When Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein became headmaster emeritus of The Stony Brook School in 1963, he again postponed some long delayed writing in order to devote several years to CHRISTIANITY TODAY as co-editor. The current issue reflects, as have other educational issues since 1963, one of his areas of special interest and responsibility, Christian education. Few educators have the broad experience Dr. Gaebelein brings to the discussion of the Church’s educational activity in America. Among the books he has written are two on religious education—Christian Education in a Democracy and The Pattern of God’s Truth, both published by Oxford University Press and both recognized contributions to the philosophy of Christian education.

Next fall we shall lose our gifted co-editor after his three full years on this journalistic front, as he takes up some projects he hopes to complete in these retirement years. Among them may be a book on Christianity and aesthetics. A lifelong mountain climber and member of various Alpine clubs, Dr. Gaebelein is also an accomplished pianist.

Throughout most of 1966 we shall continue to share the values of his association. Later this year our subscribers will be offered an anthology to which Dr. Gaebelein is now devoting some of his energies. A tenth-anniversary project, it will present The Best of ‘Christianity Today.’

You came be too careful what you say to the press. The previous day I had been interviewed by an Oslo daily and had even had my picture taken. It must have gone to my head and led to some unguarded language, for the accusing headline duly appeared: EVANGELICAL VISITOR OPEN TO OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. Methought how fortunate it was that few of my friends knew Norwegian; my evident lapse into a frightful tolerance might never be known Less selfish thoughts finally prevailed: let this, then, be an awful warning to posterity and all others interested.

Norway I found full of surprises. Here Honest to God is regarded as a curiosity piece and nothing more. The theological professors with whom I met were genuinely astonished to hear that John Robinson’s book had been taken seriously in Britain and had even made some impact in America. Let it not be imagined that this reflects either ignorance or obscurantism: Norwegians know their German theology. Norway has, moreover, experienced all the strains, controversies, and renewals so common elsewhere. Talks with various professors and church leaders elicited expressions of keen disappointment that the 1963 Lutheran World Federation congress in Helsinki had failed to produce a popular statement on the meaning for today of justification by faith.

A most significant development in Norwegian church history occurred at about the turn of the century when three liberal professors were appointed to the university theological faculty founded in 1811. Matters came to a head when the chair of systematic theology became vacant in 1903. Battle raged over this key post, culminating in 1906 with the appointment of another liberal. As a result one of the evangelical professors resigned, and in 1908 there was founded the Free Faculty of Theology (Menighetsfakultetet; literally, The Congregation’s Faculty). Here it was that Ole Hallesby, Ph.D. of Erlangen, taught from 1909 and wrote his famous evangelical works. Despite the absence of any state subsidy, but supported by voluntary gifts from the congregations, this seminary has gone from strength to strength until now, with more than 400 students, it is training 80 per cent of Norway’s theological students.

I found the church generally more conservative in Norway than in any of the other four northern lands. This was seen not least during the German occupation in 1940 when Bishop Berggrav called for unity in recognition that “it is the old unabridged Gospel which alone can save our people.” The bishops openly condemned German and Quisling outrages and attempts to make teachers and pupils join Nazi organizations. Finding their position intolerable, all seven bishops resigned as civil servants. Deans refused to be appointed to the vacant bishoprics, and 787 of 858 clergymen broke with the regime, refusing to accept salary but continuing to hold services and minister to their parishes. Scores were arrested or interned, but others carried on, sometimes amid great hardship.

The king is head of the Norwegian church and is required to profess, maintain, and protect the national polity. Norway has had surprisingly few problems in reconciling spiritual and temporal authority.

To God give all glory, to king his tax yield;

Remember that meadow and hillock and field

You have from your God and your monarch.

Although they have nearly 900 missionaries working abroad, none of the country’s twenty-three missionary societies is affiliated with the WCC; the latter is regarded as having an unsatisfactory attitude to the Bible as the Word of God. Another feature of missionary activity is its traditional link with a strong lay movement.

God is far from being nudged out of the curriculum in Norwegian schools. “The Evangelical Lutheran religion shall remain the public religion of the State,” says Article 2 of the Constitution. So close, indeed, is the bond between church and education that one government ministry deals with both areas. There is no discrimination against those who are not members of the state church, but as someone suggested, “An outspoken atheist would probably not make a very good living selling brushes at doors in south Norway’s ‘Bible Belt.’ ” (In 1952 a court case there centered around a teacher who had doubted Methuselah’s age.)

Pietism is still strong in Norway, as in Finland (the two northern lands most directly involved in World War II), but it is no longer vulnerable to the charge of “lacking in ethical seriousness” brought against it by Hans Nielsen Hauge (born 1771), who made personal Christianity come alive for so many of his fellows. Hauge was imprisoned for several years for violations of the 1741 Conventicle Act against lay preachers, repeal of which was long overdue. “If half-educated people can freely write against God’s Word for millions,” complained the Bishop of Bergen at that time, referring to the recent introduction of freedom of the press, “then surely also uneducated people who love God’s Word must be allowed to preach it freely.…” Harassed and persecuted as he was, Hauge toward the end of his life warned his followers against separatism and disorder, which strong confessionalism characterized also the Johnsonian revival of a century ago. Perhaps this explains why no substantial free church has ever existed in Norway, where the state church claims 96 per cent of the people. The evangelical still claims on good historical grounds to be the loyalist in his denomination at a time when the new Athenians (if I may coin the phrase) are restlessly casting around for theological novelty.

Novelty was in evidence also some years ago when missionaries from Utah began to microphotograph all the church books in the country for ancestor-tracing purposes. Church people objected to such records’ falling into the hands of alien religionists. The government generally tended toward a policy of non-interference but showed itself opportunistic by obtaining a copy of all films for its archives—a project previously impossible because of lack of funds.

Who will head the World Council of Churches as its new general secretary?

The decision will be made by the WCC’s Central Committee at a meeting that begins next week in Geneva. The sixteen men and two women on the nominating committee are pledged to secrecy. But speculation is rife, and most of its points to the best known ecumenical engineer in the Western Hemisphere, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake.

Endorsement of Blake has gained momentum. But he has refused to comment on widespread reports that name him as the most likely successor to the retiring W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the WCC since it officially began in 1948 and even before then in a provisional status. Insiders say Blake will take the job if the 100-member Central Committee votes decisively to make him the offer. In the current ecumenical era, the position could become the most prestigious in the non-Catholic ecclesiastical world.

This is the Central Committee’s second attempt to fill the post. Earlier it had assigned the responsibility of selecting a nominee to its fourteen-member Executive Committee, which came up with the name of the Rev. Patrick C. Rodger. Although he had been head of the WCC’s Faith and Order Department, Rodger, a Scottish Episcopal priest, was relatively obscure.

His nomination was made public long before the Central Committee voted on it, and some felt it had been released in such a way as to appear tantamount to election. The resulting controversy split the World Council badly. The Central Committee voted a year ago to take no action on the Rodger nomination and appointed a special nominating committee to consider more names. Rodger is technically still in the running, but few give him much chance.

The present nominating committee is believed to have considered, in addition to Blake and Rodger, Dr. Lukas Vischer, the WCC’s chief observer at the Vatican Council; Dr. D. T. Niles, general secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference; Dr. Leslie E. Cooke, head of relief work and interchurch aid for the WCC; and Bishop Oliver Tomkins of the Church of England.

The committee drew up a priority list and instructed committee chairman John Sadiq, an Anglican bishop from Nagpur, India, to contact the choices from the top on down until a person was found who was willing to accept the nomination.

Blake would seem to surmount the political barrier that might normally face a nominee from the United States. He is well acquainted with many Eastern Bloc churchmen and seems to have their confidence. He has been to the Soviet Union several times and has rubbed shoulders with world ecclesiastical leaders for years.

Blake’s age (59) is against him. If chosen, he might be regarded merely as an “interim pope” with little more than five years in office open to him. The job has life tenure, but Visser’t Hooft, in retiring at 65 despite pressure to stay on, sets a precedent. Blake probably feels, as did Pope John XXIII, that much can be done in a short span.

As expected, most of the support for Blake comes from his fellow Americans. To the surprise of no one, the Christian Century in its January 19 issue published an editorial, “We Nominate Blake,” endorsing him “not because he is a member of the Christian Century Foundation board of trustees but because he is in every way eminently qualified to lead the World Council of Churches at this critical juncture in its brief career.” Another editorial endorsement came last month from the recently inaugurated ecumenical journal in Britain, The New Christian.

Blake was born in St. Louis and as a youth was well-trained in Christian orthodoxy. He is still regarded as reasonably conservative, though his overriding passion for ecumenicity often casts theology into the shadows. A burly man with fiery temperament, Blake readily commands respect.

While on his way to a philosophy degree with honors at Princeton University, he was a varsity football guard for three years. He earned a bachelor of theology degree at Princeton Theological Seminary and took graduate work at Edinburgh’s New College. During this period, he married the former Valina Gillespie. They have no children.

Blake’s church career began with a brief teaching stint at a Christian college in India. His pastoral posts have been at Presbyterian churches in New York State and Pasadena, California. In 1951 he was elected stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., a position that he has turned into a power base unprecedented in Reformed ranks.

He is famous as originator of the Consultation on Church Union, a long-range merger discussion among six top Protestant denominations. COCU had a rather spectacular start as the Blake-Pike talks, but interest has sagged. There is now widespread feeling that pressures for a super-church will produce more schism than ecumenicity.

Personalia

For the second time since the Reformation, the head of the Church of England plans to visit the pope. Dr. Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, will meet Pope Paul VI in Rome on Wednesday of Holy Week, March 23. Ramsey’s predecessor, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, met Pope John XXIII in December of 1960.

Half a year after President Johnson’s daughter Luci converted to Roman Catholicism (see News, July 30, 1965, issue), Vice-President Humphrey’s son Robert, a Methodist, has announced plans to marry Donna Erickson, a Roman Catholic he met at Mankato State College in Minnesota. Miss Johnson plans to marry Patrick John Nugent, also a Catholic, next summer. The expected wedding in the White House would require special permission from Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington.

Dr. Otto Dibelius, 85, courageous foe of Nazism and Communism, announced he will retire as head of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg at the end of March. He has been inactive since November because of a serious heart condition. His successor is to be elected at dual synod meetings in East and West Berlin.

The Presbyterian Church in Canada named the Rev. R. Malcolm Ransom its first full-time director of missionary education. He will channel to churches information on home and overseas missions.

Dr. Joost de Blank, 56, who gained fame as a foe of racial segregation while Anglican archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, is the new bishop of Hong Kong and Macao.

U. S. Senate Chaplain Frederick Brown Harris missed last month’s reopening. He’s recuperating from neck injuries and speech impairment suffered in an auto accident in Florida last October.

Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen, already fighting the Supreme Court’s re-apportionment ruling, announced he would also make its school prayer decisions an issue this session.

Oregon’s Governor Mark O. Hatfield, outstanding Conservative Baptist layman and board member of Campus Crusade, announced he’ll run for the U. S. Senate this year. Republican Hatfield is expected to take a moderate to liberal stance on most issues.

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quit as pastor of Cincinnati’s strife-torn Revelation Baptist Church, claiming it had been captured by the “right wing,” and took over the new Greater Light Baptist Church organized by his supporters.

Protestant Panorama

The United Church of Canada urged legalization of birth control at a conference of provincial attorneys general in Ottawa. The Criminal Code makes it a crime to sell contraceptives or disseminate birth-control information. A telegram to Justice Minister Lucien Cardin was signed by the church’s council moderator, the Rt. Rev. Ernest Marshall Howse, and the Rev. J. Ray Hord, secretary of evangelism and social service.

