Although the archaeology of Palestine has often been valued mainly to confirm the biblical account, it is often better to look on it simply as an aid to reconstructing the culture of an ancient people. Much that archaeology discloses does not bear on the biblical accounts at all, and an occasional find may complicate rather than simplify our understanding of the Bible.

The period of Israelite history designated by the term “the monarchy” covers well over four hundred years, from the anointing of Saul to the destruction of Jerusalem (c. 1020–587 B.C.), and would cover up to two hundred years longer if the years of the judges were included. To discuss half a millennium under a single rubric would be difficult enough, and the situation is complicated by the variegated character of political and religious life during those centuries. For example, after the first hundred years, north-south tensions split the kingdom into two smaller principalities, Israel (the northern kingdom) falling to Assyria in 721, Judah lasting until 587.

But this long time span does afford a rich body of finds that show the kind of thing archaeology can do for the understanding of the Bible. This article will deal with the modest but important contribution of archaeology to our understanding of historical events, social and cultural development, and religion and theology, and to biblical criticism.

It is not necessary, of course, for a biblical person or event to be known from sources outside the Bible in order to be believable; but it is always interesting to see what additional light extra-biblical sources shed, and the corroboration is suggestive.

The Israelite king Jehu (c. 842–815 B.C.) is an instructive example. His coup and bloody purge are known from Second Kings 9–11, and so is the pressure on him from Hazael of Syria in the north. But the annals and monuments of Shalmaneser of Assyria also add the fact that Jehu paid tribute to Shalmaneser, perhaps to obtain relief from Syrian pressure. The famous “Black Obelisk” of Shalmaneser, discovered in 1846 and now in the British Museum, pictures Jehu (or his representative) bowing low before the king, while the inscription reads, “The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri.” A list of gifts follows. This is the only known contemporary representation of any Israelite king.

Another king mentioned in Assyrian annals is Hezekiah, a late eighth-century king of Judah (c. 715–686 B.C.). Sennacherib laid unsuccessful siege to Jerusalem in his farthest penetration down the Mediterranean coast. He describes the entire western campaign, including the siege, in some detail, and at one point he mentions Hezekiah:

As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, [and] I laid siege to forty-six of his strong cities … and conquered them.… Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage [Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 288].

The last two kings of Judah, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, while not mentioned by name, are referred to in the “Babylonian Chronicles.” These clay tablets are now in the British Museum and have been translated by Donald Wiseman. What Sennacherib the Assyrian attempted to do, Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian actually did. The biblical account (2 Kings 24:8–17) is paralleled by the Babylonian:

Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and seized it on the second day of the month Adar. He then captured its king and appointed a king of his own choice, having received heavy tribute from the city, which he sent back to Babylon [Chronicles of Chaldean Kings].

These particular tablets had been in London for over fifty years before Wiseman identified them; one might almost say they were recovered by exacavations in the British Museum!

The unfortunate King Jehoiachin, deported by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, is mentioned in Babylonian records by name as well as by office. About fifty years ago, German archaeologists working in Babylon found a group of clay tablets detailing rations of oil and barley issued to certain important captives. Jehoiachin of Judah is mentioned, along with other Jews, another kinglet, and numerous skilled craftsmen. This is clear evidence for the favorable treatment of Jehoiachin during his forced exile (2 Kings 24:15; 25:30).

Contrasting Cultures

The material culture of people is a clue to their values and preferences. The archaeologist usually studies an entire sequence of cultures and may be in a position to trace developments that are of great interest. For example, Canaanite culture in Palestine before the Israelite settlement stands in impressive contrast to the simple and unsophisticated homes that followed. This juxtaposition suggests that a simple but virile culture displaced a sophisticated but effete one (W. F. Albright, Archaeology of Palestine, p. 119). The reverse may be seen at the Israelite town of Tirzah. There Père de Vaux found all of the tenth-century homes similar in size and arrangement, while in the eighth century, the larger and better homes were in a separate quarter from the poor houses. He concludes, “Between these two centuries a social revolution had taken place” (Ancient Israel, p. 73).

When Omri abruptly moved his capital from Tirzah to Samaria, he carried the taste of the nouveaux riches with him. Samaria was the only important city founded by the Israelites, and both its layout and material remains are significant. Omri appropriated the site’s impressive and strategic summit plateau for his palace quarters, with the rest of the city being built on the lower levels. Miss Kathleen Kenyon has compared this summit quarter with the Greek acropolis, “the defensible civic centre of a democratic community.” But instead of a democratic center Omri built “an exclusive enclosure reserved for an autocratic king and his servants,” a “new conception in Palestinian townplanning” (Archaeology in the Holy Land, p. 263). The contrast with Israel’s first king is also striking. Saul used a substantial but humble fortress at Gibeah for his headquarters. In the 150-year interval, Israel had developed both prosperity and social stratification.

Omri’s son and successor, the better-known Ahab, continued the reputation for elegance and luxury. His palace is called an “ivory house” (1 Kings 22:29), a symbol of extravagance and oppression later decried by Amos the prophet (Amos 3:13–15). Quantities of carved ivories excavated at Samaria illustrate this embarrassment of riches very nicely. They are carved with floral designs and inlaid with gold foil, lapis lazuli, and colored glass, and may well have come from Ahab’s palace. It is thought that the interior paneling and furniture were adorned with such ivory inlays, giving rise to the expression “ivory house.”

Temple Patterns

Because the religious life of a people is connected with its place of worship, any excavation that advances our understanding of Solomon’s temple takes on religious as well as architectural and cultural interest. It is impossible to conduct excavations on its presumed site, but reconstructions have been proposed for years, based on the data found in First Kings 6 and following. According to these data, the temple consisted basically of three rooms in a row: an outer foyer, an elongated inner room, and the innermost chamber, the Most Holy Place. Two free-standing pillars stood outside, and steps led into the inner room, which was a cube. The rooms were of the same width and on the same axis.

In recent years, temple buildings have been found in Palestine and Syria chronologically proximate to that of Solomon and showing the same basic floor plan. This is important, for it is known that Hiram of Tyre contracted with Solomon to furnish Lebanese timber, as well as “servants” and “builders” (1 Kings 5). Hiram himself personally supervised the casting of the bronze accouterments for the temple (7:13–47). Since Israel lacked a discernible architectural tradition, it may well be that Hiram also provided certain plans and motifs for the Jerusalem temple.

In 1937, University of Chicago archaeologists discovered a chapel in northern Syria much like Solomon’s. It is at Tell Tainat, west of Aleppo, just over the Turkish border, and shows the same tripartite plan, with center room long and inner room small. The inner room may have been elevated and was probably the focal point of the building. Similar temples have been found at Khorsabad, north of the present Mosul, on the upper Tigris.

In each temple the three-room plan is followed, with steps leading up to a raised cella. The finds suggest a widespread impact of Assyrian architecture throughout Assyria’s general sphere of influence, molding Hittite and Phoenician forms that in turn provided a pattern for Jerusalem.

The chapels are each, like Solomon’s temple, attached to a royal residence. Indeed, at Khorsabad, a complex of three temples connected with Sargon’s palace has only two outside entrances, leading the first excavator, Place, to believe that it could only be the royal harem! The inference is that the temples were not so much public sanctuaries as private chapels. Solomon’s temple, therefore, may have functioned partly to encourage divine favor upon his deliberations by providing a place where Yahweh might be easily consulted.

About ten years ago, Israeli archaeologists working at Hazor in northern Galilee found a series of four Canaanite temples that show the tripartite plan. The latest of the four is probably from the thirteenth century. More recently still, excavations at Tell Arad in southern Palestine have brought to light a temple nearly contemporary with Solomon’s, apparently built by Israelites. It seems to have the three-room pattern, although the elongated central room is wide and shallow instead of long and narrow. It has the east-west orientation typical of temples, bases for two large pillars, and certain religious furnishings. Written records found at Arad even mention a “house of Yahweh,” apparently referring to the Jerusalem sanctuary.

Controls on Biblical Criticism

One of the really interesting questions raised by this discovery has to do with the centralization of worship in ancient Israel. According to Deuteronomy 12, no worship was to be permitted outside Jerusalem, although, as has long been recognized, this regulation was not always observed. Indeed, Yadin believes that at Hazor he has found “an idolatrous Israelite cult place,” in use after the Israelites settled there but before the time of Solomon. It is clear from First Kings 12:28–30 that in the tenth century, Jeroboam I established sanctuaries in the north to rival that of Jerusalem, while Amos 5:5 indicates that in the eighth century there were sanctuaries also at Gilgal and Beersheba, both southern towns.

The Arad chapel was built in the time of Solomon, subsequently enlarged, and abandoned in the eighth century, about the time of Josiah of Judah. It was therefore in existence at the same time as Solomon’s temple, and less than forty miles away. Some think this supports the current opinion that the Deuteronomic regulation was first formulated by Hezekiah (715–686). Whether this is so or not, however, it does seem to indicate the effectiveness of Josiah’s well-known religious reforms (2 Kings 22–23), for the Arad chapel was abandoned and a massive wall built through it.

Biblical criticism, like literary criticism of any sort, is a procedure with subjective dimensions. It is legitimate when done with appropriate controls, but objective checks upon its conclusions are all too few. The Arad find is not really such a check, since some laws on all books seems destined not to be observed, but it suggests that archaeology may sometimes become at least a factor in biblical criticism. Unfortunately, the situation at Arad is still far from clear, for some experts in ancient masonry believe that the great wall marking the end of the sanctuary is not seventh century but first. If so, an evidence for the Josianic reform disappears, and with it also the evidence for the violation of Deuteronomy 12!

Religious practices during the monarchy will be clarified as excavations continue. We probably do not need archaeology to tell us basic facts about the history, culture, and religion of the period, but we gratefully welcome the considerable light it throws upon the biblical records.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Few figures in the Old Testament loom larger than Moses, and few events rival the exodus from Egypt in vividness of detail and in significance for the course of Hebrew history. In the flow of time, the man and event fall somewhere within the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries B.C., most evidence now favoring the thirteenth century. This was the period of the Egyptian Empire and of Late Bronze Age culture in Syria-Palestine, a period very richly, though unevenly, documented in the story of the biblical Near East. In these centuries, Egyptians, Semites, Hurrians (Horites), and Hittites mingled on an international stage.

An Egyptian Heritage

Before the Exodus, the life and labors of the Hebrews were set in the eastern delta within the life of ancient Egypt. The cities of Pithom and Raamses (Ex. 1:11) are familiar from Egyptian records, especially those of the thirteenth century, and Raamses held special prominence as the delta residence of Rameses II. The exodus route itself may be traced with considerable confidence. Succoth (“Tjeku”), Baal-Zephon, and (Pi-ha)hiroth are known in papyri, and more than one “Migdol” (fort). The Hebrews went eastward from Raamses (Qantir) past and near Succoth to the western edge of the wilderness of Etham (near El-Gisr ridge), then doubled back west of north (Ex. 14:2). Finally they journeyed east again through the parted waters of the Sea of Reeds (Hebrew, Yam suf), attested in Egyptian records also, then south by the region of Shur and the east side of Etham (Ex. 15:22; Num. 33:8) to Sinai.

The Hebrews’ life in Egypt long before they marched forth lends itself to comment. There is nothing unusual in the fact that a non-Egyptian child like Moses was brought up in a royal harem, of which there were several in empire times. A late thirteenth-century papyrus mentions young foreigners who lived in a harem in the Fayum, presumably receiving an Egyptian education.

All manner of foreigners, Semites and others, were to be found at all levels of Egyptian society: slaves, peasant-farmers, artisans and craftsmen, merchants, officials and priests, high dignitaries in the administration and at court, even cup-bearers to Pharaoh himself, sometimes then serving as special ministers of the crown. In this cosmopolitan society, not only did foreigners acquire the Egyptian language in addition to their own, but literate Egyptians sometimes prided themselves on their knowledge of foreign tongues and distant places. Into this broad social spectrum, one may easily fit the Hebrews who labored in the brick fields, craftsmen such as Bezalel and Oholiab (Ex. 31:1–6) higher up the scale, and a princely figure like Moses near the top. West Semitic (the early Hebrew or Canaanite language) not only was understood in Egypt but had long been written in a simple alphabet for everyday matters.

The picture of brick-making, the overseers, the need of straw as well as of labor, and the problems of religious holidays pictured in Exodus 5 all accord perfectly with the incidental references to such matters found in the papyri and scrap jottings of the age. These refer to quotas of bricks, lack of straw, and other related matters. The registers of workmen from western Thebes speak of absenteeism, including references to men who went “to offer to their god” (cf. Ex. 5:3, 8). The basic techniques employed for the construction of the tabernacle (a “prefabricated” structure) are no priestly pipedream but had already been known in Egypt for centuries. The techniques of building in this manner would be no mystery to a Bezalel trained in Egyptian workshops. Thus, when the Hebrews left Egypt, some at least took with them a heritage less tangible and more significant than jewels (Ex. 12:35, 36).

Near Eastern Background

Yet the Hebrews were not Egyptians. They were Semites and as such heirs also to the world of Semitic custom and tradition.

In the covenant made at Sinai (Ex. 20 ff.) and later renewed in the plains of Moab (Deut.), there is a counterpart in form (though not in theology) to the layout of covenants and treaties usual in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. After about 1200, ways changed in the wake of the sweeping changes that hit the Near East about that date and after. The comparative evidence includes at least two dozen examples showing remarkable consistency in form. The many fewer documents from the first millennium B.C. possess only the essential elements (parties, stipulations, witnesses, curses as “sanctions”), in common with those of Moses’ time, and vary in form, all in striking contrast with the close agreement between the Mosaic covenant and its late second-millennium contemporaries. This clue to the real date of the Sinai covenant and its renewals in Deuteronomy and Joshua cannot be easily dismissed.

The Sinai covenant also contains law, and with the passing of time this became the spiritual constitution for the Hebrew nation and community. As law, the Sinai covenant bears comparison with other collections of law from the biblical world, including three collections from before the patriarchal age: the law of Hammurabi of Babylon, the Hittite laws, and the Middle Assyrian laws. These, with everyday records of actions-at-law, offer a broad vista of popular custom in the biblical world from before Abraham down to just after Moses’ day. Much is comparable—in subject-matter, in modes of formulation, even in similar or parallel terminology. There is no real factual warrant for saying that the Hebrew laws are formulations of the Persian Empire period, when their best analogues sometimes go back to the time of the patriarchs! The modern ideogram “PC” would be better read as “patriarchal core” rather than “priestly code.”

The cleavage between biblical and non-biblical law can be seen in such things as a fundamental difference in emphasis. For example, the biblical laws set a prior value on man, not property, whereas in Babylonia offenses against property (mere things) could be treated more seriously than crimes against life. Here is a contrast conditioned not by time or an imaginary “evolution” but by a basic difference in viewpoint brought about by the biblical revelation.

In matters of religion, the old idea that rituals and consciousness of sin are “late” (that is, after the Babylonian exile) is quite untenable. Quantities of offering-lists, full-scale rituals, and festival programs are attested in Egypt and Mesopotamia from the third millennium B.C. on, and among the Hittites and Canaanites in the second millennium B.C. In their elaboration, these often far outstrip anything to be found in the Pentateuch. In the Egypt of Moses, one finds a considerable consciousness of sin in the modest religious inscriptions of workers at the royal tombs of Thebes, as well as in occasional references going back nearly a millennium earlier.

In the literary field, the Song of Moses and Miriam (Ex. 15) is fine, archaic Hebrew poetry consonant with the late second millennium B.C. These songs are also members of the genre of triumph hymns attested by Egyptian texts from the fifteenth-thirteenth centuries. The oracles of Balaam similarly contain much that is clearly ancient.

A rich variety of other details might be called upon to fill in the overall picture: the use of ox wagons (Num. 7), the long trumpets and their functions (Num. 10), the spies (Num. 13), for which background data exists in Egypt and probably elsewhere also. The same is true of personal names, some Egyptianized (Phinehas), some hybrid (Putiel), and some Semitic (Shiprah and Puah). On every hand, instructive comparisons are found. From the foregoing survey, one point worthy of note is the sheer wealth of highly relevant background information, much of it contemporary with the general epoch of Moses and in some aspects going back in time well beyond it.

The second point is the basic realism of the Old Testament record. Although some points of only limited importance may yet resist full understanding, it is an inescapable fact that these narratives, poems, and laws are not yet in some imaginary land that transcends mortal history but breathe the real life so abundantly attested in the biblical Near East, whether in law or covenant, midwifery or music, hymnody or ritual, geography or technology. Thus, the skepticism so fashionable during the last century or so stands condemned, not merely at the whim of a conservative theology heedful of dogmatics, but inexorably and increasingly at the hands of the re-emergent biblical world itself, elucidated from a flow of raw material by archaeologists and philologians. In short, Moses and his age, exodus and all, must be reckoned as a part of mundane history.

The point is reinforced by our one specific reference to the people of Moses in this age: the mention of Israel as a people in western Palestine on the famous stela of the pharaoh Merenptah (c. 1234/1220 B.C.). Despite occasional aberrations, there can be little real doubt that this is a reference to the biblical Israelites, and (with the Amada stela) it places them with considerable certainty in western Palestine. The Teutonic myopia that, under a smokescreen of methodology, fails to see the obvious will just have to be discarded in the face of externally attested realism.

Part of Living History

Once the external data have restored the epoch of Moses to us, we are brought back to the text of the Old Testament itself in order to reach a real evaluation of the man and his age. Here we see the stream of patriarchal tradition and the experiences of the Egyptian sojourn, which come to their first full flowering at the birth of a nation at Sinai. The Sinai covenant thereafter provides basic guidelines for the Hebrew nation and the spiritual basis of its ongoing community. This can be seen deeply influencing the historical books and the work of the prophets.

A historical profile involving in sequence a formative age (the patriarchs and the sojourn in Egypt), a crucial crystallizing of cultural forms (the Mosaic age and covenant), and the ongoing undulations of history in terms of a basic viewpoint and tradition, is not foreign to the biblical world. One may see this on the grand scale in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, and in other countries. In the former, for example, the first two dynasties saw the formation of Egyptian culture in the fullest sense. In the brilliant Old Kingdom of the Pyramid Age, the typical forms were crystallized and remained fundamentally in force for the two and a half millennia that passed before the Roman period. Many new things were added during that long time, but they were added to an existing basis and outlook. Similarly, the rich theology of Deuteronomy, with its echoes and re-echoes in books like Judges and Kings or with prophets like Jeremiah, shows a long perspective. It is a deformation of history to cite later echoes of a basic viewpoint in order to date everything like it to the seventh to fourth centuries B.C.

The combined evidence of the Old Testament and the rich tapestry of its setting highlight the vital importance and lively reality of the Mosaic age. The question should not be, “Can we believe in a biblical Moses and Mosaic period?,” but, “Will we believe in such?” The total evidence can compel no one to believe. But it points clearly enough in one direction and in its own right cuts the ground out from under those whose “method” is simply to ignore or reject whatever the Old Testament may have to say, under the delusion that they are thereby practicing truly critical scholarship.

The Mosaic period is not a theological shadow play in some never-never land. Its part in the “history of salvation” is played out in the cut-and-thrust encounter of living history.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Archaeology is rewriting the secular life of Abraham. We now know him as a “big business man” of the nineteenth century B.C. engaged in international commerce.

Abraham followed in the steps of his father Terah, who specialized in trade coming from the Persian Gulf via Ur, up the Euphrates and Balikh rivers to Harran. Sometime before Ur was destroyed by the Elamites (in the lifetime of Terah or Abraham), Terah seems to have sensed trouble and to have moved his headquarters from Ur to Harran. Harran was the ideal transfer point for commerce going east to Assyria and Persia, north to the Hittite country and the Lake Van area, west to the Mediterranean, and southwest to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Apparently Terah planned to enter the Harran-Canaan trade lane, but he died before the new venture got under way. Yahweh then appeared to Abraham and marked out the plans and specifications for a new business venture for him. Abraham fulfilled them faithfully, and later God sealed a covenant with Abraham embracing ownership of the land between the Euphrates and the river of Egypt.

Abraham was a caravaneer—the original meaning of the word “Hebrew.” In his time all land commerce moved on donkey back. The caravan donkeys were large animals that carried 150- to 200-pound packs. Anatolian and Syrian caravans numbered up to 3,000 donkeys. Egyptian caravans ran about 300 to 1,000 donkeys, and Abraham’s was probably in this range.

Every city mentioned in the Abraham story was a key caravan city. Shechem lay at the junction of the north-south ridge road and the east-west pass between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal that linked the Mediterranean with the Transjordan plateau via the Jabbok River. It was a Hurrian enclave where the ass was the sacrificial animal, as at Harran. Bethel, on the same ridge road, was also a junction point for east-west traffic. This road came from the Mediterranean up the valley of Ajalon to Bethel and then descended to Jericho, where it crossed to Transjordan and Arabia.

Hebron was the next Abrahamic city on the ridge road. It handled traffic coming from the Mediterranean via Beer-sheba, passing it on to Transjordan via the south end of the Dead Sea, at that time much farther north than now. Abraham used Sodom as the caravan city to handle his Arabian trade and entrusted it to his nephew Lot. After the destruction of Sodom, Abraham seems to have carried on his business directly with the Arab tribes. This is the only explanation of his marriage to Keturah; it must have been a diplomatic marriage, necessary to carry on international commerce. It was in no way related to the Sarah marriage, which was the “only family marriage.”

The wealth of the family of Abraham was witnessed by the towns in the Harran area that reflected the names of various members of the clan: Serug, Nahor, Terah, and Peleg. Sarah also was rich, for she was a “sister-wife,” an official Hurrian term signifying the highest social rating. Like modern Hong Kong, Harran was a blending of two cultures. Abraham’s life reflects both the Semitic and the Hurrian culture and both legal patterns.

The episode in which Lot was taken prisoner is another evidence of Abraham’s role as a caravaneer, for it shows that he had his own small but highly efficient military unit to protect his commerce in this sparsely settled land. The Abimelech episode at Beer-sheba also suggests the superiority of Abraham’s retainers. Inscriptional materials show that the donkey caravans were often subject to brigandage.

Genesis fourteen gives another clue to Abraham’s business. This chapter used to be an enigma, for the strong allied forces seemed to be going on a dead-end military campaign into the Sinai Desert. Today we know that this was normal warfare; the invaders were after the rich prize of the copper deposits in Edom and Sinai, and the metal from the mines of both countries was doubtless a major part of Abraham’s commerce. This explains his preference for the Kadesh-barnea and Sinai route to Egypt rather than the normal Mediterranean one.

Gerar was a very important caravan city at the beginning of Abraham’s business enterprise, for as a foreigner he needed “resident-alien” rites for the Negeb-Egyptian business. Gerar was the first major Palestine city on the road from Egypt that followed the shore of the Mediterranean. Later Abraham was powerful enough to make his own cities of Mamre (Hebron) and Beer-sheba the caravan cities at the end of his alternate trade route to Egypt via Kadesh-barnea. The Kadesh-barnea route had only a brief history, for the little hamlets along the road were there only during Middle Bronze I, the period to which most scholars assign Abraham. The trade route was not used again until the Iron Age.

As a major caravaneer, Abraham faced a constant problem of feeding his donkeys and drivers. Fortunately the agricultural areas most useful to him were only sparsely occupied, so he himself could farm and graze the area of his trade roads. Special crop techniques were necessary along the route from Kadesh-barnea to Egypt, however, and these methods show up well in the hamlets along the Sinai section of the road. Water had to be conserved for both crops and caravans.

Such an extensive international business as Abraham’s demanded large capital. Abraham did his banking at Damascus, where Eliezer was his banker and his heir in his early business deals. Under Hurrian law a moneylender was adopted into the borrower’s family, thus becoming a legal heir and being assured of repayment.

The business contract of which we have the best detailed report is Abraham’s purchase of the cave of Machpelah for the burial of Sarah. Since Abraham was a “resident-alien” at Hebron, he could not make “a man to man” purchase; the deal had to be approved by the town council. Apparently the people of Hebron were Hittites whose closest major city was Jerusalem. Like Abraham they seemed to have been a commercial people, but they had come into the land earlier and had already secured property rights. They had already worked with Abraham in the military campaign against the army that had captured Lot. The price of the land was exorbitant—400 shekels of silver “at the rate of the market.” This last idiom parallels quite modern terminology. Abraham himself was later buried here beside Sarah.

Archaeology can check the religious background in which Abraham lived and worked, but his spiritual life was unique. Yahweh worked with him personally as Christ did later with his disciples. Abraham was “justified by faith,” just as the Christian is justified; the essence of his life was “trust.”

Abraham built his own altars as communication centers with God. He did not use heathen ones. The sacrifice of Isaac is often given Canaanite significance, but Abraham’s faith was greater than that of the commentators. He told the servants, “We will worship and then return to you,” revealing his faith that God would spare Isaac or return his son to him. And when Isaac asked about a sheep, Abraham replied that God would provide it.

The Melchizedek episode is of special interest, for it provides evidence of a true believer who was not in Abraham’s family. Grace was even then to Jew and Gentile.

Archaeology knows many of the details of the Canaanite religion of the peoples surrounding Abraham. Sodom’s destruction was God’s evaluation of the Canaanite religion and its homosexual priestly guilds. In all probability, the Canaanite sanctuary excavated at Shechem is the same one Abraham saw there. The hill east of Bethel was a sacred site much earlier than Abraham’s time, a fact witnessed by the prehistoric flints found beside the sacrificial altars. The Canaanite high place at Bethel has been uncovered and is very similar to the one under the Muslim Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, said to be the place of Abraham’s sacrificial episode with Isaac.

Of all the Abrahamic descendants in Genesis, it was Joseph especially who had both the secular and spiritual qualities of the father of the faithful. The Joseph story ties in perfectly with the Hyksos conquest of Egypt. The Hyksos invaders were themselves largely Semitic and consequently willing to settle some new Israelite Semitic clans at the eastern end of the Nile delta. This was the general neighborhood of the Egyptian terminus of Abraham’s old trade routes. The founding of the Hyksos capital at Tanis is actually synchronized with the founding of Hebron. Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold, was apparently an Egyptian quisling in the Hyksos government.

The Pharaoh whose dream Joseph interpreted spoke as a Semite and not as an Egyptian when he said, “God has made this all known to you.” No Egyptian-born Pharaoh would have said this, for the Pharaoh was the most important god in Egypt. One cannot be dogmatic about the cows in this dream, but they may relate to Hathor, the cow goddess, who was one of the most important fertility deities in Egypt. She was the equivalent of the Canaanite Astarte. If Hathor is involved in the dream, then the problem of interpretation would have been impossible for an Egyptian magician. The Nile River, the area from which these cows came, was also an important Egyptian god. The honors given to Joseph for interpreting the dream were the highest Egyptian honors.

The seven-year drought is paralleled by an inscription of King Zoser as early as the third dynasty. Some scholars think that the famine was aggravated by revolting Egyptians in the south who succeeded in partially interrupting the flow of water into the delta. More likely it was due to a climatic change caused by the jet streams of the upper air moving to a more northern route. The method by which Joseph secured all the land for Pharaoh was a peaceful method by which the Hyksos Pharaoh could consolidate his throne. The mention of horses in this famine program shows its dating in Hyksos times. The wagons that were sent to bring Jacob’s family to Egypt are of similar date. Neither horse nor wagon appears in the Abraham story. Joseph’s relatives were located permanently in Goshen, and during this period the Hyksos Pharaohs made their capital at Tanis in the eastern delta. This is the same area in which the Israelites are found in the Book of Exodus.

The Israelites kept their title deed on Palestine by burying Jacob there. Joseph, his son, lived a full life according to Egyptian terminology (110 years) and was embalmed in Egypt. His body was taken to Palestine at the time of the Exodus.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

During the past century, our knowledge of the historical and literary background of the Bible has increased by a series of prodigious leaps, and it is now advancing with steadily increasing speed. My own thinking has fully participated in this rapid change, as may be seen by comparison of my several volumes of a general nature, from The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (1932) through From the Stone Age to Christianity (1940) to Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (1968). This steady advance is the result of several factors:

1. A rapid increase in the number of serious archaeological expeditions from many different countries, including Japan. Museum space and volume of publication have kept pace with the field work.

2. An improvement of archaeological method that has been little short of phenomenal. This applies both to the analysis of superimposed layers of occupation (stratigraphy) and to classification and relative dating of objects found (typology).

3. Use of innumerable new techniques derived from the natural sciences, among them radiocarbon (carbon isotope 14) for dating.

4. Decipherment and interpretation of the flood of new inscriptions and texts in many scripts and languages, many quite unknown until recent decades. The application of sound linguistic and philological method to well-preserved cuneiform tablets and Egyptian hieratic papyri makes it possible to publish them with speed and accuracy. A new script is deciphered quickly, if there are a few good clues or sufficient material to permit decoding. The number of cuneiform tablets from three millennia preserved under debris of occupation in Western Asia and Egypt seems to be practically unlimited, and new methods of baking and reproduction have reduced losses to a surprisingly low proportion.

With the aid of stratigraphy, scientific analysis, and museum research, the archaeologist can now reconstruct the daily life of ancient peoples with remarkable completeness, enhanced by evidence contained in written documents dealing with everyday affairs. He can fill gaps in military and political history; he can trace social and economic development and the effect on society of new inventions and discoveries—even in the absence of inscriptions. Aside from texts dealing with business and industry, we have masses of documents devoted to legal matters, including a dozen law codes and a host of records of court cases, legal actions, treatises, and contracts of all kinds.

Another very large body of ancient literature recovered by archaeologists is religious. Religion played such a dominant role in the life of the ancient Near and Middle East that it is impossible to imagine what its absence would have meant. Generally it is very easy to distinguish between religious literature and other forms of literary composition; this directly contradicts the sociologists and anthropologists who want to dismiss religion as unimportant for ancient and modern primitive societies. We can also follow the development of natural science in Mesopotamia and Egypt from simple beginnings to degrees of sophistication that in some respects even exceeded levels attained by early Greek science—though in general the Greek was far superior.

In the light of our new information, biblical archaeologists no longer devote themselves primarily to proving the accuracy of Scripture, though this remains important and new confirmations are turning up almost daily. Their main purpose today is to interpret the Bible as fully as possible from the new evidence. The result is throughout favorable to the biblical record, and over and over again reinterpretations of biblical concepts and phraseology in the light of archaeology make the Bible more meaningful for today. For instance, the Amarna and Mari tablets have proved that the Hebrew verb naqam and its derived nouns do not mean “avenge, revenge, vengeful” when used of God, but “champion, vindicate, save,” and so on. The more we know about the world of the Bible, the brighter becomes the light shed on the historical relation of man to his Creator.

The Bible is itself a collection of written documents, and discoveries of contemporary documents are of the greatest value in interpreting the biblical writings. Written documents tend to appear in archives or accidentally preserved libraries, with stretches of little-known territory between large bodies of written documents. We shall limit ourselves to a number of outstanding illustrations of the wealth of material now available.

From the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries B.C. we have vast collections of cuneiform letters and legal or business texts. The largest single body of these comes from Mari on the Middle Euphrates and dates chiefly from the eighteenth century B.C. Since most of these tablets were written by Northwestern Semites speaking dialects closely related to patriarchal Hebrew, and since many of the tribal and personal names, as well aslaws and customs, are closely paralleled in biblical tradition, it is possible to recover the practices and beliefs of the people from whom the patriarchs came. Additional finds of similar documents have very recently been made in the cities of Shusharra and Qattara in what later became the core of the Assyrian empire. Adding to these finds, most of which have not yet been published, a very large number of Old Assyrian letters and legal texts from the Assyrian merchant colonies in Cappadocia (the eastern part of the central plateau of Asia Minor) dating from the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries B.C., we have a vast treasury of documents that will throw undreamedof light on the patriarchal period, demonstrating the substantial historicity of early Israelite traditions. Somewhat later are the Nuzi texts (fifteenth century), which have illuminated the customary laws of Genesis.

To the late twentieth and nineteenth centuries B.C. belong the so-called Execration Texts, which have been found in northern and southern Egypt as well as in Nubia; they are written in Egyptian hieratic and include names of tribes, districts, and towns and their chieftains. These chieftains were vassals of the Egyptian pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty; most of them ruled in Palestine, southern Syria, and Phoenicia. They are of the greatest significance for the political and ethnic history of Palestine in the early Patriarchal Age. Thanks to these and other Egyptian lists of Semitic names from the eighteenth century B.C., it is possible to determine the exact phonetic form of a great many names of patriarchal type that appear in contemporary cuneiform texts, not only from Mari and other places in the north but also from the rich Babylonian cities of that time, including Ur, Abraham’s home.

Next we may list the Amarna Tablets and related documents from Palestine and Syria that include hundreds of cuneiform letters written in Babylonian of every type, from good Middle Babylonian of the fourteenth century B.C. to a kind of Canaanite Babylonian that is full of words and expressions characteristic of early Hebrew. Many of these tablets were written from such places as Jerusalem, Gezer, Megiddo, and Shechem.

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Canaanite alphabetic tablets from Ugarit, north of Canaan proper. Thanks to them, we have a vast body of texts from the age of Moses (fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C.). They are partly in the local prose dialect of Ugarit at that time, but mostly in a generalized poetic dialect that corresponds closely to such early Hebrew poetic language as the Song of Miriam (thirteenth century B.C.) and the Song of Deborah (twelfth century), as well as to many of the early Psalms. They have enormously widened our knowledge of biblical Hebrew vocabulary and grammar.

The steady accumulation of ink-written potsherds (ostraca) in both the dialects of Judah and North Israel in the tenth to sixth centuries B.C., accompanied by finds of Aramaic papyri in Egypt from the sixth to fourth centuries, has thrown light on a host of historical and literary problems in classical Hebrew and Aramaic literature. Our understanding of political and religious development from Samuel to Ezra has grown greatly.

But the incredible discoveries of leather and papyrus scrolls and fragments in the Jordan and Dead Sea valleys since 1948 easily take precedence over all other finds except the tablets of Ugarit. They are clarifying intertestamental studies to an extent considered impossible only a few years ago. New Testament studies are being revolutionized as the date of the Gospels is pushed back and the meaning of obscure texts is illuminated. Neither “form criticism” in Bultmann’s sense nor the now popular “existential” interpretation of Paul and John can withstand the torrent of Jewish illustrative material in Hebrew and Aramaic—practically all antedating the Fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

In dealing with the Bible from the standpoint of modern archaeological discovery, one must remember that the Bible is both divine, since it rests on divine inspiration, and human, since it has come to us through human channels. Much of both the Old and New Testaments was transmitted by oral tradition. In other words, the Bible contains many things handed down by word of mouth—in the Old Testament largely in verse and in the New Testament as oral reports of words and acts of Jesus and his disciples. The written text of these early traditions followed later—though earlier than supposed by “critical” scholars.

It has long been obvious that our written Bible passed through an often complex history. Copyists inevitably made minor errors in copying, and their mistakes were compounded by later copyists until different recensions arose, with varying written forms of the texts, which can be classified both by key mistakes of copyists and by the efforts of later editors to correct real or supposed errors. In early times, there were naturally more errors of copyists than there were later, when accuracy became a prime object. Then came translations where, owing to the different connotations of words with similar meanings in different languages, there are nearly always slight semantic shifts that give rise to different interpretations. For instance, in the translation of Hebrew into Greek, the word for “pact, covenant” came to mean “testament,” and a whole new body of interpretation grew up around this change of sense. Illustrations are so numerous in both the Old and the New Testament that it is scarcely necessary to belabor this point. Although these changes do not affect basic religious convictions, they often do bear on specific theological interpretations.

Oral tradition has its own characteristics, its own regularities, that render its transmission both safer and more accurate in some ways and less accurate in others. Since verse was put into fixed meters and stylistic forms, and since it was sung or chanted, it was often preserved with an accuracy rarely found in normal written transmission of early literary texts. Most of the early historical traditions of the Old Testament are based on such poetic transmission. Side by side with the poetic original we often have condensed prose paraphrases. The combination of verse and prose transmission results in extraordinary reliability from the point of view of the historian of events, literature, and religion.

Another point to be borne in mind is that as a rule the Old Testament was originally written with only the consonants and without spaces between words. The Hebrew Bible with vowel points and separated words did not come in until about the eighth century A.D. While it shows a remarkably continuous tradition with respect to grammatical forms and meaning of words, by that time more than 2,000 years had elapsed since the time of Moses and perhaps 2,500 years since the time of Abraham. It is not surprising, then, that the very existence of many words was forgotten and the precise meaning of many others was no longer understood. Today, thanks to an incredible series of archaeological discoveries of documents extending from about 2000 B.C., down to the first century A.D., we have a Northwest-Semitic literature that is much more extensive than the entire Old Testament. Consequently we are able to improve the interpretation of the Old Testament text, especially in poetic passages, to an extent undreamed of a generation ago.

In studying the New Testament, we now have a similar increase in the quantity of Semitic texts dating to just before and just after the time of Christ. They vastly increase our understanding of the grammar and vocabulary of the Hebrew and Aramaic spoken and written in the time of Christ. For the first time we can really grasp the significance of the Syriac versions of the Gospels.

Much nonsense has been repeated about what constitutes orthodoxy in dealing with the texts of the Old and New Testaments. It has even been asserted recently that the Pentateuch was written by Moses in the exact form that has come down to us in the Hebrew Bible. So-called critical scholarships was partly responsible for this approach, since nineteenth-century critics insisted that the text of our printed Hebrew Bible had come down from the time of its supposed final editing in the time of Ezra without any appreciable change. Today, thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know that this is not true. There were different recensions of the Pentateuch, and no immutable form can be attributed to any part of it. It is quite impossible to cut the Pentateuch up into a patch-work of “JEP” with any hope of increasing our knowledge of what actually happened. That the Pentateuchal law is substantially Mosaic in origin and that patriarchal and Mosaic historical traditions are astonishingly early and dependable seems, in my opinion, certain.

There has also been a great deal of nonsense written about discrepancies and contradictions in the Bible. It must be remembered that reconstructing history is quite impossible unless we have different views of just what happened at given times and different reactions of contemporaries or successors. No true perspective is possible without different eyewitness or later accounts. In the case of any famous man of the recent past, we shall find different points of view and different interpretations of what he did and why he did it. In order to get as true a picture as possible of a man and of the events that transpired in his time, we must have different reports of what actually happened or appeared to happen. Minor discrepancies do not invalidate historicity; they are necessary concomitants of any true history of man.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Many stories in the history of the Church and of biblical scholarship remain only partly told. Of these, few are as significant as the story of archaeology. Since the nineteenth century, when archaeological expeditions were first launched in an extensive way, literally tons of artifacts and parchments have been uncovered. Many bear either directly or indirectly on the biblicalrecords. For some periods—such as the earliest history of the people of Israel and the years in which the New Testament was written—thefinds have often been revolutionary.

This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY helps to illumine this story. Foremost on our list of contributors is the distinguished Orientalist Dr. William F. Albright, retired professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University, who contributes a focal essay on the Bible and archaeology.

When an assassin’s bullet felled Senator Kennedy, we were within hours of our final editorial deadline. The stunning news from Californiacarried a new warning of the trendtoward violence in the United States, and a further reply to those who think that a new society can beshaped simply by changing socialstructures.

For background on Arab-Israeltensions bearing on the mood of Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, readers are referred to our last issue, particularly the essay by Dr. Kelso, and to page 39 of this issue.

The life of theology and the Church is vulnerable to all sorts of dangers. Some people, deeply impressed by danger, are fearful of taking any new step lest they fall victim to it. One is reminded of the Preacher’s description of people who are getting old: “They shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way … (Eccl. 12:5).” The time of fear is a hard time of life.

We must remember that, in theology and the Christian life, we are not permitted to be driven back by fear of danger, as wide-eyed as we ought to be to its reality. Danger is not a theological term. The man who is afraid of danger is disqualified for creative action in the tension-ridden times that Church and theology are now going through. Hemmed in by fear, we are held to a stalemate. And this is never God’s intention for our lives.

Our task and calling must take us straight through danger. If we are possessed by fear, we are unable to do the job and follow the calling. This is true in the ordinary affairs of life and particularly in our Christian endeavors. We need only think of Paul and his own apostolic task. He fulfilled it in an environment of very practical dangers—things like rivers to cross, robber bands, the desert and the sea, raving mobs. The lesson is elemental: dangers may never keep us back from our job in life.

Tempted to act, or to fail to act, in fear, one is well served if he remembers Jeremiah 12:5: “If thou hast run with the footman, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustest, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?”

One consequence of exaggerated fear of danger is the absence of joy. In fearful theology, we could never discover the truth of what Barth said about theology, that it is a joyful science. This does not mean, of course, that we play around with danger or ignore its presence. The slogan of the theologian can never be, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. But dangers ought never to hide from us the clear lines of our responsibility, especially not in times such as ours.

It is tempting to zero in on all the dangers of relativism, irenicism, historicism, “demythologizing,” and the like, and then to be so frightened by them that we give up on the task of translating the Gospel for our time for fear of falling into one or another trap. The only response that fear allows is that of the negative “anti,” the negative judgment against heresies and rumors of heresies.

When this happens, we are inclined to forget that the Gospel is first of all a mighty pro. Once we are possessed by the power of the Gospel’s pro, we will have ample occasion to come to grips with its con or anti side. We will have plenty of opportunities to speak in defense and resistance. But if we fall victim to the anti spirit and close our minds to the powerful pro, we sacrifice humanly speaking, the Church and theology to fear of danger. The future is closed to us when this happens. And we resign the Church to the public image of a group that is only against things, an image opposite to both the content and the spirit of the Gospel.

Nothing is more important for us today than that we blaze a trail through the dangers that surround us. This demands great seriousness and sober analysis of the times. Theology, around the world, is looked to increasingly for a word of power and clarity. But it can not pretend to offer its own “gnosis,” a humanly constructed system of knowledge that it claims can open the doors of the Kingdom. Rather, theology must offer itself in humble service to human life, a service that only the Gospel can perform in the power of the Spirit.

Here, above all, we must live in the truth that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The word John uses is the same one we meet when we read that Jesus “cast out” demons. Theology must cast out fear; it must be unwilling to duck away from any problem. At bottom, problem-ducking is an act of petty faith. In small faith, one suppresses problems out of fear that he and other believers can only be harmed by dealing with them in the open. Faith then becomes a safety zone where problems do not intrude and danger does not threaten. But in this faith there is no longer an opportunity for victory, because there is no longer any conflict.

We should not forget that almost everyone is influenced by modern media of communications, that almost everyone does come into contact with new questions. There are questions raised by the new technology of our time, questions about creation and the acts of God. There are questions raised by the very detailed biblical studies of our time. Anyone ignoring these questions does the Church poor service and inflicts serious damage on our faith and also that of the next generation. The theology of our time has become keenly aware of this.

The Gospel is the power of God to salvation, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If we keep this in mind, we will face the dangers and go on with our task. Theology will be, not a game played in an intellectual ghetto, but a serious calling pursued in an open and fearless confrontation with the spirits of the age. This is how it was with Paul; he fled from no-one, not even the bright philosophers hanging around the Aeropagus. He faced outward because the gospel had taken hold of him, and compelled him to wish nothing more than to share it with others.

Dangers are around us, waiting for us not to capitulate but to conquer. They are there, not to fill us with fear, but to fill us with faith. Theology joins in the fray, answering a summons to cast out fear and do the Lord’s work. Theology is a responsible job; and its responsibility should be met with joy and confidence. Fear fertilizes only a stunted faith. But in actual confrontation, faith is nourished with courage and love. This nourished faith is what makes us willing, under all circumstances, to give a reason for the hope that is within us.

In the shadow of the nation’s memorial to Abraham Lincoln, a makeshift city took shape last month. The announced resident requirement was enslavement to poverty, the announced aim emancipation by the government. Plywood-plastic shacks housed some 3,000 persons, mostly Negroes, in Resurrection City. Among them was temporary “mayor” Ralph David Abernathy, the clergyman who inherited from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not only the top position in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference but also the job of administering the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington (see story following).

Campaigners coming from all parts of the country leaned heavily on volunteers and donations from churches, many of which quickly made clear that aid was not necessarily endorsement.

Among evangelicals, response seemed left almost entirely to individual discretion. The National Association of Evangelicals made no official comment on the campaign. The Greater Washington Association of Evangelicals recommended prayer as well as material expression of Christian love. Some member churches donated food but did not offer facilities.

At New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Lincoln worshiped, one room became an SCLC information center where volunteers were directed to needs and a television reporter worked on his network’s newscasts.

The National Council of Churches’ Department of Social Justice moved to Washington for the campaign, bringing staff members from around the country. Its purpose was to coordinate national religious leadership and provide liaison.

Some church groups, such as the Topeka (Kansas) Church Council, dissatisfied with local coverage, sent representatives for on-the-spot reporting. Father James E. Groppi, Milwaukee civil-rights activist, accompanied a group of Midwesterners to Washington Coliseum (Resurrection City was not ready for them), where he conducted a Mass with singing and handclapping.

Reports indicated that the SCLC appealed mainly to white churches—though some officials appeared to fear that too much white suburban aid could ruin the movement. Apparently little was done to enlist Negro church aid.

During its first week in Washington, the campaign tottered uncertainly. Demonstrators who arrived before Resurrection City was completed went to overcrowded churches while other churches remained empty. More campaigners were expected than the Department of the Interior would allow on the fifteen-acre tract, and what to do about the overflow was undetermined. The SCLC issued no schedule for early demonstrations; some that were planned were canceled or postponed, and others took place with little advance notice. Even the date of the final demonstration—to which, according to some reports, ministers may be specially called—was changed from May 30 to June 19.

Resurrection City has some of the atmosphere of a rustic summer camp. Volunteers play ball with youngsters or take them on sightseeing excursions. A loudspeaker blares announcements and pages leaders. On a line between two plywood “tents,” tennis shoes hang drying. A “big top” provides the community dining area, and trailers house medical facilities.

That shelters are temporary and insufficient is obvious. Plastic draped around the top and a curtain over the open front can hardly provide adequate protection against rain or the sun that in late May often beats without mercy on the capital. Furnishings are sparse at best. On some shelters, bold letters and colors proclaim “Black is beauty” and “God and his angels watch over us.” Refuse burns in large containers along the “streets.” Inside the main gate is a Seventh-day Adventist welfare van where residents “shop” for clothes.

KING’S SUCCESSOR

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy was there at the beginning—December 1955. Mrs. Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, was tired from shopping and refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. She was arrested. Abernathy, pastor of First Baptist Church, got together with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, which spearheaded a 381-day Negro boycott of city buses. The drive was later vindicated by the U. S. Supreme Court ruling against bus segregation.

From the start, King overshadowed Abernathy, who was three years his elder. King called Abernathy “my closest friend,” and in 1957 the two became founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to extend their civil-rights drive across the South. Abernathy was vice-president and treasurer. Two years ago King made provision for continuing the organization in case he died by naming Abernathy vice-president at large.

When King was shot, Abernathy was standing directly behind him on the Memphis motel balcony. In the chaos he knelt in prayer over the body, then rode in the ambulance to the hospital, cradling his dying friend’s head in a towel.

The next day, at his first press conference as the new president of the SCLC, Abernathy vowed to continue nonviolent strategy, for King “sought redemption of man, not vengeance.”

Abernathy was born in Linden, Alabama, in the state’s black-belt farm area. He graduated from Alabama State College and did graduate work at Atlanta University. Before the twelve-year Montgomery pastorate, he had a church in Demopolis, Alabama. Abernathy is currently the pastor of Atlanta’s West Hunter Street Baptist Church, which is located near the city’s four Negro colleges.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

The Queens Federation of Churches defeated, for the second time this year, a proposal to merge into the Protestant Council, which represents New York City’s other four boroughs. A two-thirds majority of the 150 member churches is required. The Queens merger is considered a first step toward inclusion of Orthodox and Roman Catholics in a citywide council.

The necessary two-thirds of Christian Churches area organizations approved the denomination’s proposed restructure. Final step for passage will be two-thirds approval at the Kansas City convention, which opens September 27.

A Church of England commission recommended that this month’s assembly permit intercommunion on special occasions—but only with Methodists and Presbyterians, with whom the Anglicans are discussing merger.

PERSONALIA

Dr. Roger J. Voskuyl resigned as president of Westmont College, a Christian liberal-arts school in Santa Barbara, California. Next January 1 he will become executive director of the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges in Washington, D. C.

The Rev. Andrew J. Young, executive vice-president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was named chairman of the National Council of Churches’ controversial Delta Ministry in Mississippi. He is a former pastor of Congregational Christian churches and once before worked with the NCC.

Dr. Paul D. Clasper, former American Baptist missionary to Burma, was appointed to a professorship and made academic dean at Berkeley Baptist Divinity School.

The Rev. James Roy Smith, a Methodist pastor in Arlington, Virginia, and a colonel in the Army Reserve, was chosen president of the Military Chaplains Association.

The Rev. Emmanuel L. McCall will become the first Negro to hold a staff position with a Southern Baptist agency. He will work in the Home Mission Board in Atlanta, where he has been a pastor and teacher.

Dr. John D. Godsey was appointed associate dean and professor of systematic theology at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Deaths

Newell S. Booth, 64, Methodist bishop and former missionary to Africa; in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Peter Kleperis, 63, archbishop-elect of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church; of a heart attack while traveling on a train in the Ukraine.

George T. Peters, 64, field representative of Concerned Presbyterians, independent lay organization in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.; in Charleston, West Virginia.

James C. Suggs, who has been heading the public-relations agency of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), has been given the newly created position of managing editor of the Disciples’ official weekly, The Christian.

Prominent Roman Catholic attorney-realtor Victor Orsinger was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of using $1.5 million in investments of the Sisters of the Divine Savior to further his own interests while he acted as the order’s financial adviser. Another pending suit charges him with fraud in public sale of $16.5 million in bonds for the order and two other groups.

Latest gimmick among free-lance revivalists, reports the Minneapolis Tribune, is used by a one-eyed preacher, Ronald Coyne, 24. He tapes shut his good eye, pops out his plastic eye, then “reads” from items collected in the congregation.

French Dominican Father Damien Boulogne, 55, became the first clergyman to receive a heart transplant. He was reported in satisfactory condition two days later.

The Rev. H. Robert Cowles, former missionary to the Philippines, was elected editor of the Alliance Witness, official organ of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He succeeds the late Dr. V. Raymond Edman.

The Rev. J. Berkley Reynolds won reversal of an ecclesiastical order that barred him from accepting a call to the pastorate of West Ellesmere United Church in suburban Toronto. The local presbytery had been upheld by the executive group of the Conference (regional) Settlement Committee in refusing approval on the grounds that the theologically conservative Reynolds might split the 1,000-member congregation. The order was overturned by the full committee after the congregation vowed to appeal to the national meeting of the United Church of Canada.

MISCELLANY

United Methodist Board of Missions, perennially short on recruits, is opening the way for appointment of Roman Catholics. Ecumenism “may need this kind of interchange,” said the executive committee of the board’s World Division.

Evangelist Leighton Ford returned to his home town, Chatham, Ontario, for an eight-day crusade in May. He preached to a total of 23,750 persons, including a capacity crowd of 4,100 at the closing service in Chatham Memorial Arena.

Roman Catholic clergy have formed a national federation. Among goals is a reform of canon law forbidding priests to marry.

Encounter California, said to be the biggest evangelistic effort ever undertaken by a Baptist state convention, resulted in an estimated 18,860 decisions. Local church revival meetings were supplemented by cooperative crusades in municipal auditoriums over a three-month period.

Toronto Bible College and London (Ontario) College of Bible and Missions are merging to form Ontario Bible College. The new school will be located on the Toronto campus. Dr. S. L. Boehmer, president of Toronto Bible College, will be president.

Western Baptist Bible College in El Cerrito, California, last month became the first school of the General Association of Regular Baptists to win regional accreditation.

Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., turned down an offer of the Washington, D. C., Cathedral (Episcopal) as the permanent burial site for her husband, who delivered his last Sunday sermon there before his murder.

Philosophy Professor W. Robert Smith of Bethel College, St. Paul, has a hunch that the Viet Cong murdered missionary C. Edward Thompson because “he knew too much” and talked about it. Among other things, Thompson believed “Cambodia is involved in the war to the hilt,” Smith said.

For the first time since 1957, circulation of the semi-monthly Presbyterian Life, leading Protestant house organ, dropped below one million (to 993,605 as of February 15). Denominational subsidy for 1967 soared to $489,094, largest in the twenty years of publishing.

The Christian Broadcasting Network was awarded television Channel 46 in Atlanta. CBN President Pat Robertson said he hopes to air programs by the end of the year. The network has been operating a television channel and an FM station in Tidewater Virginia. A new AM station is being purchased in Bogota, Colombia.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that the opening of town meetings with prayer is constitutional.

THEY SAY

“I was a sinner when I went into that mine, but I came out a Christian.”—Joseph Fitzwater, one of six survivors rescued after ten days of entombment in a West Virginia coal mine.

Some California evangelicals are breaching barriers to hippies and other urban “unreachables.” Most of the dropouts have church backgrounds, many of them evangelical. An increasing number are ministers’ sons.

Curiously, opposition from the rear threatens to isolate the evangelical pioneers in an ecclesiastical no-man’s-land.

Ask Southern Baptist evangelist Arthur Blessit, 27, who runs “His Place,” a coffeehouse on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Or converted hippie Ted Wise, 30, who heads “The Living Room,” an evangelical beachhead in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.

Sunset Strip clubs and sidewalks are clogged nightly with thousands of teens, including each night some 500 who jam into “His Place” for free coffee and sandwiches, gospel “rock, folk, and soul” tunes, and midnight sermons. Result: “Five or six receive Christ every night,” reports Blessit.

Blessit, who believes in “taking the gospel where the action is,” has also scored conversions among the “booze, dope, and sex” clientele at the famed Hollywood-A-Go-Go club during by-popular-demand Tuesday-night shows. His program: “groovy music, testimonies of ‘name’ Christians and former drug-users, and my messages—with no pulled punches.” His associate, Leo Humphrey, 33, recently led club coowner Rose Gazzarri to Christ, but a few weeks ago her partner and brother banned Blessit except for a few “seasonal” appearances. It seems other club operators fear a bad-for-business gospel aftermath.

The same group tried unsuccessfully to ban Blessit from witnessing on their sidewalks by having him arrested for blocking pedestrian traffic. The judge threw out the case during a colorful jury trial April 30. Blessit was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union. The young Jewish defense lawyer portrayed Blessit as a doctor pausing to treat spiritually ill persons in the best tradition of the Great Physician.

Most Strip transients, Blessit says, are “plastics”—young counterfeit hippies—from well-to-do families. Many blame their disillusionment on the “hypocrisy” and “misery” of Christianity as practiced at home.

Although Blessit’s talks often spark eager responses on the Strip, his appeals for follow-up help back home don’t. He offers the converts literature, training classes, and directions to evangelical churches in their home neighborhoods. But his letters to pastors requesting that they contact the youths are, dishearteningly, “almost always” unheeded.

In a survey, some pastors bluntly told Blessit they didn’t want Negroes or anyone with a hippie background in their churches. Nearly fifty others said they were “willing” but begged off because they “lacked a church program that would interest those young people.”

Frequently caught in the middle on the issue is suburban San Francisco pastor John MacDonald, one of three American Baptist ministers who founded Ted Wise’s storefront coffeehouse, “The Living Room,” more than a year ago. MacDonald says hippie converts have native inclinations to reject the institutional, regimented aspects of the Church, while longtime parishioners scorn lingering hippie nonconformity. The clash leads to “isolation versus insulation” tendencies, causing some on both sides to worship elsewhere.

Most Living Roomers have found niches of service in evangelical churches, though in every case they are a source of irritation to some among the old guard. Another “Living Room” sponsor says wryly, “Most of our people want to share their Christ with the hippies, but not their pews—until the hippies conform to ‘straight’ appearances.”

Beards, beads, and sandals are a matter of retained culture for Wise and his volunteer aides. Wise, part of the original Haight-Ashbury scene, was saved from drugs and immorality two years ago. He immediately began winning others of the psychedelic set to Christ. He now makes sails part-time to help pay “Living Room” bills. Wise has “In” status, deep-rooted evangelistic fervor, and a surprisingly keen knowledge of Scripture. The result is scores of conversions. Some new converts return home, but others insist on maintaining transiency, which makes follow-up difficult.

Drugs, especially marijuana, present special problems for many hippie converts who “don’t see anything wrong” with them. Most eventually abstain, but for unorthodox reasons. (“Who needs drugs when you can have a permanent high with Jesus?” “Christians must obey the laws, even bad ones.”)

Wise is much in demand as a speaker to youth groups, who give him an enthusiastic hearing. Most adults are wary. After it featured a story on Wise, Christian Life magazine received a storm of protest from disgusted readers. Some churches returned bundle subscriptions with expressions of worry “lest our young people read about this.” A few readers, however, offered commendations, and some even asked for help in locating runaway children. (Wise was able to find three.)

On a recent visit to Haight-Ashbury, evangelist David Wilkerson, the author of The Cross and the Switchblade, was “shocked” by the language and drug use of some new converts. He promptly denounced them and Wise’s ministry over Bay Area radio and TV and in the newspapers. The manager at one Christian radio station was dismayed by the attack; he’s a “Living Room” board member.

A local official with Wilkerson’s antidrug Teen Challenge project privately voiced regret, adding, “Dave’s authoritarian methods work with hard dope addicts, but not hippies. We haven’t had much success in reaching them.”

“Living Room” spokesmen called the magazine story “premature” and Wilkerson’s charges “a threat to our successful, but still experimental, witness.” Despite the opposition and lagging financial support, they and Wise vow to continue.

DROPOUT DIALOGUE

Even the U.S. Army has its hippies—the 100,000 “marginal soldiers” who bring their character and behavior problems into the service each year. Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D. C., has run an experimental four-month rehabilitation program for two years now. Of forty-eight graduates, three-fourths are back on regular duty. In an untreated control group, 80 per cent went AWOL, landed in a stockade, or got an undesirable discharge.

The Army psychiatrists use the basic Pavlovian system: good behavior is rewarded with passes, playing cards, education, or TV. Bad performance is ignored; not punished. Nobody has to do anything.

Among thirteen staffers on the project is Methodist hospital chaplain David W. Polhemus, who holds a weekly class with the men, few of whom have had any contact with organized religion.

One major theme is that God accepts and loves the dropout. The chaplain also advises them that nobody will listen until “you are selective in your non-conformity.” “Anything beyond three slops and a flop [meals and a night’s sleep] must be paid for through participation in life.”

One discussion-starter was, “Does life actually have an ending?” One hippie replied that life ended when he entered the Army and would start up again upon discharge.

A BISHOP BOWS OUT

Colorado’s Episcopal Bishop Joseph S. Minnis, who faced an August 20 trial on unspecified charges, said last month he would resign. But apparently the trial will be held anyway, under church law.

The charges, involving personal conduct, were made by seventeen laymen, and an indictment was subsequently issued by the denomination’s Board of Inquiry.

In a speech to the diocesan convention, Minnis said the “sickness of heart” in the diocese over the past year has taken a toll on his family, including two sons who are priests in Colorado. He did not set any date for the resignation.

THE MODERATOR

A Canadian-born ecumenist known as a theological conservative was elected moderator of the 180th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. He is the Rev. John Coventry Smith, 64, general secretary of the United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations since 1959.

Smith, who spent twelve years in Japan as a missionary and was interned there for six months during World War II, was chosen on the second ballot. He received 476 of the 818 votes cast. The Rev. Frederick E. Christian, a pastor in Westfield, New Jersey, got 188 votes. The Rev. David E. Dilworth, chaplain and teacher at Whitworth College, got 154.

Smith was in the old United Presbyterian Church of North America before it merged in 1958 with the larger Presbyterian denomination, both mainly in the northern United States. He is the first from the smaller church elected moderator since Dr. Theophilus M. Taylor, whose election in 1958 was widely interpreted as a conciliatory gesture.

As a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and the General Board of the National Council of Churches, Smith has repeatedly espoused a wide assortment of social pronouncements. He also is a soft-spoken, gracious person who has the reputation of being a committed evangelical, and he has promoted contacts with evangelicals outside the conciliar movement.

A native of Ontario, Smith grew up in western Pennsylvania and northern Ohio. He was graduated from Muskingum College and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

‘WHY’ AND ‘WAY’ FOR E.P.A.

Evangelical Press Association editors were told off twice at last month’s meeting. First by alienated youth, in The Why Generation, a provocative drama produced for the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism. Second by black militants, during two hours at “The Way,” a community center in the Minneapolis Negro sector.

The Why Generation, produced by young people at a Presbyterian church, includes bitter denunciations of the Church by youths in the United States and overseas drawn from actual interviews (see November 25, 1966, issue, page 35).

At “The Way,” Milt Williams, bearded, bushy-haired teacher of Afro-American history, delivered a brilliant, earthy survey of material left out of “white nationalist” schoolbooks.

Negroes have been in America for fifteen generations, he said, longer than nine-tenths of the whites. “We paid a hell of a lot of dues to make this country rich.” As for the diligence of white immigrants, he said, “You didn’t work any harder than my grandfather. That’s a damn lie. If you were so swinging, why weren’t you rich in Wales?” “We built the country from the ground up,” he continued, hooking his thumb in a long string of beads around his neck.

Negro Baptist minister Stanley King, head of another community-action agency, said both blacks and whites want to duck blame for the murder of 156 people in city riots. Blacks need to accept responsibility, he said, but whites must provide economic resources. “Many say, ‘lift yourselves up by your bootstraps,’ but we don’t have any boots.”

King said urban unrest “is not my problem. It’s not your problem. It’s an American problem.” The only way to stop Communist aggression in poor nations, he said, is for America to prove it believes in justice.

As for the Church, he scored its racism and said it has “hurled an anathema at the inner city.” Suburban churches are “air-conditioned cubicles with three-manual organs to drown out the cries of the perishing!” he shouted.

A white suburban minister, Methodist Rolland Robinson, spoke as president of the board of “The Way.” He said that “the Church, predominantly influenced by liberalism, has totally misunderstood” the race situation. It thought education and evolution would erase the problems. But “racism is a demon. You must exorcise it.” He said evangelicals have failed to counter the dangerous “optimism on human nature” that “perpetuates racism in the Church and condones it in society.”

If two of the black speakers were nervous about the meeting, so were some of the white visitors. One middle-aged lady editor admitted, “I got out of there as fast as possible.”

The day before, at a panel on situation ethics, talented piano Professor C. Edward Thomas of Bethel College, St. Paul, said he saw value in Joseph Fletcher’s agape emphasis. As a Negro trying to find housing, he discovered “Christian people are more concerned with their property than with me as a person.”

Closing-night speaker Lester DeKoster of the Reformed Journal and of Calvin College expressed surprise at the panel’s “mild acquiescence to Fletcher. Never has love suffered such systematic destruction.”

“Liberal theology welcomes an honesty-to-God which questions his existence,” DeKoster said. But for fifty years the Soviet Union has provided a laboratory test of the idea, and “men have gone out with God.” With God “dead,” Stalin scientifically collectivized the farms in the interests of the whole and “12 to 15 million peasants disappeared in the process.”

He said Communism proves that “when politics is not invaded by religion, it becomes an agent of destruction.” DeKoster said the “unfilled promise of evangelical Christianity to this generation” is a passion for saving men’s institutions as well as souls. He then recounted some of John Calvin’s daring, institution-saving social action in Geneva.

On internal matters, EPA rejected a bid from the ecumenical Associated Church Press to hold a joint or concurrent convention. A statement noted “friendly ties” through the several mazazines that belong to both associations but said “differences exist.” The key difference is “doctrinal distinctiveness,” said EPA President Paul Fromer of His, an ACP member; leaders feared a joint meeting could split EPA.

Judged Periodical of the Year from among EPA’s 184 publications was Campus Crusade’s bright quarterly Collegiate Challenge. But the judge in the “Most Improved Periodical” contest, Wesley Hartzell of Chicago’s American, said Challenge “has reverted to a ‘house organ’ rather than a forum appealing to all collegians and challenging them for Christ.…”

After scanning the magazines, Joseph Bayly of David C. Cook Company said that “writing hasn’t improved as much as art and layout,” and EPA subsequently voted two $150 scholarships for student writers at evangelical colleges, one for a Negro “if possible.”

SCHISMS IN ASIA

The United Presbyterian Church of West Pakistan, inheritor of the legacy of Andrew Gordon and John “Praying” Hyde, lies in shambles following a violent April split. The rupture was brewing for years over the so-called dictatorship of veteran Moderator K. L. Nasir, accused of trying to control the synod and other Presbyterian institutions.

Opponents, who say Nasir’s influence has dwindled, accuse his supporters of starting violence at the April meeting to prevent his ouster. They reportedly threw chairs and flower pots and broke windows, and general disorder prevailed. Nasir supporters—about one-third of the synod members—walked out and held their own “synod” on the grass outside. Three weeks later the Nasir party formed what it called the true Presbyterian Church, paving the way for a bitter court struggle.

President Carl McIntire of the International Council of Christian Churches, long a foe of the Presbyterian establishment, predictably showed up at the Nasir synod to fish in the troubled waters. But it was a strange catch for anti-ecumenist McIntire. Nasir was a leading figure in Pakistan ecumenical circles until the split, when he renounced these ties. He was principal of the United Theological Seminary, president of the West Pakistan Christian Council, a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, and a strong advocate of a proposed united church.

