Caught in the turmoil of the newly-independent Republic of Congo were some 2,000 Protestant missionaries including 1,200 Americans and 250 Canadians.

At stake was a century or more of Christian missionary effort.

As turbulence in the Congo approached the proportions of a grave international crisis, most missionaries were obliged to evacuate at the advice of diplomatic officials. A few courageously stayed behind, most of them key personnel, to look after the interests of mission boards. Others stood by in bordering countries, hopeful of re-entry once the government had stabilized and tensions had subsided. U.S. military airlift missions gave priority to women and children in effecting evacuations.

Christians around the world fell to their knees in behalf of the missionaries’ safety. Prayers appeared to be answered in the fact that not a single missionary casualty was reported in the first three weeks of independence. Some Americans, however, did tell of being slapped and kicked by mutinous Congolese soldiers.

Arrival of U.N. troops raised hopes of mission boards that order could be restored and missionaries could return to their posts. At times there was confusion over the extent of the strife. Some missionaries were filing back into the country even as others were being evacuated. But as word spread of possible Red intervention, mission executives grew anxious to evacuate personnel as soon as possible.

It appeared that the Congolese had no resentment against missionary work as such. The danger to missionaries lay in the fact that they had been stranded in a chaotic situation where law and order had been abandoned. Their evacuation spelled a severe blow to the productive investment of life, time and money in the Belgian Congo missionary enterprise.

Observers watched developments closely, but few were willing to predict how soon missionary activity could resume. Returning missionaries told of how they had, insofar as possible, assigned responsibilities for spiritual leadership to their nationalist colleagues.

Roman Catholics are said to number some 5,500,000 of the Republic of Congo’s 13,600,000 inhabitants. Soon after independence became effective, Archbishop Gastone Mojaisky-Perrelli, Apostolic Delegate to the Congo and Ruanda Urundi, was received in formal audience by Premier Patrice Lumumba. In a speech welcoming the archbishop, who was accompanied by a group of high-ranking ecclesiastics, Lumumba thanked the Catholic church for its help to the Congolese and voiced appreciation of the assurances of cooperation which, he said, the church has given the new government. This was viewed as a significant development, inasmuch as Lumumba is known to have had serious differences with Catholics.

Fruits Of Christian Missions

The Belgian Congo, now the independent Republic of Congo, has been one of the most productive evangelical mission fields in the world. It is known for its strongly biblical stand and rapid growth. Its protest against ecumenical inroads based on an inclusive theology was demonstrated in a decision two years ago to withdraw from the International Missionary Council rather than to participate in the IMC’s merger with the World Council of Churches.

The Protestant community as a whole numbers nearly 2,000,000, or about 15 per cent of the population, according to the Missionary Research Library in New York.

An MRL report gives the following breakdown of approximate adult membership in Protestant groups in what was formerly the Belgian Congo.

Other groups, says the report, include Assemblies of God, Free Methodists, Reformed, Friends, Mennonites, Independent Baptists, Salvation Army, and churches founded by interdenominational and independent missions.

The Republic of Congo’s chief of state, Joseph Kasavubu, is a staunch Roman Catholic, having been educated in parochial schools.

Another top figure in Congo politics, Premier Moise Tshombe, whose province of Katanga seceded from the republic and asked the United Nations for recognition as an independent nation, is a product of Methodist schools.

Retired Methodist Bishop John M. Springer, 86, a pioneer missionary to Katanga for more than 50 years, refused to heed an evacuation plea from the American consulate at Elisabethville, it was reported.

In the worst danger, according to Religious News Service, were missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. in Kasai province. The church’s Board of World Missions held a special meeting to meet the emergency. It was decided to recall all missionary families who are due furloughs within a year or who have children of school age. A special contingent was assigned to neighboring countries with the understanding of subsequent re-entry efforts.

Two Southern Presbyterian missionary pilots, Dr. Mark Poole and John Davis, spearheaded the airlift rescue.

Missionaries returning to the United States cited inflammatory political promises by native leaders and Communist agitation as chief reasons for the Congo uprisings.

First missionaries to be evacuated by the U. S. Military Air Transport Service were flown to Washington in a pair of giant C-124 Globemasters. Most of the 133 missionaries and dependents aboard were affiliated with the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

Congolese Christians were praised for their loyalty and were credited with protecting the missionaries. Lack of effective leadership in Congolese ranks was blamed for the turmoil which forced missionaries to leave.

“We left the dishes half done,” said Orville R. Chapman of the ABFMS, who with his wife and three children was rescued by helicopter. Chapman said his family, like most others, had to leave behind virtually all personal belongings.

Protestant Panorama

• Construction of a huge new office building for the American Baptist Convention is under way. Groundbreaking ceremonies for the $8,500,000 circular structure, located on a 55-acre site at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, were held July 5.

• World Vision plans a month-long crusade in Tokyo next May. According to President Bob Pierce, an invitation to hold such an evangelistic series came from 90 per cent of the churches in the world’s largest city (population: 9,312,000) and was signed jointly by moderators of the National Christian Council and the Evangelical Federation.

• Dublin got its first Protestant lord mayor in 60 years last month. 52-year-old Maurice E. Dockrell.

