Professor Bruce Shelley notes that “the decline in denominational loyalties is apparent on every hand.… We are living in days when a kindly little old Roman Catholic lady will light up at the mention of Billy Graham’s name and promise to attend his meetings faithfully, and when a Greek Orthodox priest will use Scripture Press literature for Vacation Bible School.”
Shelley, who teaches church history at Denver’s Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, makes the observations in the opening article of a two-part series on ecumenism in United Evangelical Action, official monthly magazine of the National Association of Evangelicals. The series comes, appropriately enough, on the threshold of NAE’s twenty-fifth anniversary, when the organization can be expected to look soberly at itself and ponder its own future in today’s ecumenical drift.
NAE claims two million members among its affiliated churches and a “service constituency” of some ten million. The eight-million gap represents people who are in sympathy with the organization and draw from its services but whose denominations do not officially belong. There are additional millions of American evangelicals who have no tie with NAE whatsoever; many belong to denominations within the broader conciliar movement and are disillusioned over Neo-Protestantism’s neglect of evangelical and evangelistic priorities and its growing interest in Roman Catholic rapprochement. Several staunch evangelical denominations remain aloof.
These non-aligned evangelicals are the cause of more and more discussion. There is a growing feeling that the time may have come for a revitalized NAE that would be found appealing to evangelicals with no present interdenominational connections. Some feel the present strengths of NAE ought to be preserved and new dimensions added. Others feel that an entirely new evangelical organization transcending NAE is in order.
The NAE situation was made a bit more fluid early this year with the resignation of Arthur M. Climenhaga as executive director. Climenhaga left after being nominated to an administrative bishopric in his Brethren in Christ Church. He will continue to be active in NAE but on a voluntary, non-salaried basis. Meanwhile, new leadership is being sought, and some observers feel the choice will go a long way toward determining NAE’s future.
Another factor will be the outcome of the organization’s twenty-fifth anniversary convention. It is scheduled for April 4–6 in Los Angeles.
The general convention theme will be “Beyond the Social Gospel.” Under this theme, a spokesman said, “we will seek to show the weakness and inherent ineffectiveness of today’s liberal social gospel, and to show the strength and viability of the evangelical cause when it is properly oriented biblically.”
“In all of this,” he adds, “our main objective will be to arrive at a philosophy and theology for evangelical involvement of Christian church and citizen in the social concerns of today.”
TOP TEN NAE DENOMINATIONS1Source: Yearbook of American Churches, 1967
Note: Among leading non-aligned groups are Southern Baptists, Missouri Synod Lutherans, Churches of Christ, American Baptist Association, Seventh-day Adventists, Salvation Army, Christian Reformed, General Association of Regular Baptists, Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), and Baptist General Conference. Together the non-aligned groups represent a larger constituency than the nine-way merger proposed by the Consultation on Church Union.
Protestant Panorama
Women of the Episcopal Diocese of California show a great desire to win people to Christ, according to a poll taken by the University of California at Berkeley. Nearly two-thirds of the women also thought church leaders should not join a civil rights demonstration if it would lead to their arrest.
Three United Presbyterian officials got special State Department permission to witness ceremonies in which an ecclesiastically autonomous Presbyterian denomination was created in Cuba.
Wesleyan Methodist churches have ratified a merger of their denomination with the Pilgrim Holiness Church. The union is to be consummated in June, 1968. The merged group will be called The Wesleyan Church.
Personalia
The Rev. Benjamin Haden, minister of Key Biscayne (Florida) Presbyterian Church, is succeeding Dr. D. Reginald Thomas as preacher on “The Bible Study Hour” radio broadcast. The program, made famous by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse, is sponsored by the Evangelical Foundation, Inc., which also publishes Eternity, a Christian monthly with offices in Philadelphia.
Dr. Arnold B. Come was elevated to the presidency of San Francisco Theological Seminary after serving as acting president since November of 1965. Come, who has taught at the California campus since 1952, holds a doctorate in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. His new appointment was effective February 1.
Helge Alm, secretary of missions of The Methodist Church in Sweden, was elected president of the Swedish Missions Council. He succeeds C. G. Diel, who was named bishop of the Tamil Church in India. The council sponsors 1,520 missionaries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
A Dutch Baptist pastor, F. E. Huizing, told tax collectors he will subtract 15 per cent from his assessment in protest against government military spending. Huizing, former president of the European Baptist Federation, doesn’t want others to follow his example, however.
The Rev. E. N. O. Kulbeck, editor of the Pentecostal Testimony, official organ of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, was elected president of Canadian Church Press.
Ronald A. Ward, 58, well-known evangelical expositor and former New Testament professor at Toronto’s Wycliffe College, is resigning his parish in Norwich, England, to come to Stone Church (Anglican) in Saint John, New Brunswick.
Rolfe Lanier Hunt, formerly chief of the editorial section of the U. S. Office of Education and a public-school specialist with the National Council of Churches, has been named editor of the NCC’s International Journal of Religious Education.
Miscellany
Roman Catholic and National Council of Churches film panels gave their first joint award to “A Man for All Seasons,” much-lauded drama of Thomas More. The NCC also cited “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” and—after hot debate—the sordid “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for portraying the “human predicament.” The Catholics honored the late Walt Disney.
In Ottawa, members of Parliament angrily challenged measures taken by the U. S. Treasury Department to block Quaker shipments of medicines to North Viet Nam via Canada. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, it was reported that the U. S. Treasury Department had frozen a Quaker group’s bank account.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Louisville plans to award as its basic theology degree a master of divinity in place of a bachelor of divinity. A new curriculum structure will allow each student to take up a specialty.
The American Board of Missions to the Jews is establishing a new department to enlist and train evangelists.
Provincial police scoured the area around Ste. Agathe, Quebec, last month to find dozens of children who were missing when the government raided the monastery of the Apostles of Infinite Love, a French-based Roman Catholic rebel sect. The government charges that the children, raised communally by newly celibate parents, lack proper food, education, and health precautions.
An Oklahoma Baptist missionary turned in an estimated fifteen million trading stamps in exchange for a six-passenger airplane he will use in Brazil. The Rev. J. Gerald Price said the stamps were saved over a period of six years by members of the North American Baptist Association.
Thirty-year-old Robert Petersen was convicted of possessing marijuana in Santa Cruz, California, despite his plea that use of the drug was essential to the practice of his religious beliefs. A number of clergymen testified in his behalf, but the judge said he questioned Petersen’s sincerity.