The new denomination joined McIntire and split with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Nasir based the action on the U. S. “Confession of 1967,” but the Pakistan synod had earlier discussed the new confession and rejected it in favor of the traditional Westminster Confession. A missionary said, “Liberal theology is no problem here because it just won’t stand up in a Muslim culture.”

The real issue appears to be money and control of institutions. One missionary said, “Unfortunately, none of the church leaders are clean in this fight. There could be no neutrals. Everybody had to pledge loyalty to one party or another. The only clean ones are the laymen.” No one is quite sure whether the laymen will support their pastors in secession.

The bitterness goes deep, and the majority Muslims are likely to see the Christian minority fighting and fragmented for a long time to come.

In neighboring India, meanwhile, McIntire’s ICCC claims to have won the allegiance of 471 Baptist congregations in the Telegu area. The American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, however, estimates the dissident group led by the Rev. J. Edward at between five and twenty congregations.

An ABFMS spokesman said that in 1957 the vast majority of South India’s Baptist churches voted to form Telegu “Samavesam” in order to circumvent a complicated legal battle with Edward. He said this group, which continues ABFMS affiliation, includes 553 churches with about 190,000 members. In the intervening decade Edward has lost three lawsuits, and in January of this year his churches voted to link up with the ICCC.

Edward claims his group is nationalist and lay-oriented—similar to the Burmese Baptist Convention, which he says brought about the expulsion of missionaries from that nation in 1966.

In a letter to McIntire, Edward said the missionaries employ “a gang of parasites, sycophants, mercenaries, satellites, seducers, and guerrillas,” attracted by “bags of foreign money.”

As to Edward’s charges of heresy, the ABFMS official said the South India affiliates are “as conservative as you’re likely to find.” Edward also opposes participation in the National Christian Council of India and use of the New English Bible.

HAITI INVASION ATTEMPT

Raymond Joseph, Wheaton College graduate who leads the Haitian Coalition, said that his group of exiles in the United States did not organize last month’s invasion of Haiti by anti-Duvalier forces in the Bahamas, but they agreed with the goals of the group. Lay preacher Arthur Bonhomme, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, announced that the small invasion force had been crushed at Cap Haitien. Haiti then lodged in the United Nations an official complaint against the United States that referred to Joseph’s shortwave broadcasts critical of the Duvalier regime (see March 15 issue, page 43).

Portland: Melting The Resrve

By the time they near the half-century mark, most evangelists tend to slow down, to lose their luster, to establish institutions, and to reminisce. George Whitefield was an exception. So is Billy Graham.

In Portland, Oregon, last fortnight, the roses were still in bud, but the man Graham was in full bloom. Presidential candidates were whistle-stopping around the state, mostly with indifferent results; but the appeal of Graham’s message was undiminished. The new Memorial Coliseum on the banks of the Willamette plus two overflow rooms were filled each night as he proclaimed the same Gospel that had won such an astonishing hearing a month earlier in Sydney, Australia. (Three services of the Portland crusade will be telecast in color in hundreds of cities beginning June 17.)

The attraction for young people was again evident, and Graham reaped his advantage by scheduling three youth nights in nine days. He invited a dozen “rose princesses” to sit on his platform, and one of them gave her Christian testimony. He shared his pulpit with the popular U. S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield, whose Christian testimony is well known. Norma Zimmer of the Lawrence Welk TV show also gave a Christian testimony and sang.

As a result, things began to happen. The sight of hundreds of young people flocking forward nightly to give their lives to Christ melted the reserve of many a conservative Oregonian. Church leaders, excited to see their own people making spiritual commitments, began to speak of “revival” and “awakening.”

By the time the ten-day crusade was half over, 99,730 persons had passed through the coliseum turnstiles and 2,830 had passed through another kind of turnstile, the nature of which only the Spirit of God knew. Well over half of these were making first-time commitments to Jesus Christ.

A nurse at the first-aid station in the coliseum heard the invitation one night and responded in uniform. A minister and his wife and son came forward, the parents for rededication, and when the counselor filled out the wife’s card he referred her to her husband.

Many links with an earlier crusade in the Rose City were discovered. A man and his wife had found Christ in 1950 in the tabernacle on Glisan Street; this time their three children made commitments. The chairman of the counselors serving each night was himself a 1950 convert.

But this year Portland faced urban problems unknown in post-war days. A Negro member of the Graham team, associate evangelist Ralph Bell of Los Angeles, was one of the chief speakers at the School of Evangelism held during the crusade and attended by some 420 seminarians and young pastors from four Western states. Bell warned them that evangelical churches have been inexcusably slow to accord Christian treatment to their Negro brethren.

Editorialized the Oregon Journal, “A Graham campaign gives a moral and spiritual lift to a city or a region wherever it is conducted. Portland and its environs was no exception.” As the crusade moved to its climax, that opinion seemed well grounded.

SHERWOOD E. WIRT

In a time of troubles and change, what are the Church’s priorities?

That was the question that kept popping up for commissioners to the 180th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church during a cool week in May in Minneapolis. Whenever it seemed an answer was ready, the question was raised again.

Answers were slow in coming, and debate lasted long in the denomination’s first assembly since its 1967 adoption of a new doctrinal stance. The ambiguity of the church’s Book of Confessions was reflected in some of the governing body’s actions.

Commissioners got one of their cues from John Coventry Smith, the veteran executive of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations (COE-MAR), elected as this year’s moderator (see page 42). “The Christian in a time of troubles” was the theme of his Sunday sermon in Westminster Presbyterian Church. A Christian’s faith and hope, he said, give him impetus to work for the establishment of the kingdom of God. Smith added the Christian knows that his work “must deal with more than the life of individual persons.” Suggesting political involvement, he added, “People are also participants in the structures of society, structures which can enhance their humanity or dehumanize them.”

From this departure point the assembly went into a variety of recommendations from agencies dealing with denominational programs. COEMAR won endorsement of its plans to spend some $100,000 in deploying seventy-five overseas missionaries and churchmen in American urban centers during the remainder of 1968. The national missions agency got endorsement of its emphasis on housing. In its action on an evangelism report, the body called for production and promotion of materials to aid in personal evangelism, but it also approved such current emphases of its evangelism division as “demonstration of love.”

Boards and agencies were directed to implement buying and contracting policies favoring businesses with equal-employment practices. They were directed to invest up to 30 per cent of their non-restricted funds in high-risk, low-interest ghetto investments.

Much attention was devoted by the assembly to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its Poor Peoples’ Campaign and March on Washington. This month’s fund for freedom will be a special target, with a goal of $200,000. SCLC will get the first $100,000 for a Martin Luther King economic development fund, and SCLC was authorized to use up to $50,000 for the march, with the understanding that it would later restore the money to the development fund. The assembly also gave an offering of over $4,000 to the march and called for de-escalation of the Viet Nam war.

An early assembly speaker was SCLC President Ralph David Abernathy. On the theme of a time of troubles, he called on the Presbyterians to be “trouble-makers” of the sort that Martin Luther King was. The Baptist minister urged “massive public action … whatever it may cost,” including a guaranteed annual income as a right.

The assembly echoed this, calling it a pronouncement for “eventual elimination of the present welfare system and for the establishment of an adequate income for all … as a basic human right.” In the same document the assembly called on Negro members of the church to involve themselves in the “black power” movement. Service to this cause “is a service to the church of Jesus Christ and to the nation.”

The assembly was one of surprises for many participants and observers.

Among the unusual actions was election of New York community organizer Robert Lee Washington to the denomination’s General Council. He was nominated from the floor and won over National Council of Churches official Ellsworth Stanton III, who was described as not being a representative of the struggle for minority rights. Both candidates are Negro laymen.

Also unexpected was a ruling on glossolalia. In a judicial proceeding, the assembly upheld the right of an Arizona minister to refuse his presbytery’s insistence that he vow not to speak in tongues, exorcise spirits or otherwise engage in manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit. The case was decided on the technical point that a presbytery cannot require any vows other than those required of all ministers at ordination and installation. The assembly created a special committee to study the glossolalia issue.

In an unprecedented action, the assembly turned down the preliminary judgment of its permanent judicial commission in a judicial case. An Iowa couple, Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Baker, had been excommunicated by presbytery for disturbing the peace and the unity of their congregation in opposing destruction of an old church building. Two members of the assembly’s permanent judicial commission dissented from the judgment recommended by other members of the panel on the basis of irregularities in presbytery trial procedures. After hearing the reading of the long dissent the commissioners to the assembly, on a standing vote, rejected the preliminary judgment. The matter then went back to the permanent judicial commission for rehearing. Three dissents developed from the rehearing, but the assembly reversed itself and approved the preliminary judgment when the case came back to it.

The assembly decided to continue the operation of Johnson C. Smith Seminary at Charlotte, North Carolina. The parent institution, Johnson C. Smith University, and the denomination’s council on theological education had taken steps to close the Negro institution. After hearing protests from alumni, the assembly set up a blue-ribbon commission to keep the seminary in operation temporarily, possibly relocating it at the interdenominational theological center in Atlanta, Georgia. Provision was made for $150,000 to operate the commission, which will also be charged with recommending long-range policy for ministerial education in the Southeast at the next assembly.

The actions were taken by the court against a background of statistics to the church’s own trouble. Last year it lost over 25,000 members (not counting 4,000 removed when an autonomous church was created of the former Presbytery of Cuba.) It was the second annual net loss. Denominational income was up last year, but not enough to keep the agencies from dipping into their reserves to maintain programs at current levels.

EXPOSING A RIFT

A petition is being circulated among United Presbyterians to lay bare grassroots concern over liberal trends in the denomination. “When all the signatures have been tallied,” sponsors say, “our denominational leaders will know the magnitude of the rift which has been created by the passage of the Confession of 1967.”

The basis for the desired signatures is “An Affirmation” of 1,900 words emphasizing “acceptance of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.” The three-part document charges that the United Presbyterian Church has recently deviated from its constitution, from orthodox theology, and from earlier concepts of church-state relations. Pastors and laymen are asked to lend their signatures if they agree generally with the basic principles of the affirmation.

The appeal for signatures is being circulated by a group known as the Fellowship of Concerned Presbyterians—U. S. A. The document was adopted October 4, 1967, at a meeting of the fellowship at the Great Valley Presbyterian Church, Malvern, Pennsylvania. Those originally signing the affirmation were David W. Baker, James A. Clark, Ralph P. Coleman, Jr., Luther P. Fincke, Raymond N. Ohman, and Leon F. Wardell.

NOSTALGIA IN PHILADELPHIA

The city of Philadelphia looms large in the life of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The denomination began there 181 years ago when a group of Negroes, asked to move to a special section of St. George Methodist Episcopal Church, left in protest. In 1816 Philadelphia was the site of the denomination’s first convention. And last month the AME Church met there for its thirty-eighth Quadrennial Conference.

Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who spoke early in the fourteen-day convention, drew parallels between the 1816 conference and the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia 130 years later. There, he said, “a group of us … demanded … that humanity be placed above politics.” And today, he added, “words spoken at that convention in 1946 are still true: ‘People—human beings—this is the issue of the twentieth century.’ ”

The Rev. F. C. James, social-action consultant for the denomination, said the AME Church “needs to identify anew with the pressing issues facing the underprivileged in the country. We had that identity in the beginning, but in recent years we have had so many internal problems and so much need for ecclesiastical reform that we have gotten away from pressing social issues.”

The denomination moved toward that identity by establishing its first Department of Social Action, which will study ways to implement concern for poverty, urban renewal, and the indiscriminate use of natural resources.

Most of the conference time was required for administrating the thirteen U. S. and six foreign districts with more than a million members, electing bishops, and revising the book of discipline. One bishop was reinstated after his eleven-year suspension for infraction of the rule that a bishop may not handle the fiscal affairs of his district.

Delegates received an invitation from the United Methodist Church—extended also to two other predominantly Negro churches—to join in merger dialogues. Although there was much discussion, no official reply was made. Delegates decided to continue the denomination’s representation in COCU, and they established liaison committees to discuss union with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Although the three denominations are similar in origin, doctrine, and organization, they grew independently in different parts of the country with no thought until recently of reuniting.

Meanwhile in Detroit the AME Zion Church, meeting for its quadrennial convention, also expressed ecumenical interest. Delegates talked about union with AME and CME churches as well as with the United Methodist Church and decided to maintain representation in COCU.

Social problems confronted the delegates, whose denomination began in 1796 because of racial discrimination at John Street Methodist Church in New York City. They heard both Roy Wilkins, NAACP executive, and Whitney Young, head of the Urban League, urge non-violence this summer; and they heard Vice-President Humphrey say that racial and economic problems should be approached as problems of America, not of a minority group.

Delegates passed a resolution to appoint a social-action committee to take over some of the areas formerly handled by the Christian-education committee.

The church’s Layman’s Council proposed some departures from traditional forms of church structure in order to save money and make the program more efficient. But some clergymen were hesitant about changes, and tension resulted. Proposed changes would affect church curriculum, ministerial training and support, overseas churches, public relations, and distribution of financial secretaries.

In other action, the AME Zion Church put an African, rather than an American, bishop in charge of its African work and voted to establish a study commission on divorce. Many in the church have opposed its conservative attitude toward divorce, feeling a need to face contemporary society more realistically, as many other Protestant groups do.

In the quaint old university town of Uppsala, Sweden, students have already cleared out for the summer holidays. Ordinarily, the townspeople would also be busying themselves with vacation plans by this time. Swedish law provides everyone with a guaranteed four-week vacation, so most industries shut down completely. But this will not be a normal summer in Uppsala. Beginning July 4, the town will play host to the biggest and most important ecumenical clambake yet, the seventeen-day Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches.

Uppsala residents may not be aware that the assembly could turn their town into an ecclesiastical storm center. Radical forces in the WCC, bent on making churches a major instrument of socio-economic change, will seek delegate approval of militant strategies. A draft of a document due to be adopted by the assembly calls for “revolutionary action” to correct social ills, acknowledging that such action “may, if not kept under control, lead to even greater suffering.”

As many as three thousand persons, including 800 official delegates, may pour into Uppsala to witness the assembly. The town, about forty miles north of Stockholm, has a population of about 80,000. Since the year 1164 it has served as the seat of the Swedish Lutheran archbishop. Parts of the Gothic cathedral in Uppsala date back to the thirteenth century.

But the assembly theme, appropriated from Revelation 21:5, is “All Things New,” and delegates will be expected to use twenty-hour days occasioned by the northern latitude (about the same as that of Juneau, Alaska) to help engineer the demise of old orders. The WCC Central Committee’s report to the assembly contends that “the Council has moved out of the stage of discussing social ethics in general and has stimulated the churches to take specific action to establish social justice.”

A big question is whether delegates will put more muscle in the draft on “revolutionary action” (see adjoining text) or will soften it. Militant churchmen can be expected to attempt to win endorsement for force and violence.

Pope Paul VI has been rumored to be a possible speaker at the assembly. The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was to have given a major address. Evangelist Billy Graham has accepted an invitation to attend, but his role on the program has not yet been announced.

Some WCC leaders will be inclined to temper pronouncements, in the light of the World Council’s deteriorating public image and its financial standing. The WCC’s basic annual budget is now up to about $1,000,000, and the Uppsala meeting may cost nearly half that much. The council has not been able to put as much money aside for Uppsala as it desired. Official reports indicate that operations this year will create a sizable deficit for the first time in the WCC’s twenty-year history. “Inflationary tendencies and the rising costs throughout the Western World” are blamed.

Another problem facing the World Council is the growing theological confusion since its New Delhi assembly in 1961. The WCC Central Committee now openly admits that “the emerging ecumenical consensus on a number of important points of faith and order or of life and work is less stable than had been supposed.”

Toward A Sadder Tomorrow?

From a draft of a proposal to be presented to the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches:

In their faith in the coming Kingdom of God, Christians agree that no given state or society is sacrosanct, and that it is their duty to contribute actively to the continual renewal of social institutions and structures, where these have fallen short of allowing individuals, groups, or communities to develop and live in human dignity.

While we do not differ about the ultimate goal of these endeavours, we find it hard to agree on a common road to achieve them:

There are those who argue that the injustice done to certain people under the present state of affairs is such that the entire establishment order should be overthrown. To wait for an evolutionary change of conditions would be to cover up and condone corruption and violation of human rights.

On the other side, there are those who argue that there are certain problems of social reconstruction for which, by the nature of things, there is no quick solution. Bloodshed and other violence could not produce them, since the fabric of human society today is too complex and interdependent. No one would gain from its destruction.

Although we cannot reconcile these extreme positions, we recognize that there are situations in which development is prevented by the existing power structure, and in which revolutionary action to achieve a radical change of social structures or of the political regime seems the only way to arrive at a social order based on greater justice. Such revolutionary action should not be idealized, for it may be costly in terms of many human values and may, if not kept under control, lead to even greater suffering. But the possibility should not be excluded that, in this dilemma, it may be an expression of Christian responsibility to take revolutionary action rather than to acquiesce in the indefinite continuation of an oppressive status quo.

Still another persistent issue is the WCC’s problem of identity and nature. It is still trying to figure out what it is. The Central Committee notes that “it became clear” at a faith-and-order conference in Montreal in 1963 that “it was not yet possible to arrive as a common ecclesiological definition of the nature of the World Council.” The same year in Rochester, New York, the Central Committee discussed, “What can we say together about the meaning of membership in the WCC?” A paper on the subject by the WCC general secretary was sent to member churches for study and comment. “Unfortunately,” the Central Committee notes, “so few churches responded that it was not possible to prepare a further report.”

Undeterred by the muddle, WCC leaders seek to expand the influence of the ecumenical movement and to make it more inclusive of Christendom. Their priority target (aside from the world’s half billion Roman Catholics) is “the conservative evangelicals.” Organizationally, these prospects are manifest mainly in the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the National Association of Evangelicals. The Central Committee report says about the NAE churches that “there are many in their leadership and membership who are well-disposed towards the World Council and who participate in its consultations and conferences, but others are ambivalent or take a more negative view.” Two consultations between the WCC and “the conservative evangelicals” have already been held (in 1961 and 1965), and another is to take place in Bossey, Switzerland, after the Uppsala assembly.

On the one hand, Chairman Franklin Clark Fry of the Central Committee argues that “nobody even faintly intends that the Council should ever get away from the churches, either to be above them or distant from them.” From another perspective, however, the World Council propels the concept of a more centrally authoritative, inclusive Christian ecumenism.

Among proposals to be offered at Uppsala is one expressing “hope for a Universal Council.” “How will the churches of the whole world speak and act together?” a draft asks. “Will it happen again as in the first centuries that they will occasionally come together in a Universal Council?” The ecumenical movement, it adds, “works towards the time when such a Council may become a reality.”

HOUSEKEEPING—IN PRIVATE

Observers from three East Europe satellite nations were among observers at last month’s General Council of the World Evangelical Fellowship in Lausanne, Switzerland. Most of the week was spent on housekeeping matters for the WEF, which stresses a minimum of central organization.

The Rev. I. Ben Wati, a Baptist from India, won a five-year term as council president, the first person from outside the United States and Britain to hold the post. In contrast to previous meetings, only three of the sixty-five persons attending the council were U. S. delegates: President Arnold T. Olson, General Director Clyde W. Taylor, and Dr. Hudson Armerding, all representing the National Association of Evangelicals.

Canadian Baptist Dennis E. Clark was re-elected international secretary, but WEF headquarters will be shifted from Canada to Lausanne.

The meetings were closed to the press. One delegate said little mention was made of the World Council of Churches. The sixteen-year-old WEF, a conservative counterpart of the WCC, has several affiliates that have ties with both groups, including alliances in Germany, France, Denmark, and Switzerland that were voted into the WEF at the recent meeting. The WEF constituency includes several million evangelicals in eighteen countries, and five new national associations are close to joining.

After much discussion of evangelism, the WEF decided to support the Rev. Samuel Kamalesan, a Methodist in Madras, India, in part-time evangelism. It also appointed part-time coordinators of youth work and theological study.

CLIMAX IN CONFUSION?

Student groups in Scandinavia urge churches that “wish to take biblical revelation seriously” to withdraw from the World Council of Churches. They cite a need for a viable alternative to the present ecumenical movement.

The call came out of a four-day meeting at Enebakk, Norway, this spring. On hand were representatives of Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish evangelical student organizations. They adopted a declaration saying, “The preparatory documents for the Uppsala assembly this summer clearly show that the criticisms of the World Council of Churches over a period of many years have not been unfounded, and that the ecumenism within the World Council of Churches now has been carried to a preliminary climax of confusing ideas and opinion about the faith of the church and its tasks.”

In contrast to most other evangelical student unions around the world that are members of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, such as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in the United States, the Scandinavian movements have a strongly confessional Lutheran orientation. Since the four Scandinavian state churches belong to the World Council and have played an important role in WCC development, and since the Scandinavian student fellowships want to maintain loyalty to their national Lutheran heritage, the official relation of the state churches to the World Council is more of a problem in Scandinavia than elsewhere, with the possible exception of French-speaking Switzerland, where conformist pressure is also strong.

At the Enebakk meeting, attention was frequently drawn to the inhibiting effect that the WCC and the Lutheran World Federation have had upon the evangelizing and catechizing work of Norwegian Lutheran missionaries.

Participants unanimously concluded that biblical principles have virtually disappeared as a motivating force behind WCC actions. They felt that an alternative movement should be initiated, not with syncretistic, bureaucratic, super-church tendencies, but as an actively functioning theological forum in which evangelical believers could express and implement their unity in Christ and their fidelity to the whole of the biblical revelation without prejudicing the diversity of theological and confessional opinion that exists among them. It was agreed that organizations such as IFES and perhaps the World Evangelical Fellowship are a step in the right direction, but that they leave unmet the need for a real discussion of disputed doctrinal issues, such as those that divide the Lutheran churches from the Reformed.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN