My united states passport suggests not so much a peripatetic theologian as an active Agent 007. In 1964 the self-styled “Deutsche Demokratische Republik” gleefully stamped its multicolored visa into my passport on the occasion of a personal study trip into East Germany; this summer a second and even more gaudy DDR visa was added when I took the members of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School’s European Seminar into East German Luther country.

As a political and social liberal who is convinced that his views in these areas are fully compatible with theological conservatism, I receive a certain perverse pleasure from the contradictory state of my passport: it contains visas from a country which for us does not exist as a political entity. But East Germany has a very real existence, and contact with it offers a sobering corrective to loose thinking about the relation between the Gospel and political freedom. Personal experiences are a dangerous form of argument, but I shall run the risk.

My 1964 pilgrimage took me to the partially extant Erfurt cloister where Luther had lived as a monk, flagellated himself in a vain effort to become right with God, and felt the hopelessness of Rome’s way of self-salvation; next to the former cloister (now a small Protestant practical seminary) are ramshackle church offices, testifying only too well to the economic plight of the church in a religiously hostile state. This summer the hospital across the street from the cloister sported a large propaganda sign reading: “Fight U. S. Aggression in Viet Nam. Give Blood.”

Not even the small towns are free from disfiguring political mottoes—far more sinister than those that prompted the parody on Joyce Kilmer, “I think that I shall never see/ A billboard lovely as a tree.” On my first trip to East Germany I said to a prominent theologian: “I see many signs proclaiming Freiheit (freedom) here.” “Yes,” he replied, “and that’s the only place you’ll find Freiheit here—on the signs. I hope you can come back someday and bring genuine Freiheit with you.” I came back; but Freiheit was little closer than before.

The Wittenberg Schloss, on whose church door Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses, now also serves as a cultural museum (with bi-lingual German and Russian plaques) and provides meeting rooms for a Communist youth organization. The regime brashly appropriates Luther—as one who smashed medieval church authority and prepared the way for the modern secular era. Objective history is of little consequence to an ideology that in principle allows the end to justify the means.

Both trips to East Germany yielded an unforgettable gallery of faces: the young couple who in 1964 insisted on buying me Russian “champagne” at the Wartburg Castle, lambasted Walter Ulbricht, and said that I could not imagine how bad the restrictions of freedom really were (cf. my article, “A Day in East German Luther Country,” Christian Herald, June, 1965); an official chauffeur who wistfully spoke of his desire to travel beyond the confines of Eastern Europe; a waiter who told me that I must be sure to “look in the corners” while in the DDR and that he personally yearned for unmanaged news and a true view of America; a graduate student who sought an honest picture of the U. S. racial situation; a citizen of Wittenberg who insisted that I not get the impression that “we are all Communists here”; a Christian believer who described the economic and personal sufferings of his countrymen and of his own family and longed for better days; etc., etc.

My students were particularly struck by the general tone of life in the East: the deadness and abnormal silence of the towns and cities and the subdued if not hopeless faces of the people. Even the children seemed listless. To move across the mined and pill-box controlled borders from East to West was like entering a different world. Leipzig and Munich could not be more different in vitality, warmth, and joie de vivre. It is no exaggeration to say that in East Germany vast numbers of people have been reduced from living to mere existing.

What are the theological implications of this sad political situation? In general, there must be a rejection of the incredible naïveté that has typified whitewashings of East German Communism by many American religious liberals, and that has also characterized the neutralist judgments of Karl Barth on the East German situation. In point of fact, the DDR is a political abomination and deserves no more commendation than Papa Doc’s rule in Haiti.

But it is not just the theologically liberal and neo-orthodox who tend to cry peace, peace, when there is no peace. Advocates of a strict Reformation theology have more than once allowed the principle of the Schöpfungsordnungen (Orders of Creation) to justify the political status quo, and Romans 13 has been falsely employed as a charter of political indifferentism. Some theological conservatives have even had difficulty in rationalizing the American Revolution, since revolution for the sake of freedom seems incompatible with “subjection to the higher powers.”

As evangelicals we need to reappropriate the biblical insight into the essentiality of freedom. The very proclamation of the Gospel requires the freedom to decide for or against it; and where human restrictions are placed on man’s free choice, the result is a closing-off of the way of salvation. Historically the “free churches” have seen this truth most clearly, for they have recognized that to force religious values on a people through state influence is actually to cut men off from the Gospel. How much more is this the case when a regime restricts free will in the interests of an anti-Christian religion!

We are indeed to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but freedom of choice is not one of them; it is a divine gift, and no government has the right to remove it. This was the persuasion of the Christians who supported the American Revolution (they did not need a deistic “natural rights” theory to ground their action); and their biblical conviction should be ours as we endeavor to evaluate present-day Communist rule.

All forms of totalitarianism approach in principle the thought-control that is described by Orwell in 1984, and we must work and pray for the liberation of peoples whose lives are reduced to a sub-human level through the removal of their decision-making powers.

Although the “American way of life” and the Gospel are separate, distinct, and not infrequently at odds, freedom and the Gospel are intimately bound together, since the former is a condition of the latter (Rev. 3:20) and the latter is essential to the full manifestation of the former (John 8:31–36). Julia Ward Howe was not a bad theologian when she juxtaposed the two poetically: “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.”

Heroic Colonial Christians, edited by Russell T. Hitt (Lippincott, 1966, 255 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, chairman, Department of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This book, dealing with Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent, David Brainerd, and John Witherspoon, is delightfully different from most books that try to relate the colonial period and evangelical Christianity. Jonathan Edwards is the only one of these four who generally gets any attention from the secular historian. Tennent, Brainerd, and Witherspoon are for the most part still treated with indifference.

Courtney Anderson, author of a biography of Adoniram Judson, presents a fascinating picture of the life of Jonathan Edwards and offers fresh insights into this brilliant colonial mind. He pays unusual attention to the ancestry and early training of Edwards, which makes his later career more interesting and understandable. Anderson places Edwards within the religious life of New England during the eighteenth century and makes him a part of his times. While the basic greatness of Edwards appears in bold relief, Anderson also portrays his human failings, particularly his inability to understand people. The treatment of Edwards as a philosopher and theologian is necessarily brief in a volume of this kind; however, the theological and philosophical influences that helped him form his own interpretation of Calvinism for the colonial mind are well presented.

In his chapter on Gilbert Tennent, Russell Hitt brings to life a neglected figure in colonial Presbyterianism and shows his role in the Great Awakening. In so doing, he unfortunately fails to present the real nature of the split between the Old Light and the New Light schools within Presbyterianism. He gives the impression that the Old Light party was at fault, even though he does admit that Gilbert Tennent was at the very heart of the controversy. Perhaps the best part of this chapter is that which deals with the Log Cabin College and its influence on American Presbyterianism.

Clyde Kilby treats David Brainerd with literary skill and great fidelity to the available sources on his life. The Brainerd who emerges is not the one so often presented in evangelical literature as the missionary to the Indians. Kilby does not detract from his greatness, but he also presents the Brainerd who failed to understand and appreciate the Indians with whom he was dealing and to whom he was preaching the Gospel. Kilby is at his best when he analyzes Brainerd’s lack of appreciation of nature as God’s creation in contrast to the deep appreciation that marked Jonathan Edwards.

Henry Coray fails to present John Witherspoon as the first three writers presented Edwards, Tennent, and Brainerd. He treats him much more as a patriot than as a powerful figure in American Presbyterian history. The activities of the Continental Congress are given undue space compared to that given the theological influence of Witherspoon. Coray also seems to feel the need for denying that Witherspoon was in bad company by denying that Franklin and Jefferson were deists. Their espousal of deism is too well attested to be easily set aside.

It might be well if the four writers could come to an agreement on the date for the founding of the College of New Jersey. But this is a minor matter, and on the whole the book is fascinating. I recommend it highly as a very readable presentation of four leaders of the eighteenth-century Great Revival, and thus as an aid in understanding that revival.

C. GREGG SINGER

Raading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• Not Me, God, by Sherwood Eliot Wirt (Harper & Row, $2.95). Imaginary conversations between a Contemporary man and God that explode man’s pretensions and exhibit God’s grace in a penetrating way.

• The Biblical World: A Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology, edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, $8.95). An informative glimpse of the geography, history, literature, religion, and art of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent in light of archaeological discoveries.

• Help! I’m a Layman, by Kenneth Chafin (Word, $3.50). The occupant of the Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary offers encouragement and spiritual strength to new Christians.

Von Rad Rides Again

The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, by Gerhard von Rad, translated by E. W. Trueman Dicken (McGraw-Hill, 1966, 340 pp., $9.50), is reviewed by Harvey E. Finley, professor of Old Testament, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.

“The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” published originally in 1938, is the main article in this book. When the various articles were considered for a collection at the instance of Professor H. W. Wolff, there was an attempt to revise this and some of the others. However, it was found to be impractical. Von Rad in the foreword therefore begs the reader “exercise a certain historical discretion in making use of the present volume and to bear in mind the state of our knowledge when each particular essay was written” (p. v).

The article on the Hexateuch is the one in which von Rad presented his famous thesis that the Hexateuch is the elaboration of a brief, historical creed found in Deuteronomy 26. In studying the form of this creed, von Rad noticed that it was used in different situations, and thus he was led into the literary history of this ever-expanding creed. He observes that a number of separate traditions (such as the Settlement tradition, the Sinai tradition, the Exodus tradition, and the patriarchal history), were developed into literature around certain themes by a Yahwist, perhaps of the time of Solomon. Further, he contends that the Yahwist used the Settlement tradition as his framework and fused a great amount of agglomerate material into it to produce a single whole. Thus von Rad presents a case for a long, complicated history of the hexateuch.

The term “hexateuch” has always been open to debate. Form critics tend to abandon it and to speak of a Deuteronomic History presumably consisting of Deuteronomy through Second Kings, excluding the Book of Ruth. This among other reasons is perhaps why von Rad advises the reader to use Noth’s Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuchs along with his article.