A scale model of the new National Presbyterian Church (see above) was unveiled in Washington, D. C. The groundbreaking will be about April 1. The church will be in a ritzy neighborhood near Methodist American University and the more expensive Washington Cathedral (Episcopal), which is scheduled for completion in 1985. The capital’s most expensive religious structure is the Roman Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Miscellany

South Africa is suffering its worst drought in memory, and the government sponsored a national interfaith day of prayer for rain. The blistering summer heat that parches crops also encourages swimming, but the government is tightening up seashore segregation. Persons of different races swimming in sight of each other face fines or jail sentences. A mulatto leader charges “greedy whites” have snapped up the best beaches. In Israel, the fifteen-member municipal council elected as mayor its only Mapam Party member, Abdul Aziz Zouabi. He got his own vote and all seven Communist votes, while the seven Alignment Party members boycotted the meeting. (See December 17, 1965, issue, page 35.)

Deaths

THE RT. REV. ROMUALDO GONZALEZ-ACUEROS, 59, Episcopal missionary bishop of Cuba since 1961; in New Orleans, of cancer.

THE REV. NIKOLAI LEVINDANTO, 69, vice-president of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (largest Soviet Protestant organization) and administor of Baptist work in the Baltic states; in Riga, Latvia.

DR. JOHAN AASGAARD, 89, the president who helped Americanize the Norwegian Lutheran Church and led it into the American Lutheran Church merger in 1960; of pneumonia, in Cokato, Minnesota.

Pupil placement by religion was outlawed for public schools in Celina, Ohio. Three local schools are attended mostly by Roman Catholics, and a fourth is predominantly Protestant. The court order let stand the practice of Catholic nuns’ teaching in religious garb.

Nevada’s Attorney General Harvey Dicker-son ruled unconstitutional a plan for students in Roman Catholic schools to take certain courses in public schools.

Intermarriage within a 250-family Old Order Amish community in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, is considered the cause of an outbreak of a rare form of anemia that was fatal to at least nine children. Blood specialist Dr. Herbert S. Bowman of Harrisburg said the Amish need not marry outside their faith but should marry outside the single isolated group. This is difficult for the Amish, who keep close family ties and do little traveling because of a ban on automobiles.

As congressional hearings on the Ku Klux Klan resumed last month (see November 19, 1965, issue, page 42), former Klansmen told of KKK intimidation projects, including bombing of Methodist and Baptist buildings in Slidell, Louisiana. Other more chilling schemes faltered: statewide church burnings, militia activity against street demonstrators, and sabotage of a train carrying Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson.

Forty-five Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders lent their names last month to the government’s war on poverty by announcing formation of an amorphous Inter-Religious Committee Against Poverty (IRCAP).

Many politicians think clergy support made the difference in putting across civil rights reforms and are anxious to rally religious backing for the poverty program. Vice-President Humphrey attended IRCAP’s birth and enthused, “The spiritual and material resources you can bring to this effort are crucial in … any ultimate victory.” Prompt praise also came from Vatican Radio.

Humphrey said IRCAP was “a manifestation of the most fundamental beliefs of our three faiths.” He quoted from Ezekiel and the Epistle of James and said “the preface of the Economic Opportunity Act was written many hundreds and thousands of years ago.”

The IRCAP opening statement said that “the persistence of involuntary poverty in a society possessing the resources and the technological capacity to eradicate it is both economically and politically indefensible and morally intolerable.…”

Churchmen and politicians of all varieties are against poverty, but there’s a lot of disagreement when it comes to specifics. The poverty war is still a hot partisan issue, with Republicans charging millions of dollars are wasted in bureaucracy and never reach the poor. Humphrey used the IRCAP platform to call that claim “hogwash.”

A key IRCAP spokesman was the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, leader of the United Presbyterian Church and apparent front-runner to be new chief of the World Council of Churches (see page 54). Asked if IRCAP expects clergymen to back the poverty war from the pulpit, Blake replied: “I expect them to preach the faith they profess to hold. It includes this commitment.”

Church groups are already involved in poverty programs to the tune of millions. IRCAP, which received impetus from the National Council of Churches’ board last June, plans to amalgamate religious force and advise the government on how it thinks things should be done.

This has already happened locally. In many slum neighborhoods, churches have joined the political infighting to get laymen on poverty steering committees and see that the poor are properly represented in policy-making. The issue has been hotly debated in recent months, since city Democratic machines would like to dispense the millions. It was rumored the machines were out to get R. Sargent Shriver, head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, but Shriver has dropped his Peace Corps responsibilities and stayed with OEO.

IRCAP intertwines with the earlier Citizens Crusade Against Poverty, a front for 125 interest groups pushing private agency involvement in OEO programs. The head of the crusade, auto union President Walter Reuther, is also on the IRCAP committee. IRCAP’s Blake also heads the crusade’s community action commission.

At the recent AFL-CIO convention Shriver declared that although several years ago it was “practically impossible for a federal agency to give a direct grant to a religious group, today we have given hundreds without violating the principle of separation of church and state.”

One Washington religious lobbyist who favors a more traditional separation grumbled, “It’s bad enough to do it without bragging about it.”

Second Front In Smut War

Federal prosecutors won a key conviction last month that opened a second front in their war on smut. Rather than hitting a California publisher at the point of origin, they indicted him in Sioux City, Iowa, where his stuff had been shipped.

A jury convicted Milton Luros, his wife, and seven employees under a 1958 amendment to U. S. anti-obscenity laws that permits prosecution at delivery points. Luros’s lurid literature included L Is for Lesbian, Lesbian Interlude, Lesbian Alley, Lesbians in White, Lesbian Sin Song, Two Women in Love, The Three-Way Apartment, Popular Nudism, Nudist Week, Urban Nudist, and Teenage Nudist.

A special panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals in Washington is to decide whether the 1958 amendment is constitutional and whether it was applied fairly in the Iowa trial. Defense attorneys said the government purposely picked a rural district in order to win conviction.

The U. S. Supreme Court is currently pondering the merits of several big obscenity cases. Its previous rulings have confused jurists, and enforcement varies widely across the country.

Sick Transit

New York City clergymen, often outspoken on current issues, said little in their sermons when a transit crisis hit home. Religious News Service, based in the city that was paralyzed thirteen days by a transport workers’ strike, said preachers were “helpless and baffled.” Even those often sympathetic to organized labor were among the hesitant, perhaps reflecting the public’s general disenchantment with the union.

The union tried to get a department of the Protestant Council of New York to urge that union President Michael Quill be released from jail, where he had been sent for disobeying a no-strike injunction. But council chief Dan Potter said, “This is a power struggle in which the churches are not in a position to be of help.”

Later, Potter joined Catholic and Jewish leaders to front a 200-member committee that backed Mayor John Lindsay’s three points for settlement. They held a press conference and special prayer services.

As in last fall’s power blackout, people pitched in. Ministers dipped into welfare funds to help members unable to work. Harlem churchmen organized car pools to get people to jobs. The Salvation Army ran round-the-clock transportation for hospital workers and served 240,000 cups of coffee and snacks to people waiting in impossibly long lines for commuter trains.

Church attendance was down all over the city, particularly at big downtown churches that draw from outside Manhattan.

Some reporters consider the Roman Catholic archdiocese an integral part of the establishment Lindsay hopes to unseat. In this vein, the Washington Post’s Flora Lewis wrote that in the strike Lindsay was “the general on one side. The general on the other side has never appeared, and probably does not exist, except as ‘the way tilings have been done around here’ and the lawyers, businessmen, union leaders, politicians and churchmen who have been doing them.”

Youth For Christ At 21

Youth for Christ is now 21 years old; its adolescence is over and its voice has changed. At a convention last month in Seattle, evangelists to teen-agers talked about racial integration, the inner city, and internationalism.

The Rev. Sam Wolgemuth, 51-year-old former Brethren in Christ bishop now entering his second year as YFC president, told local reporters: “Before Youth for Christ becomes any larger, or gets any busier, we feel a sense of responsibility … to look at our adult selves, to evaluate our motives and purposes, to deepen our spiritual resources.”

YFC began with one full-time staff member—Billy Graham—and now has 359 in fifty-one nations (half of these are ordained). Counting the semi-autonomous local “rally” units, it spends more than $3 million a year.

Wolgemuth admits, “We haven’t done very much significant work in the inner city,” but hopes this will change. The YFC stronghold in the New York City area, for example, has been middle-classy Long Island, but an invasion of Manhattan is in the works. Another teen evangelistic group, Young Life Crusade, has undertaken a similar migration.

When you talk about inner city you’re talking about Negroes. YFC has looked in the mirror and seen a white face staring back. So last September it hired the Rev. William Panell, its first Negro staffer (see “Negroes as Neighbors,” page 38, January 21 issue). Another sign of the times: last month’s big rally in Birmingham, Alabama, which drew 6,000 young people, was integrated. Of integration, Wolgemuth said, “We are committed, no matter what it costs us. It is the Lord’s will.”

Some observers sense a toning-down of YFC’s exuberant, rah-rah atmosphere and note that its magazine and clubs now carry the post-teen label “campus” even though it’s a high school movement. But the light touch is still an important ingredient in meetings designed to draw in the apathetic or unchurched teen-ager.

Next fall, some two dozen married couples will inaugurate the new Y-2 program, an evangelistic Peace Corps in which college graduates will spend two years working with YFC’s native staffers overeas. Its director is Dr. David H. Paynter, California school administrator credited with starting the conservation centers under the U. S. Office of Economic Opportunity.

On Washington’s Birthday the Lifeline Department, which works with delinquents, will dedicate its newly built boys’ home in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on farmland where the first president lived as a youth.

John Haywood spent years preparing for a special ministry to lepers in Viet Nam. Though caught between Viet Cong and U. S. Marines, his hospital near Da Nang, the Hylac Vien (Happy Garden) Leprosarium, was completed this year and survived periodic shellings. Symone, a Swiss missionary he married last February, was expecting their first child.

So the future was full of promise on January 8 as the quiet, red-haired 29-year-old missionary set out for Hue to see U. S. officials about getting livestock to feed his patients. Failing to hitch a plane ride with U. S. Marines, he started out with a convoy along the perilous road north.

Three miles out of Da Nang, in a dense jungle area where the road narrows, the Viet Cong guerrillas opened fire, killed three Vietnamese soldiers, and crippled two military vehicles.

As Haywood got out of his Microbus to investigate, a machine-gunner in the ditch cut him down with three bullets to the head and three in the chest. He died instantly. One investigator said Haywood apparently tried to help somebody and just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

His body (minus papers, watch, wallet) was recovered later that day by Marines, and taken back to Da Nang. On January 10, Haywood was buried in a Christian and Missionary Alliance cemetery at Da Nang as American soldiers looked on.

The day after the funeral, the widow gave birth to a daughter and named her Jacqueline. Mrs. Haywood announced she will remain at her missions post.

John Haywood was the first missionary murdered in Viet Nam since two Wycliffe Bible translators were slain in March, 1963, and the first since military escalation began making it a new war early last year. Ironically, the murder came during a lull in fighting and a halt in U. S. bombing raids on the North.

Another bit of irony: Haywood had been near much greater danger for the better part of three years while setting up the leprosarium eight miles south of Da Nang.

Haywood, a native of Birmingham, England, operating under the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, ran the hospital by remote control, since it was in an unsecured area 200 yards from Viet Conginfested jungles. He stayed at a clinic at the Marble Mountains, as close to the hospital as he could get. The five native staffers who lived at the hospital itself ferried patients and supplies to and from Haywood.

In a December prayer letter, Haywood summarized his feelings: “Things are bad, but not impossible.” After all, the very existence of the hospital was a miracle. The site was granted by the Saigon government after six frustrating years of negotiations. Last August, while the newlywed Haywoods were in Hong Kong getting special training in treating leprosy, the Viet Cong threatened to destroy the hospital because they had seen American officers there presenting a gift. One night hundreds of VCs showed up with tools to level the fourteen-building compound. After hours of pleading, the Reds decided to leave it alone.

The hospital is in an area Marines hope to take over. During a Marine sweep through the area last March, twenty-nine Viet Cong soldiers escaped capture by hiding in beds at the leprosarium.

