This month’s U. N. discussion on the war in Viet Nam was something of a diplomatic victory for Pope Paul VI. It was he who had suggested, two days before the United States renewed air strikes against North Viet Nam, that the U. N. mediate. The Pontiff, in an address to Italian Catholic journalists, put it this way:

“Who knows if U. N. arbitration, entrusted to neutral nations, might not tomorrow—we wish it were even today—solve the terrible question.”

President Johnson responded the same day. Joseph Laitin, assistant White House press secretary, said the Chief Executive was “very grateful for the Pope’s interest in peace and for any suggestion he has for achieving it. We are giving prompt and full study to the latest suggestion.”

Less than forty-eight hours later Johnson was giving a speech explaining to the world why the United States had resumed bombing the north after a thirty-seven-day lull. He asked for an emergency meeting of the U. N. Security Council and said a resolution would be presented that “will be responsive to the spirit of the renewed appeal of Pope Paul.”

At the U. N., United States Ambassador Arthur Goldberg unveiled a draft resolution that for the first time put the nation on record for arbitration of the Viet Nam dispute.

The Pope again proved to be an instrument for a new peace initiative in behalf of Viet Nam. Many observers had given credit to the Pontiff’s December peace pleas as the means by which a Christmas truce and bombing lull were achieved.

In New York, leaders of the newly organized National Emergency Committee of Clergy Concerned About Viet Nam issued a statement that deplored the resumption of U. S. bombing but also welcomed placement of the Asian conflict before the United Nations.

The Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Protestant chaplain at Yale and executive secretary of the national CCAV, and another leader of the group, President John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary, issued the CCAV steering committee statement.

“While we are shocked at the intransigence of the Hanoi government,” it said, “we are unpersuaded that our own government has exhausted every possibility for peace. After more than five years of hatred, suspicion and bitter fighting, thirty-seven days of efforts to find peaceful solutions were not enough.”

The churchmen were plainly disappointed that the bombing lull had not drawn Hanoi to the conference table. A number of pacifism-oriented clergymen had contended last year that a bombing lull would demonstrate the peaceful intentions of the United States and would induce the Vietnamese Communists to negotiate. The failure of the Reds to respond to the U. S. and Vatican peace initiatives may have left some clergy a bit disillusioned, but others have indicated they will press their dissent. Some new suggestions appear to be a virtual lobbying campaign in behalf of the Viet Cong politicians.

The CCAV statement declared that “our continued refusal to grant the National Liberation Front a seat of its own at the conference table, our continued fighting and our own troop buildup which during the peace offensive more than matched the infiltration from the North—all were not conducive to a negotiated settlement of the war.”

The statement asserted that “the claim that the whole war is due to aggression from the north is misleading the American public.”

The Rev. Richard Neuhaus, Brooklyn Lutheran pastor who is a co-chairman of the New York CCAV, which led to formation of the national group, said it appeared certain that Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish clergymen who have been strongly urging Viet Nam peace negotiations now will turn from largely verbal expressions to more active demonstrations.

Vatican Radio said that resumption of bombing should not lead to abandonment of hope for a peaceful solution. “It would be a mistake to allow ourselves to slip into a blind fatalism,” it said. “All is not yet lost. It is possible to try again, to find our new ways.”

The station said “events seem to be making us forget the joyful hope … of the beginning of negotiations for peace.” It echoed Pope Paul’s plea to the journalists for U. N. arbitration and added, “It is comforting to be able to record that the hope of the Holy Father was favorably received by public opinion at large, by the Secretary General of the United Nations, U Thant, and by one of the combatants.”

Even as the Pope was intervening, reports from Saigon said that a Vietnamese Roman Catholic priest was beheaded and his church and house burned to the ground by Communist terrorists who overran a refugee village about fifty miles from the capital.

In Washington, the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order issued a statement supporting American policy in Viet Nam. The statement said: “The truth is, incontestably, that had we not ‘escalated’ by sending in U. S. combat troops in force, it would have been all over before now—except for the Communist shouting and the general Asian alarm.” Among those singing the statement were retired Episcopal Bishop Noble C. Powell, former dean of Washington Cathedral; Episcopal Bishop Alfred L. Banyard; U. S. Senate Chaplain Frederick Brown Harris; Father Charles S. Sassassa, S. J., president of Loyola University of Los Angeles; Msgr. Patrick J. Ryan, former Army Chief of Chaplains; and Rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld.

A new issue on the Viet Nam conflict was raised last month by board members of the Progressive National Baptist Convention during a meeting in St. Louis. They charged that more Negro than white soldiers were being sent to fight in Viet Nam.

“Something is drastically wrong and unjust in pursuing such a discriminatory policy.” said a resolution approved by the board.

The Progressive Convention was formed in 1961 by a group that left the all-Negro, 5.5-million-member National Baptist Convention. U. S. A., Inc., over the issue of “tenure” for denominational officials.

Miscellany

The New York State Catholic Welfare Committee stepped into the state’s controversy over divorce laws by asking the legislature to postpone action on a so-called “reform bill.” Another state-church dispute seemed to be in the making in a report from Syracuse stating that Jesuit missionaries had proposed joining the Peace Corps. An official of the National Council of Churches’ Delta Ministry backed the demands of some seventy jobless and homeless Negroes evicted from a deactivated air base at Greenville, Mississippi. Episcopal Suffragan Bishop Paul Moore, Jr., of Washington, D. C., who is chairman of the Delta Ministry, said the government is obligated to provide housing for the group.

South Africans held a special day of thanksgiving prayer for abundant rains which fell on parched farmlands. Earlier, they had held a national day of prayer for rain to ease drought-stricken areas.

Publishers’ Weekly reports The Gospel According to Peanuts, the study in comicstrip theology by Robert L. Short, was the second-best-selling paperback book of 1965. Number one was William Golding’s penetrating fable of original sin, Lord of the Flies.

The value of parochial school education in Lutheran churches is minimized in a preliminary report issued last month by Dr. Ronald L. Johnstone, research director at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. The report concludes that “our system of formal Christian education has simply not accomplished as much as we have hoped or thought it was achieving.”

Two Swiss missionaries and a prominent Baptist clergyman were among thirty persons killed in the crash of a DC-3 in Haiti last month, according to Ecumenical Press Service. The Swiss were members of the Gay Vagabonds Overseas, an independent missionary group. The clergyman, a Haitian, was identified as Pastor Robert Rocourt.

The Defiant Traditionalist

Father Gommar A. DePauw appeared this month to be well on his way toward becoming the most controversial Roman Catholic priest in the United States since Father Coughlin.

Father DePauw as founder and president of the controversial Catholic Traditionalist Movement has been engaged in a campaign against changes in the church brought about by the Second Vatican Council (see Feb. 4 issue, p. 45). Father Coughlin became famous in the thirties for his radio talks on politics.

DePauw, ordered by Lawrence Cardinal Shchan to cease his priestly ministry, defied the directive, insisting that he was not under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Baltimore.

Methodist-supported Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana, enrolled four Negroes last month. They were the first members of their race ever to register as fulltime students in the 140-year-old school.

Personalia

President Johnson was named honorary elder of the National City Christian Church in Washington. On his first Sunday in office, however, the Chief Executive was obliged to attend the “Red Mass” at St. Matthew’s Cathedral (Roman Catholic). The mass, held annually in behalf of those in law, is conducted by priests clad in scarlet vestments. Johnson braved a blizzard to attend.

Dr. Grant L. Stahly, 30-year-old microbiology professor at Ohio State University, is joining the faculty of Malone College (Quaker), in Canton, Ohio. Stahly is chairman of Malone’s trustees and former assistant dean of arts and sciences at OSU.

Sir Francis Ibiam of Nigeria was chosen to receive the 1966 Upper Room Citation. Ibiam, a Presbyterian layman and noted political leader, is one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches.

Lt. Commander Hugh Franklin Lecky, Jr., first Navy chaplain to receive the Purple Heart as the result of action in Viet Nam, was named Chaplain of the Year by the Reserve Officers Association of the United States. Lecky is a clergyman of the Lutheran Church in America.

The Rev. Gilbert W. Kirby was chosen principal of London Bible College. Since 1956 he has been general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance.

Evon Hedley was appointed executive secretary of Christian Business Men’s Committee International. He was formerly director of development for World Vision, Incorporated.

They Say

“Whether Swedish sex smorgasbord, the Italo-French influence, or the close-to-home Anglo-American productions, there’s no question that samplings of recent film product point up that there’s little left to censor cinematically. The gamut from rape to rampant sex, homo to overly frank boudoir enactment has been the scheme of things in pix that range from A Stranger Knocks to Darling, The Silence to What’s New Pussycat?, The Sandpiper to Repulsion, Marriage on the Rocks, The Art of Love, 491, Strange Bedfellows and other ‘sin’-amtic excursions.…”—Editor Abel Green in Variety, reviewing 1965 movies.

A National Council of Churches’ film awards panel decided The Greatest Story Ever Told wasn’t. It snubbed the widely publicized film extravaganza, as did Catholic film judges, and gave no religious film prize for 1965.

A Hollywood member of the awards panel quit in protest: the Rev. Frederick Essex, film-broadcasting director for the American Baptist Convention. Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy, who is West Coast chairman for the NCC Broadcasting and Film Commission, tried in vain to get the full BFC to overrule the panel nominations and honor The Greatest Story.

The George Stevens film has been praised by leading churchmen—including NCC President Reuben Mueller and Archbishop Iakovos—and panned by sophisticated secular critics.

The BFC awards were announced February 3 at a hotel in the New York theater district. The week before, the panel had spent two hours discussing The Greatest Story, then voted it down by a narrow margin. It was the only film discussed in the religion category.

Awards chairman Thomas Trotter, dean of the Claremont, California, School of Theology (Methodist), said The Greatest Story was judged “a mish-mash of historical and biblical tradition,”¹For instance, in having Jesus recite words from First Corinthians. and added that the NCC “copyrighted the Revised Standard Version so none of this could happen.”

He said the film also failed the “pertinence” test by dealing “with Christian tradition without engaging in any contemporary issues” and by “obscuring such issues by its interpretative slants.” “Given the historical time in which we live, the Church must speak with a prophetic edge,” he said, no matter what “little old ladies in Pasadena” think. He doubts a historic, biblical film can be artistically viable.

To Kennedy, all this sounds as if the critics think the Bible story, treated by itself, is irrelevant. The bishop admits The Greatest Story has its faults, but he thinks it is the best Hollywood version of Christ’s life so far, and the snub “makes us look funny.”

Trotter commented that the panel cannot nominate a film just because it’s “a good try.”

One award was particularly popular: the one given to The Sound of Music as exceptional family entertainment. A day before the NCC decision, the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures also gave its family award to The Sound of Music, which was the only American film to win a Catholic award (the NCC limits its choice to American productions, a policy which is unpopular among film followers and is being reconsidered).

The Catholic prizes were perhaps even more controversial than the Protestant-Orthodox choices. The office praised two films, Darling and Juliet of the Spirits, which had been classified by the old Legion of Decency as “morally unobjectionable for adults, with reservations.” Darling was called the best film for adult audiences, and Juliet was chosen for the best foreign-language film. Other awards went to Nobody Waved Goodbye (youth) and World Without Sun (education).

The Pawnbroker also got a shady Catholic rating because of a bare bosom scene. It won an NCC award among films which honestly portray man’s struggle to “realize the full potential of his humanity.” Three films were honored for enhancing understanding of the “family of man”: A Patch of Blue, Nothing But a Man, and The Eleanor Roosevelt Story. The children’s film award, like the religious one, was withheld.

The Rev. William F. Fore, executive director of the NCC commission, said the categories used in the second annual awards reflect “a new attitude among mainstream Protestants” toward feature films. “We are primarily concerned with encouraging honest portrayals of the human situation.”

The Catholic awards also mirror change. They are the first since the December conversion of the National Legion of Decency into the Office of Motion Pictures, and represent a change from banning bad films to promoting good ones. Saturday Review film critic Arthur Knight told the NCC meeting this constructive approach is the best way to affect standards in movie production. He said churches can also help avert film censorship by classifying films so mature adults have free choice but children are “protected” from what society doesn’t think they should see. Thus, the state would have “adult viewing ages” just as it has adult drinking ages.

Focus On Alcohol

Top churchmen in Massachusetts are appealing for more programs to deal with the alcohol problem. They issued a joint statement last month asking wider alcohol education plus social and legal controls. Among those signing the appeal were Richard Cardinal Cushing, Episcopal Bishop Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., Methodist Bishop James K. Mathews, and Dr. Forrest L. Knapp, general secretary of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.

They declared that in the per capita rate of alcoholism, Boston was second only to San Francisco among American cities and that Massachusetts ranked fourth among the states.

The statement was approved at a luncheon sponsored by the North Conway Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to the study of alcoholism and its problems.

In Richmond, Virginia, the U. S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states “cannot stamp an unpretending chronic alcoholic as a criminal if his drunken public display is involuntary as the result of the disease.”

‘Practice Drinking’

Researchers in alcoholism have stumbled on a bizarre but hopeful phenomenon: a venereal disease drug, metronidazole, has the side effect of eliminating a person’s craving for alcohol.

But Harvard psychiatrist Morris Chafetz pins his hopes not on chemical cures but on education on how to drink. Chafetz recently told the New York Academy of Sciences that elementary school children should “practice drinking” so they can develop a “healthy attitude” and learn to control it.

In Chafetz’s design, teachers would spike pupils’ drinks with something subtle like sherry, then increase dosage as they grew older. They would be told of hazards in over-drinking, and benefits of light drinking such as facilitation of social relations, relaxation, and a feeling of well-being.

Booze barons had no immediate comment, but reaction was fast and hot from other quarters. One outspoken critic was Harold E. Hughes, an alcoholic who broke the vice, salvaged his career, and even got elected governor of Iowa as a Democrat.