Other questions may be raised about von Rad’s reconstruction of the literary history of the biblical materials with which he deals. For example, one may well question the nihilistic attitude toward Moses, of whom very little mention is made. In speaking of a Yahwist von Rad apparently reflects the need to refer to a great religious personality, one who contributed significantly to the “theology” and to the literature of ancient Israel. The question arises, then: Why downgrade and almost overlook the most obvious person, the great biblical personality Moses? The implied answer is that the Bible cannot be taken for what it is but rather must have a modern viewpoint imposed upon it. This inclines the reviewer to question both the methodology of and the presuppositions behind such literary analysis.

The other fifteen articles making up this volume were published in European periodicals between 1933 and 1964. All except “Some Aspects of the Old Testament World-View” were published as a collection, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1958). It can only be pointed out here that each article as a separate study is distinctive for a particular von Rad viewpoint, at times differing from that of other Old Testament scholars.

These essays should be of special interest to those who teach and study the Old Testament in depth. It will inform them about a methodology that has been given increased attention in recent times.

HARVEY E. FINLEY

We Four And No More

The World of Mission, by Bengt Sundkler, translated by Eric J. Sharpe (Eerdmans, 1965, 318 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by H. Wilbert Norton, Sr., professor of missions and church history, Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, Illinois.

From three sides: theological, historical, and ecological, the former bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, now professor of church history and missions at Uppsala University in Sweden, examines “… the milieu in which the Church has to live, and the interchange between Church and milieu.”

Sundkler’s theology of mission is an apologetic for ecumenical universalism. Initiated by the election of Abraham, “salvation history” progresses to Israel and reduces itself to Judah through the Remnant to “the Solitary,” Daniel’s “a son of man,” and Isaiah’s “suffering servant” (p. 13).

“This Solitary was chosen to represent mankind on the Cross—to save the nation; to save the nations; to save all men” (p. 13). The Cross introduces “a progressive expansion … to the apostles … to the early missionary Church … to the new people of God … to the company of the redeemed of mankind in the Kingdom of God …” (pp. 13–17). According to Sundkler, the Christian faith claims that the elective line of Abraham and the universalistic line of Noah meet at the Cross, thereby undergirding “the universalism of the New Testament.”

The message of the Church is that Christ is King. Cullmann’s concentric-circle concept of the Lordship of Christ over the Church and the world leads to the insistence that social responsibility, “developing the political and social resources of the Asian countries, is the response of obedience to the Lordship of Christ” (pp. 43, 44).

Sundkler’s ecumenical and universalistic theology, which breaks completely with the historic apostolic and Reformation emphasis on sin, regeneration, and personal faith in a personal Lord and Saviour, deliberately excludes the historic evangelical approach to the great religions of the world. Categorically he includes “only four … the Catholic, Lutheran, Liberal and Barthian solutions” (p. 47). Consequently he later scores the “energetic proselytism” of “certain fundamentalistic groups” (p. 303).

Apart from his positive reference to Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission, Sundkler appears to be totally oblivious to the coordinated efforts of contemporary evangelical (fundamental) efforts of the member missions of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and its almost fifty-year-old counterpart, the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association. An ecumenist, Sundkler leaves but little room for the non-ecumenist!

Sundkler’s Swedish accent is refreshing in the midst of the many English, German, and Dutch voices to speak on missions in recent years. He refers several times to Swedish missionary involvement, a long overdue mention. However, the Swedish bishop breaks with his own tradition in failing to recognize the priority and centrality of the Scriptures in the contemporary missionary task.

In his consideration of Church and milieu, Sundkler suggests that sacramental Christianity in dialogue with Islam can appeal to the theocentricity of the Muslims more meaningfully than can Christian moralism (p. 233). Baptizing the Indian religious language will provide a new approach to the Hindu (p. 265). Buddhist study centers carry hopes of better understanding of religious language and its use, as shown in the meaning of the Logos and the Tao (p. 289).

A ten-page index is very helpful. There is, however, no bibliography, and documentation is very limited.

H. WILBERT NORTON, SR.

When Counselors Talk Too Much

The Meaning of Pastoral Care, by Carroll A. Wise (Harper & Row, 1966, 144 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Gene Griessman, pastor, Foster Road Baptist Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Carroll A. Wise’s most recent work is not a “how to do it” handbook for fledgling counselors. Those who purchase it for this purpose will be disappointed. The book is basically what its title suggests—a setting forth of the meaning, or philosophy, of pastoral care.

Pastoral care, however, has a variety of meanings. A few writers, the most prominent of which are Eduard Thurneysen (A Theology of Pastoral Care) and Frederick Reeves (Theology and the Cure of Souls). have advanced the idea that pastoral care should include theological “conversation.” That is, the pastor should speak as well as listen. Their approach is in direct contrast to the one developed by Dr. Wise, who defines pastoral care as “the art of communicating the inner meaning of the Gospel to persons at the point of their need” (p. 9). Its function is to help persons live out a “personal existence in a genuine relationship of trust and love.”

The author stresses the importance of “relationships,” however, without explicitly stating what a “relationship” is. Verbal formulations and relationships tend to be presented as polar opposites. The reader sometimes gets the impression that words are intrinsically harmful.

Wise asserts that the “Christian faith has not produced a workable theory of personal growth” (p. 86). Then he devotes twenty-nine uncritical pages to a presentation of the theories of Erik Erikson, a neo-Freudian clinician.

The author maintains that Christians should endeavor to be open and transparent to all. Yet he fails to warn that indiscriminate self-disclosures are often damaging to mental health.

Nevertheless, the treatment of the subject is systematic. The need for a personal experience with Christ is emphasized. Hazards to be avoided by the pastor are enumerated, including: (1) talking too much and listening too little, and (2) proceeding from the role of representative of God to the fantasy of playing God. The author also deals with the crucial question of the relation between personality and culture.

The surprise of the book is the last chapter, “The Making of a Pastor.” In it the author pinpoints a flaw in contemporary theological training: the creation of an atmosphere wherein students identify with scholars but not with pastors. Dr. Wise, himself a professor (at Garrett Biblical Institute), offers suggestions for remedying the deficiency. This chapter, though certain to stir controversy, is worthy of consideration by all interested in theological education.

GENE GRIESSMAN

Conversations With God

Not Me, God, by Sherwood Eliot Wirt (Harper & Row, 1966, 94 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Robert L. Cleath, editorial assistant,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

To capture the spirit and words of a man conversing with God in his innermost being is an elusive task for any writer. Sherwood Wirt has succeeded remarkably in doing this, however, in this little gem of a book that depicts the give-and-take of a man with his Maker.

Not Me, God is the kind of book that may creep up on the reader. As Wirt imaginatively relates in simple dialogue the doubts, anxieties, pride, and spiritual hunger of a thoroughly modern man who first unsuspectingly makes contact with God while shaving, the reader may before he knows it find himself looking into the mirror of his own spiritual experience.

The problems that emerge in forty-six conversational episodes are those found universally in the developing relationship of a man with God. Wirt’s conversations touch upon such topics as God’s desire and ability to communicate with man, man’s status as a sinner, the meaning of the Cross, grace, prayer, the relationship of the spiritual and material, envy, lust, pride, weariness, false and true piety, the Bible as spiritual food, Christian witnessing and service, and God’s resources for the believer.

Such a list, however, does not begin to convey the full contribution of the book. Its value lies in the writer’s incisive ability to cut away the complexities that often surround such topics and lay bare crucial matters that pertain to a man’s personal experience with God and his fellow man. While the dialogues do not penetrate in the same way as the reverse-English thrusts in the letters of C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape to Wormwood, they are nevertheless incisive and authentic. The words Wirt places in God’s mouth have a startling simplicity reminiscent of Jesus’ speech in the Gospels. The uninhibited verbalizations of Wirt’s man have the ring of one’s own remarks to God in private.

In relating the six-month spiritual pilgrimage that proceeds from doubt and doom to Christian conversion and sets the man on the road to spiritual maturity, Wirt is disarmingly honest in conveying the attitudes of both God and man. God is shown to be one to whom religion does not appeal, who seeks to make men normal and “more ordinary than ordinary,” who works tirelessly behind the scenes, who sweats out a man’s difficulties at his side, who delights in hearing his sons say they love him, who comes to man and reveals himself according to his own good pleasure.

The man first considers the inner voice of God to be a hallucination. After his conversion and the early months of his new life, when God has brought into his life three men seeking spiritual counsel, he unboastingly exclaims: “Me, the space guide to celestial regions—when it’s all I can do to put the honest change in the slot of a newspaper rack.” Wirt has the ability to make real the presence of God in the life of a man who experiences varying moods and circumstances. The reader is caught by the ever deepening qualities of this relationship with God and feels a surge of excitement as he reads the last episode: a glimpse of God’s glory found in Psalm 19.

Not Me, God was written by Wirt at odd moments over a ten-year period. Its simplicity, honesty, and vitality make one desire to meet its author. But more important, it motivates the reader to enter into an intimate personal relationship with God.

ROBERT L. CLEATH

Book Briefs

Nature, History, and Existentialism, by Karl Löwith, edited by Arnold Levison (Northwestern University, 1966, 220 pp., $8.50). A series of essays contemplating the meaning of human existence within nature and history as known today. For the serious student only.

Fulfillment in Marriage, by Joseph B. Henry (Revell, 1966, 160 pp., $3.95). Much good sense about sex and marriage.

The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, by Abraham Joshua Heschel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966, 306, pp., $5.95). Twenty philosophical essays on the perplexities of our humanity in modern society; by an erudite Jew of high morality.

The American Male, by Myron Brenton (Coward-McCann, 1966, 252 pp., $5.95). A lot of psychological sense about sex in an age in which “true gusto for sex” is “tragically absent.”

The Word That Can Never Die, by Olav Valen-Sendstad, translated by Norman A. Madson, Sr., and Ahlert H. Strand (Concordia, 1966, 164 pp., $3.95). A basic, evangelical Lutheran analysis of theological trends; suffers from the fact that this first 1966 English translation is of a 1949 book.

