History, the new, and our quest for salvation.

The American Reporter

Vol. 5, No. 1229 -- December 17, 1999

COMMENTARY: HISTORY, THE NEW, AND OUR QUEST FOR SALVATION
By Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent

WASHINGTON -- We who are steeped in popular culture and journalism are the connoisseurs of the new. Few are alive who lived in the last century. Journalism by default favors the "new," but the approaching year 2000 has stretched our backward vision.

Journalism as a daily phenomenon had hardly begun when the year 1900 rolled around, but the millennium has made us think about times upon which popular culture and we who record it don't often reflect.

This turn to history is dramatically exhibited in the selection by the Religion Newswriters Association of the top 10 stories of the millennium. Only two of the stories are clearly from the 20th Century, the Holocaust, ranked fourth, and Vatican II, ranked seventh.

Two others are 20th Century stories, but their roots are in the 19th Century: The revolutionary theorizing of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, ranked ninth, along with the somewhat obscure beginning of modern Pentecostalism in Los Angeles in 1906, which garnered the RNA's 10th-ranked story slot.

Of the remaining six stories in RNA's top 10, two are from the 11th Century -- the Great Schism that separated Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, which ranked third, and the infamous Christian Crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land, which ranked fifth. Another is from the 13th Century, when Buddhism was crushed in India by Muslim invaders, a story the RNA voters ranked sixth.

In the 17th Century, Protestants founded Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, and Roger Williams established Rhode Island, forging the ideal of religious freedom, a story ranked eighth by the RNA.

At the top of the RNA list are two closely linked stories: The second-ranked story is Gutenberg's 15th Century invention of moveable type and his publishing of the Bible.

The top story of the millennium, which many would argue is dependent on Gutenberg's invention, is Martin Luther's 16th Century posting of his 95 theses that challenged Roman Catholicism and led to worldwide Reformation and, many would argue, the beginning of modern civilization.

In addition to our preoccupation with the new, we journalists tend to value change. When we look at the past -- as the millennium has forced us to do -- often it is with an intention to record how different the past is from our contemporary times.

Indeed, we thrive on change, updating stories daily if not hourly by adding detail after detail to a story we call "developing."

Does the past have anything to offer besides its contrast to our day?

Enter Billy Graham, who at 81 has seen all but the first 19 years of the 20th Century.

In a recent interview, Graham told AP religion writer Richard Ostling that one thing has not changed in the millennium -- humankind's search for salvation.

Indeed, Graham would argue that such a quest links Luther, Gutenberg, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, the American colonists, the Crusaders, the Vatican Councilors, the Muslim invaders, the Jewish victims of Nazi evil, the Azusa Street Pentecostalists -- and the journalists of Cyberspace.

Graham should not be taken lightly, despite his evangelist's way of racing through history. I recall when Graham emerged from behind the Iron Curtain several years ago and told reporters he'd found a vibrant and active Christian church alive in the Soviet Union. Most disdained if not scoffed his assumed naivete, but his assertion proved more reliable than the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

What Graham implies is that humankind in the 21st Century, as did humankind in all the centuries prior, will seek salvation that will rescue us from our unrighteous ways.

Like it or not, a good part of our role as journalists is recording that unrighteousness, and I find it ironic that so many of the top 10 stories are records of human unrighteousness or attempts to correct it.

The argument, often attributed to both Christian writer C.S. Lewis and to neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth, that Christians should read their Bibles with a copy of the daily newspaper alongside them, provides a way of linking the quest for salvation with human unrighteousness: The Bible, a commentary on sainthood; the newspaper, a commentary on sinners.

Graham, without saying it, seems to have challenged those of us who read our daily newspapers with regularity to also have a copy of the Scriptures nearby to aid in that never-changing human quest for salvation as we move into the next millennium.

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Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net