ESCAPE?
Dr. Ivy spoke about “Escape or Involvement” at the Mortarford College commencement. He declared that the only way out is the way in. The Christian answer to escapism is existential participation in the human predicament. I wanted to discuss involvement with him, but he left for his summer cottage in Minnesota.
There is no doubt about the popularity of escape. Modern life streams away like city traffic on a summer weekend. Often it is noisy and expensive: the escape of night clubs, bars, and racetracks. Sometimes it is the routine and numbing escape of TV and comic books. A carousing delegate at a political convention and a patient stamp collector may be equally driven by the fear of meeting God. C. S. Lewis has that senior devil Screwtape observe that a man with a guilty conscience can be diverted from prayer by anything, or nothing. The advertisements in an old newspaper will serve if necessary.
A recent novel describes an escapist so attached to his fantasies that he cannot leave his world of make-believe even when reality sends a taxi to the castle of his dreams. There is no escape from escape.
But the people who realize this may be the most bitter escapists of all. The modern prodigal who has run through his last coins of illusion flops on his pad in the pig pen and writes plays about the tragedy of existence.
Christian compassion should seek him there, but his salvation begins when he sees himself, not in the pig pen perspective, but in that of the father’s house. Burrowing into the human predicament may be another attempt to run away.
There is an involvement that is the opposite of escape, but it is first involvement with God. For the escapism of drunkenness, Paul would substitute the intoxication of the Spirit. The exuberance of life filled with the Spirit exults in songs of salvation. Christian experience is not sanctified despair. The prodigal is home again at his father’s feast. He may be in prison at midnight, but he can sing in the peace of God.
EUTYCHUS
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
I consider the Christian university “devoted in depth to the biblical revelation of God, of man, and of the world” (May 9 issue) the greatest evangelical idea in the last decade.
L. K. MULLEN
Reformed Baptist Church
Woodstock, New Brunswick
A move in this direction would be one of the finest and most lasting testimonies the Christian Church could express in contemporary America. If enough leaders and laymen got excited about the realization of your suggested plan, who knows what might be done!
RALPH KEE
University of New Hampshire
Durham, N. H.
It is better to have a small first-rate school than a larger second-rate one. A first class university strategically located and adequately undergirded by financial resources would be just about the best thing to hit the American scene in a hundred years.
HAROLD LINDSELL
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, Calif.
A hearty amen! I pray with you that it is not “too late.”
DAVID C. LINDBERG
Malone College
Canton, Ohio
I believe it should be priority number one in the minds of those who are awake to the needs of the churches. Until we no longer have to send our graduate students to secular or secularized schools for their education in most fields we are jeopardizing the future of the church at home and abroad.
I don’t quite agree with you that the New York location is to be preferred or that such a university could not be super-imposed on an existing structure. That might be generally true but there is one school, Gordon College, located on the lovely North Shore area of Massachusetts which has many exceptional advantages, some of them exclusively.
J. ELWIN WRIGHT
Rumney Depot, N. H.
There is to be opened this fall just such a university on the West Coast. This one is located at Parkland, Washington—just outside of Tacoma, Washington. This school has for many years been known as Pacific Lutheran College and through the years has expanded until it is now about to launch out as a university.…
HANS NELSON
Scandinavia-Bethany Lutheran Parish
Aberdeen, S. D.
There is more to a university than men and money. There is maturity from slow growth: ivy walls are no meaningless symbol. Money can build and equip; money can gather a library of existing books; can even attract a faculty of already trained scholars—though many men will prefer smaller salaries in a mature institution to the opulence of the new. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”
My own vision is this: New York needs missionaries more than universities: Chicago is already the center of a virile evangelical life. Why not, laying aside the jealousy each of us feels for his own alma mater, unite on the development of a Christian university around staunch and century-tested Wheaton College, with its inclusion of a wide variety of evangelical convictions in trustees, faculty and students; its outstanding success in withstanding the pressures of secularism; and its already significant graduate program?
