In Communist lands the notion is widespread (totalitarian dictators foster it) that modern man—simply because he knows science—can no longer believe in the supernatural, least of all in Jesus Christ. But many professional scientists recognize the cliché “either science or Christianity” as slick propaganda serviceable to dialectical materialists. Since evidence is sparse for such arbitrary dogmas, rationalists understandably speak of science rather than of sheer speculation to bolster their prejudices. Such equating of science and anti-supernaturalism, however, has widely confused the student world and encouraged religious skepticism.

All the more gratifying, therefore, is the bold proclamation of faith in Christ and his Gospel by men of scientific learning and stature. Nothing is needed more urgently than a coordination of the powers of science with the principles of true religion and morality. Science has power to destroy civilization; Christ alone has power to give it light and life. In this issue devout men of science declare their faith in God and in the Saviour.

What if machines replace brains?

Great changes are taking place in the Western world as technology comes to full fruit. Machines are replacing men and doing their jobs better and faster. Chemistry is transforming the production of foods and fibers. Automation has led to machines that operate other machines. “Cybernation” is the term used to describe the next generation in machine-development—devices that replace men’s brains as well as their hands. Whole categories of jobs are being wiped out. Before all this is finished, man’s life will have undergone one of the most radical alterations the world has seen.

As always when men think about the future, speculation is rife. Dire predictions are made and desperate remedies proposed. Some of this is echoed in the Church. It is proposed that we should accept as inevitable a society in which large numbers will be permanently unemployed. The incentives for working—income and the respect of the community—should be removed. The idle should, we are told, be guaranteed an income, and the “popular Protestant value concept” that assigns dignity to work and not to idleness should be changed. The vision is held out of a society in which 2 per cent of the population will produce all the needed goods and services, while the rest serve principally as consumers.

To many, however, this is no promise of utopia but a threat of hell. Sociologist Eric Fromm fears that we can now develop societies “in which the inhabitants are well fed and well clad, having their wishes satisfied and not having wishes that cannot be satisfied; automatons, who follow without force, are guided without leaders, who make machines that act like men and produce men that act like machines …” (“The Present Human Condition,” in The American Scholar Reader, Atheneum, 1960, p. 390). Fromm hopes we can do better than this. If we avoid the worst dangers of our changing society, perhaps we can achieve the end of “humanoid history,” which he defines as “the phase in which man has not become fully human,” the state of all history until now. Which will it be? A life that is fully human (or more nearly so, if Fromm is too optimistic)? Or one that is increasingly humanoid?

What does the biblical faith have to say to this world in transition, poised between human and humanoid? It has the only word that will make any difference. Life will be no more than humanoid unless we know what man is. This is not a question of technology or of sociology; it is a biblical question.

That is why the Church cannot respond to this hour with a smattering of technical jargon and feelings of justice and compassion. Justice and compassion are noble virtues, but not exclusively Christian. They are, moreover, difficult to put into practice. Compassion not informed by a biblical view of man may devour the people it hopes to save.

I once knew a young man who was crippled by polio at the end of his senior year in high school. His mother, a loving and compassionate woman, devoted herself completely to him. Her life revolved around the cripple in the upstairs bedroom. There was nothing he could want that she would not get for him. Soon, of course, there was nothing she could get for him that he wanted. But she forgave him his bitterness and despondency, for who would not be despondent in the face of such outrageous misfortune?

Then the boy’s mother died. His father loved him, too, but had a different idea of what a human being is. He forced the boy out of bed and into a wheelchair. He badgered him into enrolling at the state university. The head of the rehabilitation department there was equally loving and pitiless. The result was that the young man got a degree and a job, married a fellow student, and soon had a home and family of his own.

Both parents loved the boy. But his mother saw him only as an object of love. His father saw him more biblically, as a child of God needing usefulness and vocation to be fully human. The mother said, “I love him.” The father asked, “What is a man?”

It is this kind of profound question that Christians must not only raise but also answer, and answer biblically. In fact, it is shallow and potentially harmful to speak of the implications of technology for the Church without raising these questions:

1. What is the relation between man’s dignity as man and his useful vocation? Before we talk about changing the idea that work gives dignity to man, we should ask whether work and human dignity have any deeper connection than custom. If there is none, we can talk sensibly about the right to an income and dignity for those who do not work. We can even rejoice in the opportunity of men to be free of labor. Much of our experience, however, has indicated the opposite. It is fairly well agreed that jobs and sheltered workshops do something for the handicapped that custodial care cannot do. If there is no connection between dignity and work, the difference between the way of life chosen by King Farouk and that chosen by President Kennedy—two rich men who were guaranteed great incomes and could make their own decision about work—is simply a matter of taste. Were this all, we would be quite wrong to respect the one and not the other. The Christian must ask what the Bible says about man, whether employment degrades him, is neutral, or is essential to his character as man. Then we can decide whether custodial care in the age of cybernation will satisfy men—or should satisfy them.

2. What is the economic meaning of the fact that man is a sinner? Only the Christian has a reason to take sin seriously. Civilization is possible, not because man is good, but because it encourages behavior more socially useful than man would ordinarily choose. Every society depends on a combination of incentive and coercion. The balance between the two can be changed; but if their total force is lessened, then the society begins to dissolve. When either incentive or coercion is decreased, the other must be strengthened to give a shape to the social life of sinful man. The Soviet Union provides an interesting example. The end of the Stalin era brought a marked lessening in the use of coercion in that society. As a result, there has appeared an equally marked increase in the use of incentive, such as increases in consumer goods, more individual benefit to farmers, the introduction of the profit concept in industry. Because man is a sinner, the reverse will be true if the two principal incentives in our society, wage and status, are removed. Fewer carrots mean more use of the stick. Both incentive and coercion are to a degree degrading to man, as man is to a degree degraded. But that does not mean there is no choice between the two. Christians have a clear preference for incentive over coercion. If they think they can get along without either, they have not heard that man has left Eden.

3. What is the essential human quality implied in man’s creation in the image of God? This is the question that must guide the search for new jobs. We should look first for work in which man will be employed as man. Until now, survival has demanded that man be employed as less than man. Before the Industrial Revolution, all but a few men were employed as trainable animals, to perform manual labor. Machines gradually took over these jobs, but they replaced them with a different kind of work. Men were then employed as substitute machines—to make inspections, perform repetitive tasks, and compute. These jobs too are disappearing. Man is not needed as either animal or machine. But man is much more than either of these. He now can be employed as man, relating to other humans, offering understanding, response, and fellowship. It is here that employment is growing rapidly; there are more nursery school teachers, fishing guides, shoe salesmen, nurses’ aids, social workers, and airline stewardesses than in the past. We can now afford to employ human beings as human beings. But we need to ask the biblical meaning of this.

