LITTER

Bert the custodian is having problems again. Not the bottle; the bottles. It all came at once. There was the Saturday picnic on the church grounds. Thunder showers disrupted the clean-up operation, and Bert returned from vacation to face an acre of no-return root beer bottles, cans, soggy paper plates, plastic spoons, and aluminum foil wrappings. A disagreeable chore—but that was not Bert’s problem. He didn’t mind picking it up, the difficulty was in storing it all. Bert was raised in the heather. He never wore a disposable diaper, doesn’t use Kleenex, and has not surrendered to the planned obsolescence of an economy of abundance.

He drives his pick-up truck with a sharp eye for valuable objects in rubbish cans. In the truck there will be a wagon with a missing wheel, a rusty wrench, and perhaps a refrigerator door.

Of course he saves paper, string, aluminum foil, plastic dinnerware, and bottles. It happens that his cubicle in the church basement couldn’t hold another bottle.

Now Bert had spent his vacation moving. Naturally his life-long collection of usable material is immense. He only moved four blocks, but he moved everything. He moved everything over the hill and over the determined opposition of his married daughter. There had been a crisis, though, about the bottles, and when Bert came to work, his truck was loaded with bottles.

Under the circumstances he didn’t appreciate the signs the young people had posted in the basement. “Every litter bit hurts” was over the door of his shop. “Rubble trouble?” “Stash that trash!”

The pastor finally calmed him down. Pastor Peterson remembers the twelve baskets of fragments saved after the feeding of the five thousand—a miracle of abundance but not of waste. But he reminded Bert that even in the Gospels old bottles are expendable.

EUTYCHUS

AS LUTHER NAILED …

About ten minutes ago, the mailman brought the July 3 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY … I started with … “Evangelicals and Roman Catholics” by James W. L. Hills. Before I continue to read the other articles, I must sit down and write you that the author of the article should be commended publicly. As Luther nailed his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, so should this article be nailed on the door of every Protestant church and the study of every Protestant minister to remind them and their lay members of their God-given task as heirs of the Reformation caused by the will of God. Especially the retired Church of England Archbishop Dr. Fisher and people sharing his infatuation for Rome should heed the article’s admonitions written and filled with a spirit of true Reformation faith, based upon the pure word of the Bible.

RUDOLPH FLACHBARTH

Nativity Lutheran Church

Windsor, Ont.

Having returned from a busman’s holiday in Europe, I found on my desk the July 3rd issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… I must say that I am not an evangelical and that, therefore, I do not agree with much that is written in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. At the same time I admit that I find it … stimulating … simply because it ably presents doctrines I cannot accept.… Some of your articles make my Anglican hair curl—whatever there is left of it!…

I do not think that anyone would argue the fact that a reform was necessary. Even Roman theologians would assent to this. But in an effort to heal the Body of Christ, which is the Church, was it necessary to break that Body? Calvin or Luther could have gone to Antioch or to Constantinople as the second-generation Hussites did, thus preserving unbroken the continuity within the Body.… Mr. Hill states: “Roman Catholicism is cleverly portrayed as the true Church having an unbroken line from Jesus Christ to the present day.” It isn’t “clever” but it is true. It is also true of Anglicanism, of Eastern Orthodoxy, of the Swedish Lutheran church, of the Old Catholic church, to name but a few branches of the unbroken River, the streams whereof make glad the City of God.

… Protestantism in France and in Germany is, by and large, pompously irrelevant. The one great ray of light I found at Taizé, near Cluny. There, a French Protestant Monastery of some 40 monks, consisting of both Evangelical pastors and laymen of many denominations and nationalities, is working toward a real ecumenical unity through a liturgical renewal movement which endeavors to return to the bosom of Protestantism some of those common elements of Christian heritage which the Reformers in their righteous zeal often removed with legitimate abuses.…

ENRICO C. S. MOLNAR

Canon Registrar

The Diocese of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, Calif.

This article only confirms my belief that Protestantism is negative and that if “Roman Catholics” lack what you call a “radiant assurance of salvation,” this could be better attributed to their true devotion to the Holy Cross and what this really means. All of the Mysteries are not joyful; neither is the fact of sin, being my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault. WILLIAM H. PAUL St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Waretown, N. J.

It strikes me as the best thing I’ve ever read on the Protestant-Catholic problem.

D. E. ERICKSON

Dunsmuir, Calif.

THEME OF THE 4TH: FREEDOM

Most timely at the 4th of July, when we are giving thanks to God for our freedom, is your article on “The Communist Peace Front” (July 3 issue). The account you give is an excellent brief summary and sets the names of the outstanding “stooges” and “dupes” in very clear focus.… I wish every minister … in the U. S. could and would read this summary.

JOHN M. RHAME

Clinton, Iowa

A LOADED GUN

Addison Leitch has a point (July 3 issue). The statement on alcohol from the General Assembly of our United Presbyterian Church meeting in Buffalo differs in an important basic point from the statement of the 1950 General Assembly … which met in Cincinnati. At that time we said, “Adults in our churches should recognize their responsibility to provide a good example in sobriety and godly living by practicing and advocating complete abstinence from the use of alcoholic beverages.” Today, according to the Buffalo assembly, while church members are encouraged in the practice of voluntary abstinence, the Presbyterian who abstains and the Presbyterian who drinks are to respect each other and “constructively work together in dealing with the problems of alcohol.” The change made from the Cincinnati document is disturbing. Then we placed a responsibility on our members for complete abstinence. Now we only encourage them toward that goal. Let’s face it. In the 11 years that have elapsed between the two statements issued respectively by the Cincinnati and Buffalo assemblies, either the peril of alcohol has diminished (hardly!) or more Presbyterians are drinking (rather obvious!). The only question that I had in reading Leitch’s potent article was this: does our church really know that alcohol is a loaded gun?

C. K. STORY

Plainsboro, N. J.

It requires a million new drinkers each year for the whiskey interests to maintain their level of drinkers. For that million they turn to our young people and our would-be church members. The decision of the Assembly will certainly furnish excellent publicity for whiskey-beer-wine industry.

C. T. RYAN

Kearney, Neb.

TRAINING OF PASTORS

Thank you so much for Roy Burkhart’s stimulating and perceptive article (July 3 issue).… I now serve on my seminary’s board of trustees and intend to see that the 10 suggestions are seriously considered.

WILLIAM C. COLE

University Baptist Church

Long Beach, Calif.

An old man, at 85, perhaps I should not be so troubled about it; but I have read Dr. Burkhart’s article with a deep sense of shock, and of tragedy.…

My own experience of the ministry is very much at variance with the tragic incidents and cases which the article suggests. When I came to Boston in 1922 to edit The Congregationalist, it was after years in four pastorates, and two years as a probationer under two different superintendents.… I discovered that there were “career” men, whose worship of an honorary degree seemed more real than their worship of God; and men of frustrated ambition who were discontented in their lowly parishes. But I think such ministers were very much the exception.…

I thoroughly agree with … [Dr. Burkhart’s] suggestions for the seminaries, with considerable emphasis on “therapy sessions.”

W. E. GILROY

Newton Center, Mass.

TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

The sermon of Dr. Robert H. Reardon in the July 3 issue was interesting reading. So was the comment by Dr. John A. Morrison. But both Dr. Reardon in his writing and Dr. Morrison in his criticism missed the real content of every evangelical sermon: the Gospel. For all the inadequate and unworthy sampling answers to the question, “What do you think?” the sermon neither stated nor answered life’s greatest question, “What must I do to be saved?” People may have been fascinated, but if they did not know Christ when they came they did not know him when they left.

We can take nothing for granted, not even with our most consecrated laity—or preachers. Always there is the temptation to depend for eternal life on the fact that we “have been willing to put on the altar our lives and our resources.”

A good rule for the evangelical preacher: Never shall a man who comes to hear me preach be able to say when he leaves that he has not heard that (1) he is a sinner, and that (2) Jesus Christ paid the price of his sins, and that (3) “whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

ERNEST R. DREWS

Jehovah Evangelical Lutheran Church

St. Paul, Minn.

VOTING ON THE UNSEEN

I rejoice in the report of the two-day Chicago meeting of the General Board of the NCC (News, July 3 issue). It is precisely at the point of Dr. Van Dusen’s disagreement with Dr. Blake that many earnest Christian ministers and laymen fear the “Blake-Pike” plan for organic church union. Too many actions are taken and pronouncements made by the device of “blind” voting on matters that merit careful and prayerful study. The phenomenon of “voting on what has not been seen” is all too prevalent in the United Presbyterian Church now and would only increase in a new “super-church.” Let us make haste to pray for the leadership of the Holy Spirit in all these matters and be slow in sanctions for “organization men.”

JOSEPH MACCARROLL

Central Presbyterian Church

Norristown, Pa.

ON THE OLD TESTAMENT

How can such a book as Curt Kuhl’s—if I read the review correctly (July 3 issue)—be recommended as “an excellent tool for both pastor and layman”? Why should it “receive wide reading” when Scripture tells us to avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called?

E. P. SCHULZE

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N. Y.

BENEVOLENT SEALS

I was struck by … the “SV Plan” on which Eutychus and Associates are presently working (Eutychus, June 19). There is already a stamp plan for churches and charities, operating today. It is called the “Community Benevolent Seal” Plan. It is a copyrighted plan developed by a group of men of which I am a member.… The Plan has now been developed to such an extent that we are in the process of moving it on a national level.… We can use all the moral help available.

ROBERT G. SALTER

Vice-President

Community Benevolent Seal Co.

Seattle, Wash.

• Thank you, Mr. Salter. To offer you a modicum of moral help, Eutychus Associates are withdrawing all plans for Spiritual Value stamps. Since we’re strictly a fictional group, our planning is quite flexible. Best wishes to CBS. Let us know when the first church is built with Benevolent Seals.—EUTYCHUS

No one gets trading stamps as a “gift.” The consumer pays for every one of them. If the retailer gave a discount in cash for those who do not collect TV stamps the non-user would not be paying extra prices for the things he buys. The trading stamp is a delusion and a snare.

H. HAWKINS

The Order of The Holy Cross

West Park, N.Y.

HEAVEN AND EARTH

I most emphatically agree with the statements in … “Current Religious Thought” (June 19 issue) in that the New Testament does teach of a new heaven and a new earth, and that true Christianity is therefore very much interested in the earth. It will be so new that there will be real geographic changes, for Revelation 21:1 states that there will be no more sea.… However, I must agree with Martin Buber that at least the majority of Christianity today teaches a kind of Platonism. This is found primarily in their teaching of the intermediate state of the dead, that either the soul or the spirit live and have a conscious existence in death.… I believe that immortal life is given at the second coming of Jesus … and that until then man is, as it were, asleep or nonexistent.…

MELVIN E. MATHERS

Defiance, Ohio

The dimensions of the present grace are not restricted to earth alone. The riches of His grace are intended to affect the heavens as well. The sovereignty of the earth belongs to Israel according to the prophets and our Lord. The sovereignty of the heavens is the realm of His body, the theater of display of the untraceable riches of the Christ. Between the two, the entire universe will be headed up in the Christ.

CHARLES LAMB

Ft. Pierce, Fla.

FOOTNOTE TO A LAMENT

You have unjustly attacked me. Your attack has hurt my work. Your attack was untrue and false.

BILLY JAMES HARGIS

Tulsa, Okla.

• Mr. Hargis refers to an editorial (May 22 issue) in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY lamented the fact that churchmen today sometimes spend more energy attacking anti-Communists than attacking communism. In passing, the editorial added: “We have no sympathy with wild generalizations, whether made by the McIntires, the Hargises or others. The best way to handle those who spend half-time denouncing churchmen and half-time denouncing communism is hardly to major in denouncing anti-Communists.” Mr. Hargis seems to feel we failed to practice what we preach. If so we regret it.—ED.

A PENTECOSTAL EXPLAINS

Thank you for your article on the Pentecostal World Conference (News, May 22 issue). You will be interested in our explanation of some of the points raised in this article.…

Paragraph Six: “It has grown to represent a virile segment of Christianity which ecumenical leaders have described as ‘the third force.’ ”

Ecumenical leaders listed the Pentecostal denominations as a part of the “Third Force” only in terms of growth, world-wide scope, etc. It also listed other groups not Pentecostal, even in some cases, bordering on being cults. It should be noted that while we perhaps “operate outside classic Protestantism,” we are much closer to traditional Protestantism, theologically, than we are to many of the so-called “Third Force” denominations. While the socio-cultural appeals of the Pentecostal denominations “reach” below the middle class, it is by no means limited to this level of society.

Relative to the size of the Pentecostal churches, the 12-member denominations in the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America alone have 938,871 members with a Sunday school enrollment of 1,576,867. However, this is in no way an indication of the size of the worldwide Pentecostal movement. As an example, the Assemblies of God alone has a U. S. membership of 508,602 with a foreign membership of 985,241.…

Paragraph Seven: “… many Pentecostal leaders are restudying the movement’s distinctive doctrine of ‘the gifts’ of the Spirit, and the tendency to view ‘speaking in tongues’ as the criterion of legitimate Christian experience.”

… There have always been Pentecostals who have not understood spiritual gifts. The Assemblies of God teaches that all gifts are available to each individual believer.… The Assemblies of God and other major Pentecostal churches have never taught the necessity of having one or the other (or all) of the gifts as a criterion of Pentecostal experience.

Main stream Pentecostals have never viewed “speaking in tongues” as the criterion for a “legitimate” Christian experience. We view “speaking in tongues” as the initial, physical evidence of the infilling of the Holy Ghost as recorded in Acts 2:4; Acts 10:44–46, and Acts 19:6. Pentecostals view the Baptism with the Holy Ghost and the initial, physical evidence of speaking in tongues, as an experience following and subsequent to salvation. To our knowledge, no Pentecostals are restudying this position with the thought of any revision of the belief.

Paragraph Eight: “Whoever has this initial experience (speaking in tongues) is described as ‘having received the Holy Spirit.’ Doubt is widening among Pentecostal ministers, however, that this description is to be denied others, and that it is to be rigidly attached to the ‘experience of tongues.’ ”

We know of no trend in the direction of accepting the position that “speaking in tongues” is not the initial, physical evidence of the infilling of the Holy Ghost. In fact, the Assemblies of God has re-emphasized this stand, asking its ministers each year on the credential renewal questionnaire to reaffirm their belief on this position. This would, without doubt, be the position of the leadership of all Pentecostal Fellowship of North America members and also virtually all ministers affiliated with the different denominations.

Pentecostal churches view the gift of the Holy Ghost as a crowning experience. However, this is the beginning, not the ultimate. It is our feeling that the Baptism gives power for further advancement and growth in spiritual depths.

Paragraph Nine: “Pentecostals do not insist that an interpreter be present, since they do not believe that new revelation is communicated by the Spirit.…”

Most Pentecostals view speaking in tongues in two lights, so far as interpretation is concerned. First, we believe the Holy Ghost uses the unknown language in private and devotional supplication to God (1 Cor. 14:2). We do not feel this is for interpretation or could be since He speaks not to men but to God. However (and secondly), we believe that “tongues” are given to edify the church, 1 Corinthians 14:26, and as a sign to those who have not accepted Christ, 1 Corinthians 14:22. We do hold that public “speaking in tongues” in the church and tongues as a sign to the unbeliever should be interpreted, as indicated in 1 Corinthians 14:27–28. We do not feel that any new revelation is conveyed, but that “messages” will be in accord and agreement with God’s Word, the infallible Truth.

Relative to your quote, “Some regard them (tongues) as a mystical reassurance of salvation,” my research has not disclosed any Pentecostals who take such a position. Rather, we believe this experience follows salvation. The evidences of salvation are as given in Romans 8:5, 10, and so forth.

Closing Paragraph: The Assemblies of God has been too concerned with revivalistic evangelism to spend a great deal of time elaborating its basic theology. The 16 points of our “Statement of Fundamental Truths” have served well, without modification, for a bond of faith and practice for more than 45 years. A proposed expansion of the Statement, to be presented this August at the General Council in Portland, Oregon, will enlarge upon the 16 points without effecting any basic change in them.

T. F. ZIMMERMAN

General Council of The Assemblies of God

Springfield, Mo.

POINTS OF VIEW

I wonder if those of you who call yourselves “Evangelicals,” and who are constantly depreciating the work of Barth, Brunner, etc., and who cling so tenaciously to the unbiblical dogma of the absolute infallible verbal authority of Scripture, as such, are not yourselves in danger of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever—Amen!

GERALD A. VAN DOREN

Edmonds-Lynnwood Christian Church

Edmonds, Wash.

Many of us feel that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is more concerned about being courteous and scholarly than they are in being biblical and positive.

B. MYRON CEDARHOLM

General Director

Conservative Baptist

Association of America

Chicago, Ill.

I greatly appreciate CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The magazine is making a real contribution to the cause of Christian truth and activity today. It shows that firm conviction for biblical truth is consistent with genuine scholarship. Time will show that your active concern for evangelistic effort will result in social progress, as well as spiritual advance.

BUFORD L. NICHOLS

President

Seminari Theologia Baptis Di Indonesia

Semarang, Djawa, Indonesia

The most strategic journalistic venture in the kingdom of God in our time.

HAROLD N. ENGLUND

President

Western Theological Seminary

Holland, Mich.

I believe you are doing an excellent job. This is a magazine with a voice of certainty and the voice of the word of God. I thoroughly enjoy reading the articles and will look forward to more of the same.

EDWARD HEPPENSTALL

Dept. of Systematic Theology

Andrews University

Berrien Springs, Mich.

It is the most useful and relished of the five Christian publications to which I subscribe in that it does more to stimulate creative and constructive thought in the area of practical Christianity.

DON SCHOMBERG

Anaheim, Calif.

I wish to express my appreciation for the stabilizing factor that CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Revelation and the Bible have been to me in my crucial first year in Seminary, when the approach to the Bible and Christian morality has seemed so relative.

HENRY W. STEVENS

Richmond, Va.

First in a Series (Part II)

The question whether modern Israel practices mere religious tolerance, coupled with periodic intolerances, rather than implenting the program of religious freedom announced in the Proclamation of Independence, is a live one. Most Israel authorities interpret religious freedom as liberty to worship God as one pleases, but not as including the right to evangelize. While this interpretation lacks legal status, and is not formally announced for reasons of good public relations, it is candidly expressed at government policy meetings. “We don’t believe in missionaries,” said one government spokesman. “Missionary activity is harmful to the peaceful co-existence of the community; it introduces religious tension. Let us Jews alone! Take your missionaries out! They threaten the stability of the nation and breed resentment!”

For the Christian this sentiment represents an evasive and unworthy definition of religious liberty, one far different from that assured to minority groups in lands such as the United States where the freedom and right to evangelize across religious lines is defended and sought by Jewish as well as other religious leaders. For the Christian the worship of God includes obedience to the commandments, including Christ’s command to “go … into all the world and make disciples.…” To strip the Christian of this freedom spells religious intolerance.

Israel expresses high esteem for religious influence and religious culture but implicity disdains any emphasis on conversion. Liberal Protestantism has little trouble with such compromises. In Jerusalem, for example, 90 per cent of the YMCA membership is Jewish (non-Christian). When it was suggested that missionaries meet for informal discussion of religious liberty, the YMCA refused them a conference room because their meeting might be viewed as political. One of the Y personnel suggested that Israeli visa restrictions be understood in the same way sovereign nations like India interpret their sovereign rights regarding missionary visas. Described as an evangelical missionary venture, the Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies aroused serious misgivings among Israeli religious leaders. The venture gained co-operation only as a training school for American preachers with some non-Christian Hebrew professors as faculty participants to promote academic discussion aimed at mutual understanding. The Institute distributes free upon request from its American office (1046 Ridge Ave., Evanston, Illinois) the Israeli government publication Christian News, specially oriented to the evangelical Protestant constituency, which manifests a live interest in Israel.

The Jewish religion, historically, has had little interest in converting others. The same is true of Orthodox Judaism today in Israel, if not in America. In fact, there is little confrontation of the Jewish population with the necessity for personal spiritual decision. This is one reason—fully as much as the secular revolt against sabbatarian and other legalistic restrictions—why Jewish masses in Israel are not as a whole reached evangelistically by the claims of Old Testament religion, despite an interest in Scripture. The Orthodox Jew is a self-sufficient person; he thinks every Jew should meditate on the Book for himself. And he therefore lacks incentive for “breaking through” to his people. Even the children of the Orthodox drift easily into nonorthodoxy, especially after military service. Under these circumstances one might think he would welcome evangelical Protestantism at least for its devout grasp of the Old Testament as living Scripture that has abiding personal and social relevance, in contrast to liberal theology’s critical views of Old Testament literature and theology. But because Hebrew orthodoxy has lost its hold (the Orthodox represent only 15 to 20 per cent of the population) and because evangelical Protestantism appeals to both the Old and New Testaments and calls for personal conversion to Jesus as Messiah, Protestant missionaries apparently loom as a special peril to the Orthodox Jew. The conspicuous contrast between evangelical Christianity and modern Judaism (with its concentration on historical rather than personal theological faith) became obvious in Israel during Evangelist Billy Graham’s 1960 ministry.

Many Israeli spokesmen deny the possibility of sincere conversion, and view a Hebrew’s acceptance of Christianity as “motivated” (by material advantage). Hospitals, education, and welfare with the hidden hope of conversion is contrasted negatively with the Jewish view of charity “without strings attached.” But Christian compassion from the outset has been motivated by concern for “the whole man,” and the special connection between Christianity and sacrificial interest in the outsider, motivated by the Gospel, is a standing fact of history. Nonetheless, Christian missions in Israel need to ask to what extent education and welfare programs are justified solely on the basis of conversion prospects, to the exclusion of a response to human need. On the other side of the ledger, Israelis who marry Gentile women who “convert to Judaism” (apart from which such marriages cannot be solemnized in Israel) tend to emphasize the genuineness of such conversions. The open exclusion of a sincere transition from Judaism to Christianity, moreover, settles “in advance” the judgment which is then passed upon the early disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

Orthodox groups usually control the Ministry of Interior, Israel’s immigration regulating agency; the present minister of interior is reportedly so learned in Judaism that he could qualify as a rabbi. Certain officials insist nonetheless that only fanatically religious Jews really oppose missionary effort, that Israel actually implements religious freedom “to the maximal extent that orthodox pressures allow.” Many Jews themselves resent certain pressures such as the requirement of rabbinate marriage, which exacts an affirmation of orthodoxy. One tour guide who ridiculed the claim that the Israeli population is “wholly Orthodox, but with various degrees of observance and nonobservance,” said that “70 per cent of the Israeli Jews are non-Orthodox and most would prefer a civil marriage.” Such desires for church-state separation do not, however, necessarily reflect a full demand for religious freedom. The Jew has come to Palestine to escape persecution, much of it religious. Whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox, he therefore tends to attribute his sufferings to Christian vindictiveness. He wants to build a national bulwark against another such situation and fears any revival of Christianity in Israel. Hence, in some official circles open disdain for evangelism may really conceal a disquieting fear of evangelism. Obviously then, reluctance over visas for Protestant missionaries should not be explained only by Orthodox pressures; liberal Jews and free-thinkers also share this same aversion. They justify antipathy for missionaries by reference to the religious intolerances and persecutions of the past. They have not forgotten the Romanist Inquisition nor other crusades to “get ‘the Christ-Killers’,” and they shrink from a religious commitment which implies endorsement of such persecutions and intolerances. “For the first time in 2000 years we Jews can escape forced religious conversion,” said one government spokesman. “Let us build our Jewish state and Jewish culture. If you need missionaries to minister to non-Jewish communities, that is one thing. But to ask a Jew to ‘convert’ produces an abnormal Jew; he is no longer fully at home with Jewish traditions and culture; his children are taught that what his forefathers and other Jew’s believe is not ‘the whole truth.’ That is destructive of the sense of Jewish community.” Moreover, many leaders expect of all their citizens a full “conversion” to the ideals of the State of Israel; for the Orthodox these ideals include revival of the Jewish religion. This thinking prompts government agencies to diminish as much as possible the granting of visas to Protestant workers.

On occasion, however, and for strategic reasons, the Foreign Ministry moderates the pressures of the Ministry of Interior against missionaries. If the denomination involved is large, and lodges protests through the American Embassy, Israeli decisions may be weighted by the factor of good will. A small interdenominational group however is quite unlikely to gain such an expedient advantage.

NOT A STATE POLICY

Dr. Chaim Wardi of the Ministry for Religious Affairs presents a different perspective. He sees in Israel, where Jew’s are immune from repetition of past Christian persecutions, good conditions for fresh Jewish-Christian relationships and for reversal of former misunderstanding and mistrust. He thinks a modus vivendi is being evolved, that further progress of gains made during the first 13 years of statehood for the cause of religious freedom is a likely prospect.

Dr. Wardi concedes that “Jews are not in favor of Christian missionaries.” The Jewish people believe that Christian missionaries have produced anti-Semites, some of them virile and dangerous. Dr. Wardi notes that Jews converted to Christianity have sometimes been persuaded to leave Israel for Gentile lands. After the war of liberation, economic hardships encouraged some Israelis temporarily to join Christian church communities in order to lessen the difficulties of the first years. Such “converts” brought little credit upon the missionary cause, even if for a season they provided encouragement to the “statistics seekers.” Missionaries involved in such nose-counting (Roman Catholics considerably more than Protestants) are considered unsympathetic to the State. They threaten the new State’s unity, which demands not diffusion but synthesis of interests and loyalties. Officials resent too the fact that some Catholic and Protestant missionaries offered food parcels in the early period of national poverty as a means of gaining converts from Judaism.

Few of these missionaries become permanent residents of Israel; most of them remain foreigners who cherish their passports. Many show little concern for the projection of Israeli culture; in fact, some missionaries seem devoid of understanding and appreciation for Jewish culture. In other cases, a missionary’s unfamiliarity with the Hebrew langauge, or even his personality, encourages misgivings. Missionaries who seek permanent visas after entering the country as “visitors” gain little respect from Israeli authorities, even if they feel driven to this evasion by present pressures. Now and then some individual missionary transgresses a minor law and thereby brings discredit upon the whole assembly of workers. More than ever Protestants must consider the matter of missionary qualification. As never before since the apostolic age Christianity needs competent people to pursue competent dialogue with Judaism in Israel, now the seat of a great university of Hebrew learning and the coming world center of Jewish culture.

Personal prejudice, claims Dr. Wardi, does not govern state policy or practice in respect to visas and religious privilege however. At the same time that the Ministry for Religious Affairs and other government agencies were organized in 1948, the Department for Christian Communities was established. This group interprets Christian rights and needs to the government to see that the religious requirements of the Christian communities are satisfied. After centuries of dispersion as minorities, the Hebrews had become a sovereign majority with the moral problem of protecting other minorities. Shrines in Israel such as the birthplace of John the Baptist in Ain Karem, site of the Annunciation in Nazareth and that of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and the upper room of the Last Supper on Mount Zion were kept open and accessible.

Despite these facts, says Dr. Wardi, “the government hasn’t done the slightest thing to hamper missionary activities. I haven’t any antipathy toward missionaries, and I am ready to say that both the missionaries and Jewish reaction have contributed to existing tensions.”

INTER-FAITH OPPOSITION

But the Committee for Inter-Faith Understanding in Israel and the World, of which R. J. Zwi Werblowsky is honorary secretary, views “the existence of Christian missions, viz. the activity of Christian missionaries among the Jewish population” as “a veritable stumbling block in the way of healthy and brotherly Jewish-Christian relations.” At its founding session this committee declared that “the absence of missionary activity of any kind is a condition of any effort to foster good relations between religious groups,” and it called upon the Protestant Council in Israel last year “to make a clear and unequivocal statement concerning the suspension of missionary activities of all kinds” in order to promote “religious tolerance” and “cordial Jewish-Christian relations.” In a letter this year to the United Christian Council in Israel, Werblowsky declared that the missionary bodies “must know whether they want brotherly relations, based on mutual respect, sympathy and genuine understanding, between the Jewish people and Christianity, or whether they want converts. But they must also know that they cannot have both.… I feel it my duty to repeat with the utmost emphasis that any kind of missionary activity—perhaps even the very existence of missions—is bound to cause ill-will.”

PRESSURES AGAINST MISSIONARIES

In one case of refused missionary visas, appeal for reconsideration was immediately made to a higher office in the Ministry of Interior. Meanwhile, a plain-clothes-man (who described himself as from the police) came with a verbal order from the Ministry of Interior and demanded the missionaries’ immediate departure. Threatening police action and warning against delay, he ignored the explanation that an appeal to the office of the Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem was being processed. Only when informed that the United States Embassy would be notified of this turn of events did he retract his order and suggest that the applicants wait for word from the Jerusalem office. When the U. S. Embassy made inquiry through the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Interior replied that refusal was based not on religious discrimination but on legalities, the applicant supposedly having disregarded visa expiration dates. But such applications had been made in advance of visa expiration. Since the Embassy had no access to the applicant’s file, it was stalled from further inquiry.

In another case of visa refusal, inquiry was made by the applicants to the Ministry of Interior and to the Department for Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The Ministry of Interior gave this verbal explanation: 1. Refusal was not prompted by the applicants’ records, but because they represented a new church group seeking a foothold in the country. 2. Refusal therefore was based on the sponsoring board’s lack of long activity (prior to statehood). 3. New groups were not being allowed to establish a work.

The verbal reasons reportedly given by the Department for Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs were: 1. Property not formerly owned by a Christian group had been purchased in the name of a church in hopes of using this as a home base for Christian activities. 2. This would then become the base for establishing a new Christian church, and “we are determined to stop this.” 3. No already existing congregation of this denomination anywhere in the State of Israel needed or requested a pastor from the United States. 4. The objective was to create such a congregation out of Jewish converts, and this will not be tolerated. 5. The people of Israel do not want missionaries and new mission groups. After inquiry a spokesman for the American Embassy reported that the government’s policy toward missions seems to operate on a quota system under which the personnel of one mission after another is periodically reduced by one missionary family. Christian workers in Israel know the formula well: “you want to convert Jews; no present congregation demands you; we oppose expansionism.”

In short, the Israeli government welcomes Christian tourists to Israel, to “fill in the gaps” of pilgrimages to the sacred sites, and it is enlarging hotel accommodations for more and larger tour parties. It welcomes Christian conventions in Israel, the recent World Pentecostal Assembly in Jerusalem having been hailed as the largest such gathering in Palestine since biblical times. It welcomes Christian funds for the exploration of archaeological sites and investments for the development of natural resources. But it has scant welcome for the Christian missionary, that is, to the Jew. This chilly atmosphere recalls the apostolic age only in its outward repression; it does not rise from a conscious alternate messianic conviction, with reference to Jesus Christ, as much as from a post-Christian resentment of Christian persecution. But the situation nonetheless dramatizes the question how the Jews, long a persecuted minority, will respond to minority rights now that they exist as a majority.

UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

Winning the modern Jew to faith in Jesus Christ is everywhere difficult, but in Israel the task is even more arduous because of ethnic and religious pressures and materialistic visions of life. Orthodox Jewry, as indicated, is merely a minority commitment. The Jewish immigrants from Arab lands are mainly Orthodox; those from Europe both Orthodox and non-Orthodox; while American Jews (who have come in scant numbers) are sometimes deplored for “losing Judaism in Unitarianism and Ethical Culture” and of evading the force of Ben Gurion’s insistence that “every true Jew really means it when he prays ‘next year in Jerusalem.’ ”

Christian Hebrews are admitted to Israel with a permanent visa simply as Jews. None has been disturbed when his or her Christian views have become known. The Christian witness to Israel in the long run may therefore turn more upon the missionary dedication of Hebrew Christians than of Gentile Christians. The Gentile missionary lacks familiarity with Hebrew language and literature, culture and customs. The first Christian Hebrew family from America arrived in Israel only within the past year, although some missionary work has been done by individuals who are not “officially” missionaries.

To the modern Jew, Christianity often seems a religion shaped by Greek, Byzantine, and Latin developments of the West, and very remote from Judaism. Protestant Christianity represents an extensive revolt against these medieval developments, yet there is not at the present time, on the usual Protestant basis, a single Hebrew-Christian church in all Israel. The conviction is growing that the Protestant mission to the Jews will succeed only if it creates a Hebrew form of Christian worship with roots in the Book of Acts and the ancient Judaeo-Christian community, a pattern eliminated by the medieval church more than 15 centuries ago. One of the strongest Christian works is the Messianic Assembly of Israel (Pentecostal). Its founder 13 years ago was W. Z. Kofsmann. A Hebrew who worked for the French government in French West Africa, he was led to the Messiah by a missionary personally sharing his love for the Jews. At first government authorities in Jerusalem refused to recognize Kofsmann’s assembly. But he sought no “favor,” only “rights,” explained Kofsmann, and stressed a spiritual tie to the early Church in the assembly’s Pentecostal emphasis. Today the effort is recognized as autonomous, with 55 active Christian Hebrew members. The assembly publishes a newspaper for Hebrew readers, although Kofsmann at one time was threatened with imprisonment for starting it without permission.

Missionaries who seek merely to transplant branches of “Western” churches to Israel are easily viewed as “outsiders.” Assuredly Jewish culture has mainly tended to express itself in a Western democratic-capitalistic framework, left somewhat insecure in Israel by the large influx of Jewish immigrants from Moslem lands. But in religion, most forms of Judaism—however modified—reflect Hebrew rather than post New Testament Greek-Latin-Germanic-Anglo-Saxon roots. The feeling that the Christian and Hebrew religions are divergent alternatives militates against the Christian witness. Missionary representatives of established denominations labor under still another disadvantage, namely, the multiplicity of competitive Christian denominations which confuses the Hebrews. Since arrangements are not feasible in a land of only 8,000 square miles, oneness is more imperative than on other fields. But in Israel efforts at unity have been resisted. A three-year attempt by a European Hebrew Christian to promote it among the missionaries ended in failure, despite the fact that unification seemed imperative simply as a protective device. Evangelical fragmentation (let alone Christian disunity) actually perpetuates the weakness of the Gospel witness and exposes missionary leadership to easy opposition.

In one area some 20 Christian Jews meet periodically in private homes for Bible study and worship, and invite other Jews. To avoid ill will, this group shuts the windows when hymns are sung. Their profession of Christianity has made some workers undesirable to their employers, Christian Hebrews being resented for “depriving” non-Christian Jews of work. Although such pressures are private and indirect, rather than official, they help to explain the fact that, in addition to the 250–300 open believers, there are estimated to be again as many “secret” believers in Israel—known as such to relatives and to Christian missionaries but not to their employers and fellow workers. There are other obstacles to the full expression of Hebrew-Christian conviction, such as the lack of Christian schools for Hebrew children, and of young people’s societies. As a consequence, children of Hebrew-Christian parents seldom follow in their steps. In these discouragements some Hebrew-Christian families every year emigrate out of frustration, while government officials view this as evidence that Christian commitment detaches Hebrews from national loyalties.

There is need for bold restudy of the Christian approach to the Jew. Christianity is not an interloper; it accepts the Old Testament, and is ready to discuss the Christian claim on this basis (“If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me,” John 5:46). The Jew is not being invited to receive a new God, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of promise and fulfillment. The Jew is not being urged to receive a Gentile Messiah, but the promised Jewish Messiah. The Jew is not being pressured to become a Gentile; when a Jew comes to the Messiah, he does not cease to be a Jew, but a Jewish believer—and there is surely no need, on this basis—for him to separate himself from his people. The Jew is not being asked primarily to become a Baptist, or a Scottish Presbyterian, or whatever else, but simply a Messianic Jew. Devout Jews and devout Christians are both waiting for Messiah to come—the latter for his return in glory. Such emphases reflect an understanding of the times in the outreach to the Israeli Jew. They dispel the misimpression that in order to become a Christian the Jew must cease to be a Jew, and remind him that, in the discovery of his Messiah, the Jew becomes in the profoundest sense a son of Abraham.

The timidity of the Christian missionary in Israel, be he Gentile or Jew, is one of the strange ironies of the age. The early apostles experienced and endured Jewish hostility beyond that known by the Christian task force today. Nobody languishes in prison, nobody’s life is in danger, nobody has been beaten and stoned for his faith. That may be one reason the modern Israeli does not take the Christian missionary too seriously.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Your church library can become big business. More of your people can read more of your books for more help in their interests and problems. How? Bring books to the people instead of people to the books. Getting the two together is the special job of departmental church libraries.

These libraries are really samples of the main church library. Carefully selected for a particular group of persons, these miniature libraries of a dozen or so books supply Christian and church-related materials often unavailable in public libraries and often unknown to church members. Departmental libraries are traveling salesmen of the church’s ministry through reading.

While the mechanics of this books-to-people program are simple, they presuppose good planning. In the first place, determine what groups could benefit from having their own branch libraries. Juniors? Youth? Young adults? Senior adults? There may be two, three, or at present only one. Your church school workers are perhaps best qualified to know. Second, designate what organizations, such as young people’s societies, missionary circles, men’s brotherhoods, and so on, logically incorporate these selected groups. The Junior-High library, as an illustration, would issue books particularly for this group in the church school classes, Sunday evening groups, and week-day clubs. Such coordination for a departmental library has side benefits, too. An alert leader soon discovers, for example, who attends club activities but not Sunday school, and vice versa. Third, establish the branch libraries in easily accessible quarters. The main assembly rooms of the Sunday school departments or adults’ regular meeting places usually offer sufficient space in attractive, familiar surroundings.

Obviously, the personnel in this program is very important. The main librarian, of course, alone or with a committee keeps an efficient, well-stocked central library and determines what books shall remain there for general circulation. She recommends which present book holdings and what new purchases are suitable for the departmental libraries. She recognizes that as additional books are requested by and supplied to the branch libraries, the total library service will increase both in quality and in volume.

Departmental librarians, well-briefed by the main librarian on circulation techniques and library policy, are preferably teachers or assistants in the various church school departments. Better than anyone they know “what’s going on” in their groups. More than anyone they’ve probably said, “I wish I had a good book for Johnny on the social code,” or “Isn’t there something for Mrs. Jones on how to tell her children about death?” Through judicious direction of materials these workers reinforce their Sunday school teaching and that of the church as a whole. Too, they often gain a personal, strategic relationship with individuals and families that even the minister may lack.

Departmental librarians help choose and vary book selections for their groups. They may recommend the purchase of new materials. Periodically they report and analyze circulation. They play a part, too, in encouraging persons in their groups to share in shelving books, filing cards, making displays, or even giving book reports. The greater the division of responsibility in the program, the more enthusiastic and contagious will be the use of the branch libraries and of the central library as well.

With sites determined and bookshelves provided, materials for the branch libraries, after some preliminary processing, are transferred from the main church library. The librarian or some competent committee has already decided which books shall remain in the central library. In all other books paste a card pocket in the front to match that in the back. For this front pocket make a file card with book title, author’s name, accession and call numbers to duplicate the card in the back pocket. In other words, all books circulating into the branch libraries have two card pockets and two file cards. Whenever a book goes to a branch library, the head librarian removes one of the file cards, records the name of the branch library to which it is issued, and the date of transfer. When a book is checked out in the branch library, the borrower’s name and the book’s due date are recorded on the second file card which is then kept by the branch librarian. The main librarian therefore knows which branch library has a given book; the branch librarian knows who is using the book and when it is due. To recall a book for loan to another person or even to another branch library becomes an easy matter.

Essential to the program’s success is good publicity. Regular announcements in departmental groups, perhaps with reference to specific book titles, are assumed. Bulletin boards, posters, and library displays in various church locations give many others a visual impact of the nature and the value of the expanded library service. At regular intervals church bulletin inserts reach even more people and accomplish several things: circulation statistics indicate growing activity; lists of recent book acquisitions or an occasional well-written book review may bring new library inquirers; opportunity to contribute specific titles enlarges the circle of supporters. Here and there brief oral reports of visits by church leaders to the libraries and timely comments by the minister give a stamp of official approval and encouragement.

The primary purpose of this program, of course, is not to promote a specific activity for activity’s sake, but rather to demonstrate through that activity the Gospel’s relevance for all areas of life. Without the church’s original historic sponsorship of the Book and books we might still be grossly illiterate. Today’s problem, at least in most of America, is not lack of hooks or of learning. Rather it is one of selective and pertinent reading. Departmental church libraries specialize in selective, pertinent books for special people with special interests and needs. Try them to step up your circulation!

CHRISTIANITY TODAYoffers the following list of departmental titles recommended by Miss Lois E. LeBar, Professor of Christian Education at Wheaton College.

JUNIORS

DEJONG, MEINDERT, The Mighty Ones: Great Men and Women of Early Bible Days. Harper, 1959, 282 pages, $3.50.

EISENBERG, AZRIEL, The Great Discovery. Abelard-Schuman, 1956, 112 pages, $2.50.

HASKIN, DOROTHY C., Brave Boys and Girls of Long Ago. Baker, 1958, 61 pages, $1.50.

JOHNSTON, DOROTHY GRUNBOCIC, Cathy and Carl of the Covered Wagon (series). Scripture Press, 1954, 104 pages, $1.50.

LUDWIG, CHARLES, Chuma (series). Scripture Press, 1954, 72 pages, $1.25.

MASSEY, CRAIG, Twig, the Collie. Zondervan, 1958, 121 pages, $2.

The Old Testament, illustrated by Marguerite de Angeli. Doubleday, 1959, pages unnumbered, $6.95.

PEARCE, WINIFRED M., John Paton (missionary series). Zondervan, 1954, 96 pages, $1.

SOMMERLAD, PATRICIA J., My King and I: Devotions for Junior Youth. Moody, 1959, 128 pages, $2.25.

ST. JOHN, PATRICIA M., The Tanglewood’s Secret. Moody, 1951, 250 pages, $1.50.

Vos, CATHERINE F., The Child’s Story Bible. Eerdmans, 1935, 732 pages, $4.50.

WHITE, PAUL, Jungle Doctor (series). Eerdmans, 1959, 118 pages, $1.50.

COLLEGE AGE

ADOLPH, PAUL E., Triumphant Living. Moody, 1959, 127 pages, $2.50.

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC AFFILIATION, Modern Science and Christian Faith. Scripture Press, 1948, 316 pages, $4.50.

CODER, S. MAXWELL, God’s Will for Your Life. Moody, 1946, 123 pages, $.39.

ELLIOT, ELISABETH, Through Gates of Splendor. Harper, 1957, 256 pages. $3.75.

HENRY, CARL F. H., ed., Revelation and the Bible. Baker, 1958, 413 pages, $6.

LEWIS, C. S., Mere Christianity. Macmillan, 1943, 175 pages, $2.75.

PIKE, JAMES A., If You Marry Outside Your Faith. Harper, 1954, 191 pages, $2.50.

RAMM, BERNARD, The Christian View of Science and Scripture. Eerdmans, 1954, 367 pages, $4.

RINKER, ROSALIND, Prayer: Conversing with God. Zondervan, 1959, 117 pages, $2.

SMALL, DWIGHT, Design for Christian Marriage. Revell, 1959, 221 pages, $3.50.

TAYLOR, DR. and MRS. HOWARD H., Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. China Inland Mission, 1932, 178 pages, $1.

TOURNIER, PAUL, The Meaning of Persons. Harper, 1957, 238 pages, $3.75.

YOUNG ADULTS

CARNELL, EDWARD JOHN, The Kingdom of Love and the Pride of Life. Eerdmans, 1960, 164 pages, $3.50.

DUFF, ANNIS, Bequest of Wings. Viking, 1944, 214 pages, $2.50.

EAVEY, C. B., Principles of Mental Health for Christian Living. Moody, 1956, 326 pages, $4.

HUTCHINSON, ELIOT D., How to Think Creatively. Abingdon, 1949, 233 pages, $2.75.

LITTLE, SARA, Learning Together in the Christian Fellowship. John Knox, 1956, 104 pages, $1.25.

MAVES, PAUL B., Understanding Ourselves as Adults. Abingdon, 1959, 217 pages, $2.

NEE, WATCHMAN, The Normal Christian Life. Christian Literature Crusade, 1958, 275 pages, $2.

OVERTON, GRACE S., Living with Teeners. Broadman, 1950, 85 pages, $1.25.

SHAW, DOREEN and JOHNSON, MARTHA, Your Children. Moody Pocket Book, 1957, 192 pages, $.50.

SWEAZEY, GEORGE E., Effective Evangelism. Harper, 1953, 284 pages, $3.50.

WHYTE, WILLIAM H., JR., The Organization Man. Doubleday Anchor, 1956, 471 pages, $1.45.

SENIOR ADULTS

BOUCHERON, PIERRE, How to Enjoy Life after Sixty. Denis Archer, 1959, 224 pages, $3.95.

CARMICHAEL, AMY, Gold by Moonlight. S.P.C.K., 1935, 182 pages, $3.

COWMAN, MRS. CHARLES E., Traveling Toward Sunrise. Cowman Publications, 1952, 254 pages, $2.50.

DOBBINS, GAINES S., The Years Ahead. Broadman, 1959, 144 pages, $.75.

GLEASON, GEORGE, Horizons for Older People. Macmillan, 1956, 137 pages, $2.95.

HULME, WILLIAM E., Counseling and Theology. Muhlenberg, 1956, 250 pages, $3.75.

LEWIS, C. S., The Problem of Pain. Macmillan, 1959, 148 pages, $3.50.

NILSEN, MARIA, Malla Moe. Moody, 1956, 253 pages, $3.

REDPATH, ALAN, Victorious Praying. Revell, 1957, 151 pages, $2.

TOZER, A. W., Born After Midnight. Christian Publications, 1959, 142 pages, $2.75.

WHEELER, W. REGINALD, A Man Sent from God: Robert E. Speer. Revell, 1956, 333 pages, $3.95.

WHITE, ERNEST, The Way of Release: For Souls in Conflict. Christian Literature Crusade, 1947, 95 pages, $1.95.

A careful selection of 100 books is a good library beginning for many churches.

Some books, of course, have more general and comprehensive value than others. Which books are most useful depends in some measure on the local situation.

The following list does not include volumes in systematic theology: each congregation will know what key materials best define its distinctive denominational convictions. Nor does the list include recommended modern fiction. Such titles are actually a kind of specialized service. (A checklist of 400 biblical novels by subject and character, for example, is available from BCH Publications, 1327 Ferndale Street, Anaheim, California, at $1.00.) Since a well-planned church library usually incorporates reading for all ages the supplementary booklist on pages 13–15 suggests some of the many graded materials currently available.

Dr. Arnold P. Ehlert, librarian of Biola College and Talbot Theological Seminary in La Mirada, California, and who helped organize the Church Librarians Association of Southern California in 1955, reminds us that church libraries are really no recent development. Already in A.D. 303 they were considered so important that Diocletian burned many of the book collections in his effort to destroy Christian literature.

EARLY AMERICAN TRADITION

A long history also surrounds the American Sunday school library. In 1821 the Female School of St. James’ Church, Philadelphia, opened a small library. St. Paul’s Sunday school in Baltimore listed 236 books in 1829. By 1841 several Sunday schools boasted libraries of 350 to 400 volumes and by 1886 a Sunday School Library Association had been established in this country.

The modern church library movement however dates from around 1940–45 when the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board began to develop church libraries and organized the Church Library Service. For over 15 years it published The Church Library Bulletin, now replaced by The Church Library Magazine. Other denominational groups followed with similar departments. In the early ’50s the Methodist Publishing House formed a Church Library Service and issued a bulletin called Bookmarks and also The Bookshelf, a Booklist for Church Libraries. Presbyterians in 1958 advertised the Westminster Church Library Plan with a manual. Nazarene Publishing House issued a manual on the church library in the mid ’50s. In St. Louis the Christian Literature Commission of the Christian Board of Publication promotes a ten-year reading program called the Disciple Reader’s Plan.

COVERING A BROAD RANGE

The following “first 100 books” for a church library represent volumes presently available from their publishers. This basic collection primarily stresses reading and therefore omits some of the more technical manuals useful to teachers, youth leaders, and church workers generally. Most church libraries will systematically add such working tools, of course. The present list covers a broad range of subject matter. Obviously, in some cases other titles could be equally recommended; at best the stated selections are only representative. Denominational churches will be especially alert to materials from their own publishing houses, of course, and to possible cost discounts. Some groups also issue helpful librarians’ handbooks and even catalogues for the church library with books already classified according to the Dewey Decimal System.

Indeed, the church library is an exciting adventure in recognizing and meeting important responsibilities for its present and potential readers. An entire congregation, even a whole community, may experience the far-reaching impact of an effective church library. If it is at all possible to organize a church library, every church should do so, but only with utmost spiritual dedication to the task’s requirements. (Note also the supplementary suggestions on pages 13–15.)

BIBLE STUDY AND REFERENCE

BRUCE, F. F., The English Bible. Oxford, 1961, 234 pages, $4.

CHAFER, L. S., Major Bible Themes. Dunham, 1926, 329 pages, $2.50.

CONYBEARE, W. J. and HOWSON, J. S., The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, Eerdmans, 1949, 850 pages, $5.

CORSWANT, WILLY, A Dictionary of Life in Bible Times. Oxford, 1960, 308 pages, $6.50.

CRUDEN, ALEXANDER, Cruden’s Complete Concordance. Zondervan, 1949, 783 pages, $3.95.

DAVIDSON, F., The New Bible Commentary. (2nd ed.), Eerdmans, 1954, 1199 pages, $7.95.

DAVIS, JOHN, Westminster Dictionary of the Bible. (4th rev. ed.), Baker, 1944, 840 pages, $5.95.

FARRAR, F. W., Life of Christ, World, 1950, 723 pages, $3.50.

HALLEY, HENRY H., Bible Handbook. (22nd ed.), Zondervan, 968 pages, $3.75.

HENRY, CARL F. H., ed., The Biblical Expositor. Holman, 1960, 3 vols., $20.85.

HENRY, MATTHEW, Commentary on the whole Bible, new one volume edition, Leslie F. Church, ed., Zondervan, 1960, 1204 plus 784 pages, $9.95.

Jamieson, Faussett & Brown’s Bible Commentary, The. Eerdmans, 1957, 6 vols., $30.

KRAELING, EMIL G., Rand McNally Bible Atlas. Rand McNally, 1956, 458 pages, $8.95.

LASOR, WILLIAM S., The Amazing Dead Sea Scrolls. Moody, 1956, 251 pages, $3.50.

MONSER, HAROLD, ed., Cross Reference Bible. Baker, 1910, 2405 pages, $14.95.

ORR, JAMES, ed., International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Eerdmans, 1915, 5 vols., $35.

Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press, 1957, 1492 pages, $17.50.

SHORT, A. R., Modern Discovery and the Bible. Inter-Varsity, 1943, 188 pages, $2.50.

SMITH, WILBUR M., A Treasury of Books for Bible Study. Wilde, 1960, 289 pages, $3.95.

STALKER, JAMES, Life of Christ. Zondervan, 1949, 160 pages, $1.25.

STALKER, JAMES, Life of St. Paul. Zondervan, 1949, 160 pages, $1.25.

THE CHURCH

BLANSHARD, PAUL, American Freedom and Catholic Power. Beacon, 1958, 402 pages, $3.95.

LATOURETTE, KENNETH S., A History of Christianity. Harper, 1953, 1516 pages, $9.50.

MAYER, F. E., Religious Bodies of America. Concordia, 1958, 591 pages, $8.50.

MEAD, FRANK S., Handbook of Denominations in the United States. (2nd rev. ed.), Abingdon, 1961, 272 pages, $2.95.

STUBER, STANLEY L., Primer on Roman Catholicism for Protestants. Association, 1960, 276 pages, $3.50.

VAN BAALEN, J. K., The Chaos of Cults. (Rev. ed.), Eerdmans, 1956, 409 pages, $3.95.

WALKER, WILLISTON, A History of the Christian Church, (rev. by Cyril C. Richardson, Wilhelm Pauck, and Robert T. Handy). Scribner’s, 1959, 585 pages, $6.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

CALVIN, JOHN, Institutes of the Christian Religion. (Ed. by John T. McNeill), Westminster, 1960, 2 vols., 1734 pages, $12.50 set.

BERKOUWER, G. C., Studies in Dogmatics (a series of 20 volumes now in translation). Eerdmans, 1952, $3 to $4.50 per volume.

DENNEY, JAMES, The Death of Christ. Inter-Varsity, 1951, 272 pages, $3.50.

GORDON, A. J., The Ministry of the Spirit. Judson, 1895, 225 pages, $2.

HARRISON, EVERETT F., ed., Baker’s Dictionary of Theology. Baker, 1960, 566 pages, $8.95.

HENRY, CARL F. H., ed., Contemporary Evangelical Thought. Channel Press, 1957, 320 pages, $5.

LEWIS, C. S., Mere Christianity. Macmillan, 1958, 175 pages, $2.75.

LEWIS, C. S., The Screwtape Letters. Macmillan, 1943, 160 pages, $2.50.

MACHEN, J. GRESHAM, What is Faith? Eerdmans, 1925, 263 pages, $3.

MIXTER, RUSSELL L., ed., Evolution and Christian Thought Today. Eerdmans, 1954, 224 pages, $4.50.

WALVOORD, JOHN F., The Holy Spirit. Dunham, 1954, 275 pages, $3.50.

WARFIELD, B. B., The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948, 442 pages, $4.95.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

EAVEY, CHARLES B., Principles of Teaching for Christian Teachers. Zondervan, 1940, 351 pages, $3.

GAEBELEIN, FRANK E., Christian Education in a Democracy. Oxford, 1951, 305 pages, $4.

GETZ, GENE, Audio Visuals in the Church. Moody, 1959, 256 pages, $3.95.

HAKES, J. EDWARD, ed., Introduction to Evangelical Christian Education. Moody, 1961, 460 pages, $7.95.

HARBIN, E. O., Fun Encyclopedia. Abingdon, 1940, 1008 pages, $4.95.

HARNER, NEVIN C., Youth Work in the Church. Abingdon, 1943, 222 pages, $2.

HEIM, R. D., Leading a Sunday Church School. Muhlenberg, 1950, 368 pages, $4.75.

LEBAR, LOIS E., Children in the Bible School: The How of Christian Education. Revell, 1952, 382 pages, $4.50.

MAUS, CYNTHIA PEARL, Christ and the Fine Arts. (Rev. ed.), Harper, 1959, 764 pages, $5.95.

RUMPF, OSCAR J., The Use of Audio-Visuals in the Church. Christian Education, 1958, 150 pages, $3.

SWITZ, T. M., and JOHNSTON, R. A., Great Christian Plays. Seabury, 1956, 306 pages, $7.50.

EVANGELISM AND MISSIONS

ANDERSON, J. N. D., The World’s Religions. (2nd ed.), Tyndale, 1951.

BAVINCK, J. H., The Impact of Christianity on the Non-Christian World. Eerdmans, 1948, 183 pages, $2.50.

BRUCE, F. F., The Spreading Flame. Eerdmans, 1953, 3 vols. in one, 543 pages, $5.

ELLIOT, ELISABETH, Through Gates of Splendor, Harper, 1957, 256 pages, $3.75.

GLOVER, ROBERT HALL, The Progress of World Wide Missions. (Rev. ed. by Herbert Kane), Harper, 1960, 572 pages, $5.50.

LEAVELL, ROLAND Q., Evangelism: Christ’s Imperative Commission. Broadman, 1951, 234 pages, $3.25.

THIESSEN, J. C., A Survey of Christian Missions. Inter-Varsity, 1955, 504 pages, $5.95.

PRAYER AND DEVOTIONAL

The Book of Common Worship. Presbyterian, U.S.A.

BENSON, LOUIS F., The Hymnody of the Christian Church. John Knox, 1953, 310 pages, $4.50.

CHAMBERS, OSWALD, My Utmost for His Highest. Dodd, Mead, 1935, 375 pages, $3.

COWMAN, MRS. CHARLES E., Streams in the Desert. Cowman, 1931, 377 pages, $2.50.

EDMAN, V. RAYMOND, They Found the Secret. Zondervan, 1960, 159 pages, $2.50.

HALLESBY, O., Prayer. Augsburg, 1931, 176 pages, $2.

KUYPER, ABRAHAM, The Practice of Godliness. Eerdmans, 1948, 121 pages, $1.50.

MUDGE, JAMES, Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul. (Revised and enlarged), Abingdon, 1960, 308 pages, $2.50.

SMITH, HANNAH WHITALL, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Revell, 1952, 248 pages, $1.79.

WALLIS, CHARLES L., Worship Resources for the Christian Year. Harper, 1954, 483 pages, $4.95.

STEWARDSHIP

CASHMAN, ROBERT, The Finances of a Church. Harper, 1949, 159 pages, $2.50.

CRAWFORD, JULIUS E., The Steivardship of Life. Abingdon, 1929,176 pages, $1, paper.

CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WITNESS

Augustine’s Confessions

BUNYAN, JOHN, Pilgrim’s Progress. Zondervan, 1957, 127 pages, $2.50.

CAIRNS, EARLE E., Saints and Society. Moody, 1960, 192 pages, $3.25.

CLARK, GORDON H., A Christian View of Men and Things. Eerdmans, 1952, 325 pages, $4.

GRAHAM, BILLY, The Secret of Happiness. Doubleday, 1955, 117 pages. $2.

GOULOOZE, WILLIAM, Victory over Suffering. Baker, 1949, 150 pages, $2.

HENRY, CARL F. H., Christian Personal Ethics. Eerdmans, 1957, 615 pages, $6.95.

HOOTON, C. R., What Shall We Say about Alcohol? Abingdon, 1960, 127 pages, $2.

KLAUSLER, ALFRED P., Christ and Your Job. Concordia, 1956,145 pages, $1.50.

MARSHALL, PETER, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master. Revell, 1949, 192 pages, $2.95.

MILLER, RANDOLPH C., Education for Christian Living. Prentice-Hall, 1956, 418 pages, $7.50.

PHILLIPS, J. B., New Testament Christianity. Macmillan, 1956, 107 pages, $2.25.

PRICE, EUGENIA, Woman to Woman. Zondervan, 1959, 241 pages, $2.50.

RYLE, JOHN CHARLES, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots, Kregel, 1952, 333 pages, $3.95.

SANGSTER, W. E., The Secret of the Radiant Life. Abingdon, 1957, 219 pages, $3.

ZYLSTRA, HENRY, Testament of Vision. Eerdmans, 1958, 234 pages, $3.50.

CHRISTIAN HOME

JACOBSEN, MARGARET BAILEY, The Child in the Christian Home. Scripture Press, 1959, 200 pages, $4.50.

MAYNARD, DONALD M., Your Home Can Be Christian. Abingdon, 1952, 160 pages, $1.50.

ROYAL, CAUDIA, Teaching Your Child About God. Revell, 1960, 186 pages, $2.95.

THOMPSON, WILLIAM T., Adventures in Parenthood. John Knox, 1959, 155 pages, $2.50.

WIDMER, FREDERICK W., How Home and Church Can Work Together. John Knox, 1960, 94 pages, $1.50.

WYNN, JOHN CHARLES, How Christian Parents Face Family Problems. Westminster, 1955, 144 pages, $2.50.

BIOGRAPHY

ANDERSON, COURTNEY, To the Golden Shore: Life of Adoniram Judson. Little, Brown, 1956, 530 pages, $6.75.

BONAR, ANDREW A., Memoirs, Robert Murray McCheyne. Moody, 1947, 448 pages, $3.50.

DALLMAN, WILLIAM, Martin Luther: His Life and Labor. (Rev. ed.), Concordia, 1951, 262 pages, $3.50.

EATON, JEANETTE, David Livingstone, Foe of Darkness. Morrow, 1947, 256 pages, $3.

GOFORTH, ROSALIND, Goforth of China. Zondervan, 1937, 364 pages, $3.95.

PIERSON, A. T., George Müller of Bristol. Revell, 1941, 462 pages, $2.50.

WALKER, FRANK D., William Carey. Moody, 1951, 256 pages, $2.95.

FICTION

SIENKIEWICZ, HENRYK, Quo Vadis. Dutton, 1960, 448 pages, $1.95.

WALLACE, LEW, Ben Hur. Dodd, Mead, 1953, 491 pages, $2.95.

The Methodist Church is engaged in a mammoth campaign to raise money for the support of its more than 100 colleges and universities. Something of the scale of the campaign is revealed by the goal of 5 million dollars set for Methodists in the one state of Alabama. The breakdown of this goal to local levels is suggested in the goal of $36,000-plus assigned to the one church served by the writer. The immense denominational machinery of Methodism with its customary efficiency is rapidly transmuting the goals into quotas, and pastors and laymen are busily engaged in securing pledges to assure the quotas.

The justification for this campaign for funds for colleges and universities related to the church is found in the phrase Christian higher education. Like most other private institutions, Methodist church-related institutions of higher education have been caught in the squeeze between inflation and increased enrollment. Substantial increases in financial resources are essential if these institutions are to provide for growing student bodies and maintain high academic qualifications.

The same economic facts of life that affect the educational institutions also affect the local church. There are problems of post-war inflation, enlarged budgets, and new building programs to accommodate growing memberships. It is understandable, therefore, that many Methodists are closely scrutinizing the word Christian in the phrase “Christian higher education.” Taking their cue from John Wesley, founder of Methodism, the Methodists have entered more extensively into the field of higher education than any other Protestant denomination. They have done so because they believe that Christian education incorporates something distinctively valuable, something necessarily lacking in secular higher education whether public or private.

More and more church members, however, have developed an uneasy suspicion that this distinctive element in church-related institutions of higher education is much less obvious than they wish. They question the soundness of their investment in the field of higher education in colleges and universities which, if their suspicion is justified, simply reproduce or duplicate the kind of higher education available in secular educational institutions.

COLLEGE AND CHURCH

This raises anew the question, What is an institution of Christian higher education? What is the obligation of such an institution to the church whose name and sponsorship the institution claims? The president of one church-related college told the writer that his duty, as he sees it, is to administer the highest quality academic program his college can provide. He went on to say that the academic program should include elementary courses in the Bible and in religious education but that the obligation to the church did not extend beyond that point. He was firm in his insistence that the college should not be an evangelistic agency or engage in social crusades.

To the writer such circumscription as this cannot be regarded as a satisfactory description of any Christian community. Certainly, the educational function is primary to any institution of higher education. But a church-related college which professes to be engaged in Christian higher education, implies a Christian community devoted primarily to education. This primary purpose, however, cannot exclude other basic characteristics of a Christian community without seriously damaging the community or even destroying its distinctive character. While the Christian institution of higher education must properly keep its educational purpose foremost, it must not exclude or minimize its involvement with the Christian faith and the Christian tradition and their basic components and concerns.

The Christian community, whatever its central concern, will also be concerned with the Christian faith and its correct interpretation through the biblical revelation and sound doctrine. The Christian community will be concerned with the Christian ethic and its implications for the individual and society. The Christian community will be concerned for the human soul and its relationship to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. These basic concerns are minimum delineations of any Christian community irrespective of the special purpose for which it may be formed.

FAITH AND FREEDOM

It has been argued, and is argued still, that no educational institution can commit itself to such a posture as that indicated above without imposing restrictions on academic freedom and encroaching on the academic integrity of the institution. This argument assumes that an educational institution can be operated without a basic commitment which envelops it within a faith-context. It is obvious that a pluralistic society cannot permit its publicly-supported educational institutions to commit themselves to sectarian religious posture. It is fallacious to assume, however, that some kind of commitment can be avoided. The secularistic assumptions which lie behind the public educational institutions comprise as definite a commitment to a world-view as does the word Christian in the term “Christian higher education.” The choice is not between commitment and no commitment. The choice is whether the commitment shall be made to this or that world-view. The church-related institution by its very nature is committed to a Christian world view.

This commitment on the part of the church-related college does not entail limitations on academic freedom or integrity, but it does entail the acceptance of the total responsibility of a Christian community. It does require, for instance, that the leadership both in administration and faculty shall be of persons committed to the Christian faith and life. While there may be no Christian physics or chemistry, there are Christian professors of physics and chemistry. Any educational process extends far beyond the classroom and the laboratory into the realm of human relations. It is in this extended area that the church-related college finds its distinction and this is a distinction which cannot be maintained unless the leadership of the community is unashamedly Christian.

In the scramble for academically-qualified faculty personnel, this factor tends to be neglected. A faculty member in a church-related college acknowledged during religious emphasis week that, although he had taught in this college for several years, he was a man without a faith. On the same campus more than one student in private interviews stated that they had lost their faith since coming to the college and had found no one to guide them toward new faith. When I cited these cases to one administrator in a church-related college and also reported some instances where, to my knowledge, certain young men had been influenced to abandon their call to the ministry, he evaded the issue by saying that all the students had been exposed to family and local church influences for at least 18 years before coming to college, and he added positively that the college is an educational, not an evangelistic, institution. Such a reply simply evades the total responsibility of a Christian community.

Similar issues arise when one reviews the relationship between church-related college and the sponsoring institution. Admittedly, denominational support for church-related colleges has often been something less than generous, although this situation is now steadily improving. Nevertheless, the college that goes under the banner of a Christian denomination and appeals for support to the members of the denomination on the basis that it is “your Christian college” incurs obligations to the sponsoring denomination. Among these obligations is due regard for the theological and ethical posture of the denomination. That this obligation is frequently ignored or glossed over is a fact well known to those acquainted with the church-related college. A case in point is that of a church-related college that severely reprimanded five male students, three of them candidates for full-time service in the sponsoring denomination, for attending interracial meetings, and threatened the students with expulsion in the event they attended other such meetings or engaged in interracial activities. Their action was in harmony with the stated position of the denomination on interracial affairs and likewise of its general board of education.

TIME FOR EXAMINATION

We are not suggesting a spate of witch hunts and heresy trials on the campuses of church-related colleges. Church and college alike usually come off badly when such actions are prosecuted. We are suggesting rather that the churches and the church-related colleges make forthright and frank evaluations of their mutual responsibilities to each other and that the church-related institution of higher education explore fully the implication, in terms of the Christian community, of the word Christian in the designation “Christian higher education.” If this is to be interpreted, as seems to be the case in a number of instances, as meaning liberal education of a high academic quality with a rather casual bow in the direction of the church, then the church-related college can hardly justify its appeal for support on the basis of its distinction as a Christian institution, for this may describe some publicly-supported institutions and any number of private, non-church-related institutions. The only real reason for the existence of the church-related college is its distinctively Christian character. In these times of resurgent paganism, the need for Christian higher education assumes new and urgent proportion. Let church and college draw closer to each other to assure that this need will not go unmet.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

During the First World War, the fortress of Verdun was fiercely attacked by the Germans, and for two years they threw division after division of troops against this pivotal defense of the Allies. A million soldiers lost their lives, but the fortress held, and the brave French resistance gave rise to the motto, “They shall not pass.” So long as Verdun remained unconquered by the Germans, there was hope for the Allied cause, and, finally, the assurance of ultimate victory.

No one questions the fact that the Christian faith during the last 50 years has been under more terrific attack than at any time since the cessation of persecution in the early centuries. As Archbishop Garbett said in his notable work, In An Age of Revolution, “The advances made in scientific knowledge, the results of Biblical criticism, and the mental and spiritual disturbance caused by the wars, have shaken the traditional beliefs and customs.… There is more open and aggressive atheism than at any other period of human history. In Russia, in Germany, in France, and in many of the central European and Balkan nations, Christianity is treated either with hatred or contempt. Far more general is the attitude of almost complete indifference to religion and ignorance of its nature. Except for occasions such as baptisms, marriages, and funerals, the ordinary man has little contact with the church or its ministers.”

Though one confesses this with grief, all men—whether Christians or pagans, believers or scoffers—must recognize that the Christian faith is counting for less and less with the passing of each successive decade. I am referring here to conditions in general. We must not see world conditions through the spectacles of some local, evangelically-active area, such as Southern California, or perhaps the church life of the Twin Cities. Maritain has said, “It is not Europe alone, it is the world, it is the whole world which must now resolve the problem of civilization” (The Twilight of Civilization, 1944, p. 64). Attacks upon the Christian faith are being projected from almost every major area of life, even from the area of ecclesiasticism.

THE COMMUNIST THREAT

First, we must reckon with this hideous monster that has arisen in our century to threaten the liberties of man and challenge the whole free world, namely, communism. I know that people grow weary of hearing this word, but we must face the facts. Communism is not simply anti-Christian, it is anti-God. It is atheistic and vigorously so. The Soviet Encyclopedia goes so far as to say that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. There are 200,000,000 people today in the Union of Soviet Republics. There are 630,000,000 people in Communist China. This makes a total of 830,000,000 people who are consistently exposed to anti-God propaganda. Yet this virus of communism is in the vitals of all nations, more or less. It is vigorously being propagated in Japan. It is blatantly arrogant in our own country. Some of its principles infiltrate many of our textbooks. We are now on the verge of a great student exchange movement, when thousands of our college students will be studying in Russia, and thousands of Russian students will be studying in this country. The day is not far off when we are going to be challenged with the atheism of these Communistic nations more directly than most people today dream.

SCIENCE AND AGNOSTICISM

In the second place, modern science—fascinating, indispensable, exciting in its discoveries, and more and more dominating every department of life—is today, for the most part, totally indifferent to the Christian faith. I believe one is safe in saying that not 10 per cent of the outstanding scientists of our nation are Trinitarians today. I have not yet shaken off the sense of shock which recently came to me in reading a new volume titled Science Ponders Religion, edited by the distinguished astronomer of Harvard University, Professor Harlow Shapley. Eighteen well-known scientists of our country, some now in the prime of life, almost all of them with distinguished careers in teaching in our larger colleges and universities, attempt in this book to set forth their conceptions of religion. Let us remember these men are not purposely attacking Christianity. They are not writing from Moscow, but from the United States. And yet not one of these scientists confesses that he believes in a personal, sovereign, omnipotent God, nor does one of them confess to any sure hope of personal life after death. Not only is their own position agnostic, but they frankly say they represent a true cross-section of what scientists today think about religion, and I am quite sure that in this they are correct. As Dr. Leslie Newbigin has said, “The typical and dominant scientific man of the West is to a large extent alienated from the Christian tradition. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the fact that at the moment when the scientific culture, which was formed within the Western Christian tradition, has achieved world-wide expansion and dominance, its unity with the supernatural faith in which it was begotten has disintegrated” (“Summons to Christian Mission Today” in the International Review of Missions, Apr., 1959, p. 178).

PHILOSOPHICAL UNBELIEF

Modern philosophy is more outspoken than science in its antagonism to the Christian faith. A recent volume by the German scholar Dr. I. M. Bochenski, Contemporary European Philosophy, reinforces the impression that the philosophers who have exercised the greatest influence over the world of thought since the dawn of this century are all atheists, with possibly one exception, Whitehead, and he was by no means a Trinitarian. In this volume, the modern philosophers are introduced by a chapter on Bertrand Russell. This is followed by one on the Italian, Benedetto Croce, emphatically atheistic. Next follows John Dewey, who exercised such a pernicious influence over modern American education, and who once wrote that the greatest hindrance to the progress of modern man was his belief in the supernatural. Then there is a chapter on Martin Heidegger, of whom a contemporary professor of philosophy has recently said, “He regards the atheism of Nietzsche and Marx as a salutary attempt to purge us of idols.” And last comes Jean-Paul Sartre, the most vigorous atheistic philosopher of our day. It is not necessary to add that in the realm of psychology the most profoundly influential in this department has been Freud, who scoffed at the very idea of the existence of a personal God.

In 1951, The New York Times had a remarkable article on the 100 greatest books of the preceding century. Careful study of these authors, however, would reveal that not more than eight of them could be called Christian, and they were not among the most influential. More than half were deliberately and vigorously antagonistic to Christian principles.

UNBELIEF WITHIN THE CHURCH

Moreover, while unbelief multiplies on every hand, in Christian as well as Muslim countries, the Church itself is being tragically weakened by betrayal from within. Two most recent illustrations of this will suffice.