Hughes called alcohol “the greatest poverty-creator in America.” Telling students they can’t drink doesn’t work, he said, but schools should report drinking’s dangers. Chafetz-style instruction in imbibing was tried in France, the governor added, and it didn’t work.

‘Truth On The March’

Protestant church leaders in Manila say they are encouraged over the response to a weekly telecast inaugurated in late November by evangelist Gregorio Tingson. The half-hour program is the first of its kind in the Philippines.

The potential of the telecast is impressive. There are more than 200,000 television sets in the Manila area. In addition, relay arrangements take the programs from Manila stations into neighboring provinces. Greater Manila alone has a population of more than 3,000,000.

Tingson is the main speaker for the Sunday afternoon evangelistic telecast known as “Truth on the March.” Instrumental and vocal music is provided by members of evangelical churches in the area. Several local business enterprises have pledged financial support, and one donated office space.

EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS, JR.

The 70–30 Plan

The trouble with Christian radio stations is that evangelism often fails because only Christians tune them in. At the National Religious Broadcasters’ twenty-third and largest convention, held in Washington. D. C., last month, 200 delegates got some advice in attracting outsiders.

The advisor was Dr. Sigurd Aske, an erudite Norwegian Ph.D. who directs the three-year-old Radio Voice of the Gospel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This $2 million station is a project of the Lutheran World Federation.

Aske said airwaves are cluttered with “objective, John 3:16 sermons which never touch the human situation enough to make an impact. True preaching is only prophetic if it has to do with the people you talk to … with a sense of geography,” the way Amos preached in the Old Testament.

Aske is no social gospeler. He flatly rejected the “fallacy” that the “Gospel is made relevant only by diving into all sorts of social issues.” This produces the temptation to convey “cultural influences, not the Gospel,” he said.

Aske advocates thorough knowledge of the non-Christian cultures a broadcaster is speaking to and says “audience relations” is even more important than programming. Thus, RVOG enlists local believers to encourage listening by non-Christians and to monitor their reactions.

His program formula is 30 per cent direct proclamation of the Gospel and 70 per cent “indirect,” which means basic informational and cultural offerings that “express Christian concern for the listener,” such as child-care features and agricultural advice.

He said circumstances forced RVOG to undergo the “slow, laborious process” of developing good news programs. The station has made inroads this way, since unbiased, non-national radio news is hard to get in Africa and Asia.

The results? Forty per cent of the listener letters from the Near East are from non-Christians, which Aske considers “revolutionary.” The Lutherans plan to import their African concept to Tokyo and Hong Kong and open new stations.

Two members of the Federal Communications Commission spoke at a luncheon and supported FCC policies on religious programming, which were criticized at NRB last year by another commissioner, Lee Loevinger. Kenneth A. Cox said it is proper for the FCC to ask how much religious programming a secular broadcaster offers, since it is one of several valid types of public-service programming.

Cox said “religion has seldom, if ever, been the deciding factor” in station license renewal. However, if there were two identical petitions for a broadcast band and one prospective owner offered free time to the three major faiths while the other proposed to sell all his religious time to anyone with the money, Cox said, the FCC would favor the first applicant. Also, he said, the FCC would look askance at a renewal application if the owner promised more religious programming than he actually offered.

FCC Chairman E. William Henry backed current policies and said. “I don’t foresee any change.” A change to Loevinger’s view might require the FCC to deny radio-TV licenses to any religious organization, so this forecast was greeted warmly by the NRB audience, which now includes many more religious station owners than previously as a result of an organizational change last year.

Second Thoughts On ‘Secular City’

Harvard’s Harvey Cox revisited his Secular City last month and presented some modifications on ideas contained in that fast-selling paperback.

His forum was the seventh meeting of the exclusive American Society of Christian Ethics (limited mostly to professors with Ph.D.’s in the field). Most of the sessions convened at Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, with some held at Seabury-Western Seminary across the street. The assembly was informed at a banquet that Northwestern University students refer to the two schools as “East Jesus Tech” and “West Jesus Tech,” respectively.

In the tradition of the Christian Century’s series “How My Mind Has Changed,” Baptist Cox said his immersion in Bonhoeffer had supplied negative stress (phrases like “the end of the religious age”). But he now thinks the book was too hard on the organized church and is ready to talk about “the secular reappropriation of our mythological past.”

Cox explained that what he really wished to oppose was the “triumphal church” that endeavors to promote its future for its own sake. Cox’s name has been linked to the “death of God” discussions, but he specifically disengaged himself from Paul van Buren’s literal rejection of God’s present existence.

He called his Secular City an attempt to integrate the transcendental theology of Barth with the dynamic sociology of Talcott Parsons. To the kind of epistemological question that has always troubled Barth (how do you know when the Holy Spirit is present in social action?), Cox blithely affirmed that “only the hermeneutical community with its eyes of faith discerns ‘where the action is.’ ” Whereupon the inevitable query came from the floor: “Carl McIntire’s church or yours?”

Franklin H. Littell of Chicago Theological Seminary moved into the sphere of this latter question in a sparsely attended historical seminar on “right-wing threats to America.”

Littell lashed out at both the Communist far left and the Fascist-reactionary far right. A particularly telling argument was that in spite of the support John Birchers receive from certain “defrocked radio preachers,” the far right, like the Nazi Deutsche Christen religion, is “without history or creed and beyond all objectivity of law or sacrament.” Thus top Bircher Robert Welch writes that the rightist cause is hospitable both to fundamentalists and to convinced rationalists.

But Littell left several listeners (including Cox) uncomfortable when he asserted his laudable social liberalism in pugnaciously illiberal terms (“I won’t listen to anyone who won’t listen to me”).

Half a day was devoted to “wars of national liberation,” which means Viet Nam these days. American foreign policy won articulate support, particularly from two Roman Catholics.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

A new theological storm is brewing around Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who only last September was charged with heresy by his ecclesiastical peers.

Co-promoter with Dr. Eugene Carson Blake of a proposal to restructure American Protestantism, Pike is now quoted as repudiating the biblical doctrine of God as a supernatural, personal Being independent of the world. In the February 22 issue of Look, Senior Editor Christopher S. Wren asserts, having interviewed Pike, that the controversial California cleric has switched instead to the speculative notion of an impersonal Ground of Being promoted by the late Paul Tillich.

“I’ve jettisoned the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation,” Pike is quoted as saying. His views on these doctrines were among issues brought against him in the Episcopal House of Bishops in September. But at that time a committee report was accepted stating that “the sincerity of his profession of the Catholic faith is not questioned.” Pike in turn reaffirmed his “loyalty to the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Episcopal Church.”

In the Look article, Pike is described as having thought at the time, “If they only knew what I had in my briefcase.” It was the manuscript for a new book, What Is This Treasure?, in which he expounds his latest revised view of spiritual truth. The book is scheduled for publication next month by Harper and Row.

Pike’s thought, his style, and perhaps even his strategy have apparently been influenced by Honest to God, the best-seller of Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson. During a sabbatical at Cambridge, Pike has become friendly with Robinson, and he is now sometimes referred to as “the American Bishop of Woolwich.”

In the forthcoming volume, Pike rejects the idea that Jesus Christ was supernatural in his being or his work. The bishop now depicts Jesus, according to Look, as a country carpenter turned itinerant preacher. “God didn’t choose Christ … Christ chose God.” And Jesus is said to differ from “other good but mortal men” only in degree, not in kind.

Look declares that “Bishop Pike could well tempt another heresy hearing, but he looks pallid beside the ‘God is dead’ theoogians who have caught attention in his absence.”

There is no doubt, however, that Pike is a prime mover in the promotion of new structures and forms for the Christian Church in our time. The Blake-Pike plan for the merger of major American Protestant denominations at first centered attention on organizational restructuring. But the theological controversies associated with Pike have set the debate in the context of theological restructuring as well.

Bishops Challenge Altizer

“The moral question emerges: whether any individual can in good conscience receive his livelihood from an institution, participate in its advantages and benefits, and at the same time publicly and aggressively oppose the basic commitments on which it is founded.”

In these terms the College of Bishops of the Methodist Church’s Southeastern Jurisdiction analyzed the predicament of Emory University and its “death of God” theologian. Professor Thomas J. J. Altizer. The bishops formally condemned Altizer’s views but did not call for his dismissal. Their statement merely said: “We are confident Emory’s trustees … will make clear to all persons the declared purpose and commitment of Emory University.”

Altizer, a professor of religion with tenure at Methodist-related Emory, is an Episcopal layman. He is the best known of a group of new theologians who contend that the death of God is “an historical event.”

The ‘Danger’ Of Evangelism

Potshots at Baptists in general and Billy Graham in particular, plus an appeal for an American super-church, came out of a conference on evangelism in Berkeley, California, last month.

Graham represents a “danger to the Kingdom of God,” said Dr. Colin W. Williams, an associate secretary of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Life and Mission. Williams said Graham “misunderstands the Gospel, and thus misleads people and gives them too narrow a view of conversion.”

“If he were a rogue, he wouldn’t be nearly the danger he is,” said Williams. “But he’s a good man, and people listen to him.”

The conference in which Williams issued his attack on Graham was sponsored by the American Baptist Churches of Northern California, a group composed of 220 churches with 70,000 members. More than 100 ministers were present, and most of them were described as ready to take issue with Williams.

Williams, a Methodist, criticized statements made by Graham during a Houston crusade meeting last fall when President Johnson was in the audience. Graham indicated at that time his support of U. S. action in Viet Nam.

“The tragedy of evangelism today is mirrored in that one tragic speech,” Williams charged, maintaining that the problem lies in Graham’s “unquestioning loyalty to American beliefs that remain un-judged by God.” Spokesmen for Graham dispute the accuracy of the latter statement, pointing out that the evangelist has challenged “American beliefs” many times. Perhaps his best-known criticism is that of the Supreme Court decisions on public school prayers and Bible reading.

Williams rebuked Baptists for their traditional insistence upon congregational independence and called for the formation of “one large church body with a limited form of episcopacy with built-in balances providing for both congregational freedom and authoritative power for church leaders.”

“A unified impact must be made upon society’s power structures,” he said. “The church cannot do it through scattered independent congregations.”

He told the Baptist ministers that “the time is long past due for them to adopt a form of church government that provides for greater central authority. The Baptist belief in congregational independence is not only behind the times but it is heretical and stands in the way of God’s purpose for the world today.”

The views expressed by Williams run counter to the arguments of NCC spokesmen who maintain that the council does not take a theological position but seeks to embrace both liberal and conservative positions. Some observers fear the statements by Williams may reflect a new line to be promoted by leaders of the National Council.

Doctrinal Dispute

A protest against theological deviations accompanied the resignation last month of Dr. Leonard Gittings as professor of missions and comparative religion at Berkeley Baptist Divinity School. New concepts are finding acceptance at the American Baptist Seminary, he charged, and these depart from the historic faith of the Church and the essential teaching of the New Testament. Gittings laments, moreover, what he regards as indifference on the part of church people generally and denominational leaders in particular.

A number of American Baptist seminaries are reported to be under persistent pressure to initiate ecumenical programs.

Revising The Scofield

Since the invention of printing, the Bible has been the world’s most wanted book. The appearance during recent years of a host of new versions in updated language has made the demand greater than ever. But the venerable King James Version of 1611 still leads all others in sales. And among editions in which the KJV is published, the perennial front-runner is the 57-year-old Scofield Reference Bible of Oxford University Press. At least three million have been sold, says the publisher, and the annual rate continues to show a gradual climb.

Competition in the study-reference Bible field is getting stiffer, however. Some of it is provided by the same publisher’s Oxford Annotated Bible, which combines notes based on higher critical views with the Revised Standard Version text. The Westminster Study Bible, which first came out in 1948 with the KJV text, is also available now in the RSV.

Based on theologically conservative perspectives are Thompson’s Chain-Reference Bible, the Holman Study Bible, the Harper Study Bible, and Scofield.

Scofield has spelled sales success despite the fact that theological liberals and even a considerable number of evangelicals shun its dispensationalism. Its wide appeal seems to lie chiefly in its systematic notes, which give the Protestant layman and popularly trained minister extensive explanations in terms they readily understand. Scofields are now available in some fifty styles and bindings.

As a youngster, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield moved with his Protestant Episcopal family from Michigan, where he was born, to Tennessee. He won a medal as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War and afterward became a lawyer under the tutelage of a St. Louis firm. Converted at 37, Scofield went on to become a leading Bible expositor and for a time was associated with Dwight L. Moody. He won wide recognition in a day when destructive biblical criticism was gaining ground rapidly. His reference Bible, the product of seven years’ work during which he was assisted by a group of leading Bible scholars, came out in 1909 and sold slowly. An improved edition was published in 1917, and sales rose sharply after World War I. By 1930 a million copies had been sold.

In 1954, Oxford University Press appointed a committee headed by Dr. E. Schuyler English to start work on the first major revision of Scofield’s work (Scofield died in 1921). The revision is now due to appear in book stores in about a year. It will retain the King James text, but with archaic and obsolete words and phrases replaced. Changes will be made in the notes in the light of recent archaeological discoveries and increased textual knowledge. New footnotes will be supplied, chain references will be expanded, and tens of thousands of marginal references will be added. Ussher’s chronology, now in general disrepute among scholars, will be discarded.

The American Baptist Convention’s General Council voted 2-to-1 this month against joining the Consultation on Church Union. The secret ballot at a New York meeting followed a measured, ninety-minute debate and three months of discussion, meetings, and letter-writing within the denomination.

In view of the ABC’s general openness to inter-church cooperation, the decision was a significant defeat for plans to expand COCU (alias Blake-Pike talks) beyond the six mainline denominations now involved.

