A first-hand report.

‘We wanted to bring the Soviets into the dock of world opinion.’

In august, 1975, representatives of thirty-five nations including the Vatican signed the Helsinki Final Act, a document designed to bring greater security and cooperation to Europe. The Act, though not a binding treaty, has had extraordinary impact upon the signatory states and upon world public opinion. It legitimatized the post-1945 European borders and encouraged scientific and cultural exchange. The Act’s third section (“Basket Three”) contains some striking provisions that have caused observers to wonder why the Soviet Union agreed to such language.

“The participating states recognize and respect the liberty of the individual to profess and practice on his own, or in common with others the religion or creed, acting according to the dictates of his own conscience … will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion … They will promote and encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and other rights and freedoms, all of which derive from the inherent dignity of the human person … will deal in a positive and humanitarian spirit with the application of persons who wish to be reunified with members of their family … as expeditiously as possible … facilitate wider travel by their citizens for personal or professional reasons … confirm that religious faiths, institutions, and organizations, practicing within the constitutional framework of the participating states … can have contacts and meetings among themselves and exchanges among young people by encouraging increased exchanges.”

The thirty-five nations also agreed to meet in Belgrade in October, 1977, for a “compliance meeting,” or as a veteran European diplomat put it, “A chance to give each other report cards, a kind of grading system to determine who were good boys and girls, and who were not.” After six months the meeting ended in a deadlock over the wording of a public statement of principles and recommendations. The United States wanted the human rights issue specifically mentioned in the concluding document; the Soviet Union did not. After weeks of bitter wrangling, a bland three-page final statement was hammered out with no reference to human rights. But, like so many diplomatic communiques, the true meaning is obscured from the casual reader, and only those who struggle know precisely what it means.

Several high U.S. government officials have told me they are pleased with the document. The thirty-five nations did resolve “to implement fully, unilaterally, bilaterally, and multilaterally all the provisions of the Final Act.” For the U.S. and its allies the key word is “unilaterally.” This is a commitment by the Soviet Union to carry out the human rights provisions within its own borders. The concluding document also states that the Belgrade Conference “in itself was a valuable contribution towards the achievement of the aims of the Helsinki Final Act.” And although “consensus was not reached on a number of proposals,” another compliance meeting will be held in Madrid in November, 1980 (not coincidently, a week after the American Presidential election). The National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry, founded six years ago by the American Jewish Committee and the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, sent a seven-person delegation during the Belgrade Conference to press for full implementation of Basket Three. The group represented evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and was made up of clergy and lay people, men and women, blacks and whites—a microcosm of America’s religious communities. From the moment the Interreligious Task Force arrived in the Yugoslavian capital, it was clear that Basket Three and the issue of human rights dominated the proceedings.

While in Belgrade the Task Force met with the leaders of six delegations (the United States, Great Britain, Holland, Spain, the Vatican, and Hungary), as well as with Senator Robert Dole, Senator Claiborne Pell, and Representative Millicent Fenwick. Fenwick and Senator Clifford Case were the coauthors of the bill that established the official United States “watchdog” commission, an extremely valuable body that collects and publishes data, complaints, and testimony relating to the Final Act’s many provisions.

The Helsinki Final Act is best understood as a rough equation: Basket One (borders) plus Basket Two (technical and scientific exchange) equals Basket Three (human rights and religious liberty). Most Western and neutral countries agreed with the arithmetic, but the Soviet Union and many of the Eastern European nations did not, hence the great difficulty in agreeing on a statement of consensus in Belgrade.

Everywhere the American religious leaders went in Belgrade’s sleek new Sava Conference Center they heard the same question: “How serious is the United States’s commitment to human rights and how much is the Soviet Union willing to yield on this issue to gain the advantages of Baskets One and Two?” Our Western allies (the NATO and Common Market countries) were all more or less committed to Basket Three (who, after all, in the so-called Free World is opposed to human rights?). The real question was what price does a Western nation have to pay vis-à-vis the Soviet Union for its pro-Basket Three stance? Will it suffer economically? Will the Soviet Union threaten it militarily or diplomatically?

Just as the United States provides a “nuclear shield” for the West, so, too, at Belgrade our government supplied our allies with a “human rights shield.” Wielding that shield and leading the campaign against the Soviet Union was the head of the American delegation, Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, a personal appointment of President Carter. Goldberg was the only diplomat of international stature and reputation at the conference. The other thirty-four nations sent middle-level foreign service types to Belgrade, a clear reflection of their view of the conference.

Because of Justice Goldberg’s vigorous leadership and his long involvement in the struggle for human rights and religious liberty, there was a tendency at Belgrade to “let Arthur do it.” He was the one diplomat who publicly cited the names of Soviet Jews and Christians who are “Prisoners of Conscience,” he listed the dates of arrest, the jails where the prisoners are being held, and the alleged charges against them. Goldberg put the muscles, sinews, and flesh of specificity onto the skeleton of abstract commitment to human rights. Justice Goldberg clearly dominated the Sava Center as he attempted to rally the timid and diffident, the fence-sitters, and the human rights relativists. His acknowledged mediation skills were a great asset as he dealt with such disparate states as San Marino, the Soviet Union, Canada, Bulgaria, Malta, and the Vatican.

The Holy See pursued a delicate and highly nuanced policy at Belgrade. One of the Vatican officials in Belgrade stated it most clearly to the visiting Interreligious Task Force delegates: “We were aggressively against the Soviet Union after World War II … in Italy, in Hungary, Poland, many places. Now we have shifted to nonpublicized interventions in human rights. Of course, we are committed to religious liberty and Basket Three, but by quiet diplomacy, at the right time and the right place—efficacy, efficacy, that’s the important thing.”

Pope Paul’s public condemnation of the recent trials of Soviet dissidents was especially welcome since we were told in Belgrade not to expect any statements or public interventions from the Vatican that call attention to the many Christian and Jewish prisoners in the Soviet Union.

If Arthur Goldberg was the central personality present at Belgrade, there were two persons who hovered over the Sava Center like Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth. One was Anatoly Shcharansky, the imprisoned young Soviet Jewish engineer. His case was mentioned often, especially by the American delegation, at both the public and private conference sessions, as well as in the corridors. Shcharansky, charged with treason by the Soviet authorities, had been held in jail for over a year without a trial and without the right to select his own attorney. He has been called a “CIA agent,” a charge that President Carter has publicly denied. Shcharansky is a leader in the Soviet Jewish activist community and he is also a key member of the ad hoc Helsinki monitoring groups that have been set up inside the Soviet Union. Thus, Shcharansky represents both symbolically and actually two important forces in Soviet society today. His arrest, detention, trial, and lengthy sentence, was a calculated attempt to intimidate and stifle all human rights activities within the Soviet Union.

Pastor Georgi Vins, the Executive Secretary of the Churches of the Evangelical Christians and Baptists, is the other person whose case was vigorously pressed at Belgrade. As a leader of the free or underground Evangelical Church inside Russia, Vins is currently serving a five-year prison sentence with five additional years of exile after that. In 1975 he was found guilty of “unauthorized religious activities.” Soviet authorities are also harassing Pastor Vins’s nineteen-year-old son, Peter. This is part of the campaign to suppress the evangelical churches.

Shcharansky and Vins were the litmus paper tests of Belgrade. They were the linchpins of the Conference and because the Soviet Union is susceptible to public world opinion, and because it does react, sometimes in a Byzantine way, Belgrade was a highly important setting to bring the Soviets into the dock of world public opinion. And, indeed, one of the most hopeful signs emerging from the conference is that such compliance meetings will be held on a regular basis, the next scheduled for Madrid in two years.

Did the Belgrade Conference make a difference?

Yes, for several reasons. First, the Soviet Union was confronted with clearly documented cases of gross human rights violations, all in defiance of the Helsinki Final Act. The Press, especially in Western Europe, carried many articles on the continuing failure of the Soviets to implement Basket Three. Second, compliance meetings are now “regularized” (a bureaucratic term meaning the thirty-five nations will meet at set times to continue the process of reporting on compliance—the “report cards” will be issued again). Third, the argument that a nation’s “internal affairs” are not open to discussion or critique was shattered at Belgrade. After one of Ambassador Goldberg’s strong speeches about Soviet human rights violations, the Russians, in a mood of embarrassment and desperation sharply criticized alleged American human rights abuses (“the Wilmington N.C. Ten”). Goldberg welcomed discussion of American society and the Soviets by their anti-American statement tacitly confirmed the right of one nation to criticize another’s “internal affairs.”

Fourth, the governments and the peoples of Europe have now made heavy political, diplomatic, and emotional investments in the Helsinki Final Act. True cooperation and security now seems possible for all of Europe after centuries of strife and warfare. Human rights is part of that investment; it will be neither simple nor easy to remove it from the European scene. As if to confirm this view, the Soviet Union and the United States along with the other thirty-three nations have termed the Belgrade Conference a “success.” And the European peoples now have the reality and the hope of family reunification, student exchanges, human rights, and religious liberties. As religious men and women know so well, hope once experienced can never be taken away.

But the grave danger is that the specific human rights charges raised by Justice Goldberg at Belgrade will be viewed merely as an American concern. The Western nations and the Vatican must speak out clearly and often for all oppressed peoples in the Soviet Union. “Letting Arthur do it” may be a convenient and easy tactic for our allies, but it is ultimately self-defeating.

A Pilgrim’S “Cantabile” For Flight

With Pachebel’s D Major Canon still

At large in me, and all my heaven-bound

Enthusiasm straining hard to will

One will, I vowed to run but heard a sound

That beckoned me to walk a charted road,

Deciding that a hurried pace was not

The way He took.

What’s more, I dropped the load

I thought I’d always bear; and found a plot

So undeserved, so filled with ecstasy

I cried my little boyhood heart to sleep,

And rested in His love-then woke to see

That all my promises were His to keep.

Now when I hear that repetitious tune,

I’m like a butterfly without cocoon.

JAMES A. REIN HARD

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Let’s face the hostility head on.

What advantage has the Jew?… Much, in every way! What if some of them were unfaithful?” Thus Saul of Tarsus, better known to history as Paul, who styled himself “a Hebrew of the Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5) expressed the attitude of one early Christian towards the Jews (Rom. 3:1–2). “I ask then, has God rejected his people? God forbid!” (Rom. 11:1).

Paul did not hesitate to criticize his ancestral people, even while attesting the zeal for God of unconverted Jews (Rom. 10:2). Paul’s prayer that Israel, which God had hardened against Jesus the Messiah, might yet be saved (Rom. 10:1) is cited by the contemporary German theologian, the late Paul Althaus, as an indication of the fact that “hardening” or “passing over” by God is not definitive, in the sense of double predestination. The relationship of believing Christians, Jews but especially Gentiles, to unbelieving Jews has always been a complex one. The special place of the Jewish people in God’s plan is acknowledged; God’s faithfulness to his covenant with them, despite their stubbornness, becomes a source of assurance to Gentile Christians as well, who also know themselves to be “chosen in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). The knowledge that God has a blessed future for the Jewish people despite their resistance to the claims of Christ encourages Gentiles to hope for their own unbelieving relatives, on the basis of the promise of Acts 16:31, even though they may see scant evidence of faith in members of their household. Yet, at the same time, as the Gentile disciple of Jesus acknowledges a certain primacy of God’s favor to the Jew, he frequently cannot avoid irritation and exasperation, or even anger, with the Jews who disdain the Messiah who came first for them, and only in the second place to the Gentile.

For this reason, it may well be true that it is precisely the Christians with the deepest sense of who Jesus Christ is and what he has done who can be most resentful, indifferent, or even contemptuous of Jewish attitudes towards Jesus. At the same time, it is also exactly those orthodox, fundamentalist, or evangelical Christians who do understand and acknowledge that the Jew had and still has a special place and dignity in God’s plan. The so-called liberal Christian may be a social anti-Semite, but is rarely a religious one, for he cannot blame the Jew for rejecting messianic claims he himself demythologizes. The conservative Christian may sense a terrible frustration, even anger, at the way in which the non-Messianic Jew rejects Jesus. Nevertheless, by the same biblical authority that tells him that Jesus is able to save him to the uttermost, the Gentile Christian also learns that the Jews retain a special place in God’s affection. Although Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles, in many respects he is the most deeply Jewish of New Testament writers; he repeatedly attests his continued love and respect for his former coreligionists.

Nevertheless, Paul’s philosemitism, if we may call it such, does not stand alone in the New Testament. John the Evangelist, called “the divine” by early Christians, although racially as Jewish as Paul, has contributed to Christian hostility to Jews by his frequent use of the term, “the Jews” for those Jews who rejected and killed Jesus. The Jews who accepted Jesus, in John’s language, are no longer called Jews. John’s distinction between “Jews” (those Jews who rejected the Messiah) and disciples (those, in John’s day almost all Jews, who accepted him) was not recognized by pagan contemporaries: for them Jews and Christians, at least at the outset, were all alike, even though it was occasionally the non-Messianic Jews who provoked the public authorities against the Christians, also largely ethnic Jews (e.g. Acts 18:12–23).

At the outset, unbelieving Jews provoked governmental reprisals against Christians as disturbers of the peace. But soon the shoe was on the other foot. Of all the civil uprisings and rebellions that troubled the Pax Romana, none was fiercer than the Jewish War of A.D. 66–70, which ended in the reconquest and destruction of Jerusalem. Prompted by what they took to be God’s guidance, members of the Jerusalem church fled the city before its fall. For this reason, Christian Jews were regarded as traitors by the Jewish survivors of the war, and from A.D. 70 onward there was no longer a significant distinctively Jewish Christian community. Converted Jews began to assimilate and to lose their ethnic identity among Gentile Christians. Unconverted Jews often confounded Gentile Christians, who claimed to be the legitimate heirs of Old Testament traditions, with their superior knowledge of the Bible. A converted Gentile philosopher, Justin Martyr (first half of the second Christian century), intellectually the most distinguished scholar among early Gentile converts, has given us an extensive defense of Christianity against learned Jewish objections, his Dialogue with Trypho (circa 150). Justin’s Dialogue sets a high level for religious discussion. It ends with Trypho wishing Justin a good voyage to Rome (where Justin ultimately won the martyr’s crown) and Justin in turn praying that Trypho and his friends might come to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.

