Facts And Trends
Religion in America, by Winthrop S. Hudson (Scribners, 1965, 447 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Robert G. Torbet, dean, Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Kansas, and president, American Baptist Convention.
This is a survey of the development of American religious life. It is the story, not of denominations, but of the unfolding of a religious witness brought to this new land from Europe and nurtured and modified by a people who were building a new nation under God. The organization follows the major segments of our national history: I. The Formative Years, 1607–1789; II. The New Nation, 1789–1860; III. Years of Mid-passage, 1860–1914; IV. Modern America, 1914—.
Four features characterize the author’s approach. First, he regards religion as a part of American life and therefore of the American scene. For this reason there is in his story a generous interlacing of the facts of our social, economic, and political life. Religion is seen in proper perspective, as an important dynamic in the development of the nation. But it is also seen as modified by the several European traditions developed in a new world setting.
Secondly, the author achieves a remarkable balance in selection and interpretation of his facts. He moves with ease from the beginnings of the major denominational groups in American life to the Great Awakening, “when America experienced its ‘national conversion’ and achieved a common pattern of evangelical cooperation in the enormous task of Christianizing a continent and expanding the Christian witness overseas.” He succeeds in describing, without confusion to the reader, the proliferation of the denominations in the early nineteenth century in the midst of a religious ferment that produced utopian communities, Mormonism, Millerism, spiritualism, and humanitarian crusades. When he comes to the period of 1860–1914, he again demonstrates his skill in summarizing a rich and absorbing era in American history. The Civil War is seen as “a watershed between an old and a new America” (p. 207). What followed was a greater heterogeneity in background, an intellectual climate altered by modern science, and new centers of power in national life created by the quickened pace of industrialization. On this broad canvas he deftly outlines the new frontiers along which the churches were working in response to rapid technological and urban change: the institutional church, an emerging Christian social ethic, the social gospel, the “Progressive” movement in American politics, which translated many social concerns of the churches into legislation, and the impetus that the new imperialism following 1898 gave to world missions.
Thirdly, Dr. Hudson does not attempt too much in Part IV, which is an analysis of religious trends in modern America since 1914. Unlike many other books familiar to this reviewer, this work does not lose force and value in an effort to predict the future. Instead, the author carefully delineates the shifting religious configuration in this post-Protestant, pluralistic society. After this he describes the reassessment and recovery of Protestantism after its “religious depression” of 1925–35. The reader will find an able and fair description of fundamentalism, the theological reconstruction since the 1930s, and the manifestations of renewed religious vitality in vocational evangelism, peace concerns, anti-McCarthyism, and leadership for the racial crisis. The maturing of Roman Catholicism is treated with equal fairness. A concluding chapter traces the reversal of the centrifugal force in favor of the centripetal in American religious life as ecumenism becomes a major concern of many Protestants and Roman Catholics alike.
A fourth feature characterizing this work is a reliance upon a wide variety of recent studies in the history of American religion. The documentation provides an excellent bibliographical guide for the serious student who wishes to pursue the subject further.
The author is James B. Colgate Professor of the History of Christianity at Colgate Rochester Divinity School. He has achieved in this book an enviable scholarly insight, literary skill, and impartial interpretation that will enhance his reputation as historian of American religious life.
ROBERT G. TORBET
Pike’S Peregrination
What Is This Treasure, by James A. Pike (Harper and Row, 1966, 90 pp., $3), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, professor and chairman, Division of Church History and History of Christian Thought, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
Whatever else may be said of Bishop Pike, no one will say he is non-controversial. His prolific writings have placed him in the maelstrom of contemporary social dialogue (The Church, Politics, and Society; Beyond the Law; Teen-Agers and Sex; and so on; the Blake-Pike proposal has made him famous in American ecumenical discussion; and his theological radicalism (“There are several phrases in the Creeds that I cannot affirm as literal prose sentences, but I can certainly sing them”) has involved him in three heresy charges since 1961, all dismissed by his fellow Episcopal bishops. In the February 22 issue of Look magazine, Pike—whose religious peregrination has taken him through Roman Catholicism, agnosticism, neo-orthodoxy, and Anglican neo-liberalism—is described as a bishop “searching for a space-age God.” Then visiting his confrere Bishop John A. T. Robinson in England, Pike told Look that he had “jettisoned the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation,” and said of those who had made the latest heresy charge against him: “If they only knew what I had in my briefcase.” This was the manuscript of What Is This Treasure, and now the eager theological public—properly prepared by the Bishop of Woolwich and the death-of-God school—can examine Pike’s portfolio for themselves. Is it Pike’s peak?
We are told that “What Is This Treasure opens wide the door left ajar by A Time for Christian Candor” and informs us of “what to keep—not what to throw out—to make today’s church more vital.” Both books have as their theme Second Corinthians 4:7a (“we have this treasure in earthen vessels”), and Pike’s aim is to distinguish between the treasure and the vessels. The bishop’s conclusion displays him, not as an original thinker, but as a poor man’s Tillich: only “God, the Ultimate Ground of all being” is the treasure, and all earthly expressions (including Jesus, Scripture, all doctrines and creeds) are but fallible and conditioned vessels. “The answer is more belief, fewer beliefs.” Thus Pike eviscerates the New Testament treasure (for Paul, the Gospel of Christ):
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” we read in the Fourth Gospel (14:6). While, as we have already seen, the negative conclusion of the sentence (“No one cometh to the Father but by me”) won’t do, the opening clause beautifully reflects the experience of the early Christian community of the role of Jesus in their lives. To sum up, in Him they saw what a man is to be; and since Jesus was Himself fully this, they saw showing through Him the fullness of God as Truth (which in good measure we can see also through Socrates and Buddha as “free and open” men) and, certainly as important, as Love [p. 80].
In this way the Bishop of California stands in judgment upon Scripture, upon its apostolic authorship—and upon “the Shepherd and Bishop” of his soul (1 Pet. 2:25). By arrogating the right of final spiritual judgment to himself, Pike’s pilgrimage has ironically brought him to a caricature of his starting point. His favorite verse ends “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” The bishop has, however, by refusing to allow God to reveal himself adequately, elevated himself to the powerful role of arbiter of revelation. The power is now “of Pike.” Now it is he who speaks ex cathedra.
JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY
Help For Parents
Understanding Your Teen-Age Boy: A Psychologist Opens His Casebook, by William J. George (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 163 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Marvin W. Goldberg, director of studies, The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, Long Island, New York.
This small book is a refreshingly frank attempt to provide parents and teachers with practical instruction in guiding teen-age boys. William J. George, a Roman Catholic psychologist who besides his impressive professional credentials has the qualification of being the father of six children, loses no time in getting to the problems of the young man’s world. “Drinking,” “Driving,” “Car Theft,” “Drop Out,” “Violence,” and “Sex” are some of the titles of the thirty-six short chapters.
Readers will be pleased by Mr. George’s lucidity and reasonableness. The book is written in non-technical language and is remarkably readable. As soon as one opens it, he finds himself immersed in the lives of teen-age boys. Here is Anthony, 16, who wears his hair long and persistently skips school. And Eddie, 15, two years behind in school, who loves his beer and wine. What can be done to help Terry, 13, who has just stolen a car? In the course of the book, the reader meets twenty or more boys along with their parents and friends.
So interesting are these and other stories that one has to be careful to avoid being superficially absorbed with the real-life episodes and overlooking the serious text that accompanies each case study. At times the interchange of case studies and explanations is bewildering. A second reading in which one can largely skip the case studies is helpful.
Many will like the straightforwardness of the chapters on “Homework,” “Religious Doubts,” “Comparison with Others,” and “Under Achievement.” The author’s practicality is at its best in these pages. George goes so far as to promise that parents can help their sons improve their school grades by following his five-step program in the supervision of homework. His advice is excellent and, if followed faithfully, could produce a revolution in some households!
The chapters on “Drinking” and “Smoking” undoubtedly will evoke a negative response from some readers. Here the author, in his earnest attempt to be reasonable, allows himself to be placed in a rather awkward moral position. “As a means of helping your son into adulthood,” he says, “consider offering him his first drink in your kitchen even if you abstain yourself”; and “I’m sorry for the family in which teetotalling parents look upon alcohol as completely black.” Has George seriously taken into account the risks involved here? Surely many experienced parents and teachers have found more effective methods than this in handling the problem of alcohol.
This readable and comprehensive book (an index would have been a great help) is also noteworthy for the warmth of the counselor’s personal interest. His dialogues with boys merit study. George very obviously loves young men and believes that they can, with spiritual strength, rise above their entangling problems. His book can be a great help to every parent and every teacher of boys.
MARVIN W. GOLDBERG
Trend Sampler
A Religious History of America, by Edwin Scott Gaustad (Harper and Row, 1966, 421 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
This overview of American history from a religious perspective is more a “sampler” of trends than an interpretation of events in terms of controlling ideals and convictions. It has the merits of direct quotation from many sources and of photographic illustration, but it can hardly be considered a comprehensive study of American life and culture in regard to its religious heritage.