In formal terms, the council backed the recommendation of its Division on Cooperative Christianity that the ABC retain status as a COCU observer. That report was offered at the council’s last meeting (see “COCU on Ice?,” Dec. 3, 1965, issue, page 42). The key vote killed a substitute motion that would have proposed full COCU participation to the ABC’s annual meeting to be held in May in Kansas City, Missouri.

The forty-six-member General Council, as a between-conventions legislature, could technically bring American Baptists into COCU without specific convention authorization. But the step is generally regarded as too sensitive to be taken in that way.

Also, the council decision could be challenged from the floor in Kansas City, but both ABC President Robert G. Torbet and Chicago’s Robert Middleton, leader of COCU advocates on the General Council, say they doubt this will happen.

The council vote reflected grassroots sentiment. Council members had received 876 letters (not counting duplications) since the last meeting, of which 564 favored observer status and 192 a full COCU role, while 120 wanted to cut all ties with COCU. Responses came from 182 local congregations that voted on the issue.

The results of this unusual exercise of Protestant democracy troubled the Rev. Theron M. Chastain of Salina, Kansas. In the debate, he said the letters “showed no comprehension” and included “caricatures of other groups which were beyond belief … cock-and-bull stories about their neighbors.” Thus, while he favors COCU, he voted against it because the ABC membership is “utterly unprepared” for such a step. He advocated five or ten years of “intensive education.”

The vote was also affected by a letter from COCU Executive Secretary George L. Hunt answering ABC questions. He said the consultation talks of unity only in terms of organic union, and that the ABC and others are welcome “to come in on the basis of the work we have already done.”

While the COCU plan of union isn’t due until May, the proposed multi-denominational merger undoubtedly will include a historic episcopacy, baptism of infants as well as adult believers, and a common liturgy and creed. All are hard for Baptists to accept.

Parker Burroughs, an ABC administrator from Cleveland, feared the results of COCU rejection on the denomination’s “increasingly disillusioned crop of seminarians.… If we appear to be isolationists, out of the mainstream of American church life, we will lose their membership.” Baptist students at Yale, Andover Newton, and Colgate Rochester seminaries had been among those pressing for COCU.

Ecumenical Summit

The first formal meeting of high-level Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox representatives took place in Baltimore last month. The day-long discussion climaxed the ecumenical movement’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

On hand were more than a dozen members of the U. S. Catholic Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenical Affairs, some twenty Protestant participants, including the heads of several major denominations, and five ranking Orthodox prelates.

Starting the day at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the group went through a service that included a hymn, special prayers for unity, Scripture lessons, the Apostles’ Creed, a meditation, litany, and more prayers.

Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, Archbishop of Baltimore, joined the group at lunch and gave a message of greeting.

But Mrs. Frank C. Wigginton, a vice-president of the National Council of Churches, said, “We must be in the mainstream of the Baptist movement.” And Seattle’s Robert W. Beach doubted that young people are leaving the ABC because it has no liturgy and doesn’t baptize infants.

Another fear, unmentioned in the debate, is that big-city churches favoring COCU will leave the ABC. This fear is the reverse of the contention by COCU opponents that participation would cause many congregations to withdraw. Members of the COCU camp had called that argument “blackmail.” Schism is an ever present hazard in the ABC’s loosely knit “free church” structure as compared with the centralization likely under the Blake-Pike proposal. But the council apparently agreed with Maryland’s Carl W. Tiller that “God’s blessing is not dependent on huge size or uniformity.”

COCU advocate Robert Middleton gave one of the most impassioned speeches: “The world is facing a crisis of belief. All other considerations fall into insignificance.… Structures are provisional and functional—the Gospel is the important thing!”

The Lutherans Revamp

The National Lutheran Council met in New York this month to make joyful arrangements for its own funeral. Next November it gives way to the new Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., which will bring the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod under an inter-church umbrella for the first time.

Besides housekeeping chores, the NLC’s forty-eighth and last meeting brought predictable nostalgia, serious words about church involvement in the federal Great Society, and sober words about the National Council of Churches.

The NLC campaign for Lutheran unity bore fruit in recent years when its eight member denominations merged into two, the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church. With the addition of Missouri Synod and the tiny (20,000 members) Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, the new council will represent more than 95 per cent of America’s nine million Lutherans.

But Missouri Synod persists in some separatist ways, such as staying outside the Lutheran World Federation. So at the New York meeting considerable time was spent in setting up yet another Lutheran entity, a U.S.A. committee for the Lutheran World Federation, to absorb international projects now handled by the NLC. The heir apparent to lead this organization is the NLC’s executive director, Dr. Paul C. Empie. Missouri’s insistence on a separate university ministry also forced the LCA and the ALC to form another new agency to carry on joint campus work presently under the Lutheran Council.

Since Missouri Synod sees theological study as the starting point for cooperation, this is the only required facet of the new Lutheran Council’s program. Beyond that, each denomination will decide how it will use the other consultation services, in welfare, education, missions, public relations, and military personnel. Missouri Synod and the others will continue to cooperate in the Lutheran Church Center in Washington, Lutheran World Relief, and projects such as immigration service and film production.

Empie said ecumenism will be a major project for the new Lutheran Council’s theological studies division. Ecumenical talks with Reformed Churches, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodoxy are the outgoing council’s most publicized projects. Although Missouri Synod has joined in these discussions, continuation depends on what the new Lutheran Council decides.

Empie said the Augsburg Confession makes only two requirements for Christian unity: preaching of the Gospel and administration of the sacraments. Thus, Lutherans are under pressure to “distinguish between the clear biblical message of the Gospel, upon which there must be agreement, and human speculations on theological issues related to it—differences which do not justify denial of Christian fellowship.”

Lutheran ecumenical talks are in various stages. The NLC scheduled its second meeting with Roman Catholics in Chicago the week after the New York meeting, with baptism as the topic. These talks are starting with a point of accord—the Nicene Creed—but the meeting with Reformed representatives has what Empie called the “most controversial points.” He says the “Lutherans are in substantial theological agreement but have found a wide spectrum of views among Reformed representatives.” The last of the NLC-Reformed talks were to be held later this month, although individual Lutheran denominations may want to continue the effort.

The first meeting with Orthodoxy next October will start with each side’s describing itself and then move into the doctrine of the Church, an unusually wide-ranging topic for an initial meeting.

Church-state issues are another continuing Lutheran Council concern. Dr. Robert E. Van Deusen, Washington secretary for public relations, said the 1965 federal school aid bills “went a long way toward recognizing the Roman Catholic school system as an integral part of the American educational enterprise.” Parochial school aid is particularly important to Lutherans, since the Missouri Synod runs 1,374 grade schools, more than any other Protestant group. The synod modified its traditional ban on federal aid at last June’s convention, and local congregations are starting to participate, particularly in aid for disadvantaged children and libraries.

Van Deusen reviewed religious involvement in other programs and said the right of church groups to take positions on controversial issues is on a collision course with acceptance of public subsidies.

“A foreshadowing of it may be seen,” he said, “in the growing intensity of the feeling against those who, for religious or other reasons, oppose U. S. policy in Viet Nam. The time could come when an acquiesence to public policy is expected of church groups which receive public funds.”

Political statements had produced “growing disfavor” with the National Council of Churches, said Van Deusen, not only because of its advocacy of civil rights legislation but also because of a “genuine difference of opinion over the propriety of a church group’s speaking out on social and economic issues and engaging in political action.” He said the resistance has led to withdrawal of financial support and questions about the council’s eligibility for tax exemption. (LCA is the National Council’s only Lutheran member.)

The Rev. G. S. Thompson, executive secretary of the welfare division, said churchmen should not consider government welfare “a futile mirage which can never have substance in a sinful world.” “Political achievements for the betterment of men are, after all,” he contended, “the result of the Gospel.” However, he said, churchmen must not equate the material Great Society with the spiritual Kingdom of God, which is broader, and more important.

He said growing church dependency on government welfare raises the question at what point the church agency becomes “a tool of government.… However worthy the goal of government welfare programs may be, the Church and its agencies must always be solely responsible to the purpose of their Lord.” He called for research on church programs for needs unmet by government welfare.

Blossoms In January

“Getting Southern Presbyterians out of the magnolias and Dutchmen out of the tulips” is the way John A. Fulton describes the purpose of union negotiations between the Reformed Church in America and the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.

The Louisville lawyer, a Presbyterian, gave the flowery illustration as his city played host last month to 130 representatives of the two denominations. The “consultants” came to snow-covered Louisville for a three-day meeting at the invitation of the formal negotiating group, the “Committee of 24,” headed by Fulton and a Reformed Church pastor, the Rev. Norman E. Thomas of Albany, New York.

A question that remained unanswered as the consultants returned home was whether the talks would lead both bodies into a more productive garden.

Facing a 1968 target date for submission of a plan of union, the committee sought ideas from throughout both churches. The seeds planted by the consultants were as mixed as their feelings about merger possibilities.

Cool toward any merger not including the 3,292,000-member United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., a small group of the consultants pressed for a doctrinal stance similar to that now being considered by the United Presbyterians. A majority in the theology sub-committee, however, recommended adoption of the confessions now in use in both denominations. Also suggested was a commitment to develop a comprehensive and contemporary statement of faith after union.

Writing a complete polity scheme into the plan was suggested, but it was proposed that a new liturgy could wait until after the merger.

Next on the agenda for the committee is the important job of culling and weeding. The plan will have to have the right combination to get the necessary approval in three-fourths of the presbyteries and two-thirds of the Reformed classes. The drafting of a plan of union is to begin immediately.

While the consultation was in progress, two overtures were being readied for presentation to the Presbyterian U. S. General Assembly asking for union with United Presbyterians. Unlike previous overtures, these asked for union of synods and/or presbyteries in Kentucky and Missouri. The overtures cite joint work now being carried out in these areas by the two denominations. Earlier, the Central Texas Presbytery (US) and the Brazos Presbytery (USA) had asked their highest judicatories for permission to unite. United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake conferred on the strategy with Presbyterian leaders in Texas while on a recent trip there.

Agitation for union with the USA church is seen by some, especially those in the Reformed Church, as a threat to union between the US and Reformed churches. Several Reformed classes have overtured their General Synod to withdraw from merger negotiations because they regard them as a first step toward union with the USA church.

There is speculation, on the other hand, that some super-ecumenists are out to block the US-RCA union because they feel it will impede negotiations with the USA church and might even make harder going for the Blake-Pike talks.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Canada: Mobilizing Women

The Church Army in Canada, an evangelical Anglican organization, is beginning to recruit women for the first time in its history. With sixty male officers in Canada and eleven cadets under training at army headquarters in Toronto, the group sent its first woman, Miss Lyn Heffernan, to England for training at a school in Black-heath, Surrey. A spokesman said there are three or four more female applicants.

In recent years, there has been opposition to women membership from several areas of the church, according to Religious News Service. Such opposition has been based on the fact that there is already an Anglican Women’s Training College, which prepares deaconesses for more traditional roles in parish life.

CA officers—all hold the rank of captain—serve in downtown missions, courts, homes for delinquents, and isolated parishes and missions where no priest is available.

The Canadian spokesman declared that there is plenty of precedent for women CA officers in Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and East Africa.

A Vote For Women

The denomination known as the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands took a large step last month toward ordination of women. Its General Synod voted 66 to 2 in favor of the conclusions of a subcommittee, which specified women are to be accepted not as equal to men for ordination but within their own God-given gifts, and always beside men. The proposal now goes to the churches and regional presbyteries for recommendations. No women are to be ordained before these are considered by the next synod. Another committee is to give a report on how the tasks of ordained women should differ from those of men.

A move to give the office of deaconess to an ordained woman failed. Many who opposed the suggestion feared that such a step now would block ordination of women as elders and pastors later on.

The Reformed Churches of the Netherlands (the name is plural because the local church is emphasized) separated from the Dutch Reformed State Church during the last century. Their combined membership, 800,000, is smaller than that of the state church, but their Sunday morning attendance statistics are reported to be consistently higher.

The Reformed Churches’ synod accepted a proposal from the state church that the two groups send observers to each other’s synods. It also decided to apply for membership in the World Presbyterian Alliance.

‘One Race, One Gospel, One Task’

There will be approximately 1,200 attendants from about eighty-five countries, and yet only One Race. They will come from different cultures and from scores of church groups, but with only One Gospel. They will represent almost every position of Christian leadership, but with only One Task.

So the theme of the World Congress on Evangelism—One Race, One Gospel, One Task—is developed by Dr. W. Stanley Mooneyham, who is coordinating director.

The World Congress on Evangelism, a tenth-anniversary project of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will be held in Berlin’s famous Kongresshalle October 26-November 4 of this year. Dr. Mooneyham, a special assistant to evangelist Billy Graham, has already taken up residence in Berlin to direct preparations. He and another Graham staff member, Dr. Victor Nelson, flew to Germany in January and will be remaining there through the intervening months.

A Historic Scope. Dr. Mooneyham raises hope that the congress will be “the largest evangelical transdenominational endeavor in evangelism ever held in modern times.” He also envisions it as “the most representative ecumenical gathering ever held for the specific purpose of creatively exploring the full implications of biblical evangelism.”

The meeting will be preceded by a major evangelistic crusade in Berlin to be conducted by Graham and his team. The evangelist is honorary chairman of the congress.

“Our prayer,” Graham has said, “is that through the medium of the congress the Church today will receive renewed power and a sense of urgency such as was characteristic of the early Church after Pentecost.”

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and chairman of the congress, says the meeting comes at a “critical moment in church history.” He declares that “either spiritual forces will cushion and contain the violent flow of secular events or modern civilization will tumble through its rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage.”

A global wave of prayer support for the congress is being sought. Dr. Henry notes that “the fervent prayers of the early Christians were crowned by the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, arch-persecutor of the early Church. Dare we pray that Mao Tse-Tung might even become the Billy Graham of Asia? Or that, in a time when many Protestants are minimizing their heritage of biblical theology, Pope Paul might emerge as the Martin Luther of the twentieth century?”

