Every now and then a hopelessly overcrowded little boat arrives at Darwin. Jammed with refugees, it has made the hazardous voyage from Viet Nam with inadequate supplies, often with nothing more than a compass and a page torn from a school atlas as navigational aids. Typically the boat has far too many people in it for even reasonable comfort as the people scramble for places in the boat that they hope will bring them to a new life. More often than not the boat is in pretty poor shape. The refugees must know that there is a good chance that they will not survive (it has been estimated that at least half the ships sink on the way). The little boats were not designed for long ocean voyages and they are usually not in the best of shape to start with.

But still they come. Despite the dangers and the hardships they keep coming. The refugees may not know all the hazards into which they are thrusting themselves but they do know what they are fleeing from. So they continue to make the effort.

So far those who have reached Australia have been allowed to stay and efforts have been made to find jobs and places in the community for them. But there have also been voices raised in protest. Unemployment in this country is high so some ask, Why should we allow these people to come in and take jobs away from native-born Australians? Others point to recognized immigration procedures and ask why these people should be allowed to jump the queue. There have been allegations that some who arrive in the little boats are not really refugees, destitute and friendless, but wealthy people who choose this way of getting away from their problems in their own land and starting afresh in this one.

In our world there are many groups of refugees and no real solution to the problem has been found. The Palestinians are a continuing reminder that the problem can be lasting and intractable. So there they are, in many countries throughout the world, minority communities without rights, without possessions, and often without hope.

It is rarely that they are given anything remotely resembling a welcome from the host country. Indeed, the opposite is often the case, for a minority group, especially an ethnic minority, forms a splendid scapegoat. When troubles arise in our community most of us are happy to find someone on whom we can heap the blame. It is comforting to divert attention from our inability to solve our problems by saying that really it is not our fault. If it were not for these aliens in our midst we would be all right.

So it is that minority groups are rarely regarded as valued members in the community. Few of us are guiltless when we think of black people in Australia and the U.S.A., of Asians in Britain, of Chinese in Viet Nam, of Palestinians in Lebanon, to name but a few. It is so easy to be hostile to the stranger within our gates, however he got there and however just his cause. Even if the majority community is hopelessly in the wrong the attitude is the same. Majorities are more interested in scapegoats than in justice.

Christians ought to be the leaders in mitigating such evils. We profess to follow one who pronounced a blessing on those who welcomed the needy and the stranger (Matt. 25:34–36) and who pronounced a curse on those who failed to make use of this kind of opportunity (Matt. 25:41–43). His “Inasmuch as you did it (or did it not) to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it (or did it not) to me” rings in our ears. The Bible leaves little doubt as to what our attitude should be.

It is a matter for profound sorrow that the track record of the Christian Church in this matter is far from uniformly good. In our thinking about minorities we are often all too representative of the communities in which we live. The lines have sometimes been drawn as hard in the churches as anywhere. It is not difficult to find examples of professing Christians who have shown anything but love to the underprivileged in their area. All too often we have been just as ready as anyone to ostracize our minorities and to make them the scapegoats for the ills in our midst.

When we are tempted to make yet another scapegoat we might profitably reflect on the origin of the term. Leviticus 16 lays down the procedures to be followed by old Israel on the annual Day of Atonement. There are solemn rituals to be gone through and sacrifices to be offered. The part that concerns us is that in which “Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness” (Lev. 16:21). The goat was not thought of as sinning. It was the community that sinned. But the high priest “put” the people’s sins on the goat and then sent him off into the wilderness.

What distinguishes the classical scapegoat from our modern tendency to find someone we can blame for all our ills is the Bible’s clear recognition that the community has sinned. The repetition is impressive. The high priest was to confess “all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins.” There was no evasion or equivocation or attempt at avoiding responsibility. The people had sinned and they knew it. They came humbly to God confessing those sins and seeking forgiveness. The scapegoat ritual witnessed to the fact that God had provided a way of dealing with the sins of the people.

In the New Testament Jesus is seen as fulfilling perfectly all that the Old Testament ritual had foreshadowed. The Epistle to the Hebrews makes use of the Day of Atonement ceremonies to bring out the truth that Jesus has carried away the sins of his people and they will see them no more.

But it also insists that the people who have been forgiven in this way should live as the forgiven. In particular this Epistle urges on us the importance of brotherly love, of right treatment of strangers and of prisoners, of love in marriage. For good measure it adds a warning against a wrong kind of love, love of money (Heb. 13:1–6).

Confronted with the boat people or any other minority it is this kind of thing that should guide Christians. One has suffered in our stead, suffered for our sins. Suffered. It is not for us then to make minorities into scapegoats. Rather we are to find the path of love and pursue it resolutely in the spirit of him, whose we are and whom we serve.

Leon Morris is principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The 250 members of the independent Church of Christian Liberty in the Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights mean it when they sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Their pastor, conservative Paul Lindstrom, recently dispatched an armed fighting unit to eastern Rhodesia. Its immediate goal is to reopen mission stations that have been closed by attacks from Robert Maguabe’s guerrilla troops who operate from neighboring Mozambique. The venture was prompted by the murder last June of twelve Britons at a mission station in Umtali, which is run by the Elim Pentecostal Church.

Giles Pace, a 34-year-old former Green Beret who Lindstrom calls a “born again believer,” leads the fighting unit, which will eventually number 300. Pace told reporters in Rhodesia recently that he was “not interested in dialogue or detente. We will shoot the bastards [black guerrillas] on sight.”

Lindstrom makes no apologies for Pace’s comments, saying that the guerrillas, according to Hebrews chapter 12, are illegitimate in God’s eyes. They are “not unsavable,” Lindstrom says, but they are “unregenerate murderers of missionaries and self-declared enemies of the work of Christ.” Suspicious persons seen carrying guns within the borders of mission stations controlled by the church-financed troops will be met with force, says Lindstrom—“not out of retaliation, but according to righteousness and justice.”

Lindstrom’s policy of mixing bullets with the Bible did not begin with his most recent venture. He once threatened to send mercenary troops into Viet Nam to rescue American prisoners of war.

The Prospect Heights minister gained national recognition as head of the Remember the Pueblo Committee. He actively fought for the release of the eighty-three American soldiers held captive in North Korea, and he frequently scooped the government announcements regarding the status of the men with the help of sympathetic sources inside the Defense Department. Lindstrom even beat the official announcement of their release by several hours.

Lindstrom, who describes his thirteen-year-old church as having “evangelical and Calvinistic-reformed persuasions,” says the Rhodesian venture is for “missionary purposes.” His army is not composed of mercenaries, but of “Christian young men with military experience in Viet Nam.” The Trinity seminary graduate defends his commander-type role: “Though God says ‘Vengeance is mine,’ the Lord uses men to fulfill his purpose.”

David Eyling, director of Elim Pentecostal Church missionary activities, washes his hands of the Lindstrom venture. Leslie Wigglesworth, who was mission director at Umtali at the time of the massacre, has speculated that Lindstrom’s army will be “taken up by the Rhodesian Army. I don’t think the government will allow a private military force to operate.”

Not so, in Lindstrom’s view. He says the Rhodesian government is sympathetic and will send help if any major conflict breaks out at the mission stations. Lindstrom says his church is in direct communication with the Salisbury government. Indeed, for several months, he has tried to bring the four-man transitional government to speak at his church on the future of Christian missions there.

Lindstrom apparently has been successful. The U.S. State Department granted the four men entry visas earlier this month. Prime Minister Ian Smith and Ndabaningi Sithole, a black clergyman, were expected to arrive in America first, to be followed shortly thereafter by the remaining members of the four-man interim government, Chief Jeremiah Chirau and Bishop Abel Muzorewa. Lindstrom renewed his invitation to the men, and expected them to visit his church sometime during their stay.

Lindstrom, who has John Birch Society ties and is frequently in demand as a speaker, also is head master of his church’s Christian Liberty Academy. About 150 students attend the school, which is adjacent to his $250,000 church. Another 1,400 students learn Lindstrom’s brand of conservative back-to-the-basics education by correspondence. Lindstrom’s church has fought legal battles in Nebraska and Minnesota for parents of children who take the course; the states have held the parents in violation of compulsory school attendance laws.

Lindstrom’s military defense of the Gospel may continue, if for no other reason than that financial donations from sympathetic persons around the country keep rolling in. Lindstrom says his fighting unit has received no financial support from the Rhodesian government.

Integrated Belief

The 25,000 delegates in the Louisiana Superdome stood to signal their unanimous selection of Joseph H. Jackson as president of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. (NBC). Another man might have been awed, but probably not the 74-year-old Jackson. Jackson’s election last month was his twenty-sixth in a row as head of the largest black denomination—6.5 million members—in this country.

Often called the “incorporated body,” to distinguish it from the smaller 2.5-million-member National Baptist Convention of America that split from it in 1915, the NBC in recent years has emphasized racial integration. The election of Jackson, pastor of the 2,000-member Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, insures that policy.

Jackson thinks that his steady push for “civil rights within the constitution” has kept him in office. He has always advocated black equality through working within the system. In his annual address at the New Orleans convention, Jackson said, “All of us must work for the correction and the cleansing of our country, but not for its destruction.”

Jackson’s establishment approach has angered black activists in the past, yet he has steadily pursued equal rights. He has been at odds with fellow Chicagoan Jesse Jackson (no relation), magnetic leader of the nationally known People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) program. The NBC president says Jesse Jackson has abandoned integration as a priority to emphasize black self-reliance and black pride.

Reacting against what they saw as Jesse Jackson’s betrayal of the push for equal rights, NBC convention delegates in 1975 issued a call to continue working for racial integration. This year the convention delegates reaffirmed that call.

NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks explained at a convention gathering for young people, “Blacks still have a long, long way to go.” He added, “We’re not asking white folks to come down but merely to move over and make room for us.”

Convention delegates discussed more items than equal rights during the six-day convention. They passed a proposal giving teachers the right to strike—but only when it “was subordinate to the responsibility of teaching children.” NBC leaders asked support for black colleges, and a $10,000 endowment was established at each of three schools: two predominately white Baptist seminaries, Southern in Louisville and Colgate-Rochester in Rochester, and a black Bible college, American Baptist in Nashville.

The Commission on Evangelism met during the convention, and Jackson said it preaches the “power of Jesus Christ to be saved.” In his view, that means “winning people to Christ through social salvation”—that the church should preach Christ in the context of a person’s place of business and apply Christian principles to everyday problems.

As Jackson plans his twenty-sixth term in office, another black leader, Thomas Kilgore, will look for other work within the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC). Kilgore stepped down as president of the predominately black PNBC, church of Martin Luther King, Sr., Jesse Jackson, and Ralph Abernathy. He had served two single-year terms—the maximum allowed under church bylaws. Selected to replace him at the PNBC convention in Los Angeles in August was Brooklyn pastor William A. Jones.

The denomination split as a reform movement from the NBC seventeen years ago, and its members acted quickly to insure a limited term for president. Progressive Baptists generally oppose what some call the “hip pocket” style of leadership in the other two large black Baptist denominations—the NBC and the unincorporated National Baptists, who again elected long-time president James C. Sams of Jacksonville, Florida, at their September convention.

The Progressive Baptists wanted to distribute the power throughout the church and gain a more streamlined organization. In fact, Kilgore’s goal as president of the PNBC was getting more accurate statistical data from PNBC churches that often regard their membership statistics as their business alone, says PNBC general secretary Sloan Hodges. Church officials also differ as to who belongs to the denomination. Kilgore’s 1,900-member Los Angeles Second Baptist Church, for example, also holds membership in the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., a mostly white group. (For a time, Kilgore was president of the latter group—making him possibly the only person ever to preside over two denominations at the same time.)

In any case, PNBC national membership ranges anywhere from Kilgore’s estimate of 450,000 to the 750,000 figure given by secretary Hodges. (A denominational news release claimed one million.) Kilgore says it will take several more years for the PNBC to get an accurate figure.

The 5,000 delegates attending the recent PNBC convention greeted a parade of eminent guests: California governor Jerry Brown, United Nations ambassador Andrew Young, and evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton. They heard outgoing president Kilgore’s call to support black businessmen. Kilgore, 65, estimated that 90 per cent of the money earned by blacks leaves the community. Kilgore also asked for stronger leadership from black pastors; he criticized clergymen who don’t get involved and who hide behind “bogus degrees.”

All three major black Baptist denominations are active in the National and World Councils of Churches. Joseph Jackson has been active in the WCC hierarchy. Each denomination has liberal and conservative theologians in its membership, with most members falling somewhere in between.

Another gathering of black churchmen was held last month, but this conference involved black pastors within the predominately white United Methodist Church. The 200 pastors who met at Garrett seminary in Evanston worried about a declining black membership in the denomination, which they blamed on increasing affluence and secularization among blacks. Black membership in the United Methodist Church has dropped by 20,000 from 1967 and by one million from 1958.

The pastors said they had difficulty relating to inner city blacks, many of whom talk a “different language.” Also, the more affluent pastors lack experience in dealing with poverty.

