It’s been a real privilege to be doing radio shows lately in response to Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Here’s a link to some of the comments I’ve made that I hope are helpful to you:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=1326562
May you have a blessed Easter in the hope of our risen savior, Jesus Christ!
Tags: Easter, Heaven, Love Wins, Rob Bell
My publicist at Moody just released the following statement that I’d like to share with you:
MOODY PUBLISHERS eRELEASE
WHO GOES THERE?- A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HEAVEN AND HELL
Rebecca is available for print, radio, television, and web interviews.
To schedule an interview or to request a review copy, contact:
Stephanie S. Smith
(In)dialogue Communications
steph.in.dialogue@gmail.com
443.955.2394 443.955.2394
Historian Says Bell’s Questions of Eternal Destiny Are Not New
Chicago, IL–An overwhelming eighty-five percent of Americans believe that they are destined for heaven, but is this hope taken for granted? In her book Who Goes There? Rebecca Price Janney traces “a cultural history of heaven and hell,” investigating how popular beliefs of the afterlife have been shaped by events such as JFK’s assassination, the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Theresa, and the September 11, 2001 attacks. And now, Rob Bell’s latest book, Love Wins, has sparked such a firestorm over his views of heaven and hell that it has opened a whole new chapter in history’s ongoing debate.
Bell’s controversial book poses many questions, Are heaven and hell real places? Who goes where? How do we know and why does it matter? These questions have all been asked before, Janney says, and with a biblical foundation and a panoramic perspective of American history, Janney identifies where these same ideas have shown up in the past and how they influenced popular opinion and lifestyle.
“We dislike the idea that those who die apart from Christ go to hell,” Janney writes in Who Goes There?, but are we willing to let our emotional preference take the lead over truth when souls hang in the balance? Current events, pop culture, and our own emotions color our perspective of eternity more than we may realize.
But Janney believes a right understanding of our eternal destiny is critical, and not just for the end of our lives, but for now, “Living with the hope of Jesus Christ to overcome sin and hell gives meaning and perspective to life, as well as hope, purpose in suffering , and a moral foundation for individuals and society. Believing that we get all this, and heaven too, apart from Christ, is the most dangerous kind of folly.”
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Who Goes There? Video, Blog and Website
REBECCA PRICE JANNEY
is a theologically trained historian and the author of 18 books including Then Comes Marriage?- A Cultural History of the American Family, and two young adult series as well as hundreds of articles in magazines and newspapers. She began writing professionally as a teenager when she covered the Philadelphia Phillies for a New Jersey newspaper. Rebecca resides with her husband and son in suburban Philadelphia.
Sample chapter, video, blog and media resources at:
WhoGoesThereBook.com
www.moodypublishers.com
I’m looking forward to teaching an adult Sunday School class at my church later this month, focused on my book, WHO GOES THERE? A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HEAVEN AND HELL. Seems like hell is actually a hot topic right now, pardon the pun! Pastor Rob Bell’s book, LOVE WINS: A BOOK ABOUT HEAVEN, HELL AND THE FATE OF EVERY PERSON WHO EVER LIVED is causing a sensation even before its official release. This superstar minister actually appears to be saying something very old, although it appears very new to many.
The apostle Paul referred to the gospel of Jesus Christ as a “scandal” because, apart from divine intervention, we can’t accept it. No one wants to hear that he/she is a sinner and will not be able to live eternally in God’s presence apart from the atoning blood of Christ. Nor do we like to acknowledge that Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” We dislike the idea that those who die apart from Christ go to hell. We have become comfortable with the idea of a grandfatherly (or grandmotherly for the ardent feminist) image of God in which He is nothing but loving. We dislike hearing that sinners cannot stand in His holy presence apart from a Savior.
Yet, these things are true. The message that all are saved, by whatever means, is universalism, and it is clearly “another gospel,” no matter who says it or how it’s packaged.
At the end of my book I write:
“Living with the hope of Jesus Christ to overcome sin and hell gives meaning and perspective to life, as well as hope, purpose in suffering , and a moral foundation for individuals and society. Believing that we get all this, and heaven too, apart from Christ, is the most dangerous kind of folly.”
People often ask me if there were any surprises when I researched my book, THEN COMES MARRIAGE? A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY. Actually, there were.
