The most comprehensive church-state study document ever to come out of an American church was adopted by the 175th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. last month.

Dr. Elwyn A. Smith, professor of church history at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and chairman of a special committee that drafted the report, described it as a “guideline” for local action. He regarded the report as an expression of the traditional Presbyterian principle, “God alone is the lord of the conscience.”

In adopting the report the assembly declared that “Bible reading and prayers as devotional acts tend toward indoctrination or meaningless ritual and should be omitted for both reasons.” It is “completely appropriate,” the report added, to introduce Bible reading “in connection with courses in the American heritage, world history, literature, the social sciences, and other academic subjects.” This part of the report aroused the greatest excitement of any of the assembly’s meetings, and extended debate. The Rev. Nevin Kendall of North Tonawanda, New York, told the 840 commissioners that they should not “let our public schools be part-time churches. I submit that we dare not identify ourselves with those people who insist upon using their majority position to cram this position down their neighbors’ throats. We want our children to hear the Word of God, but we will find other times and other places.”

Objection was registered also against the report’s theological basis: “The sole ground for the church’s critique of the state is that in Christ, God and the world are reconciled.” The Rev. Thomas P. Lindsay of Haddonfield, New Jersey, charged that the statement contained an implicit universalism, was contrary to fact, and was not a faithful transcript of Paul’s language.

The various recommendations of the church-state report rested on the theological foundation that since “in Christ, God and the world are reconciled” the Church lives on “a new level of freedom” which enables her to pursue her “overriding purpose” to witness to Christ under any circumstances, but prohibits the use of public schools to force the Gospel on a captive audience.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

‘THE RACE ASSEMBLY’

This year’s meeting, said a denominational publicist, “will be remembered as ‘the Race Assembly’ of the United Presbyterian Church.”

That may be an exaggeration, but the civil rights issue did prove to be a dominant concern at the week-long conclave in Des Moines.

The assembly sent to its 196 presbyteries for ratification a series of constitutional changes which would make integration mandatory in all United Presbyterian churches. The proposed changes would require the denomination’s 9,202 congregations to accept persons into fellowship and membership without regard to “color, origin, or worldly condition”; refusal is declared “a rejection of Christ himself.”

In related action, the assembly petitioned President Kennedy to call a White House conference on civil rights “at the earliest feasible time.” The assembly also established its first Commission on Religion and Race and with an allocation of $500,000.

Dr. Martin Luther King declined a last-minute invitation to address the assembly because he was busy elsewhere.

The remainder of the report was adopted after one speech and two minutes. The assembly quickly urged United Presbyterians not to push for Sunday closing laws, “to seek discussion with Roman Catholics … with a view to finding new and creative solutions to the present public-parochial school dilemma,” and to oppose federal, state, or local grants to elementary and secondary schools, including such indirect grants as “tax forgiveness or exemptions” to parents sending children to private schools.

In a move toward repudiating tax exemption for churches, the assembly urged the church “to begin the process of extricating itself from the position of being obligated, or seeming to be obligated, to the state by virtue of special tax privileges.” Actual instances of this real or seeming obligation were not cited.

Also adopted was the report’s recommendation that “the state grant a divorce when, and only when, there is an irretrievable human failure within the area of marriage.” Inasmuch as existing legal grounds for divorce in almost every instance concern criminal actions, the assembly declared “specific grounds for divorce should be that the family has been so broken that it is no longer socially desirable to maintain.”

On the question of a political candidate’s religious affiliation the assembly asserted: “A candidate’s religious conviction is relevant to the question of his competence to govern.” The question of religious affiliation should not “be sharply focused,” however, since “religious affiliation may not accurately reflect a candidate’s conviction.”

The 840 commissioners of the 3.2 million-member church called upon the United States government and its appropriate agencies “to encourage and support programs of research designed to provide improved means and techniques for dealing with the problems of overpopulation; and to be willing and prepared to provide, upon request, the medical assistance, the popular education, supplies and equipment necessary for adequate programs of responsible family planning in underdeveloped countries where economic and social development is seriously limited by uncontrolled population growth.”

A series of resolutions projected by the church’s Standing Committee on Church and Society were adopted. They included support of the United Nations and efforts toward “the goal of general and complete disarmament … realizing that general and complete disarmament would require the establishment of a world-wide authority …”

The assembly and its Permanent Judicial Commission upheld the New York Presbytery’s ouster of Dr. Stuart H. Merriam as minister of Broadway Presbyterian Church but ordered the session reinstated. The San Francisco Presbytery was overruled in its removal of the Rev. Floyd R. Waddell as minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburg, California. The commission said the presbytery had failed to establish its authority for Waddell’s removal.

Baptists In Detroit: Religion And Politics

The young waitress looked toward the river and confessed that although she had lived in Detroit all her life, she had never found time for the six-minute tunnel ride into Ontario. But no such parochialism marked the fifty-sixth annual meeting of the American Baptist Convention, which this month brought some 10,000 delegates and visitors from forty states to the new, strikingly handsome Cobo Hall convention center on the Detroit River, “world’s busiest waterway.” With a Canadian flag waving in the distance, the Baptists moved to a climactic final night of mission emphasis featuring a parade of flags of twenty-two nations where American Baptists have missions. The flags were followed by missionaries themselves, clad in native costumes. And later, some 10,000 candles were lighted in a service of consecration for thirty-three new missionaries.

Just prior to the processional, the international theme was sounded in the presentation of newly elected president (not of his country but of his denomination) Harold E. Stassen, in 1948 a drafter of the United Nations Charter, who now pledged to his fellow Baptists that he would “work to: bring the arms race under control …; lift the foreign policy of our country to policy of ‘Humanity First on this earth under God’; establish the complete respect for the dignity and worth and human rights of each man … without discrimination or segregation or classification for race or color or creed.”

Later in the convention, lifelong Baptist Stassen, a former deacon and currently a member of the Convention’s policy-making General Council, urged that the arms race be brought under control of the U. N. and suggested the establishment of a “beginning zone of arms limitation” along the Bering Strait in Alaska and Siberia.

During the convention, some seventy-five breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners dotted the heavy program. Speakers on hand for these and major convention sessions read like a who’s who in United States political and ecclesiastical life. The roster included names like Ralph Bunche, Franklin Clark Fry, Elton Trueblood, Roy McClain, and Edith Green.

Indeed, the addresses overshadowed business sessions, and concern was registered over the sparse attendance as resolutions were being passed. It was somehow reminiscent of the old parson who termed denominational resolutions “the most harmless form of amusement ever devised by the human mind.” But on the other hand, delegates could point wearily to an exhausting 8 A.M. to 9:30 P.M. (or later) daily schedule.

Several of the addresses contained implicit reference to debate which has in past months been carried on within the Convention over emphases in the evangelism department, which some feel tend toward Barthianism. universalism, and excessive preoccupation with political and social issues. These charges are resisted by other American Baptists. Evangelism is a particularly touchy subject within this denomination these days due to great concern over lagging numerical growth in comparison with other major church bodies. The title of the convention sermon, delivered by Dr. Clifford C. Medeen of First Church, Haverhill, Massachusetts, was “It’s Time to Grow Again.” He pointed to a decline in American Baptist church membership from 1,561,000 in 1950 to 1,544,000 in 1962 despite a number of denominational programs for growth. In outlining a prescription, he referred to the current debate and said: “We Baptists ought to know that any theology which smacks of universalism cuts the nerve of evangelistic zeal and world missionary endeavor.”

Timber Survey

Newspaper men covering the American Baptist Convention had sensitive ears tuned in for any whispers of presidential politics. Newly elected convention president Harold E. Stassen, former Eisenhower assistant and onetime Minnesota governor, now practices law in Philadelphia, but he is an announced candidate in next year’s New Hampshire presidential primary. Though unopposed in Detroit for his church office, he can hardly expect so smooth a road in New England.

A possible primary opponent also spoke at the Detroit convention. Michigan’s Governor George Romney, a Mormon, reminded his Baptist listeners that if they were interested in conversions, Michigan had 11,000 lakes handy for total immersion. The press was quick to note that, in outlining signs of internal U. S. “weakness,” Romney headed the list with divorce.

Retiring Baptist President Ben Browne was asked in a press conference to comment on Baptist Nelson Rockefeller’s recent marriage. Said he: “I do feel one of the great issues today is the stability, the sanctity of the home. It adds nothing to the high standards of American life for any of our great leaders to break up two homes, declare themselves happy, and disregard the children. Those who aspire to leadership cannot dismiss this as matters that are private.”

Other addresses revealed varying concepts of the relationship between salvation and social concern. After praising the evangelistic work of Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Emerson Fosdick, Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, secretary of the division of evangelism, spoke of the need for personal regeneration and also for demonstration of the doctrine in love for the world: “We cannot individually be neighbors to the world but through action of Congress, support of the United Nations, Church World Service, Home and Foreign Missions, support of urban housing, Federal aid to education, slum clearance and emergency aid to depressed areas, support of the Negro’s struggle for civil rights, we can identify ourselves and enter into solidarity with the world. The singular mark of a Christian, the one identifying mark of a man born again, is that the world is the arena of his concern, he belongs to the whole human family, he thinks … and acts with the whole human race in view.”

On this general subject, Harold Stassen cautioned: “The great teachings of our church should be brought always to the issues and situations of everyday life and of our modern world in the space atomic age; but the political considerations and daily differences should never be brought into our church.” Results of a survey were announced which revealed that 92.5 per cent of American Baptist pastors contacted believe that evangelization of the individual is their major concern, while 29 per cent include also the regeneration of man in his social relations.

In action which could have far-reaching results, the convention approved creation of a council on theological education for “implementation” of recommendations made by a special committee. This committee had indicated the advisability of relocating and merging some of the denomination’s eight seminaries.

Convention condemnation of racial discrimination was reflected in the collection of nearly $4,500 to rebuild the bomb-damaged Birmingham, Alabama, home of the Rev. A. D. King, brother of Martin Luther King. After Dr. Ralph Bunche’s address, which was critical of Birmingham city officials, Dr. Benjamin P. Browne, the Convention’s seventy-year-old dynamo of a president whose charm was a considerable convention asset, called on a Birmingham white for the benediction. Quickly explained Dr. Browne: “Our brother is from Birmingham, Michigan.”

F. F.

Celebrating Life

When the Unitarian Universalist Association assembled for its annual convention in Chicago last month, Gordon Cooper’s orbital flight was the only heavenly topic in conversation. To these liberals, orthodox terms are fuzzy, though a Wisconsin minister quipped, “If I use the word ‘God’ hyphenated with ‘damn,’ everybody knows what I mean.” But with deists, mystics, humanists, naturalists, existentialists, and perhaps atheists in UUA, rare reference to the supernatural speaks of an impersonal “being” or “force.”

Some UUA members still consider themselves Christians, but most of them don’t worry about it anymore. UUA President Dana McLean Greeley, a clean-cut diplomat with a Harvard accent, says the century-old debate has been “transcended.”

The only convention speaker who stressed the word “God” was Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, leader of America’s more than one million Reform Jews. While echoing UUA’s concern with a nuclear test ban and racial understanding, the rabbi was realistic about man’s part in these moral crises. Just as Isaiah called Syria “the rod of God’s anger,” he said, so Communism may carry rods of judgment for the sins of the West.

This didn’t exactly coincide with UUA’s optimistic outlook on man and belief in a never-wrathful deity, though the rose-colored glasses of nineteenth-century liberalism have been taken off forever. Before the two liberal denominations joined two years ago, there was an old saw that “Universalists believe God is too good to damn men; Unitarians believe man is too good to be damned.”

There are many factions in UUA, but schisms don’t bring animosity here. Outspoken UUA members revel in a good argument, and their spirit was usually as jovial on the General Assembly floor as in the downstairs cocktail lounge. With emphasis on the here-and-now, 2,000 delegates felt most at home in the political-convention atmosphere of business sessions. Above the low hum of voices, heated debate, microphone cables and lights sat moustached, grev-maned Moderator Marshall Dimock, steering proceedings with a political scientist’s objective hand.

The deepest conflict was over an attempt to graft UUA’s anti-bias belief to the constitution by requiring open-membership policy for a church to vote in the UUA. But this humanitarian goal smacked head-on with congregational autonomy, perhaps the only long-standing tradition left in the organization. The amendment was proposed by ten Southern churches to stimulate Negro membership, but the few Negroes present debated on both sides. Conservatives won by preventing the necessary two-thirds majority, though a simple majority favored the change. A day later, liberal wounds were salved with a resolution affirming UUA’s advocacy of open membership and establishing a commission on religion and race. But on another issue, a delegate commented, “These resolutions come and go; it’s the constitution that counts.”

In other constitutional issues, a group wanted to gain recognition of the former Universalist canon of faith in “the spiritual leadership of Jesus, and the teachings of Buddha, Moses, Mohammed and all the God-men of all the ages.” An alternate proposal would have mentioned no specific creeds. But by a wide margin, the assembly retained its present affirmation of the universal truths of all ages “immemorially summarized in the Judeo-Christian heritage as love to God and love to man.”

The social stand of primary concern was for legalization of abortions if there is grave impairment of the mother’s health, if the child will be defective, if pregnancy results from rape or incest, or if “there exists some other compelling reason: physical, psychological, mental, spiritual or economic.”

Other resolutions adopted at the meeting opposed released-time for religious education of public school students, opposed Bible readings or religious observances in public schools, advocated comprehensive training in American history and government in schools, and called for liberalized immigration policies by the United States government.

Despite some strong anti-Catholic feeling, a last-minute resolution praised Pope John XXIII’s encyclical “Peace on Earth” as a “wise and noble utterance.”

Art is important to the UUA religion, and in a lobby display an Indiana minister turned even the lowly collection plate into an object of creative joy. But music has been a problem, since much of the good religious music available carries an orthodox Christian message. The delegates previewed “the first new denominational hymnal in twenty-five years,” expected to be in common use by November. “Hymns for the Celebration of Life” uses traditional melodies, but draws heavily on secular poets for texts. (Sample, from Vachel Lindsay: “Let not young souls be smothered out before they do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.…”)

UUA draws upon a history of strong individuals, including many of America’s founding fathers, and presently claims the allegiance of Albert Schweitzer. Today, UUA is small (250,000 members), but fast-growing (70 per cent in the past four years) and well-financed ($1.6 million annual budget).

