When the Friendship 7 space capsule landed with a splash and a sizzle and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., clambered out, American Christians had special reason to take heart. Not only had their prayers for Glenn been answered, but the nation had a new space hero. And for once at least the hero was not a smart-alecky ham with a long record of marital strife.
Throughout the world the word had gone out that Glenn and his family are devout Presbyterians and faithful churchgoers. They represent an American Christian home in the best tradition. Theirs is clearly not a head-in-the-sand Christianity, but a very practical faith.
“But are they born again Christians?” some evangelicals were asking. “Have they actually experienced regeneration?”
The Glenns come from a community where churchgoing was the rule. When they were youngsters in New Concord, Ohio, “everyone went to church.” As a junior high school student, John once collected his savings from small jobs and save them to an evangelist who was preaching at his church.
After high school, John and Annie both enrolled at Muskingum College, which was affiliated with the former United Presbyterian Church of North America now merged into the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
Glenn’s fellow students remember him as a clean-living, devoted individual, although he did not “wear his religion on his sleeve.” They did not consider him particularly pious. However, as one classmate puts it, “John wasn’t around when there was anything happening that he didn’t agree with.”
Glenn, to be sure, did not abandon his faith upon entry in the Marine Corps. Even in the jet pilot set, which is not especially distinguished for high moral standards, Glenn stood his ground as a clean-living individual. Down through the years he has made it a point to bring servicemen friends to church with him, although avoiding high-pressure evangelistic tactics. He was a trustee in one of his former churches, taught a boys’ Sunday School class in another, and was a choir singer (tenor) in another.
When the Glenn family moved to Arlington, they learned that the Rev. Frank A. Erwin, an old hometown friend, was pastor of the Little Falls United Presbyterian Church. Erwin got to know Mrs. Glenn’s parents during his own days at Muskingum, where he attended before going on to Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary.
Problems Of A Space-Age Parish
The most publicized church in the world in 1962 has been the Little Falls United Presbyterian Church of Arlington, Virginia. Its minister, the Rev. Frank A. Erwin, has played a key supporting role in the Glenn space drama by virtue of the fact that the astronaut and his family have worshipped at Little Falls since 1958.
The spotlight upon Little Falls has brought the flourishing church some problems, although Erwin does not regard them as serious. He says his biggest problem has been in trying to cope with the scores of inquisitive phone calls and letters. Another problem arose one Sunday morning when the Glenn family arrived at the church accompanied by a flock of news photographers. The photographers agreed to confine themselves to a balcony, but even at that Erwin felt their noise disrupted the service.
Demands on Erwin’s time reached their peak during the week of the space flight. The situation was somewhat alleviated for him in that it was the assistant minister’s turn to preach the following Sunday.
Erwin and the associate, the Rev. Arthur L. Stanley, serve a congregation which has grown in a decade from a nucleus of a dozen families to more than 1,000 members. In the church’s early days, substantial impetus came from lay help provided by the Wallace Memorial United Presbyterian Church of Washington, one of the leading evangelical churches in the national capital area.
At Little Falls, the Glenn family has been one of the most active in the entire congregation. Lyn, 14-year-old daughter, is currently president of a junior high fellowship. John and Annie were counsellors during a week-end camp retreat. Glenn took the pulpit once in a laymen’s Sunday address.
The Glenns exercise their faith in their home as well. During evenings when the father is home, they have family Bible reading together. One of their favorite traditions at Christmas is to bake a birthday cake for Jesus.
Evangelical Press Service quoted a minister friend of the Glenns as saying, “There’s no doubt about it. John is a born-again Christian.”
The minister’s father was said to have been used of the Lord to lead John Glenn’s father to Christ many years ago, “and the conversion of the entire family soon followed.”
Astronaut Glenn, however, is not known to refer to a specific conversion experience, but Erwin warns that this is not to be construed as reason to question his genuine Christian commitment. The minister says that Glenn is “neither a fundamentalist nor a liberal.”
Some observers have expressed a hope that wide identification of Glenn as a fellow Christian would lessen tendencies toward provincialism in some elements of U. S. evangelicalism.
Soon after the orbital space flight, the Glenns received a congratulatory message signed by United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake and General Assembly Moderator Paul D. McKelvey. Many other U. S. church leaders were silent about the space feat, however. The quasi-pacifist element which inspirits much of organized American Protestantism seemed unable to dissociate space rocket launchings from their nuclear warfare counterparts.
