The pan-denominational charismatic movement pulled headlines last month at evangelist Morris Cerullo’s Seventh World Deeper Life Conference in San Diego. Crowds ranged from 1,200 at afternoon seminars to more than 3,000 at evening rallies. On the program were internationally known speakers, national evangelists from fifteen foreign countries, specialists (including an ex-Satanist leader), and Cerullo himself.
Cerullo, surprisingly unassuming in contrast to the image created by his flashy PR people, is perhaps better known abroad, where he spends 80 per cent of his time. His overseas campaigns have sometimes attracted as many as 100,000 to a single meeting.
Herb Ellingwood, Governor Ronald Reagan’s chief legal aide, relayed Reagan’s greetings to the San Diego gathering and told of the charismatic movement’s reach into the state capitol. “We have more Spirit-filled janitors than any capital in the world,” he declared, sparking laughter. Prayer groups, he said, are growing in all levels of the legislature from secretaries to attorneys and elected officials. He stated that Reagan is aware of what is happening spiritually and that the governor’s own Christian life is deepening. Ellingwood also laid down legal advice at a seminar for those operating hotlines and other drug-counsel ministries. He estimated that 300,000 youths have been delivered from drug abuse by the Jesus movement.
Pastor Chuck Smith of the widely known Calvary Chapel near Costa Mesa, California, told how his church had become a haven for thousands of youthful Jesus people. It began, he said, when he encountered a hippie Christian “pouring forth the love of God.” Out of that meeting sprouted a super-effective “House of Miracles” outreach ministry, headed by two teen-age evangelists. Seventeen of the twenty-one young men who accepted Christ the first week at the house are now in the ministry, said Smith. He went on to offer guidelines to churches pondering a response to the Jesus revolution.
One of the favorites of newsmen at the conference was a mobile anti-occult display, soon to make a forty-five-city tour in the United States. Its samples of voodoo oil, Satan-worship paraphernalia, and other items were explained by Michael Warnke, a naval medical technician who says he used to be a Satanist priest and leader of a 1,500-member witchcraft group.
Warnke, in an interview, said witchcraft rites include mocking the Christian communion and often end in sexual orgies. Selfishness, he explained, is taught as equivalent to holiness. His own conversion to Christ occurred after drug trips, and near suicide.
Cerullo bore down heavily on the theme that Satanic forces are loose in the nation. He urged his audience to go home and declare war on the devil in the name of Jesus. Aides handed out 20,000 copies of his new antiwitchcraft newspaper.
He also hammered home the theme of the week-long conclave, “The New Anointing Is Here,” declaring that God had promised an outpouring of his Holy Spirit so that spiritual breakthroughs comparable to the vast strides made in science and medicine would be experienced today. God’s healing power will be demonstrated in a way that will “supersede what the early church saw,” he predicted.
As if to buttress the point, a number of persons testified how they had been miraculously healed of assorted afflictions. A surgeon told how his son’s poor eyesight was instantly corrected during a Cerullo healing service. And 1,400 made decisions for Christ.
Cerullo and foreign nationals gave highlights of his international ministry, headquartered in San Diego: “30,000 ministers” trained worldwide to keep giving “the full Gospel” to their people; fifty-five crusades sponsored monthly in scores of countries; effective literature-oriented outreach in Israel.
Cerullo says that he accepted Christ at age 14 in an orthodox Jewish orphanage, and that in recent years his ministry has brought hundreds of Israelis to Christ. A Pentecostal, he estimates that 60 per cent of those in his American audiences are not old-line Pentecostals, and that up to 30 per cent are Catholics.
The Troublesome Ten
Prophecy buffs are talking about recent additions to the European Common Market that bring its membership to ten countries. Some dispensationally-minded Bible students believe that a ten-nation alliance, composed of ten nations once a part of the old Roman empire, will have a central place in a seven-year period of war and tribulation leading to Christ’s second coming to earth. They also believe, however, that the Church will be raptured from the earth before the trouble begins. The teaching is based on interpretations of passages in Daniel and Revelation.
Prophecy analyst-author J. Dwight Pentecost of Dallas Theological Seminary believes that a literal ten-nation alliance is necessary, and that the Common Market ten may or may not be the “required” ones. Because of splintered history, it may take more than ten Western nations to come up with the correct ten revived Roman powers, he says.
At any rate, some prophecy students aren’t making any long-range plans.
Handclasps And Prayers
“America needs to repent” was a note sounded repeatedly, if somewhat obliquely, at the latest of the Washington prayer breakfasts, now attended by some 3,000 influential people annually. The note was not sounded as clearly as a country preacher would give it, but most breakfasters in the huge ballroom of the most prestigious hotel in the nation’s capital should have caught it.
“We have not arrived.” said Congressman Albert H. Quie of Minnesota in opening the program. “We are a gathering of sinners.”
Board chairman Arthur F. Burns of the Federal Reserve System carried forward the theme with readings from Ecclesiastes and Micah that warn of judgment as well as offering hope.
