Christian history may single out 1962 as the year in which the alarm was sounded.
It was the year in which concern over lack of virility in the Church broke into the secular press.
In a lead article in the September Reader’s Digest Dr. Norman Vincent Peale charged that “Protestantism is losing ground” in spiritual effectiveness.
Peale cited a Gallup poll which showed church attendance on the wane and which reported that the number of people who feel that religious influence is declining had more than doubled in the past five years.
In November, the Saturday Evening Post carried a provocative article by an anonymous writer who said he quit the ministry because of frustrations encountered in dealing with the laity of the church he pastored. A sub-heading asserted that there is an acute shortage of clergymen.
Look magazine, at about the same time, also reported that the shortage of clergymen is critical and that recruits are scarce.
Nine leading Protestant officials1Dr. Theodore F. Adams, Dr. Edwin H. Dahlderg, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, Dr. Ben Mohr Herbster, Dr. James A. Jones, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, Bishop John Wesley Lord, Dr. Theophilus M. Taylor, and Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen. subsequently issued a joint statement disputing the seriousness of the problem of ministerial retention. They declared that there is “no evidence whatever of unprecedented resignations from the Protestant ministry.”
A few days later the Massachusetts Council of Churches got into the controversy with a startling report based on a poll conducted among 1,620 clergymen in the state. The poll indicated, said a council news release, that “nearly one out of every two Protestant ministers in the state may be retiring soon from the pastoral ministry.”
Public Relations Director James L. Hofford hastily cautioned against any “misinterpretation” of the findings: “We sincerely request that the keyline for any of this copy used not state that nearly one out of two ministers in Massachusetts will soon quit the ministry itself. Our information only indicates that nearly one out of every two will soon leave the pastoral ministry … i. e., positions as local church pastors … and in all probability, the majority of those resigning will be taking positions in some other phase of the ministry or actually retiring.”
Doubtless many more similar polls will be taken in coming weeks and months as church leaders face up to major anxieties. Interest of the mass media reflects a growing secular sense that something is amiss, even though reporters and writers may be statistically wrong. A broad look at the religious scene in America indeed indicates that institutionally the Church may be losing ground. Back of generalized apprehensions is a long list of deficiencies which are taking their toll.
Among the most subtle obstacles to the advance of the Gospel is Christendom’s increasing preoccupation with ecumenicity and church-state problems. This preoccupation becomes so intense at times as to be a decoy. Even legitimate concerns become illegitimate when they wrest priority from proclamation of the Word. Inclusivists channel all available forces into promotion of political pronouncements. The far-right with its intense hatred of Communism and Communists does battle not simply for the sake of battle, but to combat left-wing aggression.
NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion
THE VOICES OF CONCERN
A troubled clergy aired assorted concerns at a quickening pace during the last few weeks.
The most dramatic expression of anxiety came from Finland, where the distinguished theologian Osmo Tiililä broke with the national Lutheran church in protest against modern trends which he says are leading the church away from its central purpose.
The 58-year-old Tiililä, professor of systematic theology at the University of Helsinki, resigned from the ordained ministry of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church more than a year ago. This fall he gave up all church committee posts.
His decision, he said, had been brought to a head by the treatment given by the church press to an evangelistic rally in Helsinki last month. Tiililä, speaker at the rally, criticized new methods of church work aimed at reaching and understanding modern man without primarily seeking his conversion from sin. He said he wanted to stress that “the greatest danger to the church is the neglect of the message of eternal life.”
In the United States, the noted Quaker scholar Dr. Elton Trueblood observed that “the scoffing outside world does not object to our cozy Sunday meetings, because they are quite sure these won’t make any difference in politics or business or society. They’ll let us alone as long as we stay in our little organizations, and bother nobody.”
Trueblood, in an address to the Men’s Convention of the Reformed Church in America, declared:
“Jesus Christ did not come to this world just to build an organization, just to hold meetings and raise budgets. He came to build a hard core of committed men in a labor force.”
Dr. Elwyn Allen Smith, professor of church history at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, said church people, not Supreme Court decisions, are dulling the impact of religion.
“If there is secularism in this country,” Smith declared at a seminar in Niagara Falls, New York, “it is because of what is happening inside our churches.”
Evangelicals in particular were served a mild rebuke by the departing pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, Dr. Alan Redpath.
Redpath, who is returning to the pastoral ministry in his native Great Britain after ten years in the United States, said that “failure to preach the entire message, which includes not only forgiveness of sins but deliverance from the power of the sin principle, has produced a generation of independent evangelical Christians who simply have not progressed with God.”
Redpath’s remarks, which appeared in the Sunday School Times, charged that “the separatist movement has become involved in a Phariseeism in its fellowship which I believe is grieving to the Holy Spirit.”
The vivid irony of current church problems is that religious leaders are aware of them all too well. Often they speak in generalized self-criticism. But when adverse particulars are cited, particularly in cases touching upon narrow loyalties, churchmen abruptly shift to the defensive and repudiate analyses which set their own groups in a bad light.
Evangelicals can still lay claim to the largest area of interdenominational theological agreement (see statement by British evangelicals on the nature of the Church, page 34) and the broadest representation of any world view found in non-Catholic Christendom. Yet evangelicals overlook their spiritual unity in bickerings and disputings which often are mere misunderstandings. Friction saps their combined strength.
Notwithstanding the theological unity which does exist, the evangelical community is being confronted increasingly with the problem of what to do with school faculty personnel who no longer insist upon the inerrancy of the Scriptures but a more liberal view.
In trying to reach the uncommitted world, Christians can trace their ineffectiveness largely to forefeiture of cultural impact, including the mass media void. Observers are hard pressed to pinpoint any creative Christian literary work, movie, painting, or telecast which has had general popular appeal. C. S. Lewis is an outstanding exception, but his latest works have not counted as much. Christians by and large are talking to themselves. Even Barth, Brunner, and Tillich register their views more on those within the Christian community than on the outsiders.
The Madison Avenue publishing house of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, however, spoke of a “resurgence of theological power in biblical Christianity” in America in its decision to publish in book form the Basic Christian Doctrines from CHRISTIANITY TODAY as one of its two year-end religious volumes (the other: a compilation of Barth’s American lectures).
To cite another principle needing attention, the field of Christian social concerns is punctuated by tremendous gaps. Even liberals, who take pride in their brotherhood programs, have all but neglected the role of moral responsibility in traffic safety. Christians seem wholly unconcerned that as many as 100 Americans die on the highways daily; yet careless, inconsiderate Christians must share the blame.
The link between smoking and cancer is another major concern overlooked by the churches. President Benjamin Browne of the American Baptist Convention this month called on Christians to rally to the support of Leroy Collins, an Episcopal layman who was in danger of losing his job as president of the National Association of Broadcasters because he dared to urge restrictions in tobacco advertising. Browne said that “it is rather humiliating to have a layman speak out on the safeguarding of the health of young people at a point where the church has remained silent.”
Perhaps as a revolt against the ineffectiveness of the Church and its preoccupation with secondary issues, there seems to be a rising anticlericalism. Among the laity, in turn, is found an ever-widening range of committal. Thousands of regular churchgoers remain spiritual illiterates. Others are outpacing the clergy in education and even in spiritual insight. Most are somewhere in between, including some who are so intensely groping for spiritual truth that the charismata are taking on dramatic new appeal.
Modern life with its bent toward materialism and comfortable luxury is giving rise to new problems for the local church. The outsider becomes more difficult to reach as he takes to the high-rise apartments, sealed from church visitation efforts. Lay responsibility in local congregations is evaded by weekend wanderers—the growing tribe of motorized nomads who abandon their homes from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening “to go visiting” or “just for a drive.”
In weighing all the adverse trends, the discouraged Christian invariably asks: Why?
Scores of reasons could be offered, but one of the most glaring is that for years Protestant churches have not taken their educational programs seriously enough. The vast majority of Christian parents are satisfied that one hour out of every 168 in the week is given over to spiritual instruction in the Sunday school. And to a large extent they are apathetic to the fact that even that one hour may be made up of shoddy instruction. Christian day schools are popping up everywhere, but most are limited to children under ten, and some have only segregationist inspiration.
Local church facilities in the United States and Canada have a combined tax-free value of 100 billion dollars or more. The plight of the churches is easily understood when one realizes that most of these facilities lay idle for 6½ days of the week. Dr. James DeForest Murch has aptly underscored the alternative in the title of his 1962 book, Teach or Perish.
