April 2006

(Note: this article by Dad (Joe Bayly) was published in the August 1978 issue of Eternity magazine.)

Losing Troop Contact: Three Conferences without Earth's Luxuries

by Joe Bayly

Last month I wrote about a conference convened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Evian-Les-Bains, France, in July 1938. This gathering of world leaders, to consider the perilous situation of Jews in Hitler's Germany and in recently subjugated Austria, ended without significant action.

Its failure is considered by many to have given Hitler's Third Reich the go-ahead signal in their subsequent drive against the Jews. "More than any other factor," wrote Manchester Guardian correspondent Peggy Mann, it "underwrote the death warrant for six million European Jews."

Ms. Mann concluded: "There are few people today who even remember the momentous conference... However, when I visited Evian last summer, I did find one man who remembered: Rene Richier, the elderly concierge a the Royal Hotel. He was a concierge then, at the time of the conference.

"'Oh, Yes,' Richier told me, 'I remember the Evian Conference well. Very important people were here and all the delegates had a nice time. They took pleasure cruises on the lake. They gambled at night in the casino. They took mineral baths and massages at the Etablissement Thermal. Some of them took the excursion to Chamonix to go summer skiing. Some went riding; we have, you know, one of the finest stables in France. Some played golf. We have a beautiful course overlooking the lake...

Pentecostals are celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of their founding at the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. An article from the Christian Science Monitor lists some of the defining marks of Pentecostalism. (Thanks, Chris.) Here's a list of ten, followed by my own response to each:

1. A focus on New Testament "gifts of the Spirit" such as healing, prophecy, and tongues.

2. Spontaneity due to the moving of the Holy Spirit during worship, including prayer for physical healing and deliverance, prophecy, tongues, and a change in the order of worship.

3. Expecting God to make His presence known during worship.

4. A focus on praise leading to lively, upbeat, and jubilant music.

5. Expressive worship, including the lifting of hands, tears, clapping, etc.

6. A belief in the imminence of Christ's return.

7. A belief that after becoming a Christian one should have a second experience called "the baptism of the Holy Spirit" by which the believer receives the real power that makes him able to live with "an extra zeal that is miraculous--(that's) like a turbocharged faith."

8. A belief that this second experience is normally proven to have happened by the individual speaking in tongues.

9. A denial of the need for its pastors to be trained: if God calls you, get up and preach--that's it.

10. Finally, "Pentecostalism has the ability to translate itself into the language and culture of the people being reached, drawing on local music."

Here's a copy (without graphics--to see the version with graphics, please send me an E-mail) of First Do No Harm, the first edition of a publication put out by the Health Professionals Liberation Army (HPLA), both founded by Duane Caylor, M.D. Caylor summarizes HPLA's goals for First Do No Harm:

This is the inaugural issue in a series devoted to the resurrection of prudence and common sense in the utilization of computerized medical delivery systems. First Do No Harm will address philosophical, ethical, economic, sociological, and medical issues as they relate to health information technology (HIT). Today's number offers an annotated list of recommended readings for HPLA partisans. We hope you find it both stimulating and entertaining.

For readers not experienced in large-scale software implementations across educational institutions, corporations, and nonprofit organizations, here's an explanation of the conflict that has led to the founding of HPLA and its publication of First Do No Harm.

We've all known (or known of) physicians impaired by their addiction to alcohol or drugs, but who's heard of physicians impaired by the health information technology their clinic or hospital forces them to use?

Patients beware! The latest threat to life and limb is the move from hospital charts to computers running a class of computer programs called "computerized medical delivery systems." After listening to my friend, Duane Caylor, last night, I'm a believer in old fashioned paper charts--at least if the implementation of industry-leader Cerner's computerized physician order entry system in the Dubuque hospital is typical of this category of software.

Dr. Caylor is a Christian physician in Dubuque, Iowa, who works primarily as a family practice doctor. About 23% of his billing, though, comes from hospital care.

Duane tells me that Dubuque's implementation of Cerner's computerized physician order entery system, Genesis, has proved to be quite unhelpful in the provision of patient care. He's argued with his administrators that their patients ought to be asked to give their informed consent to serving as guinea pigs in the latest wave of technological utopianism in the medical world as this system is implemented, for instance, in Dubuque.

The essential fact is that, until now, doctors could write with a pen on paper medical charts they held in their hands...

In the past couple of weeks, our congregation has been involved in bearing witness to our public servants in two areas: one, a local city ordinance that was passed this last week by our Bloomington City Council raising "gender identity" into a protected status equal to race, age, religion, and so forth. They'd already raised "sexual orientation" into protected status, but deemed that insufficient protection for various souls, particularly the "transgendered." Despite our witness at all three meetings where the ordinance was read and debated, it passed unanimously. Pastor Dave Curell engaged the city fathers in an E-mail correspondence that I'm hopeful can be put up here on the blog soon, but will first need some formatting.

Then the other shoe dropped. This same week the Indianapolis Star had a very large headline across the front page announcing that the Indiana Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of what the Indy Star called "gay adoption." The ruling was two to one, with an excellent dissent written by Judge Ted Najam. I've read the majority opinion and it's pure legal casuistry--all kinds of closely reasoned arguments making it appear that their ruling is only an absolutely necessary deduction from the plain meaning of adoption legislation passed by the Indiana legislature. But anyone who knows the Indiana legislative climate will recognize that as a joke.

Before reading anything about the decision and knowing who the judges were, I submitted the following letter to the editor of the Indy Star. Here's the letter, which today was responded to by three letters to the editor you can find here, here, and here.

Are you serving faithfully as salt and light in your community, steadfastly proclaiming both God's 'yes' and His 'no'? Or have you lost your savor, having convinced yourself that doctrine and truth don't really matter--only friendship evangelism and random acts of human kindness.

To the Editor:

The big news today? The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in favor of "gay adoption," two judges in the majority and one dissenting. And although I don't yet know the names of any of the three judges, one thing is clear: two judges have defied nature and nature's God, while the third fears God and loves the citizens of the state of Indiana--particularly her children...

One area Christians can, and should, speak prophetically to our political leaders is to warn them against the use of nuclear arms in military conflict, and this includes nuclear arms that are strategically deployed--in other words, something less than the full scale bombing of cities. Not being old enough to remember if there was such a prophetic voice against the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I can't say whether we fulfilled our calling then. But if Seymour Hersh's piece in the latest (April 17, 2006) New Yorker, exposing the Bush administration's plans to wage war against Iran, is reliable (and Hersh is about as reliable as any journalist at work today), our duty is clear and the time to speak is now.

Hersh begins his piece:

The Bush administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a major air attack. ..."The planning is enormous," (a) former senior intelligence official said. The plans include "significant air attacks on (the Iranians) countermeasures and anti-aircraft missiles--a huge takedown." He depicted the planning as hectic, and far beyond the contingency work that is routinely done. "These are operational plans," the former official said...

One of the military's initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapons...