One autumn day in 1830 Charles G. Finney rode a mule-towed barge along the Erie Canal into the young city of Rochester, New York, where his Gospel preaching spurred one of the most famous revivals of the nineteenth century. This month, 130 years later, both the evangelist and the canal are gone. The canal’s empty ditch is about to become a freeway in downtown Rochester. But as some 8,000 delegates to the 53rd Annual American Baptist Convention gathered in the city’s War Memorial Building, Finney’s voice seemed to be feeding back on the microphone, and Rochester once again felt the stirrings of spiritual awakening.

From the invocation June 2 until the benediction five days later, a spirit of unity prevailed, due in great measure to the gifted congeniality of the presiding officer, Dr. Herbert Gezork, head of Andover-Newton Seminary, and the background work of the young general secretary, Dr. Edwin Tuller. Just enough controversy was present, as one delegate expressed it, “to keep the steam up.” And a French-born woman delegate added, “People don’t understand us Baptists; they think we’re fighting when we’re only expressing ourselves. That’s the Baptist way!”

One crucial issue was quickly settled on the third day as, by an almost unanimous vote, the convention agreed to proceed with erection of its proposed modern $8,500,000 headquarters and publishing plant (Judson Press) on 55 scenic acres along the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Valley Forge.

The other major issue at the convention was a Kansas revolt, led by the 4300-member First Baptist Church of Wichita, against further ABC participation in the National Council of Churches. The NCC was charged with advocating UN recognition of Red China, socialized medicine, federal aid to education, uncontrolled immigration, cooperation with Roman Catholics. It was accused of opposing right-to-work laws, of issuing pacifist pronouncements on UN disarmament, and in general of being “too close to socialism” and “trying to legislate a watered-down Christianity.” Leaders of the Wichita group declared that scores of Baptist churches in the Midwest supported their stand.

Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, Baptist president of the NCC, did not take part in the debate, but expressed the majority view one evening when he said, “the Christians of America are coming together and intend to stay together.” After a substitute motion was defeated, an overwhelming majority approved a General Council recommendation “reaffirming our participation” in the NCC, but preserving the right of local churches to dissent and to withhold NCC financial support. Individual churches disaffiliating from NCC shall have the right to be so listed in the annual ABC yearbook.

Convention Retains Social Stand

The characteristic American Baptist position on social issues was strongly maintained in resolutions adopted by this month’s convention.

Sex and violence in mass media were deplored, along with gambling, alcoholic beverages, and continued nuclear testing. A comprehensive statement on race relations called for “complete integration of all Baptist organizations.”

The attitude toward Roman Catholicism was ambivalent; a pre-convention critique by Paul Blanshard in Rochester had roused ire in the local Romanist press, and the convention itself warned against use of public funds for parochial schools. Further, delegates insisted that candidates for public office clarify the relation of their religious beliefs to “issues of American life.” On the other hand, they said that distinctions of creed, race or gender should not affect one’s right to aspire to such office. A friendly reference to Roman Catholics was made in an “official” address by NCC President Edwin Dahlberg, an American Baptist pastor.

Dahlberg’s message, entitled “The Last Farthing,” contained in mimeographed form an extended defense (not delivered in person to the convention) of the 1958 Cleveland NCC World Order Conference stand on Red China.

The ABC gave thumping support to the South’s sit-down demonstrations.

Sixty hands were raised in opposition; newsmen broke for the telephones; and the convention settled back for the home stretch. One correspondent at the press table recorded the debate on tape: Dr. Carl McIntire of the Christian Beacon.

Delegates unanimously elected as their new president a layman, C. Stanton Gallup, former head of the Baptist Men and a lumber and utility executive in Plainfield, Connecticut.

The real issues facing American Baptists, deeper than any which reached the floor for debate, were nonetheless everywhere evident at Rochester. There was the concern about growth: the ABC membership has stood still in recent years, while other Baptist groups have expanded as much as 34 per cent. Another concern was the drift toward centralization of authority and away from local autonomy; some churches are now being encouraged to place title to their property in the hands of the state conventions.

The basic theological dilemma was aptly expressed in a statement prepared for the delegates by the Baptist Union of Rochester and Monroe County, which read in part: “Our own understanding of who we are as Baptists has become fragmented and confused since the sturdier days of our fathers.… We are reluctant even to raise the question of a common confession, lest such unity as we have be lost.… We have moved to many forms of church government and to little or no discipline. From a clearly understood sense in which Scripture was the final authority for the church, we have come to an implicit recognition of multiple authorities and to serious disagreement concerning any sense in which Scripture is authoritative at all.”

Occasional voices from the rostrum called delegates back to their source of Baptistic strength.

Still a key force in any spiritual awakening that might come to America, still interested in soul-winning and revival, with a lively church conscience, yet evidently increasingly dependent on the techniques of social engineering, American Baptists were uncomfortably aware at Rochester that their early-day thrust was flattening out. So while the leaders preached about discernment, lectured about stewardship, and debated about autonomy, there were Baptists present who prayed for genuine revival in the land, America, and who kept one ear open to heaven, listening for the rustling of the Holy Spirit.

Protestant Panorama

• The Universalist Church of Rhode Island, which reverted to an “affiliate” status with the state council of churches two years ago, plans to apply for readmission to full constituent membership. The council recently adopted a Trinitarian preamble, but did not specify that members must subscribe to it.

• Groundbreaking ceremonies were held in San Antonio May 25 for the Southwest Texas Methodist Hospital, said to be the world’s first which can function under nuclear attack. Two floors of the $20,000,000 hospital will be underground, protected by a 26-inch concrete wall and equipped to accommodate 1,200 people.

• Cameras will begin rolling in Germany next month for a film depicting Christianity’s struggle under communism. Tentatively titled “In My Father’s House,” the film will be produced by Lutheran Film Associates and Louis de Rochemont Associates, which also collaborated on “Martin Luther.”

• Chaplain (Captain) John D. Zimmerman will serve as principal liaison representative between the Jerusalem See and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States following his retirement from the Navy June 30.

• Union Theological Seminary is creating a “Reinhold Niebuhr Professorship of Social Ethics” in honor of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, retiring vice president and senior faculty member.

• The Foundation for Reformation Research will apply two newly-received grants totalling $20,000 toward a program to film sixteenth-century books and manuscripts. One gift of $10,000 came from the Lilly Foundation and another from Concordia Publishing House, which plans to donate $50,000 over a five-year period.

• The Independent Faith Mission is launching a new Italian-language newspaper with a popular, evangelistic appeal. Vero (True) will use a modern, dressy format and the rotagravure printing process to compete with slick secular papers.

• The $1,750,000 Park Place Church of God in Anderson, Indiana was dedicated this month. It is the largest in the Church of God denomination, which has headquarters in Anderson.

• The Rev. David Koto, Anglican bishop of Tokyo, reports that he is encouraged at the response of U. S. Episcopalians to his plan for a $500,000 cathedral. The cathedral would be located opposite the world’s tallest television tower, which has turned into a tourist mecca.

• Conservative Protestant churches in the South Bend, Indiana, area are spearheading the establishment of a Christian high school. Classes will begin this fall.

• The Rev. William H. Jordan was consecrated as a missionary bishop by the Reformed Episcopal Church at its annual council in Philadelphia last month. The church has some 70 congregations in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and in South Carolina. It supports 11 foreign missionaries.

• Concern, news magazine of Methodist Youth, was merged this month with Contact, social action periodical published for three Methodist boards.

• The Lutheran World Federation says its mediators have helped to heal a factional split in the 209,000-member Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church of northeastern India.

• The Congregational Christian home missions board is giving college scholarships to 82 Indian and Spanish-speaking youths in the United States under a program begun in 1954.

• Representatives of the Danish Ministry of Education say they have reached agreement with bishops of the state Lutheran church on a program of released time religious instruction for pupils about to be confirmed.

• The Newcastle synod of the Anglican Church in Australia wants New South Wales school authorities to withdraw a text which allegedly contains passages “repugnant to the truth and to the Church of England.”

Race and Theology

A racial dispute triggered by Negro sit-in demonstrations broke out at Vanderbilt University Divinity School last month. Eleven professors resigned, including Dean J. Robert Nelson, three new graduates said they were returning their degrees, and fourteen students threatened to withdraw. All described their action as a protest of the university’s refusal to readmit the Rev. James M. Lawson, 32-year-old Methodist minister and former missionary to India who was expelled from the Divinity School for his “commitment to a planned program of civil disobedience” in connection with segregated lunch counter demonstrations in Nashville this spring.

Nelson’s resignation is scheduled to take effect in August. The resigning faculty members said they would remain to the close of the next academic year. Were they to leave immediately, the Divinity School would be left with only four professors.

Vanderbilt Chancellor Harvie Branscomb said he would refer the resignations to university trustees.

Lawson was arrested during the rash of sit-in demonstrations and is awaiting trial on a charge of conspiracy to disrupt trade and commerce. Meanwhile, he has enrolled in the Boston University School of Theology and hopes to complete requirements for a bachelor of sacred theology degree during the summer session.

Vanderbilt offered the post left vacant by Dean Nelson’s resignation to Dr. Walter Harrelson, who is now leaving another theological school controversy, having been dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School during its years of tension as part of the soon-to-be-dissolved Federated Theological Faculty. Harrelson not only turned down the offer but resigned a professorship he had already accepted before the controversy began. He was to have begun teaching at the Vanderbilt seminary this summer.

Branscomb, in refusing to readmit Lawson, cited these considerations: “that in this emotionally charged situation, it would be impossible to deal with Mr. Lawson on the same basis that one would deal with any other student; that to readmit him would initiate a conflict as long as he would be on campus; that he had the alternative … of attending Boston University, which … had agreed to give him his degree by the end of the summer term; and that in these circumstances and the best interest of the university I would not approve his readmission.”

The Uneasy Congo

U. S. mission boards maintained a steady alert on the eve of Belgian Congo independence.

Missionary News Service reports that a “pall of uncertainty” surrounded Congolese affairs as the territory moved into its last month under Belgian rule. The first session of the new Congo Parliament opens June 30.

Most missionary agencies apparently have adopted a wait-and-see policy. Some were fearful of what might happen. Others were optimistic. Most agreed that missionary personnel should stay put pending the governmental changeover, and one board flatly decreed that there would be no travel in or out of the Congo after June 15.

A missions official just returned from the Congo said Africans stressed that there was no animosity toward foreign missionaries: “We were assured that (the missionary) is loved and respected among the people, that their earnest desire is for him to remain, and indeed, that more missionaries are needed.”

Still there was anxiety. “Not that the missionary himself would be the target,” the missions official said, “but that he could be caught in the welter of confusion, possibly violence, that might accompany a chaotic period following the elections.”

Informed observers were watching the movements of Congo’s new strong men, including Patrice Emergy Lumumba, Otetela tribesman who once was expelled from a Methodist mission school, and Abako leader Joseph Kasavubu. Lumumba came out of last month’s election with the likely control of about one-third of the seats in the Chamber of Representatives.

There are approximately 2,150 foreign missionaries now serving in the Congo. They represent groups such as the Disciples, Methodists, Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Mennonite Brethren Church of North America, Conservative Baptists, Salvation Army, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and the Evangelical Free Church.

A Judge’s Reversal

In Medellín, Colombia, public indignation is said to have prodded a judge to reverse himself in the case of three children seized from their Protestant father.

Juvenile Court Judge Arturo Tobón originally had issued a warrant for the children to be taken from their father and given over to the care of their Roman Catholic uncle. Nine days later they were returned, again by order of Tobón.

“The abrupt reversal of orders from the judge,” says James Goff of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia, “resulted from public indignation over the ‘legal kidnapping’ as well as from intervention by the Ministry of Government in Bogotá, the Governor of Antioquia, and the Mayor of Medellín.”

The children had been baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, but the father, a widower, has since been converted.

Losses in Chile

Religious News Service reports that Protestant churches, schools, and parsonages in Chile suffered heavy losses in May’s earthquakes and tidal waves.

Many national church workers were among the 5,000 victims, but no U. S. missionaries are known to be missing or dead.

Among groups which sustained serious church losses were the Methodist, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Seventh-day Adventist, and Four Square Gospel.

Church Battleground

A German Lutheran church taken over by Roman Catholics following World War II became a battleground in Zielona Gora, Poland, last month. Authorities, who want to use the building for concerts, sent workmen to remove furniture only to have them expelled by angry Catholic women. A riot ensued with thousands of townspeople joining in. Four persons were seriously hurt as police resorted to nightsticks and tear gas to dispel demonstrators.

Tracing ‘Terrorism’

The Christian Century, undenominational weekly, issued a blistering rebuke this month of proposals to arrest liberal trends in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In a June 8 editorial, “Do Southern Baptists Fear Liberty,” the Century took strong issue with SBC President Ramsay Pollard, who urged the convention last month to seek out unbelieving seminary professors.

The editorial sought to identify Pollard’s orthodox stand with anti-intellectualism and oppression.

“It is not an accident that the quality of literature exhibited at a Southern Baptist Convention is lower than that seen at the convention of any other major religious body in America,” the Century said. “The intellectual and spiritual poverty there exhibited is not due to lack of ability of Southern Baptist writers and publishers to enter more creatively into the dialogue of our times. Rather it is traceable to the terrorism which is exerted over writers, publishers and booksellers by self-appointed censors. By demagoguery they inspire a fear which inhibits mental activity, blunts legitimate expression, throttles ideas in their cradles.”

The editorial was viewed as one of the severest criticisms of denominational leadership to appear in the Century in recent years. The 51-year-old journal, chronic critic of theological conservatism, has pursued a softer line of late, presumably in the interests of ecumenicity.