Religious Review
Here is a brief resume of significant religious developments during 1961:
EVANGELISM: Billy Graham conducted major crusades in Latin America; Chicago; Fresno, California; and El Paso, Texas.
THEOLOGY: Southern Baptist Convention was rocked by a controversy over biblical interpretation. At issue was The Message of Genesis, a book written by Professor Ralph H. Elliott of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and published by the Southern Baptist book house.… Theologian Karl Barth made his first visit to America for lecture series at University of Chicago and Princeton Theological Seminary.
MISSIONS: Anti-Christian uprisings killed 20 Roman Catholic priests in the Congo and more than 80 Baptist believers in New Guinea.
ECUMENICITY: The Roman Catholic Church opened its renewal-oriented Second Vatican Council with a two-month session.… The new Lutheran Church in America was formally inaugurated in a merger of four Lutheran denominations.
EDUCATION: Gross-roots enthusiasim was building up for the shared time concept of child education whereby students’ time is divided between public and Christian day schools.
MORALITY: Astronaut John Glenn won admiration from millions as a devout Presbyterian layman.
CHURCH-STATE: A U. S. Supreme Court ruling which forbid use of governmentally-composed prayers gave rise to the biggest religious news story of the year in America.… Disputes over federal aid to parochial schools continued.… Protests were voiced when the U. S. government’s Agency for International Development disclosed it was entering into contracts with religious organizations abroad.
SOCIAL ACTION: Desegregation of Roman Catholic schools in New Orleans prompted a major controversy climaxed in the excommunication of three persons from the church.
On the world-wide scene, oppression of religious minorities continued in many countries.… The total Christian community—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox—approached the one billion figure as world population moved past the three billion mark.… In the United States. Southern Baptists were displacing Methodists as the largest denomination. Both groups number approximately 10,000,000.
Evangelism Under Fire
The barrel of his sub-machine gun was still warm when Guatemalan President Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes drove into the capital city’s Olympic Stadium. Some 30,000 of his countrymen stood and cheered while the determined, 67-year-old chief executive climbed out of his black Cadillac in the unmistakable image of an all-time hero for the Protestant minority in Latin America. Rifle fire which still crackled in the distance lent a seemingly incongruous backdrop to the biggest Protestant event in the country’s history. But Ydígoras, confident he had crushed a military revolt which had almost taken his life a few hours before, took a seat in the stands and witnessed the entire service.
Such was the dramatic climax to a year-long “evangelism-in-depth” movement in Guatemala spearheaded by Latin America Mission. The movement, an evangelistic saturation program which embraced virtually every Protestant church group and missions board, was almost obliged to forego its grand thrust because of the revolt on Sunday, November 25.
Ydígoras is a nominal Roman Catholic, but he has been outspoken in promoting the cause of religious freedom. His sympathy toward the evangelism-in-depth movement became openly evident when he turned up for the opening service of a four-week evangelistic series. Dr. Kenneth Strachan, international coordinator of the evangelism-in-depth project, understood it to be the first time in history that a Latin American president had spoken at a Protestant evangelistic meeting. Last month, Protestant church leaders set up a banquet at which Ydígoras was honored guest.
It was uncertain whether the goodwill gestures toward Protestants had anything to do with the outbreak of the rebellion on the closing day of the campaign.
The revolt was staged by elements of the Guatemalan air force at Guatemala City. Several American-built aircraft of World War II vintage strafed the president’s home and army barracks. Two civilians were reported killed, and some 30 persons were injured. One of the planes was shot down. Ydígoras was said to have personally led the ground forces in subduing the air-force units.
By noon the government reported that it had the situation under control, and it was not a minute too soon as far as Protestants were concerned. They immediately started to assemble in a downtown area for a parade to the stadium. Some 12,000 persons marched for three miles carrying banners and singing hymns. A chilly drizzle did not discourage them.
Ydígoras arrived at the stadium still carrying a sub-machine gun. He was dressed in a black hat and black coat over a sport shirt and turtle neck sweater. Some 30 bodyguards accompanied him.
