Early in June, Dr. Joost de Blank, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, preached a sermon in New York City.

“It is a sad commentary on the work of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa,” he said, “that it spends a great deal of money on missionary work but believes in keeping African and white congregations apart. It has a warped and inaccurate Calvinistic outlook.”

Subsequently, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, sided with his Cape Town colleague in criticizing South African race policies of the Dutch Reformed Church.

The Anglican comment angered Calvinists all over the world, and the criticized church reacted by announcing its withdrawal from a proposed all-church conference which had been scheduled for South Africa in December.

What lies behind bitter feeling over the issue of apartheid, a South African term for racial segregation?CHRISTIANITY TODAYinvited Professor Ben J. Marais of South Africa to prepare the interpretive summary which follows. Professor Marais teaches Christian history at the University of Pretoria and is a Dutch Reformed minister. He has studied at both Yale and Princeton.

The Professor’S Report

People who have never lived in this lovely country can never realize the dominancy of this problem. Its shadow falls over every other aspect of national life, forming a great dividing line.

The South African racial drama is extremely complicated. People judge developments very differently. Some pick out one thread—the great housing schemes for Africans, for instance, and paint a picture of fortunate and contented Africans, “salvaged” from the terrible slums of western Johannesburg. Others only stress repressive legislation and present a picture of a gathering storm, of a terribly frustrated people, and of a country on the verge of a rumbling volcano. Up to a point, both pictures are true, but both can be terribly misleading if not put into true perspective.

The total South African population is just over 12½ million, including less than 3 million whites, usually referred to as “Europeans.” The main colored groups are the Bantus, numbering 8 or 9 million; the “Cape Coloreds,” a racially-mixed group of 1 million; and a few hundred thousand Indians.

Historically, the black-white problem started as a problem of land, of grazing rights and ownership. Basically, the possession of land is still the problem in color relations, although one hears more of political and economic issues.

African reserves constitute about 20 per cent of the total land area. No white may own land in these reserves, and no African may own land outside them. In plain figures it means that 20 per cent of the total population (the whites) own 80 per cent of the land. Most of the reserves are situated in well-watered and fairly fertile areas; others are arid.

Unified Society Rejected

According to apartheid policy in vogue in South Africa today, the idea of a unified society of whites and Africans is absolutely rejected. Stringent separate development is propagated. Within the broad folds of apartheid, however, many differences of opinion exist.

According to prevailing ideology, Africans must be given the opportunity to develop in their own cultural background and must not be forced to become “pseudo-whites” or Westerners. It is argued that only in separate development or apartheid will the Africans come into their own. In their own areas, they will have their privileges, political and otherwise. In “white” areas, they will not be granted political rights, but will be looked upon as “temporary” sojourners.

Extreme apartheid ideologists dream of a future in which all Africans will be removed to their own areas and if any Africans are allowed to enter the white areas it will only be as migratory laborers, and that for a limited time. In South Africa, one often hears about the great “sacrifice” whites will then have to make. It will mean that whites will have to do their own dirty work and the African laborers in industry and even on the farms will have to be replaced by whites, not to mention hundreds of thousands employed as domestic servants. People who take this point of view realize that if Africans are permanently employed in industry, they could not in the long run be excluded from citizen rights in the white areas, and this, they say, would lead to total integration and disappearance of the white group in the vast black African morass. This, to the white group, would not only mean a loss of color. It would, according to this line of argumentation, mean much more: not only racial suicide, but a loss of calling, of a God-given responsibility which the white Christian group has towards God, towards pagan Africans, and towards their own past cultural and religious heritage.

During recent years, parallels have been drawn between Israel in the Old Testament and the white Christian group in South Africa, and attempts have been made to give a scriptural basis to apartheid, especially on the basis of diversity in nature and creation. Apartheid has been “proven” to be scriptural by politicians as well as theologians.

Some branches of the Dutch Reformed Church, for instance, accepted such scriptural bases as late as 1951. These attempts, however, have been officially abandoned by the main Dutch Reformed denomination, and seem to have lost the day, although many ministers of religion in Dutch Reformed churches still propagate this line of thought. And if one must judge from correspondence columns of Afrikaans political newspapers, most Afrikaans-speaking citizens still accept it. During political elections, there are still the standard slogans in the Afrikaans-speaking rural districts: “God has divided people into different races; who are we to undo what God has done.” “We must accept and honor God’s decrees.” “Apartheid is according to God’s will.” Many devoted white South African believers honestly believe that apartheid is scriptural and because it either seems to be a “just” solution to them or seems to fortify the position of the white group, they stand for it.

Whites Struggle

If one knows the three-centuries-old struggle of this small white group on the tip of the erstwhile Dark Continent to keep its way of life and to guard against being swamped by the pagan millions of Africa, its way of looking at the racial situation is easily understood.

Apartheid as a political theory is not formulated by these people—they will vote for it almost to a man—but this theory was formulated by Afrikaans cultural and political leaders, some of them men of great personal integrity and idealism. According to protagonists of apartheid, it is not an oppressive policy or theory, but it is actually designed to give justice to whites as well as to Africans. In a mixed society, they say, the African will always be discriminated against, and he will remain inferior in status. In his own area or country the African will be boss and progressively be made responsible for running his own show. There the African will have his own schools, teachers, and policemen. Industries will be developed in his own areas. Exactly how this is to be done, and by whom it will be financed, is not yet clear, even to apartheid people. Of course, it is admitted, all this will take time and the movement of all these Africans back to the reserves or away from white residential areas will cause some inconvenience and even temporary grievances.

These champions of apartheid give a very vivid picture of the alternative to apartheid or total segregation. The present drift will lead to more and more Africans being drawn into white areas, into great or growing industrial cities for which they are not fitted. To most of them it means such a tremendous cultural or moral adjustment that it leads to mass frustration, to a vast moral breakup. Their old tribal cultural and religious taboos and restraints are torn to shreds, long before they are able to adjust themselves to the standards of a new society. The result is moral chaos and anarchy and heightening of tensions between the two main color groups, a situation which must utlimately lead to a vast emption.

Much of what is said in this connection is true. Whether apartheid or total territorial segregation can be a solution, however, is quite another question. At the moment, it seems extremely doubtful that the majority of Africans will ever accept it. As far as whites are concerned, although most feel for some sort of “separate development,” it must be seen whether they will be willing to support apartheid when it is fully implemented and they have to do without Africans as laborers in industry, agriculture or as domestic servants. Some propagandists for apartheid, especially politicians, meet this type of objection with the promise that once there is absolute territorial segregation, all needed African labor will be drafted on the temporary plan.

The moral and spiritual implications of such a system, however, makes it from a Christian point of view absolutely unacceptable, as it would cause the worst moral and spiritual breakup imaginable. Whereas many white Christians accept apartheid in general, as either a promising temporary or permanent policy, few responsible Christian leaders accept a policy of migratory labor on any vast scale. The dangers are all too obvious.

The churches have, on the whole, followed traditional patterns. English-speaking churches have generally declared themselves for a unified society, though in practice they have mostly followed a policy of separate church development with a degree of integration at some points. Afrikaans churches have often stood more solidly for segregation or separate churches for the different color groups whether on “practical” cultural, linguistic or even “scriptural” grounds.

The Dutch Reformed Church had followed a practice of separate churches for white and nonwhite believers for more than a century, although it did not become official policy until the 1880’s.

Among some English churches, notably Anglican, there has of late developed a more resolute and outspoken opposition to apartheid, although this church itself still has a long way to go to become a fully integrated church in theory and practice.

Baptism At Dead Man’S Rock

The site known as Dead Man’s Rock is located along Beaver Creek at East Liverpool, Ohio. About 30 people were gathered on the bank for the August Sunday afternoon baptismal service. A woman was strumming a guitar. The Rev. Gallard McCartney was out in water that came up to his waist.

Three people had already been immersed. Six other candidates were waiting. Next was the minister’s own nephew, 21-year-old Cline Cogar. The youth, whose home was in a nearby West Virginia town, had decided to come to East Liverpool only two weeks before. He had heard that his uncle was holding a tent evangelistic campaign. Besides, young Cogar needed a job. He thought the minister might be able to help.

As McCartney later said, he immersed his nephew then brought him up. “He was smiling,” the minister recalled, “as many do after baptism. Then he started shouting and grabbed me and in a moment we were in the swift current farther out. We both went under. We became separated. When I came up, he had disappeared.”

Cogar’s body was recovered downstream some 15 minutes later. Attempts to revive the youth failed. The remainder of the baptismal service was called off.

McCartney said he had conducted many baptisms before, including several since he had come from Akron, where he pastored several churches as a minister ordained by Fundamental Methodists, Inc.

Unable to explain the drowning any more, the minister said, “I’d rather it was me than him.”

Europe

The Methodists

In Stuttgart, Germany, the executive committee of the World Methodist Council approved a motion urging that a conference of Central and South African Methodist leaders be held next spring to work on the problem of racial tensions.

The motion was submitted by Dr. T. Webb of Johannesburg, who asserted that Gospel proclamation of man’s equality should be followed in achieving racial equality among all races.

During the five-day conference, renewed effort to strengthen ties among the world’s 18,000,000 Methodists was urged by Dr. Harold Roberts, World Methodist Council president who is also head of Richmond College, a Methodist theological school connected with the University of London.

The 50-member council executive committee heard reports on church union proposals involving Methodists with the Anglican Church in England, with Presbyterians and Anglicans in West Africa, North India and Pakistan, with Presbyterians, Anglicans and Baptists in Ceylon, and with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in the United States.

Meanwhile, the Methodist Church of Denmark observed its 100th anniversary with a series of festival services in Copenhagen. Methodist Danes include some 4,000 adults and 6,000 youth.

Retired Bishop Ivan Lee Holt of St. Louis had been scheduled to attend the commemorative meetings, but was unable to come because of the sudden death of his wife in Brussels, Belgium.

Fateful Sequel

In Germany, six-day ceremonies marking the 250th anniversary of the Church of the Brethren were highlighted by a rededication service on the banks of the Eder River at Schwarzenau, where the first of the Brethren was baptized in 1708.

Following the service, the gathering of some 400 German Brethren plus other members of the denomination from four continents was addressed by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Bishop Ernst Wilm of Bielefeld, president of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, and Dr. William M. Beahm, moderator of the Church of the Brethren. Other observances were held at Kassel and Berleburg.

Among witnesses were American members of the Brethren Heritage Tour, arranged by the Church of the Brethren. The tourists also visited places connected with the early history of the pietist movement in Europe. (The Brethren movement was launched at Schwarzenau by Alexander Mack and a small group who had withdrawn from the state churches in Germany and were influenced by the pietist movement, which emphasized repentance, faith as an attitude of heart, and regeneration and sanctification as experimental facts.)

The night of August 13–14, after a month in Europe, 20 members of the touring Brethren party boarded a New York-bound plane of the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 130 miles west of Ireland, killing all 99 aboard.

Only days later, a car accident in Sweden killed the wife of Dr. M. R. Zigler, European director of the Brethren Service Commission. Zigler was injured.

Modern Slavery

A Hungarian clergyman told a Western assembly this summer that exploitation, bondage and slavery is to be condemned, “even though in modern form.”

The Rev. Josef Nagy, director of Baptist young people’s work in Hungary, told the Congress of the European Baptist Federation that “no man or nation has the right to rule over another.”

The six-day Congress was attended by 10,000 from 22 countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Middle East

Moslems And Christians

A former principal of Beirut’s Near East School of Theology says he does not believe a Moslem-Christian war in Lebanon is in the offing.

The Rev. Cullen Story, now back in the United States, explains why:

“1. The present constitution of Lebanon … stipulates that the country shall have a Christian president but the country itself is to be pro-Arab. There is nothing in the basic organization of Lebanon, then, to indicate any Moslem-Christian war will ever occur.

“2. The so-called ‘kid-glove treatment’ of the opposition by the ‘Christian’ army under General Shehab seems to be evidence of a studied resistance to any vis-a-vis conflict of Moslems and Christians.

“3. Christian groups in Lebanon are not united together to form any common front against Islam. Witness the outspoken views of Maronite Patriarch Meouchi, that, to say the least, are in direct contrast to those of President Chamoun.

“4. These groups, though embracing an approximate 50 per cent of Lebanon’s population, sense that they live in a Middle East containing an overwhelming Moslem majority. The last thing they would want would be to court the disaster of an open conflict with Islam.”

Far East

Christian Education

Addresses by Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin and a closing public worship service attended by some 16,000 highlighted the eight-day fourteenth World Convention on Christian Education in Tokyo, sponsored by the World Council of Christian Education and Sunday School Association (headquarters in New York).

The convention reportedly was the largest international gathering ever held in Japan, with more than 4,000 delegates from 63 foreign countries on hand.

Japanese Christian leaders were said to be hoping that the meeting would serve to lend impetus to the advance of the Gospel in their country. Tokyo also played host to the eighth such gathering back in 1920, when fire destroyed a specially-constructed four-story convention building only a few hours before sessions were to start. A theater building was secured as a substitute meeting place.

Last month, the convention was held at Aoyama Gukuin, one of Japan’s leading mission schools. The Rev. Michio Kozaki, president of the National Christian Council of Japan, was chairman of the organizing committee.

Presiding at the climactic public worship service was Methodist Bishop Shot K. Mondol of India, new president of the World Council of Christian Education and Sunday School Association.

Bishop Dibelius, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany, asserted that the teaching of youth in totalitarian countries poses a challenge to Christian educators. He said control over the education of young people imposed by Communist nations is giving such states a monopoly in that field.

The August 6–13 convention was preceded by the World Institute on Christian Education, held July 10-August 1 at Nishinomiya with 312 delegates from 62 nations. The institute heard a number of addresses, then divided into discussion groups which met at Seiwa College. Closing plenary sessions were under the leadership of Dr. Paul H. Vieth of Yale Divinity School.

The theme of the convention was “Christ—the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Only Teens Laugh

What forms does current Christian witness take in Communist China? In the Catholic realm, reliable reports indicate that Red Chinese government leaders have waived overt suppression in favor of setting up a collaborationist church hierarchy with Roman liturgical rules.

But how about Protestants? Last month, a top Methodist missions official expressed hope for “resumption of contact” with Christians in mainland China. “There is a great deal of evidence that Methodists and other Christians in China hunger for fellowship with the Western world,” said General Secretary Eugene L. Smith of the Methodist Church’s Division of World Missions. Smith told a South-wide Methodist Missionary Conference at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, that “we do know there is some religious freedom among the Christians of Red China.”

Not long after Communists won control over 600,000,000 Chinese, machinery was set up to handle Protestantism through an organization known as the Three Self Love Country Movement. The organization, billed as patriotically self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating, originated with the Communist Chinese Religious Affairs Bureau as a means of maintaining contact and control over Protestant churches. The Three Self Movement reportedly has 60 per cent of Red Chinese Christians.

This summer in Red China, Protestant churches were definitely open and active. Whether they were growing or declining was not clear. There was evidence that even evangelistic tours were tolerated, although the traveling evangelists were being officially denounced. YMCA athletic activities seemed to be flourishing.

Communists would have it believed that their Chinese have religious freedom to the extent that the government is not embarrassed. Jail sentences, however, are still being meted out to clergymen whose words or deeds are viewed as revolutionary. The Three Self Movement keeps a close tab on clergy patriotism. The group holds one local conference after another to keep “People’s Government” loyalties fresh in the minds of ranking Protestants.

In the spring of 1957, at the invitation of Three Self Movement leaders, 15 key Japanese religious leaders went on a guided tour of Communist China. They visited Shanghai, Peking, Hankow, Sochow, Canton, Hanchow, and Nanking. Since then, the visitors’ remarks have told more about the state of the church in Japan than they indicated of actual conditions in Red China. With one exception, the religionists gave reports which were interpreted as having a generally favorable tone toward the Communist China situation. The reports have been raising eyebrows, prompting concern as to whether Communist ideology had made inroads among those who guide Christians in Japan, whether these individuals were forgetting the incompatibility of Christianity and communism.

Among those who reviewed the reports with alarm was the Rev. Samuel E. Boyle of the Reformed Presbyterian Mission in Kobe, Japan. Boyle, a missionary to China before Communist occupation, keeps up to date on doings behind the Bamboo Curtain through Tien Feng (Heavenly Wind), a church magazine published in Shanghai. Issues of Tien Feng are rare in the free world, but Boyle has managed to secure copies regularly. Knowledge of the Chinese people and gleanings from Tien Feng prompted an evaluation of his own:

“The significance of the visit of a Japanese Christian delegation, including orthodox Japanese ministers, cannot be exaggerated. We see already the spreading virus of error entering the Japanese church by printed page and verbal reports of the 15 delegates. The pro-Communist church in China which cooperates through the liaison apparatus called ‘The Three Self Love Country Movement,’ dominated by Wu Yao Tsung of the YMCA, had made what we earnestly believe to be a nonbiblical and spiritually disastrous truce with the Communist state. The Japanese delegation stoutly denies this interpretation of the facts. Thus in Japan, as formerly in China, Bible-believing missionaries find themselves in opposition to the prominent leaders of the Asian Protestant movement.

Social Relations

For eight years, the United Church of Japan has been studying social relations. This summer the church issued an official statement:

“We intend firmly to oppose rearmament and to lay the foundation for world peace. We advocate the cessation of the production, use and testing of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. We oppose the erecting of tariff walls as an expression of the selfishness of one nation. The Christian must so participate in politics as a citizen that the state fulfills its true function and that power is given to social justice.”

“Two powerful motives serve to blind Asian leaders of the church to the danger inherent in the Chinese ‘Three Self Love Country Movement’ solution of tensions between Christianity and a Communist state. The first and strongest motive is nationalistic pride and ambition to be counted patriotic by the state. The other motive is to achieve an indigenous, united and effective national Christian church which can be totally free from Western denominational control and foreign money, with the power which such money always imposes on the Asian Christian recipients. That the problem in Japan is now complex and dangerous, not to Western missions alone, but to future Christianity in Asia, seems apparent to us.”

Among those who visited Red China were the Rev. Jun-ichi Asano of the United Church, Mrs. Tamaki Uemura of the Japan Christian Church, the Rev. Seiju Yuya of the Baptist Conference of Japan, the Rev. Shigeo Yamamoto, of the United Church, Mrs. Masako Takegami and Mrs. Hatsue Nomiya of the Japanese Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Rev. Kaneo Oda of the Free Methodist Church of Japan, the Rev. Shuichi Ogawa of the United Church, the Rev. Shigeji Ogasawara of the Japan Episcopalian Church, the Rev. Aoyama Shiro of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Japan, Professor Yoshio Inoue of the Tokyo Union Theological Seminary, the Rev. Mitsuo Senoo of the Japan Evangelical Kyodan, the Rev. Ichiro Nakagawa of St. Paul’s University in Tokyo, and Editor Seiichi Waki of Christ Weekly in Tokyo.

The fifteenth member of the delegation, the one who took exception to generally favorable comments on Red China, was Toshio Suekane, general secretary of the YMCA in Yokohama, who said:

“You’ve heard that there are no flies, no dogs, no cats (which would all be a burden to the people to care for so they were eaten as food because of economic necessity) and no prostitutes. Externally this may be true. The situation is changed from what it was 11 years ago. But people clearly show their heartache. Only teen-agers laugh freely. The older ones are very serious and stem, not light-hearted. This is true even among Christians. They are all politicians, concerned with the government. That’s all you hear.”

“My fountain pen was stolen twice in Hong Kong,” Suekane concludes, “yet I still prefer this harbor city to oppressed Red China, though I could lay it down anywhere in China without being stolen. Freedom is more precious than a pen.”

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

“I will report to the Soviet churches, recommending that they join the World Council.”

The speaker, according to Religious News Service, was Metropolitan Nikolai, second-ranking leader of the Moscow Patriarchate, who had just met for two days with top WCC officials at Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The metropolitan’s declaration represented the most significant development thus far toward possible Russian Orthodox Church membership in the WCC.

“We cannot express a firm decision on joining the World Council of Churches,” Metropolitan Nikolai was quoted as saying. “We can only say the next stage will be one of consultation with Soviet church leaders.”

A joint statement issued after the meeting said the Russian delegation would report to the Moscow patriarch and synod that it was in “a spirit of full sympathy with the fundamental principles of the ecumenical movement.”

The Soviet delegates, the statement added, will also report favorably on the conference to other autonomous Eastern European Orthodox churches which, like the Russian body, refused to join the WCC when it was formed at Amsterdam in 1948.

The Utrecht conference was the first official meeting between leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and the WCC, which was represented by General Secretary W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, Central Committee Chairman Franklin Clark Fry, and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan James of Melita, a member of the Central Committee.

Metropolitan Nikolai said the conference provided “undoubtedly a good basis for future contacts” between the Russian Orthodox Church and WCC leaders. He was accompanied to the meeting by Archbishop Michael of Smolensk and Mr. Alexis Buevsky, a layman.

The statement said that WCC leaders were similarly in favor of further contacts with the Russian Orthodox Church. The WCC representatives were also reported as having expressed intentions to recommend at the Central Committee’s August 21–29 meeting at Nyborgstrand, Denmark, that Russian Orthodox observers be invited to sit in, if this is agreeable to the Soviet church.

Although the August 7–9 conference at Utrecht had been arranged rather hurriedly, both sides had been expressing interest in such a meeting for some time.

Ten Years Ago

Why did the Russian Orthodox Church choose to remain out of the World Council of Churches when the ecumenical body was formally constituted in August, 1948?

The Russian Orthodox Church surely had its chance. An invitation to join was received in good time prior to the WCC’s first assembly at Amsterdam, a milestone which the Central Committee commemorated last month with a service in the Cathedral of Odense, Denmark.

Eight Orthodox bodies seriously considered a “charter member” move at a Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow in July, 1948. Stalinist pressure undoubtedly influenced their decision.

The conference voted against affiliating with the World Council. No representatives appeared at the Amsterdam assembly. From Moscow the word came that the WCC was “mainly political and anti-democratic and does not follow ecclesiastical aims.”

Music For America

The attraction at Denver’s boulder-rimmed Red Rocks Theater was one of the finer types of Gospel music presentations, with many top artists on hand.

People from five or more states came to hear the sacred notes of 300 musicians resound in the near-perfect acoustics of the awe-inspiring outdoor amphitheater.

The festival was more than a pleasant August evening’s entertainment. It was a big trial step for an enterprise seeking (1) to bring to the American public large-scale concert productions with an evangelical flavor, and (2) to provide a continuing outlet for Gospel artists.

The medium is Music for America, an organization which for the past two years has been presenting sacred concerts in Pasadena, California. Cy Jackson, Pasadena advertising promoter, is its creator and producer.

Denver was the first outward thrust of Music for America. Using a group of evangelical church leaders as local sponsors, the program was billed around such personalities as orchestral leader Ralph Carmichael and his songstress wife, basso Bill Carle, singer-composer Stuart Hamblen, tenor John Gustafson, organist Les Barnett, violinist John Cuneo, pianist Charles Magnuson, and choral coordinator Jack Coleman. In addition, the concert featured the quartet which gained fame with the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, along with soprano Beth Farnam and pianist Rudy Atwood, both of whom also are known to listeners of the Charles E. Fuller radio program. The soloists were supported by a choir of 250 and 48 Denver Symphony Orchestra members.

Music for America sponsors had good reason to be encouraged by the result. The advance ticket sale was the largest in Red Rocks Theater history. The attendance of 10,500 was the theater’s second largest of the season (first: Van Cliburn). Some persons came from Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Nebraska, and far-removed parts of Colorado only to stand throughout the concert or sit on the cold crimson boulders which rise 600 feet above the seating galleries.

The audience seemed well repaid for any inconvenience. The two-and-a-half-hour program won widespread acclaim. The Rocky Mountain News called the concert “a memorable occasion.” Best loved were Carle’s inspiring “How Great Thou Art,” Hamblen’s “It Is No Secret,” and the ensemble’s rendition of Newbury’s “Psalm 150.” Miss Farnam sang “The Holy City” with a “sweet interpretation clearly and delicately given,” according to the News. The program also premiered Carmichael compositions.

A Lag Develops

Church membership gains failed to keep up with America’s population growth last year, according to the Yearbook of American Churches for 1959.

Nevertheless, church membership in the United States reached a new high of 104,189,678 in 1957, a gain of 964,724 over the previous year, the book reports.

For the first time since World War II, the membership percentage increase was lower than that estimated for the population as a whole. Last year church membership rose by 0.9 per cent, while the population rise was estimated at 1.7 per cent. In 1956, when 62 out of every 100 Americans were reported to have church affiliation, the membership increase was 3 per cent, nearly twice that of the reported population rise. This year’s 61 per cent figure is the second highest on record.

The figures were compiled by the National Council of Churches, which publishes the yearbook.

Of the grand total with religious affiliation, 59,823,777 are Protestants, 35,846,477 Roman Catholics, 5,500,000 Jews, 2,540,446 Eastern Orthodox, and 273,692 Old Catholics and Polish National Catholics.

(The Roman Catholic church considers all persons who are baptized, including infants, to be church members. Most Protestant church bodies count only those young people and adults who have attained full membership.)

In major Protestant “family” groupings, Baptists lead with nearly 20 million members in 27 different church bodies. Next are Methodists with more than 12 million in 22 bodies. Lutherans have some 71/2 million in 19 bodies, while Presbyterians have 4 million in 10 bodies.

Top 10 Protestant groups: Methodist Church, 9,543,245; Southern Baptist Convention, 8,956,756; National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., 4,557,416; United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 3,032,977; Protestant Episcopal Church, 2,965,137; National Baptist Convention of America, 2,668,799; United Lutheran Church in America, 2,305,455; Congregational Christian—Evangelical and Reformed merged church, 2,192,674; Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 2,150,230; Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 1,943,599.

‘Art’ And Morality

Have Las Vegas morals dipped to a new low in a rash of nudity shows?

Increased business was not to be interpreted as “the voice of the people,” the pastor of one of Nevada’s largest Methodist churches warned operators of Las Vegas hotels featuring chorus girls nude from the waist up.

“How many of these people are tourists in town for a good time?” asked Dr. Donald O’Connor, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Las Vegas.

Whatever the full moral ramifications, Las Vegas ministers saw the situation as an opportunity for a referendum call on the whole question of legal gambling.

“If the gambling fraternity is not able to police itself against such situations as are current,” said the Rev. Walter Bishop of the First Baptist Church, “the citizens of the state will do it for them.”

Abel Greene, editor of the show business trade journal Variety, predicted that sponsors of the nudity shows will “back down” rather than risk gambling rights.

Night club acts featuring naked show girls are not new, but “come in cycles,” he said. Statutes in various communities, however, govern the circumstances. In New York City, for example, nude tableaux are permitted as a form of art. Legal control is hampered by lack of a clear distinction as to what constitutes art and what panders to lust.

Clergy reaction to Las Vegas nudity shows was led by a condemnation from Roman Catholic Bishop Robert J. Dwyer, and Variety reported an ironic note relative to his criticism. The night before the bishop issued his statement, St. Bridget’s Catholic Church Altar Society sponsored a bingo party. First prize, Variety reported, was dinner for two at the Stardust Hotel, which was featuring the “bare bosom” Lido de Paris show.

Sunday Firing

Was the Air Force justified to schedule its first moon rocket launching on a Sunday? Might the U. S. government have followed a more honorable course, in deference to the country’s Christian roots, by specifying a weekday for its initial lunar shot?

The decision to fire a moon rocket on Sunday morning, August 17, was “out of line,” said the Rev. Melvin M. Forney, general secretary of the Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States.

“Every important adventure in American history has had divine blessing,” Forney added. “To desecrate the Lord’s Day by firing a moon rocket may give those who are more spiritually-minded real cause for concern.”

Forney suggested the moon shot’s failure may have been “divine chastisement.”

“It would do us well to stop and consider whether the failure was purely human,” he said.

It was generally reported that the Sunday firing date had been agreed upon weeks in advance. Air Force officials had also indicated the following Monday and Tuesday to be acceptable alternates, should a temporary delay have arisen.

Forney said it would have been more in keeping with Christian principles to launch the rocket on a weekday, even if the date chosen offered less than optimum physical conditions as compared with Sunday.

Liberal Ties

Members of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America will vote in February on whether the two bodies should merge.

Poll plans were announced at the five-day sixteenth congress of the International Association for Liberal Christianity in Chicago. Both groups were hosts to the congress, attended by representatives of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

If the Unitarian-Universalist merger is approved, a plan of union will be presented to the assemblies of each body next fall. Final membership vote on the union, if endorsed by both assemblies, is not expected to take place until 1960.

The proposed body would unite some 105,000 Unitarians and 75,000 Universalists. The United Liberal Church has been suggested as its new name.

A 12-member special commission has been negotiating the union since 1955. It conceives the merger to mean establishment of one corporation to perform for the Universalists and Unitarian churches, and possibly others, all the functions now performed by the Universalist Church of America, the American Unitarian Association and the Council of Liberal Churches. The council was formed in 1953 to federate work of various departments of the two bodies. It has been acting as an intermediary.

Among 1,000 delegates from more than 20 countries attending the congress was Bishop Miroslav Novak of the Czechoslovak Church. He said his church, largest Protestant body in the country, has some 1,000,000 members and functions without hindrance from the Communist government.

FASHION GUIDE

There is no better way to be different than to stay the same. Amish “plain dress” was once completely unobtrusive, but even Dior’s latest is less bizarre on Fifth Avenue. Those cutting the patterns for the zig-zag changes of fashion have this worked out. Everyone, especially every woman, wants to be different. She can’t bear to look like an ordinary woman. As soon as she returns from vacation, she must find a new fall wardrobe that will flatter her individuality. Of course, she doesn’t dream up a queer creation of her own. In fact, by studying the magazines, she has prepared herself for exactly what the better shops are offering.

This has to be different, the same difference for everybody who wants to be different. Now to make the different women different, style creators seldom think of anything new and different. In fact, this would be a waste of time when there is so much old and different. Therefore, the difference to which no truly different woman is indifferent is sometimes only different from the last difference, and may be the very difference by which women who are not different differ from the different! This Empire style, for example. Surely there must be a few recluses, in crumbling mansions or private institutions, who have never given it up.

The supreme act of courage is to stay with the difference after it is no longer different. Urge your wife to buy a sack at an absolute clearance, and wear it for three or four years. After all, aren’t you still wearing those bargain pink shirts?

Unfortunately, style consciousness is not limited to the world of haute couture. Theological fashion seems equally potent, and appears to follow the same rick-rack pattern. Those weary of the new and different, can be overcome with a fashionable rage for the old and different. Even a Neanderthal conservative is occasionally astonished at the authentic cut of the latest orlon bearskin.

The toughest assignment is to ignore fashion for the sake of truth. The theologian who seeks to build on the achievements of orthodox theologians of the last generation cannot boast even a modish bearskin. He must work in a pink shirt.

SYMBOLISM AND DOGMATISM

Can Mr. Freeman (July 21 issue) prove that any statement about anything is not symbolic?… Can he keep warm on a winter night with only the word “blanket” over him?… One does not have to swallow every statement that Dr. Tillich makes, but one is bound to be the poorer if he refuses to consider his frequently challenging and constructive thoughts. Dr. Tillich states his adventures in thought in a very dogmatic manner. A bit more humility might benefit him, and the same might help Mr. Freeman, and, indeed, all of us.

Sacramento, Calif.

I speak as one who has been greatly helped by the thinking of Paul Tillich. I am certain he addresses himself to questions that are actually there but which can easily be obscured by any of the several varieties of “Protestant” and Roman Catholic scholastic theologies current today which insist on a propositional Deity to worship, to swear by, and to use for whipping the rest of society into some kind of shape. Tillich braves psychological hazards that Jesuitical, Fundamentalists, and “Power of Positive Thinking” expressions of “the will to believe” refuse to risk. Perhaps he himself should have a word in your journal, on the question as to which route is the more idolatrous and alien to the genius of the Christian movement.

Westminster Foundation, Univ. of Ore.

Eugene, Ore.

When Freeman represents as Tillich’s own position the view that “experience is an inexhaustible source out of which new truths are continually taken” and that “the theologian ought to be open to experience which might go beyond Christian experience,” he completely overlooks the fact that in the discussion to which he refers (Systematic Theology, I, 45) Tillich himself is in reality concerned to reject any such view. As can be readily confirmed by … the context in which the statements that Freeman paraphrases occur, Tillich’s purpose in making them is actually descriptive—or, even better, polemical; for it is against precisely such a position as he thereby describes that he is concerned to set his own view of experience as a “medium” rather than as an independent source.

So. Meth. Univ.

Perkins School of Theology

Dallas, Tex.

Your frantic support of reactionary religion … only confirms Tillich’s judgment of some years ago, that much of American religious thinking is comfortably at anchor in the backwaters of a hard-shelled and fundamentalists supernaturalism—which he has called a “happy state of backwardness.” If openness to the eternal and to the future means anything in religious thought and action Tillich is in the vanguard.

Christ Episcopal Church

Tracy City, Tenn.

One of our younger ministers … conducted … devotions.… He had given them Tillich. Even the wisest of preachers told me he didn’t know what he was talking about.… Yet Tillich gets all the space possible in your paper.… I want you to sense the deep, tragic needs of a baffled world, and give us food for … our souls.

Winnipeg, Man.

I am really delighted … you have taken Tillich’s Saturday Evening Post article (June 14 issue) and … have analyzed so competently and unsparingly his position. Dr. Bell’s article on the subject is superb. I was greatly impressed also by the article by David Freeman.

Headmaster

The Stony Brook School

Stony Brook, L. I., N. Y.

It was a very excellent criticism and certainly needed. One cannot help but feel after reading Tillich that his whole approach is just first century Gnosticism warmed over and given a twentieth century sauce. The Gnostics emphasized the idea of “depth” in their philosophy. Indeed, they were trying to give to New Testament Christianity a depth which they felt was missing. Unfortunately, they like Tillich, only succeeded in divesting the relation of God’s saving act in Jesus Christ of historicity and therefore of relevance. The historic facts of the Christian message have always been an offense to the intellectual who has not been humbled at the cross. It is tragic that Tillich’s position is often represented as being the only road by which modern man can travel if he wants to reach a mature faith. Your articles … certainly helped to show that Christian faith must be rooted and grounded in the historic acts of revelation where God in Christ has acted in time—for men and our eternal salvation.

… My prayer is that God will bless the whole ministry of the Church through the excellent and timely articles.…

Thornhill Presb.

Thornhill, Ont.

Encamped along horizontal plane in existential present

Modern man’s predicament becomes quite evident

Lost is the meaning of his life; no infinite concern

Depth the dimension that’s been lost; for which we all should yearn.

Depth is the victory! Depth is the victory!

O glorious victory of infinite concern.

The banner over us is, “Go! directions without limit.”

We’ll tread on roads no saint has trod; world-space will not inhibit.

Fair Science like a whirlwind’s breath makes all and us a tool

While transitory life-concern completely does us fool.

On every hand the foe we find drawn up in dread array.

Literal defense of our symbols for us will lose the day.

The truth of History’s healing power and power in personal life,

Is plainly in symbolic sense and pure non-literal light.

To him that hurts with hard questions; black raiment shall be given

By angels he shall be well-known, at Harvard, if not heaven.

Analysis, Existentialist with cube and plane and line

Humility’s “learned ignorance” is still their name and sign.

Chaplain

Veterans Hosp.

Sheridan, Wyo.

By far the greatest service rendered by Freeman’s article …, particularly in quoting Tillich’s references to “the continuous self-surrender of Jesus who is Jesus to Jesus who is the Christ,” is to show how really far from dead is that Gnosticism the early Church Fathers fought, and how much alive and energetic it still is, particularly in the dress of academic sophistication.

Dongola, Ill.

The references to Tillich … were handled in love and critical integrity.

Indianapolis, Ind.

PROPER THRUST

The thrust of … Prof. Cullmann’s … thesis (July 21 issue) may be in the proper direction, but can such of his quotations … as the following be considered as biblical? “He [Jesus] is now actually in the hands of God’s great enemy [death]” (p. 5). But death is a judicial penalty inflicted by God and is therefore man’s great enemy, not God’s. “He [Jesus] can only conquer death … by betaking himself … to the sphere of ‘nothingness’ …” (p. 5). I have purposely condensed this to bring out the objectionable part, e.g. calling death the sphere of nothingness. Cullmann here implies, if he does not actually say, that Jesus’ death included the cessation of existence for his soul. This is not only unbiblical, it is anti-biblical. “Death is not something natural, willed by God, … it is … opposed to God” (p. 5). This smacks of a dualism that makes death practically, if not actually, as ultimate as God. “The soul is not immortal” (p. 22). This statement agrees with Cullmann’s thought as expressed in the above statements, but it is also simply not true. The biblical data describe death in the primary sense as separation of the soul from the body, and in the ultimate sense as separation of the complete personality from God, of which the former is but a portent. And in neither case does the soul lose its existence.

Faith Presbyterian

Fawn Grove, Pa.

Making a distinction between body and flesh is certainly a bizarre idea.… It is my humble opinion that if this is a sample of Fundamentalist scholarship, they should give it up altogether and confine themselves to the emotional side of religion. Then Christianity will become an outgrowth of the old mystery religions with a modern setting.

Reading, Pa.

I cannot agree that our Lord was afraid to die. If Dr. Cullmann had not omitted the last phrase of Hebrews 5:7, this verse would have refuted his statement concerning this matter. If Christ prayed that he might be spared from death, then he was not “heard.” I believe the only thing he feared was that the sins of the whole world which were beginning to weigh heavily upon him might crush out his life and prevent him going to the cross to accomplish our redemption. The fact that “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood” and that “there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him” would seem to allow for this interpretation.

Dean

Simpson Bible College

San Francisco, Calif.

Thank you for the stimulating article … by … Cullmann. I … appreciated his statement that sickness, although not necessarily the result of individual sin, is a result of “the sinful condition of the whole of humanity. Every healing is a partial resurrection, a partial victory of life over death.…” This is exactly what the exponents of divine healing from Drs.… A. B. Simpson … and A. J. Gordon down to the present have been saying. My ideal of a preacher is F. W. Robertson of Brighton, and I consider Oral Roberts to be in the same class.

Parkside Christian & Missionary Alliance

Visalia, Calif.

Cullmann’s vital point is that we have a sure and certain hope only because of the concrete fact of Christ’s resurrection—an … outstanding article … with … essential soundness.

Whitley Vicarage

Godalming, Surrey, England

While reading Cullmann …, I was reminded of a poem by John C. Cooper (July 7 issue). It would seem that Mr. Cooper would agree with the Socratic hope, as described by Dr. Cullmann, that “death is the soul’s great friend.” … Cullmann’s Ingersoll Lecture is a good antidote to the frazzled ending of Mr. Cooper’s otherwise inspiring poem.…

First Cong. Ch.

Brewer, Maine

ALCOHOL

The July 7 issue contained some very good articles on the social aspects of the Gospel which many have a tendency to neglect.

Solon, Maine

The last few paragraphs in … Bainton’s article do little to mitigate against the oinophilic tones of the rest of the article.… Should the subtle invitation to “moderate” drinking be accepted by untaught or mistaught people, then some of the responsibility should be thrown on the shoulders of the writers who “practice and teach total abstinence,” but at the same time undermine the authority of God’s Word regarding the dangerous poison chemically known as ethyl alcohol. San Gabriel, Calif.

The author, as he freely confesses … did not base his article on biblical precepts and examples. An habitual drinker could not have avoided them better.

Chicago, Ill.

Dr. Bainton … holds out a Bible which does not teach total abstinence … and a Christ who … dispensed alcoholic drinks at the wedding in Cana.… History proves that Christians have never risen higher … than their concept of … Christ.…

Evangelical Cong. School of Theol.

Myerstown, Pa.

I wonder if Dr. Bainton felt that there would not be among his readers any who would be so inconsistent with themselves as to read both his article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY on total abstinence, in which he seemed to endorse fully the non-literalist approach to biblical interpretation, and his more recent article in The Christian Century on pacifism, in which he appears to be rather self-consciously embarrassed about his own biblical literalism and legalism. “But if one cites a text one is promptly accused of legalism” (“Christian Pacifism Reassessed,” The Christian Century, July 23, 1958, p. 848). In the article on abstinence he openly admits that his thesis is in direct contradiction to the precepts and practices of the early Church, but seeks to justify his position on grounds of deeper Christian principles. In the article on pacifism he skips over principles and dwells more on the actual precepts and practices of the early Church.

One is puzzled as to what is fundamental in the celebrated professor’s thought—biblical precepts, biblical principles or his own concepts. On the other hand, Professor Bainton may be the latest star to appear on the dialectical horizon.

Dept. of Religion

Judson College

Marion, Ala.

If it is true that the wine of Cana was fermented, then Jesus was doing exactly what Dr. Bainton suggests a stronger brother should not do for a weaker brother—placing before him the wherewithal to yield to temptation.

Santa Rosa, Calif.

Alcohol taken even in moderation provides a degree of drunkenness.

Shelton, Conn.

The article by Dr. Bainton was especially helpful.

River Falls, Wis.

WE WOULD LIKE PERMISSION TO REPRINT IN THE DAILY PAPERS YOUR ARTICLES … ON “THE LIQUOR PROBLEMS” … “TOTAL ABSTINENCE AND BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES,” “LIQUOR, LEGALITY, AND LICENSE” … AND TO QUOTE OR PRINT THE OTHER ARTICLES AS NEED MAY ARRIVE. THE REASON FOR THIS REQUEST [IS] OUR CITY AND COUNTY ARE DRY AND THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME INDICATION OF AN EFFORT FOR A WET ELECTION.

FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH

GLASGOW, KY.

Concerning the article by Mr. Wallace and the Temperance League: while it is expected by the churches that they shall follow the methods of the Anti-Saloon League whose chief purpose was to close up liquor outlets, they have retreated by substituting so-called education and have let down the churches.

Townville, Pa.

Dr Jellema states, “Only 2 per cent of those who drink become alcoholics.” The latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Alcohol Studies reports that in 1956 there were 5,015,000 alcoholics in the United States.… The Gallup Poll has recently made a survey resulting in the estimate that there are now about 57 million adults in the United States who use alcoholic beverages.… This would mean that the alcoholics constitute about 11 per cent of the present drinking population.…

State Supt.

Temperance League of Ohio

Columbus, Ohio

The editorial on “The Alcohol Problem” is the best thing on that subject I have ever read.… The article just following, “Evangelism and the New Birth,” … dovetails into [it].… The alcoholic must be born again before there can be any constructive work on emotional instability or personality weakness.

Presbyterian Junior College

Maxton, N. C.

I wish to commend you on an excellent presentation of a very serious problem that the pulpits of the land seem to have ignored for years. I’m 70 and can’t recall when I last heard a preacher even mention the subject.

Pasadena, Calif.

I would like … copies for parish distribution.

First Congregational Church

Iowa Falls, Iowa

I feel … there is only one way to arrest the spread of alcoholism; … spread the word not to take the first drink.

Winchester, Mass.

I enjoyed reading every word.… Every Christian should be active in the cause of total abstinence.

Coronado, Calif.

Your series of articles … is the most helpful I have ever read.

Emanuel’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

It is heartening to us to see items given to such a serious problem as alcoholism by a publication such as yours.

Arkansas Commission on Alcoholism

Little Rock, Ark.

CONGREGATIONAL POLITY

In your July 21 issue appeared a statement by Dr. Truman Douglass which is an insult to all churches and ministers who do not believe that organic union is the only expression of the ecumenical movement, and therefore wish to remain outside the “United” Church of Christ. Congregationalists, from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, have never supported Dr. Douglass’ “legal principle of ‘obedience and support to the will of the majority,’ ” for under our system of church polity each local congregation is in complete charge of its own affairs. We remain a fellowship rather than a national denomination, and a much greater number of churches than the General Council admits have taken their stand in favor of the continuation of our fellowship of free and autonomous congregations, answerable only to the guiding power of the Holy Spirit in our midst. I would like to ask Dr. Douglass how many churches have taken positive action to merge with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The General Council takes far too much for granted when it approves recent newspaper releases claiming that all Congregational churches and ministers support this hybrid union.

First Cong. Church

Tarentum, Pa.

Is not the heart of American life the coffee cup? When most of us wake up in the morning, we rather feel the day more promising after a cupful of aromatic breakfast coffee. And the way many employees in business tell time, of course, is not so much by the clock on the wall as by the morning or afternoon coffee break. Even executives frequently make important transactions over a cup of coffee. And it is not uncommon to see one lover gaze into the eyes of another while unsipped coffee cools. Students would flunk out of school without coffee, and the Navy would sink without coffee!

But what does the coffee cup possibly have to do with Christ? Much indeed. For one thing, it is over coffee that so many people come together, quietly relax and talk of the doings of the day. It is there they deepen their friendships. Coffee and conversation just go together. When people in our rushed and impersonal America become desperately lonely, as they often do, they hunger to meet with someone in the deeper dimensions of life. They are tired of the breezy, shallow and superficial ways so well-known to all of us. And it is the simple, common coffee cup that can often provide just the setting in which one may open and share his inner life with a friend. Coffee means communion.

Coffee Cup Evangelism

But again you ask, what has this to do with Jesus Christ? One of the deepest needs of the modern American is the need for friendship and inter-personal communion. He has lost individual identity by becoming a unit in the “lonely crowd.” He has found himself an automation within the machinery of mass culture, and often it is over so small a thing as a coffee cup that he seeks to recapture his identity. To put it simply, he is open to friendship and responds appreciatively when someone will treat him as though he were important—just because he is. It is in this context that a Christian can be a friend. And it is in this friendship that Jesus Christ can be winsomely presented as Saviour and Friend. We might well call this “coffee cup evangelism.”

Mass meetings, special preaching missions, Sunday evening evangelistic services, all have their place, and God has used them. But too often we count on them as the sole means of presenting the Good News. We have become convinced that only a few chosen ones can adequately tell of the love of Christ; only those who are professional evangelists, those who have seminary education, and those who are in “full-time” Christian work can persuade the nonbeliever to entrust himself to the Saviour! We have quite forgotten that most of us everyday five-and-ten-cent-store Christians are appointed by God as ministers of reconciliation. There are indeed those who have special gifts and ministries, such as teaching, pastoring, and evangelizing. But this does not cancel the commission God has given each of us to be an agent of reconciliation.

A Point Of Contact

How then may we fulfill this special trust from God? First of all, by the earnest exercise of prayer. Then, by means of the coffee cup. Why not? Many of our non-Christian acquaintances (and I use the word advisedly) never attend church. They would politely shun our attempts to get them to an evangelistic service. But they do drink coffee, and they hunger for friendship. Yet because they are not Christian we have not been friends to them, only acquaintances. We have looked upon them somewhat as impersonal “souls to be saved.” And we have not seen them as human beings with joys and sorrows and tensions and defeats and successes of which we share our common humanity. Too often the Christian has failed to join the human race!

Let us see the coffee cup, then, as a symbol of sincere, outgoing friendship to a non-Christian. Friendship may indeed be established and deepened over just a simple cup of coffee. A neighbor invited in mid-morning, a schoolmate with another at a stop between classes, a business acquaintance and you at the coffee shop—these present unequaled opportunities for extending friendship and in God’s time for sharing quietly Jesus Christ. Sincere friendship is an almost certain way to gain the occasion of speaking about spiritual values in life and sharing the Lord’s Good News.

