Ecumenicity is not a dirty word. Jesus Christ said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love.…” Love is wonderful to have; but when it is narrowed down to the love of one Christian for another Christian, then we have reality. John said, “We know that we have passed from life unto death, because we love.…” Whom? “The brethren”! I have lived long enough to know that the hardest people to love are the brethren. “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.” Ecumenicity! Where does it start? In my humble opinion it starts within this fellowship that you and I have espoused, namely, the American Baptist family. The Southern Baptists can’t get along with anyone except themselves. The American Baptists can get along with everyone except themselves. Is this true?

I am in active contact with the presidents of the Conservative Baptist Association of America, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the North American Baptist General Conference. I am more interested in Baptist ecumenicity than I am in another form. I don’t care how ecumenical we say we are as American Baptists, or how much we point to our affiliation and activity in the conciliar movements, if we fail to see that we have far more in common with our Baptist family than with any other Christian body. What is the meaning, validity, relevance, and dynamic of fellowship with non-Baptists?

I not only believe in Baptist ecumenicity, that is, in cooperating, understanding, and communicating as Baptists, but I believe in Baptist unity.

We must go on. If you are going to project your imperfection and join an imperfect church called the local Baptist church, and if you are going to project the imperfection of your local church into what is known as a denomination, such as the American Baptist Convention, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t continue to project this imperfection and cooperate with others who are not Baptists. That accounts for the National Council of Churches. Sure, it is imperfect. You can pick it to pieces so that there is nothing left. A blood-washed hand reaches out in the increasing darkness and impersonality of the space-age, and a voice calls, “Is there another hand in all of God’s world that is also washed in the blood of Christ? If so, will you join with me and let us try somehow to do together—to the glory of God and for the redemption of lost men and women and boys and girls—what we cannot do alone?” That is all that interdenominational ecumenicity is. It involves a lot of honesty and trust. The relationship is imperfect. The net result is imperfect. But all is based upon the perfection of Jesus Christ, our only hope.

Will you go with me one step more in Christian understanding? In Israel on a Sunday morning eight other American Baptist pastors and I were walking on the beach outside Haifa trying to find some place where we could worship. As we moved south, we came to a monastery that proved to be the traditional site of Peter’s siesta on the roof of Simon the tanner’s house. It was here that Peter was straightened out about who was to get the Gospel and who wasn’t. A little Italian priest who murdered the King’s English received us warmly. As we spent an hour there, our hearts were warmed. We sensed that here was a brother in Christ. When we were ready to leave, someone suggested we have a word of prayer together. When we finished, the monk grabbed the arm of the one nearest to him and said, “I will see you at Jesus’ feet.” What do you think that did for a fellow who was brought up in Boston, where every cop on the corner was a red-faced Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and where everything wrong in City Hall, in the State House, was because of those Roman Catholics?

My heart was melted, so much so that when Monsignor Tobin of Portland asked me to come over and explain to them what Baptists were all about, I accepted the invitation. He sits on the Vatican Council. When I got to All Saints Church I talked for forty-five minutes, at the end of which the audience plied me with questions for another forty-five minutes. During the latter period I referred to myself in Pope John’s terminology as being a separated brother. Monsignor Tobin said, “No, no, you are not a separated brother. You are not even a Protestant. You are my brother in Christ.” I remember that when he wrote to invite me he signed the letter, “Yours in Christ”—just as a Bible-thumping Baptist would. What are you going to do with a guy like that?

In U. S. Nexus and World Report came word from Boston that Cardinal Cushing urged Catholics of Boston to attend the Graham evangelistic campaign there, saying, “They have everything to gain. The hand of God must be upon him. I have never known of a religious crusade that was more effective than Dr. Graham’s. I have never heard any criticism of anything he has ever said from any Catholic source. I only wish we had half a dozen men of his sort to go forth to preach the Gospel of Christ Crucified.”

Now, we can say it is about time they are reforming their church and straightening up and flying right because they have been wrong all along. But wait a minute! Can we Baptists, can we American Baptists, equal in renewal, in updating, in shaking off some shackles of the past, what the Roman Catholics are doing? Just think of the dramatic change in putting the Mass in the vernacular so that it can be understood, or including in one of their hymnbooks Martin Luther’s Reformation hymn!

Let’s keep open those windows that were thrown open by little Pope John, the peasant. He kept his feet right in the earth; and when that earth began to tremble because of the marching of Communist hordes and the exploding of A-bombs and H-bombs, he knew it was time to issue a call to all the people of God. What will it take for us as Bible-believing Baptists to have that same sensitivity, to feel we should get together as Baptists and as Protestants, and to believe in the sincerity of anyone who claims the name of Christ?—DR. J. LESTER HARNISH, president, American Baptist Convention.

Southern Baptists have generally believed that the ultimate objective of the current ecumenical thrust is organic union. We have assumed that denominational distinctives would be dissolved and the autonomy of local churches swallowed up in the evolving monolithic hierarchical structure. And we have quite frankly declared little interest in such a movement.

Deep convictions rooted in our heritage have led us to this position. We believe that these convictions are relevant to issues facing Christianity in this decisive day.

Why have Southern Baptists not been identified with the ecumenical movement?

A major reason is our ecclesiology. The Southern Baptist Convention is a federation of independent democracies, local churches that recognize no ecclesiastical authority superior to themselves. This structure creates a mechanical problem with regard to the NCC and the WCC. These ecumenical councils are composed of denominations and do not accept affiliation by local churches. But no centralized body can deliver the 33,000 local Southern Baptist churches as a unit into any such ecumenical affiliation or corporate unity.

In my opinion, however, not many individual churches would join the NCC if this mechanical barrier were removed. For this ecclesiology is a basic tenet of our Baptist heritage. We believe that the local church is the highest tribunal of Christendom. It is its own final authority, subject only to the will of Christ, its head, as expressed by democratic action of its members.

Baptists have an innate fear of the centralization of ecclesiastical power even within our own ranks. We draw back from any entanglement that threatens to compromise the authority and autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists cannot conceive of a great “super church” or a hierarchical structure above the local church, whether it be a Baptist hierarchy or an ecumenical hierarchy. We have no such organic union among ourselves; hardly would we seek it with others of a different doctrinal persuasion!

A second reason is that Southern Baptists generally are strong denominationalists. We do not accept the ecumenical premise that denominationalism is the scandal of Christianity, wasteful, selfish, or sinful. The variety of churches produced by the Protestant Reformation has brought great vitality and strength to Christianity. Division has multiplied the Christian witness. Struggle, tension, and doctrinal debate have purified truth and have been beneficial rather than harmful. To abolish denominationalism would be to reverse the Reformation and turn the clock back to a medieval Catholicism.

Neither do we accept the ecumenical premise that the “consolidation” of all Christians into “one Church” would solve all the problems of Christendom, bringing vitality and spiritual renewal. Historically, two plus two have more often equaled three instead of five when applied to church unification.

The third barrier is theological. The present ecumenical movement tends to dismiss theological problems as “insignificant” or as readily reconciled by “honest dialogue.” Yet the basic gap remains between the evangelicals and the extreme sacerdotalists. Is the Bible or the Church the seat of authority for faith and practice? Is salvation through personal faith in Christ or through the Church? Is the divine authority on earth the voice of the Church or the Holy Spirit speaking to the individual believer? With the Anglican and Eastern churches dominating the World Council, and with the Vatican now reaching out a hand to lead back the “separated brethren,” doctrinal differences are even more pronounced.

Doctrinal indifference is not the solution to doctrinal differences! Our Baptist dilemma is that if we want unity we must scrap our doctrinal convictions, and if we uphold our convictions we cannot have unity. In every consideration of the ecumenical movement we inevitably come back to this hopeless impasse. We have remained a separate section of the Christian movement because we feel that others have departed from the truth of the New Testament. We believe that only by coming closer to the New Testament as the basis for faith and practice shall we all come closer to each other.

Methods Of The Movement

Southern Baptists are also concerned about the ecumenical methodology.

There is the comity agreement of the NCC carving up geography and restricting denominations to assigned areas. Do such “man-made” limitations thwart the leading of the Holy Spirit or frustrate the evangelistic and missionary zeal of individuals and churches?

Is evangelism the changing of the social structure by a powerful ecumenical church bringing pressure upon the state and upon legislators, or is evangelism personal as Christ redeems the individual and redeemed men redeem society?

Would a “united front” really strengthen Christianity? Does Christianity advance by a great organization filtering down power from the top or by spiritual vitality and faith at the believer level?

Then there are the “official pronouncements” of the intelligentsia of the ecumenical movement, which appear to some as sheer clericalism in modern dress. From the security of the ecumenical establishment the clergy tells the people at the grass roots what to think, what to do, and what position to take on various political and social issues. Baptists believe that men must be brought to Christian conviction by persuasion and by an appeal to the spirit-led conscience rather than by authoritative clerical pronouncements.

On the other hand, in my opinion the Southern Baptist attitude toward the ecumenical movement is not above criticism.

Our genuine doctrinal stance has sometimes degenerated into one of spiritual pride and provincialism.

We have been too negative in our aloofness.

Too often we have been more concerned about gains for ourselves than about the contributions we can make to the total Christian witness.

Unquestionably our size and success have influenced us to say, “We do not need ecumenical ties. We will go it alone.”

We have often been unduly driven by our fears.

We have allowed ecumenicity to become a “bad” word and failed to recognize that there are alternatives to organic union.

Finally, economic, political, and social factors have influenced our considerations far more than we would like to admit.

Is our posture changing? With regard to organic union, or joining the NCC? No, as far as I can discern. In our attitude toward Christians in other denominations? Yes!

In the past, I believe that Southern Baptists, because of our organic isolation from the NCC, have been grossly and unfairly judged as “non-cooperative isolationists.” It should be remembered that Southern Baptists have been on the forefront in cooperative Christian enterprises that did not compromise our convictions. We have long walked and worked in fellowship with other Christians in such national organizations and projects as POAU, the International Lesson Committee, the Foreign Missions Conference, the American Bible Society, World Relief, and Bible revisions, as well as in such local things as evangelistic crusades and campaigns against liquor and vice.

I look for this same spirit of cooperation to continue. I believe that denominational isolationism is fast disappearing, not only among Southern Baptists but everywhere. There is an ever-growing desire for more communication and understanding among all Christians, for more creative cooperation rather than hostile competition. There is scarcely a denominational theology any more. Seminary students are reading the same books and struggling with the same theological problems. Young ministers are more oriented toward world problems and less concerned about divisive doctrines.

The Fast-Running Tide

I feel that Southern Baptists cannot ignore a fast-running ecumenical tide. The glamorous appeal of “one Church” is making an impact upon the world, and this movement must be reckoned with. On the other hand, neither can the ecumenists ignore as provincial or irrelevant the position of Southern Baptists. As the nation’s largest evangelical denomination with 10.3 million members and 33,000 churches, Southern Baptists stand as a formidable obstacle to any successful expression of ecumenicity.

In my opinion, the ecumenical movement should abandon its drive for organic union, forsake its policy of erasing denominational differences, and develop more areas of cooperation at the local level. Otherwise, I predict that Southern Baptists will remain on the sideline in a tragic isolationism. But the alternative of a shallow and impotent ecumenical inclusiveness would be an even greater tragedy, perpetrating a colossal deceit upon the world in the name of “The Christian Church.”

In my opinion, we must seek alternatives to organic union—a new brand and a new expression of ecumenicity—in which there is denominational cooperation without the loss of autonomy and distinctiveness and without the surrender of convictions.

