Where Have All The Artists Gone?
Last year, artists at a New York exhibition displayed their “worst work,” in order to question the basis of taste in Western culture. One pornographic poem was covered with a paper curtain that said, “Look at your own risk.”
In Europe a fifty-five-minute documentary on the German Richard Strauss showed the composer’s wife being raped and murdered and a horde of sex-mad nuns attacking the hero. After protests had been rejected, the author said: “Thank God there is still such a thing as free expression.”
At this year’s Monte Carlo TV Festival, one entry was Funeral Games, a play in which a bogus priest seduces penitent ladies, steals from the offering box, and is accused of murder and adultery.
In California the erotic revue Oh! Calcutta!, featuring simulated love-making in the nude, was raided by police, and several actors were arrested. Undeterred, author Kenneth Tynan is said to have promised the show would be “more perverse and decadent” for the London opening this month.
Benjamin Spock, for long an avowed “uncompromising civil libertarian,” now condemns recent trends and the courts’ acceptance of “shock obscenity” and complains that some sophisticated judges are afraid of being considered illiberal. So too are certain churchmen.
I think that Frank Gaebelein is right in suggesting an aesthetic counterpart of Gresham’s Law, and that bad art does drive out good, but too often we get resigned and assume the situation is irreversible. Christian condemnation is something we are good at, but, like the former bishop of Woolwich, we are not so hot on constructive thinking. Condemnation, like patriotism, is not enough.
In a fascinating book called Dreams and Dream Life published eighty years ago, the South African Olive Schreiner has this moving passage. I quote it without comment: “I thought I stood in Heaven before God’s throne, and God asked me what I had come for. I said I had come to arraign my brother Man ‘because he is not worthy, and … my hands are pure.’ I showed them. God said, ‘How is this?’ I said, ‘Dear Lord, the streets on earth are full of mire. If I should walk straight on in them my outer robe might be besotted, you see how white it is! Therefore I pick my way.’ God said, ‘On what?’ I was silent, and I let my robe fall. I wrapped my mantle about my head. I went out softly. I was afraid that the angels would see me.”
EUTYCHUS IV
Money To Learn By
Just a word of deep personal appreciation for the wonderful lead article relative to tax dollars for Christian higher education (July 3). Mr. Cattell has certainly stated the issue as succinctly as possible. I particularly appreciate his clear-cut delineation between the secular and the truly Christian institution.
EDWARD G. COOKE, JR.
Christian Reformed Church
West Sayville, N. Y.
Here we go again, proposing that the government provide a solution! A tax credit would be nice, but I balk at student grants unless accompanied by an obligation upon the student to pay a small additional percentage of tax in the future to liquidate the grant.… It will enlarge the opportunity for the immature to continue their immaturity for four more years.
KEITH MISEGADES
Arlington, Va.
As an alternative I would like to propose a “pay before you go” tuition credit plan. The essence of the plan is that the parent … of the prospective Christian-college student would take the money which would otherwise be invested in a savings or other institution to be used eventually for payment of college tuition and send it directly to the Christian college of his choice instead. The college would credit a reasonable interest which would accumulate with the principal, and the total principal plus interest would be credited toward ultimate payment of tuition. Transfer of tuition credit between Christian colleges would be arranged to allow for a change in the selection of colleges. Also, an arrangement would be made to permit refunding in the unlikely event that the prospective student did not eventually attend any of the Christian colleges participating in the plan.…
The plan would provide the Christian college with instant cash … for building and otherwise strengthening the college. The parent would, while setting aside money for the education of the student, be making a real contribution to Christian education and therefore the work of Christ.
FRANK E. JONES
Bethesda, Md.
President Cattell, in my opinion, has not matured as far past the Maginot Line level of spiritual perception as he imagine-ohs! Underlying his argument is the desperate evangelical cliche that God has restricted the performance of his will in an individual’s life to correspond to the type of educational institution he attends.
After a quarter century of teaching in both Christian and secular institutions, I find my own impartial list of pros and cons weighs heavily in favor of the state—provided of course that the divine order of Christian witness through first the home and second the church is observed. A school is primarily neither an instrument of evangelization nor an intensive-care unit for weak believers, a sort of extended maternity ward. Nowhere are we instructed to teach students out of the world, but to assist them in discovering their appointed places in the world. Miracles still happen when Christian teachers take their places on the firing line with the Sword of the Lord instead of in the sick bay armed with a bedpan. Worldly students are infinitely more receptive to the Gospel than are sanctified saints of one another. It is only Christ-in-the-heart which attracts, and the greatest power of light is manifest in most absolute darkness.
J. FURMAN MILLER
Chairman, English Dept.
Athens College
Athens, Ala.
Of Bans And Brands
Thank you for your most excellent editorial on “The Responsibilities of Denominational Publishers” (July 3), which defended Southern Baptist Convention action in withdrawing the Broadman Commentary volume. I am a little tired of professors, pastors, and religious publishers who are always ready to brand Bible-believing people who have deep convictions about the teaching of God’s word as bigoted, illiterate witch-hunters. If the “liberals” are so broad-minded and so willing for all to express their convictions, why are they so anxious to censure us and call us names when we express our opinions and demand that teachers and writers who represent us follow some decent guidelines when writing or speaking for us?
BILL HARTLEY
First Baptist Church
Key West, Fla.
It must be a sad day for the dedicated professors in Southern Baptist colleges and seminaries as they ponder the action of the SBC in banning the Genesis-Exodus volume of the Broadman Bible Commentary. (“Southern Baptists on the Spot,” July 3). I purchased that book and found it quite conservative in light of the advances in biblical scholarship, but I was pleased with the effort to bring Southern Baptists closer to the realities of modern knowledge.
Unfortunately, the retreat of convention commissioners in withdrawing the volume indicates that these Baptist brethren have moved very little in their theological thinking since they banned the Elliott book (Message of Genesis) a few years ago.
Of course, time is on the side of the progressives since the contents of these volumes have been standard fare at SBC seminaries for at least a decade and will continue to be included in the training of the ministers who attend them.
JAMES A. ROHNE
Asst. Minister
First Presbyterian Church
Charlottesville, Va.
The Fall And All
I did enjoy Mr. Lockerbie’s commentary on “The Theater of Deceit” (July 3). But I have one small quarrel with his analysis of Easy Rider. What Mr. Lockerbie identifies as “Christian” in the film struck me as much vaguer and more typically modern than that. The riders are most delighted with the simple existence of the commune or the rancher because it is so close to nature. In a Rousseauesque series of scenes, the film glorifies the unsophisticated life as the sinless life …
It is a pattern of thought typical of many of my students. They want to believe in man as unfallen and innocent, and they want to equate all ideas of God in a vaguely benevolent and democratic theology. They long for a mystic experience, but will seek it in a pot party run by the local guru. They want wisdom, but shun Christian Scriptures while hanging on every word uttered by sham prophets of Zen. In short, they thirst for the living water, but reject it because it satisfied their parents—middle-class capitalists who pollute the atomsphere and accept the corrupt system.
NANCY M. TISCHLER
Professor of English and Humanities
Capitol Campus
Pennsylvania State University
Middletown, Pa.
I resented the article! I get enough of that junk in the magazines of today; in a Christian magazine, I see no need for that article and wonder how it got by your censor.… Imagine going to the slop trough to be further demoralized through an article read in your magazine!… By the way, where is your censor, and who is he?…
We have been in the Lord’s work for over thirty-eight years, so covet the very best for the printed page … to guide faltering footsteps heavenward!
POLLY BURRIS
Long Beach, Calif.
Couple Of The Century
The reference to the nude couple receiving communion beats all (Religion in Transit, July 3). For my part it is the “sacrilege of the century.” I am amazed that God did not strike dead on the spot both the couple and the officiating clergyman. Just one more proof of the “long-suffering” of God!
I. ROBERT WANNER
Church of the Nazarene
Bloomsburg, Pa.
Dead And Choking
In “Moment of Decision” (June 5) you speak of the danger of the United Presbyterian Church committing spiritual suicide by such actions as adopting the report on “Sexuality and the Human Community.” And you add, “Perhaps there will come a time when those faithful to Scripture will be disciplined for upholding the Bible against the unbiblical pronouncements of their church.”
Let me remind you that Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, and others were disciplined out of the church in 1936 for exactly this reason. They refused to obey the 1934 Mandate, which placed the duty of supporting the regular boards and agencies of that church on a level with participation at the Lord’s Table. That unbiblical pronouncement is still very enforceable. We argue that it was in 1936 that that church committed spiritual suicide. The new sex code (which was adopted, with a disclaimer added as a sop to the conservatives) simply illustrates how spiritually dead the church already is.
EDWARDS E. ELLIOTT
Garden Grove Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Garden Grove, Calif.
“Sexuality and the United Presbyterians” and “United Presbyterians: Dropping the Traditional” (June 19) are sufficient evidence that Dr. Carl McIntire is correct in his separationist movement.
IGNATIUS DI GUARDIA
Holbrook, N. Y.
As a visitor to the United Presbyterian General Assembly recently held in Chicago, I noted very severe tensions, almost irreconcilable polarization, as to the role of the Church in our contemporary society.
I feel that one of the most urgent responsibilities of the organized church—from the session to the General Assembly—is to see that all the proceedings and interpretations of the Chicago assembly are intelligently and coolly presented to the membership of the churches. And this presentation should be more than a commissioner’s report from the pulpit or a reminder to read the General Assembly report in one of the church papers.
If this is not done sanely and intelligently, I fear that the United Presbyterian Church will be strangled by its inability to bridge the gap between “front office” and the laity of the local congregation and could choke to death on hot-headed words by uninformed, partially informed, and misinformed people.
RUSSELL E. HALL
Western Springs, Ill.