4. For what is man responsible beyond survival? Across the centuries, the proportion of man’s time needed for survival has steadily decreased. At the dawn of history, man spent all his waking hours in the quest for food. When he gave up the roving life of the hunter and became a farmer (a change until now perhaps the most drastic in man’s history), he had a measure of free time and developed his first civilization. It is a mistake to speak of this free time only as leisure time. The agricultural Indians of Central and South America used it to raise a great civilization. It will be our own fault if we simply bring shuffleboard to a new peak of development.

So far as possible, Christians have a responsibility for guiding the new society technology is certain to create. A non-working society divorced from incentives may be possible, as a few prophets believe. But the Christian must judge this possible society in the light of his knowledge of man. He must help turn it in directions that will enhance man’s life as man. Significantly, the prophecies that chronic unemployment will unavoidably result from the technological revolution are somewhat like the predictions Marx made about the Industrial Revolution and the accumulation of capital. This does not mean that the prophets are Marxists; indeed, nothing could be farther from their thoughts. What it does mean is that they are repeating a mistake that has been made before. Marx spurned the Christian view of what man is. As a result, what he thought was a prescription for fuller life was in fact a sentence to humanoid existence. But there is no excuse for Christians’ making this mistake. They of all people ought to know what man is.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

“Wherever industry spreads, the Church usually does not.…”

An analysis of the “strange mystique” of the technological age

It is a painful fact that wherever industry spreads, the Church usually does not spread. In Britain the smaller community of the rural area expands into a bigger population in the town, and that population does not have a church-centered life. This is equally true of the red-belt around Paris, where the worker-priests sweated from 1943 until the Vatican ordered them to cease in 1954 (after which some complied, twenty got married, and numbers of others carried on quietly). It is true also of the African in the copper-belt and the other industrialized parts of Africa, even though there he may still be a churchgoer in the rural set-up to which he returns.

The Church is still seeking to reach a stratum of society that has never been effectively reached in proportion to its size in the community. In the mid-nineteenth century the Church of England said, If only we had the Methodist free type of service we could reach the industrial workers; the Methodists said, If only we had the Church of England parochial system we could reach them; the Congregationalists said, We think God must have called us to the middle classes, since only they come to our churches. Yet Bishop Edward Wickham points out in his book Encounter with Modern Society that industry is the basis of modern society. If we wish to influence men, we must influence this fundamental influence to which men are subjected. How?

One essential is that we must not be afraid of technology. Some writers give the impression that technology has rubbed out man’s sense of the “vertical.” But I think they are “falling for” technology as men fell for the Darwinian theory of evolution, which everything had to fit or men couldn’t believe any more. Nels Ferré has been quoted in this magazine as saying that “as a description of method, how creation took place, evolution had much merit, but as explanation it is sheer faith, an incredible mystique. And yet hard-headed thinkers fell prey to such a gullible faith in the name of science. As an ideology, educators themselves are now beginning to see the stark and startling nature of this faith, but in the meantime education trained away from the church countless millions, who swallowed this mystique of truth” (italics supplied). And the mid-twentieth century is producing a new “mystique of truth” in terms of technology and cybernetics (the employment of machines in place of muscles, and computers and the like in place of human brains to guide them). If the Lord Jesus tarries, scholars will be explaining in the mid-twenty-first century how men in our era thought of the technological age in terms of this “mystique of truth.” It is no such thing. Technology has nothing to say to the manager of the automated factory whose wife dies in her forties.

Industry has tremendous power. We read in Colossians that God upholds all things by the word of his power, and the upholding agent is Christ, the agent of that power. The Ford assembly line would stop more quickly if the Lord Jesus were to withdraw his power than ever it would if someone were to shout, “All out!” The organist at my former church was horrified because we put a model diesel train in the sanctuary for our industrial harvest thanksgiving (he seemed to think it was somehow a defilement), but what is more religious about two or three cabbages and half a dozen apples?

Looking Under The Mat

We must not forget the soft underbelly of technology—the technologically displaced. A recent BBC program on industrial efficiency showed how slow we British are, and what we have to learn from America. And under the mat, where the lazy sweep the dirt, was hidden “the other America,” in which, we may deduce from surveys by Michael Harrington (1962) and the Saturday Evening Post (December, 1963), something like 40 million people live in poverty. This technological age needs the Gospel and the doctrine of a Holy God who requires justice, as any age before ours did.

A Christian worker remarked that what the working people needed was another dose of unemployment. Really? Did they go to church when there was mass unemployment? When I collected my father’s outstanding dole money from our local labor exchange a few days after his death, I didn’t notice that the line was full of fellow Christians. America has shown that affluence helps churchgoing (although material betterment and spiritual betterment are not to be confused). This does not please the Bishop of Woolwich. It pleases me. Rightly treated, affluence may yet drive its soul-starved slaves to church in Britain; and if the Gospel is preached, some of them may be saved. It would not be hard at times to gain the impression that people who have always known a good measure of comfort find it somehow indecent that working men have such things as cars, television sets, and refrigerators: let’s be careful of this, too. Dr. Zweig in his sociological study Worker in an Affluent Society has shown that the vast majority of those whom he interviewed in a car factory and in an electrical lamp works held to belief in God. Much that is said about modern unbelieving man lacks careful sociological documentation, for it tends to reflect the awful doubts of the speakers rather than of those spoken about!

The relevance of the Christian Gospel is shown by its social implications. H. L. Ellison pointed out (The Churchman, December, 1960) that one of the expectations of the Messiah’s coming was social righteousness. He said that the Jew, when faced with Jesus of Nazareth today, is hindered by the lack of concern for this in the Church. That same lack has hindered the industrial masses, too—and evangelicals have this matter at their fingertips because they take seriously the Old Testament and the whole biblical revelation of a Holy God who requires justice in society because he is just. God cares about justice for the widow and the fatherless and, we may add, the old-age pensioner. He cares about right prices (see Amos and proper weights). He is the original inspector of weights and measures. When workers are not paid properly, their cry, James tells us, is heard in heaven, though it may pass the ears of the boardroom en route. Paul urges the Colossians to pay their slaves properly. He exhorts the Ephesian workers not to be clock-watchers, or crawlers (men-pleasers working when the boss is looking), and he advises employers that their boss is in heaven. When evangelicals lay hold on the element of social righteousness in a new way, people will see its relevance.

In his book The Christian in an Industrial Society, H. F. R. Catherwood says, “Society cannot be redeemed, but it can be reformed according to God’s law.” We need a theology of work, too. We need to see that there is nothing more religious about teaching than there is about industrial activity. How many of us are likely to encourage our young folk to what we might call “nicer” jobs, and away from industry?

