The following report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. Dwight L. Baker, chairman of the Baptist Convention in Israel, in Jerusalem:
Stories making the rounds after the Arab-Jewish war in 1948, at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, sought to explain why Jerusalem emerged a city divided between Jews and Arabs. I talked with Israeli soldiers, including a young Palmach (commando) officer, at the time and they insisted that Israel forces had captured the Old City but were ordered personally by Ben Gurion, the first premier, to retreat to the Jewish sector and leave the old town to the Arabs.
Why? The young commando leader insisted that Ben Gurion did not want to face the theological controversy that might flare up over rebuilding the Temple and restoring Temple sacrifices. Furthermore, Mt. Moriah, on which the Temple was located, is the second holiest site in Islam. According to traditions of certain Muslim sects, it is the spot where Muhammad will someday return to earth as their mahdi (“messiah”). Mt. Moriah is also sacred to the Muslims because it was there that Abraham agreed to sacrifice, according to the Muslims, not Isaac, but Ishmael, through whom the Arabs trace their lineage to Abraham.
The Temple area has been in the hands of the Muslims since the Muslim Conquest in the seventh century. In various periods of history the Jews have been permitted to pray at the Western Wall, the only remaining portion of the Temple, more commonly known as the Wailing Wall. For centuries they prayed there for the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple. Nineteen years ago, when the city was divided, access to the wall was closed to them once more.
Then on June 7, two days after fighting broke out in Jerusalem, the Old City fell into Israel hands and with it, the Temple area and its famous Kotel Ma’aravi, the Western Wall.
That Ben Gurion handed the Old City back to the Arabs in 1948 as a theological bomb too hot to handle is happy fiction. Actually, the bedraggled Israelis were spread too thin to hold it, and other fronts were more urgent.
After the establishment of the state, rumors continued to crop up. Some reportedly believed that orthodox Jews were tunneling under the walls of the city to reach the Temple area. They pointed to what they saw as Jordanian concern over the possibility. Had not the Jordanians sealed up all entrances to the quarries under the Old City from which King Solomon had taken the white limestone for the Temple? But Jordanian officials announced they had sealed the openings to prevent sabotage.
Will the Jews rebuild the Temple? If they do, the initiative won’t come from their religious members. According to halacha (religious law), Jews may approach the Western Wall only by way of the Dung Gate (northern entrance) or the Jaffa Gate (western entrance). They are not permitted to cross the Temple Mount. In an extraordinary meeting on June 9, the Chief Rabbinate Council reminded religious Jews of this prohibition and warned that it would remain in force until the Temple has been rebuilt with the coming of the Messiah. (Another problem is that the Muslim Dome of the Rock would have to be razed for the Temple.)
When do the Orthodox now believe the Messiah will come? The average observant or religious Jew is not obsessed with messianic anticipations, but for the ultra-Orthodox it is another matter. All over the country they are tense with excitement following Israel’s victories.
A Jerusalem Post reporter wrote that some messianic speculators have worked it out that the Messiah will be the stepson of Amran Blau, former leader of the Neturei Karta extremist sect in the Mea Sherim quarter of Jerusalem. The stepson—Uriel Ben David, a convert whose mother recently married Blau, over storms of protest from the faithful because she is a proselyte from Catholicism—was picked as the likely candidate to be the messiah because his surname recalls the name “Messiah Son of David.” They also point out that on her conversion his mother took the name of Ruth, the number-one convert of biblical history, through whom King David descended.
Other speculators believed that the Messiah would come Wednesday, June 14, which was the Feast of Shavuot (Feast of Weeks), just one week after the city fell to the Israelis. Shavuot is also celebrated as the Festival of the Giving of the Torah and as the traditional birthday and death anniversary of King David, and the Book of Ruth is read in all synagogues on that day.
Since the Messiah did not come this past Shavuot, calculators now believe he will come on Shavuot in seven years and will rebuild the Temple.
Thus it appears that if the Temple is rebuilt, the non-religious will have to do it, and they are obviously not interested. But one clear point has emerged on which both religious and non-religious Jew agree: The Old City with its historic Wailing Wall is to remain in Israel’s hands.
