A fortnightly report of developments in religion
The following is a report on the lectures delivered by Professor Karl Barth at the University of Chicago, April 23–27. Barth spoke to overflow audiences of more than 2,000 at each of seven sessions held in Rockefeller Chapel. This report has been prepared expressly forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy at Butler University.
To judge Barth fairly one must ask: What is this distinguished theologian trying to do? During the panel discussion, in answering a question from Professor Schubert M. Ogden of Southern Methodist University, Barth said: “In no sense is theology dependent on philosophy; one of my primary intentions has always been to declare the independence of theology from philosophy, including religion.”
As in his Church Dogmatics Barth reiterated his opposition to a nonhistorical religion of general principles, principles discovered by ordinary human capacity as exemplified in anthropology, sociology, politics, or any other science. Theology is sui generis. The reason is that God is not some Hegelian Absolute to be discovered and manipulated by man. God is the living and free person who has acted and spoken in history. Therefore the place and starting point of theology is the Word of God. “The Word of God spoke, speaks, and will speak again.”
Theology is a response to the Word of God. If it should try to justify itself, if it should try to reserve for itself a place among the sciences, if it should explain or excuse itself, it would destroy its whole significance. Before a man can respond, he must be summoned by the creative Word. Otherwise there is no evangelical theology at all.
These sentiments give content to Barth’s aim to free theology from all science and philosophy. For this reason it seems most just to evaluate Barth’s performance as an attempt to oppose the liberalism and modernism of the last hundred years. He is speaking against Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack, Herrmann, and perhaps also against Bultmann.
Thus can be understood the special place Barth assigns to the history of Israel. It is there, and not in China or elsewhere that God has spoken. When Professor Edward J. Carnell of Fuller Theological Seminary asked if God could be encountered in reading Confucius, as some Chinese might claim, or in Mozart, whom Barth loves, Barth replied in effect that whatever might be encountered in other sacred writings, it is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Barth thus stresses the history of Israel as no modernist ever can. Salvation is of the Jews, and the culmination of their history is Jesus Christ and the empty tomb. In opposition to the liberals Barth insists that the apostles did not preach “the historical Jesus” (of Renan or Harnack) nor did they preach “the divine Christ” (Bultmann), but rather the one concrete Jesus Christ our Lord.
In our preaching today we are dependent on the apostles. Theology knows the Word only second hand; it is not on the same level with the apostles. We today may know more science than they knew, but we know less about the Word of God than they knew. The modern theologian must not sit over them and correct their notes as a schoolmaster corrects the essays of his students. No! The apostles must look over our shoulders and correct our essays!
Obviously this is all in opposition to the History-of-Religion school, and it ill accords with proposals to merge all religions into one world-religion. This latter is based on religious experience, on philosophy, on human capacities. Barth wishes to respond to the Word of God.
The next question is whether Barth can press home his attack on modernism. Can he make good in constructive theological detail?
Father Bernard Cooke, S.J., of Marquette University, asked Barth if knowledge of God arrived at in faith could be integrated with knowledge about God attained in natural theology. Barth, of course, allows no place for natural theology; but his answer to this question was given in the form of a dilemma. If these two knowledges are not identical, they cannot be integrated; but, continued Barth, if they are identical, then the Bible is wrong when it says that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of philosophy. “The God of philosophy is always an idol,” and then in the manner of Billy Graham, Barth added, “The Bible says so!”
But difficulties arise, the more specific the questions become. Ogden, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Hebrew Union College, and Carnell agreed essentially on one question. The Jewish rabbi put it in a slightly different form. He wished to know why one might not select and interpret parts of the Old Testament, and even parts of the New Testament, without being forced to a central Christology. From a Christian point of view, and especially from an evangelical point of view, Carnell’s formulation is more familiar. “How does Dr. Barth,” asks Carnell, “harmonize his appeal to Scripture as the objective Word of God with his admission that Scripture is sullied by errors, theological as well as historical or factual.”
Carnell confessed parenthetically that “this is a problem for me, too.”
This seems to be a most important question. Can a theology claim to be a biblical theology and reject parts of the Bible as theological and historical errors? Can Barth insist on the independence of theology and then in some way or other select one verse and reject another? Does not such selection require a principle or criterion different from the Bible? Must not a theologian who denies verbal inspiration and Biblical inerrancy use of necessity some philosophic or scientific test of how much and what part of the Bible he will accept?
Barth’s answer does not seem to meet the question. He asserted that the Bible is a fitting instrument to point men to God, who alone is infallible. The Bible is a human document and not sinless as Christ was. Then a large part of the overflow audience—possibly 500 were standing in the aisles or sitting on the stone floor—applauded Barth’s assertion that there are “contradictions and errors” in the Bible. After and possibly because of this expression of hostility, Carnell professed to be satisfied and did not press the matter of a nonbiblical criterion by which to judge what is a theological error in the Bible.
In answer to Rabbi Petuchowski’s question concerning the state of Israel, Barth said that modern Israel is a new sign of the electing grace and faithfulness of God. Especially after the horrors of Hitler, the reappearance of Zion as a state is a miracle. He further observed that the Jews have always owed their existence to God alone, not to their own power. Now today, wedged among the Arab nations and caught in an East-West struggle, God alone will preserve Israel.
A less pertinent note was introduced into the panel discussion by lawyer Frank W. Stringfellow. He requested Barth to comment on his view that “in the United States the many and divided churches live in a society which constitutionally professes the freedom of public worship … It increasingly appears, however, that the use of that freedom—the only use that is socially approved, at least—is confined to either the mere formalities of religious observance … or to the use of religion to rationalize or serve the national self-interest …”
In explaining his written question, Stringfellow referred to the National Council of Churches’ report on Red China a few years ago. Using the dodge that this was a “study” and not a “official position” of the National Council, Stringfellow seemed to believe that the widespread reaction against this pro-Red document on the part of many individual Christians throughout the nation was an infringement on the church’s liberty. In the United States, he claimed, the church is “stifled.” He went on to say that the large loss of income that resulted from the publicity on the Red China issue has made the National Council very careful in making any statements since that time.
Continuing further with Stringfellow’s concern in politics, Barth remarked that Romans 13 is a “disturbing chapter” and played a great role in the submission of the German church to the political leaders. Mere submission, however, is not enough. The verses tell us to place ourselves in a political order; we are commanded to pray for our rulers; this means we are responsible for them. Therefore the Christian must take part in politics and not retire to the position of a spectator.
Nonetheless, in identifying the evil principalities and powers which bedevil the Christian, Barth put anti-communism in the same class with communism. He also spoke of the evil power of sport, fashion, tradition of all kinds, religion, the unconscious, and reason as well. Sinful man, separated from God, makes these things his rulers; he becomes their servant. Needed is a new heaven and a new earth with a bodily resurrection at Christ’s second coming.
On his last day in Chicago, there was a university convocation where Professor Barth was awarded an honorary degree. Barth again declared in his final lecture, delivered at the convocation, that evangelical theology is without presuppositions. Its statements “could not be derived from any points outside of the sphere of reality and truth which they themselves signify. They had no premises in any results of a general science … and they likewise had no background in any philosophical foundations.”
Most of the last lecture, however, dealt with the Spirit. In various ways Barth insisted that the Spirit blows where he wills; that this is a matter of free grace; and that the Spirit gives himself “undeservedly and incalculably.”
It is somewhat of a milestone in the history of American theology that the University of Chicago, so thoroughly liberal in the early part of the century, should now in the sixties award a degree to a man with this much of a biblical message. Doubtless the impact of Barth’s visit will be evident here for the next decade at least.
Barth’S Itinerary
Following his Chicago lectures, Professor Karl Barth was scheduled to proceed to the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary and render what essentially amounted to a repeat performance.
The Princeton series was slated to be part of the seminary’s sesquicentennial celebration.
San Francisco Theological Seminary at San Anselmo, California, announced that “after being importuned” by President Theodore A. Gill, Barth consented to speak to the theological community there on May 16.
Other scheduled stops on the cross-country circuit included the Gettysburg battlefields (Barth is an amateur expert on the Civil War) and Washington, where a private dinner meeting was being arranged in his honor.
This is the first time that the 75-year-old Barth has ever visited the United States. It comes upon his retirement from a professorship at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
Barth’s 46-year-old son Markus is a New Testament scholar at the University of Chicago. Another son, Christoph, 44, teaches Old Testament at the University of Djakarta.
Rome And Racism
In one of the most celebrated cases of excommunication in modern times, three Roman Catholic segregationists lost rights to participate in their church’s divine offices last month. Monsignor Charles J. Plauche, chancellor of the New Orleans archdiocese, announced the excommunication order at a press conference. The order read:
“Despite the paternal admonition of his excellency, the Most Rev. Joseph Francis Rummel, Archbishop of New Orleans, cautioning certain members of the Church against any further attempt through word or deed to hinder his orders or provoke the devoted people of this venerable archdiocese to disobedience, or rebellion, in the matter of opening our schools to all Catholic children, the following subjects of the Archdiocese, by flagrant disregard of his fatherly counsel have incurred the spiritual penalty of excommunication of which he warned them in his ‘personal and confidential’ letter of March 31, 1962.”
The names of the excommunicates were then listed with the notation that “this spiritual penalty may be remitted only by the ordinary [archbishop] or by his delegates.”
The “personal and confidential” letter had previously been made public by the most vociferous of the excommunicates, Mrs. B. J. Gaillot, Jr., Bible-quoting leader of a small segregationist group, Save Our Nation, which picketed the archbishop’s residence when he ordered parochial schools desegregated by next fall. Mrs. Gaillot released the text after trying in vain to gain a personal audience with the 85-year-old Rummel. He finally consented to see her, then cancelled the scheduled audience because he “became convinced that Mrs. Gaillot obviously intends to use this interview to gain further widespread publicity for her personal interpretation of Holy Scripture.”
The latter reference was to Mrs. Gaillot’s practice of quoting Old Testament passages to support her segregationist views. She contends that Hagar and the son she bore to Abraham were the equivalent of Negroes.
A few days after the excommunication, Mrs. Gaillot appeared at the archbishop’s residence with a group of women who were on a Holy Week pilgrimage. As Rummel stood on the lawn, she rushed up and dropped to her knees before him. There were conflicting reports of what she actually said to the archbishop. Apparently she pleaded that he accept segregation as a divine injunction. Rummel said nothing.
Excommunicated along with Mrs. Gaillot were Leander H. Perez, Sr., Louisiana political boss and White Citizens Council figure, and Jackson G. Ricau, executive secretary of the Citizens Council of South Louisiana.
Meanwhile, a Roman Catholic lay organization was being organized in New Orleans in an effort to muster public support for Rummel’s integration policy.
A public statement issued by the group declared:
“Not one Catholic lay group—Knights of Columbus, Holy Name Society, Catholic Daughters and others—had courage to step forward and denounce publicly the erroneous opinions of [church critics]. Neither did any lay group in numbers let our archbishop know they were proud of his leadership in such a delicate matter.”
Never before has a Roman Catholic excommunication case involving laity been so widely publicized. The situation does recall, however, the 1953 excommunication of the Rev. Leonard J. Feeney, a Boston Jesuit who insists that there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church.
Protestant Panorama
• Ministers’ salaries, victims of inflation, are well below the national average, according to a report released last month by the National Council of Churches. The report, available in booklet form, cities statistics from a two-year study made by NCC and financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It was prepared on behalf of denominations cooperating in a drive to educate local congregations to their ministers’ financial needs. The drive was said to represent the first concerted, interdenominational effort in Protestant history to raise ministers’ salaries.
• The Methodist Church’s temperance agency released a half-hour color film last month designed as a tool to fight gambling. “Where Fortune Smiles” is the story of a girl whose “fun” at slot machines leads to deeper involvement in gambling.
• The Philadelphia Presbytery voted 152 to 100 last month not to endorse its moderator, Dr. Ellsworth E. Jackson, as a candidate for moderator of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. The action was regarded as without precedent in the oldest and one of the largest of the denomination’s 214 presbyteries.
• The American Lutheran Church plans to increase its foreign missionary force with the addition of 53 more pastors and laymen this summer. The increase will give the church a total of 620 active missionaries.
• A new nationwide boys’ organization similar to the Boy Scouts of America will be launched September I by the Assemblies of God Men’s Fellowship Department. The group, to be known as “Royal Rangers,” will supplement the work of the Assemblies’ present youth organization.
• Ground was broken last month for a $450,000 library building on the Philadelphia campus of Westminster Theological Seminary.
• The 50th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titantic was observed last month with a memorial service at Seamen’s Church Institute in New York City. Seven survivors were on hand as special guests.
• Members of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) are being urged to contribute funds to the United Nations. The drive is sponsored by the Disciples Peace Fellowship, an organization of 300 ministers and laymen of the Christian Churches.
• Leaders of U. S. Methodism’s Central (Negro) Jurisdiction say they will ask the 1964 General Conference of the church to declare unequivocally that the entire church should be desegregated. A statement which came out of a spring study conference of the jurisdiction reiterated that abolition of the Central Jurisdiction is inevitable, but added that this structure “is only one of a number of unmistakable manifestations of racialism” within Methodism.
The Bureau of Information of the National Catholic Welfare Conference says the excommunicate “is deprived of the right to participate in divine offices: the Mass, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, funerals and processions. Public recitation of the rosary and the stations of the cross are not considered divine offices.” Excommunicates may not receive the sacraments, except penance in which they will confess and be absolved from the offense for which they incurred excommunication. They are deprived of church burial unless they repent.
The Louisiana excommunicates may pray privately in church, hear sermons, and even attend services provided they take no active part.
Mrs. Gaillot emphasized that she will “appeal to Rome.” Most sources doubted that she had much chance to win a reversal, however. If she has any case at all, it would probably be on the premise that like many others Roman Catholics have always condoned segregation. On the other hand, the Vatican will likely view the excommunication on the basis of disobedience to the hierarchy rather than on segregation per se.
Rummel has been archbishop of New Orleans since 1935. He praised the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in public schools, and he has referred to segregation as “morally wrong and sinful.” His decision to desegregate the parochial schools in his archdiocese came more than a year after New Orleans public schools adopted token integration.
Many Roman Catholic leaders apparently are intent on vigorous implementation of principles of racial equality. Even while the New Orleans hubbub was at its peak, the Vatican announced that on May 6 Pope John XXIII would canonize Blessed Martin dePorres, seventeenth-century Dominican lay brother. Blessed Martin thus becomes the first person of mixed Negro and white blood ever accorded such recognition. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a Peruvian Negro woman.
Only recently the Pope had this to say to the mother of a newly-ordained Negro priest: “There is no color bar in the Catholic Church. Today we have a Negro cardinal, many Negro bishops, and very many Negro priests.”
Tea And Tarts
Venturing their first evangelistic conference, 170 Baptist ministers of the Atlantic Provinces drew larger attendances than annual denominational conventions and projected simultaneous crusades in the Maritimes for the fall of 1963 and spring of 1964.
Addressing the sessions in United Baptist Bible Training School, Moncton, New Brunswick, were Dr. Donald Thomas of the American Baptist Division of Evangelism, Dr. Leonard Sanderson, former director of the Southern Baptist Division of Evangelism, and Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Despite significant growth (the 300 Baptist clergy are the largest Protestant force), they have not kept pace with the population increase. Speaking of the lack of followup in the Maritimes, Baptist Convention Evangelism Secretary L. R. Atkinson put it this way:
The tumult and the shouting die,
The evangelist in haste departs,
The pastor and the people sigh,
And settle down to tea and tarts.
Dedicating themselves with new vigor, Maritimes ministers took a hard look at their scanty French Protestant witness due to their failure to learn the language. In Moncton alone hundreds of converted French Catholics have united with English-speaking churches.
C.F.H.H.
Violence And Prayer
In San Francisco, an incident of violence prompted a spontaneous outdoor prayer service in Golden Gate Park by members of four denominations.
About 150 persons gathered to pray in the park after a 22-year-old woman was brutally slashed by a purse-snatcher. The prayer session was led by four ministers and attended by eight other clergymen.
The Rev. E. W. J. Schmitt, pastor of Mission Methodist Church, said he and three other ministers who held the service were motivated by concern over increasing violence on city streets.
Clergy Problems
A survey among American Protestant ministers shows that “demands of time” represent the major problem affecting their work.
“The financial problem” or “insufficient salary and/or expense allowance” were the runners-up among concerns listed by clergymen responding to a Ministers Life and Casualty Union poll.
Only a slight improvement in financial matters was noted in comparing the survey with a similar one conducted four years ago.
Also cited as a problem in the 1962 survey was lack of parishioner interest in Bible study and religious fundamentals.
Half the ministers cited lack of time, a third listed financial difficulties, and a fifth noted parishioner apathy toward study.
Other leaders of the service were the Rev. L. Roy Bennet, pastor of A. M. E. Zion Church; the Rev. William R. Grace of Howard Presbyterian Church; and the Rev. Thomas Dietrich, an Episcopal clergyman.
Grace told the group assembled in the park that they were gathered to pray for deliverance from “violence on our streets, our beaches and in our parks.”
Schmitt said the churches wanted to make “a meaningful protest against this terrible thing.”
The young woman, who lost an eye in the knife attack, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Religious Experience
Would you say that you have ever had a “religious or mystic experience”—that is, a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening?
The Gallup Poll, which put the above question to “a nationwide cross-section of adults,” reported last month that one in five persons answered “yes.”
“It should be pointed out,” said a report on the poll, “that the above question is on religious experiences of a sudden, or dramatic, nature. The figure of 20 per cent would undoubtedly be much larger if the question had been designed to include religious experiences of a general nature as well.”
The Gallup report said that in general the types of religious experience take the form of (1) the “mystic experience”—a hard-to-describe, “other-worldly” feeling of union with a Divine Being, usually unrelated to any specific faith or doctrine; (2) basically this same experience, but carrying with it the conviction of the forgiveness of sins and salvation; (3) answers to prayers—often of a “miraculous” nature; (4) a turning to God—or a reassurance of his power and love—in moments of crisis; and (5) visions, dreams or voices.
“Education—or lack of it—has little to do with such experiences,” the report said.
Mother’S Day Shrine
A drive is under way to make an International Mother’s Day Shrine of the Andrews Methodist Church, in Grafton, West Virginia, where the first Mother’s Day service was held on May 10, 1908.
Led by the Grafton Kiwanis Club, the movement has been endorsed by West Virginia Governor W. W. Barron.
The shrine organization hopes to raise $180,000 to restore the old church and to landscape the surrounding area to create a permanent memorial to “all mothers everywhere.”
Financial cooperation is expected from the city’s Urban Renewal Authority, with federal funds, for the shrine will be at the center of an area to be redeveloped.
The church would be called “The Mother Church of Mother’s Day.”
The first Mother’s Day service was organized by the late Miss Anna Jarvis as a tribute to her own mother, Mrs. Anna Reeves Jarvis.
During the post Civil War period, Mrs. Jarvis, the daughter of a Methodist minister, held a Mother’s Friendship Day to reunite neighbors who had fought on opposite sides in the war.
In 1907, two years after her mother had died, Miss Jarvis invited several friends to her home in Philadelphia on the second Sunday in May to commemorate the anniversary of her death.
She also announced plans for a national observance of Mother’s Day. Miss Jarvis wrote to officials in the Andrews Methodist Church to suggest that they hold a Mother’s Day service, and the next year on May 10 the first formal service took place.
In 1910 Governor William E. Glasscock of West Virginia issued the first Mother’s Day proclamation. This was followed in 1914 by Congressional legislation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
Miss Jarvis lived to see her idea grow into an international institution. She died in 1948 at the age of 84.
Historic Home
Youth for Christ International plans to convert the boyhood home of George Washington into a rehabilitation and training center for wayward juveniles.
A 101-acre tract on the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia, was purchased from a foundation that had begun to restore the plantation’s original buildings and develop an already existing museum of Washington mementos. There are six buildings on the tract, including an authentic restoration of the first president’s surveyor shack and ice house.
It was on this plantation that Washington lived from the age of 6 to 22 and where, according to tradition, he chopped down the cherry tree and threw the dollar across the Rappahannock.
Youth for Christ intends to develop the property for camps, conferences, and leadership schools, in addition to a home for potentially delinquent boys.
New Footing For Biblical Scholarship?
Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, a leading Orthodox Jewish scholar, reported last month that he has found conclusive linguistic evidence of a culture parent to both Hebrew and Greek civilizations. Gordon told a meeting of the American Oriental Society in Boston that his finds will put study of the Bible on a new footing.
The discoveries, he said, explode the widely-held view that Greek culture developed independently of the Hebrew.
“They run counter to many firmly-entrenched views concerning Scripture, classics, and history,” he declared.
Gordon is chairman of the department of Mediterranean studies at Brandeis University. He is a veteran archeologist who has participated in excavations in Egypt, Sinai, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.
Last January, Gordon said, he broke through the language of the people of ancient Crete and found it to be Phoenician—a tongue of the West Semitic family. This accomplishment climaxed a series of effort begun back in the 1940s, when he tentatively advanced the theory of a common Hebrew-Greek heritage. Subsequently Gordon declared that this heritage spanned the entire East Mediterranean from Greece to Palestine in Minoan times—so named after the legendary King Minos of Crete.
In 1957 he announced that he had identified some ancient writings found on Crete. He said the writings, which have become known as Minoan Linear A, were Phoenician.
The latest evidence lies with the decipherment of the pre-Greek Cretan language as Eteocretan (pure Crete). Although it is written with the Greek alphabet, he says that it too is Phoenician.
Linear B, a script used by the Greeks who invaded Crete during the thousand years following 1450 B. C., was deciphered by Michael Ventris, an Englishman, in 1952, who identified it as Greek.
Minoan Linear A was used on Crete from 1750 to 1450 B. C., Eteocretan from 600 to 300 B. C.
Gordon’s efforts were enhanced by a new edition of the Minoan texts, written by W. C. Brice and published in England, which appeared in 1961.
The Brandeis professor maintains that his discovery is “more important to historians than the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Canadian Gain
Communicant membership in the United Church of Canada showed a net increase of 20,868 in 1961, bringing the total to 1,037,747. Total giving amounted to $60,279,743, up about $2,200,000, according to the Rev. Ernest E. Long, secretary of the United Church General Council.
Ireland To Iona
To mark the 1400th anniversary of St. Columba’s historic landing on the Scottish island of Iona, 13 men will set out from Ireland next year in an attempt to relive the feat authentically.
Their vessel will be a replica of Columba’s sixth-century coracle—a small boat made of a wicker frame covered by hide.
The venture is being sponsored by the Iona Community and underwritten by a Scottish industrialist in Ireland. Said the Rev. T. Ralph Morton, the community’s deputy leader: “Some of the 12 oarsmen may be members of the community. I hope there will be at least one minister or theology student among them.”
Columba and his 12 companions established a monastery on the island which influenced religious thought in the British Isles for centuries.
The Iona Community is a movement whose members live under something like monastic discipline and who have spent summers rebuilding an abbey on the island.
Preview Of Second Vatican Council
The Second Vatican Council probably will be split into three sessions extending over a period of 10 months, according to the Rev. Gustave Weigel, a leading Jesuit theologian.
Weigel, a professor at Woodstock (Maryland) College, offered the forecast at a Northwestern University lecture last month. He is helping to prepare for the council, which is scheduled to open in Rome October 11.
The way plans are shaping up now, Weigel said, the council may follow a schedule according to these approximate dates:
First session—October 11-December 8.
Second session—February 2, 1963 to shortly before Holy Week (Easter falls on April 14 next year).
Third session—Pentecost (June 2) to sometime in July.
He stressed that the Second Vatican Council—so named because it follows the First Vatican Council held in Rome nearly a century ago—will not be a “reunion council.”
Purpose of the forthcoming council, he said, has been widely misinterpreted, especially in the first reaction to Pope John XXIII’s announcement that he intended to call an ecumenical council. Many persons concluded that the work of the council would be to consider reunion of the Roman Catholic Church with other bodies in Christendom. This is not the case, Weigel declared, although Christian unity will be one of the topics considered by the council.
The ecumenical council will be primarily concerned with “internal relationships of the Roman Catholic Church,” he added.
He listed the following as among the probable items on the council agenda:
—Redefinition of the “meaning and power of a bishop.” The First Vatican Council, held in 1870–71, dealt with the papacy (infallibility of the Pope was defined then) but not with the episcopacy (the bishops).
—Position of laymen in the church and relationship of the laity and religious to the bishops.
—Relationship of the “secular and sacral” (church-state).
—Liturgical problems, such as the use of Latin or the vernacular.
—Questions on how much liberty should be granted to the “newer churches” in Africa and Asia.
—One of the most contested issues, and perhaps the most important one facing the church, is that of centralization of power.
Highly conservative Catholics will be striving for strong centralization in the Vatican, Weigel said. This would obviously diminish the power of the bishops elsewhere in the world.
The outcome of the debate depends on the “guts of the bishops,” he observed. “No one can stop them.”
Council decisions will be made by the members of the hierarchy—cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and abbots—attending the council from all over the world. The Pope, through a legate, will preside and hold veto power.
Wall Of Shame
In a northern section of Berlin lies a Protestant church whose front yard now straddles the Communist wall. Its ironic name: the Church of the Reconciliation.
A Presbyterian minister who visited the barricaded churchyard a few weeks ago aptly remarked that it is “symbolic of the nature of sin.”
“Sin is a divider,” said Dr. Cary N. Weisiger III, minister of Menlo Park (California) Presbyterian Church and member of the United Presbyterian General Council. “Sin is opposed to the Gospel. God seeks to reconcile all men to himself through Christ. Sin seeks to thwart and destroy the Christian ministry of reconciliation.”
Weisiger was in Germany to address a dozen spring rallies of Protestant Men of the Chapel, an organization of U. S. servicemen. He quoted Dr. J. W. Winterhager, secretary to Bishop Otto Dibelius, as having referred to the Communist seal-off measure as “a wall of shame.” Winterhager was a guest at a PMOC rally held in Berlin.
Weisiger said the Church of the Reconciliation appears to have been abandoned. The building itself, with a statue of Christ at the entrance, is in East Berlin, while the front sidewalk is in the West. A 10-foot brick wall stands between.
A Messianic U. N.?
“Whether Messiah is a person or an assembly is of minor importance,” said Chief Rabbi Marcus Melchoir of Denmark. “I believe Messianic times would come if the United Nations were made Messiah.”
Melchoir was addressing a student group in Oslo. His remarks were reported by “Church News” of the Northern Ecumenical Institute.
He said that Hebrew theology never speaks about the Messiah as a person as much as about “the very conception” of a messiah. Melchior added that he hoped to experience the Messianic age in his own lifetime.
Ecclesiastical Luxury
The Soviet government has turned over a new and luxurious mansion to the “foreign affairs section” of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Religious News Service reported last month. The residence is said to contain some of the most beautiful icons of the seventeenth century as well as many expensive antique pieces among among its furnishings.
Missionary Impact
The impact of Christian missions on African political life was reviewed on the floor of the U. S. Senate last month. Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, recently returned from a trip to Africa, said “the Western world owes a great debt to Christian missionaries” there.
“Without them,” he declared, “the nations of Africa would have been much more poorly equipped to join the family of nations, and conditions would be far less stable in Africa than they are.”
Of the 23 heads of independent African nations, 16 received at least part of their education in Christian mission schools, Pell reported.
Of the 16, he said, 12 had training in Catholic mission schools and four in schools operated by Protestant missionary groups. One, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, had training in both Catholic and Protestant institutions.
Three African political leaders were listed as once having begun training to become clergymen.
The Rhode Island senator stated that there are an estimated 23,000 Christian missionaries of all nationalities in Africa, of whom about 10,000 are Americans. The number of Americans working with African church groups exceeds many times the number of personnel who are at work there for the government or in Point Four Programs, he added.
Among mission-educated African leaders listed by Pell were the following:
Protestant
Chad: President Francois Tombalbaye, born to Protestant parents in a Moslem area and received some Protestant mission schooling. Ghana: President Kwame Nkrumah, prepared for the Presbyterian ministry but turned to law instead. Nigeria: Governor-General Nnamdi Azikiwe, Protestant mission schools. Sierra Leone: President Sir Milton Margai, Protestant (Evangelical United Brethren) mission schools followed by medical education in England. Liberia: President William V. S. Tubman, educated in Methodist schools.
Other leaders of emerging African nations who received Protestant mission education include Holden Roberto, leader of one faction of the government-in-exile of Angola; John Kenyatta, who will become president of an independent Kenya and who was educated in a mission school of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian); and Dr. Hastings Banda, a Presbyterian who is regarded as the strongest African leader in Northern Rhodesia.