Southern Baptists have much to contribute to world Christianity from our distinctive doctrines, our leadership, our numbers, our wealth. Southern Baptists face a moral and spiritual responsibility continually to rethink our attitude toward and re-examine our relations with other Christians so as to find acceptable channels through which to work on national and international levels. In this our goal must be to emphasize the basic spiritual unity of all believers and to give a united expression to the mind of Christ in a world where Christian ideals are being challenged as never before.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Four centuries ago John Knox pronounced tersely on a prominent ecclesiastic: “As he sought the world, it fled him not.” An indulgent tolerance is the fashion now. After an ordination service last year an Anglican bishop took his new priests and deacons to partake of liquid refreshment at a London pub. A battery of press photographers happened to be standing by, next morning’s newspapers carried the pictures they took, and bang went another outdated image of the Church of England.

A different Knox, Msgr. Ronald, once pointed out how shocking it was that in Muslim lands a fellow should bawl from the top of a minaret the controversial statement that Allah was great. The essay in which Knox made this protest, called “Reunion All Round,” was regarded four decades ago as satire of a high order. Not so today, when atheists in certain areas have ensured the minimum public reference to the deity, great or no, lest their faith be placed in jeopardy.

In some circles it was evidently felt that Christian charity ought to go further, for it is but a simple step from tolerance to modest self-denigration. Thus a group of Cambridge theologians produced a volume which they called Objections to Christian Belief, putting the case against Christianity with what Philip Toynbee called “robust and healthy good sense.” This was clearly a challenge to some non-Christians, and they duly obliged with Objections to Humanism, the “austerely brave spirit” of which was saluted by an Anglican weekly.

The process has now gone one stage further with the appearance of Objections to Roman Catholicism (Constable, London, 18s.). Edited and introduced by Michael de la Bedoyere, a former editor of the Catholic Herald and biographer of Baron von Httgel, the book consists of seven essays, of which six are by lay writers and the seventh by a Jesuit archbishop.

In a beautifully written first chapter, “Some Reflexions on Superstition and Credulity,” Magdalen Goflin faces her subject squarely. To the question, Why does Rome repel?, she suggests this answer: Because let your credentials be ever so persuasive, your helps to heaven ever so numerous, your liturgy ever so splendid, in practice you invite us to worship but a shrunken god. The Roman teaching about hell, Mrs. Goflin continues, might be bound up with much that is both credulous and superstitious, but it is nonetheless a sign of the annihilating effect of sin. On purgatory, she asserts that “at death the majority of souls are too self-centred to be yet capable of being filled with the life of God himself.” Credulity made Justinian think that homosexuality caused earthquakes; credulity made Cardinal Newman believe that the Holy Manger was preserved in Rome.

She hits out in other directions, too. Defending Roman Catholic churches and forms of worship, she contends that in rejecting “helps to heaven” some Protestant churches (and here she quotes a Presbyterian) “often have an air of desolation and gloom artificially created by Catholics on Good Friday.” But Mrs. Goflin spoils her case by declaring that “the fundamental objections to Roman Catholicism are objections to Christian orthodoxy,” which statement begs all kinds of questions and calls for a precise definition of terms.

Elsewhere this chapter makes a point of admitting “the appalling record of the German bishops during the last war” when, as Archbishop Roberts affirms in his chapter, they supported Hitler (pp. 44, 175), but this admission should be considered in conjunction with John M. Todd’s fulsome and questionable praise of the prewar pope, Pius XI (p. 69).

An excellent and informative chapter on “Censorship” by Professor H. P. R. Finsberg details the bewildering history of the Holy Office’s attitude to Alfred Noyes’s study of the life and writings of Voltaire. For some reason John M. Todd, in his chapter on “The Worldly Church,” finds it necessary to suggest that kindness is a characteristic of the Curia (“the velvet gloves are often many layers thick before the iron hand is reached”). In a most frank study called “Freedom and the Individual,” Rosemary Haughton says that while physical force is now “out” (except in Sicily and Malta), emotional and moral blackmail are still very much “in.”

The final chapter is contributed by Msgr. Thomas Roberts, formerly archbishop of Bombay, and is oddly headed “Contraception and War.” It was his controversial views on the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude to contraception that provoked the Archbishop of Westminster’s negative pronouncement in May, 1964, and subsequent Vatican statements. The archbishop puts the dilemma forcefully in a hypothetical question posed by an Indian Roman Catholic who has been told that another pregnancy would leave his children motherless and who wants temporary sterilization: “How is it wrong for the state to grant me for the good of my family what, according to many Catholic theologians, the state could impose forcibly on me as a punishment if I committed a crime?”

But here again it is Magdalen Goflin who puts the problem most graphically. In repeating the familiar charge that Roman theologians have made gods of the human reproductive organs, she illustrates this strikingly by suggesting that “if contraceptives had been dropped over Japan instead of bombs which merely killed, maimed, and shrivelled up thousands alive, there would have been a squeal of outraged protest from the Vatican to the remotest Mass centre in Alaska.” It is Mrs. Coffin’s contention that such idols are now being discredited, and that Roman Catholics of the next generation may “feel the need only of explaining what they no longer wish to defend.”

When Objections to Roman Catholicism was made the subject of a BBC TV program, one participant declared that the Roman Church in England in its present form would not survive the book, which is published without the imprimatur. One reviewer said it “must count … as something of a miracle” that it was published at all. The not-too-discerning predicted that its effect would rival that of Honest to God. All this is very misleading, as is the volume itself when it purports “to break new ground in the spirit of Pope John” (p. 12)—and so perpetuates the persistent fallacy that John XXIII was solidly behind the liberal movement in his church.

