A lot of ink has passed through the presses since we published a statement of purpose for CHRISTIANITY TODAY a little more than four years ago. Many of the challenges we spoke of then are still with us; some things have gotten worse; a few have gotten better; and threatening new challenges have arisen to plague the Church as well as the world.
The world is more troubled today than it was four years ago. Agnosticism, secularism, and atheistic existentialism have not abated; they have been abetted by a rising tide of interest in demonology, the occult, and star-reading. Humanism, syncretism, and universalism in the churches continue to attract the fancy of many. More and more the infallibility of Scripture is under attack within churches that once were among the strongest defenders of that viewpoint.
But there is also a positive side of the picture. In America, at least, evangelical theological seminaries are bursting at the seams. They have more students than ever before. Interest in evangelism is rising. The International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne came like a breath of fresh air at a time when thousands of overseas missionaries once supported by the world’s leading denominations had been withdrawn. The Lausanne Covenant, which articulated evangelical concern for social action as well as for evangelistic outreach, has been read with great approval around the world. The World Council of Churches will examine its propositions at its next assembly, which convenes in Nairobi this fall. The interest generated at Lausanne in world evangelization has sparked new programs and led to new forms of outreach to bring the Gospel to every creature. A continuing committee meets for the first time this month, charged with conserving and spreading what was done at the congress. Last fall in Rio de Janeiro the undiminished mass-evangelism ministry of Billy Graham reached a new high point when more than a quarter of a million people thronged to the final crusade meeting.
For several decades we have witnessed the rise and the peaking of the ecumenical movement. It has been a challenge to evangelicals outside the movement as well as to those whose denominations are directly connected with the WCC. During the past four years evangelicals in both camps have drawn closer together and have worked and cooperated with each other in ways not dreamed possible a short time ago. An impressive number of programs are being developed for the U. S. bicentennial that have substantial transdenominational backing and hold promise of gaining nationwide visibility for the churches.
But the churches, like the rest of our world, have a strong new foe to contend with. The world has been overtaken by an economic challenge that poses grave threats to the Western nations and far graver threats to the underdeveloped ones. Its severity and undoubtedly its length have been increased by the oil cartel, whose maneuvering have brought untold riches and extraordinary political clout to the Arab world. There is no Western nation that has not felt the effects of the economic crisis. Everybody is hurting. Unemployment is rising steadily, production lags, sales decline, housing construction is in a shambles.
Christian enterprises suffer along with secular ones, of course. Church offerings are down, Christian higher education is beginning to hurt, and interdenominational enterprises of various sorts are having funding difficulties. For the first time in ten years the American Bible Society sent out a strong financial appeal six weeks before year end; it needs gifts in the amount of three-quarters of a million dollars to avoid a deficit. Religious Heritage of America reported changes to reduce spending so to remain viable. Billy Graham announced plans for a cutback, not because contributions were sagging but because the maintained level of income simply did not go far enough in an age of spiraling inflation.
This has been a hard year for nearly all publications. God has graciously intervened for CHRISTIANITY TODAY and provided substantial grants that have kept us going. But we will have to make less do more in the year to come. We have been putting our house in order and have cut expenses for next year wherever it seemed possible. We look to God to move our friends to assist us. Our income comes from three sources: subscriptions, advertising, and gifts (which are tax-deductible). Readers can help us by renewing promptly, inviting their friends to subscribe, and sharing gift money with us.
To turn to another area of our plans for the year ahead: we have special issues planned on missions, Christian education, colleges, books, and seminaries. We are working on plans for the Bicentennial. Among the matters we expect to address during the year are the basis of religious authority, the inroads of Marxist thought among evangelicals, the effects of Bultmannism on theological education, the present state of the charismatic movement, the unity of the churches, the after-effects of Lausanne, social action with regard to hunger, ecology, abortion, the Nairobi assembly of the World Council of Churches, and what is happening in Israel in relation to biblical prophecy.
It is an exciting and challenging age in which to live. But it is also a dark, dangerous one. God has never promised his people an easy journey. He has, however, assured us of a happy landing. Our thoughts turn to the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 8. He speaks of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, and martyrdom. Then he proclaims: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” Let that be our slogan in 1975.
Walter Lippmann
As the thinking man’s journalist, Walter Lippmann had no peer in modern times. Lippmann, who died December 14 at the age of eighty-five, wrote with a breadth and depth that the world needs badly from its chroniclers. True, he seemed to vacillate between political liberalism and conservatism, and was not known for any religious posture (his parents were children of German-Jewish immigrants). Much of his approach to journalism could nonetheless serve as a model for aspiring Christian reporters, for he pursued the great issues of the day to their roots.
Lippmann’s most celebrated foray into religion was his commentary on J. Gresham Machen in A Preface to Morals. This was back at the height of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, and Lippmann praised Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism as “the best popular argument produced by either side.” “The liberals have yet to answer Dr. Machen,” asserted Lippmann, “when he says that ‘the Christian movement at its inception was not just a way of life in the modern sense, but a way of life founded upon a message. It was based, not upon mere feeling, not upon a mere program of work, but on an account of facts.’ ” Lippmann sharply criticized H. L. Mencken, whose characterization of the Scopes trial drew offensive scorn upon fundamentalists.
Machen’s arguments notwithstanding, Lippmann’s lifelong hero was the pragmatist William James, who argued that “if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.” He also sat at the feet of George Santayana, the Spanish Catholic philosopher who wove together such diverse philosophical themes as naturalism, Platonic realism, and idealism. Evangelical orthodoxy was not destined to come out of such a mix.
A Man Of Too Many Gifts?
Occasionally a genius comes along who wants, instead of building on the past, to start all over. The late Albert Schweitzer, born in Alsace 100 years ago this month, was such a man. He challenged a host of traditional notions (and replaced some with paradoxes). For this alone he merits intent study by those who do want to learn from history.
Schweitzer is now being hailed as a forerunner of the death-of-God, secular, and hope theologies and the father of ecological concern, among other things. It is doubtful that he would feel comfortable in all these schools, but that is the price one pays for iconoclasm.
Schweitzer, the son of a Lutheran pastor, held doctorates in theology, philosophy, and medicine. He deserves continuing esteem for many achievements. His life can serve as a model against materialism. He was also a great organist and a master organ builder, and the author of what is still regarded as a classic study of Bach. In the more than fifty years he devoted to his mission hospital at Lambarene he tried to pull all his expertise and insight together in a reverence-for-life ethic around which he felt that all else properly revolves. The free spirit of Schweitzer suddenly appears as a prisoner of space and time. His Christology was defective, and he misunderstood the true nature of scriptural redemption. Perhaps he had too many gifts to bridle.
Presbyterian Precedent
The Permanent Judicial Commission of the United Presbyterian Church has, for the first time, told a presbytery it cannot ordain a candidate whom it had already voted to ordain. So Walter W. Kenyon, a graduate of Pittsburgh Seminary, has been advised to choose “some other fellowship whose policy is in harmony with [his] conscience.” Kenyon had told his presbytery that he believes the church is wrong in ordaining women and that he would not officiate at such an ordination, although he was willing to work with ordained women and would not try to prevent a woman from being ordained (as either a teaching or a ruling elder).
The Permanent Judicial Commission was well within its rights and the church’s constitution when it decided that Kenyon’s views are contrary to that constitution. But some larger questions remain. The United Presbyterian Church has become a broadening church in which opinions that run counter to the church’s confessions abound. In this fellowship may be found Unitarians, humanists, and disbelievers in some of the church’s clearest confessional teachings about the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and his vicarious atonement—not to mention its standards about the full veracity of Scripture. It is of more than passing interest that such a broad church would seize upon this one item of dissent and leave untouched others that pertain dynamically to its theological foundations.
