While the blockade of Cuba exploded into world headlines last week, Evangelist Billy Graham was conducting the most successful crusade of his South American tour.
There were no anti-American demonstrations in Buenos Aires as in other Latin American cities, but extra police were stationed at the arena.
Dr. Graham answered questions on a telecast beamed to 60 per cent of the Argentine population and into neighboring Uruguay. Ratings in the city indicated that 46 per cent of television viewers at that hour were watching Graham.
Luna Park had capacity crowds of 20,000 each night of the crusade. Recorded decisions for Christ totaled 1,661 after four meetings. Observers promptly heralded the crusade as “the largest Protestant event” in the history of the city.
Thirty thousand heard Dr. Graham preach at Buenos Aires’ Luna Park at the opening rally. Police estimated that they had turned 5,000 persons away for lack of seating. The closing rally was scheduled on the city’s main football stadium grounds.
In a press interview preceding his final series of rallies, Graham told newsmen: “I find a great spiritual hunger in this country. People are deeply interested in religion.” He said his purpose in Argentina was “to bring people face to face with God,” rather than “to convert them to any one religion.” “I want them to come to Christ, whatever their religion,” he stressed. “After they have made their decision, I cannot direct which church they go to. That is up to them.”
The evangelist’s eight-day series of rallies in Buenos Aires was financed by local Protestant churches, which also provided a 1,000-voice choir. It climaxed a month-long evangelism tour of the southern portion of the Latin American continent. Rallies were held in six cities.
A full report on the impact of the Graham Crusade by News Editor Kucharsky, now in Latin America, will appear in the November 23 issue, with photographic coverage.
Earlier in the tour, Graham drew capacity crowds in the 60,000-seat Pacaembu Stadium at São Paulo, Brazil, at two meetings which closed a six-day campaign there.
On the last night at São Paulo, the huge throng sat out a drenching rainstorm. Meanwhile, a voodoo society which had engaged a dance hall adjacent to the stadium for a demonstration folded its gear and joined the Graham crowd.
The evangelist’s itinerary also took him to Asunción, Paraguay; Cordoba, Argentina; Rosario, Argentina; and Montevideo, Uruguay. In each city he was assisted by associate evangelists on his team who held up to a week of nightly meetings prior to his arrival.
In Asunción, Graham ran into a virtual boycott by mass media. Of 20 correspondents invited to a pre-crusade press conference, only one attended. Asunción’s newspapers carried no pictures, reports, or comment on the meetings, although paid advertisements of the crusade meetings were published. The evangelist said it was the first time in his career, after visits to 80 countries, that the local press had ignored him.
One report said that the media boycott had prompted a reprimand of the press by Paraguay’s President Alfredo Stroessner.
The crusade in Asunción, including eight services conducted by the Rev. Joseph Blinco, a member of the evangelist’s team drew an aggregate of 40,000. Some 800 persons were reported to have made decisions for Christ.
The Graham team made two trips to South America this year. The first, in January and February, was conducted in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Team officials said more than 250,000 persons attended 57 meetings, with 9,228 recording decisions for Christ.
NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion
WCC CRITICAL OF U.S. ACTION IN CUBA
Although most religious commentators praised President Kennedy’s action in the Cuban crisis, officers of the World Council of Churches expressed “grave concern and regret” over announcement of a “quarantine” against shipments of offensive military weapons. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry of New York, chairman of the 100-member policy-making Central Committee, Dr. Ernest A. Payne of London, general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft of Geneva, criticized the United States for taking “unilateral military action” against another government.
The WCC statement critical of the United States was delivered to the eleven members of the United Nations Security Council. It was accompanied by a message from Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, director of the ecumenical movement’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, noting that “the United States has military bases on foreign soil closer to the U.S.S.R. than Cuba is to the United States,” and stating that military reprisal is justified “only if Cuba becomes a military threat” and even then should be ventured only under the United Nations charter.
