Has the East-West struggle reached an unpalatable stalemate? Is it time to introduce a third party, an intermediary to break the deadlock?
In sweltering Rome, these questions gained surprising relevance this month—in fact and, curiously enough, in fiction.
The fact lay in what may have been, according to the American newspaper in Rome, “the biggest double feature here since Nero fiddled while the city burned”: the coronation of Pope Paul VI and the visit of President Kennedy.
The fiction lay in a new novel, The Shoes of the Fisherman, wherein a Ukrainian pope becomes the go-between for the United States president and the Soviet premier. The book was released just seven days after the death of Pope John XXIII and was an immediate U. S. best-seller. It was written, not by an alarmist bigot seeking to arouse anti-Catholic sentiment through fear of papal power, but by a veteran Vatican correspondent turned novelist. The author, Morris West, formerly of the London Daily Mail, previously wrote The Devil’s Advocate, which also was a sensation. West’s early years were spent as an apprentice of the Christian Brothers, an Australian teaching order.
Adding still more fuel for speculation was the audience with Paul VI, just four days before that of Kennedy, of the President’s 1960 election opponent, former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon and his family were on a vacation trip. They spent about half an hour with the Pope.
West’s novel will never come true altogether. Some of its lines border on the ludicrous. But it may well prove historic as an accurate portrayal of the spirit of the times, that is, a yearning for more normal world conditions.
Moreover, the elevation of Giovanni Battista Montini to “the chair of St. Peter” probably spells additional participation for the Vatican in world affairs. The Vatican has long been reputed to be a diplomatic listening post for the world, and Montini brings to it extensive experience in political affairs. He is widely recognized as a first-rate diplomat and served for years as Vatican secretary of state under Pope Pius XII. He has already indicated that he will follow up the conciliatory overtures made toward Moscow by John XXIII.
Beyond that, opportunities may indeed be forthcoming whereby the Vatican, as a morally prestigious and politically neutral force, assumes the role of international arbiter. Most distinct possibility of this would probably come in a grave crisis when button-pushing is imminent.
Several years ago, there was some feeling that the Afro-Asian neutralist bloc might emerge as the reconciling third party in world affairs. But these nations now appear to be content with promoting their own ends, sometimes even playing the two world powers against each other for rather narrow purposes.
It is obvious to informed observers that the timing of the papal audiences so near the coronation was coincidental. Kennedy’s schedule originally provided for a meeting with the late John XXIII at about the same time that, as it turned out, he saw Paul VI. The trip to Rome at one point was called off altogether, then reinstated. One important change in the President’s schedule was made following the announcement by the Vatican that the coronation would take place June 30. Kennedy was due in Rome that day. He spent it in Milan instead. The United States was represented at the coronation by a four-man delegation headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion
THE CEREMONY
For the hundreds of thousands who milled about cobblestoned St. Peter’s Square on Sunday evening, June 30, the coronation of Pope Paul VI was a ceremony of elegance and finesse. But it was a wearisome spectacle, and it had touches of unscheduled humor.
Heat and humidity felled scores, including a costumed guard who was helped from the platform during recitation of the liturgy. Some brought jugs of cold beverages. Others had packages of dry ice which they pressed against their wrists and foreheads.
The ceremony began at twilight under a bright half moon. Prior to the opening procession a thirty-two-piece Palatine Guard band entertained the crowds with martial music.
But it was less than a wild ovation that greeted the pontiff, who was introduced with a blare of trumpets. Much of the crowd, perhaps reflecting traditional Italian apathy, seemed indifferent throughout the ceremony. Some knelt during the prayers, some read missals; but most gazed about, chattered, and joked.
The open-air ceremony had its lighter moments, as when the Pope’s voice cracked at several points during his chants. Even priests and nuns chuckled with candid good humor.
The new Pope’s speaking voice is resonant, but it has limited range.
Comparatively few people in St. Peter’s Square saw the actual coronation. So many attendants had gathered about the altar that the principals were obscured from view for all but the dignitaries on the platform and others who sat atop Bernini’s Colonnade. The masses standing in the square shared the big moment only via public-address system. There was scattered applause.
The Pope sat on a white silk throne against a red cushion. Behind the throne hung a 12-by-18-foot tapestry depicting Christ handing theologically controversial keys to Peter. From a balcony overhead was suspended a flag of equal size—the Pope’s personal coat of arms. On the altar were seven 3-foot candles which evening breezes extinguished repeatedly.
The nine-language homily of Paul VI echoed the “dialogue” appeal of Pope John XXIII toward other Christians and the modern world in general. The Italian portion said the Roman Catholic Church would be “respectful, understanding, patient, but cordially inviting” toward others.