Will the United Presbyterian Church now seek to defrock all its ordained ministers and ruling elders who believe that women should not be ordained? And will it do something about those who are flying in the face of its constitution by believing and preaching views that are explicitly contrary to its confessional standards?
Innovation Is Still In
During the late 1960s, when young people were getting unprecedented attention, many churches began using audio-visual equipment and techniques. Now that things have settled down somewhat, the churches may be putting a damper on teaching innovations. If so, it is a pity, because modern technical advances can really help to capture the minds, imaginations, and souls of twentieth-century persons for the sake of the Gospel. Certainly anyone in business will vouch for the fact that such things as slides, charts, and films can enhance sales meetings and retailing endeavors.
Churches that want to develop an audio-visual program, which often can be done without great expense, would do well to get You and Communication in the Church, edited by B. F. Jackson, Jr. (Word), and AudioVisual Idea Book For Churches, by Mary and Andrew Jensen (Augsburg). The former concentrates on skills in spoken and written communication, and includes one chapter each on audio tape and slides. It should be read first, since it deals largely with theory. The second contains charts, diagrams, and instructions on how to use various techniques.
The Jensens conclude their book with a chapter on freeing imagination:
Many people are caught in webs of stifling tradition and suffer from chronic cases of “We never did it that way before”.… Most people seem to need a nudge (or even a shove) to think, dream, imagine, and muse, “I wonder what would happen if.…
These books can provide that needed nudge.
Equal Justice For Gun-Runners
Hilarion Capucci was recently sentenced to twelve years in prison for knowingly and repeatedly smuggling guns and explosives into Israel to be used by anti-government terrorists. The sentence is mild enough, especially when compared to the punishments meted out in numerous other countries for completely non-violent opposition to authority.
What makes Capucci’s case noteworthy is that he is the head of one segment of Roman Catholics in Israel and its occupied territory, a segment that includes less than 5 per cent of the professing Christians in the land (see “Grenades in the Archbishop’s Mercedes,” by Lester Kinsolving, October 11, 1974, issue, page 15). Because of his position, the government gave him greater freedom to travel in and out of the country, and the border guards subjected his car to less scrutiny. This was probably a mistake. Religious leaders are deserving of no more respect—or censure—from secular authorities than persons in other walks of life. Nor should the state, in the application of its laws, hold religious persons to higher—or lower—standards of conduct than it does others.
Capucci, who is called “archbishop of Jerusalem” (one of many bearing such a title), is not the first religious leader to be involved in extreme “political” action. Zwingli died on a field of battle, for example, and an Episcopal bishop was a general in the Confederate army. Although we deplore Capucci’s actions, we do not mean to suggest that religious leaders—like business, academic, professional, and other kinds of leaders—may not be called on at times to become very involved in the struggles of society. What religious leaders must remember is that they ought not to expect any special immunities.
We do not endorse the restraints on freedom of religion mandated or tolerated by the Israeli authorities, but we do endorse the right of those authorities to try alleged gun-runners as such without reference to their other occupations.
On Baring Our Soles
Footwashing has failed to achieve its proper place in the Christian world. It certainly has never been a universal practice within the church. Even among the gospel writers only John took note of the incident in which Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. The Apostle Paul mentions it only in his first letter to Timothy—and then just in passing.
We need a campaign to give visibility to this cause. Perhaps the Advertising Council would agree to make it a part of its “Religion in American Life” program. No doubt Proctor and Gamble would underwrite the cost.
A more imposing name like “podaniptosis” would give footwashing a little more class and make it easier to promote. We could commission some hungry composer to produce a hymn in its honor. A real breakthrough would be to get Footwashing Eve included on the liturgical calendar.
To capture the public’s imagination we could have a competition to find the world’s most humble Christian. The winner would wash the feet of the Archbishop of Canterbury on network television.
Picture, if you will, the competition itself: Christians all over the world treating one another with brotherly love, bearing one another’s burdens. Just imagine it—me putting your interest ahead of my own!
Oh well, it probably wasn’t a very good idea anyway.