Of course, there are other means to this: playing golf with a non-Christian friend; inviting him to dinner; out of thoughtfulness taking a forgotten trash can to the curb, or bringing in the wash of an absent neighbor before it rains; just a walk together or the sharing of a mutual interest. The list is endless.

But a word of warning is necessary. People are not insensitive to inter-personal feelings, and they know almost intuitively whether the friendship offered is sincere and genuine, or whether it is calculated as a means to an end. Our love and friendship ought to be freely and uncalculatingly given, not a friendship-with-a-price-tag—the tag being conversion. That is using people, treating them as things, and not loving them just because they are and because God loves them. The friendship of calculation is hypocrisy; the friendship of love and respect is a reflection of the love of God and may well be the wedge that God uses to open a friend’s heart to Christ.

Cordiality And Grace

We may not have the gift of teaching, nor of evangelism (in the sense of prominent public evangelism), nor of pastoral administration. But we all do have the peerless gift of God’s love shed abroad in our hearts. This is a spiritual gift that surpasses all others. And this kind of love, expressed in a pure and cordial friendship, is our most effective way of being an agent of reconciliation. All of us can be friends for Christ’s sake. The lonesome face mirrored in the half-filled cup may be the symbol of a soul without another companion to lift life above a monologue.

Christ and the coffee cup. Why not bring our Saviour into the very center of everyday American life as we drink coffee—and make friends—to the glory of the living God.

Warner A. Hutchinson holds the B.A. degree from University of California at Los Angeles, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and the B.D. degree from Fuller Theological Seminary. He has served as chaplain with the United States Navy and in the Spring assisted the Billy Graham Crusade in San Francisco.

(LOCALE:) The Alpha State Medical Society

(OCCASION:) Annual Banquet

Conversation overheard at table:

First Pediatrician: “Have any of the babies, delivered by that upstart obstetrician, Dr. Graham, come your way?”

Second Pediatrician: “Yes, and I’m completely puzzled as to what to do. I never saw such a conglomeration. Why, some of these babies suck their thumbs, others seem confused, and others have awfully poor feeding habits.”

1st Ped.—“I know just how you feel. What burns me up is all the publicity this man gets; and he has written a number of articles and books on obstetrics.”

2nd Ped.—“Yes, a number of the infants I have seen haven’t been inoculated against polio; in fact they have not been inoculated against any communicable disease.

1st Ped.—“One reason I haven’t any use for this fellow is that he thinks an obstetrician’s business is to deliver babies. He doesn’t carry them through to maturity.”

2nd Ped.—“And you know, he’s so busy with obstetrics that he says little about public health, and I’ve never heard him make a pronouncement on the genocide pact or the United Nations.”

1st Ped.—“It’s embarrassing to have these infants come when you don’t like either the man or his methods. At the same time many men cooperating with Dr. Graham seem to be getting a tremendous number of new patients from his clinic.”

2nd Ped. (In a low voice, glancing around the table to see if anyone is looking)—“You know, and you surely must not quote me or the Medical Society might kick me out, I have serious doubts about how babies are born. Or, whether they are born at all. I have some specimens in my office (pickled in formalin) and as I look at those jars sometimes I wonder where they really came from and what they really are.”

1st Ped. (Also with a furtive look)—“I am glad to hear you say that, because I have come to reject the entire idea of babies being born. I believe they come into existence by a confusion of educational ectoplasm transplanted to a conglomeration of pseudo-scientific astigmatism. It is so utterly naive to hold the archaic view that they are born into the world as babes.”

Internist: “Excuse me boys but my hearing aid is so acute I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I am professor of dialectic medicine down at Miasma Medical College. I’m intrigued by your views because they’re mine too. The basic problem is that man has lost his depth perception and has emerged through the back door of theoretical spatial orbitization. The plain fact is that we don’t know where we came from, where we are, or where we are going.”

1st and 2nd Ped. (In unison)—“You fascinate us with the profundity of your group hallucinations.”

Internist: “Be sure you keep this quiet. So far only a few of us hold this advanced hypothesis. The man in the street might not understand and if the trustees of my school heard it they might become restive and ask some embarrassing questions.”

1st and 2nd Ped.—“We’re all in the same boat. Our patients would not understand either. In fact we do not understand ourselves. As for these infants “delivered” by Dr. Graham—let them die! But wait a minute; we don’t believe they were born in the first place … Wouldn’t it be nice if we really knew what we do believe?”

(Locale🙂 The City-Wide Ministerial Council

(Occasion🙂 Monthly Meeting—Topic: “How to make the Far-Country more pleasant for the Prodigal”

Conversation overheard in cloakroom:

First Minister: “Have you had any of these people come to you from the Billy Graham Crusade?”

Second Minister: “Yes, several, and I must say that I resent them. I never saw such a conglomeration. I talked to two who were utterly confused; they even asked me how to study the Bible.”

1st Min.—“I had the same experience. What burns me up is the publicity this man gets. And he has written several books and a number of articles on how to win men to Christ.”

2nd Min.—“It exasperates me because he spends so much time talking about ‘sin’ and being ‘born again.’ Doesn’t he know that sin is merely an emotional reaction to the adverse conditions and circumstances of life? He should certainly be aware of that fact.”

1st Min.—“I know, I know. And I get burned up because he seems to think the social order can only be changed when men’s hearts are changed. Why doesn’t he spend more time attacking the great social problems of our day?”

2nd Min.—“One of my parishioners embarrassed me the other day by suggesting that it is the place of us ministers to take these people and lead them on in the Christian life. Why doesn’t Graham send them to us as mature Christians?”

1st Min. (In a low voice and with a hasty glance around)—“You know, and I don’t want to be quoted because some wouldn’t understand, I just don’t have any truck with this talk about being ‘born again.’ A lot of people in my church certainly haven’t been born again, and I dislike archaic and childish ideas.”

2nd Min.—“I surely am glad to hear you say that. I’ve felt that way a long time. The way to make Christians is to tell them about the divine spark within them, challenge them to follow the example of the carpenter of Galilee and be good.”

1st Min.—“Education is the secret. Get a good program started. Be careful about the Bible too. I’ve known people to go off their rockers reading the Bible.”

2nd Min.—“We are so busy in our church we have no time to talk about sin and judgment. We’ve something more challenging to talk about.”

1st Min.—“Unfortunately you and I are in the minority now. But a lot of people like to hear us, it makes them feel good.”

Professor: “Gentlemen, I was not eavesdropping but I am deaf and I have been reading your lips. Congratulations! I am professor of Obscure Philosophy at Humanist Divinity School. You must have been reading my books for you express my thoughts so clearly. I am glad you have freed yourselves from a theology which talks of sin and of God’s holiness and justice. God is love and if we do our best we can leave the rest to him.”

1st and 2nd Min.—“We are truly glad to meet you. Your depth of perception, your scholarship, your reasoning, your philosophy of life have fascinated us.”

Professor: “I appreciate your attitude. But let me advise you to hold these views in confidence until more people hold them too. The other day I heard a crack-pot layman say the greatest hoax in America is to be found in those ministers who do not believe the Gospel they are supposed to minister. Such ideas are dangerous and those holding them should be silenced. If you cannot silence them make them look ridiculous.”

1st and 2nd Min.—“Just what shall we do with any who come to us from Graham’s Crusade? They have been deluded into thinking they have had some sort of religious experience. But we just don’t believe they have been ‘born again’ because we do not believe in any such thing. Our idea is just to let them alone.”

Professor: “Your deductions and conclusions are correct. You have the philosophical approach, based on your predetermined prejudice and that is based on your rejection of childish notions. I am happy to meet such enlightened men.”

1st and 2nd Min.—“Ah, what a relief. Just let them die! Wait a minute, they never were born in the first place. Or, were they? We wish we knew.”

At the risk of being excessively negative, I shall try to show why orthodoxy finds it difficult to cooperate with the National and World Councils of Churches. The ethos of orthodoxy is seldom sympathetically understood. Critics tend to judge it by its worst, rather than by its best, elements.

Were I to name the criterion that inspires the best elements in orthodoxy, it would be the following: The visible unity of Christendom is an ideal which simultaneously inspires and judges the real. Just as we strive for sinless perfection, though we shall never reach it, so we strive for the equally valid, though equally elusive, ideal of visible unity. If a person imagines that the ideal can be realized in history, he betrays his own want of education. Either the terms of the ideal are underestimated or the possibilities of the real are overestimated. Since original sin tinctures the entire human enterprise, man’s quest for unity is never a purely virtuous undertaking. Organizational security is partly a status symbol of pride and an outlet for will to power.

I am not saying that orthodoxy succeeds in applying its own principles. I only say that, in its finest moments, it evaluates the possibilities of Christian unity by what theologians call the “polar method.” The ideal and the real must be kept in delicate balance.

I

While orthodoxy may err in its conviction—and I want to stress this possibility—it nevertheless believes that the ecumenical movement is plying a course which overlooks the effect of original sin or collective human efforts. And this oversight traces back to a rather loose handling of the Word of God. Let me establish this by reviewing the kind of argument that appeals to the orthodox mind.

Christian unity is deceptively simple. Even a junior in seminary can define it. It is a fellowship of those who are spiritually joined with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection. “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13 RSV). But if the definition of Christian unity is simple, its application is not. We unite when we sing the Te Deum, “We praise thee, O God,” but we divide when we spell out the theology of this hymn. Our theology is never systematic, and unsystematic theology spawns disunity. This can be abundantly illustrated from the pages of church history, but I shall confine myself to two striking examples.

Luther and Zwingli tried to unite the Protestant cause, but “a different spirit” hindered them. Since they could not agree on the theology of the Eucharist, division was unavoidable. And after centuries of theological debate, the Lutheran and Reformed efforts are no nearer union than on the eve of the Marburg Conference.

A similar difficulty frustrated the Reformed cause. Baptists contend that public profession of faith precedes the rite of baptism, while Presbyterians contend that covenant infants form an exception to this rule. Classical Baptist divines (John Gill, Abraham Booth, etc.) and classical Presbyterian divines (William Cunningham, B. B. Warfield, etc.) exhibit equal powers of critical acumen and personal piety. But apparently something more than this is required to exegete the fine points in the Bible. This is why the threat of division, like the poor, is with us always.

There is only one way to defeat this, and that is by making unity a higher virtue than truth. Romanism aptly illustrates the technique. Roman apologists cite our fragmented efforts as palpable proof that the Reformation principle defeats itself. But it should be observed that Roman apologists never tell us how the Vatican eliminates the threat of disunity. And there is good reason for this concealment, for if Roman strategy were really understood, the Catholic cause would fall into considerable disrepute.

The Vatican eliminates the threat of disunity by eliminating religious liberty. Unless a Roman Catholic surrenders his judgment to the Pope, he is excommunicated. But this species of unity holds no attraction to one who believes that man is made in the image of God and that freedom of inquiry is an indefeasible prerogative. Furthermore, Roman security is specious. A man must exercise religious liberty to evaluate a system which nullifies religious liberty. Before one can surrender his judgment to the Pope, and thus be safe, he must use his own fallible judgment to assure himself that the Pope is infallible. The complex criteria of verification must then be faced. Thus, if we trace Catholic confidence back far enough, it rests on the same peril of private judgment that led the Reformers to conclude that the Pope is not infallible. Where, then, is the Roman advantage? Orthodoxy fails to see any.

The Reformers had one goal in view, and that was to coax Roman theology into conformity with biblical truth. But Rome promptly answered by banishing the Reformers. This means that the genesis of our divisions traces back to the medieval Church itself. Instead of meeting the Reformers on exegetical grounds, as Christ and the apostles met the Jews, Rome hurled barbed epithets of heresy and schism. The Reformers were given the curt option of either submitting to the tradition of the Church or of being excommunicated. To men of powerful Christian convictions, of course, this was not a live option at all. And Luther promptly showed his contempt by burning the papal bull.

