NEWS: Church Assemblies

United Church Eyes Bishops

Predictions of objections in the Fifth General Synod of the United Church of Christ against the church’s acceptance of bishops proved unfounded. Reporting on the progress of the Consultation on Church Union, of which the UCC has been a member since its inception, the Rev. David G. Colwell of Washington, D. C., chairman of the UCC’s Commission on Christian Unity and Ecumenical Study and Service, told the synodical assembly:

“You are well aware that it is anticipated that there will be somebody called a bishop in the United Church [the anticipated merger of the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, and the Evangelical United Brethren]. I ask those of you whose hackles automatically rise at the word ‘bishop’ to deal with what the consultation has said and not to deal with some imagined office nor some frightful caricature which comes from out of the mist of the past.”

Colwell said the consultation is talking about an as yet undefined “but specific kind of bishop.” Without debate, the 738 delegates, meeting for their Fifth General Synod June 30-July 7 in Chicago’s Palmer House, then voted unanimously to “direct” their delegates to the COCU “to continue their efforts to set forward the union of the Church.”

The UCC was formed when the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches, both themselves results of earlier combinations, merged in 1957. The church is highly congregational in polity, with none of the synod’s decisions binding on the local congregations. The synod stipulated that “action to commit a congregation to become a part of the new denomination will be taken by the congregation itself.” This left open just what kind of a bishop could be accepted within the UCC’s deep commitment to the autonomy of the local congregation. In the UCC structure of government, delegates to its biennial synods need not even be office-holders in the church.

The synod of the “united and uniting church” also decided to appoint a committee to participate in formulating a plan of union with the Disciples of Christ. Since ecumenical efforts with the Disciples have bogged down, the synod stipulated that such efforts are to begin again only when it is mutually agreed that “the necessary theological and ecclesiological consensus has been developed to make the effort useful.” It was added that any effort toward merger with the Disciples must give proper consideration to the UCC’s “participation in and commitment to the Consultation on Church Union.”

In other ecumenical actions, the synod resolved: to continue participation in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and in the International Congregational Council; to continue its authorization of “exploratory conversations with the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Incorporated”; and, “mindful of the attacks being made upon the National Council of Churches,” to “pledge the continuing support of the United Church of Christ to the National Council of Churches.” The synod also urged UCC publications, UCC-related colleges and seminaries, and UCC local churches and their instrumentalities (boards) to promote and interpret church union.

In contrast to the near vacuum of floor debate on ecumenical decisions, considerable discussion was devoted to the question of the location of UCC national headquarters. Attempts to reorganize conferences and services of the UCC and to achieve a more efficient location for its top offices necessitated by the merging of the two constitutive denominations in 1957, are complicated by the UCC’s hoped-for future mergers with other churches. As one delegate said, “the church’s headquarters ought to be a tent.” Final decision as to whether all the denomination’s offices should be located in New York, and if so, whether they should be in a single location, was postponed.

An attempt was made by Dr. Robert M. Bartlett of the church’s Ohio Conference, by way of a proposed amendment to the UCC’s endorsement of the National Council of Churches, to have the synod direct its Commission on Christian Unity to work toward the “re-establishment of Christian unity within the United Church of Christ by seeking out the cause of dissension.” It was roundly defeated. The “dissident groups within the Church” were informed that “every action taken in the struggle for civil rights is action on behalf of all minority groups.”

Whether or not this response was to the point, it indicated the UCC’s expansive concern over social matters. Indeed, the UCC’s concern for church union is equaled only by its concern for social action. The synod summoned its 6,957 churches with 2,067,244 members—who have fallen $717,676.81 short in their world ministries—to assist in “abolishing poverty throughout the world,” and to work for integrated schools, equal opportunity in securing jobs, equal access to public accommodations, equal voting rights, equal protection under law, open church membership, open housing, equal opportunity for leadership and service, and the repeal of such racially discriminatory laws as those “prohibiting marriage across racial lines” and “discriminatory immigration laws”; the churches were also urged to hire all ministers and staff personnel regardless of race, to refuse to do business with those who do not practice fair employment, and to invest monies only in corporations that do not practice racial discrimination. If the Chicago meeting was representative of the eight-year-old UCC, few churches, if any, have a greater social concern.

The tendency of the UCC to place greater value on Christian action than on Christian proclamation was nowhere more explicitly spelled out than in the report, “Mission on Renewal and Evangelism,” briefly designated in the UCC as “MORE.” “MORE,” the delegates were told, “points not so much to words, but to two significant deeds.” These deeds, the delegates were told, are “the dialogic deed and the social action deed. MORE points to dialogue as the important base for evangelism.”

Although the proclamation of the evangel allows for dialogue after proclamation, none of the synod’s 738 delegates took exception to the reduction of gospel proclamation to dialogue, although the very concept assumes that each party has as much truth to speak as the other and therefore as much right to be heard. Only one dissenting voice was heard to this reduction of gospel preaching to the dialogic and the social action deed. The Rev. Paul R. Surbey of Granite City, Illinois, arose to remind the synod that the UCC is “one of the slowest growing denominations,” and that evangelism is still a matter of “winning members to Christ.”

Financially, it was revealed, the UCC has fallen far behind its set goals of contribution. In what was described as a realistic and less discouraging procedure, the delegates accepted a proposal to begin with the present level of giving and project a budget of giving for the next two years that would exceed actual giving by a million dollars.

The UCC’s biennial synod met at a time when the race movement in Chicago was astir. Newspapers were carrying accounts of school teacher Al Raby’s resignation over the reappointment of Ben Willis as superintendent of education. The UCC synod allowed Raby, with his demonstrators, to enter its meeting and occupy its platform for two minutes. In a direct repudiation of Mayor Richard Daley’s charge that the race movement in Chicago was infiltrated and directed by Communists, Dr. Robert W. Spike, member of the UCC and executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race, drew hearty applause when he described Daley’s charge as an outburst of intemperate attack and asked, “When are we going to stop blaming all difficulty and unpleasant situations on the ‘omnipotent’ Communists?”

The delegates also put on record their opinions (a) that war is “incompatible with Christian teaching,” (b) that the United States government ought to take a positive position in consulting with other nations on how the People’s Republic of China may be brought into the United Nations, (c) that the United Nations “deserves the prayers, the careful attention and the support of our people,” and (d) that the United States government “should sell wheat, other foods, medical and other necessities of life” to the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Eastern European governments.”

Plymouth: Scrutiny Of Unity

In the early days of Methodist assemblies in Plymouth so many came that preachers had to sleep three in a bed, which fact evoked from a minister at the 1965 gathering the neat suggestion that “perhaps our fathers were more narrow than we are.” The question of bedfellows was in one sense still a live issue, for the chief business at the British Methodist Conference this month involved a decision whether or not to approve the next step toward union with the Church of England (see “British Ecumenism: Anglican-Methodist Merger?,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, March 15, 1963).

The first of the five resolutions on the agenda was plain sailing, and the conference by 601 votes to 14 reaffirmed “its resolve to seek closer relations” between the two denominations. Three other resolutions, passed without difficulty, were concerned with the appointment of a joint negotiating committee, its terms of reference, and the legislation procedure necessary before its proposals are finally confirmed by a future conference.

The remaining resolution (chronologically number two) went right to the heart of the matter and provoked the keenest opposition. This resolution asked the conference to give “general approval to the main proposals of the Report of the Conversations … on the understanding that before full communion … is established (i.e. Stage I) there will be opportunity for (a) the clarification of any points in the Report that the Conference may require in the light of the judgments of Quarterly Meetings and Synods, (b) the considerations of such amendments submitted by Quarterly Meetings and Synods as the Conference may determine.”

When Professor C. Kingsley Barrett, leading New Testament scholar and one of the dissentient signatories of the report, mounted the tribune to propose an amendment, the microphones failed, and the session adjourned for lunch amid delighted cries of “Sabotage!” Good humor and charity were prominent features of this whole debate. Later, the microphone suitably chastened, Dr. Barrett suggested to his audience that their primary duty was to unite Methodism, which he described as a divided church. His amendment was aimed at preventing the conference from making a final judgment on the main proposals, and sought plain answers to those questions that have troubled many Methodists. He listed some of the problems: Is the Service of Reconciliation ordination for Methodist ministers, or what? What is meant when the report speaks of “priest”? Is continuing communion with the other free churches certain? Dr. Barrett said his amendment would leave the door open to the Church of England, to world Methodism, to ecumenical development, to the non-episcopal churches, and to the penitent sinner (“it runs no risk of saying to any man, you can’t come to Communion unless you have the right ecclesiastical qualifications”). The amendment was lost, 467–165.

Another amendment, proposed by the Rev. the Honourable Roland Lamb, chairman of the Methodist Revival Fellowship, sought from the conference an “unambiguous affirmation of three fundamental principles”: the supreme authority of Scripture, justification by faith alone, and the priesthood of all believers. The right kind of theological basis was required, urged Mr. Lamb; “we ought not to build a temple of unity on the ruins of sound doctrine.”

On the first of Mr. Lamb’s points, Dr. Ward Kay, a physician from Sheffield, drew an analogy between Scripture and obsolete medical textbooks, good enough in their day but now superseded. He was supported by a theological doctor, the Rev. Percy Scott, who said that their church’s Christian Citizenship Committee had “driven a coach and horses” through Paul’s views on sexual morality—and rightly so. Mr. Lamb’s amendment also was defeated by a substantial majority.

Finally, by 488 to 137, the conference accepted the resolution and gave the requested “general approval to the main proposals of the Report of the Conversations.…” It stipulated, however, that among the many subjects to be scrutinized further should be the form of the proposed Service of Reconciliation, including laying on of hands and the interpretation of “priesthood”; the question of open communion; the use of fermented wine and disposal of the elements; relations with world Methodism and the other free churches; the place of the laity in the church’s councils, and lay administration of Holy Communion; the appointment and functions of Methodist bishops; and marriage discipline. At the instigation of Mr. Lamb the assembly further called for reconsideration of the sacrificial aspects of Holy Communion, and of the theological implications of infant baptism, including baptismal regeneration; and clarification of the report’s view of Scripture and tradition.

Statistics released beforehand showed a striking degree of dissention among what was described as “the inarticulate masses of Methodism,” as represented in the quarterly meetings. The crucial question put to the meetings was: “Do you consider that in broad outline the main proposals of the Report point the right way forward to full communion between the Church of England and the Methodist Church?” The voting: 26,440 laymen in favor, 22,236 against, while 1,835 expressed no firm opinion. There were 768 amendments or requests for clarification from quarterly meetings. Many of them raised major points of difficulty, though not all were expressed so uncompromisingly as one from north of the border that stated simply: “It is requested that no bishop be appointed to the Scotland District.”

The conference appointed fifteen members of a new joint negotiating committee. Four of these had signed the Majority Report. Four of the twelve Methodists reporting on the proposal had dissented, but none of these is on the new committee.

J. D. DOUGLAS

NEWS: Church and State

Viet Nam: Bullets and Brickbats

As the hot jungle war of Viet Nam grows bloodier, missionaries with ears attuned to the cacophony of gunfire do their job but keep their bags packed, and prominent Protestants in the United States and abroad are joining the debate over America’s mushrooming involvement.

A fourteen-member Clergymen’s Emergency Committee for Viet Nam toured the battle-baked Asian landscape for ten days this month, then declared America should stop bombing North Viet Nam and submit to a peace parley to include the North and Red China. Sponsoring the trip was the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group in Nyack, New York, which in April mobilized 16,916 Protestant ministers to sign a petition urging President Johnson to “stop the bombing now.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., chose the July Fourth weekend to bombard American actions and said he might channel protests from his civil rights drive into the Viet Nam peace issue. He wired the clergymen visiting Saigon: “The war in Viet Nam must be stopped. America must be willing to negotiate with all involved parties.”

The Church of the Brethren, which holds fast to pacifism, joined the criticism at its annual conference in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. A resolution said U. S. policy tends to escalate the war, and joined the call for an end to bombing and a U.N. settlement. The representatives of the 201,000 Brethren also advised a withdrawal of some American troops “as a measure of good faith” even before a truce is reached.

Meanwhile the foreign missionaries in South Viet Nam warily continued their witness in the fortified villages where most have been withdrawn for safety. The Christian and Missionary Alliance’s 100 missionaries have had an emergency retreat plan ready for ten years but don’t expect to use it, reports the Rev. Louis L. King, the denomination’s foreign secretary. “We have known since February that the situation would become almost intolerably bad through October and have planned on it,” he said. Alliance workers, who once covered the countryside, are now specializing in city work, as symbolized by three new churches being built in Saigon. King said the war has meant more people listen to the Gospel more seriously.

When U. S. government dependents were sent home in February, officials asked Alliance workers to pull out but weren’t successful. King said Alliance policy is to leave only when the U. S. diplomatic corps does. If a withdrawal comes, he said, a strong indigenous church will remain with 350 pastors and 65,000 laymen who operate now without American money.

A second major group in Viet Nam, Wycliffe Bible Translators, has also withdrawn into defended villages in the past year. But it has taken natives along to speak the tribal languages so that the work of translating the Bible into these tongues can go on. The organization has forty-four persons assigned to Viet Nam, of whom nineteen are on furlough. All Wycliffe teams are “within the sound of gunfire,” said Dr. Richard Pittman, director of work in Asia. But there have been no casualties since two men and a baby were killed in 1963. Pittman said Wycliffe follows American and Vietnamese military advice on where to locate, since it is dependent on military transportation.

In contrast to this business-as-usual attitude near the front, Protestants elsewhere stepped up their barrage of criticism. The Christian Century and Christianity and Crisis, in identical editorials, lamented the National Council of Churches’ silence on the subject. The NCC has reported criticism of the American moves by Protestants in Latin America and Japan and was prepared to host five Japanese, headed by Dr. Isamu Omura, moderator of the United Church of Christ in Japan, who were to leave July 20 on a peace mission to the United States. The foreign policy advice of the ministers who toured Viet Nam was offered by Dr. Harold A. Bosley of Christ Church (Methodist) in New York, Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, former president of the NCC and the American Baptist Convention, and Dr. Dana McLean Greeley, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Another team member, Episcopal Bishop William Crittenden of Erie, Pennsylvania, said in Australia that it is a “civil war” and an economic and social problem more than a military one.

No Anonymous Sponsors

Religious broadcasts that are carried on time purchased from radio and television stations must be accompanied by a clear announcement naming the sponsor, according to the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC notified radio station WFAX, Falls Church, Virginia, of liability to a forfeiture of $1,000 for failing to identify Dr. Dale Crowley as sponsor of his own broadcasts on that station.

Crowley, a veteran radio evangelist in the Washington, D. C., area, purchases time from the Virginia suburban station for three fifteen-minute broadcasts daily and an hour-long broadcast on Sundays. He said that in asking support for his evangelistic work he makes an occasional reference to the fact that he must pay for the time for his broadcasts, but that he relies on the station announcer to make such daily announcement of sponsorship as is required by the FCC rules. He suggested that an oversight by an announcer must have been responsible for the FCC action.

The Federal Communications Commission dismissed a complaint by the Democratic National Committee against Dr. Carl Mclntire and radio station WCCB, Red Lion, Pennsylvania, asserting that it believes the station has satisfied requirements of the “fairness doctrine.”

McIntire criticized the Democrats’ deputy national chairman, Samuel C. Brightman, in two broadcasts in 1964 after Brightman wrote a letter to stations carrying McIntire’s broadcasts reminding them that the “fairness doctrine” applied to religious broadcasts conveying political attacks, as well as other types of broadcasts. A number of stations gave Brightman a chance to reply, and McIntire later carried on his “Twentieth Century Reformation Hour” a twenty-minute tape recording of one of Brightman’s broadcasts.

The FCC also noted that Carl Rowan, former director of the U. S. Information Agency, was offered time by McIntire to reply to a broadcast attacking him but that Rowan refused because USIA has a policy of “not becoming involved in partisan politics.”

The FCC also cleared the Red Lion station, owned by the Rev. John M. Norris, of several other allegations of unfairness arising from the “Life Line” program and the “Dan Smoot Report.”

‘Ready To Die’

The Army used intravenous force-feeding to end a two-week fast by Private David Ovall, who wants to be discharged as a conscientious objector. The 23-year-old Ovall isn’t a member of any religious group, and the Pentagon rejected his application for a discharge in June despite favorable endorsements from officers at his base, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The unwilling soldier waited eight months after being drafted before he mounted his protest, and explained he didn’t know previously that an objector without formal religious ties could be discharged. Such discharges are rare, but some have been granted.

J. Harold Sherk, executive secretary of the National Service Board for Religious Objectors, visited Ovall in an Army hospital and reported the youth is “ready to die for what he thinks God wants him to do.” He’s sure Ovall qualifies for the requirement that an objector believe in a supreme being.

The National Service Board wants Ovall to accept the Army’s offer of a general discharge on grounds of unsuitability for military service. But Ovall so far has insisted on a discharge as an objector, whether honorable or general. Sherk said the Army handles about one case a day of a soldier who wants an objector discharge after being in service. This compares to some 11,000 men in the files who have been classified as “l-O” prior to induction, and more than 8,000 men who have entered civilian work in lieu of military service. Sherk, a Mennonite, said Ovall’s personal religion is obscure and apparently stems from a wide variety of sources. The private’s father is a Rosicrucian, and his mother is a member of the Unity Church. A brother, 25-year-old Donald, just finished two years in the Army without a fuss.

Angel On A Stamp

Responding to complaints from the public that recent Christmas stamps issued by the U. S. Post Office have been of secular and even pagan design, Postmaster General John A. Gronouski chose a religious theme for the 1965 stamp—the Angel Gabriel.

The design is taken from a watercolor painted by Boston artist Lucille Gloria Chabot in 1939. Her model was an antique New England weathervane that depicted the Angel Gabriel in flight blowing his horn. Fabricated about 1840 by the firm of Gould and Hazlett in Boston, the weathervane featured a five-foot gilded iron figure of the angel blowing a tubular copper horn.

The colorful Christmas stamp will be printed in red, green, and yellow, with the green introduced in such a way as to give the golden figure of Gabriel what the Post Office Department describes as a “weather-beaten appearance.” The stamp, which thus bows in both secular and religious directions at the same time, will be given a first day of sale in November at a site not yet selected. The department was sharply criticized two years ago when it had a first-day-of-sale ceremony at Santa Claus, Indiana.

Previous Christmas stamps have featured a holly wreath, the nation’s Christmas Tree, which is annually erected near the White House, and Christmas flowers, including mistletoe. Religious leaders pointed out that holly wreaths, evergreen Christmas trees, and mistletoe all originated in the pagan practices of the Nordic winter solstice festivals, which, though animistic in origin, became associated with Christianity and Christmas.

Critics have suggested that stamps with such designs, and first-day ceremonies at post offices such as Santa Claus, Indiana, were contributing to the secular commercialization of Christmas rather than honoring a religious holiday. The 1965 design, although carefully tied in with other recent commemorative stamps honoring American art, is a significant concession to religious sentiment, since the Angel Gabriel is the biblical messenger who told the Virgin Mary that the son she was to bear would be the Messiah.

GLENN D. EVERETT

Naval Watermark

Rear Admiral James W. Kelly is the first Baptist ever to be named chief of Navy chaplains. His appointment this month means two of the services’ three top chaplains are Southern Baptists. The other is Major General Robert P. Taylor of the Air Force. The Army’s chief is a Methodist, Major General C. E. Brown, Jr.

Kelly, former deputy chief, was replaced in that post by a Roman Catholic, Rear Admiral Henry R. Rotrige. Before assignment to the chief of chaplains office, Kelly was senior chaplain at the U. S. Naval Academy. He is a native of Lonoke, Arkansas, and holds the B.A. from Ouachita Baptist College, Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and the B.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville.

Kelly’s predecessor was Rear Admiral J. Floyd Dreith of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Religious Radio In Canada

Canada’s Board of Broadcast Governors is considering holding a public hearing on religious broadcasting in Canada. It is reserving decision, meanwhile, on two requests for establishment of religiously oriented radio stations.

Canada’s equivalent of the U. S. Federal Communications Commission says that there seems to be a renewed interest in establishing religiously oriented stations and that it might be related to dwindling time assigned religious matters on many stations.

Applications for licenses for “special religious stations” have been filed by John O. Graham of CFGM, Toronto, who asked for an FM license in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, and James D. Dixon, who asked for an AM station in Kitchener, Ontario.

Bridling The Sabbath-Breakers

The Knesset (Parliament) of Israel is considering a bill that would impose $333 fines for Sabbath violations. The measure, approved by Israel’s Cabinet last month, establishes the Sabbath and certain religious festivals as official rest days. Non-Jews are exempt, however, provided they observe their own rest days.

Public services would remain unaffected (service stations, restaurants, pharmacies, beaches, and so on). Coming under a ban for the first time, however, are Friday night stage and dub performances.

The bill fulfills coalition conditions imposed by the National Religious Party in 1961, when the present Eshkol government assumed leadership. The government had successfully postponed the issue and might have done so indefinitely except for one reason: elections are coming in November and the government party needs the support of the religious parties.

Although most of the proposed Sabbath restrictions are already enforced under local bylaws, the religious parties are determined to see legislation on the national statute books. Religious party leaders had hoped for a more stringent law banning all but essential travel on the Sabbath.

Advocates of separation of religion and state decry the measure as being another step back toward the achievement of the Orthodox goal of a “Torah State” theocracy such as was characteristic of ancient Israel.

DWIGHT L. BAKER

Baptists On ‘Religion Row’

Eight major Baptist denominations got a more strategic vantage point on the Washington scene this month as their Joint Committee on Public Affairs leased office space on Capitol Hill. The new quarters, on the third floor of the gleaming white marble Veterans of Foreign Wars Building, are within sight of the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the Senate and House office buildings. The Baptists thus join a chain of religious interest groups whose real estate forms a veritable “Religion Row” extending northeast from the Capitol grounds.

The Joint Committee’s move from the old Baptist Building on Sixteenth Street was necessitated by an expanding operation. A new research program is to be initiated August 1 under Dr. Walfred H. Peterson. Peterson comes from Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota, where he has been professor of political science. Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, executive director of the committee, was formerly dean at Bethel, a Baptist General Conference college.

The committee dates back to the late thirties, when resolutions were passed in the Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions providing for the “Joint Conference Committee on Public Relations.” The Washington office was established under a full-time executive director in 1946. Its undergirding rationale has been the traditional Baptist pursuit of preserving religious liberty.

Is the committee now a Baptist lobby? The committee’s description of its work includes the explanation that “Baptists do not maintain a lobby in the nation’s capital. However, ‘the right of petition’ belongs to all groups in the United States. The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs is often the channel through which Baptist agencies and conventions make their views known to government.”

The man who makes the views known is Carlson, who testifies from time to time before House and Senate committees, most often on issues related to the public stake in education.

W. Barry Garrett is the committee’s associate director in charge of information services. Garrett, who is also Washington editor for Baptist Press, the promotional news agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, is one of the few representatives of religious publications ever to win accreditation to the White House and to the House and Senate press galleries. The accreditation specifically prohibits Garrett from lobbying.

Also on the staff is James M. Sapp, whose duty is “to make the resources of the committee available to Baptist conventions, associations, agencies, etc., to develop stewardship of influence.”

The four-man executive staff is directly responsible to the committee, which is composed of the public affairs committees of the participating conventions (Southern Baptist Convention, American Baptist Convention, Baptist Federation of Canada, the two National Baptist Conventions [Negro], the Baptist General Conference, and the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference). The larger conventions are represented by fifteen members, the smaller ones by three members.

There is some speculation over what influence the Capitol Hill environment might have on the committee’s range of interests and its future role in political issues. The religious interest groups that now flank the Baptists’ base of operations tend toward increasing involvement in selected social questions. The politically and socially liberal outlook of most church-related agencies in Washington enables them to form frequent solid fronts (see “Religious Coalition in Washington,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 21, 1965). The Baptists, however, have not shown the willingness to play as broad a part in public affairs.

NEWS: Special Report

The Ecumenical Furor Over Rebaptism

Why did Luci Johnson renounce the Episcopal Church? What prompted her conversion to Roman Catholicism? How do her parents feel about the switch?

These are the questions nobody was asking this month. Instead, a storm of criticism swirled about the President’s younger daughter over whether she should have been administered the rite of baptism a second time. And churchmen debated the effect of Luci’s actions on the ecumenical movement.

What made it all more controversial was the fact that Roman Catholic and Episcopal churchmen were understood to have agreed only days before, in an unprecedented dialogue in Washington, that so-called conditional baptism ought to be carefully limited.

Luci was baptized in 1947, when she was only five months old, in the Episcopal Church of St. David in Austin, Texas. But Catholic authorities in Washington apparently made no attempt to uncover that fact when Luci made known her desire to be accepted into the Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholics and Episcopalians normally recognize each other’s baptisms as valid.

On her eighteenth birthday, Luci went to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, seven blocks from the White House. There she was conditionally baptized by the Rev. James Montgomery and received officially into the Roman Catholic Church.

Why was the baptism “conditional”? What was the nature of the doubt about the first baptism? No one seems to be absolutely certain.

“I did what thousands of other priests would have done,” said Montgomery, adding that it was “the customary way of handling converts.”

Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle defended Montgomery and said he upheld the priest’s right “to make freely his decision in this matter after conscientiously considering all the circumstances.” Montgomery had indicated that the “circumstances” included a personal request from Luci for the baptismal rite. He said she merely wanted to be certain of fulfilling all the requirements of Roman Catholic membership.

To Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, president of the American Lutheran Church, this explanation “compounds the confusion. It suggests an inadequate pastoral ministry during the period of instruction.”

Luci told newsmen she had taken an initial interest in Roman Catholicism five years ago. She began her official instruction under the supervision of Montgomery last September.

The first comment on the rebaptism came from Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike of California, who labeled the ceremony “sacrilegious,” an “insult,” “a direct slap at our church.” Pike had been baptized a Roman Catholic and was never rebaptized when he became an Episcopalian.

Later, Pike seemed pleased at the controversy and ventured that Luci had “innocently made a distinct contribution to the ecumenical movement.” The episode, he said, “has resulted in a clear reaffirmation that such denigration of Christian baptism should never occur again—and I doubt that it will.”

Pike referred to the statement of an American member of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity as supporting his view. Father Thomas F. Stransky of Milwaukee had pointed out in Vatican City that an Episcopal baptism is “valid” and that “normally, a convert to Catholicism from Episcopalianism would only take the profession of faith.” Stransky said the Johnson case was typical of “what is a bad practice in the United States—indiscriminate baptism.” “Despite clear rulings to the contrary by the Holy Office,” he said, “American priests have the tendency to rebaptize.”

Many Catholic newspapers in the United States have carried editorials on the conditional baptism issue. Some criticized the ceremony, holding that the validity of the Episcopal baptism of the President’s daughter had not been questioned. Others denounced Pike.

Generally, Religious News Service reported, “it was not felt that the controversy had caused a crushing blow to the ecumenical movement.” One paper, quite critical of Pike, said “efforts toward Christian unity … would be pathetically unstable if an incident of this nature would cause them to crumble.”

Osservatore Romano, Vatican City daily newspaper, said that contrary to some reports the Vatican has taken no official stand on the controversy. It stressed that any statements from Vatican personnel “must be considered entirely personal,” and that “diocesan ecclesiastical authorities are competent to express judgment on such matters.”

That still left Luci forsaking a Protestant heritage for some unknown reason. She would only say that five years ago, “I, like all young people, began to question, and I began to wonder. I found my answer in the church.”

“I was waiting until I was eighteen,” she declared, “so that I could make the decision as an adult, not as a child.”

Toward A More Biblical Base

At least a third of the fifteen-member committee appointed to scrutinize the United Presbyterians’ proposed new confession is reported to be theologically conservative. The committee, composed of nine ministers and six laymen, was assigned the responsibility by this year’s General Assembly of studying the draft of the creed and making recommendations for possible revision.

One evangelical source close to the committee indicated he was encouraged by its makeup. He predicted that its conservative strength would increase the chances of bringing the confession around to a more biblical base.

The committee will hold its first meeting in New York in September. The members are:

The Rev. Edler G. Hawkins, past moderator of the General Assembly; the Rev. Joseph Haroutunian, theology professor at the University of Chicago; the Rev. W. Sherman Skinner, president of the United Presbyterian Board of Christian Education; President William H. Schechter of Tarkio College; the Rev. William F. Keesecker of Wichita; the Rev. Louis H. Evans, Jr., of La Jolla, California; the Rev. Lewis S. Mudge, Jr., chaplain of Amherst College; the Rev. Robert J. Lamont of Pittsburgh; the Rev. William Johnston Wiseman of Tulsa; the Rev. James W. Angell of Lexington, Kentucky; Mrs. Robert Wise, a La Grange, Illinois, housewife; Robert C. Grasberger of Media, Pennsylvania, a lawyer; Irvin W. Cobb of Natick, Massachusetts, also a lawyer; Dr. Theodore Lindner of Cincinnati; and Dr. Harry Davis of Beloit, Wisconsin.

Baptist Mitosis In Wichita

The thunder of splitting asunder has stilled in Wichita’s classic case of church-splitting. Where there was one Baptist church five years ago, there are five today. The First Baptist Church—largest congregation in the American Baptist Convention before a lawsuit began winding its way to the Kansas Supreme Court—now draws 400 souls on a Sunday morning. They sit in a cavernous sanctuary built for 1,800.

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Baptist Church, composed of former members of First Baptist, is a booming Southern Baptist congregation of 2,000 that recently entered a $2 million building on five acres of land with a fifteen-story spire rising above downtown Wichita. Three other offshoots of First Baptist are visible now that the dust has settled; two small independents and a mission from First Baptist that became a separate entity during the legal battle.

The splitting started in 1960 when a First Baptist group led by the Rev. F. B. Thorn failed to get the ABC to leave the National Council of Churches on grounds of political philandering. The church voted to leave the ABC, and the minority in the vote regrouped 100 strong, met in another ABC church, and waged the legal battle that resulted in the 1962 Kansas Supreme Court ruling that “a mere majority vote” was not enough to cut denominational ties. The outs became the ins and regained the $2.5 million church plant, and the majority left to form Metropolitan Baptist. During the majority’s rule, a satellite church, Woodlawn Avenue Baptist, had been granted autonomy. But its pastor, the Rev. Darrell Sanford, was growing more and more unhappy with what he calls ABC’s “universalism” and “out-and-out affiliation” with NCC. So conflict arose when the ABC group returned to First, and Sanford resigned to join the Rev. Samuel Bradford at Beth Eden Baptist Church. Beth Eden was formed by disgruntled members of Metropolitan who disliked its move toward the Southern Baptist Convention. However, it wasn’t until this spring that Metropolitan formally joined the SBC. Of Wichita’s 100 Baptist churches today, the two largest are now Southern—Metropolitan and Immanuel Baptist, which defected from the ABC earlier.

Last year, a splinter developed in the splinter of the splinter. As Sanford described it, Bradford was forced to resign due to a “power struggle” with “powerful, rich laymen,” so the two ministers and their partisans founded the Messiah Baptist Temple.

Dr. W. E. Thorn, who succeeded his father in Metropolitan’s pulpit shortly after the court ruling, says the original split was good because “there is a need for both of these churches.” They don’t differ in belief, he said, but in “method of operation.” But Dr. Max Morgan said after 2½ years as minister at First Baptist that the split was “very unfortunate.” The remnant he leads has a $330,000 debt to pay off on a large educational building. But last year First had an income of $150,000 and Morgan predicts “slow but steady growth.” He said hundreds of members of the 1960 First Baptist have drifted to other Baptist churches, other denominations, or nowhere in particular. Sanford said Beth Eden, and Messiah Temple after it, have become “a haven for disillusioned Baptists.”

Flies, Foxes, And Images

Appointment of a retired major-general as information officer for the Church of England prompted an outburst of sharp criticism during this month’s Church Assembly at Westminster. The Rev. Adrian Esdaile, a curate from Wimbledon, wished Major-General Adam Block well but asked: “Does the image of a retired major-general, whose hobbies appear to be fly fishing and fox hunting, as our church information officer give the right impression?”

The Bishop of London, Dr. Robert Stopford, defended the appointment. He said that General Block had vision and experience, as well as the ability to make contacts. Block, former army commander in Malta, retained his job.

A March For Christ

Billy Graham, addressing the thirtieth anniversary meeting of International Christian Leadership, called for a renewal of Christian zeal and a “march for Christ” to make the world better for mankind.

“We are not responsible for the past or future generations, but we are responsible for our generation,” he told clergy and lay guests at a dinner.

The noted evangelist asserted that the “crisis of American civilization is the decline of human personality and human responsibility.…”

Graham said that the world is facing crisis after crisis and that every day solutions grow more difficult. Pointing to the war crisis, he said that “each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger, and time has not been our friend.”

Other crises are found in social problems, moral standards, politics, and education, he continued. Though great social problems face society, such as race, poverty, and disease, he stated, the greatest is the “explosion of sexual energy.”

In six generations this country will have 9 billion people and “will become one single metropolitan city,” he said. “Then no system of government, be it democracy or Communism, could possibly prevent war.”

Graham also said that the country is “obsessed” with sex and that “never before in history has a nation been so completely given over to worshiping the goddess sex as we Americans. No nation can survive long when sex becomes its goddess.”

Turning to modern education, the evangelist charged it with “failing to answer the questions the student is asking”; consequently, he said, they are rioting all over the world. Graham asserted that education is avoiding the “ultimate realities of life and is losing its grip on the modern student.” He added that education should concern itself with the “great ultimate situations of human life—death, suffering, fate, and sin.”

Two-Part Harmony

The evangelistic series that took the name “Lower Mainland Crusade” was centered in Vancouver, British Columbia, and had two parts. The first part was held May 2–16 in the 6,000-seat Agrodome of the Pacific National Exhibition grounds, under the preaching of Leighton Ford. The second began with Ford June 25 in the 35,000-seat Empire Stadium. It closed July 2–4 with Billy Graham.

It was not easy, since Christians had gone all out for the first part, to galvanize the churches into action once again. Lower Mainland residents, having come through the hardest winter in living memory, were eager to begin their holidays. And the mood was not enhanced by public statements from a leading spokesman of liberal Christianity, who cited a survey minimizing the scope of church participation. A week before he had come out for “trial marriage” and subsequently announced his departure from the ministry for the field of psychology. It was revealed later that the survey had embraced only 23 of the more than 800 churches in the area.

Thus it was heavy going for the first couple of evenings in Empire Stadium, with some 6,000 in attendance. Rain is never far away in the Pacific Northwest, but as day succeeded day skies became clearer and temperatures warmer. As it turned out, Graham could say he had not seen a cloud in the sky in his days in Vancouver.

The crusade extended deeply into the culture of the area. One meeting was held for union members at the heart of one of the most militant and doctrinaire left-wing labor movements in the Western world. Vocalist Homer James, also a dairy farmer, spoke to agriculturalists from the rich Fraser River Delta. There was also a Chinese-language rally in the Chinatown section of Vancouver.

Mrs. Eleanor Whitney, noted Christian socialite, arrested the attention of the ladies with her hats and her straightforward testimony. Business and professional men turned out in droves for early morning breakfasts. There was also a luncheon, one of the largest ever held in the city; among attendants was British Columbia Premier William Bennett, who brought greetings and wished the crusade well.

Night by night, under Ford’s biblical, thoughtful, and relevant messages, an increasing number made public profession of their faith in Christ. When Graham rose to speak, many realized anew that his effectiveness lay, not in his organization, his image, or his simple and at times folksy messages, but in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The two final services were hours of great triumph, with the stadium filled to capacity and many hundreds coming to Christ.

IAN S. RENNIE

Double Fatality

Religious News Service reported this month the death of two Roman Catholic missionary priests in a New Guinea plane crash. The plane, a single-engine Cessna 206 belonging to the Catholic Mission Airways, smashed into a mountainside.

Found in the plane’s wreckage were the bodies of Father Joseph Walachy, 48, of Trenton, New Jersey, and Father Joseph Bayer, 49, of Wiesau, Germany. They were flying from Madang to Kegulsugi. Walachy was at the controls.

In 1958, Walachy was forced to crash-land a plane in New Guinea’s rugged Bismark Ranges because of engine trouble. He and his three passengers were not hurt. Later the priest won a commendation from Australia’s Commonwealth Department of Civil Aviation for his skill and swift action.

The Care Of 20,500 Orphans

Dedication services were held last month for a new building housing headquarters offices of World Vision, Inc., at Monrovia, California, in suburban Los Angeles.

The structure gives the missionary service organization, headed by Dr. Bob Pierce, more office space as well as a large warehouse. Room is also being set aside for research facilities that will eventually include not only a large missionary library but also photo, audiovisual, and information files.