The black Catholic clergy in this country have noted a similar evangelism problem. Bishop Joseph Houwze, a black from Biloxi, Mississippi, said evangelizing the black unchurched was “not unlike mission work in foreign countries,” a reference to the Catholic church’s outreach in black, non-Catholic urban areas.

Earlier this month, the church again set aside two days to focus on black needs and raise funds for the National Office for Black Catholics. An estimated one million blacks are members of the American Catholic church, about 4 per cent of the black population.

DEATHS

GAINES S. DOBBINS, 92, pioneer Southern Baptist educator on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary faculty for thirty-six years and prolific writer, who was the first Southern Baptist to teach Christian journalism; at his home in Birmingham, of an apparent heart attack.

ROBERT W. FRANK, 88, United Presbyterian minister and former president of McCormick Theological Seminary; in Denver, after a sudden illness in his home.

MERVEL S. LUNN, SR., 91, for thirty-eight years the head of Nazarene Publishing House and former treasurer of the International Church of the Nazarene; in Bethany, Oklahoma, after a short illness.

VALERIAN GRACIAS, 77, the first native Roman Catholic cardinal of India and patriot who rallied Indian Catholics to defend their homeland during a 1962 Communist Chinese invasion; in Bombay, of cancer.

F. EPPLING REINARTZ, 77, leader in the United Lutheran Church in America before its 1962 merger with the Lutheran Church in America, former president of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, and an organizer of Lutheran World Action; in Columbia, South Carolina, after an extended illness.

Mad At Jimmy

Prolife groups are fuming about President Jimmy Carter’s appointment of an abortion rights leader, Sarah Weddington, as his top adviser on women’s issues. “I think it’s a total insult to any evangelical—this is the crassest example of Carter’s inconsistency with his expressed commitment to biblical principles,” said Curtis Young, executive director of the Christian Action Council (CAC).

One of the most vocal Protestant prolife groups (there are about 3,000 assorted antiabortion groups around the country), the CAC vainly tried to get Carter to reconsider the appointment. The CAC, in fact, was born as an evangelical response after an event in which Weddington played a leading role. She argued for and won the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, which overturned nearly all state laws restricting abortion.

Young was among signers of a letter of protest to President Carter soon after Weddington’s appointment. Other signers included Jean Gartan, head of the recently formed Lutherans for Life, Robert Holbrook, national coordinator of Baptists for Life, and Presbyterian pastor James M. Boice. The White House acknowledged the letter indirectly through a Carter staff member.

Reacting to church criticism, Weddington, who is the daughter of a United Methodist clergyman, has restated her position on abortion. She said she is not “proabortion,” but “prochoice.” “Nobody I know is for abortion,” she said. “What they are for is the right of the individual woman to have a choice.”

Weddington gained national recognition after showing her judicial skills in Roe vs. Wade, and women’s rights groups embraced the Texas native as one of their own. She was elected president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, a group whose purpose is to secure a woman’s right to have an abortion. Weddington believes a woman should have the right to an abortion without her husband’s consent, and that a girl should have the right to an abortion without her parents’ consent.

Known for her skill as a speaker, Weddington is working for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment—her first priority right now. She says her liberal views on abortion won’t affect her relationship with President Carter, who opposes federally funded abortions except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest.

But then, several evangelical leaders assert that Carter’s views on abortion don’t differ much from those of Weddington anyway. Harold O. J. Brown, Trinity seminary professor and founding member of the CAC, says Carter’s past record of appointments indicates a more proabortion stance than is commonly believed. Only HEW secretary Joseph Califano among Carter staff members has taken a strong antiabortion stance, says Brown.

Propositioned California

What Howard Jarvis was for the California tax revolt and Proposition 13, state senator John Briggs is to a proposal that is just as controversial now on the November 7 ballot in California. The Briggs bill, Proposition 6, would require that school boards fire teachers and other education employees who publicly advocate homosexual acts.

California church groups are split in their opinion of the bill. Some say it would start a “witch hunt,” and others, like Briggs, assert that it would eliminate practicing homosexuals, persons “unfit to teach,” from the school system.

Briggs, now a Catholic, describes himself as a “born again Christian” from a “fundamental, Pentecostal” background. He is canvassing mostly fundamentalist churches throughout California to get support for his cause.

Briggs and Ray Batema, pastor of the 7,000-member Pomona Central Baptist Church, last June formed a fund-raising group, the Citizens for Decency and Morality. They hope to pay for the needed publicity and television promotions. Briggs says he still owes $500,000 “just from getting the bill on the ballot.”

Recently, Briggs and Batema met with the influential and nationally known pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jerry Falwell, who enthusiastically supports Proposition 6. Falwell sent letters to 1,400 churches in California in support of the bill, and he promised to hold a rally for the bill in Orange County this month.

Briggs discounts claims that Proposition 6 could encourage McCarthy-type hunts for homosexuals. He said a similar bill in California that was repealed three years ago was not abused.

But other California churches don’t agree. The Presbytery of San Diego, which includes thirty-six churches, recently branded the bill “unnecessary and potentially dangerous.” Also on record against Proposition 6 are the board of directors of the Southern California Council of Churches (which includes membership from thirteen denominations), the 136-church Southern California Conference of the Church of Christ, and a council of Jewish congregations.

Ironically, some of the strongest opposition has come from Presbyterian groups. Last May, the national governing body of the church met in San Diego and rejected a study committee’s recommendation that practicing, self-admitted homosexuals be ordained to the ministry.

World Scene

A Nigerian evangelistic outreach program, “Operation Good News,” has been launched to present the Gospel clearly to all 65 million Nigerians. Approved by the Second National Congress on Evangelization, the program will be implemented, starting next month, by nineteen state committees under general coordinator Yemi Lapido, who also directs Campus Crusade in Nigeria.

Luis Palau and members of his team have launched the Luis Palau Evangelistic Team as a distinct organization. The Argentine born evangelist was until recently the executive director of Overseas Crusades. The separation was amicable. Dick Hillis of Overseas Crusades is on the board of Palau’s new organization, and Palau continues on the Overseas Crusades board.

Gangs of Muslim fanatics are terrorizing Coptic Christians in rural areas of Egypt. Members of the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood are behind many of the attacks, which have increased over the last two years, according to Shawky F. Karas, president of the American Coptic Association. He cited a recent incident in the Upper Nile village of Tawfikia in which a Coptic priest and his two sons were killed and his wife attacked. The attackers, Karas said, were punishing the priest for persuading one of his flock “not to adopt the Islamic religion.”

