Second in a Series

The post-modern mind, we suggested, holds that Reality consists of the Self and the Unpatterned Cosmos. In such a world, no objective standards are real (for the Self creates truth, structure, meaning, and values; and, further, the Unpatterned is beyond-values, beyond-truth, beyond-structure).

THE SEARCH FOR SECURITY

How then should we act? One possible answer is: act so that the Self gains security.

One way to this is to act so that the Self is accepted by a Group and therefore feels emotionally secure (or is enabled to create emotional security for itself). If this version of the post-modern mind is influencing large numbers of people (particularly the post-war generation), we would expect a behavior pattern dedicated to Group conformity. For in terms of the post-modern mind’s definition of Reality, such behavior makes “good sense.”

From the point of view of someone holding to the modern mind (with its Patterned Universe and Rational Goals)—or, indeed, to someone holding that Reality is, ultimately, the Triune God—such behavior does not make good sense, but is both puzzling and alarming. For if we act to conform (for the sake of emotional security), and this alone is how and why we act, then many goals and aims and interests of the modern mind (and no less of the Christian mind) become irrelevant. Why should the post-modern Conformist be interested in political freedom, or in politics in general, or in learning, or in romance? All these imply a different view of Reality, and indeed thus become difficult for the post-modern mind to understand. One recalls Arthur Koestler’s picture of Europe’s teen-agers: “Their typical gesture is a great silent shrug” (Time, Oct. 5, 1959).

THE WORLD OF SEX

Consider romance, or rather the whole relationship between the sexes. For the post-modern Conformist, the whole realm (if our suggestion is correct) becomes a means to emotional security through approval by the Group. Some recent news items and evaluations are pertinent.

Charles Cole, President of Amherst, speaks of “a revolution which has dramatically altered the folkways of American youth and created a new and strange chasm between my generation and the next.… Going steady is a stylized relationship … the new ways may also be related to the search for security. The boy or girl who goes steady is secure” (Harper’s Magazine, March, 1957).

Professor J. A. Gengerelli, University of California, asserts: “Adjustment … takes many forms, but among college students in recent years … the general business of going steady … is considered a sign of emotional security and indicates that you are psychologically okay.… Thus we witness the frequent spectacle of the marriage of two persons motivated not by romance or passion, but by sheer orthodoxy” (Saturday Review, Mar. 23, 1957).

In a 1951 survey of “The Younger Generation,” Time Magazine (Nov. 5, 1951) reports: “Youth’s ambitions have shrunk.… There is the feeling that it is neither desirable nor practical to do things that are different from what the other fellow is doing … (as one girl put it) ‘the individual is almost dead today, but the young people are unaware of it … they are not individuals but parts of groups. They are unhappy outside of groups. They date in foursomes and sixsomes.’ ”

About half of the women getting married today, current figures show, are teen-agers. Sociologist Kingsley Davis comments that the trend shows a “widespread movement towards anti-intellectualism and anti-effort (emphasizing) group conformity rather than individual initiative, security rather than achievement” (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 18, 1958).

The number of married students in Dallas high schools is seven times what it was in 1953. Two thirds of them are below 18. The total is nearly 500, and present high-schoolers now have 72 children (Time Magazine, May 25, 1959).

Dr. R. E. Lentz, addressing the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches, warned that clergymen must be prepared to cope with eight and nine-year-olds going steady (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 11, 1958).

VANISHING POLITICAL IDEALS

Or, consider political ideals and even interest in politics. For the post-modern Conformist, politics becomes simply a means towards emotional security. Any government the Group approves would fulfill this role; beyond that, no reason for interest remains. The modern mind’s sustained interest in politics and political ideals would be enigmatic to the post-modern temperament.

A French Institute of Public Opinion poll revealed that a majority of young people (18–30) were not sure whether a Communist regime would change their personal lives. Only 20 per cent thought that they had any real influence on events (New York Times, Dec. 9, 1957).

A questionnaire revealed that 55 per cent of 359 students at a large southern university could not identify Woodrow Wilson (New Republic, Aug. 12, 1957).

Nearly two thirds of teen-agers polled in West Germany said they have no interest in politics (Time Magazine, Oct. 5, 1959).

Reports from a meeting of 25 West Berlin religious and political leaders which was held to consider recent anti-Semitic outbreaks in West Germany say that there was “despair” about democracy as a way of life, because the younger generation is “completely indifferent” to politics (New York Times, Jan. 30, 1960).

A poll at the (Communist) University of Warsaw, Poland, showed that most students believe vaguely in some sort of socialism and in Catholicism. Asked to identify the highest moral authority, 347 out of 387 said their own consciences, 14 said religion, and only six said socialism (New York Times, Oct. 6, 1958).

Political Scientist M. Klain, after extensive polling, characterized the attitudes of Western Reserve students towards politics as “decidedly cold” and “fortified by ignorance” (Antioch Review, 1957).

THE YEN FOR CONFORMITY

A summary of general attitudes is given by William H. Whyte, an editor of Fortune, who characterizes the emerging outlook in this manner:

The New Illiteracy is nourished by several simple articles of faith. The essence of them is this: First, the individual exists only as a member of a group. He fulfills himself only as he works with others: of himself he is nothing. His tensions, his frustrations … are penalties for his failure at adjustment, and they should be excused.… Above all, he must get along (with people).… The belief is growing that the health of our society depends on increasing adjustment of the individual to the consensus of the group; and this is not simply an unwitting yen for conformity, but a philosophy, a philosophy advocated by a sizeable proportion of the leadership in each sector of society.… Their doctrine is now orthodoxy (Saturday Review, Oct. 31, 1953).

Or, to quote a review of Whyte’s book, The Organization Man: the new outlook’s “major propositions are three: a belief in the group as the source of creativity; a belief in ‘belongingness’ as the ultimate need of the individual; and a belief in the application of science to achieve the belongingness” (Time Magazine, Jan. 21, 1957; cf. New York Times, Dec. 14, 1956). A similar analysis is given by David Riesman in The Lonely Crowd. Time summarizes Riesman’s views:

The new middle class—bureaucrats, salaried business employees—is largely other-directed.… Youngsters rate many popular entertainers as ‘sincere,’ which evades the issue of whether their performance was good or bad; the child is afraid to make a judgment that will turn out wrong (i.e., unpopular).… They will be tolerant because they do not much care, not because they understand the value of difference and individuality.… They will be compulsively gregarious—and lonely. Their play will be deadened by compulsive groupness.… The younger generation contains many new-style indifferents, who know enough about politics to reject it … enough about their political responsibilities to evade them (Time Magazine, Sept. 27, 1954).

SOCIOLOGICAL SUPPORT

Sociological investigations through polls and interviews give some support to this analysis. A five year “depth study” by T. W. Adorno and other University of California sociologists produced the appraisal of a general population cross-section (not confined specifically to the post-war generation):

It can be said that about 10 per cent of the population of the United States consists of ‘authoritarian’ men and women, while as many as another 20 per cent have within them the seeds.… The Authoritarian Man conforms to the nth degree to middle class ideas and ideals, and to authority. But conforming is no voluntary act for him; it is compulsive and irrational. It is an attempt to find security by merging into the herd (New York Times Magazine, Apr. 23, 1950).

The study in depth supervised by Sociologist S. A. Stouffer of Harvard, to determine how much attachment remains to the ideal of freedom (one of the key ideals of the modern mind), disclosed that nearly a third of the sample interviewed would deny freedom of speech to anyone favoring government ownership of big industry, and nearly two-thirds would deny it to atheists (Look, Apr. 15, 1955). Another set of experiments was conducted by S. E. Asch and other Harvard psychologists, their subjects being 123 students from five different colleges. Each subject was put into a controlled experimental situation involving a group of six to eight helpers who have been tipped off beforehand. The subject was asked to tell, during a series of trials, which of three lines was the longest. The “group” (the helpers) consistently and unanimously gave wrong answers. The subject was less and less sure of his (correct) answer, and as the trials proceeded, 38.6 per cent conformed to the majority, despite the clear evidence of their senses (Scientific American, Nov., 1955).

A lengthy report on college students, written for the American Council on Education by Dr. W. M. Wise of Columbia University, reports that students are interested in “the grades that will give them an advantage on the job market. Some of them are even prepared to cheat.… They want to enter upon a business or professional career, and they want to find security.… (They fear) rejection by the group.… (They feel) that everyone is entitled to his opinion, and even that one opinion is probably as valid as another.… (There is) little belief that by joining political groups he can change things” (Time, Sept. 12, 1958).

We Quote:

MAN-MADE RELIGION: “The Book of Proverbs describes the risk of private opinion in spiritual matters: ‘There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death’ (Prov. 16:25). The religion of the man who ‘thinks for himself’ is usually filled with subtle assumptions: that there is no exclusive way for a man to get his eternal reward; that all avenues plotted at any time in the course of human history are potentially valid.… Latent in the phrase, ‘I believe that every man should think for himself,’ is the notion that a different way exists for each individual.… The next step is: ‘I believe that every man should think for himself—as a god.’ … The religion of the freethinker may be sincere, but it is also subtle and subjective.… The way he takes is right in his own eyes, but not in the eyes of God. And the divine verdict upon such man-made religion is inevitable: ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord’ (Isa. 55).… It was the Lord Jesus who affirmed: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ ”—The Rev. R. RICHARD SEARLE, Oak Park, Illinois, in a message on “The Religion of the Man Who Thinks for Himself.”

THE VIEW OF REALITY

If our evaluation is correct, such attitudes reflect a view of Reality characteristic of the post-modern mind, and if this view of Reality is correct, the attitudes are eminently sensible. From the viewpoint of the modern mind (or indeed the Christian mind), such attitudes are unrealistic.

An illuminating example of the confrontation between modern mind and post-modern mind turns up in a survey of college teachers on 16 campuses recently conducted by the Nation (Mar. 9, 1957). Its purpose was to learn what literary and artistic influences predominate among today’s students. But the side remarks were so striking that the original purpose was sidetracked. Here is the modern mind looking at the post-modern mind.

Queens College, New York: “The mass of college students live lives of quiet enervation.… They come to college because a degree increases earning power and enhances social prestige.… Barely literate … wanting above all to buy security for themselves in the full knowledge that the price is conformity.”

Stanford University: “Many acknowledge no heroes, profess only lukewarm admirations, shun causes … flinch from commitments.… (The attitude) has its own moral basis, which comes less from single leaders than from the Zeitgeist.”

Yale: “Skeptical … indifferent … solemn … most of them are company men.”

University of Minnesota: “Today’s students sit and listen … less animated … detached … only a tiny fraction subject to intellectual influences of any kind.”

University of the South: “The real influences … are the makers and sponsors of such mass media as TV and the weekly slicks.… Accommodating.… Standardized.…”

University of Washington: “Strong intellectual or aesthetic allegiances scarcely exist among the present college generation here. The first interest … is to get on with their technical training.… Conformism and timidity.”

University of Michigan: “Touching submissiveness.… Eager to break into the accepted social pattern of marriage and a career. Since these are the accepted social patterns, he naturally believes they are the right ones.… Hardly any background.… Find simple prose almost illegible.… General conformity.… Earnest but dull.”

University of Louisville: “Existentialism is the philosophy they trust most. Freud … is the psychologist—a guide to adjustment that is not mere acquiescence.”

University of Nebraska: “Brainwashed generation.… Passivity.… Chamber of Commerce morality.… Their minds are as quiet as mice.… The blood runs cold.… Indifference.”

University of California: “Timid, unadventurous and conforming.… Accept the opinions of their professors.”

University of Denver: “Dull.… World-weary … skeptical … unimaginative.”

University of Rochester: “They whisper their hopes.… Temporizing.… Low-pressure doubt.… They want to learn how men learn to care.… They are suspicious of the lack of conviction in themselves.”

Wayne University: “Dull conformity.… Indifferent.… Bound together by their aloneness.… The majority come to college because it is the only thing to do … accepting what their teachers tell them.… Unenthusiastic … pepless lives of cynicism and tolerance.”

Columbia University: “Conservative and conformist.… Curious mixture of rebellion and conventionalism.”

Centenary College: “Not particularly interested.… Comfortably patterned.…”

Princeton: “Wait-and-see.… Conservative … sensitive to the accusation they are conformists.”

DENIAL OF BASIC IDEALS

So far, we have covered the post-modern Conformist who conforms to the “values” of a Group, which still holds to many of the forms of modern society, while denying the ideas which lie behind these forms. The Cheshire Cat slowly disappears; only his smile lingers on, the body having vanished.

There might be, however, a Group also which increasingly denies even the forms of modern society, and which is even more alien to the modern mind. And, as we shall see, there is some evidence that such may exist.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

The Africa of tomorrow is just beyond the horizon and the role of the Church more important than at any stage in the history of the once “dark” continent. In world history the pace of Africa has been the pace of the camel, the ox, or the canoe. The emergence of our continent and its indigenous peoples has been slow. A land of promise during the early years of Christianity, Africa was cut off from the cultural streams and especially the religious development of “Christian” Europe for so many centuries that the twentieth century dawned almost wholly pagan or Moslem. This pattern was broken only by the groups of Copts in Egypt and Ethiopia and small and far-flung Christian communities, the result of nineteenth century missions, in other parts of this vast continent.

Politically Africa was hardly a factor in world affairs. But all that is rapidly changing. Africa is on the move. The role of the Church must now be seen against the background of the Africa of today and the Africa of tomorrow. Else our vision will be out of perspective.

In any evaluation of the future role of the Church, its opportunities, its tasks, and possibilities—we must begin with a realistic look at Africa as it is and try to discover the basic movements of the human spirit on this continent. The Church never exists in a vacuum. It is and must be rooted in some actual human situation. And if we take a long look at Africa, what do we see?

THE SPLINTERING PATTERNS

We see age-long patterns of life breaking up all over Africa. A “new look” is emerging about everything. Yesterday is dead. Tomorrow is only beginning to take shape. We may be entering into one of the most chaotic eras in the history of this continent.

Vast changes may come more suddenly than many of us now deem possible. On the other hand, old institutions may prove to be extremely stubborn. Much will depend on outside factors and on how African nationalism develops.

If leaders in different parts of Africa succeed in molding the emerging national sentiments of the different African groups into one all-inclusive African nationalism, the political face of Africa may change very radically and at a quite unexpected tempo. Our knowledge of human groups, however, leads us to regard this as fairly unlikely. Rivalries and inter-group hostilities seem bound to occur among the self-conscious African leaders and groups. But even if African nationalism breaks up into a few fairly inclusive federal patterns or smaller group nationalisms, it might still be a factor of very great importance and compel radical changes in vast areas of our continent.

The following factors will probably shape the new Africa: 1. Western technology; 2. Islam; 3. Communism; 4. Nationalism; and 5. Christianity.

Of these, the first influence is in one sense the most obvious. Even a superficial observer of Africa must be struck by the ever-growing role of Western technology throughout this continent. Wherever one turns, mills, factories, or processing plants are being built, mines developed, roads laid out, and cities planned. Oil wells are sunk, vast conservation schemes started, and transportation developed. Western technology is opening up the African continent and is laying bare its resources. The bush is converted into fertile land, and schemes like Kariba, the Volta, Aswan and Inga Falls projects must affect the future of the continent.

In the wake of Western technology, old Africa and its way of life are doomed. They must and will change—with increasing momentum. The process, once begun, can never be arrested, but runs its course. An accepted principle among anthropologists is termed “the irreversibility of culture.” A human group can never recapture a cultural phase gone by. New ways of doing things come to stay; new ideas displace outmoded ways of thought. This fact must have a very sobering effect on people who talk overmuch about safeguarding or “re-establishing” African tribal life or institutions. The attempt could at best have only very limited success. The factors of change are too real and too all-embracing.

ONE IN THREE A MUSLIM

Then there is the force of Islam. We in the deep South of Africa are not always aware of the power of Islam, which has anything between 70 and 80 million adherents in Africa. One out of every three people in Africa is a Muslim. The whole Mediterranean seaboard of Africa is a solid Muslim stronghold. Only the Coptic kingdom of Emperor Haile Selassie is half Christian. Probably 90 per cent of the total population of Africa north of the equator is Muslim.

It is important to note that the front of Islam has persistently moved south during the last decades. It has crossed the equator at several points. Islam has launched a full-scale missionary crusade. The Koran is being translated into African languages, even into Afrikaans.

But, from the vantage point of the West, Islam may be viewed as a potential ally in forestalling communism in Africa. This factor is rarely appreciated. Of all known groups it is most difficult to influence Muslims or change their basic loyalties. They have been called by Christian missionaries le bloc inconvertible. When people glibly talk of the Muslim world “turning Communist,” they have little historical insight. If it should happen it would be against all historical precedent. I believe the next decades will prove that Russia may have no more success with Muslims than the Christian Church has had through all these centuries. The Islamitic states of North Africa may instead prove to be a very real bulwark against the Communist penetration of Africa.

EXPOSURE TO COMMUNISM

The next great force in the development of the new Africa is communism.

I am convinced that there is great danger of infiltration by communism in Central and West Africa. On the whole, these peoples are not bound together by a fierce religious nationalism like that of the Islamic groups of North Africa. Whereas these groups are closely bound to the greater Moslem world, the Central and West African groups are not rooted in a great world religion. They are more “open” to foreign influences and also to communism. The great physical barrier of the Sahara is no longer as important as it was. Modern communications have broken through all the old barriers behind which any human group could live in isolation. Moscow is aware that all Africa can be reached by radio, and we can expect the Kremlin to intensify its onslaught upon Africa over the air.

At the present moment communism is not a great force in Africa. But we may be sure that Moscow will grasp every opportunity to exploit trouble-situations, to stir up Africa nationalism for its own ends and against the interests of Western powers in Africa.

CONFLICTING NATIONALISMS

The next great factor in the New Africa is nationalism in all its varied forms, from Afrikaans nationalism in the far South to different indigenous African or Islamic nationalisms in Central, West, or North Africa. The battle for Africa will in some sense be a battle of conflicting nationalisms.

There is a rising tide of nationalism from Algiers to Cape Town. But it occurs in different forms, springing from different historical backgrounds and even having different “spiritual” content. (Compare President Nasser’s Egyptian Islamic nationalism with Dr. Verwoerd’s Afrikaans Christian nationalism and Dr. Nkrumah’s West African form of nationalism.)

All these nationalisms, however, have one element in common: they all seek absolute goals. Nationalism never halts halfway. It goes the full mile. It may be pacified into accepting interim goals for a short time. But ultimately it is never satisfied without accomplishing final goals. Aggressive nationalism despises “wise” counsel, and compromise is branded as weakness.

Thus if African nationalism once becomes unified and on the move, Africa faces tremendous hazards. South Africa especially, with all the signs of a violent clash of nationalisms, may face upheaval. Genuine leaders will arise among African groups, but so will many dangerous political adventurers.

Much will depend on whether African nationalism will be “black,” that is, with as strong a color bias as our own “white” nationalism. If that should happen, relations between the different racial groups will progressively worsen. Against the background of our history, the Africans may be gravely tempted to follow this course. It may spell disaster for all concerned.

Much will depend on the role of the Church in this turbulent era in Africa’s history. It faces tremendous responsibilities. On the one hand, it will have to be realistic in taking account of actual historical situations. On the other hand, it will have to guard against becoming a tool of nationalism, either “white” or African.

Relatively few Africans, assuredly, belong to the Christian Church in this emerging new Africa. It would be a safe guess to place the number of Christians in Africa at around 33 million, about one-seventh of the African population. This includes Roman Catholics, Copts, and evangelicals. This means that Moslems outnumber Christians more than two to one. Moreover, Christians are more divided than the Moslems. Apart from South Africa and the Federation, there are, outside colonial possessions, no “Christian” states except Coptic Ethiopia.

On the other hand, members of the Christian Church are generally more literate than other groups and have relatively greater influence. The educational programs of the Christian churches and missions have done a great work. Furthermore, the Christian churches have progressed at an inspiring pace in the last three or four decades. Some churches have really become rooted in African communities. The Christian Church can count on many friends and champions for her cause among Africans.

THE RELIGIOUS TENSIONS

Yet we must not be overoptimistic. In an era of rising nationalism the Church may experience many shocks and disappointments. Many African Christians may be thrown off center by the tides of nationalism sweeping their countries. They may become nationalists first and Christians second. This must not surprise us. Christians in other countries or continents have succumbed to this temptation in periods of great nationalist upheaval. We need only remind ourselves of Germany during the heyday of national socialism! Even a man like Dr. Hastings Banda of Nyasaland, popularly linked with many sinister aspects of the Nyasaland revolt, is a Christian and used to be an elder of the Kirk of Scotland! How many of our own “white” Christians make decisions not primarily on Christian grounds but according to group interests? We must face the possibility, nay, the likelihood that many African Christians will do the same.

Add to this the fact that nationalism characteristically seeks inspiration in the cultural or religious past of the group. Religious heritage is extoled and a bias projected against all “foreign” influence. African nationalism may thus extol paganism at the expense of Christianity.

THE CHRISTIAN THRUST

But the Christian Church has a great role to play. She holds the key to better relations between the different racial groups. But to accomplish this, she must not herself be a “color or cast ridden” community.

Governments in different parts of Africa are struggling—up till now with few signs of success—to find a key to racial peace. I believe the Church of Jesus Christ remains the decisive factor. If the Church fails, the future of Africa is dark indeed.

The task of the Church in Africa seems to me to center around these basic points:

First, the Church will have to witness, to evangelize, and win the African masses for Christ.

Then the Church will have to stand for social justice. The Church will have to take a vital interest in the legitimate rights of the Africans. The Church cannot win the respect and loyalty of the Africans if she fails to take a vital interest also in their material needs. To stand aloof or to side automatically with the white groups would be fatal. The Africans would reject the Church as a white man’s or imperialistic institution. Of course, the Church will have to act with great responsibility and wisdom and will have to guard against the tendency in some quarters to champion any wild African aspiration merely because it is “African.”

The Church can also play a vital role in training African leaders. Although some countries have taken over the educational task of the Church, in most countries the doors are wide open for such leadership training.

Finally, the Church will have to create real community between the different racial groups within her own ranks. I do not mean that the Church must condemn all separate churches for different racial groups along cultural, linguistic, or other lines. But the Church must rid herself completely of any and all attempts at exclusion of any believer from any church or service on any of these grounds.

If the Christian Church in Africa merely tries to perpetuate the status quo in race relations or racial patterns, she will fail to meet the needs and realities of a new day in Africa in which nationalism and race consciousness and sensitiveness are very marked. This to my mind is the problem of the Church in the present world situation and in the emerging Africa.

Great new non-Christian or anti-Christian forces are on the march, and we see their shadows falling across all the horizons of our Western world. A divided Church faces this new world. As millions are freed from illiteracy and the power of old pagan gods and fears, what has the Christian Church to offer these temporarily uprooted millions?

One of their basic needs is a sense of communion. Can and will the Christian Church be a new home to them? The Christian Church will have to face tremendous competition in her quest for the hearts and minds of the millions of Africa. We must face the sober fact that 70 million Africans have already been drawn into the communion of the Moslem faith. What hope has a deeply divided and caste-or-color-ridden Christian Church in a life-and-death struggle against Islam for the soul of Africa? Humanly speaking, victory is a remote prospect unless the Christian Church creates a sense of real and deep community among all in her fold. I do not base my idea of Christian brotherhood on any vague philosophical or humanistic conception of the brotherhood of all men, but I base it on the clear and specific Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of all believers in Christ Jesus.

Apart from Islam, we have to face the challenge of communism, with its stress on community. Though we may condemn the community created by the Communist ideology as pseudo-community, the Christian Church will, in her struggle against communism, have to prove that her own genius for creating the deepest possible community among men is real and not pseudo or an idle boast. If the Christian Church in Africa fails to create real community she is doomed. If she fails to become a new “home” to the millions of uprooted pilgrims moving out of their old paganisms and outmoded securities, these pilgrims will fall prey to some other faith or ideology, and find another home far from the cross of Christ, like some extreme form of African nationalism, communism, or Islam.

Let me state clearly that the problem is not, in the first instance, the propriety of separate churches for different national or racial groups in different countries or even the same country, city, or town (whether German, English, Dutch, or African churches for countries or areas where people belong to these language or racial groups). That is normal and natural. I raise no objection so long as these churches do not bar their doors against fellow believers of another language, race, or ethnic group. This sort of thing becomes forced segregation within the Church, within the community of God’s people, and that is an evil thing and must be combatted by all Christians, even if it is camouflaged by high sounding concepts like “the need for autogenous development.”

This is the Africa we face. The Church can be the great pioneer, the bridge builder par excellence between widely different peoples. She can teach them to value their own heritage while initiating them into their great new home—the Church and the greater family circle of the people of God.

The Church, by being true to her own character as the communion of the saints, the people of God, will have to make Christian brotherhood and fellowship for all racial groups real. Otherwise Christianity will lose all hope of moral and spiritual leadership in the emerging Africa.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Deep within the corridors of the mysterious Protestant citadels known as “denominational headquarters,” a storm is brewing whose gusts will shortly be felt in many a rustic chapel and reinforced concrete cathedral throughout the land. The storm is not due to unpredictable movements in the heavenlies; on the contrary, it is being deliberately kicked up by a talented group of young ministers who may be on the way to becoming the ecclesiastical spokesmen of the next generation in our country.

The cause of the storm is their dissatisfaction over traditional forms and programs of evangelism. Many of them are in positions of importance in the departments of evangelism in their denominations, so that their discontent is no mere protest from the outside. They are determined to retool the evangelistic strategy of the churches and thus make it “more relevant to this generation.” They believe that the Church has a redemptive message to give the world, but that since the world does not appear to be listening, the message needs to be set in a new context. They realize that what they are doing is foreordained to arouse controversy. Some have already run the gauntlet of suspicion or have encountered entrenched opposition. Others are biding their time, confident that the future is on their side, that one day the world will hear them gladly.

These young men already have a name; at some point along the line they have dubbed themselves “The Young Turks.” Even though they are scattered through the different denominations, many of them know each other quite well. George E. Sweazey, now a pastor in Webster Groves, Missouri, but at one time head of the Presbyterian (USA) division of evangelism, has described them in these terms: “They are fascinated with the novel in evangelism because they are most concerned with the penetration of the Gospel into unentered cultural areas. They lean heavily on the latest popularizers of social studies, and look on what is being done now in evangelism from the point of view of culture-critics, crying disdainfully, ‘This is outmoded!’ They have no patience with those ways by which the greater number of people are each year turned from no interest in Jesus Christ to a daily concern for Him.”

The purpose of this article is not to “expose,” censure, or condemn the young men, but to evaluate their point of view in the full light of the Gospel, and to seek out whatever strains of health may be found in their challenge to the Church. First it should be noted that they are dissatisfied with the classic definition of evangelism formulated by Archbishop William Temple: “Evangelism is so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Saviour, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church.” In slightly altered form, this definition has won wide acceptance throughout the World Council of Churches.

A NEW DEFINITION

Charles Templeton, a “Young Turk” who abandoned the ministry but whose views are still influential, broadened the meaning of the term considerably in his definition: “Anything the Church may do which has as its ultimate end the winning of men and women to Christ and the winning of Christians to deepened commitment is evangelism.” Thus evangelism has been made to seem, in the words of another, “one of those omnibus categories of Christendom that expands and contracts with theological insights and the exigencies of culture.” Or to use a phrase increasingly popular in the old-line denominations, “Everything a church does is evangelism.”

To understand how the centuries-old task of winning converts to Jesus Christ is being transmuted into a dialogue between Church and culture, it is necessary to understand parallel developments in theological thought. First, there is a new concept among many of the young men about the nature of sin, which is informed partly by the fact that they received their seminary diplomas in the atomic age. Thus one of them defines sin as estrangement, following Paul Tillich: estrangement from self, from one’s neighbor and from God. Other words often heard are “alienation” and “enmity.” As Poet Amos Wilder expresses it, “Men are more dominated by a sense of being caught in a sinful situation than of being heinously guilty of particular sins.… The modern man sees himself not as Promethean rebel or self-accusing scapegrace but as a relatively helpless and wistful prisoner in a system of huge social and cultural authorities and compulsions.” The stern Hebrew concept of sin as disobedience to God’s command seems to have been replaced by the fatalistic Greek view of sin as tragedy. Modern man, therefore, sins because he cannot help it, just as did the ancient heroes of Aeschylus. But now it is not the “fates” that make his sin inevitable, it is the pressures of “organizational living.” Such a man is to be pitied rather than warned of the fires of hell. It would be unfair (they would say) to condemn a man to eternal torment for an adultery he could not help, or for an unbelief that became his lot simply because he could not hear the Gospel in the roar of traffic.

The “Young Turks” have a genuine compassion for their fellow man. They yearn to offer him a salvation that is practical, and since a “decision for Christ” seems such a weak and futile gesture in the face of the total situation, they lean more to liturgy and the sacraments as offering genuine help in distress, and therefore as a sound goal of evangelism.

CRITIQUE OF THE CHURCH

A second major premise of the “Young Turks” is their critique of the Church’s pretension to moral rectitude. So aware are they of the secular man’s indifference to the Church, of the mistakes the Church has made in the past, and of the present cultural mood which treats all moral principles and standards of value as relative, that they are ready to rip to shreds every effort to equate Christianity with middle-class respectability or “religiosity.” The late Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose words carry added weight because he was one of Himmler’s final victims, sounds the keynote: “There is the Godlessness in religious and Christian clothing which we have called a hopeless Godlessness, but there is also a Godlessness which is full of promise, a Godlessness which speaks against religion and against the Church. It is the protest against the pious Godlessness insofar as this has corrupted the churches, and thus in a certain sense, if only negatively, it defends the heritage of a genuine faith in God and of a genuine Church.”

The “Young Turks” feel a spiritual kinship to the man who believes but who scorns to come to church because he has an abhorrence for its genteel institutional life. They agree with Bonhoeffer that he may prove to be more godly than the faithful communicant. They warm to the surgically sharp honesty of an atheist like the existentialist Albert Camus, whose hero (in The Fall) gave up his prominent legal practice in Paris and his life as a model citizen to become an alcoholic because, as he expressed it, “I realized, as a result of delving in my memory, that modesty helped me to shine, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress.” In the face of such candid revelation of truth, they reason, how can the Church feel that she is discharging the Great Commission simply by handing out packets of home visitation materials at an evangelism supper?

In short, they hold that the Church should cease proclaiming her message to the world with so much assurance, and should spend more time listening to the world, seeking to understand it, and then asking significant questions that might somehow make a difference in the way the world seeks to resolve its problems. Thus Theodore A. Gill declares that the Church “must now find other than traditional ways to state the gospel’s constant relevance, ways less concerned with giving the superlatively informed world answers about itself, more concerned with asking the world questions about the shadowed context of its brilliant competence.”

This is evangelism “in depth,” we are told. It is “a positive thrust forward into the complex structure of life and society.” It is the “spire” speaking to the “town” rather than for the “town”, and speaking of Christian goals rather than of cultural values. Adding members to the church roll, say the “Young Turks,” means little enough if the person added is the usual type of stable citizen who is already “pretty well conditioned toward participation in a committee-run organization with religious aims.” D. T. Niles, in fact, shocked the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland last year by declaring that “the primary task of the Church today in evangelism is discovering what are the successful methods of evangelism that must be discarded because they are not faithful to the gospel.”

On one point all are agreed: there are “no easy answers, no immediate, streamlined programs available” to renew the Church so that it is “alert and alive to the movements of history and sensitively aware of the birthpangs of a new age.” And the more daring will add, “We must not be intimidated by those who mistake obsolete theology for loyalty to the Gospel, or who regard obedience to Christ as synonymous with a narrow, inadequate interpretation of the Scriptures, and who conceive of evangelism as being synonymous solely with some particular method.”

DOCTRINE OF CREATION

A third theological emphasis made by some “Young Turks” is that the Church’s voice is only one voice among many that speak for God. There is no suggestion of belittling the deity of Jesus Christ; on the contrary, most “Young Turks” uniformly hold an incarnationist Christology (albeit sans virgin birth). Their attitude toward the world, however, is oriented more to the doctrine of Creation than to the Incarnation. God made the world, and is continually providing new dynamic for his creation and working out his purposes in it. What conclusions are drawn from this? First, that regardless of the fall, not everything that happens in the world is “necessarily bad.” Second, the concept that “the Church is the only instrument through which God works in the world for the salvation of men and the transformation of society” is held to be false and unbiblical. The Church is not some “desperate bridgehead” God has established in the world in order to convert people out of it. On the contrary the Church is a “colony of heaven” which seeks to identify itself with the world and to participate in the life of the world, even to “going native” in everything except faith and morals.

“So when in the course of their normal duties,” a “Young Turk” explains, “the ministers of the parish have to do with various social agencies and political organizations which affect the life of the community, they do not seek to make them ‘more religious’ or feel concerned that it is not the Church that is working in all these ways for the full benefit of the people, but rather they seek to make use of them as they fulfill their proper function, recognizing the hand of God in anything that brings wholeness and meaning into the lives of the people.”

THE EVALUATION

It is clear, as Sweazey points out, that “these young Turks are getting at something that business as usual in evangelism is missing.” The fact that so many of them are in key positions, and are preparing materials and conducting seminars on evangelism for the pastors and lay leaders of their denominations, suggests that the churches may be facing a re-thinking of evangelism even more drastic that that which took place during the recent liberal era. It was common enough in the early years of the century for a Church to turn its back on Billy Sunday’s mass evangelism, but some leaders of the new generation are prepared to go further. They are willing to subordinate all specific evangelistic activity, of whatever kind, to the making of a “total impact” of the Gospel on the “world” of work, the “world” of leisure, the “world” of education and government, and even the “world” of ecclesiastical institutionalism. Such is the meaning of the phrase, “The Whole Gospel for the Whole World.” The impact will be made by witness, but not necessarily by verbalized witness. For the word “witness” is also being re-tooled, and the cup of cold water is not merely the expression of Christian love but is becoming the maximal evangelistic testimony as well.

In behalf of the young “re-thinkers” of evangelism, certain points must be emphasized. It is no sin to “think fearlessly and plan daringly,” as one of them expresses it, nor to bring “the total task of evangelism under the most searching judgment and agonizing reappraisal in the light of the best insights of the New Testament and contemporary human need.” Just because an idea appears new, moreover, it is not necessarily dangerous or wrong; it is well that older ecclesiastical secretaries are forced to think out their positions afresh. Further, it is a healthy sign when the Church can produce young leaders who are more interested in furthering the cause of Christ than in “playing it safe,” following the denominational “party line,” and padding their futures.

Having said this, however, we must point out certain weaknesses in the “Young Turks” movement that seem to strike not only at the cause of evangelism but at the Church herself.

There is a touch of unreality, as Sweazey remarks, in the whole approach. It is primarily armchair evangelism, and makes good conversation in the seminary coffee shop and thoughtful oratory in the evangelism seminar, but it has little enough to do with the making of Christians.

Its “solving” of the sin problem by excusing it, and by putting everyone “in the same boat,” is a far cry from the New Testament concept of the Church as a “called-out body” of “holy ones” whose sins have been removed by the washing of regeneration. More than that, it does not really grip everyday life. The average sin-laden American looks to the Church neither for condemnation nor commiseration. He can get the latter at the nearest bar, and the former he gets without asking for it, everywhere he goes. If he looks to the Church at all, it is for truth that will help him and that may even save him. Yet the “Young Turks” who soften the note of individual moral responsibility in the Gospel in favor of social sympathy are the ones who threaten to make the Church irrelevant. It takes more than formal ecumenical worship per se to get rid of what one of them calls “my radical me-ness.” Or as a realistic Methodist layman put it, “The Church offered me the right hand of fellowship when what I needed was a kick in the pants.” No one knows the joy of the Resurrection until he has been to the Cross with his own sin.

Further, by minimizing the value of traditional evangelism, the “Young Turks” betray an exasperation that is ultimately directed at the Holy Spirit. Why, they ask in effect, does God persist in using such “frontier methods” in our century? The next step is to doubt that God is in fact using them. The dialogue of God with man is then reduced to a dialogue between the Church and culture, and evangelism becomes a combination of “confrontation” and critique instead of a passion for souls.

If the “Young Turks” but knew it, they themselves may be the key to the situation. Were one of their number to make the astonishing discovery that God is sovereign over all of human life; that he is truly Redeemer from sin as well as Creator; that he determines through his Spirit and through his Word how men shall come to him; that he reigns even over the “organizational rat race”; that he overcomes all estrangement, imparts power to transcend every modern pressure; that he can lift twentieth century burdens as easily as he lifted those of other centuries; that he can purify even the man in the gray flannel suit; that he can use every kind of evangelism, no matter how clumsy, so long as the evangelist’s message is that Jesus Christ saves men from their sins, but that he will never bless a message if it is downgraded into a proliferation of verbosity or a hassle over authority; then we could hope and pray for the Holy Spirit to bring revival right into the midst of the departments of evangelism of the great denominations.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Dostoevski once remarked that “if God does not exist, everything is permissible.” Atheism, according to Dostoevski, cannot provide for morality. The French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir recently recalled this statement and tried to answer it. She took the remarks rightly as a challenge to atheistic existentialism in regard to its ethic. De Beauvoir tries to show that Dostoevski is wrong, that there is a morality in atheism. She argues, indeed, that the absence of God is exactly the requirement for genuine morality. Human acts, she says, become truly serious only if there is no God.

If God exists, de Beauvoir reasons, there is always the possibility of forgiveness; a man may always figure that God may overlook or forgive his evil acts. But if there is no God and no possibility of forgiveness, our acts become irrevocable; nothing can undo or atone for our evil. Atheism makes us totally responsible.

With no God in heaven, our deeds are terribly serious; they make an indelible mark on history. Existentialism, then, is the only philosophy that makes man’s behavior an absolutely earnest matter. Only a philosophy rendering man’s deeds ultimately serious can have a real ethic. With God out of the picture, we can warn men that their deeds are absolute and ultimate. Man’s deeds are the end.

Humanism has always had trouble in finding a basis for ethics. This is not because humanists were personally less moral than theists. It is that morality always has associations with an imperative or command which men are called to obey. When men no longer believed in the divine imperative, they were faced with the question of the basis or reason for morality. Morality implies responsibility. Humanistic morality implies responsibility to fellow men. But since we speak of responsibility, we must ask to whom one must give final response for his behavior. Commonly, the humanist pointed to the inherent value of man. Anything which devalued man was immoral. But what I want to note here is that the self-evident truth about the value of man reflects a biblical thought.

But now, in modern existentialistic atheism, we are told that atheism alone can point the way to a genuine ethic. In de Beauvoir’s attempt to show this, she completely secularizes the biblical word “forgiveness.” She assumes that the possibility of forgiveness takes the edge off human responsibility. The biblical treatment of forgiveness gives no hint that this is so. From the human side of the picture, sin is utterly irrevocable. Where forgiveness enters the picture it comes as a divine mystery. “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins” (Isa. 44:22). Mlle. de Beauvoir insists that forgiveness renders human acts less than serious, since the man sinning can always count on the possibility of forgiveness. His sin will not seem quite so terrible if he thinks God might disregard it.

One notices in de Beauvoir how completely some of modern thought has become estranged from the central concepts of the Bible. To her forgiveness is an idea which posits a simple possibility of escape from consequences. This is secularization of a biblical concept. Secularization is not something that happens only to society and the dynamics of human life. The biblical world of thought can also be secularized. When men no longer have any sense for the elementary thought world of the Bible, but still speak of the words of the Bible, they secularize the thought of the Bible. This does not happen because women like de Beauvoir are less than rigorous intellects. Secularization of thought occurs when men work with and argue about such concepts as “forgiveness” wholly apart from its biblical sense.

Mlle. de Beauvoir, for instance, seems to have no notion that biblical speech about forgiveness is never disassociated from biblical speech about the wrath of God and divine judgment. She has no knowledge that the biblical notion of forgiveness is utterly repugnant to the notion that human deeds are less than terribly serious. In the Bible, the possibility that men should consider their acts less than earnest in view of divine forgiveness is unthinkable. I discern in de Beauvoir a striking estrangement from biblical thinking. She argues against the possibility of forgiveness but uses the term in a sense wholly foreign to its Christian meaning.

This defense of atheistic ethics over against Dostoevski’s statement is a cheap defense. Dostoevski is not here to speak for himself, but if he were he would, I think, brand this argument as ridiculous. Dostoevski demanded to know to whom men would be responsible if there were no God. De Beauvoir says that man is responsible to himself and adds that this fact makes his acts serious. Thus, existentialism alone can provide a basis for morality. But actually de Beauvoir only exposes how tense and hopeless life without God is.

There can be no talk here of genuine obedience. Man can only listen to and answer to himself. When the Christian reads such arguments, he can only recall himself to his own position under God to whom he is ever responsible; and he must tell himself that he will never in his own way corrupt the word forgiveness as de Beauvoir does. No Christian may ever take de Beauvoir’s suggestion that he can play with sin in view of the possibility of forgiveness.

When one plays with the divine command and takes less than seriously the following of Christ, he does fall into a secularization of biblical life and thought. When he does, he fails to live the Christian life. He can offer no witness against the secularization of the Gospel, for he has also forgotten the seriousness of sin in the light of forgiveness. It is forgiveness that called for the one most serious of all acts—the death of Jesus Christ.

Prophet In Celluloid?

Cecil B. DeMille Autobiography (Prentice-Hall, 1959, 465 pp., $5.95) is reviewed by Richard C. Halverson, Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C., and Associate Executive Director, International Christian Leadership.

Was Cecil B. DeMille a “prophet in celluloid … who brought the Word of God to more people than any other man” … or “an apostle of sex, sin, and salvation, who used these commodities as a gimmick to sell synthetic religion” (Cue, Nov. 21, 1959)?

Probably neither, certainly not the latter. He was a man of conviction and vision who worked harder than most because of his conviction. He believed that the theatre, more particularly motion pictures, would get the right message to the most people most effectively.

(According to Y. Frank Freeman, vice-president of Paramount Pictures, DeMille films have been seen by more than four billion people, one and a half times the present population of the world. The latest release of “The Ten Commandments, which cost 13¼ million dollars to produce and grossed over 83½ million, has been seen by more than 98,500,000 people.)

DeMille exploited with unusual success the finest tool of mass communication ever possessed by man. He never pretended disinterest in the commercial opportunities. Nevertheless, he had a sense of calling which he shared with his father who, though trained for the Episcopal priesthood, never accepted ordination because he felt his ministry was to write for the theatre.

Describing the primitive circumstances under which they were forced to live while shooting the Mt. Sinai scenes of the Ten Commandments, he wrote, “the rigors seem well worth while. We are bringing to the screen of the world for the first time, in all their awesome grandeur, the very places where Moses talked with God and received the Law by which mankind must learn to live or perish” (p. 426).

DeMille sensed, as perhaps no other man, the potential power of motion pictures, and he was dedicated to the finest use of the medium. At the time of his death, he had projected an article for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, on the subject of the moral and spiritual responsibility of Hollywood. He detested commercialism and compromise. Speaking of the depression’s effect on the industry he wrote, “Some producers began to inject into their pictures more and more elements which caused the menace of censorship to rumble again. Perhaps they thought that it was the cheapest way to hold a dwindling audience. It was cheap, in every meaning of the word” (p. 298). He wrote, “The problem of morality in films remains. Despite the fact that the most successful pictures of all time have been films to which anyone could have taken his children without having to brainwash them afterward, there will always be a few producers who mistakenly believe that dirt will necessarily turn out to be pay dirt” (p. 240).

While working on “The Ten Commandments” in Egypt in 1954, DeMille had a heart attack. Ordered to complete rest for weeks, he was at work next day. “I did not tell the doctors what I was thinking,” he wrote (p. 429) “that if my motives in making the film were what I thought they were, I would be given the strength to finish it. I was 73 years old. That was a lifetime long enough for a man to have learned something of the ways and power of God; and long enough to make it not so very important if one’s greatest effort turned out to be his last.”

DeMille gives little evidence of an evangelical understanding of the Bible in his book or films. If he knew the Gospel, he did not communicate it, unless “King of Kings” be considered the exception. One wishes he might have had the perception to produce a distinctly Christian picture such as others have done with exceptional results in spite of ridiculously low budgets.

This fascinating story is not so much about one man as it is a chronicle of an era and an industry. It introduces the outsider to a most intimate view of the Hollywood which evangelicals tend to repudiate carte blanche. There are many more important books for the earnest Christian reader, but this well-written volume ought to challenge the evangelical who understands the motion picture to be a business, a science, an art, and a strategy by which the Good News of Christ may be told. God grant that Christians may find a way to exploit this exceptional medium with ever-increasing effectiveness. Communism will!

RICHARD C. HALVERSON

Unfolding World View

Not Disobedient unto the Heavenly Vision, by Harold Paul Sloan (Herald Press, 1958, 166 pp., $2.25), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary.

It is only occasionally that an eminent pulpiteer is able, after formal retirement, to bring the thoughts which have been for a long time maturing in his mind into a readable compass. Dr. Sloan’s volume seeks to elaborate the impact which the initial starting point of Christian faith may have for the unfolding of a world view. The work assumes that there is a grand design in history which God unfolded “in its basics” in the incarnation and cross of Christ, and which is moving toward a triumphant fulfillment.

Not Disobedient unto the Heavenly Vision traces a series of questions which are pertinent “along the way”: human moral freedom, the origin of evil, the extent of redemption, the moral relative and the moral absolute, and the Christian understanding of the Person of our Lord. The author sees fit, for the sake of discussion, to leave more issues open than many others would do. Perhaps this is because his own grasp upon Christian essentials is so strong. Not all will agree upon some details of his metaphysics, and certainly not all will follow his venture at explanation of the question of eternal punishment. However, no one can read the volume without being stimulated to thought and to a deepened conviction at many key points in Christian theology.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Pitfall Of The Cliche

The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, by Thomas F. Torrance (Eerdmans, 1959, 150 pp., $3), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, Professor of Bible at Calvin College.

Almost every student has wondered at the big step he takes downward in evangelical perception when he takes the short step in time from the Apostles to the Apostolic Fathers. Even the non-specialist cannot fail to be impressed that the fervent moralism which pervades the writings of the Apostolic Fathers is markedly different from the Pauline doctrine of grace. Dr. Thomas Torrance of Scotland determined some years ago to find the key that would explain the Fathers’ failure to sustain the theme of grace so clearly taught by Paul. His thesis, published this year by Eerdmans, is that the Fathers failed to continue the theology of grace because they failed to find the center for their thought where the Gospel finds it, in the person and work of Christ. Torrance makes his point with historical scholarship and theological discernment. The point, however, is more than a footnote to theological history; it is a warning to theologians and preachers of every age.

The Apostolic Fathers were not ignorant of the meaning of Christ’s death. Clement wrote that Christ’s blood was “given on behalf of us.” Ignatius, in whom Torrance finds more Gospel than in most of his contemporaries, wrote that Christ “endured all His sufferings on account of us, that we might live in Him.” Barnabas spoke of the Lord giving himself to death for us that we might be cleansed by the remission of our sins. But, as J. N. D. Kelly observed (in his Early Christian Doctrines), these and like statements have the ring only of conventional clichés in the Fathers and fall short of being at all central to their thought.

To the Apostolic Fathers, Jesus Christ was primarily a lawgiver, whose death awakens in us a repentance for sin, which in turn motivates us to follow in his law of life. Jesus was for them also the giver of new knowledge by which we can find better the true way in which he urges us to walk. Grace was present in this setting, but primarily as divine assistance in man’s striving to follow the way Christ marked out for him. Grace was not the brand new relationship created by God for man in the event of the Cross. Hence, the Christian life was for the Fathers not so much a response to the declaration that God had reconciled the world to himself in Christ as it was a response to the imperative implied in Christ’s new law of life.

There were, writes Torrance, many factors that contributed to the Fathers’ failure to carry into the second century the clear message of grace that formed the heart of first century proclamation. One of these was the influence that Judaistic thought had on the Church in spite of Paul’s heroic efforts to stifle it. Another was the influence of the Hellenistic patterns of thought from which the converted Greek seemed never quite able to free himself. Both of these, having something religiously in common anyway, were unable to grasp the centrality of grace because they were unable to grasp the centrality of the person and work of Jesus Christ. It was not so much that they understood it and decided instead for Christian moralism. They never seemed to sense that they were teaching something variant from Paul’s doctrine. To them, the person and work of Christ always remained secondary to the divine teacher. Hence, grace was secondary to ethics, man’s humble acceptance of the Atonement was second in importance to man’s valiant struggle for obedience.

Dr. Torrance has without doubt read the Apostolic Fathers thoroughly and correctly. He has with this book made a genuine contribution to the historical study of theology. My only reservation is the fear that the truth of Dr. Torrance’s thesis about the Apostolic Fathers may contribute further to an already common evangelical assumption that there is little in any of the ancients to teach the children of today. Be that as it may, this book has a message for contemporary evangelical theology. When what is central to the Gospel becomes a conventional cliché rather than the determinative theme for all theologizing, we are likely to lose sight of the powerful truth hidden in the cliché.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Roman Catholic Mirror

Protestantism by Georges Tavard, translated by Rachel Attwater (Hawthorn, 1959, 139 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Earle E. Cairns, Chairman of the History and Political Science Department, Wheaton College (Illinois).

A growing literature indicates that Roman Catholics and Protestants are trying to understand each other. Protestants have interpreted Protestantism to Roman Catholics. In this book a Roman Catholic interprets Protestantism to Roman Catholics ironically, sympathetically, and accurately as a sincere but, from his viewpoint, illegal break with the infallible teaching of the Church guarded by bishops and the Pope (p. 7).

After a brief but helpful historical survey of Protestant groups in chapter one, essential differences between Rome and Protestantism are examined. Justification by faith and the authority of Scripture are not alien to the Roman tradition of subjective faith, but the examination of objective faith (doctrine) by Scripture is condemned. Greater differences exist in the views of the number and essence of the sacraments and the nature of the Church. Protestants err, he writes, in separating the spiritual priesthood of believers from the institution of hierarchy (p. 47). Chapters five through eight examine revivalistic Protestantism which puts Scripture or the inner light above the Church, liberal Protestantism which reduces the Gospel to pragmatic philanthropy, neo-orthodoxy which is a reaction from subjective liberalism, and Anglicanism with Protestant theology in an episcopal framework in which bishops are “fathers” rather than “teachers” (pp. 100, 105). Finally he suggests that these groups are being oriented to Protestant unity in the World Council of Churches alongside Roman Catholic unity (p. 131). Protestants must examine tradition and Roman Catholics scrutinize justification by faith as both face the problem of de-christianization of the masses.

Tavard will not admit that Protestantism is more than a split in the cultural and spiritual unity of Christendom (p. 133), and he ignores papal infallibility in a manner which seems to make Roman Catholicism only a deeper Anglicanism. Nevertheless, Protestants will profit by seeing themselves in this Roman Catholic mirror.

EARLE E. CAIRNS

Holy Land Guide

The Antiquities of Jordan, by G. Lankester Harding (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960, 206 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by G. Douglas Young, Director of Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies, Inc.

This is a fascinating double-duty book, half travelogue and half history and description of archaeological sites. Professor W. F. Albright says of it: “His book is by far the best guide to the splendid cities of Eastern Palestine—Petra, Gerasa, Philadelphia, and others—but it can be read at home with enjoyment and it contains a wealth of new material for the specialist and the student of Bible times.”

The geography, history, climate, and archaeological sites are described in detail. Thirty-one excellently-chosen plates illustrate the text. There are also 10 maps and site plans.

Particularly interesting are the chapters on Jerash, Petra, Jericho, and Qumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The sound archaeological and historical references and the interesting horney autobiographical touches make the reading fascinating. Little is lacking in his description of the important sites. The description of Petra is beautifully done. The description of the community of Qumran with its numbered map makes a visit to the site very meaningful.

There is little to criticize in the book. Some would not agree with the dating of the destruction of Jericho in the thirteenth century. That is the typical view of most archaeologists today, however.

This is the kind of book that would make any trip to a part of the Bible Land more meaningful.

G. DOUGLAS YOUNG

Bright On Israel

A History of Israel, by John Bright (Westminster Press, 1959, 500 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James L. Kelso, Professor of Old Testament History and Archaeology, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

John Bright’s A History of Israel will supersede all other works in that field. There is nothing else in condensed form that is as exhaustive and exacting as this book. The footnotes alone are a unique collection of the most important research data in this field whether published at home or abroad. Dr. Bright is one of the most brilliant scholars of the Albright school and is well qualified both as a linguist and archaeologist to handle the data involved. Lie insists on the historicity of the Old Testament, even in the Pentateuch, where scholars such as Noth will not yet allow Israel a true history.

The average reader should work his way slowly through this book because of the wealth of new data which is given, even though in highly condensed form. This is an interpretative history and the author insists that the Bible be read alongside his interpretation. The author is limited by space and must omit some features, but he tries to be consistent with the overall picture of each period.

The prologue of the book is an excellently condensed resume of the history of the ancient Orient up to about 2000 B.C. Then comes a detailed picture of the Near East out of which came the patriarchs. His conclusion is that the patriarchal narratives are truly rooted in history and that the patriarchs themselves are historical persons.

The periods of the Exodus and Conquest are illustrated with both Egyptian and Palestinian archeological data. A special chapter is devoted to the constitution and faith of early Israel which stresses the covenant concept. Beginning with the Kingdom phase of Israel, Bright follows something of the general pattern of other historians but always adds new material and often reinterprets earlier information. His archeological training enables him to handle this material well. If any reader thinks the theological emphasis is slighted in this history, let him remember that Bright’s book on The Kingdom of God has already stressed this feature. The closing chapters show something of the inter-Testament material which sets the stage for the New Testament and Christ.

At first reading one may be tempted to hurry through the book as a glance at the page ahead usually suggests green pastures. But all the while the reader will resolve to return and go over the data with closest scrutiny. The footnotes are virtually a syllabus for a graduate course in Old Testament history, and they cover the field magnificently. It is only after one has double-checked this cross reference material that he begins to appreciate the phenomenal labor, the fine judgment, and the gracious spirit of Professor John Bright. Scholars will naturally not go along with him at all points, but each will be the better for having worked with Bright. This is one of the few great books in the field of Old Testament study.

JAMES L. KELSO

Two Voices

The Prophetic Voice in Modern Fiction, by William R. Mueller (Haddam House, 1959, 183 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, Professor of English Literature, Dean of Columbian College, George Washington University.

Modern secular fiction, says Professor Mueller in this book, provides the perceptive reader with a rich and stimulating introduction to such great biblical themes as the Fall, Judgment, Suffering, Vocation, and Love. In the midst of a civilization made complacent by manifest technological victories, the literary artists, with remarkable acuteness, echo the Old Testament prophets and cry warnings of spiritual sickness beneath material health. (The word “prophetic” in the title denotes the prophet’s diagnostic role, not his predictive one.) True, the messages are oblique and cryptic; also true, the messages are often not in accord with biblical teaching; but for the reader able to search out the spiritual values beneath the allegory, the metaphor, and (above all) the symbol, there emerges what Professor Mueller calls a “rewarding dialogue between the Bible and the secular work.”

His purpose, then, is somewhat similar to that of Virgil in The Divine Comedy. He guides the Dante-reader through the nether and upper regions of six works of modern fiction (by Joyce, Camus, Kafka, Silone, Faulkner, and Graham Greene), and points out the spiritual meanings en route.

Professor Mueller, who teaches English at the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina, is a recognized scholar in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. His articles have appeared in publications ranging all the way from the Journal of English Literary History to Psychonalysis: Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychology. He is the possessor of what is clearly a deep Christian faith. Why, then, is the book not entirely satisfying?

There are, I think, two reasons. First, it seems to have been very hurriedly written (the volume’s dedication refers to it as the product of a “summer ‘vacation’ ”), with the usual consequences: loose logical linkage, repetitiousness, and a mixture of the overexplained and the underexplained. It reads almost as if it were an early draft of a dictated manuscript—dictated, it is true, by a learned and perceptive scholar. His organizational plan is clear and sensible (each of his six chapters is divided into three parts, one to summarize the work of fiction under study, one to summarize the biblical teaching on the theme, and one to show the relationship between the two), but the parts are not put together with coherence and unity. As a consequence, we have not so much the promised “dialogue” between modern fiction and the Bible as two monologues standing side by side. The third parts of each chapter, which should reveal the intermeshing, often point out little except that both voices have touched on the same theme.

The second reason why unqualified praise cannot be given is that Professor Mueller seems not to have decided to what group of readers he is writing. Generally he expects little knowledge of his reader, and this may be perfectly reasonable since the book is one of a series published for young college students under the sponsorship of the Hazen Foundation and the YW and YMCA organizations. It may be proper, therefore, to define fairly elementary terms (“prelapsarian,” for example), to explain simple biblical texts (we are carefully told that the naming of Peter is important because “the Greek word petra means rock”), and to re-tell, in words of one syllable, the story of Adam and Eve; but the tone is not consistent, and many difficult terms and concepts are left unglossed.

In sum, it is unfortunate that a book on so significant a theme, written by a scholar so notably qualified, has not received the benefit of the additional thought and work needed to turn a pleasant and often informative two hours of reading into a real intellectual experience.

CALVIN D. LINTON

Aid To Parents

The Child in the Christian Home, by Margaret Bailey Jacobsen (Scripture Press, 1959, 200 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James DeForest Murch, Author of Christian Education and the Local Church.

Parental responsibility for the child’s moral and spiritual growth is a Judeo-Christian principle of major importance for our modern day. Because trustworthy Christian aids to an effective discharge of that duty are all too few, the Jacobsen book is thrice welcome. Soundly scientific in its assumptions and factual information, it is written in simple and practical language. It is applicable to the growing child’s intellectual, social, and spiritual capacities and will help establish durable Christian standards of individual and social life. The volume should be in every home.

JAMES DEFOREST MURCH

The advent of the West Virginia primary May 10 saw the religious issue take on wholesome new meaning within the U. S. political scene.

Whatever the outcome, this much was clear: Candid debate about the political ramifications of Senator John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism marked a significant step forward in American Church-State understanding.

“Some very calm and respected national voices are saying that the open discussion of the religious issue is a sign of progress,” reported The Christian Science Monitor, “far better than the whispers which accompanied the 1928 presidential campaign.”

The spontaneous origin of the 1960 debate at grass roots may indicate that there has developed a fuller sensitivity to the role of religion in politics.

Some observers even dare to hope that discussions may permanently lay to rest the notorious notion that only bigots raise the religious issue.

As the Catholic hierarchy watched quietly, Kennedy began to speak freely of the religious issue even while discrediting its importance (as did other presidential contenders: Nixon, “inexcusable”; Stevenson, “irrelevant”; and Humphrey, “divisive”).

Pivotal point in the Kennedy strategy was his April 21 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It marked the first time he had gone out of his way to discuss religion. He scolded the press so severely that not a single editor of the 400 present took up his offer to answer questions.

“The great bulk of West Virginians paid very little attention to my religion—until they read repeatedly in the nation’s press that this was the decisive issue in West Virginia,” Kennedy said. “I do not think that religion is the decisive issue in any state.”

“I do not speak for the Catholic church on issues of public policy,” he added, “and no one in that church speaks for me. My record on aid to education, aid to Tito, the Conant nomination and other issues has displeased some prominent Catholic clergymen and organizations; and it has been approved by others.”

“The fact is,” he asserted, “that the Catholic church is not a monolith—it is committed in this country to the principles of individual liberty—and it has no claim over my conduct as a public officer sworn to do the public interest.”

Senator Kennedy became less convincing when he endeavored to cast doubt on the existence of Catholic bloc voting. Columnist Doris Fleeson promptly dug out a 3,000-word memorandum prepared for the 1956 Democratic National Convention under the direction of Theodore C. Sorenson, a Unitarian who was and still is Kennedy’s chief of staff. The memo spelled out in detail the “Catholic vote” which was drifting to the Republicans but which could be lured back by a Catholic vice presidential nominee.

Questioned privately of how he would define his primary allegiance, Kennedy initially described it to a CHRISTIANITY TODAY reporter in terms of the “public interest,” then indicated that it would be better expressed as a “composite” which includes “conscience.”

Did he feel that only a bigot would cite religious grounds for opposing a presidential candidate? No, but he said he found it hard to understand what intellectual anxiety there would be when one has answered in the negative (as Kennedy has) the all-important question: Would you be responsive to ecclesiastical pressures or obligations that might influence you in conducting the affairs of office in the national interest?

The Burning Issue

“The most burning issue of modern times is the race question.”

So began a statement by evangelist Billy Graham released to United Press International from his home in Montreat, North Carolina. It was one of many such commentaries currently heard from prominent clergy as a result of increased racial tension in the United States, in South Africa, and elsewhere.

In Cape Town, Anglican Archbishop Joost de Blank was criticized by a bishop of his own church for a statement chiding the Dutch Reformed church in South Africa, which accepts largely the government’s apartheid policy.

“I believe,” said Bishop Basil W. Peacey, “there are many Anglicans who disassociate themselves from Archbishop de Blank’s latest attack.”

Peacey said de Blank’s statement tended to “create a situation undermining fundamental Christian charity.”

From Rochester, New York, came a major policy statement on the race and and other issues by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

“We have no right to criticize South African churches for their derelictions,” said Blake, “unless the corporate church in the United States continues to make it clear that the gospel requires us everywhere as Christians to stand for a non-segregated church in a non-segregated society, thus encouraging ministers and members everywhere to support all peaceful efforts by racial minorities to win proper respect and status even to the point of technical violation of the law when the law stands in the way of the right.”

Blake’s remarks were made at the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, where he delivered the Rauschenbusch Lecture, perpetuating the memory of Dr. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), most eminent proponent of the “social gospel.”

Graham said he was convinced that “ ‘Jim Crow’ must go,” but that forced integration will never work. He also expressed the anxiety that “some extreme Negro leaders are going too far and too fast.”

“I am also concerned,” he added, “about some clergymen of both races that have made the ‘race issue’ their gospel.… Only the supernatural love of God through changed men can solve this burning question.”

Pope and Persecution

The Easter message of Pope John XXIII expressed a note of sympathy for persecuted Roman Catholics.

The Pontiff told tens of thousands gathered in the rain outside St. Peter’s Basilica that “many of our brethren do not enjoy any kind of real freedom, personal or civil, or religious; but for year after year have been enduring restraint and violence, and perfecting a sacrifice wrought in silence and in continuous oppression.”

“Our sorrowing gaze,” he added, “turns also to the other children of God everywhere, suffering because of race and economic conditions … or through limitation on the exercise of their natural and civil rights.”

‘Protecting’ the Baptized

Police seized three children from a Presbyterian school in Medellín, Colombia, last month and turned them over to their Roman Catholic uncle.

The children—ages 12, 11, and 9—were removed under judicial warrant secured by the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Medellín. Action was taken in accordance with Roman Catholic teaching which obliges the government to “protect” baptized children when their parents “apostatize.”

Father of the children is 56-year-old Juan Osorio, a widower who was converted three years ago and subsequently enrolled his children in the Presbyterian school over his Roman Catholic brother’s protests. Initial attempts to recover the children from their uncle’s custody were unsuccessful.

Secret Cardinals

The identities of the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s three cardinals in petto may never be known.

According to current canon law, to be a cardinal one must first be a priest. The Pope, however, is not necessarily bound by canon law. There is some speculation that precedent-setting Pope John XXIII may have named a layman.

It is not known whether the pontiff has shared with anyone the identities of the three secret cardinals. They may never be known.

The Pope announced that he had created three cardinals in petto following the elevation of seven whose names were announced earlier.

Protestant Pioneers

In a historic and precedent-shattering conference at Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, 14 leading U. S. evangelicals gathered April 20–22 for a frank discussion of Roman Catholicism. They called for friendly conversations with Rome based on “mutual Christian respect.”

Motive for seeking the conversations, the evangelical leaders declared, was “the shared danger posed by growing secularism and revived paganism.” Goal to be sought was “that unity in truth which is demanded by the Word of God.”

Meeting in council with nearly 100 specially-invited guests under sponsorship of Christ’s Mission, Inc., of New York, conferees heard their discussions described as a “pioneering venture” in a “difficult field.” The Rev. Stuart P. Garver, new executive director of the mission, keyed discussions to a note described as quiet, irenic, serious and Christian.

The leaders were reminded that evangelicals and Roman Catholics are not only facing common problems in American secularism and materialism, but that they share a common belief in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures and the validity of the ecumenical creeds of the first five Christian centuries. At the same time they admitted “the complexity of the differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism” and “the deep cleavage at certain most vital points.”

Some “signs of encouragement” were brought out at the sessions as well as “differences and cleavages.” These were among opinions expressed:

• The Christian intention of Roman Catholicism was acknowledged, invalidating the argument of some Protestants that there is little to choose between Romanism and communism.

• Dissemination of radical anti-Catholic literature is unworthy of Protestants.

• Many Roman Catholic laymen and even clergymen in Latin America have a concept of liberty and freedom that compares with the best concepts to be found in Protestant communities in America.

• Rediscovery of the Bible in the Roman Catholic church and its increasing vernacular use among the laity are healthy and hopeful signs.

• Mixed marriages are being increasingly frowned upon by both Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy.

• In many countries the Roman church’s primary thrust is political, contradicting St. Paul’s premise that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.”

• Roman Catholics have moved into our national government until they now occupy key positions in every department and dominate agencies of promotion.

• The Roman Catholic hierarchy is demanding parity in the choosing of chiefs of chaplains, although they are not supplying their quota of chaplains for the armed services. They insist that Roman Catholics alternate as chiefs of chaplains, which means in effect that the incumbent arranges the promotion of his Protestant successor and also picks the Roman chaplain who will be the next chief.

• When Protestants seek to counter the propaganda measures of the Knights of Columbus newspaper advertisements with dignified and temperate statements, the editors who publish Protestant advertising receive threats of boycott from the hierarchy if such “offenses” are repeated.

• Protestant businessmen who have defied the boycott threat and have stood on principle, have been surprised to find the threat gesture to be hollow and meaningless, and that the Roman Catholic laity itself has often repudiated the pressure tactics of clericalism.

• Martin Luther was able to stand up to Rome because of the years of study during which he had “saturated himself in Scripture.”

• Roman Catholic tradition used to mean “that which has been handed down from the past.” Today it means rather “the self-consciousness of the Church.”

• Protestants have 12 serious objections to Roman Catholic teaching regarding the sacraments, and are alarmed at the recent “promotion” of Mary in the Roman celestial hierarchy to the status of co-Redemptrix with Jesus Christ.

• Pressure from the American hierarchy upon a Roman Catholic president, while undoubtedly light at first, would tend to increase during the tenure of office.

• Protestants need to enter more vigorously into public affairs, piety being something that is not exhausted with cultivation of the inner life: it is also exercised in obedience.

• The American tradition of separation of Church and State has proved its value as a principle, and Protestants must be vigilant in maintaining the liberty within which spiritual truths operate.

• The classic weapons of Protestantism are spiritual. The evangelical thrust comes from the supernatural dynamisms of evangelism and revival, Christian education and Christian vocation. The reality of Christian experience remains the most powerful rebuke to the Roman Catholic mutilation of the grace of God; and the demonstration of the meaning of sainthood through Christian vocation is still the best refutation of error in Roman teaching.

While not all the conferees were unanimous in agreeing with opinions expressed at Buck Hill Falls, they joined in recognizing that fresh ground had been broken at high level in Protestant discussions of Roman Catholicism at long, medium and short range.

Shaken Loyalties

Uprisings in Korea indicate shaken loyalties among Protestants for the Liberal Party led by outgoing President Syngman Rhee.

Although Protestants are well represented in both of Korea’s major political parties, the majority have traditionally sided with Liberals. But the bloody demonstrations in April showed that many of Rhee’s Protestant supporters were indignant over the mishandling of elections, though they still distrusted the Roman Catholic influence in the Democratic Party.

Amidst demands for drastic national reforms, the resignations of Rhee and his cabinet were largely welcomed.

Active in the demonstrations were a number of Christian college students, two of whom were among those killed.

The Korean Council of Churches issued a statement asking that the March elections be declared void. The statement also called upon Christians to rise above partisan party conflicts in seeking a just solution to the country’s problems.

HLKY, Christian radio station, won wide public praise for broadcasting the first impartial news of disorders.

An Evangelist’s Travels

U. S. evangelist David Morken, whose headquarters are in Hong Kong, plans meetings in Ethiopia this summer before returning for furlough.

Morken’s most recent crusade was in Kerala. Said to be the most Christian of India’s 14 states, Kerala nonetheless chose Communist government for nearly two years.

The meetings by Morken began shortly after the Communist governors were defeated at the polls in February. Some 2,000 Indians were reported to have made decisions for Christ during week-long crusades in Kottayam, Trivandru, and Alleppey. Counseling teams trained by Navigator representatives aided the evangelist.

Morken also addressed conventions of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which drew some 40,000 persons. He had been invited to Kerala by the Rt. Rev. Bishop John of South India.

Baptists in Cuba

Three Southern Baptist observers say evangelicals in Cuba now enjoy, for the first time, complete separation of church and state.

Cuban Baptists in particular, responding to the “most favorable conditions in history,” are said to be pursuing an aggressive mission program.

The observations come from W. C. Fields, public relations director for the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, who attended a Baptist convention in Cuba last month with Loyd Corder and Glendon McCullough of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board.

In a statement issued upon their return to the United States, the three observers agreed that the overwhelming majority of the people support the revolution.

Evangelical denominations, they said, are enjoying complete separation of church and state for the first time, which prompts a more aggressive spirit.

They reported that government favoritism has shifted from the top 10 per cent to the bottom 90 per cent of the people.

Corder warned, however, that “there are indications that many fear the growing influence of communism.”

Herbert Caudill, superintendent of Southern Baptist mission work in Cuba, was quoted as having said that “conditions have never been more favorable than now for mission work.”

Mormon Gains

Delegates to the 130th General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, world’s largest Mormon body, learned of modest gains within their constituency.

World membership now totals 1,616,088, a net gain of 60,289 over last year, delegates to last month’s conference in Salt Lake City were told.

A key speaker at the conference was U. S. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, a member of the church’s “Council of the Twelve Apostles,” who had some solemn words of warning about Communist objectives:

“The major Communist objective, make no mistake about it, is to destroy any society that adheres to the fundamentals of spiritual, economic and political freedom—the integrity of man.”

Communism, Benson asserted, has brought more people under its control in 40 years “by trickery and force” than the total number of Christians now living in the entire world.

Another group of “Latter Day Saints” met at Independence, Missouri, last month: The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a much smaller body (current membership 150,000) which dates back to a division of Joseph Smith’s followers at his death in 1844, conducted its biennial conference in the Independence Auditorium, which serves as a world headquarters building. The conference rejected a proposal to change the organizational name to Restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Toward Peaceful Economy

Raymond Wilson, secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, urged Quakers last month to help create a climate of public opinion whereby adjustment could be made to a “peace economy.”

Wilson told delegates to the 280th annual session of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends that achievement of either partial or total disarmament will not throw the nation’s economy out of gear if government, business, and industry “adjust themselves to a peace economy.” His remarks were in response to a question as to whether a sharp cutback in defense production would create widespread unemployment and a stock market crisis.

Wilson reasoned that a lack of confidence in the ability of the nation’s economy to adjust quickly stands behind the hesitation of some Congressmen to work for total disarmament, especially those lawmakers whose districts represent concentrations of defense contracts. The problem is also the concern of labor unions, he said, and may explain their silence as well as that of many national organizations regarding total disarmament.

Honors for the Press

The National Religious Publicity Council, a fellowship of some 450 religious publicists and an assortment of other interested individuals, bestowed honors on three secular newspapers and one magazine at its 31st annual convention in Philadelphia last month.

In addition, a special citation was given Religious News Service for “outstanding service rendered to organized religion through the pursuit of impartial journalism, and as a testimonial to its continued efforts in behalf of all faiths to advance the spiritual life of the nation.”

“Awards of merit” were given the Ladies Home Journal, the Chicago Daily News, the Miami Herald, and the Seattle (Washington) Times.

The Journal was singled out for a series of articles on religion and sex.

The religion editors of the three dailies were made “NRPC Fellows”: the News’ David R. Meade, the Herald’s Adon Taft, and the Times’ Lane Smith. (Meade and Taft also are RNS correspondents.)

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. Toyohiko Kagawa, 71, noted Japanese Protestant leader; in Tokyo … Dr. William Wright Barnes, 77, emeritus professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; in Fort Worth, Texas … Dr. George W. Davis, 57, professor of theology at Crozer Theological Seminary; in Chester, Pennsylvania … Dr. Jesse Dee Franks, 76, founder of the Southern Baptist seminary in Zürich, Switzerland; in Hopkinsville, Kentucky … the Rev. A. J. Thorwall, 69, retired field representative and director of evangelism of the Evangelical Free Church; in Minneapolis … the Rev. J. Chauncey Linsley, 101, believed to have been the oldest Episcopal clergyman in America; in Warren, Connecticut.

Appointments: As executive director of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, Dr. Albert G. Huegli, Jr. (who did not immediately indicate whether he will accept the newly-created post) … as secretary general of the Congo Protestant Council, the Rev. Peter Shaumba … as minister emeritus of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, Dr. Daniel A. Poling … as president of The College of the Ozarks (United Presbyterian), Dr. William S. Findley … as professor of religion at Yale University, Dr. Erwin R. Goodenough … as professor of philosophy of religion at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Dr. J. V. L. Casserley.

Citations: To the Rev. Leonard H. Chatterson, veteran Presbyterian missionary, the Merite Camerounais, First Class, highest honor of the government of Cameroun … to Dr. Otto A. Piper, professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Cross of Merit, First Class, highest honor of West Germany.

In sharp contrast to the attitude of many Protestant inter-church organizations in America, the National Association of Evangelicals took an unequivocal and aggressive anti-Communist position in its 18th annual convention in Chicago, April 26–29.

On the eve of the summit conference of the Western powers, NAE heard its president, Dr. Herbert S. Mekeel, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Schenectady, New York, declare that atheistic communism is the gravest danger to the Christian church. Dr. Mekeel said Marxian ideology is based upon a concept of man which makes any kind of terror, hate or unscrupulous methods permissible to gain its ends. To trust the emissary of such a system is to court disaster. The Rev. Arthur Glasser of the China Inland Mission, whose immense Gospel program in mainland China was wrecked by communism, gave a realistic picture of the world conflict. John Noble, author of I Found God in Soviet Russia, and Dr. Fred Schwarz, Australian physician, stirred large audiences as they defined and described the Red menace.

Inspired by the “Emergency Christian Mobilization” program of its northwest regional organization, the NAE will make communism a nation-wide issue in the churches during the coming year. The program involves development of revived militant churches by prayer, Bible study and evangelism; classes and lectures educating the community in Christianity’s answer to the Communist threat; and an aggressive anti-communist crusade on local and national fronts.

A ringing resolution adopted by the convention said, “There is no such thing as compromise with communism.”

The NAE is best known in the United States as the conservative Protestant alternative to the National Council of Churches. The evangelical body numbers 41 denominations in its membership and hundreds of individual congregations and organizations serving a total constituency of some 10,000,000. Its potential for future growth may be seen in the fact that there are approximately 25,000,000 American Protestants who have not joined the NCC because of its liberal theological, sociological and economic views. “Cooperation Without Compromise” is NAE’s rally cry. Along with offering an alternative to the liberalism of the NCC, the NAE has served as a counter balance to the much larger organization in certain areas. It has opposed the NCC position on presenting religious radio and television programs only in public service time donated by stations, and has worked to offset community planning systems that would concede a monopoly to the major Protestant church council.

The NAE also jousts with the Roman Catholic church, especially through its Washington office which presents complaints of NAE affiliates about religious restrictions in Colombia, Spain, Italy and other predominantly Catholic countries to the U. S. State Department.

NAE’s radio and television arm includes some 150 leading evangelical broadcasters in the nation and has close relations with a network of missionary broadcasting stations.

The Evangelical Foreign Missions Association with its 100 boards is NAE’s service medium for world evangelism and aids about one-third of all American missionaries preaching the Gospel abroad.

The Chicago meeting was strong in its emphasis on evangelism. Leading evangelical evangelists participated in the sessions, including the Rev. Grady Wilson and Jerry Beavan of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Dr. Graham, long an active member of the NAE, sent greetings to the convention.

Ten simultaneous “conventions within the convention” presented completed programs each morning. For example, three social action sessions dealt with campaign techniques to combat pornography. In one feature the mayor, city councilman, a police officer, and a state representative from Evanston, Illinois, told how obscenity challenged this American city and was eliminated. Workshops dealt with methods in education, summer camps, youth work, and other areas of evangelical concern. Over 100 exhibits presented a wide range of services being rendered the evangelical churches.

Major speakers included Dr. Paul S. Rees, Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, Dr. Vernon C. Grounds, and Dr. George L. Ford. The convention ended on a high note Friday noon with Dr. Bob Pierce inspiring the delegates to wider world vision and Christian advance.

The Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, was chosen president for the ensuing year.

Nae Resolutions

Evangelicals at Chicago spoke in official resolutions which:

• Opposed election of any Roman Catholic as a U. S. prcsident;

• Deplored Communist infiltration of the churches and recommended that a study committee be set up;

• Hit federal aid to education;

• Restated strong orthodox position on the person and work of Christ;

• Urged the preservation of constitutional government with its guarantee of basic individual freedoms;

• Approved Bible reading in the public schools;

• Called for action to preserve the right of evangelicals to purchase radio and television time for the broadcasting of the Gospel;

• Opposed recognition of Red China;

• Warned against dangers to faith and freedom implicit in the United Nations and related world groups.

The New President

The Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman, newly-elected NAE president, became general superintendent of the Assemblies of God last year. A native of Indianapolis, Indiana, he is the first representative of a Pentecostal denomination ever to be named to the NAE’s top office.

Zimmerman, 48, studied at Indiana University and was ordained to the ministry in 1932. He has held Assemblies of God pastorates in Indianapolis, Kokomo, Harrodsburg, and South Bend, Indiana, also in Granite City, Illinois, Springfield, Missouri, and Cleveland.

He was director of the Assemblies’ first radio broadcast from 1945 until 1949 and was made assistant general superintendent for the denomination in 1952.

Zimmerman, married and the father of three children, has long been active in NAE and has served a term as vice president.

Episcopal Address

“We have too many barren churches,” the Council of Methodist Bishops declared in a collective “Episcopal Address” at the opening of U.S. Methodism’s quadrennial General Conference April 27.

The address, two years in the making as a composite view of all Methodist bishops, noted that “the growth of The Methodist Church in recent years has not kept pace with the growth of the population in all places.”

“We have too many barren churches in which there are no new members being admitted on confession of faith,” the bishops said. “No Methodist church in a community of expanding population should be regarded as evangelistically awake unless it is winning people to Christ regularly and constantly.”

The address was delivered by Bishop William C. Martin of Dallas, chosen by secret ballot of his fellow bishops.

The 1960 address also commended the “general method and spirit” of a controversial report submitted by a special commission created four years ago to study the Methodist jurisdictional system.

“Without prejudging your action on its proposals,” the bishops told the conference, “we wish to commend the general method and spirit of the report and to say that in our considered judgment your dealing with it is the most urgent specific obligation of this conference.”

The report recommended retention of the present jurisdictional system which divides the church geographically, except for Negro congregations, all of which belong to the Central Jurisdiction.

While U. S. Methodism’s 49 bishops have no vote in conference proceedings, their Episcopal Address traditionally wields great influence.

Court Review

The U. S. Supreme Court plans to review the constitutionality of Sunday laws for the first time in history.

Arguments are scheduled to begin in the fall.

The nation’s highest tribunal has always upheld, in effect, the constitutionality of Sunday laws by refusing to hear lower court appeals on grounds that they did not present “a substantial federal question.”

Now the court says it will hear appeals of three merchants who have been found guilty of breaking state laws which forbid Sunday business. The merchants contend that such laws are unconstitutional and that their rights are being violated.

Protestant Panorama

• World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva dispatched its associate general secretary, Dr. Robert S. Bilheimer, to South Africa last month to inquire into the effects of racial strife upon church relations. Bilheimer met with leaders of churches which are WCC members and which have been at odds over attitudes toward apartheid.

• The newly-appointed Treasury Minister of the West German Republic, Dr. Hans Wilhelmi, is a noted leader of the state Lutheran church. He is currently president of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau.

• The signatures of 18 bishops of the Old Order Amish Mennonites appear on a petition which asks enactment of legislation to exclude their sect from participation in the social security program. The Old Order Amish oppose insurance because they feel it implies lack of faith in God’s judgments and that it yokes them with the unbelieving world.

• Three women were ordained last month by the state Lutheran church of Sweden despite persistent opposition from an element within the clergy. They became the first women ministers in the church’s history.

• A 90-ton vessel belonging to the Melanesian Anglican Mission was wrecked beyond salvage last month in an earthquake and tidal wave which hit the Solomon Islands area.

• The Minnesota Council of Churches plans to erect an $800,000 Protestant center in Minneapolis.

• Washington’s interdenominational Church of the Saviour opened a public coffee house last month as an “experiment in evangelism.” Workers from the church will staff the coffee house each evening and offer spiritual counsel upon request.

• A fire which destroyed Russwood Park, Memphis baseball stadium, also knocked out 300 windows of the 920-bed Baptist Memorial Hospital, located across the street. All patients escaped injury.

• A new library on the campus of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, contains a room devoted to preserving mementoes of the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham. Graham was scheduled to present the mementoes officially at a baccalaureate service May 9.

• Fellowship, official publication of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, interdenominational pacifist group, marked its 25th anniversary by publishing a double-sized issue May 1.

• A chapel-recording studio for “The Lutheran Hour,” largest private broadcasting operation in the world, was dedicated in St. Louis last month at the new headquarters building of the Lutheran Laymen’s League, which sponsors the program.

• Howard University’s School of Religion plans a $2,000,000 fund-raising drive to expand facilities on its Washington, D. C. campus.

• Seamen’s Church Institute of New York will construct a recreational and spiritual center this fall near Port Newark, New Jersey.

• Protestant ministers are joining Roman Catholic and Jewish clergymen in protesting curtailment of public library services in Boston. The curtailment grew out of drastic reductions in the municipal budget.

• Ground was broken April 30 for a $600,000 dormitory on the campus of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. The Presbyterian seminary, product of a merger of Pittsburgh-Xenia and Western theological seminaries, plans a long-range expansion program costing some $13,500,000.

• Representatives of the National Lutheran Council and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod joined hands last month in placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. The ceremony took place during simultaneous meetings of the NLC’s Bureau of Service to Military Personnel and the Missouri Synod’s Armed Services Commission.

The setting was Minneapolis, Minnesota, predominantly Lutheran city in what has been called “the Lutheran state par excellence.” A procession of 1,000 delegates led by flag-bearers and acolytes marched three abreast from the Central Lutheran Church to the Municipal Auditorium where three churches merged into one. After more than a decade of preparation, the presidents of the Evangelical, American, and United Evangelical Lutheran churches (ELC, ALC and UELC) clasped hands to signal creation of “The American Lutheran Church” (addition of the definite article distinguishes its name [TALC] from that of one of its predecessors), whose 2,250,000 members make it the tenth largest church in American Protestantism, third largest in U. S. Lutheranism. Some 7,000 observers then joined in a spine-tingling rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Thus opened the constituting convention of the new church (April 22–24), which will function officially beginning January 1, 1961. It followed by a day the final conventions of its three component churches. There had been little opposition to the merger and these meetings produced practically no debate. After all, the delegates were under instructions simply to ratify what had already been decided by the churches. This they did in festive mood amidst virile hymn singing, extensive Bible reading, and solid gospel preaching.

The merger was of the type to prompt rejoicing among adherents of Protestant orthodoxy. Lutherans generally maintain a fidelity to the classical doctrines several notches above many churches of Anglo-Saxon origins. “A statement on faith and life” warned against “unionism,” a term designating the establishment of church fellowship which “ignores present doctrinal differences or declares them a matter of indifference.” Such a framework is but the “pretense of union which does not exist.” “We believe that the Church has its unity in Christ through the Holy Spirit.” “All separatism which ignores the existence of other Christian Churches, as well as all attempts to reduce the unity of the Church to outward organizational forms, lead to a denial of the true nature of the Church and to a confusion and frustration in the attainment of its objectives.”

Buttressing such doctrines as propitiatory atonement and justification by faith is Article IV of the constitution adopted unanimously by the convention. Entitled “Confession of Faith,” it begins: “The American Lutheran Church accepts all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as a whole and in all their parts as the divinely inspired, revealed, and inerrant Word of God, and submits to this as the only infallible authority in all matters of faith and life.” The church also confessed as “true statements” of doctrine the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, the unaltered Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism, as well as recognizing the other documents in the Book of Concord of 1580 as theologically normative. Elsewhere, in a show of sensitivity against neo-orthodox slants, the Bible is declared to be the Word of God “under all circumstances regardless of man’s attitude toward it.”

The new church elected and installed as its first president Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, 58, retiring president of the 1,153,566-member ELC. The third ballot saw him victor over Dr. Norman A. Menter, retiring first vice president of the 1,034,377-membcr ALC (and president of the National Lutheran Council) and Dr. William Larsen, retiring president of the smaller (70,149) UELC. Dr. Menter was then voted vice president and Dr. Larsen secretary. Named honorary president for life was retiring ALC President Dr. Henry F. Schuh.

Dr. Schiotz of Minneapolis—where the new church’s headquarters will locate—paid tribute to the U. S. melting pot in noting this to be the first U. S. Lutheran merger to cross lines of national origins, ELC being Norwegian, ALC German, and UELC Danish.

When asked at a press conference about prospects for further mergers, Dr. Schiotz (pronounced shuts), with perhaps a trace of weariness, said sentiment in his church appeared to be against facing merger again unless it included all Lutheran groups (with the exception of the small Lutheran Free Church which has twice voted against merging with TALC, though it may reverse itself in a scheduled 1961 vote). He acknowledged this would mean getting the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA)—along with three other churches with which it will likely merge in 1962—under the same roof with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, at this stage an unlikely coalescence. Years ago the late famed radio preacher Dr. Walter A. Maier went on record as favoring merger between Missouri Synod and ALC. The Missouri Synod already has invited the new merged church to begin conversations toward “a God-pleasing unity.” But there is sentiment in both groups that the ULCA represents excessive theological latitude.

After adopting a 1961 budget of $18,102,254, the merged church voted to seek membership in the Lutheran World Federation, the National Lutheran Council, the Canadian Lutheran Council (each of the three churches included Canadian congregations), and the World Council of Churches. The latter action is subject to mandatory review in 1962. No move was made toward joining the National Council of Churches. Dr. Schiotz spoke of opposition to such a move within the new church. None of the three churches which merged to form TALC were members of the National Council of Churches.

Pentecost Sunday, June 5, will mark the beginning of a “Year of Jubilee” celebrating the merger. To be read in all worship services that day is the constituting convention’s “Message to the Churches.” It cautions: “… these days which consummate our union mean little if they do not initiate much.” It also exults: “In one sense we have reached a new height in our journey to the heavenly Jerusalem.”

“Our message to the Church is a simple one: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And our confidence is equally sure: They shall prosper that love thee. As we face the future before us, let each one pray and labor that there may be ‘peace within her walls and prosperity within her palaces.’ ”

MONEY

The many references in the Bible to material possessions—money, treasure, things—indicate a divine recognition of their importance, not only from the standpoint of economics, but also because of the bearing they have on the spiritual life of the individual.

Money itself has no spiritual significance. Wealth means nothing, for it cannot be taken out of this world. Poverty has no claim to merit; it too is a transient condition.

But man’s attitude to the material is of the gravest importance. Where in the scale of values do we rank money? Is it our master or our slave? Do we desire it for what it can do for us or for what it can do for others if placed in our hands? Is money a first consideration in our lives or merely incidental to our living for the honor and glory of God?

The Bible makes it plain that money can be either a curse or a blessing; a menace or a means of grace; a lubricant to grease the skids to hell or incense to perfume the way to heaven.

Nowhere does the Bible say that money is the root of evil. But it does say that the love of money is a root of evil.

Love of money becomes an obsession, for within the human heart there is a strange acquisitiveness which is never satisfied. Get one hundred dollars and we immediately want two; secure five hundred, and the desire for one thousand wipes out that satisfaction. The Chinese have an old proverb which expresses this truth: Ren hsin puh choh—“The heart of man is never satisfied.”

The heart of man can be satisfied, but only when material and spiritual things are placed in their proper perspective and we are more concerned about things unseen than with things seen.

The Christian philosophy of money is very important. Many is the Christian who has lost his peace and his witness to others because the love of money has come between him and his Lord. Speaking of this, the Apostle Paul says: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

What should the Christian’s attitude to money be? How can we honor God with material possessions, great or small?

A Trust

Money is a trust from God. It is something which he places in our hands to be used for his glory. The farthing which the poor widow cast into the treasury of the temple was, in our Lord’s eyes, a large and precious gift because it represented great sacrifice on the part of the giver. A million given from many millions is less in His sight.

Stewardship bears not only on the work of God’s kingdom but also heavily upon the spiritual life of the steward.

During the Great Depression, a friend of the writer was financially destitute. He remarked to another friend: “All that I have saved is what I have given to the Lord’s work. I have just one thousand dollars in cash left.”—And he gave that to the cause of world missions.

This man had a deep sense of Christian stewardship. Little wonder that since those days God has prospered him greatly and today he continues to give most of his income to the work of the Church.

A Danger

Even a casual study of the Scriptures will show that money is also a grave danger to those who possess it. In fact money shuts the gates of heaven to those who become its slaves. Our Lord exclaimed, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of God!”

Christ put the test of desire for possessions to the rich young ruler, and he went away sorrowing.

Our Lord told of the man whose wealth increased and, seeing it all, he became selfish and boastful. But God said to him, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”

From beginning to end the danger of money is one of attitude, not of dollars, Does desire for it possess us, or do we demonstrate at all times that it is more blessed to give than to receive?

An Opportunity

God has ordained that the work of his kingdom shall be carried on by men and women who give of themselves and their means to that end.

The entire work of the Church rests, from a practical standpoint, on the gifts of God’s people. It is through the use of money that Christian enterprises of every nature are carried on. The spread of the Gospel across the world depends on money given by those who have themselves received God’s greatest Gift and who know that this entails a responsibility to make Him known to others.

In our day no Christian need lack for avenues of Christian work to which he may give—they are legion. It is not a question of whether one should give but how one should take advantage of the multiplied opportunities for giving.

A Power

The power of money is an awesome thing. For coveting this power to buy things and gratify the desires of the flesh, men will kill, lie, steal, and break every law of God and man in order to obtain.

But the power of honestly gained wealth is also awesome. How best can it be used for the glory of God and the welfare of mankind? How can it be dispensed without injuring those who receive it? How can it be administered lest it become a weapon for evil?

Many have used wealth to further evil causes. Others have used it to bring untold blessings to millions. However, the problem confronting the average Christian is not the use of great sums of money, for few of us are confronted with that problem. Rather, the question is what we should do with that which God has placed in our hands.

In First Corinthians 15, we have the thrilling treatise on the Resurrection. It is of more than minor significance that immediately after this discussion Paul turns to the subject of money: “Now concerning the collection for the saints … Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him …”

It has been stated that the extent of a man’s conversion is often indicated by its effect on his pocketbook. There is a truth in this. Certainly the grace of giving is a grace to be cultivated by every Christian. “The Lord loveth a cheerful (or hilarious) giver,” probably because such a person senses the privilege of giving and because in a very real sense it is an act of worship.

The temptation, power, opportunity, trust, danger, and privilege of money are things from which none of us can escape.

Some day each of us will hear one of two pronouncements: “Well done,” or “Thou wicked and slothful servant.”

The time to lay up riches where they can never be disturbed or lost is now.

L. NELSON BELL