Page 1896 – Christianity Today (2024)

Everyone in pastoral ministry has a bias. Some of us prefer deep doctrinal teaching. Others value ministry that is practical and immediately applicable. Others are all about reaching those far from God. And while there is nothing wrong with those different approaches, let's be honest–many of us hold judgments and feed stereotypes about ministers in other camps.

In this video from The Elephant Room event featuring Matt Chandler and Steven Furtick, they openly admit their judgments about each others' ministries. The tension is evident, but the honesty is refreshing.

Chandler and Furtick from Harvest Bible Chapel on Vimeo.

Is the tea party just a rebranding of Christian conservatives? Debate over this question is notnew, but it has received new fuel recently.

David Campbell of Notre Dame University and Robert Putnam of Harvard University wrote an August 16 op-ed for the New York Times, reporting on their recent survey that shows that those who like the tea party are not the non-partisan fiscal conservatives described by the movement’s leaders. Campbell and Putnam find that the tea party has attracted Republicans—not just any Republicans—social conservatives who want religion to play a greater role in political life.

“The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government,” Campbell and Putnam concluded.

First Things editor R. R. Reno agreed that tea party supporters were religious conservatives. However, he took issue with Campbell and Putnam’s conclusion that it was religion, not fiscal issues, that were drawing people to the tea party.

“The religious and social conservatism of the Republican Party intermixes with the fiscal and economic conservatism in all sorts of close and complex ways,” Reno wrote. “But it is willful of Putnam and Campbell to conclude that it’s the religious dimension that constitutes the most salient—and most controversial—dimension.”

Campbell and Putnam are not the firstto find a link between the old-fashioned conservative Christian movement and the tea party movement. A link, however, does not mean that the two are the same.

Among the general public, neither the tea party movement nor conservative Christians are well-known. In last year’s religion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, only 28 percent of registered voters had heard enough about both groups to voice an opinion on them. For the vast majority of Americans, neither is something they have heard of or care about.

Of the one-in-four American voters who do have an opinion, most disagree with both groups. But of those that do find at least one of the movements attractive, very few agree with conservative Christian only. Instead, most conservative Christians also like the tea party. Many who like the tea party, however, do not agree with Christian conservatives.

The tea party, then, is a larger movement that the vast majority of conservative Christian political activists find appealing. Christian conservatives are now part of a larger grassroots conservative movement that includes others who are not driven by social issues. By appealing to the tea party, a politician could appeal to both social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. Appealing to Christian conservatives alone could alienate many grassroots conservative activists.

We can see a similar relationship in Congress. In 2010, Michele Bachmann founded the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. Most of the members were social conservatives who scored perfectly on voter guides by Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

The 2010 election swept in 84 freshmen Republicans, many of whom rode the tea party wave into office. Upon arriving in Congress, however, they were hesitant to join the Tea Party Caucus. Today, just 17 of these Republican freshmen have joined the group. These freshmen are, like those who started the caucus, social conservatives who are also deficit hawks and fiscal conservatives.

Among voters and in Congress, we see a similar pattern. Social conservatives are saying “amen” to the tea party. Even though many of them have joined the party, the party is larger than social conservatives. A diverse set of grassroots conservatives has emerged. Some are social conservatives. Some are not. But the tea party applies to them both.

His name might not be prominent, but Eugene A. Nida’s influence can be found in most Christian homes—more specifically, in their Bibles.

Nida, one of the leading advocates for dynamic equivalence translation, died August 25 at a hospital in Brussels, Belgium. He was 96.

Dynamic equivalence translation (a phrase which Nida coined) is a “meaning-based” approach to biblical translation; it focuses on translating “thought-for-thought” rather than “word-for-word.” In a 2002 interview with Christianity Today, Nida said that this shift in translation was his most important contribution: “To help people be willing to say what the text means—not what the words are, but what the text means.”

Nida’s career in translation began in 1936, when he graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Greek and a minor in Latin. The summer after he graduated, Nida attended the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a faith-based nonprofit that serves language communities by using research, training, and development to “build capacity for sustainable language development.” After his introduction to SIL, Nida returned every summer from 1937 to 1953 to teach there.

Nida continued his studies at the University of Southern California, where he earned a master’s degree in New Testament Greek. He completed a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1943. That same year, he was hired by the American Bible Society as associate secretary of versions. He became the executive secretary for translations in 1946, a position that he held until his retirement in 1980. He was present at the founding conference of the United Bible Societies in 1946, and in 1949 he founded The Bible Translator, a journal featuring articles about the theory and practice of Bible translation.

By the late 1960s, Nida had published two books, Toward a Science of Translating (Brill, 1964), and The Theory and Practice of Translation (Brill, 1969, with C.R. Taber), advancing his new dynamic equivalence theory. He had also published a first edition of the Greek New Testament, which became a basis for other translators in their work.

Nida spent much of his career traveling around the globe. By 1952, he had traveled to more than 30 countries and encountered more than 80 languages. In his travels, he met and trained teams to help them in their translation work. In 1978, he was praised by the Christian Herald as a man who “has done more than any one person to provide people with Scripture they can read in their own language.” The popularity and positive reception of The Good News Bible (also called the Today’s English Version) lent credence to Nida’s work, as it was translated using dynamic equivalence theory. Other versions, such as the New Living Translation and Contemporary English Version, are also heavily influenced by Nida’s approach.

