THE ART OF PREACHING AS AN ACT OF WORSHIP

No sermon, however homiletically artistic, is ever complete if considered solely as an individual effort by the preacher. It is the congregational context, as well as the sermonic content, that must be taken into account.

Immediately we are hard against an issue that is increasingly to the fore in wide areas of Protestantism: shall we revive liturgy in order to enrich worship? This is not the place to explore the ramifications of the debate. It is the place, however, to point out—and to protest against—a false antithesis. Granted that in evangelical Protestantism, particularly of the “free church” variety, the tendency has been to misconstrue and undervalue those forms of congregational prayer and praise which precede the sermon. In this distorted perspective we look upon these exercises and offerings as “preliminaries.” The word should be an offense to us. The abandonment of its absurdity cannot be too swift.

But now an opposite peril threatens. Protestants, we are told, have become a sermon-tasting breed who, whether fascinated by a pulpit star or bored by a hack, are strangers to the art, the beauty, the dignity, the sacramental mysticism, of “worship.” On the whole, those who exalt ritual denigrate preaching. Whether by accident or design, it is generally and obviously true that the heavily liturgical service is the service of the ten-to-twelve-minute sermon.

Again, the numerous facts and facets of the current discussion are beyond the range of our purpose. The extremists in both camps can ill afford to be unteachable. But again what one does deplore is the fallacy of thinking of the sermon as something apart from worship. It is implied—and occasionally declared—that in the liturgy God is acting, while in the preaching it is man.

This is dangerously opaque thinking, the corrective answer to which is a series of insights which one ventures to describe as follows:

1. Preaching is a redemptive event. “True preaching,” says Dr. Donald G. Miller in Fire In Thy Mouth, “is an extension of the Incarnation into the contemporary moment, the transfiguration of the Cross and the Resurrection from ancient facts of a remote past into living realities of the present.” What we have in authentic preaching is not a repetition of Calvary (since that is unrepeatable) but a contemporizing of it. The Holy Scriptures having dependably recorded it, the Holy Spirit now dynamically reveals it; and in the preacher, if he be the man of God he should be, both the record and the revelation find a claiming voice. This makes the sermon vastly more than something said: it is something done. It is the saving, healing, strengthening God in action through his servant. To separate this from a church’s worship experience is perilous nonsense.

2. Preaching, moreover, is actually a congregational function. In an essay on “Preaching As Worship” P. T. Forsythe makes the observation that “true preaching presupposes a Church, and not merely a public.” Reading this, my own mind leaped back to Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. The account of it begins with the revealing statement, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, said.…” The proclamation of the Gospel to an unbelieving “public” was made in the context of a believing “Church.”

Furthermore, on any right reading of the situation it will be seen that in Peter’s preaching that day the Church was preaching. A New Testament sermon, far from being a parade of the opinions of a man with a clerical title, is the congregation witnessing to its faith—both for its own edification and for the persuasion of those who are without faith. It is the congregation “hearing its one hope,” not with “an empty wonder” but with illuminated adoration, not “sadly contented with a show of things” but discontented with anything through which the eternal is failing to show.

To say that such preaching does not have in it the dimension of worship is to be under a strange illusion.

3. Preaching, we should not hesitate to say, has a sacramental character. Not sacerdotal, mind you, but sacramental! The sermon is not a communication of grace in which the transmission is guaranteed by the mechanics of the investiture in which the preacher was given the insignia of his office. On the other hand, the sermon is indeed the visible and audible sign of the grace that is given when, to borrow the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “the word preached” is “mixed with faith” on the part of those who hear. The pulpit should be seen as a sign of the grace of God standing within the divinely created community of faith—the Church.

4. A further insight is this: preaching is an oblation. It is an offering of prayer. The preacher’s? Yes. And the congregation’s too. A sermon not steeped in prayer is unworthy of the name. It is an offering of the intellect. Read Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14, on the relation between prophesying and intelligibility. It is an offering of the volition. First the preacher’s and then the congregation’s. A sermon is, in Forsythe’s unforgettable phrase, “the organized Hallelujah” of the Church, joyously confessing its faith in the Gospel, obediently submitting to its claims.

If such offering is not worship, then nothing is!

PAUL S. REES

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20; read vv. 1–21.)

This British sermon begins with a well-known case from life. At a critical stage in the recent World War Sir Samuel Hoare went to Spain on a special mission. There by skill and tact he kept France from coming out directly on the side of the enemy. From this example the interpreter draws four lessons. As an ambassador for King Jesus the Christian:

I. Represents His Ruler in an Alien Land. There his official residence belongs to the country to which he himself belongs. Are you really an ambassador of Christ? Is your home an embassy of heaven? Is this church, as far as you can make it, a “colony of heaven”?

II. Enjoys Direct Access to the Ruler He Represents. The ambassador’s mail-bag is ever inviolate. The Christian has even more immediate access to his Ruler through prayer. To keep from being “denationalized,” the ambassador has to keep in constant touch with his King. Is this true of you?

III. Serves on a Special Mission for Christ. “Be ye reconciled to God.” What a task! What a task! Have you felt the critical character and all the responsibility of your mission as an ambassador of reconciliation? Also, have you studied the minds of people outside the Church? Do you know the craft of personal evangelism? Do you know how to plead the case of your crucified Lord, the Reconciler?

IV. Some Day Is Relieved of His Post. His task well done, the ambassador hears the call to come home. There he receives the thanks of Christ as King, and then takes his place near the throne. However sudden the call, may it find us gladly fulfilling our ambassadorial duties. Meanwhile the ambassador is waiting to be called home, there to see the smile of his King. Will it be like that with you some day as an ambassador of King Jesus?—From Can I Know God and Other Sermons (Abingdon Press, 1960).

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

W. E. SANGSTER: An Ambassador of Christ; PAUL S. REES: The Service of Silence; BRYANT M. KIRKLAND: Praying When Prayer Seems Dead; HENRY GEORGE HARTNER: The Gospel of Ascension Day; and DR. BLACKWOOD’SA Psalm that Luther Loved.

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still (Ps. 4:4).

Other translations prefer the word “silence.” For our noise-dumb age could anything be more timely? A silence pregnant with God makes you feel that even one audible word would be sacrilege. What then is the service of these quiet yet creative interludes in the life of God’s child? Think of such silence as:

I. An Aid to Memory. When we are still, the past comes back to haunt, perhaps to humble, or to make us happy. In the psalm when David is quiet his memory goes to work. He looks back on troubles at the time seemingly unbearable, but troubles that have left him a bigger man, with a richer soul and a finer faith. Yes, silence is the setting in which memory has its best chance, and does its noblest work.

II. A Response to Mystery. Before any mystery, “Stand in awe, and sin not.” Among the mysteries consider the holiness of God. Do we stand in awe of his holiness? “As he who has called you is holy,” cries Peter, “so be ye holy in all matters of conduct.” There is a hushed response that should be evoked by the unsullied holiness that our poor eyes behold in God. This response is a part of worship, of penitence, of sensitive discipleship. In the presence of such mysteries how useful to be silent! When no other response is ready, “in silence reflect.”

III. A Form of Ministry, not least to ourselves. Without some such concern against evil, and protest against it, something is missing from our moral fiber. Silence is even more a form of service to others. In another sometimes a hurt is too deep for words; it calls for loving silence. Often I have gone to a funeral parlor, or to a home, to face a friend to whom grief has just come. My first ministry there has been with no smoothly turned sentences, no glib and conventional condolence. No, just a clasp of my hand and whatever of Christ’s tender care I could convey with my eyes. When a heart is throbbing with its most acute anguish it is not speech that is needed, but our Lord’s healing silence.

IV. A Symbol of Mystery. When Christ hung upon the cross, how did he reply to cruel taunts? With a silence so noble and noteworthy that the centuries reckon with it as sublime. Like the Saviour we too can not escape occasions when the noblest weapon of moral dignity is silence.

Silence! Let no one think it useless! Give it a larger and a more meaningful place in your soul. Whatever you do, don’t treat Christ with such carelessness and flippancy that he can return you nothing but his awful and dooming silence. His silence to you can be terribly fatal. Your silence to him may be tremendously fruitful.—From Evangelical Sermons of Our Day, ed. by A. W. Blackwood (Manhasset, N. Y.: Channel Press, 1959).

For this thing [the thorn in the flesh] I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me (2 Cor. 12:8; read vv. 1–11).

What a confused world this would be if God answered all our prayers affirmatively! For this reason the Scriptures teach what to do when a prayer seems dead. Paul had his thorn in the flesh. For its removal he prayed three times. But God said No, lest the Apostle become conceited, forgetting that this is God’s world. He may refuse a prayer because he has better things to give than we dare to ask. So let us turn into modern language these lessons about the conditions of prayer.

I. Clarify What You Seek. “Watch out when you pray! Are you ready to receive what you really cry for in your unconscious? When you pray for peace, are you prepared for the costs of peace? When you pray for brotherhood, are you able to stand the involvement of brotherhood?” Your prayer is not what you say but what you think in your subconscious mind. When Elizabeth Barrett was with her father he prayed: “O God, make Elizabeth well.” But she did not get well. Robert Browning won her heart, and took her to Italy as his wife. There he prayed: “O God, make Elizabeth well.” She was healed. The father’s prayer was obscured by the desire to keep his daughter at home. Browning’s prayer was the devoted identification of a husband with his wife.

