Alone in the twilight of the fading year, before handing it over at last to the historians, a religion reporter is inclined to sort through the events and developments of those twelve months, pondering what was significant and what was not. The selection process is neither simple nor necessarily clear-cut. Significance, as beauty, often is in the eyes of the beholder.
There were a number of important religion stories in 1974, some involving or affecting millions of people, some representing milestones in church history.
One of the top stories was the emergence of a markedly evangelical awareness in national life amid the ruins of Watergate: wide attention given
Charles Colson’s conversion and the spiritual experiences of other Watergate figures, Iowa Senator Harold Hughes’s decision to enter full-time Christian service, the near-revival atmosphere of the National Prayer Breakfast, President Ford’s evangelical faith and his association with evangelist-film producer Billy Zeoli, Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s conversion, and the spread of the prayer movement in the nation’s capital. Millions of Americans were exposed to a clear evangelical witness in the accompanying press coverage.
(Ford’s friends attest to the sincerity of his faith and his growth in it. Last month the presidential family hosted Francis and Edith Schaeffer of L’Abri at a private dinner. As national woes mount this year, Ford may be more vocal in calling Americans to a deeper spiritual commitment.)
On the denominational front, the struggle over women’s place in the church was a prominent issue. Most of the headline stories were devoted to the revolt in the Episcopal Church, where a handful of deaconesses say they are now ordained priests and the bishops say they are not. In the face of spreading clamor and impending disciplinary trials, the church may be forced to deal with the matter this year instead of waiting until the 1976 triennial assembly. Prognosis: women will be permitted ordination to the priesthood.
For many denominations and church organizations, 1974 brought a budget crunch, cutbacks, and restructure. In light of current worldwide economic conditions, things will get worse before they get better, and more churches and para-church groups will feel the pinch.
Another big story in 1974 concerned the global response by Christians to the famine-stricken people of Africa and southern Asia and to the victims of hurricane Fifi in Central America. The worst is yet to come, say relief specialists. Hundreds of thousands may die of malnutrition and starvation in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan this year. More than ever, churches will be called on to help solve the world food crisis.
The big topic of the year was evangelism. The International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne brought 4,000 Christian leaders together, and its effect will be felt for years to come. (This month the Lausanne continuation committee convenes in Mexico City to map preliminary ongoing strategy.) Congresses on evangelism were held in Japan and Spain. Evangelism was the main subject of the Catholic synod of bishops at Rome. Some 300,000 gathered in Seoul, Korea, for Campus Crusade for Christ’s Explo ’74, a week of training in evangelism. Evangelist Billy Graham celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary in big-crowd evangelism (and drew big crowds in major crusades in the U. S. and Brazil).
An important but under-reported story involved a paradox of sorts: surging church growth in Third World nations and eastern Europe despite persecution and severe hardships. The majority of evangelical Christians now reside in the Third World. In some countries (Chad for one), cultural-identity movements with pagan trappings have been a source of trouble for believers. In South Korea, protests against restrictions on freedom have landed some church leaders in jail.
During 1974 millions of Americans got better acquainted with some high-living cultists: Guru Maharaj Ji, Sun Myung Moon (who heralds a Korean Christ), and Herbert and Garner Ted Armstrong. Jesus people harried Moon; defections plagued the Armstrongs.
It was the year some large evangelical churches encountered large financial problems. Calvary Temple in Denver filed for bankruptcy, Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, was placed in virtual receivership, and evangelist Rex Humbard’s Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio, barely escaped bankruptcy.
A public-school textbook controversy, led by church people, erupted in West Virginia. It sparked textbook feuds elsewhere.
Other significant religion stories of the year include:
• Church involvement in the permissive-abortion issue;
• Trends toward a denominational or doctrinal basis of fellowship among groups within the charismatic movement, fragmenting it somewhat;
• The ongoing clash over doctrine and policy in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod;
• An evangelical, Donald Coggan, elevated as Archbishop of Canterbury;
• An emphasis on demons and exorcism.
Many people will remember 1974 as a bleak year that began with a shortage of energy and ended with a shortage of money. But in between there were some exciting things—exciting to a religion reporter, at least.
AN EYE FOR DETAIL
In their workshops for writers, renowned Christian authors John and Elizabeth Sherrill describe some of the difficult types of persons they’ve had to interview. One type of person has no mind for detail, they say, citing Corrie ten Boom as an illustration. While writing The Hiding Place, they asked what a certain prison guard looked like.
“Well, she was just—a guard,” replied Miss ten Boom. The Sherills say they had to coax and tug to get all the details.
One day the Sherrills received a post card from Miss ten Boom, who had gone on a visit to Siberia with “Brother Andrew” van der Byl, another Sherrill subject (God’s Smuggler). Duly noted Miss ten Boom:
“I am sitting in a hotel room on Easter Day. The room is fourteen feet six by ten feet. The curtains are light blue. The rug has a pattern on it that reminds me of roses. Am I not a good girl? Love, Corrie.”
Not Exempt
Strange bedfellows were apparent among the dozen or so religious groups on a list of ninety-nine organizations kept under surveillance by a special tax unit of the Internal Revenue Service during the Nixon administration. Some of the groups claimed they were harassed by the IRS after the unit was set up in 1969 allegedly to keep an eye on tax-exempt “subversives,” “militants,” and others.
Those listed included: the National Council of Churches, Billy James Hargis’s Christian Echoes ministry, the Black Muslims, Edgar Bundy’s Church League of America, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), Carl Mclntire’s Christian Beacon ministry, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Founding Church of Scientology, and a Unitarian body. Other well-known groups ranged from the late H. L. Hunt’s Life Line Foundation and the John Birch Society to the Maoist-oriented Progressive Labor Party and the American Nazi Party.
Liberating The Poor
A World Council of Churches Consultation on Development, held at Montreaux, Switzerland, and attended by 110 church people from fifty-two countries, called on the WCC’s 271 member denominations around the world to become more closely identified with the struggles of poor people. Such identity may mean supporting liberation movements against repressive structures of power, said a consultation report.
“A deeper understanding of liberation than that which is expressed in overspiritualized theological interpretations of salvation is needed if churches are to live by identification with the poor,” it went on.
It called on the WCC to ensure that poor people are represented in its decision-making structures and to “reinforce the image of speaking out of its roots in Christian faith rather than projecting the solutions of the secular world.”
Hosting The Wcc
The Reverend Lawi Imathiu was recently named a member of Kenya’s Parliament by President Jomo Kenyatta. Imathiu is head of the 18,000-member Methodist Church of Kenya, chairman of the National Christian Council of Kenya, and chairman of the host committee for the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi next Fall. Kenya Presbyterian executive John Gatu, chairman of the All Africa Conference of Churches, a Lausanne participant, and a leading advocate of the missionary moratorium concept, is arrangements secretary of the upcoming WCC meeting.
Scotland: The Flickering Flame
Church unity hopes in Scotland flickered, then flared with two recent developments. First, leaders of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) announced the Kirk will withdraw from talks on unity with the Episcopal Church in Scotland (Anglican). They said an impasse had been reached in the ten-year-long talks and minor unity proposals had failed. Talks, however, between these two churches, the Churches of Christ, the Congregational Union, the Methodist Church, and the United Free Church will continue. These talks are aimed at the creation of a united church.
Last month a committee representing the six denominations reported it could find no reason why differing customs of baptism and the Lord’s Supper could not continue side by side in a united church. “The Lord’s Supper is acquiring a new spontaneity and informality,” noted the report. “A united church would have to recognize this movement and encourage it.” Also: “We should not seek the sole continuance of any single tradition of baptismal practice.”
The six churches published a major report in 1972 outlining a structure for a united church in Scotland. It is now under discussion among the churches. Some will vote on it this year.
Cutting Down
World hunger will be one of the big issues of 1975, and a number of relief agencies are trying to get more Americans to do something about it. In November World Vision International introduced a program called “Project FAST” (Fight Against Starvation Today), aimed at bringing about “permanent changes” in the nation’s food consumption patterns and getting Christians “committed” to help feed the world’s hungry people.
Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, a World Vision board member, got the Senate to unanimously pass a resolution embracing some of FAST’s proposals. It calls for a spirit of self-sacrifice and periodic fasting through 1975, climaxed in a National Day of Fasting on the Monday before Thanksgiving. The resolution encourages Americans to reevaluate their life styles and share with the “starving millions of the world” the money saved by eating less.
Oxfam-America, the American wing of the British-based Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, claims some 250,000 participated in a day of fasting it sponsored in November. Funds raised from the fast will be spent on both immediate and long-term projects, a spokesman says. (Oxfam says income, at a ten-year low, will force cutbacks and shifts in many of its ongoing programs.)
Other agencies and church groups are speaking out on the issue and tooling up with promotional programs of their own.
But whatever symbolic action (such as fasting) is taken, many relief leaders point out, it will be of little value unless cash is also given to enable agencies to purchase the needed food.
Third World Know-How
They seemed a motley group, forty Asians trooping through the lobby of the Singapura-Forum, a moderately priced Intercontinental hotel in “the Switzerland of the Orient.” Some had never traveled by plane before, others had never used an elevator, and some had never lodged or even eaten in a hotel; a few had to be outfitted with shoes and trousers.
But this fellowship of the forty, as they soon became, were Asian evangelical workers—pastors and evangelists, teachers and lay leaders—gathered for the tenth and eleventh five-week sessions of the Haggai Institute for Advanced Leadership Training. From Bali, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Java, Korea, Malaysia, New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, and Viet Nam they came on scholarships enabling them to share their evangelistic Christian outreach in Asia. A few days together welded them into a camaraderie that fascinated other hotel guests. Here were men ranging from 26 to 63, some with Ph.D.s and others without college learning, embracing one another like treasured brothers, bursting into Christian song, and unpredictably asking hotel staff, taxi drivers, and others whether they knew the rewards of personal faith in Christ.
By last month more than 250 Third World Christian leaders had participated in Evangelism International training programs (600 were on the waiting list). They in turn will share their knowledge at national institutes back home in Korea, Indonesia, India, and the Middle East (funds for the Korean and Indian projects have been underwritten by nationals there). Virtually all faculty members, teaching methods, and resource materials are Third World.
Plans call for opening a new headquarters training facility in Singapore by May. It will have conference rooms, an audio-visual room and radio-television studio, a data-gathering center, a library of books by Third-World religious leaders, and facilities for classes. Its estimated cost is $500,000.
The moving spirit behind Evangelism International is John Haggai of Atlanta, Georgia, a 50-year-old evangelist who has conducted crusades throughout the world. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, where his father, a Syrian evangelical minister, was enrolled in Southern Baptist Seminary. The son too became a pastor, later moving into evangelism full time with his headquarters in Atlanta. In 1964 Haggai visited Asia, where he was “disturbed” by conversations with Asian Christian leaders.
Haggai discovered that numbers of Asian nationals were as well trained as the American missionaries working among them. Moreover, he sensed a growing reaction against Western American cultural motifs. There was increasing resentment also of mission boards that used American dollars to impose their own programs, treating nationals as if they were incapable of carrying forward the mission of the Church.
The 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin deepened Haggai’s disturbing impressions. The duplication and overlapping of evangelistic effort in the West stood in clear contrast to the unconcern, the understaffing, and even the failure of evangelistic effort in much of the Third World. Not a few Asian Christians, moreover, refused to submerge their national identity in Western cultural patterns; they resented American paternalism in missions and missionaries who considered themselves a class apart. When in 1968 Haggai went to Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia for crusades, he became convinced that updating Asian workers technically in evangelistic skills would multiply their successes. A training program in Indonesia, which he set up with American leaders, fully persuaded him that a preponderance of American trappings, insensitivity to Asian customs, and reliance on Western-oriented illustrations thwarted evangelical goals.
Through the generosity of a Swiss layman who had attended the World Congress on Evangelism, Haggai in 1969 opened a training center in Switzerland, but Americans failed to support it, and Asian trainees disliked the food, climate, and travel problems. The evangelist closed the facility in the Spring of 1970.
The fall session of that year was held in Singapore, a Third World center and free port where English is the official language and where climate and cuisine are more agreeably Asian. Again there was financial stress, but a visiting American layman came to the rescue with the $34,000 needed, and since then money has come in as required.
The cost of participation in the five-week effort averages $2,500 a student, including transportation, lodging, meals, and administrative and faculty expenses; devaluation of American currency and the effect of inflation on operating costs has raised earlier projections by 44 per cent. Dean of the effort is Dr. Ernest Watson of Sydney, Australia, former director of evangelism, radio, and television for the Baptist Union of New South Wales, whom Haggai met at the Berlin congress. They completely agree on the objective of specialized training in evangelization, with an emphasis on implementation rather theory. Asian instructors have included K. C. Han of Korea, Nene Ramientos of the Philippines, Timothy Yu of Hong Kong, D. G. James, James Wong, and David Chan of Singapore, and Daniel D. Souri of India. The first African visiting lecturer was Zabouloni Kabaza of Uganda.
Since the outset, participants have paid 10 per cent of their cost, a figure that for some has represented as much as nine months of their income. Some were allowed by their governments to take out of the country only the equivalent of $1 to $8; others have come despite tremendous difficulty in getting visas. Scholarship aid has been provided mainly by American Christians, although some Australian, Indian, Indonesian, Korean, and Swiss support has emerged. The institute has been authorized as a Singapore company, a fact that greatly facilitates approval of entrance visas for participants. In the initial years only a few lay leaders came, but the number of lay participants has gradually increased, a development Haggai sees as reflective of a wholesome recognition that evangelism is not the task of the clergy alone.
The Singapore venture is not without critics. Some think more could be accomplished less expensively on a national rather than international basis; but that would sacrifice the trans-Asian interactions that Haggai Institute generates. Others think Asia’s present crisis is more deeply intellectual than evangelistic, and that scholarships enabling gifted students to pursue advanced degrees in theological and biblical concerns would be more strategic; Haggai replies that his calling is to evangelization. Some think course content lacks the organization and cohesion of a standard instructional program; the institute’s purpose, however, is not conferring degrees but rather personal confrontation with evangelistic achievers. Some complain that the English comprehension by some participants is inadequate; the institute points out, however, that enrollees are selected from many applicants and that improved screening methods will in time surmount any language difficulty.
CARL F. H. HENRY
Lausanne: Follow-Up And Fall-Out
Some eighty German participants in the world evangelization congress at Lausanne met last month in Wölmersen, Germany, and proposed that the German Evangelical Alliance (GEA) organize a Society for Evangelical Theology. It would be open to all who wish to do theological research and who are willing to subscribe to the Lausanne Covenant.
The participants had come to Wölmersen anticipating a confrontation over the doctrinal basis for further evangelical cooperation. On one side would be representatives of the conservative “confessing communities” in the established churches and on the other side the members of the free churches and of the evangelistic agencies of the established churches. The Theological Convent of the Confessing Communities had asked that the basis include not only the Lausanne Covenant and the GEA’s Basis statement but also the liberal-knocking Frankfurt Declaration and Berlin Declaration on Ecumenism. The Free Church Council, however, had declared it would be content to make the Bible the sole platform for cooperation.
But the clash failed to materialize. Professor Peter Beyerhaus and a number of other leaders of the confessing communities declined to attend the Wölmersen meeting. They told reporters the list of Lausanne participants was so composed that it was bound to lead to basic controversies about the theological foundations for evangelistic cooperation—as occurred in the national caucus at Lausanne. Therefore, they reasoned, “any further discussion within this group would make no sense.”
Minus the strong right-wing presence at Wölmersen, those present agreed to stick to the Lausanne Covenant and the GEA Basis, to extend their cooperation within an already existent working committee for evangelism, and to refrain from founding a new pan-evangelical organization. They encouraged consultation between the confessing communities and free churches, and they pledged to keep evangelism alive in their respective denominations.
WOLFGANG MÜLLER
Crime In Church
Urban churches are increasingly resorting to security devices and personnel for protection—and for good reason.
