“Why is there so much bad news?” we ask. An easy answer is: “Because we humans are so bad.” We are a fallen race, fallen from the creative grace of God; fallen from life with God; fallen into our own wayward path of estrangement from God and each other.

A recent Canadian study brings bad news to evangelicals (see page 28). In the last 25 years, Canadian Christianity has suffered a dramatic setback. Hardest hit was the United Church of Canada, but evangelicals can take no comfort since all major groups reported serious losses.

Bad news can lead to despair, apathy, stagnation, and finally, death. But it can also lead to diagnosis, prescription, and renewed health. History records other days of spiritual retreat. In the eighteenth century, John Wesley and his band of “Methodists” responded to God’s call to meet an ebb tide of faith. We believe that the young people crowding our evangelical seminaries today are responding to a similar call. We must pray God for a similar revival—like those recurring movements of the Spirit of God that broke in successive waves across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Chet Bitterman answered such a call—and laid down his life in Bogotá, Colombia (see page 20). But the blood of the martyr has always been the seed of the church. One Chet Bitterman dies, and thousands rise up to take his place. Today the church under 30 is answering God’s call. But where is the church over 50? Where, in today’s pew, is the disciplined belt tightening that prepares the church for the long, hard march?

We lament the reversal of the church in Canada; we rejoice in Chet Bitterman’s triumph in Colombia. But let each of us see to it that he tightens his belt one more notch for the kingdom battles of our day.

Soviet Evangelicals: An Authoritative Guide

Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, by Walter Sawatsky (Herald, 1981, 527 pp., $19.95 hb; $14.95 pb), is reviewed by Paul D. Steeves, director of Russian studies, Stetson University, DeLand, Florida.

“Because a serious struggle for the faith of people is going on, it is the responsibility of fellow believers elsewhere to take Soviet evangelicals seriously.” At last, the authoritative history prerequisite to responsible understanding of evangelicals in the Soviet Union has appeared. In this masterful work, Walter Sawatsky provides information and provocative suggestions that will help the reader find answers to questions that have perplexed aware Western Christians: How have evangelicals fared under Communist rule? What is the nature of the differences dividing them? How can believers in the West relate to them most effectively?

Sawatsky is uniquely qualified to write this exposition of the complex experience of Soviet evangelicals. He possesses the rare research, linguistic, and personal skills that give him access to the essential information. At the same time, he combines admirably the qualities of disinterested scholar and concerned Christian that a trustworthy study of this difficult and controversial subject demands.

For over a century, the story of the Soviet evangelicals has been one of revival and triumph amidst repression. Sawatsky briefly surveys the decades before World War II in order to establish that theme, which he develops in copious detail for the postwar period. He describes the formation in 1944 of the union that draws together evangelicals of various denominations—Baptist, Evangelical Christian, Pentecostal, Mennonite—across the county. Then he narrates the subsequent burst of revival that eventually evoked stern governmental restrictions against evangelicals in the early sixties. This vivid account portrays a surprisingly vigorous gospel witness in Communist society. When the Khrushchev administration tried to throttle this witness, schism rent the movement as believers disagreed on their responses to official pressures. Sawatsky analyzes this division thoroughly.

The study is enriched by Sawatsky’s lucid discussion of numerous facets of the spiritual life of evangelicals—in church, home, school, work, and society at large. Thus, this book is much more than an account of church-state relations or persecutions, or even institutional history.

Sawatsky’s analysis is so responsible and thorough that there is not much room for criticism. He has a mild bias in favor of the schismatic evangelicals for whom he uses the questionable label “Reform Baptists”; I would consider the adjectives “dissident” or “independent” more appropriate.

A much stronger bias emerges when Sawatsky discusses pacifism. The Russian evangelical tradition has a surprisingly strong pacifist strain that continues to stir vigorously, despite formal rejection by the evangelical unions. Undoubtedly influenced by his Mennonite heritage, Sawatsky lapses from his scholarly objectivity into admonition and exhortation when he recounts the growth and subsequent curtailment of pacifism by Soviet evangelicals.

This book is for the serious thinker. Its length and scholarly tone may discourage the casual reader seeking entertainment or sensation; but it commands the attention of Western evangelicals. The chapter evaluating mission agencies that purport to serve the evangelical cause in the Soviet Union especially deserves thoughtful consideration. Time spent in exploring Soviet evangelicalism, with Sawatsky as guide, will be well rewarded.

The Pastor As Counselor

Pastoral Counseling and Preaching, by Donald Capps (Westminster, 1980, 156 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Wallace Carr, professor of counseling, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi.

Can a pastor preach and counsel from the same theoretical stance? Yes, says Donald Capps. There can be a similarity in structure when “theological diagnosis” is its primary element. Also, preaching and pastoral counseling both have a central purpose—the proclamation of the Christian gospel.

Capps suggests that the four elements of counseling are also the four elements of preaching. They are: (1) the identification of the problem; (2) the reconstruction of the problem; (3) the diagnostic interpretation of the problem: and (4) the pastoral intervention.

“Theological diagnosis” (distinguished from the “diagnostic attitude”) can be an “empathic, participatory enterprise” when “the pastor succeeds in assuming the internal frame of reference of counselee,” or congregation. Capps then identifies six different ways theological diagnosis can be used in preaching.

Preaching and pastoral counseling can also be linked in a common purpose—to proclaim the Christian gospel. Counselors who have relied exclusively on “relationship to make whatever affirmation of the Christian faith they deem appropriate and have used ‘secular’ psychotherapies as their primary medium of verbal communication … have not had a very clear sense that pastoral counseling has a Christian purpose.”

How, then, “can Biblical thought inform pastoral counseling”? Capps discusses three models:

1. The “Psalmic” model, emphasizing feelings (Seward Hiltner, Carroll Wise, and others).

2. The “Proverbic” model, emphasizing doing (Jay Adams and others).

3. The “Parabolic” model, emphasizing insight. (Capps adapts the concepts of James E. Dittes to counseling.) The “Parabolic” model is proclamation in an indirect way. Its focus is perceptual restructuring.

All are legitimate, but each is most effective at one particular stage of human development.

As an epilogue, Schleiermacher’s touching sermon at the funeral of his nine-year-old son, Nathaniel, is presented in full and analyzed according to Capp’s four stages of counseling.

The author has seriously addressed a source of tension that has plagued pastors since the rise of the modern counseling emphasis. He has moved beyond fencing with prooftexts. While there is still much work to be done, Capps has added a solid rung to the ladder leading to a more congruent and therefore more authentic ministry. His assertion that counseling is proclamation warrants more attention. Paying attention to the perceptual factor in therapy through the “Parabolic model” offers real possibilities. What is probably of equal importance to Christian counseling is his recognition of the legitimacy of both “client-centered” and “nouthetic” counseling in a developmental framework.

It Really Happened

Reading the Bible As History, by Theodore Plantinga (Welch, Canada, 1980, 110 pp., $4.95 Can.), is reviewed by Robert Rogers, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The author, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, disagrees with those who wish to use the Bible only as a source book of moral lessons, while rejecting it as history. He argues convincingly that not only are there no good reasons for not reading the Bible as history, there are good reasons for it. In his opinion, without that understanding, even the nonhistorical passages will not reveal their full meaning.

Discussing the nature of history, Plantinga maintains the belief that all the world is subject to God’s work of salvation and judgment. Nevertheless, salvation history must be seen properly as part of covenant history. God’s working in history, whether for salvation or judgment, should be seen as the historical fulfilling of his covenant promises. But, in addition, he holds that even this work of salvation and judgment must be seen as happening for the sake of God’s glory and honor.

The author discusses why men have eliminated heaven’s influence in earthly affairs and asserts that “the events and struggles in heaven are decisive for the fate of those who are on the earth.” He sees “progress” in history in terms of the promised battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. But he also does justice to man’s role in responding to God’s calling. He sees man’s freedom in light of the “distance” that God employs with respect to his creation, either temporarily leaving man to his own ways or drawing near in redemption or judgment.

The Bible, for Plantinga, must be read as seeing God making himself known to man through the course of time in a “progressive revelation,” and he gives helpful guidelines for reading the Scriptures in that light. He also shows how a historical reading of the Bible can apply to us who are living in new covenant times. He concludes with a rather brief hermeneutical study regarding the translation of normative concepts in the Bible into the thought patterns of today, and he comes down somewhat negatively.

This book is a curious mixture. It is the work of someone both knowledgeable in philosophy and history, yet skillful in his handling of Scripture. At the same time it is written in straightforward language that is suited to, and helpful for, the average Bible reader.

A Look At Jesus’ Life

The Work and Words of Jesus Christ, by J. Dwight Pentecost (Zondervan, 1981, 576 pp., $16.95), is reviewed by Robert H. Stein, professor of New Testament, Bethel Theological Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota

This work is the result of the author’s 30 years of teaching the life of Christ. In it he seeks to approach “the inerrant Scriptures from a literal method of interpretation that Jesus Christ was introduced to the nation Israel as her Messiah,” that this offer was rejected, and that as a result Jesus turned from a public ministry to preparing chosen men who would continue his ministry after his death and resurrection. Pentecost patterns his approach on that of Tatian’s Diatesseron and seeks to combine the four Gospels into a chronological history of the life of Jesus.

I have a number of serious problems with this work. For one, Pentecost denies any interrelatedness of the synoptic Gospels and chooses to ignore any insights provided by the disciplines of form and redaction criticism.