While this is undoubtedly a book to be taken seriously, its crowning fault is the writers’ concentration upon secondary and peripheral issues. They have little to say, for example, about Tradition and what Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls its “damnable plus.” We might have expected also that objections to Roman Catholicism would have included treatment of such topics as Mariolatry, papal infallibility, transubstantiation, and priestly mediation, but we look in vain for any such discussion here. The title suggests the ax laid to the root of the tree, but we find it doing no more lethal work than lopping off a few branches.

Japanese Christian leaders are reportedly concerned about the recent organization of the Komeito (Clean Government Party) by the Buddhist Soka Gakkai sect.

The Japanese National Christian Council’s Activity News reported that the development is likely to have a profound influence on the country’s religious situation as well as on its politics.

Ecumenical Press Service, published in Geneva by the World Council of Churches, cited the Activity News observation last month and declared that the party thus far has a 100 per cent record of success in elections.

“All fifteen of its candidates won seats in recent elections to the Upper House of the National Diet and 964 members were elected to various regional councils all over Japan,” EPS said.

For elections likely this year, the party is said to have listed fourteen candidates for the Upper House and thirty-two for the powerful 467-seat Lower House.

Before an assembly of 15,000 leaders last November, Soka Gakkai leader Daisaku Ikeda was quoted as saying that with “Buddhist democracy” as the guiding principle, they should seek to promote “mass welfare” and “to clear up Japanese politics.” The ultimate objective was described as “the establishment of an eternal peace structure for the world.”

The NCC publication described the Soka Gakkai party’s platform in these words:

“Much of its political program resembles that of the Japan Socialist Party—opposition to revision of the National Constitution and testing or use of nuclear weapons, abandonment of the United States—Japan security agreements and proposal for world disarmament. However, its approach to the electorate is basically different from that of the socialist party as well as other parties in Japan. It negates the concept of class, claiming to be a party of the ‘mass’; it does not represent interest groups (except Soka Gakkai!) and is unique in that its doctrinal basis is a traditional Japanese religion.”

Party leaders claim a membership of five million households or some 15 million persons—about 10 per cent of the total population.

Miscellany

Fifty-five worshipers were killed and sixty-three injured when the roof of a newly built Roman Catholic church collapsed in Rijo, Mexico. The church was to have been dedicated during the service. The celebrant was among those killed.

Fires in the sanctuaries of two neighboring Protestant churches in Miami within a thirty-hour period triggered a search for a firebug who may have had a grudge against church music. One fire was apparently started in a storage area under organ pipes. The other may have been lit in a grand piano. Hymnals were piled up and ignited.

The Synod of the Reformed Church of Zurich, Switzerland, granted permission to a Roman Catholic publishing house in Germany to print Zwingli’s Bible. No changes are to be made in the text, but notes are to be added with approval of the synod.

The Lutheran Institute of Human Ecology, Park Ridge, Illinois, plans a $750,000 alcocolic treatment, rehabilitation, research, and educational center. Groundbreaking is scheduled for this spring.

A poll conducted among subscribers to the Christian Herald revealed a strong preference for racial integration in church and community—but with some reservations concerning real estate sales.

Justice Minister Guy Favreau of Canada named a seven-member committee to study “hate literature” and recommend government action.

A new graduate school of religion will open at Milligan (Tennessee) College next Sep tember.

Personalia

Dr. Charles L. Balcer was elected president of Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Dr. L. Harold DeWolf was appointed dean and professor of systematic theology at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Dr. James L. Price, Jr., chairman of the department of religion at Duke University, was elected president of the American Academy of Religion.

Dr. Albert G. Johnson is retiring as president of Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. John A. Mackay, president emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary, was chosen to receive a religious liberty citation from Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The Rev. Samuel Wolgemuth was elected president of Youth for Christ International.

Dr. Oliver R. Barclay was appointed general secretary of British Inter-Varsity Fellowship.

Bruce C. Clinesmith was named president of the National Council of United Presbyterian Men.

Dr. Daniel E. Fountain, 34-year-old American Baptist medical doctor serving in the Congo, was among the “Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1964” named by the U. S. Junior Chamber of Commerce.

The Rev. Raymond C. Hohenstein was named executive secretary of the Lutheran Service Commission.

Witnessing And Caring

“You don’t have to tell me, brother,” said a Nashville taxi driver once to a fare who was describing his destination. “That’s where I go to get the man who looks like he needs a haircut and always talks to me about my soul.”

The man the taxi driver meant is a 71-year-old bachelor, Harry Denman, who is the retiring general secretary of the Board of Evangelism of The Methodist Church and the designated recipient of the 1965 Upper Room Citation. The editor of The Upper Room,¹The world’s most widely used devotional guide (circulation over three million, published in thirty-six languages), The Upper Room will mark its thirtieth anniversary this year. Dr. J. Manning Potts, approached Denman a few weeks ago and told him that he had been selected. Denman’s characteristic reaction was: “I am unworthy of it. It ought not to be given to me.”

Despite his reluctance, Dr. Denman’s name will be added to a distinguished list of recipients of the citation, including John Mott, Ralph Sockman, Frank Laubach, G. Bromley Oxnam, and Billy Graham. Graham has called Denman “the greatest practitioner of personal evangelism in America.” Potts calls him “the most loved” lay evangelist.

“All I’ve done is what all of us are supposed to do as Christians,” Denman says.

His official title and his D.D. and Litt.D. degrees are not likely to convey an adequate picture of the man. For years he has refused to draw his salary (the board pays his living expenses) and has lived under a virtual rule of poverty. After one speaking engagement, the host church offered to have him fitted for an expensive suit in lieu of the money he refused.

“I couldn’t take a suit,” he said. “What do I need with a suit? I already have one suit.”

Interviewers have found him reluctant to talk about himself, but he is not reluctant to talk evangelism—mass evangelism, individual evangelism, and any other kind.