Most Prayed-For Event? Dr. Mooneyham has voiced the prospect that the congress will be “the most prayed-for event” in the history of the Church. He has issued five suggestions for Christians interested in supporting the congress through prayer:

1. Add the congress to your prayer list for daily intercession.

2. Request prayer for the congress in church prayer meetings and other public services.

3. Form a prayer cell to pray for the congress and for world evangelism.

4. Mention the congress in correspondence with Christian friends and urge their prayer interest.

5. Write especially to friends overseas and ask them to share a prayer burden for the event.

The program of the ten-day congress will be built around a series of major addresses on evangelistic and theological topics, special research papers, panel discussions, and reports on evangelistic progress. Each morning session will begin with a Bible study hour led by such well-known evangelical teachers and authors as Pastor Wilhelm Busch of Germany and Dr. John R. W. Stott of England. Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann of St. Louis, preacher on the “Lutheran Hour” radio broadcast, also will participate.

Anglican Bishop A. W. Goodwin Hudson of London will be a key program personality, presenting a major position paper on the theological basis for evangelism. After the papers are given, delegates will separate into six major groups to discuss them.

Graham heads the list of major evening speakers. He will be joined by Bishop Chandu Ray of Pakistan, Dr. Ishaya S. Audu of Nigeria, Dr. Akbar Abdul-Haqq of India, Dr. Kyung Chik Han of Korea, Dr. Gerhard Bergmann of Germany, and Pastor Fernando Vangioni of Argentina.

Worldwide News Coverage. More than 100 newsmen are expected to cover the congress. They will represent secular as well as religious newspapers, magazines, and television and radio networks and stations all over the world. Primarily because of limited seating in the Kongresshalle, only accredited newsmen will be admitted. Those accredited, however, will have access to the whole program; no closed sessions are anticipated. Accreditation is available to editors and reporters of bona fide news media on a first-come, first-served basis. A number have already been accredited.

The aim of the congress will be to face anew the duty and need of evangelism, the obstacles and opportunities, and the resources and rewards, and to encourage Christian believers of common faith and doctrine in a mighty offensive for the Gospel in the remaining third of the twentieth century.

The congress already seems to be having a beneficial effect upon evangelicals around the world. Letters report enthusiasm building as missionaries and evangelistically minded churchmen consider the great potential of such a representative gathering. There may be a special impact upon those working in areas where political conditions have hindered the spread of the Gospel and where response to evangelistic efforts has been minimal.

New Hymn Contest

A contest is under way for development of a new hymn to serve as theme song for the World Congress on Evangelism. Deadline for submission of entries is April 15, according to Dr. Donald P. Hustad, chairman of the congress music committee.

Hustad says the hymn should have the flavor of contemporary literature and must be strophic. It must also possess a common meter for each stanza, but the rhyme scheme need not be rigid.

Further details may be secured by writing Dr. Hustad, 5721 South Harvey Avenue, La Grange, Illinois 60525.

Take Another Look At S.K.

The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard, by Edward John Carnell (Eerdmans, 1965, 174 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Vernon C. Grounds, president, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

The mere mention of Sören Kierkegaard stimulates the adrenalin output of many evangelicals. Usually they have no firsthand knowledge of his works; at best they have read only certain seemingly heretical passages from some of his pseudonymous books, ignoring the place such passages occupy in his total writing and therefore in his self-imposed task as a Christian witness. Evangelical critics of Kierkegaard rarely engage in that objective, protracted study that would qualify them to issue authoritative pronouncements on this profound, complex, many-faceted, and pathological genius. Instead, misunderstanding an apologist of prodigous originality and disdaining to tolerate so unconventional a disciple within the pale of orthodoxy, they consign him to the limbo of neoliberalism. After all, even a sympathetic scholar like Herbert C. Wolf, associate professor of religion at Wittenberg University, recently characterized Kierkegaard as an iconoclast, a misogynist, and a neurotic with a passion for martyrdom. Ah, yes! But Wolf also characterized him as a fool for Jesus Christ, a man who for the sake of God dared to run the risk of scandalized misunderstanding—by the very people who share his basic commitment.

At long last, however, an evangelical has arisen whose objective, protracted study of Denmark’s greatest son entitles him to make authoritative pronouncements. And Edward John Carnell, well-known for his probing scholarship, does not consign Kierkegaard to the limbo of neo-liberalism. He embraces him—rightly!—as a fellow believer and quotes approvingly Denzil G. M. Patrick’s verdict on Kierkegaard, “He was an evangelist rather than a theologian. There can be no question about his own adherence to the orthodox Christian faith of the oecumenical creeds” (p. 39). Indeed, Carnell remarks that “students of psychology, as well as students of theology and philosophy of religion, continue to pore over Kierkegaard’s works with something approaching a sense of reverence” (pp. 14, 15); and precisely that spirit stamps Carnell’s perceptive handling of these demanding works—works, he points out, that, maieutically, force the reader to struggle (p. 112).

In his highly successful simplification of a thinker famous for his frustrating complexity, Carnell adheres to a commendable methodology: “We are trying to tell what Kierkegaard said, rather than to give our own opinions” (p. 156). And what did Kierkegaard say? He said that man, a synthesis of time and eternity, is saddled inescapably with the task of becoming himself; but he can become himself only as he becomes an individual; and he can become an authentic individual only by becoming a Christian (p. 34). This, essentially, is Carnell’s simplification of the bewildering mazes of the Kierkegaardian corpus—and it is penetratingly correct. What is the nature of the eternal? Or, to use more common terminology, what is the nature of God? God is love. How do we know this? We know it through Jesus Christ, who, as the unconditional God subjecting himself to the limitations of time and space, revealed the nature of the eternal. As Carnell puts it, “Christ disclosed the essence of God by his consistent love” (p. 119). Thus Kierkegaard—and Carnell expounding Kierkegaard—holds that “love is the true point of identity between time and eternity.” “This is why,” Carnell says, continuing his exposition, “we are justified in saying that Kierkegaard’s thesis, ‘Truth is subjectivity,’ is another way of describing the substance of love. The self is not existentially at its best apart from love, for God is love” (p. 160). Furthermore, Carnell insists as he exegetes Kierkegaard, “love and true existence are the same thing, for love is the law of life” (p. 168). Thus if a man is to achieve authentic individuality, he must take the incarnate God as his model. “The ideal task is to be like Jesus Christ: to mediate eternity (self-giving love) through passionate, moment-by-moment decisions in time” (p. 134). Or, to quote Kierkegaard, “God is love, therefore we can resemble God only in loving.… When you love your neighbor, then you resemble God” (p. 118). In short, to respond in faithful obedience to God’s love disclosed in Jesus Christ is to achieve genuine individuality: “A living person cannot pass from potentiality to actuality until the specific conditions of selfhood—love’s attributes—are mediated in the instant by passionate decision” (p. 95). This likewise means that faith issues in love, the works of love: “The dialectical mediation of eternity in time may be a way of the cross, but it is also a way of virtue. Virtue is formed of acts of self-giving love, and such love is only expressed when the inner man is developed by conscientious choices of what is right” (p. 110). Is grace, then, eliminated? Quite the reverse! Grace, Kierkegaard says, is postulated: “When we existentially realize that we fall short of the duties of love, we are able to reject self-sufficiency so radically that it becomes natural to rest in God, morning, noon, and night, every day of the week. Since the duties of love are directly connected with eternity, divine grace is relevant to all stages of life’s way” (p. 167).

Here, then, is the heart of Kierkegaard’s dialectic. It turns out to be a dialectic of love rooted in the New Testament, a dialectic which argues that no man is authentically man unless he is a man in Christ, living ethically, inwardly, passionately, believingly, thankfully, and lovingly. But here, simultaneously, Carnell suspects, is the nub of a common difficulty in understanding Kierkegaard. To be an authentic individual, mediating the love of eternity in space-time existence, is to be like Jesus Christ. Who, though, is really like him? “Judged by spiritual and existential criteria, every living Christian is at best only partly a real individual.… Jesus Christ is the only complete individual. Viewed from eternity, of course, all who repent of their sins, and who strive to love as they should, are complete individuals. But under the conditions of sin and time, no one but Jesus Christ is a complete individual; for He alone, of all the men who walked this pilgrim path, met the absolute terms of the law of love at every moment in his life” (pp. 158, 159).

With amplest justification, therefore, Carnell concludes: “Kierkegaard developed the meaning of Christian love with a profundity, thoroughness, and biblical accuracy which, it is no exaggeration to say, surpassed all previous efforts” (p. 166).

Though love is certainly Kierkegaard’s Archimedean point, Carnell’s competent study includes much more that is important for a proper interpretation of this iconoclastic apologist. In fact, everything essential is dealt with—Kierkegaard’s attack on reason, his disparagement of traditional evidences, his criticism of Hegelianism, his views on paradox and faith, his denunciation of complacent orthodoxy, his extreme notions about women, marriage, and celibacy. All of this is here ably and quite adequately treated.

The great value of Carnell’s book, however, is that it corrects the view of Kierkegaard that has prevailed too long and too widely among evangelicals. To be sure, criticism is required, and Carnell engages in sharp criticism whenever necessary. Yet as one reads this study, one feels as though he is watching the restoration of a portrait that has been so painted over that it is finally only an ugly caricature. Carnell skillfully peels off the distorting layers of misinterpretation until one sees Kierkegaard as he really was—a passionate disciple of Jesus Christ, clinging in faith to the wonder of divine love.

VERNON C. GROUNDS

Out Of The Seventeenth Century

Reformed Dogmatics, edited and translated by John W. Beardslee, III (Oxford, 1965, 471 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The “Library of Protestant Thought” presents collections of writings that reflect the history of the Christian faith in its Protestant expression. This particular volume contains writings of three seventeenth-century Reformed theologians. The first is Johannes Wollebius, chosen because his works represent the best brief summary of Reformed dogmatics in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. The second theologian is Gisbertus Voetius, chosen because his theology of the second quarter of the century reflects the attempt of a scholastic Reformed theology to achieve ethical relevance; and the third is Francis Turrentin, chosen because his Institutio Theologicae Elencticae, belonging to the third quarter of the seventeenth century, presents the Scholastic Reformed theology of the seventeenth century as systematized and clarified after the appearance of Descartes, and after the rise and fall of Arminianism at the Synod of Dort (1618).

The theological method of seventeenth-century theology differed little from that of Scholasticism as informed by the Aristotle of the late Middle Ages. For this reason, and for the reason that Turrentin’s work in particular, republished in 1847, played a role in the theological thought of American Presbyterianism and was the background of the Princeton theology of Charles Hodge, the study of this volume is of value for any adherent of the Reformed faith who desires to see how this faith developed.

Turrentin’s Locus IV, which deals with predestination, is here published in English for the first time. Beardslee justifies the selection of this detailed treatment of predestination by asserting that while this doctrine is not lacking in Roman Catholicism, it is “not only an historic peculiarity of Protestantism, but also a special problem for Reformed theology.” And he adds, “Among the questions that agitated Reformed theologians during the period between the rise of Arminianism and the Helvetic Consensus Formula—the inspiration of Scripture, the imputation of sin and guilt, justification by the active righteousness of Christ—none was more troublesome than that of predestination, nor has any continued to hold a greater interest in later centuries.”

In a significant introductory essay, Beardslee shows how Calvin’s original understanding of predestination within the framework of the soteriological developed into an expression of God’s all-encompassing doctrine of decrees; thus he shows how what was an expression of grace became in time a logical principle, a formal idea, in terms of which all of God’s works were to be seen.

I should like to say a word for the publishers. They are to be commended for making such material as this readily available, with the kind of introductions that tempt the reader to study the developments that shaped Protestant faith.

JAMES DAANE

Reflections

Minister’s Shop-Talk, by James W. Kennedy (Harper and Row, 1965, 211 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by John H. Piet, professor of English Bible and missions, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

“We often judge the value of a book by our faith in the reviewer, who is ‘almighty’ and can ‘make’ or ‘break’ a new book.… I will always believe a reviewer of one of my earliest books killed it as a successful confirmation manual by thoroughly misunderstanding one chapter …” (p. 149). This formidable statement of Kennedy’s rises to challenge any reviewer. The claim is all the more awesome in that Kennedy himself is deeply committed to his calling as a minister and regards a clergyman as the one in whom there are signs of “God let loose in the world.”

He has served with distinction in several significant parishes. In this book, he shares insights that have come to him over many years, addressing himself particularly to clergymen. After confessing that insights from both Henry Drummond and the Oxford Group Movement enriched his life, he explains how through maturing he transcended what each of these had to offer.

The book covers twelve areas: the clergyman’s world, church, parish, life, words, works, ways, prayer life, reading, calling, playing, and future. The author appends six pages of prayers that appeared in a syndicated series in daily newspapers.

Since the content of this book is personal and hence subjective, one’s criteria for evaluation are limited. The author writes dearly, informatively, and with candor. Older ministers will find their experiences reflected in these pages. Younger ones may find encouragement and direction. Kennedy is convinced of the value of the ministry. This in itself is heartening at a time when so many have prepared palls to drape across parsonages. Here is an older man fresh each day to God and the world, and ready to place an experienced hand on another minister’s shoulder to testify what life in God through the Church can teach if one is obedient, pliable, and responsive.

There are several places where Kennedy could improve his material. On page 125, for instance, he wonders whether he should comment on clerical vagaries, mentions two, then says, “But I won’t …,” forgetting he already has. He quotes a text or two out of context. And he makes life difficult for professors of biblical languages in a paragraph on the availability of modern translations. “With such excellent translations at hand,” he says, “I find it less and less necessary to consult my Greek New Testament. This may seem a pity to many, for the minister has always been fluent—at least so people have imagined—in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and at home in the classics” (p. 152). This may limit the sale of Kennedy’s book in theological schools, although even here the ban may be removed because of the author’s clear conviction that “the primary task of the minister is to communicate relevantly the Christian meaning of existence” (p. 7). This Kennedy himself does.