Israeli ambassador Simcha Dinitz told Baptist leaders in a one-and-a-half-hour meeting late last month that he would “put all his weight” behind efforts to stop harassment of Christians in Israel who might be adversely affected by the new antiproselyte law. The law, passed by the Israeli Knesset last April, makes it a criminal action to offer “material benefit” to a person in Israel to “induce him to change his religion.” Baptists and other Christians worry that local Israeli officials will interpret the law in ways that will harm Israeli Christians and Christian ministries.

Five oriental Orthodox churches endorsed the idea of reuniting with the Roman Catholic Church at a meeting in Vienna last month. They concluded that most major doctrinal issues could be settled but have not resolved differences over the role of the pope. The churches split from Rome and the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy when they rejected parts of the creed of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. The churches are the Coptic in Egypt, the Armenian, the Ethiopian, the Syrian Jacobite, and a Syrian church in south India.

The new Spanish constitution would guarantee religious liberty and disestablish the Roman Catholic Church as the state church. Still in draft form, the constitution does specify that the state “will maintain cooperative relations with the Catholic Church and the other confessions.” The draft is now being finalized by the Cortēs (lower house), but then must be approved by the Spanish Senate and by a national referendum before being proclaimed into law by King Juan Carlos.

Religion In Transit

The thirteen-member governmental Ethics Advisory Board began public hearings last month to study the moral issues involved in government funding for research of “in vitro fertilization”—the technique that gave birth to “test tube baby” Louise Brown. The board—which includes lawyers, doctors, businessmen, a medical ethicist, and a Catholic priest—is gathering testimony on the subject, and will decide early next year whether funds should be released for “test tube baby” research (banned since 1973). A Harris poll of 1,500 American women taken shortly after Miss Brown’s birth showed 85 per cent approval of test tube procedures for women who can’t conceive normally.

A coalition of the American Indian Movement and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference may be in the offing. SCLC president and United Methodist minister Joseph Lowery visited AIM activist leader Russell Means in his Sioux Falls, South Dakota, jail cell, and said afterwards, “We discussed how black and Indian leadership might work together for a common objective—legislation and programs that fight poverty in our respective communities.”

About 800,000 orders are being filled for the newly published Lutheran Book of Worship, but controversy surrounding the hymnal hasn’t died. Paul Peterson, LCMS pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota, who helped develop the book while serving on the LCMS Commission on Worship, was upset when the LCMS rejected the hymnal for containing false doctrine and hymns “not compatible with Lutheran Theology.” Last month he left the synod, noting his “deep feeling of frustration” with the LCMS, to become associate pastor of a Lutheran Church in America congregation, also in St. Paul.

Corrie Ten Boom, 86, is resting in her Placentia, California, home after hospital treatment for a stroke she suffered in August. The popular author and lecturer has almost completely recovered, though therapists are still working to help her overcome some speech difficulties.

About 1,000 Spanish-speaking Catholics held a rally in San Bernardino, California, last month to protest the selection of an Anglo, Philip Straling, as bishop-designate of the new Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino. Sixty-five per cent of 235,000 Catholics in the diocese are Hispanic. Rally supporters hope that their regional demonstration would be the first of many around the country to encourage more appointments of Spanish-speaking bishops. Leaders estimate that from one-fourth to one-half of the baptized Catholics in this country are Hispanic, but note that only eight of the 350 bishops are Hispanic.

CBS Television has dropped its long-running “Lamp Unto My Feet” and “Look Up and Live” Sunday morning programs in favor of a weekly ninety-minute news program, “Sunday Morning.” Network spokesmen say that religious news will be a regular feature of the show (scheduled to begin in mid-January) and that it will often be pre-empted for religious specials.

A rabbi and four women, who describe themselves as a Quaker, a Unitarian, a mother, and a “non-believer,” have obtained a court order blocking implementation of Kentucky’s “Ten Commandments law.” A Franklin County judge upheld their complaint that the law showed religious preference. Just days before, the attorney general of Kentucky had reaffirmed the constitutionality of the law, which was passed last June. It would require the display of framed copies of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, provided the copies are paid for by private donations.

The Regent College board of directors has elected James M. Houston as the first chancellor of the Vancouver school. Prior to his appointment, Houston had been the principal. Old Testament professor (and CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor-at-large) Carl E. Armerding was named acting principal to fill Houston’s vacated slot.

Personalia

The international headquarters of Nicky Cruz Outreach has been moved from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Colorado Springs. One hundred fifty acres of mountain property outside the city was given to him. He plans to train Christian parents to take troubled children into their homes.

Carl W. Tiller has been named director of the Interchurch Center, the building in Manhattan that houses Protestant, Jewish, and Roman Catholic agencies. Tiller had been associate secretary for the Baptist World Alliance since 1972.

As the announced U.S. national chairman for the global Here’s Life evangelism effort sponsored by Campus Crusade, Edward L. Johnson will seek funding to meet the one billion dollar goal set for the project. Johnson now is head of a holding company for eleven California savings and loan asociations.

At times the press mauled him, demonstrators booed him and threw garbage, leading churchmen shunned him or criticized him publicly, and multitudes were apathetic. Yet evangelist Billy Graham concluded his Skandia ’78 campaign in Scandinavia on a note of hope.

“I believe you are on the verge or at the beginning of a great spiritual awakening,” he told a near-capacity Stockholm audience of 10,000 on a bright Sunday afternoon early this month. “You have the people, the history, and the finances.”

Graham was also speaking to a vast television audience throughout Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. The five Stockholm crusade rallies were beamed from a fairground hall live or by videotape on closed-circuit TV to thirty-one churches and other meeting places in twenty-four cities in the three countries. Preliminary reports indicated that attendance ran as high as 80 per cent of the 50,400-seat capacity of all meeting locations combined. In Bergen, Norway, for example, 4,200 persons gathered in a 5,000-seat public hall for the first live telecast from Stockholm.

The evangelist also preached at a special Sunday morning service that was aired nationally from the Stockholm hall by one of Sweden’s two television channels (both are run by the government). On the preceding Sunday he preached to a stadium crowd of 20,000 in Oslo, Norway, and most of the rally was carried during prime time that night on Norway’s only TV channel. Presumably, the bulk of the 4.1 million Norwegians heard Graham preach the Gospel, along with many of the 8.3 million Swedes.

Hundreds of people streamed forward in both the live and television sites when Graham invited his listeners to receive Christ. It was a rare sight in Scandinavia, where church membership and attendance have been sharply declining.

Lutheranism is the stated faith of the land in both Norway and Sweden, claiming more than 90 per cent of the population in each country. Laced with theological liberalism, it is cool—and sometimes hostile—toward revival emphasizing personal acceptance of Christ. At the same time, it clings to past ways and rituals, which fail to attract the younger generation.