Footloose Scientist in Mayan America, by Sister Mary Corde Lorang (Scribners, 1966, 308 pp., $6.95).

The Cambridge Medieval History, Volume IV: The Byzantine Empire, Part I: Byzantium and Its Neighbors, edited by J. M. Hussey (Cambridge, 1966, 1,168 pp., $25). Fresh material on the history of Byzantium between 717 and 1453 and of its neighbors: the Muslims, the Slavs, the Hungarians, and the Latins of the Aegean.

The Vespasian Psalter, edited by Sherman M. Kuhn (University of Michigan, 1965, 327 pp., $12.50). This title is the designation by which this British Museum manuscript is known to many scholars. The manuscript is significant for many areas of research. It contains the English interlinear translation of the Psalter and is the most extensive text of the Mercian dialect that has survived to modern times.

No Other Name, by R. Leonard Small (T. and T. Clark, 1966, 182 pp., 21s.), Extraordinarily good sermons.

From Hell to Paradise: Dante and His Comedy, by Olof Lagercrantz, translated by Alan Blair (Washington Square, 1966, 219 pp., $4.95). The author in simple style escorts the reader through the symbols and beauty of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Paperbacks

The Christian and the John Birch Society, by Lester DeKoster (Eerdmans, 1966, 46 pp., $.75). An informed and persuasive critique of the perversion and abuse of Christianity as it appears in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society.

Flannery O’Connor: A Critical Essay, by Robert Drake (Eerdmans, 1966, 48 pp., $.85).

Sermons and Meditations by the Rev. James A. Tallach (Ross-shire Printing and Publishing, 1962, 110 pp., $1). Sermons and meditations by the late author, offered by his wife.

Vatican II: Renewal or Reform?, by James G. Manz (Concordia, 1966, 142 pp., $1.95). A sane, fruitful contribution to Roman Catholic dialogue by a Lutheran.

Alter Orient und Altes Testament: Probleme und ihre Lösungen Aufklärung und Erläuterung, by K. A. Kitchen (R. Brockhaus Verlag, 1965, 117 pp., DM7.20). Two lectures that throw the light of Ancient Eastern research on Old Testament problems.

The Shaping of Protestant Education, by William Bean Kennedy (Association, 1966, 93 pp., $2.50).

Apostle to the Illiterates: Chapters in the Life of Frank C. Laubach, by David E. Mason (Zondervan, 1966, 92 pp., $.69). A short portrait of the work and spiritual life of a remarkable man who is still vigorously enlarging the portrait at the age of eighty-two.

Until recently it was popular to make light of the evangelical approach to the Gospel by referring to it as “seventeenth-century Christianity, not relevant to the twentieth century.” Now the charge has advanced a bit; ours is a “nineteenth-century message, outdated by the space age.”

We will be wise to keep things in perspective by being aware of what was relevant in the first century after Christ and what is relevant now.

In the first century, when the Gospel was first preached, what did men need?

To put it in the simplest terms possible, they needed a revelation of God, changed hearts, a new dynamic for living, and a hope for the future.

What was the need of the social order when the Gospel was first preached?

The social order, composed of men and women, desperately needed redeemed people to bring into play a new ethic, supplanting the tyranny of power and lust with the fruits of the Spirit.

The social order of the first century needed to be confronted with its own insufficiency, for neither the culture and philosophers of Greece nor the power of Rome with her dedication to law and order was able to cope with the problems caused by sin in the human heart.

Today men and nations, the politician and the philosopher, the ignorant and the sophisticated—all have the same needs as did those who lived nineteen centuries ago.

If, then, man’s need today is the same as it was when men first went out to preach the Gospel, the burning question is whether the Gospel of the first century is relevant for the twentieth.

What was that Gospel?

That all men are sinners, standing under the judgment of God; that the wages of sin is death; that God loves all men everywhere; and that he has made full provision for the sin problem in the death and resurrection of his Son. Paul telescoped the Gospel in these words: “… that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15.3b, 4, RSV).

The basic need of man for personal salvation is brushed aside only through a rejection of the clear record of Scripture. To suggest that the space age has changed the hearts of men is utter foolishness. A reading of any newspaper reveals that the hearts of men are still desperately wicked.

To admit the diagnosis but then turn to education, power politics, or social engineering for the solution is to add folly to folly.

To say that the industrial, atomic, or space age represents problems that first-century Christianity is unable to solve is to limit the power of God and to imply that scientific, sophisticated man needs a God not revealed in the Gospel of the first century.

Part of the problem is the confusing of God’s message of redemption with methods of making that message known.

For a church or a Christian to insist on traveling as Paul traveled, or limiting himself to the means of communication available in Paul’s time, would be an absurdity. As each generation comes into its responsibility of preaching the Gospel, it should make use of every means for making Christ known. People must be reached where they are, not where we wish they were. Each generation of Christians must speak to the heart hunger of the multitudes with the tenderness and love found only in the hearts of those who have been touched by the Master.

Preaching the Gospel in the twentieth century requires, as always, consecrated common sense. To think that the social order can be changed without changing the hearts of the people who compose that social order is perhaps the least realistic concept imaginable. In fact, it is downright foolishness.

Those who preached the Gospel message in the first century did not gloss over man’s condition and need. When our Lord commissioned the Apostle Paul as a minister to his generation, he said, “I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).

What was the condition of those to whom Paul was commissioned to preach, and what was his message to be?

Men are spiritually blind until their eyes are opened by the Holy Spirit. Are men in the twentieth century more spiritually enlightened than their brothers in the first? Only by faith in Christ were men’s eyes opened then, and this remains true today. Men out of Christ—in the jungles of Ecuador and in the most sophisticated universities—are still living in spiritual darkness.

Men in the first century were under the power of Satan. What conceivable evidence is there today that those who do not know the Saviour are any less under that power? It is popular to deny the reality of Satan, but it is exceedingly difficult to deny the evidence of his activity.

To turn men from the power of Satan to God was a work of personal conversion that men needed in Paul’s time and that they need today. The imperative, “Ye must be born again,” has never been invalidated.

By the Gospel men could receive forgiveness of sins. All through the Acts of the Apostles we hear the plea to repent. Do men need “repentance to God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21) less today than they did then? Are we not living in a generation that is sinning far more against the light than did those people in Paul’s time? Are we cloaking our rejection of personal repentance for sins by calling for “corporate repentance for corporate sins” instead? We need personal forgiveness by the One who alone can forgive our sins.

Paul was commissioned to preach a Gospel that would bring sanctification—a new life—by faith in Jesus Christ. The risen Lord knew the hearts of men. He knew their needs in the first century. Men have not changed. Their hearts are the same, “desperately wicked,” and their need for personal salvation continues.

Men make all sorts of desperate efforts to substitute something else for the first-century Gospel. The shrinking world, growth of cults, resurgence of pagan religions, population explosion, lessening influence of the Church—all are used as an excuse to change the Gospel to something more palatable to unregenerate man.

What is advanced by some today as “twentieth century Christianity” is not Christianity at all. It is a gospel of accommodation to man, not the Gospel of man’s reconciliation to God through faith in his Son.

Men may change the method of preaching and teaching the Gospel and thereby be more effective in the twentieth century. But woe unto them—and to those deceived by them—if they change the Gospel Paul preached and the commission he received from his Lord on the road to Damascus!

God forbid that we should be deceived by a form of godliness that denies the power by which alone we are redeemed.

Revolting jolts on campus

File Thirteen

There is nothing quite like an anonymous letter to make me feel insecure. Two of them came my way a good many years ago before I had enough nerve to inquire around discreetly whether anyone else ever got any. To my delight I discovered a college president who kept a file just for anonymous letters. After that, it didn’t seem so bad.

I remember one time I said something about the Negroes in something I had written, and a woman from St. Louis wrote me about four pages of virulent attack in which she used some pretty strong words. She closed like this: “You are probably the kind of person that never answers your mail so I won’t sign this, but meanwhile why don’t you learn to act like a Christian?”

All this is by way of announcing that last week somebody sent me a cartoon, underneath which he had written, “Et tu Brute.” Apparently the writer of the anonymous note was educated! “We who are about to die salute you.”

So what to do about insecurity? Our dog is our best weather guide, because she always comes and lies behind my chair a good many hours before a thunderstorm. She thinks I can do something for her. It was a shocker one day when I took her for a walk to discover that whereas I had thought she kept me safe and secure from all alarms, as a matter of fact she was counting on my presence to support her. So sometimes the dog hides behind me and sometimes I hide behind the dog, and I don’t think you can trust either of us.

Do you remember the vice-president in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, who every morning as he rode the commuter train mused, “I wonder if this is the day they will find me out”?

Time magazine reported on a little girl who had fallen down an abandoned well: after hours of screaming and crying, she finally “cried like a little girl who knew even her mother couldn’t help her.” Do you ever recall that you inhabit a planet?

EUTYCHUS II

Campus Rebel Replies

I would like to offer my thanks for the news report (Sept. 2 issue) “Rebel Spirit Jolts Church Colleges,” for I think that you have brought to light a situation … which few evangelicals like to talk about.

As the former editor of the student newspaper at Barrington (R. I.) College my associates and I led a student rebellion against what we considered administration injustices, and certain ridiculous thought patterns, i.e., administration-invited evangelistic chapel speakers who have in their home offices neon-lighted pictures of Jesus that cry real tears!

What so many fail to see is that our evangelical colleges have so very much to offer to society but allow their potential to be destroyed by certain members of their constituency who have not even kept pace with changes in contemporary evangelicalism, let alone changes in the Church at large. Most of them are still living in the Scopes Trial era. Administrative leaders often lack the moral and intellectual courage to break with such individuals, for financial or other reasons. Thus student rebellion is significant as well as admirable.

Rebellious Christian college students are concerned with finding meaning for their faith, and meaning for their respective institutions in our contemporary society. They find that some of the old traditions have lost their meaning and must go.