Interestingly enough, some members asked themselves in bull sessions if liberalism could ever relate to the common man. Some worried about UUA’s being an intellectual, middle-class movement. Others felt UUA just passes resolutions, while the Quakers and Salvation Army actually go out and do something. One delegate had become disenchanted with the adoration of non-Western religion: “We talk about the beautiful Hindu temples, but if the religion makes people slaves, to hell with it.”

Such was the self-examination of the UUA members, a cerebral corps of strong individualists, concerned with the world around them, vaguely aware of a spirit above them. With the movement’s indefinite creeds, congregational autonomy, and glorification of dissent, it has more variety than any other group within Protestantism. So Unitarian Universalists display little unity and hold to few universals. And apparently they like it that way.

Through The Valley

If the church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must be a new type of preacher.

—A. W. Tozer

Aiden Wilson Tozer regarded the man for the hour as an “old prophet type” who would “stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear.” The prophet would be profoundly loving, yet fearless, unpopular, lean, rugged, blunt-spoken, “and a little angry with the world.” Many who knew him felt that Tozer fit the description himself. He was one of evangelicalism’s leading essayists and the most influential figure in the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Tozer was rushed to a Toronto hospital two hours before he was to take his pulpit at Avenue Road Church (where former evangelist Charles B. Templeton won considerable attention during the forties). He died the same night at the age of 66.

An immediate effect of Tozer’s death, attributed to a heart ailment, was to cast a cloud of gloom over the opening three days later of the sixty-sixth CMA General Council in Phoenix, Arizona. Last month’s six-day meeting climaxed a diamond jubilee year observance, but delegates seemed in no mood for rejoicing. Their dejection was implicitly rebuked by the effervescent F. H. Lacy, 72-year-old survivor of the famed Cleveland Colored Quintet, whose wife had died only a month before. She would not have wanted him to be long-faced, he said, whereupon he launched into a witty-creed¹“We are a Christian organization saved from condemnation through old-fashioned salvation. We’ve made our consecration and have the blessing of sanctification, and we sing with inspiration, without hesitation, to any congregation, color, race or nation, providing their qualifications meet with God’s approbation, and we trust God for our remuneration. We have the joy and consolation that in spite of sin’s temptation, souls can be lifted from degradation, and have a conscious realization of Christ the solid rock foundation, and at the final consummation, when we have reached our destination, on that day of our translation, we with joy and acclamation will join in the coronation of Christ our King with adoration with all the saved of God’s creation from Genesis to Revelation throughout eternity and its endless duration.” while delegates roared.

PRAYER MEETING IN SPACE

America had itself another devout hero in astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, who named his space capsule “Faith 7” and uttered a 170-word prayer during his 22-orbit tour through space last month.

Cooper’s outlook was in contrast to that of John Glenn, who, though devout in his own way, thought it smacked of “fire engine religion” to pray in flight.

Cooper’s mother disclosed that “some of them wanted him to change the name of his capsule,” perhaps wary of the satisfaction it might bring Communists if the flight ended tragically.

The astronaut said he named his spacecraft “Faith 7” for three reasons:

“First, because I believe in God and country; second, because of the loyalty to organization, to the two organizations, actually, to which I belong, and, third, because of the confidence in the entire space team.”

A life-long Methodist, Cooper told Congress that “I am not too much of a preacher, but while on the flight on the seventeenth orbit I felt so inclined to put a small prayer on the tape recorder in the spacecraft—it was over the middle of the Indian Ocean in the middle of the night.” This was his prayer:

“I must take this time to say a little prayer for all the people, including myself, who are involved in this operation. I wanted to thank You especially for letting me fly on this flight. Thank You for the privilege of being able to be in this position; to be in this wondrous place, seeing all these startling, wonderful things that You have created. Help, guide and direct all of us that we may shape our lives to be much better Christians—so that we help one another and work with one another rather than fighting and bickering. Help us to complete this mission successfully. Help us in future space endeavors to show the world that democracy really can compete and still is able to do things in a big way, and are able to do research, development, and can conduct new scientific and technical programs. Be with all our families. Give them guidance and encouragement and let them know that everything will be okay. We ask in thy name. Amen.”

Vice-president Kenneth C. Fraser’s keynote address reminded delegates that although the CMA “packs a wallop in this world,” they were not assembled “to flex muscles but to see why we are coughing and wheezing.” He warned of the danger of an attitude wherein one feels he is getting ahead by holding his own.

Speakers repeatedly cited the need of a fresh anointing from God if witness is to be expanded. President Nathan Bailey expressed virtual frustration in view of worldwide spiritual needs. Said he:

“It’s like trying to climb Niagara Falls to meet these needs.”

If the CMA was passing through the valley of the shadow of death, the business sessions failed to reflect it. Delegates confidently took steps to put the CMA domestic outreach on a par with foreign advances. A motion was unanimously adopted urging local churches “to initiate programs or special meetings for the purpose of extension emphasis to the end that our constituency be made aware of this personal and individual responsibility to the same degree as now prevails toward our foreign missionary effort.”

A committee surveying domestic work noted that “if such proven means of extension as home Bible study, extension Sunday School and the ‘mother church’ concept were implemented throughout our society, each and every Alliance church could give birth to a new self-supporting extension church as often as once each seven years.”

The year 1961 produced a record number of 10,818 baptisms on CMA mission fields, 6,070 of them in New Guinea and Viet Nam. The Alliance now has 876 active missionaries and a foreign membership of some 140,000.

CMA North American membership climbed 3.4 per cent during 1962, to 71,548.

In other action: Delegates voted to recognize the Graduate School of Theology at Wheaton College as the official CMA seminary until the Alliance is able to establish its own.

Bailey, reelected president, also was named to fill Tozer’s unexpired term as editor of The Alliance Witness. The action was a stop-gap measure pending selection of a permanent successor.

‘Crisis Theology’

Evangelical editors assembled for their annual convention in Chicago last month were treated to a theological critique by Dr. W. C. Fields, chief of public relations for the Southern Baptist Convention.

“We are now accepting rapid change as normal,” Fields told a record number of 171 delegates at the fifteenth meeting of the Evangelical Press Association. He said this recognition affects so-called “crisis theology”—“we are seeing things in a slightly different light.”

Commission, monthly organ of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, was named EPA “Periodical of the Year.” The general magazine award was shared by Decision and Eternity. Tie, a quarterly published by the Council of Evangelical Churches of St. Paul, Minnesota, was honored for having “most improved format.” Other winners: His (youth magazine), Team (denominational magazine), Teach (Sunday school magazine), and High (Sunday school take-home paper).

In EPA’s “Higher Goals in Christian Journalism” competition, which selects outstanding editorial and picture content, these were the winners: Cover, The Evangelical Beacon and The Message ofthe Cross; original art, Eternity; title-page layout, Eternity and Venture; photo feature, The Missionary Tiding; single photo, Abundant Life. “I Recruited Wally Wakefield,” a story in His by Robert Adams, won in the fiction category. “A. D. 1962,” by Gloria MacKenzie in The Pentecostal Testimony, was honored in the poetry category. Also cited were the news page of Moody Monthly, a standing feature by U. Milo Kaufmann in Teen Time, and “Who Is Ministering to Ministers?,” an article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY by George C. Anderson.

The Ransom Price

Drug supplies for Protestant medical missionaries are being drastically curtailed because of the Cuban ransom deals.

Drug manufacturers in the United States normally donate thousands of dollars in medicine to missionary suppliers, such as the Christian Medical Society. In recent months, however, these firms have had to divert these donations to Cuba as the price paid by the United States for the return of captives.

The result is that the amount of drugs available through the Christian Medical Society to medical missionaries has been cut by as much as 75 per cent, according to J. Raymond Knighton, executive secretary.

Meanwhile, says Knighton, CMS is putting into effect a program—in the planning stage for several years—to broaden its financial base.

Until now, the organization has drawn its resources chiefly from member doctors. Knighton states the plan is to appeal for lay support, too. A new, profusely illustrated publication for laymen is being designed as part of the broadening process. It will concentrate on reporting Protestant medical missionary activities from around the world.

Faith Versus Work?

The United States Supreme Court will decide whether a Seventh-day Adventist who refused to work on Saturdays is entitled to unemployment benefits.

Adell Sherbert worked a five-day week at a textile mill in Spartansburg, South Carolina, for thirty-five years. The mill went to a six-day work week, and she was fired for refusing to work on Saturday, her Sabbath day. A commission denied her unemployment benefits on the ground she was not “available for work.”

The woman then filed suit to overturn the commission’s ruling, but the courts declined. South Carolina’s Supreme Court said the unemployment compensation law, in requiring unemployed persons to be available for work, does not prevent anyone’s free exercise of religion.

She then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that a state cannot require surrender of religious beliefs to qualify for unemployment benefits. She maintains she is available on a five-day basis for work in the textile industry, the only work she is able to do.

The state argued that it does not ask anyone to give up religious beliefs but only to be available for work. If religion disqualifies a person for work in an industry operating on Saturdays (all textile mills in the area are said to be on a six-day basis), he must be available for work in other industries.

The state points out that other Seventh-day Adventist families in the same community are employed without giving up any of their religious beliefs.

Sports And Morals

A Sports Illustrated writer asserted last month that recent scandals in professional athletics notwithstanding, “there is less outright dishonesty today than there was in the ‘good old’ days which, a dispassionate review would show, were not only not good but often sensationally crooked.”

The writer, John Underwood, said that “in an important sense, unless it is a sin to enjoy oneself, there is no crisis.”

“Yet beneath the surface of seeming morality there lurks a true crisis,” he added. “It is, instead, a subtle erosion of the quality of sport.”

Underwood declared that the men who control sport in the United States today are courting the risk of failing to cope with success.

“Sport will retain its character, its unique quality as sport, only so long as the player and the fan and the kid who stands three hours in the rain to get Willie Mays’s name on a crumpled program believe in its sacrosanctity.”

He added that “there is an almost spiritual quality to sport. Man and boy identify with the sports hero; the hero must therefore be the quintessence of his sport.”

‘No Ecclesiastical Tycoon’

When news reached his students last fall that Professor J. S. Stewart had been nominated moderator of the 1963 General Assembly, they carried him around the quadrangle of New College, Edinburgh. As was only fitting, the professor contrived to get one hand free in order to lift his hat to the statue of John Knox as he passed. No nomination in recent years has met with the same degree of warm approval in every section of the Kirk.

At the annual meeting of the National Bible Society of Scotland last month, the sixty-six-year-old moderator-designate said: “We are living in a generation when the Bible is under attack from many sides, and many church people say we should leap to its defense against those who wish to de-supernaturalize it, de-ethicize it in favor of a new morality, and those who would de-personalize it in favor of a ‘new image of God.’ ”

He added that it is not our task to rush to the defense of the Bible, but rather to unchain it and let it go “ranging through the world to take the hearts of men by storm.” The Bible not to be regarded as a dull compendium of man-made thought and ideas; to a “disheveled, disturbed and burdened generation” seeking some sure word from God, this is the answer.

Professor of New Testament in a historic college since 1947, Dr. Stewart is perhaps better known for his continuing preaching ministry. “Here is no ecclesiastical tycoon, but a modest, almost painfully shy man, with a profound concern for people,” said the Baptist Times, adding quaintly, “and little time for the garish occasions he is sometimes expected to share in.”

J.D.D.

English-Style Mutiny

A peculiarly English scene was enacted last month in the ancient cathedral town of Wells, near Bristol. An ecclesiastical court presided over by the diocesan chancellor, Mr. Walter Wigglesworth, and the bishop, Dr. E. B. Henderson, met to discuss the state of war which existed in the village of Spaxton between a rector and his churchwarden. Said the latter’s wife: “The trouble arose because he refused to be a yes-man to the rector.”

The couple complained that they had been pelted with eggs one evening on their way home from a parish meeting. It was not suggested that the rector had a hand in this; indeed, it never did become clear what the rector was accused of. The court neither discussed specific allegations nor announced any findings.

The churchwarden, on the other hand, according to one newspaper which gave the confident impression of understanding the whole mystifying business, had been accused of mutiny, perjury, false pretenses, hatred, malice, envy, breaking an oath to the bishop, and misbehavior. In a woman’s inimitable way the accused man’s wife had the last word: “These are terrible things to say against a good churchman—and one of the few regular attenders at the rector’s services.”

J.D.D.

Reaching France

More than 10,000 Frenchmen swarmed into a German-made tent last month for the closing meeting of an eight-day Paris crusade by evangelist Billy Graham.

“The Graham crusade has reached more unchurched people than any effort we have ever undertaken in France,” said Pastor Andre Thobois, president of the French Baptist Federation. “Two-thirds of the people who responded to the appeal to receive Christ had no previous religious background.”

Altogether, Graham preached to more than 60,000 persons while in Paris. Some 1,200 of them responded to his appeal to receive Christ.

Confusion On Faith

Professor Albert Geyser was restored to the ministry last month by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. Heresy charges against him were dropped.

Announcement of the reconciliation was made as the Pretoria Supreme Court resumed hearings of Geyser’s appeal against the decision of a church commission on May 8, 1962, which convicted him of teaching doctrines that amounted to a denial of Christ’s divinity and deposed him as a clergyman.

Reversal of the commission’s verdict was reported in a joint statement by the commission and Geyser. It said a “brotherly discussion” had cleared up the situation.

Geyser presently occupies the chair of divinity at the predominantly English University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He had previously taught theology at the strongly Afrikaans University of Pretoria.

Geyser’s attorney had maintained that the crux of the dispute was in divergent attitudes toward racial matters in the church. Geyser had insisted that the Scriptures do not uphold segregation.

The joint statement said “it appeared there was confusion at the time of the trial as to whether Professor Geyser accepted all the articles of faith.”

Buddhists In Revolt

Eight persons were killed in the Vietnamese city of Hue last month in a massive demonstration protesting discrimination against Buddhists by the Roman Catholic government.

Subsequently, an eight-man delegation of Buddhist priests and laymen called on President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon, demanding that the government of Viet Nam be given the same legal standing as Roman Catholicism. The president is a brother of Roman Catholic Archbishop Ngo-Dien-Thuc of Hue.

Protestant missionaries in Viet Nam are reluctant to speak out against Roman Catholic domination of Viet Nam because of fear of reprisals. They are known to be irked, however, because Roman Catholic government officials repeatedly discriminate against Protestant believers.

