The opinion is current in some Protestant circles today that the tide of history has turned against the Christian church and that the efforts of believers must be directed toward retrenchment or, perhaps ultimately, toward a radical transformation of the gospel message.
What indications are cited in support of this diagnosis? In contrast to the nineteenth century, when Protestantism launched a massive program of world evangelism, Christianity is challenged by the increasing attempt of Eastern religions to “evangelize” the West. Hindu and Buddhist missionaries are now preaching in many American cities. Moslems now worship in an impressive mosque constructed in our nation’s capital. And the tenets of Islam, Buddhism and other world religions are increasingly studied among the peoples of Europe and North America. For these faiths, the task of “enlightening the darkened continents” has just begun.
At the same time, the wavering phalanx of Protestantism has been beleaguered by the astounding growth of the so-called religious “sects.” Our country has itself made room for over 200 of these aberrant denominations, and one of them boasts over 35,000 “missionaries” (not adherents) in the New York metropoliant area alone. In the New York subways the new Swedenborgian Church promotes itself as “a member of the Protestant Council.”
Considered in itself, few would deny that the Protestant church has suffered greatly in the twentieth century. Despite the so-called religious revival of the 1950’s, church identification still means less to many people than it did even a decade or two ago; and membership is beginning to decline numerically. Even more alarming for the organized church is a corresponding decline in the number of candidates presenting themselves for the Protestant ministry. In the Church of England, for instance, the average age of the clergy was over fifty in 1958, yet Anglican seminaries are graduating only 500 students each year to fill an estimated 600 vacancies. Not without cause has the inner vitality of the Protestant church and its relevance to the secular world been called in question.
Has Christianity really had it? Wouldn’t it be wise to accept such a verdict upon history and to desert a sinking ship?
God forbid.
To this increasingly popular diagnosis, believers may first respond by refusing to identify the causes of an established church with the cause of Christianity. When the Gospel first entered the world there were no Presbyterians, Methodists, or Baptists; yet Christianity was vital enough, relevant enough, to transform the Roman world. If God wills, he may pursue his cause without our institutions, even despite them, and achieve his purpose in calling out a people for himself. Christ was speaking to the defenders of “the establishment” when he observed that “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” It would not be an ultimate tragedy, then, if history were to pronounce its quietus on much of what now passes for organized Christianity. Christianity itself would nonetheless prevail. It would prevail because it is the work of God and not the work of men.
But when we have dissociated the cause of Christianity from the cause of an established church, we open the door for perceiving what is truly of God within historic Protestantism. When we can see beyond “denominational programs” we may note the extent to which the Gospel is faithfully preached and the Christian witness propagated—in our country and abroad. About us we see personalities changed by the power of God’s Spirit. There are repeated indications of revival. Dedicated men and women are giving their lives in obedience to the missionary imperative. The decisive question, and the one which may determine the destiny of the Protestant churches in Europe and America, is whether Christians will be able to distinguish what is genuinely Christian, what is distinctively of God, from the encrustments which seem to embellish but actually impede the Church’s growth.
As the tide of history wrestles with the Church it may perform a valuable service. It may be used of God to strip away the barnacles, to purge us of the dross, and to reveal in increasingly sharp relief the mysterious but dynamic power of God’s Spirit working in our midst.
America has included in its Oath of Allegiance the vivid phrase “one nation under God.” Let us have “one Church under God,” called into being, empowered and sustained by the Holy Spirit alone and dedicated to the directives of Scripture alone. Let us recapture that dynamic of the Christian faith which was characteristic of the apostolic church. Today’s theological world is enamored with the theme of apocalyptic judgment. Let us have judgment on the so-called organized Church. Let the church repent. But let us see what has always been present; namely, the power of God to transform the lives of men, to forgive their sins and to inspire them with a vision of those yet unreached by the Christian gospel.
With such a church God may again demonstrate—as he has repeatedly done on behalf of those who trust him—that his activities with men are not regulated by the so-called historical trends. To a world threatened by the Marxist philosophy the Protestant church could itself be the strongest refutation of a deterministic concept of history. Our God is the God of history, the Lord of every event. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear.”
If the trends of history are not irreversable, the challenge which confronts the church may be used of God for her inward renewal. God may even revitalize human institutional structures if they are placed at his disposal, and if we consider them dispensable. If Toynbee is right when he observes that the dynamic of history may be understood as “challenge and response,” then every historical challenge may be expected to present its own opportunity. Only let us see the challenge as one given by God and as an opportunity for all who will answer it by faith.
Ours is a new bold age for religious dialogue. “For the first time in history,” as Gordon Gould has observed, “all faiths, ideas, and ideologies are forced to compete with one another in the open marketplace of the human soul.” In such open competition, evangelicals may sense an opportunity to present the case for biblical theism and to display the vitality of revealed religion with new vigor and new hope.
Faulkner’S Death Coincides With Decline Of The Novel
William Faulkner, who was hailed by many as the greatest novelist of the twentieth century, wrote a dense, labyrinthine, but emotionally electrifying prose. In novels like The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom! and Requiem for a Nun he set the tone for a generation of American novelists. Strangely enough, his death comes at a time when interest in the novel appears to be declining. Magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, long noted for their fiction, are expanding their use of short stories and feature articles in preference to more extended compositions. Moreover, the decline of interest in the novel seems to disclose a decline in the art form itself.
Through its denial of eternal values and a preoccupation with ignoble subjects, defended as reflections of “real life,” the novel has departed in our day from two elements which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generally considered essential to a great work of art—a certain idealism as reflected in a choice of themes and characters and a prevailing interest in the transcendent dimension of life. One only needs to reflect on the heroic character of Ahab in Moby Dick, on Peter and Prince Andre in War and Peace, on the Deersla-yer and on Thackeray’s Amelia to recognize the important place which evil, virtue, the purpose and activity of God, redemption and many other “eternal” themes have had in making these classics great. These themes figure highly in the Bible. Can a novel which overlooks them or which buries such concerns in the trivial and base lay claim to enduring interest and attention?
We do not suggest that the novel is doomed to extinction. But it needs to be reborn. It needs new life, a new understanding of its function. Couldn’t a Christian writer show the way? More than ever today there is need for a great Christian novel.
The Oncoming Generation: Two Went West; One Hung Up
Children can be more eloquent in expressing the human hopes and tragedies of an age than the most articulate philosophers. For Americans the future has traditionally been a land of bright hope and beckoning promise. It drew the early Americans into vast frontiers of unyielding forests to carve an empire beyond their wildest, brightest hopes. This spirit is not yet dead.
Recently The Washington Post carried a story of a 12-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother who in the face of disappointment decided to strike for the West and better things. Told that the family plans to move to a farm in Arkansas had been delayed, they left home together, taking with them only homemade fishing poles, 16 cents, their dog, and the bright dreams of a better future. Left on a bed was a note to Mom and Dad which said: “If you go on with the plans about the farm, you will see us there in 1964.” By such an amazingly confident and venturesome spirit, America was built. Though the builders were older, their deeds could hardly equal the eloquence of these two American youngsters.
But children, just because they are children, can speak also the language of tragedy with unequaled eloquence. The same day, the same newspaper reported that an Alexandria telephone operator heard a small voice over the line asking for help, and for a policeman. A calm, small voice told the operator: “There’s blood all over my mommy’s bedroom.… Mommy said something to me, but now she doesn’t talk anymore.” “How old are you?” asked the operator. “Six,” Clancy replied. He was asked to hold on until the police came. When a policeman came, the child and his four-year-old sister opened the door. Returning to the phone young Clancy told the operator: “Thank you, a policeman is here”—and hung up.
The eloquence of children speaking of hope and tragedy cannot be surpassed—just because they are children they convey a poignancy which grownups, though they be philosophers or poets, cannot exceed. And what grownup could really scold the two who left disappointment behind and went West, or the one who remained with the blood and “hung up”?
Telstar Launching Suggests Fulfillment Of Bible Prophecy
For centuries the prediction of John in the Revelation—“behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him” (1:7)—has captured and puzzled the imagination of those who know John’s prophecy. In a world in which space and time seem insurmountable factors, how can “every eye” see Him when He comes? Defenders of Scripture have only been able to answer that God has a way. Doubt has varied from “spiritualization” of this assertion to a frank denial of its possibility, even to doubt that Christ will return at all.
Now “Telstar” has been launched, and suddenly the world is alive with the possibilities for mass communication. The first experimentations have been amazingly successful. That this is only the beginning of a world-wide network of television broadcasts seems a certainty. Thus, seemingly overnight, technology has demonstrated the possibility of a fulfillment of John’s prophecy, not as poetry, but literally and in precise detail.
World-wide evangelization is also a biblical prophecy. Now the evangelization of the world by radio and television is within sight of actual achievement, and mission boards should be keenly alert to the possibilities opened up by this new technological advance. Once again time has demonstrated the possibility of a literal fulfillment of prophecies for long thought unrealistic. So it is. So it will continue, until the Word of God stands forth—accurate, authoritative and fulfilled in its least detail.
The Lure Of American Money And Our Confused World Image
Inconsistencies in American foreign aid ought to embarrass national policy-makers, even if they remain unperturbed. Daily newspapers simultaneously trumpeted three items: (1) After Peruvian armed forces staged a bloodless coup, the U.S. suspended diplomatic relations and interrupted further commitments under the Alliance for Progress; (2) Senate and House conferees approved President Kennedy’s requested leeway to give or lend any aid (except surplus farm commodities) to Communist nations such as Poland and Yugoslavia; (3) A compromise bill now before Congress includes President Kennedy’s request for authority to buy up to half of a $200 million bond issue of the financially wobbly United Nations. It seems that the only line to form on the right in Washington is the endless parade of handout seekers.
Labor Sunday Message Has A Strange ‘Gospel’
The National Council of Churches is requesting member churches to read from their pulpits a 1962 Labor Sunday document approved by the Executive Board for the Division of Christian Life and Work. The message contains many good points. But certain deviations can hardly be traced to the Founder of the Christian religion. The Church is indeed called to minister to the poor. But the N.C.C. message pledges her also to work for abolishing poverty around the world, to explore wider social insurance against the exigencies of unemployment and old age and more nearly universal coverage of workers through minimum wage laws.
Supportive texts—if they are anywhere to be found—might read something like “the poor ye shall no longer have with you,” “give us today our future bread,” and “be discontent with your wages.” Their motivation derives, of course, not from Jesus Christ but from modern seers of the social order. Interestingly enough, the N.C.C. document declares point blank that God has given the Church the responsibility for eradicating poverty “at home and abroad.”
This revision of the Church’s mission brings to mind a meeting sponsored by the Albany Area (New York) Council of Churches and the National Council recently on the subject of unemployment. At the session’s close the chairman asked everyone in attendance to join in reading a prayer containing these words:
O righteous God, we acknowledge our common guilt for the disorder of our industry which thrusts even willing workers into the degradation of idleness and want, and teaches some to love the sloth they once feared and hated.
We remember also with sorrow and compassion the idle rich.… Forgive them for loading the burden of their support on the bent shoulders of the working world.… Grant them strength of soul to rise from their silken shame and to give their brothers a just return of labor for the bread they eat.…
The prayer had not a word of rebuke for labor, not a word of commendation for industry. Used because of “the pertinency of this prayer to our times,” it was borrowed actually from a work of Walter Rauschenbush published in 1925. CHRISTIANITY TODAY thinks that the judgment of the Bible needs to be applied to both management and labor, to both rich and poor. When the scales are as unbalanced as in this instance, partisan propaganda has usurped the ministry of the Gospel.
Labor Sunday 1962 offers more than an occasion to interpret the Christian meaning of work; it affords an opportunity also for the churches to set their ministry squarely in the context of biblical imperatives.
Time To Recapture The Joy Of Labor
Labor has come a long way since the day of child labor and the sweatshop. Yet all the improvements in working conditions, shorter days, higher wages, fringe benefits, increased security through organization, seem not to have brought an increase in the pleasure of labor. Featherbedding, goldbricking, organized insistence on a 25-hour work week (with 40 hours of pay) suggest that men desire the products of labor but dislike the activity which produces them. While many fight for right to work laws, fewer people seem to enjoy any exercise of the right.
Americans need to recall the decade of the Thirties when an economic depression revealed the utterly demoralizing effect of unemployment. Unable to find work, men felt meaning and purpose drain from life. The young who regard it as something to be avoided as far as possible, wait too long if they wait until the age of forced retirement to discover the sheer joy of work.
In biblical thought labor is not untouched with sweat and anguish, but the Bible cannot be summoned to support the notion that labor itself is an evil, undesirable thing. Labor in 1962 faces greater problems than ever before in history as the threat of automation is added to a seemingly insoluble unemployment problem. Yet labor will lose everything if in its problemsolving process it loses the joy and dignity of labor. This is a matter of the heart and spirit of a man, a matter that cannot be solved by labor legislation or gains at the collective bargaining table, a matter worthy of reflection as America again celebrates Labor Day.