• Dr. James M. Bulman, dismissed from a pastorate in East Spencer, North Carolina, is starting a new Baptist church in the same town. Bulman has repeatedly clashed with Southern Baptist Convention officials over local church autonomy … A judicial commission appointed by the Presbyterian Church of Canada’s General Assembly relieved the Rev. A. Ian Burnett of his responsibilities as minister of St. Andrew’s, largest Presbyterian church in Ottawa. The commission cited failure to fulfill ordination vows. Tensions have arisen within his congregation since Burnett became separated from his wife two years ago.

• Eighty-seven per cent of Episcopal clergymen responding to a survey by Living Church, denominational weekly, say they accept literally the statement in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary.” Of 539 responses, 39 do not believe in this traditional concept of the Virgin Birth and 30 are undecided. Every Protestant Episcopal candidate for the clergy must indicate, before ordination, that he accepts the creed.

• Ten young Anglicans from England are spending the summer supervising recreational programs for slum children on New York’s lower East Side. They are part of an English-American exchange program in social work.

• Dr. Arthur E. Hanson, district president-elect of The American Lutheran Church, officiated last month at the ordination of the fourth of his sons to enter the Lutheran ministry. The Rev. John Hanson, 25, has accepted a call to become associate pastor of Olivet Lutheran Church in Fargo, North Dakota.

• A Pentecostal congregation in Reykjavik, Iceland, is erecting a new church to accommodate 1,000 worshippers. The building will be one of the largest in Iceland.

• Five rifle shots were fired into the home of the Rev. C. B. Studstill, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Darien, Georgia, last month. Studstill has been preaching against gambling in his country and had received anonymous threats.

• The General Conference Mennonite Church is extending invitations for greater fraternity among Mennonite bodies. The invitations came out of a special study conference held in Donnellson, Iowa, last month in connection with the church’s 100th anniversary.

• The Virginia Methodist Conference plans to build a $3,000,000 home for the aged in Alexandria.

• The Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association is asking Federal Communications Commission approval for a 65,000-watt FM broadcasting station in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

• Old Bergen Reformed Church of Jersey City, New Jersey, is marking its 300th anniversary. The church, founded by Dutch settlers, has had only 10 pastors in its history.

• A pilgrimage to Aylmer, Quebec, highlighted Christian Endeavor’s Citizenship Convocation in Ottawa last month. Delegates visited the birthplace of the founder of Christian Endeavor, Dr. Francis E. Clark … A team of teen-agers from the Moline, Illinois, area won Youth for Christ’s annual Bible quiz competition. Finals were held in conjunction with the group’s 16th annual convention in Winona Lake, Indiana, last month.

Exit Eden

Promoters of California’s proposed Bible Storyland amusement park say they will yield to Protestant objections in abandoning plans for such “rides” as “Garden of Eden,” “Ride to Heaven,” and “Dante’s Inferno.”

Curbing Obscenity

A bill designed to strengthen the Postmaster General’s fight against the mailing of obscene materials was signed into law by President Eisenhower last month. The new law enables the post office to secure a court order to impound the mail of a suspected smut peddler, pending the outcome of legal proceedings against him.

Reactivating Religion

The University of Southern California is reactivating its Graduate School of Religion.

Named to head the seminary was Dr. John Geddes MacGregor, professor of philosophy and religion at Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania) College, and a member of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).

Southern California’s initial School of Religion was founded by Methodists, who subsequently moved it to a campus of its own at Claremont, California.

Phillips Old Testament

J. B. Phillips, Anglican vicar responsible for the highly-popular New Testament in Modern English, is working on a new translation of Amos, Micah, Hosea and Isaiah 1–39.

“Whether this will be successful or not,” says Phillips, “it is too early to judge.” He estimates that it will be another two years before a translation of the four prophets can be completed and published.

Phillips has genuine reservations about even an attempt at Old Testament translation.

“The Hebrew of the Old Testament is ‘literary and polished’ for the most part,” he explains, “while the Greek of the New Testament is written in rather commonplace and ‘unliterary’ language. It may therefore be that my particular gifts for New Testament translation would not be particularly useful for rendering the Old Testament in today’s language.”

According to Phillips, “there would be many who would agree with me that many of the fine old tales in the Old Testament and books of poetry such as the Psalms and Job would lose more than they would gain if they were rendered into contemporary English.”

New Task

Dr. Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Presbyterian minister and author of Crusade at the Golden Gate, is taking up duties as editor of Decision, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s new periodical scheduled to make its debut in the fall.

For the past six months, Wirt has been Editorial Associate on the staff of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

His account of Graham’s 1958 crusade in San Francisco was written while he was minister of Hillside Presbyterian Church in Oakland, California. Wirt is now penning his first novel.

End of the World?

Predictions of a small Italian spiritualist sect that the end of the world would come July 14 set off reactions of fear and repentance that were felt in many corners of the globe.

When the day passed without incident, members of the sect gathered high up on Mont Blanc in the Italian Alps for an emergency meeting with their leader, who explained that he must have misinterpreted voices of “the Logos, that is, the Supreme Authority.”

The prediction nonetheless caused waves of fear in Italy, Holland, Israel, Greece, and even as far as Mexico, Malaya, and Formosa. It had been prophesied that a mercury bomb explosion would blow the earth off its axis, sending ocean waters roaring over all but the highest mountain peaks.

In Greece, many Orthodox believers engaged in long prayers. Villagers in one area publicly forgave each other.

In Mexico, great numbers of Roman Catholics crowded into churches despite assurances by Archbishops Miguel Dario Miranda and Luigi Raimondi (the latter is apostolic delegate to Mexico) that the prophecies of the Italian mystics were “absurd.”

Reports from Singapore said students there abandoned classrooms to participate in demonstrations in which slogans were displayed which read, “The world must be given another chance.”

Lutheran Talks

Top representatives of the National Lutheran Council and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod explored the theological implications of inter-Lutheran cooperation at a historic closed meeting in Chicago last month. The three-day sessions marked the first time that the two groups have ever come together for an exchange of viewpoints. Presiding was Dr. Norman A. Menter, NLC president and American Lutheran official.

Following the meeting, participants said the sessions were “profitable and would lead to better understanding and closer relationships between the two groups.”

A chief item on the agenda was a “comparison of interpretations” of an article in the Augsburg Confession dealing with church unity. This article declares in part: “And to the true unity of the Church, it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary for the true unity of the Church that ceremonies instituted by men should be observed uniformly.…”

The Nominations

Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for president, is generally regarded as being closer to the nation’s highest office than any Roman Catholic has ever been. He is given a much better chance of election than Al Smith had in 1928.

United Press International and Religious News Service, who sought clergy reaction to Kennedy’s nomination, found a number of Protestant leaders refusing immediate comment. Other churchmen indicated they would stand by their original positions which expressed anxiety about a Catholic in the White House.

Kennedy’s running mate, Majority Senate Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, is a member of a Disciples of Christ church in Johnson City, Texas.

Technically, Kennedy is the third Catholic presidential nominee in U. S. history, according to RNS. Besides Smith, there was Charles O’Conor, a states-righter from New York and the son of an Irish immigrant, who was the candidate of insurgent Democrats in 1872. O’Conor drew 29,489 votes; Ulysses S. Grant was elected with a popular vote of 3,597,132.

Summer Brainwashing

Unsuspecting teen-agers attending a “World Affairs Seminar” in Richmond, Indiana, found themselves subjects of a pacifist-socialist brainwashing session.

The seminar was sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and was one of 29 such “community projects and work camps” scheduled across the United States this summer. It was held on camp grounds leased from a local YMCA and attendance was open to teen-agers of all faiths.

“They said we attacked ourselves at Pearl Harbor,” said the daughter of a newspaper publisher who exposed the seminar, Edward H. Harris of the Richmond Palladium-Item.

The YMCA camp director took issue with seminar leaders who, he said, asserted that the United States wanted war and that other countries wanted peace.

Among seminar speakers was the Rev. Maurice McCrackin of Cincinnati, pacifist minister who has served a jail term because he refuses to pay income taxes.

Officials at nearby Earlham college stressed that the extreme views expressed at the seminar were not representative of Quaker thought and practice.

The American Friends Service Committee is a social action agency organized by Quakers which gets support from many yearly meetings of Friends. It is independently supervised, however, and includes among its constituents numbers of non-Quakers.

Cutting Ties

The 4,300-member First Baptist Church of Wichita, Kansas, voted last month to withdraw from the American Baptist Convention.

By a vote of 739 to 294, the congregation—one of the largest in the ABC—chose to cease affiliation in protest against the convention’s continued membership in the National Council of Churches.

Last March, the congregation had endorsed action by its board of deacons withholding financial support from the convention because of its NCC ties.

Proponents of the withdrawal declared that the NCC’s “policies and plans are not in accordance with the faith and practices” of the congregation. Also cited was (1) alleged Communist influence among NCC leaders, (2) the ecumenical movement’s advocacy of a “universal church,” and (3) NCC pronouncements on social, political and economic issues in violation of the Baptist principle of Church-State separation.

TWO CONCEPTS OF THE CHURCH

When we think of Church divisions we usually think in terms of ecclesiastical organizations (Roman Catholic and Protestant), or of the theological division usually labeled “conservative” or “liberal.”

Such divisions exist, but the differences are not always constant, nor are they confined to particular denominations.

There is a determining influence, not often recognized, which lies at the heart of many of the divisions of the Church.

I am speaking primarily of American Protestantism and of the effect which two different concepts of the nature and mission of the Church are having on the work and witness of the Church in our day.

Many people who hold divergent viewpoints are unaware of having them, and they are not always consistent in acting upon them.

The situation may be defined briefly. To some people, the Church is in the world primarily to witness to God’s redemptive act in Jesus Christ; to others, the Church is an ecclesiastical organization which will eventually conquer the world.

Some will affirm their belief in both concepts and insist that they are not mutually exclusive. But undue consideration for one or the other side inevitably affects a person’s whole attitude and reactions to a number of matters.

Where it is believed that the Church’s primary task is witnessing to the redeeming and sanctifying power of Jesus Christ as embodied in the Gospel message, we find that particular emphasis is placed upon the nature and content of the message itself.

But where it is thought that participation in the work of organization will ultimately conquer the world for social righteousness, we find people naturally promoting and taking advantage of every movement, authority, and power that will advance humanitarian and social revolution within or outside of the organized Church.

In the first concept the emphasis is on the witness of the message itself. Men trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives and produce righteous fruit.

In the second, the emphasis is placed on ecclesiastical organizations, resolutions, pronouncements, lobbying, and even the arm of the law itself to affect the social changes envisioned for a world where the Church shall be the dominating influence.

One might illustrate the nature of the problem with the story of the Prodigal Son. As to the ultimate welfare of the Prodigal, was it vital that he be made comfortable in the “Far Country,” or that he be brought to realize his miserable condition and return to his father?

From the pronouncements of some in the Church (viewed in the light of their silence on matters having to do with the Gospel itself), one would think that the Church’s major task is making the Prodigal comfortable and happy where he is.

It is a matter of record that the machinery of most major Protestant denominations is in the hands of those who apparently look at the influence and mission of the Church in terms of social reformation. Annual pronouncements of conferences and General Assemblies on matters having to do with disarmament, Federal aid to education, birth control, the United Nations, federal housing, minimum wage laws, and any number of socio-political issues come as a result of the social reformation concept and its leadership.

Those of us who believe that the witness of the Church is of primary importance do not minimize the need for the implementation of Christian principles in the social order. May God forgive any Christian who ignores his responsibility to live and act as a Christian in his dealings with his fellow men!

But we do not believe that the social order can be changed in depth without the presence and influence of redeemed men and women, and we do not believe that redemption comes apart from conversion to Jesus Christ. Thus we insist that first things must be kept first. What good does it do to tell non-Christians to act like Christians? How much more important it is that the Church concentrate on winning men to Christ and leading them to live for him in the environment in which God has placed them!

Here we are confronted with the insidious temptation to substitute for the presence, power, and work of the Holy Spirit the more obvious and often compelling program of “social engineering.”

There is also the temptation to confuse Christianity with personal attitudes that embody social awareness. According to many, one is or is not a “Christian” depending upon his particular slant on a burning issue. Ghandi was considered by some to be a “great Christian” because he was a pacifist. According to others, a man noted for his humanitarian work is “Christian.” A “social consciousness” about race, money, or politics may be utterly divorced from Christianity and yet still be labeled so. In the confusion the distinctive nature of Christianity becomes blurred by biases and preoccupations of all sorts.

Some Christians have been accused of being “so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use.” The accusation may be true, but it is also possible to be so earth-centered that we ignore the eternal values that constituted the primary reason for our Lord’s coming into the world.

Looking at the matter purely from the standpoint of a task to be performed, we are forced to ask where, if the Church does not espouse and further the preaching of the Gospel, shall men turn for salvation?

Again, if the larger denominations become involved in social reformation, while neglecting their primary task, are they not in danger of finding themselves laid aside in favor of obscure groups who recognize and perform this vital work?

What shall it profit us if every social change now ardently advocated by some people should become a reality without the transforming work of the living Christ in the hearts of those receiving the benefits?

It is a disservice to all to deny or pervert the content of the Christian message. Those concerned with this message believe that out of Christ all men are lost for eternity, and they believe it to be a perversion of truth to espouse a universalism not supported by Scripture.

Those within the Church who hold allegiance to the biblical content of the Christian message and trust the Holy Spirit to make it alive and relevant at the personal level are realistic for the present and wise for the future.

The changes we all desire can come only from the work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men. Laws may coerce and change the conditions under which men live, but God alone can change hearts and make them conformable to the likeness of his Son. It is this gospel which the world so desperately needs.

To us that is the primary task and message of the Church.

L. NELSON BELL

Some five years ago theologians were introduced to a new definition for a host of world-influencing sects, cults, and small church movements. The definition, “Third Force in Christendom,” was coined for a 20-million-strong group by Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, president of Union Theological Seminary. Since that time theologians, scholars, and writers by the dozen have recognized the influence of the “force,” some with disdain, others with question. None has attempted to explain it and few have speculated on its future. In fact, no one has separated the varied and in many cases diametrically-opposed segments into like parts, theologically speaking. The original grouping was correct only in terms of relatively recent historic origin, evangelistic zeal and socio-cultural appeal. To illustrate, the theological beliefs of the 17 churches mentioned in a Life Magazine article in June, 1958, vary all the way from the deviant position of the cult to beliefs closely resembling those held by the historic Christian churches.

Basically the 17 churches can be grouped in three bodies: (1) Holiness churches associated with the National Holiness Association; (2) Pentecostal churches holding membership in the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America; and (3) “Others,” a segment independent of any association and varying widely, in some cases even bordering on the status of cults. Churches found in the first two divisions are strongly represented in the National Association of Evangelicals. Seven out of 13 denominations, comprising a large percentage of the churches, have clearly cast their lot with the evangelical side of Christendom in contradistinction to ecumenical inclusivism.

UNTOUCHED STRATA

How these groups originated, their past growth, and prospect in the future, have attracted the attention of both the conservative and liberal forces in Christendom. Many of the churches have reached social strata of the world’s population never touched by other forces in Christendom, and are now touching people sometimes “assigned” to the historic church. While some in the past have thought of these groups as cults, or at best sects on the fringe of the historic, the churches on Main Street (the “first” and “second” forces) are now having to move over to make room for the sociological, educational, and economic advance of the “third force.”

Some may still be classed as sects so far as their theological pattern is concerned. Such categorizing is not necessarily to be interpreted as being derogatory. The late Dr. William Warren Sweet, dean of American church historians, once pointed out that “in the minds of many people the term sect implies an ignorant, over-emotionalized, and fanatical group; an ephemeral, fly-by-night movement that is here today and gone tomorrow.” This all-too-often accepted position, he explained, cannot be applied to many churches found in what Dr. Van Dusen calls the “third force.”

Dr. Sweet’s “rule of thumb” for distinguishing a sect from a church or cult may partially explain the astonishing growth of the “third force.” Here are his criteria for categorizing some churches as sects: “(1) They reject the “State Church” principle, (2) they oppose creeds and confessions of faith, (3) they reject infant baptism, (4) they accept religion as a way of life (exclusive of membership), and (5) they follow a simple polity.” As opposed to this standard, he defines a church as an organized body which accepts “(1) creed or confession of faith, (2) infant baptism and automatic membership, and (3) an elaborate church polity.”

The word “cult” has often been used as a label for any group which does not follow historic thinking in religion, but Dr. Sweet disagrees. He classifies a cult as a religious group which looks for its basic authority outside Christian tradition. “Generally cults accept Christianity, but only as a halfway station on the road to greater ‘truth,’ and profess to have a new and additional authority beyond Christianity,” Dr. Sweet wrote. As examples of cults he suggests the Latter-Day Saints who stress the Book of Mormon, and Christian Scientists whose beliefs center on Science and Health.

Most of the “third force” falls into the sect classification, we judge by Dr. Sweet’s standard. One or two groups would be on edge of becoming churches, while two or three might be typed as cults or near-cults. Such organizations as the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Pentecostal Holiness, and similar groups he would call sects. The Church of the Nazarene, Dr. Sweet suggests, is an example of a body changing from sect to church status. Many Baptist groups have moved or are moving into the church category. The Jehovah’s Witnesses might be classed as a cult—certainly they are commonly recognized as such by evangelicals.

Of the 17 organizations mentioned in the Life Magazine article by Dr. Van Dusen, three are Holiness churches. They include the Church of the Nazarene, the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Ten of the 17, by far the largest segment, fall into the Pentecostal group. They include the Assemblies of God, Church of God of Cleveland, Tennessee; United Pentecostal Church, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Pentecostal Church of God in America, The Church of God, Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the Pentecostal Holiness, and two Negro groups, the Church of God in Christ, and the Apostolic Overcoming Holy Church of God. Falling into the “other” classification and varying all the way from near cults to fundamentalists are the Church of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Independent Fundamental Churches of America.

THE STRENGTH OF THE SO-CALLED ‘THIRD FORCE’

NOTE: These figures cover a 10-year period from 1949 to 1960. The information above was taken from the 1949 and 1960 volumes of the Yearbook of American Churches.

BACK TO THE CHURCH?

What is the future of the “third force?” Dr. Van Dusen gave a partial answer when he wrote, “No one can foretell whether this “third force” will persist into the long future as a separate and mighty branch of Christianity, or whether it will ultimately be reabsorbed into classic Protestantism as many spokesmen of the latter prophesy.…” While “spokesmen” prophesy and perhaps indulge a bit of wishful thinking, the growing strength of the churches in the “third force” certainly would not suggest the deterioration which usually drives smaller movements to merge with larger ones. Dr. Van Dusen enumerated six contributing factors to the vitality of the third force which are likely to keep it alive and active for many years to come: “(1) They have great spiritual ardor, (2) they commonly promise an immediate, life-transforming experience of the living God-in-Christ, (3) they directly approach people, (4) they shepherd their converts in an intimate sustaining group-fellowship, (5) they place strong emphasis upon the Holy Spirit, and (6) they expect their followers to practice an active, untiring, seven-day-a-week Christianity.” All six of these are accepted in varying degrees by evangelicals, and intense devotion to none of them in itself renders an individual unorthodox.

One writer recently spoke of Christians who accept these beliefs as “fringe,” and “centrifugal” types, but biblically speaking they are actually centripetal, pulling men back to Jesus Christ and back to the center of early Church theology rather than away from it. Many theologians and churchmen have recognized this truth. Speaking recently to a gathering of leaders of his own denomination, Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, pastor of the National Presbyterian Church and President Eisenhower’s minister, said, “… the rising pneumatic sects, with their radiant evangelistic appeal, have something we need.”

Dr. Elson’s speech was reported in the Pittsburgh newspapers on March 5. He was quoted as saying of the “third force” churches, “They have the authentic, New Testament expression more than some of our comfortably-established denominations.” Continuing, Dr. Elson asked his fellow-churchmen, “Is it not tragic that to be Spirit-filled is associated with fanaticism?” Such sentiment has been echoed by many who have awakened to the fact they may have missed the road. Various periodicals throughout the United States, almost simultaneously, have expressed such a feeling. The February, 1958, issue of Coronet carried an article entitled, “That Old-time Religion Comes Back.” The April, 1958, issue of Eternity published an essay titled, “Finding Fellowship with Pentecostals,” while Christian Life and similar publications have issued articles on the influence and spread of parts in the “third force.” Statistics will also bear out progress of the movement.

Information released in the 1960 Yearbook of American Churches shows denominations of the “force” have a membership in the United States of more than 4½ million, with more than 50,000 churches. Ten years ago, in 1949, these same churches listed a membership of only slightly more than 2 million, with only 33,000 churches.

It is not possible to say where all of the “third force” is going, for it varies too widely in theology; but for the most part its members are found solidly in the National Association of Evangelicals and are moving with it. The United States membership of the partial list of Pentecostal churches mentioned by Dr. Van Dusen has more than doubled during the past 10 years—jumping from just over 800,000 to more than 1,630,000. Churches in the Holiness group have increased from 341,881 members to more than 480,000 (not including many churches not mentioned by Dr. Van Dusen). Churches in the “other” group have increased from 960,000 (figures not available for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1949) to two and a half million.

The reason for growth and the future could be interpreted many ways. Certainly members of the “third force” would not agree that they are headed back to the old-line churches, nor would its leaders plead guilty to abandoning its evangelistic verve. There is permanence in the “third force,” and the evangelistic outreach of a major part of it is sufficient to bring increasing growth in the years ahead. More important, any heaven that makes no room for a major part of the “third force” is likely to be a suburb rather than the main city.

The First Encounter

Never in human history have two opposing powers had a sharper encounter than Christianity and ancient Heathenism, the Christian Church and the Roman State. It is the antagonism between that which is from above, between natural development and the new creation, between that which is born of the flesh and that which is born of the Spirit, while behind all this, according to the Scriptures, is the conflict between the Prince of this world and the Lord from heaven.

Two such powers could not exist peaceably side by side. The conflict must come, and be for life or death. Every possibility of a compromise was excluded. This contest might be occasionally interrupted; but it could end only in the conquest of one or the other power. Christianity entered the conflict as the absolute religion, as a divine revelation, as unconditionally true, and claimed to be the religion of all nations, because it brought to all salvation. A religion coexisting with others the heathen could have tolerated, as they did so many religions. The absolute religion they could not tolerate. Diverging opinions about God and divine things could be allowed, but not the perfect truth, which, because it was the truth, excluded everything else as false. A new religion for a single nation might have given no offence. It would have been recognized, as were so many heathen cults, and monotheistic Judaism as well. But a universal religion could not be thus allowed. The conflict was for nothing less than the dominion of the world. From its nature it could only end in the complete victory of one side or the other.

Christianity entered the field conscious through the assurances of our Lord, that the world was its promised domain. Its messengers knew that they were sent on a mission of universal conquest for their Lord, and the youthful Christianity itself proved that it was a world-subduing power by the wonderful rapidity with which it spread. After it had passed beyond the boundaries of the land and the people of Judaea, after the great step was taken of carrying the Gospel to the heathen, and receiving them into the Christian Church without requiring circumcision or their becoming Jews, it secured in Syrian Antioch its first missionary centre; and from this point Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, bore it from city to city through Asia Minor to Europe, through Greece to Rome, the metropolis of the world. His line of march was along the great roads, the highways of travel, which the Romans had built.

—DR. GERHARD UHLHORN, in The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Roland Allen, in Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours, finds the secret of Paul’s missionary strategy on the human side in his concern for “strategic centres.” Every city in which Paul did major work was a center of Roman administration, Greek civilization, Jewish influence, and world commerce. From these centers the Christian witness radiated outward until it permeated the nations.

In projecting his essay on biblical missionary principles and practices, in the 20th Century, F. Dale Bruner nominates these as “the great cities of our time … eminent centers of government, culture, religion and business”:

★ Tokyo: The Japanese are Asia’s imperialists—in the precise sense of the word. A land area equivalent to Montana embraces nearly 100 million people packed together like dynamite. The fuse is Tokyo, world’s largest city. In this capital metropolis are all but one of Japan’s top universities, most of its preparatory schools, 90 per cent of the nation’s publishing houses, and 60 per cent of the business headquarters.

★ Seoul: In the battered capital city of Korea, 160 Presbyterian church spires rise like praying hands. Surrounded by stronger and politically more formidable nations, it nonetheless represents a site where God has chosen to fructify his seed and build his church as nowhere else in East Asia, with the exception of New Guinea. Perhaps Korea is destined to be spiritually what she is geographically, an appendix of Asia which will erupt and spread through all the East the beneficent bacteria of God’s Word.

★ Peking: Red China’s 650 million people represent the equivalent of three Russias or four Americas, and the population is said to be increasing at the incredible rate of more than 15 million a year. At the heart of the empire lies the stolid, mysterious capital city of Peking—the city forbidden to all but God.

★ Singapore: The key to Southeast Asia, Singapore lies on the principal trade route between the harbors of the Far and Middle East. It is three-fourths Chinese, dynamic, and growing so rapidly that it is estimated that by 1980 half of its population will be teen-age and under. Capital of one of mankind’s great races, this youthful city sitting at the crossroads of the new Asia cannot be ignored.

It is unfortunate that we must skip over so many cities of significance. One is Hong Kong, precarious and swollen parasite clinging to the Chinese mainland. Another is Djakarta, capital of Indonesia, whose 88 million make it the world’s sixth largest nation.

★ Delhi: Seat of power and government in the world’s second largest nation, Delhi presides over great possibilities—and great hunger. More than 80 million in India chronically starve, and look to Delhi for relief. If soundly evangelized and established with a living Church, the city could become the hope capital of the world. Indian Christians say that India’s greatest blight is not hunger, but hunger’s chief causes, inertia and pessimistic fatalism. They are moods that feed on the husks of Indian caste religion.

Our next great city must be somewhere in the Middle East, or perhaps in the Arab world which stretches from the Atlantic seaboard along the northern rim of Africa to the eastern borders of Iran. The vast majority of some 80 million Arabs live in poverty and suspicion of one another. They share a common language (Arabic); a common religion (Islam); a common race (Hamitic); and a common hatred (Israel).

★ Tel Aviv: A few years ago Tel Aviv would have been hard to find on the map. Today it is in the eyes of the world. Whatever one’s prophetic convictions, there seems to be little doubt that Tel Aviv will assume more prominence in the years to come.

The importance of Israel should not be underestimated. The three great revolutions of our time, as has often been remarked, are the products of Jewish minds. Behind the current scientific revolution is the brain of Albert Einstein; behind the political and economic revolution of communism is Karl Marx; and behind the modern psychological revolution is Sigmund Freud. A most challenging, difficult, and demanding mission in the world today is the mission to the Jew—our own spiritual ancestor—from whose heritage we have taken the Torah and Scriptures, and, most beneficially, their Messiah and our Lord.

The strategic city for Africa does not appear at this time. One might have suggested Cairo, but Cairo may be more part of the Middle East than of Africa. Perhaps Leopoldville, or Johannesburg. The most vigorous current leadership in Africa is apparently being exercised by Nkrumah of Ghana and Mboya of Kenya, but their leadership seems to flow more from personal power than from geographical advantage.

★ Moscow: Nerve-center of international communism, Moscow has come to be a living symbol to one-third the world’s land surface and one-half its population.

★ Berlin: Divided Berlin speaks for a divided nation which perhaps more than any other stands at the crossroads of our century. Einstein, Marx, and Freud, to whom reference has been made, were of Germanic origin as well as Jewish. The direction Germany takes in the last half of the twentieth century may be as portentous for the world as the direction she took in the first half. What the Germans do, they tend to do with extreme thoroughness. Could that great zeal be harnessed for Christ, Germany might well lead the world in spiritual awakening.

★ Paris: Recently a leading U.S. publisher declared that Paris is still the fashion-setter of the world—setting the pattern in everything from wearing apparel to morals. Many believe that the rise of Charles de Gaulle may have been the harbinger of a new “vogue of virtue” throughout France, in place of the vogue of the sensual. In this enigmatic city where the intellect is worshiped and the body is served, it may be too much to hope that Christ could ever become the fashion, but Paris remains one of the world’s key cities.

★ Rome: The center of loyalty of a score of countries is Rome, crucial because it is the site of the Holy See of the Roman Catholic church. The responsible missionary statesmen of our time must study Romanism as assiduously as he studies communism, for a mixture of reasons. There are segments of Romanism where a true witness to the Saviour is borne, yet the authentic Gospel is often overlaid with so many accretions of Roman tradition and practice that the Gospel is scarcely discernible. There remains the possibility that the seeds of primitive and pure truth can be revived and the church recalled to its ancient task by faithful witnesses without and within.

★ London: Great Britain, shrinking in population and in world-wide influence, is no longer mistress of the seas nor queen of a far-flung empire. Yet deposits of diplomatic wisdom and international skill are not lost in a generation. London is still at the heart of the Christian world mission. Great Britain has been the home of many of the greatest of missionary pioneers and statesmen: William Carey, Alexander Duff, Robert Morrison, Hudson Taylor, David Livingstone, Mary Slessor.

★ São Paulo: In 34 years the population of São Paulo has gone from 750,000 to more than 3 million. United Nations experts have marked Brazil as the one nation in our time with the potential of graduating into the great power status. A recent estimate shows the rate of growth of evangelical Christianity in Brazil as three times the rate of growth of the population as a whole. A century ago there was in Brazil one Protestant for every 250,000 Roman Catholics. Today there is one Protestant for every 39 Roman Catholics. If the industrial key city of Brazil could be won for Christ, all Latin America would feel the effect.

★ New York: Here is Wall Street, the wallet of the world. Here is Madison Avenue, one of the three or four opinion-setting centers. Here is America’s largest airport and the world’s largest seaport. Here is the seat of the United Nations Organization. Here is the world’s melting pot and the world’s second largest population. As someone has said, New York may not be a capital city—of either a state or a nation—but she is well on her way to becoming the capital of the world.

Here are the high potential centers of the modern world. The goal of modern missionary strategy is to occupy and inform these cities with churches and Christian leadership in key places. If from such cities the manifold gifts of God, as seen in Japanese dynamite, Korean grit, Chinese wisdom, Indian spirituality, Jewish genius, Russian virility, German industry, Roman organization, British statesmanship, Latin zeal, and American ingenuity, could all be marshalled in the power and enabling of the Holy Spirit, there would be evident in our own day a surging, genuinely ecumenical movement in and through the nations.

We Quote:

Whatever method of evangelism may be employed, the message itself cannot be altered. I have preached this message on every continent, under almost every conceivable circumstance. A quiet hush has come over almost every audience when I expound the cross and the resurrection.… There are many factors that contribute to these crusades but the underlying factor is the content of the message.—Evangelist Billy Graham, to the WCC Consultation on Evangelism in Geneva, Switzerland.

Of all continents Asia offers the greatest challenge, yet it poses the deepest enigma. The land in which Jesus Christ was born is at the heart of the “population explosion.” It threatens to engulf the world with sheer numbers. According to a United Nations study, The Future Growth of World Population (1958), “With the present rate of increase, it can be calculated that in 600 years the number of human beings on earth will be such that there will be only one square metre for each to live on.” Nobody expects such a development to take place; but if it did, most of the people would be Asians.

Between now and the end of the century the population of Asia is expected to triple. From this fact alone a revival of the non-Christian religions of Asia (Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, and others) would appear inevitable. That revival is in fact already taking place; under the pressure of nationalism the old gods are being renovated and the discarded writings are being re-translated. What is the Christian mission doing to meet this new world development? What strategic steps are being taken to evangelize the Asian world in the next generation?

Because of Asia’s size, our Index is divided into seven sections to present a clear statistical picture of the present religious situation. The Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Australasia, China and Japan are natural groupings. Korea is considered separately because it fits into none of these bounds, and has a significant sacred history of its own. Japan’s population is not expected to grow as rapidly as other Asian nations. UN reports indicate that Japan’s rate of growth has been radically cut in post-war years by many factors, including government legalizing of abortions.

THE MIDDLE EAST

From the Hellespont to Afghanistan, including Arabia, Syria, Iran, Iraq and other nations.

INDIA

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Pakistan to the Philippines and Formosa

AUSTRALASIA

including Indonesia, New Guinea, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand

CHINA

JAPAN

KOREA

North and South

Amid all the tumult and unrest in modern Africa, one astonishing fact emerges: a vigorous evangelical Christian community of nine million persons bears its witness between the Sahara desert and the Union of South Africa. Those who predict the demise of the African Church in the turbulence of the struggles for independence may have dismissed too quickly the faithful labors of missionaries since the days of Moffat and Livingstone.

Two-thirds of a billion persons may inhabit the erstwhile “Dark Continent” and Madagascar by the end of the century. The question is, “How many will be Christian?”

For convenient study, the continent of Africa has been arbitrarily divided into the area north of the Sahara desert, where Mohammedan influence is strongest; central Africa; and the Afrikander-controlled Union of South Africa. The Union of South Africa has its own strong national Reformed church with a program of evangelistic outreach, and does not encourage the entrance of missionaries who do not support the government policy of apartheid. Population here as elsewhere is indicated by the most recent figures available.

NORTH AFRICA

CENTRAL AFRICA

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

Many missionaries are convinced that the greatest opportunity for the Church of Jesus Christ today lies in Latin America. With population expected to soar well past the half-billion mark by 2000 A.D., Latin America may become the most populous and in many ways the most important segment of the Western Hemisphere. The evangelical community today numbers nearly 6.5 million and is growing rapidly. Persecution is always on the horizon, yet even countries like Colombia are ripe with opportunity. According to the 1958 National Catholic Almanac, “A controversial survey of conditions in Latin America by Fr. Albert J. Nevins in September, 1955, reported that 93 per cent of the millions of Latin Americans claimed to be Catholics but estimated that only about 10 per cent actually practice the faith. It declared that the (Roman Catholic) Church was strong in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Argentina; that it was standing still in Guatemala, Nicaraugua, El Salvador, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Peru and Uruguay, and that it was dying in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, rural Brazil, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Haiti.” As Father Nevins’ report indicates, nine in ten of those classed as Roman Catholic practice no religion. If they are not confronted by the Gospel, something else presumably will be imported to fill the vacuum.

In this Index all countries south of the Rio Grande are classified under “Latin America.” Separate attention is given to Brazil, not because of its linguistic uniqueness (Portuguese rather than Spanish) but because it affords a prime example of modern missionary opportunity. Brazil has the fastest-growing evangelical community in the world.

SPANISH-SPEAKING AMERICA

including Mexico, West Indies, Central America, South America

PORTUGUESE-SPEAKING AMERICA

Brazil

The United States and Canada are among today’s Protestant strongholds. They have become the chief manpower source of the world missionary movement. Today more than 26,000 evangelical and Protestant missionaries are supported around the world by American and Canadian Christians, compared with 12,597 from Europe, 847 from Australia-New Zealand, and 104 from the “younger churches.”

Although Protestantism has kept surprising pace with Roman Catholicism in North America, population growth in North America is not nearly as rapid as elsewhere in the world. By 2000 A.D. the U.S. and Canada may form only 4.7% of the world population. Today roughly one-third of the world is Christian (of all branches). By the end of the century, due to their slower growth, the Christian one-third is expected to drop to one-fifth.

Foreign missionary statistics in North America, as in Western Europe, reflect the fact that these lands are primarily sending areas. A Canadian missionary working in the United States would not be considered a foreign missionary; if in Mexico, he would be so considered here. Dr. Frank M. Price of the Missionary Research Library defines a “foreign” missionary as one who has left culture and people to labor in a new and strange environment. Hence this survey includes Mexico with Latin America rather than with North America. Western European and North American missionary statistics inevitably list only those sent out, rather than those received from other lands. When the Christian Church around the world fully realizes its missionary task, this situation is expected to change.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CANADA

(Seventh-Day Adventists and Assemblies of God missionary statistics are not included under NCC totals, although the latter lists them as “associated boards.”)

Europe, for centuries the cradle of Christianity, has now become in part a mission field itself. The proud continent first sparked the modern missionary movement, sent Carey and Schwartz to India, Livingstone to Africa and Morrison to China. Today many of its churches are hampered in their ministry—particularly to youth—by unfriendly and atheistic governments, and are hard put to stay alive. Hardly a year passes but some far-flung mission outpost, supported for decades by European Christians, comes under American or Canadian or Australian sponsorship. In western and northern Europe, where Jesus Christ is still freely preached, young men and women hear the call and the task force is moving out. But in East Germany, where the missionary movement was once the glory of the Lutheran Church, the stream of volunteers for Christ has been reduced to a trickle by the Communists.

As in the case of North America, the Western European task force is designated statistically by those “serving abroad” rather than those “in the field.” This arrangement does not imply that Europe and North America are not to be considered legitimate “mission fields.” It simply reflects the fact that missionaries from abroad, by and large, are not now working in these areas.

WESTERN EUROPE

EASTERN EUROPE AND SIBERIA

Communist controlled