In his work, Nida emphasized the importance of cultural context—both the cultural context of Bible and the cultural context of the language into which the Bible is being translated. One example he liked to use was the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, where the sheep represent those who have done the Lord’s will, and the goats are those who haven’t. “Look out, because in most of Africa, sheep are regarded as very bad animals!” he said in his 2002 interview. “The translator, of course, cannot change all the sheep into goats and the goats into sheep. But you’ve got to have footnotes to explain the cultural difference. Otherwise, you’re going to give an entirely wrong impression.”

However, Nida also emphasized something over the need for multiple, relatable translations: a desire to understand and spread the meaning of the Bible. “What is really needed is for people to take the message seriously and share it with other people, focused primarily on what this message has meant to me,” he said. “So many Christians love to argue about the Bible rather than take it seriously as a message that is important for their own lives.”

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

CT interviewed Eugene Nida in 2002. CT has gathered more tributes.

In 1994, Wheaton College historian Mark Noll published The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind—"an epistle from a wounded lover" that decried the anti-intellectualism of evangelical religious culture. Noll's newest book, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, released in August), devotes far less space to criticism and offers instead a foundational vision: The basic truths of Christian faith are the key to Christian scholarship. Christianity Today editor in chief David Neff recently spoke with Noll (now teaching at the University of Notre Dame) about the book.

Although it's not the main subject of Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, most people will want to know: Are you more optimistic today about the state of the evangelical mind than you were 17 years ago?

I am more optimistic, though not overwhelmingly so. The problems endemic to modern Western culture undercut Christian thinking the same way they undercut every other kind of serious intellectual life. The tendencies among evangelicals that undercut serious reflection are also still pretty strong—for example, the populism and the immediatism, the idea that if there is a problem, we have to solve it right away.

Those are strengths in other contexts.

Exactly. That's very important to say. Almost everything in the evangelical world that undercuts serious and sober thinking actually plays a productive role in some other aspect of evangelical life. I never wanted to make a categorical statement that thinking is the most important thing. But it is important.

There are a lot of factors that show commendable and very serious improvement. The trajectory is moving in a positive direction. Christian philosophers have done very significant work. The number of Christian colleges that make serious efforts continues to grow. The evangelical seminaries, which have broader purposes, nonetheless encourage a lot of good, solid thought. And there certainly are many more people willing to identify as Christians, either as evangelicals or as classical Christians, in the broader academic world. Christian publishers put out more and better books. Parachurch agencies like InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries are doing much good work.

My own sense—and maybe it's just a historian's genetic pessimism—is that we have a long, long way to go until there is a serious intellectual contribution from Christians across the broad stream. But things are moving in the right direction.

You write that "come and see" is Christ's invitation to us to do science.

The premise of the book is that people who trust Jesus Christ for personal salvation and for the hope of the church in the future should rely on Christ to provide the basic standpoint from which to look at intellectual problems. What does this mean?

It means, first of all, to recognize that everything exists because it was created by Jesus. John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 all make the same statement: It's not just that the Lord God in some general sense created everything, but that Christ created everything. We also have the amazing statement in Colossians 1 that all things hold together in Jesus.

In the Gospels, we also have repeated injunctions that when there's an issue to be explored, it should actually be examined. In John's gospel, when Nathanael asks whether "anything good" could come from Nazareth, Philip replies, "Come and see."

Or take John the Baptist in prison. His disciples come and ask Jesus, "Are you the one that we are looking for?" And Jesus says, "Tell John what you have seen and heard." The great opening of 1 John says, This is a book about what we have seen with our eyes, heard with our ears, touched with our hands, about the Word of Life.

My appeal is not for a simple Baconian empiricism that treats observation and experience as the only pathways to valid knowledge. Instead, the appeal is that following Christ means having an open mind that can be fruitfully informed by what we experience in the world. Scientists do this through the experimental method. When responsible examination of nature takes place, the examiner discovers not just nature, but nature as created by the Son of God and sustained by Providence.

From a basic Christ-centered focus, the attitude toward the study of nature requires great openness and willingness to learn. The relevance of Christ for science is to realize that everything that exists in nature comes from Christ, but also that the life of Christ gives us a way of exploring nature that involves openness to what we experience. So, "Come and see."

Especially regarding scientific controversies among evangelicals, you seem to be suggesting that slowing down may be the best way to move ahead.

Many of the problems that have taken place in the so-called conflict between religion and science come from hasty conclusions. Right back to the Middle Ages, we have a long series of purportedly new discoveries in nature. The response by church leaders has often been, "This can't be possible." Only a little while later would Christian people say, "Here's how it is possible."

Neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin was at all willing to believe that the earth might move around the sun. But two generations later, all Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics agreed that in fact the earth did move around the sun. It would have been ideal for people to respond to the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo by saying, "Well, let's take our time and evaluate this apparent contradiction with Scripture as carefully and as patiently as possible." What took place instead was an unnecessarily dogmatic reaction.

I'm not qualified to speak in detail about current problems. As a historian, I am qualified to say that less denunciation and more effort at patient study is the best way forward.

You write that "for scholarship that is Christian, the essential ingredients are the same as for family life, politics, community service, economic activity, medical care, or any other activity that would be Christian"—meaning ingredients like prayer, service, Bible reading, preaching, catechesis, and fellowship.

Christian scholarship has to begin with Christianity, just as Christian parenting, Christian publishing, and Christian politics all have to begin with Christianity.

Much of our difficulty in the academic realm has come from not taking problems back to the Christ-centered foundation. This is one of the reasons I spend a fair bit of time in the early chapters spelling out the Christological affirmations of the great Christian creeds. The creeds are important not because they have any special status themselves, but because they were hammered out with intense discussion and have been used productively for centuries.

The way forward for Christian people is to bring the challenges in family life, politics, and ethical spheres of all sorts back to the foundation. If that's the way forward in other dimensions of life, it's also the way forward in intellectual life.

You say that "doubleness"—the idea that not every problem can be reduced to a single solution—is one of the key ways to frame Christian scholarship. What do you mean?

The whole point of the book is that believers in Christ should take seriously who Christ is and what Christ has done. As a historian, I've been drawn to the great Christian creeds as the most succinct and powerful statements of who Christ is and what Christ has done. The great relevance of the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian definition is to affirm that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine in one integrated person. But we know from moral and ethical reasoning that God and humans are different. God is the Creator, and humans are the creatures. There's a huge gap between humanity and divinity. Yet Christianity says that in Christ, that gap doesn't exist. The lengthy debate leading up to Nicaea and Chalcedon was over how to state that what can't be together really was together.

While people can certainly see and know things clearly in this world, if we assume we can know things perfectly, the way God knows things, we delude ourselves. God is not just bigger than we are; God is qualitatively different. And yet we know from the work of Christ that we can have fellowship with the divine. We can know God in Christ.

Following Christ means having an open mind that can be fruitfully informed by what we experience in the world. When serious examina-tion of nature takes place, the examiner finds not just nature, but na-ture created by the Son of God.

From the basic Christian story, we can approach all of life with the awareness that within one thing, two things may actually be going on. The great Lutheran mantra was that a Christian believer is simultaneously justified and a sinner. The Calvinist tradition uses the word concursus, which means that two things are happening at once. The Christian religion begins with two things happening at once. The human Jesus and the divine God both offer the Word of Life. And it's not two people offering the Word of Life, it's one person. If that doubleness defines the most important thing in all existence, how God revealed himself most fully to humankind, then why not expect lesser things like scholarship, science, history, and psychology to reflect the same pattern?

How does this idea apply to history?

To take the Christological perspective on historical work does inspire confidence that historians can, at least potentially, discover some aspects of what really happened. Yet for all sorts of reasons—the Fall, certainly, but more importantly, the way in which the Incarnation brings together apparently contradictory things—historians should be very careful about presuming to know too much.

Christian historians should never presume to have godlike knowledge about the past. As 1 Corinthians states, we see reality "through a glass darkly." Our knowledge is true and yet beclouded—two things at once. Both the cloudiness and the confidence come from the same place, which is a reflection of what the Incarnation means.

How does this mesh with your views of Providence?

A Christian has to affirm Providence, but a Christian historian should not assume to know the mind of God about most particular events. In fact, there are all sorts of bad examples in history where people have falsely made that assumption. In the modern world, there aren't too many examples of Christian historians who have employed particular examples of Providence well.

For most historians, I think it's wiser to affirm a general sort of Providence and yet not presume that you as an individual can know what God intended for any particular situation in the past.

Or to use Providence as a shortcut to avoid looking at social context and economic forces.

Right. Providence, in my view, arises from the message of salvation that says God works all things together in Christ. That's the main providential message. But for history, science, and other domains, the "come and see" principle means that you really have to do research to find out the meaning of the past.

On the other hand, you suggest that social science, denying Providence altogether, can too easily become reductionist.

Some of the difficulties in social science have to do with the conditions in which that discipline arose. In the second half of the 19th century, there was a strong flight from Providence—from solid and misguided ideas of Providence alike.

The alternative was confidence that studying humanity could make the same strides as studying nature. That confidence was only partially justified. The difficulty with social scientists' overconfidence is that in a modern secular world, God is left out completely. And not just God but also the work of redemption. So I try to show that Christian social scientists who are conscious of the foundation in Jesus Christ will not want to be reductionist. It's possible that multiple explanations can work for a single phenomenon because of the multiple explanations required to speak of the Incarnation. I'm willing to let the sociologist and the psychologist and the economist work out what these things might mean for them. But what counts as a distinctly Christian approach to social sciences is something that again and again goes back to the foundation of Christian faith, not something vaguely theistic or vaguely modern.

You write about how non-Western historians include supernatural analysis in their work. How does that fit in with your views about how to talk about Providence as a Western historian?

Come back in about 40 years, and we'll have a good answer. But I've been really helped by perspectives from a few African historians. The late Ogbu Kalu was the leader in that group. Ogbu was a well-trained historian who studied and wrote about Henry VIII at the University of Toronto, but he was also a Presbyterian elder in Nigeria, where charismatic phenomena were routine. In his inaugural address at McCormick Theological Seminary, he challenged Christian historians to see Clio, the muse of history, in sacred garb. In other words, don't go too far toward treating Providence only as general background, but instead allow Christian confidence and Providence to come into the foreground. Unfortunately, Ogbu died before he could show too many examples of what he meant, but his appeal was a good one. Voices from the non-Western world have been a great stimulus for serious thinking about how Christian historians should go about their tasks.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

A Bible study based on this article, "The Foundation for the Evangelical Mind," is available at ChristianBibleStudies.com.

Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind is available from ChristianBook.com and other book retailers.

Previous Christianity Today articles on Christian scholarship include:

Scholars and 'Snake Handlers' | Society of Biblical Literature accused of evangelical pandering—and secular bias. (August 31, 2010)

Abandon Studying the Historical Jesus? No, We Need History | A response to 'The Jesus We'll Never Know.' (April 9, 2010)

Patrons of the Evangelical Mind | "Why has evangelical scholarship soared in the last few decades? Native intellectual talent is one reason, to be sure. But an infusion of cash didn't hurt." (July 8, 2002)

| Baylor University's Polanyi Center comes under fire from the university's faculty. (April 1, 2000)

N.T. Wright: Making Scholarship a Tool for the Church | Reconciling Christian history with the Christian faith. (February 8, 1999)

Have you ever wondered what lore and legends might lay behind the idea of the tooth fairy? If so—and especially if you always suspected that the tooth fairy was a tad bit sinister—Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark might be a movie for you. In this version, the tooth fairy isn’t a singular, angelic being who gives children money in return for lost teeth; rather, it’s an army of creepy crawly Gollum-like creatures who come out at night and prey on little children—and not just for their teeth.

To be sure, Dark is not a fairy tale for kids. It’s a decidedly R-rated, scary fairy tale for grown-ups. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, Dark bears resemblance to the Mexican filmmaker’s acclaimed 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, which also featured a child protagonist interacting with monsters and fairies from some imaginary underworld. But while Labyrinth managed an intelligent and layered picture not just of fantasy and thrill but also social and human commentary, Dark is mostly just a “gotcha!” horror film to make audiences squirm, jump, and feel afraid.

Helmed by first-time director Troy Nixey and based in part on a 1973 TV movie, Dark follows the frightful experiences of a family after they move in to a gothic-style 19th century mansion with plans to restore it. Things begin innocently enough for Alex (Guy Pearce), his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes), and Alex’s young daughter Sally (Bailee Madison), but then things start going bump in the night. Sally has encounters with creatures who scurry around under her bed, her teddy bear is found beheaded, Kim’s dresses are shredded by an unknown vandal, and one afternoon the mysterious groundskeeper (Jack Thompson) falls victim to knife-wielding beasts in the newly discovered creepy basem*nt.

But in spite of the hard-to-miss ghoulish character of the clearly cursed abode, homeowners Alex and Kim (aka the out-of-touch adults) go about their business as if normal. They disregard little Sally’s repeated reports about the creatures she has seen and heard, and they blame her midnight screams on nightmares and anxiety. At one point a shrink is brought in to help the clearly confused girl. By the time the adults finally begin to take Sally at her word—after seeing the monsters with their own eyes—it’s almost too late. The film climaxes in an unabashedly stereotypical manner: The night is stormy, the power is cut so the house is dark, violence escalates as the monsters get more ruthless, and not all main characters emerge alive.

Dark is a throwback horror film of a variety we haven’t seen much of in the gruesome era of Saw, Hostel, and Final Destination. It relies less on elaborate ways to construct deathtraps than on classic scare-tactic tropes: tension-building Hitchco*ckian point-of-view shots, subtle shifts in light and sound, walking down stairs in the dark alone, a bathtub scene, lightning outside the windows, and so on. In this sort of nostalgic-for-old-timey-horror-films manner, the film is successful. It does provide thrills and plenty of tension. But is there much story to speak of? And do we care for the characters?

Here’s where the film falls a bit short. Though the “twisted tooth fairy” premise has some intriguing aspects to it, the film leaves more questions unanswered than it should. Why are these creatures seemingly confined to the inner depths of this one house? Why do they so desire children? What do teeth have to do with anything? What exactly are these fiendish monsters and why can they only live in the dark?

Certainly the film intentionally leaves some of these questions unanswered. We experience the mysteries of the house just as the residents do—with no back-story or contextual understanding of what we are seeing and hearing. But at least by the end we have the right to know something about what we’ve just seen. Instead we get a cryptic final mini-twist that leaves us asking even more questions. In the age of The Sixth Sense and other “everything makes sense now that we’ve gotten to the ending” brain-teasers, audiences demand more than just open-ended ghost stories.

Then there is the question of caring for the characters. Young Sally is the chief protagonist of the film—much of it is told from her point of view as she explores the house and fights off her inhuman assailants—and so of all the characters, we should care for her. But while Bailee Madison is cute and believable as a slightly angsty elementary schoolgirl, she doesn’t exude enough charisma or innocence to make us truly care. Madison has a gratingly over-expressive, “I’m a child actress!” style of acting, and it feels overbearing at times (see also her work in Brothers). Furthermore, how are we to care for a child who willingly ventures—out of insatiable curiosity—into the basem*nt and unlocks the vaults from which the monsters emerge? She’s as much to blame for the chaos as she is a victim of it.

Meanwhile, the adults in the film are supremely bland. Their attempt to placate Sally and her childish fairy stories in the beginning is one thing. Their inane refusal to jump in the car and flee while they have the chance in the final act is quite another. If one of the themes of the film is that children are innately curious and willing to believe the incredulous and supernatural before their adult counterparts, another theme is that adults are just silly and probably asking for a sordid end at the bloodthirsty hands of mysterious fairy-goblins.

In the end, Dark has little of substance to offer aside from a flimsy attempt at exploring family dynamics and the alienation that might lead a child to want to befriend malevolent creatures of the shadows. There’s a lot more territory here that could have been mined but wasn’t, which is a shame. But for those just looking to be scared the old fashioned way in a movie theater, Dark certainly delivers.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What do Kim and Alex do wrong in their parenting of Sally over the course of the film? What do they do right?
2. What would lead Sally to be so fearless and curious to get to know the monsters calling her name from the basem*nt?
3. What lessons does the film have for families in terms of communication?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Don’t be Afraid of the Dark is rated R for violence and terror. It’s about a child, but it’s not a film for children; it’s a fairy-tale for grown-ups. The worst of the violence happens in the opening scene (including the splitting open of a woman’s head with a chisel) and in a sequence where an army of creatures attack a man with razors, box-cutters, and other sharp objects. There is also a pervasive feeling of terror and “I don’t want to look!” intensity which makes it a film unsuitable for younger viewers as well as squeamish adults.

Photos © FilmDistrict

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

When evangelicals hear that there’s a new movie about their brand of Christianity, they get nervous. All too often they are presented as idiots or villains. Stereotypes about narrow-mindedness, intolerance, cultish mind-control, and harsh subjugation of women abound.

Carolyn Briggs’ 2002 memoir, This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost, hit a number of those notes. When their church leaders counsel her not to get a college degree; when they counsel her husband to forgo a plum job opportunity because they instead need the headship of the church leaders; when she refused medication during a complicated pregnancy and scoffed at taking shelter during a tornado—well, it sounds to many evangelicals like a pretty kooky church, if not a cult. But don’t expect the general public to make that distinction. CT‘s review of the book said it was “likely to win plaudits for its savaging of evangelical Christianity as the source of one woman’s oppression, and her abandonment of that faith as a fount of liberation.”

News that This Dark World, retitled Higher Ground, was coming to movie screens did not cause Christians to throw out the red carpet. And yet—what a surprise. This movie presents a church that is really endearing. It’s a small community, and we meet them first in the 1970s as a gang of Jesus Freak hippies, gathered for a joyous, noisy river baptism. The guys are long-haired and bearded and have amiable, sweet expressions. The women wear prairie dresses and have personalities.

Corinne—the lead character played by Vera Farmiga, who also directed the film—is extra-bright but subdued, an observer. When, in an early scene, her boyfriend makes love to her in a meadow, he has an ecstatic experience while she waits it out, occasionally furrowing her brow.

The character in the film who lights up the sky is Annika. She is funny, creative, shapely, sensuous, and mischievous. Her husband describes her as loving “drama, art, and nature.” She counsels Corinne not to let the sexual fires in marriage die, and imparts that she likes to draw pictures of her husband’s penis. (We see Annika’s bedroom later on and yes, she certainly does.) When a cop pulls the two over and tells Corinne she was exceeding the speed limit, Annika puts on a foreign accent and explains to the cop that she was having an underwear emergency and that Corinne was trying to help her.

When the two are relaxing in a boat on a river, Annika begins to pray aloud in tongues. Whatever your opinion of that gift may be, it certainly sounds beautiful here. This is a Hollywood movie, and a woman is praying in tongues, and it is beautiful, and she is beautiful. Wonders never cease.

In fact, prayer and worship are consistently shown as inviting, peaceful, and joyous. A small group sits in a living room singing “The Sweetest Name I Know,” and they’re practically floating away. Any viewer would get the impression that those who don’t love Jesus and pray with others are missing one of life’s great joys.

Realistically enough, there are a couple of negative figures: an overbearing pastoral counselor who announces “I consider myself a prophet,” and the pastor’s wife, who corrects Corinne a couple of times about proper feminine behavior. But even she is well-meaning, not vile. The tension here is not between Corinne and an oppressive church, not at all. The tension is within Corinne.

She can’t make her faith work the way she thinks it should. She can’t pray with relaxed whole-heartedness, like Annika does. She can’t grab hold of the gift of tongues, though she stands in the bathroom coaching the Holy Spirit as you would a little league batter: “Come on Holy Spirit. Come on Holy Spirit,” followed by a stuttering, but self-extinguishing, blast of consonants.

She can’t hold still when her husband wants to kiss her—she can’t keep herself from turning her lips away at the last moment. And, when tragedy strikes, she has a hard time fighting her way through to a survivor’s faith.

This is, to some extent, a movie about doubt, and that’s a topic most Christians already know about. It’s a commonplace around churches that “everybody has doubts,” and knowing that it’s common actually helps. So we support each other when we’re struggling. We pray for each other. We just keep on showing up for prayer and worship, even when it seems God doesn’t. Sometimes, we just have to wait it out.

So Christians will empathize with Corinne’s struggle. When she pours out her heart to the church she says, “I need all this to be real but I don’t know how to make it real,” and the camera cuts away to show us the pastor nodding. It’s a blessing to see that—to have permission to admit that.

Some reviewers have compared Higher Ground to Robert Duvall’s The Apostle (1997), and it is a similarly positive portrayal of Southern evangelical faith. But before you organize a congregational outing with the church bus, note that R rating. Among the tools employed by this clever and sometimes very funny movie are flashes of raunchy humor that are definitely not for children, and probably not for every adult at your church either. Apart from that, this is a movie that will be touching for anyone who ever asked Jesus into his heart, and years later felt, as Corinne confesses, “I’m still waiting for him to make himself at home.” Yet, she concludes, “I won’t let go until he blesses me.”

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Was there a time when you had a faith experience so strong that you thought you would never doubt again? What would that person want to tell you today?
2. When a character is disabled by illness, it troubles Corinne’s faith. But in an earlier scene, when their bus plunges into a river, they attribute their rescue to God. Why weren’t they angry that God let their bus go into the river? Or joyous that the disabled character was saved from death? Is there a pattern to our expectations of where God’s responsibility begins or ends?
3. There’s more accurate quoting of Scripture in this film than any for a long time. See if anyone in your group can name the scripture behind the fantasy moment when Corinne steps outside the church and is surrounded by all kinds of dogs. Next, see if anyone caught the pastor’s flub of a familiar verse. [Answers: The pastoral counselor had prayed with Corinne, “Lord, it’s either inside with you, or outside with the dogs” (“Blessed are those who wash their robes…that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters.” Rev 22:14-15.) The pastor gives thanks that Annika was delivered from “the shadow of the valley of death,” not “valley of the shadow” (Ps 23:4).]

