Two days after Israel and the Arab lands went to war this month, Jews won control of the entire city of Jerusalem for the first time since A.D. 70. They vowed never again to leave it. Military takeover of the “old” city from Jordan raised immediate hope that the Jews, after so many centuries, could rebuild the Temple on its original site.
Also on that site is the Dome of the Rock or Mosque of Omar, oldest existing Muslim monument, which marks the site where Mohammed is believed to have ascended into heaven. The ancient city once again symbolized the intersection of world religious and political empires in a Middle East rent by ancient animosities. Both Jews and Arabs attached a “holy war” dimension to the new conflict.
The re-entry of the “Holy City” by the Jews was a great moment in world religious history, regardless of the eventual outcome of the war. A rabbi who is a military chaplain to the Israeli army exclaimed, “we are entering the messianic era.”
Jerusalem also contains many Christian shrines, and Pope Paul asked the armies to spare all holy places. His appeal to make Jerusalem “an open and inviolable city” during the war was joined by United Nations Secretary General U Thant.
Except for Lebanon, the warring nations have only tiny Christian minorities; these could do little to affect the religious and ethnic hatreds between Muslims and Jews, who both trace their origins to Abraham. Those Christians whose reactions were reported lined up behind their nations. Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Kyrillos VI of Egypt said he backed “all measures of Arab leaders which might lead to the regaining of the Holy Land from those who killed Christ.” The Anglican Diocese of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon supported Jordan’s policies of opposition to Israel and prayed for “a victory of justice over wrong.”
In Israel, where nearly all Christians are Arabs, leaders vowed loyalty to their nation. Roman Catholic Archbishop George Hakin urged the faithful to shun “propaganda from without which is not in the best interest of Arabs.” Israel and the Vatican do not have diplomatic relations, but the crisis produced an unprecedented visit by the Pope’s apostolic delegate, Archbishop Augustine Sepinski, to Israel Premier Levi Eshkol. Sepinski’s offices are in the Jordan sector of Jerusalem, and he is also the Pope’s representative in Jordan.
Reports from Jerusalem during the first two days of fighting said foreign missionaries in Israel were remaining at their posts, though some wives and children were evacuated. The position of missionaries in Arab nations was more dangerous. Concern was expressed at the Southern Baptist Convention for the denomination’s sixty-one missionaries in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Israel—one of the largest contingents in the Middle East. Staffers at Baptist Hospital in the perilous Gaza Strip of Egypt cabled to the United States May 30 that they intended to keep on working. The war has canceled several Holy Land tours and archaeological digs.
With the Arab nations’ strategic oil reserves and Egypt’s control of the Suez Canal, the self-interest of the United States and Britain lay almost exclusively on that side of the conflict. But overshadowing this was the emotional and religious tie with Israel.
While many Christians uttered only their hopes for peace in general, many others expressed explicit support for Israel’s sovereignty and full access to international shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba, which had been blocked by Egypt.
The National Council of Chuyches General Board suggested “establishment of national and international rights” in the gulf. When war broke out, World Council of Churches spokesman O. Frederick Nolde wrote a letter to Thant urging the U. N. Security Council to call “an immediate cease fire.” The United States backed such a move, and Soviet opposition faded along with Arab military fortunes.
Among the most ardent Israeli supporters was Roman Catholic Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan of Atlanta: “We sacrificed Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary against their will when we could have joined with France, England, and the other great powers to save them. I hope that at this hour every force of the civilized world, every means of negotiation, every source of peace will be mustered by the United States to protect the statehood of Israel and the freedom of the open seas and waterways.” Monsignor George Higgins of the U. S. Catholic Conference wired President Johnson that the United States should “remain faithful” to its commitments to Israel.
Another appeal for support of commitments came from such Protestants as Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, John Bennett, and Robert McAfee Brown, all “doves” on the Viet Nam question. In fact, the new war threw the peace alliance of recent months into some disarray. SANE, a moderate anti-war group, postponed Washington demonstrations that were scheduled for the same day as a major pro-Israel rally sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews and major Jewish organizations. The latter stepped up drives to raise millions of dollars to help Israel.
But the voices of Judaism were not in unison. The famous Jewish psychiatrist Erich Fromm, at the Pacem in Terris convocation in Geneva, noted that Israel had refused to permit U.N. troops on her soil. (Egypt’s decision against letting U.N. troops stay on her soil had helped spark the new crisis.) Fromm also said Israel has a moral obligation to compensate Egypt for seizing the property of some 800,000 Arabs who have fled Israel.
Hong Kong: How Long?
