The current discussion about the Church’s ability to communicate seldom touches the theme of the rich possibilities of Christian writing. Hundreds of young Christians presently enrolled in Bible schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries should be contributing to the stream of Christian literature. Many of them have the gifts, the imagination, the inner warmth that come from personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why are not these young people being trained to write and to write well? Why do they have to die as martyrs, like Jim Elliot, before their diaries and testimonies can become part of the Church’s heritage?
Schools of Christian writing are held throughout the nation each summer, with commendable results, although some of them are a bit heavy on market consciousness. English instruction in Christian schools is uniformly good, but the classical academic lines do not always encourage free expression. Where has there appeared in our day a genuine heart-cry from the lips of youth? Who is the David Brainerd or the Henry Martyn of our time? Where is the Christian counterpart of the beatnik literature? We would not encourage our young writers to ape the standard Christian authors of our day. We want to see them develop their own idiom, to make Christ real for their own generation, to articulate their own spiritual hunger and then to look with fresh eyes at the New Testament.
Ours is an age totally different from that in which some of us grew up. It is an atomic age, a space age, in which death sits with the children at dinner; in which long-range life plans are made one day and cancelled the next; in which the foreseeable future seems seldom foreseeable. Who will inscribe with a pen of fire what it means to come to maturity at such a time? What Christ means to a generation suffering from the over-burgeoning machination that someone has called “electronic cancer”?
We call upon young ministers and theological students to help build this fund of devotional literature: but not to glorify themselves, not to satisfy ambition, or impress us with their mastery of the language. We ask them to tell us what Christ means to them, in words and phrases not parroted, not hackneyed, not flabby with some new heresy; in words that are as gripping and exciting as if God himself were guiding their pens. Coming off the presses should be Christian fiction that is literature, that does not sound as if it were written in a cyclone cellar 100 years ago, that sets up believable culture-crisis situations and does not try to soak them in saccharine pap.
Such literature should inculcate a deep love for the land, for its heritage of freedom and for what it offers to every man, woman, and child. It should grapple with, life’s themes with the honesty of Job, yet with the faith of First Peter. Instead of the cynicism and despair that engulfs the whole Faulkner literary tradition, it should offer hope: hope that is not easy, flimsy, man-made, or superficially pious, but hope that comes from the wellspring of God. Above all, it should breathe throughout a consuming personal passion for Jesus Christ.
It is time, too, for publishers to become spiritually literate. The shelves of CHRISTIANITY TODAY are lined with books, not a few from Christian presses, which we hold unworthy of review. Many publishers, Christian and otherwise, seem unaware that America is counting on them not just to evaluate manuscripts, but also to encourage writers to embark on spiritual themes, and to lift the whole tone of the literature of faith. The religious market is overflowing with potential, yet many publishers are afraid to touch it, while others now in it show little inclination to venture into new approaches. They prefer to traffic with mediocrity rather than take risks with untried genius.
We have not yet begun to realize in these United States the power of a Godly pen. Even those who do not write can spread the Gospel through literature by means of tract and book. The unprecedented and deadly challenge facing us should be sending every writing Christian to his typewriter, and every reading Christian to the bookstore.
TRUJILLO CASE HEIGHTENS HEMISPHERIC IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
United States severance of diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic, along with imposition of economic sanctions against Trujillo-land, roused debate as to the effectiveness of such action in halting the further spread of Communism in this hemisphere.
Administration supporters pointed to the necessity of outgrowing the U.S. reputation among Latin American countries of supporting rightist dictators for economic purposes. Only in this way, it is said, can this country gain a united support of southern neighbors in dealing with the Communist threat posed by Castro’s Cuba.
Admittedly, U.S. action trailed by a few days an identical move previously voted by the Latin American countries represented by their foreign ministers at the Organization of American States gathering in Costa Rica. The United States reportedly would have preferred to postpone sanctions and take immediate steps to guarantee free elections.
And for some observers, this highlighted basic differences in political ideology between the United States and Latin America, not seen in the field of governmental process nor even in the cultural distinctiveness of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races, but rather rooted in the Protestant heritage of the United States and the body of jurisprudence evolved in a Protestant climate. While our neighbors to the south can with justice accuse us of many political sins, they generally fail to grasp three basic viewpoints that make us seem greater sinners than in reality we may be:
(1) The North American has an innate respect for the “powers that be.” This is a concept lifted directly from the 13th chapter of Romans, an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God. The average Latin American does not share this viewpoint. He is more accustomed to seeing corruption and nepotism in high places. He does not identify human authority with God. He has seen his church jump from one bandwagon to another. His history and his temperament combine to give him a disposition for revolution. In most countries revolutions are more common than elections, and violence has bred violence. To the North American, violent revolution is repugnant. To the Latin American it is an accepted way of life.
(2) The U.S. citizen has a deep-rooted respect for the due process of law—“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13). And while he recognizes that legality and justice are not always synonymous, nevertheless, if he must choose between them, he will prefer legality because in the long run it is the only permanent and impersonal guarantor of justice. This attitude makes the North American extremely patient with individual gangsters or racketeers whom the law has as yet been unable to touch. The United States is tolerant of its Costellos, its Hoffas.
When extended into international relationships, this same attitude makes the United States more indulgent toward the “naughty” members of the Pan-American community. Admittedly, the United States will say, “Trujillo is a bad man, but he must be removed legally and peacefully, not by revolution or extra-legal intervention.” Likewise, Batista was formerly the legal ruler of Cuba, and as such he had to be respected until the Castro revolution could clearly demonstrate that it, rather than the Batista regime, truly represented the collective will of the Cuban majority. In both cases, of course, the U.S. attitude led to the further culpability of active support—something our neighbors to the south find it difficult to forgive.
The Latin American, on the other hand, is impatient with the due process of law—perhaps because he has seen it too often warped and thwarted. His preference is for flaming justice. The greatest historical flashback in North American memory is to those scenes in Philadelphia where the fathers of our country signed the Declaration of Independence and later forged the articles of our federal constitution. In Latin America, however, the memory flashes back to Simón Bolívar or to José San Martín, mounted on white charger, brandishing sword, leading the liberating charge against the colonial troops of the Spanish emperor. North of the Rio Grande, “law” is the watchword—to the south it is rather a concept of impassioned justice.
(3) The final and most aggravating characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon diplomat which most Latin Americans find difficult to understand is the dry, cool-headed approach to problems on every level, be they local or international. Latin Americans cannot understand why there are no shootings on election days in the United States. They ask whether or not all bars and liquor stores are closed at times of political contest as they are in Central and South America. A calm acceptance of majority rule seems to show lack of conviction, of sincere feeling.
For generations the biblical principles of self-control have been drummed into the Anglo-Saxon peoples. “He who controlleth his temper is greater than he who ruleth a city.” This is a part of our culture. We feel it is basic to democratic action. And probably it is. But it is foreign to the experience of the Latin American. Passion is glorified in his culture. Passion should not be repressed, he feels, but should be channeled into glorious love affairs or expressed in uninhibited bursts of silver-tongued oratory. To indulge in passion is somehow to be more virile, more sincere. And the North American approach is “muy seco” (very dry), “sin gracia” (unexciting), undynamic. Cuba’s bearded Fidel Castro, haranguing his people through long telecasts, or her Foreign Minister Raúl Roa, pounding the table in the San José meeting of ministers, seems more nearly to embody the burning aspirations of Latin America’s underprivileged masses than does the impassive figure of the United States’ Secretary of State.
The United States has a long way to go in order to understand Latin America and to implement that understanding with aggressive leadership in the continent. And Latin America consistently seems to misjudge the motives and actions of the U.S. But meetings like those just finished in Costa Rica—where points of view are expressed and adjusted—give grounds for much hope in the cause of hemispheric harmony. Both as a sounding board and as an instrument for political action the Organization of American States has again demonstrated its effectiveness and its maturity.
NEW SIGNIFICANCE FOR OLD DISTINCTIVES
Few are the sermons ever preached today that are based on Jeremiah’s plea to Israel: “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ash for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”
There are distinctives and imperishables which give to the Christian faith meaning and direction, and when they are disregarded it is at great cost.
Many people in our day are unresponsive to the lessons of history. Just as there arose in Egypt a king who knew not Joseph, there are today Christians to whom the Christian heritage has little relevance.
That these distinctives were brought out in blood, sweat, and tears seems to mean little to us who live in a time when secular and immediate considerations have priority.
But our debt to our forefathers is far greater than we realize. Theirs was a faith nurtured in the Holy Scriptures from which came firm convictions, strength in adversity, and courage to witness against any odds.
This faith was characterized by distinctives so clear that they erected a wall between the spiritually free and the ecclesiastically bound.
The first of these distinctives was the final authority of the Bible. On this premise Martin Luther took his stand at Worms, and from there the Reformation blossomed. Some have departed from the doctrine of scriptural authority, and have equated the opinions of men with the divine revelation. In so doing, of course, they have blurred a truth which must be restored if the Church is to regain her power as a witnessing force in the world.
Another distinctive of our Christian heritage is the fact of man’s justification by faith alone. When the full significance of the words “the just shall live by his faith” dawned on Luther, there fell from his heart and mind the shackles of fear and the burden of the law of works which had been for him intolerable.
A third distinctive of our Christian heritage is the truth of the sole mediatorship of Christ. No more do men have to turn to men as their intercessors, for in Christ the veil of separation has been parted and we may come boldly into God’s holy presence in the name and merit of the Son of God, our Redeemer.
A fourth, among many other distinctives, has to do with the matter of separation of Church and State. The Church is a spiritual Kingdom within the kingdoms of men. It consists of those whose citizenship is in heaven. Living in this world, such citizens are not of this world, they are of the Kingdom of God, and act as salt and light in an alien environment. Their weapons are spiritual, not carnal, and their eventual goal is the eternal, not the temporal.
These distinctives delivered our forefathers from ecclesiastical tyranny, and gave them liberty of spirit and freedom of expression which has carried the Gospel message to the entire world.
The “old paths” of which Jeremiah spoke were good paths, ordained and blessed of God. The heritage which is ours today rests firmly on the rock of God’s revealed truth. To be ignorant or indifferent to the distinctives of our faith is disastrous. In the “old paths” there is freedom and blessing.
