Worth Celebrating

An unknown author writes an unlikely book and inadvertently sparks an improbable global movement. The manuscript was written longhand on a yellow pad in a small Oregon town by a Quaker pastor describing twelve ancient Christian disciplines (the very definition of the term "unlikely"). But publishers at Harper & Row saw something special in what Richard Foster had written and took a risk. The movement kindled by the book developed slowly, almost imperceptibly. But once it caught hold, it exploded into flame. Celebration of Discipline was conceived during a period in history that Charles Dickens might describe as being the best of times and the worst of times. From its inception, American culture had been linked to Christian faith and values. We were "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The 1950s and early '60s saw the peak years of American churchgoing, when 70 percent of citizens attended church. But as the decade of the '60s stretched on, values