On the Feast of Shavuot, for the first time since the Dispersion, a stream of Israelis moved under the flag of Israel through the streets of King David’s city to the relic of the Second Temple.1Or third temple. “Zerubbabel’s Temple,” which succeeded Solomon’s original, was damaged by attackers but never destroyed. In the rebuilding, Herod replaced old materials gradually. Many consider the reconstructed building as the third temple. It was destroyed in A. D. 70. Starting at 4 A.M., 200,000 pilgrims made their way by foot over a freshly asphalted road. They began at Mt. Zion and passed through the Dung Gate to the Wall to pray and recite the Psalms of the Ascent (Psalms 120–134).
Every section of the population was represented. Members of the kibbutizim (collective farms) and soldiers wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) rubbed shoulders with Neturei Karta (ultra-Orthodox). Young mothers pushing their babies in carriages walked beside old men who had to be helped to the Wall, there to pray before the end of their days.
Mere hours before the Ascent began, Israel bulldozers swept out slum dwellings that reached to within feet of the Wall, opening a huge square to accommodate the pilgrims.
The stream moved smoothly in one direction and, after leaving the Wall, flowed through Jaffa Gate into the New City.
City officials announced that the route is to remain open permanently, but it may be a long time before it accommodates so many rejoicing pilgrams at once. It is a good guess, however, that it will be even longer before the route is closed again—if ever.
This interpretative appraisal of the Arab-Jewish conflict was written by the Rev. James L. Kelso, a former moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, who has known the Arabs of Palestine for the past forty-one years through his participation in eleven archaeological expeditions there:
How did Israel respect church property in the fighting a few weeks ago? They shot up the Episcopal cathedral just as they had done in 1948. They smashed down the Episcopal school for boys so their tanks could get through to Arab Jerusalem. The Israelis wrecked and looted the YMCA, upon which the Arab refugees had bestowed so much loving handcraft. They wrecked the big Lutheran hospital, even though this hospital was used by the United Nations. The hospital had just added a new children’s center and a new research department. The Lutheran center for cripples also suffered. At Ramallah, a Christian city near Jerusalem, the Episcopal girls’ school was shot up, and some of the girls were killed.
So significant was this third Jewish war against the Arabs that one of the finest missionaries of the Near East called it “perhaps the most serious setback that Christendom has had since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.”
The Balfour Declaration has been the major cause of the three wars whereby the Jews have stolen so much of Palestine from the Arabs who have owned it for centuries. Zionists insisted on amending the Balfour Declaration to make it read all of Palestine, though it specifically states “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.” This was Jewish crime number one.
Ever since Israel made a military conquest almost twenty years ago, she has refused to have anything to do with the refugees upon whose land she now lives. To her, Arabs are simply dogs. In the Orient, a dog is a thing to get rid of; if he does live, it will be because someone else cares for him.
Here is one glimpse at the refugee problem. I was in Palestine in the bitterly cold winter of 1949–50, when the Arab refugees around Bethlehem were forced to live in old army tents even though the snow was at one time three feet deep. The only way Arab mothers could keep their babies warm was to wrap them in reed mats. Even Mary and Christ received better treatment at Bethlehem than the Arab refugees did that winter. New cemeteries beside the refugee camps soon filled with Arab babies and the aged.
A missionary who has worked constantly with Arab refugees through the long years since Israel became a state in 1948 speaks of them as “human sacrifices to political ruthlessness.” It is the most accurate statement I know. Sometimes it was actual human sacrifice, as when 250 Arab men, women, and children were massacred at Deir Yassin. I know that massacre well, for one boy who was fortunate enough to escape that massacre later worked for me on my excavations.
There is a deep horror about all this history in the fact that great numbers of Christians in United States applaud Israel’s crimes against Arab Christians and Arab Muslims. How can a Christian applaud the murder of a brother Christian by Zionist Jews? The Arab church is as truly the body of Christ as the American church.
An equal or even greater horror is that so many Christians applaud crimes against the Arab Muslim. Our greatest crime is that we never evangelized these Muslims or these Jews. After what the Arabs of the Near East have been through since World War I at the hands of Christians, how can we ever expect them to listen to the Gospel of Jesus, the Christ?
Whither Jerusalem?
From a wide range of ecclesiastical leadership has come a growing demand for the internationalization of Jerusalem. The strongest statement came from the Vatican. At a consistory for the nomination of new cardinals, Pope Paul VI included a plea for the Holy City “with its own status internationally guaranteed.” Religious News Service reported the Vatican representative at the United Nations had circulated a note to all delegations promoting such a plan.
A Soviet commentator, V. Ardatovsky, called the papal proposal “very interesting” and urged discussion.