The hospital has 200 patients and is the only leprosy treatment center in the northern part of South Viet Nam. Gordon Smith, WEC administrator for Viet Nam now on American furlough, said the future is uncertain. Haywood had been through Bible college in England, learned Vietnamese, and studied the disease. A replacement with these abilities will be hard to find.

“The war has played havoc with our work, but it is going ahead,” he said. “No missionary can go out into the countryside, so nationals do the job, and they are magnificent.”

Churches Hike Viet Nam Relief

Next month American Protestant groups will launch a greatly expanded relief program in Viet Nam, all of it supervised by the Mennonite Central Committee.

So far, some $350,000 has been earmarked for this year’s effort, mainly aimed at helping war refugees. The total compares with only. $32,500 expended in 1965. Church World Service hopes to provide the MCC with $250,000 from its 1966 budget, and Lutheran World Relief seeks to raise $50,000. The rest, it is hoped, will come from Mennonite and Brethren in Christ contributors.

During the next eight months, forty-five new volunteers, including five doctors and six nurses, will go to Viet Nam to join the eleven already there. Seventeen of the forty-five new volunteers will be recruited by the MCC and the rest by CWS. They will expand already existing relief efforts in Saigon, Nhatrang, and Pleiku and begin projects at five more locations.

The MCC continues to be the only Protestant relief agency handling government surplus commodities in Viet Nam. During 1966 it expects to receive 4, 250,000 pounds of dried milk powder, flour, wheat, cornmeal, and vegetables. Drugs are being dispensed also by MCC.

An MCC spokesman says the “danger” of having the organization’s relief and service efforts identified with the U. S. government’s total military and psychological strategy to win the war “continues to pose serious problems.”

Wanted: Christian Canteens

The National Association of Evangelicals is trying to rally support for the establishment of Christian servicemen’s centers in Viet Nam. There are numerous evangelistic programs in operation for the nearly 200,000 American GI’s there, but not a single church-related canteen or outdoor recreational area. If funds become available, NAE plans to set up such centers, beginning in Saigon, through its Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship.

Pressures On The President

From New York’s big Interchurch Center last month came a new pressure campaign for a negotiated settlement of the Viet Nam war. United States clergymen found themselves in the middle. Leading pastors all over the country were telephoned and asked to rally support for the administration’s peace effort and against pressures on President Johnson to renew bombing of North Viet Nam.

The campaign originated in an office rented by the recently organized inter-religious “National Emergency Committee of Clergy Concerned About Viet Nam.” One of its members was identified as Richard Cardinal Cushing, who later dissociated himself, asserting he “was merely requested to permit the use of my name in support of the peace program of Pope Paul VI and President Johnson.”

Another group of clergymen, spearheaded by the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, announced they were forming an “International Committee of Conscience on Viet Nam.”

Death Follows Kashmir Pact

Leaders of India and Pakistan signed a pact on Kashmir last month that may ease religious tensions (see “Christians Caught in Kashmir Crossfire,” October 8, 1965, issue).

The agreement in Tashkent was regarded as a diplomatic triumph for the Soviet Union, which arranged the meeting, and it was celebrated with drinking and dancing girls. Hours later, India’s teetotaling Prime Minister Shastri awoke from his sleep, crying, “My father! My God!” and shortly after died of a heart attack.

The pact with Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan which climaxed Shastri’s career calls for withdrawal of troops to last summer’s lines by February 25, restored diplomatic relations, and peaceful settlement of future disputes. Christian spokesmen in the West rejoiced, but many Pakistanis were outraged at a thaw with India without settlement of basic Kashmir issues. Opposition politicians blasted the agreement, and two persons died in a Lahore riot. Pakistan insists on a free vote, believing Kashmiris would unite with their Islamic nation rather than with India, which is mainly Hindu.

Strife often seems a way of life for Protestants. But lately they’ve been on unaccustomed sidelines watching America’s Roman Catholics wrestle with new furies unleashed by Vatican Council II.

The council stirred up the present ferment in several ways. Liberals have a new boldness in challenging the church establishment. Conservatives claim the same freedom to lament the council’s effects. And the liberal spirit has opened up discussions in private and a thorough airing of them in public.

Consider these strange results in recent weeks:

• The nation’s first university teachers’ strike occurred not at bombastic Berkeley but at St. John’s University in New York City, largest Catholic college in America (13, 000 students at two campuses). The strike was not just a labor dispute over mass faculty firings but a revolt against the whole design of Catholic higher education.

• A decade after John Courtney Murray was muffled in private for ecumenical wandering, Ave Maria, a weekly of the Congregation of Holy Cross, published eleven hard-hitting case histories of latter-day “silenced priests.” Most were reassigned or restricted because of pacifist and civil rights activities.

• In the most celebrated silencing, Daniel Berrigan, a pacifist Jesuit, was subtly sent to South America for three months of journalistic penance on the eve of a big pacifist meeting, and after David Miller, one of his proteges, started the draft-card burning craze. The Berrigan case inspired an unprecedented uproar, with heated diatribes, newspaper ads, and pickets at Cardinal Spellman’s office.

• Another silenced priest broke his silence and announced resurgence of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement he founded. The Rev. Gommar A. DePauw became the new spokesman for Catholic fundamentalists who oppose the “Protestantizing” of the church after Vatican II, and managed to draw three cardinals into an international dispute over who was responsible for his revolt to the right.

Then there were a bishop and priest trading verbal blows during the strike by California grape-pickers and perennial conscientious objection on subjects like birth control. (A high French churchman flatly rejected church teaching in a recent Paris radio program.)

In Mendoza, Argentina, twenty-seven progressive priests have quit diocesan offices, and a spokesman says they won’t return until Archbishop Alfonso Buteler, 75, implements Vatican II reforms.

The St. John’s fuss had been in the making since March, but for some reason the administration brusquely dumped 31 of its 510 teachers in mid-semester. Ten of those fired during the Christmas holiday were later allowed to teach through June.

In retaliation, the United Federation of College Teachers, whose local chapter is headed by the ousted Rev. Peter O’Reilly, called a strike of the non-fired teachers. Some students also boycotted classes in sympathy when the vacation period ended last month. The two sides varied widely on how many people stayed away.

The school executives have been remarkably uncommunicative through the furor, but apparently they considered some of the teachers incompetent and others guilty of insubordination and unprofessional conduct. Teachers had been seeking fixed tenure, union recognition, higher salaries, and a role in running the university.

Despite some recent concessions to these complaints, the university is under investigation by the American Association of University Professors (which could censure the school) and the city labor department. The National Labor Relations Board refused to get involved because St. John’s is a non commercial employer.

Most of the dismissed teachers are laymen, although one is Msgr. John G. Clancy, formerly of the Vatican Secretariat of State.

One of the loudest dissidents is a former philosophy professor, Dr. Rosemary Latter, who was once demoted for criticizing Thomas Aquinas, for centuries the honorary clean of Catholic colleges. She contends that “the Catholic Church, or any other church, ought not to operate a university,” because it seeks to propagate dogma. She sees this as the wave of the future for Catholic colleges and points out that most Protestant ones have already made the break. O’Reilly, less extreme, regrets that the church often reduces universities to “indoctrination centers.”

While intellectual liberals seek no-holds-barred education, conservatives are also vocal. DePauw’s group is the most tangible expression of grass-roots discontent over church changes, particularly over what he calls “hootenanny liturgy,” “ecumania,” services attended by both Catholics and Protestants, and “indifferentism”—the idea that Protestant-Catholic differences aren’t significant. He supports the Vatican II documents but says they have been distorted by liberal Catholic journalists and theologians.

Although DePauw is the only priest in the movement, he claims support from thirty bishops and a top Vatican official (unnamed) as well as a vast majority of Catholic laymen.

When he announced plans to open a New York office last month, the 47-year-old Belgian said Cardinal Ottaviani, leader of arch-conservatives at Vatican II, had arranged to transfer him from the jurisdiction of Baltimore’s Cardinal Shehan to that of an Italian bishop. That bishop said Cardinal Spellman had asked help for DePauw. Spellman denied this and said he doesn’t want the Catholic Traditionalist Movement in New York. Meanwhile, Shehan’s office said it has no word of any transfer.

A previous DePauw-Shehan struggle is one of Ave Maria’s eleven cases. Several other disputes involve agitation against Los Angeles’s James Francis Cardinal McIntyre for conservative racial policies. Other cases affected priests active in civil rights in Cambridge, Maryland; Selma, Alabama; Albany, New York; and Milwaukee (see November 5, 1965, issue, page 56).

But Daniel Berrigan overshadows them all. The publicity is natural, with the interest in Viet Nam issues and Berrigan’s visibility as one of the handful of Catholic pacifists. Also, his equally pacifist brother Philip had been moved from a seminary post to a city parish last April and told to keep quiet about Viet Nam.

When the Lutheran co-chairman of Clergy Concerned About Viet Nam, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, revealed that Berrigan had been told to quit the organization, Berrigan was discovered at Georgetown University preparing for a three-month assignment in Latin America for Jesuit Missions magazine, of which he is associate editor, and unwilling to say anything. The hurricane of commentary and the unprecedented picketing of Spellman followed. The Rev. Robert W. Gleason of Fordham University said bitterly. “The real issue in this vicious, totalitarian act is: Is it still possible for a committed Christian to remain in the Roman Catholic Church?”

More temperate reactions constitute a serious reconsideration of the role of obedience in the church. Among issues raised: During Rome’s current transition, should a priest obey a Vatican document or an unreconstructed superior if they conflict? Is the hierarchy afraid those involved in social action may step on the toes of well-heeled contributors? How great is the “psychological distance” between a bishop and a slum priest?

Germany: Tax Tremor

West Germany’s Constitutional Court has overthrown a part of the government’s collection of taxes for churches. The court said that a husband who is either an atheist or a member of a church other than the major Protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism need not pay the church tax if his wife has no income. The church levy is estimated at $600 million a year, the biggest source of income for the major churches.

Separation of church and state, made a constitutional principle in Germany in 1919, has not been followed strictly in West Germany. In officially atheistic East Germany the church tax was abandoned years ago.

Scotland: Kirk Secrecy

In Scotland, one popular daily can always be certain of boosting its circulation by a dire warning calculated to alarm the country. One day last month it nudged Rhodesia and Viet Nam off the front page with the headline, “BISHOPSagain:SECRET PLOT.”

Other papers related less emotionally that conversations had been resumed between Presbyterians and Anglicans working toward a United Church in Scotland.

An official joint statement said: “Originally it was anticipated that the full conference would meet again in September 1966, but … it was agreed that, over large areas of doctrine, sufficient agreement had been reached for the full conference to come together in January.” A previous “Bishops Report,” which advocated church union featuring bishops-in-presbytery, had been rejected by the Scottish General Assembly in 1959.

Plot or not, secrecy did surround the meetings, a fact bitterly criticized by some Church of Scotland ministers. One presbytery moderator declared, “If the linen cannot be washed in public, it is not clean.”

Another critic was John Knox’s current successor at historic St. Giles’ Kirk, Dr. Harry Whitley (who was once described by an ecumenically minded colleague as “the greatest single non-theological factor in church disunity”). Commenting on a reported scheme to give the Kirk bishops, Whitley described it as “verging on the arrogant, because it discredits the entire ministry of the Church of Scotland.” Progress was not possible, he averred, until things were “done in the open.”

The Kirk-owned British Weekly scoffed at the suggestion that bishops are to be “foisted” on the Presbyterian establishment, and pointed out existing safeguards against precipitate action.

It seems clear, however, that the emphasis on secrecy has boomeranged. Conference officials were acutely embarrassed that the contents of a “private and confidential document should have got into the possession of a newspaper at whose hands bishops have in the past received rather less than sympathetic treatment.” This document put forward for discussion a scheme that would irrevocably give the Kirk bishops who alone could ordain future ministers.