Evangelist Billy Graham, in the midst of his South American crusade, expressed “full support” of President Kennedy’s action to bar the shipment of armaments into the Soviet-supported island. He called for prayers that President Kennedy might have wisdom in handling the grave crisis. “I did not come to Argentina,” he said, “to talk politics. I do not come to represent the United States government. I represent the Kingdom of God and I want a light to spark in Argentina that will become a flame to illumine the whole people.” He added that “the United Nations is not the hope of the world—Jesus Christ is.” But he suggested also that the U.N. call its delegates to prayer.
In its first convention, The American Lutheran Church seriously debated withdrawing from the World Council, and adopted the following resolution:
“Whereas a release by the World Council of Churches speaks out against the action of the government of the United States and the Cuban crisis, be it.
“Resolved that The American Lutheran Church inform the officers of the Central Committee of the WCC and its general secretary, the press, and President Kennedy that we disagree with the statement.…” (For news coverage of TALC convention, see page 35.)
Sidelights On St. Peter’S
A Vatican Council surprise came when two Russian Orthodox observers appeared belatedly. Regarded in some quarters as a triumph of diplomacy for the indefatigable Msgr. Willebrands, it met with obvious disapproval from the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Istanbul. The real fireworks, however, came from Archbishop Chrysostom of Athens, who said the Russian decision was “a body blow” to Orthodox unity, and saw in it the machinations of the Kremlin—a conclusion promptly repudiated by the Moscow Patriarchate. Nevertheless the idea persists that this is a maneuver to destroy both Istanbul and Rome. Having humiliated Athenagoras, whose influence the Moscow Patriarchate hopes to supplement in the Middle East, this theory adds, Moscow will soon humiliate Pope John also by finding some pretext for withdrawing in feigned indignation from the Vatican Council. The two Moscow observers are thought to have hinted at this in saying that they would remain at the council until recalled by superiors.
Comment by Italian Protestants (numbering about 100,000) was made at a meeting for observers and official guests organized by the Federal Council of Evangelical Churches. Its Waldensian chairman, Dr. Ermanno Rostan, pointed out that in 1948 the state had declared all religions equal before the law, but that this did not necessarily mean in practice a perfect equality on the juridical and moral plane. Welcoming the beginning of a new era in Protestant-Roman Catholic relations, Dr. Rostan continued: “But I do not wish to hide from you that courtesy visits to the Pope have not been approved by some Italian Protestants because, in spite of the intentions of those who make them, they have had the effect, in Italian public opinion, of homage to a primacy which we cannot recognize.” He made particular reference to the visit of the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Whatever the changed relationships, Dr. Rostan concluded, the truth of one church must not take the place of the truth of the Word of God.
J. D. D.
Talc Disowns Wcc Statement On Cuba
Four days after the First General Convention of The American Lutheran Church decided by 647–307 vote to remain within the World Council of Churches, it issued a resolution disowning the WCC’s criticism of the United States government’s action in the Cuban crisis. Although the assembly’s chairman, Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, suggested that no action he taken, the church by overwhelming vote adopted a resolution of Dr. Rudy Skogerboe to notify the press, the officers of the WCC, and President Kennedy that it disagreed with the WCC’s criticism of the President’s action, and reaffirmed its own earlier resolution of presidential support.
On Monday the convention had halted activities to listen in solemn silence to the President’s Cuba message, piped into Bruce Hall in Milwaukee Auditorium. Special prayer was offered and a resolution of support sent to the President.
Milwaukee’s lovely autumn weather, broken only by cold rains, chilling winds, and a touch of snow from darkening skies, hosted the 1,000 delegates to the convention. The ALC is the product of the 1960 merger of the old American Lutheran Church (German), the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Norwegian), and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish).
Early in its sessions The ALC, by unanimous rising vote, welcomed into membership the Lutheran Free Church. The 90,253 members of the Free Church enlarged ALC membership to 2,455,000. The Free Church had engaged in the ground floor negotiations in 1948 to form The ALC, but was forced to withdraw by member churches’ rejection of the merger proposals. After two referendums failed, a 1961 referendum resulted in 32 votes more than the required three-fourths majority. Dr. John M. Stensvaag, Lutheran Free Church president, told the convention: “For us, the way has been long, and in some respects full of anguish.… I must confess that we almost despaired at times.… That is why this is such a day of joy.”
One of the principal issues before the convention was a “review” of its 1960 decision to join the World Council. Dr. Schiotz strongly endorsed continuation of membership. He denied that Russian Orthodox presence in the WCC means that the council is now under the control or influence of the Russian government. “Nothing could be farther from the truth,” he said.
An entire afternoon was devoted to the “review.” In an atmosphere of noticeable tension, debate was spirited, yet controlled and decorous. Dr. E. C. Fendt of the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary at Columbus, Ohio, gave an impassioned address to retain WCC affiliation. With equal passion and force, Dr. Herman A. Preus of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, urged withdrawal.
Withdrawal would be sectarian and contrary to traditional Lutheranism, argued Dr. Fendt, who pressed the obligation to join the confession of the World Council and to converse on things that divide the churches. Dr. Preus urged that The ACL would better remain true to its religious tradition by withdrawing from a council which “has lost the concept of heresy and calls false doctrine a difference of opinion—yours as good as mine.” It is a “real question” he asserted, whether Lutherans are not closer to the Roman Catholic Church than to those affiliated with the World Council.
After a dozen ministers and laymen spoke to each side of the issue, a ballot decision revealed a 2 to 1 desire to remain in the WCC.
Later many delegates felt strongly that had the “review” occurred after, instead of before, the WCC’s expressed “concern and regret” over Kennedy’s Cuban action, the decision would have been different.
Dr. Theodore F. Nickel, Vice-President of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, brought the greetings of his church to the convention. He expressed hope that Lutherans will get to know each other better so that “we may confess that which is represented by the name Lutheran.” Declaring that “absolute” unity in doctrine and practice “has its roots in heresy,” he asserted that the founders of their church demanded only “fundamental unity,” one committed “to the Gospel in all of its facets and to the Scriptures in all their parts and in all their words as … centered in Christ and as … meant to be the only infallible norm for faith and life.” Nickel saw “evidence all about us” of a “new and genuine concern” for such unity.
The convention by unanimous vote approved a proposal to form a new cooperative agency which will replace the National Lutheran Council. The significance of the new agency lies in its provision of avenues of theological approach to the Missouri Synod and possible future merger.
A spirited two-hour debate arose over policy regarding acceptance of Federal aid for such projects as colleges, hospitals, nursing homes, and homes for the aged. While the policy of The ALC is congregational, permitting each institution to make its own decision regarding acceptance of Federal funds, the 55-member Joint Council of the church sought the adoption of a “guideline” statement. No issue received more complete floor analysis. A floor attempt to ban Federal grants while permitting loans was decisively defeated. In the end the convention adopted its Joint Council’s statement of policy. The policy was described as a mugwump statement, “a mugwump being a critter which sits on the fence with its head on one side and its wump on the other.” The statement realistically recognized that some church projects do receive such aid, but also warned that acceptance of Federal aid carries the dangers of funds being cut off, government restrictions, and the temptation to compromise the purpose of the institutions, and would condition one’s position on the whole matter of Federal aid to religious institutions and church-state relationships.
Criticism was directed against a jazzing-up of the church’s liturgy, and particularly against the Youth Activity Department’s Luther League theme manual, Called To Be Human, alleged by some delegates to contain statements about the doctrine of man that are highly dubious. By a vote of 609 to 137 the convention decided to make a “careful, objective investigation” to determine whether “any teachings contrary to God’s Word [are] contained in these publications.”
Delegates were informed by the Board of Theological Education that both seminary and pre-seminary enrollments are down. The Rev. Albert Heidmann urged the convention that “interest in the ministry must begin on the family and parish level.” Among The ALC’s 5,000 congregations are 186 pulpit vacancies.
A total budget of about $45,000,000 was adopted for the years 1963 and 1964. (The convention meets biennially.) Almost $5,000,000 of this sum will be devoted each year to the Boards of American and World Missions. Dr. William H. Nies of Detroit, chairman of the Board of American Missions, told of the sharply rising cost of mission efforts. He asserted that “it costs about $100,000 to establish a new congregation.”
