Four Spiritual Laws, Then and Now

When I got on the bus to Cambridge today, I was reading David Harrington Watt’s A Transforming Faith: Explorations of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism. Watt begins his book with an essay that is a close reading of a pamphlet titled “Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?” Written in 1965 by Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, the pamphlet explains how to be converted. Bright’s four spiritual laws are these:

1. “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.”
2. “Man is sinful and separated from God.”
3. “Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin.”
4. “We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.”

When I got off the bus coming back to Waltham, I accepted a pamphlet from a woman at the bus stop. The pamphlet was titled “How Do I Begin a Relationship with God?” Other than the name of the church—Waltham Haitian Church of the Nazarene—there was no author’s name. But sure enough, the main headings were the same as Bright’s four spiritual laws. While the rest of the text had been changed (but not improved), there was only one change in the laws themselves: number 2 had been reworded to be gender neutral.