I didn’t realize, for example, that in our distant past there were so many blended families. In fact, our nation’s first First Family was blended. George Washington married widow Martha Custis, who had two children, whom he adopted. This was a common pattern because disease and childbirth claimed the lives of so many husbands and wives. It was also a reality that lasted for a very long time; when Abraham Lincoln grew up a century later, he had a stepmother and stepsiblings after his widowed father remarried.
I recently discussed this on American Family Radio. You can “see” part of the discussion on YouTube:
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington
My 6 year-old son and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch, listening to the radio for storm information. Because a significant layer of ice had shut down his school and left roads unsafe to navigate, we hunkered down inside with good food, good books, games, and his favorite “Star Wars” video. We had plenty of batteries, candles, and flashlights ready just in case the power went out.
As we sat there listening to reports of a vicious blizzard striking the Midwestern part of the country, David was oblivious, happily chattering away, safe and content. It struck me—he trusted that all would be well because his father and I were there to take care of him.
I started thinking about a story I’d written years ago about Laura Ingalls Wilder and a memorable winter that she and her family endured. From mid-October until May, blizzard after blizzard savaged the Dakota Territory where they lived. Supplies ran dangerously low. The trains couldn’t get through because workers weren’t able to keep the tracks clear long enough for them to come and go. It became a matter of survival. And yet, her family was at peace because they believed in the rock solid stability of God’s provision for them. It was on this that they depended, and by that faith, they prevailed.
In every tempest of our lives, we can rest in the Father’s assurance, “be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Tags: Blizzards, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Another anniversary is upon us, a sad one that many of you can relate to directly. It was 25 years ago this week that the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift off from Cape Canaveral. In the years following the dramatic Apollo program that took Americans to the moon, NASA began using a workhorse contingent of shuttles that conducted experiments as they orbited the Earth. By the winter of 1986, the flights had become somewhat routine in the eyes of most Americans.
The Challenger piqued the nation’s interest because it marked the first time that a teacher would be going into space. NASA selected New Hampshire social studies instructor Christa McAuliffe from some 11,000 applicants to bear that distinction. With her endearing personality, Mrs. McAuliffe captured the public’s imagination, and thousands of school children gathered in their classrooms to watch the flight on TV. Jennifer Irani Stewart recalls:
?We had closed circuit TV in our high school and they were televising it live for the whole school to watch. At first we all thought it was just extra exhaust. When reality set in what had happened, they shut down the TVs. But it was too late, we had all seen it.”
Jolee Lieberman was a teacher herself at the time and remembers:
“I was teaching kindergarten at a little private school in Virginia. It was a teacher ‘workday.’ The director called us into his office to watch on his TV – the only one in the building. It was awful. I remember my heart in my throat. I think we prayed together in his office. As a teacher I could identify personally with Christa McAuliffe. . . .”
President Ronald Reagan was preparing his State of the Union Address to be delivered that evening when news reached him of the tragedy. Instead, he postponed it and went on TV at 5 PM to speak to Americans about the disaster. His words provided comfort to a grieving nation:
“We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.
“For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much. . . And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. . .
“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ’slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”
(The full text of his speech is available at http://www.reaganfoundation.org/tgcdetail.aspx?p=TG0923RRS&h1=0&h2=0&sw=&lm=reagan &args_a=cms&args_b=1&argsb=N&tx=1745)
When the nation commemorates the late Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, the media often shows him delivering his impassioned “I Have a Dream” speech from the August 1963 March on Washington. My little boy’s school take-home paper mentions how throughout the 60s he peacefully stirred Americans to overturn legalized discrimination against people of color.
King originally garnered the nation’s attention in 1955 when Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. That small act of righteous defiance resulted in a year-long bus boycott to promote desegregation. Leading that protest was the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church’s 26 year-old pastor, Martin Luther King. He was so successful organizing and inspiring that city’s African-American population that when his fellow pastors created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to combat racial prejudice, they elected King its first president.
In 1963 the young minister rose to even greater prominence when he planned a massive civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, as well as voter registration drives, and those to promote better housing and education for blacks across the South. For his efforts, he was arrested three times that year.
During his stint in a Birmingham jail in April, 1963, he wrote to his fellow clergy about brotherhood and the responsibility of the Church to combat injustice. One of the oft-quoted lines from it reads, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” He ended his letter with his assurance that God would see him, and the civil rights movement, through:
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are not understood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. . . We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. . . .
