The year 1978 is likely to be another “year of the evangelical,” according to George Gallup, Jr., the poll-taking observer of the American scene. Gallup, who recently established the Princeton Religious Research Center to monitor the American religious scene, predicted a continued upsurge of evangelical strength in his just-published Religion in America 1977–78. Gallup’s survey, based on a sample of 3,000 individuals, reveals more facts about today’s evangelicals than any comparable source: Who are they? Where do they live? What is their socioeconomic and educational profile? What denomination do they prefer?

The typical U.S. evangelical is likely to be a white female Southerner age 50 or over, with a high-school education and a modest income, the survey indicates. Gallup says about three out of ten (28 per cent) Americans, or about 40 million adults, are evangelicals—confirming a figure that is often used. This figure may be low, he points out, since “some evangelicals may not be aware of the term.” Gallup defines an evangelical as one who “has had a born again conversion, accepts Jesus as his or her personal Savior, believes the Scriptures are the authority for all doctrine, and feels an urgent duty to spread the faith.” An evangelical also places a strong emphasis on a personal relationship with God, and adheres to a strict moral code.

More than six out of ten (63 per cent) evangelicals are women, according to the survey, while 23 per cent are non-white. This suggests that a solid evangelical majority exists among blacks since blacks comprise only 11 per cent of the population. Fully half of all evangelicals reside in the South and slightly over one-fourth (27 per cent) live in the Midwest. The East and West have relatively few evangelicals.

The socio-economic status of the evangelicals is quite modest. Six out of ten have a high school education compared to 25 per cent who have completed only grade school and 15 per cent who are college graduates. Fifty-seven per cent of evangelicals are over age 50, while only 15 per cent are under 30. The much heralded evangelical thrust among the young and college-educated has yet to show up significantly in the survey data.

Just over half (51 per cent) of evangelicals make under $10,000 a year compared to 28 per cent whose income exceeds $15,000. Almost half (45 per cent) are manual workers, while one-fifth are professional and business people. Thus evangelicals rank well below the typical Episcopalian, Jew, Presbyterian, or moderate-to-liberal Protestant in socioeconomic attainments.

In addition, 60 percent of evangelicals live in rural or small-town (under 50,000 population) America. Only one in eleven lives in large cities. Somewhat surprisingly, the evangelical is a political independent rather than a Democrat or Republican. An almost unbelievable 86 per cent of evangelicals call themselves independents (only 8 per cent of those surveyed said they were Democrats, and 6 per cent reported they were Republicans). The evangelical is therefore a “floating voter” whose impact on future elections may be considerable.

Denominationally, 42 per cent of evangelicals are Baptists, 22 per cent prefer the smaller evangelical denominations, 15 per cent are Methodists, and 12 per cent are Catholics. Significantly, this Catholic evangelical contingent represents five million or more adult believers, a development that would have been considered unthinkable a decade or two ago.

Most evangelicals (87 per cent) are members of a church, but a rather high 13 per cent are disaffiliated. Although 60 per cent attend church regularly, 40 per cent do not. These two figures suggest, perhaps, that a number of evangelicals worship outside the structure of the institutional church.

Some other data in the study suggests that theological nomenclature may distort the attempt to locate with precision the evangelical. For example, 28 per cent of the respondents replied affirmatively to the question, “Do you consider yourself an evangelical?” A negative response came from 64 per cent, and 8 per cent had no opinion. Blacks, Southerners, and the poor were the most likely to respond affirmatively. Twenty-five per cent of Episcopalians said they were evangelicals, but very few agreed with the four-part Gallup definition in another part of the survey. Only 42 per cent of Baptists called themselves evangelicals, yet a large majority indicated they adhere to the definition of what an evangelical is. Twenty per cent of adult Catholics (eight million persons) called themselves evangelicals, a much larger number than those who embraced the fourfold definition.

The survey also shows that evangelicals are no longer the silent strangers on the American religious scene. Almost six in ten Americans know enough about evangelical beliefs and life-style to recognize an evangelical when they see one. And 22 per cent of all Americans—along with 39 per cent of the “aware” or informed ones—give evangelicals a “highly favorable” rating.

It is likely that the evangelical impact will be felt more strongly in the nation’s churches during the coming years. To the question, “Would you like to see your own church become more evangelical or not?” 35 per cent said yes, while 49 per cent said no, and 16 per cent had no opinion. Evangelicals themselves, by 75 per cent to 18 per cent, affirmed that they want a more evangelical church. Nonevangelicals, by 64 per cent to 19 per cent, did not share that desire.

These figures present a mixed profile of the evangelical movement, with signs that are both encouraging and discouraging to evangelical leaders. They do represent the first full-scale portrait of the American evangelical today. Given the high rate of proven accuracy in other Gallup surveys, the findings are considered highly credible by students of the art of polling, and America’s church leaders are likely to study carefully the figures and their implications.

Most Admired

President Jimmy Carter came out on top in the Gallup Poll’s periodic survey to determine the “most admired man in the world.” Two religious leaders were among the top ten: evangelist Billy Graham (fourth) and Pope Paul VI (tied for ninth with former President Richard M. Nixon). Egyptian president Anwar Sadat placed second, and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, who is fighting terminal cancer, was third, followed by Graham, former President Gerald R. Ford, Henry Kissinger, Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, and former California governor Ronald Reagan.

Graham got second place in the 1973 and 1974 polls. Gallup omitted the poll in 1975 and 1976.

Sister Churches

Episcopalians and Roman Catholics in the United States share such a “unity of faith” that they must give it “visible expression and testimony now.” That is the conclusion of the officially appointed Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation after twelve years of study.

The nineteen-member body, composed mostly of theological professors but chaired by two bishops, issued its report last month. The seventeen-page document suggests specific joint activities for demonstration of unity. These include cooperative projects in evangelism, the war against world hunger, and the like.

The report cites six areas where there is wide agreement: baptism and the Eucharist; the Bible as the inspired Word of God; traditional central doctrines (the Trinity, Christ as true God and true man, the Church, and others); the role of bishops; ethics and Christian life-style; and personal life in Christ. Indeed, suggests the document, there is so much agreement that the two bodies can be considered “sister churches.”

In the section on the Bible, the document states in part: “Episcopalians and Roman Catholics believe that in the Bible the inspired Word of God is expressed: through the Holy Scriptures the living God speaks to us still today.… To help comprehend the meaning of Scripture [both] churches endorse and utilize historical, critical methods of exegesis.”

The report identified four “problem areas”: papal authority, the role of women, the tension between “normative” tradition and individual conscience, and the degree of unity that must be reached before there can be “sacramental sharing.”

Confronting The Future

The meeting on the future is past, and whether it did anything that will be a part of the future remains to be seen. Reporters were barred from a “consultation on future evangelical concerns” held in Atlanta last month, and only a brief announcement of it was issued afterwards. Some of the eighty participants did not understand the ground rules as others did, and they came home and spoke and wrote to non-participants about their three-day gathering. Others would speak to no one, especially journalists.

The eighty were chosen by a steering committee which grew out of a meeting of about twenty-five evangelical leaders called together last March by Wheaton College president Hudson Armerding and evangelist Billy Graham (see December 17, 1976, issue, page 34). Included were lay leaders and pastors as well as executives of various denominations, institutions, and para-church groups. The meeting was directed by Donald Hoke, executive director of Wheaton’s Billy Graham Center. Graham himself was absent, and Hoke said a few others who were invited were unable to attend. Although a wide spectrum of evangelical leadership was included, some participants took note of the absence of any staff members of Fuller Seminary.

Three sentences from a statement adopted on the last day were released. One of them mentioned inerrancy, an issue over which some participants have been at odds with Fuller. The statement said, “Knowing that the Bible offers the only viable answer to the needs of a relativistic age, we will insist that the authority of the Bible, threatened by weak views of inspiration, can be preserved from erosive vacillation only by total fidelity to the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of the Bible and by a costly incarnation of what it teaches.” The release did not mention the vote on the document, but participants engaged in vigorous debate before final adoption.

Among topics discussed were science, energy, the crisis in values, and the state of the evangelical community. Among the non-participants on the program was Martin Marty, professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and staff member of Christian Century magazine. His topic was, “The Shape of Religious Thought and Assumptions in America Today.”

Armerding, the chairman, said no continuing organization is anticipated.

Religion in Transit

The federal government, looking for ways to improve education and reduce school violence, has awarded a grant of $45,000 to minister Jesse Jackson’s PUSH for Excellence program. The money will be used to analyze PUSH’S methods and effectiveness and to explore motivation of disadvantaged youths. Much larger grants are expected later. PUSH is operating in high schools in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Kansas City.

More on Anita Bryant: Evangelists Larry Jones and Robert Wise of Oklahoma delivered a 100-foot-long telegram to NBC television this month. It listed 5,500 names of people protesting NBC’s decision to drop Miss Bryant as commentator on its telecast of the Orange Bowl parade. NBC replaced her with Rita Moreno, star of a current film, The Ritz, which is set in a bathhouse that caters to homosexuals. NBC insisted that its decisions regarding both women had nothing to do with the controversy over homosexuality. This month Miss Bryant embarked on a series of “Christian liberation crusades” in Canada.

Maybe it was all that newspaper publicity about the finances of evangelist Billy Graham’s organization. Whatever, President Carter wrote a letter requesting Graham’s help in raising $250,000 for the building fund of Maranatha Baptist Church, the congregation that broke away from Plains Baptist Church in Carter’s hometown. “We are overextended financially,” Graham was quoted as telling Carter, but the evangelist sent $10,000 anyway—the largest gift to the building fund so far.

Seven New York City police chaplains want a raise. They have received only a single $1,000 salary increase in the last twelve years, bringing their pay to $5,900 a year. They hold the rank of inspectors, and they are asking for the same pay other inspectors get: $30,000 a year. The chaplains try to help police officers cope with personal troubles, including marital, psychological, and other problems. They say that they handle “300 to 400 marriage situations” a year.

A Louis Harris poll shows that American confidence in organized religion jumped sharply last year. In 1976, 24 per cent of those surveyed expressed “a great deal of confidence,” and in 1977 the figure was 34 per cent.

In 1977, a record 279 persons were appointed to the foreign missionary force of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches, announced plans to ship 10,000 metric tons of donated wheat, valued at $2 million, to Viet Nam next month to help alleviate a severe shortage of grain there.

Personalia

Billboard magazine named Andrae Crouch and his Disciples music group as the top gospel singers of 1977. Crouch, who was featured in a story in Time this month, is scheduled to sing at rallies in Thailand next month, helping to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Christianity in that country.

Deaths

FREDERICK W. CROPP, 72, Presbyterian clergyman who served as general secretary of the American Bible Society from 1939 to 1951; at Santa Barbara, California.

ROY G. ROSS, 79, a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and general secretary of the National Council of Churches from 1954 to 1963; at Lighthouse Point, Florida.

HENRY WINGBLADE, 94, Baptist clergyman who served as president of Bethel College and Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1941 to 1954; at St. Paul, following a long illness.

Legend has it that Pope Sylvester II in the year 1001 sent an emissary with a jeweled crown to proclaim Stephen, a ruler of the Magyars, as king of Hungary. Stephen—baptized a Roman Catholic at age ten—had delivered his tribal people into the realm of Western Christianity from pagan religion and inroads of the Byzantine East. In restructuring his state, the king promulgated a code of laws based on Christian concepts, and he firmly established the Roman Catholic Church throughout his kingdom. Thus Stephen became enshrined in Hungarian history as the sainted father of his country (he was canonized in 1083, forty-five years after his death), and his crown—passed down through generations of successors to the throne—became the symbol of Hungary’s nationhood.

Some modern scholars dispute the role attributed to Pope Sylvester, and they say that the crown really was fashioned in the 1200s, possibly from bits and pieces that included a remnant or two of Stephen’s original crown. It contained rubies and other jewels, along with enameled miniature religious scenes. The last coronation at which it was worn was in 1916, when it was placed precariously on the several-sizes-too-large head of Charles IV.

The crown and other royal relics—an orb, scepter, sword, and coronation robe—were preserved as national treasures in the following years, surviving the perils of World War II. During fighting between the Soviets and Nazis near Budapest in 1944, security guards hid the crown. In 1945, when Soviet control became certain, the guards gave the royal treasures to American troops in Austria for safekeeping. The valuables were kept in U.S. custody in Germany until the early 1950s, when they were shipped to a special storage vault at Fort Knox in Kentucky. Early this month, amid much controversy, the crown and the other relics were returned to Hungary.

The Hungarians had long wanted the crown back, but Communist repression and the pervasive Soviet presence in the late 1940s and 1950s made the Americans unwilling to budge. This position was bolstered by the views of refugees from the ill-fated “freedom-fighter” revolt of 1956. To them the crown was a symbol of hope: it could be returned only when the people of Hungary were again in control of their affairs, and only when atheism was no longer the official ideology of the land.

Relations between Hungary and the United States began to thaw in the mid-1960s. Ambassadors were exchanged, travel restrictions were eased, cultural and scientific exchange agreements were enacted, and the Hungarian government gradually allowed greater measures of religious, speech, and economic freedom. Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, a fervent anti-Communist who had been granted asylum in the American embassy in 1956, left the country in 1971. His departure further eliminated friction between the two governments.

Last spring, according to press reports, U.S. officials began studying the crown issue, and in the summer a presidential policy-review committee recommended the crown’s return. Evangelist Billy Graham, who preached in Hungary in September (see September 23, 1977, and October 7, 1977, issues), reportedly endorsed the idea in private reports to U.S. ambassador Philip Kaiser and State Department officials. Hungarian church leaders had raised the crown issue in discussions with the evangelist. At his final press conference in Budapest, Graham skirted a question regarding his position, but he hinted that he was in favor of the crown’s return and said that he would talk about it “with some of my friends in Washington.”

Soviet Scene

More than 6,000 persons in the Soviet Union, including many young people, were “won for Christ” last year and baptized publicly into the membership of local churches affiliated with the All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUCECB), according to an official report of the church body. The report also said that more than 120 new pastors were elected or ordained by the AUCECB’s churches. “Many” congregations in Khazakhstan, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia reconstructed their church buildings or erected new structures, the report stated. It named some of the new congregations and church buildings of the Mennonites, Pentecostals, and Baptists affiliated with the AUCECB.

By early October, according to press accounts, President Carter agreed to return the crown, and he set the diplomatic wheels in motion. A State Department spokesman denied that Graham’s recommendation figured in the decision. The outcome would have been the same without Graham’s involvement, he said, but he did acknowledge that Hungary’s willingness to permit Graham to preach there carried weight with the Administration.

Carter announced the decision publicly on November 4—the twenty-first anniversary of the unsuccessful 1956 attempt to overthrow the Communist regime. The timing was apparently coincidental, but it helped to fuel the protests and expressions of outrage that erupted in the Hungarian-American community. A hearing was conducted in Congress, and more than 2,000 Hungarian-Americans marched from the Washington Monument to the Capitol steps in late November to protest Carter’s decision. Fourteen sympathetic members of Congress were among those who addressed the crowd. Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar, a Democrat whose district includes Hungarian-American neighborhoods in Cleveland, stated that Carter told her he considered the views of religious leaders in Hungary of “key importance.” But, said she, the religious leaders have no choice but to parrot government desires, and she asserted that the practice of religion in Hungary is “stigmatized” by the regime. Young people, she charged, are “coerced” into staying away from the church if they want to pursue certain careers.