Rumors circulating in Rome while John XXIII was still alive spoke of a possible summit meeting in Rome of the pontiff, Kennedy, and Khrushchev. But these were largely discounted. A trip to Rome by Khrushchev, however, is probably only a matter of time, if only as an effort to offset the Kennedy trip. The Soviet leader’s hastily conceived jaunt to East Berlin was widely interpreted as just such a maneuver.
Kennedy concluded his ten-day European tour on a spiritual note. In a speech at NATO headquarters in Naples he quoted some phrases uttered by Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini 115 years ago. Mazzini was described as having said at a mass meeting in Milan: “We are here … to build up the unity of the human family so that the day may come when it shall represent a single sheepfold with a single shepherd—the Spirit of God.”
Kennedy’s comment was that “the unity of the West can lead to the unity of East and West until the human family is truly a ‘single sheepfold’ under God.”
Earlier that day Kennedy had made his much-celebrated trip to the Vatican. As usual the Vatican laid on all its majestic pomp. Remarked one sweating newsman, “ ’Tis like a page out of Gilbert and Sullivan.”
The Palatine Guard band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” when Kennedy’s car pulled into the San Damasus courtyard. The President and his party, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, were escorted to an elevator which brought them up to the richly muraled Clementine Hall. This was as far as the 100-odd newsmen covering the event were allowed to go. The only exceptions were several “pool” reporters and photographers.
Kennedy, the United States’ first Catholic president, went on through a series of anterooms and was introduced to Paul VI at the threshold of the pontiff’s library. The President bowed but did not kiss the Pope’s ring as Catholics normally do.
Asked why Kennedy did not kiss the ring, Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger replied that he did not wish to discuss the matter publicly. Salinger said shortly afterward that a Roman Catholic monsignor was available to interpret, but he did not know whether the interpreter was actually in the room at the time or whether the audience was completely private. About fifteen minutes later Rusk was ushered into the private library, and subsequently other members of the White House staff entered. Kennedy was reported to have said to the Pope: “I hope to see you in the United States.”
The Pope was described as replying with a noncommittal gesture.
After the President left, the Pope greeted visiting newsmen in Clementine Hall. He was clad in a white robe, white skull cap, and red shoes. His first words were drowned out by the Palatine Guard band’s send-off for the President.
“You know what we discussed,” said the slightly-built Paul VI. “Above all, the peace of the world.” Kennedy’s next stop was at Pontifical North American College on Janiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican. He was greeted there by a kiss from his own long-time archbishop Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. Kennedy’s sister, Mrs. Stephen Smith, also was on hand. “Hi, Jean,” said Cushing. “My, you look good.”
He then shook hands with Kennedy and jokingly poked him in the chest.
For a moment, the President looked startled. Cushing put up his fists in a boxing pose, and they broke into laughter.
The President’s ten-day tour of Europe, climaxed by his visit to Italy, had an assortment of political and religious implications. Least affected, it seemed, were Italy’s handful of Protestants. They have been in a perpetual uphill struggle despite unfettered legal opportunity.
An American missionary in Italy says Protestants now have as much liberty there as they do in the United States. But asked about the evangelical witness in Milan, for example, he shook his head sadly.
Upon teeming Milan, Italy’s largest city and a focal point of industry, may hang the future of Free Europe. A third of its population is said to be nominally Communist. Kennedy’s visit there can undoubtedly be attributed in part to his desire to see a turnabout in favor of the West. Diplomatic observers are keeping a close eye on Italy’s newly named premier Giovanni Leone.
It is almost ironic that the new Pope should have come from Milan. Montini’s appointment there eight years ago is widely reported as having been a virtual banishment from Rome. He had been at odds with the Roman curia, it is said; hence the “deportation” to a difficult situation.1Paul VI was crowned by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, reputed to have been one of his chief adversaries. He probably stopped short of stemming the tide but did gain a reputation as an amiable and popular prelate. He headed the list of non-cardinal “Papabile” following the death of Pope Pius XII. John XXIII made him cardinal, and the two were regarded as very close. John XXIII once referred to Montini as “the most eminent Hamlet of Milan.”
What kind of era will Paul VI usher in? Vatican observers are straining for clues. One even saw in the Pope’s new lightweight crown an apparent determination “to face the challenge of this anxious modern age.” Perhaps the safest generalization is that Paul VI will gear his program around the priority of peace in keeping with the growing world feeling that absence of hostilities is a desirable end in itself. The prospect that perhaps deserves the most attention is how he might try to implement the proposal made in John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris encyclical for a new global authority to guard the peace.
Cristo, si; Lenin, no!
Increased harassment and persecution of the Protestant church in Cuba has in no sense weakened its testimony or effectiveness, according to recent reports from Havana. Membership is below the 1958 level, stated one observer, but offerings have kept up. And a leader was quoted as saying, “The Christian church in general is better off than it was in 1958.”
