How much voice should the national (or “receiving”) church have in the affairs of overseas missionaries working in its midst? Do changing conditions indicate a change in the missionary task?

To examine these and other important questions of motive and strategy, the Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern) called a unique consultation. The week-long meeting (October 13–19) was unique in that participants were not chosen by the board: national churches abroad sent delegates they had selected; missionaries representing the board’s work in nine countries were elected by fellow missionaries in their fields; other boards and agencies of the denomination sent delegates of their choosing.

In addition a host of outside experts were called in. Other churches and organizations with which the board has relations were invited to send non-voting correspondents. Specialists in particular areas of missionary activity were invited as non-voting consultants. About 70 of these visitors were given the privilege of debate.

Voting in the deliberations were some 120 delegates: the board and its key staff personnel, missionaries, nationals, and members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, who represented other boards, agencies, and organizations.

Wide Range of Debate

The diversity of opinion represented by participants led to sharp debate in many sessions. The conferees came from a variety of situations. In Mexico the Presbyterian mission is involved in proceedings to set up a consultative committee of all missions and the Mexican Presbyterians which will handle all strategy decisions. Independence in the Congo has brought many problems to the young church on the largest Presbyterian mission field. In Iraq and Ecuador the Presbyterians work through a united mission. Divisions within the Korean church and revolution in that nation have posed problems there. Political uncertainty, runaway inflation, and a vigorous daughter church were factors in Brazil. In Japan the mission is involved in much institutional work and is cooperating with both the Reformed and United churches. Portugal is a cooperative venture with other Presbyterian bodies. Taiwan is a field where the board began work only after its personnel were forced out of mainland China.

Issues of the debate were sharpened in platform addresses. Dr. T. Watson Street, new executive secretary of the board, led off with a review of the current situation. Next was Dr. John A. Mackay, retired Princeton Seminary president and former chairman of the International Missionary Council. He was followed by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, director of the World Council of Churches’ new Division of World Mission and Evangelism, who recalled experiences in the church of South India and decried the presence of a mission as a unit on some fields.

After the first session of the five study committees, an address on what the man in the pew expects of world missions was delivered by Dr. Harold John Ockenga of Boston’s Park Street Church. Speaking on “teamwork” the next day was Dr. Jose Borges dos Santos, Jr., veteran leader of Brazilian Presbyterians. Miss Esther Cummings of the Biblical Seminary gave an address on the spiritual qualifications of the missionary.

Delegates heard from a varied group of correspondents and consultants. Foreign missions board personnel of the Assemblies of God and the United Church of Christ (and of several other denominations) were there. The National Council of Churches (with which the board works) sent a contingent, and one staff member of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (with which the board does not work) came. No independent faith missions were invited to send representatives.

Questions under consideration were primarily concerned with the respective roles of the missionary, the field mission, the board, the sending church, and the national church. The question of a theological basis ran through all the discussions.

Answers and Generalities

Four days of debate brought some general answers for the board. Some were general enough to be praised for their ambiguity.

At the final session, while the committee on theological issues was still at work, the delegates “re-affirmed” the missionary declaration of the first (1861) General Assembly of the denomination. That statement defined the missionary task as obedience to the Great Commission and declared that a proper conception of its “vast magnitude and grandeur is the only thing which, in connection with the love of Christ, can ever arouse her (the Church’s) energies and develop her resources.…”

When the committee came in, its report was adopted with only minor amendment. A key section says of Jesus Christ: “There is no other king; there is no other hope; there is no other life. Without Him man perishes.” The statement continues: “Thus we who hope in the Lord Jesus alone for salvation stand under the inescapable imperative to carry the Gospel to all those who do not know Him as Saviour and Lord.” The statement also calls for acts of repentance and rededication by the Church for its failure to bear faithful witness.

Ignoring ‘Practical Universalism’

A key question in the agenda was: “What are the theological convictions which undergird missionary outreach? How can the Presbyterian Church in the United States strengthen these convictions and meet the challenge of ‘practical universalism’?” Committees struggled with this until the last minute of the consultation.

There was no specific mention of “practical universalism” or suggestion about meeting its challenge in the general answer to the theological statement.

Hammered out after long debate was the answer to the crucial question on the role of the mission—the organized unit of missionaries on a particular field. No particular cooperative plan or form of “integration” was recommended. Rather, the consultation decided “that the structure of relationship of missionaries to a national Church should be worked out by that national Church in consultation with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.”

Other Considerations

Another statement in the report on the mission says of cooperation: “The national Church has immediate responsibility for the evangelization of her own people, and so the national Church should have primary responsibility in the definition of freedom and initiative for the sending Church.” The report also suggests that mission and national church should feel free to propose to each other any change in the status quo that either feels necessary. Another proposal suggests mission consultation with the national church before the start of any new project.

Financial considerations were a subject from time to time in the debates. It was recommended that aid to daughter churches should be given in such a way as to stimulate the development of stewardship but that after funds are given there should be no more control over them by the sending church.

On the subject of missionary salaries, nationals generally supported higher pay but pointed to the danger of displays of comparative wealth (such as having many servants) by the missionary.

Missionary giving in the home church ($4.59 per capita last year) prompted the consultation to observe: “It is our conviction that only a deepening of the home Church’s devotion to her Lord will ever produce the outpouring of gifts so desperately needed for her witness around the world.”

Facing the Future

Unique and diverse in composition as it was, the consultation gave vent to many long-smoldering discussions. Because “the air was cleared,” many missionary leaders of the Presbyterian Church in the United States saw the meeting as the beginning of a new advance in the denomination’s work.

One Brazilian delegate expressed what was considered to be the opinion of all the nationals when he said on the floor: “This consultation was (taken on) your initiative, and we love you for it.” A Mexican suggested: “Now our Church can listen to you, and I hope your Church will speak to us in a very frank way.”

One consultation recommendation asks the board to “clarify its channels of communications” with churches abroad, but a proposal to reorganize in a manner similar to The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America’s Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, was defeated.

How will the board and the home church deal with national churches in the future? One board member put it this way: “The day of unilateral decisions is over.”

No action of the consultation is binding, however. The board called it to ask only for advice on the work of its more than 500 missionaries in nine countries. It heard much.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Rare indeed is the Christian who does not consciously, or unconsciously, harbor the feeling that in some measure he is earning his own salvation and therefore deserves to be saved.

Innate human pride is such that we love to think of ourselves as good, so that every act of worship, kindness, or favor to others is apt to give us an inner satisfaction and a sense of self-righteousness which, we should know, God utterly detests.

One of the signs of true spiritual maturity is a growing realization of the grace of God. More than four centuries ago, on seeing criminals being led out to execution, John Bradford exclaimed: “But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford.” Today, when we see the wages of sin on every hand we should remember that but for God’s grace we too would face death and judgment.

Salvation through grace is the very heart of the Gospel message. The fact that eternal life cannot be merited should cause us to ponder the mystery of our own redemption—an act of God’s sovereign mercy whereby the redemptive act of his Son becomes operative in our lives through faith, and faith alone.

The Apostle Paul, speaking of the sovereignty of God’s acts of mercy and election, says: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33).

Nothing is more calculated to bring us to our knees in worship and thanksgiving than a realization that all which we have is undeserved. Speaking of Abraham’s faith Paul also says: “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants—not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16, RSV).

But grace is not to be trifled with. To presume on the love and grace of God is to trifle with that which may turn and rend us. The Apostle Paul poses this question, and Phillips in his translation of Paul’s words says: “Now what is our response to be? Shall we sin to our heart’s content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God? What a ghastly thought!” (Rom. 6:1, 2a). And yet we have known people who, taking the premise that we are “not under the law but under grace,” have seemed to feel they were therefore free to sin. “Ghastly”? Yes, and utterly perverse.

Grace has been spoken of as the free and eternal love and favor of God, which is the spring and source of all the benefits which we receive from him. As a young man we remember hearing an old minister praying, “All that we have except sin comes as a blessing from Thee.” How well this fits in with the gracious affirmation of Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Accustomed as we are to the idea of merit and payments, therefore, it always comes as an overwhelming shock when we first realize that forgiveness of sin and eternal life are gifts of God’s grace and never earned or merited. Those who have tasted deeply of this truth can never be the same. “Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me,” takes on an eternal significance, and pride is humbled in the face of God’s redeeming love. Nowhere more than here do we see the sovereignty of God. Why has he been so kind to me? Why has he made it possible for me to stand in his holy presence without a sense of guilt? The answer is, of course, in the atoning work of his Son, through whom his grace becomes operative and magnified.

This combination of love—the gift of his Son and grace which is that love in action—reflects for all to see that the divine calling demands humble acceptance on our part. That pride so often suggests another way shows the blindness and perverseness of the unregenerate heart.

But grace is more than saving in its nature; it is also sustaining.

All of us live confronted with a multiplicity of problems and difficulties, physical, material, and emotional. How often do we experience, or see others experiencing, the deep and trying vicissitudes of life. The Apostle Paul plumbed the depths of such experiences only to have God tell him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9b, RSV). Here we have demonstrated once for all that God’s grace not only saves us but continues as the controlling and sustaining force in our lives as Christians.

Grace also has its fruits. From it proceed those evidences of the indwelling Christ which commend to others the faith we profess. Nowhere more than in the interpersonal relationships should grace be shown. People irritate us—God’s grace in our hearts will enable us to react in love and not in anger. Problems arise for which we have no immediate solution—the grace of God enables us to look beyond to the One who has the solution. Sorrows come—the grace of God enables us to look through our tears to the One who will some day wipe away every tear. The daily routine gets us down and we groan under its monotony and its burden—but God’s grace enables us to rise above this and to sense his presence and love.

Grace is spoken of as a fair ornament in Proverbs 4:9—“She [wisdom] shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee.” How often we have seen this demonstrated in the lives of others, and how pleasant to see! “Graciousness” is one of the loveliest words in all of the English language, and one of the nicest attributes by which one may be described. Where affected it is hypocrisy, but where genuine it is a reflection of God’s glory in a work of his new creation.

The grace of God is shown in the perfection of his creation, marred only by the sinfulness of man. “Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile,” is far more than the poetic expression of a hymn. All around us we see evidences of the loving provision of God’s grace. Little wonder that the Bible concludes its revelation to man with the crowning act of all the ages: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen” (Rev. 22:21, AV).

Living in the dispensation of grace, surrounded by its evidence on every hand, offered its perfection in the person and work of the Son of God, we, individual Christians and the Church in her corporate witness, should at all times proclaim that the grace of God is God’s offer of forgiveness and freedom from the penalty of sin to all who will accept it. The Gospel is as complicated and as simple as Paul’s words to Titus: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men” (2:11).

Gift Catalog

Pastor Peterson is sometimes a little bizarre. He has never brought a dog into his pulpit, but then he has never had a dog. He did once pull a lily out of Mrs. Husted’s pulpit floral arrangement to illustrate a glory greater than the Easter finery of his flock. Last Sunday he waved a colorful Christmas gift catalog as he introduced his sermon. Then he proceeded to read some of the gift descriptions—unusual gifts for people who have everything. For $2,495 you could send a two-man submarine to a deserving nephew. It is a 15-foot fiberglass craft with two speeds forward. On a more limited budget, you could buy the boss two solid silver tacks bearing his initials for $1.98. Very few of America’s executives have this equipment. For your secretary there is the world’s largest eraser, about half a pound of pink rubber in one king-sized chunk, bearing the inscription, “I never make big misteaks.”

I began to grow uneasy. There was no doubt that the catalog he had was one that I had received last month. Would he go on to describe such novelties as “nudie” ice cubes, bourbon toothpaste, and “instant sex” spray, the strictly imaginary aphrodisiac?

Happily, he concluded his introduction with a final allusion to primitive paintings which can be obtained on commission from a chimpanzee artist for only $9.98, complete with engraved metal plaque and documentary photos of Pablo the chimp at work in his studio.

I felt relieved but dubious. What could the good pastor say now to retrieve the congregation’s imagination from Pablo and pink rubber?

He declared that he had a gift catalog for a Laodicean church, a rich church that lacked nothing. For suburban Christians who have everything the pastor presented the catalog of the gifts of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.…

I suppose the attention of some Laodiceans wandered. Silver thumbtacks are more curious if not more rare than Christian meekness. But without full-color photography the pastor presented a glowing picture of the gifts of the Spirit for Christians who have everything, but are wretched, poor, blind, and naked.

Several young people told the pastor later that they wanted such spiritual gifts, and only one woman asked to see the first gift catalog.

To Educators, A Challenge

I am in accord with Harold N. Englund’s challenging “Writing Is a Ministry” (Sept. 28 issue), but the basic problem still lies unsolved. Where can a concerned student find training in such areas? What evangelical college or seminary offers advanced programs in biblical, theological, historical, and practical studies, and in addition offers literature, journalism, politics, economics, international affairs, or sociology? I know a few with meager offerings along this line, but their existence is only a constant reminder of the pathetic neglect of this type of training within evangelical Christendom. You have challenged editors, foundations and ministers: how about doing the same to college and seminary boards and faculties?

Azusa Friends Church

Azusa, Calif.

I was specially delighted with the section subtitled “Thoroughness and Accuracy.”

From 40 years experience in the newspaper business I know well that one of the major criticisms leveled at both clergymen and writers on religion … is that they are not careful to insure that their “facts” are adequate and accurate. Rightly or wrongly, the discovery of such inadequacy or inaccuracy tends to discredit the conclusions based on these alleged “facts.”

… I am not one of those who hold the belief that the (secular) press for the most part is opposed to Christianity.… I recognize, however, that many newspaper writers tend to distrust certain religious leaders—as they distrust certain politicians, labor leaders, business executives and promoters—and the distrust is usually based on some personal experience.

The Apostle Paul counseled the first-century Christians to “provide things honest in the sight of all men”.…

Crusade News Bureau

Minneapolis, Minn.

Bureau Chief

In surveying religious magazines, I feel that they are not so open to working journalists (which is what I am), or craftsmen plus, as they are to clergymen and professors or teachers. Some even resort to ghost writers.

What we need are more Holy Ghost writers.…

San Marino, Calif.

You Can Please Some …

The August 31 issue was even richer than usual. Of special interest to me were your very discerning article on “The Second Coming—Millennial Views,” Dr. Addison Leitch’s extremely penetrating and pithy report of his European trip, and Dr. R. G. Tuttle’s unusual summary presentation of the “Ten Essential Life Principles.”

Excellent also, as always, were your book reviews. They are a real boon to us busy pastors, who are generally hard-put to decide what to read in our all-too-brief study hours.…

Webster Presbyterian Church

Webster, Tex.

The few times I have had an opportunity to browse through your periodical … I was greatly impressed with its sincerity and broad-mindedness.

However, the article by Addison H. Leitch was just about the most narrow, the most prejudiced bit of reporting that I have read in a long time.

Christianity has indeed a long way to go as long as articles such as this one keep getting published.

Havertown, Pa.

Re the article by William R. Arnett entitled “The Second Coming—Millennial Views”: according to Ironside (Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement, p. 23) this teaching [of the “secret rapture”] was originated at a Powerscourt Conference by John M. Darby, one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren, and marked a sharp break with historic premillennialism. The full teaching involves futurism and the “gap theory” which began with the Counter-Reformation views of the Spanish Jesuit Ribera, published about 1590. For about 240 years, Protestantism rejected such views altogether, until they were apparently picked up and actively promoted by Darby. They have had a place in the evangelical wing of Protestantism only since about 1832. Now we have the amazing paradox of evangelicals actively promoting what was originally a Counter-Reformation interpretation by a Roman Catholic Jesuit.

Carmel Valley, Calif.

Thank you for the superb article on the Second Coming. Arnett is to be commended for his concise review of the doctrine, with the millennial views which relate to it. The article is biblically and creedally interested, clearly and sanely presented, evangelistic, and fair to the various evangelical theories—it being enough that he simply listed the denial views.…

The one minor matter which I somewhat question … is that in the New Testament “it is mentioned” [the Second Coming] approximately “eight times as much as Christ’s first coming.” Some 318 verses, it is stated, are on the Second Coming. One-eighth of this would make about forty verses on the first coming.

But, in spite of this, I consider it to be by far the finest brief treatment I have read on Christ’s return.

Associate Professor of Theology

Nazarene Theological Seminary

Kansas City, Mo.

The Keswick Movement

Too bad Britain’s J. D. Douglas’ prejudice toward the God-raised-up Keswick movement and message (News, Aug. 31 issue) should be allowed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY to so distort the truth. I trust my fellow subscribers … know that this 87-year-old work is heartily endorsed by Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, Dr. Alan Red-path, Dr. Stephen Barabas, and the late Dr. Barnhouse, together with thousands across the years who have been released from the bondage of self and sin into the liberty and victory of the Spirit-filled life. Keswick in England, Canada, and the United States has had a profound influence for righteousness in the Christian Church. Please refer your readers to these volumes on it: Keswick’s Authentic Voice (Zondervan); So Great Salvation and The Message of Keswick (Marshall, Morgan and Scott).

North Presbyterian

Pittsburgh, Pa.

You can always tell how entirely sanctified some people are by marking their reaction to any criticism of Keswick.

Manchester, England

I would like to say that it is hardly a correct description of England’s grand Keswick Convention.…

My first impression of the meetings in the great tent was the conscious presence of God.… I once heard the saintly Bishop Moule preach in St. John’s Episcopal Church one Sunday morning and the congregation was spellbound, not with oratory, but they were listening to a message from God. To use the common phrase, you could have heard a pin drop. Keswick was then and still is, in my opinion, composed of the very finest and sanest Christian people from every part of the British Isles.

Watertown, N. Y.

• Careful reading of the Keswick report will disclose only two criticisms of the movement: (1) the myth of a unique “Keswick message” as such, a point made in a quotation from remarks of a chaplain; (2) the predilection for intensively devotional hymns to the exclusion of other hymns.—ED.

Sda And Wcc

I note what the writer has to say about the Seventh-day Adventists remaining outside of the World Council of Churches (News, Aug. 31 issue), and it is very true, but there are many other denominations which do not unite with the WCC. However, we do have membership on one of their special committees.…

There is one way in which we do try to cooperate with other church groups that is not understood by many. I refer to the fact that our ministers are encouraged to and do join local ministerial association groups and work with them. This is encouraged by an occasional suggestion from the editor of our magazine Ministry, and I believe this is as it should be. Although I am now retired, for many years during my active ministry I not only tried to work with and cooperate with local ministerial associations, but had the honor of serving as chairman in some instances, and as secretary in other localities.…

Arlington, Calif.

Macedonian Call

The last sentence in the second paragraph of the first column (p. 16) in the article … entitled “The Missionary Situation in Europe” (July 20 issue), needs correcting. This sentence reads: “But in response the churches of North America sent only about 50 missionaries to Europe before World War II.” … The records of the Eastern European Mission show that we supported a total of 56 American missionaries in Europe between 1927, when this mission was founded, and 1939, when World War II began.… The total number of American missionaries ministering in Europe in prewar days likely was about 125.

President

Eastern European Mission

Pasadena, Calif.

The Pastor’S Sunday

Thank you for your timely editorial in the July 6 issue, “Sunday Union Meetings Pose Dilemma For Protestant Workers.” I cannot help but wonder if some of our Protestant denominations do what is just right in this regard when they set up meetings on Sunday afternoons and evenings making it impossible for pastors … to get back into their pulpits for the evening services.

Editor

The Sunday Guardian

Newark, N. J.

Prince Of Preachers

Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood in his article “Expository Preaching: Preparing for a Year of Pulpit Joy” (June 8 issue) states, inter alia, “Spurgeon’s Autobiography (four large volumes) shows that he toiled over his sermons, and that he spent a full day or more every week perfecting the form of the message that went into print.”

It should be pointed out, of course, that the time spent on preparing the message for the press followed the preaching of the sermon.… (After delivery the selected sermons were set up in type from the shorthand reporter’s notes and only then submitted to him … for necessary amendment.) Spurgeon urged his students to write out their sermons from time to time in order to cultivate orderly habits, and made it quite clear that he derived from the correcting of his sermons for the press the same benefit that writing out sermons prior to delivery would accrue to them.

He “toiled over his sermons” to the extent that he had frequent difficulty in selecting his text or topic. Once that had been given to him the rest was easy.

On page 207 of the first volume of the Autobiography he says, “I am always sure to have the most happy day when I get a good text in the morning from my Master. When I have had to preach two or three sermons in a day, I have asked Him for the morning subject, and preached from it; and I have asked Him for the afternoon’s topic or the evening’s portion, and preached from it, after meditation on it for my own soul’s comfort,—not in the professional style of a regular sermon-maker, but feasting upon it myself. Such simple food has done the people far more good than if I had been a week in manufacturing a sermon, for it has come warm from the heart just after it had been received into my soul; and therefore it has been well spoken, because well known, well tasted, and well felt.”

On page 42 of the third volume of the same work will be found the following: “I … very seldom know, twenty-four hours beforehand, the subject of any sermon I am going to preach. I have never been able to acquire the habit of elaborate preparation. I usually begin my sermonizing for the Sabbath-day on Saturday evening. I cannot think long upon any one subject; and I always feel that, if I do not see through it quickly, I shall not be likely to see through it at all, so I give it up and try another.”

I think Spurgeon conveyed to his students in his famous Lectures a very graphic idea of his secret as a sermon-maker. “If a man would speak without any immediate study, he must usually study much.” His mind was so saturated with Scripture and with illuminating thoughts thereon, that his sermons came relatively easily.

The modern preacher cannot do better than study Spurgeon’s methods. He should bear in mind, however, that Spurgeon had an abnormally sensitive mind and retentive memory; that he could skim his eyes over a page of a book and then repeat the content almost word-for-word without a mistake; that he died at a comparatively early ago from a mysterious complaint, which, as he himself says, was called “ ‘gout’ for want of a better word,” and that this disease affected his head.

There will never be another Spurgeon, but, happily, Spurgeon’s God is still the inspiration of the true servant of the Lord today, able and willing to speak through frail mortals the Word of Life.

Kenilworth, Cape Province, S. Africa

In Massachusetts

In “A Layman and His Faith” (June 22 issue) the statement is made: “At no time have the major evangelical denominations recognized these churches (Universalist-Unitarian) as a part of the Protestant tradition, nor has either of them been admitted to membership in cooperative church groups.”

I think that in Massachusetts you will find that Dr. Dana McLean Greeley was president of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Also you will find that the Universalist-Unitarian churches are admitted to full membership in their State Council of Churches—as they are in several local councils.…

First Congregational Church

Adams, Mass.

A Different Incarnation

The Rev. T. Paul Verghese, news associate secretary of the WCC, in his references to what he considers to be the tyrannical disruptive force of being called a Com-symp, borders, in my opinion, upon blasphemy when he calls Christ “the master fellow-traveller.” If Communism were only another economic or political system his statement might go unchallenged, but since it is the incarnation of atheistic materialism at its worst, Mr. Verghese reflects no credit on God’s Son, himself, or the WCC.

Cobden, Ont.

A Case Of Identity

Re “The Pastor and the Psychopath” by Stuart Bergsma (June 8 issue): It appears to me that Mr. Bergsma has … brought under the aegis of evangelical Christianity one of the most pernicious doctrines of so-called liberalism, i.e., that we must look upon the abominable, the fornicators, the drunkards, etc., more as sick persons than as sinners.…

Staten Island, N. Y.

Call For Poetic Seer

Upon reading of the death of America’s rebel-troubadour of conventional punctuation, e. e. cummings, I began to survey, at random, the poetic scene in 20th-century America. With the passing of Cummings, America lost again another potential seer into the unseen world of spiritual realities. No one would dispute his poetic talent, but few Americans, especially among the bourgeois, will reread his verses for a better glimpse into the spiritual world. Cummings, a New England recluse, had small concern for the Scriptures, and he shut the door of his Joy Farm paradise to all but a select few. The son of a minister, Cummings drew from the external world around him for his source of inspiration. His own fertile imagination was his well of memory. He will be remembered as a prophet of stylistic rebellion and a champion [against] social abuses, but not as a seer who set before the American people the mind of God.

In the world of literary scholarship, it is disturbing to me to find so few who seek poetic inspiration in the Scriptures. The famous Miltonic call for the aid of the Holy Spirit—instead of invoking the pagan muses—is all too lacking among the men of letters. Has the source of all truth in inspiration gone dry, or have poets forgotten how to obtain divine guidance? Poets, representing the American intelligentsia, have, for the most part, continued to look inward and not upward for poetic inspiration and subject matter. The early Romantics of the 19th century looked outward to nature, and became obsessed with the beauty of creation. But 20th-century American poets (Robert Frost is the last of the Romantics)—especially the “literary” ones—have dwelt upon their own personal conflict, and from this media of highly individualized and introspective research have produced verse which has for its subject matter the turmoil of man’s struggling spirit (often with touches of perversion) apart from God’s grace. The tools of poetry (rhyme and meter) have been dissolved into a rugged, often unintelligible, prosaic verse which dies the moment after it is voiced. Is this to be American verse in the 20th century?

A poet is first of all a seer or prophet, and he has the noble task of picturing in meaningful language the acute needs of his people. A poet stands between God and man as a sensitive interpreter of the inner reality of things both sacred and profane. Cummings pictured for us clearly the profane, i. e., the social issues in America, and can be praised for his perception into the dry boredom of conventions without purpose. He pointed with acid satire to the false gods of materialism and status-seeking before which America bows, but he offered no predictions of hope, nor did he suggest an upward look for salvation. What of America’s spiritual needs?

We need in America today a poet with the literary talent of C. S. Lewis who can reveal and penetrate spiritual truth. We need a poet who can touch the American heart, and make it bleed with the blood of repentance. A poet who can heal the sin-sick with the cleansing flow from Calvary.

I ask for a poetic seer who will become a rebel for the sake of the Gospel, and who will find his inspiration in the Scriptures under the Holy Spirit’s direction. Who will pray with the Psalmist: “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”

Georgetown, Mass.

The purpose of evangelistic preaching is to bring the listener face to face with the Son of God that by the Holy Spirit he may accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. It pleased God, the Bible tells us, to redeem sinful man “through the foolishness of preaching” (or, perhaps more accurately, “through the folly of what we preach”). The Greek word kerygma, or “preaching,” indicates speaking to the unsaved. New Testament preaching, then, was unmistakably evangelistic.

Almost every soul-winning movement in church history that has commended itself to later times started in a local church. And the instrumentality was usually of the simplest. In eighteenth-century England, for example, revival came through the evangelistic preaching of men like Grimshaw, Romaine, Rowlands, Berridge, and Venn. Were a similar awakening to happen in England again, or anywhere else for that matter, it would come undoubtedly under evangelistic preaching, the same sword with which Paul so mightily assaulted the pagan world 1900 years ago. What was this kind of preaching?

The Man

The answer to this question begins with the preacher. Evangelistic preachers are men whose hearts are full of Scripture, full of Christ, full of deep awareness of the sinfulness of sin; of the value of a soul; of the need for repentance and faith; of the happiness of holy living; and of the importance of the world to come.

The great apostle of Wales, Daniel Rowlands, was such a man, although when he was ordained he was ignorant of the gospel of Christ. After Sunday morning services he was as ready as anyone to indulge himself for the rest of the day in sports and entertainment. After his conversion, however, he preached with conviction, spoke and lived like one who had discovered that sin, death, judgment, heaven, and hell are stark realities. It is no surprise that sinners were awakened and aroused by his changed preaching. In a remote section of Wales, Daniel Rowlands preached for 48 years—sometimes to crowds of 2000—with continuously fruitful results.

We can mention only a few of the qualities that mark the evangelistic preacher. He is a humble man, deeply aware of his own sinfulness and need of God’s grace. He is a diligent man, continually growing through reading, meditation, and study. He is a praying man, who pours out his heart before God for the salvation of those around him. He is a concerned man, burdened for the people and their eternal spiritual welfare. Above all, he is God’s man, one in whom Christ is clearly seen in word and deed.

The Message

God’s man has a primary message, the message of the Gospel. Redemption is clearly understood in his own mind, truly experienced in his own heart, and plainly presented to his people. Every sermon in his preaching makes prominent the Lord Jesus Christ. His atonement and saving grace, His greatness and righteousness, His kindness, patience, and example permeate and color every sermon. Never can the evangelistic preacher say too much about his Master nor commend him too often to his hearers. The words of St. Bernard are fitting in this regard. “Yesterday,” he said, “I preached myself, and the scholars came up and praised me. Today, I preached Christ and the sinners came up and thanked me.” Christ-honoring sermons are sealed by the Holy Spirit with his blessing.

For 21 years William Grimshaw ministered at Haworth. Concerning his work there he said, “I preach the Gospel—glad tidings of salvation to penitent sinners, and a chapter expounded every Lord’s Day evening. I visit my parish in 12 places monthly, convening six, eight, or ten families in a place allowing people of the neighborhood that please to attend the exhortation. This I purpose to make my constant business in my parish so long as I live.” Wherever he went this man of God took his Master with him, and spoke plainly to people about their souls. As a result, previously unconcerned multitudes began to think about spiritual things. Year after year the Holy Spirit used Grimshaw’s sermons to convict and to convert.

In 1749, John Berridge began his six-year ministry at Staplefort. Here he took great pains to impress his parishioners with the importance of sanctification. He preached simply but appealingly. He was diligent, too, as a pastor. Yet his ministry seemed without fruit. Why? He himself says he was ignorant of the Gospel. He had no message of salvation by grace, Christ crucified, or the necessity of conversion. Christianity was for Berridge like a solar system without a sun. One morning while meditating on Scripture, these words came to mind: “Cease from thine own works, only believe.” At once he gained spiritual sight and insight. He says of his former ministry: “I preached up sanctification by the works of the law very earnestly for six years in Stapleford and never brought one soul to Christ. I did the same at Everton for two years, without any success at all. But as soon as I preached Jesus Christ, and faith in His blood, then believers were added to the church continually.”

“Evangelical but not evangelistic? It is a lie. No man is evangelical without being evangelistic. A man tells me that he is evangelical, that he believes in the ruin of man and the redemption provided by Christ and yet is not evangelistic. Then he is the worst traitor in the camp of Christ.…”

John Bunyan gives this testimony concerning his message: “In my preaching of the Word I noticed that the Lord led me to begin where His word begins—with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh and to state is clearly that the curse of God is upon all men as they come into the world, because of sin. Then I try to show everyone the wonderful Jesus Christ in all His offices, relationships, and benefits to the world and try to point out and condemn and remove all false supports on which the world leans and by which it perishes. After doing this God led me into something of the mystery of the union of Christ, so I showed them that too.”

In simple terms, the Gospel message is this: First, God’s love for man. “God so loved the world.” “God commendeth his love toward us.” Love seeks unity with the loved one. Second, man’s estrangement from God because of sin. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” We are “aliens,” “strangers,” “without God—without Christ—without hope in this world.” Third, God’s provision of reconciliation to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” We are “made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Fourth, the new life in the family of God. “All things are become new.” This the Gospel we are called to preach. No other will do. The inscription on the great bell in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, could well be every minister’s motto: Vae mihi si non evangelisavero, that is, “Woe to me, if I preach not the Gospel.”

The Method

Among the most important things in the method of evangelistic preaching are clarity and simplicity of presentation. Andrew W. Blackwood, in commenting on the preaching of Spurgeon, called it “steeped in simplicity. That is why it attracted the sinner and the blessed saint.” The first qualification of a good sermon is intelligibility. Simplicity, therefore, is vital to its content. On the other hand, a ponderous and philosophical presentation may be an obstacle to comprehension. Augustine once said, “A wooden key is not so beautiful as a golden one, but if it can open the door when the golden one cannot, it is far more useful.” Luther added, “No one can be a good preacher to the people who is not willing to preach in a manner that seems childish and coarse to some.” D. L. Moody knew the power of simplicity, too. The warp of every message was from the Book, the woof from the lives of ordinary men and women. It was William Grimshaw who wrote to John Newton: “If they do not understand me, I cannot hope to do them good; and when I think of the uncertainty of life, that, perhaps it may be the last opportunity, I know not how to be explicit enough.” Plain statement with fervor and love, simple ideas, forceful illustrations, direct appeals to heart and conscience are the elements of effective method in evangelistic preaching.

This is no brief for trite commonplaces, however, or for bald platitudes, and hackneyed phrases. The effective preacher studies diligently, and spares no time in the preparation of sermons. Out of his great reservoir of knowledge, however, his presentation, like that of Jesus, must be reduced to vivid and pictorial terms.

Romaine, an Oxford graduate, gave seven years to produce a scholarly four-volume edition of the Hebrew concordance and lexicon of Marcus de Calasio. His preaching for 45 years in London, however, was known for simplicity, clarity, and forcefulness. Such preaching spurred the eighteenth-century revival in England.

A second necessary component in evangelistic preaching is fervency. The prophet said, “As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth children.” The man in the pulpit must be earnestly preaching, not for the salvation of the sermon, but for the salvation of the sinner. Used of God for the spiritual awakening of that day, the eighteenth-century preacher preached with fire, earnestness, and conviction. Today’s minister needs the same persuasion that his message is true, that it is of eternal importance to his hearers. With Whitefield the evangelistic preacher needs to pray, “Lord, give me a warm heart!”

Evangelistic preaching is from the heart to reach the heart. John Bunyan wrote in his Call to the Ministry, “And after I have preached, my heart has been full of concern … and I have often cried out from my heart, oh, that those who have heard me speak today will but see as I do what sin, death, hell and the curse of God really are, and that they might understand the grace and love and mercy of God, that it is through Christ to men.… And I often told the Lord that if I were killed before their eyes and it would be a means to awaken them and confirm them in the truth, I would gladly have that done.”

The third characteristic of an evangelistic sermon is its appeal for decision. Evangelistic preaching is personal. The preacher says in effect, “I have a word of God for you which you must do something about.” Evangelistic preaching is a forthright call for a verdict. It does not minimize the sinner’s involvement. “He who, so to speak, believeth not, shall, as it were, be damned,” has no place in evangelistic preaching.

Paul’s preaching certainly included an appeal for decision. After clearly and plainly stating the Gospel as recorded in 2 Corinthians 5, for example, he says, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.”

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan said this: “I am not sure that the condition of the church might not be expressed in a phrase I once heard … from … one who called himself a Christian. Said he, when raising protest against evangelistic work, with a very evident assumption of superiority and self-complacency, ‘You know, I am thoroughly evangelical but not evangelistic.’ Evangelical but not evangelistic? It is a lie. No man is evangelical without being evangelistic. A man tells me that he is evangelical, that he believes in the ruin of man and the redemption provided by Christ and yet is not evangelistic. Then he is the worst traitor in the camp of Christ.”

While evangelistic preaching involves a man, a message, and a method, it is essentially the work of the Holy Spirit. He it is who empowers the evangelistic preacher, applies the Word, and wins the heart of the sinner. It is all of God and all for his glory.

END

In an article entitled “What Ministers Think of Mergers” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 24, 1961), Dr. Harold Lindsell mentions that probably 90 per cent of the laymen do not favor merger. If, as one of Dr. Lindsell’s correspondents suggested, “most of those who disapprove of merger simply need to be educated in favor of merger,” then my layman’s views may be of interest in evaluating the magnitude of the educational task ahead.

My three brushes with church unity have been on a local church level, on the presbytery level, and on a national level.

In a little New England town I was once a deacon in a small Congregational church which attempted a joint relationship with a neighboring small Universalist church. Both congregations were anemic, and the arrangement was a desperate attempt to ward off possible extinction.

Every service seemed to emphasize the difference between the Unitarian and Trinitarian concepts, even though as individuals we did not feel like fighting over the matter. Difficulties involving such things as the Doxology, the Apostles’ Creed, and contributions to missions finally whipped us. After about one year the relationship was dissolved.

The minor wounds of severance finally healed, leaving only slightly visible scars, and each congregation went its separate way feeling a vague disappointment and frustration. In one sense we did not have strong disruptive convictions. We could find no way to solve our problems.

More recently I joined in an attempt to unite three minimum-sized presbyteries in the same United Presbyterian synod to form a single, more potent organization. After going through all the steps required by church laws, the proposal was accepted by two presbyteries but rejected by the third, and the idea was abandoned. To be sure, the proposed unified body did not represent perfection, and there was room for honest doubt, especially concerning the geographical spread of our combined territory.

However, after mature deliberation, I am convinced that the proposed merger failed because some of us lived in the hills and some of us lived in the valleys. Our differences were that infinitesimal. Apparently the comic strips do not exaggerate the differences between the hillfolks and the flatlanders.

On the national level I was a commissioner to the 1958 General Assembly which joined the United Presbyterian Church of North America with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. From my present worm’s-eye view I cannot evaluate the four-year-old merger of these two Presbyterian denominations. It seems to me that demands on the local church for money have increased.

In my somewhat limited experience with these three instances of church merger, it has been human and not spiritual difficulties which have been hardest to overcome. I am convinced that human and not spiritual difficulties would be of utmost significance in an extensive merger. I am also convinced that most of the basic reasons for extensive merger are of human and not spiritual origin, and I am not going to be easily bluffed out of my position.

The ecumenical type of thinking is certainly not limited to churches. Where there exist several women’s clubs there will be a Council of Clubs; where there exist a number of technical societies there will be an Engineering Council; where there are labor unions there will be an AFL-CIO.

As Dr. Lindsell succinctly states, “Our age cherishes bigness and monolithicity. This fact is true in business and is becoming increasingly true in religion.”

Corporations merge for a number of reasons: to gain added capital; to gain improved sales outlets; to improve the raw material situation; to decrease competition; to acquire outstanding personnel; to extend production to a more economical level; or to gain patent rights to a new process. Sometimes merger is based solely on the whims of an ambitious individual who would rather run a gigantic railroad than run merely a big railroad.

I strongly suspect that in church mergers there is an ecclesiastical equivalent of every one of the above business reasons plus a few more. Before my denomination becomes the Studebaker-Packard or NYC-Pennsy of the religious world, I want to see a very thorough “report to the stockholders” describing the benefits to be derived.

That church merger should be considered a problem of human origin rather than one of divine origin is important to establish because, even in those churches where the laymen are on equal terms organizationally with the clergy, the laymen will automatically defer to the latter in matters involving divine interpretation.

In reading three different versions of John 17, I find no reasons why I should condone extrapolating that passage into a million dollar boondoggle.

Junketing is not limited to Congressmen. Almost everyone likes to attend conferences and conventions, address his fellow men, and be in turn addressed. He may be a scientist, service clubber, labor delegate, clergyman, or layman. While the urge may be idealistic, it is strictly human. The more abstruse the subjects on the agenda, the greater the variety of attendees, the vaguer the speeches, the hazier the proposals, and the more committees appointed.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake’s proposed merger contains enough basic difficulties to keep high churchmen jet-speeding from conference to conference for the next five decades. I resent being urged to tithe, then having my benevolence money go for such a purpose.

The Size Of The Flock

Do we really need church union?

Let us wander somewhat afield and consider migratory birds on their annual autumnal pilgrimage. Each flock will have its own flyways and favorite feeding grounds. The older birds will guide the younger birds. Each bird, however, must make the flight himself. He cannot be supported physically by his fellows. The principal requirements to reach the destination are sufficient individual strength on the part of the birds and a true sense of guidance on the part of the leader. The size of the flock is relatively unimportant.

In fact, too large a flock might prove to be a handicap because many of the feeding grounds would be too small. The joining of flocks with different flyway patterns to form a super-flock would undoubtedly be accompanied by much wasted energy and time-consuming confusion as the birds circle and circle, trying to choose a leader and a flight plan. If the birds can arrive safely in small groups, each with its own group habits and flyway patterns, is this not sufficient?

To me Christians are somewhat like the migratory birds, with churches and denominations providing the functions of the groups and flocks. If a denomination does no more than provide meeting places for Christians with similar like and dislike patterns, it has sufficient excuse for being. If the multiplicity of denominations confuses the African aborigine, we owe him no apology.

We who scoff at the infallibility of the pope are expected to accept the doings of our own hierarchy without question. But what choice of actions has the individual Protestant layman who is unenthusiastic about church merger? Here are four possibilities:

1. Open defiance coupled with action outside the church organization. Such action would be counter to church law and as such would be unethical and repugnant to the responsible layman.

2. Open defiance coupled with action inside the church organization. This should be considered only by the naïve. Several denominational governing bodies have already given encouragement to church merger. These bodies can be so effectively manipulated by the hierarchy that any opposition move originating in the grass roots would get nowhere.

3. An organized economic boycott. This is unpromising. It is bound to be sticky, gaining organized support in a congregation for cutting benevolences to some specific level which will permit some favored denominational actions to take place but effectively prevent unwanted ones, such as church merger, from being effected.

4. A restriction of activities to the scope of the local church. This is about the only semi-honorable course left to the layman who disagrees with merger. Certainly neither the local individual church nor its pastor should be penalized for external merger manipulations. A renewed and detailed interest in the local church would leave our denominations with strong foundations no matter how merger winds might blow.

Perhaps, while studying the requirements of big church government, our attention will be inadvertently distracted to the important needs of the local church—the forgotten element in modern Protestantism.

Subway Riders

Empty eyes of city dwellers empty of dreams

And the light shineth

Restless hands of hasty success

Silent lips clamped over unspoken words

in darkness

Unloving neighbors of short duration

hurled through the city in clanking darkness

and the darkness comprehended it not.

GERTRUDE C. SCHWEBELL

The decision of the United States Supreme Court disallowing the New York Regents’ prayer aroused furor in many parts of the country. Another possibly equally perturbing decision is still pending—that concerning the constitutionality of Bible reading in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida public schools. To understand these situations one must understand the changes that have been penetrating the religious life of our nation.

No one questions that our nation, by and large, was founded and established by men of deep religious faith and conviction. Mostly of British background and also of German, French, Dutch, and Swedish heritage, the early settlers were, in the main, of Protestant persuasion. Congregational-Presbyterianism prevailed in New England, and Anglicanism predominated in the South. While some of the middle colonies professed and practiced religious toleration, or even religious freedom, they were the exception.

Our founding fathers considered the relationship of man to his maker a fundamental part of their philosophy of life and believed that human rights were derived from this relationship. They recognized also the fact of their Christian heritage. But they knew history well enough to recognize the dangers of an established religion and saw the necessity of encouraging the free practice of religion in a free society. Accordingly, they wrote this safeguard into the First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof.” By these words they rejected the idea of an established religion and guaranteed personal religious freedom.

They had no intention, however, of thereby encouraging a spirit of anti-religion. As Norman Cousins indicates, “It is significant that most of the founding fathers grew up in a strong religious atmosphere; many had Calvinist family backgrounds. In reacting against it, they did not react against basic religious ideas, or what they considered to be the spiritual nature of man. Most certainly they did not turn against God, or lose their respect for religious belief. Indeed it was their very concern for the conditions under which free religious belief was possible that caused them to invest so much of their thought and energy into the cause of human rights” (In God We Trust, p. 9).

While most of the men who authored our documents of freedom affiliated themselves with Protestant denominations as professing Christians and were influenced by eighteenth-century enlightenment, they nevertheless believed in religious freedom. They were well aware of the discrimination and persecution that followed whenever the colonies superimposed an established religion upon their people. Such evil they were determined to prevent. So they underwrote religious freedom, not to do away with the practice of religion but rather to insure it for everyone. They knew that religion as a whole would be destroyed if each group, in affirming the truth of its own faith, practiced intolerance and bigotry.

Despite this provision by the founding fathers for practicing differences of religious conviction, the nation shared a common bond of unity. As the various colonies ceased to exist legally as independent religiously established units and became a nation, the people of America recognized the fact of a common heritage. This common heritage was not only Christian and Protestant, but Protestant Christianity of Calvinistic orientation. For many years this special kind of faith characterized the American people as a whole. This faith was unique in its ability both to influence the new nation and to adapt itself to a changing environment without sacrificing any of its peculiar genius.

In the early days of American history the chief center of community life and culture was the Church, specifically the Protestant Church. It was the one institution that united people into a cohesive unit. While there were many denominations and sects, they shared a common belief in God, in Jesus Christ, and in the Bible as divinely authoritative. Protestantism also incorporated a healthy individualism that stimulated the nation’s growth. American Protestantism had no ecclesiastical dependence upon churches in Europe. Men were free to preach the Gospel, and even to establish new churches on the growing frontiers of American life. As the newer states matured from their pioneer status, their churches, which were Protestant, effectively influenced the shaping of community life.

The revival services that characterized American Protestantism aided the growth and impact of the Church. Whole communities were changed as thousands of people came under the influence of the Gospel message. In both the East and the West the number of those who professed Protestant Christianity continued to rise. There was virtually no competition. Roman Catholicism was but a small, almost negligible factor in the life and culture of those times. Its adherents were few; in 1787 there may have been 35,000 (Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Great Century, Vol. IV, p. 230) in a total population of about 3,900,000 (in the census of 1790 the total population was 3,929,214), or less than one per cent. Thus while the founding fathers espoused and provided for a pluralistic society, American culture for decades was predominantly Reformed-Protestant in perspective.

During this period in our national life no one seriously challenged the fact that religion (and by religion we mean Protestantism) was an integral part of the American scene. Public education, for example, knew nothing about excluding the major premises of the Christian faith from its pedagogy. Religion, in fact, was the mother of education in America. During the colonial period, the primary schools were conducted in close alliance with the churches. And until the turn of the present century, secondary education, especially in the newer areas of settlement, was provided largely in academies operated under religious auspices and taught by ministers. Most of our colleges and universities, including such revered institutions as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt, were established by churchmen. The ministry of teaching has been a major contribution of Christianity to American culture (Ronald B. Osborn, The Spirit of American Christianity, pp. 33 f.). Schools were free to teach the Beatitudes or other Scripture passages in entirety. Classes could begin with prayers invoked in the name of Christ. The Bible could be taught and read, and hymns could be sung. Christian holy days, such as Christmas and Easter, could be observed accordingly. The culture of America was predominantly, even profoundly, Christian in the Protestant tradition. No one seriously challenged either this devotion to religious heritage, or the doctrine of religious freedom laid down by our founding fathers.

This situation, however, underwent gradual change. Before 1820 (200 years after our Pilgrim fathers) there were no more than 20,000 immigrants a year, and these were mostly Protestants. Between 1820 and 1860, however, about 5,000,000 immigrants entered the United States, and since then over 35,000,000 have come to our shores. Among these later immigrants were many Roman Catholics and Jews who brought with them—and this is no condemnation, but merely a statement of fact—ideas and cultures that differed extensively from those of the early settlers and founders of our nation.

In the 1820s and especially after the potato famine of 1846 in Ireland, the Irish came to America in great numbers. For the first time in American history our population had a sizable representation of Roman Catholics. Toward the end of the century most immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe and introduced new ethnic groups into our society. While most of these people were Roman Catholic, they incorporated also two sizable new elements, namely, the Eastern Orthodox and the Jewish. America was becoming less Protestant and less Puritan in spirit. We were becoming a more complex and pluralistic society.

Being new, and at first often of lower economic and social status, these new minority groups found it profitable and advantageous to adhere to our predominantly Protestant culture. This was the only way they could progress. There was still no danger to our Protestant heritage, however, and even as late as 1927 foreign observers like André Siegfried could speak of Protestantism as the United States’ only national religion. Someone else observed, however, that “they [the immigrants] still saw the more ancient stamp on our culture rather than the immediate dynamics of the situation.”

The Yearbook of American Churches for 1962 reported that the United States now has 63,688,835 Protestants, 42,104,900 Roman Catholics, 5,367,000 Jews, and 2,698,663 Eastern Orthodox. The Roman church, that for over a century was a relatively insignificant minority, is today a sizable group in our country. The Roman church has increased markedly in number, wealth, and prestige. Its members, by and large, are loyal to their church in active membership and support, while many Protestants, on the other hand, are Protestant merely in name.

Furthermore, America’s new culture is becoming urban centered, and the large cities which dominate this new culture are becoming, or have become, largely Roman Catholic. Cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Chicago, are all concentrations of Roman Catholic population, and increasingly control the political life of our nation. For the first time in our nation’s history we have a Roman Catholic president, whose election, moreover, was largely carried by the city vote. The majority leaders of both the House and the Senate are Roman Catholic, a situation that 50, or even 30 years ago would have been quite improbable in American life. Whether this change is good or bad is not the issue. The point is that something new has appeared on the American scene, and Protestants must increasingly learn to live with this fact. The Roman church is now a powerful political force in the life of the nation. Its effort to get Federal aid for parochial schools has made many Protestant leaders fearful of this increased power. The doctrine of the separation of church and state has accordingly become a live issue that 50 or 100 years ago, when Protestantism had no competitors on the American scene, was nonexistent, or relatively unimportant.

Likewise Jewish culture has assumed an increasingly important part in American life. For one thing, Hitler’s persecution stirred the Jewish people everywhere to a renewed religious-cultural consciousness that, among other things, brought into being the new state of Israel. The establishment of this national Jewish state has had the active support of thousands of Jews in America. In this resurgence of religious-cultural consciousness, the Jewish people are investing vast sums to educate their youth in the Jewish religion, a revival of Judaism that is being felt in America, too. At inter-faith gatherings here, our Protestant Christian heritage must frequently be adjusted to avoid offending the Jewish faith. Bible readings, for example, must be selected from the Old Testament, and prayer must not be offered in Jesus’ name. And we are pressured to have an open Sabbath in deference to the Jews, who observe Saturday rather than Sunday.

These facts reveal the pluralistic state of our society, for which our founding fathers provided, but with which we have not had to cope seriously until the present time. This development, of course, comes at the expense of Protestantism, which through the years had enjoyed a preferred religious position in America. Whether this status was good or bad is another question. The fact is that Protestantism seemed unaware of what was happening. No longer is old-line American Protestantism in a position to guide the spiritual life of the nation as before. We have reached the place in our national life where many of our theories must be adapted to the practical outworkings of life. To do this is a new experience for us both as Protestants and as Americans and is part of the tension now operative in our approach to the problem of separation of church and state.

Secularism is another element in American life that cannot be overlooked. Many persons either do not believe in God at all, or have so diluted any concept of him as to make him virtually nonexistent. Many young people are being reared in a new kind of faith that makes God quite irrelevant to life. Because of this changing status of religious life in America there has come increased pressure to define what we mean by the separation of church and state, and by religious freedom. For the first time since its founding as a nation, America is being brought face to face seriously with the demands of a pluralistic society.

In a 1952 decision of the Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas said, “We are a religious people and our institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” These words contrast tellingly with the words of Justice Sutherland in an earlier decision of 1931 which refers to us as “a Christian people.” In the 21-year interval between 1931 and 1952 we moved from designation as “Christian” to simply “religious” people. It is doubtful whether we can ever again recapture the former identity. It is conceivable that in the not too distant future we shall even drop the term “religious” in reference to ourselves. If religious faith is to prevail in our pluralistic society, it must center increasingly around the life of our churches. Perhaps this is as it should be. Louis Cassels, United Press religion correspondent, concluded a recent column titled “A Look Past the Prayer Decision” by saying:

The Supreme Court ruling means that Protestant parents must now face up to reality. And the reality is that the average Protestant child is not receiving much religious education. Even if he attends Sunday School faithfully he gets only about 25 hours of solid instruction a year.

Some Protestants have reacted to the ruling by denouncing the Supreme Court and talking about a constitutional amendment to permit the public school religious exercises which parents have found so comforting.

Others, however, are already looking beyond this kind of emotional response to see what constructive steps the Protestant churches can take to provide children with the kind of religious-oriented educational experience which is now quite obviously ruled out of the public schools.

One thing is obvious. Recognizing what has taken place in the American scene, we must go on to meet further challenges that will confront us as we try to define what our founding fathers meant by the separation of church and state.

Preacher in the Red

NO RETURN ADDRESS NECESSARY

I was a minister of one of England’s great old Methodist churches, a splendid edifice dating back to Wesley’s time. Extensive renovation and restoration had been done and I invited an earlier famous and beloved pastor to share in the dedication services.

Seated by his side on the platform I said to him enthusiastically: “Beautiful isn’t it? You see how we have done out the front of the gallery in simple white and gold, replacing that hideous multi-colored blotch of a frieze—that gaudy, tasteless, inartistic abomination unto the Lord. Do you remember it?”

“Yes I do,” he replied. “I put it there twenty years ago.”—THE REV. T. L. BARLOW WESTERDALE, “Camelot,” 12, Cheriton Road, Winchester, England.

Many years ago, as the wise men of Jerusalem observed the flow of life in and out of their city gates, as they listened to the daily petty disputes of the common people, and as they considered their own experience as part of the panorama of life, they coined a wise proverb, which is found in Proverbs 15:17: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” They recognized that a humble meal with love was far better than a fatted calf with hatred.

As we anticipate the bounteous dinners which will grace our tables on Thanksgiving Day, we shall do well to heed the message of this proverb. As we enjoy the fruits of our labors, we will be wise to remember that more exists to life than an abundance of food and clothing and to guard lest we become self-satisfied.

The undeniable truth of this proverb is illustrated in two episodes of history.

The first such incident occurred in ancient Egypt during the reign of the Pharaohs. In order to construct a memorial to their national greatness, the Egyptians had enslaved a colony of Hebrews, forcing them to toil many hours daily. Despite the persecution, the colony continued to multiply and threatened the numerical supremacy of its masters. These ordered the death of all male children at birth.

One family tried to protect its infant son. By chance the baby was discovered by the princess, who raised him as her own son in the palace of the Pharaoh. Thus the boy grew up a prince and shared in all the splendid advantages of the Egyptian court—its education, its regal dress, its bountiful delicacies. Gradually, however, the prince’s heart was stirred by a deep sense of injustice at the slavery of his people, their overwork and their poor diet. Eventually, God used Moses to become the deliverer of his people and to lead them out of Egypt into Canaan. Summarizing his life, the epistle to the Hebrews notes,

By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproaches of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.

May this be the clue to solving some of the social issues of our day? Are we, like Moses, unafraid to make the personal sacrifice of giving ourselves to a needy humanity? Christians must earnestly seek to know, to understand, and to love the downtrodden people of the world. We must give a practical demonstration that “better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”

A palace is the setting for another episode. In the days of the Babylonian empire, the finest young men of Judah were selected for government service. Part of their training included dining at the king’s table, enjoying the king’s meat and the wine which he drank. For many youths this was a great honor, but four young Hebrews knew that the fulfillment of this requirement meant religious defilement. The Bible says, “Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank.” He and his friends cherished their purity and personal integrity; they would not sacrifice it by eating at the king’s table. They believed that a dinner of pulse and water with moral purity was better than meat and wine with moral compromise.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked one of the most profoundly simple questions of his ministry—simple because its answer is obvious, profound because its practical implications are so far-reaching. Addressing the disciples, Jesus asked, “Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?”

What more obvious question could Jesus have asked? Anyone can compile a list of things which he values as highly as meat and raiment—such things as health, friendship, integrity, and a vital faith. But scores of people live as if food and clothing were all there is.

As we give thanks this year, let us earnestly consider what our bounteous dinners have cost us. To enjoy them, did we tolerate social injustice and exploitation? Did we have to sacrifice our moral purity on the altar of expedience? Does our conscience smart because of failure to stand for what is true? If we have full tables and full lives, then we can be thankful indeed.

END

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. They are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cycle.” So wrote Grantland Rice in 1924 as the Army football team fell before the magnificently balanced backfield of Notre Dame. But though it was the age of athletic giants and the peaceful decade of the 1920s, even the most optimistic of liberal Protestant preachers doubtless found this memorable identification of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse somewhat confining, albeit Albrecht Dürer’s terrifying portrayal may have seemed rather pessimistic for the day. For the liberal social gospel was then confronting the Four Horsemen—in their twentieth-century manifestations—on several fronts, and its chief mouthpiece was The Christian Century (see Donald B. Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919–1941 [University of California Press, 1960], pp. 44, 53 f.; Robert Moats Miller, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919–1939 [The University of North Carolina Press, 1958], p. 39; and The Christian Century, Oct. 5, 1938, p. 1187). They were moving together toward the victorious crest of 1928 when the social gospel appeared to be carrying all before its onward surge. It fought not with ancient weapons of biblical Christianity but with shining new ones forged in the twentieth-century crucible of liberal optimism, which proclaimed for all who would hear that man was inherently good, that his evolution could be assisted through environmental improvement. So pass good laws—and legislate the Kingdom into history!

Weapons Of The Social Gospel

Against the white horse of conquest and the red horse of war, the supreme Christian Century weapon was the outlawry of war, which was confidently legislated by the 1928 Pact of Paris, also called the Kellogg-Briand Pact (see earlier essays in this CHRISTIANITY TODAY series: Jan. 5, 19, Feb. 2 issues). For who then could see the long shadows of white and red horses moving toward Manchuria, object of Japanese aggression in 1931? (And onward to Ethiopia, Spain, China, Finland, Poland, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Korea, Algeria, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba …?)

If optimistic passage of a law was deemed appropriate to halt conquest and war, optimistic defense of the National Prohibition Act was the chosen weapon against the black horse of famine, which seemed to be running on a muddy track in the America of the 1920s. Its chief threat was singled out as the poverty and waste resulting from drunkenness, so prohibition was given priority over welfare state legislation. Rising to its defense, the social gospel rallied forces to contribute to a smashing 1928 election victory over the law’s opponents represented in the challenge of Al Smith. Unforeseen was the 1932 election reversal which brought repeal in 1933. Also unanticipated was the 1929 stock market crash which was to plunge the nation into a critical depression.

And what of the ultimate enemies reflected in the pale horse of death followed by Hades? Fighting was not as strenuous and unremitting on this front. Theological answers to ultimate questions, evangelistic and missionary quest for lost souls—these became a secondary theater of the conflict. Social gospel and Christian Century energies were primarily absorbed by political matters, true to American activist traditions. Al Smith’s religion did raise certain theological questions related to the issue of political freedom. And the 1928 Jerusalem Conference on missions was hailed by the Century for what it saw as a great thrust forward for modernism from positions held at the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. But the tall shadow of Karl Barth, who would wreak such havoc upon the liberal gospel, had not yet fallen across the English-speaking world. This would take place with telling effect in the 1930s. Der Römerbrief, published in 1918, would not be translated into English until 1933 (religious publishing houses being dominated by modernist advisors).

And the challenge to the liberal social gospel by American neoorthodoxy embodied preeminently in Reinhold Niebuhr was yet to come. The pessimism of Niebuhr’s first book, published in 1927—Does Civilization Need Religion?—still lay safely within social gospel presuppositions. But he came to emphasize the extent to which the social gospel identified Christianity with the religion of social progress, and as early as 1932 he wrote sharply of its limitations. He criticized its prophet, Walter Rauschenbusch, as partaking of the liberal illusions concerning the possibility of constructing a new society through education and moral persuasion apart from class struggle. The Great Depression had struck, giving Niebuhr a receptive audience for his castigations of the social gospel for its identification of Christianity with mild socialism and less mild pacifism encased in an overall utopianism. In the thirties The Christian Century, among others, would hear much on man’s sinfulness and God’s transcendence, as Niebuhr moved to the right in theology and to the left in politics. Early in that period, he was pessimistically entertaining the possibility that American middle-class culture, at its zenith in 1929, would have fallen into full decay by 1950. He became in effect a fifth horseman to harry the social gospel which found in him its supreme critic. (For those readers whose sense of imagery is persistent: the color of Niebuhr’s horse is not known; his dialectic mounts a mottled steed.)

Donald Meyer’s portrayal of social gospel pastors is significant:

“For most of them, deliberate, systematic attention to politics and questions of social organization was their primary professional occupation, precisely as men of religion. They thought of their interest, in fact, as the heart of their religious evangel, as a ‘gospel,’ the social gospel.” “The social gospel could be regarded as, in a sense, reform with a Protestant gloss, the gloss interesting but inessential.”

“… For The Christian Century, the social gospel was in itself close to being the heart of the total evangel.… Discussions of theology appeared now and then, but the Century’s speciality was not critical and systematic. Rather it was unremitting attention to Protestantism’s place in the national culture, and in fact to Protestantism as culture and as the national culture.” “Ably, often enough brilliantly, edited, the Century was a voice incomparably more broadcast, though not necessarily more penetrating, than any other social-gospel organ. Aside from the liberal seminaries, there was probably no agency more responsible for keeping the passion vital in the ranks of the ministry” (op. cit., pp. 1 f., 53 f.).

If the glory year of 1928 appeared to be bringing in the Kingdom by means of the social gospel’s pacific arms, the tragic four years immediately following witnessed a decline and fall of stunning swiftness. Deafening was the discord between liberal optimism and those apocalyptic days. The Century optimism which had in 1911 seen the “near approach” of “inevitable” “universal peace” (Apr. 6, p. 2) had survived the World War. (With more Augustinian fervor than Augustinian insight, Chicago had been described as “a great city of God” [Mar. 24, 1910, p. 11].) The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact triumph in August led onward to November’s Hoover landslide at the polls, an election the Century considered, over Niebuhr’s objections (Sept. 13, pp. 1107 f.), a “referendum on prohibition” (Sept. 6, p. 1068; Nov. 15, p. 1388).

To be sure, this was not the only issue of the campaign. Two others were also considered paramount—world peace and Roman Catholicism—and on all three Hoover was to be preferred, though this preference had not come easily for the Century. Hoover had made “strong utterances” on the Kellogg Pact while Smith evidenced “no intelligent understanding” of the outlawry of war. The Roman Catholic issue was regarded as a legitimate one, while the issue of liberal welfare legislation was not paramount—“Both parties are conservative …” (Nov. 1, pp. 1315–1318). But Smith had “chosen” prohibition as the decisive “battle ground,” and the Century chose “for Sahara” over Smith (Sept. 13, pp. 1098 f.).

“The Christian Century believes that the adoption of the eighteenth amendment was the most signal and significant project of self-discipline which a democracy ever undertook. We believe that it was not only a ‘noble experiment,’ as Mr. Hoover describes it, but that it was socially and economically exigent” (Nov. 1, p. 1317).

Prohibition, Part Of The Creed

Prohibition, the journal maintained, was also a religious issue even as Roman Catholicism. The conviction that the traffic in liquor for beverage purposes was “inherently and unqualifiedly evil” had been formed as “a part of the living creed of the churches.” The social gospel priority of politics over theology stood revealed without apology:

“It is a profound and intense moral conviction, a more vital article in the real creed of effective American Protestantism than the belief in the virgin birth of Christ. It was the Church’s legitimate activity in politics that brought the prohibition principle up to the level where industry and commerce united with religion to enact it into law.… Prohibition has come to be a part of the orthodoxy of churches” (Oct. 18, p. 1252).

The election was expected to be very close (Sept. 13, p. 1098), but the liberal optimism held: “We cannot turn back. We expect to witness the annihilation of the liquor traffic in America.” And this, despite “the wet press” with its “present seditious policy of stimulating the law’s violation” (Nov. 1, p. 1318). However, win or lose, no realistic political observer “can now dimly foresee the coming of the day when it will be possible to undo the 18th amendment” (Oct. 11, p. 1220). Hoover’s victory was seen as a great victory for prohibition, the “clearest” issue of the campaign. A Protestant crusade had been won (Nov. 15, pp. 1387 f.).

Century idolizing of prohibition was no new thing. After the 1916 election of Wilson over Hughes, the journal had declared that dry victories in that election had been more significant than the choice of a President (Nov. 16, p. 6). The next year the future of civilization was said to be dependent on the prohibition issue (Dec. 13, p. 8), and in 1919 Wilson was attacked for “unsoundness of conviction” on the matter, a “mortal offense” (May 29, p. 6). After the eighteenth amendment was adopted, assurance was given that it would never be “unwritten” (Nov. 19, 1925, p. 1434).

Thus in 1933 an editorial titled “This Is Armageddon!” comes as no surprise upon the occasion of Congressional submission of the repeal amendment to the states (Mar. 1, pp. 279–281). Response to repeal was: “We shall have to begin anew.” Prohibition through constitutional amendment was said to have been a mistake. Congressional regulation or prohibition was now preferred (Aug. 2, 1933, pp. 974 f.).

But the issue receded from the Century’s pages. In 1958 it noted, “Obviously prohibition, national or even statewide, is not a live issue now.” Prohibition proponents prior to repeal had, in concentrating on enforcement, “neglected their mission of public education.” “Prohibition failed. Now repeal has failed. The churches have failed; but we are not permitted to quit caring or to stop trying” (Dec. 10, p. 1420). But Century silence on the issue was the rule rather than the exception. Thirty years after repeal, the Virgin Birth remained considerably more a live issue for most American Protestantism than prohibition, the Century’s social gospel “creed” of the twenties notwithstanding.

Al Smith’S Religion

As has been noted, the Century saw prohibition as such an overriding issue as to make the 1928 election a referendum on prohibition. It was thus described in September and also in November both before and after the election. But earlier, in July, the journal had stated its conviction that Smith’s “membership in the Catholic church will be by far the most powerful single factor operating to influence the casting of votes” (July 12, p. 875). Later, Smith himself was seen narrowing the campaign down to the issue of prohibition.

“To say that this fight is really a fight against Mr. Smith’s Catholicism is to distort the facts. Had the democrats nominated Senator Walsh of Montana, there would have been no revolt in the south. Neither would large groups of protestants in other parts of the country have come to regard this campaign as a moral crisis. Yet Senator Walsh is a Catholic” (Aug. 30, p. 1040; see Sept 6., p. 1068).

(Said Reinhold Niebuhr: “It is idle … to make sweeping generalizations about the phenomenon of protestant opposition to Gov. Smith” [Sept. 13, p. 1107].)

The Century took strong exception to what it called “the browbeating tactics of Governor Smith and the Catholic-cowed press … which has accepted Smith’s Oklahoma City speech as an annihilation of the religious issue.… Those who make an issue of his Catholicism are bigots, says Mr. Smith.” The northern press, especially in big cities, was described as “tied hand and foot with Roman Catholic patronage.” In defending the propriety of discussing the religious issue, the Century declared:

“If a voter … holds that the system as projected by our Protestant-minded, Anglo-Saxon fathers is a better system than that with which a medieval church, dominated by a Latin mentality and controlled by a foreign oligarchy would displace it, why should he be stigmatized as a bigot because he refuses to jeopardize the social order in which he does believe by encouraging with his ballot the forces which desire to bring about the kind of a social order in which he does not believe? The whole appeal rests upon a perversion of democracy.”

“Does [the Catholic church] … exercise pressure upon its members to secure their support of [its] … policies?… Every organization exercises some degree of pressure upon its members, and that pressure is potent in proportion to the centralization of its authority, the compactness of its organization, and the sanctity which its members ascribe to it” (Oct. 11, p. 1219).

Just before the election, the Century seemed to be erecting a shield against any unearned charges of religious bigotry when it proclaimed the issue to be political and not religious because “Roman Catholicism is both a form of worship and a form of government.”

“Catholicism as a form of government comes into clash with American institutions in several definite areas of conflict such as marriage, education, and property, in addition to its clash with the fundamental principle of the relation of church and state.

“The Catholic question is not in reality a religious question at all. It is a political question—as much … as socialism is a political question.… The Christian Century has nowhere taken the position that the Catholic issue should alone be decisive of a citizen’s vote. No issue is absolute. It is qualified by other issues” (Nov. 1, p. 1317).

After the election the Century found no evidence that those who had voted solely on the Catholic issue were “sufficiently numerous to determine the electoral vote of any state” (Nov. 15, p. 1388).

The Century had also opposed Smith during his losing bid for the Democratic nomination in 1924.

“… Not every person who is constitutionally qualified is fit for office.” “Dean Inge puts it rather sharply when … he says: ‘No Catholic is more than conditionally a patriot.’ We would not like to phrase it so cuttingly.” “… Catholicism is fundamentally and constitutionally intolerant. Protestant tolerance and true American tolerance require that even the intolerant should be tolerated, but not necessarily that the intolerant should be placed at the head of the government (July 10, pp. 878 f.).

Just after Charles Clayton Morrison “refounded” the Century in 1908, the journal noted that William Howard Taft’s election to the presidency had come without any serious opposition being raised by the fact that he was a Unitarian. But had he been a Catholic, opposition would have been “justified” because of the papal theory of subordination of state to church. In any case, Catholic candidates “equally qualified in character and independent intelligence” with Protestant candidates would be “pretty hard to find!” (Nov. 21, p. 4).

In 1932 the Century believed that New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt’s bid for the Democratic nomination involved “the religious issue almost if not altogether as “inescapably” as Smith’s candidacy, due to Roosevelt’s “weak subservience” to the power of the Catholic Church: “… The question of his Americanism is bound to be raised by those citizens who are intelligently determined to keep our democracy free from church control of its laws and institutions” (Apr. 20, pp. 502 f.).

Temporal Power Of The Vatican

Through the years the Century kept up a running critique of Roman Catholicism not on theological grounds but on the issues of church-state relations and political freedom and morality. “… There is no first-rate nation in the world in which Catholicism is the established religion” (Oct. 25, 1917, p. 5). Much of the criticism was directed at the Vatican, which represented the ecclesiastical temporal power so strongly opposed by the Century. Near the end of World War I, the journal spoke of the pope’s “outward neutrality,” but observed that “his peace overtures have come at times which favored German plans” (Aug. 22, 1918, p. 4). During World War II an editorial entitled “Behind the Pope’s Peace Plea” reflected a similar mood:

“Pope Pius XII has at last decided that the United Nations are destined to win the Second World War.… He delivered a stinging rebuke to Hitler and his followers, although he still cautiously refrained from using names.”

“… The papacy has its own ends to serve. That these ends are primarily and solely concerned with peace only those can believe who never heard of General Franco or the Spanish war, who are ignorant of the concordats with Mussolini, Dolfuss and Hitler and who know nothing of clericalism in European history” (Sept. 15, 1943, pp. 1031, 1033).

Here in effect the social gospel was confronting the white horse of conquest, a new Roman imperialism now in religio-political form. At war’s end, Rome was seen probing “every fissure in the political and social structure in the interest of clerical power” (Aug. 22, 1945, p. 953). The Catholic Church “is definitely an obstacle to the democratization of Italy.” “The Vatican has never been the friend of democracy anywhere” (Mar. 28, 1945, p. 390). On the other hand, fascism “has historically proved itself to be compatible with Catholicism” (Dec. 22, 1943, p. 1497). Century readers were kept abreast of Catholic persecution of Protestants in places like Spain and Colombia. The coronation of Pope John XXIII in 1958 prompted the Century to repeat its 1939 description of the coronation rubric—which included the words “Ruler of the world”—as “blasphemous arrogance” (Nov. 26, pp. 1357 f.).

Franklin Roosevelt’s appointment of Myron C. Taylor to the Vatican (“an illegal ambassador”) was vigorously denounced as an “executive usurpation” which struck at the root of the American system of separation of church and state (Mar. 13, 1940, p. 344; Jan. 10, pp. 38–40; Feb. 14, p. 209). Harry Truman’s attempts to send Taylor and Mark Clark to the Vatican likewise provoked strong opposition: “illicit intrigue between our state department and the Vatican”; “President Surrenders To the Pope”; “unconstitutional”; “political Romanism is a tremendous and dangerous power”; “the campaign [in America] to promote the political interests of the Roman Catholic Church never ceases” (Apr. 3, 1946, p. 422; Oct. 31, 1951, p. 1243; Dec. 19, 1951, p. 1455; Jan. 30, 1952, p. 119). The Vatican, it was indicated, was not honest enough to admit its identity as both political state and religious society (Jan. 23, 1952, p. 95).

Church-state separation is at issue in Century opposition to Roman Catholic desires for public tax funds for parochial schools. In this connection Protestants were called on in 1947 to “lift high the banner to which all lovers of religious liberty can now repair” (Feb. 26, p. 264). In 1961, confronted by Cardinal Spellman’s demand for public funds for parochial schools, the Century declared for Protestant non-payment of taxes for this purpose even if laws were passed requiring such taxes (Feb. 1, p. 132). The journal also pronounced low-interest government loans for parochial schools unconstitutional (Mar. 22, p. 381). The “shortsighted, indulged self-interest of the Roman Catholic hierarchy” was charged with killing Federal aid to public schools (Aug. 2, p. 924). The Roman church’s flexing of muscles “should remove all doubt that it is a political as well as a religious institution” (Apr. 5, p. 412).

At the time of the founding of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State in 1948, the Century defended its aims in opposition to the “vulgar epithets” of Roman Catholics (Feb. 18, p. 199).

Century grievances against the Roman church in America have been numerous and durable. It saw in 1924 a “menace” to American society in Catholic property holdings: “A dull and brutish power furnishes none of the makings of an intelligent and forward-looking society.” The Roman church “has never proved to be [a constructive social force] anywhere else, or at any other period of history, and it will not become such in our society, now or at any time in the future” (Oct. 9, p. 1927). In an editorial, “Who Killed Prohibition),” the Roman church’s opposition was listed as one of nine factors (Nov. 15, 1933, pp. 1430–1432). In calling for the outlawry of organized gambling, the Century noted that the Roman church “not only condones organized gambling, but actually conducts it to swell its own revenues”—an “indefensible position” (Mar. 21, 1951, p. 358). Inasmuch as the Century has said that “unplanned, uncontrolled population expansion may in the long run prove more of a threat to the American way of life than nuclear war” (Jan. 17, 1962, p. 78), its attitude toward Roman teaching on this subject is highly predictable. The church “errs in its teachings” (Aug. 17, 1960, p. 942), though hope is seen in that “all Roman Catholics today are not devotees of that fertility cult in the church that does most of the talking” (Oct. 1, 1958, p. 1100, italics theirs).

Senator John F. Kennedy’s presidential ambitions raised anew the religio-political questions of 1928. One acquainted with Century attitudes through the years might expect opposition to Kennedy’s candidacy. But it was not to be. However, the journal did raise the issue, asserting early in 1959: “Politically, ours is and must remain a secular state.” This was interpreted to mean not state adoption of a “secularistic creed,” but rather state neutrality respecting the rival claims of churches.

“The separation of church and state does not demand the separation of religion and politics, but it does require that church and state, the institutions of religion and politics, shall limit themselves or be limited to their own realms of freedom. This is pluralism.”

The fact that the Roman church hierarchy periodically challenges the pluralistic nature of the American political order “constitutes a serious liability to Catholic candidates for high office” (Mar. 4, pp. 252 f.). The Century did not like the Kennedy “capture” of the Democratic party at the Los Angeles convention (July 27, 1960, pp. 867 f.); it complained that both party conventions had “shunted aside” the best men, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller, for competent political manipulators (Aug. 10, p. 915).

1928 And 1960

As in 1928, the journal believed Catholicism to be a legitimate campaign issue, but held that one’s vote should not be decided on this issue alone (Oct. 26, p. 1236; June 22, p. 740). But while in 1928 it was one of three “paramount and decisive” issues, in 1960 it was not listed among “the major issues”—“international relations, foreign aid, civil rights, schools, defense, slums, depressed areas, agriculture, a worthy national purpose” (Sept. 28, p. 1109). The Century favored election of liberal congressmen to make possible “the enactment of humanitarian legislation” (Oct. 26, p. 1237). And Kennedy was known to be more liberal than his Republican opponent Richard M. Nixon.

On the religious issue, the journal seemed reassured by Kennedy’s pronouncements on church-state separation in a way that it had not been by Smith’s in 1928 (ibid., p. 1235; Sept. 28, p. 1109). There were more Roman Catholics now and ecumenical winds were blowing. In October, Century editor Harold E. Fey told the United Church Women of Greater Chicago that he had not yet decided between the two presidential candidates. And Charles Clayton Morrison, founder and for 40 years editor of the Century, turned to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for publication of an open letter to Kennedy which indicated that he, Morrison, was distinctly unsatisfied with the extent of the candidate’s statements on church and state.

Social Reconstruction Could Wait

Prohibition, Roman Catholicism, and world peace—these “immediate” issues in the 1928 election, affirmed the Century, pressed “so hard upon the liberal Christian intelligence” as to make them paramount and decisive. Thus they overrode the “important” long-time issue of fundamental economic and social reconstruction, though the journal was “impatient … to see it joined in our American political arena by the appearance of a genuine party of innovation.” Hoover’s “apologetic for private initiative and the competitive system” was “as fallacious as it is able” (Nov. 1, pp. 1315 f.). He was seen ranging himself “with the extreme conservatives” “on the tariff and on the economic order in general” (Aug. 23, p. 1016).

Reinhold Niebuhr spoke of a lack of “the measure of appreciation for Gov. Smith’s liberalism which one might expect from a liberal journal like The Christian Century.” He held up the need for “rebuking the whole reign of big business as exemplified in the republican [sic] rule of the past eight years.” Were the choice between only Smith and Hoover, he’d vote for Smith. As it was, “my vote will go to Norman Thomas” (Sept. 13, pp. 1107 f.). Responded the Century:

“If the use of the injunction in labor disputes, the development of superpower corporations, imperialism in the Caribbean, and similar questions were the only issues involved in this campaign The Christian Century might find itself in either the Smith or the Thomas camp. But anyone with any sense of political reality knows that these are not even major issues.” “If Governor Smith wins the presidency, he will win it, not as a progressive, but as a wet” (ibid. pp. 1098 f.).

Events on Wall Street a year hence would eventually transform economic and social reconstruction, rightly or wrongly, into a major issue for the Century. The black horse of famine would outride its identification with drunkenness to be darkly descried in the gloom of depression as the capitalistic system itself.