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It is similarly vital for the health of society in the United States and Canada that adherents to the key truths of classical Christianity - a self-defining triune God who is both Creator and Redeemer; this God's regenerating and sanctifying grace; the sanctity of life here, the certainty of personal judgment hereafter, and the return of Jesus Christ to end history - should link up for the vast and pressing task of re-educating our secularized communities on these matters. North American culture generally has lost its former knowledge of what it means to revere God, and hence it has lost its values and standards, its shared purposes, its focused hopes, and, in a word, its knowledge of what makes human life human, so that now it drifts blindly along materialistic, hedonistic, and nihilistic channels. Again, it is the theological conservationists, and they alone - mainly, Roman Catholics and the more established evangelicals - who have resources for the rebuilding of these ruins, and their domestic differences about salvation and the church should not hinder them from joint action in seeking to re-Christianize the North American milieu.

In its section titled "We Contend Together," ECT spells out a resolve to uphold religious freedom, sanctity of life, family values, parental choice in education, moral standards in society, and democratic institutions worldwide. This should be as much an agenda for all evangelicals as it is for any Catholic, and these contendings are crucial at present; but they will only gain credibility if the view of reality in which they are rooted takes hold of people's minds. Propagating the basic faith, then, remains the crucial task, and it is natural to think it will best be done as a combined operation. So togetherness in witness is timely.

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December 12 1994, Vol. 38, No. 14