The ecclesiastical situation is not as bleak in Norway as it is in Sweden, yet it was in Norway that Graham encountered his stiffest opposition. Newspapers complained about the costs of the evangelistic campaign, about foreign “methodology” in religious matters, about Graham’s past association with Richard Nixon, and about his hawkishness toward communism years ago. Lutheran bishop Andreas Aarflot of Oslo was quoted as saying that what happens every day in the churches of Norway is more important than the visit of an evangelist. A coalition of groups and individuals formed “Action Billy Graham ’78” to oppose him. Members included scientists, psychologists, actors, writers, and a radical group known as the Heathen Society. They released press statements, held public meetings, and discouraged people from attending the single Graham evangelistic meeting in Oslo. The Heathen Society warned that it would attempt to disrupt the stadium rally.

In a crowded press conference, Graham handled the tough questions and criticisms deftly, and he even scored a point or two of his own. He said he agreed with Bishop Aarflot, then explained that there can be no reaping without long-term cultivation. (He later visited Aarflot in a three-hour meeting described by an aide as “cordial,” though he declined to endorse the Graham campaign. Two of the ten bishops voiced approval, however, and two were said to be sympathetic.)

Graham spoke at several Christian leadership gatherings while he was in town. At a crowded pastor’s meeting, a young woman member of the Heathen Society hurled a mixture of red paint and chemicals that splashed on (but did not stain) the evangelist’s suit and white shirt. “I love that young woman because Christ loves her,” said Graham after she was ushered out.

Both the believers and the opposition stepped up their activity on the weekend of the stadium meeting. There were Christian youth rallies, open-air meetings in downtown plazas, and a Saturday night torchlight witness march through downtown streets, led by the marching brass band of the Filadelfia Church in Oslo, a large Pentecostal congregation. In all, about 2,000 persons were involved. Action ’78 members debated Christians at the open-air meetings and handed out anti-Graham leaflets.

In the forefront of the Action ’78 coalition was Levi (pronounced LEH-vee) Fragell, a leader of the Humanist Society. Fragell, 40, is the son of a well-known Norwegian Pentecostal evangelist and was himself a preacher until he dropped out of the faith at age twenty-two. A former journalist, he is press secretary for the Minister of Justice. Some Graham campaign workers suspected that he was behind government roadblocks that slowed down preparations for the television phase of the campaign, but no one offered proof. Fragell, who complained about Graham’s alleged ease of access to the government TV monopoly, said that his university training had convinced him that Christianity is not true. Young people and children need to be protected from the psychological manipulation of evangelists, he said.

At the Stadium, two dozen Heathen Society demonstrators, applauded by 100 or so scattered sympathizers, kept things stirred up amid chilly overcast conditions and showers. The same woman who had thrown the red mixture at Graham slashed the ropes holding a large thematic banner behind the choir, then climbed a tall light tower to unfurl a sign that had been hidden there earlier. Its message: “When Christians get power, they will kill!” Police arrested her. (Posters of the Heathen at the earlier rallies contained obscenities.) A young woman hidden on another light tower let loose a long blast on an air horn that drowned out all other sound. She also showered leaflets on the crowd. Pockets of demonstrators chanted, “Billy, go home.” Four men ran onto the field but were hauled off quickly, and the crowd applauded. Their apparent mission was to light fuses to smoke bombs beneath the platform, but these had been discovered and removed before the meeting.

Graham and his interpreter, Pentecostal editor Oddvar Nilsen, retained their composure and kept on preaching. The evangelist urged love for the demonstrators. Relatively few responded publicly to his invitation to receive Christ, possibly because of the confusion and uncertainty, possibly because of cultural and other reasons.

As Graham left the field, surrounded by aides and reporters, the Heathen—just a few yards away—threw plastic bags of garbage. Several splattered reporters. None hit the evangelist.

Many of the press reports the next day of the stadium rally were fairer than pre-rally coverage, and some were even favorable to Graham. Several papers editorialized against the demonstrators. A number of individuals in the Action ’78 group disavowed the Heathen tactics and announced they were bowing out of the anti-Christian coalition. Many complaints were registered against Fragell for his role in the opposition efforts. Little of the disturbance came through on the televised portions, and viewers thought the applause was for Graham’s preaching.

Most Norwegians seemed embarrassed at the way Graham was treated, and an outpouring of support for him came from the Christian community. Working together in campaign preparations brought unity to many Christians, said Anfin Skaaheim, director of the Norwegian phase of Skandia, and the demonstrations created even more unity. More than 2,000 people were trained for counseling and follow-up ministries in the television phase of the campaign, and they will be a force for spiritual good in Norway in the years ahead.

A quieter time awaited Graham in Sweden. Crowds ranged from 7,000 to 10,500 in the fairground hall. The people listened intently as Graham preached. Responses to the invitations were slow at first, but a “breakthrough”—as Graham’s aides described it—came on the third night, when a number of young people walked forward. At the end, revival-like conditions prevailed.

Supplementing the 800-voice choir of volunteers from many churches were American singers George Beverly Shea (of Scandinavian descent), Evie Tournquist (who addressed the crowds and sang in both Norwegian—her parents’ tongue—and Swedish), and Myrtle Hall. Several associate evangelists assisted with preparatory preaching campaigns in other cities, and a team of 100 technicians under the direction of British communications specialist David Rennie tended the complicated television responsibilities.

Sven Bergholm, an Orebro Mission Society (Baptist) pastor who served as General Chairman of the Stockholm Crusade, said at the closing Sunday meeting, “We thank Billy Graham, who has kept the cross central in his preaching … This means that some have turned away from his platform, but millions of others have found life.” Bergholm told a reporter later, “I think it’s God’s time for Scandinavia. We need Billy Graham’s kind of preaching here.”

Not everyone agreed. There were bitter attacks against Graham in the press, and two television specials gave distorted views. “Spiritual rape,” snapped one writer in describing the response to Graham’s invitations to receive Christ. Many young people walked to the front of the hall, some of them weeping, and a paper ran a picture with a headline, “Weeping children at the feet of Billy Graham.” Aftonbladet, the big afternoon daily, bellowed, “Children can be hurt.” A high school welfare official charged that Graham had violated child-protection laws. (Among other things, the laws forbid parents to spank their children, and violators are subject to jail or loss of their children.)

The young people had another view, though. A seventeen-year-old and her boyfriend who came forward indicated that their tears were from a sense of release and happiness. Others gave similar explanations. An obviously happy young woman who had decided for Christ at the meeting the previous night said that she had prayed, “God, if you exist, please let me be a new person when I come home.”

Most of the evangelist’s clergy support came from the Free (non-Lutheran Protestant) Churches. Archbishop Olaf Sundby of Uppsala, Primate of the Church of Sweden and a president of the World Council of Churches, was out of the country during the meetings. In a private statement to a crusade leader earlier, he said he believes that Graham is a man of God, and he said he would pray for the campaign.

Bishop Ingmar Stroem of Stockholm was cool toward Graham, but Bishop E. Gartner of Gothenburg—an evangelical—supported him. (Graham held a successful crusade in Gothenburg in January, 1977. This year, several theologians at the state church’s theological faculty [seminary] in Uppsala released a paperback book criticizing Graham and the Gothenburg meetings.)

Christianity in Sweden is usually traced to Ansgar, the pioneer missionary monk from Denmark, who baptized his first Swedish convert in 830. In 1544 the parliament declared Sweden an “evangelical kingdom.” About fifty years later the country officially became Lutheran. All Swedes were considered members of the church. About 95 per cent of the Swedes still belong, but only 3 per cent or so are in a Lutheran service on most Sundays. Per capita giving is about US$1.50 per year.

Curiously, a large number of Free Church members are also members of the state church even though they never attend. These are troubled times for the Church of Sweden. There is a shortage of pastors to serve its 2,600 parishes. Few young people are active in the church. In some parishes not one person shows up for the Sunday service. Controversies rage over the ordination of women and over government-initiated proposals aimed at achieving separation of church and state. Women have been ordained in the church since 1958, thanks to government legislation, and there are now about 275 female ministers. A conscience clause was written into the 1958 law enabling a minister opposed to the ordination of women to be exempted from ministerial duties that “would be contrary to this conviction about such ordination.” The clause also contained a vaguely worded guarantee that a candidate could not be denied ordination because of his beliefs about women’s ordination. Some parliament members have introduced proposals to scrap the conscience clause.

Published surveys show that nearly half of the church’s ministers are opposed to women’s ordination and that one-third will leave the church if the issue is pressed. A few already have left.

An assembly of the church has been called for early next year to deal with the ordination controversy and the church-and-state separation issue. The separation proposals are the result of twenty years of work. If enacted, they would rescind the right of parishes to levy taxes (collected as part of the local income tax), provide the church with an annual government compensatory grant of more than US$80 million, and give the church control over its own affairs.

Church members would pay a church levy, and the government would assist in collecting it. Population records would be shifted to a secular office, and the church would oversee burials only upon request. In families where parents are members, children would be considered adherents only up to the age of eighteen years if not baptized by then.

Ten bishops have endorsed the proposals, but three—including Stroem in Stockholm—have voiced opposition. The three say the provisions on membership are “entirely unusable” because “personal decision shall be the decisive factor for membership in the Church of Sweden … This would change the present church into a more restricted structure in which people, uncertain of their faith, could not be accommodated.” The prospect of the “drastically reduced number of members … would, in turn, bring about a weakening of the financial resources of the church,” they warn.

Accords by both church and state are needed before the proposals can become law. All of the major church organizations are on record favoring the changes.

As for the church’s spiritual problems, there is evidence that the growing charismatic influence in its midst may provide the basis for renewal, according to observers inside and outside the church. Bible study, evangelistic concern, and personal spirituality are hallmarks of the movement, they say. Others, though, see little hope without theological reform in the seminaries at Lund and Uppsala.

Revivals are not unknown in Sweden’s history. Pietists had an impact in the eighteenth century. Later many received Christ under the preaching of British Methodist George Scott, chaplain at the British embassy. After he was thrown out of Sweden in the 1830s for his activities, a well-educated Lutheran lay leader—Charles Rosenius—took his place on the preaching circuit. He became pastor of Bethlehem Church in Stockholm and a leader in the Evangelical National Missionary Society (ENMS), a theologically conservative and semi-independent movement within the Church of Sweden. The movement split in 1878 over doctrinal and polity issues, and from the schism the Swedish Mission Covenant Church emerged, a congregational denomination that grew to more than 150,000 members in this century (it is now down to 87,000).

The new denomination produced some of Sweden’s greatest evangelists, among them Frank Mangs, Bertil Paulson, and John Hedlund. It is a pluralistic group, sheltering evangelicals and neo-orthodox Baptists and Pedo-Baptists alike under the same church roof. Its members gave Billy Graham strong support in Stockholm. The ENMS, meanwhile, has retained its evangelical emphasis, but its adherents have declined from a high of about 100,000 in 1940 to 25,000 or so today.

Baptists appeared on the scene in the 1840s and grew rapidly (63,500 members in 684 congregations in 1930) despite persecution by the state church. Controversies over doctrine and polity, however, prompted three schisms that produced the Free Baptist movement (1,500 members today), the Pentecostal movement (95,000 members), and the Orebro Mission Society (20,000 members), a Pentecostal Baptist body. The parent Swedish Baptist Union currently has about 22,000 members. It is theologically pluralistic.

Other groups include the Salvation Army (38,000 members), Methodists (8,000 members), and the Swedish Alliance Mission. Altogether, the Free Churches have about 300,000 members, representing a sharp decline over the past twenty years.

The largest Free Church congregation in Scandinavia is the 6,000-member Filadelfia Church in Stockholm, the anchor congregation of the 550-church Pentecostal movement in that country, one of the few church bodies registering growth. About 2,000 attend Sunday morning services at the 3,000-seat church; other members attend services at branch locations. Filadelfia was ejected from the Baptist Union in 1913 over the issues of open communion and Pentecostalism. Its pastor, Lewi Pethrus said he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit during a visit with English Methodist Thomas B. Barratt.

Pethrus also was a key figure behind the growth of Swedish Pentecostal foreign missionary thrust. Today some 900 Swedish Pentecostals are serving abroad. A success story: Rwanda, Africa, where a Swedish-spawned work has grown from 1,000 members in 1960 to 66,000 members presently.

A dispute among Pentecostals in Norway has spilled over to Sweden and is causing division. It revolves around the booming ministry of popular Norwegian charismatic leader Aril Edvardsen, who has been ostracized by the main Pentecostal leaders in Norway, mostly over issues of methodology and power. Filadelfia has come out against Edvardsen, while Pastor Stanley Sjoeberg of City Church—leader of the Sweden charismatic movement—supports him.

For part of one week, though, the disputes and the dreariness of the Swedish ecclesiastical scene seemed to be forgotten as people gathered in a hall and heard words of life and hope from Graham. Outside, as if in affirmation, the sky cleared on Sunday afternoon and the flaming yellows, oranges, and reds of the foliage seemed to come alive in the crisp autumn air. It was a bright day for the Swedes.