Protest leader Tibor Bodi of Philadelphia declared that “as a Christian President, it is incomprehensible that President Carter hands over the holiest symbol of a nation to its Communist invaders.”

Several members of Congress filed lawsuits in attempts to prevent the crown’s return, but none—including one carried all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court by Republican Senator Robert Dole of Kansas—was successful.

The delay caused by litigation and the uproar in Congress enabled Administration officials to muster additional support within other sectors of the Hungarian-American community and among Roman Catholic leaders. Some Hungarian-Americans underscored Carter’s explanation that the crown was being returned to “the Hungarian people” and not to the ruling Communist party, and they suggested that its presence in Hungary might promote a greater degree of nationalism which would lead to increased independence from the Soviet Union.

Women At Work

Nearly 100 women were ordained to the Episcopal priesthood during 1977, the first year in which ordination of women was officially permitted, according to an Episcopal survey. About two-thirds of the women hold stipendiary positions in church work; twelve are in charge of congregations as vicar, rector, or interim minister.

A staff commission of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference said that the bishops would not oppose return of the crown, but it did call for the action to be used “as an instrument” to press for greater freedom of religion in Hungary.

Except for the stipulation that the crown must be available for viewing by the Hungarian public, the conditions and concessions attached to the crown’s return were kept confidential. One of the apparent conditions involved symbolism: the crown was to be presented formally to the president of Hungary’s National Assembly and not to Communist party chief Janos Kadar. The American government has some leverage in monitoring other long-range, more substantive agreements: Hungary is anxious to achieve and maintain favored-nation trade status with the United States.

Among the two dozen members of the American delegation that accompanied the crown to Budapest were three clergymen: Geno Baroni, a Catholic priest who is assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; research executive George G. Higgins, a priest representing the U.S. Catholic Conference; and Rabbi Arthur Schneier, the Budapest-born president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.

A number of Hungarian Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders were present at the ceremony marking the formal transfer of the crown. The event was held in a marbled room under the dome of the beautiful Gothic-style Parliament building on the banks of the Danube. U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance made the presentation. One of the most conspicuous figures in the reception party was Cardinal Laszlo Lekai, the Catholic primate of Hungary. (Lekai and Hungary’s bishops had sent word to the United States in December backing the crown’s return.)

A New York Times reporter wondered why the Communist party was so eager to get back an object that has so much religious significance attached to it. A high government official explained: “I am an atheist, and the crown holds no mystical significance for me. Yet it has a deep meaning for all of us. When King Stephen introduced Christianity, he intended progress—and in those days it was progress. And when Pope Sylvester II sent the crown to our first king, he simply put the Hungarians on the world map.”

The Hungarian government has been sensitive to the religious-freedom issue in recent months, and the issue has been highlighted in a number of press accounts. Immediately following Graham’s visit to Hungary, two important American Catholic leaders received a warm welcome there: Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia and Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati. The pair joined Lekai in a concelebrated mass for a standing-room-only congregation of 3,000-plus in St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest. They also participated in baptizing sixty infants. Krol told the congregation: “Though we may be divided by time and space, by geographic, cultural, and language barriers, by vocation and profession, we are one, we are united in the Body of Christ.” (An estimated 60 per cent of Hungary’s 11 million population is nominally Catholic.)

Overall, Krol and Berhardin were favorably impressed by what they found, but Bernardin did suggest that there is room for much improvement. He told reporters later that there are “limitations placed on the freedom of the people,” especially their religious freedom.

The issue is not a stagnant one. Kadar visited Pope Paul last spring, and the pope’s envoy has conferred with church and government officials in Budapest.

Hungary’s government points with pride to its record on Jewish rights—probably the best of any Soviet-bloc nation. Hungary’s chief rabbi, Laszlo Salgo, has been telling American Jewish leaders in effect that the 100,000-member Jewish community in Hungary has never had it so good, and he invited them to come and see for themselves. Rabbi Schneier, who accompanied the crown on its return, had what was described as an emotional homecoming at a Budapest synagogue, where he preached to a congregation of 500.

The Hungarian press spoke glowingly of the crown’s return, and one party paper commented that President Carter deserved special praise for holding out against “considerable opposition.”

That opposition has not ceased. On the eve of the crown’s return, a number of Hungarian-American community leaders representing various groups, including religious ones, called a press conference in New York to accuse Carter of “deceiving” and “betraying” the American people on the issue of human rights. Carter, said one angry spokesman, “did all this to Hungary and to us. We shall not forget it, and he will forever remember it.” The group pledged political reprisals against the President and suggested that a slogan will be heard in future election campaigns: “Remember the crown!”

Indicted

Guido “Father John” Carcich is a Roman Catholic priest who knows how to raise money—lots of it—for poor and starving children overseas and for the work of dedicated missionaries struggling to get by with only meager resources. He was able to raise as much as $20 million in one eighteen-month period for his missionary order, the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, better known as the Pallottine Fathers. Not much of the money went to the starving children or struggling missionaries overseas, though. Only 2.5 cents or so of each dollar went where the donors intended, a 1976 special audit showed. Most of the money somehow ended up in real estate deals, loans to businessmen with political connections, and other questionable ventures. Some of it allegedly was pocketed by Carcich for himself and friends. This month a grand jury in Baltimore indicted Carcich on sixty counts of misappropriating funds and one count of obstructing justice.

Among other things, the forty-three-page indictment charged that Carcich:

• Embezzled $540,000 from Pallottine bank accounts for his own use.

• Embezzled another $1.4 million and hid the money in secret accounts.

• Funneled more than $15 million through concealed accounts and refused to hand over records to investigators or tell what happened to the money.

• Used $52,000 to build a house for a niece in New Jersey, and siphoned off tens of thousands of dollars to give to friends, including between $25,000 and $40,000 to a South Carolina woman who once was one of his parishioners.

Carcich, in his mid-fifties, theoretically could face up to 303 years in prison and thousands of dollars of fines if he is convicted on all counts. Maryland attorney general Francis B. Burch indicated that another grand jury will continue the investigation of Carcich, leaving the door open for more indictments.

The priest told reporters at a press conference that he would “work hard” to prove his innocence, and he called on Catholics to pray for him. “There is another side to this story,” he said, and he suggested that he had been denied due process in the way the indictment was developed.

Donald E. Webster, the late accountant for the Pallottines, was also named prominently in the indictment. It alleged that he had “aided and abetted” Carcich in the misappropriation of funds. Webster was linked in earlier revelations to a $54,000 loan to help finance the 1974 divorce of former Maryland governor Marvin Mandel. Last month the accountant was found shot to death at his beachfront condominium. The death was ruled a suicide by police and a medical examiner.

Carcich came to Baltimore as an assistant pastor in 1946. Eight years later he established a Pallottine center across the street from the church he served, and he became its chief fund-raiser, mailing out millions of emotionally worded appeals yearly.

In 1976 the Baltimore Sun looked into Carcich’s operations. The newspaper uncovered many of the Pallottines’ questionable business dealings, noted the web of political and business alliances, and showed how Carcich lived it up while in Las Vegas purportedly on Pallottine business. Prayer requests from the elderly and poor were “callously” discarded at the Pallottine warehouse, the paper reported. It said that Carcich received $100,000 in “consultant fees” from the firm hired by the order to conduct its direct-mail program—a firm partially owned by the Pallottines and from which Carcich is accused of embezzling more than $50,000 in the indictment.

Carcich was banned from functioning as a priest in the Baltimore area by Archbishop William D. Borders in 1976. The Pallottine fund-raising practices were “clearly wrong” and “immoral,” said the archbishop. A housecleaning was ordered by Pallottine headquarters in Rome, watchdog procedures were instituted by local Catholic officials, the nation’s Catholic bishops formulated guidelines for fund-raising, and Maryland enacted legislation requiring disclosure by charitable organizations. The state also set limits on how much can be spent on fund-raising and overhead.

Meanwhile, the Pallottines, under an agreement worked out with prosecutors, have been liquidating their investments and putting the money into missionary work.

White Collar Crime

The Pallottine Fathers (see preceding story) aren’t the only ones whose religion-related money troubles have been aired in the secular press in recent weeks. Here are some other cases:

• Former bank executive Alfred W. Hall, Jr., 43, was sentenced last month by a federal judge in Boston to four years in prison. Hall had pleaded guilty to a charge of embezzling nearly $1.4 million, $919,000 of it from a missions account administered by Walter J. Leach, a retired Roman Catholic priest. Leach’s own dealings in connection with the account are under investigation. Hall returned more than $500,000 of the stolen funds before leaving for jail.

• St. Teresa’s nursing home, a facility run by Catholic Carmelite nuns in Middletown, New York, was accused of fraud in the use of Medicaid funds. A state agency which audited the home’s operations alleged that more than $200,000 is involved. It said the money had been spent for such things as a gift for a bishop, medicine and grooming for pet dogs kept by the nuns, meals for nuns who lived at the convent but who did not care for patients at the home, and educational course fees unrelated to nursing-home operation. State investigators also charged that the nursing home hired some of its board members as attorneys and auditors, paying them “exorbitant” legal and bookkeeping fees. The nuns declined to comment, but a lawyer hired by them called the charges “unfair.” The home received $3.8 million in Medicaid reimbursement funds over a recent three-year period.

• Two Church of Christ ministers in Texas are facing charges of misappropriating for personal use “several hundred thousand dollars” of a foundation established primarily for the benefit of Preston Road Church of Christ in Dallas. The ministers—Burns Vinson, Jr., of Dallas, and his brother Foy W. Vinson of Allen—were trustees of the fund set up by their oilman father to benefit Churches of Christ.

Relief From Payne

Bible professor Donald Lake of Wheaton College survived an attempt to expel him from membership in the 1,000-member Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) at its twenty-ninth annual meeting last month. Nearly 100 persons attended the meeting, which was held at Simpson College in San Francisco. Their principal activity was the reading and discussion of about three dozen scholarly papers.

J. Barton Payne of Covenant Seminary had taken exception to a paper that Lake had delivered to a regional meeting of the society in 1976. In addition, one of the few papers delivered to the entire ETS assembly in San Francisco (most were presented to small groups in special-interest sessions) was a response to Lake’s paper by Elliott Johnson of Dallas Seminary. Johnson charged that Lake, despite good intentions, had undermined the ETS position on biblical inerrancy.

The society, in order to attract scholars from various evangelical traditions (Baptist, Reformed, Wesleyan, dispensational, and others) has always had only one point in its doctrinal statement—an affirmation of the inerrancy of the Bible. In his controversial paper, Lake had said that “to speak of an absolutely trustworthy, inspired Bible which does not teach error is the point of departure for a soundly consistent evangelical theology.” But he also said that an article on “cosmogony” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible was “descriptive of the way the ancient biblical writers conceived of the universe.”

Lake saw no contradiction between these assertions, and the membership committee in effect ruled that his views were within bounds. In a poll of its members, the committee voted 4 to 1 to uphold his right to membership. Two members were non-commital.

Payne, however, did see an inconsistency, and on the first day distributed thirty copies of the dictionary article on cosmogony as evidence. But during the last business meeting, when the membership committee’s report regarding Lake was presented, Payne did not challenge it. A prominent theologian with impeccable inerrancy credentials, it was learned, had informed Payne that if the issue were brought to the floor he would speak in defense of Lake. (Both Payne and the anonymous theologian are among the sixteen members of the executive council of the newly formed International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.)

Stanley Gundry of Moody Bible Institute was elected president of the ETS for 1978, succeeding Walter Jauser, Jr., of Trinity seminary.

DONALD TINDER

Coral Ridge: ‘Count Us Out’

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is best known around the evangelical world for its pioneering emphasis on lay witness known as Evangelism Explosion. The 4,400-member congregation took a step this month that may give it another distinction, that of leading a second exodus from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern). At a business meeting members voted 1,754 to 1 to seek dismissal from the PCUS and to affiliate with the four-year-old Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

Coral Ridge was conspicuously absent in 1973 when the PCA was organized by evangelical churches leaving what many considered was an increasingly liberal PCUS. A number of those staying in the denomination cited the example of the Florida church as a reason for staying.

D. James Kennedy, senior pastor at Coral Ridge, disclaims any role as a leader of another large defection. He says simply that he is keeping a promise that he and other ministers made in a public declaration eight years ago (see October 24, 1969, issue, page 45, and January 2, 1970, issue, page 41.) “Should the basic theology or polity of the church be altered or diluted,” said the “Declaration of Commitment” signed by Kennedy and 500 other PCUS ministers, “we shall be prepared to take such actions as may be necessary to fulfill the obligation imposed by our ordination vows to maintain our Presbyterian faith.” Kennedy believes that the last PCUS General Assembly finally and officially altered that constitutional position (see July 29, 1977, issue, page 35). He cited the enactment of new ordination vows as the act that “cut the rope” binding the church to its historic positions on Scripture and faith.

The Coral Ridge pastor acknowledged that he has been concerned over a long period about the doctrinal drift of the denomintion. A 1972 PCUS assembly statement on Scripture was particularly troublesome to him, but it did not have constitutional authority. In 1977 a commission of the regional PCUS presbytery of which Coral Ridge was a member declared that the proposed ordination vows, if passed, would “commit one to no particular theological position.” Among those at the national level who tried to keep the vows from becoming part of the constitution were four former moderators of the assembly. They warned that the proposed vows would not commit ordinands to “hold to our Presbyterian heritage.” The denomination’s governing body nevertheless enacted the constitutional change last June, leaving Kennedy and others free to charge that the church had departed from its confessional position.

At the first fall meeting in 1977 of the Coral Ridge session (board of elders) a committee was appointed to start planning for the congregational vote. The meeting was announced a week in advance (as required by the constitution), letters were sent to all members, and a committee called all members to explain the issue. The presbytery was invited to send a speaker, and its moderator briefly addressed the meeting. The attendance, said Kennedy, was the largest for a business meeting in the congregation’s history.

In view of court rulings in some states, could the person who cast the lone vote against withdrawal pose a problem for the church? Kennedy discounts that possibility. He believes that the member simply was not prepared to vote to leave the PCUS but would not oppose the will of the majority. And the pastor does not expect the presbytery to try to make a “loyal minority” of that one member in order to claim the church’s property. The property includes a new physical plant that cost more than $5 million to build. In fact, he said, no problem from the denominational hierarchy is expected since every effort was made to “follow the book” in moving toward dismissal from the PCUS.

A practical consideration that would dissuade the hierarchy from trying to take over the Coral Ridge property would be its huge mortgage, said to require $4,000 per day. Presbyterian bodies have generally avoided attempts to control property with large debts. Coral Ridge raised $3.25 million for all causes, including its building debt, last year. In addition, the now-separate Evangelism Explosion (EE) organization operated on a budget of around $1 million. EE has now spread into every state, all Canadian provinces, and some fifty nations abroad. It has provided evangelistic training for ministers and laymen of a wide variety of denominations.

As Coral Ridge members were voting, the congregation of the nearby 500-member First Presbyterian Church of Plantation unanimously took a similar action. After the votes were reported, the presbytery’s executive secretary, Roy B. Connor, resigned.

Another of the presbytery’s better-known churches voted last June to leave the PCUS and join the PCA. The presbytery released from membership its Key Biscayne church, where ex-President Richard Nixon often attended services. The synod of Florida, however, reversed the presbytery and instructed it to “follow the book” more carefully. Instead of dismissing Key Biscayne, which has about 500 members, to another body (such as the PCA) the presbytery had voted simply to “erase from the rolls” the names of its members and officers. The synod’s reversal leaves the situation unclear.

Elsewhere in Florida, the PCUS “loyal minority” of a church in Madison lost its fight to keep the church property. The Florida Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling that awarded the property to the majority.

Cases are still pending in other states where the PCUS has laid claim to the buildings of congregations that voted to join the PCA. Notable among them are the cases involving the larger churches in the Montgomery, Alabama, area. In a number of presbyteries majorities simply walked away from the property and left it to “loyal minorities” of less than 5 per cent rather than go to court.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Seminary Grant

Some Jewish scholars believe that college history courses have a gap of about 500 years that needs to be filled. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is out to fill the gap—with $162,777 of federal money. The neglected period, from 332 B.C. to 200 A.D., straddles the birth of Christ, and seminary officials believe the omission might be related to prejudice. Their attempt to correct the oversight—financed by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities—is called the Institute for the Teaching of the Post-Biblical Foundations of Western Civilization.

The institute will invite twenty teachers of undergraduates to an eight-week course at the seminary’s New York City campus this summer and an equal number in the summer of 1979. Those chosen will be specialists in the humanities with a “promising future,” nominated by their own schools. Those schools must agree to add to the curriculum a new course or courses as a result of the seminary study by their faculty member. Teachers at the institute will come mostly from the seminary’s own faculty, including specialists in history, rabbinics, Bible, philosophy, and education. Rabbi Gordon Tucker of the seminary staff said in a telephone interview that other institutions in New York’s Morningside Heights area (such as Union Theological Seminary) may provide lecturers.

David Weiss Halivni, professor of rabbinics at the seminary, will direct the institute. He said he believes that the critical period had been overlooked in college courses because of prejudice against including religious history in the curricula of secular institutions and prejudice against “viewing Western tradition as having been nurtured by a Jewish parent.” The prejudice, he added, is “now outmoded.”

How did a Jewish institution get federal money for a Jewish faculty to teach about Jewish history and influence? In a day when inspectors from various federal agencies are demanding that some religious institutions rearrange their curricula or libraries and take down some symbols or signs on their buildings, is there no church-state problem here? Not for Rabbi Tucker. His quick answer to the question is that the seminary offers several programs in addition to rabbinical training, and its board is independent. (A number of Protestant seminaries, however, have similar qualifications, an observer points out.)

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is apparently one of the smaller federal agencies that has doled out funds to numerous religion-related projects while church-and-state watchdogs focused their attention on the larger treasuries, such as that of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. “Comparative religion” is one of the fields covered in the broad official definition of the humanities circulated by the NEH. In charge of overseeing the agency’s budget of over $100 million in the Carter administration is Joseph Duffey, a minister of the United Church of Christ. Duffey, ordained a Baptist preacher at the age of eighteen, formerly served as chief administrative officer of the American Association of University Professors. He has been a political liberal for years and was once national chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action. He was also on the faculty of the now-defunct Hartford Seminary.

A church-and-state observer at the headquarters of Americans United for Separation of Church and State shrugged when asked about the grant to the Jewish seminary. The situation might prompt a letter to Duffey, but it is one of many fires that need attention, and there are not enough firemen, he commented. The church-and-state group’s new lawyer, he explained, faces a backlog of at least a year’s work.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

The Nazi Master Race

Of Pure Blood, by Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry (McGraw-Hill, 1977, 256 pp., $10.00), is reviewed by Richard V. Pierard, professor of history, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.

One of the vexing theological problems of our times is Nazi Germany. How was it possible that in the land of the Reformation and in the “enlightened” twentieth century the National Socialist regime could come to power (with the active support or at least passive acceptance of most Christians) and then embark upon the systematic destruction of millions of human beings whom they regarded as racial inferiors, including the entire Jewish population of Europe? What does this inscrutable event tell us about the presence of sin in the world, about the times we live in, about ourselves?

The most appalling feature of Nazi racial policies was the deliberate, dispassionate way in which they were carried out. The surviving documents reveal an impersonal, bureaucratic precision of frightening proportions, both in the destruction and creation of life. The story of the efforts of Heinrich Himmler, the mousy little ex-chicken farmer who headed the SS and held almost complete control over the police and security forces of the Third Reich, to foster the development of the pure “Nordic” master race by eliminating the inferior races—Poles, Gypsies, Jews, and others—has been told many times, and the full magnitude of the barbarity utterly eludes comprehension. One aspect of this madness that up to now had not been adequately chronicled was Operation Lebensborn (Fountain of Life). This was the counterpart to Nazi genocide, the selective breeding of the new Germanic super race that would occupy the vacant space from which the lesser folk had been cleared off.

It started with the establishment of maternity homes where pregnant women, married and unmarried alike, who had the proper racial credentials (blond hair, blue eyes, wide hips, a minimum height of five feet, three inches) could receive the finest of care during their confinement. The Lebensborn organization, financed by money and property expropriated from Jews, rapidly expanded and its network of homes around Europe soon became the “stud farms” of Nazi Germany. Men and women were selected and mated on the basis of their size, shape, and coloring, and a woman could perform no higher service than to bear a child for the Führer. The children produced were graded, and the ones who were most fit physically were supported at public expense or put up for adoption in racially good homes while the poorer ones were “disinfected,” i.e., killed.

The other side of the program was the wholesale kidnapping of Nordic-appearing children in the German-occupied areas of Europe. Thousands of youths between the ages of six months and twelve years were rounded up, the few who possessed desirable features taken to Lebensborn homes and Germanized, and then adopted by Nazi couples. The others were simply exterminated. According to the medical superintendent, Dr. Gregor Ebner, “thanks to the Lebensborns, in thirty years time we shall have 600 extra regiments.”

The tragedy of these young people who were to be the advance wave of the master race was two-fold. Few of the ones who had been kidnapped were ever reunited with their parents in spite of the most diligent detective efforts by them and international relief agencies after the war. As for the Lebensborn-bred children, a nun who helped care for a group of them liberated by the American forces reported: “These children did not know what tenderness was. They … were frightened of any grown-up who approached them.… The three-and four-year-olds could not even talk.… They were very backward in mental development in comparison with other children of the same age.”

Truly, this brings us face to face with the all-pervasiveness of sin and makes us realize how desperately the world needs the redemption found in Christ. As the reader confronts the human suffering detailed in this gripping book, he or she cannot help but be drawn to contemporary problems. The Lebensborn program gives a penetrating insight into where the far-reaching schemes for human engineering so widely discussed nowadays may be leading us. The hundreds of thousands of innocent babies destroyed annually in the United States by needless abortions bitterly reminds us of the Polish children who perished in the death camps through no fault of their own except that some person decided that they were “inconvenient.” While condemning the downgrading of women and the brutalization of children that resulted from the Nazi racial policies one must also examine what is happening in our own time to those who are trapped in urban ghettos.

As American Christians it is impossible for us to look into the mirror of history and not see our own national sins and shortcomings. Although we recoil in horror from the idea that the Nazis really believed they could create a people “of pure blood,” we must not remain indifferent to the suffering around us.

An Introduction To Thielicke

The Hidden Question of God, by Helmut Thielicke (Eerdmans, 1977, 183 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by Michael H. Macdonald, professor of German and philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington.

This is a selection of some of Thielicke’s addresses, articles, and chapters as well as a condensation of a section from the recently published second volume of The Evangelical Faith. The book is designed as an introduction to this leading German Lutheran theologian. The book will be useful to pastors and thoughtful Christians who want to relate their faith to the issues facing modern man.

There are five chapters, in which Thielicke deals respectively with religion, the church, man, truth, and God. The heart of the work is his discussion of the nature of man, in which he has an excellent critique of Marxism. Thielicke points out, correctly, that in spite of Marxism’s original concern for man, it essentially makes man a thing. Man’s value does not rest on his divine likeness; there can be no ultimate significance of each person. Man’s nobility is due to his ability to control nature, to produce. Marx inherited from Hegel this secondary role of the individual. It is not individual man, but man as a type that is accentuated. Man achieves fulfillment by becoming a social man. And then in the final classless society, evil somehow ceases to exist. Thielicke wonders whether man has not ceased to exist also, “becoming simply a synonym for humanity, the sum of all the positive and self-completing qualities of man.”

Thielicke emphasizes Marxism’s false anthropology. He exposes Marx’s doctrine of man, particularly obvious in the thoughts of the young Marx. Marxism is not just an economic theory; if it were, then Christianity and Marxism would have no reason to be diametrically opposed to one another, because Christianity has no single economic theory. Indeed, as many religious socialists have shown, Christianity is compatible with Marxist economic theory (cf. Tillich, The Socialist Decision, Harper & Row, 1977). But Marxism and Christianity take opposing metaphysical viewpoints. In Christianity God exists, spirit is primary, and man has a heart that needs to be transformed. Marxism is atheistic, materialistic, and concerned primarily with society.

Thielicke’s theology does not begin with a statement concerning the nature of God but with the work of the Holy Spirit. His central epistemological thesis is that truth is known only when it is seen incarnate in a person. The ultimate goal is not to grasp the truth, but to be in the truth by the power of God’s Spirit. Thielicke is a complex thinker and difficult to categorize, but he seems at times to set up a dichotomy between reason and revelation. For example, he singles out the theological faculty as “a little university of its own,” as if theologians alone had a set of presuppositions with which they work. Yet theological “control beliefs” are different only in substance, not in form. Everyone has a perspective on reality to bring to a theoretical inquiry. Christians should not be apologetic for control beliefs that determine which theories and explanations they consider live options (cf. Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion, Eerdmans, 1976).

Thielicke is thorough and well-read; the book is meaty, though somewhat obscure in spots. He mixes his primary and secondary sources skillfully. Reading Thielicke is rewarding, for he is well-acquainted with the issues facing our age. Chapter three alone is worth the price.

Christian Marriage: Can Books Help?

The Christian Couple, by Larry and Nordis Christenson (Bethany Fellowship, 1977, 186 pp., $5.95), Honest Questions—Honest answers to Enrich Your Marriage, by George and Margaret Hardisty (Harvest House, 1977, 222 pp., $3.95pb), Toward a Healthy Marriage, by Bernard Harnik (Word, 1976, 166 pp., $6.95), Living in Love, A Guide to Realistic Christian Marriage, by Ruth Ann and William M. Jones (John Knox, 1976, 160 pp., $7.95), and After the Wedding, by Philip Yancey (Word, 1976, 160 pp., $5.95), are reviewed by Norman Stolpe, editorial director, Family Concern, Wheaton, Illinois.

With hundreds of books on the subject available, I wonder if anything more can be or needs to be written about Christian marriage. Perhaps because of this, the production of “Christian marriage” books had slowed to a trickle; but lately the flow has begun again. These five books represent the new type of Christian marriage books, though others could have been as well selected. They demonstrate that to make a real contribution in this field is a difficult task. They also show that vigorous writing about Christian marriage is not only still possible but also worthwhile.

Criteria for evaluating the new Christian marriage books must go beyond whether they are true and even beyond the usual guidelines for measurements whether they are practical. Too many books have already been published, yet too many Christians still struggle with their marriages, unhelped by the torrent of advice. The goal of the usual Christian marriage book is to inspire couples. Besides being difficult to do in a fresh way, this approach tends to be a source of guilt feelings and frustration. No couple reaches the ideal Christian marriage, no matter whose biblical interpretation it is based on.

The author who wants to make a genuine contribution to the marriages of contemporary Christians must discard inspiration as the primary method and idealism as the principle message. With varying degrees of success, each of these five books reflects that premise. The criterion for evaluating the new Christian marriage books might be called redemptive realism. It is Christ’s word of hope and healing for all couples who struggle seriously to represent Christ’s character in their marriage.

Philip Yancey’s After the Wedding meets the standard of redemptive realism. The full force of the Christian Gospel and the human condition hits the reader. Yancey does not start with biblical exposition or sociological exploration. He starts with the lives of his friends. These people obviously mean a lot to him, and he shares in both their wounds and their triumphs.

By skillfully blending interviewer and storyteller, Yancey enters the minds of nine couples to help them tell their own marriage histories. Like Yancey, each couple has been married about five years. Each couple contends with a serious challenge or threat to their marriage. For some the struggle draws them together and for others it drives them apart. Yet these are not textbook illustrations for success and failure principles. They are people with whom Yancey ached and cried. He found something of himself in each couple.

I am glad that Yancey does not include discussion or thought questions at the end of each chapter. Instead, he writes a provocative commentary that follows each couple’s story. He points out patterns that seem to be constructive or destructive to them. Perhaps most important, he asks embarrassing questions. He puts himself and every married reader of the book on the spot. He challenges conventional idealism about Christian marriage when it doesn’t work for these couples. The emotional power of the accounts is exhausting and his observations are difficult to read. Many readers will not want to make the effort. However, the reward for that discipline will be the possibility of a fresh surge of the Gospel in one’s marriage.

Yancey is startlingly honest, not only in terms of the outcomes of various couples’ struggles, but also in the kinds of things he relates. He does not flinch when sensitive issues such as sexual conflict, spiritual deception, or parental hang-ups are at the root of a problem. But neither is he embarrassed to show sensitivity, love, growth, or the healing of the Gospel. After these moving examinations of young marriages, Yancey concludes with the depth of hope that can only come from such mature marriages as those of Charlie and Martha Shedd and Paul and Nellie Tournier.

No one should miss Larry and Nordis Christenson’s The Christian Couple. It is not the “same biblical insight and practical wisdom that made The Christian Family a best seller,” despite the dust jacket. Of course it is based on the same approach to biblical interpretation and the same principles for family relationships. But The Christian Couple is a much more incisive and significant book. It demands that Christians rethink some of the logic of their marriages.

The first, and the broadest, area of challenge is in the question of roles. Although people with feminist inclinations will hardly find the Christensons to be allies, others who have partitioned the home off for women will be discomforted by this book. The Christensons call men to make their families more important than their careers. Their own words state the case more strongly than any summary could:

“The feminist movement is a strident declaration that women cannot and will not homestead the domain of marriage and the family by themselves. If the husband assigns a low priority to the home, then the wife will downgrade it also. If job … [is] more interesting to a husband than his marriage, then the wife will begin to look outside the marriage for her fulfillment also. Feminists have tapped into a tragic reservoir of resentment on the part of women. But the real source of resentment is not primarily that men have excluded women from full participation in the institutions and power structures of society. It is, rather, that men have withdrawn themselves from full and creative participation in the adventure of marriage.… Family life will continue to go downhill until husbands give it a higher personal priority” (pp. 45 and 46).

The Christensons have isolated an issue of much greater significance for Christians to resolve in their marriages than the customary polemics of feminine submission and masculine headship. Although family books for men is an increasingly interesting topic for publishers, whether such books will be read by men remains to be seen. Until men accept that homemaking and nurturing responsibilities are dignified enough for themselves, the claims that they are dignified enough for women will mean little.