EMMETT RUSSELL
Short Falls, N. H.
Boston is a very important area for scholarship. Such prominent schools as Harvard, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, Brandeis, Northeastern University, Wentworth Institute, Radcliffe, Simmons, Emerson, Wellesley, Boston College, Suffolk Law School, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston Conservatory of Music, and Andover-Newton Theological Seminary are in the near vicinity. Included in these names are great theological seminaries (reflecting much of current thought), great schools for the sciences and technical subjects, great schools for the liberal arts, and great all-around graduate schools. Many of the world’s leaders have in some way received training from at least one of these institutions. These schools are largely not interested in evangelical thought, yet they are schools of great learning. What a difference it would make if evangelical scholarship could make an impact on these halls of learning and their outreach!
RICHARD E. VISSER
Beverly Farms, Mass.
Why not start with the evangelistic and evangelical emphasis?… Why not bring the influences of these principles on universities already in existence? It would have far greater effect to restore Harvard and Yale, et al, to conservative and Christian standards, than to start another university. Why not convert all universities to conservative Christianity?
THOMAS D. HERSEY
Methodist Church
Popejoy, Iowa
As a senior in one of “the great Eastern universities that surrendered their evangelical heritage and now assail the Christian view” I wholeheartedly support your call for Christians to seek God’s will concerning the establishment of a distinctively Christian university.
DONALD TINDER
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
I am … in complete sympathy.… Such an institution could make a valuable contribution, particularly if it had strong engineering and science faculties, and which would include strong graduate courses in the major technical disciplines.
F. F. MIDDLESWART
Landenberg, Pa.
As a graduate of a secular, godless college, who has since found Christ, I believe this to be a work worthy of our prayers and determined effort.
STEPHEN G. WOODWARD
Horseheads, N. Y.
Since we are living in a culture with predominantly secular values, only a strategy of counterattack and advance—including a Christ-centered educational institution meriting national and international academic recognition—can begin to undermine the humanistic assumptions of our collective psychology. A university, such as you are proposing, through emphasis on interdisciplinary and research institutes and such facilities as a university press, could be used to diffuse the “good news” of Christ to the whole man using evidence from the whole cosmos.
JOSEPH L. GRABILL
Bloomington, Ind.
My response is the strongest possible yes. After more than 20 years of careful study, the writer believes … that one of the greatest and most direct endeavors for the accomplishment of a progressively peaceful world order that could be initiated now would be a certain type of educational program projected immediately by those who represent the best in our Western civilization: our Judaeo-Christian culture. This educational endeavor should be centered in a new world university which is designed for the specific purpose of producing highly enlightened and skilled leadership in the countries of the world. Therefore, the students must come from the countries of the world. Every student must feel that “this is our school,” and none must feel as a foreigner among nationals.
JULIUS H. AVERY
First Baptist Church
Panama City, Fla.
TURKS AND EVANGELISM
I have just finished reading with the greatest imaginable pleasure your article on “The Young Turks of Evangelism” (May 9 issue). How I do wish it were possible to broadcast this material everywhere!
G. AIKEN TAYLOR
Editor
The Presbyterian Journal
Asheville, N. C.
I confess confusion.… Your article does justice neither to the firm biblical orientation of these men, nor to the basically conservative character of their concern. In the face of the failure of the old patterns of American Protestant churches to witness with power to the Gospel in the urban culture of our day, they are being driven not to radical experimentation but back upon God’s grace.…
GEORGE W. WEBBER
East Harlem Protestant Parish
New York, N. Y.