One kind he practices might be called tavern evangelism. Here is what happens when he walks into a bar:

“I tell the men I’d like to have two or three minutes to talk with them and invite them to our services. First I pray for our country and then for them, and then I ask them to pray for me. Harlots, bartenders and all—I always ask them to pray for me.” A bartender once asked him why he bothered to come in.

“Because God loves you and I love you,” he answered.

Says Louis Cassels, United Press International religion columnist: “Denman is not the brash kind of extrovert who finds it easy to strike up conversations with strangers. He carries on his private evangelistic crusade because he is convinced that ‘Jesus was speaking to all Christians—not merely to ministers—when he said, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me.” ’

“Won’t people resent such overtures?” Cassels asked him.

“I’ve never met one who resented it,” Denman answered. “You cannot do this kind of thing unless you really care for people—and they can always tell.”

GEORGE WILLIAMS

The Sound Of Forgiveness

Now and then a black-skinned Christian will drop in for a friendly visit at the home of Mrs. J. J. Vermeulen, a white widow who lives in the village of Paarl in the heart of South Africa’s rich wine country. Behind these visits lies a gesture of forgiveness that neither black nor white will soon forget.

On November 22, 1962, riots flared in the Cape Town suburbs and as far as Paarl, some sixty-five miles to the northeast. As an African mob passed Mrs. Vermeulen’s home they seized her 17-year old daughter, her only child, and hacked her to pieces. A neighbor boy, twenty years old, dashed out to rescue her and met a similar fate.

During those same riots, a Bantu Dutch Reformed Church outside the city was burned down, as were many other churches throughout South Africa. In the massive retaliation of the black people against the oppression of the whites, Christianity too was receiving its judgment. When the Africans began to rebuild, the mothers contributed money, enough for a belltower. The Colored journal of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa acknowledged the compassion with a little news item entitled “So kan ‘n Christen vergewe” (So Can a Christian Forgive).

“I had the normal impulse for revenge,” says Mrs. Vermeulen, who herself belongs to a Dutch Reformed church. “Many people encouraged me to hate. But I came to the realization that a Christian cannot live with hate. I found that I couldn’t go to sleep at night hating. When I heard the Africans were trying to rebuild their destroyed church, I wanted to help. Contributing the belltower was a way of reaching out my hand and my heart to them. I knew I must not only not hate, but must also positively express my love. They must know that God had taken my hate away.”

So kan ‘n Christen vergewe. The church, with gleaming belltower, was dedicated at a special service several months ago, and Mrs. Vermeulen was in the congregation that day. The chimes now sound forth regularly, and each note echoes the sound of forgiveness.

The Rev. David Wilkerson, a slim, intense, 34-year-old evangelist whose ministry to teen-agers in trouble (especially narcotics addicts) has won national attention, is expanding his Brooklyn-based work, called Teen Challenge. The main new emphases are on mass youth evangelism, magazine publishing, literature distribution, and specialized schooling for converts to Christ. His purpose is to reach a greatly expanded segment of the nation’s immense teen population (those from twelve to twenty years old), now numbering about 29,000,000.

Wilkerson’s work with young people began nearly six years ago when he saw a picture of a gang of New York toughs in Life magazine. Strangely, the picture made him weep. It constituted what he terms a “burden from the Lord” that made him leave his Pennsylvania country-church pastorate to invade bleak tenement hallways and gang “turfs” with a message to socially deprived, hostile youth that God loved them in very fact. Teen Challenge is now a $670,000-a-year operation in the New York area, with similar projects in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, and Toronto.

The Cross and the Switchblade was the title of the book that told the story of his curbstone encounters with the teen-age underworld and his penetration of narcotics cloisters where kids jabbed their arms full of needle holes. Its accounts of about-face turns to Christ and redeemed young lives caused a considerable stir among church people, and the book, which has gone through nineteen printings in hard-cover and paperback, has sold 478,000 copies in paperback alone and well over half a million altogether.

The Cross and the Switchblade has now become the name of a new pocket-sized magazine whose first issue comes off the press this month. Teen Challenge, which plans to make no charge for subscriptions, will publish it every other month and distribute it to individuals and churches.

The Rev. Leonard Ravenhill, British-born preacher and author of books on revivals, has moved his family into one of the Teen Challenge headquarters buildings along Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn to become the magazine’s editor. The magazine intends a double thrust—directly at youth, with a message of personal redemption amid temptation, and also at churches. “What we hope to do is to make this magazine a kind of window in which the churches of America can see the problems that many teen-agers are being caught in, and perhaps get a glimpse of what can be done about it,” Mr. Ravenhill said.

Wilkerson, no theologian, is a sort of a gut-preacher of the Gospel who believes in directness of thrust. “It works, on the street, changing life patterns,” he says. “This is not just on paper; it’s in hearts.”

Wilkerson and his wife, who has been seriously ill, have four children. They live in a small home on Staten Island. He is an ordained minister of the Assemblies of God but says he differs somewhat with what he regards as the denomination’s traditional stand on glossolalia.

In June, Revell will publish a sequel to The Cross and the Switchblade. Twelve Angels from Hell will show more detail, telling the story of a dozen young lives redeemed from drugs and gross perversions and set on new paths of peace through Jesus Christ.

Life magazine—which in a way started it all—has tentatively scheduled a major report for a February issue. Photographers have been shooting film in a number of Teen Challenge centers throughout the country.

A young businessman in Calgary, Alberta, got the notion of distributing free copies of the original Wilkerson book to high school students last year, and Wilkerson has arranged with Pyramid Publications for a low-cost high school edition to be distributed at $150 per thousand paperback copies. This whole-text edition will also be used in Teen Challenge’s newest ministry—mass evangelism aimed specifically at teen-age audiences.

Wilkerson’s work has been essentially a street-corner affair, with only occasional broader scope; but eight meetings at Carnegie Hall and Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh in as many months have demonstrated to his satisfaction that large numbers of young people can be drawn to auditoriums, and that the same message he presents in his work with individuals can be presented to thousands, with somewhat the same effect.