Probably during the last 30 years, the outstanding single ecclesiastic in The Methodist Church has been Bishop G. Bromley, who retired from the active bishopric only last year. He has been chairman (1939–44) of the Division of Educational Institutions for the Board of Education of The Methodist Church; from 1940 to 1948, in the same great denomination, he was chairman of the Commission on Public Relations and Methodist Information; while for eight years, 1944–52, he was president of its Division of Foreign Missions. For many years, he was chairman of the Methodist Commission on Chaplains. Bishop Oxnam also was on the Board of Trustees of numerous educational institutions and was the president of the Board of Trustees of Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D. C. He was a professor in the University of Southern California, and also in the Boston University School of Theology, and president of DePauw University for eight years. He has been a bishop in The Methodist Church since 1936 and has served as president of the Council of Bishops. In addition to the highest possible offices in his own denomination, he was president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1944 to 1946, and president of the World Council of Churches, 1948–1954. In his book, Testament of Faith (Boston, 1958), he not only ridicules the idea of the Virgin Birth and scoffs at biblical inspiration, but he emphatically repudiates even such a truth as the atoning work of Jesus Christ our Lord. “I have never been able to carry the idea of justice to the place where someone else can vicariously pay for what I have done in order to clean the slate” (p. 38). “They argue that God sent His own Son who died upon the cross and in so doing, satisfies God’s sense of legislative justice. It simply does not make sense to me. It is rather an offense. It offends my moral sense” (p. 41). “Must God have a sacrifice, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, as the Book says? No, no, I cannot think of it this way” (p. 42). And what is the bishop going to do with his sins? He tells us, “I cannot see forgiveness as predicted upon the act of someone else. It is my sin. I must atone” (p. 144).

More recently, Bishop James A. Pike of the Protestant Episcopal Church, bishop of the Diocese of California, in an article in The Christian Century (Dec. 21, 1960) says of the Virgin Birth: “I am inclined to believe it is a myth.” On the work of the Holy Spirit, he says: “I no longer regard grace or the work of the Holy Spirit as limited explicitly to the Christian revelation.” Of the Bible, he says, “It came along as a sort of Reader’s Digest anthology.” But it is on the great doctrine of the Trinity that he most blatantly reveals his unbelief. “Take the Trinity—a doctrinal formulation which I did not question ten years ago.… I can’t see its permanent value.… I see nothing in the Bible, as critically viewed, which supports this particularly weak and unintelligible philosophical organization of the nature of God.” “In other words I believe totally in that which the formula is seeking to express; my belief is in God, not in men’s formulae about Him.” Like Bishop Oxnam, Bishop Pike has been active in educational work.

The terrible significance of these denials of basic Christian truths is the more ominous in that the respective churches of these ecclesiastical leaders are so silent about it all. I do not know of one official organization in the whole of Methodism, or any group of ecclesiastical leaders within that church, that has had the courage (or even the desire) to speak out publicly and forcefully against such repudiations of the faith. Some Episcopal clergymen have recently declared publicly their full support of Bishop Pike. If bishops may deny the Faith, then certainly the clergy have the same privilege. Indeed, for the sake of harmony, why may not the day soon be upon us in which the bishop will urge his clergy to stand with him in his opposition to biblically-revealed truth? And, if those who are the ordained teachers and preachers of the Holy Scriptures no longer believe in the divine origin and absolute authority of the Word of God, surely the laity need not believe, and unless some other more wholesome influences are at work in their hearts and minds, they most certainly will not believe.

The emphasis on myth, which has so powerfully gripped theologians on both sides of the Atlantic and has penetrated into many pulpits of the continent, of course destroys confidence in and even need for the actuality of New Testament events which the Church has always considered undeniably historic. Modern man is not going to come under any conviction of his need of salvation through Jesus Christ if he can reduce the crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension to mythological nomenclature.

Some denominations, by their own authorized and widely-distributed Sunday school literature, and study-books assigned for teaching in church organizations, are sowing seeds of doubt as to the truthfulness of many supernatural events in the Gospels. I have before me one on the Gospel of John which, in referring to the raising of Lazarus, says that this record may have four different interpretations, of which the view that it was an historical event is dismissed as the least valid! Other than that, it might be taken as just a piece of fiction, or a misinterpretation, or a parable. Young people, mastering the laws of chemistry, biology, and physics, are not going to find the gospel of Christ powerfully appealing to them if they are being taught that what the New Testament sets forth is to be considered as superstition, or as spiritual truths couched in historical form but all the while decidedly unacceptable as history.

The Bible is the Verdun of the Christian Church. Unless there is a definite reversal of the more powerful currents in modern thought, the Christian Church may have to contend with a condition of universal repudiation of the pre-ëminence and authority of the Scriptures, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and his salvation, and of belief in the eternal, omnipotent, sovereign God.

THE BIBLICAL WARNING

Yet, such a situation as this, of fierce antagonisms against our faith, need not take us wholly by surprise if we are careful students of the Word of God. The Apostle Paul said that Satan, the god of this world, has blinded the minds of men (2 Cor. 4:7). Our Lord warned us again and again that there would come, with particular power at the end of the age, false prophets, false Christs, and false teachers (Matt. 24:11, 24; 2 Pet. 2:1). In fact, so the New Testament tells us, it is Satan who has deceived the whole world (Rev. 12:9; 20:3, 8, 10). Our Lord said that though he spoke the truth and was the Truth, Satan was a liar and the father of lies (see John 8:40–46; 15:26; 16:7, 13). There is the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of error, and these two must ever be in conflict. Indeed, said the Apostle Paul, at the end of this age men would turn from sound doctrine and follow those who preached flattering and false gospels (2 Tim. 4:1–4).

Now we might well ask ourselves the question: Well, what of it? What if faith in the Bible does go? What it believing Christ to be the Son of God and the Saviour of men is to be, for the most part, erased from the convictions of humanity—what difference does it make?

First of all, let men lose confidence in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures and we lose any satisfying knowledge of the true and living God. No religion in this world or philosophy or science dare talk to us with evidence about a God of love, and a God of holiness, except that religion which is built upon the Bible. Our Lord said those who have seen him have seen the Father also. I remember when the atomic bomb was first exploded. Dr. Compton said, “Now we know there is a God.” What nuclear fission has to do with a knowledge of God, I wouldn’t know, but in all the years since none of these physicists, to the best of my knowledge, are echoing Dr. Compton’s words.

Secondly, without faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, men will not have and cannot have a Saviour from sin who can make men walk in the liberty of the children of God, who is able to reconcile men unto God, and who can deliver them from the wrath to come. How foolish did so great a man as Emerson appear when more than 100 years ago he talked about looking for a new great Saviour from the West! The tragedy today is that most men don’t even believe that we need a Saviour; they think we need nobody but ourselves. Indeed with the loss of the living conviction of a sovereign and holy God, and of life after death, the sense of the very need of a Saviour disappears too.

Thirdly, without Jesus Christ, no man has any adequate reason for real hope for the future. Our Bible talks about the day when God is going to make this an earth of righteousness, when sin will be judged, when the supernatural enemies of mankind will forever be put away, when the dead in Christ shall be raised, shall be in the presence of God and possessed with eternal life. These are the things that will go if Christ goes. It has always been true, it is true today, and it will forever be true, that men without Christ are without hope in this world (Eph. 2:12).

Is it not also true that if the Christian faith goes, along with the highest ethical principles ever known on earth, even those restraints that still exist, which tend to make men decent, honest, and truthful, will be removed, and we are already as lawless in thought and deed as we dare to be? Even such an atheist as Bertrand Russell would testify to this. In his lectures at Columbia University, which were published under the title The Impact of Science on Society, he apologetically confesses that the only hope for the world is in what is called Christian love. These are his words: “The things that it (our age) must avoid and that have brought it to the brink of catastrophe are cruelty, envy, greed, competitiveness, search for irrational subjective certainty, and what Freudians call the death wish. The root of the matter is a very simple and old-fashioned thing, a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean—please forgive me for mentioning it—is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, an impressive necessity for intellectual honesty. If you feel this, you have all that anybody should need in the way of religion. Although you may find happiness, you will never know the deep despair of those whose life is aimless and void of purpose; for there is always something that you can do to diminish the awful sum of human misery” (pp. 59 f.) And from what source does “Christian love” derive? It comes from faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ, and is revealed fully and truly only in the Holy Scriptures.

In saying that full confidence in the divine origin of the Bible and faith in the Word of God are being erased in our desperately critical and convulsive mid-twentieth century life is not to say, however, that the Word of God is itself in danger of being extinguished. The all-powerful and eternal God himself has said, “I watch over my word to perform it” (Jer. 1:12). The Lord Jesus said that though “heaven and earth will pass away … my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). I believe that! Peter was right that “the grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever” (1 Pet. 1:24, 25). Even when the beast and the false prophet bring together that great federation of demon-possessed kings at the end of this age to go out and wage war against the Lamb, we are told that it is God himself who “has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled” (Rev. 17:17).

THE HOPE FOR REVERSAL

What will bring about any reverse in this alarmingly growing mood of unbelief and denial? There is only one hope, so far as you and I know, and that is in a return to, a full confidence in, and a loving obedience to, the Holy Scriptures. Philosophy is not going to bring us to God—it never has. All the marvelous discoveries of nature are not leading us into a deeper reverence for God, and most of those engaged in these necessary enterprises do not even give God a thought. We talk about the coming of a new society for a new world, but if the next 50 years show the same graphs as the last 50, then we will have greater periods of destruction, a higher crime rate, more violence and racial hatred than the world has ever known. Who can judge and control the human heart but God alone? Certainly, no legislation of any government can bring us to God. And most of all, what is in the heart of men by unaided human nature is not going to give us a knowledge of God. The heart is desperately wicked. I shudder when I see posters on the bulletin boards of some churches that read “God is the best that is in you.” Our Lord said, “I have told you the truth.” And then He asked the sad question, “If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” (John 8:45, 46).

At the dawn of human history, Satan’s first words to unfallen man were, “Yea, hath God said?” And our first parents, finally concluding that God had not said what they thought they heard, or at least, that what God said was not true, turned their backs on a righteous Creator and led the human race into a subservience to the father of all lies. Even Eve, within a few hours, confessed how tragic was her decision when she acknowledged that the serpent had deceived her. Satan is asking this more loudly, with greater sarcasm than ever in human history, and is appealing to the growing pride of man in his “yea, hath God said?” The answer man gives to that question will determine the destiny of his soul, and the answer that this age gives to that question today will determine more than anything else whether we will continue to rush into one great final overwhelming disaster, or whether there will remain still a time of grace and an opportunity for lost men to be saved, for men dead in trespasses and sins to be possessed with eternal life, and for those who are without hope to cry out, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3).

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.