II. Clear Up Your Human Relations. Before we speak our prayers we need to clarify our human relationships. With those who stand out at odds against us we may first need to make restitution and receive forgiveness. With a married man the way to start praying effectively for his wife and children is to love them more tenderly. For a young married man with a mother-in-law critical about his lack of money, the way to start praying for her is to show her clearly that he loves her. What woman with wrinkles on her face wants to remain bitter?

III. Cooperate with God. Your prayer may be denied so that God can give you some greater blessing. Paul said, “I will glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may come upon me.” Like Naaman the leper, instead of seeking to do something great, accept the little deed that God desires. Like Samuel in the night, when he heard the voice of God and thought it the voice of a man, learn to know the voice of God. Like Tagore, the Christian philosopher of India, learn to say: “I thank Thee, God, for Thy hard refusals, which have been my salvation.”—Pastor, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, N. Y.

Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven (Acts 1:11; read vv. 1–11).

Ascension Day brings into the songs of the Church Militant the final note of victory. Ever since then the Church has kept looking up, and will do so until He comes again, as come he will. Meanwhile the Church should sing: “Glory, glory to our King!” The Ascension Gospel is:

I. Glorious in Direction. Twice our text says: “up into heaven.” In the light of Ascension Day our prayers ascend in the assurance of God’s love. By faith we now have up there the One who lives to intercede for us, the One exalted far above all earthly things, able to govern his Church and finally lead her to glory forever. “Glory, glory to our King!”

II. Glorious in Meaning. For our King this was Coronation Day. At the end of his earthly sojourn it was fitting that he should return to heaven in triumph. For those who now walk the way of the Cross and with all their heart believe that no one cometh to the Father but by Him, the ascension of Christ has built a free bridge to heaven. The Ascension is the crowning finale of all his words and works for our salvation. Here is the final and complete assurance that God the Father has accepted the work of his Son for the redemption of men from the guilt and punishment of all their sins. Glory to our King!

III. Glorious in Hope. For believers here on earth the highest blessings of the Ascension may be in the realm of hope. Hope is the keynote of our text. The idea of our Lord’s return was not new. But in view of the Ascension the message of the angels brought to believers a new impetus both to work and to wait for the Saviour’s second coming. Time for the winning of souls is limited. God wants all believers to be filled with the sort of energy reflected in the words of his Son: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day, for the night cometh, when no man can work.”

We call this our hope, and “we are saved by hope.” Hope here means faith as it concerns the future. To be of lasting worth one’s hope must have a sure foundation.

If any man says: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” that man has a blessed hope. It rests on the everlasting Rock of Ages, Christ and his unchanging Word.—From The Concordia Pulpit for 1962 (St. Louis: Concordia Press, 1962).

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? (Ps. 2:1; read vv. 1–12).

“The Second Psalm is one of the best. I love that psalm with all my heart. It strikes and flashes valiantly among kings, princes, counsellors.” Why did Luther the Reformer so love this difficult psalm? What does it mean to common folk now? Note the dramatic element, with different speakers, here shown in parentheses.

I. The Rebellion against God (The Psalmist, vv.1–3). A favorite Old Testament idea of God as King, and of sin as rebellion against him. A. The Folly of Rebelling against God. B. The Conspiracy against God. C. The Defiance of God. In history with Toynbee study such nations, notably Russia now.

II. The Laughter in Heaven (The Psalmist, on behalf of God, 4, 5). A. The Irony of God. B. The Anger of God. Here we behold “the dark line in God’s face.” When the powers of earth set themselves to defy their Maker, He knows, he cares, he shows righteous indignation. If he did not, how could we continue to bow down and adore him as the Holy One? Is this the grandmotherly God of some American pulpits today?

III. The Kingship of Christ (God as King, 6–9). Here is no Absentee Monarch, sitting on a distant star, indifferent to the woes of earth’s suffering saints. A. The Kingship of His Son. B. The Dominion of this King.—What a vision of World Missions! C. The Judgment on God’s Foes.

On an ocean liner a Scottish divine and one of our past statesmen were discussing our country and her corrupt cities. The minister: “What does America need?” “America needs an Emperor!” “You a distinguished American leader, highly honored at home and abroad! Do you confess that your Government is a failure?” “Sir, America needs an Emperor, and his name is Christ!” So does the world. Our earth has an Emperor, but alas, countless hosts still rebel.

IV. The Call for Submission (The Psalmist, 10–12). A. The Voice of Wisdom. B. The Fear of the Lord. C. The Call for Submission. “Kiss his feet with trembling” (Moffatt), or else make ready to receive his judgment.

After such a heart-searching message from God, the hearer longs to cry out: “What can I do, right here and now?” My brother, dedicate yourself anew to God, as Luther did before the Reformation. Then let the Lord guide in Christian warfare, according to the spirit of the psalm that Luther loved.—(After a prayer of dedication, have the people sing: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”)

The Last Gasp

The finest journal in its field is the Journal of the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors—professional, contemporary, lively, and instructive. All the more impressive, therefore, is the table of contents for the January issue. I wonder if the titles even need comment:

“The Role of the Counselor in Sex Behavior and Standards.”

“College Youth and Sexual Confusion.”

“Premarital Sex Norms in America and Scandinavia.”

“The Variety and Meaning of Premarital Heterosexual Experiences for the College Student.”

“Premarital Pregnancies and Their Outcome.”

“Sex and the College Student: A Bibliography of New Findings and Insights.”

From what I can find out, this table of contents is the result of pressures among deans of women that their journal give them help in what has become a very serious problem on every college campus. We have passed through an era when we were just a little pleased with ourselves because we could speak freely on matters of sex. We are entering an era when we shall, perhaps, begin to discuss this subject with a note of desperation. Sometimes we dig up more snakes than we can kill; and as against the wisdom of our forebearers, we will have turned loose in the name of freedom what shall now destroy us by license.

I don’t know who Stevie Smith is, but he surely got off a good one once: “I was much farther out than you thought and not waving but drowning.”

In this “far out” day of ours, things may not be quite as gay as they look.

EUTYCHUS II

Tribunal In Jerusalem

It is gratifying to see your publication take such a sympathetic and well-informed interest in the position of the Hebrew Christian in Israel. For some strange reason the evangelical press of this country has thus far paid scant attention to this matter which is of profound significance to the mutual relationship between Christians and Jews. The recent decision of the Jerusalem Supreme Court in my humble opinion surpasses in historical significance anything that has happened since the emergence of the State of Israel. The article by Dr. Jocz, “A Test of Tolerance” (Mar. 29 issue), was superb.

VICTOR BUKSBAZEN

General Secy.

The Friends of Israel

Philadelphia, Pa.

The words of Jesus (Matt. 12:30) testify against Father Daniel’s right to be an Israeli citizen.… How can a priest (or a Christian minister) accept and preach the guilt of Jews and be a good Jewish citizen? How, Doctor Jocz?

Milwaukee, Wisc.

The American Council for Judaism also has misgivings about this case, but offers a different set of reasons.… We felt that the Brother Daniel case was part of a series of incidents in the State of Israel which purposely aim to link Jews outside of Israel with the policies and actions of that State itself. The Law of Return is based on the Zionist theory that every Jew, no matter in which country he is a citizen, has automatic nationality rights in the State of Israel. This claim is made on the basis of common religion shared by Jews the world over. The Council denies that there is a “Jewish” nationality (which Zionism advances). We therefore reject any claim on the part of the Israeli judicial, executive, or legislative branches to represent or speak for Americans of Jewish faith.

Ex. Dir.

American Council for Judaism

New York, N. Y.

Soviet Churchmen And Ncc

To some readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, particularly those who have followed the comments of Fulton Lewis, Jr. and Dr. Carl McIntire on the recent visit of Soviet clergymen to this country, your account (“Soviet Church Leaders Visit America,” Mar. 29 issue) may seem a bit on the “Mister Milquetoast” order, and the same judgment might be passed on the statement of the Denver Association of Evangelicals as you report it, though that statement does indeed point a finger of scorn at the preposterous claim that these men actually represent Christian believers or true Christian churches.

But I always try to find things to commend and I want you to know that I am truly delighted that you quoted Nikodim in his reference to the 32 Siberian “refugees” as “fanatics.” Surely no reader can fail to question, what kind of a Christian is a man who, claiming to be the beneficiary of a rule of freedom of religion, excuses persecution of other Christians on the ground that they are “fanatics”?

American Council President of Christian Laymen

Madison, Wisc.

Why do the NCC spokesmen blame McIntire? He did not invite the Soviet churchmen to the United States. I am quite familiar with Dr. McIntire’s part in the visit. In many ways I thoroughly disapprove of his work but in this phase I feel that he is doing something that needs to be done.

Dr. McIntire will probably not be able to convince NCC officialdom of anything. Sometimes I am convinced that church officials are more arrogant than any others. Where Dr. McIntire helps is to undercut support for the NCC at the grassroots. I used to be proud of the fact that the congregations of which I had charge made yearly contributions to the support of NCC and WCC. However, since about 1955 I have not requested such contributions of any congregation. It didn’t take Dr. McIntire to convince me, but I give him credit for letting people know how poorly we have been led by the “ruling oligarchy” of the two organizations.

Incidentally, the “ruling oligarchy” of the NCC and WCC is quite comparable to similar groups that get control of departments of the National Council of my own Episcopal Church. A few years ago when I was in charge (under the Bishop of Honolulu) of the Taiwan Mission of our church I tangled with leaders of our Overseas Department over their “playing footsie with the Reds” policies. I really cooked my goose. The officials remain or retire with great honor. Only those who call to question their policies suffer. We “underlings” are supposed to take the same attitude as the soldiers in the “Light Brigade.” Those who “play footsie” with the Communists are always right. Those who call to question such policies are always wrong.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Anaconda, Mont.

Your reporting on the Russians now visiting under the auspices of the NCC was about the most objective view I’ve seen. It will therefore be criticized probably by both sides on this issue.

One comment by a man identified as an “NCC aide” said, “It’s the most reprehensible thing McIntire has ever done. He’s playing with human lives and he may end up with blood on his hands.”

The curious thing about this statement is that it gives the impression that some of these Russians may be in danger from the Soviet government when they get back home because of either real or alleged statements made in this country.

If this is what the aide implies, it appears that, like it or not, he is in substantial agreement with Dr. McIntire, who claims that the clergy is under control of the secret police and terror is still being used today.

Finally, if this is so, why is the NCC so intent on building a united front and trying to sell American Christians on peaceful coexistence?

Miami, Fla.

Luther And James

I would like to make the following comment on Dr. J. Oliver Buswell’s reference to Martin Luther (Eutychus, Mar. 29 issue): Luther, like some other men of the Reformation period, doubted whether the Epistle of James rightly should belong to the New Testament canon. His so-called free utterances on this epistle [thus] have nothing to do with the infallibility of the Scriptures.

A number of able scholars, among them W. Walther, in his Erbe der Reformation, have proved that Luther believed in the verbal inspiration. Again and again he declared the canonical books on the Bible to be inerrant. I only would refer to the evidence given by Francis Pieper in his Christian Dogmatics, part I, pp. 276 ff.

As is well known, Luther’s doubts concerning the canonicity of the Epistle of James were not shared by later Lutheran theologians.

Faith Theological Seminary

Elkins Park, Pa.

Jesus And Paul

Such articles as “Paul on the Birth of Jesus” (Mar. 15 issue) play directly into the hands of the enemies of my Lord and of his program. Completely ignoring Paul (in Rom. 8:29) “in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren,” Dr. Robinson distorts the writings of Paul to make it appear that Paul teaches a Jesus who embodied God because of a unique birth. Such a unique birth is not God’s way of getting himself embodied in human kind.

Eugene, Ore.

Enclosed is an additional word … to strengthen the case I sought to make:

One ought to visualize Paul in the context of his life situation in order to understand his references to the birth of Jesus. Galatians 1:18, 19 may be paraphrased thus: Three years after my conversion I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter for the purpose of inquiring into the things of Jesus Christ. I stayed with him for some fifteen days, including in my historical investigations conferences with James the brother of the Lord.

According to the Muratorium Fragment and the Lukan Prologue, acting on Paul’s authority, Luke his companion and physician with the careful research of a “legal expert” prepared the “authentic knowledge” of the Christian origins as Paul’s defence before his Excellency, Judge Theophilus (Fragment of Muratori, cited J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius, pp. 144, 145; Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1; J. Knox, The New Testament, 1963, p. 19).

Thus the Apostle Paul would not have been ignorant of the miracles of the Incarnation, and his epistolary references to the birth of Jesus are best interpreted as written on the basis of his acceptance of an account given by James and recorded later by Luke.

Columbia Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

Secularistic Religion

Mr. Stanley Lowell objects to having all accredited American schools (independent as well as state) receive their proportionate share of educational taxes (Eutychus, Mar. 1 issue). One reason he gives is: “I myself am a Protestant minister but would object to paying taxes for Mr. Vanden Berg’s school [a Christian one].” May I say that it may come as a shock to Mr. Lowell (to use his own terms), but there are also “any number of American citizens who do not care to pay taxes for the particular kind” of secularistic, God-ignoring religion of Mr. Lowell’s state schools. It is just because our country is not a monolithic structure of God-less, “neutral” secularism but rather a pluralism that Citizens for Educational Freedom advocate that taxes which are taken from all should not be given exclusively to one type of religious schools, namely, the state schools, but to all schools without regard to race, color or creed.

A fair solution to the problem would be a system modeled after the recently-instituted N. Y. Scholar Incentive Program or the N. Y. Regents Scholarships or the G.I. Bill of Rights. Under these laws educational taxes are given to students to use in any accredited college of their choice.… Each segment of the American pluralistic society pays for its own type of education.… This proposed aid-to-the-student plan would also solve the insoluble dilemma of whether Bible reading, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, and similar religious exercises or instruction should be included or abolished in the state schools.…

Instructor in Systematic Theology

Westminster Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Yes, There Is

I have been preaching for 50 years, and in all that time I’ve never seen such a beautiful and magnificent piece of writing as “Jesus and His Kingdom” by James Hyslop (Mar. 1 issue).… I’ll treasure this article for my remaining days for it will add sparkle to my last sermons. Is there a way of letting Hyslop know how he lifted a veteran’s spirits?

Herrin, Ill.

The article … is brilliant for a layman.…

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Pittsburgh, Pa.

The Unspecified Specified

The “ancient saying (source unspecified)” heading the article “British Ecumenism: Anglican-Methodist Merger?” (News, Mar. 15 issue) is from the Mishnah, Tractate Pirke Abot-M. Abot 2.21. See R. Travers Herford, ed., Pirke Aboth: The Tractate ‘Fathers’ from the Mishnah (New York, 1945), p. 62.

Prof. of Judaic Studies

Drew University

Madison, N. J.

• The saying, appended to the Anglican-Methodist merger plan released in February: “It is not given to thee to finish the task but neither art thou free to desist therefrom.”—ED.

Nose Of A Camel

In the March 1 issue you editorialize on the question “Is the Supreme Court on Trial?” … The Supreme Court is not on trial, believe me; the Church and the home are on trial! If our youth are not taught to pray and to read their Bibles at home and in the Church, their being forced to do so in school might even be repulsive to them.

Let’s examine our Christian institutions instead of secular institutions. Our refusal to do so will leave the legal doors ajar for the camel of Romanism to inch its way inside.

The Manasseh Cutler Church

Hamilton, Mass.

Four In A Row

My personal thanks to George Christian Anderson for his timely, “Who Is Ministering to Ministers?” and to you for the entire January 18 issue.

The “desire to preserve the church’s reputation” reaches lamentable proportions in some of our smaller evangelical denominations where ministers outnumber the churches. I am acquainted with a church situation where four pastors in succession had either very unpleasant or violent pastoral terminations with the church, resulting in unpleasant estrangements from the church apparently for the rest of their lives.…

Chaplain

Nebraska Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home

Grand Island, Neb.

Dignity Of The Body

It would be heartening to see the churches catch up with government researchers in areas of physical, social, and spiritual concern. Churches that once identified the cause of Christianity with abstinence or temperance are hardly complimented by the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous is a basically secular movement, or by the fact that in many communities the agencies now promoting break-the-smoking-habit seminars are non-religious. If the churches want to get into social action, they have a wide open field right in the areas of alcoholism and cigarette addiction.—Editorial, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 15, 1963.

Six months ago that kind of editorial comment would have made me feel uncomfortable and more than somewhat ashamed. Why? For the simple reason that, while recognizing the incontrovertible truth of it, I could have done nothing about it, in view of the fact that I myself was a tobacco addict. Approving the theory intellectually, I could have done nothing about it in practice because I was bound by the very chains which it seems quite imperative to break.

Mind you, I should have strenuously denied my addiction to the weed. For thirty years, off and on, I had been a confirmed cigarette smoker, regarding it as a pleasant habit which could be defended on many grounds. (Hadn’t Spurgeon himself enjoyed his cigar? And in any case wasn’t this one of those questions of personal ethics upon which no general law could be formulated? You know the arguments.)

I confess that I was badly shaken by the publication exactly a year ago of the Royal College of Physicians’ report “Smoking and Health.” Shaken, you understand, not by the scientifically proved connection between smoking and lung cancer in so far as it affected myself. Most smokers have an infinite capacity for rationalizing, and obscuring the medical facts in a cloud of smoke. We all think, in other words, that we’ll be one of those who escape. But what about those who don’t escape? What about the young people just beginning to smoke? If the medical facts are true—and what sane and unbiased man can dispute them?—what about the moral responsibility of the minister to show the right kind of example?

All this might have remained in the realm of academic theological discussion if I hadn’t been put on the spot by the medical authorities themselves. I was approached to see whether I would be prepared to take some active part in the first experimental anti-smoking clinic in Scotland and to provide, if possible, a group of volunteers from my own Congregation for the clinic. This was a challenge which could not be avoided; and indeed I was glad of it, for it compelled me to look straight at a problem round whose edges I had skirted for years.

