A Middle Way

Frank Farrell

Christopher Columbus set sail for the Orient but landed in America. Early this month many churchmen set out for Columbus, Ohio, to attend a study conference on church-state relations which they believed would support the Jeffersonian doctrine of “absolute” separation of church and state. But like Christopher, the conference wound up on another continent. It had steered a middle course.

The four-day meeting was a precedent-setting one. It was the first study conference on church-state relations called by the National Council of Churches. It was the first time the NCC had invited non-member Protestant communions to send voting delegates, these representing conservative groups like the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and several state conventions of the Southern Baptist Convention. And along with some 400 representatives of sixteen Protestant and Eastern Orthodox bodies came nineteen Roman Catholic and Jewish “participant-observers,” the first to share even indirectly in the formation of a major NCC document—as they took part in drawing up section reports used by a “findings committee” of delegates in preparing the final 3,000-word conference statement. Observers were named also by the National Association of Evangelicals and the First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston.

The delegates faced a complex and perpetually vexing problem area in Christian thought, and their findings, while not constituting an official NCC “policy statement,” were seen by observers as highly significant guidelines for continuing examination of church-state relations by the nation’s religious bodies. Delegates stated the rationale for their gathering in this way: “The necessity for new attention to the problems of church-state relations arises not only from the expansion of governmental programs into areas where churches and other voluntary agencies have served and continue to serve but also from the transition of this nation from a Protestant to a religiously pluralistic society.” The pluralism motif was stressed throughout the document though there were some who questioned the thesis and wished it stricken.

In qualifying the “complete” separation, or “wall of separation,” theory, the document points to the frequent “overlapping” of the functions of church and state, and thus the “interaction” of the two structures. Yet it asserts church-state separation to be a constitutional principle and declares “acceptance and support of Supreme Court decisions insofar as they prohibit officially prescribed prayers and required devotional reading of the Bible in schools.” An attempt to delete the word “support” was defeated. Opposition was asserted to “any proposal such as the so-called Christian Amendment which seeks to commit our government to official identification with a particular religious tradition.”

On the other hand, the document states that “government exceeds its proper authority if it shows hostility or even indifference to religion”: “While it is not the business of government to promote or support religion, it is government’s role and duty to further religious liberty. The clause of the First Amendment prohibiting an establishment of religion must be balanced against the clause prohibiting interference with the free exercise of religion.”

Going beyond this, the document asserts that “under some well-defined circumstances, government may legitimately support specific programs of church-affiliated health and welfare agencies. The sole purpose of any governmental policy in this respect must be the promotion of a clearly identifiable public interest as against a private interest of an individual or religious group.” It is also declared that such government aid should not be aimed “primarily” at the support of religious institutions or programs but should be “incidental” to large programs in the public interest. It should also be made certain, the document says, that agencies receiving aid do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed (this point was sharply debated), or national origin.

This brought the delegates to what proved the most controversial subject in their statement of findings—federal aid to parochial schools, which in general they opposed, but with certain exceptions. Following is the key passage: “Since parochial elementary and secondary schools are maintained by churches so that ‘religion permeates the entire atmosphere’ of the school, government funds should not be authorized or appropriated for overall support of such schools as distinguished from aid in support of specific health and welfare programs conducted by such institutions to meet particular needs.”

This section, adopted by a vote of 85–57, was a revised version of wording that would have approved federal aid for any “specific programs” of private and parochial schools that would meet a public need. As amended, it approves federal aid for such programs as school lunch projects and medical treatment while rejecting government funds for educational purposes.

There was lively debate over a proposed amendment that would have removed the word “overall’ in reference to government support for parochial schools, a revision that would have given the findings a more rigid separationist tone. The proposal died on a 79–85 vote.

The delegates acknowledged the parental right of choice of schools, but they denied that a choice of parochial or private schools “imposes on the state any obligation to support such choice through the granting of public funds in overall support of such schools.” They cautioned that such support “may well have the result of further fragmentation of the educational system and weaken the role and position of the public schools.”

But recognition was given to “the seriousness of the financial problem of the parochial schools.” In response, the conferees proposed “shared time as the most creative measure for solving this problem and [we] are willing to explore other legal methods for solving it.”

The study document passes very quickly over what is becoming an increasingly thorny problem for U.S. congressmen: the differences between education at primary and secondary levels on the one hand and college education on the other with regard to proposed federal aid. The document says simply that “these differences [undefined] with respect to the constitutional and policy questions involved in governmental support of non-public education enterprises remain to be explored.”

Summing up the conference, one leader said: “This is not the first or the last step in the quest. But I think it’s a significant step.”

Closing Up Shop

The major agency of cooperation among American Lutherans began a formal dismantling process this month. At its forty-sixth annual meeting, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, the National Lutheran Council took initial steps toward transferring activities to the proposed new Lutheran Council in the United States of America.

The LCUSA, as now projected, will embrace the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church, both of which participate in the present NLC, as well as the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which do not belong to the NLC.

Planners have a target date of January 1, 1967, for establishment of the new agency.

Among key problems in the transition are those connected with the separation of the council’s regular program from its functions as the American committee for the Lutheran World Federation. The Missouri Synod and the SELC are not members of the federation.

Another problem is what to do with the campus ministry of the present NLC. An NLC news release noted that “the NLC bodies differ with the Missouri Synod in their philosophy and approach to this area of activity and lack of doctrinal agreement is a major obstacle.”

Sacred Precincts Picketed

Now and then Britain gets a reminder that old-time militant Protestantism, like Charles II, is an unconscionable time dying. In Scotland each July 12 it organizes noisy processions to celebrate King Billy’s victory over the Papists in 1690; in England it has all but forsaken vocal protests during Anglo-Catholic services, and witnesses chiefly through incisive little notices in the “Personal” column of The Times. Earlier this month, however, it took to itself a modern weapon when its supporters picketed the decently somber confines of Church House, Westminster.

Inside, the Church Assembly was debating a controversial measure that sought to regularize the use of eucharistic vestments. This has been a well-aired subject in recent times, and nothing new emerged from the discussion, though a prominent layman, Mr. George Goyder of Oxford, created a stir when he asked why if our Lord wanted them to wear vestments he did not dress up specially for the Last Supper. In the end all three houses, Bishops by 31–0, Clergy by 214–30, and Laity by 182–68, voted in favor of the measure, which now goes forward finally for parliamentary approval. Such approval would not make vestments mandatory; it would merely give official sanction to a practice which hitherto has been illegal.

Later in the week pacifist pickets took over and found the house more sympathetic to their cause. A resolution by the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Roger Wilson, opposing Britain’s independent nuclear force, was carried with an addendum which stated, “believing that the use of indiscriminate weapons must now be condemned as an affront to the Creator and denial of the very purpose of the Creation.”

When the House of Laity met separately, evangelicals again received a setback when a move that would in effect have officially permitted non-Anglicans to communicate in parish churches on occasion, was defeated 101–84. Two things were significant about the voting, however: the minority vote on this issue was the largest so far; and the majority vote was cast very largely by older members of the house.

The whole assembly discussed the report on deployment and payment of the clergy (see “New ‘Pauline’ Document,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, February 14) and agreed to receive it after an official assurance was given that such reception in no way committed the church. It seems certain, nevertheless, that many of the report’s recommendations will in the church’s own time be implemented. As one means of furthering them, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey, pleaded for more clergymen to make a vocation of celibacy. This would help solve the problem of filling vacant parishes by allowing men without domestic ties to move from place to place, wherever the need was greatest. The Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. John Robinson, said the report would not bring in the Kingdom of God, but that the future would be “very grim” if its recommendations were not received.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Jeopardizing The Union

Despite the somewhat ostentatious support given by the upper echelons in both churches, opposition is growing to the proposed Anglican-Methodist merger in England. This month in London saw the inaugural meeting of the Voice of Methodism, a movement pledged to uncompromising opposition to certain proposals in the current report (the issue will probably be decided next year). It seems likely that if these are accepted there will be a split within Methodism with, suggested some of the speakers at the meeting, a majority of Methodists dissenting.

The new movement, which has already appointed a full-time secretary and is inundated with offers of voluntary help, is planning to publish a regular journal and a series of booklets, and is appealing for at least $55,000 from supporters. One of the elder statesmen of Methodism, noted Old Testament scholar Norman Snaith, was unable through illness to attend the inaugural meeting but sent a message pointing out that “the essence of the Gospel and of Protestantism was justification by faith alone,” and that acceptance of the report involved “denying this by agreeing to the unhistorical notion of apostolic succession.” He was backed by Dr. Leslie Newman, who is reputed to have the largest evening congregation in Methodism (he takes up an appointment in the United States this summer). Some people spoke very confidently about reunion as the will of God, said Dr. Newman, but “this age was not conspicuous for its concern for God’s will.”

Meanwhile the (Anglo-Catholic) Church Union, which perhaps hoped the merger proposals would founder on other rocks, has at last come out with a plain statement. This body, which makes wide use of such pejorative expressions as “separated brethren,” professes to welcome the merger report but says it is “not an adequate basis of communion.” The union finds the language equivocal at times and points out that “some important theological questions are left unresolved, others barely mentioned.” It cites two notable differences of discipline in the two churches: the problem connected with Holy Communion, and that dealing with admission to holy matrimony after divorce.

The union has reserves also about Methodist insistence on maintaining relations with other non-episcopal churches, and comments: “It does not appear from the report either that the theological implications of communion have been adequately considered, or that the respective relations and discipline have been reconciled. An Anglican attending Holy Communion in a Methodist church might find that the celebrant was, say, a Congregationalist minister.” What the union’s statement fails to add is that already an Anglican who attends communion in the Lutheran Church of Sweden (with which the Church of England is in communion) might find the celebrant is a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, whose orders are accepted by the Swedish Church but not by the Church of England.

J. D. DOUGLAS

‘One Man’S Way’

If anything can be an omen in the flickering world of Hollywood, the Protestant clergyman may be in for a new public image. After decades of movies that presented the Protestant minister as a confused and bewildered oozy sentimentalist whom no man in his right mind would take seriously, United Artists’ One Man’s Way presents a credible image of one of America’s best-known clergymen.

The film is the story of Dutch Reformed minister Norman Vincent Peale, played very satisfactorily by Don Murray. Born in the manse, the last thing Peale wanted to be was a minister, and he turned to journalism. But exposure to crime and human need awakened a compassion for people that sent the police reporter to the seminary. He wanted to meet human need with positive action, not simply write about it. Here lies the motif of Peale’s ministry.

When in a gas station his future wife met his back bumper with her front one—with a very positive impact—the romantic chase was on. The bumped became the pursuer, and the pursued the girl-who-is-never-at-home—for the last thing she wanted to be was a minister’s wife, which she thought could only be dull.

With the bright persistence of the original positive thinker, Norman refused to accept a negative answer. In the end, Ruth herself asked for what Norman wanted, and he complied by taking her to wife. Playing a starring role in her first motion picture, lovely Diana Hyland is no typical minister’s wife—but then neither is Peale a typical minister.

One Man’s Way is not the usual story of the minister’s struggle to coexist with the special attention of the congregation’s “unclaimed jewels” turned sour and with the usual cantankerous, immovable church boards. It is just what the title suggests: one man’s way of preaching. The script faithfully reflects Peale’s way of preaching down the years. At the first, he proclaimed a kind of do-it-yourself-with-God religion—a combination that makes all things possible. In the movie as in his life, there came—especially with his growing popularity—severe criticism, and even the charge that his message was blasphemous. Peale countered, in the movie as in life, that he was really preaching the God in Christ who so meets aching human needs that man, even in this world, can live on a note of optimism and in a mood of triumph. Here lies the key to Peale’s extraordinary appeal. He stresses what is often an unnecessary deficiency in preachers of more obvious orthodoxy.

Based on Arthur Gordon’s book, Minister to Millions, and produced by Frank Ross, One Man’s Way is certainly one of the best current religious movies. It is serious, warm, authentic, reverent, and always in good taste. May One Man’s Way become the way in which other religious movies are made.

JAMES DAANE

A Memorial (?) to God

President Johnson climbed out on a theological limb this month. Addressing nearly 1,000 guests at the twelfth annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Johnson proposed establishment in the capital city of a “memorial to the God who made us all.” It should be, he said, “a center of prayer, open to all men of all faiths at all times.” He suggested that International Christian Leadership, sponsor of the breakfast, round up necessary support.

The Chief Executive’s idea found no immediate groundswell of acceptance (see editorial on page 26), but if nothing else, it was noteworthy for its very daring. Seldom does any high-ranking politician, much less the President, have any suggestion to make to the religious community much beyond a variation of “keep up the good work.” Johnson at least showed that he wants to be a participant rather than just a spectator. Some observers felt his word choice was unfortunate; critics immediately drew the inference from the term “memorial” that “God is dead.”

Hundreds of government leaders, including Chief Justice Earl Warren, House Speaker John W. McCormack, six members of the Cabinet, and several state governors, were crowded into the grand ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel. Amidst notables at the head table was Los Angeles publisher William Jones, who each year picks up the entire tab for the Presidential Prayer Breakfast. Republican Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas presided.

Johnson said that “prayer has helped me to bear the burdens of this first office which are too great to be borne by anyone alone.” In remarks to the Congressional Wives’ Prayer Breakfast, held simultaneously in another room, he recalled “those first dark days of November, when the pressures were the heaviest and the need of strength from above the greatest.” “Lady Bird and I sat down together to eat a meal alone,” he said. “No word or glance passed between us, but in some way we found ourselves bound together, and I found myself speaking the words of grace that I had learned at my mother’s knees so many years ago.”

First public endorsement of the Johnson memorial plan came from the National Association of Evangelicals. Dr. Robert A. Cook, NAE president, noted in a letter to Johnson that “the Scriptures are replete with … references which make it plain that nations as well as individuals should acknowledge God, even as the founding fathers of our nation were careful to do.”

“The God of our American heritage is the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible,” Cook said, “and recognition of this fact can have great significance. An edifice for this purpose could serve as a testimony to the thousands who annually visit our nation’s capital, as well as to those who live and work here. It would stand in the same marked contrast with the idol of the godless dialectical materialism as does your confession of faith in God and His Son, Jesus Christ.”

The letter conceded “problems and difficulties” but added that “complete agreement on theology … is not necessary for the limited project under consideration.” Cook concluded by saying that “we are hopeful, therefore, that the International Christian Leadership, in accord with your suggestion, will take the lead in exploring the possibility and feasibility of implementing your splendid suggestion.”

Johnson was preceded on the breakfast program by Republican Governor Mark Hatfield of Oregon, who said that “the call for spiritual mobilization is a clarion call in this day,” and evangelist Billy Graham.

Graham cited a series of pressures that currently plagues the United States. He said that the nation is pressed demographically and psychologically, as well as by moral and social problems, by international crises, and by a pessimistic philosophy.

“The victory,” he said, “is found in a spiritual dimension, and I believe that the greatest need of America at this hour is a moral and spiritual awakening that will sweep the nation from coast to coast and put back into our society a moral fiber that we need, and a will to resist the forces of tyranny, and a will to maintain our freedoms at an hour when they are being attacked.”

Later that day, Graham and his wife, who had addressed the wives’ breakfast, went to the White House at Johnson’s invitation. Graham said he had telephoned Johnson several days before to assure the President that, press reports to the contrary, he had absolutely no presidential aspirations.

The President introduced his suggestion of a memorial as a “personal thought.” This is what he said:

“This Federal City of Washington in which we live and work is much more than a place of residence. For the 190 million people that we serve and for many millions in other lands, Washington is the symbol and the showcase of a great nation and a greater cause of human liberty on earth.

“In this capital city, we have monuments to Lincoln, to Jefferson, to Washington, and to many statesmen and soldiers. But at this seat of government, there must be a fitting memorial to the God who made us all.

“Our government cannot and should not sponsor the erection of such a memorial with public funds. But such a living memorial should be here. It should be a center of prayer, open to all men of all faiths at all times.

“If I may speak this morning as a citizen and as a colleague and as a friend, I would like to suggest to this group, which has done so much through all the years, that it undertake the mission of bringing together the faiths and the religions of America to support jointly such a memorial here in this Federal City—the Capital of the Free World.

“The world is given many statistics about the per capita vices of Washington, but the world knows all too little about the per capita virtues of those who live and labor here.

“I believe—and I would hope that you would agree—that the true image of Washington is not that of power or pomp or plenty. It is, rather, that of a prayerful capital of good and God-fearing people.”

Books

Book Briefs: February 28, 1964

What To Teach Teachers

The Education of American Teachers, by James Bryant Conant (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 275 pp., $5), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, co-editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYand headmaster emeritus of The Stony Brook School.

In 1910 Abraham Flexner, after extensive study under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, published his Medical Education in the United States and Canada, a book that revolutionized the training of physicians in America. Last September James Bryant Conant, former president of Harvard University, U.S. High Commissioner of Germany and later ambassador to that country, published The Education of American Teachers, another in his series of studies of American public education made under grant of the Carnegie Corporation. The parallel is significant, for Dr. Conant’s most recent volume contains the potential of changing the face of teacher education as Flexner’s book changed medical education.

Like its predecessors, The American High School Today and Education in the Junior High School Years, this book is a refreshing example of what happens when a first-rate mind, unencumbered by the hazy professionalism that marks many educational theorists today, applies itself to the problems of public education.

Charles Malik, former president of the General Assembly of the United Nations and himself a teacher, said, “Find the good teacher and forget everything else.” This may sound extreme, yet it places the emphasis for education in the right place. Already the influence of Dr. Conant’s other books on the public schools is widely felt. But the proposals he has made in them will fall short of full effectiveness, as will every other effort toward educational reform, without drastic changes in the education of teachers.

This is not a superficial study. Assisted by nine outstanding educators and scholars, Dr. Conant gave two years to the project, during which he visited seventy-seven higher institutions in twenty-two states and studied the state regulations that limit the freedom of local school boards to employ teachers. His subject is complicated by a staggering variety of theory and practice. It is also a battleground of academic civil war in which the professional education establishment is arrayed against the advocates of the liberal arts and sciences. No one who has done his share of reading the writings of professors of education can fail to admire the fair-mindedness and incisiveness with which Dr. Conant works through tangled verbiage and the multiplicity of programs to the heart of the problem.

Compared with existing practices, his proposals for revision of teacher education are radical. The elaborate system of required credits in education courses prescribed for the certification of teachers by state departments of education and a number of the regional accrediting associations must go. “Except for practice teaching and the special methods work combined with it,” Dr. Conant declares, “I see no rational basis for a state prescription of the time to be devoted to education courses.…” In its place, he would empower college and university faculties to set up the teacher-education programs they consider adequate and to stand behind these programs by certifying that those completing them are satisfactorily trained to teach. He proposes only three requirements for state certification: (1) “a bachelor’s degree from a legitimate college or university,” (2) evidence of successful practice teaching under state-approved direction, (3) “a specially endorsed teaching certificate from a college or university which … attests that the institution as a whole considers the person adequately prepared to teach in a designated field and grade level.”

Essential to Dr. Conant’s proposals is his plan for clinical professors of education to supervise practice teaching. Such professors would be first of all superbly skillful teachers of youth or college students. Although they would not be expected to engage in research and publish papers, their academic rank and compensation would be equal to that of any other professor. They might serve full time or part time and would be required periodically to return to classroom teaching. (The analogy to medical education is not fortuitous but deliberate.) Dr. Conant’s study convinced him that the single most effective instrument for teacher education is supervised practice teaching. Certainly the clinical professorship that he describes should greatly heighten the value of the practice-teaching experience.

In all, The Education of American Teachers contains twenty-seven separate proposals. Yet the heart of the book lies in the points just cited. Not that the other proposals are unimportant; the program advanced has inner consistency and should be considered as a whole.

The implications of the book for Christian education, while not apparent on the surface (Dr. Conant says practically nothing about religious education beyond brief mention of private denominational colleges), are nevertheless significant. By and large, the Christian colleges are heavily involved in teacher education. This is particularly true of the conservative evangelical colleges, which probably graduate more prospective teachers than prospective members of any other professional group. Moreover, many of the newer conservative evangelical colleges have in recent years been seeking regional accreditation. And it may be that this praiseworthy concern for academic standing has made them vulnerable to some of the proliferation of education courses and over-emphasis upon method to which Dr. Conant objects. Perhaps in their uncritical acceptance of some less favorable trends in education programs and in their desire to gain status, they have been in danger of adding their own share to the multiplicity of courses by setting up too many specialized courses in Christian education, some of which though not unsound might be unnecessary. After all, the great strength of evangelical education should be the integration of the whole curriculum with biblical truth.

In relation to courses in the philosophy of education, Dr. Conant is caustic. “The word philosophy, as used by many professors of education, is,” he says, “like a thin sheet of rubber—it can be distorted and stretched to cover almost any aspect of a teacher’s interest.” And he refers to “the philosophical foundations of education, which today consist of crumbling pillars of the past placed on a sand of ignorance and pretension.” The chief distinction of Christian education lies largely in its own philosophy. Dr. Conant’s strictures on the usual philosophy of education courses, while warning against slipshod thinking and belaboring of the obvious, should stimulate Christian colleges to the disciplined presentation of the biblical world view as it applies to education.

Much of the material with which the book deals is technical and pedestrian, as in the sections that consider varying certification requirements and treat existing programs. But there is a genuine fascination in following a powerful mind in its unsparing examination of practices almost sacrosanct to the educational establishment. For the persevering reader there are some flashes of humor, many examples of blunt common sense, and occasional passages of real wisdom. Referring to the habit of taking courses without any clearly defined purpose aside from the reward of higher pay, Dr. Conant says: “Discussing this subject in a summer school with more than one group of teachers who were purring with pleasure at their continuing education, I felt as if I were talking to opium smokers who were praising the habit of which they had long since become the victims.” Or consider this: “As someone has said, the diploma should not be the death mask of the educational experience. Education in breadth and depth, rightly conducted, should lead to further self-education in greater breadth and depth.” And this also: “Among the many things our professors of arts and sciences have failed to accomplish is the inculcation of the idea that vast fields of knowledge and culture are wide open to anyone who can and will read.… I wish no one receiving a bachelor’s degree would carry away the belief that his alma mater has ‘educated’ him. The well-educated man or woman of the future must be primarily a self-educated person. And self-education requires years and years of reading and a desire to learn.”

Dr. Paul Woodring, editor of the Saturday Review Educational Supplement, has said that 2,000 reviews and editorial mentions of The Education of American Teachers have appeared since its publication in September. Nevertheless, this review, one more among so many, will not be superfluous if it leads Christian educators to think with Dr. Conant about the single most important aspect of education and to ponder critically the relation of his proposals to the training of Christian teachers.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

A Book Of Provocations

Church Unity and Church Mission, by Martin E. Marty (Eerdmans, 1964, 139 pp., $3), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Marty’s thesis is that the churches have sufficient unity to resume and carry forward their mission to the world in new ways. He sees in the general rejection of proselytism (the conversion of the members of other churches to one’s own) “the informal recognition of other Christian traditions and confessions.” Here, as in so many other places in his book, a significant insight is immediately fogged over by his positing of conclusions not derivable from the insight. The rejection of proselytism surely has profound significance for denominationalism, but it has meant neither theologically nor historically the “informal recognition of other Christian traditions and confessions”; and Marty is misleading when he suggests that church unity on this score lacks only the courage of spirituality to face this fact. The idea inherent in denominationalism has never been that other churches did not and could not contain real Christians; the cessation of proselytism, therefore, does not possess the significance for church unity that Marty suggests.

Marty has a shrewd eye for the sociological factors that have made for denominationalism, and it is good that he points them out, for too many Christian churches prefer to close their eyes to this shaky underpinning of denominationalism. Yet Marty overstates and confuses matters when he asserts that “the denomination is basically a sociological category.” This is all too simple and too provincially American. The Church is worldwide, and there are many homogeneous national and sociological units that contain many denominations where sociological factors do not account for church disunity. Truth and confessional differences embodied in denominationalism have deeper, more theological roots than the author suggests.

Marty contends that the ecumenical movement has reached a “stalemate” because those within the movement are chiefly concerned about unity and those outside the movement are chiefly concerned about truth. He realizes that the ecumenical movement will achieve little indeed if it produces only an “organizationally-fulfilled, undergirding and overarching Christian unity.” He reminds us too that denominationalism as such advertises the disunity rather than the unity of the Church, and that denominations tend to exist for their distinctive truths rather than for the whole truth of the Gospel. And he contends that if we put either unity or truth first, the stalemate between the “unity-firsters” and the “truth-firsters” will continue, and the Church’s cause of mission to the world will continue to suffer. Yet even though denominationalism does place truth first, few will agree with his injudicious judgment: “Every poll we have seen, every common-sense observation we can make leads us to one conclusion: that anything Christians might try will do more justice to truth than the competitive system they now inhabit.” I find myself in agreement with many of Marty’s observations and criticisms about denominationalism, but I find myself as completely lost in his judgment that any form of church life would be better than denominationalism, as I find myself completely in the dark as to what he really means when he says the only “solution” to the problems of unity and truth is simply to get on with the mission of the Church to the world. The churches cannot move forward from the historic point where they are, in total disregard of that history which brought them to the point where they are, and made them what they are.

The provocativeness of this book stems as much from its weaknesses as from its strengths, and both of these from its greater sociological than theological concern. It is in many ways a book of sane and balanced judgments, and I heartily recommend that it be read; yet its strength and weakness stem from an essential dissociation from both the ecumenical movement and the reality of denominationalism. Marty sees the claims of these locked in stalemate and proposes that the stalemate can be overcome, insofar as this is possible at all within history, if the whole Church will get on with its mission to the world. Such a solution is to solve the problem of death by asking the dead to arise. The task confronting the divided Church is really not this hopeless, and the solution lies instead in another direction. Marty himself hints at it when he proposes what he calls a biblical counterpart to a “sociological Machiavellianism” in which each church member operates within his own denomination—as regards both truth and mission—as the nature of Christ’s one Church demands. Here I think he is on the right path, though it is not, I think, consistent with his statement that any new forms of church existence would be better than denominationalism. Marty’s book points up the dire need of a thorough theological and historical study of denominationalism, for it is in denominationalism that every segment of the Church posits its understanding and commitment to both unity and truth.

JAMES DAANE

Sunday School Lessons

Arnold’s Commentary, edited by Lyle E. Williams (Light and Life, 1963, 330 pp., $2.95); The Douglass Sunday School Lessons, edited by Earl L. Douglass (Macmillan, 1963, 475 pp., $2.95); Higley Commentary, edited by Knute Larson (Lambert Huffman, 1963, 528 pp., $2.95); The International Lesson Annual, edited by Horace R. Weaver (Abingdon, 1963, 448 pp., $2.95); Peloubet’s Select Notes, by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde, 1963, 419 pp., $2.95); Standard Lesson Commentary, edited by John W. Wade and John M. Carter (Standard, 1963, 448 pp., $2.95); Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide, edited by Frank S. Mead (Revell, 1963, 382 pp., $2.95); The Gist of the Lesson, edited by Donald T. Kauffman (Revell, 1963, 125 pp., $1.25); and Points for Emphasis, by Clifton J. Allen (Broadman, 1963, 214 pp., $.95), are reviewed by Lois E. LeBar, chairman, graduate Christian education, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The first seven titles are full-size book guides for teaching the 1964 uniform Sunday school lessons; the last two are pocket-size. The subjects covered are: first quarter—personalities around Jesus; second quarter—the Christian faces his world; third quarter—early Hebrew history; fourth quarter—letters to Christian leaders. At the beginning of each lesson, The International Lesson Annual and Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide print the Scripture text in both the King James and Revised Standard Versions; the others use only the King James. All but the Tarbell’s Guide include daily devotional readings. The Douglass, Peloubet’s, International, Standard, and Tarbell’s lessons contain suggestions for correlated visual aids. Although the trend of Bible-centered lessons is to relate them more closely to life, three of these books are still called commentaries.

Arnold’s Commentary is geared for adults and youth. The Douglass lessons sometimes give different captions for intermediate-seniors and young people-adults. Peloubet’s gives topics for juniors and primaries also, and suggests different emphases for younger and older classes. Some of the more difficult of the uniform lessons for primaries and juniors are: man’s place in God’s universe, Christian principles in earning a living, the Christian looks at nationalism, the pastoral epistles, and qualifications of church officers.

Peloubet’s is distinctive for its quotations from outstanding evangelical scholars as well as for Dr. Wilbur Smith’s expositions of Scripture and his bibliographies. Each lesson concludes with a lesson in life, literature, or archaeology, and a truth for the class to carry home.

Arnold’s Commentary affords the teacher the most help in getting students personally involved in the lesson, because parts of the content are introduced through practical questions, enabling students to become participants rather than spectators. Both personal and factual questions motivate them beween Sundays to explore the next lesson. At the end of each lesson is a half page written from the viewpoint of a pastor, a half page by a layman, and a full page relating the lesson to life.

At the beginning of each lesson Tarbell’s Guide gives an overall personal question to launch the whole lesson and to stimulate inquiry. It is the only guide that has separate suggestions for teaching intermediate-seniors and young people-adults. For those teachers not content to “preach” to their classes, The International Lesson Annual adds an alternative teaching plan with well-worded questions for discussion and action.

The Higley and Standard Commentaries offer more specialized types of aid. Each week the Higley furnishes a paragraph on evangelistic and missionary application, a correlated superintendent’s sermonette to lead into the lesson, a simple illustration for the chalkboard, a teacher’s “pump primer,” and ten questions with brief answers to be cut out in advance and given to members of the class. The questions are factual, however, and tend to promote stereotyped recitation rather than personal interaction. The Standard Commentary is complete with introductory articles, lesson aims to “help the pupils to know this” and “lead pupils to do this,” quotable quotes, pithy points, personal questions for daily living, simple chalkboard illustrations, short factual quizzes, and correlated prayers.

In these seven guides differences in theological emphasis are evident in expositions of the same Scripture. For example, “… the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all …” (Tim. 2:5,6): Arnold’s—the one who paid the purchase price of salvation; Douglass’s—the only one who can reconcile an offended God and a sinful man; Higley’s—the idea of substitution for all; International—the need of translating the Christian faith into truly universal terms; Peloubet’s—that which is given in exchange for another as the price of his redemption; Standard—the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ as he died on the Cross to redeem men from their sins; Tarbell’s—therefore the one who is the only mediator between God and men.

The Gist of the Lesson and Points for Emphasis are pocket-sized condensations of the “seed thoughts” of the lessons for the year. “The Gist” was initiated many years ago by R. A. Torrey to provide practical evangelical treatment of lessons in concise form. In addition to Bible exposition. Points for Emphasis contains practical truths to live by and daily Bible readings. Although the authors of these small volumes make their words count, it is hoped that teachers will not consider these adequate preparation for teaching a lesson from the Book of books.

LOIS E. LEBAR

Paperbacks

Your Church & Your Nation: An Appeal to American Churchmen, by Paul Peachey (The Church Peace Mission [Washington, D. C.], 1963, 22 pp., $.15). A still very relevant discussion by pacifist Peachey; first published in 1950.

The Christian Conscience and War, a symposium (The Church Peace Mission, 1963, 48 pp., $.25). A statement on the problems of war and peace by theologians and religious leaders. First published in 1950.

The Challenge of the Ages: New Light on Isaiah 53, by Frederick Alfred Aston (self-published, 1963, 24 pp., $.40). An evangelical discussion to demonstrate that the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is Jesus Christ crucified.

God’s Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioriation of America’s Environment, by Peter Blake (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 144 pp., $2.45; cloth, §4). Written in outraged fury against the wanton despoiling of the American landscape; with photography to show what was, and what Americans have done to it.

Professor in the Pulpit, edited by W. Morgan Patterson and Raymond Bryan (Broadman, 1963, 150 pp., §2.25). Twenty-two chapel sermons of high caliber, preached by the faculty members of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Faith of Qumran, by Helmer Ringgren (Fortress, 1963, 310 pp., $1.95). Written in the conviction that before isolated beliefs and practices of the Qumran community are compared with those of the New Testament, the overall theology of the Qumran should be understood. Translated from the Swedish.

Ideas

Education and the Evangelical Minority

Robert K. Bower

In an editorial introduction to a recent issue of Columbia College Today featuring the place of religion at the college, George Charles Keller tells how an undergraduate asked him one day what this alumni publication was going to discuss. When told that the subject would be “Religion on the Campus,” the student, obviously taken aback, exclaimed: “But, sir, there is none.” The young man went on to say that, while some students attended church services, took religion courses, or belonged to religious clubs, their motivation came from anything but “a deep sense that they owed reverence to a God who created the world and is still involved in everything men do or try to be.”

With this Mr. Keller expressed substantial agreement, saying, “Religion in the traditional sense of formally offering awe and gratitude to a mysterious, omnipresent being has departed for the most part from college campuses.… However, religion in a new sense is growing rapidly at American colleges.” And he defined religion as “mainly a personal quest by young men for some reasonable guidelines for their own actions and clues to the meaning of history.”

Unquestionably the place of religion in school and college is one of the livelier subjects of the time. The churches are probing it; witness Professor William Hordern’s articles published simultaneously in Presbyterian Life, The Lutheran, and The Episcopalian. In the “Survey of the Political and Religious Attitudes of American College Students” that appeared in the National Review Protestant students in comparison with Catholic students made a poor showing in stability of faith, and one Protestant church college had the highest rate of apostasy of any college polled.

As for the public schools, the religious discussion continues in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on Bible reading and prayer. When a parent visiting his child’s classroom in a Rochester (N. Y.) elementary school sees on the blackboard, “The heavens declare the glory of nature,” and is told by the teacher that the quotation of the Nineteenth Psalm was revised at the principal’s request, the role of religion in public education is still very much confused.

The instinct that leads Americans to be concerned about religion in education is a sound one. Few if any institutions in a nation influence its citizenry more than its schools; and in America, with education for all, this influence is especially pervasive. According to Francis Keppel, United States commissioner of education, more than one in every four in our 188 million population is enrolled in public and private schools and colleges, the total for 1962–63 being some 51.3 million. Only recently the Educational Policies Commission of the National Education Association announced as the new goal for the nation’s schools “universal opportunity” for all youth to have two years’ education beyond high school at “non-selective” public colleges on a tuitionless basis together with provision when needed of the expense of living away from home. Moreover, the rise in independent school attendance from 1899–1900, when 91 per cent of children were in public and 9 per cent in private schools, to 1962–63, when only 85 per cent were in public schools and 15 per cent in private schools (the vast majority of which are religious), underlines widespread parental concern for the spiritual training of youth.

Against this background, where does Protestant Christian education, particularly that of evangelical persuasion, stand? The first answer to the question is statistical. If the great majority of the 15 per cent minority (6.7 million in total) of elementary and secondary school pupils are in Roman Catholic parochial schools, as they are, and if only a comparatively small number of the remaining private schools are evangelical, then such schools are only a minority of a minority—and a tiny one at that. For the colleges, the situation is broadly comparable; Christian institutions are again in the minority and those that are evangelical are again a sub-minority.

But is Protestant Christian education in general and the drop-in-the-bucket evangelical minority in particular therefore negligible? Are evangelicals so far behind educationally that their influence may be written off? To both questions the answer is an emphatic No.

Look once more at the background: the increasing number of religion courses in many colleges, yet the undergraduate saying of religion on his campus, “But, sir, there is none”; the repudiation of supernatural religion, and its redefinition as a quest for guidelines and clues to the meaning of history—all this is far from authentic religion even according to the broad Judeo-Christian tradition, let alone its expression in the grand particularities of the historic evangelical faith. It is rather the search for a philosophy and the desire for purpose and for personal identification. And the result may be that, with all the meticulously objective study of religion, the student may merely work out his own philosophy of life which will be, as Canon Bryan Green said, only “My-anity” and not vital Christianity.

But what about authentic New Testament faith on the campus? To overlook its presence and to belittle its relevance betokens a kind of spiritual myopia. Not all practicing Catholics and Jews worship only by force of habit. Not all Protestants are superficial formalists. And there is on the American campus a committed minority (faculty as well as students) that crosses denominational lines and includes in a practical biblical ecumenism those who out of a personal, saving encounter with Jesus Christ recognize their oneness with all believers and who find the Bible essential spiritual food as well as the infallible rule of faith and practice. Measured against the millions in higher education, this minority is numerically insignificant. Measured against the little group of disciples who turned the world upside down, it is large. And it is worldwide. At Oxford, Cambridge, and other British universities, among college and university students in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and the Orient, there is a remnant of evangelical students and teachers. And where it is found, there even on the secular campus is religion in its worldwide, biblical aspect.

Protestant colleges are of two kinds: those that are church-related and those that, while independent of denominational control, yet maintain a thorough-going Christian position. In the first group are the colleges—and their number is considerable—that differ little from the private secular colleges. To be sure, they have departments of Bible and religion, chapel services, and religious emphasis weeks (a singularly patronizing term); but these are peripheral to an education in other respects indistinguishable from its secular counterpart. Here the adjective “church-related” betrays a kind of second-cousin-once-removed relationship quite different from whole-hearted commitment of administration and faculty to a denominational and theological position.

Yet there are also some church-related colleges that are unreservedly committed to the biblical world view and that, along with the group of evangelical but denominationally unaligned colleges, comprise institutionally a conservative Christian minority in higher education. For this minority, Christ and the Scriptures are central to the program and the unity of all truth in God is a major premise. For them the faculty is a fellowship of believers, not an eclectic company made up of Christians, adherents of non-Christian religions, and more or less benevolent unbelievers. In a day of doctrinal indifference they hold to the biblical doctrines of supernatural Christianity and know their position to be compatible with good scholarship. While the number of such colleges is small yet growing, their influence for the Kingdom far transcends their size. From them has come significant national and world evangelical leadership. They too are a part, and a not inconsiderable one, of the remnant in education today.

But any estimate of religion in education cannot be confined to the colleges and universities. It must also take account of the formative years of childhood and the crucial years of adolescence. Here the lines are sharply drawn. By constitutional interpretation public schools are secular. But independent schools are free to use their independence for Christian education as fully as they desire. The number of Christian day schools, both denominational and parent-controlled, is growing. Some boarding schools are thoroughly committed to the unity of education in Christ and the Bible. Would that more of the non-Roman Catholic independent schools might be like-minded!

As for public education, it would be a mistake to assume that because of its religious neutrality it is devoid of a believing remnant. Wherever a Christian who knows whom he has believed and trusts the Bible as the Word of God teaches in a public classroom, there is something of Christ. Such a teacher must adhere scrupulously to state-imposed limitations on sectarian religion in the schools. Yet no teacher, least of all a devoted Christian, teaches out of a convictionless vacuum. The feeling tones of his classroom are bound to reflect the One to whom the Christian in secular education belongs. And in his community he has full liberty to witness by word and life.

Yes, there is religion on the campus—college, secondary and elementary school, public and private. Through the believing remnant, Christianity is in education every day. It is there for the age-old purpose of witness and response. Let objective college courses in religion continue. They have their place in the academic program. But their upsurge on the secular campus is of lesser significance than the consistent witness of the believing remnant to the living God of the Scriptures and to his Son.

Youth seeks reality and responds to it. Youth penetrates pretense and sham. Christ is himself reality. Amid the sophistication, moral ambiguity, and longing for personal fulfillment, the unchanging Christ, when lifted up in his saving reality, still draws youth to himself.

One of the encouraging signs of our day is that American education, apart from the public school, is more ready to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ than it was twenty years ago. And of those who are hearing it on the campus, some like C. S. Lewis are “surprised by joy.” The reception accorded Billy Graham at secular colleges and universities is genuinely significant; with commendable liberalism many a college chapel is more open to evangelical preaching than in the past. Organizations such as the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ that have opportunities parallel to those of the denominational student ministries should take full advantage of them.

Let the Christian remnant in education proclaim their Lord with conviction and by faithful word and consistent life. The God who brought out of academic communities in the past a Luther and a Calvin, a Wesley and an Edwards, a Drummond and a Mott, may be trusted to bring forth his leaders for today.

Christian Conscience And The Vote

The adoption of a new amendment (the twenty-fourth) to the United States Constitution, prohibiting poll taxes as a requisite for voting in federal elections, is a reminder of a basic civic duty. In signing the document on February 4 certifying ratification of the amendment by three-fourths of the states of the union, President Johnson said: “Nothing is so valuable as liberty and nothing is so necessary to liberty as the freedom to vote without bans or barriers.”

While the amendment will increase the voting record of the few states with poll taxes, the nationwide average (63.8 per cent in 1960) of participation in elections continues to need improvement.

A citizen who carelessly refrains from voting might be regarded as displaying inexcusable ingratitude for the liberty he enjoys under God. To vote or not to vote is certainly a matter of Christian conscience. Nor is the privilege of the franchise rightly exercised by going to the polls with only a sketchy knowledge of candidates and issues. Christians ought to be in the forefront of the informed electorate. This means day-by-day interest in public affairs rather than a last-minute scramble for information prior to an election. Consistent and considered participation at the polls will do more than increase the national voting average; as an expression of civic responsibility, it will help make for better government.

Look Before You Give

Not long ago a teacher at a Christian school received a “most pathetic appeal” from a missionary society he had never heard of. Funds were urgently needed, it said, for work in India and other far-off lands, where missionaries were seeing wonderful results. “Brother and his associates presented the Gospel so powerfully that many came forward weeping, accepting Christ as Saviour,” the appeal stated. “Rev.——, his pastors, evangelists and Bible women, are doing a magnificent job for the Lord.” There were sketches, statistics, and plenty of references to the Holy Ghost, prayer—and money.

This teacher did what most people do not do: he decided to investigate. A former missionary to India who lives near the alleged mission’s American headquarters was asked to do some checking, and other inquiries were made. Investigation failed to turn up any record of the preacher. The district in India given in the literature as a base of operations proved to be non-existent, and the American headquarters were found to be located in a wedding chapel.

Whatever the truth about this organization, its activities are at least highly dubious. Moreover, it is a fact that some so-called missionary societies are begun by people who have decided that the needy-works-in-the-distant-lands gambit can produce a very easy dollar. Some of these opportunists may even make a good living from their unctuously worded appeals, while managing to stay on the fringes of legality. When the news about them does get around, it tends to cast a shadow on the whole missions movement, especially on the relatively unknown but sound missionary society.

What can be done? Aside from the denominational boards, probably no other organizations know as much about missions, genuine and spurious, as the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA) and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA). Membership in either body amounts to a guarantee of reliability. If the mission in question is not listed by either one, the prospective giver can do his own checking. In a magazine article last year, Clyde Taylor, executive secretary of the EFMA, recommended securing a financial statement, a list of the board of directors, and some information about the mission’s policies.

What we have, we hold in trust. Our responsibility is not discharged simply by making out checks to any organization that calls itself a mission and spells “Saviour” with a capital S. Stewardship implies careful and thoughtful giving.

Another Memorial In Washington

In his remarks at the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington on February 5 (see News) President Lyndon Johnson proposed that “a fitting memorial to the God who made us all” be erected in the capital city. This memorial, he said, might be “a center of prayer, open to all men of all faiths at all times,” and he suggested that International Christian Leadership, sponsor of the Prayer Breakfast, “undertake the mission of bringing together the faiths and the religions of America to support jointly such a memorial.”

The proposal raises two main questions: (1) In a city that already has several national denominational churches, including a great cathedral open as a house of prayer to all people, is such a memorial necessary? (2) Can a joint endeavor of the kind proposed by Mr. Johnson be carried out without the assumption that the various religions are but different roads to God? While Christian Americans recognize the inalienable right of their fellow citizens to worship God according to conscience, they cannot go beyond the words of their Lord, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” This Lenten season reminds us once more that Christ’s arms which were stretched out on the Cross for the redemption of the world are still beckoning all who labor and are heavy laden to come to him. But his invitation is unique; “for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

If, however, the President desires a recognition of the historical Christian roots of the nation that go back to the Pilgrim fathers, and if the suggested memorial would clearly be a Christian place of prayer open to all, then the proposal might well be considered by the Christian churches of the country. Otherwise it would seem best to forget the memorial idea and to focus attention upon the opening of the President’s remarks in which he spoke movingly to his fellow believers of his need of prayer and of the way in which prayer has helped him “to bear the burdens of this first office which are too great to be borne by anyone alone.” Remembrance of the President in prayer is in itself a living memorial to God.

Church Schools: Symptoms Of Decline

Trends in two essential aspects of present-day Christian education—the Sunday school and the daily vacation Bible school—are cause for concern.