Dr. Norman A. Mentor of Detroit was re-elected vice-president of The ALC.
Dr. Schiotz, The ALC president, chaired the church’s first convention with the surefootedness that comes with experience plus ability, and with apparent justice for all.
J. D.
Cbmc: Champions Of Man-To-Man Evangelism
A visitor stepping into the red-carpeted office of an Eastern business executive is apt to be asked, discreetly but unashamedly:
“My brother, have you ever made the most important decision in life?”
If the executive is unsatisfied that his visitor has had a regeneration experience, he is likely to pull a curtain cord seen by his Christian office help, who immediately take to prayer for the visitor’s conversion.
In Miami last month, this variety of businessmen marked a quarter of a century of organized life. From all indications at its twenty-fifth anniversary convention, the Christian Business Men’s Committee International was ready to claim title as the world’s largest and most active evangelical lay organization.
“The basic drive of CBMC is salvation,” said keynoter Andrew W. Hughes1Named by CBMCI directors as chairman to succeed Hughes was George D. Armerding, West Coast manager of the Mojonnier Brothers Company, Lafayette, California., retiring CBMCI chairman and comptroller of Rheem water-heater manufacturers. “Man-to-man witnessing, introducing men, women, boys and girls to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Appropriately enough, the five-day convention proved an ideal opportunity for intense personal evangelism by the 600 CBMCI delegates and the 500 wives who came along. See-bee-em-see-ers fanned out into Miami’s palm-lined streets and parks distributing thousands of tracts and testaments and collaring passers-by to press the claims of Christ. Dozens of conversions were reported, among them a leading banker.
The convention program itself was largely evangelistic and devotional, and was dominated by recitation of personal testimonies. One participant told of pummeling his wife with beer bottles in his unregenerate days, another confessed to unfaithfulness, and still another asked permission to apologize from the platform for talking too long the day before.
CBMCI is a loosely-knit but tightly operated movement. Virtually all power is vested in a 15-member board of directors which meets twice a year. The international convention, which has authority to enact legislation, ordinarily prefers to leave the law-making to the directors (this year’s business was dispensed with in 42 minutes). The five directors who retire each year constitute a nominating committee for their successors, and there is an unwritten rule that two of these successors must have served before. A veteran CBMC’er says he cannot recall a director ever having been nominated from the floor, although opportunity for such nomination is given. A director cannot serve successive terms.
The well-oiled machinery at the top notwithstanding, local Christian Business Men’s Committee groups are answerable to no one after they have subscribed officially to the international movement’s nine-point statement of faith. They sponsor breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, retreats, radio programs, newspaper advertisements, and servicemen’s centers—all geared to present opportunities for Gospel witness. Some committees have even ventured into mass evangelism.
A charge often leveled at CBMC is that it is anti-church. In rebuttal, a poll was taken which showed that 100 per cent of committee members were active church members as well; 67 per cent were teachers, officers, or superintendents; 76 per cent attended prayer meetings; and 63 per cent were church officers.
Laymen have an advantage over clergy in Christian witnessing, according to R. G. LeTourneau, magnate of earth-moving machinery whose name is the most familiar among CMBC figures.
A key observer of the CBMC movement, Lieutenant General William K. Harrison, now retired, has said: “Unless there is to be a professional monopoly in witnessing for Christ, there seems to be no good reason why the layman, redeemed of the Lord, should not say so.”
Local Christian businessmen’s fellowships date back to 1930, but the CBMCI movement was not formally constituted until 1938, at a conference in Chicago. There are now some 550 local committees in 35 countries with a total of 15,000 members. The largest committee, in Pusan, Korea, has about 500 members. The international committee itself is a relatively small organization with a budget of some $160,000 a year. Its Chicago office employs an executive secretary, a director of publications, and five women helpers. Revenue is raised from dues assessed local committees.
Perhaps the thorniest of issues which have faced CBMCI is the clause in its statement of faith requiring belief in the premillennial return of Christ. Proposals to eliminate such a qualification have come before CBMCI directors repeatedly but have been defeated each time, even though some who are closest to the CBMCI leadership have campaigned for a change.