It glimpses some of the implications of a significant movement, but without enough real research … to be wholly accurate. The attempt to label a growing consensus among people concerned with evangelism and mission in Protestantism as a conspiracy by referring to them as “Young Turks” is dangerous. As far as I know, this is entirely George Sweazey’s term, used to belittle people who have disagreed with his position in what I thought was a genuinely honest debate going on in the Central Department of Evangelism over the past five years.…
The article only tells one-half of half the story. It is certainly true that those concerned with the contemporary ministry of evangelism in Protestantism take seriously the critiques of culture that are arising, for Protestantism has indeed become culture-bound to a great extent in this country. It is not simply “armchair evangelism,” however. The men whose names I immediately identify with Mr. Wirt’s and Mr. Sweazey’s “Young Turks” are all people who have been contending as evangelists in the very front lines of the Church … in the slums, the hearts of large cities, and in the mass media. The critique of conventional evangelism has come not from the seminar but from the practitioner.
ROBERT W. SPIKE
General Secretary for Program
Congregational Christian Board of Home Missions
New York, N. Y.
Of course, our presentation of the Gospel message must keep pace with contemporary life. Perhaps traditional evangelism needs to be set free from the shackles and methods and approaches that do not belong to the jet age. But in seeking for methods, we dare not neglect the unchanging message. The Gospel still meets the needs of sinners. The significance of this new movement will be written not in scholarly books, but on the fleshly tables of men’s hearts.
TED W. ENGSTROM
President
Youth for Christ
Wheaton, Ill.
This evangelism is not rooted firmly in biblical theology.… What is needed is a burden to transplant the “coffee shop” and “seminar” concern into actual exploration of ways of reaching people. In doing this the essential message of the Gospel must not be weakened, but some of the “limiting” attitudes of traditional evangelism might be by-passed.
ROBERT W. ROSS
Research Editor
Scripture Press
Wheaton, Ill.
ROME AND WASHINGTON
What an emotional orgy Ed Sullivan’s letter is (Apr. 25 issue)! The religious issue is a two-edged sword. Catholic bigotry makes it impossible for a Protestant to be elected mayor of New York, premier of Italy, president (?) of Spain. Catholics have dug a ditch—bigotry—for Protestants, and now they themselves have fallen into the ditch they have dug.
Until Rome takes its hand out of the public treasury, we pledge ourselves, in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to unrelenting non-violent, non-cooperative resistance.… We have enjoyed wonderful privileges because our forefathers did not cravenly evade the “issue.” What sort of heritage are we leaving our children?
HENRY RATLIFF
Hartford, S. Dak.
I agree, Mr. Sullivan, religious affiliation should have nothing to do with a candidate’s election to office. But his political affiliation with a foreign government certainly should.
CHARLES J. MCCULLY
Mounds, Okla.
Has it occurred to any “protestants” that in raising the whole issue of a “Catholic for president,” the Roman Church is getting much free publicity and the Roman Catholics who would otherwise have made their choice politically will now probably make it “religiously”? The Roman Catholic press is revelling in the mess.
CYRIL I. VLAMYNCK
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Pascagoula, Miss.
Surely Mr. Sullivan isn’t sincere in writing this statement.… The one thing that ought to be relevant is a man’s Christian convictions. If Mr. Sullivan believes in the irrelevancy of Christianity—and that’s what he is implying—we have reached a very low, low ebb in our Christian education.
HERMAN DAM
West End Presbyterian
Albany, N. Y.
The lengthy letter of Ed Sullivan fails to come to grips with the main issue—the refusal of Senator Kennedy to attend the Memorial service, honoring the brave chaplains, on the grounds that he had been advised to take such action from a member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States.
Surely Ed Sullivan cannot support that type of bigotry. But in reality he does if he condones the Senator’s conduct.
If Senator Kennedy had been smart and truly American in his ideas, he would have taken the attitude of the late Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who as Prime Minister of Canada in 1891, 1900, 1904 and 1908, and a practicing Roman Catholic, put the Roman Catholic hierarchy of that day in its place, by refusing to put his Catholicism before his Canadian citizenship.
In view of Senator Kennedy’s action, many Canadians like myself view with trepidation the possibility of such a man becoming President of our great neighbor.
J. M. COLLING
Port Stanley, Ont.