(Quoted from Great Letters in American History by Rebecca Price Janney; for a full text of this letter you may also visit http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/dos/mlk/letter.html
Tags: Jr., Martin Luther King
Today is Epiphany, January 6th, the day the Wise Men visited the Holy Child. It comes from a Greek word that means “appearance,” “manifestation,” and it refers to the time when the Saviour of the world was revealed to the Magi.
Christmas cards and scenes, tableaus and crèches often show Mary, Joseph, and the Babe surrounded by barn animals and shepherds, as well as three Wise Men, or Magi, who came from the East, guided by a miraculous “star.” However, something is wrong with that picture. According to the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the Magi inquired of King Herod where they might find the child born to be King of the Jews. The chief priests and teachers of the law put their heads together and determined that the ancient prophecies about the Messiah pointed to Bethlehem. And when the Wise Men arrived at that town, the Bible says they were “overjoyed.” Matthew 2:11 says, “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.”
That’s curious. Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger because there was no room for his family in the inn. What’s this about a house? There are various theories. Some say that stables were often attached to houses in that area, and the Holy Family may have moved up into the dwelling. It would seem, in that case, that the house belonged to the innkeeper. Others say that although the Wise Men weren’t present at the birth, they arrived some time after Mary’s Purification, which would have been about a month and a half later.
When they left, an angel warned them not to return to Herod, and Joseph also heard from an angel in a dream that Herod was going to try to kill Jesus, that they should escape to Egypt until the threat had passed. According to some scholars, that might have been two years after Jesus was born because Herod ordered the deaths of all male Jews two years and under in order to get to Jesus. I’ve always wondered, though, why Mary and Joseph stayed in Bethlehem for two whole years when they only needed to be there temporarily, for the census. Wouldn’t they be eager to return home, after her purification and Jesus’ circumcision, eight days after his birth?
Intriguing questions.
Tags: Epiphany, Magi, Wise Men
A local business owner likes to display messages on his signboard, and as I drove by today, his offering especially caught my eye: “Wise men did not seek Santa Claus.” I wonder if it made others reflect the way it did me.
Personally, I like Santa Claus. I have fond childhood memories of anticipating his arrival on Christmas Eve, tracking his whereabouts on the radio via Norad, wondering if he would enjoy the milk and cookies I left for him when he arrived at 8 Meadow Avenue. I didn’t have any illusions, however, that Christmas was about Santa. The day really belonged to Jesus—Santa was simply a supporting actor in the drama. My happiest holiday recollections are from church and school pageants, singing stirring carols and hymns, filled with gratitude that God so loved the world that He gave us this precious gift. I remember riding home one velvety black Christmas Eve after the church service, sitting in the back seat with a gift bag filled with hard candies from my Sunday School teacher. As I indulged in their sweetness, I looked out the window and wondered if I could see the star of Bethlehem if I looked hard enough.
My parents weren’t especially religious people, but they knew what Christmas was really all about. When Linus Van Pelt explained it to Charlie Brown on TV, they smiled in the background, knowing that the little theologian had nailed it.
I’m not so sure that most American parents have that perspective today, in a culture that strives for political correctness and diplomacy, to the point of the ridiculous. I mean, why do advertisers insist on saying “holiday tree” in their circulars? Christmas trees can’t be confused with anything else, after all. Now “the holidays” are mostly about Santa Claus.
My husband and I decided not to ban Santa for our little boy, but to put the jolly old elf in perspective. We told David that long ago there was a wonderful man named Nicholas, a pastor who lived far away, at the edge of Europe. (We used maps and a children’s storybook as helps.) Nicholas loved Jesus very deeply, and he served the Lord with all his heart. That led him to give to people in need. His love and kindness were so great that even after he died, people all around the world celebrated his life by following his example. He became a special part of Christmas celebrations because of the way he lived for Jesus, and in America, we call him Santa Claus. Stories about him living at the North Pole and flying in a magical sleigh were a fun part of the story that someone created many years ago.
David happens to love Santa Claus/St. Nick, although we don’t make a big fuss about him. He’s mostly in the background for us because we think that’s where he belongs. My personal favorite image of Santa is the one of him kneeling before the Christ child, praying. That’s just how it should be.