Second, he chooses to ignore many of the major problems that exist in seeking to write a life of Christ. Some specific examples of this: (1) The question of the cleansing(s) of the temple is avoided. Pentecost simply assumes that there were two, and this may be correct; but should this not be discussed? (2) The canonical status of Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11 are assumed and never discussed, even though the NIV text he uses implies that both were not part of the original text. (3) The differences in the reply of Jesus to Pilate are ignored. Matthew 26:64 is assumed to be historical—but what about Mark 14:62? (4) The different times of the cleansing in relation to the triumphal entry (in Matthew it is the same day but in Mark it is the next day) are not discussed.

A third problem involves Pentecost’s use of sources. Except for one reference to the Mishnah, he uses only secondary sources.

A final problem that must be mentioned involves the numerous quotations in this work. There are approximately 460, and of these, 30 percent (i.e., 138) come from A. Edersheim’s The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883); 31 percent (i.e., 145) come from J. W. Shepard’s (always misspelled as Shepherd) The Christ of the Gospels (1939); and 9 percent (i.e., 40) come from F. W. Farrar’s Life of Christ (1874). The amount of space taken up by these quotations is also disturbing, for out of 558 pages of text, approximately 226 consist of quotations. This means approximately 40 percent of the work consists of quotations from other works.

It is difficult to recommend this volume. Certainly one cannot envision it in a seminary setting, for what is needed there is a work that deals forthrightly with the various problems found in the text. Regardless of what attitude one may take toward form and redaction criticism, these problems cannot simply be ignored. In a college setting, if one uses a synopsis of the Gospels, then this work will likewise be inadequate. I also have reservations in recommending this work to lay people, for whereas it is not fitting or wise to introduce them to detailed scholarly problems of the text, it is neither truthful nor wise to give the impression that no such problems exist.

The Holy Spirit

Several books on the Holy Spirit are reviewed by Robert L. Saucy, professor of systematic theology, Talbot Theological Seminary, La Mirada, California.

Although the spate of books on the Holy Spirit has abated somewhat in recent years, it has by no means ceased—as evidenced by these five recent works. Nor has there emerged a consensus of interpretation on the key issues that have been so ardently discussed in recent years relative to the charismatic renewal.

Bob Slosser, a popular writer formerly with the New York Times, gives us an easy-reading overview of the current charismatic renewal movement. Laced with personal experiences with the Spirit, including his own, the work gives a good glimpse into the religious practices of those involved in the movement. Along with the positive elements, certain early weaknesses such as a tyranny in the name of discipleship and and other-wordly mindedness are noted. Slosser, in See How the Wind Blows (Logos), sees the prime direction of the renewal movement as focusing on the goals of power for ministry and unification of the church.

In The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today (Logos), J. Rodman Williams, professor of theology at Melodyland School of Theology, seeks to provide a biblical theological base for the contemporary experience of the gift of the Spirit. His method is first to explore the biblical data of the experience almost exclusively from the Book of Acts, and then to show the same experience from the contemporary scene. This methodology underscores perhaps the most serious weakness in the work. An integration of all of the relevant material on the Spirit from the epistles is not attempted, leaving the reader only with the impression that all of the experience of the early church is normative rather than proving it to be so.

A further questionable area involves Williams’s discussion of the effects of receiving the Spirit as a second blessing of salvation. Listed among these effects are the assurance of salvation (Rom. 8:15–16) and the Spirit as the earnest of final salvation (2 Cor. 1:22). In context, it would appear that these blessings of the Spirit belong to all believers and not just those who have had a second experience.

The work, supported by copious footnotes, includes discussions of the nature of the gift, its purpose, and the means of receiving it as well as the effects. It thus provides a valuable interpretation of the contemporary renewal movement from a biblical and theological perspective.

Believing that Finney’s teachings on the Holy Spirit can contribute to the present-day discussion, Timothy Smith has made available in The Promise of the Spirit (Bethany) his lectures on sanctification, delivered at Oberlin College in 1839–40. While not emphasizing the sign of tongues so characteristic of the modern day, Finney expresses a similar two-stage experience of the Spirit.

Focusing on the New Covenant as belonging to New Testament believers, Finney presses the demand that Christians go on to claim the promise of the Holy Spirit involved in that covenant for the purpose of attaining entire sanctification. Finney’s discussions of the love and the heart as involving more than emotion are especially worthwhile. An excellent introductory chapter tracing Finney’s theology of the Christian experience and its place in the contemporary scene is provided by Smith, who is professor of history at Johns Hopkins University.

The Holy Spirit, Lord and Life-Giver (Loizeaux), by John Williams, presents the other side of the controversy over a second experience of the Holy Spirit. In this work, the English-born and -educated pastor/evangelist/Bible teacher gives us a systematic treatment covering the entire scope of the person and ministry of the Spirit suitable as an introductory text on the subject. With the contemporary scene in mind, special attention is given to the baptism and gifts of the Spirit, including excellent discussions on tongues and healing. In a comprehensive work of this nature, one could have hoped for more on the relation of the ministry of the Spirit to the exalted Lord. Also, the development of the experience of the Spirit under the Old Covenant to that of the New was somewhat obscured by a blurring uniformity at certain points—for example, regeneration. Altogether, however, this work provides a readable, practical exposition of the doctrine of the Spirit that should prove useful in both churches and schools.

A different but effective approach to the study of the Spirit is R. E. O. White’s The Answer Is the Spirit (Westminster). Structured around the fact that the New Testament teaching of the Spirit comes in response to particular situational problems in the lives of the early believers, White expounds the teaching of nine New Testament books on the Spirit in the light of the background problems of each.

For example, the problem of evangelizing the world in Acts is solved by the Spirit; that of personal freedom faced by the Galatians is likewise met in the freedom of walking by the Spirit. The pertinent passages in each book are handled with exegetical skill and woven together in a convincing manner supportive of the main thesis. The chapters on Ephesians, “the diverse community,” and II Corinthians, “the question of ministry,” are particularly pertinent and valuable for the contemporary church. In sum, the book presents a refreshing, practical look at the biblical picture of the Spirit, reminding us that he is still God’s provision for the problems we face today.

Briefly Noted

The Holy Spirit. Several studies relating to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit have appeared recently. Philip J. Rosato has examined the pneumatology of Karl Barth in The Spirit As Lord (T & T Clark). It is a full-blown study and probably the best available today. The Holy Spirit of God (Nelson), by Herbert Lockyer, is a traditional noncharismatic study of the Person and work of the Spirit. For some reason, spiritual gifts are not discussed.

The Holy Spirit (Fortress), by Eduard Schweizer, is a nontraditional, somewhat liberal analysis that looks primarily at the biblical material. Bill Bright, in The Holy Spirit (Here’s Life), sees the Spirit as the key to supernatural living. G. Campbell Morgan’s The Spirit of God (Baker) is a reprint of a 1953 devotional study that still speaks today. The Holy Spirit in Action (Servant), by F. J. Sheed, is a simple (not simplistic) look at the Spirit as Lord and Giver of life.

Five books deal rather specifically with the charismatic phenomenon. Arthur J. Clement’s Pentecost or Pretense? (Northwestern Pub. House) concludes, “We can only conclude that it is not Pentecost! Rather it is pretense and has no basis in the Bible.” John F. MacArthur, in The Charismatics (Zondervan), argues that “tongues ceased in the apostolic age and when they stopped, they stopped for good.” More irenic and open is Tongues and Spirit-Baptism (Baker), by Anthony Hoekema, being two earlier books reprinted as one that still bears reading today.

Including a psychological look, yet affirming the essentially Christian nature of the phenomenon, is Tongue Speaking (Crossword), by Morton Kelsey. This, too, is a helpful reprint. The WCC’s evaluation is in The Church Is Charismatic (W.C.C., Geneva), edited by Arnold Bittlinger. It is quite affirmative, on the whole, and well worth reading.

Christian Education. Two excellent introductions to the subject are: Making Disciples (Christian Studies Center), by Norman E. Harper, which presents the challenge that confronts us today, and Philosophy and Education (Andrews Univ.), by George R. Knight, which is designed to be a textbook from a Christian perspective.

Written with church school education in mind are: Christian Education Handbook (Broadman), edited by Bruce P. Powers, and Education That Is Christian, revised (Revell), by Lois E. LeBar. These two books ought to be read carefully by all concerned.

The importance of the college is looked at in Christianity Challenges the University (IVP), edited by Peter Wilkes. It is a series of lectures by five senior professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison challenging the secular values of today’s universities. Students, Churches and Higher Education (Judson), by R. T. Gribbon, is a study of how the church can relate to college students. The Recovery of Spirit in Higher Education (Seabury), edited by Robert Rankin, looks at campus ministries, Jewish and Christian. It is a very helpful book. Teaching Religion (Univ. Press of America), by W. Clinton Terry, is a case-study look at the secularization of religious instruction in a West German school system. There are some chilling lessons to be learned here.

Jacques Barzun’s classic Teacher in America (Liberty Press) is available again in a beautiful new edition.

But the garden-variety type has crept into evangelical experience and practice.

Protestantism, with its great attention to personal faith, started as a popular movement because the Reformers were convinced that Christianity was not functioning effectively for salvation in the lives of the people. Forgiveness of sins could be obtained without the personal involvement of faith. The people could merely observe the Mass. The Protestant emphasis on faith made Christianity functional since such faith required the people to participate.

Characteristically, Luther may have overstated himself in asserting that gospel preaching was more important than the salvific events in Christ’s life. Without the gospel, he reasoned, no one could benefit from what Christ has done; questions of importance are relative and frequently depend on the current situation.

The function of faith in connection with the sacraments created a chasm that has divided Christendom since the Reformation. For Catholics, the sacraments effectively work forgiveness without faith. Lutherans stress the validity of the sacraments apart from faith, but insist that without faith there is no personal efficacy. The Reformed generally connect sacramental validity and forgiveness more closely to faith. Faith’s sacramental function among various Christian groups is so complex that any simplistic generalization, including the one just offered, deserves any severe criticism it receives.

Without settling all the traditional quarrels over faith’s function in the sacrament, there are some points on which nearly all ought to agree—for example, the radical evil and threat to biblical faith posed by modern “functional” views of Christian doctrine.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) introduced so-called functionalism into the world of theology. He taught that the validity and importance of a doctrine was dependent on its religious value for the believer. His prime interest was not in determining whether doctrines were useful for faith. To be sure, Ritschl recognized Jesus as God, but not in the sense of the homouisios doctrine of Nicea (that Christ shared the Father’s deity). Jesus was God only in the sense that he revealed God’s love to us. He is God in the same sense that the picture of Martin Luther hanging on my office wall (composed of oil paint and canvas) is Martin Luther. Ritschl supported his position by stressing the pronoun “me” in Luther’s explanations of the Apostles’ Creed: “God has created me and all creatures; … Jesus Christ has redeemed me …; the Holy Ghost … has called me by the Gospel.…”

Apart from faith’s personal awareness of God, there are no philosophical or theological absolutes. More simply put, God has no objective existence outside of the function of faith. This was the raw, now somewhat matured, philosophical subjectivism of Kant set forth in theological dress. Ritschl’s making the deity dependent on personal faith is functionalism with cruel vengeance, but he may have only developed a continually latent, but forceful current in Protestant thought.

Conservative Christians repudiate such blatantly destructive functionalism. The unified defense against such forms of functionalism has given conservative Protestantism a unity not experienced since the Reformation. But what about that garden-variety type of functionalism to which even more tradition-minded Christians can succumb?

First of all, Christian believers do not make salvation happen by their faith. Salvation is something that happens outside of and before faith. It is God’s act alone, accomplished and completed in Christ. Faith simply receives Christ and thus receives salvation. It neither constitutes salvation nor contributes to it. The biblical imperatives to believe can never be understood as making the believer’s decision a part of salvation’s process.

Second, there are hardly any corners left in Christendom where the pastoral office has not been dissolved into a general function that all Christians can and are duty bound to exercise. Consider church bulletins and bulletin boards that proclaim loudly and clearly: “Every church member is a minister.” The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons do it best of all. The basic Reformation doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers was never intended as a replacement for the pastoral office, though one suspects that this is now the common understanding. Roman Catholics are also moving in this direction.

A functional view of the ministry means that behind the pastoral functions there is no divinely mandated office. Ministerial responsibility is reduced to free-floating functions detached from a divinely mandated office. But the clergy should refer to themselves as pastors of congregations instead of pastoring them. The office should be stressed as well as the functions.

Third, the divisive issue of the sacraments cannot be totally avoided, even if the final solution is not attempted here. All should come to that minimal agreement that the New Testament simply does not know of any sacramental action that is not targeted to faith for its benefit. Of course, sacraments are more than just church functions. They should be recognized, however, as God’s work and not merely as community functions demonstrating that faith is at work there. Just as the function of gospel preaching is ultimately meaningless without the foundational realities of the Cross and the Resurrection (vs. Ritschl, Barth, Bultmann), so the sacraments have their foundation in the same realities.

The necessity of an active, lively faith for personal salvation should be beyond dispute within the Protestant context and the common Reformation heritage. However, without the acknowledgement of the permanent, concrete reality behind the church’s message and actions, the Christian is left only with an autonomous functionalism, hanging unsupported in midair. Such functionalism is philosophically indefensible for the intellect, emotionally unsatisfying for faith, theologically meaningless, and ultimately doomed to sheer uselessness.

All functions or values of the gospel must ultimately be derived from objective reality. Only where Christianity is presented as an objective reality in all of its parts can it actually function usefully for faith.

Dr. Scaer is professor of systematic theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

These pastors felt the chief lack in their education was practical application.

A survey of Protestant ministers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North and South Dakota posed this question: Did seminary prepare you adequately for your first parish? Could it have been more helpful or relevant? In what ways?

One pastor responded: “I doubt that any amount of learning could have prepared me for my first parish. I received a very good education in seminary, but there is a difference between reading a case study and dealing with a real-life situation. Even the limited experience of internship doesn’t place a new pastor in the position of being totally confident in what he does.”

Most who answered this question agreed that no seminary taught them all they needed to know in order to become a successful pastor. Its walls are too limiting. “Seminaries can build the principles and help in the growth of the faith; but only after encountering the challenges, problems, and loneliness of being responsible for a parish could I really know what being a minister means.”

Pastors critical of their preparation for the ministry agreed that much of the gap between training and practical application could only be bridged by experience. A seminary is set up well for teaching theology, but insight into the ministry can be learned best only by experience. Growing up as a “preacher’s kid” can’t be beat as a school for absorbing what it really means to be a minister.

Others were sharply critical of their seminary training:

“Theologically, I was more than prepared; administratively, I was short-changed.”

“When I left seminary, I didn’t know the church structure; I didn’t know how to christen, marry, or bury. And I needed a course in church finances.”

“I needed the nuts and bolts.”

“Seminary prepared me for graduate work, not for life in a small church.”

“Seminary prepares one best to teach theology, to duplicate the seminary experience. It makes you a scholar, not a pastor.”

Some pastors blamed their seminary because it hadn’t taught them how to fill out a letter of transfer or a certificate of baptism, or provided them with information about clergy discounts, pension plans, social security, and the Internal Revenue Service.

A pastor whose first parish involved four missions on an Indian reservation wished he had had more training and practice in crisis-centered counseling. He also needed help in coping with loneliness—and could have used courses in plumbing, wiring, and furnace repair!

One pastor said, “I needed a greater understanding of the psychology of personality and a stronger foundation of practical theology—that is, the theology of our form of worship, our form of government, and personal and professional ethics.”

Another needed help in dealing with people who didn’t like or agree with him. “We go into a parish expecting everyone to like us and to support our every idea and project. When trouble erupts, we are unprepared.”

Ministering to the terminally ill and the grieving is another field that needs more emphasis in seminary. Someone else said she should have been told what to do about apathy: “Many Christians have no idea of the Great Commission.” And another minister wasn’t ready to teach Bible studies. “I wasn’t aware that lay people are so biblically illiterate,” he commented.

One man thought the seminary’s biggest failure was not giving enough practical instructions in soul winning and parish administration. While one said seminary was not demanding enough academically, another thought it was too strict, considering only grades instead of the other qualifications of the “pre-minister.” More preaching practice was suggested; also, there was a request for help on how to handle the church hierarchy.

One pastor needed more guidance in teaching and relating to youth. Another was sorry his own devotional and prayer life had not been nourished more during seminary. Still another blamed seminary for stressing the ideal too strongly: “There are no ideal situations in any parish. The congregation will probably be upset by what is happening to the budget and to the building, not to their spiritual lives.”

In spite of shortcomings, most pastors who participated in the survey, even those most critical, were grateful for their seminary training. Several acknowledged that it gave good academic and biblical training and supplied a good climate for growth. “Seminary provided a useful faith and a wonderful experience of living in a Christian-concerned community. It was an important part of my spiritual growth.”

A minister who entered seminary at age 35 felt that he was adequately prepared. “The main function of the seminary is to challenge the student to think intelligently and broadly about his faith. This was accomplished.”

A woman who enrolled at age 32 said, “I had excellent preparation in seminary. Common sense and life experience did the rest.”

Another wrote, “The seminary didn’t try to be a business or a finishing school. I had good biblical and theological preparation.” One minister considered it good education “doctrinally, scripturally, and academically.”

The older pastors who attended seminary before internships were part of the program felt that lack severely. Those who attended seminaries that required student internships and field experience in churches, hospitals, and prisons considered those experiences invaluable and were duly grateful.

Many pastors strongly advocated some sort of continuing education throughout their ministry. Combining this with the experience of serving a congregation is bound to enrich the quality of the work of the pastor.

“I had a good education in seminary,” said one pastor, who summed it all up, “but I learned to be a pastor in the field and I am still learning. It probably takes a lifetime to become adequately prepared.”

Clearly, a good seminary education is an indispensable part of the preparation for pastoral ministry. Equally clear is the fact that seminary alone is not enough.

GLORIA SWANSON AND JEANNE WARD

Mrs. Swanson is a free-lance writer living in Hallock, Minnesota; Mrs. Ward is a former teacher of English and Latin, who lives in International Falls, Minnesota.

Two threaten to starve, and U.S. diplomats finally pay attention.

Depressed by their three and a half years as refugees in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, two members of the two families often referred to as the Siberian Seven launched a hunger strike in December. Augustina Vashchenko, 53, began on Christmas Day, and her daughter, Lida, 30, joined her three days later.

The action was evidently inspired by the success of the hunger strike by Andrei and Yelena Sakharov that won release of their daughter-in-law to join her husband in the United States. But Sakharov is a world-renowned physicist, while the Vashchenkos are obscure laborers from a remote Siberian village—Pentecostal believers distinguished only by a passionate desire to emigrate to the West to obtain religious freedom. What worked with the Soviet authorities for Sakharov in the less-charged atmosphere before the imposition of martial law in Poland was almost certain to fail afterward with the Siberian Seven.

But the hunger strike may have at last gotten the attention of American officials, who until then had steadfastly resisted granting them any public notice—unlike the Sakharovs, who were the subject of regular State Department briefings to the press.

On January 8, Ambassador Thomas J. Watson, Jr., held a press conference at the American Embassy and discussed the Siberian Seven. The hunger strike was the result of growing frustration, he said, was beyond the embassy’s power to control, and urgently required immediate solutions. After the first week of the strike, Lida’s weight had dropped from 104 pounds to 98, and the stouter but ill Augustina had lost 9½ pounds. Other family members were threatening to join.

The embassy’s medical capability was one factor behind the ambassador’s statement that he was not in total control of events. Dr. Shadler, the embassy doctor, has a small clinic just down the hall from the seven’s cramped quarters. But if those fasting should lapse into comas, the choices were stark: allow them to die in the embassy, or admit them to a Soviet hospital for force feeding and thus remove them from embassy sanctuary.

“The stress and strain of the 20-year struggle to emigrate have obviously taken their toll.”

The need for rapid solutions, belatedly acknowledged by the embassy, has been the preoccupation of some Western Christians for months and even years. The first were an embassy official, the embassy chaplain, and Kent R. Hill, a Fulbright scholar working in Moscow on his Ph.D. thesis for the University of Washington. Blahoslav and Olga Hrubý, who produce the journal Religion in Communist Dominated Areas from New York, documented the plight of the seven. A housewife, Jane Drake, went to work and organized SAVE (Society of Americans for Vashchenko Emigration).

Other groups were formed: Research Center for Religious and Human Rights in World Societies, Friends in the West, and Christian Solidarity International. Recently, groups with more clout have joined in: the Christian Legal Society and CREED (Christian Relief Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents), backed by Sen. Roger Jepsen (R-Iowa).

These were organized last November into a Coalition to Free the Soviet Seven. It first pressed for a bill (S. 312) to grant the seven permanent resident alien status. Though passage of such a measure would not force the Soviet Union to do anything, it would give the refugees a guaranteed status with the Americans and signal the Soviets that they are of concern to the United States.

Lynn Buzzard, executive director of the Christian Legal Society, flew to Moscow during Thanksigiving week, spending time with the embassy officials and the seven.

Embassy officials had earlier approached the seven, seeking to ascertain what settlement they could negotiate with Soviet officials that the refugees would not repudiate. But the seven were suspicious.

Buzzard was able to draw up the rough draft of a document acceptable to the embassy that stated the seven would be willing to leave the embassy on two conditions: (1) that their family members at home in Chernogorsk, who had long since applied through proper channels for emigration, be safely received in the West; and (2) that they receive assurance from Soviet authorities that following normal application procedures for emigration would eventuate in permission to leave. He discussed this with the seven, brought it back to the U.S., and revised it with Hill, whom they trust.

When the two Vashchenkos began their strike. Hill and Buzzard again flew to Moscow for a full week and attempted to convince the Vashchenkos of the futility of a hunger strike then in the light of new diplomatic movement and the Polish situation. Augustina and Lida refused to budge. The family, however, did respond to the document, and, after further modification, signed it.

The mediators then tried to persuade the two to retreat from total abstinence to a partial fast if they could arrange an appointment for them with some Soviet leaders, and if an outside doctor could be permitted to visit Augustina. This was not achieved. But on January 8, word was received that the embassy had made an overture to the USSR foreign ministry and that Lida had relented and was drinking juices.

On January 14 former President Jimmy Carter phoned the seven, appealing to them to call off their strike. They refused. But the call, surely orchestrated by the administration at the highest levels, revealed that the State Department had begun to act.

Momentum continued to build over the last several weeks with these developments:

• Buzzard and Hill conversed for 45 minutes with a Soviet legal official. They were given indications that the Kremlin might provide the family with legal advice as to its rights and emigration.

• Lady Coggan, wife of the former archbishop of Canterbury, appeared on British television on January 19, urging President Leonid Brezhnev to release the seven.

• A delegation of Swedish members of Parliament called on the Soviet embassy in Stockholm, offering to accept the seven on relatively neutral ground.

• Buzzard and Hill again flew to Moscow armed with letters of encouragement from U.S. Christian leaders. They pursued leads with the legal official and others.

• Seattle Pacific University, where Hill teaches, and Wheaton College held chapels launching a drive for signatures from students in these and other schools and their communities on a petition to President Reagan. It called for Reagan’s support with a White House press conference, a phone call to the seven, and instruction to the State Department to issue daily medical bulletins on the condition of the hunger strikers.

The feverish round of activity was prodded relentlessly by the “time bomb” of the hunger strike, as Christians of several nations exerted themselves to avert a tragedy.

North American Scene

J. Richard Chase, 51, now president of Biola University (La Mirada, Calif.), will be the sixth president of Wheaton College. Chase was chosen early in January from a slate of more than 70 names. He is a graduate of Biola, Pepperdine University, and Cornell, where he earned his Ph.D. in rhetoric and public address. Chase will assume the Wheaton post August 1. He succeeds Hudson Armerding, who has been Wheaton’s president for 17 years.

The International Christian Graduate University, established by Campus Crusade in 1977, is seeking a president. The International School of Theology was the first school of the university in operation, with schools in communications and management also planned. University buildings will be built on a 1,000-acre tract near San Diego. The presidental post is expected to be filled by July.

William Franklin Graham III, son of evangelist Billy Graham, was ordained to the ministry at the nondenominational Grace Community Church in Tempe, Arizona. The younger Graham, 29, is president of Samaritan’s Purse and World Medical Missions. Samaritan’s Purse provides assistance to missionaries with illness or other needs; Medical Missions recruits doctors to serve short-term periods at mission hospitals. Franklin Graham said he did not know if God would call him to follow in his father’s footsteps. He thinks his father has “at least another good 10 years” of evangelism remaining.

If there is no other way to get a pornographic theater out of the neighborhood, buy the theater. That’s what the First Presbyterian Church in Concord, California, did. An X-rated movie house was adjacent to the church, but city fathers had been unable to close it during years of legal battles. Finally, church members voted to buy the theater for $425,000. After the current lease expires, the church plans to renovate the theater, connect it to the church, and use the space for religious purposes.

Songs of Zion was originally published for black churches, but the hymnbook has proven so popular with white churches that a second printing is planned. The first printing of the United Methodist hymnal sold 64,000 copies. Songs of Zion includes 36 gospel hymns and 98 spirituals, with historical accounts of the songs in black worship experience.

Sun Myung Moon can’t get his seminarychartered, but he plans to begin a newspaper in Washington this year. Officials of Moon’s Unification Church have failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the denial of a charter to the cult’s Barrytown, New York, seminary. Regents in New York denied a charter to the seminary, saying it was academically deficient and fiscally questionable. In Washington, Moon has purchased a building where he plans to publish the Washington Times.

Thomas Nelson Publishers, the nation’s largest publisher of Bibles, is expected to acquire Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., in April. Dodd, Mead, founded in 1839, is one of the oldest publishing companies in America. Its backlist of titles includes such distinguished authors as G. K. Chesterton, Sigmund Freud, Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, and Winston Churchill.

Four homes at the Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center in Santa Cruz County, California, were destroyed in the mud slides that devasted the area early last month. The center has about 400 homes and cottages on its 450 acres of mountainside property. In addition, two bridges were destroyed and walkways were damaged. Damage was also reported at other Christian camps in nearby towns.

World Scene

Attendance at Urbana ’81 topped 14,000 this year. The Christmas-break missionary convention sponsored by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IV) has usually been held at three-year intervals. This time it was held two years after Urbana ’79, which, with 17,500 attenders, stretched the University of Illinois facilities. IV leaders are returning to the three-year cycle, but plan to hold an urban missions event, patterned after the pilot Washington ’80, in the middle of each cycle. Fresh emphases this year dealt with the local church’s role in sending missionaries, and on relief ministries.

Mission agencies are worried by President Reagan’s executive order that loosened restrictions on the U.S. intelligence community. The measure, signed in December, makes no reference to Central Intelligence Agency use of clergy or missionaries. The missions are pressing for legislation prohibiting the use of clergy, journalists, and academicians as informants. The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board has asked Congress to forbid the CIA using agents posing as missionaries or setting up “missionary front” organizations. The board’s executive officer, R. Keith Parks, said that using a missionary cover is “morally wrong and potentially endangers the lives of missionaries in some countries.”

Two million Mexicans took flowers and prayers to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in December. They were at the Mexico City basilica to commemorate the four hundred fiftieth anniversary of the reputed miraculous appearance of the image of the Virgin on an Indian’s tunic a decade after the Spanish conquest. Mexico’s conservative Roman Catholic hierarchy used the occasion to demonstrate the power of the traditional church and to put the liberal bishops and priests, who press for social change based on a theology of liberation, on the defensive. These priests believe that worship of the Virgin and local saints serves to deepen the fatalism and passivity of Mexican Catholics—views they kept private as the crowds paraded beneath the image of the Virgin.

Unprecedented opportunities are opening up on European radio and television. In France, more than 300 independent radio stations have been established since François Mitterand’s socialist government came to power last May. Last month a law took effect that allows any nonprofit, nonpolitical group to apply for a license for available FM frequencies. For the first time, the government-controlled television network is airing programs from Christian groups. Spain is granting licenses for 200 FM stations by March; evangelicals have applied for frequencies in Barcelona and Madrid. Also for the first time, in 1982 evangelicals will have their initial brief access to state radio and television.

A renewal movement has been launched in Switzerland’s Reformed Church. Known as the Confessing Fellowship Devoted to Christ and His Word, the group was organized in Zurich as “a Bible-based reformational renewal.” It came out swinging: not just any opinion or ideology, it said in one of its first statements, “can be sold as being Christian.” It must first be “measured against the Bible.” It also struck out at “political agitation” and “feel-good” church life that fails to bind members together in saving power.

Evangelical factions in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden are hiving off into separate diaconates, or subunits, within their dioceses. Two groups—one in Halmstad and another in Smaland—broke away last year. Dag Sandahl, deacon of the second group, says that as soon as four or five diaconates are formed they will unite in a separate synod. Both groups are calling for a return to active evangelism in the state church, and both of them oppose the ordination of women, which is the official stated policy of the church.

Turkish Muslims recently shot and killed a Syrian Orthodox neighbor who refused to move out of their village, Baksyan, as other Christians had done under pressure. No criminal proceedings were instituted, and the family’s request for an autopsy was refused by the authorities on grounds that publicity would damage the country’s image. Meanwhile, Turkey’s military rulers angered Islamic fundamentalists by banning the wearing of head scarves by female students and teachers in schools.

Some 20,000 booklets of the Old Testament story of Joseph written in Burmese were printed and are being distributed by the Bible Society of Burma. The cartoon-style format is especially popular among young people. Burma’s 32-million population is 80 percent Buddhist and less than 3 percent Christian.

The Philippine government has again leveled subversion charges against a fugitive Filipino Jesuit priest. It said documents seized from two captured urban guerrillas showed that Romeo “Archie” Intengan is a leader of a leftist plot to overthrow President Ferdinand Marcos. Jesuits denied the charges.

Police Pressure On Romanian Christians Grows

In an endless series of arrests, interrogations, and house searches, Romanian authorities appear to be seeking to regain control of that country’s religious communities. (Already a large number of its more outspoken evangelicals have been permitted or forced to emigrate to the West. Now, over the past 12 months, there has been an expanding campaign to deal with the remaining independent elements within the country.)

In December, three Christians from Sighişoara, Klaus Wagner, and Maria and Bibia Delapeta, were given heavy sentences of six, five, and five years, respectively. It is alleged that Wagner was personally involved in the unofficial introduction of 600,000 Bibles into Romania. Since their arrest on October 1, dozens of homes have been searched, and numerous believers, mostly of German Brethren origins, have been interrogated. Interrogations have taken place throughout the country, following the uncovering of the largest Bible network in Romania in a decade. It occurs one year after the arrests in Suceava of five believers, also for Bible distribution. In both cases Russian Bibles were found among the confiscated literature. Coordination of the roundup is thought to have had Soviet assistance.

Some suspect that informants penetrated Western missions for the police. Wagner’s arrest came days after the discovery of a ship carrying 13,000 Bibles from Hamburg, resulting in the arrest of the Romanian ship captain and two members of his crew.

The harsh sentences for Wagner and the Delapeta sisters indicate that winds of change are blowing in Romania; other evidence confirms this increased severity. Many reports from the interrogations cite police beatings, sometimes severely administered. On December 17, the spokesman for the Romanian Committee for the Defense of Religious Freedom (ALRC), Ioan Teodosiu, was taken into custody and held over Christmas for a trial scheduled for late January. He faces 15 to 25 years imprisonment on threatened charges of espionage. According to emigré reports, Teodosiu was badly beaten and facially disfigured, his fate one of a string of tragedies to afflict the Teodosiu family in the past six months. In June 1981, his brother Sabin died accidentally on an electric pylon. His family accuses the authorities of foul play and has received only hostile responses to their inquiries into his death. Ioan Teodosiu’s wife suffered a miscarriage during one of her husband’s periods of interrogation before his arrest.

Other pockets of spiritual resistance are marked out for possible police action. In Bucharest, four leading Baptist pastors, Vasile Talos, Josif Sarac, Vasile Brinzei, and Geabou Pascu, still face accusations of embezzling church funds. The fraudulent charges have been dismissed by their colleagues and church members. The real issue seems to be that the four have a good track record in affirming the Baptist tradition of church and state separation and have not accepted state interference in their church affairs. They were also close associates at one time of Josif Ton, now exiled in the United States. (Talos opened his pulpit to two Baptist preachers now in exile in the U.S., Pavel Nicolescu and Aurel Pooescu, after the Baptist union was asked to expel them from the denomination. Josif Sarac, the Bucharest Association president until relieved of his duties in November 1981, presided over the opening of 12 affiliates of the Baptist church in his region without seeking state approval.)

Finally, with the Orthodox church, there have been some signs that young priests are questioning the status quo of the church’s relations with the state. They have also dared to protest the continued imprisonment of Orthodox priest and professor Gheorghe Calciu, who is serving 10 years for his activity among Orthodox youth. On November 21, clergymen Liu Negoita, Viorel Dumitrescu, and Ambrus Cernat disappeared for three days while authorities both interrogated them and prevented them from meeting Western visitors. They are free but remain under investigation.

The time may have passed for hoping that Romanian officials will be receptive to Western intervention for Christian prisoners on humane grounds. Ironically, it is the fate of the strongest East European religious community, the Polish Catholics, that determines this. President Reagan gave Romania an extension of its most favored nation trade status with the U.S.A. recently. This is a persuasive gesture to keep the Romanians looking Westward. It may be that at present the shoe fits on the other foot, and that the West needs Romania—if not more, at least just as much. This could give the Romanian authorities the opportunity to move against those Christians they have been watching with annoyance for some time, while being assured that any economic consequences of these human rights violations will be slight.

ALAN SCARFE

When Archbishop Obando y Bravo of Managua fields tough questions about Nicaragua, he frames his answers carefully. It is now a crime in his country to criticize the government. And he is trying to keep open dialogue between himself and the ruling Cuba-backed Sandinist leaders, who have been imposing restrictions on the population to shore up their Marxist positions.

In replies to reporters and others at the recent award luncheon in Washington, D.C., of the Institute for Religion and Democracy honoring him, he:

• Warned that American attempts to isolate Nicaragua “would be dangerous” and asked the U.S. to provide “any aid that will benefit the people.”

• Took a dim view of French and other military aid, saying “peace should be supported by justice, not arms,” and noted the money could be better spent on schools, housing, and other basic needs.

• Confirmed that many Cubans occupy important government positions in Nicaragua.

• Acknowledged that some priests still hold major government posts despite a Vatican ban and ongoing church efforts to restrict their secular involvement, and asserted that Christians should not adopt Marxist-Leninist views (as some Nicaraguan Catholic clergy and lay leaders have done).

• Expressed concern over government crackdowns, but said it would be wrong to characterize the regime as totalitarian “at the present time.”

• Sidestepped a request for him to compare religious freedom under the former Somoza regime and the Sandinists, saying it was too early.

“We must preach the gospel,” he said, implying the government has a stake in maintaining religious freedom. “People’s hearts must be changed,” he said. “Otherwise injustice will always creep in.”

When the Marxist-oriented Sandinist Front for National Liberation toppled the long-corrupt Somoza regime in the summer of 1979, it was with the quiet though wary support of a broad cross section of Nicaraguan society, including the Roman Catholic church (which claimed the allegiance of most of the country’s 2.5 million citizens.).

Relationships between the new government and the Catholic hierarchy soured, however, about a year later when the Sandinists issued a policy on religion, specifying that churches should limit their activities to the religious realm. In response, the nation’s Catholic bishops warned that such a policy was a mark of totalitarian systems aimed at shutting out religious influence in “the new revolutionary structures.”

“It is not the church or Christians who are against the revolution of the Nicaraguans,” asserted the bishops, “but those who deviate ideologically against the religious feelings of our people.”

A small, unofficial group known as the Nicaragua Conference of Priests and Nuns (CONFER), active in the Sandinist government and under pressure from the hierarchy to return to full-time religious ministry, accused the bishops of dividing the revolution.

In an interview with a Mexican publication, Nicaragua’s foreign minister, Miguel D’Escoto, a Maryknoll priest and member of CONFER, labeled Archbishop Obando y Bravo—who had been a Somoza foe—as “Nicaragua’s leading counter-revolutionary.” La Prensa, Managua’s leading newspaper, picked up the story from a news service and published it. In the ensuing furor, the Sandinists closed down the newspaper for several days, and Obando y Bravo conducted a Mass for freedom of the press in the newspaper’s office.

Last June, the archbishop commented that “after two years of hope, our revolution is drifting towards Marxism according to the Cuban model.” (The archbishop is not the only church leader with such views. Moravian bishop John Wilson, a Sandinist sympathizer at the outset, also declared in June that “people have lost confidence in the revolution.” Centered on the rural Caribbean coast and largely composed of ethnic minorities, the Moravians are Nicaragua’s largest Protestant denomination. More than 5,000 reportedly have fled to Honduras.)

Obando y Bravo’s weekly telecast of a Mass was recently curtailed. The Sandinists say they want to share the airwaves with other priests and Protestant clergy. But critics claim the TV programs have been restricted to pro-Sandinist clergy.

Observers note that CONFER and its backers are establishing neighborhood groups of pro-Sandinist Catholics that the government might choose someday to recognize as the official Catholic presence in Nicaragua.

Ronald Reagan’s budget cutting would not harm the “truly needy,” the president’s men said, because a safety net would be provided. But a December budget decision has shown that nonprofit magazines and newspapers—including hundreds of Christian periodicals—are fish too small to be caught in the safety net.

To the surprise and dismay of publishers nationwide, the second-class postal rates for nonprofit bulk mailers (the rubric under which most Christian publications fall) more than doubled in January. The heaviest blow affecting most Christian magazines came in the category called per-copy surcharge, with the cost springing from 3.5 cents per piece to 7.1 cents.

“There’s no doubt this is a serious, even devastating, thing,” said James Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Press Association. “One of the dangers is that the religious press is going to be muted, if not in some places silenced.”

Indeed, John Stapert, the Evangelical Press Association’s postal liaison, estimates up to 10 percent of all religious periodicals in the nation will be forced out of operation by the increase. Another 50 percent will reduce the size or number of issues.

The higher rates affect not just religious publications, but art societies, labor unions, college alumni associations—any nonprofit organizations mailing under the second-, third-, and fourth-class rates.

Meanwhile, many who read religious periodicals can anticipate higher subscription costs. Doyle said members of the Catholic Press Association expect to raise rates anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars per year. The evangelical magazine Eternity, said publisher William Petersen, will have to raise subscription prices. Edgar Trexler, editor of one of the largest denominational magazines, the Lutheran, said he will have to do the same. And the Reformed Church in America’s Banner has been hit by a double punch. Nearly a quarter of its circulation is in Canada, where a volcanic surge in postage will force Canadian readers to pay an $8.60-per-year mailing charge, as opposed to $4.30 last year. A Banner official said the magazine expects to pay $70,000 more in postal costs in 1982 than in 1981.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY will face postal costs 82 percent greater than last year’s. Adding to that the higher costs for mailing LEADERSHIP magazine, and for mailing promotional letters, the corporation will pay about $250,000 more this year.

Adding to the frustration of editors and publishers is the fact that the increased costs are partially a mistake. Emmett Lucey, a Washington, D.C., attorney, serves as counsel for the Evangelical Press Association, American Jewish Press Association, American Church Press, and Catholic Press Association. He said part of the increased costs are due to an oversight by staff members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Nonprofit periodicals have long been subsidized for a portion of their mailing costs, but Congress decided in 1971 to eliminate the subsidies gradually, making the nonprofits responsible for all their mailing costs by 1987. In recent years, however, Congress has balked at renewing the subsidies—a mood especially heightened last year with the “Reagan mandate” to lance the bloated federal government.

Scurrying to finish work before the Christmas break, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to allocate $22 million for subsidizing the postal costs of nonprofit organizations. (The $22 million would have been a greatly reduced subsidy, but at least slightly helpful to nonprofit publications.) The committee’s staff was instructed to distribute the $22 million in funds for libraries, agricultural, religious, and other nonprofit organizations, Lucey said. But several of those categories, including the religious one, were overlooked, and the mistake was signed into law.

Lucey and others are quick to emphasize the government was not discriminating against religious or other nonprofit publications. “We are but a grain in the sand [of the multibillion-dollar federal budget],” Lucey said. Religious publication editors say they are willing to give up the subsidy and “pay our own way,” but not so suddenly. Said Lutheran editor Trexler, “Congress made an arrangement for a phase-in” to culminate with the complete removal of the subsidy by 1986. “It should keep faith in it,” he added, “and not knock the pins out from under us all at once.”

“There won’t be any winners, only losers,” Trexler contended. Some magazines will go under, others will reduce their number of issues, and still others will drop to cheaper third-class rates.

Trexler testified before Congress about threatened higher postal rates last year and repeats what he said then. Large magazines like his, which goes to 600,000 members of the Lutheran Church in America, will be able to adjust and carry on. “But dozens [of smaller periodicals] run right on the line between disaster and success already,” he said. For them, one more cost is one more cost too many.

Publications that will be hit worst are those light in weight, without ads. One such publication is the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Decision magazine. Mailing an astronomical 24 million copies annually, Decision will now be mailed third class instead of second class. In the past, third class was actually more expensive than second class. But that is no longer true under certain circumstances. Most of the 280 members of the Catholic Press Association are parish newspapers, lightweight, and carry little advertising. Likewise, the Baptist Press reported an uproar from editors of state Baptist magazines—also lightweight, with little or no advertising.

The escalating costs of paper, printing bills, and postage have kept religious publishers gasping for years. The January postage hike left most dazed but not panicked, and forced them to pore over the budget books anew. The publishers can all agree on one thing: accepting the gospel may be free, but it is getting more and more expensive to communicate the gospel’s work.

Californians Will Monitor Evolution Teaching In Schools

Last spring Kelly Segraves, a fundamentalist Christian from San Diego, went to court to protect his children from being taught in science classes that they were descended from apes. The news media flocked to superior court in Sacramento for the trial that everybody hoped would be “Scopes II,” a descendent of the famous confrontation between lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.

That did not develop, because the Segraves family and their organization, the Creation Science Research Center, were not seeking to prove evolution false. All they wanted was to get the state board of education to reaffirm a 1973 policy of teaching evolution as theory, not dogma. The policy was reaffirmed, so the creationists folded their tents and left the courtroom, to the disappointment of many reporters and creationists who were yearning for battle.

Now, the Segraveses have embarked on phase two of their plan to rid California public schools of dogmatic evolutionism. Kelly Segraves, along with Robert Grant of the conservative lobby Christian Voice, announced the formation of the Creation Creed Committee, a consortium of laymen and clergymen who intend to make sure local school boards carry out the antidogma directive, especially in science textbooks that are purchased for classes.

Said Grant: “We are no longer going to sit quietly on the sidelines while our children’s cherished religious beliefs are violated by the teaching of evolution as fact and by the ridiculing of creation theories.”

Grant and Segraves said that in each local school district a network of parents and church congregations will review textbooks and monitor classrooms to make sure the state policy is enforced. (There were no details on how the monitoring would take place.) The group intends to use direct mail as well as radio and television commercials to raise awareness in the religious community that the policy against dogmatic views on evolution exists.

Mosley Collins, attorney for the committee, plans to solicit each of the 1,100 local school boards around the state for evidence of their efforts to comply with the directive, as well as their actions to correct violations of it.

Among clergymen who plan to be active on the committee is E. V. Hill of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, an influential black minister.

Grant and Segraves maintain they are not practicing censorship and that they do not desire further litigation. All they want is to see that existing rules are enforced. As Grant put it: “We are on the side of the angels.”

Private Schools Escape Irs—For A While, Anyway

For the last 12 years, the Internal Revenue Service has had authority to deny tax exemptions to private schools thought to be discriminating racially. Last month President Reagan took that power away, not because he thinks discrimination is a good idea, but because he thinks Congress, not the IRS, should decide whether schools that discriminate should be denied tax exempt status.

His decision raised a furor. “This represents a retreat to a sad era of racial injustice in our nation’s history, which most Americans have worked to put behind them,” said U.S. Senator Gary Hart, a Democrat from Colorado. He and other political liberals announced immediate plans to draw up a bill that would reinstate the IRS policy.

Shortly after announcing the change in policy, the Reagan administration seemed to reverse itself, apparently in an effort to correct a misunderstanding about where Reagan stood on the issue of discrimination. Actually, the sudden change was only a clarification that Reagan would not wait for Congress to act, but would propose legislation himself.

Others believe the federal government has no business using its tax powers to force people to conform to public policy, especially when it violates their religious beliefs.

The IRS has been trying to take away the tax exemption of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, because of its policy against interracial dating and marriage, and because, until 1975, it declined to admit most blacks. The school fought the government all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was to hear the case during its present term, until the issue was rendered moot by Reagan’s decision. The arguments used by Bob Jones will come up again as the Religious Right lobbies against any bill reestablishing the discrimination policy.

In its legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court, Bob Jones argues that it is an exclusively religious institution, deriving its beliefs on interracial marriage exclusively from the Bible—an argument with which lower courts generally have agreed. (Most conservative Bible scholars would be hard put to find Scripture backing the Bob Jones view.) The school argues that the federal government, by wielding its tax powers against the school, is “prescribing a minimum floor of acceptable church doctrine to which every religion must subscribe or else suffer taxation.”

The school argues that the IRS violates the religious protection guaranteed by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”). Finally, the school argues that the antidiscrimination policy creates tax preferences for conforming religions and calls for excessive entanglement of government with religious bodies.

William Ball, the attorney for Bob Jones University, said that news accounts of the change in the IRS policy seem to emphasize the racial discrimination issue and neglect the religious base on which many legitimate Christian schools are seeking to free themselves from the government.

Three years ago the IRS tried to make private schools prove they do not discriminate by requiring them to enroll a quota of minority students and vigorously recruit minority teachers. There was such a storm of protest that Congress passed a law preventing the IRS from acting.

Acting under the protection of a federal court order, however, the IRS has begun doing the same thing in Mississippi, but there only. Christian schools in Mississippi, caught in the net, have protested vigorously, and lawsuits have sprung up in an effort to knock out that IRS offensive. The Mississippi situation was not immediately clear in light of the new change in IRS policy, since a federal court order is involved. Many of the Christian schools in Mississippi have no fear they will be found discriminatory, for their purpose is genuinely religious. They are fighting the notion that the government can dictate to a religious institution whom it can hire and whom it can enroll.

Personalia

David McKenna will leave his post as president of Seattle Pacific University (SPU) to become president of Asbury Theological Seminary. McKenna, an ordained minister in the Free Methodist Church, was SPU president for 14 years. He will become president at Asbury on July 1.

William A. Dyrness has been elected president of New College Berkeley, Berkeley, California. Dyrness, currently on the faculty of Asian Theological Seminary in Manila, Philippines, succeeds W. Ward Gasque. Gasque will return as vice-principal to Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.

James P. Schaefer is the new editor of the Northwestern Lutheran, the official semimonthly magazine of the Wisconsin Synod. Schaefer is a graduate of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, Mequon, Wisconsin. He succeeds the retiring Harold Wicke, editor of the magazine since 1970.

Faith, prayer, and love played a big part in Reagan Press Secretary James Brady’s recovery, his physical therapist believes. The therapist, Cathy Wyne, hesitates to call his recovery from brain injuries a miracle, “but faith, people’s prayers and his own inner strength had a lot to do with it.” Brady was seriously injured during last spring’s assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

Deaths

Elmer G. Homrighausen, 81, dean emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary, first secretary for evangelism of the World Council of Churches, translator of Karl Barth; January 4, at Princeton Medical Center, of a heart attack.

Charles Mellis, 60, former president of Missionary Aviation Fellowship, author and editor; December 22, in Fullerton, California, after a brief illness.

And how he went on to become a Southern Baptist evangelist.

Anis Shorrosh remembers well the day Israeli tanks rolled into his home city of Nazareth in 1948. He was there. His father and cousin were killed in the battle. He fled with his mother and sister on camelback to Jordan where they joined his older brother and 650,000 other Palestinian refugees.

Fatherless, stateless, jobless, living with his family in one room and unable to attend school, 15-year-old Anis burned for revenge. “I hated the British because they exploited us and then abandoned us. I hated the Jordanians and Syrians for not coming to help us. I hated the Jews most of all for what they had done to my family. I thought if I could just get a gun and get back across the border, I would kill as many Jews as I could before they killed me. That way my life would have some meaning.”

His brooding continued for two years. Finally, the young Palestinian ran into the desert to starve himself to death. The next day, in delirium, he thought he was suffering the torments of hell. Somehow he managed to drag himself back to his mother. This time he sought help from the Bible and surrendered his life to Christ.

Now seminary educated, and a full-time Southern Baptist evangelist, Shorrosh recently returned from his sixth trip to Pakistan where he witnessed over 2,500 professions of faith when he spoke during meetings for the Lahore Christian Convention. In the old capital of Rawalpindi, where he also preached, a lay leader told him that since 1968 half of the new believers in that area had made professions under his ministry.

Besides preaching to crowds of up to 9,000 in Lahore and in Rawalpindi, he spoke at hospitals, schools, and even inside a Catholic cathedral where he gave an invitation to accept Christ. On a trip to the Afghanistan border, he passed out from heat and exhaustion, but recovered to preach that night.

A Palestinian who speaks fluent Arabic and understands Muslim beliefs and customs, Shorrosh has been unusually effective in Asia and the Arab world. “I talk about Christ, not religions,” he stresses. “On the last visit to Pakistan, I preached about the characteristics of the Great Physician, including the fact that he is the one and only Savior. Many Muslims received that message gladly.”

Shorrosh works under the Anis Shorrosh Evangelistic Association, a group of committed Baptist laymen, who sometimes accompany him and preach oh trips abroad.

Anis Shorrosh himself was brought to the U.S. by Southern Baptist missionaries and an educator from Clarke College in Mississippi, Eugene Keebler. With only a seventh-grade education, he completed college in 33 months, then earned a B.D. at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he met and married an Alabama preacher’s daughter.

The Shorroshes planned on serving in the Middle East as Southern Baptist missionaries, but were thwarted by a policy that forbade appointment of foreign nationals. Instead, Anis had to work for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) mission in Jordan for a national preacher’s salary, although he had as much education and more experience than most of the missionaries.

In 1966 he was serving as pastor of the 18-member East Jerusalem (Arab) Baptist Church, but earning more money as a tour guide, when Radio Jerusalem tried to hire him as an announcer. He chose another option and answered a call to full-time evangelism. For the next few months he itinerated across Arab countries with Jan Willem van der Hoeven, the well-known Dutch “Keeper of the Garden Tomb.” At the 1966 Berlin Congress of World Evangelism, he represented Jordan, then flew with the Billy Graham team to England.

While away from his family, he took the words of Acts 22:18—“Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem”—to mean that his wife and children should come to the United States.

They settled in Mobile, Alabama, and in 1972 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. By this time he was making a preaching trip abroad each year, leading a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and holding evangelistic meetings in other 40 Southern Baptist churches.

The SBC Foreign Mission Board has sponsored three of his trips abroad. He held a nationwide campaign in Guyana shortly after the Jonestown tragedy and 900 professed faith. Shorrosh went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for more meetings.

While holding that the state of israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, he thinks Israel has “pushed its advantage too far” in continued occupation of the West Bank. He supports “a small Palestinian state, without a standing army, on the West Bank. The Israelis,” he says, “should also pay for the property they have taken from Palestinians.” This has to be, or the fighting will go on for a hundred years, he believes.

To Arab friends who press for more fighting with Israel, he answers, “Guns and bullets have not brought peace. Only the gospel can. Jesus didn’t say on the cross, ‘Father, kill them,’ but, ‘Father, forgive them.’ ” His forgiving attitude has given him numerous opportunities to witness to Jews. On one trip back to Nazareth he was chatting with the Israeli tour guide on the bus. The Israeli happened to mention that he had been a captain in the tank force that took Nazareth.

The Palestinian took a deep breath, before declaring, “I am from Nazareth. My father was killed in the battle. My family lost everything and had to flee. By all the traditions of my people, I should avenge my father’s death. But because Jesus of Nazareth forgave my sins, I can forgive you. Let me tell you how he changed my life.”

And he did.

Methodist Tv Venture Has Money Problems

The United Methodist Church is cutting its communications staff and programming to shore up its ailing television fund-raising campaign.

Ten communications staff members are being released, two of the division’s four offices are being closed, and the denomination’s nationally syndicated radio program, “Connection,” is being discontinued. Church officials said the action was necessary to salvage the ambitious campaign to raise $25 million to help United Methodists develop a national television effort.

As originally approved by the church’s 1980 general conference, the campaign was to involve the purchase of a commercial television station, which would provide income for producing television programs. The church’s action was seen as a way to counter the impact of independent television evangelists who bought air time and had become highly successful at direct fund-raising appeals over the air. The United Methodist Church, like other mainline denominations, has relied solely on free time for radio and television broadcasts.

In early December, the campaign steering committee calculated that almost one million dollars had been spent, but that less than $200,000 in cash and pledges had been raised. United Methodist Communications officials said a key problem had been in the initial strategy of focusing on major contributions from wealthy individuals, and postponing an appeal for support to the 9.6 million “grassroots” United Methodists.

“We started too big, too fast,” said Charles Cappleman, general manager of CBS’S Television City in Hollywood and president of United Methodist Communications. He said the agency had “underestimated the enormity of the task and we underestimated the time needed to interpret and cultivate the United Methodist constituency before a payback could reasonably be expected.”

“The problem has been that the vast majority of United Methodists have not been asked to give directly to the campaign,” said Spurgeon Dunnam III, editor and general manager of the United Methodist Reporter newspaper chain and a member of the campaign steering committee.

Emphasizing that he was speaking only for himself, Dunnam commented, “It is utterly incredible that intelligent people could allow to happen what has happened in the campaign.” He said he included himself in the criticism, and asserted that “we just let the thing snowball before our eyes.”

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

But shoots itself in the foot instead, say its critics.

Moral Majority appears to have damaged its credibility among Senate allies and perturbed evangelicals in Washington by declaring war on a bill that would update the U.S. Federal Criminal Code.

Jerry Falwell’s lobbyists see the revision as “soft on crime.” They have rushed out a hair-raising analysis, written by a Senate staff member, Mike Hammon. He is counsel to the Republican Senate Steering Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). Although Hammond wrote Moral Majority’s position paper, the group also retained a lawyer, and relied on its Washington staff for information.

The massive bill culminates 15 years of congressional tinkering with overlapping, contradictory, and outdated provisions in the criminal code. The complexities and sheer length of one Senate and two House of Representatives versions make the job of analyzing it staggering. This has spawned a series of charges and countercharges about who, if anyone, fully understands the bill.

Nonetheless, some conservative senators say that in reacting so harshly to the bill, Moral Majority leaped before it looked.

For example, Moral Majority says the new bill would “create an abortion funding program” for victims of rape. But according to the conservative senators who cosponsor the bill, “The criticism is wrong. The bill provides no compensation of any kind for medical expenses relating to pregnancy.” (An earlier version would have done so.)

Another objection involves the length of prison terms. The current maximum sentence for a convicted rapist is either death or life imprisonment. In the revised code it is 25 years. Moral Majority interprets this to mean that the code will “let dangerous felons loose on the streets.”

But what Falwell’s attack does not say is that the new code also would eliminate parole. As a result, sentences would be served in their entirety. At present, inflated sentences are assigned and then often reduced by parole boards. Proponents of the code say the new sentencing structure would actually result in longer sentences and easier convictions.

Moral Majority’s vice-president, Ronald Godwin, testified before the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice that “we are experiencing a violent crime wave that is sweeping America, that is being felt by everyone.… We call for a restoration of existing maximum penalties and insist that all existing death penalties be carried forward in a constitutionally valid manner.”

Some knowledgeable evangelicals in Washington see it differently.

Daniel Van Ness, special counsel for Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship, said lengthy prison terms are not the answer because “the certainty of punishment is more significant than the severity.”

He cautioned, “We have to check our instinct to raise prison sentences, because it’s a false impulse. It makes us look like we’re getting tough, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything.”

To identify a criminal’s state of mind, the current law offers 70 definitions, such as “with malice aforethought” or “with a depraved heart.” In the update, these are reduced to four: acting “intentionally,” “knowingly,” “recklessly,” or “negligently.”

What this will accomplish, according to Senate staff lawyers, is to introduce language that is commonly understood by both judges and juries. But altering the language has drawn fire from Moral Majority. Said Godwin, “In the high and holy name of neatness, they say surely we must do something to tidy it up. I’m not in favor of neatness,” he added, at the expense of eliminating language used to set legal precedent throughout history.

Legislative efforts to update the criminal code began under President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. Later, conservative Sen. John L. McLellan introduced a series of revisions. In 1977, he drafted a compromise bill along with Sen. Edward Kennedy, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time. Kennedy’s contribution to that earlier version of the bill has spurred Moral Majority incorrectly to label the current edition a “Kennedy bill.” In fact, it is the result of a broad bipartisan effort, but Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, is a popular target of Moral Majority’s fusillades.

A meticulously detailed rebuttal to Moral Majority’s broadside attack was prepared by the Justice Department and three staunchly conservative senators who cosponsored the bill, who say Falwell’s charges are “false and misleading.” The three are Senators Paul Laxalt of Nevade, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and Orrin Hatch of Utah. (Two other conservatives, however, John East of North Carolina and Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, withdrew their sponsorship because of Moral Majority’s objections.

When asked whether Moral Majority officials had studied the bill themselves, spokesman Cal Thomas said, “there is no way we can know the entire contents of every bill.”

Godwin said, “I’m aware of those elements of the bill which concern Moral Majority.”

Moral Majority’s statements raised concern among evangelicals in Washington. At the National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) Washington office, public affairs director Bob Dugan said, “I think the whistle needs to be blown on inaccurate reporting, whether in liberal media or conservative fund raising. The bill just isn’t quite the threat that it’s purported to be, especially once you’ve read it and considered that it is cosponsored by some very conservative senators.” Responding to Dugan, Thomas said he was disappointed that one Christian organization should criticize another. “We gave a well-reasoned, articulate defense of our position,” he said.

In its January Insight newsletter, the National Association of Evangelicals raises questions about the bill. But it goes on to explain the reasoning behind the provisions—something the Moral Majority critique does not do. The legislation has won strong administration support, with President Reagan calling it “the foundation of an effective federal effort against crime.” Attorney General William French Smith says it “contains well over a hundred significant improvements in criminal law” and would “clarify and rationalize” existing provisions. But Moral Majority has vowed to work toward defeat of the measure in Congress, saying they “regard improvement by amendment to be virtually impossible.”

As a floor debate in the Senate approaches this spring, Falwell is likely to step up direct-mail and advertising efforts to mobilize Christians to write letters to Congress and financially support his group’s initiative.

Moral Majority Has Harsh Words For Reagan

Some of the most ominous warnings to the Reagan administration yet heard from the Religious Right came during a recent conference on the Christian faith and social issues held at Huntington College in Indiana. The speaker was Cal Thomas, a former NBC newsman, and Moral Majority’s vice-president for communications.

Thomas voiced doubts about the Reagan administration’s commitment to Moral Majority’s social agenda several times in response to questions. “If Reagan cleans up the economy and lots of babies go on being killed, I think we’ll go down the tube. I think we’ll forfeit the right to exist as a nation. The White House doesn’t think we have any place to go. That’s what they think.”

He acknowledged that the New Christian Right would have a hard time finding another presidential candidate to support in 1984, but noted that staying away from the polls is always an option—one that can mean the margin of defeat for a candidate.

Moral Majority is organizing a profamily conference for next summer, when President Reagan will be warned to start moving on the social agenda of the New Right. “He’ll be told if he doesn’t immediately set a social agenda, he’s through as far as the Religious Right is concerned.”

Also, in response to complaints that Moral Majority has not addressed issues such as poverty, Thomas detailed the efforts of Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority president, to help the poor. Last summer, Falwell sent 100 Liberty Baptist College students to live with black families in several urban areas, according to Thomas, including Watts and Harlem. “I think a lot of his social agenda has been unreported. We don’t report it because it sounds self-serving.”

Thomas joined Falwell’s organization last year. “He’s one of the best things Falwell has going for him,” said Wes Pippert of United Press International’s Washington bureau, a conference participant. “He’s brought a lot of people into one-to-one contact with Falwell. I don’t know anybody who’s done more to reach to others on either side. He’s established contact between Hatfield and Falwell. He’s also astute in the use of the news media. He knows how the media operate.”

Before going to work for Moral Majority, Thomas was a correspondent for NBC television in Washington, D.C.

RUSS PULLIAM

How are the 700,000 Protestant believers among Poland’s 36 million citizens faring in Poland under martial law conditions?

They, of course, share the hardships common to all Poles. Jean, a young man from Western Europe was in Poland at the time martial law was imposed in December, and he stayed for a day with the family of a Protestant pastor in a medium-sized town. They were able to serve only boiled potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and supper.

In preparation for Jean’s visit, Polish believers had pooled their gasoline rationing coupons, providing a drum of fuel. This represented hours of waiting in lines, so as to insure Jean could complete his itinerary.

Rising early with the pastor for a long day’s drive, he noticed that already at 5:00 A.M. hundreds were lined up to gain access to shops when they opened, warmed by little charcoal fires.

Protestants are a negligible minority when compared to the Roman Catholic preponderance in Poland. (Among them, however, is the former Polish ambassador to the U.S., who defected. Romuald Spasowski is a member of the Reformed Evangelical Church in Warsaw.) More than 90 percent of all Poles are affiliated with the Catholic church, and a higher proportion of Poland’s citizens are said to attend church than those of any other country.

This has its drawbacks. Patriotism and Catholicism are bound together in popular thinking, putting evangelicals at a psychological disadvantage. Banners of the independent trade union Solidarity, for instance, were dedicted to the Virgin Mary in ceremonies in Catholic churches.

Protestants sometimes feel smothered by the pervasive Catholic presence. This is particularly true of Lutherans in northeast Poland, who complain that burgeoning Catholic congregations are illegally confiscating their sparsely attended church buildings.

And Protestants don’t have the luxury of a full-time clergy. Most—Methodists, Lutherans, Brethren, Free Evangelical, and Assemblies of God—work in factories. The Baptist ministers, for some reason, are more inclined to drive taxis.

But there also may be advantages to the Protestant minority status. Evangelicals’ actions are not automatically assumed to be political in nature as are those of the Catholics. And some believe that the evangelicals are treated with relative favor by a regime that would like to see a counterweight develop to the dominant Catholic church. This is not overt favoritism, as practiced by the Hungarian authorities, but according to some observers, it may be assumed to be a consideration.

There have been fewer restrictions for churches in Poland than for those of any other country in Moscow’s orbit for years. One worker with the Assemblies of God notes that his denomination was allowed to record religious programs in Poland as long ago as 1965, sending them out to Trans-World Radio in Monte Carlo for shortwave broadcast back into Poland.

A Baptist church worker notes that for several years Polish believers have been permitted to travel abroad for conferences, short school sessions, and even longer residence courses.

It has never been impossible for evangelicals to obtain permits for some church building renovation or new construction. But in the last year or so, many more permits were granted. Congregations that had been waiting and saving for years moved into building programs. The Baptist congregation in Katowice, for instance, received permission in November to build the first building in its 60-year history—to seat from 250 to 300. The result, according to visitors, is that Protestant churches are among the most up-to-date and attractive buildings in the country.

What has been more or less freely granted to Protestants, Catholics have been able to win through muscle. In the process of serving as mediator between the Communist party and Solidarity over the last year, the church has won significant state concessions. Among these is permission to erect 800 new churches during the coming five years.

Although part of the pervasive religious presence in Poland is a form of backlash against a Communist regime, there is clearly a spiritual vitality that goes far beyond that.

One indication is film attendance. More than 100 copies of the film Jesus are showing there. And the Catholic church told an organization that is dubbing the film Joni into Polish that it needed 100 copies for showings in its churches.

Jean, the visitor from Western Europe, was smuggled into a Polish university to attend an evangelistic meeting there, which a Roman Catholic priest concluded by giving an invitation.

Recently a rumor surfaced that the Polish Bible Society had received a shipment of Polish-language Bibles from the British and Foreign Bible Society. Hundreds of Poles promptly queued up—students, army officers, housewives, and so on—all prepared to part with the 350-zloty price of a Bible, equal to about a half-week’s wages for a laborer.

Keeping spiritual revival and political renewal separate may not be possible. While Protestants have generally avoided taking political stands as church bodies, observers say that many believers were individually members of Solidarity.

Polish Ecumenical Council (PEC) general secretary Pawlik was summoned in early January to meet with Archbishop Jozef Glemp and also with the head of the Department of Religion at the Interior Ministry. He is reported to have told the Catholic primate that the PEC would not be overtly involved in political affairs as are the Catholics. What transpired at the Interior Ministry is unknown.

Of course, the Communist regime has to reckon with the powerful grip of the Roman Catholic church on the Polish citizenry. Western officials monitoring broadcasts from Poland noted that the traditional Sunday morning Mass broadcast from the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw was not aired on December 20. But in short order, the authorities were repeatedly broadcasting the sermon delivered by Archbishop Glemp on the night of the crackdown, appealing for the people to avoid violence, even though it also condemned martial law itself as evil and a violation of human rights.

Roman Catholic churchmen quickly set up an ad hoc “crisis staff” to create and maintain some links with the authorities. They refused to negotiate with the military rulers, however, without Lech Walesa present. And he refused unless the full Solidarity secretariat could be included with him. Reportedly, its proposal to have Walesa removed from state custody in Warsaw to its protection in a secluded monastery was nearly accepted. But the state dropped the idea after Glemp’s January 6 Epiphany sermon, in which he strongly attacked the official policy of extorting “loyalty pledges” from people in exchange for security or jobs. Such a policy, said the archbishop, is “a violation of human conscience” and incompatible with the church’s teaching.

One Christian worker from Eastern Europe predicts that by not taking sides, the Protestant church will emerge from Poland’s current travail relatively stronger in relation to its dominant sister church.