Does Mr. Sullivan know of just one Roman Catholic country that has religious freedom? I am sure that even Mr. Sullivan doesn’t want that brand of religious freedom found in Spain, Portugal … or Bolivia.…
We hold nothing against a man because he is a Roman Catholic but we must be alert, and sometimes vociferous, if we would maintain our national freedoms and our American way of life.…
Let us nominate and elect a president who shall maintain our freedoms regardless of party, but his religion is very definitely relevant.
Bigoted, Mr. Sullivan? No, just taking a realistic view of things and forced to come to a practical conclusion to preserve my own status quo as a free individual, something no one in any of these “Catholic” countries knows anything about.
JAMES B. DUTHIE
Warren, Mich.
In February, I traveled into El Salvador in a revival effort where we had 8,000 converts in an open-air meeting which ran for several weeks. The Catholic oppositions were not only words; the special envoy from Rome (Vatican) was not there just to observe; the riots, the persecutions, the beatings of native pastors, the preaching permits, were not just routine … except in Catholic controlled countries.
FLOYD GARRETT
Chappell, Neb.
Mr. Sullivan has very artistically hidden the issues under a heap of emotion-soaked semantical rubbish.
ED LUGENBEAL
Arlington, Calif.
ANOTHER STRATEGY
In the January 18 issue, Billy Graham described his new strategy of evangelism. Who would doubt that our Lord has used him marvelously in the past decade and that tens of thousands have been saved by hearing the gospel from his lips. All Christians rejoice in that and without any implied criticism of the past will be glad that he has now been led to alter his strategy. A man who is filled with the Holy Spirit can proclaim the old gospel in new ways but always with the same blessed results.
But there is another strategy of evangelism I propose for the new decade.… It is the principle of building a fire from within. The key person must be the minister but the minimum, indispensable factor in this or any other successful strategy of evangelism is that the minister himself must be a converted man, and few would deny that thousands have drifted, doubtless inadvertently, into Protestant pulpits without being saved. Billy Graham could do a tremendous amount of good by confining himself for a few years to the conversion of ministers in large and small groups throughout our country, and to missions to theological seminaries to make certain that students know their Lord before they start out to preach his gospel. If the first step in this new strategy should occur then certain things would happen inevitably: 1) A neglected but necessary vocabulary would be revived in sermons, Sunday School classes and conversations throughout the church. People would start to hear words long disused, such as sin, salvation, repentance, surrender, … conversion, and … [rebirth]. Ideas are conveyed by means of words and those words our Lord has honored with saving power. 2) Ecclesiastical sophistication would give way to conviction and a real passion for souls. 3) Ministers would search out in their congregations those people who are saved and he would share with them his change of heart, his new dynamic. This nucleus, however small, of committed pastor and people would start to leaven any congregation. The spirit would be infectious as it is sustained and motivated by the Holy Spirit. 4) We would have a ready-made prayer meeting. You would never have to beg or even invite people to come. There would be a natural and eager desire to share concerns that are vital. 5) The minister’s main task now would be to win souls for Christ from within his own membership roll. Peripheral and secondary matters which occupy so much of a minister’s time would be subordinated to this one glorious aim.
Protestant people do not resent this emphasis. They love it and are waiting for it. There is a hunger for the gospel and a yearning for the assurance of salvation within the membership of the Protestant church. God is calling us these days to get a fresh vision of our main task. This is the only possible reason why our Lord established his church. Think what it would mean to America and the whole world if a hundred thousand Protestant churches could move into this new decade with memberships of converted and utterly committed people. Our Lord instructed his disciples to begin at Jerusalem and for Protestants that means their present membership. That is the center and starting point for an effective evangelistic strategy. Let us face the fact that our Protestant church, with its worldly standards and preponderance of unsaved members is coming to the end of the road, but we have enough members to bring our cities and our nation to the feet of Jesus Christ if they were saved and dedicated. Why not plan our strategy for the 1960s with that objective in mind?
JOHN HUBERT STANTON
Westmont Presbyterian Church
Johnstown, Pa.