Recent “theological and ecclesiastical earthquakes which threaten the strength and solidity of the Southern Baptist Convention … cannot be ignored,” the Century said.

“Tyranny of this kind is as blinding as it is subtle, cruel and anti-Christian.”

Sticking to the Gospel

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, asserted before a nationwide television audience this month that Christianity has no program to assure survival to an unregenerate world that seeks its solutions outside of Christ.

Henry appeared on a panel discussion with Dr. A. Dudley Ward, general secretary of the Methodist Board of Social and Economic Relations. The discussion was a feature of NBC’s “Frontiers of Faith” and revolved on the question, “Why Don’t the Churches Stick to the Gospel?”

“Some do and some don’t,” Henry observed, “but all the churches ought to.” Ward retorted that to give such an answer is “to beg the question” … of the definition of the Gospel.

Ward maintained that it was necessary for the corporate church to concern itself with social welfare. “We must become involved,” he said, “or we are irrelevant.”

Henry said the pulpit has divine authority to preach revealed doctrines and moral principles, and that the church’s primary task is evangelism and missions. He deplored “lack of social conscience,” but also criticized the manner in which the corporate church propels itself into particular socio-political programs.

Ward disputed the Bible’s final authority, insisting that the church must shape its message also in view of tradition and the social setting.

Commentator Lisa Sergio, a convert from Roman Catholicism to the Episcopal faith, moderated the discussion.

Life and Death

The effects of a disaster are not always disastrous.

“I know of at least three persons who have accepted Jesus as Saviour following the tornado,” said the Rev. R. L. Phillips, pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Wilburton, Oklahoma. The twister hit one evening last month while Phillips and 24 of his parishioners were gathered in the church for a dinner. The church was demolished and five of the guests were killed.

Arguments Forthcoming

The U. S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this fall on the constitutionality of the Connecticut law which prohibits dissemination of birth control information. The resulting decision will mark the first time the nation’s highest tribunal has ever ruled on the question.

Some Protestants say that the birth control laws in Connecticut and Massachusetts favor the Catholic population. Catholics say the laws were enacted by Protestants who long ago were largely opposed to birth control.

Visitor’s Impressions

A noted Salvation Army evangelist, just returned to his native England following a five-month speaking tour of the United States and Canada, says he was impressed with “the freedom given for preaching the Gospel over radio and television.”

“May that freedom be carefully guarded,” declared Major Allister Smith.

He added that although he found Salvationists in America “fundamental and evangelical,” “the Army realizes that, like other churches and missions, it needs a revival and a return to the fire and power of its early days.”

Pilot Project

Six days of discussions about the Bible climaxed a pilot project among ministers and laymen in Buffalo last month. The project, initiated by the American Bible Society, was the first of its type in the United States and drew from both Protestant and Orthodox congregations. It was said to be aimed at determining what “God has to say to the people of today through the Bible.”

The project began several months ago with a clergymen’s seminar conducted by such Bible expositors as Dr. John H. Gerstner, Dr. James Sanders, Dr. John Schmidt, Dr. James R. Branton, Dr. George W. Birtch, and the Very Rev. Alexander Schmeman.

ROME REAFFIRMS POLITICAL ROLE

L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican City daily, called attention last month to the hierarchy’s “duty and right to guide, direct and correct” Catholics in politics.

In a prominently-positioned editorial entitled “Firm Points,” the newspaper spelled out the far-reaching implications of Roman doctrine. It was the most official and definitive Church-State policy statement to come out of the Vatican in many months.

Though ostensibly aimed at the Italian situation wherein many Catholics lean toward communism, the editorial’s principles apply to Catholics everywhere. Vatican sources described the message as “authoritative.”

Some effort was made to temper the effect of the editorial. The day after it appeared a high Vatican source was reported as having said that the writer (unidentified) did not have in mind U. S. Senator John F. Kennedy, Democratic presidential aspirant. Nearly two weeks later L’Osservatore Romano carried another editorial saying that the first one did not “hinder or contradict the autonomy of political action” as long as it was undertaken in keeping with the church’s teaching and with the “refusal to allow any split in conscience between the believer and the citizen.”

Catholic Data

• The newly-released Official Catholic Directory reports a record constituency in the United States of 40,871,302.

• The National Catholic Welfare Conference says enrollment in Roman Catholic elementary and high schools for the 1959–1960 academic year topped five million, also a record.

• Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, says Knights of Columbus advertisements attracted 3,660,182 inquiries during the first third of 1960.

• One of two secretaries established for the forthcoming Ecumenical Council by Pope John XXIII is being assigned the task of enabling non-Catholics to follow the work of the council and to arrive at “unity.”

“The Church’s teaching is directed towards the free conscience of the citizen so that with well-inspired will power he can make a choice which is not contradictory to faith.”

The second editorial was written by the newspaper’s new editor, Raimondo Manzini, and had less of an official character than the first, according to Religious News Service.

Kennedy’s Reply

Roman Catholic Senator John F. Kennedy declined direct personal comment on L’Osservatore Romano’s Church-State editorial, except to say (two weeks later) that he understood the Vatican to have issued a subsequent statement which declared that the editorial “did not apply to the United States.”

Kennedy’s press secretary had issued this statement the day after the original editorial appeared:

“The American office holder is committed by an oath to God to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which includes Article I providing for the separation of church and state.

“Senator Kennedy has repeatedly stated his support of the principle of separation of church and state as provided for in the United States Constitution. He has stated that this support is not subject to change under any condition.”

Editorial Excerpts

Following are excerpts from an editorial which appeared in the Vatican City daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, on May 18:

There is a tendency to separate Catholics from the Church’s hierarchy, restricting the relationship between them to the sphere of a simple sacred ministry and proclaiming the full autonomy of the faithful in the civic sphere.

Thus, an absurd distinction is made between a man’s conscience as a Catholic and his conscience as a citizen, as though the Catholic religion were a special and occasional phase of the life of the spirit and not the driving idea that binds and guides the whole of man’s existence.…

The Church, constituted with its hierarchy by Jesus Christ as a perfect society, has full powers of real jurisdiction over all the faithful and thus has the right and the duty to guide, direct and correct them on the plane of ideas and of action in conformity with the dictates of the Gospel in what is necessary to attain the supreme end of man, which is eternal life.…

A Catholic can never depart from the teachings and directives of the Church. In every sector of his activity, his conduct, both private and public, must be motivated by the laws, orientation and instructions of the hierarchy.

The political-social problem cannot be separated from religion because it is a highly human problem and as such has as its basis an urgent ethical-religious need that cannot be abolished. And, by the same token, conscience and the sense of duty, which have a large role in such a problem, likewise cannot be abolished.

Consequently, the Church cannot remain indifferent, particularly when politics touch the altar, as Pope Pius XI said. The Church has the right and the duty to enter also this field to enlighten and aid consciences to make the best choice according to moral principles and those of Christian sociology.

Outside of these principles and of the dutiful discipline of the laity toward the hierarchy, anyone can see what a vast field of special responsibilities, courageous initiatives and fruitful activity is open to the civic activity of Catholic lay people so that they may offer their contribution of opinions and discussions, experiences and accomplishments, to promote the progress of their country.

The problem of collaboration with those who do not recognize religious principles might arise in the political field. It is then up to the ecclesiastical authorities, and not to the arbitrary decisions of individual Catholics, to judge the moral licitness of such collaboration.…

It is highly deplorable … that some persons, though professing to be Catholics, not only dare to conduct their political and social activities in a way which is at variance with the teachings of the Church, but also take upon themselves the right to submit its norms and precepts to their own judgment, interpretation and evaluation with obvious superficiality and temerity.

475 Riverside Drive

A new chapter in the ecumenical movement unfolded with the May 29 dedication of the Interchurch Center, 19-story office building overlooking the Hudson River from Manhattan’s Morn-ingside Heights.

Built as a home base for U. S. ecumenism at a cost of $21,000,000 (including $2,000,000 working capital), the building houses National Council of Churches headquarters and assorted denominational and church-related agencies. Ownership rests with a tax-exempt, charitable corporation formed in liaison with NCC leaders.

More than 2,000 persons witnessed a solemn dedication service in neighboring Riverside Church. Following the sermon by German Bishop Hans Lilje, they formed a procession to the main entrance of the gray limestone edifice at 475 Riverside Drive for equally solemn ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

Interestingly enough, the interdenominational Riverside Church had been the scene of another ecumenical procession just a few days before. The earlier procession, which had no official tie with the Interchurch Center dedication, was part of a service commemorating the golden anniversary of the first World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. Although originally projected in the interests of missionary cooperation, the Edinburgh conference held 50 years ago this month is now looked upon as having provided stimulus for the ecumenical movement.

How does U. S. Protestantism react to the Interchurch Center as the “tangible symbol of the growing unity of the churches”? Denominational leaders, including avowed ecumenists, have showed surprisingly little interest in a common headquarters building. Some have been openly opposed. Only one denomination—the Reformed Church in America—has located headquarters offices in the Interchurch Center. Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Disciples do not have as much as a desk to represent them.

To be sure, the Interchurch Center’s 461,000 square feet of office space could not begin to accommodate all denominational headquarters. But even this limited opportunity for geographic ecumenicity is being widely ignored, for already the Interchurch Center has been obliged to rent rooms to a number of non-religious groups such as the Association on American Indian Affairs and the College Entrance Examination Board.

Tenants of the Interchurch Center have been moving into their new quarters since last fall, a year after President Eisenhower had laid the cornerstone (a piece of marble from ancient Corinth). NCC offices take up four floors, United Presbyterian and Methodist agencies each occupy three floors. The International Missionary Council and the U. S. Conference of the World Council of Churches have adjoining suites.

The center’s functional motif, most noticeable in its well-appointed interior, contrasts sharply with the flamboyancy of Riverside Church and the more reserved traditional look of nearby Union Theological Seminary. A 500-seat chapel on the ground floor boasts a strikingly backlighted alabaster window said to be the largest in the world. Instead of a cross, an eight-foot gold mosaic Chi Rho (a Greek monogram for Christ which dates back to the Catacombs) will be hung from the ceiling.

Site for the building was donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who also gave $2,650,000 toward construction. Another million dollars was donated by individuals, while church groups contributed $500,000 and invested $4,500,000 in second mortgage bonds. A first mortgage loan of $12,650,000 from the New York Life Insurance Company is to be repaid from rentals over a 30-year period.

NCC Hails ‘New Era’

“Hold to Christ and for the rest, remain uncommitted, or you will cumber the earth with your ‘efficiency,’ ” the General Board of the National Council of Churches was told at its semiannual meeting June 1–2 by Dr. Leslie E. Cooke, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches, at the Interchurch Center in New York.

Despite sober reminders that the newly-dedicated skyscraper was merely “servants’ quarters for the churches” and not intended to give its tenants “a false sense of permanence,” the 250-member board found little difficulty adjusting to its impressive new surroundings. And soon it was covering the earth, if not ‘cumbering’ it, with resolutions and recommendations on issues ranging from atomic waste to the Pakistani refugees of Calcutta.

Reverberations of the recent Air Force manual controversy were still echoing. General satisfaction was expressed over the outcome, especially the strong support given NCC in congressional speeches and in American mass media generally. Exulted James Wine, associate general secretary and a key figure in the controversy, “Our principal detractors are in a state of desperation … at last they are now being found out for exactly what they are—purveyors of half truths, perverters of fact, and willing tools.… The apparent conspiracy has been broken, an era is ended.” Public decency and fairness, he predicted, “will drive these people into the black holes of oblivion.”

Speeches by some board members, however, reflected a less sanguine view. It was reported that at grass roots the NCC is subject to continuing criticism and unpopularity in some areas and churches. General Secretary Roy G. Ross took an optimistic view, suggesting that the Air Force manual’s charges of Communist infiltration in NCC churches had actually demonstrated the solidarity of the denominations as they united to resist the accusations.

A change is manifest in the outspoken anti-Communist emphasis of the current utterances of NCC leaders. What is said to have been formerly assumed and taken for granted on the inside—and correspondingly misunderstood on the outside—is now a heartily verbalized policy, and the air is much clearer.

The NCC board handed its faith and order advisory committee a knotty practical problem to unravel during the next two years: the relationship of local, state and national councils of churches to the historic Church. Before it can initiate deep theological discussions on such subjects as the nature of ministry, intercommunion and other doctrinal questions, the NCC has a mandate to clarify the ecclesiological status of the councils.

The board received a study commission report calling upon the FCC to withhold licenses from TV and radio stations which persist in “offending the public interest.” The report spanked mass media for their “pathological preoccupation with sex and violence.” The FCC was asked to set up local boards of review and to hold public hearings to evaluate radio and TV stations’ performances where complaints have been raised. “We recognize that this is symptomatic of a moral disease in our society,” the report said. At the same time it expressed its distaste for censorship and the Roman Catholic “Legion of Decency” approach to films. The report called on religious broadcasters not to “pretend to a false unity, nor conspire to water down the content of the Gospel to a least common denominator.”

Among other actions the board:

• Hailed nuclear energy as a gift from God to the human race, and called for its increased use for peaceful purposes.

• Adopted a six-point proposal of ways in which world peace prospects could be improved, involving disarmament, raising of living standards, inter-communication, and promotion of moral principles and human rights. The proposal called on the United States to be ready to confer with all nations (Communist China was not mentioned by name).

• Adopted after minor changes a resolution applauding sit-in demonstrations by students and others in restaurants and libraries of the South as efforts to bring “laws, customs and traditions into conformity with the law of God which recognizes the dignity and worth of each and every person.”

