A wide assortment of Church-related agencies are complaining about the way the U. S. Office of Education is administering last year’s precedent-setting school-aid act. The Office of Education is charged with violating elements in the act designed to preserve the constitutional principle of church-state separation.

Among those expressing anxieties are influential spokesmen from the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, Americans United, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

On one section of the law, “the Office of Education has not transmitted in any meaningful way the church-state settlement reached in the halls of Congress after strenuous and tense debate,” charges Director Dean M. Kelley of the NCC’s Commission on Religious Liberty. “Local and state administrators are left to find their way without the markers set along the outer limits of constitutionality.”

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 was the first act providing funds for schools below the college level on a broad scale. Every previous attempt had been defeated, mainly through inability to resolve the church-state issue. The 1965 measure got around the problem with the so-called child-benefit concept.

The idea was that pupils in church-related and other private schools were just as entitled to federal funds as public school students. But the Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as forbidding the granting of public funds to parochial schools. Under the child-benefit concept, the money was to be given so that it aided the students in parochial schools but not the schools themselves. Public agencies were to keep control.

The distinction seemed a fine one but gained wide support. In recent months, however, there has been increasing feeling that it was too fine. Some who supported the bill are having second thoughts, primarily because of the type of regulation—or lack of it—by the Office of Education.

In New York City and other metropolitan centers, public school teachers are being required to go to parochial schools to provide special services. In Detroit, a suit has been filed by several public school teachers who contend that teaching in a parochial school violates their consciences.

In Louisville, a bloc of theater tickets was purchased for parochial school students with federal money. In Rhode Island, biographies of Roman Catholic leaders have been approved by the state government to be “loaned” to Roman Catholic schools as library books.

The Baptist public affairs office quotes Office of Education spokesmen as saying the 1965 act cannot be administered in accordance with the wishes of those who want strict adherence to understandings reached during the legislative process while the act was in the making. Critics counter that if the act cannot be administered along clean church-state lines, provisions that affect church-state relations should be dropped.

The 1965 law has been under congressional review this spring, since it is valid only until next month and must be renewed. The Administration is asking a four-year extension. But critics think that until the intent of Congress is carried out with greater fidelity, the legislation should be reviewed yearly.

Originally, the bill was to promote dual enrollment, and much of its aid for parochial school students was to be administered in this way. Parochial students were expected to go to public schools for some of the more religiously “neutral” subject matter. Kelley told a Congressional committee, however, that since enactment of the bill, “the scope of dual enrollment has been reduced and the scope of ‘mobile educational services’ has been expanded.”

The trouble with “mobile equipment” is that it hardly qualifies under the child-benefit concept. It tends to benefit the school as well as the child.

Experts in church-state relations had understood the 1965 act to specify that major equipment was to be placed in parochial schools only for therapeutic, remedial, or welfare services. That was an important distinction. Benefits for parochial school students that were already being provided in their schools were not to be supplied by public money. Many contend that this distinction is now widely ignored.

Textbook aid and library books are another sore spot. The Office of Education has received numerous complaints that loans of books are being so regarded only in a technical sense—that federal funds are providing parochial schools with books that they have no intention of ever returning. A spokesman for Americans United has asked that the Office of Education specifically require establishment of local public depositories.

Advocates of church-state separation are worried. There are rumblings that the government should erect special buildings for parochial schools, ostensibly for public-service activities. There is precedent for this in the science and language laboratory grants and loans that the federal government provides on the college level—to church-related as well as to public and private institutions.

Some observers feel the erosion of church-state separation will continue unless the U. S. Supreme Court draws a definite line in the matter of government aid and church-related education. Key cases are pending that might bring sweeping decisions by the court.

The I.A.C.S. Debate

The proposal by CHRISTIANITY TODAY for establishment of an Institute of Advanced Christian Studies is stimulating interest and debate among evangelical educators. Influential Christian leaders are endorsing the plan, but some express reservations. The proposal (see May 13 issue, page 28) calls for a center of evangelical research and writing to advance Christian truth in the modern academic milieu. Highly qualified scholars related to the institute might later become the graduate faculty core of a Christian university, but this development is not essential to the project. Ideally, the institute would be located near an outstanding secular campus. It could begin operating as early as the fall of 1967 or 1968, if support is mustered.

Some critics think the institute would compete with presently existing evangelical institutions; others view it as a move of isolation from the world.

Even some who favor the basic plan have reservations because of material obstacles. They contend that the growing taxation of wealth increasingly limits philanthropy, and that the problem of private financing today may be too acute to support such an evangelical breakthrough, however necessary.

Governor Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, a former professor of political science at Willamette University, takes note of some of the problems but feels nevertheless that “the potential rewards in the invigoration of the intellectual climate of our churches is enormous. The challenge of this idea deserves our considered response.”

Editor Carl F. H. Henry, in a keynote address to the annual convention of the Evangelical Press Association this month, called on editors to urge 40 million U. S. evangelicals to give one dollar each to the project. If the center is not established by 1970, the money will revert to other tax-exempt projects listed in advance as alternatives by the contributors.

A number of strategically placed evangelicals would like to see the proposed institute established immediately.

Says Dr. Calvin D. Linton, a dean of George Washington University, “The intellectual and scholarly validity of historical, conservative Christianity deserves the clearest and worthiest academic visibility. For many reasons, the present structure of higher education is not able (or not willing) to support it adequately, surely not to a degree approaching the emphasis given to advanced study in science or social research. The proposal of an Institute of Advanced Christian Studies merits the most urgent attention and encouragement.”

One of America’s top business leaders says the idea “strikes a responsive note during a day of confused movements in the theological field.… Our age of science,” declares Dr. Elmer W. Engstrom, chief executive officer of RCA, “needs to be interpreted and understood through the eyes, ears, and voices of evangelical Christianity.”

According to Dr. George L. Bird, chairman of the graduate division of Syracuse University School of Journalism, “a new Christian institute to study Christian revelation and the divine influence in human life is deeply needed. The American youths I know cry out for spiritual guidance—but mostly in vain.” Bird regards the American campus as “one of the neediest mission fields on this globe.”

The “mechanism” of the institute, notes Professor Martin J. Buerger of MIT, “has great possibilities, and I heartily support it.” Buerger declares that “Christianity could profit by a standard-bearer of academic stature, especially as a nucleus for a great Christian university on an evangelical, trans-denominational base which would light a beacon in these days of materialism and deviation from the fundamentals.”

Dr. Orville S. Walters, director of health services at the University of Illinois, observes that “the establishment of such a center would provide evangelical scholars with the favorable conditions for scholarly work to be found in many large universities, but usually committed to secular projects. The plan would enable evangelical scholars, usually loaded heavily with teaching, to have some freedom for creative writing, and to make an adequate presentation of the conservative theological viewpoint in contemporary intellectual issues.”

Such a development, adds Dr. Gordon H. Clark, is “long overdue.” Clark, chairmen of the philosophy department at Butler University, believes that “the problems of establishing another liberal arts college would be gigantic. An Institute of Advanced Christian Studies is obviously more feasible, and, in view of the actual opposition to Christian scholarship in secular universities, much more needed.”

Million-Dollar Doctorate

At the cost of one million dollars, Pepperdine College of Los Angeles decided that neither its honor nor its honorary degrees are for sale.

The will of the late D. B. Lewis, wealthy manufacturer of “Dr. Ross” cat and dog food, left $1 million to help Dan Smoot carry on his work as a right-wing commentator, $1 million to the John Birch Society, $1.5 million to found Defenders of American Liberty as a counterpart of the American Civil Liberties Union, and $1 million to Pepperdine College.

The will stipulated that the Pepperdine bequest depended on the college’s granting an honorary doctorate to Dan Smoot within six months. Although almost half of Pepperdine’s approximately 1,500 students come from the Churches of Christ, the theologically conservative college is not denominationally owned or financed, and depends solely on gifts and tuition.

According to President M. Norvel Young, the school’s board of trustees unanimously rejected the bequest because “whatever the merits of a proposed recipient, the academic process precludes awarding a degree based on the contingency of any gift.” Norvel issued a statement declaring that Pepperdine, “as an independent, Christian, liberal arts institution of higher learning, is committed to the virtues of integrity, sincerity, morality, reverence for God, and respect for our fellow man.”

William Teague, Pepperdine’s vice-president, said that even if Pepperdine’s supporters had disapproved of the action 100 per cent, “we still would have done what we did.”

D. B. Lewis was long a member of the Pepperdine College Board.

JAMES DAANE

Amid all the positive excitement within Roman Catholic circles about the renewal of the church, a surprising element of fear is also showing its head, fear lest renewal also bring forth a revival of modernism. The fear of a new modernism is present not only in the very conservative groups but also among the so-called progressives. These progressives, though they take their stand right in the middle of the present renewal movement, are eager to warn against excesses and dangerous tendencies.

The old modernism of the turn of the century is now coming in for review again. At that time, Rome very sharply exercised itself against modernism. Pius X issued an encyclical in 1907 (Pascendi dominici gregis) that denounced modernism as the most dangerous enemy the church had. The roots of this modernism lay, said Pius, in human pride, in lust for novelty, and (N.B.) in ignorance of scholasticism. Modernism was badly infected with agnosticism, atheism, and immanentism. It implicitly or explicitly rejected the infallible teaching authority of the church and undermined the unchangeability of dogma.

When Pius’s encyclical failed to achieve the desired results, he saw to it that opposition to modernism was expressed even more sharply. All who had places of leadership (especially those who taught) had to subject themselves unconditionally to the authority and teaching of the church. With this, the unrest created by modernism seemed to be stilled. Catholicism and modernism were declared to be unreconcilable. The church did not reject science, but it did draw a sharp line of church authority that it forbade science to cross.

As we look back on the conflict centering around modernism in the Catholic Church (see the extensive study by Emile Poulat, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste), we are inclined to wonder whether we can ever expect modernism to rise within it again.

Catholics have often said that the Roman reaction to modernism in the early years of this century was understandable and, in that situation, justifiable. But they add that many problems and questions remained unanswered at that time, and that if these problems are put on the agenda again today their presence does not mean a resurgence of modernism. Rather, the church must accept the task of dealing with them in honest recognition of their validity (as, for example, the question of evolution and other problems of natural science). While it may not have been possible to come to grips with them in the past, it is not possible to avoid them now.

Thus, it is said, we need not return to the anti-modernistic spirit of the early conflict, nor need we accept modernism to see that we must accept the legitimacy of many of the problems it raised. J. Ratzinger sees a bit of reactionary anti-modernism in the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis. But now, he says, the way is open to face the new problems with a sense of responsibility, and without fear, and so to protect the church from the unfruitfulness of isolation.