The Short Papacy: A Hard Act To Follow

Pope John Paul’s thirty-four-day papacy was the shortest since Leo XI’s twenty-six-day stint in 1605. But John Paul’s four-and-a-half weeks in the Vatican may have transformed the climate for Roman Catholic papacy for years to come.

When the College of Cardinals began meeting to select a new pope for the second time in two months, its choice of a successor to John Paul loomed as a much tougher assignment than for Paul VI. By his contagious charm and creative style in stressing continuity, the former Patriarch of Venice had raised expectations for healing in the Roman Catholic Church. There had been little time for John Paul to firmly imprint his policies on the church, but the direction was already clear: conservatism in doctrine and discipline, liberalism in the use of authority and in openness to culture.

An outgoing person with a pastoral image who called to mind a popular predecessor, Pope John XXIII, John Paul by his interregnum made it doubly difficult for the College of Cardinals to again elect a diplomat in the curial mold. But, as Monsignor John A. Egan of University of Notre Dame observed, “These are exactly the same cardinals who elected John Paul.”

When the cardinals chose John Paul, they had been looking for a neutral figure who could heal the conservative-reformist rifts that had been widened by fifteen years of constant change. They wanted an Italian pastor in the 62-to-68 age bracket who would be doctrinally firm but conciliatory.

Their criteria would remain roughly the same this time. And, as on the two preceding occasions, the College of Cardinals had to select a man who would not incur the veto of the arch-conservative bloc. It was reported that Paul VI and John Paul both received at least twenty blank ballots from the traditionalists—a thinly veiled warning to liberal candidates.

But without John Paul on the scene, the cardinals would have to bend on at least one criterion (age or pastoral background, for instance). Observers expressed strong doubts that the tenuous coalition that elected John Paul in record time could duplicate their feat, even in a much longer time span.

Tackling ‘Big Daddy’

A United States trade embargo of Uganda was virtually assured late last month by virtue of an amendment that passed both houses of Congress. The amendment, attached to International Monetary Fund legislation, was the work of Senators Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) and Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.). All it needed was President Jimmy Carter’s signature.

The fragile economy in Uganda is based solely on coffee exports, and the United States bought one-third of its coffee exports in 1977 at a cost of $245 million. Hatfield maintains that as Uganda’s largest free-world trading parter the United States provides much of the hard currency essential for keeping Amin’s repressive regime in power. Hatfield said that more than 85 per cent of Amin’s revenues come from international coffee sales, and “finance some 20,000 mercenaries that make up the Ugandan army. Take away Amin’s revenue sources,” Hatfield said in a Senate floor speech, “and you eliminate his base of military strength.” The embargo is intended to weaken Amin’s hold so that the people of Uganda can take action against him.

Senator Weicker faulted the Carter administration for not matching its human rights rhetoric with action. The boycott, he says, “would put the United States on record before the world as refusing to traffic with a genocidal madman.”

Hatfield, who has been working toward the Uganda embargo since early last spring, believes his commitment to this issue is based on biblical values. Amin’s regime, he declares, is responsible for the deaths of between 250,000 and 500,000 people.

Latin Evangelicals: A Mind Of Their Own

About 300 delegates made ecumenical history at meetings last month of the Assembly of Latin American Churches. Amid the tropical vegetation of a government-owned vacation spot, Oaxtepec, near Mexico City, the delegates laid the foundations for a Latin American Council of Churches—though no permanent structure was established.

Debate on the proposal was heated at times. But the mood at the conference was generally cordial, despite the diversity of those who attended. The delegates represented 20 countries, 110 churches, 10 ecumenical agencies, and many denominations. The theme: “The unity of the people of God and their role in Latin America.” That unity was expressed during indepth Bible studies of Ephesians and daily premeeting worship programs.

During workshops and plenary sessions, the delegates mulled over major papers that dealt with the mission and unity of the Latin American church. Of particular note were papers presented by Carmelo Alvarez, new rector of Latin America Theological Seminary in San José, Costa Rica, and by Emilio Castro, head of the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches.

Even before the meetings convened, many delegates had decided that the time was not right for creation of a Latin American church council. There was, however, overwhelming acceptance of a proposal by World Council of Churches official José Miguez Bonino for creation of a “Council of Churches in Formation.” Delegates elected twelve persons from six regions of Latin America and asked them to get reactions on the proposal. They will report back in four years, when a final decision will be made.

The delegates summarized their activities and recommendations in a newsletter sent to churches and related organizations throughout Latin America. The letter included a plea “to respond to the demands of justice of the kingdom of God in obedient and radical discipleship.”

When delegates set aside ecumenical matters, they discussed human rights. The church, heard the delegates, needs to remember the forgotten people in Latin America—the women, children, political prisoners and their families, the elderly, and Indian tribespeople.

The crisis in Nicaragua peaked during the conference, and delegates prayed for that nation and its bloody civil war. They wrote letters to various United States and Latin American agencies. The delegates expressed solidarity with the rebels who were fighting against Nicaraguan president Samoza, and pointed out the human rights abuses of his administration. Conference leaders took an offering and sent the money to a church agency already working with the poor of Nicaragua. The group sent a delegation to local churches in Nicaragua.

Delegates had mixed reactions to the meeting. Some delegates liked the appeal given to Latin church unity. Others felt uncomfortable with what they saw as links with causes such as Jimmy Carter’s approach to human rights.

Other people feared that leftist factions would dominate the meetings, which came close to fulfillment. These elements claimed that the CIA was infiltrating Latin churches, praised Cuba as the only free country in Latin America, and distributed propaganda leaflets during the sessions.

On the other hand, some delegates claimed that the conference was only a Protestant counterpart to the upcoming meeting of the Roman Catholic bishops of Latin America in Puebla, Mexico (CELAM III). That meeting should deal with similar issues, though observers claim that the bishops look more favorably on liberation theology than do Protestant Latin American churches. Yet the organizing committee for the evangelical assembly insists that any such connection between CELAM and Oaxtepec ’78 is mere coincidence.

That more than 80 per cent of the delegates took a strong evangelical position (close to 70 per cent were Pentecostal) determined the slant of debates, of voting, and above all, of the spiritual atmosphere. The latter not only silenced the leftist voices, but gave the elected body an evangelical mandate that it could not lightly dismiss.

In that sense, say observers, Oaxtepec ’78 was an important step for the Latin American evangelical churches, though nagging questions remain. If there is a leftist backlash, what form will it take and how effective will it be? Will Geneva honor the spirit of independence and leave one of its offspring in the hands of an overwhelmingly evangelical majority? The answers to these and other questions may emerge long before the next meeting convenes in four years.