Last month three gunmen marched into a Thursday-night service at the New Mount Olive Baptist Church, a black congregation in Gary, Indiana. One of the holdup men fired a sawed-off shotgun into the church ceiling. Then, said Pastor Martin W. Jackson, the men forced about 150 of the 400 parishioners to place their wallets, purses, and jewelry in a plastic sack. In addition to the undetermined amount of cash and jewels, the bandits fled with the church tape recorder.
The same church was hit by two men the following Saturday afternoon during a women’s meeting. They took about $30 and raped one of the women.
Meanwhile, police and victims are a bit puzzled by an armed week-day intrusion into the offices of First Alliance Church (Christian and Missionary Alliance) in New York City. Four white men in disguise bound Pastor Eugene McGee’s wife Norma, their teen-age son Nathan, and Jewish missionary worker Vincent Morgan, 31, whose office is on the premises. The men rifled files in Morgan’s office, took $2 and a Torah scroll from a desk drawer, then left—leaving untouched Morgan’s wallet and tape recorders, cameras, Yiddish silver goblets, and other objects of value in plain view.
Later, Morgan discovered his files from the Jews for Jesus outreach campaign in New York last August were missing. In addition to letters between leaders and notes on strategy, the files contain names of contributors. Some observers feel the incident has the touch of the Jewish Defense League, which has been aggressive in its opposition to the Jews for Jesus movement, but police had no evidence linking the theft to the JDL.
Perils Of High Finance
Pastor Charles E. Blair of Calvary Temple in Denver was indicted last month by a Denver grand jury on twenty-one counts of fraudulent sale of securities and conspiracy. Also indicted was former Calvary fund-raiser Wendell Nance. If the charges stand up in court, each count carries a possible one-to-three-year prison sentence and a maximum fine of $5,000.
Three Blair-related organizations are involved: the 6,000-member Calvary Temple, the Charles E. Blair Foundation, and Life Center, a nursing-home project. With assets of $18 million but combined debts of $23 million, the organizations filed for bankruptcy last June (see July 26, 1974, issue, page 36).
At issue is the sale of unregistered time-payment certificates between December, 1971, and March, 1973. Colorado requires state registration of securities before they are sold. The Blair organization contends the certificates technically are not securities.
Last month creditors with $6.4 million of the $9.6 million in claims against Life Center voted to accept a proposed repayment plan. Part of it involves selling property in Colorado and Ohio.
Blair, a well-known evangelical pastor and television preacher, has been on the lecture circuit recently warning fellow pastors and church administrators about the pitfalls of high finance. □
Of Necessity, Innocent
In August, 1973, CBS television featured a three-part documentary on the activities of Ted Patrick of San Diego, a “deprogrammer” of young people in off-beat religious groups (see August 31, 1973, issue, page 40). The documentary showed how Patrick assisted Mr. and Mrs. Curt Crampton in spiriting their daughter Kathe, 19, away from a Seattle cult known as the Church of Armageddon or Love Israel Family. Kathe was detained against her will in San Diego while Patrick and others worked with her. After several days he declared her deprogramming a success, but she escaped and returned to the Seattle commune. Kidnapping charges were later lodged against Patrick. Waiving a jury trial, Patrick had his case heard by U. S. District Court judge Walter T. McGovern in Seattle. Last month McGovern found Patrick, 44, innocent.
McGovern said he based his decision on the “defense of necessity,” likening Patrick to a pedestrian who runs into the street against a red light to save a child from an onrushing car and then is issued a traffic citation. He said Patrick acted as an agent of the parents, who themselves were “not physically capable of recapturing their daughter from [what they believed was] existing, imminent danger.”
Those doing less than what the Cramptons did in hiring Patrick, he said, “would be less than responsible, loving parents.”
The prosecutor contended in vain that even though life-styles may be different, persons such as Kathe are entitled to protection of their civil rights.
Two years ago Patrick was found not guilty of false-imprisonment charges in New York, but last year he was convicted of similar charges in Denver, and the case is under appeal.
Meanwhile, Kathe Crampton refuses to come home.
Hot Line To Heaven
Problem of diplomacy: Tanzania’s president Julius Nyerere says that his country and Uganda are good friends but that it’s “very difficult to respond” to Ugandan President Idi Amin because Amin thinks he has a hot line to God—“and he gets some very funny orders from that direction.”