JOHN H. PIET

Jonah And You

Adventures of a Deserter, by Jan Overduin (Eerdmans, 1965, 153 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Paul C. Zylstra, pastor, San Diego Christian Reformed Church, San Diego, California.

This psychological study of the Book of Jonah by an outstanding Dutch pulpiteer is like a long sermon that never runs dry. The pastor has squeezed the last drop of the oil of application from the adventures. The style may remind the reader of Donald Grey Barnhouse (bushels of examples for each point) or of Klaas Schilder (out on a limb risking the charge of speculation).

Scoundrel Jonah gets thrown hard for a loss. His human realism warns people who like to pat underdogs that they usually have sharp teeth. The book radiates honesty and openness, and authentic Christian experience (“You are Jonah”). It is a rock thrown through the windows of our soul, hitting the undeniable sins and stupidities of church and individual, then showing how God’s grace and patience and power are greater than our pride and self-conceit and faithlessness. Unless we’re incorrigible! Then we get a one-way ticket into the fish’s belly.

Theologically conservative Overduin (the fish’s swallowing Jonah is reliable history) keeps us in the biblical atmosphere and tells where and how one gets stamina to meet the great moral dilemmas he finds even in the small things. He makes it clear, too, that faith and unbelief are conditioned not so much by rational arguments as by the disposition of the heart toward God.

Some may feel that the psychological aspects of the Christian faith are overdone by Overduin. What seems an imprecise statement here and there may be due to the translation from the Dutch. But the book is rich with imaginative insights, scintillating word-pictures, and exegesis of scattered Scriptures (although you will not always agree).

Each of the book’s five chapters of preach-able topics underscores God’s missionary concern for all people and his use of nobodies—even a personality like Jonah—to satisfy that concern and produce faith and conversion. Christ, Jonah’s antitype, is highly exalted at the close.

The entire book admirably demonstrates what it means to be concrete in the pulpit, and to preach from the heart. The result is a thoroughgoing work that penetrates the world beneath Jonah’s surface. On the dark recesses of the heart, Adventures of a Deserter plays a light that clearly illuminates the rebellion.

PAUL C. ZYLSTRA

Boring From Within

Your Church—Their Target, a symposium compiled by Kenneth W. Ingwalson (Better Books, 1966, 288 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell, executive editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This book will irritate most of the people who read it. The organizations and individuals singled out as examples of those who are determined to make of the Church a socio-political organization will label the writers “right-wing extremists” (a favorite term to discredit any who stand for the values of a past generation). And the constant hammering on the theme that something radical is taking place in the Church that is turning it toward being a secular rather than a spiritual organization will anger some and frighten others.

The book has the weakness of being a compilation of writings by thirteen persons; there is a lack of a desirable continuity and some repetition. It also has the advantage of giving the divergent reactions and viewpoints of persons representing a number of the major denominations.

Several chapters are particularly revealing, among them T. Robert Ingram’s “Socialism in the Sanctuary” and Herbert Philbrick’s essay on the use of some folk music and folk singers for subversive purposes (“It is well known that music can be used to charm snakes. Not so well known: music can be used by snakes to charm people”). G. Aiken Taylor’s chapter on “Power Blocs, Power Politics and the National Council of Churches” is worth the price of the book.

By and large, the positions of the writers are well documented. This reviewer thinks that in a few instances unwarranted deductions may have been made from isolated quotations. And in the depths of their convictions and enthusiasm some of the writers have overstated their case. At times the language is more extreme than is justified.

But here within one cover there is incontrovertible proof that within the Church there are those who regard its nature, mission, and message as being more secular than spiritual, and who not only are working for a gigantic ecclesiastical organization with its accompanying power for individuals at the top but also do not hesitate to join forces with the secular government to accomplish its social and socialistic aims.

The compiler of this book, publisher of Human Events, says in his foreword: “To each of these writers every Christian who reads this book owes a debt of gratitude. For each in his own way has highlighted the problems at hand in a constructive and responsible manner. They have not been paid to write their chapters. Each has expressed his convictions in the hope that his contribution would aid in the salvation of the Protestant ethic. These men may not always agree with each other in details. Neither will you agree with all they say. But the problem and challenge for laymen and clergymen has been made crystal clear.”

In chapter 12 there are copious quotations from books and articles by the Rev. Charles Ferguson, a minister, lawyer, and prolific writer before and during World War I. His call for a secularized church coincides with this movement today, and his insistence that man rather than God is sovereign is today bearing fruit in the Church. No one can read this book without realizing that working within the Church there are forces that, if successful, would change the entire structure and emphasis of Protestantism.

The greatest weakness of the book is its failure to present adequately a spiritual alternative to the secularistic pressures. It is as if a physician were to diagnose a disease without suggesting a cure.

L. NELSON BELL

How Do We Know?

A Christian Perspective of Knowing, by Earl E. Barrett (Beacon Hill, 1965, 224 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, chairman of the Division of Doctrine and the Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

One must admire the courage of anyone who attempts to write a volume on epistemology in these times. The venture is all the more admirable when attempted from the evangelical point of view, since the author then has few contemporary models. Professor Barrett, of Olivet Nazarene College, surveys the field of knowledge-theory in terms of seven recognizable types of epistemology: authoritarianism, rationalism, empiricism, religious empiricism, intuitionism, mysticism, and Christian mysticism.

The author is without doubt aware that in dealing with the first type, authoritarianism, he faces an initial handicap in his choice of a title. In chapter 2, which investigates the claim of biblical authority upon the human person, he sees clearly that the question is twofold: What (or who) is the source of authority?, and, In what terms is the “word of authority” communicated to man? In brief, he notes that authority derives from truth, and truth from the God of truth. To the second question, he replies (correctly, we believe) that the authoritative Word involves the communication of propositional and valid information about God, God’s purposes, God’s demands upon man, and God’s ultimate recapitulation of all things in Christ. If some object to the demand of faith, our author will reply that faith is by no means confined in its sphere to religious concerns.

The six chapters dealing with the other forms of knowing-theory present each of these forms as embodying a partial insight. Rationalism insists upon the element of formal structuring of truth; its strength lies in the dignity it lends to the exercise of the human mind. Its weakness lies in its exaggerated claim to universality, and its tendency to absolutize its findings.

Empiricism seeks to do justice to man’s capacities as a curious and questing being. Its immanent peril is that of supposing that its most obvious form (i.e., sensory experience) is sufficiently inclusive to cope with the whole of human existence. Religious empiricism, admiring the empirical method but specializing in the processing of religious data, seeks for certainty in terms of man’s personal relationship to God; our author confirms the truth-values of Christianity in those terms. Professor Barrett is impressed by the vigor of the moral argument as a hypothesis capable of verification, in essential part at least, in terms of the experience-types systematized in Wesleyan theology.

The chapters dealing with intuitionism and mysticism overlap. The author is partial to ethical intuitionism as a source of certainty and sees the central quality of intuitive knowing to be non-inference. His treatment of mysticism’s claim to be a means to the communication of truth centers in the belief that immediate experience is likely to be more reliable than inference. In his specialized discussion of Christian mysticism, he uses the category of “mediated-immediacy” and seems, on the one hand, to credit Hegel with too much and, on the other hand, to have overlooked for the moment the role of the “one mediator between God and men.”

Some will, because of their own denominational tradition, agree heartily with his idea that the crises of conversion and of the believer’s being imbued with the Holy Spirit conform in general to the norms of mysticism. Others will, on theological or traditional grounds, take exception.

In the Conclusion (chapter 9), our author seeks to combine into one picture the sketches he has drawn. His aim is to synthesize the entire range of human experience that the several approaches use. His summation (p. 215) seems to relate what he terms “coherence” to this synthesis.

This reviewer could wish that Dr. Barrett had given, earlier in the work, his definition of the coherence-theory of truth. His use of the term here is not easy to square with the definition of “coherence” as given, for example, by Brand Blanshard.

The positive merits of this volume are many. It brings within one work a considerable range of research. It is thoroughly loyal to the principles of the historic Christian faith, specifically, to a high view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Some may feel that he leans more heavily upon Kant, especially upon the Second Critique, than is warranted. Perhaps this is balanced by his recurring references to major Christian personages, notably the Reformers. The reader sensitive to accuracy will hope that a second edition will correct minor typographical defects.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Book Briefs

The Mind of Christ: A Personal Pilgrimage of Discovery with the Disciples, by Harold A. Bosley (Abingdon, 1966, 143 pp., $2.75). A colorful preacher and exciting writer gives a not overly orthodox description of the mind of Christ.

The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary, Volume III: The Didache and Barnabas, by Robert A. Kraft (Nelson, 1965,188 pp., $5). A modern translation and commentary of important source material.

A Theology of Evangelism, by C. E. Autrey (Broadman, 1966, 119 pp., $2.75). A consideration of the theological basis of evangelism by an author who recognizes that Christian social action and gospel proclamation are not wholly identical.

The Gift of Healing: A Personal Story of Spiritual Therapy, by Ambrose A. Worrall with Olga N. Worrall (Harper and Row, 1965, 220 pp., $3.95). The pilgrimage of two people with extra-sensory perception engaged in a ministry of healing in and out of the Church. No adequate theological foundation is laid. The book is full of material on seances, poltergeists, psychic phenomena, disembodiment, contact with the spirits of the dead, and many cases of physical healing. According to one electronic scientist, a force radiates from the hands of these spiritual healers and has registered on X-ray film attached by adhesive tape to their palms. The book closes with a copy of a letter sent to hundreds of people who asked for healing help: “We seek only to give them confidence in the Divine Power that … is capable of restoring health, and improving conditions relative to peace and prosperity.… This power is able to operate at a distance … but we can and will join with all who desire in five minutes of spiritual communion with the Divine Presence, from 9 P.M. to 9:05 P.M. every night on Eastern Standard Time (or Daylight Saving Time when in effect).” All one needs to do is tune in.

Concilium, Volume IX: Spirituality in Church and World, edited by Christian Duquoc, O. P. (Paulist Press, 1965, 166 pp., $4.50). Essays on Christian involvement in the modern world. Can a Christian be both spiritual and world-involved?

Is the Bible True?, by Allen Bowman (Revell, 1965, 189 pp., $3.95). Solutions—sometimes too simple—to biblical problems.

A Manual for Biblical Preaching, by Lloyd Merle Perry (Baker, 1965, 218 pp., $4.95). A book on preaching that may drive the would-be preacher to a juniper tree. Five pages are devoted to the “philosophy of biblical preaching,” almost sixty pages to “discovering biblical preaching material,” fifty to special sermons, and three to “planning a biblical preaching program.” About thirty-five pages deal with organizing seven types of sermons; here the material would lose little if it were shuffled. A tremendous piece of work that lacks principle and bogs down in detail.

Paperbacks

Varieties of Unbelief, by Martin E. Marty (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 222 pp., $1.25). A description and discussion of the types and varied forms of unbelief. First published in 1964.

The Reformation of Our Worship, by Stephen F. Winward (John Knox, 1965, 126 pp., $1.75). An English Baptist author draws freely on the history of the Church in a discussion of many facets of Christian worship.

United States Government Diet Book, by the United States Department of Agriculture (Pocket Books, 1965, 63 pp., $1). Government aid to gluttons.

Preaching on Pentecost and Christian Unity, edited by Alton M. Motter (Fortress, 1965, 248 pp., $2.45). Many sermons on Pentecost by such men as M. E. Marty, C. Northcott, D. H. C. Read, R. W. Sockman, K. R. Bridston, and M. Barth.

The Protestant Pulpit, by Andrew W. Blackwood (Abingdon, 1965, 318 pp., $1.95). First published in 1947. Valuable.

Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation, by Roland H. Bainton (Abingdon, 1966, 299 pp., $2.25). First published in 1960.

Reprints

Science in History, by J. D. Bernal (Hawthorn, 1965, 1,039 pp., $12.95). A book that shows what science over the centuries has done to history. First published in 1954.

THERE IS AN OLD SAVING:

Twixt optimist and pessimist

The difference is droll;

The optimist sees the doughnut,

The pessimist sees the hole.

There is a vast difference of opinion among those who look at the world situation today. Some have an abounding optimism that the progress of man will lead to an eventual utopia on this earth. Others see only death and destruction, chaos and disintegration. To them the situation seems hopeless.

Christians should avoid both pitfalls. Their frame of reference, their confidence, their hope all center in a Person and his sovereignty and ultimate triumph. No matter how dark the world’s outlook and how great the seeming disintegration of the social order, there is the assurance in the heart of the Christian that God is still sovereign and that his holy purposes will be accomplished.

The Christian has the right to look at the world and be utterly pessimistic as to its prospects for bringing in a man-made golden age. At the same time, the Christian should be the most optimistic person in all the world because of his own orientation and destiny and the certainty of Christ’s ultimate victory.

The present chaotic world order has been clearly foretold by our Lord and others in the Scriptures. Jesus made some startling predictions before his death. Some were fulfilled in the days and years immediately following, and others have yet to be fulfilled. But many people read our Lord’s words and either distort their meaning or lay down a detailed blueprint of specific events that can at best be no more than the product of fertile imaginations.

In our Lord’s predictions of things to come, he was intentionally both vague and specific.

Having described conditions that will prevail before his return, he says: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14, RSV).

There may be speculation about whether this has been fulfilled, or about the degree to which the Gospel’s “testimony” or “witness” will yet have to be preached. But there can be no question about our Lord’s clear statement, “The end will come”—a “time” or “day” also predicted by both the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles.

At the beginning of this twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, the disciples asked Jesus to tell them the time of the prophesied destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the sign of the Lord’s return and of the close of the age. We know of the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. We know also of the “wars and rumors of wars,” which were never more obvious than they are today. And we know that in the closing days of the age, when “wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold” (Matt. 24:12).

