Salvation by Self-Abasement
Internalized shame as a prerequisite to saving faith
Nearly 1700 years after the New Testament was canonized, Child Evangelism Fellowship’s President
Reese Kaufmann commissioned a “Study Committee” to determine “The Message of Salvation.”
The Study Committee declared that a child’s “appropriation of salvation” was contingent upon three
things, the first of which is to “recognize and agree with what God has said about man’s sinful
condition, thus to see himself as a lost sinner”:
The Commission’s Report includes a 2-page outline with 20 different doctrinal propositions.
Consistent with CEF’s view of the Bible as a divine puzzle dropped piecemeal from heaven — which
God left his followers to assemble into an internally-consistent systematic theology — the Report
provides scriptural “prooftexts” for 19 of the propositions. However, the Report offers no prooftext
for the shame internalization requirement, in section III(B)(1), that child has a responsibility “[t]o
recognize and agree with what God has said about man’s sinful condition, thus to see himself as a lost
sinner.”
The Bible includes hundreds of verses referencing “salvation,” many of
them inconsistent with others and not any single one of them — or so
CEF has apparently concluded — complete. One blogger has (satirically)
prooftexted nearly 200 Biblical ways to get saved. Most New Testament
verses simply stress a non-particularized “belief” in Jesus, without any
specific propositional content. There is no single Biblical passage, and
no combination of passages, that demands that children internalize
shame in order to be saved, as CEF’s Report does.
The Report does not explain what prompted CEF to commission a study
on the nature of the “Gospel.” Does not the Bible — supposedly the
“inerrant, ... absolute, supreme, and final” word of God (CEF Statement
of Faith, ¶ 1) — make it plain? CEF’s own founder, J. Irvin Overholtzer, struggled to identify how to
be “saved” (see sidebar). Why does CEF assume that God’s wrath pivots on the elusive completeness
and perfection of one’s propositional commitments and internalized shame?
The Commission’s Report includes a 2-page outline with 20 different doctrinal propositions.
Consistent with CEF’s view of the Bible as a divine puzzle dropped piecemeal from heaven — which
God left his followers to assemble into an internally-consistent systematic theology — the Report
provides scriptural “prooftexts” for 19 of the propositions. However, the Report offers no prooftext
for the shame internalization requirement, in section III(B)(1), that child has a responsibility “[t]o
recognize and agree with what God has said about man’s sinful condition, thus to see himself as a lost
sinner.”
The Bible includes hundreds of verses referencing “salvation,” many of
them inconsistent with others and not any single one of them — or so
CEF has apparently concluded — complete. One blogger has (satirically)
prooftexted nearly 200 Biblical ways to get saved. Most New Testament
verses simply stress a non-particularized “belief” in Jesus, without any
specific propositional content. There is no single Biblical passage, and
no combination of passages, that demands that children internalize
shame in order to be saved, as CEF’s Report does.
The Report does not explain what prompted CEF to commission a study
on the nature of the “Gospel.” Does not the Bible — supposedly the
“inerrant, ... absolute, supreme, and final” word of God (CEF Statement
of Faith, ¶ 1) — make it plain? CEF’s own founder, J. Irvin Overholtzer, struggled to identify how to
be “saved” (see sidebar). Why does CEF assume that God’s wrath pivots on the elusive completeness
and perfection of one’s propositional commitments and internalized shame?
“I’d like to offer a warning,” [CEF instructor] Miss Carolyn says gravely. “If a child comes in to be counseled, and does not
realize that he or she is a sinner, then do not go ahead with the rest of the invitation. If they are not willing to admit that
they are a sinner, then they can’t be saved.” To help the child truly grasp his or her fundamentally sullied nature, she
advises us to pray aloud with the child in question. “Dear God,” she offers a sample prayer, “Help Johnny to understand
how punishment means he has done something wrong. Help him to understand what sin is.”
Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, p. 235-36 (2012)
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