Truth Flashes

...comprehends anything...

...I agree with Of several minds: John Garvey that, but what do you do with it...

...The Bible halt'll be gathered together...

...We needed, that letter said, dark...

...If literature is any good it boy knows it...

...finally gets his presidential campaign rola man who thinks that the Bible is true, Swaggart agrees, and says he prays for ling...

...Act Two: We find a new • An armload of others willing to become Com-_ location for our office, at a very attractive rent...

...And that brings me to Jimmy Swaggart, and also to Flannery O'Connor, and AM probably as guilty as the next tion of being right is what unites a lot of to needs people really have...

...His misrepresentations of what come like an avalanche or an earthquake some of the other preachers who embarCatholics believe are either willful or ig- or an encounter with the burning bush, rass us, usually because they are so norant, and they are dangerous because a and this should strike us as, at least, a dreadfully wrong and over-simple, but lot of people seem to think he's telling the cultural tragedy...

...Jesus really does present us wonder what people could possibly mean with hard choices, and they may make us when they speak of the Bible as literature look funny to some of our friends...

...Act Three: We monweal Associates by contributing between $75 and shell out over $60,000 in order to renovate the new space and $200 (or more) in 1986, and to make non-binding make the move...

...us, or part of us...

...sometimes because they come close to truth...

...By and large, we feeling short of blood...

...The tie his own shoes...

...the differ- what is best in Christian tradition than Jesus, as if the book itself had ceased to even embarrassing, sweaty, weird impress us, except as it offers us the Jimmy Swaggart is...

...One of my favorite quotes is all those poor non-Pentecostals whose view is quite simply the one from which from Gregory of Nyssa...

...The assump- create idols," he wrote, "only wonder its worst (though Jimmy thinks he finds it 26 Deeeinher /986: 677 in Scripture alone, since that's the way he something we muse about and take at ence, the saving difference, is that the has to think...

...My foot don't have a thing to be able to get dressed in the morning and ready...

...Act Four: We beg and borrow (but not steal, pledges to repeat such gifts in the "out years...

...There are a few aspects of outfitting our received what we had asked for, or even more than we had new office space yet to be completed-and yet to be paid...

...Commonweal continues to be a shoestring opera- But mostly the move is behind us, and we can get back to the tion, but the journal will not go into the new year either "normal" crises, like dealing with the annual deficit...

...vaguely liberal_ guy of sneering at a Catholic Workers, Wanderer readers, Some mornings on one television staparticular sort of fundamentalist ACLU members, Moral Majority folks, tion we can get around here I am able to Christian...

...Swaggart's own cousin, lives finally are not...

...you walk in as you are, and you do with it...

...remember ever having heard of Voll perhaps for reasons of imagined There is more to the story than this, but Terry, and then I realized that he meant familiarity-the least likely book to be- reading it I thought of Swaggart and Voltaire...

...In O'Connor's The Larne Shall Enter lieve, but it blesses the greed and vioThis is the claim which embarrasses First, a liberal social worker named lence which moves our society along...

...Because for the past twenty-five years...

...Too much of his message is not only and that what can be found in it is meant Jerry Lee...

...This makes me knew this...

...The man really is pig- arm's length...

...I remember hearing are changed or you are not...

...In some cases, lost mail...

...least at any price we could afford...

...asked for...

...There are certainly decent Orthodox, and Protestant services all to see him sweat and sing and shout and evangelicals--people like Senator Mark over the country every Sunday morning...

...He tells the boy, who believes in a from a Jimmy Swaggart that we aren't true, and does that mean it is literally true tough and fundamentalist version of embarrassed by the flashes of truth that or does it mean the general direction of Christianity, that there is no hell-which can be found in tough evangelism...

...My catalogue of what bothers Sojourners, and people on opposite sides see Jimmy Swaggart's Bible study, and me about fundamentalists is fairly long of the table over coffee after Catholic, some evenings on another one I am able and detailed...

...To the and mean by this a safe, non-religious extent that Jimmy Swaggart says this he approach to Scripture, because literature is, damn it all to hell, telling the as we experience it where it matters is not truth...

...It could be that worrying about what we ought to do is a central part of our problem...

...Flannery O'Connor grounds for a good fight...

...instead, we should worry more TROTH FLASHES about what we ought to be, and that conWHAT'S RIGHT ABOUT JIMMY SWAGGART cern has something to do with Gregory of Nyssa's concern for wonder and, what it could lead us to comprehend...

...the emotionalism of someone like Swag- chetypical Christians...

...It makes us embarrassed in a stand as sympathetically as we should...

...A handful of supporters willing to make sizable Of course, we are overjoyed to enlighten them-and anyone contributions -of $1,000 or more-this year and if pos- else who might be interested in coming to the magazine's aid...

...he or she was wrong, and it looks just ogy to him: Jews and mainstream ChrisCalling this "deceni' is a bit condes- plain wimpy to mount an argument while tians and other people who don't get cending, but that's part of my point too: pleading that the possibility of our being saved will go to hell, and it isn't his fault we always condescend, always assume mistaken be simultaneously taken into or his harsh decision, it's God's will for that our religious or political point of account...

...All of us, fundamentalists, pard made immoral suggestions to him...

...A form of of preaching...

...JOHN GARVEY Commonweal: 678...

...We are like patients after very successful surgery-on sending us single contributions of $10, $25, or $50...

...NY 10038...

...He is wrong about a lot of in interviews that unless he gets saved he Robertson when the God who talks to Pat things, terribly wrong, but he seems to be fully believes that he will be damned...

...When someone says the Sheppard tries hard to help a crippled boy We have to make sure, though, that when Bible is true the conversation im- who has been in an out of trouble with the we distance ourselves, as we should, mediately degenerates: well, how is it law...

...dance in front of an auditorium full of Hatfield, or the people around the It is hard to imagine an alternative to the people...

...I can't stand his smugness, his Sojourners fellowship, who combine a idea that we are right-certainly no one self-righteousness, his bigotry...

...The lame shall enter first...

...When I get him one morning talk about the dying should be at least that powerful, and yet ready to be saved, Jesus'll save me, not words of a famous atheist, and I couldn't for many of us the Bible has become- that lying, stinking atheist...

...I have always found it interesting that the truth, to the fact that there are moBut the trouble with a lot of us, espe- Flannery O'Connor, without moving an ments in our lives when we really must cially those of us who read a lot and have inch from her profound Catholic belief, make choices that are just as simple and vaguely liberal convictions, is that we usually chose evangelical, biblically demanding, and finally saving as the think of our opponents as stupid, or find fundamentalist Protestants as her ar- ones these preachers rant and rave about...

...less prophetic than he would have us beto transform us...

...departure-point for bigotry and exhigher critics, conservatives, liberals, The boy, like Jimmy Swaggart's cousin, tremism, but the relativism of a lot of radicals, neo-orthodox, evade the burn- believes that he is in the power of Satan, modern secular folks is more distant from ing bush and the prophets and Job and and says that Sheppard is too...

...by Christianity really do involve the pluralistic culture to say that the culture One thing strikes me when I watch dramatic either/or decisions, the radical itself, good as it has been to us, good as it Swaggart, and it is something I don't find choices emphasized in Swaggart's kind has been for religion, is limited, and our in any other TV evangelist...

...even if our new offices are quite a bit closer to Wall Street) that • A platoon or a company or a regiment of friends sum...

...You don't walk into "I lie and steal," he says, "because I'm time religion as a man could be and still The Brothers Karamazov armed and good at it...

...But in most This is Commonweal's first Christmas at 15 Dutch Street, cases, it turns out, these are readers who receive their subscripNew York...

...How could this be...

...We are in danger right-wing politics definitely flows from the country-rock singer Jerry Lee Lewis, when we draw definite political prohis sort of belief and preaching, but it sincerely believes that he has chosen the grams from this, and there is little doubt doesn't quite seem central to it, nor does way of the devil-a life full of booze, that flinty Jimmy Swaggart will be in he use the Bible primarily to justify his drugs, and bad marriages...

...It may the Bible is correct, or that it is to be read leads the boy later on to say that Shep- be oversimplified, and it is too often a allegorically...

...Lewis has said there applauding the oleaginous Pat politics...

...This could be be- There are times when the the choices are gart embarrassing, and fail completely to cause at certain levels-the ones which between good and evil, God and Satan, see that someone could be drawn in that interested O'Connor, as an artist and as a life and death, and we would rather avoid direction for reasons we may not under- Christian - the choices we find presented this...

...Concepts theology isn't a version of Augustine's at others ought to be judged...

...Christmas thanks to all who responded when we asked-and to Recently, however, we have been reproached by some of any who, only hearing of our move now, would still like to...

...Most of our readers have received tions through their offices or agencies, and our mailing house's letters describing the economic realities that led to this move computers have coded their addresses among the many librarfrom the offices on Madison Avenue where we were quartered ies or other institutions that receive Commonweal...

...of his own very recent version of old- terms we bring to it...

...our feet, overjoyed about the outcome, but a little wobbly and The response to this appeal was generous...

...He sees adulterous pretenignorant, as stupid about the limitations changes us on its own terms, not on the sions in Sheppard's attempts to save him...

...Writing last May, we explained only those subscribers coded as individual subscriptions reour plight and pretty much placed our fate in the hands of our ceived our letters of appeal, other readers were left in the readers...

...It seems that a few of them never received word of our move-or of our appeal for MAKING OUR MOVE help...

...sible to continue that level of giving on request through Here is the story, very briefly: Act One: We lose our lease, at the decade...

...A hearty homeless or penniless...

...What lively concern with biblical Christianity would proceed from the assumption that seems like bigotry to me is simple theoland social action...