Even more significant is the issue suggested by retiring chairman Hughes:
“So often we are prone to concentrate on salvation that by virtue of the overemphasis we relegate God’s instruction regarding our Christian walk to a minor position.”
Hughes, one-time hockey pro, went on to list five rules of conduct for CBMC’ers: resist, escape, make no deals, love thy brother, and establish leadership.
But the problem goes deeper.
Exposition of the Gospel’s broader relevance in everyday life, including a Christian view of economic concerns, is largely avoided.
Part of the explanation may be that many CBMC’ers are relatively new Christians—or at least they have been converted in adult life. The dozens of personal testimonies voiced at the Miami convention indicated an almost invariable pattern: Brought up in a denominational church, where he attended Sunday school and other services regularly, the individual somehow never heard of the necessity of a personal commitment to Christ until his grown years—and then it was from a fellow layman. With regeneration he gains a great zeal to win others, a zeal exercised through the medium of CBMC activities.
Typical of this zeal is a Florida chiropractor who ordered all phones off the hook each morning at 8:30 while he and his staff meditate and pray. In Ohio, the owner of a chicken- and egg-processing plant called for a half-hour respite each afternoon for the same reason. Not as typical were the two CBMC leaders who asked for and received permission to conduct a Sunday morning service aboard a commercial aircraft in flight.
CBMC’ers come from all walks of business and professional life and represent virtually every principal denomination and religious affiliation. In CBMC terminology, a businessman is anyone who is not a minister, missionary, or other full-time Christian worker.
What has CBMC to show for its approach? Post-war growth on the edge of the general evangelical resurgence has leveled off, and Executive Secretary T. E. McCully reported that CBMC lost as many members as it gained during the past year. Some of this loss is due to relocation in cities lacking a local committee. Over the long haul, however, the picture is different. Director of Publications David R. Enlow, in his newly released book, Men Aflame, estimates that more than five million persons have been influenced toward a practical faith.
Church And State
The President’s annual proclamation calling for a day of prayer came out as usual this year, and some observers immediately raised the question whether it is a constitutional practice in view of the Supreme Court decision of last June 25 barring governmentally composed prayers.
The 1962 proclamation did not give Americans much time to prepare for a day of prayer. The proclamation set aside October 17 for the observance, but the date was not known until the White House issued the proclamation on October 11. In taking the action, President Kennedy implemented an act of Congress of 1952 requiring him to set aside a day of prayer annually. It is up to him to set the specific date, and the only restriction is that it not be a Sunday.
Kennedy urged Americans to “nurture our youth and give them the needed faith in God.”
“On this day,” he said, “let us all pray, each following the practices of his own faith.”
“Let us pray for our Nation and for other nations of the world,” the President declared. “May we especially ask God’s blessings upon our homes, that this central unit of society may nurture our youth and give them the needed faith in God, in our Nation, and in their future.”
Kennedy also asked for prayers for the world, “that this generation may experience the fruits of peace and may know the real meaning of brotherhood under God.”
Meanwhile, at the U. S. Supreme Court, appeals were filed asking the justices to declare baccalaureate services unconstitutional in public schools if conducted in the form of Protestant worship services.
The court was also asked to bar as unconstitutional the following practices of a school district: (1) the questioning of a teacher on whether he believes in God or attends religious worship as part of the examination of his fitness as a public school teacher; and (2) the taking of a census to determine the religious affiliation of public school pupils.
These issues—along with a new challenge to the practice of Bible reading and recitation of prayer in classrooms—are raised in an appeal from the decision of the Florida State Supreme Court in two cases involving public schools of Dade County (Miami).
The appeals were filed by Leo Pfeffer, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, on behalf of four complainants who are parents of children in Dade County schools.
Earlier the court agreed to give a hearing in this session to appeals from Pennsylvania and Maryland which involve the practice of Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
Another development in the church-state field last month was a statement by Anthony J. Celebrezze, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, in which he said that he will campaign for Federal aid to public schools but added that he could see no constitutional method to provide such aid to church-related schools.