The upshot was that I began with a little group of ten people four months ago. At first we met every week. We all knew one another intimately as members of the same Church. We had expert medical advice on hand through the doctor in charge of us. And we set out with considerable trepidation on what we knew would be a rough and uphill road.

We used the well-worn methods of group dynamics in our meeting, sharing—in frank and honest discussion—our problems, experiences, and victories, such as they were. It was soon obvious to us that for the Christian there are certain strong reasons for not smoking. We all found a kind of profound relief in being able to acknowledge these after years of self-delusion.

First, there are the medical facts. They are too well-known to need repetition. It would seem that the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer (to say nothing of chronic bronchitis and heart disease) has been firmly and irrefutably established. If we believe that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost it is surely wrong to subject it to this kind of damage, denying its dignity.

Second, there are the economic facts. In Scotland it costs something like the equivalent of 250 dollars a year to smoke twenty cigarettes a day. If every smoker who is a Church member gave that amount of money to the work of the Lord, the Scottish Kirk would at least have all its financial problems solved—whatever others remained. Very few of us in the Clinic were giving as much to the cause of the Kingdom as we were blowing away in clouds of smoke.

Third, and not to bandy words about, there is the plain fact that we were all drug addicts. Most of us in the clinic were heavy smokers. Of course, as I’ve said, we would have been reluctant to classify ourselves as addicts. We would probably have called ourselves “controlled smokers”—you know the kind of thing: “I could give it up easily if I wanted to.” Like Mark Twain we might have said it was easy to stop smoking; we had done it hundreds of times. Below the indispensable self-deception, we were a bunch of very uneasy Christians—realizing as we did, in moments of illumination, that our addiction was no less an addiction though its immediate results are not as deadly nor as obvious as drink or drugs. Here was an idol that had to be dealt with.

One thing we agreed about at our first meeting—that it was absolutely imperative to stop smoking completely and at once rather than attempt to cut it down gradually. So the experiment began.

Four months later there are certain things that can be reported. The original group has grown from ten to over thirty, demonstrating that there are a great many people desperately anxious to break the tobacco habit and who are waiting for help and encouragement. This provides a major opportunity for the Church.

Success there has been. About 90 per cent of the group have given up smoking completely; a few have cut it down to almost nothing; one or two have fallen by the wayside and retired from the battle.

It is still too early to make any kind of final estimate. Those of us who know the subtle power of the tobacco habit would hesitate to say that we are cured. I haven’t, at the time of writing, smoked a cigarette for four months; and I trust that this will be a permanent victory. But the furthest I would go at the moment is to say that I haven’t smoked today. One or two of our group have had to fight the problem of alcoholism, and they agree that it was easier to stop drinking after their conversion than it has been to stop smoking. Let no man who has never been a smoker sit in judgment on those who have been through this particular abyss.

What can be said without any shadow of doubt is that this Anti-Smoking Clinic has been perhaps the most exciting experience of Christian community in my ministry. For many years, in the course of my parochial work, I have been concerned with the creation of small groups or cells of lay people who understand their call to the apostolate, and who are prepared to submit themselves to the discipline of prayer, study, and fellowship, thus becoming trained and equipped for the task of witness. I have been fortunate, in two Parishes, to see something of the power of these lay groups in action and to learn something about the fellowship of the Spirit—the koinonia—which we ought to have in our Churches. But I have never experienced such a depth and reality of koinonia as we have in our “Smokeless Union.”

How to account for this? Surely it is not difficult. The basic and necessary conditions of true koinonia—from the human point of view—are present: a sense of our absolute helplessness and our total dependence upon the grace of God. We share a common need—our bondage to a habit which must be broken; and we share a common conviction—the knowledge that by ourselves we cannot break the habit. We know precisely what Paul meant in Romans 7; and we have come to know also in quite a new way what it means to cry exultantly: “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“If the churches want to get into social action, they have a wide field right in the areas of alcoholism and cigarette addiction.” Do not for one minute doubt the truth of that. And if there is any minister reading this who, like myself, knows the power of the tobacco habit and the greater power of the Risen Christ, I would cordially advise you to form a Smokeless Union in your Church—with you as a founder-member.

St. George’s-Tron

Glasgow, Scotland

WARREN WIERSBE¹Warren Wiersbe is Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Covington, Kentucky. He served four years with Youth for Christ International, part of that time as Editor of YFC Magazine. He has written often on teen-age problems. His most recent book is A Guidebook for Teens, published by Moody Press.

If Christ’s pastoral commission to Peter were rephrased in terms of today’s population explosion, it would exhort the pastor to register the new babies, provide for the children, keep the teen-agers from turning into juvenile delinquents, counsel the newlyweds, encourage the middle-aged, and do something constructive for the senior citizens. Besides all this, he would have the care of the church!

Most of these assignments the average pastor accepts with faith and courage, except the one relating to the youth. He feels that the babies are no problem; he gets along well with children; the newlyweds and middle-aged appreciate his services and respect his office; the senior saints are happy for any attention. But many pastors shake their heads and look upon teen-agers as problems, not as people.

The Root Of The Problem

The first factor which contributes to the average pastor’s dilemma with his youth is his own general attitude toward teen-agers. If he is honest, he may have to confess that he is resentful of his church’s youth because they do not seem to respect him, because they pose problems he cannot easily solve. In other words, while children and adults give the pastor an opportunity to succeed, a group of teen-agers often poses a threat to his ministerial miracle-working, simply because he does not know what to do with them. More than one adolescent psychologist has suggested that the root of adult-teen difficulty is the adult’s resentment of his own “lost youth” and of the teen-ager’s obvious vitality and carefree attitude. We “hate ourselves” for growing old, but we “take it out” on the young people instead.

The first step toward a mature pastoral ministry with our young people, then, would be a genuine acceptance of them—faults and all—in the spirit of Christian love. Teen-agers detect insincerity; nothing less than true Christian love will win their allegiance.

The growing pressure brought against the pastor—“do something about the teen-age problem”—is another factor. A minister cannot read a newspaper or magazine without being told that the churches and the homes are to blame for the delinquency situation. Occasionally some honest orator will admit that the problem is not quite that simple, but popular journalism is usually victorious. The pastor feels a stab in his conscience every time he reads a teen-age crime report.

A third factor is the increased interdenominational youth activity across the nation. While most of these ministries try to cooperate with the local church, competition seems to result inevitably as the young people compare the church’s program with the latest city-wide or nation-wide conference.

Can the pastor who feels these pressures daily escape frustration? Yes—if he will only realize that a satisfying ministry with his church’s youth can be his. The pastor need not become a “youth expert” (whatever that is) or spend his evenings building a file of jokes. Just by being himself and by following a few basic principles, he can pastor these teen-agers into a fuller development of their Christian faith.

Trouble-Making Teens

The muddied waters are beginning to clear when the pastor can see that the teen-agers who give him the most trouble do not even exist! They are imaginary:

The Historical Teen. This youth shows up whenever you find yourself saying, “Now, back when I was a young person.…” The fact of the matter is, times have changed since you were a teen-ager, although you may not like to admit it. Few young men drove cars when you were in high school, but an automobile is a status symbol today, and it means more to a teen-ager than Father can ever know. When we find ourselves comparing today’s adolescents with those of our own generation, we are bound to run into problems. Keep “The Historical Teen” in the pages of your diary; he’s a trouble-maker in the church.

The Statistical Teen. Several wealthy firms make their money by interviewing young people and selling their reports to the public. They will tell you what kind of music teens enjoy, what they want for Christmas, how many books they read a year. But of the three kinds of lies—white lies, black lies, and statistics—“statistics” is the first. “Mr. Average Teen-Ager” does not exist. The figures you study in the latest survey will seldom apply to the youth in your church. You cannot work with a statistic, so devote yourself to understanding and helping the teen-agers you actually know.

The Commercial Teen. This is the mental image you have of “A Modern Teen-ager.” It is made up of many things: newspaper reports, movie ads, TV personalities, your own youthful years, and so forth. The American public pictures the American teen as a handsome youth with a crew cut, a hot rod, a warm smile, and a harem of girlfriends. He too does not exist.

The Ideal Teen. A man must have ideals or he will drift into failure, but an ideal must be balanced by reality. Every pastor’s “Ideal Teen-Ager” would be different, but in each case the pastor must admit the image is impractical. Every teen-ager is an individual, and each one’s progress must be measured on his own scale of abilities and opportunities.

The pastor who wants to help young people must accept and work with the teen-agers he has, seeking to understand them better, and must not be detoured into fretting over young people who do not exist in life.

Taking Teens Seriously

A good pastor must understand that every teen-ager faces three important hurdles on the road to his maturity—self-understanding (What am I like?), self-development (What can I do?), and self-esteem (What am I worth?). The young person will use his “teen crowd” for the moral and emotional support he needs in reaching these goals. As a result, the understanding pastor will not criticize his young people for their “group complex” and their desire to enjoy the crowd. (If it is the wrong kind of crowd, the pastor will want to step in and change things, not denounce them.) The wise pastor will perceive “going steady” as another device to gain self-understanding, self-development, and self-esteem.