Nevertheless, such Christian cordiality towards Jews, although frequently voiced in the writings of other Church Fathers, became more and more mingled with expressions of hostility. The third-century African Christian Tertullian contrasted Gentile learning unfavorably with the wisdom of Solomon. But—especially as pagans utilized Jewish attitudes to embarrass Christians—Christian rejection of the Jews and things Jewish became more common. The anti-Christian Emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363) made an attempt to involve the Jews in his short-lived effort to discredit Christianity by an attempt to rebuild their Temple. The tendency of the church in the patristic era to an otherworldly asceticism, and—especially since Augustine—to amillennialism, was accompanied by a growing disdain for the Jews. Thus, centuries later, a Lutheran amillennialist, John T. Mueller, calls premillennialism not merely a “figment of the human mind,” but, citing the Augsburg Confession, a Jewish opinion (Christian Dogmatics, Concordia, 1955, p. 621; the relevant article of the Augsburg Confession, XVII, is interpreted differently by Lutheran premillennialists, who hold that it condemns as a Jewish opinion only the view that there will be a return of Christ, or the Messiah, before any resurrection of the saints). The important thing to note here is that Christians have tended to be more hostile to the unconverted Jews of their day as they tended to spiritualize the biblical doctrine of the millennium and advocate an otherworldly, ascetic approach to discipleship. But it is precisely the characteristic of so-called fundamentalists and evangelicals not to spiritualize the millennium nor to mistake the biblical call for a separated life for a command to asceticism. Thus, among the most conservative Protestants, an emotional hostility to unbelieving Jews because of their denial of Christ is frequently mingled with grudging or even romantic admiration of the Jews for God’s acknowledged faithfulness to them.

The greatest of early Latin-speaking theologians, Augustine (354–435), frequently cited as one of the early representatives of Christian hostility to Jews, nevertheless places the ancient Jews head and shoulders above the pagans in his great theological study of history, The City of God (e.g. Book IV, chapter xxxiv). Augustine notes the grudging respect of the great pagan philosopher Seneca for the Jews, based on the fact that they alone among ancient peoples “know the cause of their rites.” He praises the superior spiritual discernment of Jews compared to Gentile peoples (On Christian Doctrine, Book III, chapter vi). Augustine’s older Greek-speaking contemporary, John Chrysostom, criticizes the Jews for rejecting Christ and gives evidence of some hostility, but claims, following Paul, to want to do away with “every suspicion of hatred.” Apparently Jews and Christians engaged in mutual conviviality, for the fourth-century Synod of Laodicaea prohibits feasting and sharing unleavened bread with Jews, classing them together with Christian heretics. The great fourth-century Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nyssa, warned against fellowship with unbelieving Jews as a temptation to apostasy. Although these synodical and theological warnings clearly evince a certain hostility to the Jews, they also give evidence of the fact that fraternization was by no means unknown.

It was the early Middle Ages, when a renewed “Roman Empire”—actually the Germanic kingdom of the Franks—sought to protect Europe from Islam that religiously based anti-Semitism became apparent among Christians. For a time the Muslims appeared intellectually superior to European Christians, and their Jewish interpreters and popularizers formed convenient targets for Christian hostility. When Christian Europe went on the offensive against Islam in the Crusades, in many cases the “infidels” within Europe—the Jews—suffered first. The spread of a Yiddish-speaking Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Russia, resulted from the dispersion of medieval German-speaking Jews in a series of persecutions that attended the Crusades (Yiddish is essentially medieval German written in Hebrew script and with many Hebrew loan-words).

The fact that an outbreak of anti-Semitism among Christians has several times coincided with conflicts between Christian Europe and Islam (under Charlemagne, during the Crusades, and during the wars for the liberation of Spain in the fifteenth century) should not be overlooked today, when the largely Muslim oil-producing nations are squeezing “Christendom”—Europe and America—and placing us under pressure to abandon support for the state of Israel. Where “Christian” anti-Semitism has flourished, it has generally done so in the context of a “Christian state,” where the Jews appeared as a threat to political rather than religious unity. (This offers a precise parallel to the persecution of Christians in pagan Rome, which was largely for political, not religious, reasons.) It is precisely the most spiritual of Christians—Wesleyans and other evangelicals in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Britain, Pietists in nineteenth-century Germany—who have been most tolerant of Jews and Jewishness. It was the anti-Christian Hitler, who also fought against both Protestantism and Catholicism, who unleashed the incredible “Holocaust” against European Jews. Many Jews today, especially in the context of the recent NBC television series, “The Holocaust,” are interpreting Hitler’s atrocities as the expression of religious, i.e. Christian, anti-Semitism. This is a dangerous error, for—as Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt pointed out—it is precisely the suppression of Christianity that sets the stage for virulent persecution of the Jews. Conversely, anti-Semitism is a phenomenon that paves the way for totalitarianism and the persecution of Christianity. Thus Christians have every reason to fear a rise of anti-Semitism, for it is a prelude to anti-Christianity, while Jews are ill-advised to foster secularism to the detriment of popular Christianity, for that in turn is a prelude to persecution of the Jews.

It is generally acknowledged that the Calvinistic wing of the Reformation was the least inimical branch of Christianity with respect to the Jews. Indeed, Calvin himself as well as his most rigorous followers was accused of obscuring the difference between the New Testament and the Old and with seeking to set up a Christian theocracy patterned on Old Testament Israel. Yet, Paul’s acknowledgment that God has maintained his covenant love for Israel appears in a paraphrase by John Calvin: “Of old, certain peculiar prerogatives of the church [by this term, Calvin means God’s covenant people, the Jews in the centuries before Christ, and particularly the New Testament people after Christ] remain among the Jews. In like manner, today we do not deprive the papists of those traces of the church which the Lord willed should among them survive the destruction. God had once for all made his covenant with the Jews … their treachery could not obliterate his faithfulness.… Whence the Lord called the children born to them his children” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Chapter ii: 11). Unfortunately, Martin Luther’s record is less creditable. At the beginning of his career as a Reformer, Luther optimistically set out to evangelize the Jews who, he was convinced, resisted the Gospel only because it had been so distorted by the papacy. Indeed, the Reformation itself was marked, at the outset, by the defense by scholars of Jewish religious literature against efforts to destroy it—instigated, as it happened, by Johann Pfefferkom, a converted Jew. In 1523, Luther wrote a tract, That Jesus Was Born a Jew, a touching tribute to the Messiah’s national origin. Later in life, Luther turned vehemently against the Jews. Like Luther’s attack on the German peasants during the Peasants’ War, his anger at the Jews was incited by what he considered a threat to the most central Gospel doctrine, that of justification by faith. Many of the antitrinitarians of the Reformation era deliberately appealed to Judaism in support of their views, while the trinitarian Anabaptists appeared to Luther to be using Jewish models to defend a new legalism that, in his eyes, was as dangerous to the Gospel as the Galatian error had been in Paul’s day.

Some Noteworthy Titles

Here are some of the titles released in the last year or so that should be of particular interest to our readers who want to learn more about Jews and Judaism.

A basic reference work, one that should be in just about any library from high school on up, is the New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, recently issued in its fifth edition, with major updating since it was first published in 1959. It is edited by Geoffrey Wigoder and published in America by Doubleday. The encyclopedia was prepared in Israel by some two hundred scholars and there are more than 2,000 double-column pages of entries on almost everything Jewish.

We Jews: Invitation to a Dialogue by Efraine Rosenzweig (Hawthorn) is by a rabbi with experience in trying to communicate something of the diversity of Jewishness to Christian audiences. Jewish Ideas and Concepts by Steven Katz (Schocken) attempts to give a systematic overview of Jewish religious thought. Rabbi: The American Experience by Murray Polner (Holt) is a popular account of what rabbis are like in a wide variety of settings. Christians need to recognize that much Jewishness does not express itself in religious categories, at least not the kind that Christians are used to. Ultraorthodox Jews make colorful copy on the press and TV documentaries but they are only one part of the Jewish people. For a good selection of writings by major, nontraditional thinkers, see Modern Jewish Thought edited by Nahum Glatzer (Schocken). An essentially secular position is frequently encountered among people of Jewish ancestry and is advocated in Humanistic Judaism by Sherwin Wine (Prometheus).

We need to read what Jews say of themselves as well as reading what Christians have to say. God Has Not Rejected His People by Richard De Ridder (Baker) is a brief book with useful suggestions for further reading. Most evangelical writing on Jews is from a dispensationalist stance, but De Ridder teaches at Calvin seminary, so his book is a welcome sign that other evangelicals can also be concerned about Jews. Contrary to what most Jews think a Jew can be a Christian. Judaism as a religion (to which non-Jews can convert) is distinguishable from ethnic Jewishness. Some recent Jewish Christian writings: Over the Stumbling Block: Inviting Jews to Jesus by Dan Wishnietsky (Broadman) is brief, with half of it relevant Scripture quotes; Chosen: Communicating With Jews of All Faiths by Lee Amber (Vision House) has a question-and-answer format and stresses diversity; Some of My Best Friends Are Christians by Zola Levitt (Regal) is a chatty, how-to-witness guide: Christ in the Passover by Ceil and Moishe Rosen (Moody), tells how Orthodox Judaism’s passover testifies to Messiah; The Underground Church of Jerusalem (Nelson) and the fictional An Israeli Love Story (Moody), both by Zola Levitt, give interesting but not definitive insights into Jewish Christianity in Israel. Jews and “Jewish Christianity” by David Berger and Michael Wyschogrod (Ktav) criticizes the kind of book mentioned above and is aimed in part at Jews who might convert.

Of special interest is Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation on Scripture, Theology, and History edited by Marc Tanenbaum, Marvin Wilson, and A. James Rudin (Baker). The book includes seventeen papers presented at a New York conference in 1975 between leading scholars and ministers from the evangelical and Jewish communities. Ecumenically oriented Christians are much more likely to have at least implicitly repudiated attempts to encourage Jews to accept Jesus as Messiah. For a collection of official statements by church groups see Stepping Stones to Further Jewish-Christian Relations compiled by Helga Croner (Anti-Defamation League). Samuel Sandmel’s When a Jew and Christian Marry (Fortress) is quite interesting. It is aimed at the couple who have already made the decision.

Honor the Promise: America’s Commitment to Israel by Robert Drinan (Doubleday) is a staunchly pro-Israel book by the Jesuit congressman from Massachusetts.

Finally, reading for a lifetime can be found in Bibliographical Essays in Medieval Jewish Studies, the second volume of a series launched in 1972 with The Study of Judaism: Bibliographical Essays and sponsored jointly by the Anti-Defamation League and Ktav Publishing House.

DONALD TINDER

Nevertheless, despite all the sympathy we can bring for Luther in his frustration at not being able to win the Jews to Christ and in his fear of a renewed legalism, it is impossible to excuse the attacks of his declining years, begun with a 1542 pamphlet, Against the Jews and Their Lies. On February 14, 1546, only a few days before his death, in what turned out to be his last sermon, Luther denounced the Jews and called on the civil authorities to deprive them of their citizenship and expel them from the land—measures later implemented, at the beginning of Jewish persecution, by none other than Adolf Hitler. It should be noted, however, that Luther’s anti-Jewish diatribes, far from being endorsed by Lutherans generally, caused great dismay among his friends and fellow-Reformers, notably Philip Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. It would be as wrong to reject the Lutheran Reformation because of Luther’s anti-Jewish outbursts as it would be to reject Calvin’s achievements because of his persecution of the antitrinitarian Miguel Servetus. In the case of the Jews, Calvin’s record is far more acceptable than Luther’s. He did not, it is true, exonerate them of the charge of crucifying Christ, but he correctly points out that “they had the same defense as that in which we [Gentile Christians] confidently glory” (Commentary on Romans, at 10:2). In Calvin’s view, converted Jews will obtain the first place in honor, “being, as it were, the first-born in God’s family” (11:26). Ultimately it was Calvin’s veneration for the Jews, rather than Luther’s final hostility, that has come to characterize conservative Protestantism, marked as it is in this area more by Calvinistic than by Lutheran theology. Later theologians in the Calvinist tradition—for example, Rousas J. Rushdoony in his Institutes of Biblical Law—at times express an admiration for the Jews that verges on adulation. During the Six Days’ War and accompanying oil crisis, it was the Netherlands—the most Calvinistic of European nations—that resolutely refused to abandon Israel for the sake of oil concessions. And it is Europe’s foremost Calvinist political thinker, Jacques Ellul, who continues to appeal to the conscience of the Christian West—if it still has one—to stand by Israel in the face of the ever mounting pressures from its numerically vastly stronger Arab antagonists.

In short, the attitude of Christians towards Jews, while by no means uniformly honoring to our Founder and his Jewishness, is certainly not one of persistent hostility. It is precisely the spiritual leaders of Christianity, especially but not only those in the Reformed and more recently dispensational traditions, who have praised and supported the Jews and their new national state. Where Christians have engaged in persecution and violence towards Jews, far from being because of their religion, it is usually identifiably the result of the triumph of political and economic forces over spiritual ones. In a thoroughly Christian commonwealth, such as Calvin sought to establish in Geneva and the Puritans planned in New England, Jews would always be slightly ill at ease and out of place. But they would never be persecuted. In a secularized society in rebellion against God and Christ—such as Hitler established in Germany and towards which we are evolving in the United States—there can be no guarantee of the security of Jews. As the most distinctive and most vulnerable religious community, the Jews can expect persecution from a militantly secularistic state. No Jewish efforts to blend in and become assimilated, even by the repudiation of religion and the adoption of atheism, will protect them, for the Old Testament covenants, like New Testament baptism, leave an “indelible mark” on those who have shared in them. What Jews experience in a militantly secularistic society can only be, for Christians as well, an ominous portent of things to come. In each other’s eyes, Jews and Christians may be religious antagonists, but in the eyes of this-worldly secularism, they are remarkably alike. Let no believing Christian think that abuse of the Jews will leave him untouched—and let no Jew think that a society that mocks and scorns the religion Jesus founded will long be gracious to the race from which, according to the flesh, he came.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

A question of culture.

The “homogeneous unit principle,” offered by Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission, has become a controversial subject. It stresses that churches grow most quickly along their own cultural lines—thus, for instance, you can expect a church that tries to combine black and white American cultures to grow very slowly, if at all. As an introduction for CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers, we asked Tim Stafford, west coast editor of Campus Life magazine, to get together C. Peter Wagner of Fuller Seminary and Ray Stedman, a pastor at Peninsula Bible Church, for a discussion of the principles.

Stafford: The New Testament upholds the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ, which overcomes cultural distinctions like Jew, Greek, slave, free. Dr. Wagner, why do you think we should maintain cultural homogeneity in the church?

Wagner: We need to ask the sociological question, “How do churches empirically grow?” When churches don’t grow, and the Great Commission is not being fulfilled because somehow the church is irrelevant to the community, what are the reasons for this? One of them, we’ve found, is a failure to discern the principle of homogeneity.

I think the sociological level is a starting point. The second level is biblical/theological/ethical. Even if the homogeneous unit principle does help reach the lost sheep and bring them into the fold, that is not a sufficient reason for a Christian to hold it. But we start by asking, “Do churches grow better?” We find that they do.

Stedman: I question the validity of making numerical growth a kind of supreme measure of whether a church is succeeding or not. We need to produce the kind of a church the Lord wants—one that mixes all castes, clans, creeds, and races. That’s what demonstrates the quality of reconciliation.

I would agree that numbers is a sign of health in a church, just as you can detect health in a child by the fact that he is growing. But culturally you should see gradual change. The world is always divided into classes, castes, racial and vocational divisions, and that’s where you need to start. But you mustn’t stay there.

For one thing, you lose the value of various backgrounds and the flavor of diversity. Second, you don’t demonstrate to the world the reconciling character of the Gospel. I don’t think people are impressed when they come into a church of, for example, Republicans at prayer. They don’t come out of a church like that and say, “My, what tremendous power is evident here.” What it appears to be is often what it really is: a social club made up of people who like the same life style. A church can grow like that, but it does not fulfill the mind of the Lord for the church.

It impresses people to see Republicans and Democrats living and loving and working together; likewise with hippies and businessmen, blacks and Chinese and whites.

Wagner: Empirical studies don’t bear this out. Churches where outsiders see their kind of people grow faster. Do you have any evidence that the other is really attractive?

Stedman: I can’t compare figures with you, but I can use our own church as an example of this. I think that we have some very distinct life styles mingling and comingling. Yet it’s a growing church. The walls keep bulging out; we have to keep getting new people; we have to start new services. All the marks of growth are there.

We have, for instance, a group of single adults that meets in a restaurant on Sunday mornings. It’s growing fast, now about 550 strong. It grew from about forty within five years time. It’s had three divisions and each one is growing just as rapidly as the original. But even within that group, there are all kinds of people.

Wagner: Suppose I were called to be pastor of your church, Ray. You left and I went in, and I said, “You know, one of the first things we ought to do here is, we ought to stop those singles from meeting alone in that restaurant. We ought to bring them into our married couples’ classes.” Would you agree with that procedure?

Stedman: No. As I say, I think there’s a basis for starting works on a homogeneous basis of appeal. Marital status is one.

Wagner: By describing a singles ministry where the singles meet by themselves, you’re describing the homogeneous unit principle.

Stedman: But it’s still a unit within the whole body of the church. We’re talking about the church itself as a unit. There may have been those kinds of divisions in the church at Jerusalem, but the whole of the church brings together those various groups.

Wagner: As the church growth movement has analyzed it, the larger the church gets in membership, the more it can absorb fellowships of different homogeneous units.

In our church, Lake Avenue Congregational, we detected a couple of years ago that one of our problems of growth was in the adult Sunday school. We knew that our Sunday school classes were getting too big. Since then our classes have been dividing and growing.

The Pathfinders were what you could classify as young parents. They were all white, similar educationally, from the same area, and so forth. But there were members from South Pasadena, Arcadia, and San Marino, who were upper socioeconomic. There was also a group of people who lived in Pasadena, Altadena, and San Gabriel, who were a slightly lower socioeconomic group. So they said, “Definitely we don’t want to split along these lines.” They divided the class on a completely random selection.

But for a period of time, two to three months, if anybody was dissatisfied with his or her group, he could change. And lo and behold, all the people from South Pasadena, San Marino, and Arcadia were voluntarily in one class, and all the Pasadena and Altadena people were in another class.

We tried to bypass the homogeneous unit principle, or to prove that it didn’t necessarily hold. Predictably, it didn’t work. This is just part of the innocent human nature that God has made in us.

Stedman: But what you’re calling a homogeneous principle is really a characteristic of the flesh. It’s a reflection of the innate selfishness of human beings, who want to be with our own people in our own group where we feel comfortable. The Spirit of God has come to counteract the flesh. It’s a process, and it takes time. In no one period of time or in one church are you going to see the process totally completed. But that to me would really mark growth in a church—I mean growth in a biblical dimension. People should grow in their ability to reach out across gaps and chasms to other people of different backgrounds and cultures, to show love and understanding.

Wagner: We divide the classes to win unbelievers to Jesus Christ. If we’re going to do that we need to offer them a starting point, namely, groups of their own homogeneous unit. When unbelievers come in, they will feel welcomed and folded in a group of their own kind of people. Christians can form conglomerate fellowship groups, and perhaps in some cases it’s the will of the Holy Spirit. My argument is that insisting on this across the board reduces the chance of embracing unbelievers. They are in the flesh.

Stedman: Maybe we agree more than we think we do. When you evangelize you almost always will do it on a homogeneous principle. But its purpose is to introduce new Christians to a larger group with a much more diverse background. When you look at the church you should see what the world is unable to create.

Wagner: In my book Your Church Can Grow, and in a new book, Our Kind of People, to be published by John Knox Press and is on the ethical implications of the homogeneous unit principle, I give an example of what I am saying: Temple Church in Pershing Square in Los Angeles. It’s a Baptist church right in a mosaic of inner city ethnic groups. In one church they have an Anglo congregation, a Spanish congregation, a Chinese congregation, and a Korean congregation. And they’re aiming for two more, at least. They all participate in the government of the church. Everyone is a member of Temple Church.

Stedman: Do they then intermix in worship services?

Wagner: I was coming to that. They have to worship in four different languages. But the first Sunday of every quarter they all get together in the “Sounds of Heaven” celebration. No sermon, since they couldn’t understand it. But they minister to each other in music, in testimony, in baptisms. The pastor’s vision is to build a new sanctuary with a round cylinder in the middle and five partitions going out with soundproof walls. That way every congregation worships in its own language and style, except at a predetermined time each Sunday morning, when the walls all go up. One of the congregations in the center ministers to all the congregations for a period of time, and then they go back to their own service. To me this is a beautiful illustration. When Koreans go to that church, they’re with their own people. They can be won to Christ. They say, “Yeah, I understand the Gospel.” For one thing, it’s in their language. Each congregation maintains cultural integrity. Yet there’s a sense of interdependence and love among all the four congregations.

We have in our unified school district, 43 per cent blacks, 38 per cent whites, and the others are other ethnic groups. We bus our children to schools. I live in an integrated neighborhood. Our children go to integrated schools. Blacks need Christ. Whites need Christ. But there’s no way one church can meet the needs of both of those communities. If we began having a service with soul music that ran two-and-a-half hours, with the kind of black preaching that appeals to our black community, we would be considered ridiculous by everybody. We would stop winning people to Christ. But why should we do this, when New Revelation Baptist Church is winning numbers of unbelievers who are black, and we’re winning numbers of unbelievers who are white? Neither one is racist.

Stedman: That troubles me. You’re denying the reconciling power of the Gospel. I think there has to be a time when you get them together. You’re only saying you couldn’t do it because it would be difficult. But I think it could be done. The church can be flexible and have services of different styles, with all the people joining and belonging to the same church.

Wagner: That can happen. I’ve been to churches that had two different services, and actually had two homogeneous units. One homogeneous unit goes to one service, and the other goes to another, which isn’t much different from going to one church on this corner and one church on that corner.

Generally speaking, churches that have tried bicultural models, with certain exceptions, have been unsuccessful.

Stedman: But the Great Commission is still incomplete until they have become disciples. It’s not just, go and win people to Christ, but to make disciples of all men. Disciples are those who have learned to love and live together despite differences. Diversity in unity is the great hallmark of the church as distinct from the world.

Wagner: But to deny people the privilege of worshiping God in their culture doesn’t seem to me to be a Christian virtue.

Stedman: I don’t think you deny it to them. You adjust to it. You have varying styles available in different times and places within the church. But the important thing is that people sense that they belong to a larger body that includes all these groups.

We’ve experimented in this way. There’s a black church in East Palo Alto that we’ve exchanged pastors with. We’ve taken our congregation over there and met with them; they’ve come over and met with us; we’ve exchanged choirs and choral groups. We’ve had close ties with this church. But to try to merge the two churches and have joint services together at this stage would be difficult, unwelcome to both groups.

Wagner: You’re one step ahead of us, and I envy you for it.

Stafford: We’ve been talking as though cultural distinctives are neutral ethically. But some people would say that the reason black people are uncomfortable with whites and white people are uncomfortable with blacks is that whites are racist. In erecting an all-white church there’s an inescapable aura of offense to blacks, which is an extension of our whole culture. Given the fact that the separation of blacks and whites in America is central to our economic problems, central to our social problems, and central to our educational problems, shouldn’t the church be doing more than just exchanging pastors or having an occasional choir cross town? Shouldn’t the church embody the answer to our racial situation?

Wagner: My position is that culture is not sinful. There are always demonic elements in every culture, but it’s not sinful to worship God in your language or in your style.

I think that one of the major manifestations of this today is the evangelism of the Jews. In the New Testament the Judaizers were insisting that Gentiles, in order to be true followers of Jehovah, needed to be circumcised and keep the law and the Sabbath. But the Jews through the centuries have had the tables turned on them. In the last hundred years or so it’s been fairly well agreed that much of the so-called mission work to the Jews was largely Gentilizing, rather than Judaizing. Mission agencies insisted, in an implicit form, that Jews, in order to become true followers of Jesus needed to join Gentile churches and that Jewish men needed to marry Gentile women.

Much more recently the messianic synagogue movement has arisen. Members say that it’s possible for a Jew to follow Jesus Christ, to bar mitzvah his children, to keep a kosher kitchen, to attend messianic synagogue on Friday night, to wear yarmulkes in a service, to grow beards, to marry Jewish women, and to still be Jews and be followers of “Yeshua Hamashiac,” Jesus the Messiah. The multiplication of these synagogues is a testimony to the vitality of the homogeneous unit principle.

Now the question is, does this increase or decrease hostility between Jews and Gentiles? Most Jews who have been won to Christ in messianic synagogues love Gentiles more than they ever have before. Since I learned more about the messianic synagogue movement, I have felt much closer and more appreciative of Jews. It has helped break down barriers; they’re now following Jesus the Messiah and we’re following the same Jesus. They’re doing it their way and we’re doing it our way, but we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ and we rejoice together and love each other much more than we did before.

Stedman: Long-range, you may have a breakdown of cultures, as you visit each other’s services. It may become possible to mingle some of these congregations and see people move from one to another.

Now to come back to your original question, Tim, I think there are some dangerous elements in the idea of having homogeneous groups that make no attempts to break down these barriers. Take the whole question of black-white relationships in the South. I strongly believe that had white Christians who won their slaves to Christ really treated them as Christian brothers and sisters the whole race issue might never have sprung up in the South. In the early church there was a cultural breakdown going on in the intermingling of slaves and masters in the same congregation.

Wagner: I don’t think so. There was probably a slave church in Rome that met by itself.

Stedman: Well, why, then, in the letters to the Ephesians and to the Colossians and so on do we have the words addressed to both groups right in the same letter? “To the church at Colossae. To the church at Ephesus. Masters, treat your slaves rightly. Slaves, be faithful to your masters.” These were read to the congregation. They were evidently all sitting there together.

Wagner: Let’s go to the New Testament now, because this is very important. If this homogeneous unit principle is not the way New Testament churches developed, that’s sufficient evidence to scrap it.

Jesus was born into a culture. He was not a Gentile. He was not a Samaritan. He was a Jew. Not only was he a Jew, but he was a very special kind of Jew. Among Jews, there were many different homogeneous units. There were priestly and secular classes. He was not a priest, but a layman. There were also socioeconomic classes. He was of the working class. There was a much more important division between Hellenists and Hebrews. He was not a Hellenist, he was a Hebrew. There was another important difference among Hebrews, and that was between Galileans and Judaeans. He was a Galilean. He was an Aramaic-speaking Galilean Jew, a specific homogeneous unit in the sociocultural makeup of the first century.