The relevance of the Gospel is shown because it meets my deepest need. What I have in common with the highest in the land is sin, the great leveler. But others must know God has cleansed me from sin. They must know I have needed the cleansing. Do congregations know that their pastor needs cleansing, or do they think, “He wouldn’t have the thoughts I have …”? He does, and they ought to know that he does, and that he is repenting. I know they haven’t much sense of sin in some of our work places, but it can come. I think we need this awareness more in the Church. We are a fellowship of sinners, albeit redeemed sinners; but because we are regarded in some sense as a fellowship of saints, a lot of people feel our company is no place for them. Bonhoeffer is right when he says that the Church should be the place where people are allowed to fail.

An English bishop said recently in a Sunday newspaper that people are no longer afraid of death. I don’t know where he does his homework. As a parish minister I am not aware of any real disappearance of the fear of death. The relevance of the Gospel is further shown by its triumphant answer to death in the name of the Crucified who conquered death.

Problems Of Proclamation

Among the hindrances to the proclamation of the Gospel in industrial areas is language. In October, 1963, an Anglican weekly featured an article, “Hands Off the Prayer Book.” It claimed to prove that the majority of people do not want much change; but of those who had expressed views, the chief age group was forty to fifty-nine.

None will deny that some of the sentiments expressed in our Anglican worship (rightly, I believe) need careful explanation. In another Anglican newspaper a curate whom God had blessed in work among tough teen-agers (some of whom have been led to Christ) said that when he got them to Evening Prayer and began, “Dearly beloved brethren, the scripture moveth us in sundry places …,” one of them said, “What’s happened to old Jack?” We desperately need language people can understand; yet a major Church of England conference regularly begins with a service in Latin.

Another difficulty concerns ministerial personnel. Jesus did not have the attachment to the academic ministry that we have. His disciples were chosen from a genuine sociological cross section. It is said that Bishop Selwyn hindered the work among the Maoris of New Zealand because he insisted on academic standards, thus ruling Maoris out of the ministry. That emphasis has had the same effect on the Church’s outreach to the working masses of Britain.

I am sure that Bishop Wickham is right when he says the actual encounter of the Church with the world of industry must be by laymen. And they will earn the right to speak by their social concern. In the Church of England we do not really respect laymen; and here some evangelicals seem as bad as our priestly brethren. As the laity get much more responsibility, including a share in the area of doctrine (such matters are at present dealt with by bishops and clergy), they will become more accustomed to shouldering their burden for witness in the world. My warden changes places with me at alternate meetings of the parochial church council, and I join the church on the “floor.” This helps to put things in their right perspective. There is much more that needs to be done. We will never meet the challenge of proclamation of the Gospel in industry until we practice what we preach in the matter of the priesthood of all believers.

One last thing. I believe that if we can get people from the industrial sphere of society to hear Billy Graham when he comes to Britain in 1966, many of them will hear the still small Voice speaking forgiveness of sins and eternal life through his Name. And if the posters and publicity that come out seem gaudy to my fellow clergy, if they feel they might not want them on their church notice boards, they might remember that such posters are not designed for the dear old lady who has sat faithfully in her pew for the past fifty years: they are designed for the people who live in the gaudy, noisy world outside.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Things are stirring in the United Presbyterian Church, and it will be interesting to see how many cooks get a spoon in the broth. As is well known in the States, and perhaps increasingly known overseas, the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. presented a new confession, “The Confession of 1967,” to the General Assembly meeting in Columbus, Ohio, last May. Under the chairmanship of Professor Dowey of Princeton Theological Seminary, the committee had been at work for seven years drawing up this document. The action of the General Assembly was to receive this proposed new confession and to commend it to the church for a year of study. At next year’s General Assembly in Boston, a vote will be taken to say whether the confession is to be sent to the presbyteries for a vote. If this is done, the presbyteries, it is assumed, will vote favorably, and the confession will then became part of the church’s confessional standards.

During the year of study in which Presbyterians are now engaged, individuals and groups, particularly presbytery groups, will come up with suggestions for revising or amending the new confession. A Committee of Fifteen has been selected by the moderator, attorney William P. Thompson of Wichita, Kansas. This committee, under the chairmanship of Dr. W. Sherman Skinner of St. Louis, will review and study these suggestions and make recommendations to the 1966 General Assembly on “The Confession of 1967.” It is generally understood that the findings of Dr. Skinner’s committee need not have any greater weight than the weight of suggestions and recommendations, and quite possibly the confession as now written will be the confession on which the church will vote. It is apparent from the makeup of the Committee of Fifteen that Moderator Thompson made a sincere effort to have every shade of theological opinion represented on it. It is also apparent that he attempted to represent both laity and clergy and to include a cross section of the nation.

Some have questioned whether Dr. Skinner’s committee can finish its work in time for the next General Assembly. If the members do their work seriously, and if there is any measurable response from the church, they are faced with an almost insuperable task. In the first place, most of the presbyteries may be a little slow in getting under way. My own presbytery, having met in June, is still attempting to get some kind of a study committee going before the September meeting. This is proving a little difficult because of the vacation plans of both clergy and laity. Our moderator, for example, was not present at the June meeting because his vacation had already begun, and the appointment of the committee necessarily awaits his word. It is also likely that, with other vacations coming during the summer, little real study will be done before the September meeting. Assuming that this committee will not be ready to make any recommendations in September, we can reasonably guess that any action will be impossible until about November, and then only if the presbytery can reach a consensus on the recommendations of its own committee.

What I am trying to point out is that, if other presbyteries operate like this one, recommendations from presbyteries will begin to take firm shape very late in this calendar year. If we work from the other end, that is, from the next meeting of the General Assembly in May, we must keep in mind that the “Blue Book” has to be ready at least three weeks before the General Assembly and that material for this “Blue Book” has to be ready sometime in March. We can reasonably expect, therefore, that the pressure of this committee work will fall sometime between January 1 and March 15, 1966.

There are almost two hundred United Presbyterian presbyteries in the United States. Let us assume for the sake of argument that each comes up with at least one suggestion (and we suppose that if presbyteries look at the whole new confession, they may well come up with more than one). Can we picture what a committee of fifteen will do with 190 (or many more) suggestions and changes in the new confession? The time problem is aggravated by the possibility that variations of the same suggestion may come along to the committee from many different presbyteries. If, for example, ten presbyteries make one suggestion on one point of the confession and these suggestions offer the shadings of the variety of the minds that have worked on them, and, if the Committee of Fifteen has to debate wordings as well as substance, we need no great imagination to see what kind of a task they face.

We are assuming throughout this that the committee will take its assignment seriously, and those of us who know Dr. Skinner know that his work will be faithful, concerned, and meticulous.

Taking the new confession seriously is the only way it can possibly be taken. Many concerned churchmen are convinced that the whole theological atmosphere of the new confession is going to give a new nature to the church. If this be true, and I for one think it is, then the Presbyterians are facing a new departure in their theological life. It seems to me, then, that the United Presbyterian Church is caught in a very serious bind, much more serious and much more basic than the time pressure on the Committee of Fifteen.

Professor Dowey has an excellent mind and excellent training, and he has been studying and teaching creeds, and all material relating thereto, at the seminary level for a long time. I doubt very much whether there are half a dozen men in our country as well versed in these matters as he. Anyone who has ever heard him speak on creeds or even talked with him on these things knows how well versed he is and how interesting and relevant he can make these matters appear.

But the Presbyterian bind is this: In a confessional church that also prides itself on its concern for an educated clergy and an intelligent laity, and that prides itself equally on its democratic (or, more exactly, republican) form of government, just how will judgments on the new confession be made? In a “representative” form of church government, we can do one of two things. We can turn over the decision on the new confession to the experts, admitting that it would take perhaps three years of study for most clergymen and ten years of study for most laymen to understand what is actually being said. The other choice is to take whatever time is necessary to do the serious study. This might make the “Confession of 1967” the “Confession of 1977.”

Unless Presbyterians are ready to turn their theology over to the experts (a Roman Catholic principle), then even by 1967 most Presbyterians will have to admit that they do not know enough (a) to put the Westminster Confession on the shelf with other confessions in the tradition, or (b) to pass judgment on the value of the new confession, or (c) to say that the new confession is better than Westminster.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

A statement on civil rights, the first ever made by the National Association of Free Will Baptists, calls on churches “to bring every person into a right relationship with God, regardless of race or national origin.” The statement was adopted last month by an overwhelming majority at the association’s annual convention, held in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The statement recognized “the right and privilege of the local church to conduct its own affairs in the area of human relations.” but added, “We recognize throughout the denomination there are human relations problems—we must learn to be tolerant.”

Free Will Baptists, known for their Arminian theological outlook, now number about 200,000. There are churches in some forty states, but they predominate in the South.

The civil rights resolution was drafted by a special committee set up at the start of the four-day convention by the denomination’s General Board. The committee was instructed to implement the principles of the statement in the work of the denominational agencies.

Hottest debate of the convention centered on a resolution to study relations of Free Will Baptists with “other associations, organizations, persons or institutions.” The resolution asked that a committee be named “to review the attitude of the National Association of Evangelicals, the ecumenical movement. Roman Catholicism, and the National Council of Churches.” It was defeated.

In Watertown, Wisconsin, delegates to the thirty-eighth biennial convention of the 358,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod received an overture for peace talks from Missouri Synod President Oliver D. Harms. The two synods have been at odds for several years. Wisconsin delegates turned the proposal over to their Commission on Doctrinal Matters, which asked for time to study developments at Missouri’s last convention.

In Estes Park, Colorado, General Conference Mennonites joined the protest over U. S. policy in Viet Nam (see “The Unsettling War,” p. 47). At their triennial sessions, the General Conference Mennoniles adopted a statement calling for negotiations to end the war in Viet Nam and to unify the country. Increased governmental economic aid was also suggested. The statement acknowledged, however, “the complex nature of the problem and the ambiguities involved.” The U. S. government was thanked for its efforts to negotiate a settlement and urged to “explore every possible means to end the war.”

In other business, the General Conference Mennonites (current constituency: about 55,000) adopted a resolution on ecumenical relations and appointed an inter-church-relations committee to seek understanding and friendly contacts with “other Mennonite groups as well as with non-Mennonite churches and inter-church agencies.”

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has historically avoided pronouncements on non-ecclesiastical matters. At its thirty-second General Assembly last month in Portland, Oregon, however, a spokesman noted that “it felt compelled” to express opposition to a bill calling for national elections on Sunday. “Activities such as political elections on the Lord’s Day are contrary to the constitution of this church and of many other Christian churches in our land,” a resolution declared.

The Orthodox Presbyterian assembly also adopted a resolution indicating its desire “to serve those in the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. who wish to continue adherence to the historic Christian faith as summarized in the Westminster Standards.”

Miscellany

Membership in North American Lutheran churches climbed over the 9,000,000 mark in 1964, according to a statistical summary released this month by the National Lutheran Council. The 9,002,969 total represents an increase of 1.4 per cent over 1963. For the twentieth consecutive year, the highest numerical increase was made by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, which accounted for 45.8 per cent of all the new members reported.

Representatives from more than two dozen Canadian religious bodies met in Ottawa last month in the interests of the nation’s forthcoming centennial celebration (1967). The day-long conference was hailed as the most representative gathering of Canadian religious leaders ever held. Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses declined the government’s invitation to attend. Numerous joint and individual projects, including evangelistic crusades and missionary recruitment campaigns by evangelicals, are planned.

Conscientious objector David Ovall returned home to Los Angeles last month after accepting the Army’s offer of a general discharge. Ovall, who belongs to no church, had been fasting in a pacifist protest. (See “Ready to Die,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY. July 30, 1965.)

National Religious Party leaders in Israel gave up efforts to seek enactment of a bill that would have imposed fines for Sabbath violations.

Personalia

Dr. Andre Appel was elected general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.

The Rev. James D. Ford, a Lutheran, was named cadet chaplain at the U. S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

The Rev. Edmund P. Clowney was appointed acting president of Westminster Theological Seminary.

The Rev. Richard E. Troup was appointed chairman of the Department of Christian Education of Southeastern Bible College.

They Say

“He did not believe that all non-Catholics would (or should) go to hell. He felt neither self-conscious nor superior about his religion, but simply accepted it as part of his life. He resented the attempt of an earlier biographer to label him as ‘not deeply religious,’ for he faithfully attended Mass each Sunday, even in the midst of fatiguing out-of-state travels when no voter would know whether he attended services or not. But not once in eleven years—despite all our discussions of church-state affairs—did he ever disclose his personal views on man’s relation to God.”—Theodore C. Sorensen, in Kennedy, as excerpted from the forthcoming Harper book by Look.

At age 66, they’re not checking out of the hotel Bible business. But it’s a different movement today, with American classrooms and 71 foreign countries at stake

The Gideons, whose Bible has become a landmark for spiritually hungry Americans, are just as zealous about schoolrooms as hotel rooms. Despite court dictums limiting religion in public schools, Gideons were able to distribute free of charge to the nation’s pupils a record 1.3 million New Testaments in the year ending June 30. The success of the campaign has surprised even the Gideons themselves. So far, they have been the only group to mount such a massive assault.

The hotel heritage hasn’t been forgotten. When Gideons International met in Washington last month, 1,200 Bibles were dedicated for the new $30 million Washington Hilton. Reasoned dapper hotel manager Peter Howard, “Every first-class hotel has Gideon Bibles.”

It used to be a fight to get Bibles into hotels (and still is in most of the seventy-one foreign lands where Gideons work). But today the challenge in America is to meet the need, which is twice the supply.