The speaker for the rally was evangelist Fernando Vangioni of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Approximately 100 persons stepped forward at the close of the service to commit their lives to Christ.
Among those who witnessed the service was a delegation of 30 pastors and laymen from the United States, including Editor James W. Reapsome of The Sunday School Times.
“It was a tremendous boost,” said Reapsome, “to the morale of Latin American Protestants. It will have the effect of increasing recognition for the evangelical movement in Latin America.”
A Baptist Protest
Dr. Stanley I. Stuber, an American Baptist who has been a guest observer at the Second Vatican Council, criticized the Baptist World Alliance this month for not sending official delegate-observers to the meeting in Rome.
Stuber, former public relations director for the American Baptist Convention who now serves as executive director of the Missouri Council of Churches, charged the BWA executive committee with a “closing the door action” which is “embarrassing to national Baptist denominations” and places “many Baptists in an entirely false light.”
Roman Recess
The Second Vatican Council began a nine-month recess this month.
The 2,600-odd conciliar fathers headed home for Christmas following adjournment of the proceedings in Rome. They will reassemble again next September 8.
It had been announced previously that the second session would last from May 12 to June 29, but “the Holy Father, in response to the wishes of many Council Fathers, especially those living a great distance from Rome, and taking into account reasons of a pastoral character,” cancelled the spring dates.
There was no immediate announcement as to how long the second session would run. The first lasted for two months.
In an open letter to the executive committee he called for a reconsideration of representation at the Vatican.
Stuber was invited to attend the Roman Catholic Council as a “Guest of the Secretariat [for Promoting Christian Unity].” Such guests of the secretariat have all the privileges of official delegate-observers, but have been given a different designation because they were not chosen by their churches.
Another Baptist leader who attended the council as a guest was Dr. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., and a vice president of the Baptist World Alliance.
Note To Khrushchev
Forty-six Christian and Jewish religious leaders, educators, and editors assailed anti-Semitism in Russia this month and called on Premier Khrushchev to end the government’s “extraordinary disabilities” against Jews in the country. (For a comprehensive report on Jewish-Christian tensions, see page 36.)
The plea was made in a message to the Soviet Premier delivered to the Russian Embassy in New York. It also appeared as an advertisement in four metropolitan New York dailies as a cooperative undertaking of the signers and the American Jewish Committee.
The message sharply criticized “blanket restraints” against all religions in the Soviet Union, but noted that Judaism had been placed outside even the “narrow framework of permissible religious practice” in Russia.
Those making the appeal did so as individuals and not as representatives of organizations. They included: Dr. John C. Bennett, dean of Union Theological Seminary; Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, president of the American Lutheran Church; Catholic Archbishop Karl J. Alter of Cincinnati; Rabbi Julius Mark, president of the Synagogue Council of America; Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America; and Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike of California.
The message pointed out the sharp contrast between Russia’s constitution, in which equality of citizens is guaranteed, and the Soviet government’s “persistent enmity to religion.” It stressed that devout members of any religion “suffer harassment” in the country.
While most other faiths are permitted “bare necessities” needed for religious practice, the message declared, nearly 3,000,000 Jews in Russia “are denied minimal rights conceded to adherents of other creeds.”
“Hard pressed as they are by blanket restraints,” it continued, “none of the other major religions of the Soviet people, neither the Orthodox, Armenian, Catholic or Protestant Churches, neither Buddhism nor Islam, have been subjected to the extraordinary disabilities inflicted on Judaism and its followers.”
It asked the Soviet government to conform its behavior “to its own professed principles,” and to the standards of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the constitutions of other countries which affirm that “freedom of conscience and expression is vested unconditionally in every human being.”
Among others signing the appeal were Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion; Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; Dr. Harold E. Fey, editor of the Christian Century; Dr. George L. Ford, executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals; Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., president of Notre Dame University; Methodist Bishop Edgar A. Love of Baltimore; Catholic Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington, D.C.; and Dr. Daniel A. Poling, editor of Christian Herald.
The Vatican In Washington
A high-rise apartment project planned for the nation’s capital by an Italian real estate investment corporation is the target of a nation-wide letter-writing campaign, according to Federal government officials, because of allegations that it has received zoning favoritism due to “influence from the Vatican.”