Now, it is clear that the old modernism of the century’s beginning was also much concerned with “new problems.” There were the problems of natural science and biblical science, for example. The Roman church, with a critical view to these problems, instituted the Biblical Commission in 1902, which issued a great many pronouncements about various problems. But these pronouncements give few answers that Catholic biblical scholars now find acceptable. Many problems remain unanswered as far as today’s scholars are concerned.

This is why it is important to note what John’s aggiornamento means in today’s theology. A new dogmatics of the new theology has just been published in which the renewal of the church can be studied (Mysterium Salutis, I, which has 1,034 pages and is only the first of five volumes). From this volume it is clear that there is no intention in the new theology of being trapped by modernism. But it is just as clear that this theology is truly open to all the new questions involved in the biblical sciences.

In this area of biblical sciences, Pius XII is pointed to as the pope who opened the gates to new paths. Since Pius XII, however, new problems raised by the literary genre of Scripture, form criticism, and the history of traditions have appeared on the table. That openness to such matters has created some tension is not surprising. But in the tensions, it is very important for proponents of the new theology—as well as their critics—to realize that openness to the questions is not a relapse into modernism.

In my own opinion, the position of the new theology on the question of modernism must be clear and definite. There are almost countless questions, questions that are namebranded by such familiar people as Tillich, Bultmann, Robinson, and Van Buren. These questions are directly connected with one’s attitude toward the biblical message.

In the Roman church, answering such questions in the manner of modernism is impossible; a new day has brought new ways of looking at old problems and at new problems, too. But if the answers given by the old modernism are excluded, what answers must be given? The question is urgent and radical, because the authority of the church and the infallibility of dogma cannot be seriously brought into today’s answers. One can ask, indeed: Does a binding authority like that exercised in 1907 have any room for genuine answers to new problems?

All Roman Catholic theologians answer this question affirmatively. In the development of present-day Roman theology—a development that has all sorts of parallels in Protestant theology—it is wholly clear that all who seek to deal with new problems must be bound to the Gospel of him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But it is also clear that anyone bound to that Gospel need have no fear of questions arising from the progress of science. Faith and fear are mutually exclusive.

We must not be superficial, however, nor come to hasty conclusions. Above all, we must take care that in our wrestling with problems, the clear sound of the Gospel is not muffled. The questions of our time are too deep and radical to allow for any shadowing of the unquestionable Gospel.

Dramatically underscoring the theme of the Twenty-seventh National Conference on Religious Architecture, “An End to False Witness,” was the decision of the jury of an ecclesiastical arts competition that the material submitted did not warrant exhibition, and the refusal of conference officials to allow the jury’s statement to be publicly displayed.

Not until the final session of the conference in San Francisco last month were delegates and observers able to listen to and participate in the debate. There a member of the jury, Mrs. Jane Dillenberger, art historian and wife of theologian John Dillenberger, brought to light the story of the disagreement between the jury and the conference officials.

Approximately 350 works were submitted by eighty-nine artists and craftsmen. These were studied by the jury, headed by Mario Ciampi, the architect who won the competition for the design of an art gallery to be built on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. The other jury members were Richard Diebenkorn, painter; Peter Voulkos, ceramist and sculptor; Robert Hudson, sculptor; and Mrs. Dillenberger. The unanimous decision was that, though there were some works of integrity and sound craftsmanship and some objects of beauty, they lacked sufficient carrying power to warrant an exhibition.

The jury recommended that its decision be placed in the room allotted for the showing, to dramatize for the Church and for architects and artists the poverty of the situation.

Conference officials, rather than accepting the challenge of an empty exhibition room and entering into discussion of the disturbing implications, refused to allow the statement to be posted, and accused the jury of “massive egotism” and “publicity seeking.”

“Their critics don’t seem to know that they are all artists of stature,” said Mrs. Dillenberger, in defense of the other members of the jury. “Their paintings and sculptures are owned by such venerable institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism—all of us need the artist’s gift of imagery, but they will only be ours if we seek the artists out, and trust in their vision, and accord their works their ancient, honored place in the House of God.”

She went on to recommend that the Ecclesiastical Arts Committee for the next conference convene as soon as possible and seek the advice of critics and museum curators of national eminence in getting a roster of the nation’s most gifted sculptors, painters, ceramists, and the like, that invitations be sent very soon inviting the artists to submit work, and finally that the awards be large enough to honor the seriousness of the conference.

The three major speakers of the conference had already expressed agreement with the action of the jury. Said Robert McAfee Brown, in his address: “If there is a gap between artistic creativity and so-called religious art, must we not call attention to that gap, challenge mediocrity, and even highlight the problem of the present distance between churchmen and the artist—as the jury for this conference tried to do—rather than ignoring the need to challenge artist and churchman into a new kind of partnership?”

Peter Hammond quoted Susanne Langer’s saying, that “indifference to art is the most serious sign of decay in any institution; nothing bespeaks its old age more eloquently than that art, under its patronage, becomes literal and self-imitating. Then the most impressive living art leaves the religious context and draws on unrestricted feeling somewhere else.”

Edward Larrabee Barnes, in the final major address of the conference, congratulated the jury for taking its strong stand. “Let us not forget,” he said, “the redemptive effect of something beautiful.” He noted that art speaks to the individual and concluded by saying, “In the world today we need individual redemption—not just for the poor, but for all of us here.”

The chairman of the Ecclesiastical Arts Committee, Frederick W. Whittlesey, summed up the feelings of many: “It is my opinion that it will not be the absence of an art exhibit here which will further widen the breach between the church and the arts but, rather, the failure of the conference to take appropriate action.”

The implication was clear that the conference leadership, by its refusal to take seriously the jury’s decision, was not yet fully prepared to follow out its own theme but rather was unwittingly perpetuating the “witness of false ends” that has been the weakness of so much modern church art and architecture.

Four church designs were selected as outstanding architectural examples in this year’s contest: John Knox Presbyterian Church of Marietta, Georgia (see illustration); Westminster Congregational Society Church (Unitarian) of East Greenwich, Rhode Island; the parish hall at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Sausalito, California; and the remodeling work on St. Leo’s Catholic Church in Solano Beach, California.

The conference was sponsored by the National Council of Churches, American Institute of Architects, and Guild for Religious Architecture.

Personalia

Howard Schomer, 50, has resigned as president of Chicago Theological Seminary (United Church of Christ), explaining that “I simply have no interest in more administrative and financial tasks.”

Lutheran refugee pastor Richard Wurmbrand, 56, stripped off his clerical garb to the waist at a Senate subcommittee hearing to show scars he said were inflicted by secret police in Romania who sought “accusatory statements” against church leaders.

President Johnson presented Billy Graham the Big Brother of the Year award for “notable love for the children of the world” and emphasis on brotherhood and character development in his evangelism. Graham is the first Protestant churchman to receive the annual award.

Franklin H. Littell, noted Methodist church historian and professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, will be the new president of Iowa Wesleyan College.

Donald C. Bolles, former promotion director of the Episcopalian, will coordinate the new Partnership Plan for sharing diocesan income with the national Episcopal Church.

Charles T. Leber, Jr., urban mission strategist in New York City, is new chairman of “interpretation strategy” of the United Presbyterian Board of National Missions.

Judith Phillips, 25, daughter of Church of England Bishop John Phillips of Portsmouth, plans to marry a Roman Catholic. The marriage reportedly was discussed by Pope Paul and the Archbishop of Canterbury during their April meeting. Dual wedding services will be held if the Vatican approves.

Miscellany

Anglican Bishop Robert Neil Russell, 60, reports authorities in Zanzibar threw him out of the country on forty-eight hours’ notice, without giving any reason. Russell had sparred with officials on new laws on interreligious marriage.

‘Censoriousness’

Paul S. Rees of World Vision this month told 125 editors of Evangelical Press Association that he deplored “injudicious censoriousness” in the recently passed Wheaton Declaration (see previous issue, page 48). The declaration’s treatment of the ecumenical movement, he said, sometimes uses “critique by shotgun rather than by rifle.” At the EPA convention at Disneyland, California, Cable, the bimonthly of Overseas Crusades Inc., was named Periodical of the Year.

The president of Sudan’s largest political party, Sayed Sadiq al-Mahdi, proposed in a letter to Pope Paul that Christianity and Islam carry out missionary work among pagans throughout Africa on a “coexistence” basis. The Muslim politician said paganism is “the common enemy” of both faiths.

Synod delegates of the Evangelical Church of Cameroun asked churches in France and Switzerland to continue sending missionaries despite the murder of two of them there last August.

Translators working on the Old Testament and Apocrypha for the New English Bible report they will be finished by 1970 as planned.

East Germany’s State Secretary Hans Seigewasser plans to visit the Lutheran World Federation’s Geneva headquarters to plan LWF’s assembly scheduled for 1969 in Weimar, in the Soviet Zone. He will also visit World Council of Churches leaders and theologian Karl Barth.

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has withdrawn from its 70-year-old joint social work with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in Wisconsin because of their doctrinal dispute.

The North Carolina Synod of the Lutheran Church in America wants the state legislature to amend a law that requires clergymen to give court testimony on confidential discussions.

The once-Methodist University of Southern California this fall unites undergraduate and graduate religion courses in a School of Religion.

Boston’s Park Street Church raised $274,416 for missions in its annual one-day fund-raising drive. The 2,200-member Congregational church backs nearly 100 missionaries and many institutions.

Massachusetts Governor Volpe signed the bill to end curbs on disseminating birth-control information and devices.

California’s Supreme Court threw out “Proposition 14,” which passed 2 to 1 in a 1964 referendum despite strong church opposition. The proposition forbade the state to interfere with sale or rental of housing, even if discriminatory.

Deaths

LUTHER A. GOTWALD, 67, former missionary to India, head of the United Lutheran Church missions board, and executive secretary of the National Council of Churches’ missions division; in New York City.

JOSIAH K. LILLY, 72, pharmaceutical manufacturer, Episcopal layman, and president of Lilly Endowment Inc., which annually gives about $1.5 million to religious causes; in Indianapolis.

Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who is full of surprises, came up with the biggest one yet this month. He resigned.

The dynamic and controversial bishop, noted for theological vagaries, wants to be relieved of the pressures of administering the Diocese of California to become a “scholar-teacher” at the freewheeling Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California.

Pike told Associated Press he was “not driven to my decision by critics; actually, my critics delayed the decision. Every so often, there would be a little flurry, so I stayed.”

Heresy charges against Pike have never gotten off the ground, but reaction was strong after his most recent assault on tradition in Look magazine (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, February 18 issue, page 46). Authoritative church sources said several influential bishops held an extraordinary showdown meeting with Pike at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where he was encouraged to seek a new post. The bishop had been thinking of returning to academic life as a result of a sabbatical leave in England. A second bishops’ meeting reportedly was held at O’Hare several weeks ago.

Pike would be the first Episcopal bishop ever to leave church work for a secular position. In his letter of resignation to Presiding Bishop John Hines, Pike said he would remain a bishop and participate in church affairs as requested.

Hines issued a noncommittal statement noting that Pike’s letter would be sent to members of the House of Bishops. A majority vote by letter would approve the change and is expected.

Pike’s move was a surprise even to associates at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He met with the diocesan standing committee May 10, and it accepted the resignation “with regret.” Notification then went to diocesan clergymen.

Pike led the diocese for nearly eight years. During that time it gained 113 additional clergymen and seventeen churches, and the budget went from $330,855 to $896,000. But Pike’s novel doctrines have caused increasing dissension in recent years, among both clergy and laity. Financial support for the diocese lagged noticeably this year, and a special convention was called to consider changing from voluntary giving to assessments. The night before he resigned, Pike defended his ideas at Trinity Episcopal Church in Hayward, whose rector had accused the bishop of “betrayal of the sacred vows that you made at the time of your ordination.”

Since Pike would still carry authority as a bishop, such critics as Canon Albert du Bois of the American Church Union aren’t satisfied. He believes Pike “could do great damage” if quoted as a church authority while under even less church restraint than before. Although Pike cannot resign as a bishop, Du Bois suggests he make it clear that he does not intend to exercise the office.

Pike was named head of the diocese at the rather early age of 45. He was originally a Roman Catholic who became an agnostic in college. A marriage during this period was annulled. He was a Navy officer and lawyer before entering the Episcopal ministry. Pike is married to the former Esther Yanovsky and they have had four children, of whom three are still living. The bishop, author of many books, holds the degrees of A.B., LL.B., J.S.D., and B.D., and a string of honorary doctorates.

Poland: Where Did It Start?

Roman Catholics in Poland showed their strength this month in a large pilgrimage to ancient Jasna Gora monastery at Czestochowa. Pilgrims have been coming to Czestochowa for centuries to pay homage at the Black Madonna shrine. This time the pilgrimage was part of a long series of observances marking 1,000 years of Christianity in Poland. The big parade apparently came off with no major incidents. Although relations between the Polish Roman Catholic hierarchy and Communist officials remain tense, there has been little direct confrontation, either verbal or physical.

Religious News Service estimates that about one million people filed past the famed image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, which was brought outside its monastery shrine for the anniversary celebrations.

The convent at Czestochowa is the oldest in Poland. Some tradition holds that the picture of the Virgin Mary there was the work of Luke. At any rate, miraculous events have been associated with her as “the Queen of Poland.” Three centuries ago, Polish Catholics established a covenant with the “Queen,” and adulation of Mary is still as strong in Poland today as anywhere else in the world.

Attention to Mary and the tensions with Communists seemed to push considerations of the real origins of Christianity in Poland into the background of the anniversary celebrations.

Tv Viewers In Dutch

A Dutch couple is barred from confirmation in an ultra-conservative church because the wife watched Princess Beatrix’s marriage on television. The 30,000-member Reformed Congregations took a stand last June not against TV as such but against the way it is “abused” and its temptations to worldliness.

Mr. and Mrs. C. J. M. van Hoef, a young couple, had been baptized as infants and were going through confirmation classes when the Rev. A. W. Verhoef lowered the boom. Contrary to published reports, he did not bar the van Hoefs from attending church, and the pastor says he is on friendly terms with the couple.

Van Hoef took it all rather philosophically, and his wife saw a silver lining as well—“at least we’ve bought the new clothes [for the confirmation service]. Otherwise I would never have gotten them!”

No one is quite sure who the first Polish Christians were. Some think the introduction of the Christian religion might be traced to Cyril and Methodius, brothers of Thessalonica who came as missionaries to central Europe’s Slavs in the mid-ninth century. The first well-authenticated conversion is that of the Duke Mieszka. In 965 or 966 he married Dobrawa, sister of Boleslav II of Bohemia. She was a Christian, and it is said that under her influence he was baptized in 966 or 967. The newlyweds had a great Christian influence upon the Poles. After Dobrawa died, Mieszka is said to have married a former nun and to have continued to evangelize among his people.

The masses did not take to Christianity easily. But neither did they revert to paganism. Official restrictions may have helped; the harsh discipline included such penalties as having teeth knocked out for violations of the fast.

Today the Roman Catholic Church claims about 30 million members in Poland, plus 5 million Poles in the United States and another 5 million scattered throughout the world. The total is nearly a tenth of the global constituency of Roman Catholicism.

Protestants are a tiny minority in Poland, but some recent reports indicate they may soon become a more important factor in the nation’s ecclesiastical makeup.

Burmese Exodus

All foreign missionaries are being forced to leave Burma by the end of this month. Now, as during World War II, Christians in this predominantly Buddhist land are on their own.

Anglican Bishop V. G. Shearburn calls the government move “a hard knock” but is confident about the future. The American Baptist Convention says of the Burmese, “They have come of age. They are ready. Missionaries have not been in positions of convention leadership for many years.”

About 300 missionaries are affected, including these from America: twenty-three Roman Catholics, twenty-three Baptists, seven Seventh-day Adventists, and five Methodists. There are more than 700 ordained Protestant nationals and a constituency of 750,000.

The London Observer says the government made the move both to appease the Buddhist hierarchy, which influences the vast majority of the population, and to chasten rebellious non-Burmese tribes, where Christianity has made its greatest inroads.

In neighboring Cambodia, missionaries continue to have trouble getting renewal of entry visas. Many churches remain closed, with Christians allowed to meet in small groups (not more than six persons) in private homes.

No Viet Calm

United States Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge left Viet Nam this month for talks with Pope Paul and President Johnson during a lull between storms. But the touchy political truce was then shaken by Premier Ky’s statements that his military junta would be around for another year.

The forthcoming election of a constitutional convention is being preceded by furious activity. A Saigon bloc seeks to woo popular General Nguyen Chanh Thi from central Viet Nam (and the influence of Buddhist Tri Quang) as a new pro-American, anti-Communist leader.

In the central city of Da Nang, some Christians report they were held for days by Buddhists during the recent riots; others were accused of hiding arms in mission compounds. Known Communist cadres that formerly dared operate only in rural areas are now moving freely in Da Nang. Some missionaries who left the city have returned. In neighboring Hue, last-minute appeals to Buddhists kept the Protestant Youth Center open during disturbances.

Protestants’ stance in the political turmoil continues to be awkward. The government invited their participation in the recent Political Congress in Saigon, which planned formation of a civilian regime, and Pastor Doan Van Mieng named two laymen to attend. But the evangelical church executive committee had not been informed of the move. It met and released an official church statement that it does not engage in politics (although individual members are not proscribed front political activity).

DALE HERENDEEN

Maybe Even A Barkeeper

Translating the Bible into new languages can mushroom and diversify. Wycliffe Bible Translators has now expanded to the point where it needs not only linguists but also doctors, nurses, teachers, pilots, mechanics, printers, artists, accountants, radio technicians, agronomists, and a wide assortment of secretarial and administrative help.

“Virtually anyone but the barkeeper can be used,” says Wycliffe head Cameron Townsend. “And if he gets converted, we’d even like a second look at him.”

Wycliffe appointed 190 new missionary members last year and hopes to add 300 more during 1966.

Working papers for what could be the world’s biggest Protestant church floated to finality with surprisingly little trouble at this month’s Consultation on Church Union in Dallas.

Delegates from eight churches with 24 million members (see chart, next page) gave the “Outline Plan of Union” the less troublesome title “Principles of Church Union,” passed most of it as proposed, and amputated the controversial last two chapters on structure and the time table for the united church. These two “papers” will be distributed, then discussed further at next year’s meeting in Boston.

The consultation is on the wing. The open letter to churches, preamble, and chapters on faith, worship, sacraments, and ministry form a basis for design. The effort to unite the eight denominations is now somewhere in limbo between Stage 2, acceptance of the outline, and Stage 3, negotiation of a specific plan of union.

Three of the eight denominations have authority to proceed with negotiations: The United Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). The commitment of each to joining the proposed church is clear.

At Dallas, the consultation “urgently invited” the other five denominations to get authority to enter into preparation of a union plan.

The Evangelical United Brethren and The Methodist Church will hold joint conferences in November, principally to decide on their own bilateral union, but COCU will be in the wind. The Brethren may vote authority, but their ultimate destiny probably will rest with the Methodists, who are not expected to act until the 1968 general conference.

Who’S Next?

Supporters of the Consultation on Church Union (story above) hope the surprise entry of the Southern Presbyterians may break a logjam. COCU’s new secretary, George G. Beazley, Jr. (Disciples of Christ), predicts that now that there is “a good chance of success,” other churches will join this year.

He didn’t name possibilities, but the COCU executive committee hopes for two more Negro denominations, the Christian Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches, and reports that the Church of the Brethren “has the matter under advisement.”

COCU Executive Secretary George L. Hunt said other churches are welcome to join on the basis of agreements already reached, “but we are not going to go soliciting any more.”

The two major groupings outside the unity talks are 8.8 million Lutherans and 23.7 million Baptists. The American Baptist Convention’s General Council has voted to stay out, and President Robert G. Torbet expressed doubt in Dallas that this month’s national convention would reverse the decision. Torbet came the closest yet to personal endorsement of COCU.

The Dallas meeting drew COCU’s first formal Lutheran observers, from (in a surprise to most) the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Richard Jungkuntz, executive secretary of the denomination’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations, said, “I see no proximate possibility of our participating actively.”

Jungkuntz thinks COCU is “ambivalent” in stating that one church already exists and then identifying this concept with structural unity. He questioned the “premise that growing Christian unity is best achieved through structural union first, rather than after a consultation which works from a theological platform.” His approach to unity would start with pulpit exchange, intercommunion, and development of unified spirit. This prior unity, he said, might then give rise to’ structural unity “for more efficiency and effective missions.”

Episcopalians hold their triennial conference next year, and a COCU decision is likely. The other two denominations—African Methodist Episcopal and Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern)—have just joined COCU and face a less leisurely consideration of strategy than the old-timers have had.

Consultation leaders are committed to two points of strategy: pressure on churches for an in-or-out decision on COCU as soon as possible, and organic union before details are worked out.

Methodist delegate Albert Outler of Perkins School of Theology said there are “carefully drafted ambiguities throughout” the Dallas “principles.” Many points will remain unclear as churches vote on irreversible commitment to union plans in the next few years. Some will await formulation of a constitution after churches vote to enter the united church.

Most controversies on belief and strategy were handled in closed-door meetings of chapter discussion groups, denominational delegations, and the executive committee. Corridor chatter indicated some gritty debates in those sessions, revolving in particular around Methodist intentions. Some COCU eager beavers questioned the commitment of Methodists. The Methodist delegation (changed completely since the 1964 meeting, when Methodists raised serious doubts about COCU) insisted it was not stalling but was concerned about getting the plan approved. The title switch from “outline plan” to “principles” reportedly was made to ease Methodist problems.