This, despite the fact that Protestants are now subject to increasingly frequent and violent opposition, both official and quasi-official. The Rev. Moises Virelles, pastor of the Pedro Betancourt Methodist Church in Matanzas Province, was recently jailed on a Sunday and forced to cut sugar cane along with other “volunteer” workers. In the Sierra Maestra mountains the pastor of the Buey Arriba Church is reportedly in prison for undisclosed reasons.
A Protestant church of unidentified denomination in the suburbs of Havana was stoned by a rioting mob during a service near May Day (Labor Day in Latin America). The pastor and several members of the congregation were reported injured. And during a Sunday morning service in April, a group of militia was reported to have invaded the First Presbyterian Church of Matanzas and, pounding the floor of the sanctuary with their rifle butts, to have shouted, “Lenin, si; Cristo, no.” A mob surrounding the church used a car equipped with loudspeakers to repeat slogans of the revolution.
Methodists, whose membership is drawn more from the professional and middle classes, have been hardest hit by the “exodus.” The largest church has lost 200 members, and thirty-six Methodist pastors have left the island, stated a Christian informant in Havana.
Presbyterians reported that their church membership is down 1,000 from 1958, to 4,150, but that they are prospering economically. All schools, except seminaries, have been nationalized. There are approximately 1,200 Protestant churches and outlying missions in Cuba, with an aggregate membership of at least 60,000.
At The Front Door
It was a weary Billy Graham who took his wife for a stroll through Hyde Park the other evening.
“It’s the first walk I’ve had a chance to take in six weeks,” said Graham.
He was in London for a few days’ rest following a strenuous evangelistic tour of Germany and France. It had been his first series since a stomach ailment had canceled his projected Far Eastern crusade. Still not fully well, Graham complains of a tightening of the chest and throat when under fatigue.
After several weeks’ holiday in Scotland, he will fly directly to Los Angeles to participate in an evangelistic film for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association pavilion at the 1965 World’s Fair. In mid-August he begins his major crusade in Los Angeles, including five nights on nation-wide television. He will also speak at the annual dinner of the Motion Picture Relief Fund in Los Angeles, with Bob Hope as scheduled master of ceremonies.
After his thrust in Germany and France, Graham spent several hours in Geneva, where he addressed the consistory founded by Calvin. After an hour-long address he was plied with questions for two hours. World Council leaders, who took him to lunch, said they were impressed by French telecasts of his effort, the first major Protestant programming in that land. Graham plans to return to Paris in 1965.
In Nürnburg, an average of 17,000 attended Graham’s meetings nightly for five nights, and in addition 40,000 turned out for the Sunday rally.
In Stuttgart, 25,000 attended nightly for five evenings, and 40,000 turned out on a cold and rainy Sunday.
Decisions for Christ in Nürnburg and Stuttgart totalled 7,500.
Graham received generous television coverage on the German networks and had an unusually good press. “This time I felt I was going in the front door,” he said.
He also met with Chancellor Adenauer in his Bonn office for 52 minutes. Adenauer spoke of his “religious hobby of studying the evidences of the Resurrection.” “That’s the most crucial issue,” he added, “and I think it can be attested.”
In two years Graham is scheduled to hold crusades in Dortmund and Frankfurt, in what will be his fifth visit to Germany. His first meetings there were held in 1954.
West Germany’s danger, he thinks, lies in the fact that, having reached affluence through hard work, it will fail to sense that the nation’s next challenge is spiritual. But he sees a hopeful turn in the fact that both religious and political leaders are recognizing this peril, and in the fact that the Church in Germany is hospitable to evangelism.
Evangelism, Inc.
A new era of evangelism is dawning in Asia. Best evidence is formation of a fellowship of national evangelists from Asian nations who are convinced that “if Asia must be won to Christ, it must be won by the Asians themselves.”
The movement—begun in 1958, when the well-known Filipino evangelist Gregorio Tingson launched into full-time evangelism for all of Asia—has stirred Filipino evangelicals from various denominations to create an organization which would help support the new enterprise. They named it “Evangelism, Inc.” The new group is composed of a cross section of society and prominent church lay leaders who share the belief that Asian Christians must unite in a broad program of evangelism.
The new evangelistic zeal is not limited to local Filipino Christians. As news of the movement traveled to other Asian countries through the yearly missionary-evangelistic trips of Evangelist Tingson, evangelists from other Asian nations rallied to the enterprise. Evangelists Reiji Oyama of Japan, Ais Pormes and Eddy Ie of Indonesia, David Jacobsen of Australia, Muri Thompson of New Zealand, and others have collaborated with the cause. The dynamic of their combined efforts was especially demonstrated in the Philippines for several months previous to the Billy Graham Crusade there, during which time Asian evangelists from New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines staged city-wide evangelistic campaigns. The united effort prepared the way for the All-Philippines Billy Graham Crusade and itself reaped a large harvest of decisions for Christ.
Evangelism, Inc. serves as main promoter of the movement and has for its present program an annual sponsorship of united evangelistic campaigns in different countries of Asia.
