Less than half of the United Church of Canada members believe strongly in God.

An ambitious survey of Canadians on the subject of their religious attitudes reveals an astonishing decline of the Christian faith in Canada, particularly among members of the country’s largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada. Less than half of its members profess an unequivocal belief in God.

“Organized religion in Canada is experiencing a dramatic drop-off,” sociologist Reginald Bibby says. “Churches are losing many of their once-active members and adherents, while failing to replenish such loses.…” He adds that his survey shows little likelihood that the trend will change.

Bibby, head of the sociology department at Alberta’s University of Lethbridge, bases his analysis on an 11-page, 303-item questionnaire answered by nearly 2,000 people across the nation. The project was supported by the United Church of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian government, and the University of Lethbridge.

The randomly selected respondents reflect the nation’s religious spectrum, but because the responses were broken down by religious affiliations, Canadians have a revealing first-ever national religious profile. (The affiliations analyzed are Anglican, United, Roman Catholic, conservative, other Protestant, and none.)

Regarding the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, and life after death, United and Anglican church members consistently scored below the national average. “It seems noteworthy,” Bibby observes, “that only about 40 percent of actual United church members claim unequivocal belief in God and the divinity of Jesus.” By contrast, he found, conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics are far more likely to believe.

The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925 through union of three denominations—Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian (although one-third of the Presbyterians rejected the merger and maintained a continuing Presbyterian church). In the last census, 19 percent of Canadians indicated a relationship to the United church, giving it the highest following behind the Roman Catholic church.

Concerning the biblical knowledge of the respondents, the sociologist gives this withering appraisal: “… with the possible exception of conservative church members, Canadians—church members and nonmembers alike—have a remarkable level of ignorance of even the basic content features of Judaic-Christianity.”

The survey of religious practices shows a sharp decline in church attendance since 1956. In that year, 61 percent of Canadians said they had attended church during the previous week. By 1978, that percentage had declined to 35. United and Anglican church attendance in 1978, however, was well below the national average—28 percent for United and 24 percent for Anglican. In that same year, 45 percent of Catholics and 39 percent of conservative Protestants reported church attendance during the previous week.

The decline in Christian commitment was also reflected in membership statistics for 1966 to 1977. The United church registered a sharp drop, from a membership high of 1,062,006 in 1966 to 930,226 in 1977, and its Sunday school enrollment shrank from 570,000 to 242,000. Bibby points out that all Canadian churches declined in that period.

His analysis of the data conveys a sobering message to Canada’s largest Protestant denomination: “… the United church finds itself in a position where its people appear to have a low level of commitment to traditional Christianity. Basic beliefs pertaining to God, the divinity of Jesus, and life after death tend to be held with ambivalence; regular church attendance and private prayer are practiced by only a small proportion, while regular private Bible reading is virtually nonexistent. Relatively few are convinced that they have ever experienced God, and a majority do not demonstrate a knowledge of basic Judaic-Christian content. Taken together, the result is that only one in seven gives evidence of being committed to traditional Christianity.” Bibby wonders if “the United Church of Canada has to a great extent become fused with a highly secularized culture.” He said the United church should determine if the message it delivers is “translated Christianity or industrial world-view-induced humanism.”

If the church opts for the secular humanist emphasis, he maintains, it “may well engage in self-liquidation, through finishing a distant second to superior secular competitors.”

Bibby points out that the problems are more serious than imagined because of a “belief lag effect.” He says, “Many people have been rejecting the churches, yet retaining ideas which date back to childhood participation. Without similar exposure, however, it is very doubtful that their children, for example, will manifest such beliefs.”

The failure of all churches at this point, he contends, could have dire effects for them. “Without the sustaining influence of organized religion, commitment to the Judaic-Christian tradition is destined to diminish. And organized religion in Canada—mainline or conservative—is in trouble at this stage in Canadian history.”

In proposing possible strategies for churches, he calls on them to “assess whether or not what they are doing represents anything in the way of a unique contribution to the lives of Canadians.” He points out that churches should be specializing in addressing “the ultimate questions” posed by man.

“In order to flourish in a functionally specialized society, religion must perform a function which gives it something of a unique place,” the sociologist maintains. “It must be saying and doing something different—and appreciably better—than its secular competitors. Only then, we have argued, will people find religion worth their attention and resources, worthy of transmitting to their children and others, and significant among other socializing agents which mold their minds and their actions.” Failure to do that, he warns, could cause people to turn their eyes elsewhere if religion has nothing particularly special to say.

The report is not without a ray of hope. Bibby points out that although religion has become peripheral in Canadian society, the new religions and cults have had a small appeal. “To the extent that Canadians continue to be religious,” he says, “traditional Christianity appears to have a significant lead over its religious competitors.”

According to church spokesmen, the report and analysis have been passed on to denominational department heads and other leaders across the nation. It is probably too early to predict whether the sobering analysis will provoke deep heart searching or acrimonious debate in the United church, which has been cited as a model for church union movements elsewhere.

Although the United church helped subsidize the survey, denominational spokesmen said they contemplate no official response or major action.

Lois Wilson, the church’s moderator, stated that the survey was initiated before she became moderator, and that she was unaware of any specific contemplated response or action.

Albion Wright, secretary to the church’s general counsel, pointed out that the church had not commissioned the report and that there never had been any intention of making it the basis for policy or strategy. He added that it was available for the consideration of those departments that found it useful.

A Look At The Local Church Of The Future

Earlier church services, less denominational loyalty, and changing adult education are some important trends Lyle E. Schaller observes in the church. Schaller, parish consultant for Yokefellow Institute of Richmond, Indiana, became the guru of Christian change agentry with books like The Change Agent and Activating the Passive Church. Writing in the January Presbyterian Survey, Schaller lists seven significant movements that congregations should be aware of to keep up with the times.

1. The most significant, Schaller believes, is the congregational use of local cable television. “It now appears the big audiences for religious telecasting will be via the local cable franchise …,” he says, “rather than over the network stations.”

2. The most controversial trend, on the other hand, is the proliferation of Christian day schools. These schools often open amid accusations of racism, but Schaller thinks their existence is a foregone conclusion. “The real issue is, who will offer this specialized ministry?” he writes, wondering if “mainline” Protestant denominations will move into the field.

3. The erosion of denominational loyalty is another trend. In the average Protestant church, Schaller says, only 8 of 20 new adult members come from a sister church or same denomination. “Less emphasis is being given to denominational labels and more is devoted to the personality, program, and distinctive role of the particular congregation,” Schaller writes.

4. New church members are also picking churches for different reasons than they used to, Schaller believes. During the 1950s and 1960s parents chose churches that had good programs for their children. Now young adults shop for a church with a strong ministry to their own age group, which means “the church with a strong evangelistic thrust must strengthen its adult ministries.”

5. Bible study is moving out of Sunday schools and into weekday slots, Schaller notes. Statistics on Sunday school attendance have looked dismal, but the Bible is receiving more attention at men’s breakfasts, women’s home studies, and “unofficial” groups for high school and college students.

6. Worship services are starting earlier on Sunday mornings, Schaller says. Factors include fewer hours spent sleeping on the average, a desire to free more of the day up for family activities after church—and the National Football League. According to Schaller, the NFL has been “an obvious factor in increasing church attendance at earlier services during the autumn.”

7. The final trend is toward an adult educational curriculum that recognizes “several distinctively different stages of an adult’s faith development.” This means classes may cease being divided by age, gender, marital status, and the like, and focus on the individual’s level of spiritual development.

World Scene

Evangelicals were ready for the advent of competitive broadcasting in Norway, where test broadcasts began with the new year. First of the new local radio stations on the air was the Gilekollen Media Center (GMC) in Kristiansand. The GMC is owned by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission, an evangelical voluntary organization within the (Lutheran) Church of Norway. It is beginning with one hour of programming daily. Six of the first 18 successful applications were submitted by free church denominations and other Christian organizations. Nearly 200 groups have applied.

There were 130 believers from the unregistered Baptist churches being held in Soviet prisons and labor camps at the beginning of 1982. That count is reported by exiled leader Georgi P. Vins of the Council of Evangelical Baptist Churches.

Evangelicals have appeared on television in Yugoslavia for the first time in the history of the socialist nation. In December, Peter Kezmic, director of the Biblical Theological Institute in Zagreb, represented evangelicals alongside Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and Muslim spokesmen. Last month he was interviewed separately. The unprecedented exposure evoked many calls and letters and an interview for a secular magazine.

The Nigerian Bible Society plans to set up its own printing plant at Enugu. This is a departure for black Africa, which has traditionally depended on imported Bibles subsidized through the world service budget of the United Bible Societies. Whole Bibles will continue to be supplied from abroad, but the Nigerian Society is producing its own new-reader Scriptures and Scripture portions.

A congregation of Nigerian Methodists took matters into its own hands recently. The members of Wesley Cathedral, near Lagos, listened as their minister preached a sermon on the Sunday following Christmas. Then, as he retired to the narthex, they mobbed him, snatching off his crown and other regalia and leaving his robe in tatters. They were protesting the move from simple clerical garb to ostentatious attire that accompanied independence for the Wesleyan Methodist Church. The hierarchy switched an ordination scheduled to be held at the cathedral to another location.

Bible study led to the ouster of a top Jehovah’s Witness.

“[In] 40 years of full-time service …, I endured privation, poverty, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fever, dysentery, jailings, dangers of mob violence, of gunshots and war, the risk of life and liberty in dictatorial lands, along with constant toil.…”

That sounds very much like Saint Paul’s own litany of suffering, but the list belongs to one-time Jehovah’s Witness (JW) Raymond Franz. Raymond, 60-year-old nephew of JW president Frederick Franz, climbed high in the JW structure until he was removed from the Watchtower in 1980. Now he has been excommunicated from the cult. In the eyes of his 88-year-old uncle and other loyal JWS, Raymond Franz is as a dead man.

Until his resignation, the younger Franz was a member of the elite governing body, a group of about 15 men who oversee national JW activities from Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn. He resigned under pressure, and last December 31 Franz was disfellowshiped (the JW term for excommunication). The premise for the disfellowshiping was that Ray Franz had dined with a man who left the cult only months before.

Franz does not deny that he had dinner at a Gadsden, Alabama, steak house with Peter Gregerson. But Gregerson, who disassociated himself from the cult after having been a JW since the age of three, is Franz’s landlord and employer. Franz thinks it is difficult not to talk to (or eat with) the man who is your boss and who owns the land on which you live.

After his resignation from the governing body in 1980, Franz was mute. He chose not to comment on any of the problems he had with the cult (CT, Dec. 12, 1980, p. 68). But the recent disfellowshiping has spurred Franz and his friends to tell more of his story.

Raymond Franz graduated from high school in 1940, and the same month went to the mission field to win converts for Jehovah God. He served in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. He once visited a Kentucky coal mining camp with other JW missionaries and was told to leave the camp. When he persisted, Franz was shot at.

After more than 20 years of arduous service, Franz went to Brooklyn and began work on the Aid to Bible Understanding. The encyclopedic Aid is the authoritative JW commentary on what the Bible means. Ray Franz was considered one of the best Bible scholars in Brooklyn and worked on the Aid with four other men.

Writing the Aid drove Franz closer to the Bible and he was haunted by the theme of grace—a theme incongruous with the typically legalistic emphasis of the cult. (Ironically, Franz and two others who wrote “about 80 percent” of the Aid have since been disfellowshiped. Although it has since been revised, it substantially remains a book written by the three men who are no longer JWS.)

By 1971, Franz was elected a member of the prestigious governing body. The reasons for his pressured resignation nine years later remain unclear. Franz and his uncle Frederick, JW president, reportedly were on poor terms (though Raymond will not comment on this). His doctrinal conclusions may also have disturbed other members of the governing body. Political bones of contention included a 1975 shift in the power structure, which Ray Franz supported and his uncle opposed.

He was 58 when he left the Watchtower, untrained in other labor, and without finances. He also had heart problems. It was then that Peter Gregerson, a long-time friend, offered Franz some living space on his Alabama farm. Franz moved near Gadsden and lived in a house trailer, farming and doing odd jobs for Gregerson, and he continued to worship at the Gadsden Kingdom Hall.

By late December Franz was disfellowshiped. The elders said he had violated a pronouncement of the September 15, 1981, Watchtower magazine, which forbade speaking to or dining with a disassociated JW. In Franz’s case, the disassociated JW was Gregerson.

Two years ago, while still a Witness, Gregerson was promoted in his company, Warehouse Groceries, a chain of 10 stores in northeastern Alabama. This gave Gregerson time to read Scripture (many former JWS report their problems with JW authorities began when they started studying the Bible on their own). Despite the fact that all of Gregerson’s family and friends were Witnesses, he “came to the conclusion that what I had been believing all my life was not true.” He resigned from the cult. Franz now works full-time under Gregerson at Warehouse Groceries, as do at least 35 JWS. Though the other Witnesses necessarily speak to Gregerson on occasion (and even eat with him, Franz says), only Franz was disfellowshiped.

Franz appealed his disfellowshiping but withdrew his appeal when he learned who would sit on the appeal committee. One man had been embarrassed by Gregerson years before when Gregerson challenged his handling of a matter before higher JW officials. Another, Earl Parnell, was the father-in-law of Gregerson’s daughter until the marriage ended in bitter divorce. The third was Earl Parnell’s son-in-law.

Spokesmen in Watchtower headquarters say the national officials had nothing to do with Franz’s excommunication. A Gadsden elder says the disfellowshiping concerned “strictly the congregation here. The governing body has nothing to do with it.”

Gregerson considers that claim “laughable.” He believes the elders were in contact with Brooklyn, and the JW elite may have initiated the excommunication. He wrote Brooklyn several times to protest the Gadsden proceedings but never received a reply. In addition, a traveling overseer had questioned Franz at length about his beliefs.

Raymond Franz will not say if he remains a Witness. A series of letters to the committee that eventually turned him out portrays a man seriously wrestling with Scripture and finally proclaiming, Luther-like, “I assure you that if you will help me to see from the Scriptures that the act of eating with Peter Gregerson is a sin, I will humbly repent of such sin before God.” It is a smaller stage, perhaps, than Luther’s or Wesley’s, but the Bible continues to cause men to stand alone and suffer the consequences.

NEWS

Fundamentalist Christianity burst onto the public scene in 1979 when Jerry Falwell organized his Moral Majority. It broke into the news all over again last year in California and Arkansas when creationists went to court to fight the theory of evolution in public schools.

Now, fundamentalism has boiled up in another arena, pitting racial discrimination against religious freedom. Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, citing a biblical injunction against mixing of races, refused to admit black students until 1975. It still prohibits dating and marriage between races, although it has fewer than 12 blacks among its 6,000 students.

Its biblical beliefs on racial separation are not shared by most biblically conservative Christian schools—even most other fundamentalist schools. The Bob Jones doctrine holds that joining of races contributes to “one-worldism,” which it says is man’s attempt to unite against God, and that God intended the races to remain separate when he dispersed the people at the Tower of Babel.

Bob Jones III, the school’s president (his father and grandfather preceded him as president), testified in detail on the school’s beliefs during a federal trial in 1978.

According to the Bible, Jones testified, three races descended from the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and God scattered them so they would seek him, not unite against him. Jones also used Deuteronomy 32:8: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the Sons of Adam …” He also quoted part of Acts 17:26, in which God is said to have set the bounds of people’s habitation.

Jones referred to several passages in Revelation in which God unites the people under his kingdom, and testified that “God has divided people religiously, he has divided them geographically, he has divided them racially. But there is coming a day when all of that will cease, and until that day comes, we intend to do our best to keep the lines that God has established.”

Evangelical scholars disagree with nearly every point Jones makes. Bruce Waltke, the Old Testament authority at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, said there is no way to correlate the descendents of Shem, Ham, and Japheth with races in the modern anthropological sense. For one thing, said Waltke, Caucasians can be found in each line: Israelites among the sons of Shem, Greeks among the sons of Japheth, and Egyptians among the sons of Ham. The emphasis of the passage is not on the establishment of racial lines but upon the curse of Canaan, the son of Ham. “To our knowledge, he said, Canaan is not part of the Negroid race.”

Waltke said it is theologically inappropriate to use the Old Testament to establish modern-day racial segregation since God no longer works through physical blood lines as he did with the nation of Israel. That is because the work of Christ opened salvation to all. He referred to 1 Corinthians 7:39: “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (NASB).

Finally, Waltke noted that Deuteronomy 21 provides rules whereby Israelites might marry outside their own racial group, and thus the practice is expressly not prohibited in the Bible.

Walter Elwell, professor of Bible and theology at the Wheaton College Graduate School (and CT book editor), said that, biblically, “there is only one race, period. It is the fundamental presupposition of the entire Bible.… Because we are all mankind, we all take part in Adam’s sin, and because we are all mankind, we can all be redeemed because Christ died.” Regarding the passage from Acts 17:26 used by Jones in the trial, Elwell said the verse teaches precisely the opposite of what Jones contends. Elwell also noted that the portion Jones did not use in court says “he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth …,” thereby emphasizing the unity of man, not his separation.

The Bob Jones beliefs do not square with those of some other fundamentalist schools, most notably Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg, Virginia. It has some 200 blacks in a 3,000-student enrollment, a larger percentage than in some evangelical schools. Ed Hinson, associate dean of its School of Religion, sees segregation as a Southern issue: “I do not see it as an issue that divides fundamentalists from evangelicals,” he said. “In defending Bob Jones we would need to be very clear that we are not defending their position.

The Goldsboro (South Carolina) Christian Schools comprise another fundamentalist institution that does not admit blacks, which, like Bob Jones, is defending itself before the U.S. Supreme Court. Its board chairman is a Bob Jones graduate. Most evangelical organizations disagree with Bob Jones theologically, but some mainline bodies, including the American Baptists and United Presbyterians (as well as the National Association of Evangelicals), have filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court defending the school’s religious freedom to hold its view.

For the last 12 years, Bob Jones University has battled the Internal Revenue Service to retain its tax exemption, with the IRS contending the school cannot qualify as a charitable institution eligible for tax exemption because its practice violates public policy. President Reagan called off the IRS and restored tax-exempt status to the 111 private schools, including Bob Jones, which were ruled ineligible for tax-exempt certificates. Congress, not the IRS, should establish the policy, Reagan said. The White House hastened to send a proposed bill to Capitol Hill that would remove tax exemptions from those who are practicing racial segregation.

Because of Reagan’s action, the religious issues in question—which the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to rule on—seemed lost in the swirl of antisegregationist rhetoric.

In response, William Ball, the Bob Jones attorney, issued a stinging memo criticizing what he called “a triumph of media distortion.” Ball wrote: “The avalanche of telecasts, editorials, and cartoons have almost totally omitted any reference to (a) whether Congress gave the IRS the power it asserted, and (b) whether religious institutions must lock-step their practices to ‘federal public policy’ as the price of their tax exemption (and thus their existence).”

The only island of calm in the turmoil seemed to be the Supreme Court. The White House asked the Court to remove the Bob Jones case from its calendar since the IRS antisegregation policy, which brought about the dispute, was no longer in force. But so far, the Court has not removed the case, leading to speculation that the justices may decide the question anyway.

I am 33, mentally and physically healthy, reasonably content, and single. Because I am single, I am also chaste by choice and conviction. I am not more given to sexual temptation than the average person, but neither am I less susceptible to it. I have the normal amount of sexual energy for a person of my age with the feelings that attend it.

By chaste I mean chaste; I do not engage in sexual activity. Furthermore, I do not indulge in the games too often played by singles wishing to relieve their boredom while remaining technically short of the line. I do not flirt with married men, have occasional flings with single men, or develop unhealthy attachments to other women. Not being an athlete, I am not prone to sublimation by means of hard exercise. As a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, I am scared to overeat. I overspend only occasionally. And I hate cold showers.

I am not a saint. Then how do I do it? I have heard that question in the church for years from both marrieds and singles. Asked with wonderment and speculative doubt, the query’s implication emerges: If, indeed, the truth is being told, something is amiss. Fear, perhaps; a lack of the joie de vivre; early problems with father or mother; frigidity?

Clearly, if one is single and chaste, he/she must at least be fighting the demon of lust on an hourly basis. An occasional lapse reassures the inquisitive of one’s normality; compassion and understanding abound for the fallen single.

There is little praise for the consistently sexually controlled single. Too often, it is mixed with granulated pity or powdered condescension. Ironically, while discipline and self-control are encouraged and admired in scholarship, athletics, music, and ministry, their absence is strangely excused in sexual matters. The secular myth has infiltrated the Christian consciousness: our sexual urges are overpowering and irresistible. There will come the moment when we “simply can’t help ourselves,” when “madness” will overtake us, when “it will be bigger than us.” To resist the madness is somehow a failure to comprehend true sexuality, to be pronounced neuter—if not audibly, then certainly subconsciously.

How do chaste singles do it? Very simply (not easily), we keep our commitment to our convictions. I offer this suggestion in our defense. It is just possible that we too are tempted strongly, that we too could lose control at a minute’s notice, that our weakness is as great as the next person’s. It is even possible that good sense, grace, or learning our lesson early on has kept us out of all the heady ecstasy.

Goals, hard work, solid friendships, and taking God at his word have played a part. Taking one day at a time, understanding our own natures, and knowing what to avoid all probably help. Believing that God has given us our singleness at the moment, that our condition is not an accident or a cosmic joke, also figures in. More obviously, perhaps we have learned that no one gets everything he wants. Everyone has an itch he can’t scratch, regardless of position or circumstance.

Chastity is a requisite of Christian singleness. Furthermore, chastity is possible. There will always be somebody to suggest that such thinking is legalistic, unreasonable, and unlikely to succeed. My reply can only be: “When it’s bigger than I am, so is God.”

Miss de Rosset is assistant professor of communications at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.

A Primer for Parents

The barriers against premarital sex have been crumbling in America for decades. Today they have been leveled almost to the ground. That this has brought dismay and apprehension to Christian parents hardly needs to be stated. Even non-Christian parents are often alarmed by the phenomenon and what it portends.

Violators of the sexual code were hardly uncommon in the past, but the principle was largely unchallenged. That is no longer the case. The code itself has been subjected to heavy attack and even ridicule from many quarters. For many, it is part and parcel of the “moral rubbish” that disfigured the Victorian era. Yet we must not forget that a basic Christian precept is at stake, one that is as valid today as when it was first proclaimed.

The forces producing this condition are well known. As Ronald Koteskey has pointed out, puberty arrives at a much earlier age than it did centuries ago. At the same time, marriages are delayed by the need for advanced education as well as by the financial burdens of sustaining a home during this educational phase. This makes heavier moral demands on young people than those experienced by previous generations (CT, March 13, 1981, p. 26).

Moreover, we live in a society that seems hell-bent on stimulating sexual activity by a variety of potent means—TV programs, pornography, advertising, books and magazines preoccupied with illicit sex and scornful of anything smacking of “Puritanism.” (In his Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis noted that the disdain in which the word “Puritan” has come to be held is one of Satan’s “really solid triumphs”.) The arrival of “the Pill” and the ready availability of other birth-control devices have furthered the trend.

Besides all this, moral standards in general have withered in recent years. Among the young, especially, self-discipline has been valued far less than “self-expression” and “self-fulfillment.” As for premarital sex, since “everyone does it,” adolescents who are exposed to powerful societal and peer group pressures, as well as to their insistent glandular urges, fall right and left before the nihilistic onslaughts of our times.

Everyone doesn’t do it, of course. But it must be conceded that unusually unattractive youths and those from conservative Christian homes are about the only ones who don’t. And even among the latter, the number who succumb to the moral erosion of the times is apparently growing. Not a few Christian leaders, moreover, have yielded to the Zeitgeist, and have found traditional Christian teachings too onerous and inflexible for the radically changed circumstances of our day.

The latter is rather remarkable, considering the ugly social harvest the “sexual revolution” has brought us. If we had only the current statistical consequences of that revolution to rely on, that should be enough to give pause not only to the Phil Donahues, Gore Vidals, and Shere Hites, but to liberal theologians as well.

America now records about 300,000 teen-aged abortions per year, 240,000 illegitimate children, a rapid rise in the number of early teen-aged mothers, growing numbers of high school dropouts because of pregnancies, the proliferation of single-headed families because of premarital and extramarital sex, and an estimated 12 million young Americans with sexual diseases. There is also reliable evidence that early sex increases the incidence of cervical cancer.

But there is even more persuasive empirical evidence that societies that adopt permissive sexual standards are inviting the most serious kind of trouble. Whereas experts disagree endlessly with one another in most areas of social controversy, the most thoughtful and wide-ranging students of this phenomenon are remarkably united in their pessimistic conclusions on the relationship between declining sexual standards and the well-being of society.

Although hostile to Christian beliefs in general, Sigmund Freud advanced the thesis that civilization makes greater progress when sexual energy is restrained and channeled into social energy by social customs and requirements. A respected Cambridge University sociologist, J. D. Unwin, set out to disprove Freud’s contention that there was a relationship between a somewhat restrictive sexual environment and social progress. To his surprise and dismay, however, his study of over 80 ancient, primitive, and more modern societies revealed an unvarying correlation between the degree of sexual restraints and the rate of social progress. Cultures that were more sexually permissive displayed less cultural energy, creativity, intellectual development, individualism, and a slower general cultural ascent. Whenever more sexual freedom appeared, it was invariably followed by a decline in that culture. (He conceded, however, that the adverse effects of greater sexual freedom might not be fully demonstrated for several generations.)

Correlations do not constitute scientific proof of causality. However, the undeviating nature of these correlations in such widely diverse cultures over such long historical periods could hardly be accidental. Yet Professor Unwin’s conclusions received far less attention than they deserved—and far less, we may safely surmise, than if he had come to opposite conclusions.

Unwin’s findings were supported by Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, whose own studies had reached a roughly similar conclusion. Their judgments were indirectly bolstered when Arnold Toynbee, the most celebrated student of world history, affirmed his belief that a culture that postpones rather than stimulates sexual experience in young adults is a culture most prone to progress. They were further reinforced by the late Will and Ariel Durant. In The Lessons of History, which summarized their principal findings from lifelong research on The Story of Civilization, they declared that sex in the young “is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.”

In 1971, after studying 90 contemporary primitive or less-advanced cultures, anthropologist William Stephens wrote that the tribes lowest on the scale of cultural evolution have the most sexual freedom. Significantly, he also noted that those with “maximal freedom” showed “little connection between sex and love.”

These facts and findings are not cited because Christian doctrine requires the validation of empirical evidence. Rather, they may bolster the faith of some who wonder if this particular Christian principle needs reinterpretation and modernizing. The evidence strikingly demonstrates its continuing validity in a heedless age.

What can Christian parents do to keep their children from falling victim to today’s standards (or lack of standards)? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Instilling of Christian attitudes toward sex should begin early. Once adolescents have reached puberty it is usually too late. By that time, young people have reached their rebellious years. They tend to resist parental advice and listen sympathetically to their peers. Parents need to teach their children at an earlier age that Christian standards unequivocally forbid premarital sex. They need to understand that this is a matter of major importance, and that they will want to abide by this principle because it is God’s will.

Young people may seem restless and uninterested when this is taught in prepuberty years. But they will be listening, even if they seem uncomfortable and do not know quite how to respond. It is imperative that this principle be implanted when resistance is very low or nonexistent. When adolescence arrives, young people will then be able to draw upon a moral value already solidly established, and one that seems to be their own instead of one suddenly foisted upon them when they least want to hear it.

This calls for a modest amount of sex education before most parents provide it—though not before children get garbled versions from their friends. Such education includes sexual behavior. This kind of training has been practiced by responsible parents in other areas—the indoctrination of valid, moral principles at an impressionable, early age. It is understandable if parents shrink from doing this, given our customary hesitance to introduce the subject to our children. But the risks of delay are simply too great.

2. When puberty arrives, children should again be reminded that Jesus’ teachings do not approve premarital sex (Matt. 15:19). Loyalty to him leaves no choice in the matter. And if Jesus’ teachings cannot be trusted here, why trust them on anything else?

3. The staggering cost of transgressing the Christian code may be pointed out to young people. The statistics on teen-aged abortion, illegitimacy, and so on should be brought to their attention to reinforce the contemporary relevance of counsel. It will be no exaggeration to tell young people that sexual misconduct brings them more tragedy than any single practice in which they engage. And it will be prudent to remind them that almost all of the young who became statistics were certain it would not happen to them.

4. More thoughtful and inquiring youth can be told what leading historical and sociological studies have concluded about permissive sexual standards and societal well-being. Conscientious young people with probing minds will welcome the intellectual support this provides for the path they plan to follow.

5. Young people should be made to understand why the availability of the Pill and other birth-control devices is irrelevant to the principle of premarital abstinence. As all intelligent Christians know, sexual intercourse is much more than a purely physical act. Under normal circumstances, it involves an intimate wholeness that joins spirit and flesh in sacred union.

There is persuasive evidence that coitus was seen as tantamount to marriage in the earliest period of biblical history. In the eyes of God, sexual union may commit an unwed couple to one another in more binding fashion than the marriage ceremony itself. The formal wedding ceremony was a later social invention signifying the joining of man and woman in permanent union.

While the nuptial proceedings publicly symbolize the intent to form a lasting marital relationship, they may not represent as profound a commitment as the sexual act itself. Even secular law partially supports this, since a marriage never consummated by sexual relations can be annulled, for it is not regarded as a true marriage. Christian youth who realize the full gravity of the sexual experience are more likely to take it seriously.

If safeguards against conception were sufficient to legitimize sexual adventures by the young, parents could equip their early teen-aged children with the necessary contraceptive advice and equipment and in good conscience bid them embark on the sexual seas. But even teen-agers can see the folly of such a reckless course. For Christians, birth control measures have little to do with the moral and spiritual character of the sexual act. These are only means whereby married couples can control the number and spacing of their offspring.

Young people may argue that while genuine promiscuity is wrong, it is different when one loves someone and intends to marry that person. Again, a few warnings should be passed along.

It is not uncommon for teen-agers to fall madly in love. They may be sure theirs is a deathless romance that can only culminate in marriage, and believe that sex with their beloved falls into an “acceptable” category of premarital relations. Before they finally marry, however, they may become infatuated with a succession of partners, drifting into promiscuity without ever intending to do so.

If the door is opened to sex once a couple has a “meaningful relationship,” it will not take long for teen-agers to interpret any current relationship as one that gives them the green light.

6. Parents ought to be wise in warning their adolescent children that remaining chaste may be exceedingly difficult. It takes courage, self-discipline, and personal conviction to be true to the mark. The Christian way is not the easy way; it is just the best way. Christian youth who are forewarned about the formidable temptations they face and advised to draw back from dating activities that make sexual restraint difficult will have received advice they sorely need. But they should also know that God never asks what is unreasonable, unattainable, or contrary to their long-range best interests.

They need reassurance, moreover, that the pangs of restraint are vastly relieved once they make a firm, unshakable resolution to go God’s way. Irresolution is not only a certain prescription for defeat. It is psychologically distressing as well. But once made, it is surprising how liberating a deliberate and clear-cut decision to abstain can be.

7. Youth must learn that restraint has its rewards, in both the short and the long run. Dating partners can have a greater measure of personal respect for those who refrain from sex before marriage. Abstainers can have more self-respect as well. They can maintain more open, healthy, and unstrained relations with their parents than those who engage in clandestine sex. They can also have confidence that if their partner forgoes sex before marriage, he or she will almost certainly refrain from extramarital affairs later on. Without the intrusion of sexual relations, the young can better evaluate those qualities that are most important to a lasting marriage.

Moreover, those who have practiced restraint prior to marriage know that this attitude can actually enhance love for one’s partner and heighten the pleasure of the engagement period. Incredible? Not at all.

In the first place, for various reasons initial sexual experiences are often less than satisfying. They may bring more misgivings than elation. Furthermore, the anticipatory pleasures for abstainers of consummating the marriage relationship after the wedding will be belittled only by those who have not known that experience. Indeed, their sneers may overlay a wistful wish that they had done the same.

Those who engage in premarital sex rob the wedding day of much of its mystery, allure, and dignity. In their impatience to taste forbidden fruit, they forfeit that special kind of exhilaration that makes the chaste engagement period one of the most beautiful experiences human beings can ever know.

The divorce rate is so high that prospective marital partners need to know as much as possible about each other before launching out into marriage. They need not only to know the surface attractions of each other, but the ordinary, day-to-day behavioral characteristics as well. How emotionally mature is the prospective mate? How does he or she bear up under adversity? Are faults and idiosyncracies the kind the other can tolerate? Are the couple’s value systems and religious outlooks compatible?

It is supremely important, as most recognize, for parents to teach their adolescent children that sex is not a necessary evil, but one of God’s greatest and most pleasurable gifts to mankind. It is to be viewed with thanksgiving, since it can contribute so much to human happiness and well-being. Adolescents need to know their parents believe this. But they must also know that the One who provided the gift also furnished the rules governing its use.

The best assurance we can have that our youth will respect God’s will in this area is to help them commit themselves fully to him. If they yield their lives to God, and understand his will on this matter, we can trust the outcome. But full commitment to Christ may come late rather than early. And the subversive influences of our times are so intense and the hazards so formidable that the precautionary measures recommended should be seriously considered by parents and all who work with young people.

Reo M. Christenson is professor of political science at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

“Self,” my friend said to me with more accuracy than delicacy. “Self is spiritual BO.” The more I have thought about that, and the longer I have lived, the more I am convinced she was right.

The people who have affected my life most deeply and influenced it for good have seldom, if ever, been aware of the fact. On the other hand, people who think themselves a blessing seldom are. (There is a difference between being a help and being a blessing.) Self-conscious goodness is a contradiction in terms. Someone has pointed out that it is “I” that changes goodness into goodiness.

“When the Son of man shall come in his glory,” Jesus tells us, “and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”

Then the King said to the sheep, “I was ahungered and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

But then, terrifyingly, he said to the goats, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” He continued, saying the very opposite of what he had said to the sheep. These goats had ignored his every need—which, he explained, were the needs of the least of his brethren.

The point is, those who had ministered to his needs were as unaware of their goodness and kindness as those who were indifferent were unaware of their indifference.

Today, when there is so much emphasis on things like social action and simple lifestyle, we must watch the “I.” The only way to avoid spiritual BO is by constant cleansing “with the washing of water by the Word.”

P.S. About sheep and goats: the Encyclopedia Britannica begins its section on sheep with these revealing words: “Practically, sheep form a group impossible of definition, as they pass imperceptibly into the goats.”

Separating the sheep from the goats will have to wait for the coming of the Great Shepherd. He alone knows where that imperceptible line lies.

Tensions Between Job and Family

It is becoming more and more difficult today for men and women to decide whose demands they must listen to.

Our employers pressure us to make our career our primary responsibility. They are ready to reject us (or at least never promote us) if we are not willing to sacrifice our family and personal needs for the company store.

Our children make great demands of us. Music lessons, athletic team practices, Scouts, endless car pools, discipline, diapers, fights, tears, hunger, problems, cuts, dirt, crying, selfish behavior, demands for hugs and attention—all of that is involved in having children. It is a tremendous burden and responsibility if we do not want them to turn into human monsters.

Christianity places demands on us. We are absorbed by personal devotions, neighbors with needs, people starving in the world, church attendance, financial sacrifices, church-related parties and activities, and in making contributions of time to local church work. Living a committed Christian life, like rearing children, has its roses and its thorns. Even Christ experienced both.

More demands are placed on our time by mates, friends, neighbors, schools, organizations, household responsibilities, chores.

But perhaps the demands that drain us most emotionally are intrapsychic ones. These arise out of our personal insecurities, inferiority feelings, loneliness, pains, anger, lust, desires for power, materialistic drives, parental injunctions to be perfect, true and false guilt.

More than in any previous era of human history, men and women find themselves caught in a tug-of-war, with job, family, church, and intrapsychic demands all pulling ropes. It is no wonder so many Americans are “copping out” with affairs, divorce, suicide, alchohol, and drugs. As a psychiatrist, I empathize with the hundreds, Christians and non-Christians, who come to the Christian psychiatrists and psychologists in our clinic seeking better ways to cope with job/family tensions—which always ultimately involve subtle intrapsychic tensions as well.

Nearly 60 percent of American mothers are in the labor force, either part- or full-time. The problem of “mother substitutes” is increasingly crucial.

Jean Piaget’s studies indicate that although adequate mother substitutes are satisfactory the first six months or so of life, on the social level the mother is very specifically needed by the infant, starting at about seven months of age. Infants then need their own mothers for security and socialization; without them, a variable extent of permanent emotional and intellectual damage will occur.

Another critical problem in American society is the increasing number of single-parent families. They have their own special problems: separation anxiety, grief, anger, depression, and loneliness. And the children may have sexual identity problems. More than six million children in the United States are living in fatherless homes.

An extensive study of 120 children from fatherless homes was presented by the psychiatry department of the University of Florida. They found that parent-child relationships are most seriously impaired among “hard-core” fatherless children—those who have been without a father for two years or more. Most of these children are either psychotic or retarded, with severe pathology and a fatalistic view of life. Children who have been without a father for less than two years show fewer severe impairments than the “hard-core” fatherless, but they have more problems than children with fathers (Kogelschatz, Adams, and Tucker in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 11 [1972]).

What a challenge to responsible fatherhood! Christian fathers who fail in their responsibilities before God are cause for concern. It cannot be overemphasized that a father’s first responsibility before God is his own family. All else comes in a distant second. Paul said that if anyone does not provide for the needs of his own household, he is “worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8).

When a woman who goes to work full-time leaves her preschool children at a day-care center, she is likely to have genuine feelings of guilt. Like most humans, she is liable to repress those guilt feelings, rationalizing that they are based on old-fashioned morals. She may also socialize with women who encourage her to keep working, and this could cause her to repress her guilt even further. When she meets a friend who is a dedicated, full-time mother, however, her repressed guilt may threaten to surface. To keep it repressed, she may feel compelled to try to persuade this dedicated mother to get a job. After all, she reasons, if she can talk a dedicated mother into going to work and leaving her children at a day-care center, then it must be morally justifiable.

In contrast, another mother with children under the age of six may feel a false sense of guilt for leaving her children at a nursery school or “mother’s day out” program a few half-days per week. In reality, such breaks are apt to make her a better mother. But since her false guilt prohibits her from doing what is best, and since “misery loves company,” she is likely to feel self-righteously angry (though she will call it “frustrated” or “disappointed” rather than angry) toward women who do not have children, or housewives who leave their children several hours at a time to pursue other creative activities.

The issue should not be “What will my parents think?” or “What will my church friends think?” or “What will the girls at the office think?” Rather, it should be, “What alternative lifestyle will be most beneficial for my children? What does God want me to do for my children and myself?”

I believe that staying home 24 hours a day, day after day, doing household chores, and taking care of several young children is too demanding for most people. The frustrations of being a housewife or feeling angry at one’s children at times are both normal. But neither emotion justifies leaving children in a day-care center to get a full-time job. Considering the permanent emotional damage that full-time day-care can cause to children, that is illogical, and more harmful than for mothers and children to stay cooped up in the house day after day. I believe both options are detrimental to both mothers’ and children’s mental health.

During a recent evening, I was enjoying a game with my children while my wife relaxed on the couch nearby, doing needlepoint as she watched an interesting TV show. The telephone rang, the caller a fellow physician who fought back his tears as he asked for my help. He had read the chapter on workaholism (“Do ‘Nice Guys’ Finish Last?”) in a book I coauthored with Frank Minirth, Happiness Is a Choice. He was overwhelmed with guilt. He had spent his adult life working day and night to cure and rescue medical patients, while totally ignoring the emotional needs of his family.

He told me his 25-year-old son had just had a break with reality. The young man was hearing hallucinatory voices and haring paranoid delusions. Filled with hostility, he refused help. That brokenhearted physician told me his son had been getting good counseling since he had rebelled in his teens, but that the counseling had come too late. Because of his workaholism, the physician had hardly known his son during the boy’s formative years. Now he realized he had failed as a father, and that it was too late to undo most of the damage.

Having grown up with an overdose of the Protestant work ethic, I was a somewhat overzealous honor student. During one college year I carried 39 hours in two semesters, played two sports, worked nights as a private nurse, was the president of two campus organizations, spent over an hour a day in personal devotions, read a book a week in addition to my studies, did charitable work on weekends, got engaged to be married, and won an award at the end of that school year for having achieved a straight-A record. Needless to say, I was a first-class workaholic, and proud of being one. I thought that was what God wanted of me.

But being a workaholic was all right when I was a premed major in college, single, and 20 years old. And it got me through graduate school, medical school, and a residency in psychiatry in the following decade. But at the age of 30, I found myself teaching full-time seminary counseling courses, while at the same time I was also carrying on a part-time psychiatric practice, taking theological courses myself, counseling people evenings in my home, and participating in seminars nearly every weekend. By that time I had three children under the age of four. I remember feeling overwhelmed at times with the false notion that God wanted me to rescue the world for Christ.

Then, through the practical help of Christian friends at the seminary, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and the teachings of the Bible, I made a major decision: I decided to rearrange my priorities. I had been feeling overwhelmed with the burden of serving God. But God’s Word says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30). I reasoned that if my burden was hard and heavy instead of easy and light, it must be the result of a parental injunction ingrained into my computer-brain in early childhood. And it was.

Here is how I rearranged my priorities:

Old Priorities

1. Meet the needs of every Christian, Christian group, or church that makes any demand on my time.

2. Minister to seminary students and to local churches.

3. Know God personally.

4. Write books.

5. Carry on a full-time psychiatric practice.

6. Meet my wife’s emotional and spiritual needs.

7. Meet my children’s emotional and spiritual needs.

New Priorities

1. Know God personally.

2. Provide for my own mental health needs (recreation, fun, fellowship with friends, etc.)—“How can I serve God if my own mental health isn’t what it should be?”

3. Meet my wife’s emotional and spiritual needs.

4. Meet my children’s emotional and spiritual needs.

5. Minister to seminary students and local churches.

6. Carry on a part-time psychiatric practice.

7. Write books in spare time.

I discussed my new priorities with Christian friends, and was convinced they were biblical and health producing. Then I met the following resistances:

1. False guilt. These feelings eventually subsided after two or three years, though small twinges of false guilt still occur occasionally. I felt guilty turning down speaking engagements, or refusing to counsel people with legitimate needs who phoned me asking for help. I felt guilty for not helping on special church projects. I felt falsely guilty (and occasionally still do) for not meeting the demands and expectations of everybody around me.

2. Hostility from fellow Christians. Resistance from Christians was harder to deal with than the false guilt. After so many years of viewing me as God’s dedicated servant, other Christians had come to expect a certain behavior. When I set new priorities, and reserved time to meet them (including at least two hours a day with my children), I could no longer meet the demands of all the Christians around me. As a result, even my intimate friends sometimes became angry at me.

3. Painful insights. When I cut my workload from 75 to 40 hours a week, I had the painful experience of getting to know myself better. I learned that I am much more sinful and selfish than I thought I was when I was too busy saving humanity to be aware of my subtle depravity. Though I am actually more mature and less selfish now than a decade ago, I am also more painfully aware of the unconscious sins and insecurities that have been present all my life. I am thoroughly convinced that one major reason most workaholics are workaholics is that they are avoiding insight into their innermost motives, emotions, insecurities, and fears. When dealt with biblically, they bring emotional and spiritual growth. But they can really hurt when they first hit.

It took me a couple of years after my initial decision to give up workaholism to put new priorities into practice satisfactorily. I would encourage readers prayerfully to rethink job versus family tensions and priorities. No one else can do this for you. Don’t fall passively into the world’s mold.

Paul Meier is a psychiatrist practicing at the Minirth, Meier, Goodin Psychiatric Clinic in Richardson, Texas. He also teaches at Dallas Theological Seminary.

The Trumpet Shall Sound When?

We are pleased to announce the first annual “Eutychus Pan-prophetic Conferences,” which will meet for the first time. (Please note the hyphen.) There will be four conferences, each one devoted to a different view of prophecy. At no time will the delegates meet together since there is enough trouble in the world already without adding more. Also, we sell more books this way.

The Amillennial Conference will meet in Rotterdam. Highlight of the conference will be a tour of the tulip fields, directed by a noted Calvinistic scholar, yet to be chosen. Dr. Herrmann von Ritterhavenhorst will give a series of lectures on the real reasons why Calvin never wrote commentaries on Daniel and Revelation.

The Pretribulation Conference will assemble in Dallas and last only one day, although it may seem like a thousand years. We are not revealing the day or the hour, so be prepared. There will be a special display of old prophetic charts, as well as a series of lectures on why pretribs write commentaries only on Daniel and Revelation and ignore the other 64 books of the Bible. All delegates who register early will receive a free pocket calculator for figuring out prophetic dates.

The Midtribulation Conference will last exactly three-and-a-half days, Greenwich time. Several locations are under consideration, including Mount Saint Helen’s, Rome, and Chicago. Music will be provided by “The Uncertain Sound,” a trumpet trio composed of students from three confused seminaries. There will also be a lecture on olive trees and candlesticks, plus a panel discussion on why midtribs write commentaries on only half of Daniel and Revelation.

Finally, the Posttribulation Conference will be held on the Mount of Olives and will last for seven days. White robes are included in the convention fee. We are anticipating a numberless multitude, so get your reservation in early. No lectures are planned, but there will be a great deal of singing—and maybe some tears and much sighing.

The management reserves the right to cancel all conferences should the Rapture take place. If it does, we’ll all get together and enjoy a panel discussion on “What difference did it make who was right anyway?”

EUTYCHUS X

In the next issue, we will reveal the identity of the irrepressible Eutychus X. It is rumored that he has recently moved to a bomb-shelter house, purchased a bullet-proof vest, and gone into deep retirement.—Ed.

Courageous and Objective

I felt compelled to respond to your editorial, “Why We Print the Bad News, Even About Fellow Christians” [Jan. 22], and commend you for your courage and objectivity in religious reporting. Prophets never have been universally acclaimed! A prophet’s voice is often an unpopular voice as he refuses to deny the reality of sin and shortcomings in the surrounding secular and religious institutions. Perhaps if we evangelicals would be a little more self-critical the secular press wouldn’t have such a field day with us.

JOHN WEBER

Garland, Tex.

Overzealous Writer

I have been closely associated with the porno fight in Council Bluffs, and I believe the Concerned Citizens for Christian Standards has made a valiant effort. But in your article [News, Jan. 1], the writer was overzealous. We haven’t even gotten our state legislators to enact a bill to allow “home rule,” which means our city council has no authority at present over the porno challenge here in Council Bluffs. But if you are a praying man, we could use your prayers.

REV. RON FICHTER

Twin Cities Christian Church

Council Bluffs, Iowa

Word of Clarification

John Perkins was very gracious in his comments about Wheaton College and about me [“John Perkins, the Prophet” Jan. 1]. The resolution entitled “The Threat of War” adopted by the National Association of Evangelicals provided a common ground for both pacifists and nonpacifists. It was suggested that our country “exercise reasonable restraint” as far as nuclear weapons were concerned. Both sides needed to give a little and graciously did so.

As a nonpacifist, I was pleased that the National Association of Evangelicals could maintain its strong bond of fellowship even when considering the difficult and complex issue of nuclear armament.

HUDSON T. ARMERDING

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

Perkins is quoted as saying: “They [Moral Majority] have reduced loving Jesus down to doing nothing.” Moral Majority, of which I am proud to be a supporter, is not a religious organization; it is a political action group. Moral Majority takes no position whatsoever on loving Jesus. As a matter of fact, one need not necessarily even believe in Jesus to be a member of the Moral Majority.

DENNIS T. LOWERY

Rustburg, Va.

Premature Boasting

As a nonfundamentalist fundamentalist, I learned much from Elmer L. Towns’s “The Perils and Impact of Independent Churches” [Jan. 1]. However, if I were he, I would not be so quick to boast 55,000 members at Chattanooga’s Highland Park Baptist Church if only 7,000 (including visitors, I presume) appear for a service. Ditto for Hammond’s First Baptist if only 13,000 out of 52,000-plus come on a Sunday morning.

Do fundamentalists have their own translation of Scripture? “[Jesus] went to the synagogue, as his monthly custom was, on the sabbath day” (Luke 4:16). “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together semiannually, as is the habit of some …” (Heb. 10:24–25).

REV. MERWIN VAN DOORNIK

Trinity Reformed Church

Holland, Mich.

Sermon Dozing

Jerome Lucido had a good point in his story, “A ‘SAD’ Sermon Analysis” [Jan. 1]. Better preparation by pastors would be of great help.

The other side of the coin is that if Mr. Lucido and his kin would not stay up until one or two o’clock on Sunday morning, their chances of staying awake during the sermon would improve immensely.

REV. GARY SKAGERBERG

Church of the Nazarene

Enumclaw, Wash.

What About Philip?

Despite David Benner’s valid concerns [“Psychotherapies: Stalking Their Spiritual Side,” Dec. 11], I fear we will be stalking Philip’s healing for a very long time if we allow ourselves to believe that Freud, Rogers, and Ellis each contain an “aspect of the biblical view” of man. In all honesty, isn’t Freud’s deterministic pessimism as far from the biblical view of fallen man as is Carl Rogers’s view that man’s problems are more superficial? After all, is not Christ’s healing power far deeper than the depth of our sinful nature? I find the whole process of selectively identifying formal parallels with Christianity to be very arbitrary.

I fear we as evangelicals are apt to stand confused and paralyzed as we arbitrarily pick therapies from the vast secular warehouse of conflicting systems. Why not develop an integral Christian therapy—one that will grow authentically from within the depth and breadth of the biblical set of answers, answers to Philip’s problem and answers to our own?

JAMES C. PETTY

Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation

Laverock, Pa.

A Striking Difference

The idea of the coming of Christ being the fulfillment of all myth is intriguing [Current Religious Thought, Dec. 11]. I have recently been reading The Illustrated Golden Bough, a condensation of Sir James George Frazer’s 13-volume work.

He discusses many mythological motifs that relate to Christianity. One of the many striking differences in Christianity is that in Christ’s death and resurrection the sacrifice is “once for all,” not necessary annually like the Old Testament sacrifices.

STEPHEN L. RANNEY

Portland, Oreg.

Correction

Contrary to the impression left in “Where Have All the Young Folks Gone?” [Nov. 6], Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is owned and operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America. It has been a privilege for us to train and minister to hundreds of young people from other denominations as well as our own. Our faculty and staff represent a broad background in denominational traditions, but a thorough commitment to biblical theology and evangelical concerns.

THOMAS A. MCDILL

Evangelical Free Church of America

Minneapolis, Minn.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published. Since all are subject to condensation, those of 100 to 150 words are preferred. Address letters to Eutychus and His Kin, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187.