PABLO E. PEREZ

European Believers: Grasping The Issues

Representatives from thirteen countries came to grips with real issues at a session of the European Evangelical Alliance Council held in London last month.

Regarding Spain, Portugal, and Greece, where governmental attitudes to religious liberty were ambivalent, the council was alert to the possibilities of pressure, since all three were applicants for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). Portugal, moreover, was in dire economic straits, not least because some 900,000 refugees from Angola had increased its population by close to 10 per cent. Many of the refugees had become receptive to the Gospel, but the country badly needs “a stable democratic government to lead it out of the dark tunnel whose exit still seems very far away.”

The growth and outreach of the cults were noted; in many parts of Europe there was a confrontation situation. Any proposed conference to discuss the matter was fiercely resented. Delegates thought, however, that the resort to litigation by the cultists was losing them sympathy. Some member countries reported a resurgence of Islam, and dissatisfaction that the WCC tended to regard Islam as another religion on the same basis as Christianity. There was no such toleration from the Muslim side. Although Christians had a concern for the physical well-being of Muslims in Western lands, there was a theological battle involved here, and a duty to press home the uniqueness of Christ.

The representative from one East European country called for greater discernment on the part of Western visitors behind the Iron Curtain. Too often they had not done their homework, and had established links with “generals without armies,” who spoke for no one but themselves and were not identifiably in the mainstream of the day-by-day evangelical testimony in their homelands.

Admitted to membership during the three-day London meetings was the Panhellenic (Greek) Evangelical Alliance. Its representatives were warmly welcomed by the Reverend A. Morgan Derham, the first British president in the twenty-five-year history of the European Evangelical Alliance.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Although published under primarily humanist auspices, theological libraries should be receiving The Skeptical Inquirer, which is a journal issued twice a year. It reports scientific investigation into claims of paranormal occurrences that many people accept in a religious way. Such religiosity rivals not only secular humanism but also biblical Christianity. The latest issue (spring-summer ’78, vol 2. no. 2) includes, for example, reports on Uri Geller, biorhythms, and the disinclination of the government to get back into investigating UFOs (contrary to the normal desire of government to get into anything it can). There were also ten major book reviews ($10/year [$15 for libraries], Box 5, Amherst Branch, Buffalo, NY 14226).

Such well-known evangelicals as Pete Gillquist, Jon Braun, and Jack Sparks have been involved in recent years with a church fellowship known as the New Covenant Apostolic Order. Subscribe to its new quarterly tabloid, Again, to find out more about the group ($2/year, P.O. Box 17047, Seattle, WA 98107).

Libraries serving students thinking about military chaplain service should subscribe to Chaplaincy, a quarterly published by the General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel (the major interdenominational organization in the field). The first issue appeared at the beginning of 1978, but it is a successor to the older Chaplain. The new beginning apparently is intended to herald a more practical orientation. A monthly four-page Chaplaincy Letter, a news supplement, comes with subscriptions, which cost $15/year from 5100 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Suite 310, Washington, DC 20016.

School and church libraries serving record listeners and concertgoers should add to their collections Contemporary Christian Music, a monthly tabloid launched in July, 1978. It is sent free to members of the music industry; others can receive it for $7.50 for twelve issues from 3633 W. MacArthur Blvd., Suite 400, Santa Ana, CA 92704. There are numerous special columns, including ones for news from the east, the west, and Nashville. There are also top twenty-five listings under three categories: contemporary, southern gospel, and inspirational/M.O.R. (middle of the road).

Theological libraries, as well as many individuals with a special interest in Jewish studies, will want to subscribe to the newly launched quarterly, Shoah: A Review of Holocaust Studies and Commemorations. Impressive sponsors and editorial board members have been assembled. Obtain the next four issues for $6 from the National Jewish Conference Center, 250 W. 57th St., Suite 923, New York, NY 10029.

Christians interested in the arts should be aware of Arkenstone, “a bimonthly journal created to provide an arena for artistic expression and discussion within an historical biblical perspective.” The May-June, 1978, issue, was vol. 2, no. 3 and included articles on Clyde Kilby and Evelyn Waugh, as well as on poetry and parables ($5/year; Box 12926, St. Louis, MO 63141).

The West Changes Its Mind

Modern European Thought: Continuity and Change in Ideas, 1600–1950, by Franklin L. Baumer (Macmillan, 1977, 541 pp., $14.95), is reviewed by William W. Wells, visiting professor of church history and historical theology, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

To say that the title of Baumer’s book lacks punch is an understatement; because of that, I almost refused to review it. After reading the first twenty or thirty pages, I forgave the author his unfortunate title, for the book is excellent.

Modern European Thought traces the major shift in intellectual perspective that has occurred in the West since 1600. At the beginning of that period, Europeans thought in terms of a static universe; today, Europeans and their American descendants conceptualize their world in dynamic terms. In Baumer’s words, we no longer think in terms of “being,” but in terms of “becoming”; he focuses on that shift.

The author raises what he takes to be the five perennial questions (at least in the West): what ought one to think about God, nature, man, society, and history. Having posed these questions, Baumer says that he will examine how they were answered during each of four centuries, seventeenth through twentieth. That’s the introduction. Baumer then plunges headlong into a discussion of how Europeans understood nature during the seventeenth century. From there on, the book unfolds as one might expect up to the half way point. The nineteenth century, however, turns out to be a special case. Baumer confesses that he can find no unified perspective in the welter of opinion current at that time. So while retaining his five major questions, he divides the chapter on the nineteenth century into subsections entitled, respectively: The Romantic World, The New Enlightenment, The Evolutionary World, and Fin-de-Siecle. In the final chapter, he returns to his original structure; our present century manifests a unified thought pattern: the triumph of becoming.

Throughout the book, Baumer majors in philosophy (although Hegel receives less attention than I would have expected). But he also extensively treats theology, political thought, philosophy of history, and the history and philosophy of science. Forty-two well chosen plates illustrate the shift in perspective from the history of art. (Regrettably they were poorly reproduced by the publisher.) Occasional references are made to European literature.

The task was ambitious; I am delighted to report that the author was equal to the task. Given the subject matter, the work could have been ponderous, but to the contrary it was exciting and stimulating to read. Furthermore, the book shows not only that a shift in perspective occurred between 1600 and 1950, but also the reasons for that shift.

Don’t relegate this book to an ivy-covered tower, however. The implications of Baumer’s study for the understanding and presentation of the Christian faith are many. For example, if the average contemporary person does in fact think at the deepest level in terms of a dynamic, changing cosmos, how can one speak to such a person as the God who is the same, yesterday, today, and forever?

Baumer’s study is essential for ministers and college and seminary teachers. It will be a standard work for years to come.