The “cultural revolution” that has been convulsing Red China for nine months and has spilled over into the neighboring Portuguese province of Macao has now reached Hong Kong. For the second time in little more than a year, Hong Kong’s teeming, colorful streets have erupted into sudden violence, shattering the deceptive calm of its political life and threatening the long-range future of Christian missions.
Both the 1966 and the 1967 riots were sparked by economic issues that quickly faded as inhabitants of crowded areas in the Kowloon section, particularly the youths, gave vent to pent-up social frustrations.
But there is also a clear difference between the two outbreaks. The first was largely sociological, while last month’s had a more specific economic issue at stake and was initially governed by ideology.
The industrial origins of the trouble were quickly obscured by youthful hooligans and the ugliest kind of blind racial hatred. Right-wing gangs probably took advantage of the prevailing confusion to wreak even greater havoc. By the third day of rioting there was hardly a Mao badge to be seen; the slogan-shouting had become a mere cry of hatred against all police, all Europeans, and all manifestations of law and order.
Hong Kong authorities and the police, who rightly avoided involvement in earlier disputes, unfortunately allowed this situation to grow.
Oddly, there were some indications that Red China wanted calm and order to prevail in Hong Kong. But was the chain of command (or guidance) in China itself still functioning? Despite strong language from Peking, authorities there may have been forced to support their compatriots in Hong Kong.
The usefulness of Hong Kong to Red China is well-documented and includes a flow of 700 million U. S. dollars to Peking every year. After past ultimatums, the Chinese have shown flexibility. Perhaps all that is needed is for Hong Kong authorities to come to terms with the presence of the often-neglected left wing in all strata of the colony’s society.
The general public now has a tremendous revulsion against left-wing organizations, demonstrators, and trade unions, and against those who identify with leftists. There is also a tremendous upsurge of support for the government; supporters include 500 organizations from grass-roots groups to high-level commercial associations. Various churches have also denounced the violent manner in which leftists have made their complaints. They qualified this, however, with the statement that the government should give more consideration to the problems of labor in this rapidly expanding colony, with all its evidence of quick fortunes and maldistribution of riches.
The chief lesson for the churches is that probabaly only a short time remains for the spread of the Christian Gospel both in the colony itself and in Red China through efforts based in Hong Kong. The time remaining may be as little as ten years, is probably about twenty, and might even extend to the full thirty-eight years left in the present lease with the Peking regime. But until now the Christian churches in Hong Kong have studiously avoided contemplating any of these deadlines.
If the riots of 1966 and 1967 do nothing more than convince the foreign missions that their departure is inevitable and that they must begin to consider alternatives, they will have been useful, at least to the Christian Church.
GEORGE N. PATTERSON
Miscellany
Theology Dean R. O. Corvin of Tulsa’s Oral Roberts University told Chilean Pentecostalists intent on founding a university for all of Latin America that they should think in terms of 10,000 students and a development cost of $150 million over twenty to twenty-five years. Corvin denied reports that ORU has any financial commitment to the project.
Christian Times, a Sunday school take-home, last month had announced plans to absorb the Sunday Times (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 9 issue, page 36). But at the last minute the dying weekly was bought by the Union Gospel Press of Cleveland, which will merge the Times’s name and lesson materials with its own semi-monthly and quarterly publications. The Sunday Times Foundation will continue without Chairman John Bolten, who resigned.
Philadelphia College of Bible became the sixth U. S. Bible college to win regional accreditation. Three regional associations (Southern, North Central, Northwest) have yet to accredit a Bible college.
The 1967 U. S. Post Office Christmas stamp will use the same Hans Memling Madonna as last year, only double the size. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the move, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State plans a lawsuit as part of an all-out attack on religious symbols in stamps.
The National Committee of Negro Churches plans a national campaign to raise millions for “economic development of the Negro community.” It finds current programs of government, business, labor, and churches inadequate.
Red faces abounded in Ottawa when a press release said the new national medal, the Order of Canada, would be inscribed with Hebrews 12:16. Actually, it uses Hebrews 11:16.
Plans for a Roman Catholic-supported hospital with Red Cross cooperation in North Viet Nam reportedly are under discussion in the Vatican. The international Catholic charity Caritas recently sent $1 million in medical supplies to North Viet Nam.
Protestant Panorama
Staffers from the three major U. S. Lutheran bodies (Lutheran Church, in America, American Lutheran Church, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) met to promote “a united ministry to young adults,” with initial emphasis on cities. A consultation on the plan will be held next February.
The United Church of Canada reports it lost 2,000 members between 1965 and 1966, the first drop since it was formed in 1925. The denomination’s Observer magazine said “the revival is over.… We may be in for a difficult time of retrenchment.”