Although Wilkerson is a little wooden-tongued on the platform and now and then stumbles or halts in delivery, his words have a weight of uncommon authority. He bases his sermons to mass audiences mainly on the experience he has gained talking to kids on corners, so he knows where they’re living. His themes, if a bit startling to adults, are splendidly contemporary to youth. He preaches on “wasting time,” “goof-balls,” and “going against the crowd,” and warns teen-agers that a failure to grasp the difference between love and lust may wreck lives.

A good many youths who come forward to receive Jesus Christ as Saviour at his meetings do so with unhidden tears. “There’s a good deal of talk about manifestations of the Holy Spirit today,” Wilkerson said, “and these are most interesting, but we must remember that when he, the Holy Spirit, is come, he will convict the world of sin. That is why there is a weeping and breaking among these young people. I’ve seen it in all our meetings. We miss the fact that the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days is unique in that it begins with our sons and daughters.”

What happened in Pittsburgh, where the Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation hired the hall and supplied the ushers and choir for the Wilkerson meetings, was a chain reaction. Teen-agers won by the message went home and started chartering buses to bring schoolmates to hear the evangelist. Wilkerson, who weighs 145 pounds, was taken aback when he tried to make his way through a line standing outside Carnegie Hall so that he could get inside to preach. A kid blocked his way and said. “You’ll just have to wait your turn, skinny. I’m next.” Similar meetings have been held in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, and groups of ministers and laymen in Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Detroit, Montreal, and Toronto have asked him to come this year to hold large meetings in those cities.

Teen Challenge has purchased a part of the former Astor estate at Rhinebeck, New York—a magnificent 100 acres set on a broad hilltop overlooking the Hudson River Valley. The thirty-room stone Georgian mansion, with its grand entrance hall and wide staircase, is no longer reserved for the silken footsteps of the privileged; it is soon to be a sanctuary for Bible-school training for youths who have turned to Christ, many of them from slum-ridden ghettos but a few from upper-income captivity to sin.

How does President Johnson’s record federal investment plan for education square with the American principle of separation of church and state?

While he does not refer to parochial schools as such, either in his State of the Union speech or in his special message to Congress on education, the President obviously tries in his proposals to meet Roman Catholics half-way in their demand for a share in federal aid to education programs. The means he uses are tantamount to a wholehearted federal endorsement of the shared-time concept, wherein parochial and other independent school students take some of their classes in public educational facilities.

“I propose that we declare a national goal of full educational opportunity,” Johnson said. “Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take.”

Observing that “nothing matters more to the future of our country,” the President went on to outline his recommendation for a budget on education totaling $4.1 billion for the next fiscal year. This figure includes $1.5 billion he is requesting for new programs.

Administration sources have been quoted as saying that youngsters in parochial and other independent schools would benefit from about 15 per cent of the overall federal outlay requested for education. That percentage was said to have been chosen because it is thought to represent the number of non-public-school students in the total school population.

Ultimate distribution of the money will vary according to implementation of the aid program at state and local school-board levels. To some extent, Johnson may be seeking to avoid the constitutional issue in public funds for parochial schools by leaving the decision up to the states. He also attempts to get around the problem by specifying aid to the students of nonpublic schools rather than to the schools themselves.

It is understood that students in religious elementary and secondary schools would be eligible for public school books purchased with federal funds. A total of $100 million is projected for books during the first year of the program.

Another $100 million is being sought for “supplementary educational centers and services” which public and nonpublic school children would share. It is in this program that the concept of shared time or dual school enrollment gets its first measure of federal support.

An administration spokesman contends that if a child has a right to full-time attendance in a public school, he certainly has a right to attend part-time or to receive services.

The President has in mind that “supplementary centers” can provide such services as:

—Special courses in science, foreign languages, literature, music, and art.

—Programs for the physically handicapped and mentally retarded.

—Instruction in the sciences and humanities during the summer for economically and culturally deprived children.

—Special assistance after regular school hours.

—Common facilities that can be maintained more efficiently for a group of schools than for a single school—laboratories, libraries, auditoriums, and theaters.

—A system by which gifted persons can teach part-time to provide scarce talents.

—A means of introducing into the school system new courses, instructional materials, and teaching practices.

—A way of tapping the community’s extra-curricular resources for the benefit of students—museums, concert and lecture programs, and industrial laboratories.

The new education plan would also step up the federal college scholarship program and would increase the number of grants and loans to colleges and universities, including those that are church-related, for specialized studies.

The biggest new educational expense proposed by the President, however, is the $1 billion he wants for public school districts serving economically needy children. All these funds would be spent according to plans devised by local school boards. A stipulation is that they be used “for the benefit of all children within the area served, including those who participate in shared services of other special educational projects.” This has been authoritatively interpreted as meaning that local school boards will have the responsibility of getting a portion of the money channeled to benefit students in parochial and other private-schools in their area. The plan thus seems to invest a measure of jurisdiction upon local school boards that they do not now possess.

Significantly, because of the effort to alleviate poverty, Southern and Bible-belt states would get the lion’s share of federal educational funds under the President’s proposal. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, South Carolina, and South Dakota are slated to receive more than $10 per capita. By comparison, Connecticut and New Jersey would get less than $4 per capita.

Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State has expressed some misgivings about the advisability and constitutionality of shared time. A special committee is to report on a study of shared time at POAU’s annual convention in Philadelphia in February. POAU is now supporting a lawsuit that challenges a shared-time arrangement in Chicago to determine its constitutionality.

Some evangelical and other Protestant leaders, however, see a need for an expanding Christian day-school movement in the United States and feel that shared time tends to encourage it. Shared time transfers the most expensive phases of a school’s curriculum to the public sector. Under shared time, Christian day schools could use public school facilities such as gymnasiums, laboratories, and vocational training shops.