The apartment and office building project, known as the Watergate Towne, will overlook the Lincoln Memorial and the proposed National Cultural Center which is to be built nearby.
It is being financed by the Societe Generale d’lmmobilaire of Rome, a corporation in which, opponents of the project claim, the Holy See reportedly has a large investment.
The letter-writing campaign, which brought more than 2,000 communications in less than a month to the Senate District of Columbia Committee headed by Democratic Senator Alan Bible of Nevada and about 1,500 letters to the White House, has been urged by Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Dr. C. Stanley Lowell, associate executive secretary of POAU, said, “The request of sponsors of the project for realization of the 90-foot limit on height in this area to 130 feet would have gotten nowhere, if it had not been for the Vatican money involved.”
There is a limitation on the height of buildings erected within the District of Columbia so that they do not overshadow the United States Capitol and other national monuments. In most areas near Federal buildings, the limit is 90 feet, which allows for 8 or 9 stories; while no building anywhere in the city may be higher than the Capitol dome, 130 feet, which permits 12 or 13 floors.
The higher a building goes, the cheaper is the over-all construction cost per square foot, and the more profitable it becomes, a District of Columbia official explained, and the limitations on height are constantly under pressure from builders.
A letter which has been sent to many Protestant organizations and other groups concerned with separation of Church and State from POAU contains a sketch of the apartment project and contends that “laws protecting the beauty of the nation’s capital are being bypassed so that owners of Watergate Towne can have taller buildings and a better return on their investment.”
The letter expressed concern that “a Vatican-created corporation mounted such pressure that the Government has yielded.”
In asking that letters be sent to President Kennedy, as well as the congressional committees for the District of Columbia, POAU claimed it has learned from reliable sources that the President has “doubts about allowing the building code to be waived” on behalf of this project and expressed belief that letters from the public would “strengthen his hand” in intervening in the controversy.
Biblical Breakthrough
Evangelist Billy Graham reports that a “significant breakthrough” is taking place all over the world in opportunities for winning men to Christ through evangelism.
As an example, he cites an invitation extended to the Rev. Howard Jones, Negro evangelist on the Graham team, to hold non-segregated meetings in the Union of South Africa.
“To my knowledge,” said Graham, “this is the first time in history such an invitation has been extended.”
Graham issued the report followed several days of meetings with his team and directors of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association at Airlie House in the famous Virginia hunt country 40 miles from Washington.
“We are going away from this ‘mountain-top’ to tell the whole world that Jesus Christ is the answer to the human dilemma of 1963, and that he is the Saviour of all men regardless of place, color, or origin,” the evangelist said.
Earlier he disclosed plans to spend a third of his time on college campuses.
It was also announced that BGEA would erect an exhibit building at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair.
Nature Of The Church
A list of signatories that reads like a “who’s who” in current British evangelical circles has been appended to a statement on the nature of the Church.
After taking a long look at ecumenical trends, Britain’s Evangelical Alliance assigned priority to the nature of the Church and asked a small theological study group to prepare a statement on doctrines that cannot be compromised. Evangelicals from a number of divergent communions contributed their signatures.
The statement was issued in the backdrop of the current British controversy over intercommunion. The Evangelical Alliance plans a gigantic ecumenical communion service in Royal Albert Hall on January 10.
Here is the complete text of the statement:
“The Church of God consists of His elect of every land and every age, who have been united to Christ by His grace through faith, and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This union with Christ, signified by baptism though not created by it, finds visible expression when believers meet together for worship and the ministry of the Word, and at the Lord’s Table.
“This spiritual unity is further expressed when Christians of varying traditions participate together in the Lord’s Supper, unhindered by differences on secondary matters. The existence of this God-given unity does not, however, absolve Christians from endeavouring to understand the differing viewpoints held on these secondary matters, such as forms of worship, systems of government, and orders of ministry.
“Nevertheless, there are certain essential doctrines on which no compromise is possible, such as the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the deity of Christ; the sole sufficiency of His atoning work for the salvation of men; the supreme authority of Holy Scripture in all matters of faith and practice; the justification of the sinner by the grace of God through faith alone, and the priesthood of the whole Church whereby every believer has direct access to God the Father through the one Mediator, Jesus Christ. To the extent to which churches (whether in membership of the World Council of Churches or not) fail to express these truths, to that extent they fall short of being churches in the New Testament sense, though individuals within them may be true believers.”