No one can dogmatically affirm that these are the “last days,” but they could be. Astounding wickedness is being multiplied in the world. The Bible-centered standards of morality are being discarded in favor of relativistic ethics, the notion that what is right in a particular situation is determined, not by any divine authority, but rather by the nature of the situation itself. Sexual permissiveness or promiscuity is wrong only if the relationship is not “meaningful,” or if one of the partners “gets hurt.” Into every area of life new standards of morality have been injected that are based, not on the laws of God, but on the sinful desires of men. Wickedness is being multiplied in the earth, because men are rejecting God and his Christ.

Then our Lord gave this promise: “But he who endures to the end will be saved” (v. 13). This “enduring” takes place in the face of abounding wickedness. It is, as Isaiah says, setting one’s face like a flint against the siren calls of evil. It involves complete willingness to rest in and wait on the Lord.

This endurance of which Christ speaks stems from a childlike (not childish) faith in the integrity of God and the promises of his Word. It rests on an unswerving assurance that what he has promised be will fulfill. It is certainty in the heart that beyond the horizon there is a glorious eternity with the One who is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Later, in this same discourse, Jesus told his disciples of coming tribulation such as the world had never experienced, and added that but for the shortening of those days “no human being would be saved.” Then he gave the promise, “But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (v. 22b).

Until a few years ago I was unable to find any reason for believing that there could ever come a time when Christians in America would be persecuted for their faith. This has now changed. I personally know men who are being persecuted and ostracized by fellow Christians. An increasing number of ministers are discriminated against because they stand uncompromisingly for the historic Christian faith.

The detractors of that faith and the critics of the Holy Scriptures are now legion, and their boldness in their new denials and secularistic adventures knows no bounds.

The doctrine of the return of our Lord is vigorously opposed. The fact that some have brought discredit on this truth through their own arbitrariness or obsessions in no way invalidates the fact that Christ will return to terminate history as we know it.

Belief in the Second Coming (i.e., the “blessed hope”) has been the comfort and joy of countless believers. From the days of the early Church until now this hope has existed. Paul thought the Lord was soon coming again. We believe he may even be at the door. Although no man knows the day or the hour of the Second Coming, Jesus has sketched for us the conditions that will exist in the world prior to his return. This sketch we all should heed.

The pessimist looks at the world and feels the situation is hopeless. But the optimist looks about him and then looks up with the assurance in his heart that God is still sovereign and that he has a plan that is being inexorably worked out. What is that plan? That the Gospel shall be preached in all the world as a witness—and “then the end will come.”

World missions are a part of God’s plan. Evangelism directed to the individual and to the masses is a part of the divine commission to go into all the world and proclaim Jesus Christ as man’s only hope, now and for all eternity.

With such a God, such a Saviour, such a Gospel, and such a hope, Christians must be incurable optimists. And the words of our Lord continue to speak to them: “Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

A Challenge to the Sacred Cow

A Little Learning

As somebody so well said, “One man’s partridge is another man’s grouse.”

Things were going pretty well on the car radio until that announcer told me in that tone of voice announcers have—just the right touch of condescension and the sound of “look-at-me-how-youthful-I-am”—that that very night YOUTH were going to tell what was wrong with parents. It would he “refreshing,” he said, to hear these young people speak, because they would be so “straightforward and honest and candid.” I suppose they were also clear-eyed and ruddy.

I have no objection to youth, but I can’t stand YOUTH. The whole cult reminds me of some little ditty we used to have in a book of nursery rhymes, “Who can tell what baby thinks?” I don’t think the viewpoint of youth on any subject is worth any more than the viewpoint of anybody else, no matter how candid and clear-eyed it may be. Usually they simply don’t know what they are talking about.

It is sort of like the Christmas story. The whole thing is built around the “baby” Jesus. Who can fault a baby? The safest cover for a magazine is either a baby or a dog or a beautiful woman. But now where are we? We don’t know any more than we did before.

What really irritates me is that youth are probably learning the wrong sort of thing in what sentimental adults think is a learning process, namely, training in self-expression. They are learning that they can say almost anything just because they are young, not because what they have to say is worth saying.

In every generation people have been worried because young people have been going bad. As a matter of fact, history teaches us that young people did go bad in culture after culture, as a result of which all kinds of civilizations went to the wall. Maybe we have reached the stage in our own civilization where the question is not whether youth can talk but whether they have ever really learned anything.

Just for an old authority, take Dorothy Dix: “At twenty a girl’s only appeal is to the eye. She has not lived long enough to know enough to have anything to say that is worth listening to.”

EUTYCHUS II

No Conflict

After reading “Does the Bible Conflict with Modern Science?” (Jan. 21 issue), I thought you might be interested in a letter I received from Dr. Wernher von Braun, U. S. Army Missile Command.…

Keep up the good work of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, a publication which is of utmost value in these hectic days of apostasy.

E. O. DAVIS

Beasley, Tex.

• The material from Dr. von Braun has appeared in print, and includes this statement: “Two stimuli are necessary to make man endeavor to conform with the accepted ethical standards. One is the belief in a Last Judgment, where every one of us has to account for what we did with God’s precious gift of life on this earth. The other is the belief in the immortality of the soul which thus can cherish the award or suffer the penalty decreed in the Last Judgment. The belief in God and in immortality thus gives us the moral strength and ethical guidance we need for virtually every action in our daily lives.”—ED.

Less than an hour ago, I came upon the January 21 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in which the relation of science and religion is discussed by eminent men. I could not take the magazine from the library—nor did I more than scan the first page—but I know that it is a very important article (for me).…

I enclose thirty cents for a copy of the issue.…

ELLEN COPE

West Chester, Pa.

I am very happy to see that you are hitting scientism, the sacred cow which the run-of-the-mill theologians of the Church do not seem to dare to touch today. I am convinced that until we can again affirm faith in God the Creator and challenge naturalistic evolution, we cannot preach the Gospel either.…

HENRY BAST

Bethany Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Correction

The reference you make in your February 4 issue to the National Association of Evangelicals’ interest in the Christian servicemen’s centers for Viet Nam is not technically correct.

NAE has no plans to establish such centers through the CSF or otherwise. We are receiving funds to be used in the establishment of centers in Viet Nam, but these will be transferred to some other group more directly involved in the operation of centers.

FLOYD ROBERTSON

General Secretary

Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship

Washington, D. C.

Aches And Paynes

It seems CHRISTIANITY TODAY is having trouble with pains. The January 21 (News) story on the recent Evangelical Theological Society convention lists Houghton College President Stephen W. Paine (Wheaton ’30) as the new president. It is Dr. J. Barton Payne, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, who was elected to head the society. Dr. Payne served as vice-president during the past year, and Dr. Paine succeeds him in that capacity.

LOIS M. OTTAWAY

Manager, News Service

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

• We painfully acknowledge that we made an error.—ED.

Roman Rabbi?

In Addison Leitch’s insipid eulogy of Eugene Carson Blake (Current Religious Thought, Jan. 21 issue), he still failed to answer one question that has often puzzled me. Is Blake a converted Christian called to be a minister of the traditional Reformed faith—or is he really a Roman rabbi wearing a Presbyterian robe?

ROBERT DAVIS

First Presbyterian Church of Miami

Miami, Fla.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake has had many critics, and it was a very welcome change to read something for him instead of against him.

GERTRUDE TAGUE

Olympia, Wash.

Dr. Leitch writes as if Dr. Blake’s willingness to fellowship with Bishop Pike is inconsequential.… While there seems to be no doubt as to Dr. Blake’s ability to lead the church, the question should be asked, “Where … would he lead the church?” Whatever his natural qualifications, he must be judged by the answer to this question.

GORDON HOLDCROFT

Santa Barbara, Calif.

It is not amiss to remind Leitch that “Gene’s” advocacy of abolishment of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his loud amen to the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the Constitutional right to say prayers in public schools, is no legend but hard cold fact.…

WILBUR D. THOMAS

Washington, D. C.

Fourth-Class Beatles

Some of us feel that the States should pay through its nose for the privilege of Americanizing British culture. One method we have devised for this is to perfect the American pop-culture and sell it back to the States. This regains a small part of the millions of pounds we’ve spent this century on lining the pockets of Hollywood film and record stars. Indeed, some of us have been asking long before Eutychus (Jan. 7 issue) what kind of times these are that our balance of trade can be ruined by the importing of such junk from America.

Now one British group has perfected the

American idiom, so much so that the whole of Britain has profited. We’ve shown our gratitude to the artists for this eminent display of one-upmanship by giving them the O.B.E. This is, indeed, an order of knighthood; but the Beatles only made the Fourth Class (one from the bottom), so, alas, they have not been knighted. There’s no Sir Ringo … yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GEOFF THOMAS

Alfred Place Baptist

Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales

Coping With The Retarded

Congratulations on the article “Counseling: How to Cope with Mental Retardation,” by Carl J. Rote (Jan. 21 issue).

The author’s thinking is very much in line with what I have learned in ministering to both physically and mentally handicapped.

ROGER ARNETT

Minister to the Handicapped

The Methodist Church

Ann Arbor District

Belleville, Mich.

The article … is appreciated. I am a minister and father of a little mongoloid girl who is now eleven.…

Nancy is a great imitator; for example, she is just as apt to call me “Preacher Brown” as she is “Daddy.” Why not, since that’s what many in my congregation call me?

My wife and I can both testify that with love and proper care and treatment, a child like Nancy can be overwhelmingly accepted and bring rich blessings to the parents and family.…

J. S. BROWN

Lovejoy Baptist Church

Lovejoy, Ga.

The retarded child is not God’s handiwork but the work of his archenemy.…

Even this, the heartbreak of a mentally retarded child, he redeems, and somehow [in a way] that we cannot understand here and now with our finite minds, he makes even this work toward ultimate good.

FLORENCE B. FARNHAM

Winnetka, Ill.

God And No-God

It is enormously encouraging that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is not only putting emphasis on the Church’s mission to create new men in Christ but also formulating a strategy to make such emphasis worldwide. I have read the New York Times report of the Berlin Congress with great interest.…

1. Our position will be brought up to date and relevant to the man in the street. The secularist has rejected the authority of God. But what is he going to put in its place?… He has got to find some inner, order-treating authority or else, in order to overcome chaos, submit to totalitarianism—a dirty word in any age and particularly so in these days of unlimited freedom.… The truth is that evangelism, while restoring men eternally to God, is also essential for running this world here and now—a concern of vital interest to materialistic man.

2. The battle line between God and no-God provides us with the most effective ecumenical action. It draws a horizontal line that cuts right through the perpendicular divisions—Catholic and Protestant, left and right, conservative and liberal—that separate man from man. It unites the men of God in all groups against the atheism in all groups.

Atheism has become very apparent in Protestant circles. But if Father Pedro Arrupe, the new Jesuit General, is right in his observation, it has been felt in the Catholic Church too. In his Vatican Council speech Father Arrupe spoke of atheism as “insidiously influencing the minds of believers (including religious and priests) with its hidden poison and producing its natural fruits in the Church, naturalism, distrust, rebellion.”

An ecumenical action that restores men to God and lights atheism wherever it is found is far more logical and relevant for the world than building a huge socio-political church, which seems implicit in the Blake-Pike proposals.

R. N. USHER-WILSON

New York, N.Y.

Recognizers Recognized

Congratulations on the addition to your staff of my good friend John Lawing. Some of us “recognized his genius” long ago, but alas we have not been recognized. His biting satirical wit expressed in clever cartoons has been enjoyed by us since college days.…

You are to be commended on the excellent presentation of matters of religious concern which has made CHRISTIANITY TODAY one of the leading journals of its kind in the world.

JOHN S. BANKS

Highland Heights Presbyterian

Little Rock, Ark.

Keeping One’S Head

In a day when the world is losing its head (and especially the theologians), it is good to have a Christian magazine that is not (losing its head).…

Many of us are behind you all the way.

RALPH S. FINDLEY

Grace Methodist

Warren, Pa.

Forty Years Late

Re “Is Protestant Christianity Being Sabotaged from Within?,” by Ilion T. Jones (Jan. 7 issue): While I am glad for Dr. Jones’s alarm at the condition of Protestant seminaries, his alarm is forty years late in coming. The old modernism merely parroted the romantic rationalism of its day in superficial religious terms, as does the “new theology” proclaim existentialism.…

ROSS D. LYON

Kenmuir Baptist Church

Port Credit, Ont.

The article … is alone worth the price of our subscription, plus that of the gift subscriptions we made!…

MRS. NED ADAMS

Medford, Ore.

I think the fault lies not only in the professors in the seminaries but in the churches themselves. You can’t feed people on politics and social living and expect them to grow in faith in God. People need the Bible, God’s Word, not the whims and ideas of men.

GEORGE BROWNING

Hurricane, W. Va.

A Pacifist Defending Pacifism

To have a fighting man defend killing (“Is the United States Right in Bombing North Viet Nam?,” Jan. 7 issue) is like having an adulterer defend adultery or a covetous man defend covetousness. The only Person who can give the right answer is Jesus Christ himself. He gave it, in John 18:36! Let us listen to him!

WILLIAM G. LOWE

Berlin Bible Church

Narrowsburg, N. Y.

I have seen no political or moral argument that justifies our war intervention in Viet Nam. It seems to me that our position there has been dictated by stupidity, politics, fear, and outright egotism.…

CHARLES E. COMFORT

First Baptist

Homer, N. Y.

The Vanishing Criminal

Kudos on “Man Cannot Escape!” (Editorials, Jan. 21 issue). There are many besides those of us studying human behavior who look with chagrin upon the gradual psychologizing of our society. In a very real sense we no longer have a “criminal.” Some acts of crime (witness the assassination of Kennedy) are of such a nature that the criminal must be mad. The case is a priori. No evidence to the contrary could convince many persons of sanity in such criminality.…

DAVID A. FRASER

Cambridge, Mass.

