The Making of the Christian Global Mission, Part 5: Good News for Body and Soul

Manokwari, the capital of West Papua, Indonesia (formerly known as Irian Jaya). Image: David Worabay / Wikimedia Commons

Another situation began arising toward the end of the eighteenth century and within the first eight to nine years of the nineteenth was the extension of English missionaries into China, partly due to Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe. Drake’s presence in the western Pacific was critical for England to begin with as the merchant ships of the Netherlands were also present especially in the vicinity of the Spice Islands now known as Indonesia while eastward toward the central Pacific the Spanish Galleons docking and disembarking from Manila in the Philippines. Robert Morrison arrived in China in 1807 from England, three years before Adoniram Judson and his wife arrived in Burma as missionaries representing the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The English missionaries concentrated on inland China and besides preaching the gospel established schools and medical facilities. This concentration culminated in the formation of what became known as the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor and his wife in 1865. A faith mission, the China Inland Mission operated on the basis that one went without financial support and with trust in God for provision. There were also no stipulation as to the gender of the missionary. Of the fifteen missionaries on Taylor’s initial journey into inland China, seven were seven single women. This pattern would remain not only for the China Inland Mission, now known as Operation Mobilization, but was adopted by other mission societies clear into the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

By the turn of the 19^th century into the 20^th there were forty women’s mission organizations, and more women were serving in American missions than men. Both Ruth A. Tucker’s From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Zondervan, 1983, p. 288) and Andrew Walls’ The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, NY; Orbis Books, 2002, p. 231) attest to this figure.

The end result of England’s entry into organized mission societies having a thought-out mission agenda involving evangelism, education, medicine, and outreach to those in direst need had a direct effect upon the whole Christian spectrum with Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, and others imitating the China Inland Mission. It began the process that was to eventuate in breaking down the walls among Christians on the mission field and at home.

It also redesigned the character of the Christian world as it fostered and gave birth to the indigenization of the Christian message in which the various congregations birthed in each country took initiatives in leadership, mission outreach, and self-funding. It was in the late nineteenth century, about 1895, when Roland Allen, sent out from England by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, advised missionaries to found their work on the idea of the Three Selfs–self-governing, self-funding, and self-propagating.”

One can trace the origin of the “three-self” movement and the spread of each body of Christians indigenous to the country in which the gospel took hold back to the years that the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent out Adoniram Judson and his wife and family in the early 1800s and the China Inland Mission and the London Missionary Society later. Between 1807 and ending in 1953 with the departure of Arthur Matthews and Dr. Rupert Clark of the China Inland Mission, thousands of foreign Protestant missionaries and their families lived and worked in China alone not to mention southeast Asia and the sub-continent of India. At the time of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 which ended the French and Indian War which ensured British dominance in Canada and India and the independence of what came to be known as the United States of America, the way was made for the furtherance of the gospel within the British-held lands from Canada, Barbados in the Caribbean, India, Australia, New Zealand, and eastern Africa.

The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden extended itself from Sweden into its settlement which later became known as Delaware and then spread its congregations across the American Midwest and the northern plains states. The Netherlands swapped possessions with England. England gained New York and the Netherlands gained the Spice Islands later re-named Indonesia. During the Dutch period, the Marble Collegiate Church of New York City was built as a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Christian Reformed Church also from the Netherlands spread across the American northern states, established congregations, schools and Christian publishing houses all across the northern Midwest. Into China went the American Presbyterian Mission, the American Southern Baptist Mission, the English Presbyterian Mission, the Protestant Episcopal Mission, and the English Baptist Missionary Society, to name a few.

Mustang, Nepal. The name “Mustang” comes from the Tibetan language and means, “Plain of Aspiration.”
Image: Anup Raj Rai / Wikimedia Commons

There were problems to contend with when the missionaries entered areas of central Asia and even China. One of the problems was the presence of Islam in western, central, and southern Asia. Another was the prominence of Hinduism and a multiplicity of differing people groups in India and in the Himalayan mountain chain where lived the inhabitants of Bhutan, Tibet, and Mustang, Nepal, to name a few. Still another was that of unfamiliarity with the remnants of Eastern Christians long isolated from those of the Mediterranean world and of Europe by the westward advance of Arabic, Mongols, and Turkic peoples into the Mediterranean and Eastern European lands. The Church of the East, erroneously called Nestorians by the Greek Orthodox Church, had adherents in northwestern India and held to the Syriac translation of the Bible while the Europeans had the King James Version, the Geneva Bible, or the translation into German by Luther. It took a number of years for acceptance of each other as fellow Christians in a common gospel mission. In time that acceptance came.