It may be that the Supreme Court decisions on prayer and Bible reading are leading to a multiplication of religious schools. Whatever the reason, the rate at which they are being established is climbing. The National Association of Christian Schools reports that during the last nine months of 1964 it received inquiries from sixty-nine groups who desired assistance in establishing new Christian day schools. That total was four times the number received in the comparable period in 1963.

Criticisms of shared time by some Protestant leaders revolve around the argument that it tends to fragmentize elementary and secondary school education and that it would benefit Roman Catholics more than Protestants.

A Hopeful Start

Optimistic plans for a Baptist International University with a graduate level curriculum were made public in Washington, D. C., this month. Schools of government, religion, law, journalism, and medicine are envisioned. Opening of classes is scheduled for the fall of 1967.

Lawrence H. Harris, a foreign service officer, said support is expected from major Baptist denominations. But spokesmen for the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs and the D. C. Baptist Convention said they knew of no plans for such support.

Clergymen On Viet Nam

More than 100 clergymen in the Washington, D. C., area signed a statement last month asking President Johnson to initiate action leading to a cease-fire in the Vietnamese war.

In an open letter, they also called for an investigation into “inhuman methods” reportedly used by the South Vietnamese, including bombing of villages, use of napalm, and torture in the questioning of prisoners.

The letter was circulated among 705 religious leaders in Washington and its suburbs. It was prompted by the “Washington Committee on Vietnam,” the Washington Ministers’ Association, and the Council of Churches of Greater Washington. About 105 replies were received.

Among the signatories were forty Methodists, nine United Church of Christ and Congregational ministers, nine Baptists, six rabbis, six Christian Churches clergymen, six Church of the Brethren ministers, five Presbyterians, and one Catholic priest—the Rev. Ronan Hoffman, professor of missiology at Catholic University of America.

No Protestant Episcopal clergyman signed the petition. Among several ministers who refused to sign was Dean Francis B. Sayre of Washington Cathedral, who said he did not feel competent in the field to urge such a course of action.

Moratorium On Debate

Archbishop Leo Binz of St. Paul, Minnesota, was the first Roman Catholic prelate to acknowledge intervention in a proposed television series on birth control planned by the National Council of Catholic Men. Showing of the four-part, two-hour series was scheduled to begin January 3 over “The Catholic Hour” on some 100 NBC stations. Binz revealed he had been in telephone conversation with NCCM executive director Martin Work, who was persuaded to withdraw the series.

The content of the programs was not immediately divulged. Reasons given for the cancellation pointed to the fact that birth control is under discussion at the Vatican Council and that Pope Paul VI has sought to minimize public debate until Council Fathers arrive at an official conclusion.

Exploring Cooperation

Representatives of six denominations sharing the evangelical Wesleyan-Arminian tradition met at Winona Lake, Indiana, last month to discuss possibilities of a joint program of publishing. Sunday school materials were the main topic of consideration. A second meeting is scheduled for Indianapolis, February 16–17. Participating in the talks are official representatives of Nazarene, Evangelical Methodist, Free Methodist, Pilgrim Holiness, United Missionary, and Wesleyan Methodist churches.

Christ On The Screen

The Greatest Story Ever Told, a 3½-hour motion picture based on the life of Christ, opens in New York on February 15.

A Swedish actor, Max Von Sydow, portrays Christ. Gary Raymond of Britain plays Peter. The rest of the cast reads like a Hollywood Who’s Who.

The film, produced and directed by George Stevens, utilizes Technicolor and an improved type of single-lens Cinerama.

Life With A Clergyman

The complaints of an Anglican rector’s wife won international attention this month, and a host of rebuttals. Mrs. Brenda Wolfe of London said in an article in Prism that being a clergyman’s wife “is a lousy job.” Soon after, Religious News Service carried a story out of Minneapolis quoting a number of Lutheran ministers’ wives who disagreed sharply with Mrs. Wolfe. In Washington, Mrs. Edward L. R. Elson, wife of the minister of National Presbyterian Church, told newsman Robert Tate Allan that “perhaps the husband has lost his sense of humor.”

The Church Membership Tally

The 1965Yearbook of American Churchesshows a record 64 per cent of the U. S. population as members of a church or synagogue. The total of 120,965,234 encompasses reports from 253 religious bodies and reflects a 2.6 per cent increase over the previous year. The figures are mainly for the calendar year 1963 or for a fiscal year ending in 1963. The National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., which has been credited with a membership of 5,000,000 for a number of years, reported a total 500,000 over that figure, and this difference accounted for about one-fourth of the 3.2 per cent Protestant increase.

The yearbook, published by the National Council of Churches, gives the following membership totals: Protestant, 66,854,200; Roman Catholic, 44,874,371; Jewish, 5,585,000; Eastern Orthodox, 3,094,140.

Relative numerical strengths of the large Protestant denominations did not show much change. Here are totals for the top fifteen:

Seminary Roundup

Fuller Theological Seminary plans to initiate two new doctoral programs in the fall of 1965. One will offer the doctor of theology (Th.D.) degree and will require about three years’ work beyond the B.D. degree. It is designed to prepare men and women to teach religion at the university or the seminary level and to enable them to pursue independent scholarly research.

The other program, involving a year of supervised field work and advanced study beyond the B.D., will offer a professional degree for ministers (D. Th. Past.). A seminary “core” curriculum, introduced on Fuller’s Pasadena, California, campus last fall with a emphasis upon integration of English Bible throughout nine quarters of seminary study, is expected to lend itself to the new professional program.

A statement issued jointly by the chairman of Fuller’s board, Dr. Harold John Ockenga, and three board members, Dr. Charles E. Fuller, Dr. David A. Hubbard, and C. Davis Weyerhaeuser, affirmed that the new programs would be carried out in the spirit of Fuller’s historic commitment to the full inspiration and authority of Scripture as the infallible written Word of God.¹The statement also called attention to a passage in Fuller’s statement of faith: “The books which form the canon of the Old and New Testaments as originally given are plenarily inspired and free from all error in the whole and in the part. These books constitute the written Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” The board members’ statement added that “we face so seriously our belief in the authority of the Scriptures, that we insist the Bible stand as judge over all theological statements, even our own statements about the Bible.”

A noted seminary in the East, meanwhile, announced a major curtailment in its graduate program. Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, acting upon the results of studies that were conducted by its own faculty and by a team from the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, is discontinuing all doctorates. A master’s program in practical theology is also being discontinued, this to strengthen all phases of the seminary’s undergraduate program in this area.

At Wake Forest, North Carolina, the resignations of two key faculty members at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary were made public. Dr. R. C. Briggs, professor of New Testament, and Dr. Denton R. Coker, professor of religious education, both cited effects of a protest by other faculty members against higher critical interpretation of the New Testament.

Coker is now a dean at Brunswick (Georgia) College. Briggs said he also hopes to remain in the educational field.

The protest, described by Briggs as dating back to 1960, reportedly was aimed at himself and two other faculty members, Dr. William C. Strickland, professor of New Testament who is now studying abroad, and Dr. Harold H. Oliver, associate professor of New Testament interpretation who resigned last summer.

According to a Raleigh newspaper, the announcement of Briggs’s resignation elicited a strongly worded statement from Coker. He charged that the trouble began when “six or eight seminary faculty members alleged that Dr. Briggs and two of his fellow teachers of New Testament were disciples of the German scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, and protested their use of his historical-critical method of New Testament study, a method approved by all reputable New Testament scholars today.”

Issues Of Identification

Transition from cultural isolation to creative involvement was the theme of the annual convention of the American Association of Evangelical Students, attended at Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota, by thirty-five delegates from ten church-related campuses. Speakers were Dr. Timothy Smith, professor of social history at the University of Minnesota; Dr. Philip Hinerman, minister of Park Avenue Methodist Church, Minneapolis; and Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Smith warned that, in the absence of evangelical initiative, blatantly secular and radically irreligious students are seizing on good causes as a matter of image-building.

Hinerman scored the Freudian ascription of neurotic disorders to sexual repression. “The problem in American society today is hardly one of sexual repression; yet that society is embarrassed by the abundance of neurotic personalities and twisted souls,” he remarked. He pleaded for a “life of transparent honesty” including repentance, restitution, and holy love.

Henry said that Christians are called to identify themselves, not with the social customs, social vices, or social discontents of “the outsiders,” but rather with modern man in his survival needs. Such needs, he indicated, are not merely material but include social justice and spiritual redemption.

A Door To The East?

The year 1965 may see an important if limited evangelistic thrust into Eastern Europe on the student level. Delicate groundwork is under way to bring students from Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia to a training course to be conducted this summer by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. “The plans are quietly being made,” says Dr. C. Stacey Woods, general secretary of IFES, “and we hope that some will come. Our prayer for 1965 is for an open door to the east.”

Dead Sea Scrolls Display

Fourteen priceless Dead Sea Scrolls will be put on display in the United States this year. Exhibits are scheduled in six cities.

Included in the display will be the twelve-foot “Psalm Scroll” and a scroll inscribed with the Ten Commandments. All are being dispatched to the United States under a special agreement with the Jordanian government. Jordan also is sending the containers in which the scrolls were found, coins current at the time they were stored, and other artifacts.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are one of the most significant archaeological finds of all time. They were unearthed in the late 1940s and traced back to the Qumran community of the first century before Christ.

Here is the U. S. exhibit schedule: Washington, D. C. (Smithsonian Institution),

February 28-March 21.

Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), April 3–25.

Berkeley, California (University of California), May 8–30.

Claremont, California (Claremont College), June 12-July 5.

Omaha, Nebraska (Joslyn Art Museum), July 17-August 8.

Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery), August 21–September 19.

Following the American tour the artifacts will be shipped to Canada and then on to Great Britain.

Many Cold, Few Frozen

“It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the freezer,” could be the adapted scriptural motto of the Life Extension Society, which is dedicated to the idea that dead people should be quick-frozen and stored at absolute zero for possible reanimation when science learns how to cure all diseases and reverse the aging process.

At the second annual LES “Freeze-Wait-Reanimate Conference” in Washington, D. C., this month, sixteen persons contemplated such papers as “Anticipated Psychological Response to the Prospect of Immortality,” “Scientific Reincarnation,” and “Reanimation and the Law.” The participants included such apparently earnest persons as two professors, an accountant, a patent researcher, and a legal adviser whose bid for Congress last year failed in the primaries despite inclusion in his platform of a plank on freezer funerals.

Keynote speaker was Professor Robert C. W. Ettinger, whose book, The Prospect of Immortality (Doubleday), is in its second edition and has had several translations in the year since its publication. His address dealt with the practicalities of getting the program of deep-freeze death into practice and accepted by the public. Acceptance will come, Ettinger believes, with the successful freezing of the first person who “wills his body to himself.” To break the ice, Ettinger has collected in the basement of his suburban Detroit home the equipment needed to chill that first body.

Ettinger contends that while the present state of scientific achievement falls short of sustaining human life indefinitely, there is much reason to hope that science in the future could undo death; everyone who dies, he says, should have his chances insured by freezing. With public acceptance Ettinger foresees radical changes in laws, customs, and institutions by a state willing to extend its protection beyond the grave for the masses in the cold, cold ground. He visualizes the use of social security taxes to pay for democratically administered freezer-care programs—and thus, with unintentional humor, the ultimate victory of the state over man in a world where death was not inevitable but taxes were.

GAYLORD BRILEY