Some evangelicals pointed out that the race to space should not be considered good or evil per se. The question was not whether man ought to explore space, but what for? These observers commented that space exploration could conceivably take on as profoundly religious aspects as has archaeology, and that in the providence of God the findings in space could glorify God and confirm and strengthen Scriptural truth as much as findings beneath the earth’s surface.
In Glenn’s own words, quoted in the February 1 issue of Presbyterian Life, “Space flight will contribute to man’s knowledge of God’s universe. I believe that it is not only within man’s proper province, but is expected of us, to find out all we can about God’s creation.”
Protestant Panorama
• A special day of repentance and prayer was held under auspices of the British Guiana Council of Evangelical Churches following riots and arson-set fires which destroyed a large section of the business district in the capital city of Georgetown. In issuing the call for prayer, the Evangelical Council, representing 13 Protestant denominations in the country, appealed to the nation’s leaders to offer prayers in their homes as well as at services.
• An American Lutheran Church committee plans to study glossalalia and faith healing. Three seminary professors, a physician, and two pastors have been named to the committee which will look into the phenomena described as unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s power.
• A merger between the World Conference on Missionary Radio and the National Religious Broadcasters is being explored by directors of both groups, according to a joint statement which appeared in last month’s issue of the WCMR bulletin. “International Christian Broadcasters” is the name tentatively selected for the proposed new organization, the statement said.
• Leaders of the Philadelphia Synod of the United Church of Christ are supporting the U. S. District Court ruling which declared Bible reading in public schools to be unconstitutional. Their stand runs counter to the position taken by directors of the Greater Philadelphia Council of Churches, which terms the court’s interpretation too broad and warns that it “opens the door to more serious restraints in the public school program.”
• Five San Francisco Bay area theological schools are establishing a joint graduate study program leading to a doctor of theology degree. Participating in the program, known as the Graduate Theological Union, are the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Episcopal), Berkeley Baptist Divinity School (American Baptist), Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (United Lutheran), Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (Southern Baptist), and San Francisco Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian). The program is said to be the first such venture in American theological education.
• A Spanish-language version of “This Is the Life,” telecast produced by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, is being introduced to South America. The program marks the second experiment in lip synchronization of the Christian drama telecast in a foreign language for viewing overseas. On Christinas Day the program was premiered in Japanese.
• Christian Service Brigade, which is marking the 25th anniversary of its founding, moved into a new headquarters building in Wheaton, Illinois, last month.
• Methodist spokesmen say that Amendment XII to the church constitution has failed to win sufficient votes among annual conferences to be legally adopted. The amendment would have increased the number of General Conference delegates and changed meeting dates of jurisdictional conferences so that they would meet before the General Conference instead of after it.
• The National Church Music Fellowship is sponsoring a hymn composition contest, with a $100 prize being offered by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for the copyright of the best gospel hymn submitted. Deadline for entries is August 31, 1962, according to competition chairman Rene Frank of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Bible College.
• A total of 102 persons are being selected to complete membership of the Commission on Brotherhood Restructure of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Selections were initially made by an 18-member central committee and were approved without change by directors of the Disciples International Convention. Names have not yet been made public.
• A color documentary film on Jerusalem narrated by Billy Graham will be premiered in the United States during Holy Week.
Prayer Breakfast
On a bright, brisk first morning of March in Washington, D. C., more than 1,000 men jammed into the grand ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel for what a U. S. Senator termed as one of the largest turnouts of bipartisan political rank that he had ever seen—for any reason. The head table at International Christian Leadership’s tenth annual “Presidential Prayer Breakfast” resembled the first row of guests at a presidential inauguration. In addition to President Kennedy (who arrived a half-hour late) and Vice President Johnson (who left a half-hour early), the head table included Chief Justice Earl Warren, House Speaker John McCormack, and five cabinet members.1Secretaries Freeman (Agriculture), Dillon (Treasury), Ribicoff (Health, Education and Welfare), Hodges (Commerce), and Postmaster General Day. At other tables were seated some 30 Senators and approximately 150 members of the House of Representatives, in addition to scores of other government and military dignitaries.
The mood of the breakfast did not measure up to last year’s, which approached that of a revival meeting. But the 1962 edition did produce perhaps the most dramatic moment in the history of the prayer breakfasts when host W. C. Jones stepped to the podium and uttered a public confession that he had harbored a prejudice against President Kennedy as a Roman Catholic. Kennedy sat expressionless as Jones admitted:
“On election night I was angry and resentful.”
The audience listened in a stunned silence as Jones explained that he prayed about the prejudice, knowing that he was scheduled to give a Christian testimony in the hearing of the President at last year’s prayer breakfast. Jones said that within two months the prejudice was dissolved. He attributed the transformation to a divine work, adding:
“This to me is the reality that comes in Jesus Christ.”
Other participants in the breakfast program included tenor Norman Nelson, who sang “How Great Thou Art,” Governor Price Daniel of Texas, Johnson, and evangelist Billy Graham, all of whom spoke briefly.
Kennedy also talked briefly, both at the men’s assembly and at the “Congressional Wives Prayer Breakfast” which was held simultaneously in another room of the hotel. He told some 800 women who were on hand that “it is a source of satisfaction to be here with Mrs. Johnson, the Vice President’s wife, and with the Governor of Texas—and Senator Carlson—Senator Stennis—most importantly, I think, of Reverend Billy Graham, who has served this cause about which I speak so well here and around the world. He has, I think, transmitted this most important quality of our common commitments to faith in a way which makes us all particularly proud.”
Here are salient excerpts from Kennedy’s remarks to the men’s breakfast:
I want to, as President, express my appreciation to all those whose efforts make this breakfast possible. This is only one of a world-wide effort, I believe, to build a closer and more intimate association among those of different faiths in different countries and in different continents, who are united by a common belief in God, and therefore united in a common commitment to the moral order—and as Governor Daniel said, the relationship of the individual to the state.
The effort made in New Delhi among the World Council of Churches, the efforts that have been made in Europe to build better understanding among men and women of different faiths, the effort made in this country I believe is most important and most essential.
I do not suggest that religion is an instrument of the cold war. Rather it is the basis of the issue which separates us from those who make themselves our adversary. And at the heart of the matter, of course, is the position of the individual—his importance, his sanctity, his relationship to his fellow men, his relationship to his country and his state. This is in essence the struggle, and it is necessary, therefore, that in these difficult days, when men and women who have strong religious convictions are beleaguered by those who are neither hot nor cold, or by those who are icy cold, it is most important that we make these common efforts—as we do this morning.… I believe yesterday we saw an interesting contrast in the response which Colonel Glenn made, as to whether he had prayed. And he said that he had not, that he had made his peace with his Maker many years before. And the statement made by Titov in which during his flight, as he flew over the Soviet Union he realized, he said, the wonders of the communist system.
I preferred Colonel Glenn’s answer because I thought it was so solidly based, in his own life, in his activities in his church, and I think reflects a quality which we like to believe and I think we can believe is much a part of our American heritage. So I congratulate you …
A Mormon’S Economics
International Christian Leadership’s annual banquet is usually overshadowed by the “Presidential Prayer Breakfast,” although both events are part of ICL’s annual conference. This year, however, the 18th annual conference banquet drew some attention in its own right. The speaker was George Romney, who (1) is a Mormon, (2) successfully pioneered the American compact car market by introducing Ramblers, and (3) now seeks to be governor of Michigan.
The selection of Romney as a key speaker stirred considerable controversy and disappointed many who have regarded ICL as an evangelical Protestant movement. Even persons close to the ICL leadership were distressed.
Romney, whose Mormonism showed through clearly at several points although he made no reference to specific doctrines, cited the American economic system as a Christian development. He said he regards the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as “divinely-inspired documents.”
“The Constitution,” said Romney, “was written by inspired men raised up just for that purpose.”
New Exchange Of U.S.—Soviet Churchmen
Keeping company with a record-breaking thermometer which persisted in plummeting below the zero mark, the 272-member policy-making General Board of the National Council of Churches met in Kansas City, Missouri, February 26-March 2, and promptly took its own temperature in probing the unfavorable image it has acquired in many quarters. At the same time, it assured itself of some further adverse publicity in unanimously approving plans for an exchange visit between churchmen of the United States and the Soviet Union, the original invitation having come from a Russian Orthodox Church official.
Efforts are to be made to avoid “extensive publicity” in either country. United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake, who headed the United States delegation in the previous such exchange in 1956 which attracted considerable criticism, called for an attitude of suspicion toward “right-wing extremist elements,” which are expected to renew charges of leftist tendencies against the council. A leading figure in preparing for the exchange, Blake said that its purpose was theological, not political, and represented an attempt to keep channels of communication open between Christians.
Difficulty of bifurcating the theological and the political was highlighted in topics scheduled for discussion, which include: the bearing of the Gospel on “social-economic concepts and practices,” the “place of the individual in society,” and what the churches can do to advance peace in the world. Blake indicated that effects of Communist and American materialism on religion and churches would also be discussed.
The exchange has been approved by both American and Soviet governments. The U.S. delegation will number 13 churchmen who will visit Russian churchmen in the Soviet Union for three weeks beginning next August 25. The return visit of the Russians is due in February, 1963. Possibilities for additional exchanges will be aired.
The lone voice of caution raised from the floor was that of Methodist layman D. W. Brooks of Atlanta, Georgia, who said it would be unfair to the Russian churchmen to assume they would be free agents as the Americans.
During an earlier extensive session on the significance of the New Delhi assembly of the World Council of Churches, Brooks had reported a conversation of his in the Soviet Union with a Russian minister who broke down and confessed that his fellow ministers were not free to speak their minds though they claim to be—that he himself had been sent to Siberia for preaching the gospel.
Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, chairman of the WCC Central Committee, had previously said that if government control were to be the criterion for WCC membership, the Church of England and the Lutheran church in Denmark would be excluded. He said there were churches more under government control than the Russian Orthodox.
Assuming a cautious stance toward WCC admission of the Russian Orthodox Church was Archbishop Iakovos, primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, himself a WCC president: “I am neither thrilled nor over-pleased with the action which we took.” “Will we [be able to] persuade them to join hands in spreading the unaltered evangelical truth and thus eliminate false social preachings?” He warned against “unjustified mistrust,” but added: “It is childish to say even jokingly, that because we constitute the majority, the Russians will never dare to divert the route of the World Council of Churches. They have tried it already, in a pretentiously timid way, in some instances at both the sectional and the plenary sessions.”
Of kindred interest: the paperback A Christian’s Handbook on Communism, currently being distributed by the NCC at one dollar per copy, did not get to the floor for General Board approval, as the General Policy and Strategy Committee members reportedly had not time to read it.
Among other General Board actions:
•A major public pronouncement calling for reshaping of U.S. immigration policies along lines of four non-ethnic priorities: occupational skills, U.S. economic health, reunion of families, needy persons unable to support themselves. Also urged were equal treatment for naturalized and native-born citizens and permanent legislation for annual admission of approximately 10,000 refugees.
•A hearing of the serious Cuban refugee problem in Miami, Florida, and the attempt of NCC, Roman Catholic, and Jewish religious agencies to meet it by means of the new “Flights in Freedom” project which air lifts refugees from Miami and resettles them in other cities.
The opening hours of the board meeting were marked by an “inwardness” (assuredly not of Kierkegaardrian intensity) stimulated by G. Raymond Campbell, minister of Oklahoma City’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, who pointed to the need of improving the “cloudy,” “distorted” image of the NCC. He called for greater emphasis on its good works, which tend to be overshadowed by its pronouncements, and raised the question: To whom is the NCC responsible for its pronouncements? Campbell suggested it might better serve as the clearing-house for pronouncements of its member denominations. He indicated it would be well also to leave room for difference of opinion on public issues, rather than pronouncing a particular position the Christian one.
These ideas met with some resistance in the discussion period which followed. NCC President J. Irwin Miller had previously named extremist right-wing criticism which serves to publicize the NCC. as therefore “one of the best things that has happened to the Protestant churches.” A San Francisco Methodist underscored his president’s optimism in noting the value of Southern and Midwestern criticism of the NCC: “In my city, no one cares two hoots and a holler about what you say. It would be great if we could get up enough enthusiasm even to get criticism.”
F. F.
The ‘Super Church’ Charge
Dr. Paul S. Rees, a former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, says the World Council of Churches’ record and constitutional provisions should absolve it from charges that it seeks to become a “super church.”
Addressing the midwinter conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America in Minneapolis last month, Rees praised the concern of WCC leaders for the “fantastic dividedness” of Christians in today’s world. He said criticisms of the WCC to be valid and effective must be “far better informed.”
