LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE
The pageant at the first graduation of the Cloverleaf Consolidated High School has saved the old schoolhouse on Mill Road. The quaint little one-room brick building is on the very plot where the new high school and community center has been built. When the construction engineers converged on the old MacGregor farm, they used the schoolhouse as a shack for their operations. Later it became a storage shed. The high school was in use before it could be torn down.
When a demolition crew arrived, the place was full of damaged laboratory equipment, surplus auditorium seats, and lost raincoats. It was cleared after a few weeks, but all the demolition equipment had then gone.
At this point the school newspaper began a crusade to save “The Little Red Schoolhouse.” It made Cloverleaf Consolidated H.S. distinctive; the students adopted it with enthusiasm. There was a move to put it on the school seal. In the big football game the cheerleaders appeared from a cardboard Red Schoolhouse leading a lamb mascot. Sportswriters called the Cloverleaf team “Mary’s Lambs,” and the season was so successful the fellows decided it was a luckier name than the “Lucky Clovers.”
The graduation pageant was planned around the schoolhouse from the first. Special study projects investigated the McGuffy readers. Old hand slates, birch rods, and school globes were collected. The Little Red Schoolhouse was restored with help from the PTA, and the pageant will present the contrast between education then and now. Parts of the pageant are to be televised, and a children’s book artist is at work on a sugary history of the little school.
The restoration is not complete, though, even in the pageant. The wood-lot and meadow are gone; the spring runs through a culvert; there aren’t so many birds. Inside, the old desk is better finished than ever, but Miss Donaldson isn’t behind it, and her Bible isn’t in the drawer.
RESTUDYING MISSIONS
I think … William D. Carlsen in … “A Plea to Restudy Missions” (Apr. 27 issue) gives a distressingly negative point of view on the condition and activities of world-wide missions today. To quite an extent he repeats the kind of challenge with which Roland Allen stirred the missionary world over 50 years ago with his “Missionary Methods, St. Paul’s and Ours.” But it was needed and responded to in those days in a way in which it is not needed today. What mission is there today that does not make it its objective to build a self-governing, self-supporting church from its inception? If we don’t, these days of healthy nationalism soon compel us to!
Mr. Carlsen decries “the multiplication of mission agencies.” I don’t. Variety is the genius of the Spirit in grace as in nature. Mr. Carlsen makes reference, to establish his point, to a “small land with over 90 million”—obviously Japan. He is shocked at the number of mission agencies which have poured into it. Personally I am rejoiced at them. I was out there a few years ago, and what a thrill to spend days of spiritual life conference with 3 to 4 hundred eager young missionary recruits, one in Christ though of many societies. Let us rather rejoice that Japan is being covered with such a vigorous evangelical witness. Nor do I believe that the variety of agencies or differences of minor doctrinal emphasis “confuse,” as he says they do, the Japanese believer. The natural mind will always raise questions; the spiritual is too busy rejoicing in the spread of the Gospel by all means.
There was an attempt made in Britain 30 years ago to get these stubborn-minded interdenominational groups at least to have their offices under one roof, as a move, doubtless, to fusion. It was useless! And thank God it was! The fresh winds of variety, vigor, conviction, originality blow through brotherly independence. Years back the older denominations raised their eyebrows at these young upstarts of new denominations, such as the grand one of which brother Carlsen is a member, and new missions. What do these older churches say now? They are so impressed with the enormous increase of these groups, the vigor of their witness, the great harvest they are reaping, that leading liberals are naming them “the third order in the church,” and calling on the older churches to re-learn New Testament principles from them. And if this “third order” withers or wavers, God will surely start a fourth! Such are the ways of the Spirit through history.
Certainly weak spots are always to be found, the visitor who gets a superficial idea of the field, the missionary who majors on “the naked savage” appeal, the independent who builds a wall round himself; but thank God for the strong spots, especially the growing evangelical fellowships in so many lands. Thank God for this great day of Christ-centered, Bible-centered missionary witness.
The Worldwide Evangelization Crusade
Fort Washington, Pa.
WAR AND PEACE
Dr. Smith says: “There will be wars and talk of war down to the end of this age” (Apr. 13 issue). I have again looked in five different translations and find no such quotation referring to Matthew 24:6. In fact all translations in English and the ones I have had in German interpret it—“The end is not yet.”
Grace Mennonite
Chicago, Ill.
I gather that peace will come on the earth only when “Jesus puts all his enemies under his feet,” and I summon up a picture of the “Prince of peace” standing on the necks of his victims, with blood dripping from his sword—the world become a desolation called “Peace.”
Buffalo, N. Y.
I just finished reading all of the April 13 issue … and I wish to express my approval of the content of the articles. Only wish that more people would wish to read such, especially General Wm. Harrison’s “The Search for Peace on Earth.” It is truly a masterpiece of what the true Christian should think regarding Communism.…
Mr. Smith … quotes Isaiah 2:1–4 and says, “… This … world peace will occur when two things have taken place on the earth: the establishment of the kingdom of God, and obedience to the laws of God.” … Why can he not realize that Isaiah was telling the people of his time about the coming of Christ. If those verses … will be examined closely it should be obvious that Isaiah is telling about Christ and also the goal that we as Christians should seek to attain (but of course never will while on this earth). In the final paragraph he is evidently still looking for “… the Prince of Peace … who will someday reign in the righteousness that humanity today disregards.” The “someday” is now for believers.
Pauma Valley, Calif.
I was very surprised to peruse the issue devoted to articles on peace and find not one written by a pacifist or even a sympathizer with this position.… We, as evangelicals, fight liquor and its traffic like the plague—yet the Scriptures have little to say on the subject. These same Scriptures abound with statements concerning the mandatory action of Christians toward the state, man, and God which can be fulfilled only by an active pacifism.… Shall the evangelical wing of Christianity continue to ignore them as … in the past?
Downs Congregational Church
Downs, Kans.
Show me the man who seriously puts himself to the task of reconciling men to God and man to man, who does not find himself already at work for world peace and too busy to meddle with the toys of survival.…
Greeley, Colo.
Congratulations on your issue of April 13.… There are those within the National Council of Churches and without who believe that God expects us to work for peace. The United Nations seems to me to be the logical organization through which to work for international cooperation and understanding. It is significant that both President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon have publicly stated their belief that there can be no world peace without world law. This idea has been endorsed by the late pope, Premier de Gaulle, Premier Macmillan, Adlai Stevenson and others.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Chester, Pa.
Your articles concerning communism and its infiltration get better and more revealing each time. Continue to expose leftists, defeatists, pacifists, and communists. If as much time was being spent today upholding the United States and biblical righteousness as there is being spent to gain recognition for Red China, we would have a free and democratic world. Men and women with enough intestinal fortitude to cry “give me liberty or give me death” are needed today. If we are not willing to sacrifice and stand unitedly against the Communists and atheists, then no longer will we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but will become enslaved (and possibly slaughtered) under a “one-world government” directed from Moscow.
It is better to die for something, than to live the life of a compromiser.
Northside Wesleyan Methodist Church
Chamblee, Ga.
WOMEN IN THE CHURCH
The two articles about women in the churches (Apr. 27 issue) are good but puzzling.
Why is Paul a greater authority than Christ? Christ commissioned women to declare the Gospel, and they were the first ones to do so (Matt. 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–27; John 20:1–18). Regardless of the status of women then, no writer of the Gospels tried to make the accounts of the event fit the customs of the times, nor did they try to write back into the account the ideas of Paul. Christ made the women his spokeswomen. It was the content of their message which became the apostles’ preaching.
It is worth noting that The Authentic New Testament, a translation by Hugh J. Schonfield, a Jewish scholar, renders the passage in 1 Corinthians 14:34 this way: “As is the practice in all the communities of the saints let the married women keep silence in the communities.”
I am not a feminist. I shall never crusade for women ministers. Having refused full-time Christian service for 10 years, I finally decided I’d have to find out if that was God’s will for me.… While I hadn’t been sure of the call to serve, I could see the Lord’s hand in removing obstacles once I gave him direction of my life.… Finally I knew that parish ministry was the place for me. First Congregational
Assoc. Minister
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Thank you for your articles.… Had Charles C. Ryrie’s book been published before my own Woman in the Church I am sure I would have welcomed the opportunity to quote him. The essay which you have printed shows both the strength and the weakness of his book. The author’s research in general is on the strong side, and most of his conclusions are good, but there are some conclusions which are surprisingly abrupt and do not do justice to the arguments which precede them. For example he says, “Though Junia is undoubtedly a woman, she was not an apostle.” Now it is his privilege to draw this conclusion. It is, according to his own arguments, one of four possible conclusions, each of which has equally strong (or weak) support. But I am sure that I am not the only reader who would like to know why he picked this particular conclusion … or why he thought he had to make such a positive statement at all on such a doubtful subject.
I would also point out strength and weakness in the article by Elton M. Eenigenburg. He is correct in pointing out that he is here speaking about a question which has to do with the “Order of Creation” and not with the “Order of Redemption.” No one is challenging the spiritual equality of men and women in the Christian Church. However, he is incorrect when he says that 1 Corinthians 11 argues that women are to be subordinate to men. This passage like every other Scripture passage on the subject says that the wife is to be subordinate to the husband. When the author gives an example of this subordination he has to give that of the husband and wife. There is no other kind of subordination of woman to man in the Bible. Dr. Eenigenburg goes on to state that “a woman who by divine ordinance is subject to her husband in the home can hardly bear rule over him in the house of God.” Why not? Does the author also argue that a son, who by divine ordinance is to be obedient to his mother, cannot, therefore, bear rule over her in the church as her pastor?
Institutional Chaplain
Southern Dist.
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
New Orleans, La.
I am writing in answer to … Professor Eenigenburg.… I must say I was more amused than enraged because his whole attitude brings to mind an old daguerreotype of days long past and of attitudes that should be long past as well.… As we all know, Bible times were quite different from our own. Much progress has been made and strange customs regarding women have been abandoned in many foreign countries since biblical times. America has been notable for its progress in this direction since this country was the first to give women the right to vote.… Russia, however, is outstripping us badly in this regard, since she has opened all doors to women, and 70 per cent of the doctors in Russia right now are women. I do not advocate the Russian system, but they at least have given women credit for the abilities they possess and are giving them the chance to use these abilities for the good of mankind. These developments in women’s status are all departures from the “norm” of biblical days, but who says there must not be departures? I don’t believe that God intended that time should stand still, and that man’s lot, as well as woman’s, should not improve.…
Brooklyn, N. Y.
For the most part, I think this article is very well written, and I agree with the author that God never intended man to be subordinate to woman. In the Friends Church we have no bishops, and even our pastors are subject to their congregations.
My purpose in writing is to call attention to what I consider a very grave omission of a Scripture passage which deals authoritatively with this subject from a permanent standpoint. I refer to Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost when he quoted from the Prophet Joel.… (Acts 2:17–18).… In the Friends Church … we do not “ordain” anyone, we only “recognize their gift in the ministry,” and record them as such. My mother was a minister of the Gospel who bore abundant fruit to the fact that she was called of God and used in his service.… The number of women who are actively engaged in the ministry is comparatively small in our denomination.
Whittier, Calif.
PARK STREET PROGRAM
I want especially to commend you on the article about Park Street Church’s missionary program. Dr. Ockenga is doing a tremendous job, and the suggestions he has given are the most helpful I have seen anywhere. I will be using them in my work as chairman of World Missions for Norfolk Presbytery.
Simonsdale Presbyterian Church
Portsmouth, Va.
YANKEE RETREAT
We have … Negro members now. I would say they surpass our white members, although there are only a few of them, in intellectual attainment. Yes, we lost two members immediately with the advent of Negroes attending church services here.… I think the Episcopal Church is quietly desegregating in California. In Philadelphia … Negroes move into one of our churches and the whites beat a hasty retreat.… A judgment will be rendered upon the churches of some future generation for the Church’s failure in this respect.…
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Tucson, Ariz.
In reference to a letter by a Mr. Carey Daniel of the White Citizens’ Council of America (Mar. 2 issue) …, I would like to remind Mr. Daniel, the Communists say that one of the reasons that they reject the … Bible is that it sanctions slavery and oppression. Mr. Daniel’s interpretation of the Scriptures agrees thoroughly with the Communist viewpoint.
Newark, N. J.
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
I’ve been so glad for every scrap of news about the Auca project. I am praying much about it and hope you will publish every bit of additional news of the response of Auca hearts to the Lord.
Watsonville, Calif.
CONTESTED CONSERVATISM
Richard C. Wolf’s informative article of April 27 on “Religious Trends in the U.S.” has incorrectly evaluated American Baptists as “predominantly liberal with a strong conservative element.” American Baptists are predominantly conservative with a fairly strong liberal element in the East, and are more conservative now than when I began with them 37 years ago. Their conservative seminaries are supplying most of their ministers, and other non-ABC seminaries such as Gordon, Bethel, Fuller, and Southern supply many. American Baptists are evangelistic and missionary-minded. Separatist movements have hindered their growth, but now a new unity, biblical loyalty, fraternal love, and soul-winning program grips them.
Northern Baptist Theological Seminary
Chicago, Ill.
Granting the correctness of his denominational statistics, it seems to be a far jump to predicate theological conservatism, or lack of it, on such data. Having had close and daily contact with all areas of the American Baptist Convention for the last 12 years, it is my opinion that it is predominantly conservative with liberal elements, not “predominantly liberal with a strong conservative element” as Mr. Wolf says it. His comparing us to our Southern Baptist friends also prompts the comment that it could be that we don’t count converts so much as we weigh them.
Council on Missionary Cooperation
American Baptist Convention
New York, N. Y.
I have been an American Baptist for 25 years, and 16 of those years in the pastorate. I have found the convention to be predominantly conservative and biblical. The minority is on the other side!
Del Aire Baptist Church
Hawthorne, Calif.
The … article … impresses me greatly. If I read the conclusion correctly, the article is saying that the growth of church membership gains beyond population growth for the same period is largely due to the efforts of the churches with conservative theology.… Another lead article in … the May issue of Reader’s Digest … states that we have in America today a woeful paradox: … a tremendous growth in religiosity, while … also a great growth in dishonesty and of violence. “We have both a religious revival and a moral decline.” … My point is this: If the conservative churches are willing to take the credit for the one, they must also be willing to take the responsibility for the other.
Brooklyn Methodist
Brooklyn, Ind.
• Reader Francis apparently assumes a one-and-one identification between conservative church members and dishonest and violent members of society. The Church indeed is a fellowship of redeemed sinners. But evangelical salvation stresses, with Paul, that “such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:11).—ED.
DEFINING THE TAWDRY
Recently in CHRISTIANITY TODAY in a piece on evangelism mention was made of the music being “tawdry.” I sang in R. A. Torrey campaigns … and was … with John Roach Straton as hymn leader 1924–1927.… I began regular weekly broadcasts with S. Parkes Cadman in 1923 and continued … to 1928.… If [one] would make a survey of all evangelical churches that have a Sunday night soul-winning service with invitation to accept Christ, he would find that 80 to 90 per cent of them use a gospel song type of book.… In my five years with Dr. Straton at Calvary Baptist, New York City, my diary shows that the smallest number forward on Sunday evening was two and ran to 54 as highest.… We … sang “tawdry”(?) songs and choruses all over the place at night.… Many of the songs [Cadman] liked were “tawdry”—I wonder!…
What a mess it would be if 300 Christian rescue missions in North America had to use only non-tawdry songs!!
Chinatown Cathedral
The Rescue Society
New York, N. Y.
THE GREAT WALL
In the March 30 issue you published an article, “The Resurgence of Evangelical Christianity.” It cheered me greatly. My whole prayer life seems to be taken up with the issues brought to light in this article.
My husband, ordained in 1939, is a minister of The United Church of Canada. We are both graduates in Arts of the University of Toronto, he in philosophy and history and I in sociology. In our teens along with many others, we thirsted for God. Our parents who had their feet (so to speak) on the Rock accepted the critical approach to the Scriptures without taking it to its logical conclusions and without dreaming to what lengths this approach would lead us. The social gospel claimed our hearts and lives. My husband was a pacifist and by 1951 we were exhausted, discouraged, and tied in knots. It was through a girl who had been converted at one of Chuck Templeton’s meetings that the Holy Spirit told us both that “God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.”
It was both dissolving and electrifying to know that the faith of my forefathers was really true. Then followed several years during which we were both getting reoriented and also purged of deep sin. Many “fundamentalists” helped us in most loving ways. We enjoyed their fellowship, but always my mind kept crying out for the application of Jesus’ power to something more worldwide than “deliverance from personal vices.” It was as though the evangelicals were surrounded by a great wall which kept them from touching the social and national life of our time.
We are now in the outer suburbs of Ottawa, our national capital.… There are a good number of evangelical ministers in our own church, but just a few who take the Bible as God’s powerful word (my husband is one who does). It has been borne in upon us in different ways that there is a large core of believing Christians in our United Church.
There is a growing movement in the church towards prayer groups—a kind of cell growth, but it is moving very slowly.
In one of Billy Graham’s sermons I heard him say that … it was wrong for Christians to accept ruin or evil in their nation and sit waiting for Christ’s return.… Then he quoted Scripture, perhaps it was “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” That great wall which had bounded me within the confines of a strictly individual religion was broken that day. Jesus was for our nation, not only for us little parts of it.
Would it be possible for you to call for a breakthrough or onslaught of the Spirit in society, in national life, in educational life, in international relations? Could we not have international prayer—by all those who glimpse the mighty reformation which must take place.… Christians of all kinds would be drawn together in such a prayer war.
Osgoode, Ont.
Christianity is definitely resurgent, The chief remaining hurdle for faith to cross is our lingering timidity of the supernatural, and a resulting deference of Christian thinking for the speculations of biblical scholars. This seems to be challenged by Wm. Albright and his school. The article “More Light on the Synoptics” (Mar. 2 issue) is strongly suggestive of the new attitude we need.
I see many comings of the Lord, one of which is the dawn of the millennial age.
Brown Mills, N. J.
INTERNAL THREAT
I have just read in the Congressional Record the resolution, which James Roosevelt … had introduced, to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.… In my files are many reports in which this Committee has shown the works of Communists and Communist sympathizers who are even more deadly.
I am deeply concerned for the safety of our nation today—not from being bombed … but by being destroyed internally from a force that evidently is not visible to many or even understood.
Tracy, Calif.
Cultural exchange is such a sweet-sounding phrase! The General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches, both in 1956 and in 1958, recommended “cultural interchange.” So did The (Communist) Daily Worker. So did Khrushchev. So does the National Council of Churches … Doubtless impressed by such unanimity our government has just concluded a so-called cultural exchange agreement with the Soviet Union … It is a completely one-sided agreement with very extensive veto powers retained by the Soviet Union over material distributed and visitation permitted in Russia. Even here in the U.S.A. we may not attempt to influence Soviet tourists.… One can be very certain that no party will leave the Soviet Union without a formidable secret police escort to isolate it from American influence and insure its safe return without a single defection. And there could be no better way to introduce espionage agents into America than sending these trained officers. What we have agreed to do is to multiply the mischief of the Mikoyan visit a thousand times. Our trusting citizens will be softened up still further in the interests of the international Communist conspiracy. This is no “exchange” but one more give-away—a give-away of our resolution and independence. And all blessed by these church groups in advance.
Let some church group urge instead a study of the true nature of communism—its implacable ambition to overrun the world, its atheism and slavery, its call for one world and the peace of enforced uniformity under its sway!
West Hartford, Conn.
LIGHT FROM DARKNESS
I want to share a quote from the book The Jew in Love written by Ben Hecht. I got it from a Southern Baptist pastors’ monthly paper entitled Radio Revival News (c/o Pastor James Crumpton, Box 68, Natchez, Miss.).… “One of the finest things ever done by the mob was the crucifixion of Christ. Intellectually it was a splendid gesture. But trust the mob to bungle. If I’d had charge of executing Christ I’d have handled it differently. You see, what I’d have done was had him shipped to Rome and fed to the lions. They never could have made a saviour out of mincemeat.”
This is perhaps the most blasphemous quote I have ever read. Perhaps it throws some light on his play “The Third Commandment” (Editorials, Mar. 2 issue). North Freedom Baptist
North Freedom, Wisc.
FROM INDIA TO OREGON
This is a very useful magazine.
Rajahmundry.
Andhra State, India
You have put every Christian … believer in debt whether he knows it or not.
La Grande, Ore.