Tags: Christmas, Santa Claus, St. Nicholas
Chris Wheeler Discusses the Off Season
“Wheels” is an appropriate nickname for a guy who’s spent most of the last four decades on the road with the Phillies. When baseball season ends, however, announcer Chris Wheeler prefers to stay put. “I love every minute of my job,” he says. “I am really lucky to be doing this.” He does have a reluctant confession to make, though; being on the road again, and again and again does get tiring. He is quick to add, “It’s not like the people busting to make a living, who have to get up every day at six. I feel fortunate that that’s my job. I’m pretty lucky.”
Nevertheless, when the season ends, “No buses, no hotels, no airplanes,” Wheeler says. “They are all no-no’s for me. I can’t remember the last time I was on a commercial flight. I just don’t want to go anywhere.”
With one exception.
“One weekend a year I go to see my beloved Nittany Lions.” Wheeler graduated from Penn State in 1967 with a degree in broadcasting and journalism, and he remains a big fan of his college football team. He also loves spending time in Happy Valley, which he believes embodies the spirit of a good college town. He lights up as he relates the “track meet” of a game he saw this year between Penn State and rival Michigan in which his team won, 41-31.
For much of his time with the Phillies, Wheeler has turned road warrior around the first of February and doesn’t stop moving until the last pitch of autumn, which used to be the end of
September. After that, four months of golf and open-ended days awaited him. He says with a smile, “That got cut short recently because of our success. Now the off season is just three months long instead of four. It goes so quickly that there’s not that much time to miss it.”
Every ball club endures slumps during the season, but afterwards, when the roar of the crowd ceases, and the standings are firmly set in place, does Wheeler ever go into an emotional slump? “That depends on how the season ends. When we were losing, it could sometimes be a relief,” he admits. “In those years, if you could play 500, you’d be happy. And this year. . . .” He shakes his head. “Yeah. This year we had 97 wins, the most in the majors. And although everyone is tired at the end of the regular season, there is all this sheer adrenaline that keeps us going in the postseason, and then, in the last game, the air just got let out. That’s when you do have a letdown.”
Sometimes Wheeler says people will come up and ask him, “How many days until spring training?” He doesn’t start calculating right after the last pitch of the season, though. “It’s like I have a biological time clock that goes off every January 2, as soon as we turn the corner into the new year. Then I know the days until spring training.” And he counts them down with excited anticipation. Until then, however, he enjoys kicking back.
A typical day in the off season for Wheeler ”is that it is anything but typical. During the season I know what I’m doing every day and when. So if I have other things to do, like dry cleaning, bank, gas etc, I have to make sure I plan ahead. During the off season there are a lot of days I wake up and don’t know what I’m going to do, which is real nice. And the best part sometimes is that if I don’t get it done that day, then I can do it tomorrow.”
He frequently does venture beyond the golf course and home to take his place behind the microphone for various organizations and charities, including the Delaware County Police Chiefs Association, where he’s been the keynote speaker for the last 20 years. He also catches up with his colleagues on the phone periodically, but he says, “During the season we spend so much time together. We’re thrown together all the time. When the season ends, we joke around that you get to pick your own friends.”
Baseball is his passion, but Wheeler does enjoy other sports, especially watching golf on TV and following Penn State football. Although he likes the Flyers, Sixers, and Eagles, he doesn’t live or die with them. “My life (in baseball) revolves around wins and losses,” he says, “so I don’t want other sports to affect my days. For me, other sports are pure entertainment.”
Wheeler also spends his free time pursuing his dual loves of history and politics, subjects that grab his immediate attention. He recalls one trip he did take beyond State College several years ago to various Civil War battlefields and other points of interest with veteran Phillie and Fox baseball announcer Tim McCarver. “We went all around Virginia, including the Battle of Fredericksburg,” he recalls. “We visited the Stonewall Jackson Shrine and saw where the battle of Marye’s Heights occurred. Timmy noted that we would have been on opposite sides during that conflict,” he adds with a laugh. Affecting McCarver’s southern accent he says his friend deadpanned, “Just think, I would’ve been up there, and you would’ve been down here.” The Union Army took the worst of it in that skirmish.
Since then, Wheeler says his old friend has been after him to visit Normandy, France, site of the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944. He’s still thinking about it. Right now he isn’t in a hurry to feel the road beneath his feet, at least until the clock starts ticking again sometime in January.
Tags: Chris Wheeler, The Phillies
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