The hottest unanswered question at Dallas was how much power bishops will have. Free churches and even some Presbyterians swallowed hard when they agreed to have bishops in the united church. Now the Methodists, AMEs, and EUBs, who provide more than half COCU’s constituency, are pushing for their system, in which bishops appoint ministers.

On closing day, the bishop-appointment question sparked the only semblance of public discussion at Dallas. Methodist Bishop James K. Mathews of Boston, without consulting his colleagues, introduced an amendment to add “appointment of ministers to their tasks” to the bishop’s functions.

Mathews said he had “no particular content” in mind but wanted to make sure that the appointment system was still an open question, and that bishops would at least have some voice in appointment. But during debate, Mathews and two other bishops told how democratic and consultative their system was, and all about its practical advantages. This marked a “substantive debate,” which had been outlawed in advance by COCU steerers and could not be squeezed into the closing hours.

Mathews hit the heart of the matter when he said Methodists needed “something meaningful to take to the brethren back home. There are great constitutional hurdles to overcome if something like this is not in.” Some wondered quietly whether the folks back home had as much interest in episcopal power as bishops.

After a recess, the following compromise amendment was approved: bishops will provide, “together with other agencies and office-bearers of the church, for the education, ordination, and appointment to their tasks of ministers whom God calls.” It is still an open question who has the final say. Another controversy on the horizon is ordination of women.

There were few significant changes between the outline released a month before Dallas and the final versions approved for distribution. Reporters had noted a “halo” put around bishops, and it faded from view in the rewriting. A member of the drafting committee explained the halo had been put there “because we took most of their power away.”

Also gone is stress on the united church as a product of and for America. But stated or not, the national church concept is obvious. Roman Catholic historian George Tavard warned that “the concept of nation may be obsolete in forty years, even in politics. The reduction of [Christian] divisions is good, but new types of divisions may occur.”

In most cases, one ecumenical choice negates another. The united church raises some problems for already existing worldwide confessional bodies. For the Southern Presbyterians, the last-minute decision to join COCU (see previous issue, page 43) endangers the well-advanced plan for merger with the Reformed Church in America. After the Southern Presbyterians acted, RCA pulpit exchanges were hastily canceled, and the negotiating teams from the two churches moved their Atlanta meeting up a month, to mid-May.

The Southern Presbyterian group at Dallas was in some disarray, mainly because of the last-minute nature of its decision to join the consultation. Stated Clerk James Millard, Jr., said other commitments kept him from attending, and he withheld any comment on the COCU design.

Delegation Chairman William Ben-field, a Charleston, West Virginia, pastor, also was absent. A moderate who is sympathetic to COCU, Benfield said it would be “very difficult for us to take the next step within the next few years.” He also doubted whether the necessary three-fourths of the church’s presbyteries would approve the eventual merger.

The Episcopalians had once been considered to be as reluctant ecumenical dragons as the Methodists. There is potential discontent among Anglo-Catholics, but Episcopal leaders are generally favorable. Presiding Bishop John Hines, attending his first COCU meeting, said he hopes the outline “won’t be tampered with very much.” He called the Dallas meeting the “core,” warned of the danger of “degenerating into deliberation,” and predicted his church’s 1967 conference would approve negotiation.

He warned against “twiddling our thumbs for the next eighteen months” while denominations decide on the next step. Methodist delegates saw no obstacle to further work on unsettled areas like structure, even though final authorization is also pending in their case.

The COCU delegates now face a selling job (or “interpretation,” in COCU parlance). There is some residual opposition in each denomination and, more important, a vast amount of ignorance about what has been going on in the ecumenical stratosphere. Yet the slightly unrealistic ecumenical euphoria at Dallas had some empirical basis. A Gallup poll released on the eve of the meeting showed that only 45 per cent of the nation’s Protestants have heard of the COCU plan. But among this minority, 41 per cent favor the idea, while 36 per cent are opposed and 23 per cent are undecided. Gallup said “Catholics, Jews, and other non-Protestants apparently anticipate no challenge in such a merger, and among those who know of the plan, views are favorable by the ratio of 4 to 1.”

The Dallas meeting signaled the end of an era in leadership as well as the end of a phase. Eugene Carson Blake, who proposed the multi-church merger in a 1960 sermon and has been the most important COCU leader, takes over the World Council of Churches secretariat later this year. The COCU chairman for the past two years, slim, gentlemanly Episcopal Bishop Robert Gibson, Jr., of Richmond, handed the reins to a crew-cut United Church of Christ minister, David G. Colwell of Washington, D. C. Mathews will be vice chairman.

‘Politeness’ From Psychiatry

There is “careful interdisciplinary politeness” between psychiatry and religion but hardly any real dialogue, said psychiatrist Elihu S. Howland on the opening day of the meeting of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health. There is a determination to believe the relationship is better, but it isn’t, said Howland, a pastoral consultant to First Presbyterian Church, Evanston, Illinois.

After attending many such interdisciplinary meetings, Howland concludes they travel a familiar, one-way street, with psychiatrist leading clergyman. Dialogue cannot come, he said, until the psychiatrist “sees the necessity of a reorientation for himself, and becomes aware of a spiritual dimension which, until now, he has not realized was any of his business.”

But the Rev. George C. Anderson, honorary president of the academy, put some blame on churchmen during the organization’s seventh annual meeting in Chicago last month. He called a recent gathering of sixty-five leading psychiatrists and theologians sponsored in Geneva by the World Council of Churches “a major landmark.” But many of the theologians there, he said, had a “narrow, provincial attitude.… Many of them are trying to incorporate all psychiatric and psychological insights into a narrow Christian framework.”