A Dubious Doxology
Intolerance is not a feature of the Church of England. In its chief diocese of Canterbury, for example, one will find an archbishop who expects to see atheists in heaven, and a dean who is something of a hero in the annals of Russian and Chinese Communism. Now into the limelight has come the Rev. Alec Vidler, whose carefully cultivated beard, black shirt, and white tie still startle his starchier colleagues.
A certain unconventionality was again conspicuous one Sunday evening last month when Vidler, since 1956 the dean of historic King’s College, Cambridge, took part with two laymen in a BBC TV discussion which concluded that “the Church of England is in a pretty good muddle.” This in itself would not have upset the customers, less than 7 per cent of whom are regular churchgoers. But in the process Vidler launched a sweeping attack on the clergy and their “endless chatter,” and on “all this business about religion and these ghastly hymns and all these things that go on in church.” He particularly lamented what he called the “suppression of real, deep thought and intellectual alertness and integrity in the Church.”
Most significant of all in a program which purports to deal with teen-age problems was the dean’s treatment of a direct question about whether fornication was “all right.” His answer was so phrased that many listeners got the impression that he did regard fornication as “all right” under certain circumstances. “A good, objective discussion without bias, which brought out many important points,” commented Canon Roy McKay, head of BBC’s religious broadcasting.
A storm of protest arose which may have persuaded the canon to think again. Strong criticism of the BBC and of Vidler was made in the Church Assembly that week. (“Things must be bad,” dryly remarked an English Churchman editorial, “if the Church Assembly complains.”) Letters of protest poured in. Said one clergyman: “He smears the image of Christ’s Church before a world which will gladly misunderstand further all that has been said.”
Retorted Vidler: “I did not say anything about fornication being all right. In fact, I don’t think I used the word fornication at all.”
It may be a curious coincidence that the same subject came up in Soundings, a volume of essays from Cambridge edited by Vidler and published a few months ago. In one of the essays, the Rev. H. A. Williams, dean of Trinity College, discusses two current movies in which acts of fornication are interpreted as having a healing agency in two specific cases. On the first Williams comments, “What is seen is an act of charity which proclaims the glory of God”; on the second, “The appropriate response is—Glory to God in the Highest.”
The script of the offending broadcast was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps even the Church of England’s tolerance has its limits.
J. D. D.
Crossfire On The Legal Frontier
Tensions between Christian and Jew stretched tautly from the United States to Israel this month. But inter-faith debate was happily set in the context of law and discussion rather than of violence and ill-will.
—In the United States, opinion differed increasingly over whether the Supreme Court’s decision against recitation of the Regents’ prayer in New York schools should be interpreted “narrowly” or “broadly.” The “narrow” view holds the court prohibited government-approved prayers; the “broad” view makes the court rule against any prayers whatever in the schools.
Proponents of the latter view were mainly spokesmen of Jewish or of atheistic persuasions, who insist that juridical consistency will require the Supreme Court to rule against Bible reading in the Pennsylvania and Maryland cases (on which a decision is due within the next six months).
Supporters of the narrow interpretation argue that the court did not disapprove prayer, but ruled against government-prescribed prayer. While insisting that prayers in the public schools are not legally unconstitutional, as long as politically unprescribed, they differ for other reasons (educational or religious) over the desirability or propriety of religious exercises in the public schools. Some insist, however, that objective discussion of religious truth must not be suppressed from the academic arena.
—Protests of the Jewish community against public school Christmas observances, which atheists also find offensive, supply another issue. Jewish spokesmen claim that such observances are harmful religiously (because they are institutional rather than voluntary), that the psychological pressures are harmful to children of alien views, and increasingly insist these observances are constitutionally wrong. One rabbi noted that when Jewish children cooperatively participate in nativity plays they are as likely to end up in the role of wise men bringing gifts to Jesus as in any other (though discreet teachers often assign them as “props” aides). In Washington, D.C., where Jewish leaders seek an end to Christmas observances in the schools, the non-sectarian Jewish Foundation for Retarded Children observes the Jewish holidays and not Christmas.