Although often criticized, the Sunday school is a major instrument of Christian education, and its health is of critical significance to the Church. Therefore, its present slow but steady decline in enrollment (1960–40,241,650; 1961–40,239,020; 1962–40,096,624) despite consistent increase in church membership is a symptom not to be overlooked. It must be taken seriously lest the Sunday school slip into a major slump in enrollment like that which took place between 1926 and 1947. The Sunday school is a lifeline of the Church not only in respect to membership but also in developing a biblically literate laity. Churches cannot afford to accept complacently any signs of retrogression on the part of this essential arm of their work.

The other trend relates to the daily vacation Bible school. Here the shift seems to be away from the traditional two-week pattern to a session of only one week. Various reasons for the shift are given, but they all spell one thing—lack of volunteer teachers. Surely it is strange that when parents have more leisure time than ever before, evangelical churches must go begging for volunteers to teach children for the usual two-week period. The demand for the shorter period of instruction does not come from the children; it is rather dictated by what is convenient for their teachers.

To be sure, half a loaf is better than no loaf, and no one argues that the one-week period of daily vacation Bible school is ineffectual. Still, retreat of any kind in Christian education cannot but be disturbing when secular education is steadily moving forward and when, because of the removal from the public schools of Bible reading and prayer, both Sunday school and daily vacation Bible school are more urgently needed than ever before.

The Road To Freedom

The road to freedom in the West does not always lead through Berlin. Since erection of The Wall, human ingenuity has more closely scrutinized other avenues. Recently there has been Innsbruck, scene of the ninth Winter Olympics. Overwhelming Soviet victories, to a large extent the result of a sort of “State professionalism” that proved too much for Western amateurs, did not seem sufficient palliative for loss of political freedom to some spectators and athletes from Iron Curtain countries, and they defected.

Another doorway has been Geneva, site of current disarmament talks and of a more spectacular defection. Requesting political asylum in the United States was Yuri I. Nossenko, 36, an expert of the Soviet delegation who told United States officials that he was a staff officer of the top Soviet security agency KGB and that he had been sent to Geneva on temporary duty from security headquarters in Moscow.

Inasmuch as Nossenko presumably had access to Soviet disarmament and defense secrets, Western intelligence agencies regarded him as a rare prize indeed. Initial Soviet reproach turned against Switzerland rather than the United States was interpreted as an indication that the Soviet Union did not wish the incident to poison the atmosphere of the disarmament talks. The Soviet request that the Swiss “take all necessary measures to return Nossenko” seemed to point to the high importance of the defector.

Western governments do not ask similar favors. And the fact that the East-West defection traffic is so largely one way bears a striking witness to the enduring desire for freedom God has implanted in the human heart.

Perhaps we should mention one further tribute to the virility of Western liberties as they relate to freedom of movement, which does have its liabilities as well as its glories. Take England’s Beatles (the verb is in the imperative mood). The United States State Department could not readily claim that these hirsute young men were subversive of American tastes, for there was obviously a certain adolescent taste ready and waiting on these shores—though we had taken comfort in the fact that rock and roll seemed to be dying here. Yet the ecstatic reception accorded the Beatles bears a rather appalling witness to the emptiness of youthful heads and hearts. But since America has already plagued Britain with many such exports, perhaps there is in the latest exchange a certain poetic justice.

An Overwhelming Response

Our issue of November 22 announced a new feature, “God’s Sword Thrusts,” which invited readers to tell briefly how a text or passage of the Bible has spoken to them. So prompt and abundant has been the response that, with sufficient material for many months already in hand, we are discontinuing this invitation until further notice.

The many who have through their response to the feature borne witness to the power of the Bible in their lives have confirmed this statement in the announcement: “Christians today, no less than yesterday and just as surely tomorrow, gain comfort, hope, guidance, and spiritual power from Bible passages made alive for them by the Holy Spirit.” Contributions have come from various parts of the country and from abroad, from young and old, from laymen and ministers. And the editors who have read the “Sword Thrusts” have recognized in them authentic evidence of the vitality of the written Word of God.

Theology

Frightening!

L. Nelson Bell

A ship headed toward the rocks is frightening to consider. A car rushing toward a washed-out bridge brings disaster to mind. A person poised in the act of taking poison makes one think of untimely death. In each case immediate action is indicated.

America as a nation is headed for certain disaster because the bridge of moral values and restraints has been washed away by lust and the banks all along the road are being eroded by carelessness and folly.

Some religious journals and Christian ministers have warned of the danger. Many parents are concerned, having found themselves and their homes enmeshed in the disintegrating process. Moral degeneration has continued to the point where in our society immorality is increasingly taken as a matter of course.

It has remained for a secular magazine (Time, January 24, 1964) to give an objective study of the changes that have taken place since World War I, when F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books spoke of the blossoming jazz age and alarmed mothers were told of “how casually their daughters were accustomed to being kissed.” Now we read: “In the 1920s, to praise sexual freedom was still outrageous; today sex is simply no longer shocking, in life and literature.” The explanation is that an entirely new set of values has emerged in which, for many, there are no moral or spiritual absolutes and the question is not God’s law but man’s choice.

We are frightened because yesterday’s parents (and today’s) permitted the sowing of the wind of unchallenged license and are now reaping the whirlwind of unrestrained lust.

We are frightened because God says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (and our Lord carried the prohibition to the inward thoughts and desires and the lustful look), but today adultery is only too often taken as a normal way of life. One woman recently boasted that her marriage had been saved by extramarital adventures.

We are frightened because the words of Jeremiah are being fulfilled in America: “How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of harlots. They were well-fed lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife. Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord; and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” (Jer. 5:7–9, RSV).

We are frightened because our young people can buy unspeakably lewd books at almost any newsstand; because promiscuity, adultery, and homosexuality are paraded before their eyes in many of the popular movies of today; because the Church and the Christian home have broken down in providing the standards and restraints without which any young person can be caught up in the maelstrom of sexual promiscuity.

We are frightened because the “new” morality (as old as evil itself) completely ignores God’s standards and accepts a code that man has devised. This is described as “ ‘permissiveness with affection’—which means to most people that: (1) morals are a private affair; (2) being in love justifies premarital sex, and by implication perhaps extramarital sex; (3) nothing really is wrong as long as nobody else ‘gets hurt.’ ”

We are frightened because we have permitted this situation to develop through parental folly and indifference. Young people have been prematurely pushed out into a social situation for which they were not prepared, for which they had had no spiritual or moral restraints provided, by either home or church. Cars, money, and unrestricted dating without chaperonage have given the opportunity; and now, for far too many, there is the bitter fruit of unrestrained passion.

Nothing is more frightening than the increasing number of churchmen, as well as non-Christian psychologists, who justify premarital and even extramarital sex, indulging in a rationalization that ignores God’s absolutes in favor of a devastating behaviorism stemming from personal desire and the accepted norms of a culture no longer loyal to the Judeo-Christian system of morality. Miami psychologist Granville Fisher is quoted as speaking for countless colleagues when he says: “Sex is not a moral question. For answers you don’t turn to a body of absolutes. The criterion should not be, ‘Is it morally right or wrong,’ but, is it socially feasible, is it personally healthy and rewarding, will it enrich human life?”

We are frightened because Dr. Fisher adds that many Protestant churchmen are beginning to feel the same way. “They are no longer shaking their finger because the boys and girls give in to natural biological urges and experiment a bit. They don’t say, ‘Stop, you’re wrong,’ but, is it meaningful?”

We are frightened because the very people to whom American youth should look for sound counsel based on divine principles too often are involved themselves or are at least taking a vicarious pleasure in licentiousness. The Apostle Paul has a word for them: “Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).

We are frightened because this article talks at length about the freedom of sex expression in many colleges and universities. In the past prostitutes hovered on the fringe of campuses, but now they are largely a vanishing group because of the acquiescent attitude of women students. Men students are looked at with scorn if they do not succeed in the conquest of a date, and women students regard a virgin as a “square.”

Has the author of this article overstated the situation today? He quotes Dr. Graham B. Blaine, Jr., psychiatrist to the Harvard and Radcliffe Health Service, who says that there has been a radical change in the last fifteen years and that sexual promiscuity is practiced by about 60 per cent of the boys and 40 per cent of the girls. True, these figures do not apply to all areas of America; but they do give a frightening picture of the change that is taking place at an accelerated rate. Young people are unprepared for life situations because the teachings of home and church have turned from God’s absolutes to man’s desires.

Moses looked down the ages and said to the children of Israel: “Lay to heart all the words which I enjoin upon you this day, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no trifle for you, but it is your life” (Deut. 32:46, 47a). And Paul speaks to our generation: “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6).

We are frightened because a tide of evil has set in and because the forces of righteousness seem often to be paralyzed. Only the teaching, preaching, and living of righteousness according to faith in the power of the living and holy God can change the present course of history and stem the tide of certain disaster.

Eutychus and His Kin: February 28, 1964

SOME DANGEROUS DETAILS

Just this week a boy in our community was killed in an automobile accident, and the only thing the newspaper considered worth discussing was whether he died immediately from the accident or was burned to death. With 40,000 people being killed in car accidents every year and many thousands more being maimed for life, there isn’t much news about another high school boy turning his car over while going full speed.

This particular boy had had some other troubles, and people weren’t surprised that he might have been traveling 100 miles an hour. “Just like him,” they said—but I wasn’t quite ready for the dear good Christian woman who said to me, “Well, that was a good thing. He got what he deserved.” With that remark I have been living restlessly ever since.

If I understand anything about our most Holy Faith, it is that it rests on one absolute and clear doctrine: that we are saved by grace. This idea of grace, as I get it, is that it is the unmerited favor of God. We are the objects of God’s love and his patience, not because of what we are but in spite of what we are. As I review my own life and think about drowning or crashing in an airplane or wrapping my car around a pole, about the only thing my religion teaches me is that I have some hope, because the one thing I will not get in this world or the next is what I deserve. My religion has nothing for me except the belief that He will not deal with us “after our sins or reward us according to our iniquities.” Who are the people who go around announcing to the rest of the world that all those other people got just what was coming to them?

And the other side of all this is those demanding ones who keep telling me they are going to get what is coming to them—that is, get their share. I think they should look out. Maby they will get what’s coming to them if that’s the deal they would really like to have.

EUTYCHUS II

CHRISTIANITY AND THE ARTS

Recently someone sent me a gift subscription to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. While I was pleased, my general reaction was, “Here’s another periodical to try to find time for.”

That was before … picking up the latest issue (Jan. 31) to “glance through” it. Four articles later, I found I was still standing up and the “glancing” had been more like “devouring” what Elmore, Cooper, and Reynard had been saying about the relationship of the arts and Christianity.…

Berrien Springs, Mich.

ETHEL TRYGG

The January 31 issue … has given me the courage I need to express my genuine appreciation for two articles. One of these is the article by John C. Cooper, “Reading and the Faith.” Professor Cooper has stated succinctly the sentiments of many of us who are engaged in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he has done so without mincing any words. We are only too aware that we fall short of preaching what we should be preaching.… How much of the printed page is totally wasted in attempting to wend our ways back to the historical Jesus rather than seeking the Jesus of faith. There is a definite place for biblical scholarship, but not the pulpit on Sunday morning. Our people need to be reminded that God gave us a perfect world, that we have distorted it into what it is today, and that in spite of all this God still loves mankind and offers him full salvation through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Christian writers could be such a tremendous help in this—if they would but try. We need books which point out to us our own failures and inadequacies—not literary criticism!

The second article which pleased me immensely was that of Robert Elmore, “The Place of Music in Christian Life.” I am pleased to know that at least one competent church musician has the courage to say publically what so many of us feel and have been hesitant to say. Great music is one of the important aspects of our Christian heritage; yet we persist in mouthing any and all kinds of sentimental hogwash in our worship services. I feel rather sure that God gets very tired of the same superficial wordiness Sunday after Sunday, and the same sickly-sweet “masterpieces” so many of our church musicians pass off as good music.

KENNETH G. HENDRIX

Westboro Congregational Church

Westboro, Ohio

Robert Elmore … fails to reckon adequately with the fact that many people are capable of appreciating only the “third-rate” music. To these good laymen, such music is not “ashes.” The true test of the worth of any music is the same as for a sermon: Does it communicate, does it “get across” to the people? If it does not, then its value is to be questioned, even if one of the three B’s did write it.…

His suggestions on how to increase music appreciation are splendid.

W. THOMAS LEE

First Church of God

Tulsa, Okla.

Explains with such perfect insight the meaning and necessity of good sacred music in the life of a Christian. Music has always been and still is a very integral part of our form of worship, and to abuse it is to detract from the value and meaning of our worship—both public and private.

DAVID SHOVER

Edinburgh, Scotland

Bravo and thank you for the splendid article by Grant Reynard. More!

ROBERT L. SMITH

First Baptist Church

Pine Bluff, Ark.

The January 31 issue is excellent—the articles are so relevant to Christian living today.…

JOHN E. ELIASON

Siler City, N. C.

Please, Mr. Cooper. You raise some questions, but you fail to give us answers. A postive solution more adequately spelled out would be helpful.

ENNO KLAMMER

Concordia College

St. Paul, Minn.

The article … will catch the eye of many fellow bookstore-haunters. At last a fellow must-sniffer has come out and admitted it. Give me more men and articles like Cooper.

GARY MAJOR

Minister of Education

The First Baptist Church

Twin Falls, Idaho

RETARDED … AND NEGLECTED

I read … the article by Mrs. Hampton, “Retarded Children and Christian Concern” (Jan. 31 issue).…

I am sponsoring a minister’s orientation conference for local clergymen.… I would like to reproduce … about thirty-five copies of this article for distribution on that day.…

Mrs. Hampton conveys well a parent’s feelings concerning the Church’s opportunity to serve the retarded child and his parents. For this reason, I recognize in this article a contribution I desire to share with my fellow clergymen.

V. RONALD SIMPSON

Chaplain

Frankfort State Hospital and School

Frankfort, Ky.

Thank you … for taking the time and the space to include an article on the mentally retarded. Only one who lives close to the problem could write in the way that Mrs. Dorothy Hampton did. However I disagree with her on one statement—“Loving the Unlovely.” I have yet to meet a mentally retarded child who is unlovely.

Letchworth Village is a state institution caring for 4,500 patients. All are retarded. I have been the full-time Protestant chaplain for six years.… The Protestant churches have a “head in the sand” philosophy—what we do not see does not exist—but mental retardation does exist, and its area of concern should be as important to the churches as African and Asiatic missions. In six years I have yet to receive a dollar from any church to be used for my retarded children. Our children do not want much—they just want to be remembered!

CARL J. ROTE

Protestant Chaplain

Letchworth Village

Theills, N. Y.

A TIME TO DISMOUNT

You will never know how much Mr. Ross Coggins’s article, “Missions and Prejudice” (Jan. 17 issue), meant to me, or how deeply touched I was when he said, “In a day when Marxists are calling every man comrade, let us not refuse to call any man brother.”

I am a recent seminary graduate with plans to serve on a Latin American mission field. I thought that while serving a church here I would be wise to remain silent on the racial issue, as so many churchmen want us to do. If I did, I would be joining the crowd of those who are making Christianity the laughing-stock of the whole world by attempting to reconcile missions abroad and racial segregation at home. So, if I give silent assent to discrimination while I am here, conscience would certainly make a coward of me on the foreign field.

My conclusion is that we American churchmen are sick—sick with a deadly sin called pride. Our pride creates second-class humans. Our pride relegates the Negro to “his place.” Our spiritual and racial pride makes a shambles of our Christian witness, being “… not of the Father, but … of the world” (1 John 2:16). Before it is too late we must get down from our ecclesiastical high horses and repent and turn to God!

Thank you again for this and several other plain-spoken articles on this subject.

ROBERT ARMISTEAD

St. Paul Presbyterian

Tuscaloosa, Ala.

At last! You finally passed through the period of “theory and perhaps” in the question of race relations and the Church.

Ross Coggins gets down to the facts of trying to live with a race-divided Christianity.

Our thanks to Ross Coggins for showing us that our church business here at home must be Christian if his missionary business is to succeed.

Our apologies to him for being so willing to pretend that what happens in our community is no one’s business but our own.

JOHN M. COLLINS

Franklin, Spring Grove, Laurel Methodist Churches

New Richmond, Ohio

Your article by a Southern minister is most heartening—though some of his Southern brethren may accuse him of having been duped by Communist propaganda. His article reminds me of [the] defense Peter made of his radical step of regarding Gentile Cornelius and family as full Christian brethren. Peter asked how he could resist God. Ross Coggins really is asking us the same question—how dare we resist God with our racial prejudices?

MARCIUS E. TABER

Centenary Methodist Church

Pentwater, Mich.

No honest person will deny that America’s sins are great. Our national departure from the Son of God and his Word is apparent to all. However, Mr. Coggins apparently has failed to realize that he has taken up the seed of Communism and the line that is trumpeted from Moscow to Peiping.

When the colored folks in America have a national income greater than any other people of any race in any country, when barriers are falling, we need spiritual leaders who will lead with the truth and not get so upset by the international socialistic lie. It was not surprising to find in the article that he got his information from a Moscow agent.

HAROLD MCCLURE

Oak Hill Baptist Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

Was a special blessing to me.…

CLAUDE W. JACKS, JR.

First Baptist

Cotulla, Tex.

I could not concur more heartily with this Southern Baptist minister’s statement of the case and his conclusions.

TED W. ENGSTROM

Executive Vice-President

World Vision, Inc.

Pasadena, Calif.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to be commended for publishing … the forthright statement by Ross Coggins.

If a few more articles like this are published, the idea that evangelical Christians are afraid of social issues will have to be carefully re-examined.

FRED R. MANTHEY, JR.

Emanuel United Church of Christ

Philadelphia, Pa.

I have known the embarrassment that Ross Coggins mentioned.… My patriotic feelings toward my country, the United States, are as fierce and loyal as the nationalistic devotion that my Mexican co-laborers have for their country. I don’t think they would understand me or respect me if it wasn’t so. It really hurts when one of them brings up the race situation in the United States.… One can only acknowledge a black eye that is so obvious.

Of course the Latin countries have some black eyes, too.… In Bolivia one hears the shout, “Camba!” and the retort, “Colla!” The Indian highlander and the white lowlander are at it again. Much blood has been spilled over the situation through the years. It seldom is billed as race rioting, but it is. Similar situations exist in some other Latin countries.…

JAMES H. MUMME

Coordinator

Mexican Evangelistic Mission

Phoenix, Ariz.

Most excellent.… However “… Tuan to others as we would have them Tuan to us” … oh, brother!

FLETCHER BENNETT

Methodist Church

Fennimore, Wis.

One way American mission boards can help is to utilize the great unused resources of Negro and Latin evangelicals who have been conspicuous by their absence on foreign fields. Some countries are already closed to all other American missionaries but would be open to these persons if we would only send them.

VERN MILLER

Lee Heights Community Church

Cleveland, Ohio

WOE

Woe is me! I have the unenviable, yet exalted privilege of belonging to one of your so-called “cults.” Unenviable, because no true-hearted soul enjoys being at odds with his fellows. Exalted, because Jesus would doubtless have been called a cultist had that unsavory word been in the vocabulary of his contemporary theologians.

Harold Lindsell, book reviewer of The Four Major Cults, should be brought up to date. The Brinsmead brothers have now been repudiated by the Sanctuary Awakening Fellowship. They were repudiated probably for no greater crime than that practiced by Author Hoekema—distortion of truth.

Also in [the] same issue, I was happy to observe that Seventh-day Adventists have a proven, practical approach to the problem of cigarettes, a Five Day Plan to Stop Smoking. A rather unique and laudable contribution from your cultist friends!

E. A. CRANE

Sturgis, Michigan

WELL, IT’S SIMPLY POIMENOGENIC

I am amused by the manner in which Dr. Ben Mohr Herbster and Dr. William McCorkle (News, Jan. 31 issue) attempt to say that cigarette smoking is not a moral problem—only a health problem. This implies that the moral law was given not out of our health needs but by the arbitrary whim of some pleasure-hating god, surely not the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.…

Moral issues and health issues should never be separated in my view for I know only too well in my work as a mental hospital chaplain, that the patient worsens when you do this. In such a case we might speak of the illness as poimenogenic, i.e., brought about by the illness in the pastor.

EARL JABAY

Princeton, N. J.

SMOKED FOOD

In your editorial in the issue of November 8 in regard to “Cigarettes and the Stewardship of the Body,” and in the letters (Eutychus, Dec. 20 issue) commenting on your editorial I have not noticed … emphasis on … the tendency of a smoker to be inconsiderate. How seldom do we hear, “Do you mind if I smoke?” As soon as a smoker has finished his (or her) meal in a public restaurant he lights his cigarette (or cigar or pipe), never pausing to think that the smell of tobacco smoke dampens the taste of food for others. To my mind, consideration of others should be one of the notable characteristics of a clergyman.

LIVINGSTON BENTLEY

Inlet, N. Y.

C. S. LEWIS

As one of the “Everymen” for whom C. S. Lewis was theologian I want to commend you on Mr. Kilby’s splendid article about Mr. Lewis (Jan. 3 issue). Any theologian who can look at much that is put forward today as Christianity, under whatever scholarly label, and call it “patronizing nonsense,” has a strong appeal to “Everyman.”

It is my belief that this paragraph from Mere Christianity is worth memorizing: “ ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a mad man or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him or kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”

JOHN S. BECK

Summit, N. J.

Would an American writer who (1) rejected the doctrine of total depravity (Jan. 3 issue), (2) opposed the substitutionary and penal theory of the Atonement, and (3) taught that one could reason oneself into Christianity (Dec. 20 issue), be considered as the “theologian of any conservative man”?

One book omitted from Dr. Kilby’s article is the most unique (and some say uninteresting) autobiography ever written—Surprised by Joy.

My thinking about C. S. Lewis closely parallels his on George McDonald. He pointed me to a real Christ and essential Christianity.

SIDNEY CHAPMAN

Professor of Philosophy

Spring Arbor College

Spring Arbor, Mich.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones’s quoted contention (Dec. 20 issue) that C. S. Lewis taught and believed a man could reason himself into Christianity does not square with the facts. Even the most cursory examination of Professor Lewis’s Surprised by Joy reveals his consistent contention that God saves in various ways that are never entirely analyzable to anyone, least of all the “new man.” What Professor Lewis continually fought was the attempt of any person or denomination to lay out a clear pattern of things to be believed or schemes of procedure to insure salvation. Obedience was always more than a matter of reason, for him. On the other hand, Professor Lewis clearly believed that God was capable of using a man’s loyalty to reasoned thought as one of the means of bringing him into the Kingdom, a view which some evangelicals have difficulty in accepting.

EDWARD T. DELL, JR.

Associate Editor

The Episcopalian

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel in London is quoted thus: “Lewis was an opponent of the substitionary and penal theory of the Atonement.”

Certainly, many of your readers will be shocked by this revelation, even as I am. How can a man rightly lay claim to fame as a friend of Christianity, when he is an opponent of that which is the very “heart of our Faith”?

ERNEST A. HOOK

Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church

Warren, Pa.

Might it not be that the apparent incongruity arising in the late C. S. Lewis’s view on the total depravity of man could be resolved by distinguishing between the fact that it is only regenerate man who is in a position to assess his state of moral bankruptcy before a holy God, whereas unregenerate man can never so designate himself? The belief in man’s total depravity is not the outcome of the unregenerate mind of man, but rather the outcome of the regenerate man’s acquiescence to the penetrating Light of Scripture.

Surely the fact that “man has the idea of good” in no way detracts from what we call total depravity, but is rather a proof of our having been made in the image of God. True, that image has been marred in the Fall, our likeness to Him lost thereby; but thank God not entirely has his divine image been obliterated, else there would be no ground of alliance between us.

Sincere thanks to Clyde S. Kilby for a most interesting analysis.

M. P. FARMERY

Salisbury, New Brunswick

Since his death the conservative press in America has joyously claimed C. S. Lewis as “our man.” I am personally delighted that conservatism and fundamentalism have widened [the] door sufficiently to admit such an unclassifiable person as the great Oxford-Cambridge don. I am a little amused at this; Lewis would be hilarious.

C. S. Lewis, though having great love and respect for the Bible, would never embrace the fundamentalist (literal-infallible) view of the Bible.

He would accept no theory of the “total depravity of man.”

He rejected the “substitutionary theory” of the Atonement.

In the social order he leaned a little more to the left than to the right.

He believed that all economic systems, built on the foundation of interest and usury, were illogical, untenable, and corrupt.

He was a beer drinker, and I have it on good authority that he was a heavy beer drinker (noon and evening).

He was strongly addicted to the weed and was never seen without his pipe.

He … married a divorced woman; the conditions of her divorce were not above criticism.

So if conservatism and fundamentalism joyously accept C. S. Lewis, perhaps some of the rest of us have a chance.

W. WESLEY SHRADER

First Baptist Church

Lewisburg, Pa.

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Dr. Mikolaski’s article (“Revelation and Truth,” Jan. 3 issue) was most interesting and thought-provoking.… It seems to me that a better question to have asked than “Can we have the knowledge of God without the knowledge about God?” would have been …: Can we articulate the knowledge of God without the knowledge about God? When the verbal representation (structural or logical arrangements of knowledge) is accepted as the real, then reality is proscribed and stands in relation to truth as an image stands in relation to the living God. There is no communication without the knowledge about God. There is no reality without knowledge of God. Knowledge about God never quite reveals what is true about God, just as knowledge about a person is never as complete as knowledge of that person as an intimate friend.…

WALTER B. THOMPSON

Barth Memorial Methodist Church

Nashville, Tenn.

One of the finest and most intellectually stimulating articles on the matter that I have seen.

WILLIAM DORE

Calvary-Asbury Methodist Church

Sudlersville, Md.

SHEVCHENKO

Ukrainian Protestants in the United States have observed and acknowledged for quite some time the intelligently expressed evangelical thought printed on the pages of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Our admiration for you has increased greatly in recent weeks, because of the editorial “A Memorial to Shevchenko” (Jan. 3 issue) which openly opposes the opinions of the Washington Post obviously instigated by those who are against freedom and independence of the Ukrainian nation.

Ukrainian Evangelical Baptist Convention in U. S. A., which unites many churches and through its Missionary and Bible Society reaches thousands of Ukrainian Protestants in all the world, wishes to express sincere thanks to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for its stand concerning the Shevchenko monument in Washington, D. C.

We believe that through this, love and admiration to America and Americans will increase among the Ukrainians.

Ukrainian Protestants support the erection of the Shevchenko monument, not only because he was a champion of freedom, not only because in his writings he praised George Washington, but because he was the one that inspired the first translation of the Bible into Ukrainian … thus giving impetus to the evangelical movement in the Ukraine.

P. BARTKOW

President

The Ukrainian Missionary and Bible Society

Chester, Pa.

BALANCE OF PROBABILITIES

Your correspondent … E. P. Schulze (Jan. 3 issue) is right to question the almost superstitious reverence paid by Tischendorf, Westcott, Hort, and Weiss to the three oldest codices of the New Testament; but need he resurrect the absurdities of Dean Burgon’s pathetic defense of the Textus Receptus, which did not clearly emerge until the fifth century? If we accept the fifth century’s revision of the text, why not also its views on the papacy and the invocation of saints?

Surely it is time to realize that both the third-century “Alexandrine” text and the fifth-century “Received” text were the products of deliberate revisions, the former too much inclined to omission, the latter to inclusion, and that the true text is only to be found from a variety of sources by a balance of probabilities.…

J. M. Ross

London, England

YES AND NO

The appearance of the article, “The Melody Man of Gospel Music” (News, Dec. 20 issue), prompted concern on my part and I hope on the part of many evangelical musicians throughout the country.…

Why, I ask, cannot numerous and previous articles have been devoted to men whose lives are being spent in an attempt to do in evangelical musical circles what you have, at least editorially, attempted to do in theology? Is CHRISTIANITY TODAY a magazine of such narrowed aims as to cry for integrity and fervor in but one arm of the Church’s ministry?…

Who, may I ask, is your choice for every-man’s theologian, everyman’s exegete? About whom would you objectively report whose theological, exegetical, pastoral policies and practices parallel those of John Peterson? I would be embarassed to name them and ashamed to read of them in a journal with the platform you wish to project. How long must the evangelical church try to succeed in a worship structure composed of odd, contrasting, inconsistent, flatulent wisps of anybody’s ideas, while the enlightened and tragically specialized pulpiteer knows and cares all about his pulpit and nothing about his fellow workers?

HAROLD M. BEST

Asst. Prof. of Organ and Music Theory

Nyack Missionary College

Nyack, N. Y.

Regarding the rank criticism of John W. Peterson’s gospel music by John Richard De Witt (Jan. 31 issue), I wonder if he has heard Mr. Peterson’s masterpieces sung by a fine choir, and under the direction of a great chorister.

John W. Peterson’s cantatas, such as “Night of Miracles,” “No Greater Love,” and, perhaps the greatest missionary cantata ever written, “The Greatest Story Yet Untold,” are all the most complete Bible-based musical messages, with Scripture rightly divided, this pastor has heard at any time ever.

OTHA B. HOLCOMB

First Baptist Church

Great Falls, Mont.

Singing psalms is mentioned in the Bible, as are spiritual songs and hymns of praise.

I have had the opportunity to serve as minister of music in a few evangelical churches in the past fifteen years, and have directed such compositions as The Messiah, Seven Last Words, Hear My Prayer, [and] The Crucifixion, which were written by men of the past with outstanding respect in music [though] very little is actually known about their spiritual fervor.…

I have had the privilege of directing three of Mr. John Peterson’s cantatas. It is true that Mr. Peterson does not write as did Handel. We should not forget, too, that neither did Bach write as Beethoven, nor did Beethoven as Mendelssohn.

I know Mr. Peterson through his relationship with WMBI. I also know of his testimony.… His chords may be modern which “tingle” the ear; however, his testimony rings of his fellowship in Christ.

We in church work are out to reach men for Christ, first. Mr. Peterson’s music, I have found, has been most welcomed in even the “starchiest” situations.…

Opposite to Mr. John Richard De Witt’s ending, let’s have more of this.

JOHN A. KOOISTRA

Metropolitan Baptist Church

Washington, D. C.

CHRISTIAN LOGOTHERAPY

I was disappointed with the review you gave Dr. Tweedie’s recent book, The Christian and the Couch (Jan. 3 issue). It seems to me that the message of the book centers on the author’s discussion of the etiology of mental illness. On page 109 Dr. Tweedie states, “… at the root of every [psychogenic mental illness] lies a significant amount of sinful action.” It is this concept that lends integration and a degree of credibility to this development of a “Christian logotherapy.” Whether or not Dr. Tweedie has leaned too heavily on O. H. Mowrer may be debated. It would seem, however, that such a critical point in the development of a leading Christian psychologist’s philosophy of mental illness ought, at least, to be discussed.

ROBERT W. FERRIS

Hamilton, Mass.

SHAKESPEARE, BUT NOT SOLOMON

There is an excellent article … under “Current Religious Thought” (Dec. 20 issue) regarding the impact of secularism upon the school children.…

I have heard it reported that the reading of wisdom from such as Shakespeare or some of the philosophers may be used as an opening day meditation, while passages from the greatest of all wisdom books must be omitted. This makes no sense at all to me. If ever we needed to reflect upon words of wisdom, it is in this, our generation, and the crying need is for a greater reading of and reflection upon the Bible [message] than has ever been given it in the past in the public schools, homes, churches, and elsewhere. This, in turn, will lead to sincere, inner heart prayer. (I cannot read the Bible without praying.) The banning of the reading of the Bible in the public schools, to me, completes the picture of a twisted, warped, and degenerate generation.

MARION WALGER

Baltimore, Md.

I would like to see copies of the articles about the Bible which are in the November 22 issue … go to anyone who seeks to delete the Bible readings from our public schools.

NORMAN H. SANDERS

Fort Worth, Tex.

Evangelical Colleges: The Race for Relevance

David L. Mckenna

Will the Christian liberal arts college survive? This question, popular with secular experts, causes Christian educators great concern. Its basis is found in the fact that the crisis in American higher education has been reduced to the common denominator of shortages in faculties, funds, and facilities. When these resources are accepted as the criteria for survival and status in American higher education, many small, evangelical Christian liberal arts colleges are expected to test out the high cost of dying in the academic world.

But have we been asking the right question? Without glossing over the need for teachers, money, and space in all our institutions, perhaps it is time to suggest that the fundamental problem facing the evangelical Christian college is not existence but obsolescence. “Are we in a race for survival when we should be in a race for relevance?”

Lewis Mayhew, a man who is known for asking the right questions, presents this problem in his book The Smaller Liberal Arts College when he states that the Christian college is “in conflict with some of the major values held by contemporary American society” (p. 11). These conflicts, he says, are between the values of the Christian religion and American secularism, between a liberal arts education and the vocational orientation in American life, and between the small, independent college and the trend to large, centralized organizations in American institutional structure. Within the framework of these basic value conflicts, Mayhew identifies the small, Christian liberal arts college as a minority institution in higher education that is out of step with the prevailing social values of our time. Although he does not specifically make the statement, both the import and the implication of his analysis suggest this nagging question, “Is the small, evangelical Christian liberal arts college obsolete?” This hard-nosed question demands an equally hard-nosed answer.

The evangelical Christian college is exclusively an American product of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As such, it reflected the temper of its times and became known as the “gem and genius” of American higher education. In response to the prevailing philosophical, social, and educational climate of the times, the evangelical Christian college met a unique need and produced distinguished products. Today, however, both the nature of the need and the demands for the product have changed.

The Shifting Climate

In the nineteenth century the philosophical climate in which the evangelical Christian college flourished was essentially idealistic, humane, and Christian. This climate was particularly conducive to the liberal arts emphasis upon the humanities with a strong social service sense and a widely accepted pietism in personal values. Fundamentalism in theology, conservatism in politics, and essentialism in education were the supporting value systems for what could be called the evangelical Christian college. Richard Hofstader, in Anti-intellectualism in American Life, notes the transition, however, that marked the decline of the evangelical spirit. The shock troops of Darwin, Freud, Marx, and Dewey led the way with a succession of attacks supported by such social phenomena as the American enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the scientific renaissance, the urban migration, and the rising national state. It was only a matter of time until the philosophical climate had changed to such an extent that a new liberalism won the day in theology, politics, and education. The momentum of continuing change now appears to have taken us to the point where Sorokin’s sensate culture overbalances our ideational past, secular values have priority over Christian principles, and the pragmatic mind dominates the pietistic spirit.

The long-term result of this radical change in the conscious or subconscious American philosophy is that the evangelical Christian college has lost its position as the “college of the culture.” Today, it is idealized as an institution that preserves the values of our past but does not speak with full meaning to the present.

Sociologically, the cultural environment of which the evangelical Christian college is a part has been transformed as radically as the philosophical climate. By location, size, and number, the evangelical Christian colleges represent the rural, personalistic Protestantism of the nineteenth century. With the motives for the founding of the church colleges centered in denominational preservation and aggressive evangelism, these institutions performed a meaningful function as followers of the frontier. They were rural institutions in a village-and-town society. They were Protestant institutions in a ruggedly evangelistic religious atmosphere. They were autonomous institutions in a society where centralized government did not extend beyond the township hall or the county seat. The match was perfect. Evangelical Christian colleges were the institutional embodiments of independence, stability, and integrity.

In contrast, twentieth-century America is an urbanized polyglot of religious species where the most effective action is taken by the centralized organization and the collective group. This means that the sociological currents have moved past the evangelical Christian college to the extent that the point of social impact is no longer rural, the revered voice is no longer Protestant, and the agency for forceful action is no longer the individual. The conclusion would seem to be that the evangelical Christian college was well founded according to the needs of the social climate of its time, but that while the point of need has changed locations, the colleges have not.

As a part of the revolution in philosophical positions and sociological patterns during the past century, education itself has undergone drastic changes. The evangelical Christian college developed in an educational climate that placed a premium upon the highly selective liberal arts programs of the private college. Higher education served to prepare selected persons for the prestige professions through a background in the liberal arts. Hence, the private college could play this role without serious competition from the public domain. The corollary shifts in the philosophical outlook and the cultural milieu, however, were not without their educational counterpart. Whether the change took place from so ideal a motive as “The Great American Dream” or from so practical a stance as the “New Technology,” the base for higher education began to spread. With creeping certainty the demand for higher education increased among the masses and outstripped both the purposes and the programs of the church-related liberal arts college.

Caught In A Squeeze

With this rising tide of demand, the nature of higher education has undergone profound changes. The focus has shifted from the selective purposes of the private, liberal arts college to the mass-oriented, professional purposes of the public college and university octopus. Caught in the squeeze of this shift of emphasis in American higher education, the evangelical Christian college represents a vestige of an era when private higher education was king.

A review of these philosophical, social, and educational changes brings us back to the basic question, “Is the evangelical Christian liberal arts college obsolete?” A partial answer now seems clear. It is obsolete if its purpose demands support from a compatible climate of thought that is unified in its espousal of Christian idealism and its humane concerns. It is obsolete if its social impact is limited to a rural world with a Protestant ethic and a single, stubborn frontier voice. It is obsolete it its role and scope are dependent upon a favorable educational environment that defines the evangelical Christian college as the majority institution and the “Who’s Who” leader in purposes, programs, and products.

If, on the other hand, the changing climate of higher education is recognized, the answer to the question resolves itself into the problem of defining the contemporary purpose of the evangelical Christian college without depending upon the nineteenth-century assumptions that were supported by a nineteenth-century world.

Change Without Neurosis

In response to the change in the philosophical climate from Christian idealism to the current pragmatism, the evangelical Christian college must first determine how it can be Christian without being defensive. Having enjoyed the status of being the majority institution in American higher education, it must now adjust to the position of the minority. The test will be whether or not the adjustment can be made without developing the neurotic responses of the minority mentality. When a college and its leadership get caught in the vicious circle of suspicion and self-pity, the results are self-destructive. Purposes are rationalized in unrealistic claims in the college catalogue, failures are projected on the home or the church, weaknesses are compensated by the recitation of “quality” shibboleths in advertising, and a ready-made scapegoat is found in the “liberalism” of the state university.

If the evangelical Christian college is to avoid the masochistic implications of the minority mentality, it must accept its change of status and become the center for seeking those points of impact where Christian perspective and Christian values can still affect the thought life of America. Where can the superiority of the Christian ethic over secular values best be demonstrated? What is the relevance of the Christian commitment in a post-Christian world? Can Christian idealism bridge the gap of the “two worlds” of humanities and sciences? How does the truth of Christian revelation meaningfully relate to the content and the method of the liberal arts?

Second, the change from a rural Protestant society with its individual ethos to an urbanized religious pluralism with a collective ethos puts the evangelical Christian college into a race for relevance. The challenge is to determine how the evangelical Christian college can be contemporary without being submerged. In the past, the accusation leveled at evangelical colleges was that they tended to an attitude of being “holier than thou.” The tendency now is to succumb to the pressures of a cultural complex or a “worldlier than thou” attitude. In the desire to be acceptable (sometimes considered synonymous with accredited), the college moves full swing from a radical cultural conservatism to a level of cultural competition. Students bring their urban values with them and manufacture major social issues on dress, entertainment, and privilege. Faculty members bring their status values from the graduate school and demand comparable cultural symbols. Alumni bring their secular values from the business world and insist that the college give priority to marketable products. The end result is that the evangelical Christian college becomes almost indistinguishable from the secular institution when it comes to social issues, cultural expectations, and contemporary values. While having the overlay of a “believing mode” for the students and a “pious sanctity” for the faculty, the attitudes of status-seeking, pyramid-climbing, and security-consciousness are entertained without a sense of contradiction.

The evangelical Christian college must avoid the cultural complex by again seeking out its areas of impact in a revolutionary society. What is the responsibility of the Christian college to the teeming metropolis? to the factory? the secular college? the depressed area? the “haves” and the “have nots”? What is the role of evangelical Christianity when it is only one among religions and religious commitments? What is the relation of the small evangelical college to the complex, centralized, and collective action groups in education, politics, and religion? The changing social scene means that the evangelical Christian college cannot be a college of a “location”—it must seek out its locale for action by keeping a finger on the pulse of contemporary need.

The Survival Syndrome

Third, the changing educational scene in America during the middle 1900s may well be the most significant social change of the century. With the shift in higher education from the selective, privately controlled liberal arts college to the public institution with a broadened base for admissions and an emphasis upon professional programs, the small evangelical Christian college seems to be thrust into competition with the giants. By its location, its cost, and the extent of its programs, the Christian college will always run last. Therefore, it must determine how to be creative without being compromised. At times, the evangelical Christian college seems to be caught in the whirl of the survival syndrome. This is a view that sees the future of the Christian college either in competition or in compromise with public higher education. Existence becomes more important than the reason for existing. To paraphrase a current slogan, “We would rather be led than dead.” As imitators rather than creators, Christian college educators who accept this view relax because the tidal wave will take care of the problem of enrollments, the federal programs will solve building needs, and the evidence of increasing size and new facilities will attract a top-ranked faculty. This is the survival syndrome that can plague the Christian college as its leaders compromise their programs by lowering the level at which they will compete and pretending to keep pace with excellence by imitation.

If imitation of the majority in higher education is taken as the frame of reference for the future of the evangelical college, it will neither survive nor deserve to survive. Rather, an existence with meaning will result from the development of creative thrusts in the colleges toward the gaps that secular education cannot fill. What are the particular qualities of the learning experience that only the Christian liberal arts college can fulfill? What should be the basis for the selection of students in the evangelical college so that there can be a concentration upon a quality product? How can the continuity represented by the liberal arts curriculum in the Christian college be used to create a program of common education that retains its classical roots but gains its contemporary wings? How can the purpose of the evangelical Christian college be so defined that the totality of campus life takes on the earmarks of integrity?

Secular higher education has little to say about most of these questions because it is assumed that they are either passé or irrelevant. Yet the fact remains that the secular institution is in serious trouble because of the changes that have taken place in the philosophical, social, and educational climate for higher education. In the philosophical sphere, the evangelical Christian college has the opportunity to make its idealistic stance relevant to the changing thought climate, but the secular institution appears to be operating in a “value vacuum.” Therefore, the non-committed college is faced with the burden of maintaining the meaning, the hope, and the morality of Christian idealism in a materialistic, secular, and scientific age without making a Christian commitment. The dilemma is best described by the baby and the bath water.

Problems for the secular college continue to mount when the changing social context is considered. While the secular institutions usually have the advantage of urban locations, diverse student cultures, and organizational alignments that give strength to their voice, they have the difficulty of trying to maintain the individuality, the freedom, and the identity of the Protestant rural culture in a pluralistic and yet centralized urban situation. This problem is evident in the similarity that exists among the institutions at various levels of public higher education, in the directions that their expansion must take by public pressure, and in their frantic search for a distinguished profile. If these problems are compared with the need for an updated viewpoint in the evangelical Christian college, the balance of opportunity again swings in favor of private higher education. Rather than having to respond to the culture in its broadest scope, the evangelical Christian college can pick and choose those areas of critical need that are most closely aligned with its purpose.

Then again, the changing educational scene is not solely favorable to the cause of secular and public higher education even though they represent the majority culture. As a result of changes in educational expectations, the secular institution must try to maintain the quality, the continuity, and the integrity of the curriculum in the Christian liberal arts college while being forced into a mass-oriented, professionally directed, and fragmented curriculum.

At a recent meeting of educators, the featured speaker discussed the implications of automation and leisure for higher education. The pertinent point was that the colleges must provide a general education for the new “leisure masses” that will be directed to the creative use of additional leisure time automation will give. In the small group discussion that followed the address, the basic question was whether or not higher education could come to accept a common set of liberal and humane values that could be used to organize and integrate the educational experience for the forthcoming “leisure man.” As usual, there was more heat than light generated by the discussion. Finally, the time for discussion expired with the conclusion that we had the means for training the masses, but little hope for educating them.

This experience added weight to the conviction that the evangelical Christian college has a continuing role to play in American higher education if it can build its case for existence at the creative rather that the imitative level.

Change is with us and will continue at accelerating speeds. The climate for higher education no longer favors the evangelical Christian college. As a response to the prevailing values of secular thought, we may develop the self-defeating defenses of the minority mentality. In the clamor to be contemporary, we may accept the conforming attitudes of the cultural complex. Because the wish to live is legitimate, we may succumb to the compromising imitations of the survival syndrome. To choose any of these options will probably guarantee existence, but it will also make the explanation for our existence difficult.