Perhaps more than any other evangelical cause, the Gideons’ work has won a place in Americana. But the school issue has the potential for jarring this acceptance, and it is pondered at every Gideon cabinet meeting.

The Gideons themselves were a party in a pioneer school case in 1953. The New Jersey Supreme Court decided the Gideons’ New Testament (with Psalms and Proverbs and without helps or commentary) was a “sectarian” book, and barred its distribution through the public school apparatus, even when limited to students who requested Testaments. The idea was later repeated by then Attorney General “Pat” Brown in California and—most recently—last December in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Court.

It isn’t the law of the land yet, so school projects still abound, particularly in the South and Midwest. But “camps” (Gideonese for local units) are told to shun publicity when they go to school.

Gideons counter the sectarian charge by citing the universality of the Bible and the variety of denominations that supply Gideons. Yet the group is unabashedly Protestant and evangelical, which is no secret in chats with such leading Gideons as:

• Clarence H. Gilkey, Jr., the heavyset, sincere new president, who went to college determined to be a minister. “Shortly after that,” he recounts quietly, “God showed me this was not my calling—in a graphic way. I went blind.” Doctors said that his eyes could not withstand college studies. Now forty-seven and a paint salesman in Butler, Pennsylvania, he can see through thick lenses. The fervor of “a real experience with Christ when I was twelve” has been rechanneled into lay ministries with the Gideons and the American Lutheran Church.

• Jacob Stam, jolly lawyer and leader in a dozen evangelistic causes, who was born in 1899 two months after the Gideons got going. He completed three years as president at this year’s convention and was briskly enlisted as new chairman of the key International Extension Committee. Stam made an unsuccessful bid to get the U. S. Supreme Court to review the New Jersey Supreme Court decision.

• Bill Arey, who in April, 1930, was a thirty-year-old alcoholic bum just out of jail and unable to land a job. He wandered the Atlanta streets for four days in tattered clothes. Then, wallowing in depression, he stole a revolver and sought out an unlocked room in the Piedmont Hotel, bent on suicide. With the gun at his head, he somehow obeyed a last-minute impulse to leave a note for Dad. Unconsciously, he opened a Gideon Bible for something to write on, and these words leaped at him: “God is our refuge and strength.…” Arey says he spent an hour in the room, reading a Bible for the first time, and became a Christian. He is now retired from the vice-presidency of a Southern bonding firm, and despite what doctors consider a terminal case of kidney cancer, he was on hand at street meetings in downtown Washington where various businessmen told of their encounters with God.

The Gideons are as proud of personal evangelism as impersonal witnessing through Bibles strategically planted along the routes of human activity. They say more than 300 persons made professions of faith last year through the work of members. As for Bible placements, files at the new Nashville headquarters are crammed with tales of faith born and death averted.

The keeper of these records is Executive Director M. A. (Joe) Henderson, a silver-tongued Southerner who heads the fulltime staff of twenty-five. This cadre keeps track of nearly two million dollars and four million Scripture placements a year.

Henderson reports that a move from Chicago to Nashville nineteen months ago has whittled administrative costs by $16,000 a year—this despite inflation and a 50 per cent increase in mail. The savings are used to buy more Scriptures.

Though Gideons don’t like to be called a “society,” their very name has a lodge-like air. Rights to that name (taken from the Israelite hero in Judges 6–8) and the flaming-pitcher emblem are guarded jealously.

Like that of a lodge, membership in the Gideons is selective, with strict screening on belief as well as business. The group’s stated aim is “to win men and women for the Lord Jesus Christ,” and members must have received Christ as “their personal Saviour.” Eastern Orthodox and Adventist adherents are kept out, as are all clergymen. Membership is limited to a business elite—owners, salesmen, or those on a list of other allowable professions. The idea is to get men already honed by business to be incisive Gideons.

In recent years, membership growth has been stimulated from the top through the national office’s New Member Plan, a recruiting effort that requires months per city and moves to Boston in September.

The traditional method—old members choosing new—has meant, among other things, that Negroes don’t become Gideons in the South. In the North, apparently, Negroes aren’t interested. Personable John T. Leeson III, former Plan director, said that in the last target city, Detroit, hundreds of churches were asked to provide prospects—liberal and conservative, white and Negro. But of the 100 who finally joined, none were Negroes.

The Southern Gideons’ approach is “common sense,” Leeson explains. Not that they wouldn’t welcome Negroes, but they’re afraid integration would offend local churches. After all, the Gideons depend on church offerings for the bulk of their Bible funds. That is also why members sent to churches to drum up support are coached on such things as wearing shiny shoes and smiles.

Leeson now manages the overseas wing. Fully one-sixth of the 5,500 internationals were signed up in the past year by an expanded version of the domestic Plan. The Gideons’ globe now ranges from New Zealand to the Faeroe Islands (the newest camp, founded in June). One of the most arresting convention attractions was reports from the thirty-one foreign delegates.

Priority is being put on 40,000 New Testaments in Vietnamese for native soldiers. Nguyen Van-My, secretary of the Saigon camp, fought through his halting command of English to tell the convention banquet of “hundreds of soldiers who go into eternity daily without knowing Jesus Christ.” Leonard D. Crimp, former vice-president of H. J. Heinz in Canada and president of Canadian Gideons, added that Van-My and six other “big little men” in Saigon had distributed 13,000 Scriptures in a year. Impressed, the audience of 1,700 contributed $18,500.

From the British Isles, Arthur Rousham, national secretary, reported that government schools are “wide open” to Bibles except for one problem: “Headmasters increasingly want a modern translation.… We need to give the youngsters the Bible in their own language.” But the Britons feel obligated to follow the wishes of their American progenitors. “American Gideons are opposed to modern translations to a remarkable degree,” he laments. “It’s a pity.”

Pioneer Gideons used the American Standard Version, but the King James Bible later become sacrosanct because: (1) it’s cheaper, (2) it’s the most widely used translation, and (3) the Revised Standard Version, the most likely successor, was produced by a team on which some members didn’t believe in word-for-word inspiration of the Scriptures.

Conditions could alter this conservatism, and even force use of a version acceptable to Catholics—a thought that makes many Gideons blanch. The matter could depend on how far the school perimeters shrink.

Stam’s final report as president criticized the courts for reinterpreting the Constitution to fit “their ideas of what should be modern practice.” If schools refuse Testaments, he advises, don’t press the issue, but “withdraw and pray.”

And he has other advice, with an eye cocked to the future: “We should be praying for wisdom to do some planning in advance as to what methods or plans to use if and when the doors may be closed.”

The Gospel Via Opera

The power of sacred opera as an evangelical art form was evident in West Coast performances last month of Jerome Hines’s I Am the Way, which broke all attendance records for forty-one years at the Redlands (California) Bowl. Enthusiasts hope the opera, which also played to capacity crowds in San Diego, will be invited next year to the Los Angeles Music Center with full orchestra.

Although the opera consists of ten half-hour scenes, only four were presented this summer. The conversion of the singer taking the role of Mary Magdalene was a striking development during the Redlands performance. She came to Hines, famous Metropolitan Opera basso, tearfully acknowledging she was not a believer, and they knelt in prayer behind the stage.

Hines’s ambition in composing such operas is to raise the level of Christianity in the arts and of the arts in Christianity. I Am the Way has been performed forty-five times in nine years, with Hines often singing the role of Jesus Christ. Many viewers think it has television possibilities.

The present stage director, Derek De Cambra, was converted in Newark in 1960 during the Last Supper scene. In Farmingdale, Long Island, more recently, a singer cast in the role of Lazarus was converted.

Hines, after his own conversion, ministered part-time for twelve years in Skid Row situations “as an apprenticeship.” His only music study was two years of piano. He then began writing music to Scripture and has now produced a moving operatic masterpiece.

CARL F. H. HENRY

To ‘Highlight’ The Spirit’S Role

United Presbyterians and Roman Catholics held their first formal ecumenical encounter July 27 in Washington and decided that “reform and renewal” should be the theme for future discussions. Chief item on the agenda was the formation of this diffuse agenda for the next meeting. The twenty participants said they wanted to avoid “premature conclusions,” and no details of the closed-door discussions were announced. It was the third in a series of meetings between Catholics and Protestant denominations, but the first to include women.

The clergymen and laymen not only talked but also worshiped together in a small colonial chapel of Georgetown Presbyterian Church. Dr. Marion de Velder, stated clerk of the Reformed Church in America and a “participating observer,” prayed, “Deliver us from sectarianism.” The priests, ministers, and laymen also joined in an enthusiastic rendition of “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Beaming Bishop Ernest L. Unterkoefler of Charleston, leader of the Catholics, said everyone “felt a bond of friendship and unity.” He said the same delegations might next meet in November, which would mean the Catholics would have to leave the Vatican Council. It was the council’s Decree on Ecumenism of last November that sparked the series of talks and provided the “reform and renewal” slogan prominent at the Washington meeting.

A formal statement after the day-long conference said the two groups are seeking to “highlight … the role of the Holy Spirit, and to search for signs of His activity within the Church … and in a fresh encounter with what He is saying to us through the voice of the secular world.” As an example, spokesman agreed that the Holy Spirit is speaking in the current racial revolution.

The future agendas will encompass “doctrine, worship and social action,” the statement said.

De Velder was joined as an observer by Dr. James A. Millard, Jr., stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern). Monsignor William W. Baum of Washington, director of the Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenical Affairs, said the Catholics hope next to meet with leaders of Eastern Orthodoxy and the National Council of Churches.

From Headhunter To Soul-Winner

Tariri, Chief of Seven Rivers in the jungles of Peru, admits he has beheaded at least ten chiefs of his own rank and twenty of their warrior followers.

“But now that I follow Christ,” he says, “I no longer kill and hate. I only want to love people and tell them about Jesus.”

The chief was brought from the jungles by Wycliffe Bible Translators to testify to the transforming power of Christ in his life.

He participated in the Wycliffe Day program, which coincided with Peruvian Independence Day, at the New York World’s Fair, and spoke in New York, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and Dallas before returning to Peru August 12.

Wycliffe missionaries introduced Christ to Tariri and his people in the Shapra group of the Candoshi tribe some fifteen years ago, as they learned the Indian dialect and translated the Bible into the native language.

“The ancients told us about a God who sent a great flood to destroy men,” the chief said in an interview in Dallas. “We knew God was good and holy, but we did not know he was coming to earth. We had no idea that we could know God or, even if we could, that we would be able to live good enough to please him.”

The chief accepted Christ about twelve years ago. As the gospel message was unfolded to him, he wondered how he could follow someone who was dead. Then the vital truth of Christ’s resurrection dawned upon him.

One day as he returned from the hunt, having pondered for hours these new revelations, Miss Lorrie Anderson, a Wycliffe missionary, read to him John 1:12, which she had just rendered into the chief’s language.

She asked him: “When are you going to become a child of God?” He answered, “I want to become one now.”

“Now that I love Jesus I can live a good life,” Tariri said after telling of his conversion. The glow on his face outshone his crown of brilliant red and yellow toucan feathers.

Of the 2,000 Shapras, the Wycliffe missionaries, Miss Anderson and Miss Doris Cox, know about 600. Of these, 150 to 200 have been converted, partly as a result of Tariri’s testimony.

The arrival of the Gospel already has had a tremendous influence on life in Tariri’s jungle: there is far less killing and hatred. Still, the chief believes the full impact of Christianity will come in future generations. It is hard for tribesmen to break with ancient customs, he explained, but the young receive Christ more readily.

The chief displayed keen observations about American culture. He perceived that metal was a fundamental difference between his Stone Age world and that of the United States.

He also believes Americans are too preoccupied with pleasure-seeking and material things. “How can they have so much that God has given them and not think about God?” he wondered.

JIMMIE R. COX

Evolution: What Are The Issues?

In the historic English university town of Oxford over a century ago, T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce debated the scientific and religious implications of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. The reverberations have scarcely ceased. This summer, in the shadow of history, scientists with evangelical loyalties met to consider the challenge offered to the Gospel by a modern, secular, science-conditioned culture. Their aim was to formulate positive principles of a Christian philosophy of science and to clear the ground of misconceptions on both sides as to the exact issues.

The sponsoring body was the Research Scientists’ Christian Fellowship, affiliated with British Inter-Varsity Fellowship, and the driving force behind the project a group of professional men in Canada. The program committee was headed by Professor D. M. Mackay of England, known for his competence in physics, information theory, and philosophy. About thirty-five specialists from ten countries were present. Most of them had prepared papers and circulated them among the other participants beforehand. No joint statement was issued, but a compilation of the papers and a distilled version of the discussion will be put into book form by Dr. Malcolm Jeeves at Cambridge. Some of the participants will also be publishing their papers separately.

Fifty hours of discussion over nine days polarized between general principles relating science to theology, and technical issues raised in one or a cluster of disciplines. The range of topics: determinism, cybernetics, cosmology, origins, language analysis, hermeneutics, evolution, religious psychology.