Teen-agers need a pastor who reads his Bible with them in mind. After all, Joseph was a teen-ager when he was sold into Egypt, David was a teen-ager when he killed Goliath, Daniel was in his early teens when he was taken to Babylon. And what of Samuel, Josiah, Jeremiah, Timothy, and even Mary, the mother of our Lord, who was certainly in her teens when she wed Joseph! This does not mean that every sermon should be only for youth, but it does mean that the youth should be considered in every sermon.

The pastor who takes teen-age problems as seriously as the teen-agers do is going to win them. He will never say, “Well, this is a typical teen-age problem, and you’ll grow out of it.” The problems of every age group are usually “typical,” but this does not relieve the pain nor solve the problem! The sympathetic pastor will listen with his heart, help the teen-ager face himself honestly, and carefully lead him into an understanding of the basic principles governing the Christian life.

Finally, the pastor will avoid treating the young person as a means to an end. “We missed you in church last Sunday. If you had been here, we would have had fifty teen-agers!” Is this why you wanted him in church, so he could help the annual report? No teen-ager (and no adult, for that matter) wants to be treated like a number in an IBM machine; he wants to be accepted as a person, the way God accepts him.

The Challenge To The Church

Teen-agers drop out of church when their faith ceases to be relevant to daily living and when Bible study becomes a burden rather than an exciting adventure. When the pulpit criticizes them for “being worldly” but fails to offer them a satisfying social life, young people drift away from the house of God. When they see glaring inconsistencies in the lives of the adults (particularly their parents), they lose confidence in the Christian faith and go searching for a substitute. When the traditional “canned youth programs” no longer challenge them, no longer face their problems nor meet their needs, they turn elsewhere for help.

Sympathetic sponsors and teachers, well-prepared programs, increased opportunities for service in the church, at least two “dress-up” events each year, a youth library, emphasizing Christian growth and careers, and an open door to the pastor’s study—these ingredients will help attract and hold young people. A pastor who makes the Bible live and who shows he loves young people by including them in his messages will make the recipe complete.

There are several ways in which a pastor can get to understand his church’s youth. He can spend time with them in their informal get-togethers. It is not a matter of finding time, but making time. Remind yourself that your church is always one generation short of extinction, and you will have no problem making time for the intermediate picnic or the graduation reception. Read a good youth magazine each month. It would help to glance at the local high school paper, too. You can read one in ten minutes and come up with a dozen topics of conversation for the next time you meet one of your youthful members.

Above all, pray personally for your young people. Bearing them up at the throne of grace will tie them to your heart, and your awakened interest will reveal itself in your conversation and your sermons. Pray for their career choices, and your sermons will become more practical. Pray about their future mates and homes, and your counseling will take on added meaning. The joyful result will be a pastor who looks at his young people and sees, not heart-breaking problems, but heaven-sent potentials for the glory of God.

END

The crisis situation in our church colleges grows not from financial problems, limited and inadequate plant facilities, the severe difficulty of recruiting and retaining faculty personnel capable of distinguished teaching, not from the struggle to maintain full accreditation, not from the need for a dynamic program of salesmanship and public relations. These and many other problems are very real in our church colleges and must be met with every possible effort at solution. But the most theatening condition involves none of these. The basic problem, rather, is expressed by what an executive secretary of a large philanthropic corporation said recently: “If the church colleges would dare to be loyal to the basic purpose of their existence they would lack neither students nor finance.” In elaborating he made it clear that the “basic purpose” of the church-related college is not education per se, but education modified by the qualifying adjective “Christian.”

Wherever it serves, the Church’s success or effectiveness depends on the quality of its leadership. This is true in the church college, for here the Church is at work in education. Obviously college administrators do not consciously try to bypass the reason for the church college’s existence, nor do they purpose to treat lightly the serious responsibility of vigorously promoting the Christian faith on campus. The crisis that prevails, rather—and it is one which makes the difference between state-sponsored and church-sponsored education—has developed because college leaders have become absorbed in promoting education apart from any Christian emphasis. They neglect the modifying Christian factor in education. In some instances such neglect may be due to ineffective Christian leadership by the administration. More often this critical state has developed because administrators are too busy with other things to make the college’s impact on student life positively and vigorously Christian.

When the directors of a business corporation select a president, they choose someone whose fitness for the job is closely related to their product. He must know how to produce the company’s commodity. In Christian education the charter of a church college defines that school’s business. The charter usually states in specific words that the incorporated college of the Church is to educate not only people, but Christian people. This is paramount in fulfilling the basic purpose of the church college. In selecting a president, then, the trustees of a church college must write high on the list of qualifications for a president the ability and dedication to train not only graduates but Christian graduates. In principle the Christian college cannot justify its existence apart from thorough loyalty to the responsibility of producing educated Christians. When degrees are conferred and diplomas awarded on graduation day, the church college proves loyal to its charter and justifies its existence not only by qualifying each graduate to receive an academic degree but also by bringing him to the time of graduation as a committed Christian. Becoming a committed Christian is a vital part of the educative process in the program of the church college.

Because of this special function of the church college, the president’s foremost responsibility is wise and vigorous promotion of the Christian faith on campus. He cannot delegate this responsibility. Certainly he must enlist the service of many others in discharging this major duty of his office, but the president himself must stand in the forefront of this endeavor. To the long list of what is expected of any college president, this one of promoting the Christian faith among faculty and student body is added to the duties of the church-college president. He must have a warm heart toward God and a passionate concern for the spiritual development of his students. Students must receive a lasting impression of the president’s earnest solicitude for their Christian growth. More than is usually acknowledged, it is the president who sets the Christian tone on campus. What he is in his own life and what he does in his role as religious leader profoundly influence both faculty and students. Furthermore, the president who fully supports the “basic purpose” of existence of the church college jealously guards a sound Christian emphasis in establishing school policies and campus activities. Nothing is permitted to overshadow the claims of the Christian faith. Such a president recognizes that a weak and inadequate academic program is inconsistent with sound Christian principles. To allow low standards of scholarship, poor teaching in the classroom, deficient laboratory and library facilities, is to disqualify the church college from performing its proper Christian role. Academic responsibility goes hand in hand with Christian responsibility. One supplements and supports the other. The church-college president has strong and balanced convictions concerning the correlation of academic and Christian phases of education. But one conviction distinguishes him from presidents of secular schools: his insistence on academic excellence never lessens his sense of responsibility for vigorously promoting the Christian faith.

The decline of effective Christian emphasis in church colleges today is tragic both because of the grave condition of a secularized society and because of the impotence of a confused Church. American society makes a god of material values, and the Church with its declining spiritual power is unprepared to evangelize the people. Not since the founding of our nation has there been such stubborn resistance to Christ as the Lord of Life. In many respects church colleges have a strategic opportunity to prepare and to supply proper and special leadership for America in this time of crisis. Will these colleges perceive what they can do to awaken people to the right and eternal values? Will these colleges undertake a revival of personal, experimental religion on their campuses that prepares students for dedicated citizenship and spiritual leadership?—Dr. CONWAY BOATMAN, President Emeritus, Union College, Barbourville, Kentucky.

THE CRITICAL CONFLICT—Too few students see the real, critical conflict between the assumptions of Christianity and those of secularism. Many students must have their faith severely disturbed before it becomes worth very much.—Dr. R. K. MEINERS, Assistant Professor of English, Arizona State University.

ROLE OF THE COLLEGE—If it is true that the home and church no longer effectively found the young in basic Christian teachings about God, the world, and man, … the college, in its intellectual functions, may have a unique responsibility.—Dr. TUNIS ROMEIN, Professor of Philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina.

I can find no better expression of our mission than a very old-fashioned one: we are to confront the student with the Gospel. This task remains as long as the university requires for graduation courses in the cycle of the mollusk, but not in the life of Jesus; as long as its students (our students) are exposed to what was said and assumed in first-century Rome but not to what was said and assumed in first-century Jerusalem; as long as the philosophy department imparts the teachings of Kant and Hegel in ignorance of or opposition to those of Christ and Hosea.

Narrowly construed, what we are talking about now is Christian education. It is naive to assume and unfair to expect that the student will permanently worship what he has not carefully explored. The student wants and needs to know how the Christian faith got that way, whether its critics are right, whether its advocates are wrong, or whether (as he suspects is more likely the case) the truth is less neat and more stubborn than either his pastor or his professor has said.

The serious attempt to answer such questions (or, if necessary, to raise them in the first place) brings us into direct confrontation with faculty.

Knowledge Plus Morality

A part of our task with teachers is to give the lie to the “heresy that knowledge is moral” (Gerald Kennedy, The Lion and the Lamb, p. 14). “To emphasize information alone is to clap with one hand” (A. W. Goshay, “What is the Message?,” Saturday Review, Feb. 13, 1960, p. 35). Whitehead observed that “a merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.” He might have added that a merely well-informed man is dangerous, too. “It all depends upon who has the knowledge and what he does with it” (A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education [Mentor Books], p. 43). Knowledge as such is not moral. It is morally neutral. This is not popular doctrine with the scientific naturalists and humanists. It will be anathematized as dogma; it will be resisted as unjustified restraint on academic liberty. But it must be stated and restated in every conceivably commendable way if we are to take seriously our mission of faculty confrontation.

Nature Of Ultimate Reality

Assuming that we are talking about the teacher who is resistant to the claims of Christianity, it is also safe to assume that he will not be especially interested in discussing the issue in theological categories, or even able to do so. I have found that such confrontation can therefore best take place in terms of what I might call a man’s primal assertion. Prior to all experiences is the question, “What shall I take to be real?” Here the Christian and the non-Christian or even the anti-Christian can join hands. This is a question in which each of them, each of us, is really involved. There is no getting out of it, whether I think or do not think, whether I think as a scientist or as a theologian, whether I like it or not. The scientist who has no other commitment for security than his science is manacled by blind faith. The religionist who resists and rejects the facts and even insights which science can contribute to his life is also blindly committed to blindness. But when a man can accept both without resenting either; when he can search out the one without distorting the other; when he can ask the question, “What shall I take to be real?,” and commit himself irrevocably to the answer—then he can be confident that the result will be both scientifically respectable and spiritually real.

Need Of The True Religion

Again, our mission involves a responsible confrontation of the university as a whole: student and faculty and staff. Whatever the nature of the University of Eden before the Fall, the contemporary academy is sorely afflicted with itself. It is gravely stricken with wounds of its own stabbing. I am suggesting very literally that the university needs to be saved. This cannot be accomplished, mind you, by saying it just this way. It cannot be brought about by a “wiser than thou” attitude. It will never be seen by a Church which is not willing to learn as well as teach. But it will arise out of a relation of critical friendliness, interpreting to the university the mind of the Church about the mind of Christ, although in penitent recognition that this is a mind which we neither fully understand nor perfectly embody.

Religion is being taught within the curriculum of some universities which make great claims of church-state virginity. I mean religion in the formal, systematic, historic sense of the word. Such teaching is often sprayed over with a magic paint called “Modern Philosophy and …” or “The Sociology of Religion.” That, supposedly, makes it invisible. But one coat won’t cover. It escapes me why this is believed to be more palatable or less sectarian simply because the teacher’s biases are those of a logical positivist rather than those of an orthodox Wesleyan or of a Roman Jesuit. In any case, it is happening, and I for one think it time we start employing a little holy boldness—and even a little unholy boldness, if this is necessary—in saying so.

If we do not, if we decline to declare the utter unneutrality of it, if we refuse to see—and to help the university to see—that some kind of religion, open or covert, is necessarily taught, we get the curious anomaly of an English literature teacher’s trying to deal with Milton without dealing with the cluster of Christian truth on the basis of which Milton wrote. You do not get Milton that way. What you get is Milton minus his faith plus the teacher’s ignorance.

A Liberating Fellowship

Again, let me suggest that the campus church’s mission requires it to speak to the larger Church of which it is a part. This is an important form of finger-pointing which, if we are not careful, can become an innocuous form of thumb-sucking. It involves interpreting the university to the Church beyond the university, combatting the pious anti-intellectualism that glories in its ignorance and has plenty to glory in.

I choose my words now carefully as well as, I hope, charitably. I speak as one who occupied a university pulpit for nearly five years before only recently coming within the orbit of what we call The Wesley Foundation. It saddens me to have to report that the breed of ecclesiastical cat known inaccurately as the student worker is the most insecure and frustrated clergyman in our church. Sometimes this is his own fault. But oftener, I suspect, it points to Methodism’s refusal (is she alone in this?) to take its campus men seriously and its unwillingness to heed the (sometimes) unpleasant things he has to say. He listens, as to an ancient gramophone, to the worn-out question about when he is coming back into the ministry. His friends treat him as a kind of male Virgin Mary upon whose head at ordination the bishop laid but one hand—and that lightly.

Faced with such a mission as here outlined, the campus church may be forgiven for reacting as the defendant did when he heard the bailiff announce the “Case of John Smith vs. the People of the United States.” “My God,” he breathed, “what a majority.” The only thing that will prevent such despair is the reverent recognition that the Church, like the individual, is justified by faith. It may well surprise us that God has chosen us, of all people, for this, of all tasks, to be fulfilled in these, of all circumstances.

What I covet for the Church I love is that she become an enlightened, liberating, and persuasive fellowship: enlightened about the facts of our tradition; liberating the lives of our people for joyful worship and service; persuading those who are not yet a part of us that here is a people who love one another in God and who, because they do, welcome all of every age or station to become the recipients of God’s grace and the instruments of his love.

I say it may well astound us that God has chosen us for this. But he has. So we must. Let us then, as Wesley said, unite the two so long disjoin’d: knowledge and vital piety.

END

Preacher in the Red

ELIXIR OF THE NORTHERN GODS

WHILE SERVING as interim pastor, I had occasion to spend a great deal of time counseling a widow who was undergoing severe spiritual trials. With prayer, I sought to minister the “strong consolation” of the Word.

At the close of each session, she would insist that I accompany her to the kitchen for a cup of steaming coffee. For me, being a Swede, that was reward enough! I would gratefully sip the “elixir of the northern gods” while her young son sat in a corner and eyed me with questioning probe.

One Saturday afternoon, some time later, the wife of the present pastor of that church telephoned. The preacher had collapsed with a fever due to a mysterious attack of something or other. Could I please supply the next day?

The congregation seemed somewhat surprised to see me without prior warning. But none was more taken back than my young friend of the kitchen. As I mounted the platform, he squirmed in his seat, gave his mother’s arm a hard pull, and cried out in a voice audible in every corner of the sanctuary, “Hey, mommy, look! That ain’t the preacher! That’s the fellow who came and drank up all your coffee!”—The Rev. EDWIN RAYMOND ANDERSON, Hartford, Connecticut.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

The future of private and church-related colleges is a matter of serious and ever-growing debate. For some observers the mounting competition of public education and the inroads of government spell inevitable disaster to the philosophy and hence the existence of these often small and struggling schools. Others are more optimistic; they refuse to surrender the sustaining factors of dedication to mission and reliance upon Providence. In either case, no one doubts the need for constant self-evaluation, and for courage to make those administrative and curricular changes demanded by the peculiar nature and requirements of the present age.

Ten-year studies done with the assistance of the Ford Fund for the Advancement of Education under the leadership of Sidney Tickton have enabled many small Christian colleges to make important assessments of their programs. Many have been encouraged to put their futures under rational control as effectively as does a modern business corporation, while still utilizing the asset of a mighty faith in God. Such evangelical educators are the people who know and operate upon the corrective principle that “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Other studies have been undertaken by Christian colleges which indicate the need to change to a twelve-month year and to shift the curricular emphasis from the lecture to learning. Such colleges will not need to use the obituary notices already prepared for them by some pessimists.

Evangelical colleges must deal realistically with three factors, for these are their dimensions of operation:

1. Their raison d’être depends upon the place they give to the Bible with its redemptive message and timeless meaning for human existence. Proper understanding of the Bible must be a core matter for the curriculum, a frame of reference for the exploding areas of knowledge in our time, and a clue to the highest integrity in a student’s intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. In such a climate the Bible becomes not just a numbered course but a lifetime resource of spiritual wisdom. Its perspectives enable the student to see man and his world in the light of God’s intention.

2. The evangelical college must deal with the academic and cultural realities. This aspect of Christian higher education has been sometimes unnecessarily suspect. The key components are students, faculty, library, and the learning situation. We must be clear about our assumptions. We must ask the question: “Whom are we educating and for what purpose?” The American academic scene has been described as “that odd mixture of status hunger, voodoo, tradition, lust, stereotyped dissipation, love, solid achievement and plain good fun, sometimes called ‘college life’ ” (Saturday Evening Post, March 7, 1959, p. 44).

Evangelical colleges can give a sound preprofessional education if they avoid proliferation of majors and the superficiality of fashionable and transient survey courses. They can produce men and women who serve their divine Lord and humanity with a competence equal to or surpassing that of their non-Christian counterparts. They can provide that good orientation in the social graces which enables the graduate to laugh and to lift his life above the miasmic fogs of self-indulgence and neurotic guilts and anxieties. They can produce a breed of God-fearing men who will save the nation from rising tides of governmentism.

3. Evangelical colleges as corporations are not exempt from economic realities. Their expense items must be scrutinized, and a conscious effort must be directed toward the best utilization of facilities and personnel. The long summer vacation belonged to a no-longer-existent rural economy. Capital assets must have maximum returns in terms of their function. Teachers and administration must make room for more and more new teaching techniques. Faculty salaries must be adjusted to cancel the need for a second job. How can a part-time faculty provide a first-class education? The traditional peaks of campus activity on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings must give way to academic weeks of five and one-half days that utilize time and space from eight in the morning until nine in the evening when necessary. Adult education, too, must not be a barren territory in the evangelical life of America.

On the income side, church constituencies must awaken to their responsibilities as never before. Church-related colleges need college-related churches. Students usually provide only half the instructional income and do nothing for capital programs; their churches, moreover, do not know that they should subsidize them. Private support from individuals, foundations, and corporations is on the increase, but the question of federal aid must be carefully evaluated. While there are helpful scholarship and loan programs without controls, federal grants carry the possibility of compromising separation of church and state.

In a New England regional meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges, Dr. Frank H. Sparks said that “the tripod of freedom” consists of free government, free enterprise, and free education. The evangelicals have a large responsibility to ensure that income sources do not carry compromises of freedom into their programs. Many evangelical Christians are totally ignorant of their opportunity under the generous tax provisions for the support of colleges. Annuities, trusts, property and business transfers, wills, bequests, and gifts out of income are to the advantage of the donor as well as the college. Many Christians die intestate who could have directed their assets to the glory of God in Christian higher education.

The present college-age population (18–21 years of age) of over ten million will increase to 14.2 million in 1970, and to almost 17 million in 1980. It is estimated that the 1960 levels of college enrollment will double by 1970. Evangelical colleges will feel this impact no less than other American colleges. Churches and denominations should be thinking about how to advance the cause of church-related institutions, how to utilize teaching opportunities and chaplains’ services on non-Christian campuses, and how to develop a strong evangelical university. The questions of a clear biblical philosophy of higher education, of better utilization of facilities and personnel, and of adequate financing should be an active concern of the best evangelical theologians, educators, and business executives today if the future in higher education is to be exploited for Christ. In the national interest and in the interest of the Church we need a clear articulation of direction on the basic issues common to all evangelicals. We need a rebirth of fidelity to God’s Word and the impact of the living Christ on our campuses.

The mission and cost of Christian and evangelical higher and theological education must be clearly seen by people, pastors, and professors. Our task is not easy as we face the crucial problems raised and compounded by the rapidity of technological change. We are preparing a new generation whose witness and leadership will reach its point of highest contribution in A.D. 2000 in a world entirely different in its technological dimensions from the one we know today.

The human heart will still hunger for God and for fellowship and for a transcendent purpose. These benefits are the special trust of God’s children who know the power of Christ to make men new for man’s new day. We can and we must produce first-rate leadership for Christ and his church by first-hand praying and first-class education.

END

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND MODERN DESPAIR

THE FACTS OF LIFE—A pilot survey on attitudes to marriage among students at the University of London reveals that, of 200 couples who answered questionnaires, 70 were living together. Of these, about half looked upon their relationship as a short-term affair, while the other 35 intended to get married as soon as they left the university.—Evening Standard, London.

RECOVERY OF MORALS—A recovery of conscience on campus can come by no way of piling on or tightening up the rules, any more than by taking the rules away, for the rules only touch the outer person.… A Christian answer to the problem of the education of the conscience lies in the practice of the presence of God, through the inner discipline of prayer and worship, which turns the self away from the crowd and from the self to the divine. It is a biblical theme that we come back to, by the long way around: morality is the fruit of the vision of God.—WALDO BEACH, Conscience on Campus.

FACING THE ULTIMATE—Most students who take nursing seriously go through some period when they are acutely aware of their own inability to meet situations; for example, to give support to parents of a dying child. A weird conference or “grave prognosis” is included as part of the curriculum in most schools. The fact is stressed that the student must decide what she believes to be the meaning of life and death before she can function adequately in such situations. It seems that Christian instructors have a special opportunity in this area.—JANE SHREWSBURY, Instructor, Children’s Hospital, Pittsburgh.

THE BASIC PROBLEMS—The best secular brains—be they scientists, statesmen, or philosophers—have not been able to answer the basic problems of life and death.… The Christian must be ready to point out that God through Jesus Christ is the only ultimate answer.—Dr. ARTHUR SCHULERT, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University.

I don’t understand why Roman Catholics will not be real Catholics. They claim to be this. But they obviously fail, not just because some of them follow the Roman rite, but because they cannot stand the accepted test of the Vincentian canon. Roman Catholicism does not teach what has been believed always, even by all Roman Catholics. It does not teach what is believed everywhere, for throughout the world there are confessing Christian churches which resist its innovations. It does not teach what is believed by all, unless it wishes to restrict the “all” to its own members. Necessarily, to claim to be “catholic” it has to say that only Roman Catholics are catholic. Even then history refutes its claim. For many of those whom it regards as orthodox did not accept such doctrines as papal infallibility and the assumption of Mary. Why will it not face up honestly to what is involved in being catholic?

I don’t understand why Roman Catholics will not be genuinely apostolic. They set great store by historical descent from the apostles, and especially from Peter. They are anxious to claim the privileges and prerogatives of apostolic descent. They grasp at the peculiar functions of apostolate which they cannot have. But when it comes to the real tests of apostolicity they do not even seem to try. Apostolic doctrine is no great mystery. The Holy Ghost himself has caused it to be embodied in the New Testament Scriptures. The apostolic ministry is no great mystery. It finds equally plain expression, not only in Christ’s commissioning, but in statements of the apostles themselves. The apostolic manner of life, whether in respect of ministers or people, is clearly laid down in both precept and example. But in Roman Catholicism there seems to be anxiety to have the external rather than the internal substance, the power to legislate doctrine rather than to be true to it, the privilege of rule rather than of service, the adornment of pomp rather than of humility. Both history and present practice display such a discrepancy between the claim to apostolicity and the evidences of true apostolicity that we are left in a state of bewilderment. To take a simple example, the doctrine of justification need raise no great difficulties if we are all willing simply to search out and follow the teaching of the apostles. The conflict has arisen because this is what the “apostolic” church would not do. Why will not the Roman Catholic body face up to the implications of being genuinely apostolic?

I don’t understand why Roman Catholics create difficulties of Christian fellowship by insisting on rules of the church which are either plainly anti-biblical or negatively unbiblical. The refusal to allow ministers to marry is a fine example. It has neither Scripture nor early history in its favor. In addition to the havoc caused in Roman Catholicism itself, it has made an artificial and unnecessary division with other bodies. Why cannot Roman Catholicism openly admit that those who began it made a mistake, that they did what they should not have done? Why cannot it graciously remedy the position? The same is true of withholding the cup from the laity at Communion, or of refusing to allow parents to be sponsors for their own children, or of trying to give the validity of law to monastic vows. No Protestant will deny the right of a church to take order in many matters of inner life and worship and discipline. No Protestant will deny the Roman church the right to follow its own conscience in these matters. But all catholic and apostolic and evangelical Christians must insist that their own and other churches do not legislate that which is against Scripture, or try to hold their position in face of Christian history. Why does the Roman church do these things? Why does it resist so fanatically the principle of reformability?

I don’t understand why Roman Catholicism, with its wonderful contribution to many branches of theological learning, will not be truly scholarly in certain areas. Is there any real basis for according almost canonical status to the Vulgate? Does Aristotelianism have to be sanctified in the way that is customary with so many Roman Catholic dogmaticians? Can it be laid down in advance what has to be proved in certain areas of, for example, New Testament studies? Even some modern Roman Catholics have been restive in this field. The vicious attacks on Tyndale’s corrupting the Bible by translating “repentance” instead of “penance” have yielded at last to a scholarly acceptance of the correctness of Tyndale. But Roman Catholics are still taught to suspect Protestant translations of Scripture as corrupted and heretical books. Points of doctrine may still be argued from a fallible, if magnificent, Vulgate. The whole substructure of Roman Catholic dogmatics still involves the sanctity of Scholastic Aristotelianism. Why will not Roman Catholicism face up to the fact that the achievements of the fathers and the judgments of the church cannot escape the relativizing of scholarly enquiry? Why will it not look for supreme authority to the Word of God alone rather than trying to set up subsidiary infallibilities?

I don’t understand why Roman Catholics do not see how muddled their view of the Church is. Today they rightly point out that heretics are not necessarily excluded from salvation. They may even be advanced to the status of separated brethren. The rigid, if logical, exclusivism of Cyprian is not accepted. We accept this. We may be grateful for it. Yet it is hard to make much sense of it. How can we be of the Church and yet not in it? It is also hard to see where it is going to lead. Obviously, Protestants can be both of and in the Church if they will accept Roman Catholicism. But what line of advance is open if they will not? Can there be a measure of unity with separated brethren even if they remain separated? Is the Church so tenuous a body that it can have members who are not members? Is there a difference between the family and the Church? I don’t understand why Roman Catholicism will not work out the facts of the present situation in terms of a distinction between the Church as the body of believers, on the one side, and the organized churches, of which Rome may be the largest, on the other. Surely history itself forces us to the truth of the biblical position unless we are prepared to try to resist both history and the Bible with rack and fire and sword, with bell, book, and candle. Why will not Roman Catholicism face the implications of this fact? Honest consideration of its own ambivalence at this point would do as much for Christian unity as the whole Vatican Council.

I don’t understand why Roman Catholics do not state clearly in principle their attitude to such matters as toleration if they have really abandoned their former teaching and practice. We recognize that many American Roman Catholics sincerely endorse the principle of non-persecution, and would continue to do so even if they became the majority group in the United States. But is this the position of worldwide Roman Catholicism, or is it in the eyes of the Roman church at large a mere application of the claim for toleration in a minority situation? As recently as the late nineteenth century Roman Catholicism defended the right and even the duty to restrict non-Roman Catholic activity when in a position to do so. As recently as the sixth decade of the twentieth century there have been examples of such restriction in Spain and Latin America. I don’t understand whether American Roman Catholics are right when they claim that these are relics of a bad past, or whether we do not have here the real mind of the Roman Catholic Church, namely, that toleration is finally to be claimed only for this church itself. Why cannot the Pope make an infallible pronouncement on the subject? Or why cannot he at least abrogate the less infallible decisions of some of his predecessors? Why is there any basic difficulty in any case? Is the apostolic church an intolerant and persecuting church? I don’t understand the tortuous logic which could lead earlier, and some modern, Roman Catholics to argue that they must always be tolerated and yet owe no duty of toleration to others.

Perhaps I really do think I understand many of these things. Perhaps this is why an article of this kind seems inevitably to take on a polemical and negative rather than a positive and irenic edge. Yet in conclusion there really is one thing I don’t understand, and here we are brought into the sphere of the more spiritual and fruitful. For I don’t understand how the Holy Spirit can and does bring forth so many fruits of life and thought and activity out of the Roman Catholic Church. Whatever Roman Catholics may think, this is certainly not due to any specific purity or historical validity in their communion. On the other hand, the amazement expressed is certainly not that of superiority, as though it could be taken for granted that our evangelical churches should show forth similar fruits. What I don’t understand is the grace and power and patience of God that even in the most earthen and unworthy vessels there may be the treasure of the Gospel and its operation. Can Roman Catholics join us in this very catholic and apostolic and evangelical amazement at grace? If they can, there is hope that at this starting-point we may begin to think through the other incomprehensible things which are mostly associated with the earthen vessels—of which, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is only one, and not necessarily the least earthen. But if Roman Catholics cannot join us here, if they insist that it is all a matter of the vessel rather than the Gospel or the Spirit, if they must insist that theirs is the only and most serviceable and indeed flawless and irreformable vessel, so that treasures will necessarily and automatically be found there, then I really don’t understand them, and no amount of discussion, however amicable, can take us further.

END

I don’t understand why some Protestants are not Catholics. Just off New York’s Times Square is the attractive gray-stone church of St. Mary the Virgin. The visitor observes votive candles, Stations of the Cross, even confessionals, and on a plaque outside is listed a schedule of daily and Sunday Masses. St. Mary’s is a Protestant (Episcopal) church.

It’s a bit difficult for a Catholic to understand what keeps high-church Episcopalians from taking that one further step which would bring them back into full communion with the church their fathers left in the mid-sixteenth century. I know that some of these good folks do indeed think of themselves as Catholics already; yet within their church many oppose this view.

I don’t understand either why there is not a closer feeling of brotherhood between “fundamentalist” Protestants and Catholics. It seems to me we have a good bit in common, despite our many differences. We both believe in something outside ourselves, in any case. In contrast to Unitarians and other “modernists,” we both share a faith in many of the ancient tenets—the Divinity, the Heaven and Hell concept, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection—that set Christianity apart from all other religions of earth. A Catholic and a fundamentalist can meet on fairly common ground. But with folks such as the Unitarians, there just isn’t any common ground. Unhappily, the sharpest Protestant-Catholic friction continues to be generated between us and the fundamentalist Christians. Perhaps this is so because we both hold strong objective convictions, which can scarcely be said about the modernists.

Those who have read this far are possibly annoyed with me for my use of “Catholic” rather than “Roman Catholic” to identify myself and my church. I feel that “Roman Catholic,” in its common use, is a misnomer. The only really correct use of “Roman Catholic,” as I see it, is to identify Catholics of the “Roman” rite. While this is the largest of several rites of my church, it is not the only rite. My church has never decreed to call itself the “Roman” Catholic Church, and in the official prayer book of the Latin Mass (the Missal) there is not a single reference to “Roman Catholics.”

So far as I know, my church is the only one identified in telephone directories and in newspaper stories by a name which others have given it, rather than the name by which it knows itself. Yet I can easily understand why so many Protestants call us Roman Catholics, since many of us have fallen into this habit ourselves. Some Catholic pastors even permit an “R. C.” to be inscribed on their church bulletin boards. The whole thing, though, becomes a bit ridiculous—it seems to me—when we’re referred to as “Romans.” I wonder sometimes that Protestant children don’t half expect to see us dressed in togas.

I don’t understand how Protestants can be serious about some of the ideas they have concerning us. After all, Protestants and Catholics are all of us many-sided people with interests and outlooks that cross and recross in hundreds of ways. Although we disagree generally in religious matters, we are often united in other pursuits—politically, socially, professionally. A good many of us are drawn into close association, too, through Protestant-Catholic family ties. Yet, viewed as Catholics—rather than as neighbors, business associates, or relatives—we seem enigmas to many of our Protestant friends. Well-intentioned Protestants have asked why we “worship statues.” We do not, of course—any more than a visiting dignitary worships a stone monument shaped like George Washington. How can well-meaning Protestants possibly reconcile the sound judgment of Catholics they know and respect as neighbors with the utter superstition they ascribe to us as “statue worshipers”?

Catholic teaching on freedom of conscience is sometimes misunderstood and misinterpreted to the point where our actual position and our imagined position are 180 degrees apart. So many Protestants seem convinced the Catholic Church teaches that Protestants will wind up in Hell. Yet, my church has demonstrated the untruth of this contention many times—an example being a rather noted case of about fifteen years ago in which a Boston priest was excommunicated for preaching this very notion.

A Protestant clergyman explained to me recently that, in his view, the word “Protestant” really means “to stand for” certain convictions, rather than to be in protest against anything. In all deference to his viewpoint, this is a hard lump for Catholics to swallow. The Episcopalians are the only Protestants I know of who do not seem to react in almost a conditioned way against practices and trends associated with “Catholicism.” In colonial times, the Puritan aversion to anything Catholic was so strong that in parts of America observance of Christmas (“Christ Mass”) was banned.

In these times when worldly temptations press so hard upon us, even such a small thing as abstaining from eating meat on Fridays has some merit, it seems to me, as a bit of self-discipline and as a passing memorial of the first Good Friday. But very few Protestants today follow this ancient practice, and few Protestant churches encourage it. I cannot help feeling that a reason for this is that the custom is considered “too Catholic,” rather than not worthwhile spiritually. May not this be a factor, too, in the rather general neglect of the liturgical calendar among Protestant denominations? Beyond Christmas, Easter, and the days of Holy Week, there aren’t many of the great events of Christian history, or many of the saints either, that are still commemorated and recalled in Protestant worship services. Sometimes, it seems, a greater attention is given purely secular occasions—such as National Education Week—worthy as such occasions may be.

How else but on the basis of opposition to Catholic interests can one explain the enthusiastic moral support voiced by Protestant groups for the public schools? Our system of public education does merit our support, generally. But there are weaknesses—particularly in the area of moral and spiritual values—which to many Americans appear quite serious. We find our public schools rapidly becoming more and more secular. Even singing of Christmas carols is on the way out. One naturally looks to church leaders for ways to reverse this secularistic trend in the schools, or to help us find alternatives if this cannot be accomplished. The surprising thing to me is the strong support we see coming from Protestants for the public schools as they are—the seeming reluctance to acknowledge that there is any problem here at all.

One thing that has puzzled me longest about Protestants, I think, is the way so many of them have of switching about among denominations. It’s true that many Protestant churches have a common or similar heritage—the Dutch Reformed and the Presbyterian, for example. But others, such as the Episcopalians, have quite different origins. I find it difficult to understand that if the various religious concepts had meaning once, how it is that they do not have meaning now. Appearances indicate that in many instances they don’t. And where they are without meaning now, why don’t Protestants of these denominations reevaluate their break with the Catholic Church? I know that there are many other Protestants to whom the old “Reformist” concepts are as real and as valid today as they were in the time of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox. But to a great many Protestants—to nearly all that I know personally—the theological concepts of Reformation days have virtually no present meaning.

It does seem to me that a great many Protestants today feel it matters little what one believes, except in a rather general way. Is this “tolerance” or is it indifference? Most of my Protestant friends seem to believe, if I understand them correctly, that practice of the Golden Rule is pretty much the beginning and the end of the Christian faith. “Anything more than this is just icing on the cake,” was the way one of them explained it to me.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to account for Christianity’s unique hold upon the minds and hearts of men if the Christian faith is viewed as but a code of ethics. Many other religions have also given us codes of ethics, including some of the religions of ancient civilizations long gone to dust.

The faith of a Catholic may weaken too, or worse. But any Catholic who would publicly proclaim a doctrine directly opposed to the tenets of his church would surely find himself excommunicated. There are clear lines in the Catholic Church beyond which one may not go and still remain a Catholic in good standing. On the other hand, I have never heard of a Protestant’s being excommunicated—not even for denying the most basic of traditional Christian beliefs (the Divinity, for example). There seems a looseness today in many quarters of Protestantism which did not exist—or was certainly not so widespread—only a few years ago. How can a man take part in a Unitarian service one Sunday and in an Episcopal service the next—and not feel that he is being inconsistent?

Is Protestantism the “thinking man’s” religion? I know that some folks think so. It is not the purpose of this short article to express my own views on the subject, except to recall that some of the great “thinking men” of the Christian era have been Catholics. One was John Henry Newman, the English cardinal who earlier in life had been one of the great minds of the Anglican church. One finds it difficult to understand that few Anglicans today seem to know anything about him.

END