The evangelical ingredient of the book is woefully weak; the author’s interest in liberal and interfaith concerns, and in social matters more than in personal religion, is evident. In a chronology of important dates in America’s religious history, those cited for the last few years are: 1957, formation of
United Church of Christ by merger; 1958, Martin Luther King writes Strides Toward Freedom; 1960, first Roman Catholic president elected, and Blake-Pike plan proposed; 1962, Vatican II opens in Rome; 1963, Pope John issues encyclical Pacem in Terris and Supreme Court rules Bible reading unconstitutional in public schools; 1964, King gets Nobel peace prize; 1965, final session of Vatican II and Paul VI celebrates mass in Yankee Stadium.
The author, a historian at the University of California at Riverside, has produced a work that will be helpful as background reading but many American churchgoers will consider it an inadequate reflection of religious dynamisms.
CARL F. H. HENRY
Book Briefs
Memos for Christian Living, by James L. Sullivan, compiled by Gomer R. Lesch (Broadman, 1966, 125 pp., $1.50). Little essays on Christian matters. The language, clear and succinct, conveys practical wisdom about Christian life.
A Social and Religious History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages and Era of European Expansion, 1200–1650, Volume IX: Under Church and Empire and Volume X: On the Empire’s Periphery, by Salo Wittmayer Baron (Columbia University and Jewish Publication Society, 1965, 350 and 432 pp., $8.50 each). Revised and enlarged.
All Things Common: The Hutterian Way of Life, by Victor Peters (University of Minnesota, 1965, 233 pp., $5.75). A thorough introduction to the Hutterians of Canada and the United States who practice Christian communism and reject dancing, movies, radio, television, and military service.
Dynamic Psychology, by George Cruchon. S. J. (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 278 pp., $5.95). An up-to-date guide to the understanding of modern man: Who is he? What does he want—and why? A substantive analysis of motivations.
The Work of Thomas Cranmer, edited by Gervase E. Duffield (Fortress, 1965, 425 pp., $6.25). A window on England’s first Reformed archbishop. With an introduction by J. I. Packer.
The Old Testament: An Introduction, by Otto Eissfeldt (Harper and Row, 1965, 861 pp., $9.50). Including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and also the works of similar type from Qumran.
Get in the Game!, by Bill Glass (Word Books, 1965, 150 pp., $2.95). The viewpoint and life story of a Christian who is the great defensive end of the Cleveland Browns.
Give Joy to My Youth: A Memoir of Dr. Tom Dooley, by Teresa Gallagher (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1965, 238 pp., $4.95). A tribute by a co-worker of Tom Dooley. Good reading.
Extraordinary Living for Ordinary Men, by Sam Shoemaker (Zondervan, 1965, 160 pp., $2.95). Excerpts from Shoemaker’s writings.
The Other Dimension: Meditations on the Disciples’ Prayer, by Ralph L. Murray (Broadman, 1966, 96 pp., $2). Fresh, perceptive, and very practical.
The Jewish Caravan: Great Stories of Twenty-five Centuries, edited by Leo W. Schwarz (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 831 pp., $8.95). An anthology of Jewish writings. A revised and enlarged edition of the first (1935) edition.
Theological Dictionary, by Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, edited by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Herder and Herder, 1965, 493 pp. $6.50). A good Roman Catholic dictionary of theology. The definitions are lucid and ample. First published as Kleines Theologisches Wörterbuch.
Challenging Careers in the Church, by Joseph E. McCabe (McGraw-Hill, 1966, 180 pp., $4.50). The author talks to young people about the many vocations—other than the pulpit ministry—within the Church. Too many young people, he feels, discover these vocational possibilities too late to do anything about them.
The United Nations and How It Works (Revised Edition), by David Cushman Coyle (Columbia University, 1965, 256 pp., $6).
Unchanging Mission: Biblical and Contemporary, by Douglas Webster (Fortress, 1965, 75 pp., $1.50). Reading that induces thinking.
Called to Be Free, by Angus MacDonald (Hallberg, 1965, 126 pp., $2.95). Lectures, yes; sermons, no.
The Romance of the Ages: An Exposition of the Song of Solomon, by Paul LaBotz (Kregel, 1965, 291 pp., $3.50). A highly spiritualized exposition that scarcely looks at the “bride.”