Urban work in the Church today is marked by baffling contradictions. One difficulty with the Church’s perspectives on urban work is perhaps inherent. The Gospel itself has been said to be agrarian, filled with rural imagery and ostensibly addressed to those unaccustomed to city ways and city situations. The complexities of our present-day cities, with their increasingly mobile populations, their detached dormitory communities, and their massive construction and renewal booms, present the Church with problems hitherto unknown. Urban work thus cannot be looked upon strategically from old blueprints. The world of a century and a half ago differed less from that of Christ’s time than does our world from that of our nation’s founding fathers.

What is needed in the Church today, if its urban work is to be accomplished in a way consistent with its presumed master-plan, is a recognition and recovery of essentials. The unhappy fact is, however, that we are not clear concerning essentials and not agreed upon a master-plan. Is the Church basically to seek for numerical growth, and this in areas of easy access? the extension of its influence in public life, and this primarily among the supposedly influential? the establishment of a solid business-like base of financial support, resting most comfortably upon the charity of the affluent? If the answers to these questions are given in positive terms, then our current course in urban work—involving, as it does, a holding of the line or patchwork here, and spasmodic, daring efforts elsewhere—is realistic and should be continued.

Further, and more fundamentally, if the direction of what we are doing is right, then the theology of identification, stemming from a currently fashionable approach to the fact of God’s gracious condescension to identify with frail and sordid human nature, should be continued and extended in our urban work. In the same way in which the Lord of the heavens felt a relationship with the whole of human life, so suburbia’s Church with its means and wisdom and power should help and become at one with its unfortunate feebler brethren in the inner city. So the logic of a theology of identification would run.

Identification, it must be said, does have its transparent values. But the historical reality of the Incarnation was not an end in itself. It was only a part of the means of redemption. A new theological emphasis clearly must be found and made.

Add a Touch of Beauty

Immediately we recognize that what is to be found must already be inherent in the theological groundwork of the Church. Fortuitously, from the new orientation of the ecumenical and liturgical movements which look creatively at the theological syntheses and outlook of the early fathers of the Church there has appeared a possible key to our current theological need. The answer which has been at hand is given broadly in terms of redemption, and this in its ultimate sense as the uplift and glorification of the whole of human life. This is held to be our basic, all-pervading religious purpose in every area and aspect of the Christian personal and corporate enterprise. It has potential validity for urban work also.

There could scarcely be a clearer statement of this point of view than that provided some fifty years ago by the Roman Catholic Abbot Ildefons Herwegen in an address on the Christian liturgy given to a German university audience—a statement which subsequently has had a revolutionary effect upon the development of the lay apostolate in the Roman church on the European continent. The heart of the abbot’s thesis—drawn from the writings of the ancient fathers—was that the transcendent purpose of the Christian religion is that of transfiguration. This same idea may be expressed as conversion, redemption, exaltation, salvation, glorification, or fulfillment. “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all things unto me”: this dominical decree gives substance to the Christian hope for the ultimate uplift of all of life to the plane where God would have it be. The abbot declared: “The purpose of the Christian religion is to assimilate man to God through Christ; to form mankind, therefore, in the likeness of Christ.” He added: “The purpose of the liturgy is the transfiguration of human souls,” and suggested significantly that this transfiguration is, indeed, the key to the whole programming of the Christian enterprise.

Might not the abbot’s approach to the role of liturgy be suggestive of a theological orientation to urban work which not only is perhaps sounder in theory than the current theology of incarnation, but (what is more important) promises far greater practical fruits as well? Herwegen’s turning to the ancient sources of Christian tradition, common to the whole of Christendom, led him to this conviction: that the Christian life is a life united with and lived in Christ, and so, while experienced in the here-and-now on earth, it is nonetheless invested continuously with a sense of the heavenly glory.

What greater need for the depressing sameness of the inner city streets than here and there a touch of Something Other? Whether in the form of the greenness of some spot of grass, the cleanliness of some place of refuge, or the welcome hand of concern and complete acceptance in the face of isolation or of loss, the something other brought into touch with the drab coldness of the urban scene may bring near the wanted touch of the transfigured life.

There could scarcely be a more flagrantly apparent scandal to the Christian cause within our inner cities than the often unseemly appearance of vast numbers of our depressed-area urban churches. The theology of identification suggests, at least in some quarters, the store-front type of church—“Meet the people where they are!” But the situation which those who walk the dark streets of our inner city depressed areas find themselves in is to be discerned not in an apparent, unattractive disarray, but in their hunger and thirst for the redemptive uplift which light and beauty bring.

The principle of transfiguration is at work perhaps even unconsciously in the Church’s great suburban pastures; there it suggests that the lovely hills which crown the landscape be further crowned with churches which bespeak God’s beauty. The churches’ handsome, wholesome spires and other aspects of crisp cleanliness further suggest that beyond the supposedly safe havens in which people live there is an even holier, happier place in which the human heart may find its super-native home. Here, intentionally or not, is expressed the Christian concept of transfiguration, the lifting of life above the immediacies and configurations of the here-and-now and the prefiguring of man’s experience in an area of life beyond the finite horizons.

First Order of Business

The first and possibly most immediate order of business for consideration in our inner city church life may well be to restore or create a sense of dignity and holiness for its temples. That we cannot teach people about heaven in a place that looks like something quite different than it should, ought to be recognized as axiomatic. For we learn really by sense, by an introduction into experiences which prefigure and foreshadow the realities which we would know. Thus it was that St. John in the Book of Revelation is said to have projected into the heavens a glorified and transfigured picture of the worship life of the Christian community which he knew. It might be said that he believed heaven would be like the local church in which he worshiped.

How far short of even a remote suggestion of the eternal ramparts fall so many of our inner city churches! And here—where in the midst of the dreary and the drab, the disorder and the dislocated, some witness must be shown for the peaceful and the purposeful, for harmony and grace—our church structures should speak most eloquently of and point most clearly to the realities which they represent. Not a lavishness which points attention to itself, but a sense of transcendent loveliness and order which seems inherently to uplift and sanctify should characterize the temples of the inner city’s Church.

Closely associated to this is the atmosphere of unreality in the Church’s orientation to the social needs of the inner city. Life in the raw, stripped of all pretense and encrustations, is seen most clearly, perhaps, in our inner cities. The inner city’s social needs are deep, its problems the most critical, and the Church’s meeting with the city’s social situation doubtless barometers most precisely the quality and intensity of the Church’s care for human life.

How characteristic, for example, it has been for us to lock out or freeze out these urban poor, these “different” people, from our churches—until our pews are nearly empty. And then, out of a newfound pious care and holy concern the Church (as symbolized by its professionals)—now wounded in its pride from faded glory, its people moved away—rushes in with impassioned zeal and bright-eyed righteousness to identify with life within its buildings’ neighborhoods. But is the Church within our inner cities truly identifying? The Church is not its isolated, no-longer-used or perhaps half-useful buildings. The Church is (we shrink at the thought!) … Christ’s Body, the extension of God’s life in and through time.

The theology of identification has given encouragement to clergy to come and live, in Christ’s and the Church’s name, among those who in the wild rush to suburbia of the affluent and the acceptable are so unfortunate as to be left behind or disqualified by economics, by color, or by ancestry. The key fiction here is our thinking that we can truly minister to those whom we have rejected or left behind by returning to them a remnant.

A New Perspective

The principle of transfiguration would not have the Church first isolate and then patronize, but would have the Church’s people, out of an imperative sense of vital urgency, be so deeply conscious of the divine and indeed otherworldly nature of its true and inner life that the social situation would be cast in a completely new, different perspective. “You are the Body of Christ,” says St. Paul, “and individually members thereof.” Our life “is hid with Christ in God.” Christ is “our life.” We are “in him,” and he is “in us.” What and where Christ is, to the extent that we enter into our rightful heritage, such also do we find ourselves to be.

The Church has faced the urban situation chiefly with its all-too-human resources and from an all-too-human perspective. Not until the Church studiously takes the step of first teaching and believing itself to be what by God’s decree it is—Christ’s life—will the Church be enabled to bring to the city’s situation redemption or release. After all it is only God who can redeem; his hand alone can bring order, fulfillment, and a sense of God-willed glory to the urban situation.

Is it too radical to suggest from the implications of a theology of transfiguration that the Church’s task in the contemporary world may not be to promote in its present manner Christian social relations or to construct, implement, and assist in the development of broad plans of social renewal until the Church has become—within itself—somewhat more of what it should be? May not it be unrealistic or simply escapist for the Church to give witness to racial, ethnic, and cultural unity before it actualizes this more fully within its own life?

Let the Church Begin with Herself

The correction or adjustment of housing patterns, for example, may be—as I believe—of no immediate concern to the Church’s organic life. What is of first and immediate concern to the Church is its own corporate life. Racial and ethnic segregation patterns—in elementary, practical terms—would receive the impact of the Church most forcibly if the Church did no more than simply integrate what most nearly belongs to itself, that is, if it lifted the well-nigh iron-clad bars to professional assignments outside of their own ethnic groups of its large segment of minority-group clergy. It is at rock bottom a denial of economy, a fictitious approach to the utilization of its manpower, and no less than a false representation of the Body of Christ to persist in an arbitrary and outmoded pattern which almost universally assumes that the Church’s task, in almost any area outside the South today, can be performed better by fourth-rate men of majority-group complexion than by even a first- or second-rate priest of darker hue. The Church’s task is always and everywhere simply to present, and not to deny, the Gospel. It is to bring into every situation something of the glory of its own transfigured life. Yet the Church remains the last bulwark of a rejected way in American and democratic life; by this clear sign will discerning men who in our day seek desperately for a sure instrument of divine guidance increasingly reject the Church.

Our National Council top staff positions, almost all of our diocesan and active cathedral staffs, and the rectorships of our great urban and suburban churches should—for the sake both of an image which may speak effectively to our contemporary world and of an organic life consistent with the idea of transfiguration—should, with a promptness alone consistent with a holy imperative, be opened to the Church’s hitherto “excluded” and capable minority-group clergy, and this with a wise, creative, disciplined, and massive encouragement.

Fresh Possibilities

Here in the immediately foregoing the principle of transfiguration may be seen to reject the notion of a “going forth” to identify, in favor of an “enfolding within” to bring fulfillment to the Church’s total corporate life. A transfigured Church knows no social or economic cleavage within Christ’s Body. It sees its situation, as indeed itself, as a unity. There is, after all, no earthly situation but the human situation in need of and imminently standing in the presence of redemption.

Other areas afford illustrations of the refreshing possibilities of the theology of transfiguration. In stewardship, for example, if the purpose is fulfillment, our direction will be oriented toward helping people to help themselves and others. In this sense, the aim of every mission would be to foster missions, thus enabling the seemingly destitute to become themselves benefactors, bringing to their inner city life some measure of fulfillment. In the area of parochial care, the priest would make the parish vital not by carrying out an exhausted and footsore professional ministry, but by encouraging and implementing the total ministry of lay discipleship.

In the liturgy most clearly we see our role in life which we perform each day, as members of Christ, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.” The Christian life is a life in the world, though not of it. “Christians,” wrote the author of the Epistle to Diognetus in the second century, “are not distinguished from the rest of mankind either in locality or in speech or in customs.… Their existence is on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven.” Liturgy is the exercise of a holy function whereby the Christian life is renewed in Christ. It is the Christian life bringing along with itself its world and placing it into the hands of its transfigured priest in glory.

Liturgy transfigures life; and when liturgy is exercised in its primitive understanding in the context of our situation today, the Church—in urbia and suburbia, among the fields, in far-away areas, in every place—will find itself sharing in an exalted life which, while on earth, prefigures the actuality of heaven. It is of this that the theology of transfiguration both speaks and gives promise.

NATHAN WRIGHT, JR.

Rector

Saint Cyprian’s Church

Roxbury, Massachusetts

One early problem of communication in the American pulpit was the immigrant preacher who spoke some version of Yankee-Dutch to an audience who knew the English language better than he. This problem is largely a thing of the past. But a new problem of pulpit communication has taken its place. Men of the pulpit are now forced to compete with those highly refined and effective forms of modern communication which today are commonplace.

David Susskind’s program “Open End” was dropped from a television station recently when he described the station’s evening programming as a “heap of garbage.” While some people at times might be tempted to use such overly strong language, no one is complaining that television is short on technological expertness. No cost is spared and every technical resource is employed to catch the eye and ear and mind of viewers. From a technical point of view television is great. This is so true that many people find the disparity between technical excellence and the ofttime inconsequential content painful; others are annoyed with themselves because they watch against their wills and better judgment, and sometimes even enjoy the commercials because they are so skillfully done. And here lies the problem of communication for the modern pulpit. Today’s preacher of sermons must compete with the expert technical quality of television, movies, radio, newspapers. The man of the pew is conditioned—no doubt largely unconsciously, but nonetheless powerfully—by this constant exposure to the best in modern communications. He finds it increasingly difficult to be interested in the average sermon. How rarely he listens to the preacher in spite of himself; on the contrary, and this is especially true of teen-agers, listening becomes an effort, something he must work at.

One may indeed sympathize with the preacher as he competes with television, movies, and radio. His hearers are all week long bombarded with messages. They no longer lend their ears—they protect them! Unlike the modern communications expert, the preacher is not a member of a team. He works alone. He must write his sermons without a staff of script writers and editors. If he is an average minister, he has had no special training in the highly competitive field of communications. Left to his own resources, crowded for time, he faces the task of delivering his one, perhaps two, sermons on Sunday to a congregation which throughout the week is subjected to the most highly developed and persuasive means of communication the world has ever known. How indeed can a busy pastor successfully compete for the attention of people who are exposed to a world of communications which will spend hundreds of man-hours and thousands of dollars to get a just-right picture of a breakfast cereal falling from a box into a dish?

For all their polite restraint, telling criticisms are heard in this issue about what is going on in the pulpit of today. Thankfully they come from preachers themselves. One writer urges that many laymen cripple pulpit performance by inordinate demands upon the minister’s time. Another goes so far as to offer to return to the pulpit if he ever finds a congregation that will give him ample time for sermon preparation. Still another urges that much of the pulpit’s communication potential is lost because of hasty, shoddy sermon preparation—a quite devastating criticism since preaching is nothing if not communication.

Yet even the busiest preacher need not despair if he cannot compete technically with MGM and NBC. The Word of God is not bound—not even by our faltering, not-always-expert presentations. Moreover, that which he conveys is news, the best news the world ever heard, news about the origin, life, death, and future of men, news about Jesus Christ and God’s love for us. And even NBC does not spend large amounts of either time or money to broadcast its most exciting news. A hasty newsflash does it. Let the men of the pulpit do their best and very uttermost to communicate the Gospel—and then rest in peace.

END

The Ambiguity Of Theology In Tillich’S Version

On his way to Time magazine’s recent fortieth anniversary party (honoring 284 distinguished past cover-story guests), Paul Tillich, the main speaker, remarked that CHRISTIANITY TODAY “is not very friendly toward me.” We consider Tillich an intriguing personality. We are unenthusiastic about his religious philosophy, however, and expect that its influence will soon pale. The reason should be apparent even from Dr. Tillich’s address to the Time celebrities on “The Ambiguity of Perfection.” There was no reference whatever to Jesus Christ, the sinless Redeemer, no word about the Incarnation and Atonement and Resurrection. Professor Tillich’s brand of religion finds reference to Jesus of Nazareth unnecessary and in turn disregards Christ’s church as the one divinely created and commissioned task force for man’s ultimate rescue (“churches … are not the … exclusive vehicle of the mystery of being”). Thought-provoking and of value is Tillich’s emphasis on the ambiguity of man’s achievements. But surely only judgment awaits his and any theology whose main ambiguity centers about Jesus of Nazareth.

END

Two Different Worlds Americans Live In

Two items have come to our desk—one focusing on Los Angeles, the other on Hollywood—and their concerns are worlds apart.

Los Angeles: The Billy Graham Southern California Crusade will open in Memorial Coliseum Thursday, August 15. Counselor-training classes began this month with an enrollment of almost 30,000—by most evangelistic standards an exceedingly good crowd in itself. Approximately 5,000 persons attended a series of choir rehearsals. There seems to be a widening impression that if a major revival is once again to sweep the United States with more than regional effect, it will come out of the West. There is a growing prayer burden that this crusade may be it.

Hollywood: Darryl F. Zanuck, president of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, has disclosed that besides her $1.7 million salary for Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor is to get 10 per cent of the film’s gross rentals after Fox gets the first $7.5 million. Should the picture gross $60 million (without which it won’t break even), Miss Taylor’s 10 per cent share would be $5,250,000, news which made some Fox shareholders quite unhappy.

The sums involved in Hollywood spectaculars are truly staggering. Queries persist whether the industry’s sickness is one unto death. Europeans marvel that Americans can spend so much money to produce a generally mediocre product. And Christians, seeing in films a powerful medium for the Gospel, devoutly wish they had greater financial means to pursue the project.

Should we take comfort in the fact that Americans gave approximately 100 times Miss Taylor’s prospective Cleopatra income for Protestant missions in 1961? But it is cold comfort indeed, particularly when we remind ourselves that Miss Taylor’s income rises phoenix-like from the wreckage of a ruined home.

America, this face is not a comely one. The Egyptian look does not reflect your highest aspirations. But it is a reminder that for you, for us, the choice is an ancient one: Christ or Egypt. In the face of Jesus Christ we see the glory of God. We may hope that it is toward this face Los Angeles will turn, and Hollywood too. For hope’s fruition, it is time we all begin praying for the Graham meetings in Memorial Coliseum. There is to be a battle there for the souls and bodies of men, and it has already begun.

END

Reconciling Church Polities While Facing Realities Of Power

A closing statement of the recent Oberlin meeting of the Consultation on Church Union (“Blake-Pike proposal”) maintained that the group had reached “an important consensus on the crucial question of authority in the church.” The reference was to an adopted statement on Scripture and tradition. The consultation is now ready “to grapple with the sharp issues that in our history have been causes of division and walls of separation between us”:

1. The place and authority of the ordained ministry including the historic episcopate in a united church and its relationship to Word and Sacrament and its measure of responsibility for keeping the church true to the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ as set forth in the Bible and for leading the church in effective and renewed relevance to the true needs of men and nations.

2. The place in the living tradition of the church of creeds, liturgical practices, and confessions of faith in relation to Holy Scripture, which we have agreed has central and unique authority under Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church.

3. The doctrine of the Sacraments.

To undertake such a tremendous task as here envisaged is almost to demand a monument for courage. We say “almost,” for this is no longer a day when churchmen expect theology to be taken seriously and theological differences therefore no longer loom as large as they once did. This situation is reflected by the University of Chicago’s Markus Barth in his criticism of the proposed union, which appears in McGraw-Hill’s new symposium, The Challenge to Reunion (edited by Robert McAfee Brown and David H. Scott):

The basis of the proposed union appears to be a property and trade agreement to be made for the benefit of visitors, stockholders, and a wider public, rather than a confession of faith, of repentance, and praise. The age-old conflict over historic episcopacy and presbytero-synodical church government is to be solved by swapping bishops against ruling elders, and by retaining both.…

It is clear that a church union is more than an administrative problem only. In both the Anglican-Episcopal and the Reformed traditions it is stolidly upheld that matters of church order and discipline are as spiritual as problems of right doctrine and true preaching. If they are spiritual, they need be informed by the contents of the Gospel and by obedience to it.… If a future church union were to be built upon the elements of this proposal (or of even shrewder arrangement of compromise and exchange), it might bear impressive testimony to the good will of honest and competent men. But any union that is not born out of a new hearing and a better understanding of the word of God will certainly fail to give glory to God.

United Presbyterian minister A. Culver Gordon of Paterson, New Jersey, has commented on the proposed union: “In history, we should note that the Presbyterian church in Scotland fought a long battle to preserve the parity of the clergy and to resist the placing of bishops over them. Are we willing to give away what they are willing to die for?” Some hark back to Calvinist-Arminian differences, among others, which are historically resident in the consulting churches.

On the other hand, in Oberlin the consultation voted to receive a report dealing with a sociological “Analysis of the Participating Communions,” which, delegates declared, “in its analysis of function” points to the possibility of combining in a united church episcopal, presbyterial, and congregational polities. Episcopalians were not too happy with this, even though they had succeeded in removing the term “historic episcopate” from the statement, for they did not believe the report pointed to the possibility of combining this with the other polities.

The report, written by Professor Paul M. Harrison of Princeton University’s religion department, was startlingly frank in distinguishing between legitimated authority and actual power in church government. On “religious establishments” it set forth the following hypotheses:

Given the disparate nature of authority and power in the participating communions it can be reasonably hypothesized that one of the most effective instruments for sustaining the denominations and formulating denominational polity is also one of the most difficult to define. In secular political literature it has been called “the establishment.” Rovere, in his perceptive and amusing article on the American Establishment, points out that experts disagree on what the Establishment is and how it works, but he further observes that the experts also disagree on the nature and operation of the Kingdom of God without denying its existence.

The Establishment appears to be a functional necessity in each of the denominations. The first order of business of every informal Establishment meeting is to deny the existence of the Establishment. The leaders of the Establishment maintain that real denominational power rests with the people, the local congregations, the regional officers, the national executives, the General Assembly, the General Council, or the Presiding Bishop.

The Establishment consists of businessmen and bishops, professional priests and professional laymen, ecclesiastical executives, and theologians of every persuasion, although the Fundamentalists will be sparsely represented. It consists largely of people from the Northeast. These are supported by a handful of affluent folks from the midwestern states, two or three big men from Dallas, and a generous helping from the Pacific Coast élite.

The Establishment, a very modest group in size, will hold the balance of power on most crucial issues irrespective of who holds the formal seat of authority. The group consists of an alliance of near-conservatives and almost-radicals who are cooperating in their common search for a non-irritating approach to controversial issues.

It is not exceedingly difficult to identify at least the principal members of the Establishment within a denomination. Any person who possesses an intimate knowledge of denominational politics can name at least a few members of the Establishment’s Executive Committee.

One effective way of determining who are some of the members of a denominational Establishment is to examine the lists of the American Ecumenical Establishment. A good start at discovering who these people are can be gained by culling the board members of the National Council of Churches.

The Establishment can marshall considerable positive support behind a policy which they favor, but they can generate even greater power to curtail what they describe as “idiotic non-Establishment deviations.” When the Establishment is divided by geographical, professional, or institutional interests, “idiocy” can and sometimes has prevailed. This was the case with the Fundamentalist Controversy which swept some of the denominations but was eventually bridled by Establishment powers.…

The Establishment does not work effectively at the state and local level. A seminary dean and his bishop, both of whom may be Charter Members of the Establishment, can lock in mortal combat at the diocesan level and at the same time be most congenial brothers on national issues.…

As in secular American politics there is an unwritten rule that the national powers do not violate the autonomy of diocesan or presbyterial affairs. This situation is gradually changing as denominational authority is increasingly centralized. Conversely, the local, non-Establishment bishop may exercise unquestioned authority in his diocese, but may be superceded at the national level by one of his laymen who is an Establishment Man.

Little wonder if the average churchman, when confronted with the face of political power in the church, questions the necessity for long, drawn-out wrangling over reconciliation of details of church polity.

END

The use of vaccine to prevent the development of smallpox in individuals was one of the great achievements in the long history of preventive medicine. With the passing of the years more and more vaccines and antigens have become available, not, as a rule, to cure, but to enable the human body to develop antibodies or other resistant factors against a host of diseases.

The use of “religion” to vaccinate individuals against Christianity is one of the tragedies of the modern age.

As far as the Christian faith is concerned, there can be no substitute for Christ crucified, dead, buried, and risen again. Anything which comes between this basic truth and men can be regarded as an enemy of Christianity itself.

Today the vaccines and antitoxins which prevent a true Christian experience are legion. Homeopathic doses of “religion” are a deadly enemy to a vital experience of and relationship to Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our Redeemer. This confusing of generalities for the Specific of Christ can render young people—indeed all of us—immune to a vital experience with Him as Saviour and Lord.

The Apostle Paul speaks of a time when men will have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof, or, as Phillips translates this: “They will have a facade of ‘religion,’ but their conduct will deny its validity” (2 Tim. 3:5).

Are we in this number? Are we permitting our children to be vaccinated against a true Christian faith? A study of much of the material offered young people in their youth programs suggests that this very thing is happening.

The variations of human means of immunization against God’s love and mercy are many. Many of these vaccines have so much in common that their individual characteristics are lost beneath their central ability: to keep man from capitulation to the Son of God.

There is always the danger of being inoculated with humanism, so that we look at the world in terms of physical and material need, forgetting that man does not live by bread alone.

One can be vaccinated through ritual, so that worship is lost in form, the spiritual rejected for the sensuous.

One of the most effective vaccines against Christianity is substituting “doing” for “done,” striving for that which Christ has achieved for us, being concerned with works rather than grace.

There is also the vaccine of “morality,” which leads to the substitution of man’s righteousness for the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. This makes the one vaccinated proud of his own filthy rags of good deeds when he desperately needs the robe of Christ’s righteousness, imputed by faith.

One of the more common vaccines is labeled “activity,” the preoccupation of being busy to escape being still before the Lord.

One phase of this vaccine is the substitution of programs for a personal walk with the Lord. Its reaction is also expressed in the attempt to do God’s work with the arm of flesh.

Another vaccine is the substitution of human wisdom for divine revelation. This inevitably makes the one inoculated more interested in what man says than in what God has said, causing him to give priority to the opinions of the “wise men” of our day rather than to truths expressed by the holy men of old who spoke as they were moved by the Spirit.

In this same category is the inoculation of individuals with books about the Bible while the Holy Scriptures are themselves neglected.

These and many other vaccines—and new ones are appearing all the time—have one ultimate effect. They come between man and his God, between man and a vital, personal relationship with the living Christ.

The writer is deeply concerned about the impact of these immunizations on our young people. We find so many of them eager but confused, anxious but not satisfied, amazingly informed about science and space and woefully ignorant about the Creator of all.

That this vaccination against a vital Christian experience occurs only too often in the Church itself is the supreme tragedy. We have before us an official publication of a major denomination, one for the college-age group. From beginning to end it is existentialists in its concept—its art, poetry, dialogue, and impact. In one fragment of dramatic presentation a biblical scene is depicted by characters whose language is profane and degraded. This erudite magazine was put aside with the feeling that “they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.”

The vaccine of relativity is constantly used to inoculate against God’s absolutes. The statement that “there are no absolutes” is obviously absurd, for the one who utters it is himself voicing an absolute. But consistency is not a shining virtue, and one inoculated with the doctrine that the divine attributes, as well as the way to God, may be discarded in favor of new “concepts” of truth, is rarely receptive to the Gospel.

Just as infants have a natural immunity against most diseases for a few months, so all mankind seems to have an ever-present tendency to project itself above God. True, “man is incurably religious,” but only too often this is centered in self, in man and his imagination—and the creature of that imagination is his god.

To overcome both natural and acquired immunities there is needed a confrontation with self in the light of a confrontation with Jesus Christ. When we see ourselves as we are, and the Son of God as he is, our own need is exposed. When we sense something of what God has done to supply that need, we are in a position to make the greatest transition possible in life—the transition from death to life, from darkness to light, from time to eternity.

That unregenerate man should resent and resist God’s proffered love is not amazing. There is needed a work of the Holy Spirit which can completely change the situation.

On the other hand, that man should be inoculated with the virus of religiosity which, in the name of “religion,” makes him resistant to Christ and his claims is a major tragedy.

That this condition is not hopeless is due to the love and mercy of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. But as far as Christians and the Church are concerned, we must at all times be alert to those emphases which at any point attempt to bypass the Cross and all that is implied in that event at the center of all history.

We must have cisterns of living water, not broken reservoirs. We must have Christ presented in terms of divine intervention where man is himself helpless. We must have truth illuminated by the Holy Spirit, not dimmed by the rationalization of man.

Love That Soap

Thomas Babington Macaulay is responsible for these famous words: “The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and perhaps it takes a Puritan to know one; in any case, it takes a special kind of sympathy to appreciate the Puritan. Perry of Harvard has a wonderful book called Puritanism and Democracy which everyone should read before starting any outcries against “legalism” and “moralism” and “Pharisaism.” The Puritans built iron into the American way of life, and in so doing they were not exactly “reeds shaken by the wind.” Perry appreciates the ordered thrill the Puritan had when he “did the right thing.” His exercise in personal discipline gave him something of the same pleasure a man gets when he knocks a few seconds off the two-mile run.

The best thing to do with Macaulay’s word is to accept it and then glory in it. “The Puritan hated bear-baiting because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” Exactly. If he had any love for humanity at all and any sensitivity in spiritual things, he would find intolerable the disintegration that takes place in people when they enjoy cruelty. The Puritan had something that needs to be hammered back into our beloved American Way. Must we not condemn again the things that give the wrong kinds of pleasure for the wrong kinds of reasons? The Madison Avenue boys even want us to love soap and hair sprays.

The Holy Spirit of God is called the Spirit of Truth, and we are urged above measure to abide in the Truth. This is just not a live option among many interesting possibilities; the Puritans were right. There are things both false and cruel which we ought to learn to hate just because they do give some people pleasure.

EUTYCHUS II

The Holy Scriptures

You have done the cause of evangelical Christianity in our generation an invaluable service in reviewing and replying to Dewey Beegle’s book, “The Inspiration of Scripture” (April 26 issue). Many will attack you for it, but other thousands of us are deeply grateful to you for your fearless and scholarly stand for the integrity of God’s Word written.

California Lutheran Bible School

Los Angeles, Calif.

Congratulations on the way you handled Beegle’s position that the Bible is fallible. Frank but fair, your review and analysis of this old attack on the high view of the Bible’s inspiration was a first-rate job. Everyone who considers this issue should carefully study what you and others of like persuasion have written before jumping on the theological train whose destination is skepticism.

Church of Christ

Sikeston, Mo.

Why all the fuss about verbal inspiration? I’ve never met an ecumenist or liberal who didn’t believe in the verbal inspiration of “that they all may be one” (John 15:21).

First Presbyterian Church

Orange, N.J.

Overstating the quality of inspiration is a common evangelical failure, and understating it is a common liberal failure. The Scripture does not teach the absolute inerrancy of the autographs, nor mere sufficiency of errant extant Scriptures, but it does teach the practical religious inerrancy of extant Scriptures.

First Baptist Church

London, Ky.

That is the great issue that faces the churches today as it has faced the Christian church ever since the time of crass rationalism. Whatever CHRISTIANITY TODAY can do to make ministers and laymen see the Bible as God’s inspired, divine Word and so as the only source and norm of faith and life will make it a blessing for the present and the future.

Concordia Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

I pray that CHRISTIANITY TODAY will continue to provide such painstaking articles in this day of theological drowsiness.

Editor

Moody Student

Chicago, Ill.

Since Dr. Beegle holds elder’s orders in this denomination it is with some distress that we learn of his repudiation of scriptural inerrancy, especially in view of his scholarly reputation.… This defection is most deplorable and should be lamented by all evangelical scholars as a tragedy rather than acclaimed and sensationalized.

First Free Methodist Church

Lockport, N.Y.

Upon reading your review … it occurs to me that Dr. Beegle is writing for the wrong cause. Since he advocates a wholesale removal of books from our Protestant Bible, he reminds me of an Orthodox Jew. Since he wishes us to add apocryphal books and “traditional” hymns, he reminds me of a Roman Catholic.

Lansdale, Pa.

My appreciation to you for your article reviewing Dewey Beegle’s book. For a young evangelical facing a Ph.D. program … and wrestling with the problems of inspiration, that was a fine help.

First Baptist Church

Thornbury, Ont.

Salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ, and is not dependent upon an impossible conception of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The Bible is God’s word to me, but it simply is not all verbally inspired by God. It has its human aspects and that means imperfection in spots.

St. Paul’s Evangelical and Reformed

Evansville, Ind.

Why all the fuss over biblical inspiration?… Let’s have less “rhetorical profuseness” over an issue that should have been dead and buried long ago. You might even give us a few more “Beegle samplers”!

Chaplain

The School of the Ozarks

Point Lookout, Mo.

The four-pronged attack upon Beegle’s loose stand will be quite helpful to crystallize some issues for evangelical thinking.

Gordon Divinity School

Beverly Farms, Mass.

What we see today are only seeds sown. It is in the next generation that the full fruit of this position becomes obvious. Then it is too late to do anything about it.

Gen. Sec.

International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

Lausanne, Switzerland

The doctrine of biblical inerrancy is dead—when will you take the corpse and bury it and face honestly what you must face? Rather than spend your time in clever rationalization to prove what cannot be proven, face the problem which has to be faced—the authority of Scripture in the light of an errant text.

Christ United Presbyterian Church

Mars, Pa.

I understand your concern for the Gospel, and for the souls of men, but one must live with his documents.

Danville, Ill.

Your major feature on Beegle’s treatise deserves to be added to your reprint list. A splendid critique. It certainly merits further circulation and digestion.

Miner Congregational Church

Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

The Warmed Heart

As a former student of the late Dr. George Croft Cell and with the signature of Bishop Francis John McConnell on my Certificate of Ordination into the Ministry of The Methodist Church I cannot but express my warm appreciation of the April 26 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Norman V. Hope and A. Skevington Wood will make the hearts of your Methodist readers—and of many others as well, I hope—“strangely warmed” through the reading of their excellent articles regarding Aldersgate.

In another magazine which has carried a series on the subject of how certain minds have been changed, presumably for the better, in their religious pilgrimage, I noted how one such “pilgrim” paid a special tribute to his discovery of remarkable insights in the sermons of John Wesley, particularly their relevance to the problems of our modern age. Perhaps we Methodists ought to be equally interested in our religious heritage and to seek afresh the secret of the “warmed heart.”

Municipal University of Omaha

Omaha, Neb.

Your last [issue] is wonderful.

Oakland, Calif.

Church And State

The two articles and the editorial which discuss church-state issues (Apr. 26 issue) are incisive in dealing with the departure from “historic interpretation” and the acceptance of “a new interpretation which is still somewhat fluid”.…

J. Marcellus Kik is pointed, and I believe correct, in observing that the “thrust in the report’s introduction and appendices is even more revealing than the startling recommendations.” It is in these portions that the influence of the sociologist, the humanist, and the modern historian-redactor is evident.

Much of Christendom will be gravely concerned with the action taken by the 175th General Assembly, not the least of which is the Session of this church which studied the report and, with minor exceptions, rejected its findings!

GRENVILLE A. DAUN

First Presbyterian Church

Dupont, Wash.

I was specifically disappointed in reading the hyper-criticisms of the United Presbyterian Church and State Report. I say hyper-critical because no one looked for the good aspects in the report but only for what could be disliked.… Though few people see the necessity or the advantage of all the recommendations, many of the recommendations for reform are long overdue such as special privileges to the clergy and theological students and churches paying their share of taxes.

Sterling, Kan.

I was deeply disappointed.… All of these articles made the basic error of assuming that the nation whose government officially recognizes the sovereignty of God and promotes a religious atmosphere is “more Christian,” or at least “better” and more likely to escape the wrath of God, than the nation whose government divorces itself entirely from religion and concerns itself only with secular matters.…

From the viewpoint of the Christian a “religion in general” is … no better than no religion at all. Man is not saved just by subscribing to the sovereignty of God and practicing a “religion in general,” but only by accepting the doctrines of Christ.

Nor dare we suppose that by cultivating an atmosphere of “religion in general,” the government can at least be helpful to the cause of the Christian church. On the contrary, that will only be a hindrance. A “religion in general” is never friendly, but always hostile to the Christian faith.…

The sooner the government divorces itself entirely from religion and concerns itself only with secular matters, the better it will be. Then the Christians of our land will realize what they should have realized long ago: that they cannot and must not expect the government to support and promote the cause of Christ, but that it is entirely up to them to spread the Gospel whereby alone man can be saved. The Gospel will remain pure and retain its saving power only if it is proclaimed in its purity by those who have accepted it in faith. Herein lies the only hope for our nation and for the world.

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church

East Cleveland, Ohio

Your issue has raised the warning flag. If the attempts to remove the Bible’s influence from every area of society but the Church and the attempts to undermine its authority within the Church are successful, we will slip back into the dark ages overnight. Seems I hear a trumpet sounding a call to prayer and revival before it is too late!

Oxford Baptist

Woodstock, Ont.

Your analysis of the Smith report was masterly.… Your magazine is an encouragement to the whole body of evangelicals.

United Presbyterian Church

Paterson, N.J.

I was glad for L. Nelson Bell’s article “A Secular State” for this reason. This is the direction that apostasy must go if the prophecies concerning the anti-Christ are to be fulfilled. It is in this submission and bowing down of the spiritual to the political that the anti-Christ, the political head, will rise. For if the Scriptures teach us anything, they teach us that he will be a political head, as opposed to a spiritual Head.

Again the Scriptures teach us that religion will be the handmaid, nay, even more, the prostitute of this political head.

The Dragerton Community Church

Dragerton, Utah

The Protevangelium

In regard to the review of The Torah, the Five Books of Moses by Jacob Jocz (Apr. 12 issue), the impression left concerning the work of the translator, Dr. Harry Orlinsky, is unfortunate in at least one instance. The problem of translating Genesis 3:15 is complex and can be met grammatically in at least two ways. The possibility chosen by Dr. Orlinsky, to translate zerah by “offspring” and the relative pronoun hu’ with “they,” can certainly be defended. The Hebrew noun zerah is a collective, singular in form, but either singular or plural in meaning. The translation “offspring” continues this grammatical ambiguity. Since the noun zerah is singular in form its relative also must be singular in form, hence hu’.

Whether this is the correct understanding theologically is irrelevant to the grammar of the problem (although I personally believe this passage is indeed, as traditional interpretation by the Christian church asserts, the protevangelium). The scholarship of Dr. Orlinsky should not be impugned for making a possible true translation. As a matter of fact, this is by no means as novel as Dr. Jocz seems to imply, however. It was known to Raschi, the medieval Jewish commentator, and was incorporated into the Soncino edition of the Parashoth and Haphtaroth of 1938, and is also the translation of Theophile J. Meek in The Bible, An American Translation, copyright 1931 by the University of Chicago.

I do not believe that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should leave the impression that the new Jewish Publication Society’s work is of slight or no value to Christian scholars. It is in this spirit that I write. The translation is well worth study even though one may not agree with all renderings. But then, that would be true if any group set out to make an absolutely authoritative translation for its own purposes.

Registrar

Luther Theological Seminary

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

To Reclaim And Retain

As almost a lifelong Southern Baptist (now Independent Baptist, affiliated with IFCA), I was very interested in the evaluation of present conditions in the Convention (News, Apr. 26 issue). In general it was quite accurate except in the tendency to minimize earlier influences of liberalism in the Convention. Also, Southern Baptists hardly “give financially in fantastic ways”; their per capita giving is lower than most denominations, despite an abnormal amount of emphasis on “stewardship” and the “cooperative program.” But I certainly share your concern that the Convention as a whole may even yet be reclaimed and retained for Christ-centered and Bible-centered Christianity.

Blacksburg, Va.

Catholicity

I just read the letter from Edwin S. Gault, conference secretary of the New York East Conference of The Methodist Church (Eutychus, Mar. 29 issue), and I want to apologize in the name of myself and many of my fellow Methodist ministers, for this man who breathes so little of the catholic spirit of John Wesley. I find in your magazine much that helps me as a minister and student, and for this I gratefully say, Thy heart being as my heart, give me thy hand.

Grace Methodist Church

West Palm Beach, Fla.

I greatly admire the catholic outreach of this evangelical paper, and its generally unbiased approach to all the many problems that beset the Christian church today.

The Rectory, Little Berkhamsted

Hertford, Herts, England

To The Gills, He’S Full

I am full to the gills of CT’s seeing a Communist under every bush, equating socialism and Communism, criticizing pacifism and social reform as exclusively the realm of the kingdom-of-God-on-earth liberal.… Are there not others like myself—conservative in religion, liberal in politics, pacifist in military persuasion, and active in attempts at social reform?…

Central Methodist College Biology Dept.

Fayette, Mo.

Down With The Moderator!

Mr. Hughes’s “moderate episcopacy” (Current Religious Thought, Apr. 26 issue) makes as much sense to me as a “moderate creed,” “moderate sacraments,” and a “moderate Bible.”

Saint Barnabas Church

Omaha, Neb.

A Farewell To Life

One of your readers calls attention to the fact that some of the works of Langston Hughes are recommended in a publication of the National Council of Churches (Eutychus, Apr. 12 issue). Lest we forget who Mr. Hughes is—he’s the fellow who, as a member of the Revolutionary Writers Federation (a Moscow-based authors’ group) wrote a poem titled “Goodbye, Christ,” in which these lines occur:

Goodbye,

Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,

Beat it on away from here now.

Make way for a new guy with no religion at all—

A real guy named

Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME—

I said, ME!…

And step on the gas, Christ!

Move!

Friends of Mr. Hughes have sought to explain that he was merely “quoting” a hypothetical Communist—an apologia which seems hardly tenable in view of Hughes’s long list of Red-front affiliations.

Sea Cliff, N.Y.

Reminder Of Siberia

Re “Moscow: Peasants Bid for Religious Freedom” (News, Jan. 18 issue):

Our efforts, it seems to me, are having very little tangible effect and I am at a loss as to what further to do.… We can not give up on the project; yet if every living Christian does not realize this problem as being a personal responsibility of his, our voice will be lost in the wind, and our friends in Siberia, undoubtedly praying night and day to God for help, will soon lose faith that there are any Christians in the world but themselves in their desolation.

Chairman

Russian Refugee Committee

Hollywood, Calif.

Opposed To Double Costs

In “Federal Aid and Control Are Like Love and Marriage” (Editorial, Mar. 15 issue) you state: “Most Protestants gladly pay for whatever sectarian education their children get, and do not expect to assess the general taxpayer for this private rather than public education. If public funds are used to subsidize sectarian schools, the program will discriminate against public education and penalize the citizenry in general.”

I am one of thousands of parents sending children to schools which I suppose you would call sectarian: they are Protestant, parent-controlled schools, operating independently of church organization. Already now we are compelled by the state to meet all the standards set for public schools. It is true that in this area federal control might supersede state control, but right now we are far from independent as far as control of educational standards, and so forth, is concerned. What is more, the Catholic and Protestant schools in the Netherlands have flourished under federal control and support for many years now. You are on the one hand ignoring the control already exercised by the state over private schools and, on the other hand, seeing dangers which could materialize from many other directions as well.

Further: my taxes are used to pay for the education of many public school children. Grand and beautiful buildings with all kinds of frills go up on every hand while we who pay the way for our children as well as that of the public school children scratch to meet these double costs. I know of numerous parents who have denied themselves for years such basic necessities as decent transportation or even indoor plumbing—yes, even going into debt which it will take years to repay—because they are convinced that it is their Christian duty to stop ignoring God in the day by day education of their children.… If my school must meet state standards, why is it not entitled to just as much money per pupil as the public school?… The Catholic has had enough perception to recognize the need of having all his education oriented to his faith.… Just how would it “discriminate against public education” if public school parents were obliged to carry the whole cost of their children’s education? We Christian school parents are not asking for anything extra; we are simply asking that we be given our fair share.…

Christian Reformed Church

New Era, Mich.

Grizzled Edwin Collier

In your March 15 issue, I read, “Court Weighs Religious Exercises”: “… balding Leonard J. Kerpelman … greying Francis B. Burch … tall attorney … white-haired Thomas B. Finan … red-haired Henry W. Sawyer … youthful-looking Deputy Attorney General.…”

Would you kindly inform me and your other readers of the precise significance of these tonsorial and anatomical details? Could they be a subtle form of the argumentum ad hominem or were you having a nightmare in which you dreamed you were The New Yorker?

Yours stockily-built, grizzled, bespectacled, and sincerely,

East Falls, Pa.

• Our scribes over-succeeded in letting CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S readers know they were getting a colorful, first-hand report.—ED.

One of the religious institutions of my early days in South Wales was the anniversary celebration of the church or the minister. Usually it was held on the weekly half-holiday—Wednesday or Thursday—with a preaching service in the afternoon, followed by a fellowship tea, and then by a public meeting. The preacher was usually someone of national, or even wider, reputation. I never missed this opportunity to hear a distinguished visitor, and can still recall some of these preachers and their sermons. Among them were such men as F. B. Meyer, much-beloved in America, and A. C. Dixon, Spurgeon’s American successor at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Others not so widely known nonetheless also made a deep impression on my young mind. Of those who came to these anniversaries, two men especially impressed me with their preaching, not only then but in later years as well. One was John Henry Jowett, often called “The Greatest Living Preacher,” and the other George Campbell Morgan, proclaimed “The Prince of Expositors.”

In those days Campbell Morgan made a greater impact upon me than Jowett. His pulpit presence was impressive, and his “curiously memorable face” was such indeed. There was no question about his being a preacher. He invariably wore a clerical collar (not because “you must put it on you if you haven’t got it in you”) and always had the proper bearing. While his impressive appearance helped, it did not of itself explain his phenomenal success as a herald of God.

Campbell Morgan was as much American as he was British. He spent much time in America, and loved and understood its people. And his association at the famous Northfield Conference with the son of D. L. Moody—an association begun quite early in his ministry—enriched Campbell Morgan’s character, strengthened his preaching, and enhanced his reputation in North America.

Although he was of Welsh extraction, his preaching had none of the Welsh characteristics found in Welsh pulpiteers like Howell Harris and Christmas Evans. He was born, in fact, not in Wales, but in a Gloucestershire village on December 9, 1863. The family soon removed, however, to my native city, Cardiff, where he was reared as a Wesleyan Methodist. His father had been a Baptist minister for some years before joining the Plymouth Brethren, “the straightest of the sects.” Its members took the Bible literally, denounced anything savoring of the “social gospel,” and demanded the strictest separation from the world. Their concept of independence set them apart not only from “the pope and the devil,” but also from all other churches.

However much or little of this teaching was imparted to Campbell Morgan, his early association with the Methodists influenced him far more. As a mere youth he began to preach in the little churches of South Wales and Monmouthshire, and was soon in constant demand. In his early twenties he was “on the plan” as a lay-evangelist, and won considerable fame as a revivalist. Clearly, God had called him to the ministry. So the young evangelist believed, and so did a host of discerning admirers.

Although across the years he often preached in Methodist pulpits, Campbell Morgan never became a Methodist minister. His trial sermon had “showed no promise,” and he was rejected for the Wesleyan ministry. For some years prior to this jolting experience, young Campbell Morgan had earned his living as a schoolmaster, much as did Phillips Brooks, his older American contemporary. There was one significant difference, however: Phillips Brooks was a failure as a teacher, whereas Campbell Morgan was a shining success. While he had no formal training in pedagogy, he proved to be a “born teacher.” This teaching ability he took with him when he eventually entered the ministry.

At the age of twenty-six Campbell Morgan accepted the pastoral oversight of a little Congregational church in the English Midlands. And despite his lack of formal training for the great work he was destined to do in the Christian church, it quickly became evident that he was indeed destined to do this mighty work. Within five years of entering his first pastorate he became minister of an important church in Birmingham, and virtually next-door neighbor to the great Robert William Dale, the most distinguished Congregationalist preacher and thinker of that day.

One day Robert Dale sent for the new preacher. Campbell Morgan knew that the great man was a fierce advocate of adequate preparation for the ministry and a great foe of theological illiteracy. The young minister was only too aware of his own educational insufficiency, so when Dale asked his visitor about his reading, Campbell Morgan apologetically spoke of himself as an “untrained man.” The great preacher rebuked him firmly, yet kindly. “You must never say that you are untrained,” he said. “God, who has many ways of training men, has trained you; and I pray that you may have great joy in his service.”

The young minister did have great joy, and also great success, in the service of Christ. In only a few years he seemed to sky-rocket to stardom! The parallel in this respect between Campbell Morgan and Spurgeon, his older and more illustrious contemporary, is obvious. Before long London claimed the former as years before it had claimed the latter. Campbell Morgan went to New Court Church, in North London. Then, after a period at Northfield and on the North American continent generally, he returned to London to minister at Westminster Chapel, in the heart of the city and in the shadow of Buckingham Palace.

Campbell Morgan was probably the most competent, certainly the most popular, Bible teacher of his time. It is no exaggeration to say that he rediscovered the English Bible for the average educated reader. Like no other preacher of this century, he had the enviable gift of providing a way into the throbbing heart of God’s Word for any who would listen to its inner message. Like John Robinson of Leyden, he believed that God has always yet “more light to break forth from His Holy Word,” and it became Campbell Morgan’s supreme concern to be a worthy channel—both intellectually and spiritually—for this Divine Light. It was a day when “newer views” of Scripture were being much canvassed, to the puzzlement—and even bedevilment—of many rank-and-file believers. Campbell Morgan realized the pressing need of stimulating a genuine desire to understand the message of the Word and, as old Thomas Chalmers would say, to “proceed on it” in the business of living the Christian life. Campbell Morgan set out to provide that stimulation. That is why his preaching was so memorable and so fruitful! That is why his midweek Bible lectures were the weekly event for thousands of people! From the very beginning of his ministry he determined to be an expounder of Holy Writ, A Man of the Word (as a biography by one of his daughters-in-law is entitled). No wonder he came to be known as “The Prince of Expositors.” In this regard he was truly the successor of Alexander Maclaren.

In a revealing bit of autobiography Campbell Morgan tells about passing through what the medieval mystics called “The Dark Night of the Soul.” His mind was clouded by perplexities, his faith riddled with doubts, and his Bible shut tight. He was in mental anguish, in spiritual gloom. Then came the moment of crisis. “In my despair,” he wrote, “I took all my books, locked them in a cupboard, and left them there for seven years. I bought a new Bible, and began to read with an open mind and a determined will. That Bible found me. Since that time I have lived for one end—to preach the teachings of the Book that found me.” It was a great experience, one that recalls what Samuel Taylor Coleridge said when asked why he accepted the Bible as the inspired Word of God: “I believe in the Bible because it finds me.”

As I look back I think that Campbell Morgan made his greatest impression on me (and on several thousand others) by a series of remarkable sermons he delivered in Westminster Chapel during the early months of World War I. These sermons dealt wisely and courageously with the living issues of the conflict. I remember particularly his sermon on “Multitudes in the Valley of Decision” (Joel 3:14). It was so dynamic that on several occasions the staid congregation broke into sustained applause—something unprecedented in that stately sanctuary. One thing he said with tremendous effect was this: “I here affirm that in my heart there is the profoundest conviction that never again shall we see our sons and brothers and fathers marching to slaughter in the interests of pride and power.” It was tremendous preaching, it was electrifying preaching. Elocution and diction were excellent, the spiritual passion supremely intense. No wonder the applause was loud and sustained. History, unfortunately, has betrayed the great preacher’s optimism.

The golden rule for preaching has been defined as follows: “Make sure of your first sentence; make sure of your last sentence; and put your first sentence and your last sentence as close together as you possibly can.” In other words, give special attention to your introduction and your conclusion and don’t be “long-winded”! Campbell Morgan certainly took pains with his introductions and conclusions; just as certainly, however, he did not put them close together. His sermons were twice as long as the average sermon today; indeed, just his introductions were as long as many present-day discourses in their entirety. Even by the standards of fifty years ago Campbell Morgan’s sermons were far too full, and not even the most intent listener could have absorbed more than one-tenth of any of his discourses. But there was never any doubt or confusion about the main thrust of a message, whether it was on “The Ministry of Hope,” “Triumph Amid Tragedy,” or “The Dominion of Man” (actual sermon titles). Campbell Morgan had a remarkable gift for clear and direct speech. Phrase-making, let alone paradox-mongering, held no appeal for him. Some of his “sermon-tasters” may have criticized his failure to deal with “modern problems” or may have disliked his preaching technique. No listener of average intelligence, however, could ever say he did not know what Campbell Morgan was “driving at.”

Campbell Morgan did not survive into our frightening space age! But were he with us today, he would certainly still find his messages in the Word of God. He would still be “The Prince of Expositors.” He would still find his satisfaction in unfolding the inexhaustible treasures of Holy Writ. He would have his critics, of course, even as he had them in his lifetime. Perhaps a few words from P. T. Forsyth are to the point here: “We do not treat the preacher fairly when we judge him by his statements, logic, anecdotes, or phrases. We must judge him by his positive and effective message.” So judged, there is no doubt as to Camp bell Morgan’s stature in the history of preaching and in “The Royalty of the Pulpit.”

JOHN PITTS

Minister

Calvary Presbyterian Church

Margate, Florida

The Reasoners

The Nicodemuses reason

causes,

effects …

fallouts,

fears,

infinity …

keeping mathematical queries alive.

“See,” they say, “the end does not arrive.”

They do not know that

reasoning

the absolutes of

dust

can never find the plan

by which Eternal God transmutes an endless life in man—

through simple trust …

nor can it bring

a tryst

with Christ, nor

cause

the Cause of everything

to seek

a simple throne of flesh—

their own.

And so,

the Nicodemuses even reason

Reason,

searching alone

in eager, ever-darkening

delusions

for their fixed

conclusions.

LESLIE W. SMITH

In our busy world no minister “finds” time to prepare sermons. He must plan his preparation! The pressing duties of any pastorate, large or small, can easily shove sermon preparation aside. Let’s face it—time is at a premium. What little there is of it is dotted with meetings, calls, counseling, errands, ringing phones, complaining members. But reading and sermon preparation—aren’t these usually the first to be neglected?

I am in only the second year of my pastoral ministry, but I have already come to realize the necessity of planning my pulpit schedule several months in advance. Some time ago I had to take myself aside and work out a pulpit schedule that would provide for disciplined study, long-range plans, and flexibility. Series preaching proved to be the answer, and I would like to commend it to others.

By series preaching I mean any program that includes preaching on either a book of the Bible or a biblical doctrine, theme, or character over a period of several Sundays, or even several months. Planning a Year’s Pulpit Work, by Andrew W. Blackwood (Abingdon Press, 1942), is one of the finest books of helpful suggestions.

Let it be understood at the outset that series preaching has not answered all my questions nor solved all my problems. Interruptions still come, and any program of preparation must be flexible enough to allow for them. But advance preparation cushions the frustration of interruptions.

Several things commend the kind of series preaching I have suggested. First of all, it makes for discipline. The minister more than any other professional man runs the risk of becoming lackadaisical. His time, to a large degree, is his own to budget. He has no time clock to punch and is free to establish his own habits. But if he is not careful he will find himself wasting time, day after day doing little or nothing.

We ministers can always find a good excuse for the things we do—or so we think. But place these “things” up against some of the shoddy preaching heard from our pulpits, and our use of many a minute will fall under judgment. Discipline is a sorely needed tool in a minister’s workshop.

Second, series preaching broadens the ministry of the pulpit. The minister who searches for a text on Tuesday morning or, as some do, on Saturday evening, will probably only find one he has been using off and on for months, even years! His thoughts have stagnated; consequently, his sermons revolve around two or three themes. The great gamut of Christian truths is left untouched by the very man responsible for the spiritual diet of his people.

Series preaching will force a man into various new areas of Christian truth and make him do serious spade work. The result will be new sermons on new themes. This is a rewarding experience both for himself and for his congregation.

A planned program will require a man to check his past schedule of themes, Bible books, and subjects on which he has preached; this will enable him to lay plans for exploring those new areas of truth on which he ought to preach. I have found myself including several subjects that I might have neglected had I not had a program to guide my sermon planning. To do this effectively, however, a minister must know his people. He must take the pulse of their spiritual needs, then plan his sermonizing to meet these needs.

Third, series preaching immerses a minister in his Bible. No planned program can long endure unless the minister becomes engaged by the Word of God. The Church’s need in this hour is not for great orators or masters of logical profundity. Rather, our need is for men who will search the Scriptures and preach what they find!

In planning a preaching program the minister should, I think, decide to preach a series of sermons on a number of Bible books, perhaps four or five a year. Some biblical books are more adaptable to morning preaching; and if you are fortunate enough to have an evening service, you will find a Bible book a wonderful source for sermonizing then, too.

I recently planned for a series in Philippians during the morning services for two months, allowing one Sunday for a special-day sermon. I set aside three weeks to read and study the Philippian letter, using books and commentaries and making notes. Then I allowed three weeks to prepare outlines and sermons.

For the same length of time I devoted the evening service to the Book of Amos. Again, I allowed three weeks for study and three weeks for putting the outlines and sermons together.

There is really no language to describe the joy and the satisfaction that come from such a study in depth. One experiences that the designation of the Bible as the Word of God is no mere cliché. As a divine rather than a human word, it does in fact have infinite resources. Drawing upon these the preacher learns that he can never really be “preached out.” Such blessings, however, do not come automatically; they arise with study in depth and planned sermonizing.

Fourth, series preaching brings the Bible to the congregation. It keeps the people with a given book long enough for it to speak to them—in depth! A text from one book in one service and a text from another in the next service makes for spasmodic Bible consciousness. This is not to say that this may never be done. If the preacher is to treat the many themes that the needs of his congregation require, he must allow for times of moving about freely, times when his study will be governed, not by programming, but by the varied and changing needs of the hour. I am only suggesting that an unbroken diet of this sort of hither-and-yon, butterfly technique is not the most profitable.

Fifth, series preaching keeps the preacher at his task of proclaiming the truth of God—and away from the temptation of merely drawing upon the wells of his own opinions. Series preaching takes the minister on a spiritual journey where he sees and hears what God has said, and what God wants said to his people. “Thus saith the Lord” supplants the human opinion. This depth-study of the Scriptures can change both a minister’s heart and his conception of his task. His pulpit thus becomes a sacred place where he is a “dispenser of the Word of God.”

Sixth, series preaching encourages expository preaching. Expository preaching requires diligent study. A minister who tells his congregation only what he himself thinks doesn’t have to spend much time in study. But the task of study and preparation takes on new dimensions when the occupant of the pulpit regards his task as that of telling his people what God thinks. What God thinks, what the mind of Christ is, cannot be discovered by running lightly through one’s own mind; probing deep into the biblical record is necessary. Even if the mind traversed is the Christian mind, its contents is not the proper burden of preaching. In expository preaching the Word of God speaks. In topical preaching there is always the risk that one will speak only of his own mind and its contents. Thus the sermon, for all its public character, becomes a mere soliloquy. The pulpit exists, however, to herald forth the mind of Christ, the word and deeds of God.

Seventh, series preaching requires (and provides!) a reservoir of material. To achieve such a rich background out of which he can preach, the minister must read and read. If he preaches on a subject only once, he will hit the high spots and leave a wealth of material untapped. If, however, he sets himself to preach a series of sermons on a given subject, he will read and study his subject extensively, for he will be under the demands of more than one sermon. In this probing and studying of the Bible, commentaries, and other books, there are thrills for the man who is willing to work for them.

I strongly recommend series preaching. The work is hard, but the dividends are high.

END

THE CALLING OF THE MINISTRY

IMAGE OF THE CLERGY?—To your man about the town or on the factory floor most clergy are either objectionably wet or drearily dry; some few may be neither, but such are regarded as freaks of nature who have, perhaps, been rather smart at finding a job with few cares or responsibilities at which one may work as flittingly as one pleases.—RICHARD ALLEN, “Through a Glass Darkly,” in the Church of England Newspaper.

MARK OF THE MINISTRY—The modern minister of religion has been described as “overworked but unemployed.” He is burdened with duties that consume time without using his special gifts. He is called to minister, but finds himself forced to administer; he is a cleric who no longer writes, a parson who is no longer a representative person, a prophet who is hailed as the best type of organization man, a called man who is valued when he is like everybody else.—“Peter Parson’s Log,” The British Weekly.

GO TO THE TOP—I was given the other day one of the latest innovations from America, a card to carry in your wallet which has printed on it: “I am an important Catholic. In case of an accident, send for a Bishop.” I thought it is no wonder there have to be nine auxiliary bishops in the New York archdiocese, and I wonder if that will be enough, as motor cars and accidents go on mounting, and what other activities of a less truly pastoral character these bishops may have to drop.—Father DOUGLAS WOODRUFF in The Tablet, London.

MINISTERIAL OUTPUT—8000 revs a Minute is a book on racing cars, not on the output of theological colleges.—Columnist in the Church of England Newspaper.

The plea of those who set the style for contemporary preaching is that our age needs biblical preaching. The American culture, however, presents difficulties so tremendous as to make true biblical preaching almost impossible. This article will develop the predicament of preaching and then present practical techniques on how to surmount some of the difficulties.

Preachers of different sorts call their preaching biblical, and so the term must be pinned down.

The preaching with the weakest claim to be called biblical is that based on biblical ethics. Only the behavior patterns of a Christian ethic as presented in the Bible are considered relevant to the present age. Biblical theology is neglected as fit only for a less sophisticated era.

The second level of biblical preaching is that which uses the scriptural material as a springboard for a discussion of current problems of life, using modern cultural patterns and language. The words of the text are applied directly to the problem, and the difference between preachers is the choice of text.

The third level is actually a subdivision of the above. The text is developed using mostly biblical illustrations, and the sermon is liberally laced with quotations of familiar Bible verses.

The fourth level is that of the doctrinal preacher who develops logical statements of faith on the basis of clearly applicable Bible verses. The weakness of this preaching is that generally the preacher examines only the Scriptures which clearly uphold his position. The difficult passages are ignored or glossed over by some rhetorical sleight of hand. Doctrinal preaching can very easily become philosophical or creedal preaching rather than biblical preaching.

These levels are progressively more biblical. Some men who carefully do their exegetical homework for each sermon have come close to biblical preaching.

The problem is the American culture. Our cultural patterns are so different from those of biblical times as to make biblical preaching almost impossible. A description of the American culture is beyond the scope of this article, but Max Lerner gives a concise and accurate picture of its fullness and complexity in America as a Civilization. As Lerner finally concludes, this American culture is a materialistic one—though perhaps not in its on-paper ideals. And a great modern culture can be very pervasive.

Facing Modern Materialism

The world view held during biblical times was quite different from that held by modern America. The universe of pre-modern times was a two-level world, with both the spiritual and the material enjoying reality; even the eggheads on Mars Hill were reached by an argument based on the reality of the spiritual universe. America’s world is a one-level materialistic one.

The American culture is the cause of another specific problem for biblical preaching because of its commitment to modern science. Without modern science, American materialism would not exist. One of last fall’s issues of this magazine was concerned with evolution. CHRISTIANITY TODAY was at odds with the culture here. The culture has for the most part settled this question for itself—man evolved.

For the scientifically oriented intellectual the problem involves much more than just the question of evolution. Some form of theistic evolution still can posit God as in control of the universe. But present-day physical and social science uses as an intellectual and conceptual tool probability theory. Probability theory says that a class of events or things can be accurately described, but individual events or things are random in the class. Probability theory has become extremely sophisticated and is used to discover and describe almost all modern knowledge. Such a doctrine is contrary to the traditional theistic world view of a sovereign God who rules in the lives of men.

American culture is so far away from the ancient cultures that doubt arises as to the possibility of biblical preaching. If a preacher preached completely in biblical thought patterns, would men be converted? Or would the people dully sit through the sermon understanding very little?

Some find a common ground of Scripture and modern culture in the sinful nature of man. William Golding, in his currently popular novel Lord of the Flies, presents man as being as savage and brutal as do any of the prophets. But Golding presents man as man, while the prophets tell about man before God. The id of Freud is not the sin of Scripture.

The fifth level of biblical preaching can be described as preaching in the thought patterns of the Bible. Modern archaeology, sociology, anthropology, and psychology have presented resources enabling man to learn biblical thought patterns and thus to preach in them. A touch of irony is notable here: scientific methodology and the specific disciplines of modern science which have driven our culture away from biblical thought patterns are also the tool by which we can learn about these ways of thinking.

Absolute biblical preaching is most likely an impossibility, because the sermon could never be free from the cultural conditioning of both preacher and listeners. But the possibility of deliberately seeking to adopt the biblical patterns of culture—although the adoption can not be complete, millennia having passed—does exist.

The premise upon which preaching gains its power is the direct witness of the Holy Spirit to the Word both in the preacher and in the listener. To have the Spirit in power the preaching must be thoroughly biblical, even to the point of changing some of the styles of popular modern preaching.

If Americans are so hopelessly out of touch with biblical culture, is there any possibility of biblical preaching? Biblical preaching has to be possible or the cause of Christ is lost. The old-fashioned (but not extinct) prophecy preachers offer proof that biblical preaching is possible. Unbiblical notions from wretched exegesis, prejudice based on ignorance, and crudeness of preaching can never take the power out of this preaching, because it grounds itself in the radical eschatology of the Bible. Conservative preachers preach Christ’s person and work. But this Christ is in and of history. The eschatology preachers preach a Jesus who is now about to break up history. The continuing existence and success of this kind of preaching is encouraging to hopes for truly biblical preaching.

A Matter Of Courage

For the preacher biblical preaching is a matter of courage. Since messages of this sort do not tickle the ego of the listeners, they may not bring professional advancement. Can the preacher cut loose from the cultural moorings of our materialism and trust the Spirit of God to move? The preacher must back up this kind of preaching with prayer that the Spirit of God will bring faith and willingness to submit to the Scriptures. He must set up priorities in his own life so he can have time to immerse himself in God’s Word. The busy work and the crowded schedule have to go.

To preach biblically, the preacher must submit himself to the discipline of the Bible. This involves a commitment deeper than a creedal position. Creeds are very fine as practical instruments for the organization of a religious body and as an elementary teaching device, but biblical preaching must go beyond the creeds. A creed is brief and simple by human design. The Bible is discursive and complex from God’s revelation.

The above might be construed to mean that this writer is in full sympathy with those who have no creeds, but this is not so. The non-creedalists come in two varieties, those who have such a paucity of doctrine as to make a creed impossible and those who say that they believe only in the Bible. The non-believers could not do biblical preaching, while the great majority of the second group have a clearly formulated set of categories by which they interpret and preach the Christian faith. Therefore, the lack of a creed in the usual sense of the term is no particular guarantee of biblical preaching. Since the Bible is the judge of creeds rather than creeds of Scripture, biblical preaching is superior to creedal preaching. Creeds, written or unwritten, have a practical use in the life of the Church, but not as a substitute for the inspired revelation.

For biblical preaching, the preacher must study the best biblical scholarship. He does not have to accept everything he reads, but he had better read a goodly amount, much of it from outside his own little theological corner. The myth which Bultmann rejects may be exactly the stuff a truly biblical preacher is after. In many ways the New Testament theology in the writing of Bultmann, Cullmann, Dodd, Stauffer, and Wilder is tremendously valuable for preachers. Brilliant scholarship must be considered whether or not one agrees with it. The past two decades have seen a flood of conservative scholarship of value, and these men must be read.

Some might want to explore the possibility of seeking to restate the biblical concepts in contemporary thought patterns, but the language of liberalism should show the danger of this. Accommodation is very difficult. The only possibility for the biblical preacher is the Bible and the Spirit.

The possibility of biblical preaching is explained and justified by the first three chapters of First Corinthians, where the wisdom of the world is compared to the foolishness of the Cross. The power of the Cross is the Spirit of God. The Gospel has never in its history faced challenges equal to the materialism of modern culture. The members of this materialistic culture may not be able to understand the Cross by using scientific categories, but the Spirit of God can open the understanding of the heart of man.

END

A virus infection kept me home last Sunday, and I had to “attend church” via radio. From the several church broadcasts offered by Chicago radio stations I made a good choice, for when the minister began his sermon I became absorbed. He held my attention to the end, and when the organist began playing the closing hymn I had the infrequent feeling that I could have stood more.

As I snapped off the radio the thought occurred to me that I had just listened to the first interesting sermon I had heard in a long time. This is more an observation than an indictment.

Sermons have greatly improved over the years, but in comparison with other prime competitors for people’s attention—radio, television, magazines, and books—they are not keeping pace. They lack preparation, prolonged thought, and inspiration. Mute testimony to this is our declining church attendance and the diminishing influence of the Church. The laity is being droned into slumber by sonorous sermons.

Many people still going to church do so out of long-suffering loyalty, or because they are attracted by what are sometimes referred to as “the cosmetics of religion”—those extras inserted into worship services to woo wayward worshipers into church. An accomplished organist, special anthems and tableaux by children and youth choirs, recognition of special groups attending in a body, jazz ensembles, guest soloists—these are the extra fillings. Even infant baptism is sometimes turned into a kind of baby show, scheduled merely for bringing in relatives by the pew-full.

Some of the revival of ritual is promoted by the desire to have an attendance-builder. Hope of success rests on the concept that people may be vain enough to believe something will prove interesting if they participate.

These “cosmetics” are legitimate and worthwhile to an extent, but they are supplanting the sermon, which is the voice of the Church and the greatest potential attendance-builder it has. There is nothing more enthralling than interesting sermons clearly expressed and well delivered. Penetrating, fresh, illuminating sermons can bring back the Church, and make her stronger than ever! Why aren’t sermons always interesting?

Why I Left The Pulpit

Curiously, the bulk of the blame is not the minister’s, but the laymen’s. The people in the pew have deprived themselves of interesting sermons by consuming an inordinate amount of their minister’s time. Present-day preachers are so busy doing everything in the church from conducting ladies aid elections to cranking the mimeograph that they have insufficient time and energy left for the reading, contemplative thought, research, and organization interesting sermons require.

I know, for I was a minister. After seven years of “successful” but frustrating work I went back to school and prepared for a career in religious journalism. I would go back into the ministry in a minute if I could have a schedule permitting me time to prepare quality sermons.

A few weeks ago while I was chatting with my pastor in his study, he mentioned how little time he had for sermon preparation. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand at the books and magazines neatly undisturbed against one wall and said, “I wish I had time to read these. As pastor of this church I’m nothing more than the manager of a $50,000 corporation.”

Time, and plenty of it, is the prime ingredient for creating anything worth disseminating. If a disinterested person outside the church has a choice—and he does—of investing twenty minutes of his time in listening to a sermon prepared in an hour or two or of reading a magazine article prepared in a day or two, you know which he will choose—and has been choosing.

Lee C. Moorehead, professor of preaching and worship at Methodism’s Saint Paul School of Theology, and an author, stated in a recent magazine article: ‘Certainly the thoughtful layman who wants his preacher to have something of substance to say on Sunday morning realizes that thoughtfulness is the result of intellectual activity that takes time. Therefore he will join the minister in helping to set up the conditions under which the minister has adequate time to study.… Thinking ought to take up a sizable block of the minister’s time” (Adult Student, Nov., 1962; © The Methodist Publishing House; used by permission).

Churches are spending much to train men for preaching, but the money and effort are largely negated by the poor stewardship laymen exercise in consuming their minister’s time.

How many hours of preparation a listenable sermon requires is difficult to ascertain, for men differ in their work habits. From my own experience, I found I needed one hour of preparation for every minute I was to speak. A twenty-five minute sermon, therefore, took me twenty-five hours to prepare. Of course, I couldn’t hold to that kind of schedule, and when I tried, I was sometimes accused of neglecting my job.