Given the Anglican view, the basic question between the two denominations appears to be simple: On what terms will the Scots accept bishops? For better or worse, Scottish reaction has changed very little from that of John Davidson four centuries ago: “Busk [dress] him, busk him as bonnilie as ye can … we see the horns of his mitre.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

Worldly Laymen In Chicago

“God calls all men and women to committed witness and action in all the dimensions of our daily lives. We live in the world, and we are in no way separated from it. We must work out our ministry in the structures of everyday experience, at work and at leisure, in family and neighborhood relationships, as buyers and consumers, and as politically responsible citizens.”

Thus begins a “message” from the mid-January Conference on the Ministry of the Laity in the World, convened in Chicago by the National and Canadian Councils of Churches. A secular citified ideology was evident throughout the meeting, which set forth the “new layman” in his ministry as a man of the world and a secular leader in the Church.

The convention of 450 delegates (85 per cent laymen) was the second of its kind. The first, in Buffalo, New York, in 1952, studied “the Christian and his daily work.”

Diverse views became apparent during voting on the message at the final session. The incident began when a motion was made to change this sentence: “We urge that the churches, without delay, take the necessary steps to make their membership open to all men, regardless of ethnic, racial or economic status.”

The proposed amendment, which did not pass, would have inserted a phrase: “… to make their membership open to all who accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ, regardless …”

A spokesman for the Message Committee quickly said that the intent of the sentence was not to point to religious issues but to indicate the Church’s opposition to prejudice. He did not offer a conditioning clause to demonstrate the need for prospective members to agree with church doctrine.

Earlier, Dr. Hans H. Walz, general secretary of the German Kirchentag, a laymen’s movement, expressed the mood of the conference, saying Christian faith and the secular world are partners in a common effort. Christians, he asserted, are “called to understand the nature and change of this society” and must face the ministry of the laity as the ecumenical obligation and promise of our age.

Surveying developments in the Roman Catholic laity, Dr. Martin H. Work, executive director of the National Council of Catholic Men, contended the second Vatican Council made laymen as responsible for the Church’s well-being as clergymen, regardless of their church rank.

He said the layman is now at the center of the universal church. By virtue of this “first specific legacy” of Vatican II, he said, “laymen must use their knowledge, competence, or outstanding ability” to express their opinions on things that affect the good of the church.

Bishop Stephen F. Bayne, Jr., first vice-president of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council, said laymen must discover “what God is doing in the world,” “identify with his purpose,” and serve the world rather than the institutional church.

Focusing on the social consequences of revolutions in education, Dr. Glenn A. Olds, executive dean of the State University of New York, said ministering laymen should resist the deepest “segregation—that of the sacred and secular, idea and action, belief and life.” The current revolution in higher education has turned the traditional values upside down, he suggested. It has inverted the Hebraic-Christian views of life and learning, necessitating a new science of values.

Dr. Richard Fagley, executive secretary of the World Council of Churches’ international affairs commission, further urged Christians to scrap static ideas and become personally involved in the continuing revolution in matters of war and peace. He described tensions between North and South and between East and West.

H. WILBERT NORTON, JR.

Pacifists fight back

All Curled Up

There has come to my hands, as too often happens, a church bulletin. I understand that men in the active pastorate like to get these things from each other just for the sake of ideas, but they do nothing for me.

This particular bulletin, which came out in December, is an extended one that includes a newsletter and a list of recommended books. Wouldn’t you know it, the list of books has the usual covey of Christmas cuties, the kinds of books publishing houses get out for the seasonal trade with the misguided assumption that around Christmas and Easter, when people are rushed to death, they will be wanting to read special little books of religious poetry, religious art, somebody’s self-conscious prayers (for publication), and the customs surrounding holidays in “other lands.”

But after the usual fare, this particular minister suggested, to show that he is “in,” that his parishioners read Camus, Bonhoeffer, Salinger, Faulkner, and Hemingway (but not quite Henry Miller). It is no feather in my cap to recall that I have already read the books listed; but this does not prevent me from wondering why authors like this get into book lists in church bulletins.

More to the point, such authors are always included on the book lists sent out by colleges for the freshmen to read as a kind of orientation before they start their studies. Who is trying to kid whom, and just what do the compilers of these lists have in mind? I have no particular objection to these authors’ being read; what hurts me is that this kind of stuff is being read when a lot of other stuff is not.

It is one of the strange quirks of our education today that we want everybody to think about calculus before they have learned arithmetic. Unless most people learn pretty soon what the simple Gospel is—sin, salvation, newness of life, and eternal hope—there isn’t much use in our discussing the subtle variations.

EUTYCHUS II

War And Peace

Your analysis of our involvement in Viet Nam (“Where Do We Go from Here?,” Jan. 7 issue) was penetrating and prophetic. This is the kind of solid Christian guidance we need. I’m going to start praying my prayers for peace instead of wishing them.

Deerfield, Ill.

LEROY BIRNEY

With [General William K. Harrison’s] military logic, I cannot quarrel (“Is the United States Right in Bombing North Viet Nam?,” Jan. 7 issue). But his employment of the questionable dogma of the Second Coming to afford his view a religious sanction was, to say the least, reprehensible.… He chides the pacifists and peace-mongers for their vain efforts.

I cannot imagine that the God we have known in Jesus Christ would be adverse to our attempts, however futile, to become “peacemakers.” Besides, it would be utter abdication of elemental human responsibility not to work for peace—or is the United Nations a massive exercise in futility?…

But if the Second Advent, as the General says, is the sole source of lasting peace, then instead of manufacturing and detonating bombs, Christians ought to be praying, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Pentwater, Mich.

HARRY T. COOK, II

One of the most confused and confusing articles I have ever read on Viet Nam is the one by General Harrison.… He … dismisses pacifism as being irrelevant.…

DONALD K. BLACKIE

Calvary Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Statistical Static

Re “Seminaries Hold the Line” (News, Jan. 7 issue); You quoted the AATS figures concerning the percentage of students preparing for the ministry, mentioned the United Presbyterians and the Anglican Church of Canada, and then added, “All other large denominations declined.” This is strictly false, as a not even very careful reading of those figures shows. The United Church of Christ, for example, had a percentage increase of over 30 per cent. A number of other major denominations also did not decline.…

HAROLD H. WILKE

Executive Director

Council for Church and Ministry

United Church of Christ

New York, N. Y.

• The article compared 1965 enrollments with those of the previous year, but not “percentage.” A “not even very careful reading” of staff report Number 8, Volume IX, from the American Association of Theological Schools shows the U.C.C. seminaries had 773 students in 1965 and 777 the previous year. Other major denominations with lower numbers in 1965 were the United Church of Canada, American and Southern Baptists, Disciples, Methodists, Southern Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. Mr. Wilke’s 30 per cent increase is probably a comparison between 1956 and 1965.—ED.

‘Dangerously Extremist’

I am shocked at the full-page ad (Jan. 7 issue) of the Conservative Book Club. The Conservative Club, as we know in our area, is a front for the John Birch Society, a dangerously extremist organization.… Kinston, N. C.

D. W. CHARLTON

I am “a politically conservative Christian who supported politically conservative politicians out of a lively fear of socialism through expanding federal controls and the welfare implications of projected government programs” (“Will 1966 Signal a Breakthrough?,” Jan. 7 issue). However, I was extremely offended by the advertisement of the Conservative Book Club.… Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

JOHN COCHRANE

Dr. Poling Replies

I certainly appreciate that generous and heartwarming editorial on page 32 of your January 7 issue. Thank you.…

Also this letter gives me the opportunity to express my appreciation for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. That same issue of January 7 is chuck-full of important, timely, vital material. Particularly I have read with appreciation “Will 1966 Signal a Breakthrough,” “Is Protestant Christianity Being Sabotaged from Within?,” and “The Future of Evangelism.” And also, let me add, the article and editorial on Viet Nam.

DANIEL A. POLING

Chairman and Editor

Christian Herald Association

New York, N. Y.

The Nature Of Crucifixion

The reference to mandrake juice and the Crucifixion (“Did Jesus Die on Calvary?,” Dec. 17 issue) fails to note, first, that Hugh J. Schonfield incorporated Horner’s theory about the crucifixion of Christ into his recent book, The Passover Plot, and, second, that the theory that Jesus did not die on the cross, but took a narcotic drug that fooled the Romans, is patently incompatible with the most rudimentary consideration of the nature of crucifixion. The spread arms and pendant body raise the rib cage and drop the diaphragm maximally. The victim can breathe only by raising the body, an action which requires the use of the large muscles of the legs if it is to be maintained for any length of time. This is why the legs of those crucified were broken to hasten death: death by suffocation would ensue within minutes. Therefore, if Christ had taken a drug in sufficient quantity to induce unconsciousness while hanging on the cross, it would not have taken a spear thrust to hasten his death. He would have been dead before his friends could have taken him down. The plot so elaborately spun out by Schonfield necessarily falls apart because of its inconsistency with this one elementary fact. Indeed, if Jesus reappeared physically after the crucifixion, this recent theory requires the identical miracle of resurrection which Schonfield and Horner are at pains to avoid.

Unfortunately, this error will continue its devastation, for it satisfies the desire of man to avoid the claims of Scripture. The unloved correction can only plod slowly behind the flying falsehood. Upland, Calif.

DAVID F. SIEMENS. JR.

Send Me More

Many of us were overjoyed to receive the essay on “Revealed Religion” by Gordon H. Clark (Dec. 17 issue).… Would you send me twelve copies of this essay, that I might distribute them to [a] class (and thus also be assured that no one walks off with mine, which is being loaned-to-death!).

Concordia Theological Seminary

Springfield, Ill.

DALE W. NESS

Delightfully I noted that our history of philosophy text was none other than Gordon H. Clark’s Selections from Hellenistic Philosophy. With this opening I was able to put your wonderful pamphlet into the professor’s hands; an interesting discussion ensued.…

Portland, Ore.

DALE SANDERS

Soul-Winning Chaplain

In re “Is the Chaplaincy a Quasi-Religious Business?” (Dec. 17 issue): Why is it that the evangelicals often question the motives of their ministering brethren who serve in the military chaplaincy?… It has been my privilege to win somewhat over 3,000 men and women to Jesus Christ since I have become a Navy chaplain.… I have given opportunity for decisions again and again in public services. I have gone so far as to give old-fashioned altar calls in Marine and Navy chapels, all done in good taste and order. I have never been called in question by the command about my methods and principles.…

Chaplain Corps

United States Navy

STANFORD E. LINZEY, JR.

Commander

A Jesuit Joins Us

Please enter me for a subscription to your magazine.…

Thank you … for giving us a distinctly diverse and consistent approach to the great religious themes of today … so that we outside your fold can learn to appreciate better the conscientious positions of Christians in many churches.

DAVID J. BOWMAN,

S. J. Chicago, Ill.

Loyola University

The Christian Is Witness

The Witness: Message, Method, Motivation, by Urie A. Bender (Herald, 1965, 159 pp., $3), is reviewed by Herman J. Ridder, president, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Although he makes no reference to it, D. T. Niles’s famous definition of witness fits Bender’s description: “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.”

Because he sees the Christian as a witness whether or not he wants to be one, the author begins his treatment with some of the key hindrances to witnessing. The reader sees himself implicated in a variety of ways. The hindrances are real.

Describing witness, Bender says: “To witness is to report; to present the evidence growing out of personal experience. That is all” (p. 54). “Every aspect of personality expressed outwardly in any form projects an image and carries a message” (p. 65). Or again, “Witnessing is being oneself before others, the new self in Christ Jesus …” (p. 66). And this is the burden of his presentation throughout the book. He is anxious to convey the impression that witness is not some special activity engaged in under certain structured conditions but is rather the natural expression of the Christian in any kind of situation.

Bender has his eyes open to the world. He sincerely wants to let the world “write the agenda” as the Church seeks to relate the Gospel of Christ to the world’s need. He sees witness as what it indeed is: hard, exacting labor. One sometimes tires of the approach that suggests that evangelism can be “made easy.” There are no easy ways of discipleship, which involves the bearing of a cross.

Bender is so concerned about the naturalness of witness that he is led into a fatal overemphasis on it, thereby neglecting the other side of the coin. Repeatedly he disparages organization as it relates to evangelistic efforts. “… mission boards have been organized, outreach programs have been set up, and individuals have been sent great distances to fulfill a mission whose major resource lies untouched” (p. 76). He sees little value in “special calls, appointments, and assignments” (p. 77). In fact, he suggests that “even friendship and visitation evangelism, so-called, are inherently dangerous.… The real problem with organized activities is that they are organized. This results too often in a stiff formality, a job to be done and gone, and the report for the record” (pp. 88, 89).

Obviously, there is a kind of organization that is stultifying and lifeless. There are methods of evangelism that have lived far beyond the period of history for which they have been created. And the church that assumes it is doing evangelism just because it is busy going through the motions, even if they have no effect, obviously needs to take a long look at itself and allow the Spirit to breathe new life into its witness. But to say that witness suffers when a congregation carries out an aggressive and attractive program of evangelism that leads its members into an increasingly natural participation is to deal harshly with the facts. For many, naturalness in expression comes by way of a program, such as visitation evangelism, that places them in a situation where a positive witness is required. When they find God’s Spirit powerful in that situation, they later find the confidence to trust him in all of life’s relationships.

And that’s all Bender really wants. With that I couldn’t agree more. His style is refreshing and his presentation clear. The book lends itself to individual or group study.

Next witness!

HERMAN J. RIDDER

Was Hemingway Right?

Sin, Sex and Self-Control, by Norman Vincent Peale (Doubleday, 1965, 207 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Peter Van Tuinen, minister, Trinity Christian Reformed Church, Artesia, California.

This hook, the latest from the facile pen of Dr. Peale, is directed to the moral challenges of our time. Considering the twilight of honesty, the breakdown of sexual morality, and the instability of the family, the author applies his well-known methods of “positive thinking” to meet these challenges.

He proceeds from the observation that our present moral decay results from the breaking down of outer controls. Authority is questioned. The sanctions of the Bible are no longer accepted. What is needed is that people develop inner controls to replace the outer ones. This book is intended to furnish the confidence and the incentive necessary to gain inner control.

In this attempt, the author gives some good counsel, fortified by the usual illustrations from his experience in personal counseling and from other biographical material. He illustrates the troubling consequences of dishonesty and points up the fallacies in the reasoning of those who argue for sexual freedom. In his discussion of the family, he gives some sound advice for parents on the responsibility of training children toward self-discipline and maturity. In all his counsel, he indicates that self-discipline in the light of proper standards is the only satisfying way of life.

One appreciates Dr. Peale’s forthright stand for high moral standards and self-discipline and his emphasis on individual responsibility. His book may well lead some readers to pause and reflect on their pattern of living. If it does, these readers will find some simple and practical techniques for evaluation and correction of their habits of thought and life.

But if Peale were not so well known, his readers would be surprised to learn that he is a minister of the Gospel. His use of Scripture is not that of one who is a student of the Word but of one who adapts familiar quotations from it to suit his point. Moreover, neither his premises nor his goals are in line with the teachings of Scripture.

His whole approach presupposes “a tremendous amount of confidence in the individual,” a confidence Peale justifies on the grounds that Jesus had this, too (pp. 13,205). What about Jesus’ declaration that one cannot see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again? Hasn’t Peale read that? Yes, he has. “Replacing self with selflessness [is] so difficult that the Bible compares it to being born again. There is no easy prescription. There is only one rule that applies in virtually every case: control yourself. That is the secret: control, control, control” (p. 108). Religion can make the necessary change in a person; but “it can happen without religion too” (pp. 194, 195), only it is much harder that way. This is a flat contradiction of the teaching of Jesus, one that comes to focus in Peale’s assertion that “he [Jesus] put no limitation on the power of the human spirit to lift itself above itself” (p. 205).

Peale’s basic premise is unbiblical. He finds cause for optimism in a theory that mankind is actually evolving a higher morality. External authority is breaking down, but man will develop the inner control to take its place. We are now in the interim period in which people are misusing their new freedom from outer controls. Every person who follows Peale’s advice will become a moral force in the world to help the evolution along (pp. 12, 41, 204). Incidentally, Peale doesn’t stay consistently with his theory. Having set it forth, he forgetfully attributes the twilight of honesty to the fact that “inner restraints have been weakened” (p. 14).

This book is really a book on mental health rather than on Christian morality. Peale refers to Hemingway’s flippant judgment that “what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after” as “nonsense,” but most of the book appears to be a demonstration that Hemingway is right.

Sin, Sex and Self-Control is easy reading. It is a store of practical suggestions for gaining self-esteem. It is a book that would fit well in the Moral Rearmament library. But it is not Christianity.

PETER VAN TUINEN

Two Worlds Are Ours

Sacred and Secular: A Study in the Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Aspects of Christianity, by Arthur Michael Ramsey (Harper and Row, 1965, 83 pp., $3), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The subtitle of this book indicates exactly what this book is: “A study in the other-worldly and this-worldly aspects of Christianity.” Anyone who has been troubled of late by reading about a secularized, wholly this-worldly, religionless Christianity will find this book reassuring and stabilizing. And, for that matter, any Christian who has compartmentalized his secular and religious life, or who has so spiritualized his life that the fun and pleasure of the good earth seem alien to his spiritual interests, could find this book, with its incarnational approach to the understanding of Christianity, a healthful corrective experience.

Against those who would wholly secularize and naturalize Christianity, Dr. Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, says bluntly that we would be “hindered and not helped if we were to slip into treating words such as ‘other-worldly’ and ‘supernatural’ as bad words.” In Christianity, says Ramsey, earth and heaven bespeak a duality but not a dualism; “Christianity came into history passionately other-worldly in spirit, and this characteristic did not hinder but rather enhanced its impact upon the world.”

The archbishop is right, and they who urge Christianity’s greater secularization for greater impact on the modern world are confronted with the historic fact that it was an understanding of Christianity that had a distinct “other-worldly” dimension that profoundly shaped the Western world. As Ramsey asserts, “the concept of religionless Christianity is very vulnerable to criticism and probably meaningless,” though he rightly recognizes that “like many misleading conceptions it has behind it a truth which is often forgotten and urgently calls for attention.” For there are indeed versions of Christianity so “spiritual” that they eschew the very world into which Christ came and the very flesh in which he became incarnate.

The author explicitly disowns a notion that can within the Christian Church be regarded only as ridiculous, the notion that Christianity must accommodate itself to what the modern man of the scientific twentieth century is able to believe. “Learn what we can from the modern world about the new understanding of our faith, that faith may, when presented well no less than when presented ill, incur rejection by many. We dare not forget the words of St. Paul: ‘We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto Gentiles foolishness.’ ” Some clever but superficial adherents of a new hermeneutic could ponder the claim of Kierkegaard (who was also clever but never superficial) that where there is no possibility of offense, there is also no possibility of faith.

Those who say that Christianity must be reinterpreted to become something the modern non-Christian is able and willing to believe, are themselves either unable or unwilling to recognize that they have lost all contact with the Gospel. They surely fail to see that a “this-world” which has no relationship to an “other-world” is thereby itself devaluated; not only does all the greatest art and drama possess its greatness through its transcendent reference, but even a blood-curdling curse is pallid without such a reference. A wholly secularized Christianity provides no basis for either great good or great evil; it reduces both to the significance of a sneeze or a backscratch.

In developing his theme that “two worlds are ours” and that there is therefore an authentic Christian humanism, Ramsey gives special attention to some other historical forms of synthesis developed in the history of the Christian Church. He closes with a chapter on what Christianity can learn about itself and the presence of its God in the world through a study of the state, the conscience, the sciences, secularism, humanism, and Christian civilization—phenomena that in some religious traditions fall within, or very near, the category of common grace.

These few brief lectures, written with grace and clarity, speak to a perennial problem particularly acute in our time.

JAMES DAANE

Earnest And Sober

I Believe in the Holy Ghost, by Maynard James (Bethany Fellowship, 1965, 167 pp., $2.97), is reviewed by Norman Shepherd, instructor in systematic theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This book breathes the earnestness of a gospel minister calling upon preacher and people alike to repent of the sin of neglecting the Holy Spirit. His appeal is grounded in the infallible Word of the Spirit speaking in Scripture, reinforced by the word of fellow Christians testifying to the powerful operation of the Spirit in their own ministries.

This dual motif is characteristic of the volume as a whole. Regenerating power awaits the call of “ruined men” (p. 24); the pearl of great price must be supplemented by “the pearl of greatest price,” entire sanctification (p. 126); the once-for-all outpouring of the Spirit must be followed by a “personal Pentecost” (p. 76). There is truth in all of this, but the reader must continually ask whether the author has not unintentionally contributed to the neglect of the Spirit through insufficient attention to the sovereign efficacy of his operations.

In view of the current interest in glossalalia, the brief and superficial attention given to the phenomenon is disappointing. Perhaps it is just the brevity that gives rise to M. Lloyd-Jones’s comment reproduced on the dust jacket commending the excellence of this section. More likely, it is the fact that James does not insist that every believer must have the gift and grants that not every manifestation of tongues is of the Holy Spirit.

We can applaud the sobriety, but we regret that the author does not treat the question many of his readers doubtless have: whether the Church today ought to expect in its midst gifts of prophecy, tongues, and healing in the sense in which Paul thought of them. The answer to that question lies, in part, in an appreciation of the role played by these gifts in the unfolding revelation of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ as a whole; but unfortunately James does not illuminate this topic.

NORMAN SHEPHERD

On Growing Old

The Psychology of Aging, by James E. Birren (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 303 pp., $6.93), is reviewed by Melvin D. Hugen, pastor, Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

On the bookshelf marked “Psychology” may be found everything from handbooks on how to live with a neurotic wife to esoteric research reports wholly unintelligible to the uninitiated. This book falls about 80 per cent up the scale between these two extremes. Written primarily for students of psychology, it treats the biological, social, and psychological changes and influences operative in the second half of man’s life-span. Dr. Birren has organized research information to present an integrated and specific picture of the continuing transformation of man through aging.

Old age is a strange and usually hostile world whose ways and weapons outsiders often do not understand. In view of the rapid increase in life expectancy, the development of such an understanding is increasingly important for the Church and the rest of society.

Aging is not a simple process. Birren suggests that it is useful to think of three types: biological, psychological, and social. He effectively destroys some of the stereotypes of biological aging, e.g., that elderly people are usually senile.

One of the more interesting findings about psychological aging is that the “attitudes of older persons reflect more a concern with the conditions of living than a fear of death” (p. 247). Discussing the great amount of time and energy the older person spends reviewing his past, Birren suggests that this is not just garrulous story-telling or reminiscences but rather an attempt to organize or reorganize his attitudes toward his life. There seems to be a need to arrive at an “acceptable image of himself and of the influences he will leave behind” (p. 275).

The chapter on the social age of the individual brings out problems arising from the fact that “in urban areas, there are few functions … an aging individual can meaningfully perform for himself or his family.” The resulting sense of uselessness is aggravated by the family’s being “better able to provide for the social and psychological dependency of the children than for that of older adults” (cf. pp. 35 ff.). These and other social factors require the Church to rethink her ministry to the elderly.

MELVIN D. HUGEN

Chaos

The Kingdom of the Cults, by Waller R. Marlin (Zondervan, 1965, 443 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, professor emeritus of English Bible, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Deerfield, Illinois.

The author of this encyclopedic work (about 240,000 words of text, excluding the indexes) has devoted the last twenty years to an exhaustive study of the major cults of our country and has written six volumes and numerous pamphlets on the subject. This is no doubt his major work. Twelve cults are discussed: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormonism, Spiritism, Father Divine, Theosophy, Zen Buddhism, The Church of the New Jerusalem, Bahaism, the Black Muslims. Unity, and Anglo-Israelistn, including the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong (when I was last in Westminster Chapel, London, half the questions asked me related to the teachings of Armstrong, whose radio ministry and publications are very influential in Great Britain).

The author also gives us three introductory chapters, one of which is on the “Psychological Structure of Cultism,” and four concluding chapters on such matters as cults on the mission fields and cult evangelism. In the appendix are brief discussions of the Unitarians and Rosicrucians and a long chapter on Seventh-day Adventism, in which Martin contends that the Adventists are to be considered within the pale of evangelical Christianity.

The author gives a threefold consideration to each of these cults. First, he provides a historical background, sometimes, as with Mary Baker Eddy and Pastor Russell, going into great detail on such matters as sources and court documents. He then gives a careful statement, with quotations from official publications, of the cult’s teachings, especially as they relate to great Christian truths. Finally, he points out how these various teachings are contrary to the Word of God. Here he is at his best, showing himself a careful student of the original languages of the Scriptures. An excellent illustration is his marshaling of evidence to contradict the meaning Jehovah’s Witnesses give the verb analusis, “depart” (pp. 68, 69).

I think one might say that most cults are characterized by four things. First, they pretend to give a more accurate interpretation of the Scriptures than has the Christian Church, and thus claim to exalt the Scriptures. The title of Mary Baker Eddy’s book is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and of Pastor Russell’s works Studies in the Scriptures, while the Book of Mormon cites thousands of verses from the Bible (King James Version). Unity uses Christian terminology throughout its literature. In reading this material one is continually reminded of the word of our Lord, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). (I was amazed to note in the definition of Christian Science in the American College Dictionary this statement: “a system of religious teaching based on the Scriptures.”) Second, the leaders of these cults believe, or at least pretend to believe, that they are especially anointed prophets for a new day, with a revelation from God, and they even go so far as to say that their peculiar ministry is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Third, the cults are unequivocably wrong in their interpretation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, denying his vicarious atonement, bodily resurrection, and true deity. All are to be judged by the very question that Jesus himself asked of the Pharisees, “What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” (Matt. 22:42). Fourth, practically all these cults seem to hate the Church. Thus, for instance, in the literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses it is said that the clergy are “willingly or unwillingly the instruments of the hands of Satan.” Armstrong goes so far as to say that for 18½ centuries the Gospel was not preached, and the world was deceived into believing a false Gospel!

It is to be hoped that in a new printing someone will correct the book’s many typographical errors.

For years to come, this volume will be widely recognized as the outstanding work on the history, teaching, and tragic errors of the cults of our age.

WILBUR M. SMITH

Call To Action

Nothing to Win but the World: Missions at the Crossroad, by Clay Cooper (Zondervan, 1965, 152 pp. $2.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, associate editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The author is founder-president of Vision. Incorporated, which assists foreign missionary societies in matters of recruitment, financial assistance, and interpretive reporting. The book has twenty-seven chapters of three to five pages each, covering diverse topics relating to missionary endeavor. Included are such subjects as prayer, use of money, divine love, service, recruitment, and the number of women missionaries as compared to men. The book contains many illustrative anecdotes, is epigrammatic, and has a certain attractive flair. Written for the average lay person, it is intended to push him into action—to get him to do something constructive with his life, his prayers, and his money.

In the opening chapter, the author inveighs against Christian jitters and fears of Communism which he calls “redphobia,” and which he discounts only to demonstrate his own “redphobia” by numerous and repeated references to the enemy we need not fear. He has also fallen into an old propaganda trap about the disproportion of women to men on the mission field. “Perhaps not more than twenty thousand Protestant missionaries are actually at their foreign posts at any one time. The male head count among these is so disproportionate as to be absurd.” Prior to this he cites instances of twenty-six single women to three single men, forty-one American women with no male representation, and others. The actual figures for North American missionaries show approximately fifteen women to every ten men. This ratio can hardly be called “absurd.”

In a desire to paint a sweeping word picture, the author at least once ends up advocating some bad theology. “The fate of humanity trembles on the brink. Hope hangs by a tenuous thread. One thing frightens the godless forces bent on enslaving the earth. It is the prospect that Christians might wake up and start acting their beliefs. Love in action would soon rivet the attention of the world upon Christ, and bring every eye to rest in adoration upon Him.”

HAROLD LINDSELL

Book Briefs

The Roots of Ghana Methodism, by F. L. Bartels (Cambridge, 1965, 368 pp., $9.50). The story of the growth of the Methodist Church in Ghana.

Deutero-Isaiah: A Theological Commentary on Isaiah 40–55, by George A. F. Knight (Abingdon, 1965, 283 pp., $5.50). Another valuable plowing of a well-plowed field.

Monks, Nuns, and Monasteries, by Sacheverell Sitwell (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 205 pp., $12.50). A good writer and wide traveler presents in words and pictures the art and architecture of Europe’s monasteries and churches, all touched with beauty, human interest stories, and religious feeling.

Toward Understanding Thessalonians, by Boyce W. Blackwelder (Warner, 1965, 160 pp., $3.95). A popular, Arminianistic commentary.

The Word God Sent, by Paul Scherer (Harper and Row, 1965, 272 pp., $4.95). Sermons by a master preacher with companion essays on the art of sermon-building.

Vatican Imperialism in the Twentieth Century, by Avro Manhattan (Zondervan, 1965, 414 pp., $5.95). A critique of “the greatest engine of spiritual aggrandizement in existence.”

We’re Never Alone: A Modern Woman Looks at Her World, by Eileen Guder (Zondervan, 1965, 148 pp., $2.95). The author, member of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, discusses the things women worry about. Perceptive and well written.

Who Is Man?, by Abraham J. Heschel (Stanford University Press, 1965, 119 pp., $3.95). A great Jewish scholar argues that man is “a being in travail with God’s dreams and designs, with God’s dream of a world redeemed,” through social action and concern.

Morality and the Muses: Christian Faith and Art Forms, by Johan B. Hygen (Augsburg, 1965, 113 pp., $3). An attempt to understand art in the total human context.

Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality, 1780–1845, by Donald G. Mathews (Princeton, 1965, 340 pp., $7.50). Of particular interest, since Methodism became the largest U. S. Protestant group and the one most evenly spread throughout the United States.

The Untold Story of Qumran, by John C. Trever (Revell, 1965, 214 pp., $8.95). The adventure and intrigue that followed the discovery of the most valuable archaeological documents of our time, by the first American to see, examine, and photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages, by Edward A. Synan (Macmillan, 1965, 246 pp., $5.95). An exploration of the responses to the Jews made by popes of the fifth to fifteenth centuries; by a Roman Catholic.

The Church Secretary: Her Calling and Her Work, by Katie Lea Myers (Seabury, 1965, 128 pp., $3.50). Much good advice about a demanding position.

If I Could Pray Again, by David A. Redding (Revell, 1965, 119 pp., $2.50). Prayers uttered in the uncommon and untutored language of the heart.

The Guilt of Sin, by Charles G. Finney (Kregel, 1965, 124 pp., $2.50). Sermons on sin and guilt by the famous attorney-turned-evangelist.

The Rock and the River, by Martin Thornton (Morehouse-Barlow, 1965, 158 pp., $3.75). A timely, scholarly, hard-hitting book by an author who is not awed into jelly by the pretentious claims of much of modern theological scholarship.

Using and Maintaining Church Property, by Allen W. Graves (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 186 pp., $3.95). Practical advice useful to any church.

The Zondervan Pastor’s Annual for 1966, by William Austin (Zondervan, 1965, 384 pp., $3.95). Fifty-two morning services, fifty-two evening services, sermon outlines and illustrations, mid-week meditations and programs, services for special days, funeral meditations and Scriptures, communion thoughts and themes, wedding ceremonies. Evangelical, Baptistically orientated, and frequently superficial.

Acquiring and Developing Church Real Estate, by Joseph Stiles (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 189 pp., $3.95). Much practical light and wisdom for an area where mistakes outnumber pews.

So Great Salvation, by Charles G. Finney (Kregel, 1965, 128 pp., $2.50). Sermons dealing specifically with salvation.

Depth Perspectives in Pastoral Work, by Thomas W. Klink (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 144 pp., $2.95).

Paperbacks

The Bible and Social Ethics, by Hendrik Kraemer (Fortress, 1965, 38 pp., $.75). The author seeks a “purely biblical social ethic,” one that begins with the Church rather than the regenerated individual Christian. Worth careful study and appraisal.

The Puzzles of Job, by Ord L. Morrow (Back to the Bible, 1965, 123 pp., $.39). Radio speeches of the “Back to the Bible” Broadcast.

Multiple Ministries: Staffing the Local Church, by Martin Anderson (Augsburg, 1965, 104 pp., $2.50).

What Is the World Coming To?: A Study for Laymen of the Last Things, by Nelson B. Baker (Westminster, 1965, 157 pp., $2.25). An evangelical discussion of the end-of-time events as announced in the Bible.

The Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Passion, by Paul G. Lessmann (Concordia, 1965, 109 pp., $1.75). Orthodox and prosaic.

The Indians of the Western Great Lakes: 1615–1760, by Vernon Kinietz (University of Michigan, 1965, 427 pp., $2.95). Their customs, ways of life, and religious beliefs and practices.

Forms of Extremity in the Modern Novel, edited by Nathan A. Scott. Jr. (John Knox, 1965, 96 pp., $1). For those who like to see theological backgrounds behind literary writings.

Fatigue in Modern Society: Psychological, Medical, Biblical Insights, edited by Paul Tournier, translated by James H. Farley (John Knox, 1965, 79 pp., $1).

The Cruciality of the Cross, by P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 1965, 104 pp., $1.45). A discussion of the Atonement that reflects Forsyth’s peculiar view of God’s holiness and love.

Son of Man, Son of God, by E. G. Jay (McGill University, 1965, 116 pp., $2.50). A provocative study with some questionable conclusions.

Awkward Questions on Christian Love, by Hugh Montefiore (Westminster, 1965, 125 pp., $1.45). Perceptive essays on God, the sinlessness of Jesus, atonement and personality, and the Church as an “in” or “out” group.

The Soul of Prayer, by P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 1965, 92 pp., $1.45). A good discussion for laymen by a line theologian.

His Witnesses, by John H. Piet (Book World, 1965, 166 pp., $1.25). An objective study of the Acts of the Apostles, Galatians, First Thessalonians, Philippians, Ephesians, and Romans chapters 1 through 8.

By What Authority?, by Bruce Shelley (Eerdmans, 1965, 166 pp., $1.95). The author looks at the positions of the second-century church fathers on the question of authority in religion and church.

Christian Deviations: The Challenge of the New Spiritual Movements, by Horton Davies (Westminster, 1965, 144 pp., $1.45). A revised edition of The Challenge of the Sects, this is a discussion of substance of such groups as the Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many others.

The general deterioration of the World situation, the population explosion without a corresponding acceleration in the world’s spiritual birthrate, and the seeming loss of spiritual power to he noted among Christians and in the corporate church is causing deep searching of heart by thoughtful Christians. There is a feeling that something must happen to bring a change in the situation.

Some would have the Church become “involved” in the world to such an extent that no distinction would be made between a believer and a non-believer. These feel that Christianity is no longer a force to be reckoned with because it is not relevant to the contemporary world scene. Because the gospel message had its origin in the first century and this is the twentieth, and because the Bible stresses an other-worldly orientation for the Christian that seems unrealistic for our times, there are those who feel the historic, biblically based Christianity of our forefathers is no longer applicable.

On the other hand, many sincere Christians are deeply troubled because the phrase, “the post-Christian era,” has a ring of reality that disturbs the soul and shakes confidence in present methods to reach an unbelieving world that is in desperate need.

In considering the theories of those who would reject the present validity of historic Christianity, let us ask a few questions: Are the basic needs of men different now from what they were 2,000 years ago? Or has God’s provision for those needs changed? Despite the sophistication of our age and the almost unbelievable advances in science, is man basically different from what he was in the time of Christ?

The human heart was deceitful then and is deceitful today. The lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life continue to grip each new generation. Sophisticated, scientifically advanced, modern in outlook, man is still a sinful creature estranged from God and desperately in need of forgiveness, cleansing, and a new heart.

It was to meet this need that the Son of God came into this world, died, and arose again from the dead. The world has not outgrown its need, nor has the Gospel of God’s redemption in Jesus Christ lost its power.

Why then this lapse in effectiveness by the Church and by many Christians? It is unfortunately true that in an age of sophistication, affluence, and a growing understanding and use of scientific discoveries, many now try to convince themselves that they are self-sufficient and do not need God or his Christ.

But men’s hearts still yearn for something higher than material things. Strip off the veneer of our civilization and there remains a desperate loneliness, a sense of frustration, a void that remains empty unless it is filled with the living Christ.

We must keep clearly in mind the message of the Church and also the tools of missions and evangelism that God has given us for spreading that message.

To the Church has been given the message of a higher destiny, of a renewed fellowship with God through faith in his Son, of a new life where companionship replaces loneliness and purpose replaces frustration.

One look at this chaotic world and we are ready to throw up our hands in hopelessness. How, we ask ourselves, can the Gospel become a living force in a world so obviously alienated from God? What is needed to recapture the power and the glory of the Gospel for this generation?

Here is where we need to take a new look at the tools God has provided. (We use the term “tools” reverently to refer to certain things that God has placed at our disposal, to be used for his glory.)

If we think our world is chaotic and hopeless, what kind of a world did the disciples face in the first century? On every hand there was the entrenched evil of paganism. But apparently the disciples ignored the obstacles because of the tremendous message and the marvelous tools they had. By God’s work through them, the message became effective in the lives of men and women in every walk of life, so that in a few short years the then-known world had heard of Jesus Christ, his death, and his resurrection, and enough had believed to change the whole course of history.

This handful of uneducated, ordinary men had irresistible tools, and God worked a miracle. The same tools are available today, but they are too often neglected. In their place men use man-made devices that perish with their makers and those on whom they are used.

The early disciples had been with Jesus, and this personal experience with the risen Lord had transformed them into fervent evangelists. But God never intended that they alone should know Christ as Saviour and Lord. To all of us is given the same privilege, and without it we are useless. It is hardly possible for someone to win men to Jesus Christ who does not know him through personal experience. We all need to have a deep, personal experience of the saving power of Jesus Christ in our hearts and lives.

The early disciples also were imbued with the power of the Holy Spirit. They had been emptied of self, and the Holy Spirit possessed them to the point where God was doing the work and they were simply instruments. Today similar power is waiting for those who give the Holy Spirit his rightful place in their lives and in their work.

The early disciples were also men of prayer. They believed in divine intervention in their problems. They believed that prayer released God’s almighty power on behalf of his own and their work for him. When confronted with danger, opposition, and humanly insoluble situations, they turned to God in prayer and he heard and answered.

The early disciples used the Old Testament Scriptures to confirm their preaching. In every case they recognized the Scriptures as finally authoritative. Today we have not only the Old but also the New Testament to use as the invincible Sword of the Spirit.

The early disciples had a message—repentance, forgiveness of sins, and salvation through faith in the risen Lord. This simple and direct message penetrated to the heart of man’s need, the same need men have today.

Finally, the early disciples had no money. Can it be that part of their success stemmed from their utter dependence on God, rather than on material assets?

Through these men the early Church came into being. Although they lacked much of what we prize most highly, such as education and financial security, they succeeded.

We have the same tools. If we use them faithfully, the world can again be turned upside down for Jesus Christ.

Does the uneasy relationship between evangelicals and ecumenists presage a split?

In plotting the future of Protestantism, some churchmen increasingly focus on the uneasy relation between “the ecumenicals and the evangelicals.” Ecumenical and denominational leaders, religion editors, and even some students of religious journalism ask: Will the gap between conservatives and inclusivists be bridged or broadened? Is a split inevitable between evangelicals and ecumenists? In ecumenical dialogue—whether sponsored by Geneva or by Rome—why do evangelicals always seem to be on the outer edge? Do conservatives have any basis for feeling that ecumenists solicit their participation only on a “divide-and-conquer” basis? Why has ecumenism failed to produce or even promote real rapport with evangelicals? Is a tragic major breach inevitable in the very century when many churchmen are working intensely for the unification of Christendom, and when the Christian religion is already disadvantaged by embarrassing divisions?

Few evangelicals speak of ecclesiastical trends as historically inevitable, though some churchmen on both the far left and the far right seem to view them in that way. Conservatives may underestimate socio-historical processes, but they contemplate the must of history rather in a context of God’s sovereign purpose and of man’s responsible decision. (“Thus it must be fulfilled.…” “Ye must be born again.…”) They question ecclesiastical deference to the supposed “inevitabilities” of social revolution and expanding government controls, which the churches are now asked to welcome, no less than the ecumenical leadership’s “certainty” of a coming great world church.

As evangelicals see it, a deterministic approach to religious events reflects a non-Christian more than a Christian idiom; its main flaw is its neglect of transcendent spiritual powers. Whatever events (if any) impersonal historical forces may shape, Christ above all else has the redeemed Church in his grasp. No conclave of modern churchmen can establish with finality the character of Christ’s Church. The events of the first-century apostolic Church, of the sixteenth-century Reformation, and of the eighteenth-century Evangelical Awakening remain illuminating and instructive chapters in church history. If present cleavages widen, if another reformation occurs, or whatever else, it will not be inevitable, any more than would a Protestant Counter-Reformation.

If evangelicals consider the accommodation to inevitability as harmful, they regard the growing discussion of “deepening divisions” as adversely weighted also. The term is bandied about by those who publicly launch the concept of one church into an orbit that imposes expectations of conformity upon evangelicals, while non-evangelicals dismember confessional commitments and distort historic doctrines. Deplorable as divisiveness is, “split” is a color-term too readily applied to those who sincerely question the prevalent notion of ecclesiastical reconstruction. It attaches needless odium to those who stand firmly on the very biblical commitments that the Protestant Reformation churches held in common. Many Protestant mainline seminaries today promulgate neither the formal nor the material principles of the Reformation; they compromise the Reformers’ doctrines of “Scripture alone” and “justification by faith alone.” And in some respects the Orthodox (Greek and Eastern) Churches and the Roman Catholic Church stand more firmly attached to the doctrines of the truly ecumenical (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian) creeds of the early centuries than do some Protestant bodies today, while evangelical Protestants stand firmly with the historic Christian claim of divinely revealed doctrines.

Some ecumenists now point a reproachful finger at Billy Graham because they consider him a hindrance to ecumenical inclusivism. One ecumenical weekly would have its readers believe that Graham is really a radical politician in pious evangelical garb. (As if evangelicals rather than ecumenists were distorting evangelism into political action!) Other ecumenical gossips downgrade Graham as virtually “another denomination” alongside “denomination-transcending” ecumenism. Since the objective seems to be to stigmatize Graham as divisive, it little retards them that six of the seven largest American denominations survive in the NCC, or that the WCC is itself provoking a new wave of competitive church confessionalism.

Similarly, an accusing finger is pointed at CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Now that it can no longer be lampooned as “Christianity yesterday” (since ecumenical seminaries now have to regard even Barthianism and Bultmannism as dated), it is caricatured as the echo of capitalistic supporters, right-wing extremists, and fundamentalist independents. (After all, isn’t the theology of the Barthians and the Bultmannians preferable to that of the Birchers?) One can readily understand why anyone who views Communism in a benevolent light, revolution as inevitable, socialism as virtuous, and religious orthodoxy as a blight might want his constituents to ignore biblically oriented publications. Yet we marvel at any mentality that could suppose we have substituted congressional pressures for Christian priorities, or ecclesiastical engineering for the evangel. If anyone truly doubts whether it is the evangelical or the ecumenical movement within the Church that is scripturally controlled, he need only ask which espouses biblical truths and supernatural dynamisms and which promotes theological novelties and political pronouncements.

Southern Baptists are now also becoming a special target. Since this largest American denomination remains willfully outside the National Council of Churches, other groups uneasy over ecumenical commitments are cautioned against the influence of Christians lacking sensitivity for the universal church. Who, it is asked, would prefer the fellowship of Southern Baptists to a church that strives for catholicity? It is remarkable that any ecumenist can entertain a concept of Christian unity from which ten million Christians are so complacently excluded.

All this points up the fact that the main tension within the Church in twentieth-century Christianity is that between those concerned mainly with institutional or organizational alignment and those concerned mainly with spiritual and theological commitment. To some churchmen, what matters most is devotion to the coming world church; to other churchmen, what matters most in the context of church loyalties is devotion to the faith already given. To the former, church unity is wider than theological fidelity; ecumenism has room for death-of-God theologians, linguistic theologians, and existential liberals, as well as for evangelicals—ordinarily, that is.

In less than a century, the ecumenical development has undergone a sweeping change from its initial stance, in which it embraced various denominations bound by common evangelical goals, to its present view of the rising evangelical interest in transdenominational cooperation as competitive and even hostile. Yet this continuing evangelical concern is no departure from historic Protestantism but a continuation of it. In its Reformation beginnings, Protestantism was nothing if not evangelical. Evangelical Christianity is no deviation either from the religion of the apostles or the Reformers, or from the original orientation of the ecumenical ideal in earlier days.

In twentieth-century Protestantism, therefore, the deviant and divisive factor within the Church is theological liberalism, which has gradually swung the ideal of Christian unity into the orbit of its own inclusivist and extra-evangelical preferences. The disruptive cleavage introduced by modernism exists within all mainstream denominations, dividing clergy from clergy and laymen from laymen. The debate over the definition of Christian authority, the content of the Gospel, and the nature and task of the Church reduces to a conflict over evangelical and non-evangelical perspectives.

On two extremes, the far left and the far right, there is noteworthy evidence of sharpening hostility. If ecclesiastical extremism on the far right announces the apostasy of all churchmen affiliated with NCC-related denominations, on the far left it issues pontifical pronouncements that denominational distinctiveness is inherently sinful. If Carl McIntire seems like a one-man arbiter of ecumenical destinies in holding the American Council of Christian Churches to be the sole authentically biblical alternative to the NCC, Eugene Carson Blake also appeals to a singular leading of the Holy Spirit in propounding the Blake-Pike plan as an ideal divine antithesis to American denominationalism.

Swimming against a rising non-evangelical tide in the ecumenical movement in the Church has become increasingly difficult for evangelicals. Ecumenical pressures tend to force an inclusive theology on seminaries. In theological dialogue evangelicals are counterbalanced, outweighed, and treated as a minority. United Presbyterians, won over to merger with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. by the argument that they would exert a theologically conservative influence, soon found this expectation without warrant. The United Presbyterian Church lost its own evangelically oriented seminary and was unable to halt the drift of other Presbyterian U. S. A. seminaries, and the merged church is now struggling with a proposed new confession. Across the Atlantic the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, who speaks out frequently on political matters, has not hesitated also to disparage evangelical initiative publicly. In the United Church Observer, organ of the United Church of Canada, the Rev. A. C. Forrest attacks Billy Graham’s revival of biblical supernaturalism as disruptive and urges liberal churchmen not to cooperate with his crusades.

It is doubtless true that Billy Graham’s emphasis on the New Testament message has helped to condition laymen to favor biblical orientation and evangelistic concern in their churches, and to look askance at a heavy concentration on social and political issues to the neglect of scriptural priorities. As some liberal churchmen have hardened in their opposition to evangelism and have identified themselves with social reform as an alternative to personal repentance, lay disaffection has mounted.