When a Christian layman at a recent meeting of National Conference of Christians and Jews remarked on the incongruity of Jewish protests against Christmas carols in the schools while Jewish merchants seeking Christmas shoppers blare the same carols from their shops, a rabbi quickly responded: “That’s not strange at all. Jewish merchants play the carols for the same reason as many Gentile merchants—not as a religious act, but as a concession to the holiday mood of the community.”
—The frequent conjunction of Jewish and atheist protests against religious observances led Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in remarks to the First National Institute of NCCJ, to prod the Jewish community to distinguish its concern for the protection of the rights of the atheist, from that “special” protection which enables a militant minority to dissolve the majority milieu and to reshape public institutions serviceable to minority desires. Jewish leaders replied that because of centuries-long persecution, the Jew sees his own image in every minority whose rights are in jeopardy, and his spirited defense of minority rights must not be construed as promotive of irreligion and atheism.
—Meanwhile tensions between the Christian minority in Israel and the Jewish state were placed in a new light when a Catholic monk, son of Jewish parents, began legal action to gain Israeli citizenship. Father Daniel, a 40-year-old Carmelite who came to the Haifa Carmelite monastery three years ago from Poland, has thus reraised the provocative question, “Who is a Jew?”
The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that Father Daniel was not entitled to automatic citizenship under the 1950 Law of Return. The alternative open to him was to seek citizenship through naturalization proceedings.
In answering the question of who is a Jew, the Israelis say in practice:
1. The Orthodox Jew is a first-rate Jew (legally) and a good Jew (religiously). (There is discrimination in Israel by the religious authorities against non-Orthodox Jewry.)
2. The non-Orthodox Jew, whether an atheist or Reform Jew, is a first-rate Jew (legally) but not a good Jew (religiously).
3. The Christian Hebrew is neither a first-rate Jew (legally) nor a good Jew (religiously). Hence he is clearly discriminated against on the basis of his religion more than in the case of the non-Orthodox non-Christian Jew; he is, in fact, treated as if he has ceased to be a Jew, as not entitled to the legal rights of a Jew. Therefore, the atheist Jew is viewed legally as preferable to a Christian Jew.
But in theory, the Israelis say that anybody is a Jew whose mother is a Jew. Hence Father Daniel’s suit for citizenship put this whole controversy to a legal test.
It is insisted that the tactical union of church and state in Israel is such that religious liberty is guaranteed only to Orthodox Jews, and that all others (including Reform Jews) are viewed as dissidents. Not uncommonly liberal Jews in America will say that Christians have more religious liberty in Israel than Reform Jews. But if the Reform Jew is scorned for his “bad religion” he is nonetheless honored legally as a first-rate Jew. In fact, even the Jewish atheist is legally considered a first-rate Jew, and his legal rights are protected. But the Hebrew-Christian is twice-rejected: he is disowned because he is a Christian, and on this ground is viewed further as legally not a first-rate Jew.
In Israel, the Christian gets little if any of that special protection which the Jew in America wants for atheists on the ground that religious liberty must at all odds be preserved, and that the Jew sees his own image in any person who is being denied his rights. Instead of special protection, the Christian complains that he gets special discrimination.
Other developments in Israel:
—Relief from an Israeli law requiring religious ceremonies in marriage was sought from the High Court of Justice by Yisrael Schlesinger, an Israeli Jew who was wed to a Christian Belgian woman in a civil ceremony in Cyprus. Because Jewish religious authorities refuse to marry any couple unless both are of the Jewish faith, Schlesinger cannot obtain legal sanction for his marriage.
—Opposition to a projected Christian settlement at Ness Anim in Western Galilee came from the Council of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, which denounced the plan as “proselytizing.” Leaders deny they intend to proselytize. They stress that they wish to identify with Israel and serve as an example of Christian life. Settlement sponsors include Dr. Jacob Blum, a Presbyterian minister of Jewish origin; Dr. R. Bakker of Rotterdam; Dr. J. J. Pilon, a Dutch doctor; and Dr. Hans Bernard, a Swiss physician.
—Some 3,000 Israeli Protestants and Roman Catholics sought permission from Jordan to make the traditional Christmas pilgrimage to Bethlehem. The number exceeds by 25 per cent the total of permits granted last year.