II

Orthodoxy believes that the National and World Councils of Churches defend a position which is strikingly similar to that of Romanism. This is an audacious assertion, to be sure, but it rests on the solidest kind of evidence.

The Protestant principle received its first clarification in the Leipzig Disputation of 1519. When Luther said that the Council of Constance erred in condemning John Huss, it was plain to Eck, and Luther soon saw it, that two incompatible criteria were vying for primacy. Luther claimed the right of religious liberty, while Eck replied that this was one right Luther did not have. Since God has deposited the whole counsel of his will in the church diffusive, ecclesiastical tradition cannot be challenged by the opinion of an individual.

But Luther stood his ground. He knew that if a man surrenders his right to interpret Scripture according to the dictates of his conscience, whatever else remains is of very small account. No wonder Carlyle called Luther’s stand at Worms the greatest moment in the modern history of man. Luther thundered: “Unless I am persuaded by testimonies from Scripture or clear arguments,—for by themselves, I believe neither pope nor council—I stand convinced by the Holy Scriptures adduced by myself and my conscience is bound up in God’s Word. Retract I do not and will not, for to do anything against conscience is unsafe and dangerous. Here I stand. I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen” (Translation by David S. Schaff).

If the Reformation has done nothing else, it has clarified what is perhaps the most important theological question in this or any other age. Do we find the truth by submitting to the church, or do we find the church by submitting to the truth? Rome defends the first possibility, while the Reformers defend the second. But a choice must be made; the option is forced. Rome contends that the truth is where the church is, while the Reformers contend that the church is where the truth is.

If Rome is right, we have only one course before us, and that is to recant our Reformation heritage and return with haste to the papal fold. We cannot plead indefectible ignorance. Moreover, Romanism boasts a consummate order of visible unity. To create a Protestant counterpart would be a very foolish expedient.

But if Rome is wrong, then it seems to orthodoxy that Protestants ought to have the moral courage and the intellectual honesty to live by their own principles. The moment we defend man’s right to bind his conscience by a free and open study of Scripture, we are on Reformation soil and divisions in the church are both natural and necessary.

To say this, however, does not mean that divisions are either desirable or good. Such an outcome would offend the biblical ideal. To speak of spiritual unity without visible unity, what is this but to utter a contradiction? If a family will not live together, it is not a family at all. I now mean to say, even as I shall continue to mean to say, that divisions in the church are evil. As long as a single believer is outside the fellowship, love is incomplete.

To develop the problem more fully, let us return to Martin Luther and the problem of tragic moral choices. A choice is tragic, and thus invites admiration, when circumstances force one to decide between levels of good. Tragic moral choices are always difficult to make, for they entail a compromise between the ideal and the real. Protestants should remember that the great schism in Western Christianity was the direct fruit of a tragic moral choice. Otherwise they will overestimate the possibilities of human virtue.

Martin Luther did not want to disturb the visible unity of Christendom. But he did not see how such a disturbance could be avoided, for the gospel of Rome and the gospel of Scripture were different gospels. A tragic moral choice had to be made. Luther had to decide between a united church that taught error and a divided church that at least allowed for the possibility of truth. And being bound by the Word of God, he threw himself on the higher alternative. When a decision must be made between unity and truth, unity must yield to truth; for it is better to be divided by truth than to be united by error. We test the church by truth, not truth by the church. The apostles judged the Christian community by the norm of divine revelation.

Each generation must make this same tragic moral choice—and not only once, but again and again. If we want the comfort of the Christian gospel, we must accept the distress of a divided church. When men are free to unite in Christ, they are also free to divide in Christ. Religious liberty brings dissension, and dissension brings disunity. “For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor. 11:19, RSV). If we remove the threat of factions, we corrupt the very matrix of evangelical confrontation.

Sincere and unavoidable divisions should excite a sense of honor, not shame, in us. Milton wisely observes, “It is written that the Coat of our Saviour was without seame: whence some would infer that there should be no division in the Church of Christ. It should be so indeed; Yet seams in the same cloath, neither hurt the garment, nor misbecome it; and not only seams, but Schisms will be while men are fallible” (Of True Religion, Heresie, Schism and Toleration, in Works of John Milton, Columbia University Press, Vol. 6, pp. 176–177). An unfettered gospel is the important thing.

Whenever orthodoxy ponders the goals of the ecumenical movement, it feels that the issue of the Reformation must be raised all over again. Rome says that truth is decided by the church. And judging by the rising tide of Protestant ecclesiasticism, the Roman position is attracting a legion of new converts. The ecumenical movement sees the evil in disunity, and for this it must be praised. But it does not see the evil in untruth, and for this it must be criticized. Whether in Rome, Amsterdam, or Moscow, it makes no difference; truth still ranks above unity.

There is only one live heresy in the eyes of the National and World Councils of Churches, and that is the heresy of not cooperating with the National and World Councils of Churches. If a person cooperates, his defection from the Word of God is relegated to a place of tertiary importance. But this is precisely the theological climate which forced the Reformation. Luther was a heretic because he dared to say that the church is where the truth is, and not the other way around. Orthodoxy is proud to take its stand with Luther.

III

To make its position as attractive as possible, the ecumenical movement has reduced Christian commitment to what it believes is a decisive creedal minimum. The 1948 Amsterdam assertion says, “The Ecumenical Council is a union of Churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior.” This is a praiseworthy confession, but it is not praiseworthy enough to suit orthodoxy, for the only heresy it catches is unitarianism. The holes in the mesh are so wide that a sea of theological error can swim safely through. This proves that the ecumenical movement is more concerned with unity than it is with truth.

Furthermore, the Amsterdam assertion is in direct conflict with Scripture. “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21, RSV). This verse asserts that unless a confession of Christ’s lordship is united with an evangelical affection to do the will of God, it profits nothing. And where is the will of God, if not in the system of holy Scripture?

The ecumenical movement ought to come to terms with the disturbing fact that at least one church exists which accepts our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior, but which promptly anathematizes those who defend religious liberty as part of God’s image in man. This is what makes ecumenical strategy so anomalous. How can the Amsterdam assertion compose the differences in Western Christianity, when it was not a cause of these differences in the first place? What the Reformers knew, but what the ecumenical movement does not seem to know, is that the schism in Western Christianity cannot be mended until Rome acknowledges man’s right to bind his conscience by a free and open study of the Word of God. But this is a concession Rome will never make, for the very genius of her position rests on a negation of religious liberty.

The practices of the ecumenical movement baffle orthodoxy. For example, what can possibly be gained by extending olive branches of reconciliation to the papacy? These overtures are as embarrassing to Protestants as they are offensive to Catholics. Since Rome claims an absolute monopoly on grace and truth, it considers ecumenical overtures, however sincere, as nothing but loathsome evidences that the Protestant mutiny has not yet been crushed. Rome will not rest until it enjoys absolute ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It seems to me that the ecumenical movement ought to have the good sense to see this.

When Protestants want unity so badly that they are embarrassed by the Reformation, they may want it so badly that they will end up surrendering their judgment to the Pope. They will have their coveted unity, to be sure, but at the price of the Word of God.

Orthodoxy would like to entertain a more charitable attitude toward the ecumenical movement—and this irenic note should be taken in the best possible sense—but it is not sure how to go about the matter without violating Scripture. Since the meaning of Christianity was normatively defined by Christ and the apostles, the course before us is clear. We must conform our conscience to truth. If there is an extra-biblical way to know the mind of God, orthodoxy has never heard of it. The Bible, and only the Bible, tells us how an offended God will dispose of a sinful world.

When orthodoxy examines the Bible with an eye to truth, it confronts a series of doctrines which have equal authority to bind the conscience because they are delineated with equal power and lucidity—God as triune, God’s image in man, the federal headship of the first Adam, the fall of man, the federal headship of the last Adam, and Christ’s virgin birth, humanity and deity, sinless life, miraculous works, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, ascension into heaven, and glorious return. There is nothing esoteric about these doctrines. They are all open and plain. They are all carried by the rights of language.

The Amsterdam assertion is included in the above doctrines. Orthodoxy rejoices over any testimony to the lordship of Christ. But because the ecumenical movement is content to select one doctrine out of a number that are delineated with equal power and lucidity, it betrays its indifference to the exegetical demands of the biblical system. And what is this but a return to the ethos of Romanism?

For example, Christ’s resurrection is of such importance that not only is Christian fellowship inconceivable apart from the empty tomb, but the very coherence of the Christian world view turns on the empirical validity of this one event. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14, RSV). Deny that Christ defeated death, and where is the good news?

This is very clear. But apparently it is not clear enough, for the ecumenical movement extends a cordial welcome to open antagonists of the resurrection. Whether Christ conquered death is apparently not important. The important thing is that we all get together under one roof. And the ecumenical movement does not take this stand because of any textual difficulties in the Bible, for First Corinthians is universally recognized as Pauline.

IV

If the visible unity of Christendom is ever realized, it will be a sad day for the Gospel. Just as democratic freedom is preserved by a prudential balance of social interests, so the freedom of the gospel is preserved by a prudential balance of ecclesiastical interests. Orthodoxy is afraid that the ecumenical movement will upset the balance by taking too much power to itself.

And there is a good reason for this fear. The National Council of Churches not only pretends to speak for the whole of American Protestantism, but it thinks it is sufficiently virtuous to decide what religious activity is of God and what is not. O. Walter Wagner writes in the August 22, 1956, issue of The Christian Century, “Gone are the days when the airways were a wide-open range for the denominational demagogue who could afford to buy time, or for the fundamentalist fringe group that used them to sell its divisive wares. Today, prevailingly, public service time is granted to the radio and television commission of the local council of churches.” This is most instructive strategy. The ecumenical movement takes away the prejudices of the demagogue and the anarchist, and in their place puts the prejudices of the ecumenical movement. It then caps its arrogance by calling this progress. The truth is that the right of religious liberty is being curtailed. When a single power controls religious broadcasting, what is this but ecclesiastical tyranny? In an effort to restore a reasonable balance of power, orthodoxy has had to create such counteragents as the National Religious Broadcasters and the Radio Commission.

Because sinners use power as an outlet of pride, no part of Christendom can speak for all of Christendom. Whenever bands of union become too tight, religious liberty is threatened. Voltaire may have been wide of the mark at many points, but he knew enough about human depravity to hit the mark when judging the relation between pride, power, and ecclesiastical pretense. “If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy in peace” (Letters on the English, Letter VI, “On the Presbyterians”).

Orthodoxy believes that every prudent means should be used to heal the divisions in the Christian church. But before one Protestant denomination joins with another, it must examine its own distinctives in the light of the Word of God. If the exegetical ground of these distinctives is no longer conclusive, overtures of union may be undertaken. But if Scripture affords no such release, separation must remain. Under no conditions should truth be subordinated to unity. We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law—and especially not by the law that the church should be visibly united. Our divisions will continue to scandalize the natural man, but this should not unhinge us. The message of the cross is also a scandal.

At an earlier point I admitted that orthodoxy does not succeed in applying its own principles. I want to reaffirm this as I close. If the ecumenical movement tends to upset the biblical balance from one side, orthodoxy tends to upset it from the other. The ecumenical movement sees the perils in a divided, but not in a united, church; while orthodoxy sees the perils in a united, but not a divided, church. The one error leads to tyranny, the other to anarchy. And the anarchy is no less reprehensible than the tyranny. Orthodoxy overlooks the work of sin in the separatist himself. Since the separatist does not belong to the National and World Councils of Churches, he thinks he is virtuous. This is a pathetic illusion, however, for status by negation is a far cry from affirmative righteousness. Orthodox doctrine, unsavored by orthodox love, profits nothing. As the apostle Paul stated so succinctly, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).

I am sorry about one thing. I am sorry that orthodoxy hesitates to take an active part in the modern dialogue about unity. I should think that the possession of truth would issue in a passionate desire to guide, rather than chide, the groping efforts of a tragically divided church. Failing in this nobler role, orthodoxy has merited its disrespect.

What shall we say, then, is the nature of the unity we seek? It is a fellowship in Jesus Christ which is vitally united with the system of biblical truth. Fellowship is the flesh, while truth is the bones. Flesh without bones is flabby, while bones without flesh are dead. Together they make for organic unity.

Preacher In The Red

HEART-WARMING

One of the dear old ladies in the congregation was in the habit of expressing her emotions during a sermon by shouting, “Praise the Lord, Hallelujah.”

The pastor, unaccustomed to such demonstrations, became nervous and during a call at the home of the lady, after telling her that he appreciated her presence at the services, said, “I notice that you frequently become very emotional, and you express this emotion by shouting your praises to the Lord. I know that when you feel happy, you cannot keep from shouting, but for some reason this makes me almost forget what I am about to say. Suppose I make this bargain with you: if you contain yourself, and not shout from now until Christmas, I’ll give you a pair of nice woolen blankets.”

The lady agreed to this proposition, and all went well until just before Christmas, when, during a heart-warming sermon, she just could not contain herself, and suddenly shouted to the top of her voice, “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, blankets or no blankets.”—E. M. UMBACH, Elizabethton, Tenn.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Suite 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C.

Edward John Carnell is President of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Author of numerous books, of which the most recent is Christian Commitment, he is currently at work on another. The essay above was written by invitation of Religion in Life, a Christian quarterly of opinion and discussion, as one of five viewpoints on “The Nature of the Unity We Seek.” It appeared in the Spring issue, 1957 (Copyright 1957 by Abingdon Press, and used by permission.)

First in a series of four articles on the Christian Hope and the Millennium

Discussions of the millennium or of any theme of biblical prophecy require a humble approach. The prophetic word is a lamp shining in the darkness until the day dawns and the full light of God’s accomplished purpose breaks upon us (2 Pet. 1:19). Prophecy is a light to keep men in the Way through the darkness of This Age until the light of Christ’s coming dispels the darkness forever. This suggests that we should not look to prophecy for pre-written history or for a blueprint of the future. Prophecy’s primary purpose is to give light for our present journey, not to satisfy our curiosity. Since we do not have the full light and our knowledge is admittedly partial (1 Cor. 13:12), we may not expect complete unity of interpretation among God’s servants in prophetic truth. Paul himself asserts that while there is indeed “one faith,” full unity of the faith has not yet been attained (Eph. 4:4, 13). Therefore, humility and charity in such study is more important than perfect agreement. Furthermore, the existence of unsolved problems should be no embarrassment to any interpretation.

Nevertheless, God’s Word does speak about the future, and we are justified, indeed, required to attempt to understand and to interpret the prophetic outlook of Scripture. Redemption is uniformly viewed as incomplete; and we must search Scripture to understand all about the completion of God’s redemptive purpose.

The problems which cluster around the question of a millennium, so far as the New Testament is concerned, are theological, not exegetical. The millenarian who accepts Augustine’s sound dictum that “the New is in the Old concealed while the Old is in the New revealed” may feel embarrassed by the paucity of New Testament teachings about this theme. Sound exegesis of Revelation 20 requires a millennial interpretation; and non-millennialists usually do not appeal so much to exegesis as to theological consistency for support of their position. They interpret such passages as Revelation 20 in a non-millenarian way because they are convinced that the totality of New Testament truth has no room for an interregnum and that there is no alternative in view of the New Testament eschatology as a whole but to interpret Revelation spiritually.

However, it is this author’s conviction that not only exegesis, but also New Testament theology, require a millennial interregnum; for the millennium is the era of the revelation of Christ’s glory.

The Two Ages

Underlying biblical theology is the structure of the two ages: This Age and the Age to Come. Unfortunately, this fact has been obscured to three centuries of English speaking Bible students because the Authorized Version incorrectly translates aion “world” instead of “age.” The two ages constitute the entire course of human existence (Matt. 12:32; Eph. 1:21). The transition between the two ages is the second coming of Christ (Matt. 24:3), resurrection (Luke 20:35), and judgment (Matt. 13:40f.). So long as This Age lasts, evil—demonic, satanic evil—will plague human history. Such influence has God, the King of the Ages (1 Tim. 1:17), permitted Satan to exercise in This Age that he is called the god of This Age (2 Cor. 4:4). This Age is evil (Gal. 1:4), characterized by sin and death.

Only in the Age to Come will God’s people enter into the full experience of what is meant by eternal life (Mark 10:30; Matt. 25:31, 46). Only in the Age to Come will the full blessing of the kingdom of God become man’s possession. For the fact is that eternal life and the kingdom of God (Mark 10:24f.) both belong to the Age to Come, not to This Age.

On the basis of this so-called antithetical structure of the two ages, it can be argued that there is no room for an interregnum between This Age and the Age to Come. The New Testament, it is said, makes the second coming of Christ the dividing point between the ages. At his coming, we shall enter into the full enjoyment of the redemptive blessings of eternal life and the kingdom of God. The coming of Christ is the center of the New Testament expectation of the future. God’s purposes will then be consummated; the Age to Come will then begin.

Facing The Difficulties

The difficulty with this apparently persuasive reasoning is that it proves too much; for in this same antithetical structure, both eternal life and the kingdom of God are exclusively future, not a present possession. Yet every Sunday School child knows that Jesus came to give men eternal life here and now; for he who believes on the Son has eternal life (John 3:36). Furthermore, the kingdom of God is something present which men enter by the new birth (John 3:3, 5); the redeemed are already in the kingdom of God’s Son (Col. 1:13).

Long ago, Professor Geerhardus Vos pointed out in his Pauline Eschatology that the great themes of redemption-justification, the Holy Spirit, as well as eternal life and the kingdom of God—are “semi-eschatological” realities. That is, although they belong to the Age to Come, they have entered into human history through the incarnation and redemptive work of Christ. The redeemed man experiences in This Age, evil as it is, a bit of the life of the Age to Come. There is, in other words, an overlapping of the ages. The redeemed live “between the times”—in two ages at once. We may taste of the powers of the coming age (Heb. 6:5) and thereby be delivered from this present evil age (Gal. 1:4), no longer being conformed to it even though we live in it (Rom. 12:2).

Professor Vos correctly sketches this relationship by two overlapping lines on different levels. Therefore, although the Age to Come is future and begins with the coming of Christ in glory, this new age has already begun with the Incarnation—the coming of Christ in humility. The two ages have come together. However, it is important to note that many passages of Scripture make no reference to this fact. The Age to Come is usually viewed as altogether future, even though it is “spiritually” present.

The millennium is a further stage in this overlapping of the ages. The Age to Come, which is now working secretly in This Age within the lives of God’s people, will manifest itself in outward glory before the final inauguration of the Age to Come. The life of the Age to Come will show itself more splendidly in this world before the final judgment falls and God brings the new heavens and the new earth.

Theological Necessity

The theological necessity for such a period is seen in 1 Corinthians 15:23–28. In the days of his flesh, Christ emptied himself, pouring himself out in humility even to the point of death. “But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:7–8). He is now exalted “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name,” (Phil. 2:9) and seated at the right hand of God; but his glory does not appear to the world. This Age is still the evil age. Christ’s glory is known only to his people, but even they suffer and die. Christ’s rule is hidden from the world. He is indeed now reigning in victory and enthroned with his Father (Rev. 3:21); but the world does not know it, for his reign has not been disclosed to the world. In fact, so far as the world is concerned, his reign is in a sense potential and not realized. “As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb. 2:8, RSV).

Yet, “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). His reign must become public in power and glory. The “reign of grace” must become a “reign of power.”

The Age To Come

However, the Age to Come is not the age of Christ’s reign; it is the age of the Father’s glory. First Corinthians 15:21–24 designates three stages in God’s redemptive purpose. First is the resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of the resurrection (vv. 21, 23). Then will occur the resurrection of those who are Christ’s at his coming. “After that (the literal meaning of the Greek particle) comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father” (v. 24). Here is the third stage, which is the Age to Come. Then, “the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all” (vs. 28).

The Age to Come after “The End” is the age of the Father’s all-encompassing dominion. The Church age—the era between the Resurrection and the Parousia—is the age of the Son’s hidden rule. The millennium will be the age of the manifestation of Christ’s glory when the sovereignty, which he now possesses but does not manifest, and which he will give over to the Father in the Age to Come, will be manifested in glory in the world. God yet has a glorious destiny for the race which will be accomplished by the Son when he comes to reign in glory.

George Eldon Ladd has served on the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, in the New Testament field, since 1950. He spent the past year in Heidelberg, Germany, pursuing post-doctoral studies. In this first essay in the series on the Christian hope, he presents the premillennial non-dispensationalist viewpoint. John F. Walvoord, President of Dallas Theological Seminary, is to present the premillennial dispensational view; Loraine Boettner, author of Studies in Theology, the postmillennial view; and finally W. J. Grier, Irish minister and author, the amillennial view.

I was born in a Methodist parsonage when the present century was biting a teething ring. My dad served mountain and small-town circuits 100 miles long and eight to ten churches per circuit. He rode aboard a steed he had to buy himself from his $300 to $500 annual salaries. We raised the difference between these salaries and starvation on a few scraggly acres belonging to the parsonage range or we rented them on the halves from some “bighearted” parishioner. I have seen things from the ranks. I have been through the mill.

I have known of some well-to-do “pillar” arise in the quarterly conference and ask, “Just what is the very least you can live on, preacher?” They wanted that dividing line between life and starvation. They would settle for that. One church paying $30 a year argued that during revival meeting time they had to keep and feed both the preacher and his horse and shouldn’t be expected to pay the $2.50 a month salary. Yes, they shouted in the revivals. I still don’t know why.

Missionary or other “foreign” support was virtually nil in many of our churches. We basked behind the old argument, “There’s enough to do at home.” There always was—but we seldom got around to doing it.

In one area in which we lived there was a Christian college. Young student ministers were often sent out to nearby churches that they might earn money to stay in school. Father was giving way to one such pastor at one of his churches when an old brother arose and said, “I am tired of rocking the cradle for Morris Harvey College.” Whereupon, the treasurer of the church turned hurriedly through his ledger and replied: “Sir, according to my record you have rocked the cradle to the tune of four dollars during the past twelve months.”

Yes, we’ve always had our critics and cranks. But along with them God has placed a few level-headed, solid people to hold up the hands of the men of the cloth. I have yet to know of a church that didn’t have a few, today or yesterday. That didn’t come about by chance.

One of our ministers, who served a charge in our hills, wanted to take a circuit nearer his home area. But the congregation didn’t want to let him go, they loved him so. He was getting $470 a year. He asked them if they loved him thirty dollars worth more. They didn’t. He left. And one of the pillars who loved him so much owned a large cattle farm and cleared $9,000 a year—in 1913! He paid $30 a year into the church.

“Christian” Generosity

In another section there was one of those great revivals that you read about but seldom see. I have been through them, too. You sometimes wonder what has become of the converts by the time summer is gone. Anyway, the officers appointed an enthusiastic young convert to raise money for a $175 organ. It was a beauty. The lad rustled about among the men at the plant where he worked and got $100. He would go back and get the rest from the church easily. Three weeks later his enthusiasm had died. He had raised but $28 cash and pledges from the people among whom the revival had taken place. And many of them were in much better position financially than the unsaved men from whom the young man collected the hundred.

I could give instances like this by the dozen, but here are just two more—too unbelievable to omit.

Another old-time, sky blue revival was being held. After it was over, a young farmer went to the preacher to make a confession. He said that he made about $600 a year from his bean crop, to say nothing of his other cash crops, and had banked nearly all of it as he could get his living easily enough from the sod. He had some $9,000 in a nearby bank and was adding to it yearly. He was sitting pretty, but his conscience hurt. He and his wife agreed that they hadn’t been giving enough to the church. They were going to start doubling their portion. Instead of giving the customary fifty cents each yearly, they were going whole hog and give a dollar apiece.

Here’s the other. A lot of older people can tell you of the terrible 1917–1918 winter. We children of the parsonage would run from home to school, the store, or the church, and back again, to keep from freezing en route. The coldest day of this century was the Sunday before Christmas, 1917.

My mother and a few other women of the church had braved the elements to gather in a few dollars to add to their own for a Christmas treat for the children. Several had refused to give, including the town’s lone merchant, from whom they had to buy the candy at full price. He needed that profit to add to the $100,000 estate that was already his. Neither he nor his wife ever darkened a church door. His children went occasionally—with a penny each.

But the Sunday the treat was to be given out, the wife and three of her four children braved the 20-below zero cold to an unheated church to garner four sacks of that precious candy the head of the house had sold the good ladies of the church the day before.

Did you ever drive through the country, especially the hill country, and wonder why various church buildings were located so inconveniently? I’ll tell you. Every-time members decided to build a church, there was always some old codger who couldn’t give any money but would gladly donate the land. The rest of them took his scraggly mountainside site to save money or to keep from inheriting his wrath and his family’s for the next 40 years for turning it down. And there was always that clause in the deed: should the land ever be used for anything other than a church building, it was to revert to the heirs of the donor—for a pasture for goats.

Considering these facts, one does oftentimes wonder how there could be any revivals in those days.

I knew an old German farmer who loaded up his jolt wagon every Sunday morning and took a dozen or more of his neighbors to church. He gathered his family around him three times daily for family prayer. And he let ministers have a choice piece of bottom land free.

I knew a faithful spinster who worked untiringly with the youth, directing them in whatever affairs of religion they would take part. I knew a lady pianist who had sat on the same stool for 40 years hardly missing a Sunday. I’ve known business men and professional men of the old era plunk down many a dollar on the barrelhead that they might have spent well on their families. I knew one lady who drove seven miles round trip to and from church in an open buggy every Sunday morning, hauling her three younger children with her and letting the two older walk behind. She attended every service of a three-week revival meeting in weather that hovered around zero.

I knew an aged mother who fasted and prayed in our mountains telling God she wouldn’t eat any more until people were saved in a revival going on that had come to a stalemate in the community. The miracle happened. God didn’t let her down.

I knew a school teacher and a doctor who just about financed the parsonage at one point releasing dad from his regular duties in order that he might travel through our valley praying with the parents whose sons were leaving for army camps during World War I, and the hundreds who lay sick and dying during the influenza epidemic that followed.

Yes, there have been pillars of the church down through the ages. But the sanctity of the church of your grandfather’s day, as a whole, was no greater than that of the church today. In most instances, admittedly, they worshiped with a lot more zeal and boisterousness; but there was often no missionary spirit, no movement reaching beyond the horizon. There was little, if any, youth organization. There was only skeletal church organization in any except the urban sections as compared with our great church mechanism of the present. The machinery that keeps the church movement orderly today wouldn’t have operated 50 years ago. There was not the necessary motivation.

We didn’t have stately brick churches prominently situated. We had little frame buildings on hillsides or side streets. Go out into the rural sections of our country and you’ll see the evidence.

The Great Drama

Young man, young woman, you are living in the greatest age of church history. You have a part, a very vital part, to play in this great religious drama. Yours is one of inspiration to the older members. Yours is one of accomplishment, of opportunity, of achievement. Your voice is heard in our conferences, a thing virtually unheard of when your grandpa was young.

Collections toward the great undertakings of the church were unknown and undreamed of, even in proportion to the times, when I was in knee pants. The funds for the building of $100,000 churches, pensions for aged ministers, insurance policies for them in case they die in harness, and various other funds of the church were nonexistent or had little force if they did exist. You have had a part in building this great organization we call the church. Don’t let anybody kid you.

The children of the parsonage were not always respected as they are today. Let the old timers say what they will. The minister’s kids wore cast-off clothing and ate what wouldn’t sell in the market place. I bought the first overshoes and overcoat I ever owned with money I made by working in the coal mines. I thought those things were luxuries for the rich people, people like those who sold mother the Christmas candy, then came next day with hands outstretched wanting part of it back.

Son or daughter of the parsonage or manse, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. You are living in one of the best days in church history.

Frank W. Ball is the son of a Methodist circuit rider. His school days were spent mostly in one-room mountain schools; his high school diploma was earned through correspondence school. He works for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad as a machinist’s helper and writes occasionally as a hobby. He is the recipient of two Freedoms Foundation awards. For almost 30 years he has been Trustee and Secretary-Treasurer of Steele Memorial Methodist Church, Barboursville, West Virginia.

The Middle Colony Revival, 1720

American interest in revivals goes as far back as the first quarter of the eighteenth century and continues even to this day. Indeed American Protestant churches whether they be Presbyterian, Baptist or Methodist, have regarded the annual revival meeting as much a part of their regular work as Sunday services and midweek prayer meetings. Revival meetings are not so common as they were a generation ago, but they are still regarded as an effective method of evangelism in many denominations and local churches.

Colonial awakenings, of which there were three, constituted a single movement which swept through the colonies from Maine to Georgia. They came to be known as “The Great Awakening.” None began simultaneously; traceable connections between them are slight. Each can be considered as a separate movement.

Dutch Reformed Evangelism

Four small Dutch Reformed churches in the Raritan Valley of central New Jersey were the center of the first revival in 1720. The revival was instigated under the preaching of Theodore Jacobus Frelinghuysen. Influenced by the Pietism of Holland, Frelinghuysen preached the Spener doctrines of experimental knowledge of religion, individual conversion, and purity of Christian character. The doctrines he preached were apparently new to his rough, complacent, ritualistic-minded parishioners for they proved to be at once astounded and outraged. He organized prayer meetings with laymen helping him. Opposition mobilized, factions developed, and certain Dutch Reformed ministers in New York sought to silence him. Disaffected church members even published a 246-page book against him.

But despite opposition, Frelinghuysen’s evangelism bore glorious fruit in numerous conversions and the transformation of several communities. The year 1726 especially witnessed a remarkably large number of conversions. As word of his successful evangelism spread, Frelinghuysen was invited to preach in other communities and the revival extended beyond Raritan Valley. And to counter the opposition of his fellow ministers, he began publishing his sermons. Although he eventually gained the support of most of the Dutch ministers, opposition to Frelinghuysen continued and even divided the Dutch church for many years.

Presbyterians Aflame

When the effect of Frelinghuysen’s preaching was at its height, young Gilbert Tennent, son of a Presbyterian pastor of Neshaminy, 18 miles north of Philadelphia, was called to preach at the New Brunswick Presbyterian Church, New Jersey. Having been taught evangelical doctrines by his father, Gilbert enthusiastically joined Frelinghuysen’s efforts. With a zeal equal to, if not surpassing, that of the Dutch minister, he preached sin, retribution, repentance, faith, and conversion to the English Presbyterians that resulted in hundreds of conversions.

Meanwhile, others were preaching the Gospel elsewhere. At Neshaminy William Tennent, Gilbert’s father, opened a school in 1726, derisively called “Log College,” for the training of young men for the ministry. In time, his three other sons, William, John, and Charles, were graduated from the school and became pastors of churches in central New Jersey. Samuel Blair, another graduate and an ardent revivalist, located at Shrewsbury, New Jersey. In 1738, five evangelical ministers, three of them Log College men, established the New Brunswick Presbytery, and by that time, the revival had spread yet further. Aaron Burr, Sr., was preaching at Newark; and in the highlands of New York a group of Yale graduates, including Jonathan Dickinson, joined the evangelicals. The following year a revival began at Fagg’s Manor, Pennsylvania, where Samuel Blair had gone to preach.

Although the revival was largely Presbyterian and a blessing primarily to that church, its ministers were divided concerning it. The conservative “Old Side” ministers with a Scotch-Irish and Scottish university background, opposed and derided Log College and its imperfectly trained graduates known as “New Side.” They opposed the revival because of its fervid, extemporaneous preaching and exhortations. “Falling exercises,” regarded as evidences of conversion, were common. Whereas Old Side ministers believed them to be the work of the devil, those of the New Side believed them to be approved of God. This opposition to revival and the licensing of imperfectly trained ministers tragically divided Presbyterian ranks and created a cleavage which was not healed until 1758. Then, largely through the efforts of Gilbert Tennent, the Synod of New York (New Side) and that of Philadelphia (Old Side) united. (Belcher, op. cit., pp. 119–120; Hays, Presbyterians, pp. 91–93, 112; and Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, p. 279.)

Arrival Of Whitefield

The year of 1730, a notable one for American Christianity, witnessed the arrival of 26-year-old George Whitefield, already famous for his evangelical preaching in England. Whitefield, a Church of England priest, welcomed as colaborers Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Dutch Reformed, and anyone else who preached individual conversion. As he crossed the Atlantic, he wrote to a clergyman friend in England: “The partition wall has for some time been broken down out of my heart, and I can truly say, whoever loves the Lord Jesus, ‘the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.’ ”

Landing at Lewes, Delaware, he began his tour in central New Jersey, where Frelinghuysen and the revivalist Presbyterians had labored successfully for more than 10 years. From the very first, people flocked to hear him, and many were converted. New Side Presbyterians welcomed him enthusiastically, and did everything in their power to assist him.

Whitefield preached doctrines coinciding with the Articles of the Church of England and those proclaimed by the revivalists. He declared all men to be sinful by nature with the condemnation of God resting upon them. Salvation from that lost condition was by the grace of God through faith. Good works, he declared, had no share in man’s justification; there was need for regeneration through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

From the very beginning of Whitefield’s tour, people came in such great numbers to hear him that the largest meeting houses could accommodate only a fraction of them. On his first visit to Philadelphia, his impact was so immense that business throughout the city was almost suspended; and on Sundays the crowds were so large that the Lord’s Supper had to be served three or four times. During his stay, not less than 26 societies for prayer were organized. Concerning his influence upon the people in Philadelphia, a local newspaper said: “The change to religion here is altogether surprising, through the influence of Whitefield; no books sell but religious, and such is the general conversation” (Belcher, George Whitefield, pp. 101–102).

After Whitefield’s visit, services of worship were held in the city twice a day for a whole year. When he left to go to New York, people in towns and rural communities along the way abandoned their occupations and fields to hear him. On the way he met Gilbert Tennent, heard him preach and commented, “Never before heard I such a searching sermon. He went to the bottom indeed, and did not ‘daub with untempered mortar.’ He convinced me, more and more, that we can preach the Gospel of Christ no further than we have experienced the power of it in our hearts” (Belcher, op. cit., pp. 119–120).

Whitefield’s success in New York was greater than that which he had enjoyed in Philadelphia. Thousands heard him and thousands more were influenced by his printed sermons. From New York, he went to New England at the invitation of a leading Congregational minister in Boston. Then, late in 1739, he took ship for Savannah, Georgia, where he founded an orphanage called Bethesda.

Of the number converted under Whitefield’s preaching, no estimate is possible, but it is certain that it ran into the thousands. Naturally his very success intensified the opposition that had existed from the beginning toward the revival movement. Whitefield said, “An opposer told me I had unhinged many good sort of people. I believe it.”

Although the impact of the revival was everywhere popular with the common people, the Old Side Presbyterian ministers continued to oppose it. Their most strenuous objection was that the revivalists, including Whitefield, deliberately promoted faintings, shoutings, “falling exercises,” commotion and wild disorder. There was no denial that these things took place, but the revivalists interpreted them as the work of God.

Pattern For The Future

This entire revival is significant, not only because it was the first in America, but because it began without previous planning on the part of Frelinghuysen, Gilbert Tennent, or anyone else, without advertising, and without fanfare of trumpets. The news that sinners were being saved, and those already Christians were being lifted to a higher plane of living aroused interest everywhere. To a people who all their lives had been accustomed to cold, lifeless preaching, with scarcely a reference to inner, personal experience with Christ, all of it was nothing short of phenomenal. In both Gospel and mode of preaching, the revivalists followed the ways of those in apostolic days. And in this they set the fundamental pattern for all revivals to come.

This is the first of two articles on the Colonial awakenings of the Eighteenth Century. Raymond W. Settle, a retired Baptist minister, devotes his time to historical research and writing on American history, particularly of religion on the frontier. Author of several books, he lives in Monte Vista, Colorado.