At the same time the sense of a fuller Christian mission emerged beyond that of evangelism as the missionaries from England, America, and Europe included nurses, schools, hospitals. In fact, the evangelical churches as the Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, and the Cumberland Presbyterians had more women missionaries than men. This became increasingly so with the passage of the nineteenth century that by the early 20^th century “Among the personnel of conservative faith missions, women outnumbered men nearly two to one,” wrote Kathryn T. Long in her recent book God in the Rain Forest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, p.28). Leading in this trend were the “Brethren” such as the Plymouth Brethren, the Church of the Brethren to name and the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

The American origin arose with a Presbyterian Minister, Rev. John J. Shepherd and a missionary Philo P. Stewart in the summer of 1832. These two men became friends in Elyria, Ohio. The two were concerned with what they discerned to be the lack of strong Christian principles among the settlers of the American west. The two decided to establish a college where they would “train teachers and Christian leaders for the boundless most desolate fields in the West.” They found support from Albert Finney, a circuit-riding Presbyterian evangelist. They adopted the some of the ideas of an Alsatian pastor John Frederick Oberlin, who introduced educational programs throughout the Alsace and Lorraine areas of France. Oberlin’s programs not only included biblical and Christian studies but courses in the manual trades as blacksmithing, masonry, and road construction. In the spring of 1833, with faith in their project and their labor, combined with funding from several wealthy and sources, and promotion from Rev. Finney, Shepherd and Stewart established the town of Oberlin, Ohio and Oberlin College. It was a high-water moment. In December 1832, 29 men and 15 women began classes of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute. It was the first school in America to welcome into its program African Americans. It was critical for those who would be ministers of the Gospel in the developing American West and important for co-educational higher education in America.

Oberlin was not the only important school of higher education established in the opening of the American mid-west. Seven years after the founding of Oberlin College, Bethany College was founded in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, one mile from Pennsylvania and five miles from Ohio in the neck of what is now known as West Virginia, in 1840, by anti-burgher seceder Presbyterian preacher Alexander Campbell, one of the participants in the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s and who in 1832 in Lexington, Kentucky, along with Barton Warren Stone, a New Light Presbyterian, formed the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Each believed in opening the celebration of the Lord’s Last Supper to the new frontiersmen and settlers of the Midwestern lands irrespective of their past church affiliations be they Methodist, Baptist, Quaker, Mennonite, Catholic, or Moravian. In fact, Campbell had high regard for Comenius, the Czech Brethren minister, who had one time was invited by the founders of Harvard University to be its first President [Editor’s note: see Further Reading at the end of this article]. Comenius declined the offer but did encourage the founding of America’s first primary schools for children. Campbell adopted a statement made by Comenius as the hallmark of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ): “In faith, Unity; in opinion, Liberty; and in all things, Brotherly Love.”

This regard for open communion among the churches foreshadowed what we now call the Christian ecumenical movement of the late 1890s and the early 1900s. Another step that Campbell took thirteen years later in 1845 was the creation of the United Christian Missionary Society through which congregations could co-operatively support missionaries wherever they went whether Africa, India, South America, Asia, or elsewhere.

At the same time by the 1830s the Midwestern lands were progressively being welcomed into the union as new states, beginning with Ohio Kentucky, and later Indiana. The expansion westward required something more than pastors. The need for traveling evangelists, preachers, and teachers became increasingly important and men like Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke, and Peter Cartwright for the Methodists went as circuit preachers and evangelists. Asbury and Coke became the makers of the Methodist Church in America more so than Wesley who retained his identity as an Anglican evangelist. Walter Scott was the outstanding evangelist for the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Other Christian bodies followed suit in sending out circuit riding pastors who served more than one congregation. The evangelists sought any potential setting outdoors or meeting house. Cartwright once held an evangelistic meeting in a frontier dance-hall.

At the time of the settling of the American Midwest, Great Britain was forging ahead in foreign missions. England, having lost out in gaining ground in what became known as the United States of America concentrated on developing what became known as Canada and its growing influence in East Africa, India, and the Pacific.