Observers welcome the movement not only as a potent weapon for evangelism in Asia today but also as a vigorous buffer against the rising tide of Communism. With doors closing to missionaries from the West as fires of nationalistic fervor inflame governments against foreign influence, the new movement may well keep the doors of evangelism open.
Light From The Negev
Excavations begin this summer on an ancient Hyksos city, built by people critics once denied existed. The ancient city, lost for thirty-five centuries beneath the shifting sands of Israel’s Negev wasteland, is to be uncovered by an expedition of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies under the direction of R. A. Mitchell, with the aid of a $45,000 grant from the United States State Department.
Work in the area, on the site of Tell Nagila, actually began last summer when a previous expedition unexpectedly uncovered, directly beneath the surface, the ruins of the Hyksos city. This season scholars will uncover more of the houses, streets, and public buildings in which the patriarchs of ancient Israel might have lived, walked, and conducted business.
The scholarly world has expressed its hope that this expedition will illuminate some of the mysteries of the Hyksos age (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries B.C.), one of the most obscure periods of Middle Eastern history.
The Receiving End
Vowing to integrate the all-white Gwynn Oak Amusement Park near Baltimore or “fill the jails,” hundreds of civil rights protagonists chose Independence Day for a walk-in demonstration which resulted in the arrests of 283 persons, including twelve prominent white and Negro clergymen. Among those arrested were Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; the Rev. Daniel Corigan, director of the Home Department of the National Council of Churches; Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., chaplain of Yale University; local Rabbi Morris Lieberman; and seven Roman Catholic priests from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It was the first time that so large a body of prominent clergymen of all three major faiths had participated together in a specifically directed protest against segregation.
Not everybody was impressed. Said James Price, joint owner and vice-president of the amusement park, about the demonstrations: “It’s unfortunate. It’s analogous to my shooting crap, and when the police come, I begin to pray and say I was arrested for praying.”
Dr. Blake, one of those arrested in the demonstration, had earlier told his denomination that the Church must take vigorous action in the segregation crisis. Such action, he said, might mean “being on the receiving end of a fire hose.”
Pentecost South Of The Border
At a pastors’ conference in Colombia, South America, four missionary leaders lodged as roommates found that they had something else in common—all four had recently spoken in unknown tongues.
The previous week, at a similar conference in Chile, the great majority of the attending pastors were Pentecostals.
A recent evangelistic campaign sponsored by a Pentecostal church of fifty members attracted stand-up crowds of five to fifteen thousand, and concluded with the baptism of 1,500 “converts.”
Statistical studies by consultants of CHRISTIANITY TODAY revealed that one out of every three Protestants in Latin America is a Pentecostal. In Chile nearly 90 per cent are of Pentecostal persuasion. In many of the large cities of Middle and South America, Pentecostals outnumber other Protestants two to one. In every corner of the hemisphere, those that specially stress the Holy Spirit, that re-emphasize Pentecost, or that are newly open to the phenomena of faith-healing and glossolalia are growing in number.
Such reports prompted CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s search for facts and reasons for Pentecostal advance in Latin America. While most Pentecostal groups are not diligent about statistics (“There is no time, brother.… We have to preach, always preach!”), their remarkable growth has been well documented (see “Evangelical Surge,” page 5). Reasons for that growth were culled from observations submitted by a score of respected observers:
“The Pentecostal movement represents, in some sense, the only Christian movement with real indigenous roots here in Latin America.… Two main elements … deserve careful appraisal: fellowship and worship.… They have rediscovered—or rather they have been given by God—a basic dimension of Christian Church life which is present in the New Testament, but woefully absent in many of our churches.… God’s presence and gifts are looked for—not exclusively but basically and typically—in the fellowship of the believers, not in individualistic seclusion.…
“Worship is a time when something ‘happens,’ when God visits his people and makes himself manifest. In other words, worship is God’s own act rather than merely a human religious performance.… The believer participates with his whole being in worship. In most of our churches worship is exclusively ‘auditive’ and ‘intellectual’ (centered on the sermon with ‘preliminaries,’ as it is usually said). The Pentecostal community worships with its whole being—sings, shouts, dances.”
“The early disciples, represented by those who wrote the canonical Epistles, spoke little about Jesus’ teachings and much about him. They were moved to expound and interpret their experience in him.… The present-day Pentecostals are most interested in ‘an experience.’ That gives freshness and immediacy to their Christian life.
“They have a keen sense of witnessing.… Some of us are most interested in the results of witnessing, but they are interested in the witnessing itself. They preach on the street corners when no one listens. We would see no reason to do that unless we had an audience.…
“Each one has something to do. In Chilean Pentecostalism there is really a dictatorship by the pastor.… The pastor and his lieutenants have the brethren organized in disciplined groups and keep them busy.… According to Pentecostal practice, a man can confess Christ today and tomorrow be preaching on the street corner.… We should not imitate their form. The better features of their work are due not to form but to the vitality of an experience.”
“Because of a natural desire to defend our own correctness in doctrine, evangelicals tend to underplay the doctrine as a decisive factor in the growth of the Pentecostal movement.…
“Their secret ingredient is much work—continuous and enthusiastic, at the maximum of each individual’s ability, by the great majority of the members. As a whole, in comparison with all the other denominations, they pray more; they distribute more literature; they witness more; they hold more and larger and longer evangelistic campaigns; they hold more regular services; they have more preaching points; they have more pastors, women, and participants.”
“I feel that the main factor … is the experimental.… The expectancy of supernatural intervention is normal.… Whatever may be said pro and con about the Pentecostals’ theological position in regard to the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that a person who is taught that God desires to come to him and control him, even physically, and who is encouraged to seek God, and by heart-searching and yielding to Him, eliminate disobedience to His will until God can and does come and ‘possess’ his body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, is certainly likely to expect and receive more of God than those persons who have no such teaching or spiritual preparation.
“In the ‘baptism’ in the Holy Spirit this expectation is realized.… Essentially it brings to the individual a keen sense of the reality of the things of Christ: the special help of the Spirit in prayer, praise, and testimony, and an ‘unction’ of the spirit that leads, inspires, and teaches them.”
“Pentecostalism seems to be tailored to the Latin culture and makeup.… By and large we have attempted to carry North American culture southward and failed to take advantage of and utilize the Latin culture, temperament, and ‘free wheeling’ way of life. Many Pentecostal meetings go into excess, but we must admit that there is life, enthusiasm, and a sense of joy.”
They have been particularly adept at winning adherents from the lower strata of society. This was illustrated by a recent Mexico City survey comparing the social structure of Pentecostalism with that of other Protestant bodies (A = high, B = upper middle, C = lower middle, and D = lower class):
A&B C D
Pentecostals 4% 37% 59%
Other Protestants 11% 57% 32%
“The Pentecostal brethren … put in practice an incarnational theology.… When a theology of the laity is incarnate in this existential form, then the structures of the local church are very flexible, very elastic, and very adaptable. And precisely here is where we fail. Our terrible rigidness kills us.… And while we are this way, petrified, inventing tabus, the Pentecostal brethren are dynamic, they are adaptable, they function with more spontaneity than we.…
“There is great danger of disorder. But they win people.… The missionary message of the Bible is incarnate in their daily lives. While we spend our time inventing tickets or labels, the Pentecostals preach in season and out of season.… While we have made the Christian life into a theology, they have made a theology into life.…
“I don’t believe that I find in the Pentecostal brethren either the best method or the most correct interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.… But the Spirit of the Lord is using the candor, the rustic form, the ‘uncombed’ presentation of Christ. And what God has not done through us, he has done through them.… If indeed we represent the science, the method, the theology, they represent the spirit, the passion, the incarnation. The first is not worth much without the second.”
W.D.R
Convention Circuit
Grand Rapids—Repudiating cries of “Communistic” the Christian Reformed Church last month sent a report on nuclear warfare to its churches for study. The report of its Committee on Warfare acknowledged the validity of the traditional “just war,” whose purpose is to establish “peace upon the foundation of justice.” The committee expressed doubt, however, that a nuclear war could be waged for such an objective. Against the better-Red-than-dead criticism, the report declared that “if a general thermonuclear war is able to scorch the earth, … annihilate the human race or leave alive only a maimed and wounded fragment of it … then a general thermonuclear war lies outside the traditional concept of a ‘just war’ and must be judged impermissible, whatever the provocation.”
The report, accordingly, summoned the Church to enjoin the nations of the world “to scrap these weapons … without delay, under international surveillance.”
In its ten-day meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the synod within a matter of minutes authorized a two-million-dollar campaign to construct a new auditorium and gymnasium, but rejected plans to include a swimming pool.
With equal dispatch the delegates rejected an overture for total abstinence but issued a strong warning against the evils often associated with drinking. They adopted the following declaration and sent it to their churches: “In view of the alarming incidence of the liquor problem today, that … in our teaching and preaching in the home, church, and school, instruction be given concerning the dangers associated with the use of liquor, including that of social drinking.”
The Christian Reformed Church will host the Reformed Ecumenical Synod which will meet in Grand Rapids in August.
J.D.
Champaign, Illinois—In a strongly worded resolution condemning discrimination, delegates to the General Conference of the Church of the Brethren called on the denomination to “adopt aggressive policies for racial justice and integration” in all its churches, agencies, and institutions. The denomination’s more than 200,000 members include several hundred Negroes, all in integrated congregations.
Oklahoma City—A strongly worded resolution which castigated the Supreme Court as “eight men who have played into the hands of the worst enemy America has ever had” and condemned the recent court decision prohibiting prayer and Bible reading as devotional acts in public schools was passed here last month by delegates to the annual meeting of the American Baptist Association. The resolution noted that “America is great because the very governmental, educational and social superstructure is built upon the strong, eternal foundation of a firm belief in God, prayer and the Bible,” and called upon the Supreme Court “to take firm action for prayer and Bible reading—not against.”
In other action, the independent, missionary association of over 3,000 Baptist churches, many of which are in the South, took a stand opposing integration. Terming the fight for integration “morally wrong,” the delegates approved a memorandum to President Kennedy stating that “our sentiments are that the Negro should be afforded greater opportunities for achievement and encouraged to win respect for himself in public life” but that “integration of the races … should be resisted.”
Long Beach, California—Nearly 10,000 delegates jammed the new Arena and Municipal Auditorium last month for a joint meeting of the North American Christian Convention and the National Christian Education Convention on the theme “The Church Speaks in the Space Age.” Workshops and interest groups dealt with such topics as “Moving Adults to Study,” “Drama in the Church,” “Mass Communications,” and “Developing a Mission Program.”
Chicago—High on the docket of the 78th annual meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was the question of ecumenical relations. Was she or wasn’t she? Well, she was—partially. In a resolution passed by the 615 delegates of the 61,000-member body, approval was given to merger discussions with denominations of similar “theological orientation.” At the same time a policy of non-alignment with interchurch organizations was reaffirmed. “We do not now affiliate with any ecumenical organization of national or international scope,” the delegates stated.
Meeting earlier, ministers of the denomination had adopted a pastoral letter on racial prejudice. “God calls His children to justice, love and suffering,” the letter said. “We must either accept the consequences of doing what we feel God wants us to do or turn our backs upon that will and choose our own dangerous course.”
In other resolutions the ECCA approved a second year of “study in depth” of Christianity’s encounter with Communism and expressed concern that glossolalia and divine healing “be exercised in love for the edification and unifying of the body of Christ, not as a badge of individual spiritual attainment.…”
Winona Lake—The 702-member Ministerial Association of the Evangelical Free Church of America held the spot-light at the 79th annual conference of the EFCA last month as it passed key resolutions expressing regret on the Supreme Court decision on Bible reading and prayer in the public schools, supporting integration, and calling for “true Biblical unity” as the only valid foundation in the present ecumenical trends.
Resolved the ministers, “We express regret at the Supreme Court’s decision and deplore the present trend toward complete secularization of education, government and, indeed, all of American life.” The resolution was prefaced by a statement which supported the separation of church and state but rejected any interpretation of that principle which is so rigid as to prohibit reference to things religious in our schools and government.
On the race question the ministers of the Free Church declared, “We pledge ourselves anew to upholding the rights of all, regardless of color, registering our opposition to discrimination and supression, while at the same time opposing all attempts to deal with these difficult problems by violence.”
The statement of the ministerial association regarding the ecumenical movement stressed the necessity for a firm doctrinal base. “We shall continue to emphasize true Biblical unity, the unity of the ‘one body in Christ,’ entered only by the new birth, involving agreement on the great essentials, transcending all denominational lines, and at least partially answering the prayer of our Lord ‘that they all may be one.’ ”
Beaverton, Ontario—Disclosed in reports to the 42nd annual conference of the Associated Gospel Churches last month was a denominational expansion to a total of ninety-five churches with 7,000 members in eight provinces. The reports also indicated that per-capita giving averaged $253.
Toronto—Medicare was in the news again, this time in Canada where controversial measures last year spurred doctors in Saskatchewan province to suspend their services for twenty-three days. The context was the Church. Approving by resolution a national program of compulsory, prepaid, universal coverage against medical bills, the 89th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada affirmed that Medicare measures were in harmony with the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Every person … deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and is entitled to a decent standard of living and adequate medical care.… A national health service is one of the ways in which people can show their love for each other,” the report said.
Plunging even deeper into the political arena, the general assembly praised Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson for his efforts to re-negotiate Canada’s defense structure to one involving only conventional armaments and expressed hope for a speedy abolition of all nuclear weapons.
Related debate involved the alleged “rightest propaganda” which the Board of Evangelism and Social Action perceived to be entering Canada from the United States. Declared Lawson in a written report, right-wing propaganda “assumes” that any one working for peace “beyond the status quo must be a fellow-traveler with communism.” Because it is often linked to democracy and specifically Christian values, he said, such propaganda “appeals to many sincere Christians.”
In other significant action, the general assembly rejected a suggestion that it open merger talks with the United Church of Canada, formed in 1925 by merger of Canadian Methodists, Canadian Congregationalists, and 70 per cent of Canadian Presbyterians. Told by former moderator J. L. W. McLean that such action would be “unwise, dangerous and futile,” the conclave referred questions on the denomination’s status to presbyteries and to eventual reconsideration in 1964.
Montreal—A resolution affirming “unqualified belief in premarital chastity as an essential Christian virtue” and urging “all our ministers and people to be vigilant and courageous in their stand against all attacks on the moral strength of Canada” was adopted at the annual meeting of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. The resolution was occasioned by an article advocating “good, honest satisfying sex” for Canada’s teen-agers which was published in Maclean’s in May.
Theology And Science
Ever since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859, organized Christianity has been fighting a defensive and, in many cases, an uninformed battle against the so-called “inroads” of natural science. Denouncing the allegedly heretical findings of science in regard to biblical lore, Protestant spokesmen have, with few exceptions, retreated before the onslaughts of their more popular and apparently more weighty opponents. But no longer. In recent years the tide has changed, and influential thinkers are more and more acknowledging that science is the proper ally of theology and not its inescapable protagonist.
One manifestation of the new movement within the scientific fold is a body of evangelical Christians who call themselves the American Scientific Affiliation. Bringing to their organization a firm belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures and in the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ and contributing minds well versed in the physical and social sciences, these scholars now number in excess of 1,200. They have been meeting since 1941 to investigate the philosophy and findings of science as they relate to Christianity and to disseminate the results of their studies to the Christian and non-Christian worlds. Last month, in the most recent of such meetings, the ASA descended upon Asbury College in the blue-grass region of central Kentucky and for three days, in joint session with the younger Evangelical Theological Society (organized in 1949), presented a series of papers on the conference theme—“God’s World.”
It was not so much the details of the papers which captured the interest and imagination of the delegates (over fifty were in attendance) as it was the underlying issues with which they were involved. On the second day reaction was strongly divided over a paper on “The Spirit of Compromise” written by Dr. Henry M. Morris, head of the Civil Engineering department of Virginia Polytechnical Institute. In a statement certain to evoke protest the document had asserted that Christians must not compromise with science, that “compromise is a one-way street ending in a precipice.” Evoke protest it did. In comments following the presentation of the paper psychiatrist Dr. Donald F. Tweedie detected “a certain anti-intellectual bias,” and host for Asbury College Dr. Cecil B. Hamann termed the views “disturbing.”
A popular topic at ASA conventions is evolution, and the second day of the Kentucky conference was partially devoted to this theme. Confronting the general topic “A Critical Synopsis of the Literature on Creation and Evolution,” the morning and afternoon papers surveyed the fields of earth’s earliest origins and the alleged evolution of man in light of the biblical record.
One such paper was “The World as Described in the Bible,” by Dr. R. Laird Harris, head of the Old Testament department of Covenant College. Taking issue with Bultmann’s description of the biblical world view as involving a “three story universe,” Harris asserted that “I cannot agree that this cosmology is taught in the Bible.” The elements which go into such a picture—a solid dome for heaven, a flat earth, windows in heaven for admitting rain—never occur in one context. The biblical mythology as Bultmann conceives it, stated Harris, is attained only by abstracting these poetic references and joining them into an artificial picture of the biblical perspective.
Asbury Seminary’s distinguished professor of philosophy, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, addressed the conference on “The Influence of Philosophy,” presenting conceptual Greek thought as the highest achievement of the natural mind prior to and independent of the stimulus provided by the Christian Gospel. “Christ’s coming marked the moment for men’s minds to get in line,” he noted. The relationship between that Gospel and the pursuit of knowledge, particularly in science, is the “basic issue” which confronts us now.
A detached observer might well have wished that more of these trained in Christian theology had been present. The Evangelical Theological Society was poorly represented and, as a result, the task of criticizing science and its conclusions fell largely to the scientists themselves. Had well-trained theologians been present, the generally accepted thesis that God’s creation, like the written Word, adequately reflects his nature and the truth about reality might well have been challenged by a reassertion of the corruption of human nature through the Fall and the participation of creation in that corruption.
One paper attempted such a critique, although in a limited area, and the response to it by the delegates was ample evidence of its involvement with crucial issues. Approaching the general problem “The Christian and Mental Health,” Dr. Donald F. Tweedie of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, propounded the thesis that psychotherapy must not be opposed to the Christian faith nor merely work in conjunction with it, but must be so grounded in Christian principles and biblical presuppositions that it can correctly be termed Christian psychology.
“The distressing tensions in mental health research seem to be clustered around the lack of an adequate anthropology, an objective axiology, or value system, a distinct therapeutic direction, and a governing goal.… The Christian world and life view provides stability in each of the above problem areas and affords the Christian psychotherapist a base of great theoretical and practical advantage.”
Where do the ASA and ETS go from here? To this question two answers were proposed. First, suggested ASA president Dr. V. Elving Anderson in a letter to the convention delegates, the ASA and ETS must work together toward a “theology of research.” Here, it is hoped, the theologically trained delegates would have much to offer.
Second, much could be done to increase the impact of the ASA and ETS upon both the Christian and secular worlds. Many representatives expressed hope that this would be done through increased use of publications and through specifically directed research. “I feel that one of the great needs is for an avenue for distribution of the messages given at the annual meetings,” observed Dr. J. C. McPheeters, president emeritus of Asbury Seminary. Added Dr. R. Laird Harris: “The ASA should be first in showing the new ideas in science.… I would like to see our society publish and made capital of them.”
J.M.B.
Divergent Positions
Criticism of church-state relations in Israel has come from Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, editor of the Central Conference American Rabbis Journal. In an article critical of Israel’s policy with regard to marriage laws and the recent anti-missionary campaign, Gilbert draws attention to “the divergent positions assumed by Jews” in Israel and in the United States. Current Israeli laws do not recognize mixed or secular marriages, nor is the popular mind tolerant of Roman Catholic and Protestant missions. At the same time, asserts Gilbert, the situation in Israel is a challenge to the “cool neutrality toward religion that American Jews would welcome from our secular government.…”
In a promising move several days later Israel’s Education Ministry announced that Moslem and Christian religious education in state high schools serving Arab children will begin this fall.
Tracking The Churches
New churches reported by forty-five Protestant denominations for the three-year period 1958–60 numbered 4,408, an annual average of 1,469. Closings for the same denominations (with the exception of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) totaled 2,510, an annual average of 836. These statistics occur in a study titled New Churches, 1958–1960, which was conducted by the Bureau of Research of the National Council of Churches.
Other items of note: member bodies of the NCC opened new churches at a ratio of 1.9 to existing churches as compared to a ratio of 5.1 for non-member denominations. Contrary to popular belief, only 28 per cent of new congregations were established in the metropolitan suburbs; the greatest number are being constructed in the “central metropolitan cities, non-metropolitan larger towns and … in the rural countryside.”
Responding To The Court
Reaction to the Supreme Court ruling against devotional use of Bible reading and prayer in public schools ranged the gamut from consent to defiance last month in statements by secular and ecclesiastical leaders.
This time it was the states which were most vocal. Disclosing his contempt for the Washington pronouncement, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared that his state would “keep right on praying and reading the Bible in the public schools,” and officials of North and South Carolina advised that the ruling be ignored in their constituencies. “We do these things because we want to,” said North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford. “As I read the decision, this kind of thing is not forbidden by the Court and, indeed, it should not be.”
Similar in spirit was a ruling by Delaware’s Attorney General David F. Buckson. Acknowledging that the court decision invalidates the state laws requiring Bible reading and prayer in the Delaware public schools, Buckson asserted that devotional practices could be continued on a “voluntary” basis. Other state officials and educators confessed bewilderment at how prayers could be permitted when the laws requiring them were acknowledgedly void.
In California the court decision raised no problem. Since 1955 an opinion handed down by the state’s attorney general has banned the reading of the Bible in public schools for devotional purposes and the saying of prayers. In Montana, disclosed a state superintendent, only one public school in a rural area has maintained any kind of prayer devotions. And in Minnesota, according to a survey conducted in 1957, only 3 per cent of the state’s public schools engaged in devotional practices.
In states more directly concerned with the Supreme Court ruling, among them New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, official reaction ranged from “no comment” to a disclosure that the feasibility of a period of silent prayer or meditation is under study.
Ecclesiastical reaction was also diverse. In one of the strongest pro-decision statements, the National Council of Churches affirmed that the Court has “again fulfilled its function of settling peaceably disputes in the American community.” The pronouncement added that “neither the church nor the state should use the public school to compel acceptance of any creed or conformity to any specific religious practice.”
Kantzer, Smith To Trinity
To serve a wider constituency the Evangelical Free Church of America last week chose Dr. Kenneth S. Kantzer as dean of its Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (renamed from Trinity Theological Seminary), approved immediate construction of married students’ dormitories on its new seventy-nine-acre campus in Bannockburn, Illinois, and announced plans for major faculty enlargement. Former chairman of Wheaton College’s Division of Biblical Education and Apologetics, Kantzer succeeds Dr. G. Douglas Young, who remains as chairman of Old Testament and Near Eastern studies. Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, formerly of Fuller Seminary, becomes professor of English Bible. President H. Wilbert Norton summarizes the seminary’s theological thrust as “firmly oriented to the historic Christian fundamentals with a strong orientation to the inerrancy of the Scriptures.”
Smith Resigns At Fuller
Dr. Wilbur M. Smith resigned his faculty post at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he has served as professor of English Bible since the school’s founding in 1947. Administrative and faculty differences on the subject of the Bible’s inspiration have recently vexed the school and led earlier this year to the resignation as trustee of Edward L. Johnson, president of Financial Federation, the nation’s fourth-largest savings and loan holding company.