Since Jesus grew up in that culture—and if he was truly human, he was thoroughly a part of that culture; that’s a theological deduction—it would be natural for him to form his own inner circle from those of his own homogeneous unit. Eleven of the twelve disciples were Aramaic-speaking Galilean Jews, with one exception, Judas Iscariot. Ish-Kerioth means man of Kerioth, which was a Judaean village. There were two candidates to replace Judas—Joseph Barsabbas, who was probably a Cyprian, and Matthias, who was an Aramaic-speaking Galilean Jew. Matthias was chosen.

The basic ministry of these twelve people was not conglomerate or crosscultural. When Jesus sent them out he said, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles; into the city of the Samaritans enter not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” They were going to their own people. When the Syrophoenician woman came along, Jesus used language that could be considered racist. At first he gave her the silent treatment. He finally healed her daughter, because of her faith. Compassion always crosses culture. But Jesus initially wanted nothing to do with her, if we can take the text at face value. And there are other examples, as when the Holy Spirit sent Paul and Barnabas to the Gentiles. Paul’s churches were mostly started as splinter synagogues. The people in them were mostly God-fearers, not Jews or proselytes, although there were some of them; those God-fearers began winning the Gentiles. So the churches that Paul left behind were Gentile churches.

Stedman: That’s a beautiful example, Pete, of approaching the Scriptures with a conclusion already in mind. You can interpret various passages so that they seem to support one conviction, but when you approach it from another point of view you find something entirely different.

Wagner: I grant you that. But it’s a reasonable way to read the Scriptures.

A Balanced Stride

Readers should not side exclusively with the ideas of just one of these men. The emphasis of both is important.

If C. Peter Wagner thought or taught that the “homogeneous unit” was the governing principle of church life I would be concerned. But he seems aware that homogeneity, if twisted, can be a convenient excuse for bigotry. Obviously, specialization has to stop somewhere, or churches would be tailored just for men, or women, or the elderly, or children.

On the other hand, you cannot have a congregation where year after year everyone who attends will not only be welcomed but also feel at home. Given the differences in people, at some point some people will feel out of place, whether because of language, culture, age, style, or emphasis. Wouldn’t Ray Stedman agree that Christ’s church should be composed of congregations with varying personalities? Certainly assimilation is not the ultimate answer.

The question, then, is not who is right, but which emphasis is best for me? I would have been wise several years ago to have heeded Wagner. He warned me not to try to reach too many different people in one church. Sure enough, the congregation eventually split in our attempt to extend our imperfect love too far and too fast. We were young and obsessed with solving in a few years problems that had been centuries in the making.

This does not mean, however, that Christians are not to consistently work toward reconciliation in all areas of life. I thank God for other congregations that continue to work to remove the walls that keep us from loving each other. Even the most painful lessons I learned from black believers made me a more healthy person spiritually. The world needs to see the reconciling love of the Gospel in our local churches. “Balance” is the appropriate word. The two positions are not that much in conflict. But were I forced to choose between growth versus reconciliation, I would choose the latter.

DAVID R. MAINS

David R. Mains was formerly copastor of Circle Church in Chicago, an experimental black-white congregation. He now serves as director of Chapel of the Air in Carol Stream, Illinois.

Stedman: I don’t think that’s an argument in your favor. I preached through the Gospel of Mark not long ago and I saw that Jesus spent at least half of his ministry traveling among Gentiles. He didn’t preach only among the Jews. If you trace his work with the disciples, in Mark’s Gospel, particularly, you see that he is trying to break down the cultural barriers of the Jews, so they could see the whole of the world.

Wagner: But no matter how many months Jesus spent in Gentile territory, it doesn’t change the fact that when he left there, he left Galileans behind. They weren’t even Hellenists, to say nothing of Gentiles. Jesus started no Gentile church. When Peter later went to the house of Cornelius, that breakthrough blew everybody’s mind. The way I see it, all those acts of Jesus—the parable of the good Samaritan, the healing of the centurion’s servant, and the potential contacts that he did have with Gentiles—were all serving to prepare the way.

Stedman: They were deliberate teaching methods of his to break down the limited cultural background of the disciples.

Wagner: Those are your words, not mine. My words are that he was preparing the way for his final command, which they had not heard before, “Make disciples of all nations.” They needed to have that preparation in order to go out. Jesus was a good teacher, but even when he left, none of the twelve fully understood that.

Stedman: But that was because they were lacking the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “Wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes. Don’t try to evangelize, yet.” The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, and now all of us have him. We should start immediately to break down these cultural barriers as soon as people come to Christ.

Stafford: Peter, you said earlier that all culture is neutral. Are there times when, because of a political or racial situation, the atmosphere is inflamed and the church needs to violate the homogeneous unit principle?

Wagner: Yes. I call them “social disaster areas.” South Africa may be one of those social disaster areas today. I believe that the churches in South Africa may have to violate the homogeneous unit principle. They may have to sacrifice growth temporarily in order to combat the racism of that country.

Stedman: What would you say about Japan? I have thought for a long time that Japan’s culture deliberately encourages deception: putting on a face, being polite to people you are ready to murder, hiding every real feeling. I think that the Gospel in Japan must confront that.

Wagner: I don’t have an opinion on Japan, but I will always contend that every culture has a demonic element, and that the entrance of the Gospel into any culture has to change part of that culture.

Stafford: But how do you tell? You talked about blacks and whites in America. Some see that as a sign of the demonic in our culture. We could even talk about the white suburban culture that makes up our home churches. A good many Christians are saying it represents a wealthy, ingrown, proud, and secure mentality that needs to be confronted. It produces an atmosphere of comfortable religion that is antagonistic to the Gospel. I assume that you don’t agree with that. But how do we make the distinction? The South African Christians don’t agree that their country is a social disaster area either. Some would, but the vast majority of white South Africans wouldn’t.

Wagner: That’s a very hard decision for someone to make, and I can’t really decide about someone else’s culture.

Stafford: How about America?

Wagner: America has gone through an interesting change. I think the sixties will go down as the most important decade of the century, socially. We have made a subtle sociopsychological change in America, which I think is positive. For the first time in our history, our academic and legal systems are recognizing the valid existence of disparate groups in America. The idea before the sixties was that everybody melts together in a “melting pot.” Now the idea is that America is a society in which people can affect each other like ingredients in a stewpot, so that they all come out of the pot differently from the way they went in, but they all maintain their identity.

Few are talking any more about an integration of black and white churches, diluting the minority culture, but rather about a mature recognition of each cultural expression. If the Spanish prefer to worship in Spanish rather than in English, then I don’t think they should be denied their privilege to do that.