The education board of the United Church of Canada voted unanimously to propose formation of five large ecumenical training centers for church workers in the next decade to sweep away “dead denominationalism.” Planners want Roman Catholics and Protestants to study in the same seminaries.
English Presbyterians approved the proposed merger with Congregational churches. The proposed Reformed Church would organize in 1970 with 260,000 members.
After Judson College, a Baptist women’s school, gave Alabama Governor Lurleen Wallace an honorary doctorate, the Baptist weekly Veckoposten in Sweden said, “This shows … how little the trustees of a Christian school allow themselves to ponder the consequences of a Christian confession.”
German affiliates of U. S. Methodists and Evangelical United Brethren met in Stuttgart to discuss joint operations when the U. S. bodies merge next year.
President E. A. Dahunsi of Nigeria’s Baptist Convention told 1,500 delegates to a Lagos meeting that “if Nigeria breaks up now, it is difficult to see how we can ever come together again, except perhaps through a general war—an Armageddon.”
Personalia
William (God is dead) Hamilton will resign from the faculty of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, an American Baptist seminary, to teach religion and Bible at New College in Sarasota, Florida, an independent school founded in 1964 and associated with the United Church of Christ.
Headmistress M. Judy Brown and the other seven staffers at the two-year-old Stony Brook Girls’ School, an independent Long Island evangelical academy, have resigned because of “personal misgivings” about the “structure and competence” of the charismatic-leaning board headed by President W. Arthur Johnson, who assumed full-time school supervision in December.
James McHugh, a Roman Catholic attending Princeton Seminary, will preach and otherwise assist at a Presbyterian church in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Although his Princeton study has no church status, McHugh hopes to become a Catholic priest.
New York Theological Seminary has recruited Henry O. Thompson, Old Testament teacher at Syracuse University; Ronald Soderquist, counseling pastor at St. Olaf College (American Lutheran) in Minnesota; Robert W. Northup, New Testament teacher at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina; and recent Columbia University graduate William J. Schmidt, who will teach church history. NYTS Bible professor Donald M. Stine will move to head the Bible and Christian education department at Tennessee’s Maryville College (United Presbyterian).
C. Shelby Rooks, a United Church of Christ minister, was promoted to executive director of the Fund for Theological Education, succeeding Walter D. Wagoner, new associate dean of California’s Graduate Theological Union. The fund administers three national scholarship competitions for Protestant seminary students.
The Rev. John Logan-Vencta, 68, Scottish-born minister of St. Giles’ Church, Ottawa, was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Among the twenty-seven new cardinals to be elevated June 26 are three U. S. Roman Catholic prelates: Archbishops John Cody of Chicago, Patrick O’Boyle of Washington, D. C., and John Krol of Philadelphia. The 120 members of the College of Cardinals will now include thirty-seven Italians and nine Americans.
A Roman Catholic priest, Robert Garcia, was named director of New Mexico’s war-on-poverty agency.
The student affairs dean at St. Louis University, Jesuit Thomas McQueeny, barred “black power” spokesman Stokely Carmichael and Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike from next year’s student speaker series. He criticized Carmichael’s “demagoguery” and questioned Pike’s qualifications to discuss theology.
Villagers in Santa Marta, Mexico, jailed visiting Baptist pastor Alejandro Zamora, Southern Baptist missionary Charles Gilbert, and eleven Mexican Baptists, believing that all evangelicals are Communists. The Baptists were released twenty-six hours later and fined a total of $4.
Ian Reid, minister of Old Kirk in Edinburgh, was elected the second leader of the famed Iona Community, a group of clergy and laity who live on an island in northwest Scotland.
Just five years after her husband and two other Americans were captured by the Viet Cong, Mrs. Betty Mitchell has decided to begin another term as a missionary in Banmethuot, South Viet Nam, still hoping for the release of her husband Archie, E. Ardel Vietti, and Dan Gerber. There have been rumors that the men are alive and being used as a medical team by the Communists.
Deaths
PHILIPPE MAURY, 50, member of the Reformed Church of France who directed the World Council of Churches information department after administering the World Student Christian Federation; in Lyon, France, after spleen surgery.
ROCKWELL H. POTTER, 92, dean emeritus of Hartford Theological Seminary and former president of the Congregational Christian mission board; in Hartford.
LEON ROSENBERG, 92, convert from Judaism who spent nineteen years as a missionary to Russia; sentenced to death during the early Bolshevik years but escaped; founder of the American European Bethel Mission; in Los Angeles.