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Higher Ground is rated R for some language and sexual content. There’s a scattering of F-bombs, close view of faces of a couple having sex, a fleeting view of a woman posing in lingerie, women talk about and sketch their husband’s penises, and a fantasy sequence with foot-licking.

Photos © Sony Pictures Classics

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Is there a better way to capitalize on the end of summer than to fly to Pittsburgh, secure a vehicle, and make your way to Harrisburg? You may be left wondering what sort of rhetorical question that may be, and under which degree of delusion it is spoken. Truly, I mean it, and I would like to recommend it to any bookish types possibly itching for one last excursion before the busy days of fall prevail. Here’s why.

I should admit up-front that I have my personal reasons for this suggestion. Flying to Pittsburgh means I get to visit the Laurel Mountains, just to the south and west. The driving is pleasant—as long as you avoid the city’s tunnels and bridges around rush hour. Once you’ve reached Donegal and exited the turnpike, you begin to ascend the mountain. Frank Lloyd Wright’s serene Falling Water is nearby. The temperature drops several degrees, and the world feels different. I usually get to visit family there, and most recently, I enjoyed falling asleep, for one night at least, to the sound of water cascading and converging from Fall Run and Blue Hole creeks. (In western Pennsylvania, that last word requisitely rhymes with “fiddlesticks,” a favorite word of my great grandmother’s; her bath-robed, Stoneys-beer-carrying ghost still haunts the mountain, I’d like to think.)

Then there’s the more general reason, the reason for this little report-cum-panegyric, and really one of the few reasons to cut short the above respite and the next morning continue along the turnpike to Harrisburg: Midtown Scholar Bookstore, in the old-and-revitalizing Midtown section of Pennsylvania’s capital, across from the historic Broad Street Market. The owners say they have the largest stock of academic books between New York and Chicago, and, having visited twice now, I see no reason to doubt this claim. Their large, well-decorated, incredibly inviting ten-thousand-square-foot space is packed with 100,000 used, out-of-print, and scholarly books, with multitudinous others available online. (In fact, I first discovered Midtown Scholar when it kept appearing as a seller of books I was searching for on the Web—no matter how obscure the title.) Despite its name, Midtown Scholar has a great selection of more general titles, and is very family- and community-friendly to boot. I feel confident in calling it one of the best independent bookstores in the country today.

Let me set aside, for a minute, the browsing that awaits you. The space itself is remarkable, a throwback to better, more extravagant times when storefront bookselling, like so many other things in the country, was not yet damaged, diminished, or seemingly on the skids. First, you may not make it through the front door for a half an hour, thanks to the eleven library carts with dollar books marshaled along the sidewalk, as well as the full displays in the windows, above which stands a marquee. Bright blue letters flash “MIDTOWN” within an aluminum façade. It feels like you’re standing at the front of an old-fashioned cinema, and there’s a reason for that: the building began life as a theater in the 1920s, becoming a department store in the 1950s, and then an antiques shop decades later, when Harrisburg’s boom had officially passed. As you enter, you’ll be immediately impressed by a sense of space and openness ahead of you. It is easy to imagine the prior theater’s grand stage or screen, and it feels a bit as if you’re looking into the great hall of a Renaissance manor house, complete with large wooden beams dividing up the rectangular ceiling high above.

On the afternoon of my most recent visit, a group of students clustered at the front of a long coffee bar off to the right, sturdy with its dark, dignified wood, as if from an old saloon. Behind this space, known as the Famous Reading Cafe, a grand iron staircase, recovered from a hotel in Baltimore, rises over the bar to the second floor, and beyond it, there is a modest computer station for searches of online inventory, followed by a lengthy stage area for literary readings and concerts. The tall shelves at the back of the stage house a large run of Everyman volumes, all half price, and the children’s books, which explains the kids’ table, beanbag, and pop-up toys inhabiting one area of the stage. To appreciate better the scale of the place, take in the mural above these shelves, stretching out across the top of the side wall for nearly eighty feet. Events scheduled for the weeks after my visit included a folk concert, book signing, reading and writing groups, an artist’s reception, and a performance by an improv troupe. I think the pertinent phrase here is “multi-purpose stage.”

Across the store, on the opposite wall, you’ll find three alcoves of shelves full of literature titles, arranged alphabetically by author and ranging from older, revered figures (Austen, Bronte, Dante, Shakespeare) to more recent authors (Toni Morrison). The outer edge of each alcove features handsome literary portraits (including the new, purported “Cobbe” image of Shakespeare) and panels with brightly elegant stained glass. Also noticeable are 19th-century engravings, old newspaper pages, and various signs, one promoting the NEA’s “Big Read” program, and another in which Harrisburg Magazine declares Midtown Scholar the city’s best bookstore, to which I say, “Duh.” Below this artwork are tables with books by and smaller photographs of local authors, many of whom have read their work on the stage across the room. During those readings, the wide floor is full of chairs for audience members, but during a normal day, you’ll find just a few wrought-iron bistro tables, taking up just a little of the wide-open space all around them. Above, skylights and an impressive verdigrised bell, brought from England, sit amid the beams, while a ceiling fan slowly chops the air.

At the back of this open space, take the stairs up to the elevated back room, which is stuffed with art monographs and coffee-table books. The collection of art books alone is huge, larger by itself than many smaller shops. If you arrive on a tight schedule, woe be unto you. At the top of the stairs sits an attorney’s bookcase, with glass doors protecting some of the rarer volumes, and nearby, a chalkboard placard with a quote from C. S. Lewis: “You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.” Beneath this area is a similar space, mainly occupied by history titles, which are also found, along with religion and science sections, on the next level down, formidably called “Scholar Underground.” Give yourself a lot of time down there. That’s all I’ll say.