Mayor Walter Washington pleaded for unity and reconciliation, and said he found it hard to understand why the nation finds it so hard to help those who are poor or alienated. He closed by asking the audience to join hands around the tables as an expression of spiritual determination in the presence of their leader.
President Nixon said the breakfast “symbolizes the strength of America,” adding that if participants had not recognized their shortcomings “we would not be here.” He observed that to the everlasting credit of the United States it did not use nuclear blackmail when it could have, and that “we helped our enemies until now they are our major competitors.” But he went on to deplore the fact that the two great wars in this century in which some 20 million died were fought between “Christian” nations.
“Are we on God’s side?” the President asked. He said that while he appreciated prayers for his forthcoming journeys to China and the Soviet Union, he felt that intercession ought to be made primarily “that this nation will be on God’s side.”
Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa then got up to give the closing prayer and prefaced it with a request that his hearers clasp hands again. “Jesus also stretches his hand to you,” said Hughes. “Take it! Let him into your life.”
Several cabinet members and governors were present with their wives for the February 1 event, along with a number of international dignitaries, including a leading Irish government official. Business and civic leaders, professional athletes, and noted evangelical leaders from all over the country made up the audience. Every place was taken. The Washington Hilton served a menu that featured quiche lorraine.
Billy Graham read from Philippians 2 and voiced a reminder that the Bible promises a permanent peace. Christians, he declared, will have a fourth day to celebrate along with Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, when God intervenes in human history and ushers in Utopia.
DAVID KUCHARSKY
The Jesus Movement Under Theological Scrutiny
An analysis of the Jesus people by the Archbishop of Canterbury highlighted a three-day conference in New York last month. It was the first time the contemporary phenomenon has come under scrutiny at a major theological meeting, convened in Riverside Church.
In a sermon at Lincoln Center, Archbishop Michael Ramsey cited three ways in which people today are seeking Jesus: through social action, through mystical experience, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
A number of participants seemed to presume that the Jesus movement today embraces such musical and dramatic expressions as Superstar and Godspell. Those involved deny any connection, and indeed point to profound theological differences. Some Jesus people have picketed Superstar performances.
The conference was sponsored by an Episcopal organization, the Trinity Institute. The director, Dr. Robert Terwilliger, asserted that the Jesus movement has rediscovered the historic Christ who has been rejected by the church. “The time has come to think again about the whole doctrine of redemption as it is being forced upon us,” he said. But with regard to Jesus people who emphasize the filling of the Holy Spirit, he warned that “instant experience, whether it’s sexual or religious, is transitory.”
DARRELL TURNER
Baptists, More Or Less
They’re smiling these days around American Baptist headquarters in Valley Forge. The $15.2 million budget income for 1971 was the largest in the history of the 64-year-old denomination, report officials. An economically imposed ban on sending out foreign missionaries was lifted. And a middle-of-the-road evangelical was nominated to fill the office of general secretary—the ABC’s top staff post, vacant for more than a year.
The nominee is Dr. Robert C. Campbell, dean and professor of New Testament at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, Covina, California. Nomination is tantamount to election, to be held at Denver in May.
Campbell holds degrees from Westmont College, Eastern Baptist Seminary, and the University of Southern California. Writing in his statement of faith, he says, “Our sense of estrangement is met by a vital confrontation with the living God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Meanwhile, ABC officials are pondering the significance of action taken by an ABC-related school. Twenty-year-old Eastern Baptist College (enrollment 595) on the western edge of Philadelphia has dropped its middle name. “The dropping of the word Baptist does not diminish our commitment to Jesus Christ as an evangelical and conservative institution of Christian higher education,” insisted President J. Lester Harnish. Rather, the change reflects the fact that the board, student body, faculty, and staff include many non-Baptists, he said.
Spokesmen emphasized that the change in no way dissociates the college from the ABC. “We should not, however, give the false impression of full denominational underwriting,” they added. The ABC gave only $2,000 toward the school’s $2 million budget last year, a financial officer explained, and individual ABC churches accounted for about $50,000. Actually, he commented, the denominational label hurts more than it helps. So from now on it’s simply Eastern College.
Jewish Furor: Jesus (Again)
Rabbi W. B. Silverman of Kansas City’s Temple B’nai Jehudah, one of the nation’s leading Reform congregations, believes that the best defense is an offense.
In December, responding to the Jewish students in his congregation, Silverman set up some forums on Christianity designed to help both students and adult members of his congregation defend themselves against the Jesus onrush. The first program, featuring Lyle Murphy of Calvary Bible College, led to a heated controversy among local Jews.
The editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle found Murphy’s language “offensive.” Murphy included in his speech such statements as, “The gift of life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Silverman, however, said he found Murphy tactful and dignified. Although the controversy, which made news in many of the country’s Jewish newspapers, continued through January, the congregation supported Silverman’s judgment. “We should seek the truth,” the rabbi said, “no matter how controversial it might prove.”
The temple is planning another such forum on February 23: “Jesus Freaks, Jews, and Judaism.” The panel will include members of the Jesus movement, a Jewish student, and a Protestant minister, as well as Silverman and two laymen.
Silverman claimed that his students had been “harassed and heckled” in cafeterias and school buildings by fiery young believers, some of them Jewish Christians. When asked if he had lost many young people to Christianity, Silverman replied, “A few—here and there.”
CHERYL A. FORBES
Christian Zeal Miffs Soviets
Over-eager American tourists in the Soviet Union came close to provoking an international incident last month. One was a Lutheran congressman, Earl F. Landgrebe of Indiana. Landgrebe, a Republican, said he was picked up by Soviet police and interrogated for two hours after he had distributed Scriptures.
Ten students from Oral Roberts University were detained by Soviet customs agents for six hours because they tried to bring in quantities of Christian literature and records in the Russian language.
Soviet authorities confiscated the materials the students were carrying as well as a small number of Scriptures that Landgrebe had not yet given away.
The congressman was part of a seven-member House Education Subcommittee delegation that visited the Soviet Union in January while Congress was in recess. The House members were supposed to be studying Soviet education. Landgrebe readily admitted he had given away about 300 Russian-language copies of Scripture. He said some people wept and kissed the Bibles. The night before he was to leave the Soviet Union, he said, he decided to distribute what he had left. After he gave away two copies of the Gospel of Matthew in front of a theater, a young woman who Landgrebe said was obviously shadowing him called a policeman, and the U. S. legislator was taken into custody.
No official charges were placed against Landgrebe, but the Soviet newspaper Izvestia subsequently accused him and two other subcommittee members of “promoting anti-Soviet agitation, abusing Soviet hospitality, and threatening Soviet-U. S. cultural relations.”
Congressman James H. Scheuer, a Democrat from New York was expelled after he visited several Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel. He and Congressman Alphonso Bell, a Republican from California, were accused of aiding Zionists.
Landgrebe said he distributed only Bibles because the U. S. State Department had told him beforehand that Soviet authorities were leary of the content of literature brought into the country. The Soviet government has always forbidden the importation of quantities of foreign literature except without special permission. But tourists are generally allowed to bring in several books or Bibles, even if they are to be given away. Most Americans who have visited the Soviet Union say visitors are clearly warned about the literature restrictions upon entering and are told to declare openly what printed materials they are carrying.
A spokesman for the Oral Roberts students said Soviet authorities had overlooked about a dozen Bibles and two records with Russian hymns. These, he said, were passed out to Protestant congregations in Leningrad and in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The group spent more than two weeks in the Soviet Union.
Christians who visit the Soviet Union almost invariably think of taking Scripture only in the Russian language, which is just one of a number of languages used in the Soviet Union. When they distribute Russian Scriptures in areas where another language predominates, they inadvertently aid the “Russification” promoted by the Kremlin but resisted by Soviet minority groups.
One mission source reports distributing 12,000 Russian Bibles and 182,000 Gospels in the Soviet Union in 1971, only a fraction of the total estimated input by many agencies and individuals.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Radio Network has been featuring a lengthy attack on what it calls the Roman Catholic Church’s “anti-communist campaign,” leading some observers to speculate that another anti-religion campaign has begun.
Churches And The ‘New Poor’
One year ago churches in the Seattle, Washington, area, along with two United Methodist-supported agencies, Fellowship of Christian Urban Service (FOCUS) and Ecumenical Metropolitan Ministry (EMM), formed Neighbors in Need (NiN) to help feed the 100,000 unemployed workers there.
These middle-class, highly-skilled professional people suddenly found themselves “the new poor” (as sociologists named them) when Boeing Aircraft’s work force was cut by almost two-thirds over a two-year period. Government help for Seattle, considered the area hardest hit by aerospace cutbacks, with unemployment at 12 per cent, twice as high as the national average, was almost nonexistent. Welfare officials refused to provide both food stamps and foodstuffs simultaneously to one area; “it’s never been done before,” they reasoned. Many of the unemployed couldn’t afford food stamps once unemployment compensation ended.
During 1971 NiN distributed more than $1.5 million worth of goods, often spending as much as $10–12,000 weekly. Churches and farms in the area donated some of the foodstuffs, said the Reverend Harold Perry, a United Methodist and administrative director of NiN. There have also been gifts from churches and organizations throughout the country—from New York, California, Florida, and the Midwest, he said.
Now foreign churches are getting involved. Five tons of rice was donated by Japanese Christian churches and organizations through NiN. The Japanese YMCA co-ordinated the gift with the Seattle-area YMCA, and the Reverend Sadao Ozawa of the United Church of Christ of Japan traveled to Washington on what Perry called “a mission to the various food banks throughout the state to dramatize the need for food.” Ozawa also made a symbolic donation in Seattle of the actual gift.
The Japanese gift is the first foreign aid to the depressed Seattle—and the first for the nation. But, Perry said, “there have been other inquiries. Soon we may be receiving gifts from other foreign churches.”
CHERYL A. FORBES
