Connexion minister.

His passionate revivalist style put him in constant demand as a visiting speaker, but conflicts with the Methodist establishment led him to resign from the New Connexion ministry in 1861.

Booth still considered himself an evangelist, however, and became an itinerant preacher, addressing crowds in the London streets. In 1865 two missioners observed his energetic soul-saving efforts outside a public-house and asked him to head up a series of tent meetings in Whitechapel. Later that same year he was given a modest backing to begin the Christian Mission aimed at reaching the poor of London’s East End. Booth won 60 souls his first year, but his chosen territory was a dangerous one, and Catherine wrote that he would often come home with his clothes “torn and bloody” and his head swathed with bandages “where a stone had struck.”

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and by 1867 his organization had 42 fulltime evangelists and 1,000 volunteers.

The real growth, however, was sparked by a simple change of name and image.

While reading a printer’s proof of the group’s annual report, he noticed that his organization was described as a “volunteer army.” He crossed out the word “volunteer” and penned in “salvation,” and the group officially became known as the Salvation Army. Workers were given ranks and uniforms, a banner was designed with the motto “Blood and Fire,” and the Salvationists marched into districts throughout London “to do battle with the devil.”Their goal of saving lost souls by bringing sinners to repentance struck a chord in the reformist atmosphere of Victorian England, and an 1882 survey showed that on a given night there were nearly 17,000 people worshipping with the Salvation Army as compared to only 11,000 in traditional churches. It was clear that Booth and his followers were reaching people that the church establishment could not.

With the Army firmly established, William and Catherine Booth used the years ahead to focus on social issues.

Booth’s 1891 book about the plight of the poor, In Darkest England and the Way Out, sold 200,000 copies the first year and brought the support of several prominent businessmen. With their help, he and Catherine set up a labor bureau, purchased a farm where people could be given job training, offered meals and shelter to the homeless, established a bank that made small loans for the purchase of tools, and created a missing person’s bureau. Over the next nine years the Salvation Army served 27 million meals, lodged 11 million homeless persons, traced 18,000 missing persons, and found jobs for 9,000 unemployed.

By the time of William Booth’s death at the age of 83 the fiery evangelist saw his organization planted in 58 countries.

Today it serves people in nearly twice that many nations. ■