Roman Catholic
Central African Republic: President David Dacko, Catholic school in the Congo. Congo Republic (Brazzaville): President Fulbert Youlou, educated for the priesthood although now suspended from Holy Orders. Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville): President Joseph Kasavubu, educated in Catholic mission schools and a one-time seminarian (Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula also was educated by Catholic missionaries). Ethiopia: Emperor Haile Selassie, although head of the Coptic Christian Church, received part of his early training in a Catholic mission school. Dahomey: President Hubert Maga. Gabon: President Leon M’Ba. Ghana: President Kwame Nkrumah. Ivory Coast: President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, elementary Catholic mission school followed by education in France. Malagasy (Madagascar): President Philibert Tsiranana, Catholic elementary training. Senegal: President Leopold Senghor. Togo: President Sylvanus Olympio. Upper Volta: President Maurice Yameogo.
Pell also noted that former Prime Minister Jules Nyerere of Tankanyika, recently resigned but still a potent political leader in that country, was educated in a Catholic mission school. So were Benedicto Kiwanuka, chief minister of the provisional government of Uganda, due soon to receive independence, and Tom Mboya, prominent political leader in Kenya. Mario de Andrade, a leader in the revolt in Angola, also was educated in Catholic mission schools.
Congo Incident
Far up in the Congo bush country last month, a native road crew was hacking away at the jungle with machetes when they inadvertently stirred up a swarm of wasps. One of the crewmen instinctively dropped his machete with a scream and jumped into the road, right into the path of a truck carrying two Americans from the Disciples of Christ Congo mission. The worker was killed.
Dr. Clifford Weare, a medical doctor, jumped from the truck to the aid of the victim. The other workers, running and shouting like a mob, descended on the driver, Ronald E. Anderson. They pulled him from the cab and pounced on him. A quick-thinking crew foreman, however, threw himself on top of Anderson and saved him from further blows.
A few minutes later Weare was hit in the face by the workers and again the foreman came to the rescue. The foreman locked both missionaries in his home for protection.
A subsequent inquest at Boende absolved the missionaries of blame in the accident. The workmen were severely reprimanded. The victim’s family protested so vehemently in the courtroom that the judge had them jailed for contempt.
The two American missionaries involved were sent to the Congo in 1958 in behalf of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) by the United Christian Missionary Society. A report on the incident was released by Dr. Robert G. Nelson, executive secretary of the Africa department of UCMS.
Second Expulsion
An American Methodist missionary was ordered out of Southern Rhodesia last month. The Rev. Wendell Golden of Rockford, Illinois, had been engaged in rural education work since last fall when he and three other American Methodist missionaries were expelled from Angola and held in Portugal on charges that they had cooperated or assisted “terrorist elements” in Angola.
The 39-year-old Golden was denied permanent residency in Southern Rhodesia after charges were made against him by the Portuguese Consul General J. Pereira Bastos, who claimed that Golden had been engaged in activities in Angola that in some countries would have brought the “death penalty.”
Methodist Bishop Ralph E. Dodge of Lourenço Marques, an American, defended Golden against the attack by Bastos. He requested a hearing and more specific charges, adding: “We do not like to have allegations made that cannot be substantiated.”
The three missionaries expelled from Angola with Golden did not request residency in the Rhodesian Federation, but returned to the United States and are now on speaking tours.
Judaism’S Third Force
Israel’s first Reform (Liberal) Jewish synagogue was dedicated last month in Jerusalem.
Up to now Reform congregations have held services in rented halls in Israel, where Jewish religious life is dominated by Orthodox Judaism.
The Reform synagogue, formerly a dwelling, is built of stone and has a sloping red roof. It is located in a walled garden.
During the dedication, a message of greetings was received from Professor Martin Buber, noted Jewish philosopher who resides in Jerusalem. Buber said there was need for a “third force” to restore vigor in Judaism. “Perhaps,” he added, “the future of the people of Israel depends more on the creation of this third force than it does on any external factors.”
Hope For Eichmann?
Adolf Eichmann, who is under sentence of death for his part in the extermination of some six million Jews, was reported last month to be receiving spiritual counsel from a Canadian-born Protestant minister in Jerusalem.
The Rev. William L. Hull of Winnipeg, pastor of the Zion Christian Mission in Jerusalem, said Eichmann had consented to accept visits from him.
“He is a human being,” Hull said. “He has a soul. Jesus Christ died for him as well as for me.”
During his long trial Eichmann, leading executioner for the Nezi regime, refused to see clergymen or swear on the Bible as he gave testimony.
Hull said that “we have not advanced very far yet,” but added that under his instruction, Eichmann was reading a German-language Bible.
Hull has been in Jerusalem since 1935. He described his church as independent and evangelical.
Schools In Ceylon
A government commission in Ceylon is calling for immediate “takeover” or nationalization of all remaining private schools—most of which are church-sponsored.
The schools have been assailed as “pockets of religious separatism” by a subcommittee of the state’s national education commission.
Unless brought under the control of the state, the subcommittee said, these schools “will prove a canker in the life of the nation.”
The recommendation was seen as another move against Christian institutions in a predominantly Buddhist country. Virtually all Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Hindu schools were taken over by the government—without compensation-in December, 1960.
Until the 1960 takeover, some 750,000 children were taught in Catholic schools and about 250,000 in Protestant-sponsored schools.