By its example, is it not the task of Christian college to turn out young men and women to show the world that things can be done, that dreams can be embodied in action, that a better life can be achieved? Does not the Christian faith reflect a questioning spirit, a desire for change and investigation, an irreverence for false authority that has lasted 2,000 years, a built-in dissatisfaction with the status quo?

These are exciting days for our Christian college campuses. Our prayers and support should go to each president and board of trustees with such rebellions on their hands. May they have the courage and the wisdom to act in such a way as to bring honor to their respective schools and to the Christ they profess to serve.

ARTHUR K. POPE

Newton Centre, Mass.

Are you for us or agin’ us?? Why not try oil on the troubled waters next time?

ANITA M. BAILEY

Managing Editor

The Alliance Witness

New York, N. Y.

You certainly were too captious in preparing and publishing the [news report], especially the statement regarding our college. I refer to the portion which reads, “at fundamentalist colleges the most conspicious agitation is for an overthrow of old taboos. At Northwest Nazarene College, Nampa, Idaho, the student body approached open revolt in trying to win approval for the wearing of shorts and short-sleeved blouses in the dining hall.”

There is at least one significant error in that assertion, namely, it is not in accordance with fact.… I have been associated with Northwest Nazarene College for twenty-one years and have never, at any time, witnessed student-body action that “approached open revolt”.… Do you not feel that a rectification is in order?

L. WESLEY JOHNSON

Vice President for Development

Northwest Nazarene College

Nampa, Idaho

Both as a student and as a Regent of Northwest Nazarene College, I have never once heard of any so-called revolt.… I am amazed that statements such as this would appear in CHRISTIANITY TODAY without being checked for accuracy.

D. R. PETERMAN

First Church of the Nazarene

Walla Walla, Wash.

• We regret any discomfort to our friends, but our report was based on information from what we consider to be reliable sources.—ED.

Today’s college-aged Christians are uneasy in the presence of what they term the hypocrisy and over-simplification of their elders. Knowing by experience that 100 per cent moral purity is impossible in human society and that it is all too easy to do the right things for the wrong reasons, they either resent or ignore adults who preach in terms of absolute standards without making any effort to relate these standards to everyday living in a world of wheat and tares. But the same students gravitate toward anybody who is willing to confront the problems of relating biblical standards to the complex actualities of the twentieth century. By their own admission, they need calm, honest, contemporary interpretations of scriptural moral principles as opposed to lofty and unsupported assertions of absolutes which make Christianity seem hopelessly impossible.…

My chief sorrow concerning the quotation somewhat inaccurately attributed to me is that it seems to implicate Nyack Missionary College in particular, whereas in actual fact Nyack makes more effort than many evangelical schools to present Christianity meaningfully both to its students and to the world at large. I have great respect for the Nyack administrators and for many colleagues on the faculty, who are “avant-garde” in the sense of confronting difficult issues with courage and honesty. It is unfortunate that the news editor took my comments concerning the importance of wrestling in the pulpit with the problems of contemporary Christian experience, and presented them out of context so that I seemed to be attacking a school for which I feel much respect.

VIRGINIA R. MOLLENKOTT

Chairman

English Department

Nyack Missionary College

Nyack, N. Y.

Books And Bigots

In Current Religious Thought (Aug. 19 issue), John Warwick Montgomery has exposed “Bibliographical Bigotry” in a most candid way. He provides facts to back up his claim, which is indisputable. Having attended both an evangelical seminary and a very liberal one, I can testify that all he says is true. I found further that in the evangelical seminary our courses required us to read from the “liberal” writers while the liberal seminary ignored evangelical scholars entirely.

RONALD A. GREILICH

The Methodist Community Church

Lincoln, Calif.

How very typical of your magazine! J. W. Montgomery’s article pinpointed the problem by being a perfect example of it. “Defensiveness” and “fear,” two words he used in the last paragraph to describe liberalism, seem to be the very elements which permeate his thought, and are too often characteristic of your editorial viewpoint.

A man who is genuinely concerned about dialogue hestitates to use words such as “self-styled,” “unstable,” and “bigot” to describe one whose views differ with his own.

Of what or of whom is Mr. Montgomery afraid? Why are the continual attacks on liberalism necessary? What have you prevented or accomplished by such attacks? Who have you saved? I really want to know.

RICHARD WESTFALL

Trinity Baptist Church

Santa Monica, Calif.

[This] is one of the best short pieces you have yet published.… It points out the true villain as far as bigotry is concerned. His title might well have been, “The Limited Learning of the Theological Liberals” or “One-tracked Minds”!

C. WILLIAM SOLOMON

St. Elmo Presbyterian Church

Chattanooga, Tenn.

Hurrah for Dr. Montgomery’s “Bibliographical Bigotry”! As one connected with a seminary library some time ago, I appreciate his substantiation of what I always suspected.

But the problem of bibliographical bigotry is even more acute in the public library field. A librarian who tries to select materials representing the biblical Christian point of view is left high and dry when he comes away from the standard selection tools and the reviewing media.…

One problem in public librarianship seems to be to convince the “establishment” that biblical Christianity and secular humanism are really two world-life views, incompatible, equally religious, and have the same rights to existence in our pluralistic society.…

JOSEPH MCDONALD

Librarian

Pulic Library

Coatesville, Pa.

His observations concerning the non-liberal liberals are correct.… But are not the conservatives equally guilty—and, amazingly so—of the same sort of thing in regard to their so-called ultra-dispensational brethren? ARTHUR OSTERLUND Minneapolis, Minn.

Since Dr. Montgomery makes specific reference to the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, implying some charge of “bibliographical bigotry,” … I would like to ask him publicly for some clarification. When he says that “the divinity school made a very poor showing in the field of biblical eschatology …” upon his examination, I wonder what subject heading he looked under. There is no Library of Congress subject card on “Biblical Eschatology,” though there is one on “Eschatology—Biblical Teaching.” Now under this subject heading we have quite a substantial collection of works, and without immediate examination of every item, I surmise we have every major, critical, scholarly, substantial work in that field—in all languages.

Now Dr. Montgomery is professional enough to know that “bias” enters into all of our judgments about everything. He knows something of the constant battle … to be fair in [the] representation of the various perspectives, schools, movements, et al., in developing library collections. And he knows further that we never have enough funds … even if we wanted to select everything.… We do not build up heavily in the area of Unitarianism, not because of any bias against it, but because a theological school in the area (Meadville) specializes in this. Likewise we do not develop great collections of “biblical prophecy” because we assume that Moody Institute will do so, and we need not. I have made it my policy to see that “neo-evangelicalism” gets a fair representation in our collection, though we do not attempt to get every pamphlet or tract that they produce. We have the Gordon Review,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Evangelical Theological Society Proceedings, National Association of Evangelicals publications, and other items, and display them along with the other representative points of view.…

HARVEY ARNOLD

Librarian

Division of Divinity

and Philosophy

The University of Chicago Library

Chicago, Ill.

South Viet Nam held its first really free election September 11. Despite Communist terrorism aimed at voters and boycotts by Buddhist militants, about four-fifths of the eligible voters turned out, and few handed in blank protest ballots. Thousands of others not registered sought to vote in vain.

The vote was to choose the men who will write the war-torn nation’s new constitution. And observers were generally heartened by the results. Voting by religious or ethic blocs seemed minimal.

The winners, who will form a new leadership corps in the nation, included some millionaires, soldiers, and figures under former dictatorships; but most of the 117 seats went “to middle-class professional men with local followings who share a desire for reform, civil government, increased national independence, and victory over the Viet Cong,” the Washington Star said.

The election was the outcome of strong Buddhist demands that shook the nation last spring (see April 29 issue, page 44). But, ironically, the powerful United Buddhist Church boycotted the election. They claimed the war cabinet of Prime Minister Ky had no intention of allowing election of a regular legislature.

The committee setting up the September vote originally wanted the assembly not only to frame a constitution but also to become a legislature. But the government limited it to writing a constitution. There was considerable confusion over procedure.

Although the major Buddhist group campaigned for not voting or turning in blank ballots, two other organizations backed the election: the General Association of Buddhists, largely southern, who backed the regime of the late President Diem; and the Association for Buddhist Studies, a group of southern intellectuals loosely affiliated with the United Buddhist Church.

The Roman Catholics officially had no comment on the vote, but the head bishop announced he would vote. The implication was that the church supported voting but as individual citizens, not as a body.

A small, vocal group active during the campaign was the front formed by Father Hoang Quynh, a former Resistance priest who aided the French against the Viet Cong. Known as an extremist, until recently he headed the Greater Union Forces, a political party within the Roman Catholic structure. He left that to form the Front for Religious Citizens, claimed support from Buddhists, Protestants, and sects as well as Catholics, and opposed the election.

The Protestant Evangelical Church continues to take a stance of official non-participation in politics, although members voted as individuals in the Sunday balloting. A small lay group within the church has recently formed to encourage more interest in the social, political, and economic affairs of the nation among Protestants. They are ready to get involved in politics as individuals, if necessary, and represent a potentially important force.

What does the election mean for the future? The constitution of the Diem era was good but largely ignored, and thus useless. The election may bring some hope to intellectuals who despair about the future of Viet Nam. They feel the United States is largely to blame for the political confusion, have little respect for Ky, and are not confident about what would happen if Saigon won a military victory. The people are weary of war, and many Vietnamese feel time is on the side of the Reds, not the free world.

One unknown factor is the status of the Venerable Tri Quang, who staged a weeks-long hunger strike to protest the election. His colleague the Venerable Thien Hoa said just before the election that the emaciated Quang might not live much longer and that “if he dies, the Buddhists and the Vietnamese people will consider the Americans their enemy. They would have killed our national hero!” A Buddhist leader said that although Quang’s life was important, his death would be even more important. Hoa—who held a meeting with British envoys three days before the vote to lobby for his church’s plan for a negotiated peace—feels the present Saigon government and the United States cannot bring about peace. Quang said in mid-September he was ending his fast.

But the political failure of the Buddhists at the ballot box, even though they have often controlled the streets, indicates that the dynamics of South Viet Nam’s intermeshed religious and ethnic groupings is far different from what some thought or claimed earlier this year.

Protestant Panorama

The United States-based African Methodist Episcopal Church plans to establish a British branch to reach unchurched African, West Indian, and Guianian immigrants.

The Lutheran Council in Canada officially organized at a Winnipeg meeting. It represents 297,000 members in four denominations, constituting 99 per cent of Canada’s Lutherans. Dr. Otto Olson, Jr., was elected first president.

Britain’s Pentecostal Church of Christ voted to join the larger Pentecostal Holiness Church on a two-year trial basis.

Members of an American “Quaker Action Group” joined Canadians to put an initial shipment of medical supplies to North Viet Nam aboard a Soviet liner at Montreal. A similar shipment was mailed to South Viet Nam.

Presbyterians United for Biblical Confession endorsed the revised Confession of 1967 but urged overtures to “strengthen and clarify” proposed subscription questions.

Miscellany

New York City’s new World Journal Tribune, which began publication September 12, is one of the country’s few major metropolitan dailies without a religion specialist. The paper is the result of a three-way merger.

Deaths

ALFRED JENSEN, 73, President for nearly a quarter of a century of the former Danish-oriented American Evangelical Lutheran Church; in Des Moines, Iowa.

JACOB BLUM, 65, widely known Presbyterian missionary of Jewish origin; in Bethlehem, Israel.

VINCENT JOY, 52, founder and general director of Central Alaskan Missions; in Glenallen, Alaska.

At the meeting of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, reports were made on conversations and cooperative projects with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church—Evangelical Synod.

A recommendation at the Northern Province of the Moravian Church in America called for merger with the Southern Province no later than 1968. Last year the southerners approved merger talks.

The evangelism board of the Anglican Church of Canada voted unanimously to ask its General Synod to give full support to Leighton Ford’s 1967 evangelistic crusades.

Reconaissance photographs were reported this month to have shown a church in North Viet Nam ringed with fifty-gallon petroleum drums. Experts speculated whether drums were being stored there merely for convenience or in the hope that U. S. pilots would avoid the target because it involves destruction of a church. A high-level source indicated that the drums made the building a target, church or no church.

Plans to organize associations of evangelicals in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin were announced by the Rev. Mahlon Macy, new Upper Midwest field director for the National Association of Evangelicals. In Washington, D. C., an organizational meeting was held for an Association of Evangelicals for the greater Washington area.

A target of 100 new churches during 1967, the nation’s centennial year, was set at a biennial convention of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. Despite a nationwide rail strike, some 800 delegates attended the Winnipeg sessions.

After protests from several European religious organizations, a Greek military court reduced a death sentence to 4½ years’ imprisonment for Christos Kazanis, 23, a Jehovah’s Witness who refused to bear arms. When the term is up, he faces a probable third trial on the same charge.

In a suit that may provide a precedent against twenty-five dissident congregations, the Maryland and Virginia Eldership of the Churches of God in North America laid legal claim to church property now held by a minister and his church members who have broken all ties with the parent denomination. The court suit contends that under the constitution of the denomination and eldership, church-property ownership automatically reverts to the eldership when a congregation leaves the parent group.

Personalia

The Rev. Marney Patterson, 39, onetime disc jockey, plans to leave his Anglican rectorship in Toronto this December and become a full-time evangelist without salary from the denomination. Anglicans across Canada have flooded him with invitations, and he is backed by the fast-growing Canadian Evangelical Anglican Fellowship.

Harold M. Koch, 34, a former Roman Catholic priest from Chicago, defected to the Soviet Union this month to protest America’s Viet Nam policy. The Chicago archdiocese said Koch quit after five years in the ministry when his superior asked him to seek psychiatric treatment.

In the ecumenism-charged air of the United Church of Canada’s biennial council this month, a minister’s daughter disrupted the proceedings by blurting out, “You will all be over with the Pope yet.” To which one of the 400 commissioners retorted, “That may be truer than you realize.”

Rome notwithstanding, the United Church, biggest by far of Canada’s Protestant denominations, took a key step toward union with the somewhat smaller Anglican Church of Canada. Before the decisive vote, a debate brought out a measure of friendly anxieties: the liberals are afraid of creeds, the conservatives are afraid of losing Reformed traditions, the Presbyterians are afraid of bishops, and the Methodists are afraid of nothing. Until the Anglican merger is realized, there may also be fear of the Consultation on Church Union, which aims to unite nine big U. S. denominations. UCC observers have attended COCU meetings, but an invitation to take part has been declined.

The commissioners were kept in suspense by the Rt. Rev. Ernest Marshall Howse, who had indicated he might break with tradition and seek a second two-year term as moderator if nominated from the floor. Many commissioners were relieved when no such nomination came and Wilfred C. Lockhart was elected (see next page).

Howse said that his term was marked by two major issues: the new curriculum and union with the Anglicans. He hailed the much debated new Sunday school courses as the result of modern and sound biblical scholarship but as too conservative in some areas. He hopes these will be corrected. He blamed difficulties in getting the curriculum accepted on “ministers who have not adequately faced issues that might be disturbing.…” On union, Howse said that “we in Canada perhaps can render our greatest service to our faith in this stage by pioneering a new degree of unity.… Documents are necessary, but they come second to deeds.… What is more important is that we grow together in … creating union.…”

The third day of bristling debate brought adoption of Principles of Union between the Anglican and United churches. Two resolutions that seemed too specific were replaced by one that committed the UCC, not to unite with the Anglicans, but rather to seek a basis upon which agreements to unite may be reached.

The UCC seems willing to accept the episcopacy in a modified form that would permit an equal place for the clergy and laity, but will insist on having ordained women and does not want to be bound by ancient creedal structures or rigid liturgy. Unless the Anglicans are not worried about a break with the worldwide Anglican Communion, the ordination of women could be a major stumbling-block.

When the commissioners were assured that the Principles were not binding but merely provided a “working document,” the overwhelming vote was sung in with “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Only one or two voted against the motion.

In another ecumenical move, a standing ovation gave unanimous approval to absorbing the Canadian Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren into the UCC. The other EUBs in America are on the verge of merger with Methodists. Bishop Reuben Mueller of the EUB, also president of the National Council of Churches in the U. S., sparked the jubilation that made the UCC richer by 10,000 members without any change in doctrine or polity.

In a press conference, General Council Secretary Ernest E. Long blasted CHRISTIANITY TODAY as “anti-ecumenical,” “sectarian,” and “narrow.” Later, he addressed an ecumenical overture to evangelicals: “With deepest sincerity we say: we must seek to increase understanding with our more conservative brethren and decrease any sense of antagonism. It would be a tragedy if we moved in one direction (Anglican) and not in the other.” The church was asked to study the “Wheaton Declaration” issued at this year’s Congress on the Church’s Worldwide Mission.

The Honorable Donald Flemming, a former Tory finance minister, gave the world missions report and sounded more like an evangelist than a politician as he brought sixteen recommendations for greater commitment. The UCC gives less than one cent per member per day to missions and in recent years has been unable to fill even one-quarter of the overseas requests for personnel. The church has only 260 overseas workers in 1966, compared with the 540 it had when the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists first formed the UCC in 1925. Although many in the denomination are critical of Billy Graham, Flemming said the evangelist has an important role in the Church’s mission and revealed he had signed the petition urging Graham to preach in Canada during next year’s national centennial.

The council asked the government to relax abortion laws and permit therapeutic abortion if the fetus threatens the mother’s mental or physical health. The resolution was aimed at preventing inexpert and illegal abortions by what one official called “those bloody people who operate the third most profitable business in Canada.”

The key phrase in a resolution on divorce was “marriage breakdown” as a sensible grounds, with divorce permitted after married couples have been separated for at least three years and have made reconciliation attempts. At present the only grounds is adultery. The report also called for controlled sale of birth-control devices presently outlawed in Canada.

The UCC had strong words on international affairs. It attacked both Viet Cong atrocities and American bombing of North Viet Nam, and supported the Canadian government in sending no military aid. It urged table talks with all parties in the fighting. The council accused Portugese Angola of discrimination against Protestant missionaries, urged termination of the Smith regime in Southern Rhodesia without use of force, condemned racial discrimination and South African apartheid, and urged admission of Red China to the United Nations. There was little reference to Communism as an evil. In fact, the report was more anti-American than anti-communist.

In the UCC’s current theological milieu, program speakers seemed to be calling the church toward the center. Dr. Andrew C. Lawson, prominent Toronto pastor, preached what many called “an old-fashioned Methodist sermon” called “Let’s Have a Revival,” which many labeled as outdated.

The choice of such speakers at a time when the church is seeking spiritual renewal through cell groups seemed to indicate real concern for some kind of revival in this wealthy denomination that had a net increase last year of only eighty-two members. The denomination treasurer, Harold Arnup, seemed to paraphrase Revelation 3:17 when he told the council, “We are rich financially, but poor spiritually.”

J. BERKLEY REYNOLDS

A Moderate Moderator

It took four ballots for the United Church of Canada to elect a new moderator. The final choice was between two seminary principals, Elias Andrews of Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario, and Wilfred C. Lockhart of United College, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

At a time when the Anglican and United churches are drawing toward union, the council decided to choose the 60-year-old Lockhart, who said he would foster union with “enthusiasm and concern.”

At his first press conference, the new moderator disquieted any who might have thought the denomination would continue to elect moderators as theologically radical as the retiring Ernest Marshall Howse (see adjacent story). Lockhart sees no problem in believing in the Virgin Birth, although it is “not essential to belief for all Christians.”

Howse did not believe in Jesus’ physical resurrection, but Lockhart says “it is a fact. It is undergirded by the whole of New Testament theology.” He is not sure the Second Coming is to be a real act in history, but would agree with Niebuhr that it is at least an act “beyond history.”

In his farewell, Howse called for a longer term and more authority for the moderator. He no doubt was reacting to reminders that while he was moderator he did not always represent the stand of the church. In the UCC, the moderator speaks officially only when acting under authority of the General Council. He is an elected representative but has no authority in himself.

From Risky To Risque

Intersection Center for the Creative Arts, an ecumenical project in San Francisco, gained notoriety last month when a male jazz dancer disrobed completely during performances. His act was described by Intersection’s director, the Rev. Laird Sutton, as conveying the message of its title, “Psychedelic Experience.”

Sutton told the Chronicle’s Donovan Bess that Bill Couser’s sixty seconds of animated nudity apparently meant “the psychedelic experience renders a man completely naked to himself and to other people.”

Up to that point in its two-year history, Intersection had received little attention from the press and had been largely unnoticed—and unknown—by the public, including the constituency responsible for paying most of the bills. Current outcries from the latter have sent denominational executives into huddles with Intersection board members, but no changes in policy are foreseen.

An outgrowth of the former Bread and Wine Mission beamed at North Beach beatniks, Intersection was begun ostensibly to establish church contact with the city’s “artist community.” Pledges were soon made for its $20,000 annual budget: the United Church of Christ assumed half; Methodists, about $3,000; Presbyterians, $1,000; American Baptists, $250. An anonymous Methodist family supplied the remaining $6,000.

Sutton, married and father of two, is a Methodist graduate of the Pacific School of Religion. A student of “relationships” between contemporary art and theology, he is a recognized avant-garde sculptor.

Intersection is quartered in a rented hall on the edge of the downtown Tenderloin district. It operates six nights a week, with alternating programs of life drawing, poetry, experimental films, drama, and the dance. The public is invited to attend its offerings of “art,” at admission fees ranging from fifty cents to three dollars, depending on the program. (The money is given to performers.) For life drawing (Monday nights) the fee is $1.25 (“model fee”). The audience may vary from a dozen on a routine poetry night to a capacity 100 when headline performers or “exceptional” experimental films are billed.

But Sutton insists such programs are not for the sake of entertainment. Instead, they are intended to be “catalysts” for communication between artists or performers and audiences, especially church people.

Actually, says Sutton, the Church has more to learn from the artist than the artist from the Church, for the artist is both priest and prophet. As priest, he is a mediator between the unseen and seen. Sutton cites “psychedelic art” as an example, a medium through which “non-psychedelics can be joined in mind with psychedelics.” (He is a proponent of LSD’s capacity to “expand the mind and promote creativity.”) As prophet, the artist expresses “an intense awareness of the existential situation.” Remember, says Sutton, the message of Broadway is more listened to than the message of the Church. As another example, he points to a painting on display: with many embellishments, it depicts San Francisco and a well-known topless performer chained to each other.

“We make no restrictions on the art form,” says Sutton. “There is no censorship. We ask of the artist only that he [act] with integrity.”

This creed has led to “risky” programs generously spiced with sex, profanity, even racism. But there have been no legal troubles in spite of frequent police inspections.

“By the way,” commented the bearded cleric, “I have found that psychedelics have no fear of death.”

He and others at Intersection view this as a blessing rather than a curse.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Ecumenism On Campus

The major organizations of Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic college students merged into a new “University Christian Movement” this month, on the eve of the new school year.

The groups that united at the Chicago convention are:

• National Student Christian Federation—a group of Protestant campus ministries affiliated with the National Council of Churches;

• Orthodox Bishops’ Campus Commission, a relatively new group that serves ten nationality denominations within Eastern Orthodoxy;

• National Federation of Catholic College Students, founded in 1937, which represents the total enrollment of 100 Roman Catholic colleges through their student governments;

• National Newman Student Federation, the Catholic movement on secular campuses.

Although the NSCF was dissolved, its various Protestant denominational members will continue, as will the national Catholic and Orthodox agencies, and it may be some time before the top-level ecumenical union results in local mergers. The Rev. Leonard Clough of the NCC staff, general secretary of the former NSCF, said some mainline Protestant campus groups are now “ready to go out of business” and become fully ecumenical. NSCF groups have been declining in membership while the campus population has grown. The former NSCF constituency is estimated at 200,000; the UCM’s is probably twice that.

A likely result is that social activists in each major wing of Christianity will give more moral support to one another. Comparing the NSCF with Catholic student movements, Newman’s national president Charles Badrick said the Protestants are “more issue-oriented” and “better financed,” although the Catholics will have a contribution to make in such areas as “leadership development.”

In a similar tone, James Couchell, executive secretary of the Orthodox commission, said his constituents, mainly sons and daughters of immigrants, so far have not been “identified enough with the American scene to be concerned about the great issues of civil rights and peace.”

The vast, pan-Christian student union developed rather suddenly, Clough said. The two Catholic agencies voted to seek membership at their national congresses in late August and sent a handful of representatives to the Chicago meeting, made up mainly of 125 Protestant delegates and observers.

The NSCF was so involved in merger that it didn’t have time to send out the usual raft of political resolutions. But several study committees were established to probe campus concerns, particularly the military draft. An “ad hoc” committee will do research on Selective Service, conscientious objection, alternative service, and draft resistance, before the present draft law expires next June. It will coordinate its activities not only with the NCC and religious pacifists, but also with the mostly agnostic Students for a Democratic Society, a radical campus club on the “New Left.”

In a new leaf stemming from the reorganization, a “Committee on Theological Reflection” will ponder “what all this activism is about” and “restate the basic truths of the faith,” Clough said.

Unlike the NSCF, the UCM will be open to local or regional groups not affiliated with a particular denomination. It is expected that the UCM will be “related” to the NCC and hold membership in both the World Student Christian Federation, with which the NSCF was affiliated, and Pax Romana, the giant worldwide body of Catholic college students.

The NSCF will continue its Washington, D. C., operation at NCC headquarters (see October 22, 1965, issue, page 41). The UCM’s first president, Miss Charlotte Bunch, will live in that city this year and work with an inner-city project of the local council of churches. A Methodist, she was a student delegate to the World Council of Churches’ Conference on Church and Society this summer.

The Protestant members of NSCF and now UCM are:

Baptist Student Movement (ABC); Lutheran Student Association (mainly LCA and ALC); Methodist Student Movement; National Canterbury Committee (Episcopal); National Student Council of the YWCA; and United Campus Christian Fellowship. The latter is a recent merger of the campus ministries of United Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, Disciples, Evangelical United Brethren, and Moravians. The Westminster Fellowship of the “Southern” Presbyterian Church, another UCM member, is now seeking authorization from its Christian education board to join the UCCF. The Young Friends of North America, which was “related” to the NSCF, will be a full member of the UCM. The National Student Council of the YMCA and the Student Interracial Ministry will continue as related organizations.

Although their average income has risen steadily in recent years, many of the 350,000 Protestant ministers in the United States and Canada still push to make ends meet. They generally have so small a financial cushion that a jump in food costs such as the one in recent months can throw the manse into debt. Not one clergyman in a hundred nets as much as $10,000 a year.

The underpaid pastor is probably the church’s biggest material problem. Membership continues to climb, and parishioners are better equipped to serve the church than ever. Building facilities by and large are more than adequate, religious book sales are booming, plenty of periodicals and educational materials are available, gadgets abound, and new avenues of communication are opening up regularly. Yet clergy salaries still lag.

The reason for the problem is easy to discover. Most ministerial salaries are fixed by boards of local churches.¹The Southern Baptist figure is said to he higher than the true median because a disproportionately high number o£ large Southern Baptist churches were included in the sample. Thus a substantial part of the prosperous laity is telling the pastor, in effect, that he is not fully worthy of his hire. Fewer than one out of five ministers report that they get an annual raise, and fewer than two out of five report receiving even an annual salary review. Church boards apparently prefer to approve increases only when necessary to lure a new pastor.

Ross P. Scherer, church management expert formerly with the National Council of Churches, suggests that “probably no other institution leaves the compensation of its professionals to such a sporadic, quixotic, and laissez-faire system of patronage.”

Undoubtedly, some young men see the ministry as a vocation that is lucrative if the right strings are pulled. A few clergymen do live luxuriously, and some reach a high-income bracket through politicking, if not by sheer hook and crook. Others, though honest, are poorly suited for their work and don’t deserve professional wages. But these types, dramatized in countless books and movies, are outnumbered by dedicated, efficient ministers who are woefully underpaid.

MEDIAN SALARIES OF MINISTERS

Successful ministers rarely expose their diaries, so few laymen realize what a ministerial candidate must sacrifice on the altar of ordination. He yields a lifelong measure of privacy, selection of property and geographic region, assured time of his own, perhaps even his choice of a life partner—if, as sometimes happens, she refuses to be a minister’s wife. In addition, he invites the financial problems that have traditionally been the pastor’s lot.

Most clergymen take the lumps in silence because they count some compensating factors and, infinitely more important, because they feel their life work is a divine commission. They are generally reluctant to appeal for wage hikes, and their timidity has been exploited. The average North American clergyman with wife and children draws an estimated cash salary of less than $6,000 a year, about as much as a lazy salesman. No other vocation involving graduate study is on such a low pay scale.

Critics say pastors enjoy numerous benefits that make them much better off financially than their cash salaries indicate. But this argument has not been borne out by statistical data. The most comprehensive survey ever made of the total compensation of local Protestant clergymen showed that, contrary to common opinion, the American minister receives little in fees, perquisites, free goods and services, discounts, and so on. Indeed the study, conducted by the NCC in 1963, showed that the typical minister subsidized his ministry out of his own salary by $685 each year because he was inadequately repaid for professionally incurred car expenses.

Another drain on the minister’s wallet is his need to continue his education; he is expected to be a jack-of-all-trades with expert knowledge of everything from publicity to psychiatry. Moreover, his family must strive to look well-dressed and must be ready to entertain at a moment’s notice. Few other workingmen are on call twenty-four hours a day; yet there is no overtime pay for a pastor.

Salary size is generally related to church size, but not as directly as might be expected. The income level of the congregation is sometimes more determinative. Size of the community is another factor. There are variations between denominations, but these are not great. As in other occupations, salaries tend to increase as academic training and amount of experience increase.

Negro churches pay their pastors on a much more informal basis than do all-white and integrated congregations and thus defy statistical analysis. Many Negro storefront and rural churches are unable to support a minister full-time. Big ghetto churches, on the other hand, can be the sources of comfortable incomes. It is not uncommon for pastors of Baptist churches in Harlem to get $250 a week. In some places the congregation annually celebrates the pastor’s anniversary by collecting a dollar from each member for every year he has been there, and the total sometimes goes as high as $20,000. One church supplies a new Cadillac every other January and a six-week paid vacation.

After the 1963 survey, the National Council of Churches published an attractive twenty-page guidebook for local churches, “How Well Do You Support Your Minister?” It has since been revised, and a new copyrighted edition will be available in a few weeks.

It will say that “the adequacy with which a church supports its minister is the measure of the seriousness with which it takes its mission.” It offers a rebuttal to those who dismiss better remuneration of the clergy by saying, “After all, he’s not in this work to make money—it’s supposed to be a ‘calling.’ ”

“A major hardship,” the booklet notes, “is inflicted when churches withhold merited and badly needed salary advances ‘until the church building debt is paid.’ This levies against the minister’s salary an additional forced contribution to the building fund campaign.”

The earlier, edition asserts that “to fail to give the minister adequate compensation is an uneconomical ‘economy’ that the church can ill afford. It impairs his effectiveness. It often forces him to accept ‘promotion’ in the form of a call to a larger church that pays a higher salary as the only possible solution to his financial difficulties, when he would prefer to remain in his present charge.”

The minister has been called “the last unorganized man.” No labor union or trade association protects him from exploitation. He trusts the Christian spirit and fairness of the laity. If he has integrity, he will seek to be the prophet and to reprove and rebuke, if necessary, even though the situation may involve sincere differences of opinion on theological and racial issues.

A big question is whether the churches will get less when they pay more. If clergy incomes should rise substantially, some say, the ministry would be more attractive to mercenaries. Perhaps so, say others, but higher salaries might also attract to the ministry some better-qualified applicants who for financial reasons now choose to witness as laymen. Upgrading the salary level would also discourage the mediocre, who could not compete on the higher scale.

About one thing there is little doubt: today’s ministerial candidates are concerned about salary and other material benefits. One leading pastor recently gibed, “When I interview an applicant for an assistant pastorate, the first thing he wants to know about is the pay, the vacation allowance, the retirement plan, and the opportunities for participation in demonstrations.”

The Top Salaries

The distinction of having the best-paid clergy post belongs to New York’s historic Trinity Parish (Episcopal), where the rector is reported to receive about $50,000 annually. A handful of Presbyterian and Episcopal churches give their ministers between $30,000 and $35,000. At least four Southern Baptist churches and two congregations of the Reformed Church in America run to $25,000. Among Lutherans and Methodists, the top is about $20,000. The United Church of Canada’s highest-salaried preacher makes $20,000.

Pension Board Confronts Inflation

Conventional pension plans are at the mercy of inflation. As pension funds accumulate, they are usually salted away in so-called “safe” securities that yield relatively low but fixed returns. The pensioner is thus assured a specified income. By the time he retires, however, dollar value has dwindled so much that the guaranteed income is inadequate. Clergymen, most of whom scrape through life on low salaries, get hit particularly hard in their retirement years.

Now comes the Lutheran Church in America with an optional plan to offset the effects of inflation by gearing the retirement income of pastors directly to the value of common-stock investments. The pensioner won’t know exactly how much he will get, but in the long run the amount is likely to be considerably higher than what he would get from the present fixed-income securities base.

According to LCA pension chief L. Edwin Wang, there have been many requests from prospective pensioners in recent years for a common-stock tie-in. Because traditional plans have not given effective protection against inflation, a number of ministers have balked at church pensions and turned to private investment programs.

Under the new variable-income pensions based on common stocks, says Wang, “dividend income alone will probably provide a higher yield than that produced currently from fixed-income securities.” But the pensioner will also stand to benefit from increased stock values expected under modern economic trends.

LCA pastors enrolled in their denominational pension program contribute 4 per cent of their salaries. Their churches kick in another 7 per cent, and it is this that beginning next July 1 can be channeled into the common-stocks pool. Pastors can designate half, three-quarters, or all of the congregational contribution for common-stock investment. Or they can stick with fixed-income securities as in the past. If a minister doesn’t decide for himself, the money will automatically be divided, 75 per cent to common stocks and 25 per cent to fixed-income securities. A similar variable-income pension has been worked out for lay employees of the LCA.

Wang expects three-fourths of the pastors to choose to put 100 per cent of the congregational contribution into common stocks.

What difference will be made by this year’s protracted stock-market decline? “There will be very little effect in the long run,” says Wang. Risks will be minimized by allowing each minister to reconsider his choice from time to time. At 65 he will have his last chance to change common-stock investments into fixed-income securities.

Wang describes his board’s plan as the first to make a variable-income pension retroactive to an existing common-stocks portfolio. Between one-fourth and one-fifth of LCA pension resources is now invested in common stocks. The rest is in fixed-income securities.

Southern Baptist Convention pension plans also have a common-stock link, but only on a supplementary basis. So do the American Baptist plans, but that denomination has the good fortune of a strong endowment that makes possible a floor for variable-income pensions. The Episcopal pension plan, though regarded as the best among plans of the major denominations, is not tied directly to the result of its common-stock investments.

Will Pope Paul Retire?

In August, Pope Paul recommended that Roman Catholic bishops and pastors resign by age 75, and this month he made a pilgrimage to the Castle of Fumone near Rome to honor the only pope who ever resigned, Celestine V. The thirteenth-century pope returned to his hermit existence after only five months at the Vatican.

It could have been a symbolic hint that older men should step down, but some wondered whether Paul himself might follow Celestine’s example. Paul celebrates his sixty-ninth birthday this week and in 1972 will reach the retirement age he has set for his colleagues.

The retirement recommendation came in the August 6 document Ecclesiae Sanctae, which implements certain decrees of Vatican Council II. Article 21 of the council’s decree on bishops said that when bishops and others “have become less capable of fufilling their duties properly because of the increasing burden of age or some other serious reason, they are earnestly requested to offer their resignation.…”

One of the first to respond was Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro, once a candidate to succeed Pope John XXIII, who will be 75 on October 28. Other resignations came from bishops in Italy, Spain, and Germany. Another to submit a resignation was Archbishop Edward D. Howard of Portland, Oregon, who will be 89 in November. It is up to the Pope to decide whether to accept the resignations, and Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini, 78, said the Pope had asked him to stay on.

Implementation of the decree could have great effects in aiding the young liberals of Catholicism. When the decree becomes valid October 11, it will affect sixty bishops and at least 1,500 priests in conservative Italy alone. Calendar-watchers in America noted that it covers or soon will cover Cardinals Spellman, Ritter, and McIntyre, and four archbishops besides Howard.

South Africa After Verwoerd

An estimated 250,000 people jammed Pretoria, South Africa, for the funeral of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, knifed to death by an assassin September 6 (see previous issue, page 44).

In the huge amphitheater below the government’s Union Building, 10,000 whites and nineteen representatives of black tribes listened to the funeral oration by Moderator J. S. Gericke of the Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape, a personal friend of Verwoerd.

Religious News Service said Gericke compared segregationist South Africa under Verwoerd to the Israelites, who wanted to “maintain good relations with other nations” but because of “an evil propaganda campaign” had to defend against “vicious attacks from outside.…

“If it is thought that Dr. Verwoerd’s death will break the South African people,” he warned, “then those who think so do not know the strength of a people who have produced a Hendrik Verwoerd.”

This sentiment was echoed days later when the Nationalist Party chose as Verwoerd’s successor a man with an even harder line on race, Justice Minister J. B. Vorster.

Meanwhile, RNS said the accused assassin, Dimitri Tsafendas (previously spelled Stafendis), was a member of a small Buddhist group in Capetown. Earlier reports said the white South African of Portuguese-Greek origin had been an avid Bible-reader.

Young Anglican Bishop Clarence E. Crowther, an integrationist currently touring America, predicted Verwoerd may become a “martyr” and feared tightening of segregation and repression. He said “Mr. Vorster is not so nice and not so gentle a man as Mr. Verwoerd. I believe it will be worse. Mr. Verwoerd was a nice man with a blind spot.”

Pike’S Successor

The Rt. Rev. C. Kilmer Myers, suffragan bishop of Michigan, was elected sixth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California September 14 to succeed controversial Bishop James A. Pike, who resigned last May. In a grueling election battle that went well past midnight in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, some 180 clerical and 500 lay delegates gave Myers a majority on the ninth ballot. He won over the Rt. Rev. G. Richard Millard, Pike’s suffragan bishop, and the Rev. Morris F. Arnold, director of the urban pilot program of the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

Myers’s victory was brought about by a coalition between the young liberal clergy who admire his strong social concern and the more theologically conservative clergy and laymen who regard him as sound in the faith and who respect the sacramental emphasis of his ministry. The candidate of the latter group was the Rev. Lesley Wilder, rector of St. Matthews Church, San Mateo, California. Election of Myers was assured when Wilder withdrew after the seventh ballot.

Myers, who is 50 years old, is married and has three children. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1937 with a B.A. degree, earned an S.T.B. in 1940 from the Berkeley Divinity School, New Haven, and holds two honorary doctorates. He has won acclaim throughout the Episcopal Church for his work in the slums and with youth gangs. He pioneered the first Episcopal inner-city group ministry at Grace Church, Jersey City, and served as vicar of the Lower East Side Mission of Trinity Parish, New York City, for eight years. After three years’ service as vicar of the Chapel of the Intercession at Trinity Parish, in 1963 he became first director of the Urban Training Center for Christian Mission in Chicago. This is an ecumenical institution created to train both clergy and laity for mission in urban society. Myers left this post to become suffragan bishop of Michigan two years ago. Besides contributing essays to On the Battle Lines and What’s Ahead for the Churches?, he has written Light the Dark Streets and Behold the Church.

