America celebrated her 194th birthday with great vigor, and the high point of the commemoration was a one-hour inter-faith religious service held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.
The preacher, Billy Graham, cited the influence of “a relatively small extremist element, both to the left and right,” and called upon all Americans “to stop this polarization before it is too late.”
Thousands attended the service, and additional millions watched it on TV (all three major networks carried it live). Perhaps never before has a religious event been seen simultaneously by so many.
The service was part of this year’s special “Honor America Day” observed on July 4. It may have marked the start of a resurgence of authentic patriotism. Some critics charged that the celebration had overtones of the political right, even though it enjoyed high-level bipartisan sponsorship.
After Graham’s sermon, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen came to give the benediction but instead uttered some significant pleas. He urged the start of small prayer and Bible-study cells across the nation and proposed the erection (“either physically or symbolically”) of a West Coast counterpart of the Statue of Liberty. This new “statue of responsibility” would be to remind Americans that they have no rights without corresponding duties. Sheen also said, “We need to sacrifice, reach into our pocket to help the poor, the economically distressed.”
The service took place under a scorching sun with the temperature climbing well into the nineties. A number of youthful dissenters waded in the Reflecting Pool that stretches between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Occasionally they chanted obscenities.
Graham declared that “we have raised our hands and our voices in protest over many issues and many causes during the past few years. Why not raise them now to God?”
The 51-year-old Baptist evangelist added that “what our forefathers began we must work to fulfill.… Their vision must be our vision, and we must pursue it.” The climax came with his quotation of an exhortation from Winston Churchill that prompted a cheering, standing ovation from the crowd: “Never give in! Never! Never! Never! Never!”
Because his time was limited, Graham omitted a few portions of the address he had prepared. In actual delivery, he gave six reasons why America should be honored (see text, page 20). A seventh reason in the original text: because America “has never sought to use her tremendous power to take over other nations.”
The service included a reading from Leviticus 19 by Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. He ended the reading with verse 18, which calls for loving one’s neighbor as oneself.
Two black Baptist clergymen were on the program. Dr. E. V. Hill of Los Angeles presided, and Dr. E. L. Harrison of Washington read from Matthew 5.
The service drew support from a number representing religious traditions that do not normally feel comfortable in interreligious activities.
Pat Boone led the crowd in singing the national anthem, and Kate Smith brought back memories with her famous rendition of “God Bless America.” The Centurymen, a Southern Baptist male chorus, sang “America, the Beautiful.” The U. S. Army Band played.
Hill introduced Colonel Frank Borman as the “first man to pray publicly in outer space.” Borman, an Episcopalian, was the commander of Apollo 8, whose crew read the Genesis account during their Christmas, 1968, flight around the moon. He prayed, “Give us all the moral courage we need to stand for what is true and right.… Help us make this world a good earth and prevent us from turning it into a moon of desolation.” Also on the program was J. Willard Marriott, owner of a large hotel and restaurant chain, who was chairman of the executive committee for Honor America Day. Marriott is a Mormon.
Crowd estimates ranged from 10,000 to 35,000. The throng that gathered for an entertainment extravaganza at the Washington Monument that same evening numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The only significant reference to deity in that program was the hope expressed by comedian Red Skelton that the words “under God” would not cause the Pledge of Allegiance to be barred from the nation’s schools.
DAVID KUCHARSKY
No Consensus Among ‘Believers’
Some eighty members of a score of religious groups ranging from Landmark Baptists and Churches of Christ to Hicksite Quakers and anti-war Liberated Churches gathered late in June for the second triennial Believers’ Church Conference. The meeting took place at United Church of Christ-related Chicago Theological Seminary. Mennonites and Dunker Brethren were especially numerous; blacks, women, and members of such twentieth-century renewal movements as Pentecostalism and the Bible Churches were not.
The conference was for individuals, not official representatives. It provided a useful forum for airing divergent views. No resolutions or statements were passed, nor was any consensus obvious on the three daily topics for discussion: the disciplined church, conflict within the congregation, and tension in society. The only agreement was that the church was not intended to encompass all those born in a given territory.