The Roman Catholic cabinet member said he was convinced, after study, that “aid to private elementary and high schools is unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court, he said, “has made that clear, and we have no alternative but to follow its rulings.”
Celebrezze pointed out that the Supreme Court had not ruled out aid to private and church-related institutions of higher education. He asserted that there are many precedents for such assistance.
What Is Public Service?
The Federal Communications Commission is ordering radio station licensees to stop counting time given for free “spot announcements” of special church services, bazaars, socials, and other activities as part of their time devoted to “religious programs” in preparing required logs of broadcast service.
The FCC said that program log analyses submitted in connection with periodic license renewals and other matters could count such announcements as general “public service.”
Purpose of the program log analysis is to determine what kind of programs a station is broadcasting and how well it is fulfilling the proposed schedule it files when seeking a license, the FCC said.
Barabbas
Barabbas is a compound of the spectacular and the spiritual, with both ingredients in large amount. It will receive high praise and blasting criticism from both religious and dramatic critics. In view of the character of most religious films, this is a kind of tribute.
Although the scriptural record does not give Barabbas a single line of script and describes him only as a condemned thief, it does record that Barabbas broke dramatically into the trial of Jesus under Pontius Pilate as the man who, through the crucifixion of Jesus, was saved from a similar fate. In the high dramatic-religious possibilities of this event, Pär Lagerkvist saw more than enough warrant to write his Nobel Prize-winning imaginative account of how Barabbas lived with the knowledge that he was alive because another died, and Dino De Laurentiis also saw enough to create another huge cinema spectacular whose action sequence explodes like a chain display of exploding fireworks. It was enough, too, to provide Anthony Quinn with a powerful role which he plays superbly and to the hilt.
So exclusively is Christopher Fry’s script devoted to the violent external life of Barabbas and to his internal confusion, conflict, and disturbance at the memory of living through the death of another, that the roles of Pontius Pilate (Arthur Kennedy), Peter (Harry Andrews), and Rachel (Silvana Mangano), though well played, hardly achieve secondary status.
Barabbas differs from most current religious spectaculars by the almost complete absence of sex and romance and by its degree of spiritual sensitivity and perception of the meaning of the death of Christ for the life of another. Whether it does more than gingerly probe this meaning, or actually enters into the Kingdom of its truth, is doubtless a debate that will continue unresolved.
Judgment of the religious quality of the film will depend in large part on the nature of the religious commitment of the critic or viewer. They who reduce Christianity to a mere “love of neighbor” will doubtless classify Barabbas as a mere clod, too dull to understand the imperative of love. Yet spiritual and physical clod that he undoubtedly is, he is not so much clod as not to vaguely sense and be deeply disturbed by the central Christian affirmation that he lived because another died for him. Although the discovery that he cannot die, which he makes during the 20 years spent in a sulphur mine, is no doubt perverted by pride, this violent man living in an age of cruelty is more surprised and troubled by this tenet of the Christian faith than by the mere moral imperative of neighbor love. Yet the subtle employment throughout the story of the symbols of life and death, light and darkness, in spite of all their ambiguity, does not conceal the fact that Barabbas’ conflict is more of a probing action than an entrance into the Kingdom. He is mentally confused and disturbed, but never troubled by conscience. Twice he chides God for not making things plainer, but never does he cry for forgiveness.
Barabbas receives his freedom, yet returns to his former bandit-life; he sees light but is blinded by it; he receives his life, yet loses it on a cross for his bungling and erroneous way of bringing on the Kingdom.
The story begins with the release of Barabbas from prison by the decision of the people and the legal action of Pilate that made Barabbas the people’s choice and Christ the people’s reprobate. Emerging from his prison darkness, he is blinded by the light of day and that of Jesus and returns to his former life and to his Rachel, only to be disturbed in the midst of his pleasures by her commitment to Christ and the darkness of the Cross which at that moment covers the land. The sixth-hour darkness disturbs and draws him—but not for long. Soon he is again arrested for murder and thievery and sunk for 20 years into a sulphur mine where, again in the dark, he outlives experiences that should have killed him three times over, and he comes to the belief that he cannot the because, as he says, Jesus died his death. As a gladiator in Rome he dramatically seems to prove his point. Though a second-rate gladiator, he outlives the opposition and is awarded his freedom by the Emperor.