The evangelical presence in England occasioned by the preaching of John Wesley occasioned the establishment of a society made up of Church of England laymen and their wives and single women based in Clapham, London, at the beginning of the 1800’s. Historian Stephen Michael Tomkins described the society as “a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values. They were noted for their social activism, by their love for each other, and for taking the gospel throughout the world.” The Clapham Society focused on the abolition of slavery. It initially gathered at the church of John Venn, rector of the evangelical Anglican Church in the Clapham neighbor- hood in south London. Its membership not only included Wilbur Wilberforce, but also Henry Thornton, and John Newton, rector of an evangelical Anglican church in Olney, who gained fame as lyricist of the hymn “Amazing Grace” in memory of his conversion to Christ Jesus and put to music later in 1831 to a traditional American melody by Edwin O. Excell to appear in Carrell and Clayton’s Virginia Harmony.

As intimated in the foregoing, the Clapham Sect had an influence far beyond England and had set a precedent for American, as well as British, evangelical Christianity, as well as India and the rest of the English-speaking world. The Clapham Group also had clout politically, economically, and socially as Wilberforce and Newton and the others brought an end to African slavery throughout the British sphere of influence by 1831, and in a round-about way had an impact on the American abolition movement. The Clapham sect, as it came to be called, also had direct impact upon “foreign” missions as the participants practically underwrote the entire missionary enterprise outside of the British isles. Among the evangelicals were Henry Thornton, the English financier and Zachary Macauley, sometime Governor of Sierra Leone, and Lord Teigmouth formerly Governor-General of India. The term “Clapham Sect” was a later description given to the group by James Stephen in an article of 1844 which uplifted the work of the membership. They were among the founders of the Church Mission Society, the Anti-Slavery Society, the Free Church of England and other Christian-related outreaches.

England also set a precedent worth noting as affecting the later course of action within its overseas “possessions.” England set up a political infrastructure which allowed a stable representative government should they seek independence from the “Mother Country.” This transition differed radically from that of Spanish, Belgic, and French policies, and most likely furthered by the Clapham Sect whose membership was characterized by individuals prominent in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the British Parliament.

The consequence of such was a great interest in sending missionaries into India not only as evangelists but also as educators. India, however, was not solely the mission field for the British. About the same time it attracted missionaries from the United States of America at an early date and simultaneous with the westward movement. The apparent earliest American missionary to India was Dr. John Scudder, Sr., and his wife, Elizabeth. Their story is unique in the history of missionary outreach as their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren carried out their parents and grandparents for four or more generations.

Born in Freehold Township, New Jersey, September 3, 1793, Rev. Dr. John Scudder, Sr., was the first medical missionary in Ceylon and India. He graduated from Princeton University, a school of the Reformed Church in America in 1811, and went on to study at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons and graduated from there in 1813. After experiencing success as a Physician in New York City, he felt God’s call to be a missionary. He and Elizabeth founded the first American medical facility in Asia in Ceylon and later became the first American medical missionary in India. The succeeding four generations of children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren, carried on that mission. Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder, born on December 9, 1870, of the third generation, a great-granddaughter, carried on her great grandfather’s legacy. In 1918, she started one of Asia’s finest teaching hospitals, the Christian Medical College & Hospital in Vellore, India. She served her whole life in India dedicating herself to the health of Indian women in the fight against cholera, leprosy, and the bubonic plague. She was back in the United States of America for a brief period to study at Dwight L. Moody’s Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts but returned to Madras in India to help her father, Rev. Dr. John Scudder, Jr., when her mother was ill at the mission bungalow at Tindivanam, Madras Province in India. Ida Scudder lived to be nearly 90 in 1970. She died at the age of 89 in her home in India. One of her noted students who studied under her and worked with her was the noted Dr. Paul Brand, who did most of his work as a leprosy researcher.

Between the 1840s and 1900 there were dramatic changes in missionary outreach through Europe, America, and elsewhere. Among the changes were growing co-operation among the churches of differing Reformation traditions. Another was the creation of Wheaton College in Illinois in 1860 which became a school for missionaries and evangelists and which at its time of formation, a haven for African-Americans, as a way station of the Underground Railroad. In 1877, the inner-city mission field opened up in Chicago, Illinois, when Colonel George and Sarah Dunn Clarke opened a ministry in a tiny storefront at 386 South Clark Street. The Pacific Garden Mission still operates after 140 years as the oldest inner-urban rescue mission in the United States of America, and today has a nation-wide broadcast.