A subsequent report from Rome indicated that Israel would accept internationalization of the Holy Places but not of the entire city of Jerusalem.
In New York, the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in the Americas voiced the conviction “that the shrines of all faiths in the Holy Land be given an internationally guaranteed status, irrespective of the results of present efforts for a political settlement.”
In London, the internationalization of a large area of land, including Jerusalem and perhaps Bethlehem, was urged by Anglican Archbishop Frederick Donald Coggan of York, when he addressed the House of Lords.
From Cairo, Patriarch Kyrillos VI, head of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church, sent a request for an emergency meeting of the World Council of Churches’ policy-making Central Committee for a discussion of Jerusalem. Patriarch Kyrillos, strongly opposed to Israeli annexation of the Old City, sent a Coptic delegation to Geneva to confer with WCC officials about the possibility of convening the Central Committee.
Meanwhile, a Reform rabbi chided Christians for “silence” on Israel. Rabbi Balfour Brickner of New York added that in some cases what support they did give “was for the wrong reasons—anti-Communism—Red baiting.”
Celibacy Reaffirmed
Pope Paul issued a long-expected reaffirmation of required celibacy for Roman Catholic priests on June 24. The opening section of doctrinal discussion quotes the Bible 107 times. The second section, on history, notes that in the Eastern churches (including those that recognize the pope) celibacy is not required. However, men cannot marry after ordination and married priests cannot be elected bishops, the encyclical points out.
Three days after the celibacy encyclical, another papal decree implemented a decision of Vatican II by providing an order of deacons who need not intend to become priests or be unmarried. The practice of future priests serving as deacons will continue.
Deacons will be able to officiate at marriages, funerals, and burials; distribute communion; read the Bible; preach; and give administrative help. Such functions are generally encouraged for areas without an ordained priest, such as missionary frontiers.
After Ecumenics, A Storm
Queen Elizabeth attended an ecumenical service July 1 at Parliament Hill, Ottawa, in honor of Canada’s one-hundredth birthday. Eight clergymen of the Christian and Jewish faiths participated. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, the only participating layman, read a Scripture passage.
Methodist—E.U.B. Merger Wins
Merger of The Methodist Church and The Evangelical United Brethren Church into America’s biggest Protestant denomination was decreed a “statistical certainty” June 26. The United Methodist Church will be constituted in Dallas next spring.
Approval by the necessary two-thirds aggregate vote of regional conferences was never in doubt among the Methodists, where approval ran at 87 per cent. But voting in the much smaller EUB was fairly close. The vote by the Ohio Sandusky Conference last month put the total approval vote at 70 per cent—enough for success even if the one remaining conference this month votes 100 per cent against. Methodists said the new constitution abolishes their Negro jurisdiction—a feat denominational meetings have not accomplished.
A thunderstorm caused a power blackout at a Sunday service at Ottawa’s Christ Church Cathedral attended by the Queen and Prince Philip. Special music composed for the occasion could not be played, and the choir and congregation had to sing without accompaniment for most of the service. Canada’s Anglican primate, H. H. Clark, said at the start of the service that the incident was a good reminder that humans are mortal. The Queen saw no need for apologies when church officials tried to explain the embarrassing situation. She said that such mishaps are often the most memorable things about a royal visit.
California Seminary Merger?
The boards of Berkeley Baptist Divinity School and younger, more conservative California Baptist Theological Seminary last month accepted a recommendation that they merge boards and administration, and set up a ten-member study committee to work over the summer.
The initial proposal came from a special conference of West Coast American Baptist Convention leaders, who voted 53 to 1 for merger and rejected a study unit’s proposals for more informal cooperation or for sale of the BBDS campus outright. The latter, however, is still a possibility.
Merger-promoting ABC theological education chief Lynn Leavenworth emerged from the BBDS board meeting with an offer of $50,000 from headquarters if the seminary accepted the “cooperative approach.” Another $50,000 from West Coast sources was also lined up for embroiled BBDS, where enrollment has been cut in half over the past decade and is now Cal’s size. Liberal theological trends caused dissension and lack of support, culminating in the removal this year of President Robert J. Arnott.
Cal’s garrulous President C. Adrian Heaton looked for all the world like president-elect of the merged seminary as he spoke to BBDS alums at the ABC’s national meeting in Pittsburgh. But Heaton had said creedless BBDS must affirm “the historical evangelical position” before union. Cal teachers and board members annually sign a conservative doctrinal statement.
Last month, a BBDS board resolution amended to be more conservative “committed” the administration and faculty to “the truth of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, to the acceptance of the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and to the record of God’s leading his Church, coupled with an open-mindedness to the best insights of biblical and theological studies.” The statement may prove too conservative for some BBDS professors.
Baptists: Aid Pangs
After two national conferences, twenty-four regional seminars, and two years of discussion involving 7,000 people, Southern Baptists still don’t know what to do about federal aid to their colleges. Despite traditional opposition to government support, many Baptists believe the schools face disaster without a financial transfusion.
Aid was the major problem facing a four-day conference of the Baptist Education Study Task (BEST) in Nashville last month. Some 300 college experts attended by invitation.
Besides recognizing financial ills, most participants seemed to agree that college boards of trustees must decide on aid and other issues, without policy-setting from the floors of state and national conventions.
Discussion groups even eliminated from a paper three specific alternatives on federal aid: (1) complete rejection, (2) acceptance under some conditions for help in science and other secular subjects, and (3) acceptance of any aid as long as no effort is made to control the college.
Baptist Press said group reports gave no clue to the opinion on aid of those attending, though one speaker estimated three-fourths favored acceptance.
In one program, retired Texas editor E. S. James said flatly that aid is unfair, unscriptural, unconstitutional, unnecessary, and unsafe. Among aid supporters was another Texan, President Abner McCall of Baylor. In the middle was C. Emanuel Carlson of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. Carlson said churches should pay the full bill if the college’s purpose is to train church workers and leaders. But public support is appropriate, he said, if the college is designed as “a service station in the world for the meeting of human and social needs.”
Third-Class Testimony
Breaking the humdrum of congressional postal hearings, Christian Herald last month brandished a going-out-of-business editorial it theatens to print if Johnson administration rate increases go through.
“After eighty-nine years of continuous publication, you as loyal members of the Chistian Herald family must know with what heartbreak we make this sad announcement,” it began. After the histrionics, however, Herald’s complaint was little different from that of other religious journals. The monthly magazine, the biggest Protestant independent, with 400,000 circulation, just spent $175,000 to convert to ZIP code and computerize its subscriptions, which also adds $65,000 to annual costs.
On top of this, proposed postal increases would add $113,000 a year to expenses—“more than the whole editorial budget for a year—including all staff, art, and manuscript costs.”
According to Herald testimony, the proposal would mean that the increase over the three years in second-class rates for non-profit groups would be 50 per cent greater than the increase for large commercial publications. The third-class bulk rate—crucial for promo-motion, gaining new subscribers, fund-raising, and charity work—would be hiked 52 per cent in one year for non-profit magazines but only 31 per cent for commercial outfits.
Speaking for the 185 journals in Associated Church Press, Editor Henry McCorkle of the Episcopalian said the increases would kill some journals, lower the circulations of others, and force most to seek larger subsidies and curtail service and quality.
Also speaking against increases were Monsignor Terrence P. McMahon for the 142 newspapers and 355 magazines in the Catholic Press Association, Russell T. Hitt for the 165 publications in the Evangelical Press Association, and Edward H. Grusd for Jewish journals.
Fairness In The Air
The Federal Communications Commission’s “fairness doctrine” survived its first court test last month. The doctrine was challenged by radio station WGCB in Red Lion, Pennsylvania, which carries right-wing religious programs.
At issue was an attack by Billy James Hargis of “Christian Crusade” on Fred J. Cook, a reporter for the former New York World-Telegram and Sun.
The FCC requires that when a program makes a “personal attack” on a person or organization, the station owner must provide the victim a copy of the script along with “a specific offer of his station’s facilities for an adequate response.…”
WGCB contended that this requirement was unconstitutional and that broadcasters should give free time for reply only if sponsorship for the time is unavailable and the victim is proven financially unable to purchase the time.
In the ruling, the District of Columbia circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals said the fairness doctrine does not define what programs and formats stations must use, or which controversial subjects are to be dealt with, and therefore does not limit free speech.
The fairness doctrine will be one of several matters at issue in the September 11 FCC hearing in Media, Pennsylvania, concerning license renewal for station WXUR. The station is owned by Faith Theological Seminary and closely identified with Dr. Carl McIntire. McIntire contends that the FCC will use the fairness doctrine to “stop the raising of funds by religious leaders” over the radio.