The only genuine option for the evangelical Christian college is to move into the city in order to test the contemporary meaning of our Christian purpose and the contemporary relevance of our Christian liberal arts curricula. With this pattern of action, the question of survival for the evangelical Christian college will become secondary and the charge of obsolescence will be dropped—unclaimed.

God’S Sword Thrusts

As a high-schooler many years ago I happened to meet my Sunday school teacher on the street and walked along with him for a while. He was a lawyer by profession and a gifted teacher. In the course of our conversation he asked, “John, if I were to preach a sermon, what text do you think I should use?” I replied that I had no idea. He said, “I would like to preach on the words of Nehemiah, ‘I am doing a great work so that I cannot come down.’ ” These words led me then to reread the story of Nehemiah, and they became a living part of the Bible for me. Again and again through the years they have inspired within me the faith, courage, and determination with which to confront the temptations and problems of life.—The Rev. JOHN L. GREGORY, general secretary, Vermont Church Council, Burlington.

David L. McKenna is president of Spring Arbor College, Spring Arbor, Michigan. He holds the A.B. degree from Western Michigan University, the B.D. from Asbury College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Before becoming president of Spring Arbor College, Dr. McKenna was director of The Center for Higher Education at Ohio State University.

Federal Aid to Christian Education: No

V. Raymond Edman

In considering any problem, and in particular that of federal aid to education, one’s convictions must be based on principle rather than on expediency. Such convictions are especially needed in this day when the national government is encroaching in areas that historically and legally have belonged to the states or to private citizens. While I write as president of a Christian college, my argument against federal aid for Christian education is based on broad principles that apply to all private higher education, secular as well as religious, and also to primary and secondary education, both public and private.

“Federal aid” is a political euphemism for funds taken in taxes from the people and, after an appreciable diminution through the multiplicity of departments, returned to the states and various agencies. Aid is not new wealth; it is our money, handled and directed by government officials for purposes determined by themselves.

Our discussion of federal aid to education does not include the service academies, ROTC, the distribution of surplus property, and student aid programs such as the GI Bill and the loan programs established by the National Defense Acts of 1958. By the same token, government research projects are not included in the concept of federal aid to education. Federal support of research projects constitutes the government’s purchasing the abilities and facilities of the universities to do research for the fewest dollars possible. (Subsidy of scientific research is, however, an illusory “aid” to education, because of its diversionary effect upon research and scholarship and because of its tendency to draw able teacher-scholars into government research projects.)

Educational costs are mounting, but is federal “aid” the best way to meet those needs? The easy way is often the wrong way. We need more and better educational opportunities for the rising generation; but are they to be supplied at any cost?

The case for federal subsidy to education is predicated on two chief assumptions: (1) A centrally planned society is the best for all the people, and (2) the colleges cannot meet the rising costs and other demands upon them. These assumptions are contrary to fact. We have never believed that the government knows the best interest of its people better than the citizens themselves, nor that bureaucratic planners are more intelligent than the people themselves. The American government was established with a “division of powers” between the federal and state governments and the citizens. Furthermore, federal responsibility for education was discussed in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when a national university was proposed and was rejected as being outside the province of the national government. At that time education was considered to be the responsibility of the states and their citizens; the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required new states formed beyond the Appalachians to set aside public lands for public education. And even then there were private colleges in that area.

Colleges And Continuity

In meeting expenses and balancing budgets, the colleges have been far more successful than the federal government. Since the founding of Harvard in 1636, American colleges have had the responsibility of providing for their own needs. For more than three centuries they have come through periods of financial panic and prosperity, through war and peace, and today are continuing steadily on their course. It is late in the day for the national government to think that it can better provide for higher education than the people themselves.

I suggest six main considerations against federal aid to higher education:

1. It is unnecessary, despite the enthusiastic advocacy of politicians and some educators. The American people as individuals and through help from foundations, business, and industry are providing increasingly for higher education on the basis of merit. Lloyd Morey, president emeritus and former comptroller of the University of Illinois, observed:

No adequate case can be made for additional nationwide appropriations by Congress for education at any level on a broad scale for any purpose. There may be a few areas in which local resources are sufficiently behind the general average and local educational conditions sufficiently in arrears to warrant temporary and selective outside assistance.… Such aid may be warranted from the federal government. To make these few situations the excuse for general federal grants to all states is both financial and educational folly.

There is a rising tide of opposition to federal intervention, as shown by the stand the National School Boards Association and many local Parent-Teachers Associations have taken. The colleges can help themselves by economies carefully considered and courageously undertaken. They should continue their studies in the efficient and effective operation of each institution, in the use of facilities, in extension of the school day and the school week, and in curtailment of the curriculum.

2. A subsidy is an unwarranted assumption that money is the answer to quality education. A study by Harold Orlans on “The Effects of Federal Programs on Higher Education: A Study of Thirty-six Universities and Colleges” (Brookings Institution) showed from standardized tests that the quality of undergraduate students is highest at liberal arts colleges. There followed in diminishing order of quality private universities receiving large federal grants, private universities receiving less federal money, public universities with large federal funds, and public universities with lesser federal amounts. A similar sequence was found to apply to graduate students. Thus it appears that federal aid to education does not buy scholars any more than foreign aid programs buy friends abroad.

The Brookings report, declaring that “quality must come first,” observes: “Even at the most eminent institutions, there is constant danger that intellectual standards will deteriorate from the too-ready availability of too much money. The danger will be greater at lesser institutions if programs are established solely to hand out dollars on the basis of a mechanical formula.”

3. Federal subsidy involves inevitable standardization. The department that dispenses federal funds for education will establish the kind and quality of education subsidized. For many years diversity of educational philosophy and practice have marked higher education in its independence of outside control and dependence upon the merit of its own program for support. In reporting to a congressional committee, President John A. Howard of Rockford College declared:

At the present time the variety of sources of funds for colleges and universities reinforces the diversity of educational programs and educational philosophies among the various institutions: one college now attracts funds because of the religious nature of its programs, another because of its freedom from religious influences; one for its conservative views, another for its liberalism.… As the various colleges turn more and more to a single source of revenue—the federal government—the differences that set one college apart from the next will inevitably be reduced.

Authoritarian control of education requires standardization and raises Jefferson’s uncomfortable question: “Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?”

4. Subsidization means inevitable control of education, a prospect of particular concern to the Christian college. Such control is stoutly denied by politicians and bureaucrats, and also by some educators blinded by their wish for more federal aid. Again the Brookings report: “The danger of federal control should not be dismissed as a myth designed simply to serve the interests of local and sectional forces. It is and will remain a continuing danger to the independence of academic institutions which must be guarded against more vigilantly as the role of the federal government in higher education grows.” When questioned on this point at a conference in Chicago, President Nathan Pusey of Harvard said: “It seems obvious that, over a period of years, in their power to grant or withhold funds, the agencies of government are likely to have much to say about the direction research is to follow. Many educational leaders continue to believe this kind of decision had best be left to the colleges and universities.”

A Federal Duty

It is the responsibility of the government to set up controls for the expenditure of public monies. In a decision in 1942 (Wickard vs. Filburn), the Supreme Court stated that “it is hardly a lack of due process for government to regulate that which it subsidizes.” What the national government finances it must of necessity control. This is required by the Constitution and recognized by every honest lawmaker and thoughtful citizen. One should weigh therefore the observation made by Congressman Watkins Abbitt (D-Va.) in his statement against federal aid to education: “There is here demonstrated an all-out effort to federalize the schools and nationalize the lives of American citizens.… History teaches us that when the central authority gets control of the education of our youth, it is a long step toward a totalitarian government and dictatorship.… Federal Aid means Federal Control.”

5. Subsidization will demand secularization of education—again a cause for concern to the Christian college. Separation of church and state according to the First Amendment to the Constitution is intrinsic in the American way of life. Over the years, and especially in the last few years, the courts have reinforced this. To expend federal funds for higher education will plunge the nation headlong into the problem of whether public money can be used to promote religion. The alternatives will be religion and no federal money, and federal money and no religion.

Each independent college and university is free to establish its own spiritual standards and practices according to its own persuasion, either religious or irreligious. However, to accept federal aid is in time to be required to become irreligious and secular.

6. Federal subsidization, especially long-range scholarship aid, will mean a shift in responsibility for the education of the children from parents and students themselves, from colleges and their constituencies, to the national government. No one knows better than educators the financial needs of students, the sacrifices made by parents, the strenuous efforts at self-help made by young people. Educators do not favor making the acquisition of education an unduly onerous and practically impossible task for those of limited means.

Yet the family is the unit of human life established by the Almighty in his wise provision for the welfare of mankind. The family that faces its responsibilities for its children, that perpetuates the affection and confidence between parents and children, that prays together and works together and sacrifices together, will find that its children can be educated. The effort to do so will help unite the family. There are numerous forces in our land acting against the integrity and strength of the family. These are to be resisted for the best interests of the American people and the nation as a whole. The philosophy of the welfare state includes detaching children from the family unit by making provision for them beyond what the family itself can provide. The ultimate purpose of socialism is to make all citizens dependent upon the national government. Federal aid to education is part of the battle for the minds and souls of Americans.

For our Christian schools in particular the question of federal encroachment into the field of education finally resolves itself into the choice of aid or independence, subsidy or standardization and secularization, support from the government or continued dependence on God through his faithful stewards. The passage of Higher Education Facilities Act (now Public Law 88–204) in December, 1963, accentuates the need for Christian colleges to take a stand. If the principle is wrong, so is the practice. The alternatives are the hard and good way of progress based on the merit of our programs and the quality of our graduates, and the apparently easy way of giving in to mammon. It may even be necessary at times to walk in the rags of self-determination of our own plans and programs under God rather than to be clothed in the dubious riches of dependence on federal support.

V. Raymond Edman is president of Wheaton College, Illinois. A former professor of political science at Wheaton, he holds the Ph.D. degree from Clark University, the LL.D. from Houghton College, and the D.D. from Taylor University. He has written fourteen books.

The ‘New Look’ in Roman Catholic-Protestant Relations

Norman V. Hope

Some years ago Reinhold Niebuhr declared that “the acrimonious relations between Catholics and Protestants in this country are scandalous. If two forms of the Christian faith, though they recognize a common Lord, cannot achieve a little more charity in their relations with each other, they have no right to speak to the world or to claim that they have any balm for the world’s hatreds and mistrusts. The mistrust between Catholics and Protestants has become almost as profound as that between the West and Communism” (Essays in Applied Christianity, p. 220). As recently as 1959 Jaroslav Pelikan wrote an article in Presbyterian Life deploring the “cold war” between Christians and asserting that Protestant-Roman Catholic relations were smirched with “slogans and slanders” on both sides.

Within recent years, however, relations between those two branches of the Christian faith have taken a decided turn for the better. So great has been the increase in mutual charity and understanding that it may be said that the relations between Protestants and Roman Catholics have become almost Christian in character.

There are many illustrations of this increase in mutual respect and charity. For one thing, Roman Catholic appraisal of the Protestant Reformation, and particularly of Martin Luther, has become increasingly sympathetic. For example, in 1947 Karl Adam, the well-known German Roman Catholic theologian, wrote a book entitled One and Holy, in the foreword of which he said:

It cannot be doubted that at the present moment, under shattering impact of two world wars, a bridge is being built between Catholics and Lutherans, at least in the sense that the unreality of mere polemic is being abandoned, that Luther on the one hand and the Papacy on the other are being seen in a clearer and more friendly light, and that real efforts are being made by Christians everywhere to bring about if not a unio fidei, at least a unio caritatis [p. v].

Adam’s own estimate of Luther, as given in the course of his book, is this:

It was indeed night in a great part of Christendom.… Had Martin Luther then arisen, with his marvelous gifts of mind and heart, his warm penetration of the essence of Christianity, his passionate defiance of all unholiness and ungodliness, the elementary fury of his religious experience, his surging soul-shattering power of speech, and not least that heroism in the face of death with which he defied the powers of this world—had he brought all these magnificent qualities to the removal of the abuses of the time and the cleansing of God’s gardens from weeds, had he remained a faithful member of his Church, humble and simple, serene and pure, then indeed we should today be his grateful debtors. He would be forever our great Reformer, our true man of God, comparable to Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. He would have been the greatest saint of our people, the refounder of the Church in Germany, a second Boniface [pp. 25, 26].

Hans Küng, one of the most influential of younger Catholic theologians today, makes the same point when he says:

Catholic understanding of the Reformation has developed to a significant degree. Consider the progress in the judgments passed on Luther himself, from Eck, Cochlaus, and Bellarmine via Mohler, Döllinger, Jansen, Denifle, Grisar, and Reiter, down to Lortz and Jedin. For Döllinger, in his earlier writings, Luther was a criminal; for Denifle, a man in whom nothing godly can be found; for Grisar, a psychopath. But for Lortz, a tragic individual caught in almost insoluble interior and exterior difficulties, and living by faith [The Council, Reform and Reunion, pp. 103, 104].

Again, there has been an increasing interchange of courtesies between various Roman Catholic and Protestant groups. For example, Methodist Bishop Fred P. Corson recently received an honorary degree from St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic College in Philadelphia; Baptist Dr. Billy Graham has been invited to speak in several Roman Catholic educational institutions; Baptist Dr. Martin Luther King received the 1963 St. Francis Peace Medal from the North American Federation of the Third Order of St. Francis, a national organization of 100,000 Roman Catholic clergymen and laymen. On the other side, the late President John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, not long before his untimely death received an award from the Protestant Council of the City of New York.

At the local parochial level, the flow of information between congregations of the two faiths has increased. For example, in November, 1962, the New York Times carried an item, datelined Minneapolis, which stated:

About five hundred members of the St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church here visited Mount Carmel Lutheran Church where they had a reception and tour. It was part of a project in which congregations learn the doctrines and practices of others. Members of the Lutheran Church had previously paid a similar visit to the Catholic Church. A similar quest for understanding was undertaken in a two-part program in West St. Paul.

These exchange visits are going on in many parts of the United States and can hardly fail to produce greater understanding between members of the two religious bodies.

Again, dialogue has been and is being carried on between scholarly and responsible representatives of the two faiths. In November, 1963, Presbyterian Life carried an article entitled “Faith to Faith: Breakthrough in Baltimore.” It described a television program that began in January, 1963, and lasted for fifteen weeks, and that in response to popular demand was rerun during the summer. This program featured a frank and courteous discussion of the two faiths, their agreements and their differences, between Dr. John Middaugh, minister of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, and Father Joseph Connolly, curate of the Roman Catholic parish of St. Gregory the Great. According to the article, the two participants “talked about Roman Catholic authority, Protestant concepts of authority, confession, penance, purgatory, veneration of the saints, the priesthood of all believers. The nature and number of sacraments (two or seven?), worship, mission, the Virgin, Protestant piety, and the resurrection. Without belligerence or rancor they explained, questioned, ruminated, laughed, occasionally protested a suspected unfair remark, and altogether displayed an on-camera, unrehearsed poise that proved a delight to the whole community.”