A. B. Simpson (1843-1919)

In 1870 A.B. Simpson left a successful pastorate in New York City when he had the call to reach the lost and forgotten within the urban areas of both the United States of America and of the global world. He established the New York Gospel Tabernacle and set up a Missionary Training Institute to provide training for men and women to take the gospel to the urban centers of the world. In 1884, he sent out the first team of missionaries to Lusaka in the Congo. Not long after another team was sent to Tokyo in Japan. The Christian and Missionary Alliance was formed as a missionary society. The earliest congregations were known as branches which were made up of members from the major denominations. In 1919, Simpson died and Dr. Paul Rader was chosen to lead the Christian and Missionary Alliance. One of the most well-known C & MA spokesmen was A.W. Tozer.

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Within the time frame of the 1860s and the 1880s the spread of the Christian missionary endeavor was more and more a global endeavor and much organized beyond that of the individual workers in the field and much more in line with Jesus’ total vision as outlined in Luke 10:1-12 and much more organized both within the different church groups and in some instances co-operative one with the other in a common endeavor. By 1868, the London Missionary Society sent out Griffith John into China where he labored at Sichuau. In 1881, Samuel R. Clark of the China Inland Mission was the first to rent a home in Chengchu and was one of the responsible individuals in establishing Huafi Hospital.

In the same year the West China Union University, now Sichuan University was established and a Foundling Hospital founded. Today Christianity is part of the mainstream of China’s landscape due to the English and American missionary endeavor and has been able to weather the abuse by the Communist takeover under Mao Tse Tung. Islam is dominant only among non-Chinese ethnic groups on China’s outer margins. Christians make up the third largest grouping after Buddhism and those who practice folk religions. More important the Christian faith is strongest within the countryside and mostly away from Beijing and the seats of political power. This is due to the fact that the missionaries of the late 18^th and the major part of the 19^th majored on inland China. To relate the conditions of the 20^th century or even the present is getting ahead of this narrative.

The earliest known contact is recorded on a plaque worked into a wall of rectangular platform built of close fitting stones, and given the Hawaiian title of Hikiau Heiau. On the front side was an obelisk built of the same lava rock but secured in a very non-Polynesian way. The obelisk stood twelve feet high and was mounted with a bronze commemorative plaque that read:

Kealakekua Bay in the morning.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In this Heiau,
January 28, 1779,
Captain James Cook R.N.
read the English burial service over
William Watman, Seaman.
The first recorded
Christian Service
in the Hawaiian Islands.
Erected by the Kona Civic Club, 1928

Here was a far different record from the one the heiau actually told. This was a record of an accidental arrival of the Christian gospel. However, this record is more like a record of the coming of Englishmen in the South Pacific, more specifically that part to the east and southeast of Indonesia, New Guinea and Sumatra and southeast of the Philippines and including to that part of the Pacific referred to as the Coral Sea. Oceania includes the Solomon Islands, Tahiti, and a large number of small islands and an island group known as the Marquesas. The Pacific as a whole is a little over 12,000 miles (180 degrees ) across. North to south, from the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska to the Antarctic , the ocean stretches nearly 10,000 miles. Magellan entered into Oceania in the 1500s but that was all he did as he sailed northward along the western coast of South America until he came out of Oceania by turning westward from coastal Peru and sailed westward until his ship entered into the area of the Philippine Islands.

Spanish, British, and Dutch ships entered the far western edge of Oceania where the Indian Ocean ends and the Pacific begins and skirted northeastward to the Malay peninsula and the coastal waters of southeast Asia, China, Indonesia, to Where the South China Sea meets the Pacific. This vast area so described by The European navigators became the last frontier of Christian mission. It started not by Christians from either North America or South America but by English, Portuguese, Dutch, and Americans already present in Calcutta, Thailand, the islands of Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Spice Islands, and Sumatra. Western New Guinea, later known as Irian Jaya, lay within this part of the Pacific while the larger landmass of New Guinea lay within the sea lanes of Oceania which stretched toward New Zealand and Easter Island some ten thousand miles or more. The first Christian missionaries who entered western New Guinea came with the Dutch merchantmen who entered the waters of the Spice Islands.