“I get increasingly concerned,” he added, “over the tendency by those outside the WCC to set up the terms ‘evangelical’ and ‘ecumenical’ as though they were simply opposites.”
Rees, a vice-president of World Vision, commented on the WCC New Delhi assembly, saying that it showed “early signs” that the WCC has begun to be strangled by its own ecclesiastics and administration “pros.”
The Covenant church conference also heard Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, past president of the National Council of Churches, describe the organization’s work.
Still another speaker was Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, the NAE’s first president, who credited NAE units with having revived America’s Sunday schools, spurred the foreign missionary movement, and protected the rights of religious broadcasters.
Ockenga said that the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, an NAE affiliate, now handles more than half of the Protestant missionaries sent out from the United States, although the total constituency of the NAE numbers only about 10 million.
Denial Of A Review
The U. S. Supreme Court announced last month that it would not consider an appeal from the Scripture Press Foundation, which has been denied a tax-exempt status in decisions by the U. S. Tax Court and the U. S. Court of Claims.
The court had the case under advisement for three months, but its denial of a review cited no reasons and made no comment on the issues involved.
Scripture Press, owned and controlled by a private foundation, is one of the world’s leading publishers of evangelical Sunday School materials and related literature.
The question of whether Scripture Press is entitled to tax exemption because of its religious and educational character has been in dispute since 1953 when the Commissioner of Internal Revenue ruled that, although the publication of religious educational materials and supplies may be necessary to carry out the functions of churches purchasing such material, “the manufacture and supply thereof does not constitute a religious activity in itself but is a business of a kind generally carried on for a profit.”
Scripture Press quotes legal authorities who say that the decision could affect other religious and secular foundations.
Albert Rhys Williams
Ex-clergyman Albert Rhys Williams, 78, native-born American who had been a prolific Soviet apologist since 1917, died last month in Tarrytown, New York.
Williams was graduated from Hartford Theological Seminary in 1907 and served as an assistant at the Maverick Congregational Church of East Boston (no longer in existence) from 1907 until 1914. He was ordained as a Congregational minister in 1911 but failed to maintain his standing and was subsequently dropped.
He became a correspondent in World War I and ended up in the employ of a Soviet propaganda bureau in Petrograd. He then returned to the United States but paid visits from time to time to the Soviet Union. He has written a number of books relating to Bolshevism and on his 75th birthday in 1958 the Communist newspaper Pravda praised his efforts “for the great idea of socialism.”
Canadian Appeal
The Lord’s Day Alliance is asking the Canadian government to modernize the 1906 Lord’s Day Act and to regulate radio and television advertising on Sunday.
In a brief to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, the Alliance pointed to several portions of the act which it said need revision, citing particularly that the act deals with such matters as hiring a boat or a horse and carriage on Sunday, but says nothing about airplanes, trucks, radio, or television.
The alliance asked for regulation of Sunday advertising on radio and television and said this would help to equalize treatment of the media, inasmuch as newspapers are not allowed to publish on Sundays in Canada.
In the United States, the Lord’s Day Alliance recently announced plans to expand operations to combat the attack on Sunday as a day of worship and rest.
Reformation On Film
Dr. Ernest G. Schwiebert, who doubles as a U. S. Air Force historian and as executive director of the Foundation for Reformation Research, is concerned lest all of Western culture be swept up in a mushroom cloud.
“This could be an age to which people will look back with pride in 50 or 100 years,” Schwiebert said at a meeting of Protestant Men of the Chapel at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, last month.
But it is also an age, he warned, of great potential danger to mankind. Precautions must be taken to insure that Western heritage does not disappear.
Dr. Schwiebert’s Foundation for Reformation Research was established in 1957 to make historical treasures of the Old World accessible to the scholars of the New by modern means of photo-duplication. Published and unpublished resources, wherever they can be found, are being brought together in St. Louis by the foundation, and made available to competent scholars and research specialists.
During a trip to Europe in 1959, Dr. Schwiebert made a master list of material which should be preserved. Filming began one year later. Some 500,000 pages of manuscript, the collection of Philip of Hesse, have been microfilmed in Marburg alone. Dr. Schwiebert exhibited various historical documents, including the letter from Martin Luther to Philip about the latter’s divorce, and the Speier document which first used the word “Protestant.” Aid has been enlisted from scholars all over Germany (118 of them in Berlin alone). In Switzerland there are, among other materials, 12,000 letters of Bullinger, one-third of them originals.
Roman Catholics, said Dr. Schwiebert, have been “wonderfully cooperative,” and quick to see the situation in the light of possible nuclear attack. Nearly one million pages have been filmed to date. “If we have to have a war,” Dr. Schwiebert said with a smile, “let’s wait till most of this valuable material has been collected!”
He said school of paleography is urgently needed to expedite the work.
Dr. Schwiebert added that this kind of work makes a “notable contribution to the ecumenical movement.” It will, he said, produce a different kind of scholar, make available a wider variety of material, and minimize preoccupation with adiaphora (matters on which the Scripture is silent).
J. D. D.
Important Precedent?
Protestant observers in Madrid say a recent court decision constitutes an important precedent for Protestant civil marriages in Spain. The decision, made by the Spanish Supreme Court of Appeals and dated December 12, 1961, said that there was no objection in law to a Spanish Baptist couple contracting a civil marriage.
Under Article 42 of the Spanish Civil Code, persons who formally affirm that they are not Roman Catholics may contract a civil marriage. However, during the past two decades, this article has in practice been overridden by a ministerial order of March 10, 1941, which has been interpreted to mean that an affirmation of “non-Catholicity” is not enough and that parties must also prove they have never been baptized as Catholics—something which is difficult to do in Spain.
The position was slightly alleviated by a decree of 1956 which provided that couples affirming non-Catholicity, but who were unable to prove they were not baptized in the Catholic church, might be authorized to contract a civil marriage if their case, after having been referred by the registrar to the Catholic bishop of the diocese, did not result in a decision within one month.
This is understood to have been the case of the Baptist couple whose appeal for permission to contract a civil union was taken to the Supreme Court of Appeals.
Spanish Protestants currently are said to number about 20,000.
Malta Election
Because of the “most barefaced moral pressure on an all-Catholic population, proclaiming it a mortal sin to vote labor,” the Archbishop of Malta ensured the Labor Party’s defeat in last month’s election on the island. This was the view of the party’s leader, Dom Mintoff, who further charged the British Colonial Office with working hand-in-hand with the ecclesiastical authorities in the “most unfair” election in Maltese history.
About 90 per cent of the population voted in the election, the first held under a new constitution. Pro-church Nationalists won 25 of the Legislature’s 50 seats, with the Labor Party coming second with 16. Some find it significant and even ominous, nonetheless, that in a backward urban population one islander in three voted Labor in the teeth of the church’s strictest sanctions. Anti-Labor posters on many churches declared: “God will curse you if you vote Socialist.”
(From Rome, meanwhile, came reports that there is a trend in the Vatican toward less direct involvement in Italian politics.)
It is widely felt that the result may be reversed before long because of the serious economic problems confronting the new government when the British pull out of this Mediterranean possession occupied for 150 years. For his part Mr. Mintoff has declared that he would accept help from the Soviet Union or its satellites if Western aid proved inadequate. In the light of this The Observer of London points what might be a pertinent warning: “Here are the seeds of a future Cuba rather than of a Cyprus,” says the editorial. “Will these symptoms be recognized in time both by Britain and by the local Catholic hierarchy?”
J. D. D.
Iamso And The Gospel
Religious alignments are carefully avoided in the newly-formed Inter-African and Malagasy States Organization, which brings together Christian states such as Ethiopia with Muslim states such as Somali. Christian leaders however, feel that the establishment of IAMSO may give greater opportunity for the spread of the Gospel. For instance, they point to the fact that the official languages of the organization will be French and English, explaining that use of more common languages makes literature work easier. Schools in some of the 19 charter member states already are teaching both languages.
IAMSO’s formation marks a further step toward the “United States of Africa” envisioned by many African leaders. The desire to give the continent a truly African voice in world affairs is reflected in the proviso that only “independent states under indigenous African rule” may join.
So far, IAMSO seems aware of Communist intrigue, whereas the Casablanca group (Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, and U. A. R.) have leaned toward the East bloc. The Casablanca group, which has stayed out of IAMSO, has called for more sensational political unity, but IAMSO countries have felt this is impractical and premature. The charter reflects mature thinking on practical ways to solve Africa’s problems of communication, education, health, economics, and technical development. A secretariat has been established in Lagos, Nigeria, and members states will meet at least every two years.
W. H. F.