The deepest cleft within the Church is the one separating evangelicals, who glory in the divine gift of repentance and regeneration, from those ecumenists who are repelled by the offense of the Cross; those who believe in the authority of the Word of God from those whose beliefs change according to the fashion of the times. As liberal leaders in high church posts use an ecumenical platform to repress evangelical witness and to press for conformity to their own positions, they only promote unrest among churchmen who lament and challenge departures from the New Testament norm. The primary cause of tension at this level is a matter of proclamation, not of personality; the message itself is really what divides. Whether Christianity is made relevant to our world is always discussable, as evangelicals see it; but the essential content of the Christian religion is never negotiable. When a Los Angeles church spokesman charged Billy Graham with setting contemporary theology back fifty years, the evangelist replied that he intended to take it back two thousand years, to coincide with the apostolic faith.

Intolerance of evangelical positions is all the more remarkable now that the theological bankruptcy of liberalism is apparent. In some circles, the advocacy of ecumenism above doctrinal fidelity may betray a devotion to ecclesiastical unity grounded in theological skepticism. Whatever basis existed in the forepart of this century for viewing fundamentalism as obscurantist (and it sometimes was), few will doubt that recent modernist theology (whether Ritschlian, dialectical, existential, or linguistic) is consciously anti-intellectual, while evangelical theology pointedly affirms the ontological significance of reason and the rational nature of revelation. Amid the modernist flux, evangelical theology has steadily won respect as the truly coherent option, even from some ministers whose seminary training bypassed the conservative view completely or at best looked at it in the poorest light and aimed to supplant it. Among the periodic editorial rewards at CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a message from some mainstream minister who has come to cherish a theological commitment he was once taught to despise.

Many who lost an evangelical faith through the liberal domination of church colleges and seminaries have grown increasingly nostalgic with the ceaseless revision of the modernist alternatives. Only those who have been lifelong liberals, and who know conservative Christianity only in terms of “the fundys, holy-rollers, and snake-handlers,” adamantly refuse to consider the evangelical option. Others who recall the vitality of an earlier biblical faith are aware that their colleagues in the ministry now include evangelical churchmen whose personal faith has been renewed and who have found a warm fellowship in their restoration to evangelical religion. And the evangelical strength in mainline denominations is more extensive than a liberal leadership implies. Some ministers who have forsaken liberal rationalism for revealed theology assert that, were it not for restrictions imposed by ecumenical leaders upon evangelical participation, the present situation might erupt into a tidal wave of evangelical renewal within the historic denominations.

Yet no one can say that the evangelical witness is wholly excluded in the ecumenical context, for evangelicals have made some noteworthy gains. Despite the hostility of some leaders intolerant of evangelical perspectives, the Graham crusades and CHRISTIANITY TODAY have received more support in ecumenical circles than in some independent circles. This support, in fact, accounts for the complaint of some fundamentalist spokesmen that these efforts hurt the evangelical cause. It is curious that churchmen on the far right and on the far left alike suspect others of cooperating with influential evangelical church efforts only as a matter of desperation. The interest in evangelical dynamisms runs deeper than they dream. And evangelicals themselves need to be reminded that many Roman Catholics also are seeking deeper spiritual realities in these days of ecumenical openness.

Disturbed by the ecumenical orientation and evangelical dilution of hierarchy-approved literature, many churchmen now also encourage laymen and Sunday school leaders to read explicitly evangelical publications. American mission boards eager to fill their quotas have extended an increasing welcome to missionary candidates with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship backgrounds. In England, the growing evangelical wing of the Anglican church is attributed largely to the influence of British Inter-Varsity on university campuses. It is also noteworthy that many Anglican clergymen trace their conversions to the Harringay and Wembley crusades of a decade ago.

Even more significant, some leaders notably sympathetic to evangelical engagement have been elected to important ecumenical posts. One such leader, while not a conservative, pleaded for larger evangelical representation at the Central Committee meeting in Nigeria a year ago, though without clear success.

These men do not, however, define the temper of the ecumenical movement. The WCC’s choice of a general secretary to succeed Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft will supply an important clue to ecumenical attitudes toward evangelicals. A strong-willed activist with overweening personal ambitions could propel the entire ecumenical situation into a new and precipitous era. Evangelicals are wearying of dialogue that engages them in good-natured conversation while non-evangelical objectives are energetically promoted. Ecumenical seminary faculties, faith-and-order dialogues, and other official conferences have left no doubt for a decade that Protestant ecumenical leaders pursue dialogue with Rome more ardently than they seek representation for evangelicals already in their own circles. In the current fad of confessional revision, evangelicals are often placed on the defensive and given the option of minority protest.

If the quest for Christian unity continues to manifest a pro-ecumenical anti-evangelical spirit, a sound alternative—transdenominational Christian unity on a biblical-evangelical base—will not be a matter of historical inevitability but will remain a spiritual ideal and logical consideration. Evangelical Christianity is a Bible-controlled movement, evangelistically concerned, and impatient over a compromise of priorities. That compromise has become almost obstinate on the part of some ecumenists—a point at which evangelical intolerance and liberal intolerance might well clash.

Of all tragedies of the modern world, none would be sadder in the closing third of our century than an ecclesiastical rift that would further divide the community of Christian faith. The concern for Christian unity is scriptural, and all believers in Christ who recognize the unqualified claim of the Bible ought to be reaching out toward one another across organizational lines and exploring the deeper realities of the Church of Christ as a supradenominational, supranational, supraracial fellowship. If evangelicals are to bear a dynamic witness for the Gospel in our confused generation, may they do so in a spectacular unity of devotion and mission with all their Christian brethren everywhere. While the Great Commission presupposes a firm stand for the revealed faith, it propels all Christ’s true followers into the world on a mission of mercy. Only a fellowship that fulfills both these expectations is worthy to be known as Christ’s Church.

If the terms “ecumenical” and “evangelical” are once more to become synonymous, ecumenism must manifest a lively indignation over its non-evangelical and anti-evangelical ingredients. If it prefers the inclusivist image, it may of course regard itself in some contexts as combining the ecumenical and the evangelical (as well as other) motifs. But the world will not long be deceived even if some churchmen are. For if the world hears some ecclesiastics insist that “God is dead” while others insist on “the living God,” if it hears some contend that supernaturalism is passé while others declare that the New Testament miracles are decisive for human destiny, if it hears some claim that Christ alone can save us while others insist that legislation is a superior dynamism or that the United Nations is the world’s best hope for peace, the world may agree privately that the Church bears a revelation, but of its own confusion, not of any authoritative Word. And that is the kind of confusion that evangelicals—who insist they bear an authentic Christian message to the world—cannot be counted on forever to support.

Millennium Tomorrow

Among industrial nations the United States took the lead in rate of economic growth. On Wall Street the stock market neared Dow 1000. On Main Street the minimum hourly wage was to go up to $1.50 as soon as Congress followed President Johnson’s proposal. New York was riding again as transit strikers pocketed a 15 per cent wage increase and substantial fringe benefits. On color television, viewers saw so much of Liz Taylor that there was little left to see. And air travel rates to Europe were soon to dip lower. It was a time for fast living.

There were disconcerting signs, to be sure. Four Nobel prizemen warned of depletion of world resources, starvation, and even cannibalism, if population growth continues unchecked. Mrs. Indira Gandhi (a Kashmiri Brahmin) in her new position as India’s prime minister was faced with a dissatisfied Pakistan and a threatening Communist China, and with an economic crisis and famine conditions in some areas as well. Red China alerted its army of 2.5 million, the world’s largest, to prepare for United States nuclear attack even to the point of “climbing a mountain of pointed swords and crossing an ocean of flames.”

In the United States the state of the union looked good—on paper. Americans were told that the Great Society would continue (hence it apparently has already arrived) and that the administration would avoid the risk the inflation. On both counts, however, politicians seemed to be holding a candle to the wind.

The President’s message to Congress included casual mention of a record administrative budget of $112.8 billion. After what may have been the briefest tax cut in history, excise reductions were to be revoked. The cost of living was edging up, as housewives paid more for bread and milk. The illegal New York transit strike ended in an inflationary settlement. For all the talk about holding down inflation, many European bankers had come to consider it a world-wide inevitability. There were doubts at home about the fiscal solvency of the social security program, viewed long-range. And the White House, alongside full support for civil rights, somewhat inconsistently supported legislation to destroy state right-to-work laws.

But by far the biggest United States headache was Viet Nam, where more than 190,000 American GI’s still were fighting in an undeclared war. Some 1,000 tons of Christmas parcels gathered by civic organizations for delivery to servicemen 8,200 miles from home were discovered in mid-January stored in a General Services Administration supply center in Utah. Meanwhile, American forces in Asia stood as a barrier to further Communist aggression in Asia. The first missionary fell to a Viet Cong machine gunman. Neither the President nor the Pope had made evident progress with peace proposals. There was thanksgiving that casualties were lighter, but Hanoi remained silent, some South Vietnamese feared a sell-out, and even some Americans had doubts.

Did administration suggestions of withdrawal on condition of free elections imply a retreat from the commitment to independence and freedom? What American victory is needed to guarantee free elections and to prevent full Communist takeover while Communists terrorize a third of the population?

The war that Americans once were told would be over by Christmas looked at times as if it might drag on forever—with respite for Asian holidays. “I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Viet Nam,” said the President. It was a typically modern credo, full of ambiguity and vulnerability.

Meanwhile, politically aggressive clergymen were shaping their own program for peace on earth. The Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive in New York assigned Office 560 to a national committee of liberal churchmen opposed to renewal of the bombing of North Viet Nam. The interfaith committee includes Dr. Eugene Carson Blake and Rabbi Jacob Weinstein. Across the nation their telephone crusade is coordinating 150 groups to rally a growing feeling against the Viet Nam war and to urge propagandizing of the peace offensive (see News, p. 49).

The churches must indeed continually urge elected leaders to fulfill their responsibilities with a sense of moral integrity and divine answerability. But some churchmen seem suddenly to have acquired omniscience in political and military decisions, despite their lack of strategic information available only to the highest elected public officials. When they presume to stipulate the details of public policy, some of us wonder where these churchmen have suddenly found their hot-line to heaven. What they leave unanswered is how the peace everybody presumably wants can be arrived at without a commitment to justice.

Most American churchgoers still retain unhappy memories of proposals made at the Cleveland World Order Conference of the National Council of Churches. At that time two of the nation’s top figures were devout Presbyterians with a sense both of public responsibility and of spiritual stewardship. It was the shared conviction of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles that admission of Red China would be against the best interests of both the United States and the United Nations. Yet NCC spokesmen publicly championed admission.

Sometimes we wonder whether politically oriented churchmen have not grown so skeptical of both spiritual dynamisms and democratic processes that they entertain a delusion that if the world were suddenly run by their committees, the millennium would come tomorrow.

All of us want peace; undoubtedly not a reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY prefers war. Above all others, the man of God is a man of peace. But the Bible connects wars and fightings with man’s inner passions, his craving of what belongs to others. A former chairman of the United Nations, Charles Malik, warned that Marxism-Leninism was the vanguard of forces that today seek destruction of the accumulated values we have inherited from Graeco-Roman-Christian civilization. Any quest for peace that views Communism as benevolent is nothing short of a sell-out. If peace is to be genuine, it must not whet the appetite of greedy totalitarian tyrants of any stripe but must stand in the presence of God, truth, and righteousness. Any legitimate message on a hot-line from heaven is likely to read not “Seek ye peace …” but “Seek ye first …,” and it is likely also to bear a zip code number that includes both sides of the globe.

Try The Other Book

“Numerous books, most of them scholarly, some of them objective, practically all of them sophisticated, are being published these days discussing the ‘existence of God.’ ” So writes the editor of the Durham, North Carolina, Morning Herald. The remark reminds us of what the Preacher said: “Of making many books there is no end.” Doubtless there will be many more books about the “death of God” before the well runs dry.

We just hope that while the fad lasts men will not overlook the source literature on the subject of God. We refer, of course, to the Bible. It has a word to say about God—who he is and what he is doing. Surely we are not overly bold if we suggest that in the beginning God had the first word and in the end he will have the last. In the interim, men had better listen to what he says and act on what he commands. For it may be that sooner than we think, the judgments of men on God will be subjected to the judgment of God on men.