With this issue CHRISTIANITY TODAY offers its readers a new editorial format with two full pages, double columns, and larger print. Even though we might wish it, we really can’t expect you to agree with everything we say in our editorials. We shall be satisfied if we spur you to think biblically and realistically (the two are not incompatible) about the religious and ethical problems the Christian must face if he would live responsibly in our world.
Articles focus on two subjects. On political and social justice, Thomas Niccolls sets forth a biblical approach to human rights and Philip Yancey concludes his analysis of man’s inhumanity to man in this century’s most outrageous violations of those rights. In the second pair of articles, psychiatrist Armand Nicholi of the Harvard medical faculty explores the devastating consequences of the breakdown of the nuclear family, while Harold Smith, Southern California singles specialist, describes the plight of the formerly married in an evangelical church. The dilemma of the church becomes all too evident: how to preserve the biblical emphasis upon the integrity of marriage and the family and, at the same time, preserve the equal biblical emphasis upon forgiveness and compassion towards those whose marriage has ended in shipwreck. Both Nicholi and Smith offer suggestions as to how the church can best achieve this delicate balance. A survey of recent books on marriage, together with reviews of several books on divorce, completes the discussion of this very relevant and controversial subject of divorce.