World Vision’s first office was opened in Portland, Oregon, more than fourteen years ago. The space was shared with Youth for Christ. In 1956, World Vision moved to its own offices in Eagle Rock, California, and three years later to quarters in Pasadena.

Pierce established World Vision during the Korean War, primarily to help orphans in Korea and to facilitate evangelistic work. Now, through an extensive orphan sponsorship program, care is provided for more titan 20,500 orphans in nineteen countries of the world.

The work also embraces programs of emergency aid, social welfare services, evangelistic outreach, Christian leadership development, and missionary challenge. In addition to the U. S. offices, World Vision maintains administrative branches in Toronto, Seoul, Calcutta, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Malang, Indonesia.

A Curb On Cursing

On orders from its top general, the U. S. Army is conducting a campaign to discourage the use of profanity.

The focal point of the campaign is the classroom. Commanders have been asked to “prohibit the use of offensive language and off-color stories in our service schools.”

Initiating the letter was General Harold

K. Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, who frequently makes public his Christian convictions. Those who attended the Presidential Prayer Breakfast in March recall his story of his experiences on the Bataan Death March and his reliance on faith during Japanese imprisonment.

Johnson said his letter to curtail profanity was spurred by a skit he witnessed during a training demonstration. During the skit, he declared, “the soldier-actors employed language that I can only describe as offensive to the average person.”

Johnson’s effort to reduce vulgarity in the Army is not without precedent. General George Washington, on July 6, 1776, issued one of his famous General Orders from New York, which said:

“The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American army, is growing into fashion. He hopes the officers will, by example as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect, that we can have little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our arms, if we insult it by our impiety and folly.”

HOPED FOR AND UNSEEN

There came to my lap recently a most delightful set of pictures, the complete layout of the golf course for the National Open. So I just sat there and played the course and came out just a shade under par. This, I might point out, is a little better than most of the big-name golfers were doing at the time. It isn’t really hard. First, that long drive down the center of the fairway, so long that the next shot put me on the green; and, of course, if you concentrate, you never need to have more than a two-putt green. It was with great satisfaction that I laid the magazine aside. Shortly thereafter I tried my skill on the local course, and what do you know, I made 102. Some little thing must have gone wrong.

Robert Frost said one time, “Writing blank verse is like playing tennis without a net.” Come to think of it, if it weren’t for that net, a lot of things in the game would be much simpler.

Back in college football we had about 200 possible plays on the offense. When the plays were drawn on the board, we had two men on one at the crucial points and some very fine blocking, and every play was a touchdown play. In fact, when we watched the movies after the game or studied some of the “stills,” it was easy for the coach to point out where one man had slipped on the block and the touchdown play had actually gone for two yards. There was always the question, too, of how that fellow (namely me) could drop a pass.

This, I suppose, is the clue to the new language of our day called existentialism, or, more popularly, situational ethics. The point is clear enough. Knowing perfectly well what we ought to do, it turns out that in a given amount of existence (existentialism), or in a given situation (situational ethics), things somehow don’t open up quite the way we expect. It is the wrong time, or there are too many people involved, or the cookie doesn’t crumble according to the plan. As John Calvin said so nicely, “It is easier to run out of the way than to walk in it.” The important thing, I guess, is whether we are heading in the right direction. Arriving at the promised land took the Israelites a multitude of very rough days.

CHRISTIANITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

In the article “Psychotherapy and Spiritual Values” (July 2 issue), Dr. Walters maintained that a Christian therapist, whether or not he uses Christian theology in his therapy, exerts an evangelistic influence on the patient. Would he also say that an atheistic therapist would automatically exert an atheistic influence on his patient? It seems that he is confusing the therapist’s personal religious beliefs with the therapist’s scientific evaluation of the problem and his resultant psychotherapeutic methodology. A therapist’s Christian beliefs can only influence a patient when the therapist actively involves his theology in the therapy. I am certain there must be many therapists who, although unbelievers, conduct themselves in such a manner as to be indistinguishable from Christian therapists. Thus a Christian therapist does not necessarily exert an evangelistic influence on his patients any more than a Christian professor exerts an evangelistic influence on his students. It is certainly possible for both therapist and professor to exert such influences, but it is not necessary for the normal execution of their duties. I would assert that a Christian theologian, who also was well-versed in the field of psychology, could present a course in psychology without exerting his Christian influence on the material.

Psychology is not inextricably tied up with theology because they are both concerned with man’s mind. Psychology is a science which can be predominantly taught by reference to factual observations. Let us not fall into the trap of regarding psychology as some “magic” correlate of theology. Theology is not so easily classified as some would have it. Theology is based on biblical verities, on philosophy, on history, and on natural sciences, as well as on psychology.

Campbell, Calif.

Is the need for “head-shrinkers” among the clergy apparent because an altar of penitential tears has been replaced by a comfortable, form-fitting chair? Since when has the sinner been expected to be anything but ill at ease?…

Bloomsburg, Pa.

Thank you.…

West New York, N. J.

GREEK AND TURK ON CYPRUS

Your editorial, “Who Is My Neighbor?” (June 18 issue), which supports the Turkish viewpoint stigmatizing the Greeks of Cyprus as “barbarous,” has disturbed me.

You concentrated on one alleged event. Three small children and their mother were found murdered, and you take the word of a British journalist that the crime was committed by Greek terrorists—and of course this means that almost every last Greek on Cyprus is a cruel barbarian, while the Turks are poor, gentle, defenseless people. Undoubtedly this British journalist was not there at the time of the alleged crime, and his conclusions are presumptive. The criminals were never arrested, and it is hard to see how the bloody towels prove that they were Greeks. Turks have been known to kill other Turks, just as Americans have been known to murder other Americans. You also display a rather naïve credulity in accepting the British journalist’s statement that the bodies lay in the room for five days, because in the Middle East this is highly improbable, to say the least.…

American Mission to Greeks

President

Ridgefield, N. J.

I would like to commend you for your editorial.

When I was serving the Dutch Chapel in Istanbul in 1954 I became familiar with the excellent work done by the WCC, in particular with Muslim refugees from Bulgaria. But I also became familiar with the persecutions of the evangelicals in Greece by the State Church. It seems to me I have never seen any protest by WCC officials about this. But I was told one time “the important thing is to have the Orthodox Church in the WCC”.…

First Congregational Church

Weeping Water, Neb.

HONESTY OR SECRET SIN?

You are to be highly commended for your editorial, “The ‘New Morality’ and Premarital Sex” (July 2 issue).… Too long has the evangelical church, whether through fear or through ignorance, refused to comment on this subject.

For the editor of a Christian periodical to admit in print that he is aware of what is probably the most widely read and most influential magazine in today’s colleges, Playboy, is praiseworthy honesty.…

This article should be read by all high school and college students, whether Christian or non-Christian, for it is both respectable and honest, daring to treat of and to answer the basic questions. The Hugh Hefner philosophy is accepted by many people, churchmen and so-called Christians included. It is time that someone with authority and ability answered it.

Assistant Professor of English

Nyack Missionary College

Nyack, N. Y.

Perhaps someone there secretly enjoys perusing Playboy’s filthy pages. God knows even our secret sins.…

Elmhurst, Ill.

A SECOND VIEWPOINT

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY should not be misled by J. D. Douglas’s remarks in the June 18 issue which suggest that the Church of England in South Africa is an Anglican church. Since it is not in communion with the See of Canterbury, it cannot be recognized as a member of the worldwide Anglican communion. From the Anglican standpoint it is simply a schismatic body. Its bishops are not members of the Lambeth Conference, to which all Angelican diocesan bishops belong, and its scope of operations clearly indicates that it is a rival to the catholic and evangelical Church of the Province of South Africa, which is very much a member of the Anglican communion and counts many heroic Christian faithful and martyrs amongst its ranks.…

Canon

Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

New York, N. Y.

ESSENTIALS

Just one note from a Roman Catholic layman who read with interest Part I of Dr. Runia’s view of “The Church of Rome and the Reformation Churches” (June 18 issue). Dr. Runia is assuredly correct in pointing out that “the Roman Catholic doctrines of the primacy, Petrine succession, and infallibility of the pope” are still held in the Roman Catholic Church to be essential and unchanging doctrines (in the sense, of course, in which that church really proposes them). But when he says in particular that for Catholics “the pope is still … ‘our most holy Lord, the Pope,’ ” the author unwittingly risks, it seems to me, misleading his readers. For nothing in papal doctrine implies that the words “most holy Lord” are at all essential to Catholicism.

Albuquerque, N. M.

As a charter subscriber and an avid reader and devoted admirer of your journal I rise to a point of theological order—and I believe a strong evangelical point—prompted by Klaas Runia’s article.…

In Dr. Runia’s zeal to simplify the issues that divide us from Rome he refers to Mary in the Christian scheme of salvation with these words, “There is no place for Mary or the saints in the divine scheme of salvation.” I think this is a direct affront to evangelical faith. Granting that Mariolatry became a great bone of contention and still is, and recognizing that the Roman church is reaffirming the centrality of Christ as the one Mediator between God and man, do we not as evangelicals recognize that the salvation of men involved man as well as God? And that Mary’s assent to be used by God the Holy Ghost, giving men in this way credit so to speak for their free will, was essential to the Incarnation? Once the break was made by Adam, God had to find a human being who would freely consent to His entry into human nature, and this was the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was “in man, for man,” that God fought the foe, and without her opening freely the door, a real incarnation—God become really man—could not have happened, because that essential quality of man (and of evangelical faith), namely, free will, would have been destroyed. Where is evangelical faith without the appeal to a free consent to Christ’s discipleship?

In all the schemes for reunion, our Orthodox and Catholic friends assure us that Mary is not an option in Christian theology but an essential person, for without her there could not have been a real incarnation. This strikes me also as elementary, not only for the Catholics and Orthodox but also for evangelicals, if they believe in man’s freedom.

Church of the Nativity

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Canon

MORE ON THE SEINE SEMINARY

I take exception to your June 4 report about the new seminary started in Paris (News). You said “plans were not approved until every effort to revitalize [my italics] the seminary at Aix-en-Provence … had come to a standstill.” Had it not been for sabotage and sectarian tendencies, however, things might have been different. We badly need a healthy theology in Europe, and the institution at Aix-en-Provence could have done much more and better. As a graduate of this school I think its really evangelical and authentically Reformed orientation actually displeased the so-called “conservatives” of French-speaking Protestantism.

St. Maurice-l’Exil (Isere), France

ENIGMATIZED READER

J. D. Douglas’s “review” of The Gospel According to Peanuts (June 4 issue) enigmatizes me. While waiting for whatever it is going to take to enlighten me on the intent if not the content of his “review,” permit me to put in a word for this little classic. I found it a reading experience of sheer delight, and in the ultimate. Who knows, it may make a substantial contribution in the crusade to kick some of the stuffiness out of the modern pulpit! I had the added dividend of reading it in tandem with How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious, and For Preachers and Other Sinners.

Glendale, Calif.

AT ISSUE TODAY

It is time an evangelical blew the whistle on Mr. Jarman (“The Church and the World,” Mar. 12 issue). The tired cliché that because first-century Christians did not get involved in socio-political activities we should not either is a non sequitur on at least two grounds.

First, an argument from silence is never very strong. The New Testament in several places makes it explicit that it is selective, not exhaustive, in recording the doings of the early Church, making it hazardous to jump from lack of an unambiguous statement to the conclusion that a particular thing was not done.…

Second, and much more important, the argument ignores totally the radical difference between the situation of the early Christians and ours. There was absolutely no avenue open in the first-century Roman empire for any individual to promote any social or political program, whether he was Christian or not. What Christians did do (and this is recorded) was to claim and use all the civil rights they had to obtain protection for themselves and others (cf. Paul’s assertions of Roman citizenship and appeal to Caesar).…

I am not unaware that the crux of the argument is the asserted difference between the involvement of individual Christians and the involvement of the church in its corporate capacity, but I would like to claim that the difference is pragmatically unworkable and theologically unfounded. The fact that I am publicly identified with a particular congregation of the Lord’s people in a very real sense commits that congregation to the image I create by my daily conduct (unless the church so disapproves what I do as to publicly discipline me, but that biblical principle is hardly practiced today): I am the church acting in the market-place.…

I am a fervent evangelical, belonging to what many call one of the “straitest sects” of our faith, and I would find it totally incongruous if I had to draw a line beyond which my Christian convictions were not applicable, or beyond which I could not act in conjunction with others of like precious faith. I would find it totally incongruous (and I think John and James would agree) to proclaim interest in souls and disinterest in society.

Teaching Fellow in Linguistics

Hartford Seminary Foundation

Hartford, Conn.

LIGHT ON THE CAMPUS

There is a light growing brighter each year and (on many campuses) driving back the spiritual darkness that has shrouded many of our universities and colleges (both church and secular) in varying degrees of unbelief.

That light is the light of the claims of Jesus Christ being shared through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, a non-denominational student Christian movement designed to present the claims of Jesus Christ to collegians throughout the United States and around the World. The Gospel is presented through team meetings in living groups, personal counseling, Bible studies, literature, films, and records.…

The training I’ve received through their ministry has changed my life. Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, I’ve had the privilege of sharing Christ with many people, and seeing some receive Christ as Saviour and Lord. I will make an absolute statement: God raised up Campus Crusade for Christ, God pays the bills, and God has given them … most effective materials and techniques for reaching twentieth-century Johnny Joneses on the campuses of the world.…

Fort Knox, Ky.

CHURCHES AND APPLES

The renewal of the Church (Louise Stoltenberg, Apr. 23 issue) is indeed a struggle, and it is painful. It is painful because it is internal, and is coming from within as a response to the situation without. The very uncertainty of the Church as it seeks to find itself is its very strength, for the Church is alive enough, dynamic enough, to see its weakness. Therefore, the Church is renewing.

Churches and apples are analagous. When they are green they begin to ripen. When they think they are ripe, they begin to rot.

Owingsville Christian Church

Owingsville, Ky.

THE BLIND AND BLIND

It’s no wonder that people in general feel that the Church has so little to say anymore when it is getting its lessons from the burlesque show (“Sexual Dialogue,” News, Apr. 23 issue), and when it feels that the legislatures of earth can rewrite the laws of God! I am reminded of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, published in 1494:

For priests there’s little reverence;

Their worth is reckoned but in pence,

Many a fine young clerk today

Knows no more than a donkey may,

And shepherds of men’s souls one sees

That tend the flock but for the fleece.

A better term to describe their so-called church can be found in Revelation 3:9, “the synagogue of Satan.” And as to the use of “Protestant,” I have a very difficult time classing these men with Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Huss.…

It’s time that the modern-day Christian prophet ceases his attempt to change the unchanging law of God and that he proclaims it as St. Paul does in Romans 1:18–32. The present picture of many churches today can be summed up in the famous doggerel:

So blind lead other blind today

And both from God must surely stray.

Calvary Lutheran

Post Falls, Idaho

DURABLE DEBATE

I would like to call attention to the way the March 12 article “Robot or Child?,” by Henry M. DeRooy, oversimplifies an important theological problem. In trying to do justice to the truth of man’s responsibility it improperly limits the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. The article states, “The divine greatness created within its own territory, yet outside its perfect control, a free agent.” In other words, man, because he is man, is less under God’s control than if he were a mere thing, a “robot.” But this is a notion which, however logical and commonly accepted it may be, the Bible in many places compels us to reject. Listen to Isaiah: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.… Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it?” (Isa. 10:5, 15). “But,” someone will object, “if the Assyrian is so completely under the control of God he must be a mere robot!” Not at all, is Isaiah’s answer. “He meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.… Wherefore … when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria.… For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom” (Isa. 10:7, 12, 13). The Bible confronts us with the same teaching everywhere, especially where it reveals the Saviour, who, “being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23; cf. 4:27, 28). It insists, however mystifying it may seem to us, that man’s choices and actions as well as all other events are completely under the control of “him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11). This plain teaching of the Bible compels us to reject such simple alternatives as “robot or child” and accept the more difficult truth that both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man must be maintained; neither must ever he denied in order to simplify our presentation of the other.

In facing these difficult problems we may profitably recall that the Apostle Paul concluded his discussion of them with the exclamation, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.… For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever” (Rom. 11:33, 36).

Smithers, British Columbia

The Mission of God: An Introduction to a Theology of Mission, by George F. Vicedom, translated by Gilbert A. Thiele and Dennis Hilgendorf (Concordia, 1965, 156 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, associate editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Theologians have done little or nothing to develop a theology of mission. This lacuna is being filled as more and more attention is given the subject and especially as missionary leaders and strategists apply themselves to discussing it. Vicedom is head of the Neuendettelsau Missionary Society in Bavaria and is known as a scholar and missionary strategist. He has produced a small but competent work and has made a contribution that is essentially within the tradition of orthodoxy.

Vicedom starts with the conviction that the “whole purpose of the Bible is the rescue of mankind and therefore mission work.” Missionary endeavor has its source in the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is the Lord of the endeavor, the One who gives the orders, the Owner, the One who takes care of things. Thus it is always God’s mission. The Church is not “called on to decide whether she will carry on the mission or not. She can only decide for herself whether she wants to be the church.”

The author opens up the vexing question of divergent viewpoints, such as that of Zinzendorf and the pietists over against Warneck, who wanted “to free the mission from pietistic narrowness which had interpreted the Kingdom-of-God idea as being individualistic and thus wanted to win only those who had been called to the Kingdom.” “And the American missions believed the Kingdom of God was to be realized through social service.” Since most faith missionary agencies hold to the pietistic emphasis of completing the body of Christ by the addition of individuals until the Church is complete, there will be considerable disagreement with Vicedom at this point.

Vicedom affirms that the “relationship between God and mankind was disturbed by the fall.” The goal and content of the missio Dei is “to restore him [man] to fellowship with God and to liberate him from sin.” The Bible speaks of a devil who misleads men and turns them into rebels. The works of the devil must be destroyed. “To this we must cling even at the risk of being ridiculed as fundamentalistic.… One who does not take these facts into consideration is unfit to carry out the assignment.”

The Kingdom of God is more than the sum total of the converted, and it cannot have concrete earthly forms. It is “ushered in by God alone by means of the proclamation of the Word and the dispensation of the sacraments.” The ultimate realization of the Kingdom comes through the return of Christ. Meanwhile God has given men a universal call to salvation. Not all will respond to this call. Therefore some will be lost. God works through the agency of the Church, which carries forward his plan of salvation until he comes.

In the outworking of God’s salvation plan, he is the Sender and the Church is the sent. The sent stands under the will of the Sender. God himself does mission work. He sent his Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Holy Ghost. All of the people of God are called to his service. Missionary work is performed through the apostolate, “the service of [which] office can also be performed by others.” Thus, although there are no apostles today, the service of the office remains. Elders and bishops are watchmen in the Church, not the foundation. Christ is this. Building upon the proper foundation, the apostolate “between the two comings … is called to the task of bringing all men to salvation in Jesus Christ.” Men are called to discipleship and thus to fulfillment of the functions of the apostolate in witness. The Church is to “missionize,” not “Christianize.”

In a very interesting section, Vicedom works over the question of the missionary goal—whether we are to win individuals or nations. whether man can be won in isolation from his environment, and whether the term “the nations” in the New Testament is rightly understood. He concludes that the Church has a responsibility for all men; the goal is winning and gathering them into the Church of Christ, even though “only a portion of mankind will accept.” He discusses ably the step-by-step development theory, the evangelistic method of winning men, and problems of secularization that have arisen from the use of such means as medicine and education. He concludes with emphasis on the Church as a suffering agent doing the will of God.

The author’s essential position is biblical and sound. He has brought biblical data as well as knowledge of key theologians to bear upon his task. His general thesis will stand scrutiny, although there will be disagreements about incidental matters. His statement, “There is a demonism of piety.… as we have experienced in the Pentecostal movement, even the gift of the Holy Ghost can be demonized,” must be questioned. His observation that “unbelievers and unbaptized do not have a share in this body [of Christ]” would leave the dying thief who was redeemed at Calvary on the outside. On the whole, however, this book is “must” reading for theologians, missionary leaders, and seminary students.

The Eggs Were Too Small

Two Worlds or None: Rediscovering Mission in the 20th Century, by William J. Danker (Concordia, 1964, 311 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by H. Leo Eddleman, president, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

William J. Danker here makes a worthwhile effort to “get missions moving again.” While many theological leaders are bogged down in such issues as ecumenicism, authoritarianism, and institutionalism, Dr. Danker compels us to think about the most vital issue of all: If all Christians win people to Christ at the rate I do, where will the population stand in regard to the Kingdom of God in another forty years? Arising from the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, Dr. Danker’s work elicits this foreword statement by R. Pierce Beaver of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, “One of the most encouraging developments in the total mission of Christ’s Church, as I see it personally, is the emergence of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod from denominational isolation and its steadily increasing engagement with others in the common task without loss of its distinctive principles.”

Dr. Danker, who is both a linguist and a scholar, writes out of a sense of desperation. He is troubled by what he calls “a disturbing loss of nerve on the part of missionaries, who see the Christian forces in retreat before the population explosion, before nationalism, and particularly before what Adlai Stevenson has termed ‘the revolution of rising expectations.’ Gone is the mood of certainty, conquest, and victory that characterized what Kenneth Scott Latourette has called ‘the great century’ in missions, the 19th.” From New Guinea with its Stone Age natives to Japan with its advanced technicians Dr. Danker traveled, and he reports his impressions of what missions are accomplishing and wherein they are failing.

I was amazed at his account of a Christian service, including prayer, hymn singing, and Bible exposition, held in a Muslim home in Beirut; the doors were opened because of the gratitude of a Muslim for missionaries who had surgically treated the paralyzed limb of his eldest son. A quarter of a century ago not even medical missions opened the door very effectively to a Muslim home, though when one gave of himself Muslims were never without gratitude. Dr. Danker’s attendance at the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches made possible his graphic description of the vast chasm between the poverty-stricken and the rich in India.

The emphasis of this book upon the need for foreign missions to give attention to such mundane matters as how to raise chickens that can lay eggs larger than the meager results attained by pullets, and how to produce beds on which a Westerner can sleep without sleeping pills, illustrates a trend that socialism has forced modern missionary statesmen to consider. Man has a body as well as a soul. Dr. Danker admits that many at New Delhi had very bad consciences for complaining about accommodations that “would have seemed the height of luxury to most of the population of India.”

Typical of the book are the conclusions in the chapter “Race against Time,” Though missionaries entered New Guinea only in 1948, people by the hundreds now attend services in small out-stations. Five to seven hundred people inside or outside large grass-thatched churches is not uncommon. The slow metamorphosis of Christianity from a “foreign missionary movement” into multiplying congregations and mushrooming memberships has caused the missionary statesman to decide that the Word and “the sacraments” are entrusted by God to the local congregations and that the missionary has no right to withhold them. The New Guinea church is a people’s church, and part of the recommended revision of strategy in this book is that Christianity become increasingly a lay movement once again. One sizable congregation knows only one melody but has composed words for fifteen different hymns, all adapted to this one tune. As many as thirty evangelists may accompany one leader as they use Cessnas to cover a large area in a short time.

The people’s church in New Guinea is a mission to the total man, involving the church deeply with the people’s economic, physical, and educational welfare. The missionary may open a trade store with axes and spades from Germany, cloth from Japan, soap and canned goods from Australia, and many other items available at reasonable prices. He may give out seeds and then buy back the vegetables which the nationals have raised. The clamor for more education is increasing. To some it is “the key to the white man’s cargo.” To others it opens the door wider to an understanding of the Good Talk (the Gospel). Outdoor bush clinics have patients lying around the fire while nurses and missionaries’ Wives give first aid and basic care and refer more complicated cases to the doctor. The Enga church, for example, maintains a highly articulate gospel message while avoiding the Greek philosophy that exalts the view of the soul and minimizes the needs of the body. Like Hebrews, the Engas know they have bodies and think concretely rather than abstractly. Although the Engas do not thank anybody for what is done, their preacher is often heard to say how much better things are since the missionaries came.

Noting the success with which various Christian bodies work together when thrown together on the front lines against the common enemy, Dr. Danker pleads for flexibility of strategy and makes out one of the best cases for intensifying missions this reviewer has seen.

H. LEO EDDLEMAN

Bridge Between East And West

The Demands of Freedom, by Helmut Gollwitzer (Harper and Row, 1965, 176 pp., $3), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

The National Socialist era in Germany, like the pagan era in Rome, produced both martyrs and confessors. Among the latter can rightly be named the eminent professor of theology at the Free University in West Berlin, Dr. Helmut Gollwitzer. His volume might well have been published earlier; much of the contents was made public in addresses a number of years ago.