Declaring now that God will not find him failing this time, he helps burn the city of Rome, only to be informed by the Christians that his “Christian” effort to purge the world that the Kingdom might come was an error, one for which he later dies on a cross. As the darkness of death closes in, he recalls the earlier “darkness of the sixth hour” and hands himself over to God.
Because of the ambiguous character of the biblical symbols of light and darkness and of life and death, and particularly because of the subtle, ambiguous purposes to which they are set in the story of Barabbas, one could easily interpret his darkness and death at his end as the dawn of spiritual life and insight, were it not for the total absence of any struggle of conscience. Barabbas is always confused, but never repentant. All this suggests that the intent of the film is to present not a conversion but a tortured picture of the ambiguous struggle of men, ancient and modern, tossed endlessly between faith and doubt, freedom and fate, and meaning and purposelessness, and finally strangled by the ambiguities.
As a living parable of the significance of the death of Christ, Barabbas the man has tremendous religious-dramatic possibilities. Lagerkvist’s treatment is less than adequate from a Christian perspective but, to date, it is far and away the best.
Barabbas is for those who like their religious movies big and spectacular, and with such content as invites a later mulling over to discover nuances of symbolic meaning and subtle religious implications.
J. D.
Integrating Psychology
The Christian church is faced with the enormous need for Christian counseling services which are not being provided at present by the ministry itself. Recognizing this need, Fuller Theological Seminary is exploring the possibility of enlarging its own ministry by inaugurating an ancillary School of Christian Psychology.
As now envisioned, the school would offer the Ph.D. degree subsequent to collegiate and seminary training of the candidates. The school intends to meet requirements laid down by the various states for certification and also those of the American Psychological Association. A substantial 15-year grant has been promised, and foundations are now being approached to secure the additional funds needed before the school can be opened. Officials estimate the school probably will begin functioning in 1964.
The design for the school includes a plan which would provide for the integration of psychology with the Christian faith in an orthodox theological setting. It is recognized that the Gospel of Christ is relevant to the whole man and that many Christian people suffer from mental conditions which can be helped by a therapy employing the principles of the biblical faith and the clinical skills of psychology. Opposed to the Freudian orientation of much of today’s counseling and psychiatric theory, the school hopes to bring mental healing back to the Church where it belongs and where the Gospel can be the foundation on which treatment is based.
H. L.
A ‘Promising’ Plan
The Archbishop of Canterbury says that conversations between the Anglican church in England and the British Methodist church looking toward possible union are coming along “very promisingly.”
“We are working toward a plan,” said Dr. Arthur M. Ramsey during a visit to the United States last month, “where Methodists in England will accept the episcopacy and will integrate with us, and yet maintain many of their own particular customs.”
The episcopacy—commonly held to be historic succession of bishops from the Apostles—has been a roadblock in union talks between Anglicans and many other Protestant bodies.
Ramsey said the Anglican church is also having “exploratory” talks with the British Presbyterian church.
“My own particular effort has been with Eastern Orthodoxy,” he said. The Anglican primate has visited Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, supreme leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, in Istanbul, and the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, as well as the Greek Orthodox primate in Athens.
Services For Suicides
Church services and burial in consecrated ground for suicides were recommended in a report approved by both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury last month.
While suicide remains sinful, the report said, persons who kill themselves because of incurable diseases or because they face rape or torture as spies should merit no moral condemnation. Neither should the “altruistic” giving of one’s life be regarded as suicide, it declared.
“We see no reasons,” the Anglican Joint Committee on Suicide said in its report, “why the body of a suicide should not be brought into the church for a service, nor do we see any reason why it should not be buried in consecrated ground.”
To avoid judgment by clergy on whether the suicide was a sinful act, the report suggested a revision of the Anglican burial service, with two key phrases eliminated. These are: “forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed,” and “in sure and certain hope of resurrection.”
Before the recommendations become practice they must be approved by the Church Assembly and Parliament.