Ashland (Ohio) Theological Seminary will probably sponsor another such conference in three years. Ashland is the seminary of the Brethren Church, a member of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Requartering The Sunday School
Next summer will be a short one for Sunday-school quarterlies. At present, most publishers of Sunday-school lessons break the year into quarters that begin in January, April, July, and October. In 1971, their July-August-September “quarter” will last only through August. The next quarter will begin in September; subsequent ones will begin in December, March, and June.
The new plan, which will conform the Sunday-school year to the public-school year, is “more educationally sound,” says a David C. Cook Publishing Company executive. Some denominational publishers already operate on this basis, he noted; it provides more natural breaks during summer vacation months.
One stimulus for the industry-wide rearrangement in 1971 is the National Council of Churches’ change in its International Uniform Lessons, outlines of biblical passages on which many Sunday-school curricula for all age groups are based.
The Sunday School World, one of the oldest commentaries on the Uniform outline series, will be published by the Evangelical Foundation beginning this fall. The foundation now publishes Eternity magazine and produces the radio “Bible Study Hour.” It will take over the Sunday School World and an associated publication, the Adult Bible Study Book, from the American Sunday School Union.
Turning The Tundra
Queen Elizabeth, at the outset of the first royal tour of the Canadian Arctic, broke ground this month for an Anglican cathedral at Frobisher Bay. The Queen acted as titular head of the Church of England.
The new 350-seat structure, to be named after St. Jude, will serve as the cathedral church for the Diocese of the Arctic, largest in the world (2¼ million square miles). Its modern design, appropriately enough, is patterned after an igloo.
The Queen and her family came to Canada to help commemorate the centennials of the Northwest Territories and Manitoba. Her visit serves to focus attention upon the great potential of Canada’s vast northland. Frobisher Bay, located on Baffin Island within 200 miles of the Arctic Circle north of Labrador, is the largest Eskimo community in Canada, with a population of 1,200.
Several weeks earlier the triennial Synod of the Arctic was held in the Baffin Island settlement of Pangnirtung. In conjunction with the synod, Anglican evangelist Marney Patterson held a five-day evangelistic crusade during which ninety-three first-time professions of faith were recorded. Patterson went to Pangnirtung at the request of Bishop Donald Marsh. The town has about 600 inhabitants.
New English Merger Plan
When the Church of England vote last summer was not sufficient for acceptance of the plan for union with the Methodists, there was great disappointment in establishment circles. Coupled with this was some recrimination against the alliance of Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals that had caused the defeat. “Let the dissentients tell us what their scheme is,” challenged the archbishop of Canterbury.
Four of them have done just that in the 221-page book Growing into Union, subtitled “Proposals for Forming a United Church in England” (S.P.C.K., 18s.). Two of the authors are evangelicals (Dr. J. I. Packer and the Reverend Colin Buchanan), two are Anglo-Catholics (Bishop G. D. Leonard and Professor E. L. Mascall).
In approaching unity they have as a matter of principle turned their backs on bilateral schemes; they felt they had “no particular reason for including Methodists rather than others.” Their book has been built up in the face of officialdom which has “frequently told us that those who favored the [original] scheme could never be interested in alternatives.” (Methodist willingness was further reiterated last month; Anglicans are due to discuss the matter again in assembly later this year.)
The new plan outlined by the rebel four is based on four principles: integration will result in an episcopally ordained ministry; ordination is for life; there will be a single class of ministers (i.e., opposed to the South India pattern, which provided for episcopal and non-episcopal ministries); and uniting ministries cannot be regarded as separate from uniting churches. The new united church would grow up between existing denominations, through accessions from existing congregations, and would continue to grow until participating denominations disappeared and a new English church replaced them.
The new scheme has been received so far with coolness by Anglicans and has been strongly opposed by Methodist leaders.
J. D. DOUGLAS
Religion In Transit
Some 13,500 Baptist young people paraded through Fort Worth to open a two-day evangelism conference. The city dimmed its lights for the youth and they switched on flashlights for their march.
Dr. Hycel B. Taylor has been added to the faculty of Garrett Theological Seminary with the responsibility for “integrating relevant aspects of the black experience into the total curriculum.” Taylor says the black man “must redefine English so that it can authentically express his own experience. I find this can best be done using poetry.”
A common campus will be developed by the Christian (Disciples) Seminary and St. Maur’s (Roman Catholic) Seminary. The schools are located in northwest Indianapolis, separated by the White River.
A Roman Catholic lay group that claims a membership of 12,000 has expressed opposition to state aid to parochial schools. The National Association of Laymen also seeks democratization of the church and a lay voice in financial decisions.
The eighty-first international convention of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) stressed social concern by electing three Negroes to key offices this month: the chairman and a woman (the first) member of the Executive Council, and the chairman of the Commission on Social Concerns. The 20,000 delegates also voted to join the Key ’73 evangelism outreach.
World Scene
More than 2,300 made decisions for Christ at the outset of a series of Baptist evangelistic campaigns in Asia. Rallies were held in Viet Nam, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.
In a significant attempt to promote authentically biblical scholarship, a new school called the Free Evangelical Theological Academy will open in Basel, Switzerland, this fall. Its founding is attributable to the thought and enterprise of Dr. Samuel Kulling, noted scholar and outstanding proponent of the reliability of the Pentateuch. A number of well-known figures in German evangelical church life have joined in the enterprise.
The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board has designated two new mission fields: the West Indies island of Barbados, and Surinam, on the northern coast of South America. The board previously announced its intention to send missionaries to Laos and now has dispatched two couples from Louisiana to Vientiane.
Personalia
The Reverend Marco Depestre of Haiti will be presented the prestigous Upper Room Award for 1970. He is a Methodist clergyman, agronomist, and editor of the French and Creole editions of The Upper Room, said to be the world’s most widely used devotional guide. Depestre will be honored at the annual Upper Room Citation Dinner, to be held in Kingston, Jamaica, October 13.
Rear Admiral Francis L. Garrett, a United Methodist, has become Navy chief of chaplains, succeeding Rear Admiral James W. Kelly, a Southern Baptist. Garrett, 51, is a native of South Carolina and has a reputation as an outstanding preacher.
Rabbi Bernard J. Bamberger of New York was elected president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, international arm of Reform and Liberal Jews.
Dr. David K. Winter has been named dean of the faculty at Whitworth College. He holds a doctorate in anthropology and sociology from Michigan State, where he has been serving as an associate dean, and is a former faculty member at Wheaton College.
Dr. William A. Morrison resigned as general secretary of the United Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. His resignation becomes effective next February 15, but he has a leave of absence in the interim. Morrison’s resignation was said to be prompted by his desire to free the church to select the leadership that will best fit developing new structures.
Jerry Ballard has been named director of communications for World Vision. He was in charge of communications for Free Will Baptist Foreign Missions.
Chaplain Arthur Weaver of St. Petersburg, Florida, received the Dwight L. Moody Award for “excellence in Christian literature” last month at the eighth annual Billy Graham School of Christian Writing in Minneapolis. Moody Press director Peter Gunther presented the award at the closing banquet, attended by 197 writers.
Retired Episcopal bishop Henry I. Louttit was married this month to Mrs. Elizabeth S. Harms of West Palm Beach, Florida. He had been a widower for two years, Mrs. Marms a widow for five years.
The Reverend James R. Staples, editor of the Arizona Baptist Beacon, was named president of California Baptist College in Riverside. Staples is a former president of the Arizona Baptist Convention.
The first black girl to compete for the title of Miss America is a Lutheran. Cheryl Adrienne Browne, 19, belongs to St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Jamaica, Queens, New York, and attends Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She was named Miss Iowa last month and thus qualified for the annual beauty pageant in Atlantic City in September.
Dr. Arthur R. McKay, a Presbyterian, was chosen president of the Colgate Rochester Divinity School complex, traditionally associated with American Baptists. McKay has been president of McCormick (Presbyterian) Seminary for thirteen years.