About the same time that England, The Netherlands, Portuguese, the Spanish and French were plying the inner seas washing the shores of North America, South America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, turmoil was seething back in Europe, mainly France and especially central and eastern Europe. In 1685, King Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau which ordered that Huguenot [French Reformed] Church buildings and schools be closed. The state-sanctioned suppression of all non-Catholics moved to a new stage.

PR

Further Reading:

For more on Comenius, the father of modern education, see: Global Pentecostal Renaissance? Reflections on Pentecostalism, Culture, and Higher Education, by Jeff Hittenberger

Bernie Van De Walle reviews: Michael G. Yount, A. B. Simpson: His Message and Impact on the Third Great Awakening (2016)

Having served as a chaplain in two Pennsylvania State psychiatric hospitals for twenty-nine years, I was interested in reading the memoirs of hospital chaplain, Joan Paddock Maxwell’s, Soul Support: Spiritual Encounters at Life’s End. Maxwell chronicles her reminiscences and descriptions of the numerous experiences she faced as a chaplain from 1999 to 2011, in a Washington D.C. hospital. The majority of stories come from the edge of death, as she writes in the context of palliative and hospice care about what she learned in hospital chaplaincy situations. I realize that as I work with the most vulnerable persons in our society—those with mental health issues and struggles, I understood that the accounts she disclosed were an honest depiction of people at life’s end. After she related the personal stories with patients, she did not give answers to the situation but rather, allowed the reader to sit back and consider what and how they would react in the situation. In the structure of the book, the author shares a story and offers a reflection of the experience. Because of my involvement as a chaplain for many years, I then imagined and created my own consideration of the incident. Maxwell notes that she was an agnostic who eventually, through reflection and theological study, became a hospital chaplain. She speaks of God as the Mystery at work, and in that understanding, she relates what she experiences of God through peoples’ lives.

Joan Paddock Maxwell

The vignettes in her book are divided into three levels of understanding. One set of vignettes is under the title of listening. A second group of stories is designated under learning. The third group’s heading is called loving. At the conclusion of the writing is an appendix on surviving a hospital stay and assisting patients who are terminally ill. These three values of listening, learning, and loving are the core characteristics of the work which hospital chaplains serve, in the context of the ministry of presence. In being present with a person in that holy moment, one needs to earnestly listen, learn, and love a human being with the deepest depths of their being.

Maxwell quotes Psalm 88, a lament psalm, as a complaint to God. I believe that was an appropriate psalm to express the feelings of many people in these situations. At one point in the psalm we read,

O Lord, why do you cast me off?

Why do you hide your face from me?

Wretched and close to death from my youth up,

I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.

Reviewed by Cletus Hull

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/soul-support-spiritual-encounters-at-life-s-end.html

“I have written this book,” writes Dr. Roberts, “to help those who want to bring the healing mercy of Jesus into the despairing and confusing world of the traumatized” (p.23). More specifically Dr. Roberts addresses the trauma caused by abuse and what can be done to facilitate recovery from the wounds caused by abuse. The abuse most often discussed is sexual abuse which appears to be her specialty.

Roberts gives considerable space to discussing the dynamics of “dissociative identity disorder” more recently identified as a condition affecting memories and inner conflict affecting personality. She relies on research done by Dr. Dan Allender, author of The Wounded Heart. This reviewer is well aware of the resource and Allender’s other book The Healing Path. Roberts chose well. Allender is also on the board of the American Association of Christian Counselors, an association with which this reviewer is a charter member.

Roberts writes for pastors and Christian laity in ministry. She advises her readers to not make any diagnosis of the traumatized but to assure them of the healing that comes through prayer and comforting care. The author uses the word “fractured” and “fragmented” in place of “split” personality. They are also not “hopeless.” Anyone who has experienced childhood abuse “has some defense system in place” (p.29).

For this reviewer, by way of critique, this is what makes Help for the Fractured Soul both unique and helpful for student, pastor and christian worker. It steers the reader away from a psychological or therapeutic model. She also avoids reliance upon prominent theorists, whether secular or Christian, as “no one shoe fits” all situations. She keeps to a course that is strictly biblical and theological. The author also cautions that “the greater the denial, the stronger the walls of defense, the more divided the house, then the greater chance that those seeking help have not experienced freedom” (p.55).