• Recommended that the Syrian (Orthodox) Church of Antioch (which claims to have been established between 37 and 43 A.D. with Peter as its first Patriarch) be approved as a member communion of NCC at the General Assembly in San Francisco next December.

• Reported that Church World Service had rushed emergency aid to stricken Chile.

• Welcomed a bearded official visitor, His Holiness Vasken I, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, from Etchmiadzin, Armenia, U.S.S.R., who brought “greetings of Christian love” to the Christians of America from hit church.

S.E.W.

Nile Mother

Highlight of an Assemblies of God Sunday School convention, held last month in Minneapolis, was an honor breakfast for Miss Lillian Thrasher, who was instrumental in the establishment of one of the world’s largest orphanages in Assiout, Egypt, 50 years ago.

Miss Thrasher, 73, known as the “Nile Mother,” is one of the most highly regarded missionaries in the Middle East. Among her mementoes is a personal letter from United Arab Republic President Gamal Abdel Nasser expressing appreciation for her work with the orphans. Nasser personally intervened for Miss Thrasher last fall when she encountered difficulty in importing an automobile for the orphanage.

Mission Decisions

A total of 85,543 decisions for Christ were recorded last year by the 272 members of the International Union of Gospel Missions, it was reported at the group’s 47th annual meeting in Charleston, West Virginia, last month.

IUGM members reported they had served 7,366,116 meals and conducted 66,264 religious services which were attended by 3,298,780 persons, Temporary lodging was provided for 2,190,198 persons. In addition, assistance was given 21,628 families in 1959.

The figures were made public by C. E. Gregory, IUGM president and superintendent of the Cleveland City Mission. Gregory was an accountant before he joined the mission 12 years ago.

In addition to 260 U. S. members, the IUGM has missions in Canada, Cuba, Japan, France, and England.

People Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. David Hugh Jones, 98, pastor emeritus of the First Presbyterian Church of Evanston, Illinois; in Evanston … Dr. John Z. Hodge, 88, former secretary of the National Christian Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon … Dr. Ida S. Scudder, 90, founder of the Vellore American Medical Mission; in Kodaikanal, Madras, India.

Resignations: As president of Eastern Baptist College and Seminary, Dr. Gilbert L. Guffin (effective May, 1961, to return to Howard College in Alabama as dean of the religious program) … as editor of the Link, National Sunday School Association publication, Dr. Edwin J. Potts.

Elections: As moderator of the American Unitarian Association (to be merged next year with the Universalist Church of America) Dr. James R. Killian, Jr.… as president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Dr. Nathan Bailey … as president of the Christian Medical Society, Dr. William Johnson.

Appointments: As president of Gordon College and Divinity School, Dr. James Forrester … as president of Scarritt College, the Rev. D. D. Holt … as dean of Conwell School of Theology (to open this fall in Philadelphia), Dr. Aaron E. Gast … as professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary, Dr. Edward W. Bauman; as professor of pastoral care, Dr. Tabor Chikas; as pastor of Christian worship, retiring Methodist Bishop W. Earl Ledden … as professor of church history and practical theology at San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. William J. Sweeting … as pastor of City Temple in London, England, Dr. A. Leonard Griffith of Chalmers United Church in Ottawa, Ontario.

W. E. Sangster

Dr. W. E. Sangster, 60, home mission superintendent of the English Methodist Church and a noted preacher and evangelical leader, died in London last month.

Sangster had been in poor health for many months, having suffered from a muscular illness.

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY Contributing Editor, he was author of more than 10 books and known especially for his writings on the practical outreach of the Church. In 1950 he was president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain.

Preliminary Study

Steven C. Rockefeller, son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, will enroll this fall for “preliminary study” at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

Rockefeller, whose marriage last year to Anne Marie Rasmussen, the family’s Norwegian housemaid, drew world-wide attention, is “anxious to learn more about the faith and the ministry” before making a definite commitment regarding the ministry as a career, according to Union admissions chairman Robert Handy.

A new Billy Graham came to Washington this week. He had the same transparent dependence on the New Testament message that he had when he conducted a crusade in the nation’s capital in 1952. He also had the same tanned face, lank frame, ebullient lungs, and artless manner. His familiar lieutenants—including song leader Cliff Barrows, soloist George Beverly Shea, and colleague Grady Wilson—were still with him.

Yet somehow many things were different. Instead of a boyish tent-preacher who had recently been “puffed” into a national phenomenon, he was now a mature, recognized national leader, the confidant of statesmen. The voice from the “wilderness” of the Carolina coastal plain had become an interpreter of world events in the light of God’s Word, and in the context of his own conversations with queens and premiers.

Eight years ago Billy Graham preached on the Capitol steps, and in an armory seating 10,000. This week he is speaking in Griffith Stadium, home of the Washington Senators, to perhaps as many as 25,000 or more. President Eisenhower had indicated he would be among those in attendance if he returned from the Far East in time.

Eight years ago Jerry Beavan had to warn Graham and Barrows that Washington would look askance at the brilliant ties and gabardine suits they were accustomed to wearing at their revival services. “This is the national capital,” he reminded them, “buy some button-down shirts.” By contrast, last week several hundred Congressmen, diplomats and government employees sat down at a banquet in the Presidential Ballroom of the Staffer Hilton Hotel, at the invitation of Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and Crusade Chairman Boyd Leedom, to hear Billy speak. In a corner of the beveled invitation were the succinct words, “Black Tie.”

But most significant, perhaps, was the change in mood in eight years. In 1952 no hydrogen bomb had been exploded, no satellites launched, no summits had collapsed. The armory had attracted many who were gay, bored and frivolous, and who took in a crusade as they would take in a show. Doubtless there would be some such at the stadium this week, but there would also be many thousands of sober Americans who were deeply concerned about the national destiny and their place in it, many who saw in the challenge to moral renewal the only hope for the West.

In a preparatory move, the crusade committee arranged a series of top-level functions last week at which the evangelist spoke. They were of the type that emerged such a significant feature of the crusades in London, New York and San Francisco.

He addressed a breakfast at the House of Representatives, a Senate luncheon, a banquet for military personnel convened by Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker in the Mayflower Hotel, a luncheon of combined service clubs in the Mayflower with the Optimist Club acting as host, and a Sheraton Park Hotel banquet sponsored by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of America.

In 1952 the sponsorship of the crusade was limited to a scattered group of churches, many of them small. This week the evangelist was being welcomed by some 300 churches of the metropolitan area, and unofficially by the Council of Churches of the National Capital Area, with solid support from its retiring director, Dr. Frederick E. Reissig and from its chairman of evangelism, Dr. Clarence Cranford. Thus Graham’s first return visit to a major city to hold a crusade resulted in a significant response from the main stream of Protestant churches.

The crusade was scheduled to open at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 19, in the stadium, with meetings each night and the closing rally on Sunday afternoon, June 26. Preparations were made by Crusade Director Walter Smyth, working with a 20-man executive committee headed by Leedom, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, and Pastors G. Dewey Robinson and Edward L. R. Elson. Six members of the committee, including the treasurer, were drawn from Negro churches. Graham told 700 Washington ministers at a breakfast last January, “In my opinion it is going to do us good, psychologically good, to have tens of thousands of people of several races sitting together at Griffith Stadium, an integrated crusade from start to finish, singing the hymns and listening to the Gospel.”

The detailed preparations for which the Graham team is famous have been completed. Nearly 2,000 counselors have been trained by team member Dan Piatt. Specially-trained counselors for the first time are being used for marriage problems, as a result of needs that have arisen in past crusades. A thousand-voice choir will be singing each night. The choir is flanking each side of the rostrum in the playing field.

“Operation Andrew,” the Graham plan for bringing uncommitted persons to the meetings in busloads, will be helping to pack the stadium. There will be reserved sections for Congressmen, Senators and their staffs. Special trainloads are expected from several other states including South Carolina and Indiana.

Nearly two thousand homes in the area have been opened for cottage prayer meetings, according to Dr. George Docherty, prayer chairman. Daily prayer broadcasts began May 30. Hundreds of ushers have been recruited and trained by layman Gratz Dunkum, who held the same post in 1952.

But beyond all the mechanics of the crusade, Billy Graham and his team members, including Associate Evangelists Wilson, Joseph Blinco and Leighton Ford, were seeking spiritual guidance for what will be a most significant test of their ministry. It is one thing to influence important people, it is another to win converts to Jesus Christ who will then give their lives completely into his service. The year 1960 is, like 1952, an election year; yet America’s problems go deeper than a choice between parties. Many believe the issue is moral disaster, and that a genuine spiritual revival is our chief hope. Yet was it really possible for the Holy Spirit to bring revival to sophisticated America in 1960?

Graham faced other problems as well. In a post-graduate thesis submitted to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Rev. George P. Bowers analyzed the four-week Greater Louisville (Kentucky) Crusade conducted by the Graham team in 1956. Elis sampling of 100 persons making decisions at that crusade highlighted the imperative need for a more intensified follow-up on the part of pastors and counselors if the fruits of the meeting are to be conserved.

Graham and his colleagues readily concede that many inquirers fall by the wayside. Each crusade underscores human inadequacies in counseling and follow-up methods. Special problems persist.

Yet it must be said for the Graham team that efforts are continually being made to overcome deficiencies. The system of dealing with those who respond to the invitation is under steady surveillance. Improvements are incorporated as they are developed.

“Every day is a day of school in the crusade,” says Piatt, the alert young Baptist layman who is responsible for conducting the counselor training classes in Washington. “We review our procedures constantly and we try to apply the lessons that we learn.”

Last fall a new type of decision card was introduced, aimed at drawing out more fully the counselor’s initiative (he must now complete a third of the card and mail it in himself). A minister is now immediately assigned to call upon every person who records a decision for Christ, to check that the individual’s need has been met, and to see that he is invited to church the very next Sunday. Subsequently, the inquirer is supplied with an enlarged Bible study program and encouraged to become active in the church of his choice.

Another recent innovation is the plan for a series of breakfasts for ministers prior to the crusade’s start. The ministers are addressed by a team member, who usually gives a detailed briefing of crusade plans and describes how the individual clergyman or layman can cooperate. The pastors are encouraged to ask questions and to offer suggestions.

The evangelist’s health can still be a problem in itself. By the middle of June, Graham had recovered much of the energy lost in the rigors of the African campaign earlier this year. Although he no longer seems to have the stamina necessary for an extended crusade, the evangelist did consider himself “quite ready” for the eight-day Washington thrust. In an effort to conserve his physical resources he has been re-examining commitments to various evangelical enterprises, which, though commendable in themselves, nonetheless sap strength and consume precious time. Graham has been trying to weigh these considerations along with the burdens and priorities inherent in his own evangelistic outreach. As a result, he has recently tendered his resignation to several boards.

Convinced that pressures of the world tend to erode the spiritual powers of twentieth-century Christians, the evangelist and his wife have sought during the spring months to spend at least an hour a day in outdoor meditation—perhaps a walk in the woods near their home in the western North Carolina mountains with prayer and Bible reading.

The National Capital Crusade was but one phase of a four-continent effort by the evangelist during 1960. He has already spent nearly three months in Africa, and several days in South America. He has scheduled a five-week crusade in Germany (Berlin, Hamburg, Essen) and Switzerland (Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Zürich) during July and August. And he plans a unique three-day mission to New York City’s Spanish-speaking population in Madison Square Garden the weekend of October 7–9.

Existentialism … astronaut … Castro … beatnik … these were words unknown to Billy Graham and to most Americans in 1952. The space age and its jargon had not been invented. To a new Billy, moving in a wider orbit with his Gospel of repentance and grace, the city which has become the axle of the whole free world offered an unprecedented challenge.

CHURCH PRONOUNCEMENT

An issue which is causing increased concern within the Church—a concern shared alike by laymen and ministers—is the role which the Church is assuming in the realm of pronouncements on economic, political, and social matters. The issue deserves objective consideration.

Some people feel that the influence of the Church is enhanced by her issuing statements and making pronouncements on almost every secular issue that arises. This is felt to be in keeping with the “prophetic role” of the Church and her ministry.

Others feel that once the Church ventures into the secular field, particularly on matters where men of equal piety and devotion to our Lord disagree, she has exchanged her spiritual role for one in which she can well find herself aligned with forces inimicable to both the Church and society as a whole.

Some ecclesiastical leaders view with strong distaste the opinions of laymen who hold to the historic concept of separation of Church and State. But many of these laymen are deeply concerned that the distinction shall be kept clear, primarily that the spiritual message of the Church shall speak to the basic need of redemption and regeneration, without which there can be no lasting social reform.

With the ecclesiastical organizations of the major denominations largely in the hands of men committed to such Church pronouncements, it is more or less the universal practice of these denominations during the course of their annual meetings to make deliverances which thereby become the “official” position of the Church.

I would like to discuss the matter as objectively as possible.

The matter of the Church, as a corporate group, entering into economics, social problems and politics, will not be solved by raising a false issue, as some have done.

No one wishes to “buy” any church. But thousands of men are apprehensive lest the Church sell her glorious spiritual heritage and obligation for a mess of secular pottage.

The Church (and I speak of all major denominations) has a heritage of a faith firmly planted in the revelation of God in Christ as recorded in the Holy Scriptures. She has a heritage of strong convictions regarding the separation of Church and State. To her alone has been committed the message of salvation from sin. Above all else she is the repository of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is her duty to preach it at home and abroad.

Any emphasis for secular matters without a corresponding conviction of the content of the Gospel message is a deviation which harms the Church and detracts from her influence in the secular world which she has been commissioned by her Lord to reach.

The Church does have a responsibility, but it is not that of secular deliverances; rather, it is the faithful witness of the Gospel which is man’s only hope now and for eternity.