There are some consistently interesting preachers today. However one may differ from the beliefs and ideas of such well-known preachers as Harry Emerson Fosdick or Billy Graham—to name but two—there is one thing these gentlemen of the cloth cannot be accused of, and that is dullness. Perhaps this is why they are well known. Their ability to make men listen to their sermons lies not so much in oratorical talent as in what they say. Listening to them, one is readily aware that they spend hours on content and its organization.

The average parish minister, though, is kept so busy during the week that on Sunday morning he has the frustrating task of having to speak out before he has thought out. He must preach “off the top of his head,” and the result, usually, is a fuzzy, puerile sermon—and a half-filled church.

Journalism And Preaching

Part of the blame for uninteresting sermons must be laid at the doorstep of the seminary. My graduate education included training at both a seminary and a journalism school, and I must confess I learned more about sermon preparation in the latter than in the former. In the seminary I learned little more than sermon delivery, while in the journalism school the emphasis was on content.

I actually learned how to put a sermon together in a class on editorial writing taught by a visiting professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning Lauren Soth of the Des Moines Register and Tribune. When he learned I was a minister he told me that a sermon is nothing more than an editorial, and that if I wanted to hand in some excerpts from my sermons for editorial assignments, he would grade them. I was elated and had visions of breezing through a snap course, but the first five or six submitted averaged out to only a C—grade.

I was puzzled and a bit resentful. Didn’t he know I had spent three years in seminary learning how to write sermons? And I had pulled down an A in homiletics, too!

It was Mr. Soth’s comments in the margins that taught me the things I should have learned before. His comments ran like this: “inadequate subject”; “you don’t believe in your subject”; “thoughts incomplete”; “subject done too many times already”; “full of clichés”; “not told from best angle”; “straying from subject”; and “not put together well.” How these complaints exposed my sermons—and most of the sermons I’ve heard.

As the truth of these charges clawed through my pride, I wondered how many times I had lost the attention of my congregation because of such mistakes.

Eventually I received an A in the course, but it was only after devoting hours of thought to my sermon-editorials. One of the main lessons I learned was that something isn’t interesting just because I say it—even if I say it forcefully.

The Church will regain some of its lost influence when it restores its voice in the pulpit. Intelligent, positive, articulate, well-organized, and nourishing sermons will be listened to inside and outside the Church.

As one farmer advised his preacher on the way out of a service in which the preacher bemoaned the fact that more people hadn’t attended: “I’ve learned the best way to get my cattle to the feedlot is to offer them plenty of the right kind of feed.”

It is to the laymen’s advantage to work out a schedule with their preacher that will allow him time to tilt back in his swivel chair, put his feet on the desk, and stare squinty-eyed at the ceiling. They’ll soon find people flocking back to worship services and a host of green-eyed preachers wanting to serve their church.

END

Preacher in the Red

ALERT THE MISSING PERSONS BUREAU!

In my service to a rural congregation of 160 members, one of my obligations (and privileges) as pastor is to teach a class of Junior Highs on Saturday morning during the winter months. During a recent session of this class one lad asked this untimely question, “Who is Reverend Heart?” Before I could register my bewilderment, three other class members chimed in that they too wondered about Reverend Heart. I confessed my confusion and said I did not know him.

In quizzing the class I found out that Reverend Heart had something to do with the writing or the translation of the Bible. A bright member of the class added: “Pastor, you always mention him before you read the Scripture on Sunday morning.” Only then did I realize that the misunderstanding resulted from my frequent practice of introducing the Scripture reading with the words, “Let us listen now with ‘reverent hearts’ to the Word of God as we find it recorded in.…”—The Rev. E. D. BRUEGGEMANN, pastor, St. Paul United Church of Christ, Lebanon, Illinois.

Modern preaching is being most severely attacked these days, not by the people who hear it, but by preachers and theologians themselves. “Clergymen are numerous, but prophets are few,” states Dr. Kyle Haselden, editor of The Pulpit, adding that this “is a just and accurate indictment of current preaching. With one incisive stroke it uncovers the radical defect, the weakness underlying the decadence of the American pulpit.” He refers to the need for preachers “who with conviction and passion and in truth speak hopefully for God, whose pulpits remind men, not of the lecturer’s dais or the forum or a cozy experiment in group dynamics, but of Sinai, Calvary and the Areopagus.”

Dr. John R. Bodo, professor of practical theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary (Presbyterian), concurs: “We may hold, with complete biblical and historic legitimacy, that preaching is our main duty as well as the original normative medium for the proclamation of the Gospel. But our people … may no longer be greatly affected by our preaching or by any kind of preaching.… So we go on, from Sunday to Sunday, deluded into thinking that just because we have said something, something has actually happened, while people know (and we ourselves know it in sober moments) that the day of the ‘preacher’ is done.”

Dr. George C. Stuart, professor of preaching at Christian Theological Seminary (Christian Church), attacks the way preaching is taught in our seminaries. “Sometime ago I listened to a graduate of a well-recognized theological school announce to his fellow ministers that he had spent the first four or five years of his initial parish experience forgetting all that he had learned at seminary in order, as he put it, ‘to preach to the people in my church.’ Where was that student’s professor of homiletics during those crucial years? At a time when both biblical studies and theology are working systematically to build the act of preaching into the tissue of the Body of Christ, when most theologians today believe that preaching alone creates the real future of the church, homiletics is weak both as a science and an art.”

Charles Clayton Morrison, former editor of The Christian Century, recently remarked: “For a number of years I have been a modern Diogenes going about with my homiletical lantern in search of a preacher.… The pulpit, which is the throne of Protestantism, seemed to have become the footstool of a new ruler—the Cult of Consultation. The sermon has lost its character as an Event, either for the preacher or the congregation. It has become hardly more than a space-filling homily in a highly liturgical or folksy impromptu exercise preparatory to the coffee break.”

Now these are very dim views of the modern pulpit, and they are quite representative of the opinions of Protestant leaders generally. However, here is one more severe indictment of the modern pulpit which has something very constructive to offer.

Dr. Conrad H. Massa, assistant professor of homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary, says: “In the history of the church preaching has been neglected, ignored, debased, even almost totally forgotten, but never has its place been as seriously questioned, by those who are genuinely concerned with the vitality of the church’s witness, as has been done repeatedly in this century.… All of this points to one inevitable conclusion: the Protestant minister today does not have an adequate theological understanding of the nature and purpose of preaching.… Doctrinal theology has given us exhaustive inquiries into the ‘doctrine of the Word of God.’ It has never given us a ‘doctrine of proclamation’.… It is time that theologians faced the unpleasant and rather startling realization that in the whole history of homiletical literature from Augustine to Blackwood, with only certain exceptions, the specific working aims of this activity of preaching were not taken from theologians but from pagan rhetoric! The aims of Christian preaching enunciated by Augustine, in Book IV of his On Christian Doctrine, were the aims of Ciceronian rhetoric, ‘to teach, to please, and to persuade.’ These aims have been picked up, repeated, and sanctioned by homileticians ever since.… The basic aims of public speaking cannot be applied to the gospel … because in the only sense in which ‘persuasion’ and ‘edification’ are theologically meaningful, they are the work of the Holy Spirit.…”

Exposition Of God’S Word

The sermon must be an exposition of the Word of God, not the word of man; it must come from the soul of the preacher to the soul of the hearer, as divine revelation by the power of the Spirit of God; it must confront sinners in the total context of their lives with the sovereign redemptive claims of God’s Word in the person of his Son. Therefore it cannot be judged in terms of results according to human standards. It does not “sell” something: it does not merely seek to please people, nor persuade them, nor even teach them or get decisions and conversions. Rather it tries simply to let the Word of God speak, knowing that in the last analysis only God can produce the results.

If our preaching is to have the note of divine authority, if it is to be authentic, it must strike men as being something much more than the word of the preacher. In other words, it must be theologically oriented homiletics; it must have a doctrine of divine proclamation behind it. The preacher may not be the greatest and the most popular, but he should have been taught a theory of preaching which comes, not out of mere pagan rhetoric, but out of the Word of God itself. This should be the heart of homiletics in the seminary.

Everybody can see that while the modern Church is growing, the modern pulpit is not—which raises a few very serious questions about the kind of growth which the Church is experiencing in these days of widespread religiosity. The distinctive feature which must fill the vacuum left by the modern pulpit is, as it has always been, that which the liberals themselves find wanting in their pulpits, and which the fundamentalists have not yet admitted is wanting in theirs—namely a theological doctrine of preaching the Word of God. A great opportunity lies before us, but it may be lost.

First, we can lose our opportunity by imitating others around us and sacrificing our distinctiveness in preaching, either because we would like to get the kind of dubious results others are getting, or because we yield to those voices in the church that don’t like anything too expressly biblical. Where the Word of God is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, informed, faithful Christians can produce flourishing churches, filled with worshipers every Sunday, including the youth who profess their faith and take their fathers’ places. True, informed, Spirit-led Christians will support worldwide missions, home evangelism programs, international broadcasts, fine Christian schools, distinctive youth organizations, splendid institutions of mercy, journals and publications—but these do not result from the kind of preaching which is heard in so many modern pulpits. They can be found in churches that sound the authentic note of the inspired and infallible Bible.

Second, we can also lose our contemporary opportunity even though we maintain the high standard of distinctively biblical preaching if we fail to make our pulpits relevant to the context of modern life, if they speak only out of the past and not to the present and the future. We cannot live on an island in our culture, especially not with a truly theologically oriented homiletical theory. We have something theological to say, and we have theological pulpits with which to say it. Our sermons must not only be truly biblical, but they must also be biblically pertinent to the problems of the day in which we are living.

A Problem Of Communication

One of those problems, perhaps the very first one, is communication itself—how to get through to modern man. We are not preaching to yesterday, when words were relatively scarce and public speakers were few, when there was not so much fierce competition for the attention of men. The change in fifty years is almost incredible. Someone has said that today people are being talked into a coma. “Our entire way of life is being so governed,” says Dr. Bodo, “by selling and the mentality of selling that people automatically distrust anyone who tries to persuade them. Thus, when even hidden persuaders find it increasingly difficult to overcome the apathy and skepticism of the public, open persuaders like preachers dare not indulge in any illusions.”

This means that our pulpits must speak distinctively (without compromise of our basic theological and homiletical principles) to man as he is today, not as he was yesterday—whether we see him in our pews or somewhere else. In either case he is the same man. His life span is longer, but his listening span is shorter. He is always on the move, even mentally when he is in church, for he lives in a highly mobile world. So we shall have to talk to him in shorter sentences and shorter sermons. (Most of ours are at least ten minutes too long.) Anything we say after thirty minutes had better be outstandingly good, so good that it will stop the clock.

Through movies and magazines, through radio and television, modern man has been conditioned to communicate by pictures, not by words. He reads that way, he hears that way. He lives in a picture-dominated culture, and he doesn’t change when he goes to church. So, if we reach him it will be in the word and thought forms with which he is familiar; we must cast our homiletical theory into word-pictures. If that seems beneath our dignity, let us recall how Jesus talked in pictures to people who had not been conditioned by our modern means of communication. And isn’t the entire Bible in a sense God’s word-picture of his sovereign grace for a lost world?

Finally, we can also lose our opportunity by refusing to pay attention to the so-called details of great preaching which demand so much hard work in preparation and practice. Preachers who follow careful preparation of exegesis and neat outlines by merely standing up and talking are not doing justice to the demands of the modern pulpit. Those who write out their sermons, and then rewrite them again and again and perhaps again, are going to be the most worthy exponents of biblical preaching. To use the style of the spoken word rather than the written word; to think of how it will sound instead of how it will read; to preach in carefully chosen terms that are concrete, not abstract—these are marks of the worthy preacher. Can one who ignores these points really do justice to his calling as communicator of the Word of God, or succeed in coming to grips with the man of today in the world of today—within the church or without?

In that connection it is interesting and disturbing to observe that until very recently pre-seminary courses in most colleges required many hours of foreign-language study but only a few hours of speech. Indeed, young preachers must know these languages, but is it not equally important for them to know the language of their contemporaries to whom they must preach? Can they communicate to modern man if they cannot speak effectively to him—if they do not know how he speaks and hears?

I think it is fair to say that we have not paid proper attention to matters of style and diction, idiom and delivery. Too many of us are preaching in the language of the King James Bible, and also in the oratorical tones of that day—except that we are not as polished and grammatical. If we think that the common people will still hear us gladly, we have underestimated them. They will judge the Word of God by the words we use to preach it, even though they may not be too literate themselves. Protestant preaching ought to be the best in terms of content, biblically and theologically and homiletically. It ought to be the best in terms of communication: language and delivery, projection and pertinence, directness and rapport. Proclamation of the Gospel is dishonored when syntax and style and spelling insult the Holy Spirit. He is concerned not only in the larger issues of divine truth, but also in these so-called details.

Let us not forget that every sermon we preach leaves its mark upon those who hear it, for better or for worse. After hearing it they are never the same again. If they turn away, by showing this very definite reaction they prove the point. No, it is not presumptuous for a preacher to state this conclusion, for true preaching is the most powerful form of communication in all the world. This is not because of the preacher, nor because of the sermon, but because the voice of the Spirit is in every real sermon, no matter what the cynics of our day think of it. Even cynics can be and have been affected and converted by such a sermon.

Jesus told his disciples to preach the Gospel. When the Holy Spirit came to the Church on Pentecost, he did not begin his mighty work in this world by setting up an organization, by launching a new social enterprise, by establishing a counseling service, by joining a community crusade, or by drafting a set of resolutions, but rather by preaching the Gospel. He set up a pulpit and preached a sermon. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was first of all a preacher.

And so throughout its history, the Christian pulpit has always occupied the primary place in the true Church. There have been times when it was neglected. Then the Church lost its spiritual power. But each time the restoration of the pulpit was essential in bringing the reformation of the Church.

Such a time is upon us today, judging by the criticism of the modern pulpit directed by those who, in so doing, are also judging themselves. Christian homiletics, I believe, can produce the kind of pulpits needed today. It can bring a real doctrine of preaching the Word of God. But we had better be careful, for we could easily miss our opportunity to make that contribution. We could miss it by losing both our identity and our principles of preaching. We could miss it with pulpits that have no relevance to our day, that have no rapport with our culture, that are too isolated and too antiquated to be understood by modern man or to have any significance for the modern scene. We could miss it by refusing to learn the hard lessons and the fine arts of pulpit speech, by preaching the Word of God in words which the Holy Spirit cannot use, and which our hearers cannot tolerate.

END