Several themes underlie the main body of the work, which lies between a biographical sketch of the author written by Paul Oestreicher and the closing section, made up of “The Gollwitzer Affair in Basel” and the addresses published in the Zürcher Woche by Gollwitzer and Hromádka. Outstanding among these themes are: the responsibility of the Christian to “be different” from his non-Christian social counterparts; the limitations that historical circumstances place upon freedom; the inevitability of man’s freedom-predicament; the permanence of the changed face of Europe east of the Oder-Neisse line; the qualitative difference between atomic (nuclear) warfare and conventional warfare; and the need for a Church that can and does bridge the gulf between East and West.

To develop these constitutes a large order, and the volume undertakes exactly this. The author accepts as given the position that the Church must proclaim to all who will hear that even the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is “an act of sin, despair, faithlessness and disobedience.” Thus far, Gollwitzer is a pacifist—a tactical one at least. He sees possible nuclear conflict within the larger context of creation. That is to say, the destruction it would bring would defy God’s Creatorhood and ruin the arena in which God has placed man.

Among the many commendable features of the work, it seems to this reviewer that Professor Gollwitzer’s analysis of Marxism in Chapter IV deserves a wide and most careful reading; it is perceptive and context-creating. His analysis of the East-West situation, while somewhat different from that to which our press has accustomed us, is of a type to produce penitence rather than arrogance within the Church in the West.

From the economic point of view, Dr. Gollwitzer may not fully understand the differences between conventional “European capitalism” and the “people’s capitalism” which we have developed in the United States. This limitation we can certainly overlook, in the light of his overall appreciation of the approvablc and expandable values of the West. This reviewer, in reading The Demands of Freedom, marked more than a score of passages for careful rereading. He would urge other readers to note, particularly, pages 65, 70, 86, 87, 90, 91, 106, 110, 111, and 138–40.

The final section, dealing with Gollwitzer’s non-appointment to the post formerly occupied by Karl Barth in Basel, is of less general interest than the article by Josef Hromádka and Gollwitzer’s word in reply to it. Many of us are less certain than the author of the creativeness of Hromádka’s “prophetic” role in Czechoslovakia. Culture-conformity contains its perils in the East as well as in the West. But Professor Gollwitzer’s work as a whole strikes the correct note, that of Christian responsibility.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Happily Haphazardous

An Expanded Paraphrase of the Epistles of Paul, by F. F. Bruce (Paternoster, 1965, 323 pp., 27s. [also published by Eerdmans under the title of The Letters of Paul: An Expanded Paraphrase, $4.95]), is reviewed by 1. Howard Marshall, lecturer in biblical criticism, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland.

In his introduction Professor Bruce tells us that this book began haphazardly with the writing of a paraphrase of Galatians in connection with a series of Bible study talks for young people; this was published in the Evangelical Quarterly, and then the author yielded to the friendly persuasion of the publisher to give the same treatment to the other epistles of Paul. The result is avowedly a paraphrase of the Greek text; it does not claim to be a translation and is therefore immune from the criticisms that might be directed against the masquerading of paraphrase under the title of translation. The aim of the author has been, not to deal with the subtleties of Paul’s use of moods and tenses or to amplify the meanings of key theological terms, but to write the epistles out in such a way that the general (flow and structure of Paul’s argument will be clear to the reader. To this end the various epistles are provided with headings and subheadings, and a number of footnotes have been added to clarify difficult expressions.

Were this all we were given in this book it would be sufficient cause for thanks, but more is offered. Alongside the paraphrase is printed the text of the English Revised Version of 1881, which must surely rank as the most literal and accurate translation of the Bible in common use; thus the Greekless student may compare the paraphrase with the literal translation at every point. This text has been annotated with the fuller marginal references compiled by Drs. Scrivener, Greenup, and W. F. and J. H. Moulton, only a section of which is printed in modern editions of the RV. Finally, the author has arranged the epistles in what he considers to be their probable chronological order and has written a brief introduction and connecting narrative that put them in their historical setting and deal briefly with various problems of introduction and criticism.

The high quality of all Professor Bruce’s work is so well known that there is no need here to praise a book that displays the qualities of clarity and accuracy we have come to expect from its author. It will inevitably be compared with the earlier work of J. B. Phillips; it provides a much more accurate rendition of the Greek, but at the same time it does not (in this reviewer’s estimation) have quite the same vigor of rendering and that ability to “get with it” which established Letters to Young Churches as a superb piece of popularization. Professor Bruce’s aim is rather the different one of providing a tool for study. The person who is prepared to work through this book, letting the RV text and the paraphrase illumine each other and making use of the abundant scriptural references, will surely find that he comes into very close contact with the mind of Paul.

I. HOWARD MARSHALL

One Had Better Say It

The Thickness of Glory, by John Killinger (Abingdon, 1965, 158 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by John Pott, minister, Second Christian Reformed Church, Grand Haven, Michigan.

In this collection of ten sermons, Dr. Killinger seeks to prick the conscience of the complacent American church-goer—conservative or liberal—who worships(?) a god who never really disturbs him. The reason for this unreality is the subtle mistake of identifying the “hind” parts of God with the Almighty himself (Exod. 33:23). This error dogs the footsteps of everyone who seeks the true God. The seeker fails to find the living Christ because he expects to find him “attractive.” He does not realize, with Isaiah (chap. 6), that the Lord is “high and lifted up.” Thus worship fails to be the adoring of the worthship of God. Like Jacob at the ford Jabbok, the man who seeks God desperately needs to encounter the “Stranger” in aloneness. After all, the Christian life is not a state of having arrived but an unremitting quest for more—more of the life in Christ. It is through “the fellowship of his suffering” that the “finder” has fellowship with the living Christ. Only in this experience of fellowship does the believer get out of himself and into the depths of God’s eternal purposes. Swept along on this mighty flood, he conquers all that opposes, even death itself.

There is an emphasis in these sermons that I deeply appreciate. Genuine Christianity has never been easy—not that God has made faith so difficult but that our sin has plunged us into much darkness. It is to be feared, however, that these sermons will not dispel that darkness. Though they arc learned, provocative, and beautiful, they lack a straightforwardness and a simplicity they might have had if the author had stayed closer to the Scriptures. One is not guilty of biblicism if he insists that the Scriptures, in any given passage, have something very specific to say, and that one had better say it. If God is as great as the author so eloquently and so rightly assures us, it is impossible to believe that his Word is suggestive rather than declarative.

JOHN POTT

Short But Sure

Toward an Understanding of Homosexuality, by Daniel Cappon (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 302 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Donald F. Tweedie, director, Pasadena Community Counseling Center, Pasadena, California.

This is a remarkable book. Dr. Cappon brings to our attention an area of social pathology that has been much misunderstood and cries for understanding and action. He is a psychiatrist who has dealt with some two hundred homosexual patients and whose general psychiatric practice has involved some two thousand cases.

Although I usually read a book as a wholistic experience, when reading for review purposes I do keep my “literary peripheral vision” alert in four areas. I try to evaluate the book as a literary piece, as a work of scholarship, as a source of professional helpfulness, and, finally, as it relates to the biblical revelation. My impression is that Cappon’s work is wanting in all four areas.

Stylistically, there is such unevenness that it is difficult not to become fascinated with this aspect of the book. The attempt to communicate to a rather low level of laity as well as to professionals makes for an unlikely and unlikable disjunction. Numerous technical terms and Latin phrases are mingled with homely descriptions, such as that in which an initial interview is said to be a time for the homosexual patient and the therapist to “smell each other out.” Further, sentences and phrases are inexplicably italicized. Footnotes are frequently appended with no apparent relevance. Much of this irregularity may perhaps be understood in the light of the author’s prefatory confession that he had no particular interest in the problem but that, having been invited to write a book, he did so.

Nor is this work very scholarly. It is journalistic, anecdotal, and full of vague generalizations on homosexuality and society’s evaluation of it. He finds, for example, that our culture is becoming hermaphroditic as well as homosexual; this he discovers, he says, in almost every social index. At the same time, he seems to ignore the extremely pervasive heterosexual and pornographic permeation of the “new morality.” Variations in homosexual patterns in various European areas are presented without evidence, and evaluations of homosexual problems in underdeveloped countries are accompanied with extremely meager data. And I know of no other book which includes in its index such strange listings as “How,” “What,” and “Who.”

The book is also disappointing as a professional contribution. To avoid misunderstanding and to promote the cause of science, the author declares that he is restricting the term “homosexuality” to “overt, acted-out homosexual behavior, in which the individual, male or female, habitually seeks and attains orgasm by means of sexual contact with a member of the same sex over a period of years, because of choice or preference for a sexual partner of the same sex, though this is not necessarily an exclusive choice.” But in later parts of the book he discusses homosexual acts of children, latently homosexual persons, and other aspects of the subject that comport not at all with his careful definition. There is even a discussion of acts of “overt latent” homosexuality—whatever these might be! Cappon presses for thorough diagnostic procedures as being both the initial aspect and the main body of therapy, but he does not make this idea clear in relation to his complex homosexual categories. He emphasizes that the cure of homosexuality is an all-or-none affair and then proceeds to discuss partial cures in detail.

The author’s approach is rather eclectic, middle-of-the-road, and therapeutic. I would take issue with his assertions that hypnosis and the couch are especially contraindicated in therapy with homosexuals. He makes the interesting comment that the simple suggestion of stopping the homosexual behavior “without a hint of threat or demand” has been very successful. However, his support for this statement refers to a chronic alcoholic patient to whom he issued the warning, “You’d better stop drinking or you’ll kill yourself.”

The frequent quotation of Scripture might make the Christian reader think that Dr. Cappon was attempting to square his theory in therapy with the Bible. Such hope is short-lived, however, for the author suggests that the Church should make up its mind whether it is “better to mate than to burn,” and that fornication and adultery should be freely permitted. He then continues with an unsupported forthright statement that sexual abstinence by adolescents is as abnormal as homosexuality and runs contrary to biological, medical, and psychiatric science. He thinks that the rise of the pastoral counseling movement augurs well for our extensive national mental health problem, if only counselors “become secular” and remove the clerical collar.

I must confess, however, that despite these negative comments, I enjoyed the book and found in it a fund of assets. Cappon reflects a growing optimism about effective psychotherapy with homosexuals. This would be better taken if his two case studies presented to “explode the myth of incurability” were more convincing. The reports of successful therapeutic treatment in groups of persons with homosexual problems is encouraging. Cappon also repudiates the naïve but lingering concept of a “third sex” and presents a good sample of evidence to disprove any genetic basis for homosexuality.

I also appreciated the author’s description of homosexual components of personality structure as an alien part of personality, and his general emphasis on the patient’s responsibility for his problem. This is in my mind a sine qua non for therapy with homosexual persons. Apart from this, the always difficult task becomes impossible.

The concept of ethical neutrality is also repudiated, and the value-judgment involvement of the therapist is recognized. However, these values are discussed in the context of ethical relativism, with sanctions resting upon social pressure and psychological conditioning. It is a moot question whether this kind of value recognition is progress or regress.

The volume contains much interesting data and makes the reader feel he is sharing the author’s therapeutic endeavors. These factors alone make a sure though short step in the direction of the title.

DONALD F. TWEEDIE

Jacob Defended

Jacob Have I Loved, by Jean Rees (Eerdmans, 1962, 288 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Charles M. Davis, associate professor of English, Taylor University, Upland, Indiana.

When he was a boy, Mark Twain writes, he was allowed to play chess on Sunday if he would give biblical names to the pieces. In much the same way, numbers of modern writers have discovered the value of a biblical cast of characters for throwing a luster of sanctity over what otherwise might be questionable, trivial, or sentimental. Mrs. Rees in her Jacob Have I Loved has not fallen into this trap. Her novel is a reverent account of the history of Jacob and his family as found in Genesis. To this she has added the fruits of her research, and the story is enlivened with much that is not generally known about things as diverse as ancient animal husbandry and the etiquette of Egyptian wines.

But the justification of the historical novel is this: that it clothes the bare bones of history with life, so to speak; that it conveys a sense of the “pastness of the past” and a sense of the continuity of the past and present. Mrs. Rees’s novel adds no dimensions to the biblical account. Here is one of the tremendous dramas of history: a record of unexampled human treachery, lust, cowardice, cruelty, and murder, which, for all that, cannot prevail against the “terrible patience of God.” Little of this overwhelming struggle of opposites, of light against darkness, of the anguish, the horror, and the exultation of the Genesis account is realized in Mrs. Rees’s smoothly written novel. The author is plainly sympathetic with Jacob and his aspirations and writes with the commendable impulse to defend him. But Jacob needs no defense. The best thing that can be said about him is that he had no illusions about himself; and when he fought with the angel for a blessing, it was not because he deserved it but because he could not live without it.

CHARLES M. DAVIS

Time On Their Hands

Dispensationalism Today, by Charles Ryrie, foreword by Frank E. Gaebelein (Moody, 1965, 221 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The author’s announced twofold purpose is to present dispensationalism in its current purged, refined form, and defend it against much unwarranted criticism. In my judgment Ryrie, professor of systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, has achieved his objectives to a considerable degree. Even if one is not “almost persuaded” to become a dispensationalist, one must admit that his argument is lucid, its spirit well-tempered, and its general apologetic defense marked by an acumen and subtlety that bespeak theological competence.

Since the strongest criticism against dispensationalism has come from the conservative theological camp of Reformed covenantal theology, the author constantly makes this theology the point of reference in both his offensive and his defensive efforts. Adherents of a covenantal theology (those who systematically structure all of God’s dealings with man in terms of covenants) will not, I think, be brought to bay, but Ryrie’s book may well bring them a renewed sense of the limitations of their theology.

Ryrie argues that the pre-, unlike the a-millennialist, has a philosophy of history, because he believes that history achieves a historical goal, that is, a goal within history. God will show that Christianity works, not merely in heaven, nor merely by saving people and bringing them into heaven, but also within the actual historical world of time and space. Thus fundamentalism, often scored for its depreciation of history because of its slight recognition of the Church’s creeds and theological tradition, scores a point.

Ryrie further argues that if a premillennialist consistently recognizes the progressive character of revelation, he will also be a dispensationalist. Dispensational theology, urges the author, calls for a recognition that various stages of revelation produce differing dispensations, that is, periods in which God deals with mankind in a manner distinguishable from the manner in which he deals with mankind in other periods. Thus, Ryrie argues, every biblical theologian must recognize dispensations, the Old and the New and, for that matter, another which precedes the Fall, and still another marked off by the Fall and the establishment of the covenant of grace with Abraham.

Authentic dispensationalists, Ryrie insists, believe that man is and always was saved by grace, that God’s gracious purposes take one form in the Church and another in Israel, and, further, that while these are not unrelated, they are never wholly blended into a unity. He therefore is critical of covenantal premillennialists (Daniel P. Fuller, George E. Ladd, and others), for although they recognize a present distinction between Israel and the Church, says Ryrie, in the end they make the Church the “spiritual Israel.” Since the Bible, according to Ryrie, does not identify “literal Israel” of the past or present with the Church, the touchstone of authentic dispensationalists is a consistentapplication of the hermeneutical principle that interprets the Bible according to the “natural,” “normal,” literal meaning of language.

Though I am not a dispensationalist, I enjoyed this book because it deals seriously with some of the basic, unsolved problems of both dispensational and covenantal theology. Time and history are admittedly a problem in any theology, but some of Ryrie’s criticisms of covenantal theology are much too facile. He contends, correctly, I think, that covenantal theologians have forced much scriptural teaching into the covenantal mold, paying little or no attention to the historical roles that the Bible gives to both Israel and the Church. But he also contends that covenantal theology has read the whole of the New Testament into the Old; I think the truth is rather that it has too often not gotten out of the Old into the New. What, for example, has the fulfillment and embodiment of the covenant in Jesus Christ done to the restructuring and understanding of the covenant in covenantal theology? Not only does the thought and language of this theology remain almost wholly within that of the Old Testament, but Reformed theologians have scarcely known where to place Christ in the covenant; the majority of them have construed the covenant of grace as established with the elect. Ryrie’s book may make it apparent that neither dispensational nor covenantal theology has given Christ his allotted biblical role in either eschatology or the covenant. Ryrie contends that during the Mosaic dispensation, the Old Testament believer did not (could not) consciously believe in Christ. It is difficult to see how one can hold rigidly to this and yet recognize the assertion of Jesus that Abraham “saw my day.” In any event, I would suggest that the theologians of neither theological tradition have consciously and adequately recognized the role Christ played in the history of revelation and the decisive qualification of time and history that this role effected. If Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, then George Ladd is surely right when he asserts that the New Testament is the only place to find an authentic hermeneutic (p. 187).

Ryrie’s defense of dispensationalists against the charge of divisiveness and separatism boomerangs, I fear, when he says that it is an “unvarnished fact” that Luther was a separatist, and that separation is not out of order when a segment of a church recovers some lost aspect of biblical truth. Grant this, and there is no restriction on subdividing the Church. Moreover, Luther was not a separatist, and it is patent that no man reforms the Church by leaving it. Indeed, no Christian may leave a church under the illusion that he is better able to serve the Lord outside it (P. 83).

This is, nonetheless, for many reasons, a good book. For one, it forces both theological traditions to face some of the basic theological problems with which each must continue to grapple until a fuller biblical perspective is gained. Both need to continue to face the issues of time and history as they are conditioned by the progressive character of biblical revelation. Both still have time on their theological hands. Neither belongs to the ancient theological tradition of the Church, for, as Ryrie points out with some unconcealed pleasure, they are of about equal vintage. If dispensational theology cannot go back beyond Darby, covenantal theology cannot go beyond Cocceius; and even Cocceius’ construction of a covenantal theology that would take history more seriously was quickly arrested, says Ryrie, by the application of Calvinism’s predestinarianism.

JAMES DAANE

Book Briefs

The Temple and the Community in Qumran and the New Testament, by Bertil Gärtner (Cambridge, 1965, 164 pp., $4.75). The serious student will find this very profitable.

The Supreme Court Review 1964, edited by Philip B. Kurland (University of Chicago, 1964, 315 pp., $6.50).

By Freedom’s Holy Light, by Gordon Palmer (Devin-Adair, 1964, 162 pp., $3). A selection of patriotic messages.

The Campus Ministry, a symposium edited by George L. Earnshaw (Judson, 1964, 329 pp., $6.95). A spate of essays on the why and how of the Christian ministry on college and university campuses.

The Trumpet Sounds: A Memoir of Negro Leadership, by Anna Arnold Hedgeman (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 202 pp., $4.95). A moving account.

All Things New: A Declaration of Faith, by Anne Biezanek (Harper and Row, 1964, 152 pp., $3.50). A young mother of seven who is a devout Roman Catholic tells of her agonizing struggle to match faith and practice, conscience and birth control, and how she came to be the first Catholic to establish a family-planning clinic.

That Day with God, edited by William M. Fine (McGraw-Hill, 1965, 216 pp., $4.95). Sermons and religious expressions that followed the late President Kennedy’s death. A fine Kennedy memento.

The Europe of the Capitals, 1600–1700, by Giulio Carlo Argan (World, 1964, 224 pp., $20). One in a series of fourteen handsome volumes that constitute a “vast inquiry into the cultural background of the Western world.” Text and well over 100 art reproductions (many in color) combine to give a splendid view of the art, ideas, and history of the Baroque age.

Memories of Teilhard de Chardin, by Helmut de Terra (Harper and Row, 1965, 142 pp., $3.50). A close friend shares his memories of a man who grew big in death.

Scots Breed and Susquehanna, by Hubertis Cummings (University of Pittsburgh, 1964, 404 pp., $5). An extensive history of America’s frontier Scots-Irish.

World Religions (Revised Edition), by Benson Y. Landis (E. P. Dutton, 1965, 128 pp., $2.95). Concise, fact-packed, but sometimes east of accuracy.

They Harvest Despair: The Migrant Farm Worker, by Dale Wright (Beacon, 1965, 158 pp., $4.95). A novel describing the life and toils of a migrant farm worker.

This Honorable Court: A History of the United States Supreme Court, by Leo Pfeffer (Beacon, 1965, 470 pp., $10.95). Hardly democratic in itself, the Supreme Court—consisting of nine men serving for life and responsible to no one—is, in Pfeffer’s story, the governmental institution that is most committed to and most effective in promoting and preserving our democracy. Every American who feels competent to criticize the court should know its history.

Man through His Art, Volume II: Music, by Anil de Silve, Otto von Simson, and Roger Hinks (New York Graphic Society, 1964, 64 pp., $7.95). Commentary and reproductions of paintings that illustrate man’s social progress in the field of music. One of a series of fourteen books sponsored by the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession with the financial help of UNESCO. Distinguished craftsmanship.

Paperbacks

Firebrand of Flanders, by Phyllis Thompson (Lutterworth, 1964, 118 pp., 6s. 6d.) A biography of Odilon Vansteenbergh, former co-director of the Belgian Gospel Mission. Personal glimpses of the man; highlights of the history of the mission.

Baptists and Roman Catholicism, by James Leo Garrett, Jr. (Broadman, 1965, 45 pp., $.95). A survey of Baptist writings about the Roman Catholic Church, with an interpretation of recent developments.

A Brief History of Preaching, by Yngve Brilioth (Fortress, 1965, 230 pp., $2.95). Since most preachers think much about sermons and little about preaching, this provocative book is recommended reading.

Youth Considers Sex, by William Hulme (Nelson, 1965, 96 pp., $1.50). Considerable sense about sex.

The Ethics of Rhetoric, by Richard Weaver (Regnery, 1965, 234 pp., $1.45). First published in 1953.

Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment, by Walter F. Berns (Regnery, 1965, 264 pp., $1.25).

The Book of Deuteronomy: A Study Manual, by Clyde T. Francisco (Baker, 1964, 112 pp., $1.50). Excellent.

God Was in Christ, by D. M. Baillie (Scribners, 1965, 230 pp., $1.45). Lucid theological writing; Baillie’s best-known work. First published in 1948.

The relation of obedience to saving faith is for many Christians a neglected truth. It can be an embarrassing experience to attempt to see whether the faith we profess has borne fruit in obedience to God’s revealed will.

Living as we do in an age of lawlessness, we who are Christians need to search our hearts to find out whether the rebellion against law and order in the secular world has its counterpart in our own hearts in our response to the laws of God. God has not left his children to drift aimlessly; he has given us a chart for Christian faith and living.

From the time of Adam, the basis of sin has been rebellion against and disobedience to God. This clash of wills—God’s will for man and man’s determination to have his own way—continues to the present day.

God says, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else” (Isa. 45:22); but, like Pharaoh of old, man replies, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice …?” (Ex. 5:2).

We are not speaking here of the unregenerate world, for it is and always has been in rebellion against God. Our concern here is for professing Christians. How obedient are we to God’s holy laws and commands? Are we not too often content with a profession of faith that is not validated by obedience?

Make no mistake; we are not advocating legalism, with its dependence on good works and behavior. We are affirming that for Christians there is a life to live for the glory of God, a code of behavior consistent with God’s holy laws. The attempt to be a Christian while living in disobedience to God’s revealed will brings frustration to the individual and confusion to those with whom he comes in daily contact.

The Christian faith can be described as faith in, love for, and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. How do we measure up to this definition?

We may affirm our love and protest our faith, but if we are not obedient to Christ how much does our “love” or our “faith” really mean?

Christ demands of us total surrender. Obedience to him involves our recognition of his right to command. For the true Christian there is one authority, God. We must recognize his right to command and our duty to obey.

Inherent in this is also the recognition of God’s superior wisdom. We are dealing with the one who sees the end from the beginning, who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and sovereign in action. Such an understanding of God demands obedience on our part.

Obedience is a part of normal life. The laws of nature; the compass; the square, level, and plumb line; physiology and mathematics—to these and hundreds of other things we must be obedient in daily living. Obedience is an integral part of military life, and a requirement of civil authorities whereby law and order are maintained.

How much more important that Christians be obedient to the One whose name they bear!

This is no ordinary obedience, for it can involve following Christ blindly, not knowing the outcome but trusting that he is able to perform what he has promised.

The Bible has many stories of such obedience:

Noah obeyed God in building the ark, though to all around him the project must have seemed the work of a simpleton.

Abraham left his home and kindred in obedience to God’s call, going out without knowing his destination. Later, with Isaac, the son of promise, he traveled to Mt. Moriah, obedient to God’s command though unable to understand either the whys or the hows of it.

Caleb and Joshua saw the difficulties involved in a conquest of Canaan; but they were determined to obey God, and it was his will that they should enter the promised land.

Ezra set us a perfect example; we are told that he “set his heart to study the law of God, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

The Apostle Paul met the risen Lord on the Damascus road and there was told what he should do and how much he would suffer for the name of Christ. Years later he could say with the truthfulness of a man who has given his all to his Lord: “Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).

Living as we do in this dispensation of grace, we are in grave danger of presuming on that grace. Christ has not redeemed us to lives of self-indulgence. While our salvation is through grace, by faith, it demands of us that we live obedient to the One who has redeemed us.

Jesus tells us that we have an example to set, a light to let shine that men may see it and glorify God. How often we are disobedient because we seek glory for ourselves!

Christ commands us to love our enemies. Do we rationalize this commandment, or merely ignore it? In either case, can we claim to be obedient to it?

Our Lord tells us that we should put God and his Kingdom first in our lives. How obedient are we to this? Do we not look on our obligation to God as relative and our duty to get ahead in the world as real?

We are told not to judge others, particularly our Christian brethren; but again and again we are disobedient to this injunction, excusing ourselves by saying that we are exercising “righteous” judgment.

The Sermon on the Mount lays down a number of precepts by which we should live and ends with the admonition to “hear” and “do” according to this discourse. Then our Lord uses the illustration of two houses, one built on solid rock and the other on sand. The man who obeys finds he has built on a foundation that can never be shaken.

Jesus tells us to say “No” to self and take up our cross and follow him. Are we obedient to this command?

He tells us to watch and be ready for his coming. How obedient are we to this command that has both a promise and a warning?

He tells us that we must abide in him as truly as a branch abides in the vine. Is our relationship to him one whereby he can impart divine life to us day by day?

The Apostle Paul, speaking by the Holy Spirit, tells us not to conform to this world. How obedient are we to this command, so full of meaning for us today?

Paul also admonishes us to put on the whole armor of God and tells us of what it consists. Are we wearing this armor in obedience to God’s command and provision? Are we using the Word of God as the sword of the Spirit? Are we “praying at all times in the Spirit”?

These commandments are not onerous. They are for our good, given to us in love, and obedience brings with it rest and peace.

The Cross

In what light is the Cross of Jesus regarded in the Gospels? It is often objected that the Epistles of the New Testament concentrate attention on the Cross and resurrection of Jesus, and ignore his life and teaching, which are the main things in the Gospels. This is only partially true; and it is well to draw attention to the fact that the Gospels also lay a supreme emphasis on the death and resurrection. It is seldom noticed how large a space, proportionately, is given in the narratives to the period after the open announcement of Christ’s death. One authority tells us that the Synoptic Gospels, altogether, do not contain the record of the events of more than forty separate days. But of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark fully one-third is devoted to the events of the Passion Week and their sequel in the resurrection; Luke has several chapters; John gives half his Gospel to the same period. The story of the Last Supper, of Gethsemane, of the betrayal, the trial, the crucifixion, the burial, is told in minute, affecting detail. Even this is not the whole. The open announcement of the approaching death is not, indeed, made till after Peter’s great confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:21; 17:22, 23; 20:17–19, etc.). But it is obvious that in the minds of the Evangelists the death is the pivot of their whole narrative—the tragic dénouement to which everything is moving from the first. And it is connected with human salvation. Jesus is to “save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21); is the promised “Saviour” (Luke 2:11, 30—with suffering, vs. 34, 35); “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). After the resurrection, remission of sins was to be preached in his name (Luke 24:46, 47). It is not too much to say that the shadow of the Cross lies over the Gospels from the first page to the last.

There was no dubiousness in the mind of Jesus as to the path of suffering he had to tread, or as to the Cross that stood at the end of it. Many things show how deeply he thought and felt about the cup of sorrow he had to drink (cf. Mark 10:32: Luke 9:31, 51; John 12:27, etc.). Conscious as he was of Sonship, Jesus accepted his sufferings and death as his Father’s ordainment and a divine necessity of his messianic vocation. The words in Luke: “Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory?” (24:26), express the feeling throughout the Gospels on this point. The Christ “must” suffer (Matt. 16:21; Luke 24:7, 44). The “must” lay partly in fulfillment of prophecy; but this only as an indication of the will of God, and of the necessity of the case. It was the Father’s will that was to be done (Matt. 26:39, etc.). It lay in the path of the Lord’s work as Messiah, as Saviour, that he should die.

It is clear also that, while accepting his death as an appointment of the Father, Christ imported into it a deeper meaning than simply a death encountered in the service of righteousness. It was that, but it was far more. The leading clue to his consciousness here is no doubt that wonderful picture of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. That description must have stood out beyond all others in his constant study of the prophecies. It was with the prophecy of the Servant of the Lord he began his ministry in Nazareth (Luke 4:17–21). Matthew saw the spirit of it fulfilled in his taking the infirmities and diseases of men upon himself in a perfect sympathy in his healing ministry (8:17). Christ declared it to be fulfilled in himself on the night of the betrayal (Luke 22:37). In it he found the idea of a suffering which was vicarious and expiatory, and brought salvation to transgressors (cf. Isa. 53:5, 6, 10–12). His death, therefore, was more than simple endurance, at the hands of wicked men. It had a saving efficacy. This is already hinted at to Nicodemus (John 3:14–16). It is involved in various connections in other sayings in John (6:51; 10:15–18; 12:24, 32, 33). It is the key to such utterances as that in Matthew and Mark: “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 9:45—he “came” for this end); and at the Last Supper, where he speaks of his body as given and his blood as shed for men, for the making of a “new covenant” of salvation (Matt. 26:26–28, etc.).

Such language goes far beyond mere martyrdom. How is it to be construed? We may gain a hint if we think (1) of how Jesus identified himself with men—“Son of Man”; (2) of his consciousness of his calling to “save” men; and (3) of his view of suffering and death as something alien to the true destiny of man—absolutely foreign to himself—and an expression of God’s judgment on the sin of the world. To this experience, which belongs to a world of sin, Christ, sinless himself, submitted for the sake of others, and in his love for men, and in oneness of heart and will with God, made true atonement, such as he alone could make, for the sin of a humanity that lay under doom, and could not of itself remove the awful burden. The longing for atonement lies deep in the heart of mankind. If Christ was “Son of Man,” he could not but desire to make atonement; the Gospel of the Cross is the declaration that he did it.—JAMES ORR

Several years ago in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I was one of thousands who sat attentively in the great stadium of that city, on a cool and pleasant evening, to witness, enjoy, and be moved by the dynamic and straightforward preaching of one of God’s greatest gifts to evangelism. But on Friday evening, June 18, 1965, in Cramton Bowl in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, I had a different outlook and feeling. Then I was a guest of Dr. Graham, and I sat on the platform with him and gave the invocation. In this place, I became an active participant on the team crusading for Christ. Then I knew what it meant to stand before thousands as part of a witnessing community for the Lord.

As I listened over and over again to that familiar expression which characterizes Billy Graham’s preaching, “The Bible says,” I thought of the prophet Micaiah, and the stand he took before Ahab, Jehoshaphat, and the 400 false prophets. Micaiah said, “As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak” (1 Kings 22:14). This familiar story has a great deal of relevance for the contemporary preacher, especially the evangelist.

After the ordeals of Selma—the publicity, propaganda, marches, and arrests—hundreds of us who live there and in the adjacent territory were ready for a change. We were eager to hear a message of peace, love, and reconciliation. Therefore, we welcomed the opportunity to go to Montgomery and have our spirits revived and lifted, to have our souls fed (as it were from on high), and to hear it said again, “Thus saith the Lord.”

There was a great deal of skepticism on the part of some people as to the wisdom of having a great crusade in Montgomery so soon after the civil rights marches and the reactions to this movement. But those who harbored any such thoughts had only to visit Cramton Bowl, listen to the melodious singing of the interracial choir, hear Ethel Waters sing and testify for God, see segregation displaced and barriers removed, and in their place experience friendly greetings and an atmosphere of harmony.

Perhaps the high point of this day was a meeting of Billy Graham and the members of his team after the services with a representative group of Negro pastors, educators, and laymen. The meeting was held on the first floor of the First Baptist Church (where the National Baptist Convention, Incorporated, had been organized). Here we had a heart-to-heart discussion of what we felt the crusade meant to Montgomery.

It was the consensus of this group that the crusade was a Godsend to Montgomery and had accomplished a tremendous amount of good. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing to compare with the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, once it is allowed to have full sway in the lives of men. We have seen some real evidences of change; it is not the Montgomery of old any more, and it will never be the same again.

—President JAMES H. OWENS, SR., Selma University, Alabama.

No utopian scheme has ever come out of Asia or Africa, so far as I know; this aberration is limited to people of Western Europe and America. It is a secular version of the Kingdom of God, inspiring the belief in our time that a perfectly ordered social life will be possible as soon as political power is centralized and the wisest and best men are operating the government according to an ideal blueprint. The goal would have been achieved before now, were not a few old reactionaries barring the way!

The map of the universe these trends supply is guaranteed to lead us astray. Yet these trends are popular, and so people who are always attracted to the latest fashion in ideas climb aboard the bandwagon. The Church is in the world, presumably, to witness to a quality of life that is not wholly of the world; it judges the things that come and go from the vantage point of a set of enduring values. The Church is not dedicated to wealth, power, or fame. These things are not bad in themselves, but the Church has another set of purposes, every one of which is aimed at cherishing and nourishing that elusive thing called “the soul,” for whose proper ordering each person is accountable to his Maker. In terms of this main function, religion has taken on many other chores that have implications for even such seemingly remote provinces as politics and economics. These, however, are incidental to its main task, which is to remind man, in season and out, who he really is and what he may become; and this task, in every age, involves some resistance to “the world.” Christianity can never be coextensive with any society.

Most churches and most ministers are bending every effort in this direction; their effectiveness may be questioned, but not their intentions. The fantastic thing is that wealthy and powerful ecclesiastical organizations, seconded by articulate theologians, are doing their utmost—which is considerable—to promote and further the currently fashionable secular trends!

The Kingdom of God has been secularized into utopia-by-politics. The idea of the two cities—the City of God and the City of Man, Jerusalem and Babylon—has been central to Christian social thought from the earliest days. But no longer. If politicians and a few other people will only take the advice of these ecclesiastical evangels of an earthly paradise, the Kingdom of God on earth will be due any minute.

Christians have always felt an obligation to improve the natural and social orders, but they have never until now equated even a superlatively improved social order with the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom was regarded as another dimension of existence, another realm of being, not simply an extension of our present set-up. But the late Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam told the Fifth World Order Study Conference in 1958 that Christians should “so change the planet that when our first visitors from Mars arrive they will find a society fit to be called the Kingdom of God.”

There is a consistent pattern in the social changes taking place in this country and all over the world. We witness a trend toward the expansion of the political, coercive sector of the nation at the expense of the private, voluntary sector. The end result of this trend is a society run from the top by political direction and command, with no private sector immune from political interventions. This is authoritarianism, benign in some countries, tyrannical in others. The tyrannical version, Communism, has attracted some ecclesiastical support and still does; the benign version, domestic welfarism, attracts a great deal more. The aim of powerful churchmen is to mobilize the influence of religion and the churches behind every statist proposal—as if social reform and revolution were the end and religion a mere means!

The second preoccupation of contemporary churchmen, which goes hand in hand with the first, is with the machinery for worldwide ecclesiastical organization, or ecumenism. The ecumenical movement, like secular internationalism, is based on the idea that the sins of nationalism are forgivable when committed by an international body!

To speak of the individual soul in this age of the revolt of the masses makes us a little uncomfortable, even in church. Isn’t the individual insignificant in a period when “great social forces are on the march”? What can the mere individual do when confronted by the power available to society? Does the individual really count any more, or is he just a unit to be counted?

In the planning of the politically powerful the individual is discarded as negligible or cursed as an obstruction. But if we change our perspective we realize that the individual is the most potent force we know. Before writing him off as a mere by-product of social forces, reflect on the power in the infinitely small atom. Think also of the new development called the reaction motor, in which the element we tried vainly to get rid of has turned out to be the thing of highest value.

Part of the message of Jesus is that the Infinitely Great is concerned With the infinitesimally small. How this can be so, or why, is a mystery; but the Maker of heaven and earth cares for his creatures and solicits their fellowship. Every person counts because he is included in God’s plan. This is why we as Christians resist the inordinate powers that present-day government has over the lives of individuals. When government is properly limited, the society is free. Society deserves to be free because it is the seedbed of persons. Persons emerge out of society as its consummation; society is a means whose end is the individual. Nations rise and fall; civilizations come and go; but if the Christian hope is to be trusted, persons are forever!—The REV. EDMUND A. OPTIZ, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.