Stafford: I don’t think the issue is denying a minority the right to maintain its own culture. The issue is the right of the majority culture to be isolated from the minority culture. If it’s true that every culture has within it a demonic element, that element needs to be confronted. Any majority culture has the ability to ignore other cultures. A black in America can’t ignore whites. A white can almost completely ignore blacks in most parts of America. Doesn’t the Holy Spirit confront the arrogance of people in a majority culture by forcing them to confront others, by forcing them out into the highways and biways of other cultures? Isn’t it a high responsibility for pastors to work in that?

Wagner: I agree. Not only a responsibility of pastors, but the responsibility of prophets. We need to listen to the Sojourners, The Other Side, people like Ron Sider. I agree that this is the way the body of Christ works.

Stafford: Doesn’t the homogeneous unit principle, in application, contradict that a good percentage of the time? If our churches are geared toward a white suburban culture, if our jobs and our homes and the places we eat are solidly in the majority, when are we contradicted by other cultures?

Wagner: We’re not, unfortunately. The homogeneous unit principle is a starting point. If it’s an ending point, it’s sub-Christian. If we don’t form these relationships where we’re judged, and flavored, and blessed by Christians of other cultures, we are missing out on God’s best. How to do it is hard to say.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

‘I Was Sick … I Was in Prison’

Karl Barth and Cornelius Van Til. The names represent two widely divergent theological/philosophical outlooks. Both men exerted strong influence on more than a generation through their teaching and writing.

And each had a pastor’s heart. (Dr. Van Til is alive and still has it.)

Every Sunday morning Professor Barth went to the Basel, Switzerland, jail to visit the prisoners and preach to them. He went from cell to cell.

Every Sunday afternoon Professor Van Til went to the Chestnut Hill. Pennsylvania, hospital to visit the sick and share the Gospel with them. He went from bed to bed.

Granted that this similarity does not erase the differences—many of them at the heart of Christian belief—between Van Til and Barth, I still find their shared sense of personal mission and responsibility an exciting thing.

I think it was Bishop Stephen Neill who suggested that the church’s theologians should be its evangelists, and its evangelists the church’s theologians.

It’s beautiful when the two are combined in one person.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Pilgrims of Stewardship

As usual I am way behind in reading your wonderful publication. I wanted to comment, however, on the excellent article “On Wealth and Stewardship” by Klaus Bockmühl (Current Religious Thought, June 23). God is teaching us concerning many areas that need correction and the subject dealt with in this article is probably one of the most needed. And the most difficult for us to bow to. If we could only live more like the pilgrims God says we are.

GERARD COUENHOVEN

Minneapolis, Minn.

I read Klaus Bockmühl’s article several times. This is indeed an area in need of more attention and action. Unfortunately, however, Bockmühl has been lured away from the realities of life and made captive of clockwork theory. One reality that shatters the comfort of such theory is that there never is any “going back to the biblical tradition”—whatever the biblical tradition is. Even in the Bible there is no magic formula which we need only to plug in and watch work. In addition to this, though we need to have a more narrow concept of relieving the burden of the needy, Bockmühl’s concept is unhealthily narrow.

STANLEY J. RODES

Kansas City. Mo.

The Taste Of Sawdust

By and large I greatly appreciate what the editors are doing to enrich the Christian community with CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Having just read the two lead articles on the family (“Parents and Prodigals” by Virginia Stem Owens and “The Yoke of Fatherhood” by Thomas Howard, June 23), I find myself left with a taste somewhat akin to sawdust in my mouth. Howard’s piece, although well-written and constructed, seemed so abstract, pseudointellectual, almost rambling in its approach. My goodness, I agree with his thesis, but is such a stream-of-consciousness approach the best way to go with your lead? Then Owen’s depressing article. I guess that Howard’s approach wouldn’t have bothered me so much had it not been followed by such a negative viewpoint. Is [being a mother] as frustrating as she presents it? Are children such monsters, so difficult to raise and so unpredictable in their outcome? Does the Bible really offer so little to help the perplexed parent? Where’s the balance we readers so need, the encouragement, the models of true parental success? I’m not calling for Christian success stories, but I would have appreciated at least some encouragement in this particular issue with this particular topic.

JAMES M. KUTNOW

Dallas, Tex.

Kudos for beautiful cover picture. Do it again.

RALPH R. BELL

Escondido, Calif.

Alone Is Beautiful

I wish to thank you for your recent article in Minister’s Workshop, “A Need to Be Alone” (June 23). This piece should be must reading for all pastors who strive to minister to God’s people. The realization that we, as pastors, need to be replenished as our cups are emptied is evident, not only in Victor Pentz’s article, but should be realized through common sense that you can’t run on an empty tank. Thanks once again, and keep up the good work.

(THE REV.) DOUGLAS E. ADAMS

Elmwood-Carthage Presbyterian Church

Cincinnati, Ohio

Language Sins

Talk about mixed emotions. In the June 2 issue you published a very thought-provoking article by my favorite writer, Ron Durham (“Evil and God: Has Process Made Good Its Promise?”) and then commit the type of sin against our language one might expect from The Enquirer or its ilk. I refer to the supposed news article “Sears, Roebuck: Accounts Closed,” wherein twice your reporter used the phrase “explicit sex” to describe the content of “Charlie’s Angels” and “Three’s Company.” Your description of these two shows might well have included adjectives such as “tasteless, banal, repetitious in theme, lacking in entertainment value,” and so forth, but explicit sex! Precision in language would require us to reserve such phrases for the content of adult book store fare, where it would properly apply.… My major disappointment is that your calibre of journal would use the same exaggeration and editorializing in reporting as all the other periodicals. Shame.

CLYDE N. GORDON

Atlanta, Ga.

Thank you for Durham’s article on process theology. I hope that the article marks the beginning of a long dialogue between process and more conservative theologians.… That dialogue may bring us a fuller understanding of God, and help us to realize that any one group’s claim to completely understand God must be relegated to the category of intellectual idolatry. Unfortunately, that dialogue which offers so much promise, has begun on a less than ideal footing with Durham’s article. As often seems to be the case, process theology seems to be criticized here by one who either does not understand the system, or who wishes to destroy it and will use any means, including half-truths.

DANIEL J. G. G. BLOCK

Golden Valley, Minn.

Unto the Inner City

I appreciated the message of your article on urban seminary training (“Urban Perspective on Pastoral Education,” June 2). I’m happy to know that some conservatives are willing to accept the challenge of a most necessary ministry to the losers who must live in the run-down neighborhoods in our large cities.… If we Christians cannot make the Christian faith meaningful and useful to the people of the inner city, the people who cannot help themselves or who have not learned how. then our Christian faith is irrelevant.

(THE REV.) CHARLES H. KAMP

Park Memorial and First Avenue Presbyterian Churches

Evansville, Ind.

The controversy between Newsweek senior editor Kenneth Woodward and Ruth Stapleton, evangelist sister of President Carter, warms up. CHRISTIANITY TODAY reports the fracas on page 8. Without taking sides, CHRISTIANITY TODAY makes the point that although consistency is a noble virtue anyone has the right to set the record straight regarding his personal religious convictions.