The Baha’I Cult

Several years ago a German doctor who had gone to Ethiopia to practice his profession found it necessary to visit a dentist. As he was sitting in the chair with his mouth open, the dentist, an Iranian Jew who had become a Baha’i and had gone to Ethiopia as a missionary of his faith, said to his patient, “Did you know that Jesus. Christ has returned?” The doctor, who had given up the Roman Catholic faith in which he was reared and had become an agnostic, on hearing this strange question thought the dentist must be a mental case. But as the dentist continued to talk to him, keeping him two hours after the appointment was over, the doctor became interested, and finally became a Baha’i!

It is not only in Ethiopia that Baha’is are carrying on an active propaganda. Since my retirement as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church in Iran I have had the privilege of speaking in numerous churches in various parts of the United States, and in a number of places I have been informed that Baha’is are attempting to pull people away from their churches and draw them into the Baha’i World Faith, as they call their movement. Since Baha’ism arose in Iran a century ago and I had many contacts with Baha’is during the forty-three years I served in that land, I have often been asked to explain to Christians what this faith is.

The basic Baha’i doctrine is that God has made himself known to man again and again through “Manifestations,” each of which is more complete than that which preceded it. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, as well as Zoroaster, Buddha, and Krishna, are held to be divine “Manifestations.” But the latest and most perfect of the “Manifestations” is said to be Baha’u’llah, an Iranian who died in Syria in 1892. This name, or title, means “The Splendor of God,” and from it the term “Baha’i” is derived. Baha’is believe that all the Manifestations are One, and so they say that Baha’u’llah is really Christ, who has returned as he promised to do.

This “World Faith” is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, which is the national religion of Iran. But as it has moved westward to Europe and America, it has more and more sloughed off its Eastern garb and adorned itself with garments more attractive to Westerners. The “Principles” which have been adopted, and about which Baha’is speak so persuasively, are world peace, equality of men and women, harmony of science and religion, investigation of truth, freedom from all prejudice, a universal language, and so on.

Many Christians would favor some or all of these teachings. But no Christian can accept the basic theology of Baha’ism without denying the Christian faith. For to accept Baha’u’llah as God’s most perfect “Manifestation” and the hope of the world for the next 1,000 years is to deny the sufficiency and finality of Jesus Christ the Only Son of God.

Unfortunately, much of the attractive literature produced and distributed by the Baha’i Headquarters in Wilmette, Illinois, fails to give an accurate account of the history and teachings of the Babi-Baha’i Movement. Should any readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY wish to gain a more correct and complete knowledge of Baha’ism, I suggest that they study carefully the book which Baha’u’llah himself considered the most important of his many writings, The Most Holy Book, recently translated by Dr. E. E. Elder and published as a scholarly work by the Royal Asiatic Society of London. This book is sold by Luzac and Company in London and by Orientalia, Inc. (11 East 12th St., New York); price $3.00. Also, a booklet entitled “Bahaism” by Bishop Richards of St. Davids, Wales, and published by the SPCK in London is now available. Bishop Richards is an authority on the Baha’i movement and in this excellent booklet discusses it from the Christian point of view.…

WILLIAM MCELWEE MILLER

Philadelphia, Pa.

Editorial Breaks Through

Your editorial, “Will 1966 Signal a Breakthrough?” (Jan. 7 issue), went straight to my inmost spirit. I copied excerpts from the final paragraph for our church bulletin.…

My husband is seventy-seven and I am seventy-one, but we are still going on in his service in the church we have built and will dedicate, the Lord willing, on March 6, five years since we came here.…

SARAH SMITH REED

Decatur, Ill.

Still A Methodist

Your paper is challenging and is serving a very necessary spot for this troubled hour in history. It hasn’t made a Calvinist out of me, but I like to read it anyway. Just a line or two from a Methodist retired minister with fifty-one active years to his credit.

WARREN W. WIANT

Columbus, Ohio

Great Encouragement

I am sure the majority of sincere Christians believe in the inspiration of the Bible and the deity of Jesus Christ, and it is a great encouragement to me to find a magazine that is widely read throughout the Christian world [and] that devotes itself to the affirmation of the “faith once delivered”.…

IVAN WILLIAMS

Newhall Church of Christ

Newhall, Calif.

In no area of religious teaching is the Church lagging more than in adult education. Universities, colleges, and high schools are developing programs for adult study in all kinds of subjects, and their classes are in many cases overflowing; but in this important field the Church is far behind. If the need for better-trained Sunday school teachers is to be met and if the laity are to be biblically and doctrinally literate, there will have to be a great upsurge of adult Christian education. So long as the Church’s teaching ministry continues to be occupied almost wholly with youth, its outreach will be hampered.

But an upsurge of adult education can never be accomplished within an hour on Sunday. Weekday time must also be used. There is no other option. Here are samples of what is being done by some churches that have accepted the responsibility of weekday adult Christian education. Programs like these are certainly within the reach of thousands of other churches, provided that they are really burdened for the teaching of adults. And unless many churches are so burdened, Protestantism in American faces a growing spiritual debility.

For nearly a quarter of a century, the historic Park Street (Congregational) Church of Boston has conducted the Boston Evening School of the Bible. The school, meeting on Tuesday nights for two terms of ten weeks each, annually enrolls hundreds of adults and over the years has had more than 6,000 students. Its aim is an informed laity. Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, minister of the church, who with Dr. Howard Ferrin, now chancellor of Barrington College, began the school, reports that most of the Park Street members who are now vitally interested in studying the Bible have attended the evening school.

This program of weekday adult Christian education exists primarily for persons who are employed during the day and who wish to build up their knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures. There are three classes of fifty-five minutes at each session of the school and also a chapel service. The basis of instruction is two-fold: first, the curriculum must be Bible-centered, with the primary emphasis on the content of the Bible; second, the curriculum must exhibit uniformity and also diversity in order to maintain both continuity and interest. Courses are given in Old Testament survey, New Testament survey, Bible doctrine, and principles of Christian education. There are also electives. At a closing rally each year three types of certificates are given: the evening school certificate for successful completion of each course, the Sunday school teacher’s certificate for two years of class work, and the Bible student’s certificate for three years of work.

Although the school reaches far beyond the parent church (students in the current registration of approximately two hundred represent ninety-three churches), its administration is under Park Street Church, whose assistant minister, the Rev. Paul E. Toms, serves as dean. There is also an advisory board composed of interested Christian leaders who help direct the school, which is supported by enrollment fees.

So successful is the Boston Evening School of the Bible that it will be expanded to include an enlarged curriculum, afternoon classes, branches in suburban areas, and special sections for college and university students.

An adult weekday Christian education program closely linked to the Sunday school program is that of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. This large inner-city church, founded in 1778, had a peak Sunday school enrollment of 1,589 in 1925. For thirty-seven years the enrollment declined, until four years ago it was less than 600. Then the minister and session began to restructure the whole educational program. A key factor in the new program of this downtown church was the concerted effort to reach couples with young children. Special training courses were introduced and required for all Sunday school teachers. In three years the long decline in the Sunday school was reversed, and this when there were fewer people within walking distance of the church than ever before. Today the Sunday school numbers over 800.

Out of this revival of the Sunday school has come renewed interest in the study of the Scriptures throughout the congregation, leading to the organization of an Adult School of Christian Education, meeting on a week night. The schedule includes a cafeteria dinner, a brief chapel time, and two fifty-minute class periods. Generally, four courses are presented twice each evening. Subjects of these have included Bible book studies, biblical theology, archaeology and the Bible, the major cults, missions, the Bible and modern theological trends, the Bible and our present crises, and the Bible and marriage. Each year more than 400 adults have attended these courses.

In his evaluation, the minister, Dr. Robert Lamont, points out that this educational renewal has come about without a professionally trained director of Christian education. Laymen are providing dedicated leadership. Important results include small Bible-study groups meeting in homes in almost every major part of Pittsburgh. Of these informal, lay-led groups, Dr. Lamont says, “Their influence and outreach is beyond description. I suppose there are more copies of Bible commentaries and modern translations of the Scriptures being used by our people than in any other church of similar size.” In recent years, some forty young people from the church and Sunday school have gone into full-time Christian service. Many lives have been changed, teen-agers have been grounded in the great centralities of the Scripture in preparation for college, family life has been strengthened, and the 2,200-member congregation has been spiritually quickened.

That a church does not have to be large in order to venture into weekday adult Christian education is shown by the Hyde Park (Long Island) Baptist Church. In this suburban church of 260 members, the program centers in home Bible-study groups, sponsored by the church and its minister. At present twelve such groups meet weekly from September to June (and some continue during the summer). The groups are small and are under lay leadership. All but two meet in homes, most in the evenings but some, attended by women, in the mornings or afternoons. Groups are Bible-centered and continue for as long as two hours. The method is that of discussion, with the leader staying in the background. Leaders are chosen by the pastor on the basis of depth of Christian commitment and consistent Christian living as well as knowledge of the Scriptures. The pattern is to study Bible books and major Bible themes. Always the aim is to apply biblical truth to personal, business and professional, and community life.

The pastor, the Rev. Bruce Jackson, reports a raising of the level of Christian discipleship and understanding of the Scriptures in his church. When there is a call for some special service in the congregation or community, he finds that it is usually members of the home Bible-study groups who volunteer.

The small-group home-study approach is a simple and practical way of developing a more biblically informed and more deeply committed laity. Reports are that it is being used throughout the country (see “New Neighborhood Project: Bible Study,” by James A. Adair, Eternity, July, 1964). While it has drawbacks, such as the possibility of unproductive discussion and unsound interpretations of Scripture, adequate pastoral supervision and careful choice of leaders can guard against these. All in all, home Bible-study groups, through their very informality and spontaneity, are an important development. And they have a significant parallel. As George N. Patterson, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S correspondent in Hong Kong, reported (“Christianity Behind the Bamboo Curtain.” July 16, 1965), many believers in Red China are meeting in their homes, where their Christian life is centered around group Bible study.

For over twenty-seven years the First Presbyterian Church of Schenectady, New York, has had an effective program for teaching adults. Known simply as “Doctrine Classes,” it began with eight couples, mostly elders and their wives, meeting for two hours twice monthly with assignments under the instruction of the pastor, Dr. Herbert Mekeel. Ten years later there were more than 100 couples divided into two groups. Later, short-term classes were developed in many subjects, among them books or themes of the Bible, insights into Bible teaching from the viewpoint of scientists who are committed Christians (because of the proximity of the General Electric Company, the church membership includes a considerable number of scientists and engineers), personal evangelism, missions, music as related to worship, home relationships, cults, and archaeology. In all courses the constant emphasis is on what the Bible says. Attendance at the various classes ranges from seven (in Greek) to 175. Through the years outstanding teachers have come to give regular instruction. There have also been special classes for Sunday school teachers.

Especially significant are the results of adult Christian education in this church with a current membership of about 575. Many who have been in the doctrine classes have become pastors, missionaries, and other full-time Christian workers. The total number who have gone into full-time Christian work from the First Church of Schenectady stands at about 100. The program has also led to a noteworthy rise in missionary giving. Daughter churches have sprung up, one of them now larger than the mother church. Lay preachers have been developed and have supplied churches without ministers or filled in as substitutes. Other outgrowths include a program of weekly visits to the county jail, the county home, and the Utica Mental Hospital and city hospitals, and participation in the work of the International Friends.

One of the most promising agencies for adult weekday Bible study is Growth By Groups. Operating under the control of local churches but sponsored by a central organization that supplies study materials, this movement is the result of ten years’ research and experimentation to find a way to train laymen in discipleship and personal witness within the framework of the local church program. The first group began five years ago at the Memorial Baptist Church of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. With the number of groups doubling every year, Growth by Groups is now represented in 500 churches across America. It is undenominational and thus far has found its largest response in mainline denominations, notably Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian.

Those who want to go further in their Christian growth and experience are given the tools to dig into Scripture at home, and they meet in weekly fellowship groups to share their results. Groups are kept small—four to eight each—and the leadership rotates each week among the group members. Techniques of group dynamics, inductive Bible study, conversational prayer, and leadership training are woven into the program to make the groups self-sustaining.

To belong to a group, a person must commit himself to a life of spiritual discipline for a minimum of ten weeks by (1) maintaining a devotional period each day in which his life can be renewed through prayer and study of the Scripture, (2) seeking the help of other Christians of like mind in the fellowship of a small action group in which mutual encouragement can be found, (3) seeking the renewal of the church by making his group the seed-plot for other groups within his church and other churches in the community, and (4) finding creative ways to express the Christian faith in personal and corporate witness in the world outside the church.

Group members are obligated to help one another keep the covenant. For those who wish to continue after ten weeks (about 70 per cent do) there is a long-range program of advanced study. By the time the year is out, group members have mastered basic techniques for studying every kind of literature in the Bible completely on their own. And what is more important, the Word of God has in many cases come alive for members of the groups.

To forestall problems of group study, the program includes such features as regular group inventory quizzes, retreats, church control of the group, and suggestions on how the minister may derive the most benefit for his church out of this kind of adult study.

Pastors of churches active in Growth by Groups have spoken highly of the results of the program. According to the Rev. Walter Gilliland of the First Methodist Church of Corry, Pennsylvania, “Growth by Groups has been a blessing to our church. It is an excellent method for the establishment and continuation of small groups within the church for the purpose of studying the Word of God and encouraging Christian growth through a sharing process.”

Says the Rev. Franklyn Vial, minister of the Memorial Baptist Church of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, “A whole new generation of leadership is available in our church as a result of our adult study groups.”