The key problem was how one should conceive of the relation between the sovereign God and the natural creation. The consensus was, in the view of this observer, as follows:

The extremes of deism and a “god-of-the-gaps” on the one hand, and pantheism and naturalism on the other, were studiously avoided. Since the entire space-time universe is the product of God’s creative word and is at every single point upheld in existence by him, Christians cannot hold to a piecemeal conception of sovereignty. A miracle alters the mode but not the factof divine activity. The term “creation” does not describe a mechanism by which our world order reached its present form: it is a relationship rather than a past event. The so called laws of nature are nothing more or less than the principles along which God “wills” the universe to proceed moment by moment. It is the domain of science to explore the mechanisms God has established in his universe. There are no limits to its investigations, and no one may determine in advance the results. The word “creation” should not be applied to gaps in our scientific description of the past. Yet it is important to remain self-critical and cautious in extrapolating theories, especially regarding the remote past which no one observed, and to resist the demonic temptation of worshiping the current idols of the “church scientific.” “Creation” does not offer us explanations in biology, anthropology, or geology. It speaks of a dependency of the natural order upon God, and its ultimate rationality found only in his purposes.

Conference participants accordingly felt that Christians have no stake in particular conclusions reached under the empirical method. For science treats nature from its mechanical and organic phases, and its descriptions are complementary, not competitive, to the theological understanding. There is a Christian manner of teaching geology or biology, but there is no Christian geology or biology. There is no discrepancy between admitting the truth of creation and providing a biological model that explains the origin of life.

Two views came under fire in a discussion on evolution: fundamentalism, which confounds creation with instantaneous appearance and confuses evolution with naturalism, and scientism (as represented, for example, by Julian Huxley and Teilhard de Chardin), which mocks both science and philosophy.

In the quest for a new apologetic to meet the challenge of the technocratic age, members sought a sharp cutting edge. They saw that evolution cannot offer any clue from mere biological development as to the meaning or value of human life. All the bridges humanism attempts to build across the chasm between science and values eventually collapse. The Christian cannot put forward objectively valid proofs for commitment to Jesus Christ. But he can insist that every non-Christian face up honestly to his own commitments, within which so often meaningful life is unsupportable.

The conference closed with discussion on how to tear down false images of scientism and build up a biblical understanding of reality.

CLARK H. PINNOCK

Standing Fast In Freedom

The bells of more than eighty German Evangelical churches rang out last month to welcome the twelfth Kirchentag to Cologne. Said the new president, Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker: “Anyone can take part and listen, praise, criticize and cooperate.… Here every speaker and member of a discussion group speaks for himself.” Referring to the movement’s task in a divided Germany, he said that no other organization had been so much affected by the absolute division of the country in 1961. Where people had before come from both parts of Germany, this was no longer possible. The Kirchentag “can now no more surmount the Wall than we ourselves can.… And the political handling of the German question is not the work of the Kirchentag.”

The president nonetheless urged the necessity for clarifying how this division came about, what it means for Germans today, and what practical possibilities there are for cooperation and help. In this connection it might be added that in 1965 the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID) had for the first time to have separate meetings in Magdeburg and Frankfurt, for Eastern and Western members respectively.

The Kirchentag, of which the main theme this year was In der Freiheit bestehen (“Stand Fast in Freedom”), offered the customary variegated fare: lectures, Bible studies, sermons, discussions, evening events, an extensive cultural program (including Arthur Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre plays), and what an official press release called “the possibility of private discussion with a priest.” One of the opening services featured jazz-type music.

This was not the only departure from the conventional. In connection with a radical address by Dr. Dorothee Sölle of the University of Cologne (who candidly acknowledged that she stood outside the Church), the working, group discussing church reform circulated to members a series of questions about “unchurchly people.” One query ran: “But don’t they belong to Christ too, since they hope and love?” A young Scot from Glasgow stood up to point out that Paul had in First Corinthians 13 said something about faith, too.

Other impressive things about this Kirchentag included: the increased number of youths in their teens and twenties; sessions and discussions which testified that the haunting concern of Germans regarding the Jewish people is still there as it was at Dortmund in 1963 and at earlier gatherings (the assembly approved what the Vatican Council had done); the absence of representation from East Germany; growing interest in the more intellectual type of meeting, which trend (coupled with an emphasis on higher biblical criticism) may have contributed to the non-appearance of certain more “fundamentalist” sections in West Germany; several joint Protestant-Catholic church services, at one of which Cardinal Frings was present; the references to Protestant Christians as “a vanishing minority,” though Cologne itself has more than doubled its pre-war Protestant population of 200,000.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Harassment In Israel

A mob of young zealots broke into the home of a Hebrew Christian family in Haifa, Israel, this month. They damaged furnishings and threatened the occupants, demanding that they cease propagating the Christian faith.

The father, 62-year-old Peter Gutkind, came from Poland seven years ago. He is a representative of the American Board of Missions to the Jews.

Gutkind said the youths, members of a fanatical Yeshiva religious sect, harassed his family for ten days. Six of the demonstrators were arrested, but Gutkind claimed that police had not given him adequate protection.

What is religion’s role in ‘Great Society’ program for labor, welfare, education?

A legislative blitzkrieg hit the Capitol this summer. It pleased many churchmen who support welfare causes, but long-range implications of government’s increasing involvement were disquieting to others.

Bills approved—or likely to be—covered voting rights, public housing, Medicare, immigration, poverty-program extension, and aid to higher education.

When the dust had settled, one casualty was the Senate attempt to block reapportionment of state legislatures on the “one man, one vote” principle. The National Council of Churches had testified against the bill.

Another casualty, in the House, was a religious exemption in the repeal of the “right to work” law. But the Senate labor subcommittee voted August 12 to include such an exemption in its version of the bill.

With the new federal thrusts, Baptists are pondering what to do about college aid, and Lutherans are asking aloud whether churches still belong in welfare work at all.

And strict church-state separationists are going to court in Kansas City, challenging use of Catholic schools for pre-school training under the anti-poverty program.

That project, however, is paled by a $7 million blockbuster in Mississippi, described by Director R. Sargent Shriver of the Office of Economic Opportunity as the “boldest” project yet. A non-profit corporation formed by the Catholic Diocese of Natchez-Jackson plans to train 25,000 adults now considered unemployable.

About 100 religious organizations already have enlisted in the war on poverty. John J. Adams, lawyer in the Kansas City suit for Americans United for Separation of Church and State,¹The agency is separating the “Protestants and Other” from the front of its name. said the poverty bill was rushed through without proper scrutiny of church-state issues.

Rep. John H. Buchanan (R.-Ala.), a Southern Baptist minister, sought unsuccessfully to get an amendment to the law barring religious groups from grants.

The House’s blanket right-to-work repeal would affect many Seventh-day Adventists and others whose faith forbids union membership. Rep. Edith Green (D.-Ore.), a strong labor supporter, sponsored the exemption and told the House that national legislation is needed because Adventists “often run up against a stone wall” when negotiating with locals. Under her plan, and the Senate proposal, objectors would contribute to non-religious charities in lieu of dues.

A furor developed when the three-man First Presidency of the Latter-Day Saints wrote Mormon congressmen asking votes against repeal because it violated man’s “right to free agency.” But the legislators asserted their own free agency and protested the Presidency’s move.

In contrast to House action on “right to work,” the Medicare bill signed by President Johnson included careful safeguards for minorities. Christian Scientists will get virtually the same coverage in their sanitoria as is provided for conventional institutions. Old Order Amish and other sects that believe insurance shows lack of faith are now freed from all Social Security assessments.

The bill also reopened until next April 1 the deadline for ministers to elect coverage. And it included a “living in sin” amendment that allows widows to keep Social Security benefits if they remarry. Previously, many couples had cohabited without marriage to keep the payments rolling in.

Growing dimensions of church-state interaction are dramatized in a study by the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs that shows aid is available to churches under at least 115 current federal programs.

Nearly half of these involve education, and Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, committee director, said Baptists are rethinking not just aid as such, but whether distinctly Baptist schools should assume broader functions. He noted that the proposed higher education bill views colleges as wide-ranging community service centers.

For Lutherans, welfare is the problem. Missouri Synod leaders will confer in Chicago September 16–17 to consider the church’s role in the light of the poverty, housing and medical care programs. Synod self-examination is spurred also by plans to merge welfare efforts with other Lutheran groups.

Dr. Henry F. Wind, executive secretary of Missouri Synod’s welfare board, said this month that “churches are beginning to wonder whether they still have a place in the welfare field,” especially administration. If members don’t provide money, says James C. Cross, Wind’s assistant, “we are driving our agencies into the arms of the government.”

Crime And Cigarettes

President Johnson has declared another war—on crime. He named a national crime commission to spend eighteen months deciding what to do about the growing problem. The nineteen-member panel, headed by Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, includes no clergymen.

The commission was established the same day the FBI reported that major crimes increased 13 per cent during 1964. The study is to consider prevention and rehabilitation as well as enforcement.

The President also signed a bill requiring all cigarette packs, after January 1, to warn that “cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.”

The measure is not considered a major blow to tobacco interests, since they could have fared worse if regulation had been left to the Federal Trade Commission.

The Unsettling War

Viet Nam dominated August’s news. As President Johnson sent 50,000 more soldiers to Viet Nam with his right hand and floated a new peace balloon with his left, the war bothered Protestant leaders.

The National Council of Churches, paying its customary attention to headlines, formed a committee to work up a new policy statement on Viet Nam. The study group is headed by President Arthur S. Flemming of the University of Oregon, NCC vice-president and former secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Eisenhower Cabinet.

NCC President Reuben H. Mueller said August 11 as he appointed the committee, “There is no real consensus on Viet Nam among American Christians.”

The difficulties of Christian ministry in the midst of battle were highlighted by the murder last month of a young native pastor in the resettlement town of Le Thanh, near South Viet Nam’s border with Cambodia. The town was “turned over” to the Viet Cong as too difficult to defend. The pastor, unwilling to leave his flock, was slain by Red terrorists.

But there is a brighter side. A month-long series of tent meetings in the university town of Hue repeatedly drew overflow crowds. The location was strategic—right in the center of a city just 100 kilometers from the seventeenth parallel—as was the time, the traditional celebration of Buddha’s birthday.

The Rev. Gordon Cathey, minister of Saigon’s International Protestant Church, returning to the United States after his first year there, expressed cautious optimism. Cathey, who hitched a ride across the Pacific with retiring Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, said the war has created new spiritual introspection among the Vietnamese and the American soldiers who are filling the capital city to overflowing. Many Vietnamese now view both Buddhism and Roman Catholicism as political movements, he said, which has left a new opening for Protestant advance.

The NCC’s special study committee probably won’t be ready to formulate a new policy statement on the war until sometime this fall.

The council’s current position—a general endorsement of America’s hopes for negotiations with United Nations assistance—necessitated profuse disclaimers when the NCC hosted five Japanese pacifists last month. The five, claiming to speak for the bulk of Japanese Protestants, visited several cities to pray with U. S. Protestants and to present their views on foreign relations.

In the opinion of this delegation, oriented to the Socialist view of Red China as a benign tigress, America should stop bombing North Viet Nam immediately, negotiate with the Viet Cong and pull out all troops.

The quintet landed in Washington the day President Johnson doubled the draft call and dispatched the new troops to Viet Nam. Nevertheless, in visits to the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, the Japanese thought the Americans seemed more flexible than before, according to Professor Yoshiaki Iizaka, political scientist who was spokesman for the team.

Stars, Stripes, and Evangelism

That American flag flanking Albert Tompkins as he shouts the Gospel to his transient congregation on Times Square is no patriotic ploy. City rules have required it since some asphalt preachers were locked up for losing control of their crowds several years ago. The local Civil Liberties Union, backstopping a Socialist who broke the flag rule, hopes to get it revoked. Some of the evangelists also consider it a rein on their freedom. But Tompkins, a 71-year-old Baptist layman, thinks that “if you don’t have such a requirement, every Communist, every atheist, every Tom, Dick and Harry will get up and preach.” (Photo by Sam Tamashiro)

Iizaka told an audience in Washington that Americans suffer from “self-imposed ignorance about Communism.”

Dr. Vernon L. Ferwerda, head of the NCC’s office in Washington, was agitated by what he considered the Japanese’ naïveté about Communism’s designs in Southeast Asia. But he thought talks with such policy spokesmen as Walter W. Rostow had at least exposed them to an accurate view of American policy. “American pacifists had given them the worst possible view of our policy,” said Ferwerda, who is also a political scientist.

Other members of the Japanese group were Dr. Isamu Omura, moderator of the United Church of Christ; the Rev. Sekikazu Nishimura, a Methodist who is a member of the Japanese Diet and who talked with Ho Chi Minh earlier this year; Professor Kosaku Yamaguchi; and Mrs. Hatsue Nonomiya, peace chairman of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. (War is as big a concern to the Japanese WCTU as liquor, she said.)

No Need To Say It Twice

Colleagues predicted a great future for Edward Heath when for six hundred days, from January, 1948, to October of the following year, he worked as news editor of the Church Times, an influential Anglican weekly. Heath was remembered as one who easily digested facts and figures and who never had to be told anything twice. His coverage of the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1948 indicated, moreover, he had an understanding of high theological arguments.

Heath, who last month became leader of the British Conservative Party, did have some problems on the Church Times. Ecclesiastical terminology sometimes baffled him, and he was even more bewildered by the schism caused by the creation of the Church of South India. Rival definitions of priest and presbyter caused him some consternation, too.

Speeches he planned to help him on in the political world were often prepared in the office of the Church Times, and on occasion Heath became irritated at being sent on assignments when there were, to him at least, more important matters needing his attention.

Eclipsing the hint of ruthlessness in his makeup were his friendliness, fairness, and generosity. But colleagues of those journalistic days have been puzzled by Heath’s reluctance to mention his stay with them in Who’s Who.

DAVID M. COOMES