Also to her credit, Dr. Roberts keeps theory and explanations to a minimum and offers insight by citing individual situations and giving only first names rather than disclosing the full identities of those with whom she ministers. Another attractive element in the book is that the author admits her own limitations. “I never agree to minister inner-healing with those who are trapped in substance abuse”(p.63). She makes referrals and works alongside professionals more capable than herself in areas outside of her own concentration (pp. 65-66). She acknowledges that pain and trauma can be trapped in the physical body as well as hidden in the mind (p.94). “Inner healing,” she explains, “is wholistic, it has an effect on the mind, body, and spirit” (p. 93). Some causes require long-term ministry from several months to “a few years.”

Another feature of Help for the Fractured Soul worth one’s attention is her discussion on the importance of physical health, forgiveness and mental health. She distinguishes forgiveness from exoneration of the abuser and explains the effect that unforgiveness has upon the victim’s emotional, physical, and mental health. She depends upon insights from Larry Crabb (p. 102) and also Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence (p. 103).

Gene Veith, The Soul of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Colorado Springs: Cook Communications Ministries, 2005), 206 pages.

In the preface to the book, Veith sets forth the premise that his book is intended to be a companion volume to Lewis’ work, originally written for children, that “will help you unpack the meaning of the story.” It also shows how Lewis’ book fits in with the whole heritage of Christian literature, particularly that form to which many Christian writers have gravitated: fantasy. Veith’s book is divided into two parts in accordance with these premises. Veith contends that his book can be read in the way that books are normally read or simply used as a resource. My impression is that the book is best when read in the normal manner.

Veith shows a great depth of understanding of literature, especially as it relates to the Christian faith, which I personally found to be quite educational. The book also reflects that Veith himself is well grounded in the Scriptures and has a solid evangelical understanding of the Christian faith. Veith also adroitly deals with the use of the imagination to communicate divine revelation. Some people, according to Veith, question the legitimacy of this method of communication. Veith citing Hebrews 11:1, and the reality that the Bible makes ample use of narrative and poetry.

Veith regards Lewis as a master of the fantasy genre, especially given Lewis’ background as a literary expert. The use of fantasy requires the ability to express thought in vivid, concrete images that stimulate the use of the imagination. To explain how Lewis uses fantasy so well, Veith uses several pages to tell the gist of the story of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe for those who may not have read it, or who may have read it so long ago that they have forgotten it. In doing so, Veith explains that in order for Lewis to help children apply the truths learned in their lives, the story must be anchored in the real world. In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the setting is the Battle of Britain in World War II. This part of the story, Veith notes, may be somewhat autobiographical, as Lewis himself protected children during the Nazi Blitz at his home outside of London. It may be that he saw himself in the character of the old professor.

Narnia, as Veith points out, is rich in symbolism, especially as revealed in its characters. Lewis, according to Veith, intentionally used the symbolism to communicate biblical truths. Aslan clearly symbolizes Christ while his archrival, the Wicked Witch, clearly demonstrates some of the characteristics of Satan. The story, then, is a fantasy clearly written within the biblical paradigm of good and evil with human beings, in this case, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, in the center of the drama. Humans are portrayed here as free moral agents who are the objects of Aslan’s love and the Witch’s wrath, who are called upon to choose whom they will serve. Veith rightly regards Lewis as a deft theological.

In the second part of the book, acknowledging that fantasy has become an extremely popular reading genre, he compares Lewis to J.K. Rowlands’ Harry Potter series and His Dark Materials, another series of books by Philip Pullman. While I have not read any of the Potter books and have never heard of Pullman’s series, I am quite familiar with the tenets that underpin witchcraft, which permeates the Potter books, and well understand the justified reasons why Christians should be concerned about such practices. Veith notes that children in particular have been drawn to the Potter series, finding it to be a great read. His conclusion is that the best antidote to the theological errors in Harry Potter is to not only solidly ground children in the reality of the Word of God but to also expose them to good fantasy literature such as The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Written in honor of the late Charles Malik (1987), this short volume of eight essays celebrates his belief that the two tasks of Christian scholars in the public university involve redeeming the soul and redeeming the mind. Eight Christian educators from mostly non-theological academic disciplines respond to Malik’s challenging call in several ways.