The Rev. Dirk Nelson, director of Christian education at the Manoa Presbyterian Church in Manoa, Pennsylvania, explains his experience with Growth by Groups this way: “Our small groups have done more to create an interest in and concern for growth and commitment … and a context for real person-to-person fellowship around the Scripture than anything I have tried.…”

Dr. Roy J. Fish, director of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, experimented with Growth by Groups while a pastor in Fairborn, Ohio. He had this to say: “I observed an unusual growth in the lives of those who carried through with the program. Our young people especially found the creative study of the Scripture exciting.…”

Growth by Groups is so structured as to be available only through the local church. Thus each member of a group feels an integral part of the larger fellowship of his church, and the larger fellowship of the church is helped to recognize the need for a weekday program of adult Christian education. (The headquarters of the movement is Christian Outreach, Box 115, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania 19006.)

An example of a good-sized central-city church in the process of developing a highly structured house-church program is the First Presbyterian Church of Rockford, Illinois. Taking as a pattern “the church in the house” of early Christianity, Dr. James B. Adamson and his assistant, Rev. Robert C. Linthicum, in cooperation with the church’s session, explored how their church could more effectively proclaim Christ today by developing an informed and involved laity.

This year twenty future “lay ministers” are participating in a House-Church Training Institute. In preparation for their ministry, they are undergoing two years of special discipleship. The program consists of six courses, each meeting for eight sessions. Two courses are on the Old Testament and two on the New Testament, and they are followed by a course in contemporary society and a course in group sensitivity and awareness. There are weekly assignments and examinations in each course.

There is also an Outreach Committee, a group of lay people who are assuming the responsibility of evangelism and thus indirectly asserting the primacy of lay evangelism. Eventually this committee will begin actual training of lay evangelists in the house-churches and will coordinate the house-church program of verbal witnessing.

In addition, there is the Church and Society Committee, which expresses the belief that Christ witnessed to God’s love by his acts of compassion as well as by his atoning death. This committee is developing the portion of the program by which the house-churches will witness to their faith in the social problems of the city.

When the program is fully operative in 1967, groups of twenty to twenty-five members of the church will be meeting every two weeks in each ward of the city. At each house-church meeting, trained lay ministers will lead the people in intensive inductive Bible study which will then be related to the people’s responsibility to witness. At least half of each meeting will be devoted to planning and mobilizing the house-church either for evangelism or for social action for the next two weeks. Mr. Linthicum, reporting on the project, stresses that the whole purpose is to develop an instructed laity through whom the Gospel can be effectively presented to the city of Rockford.

These programs of weekday adult education are by no means unique, for a good many other churches are carrying on similar projects. Yet the programs described are representative of what can be done. Despite their differences, they have certain things in common. They all represent the initiative of the local church. (Even Growth by Groups, though related to a central organization, depends on local initiative.) They reflect ministerial leadership committed to the proclamation of the Gospel and the teaching of the Bible; hearing the Word expounded in the pulpit creates a desire for more knowledge of the Word. Opportunities for lay leadership and lay expression are encouraged. All the programs are bibliocentric. Changed lives and ultimate dedication to full-time Christian vocations result from these programs, which have as their purpose training the people in the Word of God.

Programs like these developed by ministers and congregations should not be taken to imply dissatisfaction with the educational leadership of the denominations. Rather, the inference seems valid that when a church is really imbued with zeal for teaching its people the Bible, it may go on to develop a weekday program suited to its own needs. On the other hand, local pioneering of this kind is all too rare. Thus denominational programs and leadership have their place. But they cannot succeed without ministers and church boards whose hearts burn with a vision of adult Christian education. Programs and curricula, however well thought out and expertly developed, must be accompanied by committed, Spirit-led leadership in the local church. Always there must be the honest awareness that, as Milton so poignantly said in Lycidas, “the hungry sheep look up and are not fed,” and that among the hungry sheep are multitudes of adults who want to know the Scriptures and who will study them if only they are shown how.

Protestants face a critical dropout problem. An appallingly high number of young people stop going to church and Sunday school, and their interest in spiritual matters declines drastically.

This raises some disturbing questions. What causes youth to lose interest in spiritual things? Is it lack of home training? Then why are there dropouts from Christian homes? Are church programs that lack youth appeal to blame? Then why do some churches with many activities for their younger members still lose them? At what age does the retreat from church and Sunday school, and from such basic Christian disciplines as Bible reading and prayer, begin? Are dropouts permanently lost to Christianity and the church? Is this problem faced only by evangelicals, or are churches of other theological persuasion also confronted with it?

Such queries stem from more than curiosity. They reflect a concern for the total outreach of Christianity and a burden to meet the needs of youth in the critical adolescent years. For a church or Sunday school to broaden its base and increase its outreach, it has to do more than attract new people; it must also retain those it already has. If it loses some while gaining others, at best it is at a standstill.

The first question is, then: What causes youth to drop out of Sunday school and church? Of several possible answers, possibly the chief one is that Christian training and encouragement in the home are inadequate. Everyone knows that parental example plays a tremendous role in determining the character of young people. Yet too few parents seem to take this seriously enough. Easy-going adjustment to the common, everyday evasions and the prevalent lack of self-restraint vitiate the God-given role of fathers and mothers in the spiritual nurture of youth.

A recent survey of 600 Sunday school dropouts in Topeka, Kansas, revealed that only a handful came from homes where one or both parents attended Sunday school (“How to Build a Better Sunday School,” by Harold Garner, Moody Press, 1965). On the other hand, 90 per cent of those young people who remained in school, progressing through the various departments, had parents who were active church members. The Sunday schools seem unable to hold children if home support is lacking.

As for evangelical churches, a study of their dropouts made in 1962 by the National Sunday School Association revealed that 70 per cent of 331 teen-age quitters were from families where at least one parent was not a Christian (Link, Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., 1963). And one minister with many years of pastoral experience commented in this survey that high school youth from merely nominal Christian homes are as likely to leave church as those from non-Christian homes.

However, church activity and Christian dedication are not enough. Parents must also show understanding and love for their adolescent children and deep personal interest in them. If a Christian parent shows by his actions that he is not really interested in his teen-age son or daughter, if he constantly nags at him and argues with him, that parent’s example of zealous church activity may do little to keep his child in church. Moreover, forcing teen-agers to attend numerous church services every week against their will sometimes causes them to rebel against attending any. Indeed, parental hypocrisy was the second main reason for quitting church given by young people in the NSSA survey.

Are there some dropouts from homes where parents are active, dedicated Christians and where there is real understanding and communication between parents and adolescents? There are indeed. For other factors beside the home contribute to the churches’ loss of teen-agers. Surely one of these is the failure of the church program to interest youth and to relate the Bible to their needs.

“I got bored with the Sunday school class. It did not speak to my needs,” said an Indiana high school graduate who comes from a Christian home. A Mississippi dropout remarked: “I don’t feel free in class to say what I really think.” “Until I was in junior high school, I loved Sunday school,” a nineteen-year-old boy stated, “but from then on it was just so much repetition.” Lois, a sixteen-year-old, said, “For the last two years I’ve had such dull teachers. The lesson was lectured in a monotonous voice.” A California boy commented that churches “do not deal with nor face the real problems of living.” Many high school young people also complain that their teachers are unprepared.

One hundred Lutheran youths, forty-one of whom were dropouts, gave reasons like these confirming the other surveys: “It was uninteresting”; “class was boring”; “I didn’t learn anything”; “it was the same old thing”; “we were never challenged to think” (Interaction, May, 1965). In other words, the teacher makes or breaks a class. It is his clear duty to be prepared and to make the lessons interesting by encouraging lively discussions, by relating the Bible to life, and by avoiding needless repetition. An eighteen-year-old mused, “I suppose it would take a keen teacher to satisfy a bunch of high school kids.” How right he is!

As for church services, the dropouts questioned by the NSSA complained, surprisingly enough, that they were too informal. (The churches represented were evangelical.) And, as would be expected, they also said that pastors were not preaching on subjects that appeal to young people.

In discussing youth meetings, the church-deserters said the meetings were unplanned and disorderly (a judgment revealing the adolescent need for a structure of authority), dealt with uninteresting subjects, had poor adult leadership, lacked variety, and were deficient in serious Bible study. Here again, irrelevance shows up as the cause of fading interest. Not surprisingly, there is at this point a parallel with a major cause of public school dropouts. As a statement from the head of the Maryland State Department of Education puts it, “Young people who drop out of high school see little relationship between the activities of school and the lives they now lead or expect to live.”

Secularizing influences in colleges and universities may also contribute to the problem. The presence of other family members in Sunday school and church encourages youth attendance. More than half of the forty-one Lutheran dropouts—but only 5 per cent of those still in Sunday school—reported that no other members of their families attended Sunday school. When a young person goes away to college, he is no longer under encouraging family influences. And the busy college schedule may tend to crowd out Sunday school and church attendance.

Moreover, campus opinion on this matter may be unfavorable; many college students seem to feel that church attendance is beneath them and that they can get along very well without it. Such attitudes are nourished by professors who downgrade Christianity, or fellow students who ridicule those who stand up for Christian convictions, or textbooks in which supernatural religion is questioned. Christian young people in college (and in high school too) may also be swayed by the prevalent materialism (“Get all you can while the getting’s good”), or by humanistic self-sufficiency (“We don’t need God; we’re doing O.K. without him”), or even by immorality and fatalism (“Eat, drink, and live as you please, because you may die sooner than you think”).

With such philosophies constantly put before the minds of young people, a gradual dulling of the spiritual senses is likely, even among Christian youths. For those already spiritually weak, the results may be disastrous.

Still another factor in the problem of teen-age dropouts is the nature of adolescence itself. Surveys reveal that the most common age for young people to quit church is sixteen. Adolescents are trying out their independence. Their desire for being on their own, for making their own decisions, brings about an overt rejection of authority, although inwardly they may still crave it. “Young people,” one writer has explained, “are trying to determine their own set of values apart from the family group. Sometimes they consider the church just an extension of the family control. So in their bid for complete freedom they often feel they must break with the church too.”

The second major question in this matter of spiritual dropouts is: Do dropouts return to church? Seeking an answer to this, I surveyed 253 young adults of five denominations in the greater Chicago area. One out of five reported he had dropped out of church at one time. The average period for staying out was five years, though the time ranged from less than a year to fourteen years. Thus it may be concluded that some dropouts do return.

Why did these return? Twelve of the thirty-nine who answered this question said they returned because they “got saved,” or “became a Christian,” or “got right with the Lord.” Seven reported an awareness of a spiritual need or a renewed interest in church. Six young married couples cited interest in providing spiritual training for their children. Four returned because of the influence of a fiancé or spouse. The conclusion is obvious but important: There is a correlation between church attendance and a personal relation to God through Christ. Evangelism is thus one of the most important answers to church dropouts.

Do the more liberal as well as the evangelical churches face the dropout problem? According to the NSSA survey, one out of six teen-agers in evangelical churches quits. But J. Edgar Hoover has reportedly stated that seven out of eight teen-agers in America leave the churches, including evangelical, liberal, Catholic, and Jewish congregations. This suggests that liberal churches may have an even larger share of dropouts than evangelical churches.

Helen Spaulding, in Youth Look at the Church (Bureau of Research and Survey, Department of Youth Work, National Council of Churches), states that nearly half of 1,311 youth and young adults interviewed dropped out. She gives the following reasons for dropouts: Church was boring and unchallenging; young adults had marriage and family responsibilities; the youth or young adult organizations were geared to single persons; the dropouts’ spouses were not interested in church; the hours of employment interfered with church activities; student activities vied for time and interest; the young people became too adult for the youth group; the youth in church were not friendly. Familiar reasons, all of them, and similar to those voiced by respondents to the NSSA survey!

The final question we must ask is: How can dropouts be prevented? I believe that we desperately need to do these things:

First, we must rethink our ministry to families. Without the influence of Christian parents, much of our effort to retain potential dropouts may fail. For too long many churches have neglected one of their most vital responsibilities—that of ministering to families, of helping parents fulfill their responsibility of providing Christian education in the home. Other churches might well follow the example of a Chicago church that is conducting after-church Sunday night forums on the problems of parents with teen-age children.

Again, our educational ministry to youth in the dangerous dropout years must be upgraded. Sunday school teachers and youth workers are needed who are spiritually dedicated, interested in youth, and willing to spend time with them. We must have adults who can teach the Bible enthusiastically and creatively and who can relate it to the problems of today’s adolescents. Bible study sessions must be brain-ticklers, not sedatives. Sunday school teachers must challenge high school youth to interact with the truth. The day when young people would respond to a merely entertaining youth program is over; they are asking for programs with intellectual depth and sparkle.

Young people yearn for opportunities to serve and to feel themselves a part of the church. Any dropout prevention campaign must encourage their active participation in such things as church discussions, choirs, athletic teams, and community service projects.

Finally, we must develop a more aggressive ministry to college youth. We should mail them the weekly church bulletin, write to them, urge those at home to pray for them. They should be encouraged to become active in a church near their college and in a Christian fellowship group on campus—Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, or their denominational student ministry. We should fortify their faith by providing them with good Christian literature on apologetics, Bible doctrines, Christian living and service, and witnessing. And churches in college communities should maintain an active Christian witness to college students, welcome them to all services and activities, and show them hospitality in the homes of the members.

The waning interest of many young people in spiritual matters can be reversed. But to do so will take a far greater measure of careful planning and self-sacrificial service than the churches have yet put forth.

TREE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW

Dropping your spent leaves

On the grass

Nor brooding over things

That pass;

Brushing the sky’s

Illimitable height,

Sun-crowned by day,

Starlit by night,

You stand—God’s witness

Of grace, given

Firm ground whereon to grow

Toward heaven.

O towering Tree!

Whose roots run deep

To reach life’s spring,

Whose branches sweep

Up to light’s very source.…

So I

Stand tall too

With thoughts lifted high

Gazing where boughs

Of a great tree

Frame windows

Of eternity.

M. WHITCOMB HESS