A few steps up from the landing, a long, intricate iron railing protects distracted browsers from returning too precipitously to the literature alcoves directly below. This balcony area features travel titles as well as short-story collections and other anthologies. If you walk along the rail, you’ll eventually reach the Gallery, the upper level at the storefront end. (This tour has basically moved you in one large horseshoe formation.) A gloriously large poetry section occupies the wall nearest you, in front of which sit a handful of unfinished pews. They remind me of that intense church scene in There Will Be Blood, where Daniel Day Lewis’ character repents or converts or whatever he does, although the usual activity in this corner of the store is likely less harrowing. There’s a lectern as well, and I would guess this is where the Midtown Poets and visiting versifiers give readings. (They are a lucky bunch.) In the middle and far end of the gallery, customers seeking a more comfortable place will find chairs and sofas, with a chessboard nearby. Don’t miss, over your shoulder, the Yellow Wall Gallery, which is pretty much what it sounds like, with local art is on display.

I realize I have not mentioned a single specific book in this essay. That seems fitting, somehow, although anyone would find plenty at Midtown Scholar of sufficient interest, and much more. But then again, nearly any book you may find here could also be tracked down online with a few mouse clicks—indeed, you may even end up ordering it from Midtown Scholar. So the merchandise is not the essential reason to go, although there is a special pleasure in finding the right book in a special place. It is so much better, isn’t it, than the laser-point efficiency of mere acquisition? And now we’re getting somewhere: the massive accumulation of books may be what draws you to Midtown Scholar, but I doubt its stock is what you’ll primarily remember about your time there. If books are treasured objects, then sometimes it is good to remember that those increasingly rare places devoted to them are treasures, too. They are places where art, music, and writing happen and are shared; they are also spots to be happily alone with yourself for awhile, for a bit of rest or reckoning, kicking back or deep introspection. Isn’t it terrific that bookstores are so often both things at once? And the bigger the better, I say, even in these lean, uncertain times.

So book your ticket, and if you somehow manage to leave Midtown Scholar with any of your day remaining, turn the corner off Third Street onto Verbeke, and walk the few blocks (you’ll pass Shady McGrady’s on your right, another neighborhood gem) till you reach North Front Street. The Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion is farther along this riverside road, in the Uptown neighborhood, but there is no shortage of grand residences to view in the immediate vicinity. Even better, take a seat on one of the nearby benches and look out over the Susquehanna River. It is on a journey, too. Flowing by, it is already leaving you behind as you watch, sitting on its east bank at the end of summer.

Brett Foster is associate professor of English at Wheaton College. His first collection of poems, The Garbage Eater, has just been published by Northwestern University Press.

Copyright © 2011 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

Like every other woman in Western Christendom it seems, I’ve been reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. This month our family moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. The book group for the church I visited last week? Reading it in October. The women’s group of the church I looked up on the Internet? Reading it in September. And why? With its lyrical—some might say grammatically adventurous—prose (“I am all eye, seeing through life as glass to God”), the book is nothing like the prose we’re used to from our Zondervan-pressed inspirationals.

Though everyone may be talking about it, not everyone is convinced that the book belongs alongside C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers in the devotional canon. Two weeks ago, regular Her.meneutics writer Rachel Marie Stone critiqued the book, believing Voskamp’s emphasis on Eucharisteo (joyful gratitude) is overreaching as “the key that opens all locks” in the Christian’s spiritual life. Stone expressed concern that gratitude was being upheld as an additional requirement for salvation to be effective.

Stone also noted that Voskamp’s “wrestling to be grateful for everything” is not necessarily biblical, citing a scene from the book in which one of Voskamp’s sons throws a piece of toast in his brother’s face. In that moment of anger and frustration, time seems to pause and Voskamp grasps for thanksgiving, a “Zen-like acceptance” that seems Stone says runs counter to biblical examples. Stone cited the Book of Job and Jesus’ prayer from the cross as proof that thanksgiving is not a proper response to all of life’s circ*mstances.

The comments in response to Stone’s post were passionate. Whatever the concerns many of us may have (I for one could have done without the bit about making love to God in Paris—what would John Calvin say?), women are connecting to this book. It’s worth asking why the book has captivated enough women to keep it on The New York Times bestseller list for months?

When my 3-year-old was born, I had romantic notions of the hours I would spend breastfeeding him: hours to finally be the woman of intercessory prayer I’d always wanted to be, hours for motherhood to wise me up, make me deep and transformed. Instead, my nipples hurt. I worried about homemade baby food versus the jarred stuff and whether I was enforcing enough tummy time. I smiled at him and he stared at me. After months of this, I realized I’d been failing the “motherhood is making me a wise woman of God” plan.

Then he was crawling, walking, running, shouting “no!” And I lost all sense of quiet in my life. I’d try to wake up early for prayer, and he would wake up early as well. I’d plan on transformative contemplation during naptime, but my sleep-deprived body would nod off along with him. I realized I needed to relearn prayer.

I read about monastic practices, taped prayers all over my home. I told myself to pray during snack time and lunchtime and every moment of pause in my day as a SAHM. Some days it worked. Some days I felt the failure I’d been bearing for the entirety of my son’s life.

Fast-forward: Mom to two, longing for the quiet days of my first son’s babyhood, longing for the right catalyst to launch me into the kind of praying life, the constant response to Christ, the renewed sense of the Spirit in my day, that I know would make me more kind to my children, less anxious, more wholehearted in my view of the world and joyful toward the monotony of the work of the home.

I read Voskamp’s book and began listing 1,000 things for which I am grateful. And I learned why this book , despite its improper grammar, is so popular: Mothers love this book because we have forgotten how to connect with God. We’ve lost our sense of wonder at the world. Many of us are so consumed with the details and demands of motherhood that the line linking us to God has gotten tangled and dusty. In One Thousand Gifts, we find a wise mother telling us how she discovered God in the midst of this life with children. It isn’t by recommending another Bible study. (We’ve tried it.) It isn’t by guilting us into more time in prayer. (We feel guilty enough.) It’s as simple as listing the beautiful things God is giving us, right now in this moment.

One Thousand Gifts is changing my life, not because gratitude is the key to salvation, but because gratefulness brings me into God’s presence every time. Gratefulness is simple, yet it is shaping me into a woman who prays while doing the dishes, folding the laundry, and singing in the car with my kid. Without God’s healing presence, I am like Voskamp was: anxious, quick to despair, continually asking questions about why God allows what God allows. When I escape my glaring natural (and broken) tendencies and thank my Lord for what is truly a gift in my everyday life, the poopy underwear is not a deal breaker for my mood, the baby’s cries are not worth my raised blood pressure and raised voice at my preschooler. When I’m grateful, the world is not only beautiful, God is good and worthy of adoration too.

As Voskamp says, “Eucharisteo precedes the miracle.” We enter into “his gates with thanksgiving,” not with plans, not with goals, or books, or commitments.

Thanksgiving is simple. And that’s the beauty of this book. Sometimes we all need to remember that God is here right now, in the midst of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And that’s a sandwich I’m suddenly grateful for. Who knew?

Micha Boyett blogs at MamaMonk.com, and just moved from San Francisco to Austin with her husband and two boys. This is her first Her.meneutics post.

Brian Young had big plans for his church’s IT strategy. But his vision suffered a serious setback this summer after Google Inc. altered its nonprofit program to prohibit all churches and religious organizations from participating.

For years, the search and software giant individually offered some of its products—including its office software and popular Gmail—for free or discounted use to qualifying nonprofits. Eligibility requirements varied by product, but churches and faith-based groups were welcome to use some.

All of that changed in mid-March when the company launched “Google for Nonprofits.” The new initiative united a robust set of Google’s tools into one program, but it also came with new guidelines that excluded numerous entities, including schools, political thinktanks, churches, proselytizing groups, and any organization that considers religion or sexual orientation in hiring decisions.

The shift caught church leaders like Young by surprise. As the IT director for Living Hope Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Young spent two months researching Google for Nonprofits before applying on July 12. A rejection e-mail arrived the next day.

Young had originally planned to unify 50 paid staff members and 270 volunteers with customized Gmail and office software; distribute video of Sunday services through a premium YouTube channel; beam live feeds of faraway missionaries using Google Video; and map locations of service projects and missionaries with Google Earth. He expected the 3,000-member church would also use Google AdWords (up to $10,000 worth) included in the program.

“There were so many things for nonprofits that were going to benefit us,” said Young. “We just wanted to use them.”

Disappointed by the rejection, Living Hope scaled back its plans and paid $2,500 ($50 per user) to use Google’s office software and Gmail for one year. Young is happy with the products, but also unhappy that he’ll have fewer capabilities—and fewer remaining budget dollars to aid his church’s social ministries.

Tim Postuma, council chairman of a 418-member church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, expects the same scenario to play out for other churches. “That $50 per user is going to be a problem, especially for smaller churches with limited resources,” he said. Overall, he supports Google but said the company is “missing the mark here.”

Postuma also worries whether the numerous churches, religious colleges and universities, and denominational offices that received free Google tools before the changes now will lose them. Through an e-mail, Google spokesperson Parag Chokshi said existing participants will get “grandfathered in.”

Google won’t disclose how many religious-affiliated organizations already participate. Nick Nicholaou, founder of MBS Inc., a provider of IT and accounting services to churches for 25 years, said, “It probably doesn’t number in the thousands. It probably numbers in the hundreds.” The reason: Many churches haven’t adopted an IT strategy, leaving it up to individual staff members to choose a service such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft’s Hotmail.

Google’s policy change raises an important question for churches lacking an IT platform, or for ones who hoped to use Google’s nonprofit program, Nicholaou said. Services like Google use public—not private—servers, raising the possibility of future security breaches involving e-mails, documents, and other sensitive data. Churches may want to unite staff for e-mail and document sharing using a private exchange server, he said. Microsoft’s charity pricing, for instance, requires a one-time payment of $155 plus $3 per mailbox. “That’s very low,” Nicholaou said.

While church leaders may be startled by Google’s changes, corporations often exclude faith-based groups from their philanthropic programs or restrict who can qualify, said Lloyd Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School. He said Google is “trying to avoid anything that would reflect negatively on them” by avoiding potentially polarizing causes that might alienate customers.

Such exclusions are generally legal, even if ill-advised, said Stuart Lark, an attorney specializing in nonprofits and religious organizations with Holme, Roberts & Owen in Colorado Springs. But he noted that similar exclusions from public facilities or benefits may be unlawful religious discrimination.

Chokshi said Google continues to evaluate its changes. For Young, that’s a promising sign. “Hopefully they’ll reconsider.”

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous coverage related to and nonprofits include:

Christian Microfinance Stays on a Mission | While scandals rock the microfinance industry, Christian nonprofits diversify their efforts to help the poor. (May 27, 2011)

What’s a Congregation Worth? | A look at whether a congregation adds economic value to its community. (March 31, 2011)

How Evangelicals Give | Church members’ giving is decreasing in the recession, especially as a percentage of income. (January 31, 2011)