Along the same line, in October, 1963, it was announced in the public press that a World Center for Liturgical Studies would be constructed at Boca Raton, Florida. There, it was explained, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox theologians will be able to examine together the public worship of their churches. It is believed that this will be the first institute of its kind in the history of Christendom.

Also, recent world conferences of each of the two groups have welcomed representatives of the other. At the (predominantly Protestant) World Council of Churches’ Third Assembly (New Delhi, 1961) there were official observers from the Roman Catholic Church. And when Vatican Council II was convened in 1962, Protestant observers were invited to attend and were shown every courtesy by their Roman Catholic hosts.

A Mutual Concern

More than that, in some places there has been a movement of practical mutual aid between the two churches. Some years ago Oscar Cullmann, well-known Swiss Protestant theologian, proposed that Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations should take up offerings for the poor of each other’s parishes. Such action, he believed, would underline the solidarity of Roman Catholics and Protestants in their concern for one another as persons, even when they cannot affirm their unity as churches. Concerning this Robert M. Brown says, “The experiment has been tried in a number of places in Europe, and is perhaps the most feasible ‘next step’ toward greater understanding” (The Spirit of Protestantism, p. 169). Some such projects have been tried in the United States. For example, in September, 1963, the Massachusetts Baptist Convention announced it would undertake in the Boston area a “Good Samaritan” resettlement of Cuban Roman Catholic refugees temporarily living in Miami, Florida. The official spokesman for the Baptist Convention said, “We will assume the responsibility for the refugees’ initial welfare, including home and job placement, as well as related service, but will not intrude in any way with regard to the religious belief and practice of these newcomers to our shores.”

What these happenings add up to is this: there is a “new look,” a new climate and atmosphere in Protestant-Roman Catholic relations, not only in the United States but elsewhere in the world. Why has this profound change taken place? What reasons can be assigned for it?

Reasons For The Change

First, the challenge of atheistic totalitarianism in Europe has driven the two Christian churches together in order to protect and defend their common Christian heritage. For example, the menace of Nazi paganism during Hitler’s brutalitarian regime (1933–1945) eventually, though not immediately, brought the two Christian groups together in Germany. Thus “in the general destruction wrought by enemy bombings so many church buildings were damaged or obliterated and such migrations occurred that Roman Catholics permitted Protestants to hold services in their churches and Protestants extended similar courtesies to Roman Catholics” (K. S. Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, IV, 229). And this Roman Catholic-Protestant solidarity has continued into the postwar period in East Germany, where atheistic Communism has taken over.

Secondly, during the last generation or two, secularism—practical atheism which believes that this life is all there is, and that God, if he exists, does not really matter—has become widespread throughout the world. The challenge of this secularism has taught the two Christian churches to realize how much they have in common as believers in Jesus Christ, and to appreciate the fact that, as Theodore O. Weddel has put it, “what Protestants and Roman Catholics have in common by way of basic belief in God and His revelation of Himself in the Biblical salvation drama, far transcends their differences” (The Gospel in a Strange New World, p. 104). Therefore they have become aware of their joint responsibility to stand together in witness to their basic Christian loyalties as over against secular neopaganism.

Thirdly, the attitude of Pope John XXIII during his all too brief pontificate (1958–1963) has wrought something of a revolution in Roman Catholic attitudes toward Protestantism. Pope John, while not compromising his Roman Catholic principles in any way, began a crusade of determined friendliness toward the “separated brethren” of Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. In 1960 he set up a Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, “as a special sign of esteem and affection for separated Christians.” He received in audience such leading Protestant dignitaries as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U. S. A., and—shades of John Knox!—even the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He accepted the invitation of the World Council of Churches to send official observers to the New Delhi Assembly in 1961, and he invited Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians to send their observers to the Second Vatican Council, which began in 1962. This attitude of Pope John has been continued and even accentuated by his successor, Pope Paul VI. For instance, when he opened the Second Session of the Vatican Council in late Sepember, 1963, “he made an appeal for Christian unity that went far and beyond the approach of his predecessor. He asserted that the long range aim of the Council was no less than the complete and universal union of all Christians, and he declared: ‘If we are in any way to blame for that separation, we humbly beg God’s forgiveness’ ” (New York Times, October 6, 1963). There can be no doubt that the stand of these two most recent popes has wrought a virtual revolution in Roman Catholic attitudes toward Protestants.

The Protestant Response

How should we Protestants respond to this situation? What is our properly Christian attitude? We should applaud every interchange of courtesies. We should welcome every opportunity to enlighten our Roman Catholic brethren about our faith and practice, and to learn about theirs. We should encourage informed and frank discussion of views by competent theologians of both groups on the differences that divide them. We should cooperate with our Roman Catholic brethren in expressing, and seeking to implement, Christian attitudes on such social questions as housing, race, and world peace. We should take seriously the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, instituted under Roman Catholic auspices some years ago, which sets aside the week of January 18–25 each year as a season of special prayer for the reunification of the Church of Jesus Christ.

But at the same time we should never forget that we as Protestants have a distinctive testimony to bear, on which there can be no compromise. The Reformation interpretation of the Christian Gospel includes three principles. First, Protestants believe in justification by grace through faith, which means that in Christian salvation all is of God, and that the only thing man can do is gratefully and humbly accept the salvation that God freely offers in Jesus Christ. Secondly, Protestants believe in the priesthood of all believers, which means that all Christians are created in the same divine image, redeemed by the same divine sacrifice, and called to the same divine destiny; that all have equal standing in the sight of God, and therefore have equal responsibilities and privileges in the Christian life. Thirdly, Protestants believe in the final authority of the Bible as the only rule of faith and life, unobscured by “traditions” which may, or may not, agree with the mind of Jesus Christ as revealed in the New Testament. To dilute this testimony would be for us Protestants a repudiation of our heritage, and a betrayal of the trust committed to us. And since Roman Catholicism, for all its new friendliness, does not seem in the least ready to accept this interpretation of the New Testament Gospel, any union between Romanism and Protestantism is not on the horizon in the determinable future.

Norman V. Hope is professor of church history at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Edinburgh University with the M.A., B.D., and Ph.D., and author of “One Christ, One World, One Church.”

The Educational Ministry of the Church

Robert K. Bower

The Supreme Court of the United States has within recent years rendered decisions that have no doubt contributed to a growing secularism in our country. To say that the Church must double her educational efforts and become a bulwark against secular forces is but to declare what is already known. The handwriting on the wall can be read by each member of the Church: a sound, comprehensive educational effort must become a part of every church program if the Church is to meet the needs of her people.

Although the public schools have manifested some degree of interest in character training (see Moral and Spiritual Values in the Public Schools, National Education Association, 1951), this has been nominal at most. After the home, it is the churches that must carry the primary obligation to train youth in moral values and develop the spiritual dimension of their personalities. Thorough Christian instruction has now become so urgently needed that the Protestant church must consider new techniques for laying a moral and spiritual foundation for both her youth and her adults. For years, Roman Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues have provided for their people, and particularly for their youth, just such programs, and with relatively good success. It is now time for those churches that claim the Protestant heritage to expand their educational programs far beyond their present offerings.

Despite past criticism of education in the Church—criticism aimed at ineffective teaching, inadequate facilities, poor curricula, and weak administration—increasing numbers of people have been reached for Christ. History will show that the educational arm of the Church has been a powerful instrument for building and strengthening the “household of faith.” Whenever there has been faith in the ministry of education so that it has received strong support, the Church has grown; whenever faith in education has lagged, the Church has remained static or declined. The Apostles and the early Church placed great emphasis upon both the teaching and the preaching ministries (Acts 5:42; Eph. 4:11), and this emphasis is needed today no less than it was then.

One area to which church education should address itself without delay is family values and relationships. At one time Christian husbands and wives perceived their respective family roles clearly. But with the highly technological and medical advances experienced by our society in recent years, there are now more job opportunities for women, fewer domestic duties requiring skill and intelligence, and fewer children in the typical middle-class Protestant family. As a consequence, child-caring, dispersal of family monies, final authority in disputes, and the general division of labor have become serious, if not critical, issues in the home. Fearful of becoming dependent upon the other person, husband and wife compete for leadership in the home and thus increase the role-confusion in the minds of their children. Even those with a strong religious background appear to have encountered these problems in no small measure. In his Psychodynamics of Family Life (Basic Books, 1958), Nathan Ward Ackerman has spelled out the problems of many of our modern American families in very explicit terms.

Also, it has become painfully obvious to students of marriage and family life in our country that a moral revolution has occurred within the past twenty-five years. Subjects discussed only in doctors’ offices a generation ago are now openly dealt with in magazines and newspapers and on radio and television. Juvenile delinquents now quote the Kinsey Report when apprehended by the police.

When lawyers, judges, and physicians turn to the Church for principles to help them in their counseling and decision-making, they are often faced, not with clear-cut guide lines, but with highly complex and individualized explanations that require the training of a doctoral candidate in theology to be understood. This is not to say that the Church should offer simple solutions for complex problems to those seeking assistance. The need, rather, is for a double offensive: (1) to teach Christians how to apply the biblical principles of morality to situations that are not necessarily complex, and (2) to press the search into the true nature of scriptural exhortations on the more difficult family and individual problems.

Challenge Of Mental Illness

Another area in which Christian education may function effectively is combating mental illness. In 1962 the Joint Commission on Mental Illness estimated that more than seventeen million Americans suffer from some form of mental disorder. Are church members immune to mental illness? It appears not. Richard V. McCann, in his report to the Joint Commission (The Churches and Mental Health, Basic Books, 1962), indicates that there is as much mental illness among those who attend church regularly as among those who do not. The significant factor is the home life.

Christians are subject to the same stresses in modern life as non-Christians. Some have a low threshold for withstanding pressures and become ill. This may be true of either adults or children; but children, especially, suffer from environmental forces and may feel the effects for years to come. Of this much we are certain: children from intact homes experience less general distress, fewer marital difficulties, and more marital stability than those from homes disrupted by either separation or divorce (but not by the death of a parent).

The point at which the educational program can contribute to the improvement of mental health is in helping parents build a positive Christian philosophy of life—one that will promote more stable families and foster attitudes and relations that lead to healthy personalities. Parents must be taught that underlying much (though not all) of a child’s behavior is the desire to be accepted and loved. Biblical principles of understanding and forgiveness need to be explained in terms of specific situations. And the importance of helping a child toward independence and maturity so that he can be a responsible and self-directing adult must be emphasized.

The keen interest of the American people in assisting the mentally ill is evidenced by the fact that in an opinion poll in 1958 they declared themselves more willing to be taxed for this than for any other major public service, with the exception of education (Nina Ridenour, Mental Health in the United States—A Fifty Year History, Harvard University Press, 1961). The Church, through its educational program, can also demonstrate concern in this area by providing help to those in need.

The educational ministry also has, or should have, an evangelistic dimension, reaching out to the unchurched with the Gospel of Christ.

To say that Americans have become markedly church-conscious is not to say that the need for evangelism has passed nor that the American church is any more vital than it once was. All we can state is that a greater proportion of the population now claims church membership than in previous generations. In 1850, some 16 per cent of the population was recorded on church rolls. By 1950 this percentage had surged to 57 per cent, and by 1962 it had reached over 63 per cent. These statistics are not to be taken lightly, for they indicate the general religious orientation of our people.

Statistically, we should have cause for rejoicing. However, apart from the fact that some might question the validity of commitment of many of our church members, there remain the 37 per cent who have not allied themselves with any church. In a country of over 185 million, this means that 67 million people are a field for the redemptive news of salvation through our Lord.

If it is true that 85 per cent of all church members come out of the Sunday school enrollment and that the great majority of the uncommitted attending worship services have first taken part in the educational program of the church (J. N. Barnette, The Place of the Sunday School in Evangelism, Convention Press, 1945), then the crucial role played by the educational program for reaching those outside of Christ must be recognized.

Underlying the hesitancy of the unchurched to attend worship services are at least two factors: (1) they may not experience a sense of “belonging” to the church until they become members, whereas in the educational program they are given membership status after several weeks of attendance; and (2) they may not grasp what the people are like spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally as accurately as can be done in informal, interacting situations within the educational program. In short, they want to know what a “church family” is like before they decide to become part of it.

Toward Full Commitment

After an unchurched person has attended one of the educational groups of the church, he begins to understand not only what the people are like but also what they believe. The more he studies the Bible directly and witnesses the love and acceptance of Christians within the educational program, the more he is drawn toward full commitment to Jesus Christ as Saviour. After a time he probably will begin to attend the worship services to learn more about the church and its purpose until finally he makes full commitment to Christ and the church. In this fashion, the educational program makes its God-given contribution to the total evangelistic effort of the church in a very significant manner.

Pastors and laymen have asked, “But what can be done to recruit the needed leadership for an expanded educational thrust?” Many answers could be given. Perhaps the most important is this: An educational “climate” must be created within the church, so that people will become conscious of the teaching ministry as one of the important functions. This will require a long-range effort of at least three to five years. Why? Because new attitudes and motivations are not developed overnight: they take months and years to form. Once they make their appearance, however, they become stable and persistent and so provide their own momentum.

Thus it is essential for the pastor and other church leaders to give the educational task the time and consideration it deserves. If the church boards give only a minimum amount of time to the discussion of educational matters, if only a limited amount of space in the church bulletin is devoted to education, if laymen and pastors rarely give attention to the educational program in the announcements on Sunday, church members will develop, at least subconsciously, the impression that education is a relatively insignificant activity within the total church program. The outcome will be a general reluctance of members to serve in the teaching ministry.

However, if an educational atmosphere is created that complements the church’s evangelistic program, then it will become much easier to approach lay people about serving in the church. Church members will recognize that the Church is truly the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12) and that each person is responsible for carrying out the plan of God through service in his own local church. With laity and clergy working together, there is every reason to believe that the American churches can see a reversal of the secularism, materialism, and skepticism that have been steadily eating into the life of the Church over the years. And surely the spiritual renewal, increased attendance, and, most of all, additional commitments to Christ that result will bring glory to the One whom we love and serve.

Robert K. Bower is professor of Christian education at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Wayne State University (B.S.), of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (B.D.), and of the University of Chicago (Ph.D.). Some material in this article will appear in his forthcoming book, “Administering Christian Education,” which is scheduled for publication this year.

addApple PodcastsDown ArrowDown ArrowDown Arrowarrow_left_altLeft ArrowLeft ArrowRight ArrowRight ArrowRight Arrowarrow_up_altUp ArrowUp ArrowAvailable at Amazoncaret-downCloseCloseellipseEmailEmailExpandExpandExternalExternalFacebookfacebook-squarefolderGiftGiftGooglegoogleGoogle KeephamburgerInstagraminstagram-squareLinkLinklinkedin-squareListenListenListenChristianity TodayCT Creative Studio Logologo_orgMegaphoneMenuMenupausePinterestPlayPlayPocketPodcastprintremoveRSSRSSSaveSavesaveSearchSearchsearchSpotifyStitcherTelegramTable of ContentsTable of Contentstwitter-squareWhatsAppXYouTubeYouTube