Dr. Charles Stinnette, joint professor of theology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, challenged the pragmatic use of religion as an adjunct to psychotherapy. He insisted that the pastoral function is to help persons find meaning whether they live or die, rather than to become healers.

Despite these critical notes, the prevailing tone was amicable. The heavy majority of clergymen were obviously reluctant to offer overt criticisms of psychiatry in discussion periods.

Britain’S New-Style ‘Sunday’

Bikini-clad girls on the cover, a papal blessing, and a circulation goal of half a million—these are features of the new British ecumenical magazine Sunday, which had its first issue this month. With an Anglican chief editor, flanked by Roman Catholic and Methodist associates, it tilts at “the Sabbath of prohibition,” advocating a policy of live-and-let-live; deprecates the “false image” of Britain as “a land of empty churches and pagan people” (some bewildering statistics are pressed into service here); and sees itself as marking “a further step towards greater understanding and unity between the Churches.”

Evident throughout the forty-eight pages is a desperate desire to exorcise the Ghost of Sunday Past. People come-of-age have a right to spend the day “according to their conscience and inclination,” argues Lord Willis. There is a piece on Roman Catholic Patrick McGoohan, star of the TV thriller Secret Agent, usually seen in Britain early Sunday evening (although it appears the day before in America). Five whole pages are devoted to an article on Pope Paul VI, except for one corner announcing a profile of Billy Graham for next month.

The articles are well presented and illustrated, and no one will complain of a surfeit of religion. Apart from a short word on the Lord’s Prayer by a Baptist minister, there is little theology apparent. In “Question Time,” however, Richard Tatlock tries to reconcile eternal damnation and God’s love, by beginning; “If I were to tell you that a girl had ‘melted into tears’ you wouldn’t for one minute suppose that she had suddenly turned into three or four buckets of salty water. And it’s essential to use the same kind of commonsense when you read and interpret the Bible.” Commented an evangelical minister on Sunday: “This will rock neither the ecumenical ship nor hell’s foundations.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

One optimist on interdisciplinary cooperation was keynoter Earl Dahl-strom, professor of pastoral care at North Park Seminary. He spoke of the dangers of materialism, professionalism, and cynicism, and warned pastors against practicing pastoral care as a means of satisfying their own unrecognized needs.

The psychiatry chief at Harvard University’s Health Service, Graham Blaine, condemned parents who fail to provide guidelines and limits. “We are becoming afraid of our children,” he concluded. “We are fooled by their verbal statements and fail to pick up the opposite message in their non-verbal cues.” He also deplored the new morality and situational ethics popularized by some bishops and other clergymen, declaring that young people need a firm voice of authority defining right and wrong.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS

Forecast For Guyana

On May 26 the Crown Colony of British Guiana on the northeast coast of South America becomes the sovereign nation of Guyana. It will probably be the last new nation in the Western hemisphere. In recent years, British Guiana, despite a population of little more than half a million, has made news around the world because of strong Communist elements that sometimes have held the reins of government. While Guyana enters independence with a government friendly toward the free world, there is considerable doubt about the new nation’s future.

Guyana is of special interest to Christians because it is perhaps the most thoroughly “churched” of the developing new nations. Mainline denominations and many independent groups from the United States, England, and Canada have been working in British Guiana for many years. There are strong national churches. The capital city, Georgetown, is a city of churches, and every small town has at least one Protestant church. A national hero, Martyr Smith, came from the London Missionary Society. Smith died in prison in 1823 while under sentence of death for inciting the slaves to revolt. (In truth Smith’s crime was teaching the slaves to read the Bible. A slave who could read the New Testament for himself was not likely to remain content with his lot in life.)

British Guiana’s last prime minister and Guyana’s first prime minister is Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, a big, handsome, Negro lawyer who was a Methodist lay preacher before his law school days. Though friendly toward the West, Burnham is an avowed socialist. He frequently refers to the Scriptures in his speeches. Asked if he was a Christian, he replied that he is well aware that bishops of the Church of England owned some of his ancestors, but that people need an ethic to live by, and the Christian religion offers the best ethic.

Burnham’s political enemy is Dr. Cheddi Jagan, an American-educated dentist who is married to an American, the former Janet Rosenberg. Both Jagans are openly Marxist. Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party is the largest party in Guyana and has controlled the government three times. The first two times the Crown became so alarmed over the actions of the Jaganites that it suspended the constitution. The third time, Jagan was removed from office by a constitutional change that prevents total rule by a simple plurality. Jagan, who is of East Indian extraction and a nominal Hindu, is suspicious of and hostile toward the Christian churches, partly because of their opposition.

Informed observers tend to be pessimistic about the future of Guyana. Most of Jagan’s followers are descendants of laborers imported from India in the nineteenth century. Curiously, few of the East Indians are Communists. They just vote for their race. The East Indian segment of the population is increasing at a much faster rate than Guyana’s other ethnic groups. The pessimists say it is just a matter of time until Jagan’s party gains permanent control.

Burnham’s problems are gigantic. He must maintain a coalition with the United Force, a small party committed to free enterprise. He must break down the racial loyalties of the Guyanese, particularly the East Indians. He must attract badly needed foreign capital to a shaky young country. And he must guard against a Communist-inspired revolution. If Burnham’s coalition government can be maintained, the future for Guyana is bright. If Jagan’s party regains control, Cuba might have an ideological ally in the New World.

ALAN MARK FLETCHER