The Church, as a corporate organization, placing her emphasis more on the peripheral, even controversial, areas of personal and national life, may aim to correct the ills of the political, social, and economic world but fail to affect the eternal destiny of one soul out of Christ. Such would prove a triumph of Satan and the world’s greatest tragedy.

Every minister of the Gospel, along with individual Christians, has the right to preach or speak on social and other issues if he is so led by the Spirit. But the Church, as a corporate group, has a spiritual ministry from which her influence emanates, while her basic task is to tell of the One who alone empowers men to righteous living. The message of the Church should lead to the regeneration of the individual through faith in Christ. The Christian, as a citizen should through personal activity as an individual, and corporately with others, help in the reformation of society. But as sure as there is truth to be preached, the social order will never be greatly changed until the hearts of the individuals making up that society have their hearts changed by the living Christ.

Unless the ministry and message of the Church is unique—the Gospel committed to her custody—she will become lost in the plethora of secular and humanitarian movements which look to man to change his own conditions of living and destiny.

Because the Church is the sole custodian of the Gospel of redemption through the atoning work of Calvary, she must put first things first and be faithful to her heritage and her witnessing obligation. The concern for social reforms can become an obsession which overshadows her primary task in the world.

Unless Christian citizens exercise their influence through the ballot box and personal righteousness, the pronouncements of the Church go for nothing. These social concerns can only be implemented by concerned Christians. For the corporate Church to demand reforms “in the name of the Church” is a form of coercion, bringing to bear on the social order the force of law. This is not the spiritual healing to which the Church is committed. Furthermore, such actions of Church courts authenticate positions which may prove to be contrary to Christian ideals.

To illustrate: dedicated Christians disagree with reference to laws which enforce the closed shop, right-to-work laws, birth control, deficit spending, and so on. For the Church to take official action on one or the other side of these issues immediately places the Church in a position our Lord himself would not take when he said: “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” And then he went on to utter these searching words: “Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”

When the Church enters the field of official deliverances on secular matters, she finds herself suspect both within and outside the area where she is supposed to operate. This may seem to some a fine distinction, but it is a very real one. The minute the Church becomes officially involved in secular areas she begins to forfeit her power and witness in the spiritual field.

The Church should be guided by revealed principles which have their basis in divine revelation. But this is very different from claiming divine authority to make pronouncements regarding particular programs, parties and personalities.

We know of no one who wishes to buy any church or denomination. But we know of thousands of concerned Christians who do not wish to see the spiritual mission of the Church sold for a social program which can never save one soul from eternal loss.

L. NELSON BELL

The prophecy of Obadiah bears two unique distinctions. First, it is by far the shortest book in the Old Testament, consisting of one chapter and 21 verses. Secondly, it is the most difficult written prophecy in Scripture to identify as to time of composition. In the case of other prophets there is usually a fair amount of agreement among conservative scholars as to the age when they performed their ministry and committed their inspired utterances to writing, but for this book the conjectures of evangelical authorities (not to mention the liberals) range all the way from the reign of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat (848–841 B.C.), to about 585 B.C., soon after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. Luther preferred this latter date, as does Clarence Benson in the Evangelical Teacher Training manual on Old Testament Prophecy. Liberals also prefer this date, although many of them see in these few verses a combination of two different authors, the later of which wrote during the Exile or some decades after the fall of Babylon (539 B.C.).

A few conservatives, like J. H. Raven and J. D. Davis (followed by H. S. Gehman in the Westminster Dictionary), prefer to date this prophecy in the reign of Ahaz (736–716), who carried on an unsuccessful war with the Edomites and Philistines. Second Chronicles 28:17–18 records how these two nations attacked Judah from the South and West after the northern coalition of Israel and Damascus had inflicted serious reverses on the armies of Ahaz. One difficulty with this view, however, is that no such capture and spoliation of Jerusalem took place during these campaigns as is implied in verse 11 of our text.

Most evangelical scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have inclined towards a still earlier dating of Obadiah, which would make him the very first of the writing prophets! Delitzsch, Keil, Kleinert, Orelli, and Kirkpatrick all feel that the historical allusions and the general political situation presupposed in the text point more definitely to the reign of Jehoram than to any other. In 2 Kings 8:20 we read: “In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made a king over themselves.” The next verses speak of Jehoram’s unsuccessful campaign against them, in which he inflicted much damage upon them but failed to subjugate them again to Judah’s suzerainty. More details of Jehoram’s reign are given in 2 Chronicles 21:16–17: “And Jehovah stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and the spirit of the Arabians that are beside the Ethiopians; and they came up against Judah and brake into it, and carried away all the substance that was found in the king’s house, and his sons also, and his wives; so that there was never a son left him save Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons.” Putting these two items of information together, it becomes altogether probable that the Edomites cooperated with the Arabian-Philistine invasion as subordinate allies, and shared in the booty of Jerusalem when that proud capital fell to their combined efforts.

It is of the utmost importance to observe that the text of Obadiah implies just this historical incident in verse 11: “In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that strangers carried away his substance, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them.” Here we have the enemies of Judah forcing their way into Jerusalem and plundering its treasures. The city is looted of its valued possessions, and lots are cast upon it by the cooperating marauders, who decide among themselves which quarter of the town each will pillage, that there may be no quarreling as to who shall keep the spoil. This description hardly fits in with the complete and permanent destruction of the city which was inflicted upon it by the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar in 586. Moreover verse 13 (as correctly translated in the ASV) looks forward to yet other occasions when this same Jerusalem may be attacked by invading foes: “Enter not into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity … neither lay ye hands on their substance of their calamity.” Such words would be absurdly inappropriate if Jerusalem was already a desolate heap of ruins, as the 580 date of composition would require. We must therefore look for some military action which involved the storming of the city but stopped short of its complete destruction; an engagement moreover in which the Edomites might well have played a part (as they probably did not do when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem in 587). Only the incident in the reign of Jehoram meets these conditions.

The 580 date is rendered even more precarious by the strong evidence that the pre-exilic Jeremiah had read and adapted for his own purposes Obadiah 1–9 in his forty-ninth chapter, verses 7–22. The passage in Jeremiah is found in a series of oracles based to a large extent on the prophecies of earlier messengers of God (cf. Jer. 48 with Isa. 15–16, and Jer. 49 with Amos 1:13 ff.; 8:1 ff.). In Obadiah the sentiments are expressed more briefly and rapidly than in Jeremiah, in part also more heavily and abruptly. Jeremiah seems to have smoothed down the rugged places in Obadiah’s style of expression and made the whole oracle more lucid and perspicuous. There can be little doubt therefore that Jeremiah borrowed from Obadiah, rather than the other way around. Of course the possibility remains that both may have borrowed from an earlier prophetic utterance otherwise unknown to us, but it seems very dubious, unnecessary, and incapable of proof.

But what shall we say of the expression in verse 20: “… the captives (Heb. gāluth) of Jerusalem, …”? Does it not refer to the carrying off of the total population of Judah into Babylonian exile? That might be a legitimate inference, so far as gāluth is concerned, but the word is also used to refer to the capture of soldiers on the battlefield or of portions of the civilian population who are to be sold on the slave market (Amos 1:6). Amos 1:9 refers to the iniquity of the slave traders of Tyre who delivered over an “entire captivity,” that is, all the men, women, and children captured in a slave raid, to the Edomites (who used to work their prisoners to an early and miserable death in the iron mines). We are not to think of this word as being necessarily equivalent to the Exile of 586 B.C.

Assuming then that Obadiah gave this prophecy in the dark, discouraging days of the ungodly King Jehoram (848–841 B.C.), we may ask what was the burden of his message? The message includes, first of all (vv. 1–9) a prediction of the destruction of Edom. This proud nation, which boasts of the impregnability of its capital city of Sela (v. 3), is going to be cast down from its arrogance by the sovereign power of the Lord God Almighty. It is going to meet with a total and crushing defeat, and a devastation so complete that there will be no survivors in the land, not even the merest gleanings of the grapevine, as it were. The divine judgment will be accomplished by a nation presently in alliance with them, who shall treacherously turn on them and overcome them by strategem. In that coming day neither the proverb-quoting sages of Edom nor their valorous men-at-arms will be able to deliver the nation from its foes, but every native Edomite will be cut off from the mountains of Seir.

The fulfillment of this doom took place many years later, some time after the ministry of Malachi (435 B.C.), when the Arabs of Nebaioth (who probably cooperated in the victorious assault upon Jerusalem in Jehoram’s reign) captured the capital city of Sela and drove all of the surviving Edomites out of their ancestral territories. As a result of this pressure they were forced to migrate into southern Judah (which had never become repopulated after the terrible Chaldean invasions) and set up a new state there, which became known as Idumaea.

The second section, verses 10–14, sets forth the reason for Edom’s destruction. The judgment had been decreed by God not only because of the arrogant pride of the ungodly nation but because of bloody cruelty perpetrated against God’s people Israel. They ought to have showed some degree of kindness, or at least of restraint, in their dealings with the Hebrews, for they were related to Jacob’s descendants through their ancestor Esau. Instead they had shown an implacable hostility to the Israelites from the days of Moses, when they had refused to let the migrating refugees from Egypt pass through their territory on the main highway route, and compelled them to detour through rugged and difficult wilderness. But their recent participation in the sack of Jerusalem, their malicious gloating over the miseries inflicted on the Jews by their heathen foes, amounted to a grievous offense against the Almighty. The Edomites are also warned against participating again (v. 13) in any future despoliation of the holy city or cutting off its hapless fugitives, as they had done on this recent occasion.

The final section (vv. 15–21) foretells the ultimate victory and restoration of the people of God. Jehovah will some day inflict judgment upon all the heathen nations and requite to them the cruel wrongs they have inflicted upon Israel. Edom in particular shall be utterly consumed by other godless nations, and there will be nothing left of her in the latter day. All the God-hating peoples who now oppose Israel shall some day disappear completely from the scene, but a remnant of the Hebrew nation will survive and triumph over Edom and all it stands for. Edom exemplified the self-pride, the ruthlessness and the utter materialism of the world, with its complete rejection of spiritual values and its implacable hatred of the people of God. (Compare the thirty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, in which the wrath of God is poured out upon the world in general but upon Edom in particular, as the fitting representative of the virulent hatred of the world towards the kingdom of God.) Fiery destruction shall be meted out to the rebellious descendants (both physical and spiritual) of Esau, but the Jewish race shall once again be regathered to their ancestral soil, even to the full extent of territory granted by God to Moses and Joshua—including all of Philistia, and all of the districts inhabited by the Ten Tribes (first lost to the house of David in the days of Rehoboam). Even to Zarephath (parallel with the northern limit of the northernmost tribes of Israel, Asher and Naphtali) shall the restored Jewish commonwealth extend, made up of Hebrews returned from lands as far distant as Sepharad. (The most likely conjecture as to the location of Sepharad is a region in Southwest Media, to which the captives of Samaria were deported by the Assyrians after 722 B.C. But the name itself never occurs in the Bible again, and its identification is by no means certain. Jewish tradition identifies it with Spain.) The ultimate victory shall be the Lord’s, and deliverers sent by him shall inflict judgment upon Edom and all that it stands for, as the kingdom of God is established upon earth and his truth prevails over all the depravity and corruption of fallen, unbelieving mankind.

Professor of Biblical Languages

Fuller Theological Seminary

ESCAPE?

Dr. Ivy spoke about “Escape or Involvement” at the Mortarford College commencement. He declared that the only way out is the way in. The Christian answer to escapism is existential participation in the human predicament. I wanted to discuss involvement with him, but he left for his summer cottage in Minnesota.

There is no doubt about the popularity of escape. Modern life streams away like city traffic on a summer weekend. Often it is noisy and expensive: the escape of night clubs, bars, and racetracks. Sometimes it is the routine and numbing escape of TV and comic books. A carousing delegate at a political convention and a patient stamp collector may be equally driven by the fear of meeting God. C. S. Lewis has that senior devil Screwtape observe that a man with a guilty conscience can be diverted from prayer by anything, or nothing. The advertisements in an old newspaper will serve if necessary.

A recent novel describes an escapist so attached to his fantasies that he cannot leave his world of make-believe even when reality sends a taxi to the castle of his dreams. There is no escape from escape.

But the people who realize this may be the most bitter escapists of all. The modern prodigal who has run through his last coins of illusion flops on his pad in the pig pen and writes plays about the tragedy of existence.

Christian compassion should seek him there, but his salvation begins when he sees himself, not in the pig pen perspective, but in that of the father’s house. Burrowing into the human predicament may be another attempt to run away.

There is an involvement that is the opposite of escape, but it is first involvement with God. For the escapism of drunkenness, Paul would substitute the intoxication of the Spirit. The exuberance of life filled with the Spirit exults in songs of salvation. Christian experience is not sanctified despair. The prodigal is home again at his father’s feast. He may be in prison at midnight, but he can sing in the peace of God.

EUTYCHUS

CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

I consider the Christian university “devoted in depth to the biblical revelation of God, of man, and of the world” (May 9 issue) the greatest evangelical idea in the last decade.

L. K. MULLEN

Reformed Baptist Church

Woodstock, New Brunswick

A move in this direction would be one of the finest and most lasting testimonies the Christian Church could express in contemporary America. If enough leaders and laymen got excited about the realization of your suggested plan, who knows what might be done!

RALPH KEE

University of New Hampshire

Durham, N. H.

It is better to have a small first-rate school than a larger second-rate one. A first class university strategically located and adequately undergirded by financial resources would be just about the best thing to hit the American scene in a hundred years.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

A hearty amen! I pray with you that it is not “too late.”

DAVID C. LINDBERG

Malone College

Canton, Ohio

I believe it should be priority number one in the minds of those who are awake to the needs of the churches. Until we no longer have to send our graduate students to secular or secularized schools for their education in most fields we are jeopardizing the future of the church at home and abroad.

I don’t quite agree with you that the New York location is to be preferred or that such a university could not be super-imposed on an existing structure. That might be generally true but there is one school, Gordon College, located on the lovely North Shore area of Massachusetts which has many exceptional advantages, some of them exclusively.

J. ELWIN WRIGHT

Rumney Depot, N. H.

There is to be opened this fall just such a university on the West Coast. This one is located at Parkland, Washington—just outside of Tacoma, Washington. This school has for many years been known as Pacific Lutheran College and through the years has expanded until it is now about to launch out as a university.…

HANS NELSON

Scandinavia-Bethany Lutheran Parish

Aberdeen, S. D.

There is more to a university than men and money. There is maturity from slow growth: ivy walls are no meaningless symbol. Money can build and equip; money can gather a library of existing books; can even attract a faculty of already trained scholars—though many men will prefer smaller salaries in a mature institution to the opulence of the new. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”

My own vision is this: New York needs missionaries more than universities: Chicago is already the center of a virile evangelical life. Why not, laying aside the jealousy each of us feels for his own alma mater, unite on the development of a Christian university around staunch and century-tested Wheaton College, with its inclusion of a wide variety of evangelical convictions in trustees, faculty and students; its outstanding success in withstanding the pressures of secularism; and its already significant graduate program?

EMMETT RUSSELL

Short Falls, N. H.

Boston is a very important area for scholarship. Such prominent schools as Harvard, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, Brandeis, Northeastern University, Wentworth Institute, Radcliffe, Simmons, Emerson, Wellesley, Boston College, Suffolk Law School, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston Conservatory of Music, and Andover-Newton Theological Seminary are in the near vicinity. Included in these names are great theological seminaries (reflecting much of current thought), great schools for the sciences and technical subjects, great schools for the liberal arts, and great all-around graduate schools. Many of the world’s leaders have in some way received training from at least one of these institutions. These schools are largely not interested in evangelical thought, yet they are schools of great learning. What a difference it would make if evangelical scholarship could make an impact on these halls of learning and their outreach!

RICHARD E. VISSER

Beverly Farms, Mass.

Why not start with the evangelistic and evangelical emphasis?… Why not bring the influences of these principles on universities already in existence? It would have far greater effect to restore Harvard and Yale, et al, to conservative and Christian standards, than to start another university. Why not convert all universities to conservative Christianity?

THOMAS D. HERSEY

Methodist Church

Popejoy, Iowa

As a senior in one of “the great Eastern universities that surrendered their evangelical heritage and now assail the Christian view” I wholeheartedly support your call for Christians to seek God’s will concerning the establishment of a distinctively Christian university.

DONALD TINDER

Yale University

New Haven, Conn.

I am … in complete sympathy.… Such an institution could make a valuable contribution, particularly if it had strong engineering and science faculties, and which would include strong graduate courses in the major technical disciplines.

F. F. MIDDLESWART

Landenberg, Pa.

As a graduate of a secular, godless college, who has since found Christ, I believe this to be a work worthy of our prayers and determined effort.

STEPHEN G. WOODWARD

Horseheads, N. Y.

Since we are living in a culture with predominantly secular values, only a strategy of counterattack and advance—including a Christ-centered educational institution meriting national and international academic recognition—can begin to undermine the humanistic assumptions of our collective psychology. A university, such as you are proposing, through emphasis on interdisciplinary and research institutes and such facilities as a university press, could be used to diffuse the “good news” of Christ to the whole man using evidence from the whole cosmos.

JOSEPH L. GRABILL

Bloomington, Ind.

My response is the strongest possible yes. After more than 20 years of careful study, the writer believes … that one of the greatest and most direct endeavors for the accomplishment of a progressively peaceful world order that could be initiated now would be a certain type of educational program projected immediately by those who represent the best in our Western civilization: our Judaeo-Christian culture. This educational endeavor should be centered in a new world university which is designed for the specific purpose of producing highly enlightened and skilled leadership in the countries of the world. Therefore, the students must come from the countries of the world. Every student must feel that “this is our school,” and none must feel as a foreigner among nationals.

JULIUS H. AVERY

First Baptist Church

Panama City, Fla.

TURKS AND EVANGELISM

I have just finished reading with the greatest imaginable pleasure your article on “The Young Turks of Evangelism” (May 9 issue). How I do wish it were possible to broadcast this material everywhere!

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Editor

The Presbyterian Journal

Asheville, N. C.

I confess confusion.… Your article does justice neither to the firm biblical orientation of these men, nor to the basically conservative character of their concern. In the face of the failure of the old patterns of American Protestant churches to witness with power to the Gospel in the urban culture of our day, they are being driven not to radical experimentation but back upon God’s grace.…

GEORGE W. WEBBER

East Harlem Protestant Parish

New York, N. Y.

It glimpses some of the implications of a significant movement, but without enough real research … to be wholly accurate. The attempt to label a growing consensus among people concerned with evangelism and mission in Protestantism as a conspiracy by referring to them as “Young Turks” is dangerous. As far as I know, this is entirely George Sweazey’s term, used to belittle people who have disagreed with his position in what I thought was a genuinely honest debate going on in the Central Department of Evangelism over the past five years.…

The article only tells one-half of half the story. It is certainly true that those concerned with the contemporary ministry of evangelism in Protestantism take seriously the critiques of culture that are arising, for Protestantism has indeed become culture-bound to a great extent in this country. It is not simply “armchair evangelism,” however. The men whose names I immediately identify with Mr. Wirt’s and Mr. Sweazey’s “Young Turks” are all people who have been contending as evangelists in the very front lines of the Church … in the slums, the hearts of large cities, and in the mass media. The critique of conventional evangelism has come not from the seminar but from the practitioner.

ROBERT W. SPIKE

General Secretary for Program

Congregational Christian Board of Home Missions

New York, N. Y.

Of course, our presentation of the Gospel message must keep pace with contemporary life. Perhaps traditional evangelism needs to be set free from the shackles and methods and approaches that do not belong to the jet age. But in seeking for methods, we dare not neglect the unchanging message. The Gospel still meets the needs of sinners. The significance of this new movement will be written not in scholarly books, but on the fleshly tables of men’s hearts.

TED W. ENGSTROM

President

Youth for Christ

Wheaton, Ill.

This evangelism is not rooted firmly in biblical theology.… What is needed is a burden to transplant the “coffee shop” and “seminar” concern into actual exploration of ways of reaching people. In doing this the essential message of the Gospel must not be weakened, but some of the “limiting” attitudes of traditional evangelism might be by-passed.

ROBERT W. ROSS

Research Editor

Scripture Press

Wheaton, Ill.

ROME AND WASHINGTON

What an emotional orgy Ed Sullivan’s letter is (Apr. 25 issue)! The religious issue is a two-edged sword. Catholic bigotry makes it impossible for a Protestant to be elected mayor of New York, premier of Italy, president (?) of Spain. Catholics have dug a ditch—bigotry—for Protestants, and now they themselves have fallen into the ditch they have dug.

Until Rome takes its hand out of the public treasury, we pledge ourselves, in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to unrelenting non-violent, non-cooperative resistance.… We have enjoyed wonderful privileges because our forefathers did not cravenly evade the “issue.” What sort of heritage are we leaving our children?

HENRY RATLIFF

Hartford, S. Dak.

I agree, Mr. Sullivan, religious affiliation should have nothing to do with a candidate’s election to office. But his political affiliation with a foreign government certainly should.

CHARLES J. MCCULLY

Mounds, Okla.

Has it occurred to any “protestants” that in raising the whole issue of a “Catholic for president,” the Roman Church is getting much free publicity and the Roman Catholics who would otherwise have made their choice politically will now probably make it “religiously”? The Roman Catholic press is revelling in the mess.

CYRIL I. VLAMYNCK

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Pascagoula, Miss.

Surely Mr. Sullivan isn’t sincere in writing this statement.… The one thing that ought to be relevant is a man’s Christian convictions. If Mr. Sullivan believes in the irrelevancy of Christianity—and that’s what he is implying—we have reached a very low, low ebb in our Christian education.

HERMAN DAM

West End Presbyterian

Albany, N. Y.

The lengthy letter of Ed Sullivan fails to come to grips with the main issue—the refusal of Senator Kennedy to attend the Memorial service, honoring the brave chaplains, on the grounds that he had been advised to take such action from a member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States.

Surely Ed Sullivan cannot support that type of bigotry. But in reality he does if he condones the Senator’s conduct.

If Senator Kennedy had been smart and truly American in his ideas, he would have taken the attitude of the late Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who as Prime Minister of Canada in 1891, 1900, 1904 and 1908, and a practicing Roman Catholic, put the Roman Catholic hierarchy of that day in its place, by refusing to put his Catholicism before his Canadian citizenship.

In view of Senator Kennedy’s action, many Canadians like myself view with trepidation the possibility of such a man becoming President of our great neighbor.

J. M. COLLING

Port Stanley, Ont.

Does Mr. Sullivan know of just one Roman Catholic country that has religious freedom? I am sure that even Mr. Sullivan doesn’t want that brand of religious freedom found in Spain, Portugal … or Bolivia.…

We hold nothing against a man because he is a Roman Catholic but we must be alert, and sometimes vociferous, if we would maintain our national freedoms and our American way of life.…

Let us nominate and elect a president who shall maintain our freedoms regardless of party, but his religion is very definitely relevant.

Bigoted, Mr. Sullivan? No, just taking a realistic view of things and forced to come to a practical conclusion to preserve my own status quo as a free individual, something no one in any of these “Catholic” countries knows anything about.

JAMES B. DUTHIE

Warren, Mich.

In February, I traveled into El Salvador in a revival effort where we had 8,000 converts in an open-air meeting which ran for several weeks. The Catholic oppositions were not only words; the special envoy from Rome (Vatican) was not there just to observe; the riots, the persecutions, the beatings of native pastors, the preaching permits, were not just routine … except in Catholic controlled countries.

FLOYD GARRETT

Chappell, Neb.

Mr. Sullivan has very artistically hidden the issues under a heap of emotion-soaked semantical rubbish.

ED LUGENBEAL

Arlington, Calif.

ANOTHER STRATEGY

In the January 18 issue, Billy Graham described his new strategy of evangelism. Who would doubt that our Lord has used him marvelously in the past decade and that tens of thousands have been saved by hearing the gospel from his lips. All Christians rejoice in that and without any implied criticism of the past will be glad that he has now been led to alter his strategy. A man who is filled with the Holy Spirit can proclaim the old gospel in new ways but always with the same blessed results.

But there is another strategy of evangelism I propose for the new decade.… It is the principle of building a fire from within. The key person must be the minister but the minimum, indispensable factor in this or any other successful strategy of evangelism is that the minister himself must be a converted man, and few would deny that thousands have drifted, doubtless inadvertently, into Protestant pulpits without being saved. Billy Graham could do a tremendous amount of good by confining himself for a few years to the conversion of ministers in large and small groups throughout our country, and to missions to theological seminaries to make certain that students know their Lord before they start out to preach his gospel. If the first step in this new strategy should occur then certain things would happen inevitably: 1) A neglected but necessary vocabulary would be revived in sermons, Sunday School classes and conversations throughout the church. People would start to hear words long disused, such as sin, salvation, repentance, surrender, … conversion, and … [rebirth]. Ideas are conveyed by means of words and those words our Lord has honored with saving power. 2) Ecclesiastical sophistication would give way to conviction and a real passion for souls. 3) Ministers would search out in their congregations those people who are saved and he would share with them his change of heart, his new dynamic. This nucleus, however small, of committed pastor and people would start to leaven any congregation. The spirit would be infectious as it is sustained and motivated by the Holy Spirit. 4) We would have a ready-made prayer meeting. You would never have to beg or even invite people to come. There would be a natural and eager desire to share concerns that are vital. 5) The minister’s main task now would be to win souls for Christ from within his own membership roll. Peripheral and secondary matters which occupy so much of a minister’s time would be subordinated to this one glorious aim.

Protestant people do not resent this emphasis. They love it and are waiting for it. There is a hunger for the gospel and a yearning for the assurance of salvation within the membership of the Protestant church. God is calling us these days to get a fresh vision of our main task. This is the only possible reason why our Lord established his church. Think what it would mean to America and the whole world if a hundred thousand Protestant churches could move into this new decade with memberships of converted and utterly committed people. Our Lord instructed his disciples to begin at Jerusalem and for Protestants that means their present membership. That is the center and starting point for an effective evangelistic strategy. Let us face the fact that our Protestant church, with its worldly standards and preponderance of unsaved members is coming to the end of the road, but we have enough members to bring our cities and our nation to the feet of Jesus Christ if they were saved and dedicated. Why not plan our strategy for the 1960s with that objective in mind?

JOHN HUBERT STANTON

Westmont Presbyterian Church

Johnstown, Pa.

Last in a Series

If the modern mind (with its Reason and Patterned Reality) is being replaced by a post-modern mind in which Reality is Self and Unpattern, then the Church now faces a problem for which she is little prepared. She must now proclaim the Truth not against Rationalism but against Irrationalism. She must now proclaim the Faith not against Reason but against Faith-in-general.

Consider the place of religion in the post-modern mind. In one of its moods, “God” becomes an objective Reality which is Unpattern (as in Zen Buddhism or Hinduism), a Reality which is Love and Hate, Meaning and Non-meaning, Good and Evil—or rather, a Reality which is beyond such categories. In another of its moods, “God” becomes the Free Self, creating all values in freedom, fighting always against the blind and determined Unpattern. But these two moods of the post-modern mind influence fewer people (at least so far) than a third mood, the Conformist.