The Christensons have raised another challenge to the usual way roles are taught in the church. “Headship,” they write, “is a means of serving others”. Although some women may not welcome the kind service Christensons describe, men who use headship to get their wives (and children) to perform their wishes will not get any help from this book. Calling on the New Testament (i.e. Mark 10:42–45), the Christensons write that the husband’s headship makes him the servant of his wife. Though much of this discussion is only a rehearsal of traditional masculine and feminine roles, these elements will stretch the thinking of feminist and traditionalist alike. The Christensons are making a serious attempt to confront the realities of marriage with the message of the New Testament.

The Christian Couple approaches another issue that will stir even more controversy: contraception. The Christensons “feel that couples should be warned against the unthinking acceptance of contraceptives.” They suggest that the use of contraceptives, along with abortion, is part of an “anti-baby” mentality in western culture that should be resisted by Christians. They suggest the “Sympto-Thermic” method of birth control, which is a somewhat more sophisticated way of determining the woman’s fertile period than the rhythm method. In addition to the ethical and health benefits, this is claimed to benefit the couple’s sex life as well. Whatever the merits of these arguments, the Christensons have demonstrated that the debate over contraception is not over.

Of course The Christian Couple is much broader than these two rather controversial issues. But in these areas the Christensons have done the church a service by challenging popular positions. Little in the rest of the book rises above inspiration and idealism, but these two confrontations might provoke readers to rethink these issues. I was not persuaded, however, that such rethinking was necessarily profitable.

The Hardistys’ Honest Questions-Honest Answers is not as successful at redemptive realism as the previous two books. Ostensibly the questions they ask came from people whom the authors met at their seminars. Though many of the questions cover topics that few Christians would have written about a generation ago, few of them probe deeply into the meaning of marriage. This limits the answers, making them superficial and technique-oriented.

Many marriages, perhaps most marriages, are lived on a mundane level. Honest Questions-Honest Answers seems to imply that smoothing out the mundane and even trivial is the way to approach the ideal. The book is light, easy reading—for those not inclined to argue—that will find its audience. The common advice will help some couples but will not stretch or challenge many.

Living in Love by Ruth Ann and William M. Jones is also a rather typical collection of marriage advice. Although it is not quite as readable as Honest Questions-Honest Answers, it has more depth. Addressed to couples at the start of their marriages, it covers the usual range of sex, money, and in-laws. Unattainable idealism has been exchanged for restrained realism. Following each chapter of principles, methods, and applications, the authors explain how they have handled each issue. These conversations are friendly and personal but lack the warmth and power of the Shedds and Tourniers in After the Wedding.

The Jones do discuss two often neglected but important questions: the relationship of work and church to marriage. Although it doesn’t show much excitement for the church, the chapter “Finding a Church Community” does offer a solid presentation of the importance of the church in the life of the married couple, especially the newly married couple. In the shared life of the church, Christians can experience redemptive reality. With regard to work, the Jones have the courage to ask, “why work?” and the honesty to question the value of work. They write:

“Most of us work because we need money to live. Some members of our society have been saying for a long time that we work harder than we need to if that is our only reason for working. Some of our college-educated friends are now working only a few hours a week. ‘We’re selling as little of ourselves as possible.’ … ‘I have enough to live happily,’ he says. ‘Why should I try for more?’ Such a pattern of non-work helps us understand the sometimes obscure real reasons for working” (p. 50).

Bernard Harnik’s Toward a Healthy Marriage is in a different class. It is addressed to the marriage counselor rather than the couple. Harnik starts with the case history of a very troubled woman and her marriage; the realism is frightening. Then he extensively analyzes unhealthy marriages. Not until the final two chapters and thirty pages does the nature of healthy marriage or the redemption of Christ clearly appear. A familiarity with secular psychotherapy is required for full appreciation of this book. Care should be taken not to brand either the book or the author as sub-Christian because of these things. Pastors and counselors who devote much of their time to helping deeply troubled marriages will find the book stimulating, provocative, and helpful. The couple looking for encouragement will find that it is not a self-help tool.

In the last chapter of After the Wedding Philip Yancey raises the troubling questions of redemptive realism. Anyone who wants to write about marriage, help married couples, or live in marriage must ponder them.

“Is our ideal of marriage too exalted?… Does marriage ask too much? Is the goal too exalted for the fallen man? My answer is precisely yes, in the same way the goal of the Christian life is too exalted for man.… Does it do any good to spiritualize about how marriage is like the Christian life and how true love is God’s love? Only if you believe marriage can be a crucial settlement in God’s Kingdom. It is exalted, not because it is so different from the rest of life, but because it allows us a frontier to practice God’s value system, so that we may derive strength to present that system to the rest of the world.… In marriage we are tiptoeing through a field of land mines on the way to paradise” (pp. 143–145).

Briefly Noted

Those who want to know about ministering through the print or electronic media should read the newly revised Careers in Religious Communications (Herald Press, 243 pp., $4.95 pb) by Roland Wolsely, long-time journalism professor. Enhanced by numerous case studies and practical hints on beginning a career, this volume provides an excellent introduction to the field.

Hymn and Scripture Selection Guide, compiled by Donald A. Spencer (Judson, 176 pp., $6.95), is a handy reference work designed to eliminate the random search for hymns by people planning worship services. The interdenominational work is divided into three sections: hymns listed with the Scripture normally associated with them, Scripture references with complementing hymns, and an index of the 380 hymns classified in the volume.

TESTIMONIES. Do you like to read stories about Christians, both the famous and the not-so-famous, but you want them in small doses? Here are some recent collections with a dozen or two tales in each volume. Profiles by Helen Hosier (Hawthorn, 184 pp., $6.95) looks at Christian leaders like Pat Boone and Catherine Marshall. On the Trail of God by William Proctor (Doubleday, 151 pp., $6.95) is on such widely-known celebrities as Pat Boone, Mark Hatfield, and David Nelson (son of Ozzie and Harriet). Twelve Who Cared by Dorothy Wilson (Christian Herald, 263 pp., $6.95) offers selections from eleven of her full-length biographies, with a tilt toward medical doctors, especially missionaries. Overwhelming Victory by Graham Turner (Harper & Row, 224 pp., $7.95) is by a Britisher, but the well-told stories of conversions come from several continents. Twelfth Man in the Huddle by Dave Diles (Word, 187 pp., $6.95) is aboutthe faith of several pro-football players. He Walks With Me by David Graham (Simon and Schuster, 210 pp., $7.95) is about country music stars. For a glimpse at people from earlier centuries as well as our own, see Saints in Times of Turmoil by John Sheridan (Paulist, 130 pp., $2.45 pb) with chapters on Jerome, Aquinas, and Elizabeth Seton, among others.

Directory of Christian Work Opportunities has recently made the first of what is to be a twice yearly updating of Christian personnel openings worldwide. The 781-page first issue lists more than 18,000 opportunities. The publisher is Intercristo (Box 9323, Seattle, Wash. 98109). Single copies are $40. Naturally this work belongs in any library or career-guidance office that serves Christians. Individuals can learn more about the ministry of Intercristo by writing or by calling toll free, (800) 426–0507.

A young person’s search for a vocation is never easy. But Christian Career Planning (Multnomah, 151 pp., $7.95 pb) is designed to ease the difficulty. Written by John Bradley, an experienced guidance counselor, the book helps the student (who should have at least one year of college) to determine his interests and abilities, then aids him in matching those to job opportunities. The strength of the book lies in its remarkable depth and realism concerning the job market and required skills (it goes far beyond the simple doctor-lawyer syndrome); its weakness lies in the large amount of time required to complete the process.

For an intimate glance into the life of Mrs. Billy Graham, read her book of poetry, Sitting By My Laughing Fire (Word, 245 pp., $17.95). Although the poems may not have immortal qualities, they are warm and personal and enhanced by the many beautiful illustrations.

AFRICA. He Gave Us a Valley by Helen Roseveare (InterVarsity, 188 pp., $3.95 pb) is her account of medical missionary work in northeast Zaire between 1966–73; War to Be One by Levi O. Keidel (Zondervan, 239 pp., $4.95 pb) tells of the experiences of one American missionary in the early 1960’s when Zaire was granted independence; Nambia by Colin O’Brien Winter (Eerdmans,234 pp., $4.95 pb) is the account of a now-exiled Anglican bishop who served for thirteen years in the South African-ruled territory of South West Africa; Battle for Africa by Brother Andrew (Revell, 156 pp., $6.95) is a brief, continent-wide overview of the confiict between Communism and Christianity.

Since you came, Mr. Murphey, our church has lost some of its dignity,” Florence said as she served me tea from a silver tea service. “We had such—such quiet dignity before you came. Now, I don’t want to hurt your feelings in telling you all of this. But you call those children to the front for the children’s sermon. And they’re so noisy. It absolutely disturbs the sanctity of the whole worship hour.” She smiled angelically as she offered me a cookie from a silver plate.

“Florence, I’m sorry you feel that way. For me, children are important, I want them to feel part of the worship. Church isn’t just for older people.”

“Yes,” she said. Her lips smiled, but her eyes didn’t. “But they also need to learn to be reverent in God’s house. Why, they whisper as they go forward. And when you ask questions, they all yell out answers and.…”

Florence had other observations to make. She summed up the conversation by saying, “Now, we realize you’ve only been in the church for a short time, Mr. Murphey, but I wanted you to know how I felt about things.”

“Thanks, Florence, for being so open. I’m sorry you can’t enjoy the children’s sermons. As I said, the children are important to me. I intend to treat them as children and not as miniature adults.”

I was depressed as I walked away. Was Florence right? Had I been too harsh? Too judgmental toward her attitude? “Lord, help me to be more loving toward Florence. Toward people who disagree with me.” And I am learning. It’s not always easy. Some of the people who disagree with me never come around to my way of thinking. Or I never quite accept their position.

At one point in my life that seemed to me like an unacceptable solution. As a zealous Christian, I felt that people who disagreed had to work at a situation until they resolved it. I’ve learned that life isn’t always so neat.

I first understood this when I talked to one of my seminary professors who had influenced me during my student days. “Every church has at least one,” he said.

“And if you don’t get enough there, you’ll have them as neighbors or relatives.”

He called them “grace builders.” “God has a wonderful purpose in sending certain people your way. They force you to pray intensely, read your Bible more faithfully, and teach you dozens of lessons about patience and longsuffering. Those folks do more to help you grow in spiritual grace than any others.” My former professor had just listened to twenty minutes of complaining about two people in my congregation who were really upsetting me. “And, Cec, those people seem to have a major function—to help you grow as rapidly as possible. In the long run, they do more for you than all the sweet folks in the church.”

“I’d rather grow a little more slowly then,” I replied.

“Oh, no, it doesn’t work that way. God sends you enough grace builders to stop you from getting either proud or comfortable. He sends you enough of the sweet ones to keep you encouraged.”

Over the years I’ve had my share of grace builders. Besides Florence, the next one I think of is Oliver.

He really helped me grow. The rotund chairman of the finance committee never missed a meeting, shouted louder when you tried to reason with him, and usually got the decisions he wanted. For days before any big decision came up to the church board, Oliver visited other board members. He called them on the phone. He arrived at meetings at least half an hour early and pulled officers to the side for a private caucus. People listened to Oliver because he worked hard for the church. He loved God and seemed convinced that his positions were right. Want any kind of job done from mopping up rain leaks to patching a roof? Oliver would do it.

When I think of Oliver the words overbearing, insensitive, dogmatic, and domineering come to mind.

Oliver made me pray more often. Our differences caused me to examine my motives constantly. Perhaps I ought to thank him for his help in my spiritual growth. He was a real grace builder. And there have been others.

We all have our grace builders. Not only ministers. All of us. The grace builders round us out, help us mature. We need these people to keep us moving forward, sometimes to keep us praying.

I don’t like the grace builders in my life. I try to avoid some of them; with others, I grit my teeth and face them. Without them I could accomplish more and feel better about life. Or could I?

When some of these people dominate a portion of my life I find great comfort in these words: “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children.… For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:7–8, 11).

In my more reflective moments, I know I’m seeing only a one-dimensional picture of these people. Oliver was the one who pushed the board to give me a raise at a time when finances were critical. When he found out that we liked pecans, he brought a large bag of them that he had gathered from his own tree. His wife stood beside him, holding a freshly baked pecan pie.

In my struggles with grace builders, several things have become apparent to me. First, I can’t resolve all the conflicts. Life has a way of heaping one problem on another. And that’s when we grow.

I can’t expect everyone to like me. And second, I don’t love everybody else. That was hard for me to admit. After all, a Christian should love everyone. Jesus said, “Love as I have loved you.” “This is my commandment that you love one another.” “Love never fails.” Even with those verses in my ears, I can admit without guilty feelings that I don’t love everybody. Some people I tolerate. Others I accept. I don’t even know how to love everybody. And that includes some of the grace builders in my life. Accepting them is one thing. But I am humanly incapable of loving everyone. However, maybe that’s why Jesus sends them to me—to teach me to love more.

There’s no way I can fully and equally love hundreds of people in the congregation I serve. At times I care more for one family than another. In the midst of grief, I am close to the bereaved. Or I share the joys of a new marriage relationship, or a new baby’s arrival. But my relationship doesn’t stay constant with each member.

Finally, these grace builders have their own grace builders in life. In fact, my suspicion is that I’m the grace builder for several of them.—CECIL B. MURPHEY, pastor, Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Riverdale, Georgia.

Recently I was flying from Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles after a day of non-stop talking in interviews, to a group, to individuals, and I sank into my seat, placed my briefcase in front of me and stuck my feet up on the wall, prepared to have a three-hour period of silence to regain my strength for what was ahead. However my search for my misplaced boarding pass, and the sudden scooping up into her arms of a tiny dog (who had made a tiny puddle on the floor in front of us) on the part of my neighbor in the next seat, brought several “excuse me pleases” along with smiles that made contact of two human beings immediate. After the puddle had been mopped up, the beautiful girl sitting next to me glanced at the book sticking out of my briefcase (What Is a Family?) and asked, “Did you know that 75 per cent of marriages end in divorce? How can I stay married?” Then in a rush she went on to add, “My job takes me away three weeks at a time. He doesn’t mind that.… but we don’t have time to get to know each other very well.” To help me understand her problem better she gave me another piece of the puzzle by adding another factor, “You see I am the only woman who has attained the position I have in my field, and I am afraid I would be letting the girls down if I stopped.”

I was being presented with the very opposite dilemma from the one that current attitudes so forced on women, that of needing a career to get away from drudgery, and of needing outside contacts to get away from boredom of being too much with one person. Here was a cry of someone lost in a wilderness trying to find some path or hiking signs to get to a desired destination. The yearning was to find a way to strengthen fragile ties of a very new relationship, and to sort out loyalties that were spread so thin as to have no certainty as to what should come first. Lost in a maze of twisted ideas and off-key voices is the basic understanding of what marriage is all about. The empty place beside Adam as he walked and worked in the garden was also a vacuum in any possibility of horizontal communication, to say nothing of physical contact. When God made Eve that Adam would no longer be alone, he gave both man and woman a oneness that was triple—physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

The explanation God gives of marriage is that of leaving something good in order to have in the area of both time and space the possible reality of “cleaving” or “clinging” together, and of being one physically as well as of making and sharing a shelter. The leaving of father and mother is what is given by God to man as he is told that he is to be joined to his wife. The necessity of making place for a new and central loyalty, and taking time in togetherness to strengthen new ties is clearly set forth. As we are finite creatures, choice is always involved of courageously putting something aside to do the thing that we are convinced is of central importance. If “togetherness” and “oneness” are to be a growing lasting thing, then two finite human beings need to have time and be in the same place as much as possible in order to communicate verbally, physically, and in sharing a variety of creativity and even drudgery together. “Love suffereth long and is kind” demands proximity sufficiently long to portray patience and kindness in the midst of immediate difficulties, not distant ones.

The three-hour conversation that followed started not with the subject of marriage, but of the base upon which life itself must be built. If there is no base, no ground, no foundation, the structure of life itself is a flimsy uncertain shifting kind of thing, easily demolished by the storms and high winds of voices that cannot be judged because there is no unchanging position by which to judge them. Instead of paths being marked, there is a constant taking away of the markers, a planting of scruffy shrubs and weeds on all the paths, blotting out any sense of direction. Three hours is too short to cover philosophy, history, science in a rush of words, or to outline something of the content of the unchangeable answers from the Bible. However, there is no way of plunging in with meaningless words to talk about the centrality of the career of marriage in the lives of married people, without giving some map of the wilderness of ideas and trying to show where the plainly marked paths were, and still are when the camouflage is removed.

No wonder people are bewildered like wandering babes in the woods when the reality of the existence of diversity between male and female is attacked so fiercely, and then sex is lauded as something that has the basic purpose of “oneness” totally erased from any consideration. A recent article sent to us stated dogmatically that “sex” is no longer to have any romantic meaning at all, but will become a form of “recreation” to take its place among other recreations. The ideas put forth as to not only what marriage is, but who human beings are, are so thoroughly “wandering stars” or “clouds without water” that the fear that clutches people as they are cut off from continuity of human relationships is a dark fear indeed, because there is no sign of continuity from any source in the universe.

In contrast we who are Christians are meant to be giving a demonstration of what the possibilities are of strengthening human ties, and of continuing to place value on human loyalties. The basic relationship where this is to be made a lifelong career is meant to be marriage. However, for married and unmarried Christians alike, the picture of a “clinging together” man and wife is meant to be only a small illustration of the wonder of our really completely lasting relationship with the Bridegroom, Christ. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31,32).

We, men and women, married and unmarried, are to recognize that our Bridegroom is infinite, and that therefore his promise, “I shall never leave thee nor forsake thee,” is able to be literally kept. He can be alone with each of us at the same time; he has no choices to make because the whole church, the body of believers, is his bride, yet he does not have to choose to be with us only “enmasse” but individually he is here, and wherever we go, he goes with us. Our moment by moment communication depends not upon his staying with us, but upon our calling upon him, feeding upon his Word, reading his communication, talking to him in prayer and in song, spending sufficient time as a bride really putting the Bridegroom first in loyalty, love, and desire. May we uncover the path to strengthening our own “ties,” both the human ones and with our unchanging Bridegroom.

Recently in a special showing at the Director’s Guild in Hollywood, I saw Hal Lindsey’s newest media effort, The Late Great Planet Earth (produced by the Peterson company, Hollywood). The film, after his book of the same name, is a combination of Thief in the Night, Future Shock, Consumer Byline, and War of the Worlds. The cast is not impressive (nor extensive). The film focuses on garden shots of Hal Lindsey and extensive narration by Orson Welles, whose very tone of voice adds importance to the film.

And movie critique must speak to two separate issues: form and content. In regard to the first, the film is a good but by no means great documentary. Director Robert Amran has managed to integrate an acceptable dramatic performance (in the beginning) with assorted newsreel film clips and cameo shots of Lindsey, Welles, and a host of “important” spokesmen. The list reads like an advisory board to Futurist magazine or membership list of the Club of Rome (indeed, club president Dr. A. Peccei is the first to be interviewed). George Walk and Norman Borlaug (Nobel Prize Winners), Emile Benoit (Columbia University economist), Desmond Morris (author of The Naked Ape), Paul Ehrlick, William Paddock, and several others from such schools as M.I.T. join astrologers and Babetta the Witch in foretelling the future of the race.

The movie opens with a chase scene in which a supposed Hebrew prophet is pursued and finally stoned to death by a small band of irate Jewish townsfolk. In the next shot Orson Welles picks up the decomposed skull of the prophet and announces that “Such was the fate of any Hebrew prophets whose predictions were proven to be false.” Briefly alluding to true biblical prophets such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekial, Amos, and Jesus, Welles concludes that “although many may not agree with them, their message cannot be disregarded.” Then one of the weaker segments of the film follows: a dramatic reenactment of the Revelation to St. John. In a clumsy attempt at surrealism, the delirious apostle stumbles half-crazed around Patmos Island where the ocean turns blood red and the fish die. At one point he awakens on a sandy beach with some strange bedfellows, whose lattex flesh and festering sores reminded me of the special effects in Godzilla Meets the Sammarai Warrier. As if his imagination was not already sufficiently overactive, poor John even sees the face of the Son of God—who looks like singer Larry Norman—in the sky. The most disgusting scene is one in which John stumbles onto the Queen of Babylon perched in the branches of a tree drinking a goblet of blood; she lets the blood drool out of her mouth.

The remainder of the film, done in documentary style, is better. But the last five minutes of the movie—a “crystal montage” to the soundtrack of “The Hallelujah Chorus”—is visually and acoustically weak. Something stronger is needed to follow the lengthy Armageddon sequence of nuclear destruction. Even the otherwise sympathetic audience applauded anemically at that point.

The second, and in this case, more important, consideration is that of content. The film is biased and manipulative, lacks integrity, and is potentially dangerous.

I expected the film to be slanted toward Lindsey’s dispensational pre-millenialism. But other eschatalogical viewpoints do not get so much as the tip of Lindsey’s hat. Further, the implication in the film is that to believe the Bible is to believe that what John saw were twentieth-century war machines, nuclear missiles and explosives, armed Chinese, Russian, and Arabian troops, and IBM computers, which he described as brilliant lights, strange monsters, and apocalyptic horsemen. In other words, no pre-nuclear age could possibly have understood the symbolism of the Apocalypse. Stating that “70 per cent of the biblical prophecies have already come to pass,” Orson Welles proposes that “if the events in Revelation are truly prophetic, the remainder are to be fulfilled in our lifetime.” This, of course, is not new to Lindsey’s eschatalogical scheme, which understands the “this generation” of Matthew 24 to be approximately forty years, beginning with the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1947 and confirmed by the Six-Day War in 1967. Lindsey’s timetable therefore calls for the end of the world sometime between 1984 and the year 2,000, another twenty-five years at the most.

Further, the film is highly manipulative. Two segments juxtapose a series of highly pessimistic “intelligent” opinions with a series of plain, uncultured, man-on-the-street interviews, the inference being that most average people are unaware and unconcerned, while only the pessimistic are really informed. In another segment, the Kennedys, Kissinger, Carter, Reagan, Kosygin, Brown, and others are suggested as possible candidates for the office of anti-Christ; names and numerical equivalency are fed into computers in a sophisticated computerized numerology, of which Bullinger would be proud, in order to decide who might be the 666 man of Revelation 13:18. The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King illustrate the feasibility of the anti-Christ dying from a “mortal head wound,” only to be resurrected from the dead shortly afterwards. Biblical signs of the times are found in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes that measure over seven on the Richter Scale. The anticipated “Jupiter effect” in 1982 is suggested as a fulfillment of Luke 21. Overpopulation, world famine, and plagues are a fulfillment of Revelation 6. Zechariah’s vision of men’s tongues disintegrating in their mouths and their eyes disintegrating in their sockets is at last correctly understood as the result of nuclear war. Hailstones are interpreted as bombs, flashes of lightning as missiles. ICBMs fulfill the prophecies of John and the 200-million-strong army of China those of Revelation. Environmental pollution is a fulfillment of Isaiah 24:5 and 6. Skin cancer, cloning, and the killer bees of Brazil are also irrefutable signs of fulfilled prophecy and the end-times. Such proof-texting of current events is propaganda, as is Welles’s rhetorical questions, which give the impression that the analogies are true, whether or not they actually are.

The film lacks integrity because of its basic presupposition: the world must end within one generation from the birth of the state of Israel. Any opinion of world affairs that does not dovetail with this prophecy is dismissed. Certainly not all scientists, economists, or researchers agree with the negativism expressed by the Club of Rome. I would even venture to say that for every expert or Nobel Prize Winner interviewed in the film, you could find as knowledgeable an expert on the opposite side. William Paddock is illustrative of this unrestrained pessimism when he says in the film that “People must die, there is just no way to stop it.” Such an opinion must not go unchallenged. Granted, Paddock is right, if Western culture continues to adopt a lifeboat ethic with regard to its responsibility for the rest of the world. But it is not inevitable. Redistribution of food, technology, and wealth could halt the presently escalating starvation syndrome. Statistics and opinions are cited so rapidly that there is no time to evaluate the views presented. The result is likely to be an involuntary acceptance of what the film says.

The Late Great Planet Earth, then, is a potentially dangerous film. It identifies computer banks, peace pacts, ten-nation confederacies, and nuclear warheads with Scripture; the two are so intertwined as to be inextricable for the common man.

Of greater concern, however, is the despair that the viewer feels after the film is over. If we have only twenty-five years at the most before we utterly destroy ourselves, what is the point in going on?

Such a voice of despair cannot be the battle cry of the church. Doomsdayism is blind to the social side of the Gospel and the real presence of the Kingdom of God in this age as well as in the next. Biblical prophecy and apocalypticism must be understood separately. The apocalytic vision is vague; biblical prophecy was invariably specific and open-ended: repentance or judgment, blessing as well as curse. There is always a mercy clause, an “if my people will.” Prophecy cannot become a crutch to keep us from taking corporate responsibility for God’s creation.

Finally, the film portrays Jesus merely as one of the biblical prophets who predicted the end of the world, which gives the impression that that was his primary goal. And few viewers will guess that the concluding crystal montage with the Hallelujah Chorus symbolizes the “glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Gary Wilburn has the master of Christian Studies degree from Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He is contributing editor to the “Wittenberg Door.”

Jesse Winchester: Can’t Stand Up Alone

Jesse Winchester’s life and work have never been simple. He has a unique background, and because of it he is able to use his talent to write fascinating folk songs. His music deals with an amazing breadth of human experience. His career began in Montreal when he played music in clubs to survive. He had left Tennessee in 1967 to avoid the Vietnam draft. His career was stifled because his draft evasion precluded any tour of the United States. The situation is now reversed. After being granted amnesty by President Carter, a grateful Jesse Winchester began a long U. S. tour this spring. Jesse’s status as expatriate has brought him increased publicity. Now, one of the most fascinating singer-song writers of the seventies is gaining a portion of the national spotlight.

Few artists in the popular music world are as appreciative of the life that God has granted them as is Jesse Winchester. “Let the Rough Side Drag” is one of Jesse’s playful and celebrative songs with a cheerful country tempo:

It’s a good thing, that the air is free

Such a good thing, that a man can see

What a good thing, that the Lord above is God

It’s a good thing, to be young and strong

Such a good thing, we’re not all forlorn

What a good thing, that making love is fun

Let the rough side drag

Let the smooth side show

As you pull that load

Everywhere you go

In the cryptic “Quiet About It,” Jesse begins to parade his faith in a personal God, only to bring that parade to an abrupt halt:

Yes I am lost, but he is leading me home

He’s my companion when my friends are up and gone

But still I get lonely

Sometimes I doubt

I want to do right

And only wrong gets out

And when I feel this way

I burst and I want to shout

But trust me Lord to be quiet about it.

He shies away from speaking about spiritual belief and commitment. (“Those things are hard for me to talk about,” he told me.) The only spiritual credential he revealed in an interview was that his grandfather was once the Episcopal bishop of Chicago. Yet on his new album, Jesse sings about his spiritual struggles in a way worthy of any Christian:

Oh Lord when your jeweler’s eye

Peers into my soul

Oh Lord I am overcome with shame

Take me Lord and purify

Heal me with the Word

Oh I beg a gift, I dare not claim

Although this song, titled “Songbird,” does not express a freeing faith in Jesus, it does imply a basic fear of the Lord. As the Scripture teaches, this fear is the beginning of wisdom. Jesse employs his elementary wisdom when he acknowledges the splendor of creation in songs like “Yankee Lady” and “Mississippi You’re On My Mind.” Jesse seems to know much truth, yet personal commitment to Christ does not appear foremost.

I asked him if he looked forward to completing his tour. Jesse replied with so hesitant a “yes” that I wondered if his heart agreed with his words. He is not especially confident in his abilities. In concert Jesse regularly sings a hymn written by Martha Carson. The lyrics apply to his and most people’s situation:

… my burden has got so heavy

Till I can’t stand up alone

I must lay my head on one strong shoulder

‘Cause I can’t stand up alone.

SCOTT W. CURTIS

Scott W. Curtis is arts and entertainment editor of the “Vermont Cynic.”

Word-snatchers invade the church.

Advertising sells a lot more than cars, cookies, and computers,” a recent Advertising Council Ad states. It also sells culture, colleges, candidates, and churches. The rhetoric of ad men transforms standard brands into graven images for profit. Moreover, in the areas of religion, politics, and charities, as well as business, there is a growing trend to sell an image instead of a fact, person, or product.

This image-vying and image-buying is, according to Wright Morris, “a ‘religious’ rite in the sense that it involves idols behind altars.…” (A Bill of Rites, A Bill of Wrongs, A Bill of Goods, New American Library, 1968, p. 135). These “idols of the marketplace,” to borrow Francis Bacon’s phrase, are hawked in a liturgical lingo. However, this religious doublespeak has another side; while Madison Avenue uses religious ideas and language, churchmen have adopted the techniques and language of Madison Avenue.

A typical use of religion in advertising is the ad for Italian slacks called “Jesus Jeans,” which displays a girl in tight-fitting shorts branded he who loves me, follows me. Biblical echoes in other recent ads are Michelob’s Do unto others, Johnnie Walker’s Honor Thyself, and Seagram’s Stop loving thy neighbor’s-Get thine own. Yardley of London asks Can woman live by detergents alone? and Rolf’s of Amity Leather Products offers a wallet For your daily bread or a beatific, Welcome to the fold. Such ads are designed to transfer positive associations to products that otherwise might have no appeal.

If the advertiser, sometimes verging on sacrilege, borrows language from the churchman, placing idols behind altars, the churchman, sometimes verging on desacralization, borrows jargon and technique from the advertiser, placing altars behind idols. We hear such phrases as Things go better with Christ; Jesus is the Real Thing; You’ve got a lot to live and Jesus has a lot to give; Relief is just a prayer away; Try Him—you’ll like Him; and Give the Master Charge of your life. Such expressions bring to mind Paul’s warnings about those who corrupt the Scriptures, as well as those who peddle religion for gain.

A Committee on Public Doublespeak, established by the National Council of Teachers of English, has been studying semantic distortion by public officials, political candidates and commentators, advertisers, and all who use the mass media. The fact that religious doublespeak has not been examined is perhaps due to the false notion that those who disseminate the word of truth have no problems with truth of the word. But, as C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape reminds us, nowhere is temptation so successful as on the very steps of the altar. “We have contrived that their very language should be all smudge and blur,” Screwtape says (Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Macmillan, 1961, p. 172).

Lewis recognized that the smudge and blur begins first in the heart and mind and then transfers to speech. Similarly, George Orwell says doublethink is both a cause and an effect of doublespeak: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness, while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it.…” (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Harcourt, 1949, p. 163).

Doublethink and doublespeak have roots in the sinful nature of man. Montaigne wrote over three centuries ago that “We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

It is human nature that produces Orwellian doublethink, which, in turn, produces doublespeak, leading often to doubledealing (that is, hypocritical, cunning deception; veiled duplicity of action), and finally even to doublecross (flagrant misrepresentation and treachery). The children of men “Speak lies each with his neighbor,” the psalmist wrote, “with false lips and double heart they speak.” Or as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, men “do but flatter with their lips, and dissemble with their double heart.” Basic to doublespeak is incongruity between what is said and what really is, between word and referent. Doublespeak is characterized by incongruity between what language is supposed to do—communicate—and what doublespeak does—obscure. It is the incongruity between the specific referent and the ambiguity, abstraction, or inaccuracy of words. It is the incongruity between what should be said and what is left unsaid or slanted to cloak essential but unpleasant facts.

Incongruity between the medium and the message has no place in communication of Christian truth. The verbal medium must conform to the message, never vice-versa. In a Christian context at least, the medium is not the message; rather the Christian message is itself also the medium: the Word is both subject and object. Effective Christian communication is possible when words and their referents are united through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. “We speak not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, combining spiritual things with spiritual words” (1 Cor. 2:13, NAS).

Doublethink produces doublespeak, which in turn leads to doubledealing, and finally, to doublecross.

Acommon variety of religious doublespeak might be called rhetorical overkill, which in its milder forms is inane verbosity and in its more severe forms is tasteless bombast. “A fool’s voice is known by a multitude of words,” Solomon wrote (Eccl. 5:3). We often hear expressions such as free gift, God incarnate in the flesh, self image of yourself, unmerited favor, real reality, ascend up to heaven, and essentials necessary to Christian growth. Such tautology results from ignorance of language or a lack of faith in the power of the Word.

In Studies in Words (Cambridge, 1967, p. 7), C.S. Lewis discussed several forms of “verbicide” that men commit “because they want to snatch a word as a party banner, to appropriate its ‘selling quality.’ ” One of the commonest of those cited by Lewis is inflation: “Those who taught us to say awfully for ‘very’, tremendous for ‘great’, sadism for ‘cruelty,’ and unthinkable for ‘undesirable’ were verbicides.” Because of the use of adjectives such as awful and wonderful to describe commonplace things, these words have lost their impact when used to describe the sacred; their original meaning has been lost or vitiated through inflation. Makers of Gillette Blue Blades have experienced this similar problem: because of the use of inflated language in past advertising, they have no words left to meaningfully describe improvements in their product. “What can we do?” a company executive asks. “Say, ‘This time we really mean it’?”

Christendom seems to be choking in fuzz, fluff, and flummery—epitomized by the ubiquitous slogan, “Have a nice eternity.” This pseudo-statement illustrates what might be called rhetorical underkill or blunderkill. The incongruity between noun and modifier renders the phrase oxymoronic—with due emphasis on the second syllable.

Linguistic puffery in a religious context has brought about the lie that is not quite a lie and the truth that is not quite the truth. A church ad states, “Your friendly neighborhood church is just a few short miles off the freeway, just a few short minutes from practically anywhere in the Valley.” Ours, you see, is an age of relativity, even in linear and chronological measurement—although our friendly neighborhood pastor probably preaches absolutes in the pulpit. Think of it. The miles to church are not restricted to 1,609.35 meters each, and Ptolemy’s minute can be shortened as one drives there. A religious breakthrough has come. If Madison Avenue can advertise a large pint, a big, big gallon, and a full quart, why can’t the churches advertise short miles, short minutes, a full Gospel, and a full salvation, as well as an eternity that’s gonna last a long, long, time?

Another form of religious doublespeak is the use of euphemism. Some euphemisms, of course, serve a legitimate purpose in situations where tact, taste, and courtesy are required. Used responsibly, they can be the soft words that turn away wrath. But when they cloak essential truth, when language belies reality, when manipulation and exploitation are the motive, they become pernicious words in sheep’s clothing or the whitewash on sepulchres full of corruption. By use of euphemism some preachers avoid a clean exposition of sin, a central and essential doctrine in Christian teaching. “Whatever became of sin?” Karl Menninger asked in his recent book. A myriad of euphemisms have replaced and obsured it; sin becomes a faux pas, a peccadillo, a lapse, a slip, a breach, a misdeed, or an impropriety. One does not sin; one is simply being human.

In T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party, Celia Coplestone, in a session with her psychiatrist, describes her guilt:

“I had always been taught to disbelieve in sin.

Oh, I don’t mean that it was ever mentioned.

But anything wrong, from our point of view,

Was either bad form, or was psychological.…

But when everything’s bad form, or mental kinks,

You either become bad form, and cease to care,

Or else, if you care, you must be kinky

(Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950, Harcourt, 1971, p. 361).)

An age in which sin is bad form is a doublespeaking age in which the power to define a word can be the power to shape ideas and control minds. G. K. Chesterton, in his essay “On Evil Euphemisms,” aptly characterizes our time: “Everything is to be called something that it is not.… Everything is to be recommended to the public by some sort of synonym which is really a pseudonym. It is a talent that goes with the time of electioneering and advertisement and newspaper headlines; but whatever else such a time may be, it certainly is not specially a time of truth” (Essays, Stories, and Poems, I.M. Dent and Sons, 1935, pp. 208–9).

Still another form of religious doublespeak is the use of jargon. The use of esoteric, theological terms inappropriate to audience and occasion is the stock-in-trade of the religous doublespeaker who says thaumaturgy rather than working of miracles, viable Weltanschauung rather than sensible world-view, and relevant kerygma rather than effective proclamation of the Gospel. This person lives in a pastorium; interacts with and gets input and feedback from his prayer-cell circle of the Committed in a Christian Life Center; has dialogue in Christian constructs; opts for viable alternatives to implement, and Outreach Explosion to the unchurched. The Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian believers, “Let no man deceive you with vain [or empty] words” (Eph. 5:6), and Peter warned believers of those who would make merchandise of them with false words (2 Pet. 2:3).

A first cousin of this type of doublespeak is what might be called “purr words”—highly general, abstract language that is long on impression and short on repression, designed to sell rather than to tell. These words and expressions have such vague associations and referents that no clear meaning is conveyed or even intended—for example, the American Way of Life, a meaningful religious experience, distinctively Christian, and the word religious itself.

Another form of religious doublespeak consists of what Ralph Ellison has called “church-house rhetoric”—that is, hackneyed language, prefabricated pietisms, sanctimonious stereotypes. One who uses pious platitudes not only speaks mechanically, but also reveals the quality of his thinking and devotion. If the blessings of God are new every morning, why is the language of testimony and prayer threadbare and stale? It is certainly not the clarity of some expressions that have led to their overuse; consider: the battlements of heaven (Is the Holy City under siege?) or a journey to far-flung corners of the globe (to be accomplished, I suppose, by throwing caution to the four winds). We must be aware not only of what we mean to say but also of what we say without meaning to. Consider this common expression: May God add his blessing to the reading of the Word. The implication is that man has blessed the Word by reading it and Almighty will add a little something.

Although some words lose their value to communicate through hackneyed stereotypes, others do the same thing through a hip rhetoric slanted to accomodate a particular audience. Such expressions as Groove with God; Let Jesus turn you on; get high on Jesus, and take the ultimate trip with the Big Man upstairs fall dangerously short of any biblical referent. Paul’s advice to Timothy to “shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase into more ungodliness” (2 Tim. 2:16) is appropriate warning to anyone who is guilty of this form of doublespeak.

One of the most subtle forms of current religious doublespeak is the use of what Theodore Roosevelt called weasel words. These are words that have been emptied of their meaning, like eggs sucked empty by a weasel. As Mario Pei points out, the term “can be legitimately extended to cover any word of which the semantics are deliberately changed or obscured to achieve a specific purpose” (Words in Sheep’s Clothing, Hawthorne, 1969, p. 2). For example, Neo-Orthodox theologians often use Christian terms while denying their historical basis in fact, which in effect empties the word of meaning. This is true of their use of the terms virgin birth, revelation, and resurrection. With respect to the last Charles Ryrie has noted that “Barthians say that the accounts of the resurrection in the Bible are not the ground of our faith in the resurrection; nevertheless, they are an important element in the witness to revelation of the resurrection, and this revelation is the ground of our faith. Reduced to simple doubletalk this means that theoretically we would not need the Bible accounts of the resurrection in order to believe it, but admittedly they help, and actually we could not believe without them” (Neo-Orthodoxy, Moody Press, 1956, p. 60).

Paul warned Timothy that in the latter days men would “be full of big words,” maintaining a “facade of religion but their conduct will deny its validity” (2 Tim. 3:1–5, Phillips). Such is the incongruity of religious doublespeak. If doublespeak is the language of corruption issuing from the deceitfulness of the human heart, then the desideratum is a language of integrity. Amelioration of doublespeak will result from the single-mindedness of an integrated and regenerate personality. When the word of Christ dwells richly within, when the Holy spirit combines “spiritual things with spiritual words” doublespeak will diminish.

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.

Could Hitler happen here?

We asked three American historians, each with a background in German studies, to respond to Helmut Thielicke’s comments on Nazi Germany.

Each man is a professor of history. Richard V. Pierard, the first to comment, and Robert G. Clouse, the last, teach at Indiana State University in Terre Haute; Robert D. Linder teaches at Kansas State University in Manhattan. Linder and Pierard have written a book together to be published this year by InterVarsity Press, “Twilight of the Saints: Civil Religion and Biblical Christianity in America.” Clouse is the editor of “The Meaning of the Millennium, Four Views,” published last year also by InterVarsity.

Although we may not agree with all the views they express, their analyses are thought-provoking responses to the question, Could such things happen in this country?

The German Church and Authority

RICHARD V. PIERARD

Ever since the Third Reich collapsed people have asked how and why such a demonic force could have arisen. How could people nurtured in the bosom of the evangelical church have been taken in by Hitler and his cronies? Professor Thielicke frankly and forthrightly deals with these matters, but his remarks raise troubling questions with which every thoughtful American Christian will have to wrestle.

First of all, the German Lutheran Church was by its very nature a conservative institution. Almost from the time of the Reformation it had come under the protective wing of the civil authorities in the various German states. In the early nineteenth century the connection between pietism and the German national awakening enabled patriotism to flower under the umbrella of religion, and the struggle to advance the interests of the German people came to be regarded as God’s service.

Because the church was the integrating force within society, it educated the people in the tenets of Christian morality, that is, such virtues as obedience to authority, patriotism, and a cheerful acceptance of one’s place in life. Thus, disestablishment in the post-World War I Weimar Republic came as a rude shock to churchmen. They readily identified with nationalists of all stripes in repudiating democracy, denying any moral responsibility for the war, deploring the lack of patriotic feeling, and calling for Germany’s national regeneration. Because clerics adopted an almost totally negative stance toward a new political order and most of them identified with conservative political parties in the republic, they were easily seduced by the prophets of the far right who offered a simplistic program of national renewal.

Moreover, this negativism was also directed toward contemporary society. They denounced such trends as changing sexual mores, easy divorce, declining birth rates, prison reform, modern art, materialism, and communism in terms almost identical to those used today by many evangelical critics of American life. Largely absent from their sermons and writings were statements calling for economic and social justice, approving efforts at international peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of the war, and expressing respect and appreciation for Jewish contributions to German society.

Another problem was the church’s attitude that the governmental authority was ordained by God and any resistance to the state, no matter how unjust it may be, is resistance to God. Christians were obligated to obey their rulers except when this would clearly violate demands of the Gospel.

The pious pronouncements of the Führer deceived many Christians, as Thielicke correctly points out. They enthusiastically welcomed his accession to power, because, after all, the official Nazi program (the Twenty-Five Points) took a stand for “positive Christianity,” and Hitler himself declared frequently, such as in a radio address on February 1, 1933, that his government would “seek firmly to protect Christianity as the basis of our entire morality, and the family as the nucleus of the life of our people and our community” (M. Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, Suddeutscher Verlad, 1965, I. p. 192). Even the German Baptists hailed the new era, believing that at long last they would be liberated from the oppressive hand of the state-supported church.

The German tendency to submit to authority has deep religious roots. Unlike the United States, that country lacks a revolutionary heritage, and the theology of government and the family that evolved in German Lutheranism (coupled with a grievous distortion of the two kingdoms doctrine) does much to explain this penchant for authoritarianism. A nineteenth-century thinker, Karl Haller, suggested that the state was like a family with the sovereign functioning as the father, and he utilized the catchy slogan, “one God, one king, one father.” The virtues of a subject were those of a child—obedience, reverence, faithfulness, and piety. With such an outlook Germans were ill-prepared to offer up resistance to Hitler who came to power in 1933 legally, that is, by utilizing the institutions of the Weimar Republic, the legitimate government (although stretching and distorting these beyond comprehension), instead of by an illegal coup d’etat, which he had learned during the abortive Munich Putsch of 1923 that the army and populace would not tolerate.

A Political Machine

ROBERT D. LINDER

All eight of Thielicke’s preconditions for fascism in Germany do not exist in America—at least not yet. However, an alarming number do. Certainly, most thinking people in this country today sense that something is desperately wrong and that a malaise has settled over the land. There is little evidence of any kind of political or social consensus in America today. The political landscape is marked by shifting alliances while party theoreticians search for new political definitions. President Jimmy Carter’s apparent liberal-conservative schizophrenia is nothing less than a true reflection of the mood of a nation that does not know its own political mind.

Beyond social and political fragmentation, the seeds of a fanatical nationalism were planted in many sectors of American society during the bitterly divisive years of the Vietnam War. The American intellectual community appears as fragmented as society at large and, thus far at least, seems incapable of pinpointing the cause of the current national drift. U.S. intellectuals give little evidence that they are more perceptive than their German brethren in recognizing the threat of collectivist totalitarianism, whether it be of the left or of the right. Finally, the military in America has undergone two important changes since the end of World War II. First, it has become large and respectable; and second, it has become more professional. Americans historically have been hostile to the concept of a large peacetime standing army. However, the communist threat since 1945 has led this generation to accept such an army as part of our way of life. Most important, the attitude and composition of America’s new military establishment is increasingly like that described by Thielicke as existing in Germany in Hitler’s day.

America has other serious problems as well that make this a time of great social stress. Many of them are not unlike those common to Nazism in Germany, which Thielicke mentions only in passing: an inordinate fear of communism, the search for a scapegoat for national problems, the increasing use of the media by certain powerful interests to mold and mobilize the masses, an increasing tolerance of violence as a way of life, and the presence in society of a large body of alienated, restless, bored young people looking for a cause. Moreover, twentieth-century Americans do not seem to be any more adept at organizing resistance to entrenched power than were the Germans under Hitler. Finally in this regard, recent events have revealed the presence in America of a substantial number of individuals who are willing to resort to terrorism to gain their political objectives.

But Americans have been fortunate that thus far we have not experienced the kind of debilitating economic collapse as that which occurred in Germany in the period 1929–1933. However, the unstable economic condition of America in the 1970s has disclosed disturbing trends that well could develop into ugly confrontations between various interest, ethnic, and sexual groups in the country if and when jobs become really scarce. For example, a recent Newsweek feature entitled “Is America Turning Right?” indicated that much of the growing conservatism in the U.S. today is simply a matter of “middle-class self-interest.”

There has not yet appeared on the political horizon an apocalyptic redeemer-figure of the stature of Hitler. Perhaps the American constitutional system of checks and balances and the dearth of strong leaders have helped in this regard. On the other hand, there seem to be those individuals in America who possess the demonic charisma of a Hitler. Fortunately, none of them yet has attained high national office.

Thielicke’s point that the Nazis and their sympathizers looked on people only “as a valuable element in the labor force, or as the progenitor of highly rated offspring, or as an attractive sex object” has an all too familiar ring about it to modern American ears. Immediately there comes to mind the modern American propensity to cast people on the economic and social scrap heap at age sixty-five and the growing use of impersonal retirement centers as a place to send the aged to die. Moreover, the new American success symbol of athletic prowess rather than intellectual or commercial skills speaks to the Nazi emphasis on the desirability of producing physically superior children. No longer is the Rhodes scholar or even the shrewd Yankee businessman the ideal. Rather it is the athlete who can thread a forty-yard pass through the outstretched arms of a highly-touted defensive secondary, or who can hoist home runs into the upper deck, or who can hit a tennis service at 125 miles per hour. Sports-crazed Americans appear to be willing to pay almost any price to keep their athletic heroes happy, though they haggle over every penny spent for the services of those they engage to teach their children. And need one comment in regard to the growing emphasis on women as sex objects in national life? Americans are confronted with the sexual exploitation of women on every hand: in the increasing number of pornographic magazines, in TV shows and advertising, and in most recent movies.

At the time of the depression, the nation moved to the political left to solve its problems. But that was before the advent of the Soviet Union as a superpower and before the national mood turned rightward in the mid-1970s. Industrial America now faces the energy crisis. How will the average American react to a genuine gasoline shortage? Will present-day America sell its birthright for a pint of gas? Will Americans be able to adjust to a lower standard of living in an age of rising expectations? Nor have Americans yet been tested by a major charismatic leader in a crisis similar to the one faced by the German people in the 1930s.

I think that American political institutions are sound. They only need nurture and fulfillment. The evangelical Christian community in this nation, however, is a question mark. How would the allegedly forty million American evangelicals react to an attempted fascist take-over? The evangelical record of political involvement (or lack of it) in the twentieth century is not encouraging.

Furthermore, how deeply has materialism affected the average Christian in America? How close to the apostolic ideal do evangelicals in this country live? Could they do without their affluence? What about the evangelical Christian habit of venerating celebrities? How would they respond to an apocalyptic redeemer-figure who in an hour of crisis appeared as an angel of light—especially if he made free use of Christian vocabulary?

But most important of all, what are the shared values of evangelicals in America today? Are they truly biblical values? Or are they the values of materialism? Do they share Luther’s concept of “alien dignity” or what nineteenth-century American evangelicals held as the doctrine of the free individual in a free society? Or do present-day evangelicals in reality embrace a pragmatic view of people: important only as long as they are economically productive, valued only so far as they can achieve material success—preferably on the athletic field—acceptable only if they can be exploited because of their sex or beauty?

The Press for Conformity

ROBERT G. CLOUSE

Thielicke mentions the problem of German hatred toward the Jews. He cautiously suggests that German anti-Semitism might be paralled by American racism. Much care must be exercised in such comparisons but some dangerous similarities can be seen. America lost a war in Southeast Asia just as the Germans lost World War I. Our current energy crisis has caused serious economic dislocation, although nothing compared to what the Germans experienced in the 1920s. As the ecological and energy cost factors limit growth so that workers’ demands for an improved standard of living cannot be met, race relations may become more bitter. The racial tension that resulted from attempts to achieve school integration through busing is a forerunner of what could happen. One wonders how much evangelicals are doing to combat racism in America.

Another dangerous tendency of American life to which Thielicke calls attention is the desire to conform “to certain rigid conventions of society.” Examples of conformity range all the way from clothing styles to the similarity of the fast food chains. Yet beneath these forms there is a great deal of impetus for change in our national life, among which is the drive for equal rights for women. A sample of the paranoia so common among certain anti-ERA forces is found in a recent pamphlet entitled “Beware the I.W.Y.” In the course of condemning the International Woman’s Year, the brochure accuses feminists of being aggressively immoral, lesbians, against the family, advocates of abortion, hostile to patriotic church-going Americans, and opposed to the traditional role of women as homemakers. The tract assures readers that if the “anti-God, anti-Family, anti-America” Equal Rights Amendment becomes the law of the land our nation will fade into obscurity. Evangelical Christians are among the prime targets of that sort of propaganda.

Thielicke also cautions us about a rigid adherence to the law. He mentions that even sincere Christians in America seem reluctant to face the problem of obeying laws that are contrary to a person’s biblical conscience. There is a special word of warning in his remarks to those of us who are evangelical. We tend to feel that the only acceptable reason for disobeying a law is when it limits the right to preach the Gospel. However, when it comes to civil disobedience on matters of social justice, we are content to rest on a superficial social ethic that reserves such matters for the day of judgment or the millennium. The stand of an individual like Martin Luther King, Jr., who was ready to pay the price of imprisonment for his challenges to the establishment, is foreign to most of us.

Presently it does not seem that the neo-Nazi movement, which caused so much trouble with its attempt to hold a rally in Skokie, Illinois, last summer, represents any great danger. Memories of World War II are too fresh in the minds of most people to allow the swastika to become a popular symbol in the United States.

Although the Nazis, like the Ku Klux Klan, will continue to exist on the fringes of American society, a more frightening problem is the sort of ideology based upon religion, the family, and brand of patriotism that resists needed social change. In a less noticeable but more devastating way, the forces of nationalism, racism, placing the law above one’s conscience, and political splintering can move America toward homegrown fascism.

A first-hand explanation.

There seems to be a new Nazism on the rise. The confrontations between residents of Skokie, Illinois, and a group of Nazis last summer is just one example. In Germany a film titled “Hitler, eine Karriere” has generated high interest and controversy. Historians are asking if it could happen again, maybe in this country.

At the same time, there is a move in city high schools in this country to introduce Holocaust studies to ensure that young people know what happened during the Third Reich. Educators believe that such required courses will prevent fascism from reappearing. Another way to do that is to listen to a man like Helmut Thielicke, who lived through the Holocaust, and, as a young pastor, resisted the Nazi encroachment in Europe. The following is an excerpt from his “Between Heaven and Earth: Conversations with American Christians.”

Question: I expect that during your visit you have frequently been asked how the terrible things perpetrated by Hitler could ever have happened in a country which brought forth Bach, Beethoven, Thomas Mann and other luminaries of art and science. I too would like to present this question.…

Answer: This question does indeed seem to trouble many Americans and has often been put to me; I am rather afraid of it, but not really because it is a “hot” subject. (I have grown somewhat inured to “hot” questions!) I am afraid of it rather because it involves such a.… complex of political, historical, and psychological problems.…

First: The so-called “Weimar State,” which Hitler then so horribly liquidated, left the German people in a desperate situation. A host of many millions of unemployed crippled an economy which was already gasping for breath.…

Second: The fragmentation of the state into almost innumerable parties, the state’s complete lack of any symbolic power to fire the imagination, the rapid succession of governments, none of which was able to produce an authoritative representative of deeper ties or radiate any confidence among all the fragmented groups—all this inevitably fostered the disastrous feeling of hopelessness.

Third: Along with this one must not forget the extent to which the Versailles peace treaty after World War I contributed to this material and psychological paralysis. The occupied zones of Germany suffered severely and this inevitably generated a nationalism (including champions of it in the form of highly fanatical groups) that not only was turned against the state, which was regarded as impotent, but also had in it elements which were partly reactionary (mourning over the lost imperial glory) and partly revolutionary (pressing for a dictatorship). It is certain that through the terrible folly of that treaty the victors contributed not a little to the generation of a collective despair and hopelessness, which eventuated in an explosion, the cry for a strong man, and the willingness to worship this false savior uncritically if only he could turn stones into bread and leap unharmed from the pinnacle of the temple.…

Fourth: So people clamored for the strong man, the apocalyptic redeemer-figure, and were content to stake everything on this last card. And lo, the figure offered itself in Hitler. And it offered itself in a very subtle and cunning way. And this again suggests the analogy to the demonic, the style of the Satanic gesture by which the diabolical adversary disguises himself as an “angel of light.”

Hitler knew how to dissemble and one had to look very closely and read his terrible book Mein Kampf very carefully to see the cloven hoof beneath the angel’s luminous robes. He made free use of the Christian vocabulary, talked about the blessing of the Almighty and the Christian confessions which would become the pillars of the new state, he rang bells and pulled out all the organ stops. He assumed the earnestness of a man who is utterly weighed down by historic responsibility. He handed out pious stories to the press, especially the church papers. It was reported, for example, that he showed his tattered Bible to some deaconesses and declared that he drew the strength for his great work from the Word of God

Fifth: All this raises the question why people did not rise up against Hitler when they began to see what a prince of the underworld he was.

The answer to that must first deal with the question who found him out at all. This process of finding out the truth went on only very gradually and even then it was only partial. It happened only to the extent to which one came in touch with the terror and the massive injustice in one’s personal life or in the radius of one’s own experience. Good care was taken that one should not see this happening to others. It either did not appear in the newspapers at all or in such a way that the readers (or those who listened to the speeches) were subjected by means of inflammatory accounts to the suggestion that the terrorist measures were simply retaliatory justice. When day after day for years there was nothing but talk of the crimes of the Jews, when one could read nothing but fictitious “documentary” accounts of Jewish owners of houses of prostitution, mass profiteering, exploitations, wars, and the multiplication of armaments, when the image of the Jews was obtained almost solely from caricatures and pornographic political newspapers, it required a very considerable inner substance, insight, and objectivity to arm oneself against it. Perhaps, then, one can understand that naïve people (and how many such there are all around us!) would say what I heard said any number of times: “I know a decent Jew, for whom I feel sorry, but the others must be horrible!”

Anybody who wanted to recognize the full extent of the terror had to keep his eyes open. One would think that the intellectual class of people would have seen this; but this was by no means true as a whole. At that time I had to learn to revise my ideas about the role of education and intelligence in political matters. The fact is that the intelligent person has at his disposal enough arguments and associations to prove to himself that what he fears isn’t true at all. He is also much smarter at assessing the opportunistic chances of getting ahead than the naïve spirits. Thus precisely in the intellectual class one could observe lamentable examples of character failure and delusion. In times which demand the utmost of men, intellectual enlightenment is of very little help. The uncommitted mind, though it has been highly trained and perhaps has even achieved the eminence of a renowned academic chair, all too easily succumbs to the law of least resistance. The person who insists upon maintaining his self-respect in the midst of the terror or refusing to become an object of contempt in the face of the hunger and dread of a concentration camp does not need to be an “educated” man; but he must have inner reserves and commitments. The best and most reliable “resisters” were to be found among mature Christians—not among those who merely went along with the Christian convention—and among Communists.…

Sixth: And the military?… In the first place, the officers of the German army throughout their whole tradition were always trained to be non-political. They were to be the sword of the sovereign ruler and were sworn to personal loyalty to him. I have witnessed some dreadful spiritual struggles on the part of officers who literally had to fight their way through, or simply could not fight their way through, to the idea that their commander-in-chief was a criminal. This idea was contrary to the whole ethos which had been instilled in them and had now become second nature, contrary to all their.… reflexes.

In line with this training in respect for the supreme representative of the state it was natural that one of the cardinal virtues of the German officer should be that of obedience. It therefore requires some imagination to visualize the demonic reversals that had to take place when this traditional virtue was exploited by a criminal and used to give impetus to his heinous activities.…

In the second place, it would seem to me to be unfair to speak only of this training to slavish obedience. On several occasions Theophil Wurm, the venerable bishop of Württemberg, who was not only one of the most stanch resistance fighters but also a highly educated historian, made the following comment on this to me: “We Swabians are far more stubborn and oppositional than you Prussians. For we had a number of utterly miserable sovereigns who were always throwing into prison or exiling the best people in our country. Doing this they stirred up in us a tendency toward rebellion. And the words ‘In tyrannos’ which young Schiller attached to his play The Robbers were sure to be received with approval and understanding. But you Prussians had too many good kings and now this is your downfall. Now people simply cannot imagine that the man in Berlin, to whom they swore allegiance as they did to old Kaiser Wilhem the First, could possibly be a scoundrel and that they must watch out lest the supreme commander play fast and loose with the oath of allegiance. It is the very greatness of the past that makes the present perversion of it so thorough and disastrous.”.…

Seventh: Then, as you know, it did at one point come to open rebellion—the bloodily suppressed attempt on July 20, 1944. Repeated references have been made—also in a very well-known American book—to the dilettante character of this venture which was doomed to failure. I regard this judgment itself as being very dilettante and almost intolerable, considering the sacrifices that it involved, of which I knew not a little. It only shows how little it is possible for those who live in the atmosphere of a free constitutional state to understand a resistance situation in a totalitarian country. I shall attempt by means of a very simplified example to show how hard it was to take forceful action under these circumstances.…

Now any one of you can see that (with or without an attempt on the life of the Führer) it would take at least a unit of troops, however small it might be (let us say, a company), in order to knock out the Führer’s headquarters. It would also take several other companies to occupy the various ministries, the radio stations, and other power centers. Let us assume that compact units numbering a total of a thousand men would have been needed. But even in an army of millions these one thousand men could not have been found; for every company was infested with so-called N. S. Führungsoffizieren (National Socialist Guidance Officers) and every company contained at least several sworn Nazis. They were therefore without exception unreliable for such measures. And, as it turned out, the whole thing was wrecked by the.… guidance officer of the small Berlin garrison company, who smelled a rat.…

Eighth: A great hindrance to the resistance was also the fact that the troops were sworn to personal allegiance to Hitler. How few saw through the form of this oath from the beginning! How few were moved to ponder the consequences that this might lead to! The fact is, of course, that very few had seen through Hitler himself. And could those who had some presentiment avoid taking the oath? And to be prepared ultimately to break the oath or to regard oneself as having been compelled to swear an oath contrary to conscience or to regard it as null and void in the face of Hitler’s gigantic perjury would have required a great deal of reflection which was left to the conscience of the solitary individual, since no one could speak about it openly or write a catechism on oaths. True, the church did say something, but it was so general that it took very little effort to miss it.…

Ninth: Nor can we overlook the indescribable fear of the indescribable terror. There is no such thing as mass heroism. This can be seen in the democracies too, though there the conditions that make it possible for a man to stand up for his rights are incomparably easier. But even the man who may have had some heroic impulses could very soon be gripped by cold horror.…

But despite all the important factors which I have mentioned I should be passing over the most important reason of all for this guilt and catastrophe if I did not make the following statement: It is my firm conviction that the ultimate reason why all this could have happened is theological in nature. It consists in the major premise of the anthropology upheld by the rulers and against which the German people manifestly possessed no inner defense. That may perhaps sound somewhat mysterious, and I will explain briefly what I mean.

There are two extremely different views of man. In one I evaluate man according to his functional worth, as a working power in the production process, as the bearer of erotic attractiveness (such as sex appeal) or of biological value (for example, in the sense given it by a doctrine of the master race). At bottom this view of man is pragmatic. In normal times its destructive features are sometimes veiled, or better, disguised. As long as a person functions as a valuable labor force he may be highly esteemed and perhaps honored as a “hero of labor.” Likewise his life moves on a high road, at least outwardly, as long as he functions erotically, that is, as long as he is young and attractive. And the same applies to his biological value in so far as he belongs to the “right” race and represents its supposed qualities.

This view of man which is determined by his functional value therefore contains a very definite pragmatic scale of values. This scale of values suggests the analogy of a machine. For a machine is likewise evaluated exclusively according to its functional value. If it is efficient and productive, it is, so to speak, “respected”; it is treasured and carefully serviced. When it is worn out and incapable of functioning it is scrapped. This analogy has some oppressing features when it is applied to the human parallel; for the high esteem which the efficiently functioning man enjoys in society is logically paralleled by his complete depreciation as soon as he loses his functional value. Then by a logical necessity the end result must be the concept of “life that is not worth being allowed to live.” And inherent in this concept is the.… consequence that “worthless life,” like a machine which no longer functions, must be scrapped. In this case the term used is “liquidate.”.…

As a representative of a country which has gone through these truly apocalyptic experiences, one can only lift up his voice in warning and say to his friends in this far more fortunate country: Take care that mere good manners, the simple slogan “Be nice to one another,” is not the ultimate determinant of your relationship to your fellow human beings. The very thing which Americans possess to such a large extent, this art of human relations, this ability to establish smooth and uncomplicated communication, can be suddenly paralyzed and turned into its opposite when we no longer know who and what man really is. Then all this “niceness” can become merely the expression of a pragmatic doctrine of optimal manners and etiquette. Then one is no longer “nice” because one has respect for human dignity, but rather because one desires merely for very practical reasons to eliminate as much as possible all friction from social intercourse and not allow any sand to get into the social machinery.…

The opposite view [of man] is the one we find in the gospel. Here the dignity of man rests not upon his functional ability, but rather upon the fact that God loves him, that he was dearly purchased, that Christ died for him, and that therefore he stands under the protection of God’s eternal goodness. And the mentally defective and those who are worthless in the eyes of men are also under this protection. Thus Bodelschwingh, the director of an institution for epileptics, could fling himself against the myrmidons of the SS and say: “You will take them away (for killing) only over my dead body.” He knew that even the most wretched of them, in whom our human eyes can scarcely see a spark of humanity, are loved by God—and no one dares to snatch them out of his hand. They have no immanent functional value, but they do have what Luther called man’s “alien dignity,” which means that they have a relationship, a history with God, and that the sacrifice of God hallows them and makes them sacrosanct. Only in this “alien dignity” is there any security. In any other case we are delivered over to human evaluation and manipulation.…

There is so much talk about the church’s responsibility for society. This often means that the church must take a position with regard to social, cultural, and political questions. I would by no means deny that this is part of its obligation. But prior to all secondary statements of its position is the primary task of the church to proclaim and to hold before the public consciousness this major premise, this fateful premise of anthropology, this central image of humanity which is set before our eyes in the gospel.

Let me conclude by trying once more to define this fundamental and really fateful thesis (looking back as I do so to the way in which this thesis became the key principle of the darkest chapter in the history of my country). What matters is not the utilization of man but rather the infinite value of the human soul. Any emphasis upon the utilization of man delivers us over to the disposition of human hands and therefore to the most frightful manipulations. But knowing the infinite value of the human soul allows us to be secure in the hands of God. We must decide whether we shall see in man an instrument of society or a child of God. We must decide whether we want to see him delivered over to men or to the protection of God’s eternal goodness.…

If a man’s value depends on his ability to function then like a machine that no longer works, we must be liquidated.

Question: Though you have shown us the background against which the disastrous development in Germany must be seen, I still cannot believe that these mass murders could have happened if the German people had known these things. I can understand that at the beginning there was no protest because the new rulers disguised their real intentions. But I cannot believe that if they had had a clear knowledge of what was happening, they would have tolerated the deportation and the gassing of millions of people. I have repeatedly been assured by German friends that they really knew nothing about this, and that when they learned of it after the war it was a horrible shock to them. Considering the magnitude of the crime, I cannot understand how it could have remained a secret.… So I ask you: Did the Germans know all this or not?

Answer: I could take the relatively easy way out and answer your question by saying that at any rate, of the people whom I know, not one knew the full extent of what happened. But naturally a great many must have caught some sound of the beating wings of darkness circling above us; rumors of what was happening were going around. But there was nothing to take hold of because the things themselves were done in secrecy and were also carefully concealed by the authorities. It was possible to dismiss all these rumors and to say to oneself: “I have no use for rumors” (which in normal times may be a perfectly honorable point of view). Moreover, many well-bred, decent people said to themselves: “This simply cannot be true; such infamy is beyond all imagination.” People said to themselves the very same thing that you have just said: “How could such a thing be possible at all in our country?” The daily propaganda kept drumming it into people’s heads that the “enemy stations” were broadcasting the most absurd lies in order to “break down our fighting strength.” And many attributed the rumors of atrocities to enemy psychological warfare the purpose of which was to break down morale. It is true that the star of David was to be seen in the streets. It would have taken some effort of imagination to visualize the misery of those who were compelled to wear it, but this people preferred not to do, for they were already sufficiently burdened with anxiety about the next night of bombing, with care for the future and for their husbands and sons at the front. I myself knew considerably more than most because I had access to something more than just everyday sources of information and because many of my friends were directly affected. Nor did I myself come off unscathed, and very early I learned to know some partial aspects of the bestiality of the rulers. But I too did not even remotely suspect the full extent of what was happening around us. And I do not consider it out of the question that I too would have thought it impossible if someone had told me about it before 1945. And after all, I was one who thought the Nazis were capable of some.… outrageous things.…

Why is it that despite all this I would not have a good conscience if I spoke only of the fact that the Germans did not know what was going on? Well, there are two different ways of not-knowing. One consists in the fact that one really has no information whatsoever and therefore cannot know anything. The other has its roots in the fact that one does not want to know something, that one is therefore repressing something which might possibly be known.…

I now appeal for a moment to your imagination. Think of a general who has come home for a brief furlough from the increasingly wavering front in the battlefields of the Soviet Union. The pressures and impressions of the hardships, the daily bloodshed, and the secret dread of the growing Soviet superiority of power are almost overwhelming him. And then you try to tell him something of the crimes of the regime at home and in the occupied countries. You try to tell him considerately that his commander-in-chief is a madman. Assume that he would not forthwith dismiss any thought of this kind because of his officer’s tradition and refuse to listen to such talk because of his oath of allegiance. Try to think of this general simply as a man, a man to whom the lives of thousands of men, a division, or an army are committed. How would he react to such news?

The dreadful responsibilities he must bear, the sacrifices of hardship and blood he must demand of his men—this can be borne only if he sees some meaning and purpose in it. And he can see meaning in it only if he is convinced that he is protecting the homeland from the Red flood and that the supreme representatives of his homeland—in whose service he stands—are worthy of that trust. If he came to the conviction that this war was not a defensive war at all, but that Hitler had started it in pursuit of his insane notions of world conquest, that Hitler himself was a prince of darkness and a madman, and that the homeland which he thought he was defending in Hitler’s name was actually being destroyed by his government, that therefore all the values which he was fighting for would go to the dogs anyhow—assuming that he came to this conviction, I ask you, how could he bear the burden of such knowledge? This would not only take away all meaning from his struggle and that of his men, it would not only reduce every sacrifice to horrible futility, but it would also confront him with some very definite consequences. Could he go on allowing himself to be used by this villain, could he go on serving him? Would not this mean that he was making himself a party to this gigantic work of destruction and murder?.…

I personally encountered many such conflicts, however, among those in the lower ranks, young officers and soldiers. Many of my students were officers. They fought on all the fronts, and on their furloughs they would come to me and ask, “What’s going on here at home? We have been hearing some things.” At first I always told them the plain truth, but then it cut my heart to have to let them go away in despair, having now to bear the inner burden of this knowledge on top of the burden of the battlefield. I can still hear the despairing cry of a young officer-theologian: “What then are we fighting for, if this fellow is destroying our church?” Another had tears in his eyes because he could not bear the thought that he was sworn to Hitler while his father was in prison as a Confessing pastor. Both of them were killed in battle. Only a few of my young students of that time ever returned. And I know that several of them sought death because they could not endure the contradiction. A young half-Jew, for example, one of the most faithful and gifted of them all, volunteered for every possible dangerous patrol duty. He knew far more than he could bear. And one day he did not have to come back.…

Question: Is it true that the collapse of Germany in 1945 brought about a religious revival? If so, has this revival continued? If not, why did it not come or why did it cease?…

Answer: After the collapse people in Germany went through a period of tremendous shock. When everything that had happened came out and countless people were suddenly and in very different ways led into a great silence (either into the troubled silence of the new situation under the occupation or the dreadful silence of the new concentration camps), the majority undoubtedly felt that a tremendous judgment had fallen upon us. Many people even spoke of the “blessing of the zero hour,” the time when things have hit absolute bottom and God gives the chance of a new beginning in the midst of the ruins and the dead.…

Externally this was apparent in the fact that the churches were crowded and that people literally cried out to the church for some word which would explain and point the way out of the situation. In this hour we also established the evangelical academies which sought on the basis of the gospel to point out roads to a new order and to a new self-understanding in the previously ideological country which had suddenly become a no man’s land. It appeared to be a precious and fruitful hour in our history. The soil of men’s hearts had been plowed and there was great readiness to repent. And there were times when I thought that now the hour of awakening might have come. Anybody who lived through these hours in the pulpit was moved by the way in which people listened.

And yet this hour, this kairos, passed by, people ate and drank, married and were given in marriage—and everything remained as it had always been. Why was this so?…

I believe, for example, that the church at that time did not find the message for the hour. There were some very unpleasant “seizures of power” and self-assertion on the part of the “old guard.” Not infrequently services were rewarded with offices and occasionally someone who really had exceptional charismatic gifts was made an ecclesiastical bureaucrat, where he naturally failed. Instead of the preaching of repentance and salvation we had the proclamation of a collective guilt and a hysteria of self-accusation which was in need of psychological understanding rather than having any theological justification, and this led to a hardening of men’s hearts. Despite the times, from many pulpits we heard only very conventional, pallid sermons which did not reach men’s hearts and left them cold. We seemed to be denied a prophetic awakening.

But from a totally different and altogether unexpected side there came something which in my judgment constituted an obstruction in the spiritual situation. When I speak here of the procedures of denazification as they were handled particularly by the Americans, I beg you to believe that today I can speak about this completely without anger. I have long since realized that a military government coming in from the outside simply could not understand certain things in an occupied country and that this was not changed by the fantastic amounts of printed information materials which the army carried with it. At that time (1947) I preached a sermon about and against these forms of denazification which was later published along with a polemical exchange of letters and also reprinted in American papers. It was precisely the reaction of American Christians to this that so happily showed me how innately helpful, fair, and self-critical people are in this country.…

Hitler made fine use of the Christian vocabulary.… He handed out pious stories to the press.

The Americans at first regarded the entire German people—with only a few exceptions—as one band of more or less thoroughgoing Nazis. Figuratively speaking they had the whole German people fall in three deep and then ordered everybody who had anything whatsoever to do with the Party to step to the left. They then added to this group a rather large number of other people. In Württemberg, for example, this included everybody who had a title that ended with “… rat,” such as Studienräte, Regierungsräte, Veternärräte (schoolmasters, government counselors, veterinarians). It was thought that these people must have had a specially close connection with the system. Many thousands were sent into concentration camps.…

The fact that very many were unjustly deprived of their positions and a good portion of them were imprisoned in itself led to a certain hardening of mind. Also contributing to this was perhaps the fact that many people had placed high hopes in liberation by the Americans, that they looked upon them as representatives of a Christian nation which would proceed in love and justice to show a nation of neopagans what true humanity is. In the face of such hopes any disillusionment would be sorely felt and would result in a loss of prestige for—a wrongly understood—Christianity.

But far worse than this and something which really brought with it what we have called a spiritual obstruction was the following. Innumerable people—I believe the greater part of the German people—were therefore dismissed from their jobs and professions. (At that time one could see formerly wealthy businessmen and high officials performing the manual labor of cleaning up the streets and rubble heaps.) In order to get back their positions and a livelihood, they had to undergo a process of denazification which required a testimonial. These testimonials were called Persilscheine (Persil was a well-known soap company which advertised that its soap would produce dazzling white laundry). The consequence was that everybody who was affected sat down and wrote letters to every possible irreproachable non-Nazi begging him to testify that he had had only a formal relationship to the Party, that he had really gone out of his way to protect the Jews, that he had always been cursing Hitler, and that he had just missed by a hair being sent to a Gestapo prison or concentration camp. And because the non-Nazis had sympathy for the many who were now being unjustly punished, they quite willingly handed out these Persilscheine (hopefully not too many to those who were really guilty!). Then these people could read some heart-moving words about their innocence, their heroism, their secret martyrdom. And all along we were all guilty and should have been arrested (if not by men then certainly by God). Many people had ten, twenty, and more such testimonials. Never in their lives had they seen such a flattering picture of themselves, since this is the kind of thing you read only in death notices and memorial addresses. When a man read this stuff he was able to recover his self-conceit!…

I say all this not in order to throw the blame on the Americans of that time. It is not my business here to draw up an account of guilt. I know what I did that was wrong. I too wrote Persilscheinen until my fingers were sore in order to save as many as possible whom I considered relatively harmless sinners. But should I not have enclosed a pastoral letter which would have said to the recipient: “We are all guilty and in need of the forgiveness which no appeal board can give us”? Should I not have written to him: “I seek to wash you clean before men, but what will happen to both of us when we stand before the Last Judgment and we are asked to give an account of the years past”? “It is our guilt that we are still living,” said Karl Jaspers. This may sound a bit overpathetic, but there is something to it.…

In closing I can only thank you for having shown such fraternal interest in the fortune of my country. We have not forgotten that it was the Christians—and especially the American Christians—who stretched out their hands to us after the war and provided us and our children with food and clothing. All of us who went through those years will treasure in our hearts this act of helping love.… There has been no need politely to retouch the picture or to beat about the bush. Nor does shame need to keep us from speaking. For we can take even the most painful things and set them down in the light of eternity in which we all stand together. We face one another not as strangers but as brothers. This is what I shall never forget about these hours.