Of the 750 Roman Catholic schools operating in Ceylon in 1960, only 42 are now being maintained as private parochial schools.
Religious Conclaves
Here are reports from an assortment of religious conferences and conventions around the United States:
Salt Lake City, Utah—Ezra Taft Benson, former U. S. Secretary of Agriculture and member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, said at the 132nd annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) that America runs the risk of getting soft economically and morally.
“This is the first step toward collapse in the old Greek style,” he warned. Specifically, Benson charged that students are being brainwashed and made easy prey for government tyranny.
He said indoctrination of students “is often perpetuated behind the front of so-called academic freedom.” When the education is finished, he added, what is left are faithless, socialistically oriented students.
“The best authorities are confident that Soviets will not provoke a major war,” Benson declared. “Their economy would not support it.”
He said communism seeks to spread its philosophy throughout the world. “We must never forget that nations usually sow the seeds of their own destruction while enjoying unprecedented prosperity.”
Independence, Missouri—An extensive modernization of a code on marriage and divorce for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was adopted by delegates to the church’s world conference.
The church’s new code replaces one adopted in 1866 and revised in 1884 and again in 1896.
In an introductory statement Maurice L. Draper, one of the counselors to the church’s president, said the old code had become difficult to interpret and almost impossible to administer. The major change involved conditions under which divorced persons may remarry.
The new code says that the “remarriage of an innocent party in a divorce action is permissible when a divorce has been secured for any of the following reasons: adultery, repeated sexual perversion, desertion, such aggravated conditions within the home as render married life unbearable for the party petitioning or for the children.…”
Under the old code, the only justifiable reasons for separation were adultery and “abandonment without cause.”
In another section, the new code says that even though civil courts grant divorce for “lesser indignities,” the church should grant permission for remarriage “only when the conditions complained of were of such an extreme nature as to place the other members of the family in serious and continuing jeopardy.”
“Persons who have been divorced,” the code continues, “even though innocent of wrongdoing, should pay special attention to the admonition not to marry hastily or without due consideration.”
Washington—Dr. Robert E. Van Deusen, Washington secretary of the National Lutheran Council’s Division of Public Relations, advised delegates to the 33rd annual convention of the National Religious Publicity Council against becoming preoccupied with the mechanics of their tasks.
In the concluding session of the convention, which drew 145 delegates (one-fourth of the total membership), Van Deusen commented on the convention theme of milieu, message, and methods. He said that sometimes interpreters of religion get so involved in tinkering with the machinery of immediate jobs that they forget the overriding importance of remaining sensitive to the milieu, relevant in message and effective in method.
“Subtly,” he said, “we lose sight of the fact that the work we are doing is God’s work more than it is our own. We begin to feel without realizing it that society will be redeemed and the message of the church be made relevant only through our efforts, the improvement of our skills, the effectiveness of our communication.” Van Deusen went on to say:
“The big temptation in our profession is to let the potent secularism in the milieu creep into the standards by which we measure our message and methods.”
“The most competent craftsman among us needs to come humbly and sincerely to Him, seeking guidance as to the how, as well as the what, when, where, and why,” he concluded.
Philadelphia—A report submitted to the 282nd Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends charged that American foreign policy is dominated by a “military-industrial complex” which makes a peaceful solution to the cold war seem impossible.
“This complex,” the report said, “has achieved such vast political influence in our entire society that huge appropriations for armaments are approved with hardly any debate, while adequate support is denied to our services for health, education, and welfare.”
The report, prepared by the Social Order Committee, declared that the “sensationalism of much of our press and television, moving from one crisis to another, seeking increased sales and profits, has materially enlarged support for military appropriations.”
“We have become so absorbed with fear and the illusion of military security that we have much too often lost sight of what should be our purpose—to help bring peace, health, freedom, and justice to all mankind.”
The report urged support of the United Nations and “patient negotiation to resolve the issues of the Cold War.…”
People: Words And Events
Deaths:Dr. J. J. Stolz, 83, for 28 years the president general of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia; in Adelaide … Dr. Henry B. Washburn, 92, dean emeritus of Episcopal Theological School; in Cambridge, Massachusetts … Dr. Henry Kauffman, 70, Presbyterian minister and educator; in Oradell, New Jersey … Elder George O. Morris, 88, a member of the Council of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; in Salt Lake City.
Elections: As moderator of the General Assembly of the United Church of Northern India, Dr. William Stewart … as president of the National Religious Publicity Council, Miss Ella F. Harllee … as president of the Christian College Teachers Conference, R. Calvin Whorton … as chairman of the Irish Congregational Union, for 1963–64, the Rev. R. J. Pentland.
Appointments: As professor of philosophical theology at the University of Chicago, Dr. Paul J. Tillich. The 75-year-old Tillich, one of the world’s leading Protestant theologians, is expected to be on the campus of Chicago’s Divinity School two quarters a year. He has been ill, however, and no date has been set for his coming. Tillich currently teaches at Harvard Divinity School … as president of Augustana College, Dr. Clarence W. Sorensen.