THE GROUP AND ‘GOD’

What, then, would be the place of religion in the “faith” of the typical junior executive living in suburbia, and in the “faith” of his high school children? On the basis of our previous analysis, we might expect that “God” would become “that which helps give the Self emotional security.” Since the Self and the Unpattern are the only Reality, “God” cannot, if he is to be Personal (neither Self nor Unpattern) be Real. What Reality “God” has will come about through his connection with the Self, which is Real, or, indeed, through connection with the Group (which is a collection of Selves). What the Self (or Group) is and creates is the only Reality (outside of the Unpattern). Thus, if the Self creates “God,” or if the Group creates “God,” he therefore is “Real.” His reality is, however, secondary, and dependent on the Self’s creation of him.

Thus it becomes perfectly consistent to say (as a student recently said to me) that God created the world, but that if there were no people, God would not exist. This is a shorthand way of saying “God is something I have created, or my Group has, and is thus Real; my Group believes in a God who created the world; but if my Group did not believe in him, he would stop existing, since his reality is secondary and derived.” Or, as another student put it, “God is not Real, but I believe in him.”

Why believe in “God”? Obviously, to help give the Self emotional security. What sort of “God” should we believe in? The kind that will give us the most emotional security. Thus God will be a Kind Friend, the Protector of Our Group, the Man Upstairs, the Someone Who Likes Me. Which religion is true? Well, the question can only mean which religion confers the most security on the Self, since that is what “true” means (and this is indeed correct, if Self and Unpattern are the only Reality). The implication is that any religion which gives the Self emotional security is “true.” It further implies what might be called a “plurality of religious truths.” For what gives the most emotional security to one Self need not provide emotional security for another Self. How do we decide which religion to “believe in”? By testing. To begin with, try the one your Group believes in, and see if it is “true” (that is, if it furnishes emotional security for the Self).

‘FAITH’ AS AID TO SECURITY

If the analysis is sound (and it is, if our observations on the post-modern mind are correct), we may expect to discover a pattern in the making. “God” will be viewed as an aid to emotional security; new “faiths” promising emotional security will spread rapidly; religion will be increasingly tied to security-giving symbols (which, considered from the standpoint of the modern mind, would be irrational). “God” would become “the protector of American values,” the Guardian of “our way of life.” There would be increasing “recognition” of the “fact” that all religions are equally “true.” (As teen-age idol Tommy Sands put it, “I believe all religions are the greatest,” Time, May 13, 1957.) There would be increasing syncretism and blurring of faiths; there would be mounting appreciation of the “truth” of non-Christian faiths; and so on.

Consider, now, some relevant news items:

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, former president of the National Council of Churches, fears that “the old question ‘Can I believe?’ has given way to the new ‘What shall I believe in?’ ” (New York Times, Mar. 23, 1956).

W. L. Miller of Yale Divinity School, in part of a study sponsored by the Fund for the Republic, says American religion is apt to be “belief in believing” which may produce “a shallow and implicitly compulsory common creed” of “religion-in-general” (Time, Aug. 4, 1958).

A million and a half persons yearly visit Forest Lawn cemetery near Los Angeles, where all faiths including atheists (but not Negroes) can be buried, where Christmas toys are placed on graves each year, and where infants are buried in a special Lullabyland section (Time, Dec. 7, 1959).

There are more faith healers than doctors in modern France (Time, Mar. 17, 1954).

A church in London installed a jukebox with rock-and-roll spirituals; at the service a rock-and-roll singer sang about “Mary’s own blue-eyed (sic) boy” (New York Times, Dec. 15, 1959).

Among best-selling Catholic religious items are Sacred Hearts which glow in the dark (Time, Nov. 8, 1954).

Dr. Ivan London, Russian expert, says that religious belief is spreading rapidly in Russia, but it is a belief in a Supreme Being rather than in the Christian God (New York Times, Mar. 23, 1956).

A Christ-like portrait of Fidel Castro, being widely distributed, is described by a Cuban magazine as a symbol of God’s “tremendous hope when he wanted to make man in his own image” (Time, Aug. 21, 1959).

Brazil’s fastest-growing cult, spiritism, had over half a million devotees meeting in wildly emotional rites in Rio. It features a mixture of Christianity, paganism, and spiritualism (Time, Jan. 12, 1959).

Faith-healer Zarur, in Rio, claims 250,000 followers for his new religion, claims to be a reincarnation of St. Francis, uses Prayer Chains in his radio broadcasts, says that “bad things were said against Christ and me” (New York Times, Mar. 23, 1956).

Rock-and-roll idol Elvis Presley has released an album which includes “Silent Night” and “Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me” (Time, Nov. 4, 1957). Such reports could be multiplied, but these are adequate to confirm the impression that some sort of pattern is emerging. Perhaps two additional items may provide an intimation of what lies ahead. The first is from London. When the TV and radio idol Liberace played to a packed house at Royal Festival Hall, and was denounced by English columnist “Cassandra” as an unpleasant sign of the times, Liberace answered: “Everyone has to expect a certain number of nonbelievers.… I suppose that’s why they shot Lincoln and crucified Christ” (Time, Oct. 15, 1956). The second is from Los Angeles, where plans were announced for a “religious” amusement park (“Bible Storyland”). Built in the shape of a heart (“symbolic of God’s love”), it includes “The Ride to Heaven,” the “David and Goliath Slingshot Galleries,” the “Shrine of Faith Plaza” (which, with Ur and the Caravan Route, are laid out to “form the cross of Jesus Christ”), and much more. Backers of the $15 million project include Hollywood comedian Jack Haley and Yo-yo magnate D. F. Duncan. The promoters assure all that “above all, Bible Storyland will be a happy place” which “will not offend the sensibilities of any faith” (Time, Feb. 1, 1960). Opening date is Easter, 1961.

If one grants the presuppositions of the post-modern mind, do not the foregoing behavior patterns appear eminently “sensible” and “realistic”?

A CHECK ON THE CAMPUS MIND

As a rough (and admittedly unscientific) check on the conclusions tentatively reached regarding the post-modern mind, the writer polled some of his college classes. These students, largely from suburbia, were enrolled at an engineering school. The poll was taken over several semesters.

In each question, students were asked (in effect) whether the post-modern mind had in fact replaced the modern mind on a given point:

The first question asked whether man should be defined as “basically Reasonable and knowledge-seeking and freedom loving” (a modern definition), or “basically technological and machine-using and security-seeking” (a post-modern definition). Of 169 answering, 111 said the second definition has replaced the first.

Should society “be based on Reason, promote Freedom, encourage Science” (modern), or “be based on technology, promote a high standard of living and emotional security” (post-modern)? Of 161 answering, 93 declared for post-modernity.

Should religion be “mildly Christian, but kept apart from important affairs—that is, should it be Reasonable” (modern), or should it be “any type the group approves of, important because it gives emotional security, not important whether true or not”? Of 157, 82 said the post-modern has replaced the modern.

Should government “be run by the educated, or the property holders, or by the actively concerned majority” (modern), or should it “be run by a small group of experts appointed by the majority, with the average man taking only a passive part” (post-modern)? Of 162, 84 said that the opinion of most people today is post-modern rather than modern.

Is “good” better defined as “that which helps freedom, reason, democracy” or “that which raises the standard of living”? Of 165, 68 took the second alternative (which omits any mention of security, which might have been an additional attraction).

Is culture better regarded as “valuable though not basic” (modern) or “of little or no value”? Of 165 answering, 84 said that the post-modern attitude has replaced the modern.

Such results, in a poll not scientifically controlled, can be regarded at most as showing a rough trend, but are perhaps of interest nevertheless.

THE TASK OF THE CHURCH

The problems faced by the Church attempting to communicate to the post-modern mind may perhaps be sharpened by considering a series of questions addressed to a typical though imaginary representative of that mind. The answers are a composite of those actually given by college students.

Q: What is the purpose of education?

A: To enable the student to adjust to the group and thus gain emotional security.

Q: But to what group should the student be trained to adjust?

A: To the dominant group in this country.

Q: And what does it want?

A: A high standard of living.

Q: Is this good?

A: Obviously, since the group wants it.

Q: Is communism good?

A: Not in this country, since we don’t think it is. It is good for the Russians, since they believe in it.

Q: Is science true?

A: Yes, since it raises the standard of living, which the group believes in.

Q: Should Latin be taught in high school?

A: I don’t think so, since it doesn’t give me emotional security nor does it help raise the standard of living. But if students want it, they should have it.

Q: Do you believe in God?

A: Oh, yes.

Q: Why?

A: Because it bolsters my emotional security.

Q: What is God like?

A: Whatever you believe he is like, if you believe strongly.

Q: Do you believe in the Trinity?

A: Oh, yes.

Q: Why?

A: I was brought up in a group that did.

Q: Is the Trinity a true view of God?

A: Yes, because my group believes in it.

Q: Is Buddhism true?

A: Oh yes, but not for us, but it is if people believe in it, for them.

Q: If your group believed in Buddhism, would it be true?

A: Of course, for us, if we believed.

Q: Would it be objectively true?

A: Huh?

Q: Is Luther’s view of grace correct?

A: It was for him.

Q: Is it objectively true; would it be true if no one believed in it?

A. Are you trying to destroy my faith?

Three remarks may be added in conclusion. First, if this analysis is correct, the situation the Church faces is not really new. For the Church in the Roman Empire had, as its main enemy, not the dying rationalism of the Graeco-Roman mind, but rather the active and expanding irrationalism of the Oriental cults. Second, even from the viewpoint of the Christian mind, the emergence of the post-modern mind is not all bad. Existentialism and so forth have valuable insights, often expressed movingly and forcefully. The post-modern mind is aware of several facets of the human condition which the modern mind tended to forget. Third, of course, it remains to be established that the foregoing analysis is correct. The analysis, in our opinion, has some truth, and might at least be considered as an hypothesis. A sweeping renaissance of an informed Christian faith throughout the Western world—a rather dim prospect at the moment—could replace these emergent patterns, taking away their potential domination of culture and life in the coming generation. It will take courage for the Church to leave her peaceful cloisters, and preparation to face the resurgence of irrationalism and blind faith represented by the post-modern mind. But there is hardly a greater challenge to the cause of Jesus Christ in our generation.

Funeral

O Lord, the gate that leads to life

Should laughter make as it springs open;

Yet oiled with tears its hinges are,

And framed by sorrow its tight sealed door.

Give us this day the power of grace

To see behind the darkness of the night,

The beginning of the dawning’s glorious light,

And beyond the death’s head, the Saviour’s face.

Let the flowers on the bier more than beauty show

And in the colors of their leaves, the Resurrection glow.

Let not the dirt that fills the grave

Be wretched salt on open wounds,

But let the glorious reddish sod,

Show hope of life, of growth; the Womb of God.

JOHN C. COOPER

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.

This title will cause some eyebrow lifting. To many people it is nonsense to put “Christian” before “psychotherapy” as a modifier. It is like saying “Christian surgery” or “Christian dermatology” or like prefixing the term “Christian” to any other branch of science, medical or not. It implies that there can also be a non-Christian variety, like a Mohammedan or Atheist psychotherapy. It might further be inferred that psychotherapy can be differentiated along even finer sectarian lines such as Protestant or Roman Catholic. And this is reducing science to an absurdity.

Psychotherapy is generally thought of as a scientific discipline practiced by an adequately trained person with the proper professional degrees and credentials, and it makes no difference whether he is a Christian, Mohammedan, or Atheist. It is a healing technique for mental illness. When a surgical operation is needed the patient or his family do not look first for a doctor of their own faith but for one with skill in surgery, a specialist in the type of operation needed. Other things being equal they might prefer the surgeon of their own faith, but they would be fools to insist on it. Similarly it is thought that the person who needs a psychotherapist should look for the one with the best scientific skill rather than one with a particular religion, philosophy, or Weltanschauung. It is enough that he be “Christian” in the broad sense of being a decent, responsible, and honest person, but his specific religious beliefs are irrelevant. “Christian” is understood to refer to a set of beliefs, ethical values, moral goals, which in their nature lie outside the field of scientific enquiry.

It is conceded by this common view that the adjective “Christian” can be a proper modifier in some areas related to psychotherapy, such as Christian guidance and Christian (pastoral) counseling. In such context “Christian” refers to the facts and values of the Christian tradition. Guidance is thought to be educational or informational, giving facts as a basis for decision. Counseling is thought to be psychological, dealing with “normal” mental processes, to help a person to make decisions and pursue values agreeable to the Christian tradition. In distinction from these, it is thought that psychotherapy is psychiatric, a healing discipline to correct “abnormal” mental processes and patterns of behavior.

AN OVER-SIMPLIFICATION

While there is some validity to the distinctions given, it is wrong to suppose that they can be completely separated in actual practice. They overlap and may even merge. In a genuine person-to-person encounter something occurs which cannot be fitted into one particular mold. Insofar as an “abnormality” is functional (not due to known physical causes), ethical and moral concepts, religious and cultural values are involved. For example, a washing compulsion may be a feeling of being “dirty” arising out of early sexual behavior. But the “dirty” feeling can also have deeper reference in the person’s feeling about God. The biologically oriented therapist might try to encounter this patient in terms of the libido and Oedipus concept, the sociologically oriented therapist in terms of the interpersonal situation, the existentialist in terms of his concept of finitude and the threat of non-being, but the Christian would be concerned with the God concept and God relationship of the patient. The orientation or the presuppositions of the therapist and patient are determinants in the therapy.

It seems an over-simplification to say that counseling is psychological while psychotherapy is psychiatric. The very words used indicate that they deal with a common area. What is “Psyche”? Call it “mind” or “soul” or whatever you like, it refers to the unifying and integrating faculty, and judgmental values, the goals and moral aspects of life. The difference in suffix is hardly a distinction. Is psychology then a theoretical science, the “Logia,” the word-knowledge about the psyche, and is psychiatry then applied science, the therapeia (service, treatment) and iasis (healing) of the psyche, and is counseling then not an applied science and therapeutic? Is counseling really so different from psychotherapy? Does the psychiatrist’s M.D. give him skills which a properly trained counselor cannot have? The psychiatrist has to deal with goals, values, beliefs, yes, religion, and he has no exclusive claim on this field. The trained nonmedical person can be helpful in treating the psyche as well as an M.D. Indeed, a prominent psychoanalyst told the writer recently that his M.D. was a “pure luxury.” Of course, this is not to deny that much mental illness has a physical cause or may be associated with an organic trouble. A physical and neurological examination is essential in most cases, and the diagnosis should be done by the medical profession, and the physical symptoms must be medically treated. But the psychical aspects of the illness, whether somatic symptoms are present or not, are outside the field of empirical medicine because they involve value judgments, moral standards, religious and philosophical concepts.

IDOLATRY OF TECHNIQUES

In the early days of psychoanalysis there was considerable debate about who could be an analyst. Freud himself felt strongly that it was not the exclusive domain of the medical profession. In fact, one of his most ardent disciples was a Swiss pastor, Oskar Pfister. The American analysts disagreed with him, and the reason may be that Americans are generally not so alert as the Europeans to philosophical implications and ultimate goals. We seem to be more preoccupied with techniques. However, this attitude has been changing. The growth of counseling—pastoral, vocational, marital, and so on, is indicative of this change. Lewis R. Wolberg, in his book, The Technique of Psychotherapy, includes in psychotherapy guidance and counseling as well as psychoanalysis. He recognizes their overlapping and that the lines of separation can become so thin that they are practically imperceptible. So long as a psychiatrist only dispenses tranquilizers and administers electro-shock treatments he is much like his colleague who treats kidney disease. But when he seeks out the dynamics of his patient, when he studies the mental life in its development from infancy on and considers the social and cultural forces, including the religious beliefs that have shaped his patient, then he is entering the field of values, of religio-philosophical concepts. Furthermore, as he helps his patient to understand himself, to uncover his deep motivations and achieve a meaningful and satisfying life, he cannot avoid questions of right and wrong, true and false, with respect to a person’s drives and behavior and the mores of his cultural, social, and religious milieu.

ILLUSION OF NEUTRALITY

Psychiatrists, especially the psychoanalysts, usually insist that they are “neutral” with respect to a patient’s moral and religious values. Their technique is designed to create a free and nonjudgmental atmosphere in which a patient can “open up.” The doctor tries to “understand” the patient not for the purpose of then telling him what he must do to be cured, but rather with the purpose of helping the patient to understand himself and to make the necessary changes in the direction of health. This is also the technique of counseling, whether it be the nondirective method of Carl Rogers or the more active method of the existentialists. The therapist tries to “experience with” the patient, to empathize so completely that both patient and therapist have what Rogers describes as a sort of trance-like experience. In an article in the American Psychologist, reprinted in Pastoral Psychology (March and April 1959), Rogers describes a conflict within himself between the therapist and scientist. He is troubled lest the scientist thwart the therapist by depersonalizing the patient. He is aware of his subjectivism as a therapist, while at the same time he wants to be objective as a scientist. He finds a modus operandi in suggesting that the scientist cannot be completely objective after all, that he “experiences,” lives “organismically” in his field in somewhat the same way that a therapist “experiences” his client. He concludes: “For science too, at its inception, is an ‘I-Thou’ relationship with the world of perceived objects, just as therapy at its deepest is an ‘I-Thou’ relationship with a person or persons. And only as a subjective person can I enter either of these relationships.” Thus if the therapist is a Christian (not merely a nominal one) his commitment comes with him into the therapeutic situation, and likewise the scientist who is a Christian cannot lock God out of his laboratory. Some analysts are frank to admit that they are not neutral, that their goals are religio-philosophical (for example, Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion; Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul).

VALUES AND HEALTH

These considerations would suggest then that “Christian” is a proper adjective for psychotherapy. Values, moral standards, ethical goals, religious beliefs, a world-and-life view are involved in personality health or wholeness. If health be narrowly defined within a particular cultural situation, then the therapist is only concerned with adjustment, conformity, or the massman. But this is precisely what many modern psychotherapists fear and shun. “The courage to be,” the acceptance of personal “freedom” and “responsibility,” the willingness to be ourselves—these qualities are our uniqueness, and are what make us genuinely whole. But they confront us with the fundamental religious problem of the meaning of human existence. What is man and why is he here? What makes his life worth living, and what is the use of his three score and ten or four score years of which the strength is labor and sorrow?

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.

Christians at times get themselves overworked about the state of the world. This is not a sign of faith but the exact opposite. They should relax and trust Christ more. And so we set about, with the best of intentions, no doubt, and calling upon the power of Christ, to save the world from prejudice, ignorance, backwardness, corruption, injustice, war, sin: in short, from the grip of the devil. Christians in position of responsibility, whether civil or ecclesiastical, must certainly try to do all this; they cannot face their Lord in his day having been unprofitable and delinquent in their tasks. But it is eminently possible to lose oneself in the cares and worries of the world and therewith to lose Christ. The cry of “Martha, Martha” (Luke 10:41) keeps ringing in my ears when I behold people, including above all myself, busy day and night trying to save the world; especially as I am not sure that in our business we are adoring Christ enough; and our adoration of him is the most important thing possible.

It is perfectly clear that we can save nobody and nothing if we are not first sure of ourselves. In these matters we can never bluff, we can never hide away our truth. To have the world maddeningly on our mind all the time is not the way to be sure of ourselves. It is rather the way to be distracted, to be unsure, to be impotently spread all over, for the world is completely uncontrollable and there is absolutely no end to what can and should be saved. The dike of corruption cannot be plugged at every point, because the points are infinite. And so to be busy at this point and that point and that other point is often the way of escaping and fleeing from ourselves and therefore from Christ. It appears that the contemplative method of Mary is preferable. I think it is the Marys more than the Marthas who are going to save the world, although the Marthas are indispensable in the process.

Only those who stay very close to Christ can help others who are far away. Only those who prefer him to everything else, even to the call of the needy world, can be used by him for the need of the world. Only those who are not lifted by pride to suppose that they must carry the whole burden of the world will be pitied by him, who does in fact carry the whole burden of the world, and given a humble part of that burden to carry with Him.

A TASK IN THE WORLD

And yet Christians live in the world and Christ never meant them to live out of it. In the world they must work out their own salvation and as much of the salvation of the world as possible. They cannot wash their hands of what is going on in the world. On the contrary, they must take the most active interest in it. This is especially true of the American Presbyterian Church with its wonderful missionary epic, ventured forth and accomplished purely in the name of Jesus Christ. What a crown of glory this church has laid up for herself as a result of her prayers and exertions and vision and loving sacrifice and service over the world.

Now the importance of the emergence of Asia and Africa from the Christian point of view is threefold. First, it is good and proper that these nations take their destinies in their own hands. A Christian can only rejoice at the sight of people asserting and exercising their dignity and independence. Second, new perfections of the spirit are called for to work out the proper creative fellowship between equals. The fellowship of equals is the end of all fellowship, and therefore it should be looked upon as the norm and rule. Once perfected it becomes far more stable and enriching. And third, Christians under the new conditions will have to demonstrate their faith in Jesus Christ in the teeth of five trials. 1. They have to stand firm as they face the resuscitated tribal and national deities. 2. They have to stand firm as they see old great religions rediscovering and reasserting themselves. 3. They have to work out creative dialogues based on our common human nature and need. 4. Their own governments often find themselves embarrassed by them and by Christ. Now the Church should never meddle in political affairs; she should never make the truth of the Gospel dependent upon the fortunes, which are more often misfortunes, of systems and regimes and persons. But in the impersonal formal order of international relations, Christians could find themselves a cause of embarrassment to their own governments. This is their trial and their cross, and they should bear it courageously, keeping in mind that governments and politics and cultures come and go, but Jesus Christ endureth forever.

And 5. alien anti-Christian movements also have to be faced. It could be said a hundred years from now, it might be said in heaven right now, that the Christians, whether by default or by folly or by sheer stupidity or because they were comfortable and relaxed, lost in the competition for the soul of Asia and Africa in the sixties of the twentieth century. For ours is a most crucial decade. We can only say with Paul, God forbid! But let me tell you, there are situations in which the issue is very delicately poised. The Christian debacle in China is a sobering warning. I am not thinking of competition between political systems: that is an affair of governments, and that is a realm completely other than what I am considering, a realm with its own honourable rules and laws. I am thinking of competition for the soul and mind of the people. I am thinking of whether Christians, not governments, can relax if the mind of the people is poisoned with respect to the name of Jesus Christ. Mighty forces are moving fast into whole spiritual vacua. Surely history will say a hundred years from now—in so far as there will be history then—surely heaven is saying right now, what was the matter with the Christians, where were they? Nothing therefore is more necessary than to rouse responsible Christians from their lethargy and slumber into both the infinite dangers and the infinite possibilities of the moment.

At the heart of the whole matter is faith in Jesus Christ. Do we believe in him as passionately as others believe in their own ideas and systems? If we do, then we ought to do better than they. For we worship a Person, they worship an idea. We worship life and strength and love and victory; they worship negation and hatred. Christ can do without us; he can raise up children to Abraham from these stones; he may be doing so already in the vast spaces of Asia and Africa. And if we fail him it cannot be that he failed; we will only have proven that we are unprofitable servants. Nothing puts our faith to the ultimate test more than the concrete challenge facing us all in Asia and Africa.

Christians all over the world are mingling with other religions, outlooks, and points of view more than ever before. Their faith could be easily overwhelmed and overawed by the gods and religions and mythologies of Asia and Africa, as well as by the new fads and outlooks sprouting in the West. Jesus Christ becomes one among many. He becomes even a weak one, one of whom we might be ashamed. We begin to see the good in these other outlooks—and there is plenty of it—and we lose our hold on Christ, or, better, he lets go his hold on us. The result is confusion, uncertainty, and loss of faith. You and I must know of cases where people began with the stoutest Christian faith, but upon prolonged mixing and exposure and living with other religions and cultures, they ended with the haziest notion of Jesus Christ and began to preach some vague eclectic or pantheistic or humanitarian form of religion.

It is a bounden Christian duty to love and serve our fellow men, whether Christian or un-Christian; indeed to love and serve our enemies. It is our sacred duty to promote justice, give everybody his due, educate the ignorant, tend the sick, recognize the good everywhere, and salvage and rejoice in the truth wherever we find it and regardless of the error and darkness in which it may be embedded and with which it may be overlaid. The Lord said to Jeremiah, “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth” (Jer. 15:19). Surely we are to identify the precious everywhere and take it forth from the vile to become like unto the mouth of God. But if the price we pay for all this is loss of faith in Jesus Christ, estrangement from his presence, then that is too heavy a price, at least because without him we cannot love our enemies, or serve kinsman and stranger alike, or know what justice is, or recognize truth and goodness where we find them. When I see all this attempted without faith, I wonder if it is not all sentimental and human and political; and these will not only soon decay and degenerate, but they will never last. If Jesus Christ exists, and if he is what we believe him to be, what he himself says he is, and what our fathers have handed him down to us for 2000 years, then I can only be loving and helpful and just and profitable to others through him and with him. I certainly do not expect this to be understood by diplomats or politicians or businessmen or philanthropists or educators who are only what their name connotes; I expect it to be understood by Christians who know and believe in Jesus Christ.

CHRIST AND OUR DILEMMA

The German philosopher Kant emphasized the theoretical and moral nature of man and made everything in the universe depend on him. Hegel attempted a deduction of everything from pure reason which, regardless of what he said, was only the reason of man. The Communists emphasize man alone (in the sense of the collectivity) and want him to take everything into his own hands (in the sense of absolute political control), even to the extent of deriving all science and all culture, including religion and God, from the class struggle. The existentialists know nothing absolutely except man and his miserable existence. Here is this tremendous convergence upon man from every side. But we Christians have been affirming man ever since God himself became man. Could we not therefore show Kant, Hegel, the Communists, and the existentialists that their attempt to concentrate everything in and derive everything from man represents a sound instinct, but that it is our God-Man who is really the Alpha and Omega of all this impulse; Alpha, because he started it in the first place, whether directly or indirectly; and Omega, because the perfect man they pant after and long for and desire to create in history our God-Man already is?

We tend to think that this very culture and civilization in which we enjoy ourselves and take so much pride has created itself; that it subsists by itself and is self-sufficient. We thus lose sight of how much it owes Christ.

The life of slothfulness and satisfaction and relaxation is certainly a life of death: try it and see what I mean; it makes you forget God, it causes you to tend in the end towards nothingness; for nothingness is exactly that where God is forgotten. Whatever the value of a relaxation of tensions in the international order, such a relaxation is disastrous in the order of the spirit. Nobody understands the mysterious depths of man and God who does not understand what James meant when he shouted: “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness” (James 4:9). In mourning and affliction we come much nearer God than in laughter, and that is why they that mourn are called blessed, seeing that their reward is the comfort of God (Matt. 5:4).

Frustration because of imperfection and sin?! O yes! But thank God, Jesus Christ is without sin and he is our Lord. Only the Christian can say this. All others are just as sinful as, or they may even be much less sinful than, the Christians, but they do not have somebody to look up to who is without sin. It is not sin or sanctity that differentiates a Christian from a non-Christian; it is the Lord Jesus Christ whose mercy the poor Christian trusts. And you and I have known his power, how in the twinkling of an eye he is able to change everything and make us into new creatures. And then, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

And so faith has been tested and through God’s grace it has emerged triumphant over hell and the devil, when it can say with Paul, simply, quietly, and without guile: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38 f.).

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.

Sometime between 1000 and 2000 B.C. (depending on who does the dating) the intellectuals of India concluded that “we live in an impersonal world.” They adjusted this concept of an impersonal world, however, to meet man’s practical needs. The myths and myth-cycles of Hinduism (and later Buddhism) were launched with intellectual sophistication because something in man, whether philosophically sophisticated or ignorant, makes living in an impersonal world intolerable. The word “god” has in itself a certain sense of the personal, and so the word “god” was used by the thinkers of the East in order to cushion the concept of an impersonal universe. But since the “wisdom” of the East is centered in the final loss of personality, it was natural to minimize personality in ourselves, and to have little care for it in others. To the religion of the Orient, sin is simply “lack of understanding,” and sin passes as man accepts “the fact” that he and dung are brothers.

THE PLIGHT OF THE WEST

Many have come to such a position in the twentieth century post-Christian Western world. Lawrence of Arabia, in fact, said that the highest purpose of man’s body is to become manure on the fields. Dominated by this concept, he later committed intellectual suicide, having turned off his mind long before he brought his death to pass on his motorcycle. Historian Toynbee says that while northern European culture is based on Christianity, it no longer believes it, but is trying to keep the moral-cultural concepts built on it; therefore there is now no real relationship between what the Western world is trying to keep and what it believes. Toynbee then seems to say that communism is, by contrast, in the position of resting its culture on what it believes, and that thus communism will win since it is unified in itself as opposed to the divided present culture of the West.

I doubt that communism will win, for it seems to me that it contains even greater divisions in itself. But that is a secondary point. Communism does not have to win for us to lose. We are losing to ourselves.

Many intellectuals of the West have come to the conclusion that we live in an impersonal world, so that we have arrived back at the more than 3000-year-old world view of the East.

In the race of fission versus fission, fusion versus fusion, missile versus missile, what reason is there to think that those conceiving and engineering these things on “our side” believe anything basically different concerning the personal versus the impersonal view of the universe from those on the “other side,” the Communists?

THROUGH THE CURTAIN

We here in Switzerland have been in touch with certain young intellectuals who have escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. Some have come out at great cost. One, for example, spent several years in a concentration camp for a previously attempted break. When he did get out, he left his shoes behind in a swamp, and some of his family were in the camps for two years or more because of his successful escape. But he says, “I’m glad for the freedom, but I have not found what I thought I would—I have not found in the West any base for the freedom.” I can hear the shouts, “ingrate, haven’t you freedom, haven’t you shoes?” But he is only saying out of the rough and tumble of a personally displaced life what Toynbee has said.

Or think of it another way. In the Brussels Exposition last year, a modern art exhibit was titled “Ensor to the Present.” There was an unusually representative cross section of Western paintings of the past 50 years; and more unusual still was a certain scattering of Russian canvases since the revolution. In every room the Russian canvases stood out immediately, for they pictured the world as a world of order. True, each was in some way a political tract saying that the individual only has his meaning in relationship to the State; but it was a world of order. In contrast, the Western canvases of the past 50 years, almost without exception, spoke of a universe of disorder, of purposelessness, of disintegration, of “no one home,” an impersonal universe. And if we were facing the decision of which of these two worlds to accept, and we knew of no third alternative, would we automatically accept the freedom plus shoes plus chrome on the automobiles, plus chaos and reject the meaningful order of the individual, if only in the nauseating context of his relationship to the total State? Freedom is like bread—it needs a base to replenish it, or it rots. And when freedom rots, the only choices left are chaos or dictatorship.

ATOMS WITHOUT A SOUL

So twentieth century man visualizes himself as living in an impersonal world—a universe with no one home—a nightmarish De Chirico painting, where there are chugging machines, endless rows of houses, but the lone figures in the midst of it all only point up the lesson—“There is no one home,” personality has no real meaning. It is worse than a painting, for it is four dimensional—it stretches away to the light years which measure the cosmos; it reaches back to an origin by chance on one end and forward not only to a personal oblivion but the oblivion of all conscious life on the other end, and it embraces the view that man is only the atom contemplating itself, and the atom is finally only energy. It is nobody home—nowhere in the wide universe is there anything which can be rightly termed personality.

Twentieth century man is learning the lesson of the Hindus of 1000–2000 B.C. that man cannot take the naked concept of an impersonal world. With Camus it is a moral sense which damns; with others it is the aesthetic, the sense of beauty, which will not fit into a world of chance; with still others it is the love they feel toward their beloved which cannot be equated with the mere sexual urge, which will not fit into this impersonal universe which the Eastern mind and the twentieth century Western man say is the universe that exists. Consequently, some smash schools as the Teddy Boys of England and the juvenile delinquents of the United States; some paint a universe of chaos; some write Music Concrete and some write equally relative novels and drama; some become alcoholics; some sleep under the bridges of Paris; some just endlessly read the newspapers so they will not have to think; and some mouth religious slogans, not to think but to keep from thinking.

Huxley, in the Brave New World, knew that his “new world” would face this problem, and so he suggested soma, a nontoxic drug, to provide a controlled, needed escape.

But now the leaders of our culture are rethinking their attitude toward religion, as the Eastern thinkers did long ago. We who are Bible-believing Christians should of all people not be surprised at this trend. If biblical prophecy is read in the historical grammatical sense of the words, the antichrist will himself be the object of worship in a world-wide religion, a world-wide “Brave New World,” with a total religion in the place of soma.

Recently a professor in one of the European universities expressed himself this way: “As a natural scientist I find myself in a dual position—I see man from a naturalistic viewpoint; but I find that this materialistic phenomenon of man, as he has been produced by chance, has functional needs. It is necessary for him to fill these functional needs; this is a kind of truth. Thus, we see now that man needs religion.”

Shall we who are biblical Christians shout that a victory is won? Not a bit of it. Instead, we ought to weep, for all he means is that man is the atom contemplating itself by chance, and in the chance relationship of the atoms we are, we find that we have unexplained functional needs and these needs are best met by religion, so, they say, let’s have religion, the tranquilizer supreme. Any religion which meets this functional need is “truth.”

I am convinced that the Eastern type of religious thinking is winning the Western religious world today. Of those I meet from many Western lands who have some interest in religion as opposed to the “pure” materialists, existentialists, and so forth, many more have their basic religious thoughts rooted in Eastern thinking than in Christianity.

Anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner), Theosophy, Unity, Christian Science, Bahai, and many sects like them are Eastern and use varying degrees of Christian terminology to express that which is contrary to Christian thought. The rush to Yogi everywhere, the growth of an almost untouched-up Buddhism in Britain, have had an influence beyond the numbers of those who would call themselves their followers. Wagner’s operas and Goethe’s poems were born in Eastern thought, and have had great, if only partially understood, influence in our twentieth century world.

LIBERALISM AND IMPERSONALITY

Protestant liberalism is in its own way a strongly contributing factor: it has been depersonalizing Christianity for varying lengths of time, from 250 years ago until the present, depending on which country is inundated. The new current shaped by Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, and the Scandinavian Lund Theology twists and turns, but it has not changed the direction of the flow. For example, a Hindu or Buddhist well understands the myth-cycle treatment which much of the new liberalism imposes on the first three chapters of Genesis: it is in method what the Hindu-Buddhist myth-cycles are. Yogi Yogananda in his autobiography deals extensively with Genesis 1–3, and using the myth-cycle method he turns this passage into a Hindu-Buddhist tract for Western consumption. By the myth-cycle method, one can come with equal efficiency to the conclusions of the new liberals or to Yogi Yogananda’s conclusions.

The new liberal attitude toward apologetics is a part of the pattern. All we can do, we are told, is “witness.” Religious truth is pushed back out of the test of time, space, and history. When both the modern liberal Protestant and Hindu witness to their religious “truth,” no one can be sure whether they witness to someone, or even something there, or whether they witness only to an abstract idea. On this basis Yogi Yogananda’s interpretation of Genisis 1–3 is as good as anyone’s. Take the first steps in removing the Bible out of space, time, and history, and soon it can be lodged as one more myth-cycle in a Hindu temple, to be circumambulated and meditated upon while one waits for “the lightning to fall.” Who then is to say which is “more right,” the Hindu or the modern liberal Protestant witness? Perhaps lightning strikes deeper in the Himalayas, or Rome, than in Basel, Zürich, or New York.

THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH

In our shrinking, close-knit world we are now facing the most basic of all questions: “Do we live in a personal or impersonal universe?” and the related question of whether religion is merely functional or whether it deals with truth. What is the framework of reality? What is the universe really; what is it objectively?

As one meets Protestants from many lands, one finds them troubled because Protestantism is, in country after country, now an almost entirely middleclass phenomenon. Neither the intellectuals nor the workers are being touched. To reach them we must deal in a gentle yet rough and tumble way with the ideas involved in Christian truth. We must be able to defend the historic creeds of the Christian Church without embarrassment or reservation.

Yet all too often orthodox creeds are used not as keys to understanding, but rather as slogans to escape from the tough business of facing ideas and truth. It is so comforting in the circle of our applauding friends to slay Hinduism, the old and new liberalism, and all else, without an honest effort to understand the problems and the statable Christian ideas in answer to those problems. Slogans will not do. Nor will it do to say that the intellectual questions are unanswered, but as “a blind act of faith” we accept the Bible. Such an assertion tends to confuse the question as to whether Christianity deals with objective truth or only with the functional needs of man.

The writers of the Bible held that truth is to be intellectually considered in the broad daylight of history, or it is nothing. To Paul the resurrection of Christ was physical, testable in history and coherently statable, or the Christian faith was to be declared vain, not true. We must hold this firmly, or we feed the rushing river of the functional and relative concept of religion. We should worship the living God because the Bible has statable answers to man’s bone-crushing, ruthless, intellectual questions.

GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL

As we seek to understand the problems of our age, we shall see that something is needed in addition to the intellectual answer. There needs to be a demonstration that God is and that he is personal. Christianity is not just “the best intellectual system” the world has ever known; it is truth. It will not do simply to pay lip service to Scripture as to some mechanical truth, and assume that cold logic and common sense are all that is needed. The Bible does not say that such an attitude is enough, and the writers of the creeds did not say it was enough. We ought to note again how carefully the writers of the Westminster Confession balanced the truth of the objectively inspired Word of God with the work which the Holy Spirit does in relationship to the individual.

Again we are back to the central problem, “Is anyone home?” in the universe. The Bible says that someone is very much at home. The Bible teaches that there is a Triune God, and that this personal God deals individually with the finite creatures he has made. Thus, individuals have significance when they fulfill the purpose of their existence in fellowship with him. When man by sin revolted against God, this infinite God loved man enough to send the Saviour who really saves, so that finite creatures might return individually to the purpose of their creation, and, in fellowship with this personal God through the finished work of Jesus Christ, find their significance as finite personalities restored.

SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY

The Christian answer includes the biblical exposition of the universe, the full supernatural system of the Bible, stated without compromise and without embarrassment; and it includes the work of the Holy Spirit in history today. That answer is not the subjective without the objective Bible, as the new liberalism teaches; neither is it simply the objective Bible, if that is taken to imply that only mental assent to the best intellectual system is necessary. It is the objective Bible and the Holy Spirit, the latter dealing not only in an abstract world of religious concepts but in history, and not only history from 1500 B.C. till 100 A.D. but history in every generation.

If there is going to be a convincing statement that God exists and is personal, there must be a demonstration that the Bible’s statements and promises concerning God’s acting in history in relationship to the individual are more than mere words. It will not do to shut up the Holy Spirit’s work merely to regeneration, which cannot as such be seen; nor will it do to carry on Christian work with the means or techniques of the world (which so admirably sell cornflakes, cars, and strange sects), and then expect men to be convinced that God exists and that He is personal. The need involves first the objectively inspired Word, the Bible, from which comes a statable system based in history, set forth in history, not completely comprehended but truly comprehended, and proclaimed without compromise; and second, some demonstration that God does deal with the individual Christian in our generation.

The dangers of subjectivism are always present, but the Bible’s explicit teaching of the “power” of the Holy Spirit, its teaching of the individual leading of the Holy Spirit to individual Christians, and the relation of the individual Christian to other Christians without chaos or machine rule, on the basis of the blood of Christ and the gifts of the Spirit—these things must mean something in A.D. 1960. If they do not mean something real and tangible in our moment of history, not only will the world ask us but we must have the courage to ask ourselves, “Is there a personal God who does exist?” And we must face the question both from the world and from ourselves on the honest background of the only alternate universe which could exist, an impersonal universe of chance and consequent meaninglessness of both the individual and the human race.

The promise and emphasis of God’s acting in history are a part of the Christian system. The objective Word makes these statements and these promises. We did not originate them; they are there, as much a part of the Bible as anything else. Remove the statements and promises, and the biblical system no longer remains.

We have to leap-frog over the trivial half-systems to the basic problems of life and the universe. Because the universe is personal; because the living God exists; because after we have come to him on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ we are in fellowship with him; and because his promises to us as Christians have meaning in our moment of history, it is not vain to say before the world:

To eat, to breathe

to beget

Is this all there is

Chance configuration of atom against atom

of god against god

I cannot believe it.

Come, Christian Triune God who lives,

Here am I

Shake the world again.

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.