The Christian Agnostic, by Leslie D. Weatherhead (Abingdon, 1965, 368 pp., $4.75). A self-styled “angry old man” who has lost more and more fundamentals across the years now, as minister emeritus of London’s City Temple, devotes his thirty-first book (interestingly written) to his patchwork of beliefs.
Mary in Protestant and Catholic Theology, by Thomas A. O’Meara, O. P. (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 376 pp., $7.50). A presentation that includes the thought of Calvin and Luther, and of Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann.
The Quiet Corner: A Devotional Treasury from the Pages of Decision Magazine, edited by Sherwood Eliot Wirt (Revell, 1965, 116 pp., $2.50).
The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible: The Gospel According to Mark, commentary by C. F. D. Moule (Cambridge, 1965, 134 pp., $3.50). A very fine little evangelical commentary. In thought, clear; in form, attractive.
The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible: Understanding the New Testament, edited by O. Jessie Lace (Cambridge, 1965, 168 pp., $3; also paper, $1.65). A book for pleasure and profit for laymen and clergy.
Scandinavian Churches: The Development and Life of the Churches of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, edited by Leslie Stannard Hunter (Augsburg, 1965, 197 pp., $4.50). A series of essays by seventeen Scandinavian and British writers.
Dare to Live Now!, by Bruce Larson (Zondervan, 1965, 126 pp., $2.50). Very readable religious essays with a warm devotional strain.
A Dictionary of Biblical Allusions in English Literature, by W. B. Fulghum (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 291 pp., $4.95).
Conflicting Images of Man, edited by William Nicholls (Seabury, 1966, 231 pp., $4.95). Eight essays on the nature of man as seen by contemporary theologians. The book shows more what men are thinking than what they are.
Log Cabin to Luther Tower: Concordia Seminary During One Hundred and Twenty-five years Toward a More Excellent Ministry, 1839–1964, by Carl S. Meyer (Concordia, 1965, 322 pp., $7.95).
Modern Christian Art (from “The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism”), by Winefride Wilson (Hawthorn, 1965, 175 pp., $3.50). A survey of the art of turbulent eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, showing how today’s artists are in debt to the traditional Christian artists of earlier centuries.
No Empty Creed, by Michael Bruce (Seabury, 1966, 143 pp., $1.45). The vicar of St. Mark’s, London, says that the notion that traditional Christianity is impossible for an honest, modern man is “balderdash.” Good reading.
Paperbacks
Meet the Twelve, by John H. Baumgaertner (Augsburg, 1966, 130 pp., $1.95). Evangelical sermonettes; studies in half-depth. First published in 1960.
The ‘We Knows’ of the Apostle Paul, by Holmes Rolston (John Knox, 1966, 101 pp., $1.65). Valuable religious essays that make good reading and may start some good sermons.
Presbyterian Authority and Discipline by John Kennedy (John Knox, 1965, 118 pp., $1.50). A cry for the need and exercise of discipline in the Church. The author contends that there is an irrational prejudice against it, though it is a mark of the Church.
God and Mammon: The Christian Mastery of Money, by K. F. W. Prior (Westminster, 1966, 95 pp., $1.25).
Revolt Against Heaven: An Enquiry Into Anti-Supernaturalism, by Kenneth M. Hamilton (Eerdmans, 1965, 193 pp., $2.45). A searching look into the current belief that Christianity ought to detach itself from supernaturalism. A good piece of work.
Forgiveness and Hope: Toward a Theology for Protestant Christian Education, by Rachel Henderlite (John Knox, 1966, 127 pp., $1.45). First published in 1961.
Fractured Questions, by Warren Mild (Judson, 1966, 125 pp., $1.95). Over a chariot-wheel pizza in the Lion’s Den, some of life’s most significant questions are raised.
Taoism: The Parting of the Way (Revised Edition), by Holmes Welch (Beacon Press, 1966, 194 pp., $1.95). First published in 1957.
Rudolf Bultmann, by Ian Henderson (John Knox, 1966, 47 pp., $1). Bultmann analyzed for the layman who cares.
A Select Liturgical Lexicon, by J. G. Davies (John Knox, 1966, 146 pp., $2.45).
After Death: A Sure and Certain Hope?, by J. A. Motyer (Westminster, 1966, 95 pp., $1.25). An evangelical, enlightening discussion.
The Origin of Paul’s Religion, by J. Gresham Machen (Eerdmans, 1966, 829 pp., $1.95). A classic with continuing relevance.
Hominisation: The Evolutionary Origin of Man as a Theological Problem, by Karl Rahner, S. J. (Herder and Herder, 1965, 120 pp., $2.50)
