Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY who shared the vision of an Institute for Advanced Christian Studies can walk taller this week with the good news that this venture will make a modest beginning in 1968 (see editorial, page 26).
Many lonely church workers in the United States are surprised and gratified to discover that evangelicals in this land may number about 40 million. Only their isolation and competition keep them from achieving common evangelistic and spiritual goals, since numerically they constitute the largest religious grouping in American life.
Somewhere I have noted that, were evangelicals each to give only one extra dollar a year to some evangelical venture, they could see dramatic results. Some 800 of our readers posted a dollar to the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies—before there even was an Institute; others still have an opportunity to do so.
Ultimately the institute headquarters could be located in Philadelphia or New York, Boston, Washington, Berkeley, or some Midwestern city such as Ann Arbor. What is needed is a suburban estate or urban center with access to a major university complex and to adequate library research facilities. Such estates are often tax burdens. The dedication of an attractive site to the advancement of the truth of revelation in a secular culture could give bright new power and visibility to evangelical realities.