Myers’s election (which depends upon his consent and ratification by a majority of the denomination’s bishops and diocesan standing committees) probably indicates a continuation of the vigorous social concern expressed by Pike but a return to a more traditional theological position in the diocese. Throughout the Anglican Communion the most effective work among the culturally and economically deprived is being done by the more biblically and sacramentally oriented branches of the church, and this may be the direction of the diocese.

Pike was named an auxiliary bishop by the convention and will serve in this role as requested, while spending most of his time in his new post at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara.

JEROME F. POLITZER

Orthodox Strategy On Anglicans

Strategy for upcoming negotiations with Anglicans was determined at a pan-Orthodox conference the first fifteen days of the month. The conference took place at the Belgrade headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate. It was a follow-up to the November, 1964, conference in Greece, at which Orthodoxy decided to press ecumenism with Anglicans, as well as Old Catholics.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is especially interested in looking East, said on his April trip to Jerusalem that he hoped future attempts to resolve Anglican-Orthodox doctrinal differences would be successful. On his current tour of Canada, the archbishop said announcement of an Anglican-Roman Catholic unity commission is imminent.

Archbishop Athenagoras of Thyateira, leader of Greek Orthodoxy in Britain, is chairman of the committee on Anglicans. Other groups represented in Belgrade were the Ecumenical Patriarchates of Istanbul, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Egypt, and the churches of Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Greece, Cyprus, and Finland.

Eastern Orthodoxy held talks with Anglicanism in 1930, 1931, 1935, and 1956. Church of England orders are accepted by the Romanian church.

“To fail to live a life of prayer is to imperil our Chrsitian lives and witness”

God has chosen us as his men. We have been blessed by the experience of faith and devotion. We have been trained extensively in the Scriptures, the spiritual life, and theology. We are recipients of the grace of God and are assigned to a work that keeps us close to holy things and deeds of service. Each of these blessings places a special responsibility upon us. We have been given much, and certainly God expects much from us.

On the other hand, God has left us in the midst of the world. We are affected by all the fears and clamors of the world. We are exposed to all the fleshly temptations that are common to men. And we face a whole complex of temptations special to, or at least heightened by, our vocation.

We are constantly exposed to situations that tempt us to self-righteousness and Pharisaism. Most of us manage to avoid the gross and scandalous sins. We are generally faithful in performance of external religious duties. In comparison to most of the people we meet we are well informed in matters of religion. Our people sometimes feed our pride with praise or flattery. We have all, doubtless, preached on the parable of the Pharisee and the publican; but I suspect that most of us have at times needed more to hear than to preach such a sermon.

We yearn for popularity. We may dress this yearning with all sorts of supporting rationalizations (“If people like us, they may be drawn to Christ and his Church”). Nevertheless, some of our hunger to be liked is self-seeking and prideful. And it sometimes leads us to avoid speaking the Word of God bluntly and harshly when bluntness and harshness are called for.

We are tempted to use people rather than serve them. Here, too, the line between wisdom and sin is narrow. To give people the opportunity to serve and give is good. But if we think of newcomers to the church as tools or as feathers in our caps, then we are using them as things, and this is a grievous sin.

Our constant association with holy things and deeds of service is likely to make them commonplace. To master one’s vocation, to work in it calmly and proficiently, is one thing. But to work indifferently or cynically is something else.

Finally, there is the blasphemous sin of using God rather than serving him. What minister has not known the temptation to think up a pious, perhaps scriptural argument to persuade people to do what he wants them to do for his own (as distinct from God’s) reasons?

This, then, is our dilemma. Our lives should be lived in God’s service. Yet we often find ourselves to be as great sinners as those we are called to serve. We share Peter’s guilt, the timid denial in word or deed of Christ. Can we, like Peter, face this guilt and return through penitence to loyalty? We share Thomas’ guilt in our lack of faith. Can we, like Thomas, face the guilt and return through penitence to faith? We share Judas’ guilt, the naked betrayal of Christ. Can we, unlike Judas, return to a living Christ and in him live, not die?

The answer, since the Gospel is good news, is “Yes, we can!” We can join in Peter’s threefold cry, “I love you!” We can join in Thomas’ awestruck cry, “My Lord and my God!” In penitence we can find the grace to praise and adore God. By petition we can touch the rebuilding power of the Holy Spirit. By intercession we can share this power with others. In thanksgiving we can acknowledge the Source of that power.

The parson’s life is like a rocky plain. It is thickly covered with obstacles—good works, busy works, idiocies, and plausible evasions. We read of other men who walked through such rocky plains without being blocked by the obstacles—Brother Lawrence, William Law, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, the Curé d’Ars. But most of us are not such athletes of God. We find the role of mystic or contemplative hard to adopt. Yet we must, for our very souls’ sakes, find some way to build a road through the rocky plain, blasting out of the way the rocks of distraction, temptation, and rationalization.

We need to set times for prayer, clearing these times of all postponable interruptions. We need some order and plan that will enable us to make good use of such cleared time by quickly entering into a close relationship with God. There are doubtless great souls who live always conscious of that relationship—but most of us are not such great souls. The order and plan may be provided by disciplines imposed by the church, such as the required use of offices of prayer like those in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Rich mines of daily devotional material are found in such works as The Private Devotions of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, Frank Laubach’s Letters by a Modern Mystic, and John Baillie’s A Diary of Readings. Or disciplines may be imposed by spiritual directors. Or we may, lacking such external sources of spiritual discipline, have to create our own personal disciplines from scratch, as we are led by the Holy Spirit. In any case, there will always remain a large measure of self-discipline, for church and directors ordinarily impose only the minimum, not the maximum, rule of life, and men of our vocation dare not be content with minimums.

One word of warning. As we set out to clear times for prayer, we must keep firmly in mind the Christ-ordained system of priorities. Jesus could and did free himself often from the immediate burdens of busyness to meditate and pray. On the other hand, he told us the parable of the Good Samaritan, which speaks directly to the sin of the clergyman who is too wrapped up in his ecclesiastical business to involve himself in emergency human needs. Church business can be scheduled so as to leave time free. The postponable, even in the area of human need, can be postponed. There were doubtless some sick people looking for Jesus when he went to the Mount of the Transfiguration. But Jesus seems to be saying to us that we must always be ready to drop our ministerial and devotional tasks to meet serious human emergencies.

Once we have cleared a road on our cluttered, rocky plain, we must work hard to stay on the road and to keep it in repair. Blessedly, as we walk the road of prayer, we can be praying for, among other things, the grace to keep prayer life in order.

But there is more to prayer than scheduled acts of devotion. We need to be opportunistic about time, seizing spare moments for acts of prayer and meditation. I knew an Episcopal priest who was grateful that the streets of his town crossed a busy railroad on grade. While waiting in his car for the crossing gates to lift, he used the time for intercessions.

The content of prayer is more important than its form. Particularly dangerous is psychological prayer, the kind that is in fact though not in form addressed to self rather than to God. There is a subtle but real distinction between prayer that humbly asks God for grace and strength and wisdom, and prayer that says no more than, “Now, self, you buckle down and do your job better.” In the latter, a salutation to God and a close in Christ’s name may mean no more than the worldling’s “Goodbye” means “God be with you.”

God is a person. Thus all private prayer must be personal. It must be loving and natural, though naturalness should not be equated with slanginess. It should be individual, for in our own prayer life our role is not that of a devotional cheerleader. It should be inclusive; there is nothing in life that cannot with profit be discussed with God. It must be honest, for God knows our hearts as well as our words. It must be humble, for we speak always as unworthy in the presence of the divine majesty. It should be hopeful, for we have assurance that every prayer is heard and answered. And always we must speak in faith, for our own doubts do not affect the reality of him who hears.

Prayer is less a means to an end than part of the end. Our eternal destiny is communion with God. In this life—the only part of eternity with which we can now deal—we can at any moment pray. There are rewards flowing from such communion, but none of them approaches the value of the communion itself.

If we fail to live active and full devotional lives, we may become blind worldlings leading the blind to destruction. If we reject communion with God, we are alone, without faith, hope, or love. To fail to live a life of prayer is to imperil our Christian lives and witness.

There are two opposite errors common to those who seek to build good devotional lives. Pride, over-ambition, and shallow enthusiasm may cause our lives to become junkyards littered with the wrecked hulks of broken resolutions. On the other hand, despair, sloth, or quitting can keep us off the road to God as effectively as gross carnal sins.

Against both perils, spiritual direction can provide protection and antidotes. There are people (not all of them clergymen) gifted in the direction of the spiritual lives of others. The minister, who inevitably does some such work himself among his flock, needs not less but more than others the help such gifted Christians can give. Often those who can serve a minister best are outside his own chain of command or perhaps outside his own denomination. Such directors can be found. And they will never, if they are truly called to this work, refuse to help. Seek out such a helper, for he is God’s human instrument to give you wise and objective counsel in an area where self-diagnosis and selftreatment are often unavailing.

Not all prayer is talking to God. Meditation, or mental prayer, is far more a matter of listening to God. Whether you find formal meditation disciplines helpful or find a freer way better, make time in your prayer life for quiet listening. And for a special invigoration of spiritual life, there is great value in an occasional retreat with silence, worship, prayer, and counsel, not just a so-called conference. For the sanction of the retreat we have our Lord’s example, as in his going alone to a mountain to pray.

To sum up: We need to pray. We find it hard to pray. We shall have to walk the road of penitence in entering upon the full life of prayer. We shall have to face and deal with external and interior obstacles. Plans, order, removal of obstacles, and spiritual direction will help us into a spiritual life of continual growth.

You are God’s man. Live close to him!