Paul Gould begins by relating these tasks to the fully integrated life of the Christian scholar (chapter 1). Then Lebanon based scholar Habib Malik, Charles’ only son, speaks about the perspectives that Christian professors can offer in an era where worldviews and politics cause serious “crashes” in civilizations (chapter 3). Next, Peter Kreef’s essay calls Christian scholars to ardently pursue Malik’s two tasks in their own university settings (chapter 4). Then Walter Bradley (Chapter 5) outlines how believing professors can daily influence their secular academies. Robert Kaitia (Chapter 6) demonstrates the modern day implications of the Apostle Paul’s evangelism among the Athenians; while John North (Chapter 7) champions the application of Malik’s two tasks to the humanities.

Finally, editor William Lane Craig (Chapter 8) concludes this entire collection by repeating a unifying theme common to all of the essays. He reminds readers that “Christian academics stand on the church’s front line of the most important theaters in the culture war; that of the university” (188). He believes it therefore necessary for Christian scholars to engage intellectually with their discipline, as well as their Christian faith. He then asks that they remain mindful of their own personal, spiritual formation (188).

Certainly, this refreshing collection of multi-disciplinary academic voices contributes enheartening perspectives to other academics who also daily serve the public university as Christians. It reissues the rather lofty call of Charles Malik for our times: Christian academics are to redeem the soul, and redeem the mind of the university. Most practically, however, this anthology illustrates how professors can live as redeemed souls and redeemed minds in the university. This is by far the most practical and obtainable objective, especially in settings particularly antagonistic to Gospel witness.

Julia C. Loren, “Healers of the Wounded Soul” Charisma (Sept. 2005), pages 55-62.

Julia Loren presents to the reader of Charisma an insightful and charming article about one of the most important couples of the Pentecostal/charismatic persuasion, John and Paula Sandford. Their works on healing, deliverance, inner healing and the prophetic office are destined to be classics until the Lord returns. Mrs. Loren wisely chooses to highlight two aspects of the Sanford’s many faceted ministry, their development of inner healing prayer, and John’s understanding of the work of the prophet.

Inner healing was originally discovered by Mrs. Agnes Sanford through her ministry to heal and disciple Jewish refugees who had experienced the trauma of Nazi persecution. This ministry became popular with the publication of Ruth Carter Stapleton’s best selling book, The Gift of Inner Healing (1976). Unfortunately, this work reduced inner healing prayer to merely “directed visualization.” John Sandford, who had spent several years as Mrs. Sanford’s assistant at Christian teaching missions, immediately saw that this book was dangerous to the inner healing movement. He set about writing a work that would explain this type of prayer in biblical terms and bring it further to become a ministry of transformation. Two books came out of this correction of the Stapleton book, The Transformation of Inner Man (1982) and Healing the Wounded Spirit (1985).

Unfortunately, these books did not head off a great evangelical assault on the inner healing ministry led by Dave Hunt’s infamous work The Seduction of Christianity (1985). Hunts arguments, based on cessationist theology, dealt a severe blow to the inner healing movement, and it mostly stopped as healing prayer within evangelical and charismatic churches.

Julia Loren in 2007.

Loren’s article points out that it was largely the work of the Sandfords to reintroduce inner healing as an orthodox ministry— extending the ministry of forgiveness of sins to enable true transformation in the life of the believer. That battle took two decades, and it is now mostly won, with the ministry of inner healing regaining wide acceptance. This was gained not only through the consistently good teaching courses, books and videos that the Sandfords have produced, but by the undeniably good fruit evident in hundreds of thousands of people ministered to and healed through inner healing.

The other part of the Sandfords’ ministry outlined in Mrs. Loren’s article is John’s expansion of our understanding of the office and function of the prophet in the contemporary church. Prophetic ministry is now considered a staple of many charismatic churches, yet this was not so at the start of the charismatic renewal. John Sandford’s book The Elijah Task (1977) first gave the Church a clear biblical theology on the present and continued need for prophetic ministry. Loren points out that many of today’s more established prophets such as James Goll and John Paul Jackson were deeply influenced and motivated by the Sandford’s work.

Loren mentions throughout her article how the Sandfords suffered various waves of persecution for their pioneering work. Unfortunately she is overly polite and omits specific names and controversies. This is common to many Christian writers, and it is, I believe, a misunderstanding of the biblical pattern of historical writing modeled in both testaments, where we see frank descriptions of sin (as in David’s adultery) and controversies such as Paul’s dispute with Peter in Antioch (Galatians 2:11-14). Loren’s article gives the reader no information as to precisely who opposed the Sandfords, and very little on the specific issues that stirred controversies against them. No mention is made, for instance, of The Seduction of Christianity.